Sunday morning coming down

 

 

I would've preferred the grainy and weathered voice of Johnny Cash singing this song, but then I would've missed out on this beautiful video clip which pretty much sums up everything I feel about this Sunday morning - and that's even before I've looked in the mirror!

George Orwell once wrote: "By fifty, everyone has the face they deserve." This is plainly no more true than to assert that by fifty, everyone has the income or status they deserve. And it's even less true of the face that stared back at me as I shaved myself this morning.

Quite possibly we all feel a bit queasy when we catch our own reflection in the mirror or when we see ourselves in a photo. The disjuncture between appearance and our inner reality is one of life's tragic elements, and it seems to widen even more with advancing age.

Our face is our visual ambassador to the world; and yet, it is as unrepresentative of us as a picture postcard is of an entire country. Bear that in mind next time you're about to judge someone by their face.

This morning my face looks a bit like "Sunday morning coming down".

 

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“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

 

 

I typed the above quote into Google to find out if it really belonged to Albert Camus, and immediately the following message flashed up: "Help is available. Speak with someone today. Call 3 11 14."

Thank you, Google, but other than wanting to know if this quote was copyrighted to Camus in case I wanted to open a coffee shop for which I needed a clever byline, I was just doing some research after having listened all night long to the audiobook of "The Myth of Sisyphus".

 

 

Perhaps I should've just watched "Perfect Days" which follows a Tokyo toilet cleaner who finds quiet dignity, peace, and small moments of freedom in a repetitive daily routine. It feels like a contemporary adaptation of the Sisyphus myth, where a man is trapped in the same daily routine but accepts and finds happiness in the endless repetition.

But then I would have missed out on such gems as "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is whether life is worth living", "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world", and, best of all, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". Listen to it yourself:

 

 

There's a bit of Sisyphus in all of us or we'd never have got this far.

 

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P.S. If you REALLY want to know how Sisyphus must have felt, and if you REALLY want to experience the full absurdity of life, live on an acreage where you're pushing shit uphill day after day. One is for sale right here.

 

A blast from the past

 

Roy, Sheryl, moi

 

It's now already more than ten years ago when the phone rang and a stranger's voice said, "This is Sheryl from Brisbane. We're across the river at Nelligen and would like to come and visit you." "I don't know a Sheryl from Brisbane", I replied.

"Yes, you do", the voice said. "I'm Sheryl. We worked together in the ANZ Bank in 1966." OF COURSE! And so we met again after fifty years.

Back then Sheryl and I not only worked in the same bank but also lived in the same boarding-house about which I had written here. She had found the story on the internet some years ago and then contacted me by email but I had since forgotten. She and her husband Roy were campervanning up and down the East Coast and calling in on friends.

Sheryl had been more of a teenage crush than a friend to me as she was by far the best-looking sheila in the bank. I had been in Australia for just over a year and owned no more than the clothes I stood up in at a time when a car was 95% of a young man's personality. With just 5% personality and a thick German accent I never stood a chance  ☺

And to think that sixty years ago I would've willingly given up on the idea of seeing the world, would've willingly stuck with my dull 9-to-5 job in the bank, would've had kids and a big mortgage on a small house with a white picket fence around it, in short, what Zorba called the full catastrophe ... IF ONLY SHE HAD SO MUCH AS SMILED AT ME!!!

 

 

Do I hear just the faintest echoes of Somerset Maugham's short story "Red"? Get yourself a beer, lay back, and listen to the audiobook.

 

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"We've both seen the best of it!"

 

 

Padma does some great bird impressions. This morning she's watching me like a hawk. I think I had better finish my breakfast quickly and drive across the river to see an old friend with whom I have nothing in common except old age.

He's the sort of bloke who, if you gave him a book, would ask, "What do I want a book for? I've already got a book". What makes us identical is that we both got a bad case of OCD: we're old, cranky, and dangerous.

We both get quite cranky when we look around us and compare it to the world we grew up in. With so much natural stupidity around, who needs artifical intelligence? Having discussed it all and feeling disgusted, we usually end on the happy note that "We've both seen the best of it!"

That framed photo is of him when he was sixty years younger. At that age I was still pushing a slide rule while he was already felling trees to be turned into books. No wonder he doesn't want any more of them.

Just one more spell check before I post this and see my friend. I hate spelling errors. You mix up two letters and your whole post is urined.

 

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Reading changed my life!

 

  Bild Zeitung   dated Thursday, 30 Jan 1964
The advertisement in the bottom right-hand corner changed my life!

 

 

All my life I've been what they call a 'buveur d'encre' in French, or a 'kutu buku' in Indonesian, or a 'Leseratte' in German, or, in the good ol' Queen's - sorry, King's - English, a bookworm!

Reading is a drug of which I am a slave; deprive me of printed matter and I grow nervous, moody and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, I will make do with the label on a can of soup or a tin of paint or the telephone directory; I will even make do with a newspaper several years old.

Some five years ago, I read a newspaper that was fifty-seven years old, all thanks to the nice people - and two very nice people, Frau Katja Hinrichs and Herr Matthias Winkler - at the German   Bild Zeitung  .

I had asked them to find me an advertisement by the Australian embassy which had sought to attract young Germans to come to Australia.

Well, "deutsche Gründlichkeit" was alive and well because just two days later Frau Hinrichs had sent me a copy of the advertisement which fifty-seven years earlier I had cut out, filled with my name and address, and mailed to the "Australische Auskunfts- und Auswanderungs-Büro":

 

"Do you know Australia?
Information about Australia, a young and aspiring nation, and the opportunities awaiting you there, are available from the Australian Information and Immigration Agency
2 Hamburg 1, Mönckebergstrasse 11, Phone 33 49 82.
For more information complete this coupon (in block letters) and mail it to us."

 

All in "Blockbuchstaben" (block letters), of course! A year later I was in Australia; six years later I was an Australian. Reading changed my life!

 

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P.S. Read also "10 Pfennig BILD Zeitung"