~ earth stars

This morning on the ABC News Breakfast show, Mal Brough presented us an old chestnut which seems to be coming back into its own : why should Australia lead the world in reducing its carbon emissions (and why should we bother, as we're such a small polluter on the global scale). When Barry Jones responded, I was hoping he'd give the right answer. It would be good to hear the right answer clearly articulated on the airwaves, just once.

By my book, he did pretty well. Among the developed nations, Australia is the world's largest per capita producer of greenhouse gases. While most of the world subsists on trotters and belly pork, we are living high on the hog. Plainly, this places a moral burden upon us, more so than any other nation, to curb our negative influence on the environment. For their own reasons - largely selfish - many conservatives and the much of the business sector do not subscribe to this thinking - but most of us, I feel, would agree that ethically speaking we have an obligation.

Thus Barry Jones replied, adding that Australia has been a world leader in the past and is perfectly capable of being so again.

It is an position of integrity and right. Though certainly nothing Australia does in isolation with its emissions will curb the global pollution problem, it can act to secure the future by influencing the world at large. Australia – unlike the USA - is in no position to strongarm, but it is sufficiently large that its actions are noticed. It can pave the way that others may follow.

As well as the high-minded moral argument, I would not have complained if Barry Jones couched his response in more selfish terms. People are afraid of the coming change. They are confused by the clamouring voices, raised against each other, crying contradictory predictions and positions. And it is the way that when danger looms, humans look to their own.

If the current generation of Australians wish to provide a rosy future for their children and grandchildren, they can act personally but to little overall effect. Yet if they act as one to reduce their emissions, establishing new standards and new economic mechanisms, then they are lighting a beacon for other nations, who might act in turn - until sufficient of us are united in the cause to positively influence the future of the planet.


Yesterday, more importantly, while scraping up some mulch for my potted anemones I unearthed what I thought to be some old, partially digested plastic daisies. On closer inspection, I discovered they were ripe earth stars, their 'stomach-shaped sacs' bursting with spores. I've trawled for about half an hour, but can't identify the species, though the family is certainly Geastrum. Over my many decades of turning the earth in Mt Waverley, I have never before encountered earth stars.

~ the ears, the lyrebird, april fifteen

The Lyrebird Lounge is a tiny place, a shop front, but its size possibly had a bit to do with how wonderful the atmosphere became. Andrew had to sit on a couch with keyboard resting on his lap. I had to vocalise over an antique Galaga console. It was reminiscent of the old Exford Hotel, or perhaps the 475 Club from days of yore.

These latter-day shows by The Ears - without intending to overblow our personal trumpets - have, as they say, been pumping. And seething. And surging. If I didn’t have these accursed Hep C drugs in my system, sponging up my native energy before I’ve even generated it, I think I’d be inclined to put a good deal more time into the band. It’s fun to be a strange, thirty-year old, resuscitated, anachronistic musical artefact with a tightening death-grip on life. But you try bellowing to an audience for an hour with the twin, lead-filled panniers of interferon and ribavirin depending from your shoulders. Mind you, that’s just me; the rest of the band were steaming, and my work - if you could call something so thoroughly enjoyable ‘work’ - was probably okay, despite my reduced physical state. Mick’s girlfriend recorded most of the songs on a handheld gadget, and we watched the results today. Pretty amusing stuff. And all very exciting. I’ll edit some down and upload it to You Tube, if I’m able. And we’ll try to get some more shows organised. Hopefully, we’ll be playing at the Day at the Green in August - but I have the taste. I want something sooner.

I should also mention Josh Lord’s acidic, political, canvas-slash-poster-art which was on show a few doors down at The Bower. Very street. Very punk. Very distinctive voice. And the wonderful Ovals too, who also played at The Lyrebird. A bevy of courteous and bearded young men with a profound interest in the progressive rock of last century. They rang bells, tickled memories from my early teens; echoes of songs I couldn’t possibly have identified after the passage of so much time. Shades of King Crimson, Procul Harem, Mid Pink Floyd, ELP ... Gus, if you’re reading this, take note. There is simply so much music, so many styles, genres, attitudes ... not all can emerge from the vaults at once, to live again, but in observing The Ovals I was delighted to find this particular musical school resurrected and (naturally) given a new coat of paint.

~ the cupboard moth

It’s taken a few weeks for my black internal weather to disperse - but disperse it appears to be doing. The long long ordeal by law is petering out via an endless series of interviews with agents of Correctional Services Victoria, and no longer do I prepare myself mentally, late at night, for jail.

The other trial, the drug trial, continues ... and, at week twelve, I should know soon if it’s had any significant effect on my viral load; but until then I remain nauseous, gasping for breath and generally deenergised. Heaven knows how I’ll cope tomorrow night. Singing demands a lot of that exact kind of energy I’m lacking at the moment, but we’ll see.

I can think of nothing better than an Ears shows to celebrate the termination of my primary difficulty. Perhaps we’ll do something a bit more significant soon, but for now, tomorrow night at the Lyrebird Lounge, probably at 10.00pm, will have to do. The Ovals are playing at 9ish, if you’re interested, after Josh Lord’s exhibition opening down the street at The Bower.

What’s more, we’ll be playing a new song: The Cupboard Moth ...

I bred a cupboard moth
At some excessive cost
Because it fills my nightly chalice ...

A few doors down the street, there’s an elderly gentleman who breeds native trees. I’ve acquired a great many from him over the years, but have had no luck getting them to survive. Lately, however, fortunes in the garden have changed - even to the point of our new indigenous vegetation luring strange new life forms to the property ...

~ a monstrous bellowing of gratitude

A monstrous bellowing of gratitude. To those many many friends, who have supported me over the past two years. Those who put up their hand for the Ears Reunion at The Corner ... Those who vouched for my character, gave of their time ... Those whose sympathetic, compassionate words buttressed my spirit against the fear and uncertainty ...

And all those others.

Two years and twenty three hours, exactly ...

Since that dreadful incident ...

And an honorable judge of the County Court saw fit to refuse the OPP's request of a custodial sentence - in favour of a punishment more befitting the error of illegitimate backyard gardening.

Technically: a two year Community Based Order. I know I can live with that.

The dark clouds that have dogged me throughout this experience are just beginning to disperse. It's going to take time, I suspect, for the reality of such good, good news to sink in. Perhaps, by tomorrow morning, the skies will be clear.

Amen to that, at last.

~ my intimate blood-borne saboteur.

For better or for worse, I’ve enrolled myself in the trial of a new drug which may be a potent HCV inhibitor. It’s a triple therapy: as well as the study drug, I’m on the standard-of-care - peg-interferon and ribavirin: a toxic cocktail which tends to cause anaemia, flu-like symptoms and a genocide of the neutrophils, those fundamental elements of the innate immune system which are seen most often as a constituent of pus.

I’m desperate to shrug off the virus. It’s not killing me yet. For a fifty year old my liver’s in pretty good shape - according to the painful biopsy I had a few weeks ago. And my level of ALT (an indicator of inflammation) is within the normal range. However I’ve had the accursed invaders for upwards of a quarter of a century and there are rather a lot of them: at last count nine million viroids per millilitre of blood. The moment age begins to weary me, to weaken me, I fear they will grasp the opportunity to scour me from the surface of the planet - like a fastidious girlfriend with a box of tissues, scrupulously seeing to a clumsy boyfriend’s spilled red wine

Weird simile, I know. I’ll trust my subconscious and leave it there. Oh, and I was stung by a bee the other day. The hottest of those recent days. In Bruce Butler’s pool. A bee, of all things. There I was, lounging peaceably in one of Bruce’s vast and colourful collection of floatation devices when, lo, the underside of my upper-arm descended upon a bee. When did this last happen? Was I six? Younger perhaps? Of course, even a painful incident like this will not undermine my love and admiration for bees. The creature was acting purely out of instinct. I know that. Though I admit to taking a soupçon of pleasure in what must have been a painful, extended demise.

Polly, however, was out of the pool in a flash, pale as a sheet, trembling in the corner furthest from the water, demanding that we leave immediately. She is terrified of bees. And wasps. Snakes too, I think. (About a fortnight ago, I was walking with her and her friend Megan by Scotchman’s Creek when I spied what I believe to be a tiger snake side-winding across the path. I was a child when I last saw a snake down there.)

Just to finish up on the subject of bees ... Robert - as I have explained previously - cannot stop himself feeding the surly, obese, ill-humoured local population of brush-tailed possums. He built a beautiful possum box for them to inhabit - put it atop the shed in the hope they would cease forcing up the tiles and sleeping in the roof. Robert knows the ways of these possums. Intimately. He can tell them apart as they come for their nightly serving of putrid bananas. They seem to trust him too; he alone is allowed to stroke the fur of the matriarch’s offspring peeking from her pouch ...

Unfortunately, before the possums even noticed Robert’s labour of love, a swarm of honey-bees appeared and automatically made it their home. They became a fixture in the yard. During the Winter, for a time, the hive disappeared and shortly after we found pieces of depleted honeycomb amongst the dried leaves and the dust beneath the box. With Spring the bees returned, and they remain there now ...

I would love to steal a little of their honey... but I dare not risk it.

But back to the point ... this is my fourth attempt to flush the (stubborn genotype 1a) virus from my system. The first was a a monotherapy: interferon-alpha on its own (I responded, but barely). The second was trial of something called Rebif: interferon-beta, typically used for MS patients (The injections hurt like hell, I felt like shit and it did nothing). Then came the double-therapy - still in use - interferon-a and ribavirin (my viral load dropped from 10,000,000 to 1200, but then, like the Borg, the virus adapted and resumed its deadly replication).

Each of these attempts have excised more than six months from my life. It’s simply impossible for me to operate as usual while on these drugs. I’m not myself. I’m reduced, functioning at a minimum.

It’s a gamble: surrender these swathes of time in the hope that, later in life, I will avoid cirrhosis, or liver cancer - or else take a chance and let the virus do its evil work. Always a hard choice. And Polly must be considered. I don’t want to be sickly and weak when the time comes to wield an axe - or machete, or shotgun - when suitors come a-calling ...

I have benefited from the treatments. The most recent, though technically a failure, has caused my liver to show signs of improvement - despite my viral load careering back up to nine million.

This time round, at three weeks in (I’ve just had my fourth weekly injection of interferon-a) the side effects have been milder than I recall. The initial fortnight was bad - I might have had a poisonous creeping ague caught from some queasy, debilitated swine - but since then I’ve been normalising. There is the anaemia of course. It gets in the way of the exercise I rely on to bind my body and soul. But if this is the worst of it - this and the fatigue and the fogginess and the low-mood - then I will plough through the twenty-one weeks remaining with ease.

Perhaps the virus is already gone? The new drug - BMS 790052, which directly attacks a protein necessary for HCV replication (NS5A) - is supposed to work very rapidly. Perhaps I’m feeling better because I’ve cast it out at last. My dark passenger, as Dexter might put it. My intimate blood-borne saboteur.

Or perhaps I’m one of the unlucky ten percent who, instead of the new drug, are receiving a placebo?