Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.

Things grow in the unlikeliest of places. Outside of St Cuthberts Primary School, Lindisfarne. May 2012.

By golly, Theme Thursday already. Where has the time gone? I would suggest Port Douglas or somewhere where the weather is warmer, the ocean a little kinder and if you really want to quit your job, sleeping under the stars might not be so unpleasant!

Nevertheless, we are not here to talk about time or how much any of us might utterly loathe their employment circumstances at the moment, we are here to talk about something at the very heart of Theme Thursday: COMMUNITY. You see, as Brian has so eloquently reminded us, Theme Thursday is really about more than a theme or single blog post, it really is about COMMUNITY.

It is a varied COMMUNITY, to be sure, and one that covers the entire globe. Unlike earlier manifestations of the form, which were inevitably local and shaped and constrained by innumerable barriers – distance, landscape, history, kinship, language – the online world removes or negates many of these barriers. Do you like a photograph but don’t speak Portuguese? Easy, click on Google Translate, convert “Fantastic photograph, I love the use of colour!” and presto, you’re communicating. Intrigued by life in Stuttgart, but don’t know any Stuttgartians? Visit Tina’s PicStory and you might get an idea of it.

These days then, COMMUNITY is not constrained by mountains, rivers or oceans. One doesn’t have to inherit through the bland chance of birth or fate their COMMUNITY, for there exists greater scope to expand one’s horizons far beyond the immediate physical neighbourhood.

Obviously, this can be an amazing and liberating experience, especially for someone who spent many hours of their childhood dreamily browsing though atlases and encyclopaedias, imagining just how life in Nsukka, Nuuk or North Platte was lived, what the people ate for breakfast, what they did on their weekends, did they wear shorts there, or do they prefer trousers?

Nowadays, there are COMMUNITies out there that allow me to find these things out, to not just pop in and view someone or somewhere else’s life, I can also communicate with them. I can ask them what they eat for breakfast. I can see if they wear shorts. I can interact in real time if I want to. I can find and join an existing COMMUNITY or I can create a new one from scratch. The entire World is indeed my oyster (provided I have the bandwidth).

---[Darken screen and insert ominous music here]---

It is not all sweetness and light though. There is a risk that in the rush to embrace new and (geographically) remote COMMUNITies in an online environment, we can neglect our immediate and local COMMUNITY: the people around us, who live with us, work with us and play with us (and I certainly hope that you’re leaving your computer screen for a good play at least some of the time).

To my mind, the best exemplars of these new COMMUNITies are the ones that bring me a real sense of the person and place, another someone and somewhere that tells me about themselves and (hopefully) tells me something about myself, and vice versa.

Dina can take me through Yom Kippur in Jerusalem or how ANZAC Day is celebrated in Israel.

I can see Carola’s journey through Dortmund Hauptbahnhof on her way to work or hear about the trip to the hairdresser's in the depths of the Amazon.

Petrea has shared breakfast in Pasadena and a glimpse into the world of doggy day care.

Communicative action in practice!

So, for the COMMUNITY to work, I have to bring something and not just take. You have to bring something and not just take. It can’t just be a one-way street or a one-sided exercise. I suspect that a little bit of this has happened to Theme Thursday.

The world is out there people. Your World, our World. Let's share 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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