A thorn between two roses

 

We're back into our daily routine of walking across the bridge into the village and back, and since this is Saturday, we dropped by at the markets where I picked up a well-thumbed copy of "A Year in the World - Journeys of a Passionate Traveller" by Frances Mayes and a book of essays, one of which was entitled "How Knitting Saved My Life". It certainly saved mine several times over whenever Padma's chrocheting kept her busy and quiet.

 

 

Padma picked up some more frilly bits and pieces and home-made greeting-cards before the highrollers from the Bay pulled in on the tourist boat, and we went to the café for a coffee (for her) and a Coke (for me; are you reading this, Des?) We're home again for Happy Hour which is my afternoon nap on the verandah while I listen to Bill Bryson's audiobook "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - sample it here.

 

 

It feels sooo good to be home again!

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Red house in the green!

 

"Red House" a.k.a "Canberra" on the outside

 

I'm spending time in my secluded reading room which I call "Red House" in memory of Hermann Hesse, if I'm not calling it "Canberra" to set it apart from "Sydney" and "Melbourne". The following is an excerpt from one of Hesse's own favourite books, "Wandering - Notes and Sketches", a synthesis of prose, poetry, and watercolour sketches:

 

 

 

"Red House, out of your small garden and vineyard all the southern Alps breathe to me. I have walked past you several times, and even the first time my wanderlust was sharply reminded of its opposite pole; and once again I toy with the old refrain: to have a home, a little house in a green garden, stillness everywhere, a village below me. In a little room facing east my bed would stand, my own bed; in another little room facing south, my table; and there I would hang up the small, ancient Madonna which I bought on an earlier journey, in Brescia.

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. Maybe I will also find that secret home within me where there will be no more flirting with gardens and little red houses. To be at home with myself!

How different life would be! There would be a center, and out of that center all forces would reach.

But there is no center in my life: my life hovers between many poles and counterpoles. A longing for home here, a longing for wandering there. A longing for loneliness and cloister here, and an urge for love and community there. I have collected books and paintings and given them away. I have cultivated voluptuousness and vice, and renounced them for asceticism and penance. I have faithfully revered life as substance, and then realized that I could recognize and love life only as function.

 

 

But it is not my concern to change myself. Only a miracle could do that. And whoever seeks a miracle, whoever grasps at it, whoever tries to assist it, sees it fleeing away. My concern is to hover between many extreme opposites and to be ready when a miracle overtakes me. My concern is to be unsatisfied and to endure restlessness.

 

 

Red house in the green! I have already lived through you, I can't go on living through you. I have already had a home, I have built a house, measured wall and roof, laid out paths in the garden, and hung my own walls with my own pictures. Every person is driven to do the same - I am happy that I once lived this way. Many of my desires in life have been fulfilled. I wanted to be a poet, and became a poet. I wanted to have a house, and built one. I wanted to have a wife and children, and had them. I wanted to speak to people and impress them, and I did so. And every fulfillment quickly became satiety. But to be satisfied was the very thing I could not bear. Poetry became suspect to me. The house became narrow to me. 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.

There, where contradictions die, is Nirvana. Within me, they still burn brightly, beloved stars of longing."

 

"Red House" a.k.a "Canberra" on the inside

 

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 happens to me whenever I pick up "Wandering - Notes and Sketches" (German title: "Wanderung - Aufzeichnungen") and suddenly find myself totally absorbed in what the backcover describes as 'a fine antidote to the anxiety-provoking pressures of today'.

And 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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The carnival is almost over

 

 

The year was 1965. I had escaped a dysfunctional family, eighteen months in the "Bundeswehr", and the predictability of a lean and miserable existence in the (c)old country, and I had instantly fallen in love with my new home Australia, my new friends at Barton House, my new colleagues at the ANZ Bank, my new favourite movie "They're a Weird Mob", and my new favourite pop group, The Seekers.

All this is almost sixty years ago - and what sixty years they've been! They were full of mistakes made and stupidities committed; they had their occasional shames and humiliations as well as those brief moments of accomplishments and happiness which I now call experience. They are my recompense for the youth and the health and the energy I have left behind as I bounced through life, spending more time on planning my next weekend than on how I might spend the rest of my life.

And yet, today, sixty years later, with the carnival almost over, I'm grateful for everything that happened, but especially for that deft little pen stroke by the interviewing officer on my "Auswanderungsantrag nach Australien mit Fahrtunterstützung" which crossed out the words "NOT RECOMMENDED / REFERRED" to leave standing the word "ACCEPT".

 

 

I leave the last words to The Seekers from their Farewell Tour in 2013/2014. They are far better than I am at expressing emotions.

 

 

The water is wide, I can't cross o'er Nor do I have light wings to fly Build me a boat that can carry two And both shall row my love and I A ship there is, and sails the sea She's loaded deep as deep can be But not so deep as the love I'm in And I know not how I sink or swim When love is young, and love is fine It's like a gem, when first it's new But love grows old and waxes cold And fades away like the morning dew The water is wide, I can't cross o'er Nor do I have light wings to fly Build me a boat that can carry two And both shall row my love and I

 

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There's no place like home

 

Perhaps we all should leave home for a few days - or weeks, or months - so that we will be able to appreciate it more when we get back. I certainly appreciated my long sit-down bath while Padma was in the Bay doing her usual shopping and, no doubt, ran into quite a few people to talk to.

That's the thing when you've lived in a small place for half a lifetime: you seem to know half the town, and half the town seems to know you, and you can never just drop in to pick up a few groceries without also talking to half a dozen people and picking up the town's latest gossip.

Instead of gossip, I pick up books, such as the ones I brought back from Sydney: "Bullies and Saints - An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History", which I wished I had read seventy years ago to drive my long-suffering teacher of religion to distraction (who, surprisingly, gave me a totally undeserved "gut" in a sea of "sehr gut" - click here); "Phosphorescence - On Awe, Wonder and Things that Sustain You when the World Goes Dark", an achingly beautiful and inspiring exploration of the ways we can pursue awe, wonder and purpose in our lives; and Alain de Botton's inspiring book "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work", which was bookmarked at page 19 with the card of a dental centre in Perth.

 

There's no free online copy of the book in English, but if you can read Korean, click here

Quote from page 244: "For most of human history, the only instruments needed to induce employees to complete their duties energetically and adroitly was the whip. So long as workers had only to kneel down and retrieve stray ears of corn from the threshing-room floor or heave quarried stones up a slope, they could be struck hard and often, with impunity and benefit. But the rules of employment had to be rewritten with the emergence of tasks whose adequate performance required their protagonists to be to a significant degree content, rather than simply terrified or resigned. Once it became evident that someone who was expected to remove brain tumors, draw up binding legal documents or sell condominiums with convincing energy could not profitably be sullen or resentful, morose or angry, the mental well-being of employees commenced to be a supreme object of managerial concern."

 

I like to think that the previous owner of this book stopped reading it at page 19 only because he was interrupted by his (or her - you can't be too careful these days to include all genders; not ALL genders, mind you, as this blog wouldn't be long enough to list them ALL!) dental work because it's a beautifully written and insightful book into what these days is called the "work-life balance". What nonsense! What rubbish!

 

 

Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, put it much better: "Love and work ... work and love, that's all there is ... love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness." Freud may be out of favour these days but not with me as I've always equated work with fun. I already have a paperback copy of Alan de Botton's book and may give this beautiful hardcover to someone who has trouble getting out of bed in the morning because his "life-work balance" is leaning towards idleness. Come to think of it, I'd probably need a few more copies of this book.

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We're back at Bonnie Doon

 

 

Having sat for six hours on a wildly swaying bus, having sat in an uncomfortable restaurant eating overpriced and undercooked food, having spent a restless night on a mattress I'm not accustomed to, I woke up at three o'clock on my first morning in Sydney, and all I could say to Padma was, "I just want to go home!"

There was a time when I jumped on a plane and jetted halfway around the world at the mere whisper of some vague job offer, but now wild horses couldn't drag me away from the comfort and, most importantly, the peace and quiet of "Riverbend" which, if the previous owners hadn't already called it "Riverbend", I would gladly have called "Bonnie Doon".

 

 

The noise, the sheer bedlam of Sydney fell away when we entered our old hide-away, Golden Grove, and Peter Ying, its friendly housekeeper, welcomed us back. The guests who stay there happily talk to strangers. "Come as a guest, leave as a friend" is absolutely true of Golden Grove.

The consultation with a young and friendly dental surgeon specialising in previous cancer cases, Dr Martin - whom I promptly called "Doc Martin" - was thorough but a little short of what I had expected. He took plenty of x-rays, photographs, and dental impressions, but pulled no teeth. I hope it was not because he also suffered from haemophobia. Anyway, it looks like a second, maybe even a third trip to Sydney will be necessary.

 

 

We spent the rest of our time in Sydney wandering all over Newtown, visiting the quadrangle of the University of Sydney, and shivering at the mere sight of early-morning swimmers in Victoria Park's public pool.

 

 

Unfortunately, our favourite Chinese restaurant, HAPPY BELLY, where Padma had always enjoyed her salt-and-pepper tofu and I my congee, had closed and it was now a Thai restaurant which we didn't fancy.

 

Padma with her favourite, salt-and-pepper tofu, during our visit in May 2023

 

Observing that other whirlpool of people around me, of which no more than one out of ten looked Caucasian, I realised just how much Sydney, and the rest of Australia, has changed! Funnily, when I first came to Australia I couldn't understand the people on account of MY bad English; now I can't understand the people on account of THEIR bad English!

 

Twenty past seven in the morning; the PREMIER bus didn't leave until 9 o'clock

 

It was an early start on our second morning in Sydney and, after having taken a photo of Padma under the big clock on Central Station's Grand Concourse and talking to a few more total strangers, we checked in for our swaying ride back home. "I'm glad to go home", I said to Padma. "Me, too!" she said. Six hours later we were back at - ehem! - Bonnie Doon.

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