LIFE LESSON: Tragic. I love fixing things. Sometimes I fix them well. I fixed the fake UBOAT Italo Fontana wristwatch last night and was so happy, and it gave me the confidence to fix the fountain pen my father in law gave me about a decade ago... Chinese communist party peace treaty signing pen, gold coloured, heavy, huge, blood rubies imbedded in the top, perfect 1950s East German Iridium nib that I dropped and bent awhile back... and anyway, inspired by how well I fixed the watch, I set about fixing the beautiful pen nib and at one point I actually had the binary nib points aligned and signed my name with it...but the two points were​, although aligned,​ still just bent a bit and so I tried to make the nib perfectly straight and...crack...one of the binary points just broke off. Sigh. I doubt I can find an East German pen-smith master from 1950 to make it right, ever. It is actually stuffed. Damn. So I have walked about today calling out Damn! I expect I will continue to call out Damn! occasionally for quite some time because nothing can be done to fix it now. Ever. Damn!​ It is like the lessons in the Koran.​ There have been quite a few Damn! occasions in my life. Damn! And yet I know I will still go about trying to fix up important things and half the time I will get it just right....and half the time I will get it just wrong. Damn!

The Spring Yard a poem for Matsuo Basho by John Fitzpatrick, 22 November 2017. A magnolia bloom tumbles onto the dead fence and all is tumbled new. there is work tomorrow.

A magnolia bloom  
tumbles onto the dead fence 
and all is tumbled new. 
there is enough work tomorrow.

In the great scheme of things, if North Korea could ever develop a nuclear war head they could fit to an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit Hollywood with it, who in their right mind would think that could in any way be a bad thing? The thing is this...the little rockets that NK fired over Japan recently weren't taken out by the massive US military intelligence and massive forces in North Asia...because they couldn't do it. They couldn't hit them. This kind of war is very hard to do. America can't do it with any accuracy at all. It is highly unlikely that somehow North Korea will work out how to do it, so it's all kind of silly.

From my book "After the Wake...Stories from Palliative Care". Joe was 58 when he started ​actively ​dying from cancer and this was about the same time he was diagnosed. He was shocked at first, but then, didn't mind. He said he would never have had any kind of reconciliation with his 5 children except for the fact that he was dying. He was grateful they turned up and ​everyone ​wished everyone, including him, well, ​as was the truth of his and their time being. He traded in his Subaru Forester and bought an Alfa Romeo, knowing that neither he nor the Alfa, unlike the Subaru, needed a​n extended ​warranty, or needed to be reliable. His wife loved him anyway and she was a competent enough person to make a living, as she always had. He had no insurance and some debts...but there would always be someone who wanted to take the Alfa off his hands for almost nothing anyway. ​He was a man of reasonable virtue and reasonable reach, as he described himself.​ He offered his body to forensic science at a local university, so they would take it and chop it up etc and cover the costs for his Memorial Service. He was relieved, in a way, because the only way he could really afford to have a life he valued would ​have been to keep working until he was 80, ​as an engineer, ​and he never liked work at all, much anyway. ​H​e always just preferred not being at work, whenever he could​, and he liked not thinking about things more than was necessary.​ Joe died within the year as 99.9% with his diagnosis, do, and always have done, no matter what they say on TV, and he never once had 'a battle with cancer', and he really didn't mind it at all.

From my book "After the Wake...Stories from Palliative Care".

Joe was 58 when he started ​actively ​dying from cancer and this was about the same time he was diagnosed. He was shocked at first, but then, didn't mind.
He said he would never have had any kind of reconciliation with his 5 children except for the fact that he was dying.
He was grateful they turned up and ​everyone ​wished everyone, including him, well, ​as was the truth of his and their time being.
He traded in his Subaru Forester and bought an Alfa Romeo, knowing that neither he nor the Alfa, unlike the Subaru, needed a​n extended ​warranty, or needed to be reliable.
His wife loved him anyway and she was a competent enough person to make a living, as she always had.
He had no insurance and some debts...but there would always be someone who wanted to take the Alfa off his hands for almost nothing anyway. ​He was a man of reasonable virtue and reasonable reach, as he described himself.​
He offered his body to forensic science at a local university, so they would take it and chop it up etc and cover the costs for his Memorial Service.
He was relieved, in a way, because the only way he could really afford to have a life he valued would ​have been to keep working until he was 80, ​as an engineer, ​and he never liked work at all, much anyway. ​H​e always just preferred not being at work, whenever he could​, and he liked not thinking about things more than was necessary.​
Joe died within the year as 99.9% with his diagnosis, do, and always have done, no matter what they say on TV, and he never once had 'a battle with cancer', and he really didn't mind it at all.

After working in end of life pain control nursing for about 20 years, I arrived at being 50 and realising that most folk I'd met, most australian blokes like me, retired at 65 and then got cancer or had infarcts, went on cruises and died really quickly, so I decided my life wouldn't be like that...so at about 50, faced with 2 terminal diagnoses, one of heart and one of cancer, I jetted off, travelled the world, ended up in very bizarre and sensual places, lived a rich and incredibly expensive life, blew heaps of money, did things I thought I would never do, had things done to me I thought would never happen, and saw things and places that I never ever expected to see, and then, well, I came home and now, post my career in end of life care, I work in mental health nursing. it is still rare for me to meet anyone under 90 who has experienced life as much as I have. I'm not judging, I'm not boasting...I'm just noticing. I wouldn't be an adviser to anyone who has ever displayed congruent reason, and just stayed put at home, but at the same time, I have some good advices from time to time for fellow travellers.

The back yard lawn is verily mown. The long grass is thus smote. On the grass strip outside the house, near where all the private school kids get off the bus and toss their rubbish, well...all the rubbish hidden by the long grass for countless eons has been cut up into millions of tiny bits of paper and plastic and it is now all drifting in the wind into the rich neighbour's front yard where he has just washed his stunning Rolls Royce. Hard work is not without its subtle satisfactions.

My girlfriend left me, years ago, in the Holy Land. We were on a walking tour of Mt Sinai, there with other travellers, guides, and donkeys carrying food and water. It was a hard climb and my girlfriend complained about having sore feet, over and over again. She was still complaining when we reached the summit and looked around, had something to eat and drink. When looking at the descent in front of us, she started complaining again about her sore feet. All I said was "instead of complaining so much, why don't you go down on a donkey?"