“Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left.”

Power in the lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

This is a long and intricate book with a huge cast of characters, every one of them annoying and flawed in their own special way. Just like real life! With this, a mysterious illness arises and stalks across the fractured United States in the midst of an election that pits a career politician (who happens to be a capable but cold and aloof woman) against a reckless and obnoxious billionaire with some decidedly nefarious allies.

Yes, the parallels are stark and Wendig is not shy of sharing his thoughts on the matter. The centrepiece of the novel is the emergence of a sleepwalking illness that causes a (seemingly) random group of people to zone out and hit the road, walking with some kind of predetermined destination unknown to all. If you try and stop them, they explode (generally killing anyone nearby). Very messy.

The beginning of the book introduces the sullen and irritable teenager Shana, who wakes up one morning to discover her younger sister is patient zero with the sleeping sickness. Shana's peevishness stems from a detached father and mother who took of mysteriously a few years earlier. I never quite warmed to Shana, but this wasn't enough to put me off the book.

At 800 pages, I will not waste your time on a detailed outline. Suffice to say that the CDC is called in, a maverick scientist takes up the challenge of solving the puzzle of the sleepwalkers and pretty soon we have an evolved artificial intelligence supercomputer, a weak and vain preacher being manipulated by a powerful group of white supremacists, a raging pandemic destined to kill most of the world's population and an ageing rock god struggling with a secret and desire to find some meaning in the worship that he craves.

Sure, it's too long and a little bit "by-the-numbers", but it proceeds with gusto in an engaging style and some of the curveballs thrown in are really fascinating (not to mention cool). There's a bit too much standing around, and while I'm all in favour of flawed, rounded characters, they don't all have to be such pricks.

There is a general passivity to the whole thing which - while fitting the metaphor of sleepwalking into destruction - belies the importance of saving everybody on the planet. Perhaps the fact that the author's politics aligned well with mine (I won't complain about maligning hypocritical right-wing Christians and racists) kept me going, but all up I'm erring on the generous side.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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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...

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...

This will hurt me...

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