Hope Of His Likeness

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“It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of all creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more, for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, as far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly… the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food,” it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, it is surely meant for the chief teacher of what is immortal in us, as it is the chief minister of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought…
John Ruskin, ‘Of the Open Sky’ Modern Painters
http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/ruskin/

If there was one regret, it was the wasted days. It all comes back, those lonely days, the door shutting out the outside world, entering into his own quiet, private universe. There was no answer. He had been curdled deep inside. The door shut onto his private domain and he felt instant relief. The world was out there. Nobody could get to him here. All the lurking prospects, lurking failures, all the things he had longed for and thought would be answered, all these things were gone now; the simple, muffled shutting of a door. How much he looked forward to it. How much it provided an answer to the day's conundrums, the difficulties he now faced. Get back on the bike, they said, but he hadn't. And without a partner, the muffled sound of that door closing, the whoosh of the air, it was all part of a great closing down.

Where these things came from he did not know. The door shut, in those far off decades, and would only open again once in the entire evening, to let the dealer in. And then the silence that had become his life would assume even greater proportions. The love he had sought would seem completely unnecessary. He would open the back door, on to the mysterious, shrouded backyard overhung with a giant Jacaranda, the light crowded out with other trees he didn't recognise. He couldn't be sure where it would all end. He was growing older by the day. But there, when he opened the backdoor off the back kitchen, there was the silence, the mystery, he had so urgently sought. There was a peace created as if solely for him.

There were few positive messages out of this, except perhaps a warning. Don't waste your days. Live each like your last. All of that. Here at the end of days, as it so often seemed, perspectives altered. The things that used to matter, matter no longer. When once oblivion was a worthy goal, now each passing moment was precious, and not to be wasted at all. He tried to fit as much in as possible. The alarms went off before dawn, and he didn't stop for another 12 hours. The chaos of his days was a different chaos, this time work related, struggling with achievement. In the past the search for oblivion had been his greatest adventure, his raison d'etre. But now his reasons for being were different; and the wasted tracts, those days behind those muffled doors, those evenings spent isolating, it all seemed such a terrible waste.

He would like to have looked back on a lifetime of achievement, approaching the future, his own death, after having written about so many others, with a sanguine sense that at least he had lived. Well he had and he hadn't. The oblivion seeking had distorted his soul, curdled the triumphs. Front page stories were shrugged off as if they hadn't happened, as if they weren't an achievement. He joined the other commuters in the dark early hours, the thousands heading off to their factory jobs, and read of the glittering triumphs of the political class, and wondered. Was t here any way out of this? Was there any way to reverse time? Was there any way of making up for the losses? He thought not, in the pit of his stomach he knew: he had blown his only chance.

The creeping recovery, the forlorn glance back across a low status past, an eye towards the amazing stockpiles of wealth, the triumphalism of the upper classes, the crass flash cars and the complete lack of empathy, as they wrapped their share portfolios around them like protective cloaks. Here on an average wage, the bills kept piling up. There was no way to get in front. Every day was a slow slide backwards. He couldn't offer his own children the grand future that he would have liked; and they would be forced to make their own way. They were happier than he ever was, despite some of the turmoil he had lived through; and they would benefit, perhaps, from not having everything gifted on the proverbial silver platter. But he would have liked to have left something more tangible, a long winding driveway, a dream house, substantial gardens. Something you could see, and touch. Not just a trail of half finished books, fractured memories, brief moments of fame; a snails trail of words easily washed away by the next rain.

He wanted to say: this is yours, this is what I made. It would never be. They laughed at his little shack in the bush; threatened to sell it the minute he was dead. So much for the idea of a family trust; of passing on a swag of properties and shares. That was what some of his contemporaries were doing. If only he had invested better, if only he had worked harder, if only he hadn't just sat on those bar stools at the London in Balmain, playing the then novel new electronic game of space invaders, the prickly gush of alcohol warmth transforming this bar into the eternal bar, his heart, his centre, his universe, if only he had got off the stool and got a second job and invested in property; he'd be a millionaire now. But that was not his path, it had never been his family's path; and the road leading over the hill, surrounded by the beauty and light of the countryside, the road led he knew not where. He had to have faith, or summon faith, that everything would be alright. He could tell himself that, that his guardian angel would take care; but having been born into calamity, having waited so long for the world to end, for his life to end, he didn't believe the gifts that were promised. Fear and insecurity will leave you. Not yet; and not likely.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/clinton-raises-36-million-following-tuesdays-wins/

Clinton Raises Millions Following Tuesday’s Wins

By Michael Luo

It pays to win, evidently.

After Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled herself off the mat to notch victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, an e-mail went out to supporters Wednesday afternoon calling on them to raise $3 million over the next 24 hours.

“Without skipping a beat, we need to match the Obama campaign’s effort in Pennsylvania–our next big contest—and that means I am relying on you again,” the message from Mrs. Clinton read. “We need $3 million in the next 24 hours tor amp up our efforts immediately.”

Mrs. Clinton’s Web site currently shows $3.6 million in donations, which a spokesman said was raised from midnight Tuesday until now—it is unclear how much the campaign had already brought in when the e-mail to supporters went out–with a new goal of $6 million in 48 hours.

No word yet on how much the Obama campaign has raised in the aftermath of its setbacks on Tuesday. Keep in mind that over a course of a two-day period after Mr. Obama’s loss to Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire, his campaign collected $4.4 million, part of a $36 million month. And that was before an even more impressive February, in which the campaign is believed to have raised about $50 million, compared to Mrs. Clinton’s $35 million.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3496778.ece

The same age as me:

The news that Patrick Swayze, 55, is suffering from pancreatic cancer is terribly sad, not least to those of us who hold fast to our belief that Point Break, Ghost and Dirty Dancing, in which he starred, are among the greatest films ever made.

Desperate not to be typecast, Swayze has in his career played a transvestite and a paedophile, but it was in Point Break, playing a bank robber opposite Keanu Reeves in a fetching white T-shirt, and as the dance teacher Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing, that a generation of girls will remember him. “You have to accept that to be the actor you want to be, you have to have the courage to turn down work,” Swayze has said. “I haven't worked hard all my life to be stuck in a box.”

He was born in Texas to an engineer father and a dance-teacher mother. It was at one of her classes that he met his wife of more than 30 years, Lisa Niemi. One of four children, he was relentlessly teased for studying ballet.

“See these knuckles?” he once said. “There's a reason they look like that. I got bashed from the day I was born. It was why I learnt martial arts.”

http://news.theage.com.au/rudd-heads-to-png-highlands/20080307-1xo0.html

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will head to Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highlands Province to inspect Australian funded aid projects.

Mr Rudd will be in Goroka as part of an official PNG visit this week that has already seen the signing of a PNG Australia Forest Carbon Partnership to tackle climate change issues.

On Wednesday, Mr Rudd met PNG counterpart Sir Michael Somare to discuss a range of issues including the Kokoda Track, an Enhanced Cooperation Program and a seasonal Pacific workers scheme.

Both leaders said the visit heralded a new chapter in their countries bilateral relations.

Mr Rudd will start with a 1,000-strong business breakfast described as being the "Who's Who" of Port Moresby's community before flying for an hour northwest to Goroka.

Outspoken Eastern Highlands Governor Mal 'Kela' Smith, a former Australian citizen and Vietnam veteran who also owns a helicopter fleet will chaperone Mr Rudd.

"We're going to have very frank discussions up here," he said.

"We want leaders to come in and make funding better value for Australian taxpayers," he said.




Looking across Sydney Park.