Days Volume Two

* William James has observed that 'the power of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour' 'Mystical faculties' here refers to that flood-tide of inner warmth and vital energy that human beings regard as the most desirable state to live in The sober hour carries continuous demands on the energy sense-impressions thoughts uncertainties suck away the vital powers minute by minute Alcohol seems to paralyse these leeches of the energies the vital warmth is left to accumulate and form a sort of inner reservoir This concentration of the energies is undoubtedly one of the most important conditions of the state the saints call 'Innigkeit' inwardness The saint achieves inwardness by a deliberate policing of the vital energies He comes to recognize the energy-stealing emotions all the emotions that do not make for inwardness and...

* THE MAN FROM IRONBARK by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town, He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down. He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop, Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop. "'Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark, I'll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark." The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are, He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar; He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee, He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be, And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark! Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark." There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber's wall. Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all; To them the barber passed the wink, his dexter eye...

* Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark, So dark you bore no body, had no face, But a sheer voice that rattled out of air (As now you'd cry if I could break the glass), A voice that spoke beside me in the bush, Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind, Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man, And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found. But all I heard was words that didn't join So Milton became melons, melons girls, And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night, And in each tree an Ear was bending down, Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass, When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought, The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky, Knifing the dark with deathly photographs. There's not so many with so poor a purse Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that, Five...

* Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells. Deep and dissolving verticals of light Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water. Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth, Gone even from the meaning of a name; Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips And hits and cries against the ports of space, Beating their sides to make its fury heard. Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face In agonies of speech on speechless panes? Cry louder, beat the windo...

* They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown; For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet My window-sill is level with the faces in the street Drifting past, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street. And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair, To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care; I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street Drifting on, drifting on, To the scrape of restless feet; I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street. In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by, Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet, Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street Flowing in, flowing in, To the beat of hurried feet Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those fac...

* Small Scenes In Sydney It's when the first bus goes down Oxford Street with the daylight just pinching the edge, the rim of the night, the noise begins. Someone whistles, passes this window, quietly whistling. It's these working days and the restless cars and scooters at the lights. In the middle of the Messiaen concert, suddenly, I wanted to be outside the hall, to have stumbled across this building full of music while walking in the winter night. At dusk, before the storm broke, the bats flew in above the gigantic fig trees. It was remarkable. I get up from a chair to watch the rain outside and stub my toe on the table leg. Pam Brown And so it was that criminal neglect came his way, that old emotions circled and his own sickness took full sway. He listened to the self-absorbed messages of the sick and the dying, the rabid justifications, the extensive cries for help. He didn't know what was happening, but knew change was afoot. Everything could alter in a moment, his jo...

* Stay, I'm burning slow With me in the rain, walking in the soft rain Calling out my name See me burning slow Brilliant days, wake up on brilliant days Shadows of brilliant ways will change all the time Memories, burning gold memories Gold of day memories change me in these times Somewhere there is some place, that one million eyes can't see And somewhere there is someone, who can see what I can see Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Moments burn, slow burning golden nights Once more see city lights, holding candles to the flame Brilliant days, wake up on brilliant days Shadows of brilliant ways will change me all the time Somewhere there is some place, that one million eyes can't see And somewhere there is someone, who can see what I can see Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Someone, somewhere in summertime Simpl...

* Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations, it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience and Reading In all the clouded circumstance and in all his wanton days, in time warped and air breathed, in a tiny trickle of the infinite which crept across the corporate carpets, which made him everything he had wanted to be. We were wounded, there wasn't any doubting that. He was shattered and yet strangely optimistic all at once. As if the worst had been avoided. He was a shallow imitation of his former self. All that depth, all those networks, had vanished in a lonely swamp and all he could think about was how quickly he could escape. From the fatal, final hurts, from the open spaces between buildings, from the apoc...