So, I remain without the Facebook, and that is actually a relief...too much of nothing for me...it looks like something, but it isn't anything. to me, Facebook is much what the writer Kurt Vonnegut noted as a "Grand Falloon"...what you get when you prick a balloon. but...I have turned on the blog again. I like the blog. You write things...You don't get comments or followers but rather just anonymous readers. The readership changes from country to country. This week most have been from Japan, and then England. As noted the blog is mostly about what is happening in North Asia. If I had my way, which is unlikely, I would set up home in Dalian, a giant trading city in North China, and quickly zoom over to the Koreas and Japan to keep up to date. It is such a fascinating area. It has everything...nuclear weapons, mysticism, shamanism, fusions of maoism, neo-communism, democracies, old soviet structured ideas and things, new Japanese things etc all laid one across the other...and all, unlike SE Asia, understandable if you focus. Massive concentrations of people and profoundly rich resources...and great angst.....and the sea there is so deep and cold, wow. Melbourne will do. John

I recall that the first ever vinyl 45rpm single record that I bought was Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. We have both stood the test of time.

one of my favourite Dylan Thomas poems...the sermon by Rev Eli Jenkins...from Under Milk Wood

Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow

And say, good-bye – but just for now!

Cover image of I LOVE YOU PARK

The manuscript I LOVE YOU PARK is finished now after a few years...or maybe 5.

Its my attempt at distilling a day in the life in a bamboo park in China. 
My writing style started off with poems, short, something like haiku but less organised, and this is what I do still prefer.
In this way I LOVE YOU PARK is made up simply of about 40 or 50 sentences...this 'distilling' as I call it is tricky because if you write something and then distil/edit it down to its core idea you can easily get to a point where the tale no longer exists.
I try to write it as if I am always haunting non-existence...just saying enough...and as the vein of it is pretty much existential, this is what I like to do with words. Just say enough.
There is so much written all the time and yet so little of something with a meaning, so I am trying for gentle meaning without too many words.
Colours of green and red in a mist with shapes coming out of that. A piece of carved graffiti saying I Love U etc...quiet stillness at the hub of a bigger more confusing world.
That's what I wish my work to be.
personally, I am experiencing a revival of belief of a kind of Jesus not as a deity so much but as a kind of wise and helpful friend...funny business this Belief Index.

2 quotes from Michel de Montaigne, 1540AD: 1: Marriage, marriage is like a perfect golden cage where half of the beautiful birds inside are trying so hard to get out and half of the beautiful birds outside are trying so hard to get in. 2: Marriage is like going to a market, the only thing free is the entrance.

On Trump: I think that, about ten years ago, something went wrong, world-wide. The GFC occurred and this sudden change in how much money existed in the general flow of life caused repercussions across the globe. The Arab Spring arose around distribution of what money was left available (no one talks about that Arab Spring anymore) and wars were fought, here and there, but mostly there, over that. Then came refugees from those wars. At the same time, there was a shift from nation-states to large cities in terms of available money conduits. So, the major cities grew more powerful and the rural parts of countries became less able to manage. I was living in Bangkok back then and noticed the remarkable shift of wealth and hope from the country itself to the major city. It was easy to see in Thailand because there is only one major city, really, where all is invested and all is most certainly used up. The problems in the UK were not really about foreign refugees etc, or European immigrants, but rather the decrease in money available across the general public areas. Thus Brexit happened. In the USA the result was Trump. In all these upsetting scenarios the root cause was simply some bad decisions made world wide in the early 2000s, and, unfortunately, bad decisions on such a grand scale do lead to uncertainties and the rise of a kind of ‘primal over the cerebral’. I don’t think that people world-wide are any more or less racist or separatist or protectionist naturally, but they simply can’t find anyone else to blame…and nothing has been explained. The problem is that because of the impact of the GFC, no ready answers will be available for another ten years at least. These big adjustments always take at least 20 years... and no one is going to like this.