One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Rowing on the Derwent on a cold Winter's morn. Derwent River (with Bellerive in the background). June, 2010.

Theme Thursday and it appears that everybody has GONE FISHING.

“GONE FISHING?”, you say.

GONE FISHING.

I myself have rarely GONE FISHING. I’ve gone snorkelling; gone kayaking; gone running; gone swimming; gone off; gone on; and gone apeshit, but I believe that I have GONE FISHING two, perhaps three, times in my life.

It’s the guts I don’t like. I can handle the killing no problem, but the ritual disembowelment in such exhibitionist fashion seems to me profoundly disrespectful for the dear fish’s family and friends. Give the poor creature some dignity!

I’ve long queried the extended airtime given to the multitude of television programs dedicated to the men who have GONE FISHING. While I have no ideological, intellectual, ethical or indeed stylistic opposition to such programs, I wonder why it is seemingly okay to broadcast reel after reel of some pitiable pilchard in its death throes – blood streaming from the gash in its face as a giant metal hook has pierced its face – as two blokes ramble on about the weather.

Indeed, I eagerly anticipate the day where we will be able to see similar programs featuring the strangling of lambs. Or piglets. Even better, there is money to be made with humble Japanese ~~fisherman~~ scientists hauling in minke after minke.

Book it!

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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