A scheme to provide all artists with $1Million each

Did you hear about this bloke who’s suing a casino for the $30 Million dollars they let him throw at them? Gosh! I hope he gets his money back. But on one condition: that he gives 30 artists a million dollars each. Why? Well, it will cure him of his gambling addiction. I promise. Sue me if I’m wrong. How do I know I’m right? Think about it. What do you have to become to give a million dollars each to people who can do something useful with it? While I’m at it, I might as well extend the offer of a cure to the whole Australian population. All you gamblers: do this simple thing and you will change not only yourselves, but the world – well this country to start with. In the 2005 – 06 financial year $18.8 billion dollars was lost on legal gambling in Australia. That’s 18,000 artists who could be set up for life to make the kind of contribution to this country that no amount of spending on anything else could achieve. What’s more, that’s 18,000 artists per year. It’s not going to take more than a few years to get all artists in Australia set up, then we can start on the rest of the world. The point is, of course, where would you start? How would you go about it? Well, since it’s my idea I’ll work it out. It’ll take me a couple of days to work out how to tell the artists from the bull shit artists; but you can all wait that long, I expect. What about the $0.8 billion left after the rest has gone to good homes? Well, that’ll be my fee. Did I tell you I applied for a job at Macquarie Bank last century? They haven’t got back to me yet. Any day now, but. Eh?

In Praise of The West Wing i

SATURDAY NIGHT WASTELAND
Alack! Alas! Beat my breast! Mourn the day! My favourite TV show is no more. Last night was a desolate time for me. No more West Wing!!

Everything comes to an end. Remember Something in the air and Sea Change? This is the time to confess a dark secret. When Something in the air finished I fed my hunger for Australian soap by watching Neighbours, and for some time found it good. At the beginning of this year, however, I told John that I wouldn’t be watching it any more, because it was becoming a bit silly. I succeeded in not watching it until I left my job. Lately I have found myself involuntarily sitting in front of the TV at 6:30, telling myself that This is why I stopped watching. It really is sick. And that is true no matter what generation you are, because the word sick, as you have probably noticed has different meanings for the wise and the willing.

Hey! How about that! The Wise and the Willing! A soap about generational mutual incomprehension. And please, let me say it now. I AM kidding. Just incase anyone thought otherwise. On the other hand, it could work if the title was clearly ironic. So would it be comedy? It could be, but not necessarily. I better stop before I get serious.

But getting back to West Wing, for those who haven’t watched it or even heard of it, it was about the American Presidency in particular, and the political system in general. Not necessarily a promising subject. The other show that tried to do the presidency (I think it might have been called The Commander in Chief) was “commercial” – if you get what I mean. I use that word to illustrate something about West Wing: it was on a commercial channel in Australia, and then went to the ABC – where it always should have been.

It’s drama as distinct from entertainment. Yes, I hear someone saying, but you couldn’t follow what they said because they speak at machine gun pace. Well, yes, but it’s not the only show whose language requires effort. Shakespeare, for example takes some getting used to. But when you stop listening to the words and allow what is being communicated take hold of your consciousness, you get it. It’s like seeing the forest rather than the trees. And by the way, if you want to see what I mean, get the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet and have a look. A look? Shouldn’t I have said listen? Well you do both of course: the looking carries the narrative and the listening becomes the experience of the sublime.

The reason I am pointing out how to deal with the most common complaint about The West Wing is that it will become available in the video shops and will be worth a look/listen. The other problem you might have is that the material will surely be “dated”. Well, no, actually. The programs is a drama, not a documentary. Yes it uses events similar to those going on around us in the real world, but it never about those events. It’s about the issues that underlie the events, just like the Homer is not about battles over beautiful women and heroic sea journeys in search of golden fleeces, but an effort to ask and try to answer: Who are and what makes us tick?

Struth! That's what you did on Saturday night - D&Ming the world? Well now you can get a life mate.

I just thought I'd get that comment in before anyone else did.

In Praise of The West Wing ii

Oh! Wash my mouth out!!
WARNING: This post contains nice things about America and may offend.

I can’t believe what I am about to say. Well, I can, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be saying it – which is not to say that I never say things I don’t regard as The Truth – but praising the American political system!!? Expect the sky to fall. But I’ve got to say this. I have been converted to the American political system. All because of watching The West Wing.

I was fourteen years old when John F Kennedy was assassinated. Like many others my age I was devastated. And I have retained my sense of the Kennedy Presidency as the zenith of human achievement. As a historian I am aware of why I should not cling to such a myth. But as a human I willingly and enthusiastically embrace the myth that others cynically call Camelot. There is a defining photograph from that era. It is a back shot of Kennedy, head bowed and hands grasping his desk in the oval office, enduring a moment of what the most powerful job in the world is all about. Whoever took that photograph should get a medal. So much of what happened when I was a boy is summed up in that photograph. I heard Kennedy say that he was a Berliner. I heard him say that America would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. I shook with fear for the beat part of two weeks as Kennedy faced down the Soviet Union in the Cuban missile crisis. And I cried with rage for weeks when he was murdered in Dallas, Texas. This was the era when Civil Rights was not only put on the agenda but became the agenda, in the service of which a number of truly great human beings died. It was a time when a very rich man could say, without being hypocritical: Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. At fourteen I want my life to be about doing it for my country. I don’t have the words to describe the gut wrenching moment at 57 years of age, when I saw the re-enactment of that photograph at the beginning of The West Wing for the first time. There’s all sorts of theories about what West Wing is all about. But for me that photograph says it all. It’s about the kind of American Presidency you would hope for – a presidency that while taking account of the realities of power, attempts not only to uphold the rule of law, but to be just in the best sense of that word.

Every episode is a meditation on the human condition. It uses events just like those we are familiar with to illustrate some insight about what it means to be human. Contrasting points of view are laid out and sometimes the good guys win and sometimes they lose. Who the good guys are depends on your point of view. That’s what’s so astounding about the way it is written: you would normally expect the people the story is about to be the good guys. But this story is not about the President and his administration. It is about humanity, and there are no good guys. No bad guys. Just people going in to bat for positions they hold conscientiously, sometimes tasking advantage of ambiguities in situations to get an advantage over their opponents. Both sides do this, and every time they do they come out looking less than pretty. When they use intelligent and informed strategies and succeed you feel really good. When they use intelligent and informed strategies and fail you fel really good, because you know they failed with integrity. Failed with integrity!!? What the… Well for anyone who thinks that’s a bit of a platitude, let me point out that this is being posted four days after Anzac Day. Failing with integrity is celebrated in this country as the touchstone of who we are as a people. The Bartlett Presidency is not the monumental failure that Gallipoli was, but nor is it the triumph that the Regan Presidency is now being said to have been (sic!). Is the Bartlett Presidency a success then? Let me answer with another question: Does heaven exist?

The program reached its most astounding heights in it closing stages. After eight years of the Bartlett Presidency there’s to be a new president. Will he be a Democrat or a Republican? To illustrate what I have said about there being no good guys or bad guys in this show all you have to do is look at the two candidates: a not altogether inexperienced Democrat, but someone who would not normally have come to anyone’s attention were it not for the astute vision of one of the people on Jed Bartlett’s staff. The Democrat is a reluctant candidate at first, not because he doesn’t have good ideas about which he is deeply passionate. Rather, he’s been in the House of Representatives for long enough to be ready to move on – a bit like people who go into the military thinking that can do some good (ask me about that some time) and leave hoping to be able to do some good outside of the military. Once he’s convinced he can do it, he takes command – as distinct from control – of his campaign and does the Primaries with the same kind of risk taking courage that has characterised Jed Bartlett as President. The Republican Candidate comes to the position by means of one of those ruthless manoeuvres that have been the substance of the story for the whole time it has been running, but then fights off win-at-any-cost apparatchiks to show how a real man fights and, in the end, loses with integrity. Oh God!! Why can’t the real world be like this!!?

I have known about the American political system since 1972 when I did my first unit of American history at University. But in 1972 Richard Nixon was in the White House. I had been to Vietnam and made the journey from wanting to do something for my country and the world (I volunteered for National Service to save the world for democracy) to hating America, not only for having betrayed Camelot and the Great Society (Lyndon Johnstone’s somewhat more practical vision) by electing the Loathsome Liar, but for what appeared to be summed up in the massacre at Kent State University. Massacre!!? Compared with recent events, the National Guard’s contribution to American identity seems almost like the bungling of innocents. Like everyone else, I have been appalled by much bigger events, like Waco, Oklahoma City and September 11. But, for me, the end of the world as I knew it occurred on 4/5/1970 and Richard Nixon was in charge. Even though I was old enough to know and do better, I allowed my hostility to Nixon to colour my understanding of the system to got him to the White House. I regarded the Primaries as the height of wasteful stupidity. Why don’t they have real parties like we’ve got and save all this money and hoopla by having their leaders selected by the people who know best?

Well, when you look the election of Mark Latham to the leadership of the Labor Party you see why not. And while Kevin Rudd is the person I have long wanted to see at the helm (I have emails to my friends saying that Rudd should be the leader when Simon Crean replaced Kim Beasley) there are at least half a dozen others who would be as good but don’t get to put their case. What The West Wing showed so compellingly, was how a virtual no body, albeit one with good ideas, can come from no where and make his mark. It may be that in practice it doesn’t work that way in the US. But it CAN. If we had that system here, we’d know a lot more about people like Lindsay Tanner, Julia Gillard, Bob McMullan, Nicola Roxon, Stephen Smith, Wayne Swann, Anthony Albanese to mention but a handfull already in the public eye. Did I mention Peter Garrett? And what about the scores of equally capable people not in the closed shop who could do just as good job, bringing to it a freshness of perspective that comes from being involved in the wider community, rather than processed through a political machine that regards its own machinations as more important than the polity it is meant to serve. We’d have had to choose between candidates at several levels instead of just accepting the person on whose behalf the most effective secret deals were made to get him up. We’d participate more in the electoral process and we’d be a great deal less cynical about politics if we had a system that worked the way it is portrayed in The West Wing. That, of course, is the point: the way it is portrayed. If it turns out on close inspection to be what some people would cynically call a myth, then that’s a very good reason to embrace it, because a myth it has the power to make a difference in our lives.

You can always rely on PHILIP RUDDOCK

You can always rely on PHILIP RUDDOCK
Have you heard about the bloke who’s taking Australia to the UN over its refusal to give him a widow’s pension? Yes, a bloke has applied for a widow’s pension. Well why not? In these days of same sex relationships we need to allow the word widow a wider definition. The bloke in question was the partner of a WWII veteran, whom he nursed through twenty years of illness. When his partner died he applied for a war widow’s pension. Of course, he was knocked back. I say of course, not because I think he should have been, but because I wouldn’t expect anything else of this government. (I might add that I am not altogether confident that a Labor government would have acted any differently.) Anyway, our bereaved friend got some support from various quarters (some people would say the usual suspects) and he’s taking his case to the UN. When questioned about this Philip Ruddock pointed out that legally, a widow is a woman. But, insisted the reporter, we now live in an era of same sex relationships; do you think it’s fair to discriminate against someone who in every other way qualifies as a widow just because he’s a bloke? Ruddock’s reply was: What you’re suggesting would involve widening the entitlement; for which we’ve got to find the money. But, returned the reporter, this is not widening the entitlement. The bloke we are talking about was the life partner of a veteran. Had he been a woman he would have got the widow’s pension. The money’s actually there. Ruddock was unmoved.

Artist's Statement and Haiku for Exhibition 1

Late in 1998 I entered a large group exhibition under the pseudoname Pam Tsu-Lih. I purported to to have been through the Cultural Revolution and to be living as a recluse on Magnetic Island. The point of the exercise was to deceive one of the local arts aficionados about my identity. It worked. Why I wanted to do that is not important here. What is important is that nothing in the artist's statement is factually untrue. It can be read as the statement of someone who had indeed been through the Cultural Revolution, or someone who had come to adulthood in 1960s Australia. The haiku that follow the artist's statement relate to Exhibition 1 in the pictures of Twogreytoes in Flickr. View the photos in reverse order on:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/sets/72157600111843393/

PAM TSU-LIH
I was born into a society hellbent on repudiating its past, and grew up ignorant of all but a parody of ancestral wisdom and the culture it mediated. While studying science, however, I became aware of the paradoxical nature of the world as revealed by the new physics, and recognised intriguing parallels with various ancient wisdoms. Two particular notions converged: every particle occupies the space of the whole universe; and the boundaries of objects are illusion. I saw the non-sense of forcing naive meanings out of these statements, but chose to experiment with imagery in which more than one object or event appears to occupy the same space.

THE WHOLE YIELDS THE PARTICULAR
1A
WILD RIGOUR THRIVES AND
FINDS ITS VOICE YET THE SILENCE
IS UNDIVIDED
1B
SILENCE YIELDS WHEN WE
REACH BACK AND FIND A STORY
LESS THAN WHOLY FORMED
1C
TO SEE THEN NOTICE
FOR THE FIRST TIME THEN AGAIN
DEEP PROSPECTS BUDDING

THE PARTICULAR BECOMES SELF AWARE
2A
SEEING TWICE AT ONCE
DRAWS ME INTO WHOLEINESS
I DANCE YOUR INCREASE
2B
WHO I AM EXTENDS
THROUGH ALL THINGS BACK TO SILENCE
SINGING WELLBEING
2C
THE MORE I FIND OUT
THE MORE WHOLEINESS BECOMES
THE STORY I LIVE

SELFAWARENESS PUTS THE WHOLE AT RISK
3A
AWARENESS LINKED TO
THE SIGHT OF THINGS NEEDS THE THOUGHT
IT IS I WHO AM
3B
FROM THE SILENCE CAME
WAYS TO ANCHOR AND TO SOAR
WHICH BECAME KNOWING
3C
I NOW SELF AWARE
PUT EVERYTHING AT GREAT RISK
FOR MY OWN BEAUTY

UNSELF REACHES BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
4A
AS THE STORY GROWS
THE WORLD IT GIVES ACCOUNT OF
EMERGES ON SITE
4B
SILENCE UNDERWRITES
OUR CONSTANT RE CREATION
IT BECOMES DREAMING
4C
SUCH IS THE DREAMING
THAT ALL THINGS MERGE AND EMERGE
IN CO-CREATION

CONVICTION OVERCOMES BOUNDARIES
5A
ILLUSION DIVIDES
LIKE A GREAT WALL THAT ENDURES
EFFECTIVE DEMISE
5B
UNIQUE FORMS BLOOM YET
EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING
THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES
5C
SILENCE LIBERATES
SO WORDS AND THE THINGS THEY NAME
CAN MERGE AND EMERGE

THE TRANSPERSONAL EMBRACES THE WHOLE
6A
UNSELFCONSCIOUS TILL
BEAUTIFUL AND SELF AWARE
I AM WHO I AM
6B
I AM WHO I AM
SHAMELESSLY SELF RELIANT
TILL FINALLY WISE
6C
WISE TO ILLUSION
FINALLY WE ARE UNSELF:
CONSCIOUSLY AT ONE.

THE PARTICULAR KNOWS THAT IT IS THE WHOLE
7A
IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME
MY DANCE OF RE CREATION
IS MANY RHYTHMS
7B
THE TAO IS THE DANCE
DIVERSITY'S CHANCE TO BE
FULLY CREATED
7C
THE RITES OF INCREASE
PROCEED TO THE DANCE OF DEATH
WITCH DANCE CONNECTS LIVES

THE WHOLE IN DIVERSE AWARENESS OF ITSELF
8A
ROADSIDE GATHERINGS
KEEP OUR STORIES EVOLVING
TILL SILENCE RESUMES
8B
SPINNING DIVERSE YARNS
FROM THE FIBRES OF DREAMING
WE CLOTHE OUR SPIRITS
8C
OUR STORIES WEAVE ROUND
SILENCE THE SEAMLESS ROBE OF
ICONOSPHERE

EPILOGUE: EVOLUTION AT A GLANCE
9A
SET A COURSE ENGAGE
BE WHAT NONE HAVE BEEN BEFORE
WHO YOU REALLY ARE
9B
WAVES OF HOPE COLLAPSE
TOWARDS UNCERTAIN OUTCOMES
AND CERTAIN FREEDOM
9C
I AM FREE TO CHOOSE
MY RESPONSE TO THE OUTCOME
OF MY ENGAGEMENT

ANZAC DAY 2007

For yet another year I did not march on Anzac Day. It’s the medals. They don’t match any of my outfits. Just kidding. I have been a few times. The first was the first Anzac Day after I came home from Vietnam. That would have been 1971. I didn’t go again for a long time for at least two reasons. The first was that at the end of the march at the moment of dismissal, the platoon of Vietnam Vets that I was in executed the dismissal with perfect precision, and I had a very strong nostalgic feeling – which presented me with a real dilemma. Pursue this nostalgia and get trapped living in the past or reject it and keep moving forward. I chose the latter. The second reason was that I found it really difficult to talk to people at the RSL that day. The conversation was all about being in Nam – as though we were still there. I’d had a few of these conversations with other veterans and found them very disturbing. The same has happened each time I have gone to the RSL on Anzac Day. Of course that is what you should expect the talk of the day to be about. But it’s not for me. On one such occasion a young soldier was cosying up to me as though I was some sort of hero. Tell me some warie stories Sir – how many gooks didya kill? That sort of thing. I told him that I was a clerk in the safest part of South Vietnam and he went and found himself a real man. I’m sorry if that sounds cynical. I have the highest regard for serving personnel. But I just can’t talk that sort of talk. The same thing happened when I went to the Vietnam Vets Welcome Home Parade in Sydney in 1987. It took me a while to find my old unit (17 Construction Squadron, RAE) but when I did the vortex effect was instantaneous. Maaaaaaaaate. Cuddle cuddle. Even the odd kiss on the cheek. And Oh mate, that night you got pissed on vodka and passed out on the parade ground and didn’t turn up to work the next day … And Oh mate, remember the night we all went to the (I’ve forgotten the word for brothel) and it was your first time and you couldn’t….. and Sparkie tried to perve on Clarkie and got clobbered by the fan when he tried to look over the wall…. and … and… Yes it was nice that people remembered (regrettably, all that I remembered about most of them was doing their pay books) but I wanted to talk about more than that, because the world had moved on and as a society we came to realise that being there had been a colossal mistake. So when the back slapping of such conversations ends and people start brooding over the nasty aspects of the experience, I would like to suggest that it wasn’t just us who were badly done by. What about the boys who went to gaol for two years because they refused to be conscripted for a war that they saw then as unjust and we later came to see as wrong? Not to mention the “collateral damage” to the civilian populations of both North and South Vietnam – in the case of the latter, a population in which at least half the people did not want the government we were propping up. No of course you can’t talk about THAT at such times. But that IS what I want to talk about, so the wise thing to do is not to go. All the same, one very significant reconnection did occur on that occasion, with a bloke called Ray Spurling. We had a bit of a rocky relationship in country (hey, there’s a bit of jargon for ya) but he reminded me of a kindness I apparently showed him when we ran into each other after he returned. Apparently I offered him a job (on my farm) and he didn’t show up. He was sooooooo apologetic. I was really moved by that, the more so because I had absolutely no recollection of any of it. He’s one person I’d really like to catch up with again – to thank him, because I know that I did not realise the significance of the event at the time. So the day did have a few real gut wrenches, but by the time headed off to my motel, I was promising myself: Never again. Well, as it happened, I did go again. And had the same experience of being transported back to a world that is frozen in time. All I can say is Look fellas, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s the truth – although I don’t rule out the possibility of getting over what ever it is that I don’t like about living in the past. Perhaps when it is long enough ago and I can be certain that THAT is not me now, I will be able to go back and enjoy the memory of the most astounding year of my life: 23 July 1969 to 23 July 1970.

John Howard on global warming as a moral issue

Not the biggest moral issue facing us?
In his first Australia Rising speech John Howard denied Kevin Rudd's assertion that dealing with global warming is the biggest moral issue facing us now and well into this century. In one sense Howard is right about that. The moral issue is giving the economy priority over doing something about the cause of global warming.

If the way we do things delivers wealth and power yet threatens our very existence, you do not deal with the threat by insisting that we must maintain the status quo. Let’s put that even more explicitly. If growing the economy delivers wealth and power yet threatens our very existence, you do not deal with the threat by insisting that we must go on growing the economy.

Having made that point, let me modify it slightly. It’s not even “growing the economy” that’s the problem. It’s what’s in the economy that’s the problem. The Great Depression was caused by the way the US economy was structured at the time. Roosevelt came up with the New Deal which adjusted the way the economy worked. He almost didn’t get it past the vested interests represented in Congress - and there are still people in the US who lambast the New Deal. But it worked, because it changed what was in the economy. And the economy grew, along with the sustainability of the society – until old habits reasserted themselves and made it necessary for another new deal.

The equivalent of the New Deal today, especially in our situation would be to voluntarily accept a small reduction in the size of our economy while we tooled up for alternatives to coal. Refusing to countenance a small reduction will result in much worse. But there is yet another issue that Howard keeps using as a blocker: Changing what we do is not going to stop things from getting worse unless China and India fall into line. This from the leader of the party that has been telling us that we must take personal responsibility in this world!

Mmmmmmmm. Me and the biggest bully are not going to stop bullying unless all the bullies change their ways. We’ll be good if everyone agrees to be good. That doesn’t sound like the kind of morality John Howard would have learned at Sunday School. I can just imagine his Sunday School teacher saying to him: Now look Johnny, just because Georgie puts his head in the sand doesn’t mean that it’s OK to do so. You’re never going to be any good if you don’t grow up Johnny. Doing naughty things just to get on with your friends is not being grown up.

Malcolm Turnbull - a pattern of behaviour

“We’ve know about this all along.” Malcolm Turnbull on the Stern Report.
Oh yeah? So how come it’s taken until the rivers are empty to do something about it? And if this wasn’t an election year, and if there had been no Stern Report, would there even be a water plan at all? And what about this water plan that didn’t even get to cabinet, let alone the kind of public scrutiny that such a momentous issue needs, and is consequently not up to the job?

Let me remind you about Malcolm Turnbull’s role in another of the really great issues of recent times: the Constitutional Convention.

As head of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) he went to the convention with a model that was never going to be accepted. And when that became clear during the convention, did he negotiate with interested parties to come up with a workable model that would be acceptable to a majority of delegates? No way. It was to be the ARM model (his Model) or nothing. And so it is with water. His plan. No one else gets a look in. And it’s turkey.

How do you sleep at night Malcolm?

The Celebration of Mango Dreaming

My partner and I had a restaurant for ten years. Each menu had a theme that celebrated some person, event or feature of the local landscape. This meant that our dishes had some very peculiar names, but people (said they) loved the prose poems on the back of the menu that reflected on the theme. This is one of them.


The Celebration of Mango Dreaming
It was that moment of the day when reptiles and nocturnal mammals are about to change the guard, so to speak, and the landscape’s potential for initiating the unexpected can be felt in the air. Fatima, a child of no more than seven or eight, gazed purposefully up at a mango whose changing colour had, for several days, stoked her desire. But a sudden flapping of wings and clumsy crash landing that unfolded as a flying fox, hanging upside down beside her prize, regarding it with its own anticipation, shot bolts of outrage through the cheated child.

“No!” she shouted. “Go away!”
“What you mad about, girl?” The voice came from behind.
She spun around and saw an old woman holding a rifle. “Oh please!” she begged. “Shoot that flying fox. It’s about to eat my mango!”
“Can’t help you girl,” replied the dark stranger. “I’m Kambi. Flying fox my Dreaming.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be like killing myself. Everyone who come from here got their Dreaming. Some like me are Flying Fox. Others Fresh Water Cray. Everyone something. Our Dreaming tell us who we are.”
Fatima tidied her hijab and asked, “What’s my dreaming?”
“You come from here?”
“My parents brought me from Lebanon. But I come from here now.”
“Maybe you Mango Dreaming.”
“What do mangoes dream about?”
“Their Dreaming a Journey. Also finding roots. They from somewhere else, but now like they always been here.”
“Does that mean I shouldn’t eat them?”
“Can’t say. You find out.”
“But how?”
“You look out!” shouted the old woman, waving her rifle at the flying fox.
The startled child turned to see the flying fox flapping away – and the mango falling!

Gasping with surprise she leaped forward with cupped hands focusing for what seemed like eternity as the mango tumbled. She manoeuvred to catch it, feeling as though she was guiding it to her hands. Though she had neither the time nor words to think about it, she felt as though the mango had awoken from its dreaming, challenging her to know it with an intimacy she would never otherwise have guessed possible, and, thereby, to know herself in a way that she could never have organised by choice. Though, at first, these two aspects seemed vague and separate, she felt their interdependence grow as the mango came closer. When it reached her fingers she felt her identity with it and the tree it had fallen from; with the soil it was rooted in, and the water that fed it; with the air it exchanged gasses with, and the sun that drove its chemistry – indeed, with the very universe itself.

She bellowed with the power of recognition, and then, trembling with astonishment, she held the mango out in front of her, and gasped in awe: “This is my body!”

Fatima turned to share the moment with the old woman who had said that she was Kambi. But she was nowhere to be seen. She caught sight of the flying fox, far away but circling back, and said: “You are Kambi, aren’t you!” The flying fox replied by spreading its wings so wide that it became the night, and Fatima, the refugee, grew into a mango tree with roots deep in the earth where she had become a mango by entering the Dreaming.

The Celebration of Everyday Dreaming

My partner and I had a restaurant for ten years. Each menu had a theme that celebrated some person, event or feature of the local landscape. This meant that our dishes had some very peculiar names, but people (said they) loved the prose poems on the back of the menu that reflected on the theme. This is one of them.

The Celebration of Everyday Dreaming
Smiley found himself in a most unexpected situation: waiting in a line of neophytes for an audience with the Zen Master. He alone of the two dozen or so hopefuls had not attended the Sesshin, yet he was about to be tested for enlightenment. All before him were asked the same question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Each in turn, seated in the lotus position, leaned forward and whispered an answer, and each was ordered by the poker faced Roshi to proceed to the Great Hall where the next phase of their initiation into the art of cosmic consciousness would begin.

Smiley stole a sideways glance at his immediate senior and saw to his surprise that it was Jason, a former Australian surf circuiteer whom he’d met some time ago in Kathmandu. With a sly grin Jason asked out of the side of his mouth: “Want a clue?”
“Strewth yes,” begged Smiley.
“What’s the length of a piece of string?”
Smiley baulked. He’d used a lot of string in his life, but he’d never bothered to measure any. “It could be anything,” he hissed, annoyed at what seemed like a bit of a leg pull.
“There you go,” replied the surfie.
Smiley drooped momentarily, regretting his suspicion of what turned out to be an astute mediation. He regained his posture when he felt a whack across his back. “Could it be that easy?” he wondered. “The sound of one hand clapping could be anything?”

His whole attention focused upon those words, and as he repeated them to himself they began to resonate with a variety of meanings for which he had no other words, but which allowed him a glimpse of a single field of meaning in which words and the things they represent merge and emerge as epiphanies of the whole.

In no time he was seated before the Zen Master whose question took him by surprise. “What is the difference between a duck?” Smiley’s eyes widened. His face burst with laughter and he felt as though he was swimming in the surf. He knew he had to catch the next wave, but he’d never surfed in his life. He yelled to the other surfers, “What do I do?” it was Jason who turned to him and said, “Wait till you’re about half way up, then kick like hell!”

The water lifted him, and, at just the right moment, Smiley thrashed out and instantly became one with The Wave. He travelled for light years exploring the universe, and broke back into space-time in a curve of foam breaking on a sand bar. He ran through the undertow to the beach, and when he sat down to catch his breath, the Zen Master came back into focus. “One of its legs is both the same,” said Smiley.

It was now the Zen Master who laughed. The power and rhythm of their mutual delight triggered the genesis of a new galaxy, and Smiley woke from the dream that changed his life. Smiley didn’t know anyone called Jason. He’d never been to Kathmandu. And because of a stainless steel pin in his ankle – a legacy of the Asian War (Yes, he did come home, by the way) he couldn’t sit in the lotus position. But Smiley became a poet that day when he woke to his everyday dreaming as an epiphany of The Dreaming Cosmos.

My Father's Business

This poem is by my friend Phil Ricketts.

My Father’s Business
12 years old and already going about
His father’s business although not
His earthly one’s trade of working wood into shape

He’d found his path. And his parents?
They were left to ponder and shake their heads
And perhaps raise a fist or two for only
god knows what a handful he’d been

and to sit back in wonder at
the life he’d taken to and the
crosses he’d have to bear
until that final one

24.12.91
(dedicated to one Paul Smith who’d rediscovered his earthly sense of humour)


...and this is another

BLACKWOOD (for Raelene)
I see a boy, brain dead, give his life to another
I remember Christian myth of a man who did the same
I wander past some poor mother staring at her child disappearing
Inside a box so small that it hardly warrants the wood

I see my friend go into the ground
While black crows circle and craw

I sit between my parents and my kids
All in decline and full of life
And think. No, that way is pain.
And feel. So sad and scared.
And hope. In the order of things.
As Summer edges Autumn aside.

Chincogan Ritual

Gathering
Here we are in body
And nearby is Chincogan The Magic Mountain
So let us gather in mind and spirit
On the slopes of our inspiration
With all the faeries who live there
And admit to them and one another
that we have been less than exemplary
in our use of the gifts we have been given.

Confession
I confess on the Magic Mountain
To all the faeries who live there
That I have vandalised the planet
By assuming that it is infinitely resilient
By speaking of it as human property
By actions that degrade its diversity
And by failing to limit my use of its gifts,
And I ask the Faerie Queen,
All her companions,
And you my friends,
To spare me

Our Mother
Our Mother
Which art this Planet
Gaia be thy name
Diversity come
Thy will be done in Earth
That it may be done in Heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive us our vandalism
As we forgive them who vandalise us
And lead us not into consumer lust
But deliver us form John Howard.

[And you thought I was being serious! Eh?]

5 poems

Alpha Omega
You know me by my work: my name is Alpha –
cosmic love in which primordial matter,
flung about the blackness, was conceived
in groans of joy, evolving as I speak.
Fixed, my thoughts stir life and presently
You know I Am. You offer sacrifice
Supposing I’ll suspend the span that nurtures
Nature: stuff of me; source of you.
My sign, the science we share, effects its purpose.
Search and know me. Valid inference leads
beyond empiric fact to knowledge –vast 
definity – too singular except
in tragic human suffering and love.
You find me in your work: We are Omega.


… and the word was made flesh …
With words I grasped reality and saw
the universe about myself, but thoughts
to nurture my integrity remained
untold. I knew no words for them. Instead:
Thou shalt not kill – except in circumstances
when it’s just. The same for lies and stealing,
but never lust. Lust I learned was blackest.
See! There are no seemly words in use
for prick and cunt and fuck. Yet these exist.
Perhaps they shouldn’t. What then of God? Does He?
Since we speak of Him, indeed, He must.
Introibo ad altare Dei.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Till words become reality, and flesh,
made subject, silently consents inveighn.


FOR A FRIEND IN PAIN
When He descended into hell He fell
so near to you that you fell in as well.
Abandoned, truly naked, hopeless, dead
yet breathing, crying why and how, but no,
not when, for none can pluck you from this end.
No Job shall talk you into innocence,
nor God deny you knowledge of His pain -
so dread that even scripture would deny!
This he brought you here to know: not shame.
The just shall mourn the holy innocents
and warm themselves around forgiveness.
But no one burns as God unless they fall
with Him to hell, wherein the candle glows
that knows the darkness to be God as well.

… we are surprised
Once or twice in a lifetime
- no more than three times, four at the most –
the world assumes a mysterious aspect,
such as recently, in the dry tropics,
when La Nina made a rare and lengthy stay,
and all was green for months and years,
and her allure gave nature license
to throw off habitual limitations
so that forms not known to science
confounded eyes
that scorned the evidence
of archetypal shapes
and saw no more than vines
of rampant temper
smothering their hosts
in murderous suicide.

Such, it is said, is the sorry state
of land untilled
- not yet possessed of husbandry –
and therefore
like the savages who once traversed it
coveting the fruit it yielded grudgingly,
condemned to cycles
of diminishing prosperity.

Yet they who knew her name
- not that which others use –
remember, still, how long ago
these shapes, that never go away
but show themselves, as now, to those
who cannot hide their awe,
created every living thing, and more
-the not yet named because unseen –
unseen until their time conspires
with space to make a place for them
to thrive though scarcity prevail.

Once or twice in a lifetime
we are surprised.


How mysterious it is to live
How mysterious it is to live.
How little notice we take at first
of things that later make us fear and hope
for answers we cannot supply ourselves –
until we realise we haven’t asked
the question most embedded in our lives:
instead of Who am I we ask Why Me.
But sentience unfolds to lavish each
with opportunities to reach beyond
familiar strategies and grasp the whole
of life as one definitive event
in which our fate is quite beside the point –
the falling of a leaf that must decay
without the benefit of our consent.

Preliminary exercises for a short story

These exercises preceded the writing of Bread and Wine for Eight. The first is an account of a real life incident involving Dan and Ruby. The second explores Dan’s motivation. The third describes the location in which the story is set. The fourth is the dialogue that might have taken place. Much of the material in these four exercises does not make it into the story, and the story itself ends up going quite an unexpected direction.
 
1. Dan and those taps Dan’s sense of himself as a spiritually evolved being had been stoked by a cocktail of cannabis, MDA and what Ruby somewhat wryly called Sacred Sex. Dan had lived through the sixties, but never actually been there. He’d heard of hallucinations, but never had one – until now. As he walked down the steps to get a glass of water for his inexplicably dry throat, he saw that the record player was working, but he could hear no sound. Wonder flooded him as he realised that he was having an auditory hallucination. All the hallucinations he’d heard about until then had been visual: seeing what wasn’t there or what ordinarily wasn’t perceived. If vision did this, maybe all the senses did it. And if you sometimes saw that was not there, maybe you sometimes didn’t hear what was there. What other explanation could there be for not being able to hear what the player was clearly putting out. As he entered the kitchen he was startled to see that taps at the kitchen sink had become invisible. Two black holes stared back up him from where the taps were fitted. Shaken by the unexpected confirmation of what he’d half suspected about the material world, he applied the lesson he taught himself the first time he spun out on cannabis: stay calm, realise that things are often not as they seem; there is an objective reality which your mind knows; do as your mind would bid you do – act on what you know to be true, and no one will ever know that you are a seething mass of emotional chaos. So pick up the glass. Put your hand where you know the tap is. Turn it on and fill the glass with water. Then go and tell Ruby what an amazing thing just happened. Dan picked up the glass and reached for the tap. But his hand just went straight through the space where the tap was. Now he was really spooked. “Oh my God!” he gasped. “I’ve become trans-substantial!” a conclusion he drew on the basis of what he’d heard about another spiritually evolved being – the guy who walked right through the wall of the room where his friends were hiding out from the thugs who’d killed him three days earlier. Utterly agog with the realisation of expectations he’d barely dared to say out aloud, be bolted up the stairs to tell his lover what had happened.
“What taps” said Ruby. “There’s no taps there. They haven’t been put in yet.”


2. About Dan Dan paced as he rehearsed, anticipating his moment of truth. Not since high adolescence, when others his age were exploiting their infatuation with one another’s bodies as he lavished his passion on the new rituals of his church, had he been so intently focused on the drama of prayer. His slim stooped frame, the very model of supplication, his powerful baritone voice, the perfect instrument for a God in need of being heard, not to mention the patiently nurtured trust of those who would be his first congregants, would take care of the externals. But his qualms about the legitimacy of what he was about to do drove his zeal for the interior efficacy of his prayer. Denied ordination to the priesthood because of his sexual orientation, he had shifted his focus from liturgy to social justice, and watched mournfully as the conservative rump of his former church trivialised its ceremonies and drove out anyone with an enquiring mind by their authoritarian intolerance of debate. For three decades he absorbed the contributions of people who would otherwise have been strangers, to the larger picture of what it means to he human, and learned decency from those whom the pious judged as damned. Thirty years of enduring self righteous bigotry might have embittered most people. But Dan was not most people. As a boy he’d fallen in love with God. Now, at almost 60 years of age, he was about to consummate that love. After three decades of denial, he was about to hold the sacred elements in hands that had never lost their need for sacred gesture.

3. The address is ? William Henry St The address is ? William Henry St Glebe. It’s a terrace house in a row that’s being refurbished on the outside by a builder. The owners are taking care of the interiors. The front door is a jewel of coloured and bevelled glass. It opens into a hall that leads to a stairway. Two cherubim stand guard. To the left another door , a maze of inlaid wood, opens into a dining room. It appears at first glance to have very little in it: a table with eight chairs and a sideboard. But as the eye catches the finish the furniture reveals itself as the love child of a craftsman besotted with wood. Polished with a mixture of bee’s wax and myrrh, the room is filled with a subtle but powerful fragrance that evokes in all who enter the sense of being present to the whole of what exists, and gives a wholly redeemed meaning to the otherwise pejorative jibe: the odour of sanctity. Two candle sticks on the sideboard are crowned with bee’s wax candles inlaid with intense red and green runes. They have blackened wicks. The ceiling is Art Deco pressed metal painted a faint silver gum extending down the walls to a picture rail. The rail and ceiling highlights are silver grey, and the walls below a darker tone of the ceiling colour. A floor to ceiling bay window with fan light is draped with narrow tapestries in reds and greens. An Aeolian harp is fitted onto the lintel. On the wall opposite hangs a wide mirror framed in ceramic tile. It is heavily smoked so that any image it reflects is as flat as a painting. Miniscule concave and convex curves on its surface renders a surreal and mysterious image. The floor is polished hardwood. Two Turkish rugs in pink and blue break up the spaces between the table and the bay window at one end; and the mirror at the other. An Abyssinian cat soaks up the sunlight flooding through the bay window. Its unselfconscious indifference to visitors makes it clear who the room belongs to. It stretches its neck and lunges at the fur on its lower neck, lavishing it with an impossibly salmon pink tongue. A faint breeze sends widdershins of dust particles exposed by the sun swirling above the cat. Pigeons coo on the lintel and poo on the tiles outside the bay window. The cat utters a guttural moan as the fur along its spine does a Mexican Wave. A clank of ceramic on marble draws attention back to the interior of the room. A decanter of red wins has been set on the sideboard, and a platter of bread on the table. Two figures robed in bone linen are retreating to the kitchen. The fanlight closes down onto the Aeolian harp. It begins to hum. The liturgy is about to begin.


4. Oh come on Dan…Ruby
“Oh come on Dan, you don’t believe that New Age crap, surely?”
Dan
“What do you mean crap? What have we been doing for the last 36 hours?”
Ruby
“Having sex.”
Dan
“Is that all? What happened to the sacred bit of it?”
Ruby
“Spare me, Dan. You’re sounding like a gay man in drag who thinks he’s really a woman!”
Narrator
Dan was silenced by the unexpectedness of this as much as its power. He saw an implication for the huge range of styles that people affect – not that he would have used that word until now, but if Ruby was right, then maybe it was all just role playing.
Dan
“How many men who wear drag think they’re really women?”
Ruby
“I wouldn’t have a clue. It doesn’t matter if none of them do. It wouldn’t make any difference to my point.”
Dan
“Which is?”
Ruby
“Affecting an appearance of doesn’t make you the real thing.”
Dan thinks
Dan speaks
“There’s that word,” he thought.
“So men who dress in leather, wielding whips and body piercing gear, and talk S&M…”
Cowboy
“Most of them are all talk. No one takes them seriously – especially themselves.”
Dan
“No one? Some of them do…”
Ruby
“Yes, and aren’t they sick puppies.”
Dan
“You hear them saying exactly that about themselves all the time, and apparently being proud of it.”
Soldier
“Apparently?”
Dan
“Well if they’re so good at pretending to be brutes, maybe they’re only pretending to be proud of their perversion!”
Ruby
“Oh come on, that’s a bit rough.”
Dan
“What, calling it perversion?”
Cowboy
“Yeah. Who are you to judge?”
Dan
“Ruby’s the one who said they’re sick puppies. I didn’t hear any one getting upset then. You’re OK with euphemisms, are you?”
Narrator
Now it was Ruby’s turn to pout in silence. Dan’s needed to ferret out what she’d started.
Dan
“You know,” he continued, “you can’t tell most gay men from the heterosexual herd. But some are effeminate at home, and even in public when they’re with other gays. This doesn’t seem to be an act. It seems to be who they really are. Yet, they know not to flap their wrists where homophobia rules. And that’s the overwhelming majority of situations in the western world – and maybe even the whole planet – so you have to wonder about their sense of belonging. Does the contempt of blokes make them choose to be un-blokey?”
Ruby
“Who cares. And anyway where’s this going?”
Dan
“Well, is it the unforgiving harshness of reality that prompts people to bang on about star signs and the like?”
Astrologer
“What are you on about? And what do you mean “bang on”. That’s a bit rough, isn’t it”
Dan
“Well, again, it was Ruby who wrote off the New Age as “all that crap”; and once again, I didn’t hear anyone getting upset then. ”
Ruby
“What’s the New Age got to do with star signs in newspapers? No one actually believes what they say. It’s just fun.”
Dan
“If it’s just fun, what’s the problem with saying that people bang on about it? But more importantly, is it just fun when someone explains another person’s behaviour by saying “Oh yeah, he’s a Virgo.”
Astrologer
“Well what’s wrong with that?”
Dan
“Why do you assume I’m saying there’s anything wrong with it?”
Ruby
“Because you make it sound pathological. You said that people bang on – the tone of your language is negative.
Dan
“Ah ! Beauty!”
Ruby
“Don’t patronise me, you bastard!”
Dan
“What is patronising about what I just said?”
Ruby
“You beauty! At last! She’s catching on….”
Dan
“No, that was not what I meant! I meant beauty (and what’s pathological) – is in the eye of the beholder. You’re the one who used the word pathological. I put being interested in star signs together with the unforgiving harshness of reality, to wonder out aloud if people are looking for certainty, a way of explaining reality if not controlling it.”
Ruby
“It sounds like you’re saying it’s the opium of the masses!”
Dan
“It will sound any way you make it sound. And by the way, Ruby, you’re not still wallowing in Marxist ideology, surely?”

A short Story

This short story was preceded by a number of exercises that explored its various aspects. The original intention was to turn an incident in the life of Dan into a larger story. The larger story emerged, but the incident in Dan's life doesn't get a look in. The exercises are in the previous post. People who have read both have different opinions about the intent of the story,depending on whether they read the exercises first or the story.

Bread and wine for eightAt first glance it looks as though the Village People have gathered for a meal, except that no one here is in costume. Eight people, variously uniformed, are talking in twos around a table of Huon Pine, polished with bee’s wax and myrrh. The fragrance is subtle and powerfully conspires with the table’s exquisite design and craftsmanship to evoke the numinous. Ruby’s slightly shrill voice raises above the mild hum of conversation. “Oh. Come on Dan, you don’t believe that new Age crap, surely?”
Dan responds quietly. Only those nearest hear his reply. Conversation flows as people take in the room . The ceiling is Art Deco pressed metal; a picture rail separates light tones of contrasting colours: silver gum above, blood wood below; a floor to ceiling bay window with fan light draped in long narrow tapestries of reds and greens at one end of the room; a wide, very heavily smoked mirror framed in ceramic tile at the other.
Ruby’s voice is strident again. “Spare me Dan, you’re sounding like a gay man in drag who thinks he’s really a woman.” This time the room is silenced – momentarily. “How many men who wear drag think they are really women?” asks Dan. The self-absorbed Abyssinian cat soaking up the sun on the pink and tan Turkish rug stretches its head back and lunges at the fur on its lower neck, lavishing it with an impossibly salmon pink tongue. “I wouldn’t have a clue,” returns Ruby. “It doesn’t matter if none of them do. It wouldn’t make any difference to my point.”
“Which is?”
“Affecting an appearance doesn’t make anyone the real thing.”
Lance, in full cowboy get up, chaps and all, stares at the perfectly flat image of the room reflected in the mirror. “So ….men who dress in studded leather,” he begins, “wielding whips and body piercing instruments and talking about S&M…”
“Are all talk!” Ruby cuts in. “No one takes them seriously – especially not themselves.”
There’s a slight pause as people consider whether or not to let that one through to the keeper. “That’s not true” protests Lance. “I know people who are into S&M, and they’re, like, totally fervent about it”
“Sick puppies,” grins Ruby.
“Well, exactly” retorts Dan. “You hear them talking about themselves – with apparent pride – in exactly those words.”
A tall young man robed in bone linen places a decanter of fortified wine on the sideboard between two ceramic menorah, each bearing seven bees wax candles inlaid with intense red and green runes. A similarly clad female lays a ceramic platter with piping hot wholegrain bread on the table.
“What do you mean apparent?” asks Bruce, resplendent in military dress uniform.
Sunlight streaming through the bay window illuminates widdershins of dust particles above Dan as he speaks. “Well, if they’re so good at pretending to be brutes, maybe they’re only pretending to be proud of their perversion.”
The silence is now so thick that everyone, after a sharp intake of breath, hears the pigeons cooing on the lintel and pooing on the tiles. The cat utters a guttural moan and the fur along its spine does a Mexican Wave.
Ruby is furious. “Oh come on. That’s a bit rough.”
“What, calling it perversion?”
“Yes!” shouts Nero in fireman’s yellow. “Who are you to judge?”
“Ruby’s the one who called them sick puppies. I didn’t hear anyone getting upset then. You’re OK with euphemisms, are you?”
The fanlight closes down onto an Aeolian harp forcing the slight breeze through it’s narrow mouth and across its strings. It begins to hum in unstable harmonies. Silence falls. The formal part of the Liturgy of bread and wine has begun.
After a pause for gathering in the moment, Dan says, “Call to mind someone who has personally offended you and made you angry. Recall the incident. Name the offence. What standard was breached? Focus on that single fact and,” he pauses for effect, “maintain your rage! For justice is not served by being nice to those who offend you.”
He picks up the loaf of bread, and, with some difficulty – it is very hot – breaks it into eight pieces, saying, “Our humanity is broken by conflict.” Taking one piece he gives it to Ruby. “This is your adversary. Feel the heat of your shared anger.” He wraps both of her hands around it, then walks around the table doing the same for all. Dan takes the last piece and pauses for a moment; then opens his palms , and says, “This is your adversary. Do what you will in the name of justice.” After a short pause he says, “I forgive you, John-Paul, for marginalising those who do not agree with you.” He hears Ruby say, “I forgive you, Dan, for no longer being my lover.” Everyone addresses the token of their rage. Then, on Dan’s cue, all raise the bread to their mouths and eat it, still quite hot – and fragrant, to remind them that the ‘other’ is truly beautiful. After a moment of silence Dan says, “Forgiveness changes us so that we can invite the Other into community. Having been prepared to change, we have the right to speak frankly to the Other, hoping that the resulting dialogue will facilitate rapprochement and maybe even mutual respect.” He then invites everyone to reach left and right and take the hands of those nearest, and says, “Anyone who angers you manifests an aspect of your shadow. We have symbolically integrated our shadows into our personas. As community we have a collective shadow – not personal but structural. If you are Builder’s Labourer, you’re your shadow may be Capital; if you are an Industrialist, your shadow may be the Green Movement; if you are a Cowboy, your shadow may be Urban Sophistication; if you are any kind of Tribal Leader, your shadow may be Globalisation. If we really are community, we are fully inclusive. No one is excluded – not the Capitalist, not the Unionist, not the Mine Owner, not the Green Activist. We manifest one another’s shadows. As community we strive to understand the necessary contribution of our adversaries to our well being. Having shown that we here can change in our individual relationships, we can believe that we, as community, can critically honour those we might otherwise despise. We cannot know, yet, how we will do this, but we can dream.”
Silence resumes until it is broken by Dan saying “I have a dream!” As the spirit takes them others join in a prolonged outbreak of exclaiming, “I have a dream!”
When the silence resumes Dan releases his grasp and picks up the vessel of fortified wine, and says, “The spirit herein will flood your body with passion. When it grips your soul, speak in the spirit, and be not afraid.” He offers it to Ruby who takes a sip and is dazzled by the rush. She holds it to the lips of Sandy and croons, “Oh happy day!” And so it goes until it comes back to Dan who takes the final sip, and joins the ecstatic chatter about ‘The Dream’: a shared experience that no one person can fully know. The cat jumps up onto the table and struts from one to another receiving their strokes and adulation as its due, and dispensing the occasional rasp of its tongue, then reclines in the middle of the table and begins its divine ablutions. People begin to hug. Some cry with joy. The fanlight raises, and though the room is vibrating with loud conversation, all sense that the harmonies of the Aeolian harp are no longer rolling through them. The liturgy is over. Dan takes Ruby’s hands in his and wishes her peace and joy in her endeavours of the coming week. All do the same until they have farewelled one another. The room empties. The cat sleeps. The table is just a table.

What about Global Warming then?

If you’ve read Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers you probably wonder if we can do anything about global warming. If you’ve read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion you may or may not agree with him that praying about it won’t help. John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, has twice in the last three months urged Australians to pray for rain. About a decade ago I wrote a fairly large piece of work that addresses the issue of what kind of disposition (prayer is a disposition more than it is a form of words) might make a difference, not only to the weather, but to a great deal more that threatens the sustainability of the planet. What follows if the prose poem from that larger piece of work that sums up the theme of that work.

The Celebration of Cyclone Dreaming
Like Wandjina dreaming, cyclones erupt in space-time, wander erratically, wreaking havoc, and vanish, as unpredictably as they appear, leaving a legacy of abundance: the rain that nurtures our prosperity.

In eras long gone we sought refuge in the hope of divine intervention from the uncertainty and fear of cyclones and the slow pitiful tragedy of drought. In these less poetic times we face the fury and the pity alone, stripped, by a storm of our own making, of any sense of relationship with, or responsibility for, the Earth and the Cosmos beyond.

Like the paradoxical legacy of cyclones, however, the aftermath of the meteoric turbulence of scientific discovery, that shattered and scattered the sacral habits of tens of thousands of years, is a new era of sustainable prosperity, reflecting the recovery of our sense of relationship within the Cosmos, and a new sense of Mystery – the latter mediated by mathematics, but possessing the qualities of poetry.

We are not, it seems, mere objects in the Universe, but unique personal manifestations of the One, undivided yet infinitely diverse, Whole. The dancing Brolga and the flowering Kapoc are indeed our relatives, and our consciousness is intimately implicated, not only in their destiny and that of the Earth, but also in the very way that the planet – indeed, the Universe itself – exists.

What, then, are we to make of the efforts of those who danced the rain in dry season? Did they know, by the power of poetry, how to live in a mutually co-operative relationship with the elements? Is that relationship still accessible by the same means? What might be swept away, should we discover, by the fusion of poetry and mathematics, that the relationship between cyclones and the El Nino (the bringer of drought) is not a one way street, and that we have the power to influence it?

Dare we hope for Cyclone Dreaming to keep our relatives prosperous?

The Prince is not gay

We (not the Royal Plural) went to the bell eh recently and saw the "all male" Swan Lake. (Actually there's lots of females in it. It's the swans that are all male.) One thing everyone who's seen it agrees on is that it is absolutely stunning. We have the DVD if anyone would like to come over and watch it. Regretably the DVD is no where near as good as the live performance. If you Google it you'll read all sorts of fatuous crap about it - like the Prince is gay blah blah blah. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm here to give it to you straight. (For anyone reading this who doesn't know me, that was a joke.)

If you already know the story, bear with me while I give an outline of it to those who don’t. The first thing to say about it is that even in its pre-Bourne form there are at least two stories: the one with the happy ending and the real one. But for most of story both of them go something like this. A young prince is about to come of age and his mother tells him it is time to find a bride. He’s bothered by this and goes hunting with his mates. He becomes separated from them and is startled by a flock of swans that transform themselves into beautiful women. The most beautiful of them tells him that they are under a curse that can be broken only by a handsome young prince, not merely swearing unconditional love for her, but doing something to prove it. Our prince, of course, rises to the occasion. He will marry the beautiful woman and invites her to the palace ball the following night. She agrees but says she can’t attend until after midnight as she has her human form only between then and dawn. So the next night someone looking very much like her arrives at the ball, but it’s before midnight, and note that she’s all decked out in black! Warning bells should be going off in a smart prince’s head. But no, he publicly announces his engagement to Little Miss Gotcha-by-the-royal-assent, only to realise that he’s been tricked when he sees his real love looking through a window balling her eyes out. So in spite of the threats of the wicked father of his unwanted bride-to-be he dashes back to the lake, and here’s where the two versions of the story diverge. In the happy ending, his true love is about to return to her swan form – this time forever! – when he arrives to rescue her from the curse, and, of course, they live happily ever after – although, not as prince and princess, (because the wicked would be father in law has made sure the prince cannot return to his palace job) but as worthy folk of the forest. In the other version, he’s too late to prevent the metamorphosis of his love so he ends it there and then by jumping into the lake – which is precisely the kind of thing that would break the curse, so, yes, horror of horrors, he’s gone but she’s now permanently back in her human form. Mmmmmmmmmoving. The second ending is the European version of the story. It took the Americans to come up with the happy ending.

In Matthew Bourne’s version, the swans are all male, so, since the Prince falls in love with Boss Swan, does this mean that the Prince is …. um…. well, you know… gay? No. Not actually. Homosexual then? Not even that. Gosh! There’s a difference? Yes. Let’s get something straight here. Straight? Well, you know what I mean. Homosexual is an orientation. Gay is a lifestyle. The prince is clearly NOT gay. Ah, but is he a closet …. well, you know … queen? He may well be, but his sexuality is irrelevant because this version of the story is not about boy meets girl, or even boy meets boy, but the integration of the ego with the True Self. Having said that, I must admit that a literal interpretation of events on stage does allow for a boy meets boy version of the story. But that would be mere entertainment, and that indeed was precisely what early critics accused it of being. Entertainment it certainly is. But it’s much more. It’s ART! The real thing!! Let me explain. The awful truth is that the prince has grown up in a palace culture in which appearances matter more than reality. When on show things must conform to a rigid protocol. Behind the scenes anything goes. The Queen is an utter trollop who has become incapable of giving her son the intimacy he needs. The impact of this on his psyche is devastating and is manifest in the deeply inadequate relationship the Queen has with him. She wants an heir. He just wants his mummy – which, at fourteen, is fair enough. But she refuses be that for him, and he never gets over it. He develops an Oedipal complex which manifests initially in his choice of a girlfriend – a crass, but good natured, commoner who, by definition, can never be his consort: never replace his mother. Of course the prince gets into all sorts of trouble. In this version he doesn’t go hunting – well, not in the usual sense – he goes night clubbing in the red light district. Mmmmmmaybe he does go hunting after all. It is at the club that the Prince encounters life in the wild – the very antithesis of palace life. Lacking the social skills to fit in, he falls foul of the club patrons, which sets him up for an epiphany. Enter the swans!! He sees in his mind’s eye the truth of who he can be. The swans are the wild life (as distinct from wildlife) that underpins his existence, and their leader, The Swan (or Boss Swan), is the full realisation of being, experienced in human terms – which is why the Prince sees both Swan and Man simultaneously. In fact the swans and The Swan are aspects of his own being: archetypes of his untamed and fully realised or True Self. Though this inspires him – he dances solo to celebrate what he has grasped about his own potential – it also leaves him helpless – unable to become the truth that lies within him, because of the constraints of his royal status. His mother catches him in a moment of despair – self pity from her point of view – and berates him. He makes a desperate plea for her affection which she rebuffs, causing him to come on stronger and stronger until the horrifying denouement: the articulation of incestuous desire. The Queen tidies her gown – as though this incident could be as inconsequential as the dust she brushes off. The Prince, however has now seen the full measure of his own depravity. Suicide is the only option. He leaves a suicide note on a lamp post in a city park and is about to end it all in the lake when the apparition returns with the full force of corporeal reality. An astounding demonstration of being unfolds, and before long he’s in there partnering the Boss Swan in the dance of his life. And when the apparition vanishes it’s life the prince chooses. He rips up the suicide note and plants a celebratory kiss on an astonished park dweller. Back in the palace it’s the prince’s 21st birthday party. He’s busy trying to maintain the decorum of palace life, warning off the young military officers lining up for their moment with the Queen. All his effort pales to insignificance when the most astounding swashbuckler makes his entry. Dressed in black, he appears to be the very incarnation of the apparition in the park. He is unimpeded as he seduces all and appears to ignore the Prince, until suddenly he has the Prince in his thrall and utterly humiliates him. The prince is confused and importunate, mistakenly thinking that this seething hunk of flesh and blood really is the paragon of being that had so recently held him in his arms. Dismissed with contempt the prince gapes in disbelief as the Queen – his MOTHER! – succumbs to allure of this behemoth of machismo. Utterly humiliated, he brandishes a handgun, but his tutor follows suit, taking the opportunity to rid the palace of the embarrassing girl friend, making it look like a tragic accident, of course. The prince is overpowered and taken away by security guards. In an asylum/hospital his heart is torn out and he is lobotomised – symbolically, at least. Bereft of humanity the prince now awaits death. The apparition returns. The swans are menacingly curious. The prince is wretched. Boss Swan emerges from deep within the prince’s bed/ catafalque. His attempts to rescue the prince from despair trigger a frenzy of jealousy and rage among the other swans. Both the Boss Swan and the Prince lose their lives in this struggle, and when it’s all over, in comes the Queen who screams in grief, because all she sees is the corpse of her dead son. She cannot raise her sight high enough to see his apotheosis. In the mirror above the bed, Boss Swan cradles the young Prince in his arms. The Prince has attained the wholeness he was denied in his relationship with his mother.

Taken at face value the vicious attack of the swans could be about rejection of the outsider, echoing the Prince’s rejection by society at both ends – the night club and the palace. But such a literal interpretation is unsatisfactory in the light of everything that has gone before it. If The Swan is the Prince’s True Self then the frenzy that ends both of their lives is the internal struggle that the Prince was always going to have to endure to integrate his ego with his True Self. Is it the Prince dealing with his own homophobia? It could be, if he’s homosexual, but the question is not necessary, because the struggle for integration would be the same whether the prince is homosexual or not. The story in this production is not about sexuality, but psychological, emotional and spiritual integration. Boss Swan is the Prince’s True Self, the other swans are his roots in wild nature. They prevail, but only in physical reality. In prevailing they effect the integration of the Prince’s ego with his True Self, which is also their ultimate destiny: the full realisation of being.

Day 1 Continued

Day 1, has, as I said earlier, extended for a whole month, because I have been so busy that I have not had the time (energy?) to record my activities. The biggest task has been doing stuff for Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. Naturally, to have been doing the work I have been doing for the past six and a half years, I had the old qualification (Certificate IV in Workplace Assessment and Training), but to be current everyone has to have the new qualification by the beginning of 2008. The Job Network organisation I worked for offered it to me for free, as long as I slogged away at it by myself – as one would doing it externally – but having considered the material in the light of what I know about my learning style, I chose to pay $2100 to do it in regular sessions, driving to Ballina twice weekly, to interact with people in the learning process. I already knew that the new qualification was a lot more involved than the old one, but, even so, it has taken a lot more of my time than I anticipated. The other major undertaking has been getting two websites up. Neither are there yet, but only because the Hosting organisation that we chose seems to have gone walkabout. I tried to upload the site before Easter. When I couldn’t I emailed the Host organisation and got a reply that they would get back to me within 24 hours. It is now five working days and still counting. I would love to tell you the name of the Host organisation, but, for obvious reasons, I can’t – not here anyway. Anyone wanting to get a website hosted should call me personally and I will tell you who NOT to pick for the job.

Another major task has been spring cleaning the house. Yes, I know, it’s autumn, but, as everyone knows, it’s Easter – well it was at the time – and Easter is a festival of the Spring Equinox, so it must be spring – just like it must be winter at Christmas when we send cards with pictures of snow on them. (There’s probably a PhD that could be written on the psychological effect of living out a northern hemisphere time table in the southern hemisphere.) The house looks squeaky. And there’s a lot less in it now than there was when we started. In Townsville we had to spring clean every year, so vigorous was the mould that grew on the walls of the house. It took us seven years to get around to it here. Not a square centimetre of mould in sight. But lots of fly spots and stuff like that. It was a job that needed doing, but no one else would have known. We’ve had lots of people here since the job was finished. No one has noticed the difference, so we have to enjoy our virtuousness (or is it virtuosity?) in silence.

An unexpected setback, particularly this late in the summer season, was my getting heat rash. I quickly realised that it was probably because the average surface temperature of my body was higher since leaving work than when I spent most of the day in an air conditioned office. If anyone has a cure that doesn’t involve installing an air conditioner in the house I’d like to hear about it. Rolling in a bath tub of ice is also not an option. Fortunately winter is just around the corner and the problem will probably go away.

Deep thoughts about the four courses I hope to run, to fund my retirement, have also been sloshing around at the bottom of the well. For those who don’t know, the courses are: How to get a job you don’t have to hate; Practical Philosophy – why do we believe what we believe and why does it matter?; Practical Mythology – connecting with the whole of what exists; and Plan to live to 100 – without caring whether you do or not. I now have another one to add to that list: Love your enemies. No sub-title needed – though an explanation might help. It’s about the use and abuse of power, and the merits of cooperation and conflict. Conflict? Yes. The popular, or common-coffee-table, understanding of the word Shalom is peace. But it means a great deal more than that. It means the state of mutual accommodation that exists just on the verge of conflict between competing interests. I mention that to illustrate why conflict and cooperation go together in loving one’s enemy. I’ll say more about the other courses in due … well, course – of course.

I have been telling people that my medium term goal is to become accredited as a Registered Training Organisation. I probably shouldn’t have said that. The more I find out about what is involved, the less I like the idea. I know it’s possible, because I know two people who are one-person RTOs. And I know of many others. But as I look into the compliance requirements it is becoming clear to me that I will spend the rest of my life doing paper work instead of facilitating courses.

I guess I had better bring Day 1 to a close. In my next I’ll tell you about the most fabulous theatre experience we had recently.

Day 1 of Life after ...

Day 1
Well, actually, it’s Day thirty-something, and I am trying to recall as much of what has happened since 14/3/07 as possible. A hopeless task I’m afraid. It’s all called Day 1, by the way, because it is all such a blur, and I want to pull it back into focus. I woke on Wednesday 14/3/07 at the usual time – 4:00 am, when Soxie jumped on the bed and said “Let me out or I’ll report you to the RSPCA for animal abuse.” He’s been doing that ever since he was a kitten big enough to jump up on the bed. My first thought was that I wouldn’t be going to Boot Camp that day. It’s a long story.

For those who don’t know, or haven’t been all that clear on the details, I had been working as a Job Search Trainer in a Job Network organisation for the past three and a half years. I really liked the job, and was always operating at full stretch, delivering sessions in the morning, dealing with non compliance issues, inducting people into the program, doing administrivia, and most importantly of all, giving personal assistance to people who, having been made aware of the issues involved in best practice in job seeking, tried to put it all into practice and sought my help on aspects of their endeavours. Then just before Xmas 2006 all the trainers were called to a meeting (I have given it the title Boot Camp) at which we were told, among other things, that as of 2/1/07 we would be delivering twice as many sessions in the three week cycle of JS Training. And we were given 7 new training modules that we had to start delivering from that date. Which meant, of course, that we had to spend the Xmas – New Year break swatting up on them. Not that that was expected of us. Oh no! But how else were we to be ready unless that’s what we did? So come the appointed date, I was ready, but quickly came to the decision that I was not prepared to endure the stress of the new regime. Doubling the number of sessions to be delivered meant a doubling of the amount of non-compliance (in theory – in practice it more than doubled it.) It also reduced to less than one third the amount of time available to do everything other than deliver sessions and induct people into the program. Clearly, something had to go. Since records are of paramount importance, it was client support that got the chop. It also meant that three days out of five I would go home with significant amounts of administrivia not done and would have to pick up the pieces the following day. There’s more, but I’ll spare you the details. I told the HR Manager at the end of the two day Boot Camp, when everyone else was gone and I could speak my mind (it is the kind of organisation in which you can speak your mind at such gatherings, but no one ever does) that we were being asked to undertake a massive increase in our workload. “Oh, do you think so Paul?” she whined, “It’s just a pilot. It’ll all be reviewed in three months. We can deal with any difficulties then.” The clear implication in that statement was that if the workload was, indeed, too great, it would be dealt with accordingly. It proved to be as I foresaw, and at the end of the first week back I resigned. The reaction was so awesome that I felt compelled to reconsider. “How could you leave us for you kids?” about sums up the response. No, really, it wasn’t like that at all. People were genuinely dismayed and pleaded with me to reconsider. I offered to withdraw my resignation (which was graciously accepted) and slogged on for another couple of months, becoming more and more angry about the situation. When asked for input to the agenda of the soon to be reconvened Boot Camp, I said that there were many issues that I could put on the table, but that there was only one that I wanted on the agenda: the new regime is too much work and client support has not just suffered, but virtually disappeared. It was soon made clear to me that that issue was not going to be on the table. So I resigned – again. Day 1 of my new life was the very day the trainers met for the reconvened Boot Camp.

Who is Twogreytoes?

Twogreytoes is the name of a cat with whom my partner and I lived for a long time – though, regrettably, not long enough. That’s right, he didn’t live with us: we lived with him.

One day he just vanished. We mourned him for half a year, and, certain that he had met a brutal fate (you don’t want to know why we thought that) we wrote a memorial verse for him. Incase you can’t read it from the picture, this is it:

…my eyes have seen the glory
of the mountains of the earth
I have been witness to the charm
Of gaia since she gave me birth
And now the brutal fate my nature
Calls me to affirms my worth
To roam the universe…

I'm not just your pretty pussie

I'm your talisman of wisdom

I can fortify your courage

Just call me and I'll come!

Just before Christmas 2001 we adopted two brothers from a local litter and called them Sox and Boof.

About a month later when I was in town, a sleek street walker rubbed up against my leg. As I bent down to pat him I had the strangest sensation. This was someone I knew. His markings exactly matched those of our precious lamented friend. As I picked him up I looked in his left ear and there was the tattoo that indicated his gender – neuter. I took him home in a state of high adulation only to find that he was not going to tolerate the new cossetees. We tried everything to keep him with us, but he ran away every time we brought him home. Finally we agreed that if he ran away again we would not go looking for him.

So why have I adopted his name? Because he lived as fully within the limitations of his physical form as it was possible to live. How do I know this? Well, apart from the adventures to which we were witness, when it became known in the street where I found him that he was “our” cat, people regaled us with heroic tales about the swashbuckler they had come to know over the seven or months that he held court in that part of town. Everyone agreed that he was the boss of the street. Dogs walked the other way or tugged back on their leashes if their owners were leading them in his direction. He never went hungry. He won the affection of patrons at the nearby café as well as people from the bakery, the butcher, the hotel and the fish shop. And grown men (well, young men, anyway) who loved him when they were little boys ask after him to this day, refusing to believe that he will not, one day, come back. Like the truth, he’s out there!

The philosopher Henri Bergson, observed that ancient Egyptians deified attributes of animals that contrasted favourably with weaknesses in the human constitution, and dismissed this as something we did on our way to becoming rulers of the universe. He wrote that before the second World War. Things have changed since then, and many people are now worried about the impact of humans on the planet and everything that lives here. We could learn a lot from animals about our place in the universe. They are not gods, but they can be teachers. What I have learned from Twogreytoes about being, is “Do whatever it takes to be who you really are, and to trust others to love you.” When Christians take the name of a saint, they do not presume to be the saint’s peer. Rather, they honour the saint and hope to live up to the qualities of a mentor – someone who has explored, more fully than most, who they really are. So I am Twogreytoes. I hope to live with courage to go where no man has gone before.