The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

A view from the toilet. Mayfair Plaza, Sandy Bay. November 2011.

Theme Thursday already, and today's post comes from INSIDE the toilet here in the complex where I toil away. There are a few options if you are in need of a lavatory during business hours, but I prefer this dunny.

For one, it is close by. A quick nip through the car park, and you're in the privvy!

Secondly, how many times can you say that you've enjoyed the magnificent (and not at all repetitive) artistic styling of Stark (Sandy Bay's answer to Banksy) while sitting on the can?

Certainly, other johns might not be so decorated with the detritus of urban decay, but I find those loos, khazis and latrines far too cramped for my style. Honestly, who wants to go about one’s business like one of those calves penned up in a veal factory farming enterprise?

Not this little black duck!

If I have to use a bathroom INSIDE, I need space. I need to be able to stretch my legs out lift my arms up and roar like a wild beast.

Or something.

Yes, a decent WC really needs to be generous with its space. Really, must we be confined and crowded and rushed and hushed while we absolve ourselves of our sins? (I think I’ve invented a new euphemism there.)

No, I don’t want to be stuck in a netty like a head in a submarine!

Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don’t fence me in…

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...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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