Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.

SHARK! Manly Sea Aquarium, Manly. Sydney. September 2012.

Theme Thursday again and I am challenged by the theme of ANGELS. Well, I don't know any ANGELS and I'm not certain that I've ever met one. Which is why I've written a story, maybe it's a parable. Anyway, I call it Simon's Wife.

Simon’s wife often thought of Simon as she did the dog that she had as a young woman, a German shorthaired pointer named The Black Prince. Like The Black Prince, Simon was loyal energetic and enthusiastic. However, also like The Black Prince, Simon could be needy, aggravating, over familiar and often trailed a distasteful smell about him.

Helpfully, many of the skills and techniques that Simon’s wife applied to the day-to-day handling and management of The Black Prince were equally useful and applicable to Simon. Tone of voice, consistent and poised body language was critical. Whenever The Black Prince became a little too boisterous or even a little too frisky, Simon’s wife found a short sharp “NO!” and assertive posture usually pulled him into line. The same was certainly true for Simon.

The use of positive rewards rather than negative sanctions had also proven decisive in establishing control and limiting The Black Prince’s exuberance. Likewise Simon. It is all well and good dishing out a short firm smack on the nose if he’s getting disobedient, but as a mechanism for longer, sustainable behavioural change such measures were not useful for Simon or The Black Prince.

The most important factors at play here are consistency and discipline. It is no use setting expectations in such a way that one day jumping on the bed is allowable or acceptable if you let it happen the next without comment. No, Simon’s wife was not one to suffer fools gladly.

Of course, whether one is talking about German shorthaired pointers or husbands, there often comes a time where difficult decisions may need to be made. For example, Simon’s wife faced the very difficult choice when she was required to leave her small, provincial town (and 12-acre block with adjoining lake-front beach) to a large, metropolitan university campus in order to complete her legal studies.

When one has set high standards and rigorously applied the most useful form of structure and discipline to ensure the best behaviour for a German shorthaired pointer, it would have been cruel to abandon him to a far more haphazard and wayward existence. Thus, Simon’s wife made the only decision that a woman in her position could. It was quick, and The Black Prince did not suffer.

Just like Simon.

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...

Search This Blog