Literary Delights

Hermann Hesse in his library

 

The most fundamental delight which literature can offer has something to do with the perception or discovery of truth, not necessarily a profound or complex or earthshaking truth, but a particular truth of some order. This "epiphany" comes at the moment of recognition when the reader's experience is reflected back at him.

This is what happened to me when idly, and to pass the time on a grey morning, I picked up "Wandering: Notes and Sketches" (German title: "Wanderung: Aufzeichnungen") by Hermann Hesse and suddenly found myself totally absorbed in what the backcover had described as 'a fine antidote to the anxiety-provoking pressures of today.' Let the following excerpts speak for themselves:

Like the day between morning and evening, my life falls between my urge to travel and my homesickness. Maybe some day I will have come far enough for travel and distances to become part of my soul, so that I will have their images within me, without having to make them literally real any more. ["Red House"] Many of my desires in life have been fulfilled. And every fulfillment quickly became satiety. But to be satisfied was the very thing I could not bear. No goal that I reached was a goal, every path was a detour, every rest gave birth to new longing. Many detours I will still follow, many fulfillments will still disillusion me. One day, everything will reveal its meaning. ["Red House"] When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. ["Trees"] From time to time there rises in my soul, without external cause, the dark wave. A shadow runs over the world, like the shadow of a cloud. Joy sounds false, and music stale. Depression pervades everything, dying is better than living. Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time, I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colours, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with people is torture, and immediately leads to scenes. Because of times like this, one does not own guns; for the same reason, one misses them. Anger, suffering, and complaints are directed at everything, at people, at animals, at the weather, at God, at the paper in the book one is reading, at the material of the very clothing one has on. But anger, impatience, complaints, and hatred have no effect on things, and are deflected from everything, back to myself. I am the one who deserves hatred. I am the one who brings discord and hatred into the world. I am resting after such a day. I know that for a while now rest is to be expected. I know how beautiful the world is; for the time being, it is more beautiful for me than for any other person; colours fuse more delicately, the air flows more blisfully, the light hovers more tenderly. And I know that I must pay for this with the days when life is unbearable. There are good remedies against depression: song, piety, the drinking of wine, making music, writing poems, wandering. By these remedies I live, as the hermit lives by his prayers. Sometimes it seems to me that the scales have tipped, and that my good hours are too seldom and too few to make up for the bad ones. Then sometimes I find that, on the contrary, I have made progress, that the good hours have increased and evil ones decreased. What I never wish, not even in the worst hours, is a middling ground between good and bad, a lukewarm, bearable centre. No, rather an exaggeration of the curve - a worse torment and, because of it, the blessed moments even richer in their brilliance. ["Clouded Sky"]   (Read it online at www.archive.org)

There is so much more in this serene little book. "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us" wrote Kafka. This book fits this description. And, being a book, no matter how complex or difficult to understand it may seem to be, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life that little bit better. Here's to the joy of reading! And to more of Hermann Hesse's writing!

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Blowing my own trumpet - again!

 

WD Scott was Australia's first management consulting firm and the country's largest when its accountant founder, Walter Scott, was knighted for his services as an adviser to the Australian government in 1970.

Their Port Moresby manager David Plomley had hired me in 1976 as an adviser to a minister of the government in Papua New Guinea but Anne Pender's signature had barely dried on her psycho-assessment when I decided that I wasn't going to get my hands dirty in their dirty games.

Still, forty-five years later it's comforting to know that there was a time when my intelligence was in 'the high to the very superior category', I appeared to be 'a reasonably confident person who sets high standards of personal performance', and expressed 'little desire for a position of prestige and status' while being 'a little naive' in assessing other people.

Blowing my own trumpet. It's the only instrument I know how to play!

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The Unravelling of America

 

I've only added a second 'l' in the headline; as for the rest, you can read it in this thought-provoking article in www.rollingstone.com.

To quote, "In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world."

And the article concludes, "The end of the American era and the passing of the torch to Asia is no occasion for celebration, no time to gloat. In a moment of international peril, when humanity might well have entered a dark age beyond all conceivable horrors, the industrial might of the United States, together with the blood of ordinary Russian soldiers, literally saved the world. American ideals, as celebrated by Madison and Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy, at one time inspired and gave hope to millions.

If and when the Chinese are ascendant, with their concentration camps for the Uighurs, the ruthless reach of their military, their 200 million surveillance cameras watching every move and gesture of their people, we will surely long for the best years of the American century. For the moment, we have only the kleptocracy of Donald Trump. Between praising the Chinese for their treatment of the Uighurs, describing their internment and torture as “exactly the right thing to do,” and his dispensing of medical advice concerning the therapeutic use of chemical disinfectants, Trump blithely remarked, “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” He had in mind, of course, the coronavirus, but, as others have said, he might just as well have been referring to the American dream."

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Good-bye, my friend

Little Rover born November 2002 passed away 30 August 2017     We will never ever forget you.

 

On this day three years ago, at around ten past seven, the life force that had bounced little Rover - Mr Onederful! - through life for almost fifteen years, left him. We were both with him, talked to him, stroked him, and comforted him, and his big beautiful eyes were still looking up at us, as he took his last laboured breath.

We had one last day in the sunshine together, as he watched me prepare the vegetable garden, and he still enjoyed a large bowl of his favourite food, and we had come to accept that his seizures, sometimes just two a day (or night) but often more, would continue, but that he would always recover and be his beautiful, loving, wonderful self again.

This time it was not to be. Death is never pretty but his was as short and painless as any of us can ever hope for. From the time he lost consciousness until his eyes became unseeing, it was little more than a few short minutes. It was so quick, in fact, that the reality that the house will be so much emptier without him hasn't quite sunk in yet.

We placed him in his little sleeping box, covered him in his favourite jumper, and gave him a tearful burial minutes before midnight.

Good-bye, my friend, and rest in peace. We will never ever forget you.

 

The Rainbow Bridge ℬy the edge of the woods, at the foot of the hill, Is a lush green meadow where time stands still. Where the friends of man and woman do run, When their time on earth is over and done. For here, between this world and the next, Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest. On this golden land, they wait and they play, Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day. No more do they suffer in pain or in sadness, For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness. Their limbs are restored, their health renewed, Their bodies have healed with strength imbued. They romp through the grass, and sniff at the air, All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back, Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack, For just at that instant, their eyes have met: Together again, both person and pet. So they run to each other, these friends from long past, The time of their parting is over at last. The sadness they felt while they were apart, Has turned into joy once more in each heart. They embrace with a love that will last forever, And then side by side, they cross over ... together.

 

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On the road again

 

Llike the Water Rat in "The Wind in the Willows", I'm happy to spend my time by the river, "by it and with it and on it and in it. It's my world, and I don't want any other", but Padma enjoys her drives into town. She's just whatsapp-ed me this view of the interior of the car followed by ...

 

 

... her selection of books and DVDs from the local op-shop. Ten dollars well spent but I wonder, "How does she know what books and DVDs I like?" I mean, the only thing we have in common is the date we got married - and that's been such a long time ago that I've forgotten when!

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"What can I getcha, Hun?"

 

Covid or no covid, today we went shopping and to support the local coffee shop (whatever happened to the old milk bars with those old bashed and beaten metal milkshake tumblers and giant Wagon Wheels the size of - well, wagon wheels?)

Instead, we had a fancy gateau at a fancy price which went down well. The waitress's overly familiar attitude went down less well. "What can I getcha, Hun?" How could it be that she had guessed my old ethnicity?

Anyway, no shopping-trip is ever complete with a visit to my favourite op-shop where I picked up a few more pre-read and -loved books: "The New Paradigm For Financial Markets - The Credit Crisis of 2008 And What It Means" by George Soros and, for the armchair-traveller in me, "Adventures of a Continental Drifter" and "Last Chance to See", the latter by Douglas Adams of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy-fame.

I'm now safely back at "Riverbend" and sitting, book in one hand and cup of chai in the other, on the sunlit verandah. Life could be a lot worse!

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So ...

 

As provisionally appointed bursar of John XXIII College, I was able to stop it from going into bankruptcy and, over the next three years, repay all its million-dollar debts, but I was never able to stop its students, all those young aspiring lawyers, economists, accountants, etc. (end of thinking capacity) from saying 'awesome'. "Thank you for paying your college fees. Here's your receipt." "Awesome!" Really?

 

This is as far as a Catholic priest will go in acknowledging how the seemingly
impossible can be accomplished with typical German "Protestant work ethic".
After a long and successful career, the 'significant personal sacrifice' (even
though being a Man of the Word, Tom incorrectly uses 'on your behalf' instead
of 'on your part') was my misguided idea of giving something back by doing this
almost pro bono, despite it soon becoming an all-absorbing job which required me
to live on the job in the College. Would I do it again? Not even for the Pope himself!

For the record, here are two more most grudgingly given references by two Catholic
priests who thought that Protestants couldn't possibly be capable of working miracles:

 

I was reminded of this as I listened to a highly intelligent professional being interviewed on the radio, who started every one of his replies - I kid you not! - with "So ...", sometimes enlarging it to an "And so ..."

"And so" I've just added 'and so' to all those other empty, abstract words a speaker uses to fill in time while he works out what to say. Clichés - French for stencil - like 'going forward' which lacks all momentum, 'any time soon' which is not a different way of saying 'soon', just a longer one, 'prioritise' and 'proactive' which suggest vigour when there is none, 'opportunity' if it's just saying 'chance' in five syllables instead of one, and 'ownership', a horrible new way of saying that people have a choice. And, by the way, why use 'utilise' when you can excise 'tili'?

I'm not suggesting that William Shakespeare should have written 'boy meets girl and everyone dies'; the play would have lacked a certain 'I know not what', as the French say. What I am suggesting is that if you have something to say, better to say it simply and clearly even if it seems a little dull. Dull is better than dumb. So ...

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If Alice were to return today ...

 

One-hundred-and-fifty-five years ago, after visiting Wonderland, Alice stepped into a mirror and discovered the world of the looking-glass. If Alice were to return today, she'd only have to peek out the window.

Or read Eduardo Galeano's "Upside Down", a funny and shocking exposé of First World privileges and assumptions. It's a terrifying and angry description of the world we live in, a world unevenly divided between abundance and deprivation, carnival and torture, power and helpless-ness, where poverty kills, people are hungry, machines are more precious than humans, and children work from dark to dark.

I found a dog-eared copy in Sydney; you may find a better one on ebay. Click here for some quotes from the book.

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27th August 1883 - The Day the World Exploded

 

On 27th August 1883 the most terrifying volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Krakatoa, five miles off the western tip of Java.

The island was destroyed and almost 40,000 people were killed. The impact was truly global: ships sailing in the Red Sea were covered in ash; barometers went haywire in Washington; the seas were disturbed in Devon; stunning sunsets burned over London; immense rafts of pumice floated to Africa.

The world shifted, geologically, politically and socially, and the word 'Krakatoa' became embedded in the consciousness of the modern world.

I have just read Simon Winchester's book by the same name and it was absolutely rivetting - click here.

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And a foggy good morning to you!

 

I love those foggy morning when everything is still hidden from sight and I can concentrate on making my porridge: five spoonful of oats, a handful of raisin, a generous spoonful of honey, a cup of water; bring it to a slow bubble; add some milk; wait for it to bubble again; serve with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar; enjoy!

There's something about foggy mornings that reminds you that all in life is not black and white, that the fog always lifts, and no matter how bad things are, you can at least be happy that you woke up this morning.

 

 

The fog has lifted, I've eaten my porridge, and am now into my second cup of vanilla-flavoured chai. I've yet to switch on the radio and listen to the news. Maybe I won't; maybe I continue this silent reverie for a little longer to allow the sun to burn off the last few shrouds of fog, on the river and in my mind. Morning has broken like the first morning ...

 

 

One day I may even finish the Nelligen Yacht Clubhouse by the flagpole.

 

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The Salisbury Poisonings

 

Whether or not the moon landing was a fake is still an urban myth - after all, the Americans had just spent US$12 billion on developing a ballpoint pen that could work in zero gravity and were close to broke - but the Salisbury Poisonings were very, very real.

SBS just began to televise the serialised BBC documentary the night before we left for Sydney, with the next instalment due the following evening. Getting back to Bomaderry at a quarter past seven in the evening, we said a quick good-bye to our friends at Bomaderry's Welcome Chinese restaurant where Padma had spent the day while I went through all that poking and probing in Sydney, and hit the road.

Shortly after Nowra and after it had got dark, we got stuck behind a huge BONACCORD Freightliner. On the assumption that if he hit a roo with his huge roo-bar, it would be just a dead kangaroo, whereas if I hit one, it would be a dead me, we tailgated him all the way to the Bay.

And, of boy, do those freighliners tear along! We were constantly hovering just above the 100km-speed limit as I hypnotically followed those huge glowing rear lights through tight bends and across narrow bridges. Slightly out of breath but still breathing, we got to the Kings Highway turn-off a little over an hour later, and rolled into "Riverbend" just in time for the second instalment of "The Salisbury Poisonings".

Tonight at 8.30 is the third instalment. Padma has gone to the local craft meeting, better known as "Stitch & Bitch", which will last well into late-afternoon when she will be fired up with the local gossip while I've fired up the fireplace in time for a hot Glühwein and another episode.

By the way, the Russians didn't waste US$12 billion. They used a pencil.

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Back from Sydney!

 

Luckily, I got into the train's "Quiet Carriage", several carriage doors away from those ghetto-blaster-carrying unemployeds who while away their Jobseeker-funded time riding the railway on free tickets and greet each other with names that refer both to their penis and their cranium.

I'd taken along Alain de Botton's "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" which, after these encounters, first at the station and then on the train, no longer seemed appropriate, and so boarded my own train of thought.

I don't know what's worse: Alzheimer's disease or Old Timer's disease? With the former, you forget everything; with the latter, you forget nothing. And there's nothing like train travel to re-awaken memories which had been dead and buried. They say life is short but it's also immensely long and crowded with faces, voices, adventures,and catastrophes. And filled with guilt about deeds committed and regret, guilt's gentler relative, over deeds omitted. Perhaps it's kind rather than cruel that so many people lose their memories towards the end.

I was glad when this journey ended and the train pulled into the station at Bomaderry. Just as I spotted Padma waiting for me at the end of the platform, I heard one of Australia's next leaders yell out to another to urinate and depart. I'm glad I won't be around to vote for any of them.

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I'm telling this with a sigh

Padma texting me last-minute instructions from the Bomaderry platform: "Drink plenty of water!", "Don't forget to eat your lunch!" "Wear your mask!" "Be careful!" "Let me know when you get there!" "Give my regards to Priscilla and Professors Clark and Milross!"

 

Oh, how good it feels to be back to my chai-(with vanilla-flavour)making and porridge-cooking morning routine at peaceful "Riverbend"! There's something very soothing about preparing, in Hopper-esque solitude, for a new day.

Not that there is much to prepare as one day is very much like any other. The joys of predictability, another fancy word for boredom. For someone who hates exercise, I've done a lot of running away but "Riverbend" - and I'm telling this with a sigh - may be Journey's End, right down to those words in J. R. R. Tolkien's eponymous poem.

Although I won't become metabolically-challenged just yet according to the professors at Sydney's Lifehouse who put a camera up my nose and down my throat and said, "Fine, fine, it's just fine" and "That'll be a hundred-and-forty-five dollars, please" and "See you in six months."

That's what it has come down to for this former jet-setter and reluctant socialiser: a medical visit to Sydney every six months, but travelling is not only defined by new sights but also by new insights, and long-distance travel on a socially-distanced train can provide many of them.

The rumbling diesel from Bomaderry to Kiama - and then a sleek electric all the way into Sydney Central - starts off as long(er)-distance and morphs into a commuter train as it gets closer and closer to Sydney.

There were doggy-training stickers on the seats. "Sit here" they begged. There were so many of them that I was torn between a window-seat and one near the aisle, and I did alternate to either view the Tasman Sea in the rising sun to my right or the rolling hills and escarpment on my left.

There were no people in masks - in fact, there were no people at all - as I began my journey but from Kiama onwards they all began to look like a bunch of halitosis-sufferer - tictac sales must have taken a nosedive - or, if not that, at least like girls with bad teeth and boys with weak chins.

No matter how short in time and distance, the thrill of travel, of being on the move soon had me under its spell again, and I realised just how irreversibly (pen-)insular I have become on my little bend in the river.

For me at least, "The Road Not Taken" is not a triumphant self-assertion but a realisation of the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives. "I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." Big sigh!

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