Souls.. (A confession).

Chapter four..Peace.. 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir – In the Garden…

Chapter 4..

“The only class which could at all dispute with the hereditary leisure class the honour of an habitual bellicose frame of mind is that of the lower-class delinquents. In ordinary times, the large body of the industrial classes is relatively apathetic touching warlike interests. When unexcited, this body of the common people, which makes up the effective force of the industrial community, is rather averse to any other than a defensive fight; indeed, it responds a little tardily even to a provocation which makes for an attitude of defence. In the more civilized communities, or rather in the communities which have reached an advanced industrial development, the spirit of warlike aggression may be said to be obsolescent among the common people. This does not say that there is not an appreciable number of individuals among the industrial classes in whom the martial spirit asserts itself obtrusively. Nor does it say that the body of the people may not be fired with martial ardour for a time under the stimulus of some special provocation. . . “ Thorsten Veblen..”The Theory of the Leisure Class”.

Having lived through the disastrous times after the dissolution of marriage and the different and troubling relationships of the middle years of my life, it was with relief that I finally settled into a long relationship that was both placid and rewarding…both parties enjoyed a renewed belief in personal relationship and we progressed through the years with little disagreement and conflict, coupled with mutual benefit both personally and materially..Of course, in the beginning there was the children from both failed marriages to resolve..this being the various jealousies and resentments toward either partner in the new relationship..but with a careful balancing act, such difficulties were, if not completely resolved, at least let sit in patience for the growing up of the aggrieved parties until a more mature age let the matters settle themselves..

But while this time was one of progress and benefit, there was also a thorny bramble growing outside our control, and that was the evolution of social media on the internet.

Peace has its price.

Social media was a bastard birth…there was no ownership of the product and that product acknowledged no parental control..it was a feral gone wild in the early days, where any number of persons or organisations started up a blog-site and poured every sort of personal opinion vitriol, pornography, political wisdom or nonsense into that vast bottomless pit! And I confess I too was in the mix…I joined the conversation from the most local group to the largest global commentary site..and yes, I confess to adding my tuppence worth to the banality of the conversations, clinging to the body of evidence like a Limpet to the arsehole of some obnoxious beast.. until one by one I was either blocked, cancelled or volumtarily absconded from the clutches of that many headed Hydra..!

Having been a contributor of articles and aesthetics to social media for many years, culminating in being “cancelled” from several sites, then voluntarily“deactivated” from a Twitter account because of the ghastly banality and insanity of conversations there, I can give a pretty sound analysis of the contributing faults that have given social media such a bad name these days.

The simple equation that makes a social media site “successful” is contained in the same equation that makes a particular political party successful and the tragic reality of that equation was developed and drawn upon in the last decade to elevate certain social media platforms to the giddy heights of financial mega-extreme, along with elevating certain unworthy political personages to similar heights with the use of “Cambridge Analytica” manipulation of opinion to let the likes of certain disreputable characters gain office .

It has been long known that a certain percentage of the population will always “seek the oracle and worship the idol”….in the world of social media, this is known as clustering or cabal-ing..I use the more pejorative term of :”Hem-hugging”..ie those who hide behind a metaphorical mother’s skirt to snipe out at those they disapprove of, whilst enjoying the security of being “covered” by a “mother’s warmth”..in the social media sense that being a person or persons of “authority” within the public perception or having a majority of approving “followers” that give one a touch of “cred’ by association”.

It is a cowardly, crawling method of making opinion upon those that cannot defend themselves from the onslaught of “piling-on” obsequiousness from the legion of followers crowding to also gain validation via numbers..it is the classic example of a “bullying” philosophy.

It usually starts with the culprits cautiously making an observation on a particular subject under discussion, keeping within limits of visual approbation of other’s points of order, till they suss out the particular person on the platform or blog that has a certain higher level of authority and they will then gravitate in a very short period of time to echo that authority, all the while gaining confidence through a certain level of cluster anonymity (hem-hugging) to become more assertive and accusatory of the one person under attack.

This inherent weakness in the human condition has been drawn upon throughout history, but with the electronic age and the rise of social media as not only a tool for communication, but now a weaponised instrument for mass/mob judge, jury, executioner, to use in its favour..never has such a cowardly thing been made more mainstream..We have witnessed many times the brutal use of this cudgel to beat-down, bludgeon and crush opposition of whatever shade of opinion debated, until it is now become an “influencer” in its own right of perhaps even the judiciary itself…certainly the political arm of government and perhaps now the financial arm also…for what bureaucracy or business can stand in its way?..the irony being that the mob will not balk at crushing an individual standing in its way, but seems to go-to-water if called upon to instigate mass revolution to change an entire social way of life for the better…

Curiouser and curiouser…

It was during this period of writing political and social commentary that I also expanded my short story writing..and I would sometimes post such stories onto those blogs and social media outlets as would let me. It was very satisfying that many of my pieces were liked and appreciated..and such compliments encouraged me to persevere with my writing. Most of those blogs I contributed to claimed a “Left wing” sympathy..so my writing, coming from a strong working-class base should have been a neat fit with the philosophy of the sites..but what actually happened, was that in expressing the emotions of the characters in the stories with my unsophisticated grammar, I exposed my lack of education to some of the more precious, private schooled readers and commentators of those blogs..and themselves seeming to lack the capacity to tell a story both interesting and pertinent to the social complexities of the times, began to dissemble my writings and make comments about it being either sexist or racist or some other politically incorrect worded subject…and from then a “pile-on” that is one of the most vicious weapons of social media, would happen, with the main culprit leading the charge to be supported and backed up by the many hem-huggers seeking approval of their blogging masters.

I was up to this point unaware that the class system extended into the arts..I always considered the creation of an artistic piece to be neutral and above consideration of whom and from what social background created it..but it was suddenly brought to my attention with the deconstruction of my capabilities in regards to grammar, syntax and structure, that this thing we call art was in reality merely a commodity produced for the “arts industry” for the sole benefit of fulfilling a “bottom-line” requirement..and THAT was considered to be the discretion of a kind of middle-class management of both the publishing houses and the social media controllers whose choice of what and who to promote was considered on the mood and taste of the current social / political identity politics of the day..and it came to pass that the mood of those who thought what was best and could fulfill their bottom-line requirement were the minority group flavour of the month / year subjects. Myself, being white, aged, straight, European male descendant was not even in the running for being considered fit for publication on either hard-copy or a social media blog…I was once more cast into the vast unknown.

The Secret.

I know a little secret,
I’ll not share with other men.
It’s deep, it’s dark, it’s truth is stark,
It’s come down millennium.
It’s so complex that a genius,
Would have to give it a rest,
Yet, so disarmingly simple..
A child could tell it best.
I first heard it’s whisper in the wild oats,
Whose husks had shed their seed.
The breezes hustled the golden sheaths,
Where small lizards scurried beneath.
It was told me in the cries of birds,
The scratching bark of the mallee tree.
It was told me in my lover’s embrace,
When we kissed our anniversary.
The secret came from the other side,
Of the wide, vast universe.
But it really started right here and now,
In the confines of this Earth.
It is nothing strange or unusual,
But it can never be told.
It is as young as a first desire,
As a drama about to unfold,
AND..
As needed and as fought for,
As the last breath of the old.
The secret was known to those,
That first built ancient Athens town,
That sculptured the mighty Empire of Rome..
And then in anger tore both down.
It was known to Cleopatra,
When as concubine she went to Caesar
But then did, in the time of anarchy,
Present as Queen to Marc Antony.
It was sought by Van Gogh’s sad postman,
His crows in a wheaten field,
It was held in the breast of Manet’s
Absinthe Drinker’s desolate gaze.
It is a hunger never satiated,
A thirst never quenched.
A vein to mine as rich as Croesus ,
Yet a pauper would hold more wealth.
But..
It is denied to the cruel and greedy,
Those seekers of mammon and of wealth.
For it can be seen in their gold and silver ,
Their envy and their pelf.
That there, at the base of their every building,
Be it of marble or Platinum.
Lay the broken, twisted bodies ,
Of abandoned, homeless humans.
So they will never be rewarded,
With its velvet glove of desire,
Their hands too full already,
Their eyes too blind to inquire.
So :
There is this little secret that ,
I’ll not share with other men.
It’s deep, it’s dark , it’s truth rather stark.
Though the wording mostly unseen.
You may know it or at least sense it,
For it was whispered you at birth.
You wear it as a heritage,
You shed it at your death.
Though you may not explain it fully,
There are times , I think you know..
When the call of men and children,
Must need your attention most of all.
I promise I will never reveal it,
Because that secret is held you see..
In a knowing look , a furtive wink,
exchanged in passing,
Just between you and me.

The objective of established social order is to control the unregulated and creative person or mind, for there has never been throughout history more threatening to authoritarian order than the new idea…a new way of perception borne on the wings of the creative mind…witness Julius Caesar, Galileo, or even here in humble Australia with Albert Namatjira..a superlative creative intellect that was crucified as a kind of “Black Christ” for daring to escape the managed, conditioned cage he and his people  were trapped in.

If there is no direct or deliberate cruelty in such action, there certainly is no kindness, for the humiliation that is delivered on an opportune basis can be both cutting and destructive. Society has framed those who “deserve” their work to be displayed with a border of “recognised training” in a certified institution that “honours” their students with an embossed paper that legitimises a certain level of imagination…a certain level and no more…some go on to a higher plane, encouraged by a network of access to openings of opportunity..while most are satisfied with that certificate of diploma that guarantees at least recognition of attendance and even less application to the chore of originality…I see this “validation” of art to be the new direction of what is little more than the old Australian “cultural cringe”, where an “authority of accreditation” must place a stamp of approval on a work before that work can be accepted as a work of art.

These institutionalised “keepers of the flame”, even though their qualifications may be for subjects completely alien to the one of artistic application, say ; social science or perhaps psychology, they will STILL insist that an amateur scribbler adhere to their most strident interpretation of grammatical purity even while one is striving in a different direction with poetic licence…and once again the low level of mockery is applied and one can be taken back to that instance of the mispronounced word accompanied by the silent chuckle of derision…it is why so many “approved graduates” strive for the glittering prizes handed out to the favoured sons and daughters of those “noble institutions” solid built of sandstone but resting on foundations of clay.

Delusion is a necessity..Without a delusion of empire, Rome would never have been birthed. Without the delusion of everlasting life, religion would never have been able to overcome death..Without our own individual illusions, we would never be capable of aspiring toward our own version of “success”.

We all have read of the hiatus leading up to the outbreak of conflict that was the second world war which was referred to in those days as; “The Phoney War”..as indeed it turned out to be, when the Axis powers were arming up to commence operations against the Allied powers. In these times, the opposing powers are already “armed and dangerous” and there is no end of proxy wars being constructed and maintained in the interests of the military industrial complex that has an interest also in claiming it is doing so to “protect” the citizens of xyz nations, so to allow this mega-expensive activity to continue, there has to be compensation given to the citizen body financing the economics of “eternal war” …in this activity, there is employed that ancient Roman philosophy of “bread and circuses” to both entertain and distract the citizen body so as to maintain the delusion that all is well on the home front..all is at peace…a phoney peace!

But the difference between the crude Roman intent of keeping the plebs’ amused and this modern time of keeping the plebs’ feeling comfortably secure, is while the first was so obvious blatant bribery, we in these times have a completely coordinated system of confected social envelopment of total immersion in a soporific will-o-the-wisp soma-like comforting existence..that we call; “political transparency”..but all is false, all is fake, all is delusion..but done so well, so precise in its exacting fitting parts with the total coordination of a consciousness of kind demographic in subconscious agreement..and there is the total delusion of a society chained to a doomed and sinking vessel, a victim of its own mute inertia in a mutually beneficial purpose.

We, in this house often relent to using online streaming to watch television in the evenings. Mainly drama in the variety of crime or spy thrillers etc. ..after a while, one becomes inured to the graphic violence, the predictable characters, plot and story-lines but not the scenic views so that when the run of one series ends we go scrolling for another among the Nordic noir or the Franco noir or even the Eastern blok countries noir…but there’s the rub, after a while, you get the feeling that they are really at base, all the same..: “Haven’t we seen this one before?” I’ll ask the good wife and she will hunch her shoulders in questioning…because, you see, they really ARE all the same…with the same objective I believe..and that is to push a similar agenda of unease in the strange, uncertainty in an ideal and perhaps even the comfort of the portrayed guilty getting their come-uppence from the “good guys”…But then, if all is of the like or at least so similar as to be familiar, where is the creativity..the new art?..it certainly is not in the pastiche plots and story-lines of commercial entertainment, possibly because in these times of “bottom-line” profit demand, the familiar is gold, while the untried creative talent is “a worry” to be avoided until it too becomes a certainty and THAT is only achieved by entrance into the collegiate of “renowned artists clique” scouted and managed by entrepreneurial executives or their accountants, in keeping with the old Greek saying : “It’s NOT what you know, nor WHO you know, but rather; who knows YOU”!

So I cannot help but have this feeling of unease as I watch the news, current events, sports and other entertainments…it all seems similar, confected, all is alike, choreographed; outrage when outrage is called for, cheering when cheering is called for, weeping when weeping is called for..protesting when…well, I think you must get my drift..and I ask; where is the sudden, the impromptu, the wild creativity of these times…the Puccini, Rossini, Tchaikovsky et al…where are the crazy James Joyces, Joseph Heller and Dostoyevskies of our times?…or is the blancmange bleaching out of the demons that drive La beta humanie also washing out the creative angels of the wild, untamed spirit of humanity?

Out here in the Murray Mallee where I live, between the eastern face of the Adelaide Hills and the Murray River, on what is called ; “The Murray Flats”…or : “Break-heart country”..at the end of the second world war, there was a distinctive “cut” in a cultural tie with the methodology of farming…particularly in regards to the older families of the pioneer Germanic farmers in the area.

Before the 2nd. World War, and indeed right to the end of the war, horse-drawn implements were a common form of ploughing, seeding and harvesting…in some locations tractors had been introduced, but they were such cumbersome technology, that it was a risky and expensive proposition to do a major “tooling-up” in cost and farm layout to change over. But it did happen, and with that event, there was not only a “cut” in ties from old technology, there was also a severing with the connection between the farmer and his soil….between “Humanity and its touch to Earth”..

Where once, with the horse era, the connection between philosophy of mind, religion of heart, to callous of hand was a real and tactile thing..The farmer man and woman, rose in the early morning, praised their God, saw to and fed the animals, groomed and attended to the health of both themselves and their beasts of burden…the harness of leather and steel, the equipment of cast metal and timber..the feel of earth under foot and hoof…was it soft, hard, moist or too parched?…the entire process was “ of the senses, of the touch”.

Then, in almost the blink of an eye…it was gone…all that old expertise..redundant, along with an entire generation of horsemen farmers…the sound and scent of preparation and harnessing….of horse-feed, stabling and manure was gone…no longer were these hardy pioneers “dirt farmers”, they had now needed to graduate to become ; “chemical farmers”.

And so that was the end of something.

Another thing I believe has ended – right now – with an older generation is the understanding and/or sympathy in the writings by that older generation, of a younger generation for the reality of the Human condition…NOT to be confused with the living standard..or material comforts..or the trysts of social relationship..but rather; that uncertain something that gets us out of bed in the morning to give touch to the start of the day…the hunger of physical contact however slight or intense with our fellows…our (female in my case) opposites…the moment of embrace to start the day..a gentle ; “Good morning, did you sleep well?”.

The haste of the post-modern lifestyle, that celebrates the “individual” rather than the couple to fulfil those material needs, driving many to fore-go that moment of space necessary for human contact and relationships to co-exist..After all, we can only fill one pair of shoes at a particular time, or stand on one patch of soil underfoot…it is our mood that makes us, and I feel there is a mistaken association with the sweeping mood of “instant”communication technology via the internet or mobile phone hook-up that is making, shaping and dominating and in the end ; replacing..the mood of so many people so that the above understanding of the making of the Human condition from another age..another generation of post war people, is being lost or thrown aside for a new-fashioned personality that has little time to look into either the eyes or the soul of humanity..and like those post war farmers who adopted the new technology to up-the-ante in both speed of the deeds of farming and the output for profit that resulted in the further decimation of an already fragile environment, so too will a past generation’s experience of the pain and what is gained from that pain, be shunted aside for a more “profitably expedient” if tactile poorer outcome in human relations.

And that too, I fear..will be the end of something.

I make this claim because after years of writing story and tale, essays and poems on example after example of situation, devastation and humiliation of so many good folk and their moments of life, I have to conclude that it has to the greater extent been to no avail and the grinding of those most vulnerable underfoot has continued almost unabated…and this saddens me…NOT to the point of actual depression, but rather in that way where one has to sit by and watch a drama unfold and yet not be able to do a thing to stop it…like the proverbial train wreck in slow motion.

And there were our grandparents and parents who saw it, lived it and told oral story after story about those times which we, of a better educated generation..perhaps the BEST educated generation of an eon of years, has put down in word on page those lives..and yet the carnage goes on…Perhaps, like that generational change from horse-power to tractor, it cannot be stopped and the maxim of ; “Live for the moment”…better suits the times than the old ; “Work like you are going to live forever and pray like you are going to die tomorrow” ..which is..like this author..just too wordy to be called out of a swiftly passing window.

Where to from here?

“Middle-class feminism has a blind spot over female cleaners”: Eve Livingston.

What chance our lot;

When one woman with an apple could destroy God’s little paradise?

But it’s a metaphor, isn’t it : God, the garden and Utopia likewise,

When it’s really about The Corporation and the lesser population?

Because it was neither the apple, nor the woman,

That so tempted us that we threw our lot in with that Demon.

It was the goading of a “God” with his temptation of mammon,

That “Tree of Knowledge”…for knowledge is power, is wealth,

The apple became the symbolic, tradable commodity,

But with a rider attached as an enticing oddity,

Eve’s sexuality; the “sales pitch” selling promise of that wealth.

**

Cut to here and now, and we see just the same pitch, same how,

And why we have bought into the greatest swindle, cunning stealth,

Since Adam was conned into biting into that apple.

But this time it wasn’t a man who was targeted,

He was recovering from wars, long hours worked and low wages,

The Man was already burned out and milked in all those stages.

This time the Devils set their sights on working-class women,

Here was an untapped cheap-labour force there for the taking,

“Divide and rule” as old as time itself, reborn now in the making,

If only they followed the advice of their “finishing-school sisters”,

Became storm-troopers, cannon fodder so those same hucksters,

Could break THEIR “glass ceiling” and rise alongside their male “brothers”,

Using power and persuasion of numbers magnified by these “others”.

There was mention of “career” and “independence” for working-class women,

All one had to do was to forsake their natural inclinations,

Drop any idea of marriage, children..forget; “husband and wife”,

Reject family structure and lose that man in your life,

(What was he but a burden to your career enhancement!),

For he represented “The Patriarchy” that restricted such advancement,

Never mind that he was lower on the rung of “saleable commodities”,

For the middle-class promise of “Healthy, Wealthy and Happy”,

Pivoted centrally on the prostitution of female sexuality,

Third-world surrogate mothers bearing children for homosexual lovers,

Donated sperm “copulation” for lesbian couples via artificial insemination,

Womanhood debased by caricatured gender-alignment, drag-queen trannies,

Single gender parenting “normalised” as “Two blokes and a cocker-spannie’ “,

But if such is “normal”, then society is gone insane since the age of our Grannies!

So tell me, you working-class poor..now that you have gained so much “liberty”..

How’re those low wages going for you..Still waiting there patiently?

Like the rest of the working-class…still busking for “Ko-fi” at that station,

Trusting the middle-class to fix the problem of their own creation…

Well…you’ll be waiting forever, like that promise of wealth satiated.

We’ve ALL been sold a ‘pup’ by the upper middle-class bastards,

Now we’re left here broke, “Woke” and homeless on the bones of our arses!

As I was driving home from an appointment yesterday, I heard on the radio of an art prize worth $100.000 being awarded for an “installation art piece” to an artist named Jack Ball…

“That’ll be a beauty” I guffawed to the common-law wife as I drove.

Sure enough, when I settled in to my lap-top to see the day’s news on “our ABC”, there was the whole story..: “ Jack Ball has won the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize for an artist under 40 for their installation Heavy Grit.” ..

This “Jack Ball” “bloke” is a woman in the process of trans-gendering who constructed the installation in question from her/his personal enduring experiences with archival records of trans-gendering people from the 1950s to the 1970s… “I had so many dilemmas, so many curiosities, so many things to grapple with. [Making Heavy Grit] was a way to work through that content, materially and physically, spatially, [even] bodily.” (Jack Ball).

“We were particularly struck by the installation’s restless, kinetic quality that refuses definition and creates an open opportunity to connect individually with the materials, forms and images the work deploys.” (The Judges)

I shouldn’t wonder. . .

Now I am not going to attack the artist, who seems to be having their own issues with life’s identity…nor will I attack her piece, even though ..I..have issues with its identity…but I tell you what, if I was to come home and saw the aforementioned “installation” propped up in my driveway, I’d immediately presume an enemy had dumped their trash there and would go straight away to bin it for tomorrow’s rubbish pick-up!…I was politely told by my wife that I really had no idea about art..Funny, that…I don’t need an interpreter to tell me about “Starry Night”…or “The crossing of the Wain”…or a Michelangelo sculpture, or even one of the more darker Goya art pieces..and even Van Gogh died penniless…no $100.000 prize for HIM!..no, what I am attacking is this recent decades of the act of normalising what is an obvious, blatant, unscrupulous, deceitful, stupid and bizarre absurdity of both our cultural heart and our cultural art…not to mention our perceptions of what is accepted as “normal existence” in itself.

This idea of social inclusion of every stripe of idiosyncrasy of personal entitlement and behaviour as a kind of normality of what and how a society should operate, is a road to social destruction. If we were to consult the pages of recorded history, we would find uniformly that the civilisations that collapsed from within..NOT through external conquest…but from within, were almost singularly corrupted by the repetitive dismantling of those cultural uniformaties that first gave it strength and courage to create that civilisation.

Our Western society has entered a very dangerous stage, and is persisting with what can only be described as “social suicide”, by giving permission and strength to every minority group to demand what they see as their entitlement to not just be heard…every person in a civilised society ought to be able to at least get a hearing for their angsts…but have their complaints, be them ever so trite, ever so pitiful, ever so personalised..be acted upon with all the legislated political power and legal power of the nation’s laws!…even the State police and military seem to be at the mercy of every whim and whine of perceived injustice..not only of the now, but extending back into the transports of time itself!…so our courts and administrations are jamb-packed to the rafters with cause and effect of an impregnable backlog of frustrated complainants for all their minuscule issues and the big issue of the city streets ; petty crime..violent crime..runs rampant like so many gangs roaming the shopping centres or wherever large groups of people gather in celebration to become a group target for some disgruntled figure representing a larger group of disgruntled new or non-citizens or some-such similar mob of discontents.

And that’s all I am going to say on this shocking and absurd situation…Goodnight and Good luck…..we’re going to need it!

The Invisible Men.

Yes..

I was one of the invisible men,

A tradesman in the building industry,

Would slip out of the marriage bed quietly,

In the dark, early..very early hours of the morn’,

Many times before the rooster crowed the dawn,

Before the first light of day broached the crest,

And threw cold light on where the red hen would nest.

Yes..

I was one of the invisible men,

Worked every day to support our family and kids,

Like so many other tradesmen I met on the digs,

Brickies, tilers, plumbers, any number of invisible men.

Would likewise silently creep from their warm dens,

So as not to wake and disturb the kids from their dreams.

Let the wife rest a little longer before her work begins.

Yes..

We are the invisible men,

Go to work, earn our bread, come home beat,

Help with the shopping, cook a meal or two, bbq the meat,

Take the kids hiking, fishing, to visit nanna again.

Build the very home the family lives in,

After work, after hours, on weekends to save the pence,

Well spent on family needs, holidays, special events.

Yes..

This is the other story of the invisible men.

Not the one of drunkenness, violence, useless and gross,

Yet if believed, we are thrown in with that general dross,

Our male idiosyncrasies denied their rightful place,

Scorned, mocked by unmarried, childless poltroons,

That have a generalised image of feral male “hoons”,

Now demand we remake ourselves as “unisex drones”.

NO!..

We will no longer remain the invisible men,

We embrace a more healthy ideal of what we become,

Not some stooge of “woke, progressive middle-class bums”,

We join our woman partners as “husband and wife”,

We have our kids, our own homes..our own productive lives,

So take your exaggerated tales of “every-man-bastards”,

And shove your frustrated anger up your collective…well, just ask us!