At 4 a.m. the house is still. One dog stirs. I make coffee, survey the lounge room with bodies asleep and decide I am awake and ready to leave - except for the amp, guitars and packing. It’s a seven hour drive ahead. An hour or so later and a few logs through the slow combustion fire and it’s dawn. The sleeping bodies stir and happily take the bed.
Another coffee and I write a letter because we don’t always get to say what, perhaps, we need to say. It’s been an excellent week which is to say that both the joys and sorrows arrive, thrive and survive and I’m warmed.
Even the dogs sleep on as I drive away through the quiet. A large grey kangaroo bounds up the hill and across the paddock. Swift and graceful, it reminds me that this is the time when kangaroos bound and I note to take it easy on the way into town. Kangaroos have no road sense.
I stop on the dirt road to drink in the magnificent misty layers of the hills and mountains stretching out to the west. I’d like to take the inland route but recent rains have caused road slips on the back road up through the ranges towards Armidale and it’s an isolated area.
You can’t help but notice the mile after mile of ‘no human habitation.’ and that’s while driving the Pacific Highway to Sydney.
Andy has been slashing the paddocks on the farm. The power of regeneration of the native bush is astounding considering how difficult it can be to get a vegetable garden going without bringing in soil. In two or three years a cleared paddock can be thick with natives clamouring for space. The ‘bush’ is very specifically tailored to the local conditions which often include fierce fires thus the local trees litter the ground with seed.
Played lots of scales and got to play notes instead of sing words. This is wonderful and allows me to jam along. For some reason this feels more musical than playing chords with words. Not very good as yet but a very clear path which suggests that if I practice - I get better.
A Wallaby sits by the edge of the road. It’s facing away from the road and sits quietly as I drive past. I can’t help but wince because previous experience suggest that they’re just as likely to jump into the car as to jump away.
Magnolias are in bloom as I cruise through the coastal towns. Flowering cherries gladden the eye and I know that - a mile high in the mountains - these blooms are weeks away.
550 kms gets me home and I stop at a few second hand stores to look for Enid Blyton books for the neighbours children. Found Rudyard Kiplings Jungle Book which is far better for children’s imagination than the caricature which Disney presents. Enid Blyton is now a ‘collectable’ which is a shame if her books only collect dust jackets and monetary value. I chat with an old lady with bright eyes who helps me to look and I tell her that Enid was apparently a lousy parent - completely at odds with the values she presents - and I get a mild rebuke, “We don’t want to know about that!” She was lovely.
I grow a tad uneasy about the lack of comment on a recent advertisement for a fast food chain. I can see how people go quietly mad over - what to others are trivial matters.
The advertisement shows a family group who are sitting around a table in a park-like setting, eating their food. An elderly woman approaches - distressed - and asks whether they might help her look for her dog.
“Sorry - we’re allergic to dogs.” says the ‘father’.... then a pregnant pause before he adds “Aren’t we Molly?” as he gently prods his dog which is under the table.
So .... a fast food meal is worth lying about. Not just lying but presenting it as acceptable and clever. Not only has the ‘father’ and his ‘family’ group dishonoured themselves, so has everyone involved.
This is not ‘free speech’. This is crap and if I meet anyone who dares lay claim to this creativity, I will hit them very hard....... will I really?
The point is that what is clear to me is either too difficult to bother about for others or isn’t seen, in the same way as I see it, as an attack on ‘the fabric of society.’
A healthy society doesn’t depend upon democracy for nourishment. It depends ultimately upon trust which, in turn, is based on honesty. Could China endure as a democracy? Not a chance. Too much of everything including people to be anything other than an Empire. There’s nothing wrong with this approach to governing a society. It’s not brilliant but it’s better than chaos.
A Universal God doesn’t play favourites. In a family playing favourites makes little sense if good relationships are to thrive. Of course it happens but we’re not Godlike.
If you - as a God - wanted to sow the seeds of dissension within mankind, you couldn’t do better than to make a tribe ‘special’ a favourite for whom the sun shines out of their collective arses. Then let many generations pass until the dissension is full blown hatred. What a thoughtless god this is.
A Universal God is not a tribal god and the Jewish faith is, at best, a fraud, the implications of which causes untold misery for the rest of mankind. This isn’t anti -semitic. This is stating that an individual jew has no extra senses, has no different a soul and - when cut bleeds as do you and I.
How could it be otherwise?
Why would I respect a fraud. I don’t want the ‘story’ - I want the reality..... whatever that means.
Sunni against Shiite within the Moslem world. Doesn’t make any sense unless the parallel is with Northern Ireland and the Catholic/Protestant divide and which has very little to do with Christianity. It’s political but shows up the glaring inconsistencies of factionalism within the Universal God religions.
The daffodils are in flower, the Magnolia is in bud and I’ve put a tree orchid onto a tree fern where it looks comfortable amongst the Chinese roses which are a succulent plant and don’t need much to thrive and which have happily transplanted from a pot into the remains of the cut off fronds of previous seasons.
They look fantastic.