Originally from ABC The Drum:http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/32238.html

It is one thing to see sports players going overseas but worse still would be losing artists to greener pastures.

I am reminded somewhat by the reverence shown to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died recently. Thousands filed past his open casket. Television showed metre long roses placed there by Putin and Gorbachev. I wonder whether we would revere our writers and artists the same.

I can’t remember when I have last seen a PM opening a book show or being photographed at an art gallery, or even commenting on the importance of art. On the contrary, the Bill Henson affair brought out suspicion, disregard and ignorance from those that ought to know better.

Why is it that sport is the Holy Grail above everything else?

Years ago I took the overnight train from Moscow to St Petersburg (Leningrad) in midsummer and shared the sleeper with a couple and an ample-bosomed and beautiful Russian woman by the name of Lilly.

Most of the sleeper cabins behind me had groups of American choir singers, both boys and girls of around 20-30 years of age. They had performed in Moscow and were booked to sing in St Petersburg. Being midsummer, and so far north, the days lasted forever. It had also been very hot with thunderstorms in the late afternoon. The Americans were pleased to meet someone from Australia and, as proof of it, I was asked to give an impromptu impersonation of Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan and say “goodiaye and hozygoin” over and over again.

This was nothing compared with what would follow next. The beautiful Lilly in my cabin spoke some German and so did I. The train was air conditioned but it was stifling hot and, as Lilly and I got acquainted, she, now and then, modestly dabbed her bosom with an Eau de Cologne sprinkled silken and embroidered handkerchief. She kindly asked what I did when I was not travelling and I told her I painted pictures. Ach nein, du bist ein Artiest? Wie ist das möglich? (An artist, how is that possible?) The hanky started working overtime.

The secret was out and went like wildfire through the whole train. The next thing, passengers were lining up to meet me, vodka was offered and Lilly unpacked some ‘kuchen’ with cubed sugar soaked in almond essence. (I remember it well.) I was almost carried around on shoulders and tears were flowing. I was feted like an emperor.

Some hours later, when darkness finally announced itself – and consider Russian sleeper trains are not gender separated, and the vodka had settled – the four of us, including the beautiful Lilly, calmly undressed. I hopped in the top bunk and she underneath. I slept on a cloud of Eau the Cologne and almond essence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014

Next morning, breakfast was served in those ornate silver plated urns and glassware. The Americans behind us, thankfully, had had enough of Aussie imitations.

Getting back to the reverence shown to artists, dead or alive, in countries elsewhere, it seems doubly annoying to hear in all details the latest exploits of an AFL player who went to play in France for more money. Why is that of such enormous importance?

What I am trying to get at is that if I would have gone around the Goulburn-City Rail Link announcing I painted pictures, the best I could hope for would be the question “Do you sell them, and how much?”

How many more years will be wasted in giving so much credit to sport and so little to art?

When will we finally start recognising that art is important because it lasts and also defines us as a nation that always strives above the mundane.

The simple bicycle has been around for hundreds of years. It is surely one of the world’s most amazing inventions. Name just one invention, whereby with less effort and input, more output is produced. The bicycle seems to defy the Einstein theory whereby for every action there is an equally weighted opposite action. The Dutch seemed to have taken the ‘more for less’ with gusto. Every morning and afternoon millions jump on the bike, going to and fro work, going shopping or taking kids to school. There are more bicycles than people. Especially with romance, the bike in Holland has always been an essential extension for meeting mates. First dates are usually conducted on bikes. If the bike ride blossoms into romance, both bikes might be seen lying between the reeds along a dyke or canal with the couple hidden from sight, perhaps getting acquainted away from the harsh metal embrace with a more softer more tactile manner.   Not that riding bicycles in the Netherlands precludes having physical contact while cycling. Far from it, often the young and therefore more agile will be seen holding hands AND riding their bikes. I have often felt that the rhythmic moving up and down of thighs might well incur a hastening of passion, whereby the couple’s surging hormones might finally over rule and make for casting all cautions to the wind, hence those bikes hurriedly thrown amongst the reeds.

I was told by my mother that I was possibly conceived by this typical Dutch bicycle passion as well, not amongst the reeds but in the lee of a terrible storm. They had sought shelter from a really ferocious westerly behind a dyke and once out of the wind, one thing led to another, and nine months later… there, but for the grace of two Raleigh bikes, came I. Another very favorite form of couples getting together was the female getting a ride by boyfriend sitting akimbo on the metal brace between the handle bars and bike seat. A cunning and experienced male bike-rider would of course  not be too obviously rubbing his thighs against the girl’s on one side and her buttocks on the other side. He would just occasionally, perhaps while rounding a sharp corner, massage the girl’s thighs with his. It was called the ‘coffee grinding method’ of wooing while riding. I am not sure what coffee had to do with it. I would have thought ‘potato peeling’ would have been a better and much more suitable Dutch description.

It seems sad that bike riding here in Australia hasn’t taken a leaf out of the experienced and romantic Dutch bike riding phenomenon. The whole show has been hi-jacked by a kind of Tour De France obsession. I have yet to see couples lovingly and sensually riding bicycles. It is all far too serious, almost manically. Why on earth all this uniform wearing?   Who thought up wearing those sweaty Lycra tight fitting pants which according to medical experts kills sperms. Why on earth make wearing helmets law?  Could you imagine, the ultimate of femininity and elegance, a Parisian woman  on her way home from the Boulangerie with baguette in her basket, riding a bike with a helmet on? Non. Non.

Here bike riding is a sport not a mode of transport or encouragement for wild uninhibited sex. They, the riders, are hell- bent over their handle bars, hands gloved, heads sheathed, feet shod in expensive riding Nikes strapped into pedals… One hundred kilometers today-two hundred tomorrow! The wheels are so thin; there is hardly any surface area that touches the road. The slightest pebble or loose surface and arse over head it all becomes. This type of racing bike cycling becomes perilously close to being a very dangerous method of transport. Those bikes are lethal except on the velodromes. No wonder helmets are introduced. Still, it is encouraging more people are taken to the bike and many shires are now introducing bike lanes.

However, I am not sure that riding bicycles in Australia will ever reach the level of transport or romance (with wild abandonment of those racing bikes amongst the lemon scented Australian gum trees) that the Dutch seemed to have infused and combined in their culture.

You thought it would never end, but while it might still be some years away; end it will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg

I remember those first memories as if it was yesterday. That of holding my mother’s hand, except it wasn’t mum but a strange lady in the soup kitchen of Rotterdam 1944.  In the confusion of many mums and many children with metal buckets waiting to be filled, I had taken a mum’s hand which wasn’t my mother’s. This was my first moment of total panic and of freaking out.  It was resolved within seconds but the forgetting of this, never. How odd, that links to mothers are so important that the comfort of holding a hand can leave such lasting impressions. I mean, I was holding someone’s hand and it was only when looking upwards I became aware of the hand not being my mother’s. So what was the big deal? Perhaps during those war years with cold winters and gnawing hunger, filling buckets with soup was the primary concern by mothers with skinny children. I am sure my mother hadn’t deliberately let go of her skinny son’s hand. The metal bucket that my mother carried was green as was the little kerosene cooking stove that she used to prime by pumping. It was my right hand that my mother had let go off.

The years rushed by and then we married, we had our first, our second, our third child…. Vasectomy…. Enough now of pro-creation. Dr.Barbara Simcock of the Australian Family Planning Association performed the operation. ‘Make sure you keep using condoms for at least the next 6 weeks,” was her sage advice.  Here take some, they are multi coloured and they glow in the dark, she added before tending to the next man who I had briefly met in the waiting room. He had a beard and looked a bit anxious and pale, but he also had four children. Then after six weeks I had to take a sample to the ‘semen expert’ who would try and detect if any life ones survived since the operation and the use of those coloured condoms (glowing under the bed sheets). The butcher who had watched a channel 9 TV segment on my vasectomy said triumphantly;” I saw you on the Telly yesterday, you had it cut off”, ha-ha ha…” Your usual two kilo of sausages?”

Those were the days, forever and for more. Those were also the days of the tribal rock musical ‘Hair’ with its’ Age of Aquarius’ with long hair and tentative first bong trials and errors. We rolled the bong and felt real ‘with it’ especially after having, for the first time ‘ever’ in public, seen the lineup of nudes at the Hair musical at Kings Cross theatre. The first display of pubic hair IN PUBLIC!  It had trouble getting through the sensors. One condition of allowing the nudity was that the actors were to stand frozen. Nothing would be allowed to move or dangle. Police on horse-back with batons drawn were outside the theatre.  Any body part moving and hell would break out. The actors were also not allowed to undress on the stage. The problem was resolved by the actors getting undressed under a huge canvas sheet. When the moment arrived that the whole audience had waited for, (with baited breath) you could hear a pin drop. The canvas sheet would be hoisted up, et voila, real live nudes. Standing, in situ, like a set from Madame Tussauds Wax museum. Eroticism came in modest form during those times.

The show was hugely popular and went on even longer than ‘The Sound of Music,’ which was not quite as erotic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9oq_IskRIg

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2012/01/23/120123po_poem_cohen

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html

Remembering him form McCabe & Mrs Miller Movie by Robert Altman;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F2BSHp9oYD0

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/31798.html#comments

Home alone
286 Comments
Gerard Oosterman

Mention the word ‘table’ (tavola) to an Italian and the implications are clear: family, food, laughter and above all, the excitement of conversation. The word ‘tavola’ could easily bring tears to any red blooded Italian, having been away too long from home.

But, mentioning the word ‘table’ to an Australian and someone might ask: Ikea, or have you inherited a “Parker Table”?

(This of course is not the only difference between Aussies and the European or other nationals. But, as they say in Russia, Viva La Difference!)

A curious form of isolating oneself, at times, from the outside world persists here more than anywhere else that I know of.

Perhaps the words ‘Own Home’ demonstrate this difference. Am I right in thinking that those two little words would conjure up for Australians what the word ‘tavola’ does for the Italian?

The words ‘Own Home’ for us Australians is the need for the world of absolute ‘privacy’. Perhaps, to our Anglo forbearers, their ‘Own Home’ was their castle – up with the drawbridge and just in case of anything or anyone unwanted, they had the back up of a moat to keep out intruders, including any unannounced visitors.

While the drawbridge and moat have gone, we have substituted them with the paling fence, and now the impenetrable colour bond aluminium partition fence, blocking even the remotest chance of seeing a neighbour, or worse, a neighbour seeing us.

Some ‘own homes’ now have total block-out metal electric window shutters. Perhaps in the future they will do away with the need to have any windows at all.

The need for ‘privacy’ seems to overwhelm everything, even when it means blocking the glorious country views and light. Perhaps they are impatiently waiting to jump into bed for a bit of an old fashioned quickie, but so would the red blooded Europeans, would they not?

With the culture of one’s ‘Own Home’ comes another curious phenomenon. You rarely actually see anyone outside in their gardens and I am buggered if I know how Aussies maintain their gardens so spotlessly. The petunia borders are all weed free. The lawn is in absolute submission and not a leaf is allowed a minute’s rest in the guttering.

Back about fifty years ago, we lived in a new Sydney suburb called Revesby, near Bankstown in NSW. A neighbour would, at weekends only, climb on his roof and sweep the shiny ‘Wunderlich’ glazed tiles clean of bird shit, deposited generously by my brother’s pigeons. It was the only time we actually saw him outside, ever.

These days, if you want to see people enjoying their outside garden areas, one has to go to the suburbs of mainly Italian or Greek inhabitants. In Sydney, the Middle Eastern areas are probably the best place to see outdoor activity – people hanging over the fence, kids playing on the streets, the burning of rubber by over-excited youths, and a general feeling of excitement or ‘things happening’.

Now we come to the tricky ‘Unleashed contributors’ bit. Is it also this ‘privacy’ thing that sees so many people writing under nick names, often even changing their names as they go along? Is it safer to write something a bit controversial under the guise of a nick name?

I hope I am not under some kind of danger here. Am I doing something wrong or should I start writing under another name as well? Surely, the comforting umbrella of the ABC’s Unleashed forums will keep us always safe.

What is the answer to all this nonsense?

http://newmatilda.com/2012/01/18/call-me-whatever

Dr J.Wilson is a small David compared with the Goliath and the hordes of right wing disciples that have been on the MTR side. We all learnt both biblically and mythically that David won out. A groundswell of M/s Wilson’ supporters are growing by the minute and so are the pledges of support, both by hearts and minds and from generous wallets. The extraordinary feature is that Jennifer Wilson has been running her blog for over two years and that both on her blog and her articles on The ABC’s Drum; the issues between Jennifer, MTR and the many contributors have been in open. At no stage did MTR object or put her, supposedly, opposing viewpoint. Not once a single peep or a hum out of her. By the threat of legal action MTR definitely did not turn the other cheek. She did not have to. She could simply have stated her point of view.

Now, all of a sudden and with nothing much of substance given, accept by some very vague marsh-mellow like few words, M/s Wilson is given the threat of legal action. It is not within limits of acceptability that Court Action is ever the only way of responding to opinions that have been widely given and discussed by many, including on the ABC and over a long period.

Surely, the Courts have better and more significant issues on their books.
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http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/goback

This is now the well entrenched refrain echoing around Australia’s colour- bond fenced off and secluded suburbs. It took us years to get where we are. We are proud of having our own homes, own children, own wives, own Holdens, world’s largest T-bone steaks and we all love our sporting heroes. Never mind those millions displaced through wars or famine. We need security first and if people come here and expect a hand-out, they’ve got another thing coming.

We have forgotten that bit about being a nation of migrants who often came here also from wars and famine. The ‘reffo’of the forties and fifties was also vilified and denounced as knife pullers, garlic munchers, women pinchers and with hairy armpits to boot., but that was a long time ago and Australia was different. Our hearts have ossified since through the long and relentless ranting by politicians with a keen eye on voters. Shock jocks renting the airwaves; have put on the final touches, richly nourishing our dormant xenophobia of years long gone by.

We now have reached new levels of anti ‘illegal’ boat people opinions morphing into ‘facts’ after every bit of Murdoch’s publicity. Those strange looking people, wearing flowing white garments and whose men are bearded have the nerve to arrive unasked and uninvited at our shores. We will continue locking them up without trial for years on end. Deterrents are what we finally aim for. We massage our residents with messages of “all boat people are violent and terrorists, hell-bent on bombing our lovely brick veneer homes and life-styles.” They are also very rich and as a matter of course destroy their birth certificates and all identity papers.

Fortunately we also lock up dozens of children. We know they are not children by x-raying their wrists.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/lifeline-for-jailed-indonesian-children-20111210-1oons.html

We don’t believe their Indonesian parents or other relatives who tell us that they are still children. They all lie and are all potential illegal future terrorists. Never mind that those children back in Indonesia are sorely missed by parents and siblings. They are also missed for not being there to help out. Often survival is a daily struggle. They do not have large T-Bones. That’s why some were lured on those dangerous ocean boat journeys. It would bring some food on the table, perhaps even an opportunity to give the children the chance to go to school, learn to read and write.

Our intelligence service is not answerable to anyone or anything either, above the law, taking a leaf from North Korea perhaps? People are escorted ‘back to where they came from’ with many questions asked by asylum seekers supporting lawyers, but remaining unanswered. ‘A murderous regime’ is always elsewhere but not here in the land of our dreams, with jailed children and locked away boat people, languishing and out of sight and miles from care or conscience.

The dangerous journey in rickety boats is a last resort for many of those that have already languished in many other camps, often in countries that are overrun by tens if not hundreds of thousands refugees. No one wants to leave home and hearth. As some of them have said; better to drown at least with trying. We have nothing more to lose.

Go back where you came from.

Perhaps, doing the rounds amongst those Vinnie’s fashion items from the past, we re-discover those sweet scents, those delicate fragrances of bygone years of the many souls of evaporated lovers. It’s all so long ago now. How did we fare since leaving the bed of our birth mothers, having to make our own? Do we still carry around and live off the love of rose petals strewn around so abundantly and carefree at our beginning?

Can anyone understand people buying new beds, beds to which no memories or cares are attached? I made our own bed from Oregon pine more than fifty years ago. It is still as good now as it was then and travelled with us between continents and cities many times. Our bed as would many of those belonging to others withstood the storms of tempestuous oceans as well as the joys of soothing, weaving grassy meadows strewn with buttercups.

It seems such an awful telling sign of those discarded beds that are now featuring at many a shopping centre car-park. People must, perhaps at the dead of the night, get up and lash the hated mattress on to the top of their Holden Ute, dump their beds. There are clear signs at those charity collection bins not to leave bedding. Yet, it seems the temptation to get rid of beds overcomes the warnings, and the soiled and stained remnants of bedding and dead loves are left there. At any given time there must be those, so utterly disappointed in what those beds produced, they feel the urgent need to jettison those hated items of joyless nights and loathsome sad embraces. They drive, looking for the graveyards of hopeless loves and hateful congress but end up in the grey concrete of Westfield’s car-park or the Vinnie’s bin in front of Woolies.

Is it not so true that we deserve the beds that we lie in?

Go to the chemist and the window display will have dietary advice that mainly advises buying more food from them. Sure, it is food the chemist (on his podium) claims slims, but this can’t be as effective as refraining from taking food altogether. They are not there to tell you not to buy anything from them, are they? This is the problem; obesity is so much part of our well oiled and lubricated economic machinery. The giants of Coca Cola, Cadbury, Nestle, Mars, PepsiCo, Big M, KFC and many others would take a dim view if fingers were pointed at them being responsible for one of the most serious health issues of all times. Tinker with those boys and next you’ll have an ‘OECD Spring revolution’ as well. It is not all that farfetched to envisage thousands of the very large bodied on the streets, yielding petrol loaded Cokes and giant Chico rolls rioting, causing mayhem and destruction. They are now totally addicted to eating, chewing, masticating and getting larger and larger. Both the SFS Multi Nationals and their addicted disciples have a vested interest to keep the status quoi.

It will be one of the most interesting future events to watch. How will health organizations tackle this perplexing dilemma? It will be a fiercely contested battle with the western world already fighting a severe economic wilting; it will take brave politicians standing for health above economic growth risking further shrinkage of their voters consuming habits. The problem is that those consuming habits are so consuming it is killing them. At some stage we might have to consider the possibility that our lifestyle of consuming endless SFS products can’t be beneficial if many die as a consequence. What’s the point of economic growth if the country is littered with the dead or premature dying of millions from the effect of a booming economy that approves known deadly foods?

Of course, there are some signs of brave politicians emerging from the cauldron of indecisiveness and loathsome neglect, willing to take action. Was it Denmark who was first of the block cunningly raising revenue on fat, and lowering obesity? The Danish SFS merchants screamed blue murder, enraged with the imposition on eating habits. This is a censorship of some kind, they shouted. Where is the freedom, our freedom to eat what we like? No, said the sage Government, not if it kills.

On the train yesterday was a large man whose stomach was rolling over his shorts. He seemed in a deep sleep while resting his left hand on a bottle of Coke which was balanced upright on his enormous knee. Every now and then he would wake up somewhat startled take a sip out of his drink but promptly went back to his slumbering state again. I couldn’t help but feel but feel that the sugary drink was his umbilical cord keeping him still alive. At the railway platforms the machines that sell those drinks charge $3.20 for a coke and an astonishing same amount for plain water. What would happen if the Coke was $ 6.40 and the water free? The extra $ 3.20 raised could go to those thousands in hospitals with the results of Coke poisoning. The wiser ones would quench their thirst on the free water and be so much the healthier for it, having beaten their addiction. Those pernicious tuck shops at school, the bane of my mother’s discontent when we all went to schools. What’s wrong with my cut sandwiches, she asked? If we were really brave, surely those tuck shops would have disappeared by now. They are nothing but a stepping stone to obesity. Why, have those at all? Is snacking in between meals not one of those physical habits that have become so entrenched? In no time at all, does the snacking school kid turn into a full blown victim of bad dietary habits.

If we are serious about good eating habits, let’s get rid of snacking, just for starters mind you!

Presently, this has all changed into an astonishing fashion indicating a kind of hobo homelessness made cool- chique. The more worn out the cool people dress, the better and the more expensive it will be. At no stage during the history of fashion have holes in material cost that much. It has to be suitably threadbare. Isn’t there a fashion label by that name? On the train today there were many men and boys in singlets and thongs, coke in one hand, mobile or apps in other. Girls and women dressed in terribly worn out looking shorts or raggedly dresses, also some in singlets with bodily parts swinging hither and dither, as well as thongs and mobiles. I am informed that those shorts don’t come cheap and that the impoverished look is deliberate. There I was, thinking to get out needle and thread and offer to do some repairs. Mothers used to work their knuckles to the bare bone preventing kids to look like Charles Dickens’ urchins. Now it is high fashion to look poor, bare boned and homeless. They all utter and talk a kind of threadbare English as well, with, ‘and like, oh my god,’ or even better, a resolute ‘stuff like that’… it all falls into place, even makes some sense.

At the back of the railway line where we live is a huge Salvation Army shop. It is situated in a semi industrial zone next to a large rural produce store. It is so big one can hardly see the end of it. It has three huge industrial fans blowing circulating the air which has a barely concealed air of stale perfume. The very high corrugated ceiling and steel framed structure gives it all a rather theatrical feel, making browsing very pleasurable. On offer are all those fascinating items from glorious pasts donated for a good cause and hoping for a revival in a good home.

Here one can find the discarded and sometimes fashionable items from yesteryear. The second hand dresses are especially intriguing. Who wore this silk dark dress, size 46 with a single strand of long blonde hair still clinging forlornly at the back of it? Was she tall with that flaxen blond hair and did the tri-coloured sash next to it drape over it or did she tie it around the waste? Did she talk a lot and was she happily married? Where did she live and did she treat others with consideration? I would have thought that wearing this beautiful dark dress and sash could not have been worn by a fish curer from Woolloomooloo. You never get that sort of feeling of historical haute couture looking at the endless cloth racks of David Jones or Myers.

At The Salvos, ‘at the back of the railway line’, were many other items that would have cost a fortune in the sixties or even seventies. There were top fashion label lingerie frilly items including brassieres that would have cost a fortune new. I couldn’t help myself and felt inside the cups of a ruffled cashmere bralette made in Italy. The ticket said ‘new over $ 260.-. It was a steal for $5.-. What lovely breasts had nestled there, I reflected pensively? No one would ever do this with new items. There is just no point to it, is there? New clothes are sterile; no living has occurred in them yet, let alone warm breasts.

In my shared wardrobe and for many decades now hangs a pure woolen jacket I have worn many times in the past, especially weddings but lately more funerals… It is as good now as it was fifteen years ago. It is a dark blue-black colour and was given to me by my son who found the arms a bit short. It fits me still perfectly and even though I have not found much use for it lately, I’ll keep it forever. The jacket was first given to my son and rumored to have been originally bought by a well known lawyer. Inside the jacket at the back of it is the label: Designed by Pierre Cardin ‘Paris’. Another label pronounces in smaller letters, exclusively tailored in Australia, Berkeley apparel.

It will most likely end up at the Salvos as well…eventually. A steal for just $3.-