Freebie: Five short items by Roderic Anderson
Copyright 2012 by Roderic Anderson
Smashwords edition
1. Writers: George Orwell’s views
2. Tolerance: freedom of speech
3. Science
4. Sex and the church: What the bible says about sex
5. Flying doctor: Thoughts on Old Age and Death
1 . Writers
George Orwell, the great English writer, famous as the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote: 'All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives, there lies a mystery.’ Is this true? If so, isn't it true of everyone? Isn't everyone vain, selfish and lazy, and at the bottom, mysteriously multi motivated? Writers are human, and every writer has all of these human failings to a greater or lesser degree.
Are writers vainer than others?
I suppose it is vain to expect others would be interested in what you have written or have expressed. But doesn't this also apply to artists, musicians, actors, and even more so, to speakers, especially preachers and politicians? Before writers put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, they should consider whether what they are about to write is of real interest to others. Have they something worthwhile to communicate, or is it just vain self gratification, trying to show off how clever they are?
As a reader, I feel sure that l am not alone in rejecting vain writers. Or is that just vanity on my part? I return many library books after reading no more than a few pages because I find the writing vain. In the Weekend Australian the only columnists I can bear to read through to the end are Phillip Adams and Stephen Matchett. For the rest, all is vanity. I think all intelligent readers give short shrift to unduly vain writers.
Some of the greatest thinkers, for example Jesus and Socrates, never put their great thoughts in writing, so we have to rely on second hand reports of their teachings. Now we are left in doubt whether these reports are accurate . Surely, if you think you have something important to express, then it is not vain to write it, paint it, compose it or perform it so as to pass it on to others. `No man is an island.’ We all feel a need to communicate our thoughts and feelings to others, and writing is one way of doing this.
Vanity writing belongs with other forms of vanity: make up, fashionable clothes etc., which conceal rather than reveal or communicate the inner being. The best writing has depth and penetrates to the heart of the matter. Even the best comic writing, for example, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Tom Sharpe's Indecent Exposure is deadly serious, like Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen.
Orwell says writers are selfish. Are writers more selfish than other people?
Selfishness, in the sense of egocentricity is the same as Vanity. But are writers more selfish, in the sense of being more insensitive to the needs of others? Numerous biographies of great writers show that this is often so but no more than in the rest of the population.
Are writers lazier than others?
They certainly may appear so in relation to their time spent non-writing . Dedication to writing can be called selfishness or laziness. Often a writer has to spend much time in deep thought, apparently doing nothing. Ernest Hemingway said writing was 90% thinking and 10% actually writing.
Necessary reading is also time-consuming, and by devoting long hours to their craft, other tasks get left undone making writers seem lazy.
But the writer who is lazy in her/his writing will not get very far. Readers, editors and publishers will not tolerate careless research, slip-shod plots, poor characterisation and slipshod grammar. For the conscientious writer writing is mainly hard slogging, much of it tedious, time-consuming and boring but she/he is vain enough to believe the end product makes it all worth the colossal effort. The art of good writing is to make it all look so effortless. Any writer worth his/her salt cannot be called lazy.
Is there a mystery at the bottom of a writer's motives?
For the best ones, yes! This is what keeps literary academics, critics and reviewers in business. Here is a test question:
Did Tolstoy write War and Peace as
(a) a history of Napoleon's invasion of Russia,
(b) a polemic against war,
(c) a political diatribe against the evils of czarist Russia,
(d) a romantic love story,
or
(e) all of the above?
The correct answer, of course, is (e) all of the above.
Keeping his/her many motives a mystery attests the skill of the writer. A single obvious motive produces mere propaganda, or a Mills and Boon romance.
So what?
Basically, writers are no different from other people, but as in every other field in the arts, they must be vain enough to have faith in their ability to communicate something of value to others, selfish and lazy enough to put their writing first, ahead of spouse, family and home, and are mysteriously multi–motivated so as to give their work subtlety and interest. Serious writing, which includes humorous, requires long periods of concentrated effort, so that relationships with family and friends suffer. But this is true of all the arts. Any artist, including the writer, must give his work top priority, which means the rest of her/his life gets pushed into the background.
But isn't this also true of anyone who gives his/her career of any kind top priority. In order to excel in one’s career, other aspects of life suffer. Men have had to cope with this for centuries, relying on 'the little woman’ to cope with home and family, getting her man off to work, and looking after his social contacts. Now, with men and women claiming equal career priority, families suffer. Are these careerists being less selfish than writers?
Some write poetry, some write short stories, some write plays, others novels, and some, biographies and other non-fiction. All writers are as diverse as the rest of the community and as different from each other as from those in other occupations. Writers and non writers are all special.
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2. TOLERANCE
Tolerance is an unfortunate word to choose in connection with our attitudes to minorities. It means putting up with. When it is said that we should tolerate minorities it means that even if we think yids, tykes, niggers, dagoes, poofs, dykes, chinks, commos, poms and women are inferior, we should tolerate (i.e. put up with them). Perhaps understanding would be a better term.
I want to deal with tolerance in this sense in relation to writing. Is there some writing we should not tolerate or put up with? If so, what sort? And where should we draw the line? Should we have censorship, some other kind of control, or complete freedom?
I do not think anyone doubts the power of the written word, whether on paper or on a V D U screen. The Bible, the Koran, the writings of Buddha, Confucius and Karl Marx inspire people long after the death of their authors. The Bible begins: 'In the beginning was the word . . .'
Lenin, Stalin and Mao were writers. Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf, and long before he set out to conquer the world, he burnt books by Jews and Communists. General Pinochet 's first action on gaining absolute power in Chile was to ban a 300 year old novel, Cervantes' Don Quixote . At present in Australia we have argument over media ownership and antivilification legislation: spoken and written intolerance of minorities.
Freedom of expression is a basic human right and anyone should be allowed to write whatever (s)he pleases. No writing should be banned or controlled because it expresses views with which the ruling class or majority disagrees. Censorship does not work anyway. Solzhenitsin and Pavel, for instance, suppressed by authoritarian regimes, have risen to respect and power in spite of it.
But what about rabble rousing incitement to violence and suppression of other people's free expression? In Australia we have a politically correct thought control movement, which includes people with the highest academic qualifications and positions, that would like to ban any writing which suggests that `special interest groups' are less than perfect. No one must write or say anything criticising women, gays, lesbians, Aborigines or immigrants.
In our country we have sound laws protecting readers: advertisements are not allowed to tell completely outrageous lies, pornography is restricted to `adult' bookshops and there are defamation and libel laws protecting the innocent.
Last year Australia refused entry to an English 'historian' who claimed Hitler's concentration camps and the holocaust were a figment of the imagination. Some civil rights activists, including Jewish holocaust survivors, said he should have been allowed in, so they could argue in public open debate and show him to be the charlatan he is.
I think it is both undesirable and impractible to control people's thoughts and feelings and their expression. We already have laws to control actions against minorities or other groups or individuals with whom one disagrees. But what about incitement to violence and vilification?
In my view, Fred Nile is quite entitled to say he believes gays and lesbians are wicked and evil and the Mardi Gras parade is an instrument of the devil, but if he advocates the parade's being violently broken up, then he should be locked up.
It is acceptable for John Howard, Mal Brough or any other politician to say he thinks Aboriginal children are at risk of sexual and other abuse, but if he acts on these views by forcibly removing children from their communities he should be penalised.
So what of the writer? It isn't all that long since the Lady Chatterly case, but now a book with over 4 000 F words has won the Booker Prize. I read that the sales of the book are flagging. Few people now care what writers write about sex, or what words they use in a non sexual context. If you don't like writing spattered with F words, you don't read the book. But incitement to violence or hatred of a minority group is different. As in verbal expression, writers should be completely free to express their thoughts and feelings: they may say women are bitches, poofters and dykes are pains in the arse, niggers are a threat to pure white ladies, Jews are avaricious, Moslems are terrorists etc. But a clear line should be drawn over which they are not allowed to step, and heavy penalties should be imposed on those who do.
Advocating any form of discrimination or action against a person because of her/his race or ethnicity, political or religious beliefs or sexual orientation should be prohibited by law. We already have such laws. I can see no justification for introducing a new anti vilification law which would limit freedom of expression.
* * *
3. Science
When I decided to study science some sixty years ago this field of study was seen as the saviour of the world. Science improved health, relieved people of heavy labour, increased leisure and provided new means of enjoying it. Science brought rapid travel and communication, shrinking the world and increasing understanding. Certainly it had brought us the atom bomb, but that had shortened the war and was in safe American hands.
Today science is seen as a very mixed blessing or even a villain, responsible for weapons of mass destruction, the exhaustion of natural resources, pollution of the environment and global warming. and science is quite unable to solve the problems it has created.
What went wrong?
Science is really only a particular way of gaining knowledge and had no means of controlling how that knowledge is used. It is about understanding, not about power. Gaining scientific knowledge is a very expensive business, so the money is spent mainly on projects which will be cost-effective, producing a profit on the money invested. If the same amount of money and effort were spent on tackling the problems associated with technology, these problems could be solved. Industry is beginning to be more responsible, changing from profligate over-production, consumption and waste and dereliction of labour to a policy of frugality, recycling and forethought.
Science begins with observation: Archimedes observed that when he got into his bath it overflowed and he felt lighter, Isaac Newton observed that apples always fall downwards, James Watt observed steam pushed up the lid of a kettle of boiling water, Alexander Fleming observed that no bacteria grew near a mould on a culture Petri dish. For every observation there is more than one possible explanation and the true one is not necessarily the most obvious one. We must be very careful of the conclusions we draw and test them to verify their correctness, distinguishing between fact and opinion.
Much science is just common sense ─ everyday experience, for example Hooke’s law: the harder you stretch a spring, the longer it gets: Boyle’s law: the harder you compress a gas the smaller it gets; and Charles’s law: the more you heat a gas the bigger it gets. But when you get outside everyday experience, dealing with the very large and the very small, science contradicts common sense, for example: inside an atom an electron behaves like both a wave and a particle: space is curved and stars warp its dimensions.
Observations are never wrong but the conclusions we draw from them often are. `I saw it in the newspaper’ is true and can be easily verified; `so it must be true’ ain’t necessarily so, and should be verified.
Then comes the idea or hypothesis: I wonder if ...? Archimedes: Is there a relationship between the loss of weight of a body immersed in a liquid and the weight of the liquid it displaces? Newton: Is there a force of attraction between the earth and objects on or above its surface? Watt: Can this force of steam be used to drive machinery? Fleming: Is the mould producing some substance that kills bacteria?
The next stage is to test this hypothesis by careful, accurate experiments. If these appear to confirm the hypothesis, then the scientist does wide-ranging experiments which, if successful, lead to a generalisation or scientific law. The scientist publishes his results where they can be read by other scientists who can then see if s/he is telling the truth. By repeating his/her experiments they should get the same results and they can do other experiments to verify his conclusions or prove them wrong. Only when all agree is his work accepted. This is called peer assessment.
Scientists are sometimes accused of having closed minds: they don't believe in astrology and don't believe ginseng cures cancer. Properly controlled experiments show that some drugs are effective in curing cancer (chemotherapy) but so far no-one has been able to show conclusively that ginseng or many other widely touted natural substances that have been used for centuries in “native” medicine, have any effect. In testing whether these so-called remedies are really effective scientists use generally accepted “double blind” procedures and so protect us from charlatans and quacks.
You hear people say, `Winston Churchill lived to 90, after drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney all his life, so tobacco and alcohol are harmless.' Scientific tests show that excessive doses of both are usually dangerous. Many natural substances are being tested scientifically, but progress is slow because it is hard to get adequate funding. Money is needed to stringently test claims for all alternatives to pharmaceuticals produced by big multi-national drug companies and procedures authorised by the medical establishment who both have a vested interest in keeping out competition.
Science is also accused of getting things wrong and then contradicting itself: Einstein contradicted Newton; modern atom-smashing machines show there are more than 30 different kinds of particles in am atom, contradicting Rutherford's model with only three; modern genetics make Darwin's evolution obsolete.
Science doesn't reveal absolute truth. Any scientific discovery may be refined and modified in the light of further experiments using more advanced techniques. Einstein simply refined Newton's laws which were still accurate enough to be used by the Apollo space rockets to land on the moon. Einstein's theory of space-time is necessary to investigate outer space. Modern atomic particle theory refines Rutherford's model that works well enough for practising chemists. Darwin's evolution theory still holds; only details of its mechanics are in dispute. Some scientific theories, which were really just hypotheses, have been shown to be wrong by further experiment, for example the steady state theory of the universe has been superseded by the big bang theory.
What about science and writing?
Literary theorists have taken up modern physics: quantum mechanics of infinitessimal sub-atomic particles and relativity of the vast universe. Neither are relevant to human life and human relations. To understand them fully both require advanced knowledge of higher mathematics, which literary theorists lack. It is a case of a little knowledge being dangerous.
A basic part of quantum mechanics is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: For an infinitessimal particle such as an electron it is impossible to know both its position and its energy. In observing its position, its energy is changed and in observing its energy its position is changed.
Deconstructionist theorists have applied this to writing. They say we no longer have the old certainties, a story need not have a beginning , middle and end and may chop and change in time and place. “Linear” and “narrative line” are dirty words as are “cause and effect” We get a narrative collage of times and places. Events do not trigger other events at all. Instead of a linear sequence of events, any event is possible; the world is an infinite of random possibilities. This is the fiction of quantum mechanics.
Let us hope this current fashion will soon change and literary theorists will take biological science as their model and once again mankind will become the measure of all things. Fashionable literature will be as carefully organised as a living organism and have an organic unity.
As science has increased in importance an anti-science movement has developed: mysticism, superstition, witchcraft and extreme fundamentalist religious sects. This is heralded as New Age, but it is nothing new. It is retrogressive, a backward return to the1960s flower power and beyond that to the dark ages. These are the beliefs that bred the ducking stool, burning at the stake and the inquisition. Some people follow these beliefs because they are anti-establishment, an alternative to mass culture, controlled by the powers that be. But anti-science is a dead end and has no positive achievements to its credit.
Science has given us the benefits we enjoy today which cave men could not. The accompanying evils are not the fault of science but are due to the failure of other branches of knowledge and human endeavour to keep pace. By reducing infant mortality science has enabled a population explosion, but science has also provided the means of controlling it. Our population problems are not caused by the success of science but by the failure of religion, philosophy and economics to keep abreast of its rapid advance.
It is science that provides an alternative to mass junk culture. Science-based high tech is subversive: lap-top computers, the internet, mobile phones, photo-copiers and scanners, DVDs and desk-top publishing free us from big brother and mass control. It enabled samizdat, the clandestine publishing and distribution of banned writing that helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union, the end of the cold war and the tearing down of the Berlin wall. We should embrace science as the means of leading us into a bright future.
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4.Sex and the Church
Recently I was rushed unexpectedly into hospital in an ambulance, without the chance to pick up even a toothbrush. Though my heart was performing acrobatic tricks, my mind was functioning normally, so I longed for something to read. The only thing available at my bedside was the Gideons' Bible. Having just read Gore Vidal's essay, Sex and Religion and David Marr's The High Price of Heaven , in which they both decry the hostile attitude of the Church to sex, especially homosexuality, I decided to read the gospels to find out exactly what Jesus said, or is reported to have said, about sex, particularly between those of the same gender. This reading of the gospels was a revelation.
Jesus berates the bureaucrats and priests (scribes and pharisees) e.g.
Matthew 23: 25 26
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,' for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them are clean also.
But seldom did I find any reference to sex at all, except in
Matthew 21: 31 Jesus saith unto them, [his disciples] Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.
Mark 7: 21 For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders.
Mark 10. 6-9 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath put together, let no man put asunder.
Mark 10 11-12 Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and he married to another, she committeth adultery.
Luke 7. 37-47 And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner [probably a prostitute] when she knew that jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee'shouse, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipethem with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet ... Her sins, which are many, are forgiven: for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.
Luke16:18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth dultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
John 8: 4-11 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in thevery act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned.. What sayest thou? ... He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ... And when they heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one ... and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
John 13: 34-35 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
These show that Jesus frowned on adultery and divorce, but nowhere could I find a report of his rebuking anyone for sexual acts. He does attack the rich, lawyers, and the hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees. - Matthew`19. 24 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Matthew19:24 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Matthew 2 1: 3 [ to the chief priests and scribes] Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.
Matthew 23: 23 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Matthew 23:27 28 Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
St Paul says in Romans 1. 18 27
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness; . . . Because that, when they knew God, they gloried him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of god into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
And in 1 Corinthians 5. 9
I wrote unto you in epistle not to company with fornicators.
And in 1 Corinthians 7: '132 34
But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord. how he may please the Lord: but he who is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin.
The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in both in body and spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
1 Corinthians 10: 8
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
1 Corinthians 14: 34 35
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Galatians 5. 16 17
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other : so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
Galatians 5: 24
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
Galatians 6. 8
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
1 Thessalonians 4.. 3
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that
ye should abstain from fornication.
In the 1940s, William Bottomley, the minister of the Melbourne Unitarian Church published a book: The Man the Church has Hidden, dealing with how the orthodox churches had masked the teachings of Jesus with the interpretations of St Paul. He justly claimed Christianity had become Paulianity.
In condemning homosexuality, homophobe churchmen quote Leviticus 18:22 as though this is the voice of God:
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Gore Vidal points out that Liviticus was written about 537 BC after Persia's Great King Cyrus conquered Babylon and allowed the captive Jews to go home to Jerusalem. The leaders of the Jews believed that the Jews' own wrongdoing had led to their exile in Babylon and Leviticus sets out a stern list of rules of righteous behaviour. In Babylon the Great Goddess was worshipped and her temples were used for male and female prostitution.
Vidal says, 'Doubtless many Jews were drawn to the sexual games in the temples and Leviticus made it clear that any Jew who lay with a male or female prostitute in the temple of the Great Goddess was guilty of an idolatrous or abominable act in the sight of the Great God Jehovah.'
His assessment is borne out by the 'abomination' of a man sleeping with another man in Leviticus being one of over 170 directives, including (Leviticus 19:27) Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
Leviticus 20: 22 26 explains that these statutes are necessary for the newly liberated Israelites to return to their traditions and forsake the cusoms of their captors:
Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue not you out.
And ye that walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.
But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people.
Gore Vidal again,
`In Babylon the Great Goddess was worshipped and her temples were used for male and female prostitution. Doubtless many Jews were drawn to sexual games in temples and Leviticus made iy clear that any Jew who lay with a male or female prostitute in the temple of the Great Goddess was guilty of an idolatrous or abominable act in the sight of the Great God Jehovah.'
The whole tone of Jesus's actions and words in the gospels is one of love: love God, love thy neighbour as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But the Rev Fred Nile, Archbishop Pell and Cardinal Clancy express nothing but hatred for homosexuals. If this is Christian love and charity, thank God I am an atheist.
Flying Doctor
In the 1920s before they had electricity, isolated farms in outback Australia communicated with each other and people in the towns by pedal transmitter/receiver radio and in 1929 the Australian Inland Mission started the Flying Doctor Service to provide a medical attention.
***
`Carrgk! Carrgk! Carrgk!’
`Bloody Crows!’ Muttered Muriel and pulled a pillow over her ears but she could still hear their dawn chorus from the trees near the railway station. `They not only look like death but sound like it too!’ Then a pigeon started up a mournful `Cer-cer-coo! Cer-cer-coo! Cer-cer-coo!’ in the tree outside her bedroom window. What a depressing noise! She wondered if it was worth getting up out of bed, but she certainly couldn’t sleep through this racket. She might as well make herself some breakfast and then go back to bed.
After two big mugs of tea and some toast she went to the toilet and then back to bed. Peace and quiet now reigned, but she did not feel sleepy. She wondered about her life and death. Now 85, living alone in a small pensioner settlement I have very few friends and relations. I’m really a refugee from Melbourne – After many years of travel, without getting married, I migrated to Queensland to escape the cold winters and my bossy siblings. My brothers and sisters and their spouses are now all dead and my nieces and nephews live in Victoria, except one of them in Perth. About my only contact with them is exchanging Christmas cards. I have never been a telephone person. Recently I changed telephone companies and they gave me a free mobile but I couldn’t work out how to use it so it remains in a drawer. Since I gave up driving I don’t go out much and few people come to see me. My neighbours have no conversation except to whinge about their ailments and treatments, the dreadful younger generations and the weather, which is always too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry.
Flying Doctor 2
Conversation is impossible; they say everything at least three times as though they think I’m an idiot and they never listen to what I have to say even talk about something else when I try to tell them something. I usually just wave to them in the distance and escape inside. I can go for days on end without speaking to anyone but the check-out girls in Coles. Since I became diabetic I have given up alcohol and, having lost my sense of taste, I no longer eat and drink for pleasure but solely for nutrition. She sighed. Is this all there is to life? Recently I read a Chinese proverb: It is better to die two years too soon than to live one year too long. I thought, How true.! I’m not afraid of death or dying. I have told my friends and relations that when I can no longer look after myself I want professional care, not any of them sacrificing their lives. I’ve filled in an Advance Health Directive making it quite clear that if I turn into a vegetable I want all treatment and medication, except for pain-killers, to cease and I have donated my body to the University of Queensland. By the time I’m finished with it probably none of its organs will be fit for transplant, but it would be good enough for students to dissect. I can’t understand all this fuss over dead bodies. Once the life leaves one’s body it’s no longer human but mere carrion. Probably the most environment-friendly way of disposing of human corpses would be to convert them into blood and bone that could then be used to fertilise memorial trees. Why dig up the World War One dead in Fromelles when they are already buried in a mass grave, then identify each one and re-bury it separately with a name-tag. The funeral industry is nothing but a commercial racket; sanctimonious hypocrites posing as caring for the bereaved when they’re only interested in their money. I class undertakers as one step down the social scale from garbage collectors.
Flying Doctor 3
I miss my close friend, Ruby, who died recently. It seems only a few months ago but it must be about five years. We used to go together to concerts and plays and cheap lunches in Brisbane and visit each other for meals and games of scrabble. Now I have only two friends who call infrequently for lunch and scrabble.
Unable to sleep, Muriel showered, dressed, shopped, did household chores, lunched on leftovers from the fridge, and settled into her favourite armchair with a book. She very rarely watched daytime television but regularly watched SBS and ABC evening news, current affairs and documentaries and occasionally, films.
While she ate her dinner she was watching the news, As soon as Kevin Rudd opened his mouth she shouted `Bullshit!’ at the screen, when Tony Abbott talked about insulating rooves she shouted `Roofs!’, when Julia Gillard said,`Air-jerk-eye-shern’ she shouted `ed-you-kay-shone, if you can’t even pronounce it correctly how can I trust you to manage it properly?’ And when a reporter said `Acksherly, flowern,’ and `batterling’ she almost screamed, `Actually, flown’ and `battling.’
Next morning for Muriel started the same way, being woken at dawn by the crows’ harsh `Carrgk! Carrgk! Carrgh! Lying awake, she thought of Ruby, who used to complain about the crows in a big camphor laurel tree on the vacant land behind her house. She used to feed minced steak to other carnivorous wild native birds, and to prevent crows stealing the meat she would wait until one or two other birds appeared in her back yard, then she would throw small meat balls up in the air and the birds would catch them in mid-air before they reached the ground.
Flying Doctor 4
As the daylight strengthened the crows eventually fell silent and Muriel fell asleep until she was awakened by a magpie carolling on her front window sill ─ a delightful, musical song. She thought, I’ve got some raw minced steak in the fridge, why don’t I follow Ruby’s example? She almost leapt out of bed, put on dressing gown and slippers, removed a styrofoam tray of mince from the fridge and took it out onto her front porch. The magpie stopped singing and flew up onto the roof. Muriel picked off a small lump of meat and threw it up there. The bird eyed it warily, then jumped over to it and took a peck before eating it all. It warbled a little thank-you song before flying away.
Muriel sang a happy song as she prepared her breakfast. Later in the morning two butcher birds landed on the roof over her front door and went through their repertoire of melodies before she fed them. Over the next days and weeks her little flock increased, calling several times a day, until she had a large clientele who added interest to her life and shook her out of her dull, boring routine. Noisy miners joined the magpies and butcher birds, who amicably accepted them. Although classed as honey-eaters, they cleaned up the scraps the other birds left and joined in mobbing the crows and a large stray black and white cat when it came prowling.
Spending more time outside in front of her little unit Muriel became conscious of how bare it looked. A team of men came regularly to cut the grass and trim the edges of the paths but some potted plants and window-boxes would liven up her little domain. In a couple of months she had transformed her unit, with an attractive front garden and a bed of herbs at the back
Flying Doctor 5
While she was outside tending her little garden and feeding her birds she often struck up conversation with young people passing along the footpath beyond her fence.
Life had become worth living and all thanks to that first magpie. Muriel called him her `flying doctor’.
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Thoughts on old age and death
Plato in the Republic has Sophocles say about his sex life: `I am very glad to have escaped all that, like a slave who has escaped from a tyrannical master. Old age brings freedom from desire; the true cause for complaint is not old age itself but the way people live. If they are temperate and contented, old age is only moderately onerous: if they aren’t both old age and youth are hard to bear.
Epicurus Greek philosopher: Death is non-existence; non-existence in the nature of things cannot be experienced; it is irrational to fear that which one will not experience, there fore it is irrational to fear death.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given him but once and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past: so live, that dying he might say, `all my life, all my strength were given to the finest fight in all the world ─ the fight for the liberation of mankind.’