The knuckled shadows of the western wind

The winter solstice has passed, and today is one of those Canberra days of rare and perfect beauty.  Ali has a lovely poem this week by Amy Carmichael, better known as a missionary but a dab hand at poetry too. Given that I'm looking at bare hills and rich colours instead of snowy wastes, I chose an Australian, Thomas Shapcott, and a poem not strictly solstic; instead, "Winter Westerlies."   

The knuckled shadows of the western wind
strike and stumble on our little hill
and leave a mark as visible and chill
as broken glass in all the air – you mind
your fingers on such mornings! Strong, unkind,
the winter vandal tweaks and worries till
he makes the country quick as razors; still
he cuffs, and all the land is roused and shined.

On days like these, these are the cleared-eyed days,
that wind is rogue, is brave, to slap the back
and snap the lock and strike and break and crack
the lazy comfortable town all ways
at once. And when, his three days done, he dies,
the whole town settles deep again, and sighs.

Down Under

Ours is “a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained. Stuff yet to be found.” So said Bill Bryson in Down Under, which he wrote more than ten years ago, and which I've just finished. The book itself is packed with stuff, and yet curiously empty. Bryson's certainly not an extreme tourist. He follows a fairly monotonous pattern - drive to place, find motel, have a gander at local museum, have too many beers at motel, reflect warmly, drive on - but he manages to squeeze in a tremendous amount of history, science, sociology, arcana and trivia, and also be uproariously funny. His descriptions of cricket, parliament, and other Australian curiosities, are outstanding, and I enjoyed just as much his self-deprecating descriptions of his attempt at bodysurfing, and of his embarrassing sleeping habits. In fact the latter's too good not to quote:

I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper...I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall apart in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside - tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air - decides to leak out. From time to time...my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still...Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within 500 feet has stopped. 

His descriptive powers are admirable, and as an Australian I couldn't help but enjoy his bemusement, wonderment and affection for the place. I found myself wanting more thoughtful analysis and searing commentary, a more purposeful sojourn; but that's not really what he sets out to do. He's taken funny field notes in the places he happens to wind up, and then generously shared them. The book is a product of just that meandering good nature which is content to stumble on a beer and a bit of local colour. Not having read his other books (yet) I don't know if that's Bryson, or if that's simply what he found down under.

The harvest is plentiful

Critic Louis Menand has an interesting piece about College - as in why go. There's a lot of talk in America about College as both the symbol and the mechanism of social equalisation, but Menand (among others) questions its universal value, especially where that value is depreciated by universal application.  The post-war broadening of college entrance meant rich white boys could learn alongside black people, poor people, and women, but a corresponding broadening of disciplines and purposes, so that a college degree is not only possible but requisite for a 'beverage manager,' may have gone too far.  More alarming, though, is the revelation that while humanities and science faculties are shrinking, the fastest growing discipline is business. At the same time, business students and grads perform the worst on tests measuring the benefits of a college degree (ie, whether it develops cultural literacy and general knowledge, skills in reading, writing and thinking). Sic transit gloria I guess.

This connects for me with an anonymous quote I found in comments on Stanley Fish's NY Times blog: "American businesses don't know what to do with smart people, and smart people don't know what to do with themselves." Something about the way our society is geared now means there is a lot of unmeaningful work around for people who are qualified but not skilled (in reading, writing, thinking), and not much for people who are both skilled and qualified for meaningful work. Perhaps more accurately, the meaningless work is where the money is. Only the lucky ones get paid to read, write and think.

For those who've come across the seas

It took Australia roughly twenty-four hours to end the live export of cattle on boats to Indonesia. The public were horrified by images of brutal treatment in Indonesian abattoirs. They cried out in rage. Within a day, live exports were banned. 

I can’t help but draw a comparison with the live export of people in boats from Indonesia (usually) and the treatment of asylum seekers at our hands. There is public clamour, but no unified voice of outrage; the louder cries seem to come from those who object to sharing our boundless plains with ‘illegal’ arrivals, and those who endorse the mandatory incarceration of men, women and children in places like Maribyrnong, Woomera, and Christmas Island, for indefinite stretches of time.

Mandatory detention has been in place since 1992. For nearly twenty years Australia has wavered in and out of breach of the UN Convention (to which we are a signatory), tacitly approving hasty legislative changes enabling the breach. We have allowed successive governments to farm out to foreign regimes and private companies (specialising in prison management) the protection of refugees’ rights. We have broken several resolutions to at least get children out of detention, even if we can’t summon the moral gumption to release adults detained without charge for years at a time. We have tolerated and supported the deceptions, exaggerations, ignorance and bombast of those who use the plight of asylum seekers to float their own political boats.

Today is World Refugee Day. It is now not unthinkable that one day might be enough to release those seaborne travellers treated brutally by the moral lassitude of our leaders, by our indifference.

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate

I came across this lovely bit of Samuel Johnson - not a writer I would normally look to for lyrical, psalm-like meditations. He's a century late for that exquisite moment when Donne and Herbert were unfurling their quiet splendour, and a century early for lush, Romantic introspection, or tender Victorian lamentation. And indeed this bit is not a lyric poem at all, but the last 26 lines of his long poem “The Vanity of Human Wishes: the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated” (published 1749) - which Walter Scott and TS Eliot both thought his best work. Considering that the poem's opening lines inauspiciously bid the reader “survey mankind, from China to Peru,” its closing lines come as a sweet shock. The theology here is probably a conversation for another post, but I hope you enjoy the poetry here this Friday morn.

Where, then, shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
Inquirer, cease! petitions yet remain,
Which Heaven may hear, nor deem Religion vain.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice;
Safe in His power, whose eyes discern afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer,
Implore His aid, in His decisions rest,
Secure whate'er He gives, He gives the best.
Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires,
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resign'd;
For love, which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill;
For faith, that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat:
These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain,
These goods He grants, who grants the power to gain;
With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.