Thursday, 30th November 2006

As I trawl through the online newspapers each morning I become increasingly aware that the only satisfying page is the one containing the cartoon, although now and then the letters' editor does allow something profound to slip through the net. As for the news items, generally I am left feeling starved, a hundred questions on my lips as to background information, the whys and wherefores, the essential, the nitty gritty - they seem to be all glitzy packaging, empty of product and I wonder that reporters do not have more enquiring minds.

This morning I read a brief news item stating that police arrested a woman in northern New South Wales for engaging in an indecent act with a horse. I have a lot of questions. The report said that the police were called to a paddock at 9.00 am where they found the 35 year old naked woman with the horse. I have a lot more questions. The lack of further details certainly stimulates the juices of the imagination. The time of day itself is thought provoking - nine o'clock in the morning, the exact hour when the workforce is settling itself down to another day of slavery. Was this some kind of political statement? Was the woman taking a sickie or a day of annual leave? Was she on the dole? If the latter, there may be a serious case to be made that giving people welfare payments can lead to bestiality.

As to the horse, was it her horse? Or was it borrowed? Or stolen? Was it her husband's horse being used to provoke jealousy? Was it a mare, gelding or stallion? Had they been seeing one another on a regular basis or was it a one off? Perhaps one thing led to another - it's hard to know when to stop with a horse - for heaven's sake, one can embrace it, blow up its nose, whisper in its ear, kiss it, nuzzle it, stroke its withers, slap its flanks, get astride it and bounce up and down on it. When does it become indecent? When does the law step in? At what point do we assume that the horse turned its head around and said, "Oi, don't touch me there!"

The crux of the matter, of course, is whether the horse consented.What do you reckon?

Monday, 27th November 2006

Found this nice cricket quote today: "It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it's when you realise that your wife left you in May." [Denis Norden, British television writer and compere].

The next test match doesn't start until Friday which leaves me free to write on other subjects.

Or cricket....

The thing is, when watching cricket, one has to be totally attentive and to know that the result of such attentiveness may be that nothing much will happen, maybe for hours, yet something stupendous may happen and perhaps the fact that one is committed to such possibility - and prepared for it - is in a sense willing it to happen. Years ago I read something Andre Breton wrote about the way Henri Cartier-Bresson worked, the way he captured the instant, the never to be repeated instant, in his photographs and when I read it, it reminded me of cricket (and of life, needless to say). He said of Cartier-Bresson:

"Actually, it's quite true that he is not waiting for anyone since he's not made any appointment, but the very fact that he's adopting this ultra-receptive posture means that by this he wants to help chance along, how should I say, to put himself in a state of grace with chance, so that something might happen, so that someone might drop in."

Stunning phrases, those: "ultra-receptive posture", "in a state of grace with chance". One reads them and knows intuitively that is the way to live, to be willing and ready, to have one's hand open in a relaxed, almost nochalant way, so that when the perfect catch occurs, at that moment one knows there really was no other possibility. Anything could have happened - and yet there was nothing else that could have happened - at that instant there was nothing more certain than chance itself.

A few years ago our esteemed PM, Little Johnny (known affectionately as "the lying rodent"), advised us when he distributed his anti-terrorist kits, complete with those invaluable fridge magnets, to be "alert but not alarmed" and there is something in what he said if we take "alert" to mean to be awake to the possibility of something glorious occurring rather than one's neighbour building a scud missile in his garage. Life occurs in the instant and you have to be there - don't look away or you'll miss out.

(If adopting an ultra-receptive posture is making your back ache, you are not doing it properly.)

Saturday, 25th November 2006

At the end of day three of the first Ashes test the Aussies have made 783 runs and the Poms 157.

Fortunate indeed that mortification is good for the soul.

Friday, 24th November 2006

Good news! Well, good news if you are Catholic, married and have been tested positive with the HIV virus: the Pope is considering the possibility of allowing you to use a condom during sex with your spouse. Will not write further on the subject (can't stop an attack of eye rolling) except to applaud the TV news reader who kept a straight face while passing on this information.

Not being a "believer", I've always been midly amused by (and I would like to think tolerant of - but I'm as likely as the next person to be fooling myself) the variety of religious beliefs abounding as to the purpose of life and the codes of behaviour accompanying these beliefs. I did have a certain fondness for Jesus ("the Nazarene" I used to call him until a friend told me it sounded like a fizzy drink) who came across as a bit of a hippy, a cool dude who was pretty handy to have around at weddings. "Don't bother ordering any wine - just get in 45 vats of water and invite Jesus along." But when I was washing up the other morning, I heard a guy on the radio say, "We believe Our Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins" and what he had said, that sentence, hit me for the first time - you could say I had an epiphany - and I realised that he actually believed those words and, further, there were other people who believed those words - and not just one or two of them, either. I had to sit down and fan myself with the tea towel. Gob smacked, I was. Thunderstruck. Well, you know what epiphanies can do to you. What was I thinking before this momentous event? I suppose I thought the whole idea of someone dying for the sins of the world was a whimsical notion a bit like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy and that no one took it seriously.

I'm looking at Christians in a whole different light now. And, I tell you what - my money's on the Tooth Fairy.

I have to admit that the foregoing has been nothing but a distraction to avoid a matter of much greater import: the Aussies are doing well in the first Ashes test, dammit. They ended their first day of batting with a score of 3/346 and are crowing about it in a most ungentlemanly manner. I love living in Oz but nothing makes me feel more English than an Ashes test - it's an emotional time for me - as I was driving the van around Sydney this morning the radio played Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March and I suprised my dog by singing Land of Hope and Glory with great gusto, tears in my eyes and all. Yes, I know it's all a load of bollocks, but there we are, at heart I'll always be a fair dinkum true blue bloody Pom!

Monday, 20th November 2006

Just returned from a weekend in the bush where I attended an outdoor theatre production of "The Wind in the Willows" and we wandered happily through the balmy night following the delightful adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger and, of course, the irrepressible Toad. These brief sojourns into the countryside are always pleasurable and, as ever, I wondered whether I could live away from the city but I generally come back to the conclusion that it is the contrast between city and bush which satisfies me: I love the one because I know I also have the other. Returning to Sydney each time and seeing the harbour, the bridge and the city spread out before me, lights all a-twinkle, a fairyland reflecting in the water, makes my heart fit to burst with joy. It's the people, of course - Whitman said, "Sometimes to press my body against that of someone else is about as much as I can bear", so the fact that I have four million people pressing against me here is an unbearable ecstasy.

This is not for a moment to suggest that country folk aren't the best of the best - there's just not enough of them and they are spread so sparsely. I do appreciate that this gives me a chance to commune with nature but gum trees aren't known for their slick repartee and the witticisms of the wombat have yet to be chronicled. And it's true that here in the city I don't have the noise of the frogs in the dam to lull me to sleep but there are the speeding police cars, wailing sirens, raucous drunken singing and the occasional sound of breaking glass to remind me that I am cradled in the bosom of my own species. I rest content.

Thursday, 16th November 2006

It's a wild, wild day - the coldest Sydney November morning since 1905, the wind and rain lashing around and in the Blue Mountains bushfires and snow are co-existing. How mad is that? Having survived bushfires and floods, I ponder now and then what is in store for me next - pestilence or famine. Probably famine, as Western agricultural methods have just about annihilated this sunburnt country and the topsoil blows into the dry gashes in the landscape which once were rivers and creeks. Apparently 98% of New South Wales is in drought and we are being warned about food shortages which could be a rather drastic cure for the obesity crisis, although I'm surprised that the same remedial action hasn't been initiated as has been employed against us smokers - signs at the entrance to all public places reading: "NO SMOKING NO FAT PEOPLE" - subtle, but effective. This might mean that there will always be more people standing around outside shopping malls than there are people inside and the thin non-smokers will have to gain entry by running a gauntlet of aromas - tobacco smoke curling around steamy meat pies, hamburgers and hot chips. [I'd put one of those smiley faces here if I knew how to do it].

Going into a shopping mall for me is one step down from putting hot needles in my eyes. Fortunately, my children don't ask me any more as I turn the whole expedition to misery for them with my running commentary on our pathetic consumer-driven, materialistic society and the exploitation of people less fortunate and "... are you really intending to pay $59 for that scrap of material no bigger than a handkerchief which is supposed to be a garment, made by some poor women in a hell hole working for a pittance, and which is probably worth 50 cents and all the profits have gone to some greedy fat cat blah blah blah ..." So now I just sit in the car and wait for them and idle the time away by imagining a tsunami coursing through the place (at night, of course, with no people around), the power of the water carrying away its contents, sucking them with it as it recedes into the ocean and then all is quiet and still and peaceful - the consumer goods consumed at last!

Oh, I feel quite heady after that.

Monday, 13th November 2006

Spent an hour or so with Bill Hicks this morning. I take recourse to this foul-mouthed messiah now and then, especially when our Prime Minister has said something particularly dull and unimaginative. This morning he said he wanted Australians to feel their lives were safe and predictable - good lord, no wonder more and more folk are engaging in high risk sports and killing themselves base jumping - anything for a bit of excitement. "Safe and predictable" - sounds remarkably like stagnation, if not death. For myself, I prefer to be mad with passion, to go close to the edge and catch my breath, to feel the terrible uncertainty of existence tearing at my sinews, to plunge into the avalanche of despair and to stay with it to see where it leads, to rise again and fly, ecstatic, intoxicated, nuzzling into life's armpit, sniffing it in and in until I am filled, drunken rapturous being that I am. (No point in offering me a tax cut, John).

Bill Hicks died before I knew him. He was 33. He was filled with love and spat out obscenities as though they were the word of God, cutting through hypocrisy with a sharp and cruel wit. I watch him on DVD again and again and I read his words over and over. I love that man. His philosophy was one of gentle anarchy and his message was that we are one and that there is nothing to fear because we are only here for the ride. One of Bill's complaints was that there was never a positive drugs story on the news and this is the one he'd like to hear, just once:

"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration … that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."

Sunday, 12th November, 2006

I've just eaten three dozen oysters.

I can't believe I did that ..............

Saturday, 11th November 2006

11/11 is a noteworthy date in Australian history: as well as being Remembrance Day, it is the date that Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880 (his last words reputed to be: "Such is life") and the date in 1975 that the Queen's Representative, the Governor-General, dismissed the Prime Minister of the day, Gough Whitlam (last words as PM: "Maintain the rage!") The usual Remembrance Day service took place at the Cenotaph to honour those who lay down their lives for their country, accompanied by the usual hypocritical "Lest we forget" nonsense whilst at the same time the government is making major efforts to increase military recruitment so that more young men and women may get the chance to make "the ultimate sacrifice". I wonder which country will be invented as the next enemy? Sorry to sound cynical but one can only swallow so much bullshit.

I do love my own species - well, I'm passionate about it, actually, and human beings are a constant source of inspiration and surprise. We'll have a go at anything, there's no doubt about it. This week a young man in the UK inserted a firework into his anus and got his mate to light it. Breathtaking. I mean, I know the jazz singer, George Melly, said that the only problem with the human body was that it didn't have enough orifices which means we have to be pretty inventive with what we've got, but that's not the sort of bang that ever came anywhere close to my realms of consciousness.

Oh, God, not a Catherine Wheel, surely?

Friday, 10th November, 2006

Made a lovely connection on the Scrabble site yesterday with that rare someone who had also read "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment", the underground classic written by Thaddeus Golas. These meetings always come as a delightful surprise, even though I'm aware that nothing happens by accident, and it was helpful to be reminded to follow Thaddeus' advice to "love it the way it is" even though I couldn't find a possie for my bingo.

Like Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass), Thaddeus Golas used drugs to enhance his awareness of other dimensions of consciousness, of many other "realities", and their experiments and investigations have become definitive works for others daring to venture away from the limited experience of physical reality and the dualistic paradigm that keeps us enslaved. No surprise that governments have made these substances illegal - once we discover we are all one in love and that there is nothing to fear, then we become ungovernable. But their efforts are all in vain - the underground movement is alive and well, with or without drugs, and its members recognise one another by nuances and faint indirections.

Just imagine, the innocent Scrabble site may well be a seething hot bed of sedition.

Thursday, 9th November 2006.

"Forgive everybody everything" is the advice given by the elder man to the younger in the book, "Tuesdays with Morrie". Ultimately, of course, there is no other option if one is intent on a life of joy and laughter, free of grievances and resentments, and for some time I've been an avid student of the act of forgiveness and its effectiveness in promoting happiness and well-being. As an aid to study, life obligingly presents me with ongoing opportunities to practice and test my theories, the latest being offered to me by my dog who busied herself while I was out and chewed up a recently acquired DVD of "Little Britain". I messed around for two hours, refusing to follow the beckoning hand of forgiveness, holding off the moment of surrender with Vicky Pollard type "Yeah but no but yeah ..." protestations. In the end, I was absent from the act of forgiveness because while I was busy on the computer the dog had sat beside me and I absentmindedly stroked her head without realising I was doing it. Forgiveness had taken place without my permission and it felt like one of those weird orgasms that kind of happens without one noticing it until it's over and there's a sense of having missed out. Obviously, like the orgasm, the dog couldn't wait any longer

Travelling over the Harbour Bridge today I thought, as I often do, how amazing we are as drivers - seven or eight lanes of traffic, thousands of vehicles racing along, overtaking and changing lanes and accidents few and far between. The accidents get all the attention, of course, and the news media loves to tell us over long weekends and holidays how many people have been killed - in fact, it seems to be a bit of a competition between the States - will New South Wales win again this time? To give us some perspective we really need to be informed about how many drivers arrived safely at their destinations - several million, actually. The Harbour Bridge still has a couple of toll gates where one can hand over real cash to real people though we are gradually being coerced into obtaining E-tags. I like the brief exchange with a human being, fingers brushing together, a friendly greeting, a smile, a nod -and I also like to pay for the vehicle behind me once or twice a week. The man at the toll booth likes this too and grins as I hand over money for two vehicles because he knows the consternation that is about to occur when the driver is told I've paid his toll for him - we have become unaccustomed to acts of spontaneous kindness. I suppose if the authorities find out what I am doing there will be a law against it in no time.

Time for vino tinto - all hail the great god Bacchus!

Tuesday, 7th November 2006

Saddam Hussein is to be hanged and our Prime Minister is jubilant, calling the verdict a triumph. How odd - I thought Australia was against the death penalty (of which Peter Ustinov said, "As we don't know what death is, how can we sentence someone to it?") - but apparently it is reserved for those who were once good friends but then had to be turned into enemies because they held large oil reserves which they intended to trade in Euros instead of US Dollars. Naughty naughty.

The English XI has arrived and the excitement mounts. I must admit I felt a bit faint when I saw Flintoff emerging from the airport and I think he may be replacing Sergeant Smith in the lust stakes. Yes, I realise how disloyal I am but Smiffy has been banged up in the nick for a while now so I'm getting little satisfaction from The Bill. Maybe I'll just use Flintoff for the duration of the Ashes Tour by which time Smiffy may have picked up a get out of jail card and I can go back to him. Hark at me, chopping and changing my allegiances - I've got all the makings of a world leader, no worries.

Melbourne Cup today and I'm off out to celebrate by playing Scrabble all day. I've backed Geordieland for no reason.

Saturday, 4th November 2006

I neglected to join in the global warming march today and instead got absolutely slaughtered at Scrabble and then, to add insult to injury, I couldn't even finish the cryptic crossword. Haven't been in a good protest rally since the anti-war marches where I always managed to link up with a lively group dancing and banging drums and carrying banners which read, "Dave says no to war!" There is a comfort in being amongst ten or twelve thousand kindred spirits on these occasions, especially the Reconciliation Walk where we poured across the Harbour Bridge and had tears in our eyes when that plane wrote "SORRY" in the sky because our Prime Minister refused to say the word to the indigenous population. An aboriginal woman shook my hand and said, "Thanks for coming, mate," and I wished I could give her country back to her. I am more sorry than I can say.

The notion of the Songlines is very appealing, the nomadic people of this continent moving across the land and bringing the world to life. The nomadic life itself is very appealing, echoes of Walt Whitman, "...the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose...", to travel light, travel free, sans ecoutrements, never pausing anywhere long enough to do damage. Best to keep travelling, no matter how strong the urge to stop and leave one's mark - best to make every stopping place sacred rather than risk making one place profane.

Anyway, I notice Cate Blanchett filled in for me on the march, bless her.

Wednesday, 1st November 2006.

The Grand Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, has thrown everyone into a tiswas by saying words to the effect that women who don't cover themselves up deserve to be raped and comparing them with uncovered meat left out for the cat. For myself, I simply discounted his statement and muttered, "Don't be silly, darling," as I do with most of the utterances of men of religion and politics - they really do talk utter nonsense and engage in power struggles like little boys in the playground. I want to clap my hands and say, "All right, boys, that's enough - come on in now - time for bed!" Islam is getting a bit of a knocking at the moment (taking the heat off the blacks and the jews) and I do feel sorry for the Muslim women going about their business and hoping they are not going to be abused by the general public. I followed a couple of them around the supermarket, just keeping guard, in case some addled headed person, befuddled by propaganda, decided to go on the attack. Having survived Christianity, I feel sympathy for anyone in the clutches of religious nuts. How Christianty can knock Islam I don't know, considering it has as its emblem a tortured man bleeding to death on a cross.

When attending a Ku Klux Klan meeting, how do you know which one is the Grand Dragon? He's the one wearing the fitted sheet. Just remembered that one.

We are waiting for rain. I mean, that's what we mostly do in Oz. Wait for rain. The dams have dropped below 40% full and my garden is a dust bowl. Actually, to tell the truth, I am waiting for The Ashes. 23rd November, roll on! What joy that I can watch it all day and not have to get up in the middle of the night - let the northern hemisphere put itself out for a change! Apparently The Barmy Army is 10,000 strong and will be descending on Oz imminently. Last year our household was split between Poms and Aussies and things were getting a bit nasty. Unusually, we didn't have any Germans here at the time - must have all left to put towels on sunbeds haha. Why did the German cross the road? Because the light was green and it was allowed. This year the Poms have the numbers - have to get stocked up, besides the grog, with the Marmite, Branston Pickle and PG Tips so we can settle in. I have to go for the Poms. Breeding will out, darlings.