I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.
Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.
Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle.
"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked.
"What?"
"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."
I stress, on a day all about the paterfamilias, I’m not trying to hold onto some unreal hypothetical father. A dad who didn’t exist in reality. Some kind of miracle worker who could fix Foxtel in a single bound; Saint Kennebec of the Holy Tasmanian Potato who suddenly, after death, becomes a fast-tracked candidate for canonisation, and consists of a fondly and vastly inaccurately remembered combination of Don Bradman, Glenn Miller, Douglas Bader, Terry Pratchett, Fantastic Mr Fox and the Duke of Wellington.
The amazing thing to me is not that people write, and write so beautifully. No. That is just the best of the human spirit at work. What is truly astonishing is that it's done within the limitations of our written alphabets. How extraordinary it is to be able to express so many feelings, thoughts, emotions, opinions, fears, hopes, joys, sadnesses, expectations, desires, hates - all bound by the insignificant characters we call our tools.
I wonder if Kennebec knew what he was getting on that day back in 1832, when an appealing and winsome little Katrina Laura Lambchop was cruelly wrenched from her mother's body - "thank God for that", was the cry from said mother, "she was reading under the covers already" - and thrust into his semi-waiting arms.
On both sides of the world, people who were going about their daily lives were suddenly forced into fear and horror and blood and pain and death - because someone else decided to make a nightmare become reality.
What I would truly like to understand is this; what is the reasoning behind these people doing what they do? Because what scares me the most is that there may be no reason beyond a wish to make themselves heard - not out of a cry for their cause, or their suffering, but simply because they are hollow people.
“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”
— David Levithan, Love Is The Higher Law
I have always loved the above quote for its optimism and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for mankind. But unfortunately, on a day like today, when I woke in the early hours to hear the news of explosions, injuries and deaths at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, I feel as though it can be turned on its head.
What separates us from the animals - and brings us closer to the chaos - is our ability to injure, hurt, kill people we've never met; and not to do it with the purpose of survival - but to do it with the purpose of inflicting intentional pain.
Then I read on one of the live updates about a series of co-ordinated car bombs overnight in Iraq, which killed at least 55 people. Iraq is currently preparing for its first elections since coalition forces left the country.
On both sides of the world, people who were going about their daily lives were suddenly forced into fear and horror and blood and pain and death - because someone else decided to make a nightmare become reality.
What I would truly like to understand is this; what is the reasoning behind these people doing what they do? Because what scares me the most is that there may be no reason beyond a wish to make themselves heard - not out of a cry for their cause, or their suffering, but simply because they are hollow people.
What I want to say is not about apportioning blame to extremist groups, or pointing fingers at a particular religious persuasion, or anything along those lines. It is simply this.
The outpouring of love and support from around the world for the victims of the explosions in Boston is already incredible. It gladdens my heart to see it.
But I wonder; how many people are thinking of the dead in Iraq this morning. And I also wonder where and when this is going to end. After all, I sat in Jakarta as the Australian Embassy was bombed in 2004. I had been there for exactly two days. I watched again from the skies above the city in 2009 as a hotel with security to the eyeballs went up in smoke - and an Australian lost their life.
Because people are people are people. And some people have no moral compass.
Even if we call down the wrath of the angels on those who committed this act - there will be seven more to take their place. Unless there is a fundamental shift in the paradigm, nothing will change.
And all those who are willing to stand up and say 'this isn't the way it should be' - all of the people who do have the ability to mourn people they have never met - will continue beating their heads against a very solid brick wall of deliberate malice aforethought.
Thinking of you Boston, Massachusetts, USA. And Kamaliya, Iraq.
““What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.””
— David Levithan, Love Is The Higher Law
I have always loved the above quote for its optimism and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for mankind. But unfortunately, on a day like today, when I woke in the early hours to hear the news of explosions, injuries and deaths at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, I feel as though it can be turned on its head.
What separates us from the animals - and brings us closer to the chaos - is our ability to injure, hurt, kill people we've never met; and not to do it with the purpose of survival - but to do it with the purpose of inflicting intentional pain.
Then I read on one of the live updates about a series of co-ordinated car bombs overnight in Iraq, which killed at least 55 people. Iraq is currently preparing for its first elections since coalition forces left the country.
On both sides of the world, people who were going about their daily lives were suddenly forced into fear and horror and blood and pain and death - because someone else decided to make a nightmare become reality.
What I would truly like to understand is this; what is the reasoning behind these people doing what they do? Because what scares me the most is that there may be no reason beyond a wish to make themselves heard - not out of a cry for their cause, or their suffering, but simply because they are hollow people.
What I want to say is not about apportioning blame to extremist groups, or pointing fingers at a particular religious persuasion, or anything along those lines. It is simply this.
The outpouring of love and support from around the world for the victims of the explosions in Boston is already incredible. It gladdens my heart to see it.
But I wonder; how many people are thinking of the dead in Iraq this morning. And I also wonder where and when this is going to end. After all, I sat in Jakarta as the Australian Embassy was bombed in 2004. I had been there for exactly two days. I watched again from the skies above the city in 2009 as a hotel with security to the eyeballs went up in smoke - and an Australian lost their life.
Because people are people are people. And some people have no moral compass.
Even if we call down the wrath of the angels on those who committed this act - there will be seven more to take their place. Unless there is a fundamental shift in the paradigm, nothing will change.
And all those who are willing to stand up and say 'this isn't the way it should be' - all of the people who do have the ability to mourn people they have never met - will continue beating their heads against a very solid brick wall of deliberate malice aforethought.
Thinking of you Boston, Massachusetts, USA. And Kamaliya, Iraq.
