Slightly German reflections

1. The flood myth: a mighty roe deer cull (with no evidence of surplus).

2. Decanting cant Kant can't turn your aunt into an ant (unless she's already an ant, in which case it's (debatably) fairly likely you are also an ant and so (arguably) incapable of decanting any variety of philosophy let alone that difficult metaphysical cross-stitch popular two centuries or so ago).

3. If it starts with "Mein" it's mine but if it ends with "Kampf" it's no one in particular's - and yet also everyone's, as SEEING through the mesmerising ORATORY of a man with well-groomed facial hair is a struggle (at the worst of times).

4. Your tuba is everything, it's how you find love, it's your airlift to the afterlife.

Look down

You're not going nowhere
Is not just.

A missatement.

You're past halfway
In this maelstrom.

What do you make of that?

South Melbourne Night (1962)

Source Unknown

A quote (from Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore):

Bennelong Point, where the Sydney Opera House now stands, was first named Limeburners' Point by the colonists because it was mantled in a deposit of mollusc shells, built up over thousands of years of uninterrupted gorging.

A footnote (from the same source):

Bennelong was an Iora tribesman, the first black to learn English, drink rum, wear clothes and eat the invaders' strange food. He was rewarded for his curiosity with the friendship of Governor Phillip - and a small brick hut, about 12 feet square, in which he lived on the end of what is now Bennelong Point. "Love and war," a colonial diarist noted, "were his favourite pursuits." He went to England with Phillip in 1792 and was much feted as an exotic Noble Savage, the first native Australian to be seen in London. But he lost most of his curiosity value after a year or two, and it was not until the end of 1795 that he returned to Sydney, with the newly appointed governor, John Hunter. By then he fitted neither his old tribal world nor the carceral microcosm of the whites, whose tolerance of the blacks had begun to disintegrate after Phillip's departure. Bennelong became increasingly sodden and pugnacious with rum, and died at the age of about 40 in 1813.

More detail (care of the Australian Electoral Commision's Origins of Electoral Division Names website):

Bennelong NSW Aboriginal man befriended by Governor Phillip in 1789.

An observation (source unknown):

Bennelong is our Prime Minister's electoral division.

The Human Donkey

The human donkey's snout tilts upwards,
Its dark occupant's eyes almost perceptibly moving
Beneath a square gauze chin patch,
Straining for prospective coin poppers or, at the least,
Some form of harbour-city husbandry.

But the passers-by, tired of seeing
So many such animals
Contorted and cut from their herd,
Veer and leer and bustle on to their next
Glitzy destination.