It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Surprised seagull. Geilston Bay Boat Ramp, Geilston Bay. June 2012.

It’s Theme Thursday time again, and these week – like the perplexed seagull above – I am left to wonder about LIFE'S UNCERTAINTIES.

Certainly, we wouldn’t like life to be too certain. I normally try to eschew the deterministic understanding of events that some espouse. Not for me is the Wu wei[無爲] of the Tao. I just can’t get behind a philosophical standpoint of “non-doing” and just drift along with events and shrugging my shoulders at all around me. If there is one thing that history has taught me, the path of least resistance often leads to a place where you don’t want to be.

Biological or genetic determinism just scares me too much, so I prefer not to think about it. Besides, you really don’t want to be on a journey with fellow travellers like Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, Charles Davenport right through to Dr Mengele and his crowd.

I am probably more sympathetic to historical determinism than I really should be. Perhaps it is the Eduard Bernstein in me, but there is something about the economic interpretation of history that still appeals to me. There is just something inherently sexy about base and superstructure that appeals.

However, I am digressing (one might argue that my entire life has really been one long digression). We are supposed to be talking about LIFE'S UNCERTAINTIES.

Hmmm.

Life, you see, is full of uncertainties. My present philosophical condition can be summed up in one succinct sentence: anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation. People are unpredictable. Events are unpredictable. Sure, we can narrow the odds on choices that people make (nor not make, as the case may be); but you show me five people in the same circumstances with the same background and same set of choices and three will go one way, another the opposite and one will neglect to choose.

LIFE'S UNCERTAINTIES, you see. You can never be too sure about anything. There is no ‘dead cert’. No ‘sure thing’. The dictatorship of the proletariat didn’t lead us to a classless and stateless society, what we had as a pile of bodies and some really bad haircuts.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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. ...

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...

This will hurt me...

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