circling songlines

  If you happen to be in Derby (which to the horror of my Derbyshirian friend Lisa is pronounced to rhyme with Herbie) and to be planning to drive East, you face an existential choice. I find such choices are often shaped by conversations in laundromats and pubs. Søren Kierkegaard never mentioned that. Though to be honest I probably only ever digested one paragraph of his seemingly endless angst-thought. Though did I tell you the story of a bus trip I took from Brisbane to Adelaide? Somewhere after Dubbo my next-seat neighbour could stand it no longer. The world’s most moebius strip, most Escher-esque question must be “is that an interesting book you’re reading?” Admittedly it’s fairly pretentious to read Kierkegaard on a bus (as it is to mention Kierkegaard, or write “Escher-esque” in a blog, but moi ?). At any rate I was reading The Sickness Unto Death because I thought Kierkegaard might say something useful for a thesis I was writing about universalist Christology and fo...

  Gantheaume Point  Yeah, Marble Bar, which wasn’t on this itinerary, was another place I’d dreamt of visiting. I blame my brother for that one. Way back before I ever came to Australia he mentioned in a letter that he’d been in Marble Bar. Was it ’82? It sounded so Australian. And yeah, bull bars, akubras, beers and red dirt, it was.  To be honest, back in ’82 it wasn’t until I was half way across the Tasman, New Year’s Eve, that I realized I had no idea where Melbourne was. That was when I was loosely hoping to ride a Gold Wing around the continent.  A Triton is more suitable. It's achieved the half-way, now.  Perth, Sydney and Darwin I could place. Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane? No idea. My plane was heading for Melbourne. But I knew where Marble Bar was. Well, roughly I did. And I think I sort of forgot over the years. I hadn’t placed it on this itinerary of circling songlines, because I figured that by keeping as close to the coast as was possibl...

  I could have called it “places of dreams,’ too. Either/Or. After three heaven sent nights and days in Perth catching up with friends (for friendship, too, is sacrament), I took to the road again. Stopped, after escaping the city traffic, at Quinns, a suburb on the outer north skirts of the city, for eucharist, and to encounter a woman who thought Trump was “sorting it out” as no other US president ever had (hmmm… not sure o the referent of “it,” but yeah, he’s like no other, indeed) and how evil Hillary and that K-Woman are, and how the Book of Revelation is incomprehensible. It occurred to me modestly that a quick read of my book might suggest who Trump is allied with. Not my parish, not my gig. I remained schtum. So … off to pay respects to an old mentor, Alan Lewis, my “Australian sending priest.” He became Dean of Geraldton after he left my Australian sending parish. He was, sadly, only Dean for a few years before ill-health led him home to Melbourne to die far too young ...

  It’s been a long time between pixels. The car's fault was quickly analysed once I finally got it to a Mitsubishi mechanic in Adelaide. Previous mechanics had, somewhere in the debacle, refitted the exhaust recirculation hoses the wrong way round . Two hundred bucks and I was mobile. Heart in mouth, but mobile. Three days of suburbia, but the compensation was the hospitality of friend and Godsent host Nick, and a few hours catching up with a colleague from my ABC days a quarter of a century ago. Catching up with reading too … devouring long chunks of a biography of Caroline Blackwood. No, I hadn’t consciously heard of her, either. The serendipity of op and second hand shops. I encountered her biography and bought it for two well spent dollars back on that day when I road tested the Triton (it failed).  Whittlesea Op Shop. I recommend it. I found a bookshop, too. Dillons, in Norwood. I now have Kerry O’Brien’s autobiography, nearly a thousand pages of insight, and useful...

  As will be apparent to all who are actually Zen practitioners or students of Eastern (and Western-adopted) religion, I use “Zen” in a loosely metaphorical, lazy, even, way.  While I have probably used it in this way at least since reading Pirsig, I best recall using it as I trod water awaiting the perfect wave with my handboard, or “pod,” out with the boardriders at NSW’s Diggers Camp. There I laconically taught myself to be still (paddling legs excepted). The wave would come in its own time, its kairos . Sometimes I would catch it. Sometimes I wouldn’t. Time was its own Lord and that was okay. This crazy excursion I am currently engaging with is a far more harsh exploration of time. I think I grew to love the wide open spaces of Australia because even a narcissist like me (though I prefer the term “solipsist”, and use it with a sense of, I hope, self-deprecation), even a narcissist like me cannot help but feel infinitesimally small and vulnerable here in this vast and har...

... circumstances, we are not quite where we thought we were. All was tickety-boo for hundreds of kilometres. I left the happy environs of Daughter Unit #1. Admittedly after five kilometres I realized I’d left the mice on a fencepost, contemplating the future, but that was soon solved. 08:15, second departure. Checked in at Daughter Unit #5 to load the car, and off I went. 10:20 and 60 kms under the belt. Passed Bendigo, the previous zenith of this excursion. Refuelled at Ouyen, having nearly run dry when I didn't refuel at Sea Lake. Bought a pie and soggy chips because the young woman selling them looked sad.  They were down there with the worst I've ever had. Down there with serves at Narrabri and Quilpie, years ago.  Once chance, guys. I’m not buying your calorific slop again. The ubiquitous sparrows were happy.  Onward and upward. Bought a few supplies at Red Cliffs, then turned West, young man, leaving Victoria at exactly 18:00. Had to feast my face on a punnet...

  It’s been kind of an OM thing, really. A Zen thing. There’s a lot of it around.  I’ll come back to OM. These past – is it three? – weeks I’ve been limboed. According to my original itinerary I should be heading to Geraldton, in Western Australia,   this morning. Breaking into new territory for the first time on my (and my mice’s) journey. According to my digital technology that’s 3703 kms from my current location. It’s been fascinating down time. Fighting a superannuation company, fighting a mechanic. Let me emphasize I have nothing but praise for the dealers who sold me the car that caused the latter conflict. They have lost thousands (yes, three or four of them) on the deal. They stood by me like a rock. The mechanic (since fired, I believe), not so much. After the engine fault light came on after 120 kms he diagnosed a faulty turbo. Replaced it at the dealer’s expense. Fifty kms later when it came on he decided I was right: it was something to do with the ex...

  It was pointed out to me that I haven’t posted for a while (about five days, but that’s a while in a daily blog). So here goes. Complete with pictorial demonstration of the way things are. There’ll be days like this, sang Van Morrison, morosely. But this many? It is now T Minus I Can’t Count That Far. I’ve moved from Woodend back to Inner-ish Suburban Northern Suburbs Melbourne. I found the Preston Convenience Store and found that it sells, for my convenience, only cigarettes, vapes and what the Americans call soda. It wasn’t very convenient. I found another convenience store nearby that was inconveniently closed for half an hour. I overcame the disappointment by find yet another superb coffee harbour. I purchased milk at the reopened convenience store, in which there was no lighting and a sweet (I suppose) little old lady on the phone with zero zilch nada English. Namaste, salaam … they worked reciprocally and I wandered off with my milk.   I finished reading Where ...