Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Battling an invisible enemy
We battle on and on, my invisible opponent and I. We test our wills and skills, conflicts are fought without an attempt to win as we jostle for a superior position in the cataclysmic finale... Territories fall, leading to the fall of others, then an inspired move recaptures what was lost in a fraction of the time it initially took to tumble.
We have few words we can speak to each other, set phrases that somebody else decided, but the sequence in which we put them together belies our mutual frustration in what we’ve been given to work with. Sometimes the words reflect our actions, sometimes they are revealed as deceptions by the methods we employ.
I have no idea where in the world my adversary might be. Maybe in the house next door, maybe ten thousand miles away. No matter from what distance we engage each other, the result will be just as important. Whether or not either of us moves to another location during the engagement will also have no effect.
How we came to confront one another is uncertain. Amid a multitude of conflicts we found ourselves face to face, testing over and over, sometimes mirroring each other’s methods, sometimes striking unexpectedly into what had been considered safe ground in an attempt to create a “domino effect” from within. We appear to have a similar level of tactical dexterity, and we both know that in the end there will not be a winner but a loser, waning determination creating inadvertent forfeits, loss of confidence resulting in diminished thinking capacities.
Just as an outcome looks certain, we regroup and attack each other again, attempting to use what we’ve learned of one another to turn the tide of advantage, countering anticipated strikes before they occur, occasionally, begrudgingly, saluting each other across the battlefield. Then one side again does something completely unexpected, and what had evolved into a code of conduct needs to be rethought, new manoeuvres developed.
These thoughts stem not so much from observing what has become the War On Terror or the Jihad as from playing Othello, or Reversi, on the internet. As you can see, there are many similarities, though one has much less bloodshed and loss of human life than the other. I can’t help wondering, though, if some games players can perceive the distinction, or truly care about the results of their combinations of calculated strategies and brinkmanship.
I also wonder if, like myself after a long round of inconclusive battles, the players of the war games continue because they consider it necessary to stimulate progressive forms of development, to harness their resources into profitable deployment, to make themselves stronger and more skilful.
Surely there must be a better game for the world to play than endless rounds of war? When you challenge each other on the net, you can thank each other for the exercise and go your separate ways, unlikely to cross swords again, nothing lost or gained anywhere except for in your head. In the diversions played on the global game board, your head is something you may or may not get to keep.
The next time you play Othello, try thinking of the flowing tide of pieces as societies and their component humans. Will it make you play harder, or will you remain calculating and detached? After that, wonder what goes on in the minds of our leaders.
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Talking about an invisible enemy.
Richard, this may be a glimpse of that invisible enemy you speak of.
It all reminds me of Nazi symbolism.
And yet another above
The symbolism shown here, John, seems to be purely motivational imagery, even if it looks more like something that should be found on a tarot deck instead of a soldier's arm. Perhaps part of the psychology was to give the wearer a protective talisman, a ward against evil that could be invoked by the subconscious?
I was particularly intrigued by a comment from Julian Burnside on Talking Heads (keep an eye out for the Richard Clapton interview recorded at our pub) the other night, explaining how he listened to Bach and Beethoven while preparing a case, believing that this helped him access parts of his mind "that words couldn't reach." Images I believe, access others, perhaps more primal. I always bear in mind the mural the Americans painted on the wall of their dining room hall inside Saddam's palace. It was of the Twin Towers, accompanied by the logos of the New York Police and Fire departments.
A link inside the piece you posted, to Space Review, gives food for thought on the logos of space missions;
I was taught Tarot by a girlfriend who used to read for a bike gang in Sydney. Apart from the Major Arcana, she made me study each card and devise my own meaning for it, as opposed to using the reference in the handbook (later though, she gave me a Jungian deck, and at the time I couldn't make head nor tail of it). I don't know whether they truly help the mind predict the future, but they can certainly influence others. One person became a librarian because of my Tarot-based suggestion. Dad (this when I was younger) banned me from reading for the staff, saying that nobody should have use such influence on others' lives.
I still occassionally pull the deck out of its silk, and lay a spread beside the conputer when I'm randomly surfing. Like Burnside with his Bach, I find it steers me to look in directions I mightn't otherwise.
The picture an army places on its soldier's arm will indeed have power over and for its wearer. I'm not suprised that US Defence spends so much money on careful research. They'd be silly if they didn't The mindset of their people partially depends on it.
True Story For Sure
Richard Tonkin, I certainly wouldn't call the story "crap" - Behan was the stuff of legend (in a sad, and yes, noble way) - and I've no doubt it took place. Simply a case of mixing up names - why most probably we are known as humans and not computers.
Brendan Drinks: We all want the Invite
Richard Tonkin: "I'm told he joined in funeral processions for the sake of free Guiness at the wakes."
That's Brendan Behan.
Remember: if you can't blame the alcohol or Catholics, you can always blame the Irish. Will save a man every single time (excepting extreme bad luck)!
Good writer; although, nah, he could write some!
Thanks and sorry Paul
Given that (I now know) that Joyce died in Europe the whole story may have been about Behan. Or it was crap. I need more sleep.
The Great People I Never Met
Richard Tonkin, my Great-Grandfather (died long long before I was a thought), took my Grandfather to see Charlie Chaplin (he, Charlie, was (five year old). This all took place in a "great tent". As my father always told me (grandad had passed), if a man witnesses true brillance once; a man has lived! I would imagine witnessing James Joyce in action was equivalent (or very close).
Towards a taxonomy of Inspiration
Hi Richard. Well, bugger it, I haven't had an Epiphany since I was in my 20s. I don't quite remember, but I think it might have been under the influence of some drug. How strange that on another thread you should mention 'horticultural skills'.
And yet, on another thread, you mentioned Darwinism. Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by 'natural selection', had his Epiphany under the influence of a malarial-induced delirium.
Epiphanies are unpredictable and follow no apparent rules, but usually occur relatively early in life.
They're often mistaken for Really Groovy Ideas, which in fact occupy a position several rungs below Epiphany in the taxonomy of inspiration.
Maybe you've been having those on the the dunny?
Mock not the sanctum sanctorum
The last time I saw one of my dunny doors, an Australian flag, it was being waved to me across a crowd of country and western fans in Poland.
On yet another thread, Jacob, I've mentioned the fine line between schizophrenia and sainthood. Perhaps the gibberers of Babel had some really good herb? This will have to suffice as a seque to the story of the plant ("I'm just an old granny, what would I know?" that grew outside a certain front door. I was never into the stuff, but I gather my younger sisters in Sydney occassionally received pleasant surprises in the mail. One of my favourite memories of Gran is a slide taken at one of her last Christmases. If it was accompanied by an audio track,it would be of her suggestion that "you young people think you've invented everything!"
Okay, you've obviously read Joyce's Portrait.. Here's a synopsis link for readers who haven't. Perhaps indeed epiphanies do require an intense catalyst,. I had one of mine at the time I lost my "door", not because of that but because of the thoughts generated by thousands of people waving their hands in unison in time with mine. Another was at the second death of a grandfather, when I realised I'd sensed both departures in advance. Yet another was on meeting Long John Baldry, the first "big gig" I ever booked, and pondering what such a genial, unassuming man had done for modern music without recognition for it. The Shane MacGowan gig was another, for the sadness it evoked and for the remarkable gestalt of the crowd that night - people were acting as a protective buffer between McGowan and the moshers without realising what they were doing.
I guess that if you fill your life with intense situations you're bound to come across one or two epiphanous moments. Anyway, if Archimedes (we're coming out of ephipanies and into inspiration here) can have the original Eureka moment in the tub, why shouldn't lightning strike in the thunder-box?
Personally I think that herbal catalysts are prone to pervert the path. An extremely intelligent friend of mine disappeared into the countryside last year, "went feral" and started inhaling a couple of ounces a week. When she went to the police to tell them she'd solved the Falconio murder, they sedated and restrained her and put her in a psych ward. She's recovered now, "straightened out," but seems to prefer not to think about anything much these days, which is a bloody shame.
I don't know where in the taxonomy of inspiration my "moments" can be placed, but I contemplate an epiphany as being a moment where something a little complicated appears before you in clarified simplicity. Then again, the friend I mention probably felt the same just before she woke up in hospital.
Regarding James Joyce
Icarus falling like a brick
On first reading I thought this piece was a sort of stream-of-consciousness account of some geeky ideological warrior posting on Webdiary.
That was a novel enough entree, but then it became about some geeky internet gameplay.
Then a self-styled 'literary critic' waffles about "the imperative of our genes" and (as if we hadn't enough already, already) "doom".
Finally, the author himself alludes to an epiphany "on the dunny".
All too much, too much information.
Be that as it may... nice writing, Richard. Looking forward to the novel.
Daedalus on the dunny
A moment away from quintessence
Pray give the literary critic a small indulgence.
Reading the first two paragraphs of this piece I thought Tonkin was surpassing himself. Was this the universality we yearn for throughout literature? Was this Man at war against himself, housed yet in the same body?
Were it so (and in reality it is so) it would be a welcome escape from narrow ideology. Yet, sadly, it failed to carry through.
I respect Richard Tonkin's contributions to this forum but I had hoped they could, at times, go beyond stale ideology to reasoned thought.
Icarus, you flew for a couple of paragraphs but, fealty to the sun, you feared to soar: in your preservation, your ultimate, inglorious destruction.
For thus it is: the enemy is not without. Our enemy is within, within all of us. Unless we all learn to preserve the thin veneer of civilisation which hides us from the imperative of our genes, we are truly, inevitably, irrevocably, irredeemably, doomed.
Yet, there are dooms and dooms.
We are all doomed to die; but to what purpose? Greater or lesser purpose? A purpose that lives beyond us or just lives with us for the time we survive?
I think mine is a better purpose for a worser people - but you could have said the same of Knox or Cromwell or Hawke. Wouldn't it be gladdening to take the thinking out of me and give it back to you? And back from you again.
Ch 3 of Jenny brews.
Quintessential quandaries
Better to have flown briefly than not at all. I thank you for your honest critique, Malcolm, and take it in the spirit with which I perceive it to be given.
I'm an "ear" learner, self-taught on all my instruments bar piano, and with little tuition even on that. More so than self-taught, I learn from those around me, and attempt to improvise the techniques to attain a goal. The paragraphs you praise were those that flowed freely, a level of writing to which I aspire but have never contemplated achieving, and oddly enough inspired by a weekend of reading Banjo Patterson's verse. The rest was as laborious in its creation as you perceived it as a reader. In time I hope that I will be able to continue in such a manner as I began.
If my ideologies appear stale, and you're not the first with such suggestions, I ask you to consider that they have been only relatively recently acquired and are still in formation. Before being dragged into the Webdiary world by Margo, the only political knowledge I possessed, having spent my first thirty-five years in blissful ignorance of such matters, was garnered in a time of crisis as a method of defence. Then a moment of inspiration on the dunny, listening to a report on the opening of the Adelaide-Darwin railway, put me on the path on which I've spent the last few years. Oh yes, there was the little matter of experiencing my country's participation in war first-hand for the first time and feeling a wrongness. Everything since has been a personal process of extrapolation and improvisation, and I'm probably now just beginning to attain a level of "ideological awareness" that you most likely attained many (many?) moons ago.
The notion for the piece came directly from an experience last night. Feeling over-politicked and slightly pissed off with the universe, I went game playing and discovered an anonymous somebody who, in a net-world of faceless randoms, seemed to relish as much as I the process of a prolonged challenge. The thoughts came as we played, and when we parted (I being the one who withered from an inability to sustain) I came here and attempted to write in such a manner as I have. Again, the inability to sustain has let me down, and it appears that ukuleles are not particularly aerodynamic.
I'm considerably gratified that you have perceived the metaphorical level that I have attempted to communicate. As Michael has pointed out, the internet is still in a relatively nascent form. I believe that through it avatars can be found for concepts and thought processes previously experienced by most in introverted isolation.
The next time, or maybe the time after, that I attempt to spread my wings perhaps I will be able to construct them with a wax-lyrical composed of ingredients that will allow not only for heat and height, but perhaps also distance.
Make The Most Of It
The Internet has allowed us all to be anarchists. That's why it will be brought under control- if we allow it.
We can sort out the rules and niceties later.
Games people play
It is sad that we are conditioned towards competition rather than collaboration. Even most team games are more competitive than collaborative.
Some say that competition is a masculine trait, while collaboration is more a feminine approach. Perhaps we should elect more women to positions of power.
Or perhaps achieving leadership is itself a competitve game, and only those inculcated in these rules ever makes it.