At Kiama Blowhole
/10 April 2016
Kiama, NSW
William Oscar McClleland, aged 28 years, drowned off Blowhole Point, October, 9, 1897; the incontestable beauty of a full-rigged ship; “Does anyone know where the love of God goes | When the waves turn the minutes to hours” (Gordon Lightfoot); pirates wore eye patches to adjust the volume of light; a young Mother walking with her two children which will soon pass her; a man in a red cap and a yellow shirt is counting down the minutes to his second resurrection; two fishermen in a small boat are glad to be alive; The Old Man and the Sea; an old angel in white sneakers is on house cleaning duties; the parkland is strewn with flight feathers from the morning take-offs; “The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss” (Douglas Adams); Kiama Lighthouse white group flashing 28,000 candelas; Mount Pleasant Lookout 3 miles; Fox Ground 6 miles; Garry Moore Parisienne Walkways; Picasso loved the circus; “Poetry is what I do in real life” (Les Murray); “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (Gen 28:12); are there any coffee shops open; the seeds of berries; I must finish H.E. Smith’s Mark Twain; thank you serendipity for Robert Lax’s Circus of the Sun; Al-Sheikh al-Akbar The Meccan Revelations; Musa my dear friend, we are all of the book; Shalom Shabbazi ‘Shakespeare of Yemen’; Jung on myth and dreams; gili, gili; Oodgeroo Noonuccal formerly Kath Walker; Schopenhauer on reality but do not tell the children; the only sure thing with suffering what we make of it during the early hours of the morning; endurance derived from “the ability to last”; Pink Floyd shine on you crazy diamond; one awful trigger after another; do not give in to the cigar; “We hire people who can get inside the head of a customer” (Apple); they have, and they will; Peking toffee apples; inside humble exteriors of churches in the little village of Arbanassi hang titanic lightning bolts of colour; Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky); diptychs and icons; take a look inside Tasos Leivaditis’ large overcoat; the dance of the dervishes; the search for truth begins and ends with tears; philosophy can lead to bad pride; theology often enough to hubris; love as best you can and go about your business; why is everybody getting tattooed; the “mark” had many significations in the old world; Ink; Vladimir Nabokov loved pencils; a waterbird with a foot missing; commercial interests versus environmental concerns; the polar ice caps are melting like big blocks of butter; Immanuel Kant the categorical imperative and the inherent value of moral agency; I have an ongoing compassion for the Prince of Denmark; “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive” (Marcus Aurelius); political correctness does not like to be questioned; totalitarianism; fascism; New Atheism; ‘the invisible hand’ of Adam Smith; the ‘hand of God’ and Diego Maradona; my right arm is racked with arthritis; Ottmar Mergenthaler’s linotype machine was hot metal; “Rivers team with fish, and water’s clear. People spend their time inventing names for things they see” (Michael Sharkey); Dante Alighieri godfather to Petrarch and Boccaccio; 12… 1234… 12… 1234; saints above this might never end; it is getting cold; where are the socks; hide your true self; Superman starring George Keefer Brewer; “What’s My Line”; I have always liked Jack Lemmon; we are for the most engaging in dramaturgy and stagecraft; an essay on market forces and mechanization; we must be sure to distinguish between the two; one is economics and the other power of steam; like the gap between tenor and soprano; David Brooks transfigures the rooms of cities; Elena Shvarts birdsong escaping from a cage; here lies our beloved father, husband and grandfather Athas Xiros “This place you loved so much”; Sydney to Kiama 159 kilometres; no exit; kiosk; bus parking; Jack Gibson and Mick Cronin were born here; luxurious accommodation with a great cocktail bar; Charmian Clift Mermaid Singing completed in Lent; “Call me Ishmael” Moby-Dick or, The Whale; “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down | Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee” (Gordon Lightfoot); where there are no biological clues it cannot be trusted; “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it” (2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000); where are you Jacques Ellul; absolute efficiency; The Chicago School of Economics; a marshmallow can hit the earth with the force of a hydrogen bomb; “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off”; Google and Facebook feed on the desire for reputation; identities are bought and sold through brands; “We are the hollow men | We are the stuffed men | Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw” (The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot); Oskar Kokoschka and his life-size Alma Mahler doll; what if robots become better parents; oh Lord, what if baby robots are better children; beyond the stuff of dreams and more terrible than nightmares; Vladimir Tatlin goes straight for the bones; the great humility of Saint Francesco of Assisi; Wumen Huikai The Gateless Gate; blood pressure on the rise Zan-Extra; Eleni’s violin is missing the D String; jazz the arranged combination of accented downbeats and upbeats; byzantine chant and southern spirituals; the true joy of the mystics; “I will soothe you and heal you. I will bring you roses. I too have been covered in thorns” (Rumi); the high tides of the Bay of Fundy; as mysterious as the Caves of the Taurus Mountains; that is correct, Guildenstern, death is not a boat; honey bottled on the lips; the master of the seas Captain James Cook could not swim; bamal; gura; guwiyang; postcode 2533; are you still here; difficult to live nowadays; people have stopped loving; “Starry starry night” Vincent.