the olive tree

 

In life if you are lucky

you find people who love you 

for who you are.

Sometimes they give you a tree.

If you wait long enough

you get olives

Not the sweetest fruit

but if you work hard at it

soft and beautiful.

Like a great friendship

for my mate forever

James

Lockdown

We've spent the last two years

couped up, going crazy.

Safety was the only word!

protection 

security

community

looking out for our loved ones.

I'm reminded of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs

and the pyramid of human behaviour.

In one way there has been a devolution of the human species

and we are relegated to the lower rungs of psychological safety

and home security.

Look a little closer though and cherrypick the rung

Family is there, a tick for love

Respect for others and self

In todays world thats been both present

and remarkably absent.

Hell that's not a pandemic issue

that's a human issue.

Try getting higher up that pyramid and you'll run into 

a glass ceiling.

The great leveller a pandemic

has destroyed the jobs and worth of talented

denied people ability to help themselves 

and others.

charity

who has time for that

its now every man or premier for themselves.

(missed your loved ones?)

and now to top it off

we have a war.

no end in sight

madmen in control.

but wait there's now a mosquito virus

that infects peoples brain

and they die in their sleep.

No cure.

what next?

no internet?

god forbid.

end of the world.

good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.

There's a common thread

amongst many people.

Climate change is upon us,

and it's someone else's fault.

Ive been shopping recently

and I want to scream at the walls

or to the person standing next to me

the human race is finished.

sneakers

shirts

chocolate

whitegoods.

Greta told us not to use straws

and we ordered a billion rat tests

all plastic

all thrown away.

everybody has a new phone

a new car

orders uber eats

gets an amazon delivery.

go on  I dare you

say we aren't all to blame

say its not our fault

say they can fix this.

I was in hawaii many years ago

at a supermarket buying fresh fruit and avocados for breakfast

whilst my american friends guzzled coke and doughnuts 

with a litre of milk and sugar at 8am.

the checkout guy

said "do you want to donate a dollar to the heart foundation"

I said "no way"

"you got yourselves into this shit, get yourselves out"

We did didn't we!

somethings not right

 

Years ago at a fancy school 

I studied three unit art

and Edvard Munch perplexed me

Madness, . . . I just didn't get it.

Three decades later 

like a guy a little slow on the uptake

In the worst year for everybody

Somethings not right.

My wife called me this morning

Our 6 year old had gone missing from the front of the house

she was hysterical, couldn't find him anywhere.

Daniel Morecomb, Samantha Knight, William Tyrell, Madeline McCann.

She called me 5 minutes later

he has playing hide and seek, 

and despite the increasing hysteria in her calls

he didn't get it.

My heart was pounding

for 30 minutes after

in the blink of an eye

anything can be taken from you.

What can you lose and never get again

innocence.

what else?

Life.

A friend died saturday.

A beautiful man, funny, smart and successful

Brain tumour.

Life isn't fair.

And its random

As I say we are often our own worst enemy

unless you have a date with fate.

 Hint, don't schedule that in.

In my deepest darkest moments 

I'm reminded of the last stanza

Of a hopkins poem

at that fancy school I attended

"As the lights of the dark west went

Oh morning at the brown brink eastward springs

for the holy ghost over the bent world broods

with a warm heart and bright wings."

Hope does spring eternal eh?

distraction

Its the end of a big year

its been real rough

its not over

almost

lost my work

lost my son

lost my mind

and I still find that

I'm easily distracted

easily led and

often inefficient

I was amazed

when I stopped work for a while

that there was so much to do

everywhere

how the hell

did I have any time to go to work in the first place?

and how in the hell do people who work

get anything done?

all the time in the world I have now

I lie in bed and look at the ceiling

peeling

put that on my list (did it)

I know what the answer is

meditation

just gotta make it a habit

unconscious.

before the day begins and

the distraction

takes over.

oh and exercise

if you can be bothered

and have had enough sleep.

so many rules.

Grief

I had the misery and fortune to attend a funeral today

and learn of a life lost early

to a chance accident

by an angry planet.

A young man

so funny

so full of life

was taken so soon.

I wept

everybody wept

 whilst the religious ceremony

talked endlessly of god.

I was angry

where was this god

who could allow such a heinous act

what a concept.

Its not enough when somebody is 14 

to say they died doing what they loved.

All that matters is they are not here

and there's nothing to fill the void.

So Alexi

you were loved by the people who knew you

and those that didn't.

and our hearts are broken.

Everybody who is a parent today

realised their worst nightmare

If you can please just simply

love those who are with you.

you never know when you or they

will be gone.

travelling

Taking off on a rainy Wednesday

I had a window seat

looking across the bay 

I saw an unrecognisable coast.

The fog rendered the known unknown.

Landmarks lost in the haze

We could have been anywhere.

The minute the plane left the earth 

the real world became a plaything

Another aircraft on the runway

a kids toy I could reach down and fly

Then we burst through the cloud layer 

into another reality of sunshine and blue sky.

The clouds were endless

another geography to marvel.

Reality is only perception

Scale is everything.

semantics

Its friday night

I listen to MOLOKO

read BUKOWSKI

and MAILER

whilst I watch the wife glaze.

I'm struck with three things

the present and future tense

I read and in the past I read.

nobody does it anymore

and we worry about irrelevance

of ourselves

of our lives

of our thoughts

often at 4am

perhaps its just me

but does anybody

get the idea

the world has turned

against us?

so many experts

selling trite answers 

to universal problems

and yet

its nothing new.

Norman writes about the fight

ALI against FOREMAN

40 years ago in Zaire

the rumble in the jungle

the human condition.

Charles writes about being a drunk

looking at people

struggling to survive 

70 years ago,

the human condition.

and really

in the fifth line

should it be 

whilst

or while?

semantics.

lest we forget

This morning

before dawn

the alarm woke me

and I accompanied my daughter Elsa 

down to the dawn service.

Never before had I thought of going

yet sometimes your children dictate

the state of play

and Elsa was singing onstage

in the cold in her uniform.

I assembled in the dark

as the ceremony began

and was struck by the number

of people paying respects

to the living and the dead

Previously I had thought of Gallipoli

as a failed battle 

evidence of the careleseness of generals

the madness of war 

and the killing of young men.

22 years ago

I travelled to Gallipoli

and stood where Attaturk

manned the machine guns

looking down the steep hills.

An impossible battle

2000 aussies killed on the first day

8000 in 8 months before

they retreated

defeated.

madness to even contemplate.

There in the dark

surrounded by strangers

we were reminded

that our freedom is paid in blood

by those that make the ultimate sacrifice.

I was struck with the thought that 

even though man fights his own nature

and wars are eternal. 

lest we forget is more about

the triumph of the human spirit

The dawn service is about human respect

its about standing together

believing in something bigger

than ourselves

and the fight against tyranny.

ANZAC day remembers the fallen

counts the endless lives lost over time

both ours and our enemies

and isn't so much about us vs them

its really about us.

As the dawn broke in the east

and I looked at the yawning kids onstage

and the sleepy faces around me

the little kids and 

the old veterans

I remembered some 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

learnt at school

in a time mostly forgotten

but still dear to my heart.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Lest we forget.

nostradamus

not being the predictive type

more the reactive type

I hesitate

before I write this.

everywhere I look

humans hunched

over devices.

da vices

and I wonder in the future

when they dig up our race

will they see our spines

bent at the neck

what will they say?

weights hanging from the head?

troubles of the world

or just bad posture

born of habit

poor thought

and

modern conditioning

I love to catch the train

and see everybody staring at the screen

no eye contact

no humour

is it any wonder 

why donald trump

is the president

right now?

dreamliner

Wandering down towards my fate

I came across my dreamliner.

it wasn't mine per se

Just anybodies sitting at a gate

and I remembered the last time

I sat behind the wing

and watched the tips rise out of sight

above the cabin.

like a swallow

more bird than plane

swept back wings 

deceptively small for such a large craft

the future of avaiton

lighter, faster more efficient

a better breed

of flight

I'm always reminded of 

Gerald Manley Hopkins

"the windhover"

about a falcon.

a modern plane

and old poem

read it 

and weep

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, 

king-dom of daylight’s dauphin,

dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, 

in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air,

and striding high there,

how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,     

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding  

rebuffed the big wind.

My heart in hiding stirred for a bird,

the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! 

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle!

AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion times told lovelier, more dangerous,

O my chevalier!   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion shine,

and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,  

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Give a little bit

Sometimes I feel that

We are so busy going places that

we don’t go anywhere.

My electrician Michael is a 60 something

divorced father of two grown children.

He has always been a relaxed easygoing individual.

He had a melanoma years ago

And recently when he said I’m stopping work

And disappeared

I feared the worst.

He wandered back into my life 6 months later

And told me a wonderful tale.

You see he’s been going to FIJI

And travelling to villages

Living with strangers

And helping out.

Sometimes he goes into the forest

And chops the trees and helps build houses

Occasionally there will be a house with electricity

And he plies his trade

Often he takes some cash and buys dry goods

And gives them to the villagers.

Whats that old line?

Charity begins at home?

I thought to myself

Here we are with everything in the world

And we struggle to get more

So we work hard, and buy more stuff

And remain unsatisfied.

Here’s a guy who has said to himself

I have enough.

He still needs to work to pay the bills

But for 3 months of the year

He gives back completely

And the smile on his face was something

To behold.

He’s an inspiration.

Modern life

The future is yet unmapped.

They say everything has already been done

Or written, or thought of before.

Until something new happens

That random element of chance

That idea that forms in a person’s head.

When I was young I believed there were

Sane people and crazy people.

One of my best mates, Dean

a man who I admire greatly

Put me straight.

“Pete” he said

“we are all crazy, just in our own way”

and I am reminded of that immortal line from a

Simon and Garfunkle song

“I don’t have a friend who feels at ease

I don’t know a soul that’s not been shattered or

driven to its knees”

A study once stated that happiness is 50% inbuilt.

The rest is up to you.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to find what it is

That makes us content.

Happiness is an illusion. You can feel happy,

you can do things that make you happy

but you cant keep it.

It’s a byproduct of action or inaction.

And the modern world isn’t exactly helpful

We are almost delivered into a world of addiction.

Booze, screens, sugar, sex, gambling, shopping

Rewiring the brain constantly with desire.

Dopamine

Rewards are out there no doubt, but this modern world

It’s a struggle.

Recently one of my best mates has told me he is bipolar.

The ups were great, the downs terrible.

The result was medication and the accompanying

Flatline.

Remove desire, remove emotion, remove addiction.

Problem is that’s what makes life exciting.

Meditation and self reflection are surely the key

Control over your own desires

Physical health and balance.

Key concepts in the prescription for well being.

But hey, I’ve got a product to sell you.

Its what you want, what you desire.

It’s a better you.

Do it and you can improve everything.

Or it wont,

because nothing really works.

Increasingly we are sold a lie.

My wife studied Yoga teaching

There was a lot of emphasis on being present.

Not just here, but being really here and now.

Not being distracted

Not being driven

Just being.

She put it better than anyone

“we are human beings, not human doings”

totally at odds with modern life.