As the movement of rampaging atheists is also growing, at least on my news feed on facebook, I thought it fitting to reflect on what is perceived as the miraculous.

As a writer and song-writer, the fact that ideas spark and tumble into my stream of consciousness is something I find amazing and inexplicable. As is the fact that human beings can fill me with frustration and loathing one moment and then overwhelming joy and love the next. Some would no doubt rationalise these to chemical activity in the brain &c, but I will place my self in the devil’s camp and agree with Blake who said there is no separation between Body and Soul, but rather that the senses are merely the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

To close ourselves off to mystery is to lose connection with what makes life brilliant and bearable. Those mysteries do not need to be earth-shattering or sky-splitting. They can, and usually are, as this beautiful stencil states, small miracles.

It may pay to drop the judge at the boozer the next time you go for a walk, and see the world through the eye’s of the little child that still lives inside. This is how we learn to hear the voice of the divine, and see and appreciate those small miracles.

AFTERWORD by the Author and Printer Will.m Blake. 1793

“The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity;
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”

Spare a thought for this poor Speech Pathologist. Obviously she didn’t account for extreme sun ray action in her shopfront when writing her business plan or else this delightfully unfortunate blu-tack droop to the letter E would not have happened. But something inside me is glad it did.

This beautiful aphorism has been on a fence close to Croxton Station for a good year or more – testament to the power of its sentiment.

The day I stopped to snap this photo was one pregnant with the promise of impending thunder storms. The thunder heads were billowing behind me, and just as I stopped, a few rays of late afternoon sun stole through giving me a good half minute’s window to take my photo. Cosmic ha?

This is a very sweet take on sadness, so I’m not going to fill your mind with my own long winded interpretations, suffice to say that it has lead me down some interesting paths of thought.

It puts me in mind of a Sufi story though, more about aphoristic thought and the search for answers than sadness, though sadness, as our fence-post poet understands, has its own path to bliss.

Mullah Nasruddin is tearing up and down the high street of his village on his donkey. After a while the whole town gathers scratching their heads and wondering what is going on, till one person steps forward and asks, “What are you doing?” Nasruddin replies, “I’m looking for my Donkey!”

My family had to deal with these schmoes for a while and we found them about as effective at agency as a celibate at a swinger’s convention. Their only contact with us, or our landlord, seemed to be when they were agitating for a rent increase. Perish the thought that they should do anything like organise repairs or some such triviality. Run pride themselves on this corporate chic image, so it’s always nice to see some Texta wielding bandit do a hatchet job on their branding (cf. this one). This one is smirk-raisingly witty and made my morning after I left Missy at childcare with a heavy heart.

Fergo is considered a bit of a political relic from the dinosaur days of the Labor Party. My limited experience of him, outside of news exposure, has been in the odd slacktervist lobbying on environmental issues via GetUp. Upon voicing my democratic concerns once, his office’s own form letter flippantly lead with a backhanded line that read something like “Thanks for your inquiry lodged via the GetUp website.” Good call Fergo, but not the most respectful way to talk to your constituents.

As resources Minister he has been stirring up the environmental hornets nest by leading the charge to sell Australia’s uranium to India. One can only assume that this Texta lobbying is a plea to the good people of Thornbury, by said marker wielding crusader, to dump Ferguson for some more enlightened and progressive representative. Though maybe I presume too much. Wouldn’t a greenie say something along the lines of Recycle Mutant Ferguson? Nah, not as snappy as “Scrap… ” but definitely creepier.

This old school comment stream was scrawled on the inside of a wooden playground train at the M Walker Playground in Cramer Street Preston.

It’s interesting to reflect that the now ubiquitous experience of commenting on people’s messages, ala Facebook Wall, has an earlier counterpart in graffiti on toilet walls & c.

Human’s have always enjoyed leaving their mark, all the way back to pre-literate hunter gatherer cultures. I imagine that there was disagreement even back then as to the appropriateness of what was etched onto the cave wall with charcoal and animal fat. Grug may have coped a bit of flack from his brethren for depicting his own spear striking the wooly mammoth first, or for drawing the mammories on his Venus or the phallus on his Horned God just a little too big.

Perhaps the fact that comment streams are everywhere may make this little exchange seem trivial (compared to the brilliant insights one can read about lunch-time fare and other literate-bowel movements on FB) but this is a slice of insight I feel needs recording, if only to make me nostalgic about the streams of toilet humour that I have seen in pub and public loos the world over.

I also like the second comment, “You right it’s gay” (sic), for its unPC condensation of the issue into a curious psychological insight. Why do some people draw dicks in public places? Purileness? Black magic? Asserting their male vigour in the face of repressed homosexuality? Or just a way to mark an onanistic accomplishment – another day, another wank (metaphorical or literal)? Oh and what’s with the date?

This nice piece of German Anarchist social commentary was snapped by my brother on a recent jaunt to the Fatherland. It translates as “You all look the same!” which is reassuring to some, but obviously distressing enough to put marker to marble for the author.

This seems a fitting post for me today as I am thoroughly enjoying Gavin Baddeley’s immaculately researched dissertation on Satanism, Lucifer Rising and this statement would not be out of place issuing forth from the mouth of Anton La Vey, Aleister Crowley or any of the other free-wheeling, free-thinking, black wearing, colourful characters that Baddeley discusses.

Oh and the A sign is a nice touch.