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A New Day

 

The following morning at breakfast, one of the Sydney men asks them how they slept and they reply:

“Very well!” in unison. 

"Like a baby," Bruce adds, obviously itching to tell more.

Then the man's wife comes in, sits down and asks exactly the same thing.  Is that a sly smile and twinkling eye she detects as they repeat the performance?

Now they politely listen to the man, as he holds forth about the butter and milk, and how the Indians hold cows to be sacred but somehow, this doesn’t apply to buffalo. 

Bruce interrupts him by saying, rather naughtily, that Jennifer had an interesting dream last night.  Jennifer has to immediately cut him short, forestalling any in-depth revelations, by explaining that she had dreamt that the statue of Parvati, in their room, had come to life and was singing for a soul, for a new baby she was making.

“Ha!” the Sydney man exclaims.  “It’s amazing how almost all religions insist on a life force that's separate to the body.” 

“Well,” says Bruce, “without it we couldn’t have everlasting life. Or gods who breathe life into inanimate objects.   Maybe it’s a hangover from a primitive belief in the unattached souls of ancestors looking for a body to inhabit.  I suppose it goes along with a belief in reincarnation.”

At that point the other Sydney couple appears. 

“Talking about religion again?” the wife says.

They explained the conversation.  To which her husband responds:

“It’s easy to see how the ancients thought that the spark of life was contained in a man’s seed and went into a fertile woman to produce a child.  It was just like a seed going into fertile soil to produce a plant. Apart from being 'fertile' or 'barren' she had no other part in it. It was his child - to do with as he liked.”  

He pauses to take a bowl; half fill it with breakfast muesli and top it with milk - buffalo or cow it's hard to tell - before continuing:

“Yet the myth of a separate life force, a spirit breathed in, granted or inherited at each conception, goes on - particularly here in India." 

“Because it allows the possibility that we can go on, to inhabit another body, in different circumstances,” his friend contributes.  And then as a throwaway, as he points at his empty cup to the waiter:  “After all, it's written in ancient texts, so it must be true.”

Having finished their omelettes, the wives have been at the fruit table, chatting about gifts they intend to buy in the markets, for children, relatives and friends.  And which of the stalls, that line the road up to the Fort, they might look at first. 

“So, if it comforts those, who like to think that their soul might have been born into different circumstances - or might still be - why shouldn’t they believe it?” asks the taller one, returning with her fruit plate.  

“Yes, why shouldn't they dream of being reborn as a prince or princess?" demands her friend, close behind.

“That’s all very well.  They can believe what they like,” her husband responds. “But ignorance and untruths lead people to make bad, often harmful, life decisions.”

A second round of coffee has been distributed by the waiter and Jennifer sits silently, listening and thinking, as she often does in the salon at home, when she's drying someone's hair or waiting as they tan.  Of course, everyone knows that babies started as an already living egg, that was fertilised by an already living sperm. If either the ova or spermatozoa was dead, no baby would result.

But people so often talk about a new life, giving the impression that life is somehow freshly created each time. But it's already-living cells, that combine and multiply to become a baby. She hadn't realised, until she listened to these people talk, and thought about it herself just now, that a baby's life is not 'new' but: 'separate'. As the men had agreed, creating life anew, at conception, is just an ancient myth, that goes back to when people were more ignorant. 

So, her vision of Parvati was just a dream, brought on by all the erotic images and aromas and sounds in this romantic and exotic place.  But it was a wonderful dream, because through it, she and Bruce have discovered a new exciting side to each other, that she can hardly wait to explore again. And just perhaps, a couple of new, separate, beings, are now on the cards?

Jennifer's very stimulating remembrances and hopes for the future are interrupted, when the shorter wife renews the wives' attack on their husbands' lack of belief in anything mystical:  

“Although you two may think it's ‘ridiculous’ in the ‘light of modern science’, people want to believe their myths.  Including, that there but for circumstance, 'they' would have been born later or conceived somewhere else. Even by someone else. They don’t want to hear that they would not exist at all... You two have no souls.” 

“That’s funny”, says Bruce, impishly: “That was the last thing Jennifer said to me last night. But she got over it.”

 

First published: October 2013

 

 

 

 

 

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Travel

Argentina & Uruguay

 

 

In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Argentina. We spent two periods of time in Buenos Aires; at the start and at the end of our trip; and we two nights at the Iguassu Falls.

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Fiction, Recollections & News

Chappaquiddick

 

 

 

'Teddy, Teddy, I'm pregnant!
Never mind Mary Jo. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

 


So went the joke created by my friend Brian in 1969 - at least he was certainly the originator among our circle of friends.

The joke was amusingly current throughout 1970's as Teddy Kennedy again stood for the Senate and made later headlines. It got a another good run a decade later when Teddy decided to run against the incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

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Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

 

 

 

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

 

 

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament. 

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived.  It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia  now.

 

Read more: Climate Emergency

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