(With thanks to @ForrestGumpp for the title, and for reminding me of Dylan’s song)
I’m sitting in the Mt Tamborine library, availing myself of free wireless for three hours. It’s the most delightful little library I’ve seen in a long time, the kind of library in children’s story books with jolly librarians and interesting-looking customers. Something fantastical could happen in this library.
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship…
Mrs Chook sits opposite me, researching some nasty-sounding nasal surgery she’s been guaranteed will fix her blocked nose. She keeps asking me to tell her if she ought to have it done or not, but why anyone would ask my opinion on something like that, let alone someone who knows me as well as Mrs Chook does, I don’t know. I can’t even decide what to have for breakfast, after four months of sustained stress that has left me exhausted, and second-guessing every step I take.
My weariness amazes me…
We’re here because my Archie family has just moved up from the coast to live here, but now they’ve gone to Hawaii and we’re looking after the dogs and luxuriating in the panoramic views from their front windows, views that stretch from the Gold Coast to Mt Warning. It’s about five degrees cooler than the coast and a good deal less humid. Watching the sun rise out of the sea made me teary this morning. Followed by a hike through an enchanting palm grove with enormous and ancient red carabeen trees, then coffee, lime and coconut scones at a North Tamborine cafe and the world is looking a whole lot better than it did a few days ago.
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow…
In the forest we startled large groups of what look like very small wallabies, Mrs Chook is researching them as well to find out what they are. They squatted, staring at us gravely and with surprising trust.
We just had a fight about a picture she says is them and I say isn’t. This may not end well.
I haven’t watched the news, read a paper, or given a stuff about politics and politicians, so I have nothing to contribute to whatever is going on. All I know is when you just can’t take anymore, head for the natural world and immerse.
Let me forget about today until tomorrow…
But…Campbell Newman is doing his best to stuff up Queensland’s natural beauty, and the mayor of the Gold Coast is trying for a cable car from Surfers to the top of the mountain. It never feckin ends, does it?
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going toHey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming. Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it. Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’ swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re
Seein’ that he’s chasing. Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow. Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you. Bob Dylan
No Place For Sheep 
It’s true we’re not suited to living the way we do – but we do it anyway, because we’ve grown so accustomed to being stimulated by external sources that we’ve forgotten how to do it for ourselves.
Except when it comes to masturbation.. but then that’s stating the obvious isn’t it.
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Thank you Jennifer. Mt Tamborine is one of my most favoured places. When we lived in Queensland (we left in 2005 but where back last year, too briefly) it was a place of resort at all seasons. It’s magical in the “winter” for those of us with northern hemisphere roots – chill enough to evoke an echo of your genetic heritage but not cold enough to remind you exactly why it was that you left your former domicile 🙂 and a relief in the warmer and more humid bits of summer.
It doesn’t need a cable car from the Gold Coast (horrid idea). It needs to be left for its own community – an eclectic one – to decide what measures of progress are desirable on the mountain.
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I completely agree with you. The community here seems unusually engaged and committed, I love it.
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Reblogged this on 8degreesoflatitude and commented:
Among my most favourite places…
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I think perhaps the credit you have awarded me for the title is due to HDRebner, Jennifer.
I, after all, only mentioned the Dogfriendliness of the St Bernard Hotel.
But then again, I am only, on occasions, in The Dog’s head, not yours, so who am I to say what brought what to who’s mind. Enjoy your cocktails at the St Bernard.
And if by any chance you should come to be on the Gorge Rd, or traveling north on the Beechmont Rd, at the southern end of Mt Tamborine at dusk, you might get to see ‘the emu on the hill’ if you look up at the mountain.
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Except that if Mt Tambourine has a tick then you probably shouldn’t take your dog there.
… sorry I didn’t sleep at all well last night!-/
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The imbecilic cable car idea. It really is the sort Bjelke Petersen crass trick that had the rest of Australia loathing QLD during that era.
To save Mrs Chook the money, volunteer to do it yourself. Wolf or Black and Decker have all the gear.
Would Jane volunteer to help restrain Mrs Chook during proceedings if she were asked and the Dog could surely clean up afterwards?
God bless the PM!
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Go gently into the world of breakfast and start with eggs of course!
So many options.
Oh and I know it’s summer,but porridge fits the bill.
Or find a strawberry farm and go berserk on a pluckathon.
If all else fails a great big banana smoothy so big you can’t move.
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Of course of the two main versions of the song it can only be Dylan for mine. The Byrds version was a more polished and harmonious, possibly even more popular, but the poetry of the verse is what matters and for that I feel Dylan’s rendition speaks to me more. 🙂
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Yes, if you had a choice as to who would be perched on the edge of your childhood bed,singing you to sleep it would certainly be The Byrds.
I’d now like to offer up some contemporary poetry (song lyrics) for Gotye,on the current dilemma/s and that of the real and present ‘big picture’ issues of apathy,climate change and the zipped mouth topic of population.
(BTW The song is a ‘whole’, in that musically and lyrically it works well to capture Wally’s concern, and his obvious concern for us on this big blue ball.
“Do yourself a favour…”)
_____________________________
“Eyes Wide Open”
GOTYE LYRICS
With our eyes wide open, we…
With our eyes wide open, we…
So this is the end of the story,
Everything we had, everything we did,
Is buried in dust,
And this dust is all that’s left of us.
But only a few ever worried.
Well the signs were clear, they had no idea.
You just get used to living in fear,
Or give up when you can’t even picture your future.
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open.
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…
(Walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…)
Yeah, we walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…
(Walk the plank with our eyes wide open.)
Some people offered up answers.
We made out like we heard, they were only words.
They didn’t add up to a change in the way we were living,
And the saddest thing is all of it could have been avoided.
But it was like to stop consuming’s to stop being human,
And why would I make a change if you won’t?
We’re all in the same boat, staying afloat for the moment.
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…
(Walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…)
Yeah we walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…
(Walk the plank with our eyes wide open.)
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open,
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open,
We walk the plank with our eyes wide open, we…
With our eyes wide open, we walk the plank, we walk the plank.
With our eyes wide open, we walk the plank, we walk the plank, we walk the plank.
With our eyes wide open, we walk the plank, we walk the plank.
That was the end of the story.
*
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Nice enough song and heck’uva good sentiment, but will we be listening to it in 47 years?
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HG,
You knew I would say this……but………….
The answer my friend
Is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
(Or maybe our species will be?)
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Is it you?
Is it me?
No it’s Flait’u’lance…. The scent of humanity!
🙂
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While we’re in the Dylan mode :
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son ?
And where have you been my darling young one ?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son ?
And what did you see, my darling young one ?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son ?
And what did you hear, my darling young one ?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son ?
Who did you meet, my darling young one ?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded and hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son ?
And what’ll you do now my darling young one ?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the deepths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my songs well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
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Pussy cat ,pussy cat where have you been……
Simple Simon met a pie-man….
As I was going to St Ives…
BTW, In the end poor Bob finally succumbed to the Bible.
RIP Bob.
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Yes Hypo, but he got over the worst of it, went back to Judaism for a while and these days? Well I think he does us the enormous honour of keeping his religion to himself 🙂
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There’s hardly a Dylan Lyric that isn’t capable of being read as poetry but for mine Desolation Row fits the style that typifies the best of his ballads. Like any song that stands out from a portfolio of classics this one has special connections that lead me to single it out for special mention. A time or a place of first hearing, or re-hearing perhaps when something makes a piece of music or poetry really stick in one’s mind. I’ve told the story often enough of a bar in Beijing and a cover version by a Filipino artist with no more than a humble voice an old guitar and the wit and appreciation to come from a completely foreign culture and yet take the time to make that lyric his own, The connections we make?
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My turn!
The unofficial anthem for public servants everywhere – or at least it should be…:
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ‘neath the trees of Eden.
The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ‘neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden.
The savage soldiers sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tatooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden.
With a time-rusted compass blade
Alladin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden.
Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I will try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden.
The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.
The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden.
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden.
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.
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Irrefutable proof that the current government is using its laws to pursue racially motivated actions.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-06/call-for-asylum-processing-independent-umpire/4413324
Bowen is pretty much saying he does not trust male Sri Lankans.
Is his real surname Morrison?
I think a High Court challenge is called for, and it will succeed.
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JW,
Some of your Tweet friends may like to check this out…………….
http://unfollowingjesus.com/
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This post is entirely off-topic and is being done purely as a test as to how Twitter posts, as expanded on that platform, will be imported into the WordPress format of Jennifer’s blog. It is being put up here, now that she and The Dog are back from Mt Tamborine, where it will perhaps least disrupt current discussion.
I like Hypocritophobe’s reference to ‘WordPus’ in relation to formatting in this post: https://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/09/on-apologising-respect-the-sorry/#comment-58807
Here comes the platform-crossing test:
https://twitter.com/banana_the_poet/status/277086531695554560
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Well, that answers that question! Tweets, as expanded within a conversation display on Twitter, DON’T display expanded on WordPress (WordPus).
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This is what I was trying to display: http://twitpic.com/bkltye/full
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The UK Guardian newspaper in recent days conducted an online poll for ‘Person of the Year’ for 2012. It was won convincingly by Bradley Manning with 70 percent of the vote. Here is how The Guardian reported the award: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/dec/10/bradley-manning-guardian-person-of-the-year-2012
The following two Twitpics are of screenshots covering the content of that web page as at shortly before the time of my posting here on ‘Sheep’, just in case page content yielded by the link should change, as sometimes occurs:
http://twitpic.com/bkx75p
http://twitpic.com/bkx7ml
As can be seen, the report was posted online at 1813 hours (6:13PM) GMT on Monday 10 December 2012, after a delay beyond the closure of the poll that had attracted some adverse comment upon Twitter.
That the poll had in fact closed at 1100 hours (11:00AM) GMT on Sunday 9 December 2012 is borne witness to by the fact that this tweet was able to link to a posting of the final result of the poll, as later to be confirmed by The Guardian, put up by Russia Tonight at 2:38PM Sunday 9 December 2012:
Note that the last tweet is a retweet, and the time displaying is that at which the original tweet was posted.
Also note that, in the second sentence of the second paragraph of the Guardian report of the award, the poll is described as a “three-day poll”.
The Guardian announced the opening of the poll in this news item posted at 11:00 (sic) [AM?] GMT Friday 7 December 2012: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/poll/2012/dec/07/person-of-the-year-2012-vote?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
And, just in case things change, here are the Twitpics of screenshots:
http://twitpic.com/bky7os
http://http://twitpic.com/bky82a
Now whilst it can be said that the Guardian ‘Person of the Year’ poll EXTENDED over three days, starting at 11:00AM GMT Friday 7, running all through Saturday 8, and finishing at 11:00AM GMT Sunday 9 December, that poll only ran, at most, for 48 hours. (I say ‘at most’ in acknowledgement of the ambiguous manner in which the item was timestamped as having been posted.) These distinctions are important in relation to the claims in the report of the award that “[the poll] was very much a game of two halves.”, and that “… in the latter stages, following a series of tweets from the @Wikileaks twitter handle telling followers to vote Manning, thousands of voters flocked to his cause.”.
The first tweet in this series to which the Guardian ‘report of the award’ refers was this one:
It was made at 1:46AM GMT on Saturday 8 December 2012, either three+ or 15+ hours after the poll opened, depending upon whether the ambiguous timestamp on the item announcing the opening of the poll meant 11:00PM or 11:00AM GMT Friday 7 December. Had the poll opening occurred at 11:00AM GMT, it might have been expected that the Wikileaks ‘electioneering’ would have started earlier. I’m getting the feeling it might have in fact been only a 36-hour poll, but accepting The Guardian’s possible typocolonic inference that it ran for 48 hours, that places the first Wikileaks electioneering tweet as having been made 15+ hours in, well short of the half-way point in the Guardian narrative of ‘halves’.
The half-way point in TIME, if that was what The Guardian meant by half-way in the poll and if it was a 48-hour poll, would have been 11:00AM Saturday 8 December, at which TIME The Guardian claimed Malala Yousafzai had 70 percent of however many votes had by then been cast.
Just two and a half hours after the half-way point in time, Wikileaks was reporting that Manning had taken the lead.
Could it be that the narrative of the ‘game of two halves’ was necessary to save some face on The Guardian’s part? Was the poll only in reality a 36-hour one in which Wikileaks as a legitimate, and perhaps the only identifiable, ‘electioneer’ for Bradley Manning was effectively being given a 3+hour handicap in a surprise opening of a poll in which the bulk of what vote there was for the runner-up candidate came in during that head start period? I find the alliterative effect of the claim of 70 percent of the vote being for Yousafzai at the half-way point, juxtaposed against Manning’s winning of 70 percent of the total vote cast at finality, just too curious by half.
Could it be that the delaying of a result announcement article by over a day after the result was in fact known by The Guardian was not so much ‘sulking’, as claimed by Wikileaks, but seen as being necessary to reinforce an impression upon the public that it had run a three-day (ie. 72-hour) poll, when in fact it had not?
Wouldn’t it have been good if the public could have got to know the absolute numbers of votes cast as progressive totals were posted, not just manipulable uninformative percentages? Talk about dumbing things down!
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Sounds ridiculous to me. If enough people/email addresses can be mobilised, Assad might have been voted person of the year, or perhaps Cardinal Pell.
It means absolutely nothing.
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Much like our election process?
Only in the case of the two current ‘big’ choices ‘immobilises’ might be a more appropriate term.Like a press gang.
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Hypo, do you ever think before posting?
“Our election process” features compulsory voting, where every person over the age of 18 years is required to vote.
And to vote only once.
Please, please, engage brain before posting.
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Macabre,
Pot/Kettle/Black you.
Please, please, engage ‘your’ brain before posting.
I’d say ‘press gang’ is a pretty good euphemism for how faux Labor has dealt with leadership issues and policy by faction.According to the writers of political history,the punters really wanted Gillard, not Rudd.
And face it, if enough sheepies can be ‘mentally mobilised’ by the MSM anyone can get voted in.
“Intellectual press ganging” if you like.
(You would have lived through a few incidents of govts getting unvoted via a relentless media blitz?)
And BTW please quit the lecture on how our voting system works.I know how it works, ‘mechanically’.I also know that that does not equate to good members or good governance.Or even a reflection of the community’s aspirations.
Duped is a word that springs to mind.And the apologist mantra of ‘getting the government we deserve’ is totally wrong AFAIK.The current case in point.
Thanks for your kind words, though. I’m happy to see you expose that generous superiority you have.
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I posted this tweet in reply:
Just so that anyone following this story understands the Wikileaks view upon how The Guardian conducted, and subsequently reported upon, its own ‘Person of the Year 2012’ poll, I have posted here a series of @wikileaks tweets in sequence from first to last (ie. in reverse order to how they would normally be seen in a Twitter timeline). Just because I have listed them does not mean that I necessarily endorse all the Wikileaks interpretations of steps in the sequence.
`
This about sums it all up:
My earlier post in this thread on December 11, 2012 at 5:19 pm, ( https://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/03/hey-mr-tamborine-man/#comment-59129 ) was essentially an amplification of @Wikileaks point 10, with some observations as to misrepresentations by The Guardian as to how it had conducted its own poll.
A mouse-over of the time on the first Wikileaks ‘electioneering’ tweet after the opening of the poll reveals that it was made at 2:46:17 PM UTC (GMT), three and three quarters of an hour after the opening of the 48-hour poll, NOT halfway through it as claimed in the Guardian item reporting (minimising?) its outcome.
By 2:26:34 AM UTC (GMT) on Saturday 8 December Wikileaks was reporting that Bradley Manning had taken the lead in the poll. This was seven and a half hours BEFORE the halfway point of the poll, 11:00 AM GMT Saturday 8 December, the latter being the point at which The Guardian later claimed Malala Yousafzai to have had 70 percent of the votes. Both claims cannot be correct, and since the Wikileaks claim would have been instantly checkable in real time by anyone visiting the Guardian page, on the balance of probabilities it is likely to have been the correct one.
One can only conclude that the bulk of the vote for Malala Yousafzai must have come in during the 3+ hours before the first electioneering tweet by wikileaks, and that it was at around that point in the polling that she could have been reported as leading with 70 percent of however many votes as had by then been cast. It almost seems as if Wikileaks was taken by surprise by the opening of the Guardian poll. Which if it was to have been so, begs the question as to how the votes during the earlier hours of the poll contained such an apparent concentration of support for Yousafzai amongst their number.
Only The Guardian could tell us, but if it did, could we believe it?
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Shining the light of hindsight:
https://twitter.com/TaleahPrince/status/489710812840218624
I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the tweeter’s Profile Summary, or the linked article, but ‘Underpass’ is mentioned.
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