Katzenjamming

Woolly Days took away the local Airlie newspaper "The Proserpine Guardian" (no relation to its illustrious Manchester namesake, one presumes) for later reading. The page one headline tells of a plane that had to land on the beach. The pilot escaped uninjured but his lady passenger suffered minor bruises. She is quoted by the paper that her particular beach landing does not cause her undue distress. When the pilot informed her that they had to make an emergency landing, she replied “I’m a Nicherin Daishona buddhist and I have every confidence in you”. Must have been some kind of astral plane she was on....

Nicherin was a 13th century Japanese priest whose philosophy centered around the final teaching of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha. This teaching, called the Lotus Sutra, declares that all living beings have the potential to attain enlightenment or Buddhahood.

Buddha, can you spare me a paradigm? Car hangovers are the worst to bear. The sun and my head are stretched. Glowering hard against each other. From some primitive recess I engage in the motors of birdsqueaks, glass and kendall green.

Avast, the uncertain outdoors. A jerrybuilt future made from hottentottering materials. It may land hard here soon. Seeping cracks gasping for faraway rain with torn hats bearing witness to the possibilities of meddlesome times.

I thought too blandly of what each generation owes each other. The right to respectfully observed survival. Selfhelp and the turgid guts of the dietwise slimbering through paths of pilgrimage and pious fast. Until, like Dante, they dance in Infernos when they find out they are just on another limb of the circle. Blind to the slowturning, they arrive back at themselves warped by the coming beauty of time.

Indigent. Indignant. The mellow fury of the despised and the dispossessed. Creepers learning of ways to modify the world in their favour. Force of imagination and personality. Credo of wealth creation and libido dispensation. Large gaps to fill when they die, those tigerish soulsharpening cribkillers when bolted and alive. The reason I am so spuffed is the comic charm and lava energy that flurries forth bowed and unbending from the quill. Why and what it says is for the curse of the dice gods throwing sickness and feigning the will of God. Insh'Allah. I’d lief as much learn as die.

Woolly Days stops the car and stares at a copy of Peter Pinney “Signaller Johnstons Secret War” on the passenger seat. How bad are my problems compared to his? Johnston was plunged into the middle of a ringworm and leech infested guerilla campaign in the New Guinea highlands in 1943.

It's laced with traditional Digger self-sufficiency, full of distrust of authority and battling against "boongs, murries, and burries." Pinney captures the tedium of waiting in base camps and punctuates it with chaotic action in steaming jungles. Fear, fatigue and boredom are his three constant friends.

I can only conjure up a mild ennui envy in retaliation.