I hope it's going to be a long rainy day

 

 

I know I've already given you your daily dose by telling you about my leaky boat being ceaselessly borne back into the past, but that was before I stepped outside to smell the air. You see, it rained last night and everything looks fresh and green. And that smell in the air! (or petrichor, as my friend Des would call it) It makes you forget all about the other miseries in the world.

It takes me right back to a time more than half a century ago, before life had knocked the stuffing out of me, and before I had begun to feel all cynical and grumpy about everything. Of course, this magical moment won't last and soon the rest of the world will wake up too.

This magical moment, this gentle phasing out of the night and start to a new day, when I brew my first cup of tea - ginger with a touch of vanilla - and watch the porridge bubble on the stove, is my favourite time of day. Add the smell of petrichor — THAT word again! I can smell the scent of rain just by saying the word 'pet - ri - chor' — takes me back to many other rainy nights, and it reminds me of Eddie Rabbit and Singapore. (Strange how music reminds me of places: there's Miriam Makeba and South Africa; there's Lobo and Burma; there's is ... but I'm digressing!)

 

 

I first heard Eddie Rabbitt during my "Singaporean days" when I used to stay at the Raffles and supervise grain transhipments at Sembawang for my Saudi boss. Until that time I had been listening to the pop music of the eighteenth century - you know, Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and all that - but Singapore was awash with the sound of Eddie Rabbitt at the time and he had become something of an earworm.

I don't know what happened to Eddie Rabbitt since then but the music of Mozart is still around. And so is my love for rainy nights, but even more so for rainy days because rainy days give me an excuse not to sit on my ride-on and cut the constantly-growing grass but instead sit in my library and read a book. I hope it's going to be a long rainy day.

 

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"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

 

 

I have often wondered why it is that some slight and unremarkable memories remain strongly embedded in our waking consciousness while others apparently more memorable are quickly buried, if not forgotten. Yet they both come to us unbidden from time to time in our dreams, or are perhaps more often prompted by the discovery of a faded photograph, or a chance meeting with a long-forgotten acquaintance.

While we may think we possess memory, albeit one that fails as we get older, it is perhaps more accurate to say that memory possesses us, and we're constantly beaten, like "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" is the last line in "The Great Gatsby", a brilliant evocation of the Roaring Twenties and a satire of a postwar America obsessed with wealth and status, which is often called the "Great American Novel".

These are also Nick Carraway’s last words in the movie as he reflects on how we are all manacled to our past, captive to our own unreliable witness to past events. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I think my boat is beginning to leak!

 

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The true horror of existence

 

'Death of an Artist - The Last Friend', by Zygmunt Andrychiewicz

 

The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."

The noble art of misquoting Albert Camus is spread all over the internet. The above quote is also falsely attributed to his book "The Fall". I've just read it again and couldn't find it. That's not to say that it's not an excellent quote, just as the book is an excellent read if you are prepared for a challenging, introspective study of human nature.

 

Read the book online here

 

"You're always running away", I was once accused. But how much better it is to run away from the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain, than to have to accept that nothing will ever change.

 

 

Which is where I finished up anyway. "But let's not worry. It's too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!" which is how the book ends. But not too late to fall asleep to a bit of 'Sleepy Philosophy' while drifting off into the quiet, reflective world of Albert Camus.

 

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"First generation makes it, second generation maintains it, third generation loses it"

 

An advertisement in the PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY from 1977
276 Pitt Street in Sydney today

 

Morris, Hedstrom Ltd, J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn, Deutsche Handels- und Plantagen-Gesellschaft (DHPG), Burns Philp & Company Limited, Steamships Trading Company — with the exception of the last, all those other conpanies, who at one time dominated trading in the South Pacific, have disappeared, as has Breckwoldt & Co., a trading company headquartered in Hamburg in Germany, which had branches in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Samoa.

 

 

Once on everyone's lips, the name 'Breckwoldt' has all but disappeared from memory, and can only be found after some dedicated searches in long-forgotten archives, such as old editions of the PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, the then 'Bible' of every expatriate living in the islands — which, incidentally, has also disappeared as completely as Breckwoldt.

 

 

Who would have thought at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the company that only a few years later there would be nothing left of it? What were the catastrophic events and the tough decisions that led up to this cataclysmic demise of a once so proud South Sea Islands trader?

 

Mr Friedrich Wilhelm Breckwoldt and his son, Mr Hayo Breckwoldt (right), talk with the Assistant Administrator, Dr John Gunther, and Mr Hubert Jipp, at a cocktail party Mr Breckwoldt gave at the Boroko Hotel, Port Moresby

An evocative advertisement in the PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY from the 1960s

 

In a last-ditch effort the last of the Breckwoldts, Tim Breckwoldt, of the third generation that usually loses it, has put down his 'stein' and done some heavy thinking instead of drinking to find the best way to preserve the name 'Breckwoldt' for posterity, in both German and English (with a little help from yours truly who almost joined Breckwoldt when they opened their branch at Wewak in the remote Sepik District in 1968).

 

Tim Breckwoldt, who has never been to the islands but heard a lot about them

 

He promises it to be a no-holds-barred account from start to finish, although he will keep it clean with the help of BREWO toilet soap.

 

 

Stay tuned for an update!

 

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Friends in High Places

 

 

It was early 1976. A few months earlier I had resigned from my post as Chief Accountant in Rangoon with the French oil company TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles. Twelve months behind the "Teak Curtain" and under the dictatorship of U Ne Win had seemed long enough, and so I took up a posting in Tehran under the dictatorship of the Shah of Iran.

'Out of the frying pan and into the fire' is the best way to describe this particularly ill-fated move and I left Tehran again soon afterwards, but not before I met up again with René Pain-Savanier, graduate of the 'École des hautes études commerciales de Paris', who, as TOTAL's 'chef du service du Contrôle à la Direction Financière' in Tehran, had been highly complimentary of my work during his visits to Rangoon and also in references written some years later.

 

 

M. Pain-Savanier's home in Tehran was pure Parisian elegance and chic and, on the two or three occasions when he and his charming wife Odette entertained me there, he never failed to express his regrets over my decision to leave TOTAL.

As it turned out, the Shah was forced into exile in Egypt in January 1979. Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Westerners were forced to leave, and René returned to France from where he once again sent me a flattering reference together with an invitation to visit him in his retirement home in the south of France.

 

 

I reflected on all this when I found a notice of his funeral on the internet. 'Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur' no less, the highest French order! It's good to have had friends in high places, and he's in an even higher place now. Rest in peace, M. Pain-Savanier! My life has been richer for having known you.

 

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P.S. Having had no trouble reading the above two references in French, you should have no trouble counting to five in French and appreciating this little pun: A man had two cats. One was named One Two Three, and the other was named Un Deux Trois. He took them to the park one day and rented a rowboat and took them out for a ride. But a bigger boat came by and swamped the rowboat in its wake. The man and the One Two Three cat made it safely to shore, but the Un Deux Trois cat sank.