The Looking Glass

The Night

The darkness was coming, to comfort and heal, somewhere where he could slip back into the shadows and cease to be in the light.

To be in the light meant everything was illuminated for all to see, especially himself, his ideas his very thought exposed,some people liked the light but to him it belonged to the day.

The day could be life but the dark belonged to the many little deaths we die, somewhere he didn’t have to pretend to enjoy the light, his little hideaway.

Brain fog only seemed to begin in the morning and end when the light receded , he hypothesised that maybe it was his pain receptors lighting up as sometimes the light was too bright, whatever it was it was uncomfortable,

Like a direct stare or an expression of disinterest, both he found were an affront to his being. Maybe that look was one people gave to the desperately destitute on the street, he felt it right in his soul as he had suffered and would suffer in future like they did and would.

A video shared on messenger by his friend on the topic of the correlation between COVID-19 and 5G had got him thinking not so much about the subject matter as the subject stating that it was in the bible that God was no part in this man made world.

You may as well as stabbed him in the heart, even though he didn’t adhere to any religious ideology it was a justification for his previous conclusion that this world was a world of man.

You see part of religion is of a belief of good in the world, the suspension of that was bowel churning to him, to say the least.

That is the reality of life in this world ie godless, I guess he was a bit of a romantic on one hand but he understood the surgical precision that some ideologies exercised in execution, to behave like a soulless robot devoid of emotion is the penultimate of inhumanity and a slap in the face of life.

Now Rastafarianism now that’s a religion but did like his meat and fish, vegetables were more an optional extra due to their price.

So people have fought and died around the world, many are sick mentally and physically, there is discrimination everywhere but in his messy little room that mattered little.

The night had come and maybe tonight he would stay awake a little longer and enjoy it.

Holy Grail

-“I woke up alone, all my wounds were clean” – Hunters and Collectors song ‘Holy Grail’

He couldn’t quite figure out what unnerved him about the morning, was it the deafening silence apart from the avian affirmations.

It came to him later, he was truly alone before death. He feared death for he knew of its totality, death extinguished life completely, permanently.

If the world only knew to value life rather than denude and destroy it.

Every day is a blessing, nothing living has ever returned from death apart from the ‘supernatural’

Religion is a detour before it he thought if more people dealt with its total permanence they would give life its due respect.

It seemed fitting though, him having an existential crisis today, it being a Sunday.

He remembered back to his late teens at the United Church in Boroko, a suburb of Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby, with Mum and badly hung over from drunken debauchery the night before.

The service started at nine in the morning and ended at around one in the afternoon and it was torture pure and simple.

The Tongan minister would launch into the service and tell all the husbands, sons, brothers off for being hung over, the sun would be blazing down, the humidity was like a sauna and he would gleefully faint if he could, it was like a vision of hell.

By the end of the ‘service’ your will was completely destroyed and all you wanted to do was skulk away into some dark hole and expire, it wasn’t really a service so much as a total chastisement for the night before.

For all his missionary zeal we never learnt our lesson and so the following week as regularly as clockwork we would be dragged, unwillingly, by our mothers, girlfriends and wives to be tortured in the name of the lord for another week.

The Lion and the Mouse

This is a retelling of a story I read a long time ago in my youth-

There was once a mighty Lion, proud, magnificent and the undisputed king of all he surveyed. On this day the heat was too hot to saunter and he lay himself at the foot of a gracious shady tree to wile away the burning heat in comfort.

He started to get drowsy and was nodding off to sleep when he heard a tiny voice from underneath his well muscled paw, he lifted it and underneath was a tiny mouse.

“Please Mr Lion” the tiny mouse squeaked “Please let me go back to my family!”

The mighty lion guffawed disdainfully, he’d heard this sort of thing before, right before he dispatched other animals off into the spirit world where this little mouse would soon be. He poised his claw to end this minor irritation when the little mouse squeaked out “Please Sir Lion let me go and one day I might be able to help you!”

The instant the mighty lion heard this he roared with laughter, so much so that all the surrounding animals and birds were startled, how this insignificant tiny animal could be of any use to him made him roar out even more.

“You!, Help me!? he shouted at the now trembling little mouse, “How could you possibly help me!? I am the King of the jungle!, Go now ! I tire of you! and with that he let the little mouse go and thought nothing more about it.

Months later after a successful wildebeest hunt the mighty lion was in the same area and sought out the same tree as the morning sun was beginning to burn, he spied the tree and was heading towards it when the earth suddenly fell from beneath him. He was embraced by something taut and he now hung in a hunters trap before the tree.

He tried to struggle but the net had completely dis-empowered him, he the mighty lion, the King of all he surveyed was now as helpless as a newborn babe, overwhelmed and totally powerless he began to whimper and stopped, ‘what was that tiny noise?’ he strained his ears to listen and then he heard.

It was the tiny mouse he had let live many moons ago ,” Hello Mr Lion this wont take too long, you will be out before nightfall” and out of the corner of his eye he saw the tiny mouse start gnawing at the fibre of the net. Pretty soon he could see and tendon by tendon he was being released from the awful trap, then finally he was free.

“Thank you tiny mouse” he said quietly, “I the mighty lion am humbled before you, may you live long and have many children” and he slowly walked back to his den out in the lengthening shadows.

The tiny mouse waved him good bye by the base of the shady tree.

‘Modern Experience’

“That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew-and grew-” From Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak which I came across as an adult while I was living in my mothers village in Papua New Guinea.

The book had been bought many moons ago for one of my siblings as a child by my father. I loved that book for it was so imaginative and the illustrations were so evocative, that quote always plays in my mind when I’m alone in a darkened room or when the shadows are lengthening in the early evening in front of the balcony.

Part of the magic of any good book is that it can instantly convey a mood or feeling, still to this day though I much prefer ones intermingled with some sort of picture or illustration. The combination of the two ie text and pictures compels me to have a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Probably why I do like comics like Marvels Wolverine or the Japanese Akira series. I grew up into my early teens reading Beano and Eagle comics which came by air all the way from the United Kingdom.

I remember during the Falklands War of nineteen eighty two I think it was the Eagle comics that had illustrations of the battles fought by the British Army against the Argentinians or ‘Argies’ as the soldiers used to say in the comics.

I also remember drawing a picture of a world war two British soldier which I sent in to an Eagle weekly competition and I won five pounds which came via postal order.

I also made an Irish pen friend who saw my illustration who sent me pictures of himself and his sister I think but I didn’t stay in touch as we constantly moved around PNG.

Hu’h! memories it’s such a relief to have them when life is so prosaic and wearisome and yes I have lived.

It’s nice to receive little postcards from yourself at different times of your life and come to the realisation that one has had a full life, rich with experience and yes there was a lot of bad in adulthood but that little note from the past is a panacea for ones present ‘modern experience’ .

Election Day

Yes it’s the election we had to have, COVID – 19! What COVID – 19!? After all who will be our Mayor and Councillors?

The world doesn’t stop turning just because of a pesky viral outbreak.

Bins have to be collected and parking fines issued.

Remember voting is compulsory which brings to mind a quote by Margaret Thatcher ( former Prime Minister of the UK During the Eighties )-

quote – “In a free country, everyone has to choose!” – end quote.

I remember that quote because it was sampled by Tackhead on their song “Hard left”.

One of their members, Gary Clail went on to releasing a single I quite like called “Escape”.

It one of those days although I just have to look around and come to the conclusion that Australians have an abundance of riches.

It’s the scenery on a sunny Autumn day, the almost cool breeze. It’s that old saying-“You don’t know what you have until it’s gone”

Right now there is ample space and peace and quiet here at least.

I’ve always wondered what the the neighbourhood gets up to apart from attending to their lawns as one doesn’t hear a thing normally.

Sometimes the quiet gets to me and I pump up AC-DC, Slayer, Metallica, Alice in Chains, ZZ Top and others on the stereo or I tune in to Coles Radio or Triple M.

The mood quickly passes these days as I find solace in the natural sounds around me, the whisper of the breeze, birds, people talking in the distance and the ebb and flow of cars.

That’s election day.

To Everyone Reading

Thank you to all my followers, those who have read some of my blog posts and everyone else.

I hope this rapacious virus (COVID – 19) leaves yourselves and the one’s you love alone.

If not so lucky please know that there is an eighty percent recovery rate.

It has been a joy participating in the WordPress blog world which has broadened my horizons.

The happiness and wonder I feel when seeing where around the globe you all are reading from has been most heartening.

It has been a tumultuous few days preparing myself in case of infection with adequate supplies and medication.

As I know you all have done, are doing or will do.

Please accept my sincere gratitude for all your time now and in the future and-ma a kalou pire vavat parike, in my mother tongue that means – and God be with you all always!

Eternal Darkness

It can happen at the most inconvenient time, when you are needed to be present the most.

A brief lull and then the full force of it upon you, you are incapacitated completely.

You could be in the best place in your life, but you wouldn’t know it.

Not even the ability to squirm under the vice like grip, that’s what can break a person, the inability to resist.

It is the coldest, darkest place on earth, bereft of hope and between your ears.

An eternal wellspring of sick emotion, bluey black and thoroughly awful.

A living death as toxic as battery acid, afflicted you navigate the world as a mere husk of a human devoid of emotion and deeply ill.

Yearning for once familiar well being some may take the wine but it is brief before you are plumbing the dark, dank depths once again.

Even the Prince of Darkness fears it, for he has no power over it’s total incapacitation, the souls too dead for even his predilections.

Totally lifeless like stones to be cast aside by the living.

Your mind as congealed as the thickest of jelly, beseeching for sweet merciful clarity.

Some call it depression, I call it the many deaths of hope.

The Tyranny of the Sun

The day was hardly a portent of doom a fantastic sparkling morning to be at the beach.

The tally was now over a thousand diagnosed cases of COVID – 19 Australia wide.

He had a brief period of anxiety when he had read that news this morning.

It would seem that everything he knew, was familiar with was deconstructing right before his previously jaded eyes.

A sense of unease was slowly seeping into consciousness.

Already a vulnerable member of society his situation was becoming increasingly precarious by the day.

Time which previous had next to no meaning was starting to quicken, the grains of sand trickling in an hourglass.

The dichotomy confused him, such a beautiful day yet such dire circumstance.

He was going to to have to make some calls, someone somewhere that he knew would lose their life to this rapacious disease.

It could be him, life under the Tyranny of the Sun.

The Lion Of Kabul

Or Ahmad Shah Massoud also known as “The Lion of Panjshir”, I remember watching a documentary about him focusing on his heroic and victorious resistance to the Taliban who were besieging Kabul and being greatly impressed on YouTube many moons ago.

He was a gifted and charismatic Afghan military commander who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from nineteen seventy nine until nineteen eighty nine and then against the Taliban until he was assassinated by them a day or two before the world trade towers were leveled in September eleven two thousand and one.

He was the only political and military leader who never left Afghanistan during the struggle there.

He’s a national hero there and has an impressive tomb in his homeland of Panjshir.

I brought him up because no one well at least here in the major news outlets of the southern hemisphere ever brings him up, its all coverage about Islamic State, the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

You get the impression that no one actually opposed these groups except the United States, I didn’t even know he existed until I chanced upon that documentary of YouTube.

It would seem that it is advantageous to all involved if they pretend he never existed.

You should look him up on Wikipedia they have reams of information about him and his life, a definite loss to Afghanistan and the world as a whole and a man I admire quite greatly.

I sincerely hope he has left behind a lasting legacy.

Hello United Arab Emirates!

The Triangle

This is where time comes to die he’d joke, much like the Bermuda Triangle.

Sealed off from the outside world he was depersonalised.

He became a timeless entity, a naked life form… Ageless.

Through his magic portal to the world he could see all with it’s electronic eye.

He purposely chose to seek truths without bias or ageism and beauty in its simplest forms.

A soul is timeless he hypothesised and inherently good, evil did not have a soul for it belonged to the world of man.

Clinical and emotionless, like machines.

Maybe this COVID – 19 thing will bring out the humanity in society but deep down he knew that it would be an only temporary occurrence.

The machine men had the day, compassion clinically disposed of long ago, humility ‘collateral damage’.

They hadn’t got him though but it was only a matter of time.

He still had the Triangle though, time still had no meaning here and it was as cool as a Scandinavian forest.