Wanted. Superheroes.

Just recently I’ve been reading ‘Watchmen’, an Alan Moore graphic novel first published in twelve installments during 1986 and 1987; many graphic novel aficionados claim it is the finest example of this publishing genre.

The story centres on a group of superheroes in the style of Superman and Spiderman, by which I mean they are costumed; except the ‘Watchmen’ superheroes are really just ordinary citizens, vigilantes, poncing around in spandex. The one exception is Doctor Manhattan – he’s genuinely a superhero but he spends a great deal of time naked, which maybe explains why he’s blue; but then again, maybe not.

You might be forgiven for thinking that an aging warrior should be reading a more traditional story form, just words on a page, and typically I do, but I came across this graphic novel while reading a traditional book; and I was intrigued.

I have been reading ‘Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell’, a captivating Susanna Clarke novel about magic in nineteenth-century England, so I checked out her web site and discovered she lists the ‘Watchman’ as one of the most influential books she’s ever read. I was even more intrigued.

So I had to discover the ‘Watchmen’ for myself; discovering is, I believe, one of the marks of an aging warrior.

Anyway, the story has me thinking about the idea of watchmen – super heroes by definition, if not if fact, who are engaged in watching; but what and who should they be watching?

Well, I can only speak for the country in which I live half my life – Australia; here it’s very clear that we need watchmen, and it’s also clear whom they should be watching: our politicians and bureaucrats.

In Australia our current federal government is spending our hard-earned tax dollars - some would say squandering - at a rate never before experienced in Australia.

Yet despite this, the programs launched since their ascendancy to power have been characterised by failure: school buildings constructed by companies that enjoy union or government patronage that cost more than twice comparable buildings built by companies without similar patronage; borders that are leaking like a sieve; debate in our parliament has been reduced to the standards of a vaudeville act – a bad one at that; legislation now cripples every activity – from the most mundane to the crucial; cleanup activities after major flooding and several cyclones are limping along and ordinary people sit waiting and wondering as our army of bureaucratic incompetents design forms and sip cafe latte; common sense infrastructure initiatives such as dams, which could have helped contain the waters that now flood vast stretches of the eastern half of our continent, have been dumped in favour of expensive energy-guzzling desalination plants which are no longer needed for the foreseeable future; and tax cripples business, particularly small business, which is the heartbeat of our nation’s commerce.

Yes. We need as many superheroes as we can find to watch this mess and alert the endangered citizens of Australia.

So where do we find them? Where are these superheroes?

Well. It’s you and me. Come on aging warriors: this is a battle cry.

But please don’t ask me to wear a spandex costume!

Outlaw or hero?

So, in my last post I listed what I’ve been doing as an aging warrior to counter my PC21 – my personal conflicts with the twenty-first century.

What I didn’t explain is what these conflicts are, or perhaps more accurately, what the conflicts are primarily caused by.

Here’s the headlines:

- Corporate greed, hypocrisy, and incompetence.
- Lack of integrity within, and unchecked profligacy and abuses of process and power by, government and bureaucracy.

- News media bias and manipulation.
- Expectations of the society in which I live.

These causes are like four hydraulic rams pressing in from four directions and they edge ever forward into the shrinking central space where I stand, ineffectively pushing first against one - and then another.

But I have no control or influence over these rams – so, I will either be crushed or I must remove myself from the shrinking central space; and thus from the conflict they represent.

Ekhart Tolle, modern day philosopher and teacher, offers three options for dealing with the places where we end up in life: change them, accept them, or leave them

And in a sense, after a great deal of consideration, I’ve adopted his advice – I’ve considered the shrinking space that the advancing rams have formed – and I’ve taken my leave.

I could put up with the place in which I’ve found myself, but that's the compromise I mentioned in my last post, and why should I compromise my life?

Ten years ago I stumbled across a profound remark made by Sigmund Freud that describes my whole life up until that point, and it has certainly shaped my life since: ‘Since the beginning of civilization, man has had but one choice, to conform or not to conform. If he conforms, he is a dead man. His life is over, his life's decisions predetermined by the society he joins with. If he chooses not to conform, he buys himself one more choice, to become outlaw or hero.’

I'm an aging warrior. But am I an outlaw, or hero? That’s for others to judge. Maybe you have an opinion?

Why am I musing, pondering and meditating?

This blog began with the idea that I would muse on the decisions I’ve made to create a life for myself in this latest – perhaps last chapter of my life; I’ve made these decisions as a mature adult that’s enjoyed a modestly colourful life.

The spark that ignited this self-examination was when I reached the tipping point at which I could no longer contaminate the potential of my ‘golden’ years by continuing to compromise as I struggle to live what life in Australia has become; or rather what life has been turned into.

The causes of my need to compromise are my personal conflicts with the twenty-first century: my PC21. I’ll get to these in another post.

In compromising my life I became angry; I am angry. Which is why I see myself as an aging warrior; I am shielding myself. And I am fighting back.

Why muse, ponder and meditate? Because I’d like to live my life in a way that fulfils my reasonable and very modest expectations and I’d like to manage the factors that can influence my life. The Swiss philosopher Henri Amiel wrote, 'To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great set of living'.

I’d like to get these decisions right. I’d like to explore and investigate. And I’d like to think there may be other aging warriors that could benefit from my experiences.

So what steps have I taken to combat my PC21?

I have:
- eliminated debt.
- planned for an off-shore later life.
- simplified my life.
- done, and do, everything possible to remain gainfully employed.
- invested in daily self-improvement.
- tended towards a life of moderation, but not mediocrity.

Every post I have made, and will make, here tells the story of my progress in this very personal endeavour.

Thanks for taking time to read my thoughts. And your thoughts would be very welcome.

Dames, Broads and Dolls.

It’s self-evident, even to an aging warrior, that many Asian women have extraordinarily exotic features – added to which they frequently wear clothing that tantalises – like the Chinese cheongsam and the Vietnamese ao dais, for example.

This being so, one is accustomed to coming across beautiful, seductive Asian women that turn heads – so, as I came across four gorgeous young women in the jasmine-scented Cambodian dusk, I was hardly surprised.

Four young ladies, clearly on their way to an exotic dance club or avant-garde, trendy bar; they were wearing diaphanous hip-hugging sarongs, broad belts that hung from shapely hips, ropes of pearls, pendants, bracelets and forearm cuffs, anklets and other exotic adornment - bling I suppose, would be the modern idiom – capped by extraordinary headwear and hairstyles interwoven with blossoms, tiaras and other striking ornamentation; this was coiffure that would have caused comment even at the Melbourne Cup, an Australian horse race noted for its trackside tonsorial, millinery and fashion excesses; it's an event at which aging warriors frequently make fools of themselves!

I recall these four girls as stupendously feminine - hippy – seductive – real knockouts; author Raymond Chandler would have called them dames, Sinatra – broads, and Bogart – dolls.

The Oxford Dictionary has numerous more quirky expressions to describe good-looking women including arm candy, boy toy, cupcake, glamour puss, nymphet, odalisque and perhaps my favourite, Mata Hari, the stage name of a Dutch, part-time oriental dancer and courtesan during the troubled times of World War I – her other career was spying, for which she was shot!

I’ll admit, the girls being bare-breasted took me somewhat aback – but this would not have been extraordinary when these dolly birds were carved in relief on the walls of Angkor Wat during the reign of Khmer King Suryavarman II, some time in the mid twelfth century. Women have gone bare-breasted in Cambodia for hundreds of years.

These four foxy ladies are apsaras – and there are similar sisters called devatas; in scholarly explanations there are differences between the two, but the descriptions often seem interchangeable and inconsistent.

In short apsaras are female divinities or celestial dancers, so it is hardly surprising that in many carved reliefs they are shown in flight – perhaps in the dead of night, they still make an occasional circuit around their temple? Apsaras also come in many shapes and sizes ranging from life-sized to dinner plate-size. Some are carved in high relief, standing well clear of their background – and some are low relief, so shallowly carved they seem barely to cling to their allotted stone - it’s as if a strong breeze would wipe their existence clear away.

Myth has it that apsaras were born when the Indian deity Vishnu churned the ocean of milk to produce the elixir of life; this tale is told at great length, in 50 metres of stupendous reliefs in the eastern gallery of Angkor Wat. Generally the tale incorporates a pot of gold – a vial of the elixir of life somewhere in view but, in this Angkor Wat telling there is no container of miracle liquid to be seen. Perhaps the apsaras have this missing stash, which may account for their longevity?

Devatas meanwhile are female deities who stand guardians at doorways and generally they are surrounded by deeply etched framework as if forming a little guardsman’s hut as seen outside Europe’s Palaces.

Maybe it’s better just to enjoy these striking and exotic beings without worrying about the precise differences? In these pages I’ll use the word apsaras to refer to both apsaras and devatas, and accept any brickbats from purists.

Apsaras are not to be confused with other numerous carved images associated with Khmer mythology, or classic Indian Hindu and Buddhist texts.

The greatest number of apsaras in a single Khmer temple, and so perhaps the most easily viewed, are the nearly 1,900 that grace the walls, towers, and galleries of the jewel in the Angkor crown, Angkor Wat. Although, despite this crowd, if you want to see apsara super models, drive the ten minute or so journey from Angkor Wat, through the city of Angkor Thom and under Victory Gate to the Thommanon, a small temple which is, in my opinion, the catwalk where the super models strut their stuff.

Apsaras decorate the walls of many, although not all, Khmer temples – perhaps because of the evolution of beliefs or philosophies, or because of the era in which a temple was built, or perhaps the geographic location.

The temples of Phimai and Phnom Rung, built in northern provinces of the Khmer Empire, now Thailand, do not have near-life sized apsaras and the same is true of Beng Mealea, a large temple ruin a few kilometres from Angkor, and yet these are all considered temples of the Angkor Wat style. Apsaras are however resident in the Bapuon, Pre Rup, Ta Keo and Bakheng, and some of the finest apsaras to be seen are at Bateay Srei – and yet all these temples pre-date Angkor Wat.

No matter where you come across apsaras, there’s something about them – I’ve gazed at thousands. I’ve closely scrutinised hundreds of faces. There’s definitely something about them.

More about these dames, broads and dolls on another day.
 

‘If you don't follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable’.

I’m reading the newly published Annie Proulx book about her life and her home in Wyoming. Incomparable prose from the author of ‘Shipping News’.

And in reading this story it reminds of my brief experiences when in 2003 I drove across Wyoming.

From Yellowstone National Park in the North-Western corner to Cheyenne on the South-Eastern corner of this state, from where I barrelled out of the big sky state, like the bullet from a Colt 45, down Interstate 25 on my way to Loveland in Colorado, a gateway to the Rocky Mountains National Park.

The National Parks at the extremities of this drive are spellbinding; the journey in-between is unremarkable, in a remarkable way.

I leave Old Faithful Inn at about 7 a.m., and skirt round the northern end of Yellowstone Lake, where a Grisly Bear had been spotted the day before; a long, winding valley descended from snow clad peaks to a semi-desert landscape right out of a western movie.

It's a shock to arrive at Cody with the stupendous Yellowstone wilderness still in the rear view mirror; but a stop in the town is mandatory - as an aging warrior would you want to miss the chance to see a historical centre dedicated to the legendary Buffalo Bill? He founded the town with others, and he lived here for a time, before fame and fortune came along.

Bill was a colourful aging warrior if ever there was one; in his later years he fought for conservation, and the rights of indigenous Americans, and women; not activities you’d expect of a wild west legend.

There’s nothing like, I think, sliding behind the steering wheel with a map on your lap, rather than a GPS in your face, and heading into the personally unknown – it’s the kind of thing that I imagine many aging warriors like to do: exploring, discovering, meeting, sharing; it’s an experience exemplified in a wonderful movie titled ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’, about Burt Munro, an aging warrior from New Zealand, and his greatest love; in the movie Anthony Hopkins, as Burt, says, ‘If you don't follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable’.

On this trip I had already travelled from Los Angeles to Yosemite – where the young, gawky, piano-playing photographer Ansell Adams began his journey on the way to being, probably unarguably, the greatest landscape photographer of the twentieth-century.

Then I headed first north to Silver Springs, and then east to Fallon where I got my first and last American speeding ticket; then east again on the ‘loneliest road in America’, Route 50 across Nevada; at one point I stopped to look at the route taken by the riders of the pony express, a lonely track as straight as an arrow, across what I imagine to be sagebrush; impossible I would have thought to be in this lonely spot and not hear the wildest and most dangerous days of the wild west whispering on the wind. To the east, across my path, rose a range of snow-covered peaks, and some distance beyond these, Bonneville Salt Flats where Burt imagined realising his dream.

And that’s how I came to be east and south of Yellowstone meandering along Highway 20 in Wyoming about midday; I was in the thermal springs metropolis of Thermopolis for two minutes as I drove down the main street; the Mustang and I then sashayed between the steep slopes of a gorge through which a road, railway, and the racing Bighorn River squeezed.

Then along the shores of the Boysen Reservoir, and into Shoshoni I rolled, a dry and dusty township, as I recall, named after the Native American tribe; and as the afternoon light turned golden, and the rolling countryside, became a palette of shocking pinks, emerald greens, violets, and golden yellow I headed due east to Casper.

I made a meal stop at a road house, there a table with a family nearby, and I don’t know what possessed me, but on my way out I sauntered over and handed the kids the accumulated, heavy American coinage in my pockets; I meant it as an act of kindness, and the coins were well received, but I still wonder eight years later what those people thought. But hey, at least I can remember the event and for an aging warrior that can’t be all bad!

And that’s what I remember of Wyoming, and why I had the opportunity, no matter how briefly, to look at a beautiful and yet stark part of the USA.

Thanks Annie for giving me the opportunity to reminisce. And reader, if you got this far, thanks for following along.