The saddest thing and Democracy in the US

One of the saddest things I saw on the news a couple of days ago was a father in the US with his six or seven year old son teaching him the finer points of holding a gun and learn to shoot. When asked a few questions, this little boy just parroted the father’s mantra of ‘pride in his country’ and freedom to ‘defend’. This poor little boy.

Another man proudly stated he had about 14 guns and was buying more. He was shown to shoot at clay pigeons together with a woman who also was a great believer in being ‘prepared’.

There is something very odd about how a country which prides itself of being at the forefront of democracy yet is now desperately fighting to retain a right which to me is proof of the opposite, an apparent inability to listen and take action against an evil opposing democracy.  The right to bear arms back in 1875 or earlier has nothing to do with hundreds of millions owning assault weapon and guns. The British have long gone and left, so have naughty Indians and Cowboys.

There is no way that a country that has more  firearms belonging to its citizens than their daily needs for loaves of bread or protective roofs over their heads can still belong to the pool of countries of the true democratic world.  It just doesn’t add up when guns generally are for detaining or locking away freedom. Has the US become a Liberia or Sierra Leone? How far is it removed from rampaging citizens roaming the streets looking for kills? There are already 30 000 people dying of guns a year. It is just staggering.

Has anyone seen the footage lately of enormous exhibition halls, the size of cathedrals, holding gun shows? Row after row of sinister black assault rifles, all displayed in its macabre magnificence, gleaming and with glistening erect barrels ready to ejaculate its deadly load towards the perceived loathsome enemy, seemingly lurking everywhere  around  US’ wholesome societies corners. Last time it were the 20 children of Sandy Hook that were the ‘enemy’ together with 6 adults. Who knows where the next enemies might be hiding; in hospitals, churches, or more schools? At the gun shows there were hundreds and thousands of guns all shown as exhibited like up- market fashion items. Prospective buyers were seen to lovingly stroke and caress the naked barrels, murmuring sweet nothingness in their dark crevices of silencers and bullet magazines. .

With 30 000 shot dead annually, all one can say is,’ if believing that in the US citizens must be armed against the enemy, it follows also there must be lots of enemies in the US.’ You just can’t have it both ways. “We need guns to defend ourselves, but they are hardly ever used because in the US there are no enemies”, or,” we need guns because we are surrounded by danger and enemies are everywhere we turn”. ” At every step we take we might face our enemy and danger. Watch out or you’ll get shot so… get a good and faster gun and shoot first”.

It all sounds ridiculous and doesn’t make sense. There are now hordes of women buying guns with Prada and Bling being the main reason. Gun shops are run off their feet and everyone is onto more guns, hundreds of millions of them. The gun lobby now seems to dictate the country and I saw one man loading up his car with ammo and guns. He smiled into the camera almost expecting to be canonized for his foray into a frenzied shooting-out campaign against the enemy.

It’s clear that the NRA does everything in its power to whip up the hysteria and fear of enemies. They even advice that schools ought to arm themselves with a ‘good guy with a good gun.’ Is that democracy?

I am speechless.

A  bad world with Noam Chomsky and the UK Cardinal.

A sex scandal is engulfing a top UK Catholic priest. Allegation of this top Cardinal sharing drinking session with other priests with inappropriate behavior as a bonus will overshadow news of the flooding at the Australian Clarence River valley. Blade runner Pistorius is accused of murder and his brother of manslaughter as well as the top police prosecutor. The chance of scallywag Berlusconi returning to the top job in Italy. It just never rains but it pours.

It seems hard to come to anything redeeming this world. Where are the good news stories? Well, we lived for a long while on how Malala is showing the world to be courageous and not let being shot at in a bus remain a hindrance in wanting to attend school. She was indeed an ‘Icon of bravery’. The handing out of bravery medal for saving a drowning toddler, plus the occasional story of people with miraculous returns to life from dreadful diseases, do make headlines of sorts, but how do they weigh up against the ‘misery’ one?

Some years ago I remember reading a book called ‘the manufacturing of consent, by Noam Chomsky. While he might be best known for that book, he is lesser known for his writings about language and his theory that language is innate and that grammar and syntax ought not to restrict the language by too many rules. The innateness of language is one of the reasons why children learn languages so easily, almost effortlessly and naturally with the ability to understand and convey messages with the most eloquence and brevity which many also lose when growing up.

Why is that? How come they end up saying ‘stuff like that’ or, unable to find words to answer a question, escaping in the inane ‘you know’. No, we don’t! Perhaps the parents are mute, watching non-stop TV and with swallowing endless snack bars without uttering many words. Children do have to hear words being spoken.

We are so often surprised and entertained when the 4 year old comes up with the most astonishing observations and able to give words to it. Walking around with our dog (the incorrigible Jack Russell) Milo, he is often noticed by children in prams before they actually take notice of the adult a bit higher up, if at all. It seems that children and pets also connect better when they are still very young. Perhaps, dogs and toddlers are much closer in nature, more alert, more observant and an understanding, especially by dogs that children have much in common, including a language.

The understanding that priests, no matter how godly they are supposed to be, are without the tincture of carnality, would only escape the ignorant or the most fanatical of unquestioning believers. Why should they be excluded from that blessing or curse, depending on the acceptance of carnal pleasures or feelings of eternal misery infected by guilt and flames of promised eternal damnation?

I can well imagine the priests after a couple of lovely cold ales or stouts freeing up, letting go of the stifling and forbidden, being cloistered up for weeks, trying  running away from their risible combustible erections and other forbidden mea culpa  temptations to give in to what the rest of us are allowed, more or less, give free reign to.

Now years later, after all those thirty years of struggling in being good, all hell on earth now breaks loose with another hell waiting just around the corner. The poor Pope, it is all getting a bit much. He too must have had his morning glories. Perhaps, with a particular lovely nun having looked at him, oh so coyly sweetly and Virgin Mary like, in the papal eye and given rise to nature’s natural temptations.

A helicopter will soon take him away to a retirement and holiday destination south of Rome. He will still remain a catholic with a deep faith, he has promised. I wish him a few good years.

It’s not easy and we will be lucky to get out alive.

Bad news always outpaces the good.

An indecent Habit.

They say that the largest and biggest problem facing the world is the threat of over-population together with lack of food. Yet, this morning I watched a program whereby an eminent professor scientist had all the numbers and statistics at his side proving half the world’s food gets thrown out. That’s right; we chuck out half of our food. Searching for answers, the good professor put the blame squarely on the young, the baby boomers children, even grandchildren.  It must be right though.

Most mornings on my walk I am tempted to pick up the throw outs of food. This morning’s takings; a bag clearly identifiable with a Big M and gold arch and a carton of a Domino Pizza box with a half eaten mozzarella ‘family size’ morsel still in its box. The food would have been eaten direct from the bag or box, perhaps while driving, and heaved out when the opportunity arose and the look in the back mirror revealed no one was watching.

After I opened the Big Golden Arch bag, there was a complete bun in it with soft ochre coloured cheese and some green leaves still neatly tucked in between. The owner of this bag must have just taken the beef minced patties out and chucked the rest. The domino pizza was decorated with grey pieces of mushroom, some red coloured stuff, perhaps beet-root or tomato but, apart from one previously mentioned half eaten morsel, no mozzarella. It seems that the meat gets targeted for the gaping mouths and masticating jaws, but the rest abandoned. What wealth, what moral abandonment of food ethics.

I placed the bags and carton in a bin and noticed the bin had lots of pizza pieces with boxes and other throw away food items discarded. The smell predominantly was a mixture of pizza, gravy ladled chips and acidy pungent stale slushy remnants soft drinks looking to slake thirsts. Take away, throw away.

Dear mother, stay where you are. The world has changed since the potato peeling soup you saved for us in your green enameled bucket of the 1945 soup kitchen in Rotterdam! Did that bucket not have a ceramic holder in the middle of the handle, allowing the bucket to swing freely? Since those days, no food was ever wasted by us, scraps always used for compost or for the ducks along river’s edge.

Of course, food thrown out in the public arena might pale in what gets chucked out privately. What I would not give to take a peek inside the kitchen disposal bins of our societal neighbours, friends or foes. It would be too rude to saunter over to your friends’ disposal bins in the kitchen while you and friend have just arrived, but, perhaps after a couple of shiraz’, and as your host goes to the bathroom, go and be brave and opportune and have a quick glance. You might be surprised.

Who knows those kinds of intimate food preparations or dietary secrets about each other?  We take for granted certain aspects of our friends, s a, they are not murderers or likely to self-immolate in front of an embassy or airport, nor rife through the pockets of your jacket hanging from the coat-hanger in the hallway.

Yet, when it comes to food, who knows what dastardly deeds are performed and on so many kitchens Caesar-stone bench tops? If half the food gets thrown out, it can’t just be only our kids. Who goes still hungry, surely no one? Put up hands that only slice and use the white bits of the leeks or chives, jettison the rest in the bin? Who throws away stale bread or the odd spouting spud? That’s just penny pinching stuff, what about the Christmas Turkey or half eaten but double smoked 6 kilo ham?

As the plane sliced through the clouds an enormous rubbish tip came into view directly below the passengers. Over that ocean of rubbish crawled an ant like colony of human waves, all looking for scraps of food as the convoy of trucks spewed out their fresh loads onto the hordes of the hungry.

The Boeing captain announced; we will be landing in Bombay shortly; please keep your seat belts on and remain seated. At the airport the air-conditioning was humming while the Coke machine was being reloaded. A pale looking woman was unfolding a pram and her husband lowered a young sleepy child into it and gave the bottle of milk, the luck of the right birth.

A couple of miles away, the rubbish tip was getting busy, being clambered over, scraps of food were being prised out of the steaming morass and eaten on the spot. The things we miss out on while travelling.

Life is but a Trinket.

She was sitting next to me in one of those leather seats that those large Westfield shopping centers have sprinkled around their cavernous Meccas of consumption for the masses… Oddly enough, very often no one sits on them. Perhaps, sitting down is not in the spirit of what those temples are about; spending money and consume, consume.

The girl had a dark somewhat Gauguinish Polynesian look about her and was dressed in a multi coloured tropical fashion. I did not want to be seen as curious but decided to occasionally take a side-long glance at her. She seemed to be busy fiddling with something around her ample brown neck. I had noticed her earlier opposite from where I was sitting at a shop where they were selling lots of low-cost jewelry. You know, there are always lots of those shops about, selling indefinable trinkets, together with gold looking necklaces, also hairclips and mobile phone covers, Valentine love tags with ‘for Sandy, Macy, Lorraine or Shane, Bob, Wayne or a Ron’ together with shoulder strapped handbags. Those shops also have salesgirls who are permanently yawning or on urgent texting missions behind the counter, refusing to give service or make eye contact with the customer.

Those shopping centers have a noise unique in the world of public sounds. There are traffic noises, airplanes, street noises, barking dogs, tolling church bells and so many others. However, those large shopping centers have a noise that is different. It is the noise of the people swept up and totally concentrated on and busy with consuming. Like a tidal wave it sweeps up everything in front of them towards the cash register with the consumables clutched in both hands, the card ready at the fore, often held between teeth and the pram pushed by determined women with child bearing thighs or a brutish looking but compliant husband… You can actually hear the swiping of thousands of cards with the familiar high pitched timbre of the electronic print out receipts coming from dozens if not hundreds of shops and their purchases.

That is the noise of a shopping center.

Yet, unbelievably as it seems, there are sometimes scenes of serenity and calm in those raging seas of frenzied shopping. There was a barefooted blond woman sitting opposite me and the Gauguin girl. She was peacefully reading a book with her legs comfortably tucked under her hips. Her slippers were on the polished floor beneath the leather settee together with a small bag. I don’t think she had bought anything. She was reading a book titled ‘Snow White the Huntsman’ and seemed to devour the pages rather quickly. She was obviously reading a good story. I noticed that on her toe (next to the big one) of her left foot, there was a small silver looking ring. She wriggled her toes every now and then. A few times she looked up with a quick glance around her before returning once more to her book.

In the meantime I had found out that the Polynesian Gauguin looking girl next to me had bought a small necklace with a kind of silver wood nail as a pendant. She had managed to put it around her neck. She looked a normal girl with a friendly face, not too pretty but with a soft and feminine demeanor about her. After her success with this silver fence- nail necklace she took out her mobile phone and held it at arm’s length and started taking pictures of her adorned face with neck. This was followed by a rapid swiping and moving about of her fingers on her mobile. I suppose she was sending the pictures to a friend, possibly a nice boyfriend. A kind and caring boy, I hoped. Was the ‘nail’ a kind of promise of a more permanent thing to be fixed for the future? I am probably running ahead here, but; who knows?

Life is a Trinket.

Life’s Lament with Apple Crumble and Rhubarb.

There is no denying that life resembles a sort of crusty crumble. The top often hides the soft inner core, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. It does come with risk of failure as well, especially if thrown together recklessly. I hate cooking by measuring ingredients and prefer failure to fiddling with scales and grams. I normally box the lot together and hope for the best. I live dangerously, at least in the kitchen. It’s all one can do at the age of endless advertisements on TV urging us into ‘funeral plans’ while still alive. (Please, keep off the grass)

The really lucky ones, I often think, are those able to make a living from their creative instincts. You sometimes see them being interviewed, perhaps an opera singer, a composer or a Latvian ceramic artist, world famous, who are on top of their output and are known by the all glitterati. Presidents and other despots are queuing up to be photographed standing next to them. They are running the crest of the wave and earn a good living from their art.  There can’t be a greater satisfaction than to live from one’s own creative output.  To live from what one really feels passionate about doing. Some might really want to work as a welder, run a farm or make model trains. That’s lovely and exactly what I mean. That’s what creativity involves; let’s not put too fine a point or limitation on creativity. Anything goes in my book.

Alas, this had eluded me so far but enjoying somewhat the nasty schaden Freude and consolation that it eludes most of us. The operative word that springs to mind is ‘compromise’. It’s the banana skin on the doorstep of the life of ‘l’artiste’. How to make a quid from art, that’s the question? I wonder how Shakespeare managed or old Rembrandt Van Rijn, Caravaggio? I don’t think there were any social services available then. Didn’t Mozart got buried in a pauper’s grave? He did not sign up with Aami’s funeral plan. Perhaps a rich red mitered Bishop or an aristocrat Von Richhovenvorstendom propped up the artists at that time?

Why do I get tears everytime I hear this music?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df-eLzao63I

In any case, no President has requested or queued up to be photographed next to me, only the local Butcher years ago when Channel TV 9 wanted to do an interview about my plunge into the world of vasectomy, ‘performed’ by a female doctor aptly named Barbara Simcock. She has performed over 14 000 vasectomies so far and counting. What she doesn’t know about testicles is not worth looking at!  I once heard “Wall-nuts in wet socks”. She was ever so gentle.

The obvious answer would have to be that I am and never will be any of those giants, or even lesser ones, perhaps at best just a pigmy of an artist, worse, a kind of garden gnome of an artist, decorating a suburban garden with a white painted worn Chevrolet tyre around the bed of limping petunias and a leaning zinc alume fence as a backdrop for failure. Oh the ignominy of it all, what fate?

Space and the lack of storing all my paintings forced me into downsizing and decided I would branch off in putting words in a certain order.  My first word, if I remember correctly, was ‘exorbitant’ which I liked and followed this up quickly with another one called ‘exhortation’. Both have a nice ring to it, don’t you think, almost musical? It’s the vowels each time followed by the consonants, that does the trick. I am not sure of many words yet, and possibly, that’s the best way to be when writing. Words are inter-changeable and can also be deleted.

It never occurred to become something, I mean building a career in something. I don’t know; I could have been a bank director or dentist or a corporate accountant. Luck had it I managed money making fairly easily but not in monotonous jobs. I did work in a bank and offices for a while but the yawning ennui was mind numbing, sapping the spirit. I just never had much of an ambition or was driven to make myself into having a job of any importance. I always portrayed myself into the future, doing it year after year and came up with an apocalyptical ‘the horror, the horror”.

Perhaps I should have studied. I imagine going in the morning to Harvard University with a nice satchel casually slung over my shoulders, being greeted by other students and hurling myself in front of a politician’s car in some show of vehement protest. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have had a PHD. Dr Gerard Oosterman sounds nice (with Cum Laude). Too late for a career with the Police or Customs or flying a helicopter, swooping down on Kim DotCom in New Zealand.  Now, there is a man passionate about his art, (fleecing multi nationals) and he is making a nice living.

As for the apple and rhubarb crumble, a huge success. Nice and tart, not too sweet.

Just like real life.

Float your sins on The Ganges.

Those millions queuing up to take a dip in the Ganges must have something that we don’t know about. I know that for many, a wash in the rivers of ‘insight and wisdom’ has for hundreds of years been the annual aim for  devout Hindus. As someone from an alien culture, I wonder what it is that seems to beckon those millions to wade into those waters.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-10/tens-of-millions-bathe-at-ganges-festival/4510894

Is it a communal confession? The ritual is to cleanse oneself from sin and it seems rather poetic and certainly in contrast with the western method of confession whereby a solitary figure sits in a dark little room separated by a screen. He or she confesses his wrongdoing to another mortal. It must be a bit of an embarrassment, especially in a small village; to have bared your soul to someone you might meet again at the butcher shop next day.

I like the Hindu way of letting the magic of the river carry your misdemeanors and sins downstream much better. The figures are amazing. Over 110 million Hindus are expected to enter at Sangam which is the point where three rivers join at Allahabad. Over 50 000 police are there to try and give everyone a chance to enter the water over a six day period. An ‘en masse’ show of spiritual cleansing and breaking the cycle of death and re-birth.

A nice sideline is that apart from the cleansing of sins it is also a celebration of the Gods overcoming your demons with the promise of precious nectar that would ensure immortality.

With the solitary Christian confession it is a bit of a lonely trip, isn’t it? No promise of goodies coming your way, just hell and damnation if you fail in your effort to keep hands above the blankets or refuse to do the washing up or lay the table, swear at your sister or throw a rock over the neighbours fence or do the shopping for mum. Perhaps, the goodies our way is the sitting around with angels, boring…! Who wants to be good with that kind of reward?

No, they definitely have the edge over us at Allahabad. There it is, millions of people wishing to assuage their most inner self, seeking spiritual salvation, renewal and revival through a wash in the holy Ganges till next year’s pilgrimage.  The clanging of cymbals, the emerging saffron heads rising above the water with the garlands of marigolds tangled around the ashen painted aesthetic piercing the rising fog.  This seems to be a reward in itself and present in this life as well for all the Hindus…It doesn’t lighten the burden of life but is ‘shows’. This is the loveliness of the annual ritual of the Hindus.

It’s hard not to be seduced by the magic of it all. Although for us cynical westerns, we would probably see it as just as a dirty muddy river and ask ourselves; what about the hygiene of it all? Where are the flush duel buttoned toilets? I want soap and hair conditioner with carotene and triple layered loo paper. Perhaps, that’s why we will forever be looking for salvation without finding it. Lost to the arid desert of consumerism and brick veneers with beloved colour bonded fence, separating us from each other till the privacy of our dismal end by the funeral director or “Ladies in White” and final consumption by the fiery but lonely cremation at Rookwood…

Some say, we have our rituals and then mention ‘The Melbourne Cup’. The whole nation stands still wearing large hats and thousands punting on horses and their pacing hoofs. We have Anzac days with two-up in the pub while wearing rosemary and drinking cleansing schooners. Let’s not forget the footy ‘finals’ and tennis. They are our cleansing rituals as well.

I am not sure. I so wish I could believe that.