The floor has opened up

 

 

Life is first boredom, then fear", the poet Philip Larkin wrote.  The American satirist Edward Gorey put it even more graphically, "Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does, that's what makes it so boring."

Life certainly hasn't been boring ever since the world's greatest negotiator became the leader of the free world. Alas, even he has realised that starting a war with a hostile nation of 90 million people is more complicated than buying an apartment block in Manhattan.

After having spent billions of dollars firing off million-dollar missiles to shoot down thousand-dollar drones and having fucked up the oil market and ruined relationships with the Middle East and tanked the world's economy and set inflation rising and disrupted global trade and made the whole world less safe and tied the US military up for who knows how long, all he has achieved is to totally and comprehensively change the first name of Iran’s leader from Ali Khamenei to Mojtaba Khamenei.

Lesser things have set off a chain reaction: on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo. It started the war that was going to end all wars. The world's greatest negotiator has just started the war that may start many more wars.

The floor has opened up.

 

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"A philosopher I ain't!"

 

 

I don't know when they started, those questions about the whys and wherefores and the whole meaning of life, but they seem to have started a lot earlier with me than with my contemporaries who lived for the moment and whose drugs were sex and sports and drinking — and, in some cases, even drugs themselves.

My drug was work and I kept overdosing on it until I had to get off it, only to start again on the same drug somewhere else, hence my shifting from job to job and country to country. If there was any meaning to my life, then this was it: seeing the world while getting high on my work.

I have now lived long enough to realise that this "Lebensangst" was not unique to me but a universal human experience, although we hide it from each other, even from ourselves. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Without that, we might not. We need a "why". Without it, the world becomes a hamster wheel, a road to nowhere, an existential cul-de-sac, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing at all.

"Don't worry, be happy!" is a popular answer to the meaning of life. It's what we all want. Even for people who enjoy being miserable (count me in on that one), misery is a form of happiness. But here's the paradox: happiness comes indirectly, not through seeking it directly, so how the heck do you search for it indirectly, if you know that’s what you want?

Perhaps my best friend for almost thirty years until his untimely death in 1995 had the answer. We seemed to live our lives vicariously through each other: he through my endless postcards and letters from far-away corners of the world while he was seemingly stuck in the remote Sepik District of New Guinea, and I through his contented domesticity for which I admired him, despite or perhaps because of my restless life.

There had been an Errol-Flynn-type agelessness about him, and it only became clear towards his end that he was much older than me, and only after his death did I find out that he had been twenty-five years older than me. In some Freudian way, that may have made him the father-figure that had been missing in my life, and made me the son he had never had, but we won't go there as it's merely conjecture on my part.

I had always hoped to exploit that age difference by bouncing off him some of the searching questions of life but always drew a blank. Maybe he knew the answer but thought it too banal or too difficult to answer, because his stock standard reply always was, "A philosopher I ain't!"

Having reached his age, maybe that's the answer I should give in the unlikely event that someone should question me about the whys and wherefores and the whole meaning of life, "A philosopher I ain't!"

 

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In memory of a good friend who died on this day eight years ago

 

Helmut and I raise our glasses in June 2011 at the Lake Eacham Hotel,
the one and only Husbands' Daycare Centre in Yungaburra

 

Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him."

This is a quote from the first paragraph of W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" which I was reminded of when I met a fellow-migrant, Helmut Brix, during my travels in North Queensland in 2011.

Helmut had come to Australia in 1961 - four years before me - and also stayed at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre - a whole month longer than me - after which he found work in Melbourne and eventually opened his own camera shop in Acland Street in St Kilda. He married, had two sons, and for fifty years "like a train car travelled forever on the selfsame rails".

He had arrived at Yungaburra only weeks - but no more than a couple of months - before our accidental meeting. When I questioned him about the Victorian number plates on his car, he explained to me that he'd told his wife that now that he was into his seventies and both their sons had grown up and he was no longer needed, he wanted time to himself. With this he handed her the keys to the house, and travelled north.

In Yungaburra he found friends and a free flat in exchange for looking after several more, and I admired (and envied) him for the ease with which he had escaped from half a century of domesticity. As Maugham wrote, "It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands". What next? Seven years in Tibet? Kon-Tiki-ing across the South Pacific? Lotus-eating in exotic Bali? Walking the road to Samarkand? Living in a grass-hut on a tropical coral island?

Alas, the end was far more pedestrian: he (once again) succumbed to domesticity by buying a house in Yungaburra and joining the local bridge club as well as the Happy Snappers Photography Group of the local U3A and staying put in the one place so as not miss his appointment in Samarra because a few years later I suddenly found this on the internet:

 

born 9 December 1938 - died 18 March 2018

Twelve months earlier he had still been looking for old friends on his facebook page

 

What happened to Bali and Bora Bora, Helmut? Did you die with all that music still inside you? I hope someone arranged to have your gravestone inscribed with the German saying "Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier".

I've just gone back to reading W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" again. On reflection, I think Wilson had the better idea!

 

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Germany clearly isn’t very German anymore

 

"Germany Abolishes Itself: How We're Putting Our Country in Jeopardy"

 

Padma keeps telling me, "You should visit Germany again", but I keep resisting, and after what I've read on the internet under the heading "Europe is falling apart", I also stopped listening:

 

"I’ve just left for a visit to Germany. Only a family medical emergency could make me willing to come. I’m visiting my hometown to see my sick mum. I was born here. But that only seems to make it worse.

First, the airport was in chaos because of a Lufthansa strike. It was like being in a third-world country. Not five seconds out of the airport’s baggage hall, I was accosted by a foreign beggar.

Now I feel like the only German native in the city. I can’t understand anyone because spoken German has become a hybrid language full of foreign influences and pronunciation. When I last visited, it was still German. The German restaurants serving local dishes are also gone.

Each time I throw something in a rubbish bin, someone rushes up to pull it back out again. They get paid a few cents for bringing it to the recycling centre.

It feels like I’m in a foreign country. Only the architecture still stands. Even the cars are foreign-made, including the German ones.

The hospital that’s taking care of my mother just gave me a 30,000 euro bill. That’s about AUD$50,000. A third of which hasn’t even been incurred yet. It’s a precautionary pre-payment. Apparently, I’ll get some back if the bill doesn’t run up that far. Illegal immigrants and refugees get free healthcare, of course. Germans don't.

Only one person working at the hospital is a native German. And the rest don’t exactly hit the stereotype of a German medical professional. One of the doctors forgot to remove the remnants of his blue eye shadow and red rouge. He must’ve had an interesting weekend.

Of course, some of the culture shock isn't exactly new. The shops don't just close on a Sunday, but for lunch between 12 and 2. The Germans still use fax machines. It's impossible to get anything done without appointments. And the people were always rude. But, minor inefficiencies aside, Germany clearly isn't very German anymore."

 

Of course, Australia is experiencing its own political instability over immigration. I don’t need to tell you. You are living it. And you can see the One Nation polling. But Germany, and the rest of Europe, show us how the change manifests itself. It's a warning of what's to come: dire economic and financial consequences as in Europe, economic stagnation, political standoffs, frequent changes in government, and a complete refusal to cut immigration. We are just a few years behind.

 

 

During another even more benighted time, Germans were given free copies of "Mein Kampf". Today every German should be given a free copy and made to read Thilo Sarrazin's book "Deutschland schafft sich ab".

 

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So you don't come from "the land of poets and thinkers" and can't read German? Here's another book by Thilo Sarrazin, translated into English:

Read it online here

 

"The lagging behind of the Islamic World, the lack of integration of Muslims in Germany and Europe, the oppression of women and the high birth rate of Muslims are a consequence of the cultural influence of Islam. Thilo Sarrazin shows in his book that Islam is the origin of the trouble.

All tendencies to reform Islam and interpret it historically and critically have failed so far. Thilo Sarrazin is obviously the only German decision-maker who has ever read the Koran from cover to cover and therefore he is able to show that the obstacles to reform are inherent in the Koran itself. He understands that the Koran is a Book of Law. No country where Muslims are in the majority has religious freedom or a functioning democracy.

The Islamic world as a whole is suffering from explosive population growth and its fanaticism is constantly increasing. The proportion of Muslims in Germany and Europe is also continuing to grow due to immigration and persistently high birth rates. If this trend continues, Muslims in Germany and Europe are on the way to becoming a majority. This is a dangerous threat to our Western Culture and Society that we must protect ourselves from."

 

 

If only he WERE more like Harold Holt

 

Do I have to spell out what happened to our 17th Prime Minister? He left Australia by sea the same time I did, in December 1967; however, I left by ship and returned — he didn't!

 

At first sight I was going to dismiss this, but then I saw the hidden message in it: if even those who cannot tell the subjunctive from the indicative mood and who usually vote Labor, wish that this clown had done a Harold Holt, then perhaps this country is on the road to recovery.

Not that (m)any of the political class, either here or overseas, have got much going for them. Why, if we want to get some electrical work done in our house, we have to pay a licensed electrician who knows what he's doing, but when it comes to the energy security of our entire country, these moronic individuals with their low IQs are allowed to handle it?

Not that increasing fuel prices are affecting me. I only ever put $50 in.

 

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