Of myths and men

Jokes are like myths. They are told and retold with the understanding that factual accuracy is not the issue. The truth of the story is irrelevant to the point of it.  

http://www.academia.ed./2310/Myth_Meaning_and_Merriment_Did_You_Hear_the_One_About_the_Resurrection....

I’ve been contemplating the notion of myths in the past week and a bit.

I have been prompted to research what one has to do to attain the legendary status that merits a Canberra Street being named after one – apart from die.  Is there a Devil’s Advocate to the case for potential candidates or does one just need a good publicist? 

And what of Rolf Harris? Who knows the real story behind the veneer of Aussie boy made good with a wobble board, a paintbrush and a tin to bongo – never mind that he was born a Pom. Do you think the Queen has shrouded his portrait like they used to do in churches in Lent?

At the risk of being labelled un-Australian, I’ve been wondering why it is that many of my friends and a lot of Australians are absolutely in to ANZAC day and I’m really not. It puzzles me.

I guesstimate I’ve taken part in over 50 ANZAC services: marching, representing, witnessing, with revallie and the last post performed by squeaky pimply faced cadets, and tall toned pitch perfect bronzed gods. I’ve heard Wilfred Owen, or part of him, recited; stories of incredible bravery and sheer foolhardiness; watched thousands of wreaths been laid by teetering old ladies, and blithely innocent children. 

Don’t get me wrong. I lament the loss of young men who in their prime are sent off to wars that are sold to them as myths of adventure and altruism. I empathise with the women who lose sons husbands and lovers in nether parts of the world. 

I have no relatives who have fought for their country – history and circumstance intervened for us.

My ANZAC myth was shaped by Dylan as he belted out to the masters of war:

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.  

Eric Bogle is on my regular play list.

Johnny Turk he was waiting he primed himself well

He showered us with bullets and he rained us with shells

And in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hell

Nearly blew us right back to Australia. 

I took part in anti-war marches in my adolescents and in more recent times in protests against John Howard’s mythological buy in to the weapons of mass destruction that may eventually see him tried as a war criminal if some have their way. 

I’ve heard all the arguments about the need to defend one’s country, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. I don’t disrespect the sacrifices of unsuspecting youth thrust into the line of fire and left to deal with their post traumatic horrors for the rest of their lives. It’s the decisions and action of the arrogant woremongers whose egotism, self-righteousness and political ends justify wreaking havoc on the lives of so many that is my disgust. 

At the core I am a pacifist. 

And maybe that’s my myth.

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This Week's Art Works

  Maybe if I keep posting these I too will become a legendary Australian artist

Pears. Pastel drawing on paper

I remember when.....

Memory is a strange thing. I wonder why it is that I can recall a quote of my early high school years that even now amuses me: 

They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen.

It’s author GK Chesterton was even then an old fashioned writer and later as a secondary school English teacher I wondered why anyone would choose his essays as suitable text for 14 year olds.

But those were the days of the prescribed  cannon. 

On re-reading  On Running After One’s Hat and The Secret of a Train I understand it was his literary genius that we were meant to appreciate.  

I think of Chesterton  and I think of quaint train travel, but I wish the quote I had remembered of his was : 

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated, 

or

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected

(Wikipedia)

As a child, before I became politically jaded by weasel words and wriggling rhetoric,  we travelled everywhere by train. There was no family car. We lived in a railway town where the soot from regular steam services settled on the newly washed sheets and led my mother to curse. I remember the first time the Southern Aurora travelled through from Sydney to Melbourne and we were up in the pre-dawn to watch it pass – as significant to our lives as the Olympic torch passing by for the Melbourne games.

It was a rite of passage to take the train the 25miles to the regional shopping centre and spend the day gazing at the array of merchandise not available in our small country town. 

The train took us on family holidays to New England and occasionally to the North Coast.

When I was at boarding school the trip backwards and forwards at the start and end of term held great expectation and relief. At each stop we collected or deposited an assortment of ‘jaffas’ in their pressed maroon knife pleated serge tunics, gold blouses, berets and boaters, gloves and stockings. We were straight out of an English children’s novel.

As an adult I essentially gave up train travel. It seemed slow, cumbersome and somewhat antiquated.

I did make an eight day train journey from Singapore to Chang Mai in 2006.  It was an organised tour for 400 runners with a drinking problem, who were headed for our biennial world gathering. We were farewelled at the station by a meandering dancing dragon with accompanied drummers, offloaded at various stops to run through the jungle and be treated with local festivities and sumptuous feasts.  But I was reminded that there is an enormous chasm between the romantic notion of train travel and the reality. We were never on time, the seating was hard and uncomfortable, and like everywhere,  I had forgotten that things ‘back on’ to railway lines, so were often treated to the mounds of accumulated garbage  behind people’s houses as we made our way up the Malay Peninsula.  Don’t get me wrong, the adventure was amazing, but the train travel left a lot to be desired.

Recently in Singapore I travelled everywhere by train. Now there’s a system to learn from.

I’ve been hearing about rail services quite a bit lately. Public comment is about to start on the light rail between Canberra Civic and the northern suburbs. Yesterday Radio National featured a program on the future of rail travel and the billions of dollars and 45 years that a feasibility study has revealed it would cost to upgrade the system between Brisbane and Melbourne to modern times. I learnt that  one of the reasons it takes longer to travel by rail than road is that the latter route  between Sydney and Melbourne adds  100 extra kilometres in order to accommodate reduced gradients and steep  curves on a line that has a speed limit of 80kph.

As a senior I get to travel by train on a reduced rate. Just a couple of weeks ago I booked a ticket to see Paul Simon at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I decided that I would take the train. I booked a first class seat. I had not been on an Australian country train since the early 1970’s. Little had changed. Admittedly there were no metal feet warmers thrown on at Goulburn – but that may have been because we are not yet into winter. 

But I could still get a pie and sauce at the buffet car, and an announcement to say we were not to sleep in the aisle and the luggage racks. We rattled along at a leisurely pace and the world was again 1956.

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This Weeks Art Work:

View from another 19th Century form of transport

Ballooning over Hall. Acrylic on canvas board. 780x560 mm

 

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Great expectations

This week I am not sure whether I am Pip or Lear or Polllyanna.

Expectation theory suggests that expectations shape our behaviour – if we expect things to happen we will act to ensure they do. But the truth is expectations make you pleased or pissed because their realisations are dependent on people and things outside oneself. 

I’ve been house hunting.

I have aligned my expectations with real estate speak, but they haven’t aligned their expectations with what I am prepared to pay for a fully realised, beach proximate, beautifully appointed, crisp, neat and clean dwelling underpinned by solid foundations and sheltered by an un-leaking roof.  I’m paring back my list of ‘musts’ and my travel time to the rolling waves. I’ll be content to sit in my wet cossies for 10-15 minutes as I drive home from the beach having realised my budget will not stretch to sea views and a short saunter to the sands.  

 I’m doing my bit. 

I just want the agents to do theirs as well. 

I’m hoping I will not be disappointed.

I’m also expecting that when I poke around at an open house I won’t be overcome by the stench emanating from the bathroom that obviously accommodates a football team,  or extermination fumes that have the fleas leap about as if training for their circus act.

I am surprised that acquaintances seem to expect that I will trade my current house and garden for life in an apartment.   It is becoming increasingly obvious that as an older person people expect I am wanting to reduce the physical work demanded of a bigger space and a yard. And that I will never need room for family and guests to visit. I’m not living up to those expectations. It is the family, the friends,  the garden, the privacy and the morning meanders to see what is growing and blooming that sustain me. 

Like the rest of the world I’m expecting North Korea’s President Park Geun-hye to behave himself so I can safely take my granddaughter on a much planned first overseas trip to Vietnam in June.  OK, so the rest of the world is not banking on exploring Hanoi in a few weeks. But, if the news of the world BBC is correct Park Geun-hye is just expecting Barack Obama to call him and all will be well.  I am happy to pay for the connection.

We all have expectations of family. This week I listened to a program on Radio National that explored the notions and realities of sibling rivalry. Commencing with all those adages about not being able to select our relatives it went on to make the point that we are driven by a primeval desire to both kill and protect our siblings: kill because we must compete with them for food and attention, protect because we are of a clan. 

Lear’s  madness resulting from unrealised expectations of  family strikes a cord.  I have been rumbling my belly full, spitting fire, and spouting rain for days. 

Sylvia Plath said: If you expect nothing form anyone you’re never disappointed, or as Alexander Pope put it: Blessed is he who expects nothing for he will never be disappointed.

But,  I’ve got my expectations and reality better get used to it.

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This Week's Art Work:

A place that more than lived up to expectations.

Broome Pier. Acrylic on canvas board 780x560 mm