DON'T GO

I lay no claim to any form of psychoanalytical expertise but I think it's fair to say (to paraphrase someone, whose name escapes me right now) that once upon a time we listened to politicians and laughed at comedians whereas nowadays  it certainly seems to be the reverse case. 

The polemical wit and observational comedy of people such as George Carlin and Robin Williams for example, was without equal and really cut to the point. Sadly, both of those fine gentlemen are no longer with us in the flesh but in another sense, their bodies remain - their bodies of work - as cuttingly apposite now as ever before, if not more so. 

It strikes me starkly however that with this insight and the revelatory absurdity that comes from observing life from a comedic perspective, the material that's delivered for our amusement is profoundly tragic. The pathos just oozes from every pore.  

The lore and spectre of the sad clown syndrome was never more startlingly apparent than with comedic giants such as Robin Williams and in a bygone era, Tony Hancock, a pioneer of British comedy. Or was it? It only became startlingly apparent posthumously and there wasn't a shred of humour in that revelation. 

I experienced the same sense of intense pathos while watching and listening to Steve Hughes last night down at the Adelaide Fringe. There was this astonishingly funny and quite brilliant observational comedian performing before us yet unlike Robin Williams, whose depressive plight slipped quietly past us - to our eternal shame and chagrin, Hughes was stating quite bluntly (and I believe, genuinely) that if there was some place where he could go to transition from this world, he'd do it in a heartbeat. He'd had enough. His show was dubbed appropriately Nervous Breakthrough and it parodies, in part, his recent nervous breakdown and the stark horror of that experience. It is so much more than that though and the layers, if we were to peel them back, reveal, I think, a much darker and desperate world. 

He talks openly about not having had the balls to commit suicide but he certainly explored that possibility. Hughes, to me, is wise and wonderful and paradoxically connected with higher aspects of life where he posits our only hope of any form of long term survival as a species comes in the guise of a consciousness evolution yet we are so distracted by banal inanity that we are, many of us, sinking inexorably into a state of irreversible unconscious existence. 

One of his quips - stop obsessing with the evil of the past and watching Hitler doccos when there's full colour evil happening before our eyes that we skirt over or simply feel helpless to resolve. 

There's no overpopulation and there's plenty of "stuff" to go round, he quips. To believe in a state of global overpopulation and a shortage of stuff is, in essence to deny that whatever transpired to place us here in the universe was a very badly worked out plan indeed. And whether one is religious or atheistic, there's something fatally flawed in that mode of thinking. And if we accede to this ideology, it inevitably leads to fascism and someone or some group of people deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. 

"When you ask someone if they think the world is overpopulated and they say yes, ask them why they think this?"

"They stare blankly at you and mutter - someone told me..." 

"So if people need to be removed - if there are too many of us - kill yourself. Do your bit."

"No, not me, they protest - them - them over there. Yeah, it's never you, is it. It's always someone else causing the problem. And that's the real problem." 

Much of the show was in similar vein. It was biting and excruciatingly funny yet I was deeply saddened that this insightful, talented man admitted he no longer wished to be part of this tribe - us. He'd had enough. He saw no hope for us in our present state - a conclusion obviously augmented by his own personal burnout and resultant breakdown. 

What the fuck does one do in a situation like this? 

Laugh it off?  

Why? 

Because he was joking, right. He is after all a comedian - a successful one. 

So were Tony Hancock and Robin Williams....

They too had had enough. The chronicling of life's bitter ironic absurdities for the amusement of others was no longer enough for them. And we were too busy laughing at their antics to sense the tragedy lurking beneath. 

If Steve Hughes elects to bow out too and my wife intimated that as horrible as that prospect was, she got the distinct impression he just might, then try as I may, no matter how he might have "joked" about it, I just don't find that funny. 

The mixture of amusement and tragedy roiling within me as we filed out of that theatre last night, was profound to say the least. 

Where to from here? 

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

It's incessant and it's mindless 

And it's everywhere I go

Streaming madness, like a river

In a neverending flow

The links are exponential 

Russian nesting doll abyss 

Have we swapped our love and romance 

For cheap pornographic bliss? 

E-facts aren't truth or wisdom

They're just data served to you   

We now process information  

Sponsored news that's owned by few 

Reams of jackass clips and moments

Punctuate dull emptiness

In this age of instant access 

Joy just fails to coalesce 

We're sold hermetic voyeurism

For our safety's what we hear 

Yet the guardians of freedom 

Are the architects of fear 

Each cyber business platform

Is more efficient than the last

So where does all the time go 

That we surely have amassed? 

No, it's sucked back via portals

Into cybernetic jail

So back online and browsing 

Making sure we do not fail 

Verbal vomit via Twitter 

Rabid rants for what they're worth  

Like some impotent opinions

May make a change to planet Earth 

The barrage overwhelms me 

Until it stirs my inner voice 

Then I hear my spirit saying 

I should make another choice. 

 

CANNABIS AND CANCER....

The efficacy of cannabis as a broad spectrum medication has been known for a very long time but in the same way that hemp (another strain of marijuana) was torpedoed decades back by corporate America as an alternative to cotton and a myriad other applications, the bottom line was simply that it posed too much of a threat to the established industries - paper, textiles, medicine, fertilisers and pesticides (hemp is a natural insect repellent) and it provides a much higher yield per acre than any other plant in any of those industries. Ergo: it couldn't be considered and thus was passed over to maintain the status quo while a bunch of crap propaganda was proffered about the dangers of industrial hemp being used to conceal the narcotic strain of cannabis by unscrupulous growers.

In the same way, the pharmaceutical industry simply cannot afford to have something natural that potentially cures cancer readily available to the public when their whole reason for existing is to maintain repeat business and manage sickness. They're not in the business of cures or managing health - that's not a sustainable business model. Harsh but true.

So their approach to cannabis as medicine is loaded with all the usual rhetoric - studies are still underway and inconclusive - the science isn't verifiable - the reports about cures through cannabis treatment are purely anecdotal etc.

All of which could be changed if the industry took the potential seriously and actually funded proper research in this area which they have had the means to do for decades yet they still haven't actively pursued this....

Why?

The answers are obvious.

The vilification of cannabis by the establishment as a schedule 2 narcotic (in the same category as heroin and cocaine!) is also a bogus attempt to keep the distribution and use of the substance suppressed.

It's been shown empirically (Portugal / Switzerland) that legalising drugs - ALL drugs leads to a dramatic drop in addiction rates and deaths associated with the clandestine underground drug business which is, due to the fact it's illegal, run by thugs and gangsters who wage war against rival operators and cut their products with all manner of dangerous additives to further their yield and no control whatsoever is maintained to protect their users. Who cares?

When the supply of drugs are regulated, governments gain control of the entire operation, profit at every level of the supply chain and the illegal operators have no viable opportunity to compete in the industry. Clinics are established for addicts and the stigma associated with addiction is dramatically reduced.

The casualty rates drop significantly. It's been done - the data's available.

It's a no brainer. But when the very governments and so called law enforcement agencies are inextricably involved in the illicit business as has demonstrably been shown time and again in the faux "war on drugs," there's no chance of any meaningful improvement.

The establishment wants to keep things just the way they are. It's up to us to change that and ironically, if you want to medicate with medicinal cannabis, nine times out of ten you have to do it illegally.

The world is a very screwed up place indeed.

LINK TO: Cannabis and cancer

THE HEART IN THE HOME

I measure houses.  I see the full spectrum from the good to the bad and the ugly. 

I see lavish, pristine showcases, derelict hovels and pretty much everything in between. 

But what strikes me more than anything else has to be the way the places feel. 

There's the meticulously styled nouveau-decor environment that feels as if you've been sucked into the photo shoot spread. It's beautifully rendered, it's painstakingly arranged yet it's spiritless and sterile. 

These are houses (not homes) that haven't yet soaked up any real family energy or assumed an aura of having interfaced with haphazardly emotional beings of all ages and persuasions. 

The ones that have been lived in feel entirely different regardless of the decor. Some emanate warmth and whisper silently of long, blissful summers past when visiting family and friends clattered through the halls and blasted the walls with their laughter. 

Others are unspeakably melancholy. I seek only to do my work in those and move on before I feel the sorrow reach out and touch me. 

That isn't to say every deceased estate is a maudlin, tragic mausoleum of fragile, broken memories, no. Many of them still harbour rows of family portraiture, chronicles of flourishing children, burgeoning into maturity, seeding new life, sharing joyous milestones. They emanate a nurturing tranquility these homes. 

Yet some are just too despairing for words. One recently - room upon room of multiple lifetimes hurriedly crammed into boxes and garbage bags, no consideration given to what such trinkets or memorabilia might once have meant. The flotsam may as well have perished with the owner...

Wherever there have been animals, I can feel the difference. There's usually some sympathetic resonance within the walls.  

And often people just want to share a moment of something with someone simply because they're there and will listen.  

We should never stop listening and we should take the time to hear. 

And what you imprint upon your walls shall speak softly to the world long after you depart this realm. 

We are never far from the people and places we've touched.

INCONSEQUENTIALITY

                                                               Huh?

A friend urged me to write stuff about my life on my blog - this blog. Small, stuff, trivia even, as she was captivated by our journey, my wife and my journey from Africa to the smallish enclave of Adelaide, South Australia.
I thought about it. I mean, I'm already writing a book about this, I mused, precipitated by our disastrous honeymoon in 2008, which, in hindsight kicked off the sequence of events that led us to settle in Australia.
I've always said (in the ethos of Desiderata) everyone has a story to tell, sometimes many.
Some people just don't see it.
My life is a story - every day I see and experience magic around me, not least of which originates from my wonderful wife and our seven cats.
Then I realised something that's become manifest recently, kind of risen up and carped my diem - the idea of remaining in the present and talking about that.
The book is the appropriate forum for our anecdotal legacy, the trials and tribulations that got us here but the blog, I decided, should be a chronicle for the here and now...
until tomorrow then it's legacy once more.  
I wrestle with the demons that haunt me over a decision to become fully vegan, for example, when outside the magpies, my new friends greet me each morning hoping for a morsel of the pet's meat I've been buying to feed them....I've even resorted to donning latex gloves (my wife's artistry sometimes requires hand protection) such is my revulsion at dipping into the bloody, flesh-filled bag to hand out chunks of meat. It makes me gag at times.
Even owning (nay, WAITING on) cats has that inbuilt dilemma - they're natural carnivores, domesticated for man's pleasure (and what a consummate pleasure it is) so must it follow that one be part of that horrific cycle of abuse that is the meat industry? How does one get round it? How does one reconcile with the awfulness that is rife within it and still provide the necessary nutrition to the cats who are oblivious to my wistful agonising? Scour the highways and byways for likely roadkill or take out a classified requesting any donors who might have access to birds and rodents that have died of natural causes...?
Hardly seems plausible or even mildly pragmatic now does it?
I've started some research on the topic of animal veganism and have been surprised at what I've uncovered, however, I'd never subject my babies to anything without embarking on that road myself - no, not eating vegan catfood - simply becoming vegan myself.
This post wasn't meant to be about veganism or the debate over whether cats and dogs can thrive healthily on such a diet - arguably they can - it just seems to have meandered here of its own volition.
The magpies on the other hand, have no such quandaries to overcome - should I elect some day to proffer them non-animal titbits of a morning, they're free to reject them and forage for themselves, carrion and prey animals notwithstanding.
I can already hear the rampant carnivores among you rising up in protest, howling at how cruel that would be - forcing cats to become vegans when their natural instincts and biological imperative is premised on carnivorism and hunting. 
But that's all bollocks too. We abdicated that argument when we commenced the domestication process. The fact that we have all evolved culturally since then - yes, even cats - puts forward the potential to thrive healthily without contributing to animal suffering. We have developed alternative products and natural foodstuffs that allow this.
Here in Australia they have a love-hate relationship with cats. They bang on about how domestic cats, allowed to roam uncontained, decimate the local wildlife so they should be banned or at least confined or at the very least, restricted in their numbers. I'm all for that - all of it - to a degree. I personally think it's more cruel to confine cats to being housebound when their natural instincts are to roam and explore and hunt. Yet this is, by nature of urbanisation, a very prevalent phenomenon where cats are confined to apartments and houses for their entire lives. Is it cruel? Many a doting cat owner will vehemently disagree. And, like I say, it's become a normal lifestyle for millions of cats worldwide. They still thrive. They're the ultimate adapters - not for nothing were they accorded nine lives and a penchant for aeons of snoozing, you know.
I've circumvented that particular issue, however, by building the cats an external enclosure which, although not as large as I'd like it to be, allows them the freedom to explore in the fresh air on grass and soil and up trees and to come and go as they please through the cat flap in the scullery door. No cruelty there then.
I've also built a very large litter box in the form of an elevated corrugated steel planter which is embedded in the garden and roofed off so the critturs can enjoy the freedom of outdoor natural soil-filled ablutions without getting rain-drenched or having to use nasty, overworked kitty litter. All good so far.
Most cats, by dint of their domesticated confinement in suburban environments, don't have the luxury of hunting as they might have done in the days of their ancestral wildness - our cats are similarly restricted unless some hapless creature ventures into the enclosure through the fencing - then it's everything for itself.
So we play with them and we amuse them, not to mention the fact that they amuse each other. All the time.
So I ask - if they have the freedom to come and go as they please, have all the stimulation we can possible muster (there are jungle-gym improvements I intend adding - watch this space,) and are loved and cared for beyond all imagining, why would it be at all cruel to have them try vegan food if it has all the necessary nutrition and protein any domesticated feline might require?
I can't see the cruelty there except to imagine that the carnivorous human horrified at the prospect of themselves having to forego meat and animal products, imagine that that deprivation is in and of itself a terrible thing ergo it must by necessity be cruel.
I simply don't agree.
The crux of the biscuit (to coin a Zappaism) will, of course, be getting any feline with a particular palate such as ours have developed, to eat a new type of food other than Hills Science Diet original formula... vegan or no.
We've tried switching their diets once already when we bought a different type of Hills - the furball management pellets - our menagerie was horrified, down to a cat. They hummed and hawed and strutted purposefully away from the dishes harbouring the offending product until we caved and drove many miles to reunite them with old familiar.
I dread the thought of this potential again - but face it I think I must....
I guess it's only fair to say - me first then the cats, then the magpies...
Watch this space...

THE CAT CHRONICLES - 1

"Y'know that hard square bed on the desk with the massage bumps?"

"Yeah - the one he uses with the funny vertical picture screen on it...?"

"Yeah, that one."
"What about it?"
"They use that gizmo to talk shit about us to their friends..."
"They've got friends in that thing?"
"I think so..."
"How can that be?"
"I'm not sure but I saw a picture of us up there last night with a lot of writing underneath it..."
"What did it say?"
"What do you mean - what did it say - you know I can't read Human. I have no idea what it said..."
"So howcome you know they're talking to friends on the gizmo?"
"I've just got this feeling. This ninth sense..."
"They've got mini versions of the gizmo that they take to bed with them too - what's up with that?"
"I know - sad creatures aren't they. Tapping away on the screen when so much snooze-time is awasting."
"I've fixed that though."
"What do you mean?"
"I just crawl onto his right shoulder and snuggle there asleep. Pretty soon he gives up with the mini gizmo and just goes to sleep which is pretty cool..."
"That IS cool."
"They're an odd species aren't they."
"Sure are."
"But I love them."
"Me too..."
"What time is it?"
"No idea. Think I'll snooze."
"Me too..."
Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

FOR THE LOVE OF CATS

We have seven cats. 

We used to have many more but intercontinental travel and feline politics whittled down the numbers. They're all still okay, let me assure you. By whittle down I mean - rehome amid much tearful farewelling. 

The remainder emigrated with us. 

One day, Jeremy Jinger decided to make our home his home yet little did that big soppy boy know he'd be trading the Magaliesburg terrain for the hills of Adelaide. 

To mix metaphors - cats are just the dog's bollocks. 

They all still look at me very wistfully as if to say: how the fuck did we get here? Or: better yet - where the fuck IS here? 

But they're happy. And that makes me happy. 

Never more so than late at night when the black apparition leaps onto our bed and snuggles in the crook of my arm while I try to read. Karen snoozes peacefully next to us, oblivious to the catman bonding going on just a foot away. 

This is Chakra, the most skittish and highly strung of the entire menagerie - a menace, a brat, a monster who'll hiss and bite you (emphatically but not viciously) if he doesn't get his own way. He's a cat. 

But when he climbs onto my shoulder, nestling in my arms and kisses my face amid loud, steady purring, he is pure love. He is my familiar. 

I fall asleep cuddling this cat and I'm sure at times we even share dreams. 

I love them all so profoundly - the chirpy little Shrew who tiptoes so daintily and never enters a room without announcing herself, Jeremy the Jinger Ninjer who's a quadrupedal purring machine, Beatle the butt-tickle collapsacat flopping at your feet for yet another rump rub, Jozi the manic mini marauder - claws clicking on the hardwood floors as she tears around the house dislodging rugs in all directions before attacking Chakra then complaining bitterly because he decides to reciprocate, the twins, Isis and Ozzy, brats both but pigeon pair curled up on the bed in their yin yang pose just too cute for words. Then there is my nocturnal shadow lover, Chakra asleep in my arms when he's finished bullying and terrorising the rest of the clan and is ready to settle. 

It's a magical part of my day. 

It's profoundly comforting and can be described, I guess, as contagious contentment. 

Try it. Love a cat. Or better yet - let a cat love you. They're the ones who decide after all. 

You won't regret it. Ever.