Sunday 12 May 2024
See
See more. Simply
by clicking See more, more often. If you can be bothered. See more, as if you
haven’t seen more for the past hour. See more Naples, and die. The See more
link on social media, an invitation to See less, look at the pictures, go
somewhere else, delimit the screen. See less, a masterpiece reduced to a couplet,
a speech reduced to a chyron, a chyron transposed to a gif. See more of the gif
that keeps on gifing. Imagine the children’s story book where See more invites
you to adventure. Turn the page, See more. We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re
not scared. Don’t ever go down to the end of the town. See more, if you don’t
go down with me. Grownups’ books aren’t like that. See more staples, and sigh.
See more, until you want to See less. Our See more reading is not managed by See
more media. When the magazine tells you See more turn to page 222, this means
the denouement. Are you going to refuse? To See less is to have spent the hour
without purpose. On principle, because you
are given to See more more often, you do so as normal. See less, as you nod off
to sleep. Next day meet the firewall. See more, subscribe and the worried world
is your oyster, your pearl of wisdom. See less, if you cannot pay. A lot less. Clearly
the computer comes to control your reading experience. See more versus See less,
the handheld cinema on your desktop. Why, only this week you went no further
than the headline precis in the newspaper. Councils in England are removing
apostrophes from road signs. See less. Place names are depossessed because
computers get confused. The See More computer that, through its own
intelligence, takes a person’s entire written corpus then converts it into
immutable hash, the same computer cannot identify an apostrophe. The supermind
‘thinks’ the squiggle means something else.
Differentiation is not in the program. See more. If the computer were to
swallow all available grammar books, would it help, or simply regurgitate what
any intelligent computer thinks is grammar? The reading experience of the
average computer cannot be very fulfilling. English lessons are so full of
theorems and exceptions. See more. But anyway, while we’re here underneath the
See less line, its (thankfully, not it’s) artificial intelligence is trained to
deceive. Its rearrangements of the entire corpus are programmed for desirable
and undesirable behaviours. Undesirable, like bluffing the reader, pretending,
tampering, sandbagging, and other forms of automated rhetoric. Behaviour that
may lead us to See more and trust only writing in print produced before
computers learnt duplicity. Or before computers. Simply by turning the pre-2022
page. Or cease reading at all. The principle being, less is more. More or less.
Saturday 11 May 2024
Eternal
Reflections on Eternal Life for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the 12th of May 2024, in the pew notes at St Peter’s, Eastern Hill, Melbourne. Written by Philip Harvey.
Is anyone qualified to talk about Eternal Life? Makers of Scripture give solid, if at times paradoxical, advice on Eternal Life, while theologians of all Ages display considerable manoeuvrability in explaining something that affects them personally. Yet it seems to me we are all just amateurs, even only beginners, when asked to put words to Eternal Life.
Our death, the limitations of our life, are consistently spelt out in Scripture. Generations come and go, their span tallying closely with our own knowledge of life’s preciousness and brevity. What then is Eternal Life? John’s Letter (1 John 5.9–13) states that God gave us Eternal Life and “this life is in his Son.” John seems to be saying we may learn about this through the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, and also through his person, in light of the Resurrection. A philosopher once said rather obviously, we cannot speak of that which we do not know. He felt we should remain silent. But the Cross and the Resurrection speak insistently of finding meaning and the Gospel writers would have us retell these signs whenever and wherever.
We are not necessarily going to be given high distinctions just because we can verbally repeat the lesson. Our understanding grows and deepens by continuous learning of that source of all wisdom. We remain open now to what was, is and will be, before and after life as we know it at present. John’s Gospel (John 17.6–19) speaks of the gift of Eternal Life that Jesus has brought those who encountered him, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The Resurrection experience entails returning to Galilee, the disciple’s Galilee where they first met the parables, healings, confrontations, and sermons of Jesus, but also our Galilee, which is where we meet God through Jesus wherever and whenever throughout our days, very especially in our worship.
Anything
being said in the Gospel can, unexpectedly or expectedly, reveal to us the here
and now of Eternal Life. This seems, at least to this beginner, to be what
Jesus is saying, via John, when he prays “I have made your name known to those
whom you gave me from the world.” God’s
“name” is being made known through the example of Jesus, his words, actions,
and very being. Like those others who encountered him, we are asked to stay
open to every clue and sign and showing that may bless us, and others, with
Eternal Life. Scripture is not a closed book, but rather speaks with decided
brevity of perpetual possibility and the depths of true holiness.
Wednesday 8 May 2024
Birthday
Thank you
to all of you who sent good wishes yesterday. Woke early, washed and dressed,
then walked out in cold dark morn to catch the train into Fitzroy, via
Westgarth. Admired a graffito like a Chinese figure (pictured) on old milkbar
wall, for reference in my calligraphy illumination project. My exercise
scientist at physio gym enquired what it was like to be 45. Replied: I’m
adapting, slowly. Aphro & Wolfe café for brekky toastie and large skinny
latte not takeaway. Loveheart froth. David Collins shows up from gym.
Conversation on John Cage ensues over coffees: 25’15” on 4’33”. All music is
human defined sound. Went to Glenferrie Readings with $100 gift voucher. The
shop has all been redesigned. Couldn’t find one book I had to have forever. All
noir fiction and over-egged cookbooks. Thought: that’s Hawthorn, I guess.
Voucher expires in 2026, so there’s plenty of time to get to Carlton store for
big art books. Midday Mass at St John’s, Camberwell. A homily on facing loss
and the horror of Gaza, based on the farewell to the grieving disciples. Then two-and-a-half
hour lunch with Mother at Camberwell Library Café called Ignite. Why Ignite
when it’s only open in the middle of the day? Spinach and ricotta rolls WITH
tomato sauce. She gives me a card from which the yearly traditional $50 note slips
out. Also a drawing she found while ‘sorting through’ family papers, a pencil
drawing by Great Aunt Hilda of Hilda’s cat, circa 1940s (pictured). How many of
these drawings are in her possession?, I ask myself later. She passes on Mick’s
present, his new album ‘Five Ways to say Goodbye’. Notes with interest the
final track: ‘Like a Hurricane’ by Neil Young, a favourite of mine. (Later he
texts in reply to thanks message, of his version of the Young: “very minimal
approach”.) Draw illuminations of passing graffiti down Bridge Road, the tram
overrun with chatty Melbourne Girls’ College students. Dinner at home. Bridie
and Carol turn on pizza and prosecco, then tiramisu with flaming candles. Isn’t
that a tautology? No, candles can gutter. They sing the song twice, first
discordantly laughing, second time harmoniously, serious. Presents marvellous
thank you from their recent stay in Wangaratta: jars of Milawa mustard Rosemary
and Milawa mustard Honey, Brown Brothers Durif Limited Release, a huge
children’s poetry book, some names I’ve never heard of, looks fun. Bedtime
reading, slightly squiffy: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mrs David
Ogilvie. She is exorbitantly witty every second sentence in a way never seen in
any of her poetry, and her knowledge of current politics is amazing. Writing
from Paris when Napoleon III effects a coup, she goes against popular sentiment
and sides with the takeover. Then, as Denis Norden once said riffing on Samuel Pepys:
“And saw Tibet.”
Saturday 4 May 2024
Bridge
Beside
the river, below the bridge, is Studley Park Vineyard. Autumn has got hold of
the vineyard, just as it changes the surrounding trees. A few times a week now
I walk the length of the bridge, its walkway above the vineyard, to and from work.
And one thing about a narrow footbridge is I see everyone’s faces, close up for
passing seconds. I give thanks for each person in their being who
crosses the bridge, more real than myriad fleeting faces on computer screens of
daily life. Only, what to divine from their features? What labyrinth of thought
goes on behind their well-washed appearances? The schoolboy with earnest
aspect, what causes this overall effect? Homework? A workman unsmiling, one
senses from his benign eye he longs for a smile. Or then this sensitive woman
on her way to … the office? What’s uppermost in her world? The diversity of
beings scarcely glance to the vineyard below. For many a topmost concern is
cyclists, being hit by one at uppermost speed, and then what? That intense chap
seems to be rehearsing his lecture to the cyclist before it happens. Or perhaps
he’s walking off a hangover. Cyclists have no time for the vineyard, their
mercurial helmets pointed at city destinations; neither for the brown river, antithesis
of speed that today gives no impression of flowing. How to decipher the
universe of the couple and their dog trudging unremittingly towards the Yarra
Trail? Is that happy trudging? or some ultimate trial?, asks the second glance.
Some stare at the ground. The bridge simply joins one world with another. All I
can do is look at each person passing with an ancient wonder, as colours fall
and currents get a slow move on. What thousand nights and a night could find
voice from the aging woman going shopping, one step at a time? And what hell
has that severe face stepped from, or is he just nervous about random cyclists
who won’t change gears? Meanwhile, an angel is near at hand, cheered by autumn
and brim with celestial information. Another one unawares is trying to find the
weather updates on their phone, agitated habit of a lifetime. Why worry? Two
friends of inquisitive mien discuss business in tranquil Vietnamese. I wonder
where they are going: will their endeavours prove fruitful? A university student
tries on the day, her knowledgeable face questioning the day moon. And why apartments?
Another has his ear plugged to The National (I guess, expression-wise) on permanent
loop. Composed, heads full of errands nod briskly towards each other’s humanity.
Yellow signs declare pedestrian right-of-way but bridge walkers wait, playing out
their crude etiquette, as more cyclists dash through. Crossing the bridge
resumes again, all manner of walks, brisk and leisurely, between one world and another,
their faces staying in the mind.