Madness can be defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.  Insanity is sometimes defined as not being able to properly interact with the world as it exists.

Both madness and insanity are evident in the Australian medical system.  To a large extent it is not a healthcare system because, despite its rhetoric, it appears more enamoured of medication than health. (more…)

We live in a world that appears complex to many of us.  It is crowded with people, things, information and events.  We can only deal with a small part of all this in a lifetime and an even smaller part at any one moment.  We have to choose what to do, who to be with, where to be, what to read; even from the small slice of all possibilities that we have access to.  To assist us in this, helpful people create catalogues, indexes, compendiums, digests, directories, databases, search engines, fortune cookies and book reviews. (more…)

Earlier in the week I decided to do some (more) cleaning out of old stuff.  There are boxes in the roof that went up there when I moved to Mount Eliza thirteen years ago.  Some I have not looked at in all that time.

One box’s contents I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.  Most of it consisted of memorabilia from a number of former lives, including an address book from my almost four years of travelling in the 1970s.  Dozens of people I’d met and/or stayed with, and their contact details (pre-internet, of course). (more…)

A correspondent recently opined that I write baldly.  Whether he’s seen my unthatched pate or is having his own problems with auto-correct in Word (see From the Kitchen #12) or is being tongue-in-cheek, I don’t know.  I baldly go …

I do hope I write boldly.  Timidity does not become a writer and certainly doesn’t suit me.  I aim to entertain, while at the same time, with varying degrees of subtlety, informing, challenging, even upsetting.

I also write to challenge myself.  I’m sometimes surprised at what comes out of my fountain pen. (more…)

Many of the great teachings talk of mindfulness, being in the moment, waking from the dream of past and future and living in the ‘now’.  There are people who devote their lives to learning how to do that and, once learned, perfecting it.

The thing about being mindful of the present moment is that you miss nothing, even when it’s no longer there.  There is a trick to it, though: memories that come up are at that moment, the moment.  It’s about honouring wherever our attention is right now. (more…)

Yesterday I came upon a poetical prisoner.  It was right there in front of me, on my computer screen.  It started life as a poitical prisoner in Word and the program offered me two possible corrections.  I clicked without looking carefully.  Many such corrections, and some ‘auto correct’ solutions don’t get discovered and reprimanded until the second or third proof-reading.

Some words make it through to the finial printing, because they area words (a common one fro me is … oops, just that), or because Word thinks they are nad doesn’t raise its Microsoft^® eyebrow.  I might have to send the program to the Department of Corrections fro re-education. (more…)

I’m feeling feisty today, possibly because I’ve just finished rewriting a story set in a future, fragmented, totalitarian Australia.

Benevolent dictatorship could be the way to solve all the stupidity around us.  But I am the only person who could head such a regime in such a way that everyone would be better off, the environment would be cleaned up, species extinction would halt, peace would be the norm.  However, I would no longer have the time to write or walk the dog.

It is a question that continually engages me: why is it so hard for governments to do what is right?  I don’t know the answers.  ‘Right’ does not include supporting buddies and vested commercial interests.

We repeatedly elect governments with the hope (sometimes expectation) that things will change for the better.  They seem to for a short while and then it is almost like watching a brand new car take off on a freshly-laid road, only to soon get bogged in the soggy ruts left by previous incumbents. (more…)

Do I do requests?  Singers do, as do other entertainers.  Am I an entertainer?  I hope so.

One of my fans (yes, I have at least one) suggested I write ‘from the café’.  Okay, here goes.

I sit at a long table (two squares) facing the door, to catch the customers as they come in.  One just came in and nearly left again when he saw me.  Maybe he thought he was in the wrong place.  He looked at me again, at the books on the table, at my notebook and pen, at my poster (which explains who I am and why I’m here) and then went to a corner table as far from me as possible.  I’m the Ogre in Residence. (more…)

I can’t see much through the curtain of heavy rain outside the kitchen window.  The rain has the scene look as if it has been given a PhotoShop blur filter: the black and white magpies feasting on drenched insects and worms now look dark grey and light grey.

The wind comes in gusts and shakes water out of the trees.

There’s a squabble between the magpies and a pair of minas.  Is it over food or territory?  The smaller birds prevail and the magpies fly out of view.  What makes the minas so feisty?  They are able to spook the cat and steal his food from the back veranda. (more…)

Humans seem to be driven by the need for an explanation for everything.  This makes us curious about how things work and also leads us to pat answers.  Sometimes any explanation appears to satisfy some people.

I’ve written elsewhere (as have others) that it is useless to have answers to the wrong questions.  It’s worse than useless, because if the answers seem satisfactory, we stop asking. (more…)