Sunday, 31st December, 2006

Back in Sydney after ten days in Wollombi - ten days that rolled together into one long episode of pleasure. Perhaps that's the way one can come to view one's life eventually, allowing the painful memories to blow away like the chaff from the wheat - or maybe they are simply absorbed by the goodness, indistinguishable from the goodness, or maybe even the goodness itself, perceived rightly at last. What do I know, anyway? Only what I judge to be this or that and my judgment is fickle and faulty at best. Things are best left alone, away from my meddling. The truth sits impassively before me, a lake of crystal clarity, inviting me only to lean forward and glimpse my own reflection - but in I plunge, pusuing my mad quest for what is, muddying up the waters and complaining that I can't find what I'm looking for.

This is the last day of 2006 and tonight it will be Indian take-away, red wine and fireworks and ooh-ing and aah-ing as Sydney explodes into her annual flaunt, showing herself off like the brazen hussy she is, a colourful, noisy, brash, over-the-top old tart - and I'll fall in love with her all over again.

New Year Resolutions? Same old, same old: surrender to everything, offer resistance to nothing, roll another fag.

Good thought for 2007: “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” [Henry Louis Mencken]

Happy New Year! xxx

Sunday, 24th December, 2006

6.30 am and gentle rain. My goal today is to make 30 Scotch eggs before the temperature climbs: doing a spot of deep frying in the middle of an Aussie summer is about as mad as one can get. Last night I had to leave the heat of the kitchen and go and sit in the pool while dinner was cooking. Alone in the dark, I briefly became an observer instead of a participant, an enthusiastic audience of one as I looked back towards the house at those dear folk gathered on the deck, their laughter and their silliness making me smile.

I move my gaze past the horse paddock towards the Mill Pond, moonlit and mysterious, a fairy tale picture, though I know the eels are lying in wait in the deep mud below. The fruit trees are heavy with peaches and plums and the little crepe myrtle is in full flower, its blossoms whiter than white under a mackerel sky. Beneath its roots are whatever remains of our darling stillborn's placenta - she didn't quite make it, but her little body was passed around to be admired and cuddled and kissed, wrapped and unwrapped and eaten up with our eyes - and when it hurt too much we made jokes about how nice it was not to have to change her nappy. We weren't expecting a corpse but that was what we got and we made the best of it. That's what us humans are brilliant at, making the best of it - filled with anguish we walk around and perform tasks and crack jokes, faking it until we can make it, until we have allowed grief to restore us and bring us back to joy.

I raise my glass to us all. Salut au monde!

Tuesday, 19th December, 2006

Re. The Ashes -

Gutted.

Monday, 18th December, 2006

The latest head count for our Christmas get-together is around twenty people and eleven dogs - obviously we need to invite a few more canines to balance the seating plan - don't want two humans sitting next to one another haha. In a few days we'll be there, back in the heat of the Aussie bush, unloading the vehicles, cramming the fridges with food, filling the huge beer esky with bags of ice, yelling at the kids who are yelling at the dogs who are charging through half-erected tents. Together again, we are delighted, joyful, laughing, joking, pleased with ourselves and one another - we're here to get the best of each other, after all, to take what is offered, graft it onto ourselves and become more than we were.

In "As Good As It Gets", Jack Nicholson says to Helen Hunt, "You make me want to be a better man," - and so it is with those I love, their presence moves me to search for what is best in me, to take it out and offer it around, "Please, do have some - look, mince pies and cream and me!" We are good together, so good. We don't just meet each other half way, we go further. We go much further.

As the sun goes down we linger under the leafy shade of the vines, grapes hanging in glorious clusters above our heads, the candles on the table making long dancing shadows, the chink of glasses and bottles and hum of easy conversation continuing against the sounds of the cicadas across the hot night air. This is where I want to be.

Friday, 15th December, 2006

What can I say? Wasn't that the most brilliant day's test cricket ever? How can anyone put "cricket" and "boring" in the same breath? An emotional roller coaster it is, that's what! I'm limp and faint and all a-tremble after eight hours of pleasuring by the England XI - a day of moaning and gasping and crying out, hurling myself around the sofa like a crazy woman and wondering how much more I could take but take it I did!

Thanks, lads.

Thursday, 14th December, 2006

"What a rich and full life you do lead, Rosie," said one of my neighbours. "Really?" I replied, "do you think so?" "Oh, yes," he said, "all those young people coming and going - obviously at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, but they all seem very happy."

I've rented this house for over five years now, the longest I've stayed anywhere since I left home at age 17 - two years is usually my limit - and over those years it has been home to around 26 people and a stopping-off place for many travellers, with vans parked out the back and a tent in the garden to accommodate overflows. I love living like this, love the constant change, love learning not to worry about paying the rent but to trust my life's process, using as my mentor Buckminster Fuller who, in his "Bucky's Self-disciplines" states that he will commit whole-heartedly to his own personal philosophy and pay no attention to "earning a living" in humanity's established economic system, yet find that his family's and his own needs are provided for by seemingly pure happenstance and always only in the nick of time.

This "only in the nick of time" business has been scary, like leaping off the trapeze time after time, ever trusting there will be outstretched hands waiting to catch me and I have to fly through the fear again and again. Bucky's "by seemingly pure happenstance" fits in well with Cartier-Bresson's "ultra-receptive posture" and reminds me to be open and willing, always "in a state of grace with chance" so that my life (my work of art) gains an elegance, a lighthearted flowing dance, moving effortlessly, for all appearances just for the fun of it, yet directed by a deep and determined unknowable purpose that must be taken on trust.

I am at my best living in community, laughing and crying with others (although there are no "others", only "us" - and there is more laughter than tears), following no set patterns of daily life, no routines, never knowing who will be here and who won't, so that spontaneity is constantly invited and anticipated and we gather together by seeming accident. I am cossetted here amongst these lovely people, overwhelmed by their generosity, delighted by their presence - the turn of a head, the bend of an arm, the curve of a shoulder, is enough to make me catch my breath.

We live with open doors and open hearts, here at the lower end of the socio-economic scale - a rich and full life indeed.

Wednesday, 13th December, 2006

Well, how clever am I? I've managed to add two links to my blog, over on the right there, and they both work - yippee! The first is Anxiety Culture which contains reassuring information to offset the general atmosphere of fear being created by governments, aided and abetted by the scare-mongering mainstream media. There are useful articles on how to avoid responsibilities, why work is bad for us, why it is one's duty to phone in sick and to eat five bars of chocolate a day and how to think bad things and be unreasonably happy. Great stuff.

There is also a nice description of the Misleading Vividness fallacy:

"Politicians and media seem hypnotised by the Misleading Vividness fallacy – the belief that the occurrence of a particularly vivid event (eg a terrorist bombing) makes such events more likely, despite statistical evidence indicating otherwise".

This immediately reminded me of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, after which the Australian government took the opportunity to disarm the population and spent half a billion dollars buying back hundreds of thousands of guns from the general public. Ten years on, a study in October reported that this had had no effect at all on gun homicide deaths, which had been on the decline before 1996 anyway. Who'd have thought?

Everything they told you is wrong. Browse Anxiety Culture and be comforted.

The Apostrophe Protection Society simply gives clear instructions on when and when not to use an apostrophe. Best not to put anything in the Comments section until you've studied it - you know what a pedant I am.

..........

P.S. Well, what a coincidence - just read this headline in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Gun deaths in rapid decline since buyback" followed by a first paragraph: "The risk of dying by gunshot has dropped dramatically since the gun buyback scheme was introduced after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, a new report says". This seemed in stark contrast to the October report until one reads on to discover that it is suicides by gunshot which have dropped, not homicides, and in fact neither report found any significant difference in the rate of decline in gun homicide before and after the gun buyback.

I did a quick google and discovered that suicides in young men by gunshot had been in decline since 1988 anyway and hanging had taken precedence as the preferred form of suicide. But notice how the newspaper's headline would lead us to believe that we were all safer from being killed by gunshot because of the government's speedy action. [ROTFLMAO]

Tuesday, 12th December, 2006

The government has announced that it is putting in place a test for those wishing to become Australian Citizens. This will include a knowledge of the English language, Australian values, culture and history and the concept of mateship, this latter being what the rest of the world describes as "caring for one another" and which our PM seems to think is somehow uniquely Australian.

I wonder if I could pass the test? No problem with the English language, although the one I hear spoken is not the one I learned as a child and I like have to keep up to date like with the changes and like it's so easy (not) you know like it's different and so you know like random.

Australian values. This is a sticky one as no one seems to be able to agree on what these are and it will be interesting to see how the government manages to collect, identify and define them. (Had an image of the PM trying to catch chooks as I wrote that). Values and culture are intertwined and it all seemed so clear when I arrived in Australia: life was geared up to leisure activities and the working population spent five days organising how they were going to spend the weekend. It really did appear to be no worries and fair go and she'll be right mate. I was overwhelmed by the hedonistic society I had chosen to join and did my utmost to discard my Protestant work ethic as rapidly as possible so that I could embrace this beach and barbie lifestyle, the closest to Paradise I had encountered. Nowadays the catch phrase is still "It's all good, mate!" but whereas that used to mean we'd managed to chip in enough money for a slab of beer it may now mean that the speaker has just purchased his third investment property. What am I saying? I suppose that leisure and an easy life style used to be valued above the idea of working for the sake of acquisition. The values and culture of a country cannot be pinned down - they fluctuate with new arrivals, new ideas, new aspirations.

As to Australian history, whose version do we want would-be citizens to learn? Should they be looking through black eyes or white eyes as to the impact of the invasion of the continent and the subsequent 200+ years? Should they read Henry Reynolds or Keith Windschuttle? Probably it will be the history which suits Little Johnny, the 1950s nice clean white man, who lived in nice clean white Earlwood and who never fell asleep on the red earth to the plaintive drone of the digeridoo.

Good luck, all would-be Aussies. For myself, I cannot think "Australian Citizen" without thinking "David Hicks". I fear it will be ever thus.

Wednesday, 6th December, 2006

It's possible that I should not be writing this criticism today being, as I am, in a place of deep sorrow - but the truth is I am totally pissed off with Channel 9 in general and its coverage of the cricket in particular and I'm writing about it as a form of therapy. (Hermann Hesse said that it's good to write out one's bile as "some of the poison sticks to the verse").

The second test took place at the Adelaide Cricket Ground - a delightful place, with people sitting on the grass and with glorious views beyond the ground of trees and churches, just the sort of place cricket should be played - (unlike the vast Gabba stadium, obviously built for football and pop concerts and grim-faced security officials). Stumps were drawn at around 7.00 pm and on the first and second days Channel 9 (as one would expect) put back the news until the cricket finished. On Sunday, without a word of warning, they pulled the plug on the cricket at 6.30 pm and put on the news. I rushed to the telephone immediately and was kept on hold for twenty minutes during which time I turned on the radio and listened to the cricket commentary. Eventually a weary woman told me I'd have to phone Programming in the morning as she (like John Howard and the members of his cabinet) hadn't been told anything.

I decided to send Channel 9 an email but apparently it can only be contacted by phone or by letter, so at 9.00 am the next day I spoke to a gentleman in Programming who said they had to stop the cricket because they had a commitment to the news. He couldn't explain why such commitment hadn't applied on the previous two evenings so I asked him, with cutting Geminian sarcasm, if they intended to stop the NRL cup final half an hour before the end, his reply being an emphatic negative. On Monday evening, not only did they take the cricket off one hour before stumps, they also replaced The Cricket Show, which runs for a half an hour while the teams are taking lunch, with Hi Five! What the ...?

Yesterday, Tuesday, the final day of the test - guess what? The Australians were winning and Channel 9 followed the cricket through until 7.30 pm. I am certainly not insinuating that this occurred because the Aussies were winning - it may well be that on Tuesdays Channel 9's commitment to the news is never as strong as it is on Sundays and Mondays and it would be churlish of me to imagine that Programming's decision would have been any different had the Poms been ahead.

Having said all that, there is no reason why I should be at all surprised at Channel 9's behaviour: it rarely shows anything of quality and when it does give us a treat with Six Feet Under or The Sopranos it chops and changes it schedule, letting previous programmes (such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) overrun so that it is impossible for anyone to pre-set their VCRs. No wonder that it was voted the channel which treats its viewers with the greatest contempt.

I know I'll look back and laugh about all this - probably in about half an hour.

Tuesday, 5th December, 2006

England suffered a humiliating defeat today. I may never smile again.

I have wrapped myself in the comforting cloak of grief, assisted by W. H. Auden:

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

"Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

"He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

"The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

Sunday, 3rd December 2006

Joy to the World! England declared at 6/551 yesterday at the end of its first innings in the second test.

In other news, a search is on in Western Australia for a shark that bit off a boy's leg while he was surfing. Apparently the shark must be killed for the unforgivable crime of behaving naturally within its own habitat.

In other, other news, the ALP is voting tomorrow on its leadership, Kim Beasley having been challenged by Kevin Rudd. I must say I would find it impossible to vote for the ALP as it spells Labour without the "u". "Labour" is a very unattractive word anyway, conjuring up images of people toiling in the fields or women crying out in childbirth and the fact that it is spelt incorrectly only increases my dislike. My party preference is academic anway as I have never voted in my life, having found it impossible to summon up a desire to be governed. I have been told repeatedly that it is irresponsible not to vote and I am not ungrateful for what Emily Pankhurst et al went through to obtain suffrage for women, but I simply don't have it in me to require "a leader". (Michael Moore, in his book, "Stupid White Men", does express amazement that the women, having finally obtained the right to vote, then proceeded to vote for the stupid white men).

The dictionary defines "to govern" as "to impose regulations on; to direct or strongly influence the behaviour of; to exercise authority over" - what sane person would vote for that?

Pierre-Joseph Proudhorn defined it more fully:

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, asssesed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

Strewth! No wonder the Australian Government made voting compulsory.

Back to the cricket ... what a life ... Ashes to Ashes ...