A fresh local start

Dawn at Coogee is always spectacular, often transcendant. Everyone I see there at this time of day has an enormous look of gratitude and relief and joy on their faces. On the radio I listened to the man who was going to have a surfing lesson with Tony Abbott. He seemed pleased to be in Australia too.

I've been thinking about nature and our relationship to the planet and ourselves much as Werner Herzg did in Burden of Dreams. Herzog doesn't approve of many things I take succour from. Including self-reflection and herbal tea but as I like to say or think I like to say "there is no I in team but there is one in ginseng".

I have to go for another glucose tolerance test tomorrow. They're a bore - hours long and sometimes inconclusive. The last one somehow resulted in me having to have a colonoscopy. Couldn't see it myself - the sweet bone's connected to the bum bone?

I'm hungry and can't eat. I'll want coffee in the morning and can only have water. And this is healthy? Might try and get some happy snaps to post. I made the mistake of quoting Yoda to my daughters "Try there is not, only do there is"- that's come back to hit me in the face too often. And "Do as I say not as I do" hasn't flown since the 1960s.

Serendipitiously I made contact with two people via facebook that I'd not seen for years, 15 and 25 to be precise. One of them has Al Jazeera English as a favourite and the other works there as a Beijing-based cameraman.

Thirty Years of Tears

Looking towards ANZAC bridge - the roof of the Kauri Foreshore Hotel in the middle ground - at dusk.

Via the curate's egg that is the life online I've linked up with friends from the glory days - 1978 to 1982 - when every thing seemed possible - we reminisce and discover that we remember differently - the past is a different place - and we are attached to it differently - so many people that energised us then have died since yet the strongest memories endure.

I've tried to revisit those days but find my version of them didn't exist or if it did it was parallel to but separate from the versions/visions of others that were there. I went to Upper Cuba Street about a year ago and it is as Peter McLeavey says a Disneyland version of itself. They paved paradise and put up a motorway. It's like a lot of things that are re-worked - someone who wasn't there recalls something they didn't understand and produces a Stepford Wives version of it - think of the "new" VW - like something from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

Upper Cuba Street is now a wikipediased version of its earlier grittier incarnations. So too the "Wellington Punk Scene" - romanticised versions of which are cropping up on the net - it was dumb and ugly and fun and glorious - some of the best musical experiences in my life took place back then - the Wallsockets on one of their perfects days: the rhythm guitarist relatively straight, the drums and bass locked in like Sly and Robbie on sensi, the lead guitar cutting through like something from Jefferson Airplane and the lead singer like a cross between Debbi Harry and Poly Styrene with a hint of ancient passion

Or the Gordons every show or Mike the Cripple in his homemade Charlie Parker t-shirt gallumping across stage to sing the Endless Sea with the Androidss. (I thought the t-shirt said BIRO) - the now legendary New Wave Special at the town hall at the same time as buddha sticks hit town - the possibilities were endless - I coulda been a contender. I was heading for a career as an art director or "something in graphics" but then came to believe art was too important to me for me to be able to make money out of it (childish or what?) plus I discovered fun - being dopefucked and thinking I could levitate - "dropping" acid and seeing the black dull twigs on a tree outside the window arrange themselves into a grid and the cat with the deep deep abcess on its neck that could act like a vortex and suck me in unless I intwined my fingers in the carpet and the formica bathroom walls running and turning into caverns and crevices and being what-is-now-known-as-P-fucked and seeing Roger as God bursting through the sun at Makara beach as birds dived into the sea and the wind whipped our voices away and the thrown stick tumbled through the air and hit a carload of hoons who laughed at it and us and Roxy the dog and everything was good and Tony tooted at the horse to see if it would rear and buck off the rider and then we were in town and fucking protesters were blocking the roads and we wanted to drive some more and had forgotten about the Springboks and Void leapt on the car knowing we were totally wired and we screamed and laughed Amandla Ngawethu and the marshalls made him sit down and then it gotbad. People started dying and ordinary hoons dressed as skinheads committed their dull suburban atrocities scaring women and children and things fell apart - the centre could not hold and fun was no longer enough and the chemists must have changed or lost the recipe and windows were being smashed and lives shattered and love lay limp and people escaped into nostalgia. And now nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Coming back to NZ later I stopped in Sydney and went with friends one old one new to see Dogs in Space. Though set in a different town in a different country it captured those days. The lead singer was gorgeous and my friend Jeff said he's a famous Strayan muso in a famous band I forget who and the teenage Aussie chick behind us said "INXS" like we were the dumbest people she'd met since she left home. That's how I like my nostalgia - by people from another place who can say well this isn't your reality this is ours.

Bran Nue Dae

So the doctor said let's sort out the blood sugar thing first, and the sleeping patterns and then look at the heart and weight stuff once we know what we're dealing with. I've outlived one grandfather by 16 years and have eleven years to go before I catch up on the other.

I bought a milky macchiato this morning. Ziad's mother runs the place. I told her that her macs were milkier than I was used to but my stomach appreciated the difference. "I know, darling" she said "I can make it the other way if you like." Macchiatos like a good mother. They're normally like a slightly scary cousin. The one from out of town who smokes and wears AMCO Peaches too tight. Dangerous but exciting to be around.

The start of the day

I'm on two macchiato's a day. The first, now, comes from Cafe K (top pic) and the second from Sappho's in Glebe Point Road. The Sapphic mac is shorter - the milk lesser in quantity and liveliness. The atmosphere at Sappho's, the vibe, the decor is more appealing. Cafe K sits near a corner of the Bridge Road rat run, opposite a mediocre apartment building and close to a cement dispatch yard.

Trucks start arriving for cement early in the morning and the dispatcher announces well I'm not really sure what "Come in number seven. Your time is up", "Security to hardware please", "Cathy, price check at register three please"? The industrial equivalent of an early rising bird. Been part of the aural landscape in Blackwattle Bay for at least the fifteen years we've been here.

It looks to me as if the workers there are starting to appreciate good coffee two minutes from work. If I'm at Cafe K early enough I'm the only customer not wearing serious working clobber, hi-vis polos or bomber jackets, "I'm walkin' here" boots, can-double-as-an-ashtray trousers - not a chisel toe or pant to be seen.

The macchiatos differ greatly as well. The Cafe K one is smoother richer, the extra milk and air gently aiding the caffeines passage into my bloodstream. By the time I get to Sappho's with its more genteel opening hours I'm ready for a if-it's-too-strong drink a warm mikshake instead mac, or mach, or mack. My stomach has survived the early morning onslaught of a breakfast I craft to suit the aging digestive system. (Nobody told me that having children late in life meant a very very brief gap between my world being dominated by their digestive systems to it being ruled by the various indignities of the march of time - try and tell a 23 year old that with luck the worst part of a colonoscopy is the purging diet or try and tell an NRL player that a DRE is a medical procedure not a kind of tackle).

I've stopped eating breakfast at Sappho's. If they had a kilo of lukewarm spinach sprinkled with two cups of bran and Goji berries on the menu I'd be there but no, it seems they'll only make things people actually want to eat - go figure. Once they get the quirky antics of the night staff sorted it'd probably be worth popping in then as well. No one likes to walk into someone else's family squabble. You want that in Glebe you stay out on the street for a few hours. Or go to any bar about 3am.

The macs at Sappho's have been consistently good since I first started going to the new location when my oldest daughter was doing a pre-kinder course at GlebePS late in 2006. Her sister and I would wait at Sappho's before we picked her up. I'm pretty tolerant about coffee - simply put if you can't make a good short you shouldn't be allowed near a coffee machine - make instant or get a plunger, don't waste the coffee. The strongest coffees I've ever encountered were at Sappho's. A roaster/barista had the wheels of steam so tight and so finely calibrated that you were drinking hot coffee paste with a stain of water. This was fine for the people too dim to access the local illegal substance dealers but not so good for the people who drink why-bothers - the various buckets of slop that American chains have perfected. If it's got bean juice, de-anythinged anything and /or fruit of any sort it's no more a coffee than a marshmallow-laden chocolate sprinkled spoiltbratino. Drink water.

It's no wonder the Cobra had a sting in it's tail. You can run a cafe like a Fawlty Towers theme restaurant or the Soup Kitchen in Seinfeld but not every daytime customer got the joke. New coffee supplier, new baristas. Strong,narrow opinions will get you a blog but not a publishing deal or successful cafe. The customer is always right- especially when they're wrong. Service industries and retail outlets always have an element of amateur individual or group psychotherapy to them. It's not just stuff to eat and drink you're selling.

Family Day

We spent most of Sunday at Lovett Bay. The weather was better than forecast. The barbecue'd meats more delicious, and we paddled about in the water.

On death and dying

image: Points of Departure - Margaret Elliot. Tony Carr Collection - Sydney

An email from a friend:

Before I Forget…

Thesis:

We are all born with a ticket in our hand. It says ‘Destination: Death.’ It does not state how long the ride will be, whether we will travel first-class or third, or whether we will get a window seat or not. Just the facts: we are born and from that second on, the only other certainty is that Death will ultimately clip our ticket. We’ve all got a ticket to ride. One way; non-refundable; delivery guaranteed.

Message From a Fellow-Traveller:

Gidday. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know me, I’m Richard. I’ll be 62 on June 26. I have prostate cancer with metastasised tumours throughout my skeletal structure; terminal. Also, I have ischemic disease of the brain, (in the white matter), mainly affecting my memory. It too is both progressive and irreversible. Them’s the breaks.

Every day, chunks of my memory break off like great ice floes from a frozen continent and crash irrevocably into the sea of nothingness and unknowingness, there to melt into useless slush; cold, deep waters indeed. I know this is happening because people talk to me about things I should know of and remember, but don’t and can’t. It’s a frightening thing – and tinged with sadness, too. Memory is much of ‘who we are’. If I lose all or most of my memory, who will I be then? I don’t know – but certainly not the ‘me’ that is sitting at the keyboard right now typing this message. I hope that the cancer kills me before the ischemic disease progresses much further.

I’ll use ‘TIP’ as an abbreviation for ‘terminally ill person’ (or people).

TIPsters like myself devote a fair amount of time to thinking about death – though often, not in even a slightly morbid fashion. It engages one’s intellectual interest. What will it be like to die? I don’t know and I may never know. I do know that all the genuine experts on the subject are already dead. We all have to fashion our own path to death. But I am very curious about it all. How could I be ‘me’ and not be curious? It is the very last and greatest adventure, I guess … but one with an unknown ending: Indiana Bones and the Temple of Whom? Or where.

The body accepts the need to die before the mind does. Resolution comes when the mind accepts that simple fact of life and death – or goes mad denying it. Once accepted, TIPsters can get on with the business of living well and dying better.

Believers in a deity might be happy to die in the belief that they will get their reward in a life hereafter. Atheists – and I am one – cannot or do not share that belief. This has a sad corollary: we do not have the comfort of believing that life’s wrongs are all neatly remedied in the hereafter. How sad. But, having given it all much thought, I can only see the concept of divine justice as a convenient human construct. Frankly, the Universe, my dears, couldn’t give a damn. What we have is what we get, then finis.

Well, maybe not. Surely if we have lived, no matter what we have done with our time or life, we have certainly changed what would otherwise have been? The very fact of our existence is a guarantee of a kind of immortality: the world would be different had each and every one of us not existed. I find quite some comfort in knowing that. But I do believe that death marks the end of all consciousness, for ever, in every dead individual. I know, of course, of the stories of ‘near-death’ experiences. Classically, the person experiences a tunnel-like dark environment, with a blinding white light at the exit end. Often, they see white-clad figures who speak encouragingly to them as they approach the light. To me, it all sounds remarkably like a baby’s trip down the birth canal. The white-clad figures are probably the medical staff who orchestrated our birth; the encouraging voices are probably saying ‘push’ to an exhausted mother-to-be. So it seems to me. Having been born stupid and worked assiduously at graduating from being a halfwit to a complete idiot, I’ve had a few near-death experiences of my own, by the way. They usually involved things like cliffs, power lines, deep water, etc. Life is for living, after all!

TIPsters watch people a lot. Do they treat us differently now that they know we are dying? Yes, they do. It’s almost like we are already dead at times. Some folk hold conversations in which the TIPster, though present and the subject of the conversation, is simply ignored. How extraordinary! People also tend to get a bit tongue-tied at talking about death or dying; especially with or to TIPsters. It’s the last great taboo. How odd, because it’s the only thing I know for sure that every other person on the planet will share with me: death. Still, maybe if we don’t talk about it, it’ll just go away, eh? No chance. As I am now so you shall be. The bell tolls at the right time for all of us. So even if you go like the clappers (sorry!), death will find you when it will. Given enough rope, even campanologists eventually die.

Some folk have asked me if I’m angry about dying at a relatively young age. No, I’m not. What possible good would it do? And who would I be angry at? Sure, I look at my family and friends and regret that I will be leaving them, but no more than that. No bitterness, no ‘if only’ rubbish or mad attempts at weird diets, faith healers, novenas, charms, witch doctors of any and every kind, alternative healers, or any hocus-pocus at all. I’m dying. I know it and accept it. Anything else is madness.

I mentioned watching people. TIPsters have to be careful. There are people who care for us, who hurt on our behalf. We must reassure them that ‘everything’s okay’ and that we are not in too much pain. If we cannot ease pain for ourselves, we can at least do so for others. We can also talk about dying and death and make friends realise that we have come to terms with it, so that they know it’s okay. I tell some appalling jokes about death and dying, the whole purpose being to make people lighten up and laugh a little. But I’m a Celt, and we find it hard to take much seriously at the best of times. As I often say, I’m only dying. It’s nothing serious like becoming a naturalised Australian. I have also said that when Death comes for me, I’ll look him in his spectral empty eye-socket and say “You’ll never take me alive, you know.” Well, what else can I or should I be doing? Crying? No thanks.

But seriously, other people will still feel pain after we TIPsters have ceased to feel anything. It behoves us therefore to be kind – and thoughtful - to those we will leave behind. Reassure them, hug them, let them know that it’s all okay with and for you. Be an adult. Care. Lie a little if you must.

People who die suddenly are sometimes perceived as lucky. “He went to bed at night and didn’t wake up in the morning.” Well, luck is how you see it. Certainly, such people avoid a lot of physical pain by dying in their sleep. But they lose too, the opportunity to hug those dear to them and say “I love you” to them. Who is to say which one is the ‘better’ death? The price of foreknowledge of death is paid in coin of a harsh currency; but it has its compensations, too.

A reflective state is one of the recognised steps in the protracted dying process. A weighing and balancing of weights, an accounting in and of life’s ledger; a summation, if you will, of one’s victories, losses and draws. As an atheist, I find it easy to thank Mother Earth for sheltering me for 62 years. She has given me everything. Earth can happily survive without people; people can’t survive without Earth. She is the perfect landlady par excellence. But in the end, even she calls for the quitrent to be paid: death is the quitrent. Thanks, Earth, for giving me a home. I sometimes have sneaked into parks and reserves and planted things (no: not that stuff!). Earth needs us to help pay the rent properly; each and all of us, often. If we don’t we’ll lose our home; simple, brutal and factual.

Should I forget you, friends, family, acquaintances, it will not be because I choose to. I already know that you know that. I feel sure that, though the memory slate will be progressively and irreversibly wiped clean on its exterior, deep within my damaged brain, the paths of love that memory has scoured out will remain, though they will be unable to be accessed. Perhaps – and I certainly hope so – in a coma before death, I shall walk those paths again. But even if I cannot do so,

be assured: the love and goodwill remains strong and indelible inside me. It anchors me.

I can’t and don’t bleat at what life has dished out to me. Why should I? I have lived and still am living. Every day and in many ways, some old, some quite new; but all part of an exciting life. I do weep, rage and rail at a God I no longer believe in for the damage little children undergo, in body, mind or spirit. Oh, suffer the little children indeed! It is so cruel and so obscene. No God either could or would allow such dreadful things to happen to children. So I am an atheist. How could I not be? It is either that or accept an unjust God. I cannot do so.

Would that memorable, immortal and novel words of wisdom could flow from my fingers and mind into this keyboard. They can’t and don’t. I know only this: if you would truly find salvation, seek it within yourself. We are real; there is no act of blind faith necessary. We exist: We are who are. Be gentle to yourself; be gentle to others. Be gentle to the planet. Never stop learning, enquiring, marvelling, wondering. Be brave, for as long as you can, as much as you can; all things end - in itself a benison and a blessing, surely? Pain ends, just as life does – and often at the same time. Pain is an inevitable part of life. Life itself is a wonderful, ongoing adventure, all the way through: enjoy the ride. I know of no other one.

Now, here comes the conductor. All tickets please!

7 June 2008

PS And Before I Forget: I love you.

- an old email from an old friend