Have you been waiting for a film about defenders of the environment in which the true cost of poaching – to the environment and to people – is laid bare without equivocation or embellishment? Then you really need to see this film. It is set in Tibet and is about a patrol of volunteers trying to prevent the extinction of the Tibetan Antelope. It is not a documentary but a drama. It is not your average Hollywood blockbuster, but blockbuster it is in the power of its narrative and the gut wrenching choices that are made in the course of events. And of course, the scenery is breath taking. Apart from that I don’t want to say much, because anything I say would give too much away. It’s a foreign language film, so if you’re like me and don’t generally watch them because you miss most of the action, because you spend most of your time reading the sub-titles, don’t be put off. The dialogue is very sparse and the sub-titles are very short and easy to read. The impact comes as much from the surprises – and there are a few of them – as from the storyline – which is an account of real events – so I do not recommend reading about it or researching it before watching it. But if you really must have prior information, here’s a link to its website:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mountainpatrol/
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Lightning Trip to Sydney and back February 2008
WARNING
If you are offended by sexual inuendo there is a sentence in this post that will be problematic for you.
Going down on the highwayOn Saturday (9/2/08) I drove to Sydney to collect John’s piece from the Graduate Exhibition (mentioned in last month’s Bull tin). I left at 6:00 am and arrived at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains at 6:00 pm, where I stayed at my friend Penny’s place overnight; then drove down to Gomorrah at 6:45 am on Sunday, had breakfast in Glebe and collected the art work at 10:30 am and headed back to Mullumbimby, arriving at 11:45 pm. Are you exhausted already just reading about it? Well let me tell you, I hope John has many more pieces to deliver to Sydney, (though not to collect, for the point of any further deliveries would be to sell them) because I’ll be there to do the job. You see, I just happen to love driving. I really should have been a truckie.
What I love about long distance driving is the freedom to wander in one’s mind’s body through the landscape one is traversing to the accompaniment of fine music – and on this occasion to the riveting voice of a reader “singing” Finnegan’s Wake. I say singing, even though he was reading, because the story, even though it is a work of prose, can only be described as a song – an EPIC song! More about that in another blog post. It also gave me the opportunity to do a bit of singing myself. I included among the discs I took the recording of last year’s concert, to which I sang along delighting in the fact that I could sing the whole thing from memory, without the score to keep me from straying from the tenor part. I also took a disc of Teddy Tahu Rhodes (a bass/baritone) and hummed and harred my way through that as well, realising that that there was not a single bass note on the disc that I could not reach – which gave me the bright idea of collecting a few baritone pieces for my repertoire. Not that I could ever sound like TTR, I hasten to say. At some point the hilarious thought occurred to me that a singing truckie might attract the nick-name “Bullocky”. So from now on I will answer to “Bull”, being already an accomplisher bull artist. Ah, to be Irish to be sure!!
I went down on the Pacific Highway and back on the New England Highway. Suddenly I am riveted by the thought of going down on a highway – one that I may come back to next time I write a stand up script. Anyway, it’s not as though either highway was new to me. I know them intimately, having travelled them often in my misspent youth, and less frequently in later years. What was unique about this trip was that I did them both of successive days. The phrase that springs to mind, to summarise the experience is “The Two Australias”. It’s a phrase that normally applies to the gap between the haves and the have nots. And anyone who gives it a nanosecond of thought realises that there are actually “many Australias”. Even in the (usually) socially and politically neutral topic of landscape, there are a lot more than two Australias. But in general, we readily recognise and relate to “the coast” and “the inland”. That’s what I’m getting at here. That’s the contrast that you get in no uncertain terms when you travel between two points approximately 800 kilometres apart by different highways: the Pacific Highway along the coast; and the New England Highway through the inland.
Now, before anyone gets up too big a head of steam scoffing at the notion that Tamworth, for example, really is the inland, let me say, true, it’s not Alice Springs or Jiggalong. But it is sheep country, and it is the Country Music Kapital of ze nonejuniverz. And it is in the most exquisitely subtle landscape. On the coast there is close settlement including villages every 10 minutes and big towns or small cities as you prefer, about an hour apart; and biggish rivers, especially in the Northern Rivers Region. There’s a lot of evidence of man-made landscape: orchards, cash crops, dairy farms – or once were dairy farms, with their decaying infrastructure; trees, such as figs and pines that are obviously not native, but have become so much part of our psychological landscape that it would not be Australia without them. Along the Pacific Highway, there is not a kilometre that has not been visibly shaped by human activity. And the most astounding thing about that is that it is actually quite pleasant to experience – mostly. The other important distinguishing characteristic of this landscape is that it is a coastal plain. It has its ups and downs, but in general, it offers very few long distance vistas. By contrast, the New England Highway traverses downlands whose modest ridges provide at every turn the kind of views that town dwellers pay premium prices for. There is very little human habitation to be seen between towns, very few exotic trees, very few crops, but there are, at times, large numbers of grazing animals, mainly sheep, but no where near as many as one might expect, probably because the properties are so vast, and their carrying capacity so small, that the animals are rarely near roads as they eat their way across their sparsely foddered domains. Another highly visible feature of the landscape, especially the further north you get, is granite boulders strewn ever so decorously across the paddocks. God, it seems, was, is and ever shall be, an exterior decorator – among other things. There is a modesty about the towns along the inland highway. They’ve barely left the nineteenth century. The twenty first century will very likely never venture their way – except in the form of highways between distant urban centres. What does it tell you when Macdonalds is on a bypass rather than in a town?
The most amazing thing about the New England Highway on this trip was the number of semi-trailers and B Doubles on it – or, rather, not on it. It used to be truckie territory until very recently when the Pacific Highway was opened up to unregulated road transport. On this trip I counted five (5) (sic, 5, five only!) big mothers. There were a slightly larger number of covered fixed tray trucks that would have to be there for local commerce, but in general, I had the road to myself most of the time. I need to say that I am in no way saying that I prefer one highway to the other. I truly appreciate what each has to offer and am grateful beyond my ability to express for the opportunity to se so much in so quickly.
Which raises the question, does one really actually see anything at all, covering so much territory in so little time. Wouldn’t it be better, for example to see the granite boulders at walking pace – as a real bullocky would? Well, it would certainly be good to see them at walking pace, but not necessarily better. And if we’re talking walking pace, we’re talking a very limited amount of landscape that can be taken in. Sure, it can be taken in greater detail, but there’s also a lot to be said for taking in the kind of bigger picture that driving two highways in two days affords.
The last four hours of the trip were a mistake I will not make again. I was at Glen Innes at 6:45 pm and should have stopped at a motel. Instead, I took the road down to Grafton. I’d done Tenterfield to Lismore several times since moving to Nirvana, and wanted to see a road I’d never been on. Well I saw less than half of it, because it was dark by 8:00 pm which meant that the best part – the descent from the big ridge – was illuminated only by headlights. I was in Grafton by 9:15 pm where I refueled and reMacdonaldsed for the final leg. It didn’t matter that it was at night. I could drive that part of the road with my eyes closed, I’ve done it so many times – never, I might add, with my eyes closed, but. Eh?
Aboriginal people would say that it is the landscape that provides one with identity. Another view of the world would say the human consciousness engages with the landscape and animates it. I’m not here to choose between the two. But I am here to say that the landscape and I sang to each other. I can’t claim to know what Aborigines mean when they talk about singing the landscape. But I know what I mean by it. It is now a week since I went to a singing night with the leader of my choir, and got up the next morning at 5:00 am to set off on what turned out to be an unbelievably intense experience. That intensity has not diminished one bit. The amazing thing is that I can now travel at the speed of thought from point to point on that journey – not in a linear succession, but through “worm holes” so that one moment I am marvelling at how beautiful Richmond is; then gasping at undulating rows of grassed hills; then counting the intersections in Sydney between key points on my exit route (printed off on Friday afternoon courtesy of the WhereiS website – whose address follows for anyone unaware of it
http://www.whereis.com/whereis/home.do;jsessionid=BE9C68770CA0B29DF0A8146BD4FEEC82.server2-1); then zooming across the Clarence River; then winding up the Bells Line of Road; then approaching the point at Hexam where there is a large yellow diamond shaped road sign with a black graphic consisting of a vertical line which branches at the top into two opposing acute angles that might be arms bent at the elbows were there a circle between them to represent a head, and in the absence of which could only, therefore, be legs bent at the knees. Maybe this was where I got the idea of going down on the highway. Just kiddin’ of course, but it was nevertheless the moment when it occurred to me that the trip would be all the more stimulating if I took the alternative route back home.
It really was an exciting moment. I had about 150 metres to decide. But, really, there was nothing to decide. The yellow diamond was its own meaning. Not merely a road sign indicating where the New England Highway digressed from the Pacific Highway, but a sign!! the like of which is not easily disregarded. As I entered the roundabout it was like approaching close enough to a heavenly body and using its gravity to effect a tangential slingshot. Rather than go right around I took the first exit and was on my way into the parallel universe, so to speak, of the inland. The trip had acquired an unexpected dimension. I knew vaguely the sequence of towns I would come to, but had no idea of the distances between them – unlike how it would have been had I returned along the Pacific Highway. I relaxed into a state of unknowing and said Let the future come. And it did – to an intoxicating cocktail of Vivaldi, performed by people I know; Teddy Tahu Rhodes, performed by Teddy Tahu Rhodes; and James Joyce, performed by who knows whom. Oh bliss the day!!
The artwork got home in several pieces, which is quite OK because it consisted of several pieces in the first place. A very slight amount of damage occurred on the way, but nothing that anyone would notice. Our cats greeted me with questions about where I’d been for the last two days. Well, they didn’t actually have to ask. I could see it in their faces. So I explained that Daddy had to do a little job for Daddy, and that I’d tell them more in the morning, after I’d emailed Penny that I’d arrived, had a shower and then a sleep. The next morning, however, it was as though nothing had happened. All they wanted was their daily portion of kangaroo meat. Cats can be so…. so….. wonder full.
Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce
...have you ever swum in Finnegan’s Wake? I’ve tried reading it, more than once, and was defeated by page ten every time – not defeated by the page numbered ten, but by the time I’d got through ten pages I was sunk. Confused? You should try reading the book. You can’t imagine confusion if you haven’t – haven’t read the book, not haven’t imagined confusion. The question is, Is it a book about a gathering after a funeral, or are the pages containing the words a vessel that leaves a line of disturbance across the otherwise calm surface of oceanic consciousness? That’s why I asked if you’d ever swum in it Finnegan’s wake.
A friend gave it to me as a talking book – four CDs in all. I left it until I had time to do nothing but listen to the whole thing straight through – something that, in retrospect, I could have done at any time, just by taking a day off, but, you know how it is when what you’re doing each day seems like it has to be done on that day, which leaves no room for things that might change your world… Well in early February, an opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it with both hands, not realising the convulsive effect the book would have on me. On my second trip to Sydney in a month (this time driving rather than flying – flying is such an effort!), I took the Wake and a number of other discs. About three hours into the twelve hour journey southward, I put the first disc on thinking that I would sample it for a while. Within minutes I was hooked, and didn’t stop listening until I had played all four discs. By then I was on the Bells Line of Road – a mere 100 kilometres from my destination – which was actually Blackheath, in case you’re wondering why I would be trying to get to Sydney on that road. But, hey! Hold that thought. What sort of experience would you be having if you were trying to get to Sydney on a road that goes through the Blue Mountains?
The first thing I noticed about the Wake, the first time I tried to read it, way back in 1973, was Joyce’s idiosyncratic use of language. Having read his other two books, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, I knew that he wrote “proper English” if I can put it that way, so I concluded that he had written the Wake in an Irish idiom, which would be “proper Irish”. But it wasn’t long before he was using words without regard for their meaning, and sometimes just making them up, and I thought, Well, he is Irish – the Irish make a lot of stuff up – and a fair few stuff ups too (unlike, say, the Americans who always tell the truth and never do wrong.) This much I could cope with. It was sort of charming, you know…. quaint. But the thing that defeated me was, what I thought at the time to be the excruciating complexity of his sentences. Not that I’ve changed my mind on that, mind you. I had encountered this to some extent in Ulysses, which is renowned for, among other things, containing the longest sentence in the English language. But in the Wake you won’t find a sentence under three hundred words. Actually, I just made that up, but my point stands – if points, which are one dimensional, can exhibit the properties of two dimensional phenomena. As if the complexity of his sentences isn’t enough to put mortal readers off, Joyce also throws in digressions, asides, culdesacs and all manner of verbal sleights of hand that, if I can put it this way, that transform what might be described, metaphorically, as the landscape into a dreamscape. Being a poor reader – I can’t read any faster than I speak – I was mightily frustrated and eventually gave the book to someone I didn’t like, saying, Here, this is right up your alley. And so it was. I heard peals of laughter coming from his room for months afterwards. I often wondered what the fruit tasted like. All the same, I knew from the enthusiasm of other people for the book, that it had to have something special going for it, so when the opportunity to listen to it, rather than read it, came my way, I was on – or in… or something – but definitely not out. Though I was about to be bowled over.
My first impression, as I listened, was that he (the voice of the book) wasn’t saying anything coherent at all. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs (you can tell I had a good primary education) tumbled out upon tumbled each other tumbled sonorously hypnotically tumbling teasing cuddling wobbling until tickled laughing heaven sent burst asunder. I kid you not. At first I wasn’t sure if it was safe to keep driving. The intoxication of apparent nonsense was intoxicating – absolutely! And that’s not a tautology or an oxymoron. Actually, I must tell you about the very first time I came across that word. I was on a ten day hike across the Three Passes Track in the Southern Alps of new Zealand, reading a book in which the word was used, and I …. oops, should I be doing this – oh what the heck…. anyway, I asked the team leader, What’s an oxymoron – team leaders, as you would expect, know things like that. He asked me if I had studied at Oxford. Not yet, I said. Well, he replied, When you do you will be. It took me a while. Now back to intoxication. The extraordinary thing about what I was hearing was that even though it made no sense at all, it was absolutely riveting. I couldn’t take my ears off it. After about half an hour the thought occurred to me that surely this could not go on for four whole discs. And if it did, surely it could not sustain my interest. But I was having too much fun to be bothered wondering sensible sensibilities sensibly. So I just splashed arrollinground diving and soarleaping gleegigglingfully at how sillythingsooth the sound of the words worth more than daffodils – or daffy dills, for that matter – were. Perhaps you get the picture. Oh, and by the way, it does go on in that vein (or simthing somilar)for four whole discs, praise be the morning and the evening and everything between in both directions.
Are you still with me? It was about half way through the second disc that the penny dropped - or was it an apple – and if an apple, the apple that Eve gave Adam, or Isaac Newton’s proof of gravity – or even the Surly Pom of Avignon – that what I was listening to was actually a SONG!! Let’s put it to the test. Toast and marmalade for tea Sailing ships upon the sea aren't lovelier than you All the games I see you play... Get my point? Only there’s a bit more to James Joyce than Tin Tin (you can tell I don’t like post-modernism). I mean, it did hold my attention for nine hours. Which led me to the conclusion that this is not just a song, but an EPIC song. You know, Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Man from Snowy River. I kid you now. Another way of putting it might be that it is a cathedral rose window – perhaps in the style Miro or Dali rather than the medieval masters. In other words, it is not comprehended merely be reading or even hearing the words on the page.
There is a tradition called Bloom’s Day(16 June). Devotees gather in a pub in the very early hours, long before it is opened to the general public, and they begin reading Joyce’s Ulysses, taking turns and quaffing stout in between and almost certainly during; and they don’t stop until they have finished, long after the pub has closed. Change the venue. Change the Book. Change the epoch. And what have you got? The Hebrews gathered in a tent or the temple reading, nay, solemnly singing, Deuteronomy. This, I believe, is the way to attend Finnegan’s Wake. But not, surely, with the pious grimness of a reading of the Pentateuch. Indeed.
Go jollily. That’s what I always say – or would if I always said anything. It’s the meaning of life. And it’s what the Wake is about – I think. Just ask the laughing Buddha, or the man who “turned water into wine” – now there’s a story untold because told badly. As tribes gather to sing their continuity, or to contemplate the rose window of their cathedral, so gathers the tribe of Jolly to roll in the aisles, split their sides, laugh their heads off, die laughing, or, to put it simply, to express amusement by smiling and emitting loud inarticulate sounds. Well, compared with the figures of speech that preceded it, the dictionary definition of cachinnate is putting it simply. But I digress. The truly awesome thing about the Wake is that it gets as close as possible to being inarticulate sounds without actually being inarticulate at all, in any way, or anything like it – to put not too fine a point on it, if you get what I mean, or not. The words, most of them, are know to everyone. They have meanings. But the complexity of the sentences requires heroic concentration to retain the point that is being made, a task made nearly impossible by attention the components – words, phrases clauses – draw to themselves because they are so amusing. While the result is not incoherence, it is might as well be, because the thrust of what is being said is deliberately concealed by unrelenting mirth – not unlike the way a dream presents familiar sights that don’t make any sense at all – especially if remembered awake. A wake!? Oh, awake!
Like a liturgy, recited repeatedly for a whole lifetime, gradually letting participants into mystery, the Wake may be the book we should be reading on Blooms Day. We should probably expect that even a heroic effort to grasp the point of each sentence will not be enough. For, in the end, even a complete grasp of what every sentence says may actually conceal what the Wake has to offer. I suspect this because after listening to the whole thing twice, I began a third listening, shutting out the amusement at the surface, concentrating on the flow in order to grasp whole sentences. And I succeeded for several minutes, only to notice the fractal properties of the Wake. The mirth that is immediately seen in the components of sentences reappears when the sense of what is being said in several sentences taken together is grasped. If this is so, I think that there is little point in heroic effort, for even if one grasped the whole book as a single wave form, the shape would be as it is at the surface. The point would seem to be, therefore, just to enjoy, but enjoy in company – as in a wake. And let the enjoyment carry you into what words alone cannot express. Deeper, deeper as you go, and when you reach the end start again, and again. I wonder…
A friend gave it to me as a talking book – four CDs in all. I left it until I had time to do nothing but listen to the whole thing straight through – something that, in retrospect, I could have done at any time, just by taking a day off, but, you know how it is when what you’re doing each day seems like it has to be done on that day, which leaves no room for things that might change your world… Well in early February, an opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it with both hands, not realising the convulsive effect the book would have on me. On my second trip to Sydney in a month (this time driving rather than flying – flying is such an effort!), I took the Wake and a number of other discs. About three hours into the twelve hour journey southward, I put the first disc on thinking that I would sample it for a while. Within minutes I was hooked, and didn’t stop listening until I had played all four discs. By then I was on the Bells Line of Road – a mere 100 kilometres from my destination – which was actually Blackheath, in case you’re wondering why I would be trying to get to Sydney on that road. But, hey! Hold that thought. What sort of experience would you be having if you were trying to get to Sydney on a road that goes through the Blue Mountains?
The first thing I noticed about the Wake, the first time I tried to read it, way back in 1973, was Joyce’s idiosyncratic use of language. Having read his other two books, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, I knew that he wrote “proper English” if I can put it that way, so I concluded that he had written the Wake in an Irish idiom, which would be “proper Irish”. But it wasn’t long before he was using words without regard for their meaning, and sometimes just making them up, and I thought, Well, he is Irish – the Irish make a lot of stuff up – and a fair few stuff ups too (unlike, say, the Americans who always tell the truth and never do wrong.) This much I could cope with. It was sort of charming, you know…. quaint. But the thing that defeated me was, what I thought at the time to be the excruciating complexity of his sentences. Not that I’ve changed my mind on that, mind you. I had encountered this to some extent in Ulysses, which is renowned for, among other things, containing the longest sentence in the English language. But in the Wake you won’t find a sentence under three hundred words. Actually, I just made that up, but my point stands – if points, which are one dimensional, can exhibit the properties of two dimensional phenomena. As if the complexity of his sentences isn’t enough to put mortal readers off, Joyce also throws in digressions, asides, culdesacs and all manner of verbal sleights of hand that, if I can put it this way, that transform what might be described, metaphorically, as the landscape into a dreamscape. Being a poor reader – I can’t read any faster than I speak – I was mightily frustrated and eventually gave the book to someone I didn’t like, saying, Here, this is right up your alley. And so it was. I heard peals of laughter coming from his room for months afterwards. I often wondered what the fruit tasted like. All the same, I knew from the enthusiasm of other people for the book, that it had to have something special going for it, so when the opportunity to listen to it, rather than read it, came my way, I was on – or in… or something – but definitely not out. Though I was about to be bowled over.
My first impression, as I listened, was that he (the voice of the book) wasn’t saying anything coherent at all. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs (you can tell I had a good primary education) tumbled out upon tumbled each other tumbled sonorously hypnotically tumbling teasing cuddling wobbling until tickled laughing heaven sent burst asunder. I kid you not. At first I wasn’t sure if it was safe to keep driving. The intoxication of apparent nonsense was intoxicating – absolutely! And that’s not a tautology or an oxymoron. Actually, I must tell you about the very first time I came across that word. I was on a ten day hike across the Three Passes Track in the Southern Alps of new Zealand, reading a book in which the word was used, and I …. oops, should I be doing this – oh what the heck…. anyway, I asked the team leader, What’s an oxymoron – team leaders, as you would expect, know things like that. He asked me if I had studied at Oxford. Not yet, I said. Well, he replied, When you do you will be. It took me a while. Now back to intoxication. The extraordinary thing about what I was hearing was that even though it made no sense at all, it was absolutely riveting. I couldn’t take my ears off it. After about half an hour the thought occurred to me that surely this could not go on for four whole discs. And if it did, surely it could not sustain my interest. But I was having too much fun to be bothered wondering sensible sensibilities sensibly. So I just splashed arrollinground diving and soarleaping gleegigglingfully at how sillythingsooth the sound of the words worth more than daffodils – or daffy dills, for that matter – were. Perhaps you get the picture. Oh, and by the way, it does go on in that vein (or simthing somilar)for four whole discs, praise be the morning and the evening and everything between in both directions.
Are you still with me? It was about half way through the second disc that the penny dropped - or was it an apple – and if an apple, the apple that Eve gave Adam, or Isaac Newton’s proof of gravity – or even the Surly Pom of Avignon – that what I was listening to was actually a SONG!! Let’s put it to the test. Toast and marmalade for tea Sailing ships upon the sea aren't lovelier than you All the games I see you play... Get my point? Only there’s a bit more to James Joyce than Tin Tin (you can tell I don’t like post-modernism). I mean, it did hold my attention for nine hours. Which led me to the conclusion that this is not just a song, but an EPIC song. You know, Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Man from Snowy River. I kid you now. Another way of putting it might be that it is a cathedral rose window – perhaps in the style Miro or Dali rather than the medieval masters. In other words, it is not comprehended merely be reading or even hearing the words on the page.
There is a tradition called Bloom’s Day(16 June). Devotees gather in a pub in the very early hours, long before it is opened to the general public, and they begin reading Joyce’s Ulysses, taking turns and quaffing stout in between and almost certainly during; and they don’t stop until they have finished, long after the pub has closed. Change the venue. Change the Book. Change the epoch. And what have you got? The Hebrews gathered in a tent or the temple reading, nay, solemnly singing, Deuteronomy. This, I believe, is the way to attend Finnegan’s Wake. But not, surely, with the pious grimness of a reading of the Pentateuch. Indeed.
Go jollily. That’s what I always say – or would if I always said anything. It’s the meaning of life. And it’s what the Wake is about – I think. Just ask the laughing Buddha, or the man who “turned water into wine” – now there’s a story untold because told badly. As tribes gather to sing their continuity, or to contemplate the rose window of their cathedral, so gathers the tribe of Jolly to roll in the aisles, split their sides, laugh their heads off, die laughing, or, to put it simply, to express amusement by smiling and emitting loud inarticulate sounds. Well, compared with the figures of speech that preceded it, the dictionary definition of cachinnate is putting it simply. But I digress. The truly awesome thing about the Wake is that it gets as close as possible to being inarticulate sounds without actually being inarticulate at all, in any way, or anything like it – to put not too fine a point on it, if you get what I mean, or not. The words, most of them, are know to everyone. They have meanings. But the complexity of the sentences requires heroic concentration to retain the point that is being made, a task made nearly impossible by attention the components – words, phrases clauses – draw to themselves because they are so amusing. While the result is not incoherence, it is might as well be, because the thrust of what is being said is deliberately concealed by unrelenting mirth – not unlike the way a dream presents familiar sights that don’t make any sense at all – especially if remembered awake. A wake!? Oh, awake!
Like a liturgy, recited repeatedly for a whole lifetime, gradually letting participants into mystery, the Wake may be the book we should be reading on Blooms Day. We should probably expect that even a heroic effort to grasp the point of each sentence will not be enough. For, in the end, even a complete grasp of what every sentence says may actually conceal what the Wake has to offer. I suspect this because after listening to the whole thing twice, I began a third listening, shutting out the amusement at the surface, concentrating on the flow in order to grasp whole sentences. And I succeeded for several minutes, only to notice the fractal properties of the Wake. The mirth that is immediately seen in the components of sentences reappears when the sense of what is being said in several sentences taken together is grasped. If this is so, I think that there is little point in heroic effort, for even if one grasped the whole book as a single wave form, the shape would be as it is at the surface. The point would seem to be, therefore, just to enjoy, but enjoy in company – as in a wake. And let the enjoyment carry you into what words alone cannot express. Deeper, deeper as you go, and when you reach the end start again, and again. I wonder…
2008 February Bulletin
Greetings. We wish you interesting times – as …..
Chinese New Year approaches, and our Christmas is finally over. We have had a continuous stream of visitors since Boxing Day (which I am reliably informed is the day on which the first Christian martyr – St Stephen – got stoned. Stoned!??????? Oh, Stooooned – not, you know… stoned? Amazing what interesting bits of useless information find their way into these bulletins.)
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. I have not included my account of it here because it’s over 1000 words. If you want to read about it, See the bolg post below.
You may not believe this, but I ventured recently into the murky business of sports commentary. I was so incensed by the stupidity of the secret monkey business that I had to have my say. See the blog if you are interested. It’s called Coming cricket or not and is about how India won the toss. It’s three posts after the Sydney trip.
There’s a new book out by the sociologist John Carroll called The Existential Jesus. So? Well, I know most people would think they are not interested, but once you know what it’s about I think you might be curious, at least. Here’s the link to the transcript of the program on which the book was discussed.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2120659.htm#transcript
The choir has most of its material for Concert 2008. It’s quite different this year – no more church music. We’re doing a number of Opera Choruses, during which there will be slides to illustrate contemporary issues. For those who know about Opera, we are doing choruses from Dido and Aeneas, Nabucco, Carmen, Orpheus, and a piece in which the choir master has put music to a scene in Beckett’s Murder in the Cathedral. All very heavy stuff – even the Carmen piece (the Habanera) which is about playing with fire.
Finally, there’s pictures of the Sydney trip on Flickr. Don’t get excited, we didn’t do a systematic record of the trip. It was random shots here and there of this and that, some of which I photoshopped into… you know… um, art. Here’s the link if you want to look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
By the way, photos of our Wooli holiday will be up soon. So much to do, so few lives to do it in.
John is returning to TAFE this year to do the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. Did I mention that he got a credit in his diploma? All the rest were distinctions. Thought I’d mention it again, just in case … you know …
Happy year of the Rat!
Bliss the day!!
Chinese New Year approaches, and our Christmas is finally over. We have had a continuous stream of visitors since Boxing Day (which I am reliably informed is the day on which the first Christian martyr – St Stephen – got stoned. Stoned!??????? Oh, Stooooned – not, you know… stoned? Amazing what interesting bits of useless information find their way into these bulletins.)
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. I have not included my account of it here because it’s over 1000 words. If you want to read about it, See the bolg post below.
You may not believe this, but I ventured recently into the murky business of sports commentary. I was so incensed by the stupidity of the secret monkey business that I had to have my say. See the blog if you are interested. It’s called Coming cricket or not and is about how India won the toss. It’s three posts after the Sydney trip.
There’s a new book out by the sociologist John Carroll called The Existential Jesus. So? Well, I know most people would think they are not interested, but once you know what it’s about I think you might be curious, at least. Here’s the link to the transcript of the program on which the book was discussed.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2120659.htm#transcript
The choir has most of its material for Concert 2008. It’s quite different this year – no more church music. We’re doing a number of Opera Choruses, during which there will be slides to illustrate contemporary issues. For those who know about Opera, we are doing choruses from Dido and Aeneas, Nabucco, Carmen, Orpheus, and a piece in which the choir master has put music to a scene in Beckett’s Murder in the Cathedral. All very heavy stuff – even the Carmen piece (the Habanera) which is about playing with fire.
Finally, there’s pictures of the Sydney trip on Flickr. Don’t get excited, we didn’t do a systematic record of the trip. It was random shots here and there of this and that, some of which I photoshopped into… you know… um, art. Here’s the link if you want to look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
By the way, photos of our Wooli holiday will be up soon. So much to do, so few lives to do it in.
John is returning to TAFE this year to do the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. Did I mention that he got a credit in his diploma? All the rest were distinctions. Thought I’d mention it again, just in case … you know …
Happy year of the Rat!
Bliss the day!!
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Sydney Visit January 2008
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. He was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE in a state wide exhibition of graduating ceramics diplomats. We visited our friend Elfriede in an aged care hostel as soon as we arrived. As on previous occasions, she did not look like she was enjoying the tele when we arrived, but her look of thunderous denial transformed into sheer delight and utter surprise when she recognised us. We took her to lunch at the local soccer club. Her appetite for Chinese has not diminished one bit. She offered to carry our bags for the rest of our trip, and back to Mullumbimby as well, but we, regrettably, had to decline her offer. We left her at the hostel and headed to the Blue Mountains, where we stayed with Steve, a potter friend of John’s (Trish was off rowing in Tamworth.) Dinner was grilled snapper and mango salsa. Yuuum. Next morning it was back down to Gomorrah. I remember thinking as we trained past some of the ugliest urban clutter imaginable (well, in this country, anyway) that the people who live there must think they have no choice. And I thought of our friend in the hostel (who really does not have a choice) yet who keeps herself looking like she’s ready to meet that new man who will sweep her up in his arms and…. and I realised that she does not live without hope. Next stop was the hotel we booked on the internet the night before we left. The picture was of one of those grand old palaces on Broadway. When we got there, the hotel was actually in the building next door. You can guess the rest, but at least the room was clean. John thinks it is probably a brothel. We did a lot of walking in Sydney – in the RAIN!! Did someone say drought a few months ago? Gosh, if only we had one day to dry the washing! Anyway, after taking the train to Bondi Junction we found ourselves in my old stamping ground – where I lived in my misspent youth, before I went soldiering. I really could not recognise the place, but the food we had in the Oxford Street Market was really nice. From there we walked to a gallery at Charing Cross (hey, we’re still in Sydney at this point – not London!) where John made a new best friend who sooooooo wants his work. Actually, I saw some work there (2D) that I really liked, but I remembered just in time that we don’t have any spare wall space. Back to the hotel and on to the Clay Workers Gallery in Glebe for the opening, on the way to which I was startled to find myself walking along William Henry Street, another place of misspent youthfulness (as distinct from youth) which is mentioned in one of last year’s blog entries. The opening went like a Harley… (remember this one from last time I used it?)... better than a Triumph. John’s work was right in the centre of the very small room with the work of six other graduates from across NSW. I liked the work of two of the others; the remaining four were clearly competent and probably very good – they had to be to be there – but did not grab me. One of them in particular, stuff about mermaids, made me homesick for Byron Bay. Um, actually that would be more sick than home, and I don’t mean sick the way a twenty-something would. The artiste arrived fashionably late and before she got through the door John said “Here comes the mermaid.” Yep, it were her. We were joined at the opening by Steve and Suzie, another potter friend, also from the mountains, with her husband and son who is starting this year at East Sydney Tech – now the National Art School – where I spent three weeks in that misspent youth alluded to earlier. We all adjourned to one of the plethora of restaurants in Glebe for a post show knees up. Good food, goof fun, good night… well, not so fast, because afterwards we walked back to our hotel through the most astounding variety of night life. I thought about the bleak back yards we looked into on the train and realised that what I was seeing in Glebe-by-night was probably what people who live in the Grimlands see themselves as being part of. To some extent they would be right. Living in Mullumbimby means that we could only ever be tourists in the fleshpots of Gomorrah. Frankly, we have the better deal, but I could handle living nearby in the mountains – back to which we headed the next morning, to stay with Suzie and Don, who, being political animals, were still partying post-election. We were joined for dinner by my friend Penny, who on account of John Howard’s inflation rate, is now probably Tuppence or maybe Threepence or even Sixpence. We dined on a delicious beef ragout followed by melt-in-the-mouth meringues. Yahoo!! Mountain Due!!! Next day it was back down the mountain and off to the Art Gallery of NSW. We deposited our bags in a locker at a backpackers joint – Central railway station no longer has lockers as a precaution against terrorism – and went to China Town for Yum Cha – um, that should be Yum Yum Cha. We took the train to St James and walked through one of the many underground walkways in which we had encountered buskers, some of them really good – one of them astonishing – and from there across Hyde Park, past the Archibald fountain and St Mary’s Cathedral, both places I frequented in that aforementioned youth, to the Domain, where a lone soap box haranguer lectured himself on some obscure issue; and, finally, we arrived at the Gallery, guarded by heroic horsemen of romantic antiquity, where we took in the Sidney Nolan Retrospective. Wow!! And other shows, during which I realised that merely being a tourist in Gomorrah has its drawbacks. The taxi driver who took us the very long way to the airport to catch our return flight lives in Ocean Shores half the year and Sydney the other half. The conversation was a revelation. I can’t remember what about, but it was. Our plane was delayed by a storm, and when we did finally get on board, we were delayed a further 90 minutes because they couldn’t get fuel – the depot had been struck by lightning: so they said, anyway – I didn’t believe them – I reckon it was because all departures had to be rescheduled. We arrived at the Gold Coast with not enough time for the plane to return to Sydney before the curfew. You may have heard that the same thing happened again in Sydney a couple of weeks later and the passengers, instead of being accommodated in a hotel were turfed out onto the street for the night. Jet Staaaaaaaaar!! Oh and Macquarie Baaaaaaank – who own Sydney airport!! Ah, capitalism.
2008 January Bulletin
Ra-a-aaaain!
Raaaain comin’ down on the caaaane,
And the roooooves of the town!!
That’s from a song…
Ummm, Hello there…
about … well, rain; written on a farm near Innisfail, the wettest town in Australia – and possibly the world if you live there – in the late seventies, by the members of a theatre troupe making a big splash in North Queensland at the time. I wonder what happened to them – and to the rain that was so ubiquitous, all along the east coast in those days, yet has been so sporadic of late that the most recent rain event seemed almost apocalyptic. Indeed, it did bring flooding to many places all around us, but we were not directly affected by it. In fact, we had the luxury of actually enjoying it – waking up at night, hearing the drone of heaven on the roof and slipping back into sleep with a smile, remembering childhood; bringing out warmer clothing than we would normally wear at this time of the year and thanking the heavens, literally, that it wasn’t the usual 40 degrees for Christmas; and occasionally during the day… did I say day... it went on for daze… just sitting and listening to it, and at other times just sitting listening to the silence when it wasn’t there; and listening to the frogs and crickets; and remembering again and again that this is how it used to be; and wondering… dreaming of cyclones. (see The celebration of Cyclone Dreaming No 2. 10 May 2007)
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye. I won’t regale you with the details here, but if you can believe that there would be anything worth saying about I spy and another game called Buzz, see my blog.
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
A number of people have told me there’s nothing on the disc of the concert. Trust me, there is. The problem is incompatible technologies. It happened to us once on a CD player that we bought in the mid nineties – old !!??!! technology – but I had forgotten about it, because we no longer use a CD player to play CDs. We use a DVD player. When we went to replace our old player we were advised to buy a DVD player instead – much cheaper than the “genuine part” if I can put it that way. So if you have a DVD player, pop the disc in as though you are going to watch a movie on your TV. The disc will play through your TV speakers. The disc will probably also work in your car player, though that may also depend on how old the car (or player) is.
Hope your year is better than any previous.
Bliss the day!!
Raaaain comin’ down on the caaaane,
And the roooooves of the town!!
That’s from a song…
Ummm, Hello there…
about … well, rain; written on a farm near Innisfail, the wettest town in Australia – and possibly the world if you live there – in the late seventies, by the members of a theatre troupe making a big splash in North Queensland at the time. I wonder what happened to them – and to the rain that was so ubiquitous, all along the east coast in those days, yet has been so sporadic of late that the most recent rain event seemed almost apocalyptic. Indeed, it did bring flooding to many places all around us, but we were not directly affected by it. In fact, we had the luxury of actually enjoying it – waking up at night, hearing the drone of heaven on the roof and slipping back into sleep with a smile, remembering childhood; bringing out warmer clothing than we would normally wear at this time of the year and thanking the heavens, literally, that it wasn’t the usual 40 degrees for Christmas; and occasionally during the day… did I say day... it went on for daze… just sitting and listening to it, and at other times just sitting listening to the silence when it wasn’t there; and listening to the frogs and crickets; and remembering again and again that this is how it used to be; and wondering… dreaming of cyclones. (see The celebration of Cyclone Dreaming No 2. 10 May 2007)
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye. I won’t regale you with the details here, but if you can believe that there would be anything worth saying about I spy and another game called Buzz, see my blog.
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
A number of people have told me there’s nothing on the disc of the concert. Trust me, there is. The problem is incompatible technologies. It happened to us once on a CD player that we bought in the mid nineties – old !!??!! technology – but I had forgotten about it, because we no longer use a CD player to play CDs. We use a DVD player. When we went to replace our old player we were advised to buy a DVD player instead – much cheaper than the “genuine part” if I can put it that way. So if you have a DVD player, pop the disc in as though you are going to watch a movie on your TV. The disc will play through your TV speakers. The disc will probably also work in your car player, though that may also depend on how old the car (or player) is.
Hope your year is better than any previous.
Bliss the day!!
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Link to the Wharf Revue
Link to the Wharf Revue 2007
The Sydney Theatre Company puts on something called the Wharf Revue each year. In 2007 a federal election was looming when the production was staged. Listen, and die laughing. Of particular interest is the section by “Paul Keating”. Click on this link , ot copy and paste it to your web browser. It runs for an hour.
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/summer&d=rn/summer/2007/audio&r=sts_09012008_2856.ram&w=sts_09012008_28M.asx&t=Monday%2009%20January%202008&p=1
The Sydney Theatre Company puts on something called the Wharf Revue each year. In 2007 a federal election was looming when the production was staged. Listen, and die laughing. Of particular interest is the section by “Paul Keating”. Click on this link , ot copy and paste it to your web browser. It runs for an hour.
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/summer&d=rn/summer/2007/audio&r=sts_09012008_2856.ram&w=sts_09012008_28M.asx&t=Monday%2009%20January%202008&p=1
Coming, cricket or not!!
Winning the toss.
It’s always dangerous to make judgments about issues when not in possession of the full story, and it goes without saying that a story like the confrontation in Sydney, in January 2008, between the Indian and the Australian cricket teams, will be distorted by the much larger interests in the two countries. It would seem, therefore, that the wise thing to do would be to refrain from comment. But Australians in significant numbers seem to be doing exactly the opposite, and, astonishingly, in the land of the Cronulla riots, seem to overwhelmingly on the side of the Indian team. This would seem to be an gratifying revelation: we really can deal with a crisis in cricket in the spirit of…. well, cricket. I’d really like to leave it there and bask in self congratulations on behalf of the people of the land of the fair go. But something is nagging me about the whole thing. I’ve already acknowledged that I don’t have the full story, so here I go on the basis of the story as I do have it.
Firstly, is Ricky Ponting’s sense of what a press conference is, a bit self serving? An Indian journalist asks him a question that challenges his sense of what went on on the field, and Ponting retorts, If you are questioning my integrity you shouldn’t be standing here. Talk about dum’n’duma. I hope Cricket Australia tells him what press conferences are for before he has to do it again. If a journalist questions one’s integrity, denying their right to do so is not proof of one’s integrity. It is proof of one’s unsuitability for leadership. If someone’s question really is a slur on one’s character, a truthful answer is the necessary and sufficient response. Petulant obfuscation leaves the observer in no doubt about who’s on the right track – a point I will return to shortly.
Secondly, the Indian position seems to be twofold: there is no proof, other than the assertions of some members of the Australian team, that Harbhajan Singh actually called Andrew Symonds a monkey; and anyway, calling someone a monkey is not insulting from an Indian point of view.
On both counts they are being disingenuous.
On the issue of whether or not Singh used the word monkey, the question has been asked, How can the umpire take the word of Australian players and not that of Indian players? Oh dear! It’s Dum’n’duma at it again! You can get away with asking a question like that only if you know the accusation is false – in which case you don’t need to ask it. It is enough to deny the accusation and know that you are right. If others choose not to believe you, they’re the ones with the problem. Knowing and speaking the truth is the proof of dignity. If you know the accusation is not false, however, asking the above question means that you are indirectly accusing the other side of lying, knowing that to be false – in which case you condemn yourself by asking it. Rhetorical obfuscation (as in Ricky Ponting’s case) shows that one has something to hide. This, I contend, is also precisely what the Indians have done.
How can one be confidant – as distinct from know – that the spokesmen for the Indian position are in fact the ones who are lying? Simple: look for obfuscation in what else they have said.
There might well be a god in the Hindu pantheon who is a monkey; and India may well be among the many country in the world in which people affectionately call others, usually children, monkeys. These are two grounds on which the accusation of intending insult are disputed. This is obfuscation.
International cricket is played by sophisticated people capable of using the word monkey in a variety of ways, some of them endearing and others intended to be insulting. Furthermore, the spectators at international cricket are capable of the same distinctions, even though they’re not all as sophisticated as the people on the field. And players as well as spectators are capable of seriously gross miss-behaviour, no matter what country they come from. Thuggish behaviour on the sidelines or on the pitch is thuggish behaviour, regardless of where it happens. We’re all capable of it, as well as being capable of recognising it. But the Indians seem to be saying that people on the sidelined in India aping… well, apes, cannot be accused of intending to insult Symonds, any more than Singh could be accused of intending to insult the same player, had he called him a monkey. This is just plain stupid – obfuscation of the highest order. Had the Indians said no more than that their man did not use the offending word they would be right about it being their word against the word of the other team. And they would have the appearance of dignity, even if they were lying. But to say that no one ever intended to insult Symonds by word or deed is so patently absurd that it raises the question, Why did they feel the need for such denial? Answer: they are lying about the crowd’s intent because they know that they are lying about what Singh said and his intent. Have I proved my case? No. But I am very confidant. Would I have suspended Singh? No, because the Indians are right: there is no proof – well, there are no independent witnesses, anyway. But because of their petulant obfuscation, the whole world, with the possible exception of a billion people in one part of it, knows the truth.
Personally, I’m very happy that Australians are capable of kicking their sacred cow – the national cricket team – when it deserves it, and barracking for the other side when they deserve it. But please! Let’s be prepared to recognise the cow shit that is being flung around by the Indians for what it is. Sledging a cricketer by insulting him is one thing, but insulting the intelligence of the world? It is looking very much like India is “winning the toss”.
It’s always dangerous to make judgments about issues when not in possession of the full story, and it goes without saying that a story like the confrontation in Sydney, in January 2008, between the Indian and the Australian cricket teams, will be distorted by the much larger interests in the two countries. It would seem, therefore, that the wise thing to do would be to refrain from comment. But Australians in significant numbers seem to be doing exactly the opposite, and, astonishingly, in the land of the Cronulla riots, seem to overwhelmingly on the side of the Indian team. This would seem to be an gratifying revelation: we really can deal with a crisis in cricket in the spirit of…. well, cricket. I’d really like to leave it there and bask in self congratulations on behalf of the people of the land of the fair go. But something is nagging me about the whole thing. I’ve already acknowledged that I don’t have the full story, so here I go on the basis of the story as I do have it.
Firstly, is Ricky Ponting’s sense of what a press conference is, a bit self serving? An Indian journalist asks him a question that challenges his sense of what went on on the field, and Ponting retorts, If you are questioning my integrity you shouldn’t be standing here. Talk about dum’n’duma. I hope Cricket Australia tells him what press conferences are for before he has to do it again. If a journalist questions one’s integrity, denying their right to do so is not proof of one’s integrity. It is proof of one’s unsuitability for leadership. If someone’s question really is a slur on one’s character, a truthful answer is the necessary and sufficient response. Petulant obfuscation leaves the observer in no doubt about who’s on the right track – a point I will return to shortly.
Secondly, the Indian position seems to be twofold: there is no proof, other than the assertions of some members of the Australian team, that Harbhajan Singh actually called Andrew Symonds a monkey; and anyway, calling someone a monkey is not insulting from an Indian point of view.
On both counts they are being disingenuous.
On the issue of whether or not Singh used the word monkey, the question has been asked, How can the umpire take the word of Australian players and not that of Indian players? Oh dear! It’s Dum’n’duma at it again! You can get away with asking a question like that only if you know the accusation is false – in which case you don’t need to ask it. It is enough to deny the accusation and know that you are right. If others choose not to believe you, they’re the ones with the problem. Knowing and speaking the truth is the proof of dignity. If you know the accusation is not false, however, asking the above question means that you are indirectly accusing the other side of lying, knowing that to be false – in which case you condemn yourself by asking it. Rhetorical obfuscation (as in Ricky Ponting’s case) shows that one has something to hide. This, I contend, is also precisely what the Indians have done.
How can one be confidant – as distinct from know – that the spokesmen for the Indian position are in fact the ones who are lying? Simple: look for obfuscation in what else they have said.
There might well be a god in the Hindu pantheon who is a monkey; and India may well be among the many country in the world in which people affectionately call others, usually children, monkeys. These are two grounds on which the accusation of intending insult are disputed. This is obfuscation.
International cricket is played by sophisticated people capable of using the word monkey in a variety of ways, some of them endearing and others intended to be insulting. Furthermore, the spectators at international cricket are capable of the same distinctions, even though they’re not all as sophisticated as the people on the field. And players as well as spectators are capable of seriously gross miss-behaviour, no matter what country they come from. Thuggish behaviour on the sidelines or on the pitch is thuggish behaviour, regardless of where it happens. We’re all capable of it, as well as being capable of recognising it. But the Indians seem to be saying that people on the sidelined in India aping… well, apes, cannot be accused of intending to insult Symonds, any more than Singh could be accused of intending to insult the same player, had he called him a monkey. This is just plain stupid – obfuscation of the highest order. Had the Indians said no more than that their man did not use the offending word they would be right about it being their word against the word of the other team. And they would have the appearance of dignity, even if they were lying. But to say that no one ever intended to insult Symonds by word or deed is so patently absurd that it raises the question, Why did they feel the need for such denial? Answer: they are lying about the crowd’s intent because they know that they are lying about what Singh said and his intent. Have I proved my case? No. But I am very confidant. Would I have suspended Singh? No, because the Indians are right: there is no proof – well, there are no independent witnesses, anyway. But because of their petulant obfuscation, the whole world, with the possible exception of a billion people in one part of it, knows the truth.
Personally, I’m very happy that Australians are capable of kicking their sacred cow – the national cricket team – when it deserves it, and barracking for the other side when they deserve it. But please! Let’s be prepared to recognise the cow shit that is being flung around by the Indians for what it is. Sledging a cricketer by insulting him is one thing, but insulting the intelligence of the world? It is looking very much like India is “winning the toss”.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Driving with children
On I Spy, Buzz and Prime Numbers
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye.
It occurred me after a while that it’s a game that adults would benefit from – and about which someone could almost certainly write a thesis. I won’t go into too much detail here, but how often have you heard jaded grown ups complain about the boring car trip they had just done? That would be because they didn’t pay attention, wanting to be somewhere else, perhaps – the destination rather than the journey. Imagine the most featureless scene you have ever… well, seen… There’s always more there than immediately “meets the eye”. Actually, if something’s there, it meets the eye, given 20/20 vision, but it may not get your attention. So I Spy played in what would normally be thought of as a boring and unstimulating place will generate attention to details not normally noticed. It may even give rise to the need to name phenomena previously unknown to one or more of the players. The special challenge when driving is that one has to choose categories of objects that can be seen, while moving, for at least as long as it takes players to answer correctly or give in. The kids did this without even being aware of it – until, that is, one of them nominated something that was not observable once we had gone past it, and one of the others articulated the rule that had been implicit until that point. If I were to say to you that everything we do/know is theory-laden your eyes would probably glaze over. But I just gave you an example of what I would be talking about, were I talking about it – which I am. The kids recognised that the rules that applied in static situations would not work in dynamic situations and adopted a new set of behaviours to deal with the changed situation; and only when it became necessary, clarified the way the rules had changed. Now imagine trying to explain that to them. It can be done, but not while they’re playing the game.
Now imagine a society in which I Spy With My Little Eye is not just a game but the sacred ritual that mediates their sense of who they are, and must be played five times a day at precise times. This society existed long before there were trains cars and aeroplanes, and developed their ritual in a world that was virtually static; and concealed the fact that they developed the ritual by telling themselves – and coming to believe – that the ritual was written on a stone tablet that was lowered from heaven on a golden rope. In time their neighbours begin to travel in trains, cars and aeroplanes. But because an object cannot be seen once they have passed it, they find they cannot perform their ritual. Well, they can if they travel in cars, because they can stop while they do their thing. But trains and planes won’t stop for them, and anyway, what’s there to see at 30,000 metres, and when the train, plane and even the car takes them beyond the landscape they know to landscapes they have never seen before, and therefore cannot name, how could they play their game? What would they do? Refuse to travel in trains and planes to far away places, and travel by car only within the landscape they know? Or change the ritual? Maybe even abandon ritual altogether for want of the theory that ritual is context dependent – indeed condemning as “Modernism” such a theory when it arose. See what I mean about the potential for a thesis. And all because I overheard kids playing a game.
At the risk of frightening you to death, I want to tell you about another game that I don’t think they understood at all. It is called Buzz. One person says a number – it can be either odd or even. The other person says Buzz. The first person says another number, but if the first number was odd, the second has to be odd. If it is not, the other person has a turn. On this set of rules, the result is that someone who knows the difference between odd and even numbers and can count to 100 gets to say every odd or even number between 0 and 100 and stays in for the whole time. Boring. No one played by that set of rules for long. Which set me thinking. They must have misunderstood the rules. It would be so simple to modify them. Succeeding numbers had to be the opposite of the numbers that preceded them, for example. I say an odd number, my partner says buzz, and I must then say an even number, otherwise it is my partner’s turn. But even that can’t have been the intent of the game. What could it be? I had an idea. Maybe it was a game about Prime Numbers. So I asked the Tatum, who had just finished grade one, how many twos in four. Two, she said. How many twos in two? One. OK, I thought, she knows about division. So I said, tell me a number that can be divided with nothing left over by itself or one. What? the problem was the word divided. She knew how to do it but not how to name it. And what about “with nothing left over”? Well, I said, how many threes in eight? More than two but not three. Yes, two with something left over. Oh, yeah. OK, now tell me an number that can be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. They all can, she said. Another long pause as I pondered what had gone wrong. I was trying to steer her towards the concept of prime numbers and was facing the prospect of all numbers being prime numbers if I didn’t refine the rules of the game. Yes, I said. Now tell me a number that can be divided only by itself or one with nothing left over. Four, she said. No. there’s nothing left over when you divide four by one and by four. But how many twos in four? Two, she said. And nothing left over, I prompted. Oh yeah. What about five? Yes. Give me another one. Not six, she said. Why? Because there are three twos in six. Correct. Another. Seven. Yes, another. Not eight. Correct. Nine she said triumphantly. There’s four twos in nine with one left over. Ah, I said, but how many threes in nine? Three, she shot back. Oh! And nothing left over. Yes. Now do you see how it works? I want numbers that can only be divided by one or themselves with nothing left over. So now we have a new set of rules for the game Buzz. I say a number and you buzz me. My next number must be one that can only be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. Say that again. OK but before I do, lets give the numbers we’re talking about a name. What will we call them? Long pause. I don’t know, don’t they already have a name? Well, yes, actually, they do. What is it then? They’re Prime Numbers. Can we play I Spy With My Little Eye Again? We never did get to play Buzz with prime numbers. Oh, and by the way, later on I thought that maybe there are various stages to the game. First you just get odd or even numbers sorted; then deal with both; and then with primes.
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye.
It occurred me after a while that it’s a game that adults would benefit from – and about which someone could almost certainly write a thesis. I won’t go into too much detail here, but how often have you heard jaded grown ups complain about the boring car trip they had just done? That would be because they didn’t pay attention, wanting to be somewhere else, perhaps – the destination rather than the journey. Imagine the most featureless scene you have ever… well, seen… There’s always more there than immediately “meets the eye”. Actually, if something’s there, it meets the eye, given 20/20 vision, but it may not get your attention. So I Spy played in what would normally be thought of as a boring and unstimulating place will generate attention to details not normally noticed. It may even give rise to the need to name phenomena previously unknown to one or more of the players. The special challenge when driving is that one has to choose categories of objects that can be seen, while moving, for at least as long as it takes players to answer correctly or give in. The kids did this without even being aware of it – until, that is, one of them nominated something that was not observable once we had gone past it, and one of the others articulated the rule that had been implicit until that point. If I were to say to you that everything we do/know is theory-laden your eyes would probably glaze over. But I just gave you an example of what I would be talking about, were I talking about it – which I am. The kids recognised that the rules that applied in static situations would not work in dynamic situations and adopted a new set of behaviours to deal with the changed situation; and only when it became necessary, clarified the way the rules had changed. Now imagine trying to explain that to them. It can be done, but not while they’re playing the game.
Now imagine a society in which I Spy With My Little Eye is not just a game but the sacred ritual that mediates their sense of who they are, and must be played five times a day at precise times. This society existed long before there were trains cars and aeroplanes, and developed their ritual in a world that was virtually static; and concealed the fact that they developed the ritual by telling themselves – and coming to believe – that the ritual was written on a stone tablet that was lowered from heaven on a golden rope. In time their neighbours begin to travel in trains, cars and aeroplanes. But because an object cannot be seen once they have passed it, they find they cannot perform their ritual. Well, they can if they travel in cars, because they can stop while they do their thing. But trains and planes won’t stop for them, and anyway, what’s there to see at 30,000 metres, and when the train, plane and even the car takes them beyond the landscape they know to landscapes they have never seen before, and therefore cannot name, how could they play their game? What would they do? Refuse to travel in trains and planes to far away places, and travel by car only within the landscape they know? Or change the ritual? Maybe even abandon ritual altogether for want of the theory that ritual is context dependent – indeed condemning as “Modernism” such a theory when it arose. See what I mean about the potential for a thesis. And all because I overheard kids playing a game.
At the risk of frightening you to death, I want to tell you about another game that I don’t think they understood at all. It is called Buzz. One person says a number – it can be either odd or even. The other person says Buzz. The first person says another number, but if the first number was odd, the second has to be odd. If it is not, the other person has a turn. On this set of rules, the result is that someone who knows the difference between odd and even numbers and can count to 100 gets to say every odd or even number between 0 and 100 and stays in for the whole time. Boring. No one played by that set of rules for long. Which set me thinking. They must have misunderstood the rules. It would be so simple to modify them. Succeeding numbers had to be the opposite of the numbers that preceded them, for example. I say an odd number, my partner says buzz, and I must then say an even number, otherwise it is my partner’s turn. But even that can’t have been the intent of the game. What could it be? I had an idea. Maybe it was a game about Prime Numbers. So I asked the Tatum, who had just finished grade one, how many twos in four. Two, she said. How many twos in two? One. OK, I thought, she knows about division. So I said, tell me a number that can be divided with nothing left over by itself or one. What? the problem was the word divided. She knew how to do it but not how to name it. And what about “with nothing left over”? Well, I said, how many threes in eight? More than two but not three. Yes, two with something left over. Oh, yeah. OK, now tell me an number that can be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. They all can, she said. Another long pause as I pondered what had gone wrong. I was trying to steer her towards the concept of prime numbers and was facing the prospect of all numbers being prime numbers if I didn’t refine the rules of the game. Yes, I said. Now tell me a number that can be divided only by itself or one with nothing left over. Four, she said. No. there’s nothing left over when you divide four by one and by four. But how many twos in four? Two, she said. And nothing left over, I prompted. Oh yeah. What about five? Yes. Give me another one. Not six, she said. Why? Because there are three twos in six. Correct. Another. Seven. Yes, another. Not eight. Correct. Nine she said triumphantly. There’s four twos in nine with one left over. Ah, I said, but how many threes in nine? Three, she shot back. Oh! And nothing left over. Yes. Now do you see how it works? I want numbers that can only be divided by one or themselves with nothing left over. So now we have a new set of rules for the game Buzz. I say a number and you buzz me. My next number must be one that can only be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. Say that again. OK but before I do, lets give the numbers we’re talking about a name. What will we call them? Long pause. I don’t know, don’t they already have a name? Well, yes, actually, they do. What is it then? They’re Prime Numbers. Can we play I Spy With My Little Eye Again? We never did get to play Buzz with prime numbers. Oh, and by the way, later on I thought that maybe there are various stages to the game. First you just get odd or even numbers sorted; then deal with both; and then with primes.
2007 December Bulletin
Hello Y’all,
Anyone who is in my monthly email group please bear with me as I address an opening request to people who will receive this by snail mail.
Please, please, please. If you haven’t given me an email address, please seriously consider doing so. And if you think you have but did NOT get an electronic Christmas card from me this year, it means one of two things: you haven’t given me an email address; or it’s not current.
Of course, not everyone has the means of using email, so I will still stay in touch if you don’t give me an email address, but for those with the means, I really would prefer it didn’t have to be by snail mail.
You can give me your email address simply by emailing me at
paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com
You don’t have to write a letter: just put “Add my address to your contacts”, and it shall be so.
Furthermore, I have personal email addresses of 146 people in my list of contacts, of whom 44 have elected to be in my monthly bulletin group. If you would like to be on the list, please send an email with the words “Add my address to your monthly bulletin group”. I will NOT be overwrought if you do want to receive a monthly email from me. It would be nice to have an email address for you for occasional contacts – like Christmas, and maybe even birthdaze if I can get my act together and resurrect my birthday list. If you haven’t told my your birth date just…. you know… do it.
˜ ™
Some of you may already know that John has finished his Diploma in Ceramics and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide ceramics exhibition in Sydney in January. We were going to drive, but now we are flying, and will consequently be away from home for only three days instead of nearly two weeks. John has enrolled in the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics for 2008 and has been offered an exhibition at the Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah – normally he wouldn’t be able to get in until late 2009, but the gallery director was here on Sunday to see his work and offered to squeeze him in so that he can fulfil the requirements of his Adv. Dip. AND… BREAKING NEWS!! He’s just had an intriguing offer from Newcastle University. We don’t know what it means yet, but we’re hoping ……..well we don’t know what we’re hoping. We’re just hoping.
The choir I am in did its thing in November – a two hour programme, the major item of which was Vivaldi’s Gloria. Apologies to those who have already heard this: it went like a Harley – you know, better than a Triumph!!. I am now setting out on The Messiah. I’m also adapting about half of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass for solo work; and transliterating the 4th movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. My music teacher is very happy with my progress. I am also getting quite serious about sewing – mainly from a problem solving point of view; but having found out how much better hand made clothes are than shop bought ones, I am sneaking into the TAFE library photocopying parts of books on tailoring; and getting interested in geometric theorems and their application to drafting. I’m not talking fashion design, by the way. Think shorts, t shirts, trousers, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing – although I have not forgotten the idea of ceremonial clothing that I mentioned to a few people some time ago. I’m also making soft toys with a view to making stuff for John to turn into porcelain fossils. See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
for pictures of his final year exhibition; and also the designs for a set of Stubby Coolers I have just made. You are invited to see innuendo in them. Consider the range of occasions when you might select on for a specific purpose. If you like I’ll design a set for you too. You can supply the pictures or consult my extensive collection. And while on the subject of Flickr, I’m still waiting on courageous individuals to email photos of themselves to caricature. For those hearing about this for the first time click on Caricatures in the right hand column of my Flickr page to see my what I mean – and then send your picture for inclusion in the Hall of the Game. Maybe you’d like a set of stubby coolers with pictures of yourself/family/friends looking frighteningly fiendish.
I very bravely set out to write a blog around the middle of the year, and was going gangbusters for a while, but, as I was warned, I stopped rather suddenly because it was taking up too much time. I’m not sure that I will ever get back to it, but it is going to be a convenient place to post documents such as John’s Artist statement. I have posted it today, as well as the monthly bulletins from June to November. If you want to read John’s artist statement click on
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/
Finally, have you been watching the series Monarchy on TV? Last night it was about how the Stewarts (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II) adopted a self serving ideology and tried to make Britain in their own image, resulting in Charles I losing his head. How strangely familiar that tale is – vaguely reminiscent of a certain politician who came to believe his own publicity that he thought he could remake a certain wide brown land in his own image, and ended up losing his seat!! Not that I’m gloating or anything. But, with apologies to those who have already heard this line, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
Go Jollily!!
˜ ™
PS
Sox and Boof send their blessings.
See Flickr The Household for pictures of both of them and other family members who have joined the Communion of Saints.
PPS
After a couple of years of regular visits to a Urologist, I finally have a combination of medications that works. If you didn’t know I had been going to a specialist, you have missed all the drama. But don’t worry, I’m sure that at my age, there’ll be more. Life really IS short. I can remember so vividly that brief period of my life when mortality seemed like something that other people had to think about. And I look at bright young things now and relate as never before to poems like To his coy mistress (Type the following into Google if you are not familiar with the poem – or simply click on this link if you are reading this in an email Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress. "Had we but world enough and ... )
Anyone who is in my monthly email group please bear with me as I address an opening request to people who will receive this by snail mail.
Please, please, please. If you haven’t given me an email address, please seriously consider doing so. And if you think you have but did NOT get an electronic Christmas card from me this year, it means one of two things: you haven’t given me an email address; or it’s not current.
Of course, not everyone has the means of using email, so I will still stay in touch if you don’t give me an email address, but for those with the means, I really would prefer it didn’t have to be by snail mail.
You can give me your email address simply by emailing me at
paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com
You don’t have to write a letter: just put “Add my address to your contacts”, and it shall be so.
Furthermore, I have personal email addresses of 146 people in my list of contacts, of whom 44 have elected to be in my monthly bulletin group. If you would like to be on the list, please send an email with the words “Add my address to your monthly bulletin group”. I will NOT be overwrought if you do want to receive a monthly email from me. It would be nice to have an email address for you for occasional contacts – like Christmas, and maybe even birthdaze if I can get my act together and resurrect my birthday list. If you haven’t told my your birth date just…. you know… do it.
˜ ™
Some of you may already know that John has finished his Diploma in Ceramics and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide ceramics exhibition in Sydney in January. We were going to drive, but now we are flying, and will consequently be away from home for only three days instead of nearly two weeks. John has enrolled in the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics for 2008 and has been offered an exhibition at the Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah – normally he wouldn’t be able to get in until late 2009, but the gallery director was here on Sunday to see his work and offered to squeeze him in so that he can fulfil the requirements of his Adv. Dip. AND… BREAKING NEWS!! He’s just had an intriguing offer from Newcastle University. We don’t know what it means yet, but we’re hoping ……..well we don’t know what we’re hoping. We’re just hoping.
The choir I am in did its thing in November – a two hour programme, the major item of which was Vivaldi’s Gloria. Apologies to those who have already heard this: it went like a Harley – you know, better than a Triumph!!. I am now setting out on The Messiah. I’m also adapting about half of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass for solo work; and transliterating the 4th movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. My music teacher is very happy with my progress. I am also getting quite serious about sewing – mainly from a problem solving point of view; but having found out how much better hand made clothes are than shop bought ones, I am sneaking into the TAFE library photocopying parts of books on tailoring; and getting interested in geometric theorems and their application to drafting. I’m not talking fashion design, by the way. Think shorts, t shirts, trousers, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing – although I have not forgotten the idea of ceremonial clothing that I mentioned to a few people some time ago. I’m also making soft toys with a view to making stuff for John to turn into porcelain fossils. See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
for pictures of his final year exhibition; and also the designs for a set of Stubby Coolers I have just made. You are invited to see innuendo in them. Consider the range of occasions when you might select on for a specific purpose. If you like I’ll design a set for you too. You can supply the pictures or consult my extensive collection. And while on the subject of Flickr, I’m still waiting on courageous individuals to email photos of themselves to caricature. For those hearing about this for the first time click on Caricatures in the right hand column of my Flickr page to see my what I mean – and then send your picture for inclusion in the Hall of the Game. Maybe you’d like a set of stubby coolers with pictures of yourself/family/friends looking frighteningly fiendish.
I very bravely set out to write a blog around the middle of the year, and was going gangbusters for a while, but, as I was warned, I stopped rather suddenly because it was taking up too much time. I’m not sure that I will ever get back to it, but it is going to be a convenient place to post documents such as John’s Artist statement. I have posted it today, as well as the monthly bulletins from June to November. If you want to read John’s artist statement click on
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/
Finally, have you been watching the series Monarchy on TV? Last night it was about how the Stewarts (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II) adopted a self serving ideology and tried to make Britain in their own image, resulting in Charles I losing his head. How strangely familiar that tale is – vaguely reminiscent of a certain politician who came to believe his own publicity that he thought he could remake a certain wide brown land in his own image, and ended up losing his seat!! Not that I’m gloating or anything. But, with apologies to those who have already heard this line, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
Go Jollily!!
˜ ™
PS
Sox and Boof send their blessings.
See Flickr The Household for pictures of both of them and other family members who have joined the Communion of Saints.
PPS
After a couple of years of regular visits to a Urologist, I finally have a combination of medications that works. If you didn’t know I had been going to a specialist, you have missed all the drama. But don’t worry, I’m sure that at my age, there’ll be more. Life really IS short. I can remember so vividly that brief period of my life when mortality seemed like something that other people had to think about. And I look at bright young things now and relate as never before to poems like To his coy mistress (Type the following into Google if you are not familiar with the poem – or simply click on this link if you are reading this in an email Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress. "Had we but world enough and ... )
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
After a long absence
After a long absence
I was warned that I would not be able to keep up writing regular blog posts. And it was so. I can’t say that I will get back to it on a regular basis, because other things are of higher priority. For now I am posting two items.
1. All of the monthly bulletins from June to November. They are all in this one post.
2. John’s Artist Statement re his current work, which appears after this blog.
There is so much more that I would like to say now that a certain putrid smell seems to be dissipating across the wide brown land. We must have all died and gone to Kevin.
–˜™—
May 2007
Hey H’lo,
I am waiting on permission to reproduce something from the Melbourne Age in my blog. In the mean time, I am sending it by email. See attached. Warning, if you like John Howard you might prefer to give it a miss. On the other hand, it is a factual analysis of a claim Howard has made about himself (and compares him with Master K. Rudd Esquire, on the same issues.) It’s worth a read.
It’s approaching two months since I cut loose. I wish I could report two months of worthwhile achievements. You might be interested in my solution to the Zimbabwe question (Blog 10/5/07) and my scheme to provide every artist in Australia (eventually the world) with $1 million each (Blog 29/4/07). There’s also a new group of photos in my Flickr account: Mystrees. They are what the poem …We are surprised is about.
The major addition since last time is the full text of Cyclone Dreaming. (There will be a few of these over the coming months until I have resurrected all of the Celebration Menus we had in our restaurant.) It is in 16 parts. The Introduction is Part 1 and explains what it’s all about. Enough to say here that it’s a meditation on “saving the world” . Just kidding. HALF. If you’re going to read it, you really do need to start from the beginning. I would welcome any dialogue that might flow from it. If you wish to participate, make comments and where you feel prompted, respond to other people’s comments as well as the work itself.
My music lessons are going well. The Maestro gave me some pieces that are infinitely harder than anything I’ve ever done before. John said that is a good sign. I hope he’s right, and that it’s not just the Maestro trying to get rid of me. Compared with his Conservatorium students I’m the equivalent of Pauline Hanson in politics. Please explain.
Have a nice day, and
Love your enemies.
June 2007
Ho Ho Ho,
Just kidding, but at the rate the year’s going it won’t be long. And anyway, it is winter – sort of – so a bit of jollity probably won’t go astray as debate hots up about who’s got the best medicine for global warming, the best IR laws and the biggest barrel of porkies.
What a strange month it’s been. Did I say this last time – I’m busier now than when I was working. Well if I did, you ain’t heard nuttin yet. Actually I need a holiday. I’ve done a time management course and have been out rounding up herds of escaped minutes, hours days and sending them to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way where, as you know, estranged bits of space and time are stripped of their spaceness and timeness and reprocessed into quantum packages of space-time for distribution to everyone who’s short of time or squeezed for space. If that’s you, expect your package any time soon. You don’t have to apply, because the universe is like Santa Clause: it knows. (Why I mention the gentleman in red will become apparent if you read my blog.)
Fair dinkum, but, eh – wot with keyboard practice, reading for the courses I am preparing, and finishing off Cert IV in TAA (finished this coming Friday – yippee!!) I haven’t had time to write the great Australian novel, but hold your breath … no, not for it’s publication – someone farted. In relation to the latter mentioned magnum opus, I’ve just done a weekend creative writing workshop and am all fired up. And now I’m looking for the engage leaver. Not another ACE course, I hear someone saying. Well, yes, and two more to go this month. As I said to Carolyn on Sunday, I do ACE courses like other people do recreational drugs.
One of the problems I’ve had this last month is not enough time to blog. There’s new stuff there, but there’s even more on my hard drive awaiting completion. What’s been added in the last month is mainly political stuff. Some people will prefer not to look. But I commend to you two entries: Your stars as you’ve never seen them; and The Epiphany Celebration Menu. I hope you’ll get a larf out of both of them – in the case of the latter, the definitions at the end of the piece.
Ho! Ho! Ho!!!
July 2007
What a difference a (cold) day makes. It’s taken the onset of winter to finally make me start behaving like someone who doesn’t go to (paid) work every day. For the first three months I would wake up early, as was my want, and either get up or lie awake berating myself for not getting up. But the third or fourth day of the cold weather saw me not even waking up, let alone subjecting myself to the ravages of 10 degrees more or less. The first couple of days was hell. The third day I debated what to do and decided I was staying in bed. After that I threatened the cats with reprisals if they did not stop telling me they wanted breakfast. Get used to it I told them. Daddy’s taking care of himself from now on. So now instead of getting their ration of the national symbol (They like fresh Kangaroo meat, They like it served up warm, They like dining night and morn: They’re our pussies, They’re our cats, They’re the Nemesis of Rats.) at 5:00 am they get it at 7:30. Gosh! In the old daze I’d been at work half an hour by then.
For those who don’t liven in The Shire, good news. Next time you come to visit, we’ve got freeway all the way from the border to the Mullumbimby turn off. The final bit was finished last Sunday. We went for a drive on it today. It’s like living on another planet. So here to Brisbane is going to be “Beam me up Scotty.” Well, except for the Tugan imbroglio, of course, but even that will be fixed soon. South of here the freeway peters out somewhere between Byron Bay and Ballina. That’ll be next.
For the second month in a row I have done almost nothing on the blog – in spite of having decided to make it a priority. The problem is that when not going to (paid) work every day, things that “pop up” tend to demand immediate attention – and one tends to give in. But I’ve done a couple of ACE courses in Renewable Energy and Eco-Living. See blog.
Did I mention last month that I have joined the Mullumbimby choir? Singing lessons are going well. I’m in the tenor section, but at the moment I’m more like a fiver. Hope to get to the second G above middle C in the near future. We’re learning Vivaldi’s Gloria for a concert in November. I’m also being taught sight reading and performance technique. I’ll let you know when the Opera House concert is on.
I hope someone out there can help me here. Some time ago I loaned two talking books to someone and did not enter them into my loan register. I’m hoping it’s someone in this email group. If I’ve loaned them to you, could you please let me know? I don’t need them back at this time, but I’d like to know who’s got them. They’re both by Andrew McGahan; The White Earth, and Last Drinks. I’m also looking for the fifth book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. It’s called Shelters of Stone in hardback. I know I loaned it to someone but I can’t remember to whom, and someone else has asked for it.
Finally, we will be having a party here on 25 August 2007 from about 1:00 pm. If you wish to come could you please let us know by 17/8/07 so that we know how many limos to order. It’s John’s birthday on 28th. He’s back at TAFE and now in the home stretch – his final semester of the Diploma in Ceramics. His new thing is fossilised soft toys. You’ll just have to come to the party to see what that is but. Eh?
August 2007
Ah yeah g’day,
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
Something!??
Goll-EEEEEEEE I’d like to tell you everything,
but if I did,
I wouldn’t have to kill you –
you’d do it yourself.
Such is the burden of knowing it all.
Just ask me.
N E way, here’s the thing. In case you’re wondering how come you get emails from me that appear not to be addressed to you, here’s what I do. I put one of my email addresses in the To field, and everyone else’s in a group in the Bcc field. That way everyone’s address remains un-viewed by everyone else. I don’t know that that is necessary, but it’s what I do. It’s a hang over from a life of having to be aware of confidentiality issues. Why am I telling you this? Well, because you might think that you’re the only one getting the email, and gosh, I’d hate you to think I go to all that effort just for you. Um….. no…. that didn’t come out right…. But what the hell…. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Well another month and still no new blog posts. And so much has happened, both in the public domain and here on The Avenue, that has gone unremarked. It’s because two things have taken over my life. Singing and writing.
The Mullumbimby choir had a rehearsal with the Bangalow choir and the local chamber orchestra recently at St Martins in the Fields – well St Martins in Mullum, anyway, but doesn’t In the Fields sound so much nicer? Did I mention that we are doing one of Vivaldi’s Glorias? I have been working really hard on that – I’m not kidding, when you don’t know how to sight sing, it’s a slog. But I’m confidant that by November it will be all good, as they say. But then last Monday night I found out about all the other bits that are in the concert. So I have a significant repertoire to get my tonsils around. Consequently not much work is being done on the ACE courses. And I am doing a six week course on sight singing to catch up. By the way, I will soon graduate from being a fiver to a tenor. I am reaching the second G above middle C with ease these daze.
The other thing I am doing is getting back into the book. I was made aware of a publisher who is reading people’s first chapters and, though I really could have done without it at this particular time, I decided to take up the challenge, because, you know what they say – life is what happens when you’re making other plans. So I thought I had better… um… what’s that word I used to use … ah, yes: reprioritise.
The thing I feared most has happened as a result. As I started revising the first draft of Chapter 1 – written so long ago that it was virtually a former life – I got the urge again. No, not that urge, but it’s a feeling just as powerful. Paragraphs written in haste to “get it down” are now breaking open with rich and complex possibilities. I can be in the middle of doing something, like washing up, and I’ll be captured by an insight that becomes a stream of consciousness, to coin a phrase, and then a veritable torrent – a white water ride to who knows where. It really is like a drug. I become helpless. I have to obey. Go to your computer and write it down. Do it now! The problem is that I have other things to do. So I really DO have to reprioritise.
And that brings me to the point. As a trainer (Jump Fido! Sit! Stay! Beg! Good boy, here’s a job.) I am well aware of the organisational skills needed to get life under control when paid work is the main thing one does. But this situation is different. It’s not even like being self employed, which I was for ten years. It’s about being accountable to yourself for the opportunity that so few people have. There are so many things to do. They all need to be done. Each and every one of them could absorb my whole attention – indeed I would like each one to do so. But that’s impossible. So I have to become a lot more disciplined than I have ever been. In other words, it’s not the fun lifestyle you might suppose it to be. And here’s the punch line you aren’t expecting (if you are dragging yourself to paid work most daze): enjoy what you are doing. The grass is not greener.
May your daze be full of fruit.
September 2007
Yeehaa!! Or is it Gee Hard!!
It’s almost the end of the month. Almost time to get next month’s letter ready and I haven’t even done this month’s. Too much has happened, yet there’s very little to tell. We had a party for John’s birthday. Those who attended were a bit startled by the quantity and variety of the food on offer. I was a bit wrecked by it. Fourteen hours on my feet two days in a row gave me the worst case of shaggers back I have ever had. In spite of which we went to Gympie a week later for John’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Needless to say the drive was excruciating. I’ve only in the last few daze recovered from it. While we’re on the subject of parties, the next is on Saturday 27 October – after 1:00 pm as usual. It’s not for anything in particular. We’re having it because we can. And yes, I have learned. I’m not going to do the heroic catering thing again.
The topic I wish to share with you in this letter is what I have been reading lately – which is nothing. But what I have done is listen to a number of talking books as I tread my mill for twenty minutes twice a day @ 5 kph.
The first was Dirt Music (Tim Winton) – Yes, I know it’s been out a long time, but the title put me off. Silly me. Judging a book by its title. It’s about how two men of unequal power relate to each other and the woman in both of their lives. I almost said share, but that would definitely be the wrong word for her relationship with them. I don’t know how much I should say about it, because if you haven’t read it I might spoil it for you by saying too much. Suffice to say that it is a redemption story. The bloke with the upper hand surrenders his power, and his victim surrenders to the landscape… and what a landscape. The woman, of course, is not in need of redemption, but is instrumental in the reconciliation of the two male protagonists. I haven’t mentioned music yet, have I. Well it is there throughout the story, but comes into full play, to coin a phrase, towards the end of the book. I was going to try to attach a music file to this email, but found I couldn’t. So here’s the thing. The main male protagonist – mmp – (whose name I forget) is given a lift by a couple. She is dying from cancer. At one point she asks hubby to play an Arvo Part disc. “Lets have some Arvo in the arvo,” she says. Much later, when the mmp is as far away from people as it possible to get, he hears the same music in his mind’s ear and realises he has just “witnessed” the death of the woman. The piece of music is called Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. How do I know this? Trust me. It is. And it is on a disc called “The Best of Arvo Part” EMI. Seriously worth a listen.
Second: The boy in the striped pyjamas (John Boyne) – A nine year old boy moves with his family to a place called Outwith, from a very comfortable life in Berlin. They are important enough to have had the Fury to their place for dinner. As boys of his age often do, he manages to do the impossible (no, this is not Harry Potter) – he strikes up a relationship with a boy about the same age as himself on the other side of the fence that divides their worlds at Outwith. The outcome is breath taking.
Third: On Chesil Beach(Ian McEwan) – It’s 1961. You may not remember this, but in those days it was not uncommon for people to be virgins when they got married – as is the case with the protagonists of this novel. Though the story surveys much about their lives up to their wedding day, the timeline is their wedding night, with a very brief indication in the last chapter of what happens to them in subsequent years. Even though it is rare these days for people to have sex for the first time on their wedding night, everyone who has ever had sex had a first time. This story will not, therefore, be totally unfamiliar. Even if it wasn’t a trauma for you, you almost certainly know someone for whom it was. This is a tragi-comedy. I don’t think it’s meant to be, but I couldn’t suppress several guffaws as I read – um, listened.
Fourth: Underground (Andrew McGahan) – Talk about leaving the good wine until last!!
If you don’t know this author, let me tell you about two of his other books first. The White Earth won the Miles Franklin Award in 2005. It is set on the Darling Downs in more or less contemporary times. A young boy grows up with unrealistic expectations about his future role on the property where his father is the Overseer. He is disabused of his fantasy in the (for him) most humiliating way and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to gain control of it – which he does, at awesome cost to himself and just about everyone else except his grandson, who moved to the property with his mother after his father dies (on the first page of the book). McGahan draws on political issues that are universal and shows how they unfold as particular stories in particular places. The grandfather starts out looking like a typical Queensland “squatter” and develops in a way that shows how simple our conception of that type of person really is. Queensland politics gave us Joh and Pauline. While this book refers to neither of them, it leaves you in no doubt about just how extraordinarily complex is the social milieu that spawns such “interesting” characters. This book is a political thriller without ever mentioning politics.
Unlike Last Drinks, which is explicitly about politics in Queensland. It is set ten years after the Fitzgerald enquiry and involves half a dozen people who were involved one way or another. It revolves around a brutal death and the attempt of the story’s protagonist to find out who was responsible. Along the way we see into the worlds of people who profited from political corruption – from Ministers and their masters in the Queensland Establishment that (still) manages to live above the law, to sleazy restaurateurs. At the end McGahan fires both barrels at the way things are still done in Queensland. I have to say that, even though I lived there most of my life, there are fundamental things about the way the Queensland operates that I didn’t know – which, of course, is the point of the book.
That beings me to Underground, his most recent book. I needed to tell you about the other two books make the point that McGahan is about political thrillers. Well they don’t get much more political or thrilling than this one! It is set in the very near future. So near that it could be happening now. Canberra is nuked and whole country goes into lock down as the very worst excesses of “security” unfold and facilitate the ascendancy of the loony right. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and it wouldn’t be about Australia if there wasn’t a resistance movement: the underground of the title, who, like the Anzacs, lose. I haven’t given anything away here: they wouldn’t be Australian heroes if they won. Just when you think you’ve seen the twist towards which the story is moving…. Oops, almost said too much now. But let me add this: imagine that John Howard loses the coming election, and, unable to accept that the people could possibly reject so successful a government, declares that there has been widespread foul play in the election count and suspends the constitution….. Implausible? Well, a little known piece of research done in the late 80s showed that a very large percentage of the Australian military would have supported a military coup if Malcolm Frazer had not been elected in 1975. As McGahan shows in Last Drinks, Queensland has not moved on since the Fitzgerald enquiry. And while it may satisfy the hubris of people from other states to say that Queensland is, well, Queensland, let’s not forget that One Nation got a million votes – most of them from the other states.
Singing is going well. If you live locally the performances the choir is preparing for are as follows:
Sunday 4th October 2007 2:00 pm St Mary’s Church BALLINA
Thursday 7th October 2007 7:00 pm St Andrew’s Church LISMORE
Sunday 11th October 2007 2:00 pm St Martin’s Church MULLUMBIMBY
I don’t yet know how much tickets will be. It’s actually two choirs, from Mullumbimby and Bangalow, with a local Chamber Orchestra. The main piece in the concert is a Gloria by Vivaldi.
John is approaching the end of his Diploma in Ceramics and working frantically to complete work not only for assessment, but also for exhibition as well as for sale. Don’t let anyone tell you life as an artist is fun. It’s really hard work. His latest work can be seen on Flickr. The easiest way of accessing is to type “twogreytoes” into Google. You’ll probably see half a dozen links, one of which will be this one: Flickr: Photos from twogreytoes. Click on it and it will take you to my Flickr site. As of today 23/9/07, John’s photos will appear first. But as I add more they will be down the list a bit. So on the right hand side of the page, click on Porcelain fossils, and that group will open. Oh, and by the way, if you’re coming to my Flickr site for the first time, be warned: in the group called Caricatures you may see a photo of yourself that you are likely to find unflattering or hilarious. If you don’t find one and you’d like to be in there, email me a head shot and I’ll do my best to make you look very peculiar.
Bliss your followers (or follow your bliss as preferred)
October 2007
Howdy foaks!!
Here’s a story to make you wonder. A couple of weeks a go I was in the Barbershop at Mullumbimby and saw a sign: Gourmet Rabbits @ IGA. Mmmmmmmm, I thought. Haven’t had rabbit for ages, so I enquired, but, no luck.
The sign must have been one of those random items of mis-information planted by the world’s security services to focus people’s attention on terrorism. Don’t know how it works? Me either, but they get paid a lot of money to keep us safe, so it must work.
N E Way, not to be deterred, I went to the two butchers in town. Same result. So I just put it down to experience.
Next morning, I got up earlier than usual and sat down at the computer after letting the cats out, but within seconds decided to go back to bed.
Some time later John got up to investigate a noise, and woke me up to have a look at what Boofie (one of our cats) had brought in: a rabbit kitten!!
The poor thing was scarred out of its wits and was playing possum when John picked it up, but when he took it back outside it bolted as soon as he put it on the lawn.
Like I said – makes you wonder.
Did Wooli as usual at the beginning of the month. Took hundreds of photos which I am in the process of selecting and photoshopping for Flicker. Don’t know how long it will be before they’re up, but I’ll let you know when they are. I have had some good reactions from people who’ve previewed them.
In the mean time, have a look at the attached picture.
It’s a Dragonflopter parked on the Wooli Heliport.
Not everyone actually sees it.
You have to believe in faeries just to be able to see it, let alone take the sight seeing tour in it.
Little red sausage.
(Cheerio)
November 2007
Remember November! What a month! The combined choirs and orchestra had our three concerts. They went like a Harley, by the way. You know – better than a Triumph. John finished his diploma – distinctions to burn – and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide exhibition in Sydney in January. AND! Kevin thrashed Voldemort!! In fact, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
There are pictures of the work John put in the Graduating Students Exhibition on Flickr. Click on http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/ to view. If the first pictures you see don’t look like stuff in an exhibition, click on the icon for JOHN’S DIPLOMA EXHIBITION on the right hand side of the screen.
I have just finished reading Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. It is set in the 12th Century, 1123 – 1174, and the pivotal event is the building of a cathedral. I was expecting it to be much more about the design and construction process than it turned out to be. Nevertheless, it is a page turner. It is a good exposition of life shortly after the beginning of the second millennium. Civil war is raging in England and the robber barons can use the fact that there is no King’s Peace as an excuse to do what they like. A master builder is walking the roads of southern England with his family in search of work. His wife dies giving birth to a son who is abandoned by its father and rescued by a priest. The mason and his two children are starving when they arrive at the Cathedral village (sic) of Kingsbridge, where the Benedictine Priory in charge of the cathedral is about to get a new Prior. With them is a woman and her son whom they met up with along the way. That night the cathedral burns to the ground. (If you can’t imagine how a sandstone building can burn to the ground, you’re in for a treat if you read this book.) At the same time the Bishop of Kingsbridge dies and an unscrupulous cleric (is there any other kind – well, yes, actually) manipulates people in the Priory to support his election as bishop. And finally, the Earl of Shiring dies and is succeeded by his power hungry but utterly incompetent son. The mason gets the job of building a new cathedral, and the new Earl and new Bishop conspire to bring down the new Prior, who, in contrast to his persecutors, is a paragon of integrity. Compared with its predecessor, the new cathedral will be spectacular. The cathedral village flourishes and becomes a town. The Earl is jealous and burns it to the ground, but the people rebuild – and notice, incidentally, how few of them become ill after that. The Earl has another go, but… well, you know the mantra: A people united, will never be defeated!! Ah, but what does it take to unite a people? Well read this book and find out, because that is actually what it is really all about. Is power absolute or not; and who stands up to those who would presume to rule without consent? And at what cost to themselves.
Speaking of leadership that makes a difference: what about Get Up?!! Personally, I believe that it was Get Up that turned the tide. Going in to bat for David Hicks reminded those of us who were despairing in the face of the Howard Government’s blatant and successful use of lies and other divide and rule tactics, that power is not absolute in the face of committed resistance. And by the way, if you voted for the coalition and you think Get Up is only for Greens and Labor types, think again. Check it out. Get Up’s structure is actually non-partisan. It campaigns on issues of justice. It is therefore as open to coalition sympathisers, especially now that Labor is in power.
By the way, why is this November bulletin going out in mid December? Well everyone’s busier than bees at this time of year – even people who do not work for money. Singing and sewing can fill one’s day to the point where other important things get left behind. Such is life.
Hope youse are all luvinit. I am.
I was warned that I would not be able to keep up writing regular blog posts. And it was so. I can’t say that I will get back to it on a regular basis, because other things are of higher priority. For now I am posting two items.
1. All of the monthly bulletins from June to November. They are all in this one post.
2. John’s Artist Statement re his current work, which appears after this blog.
There is so much more that I would like to say now that a certain putrid smell seems to be dissipating across the wide brown land. We must have all died and gone to Kevin.
–˜™—
May 2007
Hey H’lo,
I am waiting on permission to reproduce something from the Melbourne Age in my blog. In the mean time, I am sending it by email. See attached. Warning, if you like John Howard you might prefer to give it a miss. On the other hand, it is a factual analysis of a claim Howard has made about himself (and compares him with Master K. Rudd Esquire, on the same issues.) It’s worth a read.
It’s approaching two months since I cut loose. I wish I could report two months of worthwhile achievements. You might be interested in my solution to the Zimbabwe question (Blog 10/5/07) and my scheme to provide every artist in Australia (eventually the world) with $1 million each (Blog 29/4/07). There’s also a new group of photos in my Flickr account: Mystrees. They are what the poem …We are surprised is about.
The major addition since last time is the full text of Cyclone Dreaming. (There will be a few of these over the coming months until I have resurrected all of the Celebration Menus we had in our restaurant.) It is in 16 parts. The Introduction is Part 1 and explains what it’s all about. Enough to say here that it’s a meditation on “saving the world” . Just kidding. HALF. If you’re going to read it, you really do need to start from the beginning. I would welcome any dialogue that might flow from it. If you wish to participate, make comments and where you feel prompted, respond to other people’s comments as well as the work itself.
My music lessons are going well. The Maestro gave me some pieces that are infinitely harder than anything I’ve ever done before. John said that is a good sign. I hope he’s right, and that it’s not just the Maestro trying to get rid of me. Compared with his Conservatorium students I’m the equivalent of Pauline Hanson in politics. Please explain.
Have a nice day, and
Love your enemies.
June 2007
Ho Ho Ho,
Just kidding, but at the rate the year’s going it won’t be long. And anyway, it is winter – sort of – so a bit of jollity probably won’t go astray as debate hots up about who’s got the best medicine for global warming, the best IR laws and the biggest barrel of porkies.
What a strange month it’s been. Did I say this last time – I’m busier now than when I was working. Well if I did, you ain’t heard nuttin yet. Actually I need a holiday. I’ve done a time management course and have been out rounding up herds of escaped minutes, hours days and sending them to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way where, as you know, estranged bits of space and time are stripped of their spaceness and timeness and reprocessed into quantum packages of space-time for distribution to everyone who’s short of time or squeezed for space. If that’s you, expect your package any time soon. You don’t have to apply, because the universe is like Santa Clause: it knows. (Why I mention the gentleman in red will become apparent if you read my blog.)
Fair dinkum, but, eh – wot with keyboard practice, reading for the courses I am preparing, and finishing off Cert IV in TAA (finished this coming Friday – yippee!!) I haven’t had time to write the great Australian novel, but hold your breath … no, not for it’s publication – someone farted. In relation to the latter mentioned magnum opus, I’ve just done a weekend creative writing workshop and am all fired up. And now I’m looking for the engage leaver. Not another ACE course, I hear someone saying. Well, yes, and two more to go this month. As I said to Carolyn on Sunday, I do ACE courses like other people do recreational drugs.
One of the problems I’ve had this last month is not enough time to blog. There’s new stuff there, but there’s even more on my hard drive awaiting completion. What’s been added in the last month is mainly political stuff. Some people will prefer not to look. But I commend to you two entries: Your stars as you’ve never seen them; and The Epiphany Celebration Menu. I hope you’ll get a larf out of both of them – in the case of the latter, the definitions at the end of the piece.
Ho! Ho! Ho!!!
July 2007
What a difference a (cold) day makes. It’s taken the onset of winter to finally make me start behaving like someone who doesn’t go to (paid) work every day. For the first three months I would wake up early, as was my want, and either get up or lie awake berating myself for not getting up. But the third or fourth day of the cold weather saw me not even waking up, let alone subjecting myself to the ravages of 10 degrees more or less. The first couple of days was hell. The third day I debated what to do and decided I was staying in bed. After that I threatened the cats with reprisals if they did not stop telling me they wanted breakfast. Get used to it I told them. Daddy’s taking care of himself from now on. So now instead of getting their ration of the national symbol (They like fresh Kangaroo meat, They like it served up warm, They like dining night and morn: They’re our pussies, They’re our cats, They’re the Nemesis of Rats.) at 5:00 am they get it at 7:30. Gosh! In the old daze I’d been at work half an hour by then.
For those who don’t liven in The Shire, good news. Next time you come to visit, we’ve got freeway all the way from the border to the Mullumbimby turn off. The final bit was finished last Sunday. We went for a drive on it today. It’s like living on another planet. So here to Brisbane is going to be “Beam me up Scotty.” Well, except for the Tugan imbroglio, of course, but even that will be fixed soon. South of here the freeway peters out somewhere between Byron Bay and Ballina. That’ll be next.
For the second month in a row I have done almost nothing on the blog – in spite of having decided to make it a priority. The problem is that when not going to (paid) work every day, things that “pop up” tend to demand immediate attention – and one tends to give in. But I’ve done a couple of ACE courses in Renewable Energy and Eco-Living. See blog.
Did I mention last month that I have joined the Mullumbimby choir? Singing lessons are going well. I’m in the tenor section, but at the moment I’m more like a fiver. Hope to get to the second G above middle C in the near future. We’re learning Vivaldi’s Gloria for a concert in November. I’m also being taught sight reading and performance technique. I’ll let you know when the Opera House concert is on.
I hope someone out there can help me here. Some time ago I loaned two talking books to someone and did not enter them into my loan register. I’m hoping it’s someone in this email group. If I’ve loaned them to you, could you please let me know? I don’t need them back at this time, but I’d like to know who’s got them. They’re both by Andrew McGahan; The White Earth, and Last Drinks. I’m also looking for the fifth book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. It’s called Shelters of Stone in hardback. I know I loaned it to someone but I can’t remember to whom, and someone else has asked for it.
Finally, we will be having a party here on 25 August 2007 from about 1:00 pm. If you wish to come could you please let us know by 17/8/07 so that we know how many limos to order. It’s John’s birthday on 28th. He’s back at TAFE and now in the home stretch – his final semester of the Diploma in Ceramics. His new thing is fossilised soft toys. You’ll just have to come to the party to see what that is but. Eh?
August 2007
Ah yeah g’day,
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
Something!??
Goll-EEEEEEEE I’d like to tell you everything,
but if I did,
I wouldn’t have to kill you –
you’d do it yourself.
Such is the burden of knowing it all.
Just ask me.
N E way, here’s the thing. In case you’re wondering how come you get emails from me that appear not to be addressed to you, here’s what I do. I put one of my email addresses in the To field, and everyone else’s in a group in the Bcc field. That way everyone’s address remains un-viewed by everyone else. I don’t know that that is necessary, but it’s what I do. It’s a hang over from a life of having to be aware of confidentiality issues. Why am I telling you this? Well, because you might think that you’re the only one getting the email, and gosh, I’d hate you to think I go to all that effort just for you. Um….. no…. that didn’t come out right…. But what the hell…. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Well another month and still no new blog posts. And so much has happened, both in the public domain and here on The Avenue, that has gone unremarked. It’s because two things have taken over my life. Singing and writing.
The Mullumbimby choir had a rehearsal with the Bangalow choir and the local chamber orchestra recently at St Martins in the Fields – well St Martins in Mullum, anyway, but doesn’t In the Fields sound so much nicer? Did I mention that we are doing one of Vivaldi’s Glorias? I have been working really hard on that – I’m not kidding, when you don’t know how to sight sing, it’s a slog. But I’m confidant that by November it will be all good, as they say. But then last Monday night I found out about all the other bits that are in the concert. So I have a significant repertoire to get my tonsils around. Consequently not much work is being done on the ACE courses. And I am doing a six week course on sight singing to catch up. By the way, I will soon graduate from being a fiver to a tenor. I am reaching the second G above middle C with ease these daze.
The other thing I am doing is getting back into the book. I was made aware of a publisher who is reading people’s first chapters and, though I really could have done without it at this particular time, I decided to take up the challenge, because, you know what they say – life is what happens when you’re making other plans. So I thought I had better… um… what’s that word I used to use … ah, yes: reprioritise.
The thing I feared most has happened as a result. As I started revising the first draft of Chapter 1 – written so long ago that it was virtually a former life – I got the urge again. No, not that urge, but it’s a feeling just as powerful. Paragraphs written in haste to “get it down” are now breaking open with rich and complex possibilities. I can be in the middle of doing something, like washing up, and I’ll be captured by an insight that becomes a stream of consciousness, to coin a phrase, and then a veritable torrent – a white water ride to who knows where. It really is like a drug. I become helpless. I have to obey. Go to your computer and write it down. Do it now! The problem is that I have other things to do. So I really DO have to reprioritise.
And that brings me to the point. As a trainer (Jump Fido! Sit! Stay! Beg! Good boy, here’s a job.) I am well aware of the organisational skills needed to get life under control when paid work is the main thing one does. But this situation is different. It’s not even like being self employed, which I was for ten years. It’s about being accountable to yourself for the opportunity that so few people have. There are so many things to do. They all need to be done. Each and every one of them could absorb my whole attention – indeed I would like each one to do so. But that’s impossible. So I have to become a lot more disciplined than I have ever been. In other words, it’s not the fun lifestyle you might suppose it to be. And here’s the punch line you aren’t expecting (if you are dragging yourself to paid work most daze): enjoy what you are doing. The grass is not greener.
May your daze be full of fruit.
September 2007
Yeehaa!! Or is it Gee Hard!!
It’s almost the end of the month. Almost time to get next month’s letter ready and I haven’t even done this month’s. Too much has happened, yet there’s very little to tell. We had a party for John’s birthday. Those who attended were a bit startled by the quantity and variety of the food on offer. I was a bit wrecked by it. Fourteen hours on my feet two days in a row gave me the worst case of shaggers back I have ever had. In spite of which we went to Gympie a week later for John’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Needless to say the drive was excruciating. I’ve only in the last few daze recovered from it. While we’re on the subject of parties, the next is on Saturday 27 October – after 1:00 pm as usual. It’s not for anything in particular. We’re having it because we can. And yes, I have learned. I’m not going to do the heroic catering thing again.
The topic I wish to share with you in this letter is what I have been reading lately – which is nothing. But what I have done is listen to a number of talking books as I tread my mill for twenty minutes twice a day @ 5 kph.
The first was Dirt Music (Tim Winton) – Yes, I know it’s been out a long time, but the title put me off. Silly me. Judging a book by its title. It’s about how two men of unequal power relate to each other and the woman in both of their lives. I almost said share, but that would definitely be the wrong word for her relationship with them. I don’t know how much I should say about it, because if you haven’t read it I might spoil it for you by saying too much. Suffice to say that it is a redemption story. The bloke with the upper hand surrenders his power, and his victim surrenders to the landscape… and what a landscape. The woman, of course, is not in need of redemption, but is instrumental in the reconciliation of the two male protagonists. I haven’t mentioned music yet, have I. Well it is there throughout the story, but comes into full play, to coin a phrase, towards the end of the book. I was going to try to attach a music file to this email, but found I couldn’t. So here’s the thing. The main male protagonist – mmp – (whose name I forget) is given a lift by a couple. She is dying from cancer. At one point she asks hubby to play an Arvo Part disc. “Lets have some Arvo in the arvo,” she says. Much later, when the mmp is as far away from people as it possible to get, he hears the same music in his mind’s ear and realises he has just “witnessed” the death of the woman. The piece of music is called Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. How do I know this? Trust me. It is. And it is on a disc called “The Best of Arvo Part” EMI. Seriously worth a listen.
Second: The boy in the striped pyjamas (John Boyne) – A nine year old boy moves with his family to a place called Outwith, from a very comfortable life in Berlin. They are important enough to have had the Fury to their place for dinner. As boys of his age often do, he manages to do the impossible (no, this is not Harry Potter) – he strikes up a relationship with a boy about the same age as himself on the other side of the fence that divides their worlds at Outwith. The outcome is breath taking.
Third: On Chesil Beach(Ian McEwan) – It’s 1961. You may not remember this, but in those days it was not uncommon for people to be virgins when they got married – as is the case with the protagonists of this novel. Though the story surveys much about their lives up to their wedding day, the timeline is their wedding night, with a very brief indication in the last chapter of what happens to them in subsequent years. Even though it is rare these days for people to have sex for the first time on their wedding night, everyone who has ever had sex had a first time. This story will not, therefore, be totally unfamiliar. Even if it wasn’t a trauma for you, you almost certainly know someone for whom it was. This is a tragi-comedy. I don’t think it’s meant to be, but I couldn’t suppress several guffaws as I read – um, listened.
Fourth: Underground (Andrew McGahan) – Talk about leaving the good wine until last!!
If you don’t know this author, let me tell you about two of his other books first. The White Earth won the Miles Franklin Award in 2005. It is set on the Darling Downs in more or less contemporary times. A young boy grows up with unrealistic expectations about his future role on the property where his father is the Overseer. He is disabused of his fantasy in the (for him) most humiliating way and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to gain control of it – which he does, at awesome cost to himself and just about everyone else except his grandson, who moved to the property with his mother after his father dies (on the first page of the book). McGahan draws on political issues that are universal and shows how they unfold as particular stories in particular places. The grandfather starts out looking like a typical Queensland “squatter” and develops in a way that shows how simple our conception of that type of person really is. Queensland politics gave us Joh and Pauline. While this book refers to neither of them, it leaves you in no doubt about just how extraordinarily complex is the social milieu that spawns such “interesting” characters. This book is a political thriller without ever mentioning politics.
Unlike Last Drinks, which is explicitly about politics in Queensland. It is set ten years after the Fitzgerald enquiry and involves half a dozen people who were involved one way or another. It revolves around a brutal death and the attempt of the story’s protagonist to find out who was responsible. Along the way we see into the worlds of people who profited from political corruption – from Ministers and their masters in the Queensland Establishment that (still) manages to live above the law, to sleazy restaurateurs. At the end McGahan fires both barrels at the way things are still done in Queensland. I have to say that, even though I lived there most of my life, there are fundamental things about the way the Queensland operates that I didn’t know – which, of course, is the point of the book.
That beings me to Underground, his most recent book. I needed to tell you about the other two books make the point that McGahan is about political thrillers. Well they don’t get much more political or thrilling than this one! It is set in the very near future. So near that it could be happening now. Canberra is nuked and whole country goes into lock down as the very worst excesses of “security” unfold and facilitate the ascendancy of the loony right. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and it wouldn’t be about Australia if there wasn’t a resistance movement: the underground of the title, who, like the Anzacs, lose. I haven’t given anything away here: they wouldn’t be Australian heroes if they won. Just when you think you’ve seen the twist towards which the story is moving…. Oops, almost said too much now. But let me add this: imagine that John Howard loses the coming election, and, unable to accept that the people could possibly reject so successful a government, declares that there has been widespread foul play in the election count and suspends the constitution….. Implausible? Well, a little known piece of research done in the late 80s showed that a very large percentage of the Australian military would have supported a military coup if Malcolm Frazer had not been elected in 1975. As McGahan shows in Last Drinks, Queensland has not moved on since the Fitzgerald enquiry. And while it may satisfy the hubris of people from other states to say that Queensland is, well, Queensland, let’s not forget that One Nation got a million votes – most of them from the other states.
Singing is going well. If you live locally the performances the choir is preparing for are as follows:
Sunday 4th October 2007 2:00 pm St Mary’s Church BALLINA
Thursday 7th October 2007 7:00 pm St Andrew’s Church LISMORE
Sunday 11th October 2007 2:00 pm St Martin’s Church MULLUMBIMBY
I don’t yet know how much tickets will be. It’s actually two choirs, from Mullumbimby and Bangalow, with a local Chamber Orchestra. The main piece in the concert is a Gloria by Vivaldi.
John is approaching the end of his Diploma in Ceramics and working frantically to complete work not only for assessment, but also for exhibition as well as for sale. Don’t let anyone tell you life as an artist is fun. It’s really hard work. His latest work can be seen on Flickr. The easiest way of accessing is to type “twogreytoes” into Google. You’ll probably see half a dozen links, one of which will be this one: Flickr: Photos from twogreytoes. Click on it and it will take you to my Flickr site. As of today 23/9/07, John’s photos will appear first. But as I add more they will be down the list a bit. So on the right hand side of the page, click on Porcelain fossils, and that group will open. Oh, and by the way, if you’re coming to my Flickr site for the first time, be warned: in the group called Caricatures you may see a photo of yourself that you are likely to find unflattering or hilarious. If you don’t find one and you’d like to be in there, email me a head shot and I’ll do my best to make you look very peculiar.
Bliss your followers (or follow your bliss as preferred)
October 2007
Howdy foaks!!
Here’s a story to make you wonder. A couple of weeks a go I was in the Barbershop at Mullumbimby and saw a sign: Gourmet Rabbits @ IGA. Mmmmmmmm, I thought. Haven’t had rabbit for ages, so I enquired, but, no luck.
The sign must have been one of those random items of mis-information planted by the world’s security services to focus people’s attention on terrorism. Don’t know how it works? Me either, but they get paid a lot of money to keep us safe, so it must work.
N E Way, not to be deterred, I went to the two butchers in town. Same result. So I just put it down to experience.
Next morning, I got up earlier than usual and sat down at the computer after letting the cats out, but within seconds decided to go back to bed.
Some time later John got up to investigate a noise, and woke me up to have a look at what Boofie (one of our cats) had brought in: a rabbit kitten!!
The poor thing was scarred out of its wits and was playing possum when John picked it up, but when he took it back outside it bolted as soon as he put it on the lawn.
Like I said – makes you wonder.
Did Wooli as usual at the beginning of the month. Took hundreds of photos which I am in the process of selecting and photoshopping for Flicker. Don’t know how long it will be before they’re up, but I’ll let you know when they are. I have had some good reactions from people who’ve previewed them.
In the mean time, have a look at the attached picture.
It’s a Dragonflopter parked on the Wooli Heliport.
Not everyone actually sees it.
You have to believe in faeries just to be able to see it, let alone take the sight seeing tour in it.
Little red sausage.
(Cheerio)
November 2007
Remember November! What a month! The combined choirs and orchestra had our three concerts. They went like a Harley, by the way. You know – better than a Triumph. John finished his diploma – distinctions to burn – and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide exhibition in Sydney in January. AND! Kevin thrashed Voldemort!! In fact, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
There are pictures of the work John put in the Graduating Students Exhibition on Flickr. Click on http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/ to view. If the first pictures you see don’t look like stuff in an exhibition, click on the icon for JOHN’S DIPLOMA EXHIBITION on the right hand side of the screen.
I have just finished reading Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. It is set in the 12th Century, 1123 – 1174, and the pivotal event is the building of a cathedral. I was expecting it to be much more about the design and construction process than it turned out to be. Nevertheless, it is a page turner. It is a good exposition of life shortly after the beginning of the second millennium. Civil war is raging in England and the robber barons can use the fact that there is no King’s Peace as an excuse to do what they like. A master builder is walking the roads of southern England with his family in search of work. His wife dies giving birth to a son who is abandoned by its father and rescued by a priest. The mason and his two children are starving when they arrive at the Cathedral village (sic) of Kingsbridge, where the Benedictine Priory in charge of the cathedral is about to get a new Prior. With them is a woman and her son whom they met up with along the way. That night the cathedral burns to the ground. (If you can’t imagine how a sandstone building can burn to the ground, you’re in for a treat if you read this book.) At the same time the Bishop of Kingsbridge dies and an unscrupulous cleric (is there any other kind – well, yes, actually) manipulates people in the Priory to support his election as bishop. And finally, the Earl of Shiring dies and is succeeded by his power hungry but utterly incompetent son. The mason gets the job of building a new cathedral, and the new Earl and new Bishop conspire to bring down the new Prior, who, in contrast to his persecutors, is a paragon of integrity. Compared with its predecessor, the new cathedral will be spectacular. The cathedral village flourishes and becomes a town. The Earl is jealous and burns it to the ground, but the people rebuild – and notice, incidentally, how few of them become ill after that. The Earl has another go, but… well, you know the mantra: A people united, will never be defeated!! Ah, but what does it take to unite a people? Well read this book and find out, because that is actually what it is really all about. Is power absolute or not; and who stands up to those who would presume to rule without consent? And at what cost to themselves.
Speaking of leadership that makes a difference: what about Get Up?!! Personally, I believe that it was Get Up that turned the tide. Going in to bat for David Hicks reminded those of us who were despairing in the face of the Howard Government’s blatant and successful use of lies and other divide and rule tactics, that power is not absolute in the face of committed resistance. And by the way, if you voted for the coalition and you think Get Up is only for Greens and Labor types, think again. Check it out. Get Up’s structure is actually non-partisan. It campaigns on issues of justice. It is therefore as open to coalition sympathisers, especially now that Labor is in power.
By the way, why is this November bulletin going out in mid December? Well everyone’s busier than bees at this time of year – even people who do not work for money. Singing and sewing can fill one’s day to the point where other important things get left behind. Such is life.
Hope youse are all luvinit. I am.
John Walters Personal Statement
John Walters Personal Statement
I have been creating a body of work exploring the technique of porcelain slip dipped recycled objects. These consist of soft furnishings,clothing,plush toys, knitted and crocheted objects. This gives a glimpse of contemporary life in Australia. By careful selecting my subject matter I am able to give a sample of society's activities through our fashion, the toys we purchase not only for ourselves but also for our children, leisure activities and stories we grow up with.
Growing up in a family of craft people, not only were our clothes hand made but also most of our toys and furniture. These skills over time have diminished to such a degree that today few exist. Most things are mass produced in China for various companies in various countries. With globalisation these objects find there way into our homes and lives, eventually ending up as landfill. Over time some may end up as fossils, but more likly they will produce toxic waste.
By slip dipping and firing the objects to stoneware I am able to create an image of the object which is only a façade, similar in features but it noway relates to the original function of the object. They become a memory, an instant fossil of contemporary society. Just like Pompeii frozen in time recording a history of everyday objects and activities. Destined to last much longer than the original.
All these objects in our past history would have probably been made by women, seen as a duty of being a good mum or wife. The skills being passed from generation to generation and classified as crafts. For thousands of years this existed but now due to the ever increasing demands by society, technology, the industrial age and globalisation the skills are no longer being used.
Ceramics like other skills in most cases is thought of as a craft and is diminishing. By marrying clay with other objects which would have originally been classified as craft, I hope to be able to develop a body of work which directly relates to todays society. Reflecting our lives, recording our likes and creating art from crafts and mass produced objects.
I have been creating a body of work exploring the technique of porcelain slip dipped recycled objects. These consist of soft furnishings,clothing,plush toys, knitted and crocheted objects. This gives a glimpse of contemporary life in Australia. By careful selecting my subject matter I am able to give a sample of society's activities through our fashion, the toys we purchase not only for ourselves but also for our children, leisure activities and stories we grow up with.
Growing up in a family of craft people, not only were our clothes hand made but also most of our toys and furniture. These skills over time have diminished to such a degree that today few exist. Most things are mass produced in China for various companies in various countries. With globalisation these objects find there way into our homes and lives, eventually ending up as landfill. Over time some may end up as fossils, but more likly they will produce toxic waste.
By slip dipping and firing the objects to stoneware I am able to create an image of the object which is only a façade, similar in features but it noway relates to the original function of the object. They become a memory, an instant fossil of contemporary society. Just like Pompeii frozen in time recording a history of everyday objects and activities. Destined to last much longer than the original.
All these objects in our past history would have probably been made by women, seen as a duty of being a good mum or wife. The skills being passed from generation to generation and classified as crafts. For thousands of years this existed but now due to the ever increasing demands by society, technology, the industrial age and globalisation the skills are no longer being used.
Ceramics like other skills in most cases is thought of as a craft and is diminishing. By marrying clay with other objects which would have originally been classified as craft, I hope to be able to develop a body of work which directly relates to todays society. Reflecting our lives, recording our likes and creating art from crafts and mass produced objects.
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Renewable Energy
…and they shall renew the face of the earth…
Remember how people used to do things? Like grow much of their own food, fix their own cars, invent pedal radio – or build them after someone else had invented it, and talk to strangers far away who had done the same thing. Later on pedal radio was replaced by ham radio. Well, I think something like that might be coming back. Despite the treacherous efforts of John Howard to keep us consuming for the sake of the economy, I have a feeling that the engine of Climate Change will drive the emergence of widespread participation in renewables: energy, water, food production – that sort of thing. I can see a whole new generation of people crawling around on their rooves tinkering with connections and adjusting the tilt of solar panels and so on; sharing tips in the pub and generally renewing the face of the Earth. I recently met half a dozen such people when I did a course on Renewable Energy at ACE in Grafton. I was the only one who was a complete novice. All the others had tales of daring do – like the Argonauts who’d found the Golden Fleece and were having rip roaring adventures bringing it home. I’m looking down the barrel of imminent retirement and have been giving some thoughts to how to cut down recurrent expenses – and give myself something more to do that run five ACE courses, write another book, make websites, sing in a choir, play the piano and everything else that one needs to do to keep busy until one’s 100th year. So I’m doing appropriate courses to get myself started, and I thought I’d share something with you. If you’re going to go solar do seriously consider doing such a course if there’s one on offer in a classroom near you. It’s a much more complex undertaking than I imagined – but seriously worth the effort, I hasten to say. There are many critical issues that a supplier might not give you adequate advise on (to cut costs, i.e. increase profit margin) if you’re not aware of them. Do you remember Ohm’s Law from school physics? E = I x R. This and its variants are what you use to determine such things as the cross section of your delivery cables and much, much more. Connect to the Grid is an option worth considering for anyone who can afford it. The disadvantage of this system is that when the grid goes out you go out as well. So why would you bother, I hear you say? Because connecting to the grid means that the power your system supplies reduces your power bill. The most significant point is that you become a producer of green power. Stand Alone systems cost more – much more - because of the need for batteries. And required battery capacity will come as a shock when you hear about it – which you are about to. When you have calculated your energy requirement (not at all a straightforward process), you need to install battery capacity 5 (yes FIVE!) times that amount!! Because you can draw only 20% of your battery capacity on a daily basis. Drawing more will seriously reduce the life of your batteries. Part of the course also looked at wind power. The summary verdict is don’t bother – unless you intend to buy one of those really big industrial strength numbers. I also did a course on Climate Change and Eco-Living. It was interesting but not as informative as I had expected. Soon I will do a course on permaculture. Oh yeah, and I’m growing my hair so that I can have dreadlocks – and brushing up on my hippie lingo: peace man…. Um I mean bro – gotta keep uptdate eh…. and don’t mind the gender problem in the language – hippie blokes were never know for their feminist credentials.
Remember how people used to do things? Like grow much of their own food, fix their own cars, invent pedal radio – or build them after someone else had invented it, and talk to strangers far away who had done the same thing. Later on pedal radio was replaced by ham radio. Well, I think something like that might be coming back. Despite the treacherous efforts of John Howard to keep us consuming for the sake of the economy, I have a feeling that the engine of Climate Change will drive the emergence of widespread participation in renewables: energy, water, food production – that sort of thing. I can see a whole new generation of people crawling around on their rooves tinkering with connections and adjusting the tilt of solar panels and so on; sharing tips in the pub and generally renewing the face of the Earth. I recently met half a dozen such people when I did a course on Renewable Energy at ACE in Grafton. I was the only one who was a complete novice. All the others had tales of daring do – like the Argonauts who’d found the Golden Fleece and were having rip roaring adventures bringing it home. I’m looking down the barrel of imminent retirement and have been giving some thoughts to how to cut down recurrent expenses – and give myself something more to do that run five ACE courses, write another book, make websites, sing in a choir, play the piano and everything else that one needs to do to keep busy until one’s 100th year. So I’m doing appropriate courses to get myself started, and I thought I’d share something with you. If you’re going to go solar do seriously consider doing such a course if there’s one on offer in a classroom near you. It’s a much more complex undertaking than I imagined – but seriously worth the effort, I hasten to say. There are many critical issues that a supplier might not give you adequate advise on (to cut costs, i.e. increase profit margin) if you’re not aware of them. Do you remember Ohm’s Law from school physics? E = I x R. This and its variants are what you use to determine such things as the cross section of your delivery cables and much, much more. Connect to the Grid is an option worth considering for anyone who can afford it. The disadvantage of this system is that when the grid goes out you go out as well. So why would you bother, I hear you say? Because connecting to the grid means that the power your system supplies reduces your power bill. The most significant point is that you become a producer of green power. Stand Alone systems cost more – much more - because of the need for batteries. And required battery capacity will come as a shock when you hear about it – which you are about to. When you have calculated your energy requirement (not at all a straightforward process), you need to install battery capacity 5 (yes FIVE!) times that amount!! Because you can draw only 20% of your battery capacity on a daily basis. Drawing more will seriously reduce the life of your batteries. Part of the course also looked at wind power. The summary verdict is don’t bother – unless you intend to buy one of those really big industrial strength numbers. I also did a course on Climate Change and Eco-Living. It was interesting but not as informative as I had expected. Soon I will do a course on permaculture. Oh yeah, and I’m growing my hair so that I can have dreadlocks – and brushing up on my hippie lingo: peace man…. Um I mean bro – gotta keep uptdate eh…. and don’t mind the gender problem in the language – hippie blokes were never know for their feminist credentials.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Did George Pell Threaten The NSW Parliament?
The case for the affirmative
In the lead up to the vote on therapeutic cloning legislation in the NSW Parliament, George Pell warned Catholic parliamentarians that a vote for the legislation would have consequences they might not like. This was all but universally interpreted as a threat to deny access to the sacraments – the Eucharist, in particular – or even excommunication. This was not an unreasonable inference. Not everyone would remember the confrontation Pell had with the Rainbow Sash movement, but those who do would be forgiven for thinking that Pel was preparing to fry bigger fish.
The case for the negative
As Pell himself has said, he did not explicitly say anything about denying access to the sacraments, much less excommunication, and therefore did not threaten anyone. Warning that consequences would flow from a vote for the legislation is no more than factually correct. For example, other Catholics who oppose the legislation might not vote in future for someone who supports the legislation in parliament. On the face of it supporters of Pell might claim that any threat is in the eye of the beholder, and that he cannot be held responsible for how other people interpret his words.
What’s it about?
Consider the Rainbow Sash issue. For anyone who doesn’t know, a group of gay Catholics in Sydney wanted it to be known that they were Catholic and gay. They wore rainbow sashes to identify themselves and were refused communion when they attended Mass. George Pell’s position was that standards had to be seen to be maintained. Homosexuality is declared by church doctrine to be a sin. Therefore anyone identifying as gay is not in communion with the faithful, and must be made to understand this by denying access to the sacrament of communion. Those who wore the rainbow sash wanted to draw attention to the fact that communion was available to gays who did not publicly acknowledge their sexuality. In their view this was hypocritical and had more to do with the exercise of power than discipleship. It became an issue after a long period of pastoral dialogue with gays, when some Bishops were not afraid to go on record as saying that being gay is like being left handed, and that the conscience of the gay person was the only judge of whether or not s/he was in communion with the faithful. Then, out of the blue, John Paul II declared that one cannot be gay and Catholic. It was at about this time that Pell made a point of saying that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. This is the critical issue for the vote on therapeutic cloning as well. Pell went on record again with the same assertion, after his statement about the consequences of voting for the legislation. So what it’s about is conscience vs power.
Blind Freddie’s verdict
It should come as no surprise that some, perhaps many, senior clerics don’t like the idea of the primacy of conscience. But lying about it is another matter. And the simple fact is that Pell is lying when he says that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. As a schoolboy I learned about the primacy of conscience from no less a source than the catechism. Since then there has been a general council of the church that, while not marginalising the clergy, enfranchised the laity in a way that required the proactive exercise of conscience.What is contestable is what the primacy of conscience means in practice. Some bishops have coped with this development in the relationship between clergy and laity. Others haven’t. Pell’s repudiation of gay = left handedness, and his attempt to assert his authority over the NSW parliament are manifestations of the same thing: his refusal to accept that people who do not agree with his views can have a properly formed conscience. He was always going to get away with taking a baseball bat to the Rainbow Sash movement, but throwing his weight around with other people in power was either very brave or very stupid – either way it was very poor leadership. It sets up the confrontation of contrary positions rather than facilitates dialogue between them. In the end whether he threatened the parliament or not will come down to the eye of the beholder. The privileges committee is likely to find itself unaccountably blind.
In the lead up to the vote on therapeutic cloning legislation in the NSW Parliament, George Pell warned Catholic parliamentarians that a vote for the legislation would have consequences they might not like. This was all but universally interpreted as a threat to deny access to the sacraments – the Eucharist, in particular – or even excommunication. This was not an unreasonable inference. Not everyone would remember the confrontation Pell had with the Rainbow Sash movement, but those who do would be forgiven for thinking that Pel was preparing to fry bigger fish.
The case for the negative
As Pell himself has said, he did not explicitly say anything about denying access to the sacraments, much less excommunication, and therefore did not threaten anyone. Warning that consequences would flow from a vote for the legislation is no more than factually correct. For example, other Catholics who oppose the legislation might not vote in future for someone who supports the legislation in parliament. On the face of it supporters of Pell might claim that any threat is in the eye of the beholder, and that he cannot be held responsible for how other people interpret his words.
What’s it about?
Consider the Rainbow Sash issue. For anyone who doesn’t know, a group of gay Catholics in Sydney wanted it to be known that they were Catholic and gay. They wore rainbow sashes to identify themselves and were refused communion when they attended Mass. George Pell’s position was that standards had to be seen to be maintained. Homosexuality is declared by church doctrine to be a sin. Therefore anyone identifying as gay is not in communion with the faithful, and must be made to understand this by denying access to the sacrament of communion. Those who wore the rainbow sash wanted to draw attention to the fact that communion was available to gays who did not publicly acknowledge their sexuality. In their view this was hypocritical and had more to do with the exercise of power than discipleship. It became an issue after a long period of pastoral dialogue with gays, when some Bishops were not afraid to go on record as saying that being gay is like being left handed, and that the conscience of the gay person was the only judge of whether or not s/he was in communion with the faithful. Then, out of the blue, John Paul II declared that one cannot be gay and Catholic. It was at about this time that Pell made a point of saying that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. This is the critical issue for the vote on therapeutic cloning as well. Pell went on record again with the same assertion, after his statement about the consequences of voting for the legislation. So what it’s about is conscience vs power.
Blind Freddie’s verdict
It should come as no surprise that some, perhaps many, senior clerics don’t like the idea of the primacy of conscience. But lying about it is another matter. And the simple fact is that Pell is lying when he says that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. As a schoolboy I learned about the primacy of conscience from no less a source than the catechism. Since then there has been a general council of the church that, while not marginalising the clergy, enfranchised the laity in a way that required the proactive exercise of conscience.What is contestable is what the primacy of conscience means in practice. Some bishops have coped with this development in the relationship between clergy and laity. Others haven’t. Pell’s repudiation of gay = left handedness, and his attempt to assert his authority over the NSW parliament are manifestations of the same thing: his refusal to accept that people who do not agree with his views can have a properly formed conscience. He was always going to get away with taking a baseball bat to the Rainbow Sash movement, but throwing his weight around with other people in power was either very brave or very stupid – either way it was very poor leadership. It sets up the confrontation of contrary positions rather than facilitates dialogue between them. In the end whether he threatened the parliament or not will come down to the eye of the beholder. The privileges committee is likely to find itself unaccountably blind.
Quantum Leap in Politics
[Like much of what gets posted this month, this is a bit late. It's a measure of how busy life can be when you are not working for pay.]
The Uncertainty Principal in action
How slow is Kevin Rudd? He’s confused by the discrepancy between what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister say about travel warnings for Indonesia. The PM says the situation hasn’t changed, yet the FM says it has.
C’mon Kevin, it’s not as though this is unprecedented. Wasn’t it only a week ago that Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, said we’re in Iraq to secure oil supplies? Yet the PM says oil has nothing to do with it.
Clearly politics has taken a Quantum Leap. Like Schrodinger’s cat which is both alive and not alive, policy issues in Australia are now This and Not This simultaneously. For example, there’s something called Work Choices, but there isn’t (well, not by that name, anyway). And it goes back a long way. We’ll never ever have a GST. But we’ve got it. It’s the Uncertainty Principle in action.
So Kevin, get with the strength. Don’t get bogged down in Green politics. The new wave is … well, Wave politics. No need for explicit promises, core or otherwise. Just give us a range of options on any issue – the more the better – and tell us that the Probability Wave will take care of the outcome according to the dynamics of the universe. But be sure to tell us that we can influence the dynamics of the universe. You know what I mean – the Secret – the Law of Attraction! Just tell us to want something – want something – and expect it to manifest.
No. On second thoughts, just stick to what you’re doing, because you’re doing really well, mate. John Howard is going to lose the next election, because he asked once too often: Who do people trust? The Uncertainty Principle is good in its place – which is the sub-atomic realm: not in politics.
The Uncertainty Principal in action
How slow is Kevin Rudd? He’s confused by the discrepancy between what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister say about travel warnings for Indonesia. The PM says the situation hasn’t changed, yet the FM says it has.
C’mon Kevin, it’s not as though this is unprecedented. Wasn’t it only a week ago that Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, said we’re in Iraq to secure oil supplies? Yet the PM says oil has nothing to do with it.
Clearly politics has taken a Quantum Leap. Like Schrodinger’s cat which is both alive and not alive, policy issues in Australia are now This and Not This simultaneously. For example, there’s something called Work Choices, but there isn’t (well, not by that name, anyway). And it goes back a long way. We’ll never ever have a GST. But we’ve got it. It’s the Uncertainty Principle in action.
So Kevin, get with the strength. Don’t get bogged down in Green politics. The new wave is … well, Wave politics. No need for explicit promises, core or otherwise. Just give us a range of options on any issue – the more the better – and tell us that the Probability Wave will take care of the outcome according to the dynamics of the universe. But be sure to tell us that we can influence the dynamics of the universe. You know what I mean – the Secret – the Law of Attraction! Just tell us to want something – want something – and expect it to manifest.
No. On second thoughts, just stick to what you’re doing, because you’re doing really well, mate. John Howard is going to lose the next election, because he asked once too often: Who do people trust? The Uncertainty Principle is good in its place – which is the sub-atomic realm: not in politics.
Friday, 13 July 2007
Embarrassing? Get real!
Not even a senior moment
Today John Howard forgot the name of a Liberal candidate in the upcoming election. This is being described in the media as “embarrassing”. And we are being reminded that Kim Beasley used the name of a public figure in the US when referring to an Australian television personality. Much was made of that too. It was even said to be the beginning of the end of Beasley’s leadership. To this is added the fact that Howard refused to hand over to Costello last year, and that as a result of today’s slip up, some people might be regretting he didn’t go when he was at the top of his game. Really! Why don’t people in the media who beat these things up get a real job – not to mention a life? The last thing I want to do here is to barrack for John Howard. But even I can’t stand back and hear such drivel without expressing my contempt for the drivellers. This really is a case of the eye of the beholder at work. Howard’s brief mental block is exactly the kind of thing that happens to everyone (not just seniors) from time to time. I was embarrassed last time it happened to me. I was introducing someone to a friend of long standing whose name escaped me at the exact moment I needed to introduce him to the newcomer. The embarrassment was only momentary, however, because all three of us recognised it for what it was and we all got on with our business. That’s how it should be with Howard’s lapse of memory today. Making it out to be a real embarrassment is what I call journalism, because, regrettably, that is what journalism has become. Oh sure, there’s some integrity around as well, but this sneering misrepresentation events, especially involving people in public life, is what makes the headlines most of the time. And I refuse to believe that it is we, the people, who “demand” such sleaze from the media. We would not complain if we got real reporting and analysis rather than sniping and simpering.
Today John Howard forgot the name of a Liberal candidate in the upcoming election. This is being described in the media as “embarrassing”. And we are being reminded that Kim Beasley used the name of a public figure in the US when referring to an Australian television personality. Much was made of that too. It was even said to be the beginning of the end of Beasley’s leadership. To this is added the fact that Howard refused to hand over to Costello last year, and that as a result of today’s slip up, some people might be regretting he didn’t go when he was at the top of his game. Really! Why don’t people in the media who beat these things up get a real job – not to mention a life? The last thing I want to do here is to barrack for John Howard. But even I can’t stand back and hear such drivel without expressing my contempt for the drivellers. This really is a case of the eye of the beholder at work. Howard’s brief mental block is exactly the kind of thing that happens to everyone (not just seniors) from time to time. I was embarrassed last time it happened to me. I was introducing someone to a friend of long standing whose name escaped me at the exact moment I needed to introduce him to the newcomer. The embarrassment was only momentary, however, because all three of us recognised it for what it was and we all got on with our business. That’s how it should be with Howard’s lapse of memory today. Making it out to be a real embarrassment is what I call journalism, because, regrettably, that is what journalism has become. Oh sure, there’s some integrity around as well, but this sneering misrepresentation events, especially involving people in public life, is what makes the headlines most of the time. And I refuse to believe that it is we, the people, who “demand” such sleaze from the media. We would not complain if we got real reporting and analysis rather than sniping and simpering.
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