end of a decade

g'day,
so the naughties are ending.
Haven't seen many "best of the decade" retrospectives yet.
But I'm interested -
what are your top 5 albums? books? movies?
what do you reckon?

i'll have a crack:
books:
1 the secret scripture - sebastian barry
2 the road- cormac mccarthy
3 true history of the kelly gang - peter carey
4 life of pi - yann martel
5 oxford big ideas science 2 (especially the engineering chapter) - yes, heavily biased

albums:
1 in rainbows - radiohead
2 up all night - the waifs
3 gurrumul - gurrumul
4 a rush of blood to the head - coldplay
5 tea & sympathy - bernard fanning

movies
pass (I haven't seen 5 movies in the decade)

anyone? click on comment to post...

and what of Our Common Future, eh, science?

On inspirational readings - on a different level, but the transcript of the Chief Executive of CSIRO, Megan Clark's speech to the National Press Club, 30 September.
Inspiring for anyone pondering our human struggle, I think. Sets out some challenges for us all & how to use scientific ideas to have a crack. Full of interesting posers, too.
One of my favourites is the realisation that in the next 50 years, we (humans on earth) will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history to date.
As she says; "That means in the working life of my children, more grain than ever produced since the Egyptians, more fish than eaten to date, more milk than from all the cows that have ever been milked on every frosty morning humankind has ever known."
jeepers.
http://www.csiro.au/science/Megan-Clark-Press-Club-Address.html

That book it has me - The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry. It's dynamite.
sharing a good story. can i do this? sharing. borrow it. buy it.
cheerio.

"My father's happiness. It was a precious gift in itself, as perhaps
my mother's anxiety was a perpetual spanner thrown
into her works. For my mother never made miniature legends
of her life, and was singularly without stories, though I am sure
there were things there to tell as good as my father's.

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes
that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more
likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following
them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing
entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad
black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling
after and a question mark.

My father's happiness not only redeemed him, but drove
him to stories, and keeps him even now alive in me, like a second
more patient and more pleasing soul within my poor soul.

Perhaps his happiness was curiously unfounded. But cannot
a man make himself as happy as he can in the strange long
reaches of a life? I think it is legitimate. After all the world is
indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man
we might be continuously happy in it."

And I'm walking round bumping into things you said...

And the daylight stretches again beyond 7pm and with it stretches my wonder that of course the world continues apace at this hour, when all is regularly drawn & blinded & darkened in the house of two little uns.
Getting out & about from time-to-time has brought the realization anew. Spilling out with mates into Errol Street for a Fringe Festival comedy show on a Tuesday night. Riding in the daylight to a north Carlton pub for some scheduled & much sought after conviviality on a Wednesday night. We made it. Another winter down.

Riding to the G in the dark & the rain, racing the clock. Floodlights looming over Fitzroy all the way. Arriving. Chaining up the bike. Finding Gate 3, scanning the ticket & running up the escalator in footy shorts & gore-tex coat. Could the Woods do it? Heart pounding with effort & expectation, rounding the bend and onto Level 2 as the crowd all shuffle up out of their seats for the anthem. Hide away up the back, swap the wet shorts for dry jeans & take a seat just as the siren sounds. A rollicking first half of missed opportunities. We will get them again? Jimmy Bartel teaching me about the setting of screens and only then becoming aware of a whole new game within a game to an extent I’d never seen before to set up Ablett on his own. And the dancing, prancing second half, soured by cocky Geelong supporters around me to the point that I even left early (to beat the (bike) traffic).

But this spring has a special fizz, don’t you think? Can you feel it? There’s a spark of something floating on the wind. Or maybe it’s a loose willy-willy that flicks up the dust and makes anything seem possible? The skies are brighter. Bigger. All is fresh and new and again.

Here we’re debating house plans & looking forward to a 4th birthday and also to a little family getaway. CJ will be running 10km leg of the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday & will then pop up to the Gold Coast for a work conference. Nice! SJ is coming up to 4 now & has been seen ringing imaginary friends (on an old disconnected phone handset) quite a bit lately. KT is 2½ and took it upon herself to cast aside the Age of Nappies last week. These kids are growing and growing and revealing more of themselves seemingly every day.

And me? I’ve been in the business of watching & observing & relishing my Slow Talker status around these parts.
My (fractured) coccyx gives me less pain than previously, though it still aches to sit. Sometimes a sharp pain, rather than an ache. This experience has taught me new lessons about Australia’s health system, overturning some idealistic naïve ideas. It turns out that without private health insurance, a public patient cannot simply offer to pay for a consultation with a private specialist. This had been my understanding. But no. The private specialist in his/her private rooms opts instead to not even allow an appointment. No private health insurance = very limited access to private system.
This situation has meant I will not be seen by my first-choice specialist in Melbourne, though thankfully my referring doctor was able to find a private specialist prepared to consult with me.

But I’m back on the bike at least once/week now, taking in Edinburgh Gardens, the MCG and the Yarra on the trip to work. And still working a 3 day-week. Clocked up 1 year at the Bureau of Meteorology this week. I’ve found it very supportive and interesting and challenging and fun.

Books? I enjoyed the many characters & life stages of those characters in The Good Parents (Joan London), found The Boat (Nam Le) interesting rather than riveting & had trouble with The Spare Room (Helen Garner). Yesterday I stopped reading The Time We Have Taken (Steven Carroll) as I couldn’t get past the continually sighing internal debates of every character but today have found a cracker in The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry). All hail the Brunswick library.

And it seems just now that I’m finding inspirational people everywhere I look. Really helping my perspective & meanderings & wanderings around this world. So what are the ethics of finishing off the last 50 pieces of someone else’s 500-piece jigsaw puzzle project? Can routine and the presence of order help to rekindle the feeling of independence and of lost self? Life is scary, but courage is knowing your own role and your own values. How do you measure the success of your life? What’s the best way to make a difference to this world? Where can we do the most good? What is happiness?
Conversations over lunch, at the pub, over email to Darwin. Conversations with the people with whom we share this life.
Happy spring.
It’s happening.

there is room for make believe out in the jungle

There’s a man with an overly long trenchcoat who gets on the tram and when he does so he pushes past the assembled commuters towards a bright yellow pole. His eyes take in no one and nothing. He greets not a soul. He is in his own world. Alone, perhaps, save for his iPod. Around him, as the tram eases again towards town, are his kin. Ironic. The kin of the alone. There’s the woman with the constant suspicious look, eyes darting over the top of her newspaper, folded crisply to the crossword page. The school girl reading over some hand-scrawled notes, iPod working away. There’s the Swanston Street crowd, work-a-day uniforms of corporate worlds on bodies matched with resignation on faces. There’s the William Street crowd, similarly fitted out, but with more tailored corporate uniforms (sometimes even a waistcoat!)
At Spencer Street the mass of humanity spilling from the train station each morning pushes against me and my travels. I, the rainbow trout, jostle against the current of scores of trenchcoats, pleated skirts (and matching runners), wet hair and rush. Everyone rushing. Must be important. So very important. Fighting at the pedestrian crossing to weave a path against the tide. I must have made face-contact with hundreds by now. And not a single smile amongst them.

Most mornings, at this point, I sing. Singing my way across the pedestrian crossing has advantages. My repertoire is limited, but the song that most aptly comes to mind, observing these great shoals of business–fish is “across the universe,” and in particular its opening line of: “words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they make their way across the universe…”

The city in morning rush hour (no kidding!) is no place for emotional sustenance. Or for children. Where are the children? My school teaching days wash fondly forward as I traipse up the concrete & steel hill; yet more windswept grimaces surrounding me, cigarettes lighting en masse. (“Hi Mr Wilson – hey did you see the show last night? Mr Wilson – nice tie. Hi Mr Wilson – why are you wearing footy shorts?”)

Thinking of this now, I am reminded of a message shared recently with a great friend. I’m sure they won’t mind.
----
Think of the mundane & the trivial & the challenges & the exhaustion & the last time you were furious with your lot.
I thought of this and then i thought of a patient and watchful gatekeeper.
Like an elder.
Someone of gravitas and of unspoken wisdom.
Someone who doesn't shirk anything.
Who doesn't flinch.
Someone who bears all before them and who listens and who accepts.
And who is sought.

I was thinking about this person & how I reckon that's a valuable person and then I thought of that daily load again.
I'm picturing that person. it's a woman & now she is lying on the ground.
She lies down to rest.
It's not as easy as it looks - this wisdom that she carries.
She lies down on a big flat rock that sits in the late evening sun.
The floodplain is below her.
She sighs and she breathes.
She breathes deeply through her nose.

She knows that this clutter of emotion and of noise in life is constant.
But she breathes again and is rested.
A light breeze shuffles branches & leaves overhead.
She hums and she smiles.
----
Who are we? Who are you?
I shared a week in Cairns with work mates. Truly shared. exhausting. wonderful. Meanwhile, at home, we were burgled - back door smashed in, computers & jewellery & video camera & hard drive (with photos, stories, etc) stolen. No one was home, so family are all fine.

Breathe.
Breathe.
That photo there was taken off the coast of Cairns. Snorkled with a turtle! Yes siree.
Breathe.
adios.

australia 2 - 1 japan

Ah yes, rolling down rathdowne street, past stationary cars, on the way to the pub, ignorant of the possibility of bike seat thieves being AT LARGE and weaving among the Imperial throng, empty-handed blind turn at the (severely understaffed) bar, laying eyes on a posse of blokes i recognised well and getting amongst it.
"and g;day to you, too." from simon, some minutes after my arrival. Champagne email banter going un-replied-all to.
The Great Seat Heist. The rueful prospect of a quad-tearing marathon to footscray later in the evening. The even-more-rueful prospect of telling Claudia about it. The rise and fall of Gary Neiwand.
Picking up the meandering pace through the Treasury gardens and moving at a fair clip by the time ground announcers could be heard. "Kick off in 10 minutes; we want you all to be seated..."
Navigating well the famililar flood of the MCG pre-game, but navigating with less poise the unexpected jog/ light run up flight after flight sucking in air of diminishing oxygen content. The dizziness of first arrival on 4th deck. The craned neck to see if, yes, there are more seats behind me. And yes, ours are among 'em.
A strangely subdued first half, wondering about tactics and individual versus team contributions, and strategy and imagined complexity versus real complexity and how much of this game comes down to chance, anyway?
The Tim Cahill double.
Rocky's "It's just like world war 2 all over again! At half time they (japan) were in Darwin!"
The roar.
The roar.
The drums, the flares, the songs.
Threading among the stationary cars through East Melbourne and thinking, yep, that was the go.

hope suburban life swallows us all tonight.
Life in the Big League is hard to take.

He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life.

Do you twitter? A teacher mate of mine asked me that the other day. Twitter? No idea, I said. So I signed up (yet another alias assumed) to check it out. Just the same as the facebook status updates, but without the photos. You get 140 characters to say what you're up to/ thinking/ doing. And it all works on the premise that other people will want to to know exactly what you're up to/ thinking/ doing several times a day. Crikey. Not unlike blogging, I guess. But a drawcard in this Age of Celebrity, is that you can search for anyone and start “following” their updates. So to test this idea, I'm now following Hugh Jackman. Would you believe it? He's just been sitting in Miami airport and is looking forward to going to Disneyland with the kids. Noise, anyone?

Noise? I popped along to the Shrine of Remembrance this year for a bit of dawn service. Not really my idea, nor something I'd ever done. We caught the tram there in the darkness, people emerging from the gloom at each stop. Strangely packed tram by the time we reached central Melbourne.
-so you're down from Canberra are you?
-yeah i'm here for the long weekend. We get the public holiday Monday in Canberra.
-gee that's alright. How's yer work?
-oh I was in Papua New Guinea last week and before that I was organising the Chinese delegation to Perth but we were only there for 3 days so it wasn't really enough time to catch up with anyone, you know?
Happy to be off the tram and walking in darkened silence with the pilgrims. Past some seedy gents just emerged from an all-night bar. Strangely sheepish in the face of the silent, solemn looks of the sober. Walking up the grassy slope, among the darkened trees, branches in the face, when the Last Post rang out.
I wondered about the whole “glorifying war” angle of the day, but I reckon it's a totally personal issue. What someone gets out of the day, recognises of the day, attributes to the day, is their own business and for me it was a remembering. I think the workaday soldiers of the lines are people to be remembered. Not so the politicians or decision-makers of the era. Nevertheless the occasion intrigues me still. Why do so many get out of bed to be there? So many kids. So many people so far from home.

Lately we've had mates & kids staying with us in our house. Playing & eating & sleeping & living. Holidays to the beach, cavorting with a dolphin. We've had an Easter at home, painting & washing & sandpapering. And we've felt the cold snap and realised the heater stopped working sometime over the summer. We've enjoyed many many birthday parties of little people; including a 2nd birthday party held at our place. So for the first time since October 2005 there is no one at our house under the age of 2.

And I learned last Friday that my coccyx is in fact fractured. Tail bone. Cracked it back in the first week of Feb, throwing myself backwards onto a low low couch. Expecting to be enveloped in the loving embrace of several cushions. Instead crashing CRASHING my tail hard onto a sturdy, non-cushioned armrest. Crack. Yeah, it hurt at the time. Since then it has stopped me running. Stopped me riding a bike. Stopped me sitting down on the tram. Stopped me sitting down at work. Fairly inconvenient. So I finally had an x-ray taken, and yep, crack-o-rama.
Fingers crossed for a decent recovery.

Tram-riding much more frequently now, me and my broken tail, and this means book-reading nirvana. Talk about a silver lining. Have you read any of Roald Dahl's short stories? Or Cloudstreet? These stories and story-tellers are worth a look. He says. Seriously.

So two days each week I'm home with the girls, so no book reading of my own then; rather plenty of Possum Magic and The Very Hungry Catepillar and Tikki Tikki Tembo. And lazy walks to the market and maybe a tram ride to the museum this week. Ahh yes, it's cold and slow at our place these days. Putting another jumper on and easing along. Hope you're fit & firing wherever you are.

sometimes when this place gets kind of empty

Looking back, it's been coming for a while but tonight, with New Order bobbing up on the shuffle, a view of our kitchen in front of me (dishes washed, Steph's painting on the bench) I realise that I've got life worked out. Ba bing.

And do you know, with that, everything has slotted into its place.

It's as if, by understanding my own vantage point, all worries, all concerns, have hoisted their own little white flags.

It feels a bit weird right now, but as I said, I think it's been coming for a while.

The top of my head has flipped open like on that old ad for a toothbrush.

Going. Going.

I'm left with the core.

That's all I need. I'm ready now. I feel ready. More ready that ever, to be truthful.

Crikey.

I feel clean and confident and natural and if I was to liken this feeling to an image that image would be of the (southern) night sky. Not so much an image, but the feeling of being underneath it it in the bush or in the desert country. Open. Without limit. Forever.

Noise is something I've just learned to actively avoid. This is helping. Noise as in extraneous, irrelevant, meaningless facts, information, statistics, etc. By golly this type of noise is pervasive. This very writing is now part of the Earth's noise. Time taken reading and writing is time we are not thinking. Unless we are, I guess.

Is there a struggle taking place? It would appear so. I buy the Saturday paper here and read it over the rest of the week. News of the city is mostly grim. News of the world is mostly grim. Is this what “sells papers”? Do journos and editors set the agenda or do they follow the lead of their marketing department?

But everywhere noise. Junk mail. Junk telephone calls. Junk email. Stereo aural assualt even while sitting at the Test cricket. Advertising bombardments. Absence of time to ponder. Time to think. Do we think?

The Noise and the struggle are linked, I think. Noise, a useless clamour for our attention. Buy 2 get one free. 100 free SMS. New facebook layout. Amex membership rewards. Peter Costello. Credit card payments now by SMS. Now online. Recharge using this card get 75 hamburger vouchers. Sale This Week Only. Inside 50s. Online friends. Clangers. Germ free. Write something about yourself. Make $50-$100/ hour. Easy currency trading. Jacko's brother asked out that girl from video easy. Free trip competition. Wash the bathroom floor. 6 months interest free. The clamour. The clamour. Our attention. Our limited and very sacred attention.

I'm turning the Noise off.

Off.

Footy is a case in point. The overwheling media fixation and (consequent?) population fixation on an imperfect, physically arduous, tedious brand of provincial football growing each year. Now players of that sport are treated by media and betting agencies alike with a significance rivalling and in some cases even outstripping their own (employer!) clubs. Made a bet on the Brownlow voting yet? Filled in your Super Coach team? How many points is he worth per match? Sum the points, watch the rookie, loose ball gets? Someone turn off the Noise.

But hey, I like the game. Love the game. Just take me away from the 7-day-a-week media circus & the audio visual assault at each match. Leave it as a game. (must be local footy, I reckon).

Noise. The Dalai Lama has been in exile for 50 years from his home in Tibet. Global village -style noise. Keeping up with the shared experience of the global Joneses. Posh & becks -style. Liverpool, manchester Utd -style. Do we need it? Do we need it?

Could drop into conversation with anyone on earth – howabout that Obama? Howabout that Fritzl? Howabout that Pakistan?

So i'm learning that a noiseless life is a thinking life and a reflecting life.

Quiet.

Struggle.

Quite a struggle.

You say you want a revolution.

Doorways to the past have opened in the past week. A message from a former Year 8 student that had me laughing out loud. A dear friend not heard from in five years appearing at the door, partner, daughter, staying & playing & eating & bathing together. It's a wonder.

Life is beautiful.

Opening some books.

Talking.

Listening.

Thinking.

That's it.

That's me for now.

I've had a birthday just now yet i feeling younger than before. The sky is open.

put me in a cage full of lions, i'll learn to speak lion

G'day from our rattletrap house,

Have you read any good books lately?Any books at all? Books and reading have made a triumphant & appreciated return to my life in the past few months. Roddy Doyle's "The Van", his "The Woman who Walked into Doors," Christos Tsiolkas' "The Slap," Robert Drewe's "Our Sunshine," and this morning I'm into Richard Ford's "Independence Day."

I've been alongside a couple of Dubiner's setting up a chipper van outside a pub. I've been witness to horrible physical abuse. I've pondered life from the perspectives of a teenage girl, a septuagenarian Greek man and egotistical men suffering mid-life crises. I've ridden with a widow's son outlawed whose requests Must Be Obeyed.

And it's been grand.

The pace of life has slowed here in the past months. Maybe this is due to my new job – I'm certainly not bringing any work home any more. We all feel that like a cold change across the bay on a day of stifling heat. And I'm attending a workplace only 3 days each week; giving me the rare gift of being at work more than I'm not (3 outta 5 days) while also being at home more than I'm not (4 outta 7 days). Presto! What a trick!

Breathing space is noticeable around our place. Unexpected contacts & visits! from long-ago friends have burnt a warm & welcome dizziness. Special to think & to remember & to share. To clap eyes on & embrace & embrace the history & the shared experiences worth more than you can say.

Breathing space.

Running. Running for the sake of running has always perplexed me. Laps of the oval? Something for the greyhounds, mate. But this week I've gone 25km (total) in four runs & am feeling really good for it – if a bit tight around the calves. It's a kind of tiredness that I'd forgotten about. That tiredness that says "yep, you've done a physically tough thing today."

Breathing space.

Stephanie turned 3 in October. Family lunch at our place. She is full of questions and full of opinions. She reasons and rationalises and explains. She remembers. Her standard position is the contrary one. "Steph, would you like the blue or the red bowl?" "No, the yellow bowl." She reads (memorises) her books with an uncannily accurate and fast ability. And she will then sit with Kyla and read them to her. Stephanie loves jig-saw puzzles. And she will help Kyla with puzzles, too. On Wednesday Stephanie drew a picture and wrote the letter M at the top, saying "This is M for Mummy and I'm going to give this picture to her." She takes herself to the toilet now – calling for help when a bum wipe is required. She has started riding her bike (birthday present – with training wheels). She regularly rides to the park now ("Dad, you and Kyla can walk behind me.")

Stephanie knows and remembers. She places people and events better than anyone I know. Meeting up with friends last week she stood in the centre of the gathering & gave a rollcall of attendees, matching couples together as "best friends" ("There's Jack. And over there is Amy. Jack and Amy are best friends.") She can recall events and places of a similar gathering months ago. I find it extraordinary.

Stephanie runs and jumps and slides and does it all with a fair bit of caution. When meeting someone new or going to a new place, Stephanie's retreat for comfort manifests in a kind of baby language – she mimics Kyla's language. For a while that confused us, even annoyed us a bit, but we realised it's just her security net and that she soon warms out of it. She relates to other people well, I think, after the initial feeling-out period. We are fortunate to have close contact with friends and their kids. Fortunate to watch skills learnt from 4-year-olds put straight into practice (You mean I can walk up a slide backwards? Why didn't anybody say so?)

Kyla is about 20 months old now. She is a funny girl who has a sneaky and crafty way of giving you a side-ways glance before making a joke. She is energetic and bold. She is a cuddly huggy girl who loves contact. Kyla slides and runs and screams and pushes trolleys and trains and prams around and around our rattletrap house. Her language is incredible ("Dad, Stephanie has enormous cup, doesn't she Dad? E-nor-mous!") I'm certain that she enjoys the benefit of an older sibling to play with & learn from. Though they have their disagreements (Me: "Steph, Kyla can use those bells in two minutes when you have finished." Steph: "No, she certainly can NOT"), the constant policing of a few months ago has ceased. Squabbles occur less frequently now. Maybe Kyla's language has developed enough to enable clearer communication. Who knows?

Kyla tries things. Climbs. Picks herself straight up when she invariably falls. Stands on top of the tricycle seat and throws her head back, arms out wide. Grins. Trying to placate her writhing wriggling squirminess is like trying to harness a fiery young filly.

Days at home are wonderful. There was a time when the prospect of spending a day at home caused anxiety to rise like a water spout. Nowadays anxiety has dropped to virtually nil.

Other happenings?

With Justine's help (thanks Juz!) CJ has introduced a Sunday night Muppets night at our place. After a bath we all catch an episode of the Muppets on DVD. What a treat.

And CJ & I got away for 2 nights recently – without the kids. Shock! They had a holiday (and a terrific time) at Grandma & Grandpa's house. We had a holiday (and a terrific time) at Airey's Inlet with mates. Extremely restful in a way we haven't really known in years. Talking about it, we reckon that rest came with the complete absence of decisions to be made. Instead we could just BE. We've got a family holiday lined up soon. Looking forward to it very much.

All is well at our place. Hectic activity & uncontrollable screaming spins out-of-control a couple of times a day but this is the natural order of things & something to be cherished. The kids begin their first experience of childcare (1 day/week) in a fortnight from now. No doubt there will be tremors. And so life continues to be entirely about our relationships with other people. Go well.