Breakfast in Bloomsbury

In the early 1970s it was possible to rent a habitable room for two in Gower St for ₤5.50 a night, including a hot breakfast. This was just round the corner from the University of London and the British Museum. I was doing research for my Ph D thesis in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, where my mentors Damodar and Devahuti had both done their British degrees. SOAS was then headed by Professor B N Pandey, after Professor A L Basham left that post to go to the ANU in Canberra.

  Every morning the guests of the Gower St hotel trouped down to the kitchen/dining area in the basement for breakfast. We were sitting at a table with an American couple who'd been staying at the hotel for a day or two. They were a very friendly, pleasant people on their first trip to London, with the informality we were used to as Australians, as opposed to the rather stiff upper lip attitude of the Brits, even the kitchen staff.

  'We went to the British Museum, as you suggested,' she said.

  'Oh, did you enjoy it?'

  'Well....' There was some hesitation in her voice. 'It closed at 4 pm and we got there at 3.45. So there wasn't much time. But -  I did the ground floor, and Otto did the first level, and we made it through just in time!'

  I've heard apocryphal stories in this vein but I never thought I'd hear this with my own ears.

  As we were finishing our toast, more people arrived and put the kitchen staff under a bit of pressure. Just as we were about to leave, there was one hell of an explosion in the kitchen.

  Everything fell silent for a few seconds, and then came the sound of a baritone voice of calm British authority from the kitchen.

  'Ladies and gentlemen - no further toast will be served this morning!'

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Monday, 19 September 2011

It's Tracey's birthday!

 XXXXXXX

Things worth pondering

Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy. (I'm not sure that's true, as people DO care, but you really must make the most of things.)

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. Henry Ford (Best thing Henry ever said!)

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. - Meister Eckhart (I'm not so sure about this either, but it's not a bad general principle.)

Loving someone means you should be ready to experience heartache and happiness at the same time.

The amount of fear in your life shows the extent to which you are in agreement with the enemy of your soul.

And last but not least....

I drank all the beer in the fridge because of a power outage. Tracey said it wouldn't spoil, but that's a risk I wasn't willing to take!

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Grammar nazis revisited

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A good friend commented wisely on this topic. I decided to make my response into a posting rather than a comment. Here's what Bob had to say:

My pet hate is the term 'a number' - as in television reporting - when a journalist looks earnestly into the camera and with heavy emphasis says: "There were a number of incidents in which a number of people were injured."

Why should they not give some indication of how many? 'A number' can range from one to infinity. 'A number' is an excuse for sloppy research or downright laziness.

Language legitimately changes but I feel the place of older 'language Nazis' is to slow down the rate of that change, to give everyone pause to consider and to prevent complete chaos. What starts as a seemingly reasonable relaxation may all too soon cause language to become incomprehensible.

God knows, communication between humans is difficult enough, so we should try and keep some sort of uniformity in how we express ourselves.

I am always reluctant to enter into any debate on language - I am not literate enough myself to presume to lay down the law for others but, before I retired from newspapers, I found a handful of sub-editors worked ceaselessly to make sense of the work of young, university-trained reporters in the field.

"Language is not important, one told me" (after I had red-pencilled 40 spelling and grammatical errors in one of his news stories). "Does spelling or grammar matter as long as the meaning is clear?"

Alas, due to the havoc he had wrought on the English language, the meaning was far from clear.

And if we want to look at the potential of this downhill slide, just follow the comments of our grandchildren and their friends on Facebook - that is, if you can.

Bob: you mean like these FaceBook entries? (NOT my grandchild, by the way! No-one in my family, but an intelligent 20 year old nevertheless.)

Is so out of it right now didn't evan realoze i was pumpen leta get loud by jennifer lopez in maccas xar park what haa become of me ,,:'( Is gonna take his deseased self to bed so he can curl up in the fetal position and sleep bleh sick day tomorrow one thinks Is feeling like 8 cans pf shark shot .... hope i aint getting sick i dont wanna get sick fml ave q rocks though

So here we go. These are great observations, thanks, Bob. I take your point about the rearguard action against degrading the language; indeed, my friend Watto, a chap who can put together a flawless written piece on the spot, banged my head mercilessly against the brick wall of literary ignorance over me an' Mr Fry's declaration in favour of unlocking the handcuffs.

  There's the point. I wouldn't allow 'Me and Mr Fry' either, but that's on the grounds of etiquette rather than grammar. Turn that around out of politeness and the bad grammar is less likely to be an issue. But should “Mr. Fry and I” also have that full stop in Mr.? If so, is Mr? as a question all right without the full stop? Is alright all right? (I hate alright infact, but don't tell anyone. In fact? Any one? Why is anyone OK when any one isn't? (**My hands are in the air!** I know there are times when 'anyone' and 'any one' have separate meanings, and a reasonable distinction for the sake of clarity may be needed!)

  All of the above can be resolved readily by most people reading this, but for others less used to negotiating the nuances of language, it's a nightmare.

  do we always need capitals? in many languages, there are no capitals. the full stop or its equivalent is sufficient. in the olden days of handwriting, capitals removed any doubt where a sentence ended when a hand-written comma and a full stop might look too similar. not any more, with a keyboard. i'm struggling with it too, i admit, but given that using a shift key is a two handed operation and i have only one, I'd rather like it for the sake of my personal convenience if we dispensed with capitals!

  That's also why, for inverted commas, I use single ones instead of double. No need for the two-handed shift key operation, or caps lock. But this is just ummm... me. I?

  I'm not advocating open slather. Far from it. Anything that creates ambiguity or misunderstanding is objectionable. Capitals can serve a useful purpose. Think of the confusion in Australia over Liberals and liberals, Labor and labour....

  At the same time, I don't see that anything petty is worth making a fuss about. (No, I won't dare try defining 'petty' at this point. Should I have said 'now' instead of 'at this point'? Darn right I should have, just because it's cleaner and more efficient. Should we allow 'should of'? Perish the thought, because that's just an awful illiteracy and could distort meaning.)

  These are questions of grace and subtlety in language more than beating kids round the head with grammar rules. I don't want to lose those kids altogether. We are in danger of that.

  Kids learn grammar through good conversation, not by a book of rules. Speak to them grammatically and they'll learn how to express themselves clearly. If you say, 'Bill rung me this morning', you can bet that's what your kids will say. And they will fail at job interviews because of it!

  Pronounce words correctly, and they have a better chance of spelling them. If we say 'lightening' when we mean 'lightning' then that's probably how we - and they - will try to spell it.

  Bob, your sub-editors are like gold. It is a tragedy that the Murdoch press is sacking heaps of them right now on cost-saving grounds, because they are indeed the last warriors engaged in trying to keep the written language as pure as possible. Newspapers and books should be exemplary in written expression - literally! Online newspaper articles should be scrutinised painstakingly by subs to ensure meaning is clear.

  The blogs I read are better written than many online articles rushed on to the news website and grammar-checked by grammar-bot. That's what's happening now. Boot off the subs and you allow a grammar computer program the right to mediocritise your flight of fancy, if the program gets it right at all.

  Now you may say this is hopelessly inconsistent contradictory. One minute I'm screaming for flexibility, and the next I'm demanding purity.

  I'm actually asking for a double standard, for now at least. ('actually' in that last sentence is redundant, but I want it there, so there.) I'm asking for a double standard because this whole debate is going to be swept away, and we might as well have the best of all worlds while they exist.

  The bibliophiles tend their libraries as most of us do, with those loved books, each of which has a personality of its own. We started collecting them when we started reading, or being read to if we were lucky, and we are used to a high standard of English expression. We can be cheeky and violate it because we know the standard we start with. We literarily superior beings can jostle with the hoi polloi if and when we feel like it. (Literarily? Oh my.... From what damaged portion of my brain did that sneak out?!)

  Long may our books be with us. They'll always be there in some form. They'll always have their guardians. Right now they're us. We. We're the guardians of our books at the moment.

  Theatre as a device for teaching has always been around. Text is still a very efficient form of learning, but it now competes with film, TV and computer based teaching. Now, if teenagers want to find out how to do something, they go to youtube. How to change a spark plug on a lawnmower? It's there. How to insert a RAM chip into a laptop. How to open the back of the bloody thing! Yep. There it is on youtube. Nearly everything is.

  If we don't allow for a double standard, then we'll end up having only one, except for a group of antiquarians whose numbers will rapidly decrease through time within a generation. That's because a new era of learning is almost upon us, and it's unstoppable. Text messaging, ebooks and youtube or websites as we now know them, or blogs, are only the razor-thin end of an enormous wedge. It's far bigger than these. They're nothing but the crude first wave. The illiterate who can't read because they lacked the opportunity will be joined by the illiterate who choose not to if the latter are made to feel antipathetic towards text and reading. And both these groups will not necessarily be the ignorant ones. On the contrary. They might turn out to be the ones with the real knowledge that builds a controlling power base.  

  There's barely a village in Bangladesh that doesn't have an internet connection, and mobile phones, and only the barest minimum of literacy is needed to gain access to them. Look again at the FaceBook comments above. How literate to you need to be? Third grade, maybe - to get online.

  You may think I'm off my rocker. Lost it completely this time. No, not yet. Read this, posted online just today. Reading levels in the US have declined dramatically. This is no coincidence, and the reasons are more complex than most can imagine. They're also irreversible. New tribes are forming in modern society. New castes, maybe.

  Yes, power is currently in the hands of the literate. Some societies value literacy above practically all else. The Chinese and the Japanese know its power and aren't likely to compromise it for a long time, but they have genuine traditions immersed in millennia. When the first Ch'in emperor in the Third Century BCE had writing standardised throughout China, its first revolution (the only one it has had till the twentieth century), cemented the Chinese political landscape in place.

  Power in our society currently rests with the literate. The disgraceful provisions sneaked into the Patriot Act in the USA were placed there by those who drafted the legislation, not the politicians. When they passed it in Congress, practically none of them knew what was in it.

  But, as I said, this is going to change more rapidly than most of us can imagine, because we think in a particular way. I can't envisage a society where literacy doesn't dominate as the tool of power, but the sources of power are changing. Look at what's happening in the world around us even now.

  I'm not advocating this change, by the way - I'm just saying it's going to happen. And this is where I wanted to start this. The rest will have to wait!

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Writing, pens, ink and bad boys

 

I haven't forgotten about tackling God in my continuing journey through my mini-series on personal philosophy. The mood will strike and it will come oozing out of the remainder of my brain.

  Maybe that's not the best analogy, but you get what you paid for today. And this is what came to me. Part of it was in response to the charming blog by a writer called Alex, whose work you can see here.

Nib

  Because I went to primary school in the 1950s (Queensland, Australia), we learned genuine cursive writing; flowing running writing that you never see today. We practised in copybooks, and our wooden pens had long steel nibs. We had inkwells in our desks.

  The State Department of Education sent these nibs to schools by the thousand, so they weren't the expensive sort you see on sale now. The best fun was snapping off the point of the nib and using the pen as a dart. If you didn't snap off the point and just used them as darts as they were, they wouldn't stick in the ceiling when you threw them, but our modified versions did.

Modified
(Dart)

  This was, needless to say, a boy thing, but you had to be careful. Firstly, you didn't want to get caught throwing them. It was an offence instantly punishable by four cuts with the cane. The other was not to sit under one that was stuck into the high wooden ceiling. Gravity being what it is, what went up eventually (or quickly, depending on certain variables) did come down. You could be unlucky enough if sitting or standing under it to have it drop points first and spear you in the top of your head. At the very least it could leave two bloody wounds as if you'd been bitten by a carpet snake.

  The ink came powdered in large sachets, and a couple of the most responsible of the boys were despatched to add the right amount of water, stir it well, put it in the ink-jug and fill the china inkwells in the desk. When I got this coveted job on one occasion, I remember the headmaster saying,

  'Now you chaps, be careful making that ink. Don't get your hands dirty. Just... use your heads!'

  Everyone burst out laughing, including the Headmaster.

  But back to our copybooks. The script was completely different from that of printing. It was designed to flow, and it did. Generally we didn't lift the pen from the paper from beginning to end of the word. Dotting the i and crossing the t were done last, of course!

Cursive, but not quite OUR cursive!

  This illustration isn't quite what we learned, but it's close enough to give the idea. Our script was more graceful than this, but I don't have a steady enough hand for it these days. An attempt now would be as bad as it was when I first attempted it. Perhaps Jan might still be able to do a fair one - I don't know. Lyn - you weren't much better at writing than I was!

  Now this was hard enough for right handers to learn, but I was left handed, and right-handers have no idea of the extra problems we encountered. Ink is wet and runny stuff, and left-handers would smudge ink from the newly written characters if we held the pen in a 'normal' way. I don't remember anyone getting caned for that, but some came close. Mostly we put our left hand right around the top of the page and wrote as if we had a crab-claw instead of a hand. It was ugly and the writing was usually awful, but at least smudging what you had laboured over was avoided. Sometimes.

  Worse was that these letter forms were all designed for right-handers, with their nibs angled the way they do. Left-handers tended to accidentally spear their nibs into the paper, and the steel tip would release with a flick, and you'd have a series of spots appear on your copybook that Jackson Pollock would have been proud of.

  Maybe that's how he did Blue Poles. I wonder if he was left-handed?

  What surprises me is how much better at writing our grandparents were than we slovenly critters. I suspect they did a lot more of it and got a lot worse punishment than we did for penmanship deemed sloppy. Postcards sent back home from the Front in France in WW1 from my grandfather and uncles were written in elegant script that put most of ours to shame. (Yes, we had uncles, my father's older brothers, who fought in Europe in that war!)

  We use computers now, to compose what we write. If we don't like it, we can make adjustments. This means that the thought processes that go into writing by hand are quite different. When you write it down with pen and ink, you try to do it just once, so it has to express the thought as clearly as possible. Even the lovely prattle that my old aunts engaged in when they wrote letters to each other was like a river of thought, often inexpertly punctuated but beautifully penned. They must have enjoyed the experience of writing, and maybe the lack of punctuation was appropriately Hemingway. Very stream of consciousness.

  Yes, this art will go, except amongst the diarists with pens in their hands, the antiquarians and the calligraphers. Artists like Watto and Alex, Joan and Carl. A computer cannot create a personal touch like the hand and eye of a calligrapher, no matter what typeface is used. It will never have quite that connection.

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One Year Anniversary

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Just a couple of observations for today.

  1. It's a year since I began the Avastin treatment. Without it, I would have had a very short time to live at a reasonable quality of life. The calculations were October 2010. Avastin is both extending my life and contributing to an increasingly delicate state of health. That was the trade-off. It has to be thought of as a dangerous form of life support that has to remain in the ON position, and become progressively more dangerous as the weeks pass.

  2. It's a year since I began this blog. I had no idea where it would take me. I still don't, but I'm glad I made the journey.

  I began it then because after the Avastin reprieve I felt I had something to say, and a reason for saying it. I still do, and feel that I have more things to say than ever, but time will run out.

  As I write this, the blog (or 'blob', as a good friend calls it) has had more than 40,000 views.  There are nearly 300 postings, totalling some 100,000 words.

  The poor old blogship is badly in need of some heavy duty maintenance, mainly to catch up on a few things and standardise the format a bit more to ensure better navigation. Maybe I'll get round to doing that. It's not vital if I don't.

  It's serendipity, but that's how I wanted it. I've discovered a strange fact, looking at other blogs. Blogs can be too orderly. Order is sometimes overwhelming.

  That's my rationale anyway! Thank you for accompanying me on at least some parts of the trip. It would be a lonely journey without you.

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Nazi-free zone

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For 35 years, I was forced to be a grammar and spelling Nazi while assessing university essays, and I was pretty good at it. Being a literacy Nazi, that is.

  Sadly, I didn't need all that much persuading. God knows some students needed it, and it didn't hurt them to discover how bad their English was.

  Yet I've always maintained what is obvious to everyone who thinks about it - language changes with time, circumstances and use; and what's acceptable - even conventional - changes as well, and I think the pace of that change is accelerating.

  So... I am going to try not to get annoyed when someone writes that a person was decimated, when they mean annihilated (decimation being the act of reducing numbers to one in ten, although authorities don't even agree about that!)

  I'm not going to get hung up on whether someone uses it's when they should use its, and try not to groan when I see tomato's for sale - or tomartoe's, for that matter. I guess I'll even get used to singular criteria and phenomena. **Groan** We all have our pet hates when it comes to the Grammar Goosestep. (Goose step? Goose-step? Goostep?) STOP IT!!

  Any one of those would get the message across just as good well. Or as badly. **Sigh** I just can't quite help myself....

  I'm damned if I'm going to write “It is I,” when I would say, “It's me.”

  Or worry about whether the comma or full stop should be before or after the inverted commas. Or whether the Microsoft corporation demands that I consider whether I really want incomplete sentences like these.

  Stuff 'em I say.

  I'm going to declare language to be free, as long as it gets the intended message across without ambiguity. Mine, anyway.

  It's not the first time I've made such a declaration in this blog, by the way, but I've not always managed to keep the jackboots off. Frenzied self-kicking up the bum must look quite funny, especially when only one leg works properly.

  I've sworn off it before, but never quite got out of the nasty uniform.

  Still, I feel the need to place the following caveat at the end of each story. “I am very good at spelling and grammar and anything that doesn't look right is deliberate, so there.”

  Pathetic, hey?

  An absolutely brilliant and much more forceful declaration of this was made by Cambridge educated entertainer and scholar Stephen Fry, and you should have a look at it. It's wonderful, visually clever, and if it doesn't rip those swastika armbands off your pedantic sleeves, nuthin will.

Original source:
http://filmmakeriq.com/2011/09/stephen-fry-on-grammar-nazis-kinetic-typography/

  I will, however, steer clear of clichéd expressions like the plague, and avoid at almost all costs text messaging shortcuts. I'll use 'however' when I please, even though I threatened immediate execution to any student using that graceless word in an essay. But the one I'll never use is gr8 for great, because it truly gr8s on me. 

  Lastly, I won't use <3 to signify love, or a heart. Sideways, it's quite cute really, but with my schoolboy mind, the only thing I can see in it is what used to be doodled all over the toilet cubicle walls in 1961 at Gladstone High.

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The South Tower chocolate shop, 12 September 2001

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Why my last two stories have involved chocolate is pure coincidence. Maybe I was reminded of this one by all the discussion about it when I thought of the sad case of the debummified Easter Bunny. But so near this 10th anniversary of 9/11, this is a sombre memory rather than a light-hearted one.

  It's frustrating that the closer the date of an event is to today, the less I remember the precise details. This must have been May or June 1996. We had been with friends in Philadelphia and then took a couple of days to stay with another friend in New Jersey.

  She wanted to show us some of the sights of New York that she enjoyed the most, so we took a short train trip into the heart of the city from her apartment in New Jersey. We had never been to NY before.

  Not far from the train station were the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. I wouldn't use the word “awe-inspiring” unless I meant it, but these two buildings were. Their dominance of the skyline was complete, and their symmetry more than doubled their presence. There was something about that duality of solidity, strength and soaring precision that made it so imposing.

  We walked to the towers and gazed upwards, as you do, but there's only so long you can do that. Our friend wanted us to see something in particular, at ground level of the South Tower. It was a tiny chocolate shop. I can't recall its name and I guess it doesn't matter now.

  It was beautifully presented, as were its wares; a boutique of delights that would send chocolate lovers into raptures. As I said before, although I enjoy chocolate, I don't have quite the passion for it that many do. In this case, it was that orgasmic adoration which attracted a steady stream of devotees to this little establishment; people prepared to pay large sums of money for minuscule amounts of utterly decadent but delightful chocolate creations.

  Even for me, each chocolate was so enticing that I would love to have tried every one at least twice - once to taste as a novelty, and a second of each to confirm that these sweets had really been sent from heaven. But this was not feasible for a variety of reasons, all of which I am sure are obvious to you.

  'You're from Australia - or New Zealand? I can never tell which,' said the dark-haired young assistant tending these objets d'art, all securely locked away behind sparkling clear glass as if they were diamonds. She was more friendly than I expected. I don't think we looked like the sort of customers who would be buying pounds of these delights, but it didn't trouble her.

  'Yes. Australia. Not New Zealand. We always tease the Kiwis about their accent.' 

  I don't think she understood why or how that was possible. Only a Kiwi or another Australian would get that joke, anyway.

  'I couldn't go to Australia. The sharks....'

  It wasn't the time for a discussion of why Australian sharks are no more voracious than the Californian ones, or those Pointers of the Caribbean  - or indeed why sharks might pose a problem in many places in Oz - at Uluru, e.g., several thousand miles inland. Nary a Grey Nurse in sight.

  We bought a few morsels, savoured the sight of the others that would never pass our lips, and walked out into the bright sunshine.

  Fast forward now to just after midnight, Australian Eastern Time. The date had just clicked over to 12 September 2001. I turned on the little radio to hear the ABC news, as I always did at midnight. Something strange was happening. Instead of the formal and precise tones of the midnight newsreader, a description of an event in real time was taking place. Just after 9 AM, 11 September. WTC North Tower... aircraft.... crash... burning... explosion... flames... smoke.... What was happening? A terrible accident?

  I listened for a minute, no more.

  Tracey was in the loungeroom, reading. I had a thought - this seemed so dramatic that it might be on the TV. I jumped up and went to the lounge, and turned it on. The North Tower was burning, high up. Within seconds, we heard the cry of the reporter. 'WTC2 has been hit!'

  I don't remember if we actually saw that happen. We've seen it so many times since that I might be imagining we did. All I know is that we could soon see both towers in smoke and flames.

  What we saw were long-haul commercial aircraft full of fuel flown deliberately into a commercial yet highly symbolic target, exploding on impact, as we now know. Utterly devastating. It was happening right before our eyes.

  There's no point in my describing what we saw in the next few hours, as everyone knows the story all too well. Suffice it to say that about an hour after turning on the TV, watching frantic people escape from lower floors, and others try without hope to do so from upper ones, we saw the South Tower sink to the ground, and half an hour later the North Tower met the same unbelievable fate.

  The great landmark of the NY skyline had disappeared, taking with it thousands of innocent lives.

  In the midst of grappling with the implications of what had happened on that scale, I couldn't help thinking of the little chocolate shop, now pulverised and buried. Not a recognisable trace of it would remain.

  It was the one spot in the whole complex where we had made human contact, so I am sure this is why it stuck in my mind. No doubt the occupants would easily have escaped. I thought of the smiling, shark-fearing, dark-haired girl behind the counter, and could imagine her turning towards the building as it came grinding downwards, and not being able to comprehend. Who could, at that moment?

  None of us could. I could recall no country in 'peace' time having so many of its citizens and others from around the world wiped out in such a ruthlessly calculated fashion, within two hours and with hell yet to come for so many.

  I knew the world would never be the same again. It may have been 12 September 2001 here in Eastern Australia, but 9/11 was the date, and the calamity that would be etched in history in all our lifetimes. It would also have fearful consequences far away from American soil.

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The chocolate easter bunny caper

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  A dear friend invariably gives each of us an Easter Bunny of the species rabbitius cuniculus chocolatus, tastefully tinsel-coated as you see here.

  The joke is that we give her one of exactly the same species in return. It's triple treat in our case, but she fares badly in the exchange, getting only one for three. She doesn't seem to mind. I suspect her generosity outweighs by far her dollar mathematics.

  She doesn't know, I'm afraid, the size of the dilemma she causes me. Humans come in only two kinds: those who cannot bear the sight of uneaten chocolate, and the rest of us, who seem relatively few in number. We are happy to pick away at something chocolately bit by bit over weeks, invoking a radically different law of human choc dispersal from those with zero self-control.

  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins the beautiful Tolstoy novel, Anna Karenina. Our family fits perfectly into the first category most of the time, but when a household is composed of both chocoholics and people of restraint and propriety, a gaping chink in the family armour rears its ugly head, if you enjoy a spectacularly mixed metaphor. One that could lead to a loss of family amour.

  So it is that certain family members take their Easter goodies deep into the burrow and gorge on what is on offer until only the tinsel remains. This is not a long time, but it pleases them.

  But the other (singular!) one is content to eat one little egg at a time, or part thereof of a full-grown member of the cuniculus chocolatus species, and leave my Easter goodies until the time of a sudden whim, possibly weeks later.

  Perhaps I'm just not very religious.

  It stands in its glory in full view of all, on the desk, smiling happily at the certain prospect that it will be taken suddenly at some point and decapitated - or at least completely deafened - and the remainder of its corpse broken up and consumed in equal measure, more or less, by the entire household.

  Look, I don't mind sharing my chocolate, not in the least. It happens every time and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The problem is that my rabbitius excites ... feelings ... on behalf of a nameless other, who looks with covetous eyes on my bunny long before I am ready to dissect him.

SPEAK UP!

  I do not want to be the cause of this sin of envy, but at the same time there used to be a moment - a precise and mysterious moment weeks after Easter - when the fancy took me, and the deed was done, starting with the biting off of the ears ceremony.

  In the end I forwent (?) this moment of pure selfishness and with great care, bore my bunny out to the lounge, in all his tinsel glory.

  'It's time', I said. 'He doesn't quite know it yet by the ridiculously delighted look on his face, but he's cashing in his chips. Or I am, on his behalf.'

  Beloved affected delight and joyous anticipation, though I know she was really thinking, 'It's way past bloody time, if not his Use-By Date. Let the sacrifice begin!'

  But on this occasion, as I carry him out carefully by the waist and present him for inspection, a look of horror comes over her face.

  'What's happened to the back of his legs? Why is he completely devoid of an arse?'

  Puzzled, I turn him round, and discover that the question is a fair one. Although from the front he is a model of entirety, from the side and rear I see for the first time that his back side, right from gluteous maxima to heels, is no longer extant.

  There is only one explanation, apart from a scurrilous and unworthy one; namely, that Beloved has snuck in on some occasion and surreptitiously committed a grievous assault on his person. I reject that one immediately because her amusement and surprise are too real, even for the seasoned actor that she is. The look of amazement on her face at my standing there believing I have an entire bunny in my hand, and not one that has been interfered with, is too genuine for any foreknowledge of the circumstances.

  So I go back to the study and examine the scene of the crime. It is all too obvious from the little calling cards. A sticky-pawed but highly intelligent mouse has been sneaking up nightly to my bunny's rear end, and with extraordinary care not to destroy the illusion of rabbitius intacta from front view, has been feasting on his body, starting with his Achilles heels.

  Not only that, but rodentia musculus has a degree in physics and mathematics, for s/he has eaten in such a way as to retain his upright posture and perfect balance for the entire time.

  We figure a mouse that smart can't be all bad, and a good 70% of the bunny is still in its pristine, smartly wrapped condition. Necessity is the mother of not worrying too much about trifles, so the bits shared with musculus are removed, and the remains of my rabbitius cuniculus chocolatus are despatched to their final resting places, so to speak. In our stomachs.

  But... she can't resist a final dig, can she?

  'See? That's what happens when you don't eat your Easter Bunny at the right time!!'

  Leave me alone. All I know is when a box of chocolates the size of a shipping container is opened at the Hocking family's gatherings, it's like the sharks are circling, and if I don't get in on the feeding frenzy along with the other White Pointers, that's it. I just get to smell it, if I'm lucky.

  When we were little, we considered ourselves fortunate to get one MacRobertson's snack bar more than once a year, amongst six of us, and that had to last a fortnight.

  Tell that to kids these days, and they won't believe yer!

MacRobertson's Snack Bar, 1950s style

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Religion, philosophy and me (pt 3): mysticism and dogma

pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3<<you are here
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I wrote this for an Indian journal, Gurukulam, many years ago. I decided to include it here because it carries on the theme I was talking about in the previous part.

From human history's beginning, the activities and teachings of certain people have been recorded for posterity, usually by disciples and adherents who wish to ensure that the words of the teacher will not pass into oblivion.

  

  The recording of this wisdom has the potential both for good and for harm. The positive value of the teachings as recorded is that they usually contain the core or essence of truth; they give a guide to humanity for living in harmony with one's self and one's fellow creatures, and engender a sense of responsibility towards one's descendants.

 

  The potential for harm arises when the words of the teachers, or their recorded actions, are misinterpreted by their followers, or when their adherents believe that their particular source of inspiration is the sole reservoir of truth.

 

  In casting about for an introduction to this theme, I was particularly struck by a paragraph of Nitya's column in the second edition of Gurukulam, which brought this problem into focus. Speaking of his record of Narayana Guru's guidance, he gave this piece of advice:

 

  Everything Guru said was not doctrine. There are pleasantries given in a light‑hearted mood. My only request to the reader is not to hang on the literal sense of whatever comes into this column, but to take it as a general suggestion to look into a certain direction of mystical profundity and be benefited by the grace of the Guru which goes with the words he spoke for the welfare of mankind.

 

  It seems to me that these words of caution, even though the context is different, could very well be applied to the record of the teachings of other great men and women, such as the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus and Muhammad. All of these, and a host of lesser known illuminates, possessed that faculty of mystical insight, which cannot be transmitted literally.

 

  Conflicts between their followers have arisen when the attempt to interpret mystical awareness becomes doctrine; where that which is unexplainable in finite terms becomes limited by fixed categories which respond to sensory‑intellectual consciousness alone.

 

  There are many examples in history of how this confusion has caused great schisms in organised religion, and where dogmatism has imposed much suffering upon mankind. The Sufis, for example, who followed an esoteric interpretation of the Qur'an (Koran), were persecuted by Islamic orthodoxy throughout history. Christian mystics such as St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross were regarded by the orthodoxy of their day as dangerous eccentrics — if not heretics. The mysticism of Tantrism and Taoism degenerated into practices unworthy of the brilliance of the original mystical insight.

 

  But where the orthodox of one religion confronted the orthodox of another, the conflict has been even more terrible. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs have all committed crimes against humanity in the name of their religion.

 

  If we look at the teachings of the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, or the Tao te Ching as the products of mystical insight, then the problems of interpretation diminish substantially. Jesus taught love, compassion and charity towards others as the way to serve God. But did not Muhammad also enjoin these practices? Are they not, among others of course, the ethical principles enshrined in the Dhammapada, or the Gita, or the Tao te Ching?

 

  Certainly, each source expresses them in its own way, in accordance with the values and needs of the society from which it came. Is it not a dangerous practice to assume that the precise form they took at the time (if, indeed, their form was ever precise) applies equally to other societies and other times? It is fair to assume that the translations upon which the present‑day disciple so often depends are exactly what the original teacher intended? Or that, even if they are exact, they were always meant to be taken literally?

 

  Too much is left to the frailty and imperfect minds of the many through whom the teacher's words have passed. The result all too often is that the interpretations of the words of the teacher are coded like symbols carved into prayer wheels to be turned five times a day. The wisdom of the teacher must live in the present and not be the mummified remains paraded mercilessly before an uncomprehending gallery of bored spectators.

 

  It is the quality of mystical insight in the teachings of the sages above all that is worthy of preservation. Much of the remainder is but the trappings of faith.

 

  Mysticism is an experience of reality unfettered by words or symbols. It transcends our everyday consciousness but is not totally divorced from it; indeed, in the extroverted form, the senses and the intellect are the agencies of mystical awareness.

 

  In the introverted form, the sensory‑intellectual consciousness loses its immediacy. Yet both forms of experience are of the same essence. Mystical awareness is a state of bliss beyond the capacity of the experiencer to conceptualise. It is total consciousness in which the self disappears in the totality of all things.

 

  The 'problem' arises when the mystics attempts to explain the experience and to relate it to how one should conduct one's mundane existence. To do so, they have to use words and symbols. They have to conceptualise. They have to rely upon a present memory of that past experience, which is quite a different thing to the actual experience of mystical consciousness.

 

  In their description, they are not only bound by limited forms of expression, but interpret experience according to their own past and preconceptions.

 

  To the Christian, the state of mystical awareness is equated to the presence of God. To the Buddhist, it is an experience of Nirvana. To the Taoist, it is to be in accordance with the Tao, and to the Hindu, it may be described in terms of Brahman, the ultimate reality.

 

  And yet the experience is not limited to the 'religious' person alone. Arthur Koestler, in The Invisible Writing, describes a great power and clarity how he, an avowed atheist, experienced a state of mystical awareness during the time of his imprisonment during the Spanish Civil War, an experience which dramatically affected the course of his subsequent life.

 

  His description is not that of a 'religious' experience as it is normally understood but it was of the same essence. Several modern scientists, too, particularly nuclear physicists, have become aware through their study of matter, energy, time and space just how deceptive to the senses and the intellect the reality of the universe is. But how explainable is this state of total consciousness to ordinary people? How applicable is it to everyday life?

 

  The best known teachers, and many who are less well known, all realised the dangers inherent in trying to pass on the knowledge of what they had discovered. The Upanishadic sages hid themselves in the forest, where all but the most devoted of disciples had no contact with them. The Buddha was almost overwhelmed by the realisation of how nearly impossible was the task of communicating what he had discovered. Lao Tzu, if we can believe the story, was persuaded only at the last moment to attempt an explanation, and the beautiful verses of the Tao te Ching were the result. Confucius refused to speak of afterlife, believing that any such discussion would only lead to confusion.

 

  Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu and the Sufis spoke in parables, which were designed simply to point the way. The koan of the Zen masters was the ultimate parable, explainable only in intuitively grasped terms. All realised that the best way to point the searcher in the direction of ultimate truth was to create a set of conditions in which truth might become apparent to the still and open mind.

 

  They offered a discipline rather than a recipe. And that discipline was expressed in terms that suited their time and environment. Whether it was in the various forms of yoga, or meditation, or prayer, it accorded with the capacity and predisposition of the people who came to the teachers for guidance.

 

  It is in this light that the teachings of the mystics ought to be viewed. To place too much emphasis on the written word is likely to lead to dogmatism and confusion. The teachers of the paths of self‑awareness try to point us in the right direction. Some have greater capacity than others to teach, just as some have greater receptivity to the teachings than others. 'To a few, a mere sign is enough.'

 

  To most of us, the discipline still has to be absorbed, so that the conditions for discovering true awareness can be created. To confuse the path with the goal is illusion. All we can do is to seek the guidance of those who can set us on the path, and to develop our awareness from there.

 

  If this at least is understood, then the conflict and jealousy between religions and sects disappears. Sadly, we’re only on the first faltering step of that journey - if anyone is prepared to take the step at all. Not too many are.

pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3<<you are here
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Boat people and other boat people

It was a tough night on the wards, though that wasn’t unusual. There were people to be treated, but medical staff have to break for a few minutes in a shift, or the chances of making mistakes increase just that bit more. Never enough staff, never enough time.... Nothing’s changed in the twenty years I’ve been here, no matter who’s in power in Canberra. No wonder my hair’s grey.

  He hunched over the table for a moment or two, then went to the fridge and extracted a small container of food, which he placed in the microwave oven. From a sachet in his pocket, he made a cup of passable coffee, sighed and sat down again.

  The silence was broken only slightly by the entry of a young woman, slight of build and as weary as he was. She’d been his partner round the wards, or one of them, and though she still had a lot to learn, he’d taken an instant shine to her. It was a face of intelligence and dedication, but very pale now. They’d never had time to talk. Consult, yes. Not personal stuff.

  She sat down opposite him.

  ‘That coffee smells wonderful.’

  ‘Better than the muck in the canteen. I have another sachet. Do you...?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I bet you were saving it for later. Oooh – the smell of those noodles....’ she stopped abruptly, fearing he would also offer them.

  ‘My wife packed me that. She’s good. Real prawns, not the tasteless peeled ones you can buy in the supermarket! Have the coffee sachet. It’s the only decent pick-me-up you’ll get all night. And look - there’s enough to feed an army here. Or at least enough for one starving Vietnamese and one little Afghan. Have a little. Please.’

  The offer was too good to refuse.

  ‘Is it Afghan, or Afghani?’

  ‘Who cares? You and me, we’re both Australian anyway. Though I’m neither of those ethnically. My origins are Hazara. Or Hazari. Take your pick.’

  ‘Ah. I know a little about your people. A sad history in Afghanistan. You’re Shi’ite Muslims?’

  ‘Yes. Though no-one knows all that much about our origins. Persecution is why we escaped. Even now, after all this time, if we returned we wouldn’t survive a week. I don’t talk about it much. It’s too painful for me, nearly ten years after we fled.’

  They sipped their coffee.

  ‘We’re going to have to go back in to the wards in a minute. What about you?’

  ‘My dad was a pen-pusher in Saigon in 1975. Well, an important one. That was the problem. We couldn’t have stayed. We arrived in 1981 after being stuck in various parts of Southeast Asia. We tried all sorts of ways to get here. By boat, like you. I was just a kid. And if we’d been forced to go back, we’d have been dead too.’

  ‘1981. The Soviets were killing my ancestors then in Bamiyan. The Taliban wanted to wipe us out, totally. Remember how they blew up the giant Buddha statues there later on? The Americans then carpet-bombed our valley and turned it into rubble. Those who survive are persecuted terribly by the Sunnis. We haven’t been all that lucky in the past.’

  ‘I understand. But I guess we better go back out there and face the multitudes. One last thing - how hard was it to get refugee status? We had quite a battle convincing Canberra that the Vietnamese weren’t going to overrun the country. It’s better now... a new generation... a different attitude - though it’s not perfect.’

  ‘Refugee status? Very hard. We had no papers. We lost what money we had ... to all sorts of people. They sent some friends back, after all that hardship, only to be murdered. We were Muslims from Afghanistan, they said, jumping the imaginary queue. Go back and apply properly for immigration. Apply where? They had no idea. And they thought we were going to overrun the country as well!’

  ‘We really must get back to the wards. Let’s start with one of the good ones. Mr Kazantzidis first. He’s a nice old bloke. He tells me he was a kind of boat person too. He came in the sixties as a kid and his father worked on the Snowy River Scheme, and they came by ship.’

  ‘I don’t know about this Snowy scheme. But he talks a lot about football - and cricket. His son used to play cricket for New South Wales, he says. He also said you know more about his blood than anyone, even from Transylvania. Then he laughs. I’m not sure what that’s about either.’

  He looks at the list in front of him.

  ‘...then Mrs Sutton. She adores you. You know, she was a boat person too. She arrived from England with her family even earlier that Mr Kazantzidas. Ten Pound Poms, they called them.’

  ‘She’s like a grandmother to me. I never had one. She’s so frail... I’ve become too attached to her.’

  ‘You’re young. You seem to have lost many family members. It’s par for the course that you might get too close to a patient. And then, we have a string of other boat people to fix – the ones whose ancestors came here in dribs and drabs after 1788.’

  ‘Most of them are fine with me unless they find out I’m from Afghanistan. I’m not going to hide my origins. My people are proud of how they’ve survived in spite of everything.’

  ‘It seems to take a generation and then you’re OK. You have to be patient. Maybe you have to wait till a new refugee group arrives and becomes yet another new threat to the Australian way of life, and we can all complain about them! Now pick up your wallet and let’s go. But tell me, who is that in the picture there? Your daughter?’

  ‘No. I was widowed just after we were married. This little girl is Hazari... the daughter I would like to have had. Or my sister as I remember her, but I don’t have any picture of her.'

  She hesitates.

  'It’s an image from The Kite Runner. It’s a beautiful movie starring my people, in a way. You probably think I’m crazy to carry around such a thing.’

  ‘No, I can understand why you like to have the picture. I don’t recall that movie.’

  ‘It’s quite old now, I think – well over ten years. Why don’t you bring your wife and family over and try some of my food?’

  ‘Great. Next Saturday, after the game? The Swans play Carlton. It should be good. Here we are, the Year 2020, and we’re heading for the Finals.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever understood that game, though my Dad loves what he calls the real football.’

  ‘We can’t hang round here any longer. We have a lot of people to attend to – most of them descended from boat people one way or another - maybe even that Aboriginal chap with the football injury.’

  She smiles.

  ‘The boy with the beautiful body? What would our country be without boat people?’

  He smiles.

  ‘A hell of a lot quieter round here. That’s what it would be.’

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That pesky Comments problem

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I'm continually getting reports that people wanting to make blog comments have found a very frustrating problem. In spite of doing everything right, when they've written their comment and asked it to POST it, their comment has just disappeared.

  I had occasional difficulty with that myself, even resorting to posting the comment anonymously and identifying myself at the end of the comment, but generally it worked, so I couldn't quite see what the problem was. Then, for reasons I won't go into here, I had reason to use Firefox as the browser rather than Safari or Chrome on the Mac, and Chrome on the laptop PC (which uses Vista as it operating system).

  Firefox worked near perfectly for what I wanted on both the Mac and the PC, EXCEPT when it came to posting a comment on my blog and other people's blogs. I'd be logged in to my Google account first, go to the blog and write what I wanted to say, take the precaution of saving the comment to the computer's memory (CTRL-A, then CTRL-C on the PC) and then try to PREVIEW the comment. (If it works on PREVIEW, then it's going to work when you hit SEND.)

  But on Firefox it wouldn't do it. Why? Danged if I know, but Firefox (which is Mozilla based) does have its idiosyncrasies.

  SO... if you can't COMMENT on the blog and you're using Firefox, try using another browser (e.g., Chrome or Safari). BUT always type your comment in Word or Wordpad or gmail and COPY and PASTE it into the COMMENTS window to avoid losing it.

  I'd like to know if this solves the problem. Email me if you can't comment!

  (What do I mean by saving in gmail? I've got a fantastic hint concerning saving your work and saving yourself oodles of grief when you're online.... another time.)

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