MADMEN IN THE WILDERNESS

I saw a crazy man in the heart of the city cursing the people he passed, cursing the buildings, cursing someone long gone, cursing God for this Purgatory.

People reacted in different ways. Some froze and willed themselves to be invisible, some scurried away in the opposite direction, some watched in that detached zombie way people stand transfixed at car crash sites, fascinated by the sight of real disaster and yet non-reacting as though watching a movie play out.

So what does it take to make someone just crack one day? One huge life tragedy too much, or a series of small ones too close together that defy our idea of logic and fairness? Perhaps if we raise our voices above the rumbling wearing down drone sound of the busy city traffic, God will hear us?

Why does our Maker withdraw his grace and allow us to free fall through darkness and scorn so far from home? Or are we meant to always be alone in search of ourselves in others, a perilous journey not for the fainthearted. Or the dreamers.

Maybe the crazy man in the street had been chosen to heed his inner calling to join the wild throng and it is therefore in the madness that lies the ultimate truth?

Was Don Quixote mad because he chose to see the world as it should be? Or were the people who gathered to ridicule and laugh at his expense the mad ones?

John Lennon, during his time, was called mad by many, especially the press and the conservative establishment. But his brutal death at the hands of, ironically, a mad man has now elevated him to the status of martyr and messiah. Today, his human flaws have been sanitised to fit what is acceptable in the gospel of his life. The nobody mad man who shot him for a shot at immortality got a life sentence, while the famous mad man got death. And then in death, rose again.

When you look closely at it, most of our true heroes in history were called mad during their lifetimes because they attempted to do something different. To shine a light into the darkness that most of us are afraid to acknowledge. To take us where we would never have dared go if not for them. To make us think and, more importantly, to make us feel. In achieving this, a great many of them paid with their lives so that we may live.

So next time you see a mad man or woman in the street, spare a few seconds to ponder the forces that shaped them. And perhaps in those seconds we may awaken the humanity in ourselves.

(c) Frank Howson 2017

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MARYSVILLE

Friday rolled around quick. Maybe it has something to do with the Pakistanis. I don’t know. I just do my job and go home each day. There’s always a meal of meat and three veggies waiting for me, followed by some reality TV shows of how other people live. You wouldn’t read about some of the things I see.

I’ve been in line for a promotion for 40 years but it hasn’t come. Word is they’re keeping me for something special. But I don’t know. I’m not quite sure what my job is, to tell you the truth. I stand in a line alongside my fellow work colleagues and at the right time I step forward and attach a bolt. Then it’s onto Charlie, next in line, to attach his screw. We are considered the best two fitters they have and take a lot of pride in that.

Some of the new kids they employ make us laugh. They don’t know anything and think they do. They also talk all the time. Me and Charlie hardly ever say a word. We just look at each other and know. I think sometimes words can get in the way and confuse things. Charlie tells me that when the Martians land here they won’t speak at all they’ll just look at us and read our minds. Well me and Charlie are more than ready for that.

Charlie and me were not mates straight off. At first we were a little standoffish. But after about 20 years we relaxed in each other’s company and are now like brothers. I was best man at his wedding and he was best man at mine. To highlight how alike we are, imagine this, at both our weddings we got so drunk on the free beer that neither of us could say our speeches, which suited us just fine. The wives were a bit upset though.

The trouble with being married is that women like to talk all the time. I don’t mind Peg talkin’ at me but it annoys me somethin’ bad when she expects a verbal response. The Martians are gonna hate her. I told her early in our courtship that I was like a Clint Eastwood type. Now she taunts me by sayin’ “Go ahead and make my day! Say somethin’!” But I just ignore her and refuse to be baited into a petty argument.

Last week our doctor informed me that I have a growth on my vocal chords. Nothing serious he said. Then told me to get my affairs in order. I indignantly told him I don’t have affairs and have never cheated on Peg. That shut him up and put him in his place. Peg is obsessed about how I could have a problem with my voice box when, in her words, I never use it. She keeps telling me, “See? What you don’t use, you lose!” Maybe that explains our sex life too.

Anyway, it’s been a very satisfying life and I ain’t complainin’. We have travelled extensively throughout Victoria and our favourite place by far is Marysville. Why go overseas or see the rest of Australia when Victoria has so much to offer? Keep your French Riviera (where they don’t speak our lingo), Marysville will do me. Peg feels the same.

I don’t know what it is about Marysville that keeps us coming back. Maybe it’s the fresh country air, but all I know is I spend most of my time sleeping. Peg doesn’t mind and actually encourages me to rest up, knowing how hard I work. The poor thing has had to while away the days with the hotel’s young Italian guide, Dino, who takes all the ladies on bush walks. She has actually come to love it and now can’t wait to get up and go each morning. Sometimes she doesn’t get back to our room until I’m already asleep at night. They must be exhausting and rugged walks because sometimes she has dirt and leaves all over her and skinned knees. But I don’t say anything because it obviously does her the world of good experiencing the wild as she is always smiling and in a happy mood, with healthy rosy red cheeks. If Peg had her way we’d go to Marysville every weekend.

When I think of my life, I wouldn’t be dead for the world.

(c) Frank Howson 2017

GOD FORGIVE THE MAN WHO STEALS FROM HIS FRIEND

God forgive him, Lord, he knows not what he does. Unable to sleep, haunted by ghosts of all opportunities gone, still he goes on living not a life, but an existence. And the clock that cruelly ticks into his impending old age, treating him with the same snobbery he has shown every one of God’s creatures, is the only constant in what he has come to call his world. He is comforted only by the woman who won’t go away. In his youth he only dated the daughters of rich daddies, in the hope that he may eventually get access to Big Daddy’s hard earned fortune so he could fritter it away on his meaningless life. His chosen girlfriends were princesses with a range of two looks 1) Stunned deer look #1, and 2) Stunned deer look #2.

Now he has settled down with the only one who can tolerate him and live with the realisation that this too is her life sentence.

Some people are too refined to call him out when his hand is in their pocket. He takes this to mean that they are dumb, but no, they are three steps ahead and indulge him in this game as they silently grieve for his lowly evolution. Mistaking their looks of pity for forgiveness, he is doomed to have to return here many times scoring a crumb of enlightenment each visit. Some would call that hell.

He has read every book ever written on the art of the deal, seen every classic play expertly performed, and yet has learned nothing of the human spirit. To him it is as unfathomable as the concept of Eternity. Friendship is as complex as Socialism

Some have witnessed his best work and bear the scars. The man sent to jail for doing nothing but trusting that his word was true. The other man who lost his home and family based on a promise and a handshake. The banished woman who watched her parents die from the residue that their retirement fortune had been stolen from them.

Arrogance comes before a fall the ancient scriptures tell us. And man’s arrogance is on display everywhere from the skyscrapers of Manhattan to the wars fought for nothing. It is true we get the world we deserve. But how strange to finally wake to its harsh reality.

I pity the arrogant person for I know what awaits him or her. The path to God is through humility. And if you don’t humble yourself, God will surely do it for you. Whether that comes in losing your money, your house, your loved ones, your health, a limb, your voice, your way, whatever – you won’t leave this life unscathed. In the words of that modern poet, Jim Morrison, “No one here gets out alive.”

Hopefully, when that time comes you will leave this condemned place spiritually wealthy.

(c) Frank Howson 2017

SINCE I LEFT YOU

Since I left you
I've been confused all year long
Too scared to make a decision
In case it's wrong...

(c) Frank Howson 2017

 

RADIO DAYS

I loved listening to the radio when I was a small boy. My ear pressed up against the speaker of the mahogany radiogram, a furniture feature in our modest living room.  All those amazing artists whose voices shaped my life, i.e., Guy Mitchell, Rosemary Clooney, the young Elvis, Buddy Holly, Harry Belafonte, Anthony Newley, Eddie Cochrane, Patsy Cline, Sammy Davis Jnr., Little Richard, Jimmie Rodgers, Bobby Darin, Johnny Desmond, Louis Armstrong, Helen Shapiro, Johnny Horton, Ned Miller, Burl Ives, Johnny Ray, Tommy Steele, The Ink Spots, etc., etc. An eclectic bunch, and I loved ’em all.

My mum said I had an acute ear for voices and as a party trick she and my dad would challenge the guests to put the radio on and I would guess the singer within a few bars.  I was four.

My parents were slow to get their own television set so unless we visited relatives on a Sunday we had to settle for listening to the radio. It was our only outlet for news updates, music, plays and comedy sketches. Oh, and serials. I’ve always felt so sorry for my mum. She was addicted to a daytime radio soap opera serial entitled “Doctor Paul” – it ran for a phenomenal 4,634 episodes and my mum listened to 4,633 with rapture. I could’ve been hanging from a rope in the bathroom and she wouldn’t have noticed. Unfortunately she had to go out one day for a real doctor’s appointment and came home to the devastating news that she had missed the final episode. I tell you, the grief I witnessed from that poor woman rivalled Jackie’s after the J.F.K assassination. She never did find out what exactly happened. So I guess she shared that with Jackie too.

Those radio plays and serials were magic and a real art form, creating a visual world in our minds using just voices and effects. Orson Welles learned much from his radio days and brought a lot of his sound tricks to his film-making. If you close your eyes and listen to “Citizen Kane” it is as aurally interesting as its visuals.

When I was 14 and a child no school room could teach, I ran away and never went back, no doubt much to the relief of my teachers. My mum, who always took my side when I was in trouble and despairing, accepted my decision without judgement or debate, and took me into the city to try and get me a job as an office boy at radio station 3DB. She knew I loved music and the entertainment business so in her intuitive wisdom she felt this was the right starting point for my future life. And that I would learn a lot. And so I did. For the rest of her life my ambition was fuelled by my efforts to repay her faith in me.

As fate would have it, 3DB were not looking for an office boy at that time. Another lesson learned – success is all about timing. So, not taking no for an answer my quick thinking mum walked me a few blocks to radio station 3UZ. And yes, a meeting with destiny. The general manager, Mr. Lewis Bennett, a man of such class and distinction he has had a lasting effect on me, gave me the once over, liked the fact that I dressed like him in a nice suit, polished shoes and a bow tie, and gave me the job. I smiled at him with tears in my eyes as I felt the joy of finally being accepted in the outside world after years of humiliation and rejection in the then cruel school system. The warm inner joy I felt at being wanted and appreciated made me work my guts out for $16 a week so as not to let Mr. Bennett down. Sometimes he even sent me his leftover lunchtime crayfish sandwiches, and I sat in my chair in his secretary’s office, and slowly savoured them bite by bite, feeling like a king. And silently giving thanks for how lucky I was.

That job imbued me with many lasting ethics – the pride of working hard, not letting anyone down, being on time, not leaving until the job is done, being polite to people, the unselfishness of always presenting a positive attitude even if you’re down, and not taking the job for granted but, instead, always remembering that you have that job because someone had faith in you.

I learned so much in my three years at 3UZ that it’s too much to detail but, because it’s so ingrained in me, even today I may do something, or give a young person advice, and then realise it’s a lesson learned from those radio days.

In those magical days of the Sixties, dee jays were gods. And I worked with the best of them – Stan Rofe, Ken Sparkes, John Vertigan, Allan Lappen, Don Lunn, Graham Cherry, Sam Anglesea, Noel Ferrier, Mary Hardy, Jimmy Hannon, etc, etc, etc. We will not see their like again. Because, like a rare vintage wine, those days are gone.

But some of us remember.

(c) Frank Howson 2017

MURDER AS AN ART

It’s always midnight in my heart
Only the alleys have known my joy
For sometimes I have experienced a bliss that is so exquisite it can’t be verbalised to anyone
Not even to the few who would care
So I have walked it away
In the dark
Along empty city side streets                                                                                                             We bloom on cue then disappear from view                                                                           Such is life                                                                                                                                           It’s a pity Oscar Hammerstein didn’t write the script for our lives
He would’ve written it just right                                                                                                       It would’ve had its highs and lows, some humour, all the boring bits cut in Philadelphia And ending on a note of hope
Instead, here we are
What’s it all about, Alfie?
The Winner Takes It All?
A Change Is Gonna Come?
Were they just 45s from our youth?
Is this the little boy I carried?                                                                                                     Some disappointments and betrayals can never fully be washed away                               We live in a world where just about everything we’ve been told for the past 50 years has been a lie and the opposite, in most cases, is true                                                                    The shadow brokers are keeping the public confused by a daily avalanche of complexities, creating a terminal dose of anxiety and fear                                                           All designed to make us give up, surrendering our power and responsibilities                  To flee to the safety of watching mindless TV to a laugh track of mostly dead people           Or turn up the doof doof music and tune out                                                                         Those brave souls that come forth and tell us the truth get ridiculed by                             The card carrying experts who translate the news for us                                                         Because we are no longer capable of thinking for ourselves                                               Here’s some breaking news –                                                                                                       There is, in fact, no news anymore                                                                                               Just opinion pieces                                                                                                                               If the smear campaign doesn’t murder the brave truth-tellers                                                 Then the lone crazy gunman will be wheeled in again to create another convenient myth
New leaders are thrown up on a platform of change
But usually it’s just a case of
Same car, different driver
Evil does indeed exist
And those who have sold their souls
Worship at the alter of a false God –
Money
But all it buys them is emptiness
And if there is an eternity
What a hell it would be to spend it in the state of regret
Arrogance comes before a fall
And the weather report suggests a hard rain

(C) Frank Howson 2017

THE MUSE

I came
I saw
And was conquered
So many roads to choose
But they all became the same
I was driven
Before being driven mad
To seek a meaning to it all
Or at least some of it
But you clouded the issue
Appearing quite a few times in my life
In the guise of different women
Always fooling me
As I laughed into my drink
Thinking I’d seen it all
You were an exquisite distraction
To my work
But God always removed you
Leaving me with just enough pain
To be able to write about it
So there you live
Forever
In my work
Always young
Always intoxicatingly crazy
Always puzzling
To us mere mortals
Who worshipped at your throne
Thinking we had the time
To make a clean getaway
Before the fall
But it came
Like Babylon
Like Rome
Like America
And now old men
Aged before their time by you
Stand on street corners
And reminisce
While I
Being human
Take the easy way out
By writing about it
God tells me if I write it enough times
Eventually it’ll all make sense
But I have my doubts
And life is short

(C) Frank Howson 2017