Joie de Vivre vs The Haters

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'etendard sanglant est levé! (bis) - "La Marseillaise"
 

"Appreciate what is happening in this photo.

This G7 leader decided to bare his hairless chest in a salmon-pink shirt, and slip into curvy white jeans (there isn't a straight guy alive that can pull off white jeans without irony—don't even bother disagreeing with me), and shake his baby-maker under a high, July sun while being hosed down by a hundred water pistols wielded by all manner of race and colour along the straight, L, G, B, T, and Q spectrum." - Written by Theo Ward, photo by Nathan Denette:

And a few days later we have the carnage inflicted by a hater; carnage at the Promenade des Anglais at Nice. Then black men shot by cops in America. Then cops shot at Baton Rouge. Then more cops shot today at Baton Rouge.

Meanwhile in the U.S.A. Donald Trump is promoting ethnic cleansing (if stopping all Muslims from entering the US and expelling undocumented immigrants isn't ethnic cleansing , then I don't know what it is). And what about Muslims who were born here - where does he intend to export them to?

The haters. The blamers of others for their own misfortune. The xenophobes. The Australians who draped themselves in Australian flags and called Australians from Lebanon "Lebos". Who punched then in their faces.

Pauline Hanson in Australia. Another hater.

The Jew haters.

The proponents of Sharia law.

The man who honor-killed his own sister in Pakistan the other day. Qandeel Baloch whose "crime" was to aspire to being a model.

Another hater - a Facebook administrator from a rural Australian Facebook site who just last week sent me an unsolicited venomous email, complaining that I was a Hillary Clinton voter.

Compare these haters with the joie de vivre of being the Prime Minister of Canada at a LBGT parade on a sunny day in Toronto.

I don't know about you, but having sex with 26 virgins up in the sky wouldn't do it for me.

Like Charlie Hebdo, Justin Trudeau, and the diners at Nice who rushed from the restaurant on the Promenade des Anglais, to cover the bodies of the dead with table-cloths, I prefer life over death.

I want to live in a country:

• where people cannot legally carry assault weapons on the streets of cities -
• where children are not locked up in prisons in tropical jungles - that has a decent health system for ALL citizens
• where the leader of a major political party does not believe in ethnic cleansing -
• where hundreds to thousands of its people are not killed by terrorists
• where a significant number of the population does NOT think it is an OK thing to legislate that is an OK thing for gays to be refused service in restaurants 
• where there is no Sharia law
• where there are night-times over 90% of the year
• where it is not OK for right-wing political leaders to call on the voters to "Ditch the Bitch" when for once in its history the PM is a woman

Guess that leaves New Zealand ...

Vive la France!
Vive Charlie Hebdo!
Vive la champagne!

Vive la vie!

Beyond the Winter of our Discontent

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them - from Richard III, Shakespeare

I usually start my post with a few lines from a song. But this is June 2016, and no time for singing - the above lines from "Richard III" seem more apt in this glorious summer of 2016.

I have lived through four elections in New York - two of which were won by George W. But I have never felt the fear that accompanies this one.

Sunday morning in the nail salon - a weekly ritual that I indulge myself in. Sitting at the nail-dryer. A woman in her early thirties -  a nail-dryer neighbor who I have never seen before - speaks to me. "I love your tee-shirt," pointing to the back which reads

Human Rights are Women's Rights!
Hillary Rodham Clinton
For President! 2016

"My grandparents were Irish", she goes on to explain. Adding that she can leave this country anytime she wants - taking her husband and baby to anywhere in Europe. Nothing new - heaps of us have been working out our exit strategy.

So many people making jokes - about Canada needing a wall to keep out the kale-eaters. The emergence of "Maple Match", the website for Americans seeking Canadian spouses so they can emigrate in November if necessary. Trump suing comedian Bill Maher for $5 million for his orangutan sex joke - though that was no joke.

She goes on to express her fear, a fear that had not crossed my mind anytime in my 20 years of living in America. But it crosses my mind now!

Until today I had worried of course that Trump could win the Presidency. But my fear had been mainly focused on the man and the damage done.

My nail-salon neighbor enlightens me.

Win or lose - she is getting the hell out of Dodge! "I never know when I might be sitting next to one of them." And (in a whisper), "A Trump supporter."

We are living in a county where eleven million people voted for the man. And then there are the Sanders supporters. Twenty percent have said they will vote for Trump. Which makes one wonder why they supported Sanders in the first place.

So counting the Sanders fanatics and the number of "documented" adults living in America, that means there is a 10% chance that the person sitting next to me on the subway is a Trump supporter.

Scene from "On the Beach", State Library, Melbourne

Of course it isn't true of people in New York. We are different here. Surely.

"There Is Still Time ... Brother", the sign reads outside Melbourne's State Library in Stanley Kramer’s haunting post-apocalyptic movie "On The Beach" - as radiation gradually descends southward from the northern hemisphere, wiping out all mankind.

Still, I am given new courage as I walk back home to my apartment. All around me are African Americans, Africans, and Hispanics. Many of them notice my tee-shirt and give me the thumbs up. There is still time, sister!

I started with the words of the Bard. But to be really gloomy, I will end with the words of the songwriter Dory Previn.

I've seen him in the headlines
And on the evening news
I saw him on the sideline
When stones were thrown at Jews

And marching in Montgomery
Pretending that he cared
I saw him wink as though
Some old conspiracy were shared

He was in the crowd in Dallas
At the close of Camelot
I spotted him on campus
When the students had been shot

In an oriental village
With civilians left to rot
He was hanging out with soldiers
Trading heroin for pot and he was
Smiling, smiling - Doppelgänger

On Mansplaining and Kale

I'm just an old fashioned girl with an old fashioned mind
Not sophisticated, I'm the sweet and simple kind.
I want an old fashioned house, with an old fashioned fence
And an old fashioned millionaire. - "Just An Old Fashioned Girl", Eartha Kitt

Three Men in the Peak District, England

Mansplaining and Kale - two things I know next to nothing about. And never want to.

They are not -  as far as I can discern new technologies or new discoveries -  so how come we didn't hear about them until recently?

I suspect that mansplaining is a bit like man-caves. They might have sort-of existed earlier, but no one thought to give  names. Like memes. Or maybe they ARE memes. Do memes even have memes?

But back to mansplaining - I think from the sound of it, that it is about how men like to talk a lot - to be the center of the conversation, to interrupt women. My gripe with it isn't that it is not real, or that it doesn't describe something that happens, but that people - especially women - like to write about it, like to analyze it. That they try to work out how men work.

I remember back in the early nineties when I was a lecturer at a university in Australia, there were classes for women lecturers on how to get along with male lecturers, especially how to be successful in "meetings". I have forgotten most of what was taught, except for one thing which I remember because I actually tried it a few times.

Three Men In NYC

The person educating us, a woman, pointed out how the men who got the most attention were the ones who, when it was their turn to speak, spend several seconds arranging the papers on the table in front of them, shifting  their posture, adjusted  their glasses. Maybe took a sip of water.

In short, they made everyone wait. The effect was that they exuded confidence;   people waited eagerly to hear them speak. Surely what they had to say was important.

Women on the other hand, when given a chance to speak at faculty meetings lurched forward in their seats, hurried to speak the second they were given their turn,  and rushed their sentences. Thereby appearing less confident, less dominant, and by speaking so fast, less eloquent.

I have watched the man-talking-at-meetings-thing ever since that women-awareness class at Victoria University,  and it is true. Whether it be academics or business men or hippies. The way to gain complete attention, to appear important,  is to make people wait.

After that  class in the early 90s  I decided to put it into practice that way of appearing important, of making people wait to hear what I had to say, and though my attempts have been unsuccessful, I have tried anew over the years. I will move in my chair, rearrange my notes, take a sip of water. And what happens?


Three Men In Edinburgh, Scotland

Some man interrupts me and I lose my chance to talk. Instead of appearing self-assured and eloquent, I end up appearing to be an uncertain human being who is probably avoiding speaking.

This just bolsters my belief that for men to change.  THEY have to want to change. Just like heavy smokers. They won't give up till they really WANT to give up. We women can talk about man-caves and mansplaining till the cows come home.

Men have to find their own enlightenment. It is not women's job. If there is anything more boring than mansplaining,  it is women talking about mansplaining. We won't get better at speaking in public by copying male tactics. This is because people - men and women - have already and unconsciously formed an opinion of us,  just because we are women.

Dummies at Bloomies

I recently started a thread on a Facebook group on the subject of women feeling that they have to understand and enlighten men. I expected to be howled down, even though the post was meant to be humorous.

" Just read yet another thing on "mansplaining". I think women do themselves a disservice analyzing men things. I think we should just let men have their own self-awareness stuff and (except for topics relatiing to verbal and physical abuse) we should let them go on their merry way and just use them for sex, or if they are good-looking, for adornment."

But the only  person who took  the bait was a woman.

Which sort of proves my point in a way -  but  I have trouble explaining how.

Of course if I were a man I could mansplain it.

The Photo Shoot

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only - "It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)" - Dylan, 1965
 

42nd Street, Manhattan

"My god look at your HAIR!" he said. "That won't do at all."

I think he was doing his Larry David impersonation. But I was not amused.

He'd called the day before wanting to take photos. My dentist. He was giving a presentation. To the American Association of Dentists or some such organization. I am one of his most ambitious, challenging, and successful cases. He had taken photos of my teeth at each stage of his year long work way back in 2011.

My wonderful New York dentist. He'd saved my teeth. My life in fact. When I'd wandered into his 40th Street practice about five years ago, I had thought I was about to lose all my teeth. The casualties of 1950's socialist dentistry in Australia. Another reason NOT to vote for Bernie Sanders.

But I digress.

I remembered how dreadful my teeth had been. And how excellent his work. So when he called wanting more shots, I said of course, when do you need me? Tomorrow? Sounds good.

Tomorrow became today, and it did not start off well.

A man had died a few yards from my apartment building. He'd been stabbed a block away earlier in the morning. I saw it on the early morning news. He'd managed to crawl about half a block almost to the corner of 94th and Second. A cab picked him up. Too late.

Everyone was quiet in the lobby when I exited the elevator. No "Have a nice day" from the doorman. It just seemed wrong.

Homeless Woman, Grand Central

But half an hour later on the bus down Second Avenue on my way to work I'd forgotten about it. Such is the stuff that we humans are made of.

Several hours later I was at an optometrist. Looking forward to new glasses. A routine check-up. I was excited. I was getting a pair of Lindberg frames. But I was thinking of the man. The stabbing. My mind wandered. Left eye. Right eye. I couldn't make it to the third row of letters.

She looked about ten. Efficient. Smart. Pretty. Asian. What was she saying? Retinal scarring? What did she mean? A specialist? Cornell?

Suddenly the cost of the frames didn't matter. I paid. I smiled. I shoved it to the back of my mind. Where the bad things lurk.

Eyes left! Walk south down Madison. Eyes right. Next stop the photo shoot. Teeth time!

There'd been a slight breeze as I stumbled south down Madison. A few wisps of my pulled-back hair had escaped. But I was only thinking about my eyes.

On the way up on the elevator in the pre-war building on 40th Street,  I couldn't read the floor numbers on the display. "Is this the sixth floor?" I asked a man with a guide dog. He shrugged. I guess he didn't speak English.

Somehow I arrived at my dentist's office. That's when he said about my hair. I stood there speechless.

 "Oh it doesn't matter," he said. "It is good if you look a whole lot older; it'll make it seem that my dental work lasts even longer."

Jesus Christ I told him. A man died near my apartment building this morning and now I am going blind.

Unphased as is his way - "I can recommend you to a good retinal specialist, I'll just get his card."

I told him not to bother. He took some teeth photos. His assistant had to put medieval torture instruments in my mouth so my lips weren't in the way of his Nikon. She stuck a mirror in what space remained in my oral cavity. "No good! You BREATHED!" Was he talking to me or his assistant?  I heard her apologizing. We tried again. And again. And so it went till he got some perfect shots.

More torture - this time with the hygienist, cleaning, X-rays. And I was free to leave.

The receptionist, a lovely woman, was giving me kindly smiles. The hygienist was telling me I'd need a molar pulled. My dentist was telling her not yet Miss Juliff needs to get her eyes fixed first. It is not a good day for Miss Juliff. A man was stabbed to death near her apartment. I told her to blog it.

"Send me the link!" he called as I fumbled for my coat.

Of course he is a wonderful dentist. I even told him so. It is the only thing you've got going for you I told him. He saved my teeth five years ago.

 He's a lovely man. A real New Yorker. I'd recommend him to anyone.

Conversation with a New Yorker

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot SPOT
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot - "Big Yellow Taxi" Joni Mitchell in 1970

Bergdorf Goodman‎, Fifth Avenue

The phone rang. It was evening. My American friend was back from her trip to Florida. I sat back, and listened.

"I hate coming back from being in the country-side. I turn back into New York person. I hate what I become here. I am not a nice person in New York.

I feel like punching people in the face. Hitting them hard. I hate the way people walk in front of me. I hate how they stand in supermarket lines. I hate what they look like and how they walk. They are either too slow or too fast. I don't like how I am in New York.

I went to a little town in Florida last weekend. BORING. You have no idea.

Everyone - men and women - they all looked like Bernie Sanders. It was a place people go to die. I wish they would just die and get it over with. And the food! My god. The food. What can I tell you.

And the stuff they talk about. I had to go out to dinner with a bunch of them. Two couples. Don't ask me their names. I can't remember. I couldn't remember their names when I was sitting next to them.

It was peaceful there. But BORING. I was really relaxed. There was space.  You didn't have to rush like you do here. Well they couldn't really rush. They all have 'medical conditions'. 


Subway on the 6 Line

And big churches. Huge. All new with white marble columns. Yes I went to church. I don't go to church but that's what they do there. They go to church.

And they watch plays. Amateur plays. I went to one called "Hands on a Hard Body". And the 'body' was, can you believe it, a big red truck. And people put their hands on it and each person had say a story about a truck. Like, 'When I was a boy I really wanted a big truck.' And seeing a red truck makes me thing of running away with my yoga instructor.' I fell asleep.

Then I came back here. Christ! People everywhere. People pushing. Rude people.

Trump? Yes well ha ha. We must look like fools to the rest of the world. So embarrassing. And that idiot Ted Cruz - a nasty, nasty man., You realize he's an evangelist.

You have to understand why people follow Trump. There are poor uneducated people out there. They feel betrayed by the system. They can't get jobs. It isn't like New York out there in the rest of the country. It's depressing.

Spring in Central Park

Well yes, there are plenty of jobs in New York. We have it good. We are lucky to be here. We have everything we need. We have real restaurants and galleries. And taste. We just take it for granted.

I wouldn't live anywhere else. If you want to see what it's like in the rest of America go to Florida. The west coast that is. Miami is OK. But the west coast. My god. Did I tell you what we ate for dinner? You wouldn't believe it.

Or Denver. Have you SEEN Denver? Full of pot heads. Or Nebraska. Or West Virginia.

Yes there is only New York. But did you hear Ted Cruz talking about 'Noo York values' like it was a bad thing. What a fool. We are proud of our values. Yes we have New York values. New York - well Manhattan really.

It is the only place to live in America."

OMG I've Turned Into One Of Them!

Well, let me tell you about the way she looked
The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright
But she's not there - "She's Not There", The Zombies 1964
 

Buggerlugs - "A gibe or friendly term of greeting particularly when one has forgotten somebodies (sic) name - "Ah G'day buggerlugs, what's 'appening - from Wordbook of Australian Idiom Aussie Slang: No Worries! She's Apples! Kerrin P. Rowe

Upper East Side New Yorkers

"Excuse me, sir," I asked the bus driver, "but can you tell me if you stop at 72nd Street?"

He told me. It was a few stops off so I went back to my seat. "You just can't see what stop you are at," I commented to the woman seated next to me. "That's right," she replied, and told me a story about her daughter and her grandchild and a bus in London 100 years ago.

I pretended to listen attentively while I rehearsed in my head the topics I wanted to discuss with my therapist. When the bus pulled into the stop at 72  I nodded  a thank you to the driver, and headed off past the Dakota. Remembering to remember John..

And then it struck me.

OMG, I've turned into one of them. Calling bus drivers "Sir", conversing New York style on a bus - first it is your turn to talk and your unknown travelling companion's to pretend to listen, and after an acceptable time the roles are reversed. The stranger can talk and you can pretend to listen ....

Calling a bus driver "Sir", talking to total strangers, and the therapist. OMG. Even thinking in  acronyms. What have I become?

Not that it is a bad thing to be,  a New Yorker. Look at Bernie Sanders. Feel the Bern! And Michael Bloomburg who might run for President. And that guy with the orange face and the bizarre comb-over Three New Yorkers standing for Prez. It is OUR year.

Then there's Ted Cruz talking disparaging about "New York values". I didn't think New Yorkers HAD values. That's one of the points of being a New Yorker. I didn't understand any of this stuff when I first came here. I found it odd to hear people call the janitor "Sir".

I had understood that "Sir" was an Englishy sort of thing related to knights in shining armour, and peasants tugging forelocks. Clearly it meant something else here.

It is a fill-in polite sort of word when you don't know someone's name. Of course you could say, "Excuse me, driver," to a bus driver. But "Excuse me janitor," would somehow sound impolite.

So we say "Sir". First person plural intended.

In Australia we too have a word for people whose name  we don't know. "Buggerlugs". It is a friendly semi-derogatory thing. Very Aussie. As in "Who brought Buggerlugs?" when referring to a hanger-on at a party. Or, "Will you give this drink to Buggerlugs over there."

A more polite term in OZLand is, "Hey you!" "Hey you, where does this bus stop?"  Or the friendly generic term of address, "mate". Possibly the most polite of our terms of address. Though it can be used to mean its opposite. As in, "Christ mate, who do yer think you are? Keep that up and I'll kill ya. Mate."

But more often than not, the unknown person is not given a name at all. "Where does this bus stop?"

I remember a year or so ago I asked a bus driver in Clifton Hill , Victoria wthether the bus stopped at Lygon Street. He was a Chinese Austalian and possibly a little  deaf. I asked him twice, louder.

Then a fellow passenger - a "digger" piped up, "Don't talk to him luv, he won't answer, he's not an Aussie." Charming.

Buggerlugs,  "Mate" "Hey you." Or not acknowledging a person at all.

On reflection, he man with the orange face and the bizarre comb-over aside, it's pretty good to be a New Yorker!

But lest you get the wrong impression mate, I'm still an Aussie. And  yes I'm talking to you, Buggerlugs!

The Old Women of Manhattan

Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, tell where are you going?
This he told me
Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free - Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" 1969

Upper East Side Women

Where have they gone, the children of Woodstock? Long time passing. The "where have all the young girls gone" girls. The "I Am Woman" women.

The older women of my parent's generation frequented diners or cafés. Socialized in the dining rooms of their peers.

They had their hair permed and gray-rinsed. Certainly they didn't hang out in  bars. OMG - in Australia women of any age were not even allowed in bars. But the times they have been a-changin'.

The young girls of the nineteen fifties and sixties are now women in their sixties and seventies. You can see some of them in the bars and restaurants of Manhattan. They generally come in groups of two but sometimes dine alone. Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 pm. But this early dining is not because age has wearied them.

Aù contraire. They choose these hours because these are "Happy Hours" here in New York City. Drinks are cheap. Important when on a fixed and limited income as many are.

They quite often have large smiley-face plastic bags on the table next to them, containing the left-over food from their meals, that they'll take home for tomorrow night's dinner home alone.  One night eating in, next night eating out - all for the price of one. Anti global-warming deniers - they would demonstrate against their own carbon footprints - defiant in exposing their own hypocrisy.

Smiley  Face, Happy Hour

Like "alternate side street parking" that we have here - something I've never completely understood - possibly because I don't own a car.

I gather it means that you have to park on the opposite side of the road than the one you parked on the day before. But I can't figure it out. How would one remember? And how would the parking guy know? And what if you parked on the left side on Monday but were away from home on Tuesday. Would Wednesday be the alternate of Monday, or of Tuesday?

The taking home of leftovers though I do understand, though I don't participate. Along with the happy hour drinks it makes economic sense.

I admire the older women of New York. Hanging out in bars, walking wherever they want. Giving as good as they get.

We've come a long way from Yasgur's Farm, and I like to think we've set our souls free. 

Star dust, billion year old carbon.

As they say in New York - "Tell me about it!"

Meanwhile, we'll keep on rocking.

Ambient Light

May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young - from "Forever Young" Bob Dylan 1973

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever. - Germaine Greer

Barney's on Madison

It used to be so very easy, when something went wrong. Like my car had a flat tyre. Or I wanted to return a pair of shoes to Myer Melbourne. Or I needed the attention of the waiter.

I would just put on a sad face and would be swarmed with offers of assistance.

Playing the young-and-pretty card. I even made a game of it. How far could I go?

I remember an incident when I lived in Launching Place in Victoria, OZ. I have never been a good driver but had been  pretty accident-free. I put this down to the fact that other drivers saw me coming and got the hell out of Dodge..

But one time I did have an accident -  involving a steel traffic signal pole thing. Side-swiped it, Pedestrians were staring with shocked faces. I accelerated. I tried to pretend it hadn't happened.  Catapulted straight into denial.

The crunching noise had sounded terrible.  I think  I had made the damage  worse be not stopping or even reversing. I can still remember all these years later, the sound of metal rearing. Ripping. And the shocked faces. Christ!

When I did stop to inspect the car I was horrified. There was a huge gaping gash in the passenger door. A wound. A not-meant-to-be thing.

What was I to do?  I couldn't face my husband. I wasn't  prepared to give him evidence towards his belief that I was a hopeless driver. I knew he wouldn't care about the car. But I cared about my reputation.

So I drove to a body repair shop and pretended to cry a little bit, and asked the manager of the car place could I borrow a mallet and some cream paint the color of my car. "I want to fix it myself as I don't want my husband to know I had an accident,  Also we are poor" I said in a sad voice.

Window Display at Dylan's Candy Bar

Manager man consulted with his worker mates., They stood around in a circle in the way men of the Australian bush do when they want to show they are real men solving an important problem..

"Yeah too right we'll fix it for her, poor little thing," they were saying. "The husband's lucky to have her." I thanked them profusely and told them how wonderful they were.  My acting skills are not a lot better than my driving ones, so I cut the thanks short. Nothing worse than over-acting, my father - one of the greatest actors of all time - had taught me.

My job well-done I walked over the road to a coffee shop and read a book while the men pulled out all plugs to get my car looking as good as new.

But those days are well passed. I can't do that sort of thing now. I haven't been able to for a while.

Sometimes I wish I would have been born ugly; then I wouldn't have had to adjust so much. People would never have helped me. The transition  has been hard.

But I made it!!! I change my own tyres now. I don't even have a car anyway, so I don't have car accidents. If waiters don't take any notice of me I yell at them. I am woman, hear me roar!!!!

I don't exploit my own sexuality because I don't have any. Life is good. Was good ...

Something new has begun. I have entered another phase of ny life. An even worse one.

And that is - saying out loud my date of birth - to bank officials, Medicare workers, house insurance people, people at LifeLock who protect me from identity theft. Come to think of it, do I even NEED Lifelock? Who would WANT to pretend they were me?

It goes like this. I will be applying or asking for something by phone, from a person with the authority to deny it.  The conversation, the application will be going very well.  Especially if the person on the phone is  male and Texan. So polite. So charming.

They'll even chat a bit. "Love yer Aussie accent!" they'll say admiringly. "I am sure you can get that loan, insure that house,  return those shoes you don't like anymore."

And then, "We need to establish your identity for our records. What is your date of birth?". I can hear the mouse click at the other end where they are bringing up my personal details on the computer screen.

I answer in a whisper . Maybe they wont notice the year. But of course, they do.

The tone of the conversation changes. Clipped. Polite. Not interested in accent. No way José.

A few times I've tried to play the age card. I don' know what you mean by a "HUD-1 settlement statement," I will say. "I know you told me before but I can't remember!" But it is a fine and dangerous line I am treading here! They might think I am feeble minded. Not worthy of a loan. Not fit to take out insurance.

Actually I tried it once - playing the old card that is. At a hospital here in New York. In the ER. I was lying there, forgotten. Hours passed. I was thirsty. I had no water. When I called to the nurse I was ignored.

I started to get dressed. "What are you doing?" Nurse Ratched snapped. "I'm getting water, I'm thirsty .I  haven't had any liquid for five hours!" She glared in an accusing spooky sort of way.

"Do you know where you are?" "Of course I answered!" "Well where ARE you?" she crowed triumphantly. Trumped like The Donald! I became the old woman she thought me to be. I briefly considered saying I was in Paris having a meal with my man friend, but common sense warned me.

I didn't much like the ER I was in, but was pretty pretty pretty sure that the one at Bellevue would be worse.

So I told her where I was, in an elderly feeble docile sort of way.

Which only goes to show that the system will always win, and we must go gently into these our final days. Or at least pretend to.

Don't Blame Me - I Just Live Here!

You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read It’s well known
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones? - from "Ballad of a Tin Man" - Dylan 1965 

What's-a matter you? Hey!
Gotta no respect. Hey!
What-a you t'ink you do? Hey!
Why you look-a so sad? Hey!
It's-a not so bad.
Hey! It's-a nice-a place.
Ah, shaddap-a you face! - from "Shaddap You Face" - Joe Dolce 1980

Beach, Maine, USA

"Even as I write this on gray and rainy Saturday, the glorious weather of Independence Day weekend is borne back ceaselessly into the past like Gatsby's boats against the current.

I hope this missive finds you well wherever you are, on the docks in the West Egg or in your own backyard."

This was the preamble of a letter from my attorney - I like to call him my end-of-life attorney (it's so American) - just to annoy some of the folks back home who have it in for all things USA.

Sure the USA has a lot to answer for. But it is also - for many of us living here - a very nice place. Especially New York City, where one's end-of-life-attorney references  F. Scott Fitzgerald when sending a letter reminding you to check that your last will and testament is still in order. 

I have a theory about New York - because it is so big, and in many ways by virtue of its size - somewhat impersonal - that people are very friendly and personal with people that they come across in day-to-day encounters.

Most of us live in small apartments and spend large amounts of  time at work. On a physical level our horizons are somewhat cramped. But we make up for it, because the world is our back yard. Central Park, the High Line, Prospect Park, the galleries, the theaters. The literary and music legacies.

Subway Advertisement 2015

And so New Yorkers, seeing the whole city as their own space, will chat to complete strangers, holding whole conversations with people who they are never likely to see again.

And in customer service email - not you pro-forma "Dear Sir/Madam" -  a comment, a viewpoint can find its way into the most mundane of commercial emails.

As was the case a few weeks ago. Frustrated at not being able to find a movie that had been reviewed on "Talking Pictures on Demand" where a panel of film critics talk about the on-demand film offerings, I emailed customer service at the TV station  NY 1. In ten minutes the reply landed in my inbox.

Thanks for your email. I just checked Movies on Demand and I found it. You need to go to channel 500 (Movies) and go to the alphabetical listings. You'll find "Battle Royale" in the A-C section. I know that we have done reviews of movies in the past that might have been unavailable and we try hard to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Thanks again for the feedback and please let me know if you are having any issues finding the film. It's a weird movie....very Japanese.

Steve Paulus General Manager, NY1

As Jo Dolce sang to people putting down Australia in the 1980s - "Hey! It's-a nice-a place."

I was chatting on the phone to a friend in Australia last week, talking about the plight of refugees and how in America we call them "undocumented immigrants", and how welcoming the U.S. really is, when it comes to new arrivals. The conversation went something like this.

Me: We call them "undocumented immigrants" here.
Her: What? I think someone is at the door.
Me: Are you back? I was just saying how in America we call refugees who come here illegally, "undocumented immigrants".
Her: At least we don't have the death penalty. I couldn't live in a country that has the death penalty.

Well I suppose we all couldn't live in countries that we think do bad things. I couldn't live in a country that stoned female adulterers to death for example. Well naturally ... I would be dead.  

Maybe I wouldn't want to live in a country that turns back "boat people"; that even calls other human beings "boat people". But I have, and I no doubt will.

And in any case, it isn't a competition.

Or is it?

Aylan Kurdi - Lest We Forget

"I wished there was no problem in their country, that they hadn’t left it and hadn't tried to leave Turkey and that I hadn’t taken this photograph, But as I found them dead, all I could do was take these pictures to be their voice." - Nilufer Demir, photographer, Bodrum Turkey, September 2 2015
 

"But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again" - from "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda", Eric Bogle 1971

The beaches of Gallipoli (Gelibolu) are etched in the collective memory of many older Australians. Every year on the 25th April Australians celebrate "Anzac Day" - the anniversary of a battle that  is believed by some to represent the birth of our nation.   In 1915 8,000 Australians died on the beaches of the Turkish peninsular of Gallipoli -  men and boys of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs),  in  their first ever campaign. The first time we made world news as a nation separate from England.

Most of us older Australians  have seen the movie "Gallipoli" -  which was also part of the marking and making of our nation. Released in 1981 by Australian director Peter Weir, it helped put the Australian film industry on the map. A film about several young men from rural Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War and who are sent to fight the Turks on the peninsula of Gallipoli. Sent to die.

Australian expats are moved almost to the tears when hearing Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda",  a song which describes war as futile and gruesome. War seen through the eyes of a young Australian soldier who is maimed at the Battle of Gallipoli.

Was it the fact that the dead child in the photo was washed up on a Turkish beach that got to me yesterday? Beyond tears. Was it the association with the memories of the young Australian soldiers  running from the Turkish beach to their deaths one hundred years ago that sickened me so?

Or was it because of the way he was lying. As the CNN reporter put it, "face down, his head to one side with his bottom slightly up -- the way toddlers like to sleep"? My children slept like that.

Or what he was wearing, his red top and blue shorts and little shoes with Velcro straps? That I could imagine his mother dressing him in that morning? Too close, too personal.

"This picture is so desperately sad", posted a friend on Facebook. I could bear it no more. I closed the iPad, turned off the TV, and  slept the sleep of the dead.

I awoke today with that feeling you get when you know that something is wrong. In between sleep and full consciousness - usually it's something like how the dishwasher is broken; or that I lost my iPhone the day before. Something trivial, but something that tells you that today is not just another day.

I don't normally wake up with that "what's wrong" feeling related to world events. Even when George W as elected way back when, I woke up as per normal. The Chile earthquake. The bushfires. The Japanese tsunami. World events don't overly affect me. At my age I'm a seasoned traveler of  life.

Last time I woke up with a feeling of something being wrong -  a something that wasn't affecting my personal life - was on 12th September 2001. The day after 9/11.

Today I woke up with that feeling. That something-is-wrong-in the-state-of-Denmark feeling. And it wasn't  about something personal. What had changed?

As consciousness dawned I remembered. The toddler on the Turkish beach.

I know that children die every day. Of disease and starvation,  from war, by infanticide. But this one did me in. Has done me in. Little Aylan Kurdi, whose family had fled through three countries in search of safety.

Fleeing ISIS. What parents wouldn't?

As we say at the dawn service on ANZAC Day in Australia, remembering the young men who died on another Turkish beach," Lest We Forget".