Graffiti

Controversy about aboriginal art sites on the Burrup Peninsula (or rather about their preservation on sites allocated for LNG plants) makes me wonder how the original artists, and their contemporaries might have felt about it. Did they consider them sacred in the way some do now or were there ancient aboriginal parents lamenting irresponsible youth going around with the paleolithic equivalent of the spray can ? On the same theme, if Chinese society continues to "westernise" at the present rate, will the Great Wall of China turn into the world's greatest canvas for angsty Chinese gangstas wanting to remind everyone that they exist and have something to say ? Come to think of it, much of what I see on Perth streets may as well be Chinese for all I can make of it. Whatever happened to Foo ? At least he had personality.

Beautiful morning in Perth. Cold, clear and crisp. Dog has had his run and sniff. He gets so much obvious pleasure from this, I might try it out. We are all neglecting our sense of smell I feel and society is the poorer for it. I may stick to trees, bushes and posts for the time being as I think people might not be ready for the butt-sniff introduction. Waiting now for teenage step-son to work himself up to glacier speed and get to school.

Start HERE

That's directed at me, not you. Nothing was happening so I felt a simple instruction might help.

I really don't know about this blog business. I've always had a vague suspicion that having the time to write about one's life is automatic proof that said life has no content worth writing about. Well, time will tell I suppose. If this is the only entry ever made, you (and future me) can assume that I've bravely gone about pushing back the frontiers of science, making people laugh, cry or more likely just getting mildly amused and mildly irritated but making some kind of bow wave anyway, and so not possibly having time to come back and add anything more. Other people seem to manage it however - having an interesting life and nevertheless having time to record bits of it I mean. There's plenty of interesting stuff out there and not all of it to do with quilting and model trains. Oh bugger. I've only done one paragraph and I've offended 6 million people already. And then there's also the ones who are offended by the word bugger. Perhaps I should explain that the literal meaning of this word has been lost in Australia and it really is just a stronger version of "bother". Did that help ? I thought not.

The name "Peripheral Vision" comes from the realisation that most really important things in life are only seen from the corner of the mind's eye. This seems evident more and more as time goes on so I figure there needs to be some place to write stuff like this down. In one of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide series, the process of learning to fly is described as "throwing oneself at the ground and missing". This is accomplished by arranging to be distracted at the crucial moment so you forget to complete the process by actually colliding with the ground and just end up bobbing gently a few feet above it. The point, I guess, is that surprises open up channels in the mind that aren't there otherwise. While travelling on a very fast train between Paris and Den Haag, having arrived in Europe for the first time a few hours earlier, I was enjoying the fast-forward views of Belgian backyards when I saw an Emu. This was such a bizzarre thing to see in such a context that my mental train left the tracks completely for few seconds - roughly the time it took for my stunned brain to rummage through the archives and drag up something about Emu farming in France. Anyway, there was a pleasurable little period afterwards when all wonders seemed possible and I enjoyed the rest of the trip very much more thereafter.

Not sure where this is going so I'll leave it there and come back (or not) later.