This will hurt me...

A plane, you reckon…?

As ever, Ezra remains unconvinced.

Waiting for the light. Campbell Street, intersection with Davey Street. February 2011.

There are many things that one can do while waiting for the lights to change. If not reading a book or taking photos, I like to subtly alter the lyrics of popular tunes of yesteryear to amuse myself. If I can’t think of any, I concoct hypothesised conversations between any pedestrians that might be lurking around.

If I’m really bored, I like to speculate what kind of foibles, desires, hidden strengths or indeed pervasions that complete strangers in the street might possess.

Try it. It’s fun.

Three people among many riding a train with tyres on an asphalt basketball court at Lindisfarne Primary School.

How did this happen?

Someone must have had some time on their hands. Opossum Bay Beach. January 2011.

Christ almighty, we’re ankle deep into February already. In barely eighteen [18!!!] more days, my oldest – and loudest – beautiful boy will begin his journey through the Tasmanian educational system. Yes, the time for Kindergarten has arrived!

While I am certain that Henry will enjoy, and indeed flourish in the new environment, I do fear for the welfare of his teacher. He’s a bright boy, but headstrong. Firm of opinion (and even firmer of resolve), I suspect that he will attempt a classroom putsch!

Be warned.

Whatever happens, he’ll be sure to have an easier time of it than I did, Why, my school was so rough we had our own coroner!

Which leads me to today’s Sunday Top Five; [In Chronological Order] My Top Five Educational Institutions That I Have Attended!

• Upper Burnie Primary School



• Parklands High School



• Hellyer College



• The University Of Tasmania



• The School of Hard Knocks

When I look at that list of schools, it seems remarkably thin. If you’ve made it this far how many did you attend? Who holds the record?


Shacks morphing into houses. Opossum Bay Beach. January 2011.

Ezra is one of those people that - from a mere glimpse - you can tell whether he is smiling or not.

Consider his ear: happy, sad or ambivalent?

Look at the plump, juicy …. [err] things. St Johns Park, New Town. February 2011.

If I wrote a Chinese poem of the Sung Dynasty, I think that I should like to call it Reports examining the range and magnitude of alcohol’s harm to others highlight the importance of comprehending the largely hidden impact of alcohol on children and observe the wide range of harms experienced by children as a result of their parents’ drinking.

I believe that it would have achieve no small amount of success and esteem.

Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles, by Billy Collins

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

Henry hunting Notechis scutatus.

Tiger snakes rank amongst the deadliest snakes in the world. Does this stop our Henry?







Of course it does, he's not an idiot!

The Croquet Club has seen better days. New Town, February 2011.

Another Friday, more books.

The Drowned and the Saved is a book of essays on life focused on understating life in the Nazi extermination camps by Italian author (and Holocaust survivor) Primo Levi, who draws upon his personal experience to face this ambitious task.

Levi is one of the authors that I respect most, and whereas If This is a Man – a tremendous first of a pair of novels written directly after the war– was an autobiographical attempt at both recording and understanding, The Drowned and the Saved is his effort at an analytical approach. The problem of the fallibility of memory, the techniques used by the Nazis to break the will of prisoners, the use of language in the camps and the nature of violence are all studied.

This book, published just months after his (apparent) suicide in 1987, was written in a time far removed from the experience of the camps. In it, Levi attempts to position himself as the dispassionate observer of a system perceived by many as incomprehensible. His mission is to make sense of something that seems unfathomable.

In this task, I think that he does an admirable job exploring a multitude of ideas that are often avoided, glossed over or written off with a simplistic dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. He ruminates on the notion of the ‘grey zone’ of actions in such circumstances, and the study of the concepts of ‘shame’, ‘communication’, and ‘Useless Violence’, are compelling and convincing.

I believe that if you are ever to truly understand humans, their capacity for violence towards each other, and their capacity to survive such violence; Levi’s work is essential. It is a challenging read emotionally, but incredibly rewarding. To get the most out of it, I would suggest that you read If this is a Man, The Truce and The Drowned and the Saved collectively, if possible.

Highly recommended.

After a succession of books that might be defined as ‘downers’, I cast my net out looking for something brighter to pep me up. So of course, I turn to Hitler…

Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall is the first of Spike Milligan's war autobiographies. The book spans from the British war declaration war in 1939 to Milligan’s arrival in Algeria as a part of the Allied African campaign.

The book is an interesting format one might expect from the Goon, mixing narrative anecdotes, photographs, excerpts from diaries, letters, and plenty of doodles and sketches. It is a very funny read, but the words from the preface are worth reproducing:

There were the deaths of some of my friends, and therefore, no matter how funny I tried to make this book, that will always be at the back of my mind: but, were they alive today, they would have been the first to join in the laughter, and that laughter was, I'm sure, the key to victory.

As such, this is at once an entertaining and enlightening read. I’m a little disappointed that of the eventual seven (7!) volumes of Milligan’s memoirs, the Tasmanian Library only has three. Oh well, three is far better than none!

Well worth chasing down…

Ezra’s first upskirt upshorts pic!

Clouds seen in the hospital windows. Argyle Street, Hobart. February 2011.

Sometimes the best way of looking at something is by looking at something through something else. We often fool ourselves that when we observe something for ourselves, we can achieve some kind of objectivity. Of course, all observation is mediated through the observer. If we consciously choose to observe something through something, we immediately abandon that pretence, and factor in the potential refractive points.

We won’t get objectivity, but at least we might get something more contemplative.

What that has to do with clouds is anybody’s guess.

It doesn’t matter how cold the water is, Henry remains am incredibly handsome chap!

Looking south down along the Tasman Peninsula. Eaglehawk Neck, January 2011.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of people in the world.

First, there are people who annoy me.

Second, there are people who annoy me less.


The Tessellated Pavement glimmers in the morning light. Eaglehawk Neck, January 2011.

I am not sure that I was built for these times…

Jen and Ezra always apply their sunscreen whilst bounded by delightful yellow flowers. Indeed, if I don’t have delightful yellow flowers at the ready, they’re both susceptible to Whitney Houston-level eruptions, and that’s something that nobody needs in their life…

Careful now, men at work. A crane as seen from the corner of Liverpool and Argyle Streets, Hobart. January 2010.

I treat the discovery of somebody else’s library due date slip – now helpfully printed out by some kind of bibliophile robot – as a rare insight into the mind of somebody else. Thus, when I found tucked in the back of Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things a slip from the Burnie Library, I eagerly pocketed it for my perusal.

What might it tell me about the puzzling punter who had previously perused the putative plot of a perplexing pederast?

Let’s have a look shall we?

• The Critique of pure reason



• The very best of Bert Kaempfert [sound recording]



• Water music : and, music for the royal fireworks [sound recording]

Immanuel Kant’s bold – and utterly impenetrable – attempt to understand understanding, a collection of the hits of a German ‘easy listening’ orchestra leader, and GF Handel’s most famous piece paired with a suite written to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.

Is there a neo-Kantian with a penchant for ‘safe’ Teutonic jazz orchestral stylings, still resentful of Maria Theresa’s ineligibility to succeed to the Habsburg thrones wandering the streets of Burnie?

Be afraid…