SOME STUFF HAPPENING

wednesdays 6pm: prayer meeting at christian centre for social action, cnr canterbury st and  albany highway, east vic pk. 

saturday may 10 2003

THE POLITICS OF JESUS

An alpha style introduction to anabaptist thought through John Yoder's classic book

Christian Centre For Social Action

RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Records

Manhattan Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

CDs

1.  Depeche Mode: Ultra

Wow, particularly 'No Good'.  Synthy, heroin songs with overtones of New Order.  9/10

2.  Joy Division: Closer

The shaking passionate goth night.   9/10

3.  Zwan: Mary Star of the Sea

Billy Corgan can still rock.  His lyrics are getting dumber at times ('Baby let's rock' ) but he's forgiven, because this is like the Smashing Pumpkins album that Machina should/ could have been.  Initial impressions: 8/10

4.   Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Nocturama

- A competent but initially disappointing album.  Nick doesn't seem to be trying too hard, especially after the perfect last album, No More Shall We Part.  II: 7/10

- 28/2/03: It has grown on me already.  'Wonderful Life' is an excellent song and so are several other songs.  8/10

Books

1.  Toxic Sludge is good for you: lies, damned lies and the PR industry

2.  Kavanaugh - Following Christ in a consumer society: the spirituality of cultural resistance

3.  Rimbaud: Collected Works

 NEWS 9/4/03

We spent three months protesting the war and now it's almost over after three weeks. It feels to the world like a troubesome tooth that's been purged; there's a horrid sense of release even for us peaceniks and I wonder how war can be stopped in the middle of it - it's like trying to stop an evil sex act halfway through - a little impossible; probably quite futile. Perhaps. Actually, the comparison's apt - these boys with guns poking holes in their pants who won't rest until penetration is complete and they leave their mark deep inside Iraq.

 NEWS 5/4/03

My publishers estimate that my novel will be published in May 2004.

NEWS 31/3/03

COPPED, ROBBED, AND RIMBAUDED.

This is the poem about a police ambush I suffered during the week.   Also, whoever has stolen my car, I'd like it back.

Here is an Easter article I recently wrote.

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NEWS 23/3/03

The media and government may soon be triumphantly declaring that 'the people' now support the war and hence
Howard was right all along.   I hope that we will maintain the rage.  I hope people see this for the deception it is, because nothing shapes public opinion like the right wing agenda of commerical media.

NEWS Monday 17/3/03

EXTRACTS FROM MY TRAVEL DIARY

Thursday 6/3

I'm somewhere east of Madura and about the only one with a neighbour.  He's snoring and drug fucked.  I found my batteries under my seat.  The soundtrack is Joy Division.

(10:38am) okay, it's happening, this is what it has all come down to -  New Order are slowing, distorting and I'm at the Eucla roadhouse.  How far is it to the border?  It's 1438 to Perth, 1268 to Adelaide.   Will there be a sign?  There has to be.  And now the driver's gone into Eucla police station to check up on us. 

(7:40pm)  When I crossed the border I was trying to hear the bus driver's instructions.  Then I walked over to the monument and thought about crossing the border.  I was the only one to bother. 

Monday 10/3

When we got to Adelaide at 6AM she said in her shy confident husky voice, 'Are you backpacking?' and we caught the bus together in the dark to Adelaide Backpacker's Inn.  I didn't sleep.  I was disorientated.  The morning was starting.  I felt I'd been there a night already.  What I did was a cold shower, breakfast, and walked out into the city.  I was inside my 'Holden Caulfield in the 25th Century' story.  The city was orderly.  Many statues - oh, well, more churches actually, great ancient churches, unpeopled.  An elegant city, just like its name.  Couple of malls.  I came back and slept.  It was still so early, such a wrong time. 

THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER:  NEWS 28/2/03

'The last day of summer never felt so cold...'  - The Cure

I've read John Pilger's A Secret Country in the last days.  It is an account of Australia at odds with everything we are told.  I'm angrier than ever now at the injustices and evils that have occurred and are occurring now in my own country.  Until the last twelve months, I wanted to think of myself as a de-facto European, above the provincial goings on of my backwater home.  Now I realise how ignorant I was.  Important, bad stuff has gone on here and if I can be called patriotic in any sense, it is in the sense that I care about these things. 

Conservatives decry the 'black armband' view of our history, but the fact is that the treatment of Aborigines by invading white colonists is even worse than is generally accepted. 

Pilger makes a strong case that the CIA were indirectly involved in the Whitlam dismissal.  America's government did not like someone so 'left' being in public office and feared he was going to close down the secret US military base at Pine Gap, Northern Territory.   I fear what evils are being perpetuated at that site.

The fact is that our subservience to the United States has helped the new American imperialism to flourish in the South East Asian region.   The current John Howard led blind bondage to George W Bush is but the latest part of a long and repetitive story.  

Pilger and friends are dismissed as 'left wing loonies' or 'troublemakers' by the establishment, but the fact is that he raises a lot of questions that the establishment is afraid to answer.  I can only hope that more people will begin to listen to dissident voices like his before we plunge further into war and injustice.

NEWS 21/2/03 -
 

On Tuesday I came closer than I will again to being a rock star; I was a feature 'act' at the Word Up Festival, sharing the billing with Leon Ewing the lead singer of defunct hip hop rock outfit Beaverloop.  I read extracts from my two novels and two poems - 'Schedules' and 'The Truth About Auden'.  It was a big moment for me.

Last night, the state Anabaptist network had a small meeting which marked the start of a prophetic revival about to rock Perth... watch out, powers and principalities!

NEWS 14/2/03 -

Yesterday marks four years of living in the 'big city' (as it used to be known).  Today marks another lousy Valentine's Day.  Groan.  I have recently come back from a funeral march through the pedestrian malls for the half a million Iraqis who will die if we go to war.  It was a fine prologue to tomorrow's massive demonstration which is going to be looked back upon as a  turning point - possibly toward peace, possibly toward a period of police violence against increasing anti-war protests

I'm reading W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage which I compare favourably to two novels I regard highly - Sons and Lovers meets Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  How many sensitive precocious writers start out considering becoming priests?  Well, me and Jim [Joyce] Bill [Maugham] and Dave [Lawrence] at the least. 

My novel is progressing, as part of my new found discipline of writing for a whole hour every day (such unbelievable commitment).  At the moment I'm rewriting some S11 urban myths that sprang up and bolstering the role of Noah Jones, the working class revolutionary in love with Phoebe. 

Here's a recent poem written in a time of dissipation - 'I Shrank My World'.

SOME THINGS WHICH HAPPENED

Sunday 2/3/03

A meeting about house churches - what they're about, the problems and blessings they face - with Bessie Pereia, a former Anglican priest.  It's at the Christian Centre For Social Action, corner of Albany Highway and Canterbury St, East Victoria Park from 6:30pm.  (PLEASE NOTE CORRECTED TIME)  Everyone is very welcome. 

Wednesday 5/3/03

The passing of the years; one score and two since I first took breath.  In a bizarre co-incidence, I will also embark on an odyssey that will finally take me across the border - a train to Kalgoorlie, a bus to Adelaide, a plane to Melbourne.  It's taken on  all sorts of significance given The Fur.