I was out Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights last week.
On Thursday I caught up with Becky for a drink at the Match bar before dinner at the European. On Friday I caught up with Whisky at the rooftop bar at Campari at 5. He was visiting from KL where he is living and working. We had a few beers and then more friends joined us and we cracked a few bottles of wine before wondering up the top end of Bourke street for wagyu beef at Takumi. After dinner drinks where at Madame Brussels across the road. I got home at about 1.30.
Instead of going to the footy on Saturday night I ended up out in the burbs catching up with friends I hadn’t seen for a while in their home. Again a few beers, a couple of bottles of wine, a good meal. The boys sat at one end of the table laughing uproariously and the girls at the other. Cheeseboy said I had the wit of Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear, which made him James May and Ant Richard Hammond, and we all agreed that we’d happily swap places with them. That was the general tenor of conversation.
I got home a little after 12, whereupon I watched the replay of the match I missed. Bed was about 2am. Whisky was due to fly out Saturday night and I called him earlier in the day to check he got back to his hotel okay. He didn’t answer and I left a message. I didn’t hear from him until late Monday night. He was calling from the airport where he was about to board a plane 2 days late. He asked me some odd questions then told me he had been arrested after leaving us Friday, but was not allowed to say why. I still don’t know, but there it is. There’s always a surprise.
I’ve had a cold for about the last 5 weeks. It waxes and wanes. At its worst I took a couple of days off, largely to spare my colleagues. At other times it has felt as if I have been completely clear of it. I took a full course of antibiotics and it dwindled from a wet cough to an erratic dry bark. Now it has returned in full force.
I don’t think I would be writing of it but for the scare it gave me last night. After a week of feeling fine I began to cough occasionally yesterday afternoon. The coughs were small, almost apologetic. Last night home watching the soccer on TV while it rained outside I felt it build and gather in my chest. I coughed unproductively while I felt this build-up thickly fill my lungs. I took another antibiotic and went to bed.
It’s easy to jump at shadows half asleep and feeling strange. I struggled to sleep lying there breathing quick, shallow breaths. I felt blocked up by the cold and as if I was trying to draw breath around a thick, viscous blockage. It was as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been. Trying to sleep my mind wandered where I did not want it to go.
I imagined this was something like emphysema. My grandmother, a smoker, had it and I remember her wheezing and short of breath. It didn’t really register with me as a kid, but lying there in bed I suddenly felt an horror of it. I imagined living like this day and night, to be fighting for every breath without pause. As much as anything it was the unremitting nature of it that terrified me. Such physical discomfort comes to dominate your life because it restricts so many of your activities.
This is more pertinent to me than most. I have something called bronchiectasis. Though only diagnosed in recent years it is something I’ve likely had since I was a boy. It’s an inconvenience. It means that I am more likely to get chest infections and that I have to watch myself. Beyond that it is no great hardship, though I’ve probably grown to accept it as part of life.
What I recalled last night was a specialist a few years back telling me I had to maintain a reasonable level of fitness if I did not want my last years to degenerate into this kind of wheezing discomfort. The inference was clear: if I was not careful then the quality and possibly the length of my life would suffer as I grew old.
It’s fair to say that recalling that spooked me last night. I did not want to live like this. I could not endure it. At about 5am my chest cleared a little, and the incessant coughing became more productive. I woke this morning feeling tired and sounding croaky. I still am, but I’m a lot better than I was. Most of all I was motivated to get healthy. There is no way I could accept this level of poor health, and if it means I have to put in the hard work now then it’s a small price.
It may seem odd, but I feel as if I’ve been given a glimpse of one of many alternate futures and, thus warned, I’ll do anything to avoid it.
I’ve been watching the tumultuous gyrations of the market very closely for the last month. In that time I’ve seen the Australian market decline by about 18% as of this morning. A month ago BHP was trading just on $45 a share. Today it’s in the $36 dollar range and likely to go lower.
I speak to my broker every day, and sometimes several times a day. When I got a missed call from him at about 9.15 this morning I knew it wouldn’t be good. “How you going” I asked him when I got him on the line. I met with him a couple of months ago and speaking to him daily we’ve found a lot in common outside of the market. He’s a straight shooter and a good bloke. “Been better” he admitted. “Was up most of the night watching the US markets fall.”
He went on to suggest that I get out of the market. Too volatile, too irrational to make money safely. Generally volatility is a good thing: it’s when you make money by buying low and selling high and riding the cycle. You can do that when you’re confident that the market is driven by fundamentals. That’s not the case now. Fear and panic stricken over-reaction is the order of the day. Unfortunately the more rational of us get caught in the stampede. There comes a point with the lemmings barrel towards you when you have to decide: stand and get trampled, or turn and run. Today we turned and joined the exodus.
I must say it goes against the grain. In fact it pisses me off. I’m disdainful of those pussies who are so easily spooked. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to trade. The nature of the market is to fluctuate. For the most part it is driven by economic fundamentals – business opportunities, company profits, and the wider economic outlook. There’s always some element of sentiment, but generally it makes it interesting, and allows those of us with a steelier nerve to profit off the softcocks. It works well, but not now.
It’s tempting to suggest that the softcocks are ruling the market right now, but that’s not entirely true. Sure, there are plenty of mums and dads out there who are terrified of seeing their investment in the NAB go up in a puff of smoke, but they’re small time really. It’s the hedge and superannuation funds going all defensive who are really doing the damage. And it’s not necessarily because they’re getting spooked – they know the fundamentals better than anyone. They also know the fundamentals count for nothing right now. And so the slightest whiff of negative news – such as there has been recently – is enough for them to act in anticipation of an irrational response. Unfortunately it only adds to the downward momentum and general hysteria.
Right now everyone’s getting into cash. You know things are bad when stalwarts like me are getting out of the market. I gave my broker the nod this morning, do it I said. Then I went and liquidated all my privately held stocks. I’ve taken a hit. At its peak I had doubled my stake in the market, but I’ve given 20% of that back since. Still well in front.
While the lemmings around me plunge blindly over the cliff I’ll have a smoko. The good news is that there’s a lot of money to made on the upside. I’ve got to hope that the market continues to fall, and I think it will. Then I’ve got to pick the time to go back in.
It’s precarious right now. Europe is yet to be resolved, and while the recovery is ongoing in the US it’s fragile. Worse case scenario and all this irrational behaviour may precipitate another crisis. I don’t think it will. I think it must steady. China is still going great guns; Oz is healthy notwithstanding the plunge in the dollar. Europe will cease to be news. At some point rationality will return to the market.
Then we go. It might be a couple of weeks, it might be a month. When it goes I think it might surge. I aim to ride it for all it’s worth. I think within 6 months all that’s been lost will have been recovered and, notwithstanding any further unforeseen disasters, it will be a stronger market. I hope to double up again.
That’s the thing, for all the doom and gloom there are a lot of glittering opportunities waiting to be unearthed.
For many years I lived with the sense that ahead of me in the unknown future was a path of adventure and discovery. It sat in me like a promise luring me on: it was all ahead of me.
One day I realised that sense had disappeared. There was not a destination, there was not even a path except the one I had always travelled on. I had matured, I thought, into understanding of one of the basic fundamentals of life. Life is in the doing, not the reaching. It is in the here and now as it extrapolates into the distant future. Truly, it is about the journey rather than the destination.
Well and good, except that now I feel something different again. While my opinion is unchanged I find myself feeling my life repeat. Perhaps I have come to the age where that is to be expected. You live in a place long enough, you do the same things and mix with the same people it is inevitable that some sort of déjà vu will be experienced.
That’s where I’m at. I feel like I’m on an infinite loop that makes a broad circuit. It takes in the same things as it has the last 20 years. Occasionally it travels through interesting territory, through a foreign land perhaps, or in a quirky situation different from before but the same in nature. Everything regardless, even the good stuff, seems familiar.
I may enjoy the moments along the way, but it dismays me to think that they are part of a string of similar moments. More than most I get restless and bored. There seems something inauthentic in doing the same things over and over again. It’s inevitable that I’ll want to change things up if I can. To be in a loop, as I suspect most people are, infers something vaguely artificial, as if we mindlessly follow the way laid out for us.
The problem is I don’t know how to step away from that path. I wonder if this kind of thinking is typical of those who suffer a mid-life crisis. Is that what this is? Well, it doesn’t seem as extreme as that. I feel pretty cool and measured. I don’t have the urge to go out and buy a Harley Davidson, though the urge to open a bookshop or move out bush remains. My mind is calculating, not excited. I have concluded something coolly and want to act on it rationally.
Maybe it’s all an illusion. The life we lead, or believe we lead. Or perhaps my take on it now is false. Perhaps whatever I choose to do is part of the journey, a way-station on the loop. Perhaps it is all pre-destined no matter how we struggle and strive. Perhaps we are all variations of Truman living in our own construct.
Still, be it what it is, I want to act on it, to change something to make it different, to get onto a different path or, at the least, change loops. If it is illusion I want to see the flickering edges of it, to sail to the edges of the sea.
Update: I went for a walk at lunch today and found myself at Readings. I browsed the shelves of the store for about 30 minutes. As always I found the experience soothing as well as interesting. There is a sense of calm in most bookshops. Arrayed on the walls is a wealth of knowledge, and those people gathered to peruse them are all of common mind. I guess in a way it is like a club.
As I took one book down to check out and then another it struck me how books speak directly to my soul. For a moment I saw the experience of reading, of absorbing knowledge, was separate to what I described above. It is easy to believe when you are transported to a different time and place, to other worlds, by the skill and imagination of the writer. In the end though the act of reading remains within the loop, regardless of its pleasures.
It’s different when I write. Even when I write something as simple as this I am stepping aside from life to observe in a different way and to report on it. It is more pronounced when I write creatively. It is such a wrench that you can’t help but be temporarily ‘unseated’ by it. I carried the books I selected to the counter. I looked forward in my leisure to sitting and enjoying them. It is a warm, precious, pleasure. It is leisure though.
It’s when I write that I am taken out of myself, though the process is really internal. I go deeper. I dig, upturning established realities and perspectives, like a gardener turning over an old garden bed with a pitchfork to enable new growth. It’s an interesting process, which for a little while takes me away from the established routines and accepted realities of everyday life.
It’s the act of creation that interrupts the loop, because it is outside of it. I’m sure it’s the same in different ways for all the different creative outlets, but in writing you look beyond the painted sky to what lies beyond. That’s why I write I think, and keep going back to it: to find something new, and to understand it.
Monday in the office. Normally I’m in by 8.30, sometimes 8.15, but today I was a little later than that. It was not that I was sleepy or had a reluctance to begin the working week that had me linger in bed. It was just so nice. I was closer to awake than asleep, but I just felt so comfy that I stayed put longer than I should. In the end it was Rigby, impatient for breakfast, who got me up.
It’s the same old world in at work, the Monday variation of it. People are slower to start perhaps needing to get back into the groove. The conversation harks back to the events of the weekend and the latest footy scores. The weekend emails are viewed and put aside. Last week’s work is opened and the thread gradually picked up. Coffee is pre-eminent – as it is most days – the fuel necessary to get the week going.
Amid all this is H. I gaze around, seeing without really looking. On one screen Outlook is open; on the other a multi-coloured spreadsheet. There are people I need meet, issues to follow up on, emails to send.
I walked into work the usual way, along the usual route. I listened to one of my audio books – this one of The Great Gatsby – while I walked down the customary road. After not seeing her at all for a year I’ve bumped into Paige perhaps 7 times in the last couple of months, her head turned from me and looking like a brooding, closed off Neve Campbell. I am later today and so miss her. I pass the primary school on the corner across from work. By now it is nearing school time and the street busy with traffic and the footpath with small children in their uniforms and the odd parent proudly escorting young ones. To my surprise I see the CEO of my footy club with his kids, and nearly say something to him with that familiarity that comes in seeing public figures unexpectedly in the flesh.
Now the heating hums in the background, a sound you don’t hear until you listen for it, or when it jolts on. The conversation now is of work, some small dramas to work through. I guess I have my own to handle too. Another sip of coffee and into it.
As an Australian I like to see good Australian films. Our movies should say something about us and our society, if only obliquely. That’s not something you can legislate for, but the hurdy-gurdy imperatives of art and capitalism combined make for a mix perhaps truer than any proscribed program.
It’s my take that many Australian movies reflect too narrow a slice of society, generally the down-trodden and disadvantaged extremes. They are earnest and well-intentioned, which is really just another way of saying worthy and dull. They are made by writers and directors who wear their heart on their sleeve and want to impart a message, mostly written in block letters.
The best art has a message, but it is subsumed within the art and received subliminally: the story comes first. This is something our callow graduates from film school need learn; in fact it’s something they should have learned in film school.
There is a place for the gritty kitchen sink dramas we too often make, but we make them too often: the balance is wrong. Though it seems a dirty word, we need more commercial movies that tell a good story well. Lantana is an example of striking the right balance between story-telling integrity and entertainment: it’s a great movie, and there are others like it, though too few.
What’s been lacking are the everyday movies, the comedies, the thrillers, the genre pieces that draw crowds in because they are entertaining. If they reveal something of Australian life – as inevitably they will – then so much the better.
Seems to me the balance is slowly shifting in recent times. Movies like Wolf Creek and The Proposition, were well-made films that were entertaining and successful. There have been probably another dozen movies of varying quality since, from The Square to I Love You Too which have continued the trend.
Right now there are two locally made movies that the pre-release hype tells us are exceptional genre pieces. Both are ‘crime’ movies for want of a better descriptor, Red Hill and Animal Kingdom. Despite plenty of real life stories to draw from and TV success this has not been a rich genre for Australian movie-making when it is such a staple abroad.
I’ve not yet seen Red Hill, but I saw Animal Kingdom in preview the other night. It’s a confronting, bleak movie that hits you with a jolt. Obviously based upon the Walsh Street killings of the late eighties, fictionalised and updated to present day, it’s basically the tale of an extended crime family and its war with the Victorian police. Clearly the protagonists in this film are based upon Victor Peirce and his cronies, though the extended family resembles family, crime matriarch Kath Pettingill and her clan, violent and tragic.
I remember the community shock when the two police officers were gunned down in Walsh Street. I lived a few streets away, and walked by the scene on my way to work the next day. It’s a chilling scene in the movie as we see the set-up, the abandoned car in the middle of a suburban street and the two young police investigating it. As a Melburnian you know what’s coming and it sets you on edge waiting for it to unfold. Then it happens, bang, the two coppers are ambushed ruthlessly and left lying dead in the street.
The fall-out from that crime continued for many years after and was splashed across the city’s media. In time one legendary crime was succeeded by another and the players, like few places in the world, became household names: Wendy and Victor Peirce in this instance, Carl Williams, Mick Gatto, the Moran brothers, and so on.
Watching the film was disquieting at times, but it felt something necessary. There is a dispiriting inevitability to the action portrayed on the screen. Once the first domino is tipped the course of events that follow have a brutal and violent predictability, as it was in reality. Characters die or become conditioned to a world much different to ours, prey or preyed upon; they become enmeshed in the machinations and take on a role within the ‘animal’ hierarchy, playing their part to its bitter conclusion.
There are no heroes in this – even the police come off looking a little soiled – and a lot of victims. There are some decent people, most of whom become innocent victims, and a few genuinely scary characters. In the end you’re left with a sense of enduring brutality – the brutality of casual and easily inflicted violence. It’s chilling and unglamorous. It is not easy viewing, but it’s necessary in the sense that it exposes the ruthless reality of the criminal animal kingdom, where dog eats dog as a matter of course, and the top dog has the biggest bite.
It’s an expertly made movie with an expert cast acting expertly. Ben Mendelsohn is a consistently good actor, and is perfect as the Victor Peirce character, amiable one minute and a psychopath the next. Jacki Weaver plays the matriarch, the Kath Pettingill replica, Wendy Peirce role (in real life they were a couple, but here mother and son, reflective of Wendy Peirce now rather than as she was then). Guy Pearce plays the straight as an arrow copper, complete with mo, and Joel Edgerton is convincing as the ill-fated crim looking to go straight – the Graham Jensen role I guess, whose killing started it all.Ultimately this is a movie of a tragic story. It’s not going to be uplifting. There is the sense that this will ever be the way, that this struggle will never end and that except for a few characters here and there it will always be dirty, dark and tawdry. There are no winners, though if you had to pick a side it’s clear that in the end the boys in blue will get you.
It's the most impressive Australian movie I've seen for ages, and mesmerising regardless of where it comes from. The director, David Michod, has the goods, and is worth looking out for. See it.
In town the other night I walked up Collins Street up towards the Paris end. It was a little after 6, it had become dark and the after work crowd were window shopping or heading off for a drink or, most commonly, on their way home.
I walked up the slight rise past the Athenaeum theatre, past the antiquarian bookshop that’s been there as long as I can remember, and up to the corner where the old Scotch Church stood. Across the road the fancy boutiques glittered, Versace, Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. The traffic went by dimly, the trams coming in or going from the city stopped and started, brightly lit and full of passengers, and the streetlights glowing yellow in the darkness filtered their light through the leaves of the elegant trees lining the street.
I missed this I thought. If you must work then it really should be in the cbd, wherever you live: that’s where the action is. I missed the comings and goings, the thriving activity of people doing their thing amid the multitude of available choices. So much was familiar that I thought the city, Melbourne, has become imprinted in me. I know it so well, not just the streets and laneways and the arcades that make up so much of the city’s charm, nor the bars and restaurants and the best cafes for coffee, though they too seemed written into my sub-conscious, more than anything it was the feeling I would experience, I thought, even with my eyes closed. It is an aura of grace and style and elegance comingled with a certain intellectual hauteur. It is both easy and laid back and discerning.
Like most Melburnians I love my town. It regularly gets voted the most liveable city in the world, or close to it. True enough I’m sure, but a truer indicator I would guess is that it would be one of the city’s most loved by the people who live within her. It is our own and we love her.
Later I had dinner in a cosy restaurant in Flinders Lane. It was frigidly cold out, and we stopped before a series of restaurants looking to choose one. The restaurant we chose had a fire burning in the grate and a warm, homely feel to it. I sipped my red wine and looked around, everything familiar to me after years of living this same life but in different incarnations. Our conversation touched upon that: look at the men drinking at the bar? They look like boys. I looked and sure enough the men she spoke of dressed in fine suits had the clear skin and innocent eyes of boys. I was one of them once I thought, and commented to that effect to our mutual amusement. I’ve journeyed through life since in this town and away from it, returning always as it changes and remains the same, much as I have done. We have matured together.
We left and it was late. Look she said, it really does look like Paris.
Walking home last night a man of about 50 in an old blue parka and a pair of work pants greeted me, then extended a cup in his hand asking for a contribution. For me, for most I think, these are embarrassing situations. For some perhaps it easier because they have a standard response, or have an unwavering belief in their own perspective. I don’t have that and I don’t think I want it. Though I am as sceptical as anyone scepticism seems a small price to pay if I incline to generosity.
About half the time I respond with the loose change in my pocket to the mumbled gratitude of the recipient. The rest of the time I acknowledge the request but turn it down with a “sorry mate”, or something similar. It all happens so quickly and unexpectedly that I never know which way I’ll turn until it happens.
Such was the case last night. I was asked in a place I didn’t expect to come across a beggar. Before I knew it I was smiling ruefully and brushing past him. He smiled back, used to this response no doubt and probably expecting it, wishing me a good day.
I carried on feeling guilty as I always do in the wake of this. Why shouldn’t he hope for a few coins – they mean much more to him than to me. I was tall and robust and healthy, clad in expensive suit and trench-coat, the career man, the go-getter, the very picture of prosperity. Why should I not give what I can so easily afford?
As always the counter-argument came forth: you can’t give to everyone. Somewhere a line must be drawn. I give half the time, isn’t that something? Yes it is, but in the cold light of day it doesn’t really hold water. Why must a line be drawn? Ultimately this is all excuse. It’s ego battling altruism. I give and there lurks in the back of my mind the suspicion that I am being taken for a sucker, that instead of money for lunch or train fare home the money will be used for booze or, worst still, as part of a scam.
Does it matter though? Isn’t the genuine good done outweigh the occasional fraud? What matters if I am fooled? I’m big enough to shrug my shoulders.
I may seem the classic liberal, but equally I believe in the rights of the individual. There’s usually a line drawn between those two positions, but there is little I see incompatible between them. Like most things, they can exist balancing one against the other.
I believe in individuality and the freedom of expression: that’s how I seek to live my life. I think people should be encouraged to have a go, that we should reward those who aspire to rise out of the common muck – and in this I differ from many liberals. I believe the freedom to do and to be has a price – and that price is that we should help those less fortunate or without the means to do what we have done. Those who can have a moral obligation to assist those who cannot. It’s karma really: do good and good will come. And it’s a form of healthy humility, appreciating one’s good fortune and never taking it for granted. It’s a small price.I wish I had of stopped last night and emptied my pockets of loose change. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. It costs me little, but means much.
According to my contract I have 4 weeks to go at my job unless, as likely, they offer an extension or a full-time role. In my mind there are 4 weeks to go and counting – I have no intention of staying any longer than I have to.
It’s a liberating thought. It frees me up in the work I’m doing. Rather than battling, as I have been, to get things done I now accept that some things won’t be by the time I finish. In so doing I shift my focus from the doing to the planning and the documenting. To a degree it means that while I still push I can roll my sleeves down a little and get back to plotting the necessary strategy to get from here to there. Much of what I propose may never happen, but at least they’ll have it in black and white, and occasionally multi-coloured flowcharts, to make a call on once I’m gone.
The other thing this knowledge does is free up my attitude. I’m less concerned with minding my p’s and q’s and more intent on getting the right message across, take it or leave it.
Of course there is a risk in the leaving. What if there is nothing to go to?
I’m pretty confident all will be good. It’s no secret that I’m pretty frustrated here, and while the money is good I can get better. Hopefully I can find a job in an environment better suited to my talents and personality, and the dollars to go with it.
As it happens I caught up with one of my contacts from about 18 months ago. At one point he was keen to get me on board, but then the GFC came and nothing happened. As it turns out they have been going great guns recently. They were featured in BRW recently as one of the big up and comers he tells me, they’re the fastest growing IT consulting company in Asia, and just to prove it he’s flying off to Shanghai in a couple of weeks to open a big new office. What are you up to? He asked. Why don’t we catch up for a beer or a coffee to discuss opportunities? Fine I said, lets.
It’s much more my cup of tea and I only wish I’d got involved back then when they were 20 odd people – the share options would have been great. Still, better late than never.
No guarantees, never are, but there are always things to be had for a clever and enterprising boy, that’s what you have to remember.
I describe myself as having a sceptical open mind to most things. In the absence of anything categorical I'll return an open verdict, but with an inclination to believe that which accords with my experience. For example, I tend to believe ghosts don't exist, but I'm open to the idea they might (and I hope they do).
I do subscribe to the view that there are more things in heaven and earth, etc, and thank god for that. Life is so much more interesting with the unexplained bits. And in fact I have experienced enough for me to believe that not everything is as kosher as the rationalists would have us believe. Some things are independent of the known principles.
Probably about 2 years ago I went through what was a very sensitive, receptive period. It lasted for about 3-4 months and was both strange and exciting. For that time it was like a door long jammed shut had creaked open and exposed me to the swirling currents that normally I am oblivious to. At times it was so intense as to feel I was almost naked to it, and unable to dim or shut it off. At other times I wondered if it was my imagination that had conjured it up, and that having done so I was so enamoured of that sensation that I unknowingly fabricated it again day after day. Regardless it was fascinating, and then it ended.
There have been times since that I've recalled that period with a sense of the surreal. My life since for all its ups and downs has been grounded in gritty reality with few flights of fantasy, imagination or spirituality. It seems incongruous to contrast the here and now to the ethereal then.
Back then it seemed I was awake to things I had previously skimmed by. At times I would feel things shifting in me in reaction to this altered perspective. I would 'feel' these unfamiliar sensations I could make no sense of in ordinary words. In a sense I moved for a while from a rational interpretation of the world around me to one that was in part visceral, and other parts spiritual. It was as much in me as it was coming from without.
At times I would sense something distantly, like something you catch in the corner of your eye. As I was open to it the feeling would come closer, loom larger. There was a fragile, gossamer quality to this, as if it would not bear close examination. I had to let it come to me on its own terms. When it did I would know without knowing what or how. A certainty had emerged in me unrelated to known reality, but a certainty I could not identify. Something was going to happen I would think, something loomed ahead. I believed it, and I was right too. Things did happen.
That time has long passed and that sense. Sad really, it was interesting. I don't know what it meant, but suspect it was as simple as I described it - that for a while something that had been closed had now opened. I doubt the likes of that will come to me again.
That said I would not be writing now if I had not had some reminder of that time. Whatever it was has opened a crack I think. I feel nothing of the overwhelming flood of sensation as I did then, but feel enough to believe that once more something important is poised to happen. Good I think, though I can't be sure of that. In any case I am waiting, watchful and curious, and ready to go where it takes me.
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