Nothing Matters

As much as I believe we would all acknowledge the perhaps undue significance, within many global cultures, that is given to the individual possession of 'stuff' or 'things' - I feel that at times our singular pursuit of acquisition blinds us to an equally important recognition of the balancing role of empty space - an at least partial absence of material belongings in our homes and lives. Our vision is obscured by the wealth of paraphernalia with which we surround ourselves, rendering us blind to the true value of 'no stuff' or 'no things' - nothing. Because nothing, actually, matters.

I was saddened recently to read of the death of yet another of the creative souls whose works were influential in the early stages of my 'discovery' of a personal philosophy and character - my 'self'. Ursula K. Le Guin's writings, whilst sometimes dismissed - by the convenient human habit of 'labelling' or 'categorising' - as being nothing more than generic works of science fiction or children's literature, are in fact extraordinary examinations of the human condition and, as her obituary in the Washington Post noted, 'grappled with issues of gender inequality, racism and environmental destruction'.

Favourite and formative works for me are her Earthsea series - at one point considered a trilogy but ultimately encompassing five novels and eight short stories - which I too originally enjoyed principally as mere fiction, yet which always resonated at some deeper level of understanding. An oft-quoted passage from book three The Farthest Shore has the Archmage Ged addressing his companion Arren, 'Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.'

Only many years later did I recognise the Daoist sentiment in this dialogue. Browsing the Philosophy section in a bookshop for an approachable rendition of the Tao Te Ching, I chanced upon 'An English Version by Ursula K. Le Guin'. Her verse 11, The Uses of Not, reads:

Thirty spokes

meet in the hub.

Where the wheel isn't

is where it's useful.

Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot's not

is where it's useful.

Cut doors and windows

to make a room.

Where the room isn't,

there's room for you.

So the profit in what is

is in the use of what isn't.

Her footnote explains: 'One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He's explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots.'

Both of these extracts address the notion of absence - nothingness. The first, an absence of activity - the creation of a space to simply be. The second, an absence of matter - the creation of a volume which can be filled or inhabited - or not! In truth, both passages are ultimately alluding not simply to these absences - but equally to their opposites. Hence Ursula's comment about 'doubl[ing] the size of the universe.' The well recognised Daoist two-part Taiji diagram, commonly referred to as the Yin-Yang symbol, clearly illustrates this central Daoist precept of the 'balance of opposites'. Originally alluding to the shady and sunny sides of a hill - which of course are constantly in flux and become their opposite every day - the symbol reminds us, and invites us to accept, that all things are constantly changing yet perpetually in, or seeking, balance.

This duality is evident in all we do, all we know, all we experience, all we value. All our senses relish the equalising balance of the 'intangible' other: Gazing into an infinite night-time sky from a rooftop above the hubbub of a major city, or a broad ocean vista from a balcony within a wall of soaring Gold Coast residential towers; a three-bar rest after the cacophony of an orchestral overture, or the perfectly timed pause before the punchline delivered by an accomplished comedian; the deliberately bland or neutral palate cleanser between courses of an exotic degustation, or the deep intake of cool, clean air after escaping the suffocating atmosphere of a poorly ventilated - or worse and more commonly, over-scented - public toilet; the freedom of nakedness after a day's confinement in restrictive clothing, or the upturned and empty palm of a hand in a Yoga-class Padmasana (Lotus Position) after hours of tapping at the keyboard of our office computer. The pinnacle, perhaps, of this desire to experience a more complete, all-encompassing 'absence' is provided by the current trend for Isolation or Float Tanks which aim to restore 'balance' to a participant rattled by contemporary urban life through Stimulus/Sensory Deprivation.

We recognise the value of 'nothing' also in the visual arts, and not simply its significant compositional value. We also imbue it with monetary value by outlaying vast sums for works by such as Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman that could be said to be largely comprised of little more than broad expanses of a single flat colour. Indeed, in 2014 an untitled 'all-white' 1961 work by American conceptualist painter Robert Ryman fetched $15 million at Sotheby's, New York. Our willingness to confer cultural or even metaphysical value to 'nothing' is perhaps exemplified by the much anticipated Roden Crater project in Northern Arizona by light and space artist James Turrell, which promises visitors, among other experiences, an unprecedented and consciousness-expanding view of an uninterrupted expanse of pure blue sky.

We also frequently find advice to possess less - to discover and value 'absence' - in diverse quotations from esteemed authors: 'With more quality in our lives perhaps we would crave less [quantity].' from Kevin McCloud's 43 Principles of Home; 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.' From William Morris's 1880 lecture, The Beauty of Life; 'It would seem that perfection is attained not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.' from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's, Terres des Hommes (Published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars); and perhaps unsurprisingly from a Japanese observer, the ultimate in appreciation of the almost imperceptible 'If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.' from Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki's, In Praise of Shadows.

But do we listen? It is currently very fashionable within our 'greed is good' consumerist mindset - seemingly undiminished since the 1980s despite repeated global financial 'warnings' - to dismiss the well-known designers' credo of 'less is more' as minimalist, modernist nonsense. We judge ourselves and our contemporaries almost solely on our apparent mutual abundance of assets. We fill our homes to bursting with belongings, collectibles and equipment; effects, goods and chattels. Then when there's little room to move, we place it all into store and fill the void once more with fresh acquisitions. But with every new purchase our environments become more thickly crowded with stuff whilst our attention is spread ever more thinly, with a lesser and lesser portion of our available emotional quotient to delight in its presence in our lives, plus a proportionally diminishing likelihood of ever encountering that oh-so ephemeral, yet oh-so longed for, moment of peace and solitude we physically, mentally and spiritually crave.

But by seeking to bask in admiration at our ostentatious display of wealth, we actually make ourselves the poorer - not just financially, but also poor of quality time, poor of physical space, poor of calm and serenity in our daily lives, when with just a slight inversion of our thinking, a little less haste to fill every nook and cranny with material clutter - and a great deal less monetary expenditure - we could discover the genuine richness of existence that we truly desire. Perhaps Matsuo Basho, the seventeenth-century itinerant Japanese poet expressed this sentiment most clearly in an essay he wrote in the year prior to his death, when he stated ' My solitude shall be my company, and my poverty my wealth.'

So less really is more - because it allows us to glimpse the richness that lies beyond immediate and distracting materiality. And nothing at all? Well nothing, as we've seen, truly matters.

Finalist for New Philosopher Writers' Award XVIII: Stuff

Words of Wisdom

In the concluding chapter of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, the ageing titular character speaks with his boyhood companion Govinda. 'Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish,' he says, 'Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.'

Even knowledge itself now presents some challenges. As Yuval Noah Harari discusses in Sapiens, the premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything important to know about the world was already known and revealed to us in scriptures. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into and understanding them properly. But the Scientific Revolution changed all that - it was a revolution of ignorance. Its great discovery was that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions, and that no concept, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge. So if our knowledge is flawed, what hope our search for wisdom? And to what extent do our existing means of communication influence or limit our understanding or potential? Is our desire for wisdom - surely our species' ultimate quest - constrained by our lack of the right tools?

Throughout my life I have encountered a multitude of communication tools, though I speak only one language, my native English - a vast, complex, nuanced and ever-growing language. According to Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything, on completion of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928, it catalogued 414,825 words which were reckoned to be all that were then known to comprise its lexis. By the release of the 1989 second edition this had grown to 615,100 words and work is underway on what is currently being called the Revised Edition - no-one is certain when it will be finished and it may include a million words. But, rich and seemingly comprehensive though the English language may be, there exist many experiences or conceptions we wish to capture or express for which it is singularly unsuited.

When I was young, my father worked for a furniture manufacturer and would sometimes bring home rolls of dyeline architectural drawings so we kids could use the rear white expanses as doodling paper. Perhaps that influenced my choice of Technical Drawing as a subject in high school and eventual career in design? Potentially it sowed the seed for my current facility with visualising environments drawn in orthographic projection - plan, elevation, etc. - that we are familiar with through real estate ads and building applications. Indeed, despite the diversity of alternative communication tools now available to spatial designers, from perspective drawings or constructed models through to digitally rendered virtual walk-throughs, to this day I prefer a two-dimensional plan, not simply to read its lines and symbols but to mentally immerse myself within its depicted volumes and forms. My skill with this quite specialised drawn language had served me well, so I never thought to question its enduring relevance.

Somewhat less successfully, also while still a child, I was introduced to another written language - that of modern music notation. Through lessons in piano, flute, music theory and singing I came to recognise the aural possibilities hidden within the tracery of dots and strokes arrayed on the bass and treble staves of sheet music. But mine was never more than a middling musical talent - I knew only that a note of such shape and location meant a particular key on the piano or fingering on the flute, for a duration of so many beats. I was little more advanced than those who play via colour-coded keys or who remember the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by counting 1-1-5-5-6-6-5, 4-4-3-3-2-2-1, as I never heard the music until I played the notes. Years later I shared a house with a talented multi-instrumentalist and composer, and recall the day I found him sitting in silence at the kitchen table with pen and paper. 'Writing a letter?' I asked. 'Composing a score,' he replied, 'but it doesn't sound quite right as yet.' It had never even occurred to me as a possibility - as I was able to inhabit a drawn room, he was able to hear a written score. Here was someone truly conversant in a language with which I was clearly a mere novice.

Then, in my late twenties, I worked briefly with a dance school and was tasked with building a two-and-a-half metre diameter open-framework icosahedron - a regular polyhedron comprised of twenty equilateral triangles. The students had been set the challenge of recreating Passacaglia, a 1938 work by choreographer Doris Humphrey which had subsequently been rendered into a graphic language called Labanotation. Through standing within the icosahedron and aligning their torso, head and limbs with particular facets or vertices, the students were able to decode and physically enact the notation, thereby learning the dance's movements. The eventual performance was truly magnificent and yet again it was a revelation to me that such a language even existed.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus, famously observed 'The limits of my language are the limits of my world.' Despite their revelatory appearance in my life, all the languages discussed above, each with remarkable capabilities to capture and communicate, are however simultaneously laden with potential shortcomings, possibly even imposing limitations on the fields of endeavour they aim to assist. There are, admittedly, other dance notations but Labanotation seems perhaps poorly suited to capture the rippling liquid movements or robotic pops and freezes of hip-hop dance. Music notation has been with us now for many hundreds of years, yet in 1978 Brian Eno clearly felt it inadequate to capture the essence of his seminal album Ambient #1: Music for Airports. He therefore devised, and printed on the LP sleeve, differing graphic renderings for each of its four ethereal, minimalist compositions. Plus, in the field of architecture, many of Frank Gehry's buildings, such as the landmark Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, were only possible due to significant advances in the computer languages of architectural software - dramatically removed from the drafting skills I learnt in my teens and leading William Mitchell to observe in Frank Gehry, Architect by J. Fiona Ragheb, and echoing maybe Wittgenstein's statement above, 'Architects tend to draw what they can build and build what they can draw.'

It is true that spoken languages other than our own, born of different cultures, have produced words to describe objects, that express concepts, or which capture feelings that did not previously form a part of our relatable experience due solely to their absence from our own vocabulary. Yet a great part of the very richness of the English language is its willingness to adopt such words from other tongues whenever they best serve the purpose, hence schmooze from Yiddish, faux pas from French and schadenfreude from German. Or, on a slightly more positive note, the melancholic beauty of imperfection and impermanence which can only truly be captured by the Japanese wabi-sabi.

Equally, there are many who have addressed perceived shortfalls in the English language via alternative means, not least Ray Bradbury in Dandelion Wine, his reminiscence of childhood in small-town America. He revels in unexpected metaphors such as, 'The grass whispered under his body.' And, 'Insects shocked the air with electric clearness.' Or Allen Ginsberg's grammatical abandon in Howl with, 'Jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes.' But, irrespective of the multitude of words already at our disposal or those we may yet coin anew - irrespective of our facility with grammar and how we might write or type within its plastic forgiveness - irrespective of the diversity of humanity's cultures and their perpetual r/evolutions - irrespective of our global desire to move beyond information, beyond knowledge, to truly seek and find wisdom - we seem strangely locked in a cycle of repeated errors or at best a stumbling two steps forward and one step back.

Just maybe our true fault - our greatest ignorance and the concept we most need to challenge - is our current acceptance of the languages we use in our search for wisdom? Just maybe Siddhartha was wrong? Maybe wisdom, once sought and found, can indeed be communicated, but in a language as yet unknown? I don't know its shape or sound or if it is indeed either written or spoken. Does it exist in colour or aroma - is it tactile or otherwise felt as pure emotion? But whatever form or tone, hue or scent, texture or sensation - find and learn it we must, and soon. A language rich with terms entirely different from those of our troubled past, coined for the urgent needs of our yet turbulent present and which can guide us toward conceiving and realising a positive collective future. Together, we must craft these words of wisdom.

Submission for New Philosopher Writers' Award XVII: Communication

The Shared Table

The shared table – it’s a powerful image, a symbolic motif, which exists in many cultures and has persisted through time. It speaks of welcome, generosity, camaraderie, peace and plenty – a veritable wealth of ‘feel good’ qualities. Depicted in paintings (Bruegel’s ‘The Peasant Wedding’ or Renoir’s ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’), or described in meticulous detail (who can forget ‘An Unexpected Party’ that opens the narrative of Tolkein’s ‘The Hobbit’?), even celebrated as an exemplar of community building through the current trend for ‘long table’ events to reunite disparate, though neighbouring, resident groups and reinvigorate urban streetscapes – increasingly abandoned in this era of online shopping and virtual social interaction.

But where, in truth, does the power of this image reside? Is it in the table itself (an inanimate, utilitarian item of furniture); or the assembled company of family and friends (or foes); or is it perhaps in the arrayed food and drink (especially the drink!); the particular environs (a private home, a village longhouse, a city laneway, an outback campfire); the overlapping, interwoven or contradictory topics of conversation (or argument); or perhaps all of these and more, in combination – the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts? Maybe it is the very notion of ‘the shared table’; the idea itself, particularly in the afterglow of a full stomach and an alcohol hazed mind or the special, elevated glory of reminiscence?

Surely the mere table seems barely worthy of serious consideration? In 1963 my family arrived in Australia as ‘Ten Pound Poms’ under a government immigration scheme. After a short interval in a hostel and some rental properties we moved into our newly constructed project home in the suburbs and the very first item of furniture my father made was a simple, small, circular, Formica-covered, kitchen-come-dining table. For the ensuing fifteen-plus years the vast majority of our family meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were consumed around this unremarkable creation. Initially we sat upon some of the upturned plywood tea-chests that had carried our worldly goods on the ship from England. These were replaced in time with a vinyl-upholstered banquette and three of the ubiquitous 1960s, mustard-coloured plastic Sebel stacking chairs. The food was common fare – Corn Flakes or Weet Bix breakfasts, sandwich or soup lunches, meat and three veg or Friday treats of take-away fish and chips for dinner – but always eaten together and pretty much always accompanied by chat, banter, discussion, debate, questions, answers, laughter or perhaps even occasional tears? Still, nothing remarkable, just a stereotypical mid-century picture of nuclear family ‘normality’.

So should we look next at the gathered diners? In a world which has increasingly embraced the notion of the supremacy and inviolate sanctity of the individual, it is only too easy to lose sight of the simple reality that we all, the entire human species, owe the greater part of our success (if indeed our current global predicaments can be classed as success?) to collaborative and cooperative behaviours. Is it this union of effort that we unwittingly evoke on those occasions we come together to dine? A raising of glasses and tearing of loaves to celebrate our combined, continued survival in ever-changing circumstances? WS Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) is oft quoted as uttering ‘it isn’t so much what’s on the table that matters, as what’s on the chairs’, though it remains unclear if his praise is for the individuals or the group. A less generous observer, with a Darwinian bent, would suggest we are simply happy if the company is comprised at least in part of one or more of our subsequent generations – children and grandchildren successfully carrying our genetic makeup into an unknown future.

Moving on to the, hopefully, bounteous feast piled upon platters and spilling from jugs (and therefore disregarding Gilbert’s contemptuous dismissal of the victuals as contributing true significance), any contemporary observer would be forgiven for thinking we seem currently to have a preoccupation with food bordering on obsession. Our popular media (be it film, television, books, newspapers and periodicals, or the truly immense online universe of blogs, archives or ‘foodie’ sharing sites) is full to bursting with recipes, reviews, recommendations and constant reminders that delicious food can be delivered to our door in minutes at the mere tap of an icon. Certainly, a delectable offering can provide its own myriad delights but for many of my personal recollections of joyous occasions around a laden table, the food has been relatively plain fare – simple sausages and salads, beer and bread. These are not the kind of dishes one imagines would elevate the repast, imbuing it with beneficent significance or indelibly imprinting a memory.

So perhaps we should consider the environs? Foundational to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs are both food and shelter, so clearly a conducive environment, a welcoming space, can contribute significantly to our comfort and happiness. But is it the critical element that converts simple consumption and chat into community and human flourishing – the ‘eudaimonia’ of the ancient Greeks? That we still recall with fondness, gatherings hampered by such as the draughtiness of a large wedding reception marquee; the relentless burning sun of a summer afternoon’s beach-side barbecue; the assault of sound within a busy trattoria or the too-small-to-swing-a-cat confines of a share-house eat-in kitchen, suggests that we can overlook most inconveniences in the right circumstances. So pleasant environs seem perhaps more desirable, than critical?

Which finally brings us to examine the conversation. David Greenberger proposes (Smith Journal, Volume 12) ‘the purpose of most conversation is to allow two people to be in the same place and time together’ which suggests that discussion is merely the glue for the assembled company. A proposition reinforced by Roman Krznaric’s observations (The Wonderbox) that conversation ‘is the unseen thread that binds [communities] together and it is time we took it more seriously.’ It is ‘a dialogue that creates mutual understanding’ and ‘has the potential … to inspire new ways of thinking and living together.’ Heady and, yes, empowering stuff but permission, binding, dialogue, and inspiration do not exist in glorious isolation but act as agents upon the participants. Participants, no less, that are relieved from immediate concerns of hunger and whose minds and tongues are relaxed perhaps with alcohol. So then maybe it is indeed the aggregate of diners, feast, comfort and conversation that creates the magic?

But here’s the thing – being in the kitchen, the centre of the home, our family table was also utilised for so many other activities; communal stirrings of the Christmas puddings; cranking the spirit-printer handle for each year’s ‘Newsletter’ to relatives in England; sitting reading with head enshrouded by the plastic bonnet of the Sunbeam hairdryer. Also, I was not a particularly voracious eater as a child and my parents insisted that our plates be scraped clean before we might leave the dinner table. Many an evening I waited, pushing the food dispiritedly around the plate until all the other family members had grown weary of my tardiness and departed to other activities (homework perhaps or the lure of the television) –  only then to move, quietly and unobserved, to open the cupboard under the kitchen sink and deposit any unwanted morsels in the bin. So the table had, for me, both positive and negative associations.

And then, just yesterday, my mother decided that after over fifty years of continued daily use, she no longer had need of this table in her recently acquired, retirement village, one-bedroom apartment. ‘Could you please take it away and either sell it for cash or donate it to charity?’ Could I? In truth, I could not. I dismantled and removed it but, despite having no immediate use for it at all and little space to store it, I have it stashed in a corner of the garage – awaiting who knows what future fate? To simply dispose of it seems somehow a betrayal or denial of all that has occurred upon and around its silent surface.

Because you see, a table is an anchor; a point of insensate stability around which all the other elements, participants and activities can find calm waters and a secure mooring. It is the enabler; it carries the trenchers of food and forgives the spills of liquor; it places the diners in visual, verbal and physical proximity whilst providing a rest for their elbows (or foreheads!); it proudly proclaims the purpose of the space it occupies, be it small suburban room, grand municipal hall or the infinite besparkled dome of the heavens; it passes no judgement on all that might be said – good or bad, calm or heated, reflective or inspirational; it is the facilitator of all that occurs in its small realm of influence. The table, in essence, embodies the very notion of sharing. It is the idea. For all its apparent simplicity, we should respect and celebrate its power and significance in our lives. I propose a toast – ‘To the shared table!’

Finalist for New Philosopher Writers’ Award XVI: Food

True Time Travel

I have a time machine. It’s a true joy to possess and I daily delight in the extraordinary wonders it allows me to experience. I suspect it would be judged by some as less stylish than Marty McFly’s gullwing-doored DeLorean, or less beautiful than HG Wells’ time traveller’s machine of nickel, ivory and crystal but it is perhaps somewhat easier to maintain and pilot than either of those. But before I go into detail on its composition and the glories its possession has revealed, maybe I should tell you a little about myself and my more prosaic adventures in the quotidian world?

I have spent the greater part of my half-century and more of life fascinated by, learning about, practicing and teaching the discipline of design. Specifically, the branch of design concerned with conceiving and configuring human environments: domestic interiors, theatre stages, cultural exhibitions, exterior landscapes and such. Creating spaces if you like, and space, as any schoolchild learns, we describe in terms of the three dimensions of width, height and depth.

In the simplest terms, to design a room, the measure of its width, height and depth are determined by the placement of floor, walls and ceiling. Any moderately competent designer can select dimensions for these which would result in a ‘well proportioned’ room but it was Paul Jaques Grillo, in his book Form, Function & Design, who first made me aware of the invaluable importance of another consideration, sometimes overlooked, which is essential to embrace if we wish to truly design for people. He states, ‘No design is done strictly to be looked at. It has to be lived with, and there is no life without motion.’ He is speaking of course about our movement within such built environments; our travel through the three spatial dimensions – entering a wide front door, walking the length of a hall, climbing to the highest stair. However, it was due to my prolonged pondering upon this statement that I was made forcibly aware of another movement inherent in all this spatial activity, but which is frequently unseen or disregarded, and this is our concurrent travel through time – the fourth, temporal, dimension.

In physics, they speak of a mathematical model wherein space and time are combined into a single idea, the space-time continuum, comprised of these four dimensions, but what is perhaps not commonly observed is the curious nature of our travel through these dimensions. For whilst we can move, or not, more or less at will through each of the three spatial dimensions in isolation – forward or back, but not up or down; side to side, or remaining still – none of them are possible without, and indeed we can never halt, our also travelling through time.

We think and speak of time’s inexorable progress with terms that draw attention to change – the passing of the hours, the cycle of the seasons, the aging of our bodies – and it is this very notion of change which I believe lies at the heart of true time travel. Change, it has frequently been ironically observed, is the only constant – all else is in flux – but it is this very quality, it’s all-pervasive constancy, which makes it so very suitable a force to empower time travel. My time machine thrives on the ceaseless inevitability of change. For my time machine is me, my body and my mind. It is from within this imperfect body and with a curious mind that I take very real pleasure in quietly observing the hourly, daily or yearly evidences of change. Is this, my revelation, perhaps an anti-climax? I hope not, for change, whilst frequently seen as being a negative force, I believe can be pregnant with promise; I believe that to truly witness and accept change can be both joyous and enriching. Indeed I believe that it is only through truly embracing change, rather than struggling forever against it, that we all are able to genuinely delight in our journeys through life.

I am not of course the first to make this observation or come to this conclusion, and I make no claims of independent discovery. Many and wiser souls have preceded me and for their insights I am indeed indebted. And their secret, if such it can be called when it is wholly on display, though perhaps seldom recognised, is the seemingly simple act of assuming stillness in the three spatial dimensions. As delightful as movement can be, it all too easily promotes an overload of perceptual stimuli – sights, sounds, smells, constantly assault our senses – and we come to associate our comprehension of the changing environment with our spatial movement alone. Our simultaneous movement through time – signposted with changes perhaps more subtle, yet equally laden with the potential for delight – can become reduced to the point of imperceptibility.

Stillness is essential for the true wonders of change to reveal themselves, for temporal travel to assume its perhaps superior position to that of mere spatial travel. As Henry David Thoreau observed in Walden, ‘It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees.’ And Pico Iyer, in The Art of Stillness, suggests ‘Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.’ Being still; being in the moment; it is this which enhances our awareness of the passage of time, and which likewise permits a joyous embracing of the changes which such passing engenders – watching with pride as our children grow and mature; observing the wonder of seeds planted in our gardens producing plants laden with beautiful flowers and bountiful fruits; or even those changes which occur on a somewhat more grand timescale, such as an occasional fall of rock from an eroding coastal cliff or the changing course of a small stream - prompted by a period of prolonged rainfall.

To fully immerse oneself in the present permits a serenity and freedom all to infrequently encountered in our modern ‘constantly-connected’ world. We seem to be overly prone to falling prey to concerns about our future or regrets about our past – both of which in truth we are actually powerless to address except when they are (or were) our present. Spanning the ages, Augustine, in the fifteenth century text City of God, promotes the practice of ‘forgetting what is behind, not wasted and scattered on things which are to come and things which will pass away … and contemplate thy delight which is neither coming nor passing.’ Whilst in 2014, in the unassuming and insightful journal Assemble Papers, Australian teacher, poet, builder and musician Dominic Bourke is quoted as uttering the poignant and simple statement ‘I lose time sitting at this desk and it’s a sweet, relaxing loss.’ His loss, it seems, is also his gain, and so it can be for us all. It requires no effort and that is, irrationally, precisely why we find it so hard. We have come to believe that we are judged by others - and indeed we have learned to value our own worth - upon our ‘worldliness’; knowledge and experience gained by our globe-trotting excursions. We have bought into the modern obsession with travel in the spatial realm; flying to holiday in exotic locales; partaking in history tours visiting sites of cultural significance; joining throngs of devotees on spiritual pilgrimages, yet remaining largely ignorant of the manifold delights which already surround our every waking moment if we only stopped for long enough to notice them.

Perhaps we all should spend a great deal more of our time (and a great deal less of our money) traveling, with stillness, through time alone. Our carbon footprints could become reduced to the scale of those of a mouse, whilst our serenity and joy might grow to the size of the mammoths of ages past? Time travel is possible. It’s real and it’s tangible and it’s available to us all, at no cost beyond a willingness to be still and embrace its wonders. A daily minute of remaining motionless and observing the small changes within a favourite vista, or a weekly half-hour of quiet reflection on your children’s achievements. Perhaps simply an annual delight in the growth of the plants in your garden.

When next you consider some travel, consider this – would you perhaps enjoy life’s journey more if you simply set aside some time to stay, perceptually alert yet bodily at ease, right where you already are?

• Finalist in New Philosopher Writers’ Award VIII: Travel

Today ...

Today you feel the need for some fresh air and cool shade and decide to sit calmly, pensively, on the bed of pale-brown fallen needles under the majestic spires of your favourite grove of Casuarina, atop the headland. The summer afternoon sea-breeze is cresting the cliff-top and whistling, sighing almost mournfully through the branches overhead. You let your gaze wander as it will across the broad vista, resting for a while as it encounters various objects, occurrences, or even absences, in the familiar scape. A small yacht under spinnaker cleaves with ease the gentle ocean swell on its journey south, perhaps heading to the safety of the harbor for the approaching evening – reminding you of the joys of piloting just such a small craft across the numerous bays, inlets and open reaches of your childhood adventures. A bright scar on the adjacent headland’s precipitous vertical face encourages your gaze to explore the sands and lapping waves at its foot – confirming your suspicions when you spot the scattering of sharp-edged boulders – a rock-fall overnight occasioned perhaps by the previous week’s heavy rains. A familiar cackle of bird-call from behind makes you turn with care to glimpse the mottled breast and yellow cheeks of a wattle bird, regarding you with cocked head from a low branch, just beyond arm’s reach. And it is only now, your gaze brought to this new viewpoint, that you notice, almost hidden in the shadow of one of the larger tree-trunks, a small and delicate tower of smooth and rounded pebbles of diminishing size. Someone has brought them here, most likely selected with care from among the multitude in the shore-break below, and with a focused mind and a steady hand, arranged them with precision and simple beauty on the rich, damp humus – there to remain, or not, at the mercy of the wind, rain and passing creatures. With a soft smile and a lifted spirit, you stand and retrace your steps to the pathway leading home …

Today you sit in your home studio, a gloriously blank and stark white sheet of paper on the drawing table and a favourite soft black pencil in your hand. With, at first, a little hesitation – an almost tentative gesture – and then with increasing assurance, you lightly commence describing some outlines, nascent forms, across the paper’s receptive face. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the skeletal strokes gain flesh – surface, contour, texture, outline and shadow – they gain, almost, life. A creature, unnamed and perhaps unnamable, mystical and unknowable, has been born on the page and seems alert – poised to leap from its two-dimensional realm and scurry across the table to the freedom of the open window. You gently lay the drawing aside and commence anew. As the clock’s hands silently describe circle after circle, in mimicry of the sun tracing across the vault of clear blue autumnal sky outside, you continue to give birth to numerous such beasts and beauties – a veritable menagerie of wonderful yet previously unseen expressions of an almost impossible diversity of life-forms. Almost impossible. The thought crosses your mind that given sufficient time and circumstances, the blind and stumbling beasts of genetic mutation and natural selection could easily make any number of your speculative critters flesh and blood – or indeed, perhaps they already did …

Today you are wearing thin the polish on the kitchen floorboards, describing numerous paths between and around the various benches, sink, fridge, oven, cupboards, pantry – as you prepare a range of dishes for your guests. You have set a menu that includes many of your own favourite foods but which is therefore time-consuming to prepare. Hence the pre-dawn start and your welcoming of the warmth provided by the oven to offset the chill winter’s-morning air. The bread will need time to prove so you start with the flour, yeast, salt, water – precisely measured and gently combined in your best, bright, shining, hemispherical stainless-steel bowl. You scrape the sticky mass onto the cool marble slab and commence the lift, slap, fold – lift, slap, fold – lift, slap, fold. Working the dough and building the air and texture into the embryonic loaf. You enjoy the sound and rhythm, the almost pungent smell of the yeast and the perceptibly changing texture of the mass in your hands as the gluten develops and builds plasticity and silkiness – until, sensing it to be just right, you stretch, fold, press and caress to craft a small and soft dome – returned to its bowl to rest under a flour-dusted cloth. You next consider crafting an haloumi cheese – you delight in its tart saltiness and the almost comical squeak as you bite into the firm and hot, pan-crusted fried slices but decide instead upon the simplicity of a ricotta. Having put the milk on the stove to heat – lumps of cream floating in lazy circles and slowly transforming into bright yellow droplets across the surface – you reach instinctively at first for the vinegar but then a glance outside to the as-yet dimly lit garden confirms your thought that perhaps there’s a lemon or two on the tree and you decide to use their bright acid juice instead to commence the chemical magic of transforming the milk into the curds and whey. As it always does, the Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme of your childhood drifts into your conscious mind from some remote corner of your brain – numerous neurons firing their electro-chemical messages across countless synapses to bring you this small recollection of simpler times. A bright, diagonal, tangerine beam of dawn sunlight suddenly bisects the kitchen work-top and you look up sharply – not wishing to miss this most glorious heralding of a new day – to catch sight of the solar orb rising with silent majesty from the cold grey mass of the ocean’s horizon …

Today you feel almost ablaze with energy and instinctively know that only a solid hour or more of pleasant physical activity is going to be adequate to the task of restoring your usual serenity. It’s almost noon but the sun’s heat is yet to penetrate the vibrant, new, spring growth crowning all the ash trees which fringe the bicycle path. The mobile phone in your back pocket has vibrated and warbled a number of times since you sent the text messages prior to leaving home, so you are confident that at least some of the usual Saturday crowd will be gathering at the café for their weekly lunchtime catch-up over fruit juice and fat, toasted sandwiches, strong coffee and buttery cakes. You anticipate with joy the various junctions along the path where they might be waiting to join the slowly growing ‘caravan’ of bikes and riders – wending their way collectively to the centre of town like the traders of old returning from their arduous journeys along the silk-road. It is the simple commonality that you all seem to enjoy – different occupations, diverse families, varying politics, faiths, wealth and sexuality; none of it matters – the shared passion for cycling and the shared table and conversation is what unifies you. All are welcome. All are generous. All are shown respect. All relax in this brief hour of ‘community.’ All are refreshed and renewed upon departing again to return home. You are proud and honoured to belong to this casual and ever-changing family of friends. It has confirmed your belief in yourself, and in the choices that have brought you to be alive, here, now …

Today you …

Self

In considering the self – from  a western, individualistic perspective – all too frequently we consider ‘our’ self, and we think of our self in isolation rather than, as is actually the case, as members of a community, a culture, a country and ultimately, a cosmos.

The inherent flaw in this mindset has increasingly led – within many western, first world societies – to a misunderstanding of our respective roles within our societies and an imbalance in our assumptions around personal rights versus personal responsibilities.

Counter-intuitively, for an individual to have rights they must first accept a position within a community, for rights can only be conferred upon a person by an external entity. You may have life or your life may cease, but any right to life or its manifold qualities exists only within an external construct or framework – a community who collectively agree to endow its members with such qualities or such rights.

Conversely responsibility, which at first glance would seem to imply a necessity for an ‘other’ – someone for whom you might assume a responsibility for, or toward – is in fact entirely possible in isolation. The brash or assertive statements ‘I can take care of myself’ or ‘I am in search of my true self’, which might suggest a stance of responsibility within a broader community, are in reality announcements of having adopted a position of self gratification or even self aggrandisement – positions that are entirely conceivable in isolation. And therefore, a denial of the reality of our existence within a community.

So how might we better consider our ‘self’? How might we envision a picture of reality wherein the apparent contradictions of personal rights and community responsibilities become void? Is this seeming contradiction actually born of our misperception of our ‘self’ being apart from, rather than a part of, a greater whole?

In truth, the quest for self, in isolation, is the pursuit of a phantom. ‘Self’ exists only as the corollary of ‘other’. As night is to day, hard to soft, high to low – self is to community. The one is only possible in the context, the presence of, the other. And it is only in combination that they become ‘whole’. Unity, though it is linguistically derived from unit, or one, is not a condition of isolation or individuality but is the unity of collectiveness – the warm and strong embrace of community. So a true search for self cannot be a search solely for personal goals and gains but should, or indeed can only, be a search for how we might best contribute to, and become a valued part of, a greater whole – an aggregate of unique and uniquely skilled, experienced, knowledgeable and collaboratively minded contributors to a collectively empowered society.

This is essentially a Daoist perspective and it highlights the principle distinction between traditional notions of Western versus Eastern modes of thought or philosophy and their apparent preferences for, respectively, language versus action as defining realisations of their ‘contrary’ positions. The Western search for self or meaning is famously fond of convoluted language, discourse and argument – whereas Daoist thought, though often recorded in written form, is equally notorious for its mistrust of language and prefers instead an immersion in the moment or ‘being in flow’. Action as a statement of belief and action as an indication, to others, of our individual worth.

Before we can speak of and demand rights, we must therefore first become a valued member of a community by demonstrating our worth through our responsible actions. Through a heartfelt embracing of our communal responsibilities, we become respected as contributors to a greater and better unified whole and thereby deserving recipients of conferred rights. A righteous community is indeed principally comprised of an aggregation of its collective individuals’ assumption of, in the first instance, personal responsibility.

Moreover, this is a notion with ‘scalability’. As an individual gains rights and respect through their responsible contributions to their community or society, so that community likewise gains recognition and respect through their responsible contributions to their state or nation – and nations through their responsible contributions to international or global concerns and needs.

We none of us exist in isolation. Through apparently ‘self’-less assumption of responsibilities to a greater ‘whole’ we in reality benefit immeasurably as individuals via the collective conferring of rights and privileges by the manifold communities we inhabit. Through knowing our value as contributors we gain an understanding of our worth as individuals and truly come to know our ‘self’.

Coffee

What counts for greatness? By what measure do we decide which is best?

A friend of mine runs a food blog (Simon Food Favourites) that is currently ranked by Urbanspoon as the #1 Sydney food blog. He mentioned to me recently that another ranking site, Beanhunter – ‘Find the best places for great coffee’ – had similarly ranked as the #1 Café in Sydney a little place in my home suburb of Mona Vale by the name of Coffee Brothers. Mona Vale is quite a drive from Simon’s usual stomping grounds so, knowing I was fond of a nice coffee, he suggested I might like to drop by and sample their product sometime. Perhaps if I was impressed he would schedule a trip north into his seemingly endless rounds of culinary explorations.

Suffice to say I was curious. I had seen the café in my local travels but never taken the opportunity to stop in for a cup. But #1 Top Café in Sydney! That must be worth a try surely? So I dropped by one weekend, ordered a ‘double ristretto of your best coffee please,’ (Their special that day was a Sumatran Sidalogan Honey-Processed, roasted in Manly Vale) and was browsing the store portion of the establishment when I was approached by one of the owners, ‘Anthony Macri: Brother’ as it says on his business card. I recognised his face from somewhere (We worked out eventually that we saw each other at the beach every morning but had never actually said Hi!) and we got to talking, so I mentioned my blogging friend’s comments. Tony invited me to spend some time with him one day to sample some coffee and hear the Coffee Brothers’ story, so we made a date for an early morning rendezvous the following week.

Now, I’m no ‘foodie’ blogger and as much as I like a good coffee, I’m no connoisseur. I confessed as much to Tony as soon as I arrived on the appointed day and told him with some little embarrassment that at home, whilst I do daily use a counter-top espresso machine, it’s not what you could call a top-of-the-line model. Plus I buy my coffee ready ground in vacuum-sealed foil packs at the supermarket along with all my other weekly groceries. It’s a 100% Arabica bean variety, the strongest blend available from this particular company and is marketed as ‘Strong & Intense’, ‘For those who love the pleasure of a genuine Italian espresso.’ And I normally have a double shot espresso to start my day – so I’m no stranger to strong or intense. To be honest though, part of it’s appeal is the simple convenience and the fact that it seems to be the perfect grind for my machine, but there are certainly times when this is not the case – when it is too fine and creates pressure problems – or worse, when the roast has clearly gone too long or too high and the flavour is burnt. But I figure ‘swings & roundabouts!’

But back to Coffee Brothers and back to Tony (who’s still standing patiently with me as I ramble on) who tells me I don’t need a big expensive electric grinder to enjoy the extra flavour of freshly ground beans because it’s possible to buy nifty little one or two cup hand-grinders that will get you going with a minimum of time or effort. At this point I make confession number two, that I have a sweet tooth and have over the years adulterated my morning brew with just about everything from leatherwood honey through to Demerara sugar (my latest fancy is granulated panela, with its soft caramel flavour). Though to be honest, part of the attraction of sugaring my coffee is less about the sweetness than it is about the silky smooth texture it imparts. To my surprise, Tony doesn’t condemn this practice either but simply suggests that everyone has their own preferences.

So what are Tony’s preferences? He has now started to gather together onto a large table toward the rear of the café (scattered with newspapers, decorated with coffee ‘fact sheets’, and shared with some other happy customers enjoying their morning brew), the various tools to brew the particular coffee he’d like to enjoy with me today – Coffee Brothers ‘Vanuatu Gold’, their house roast. He places a small cup onto some electronic scales and measures a precise 20g of fresh grounds which he tips into the paper filter cone sitting atop a Chemex Classic Series borosilicate glass coffeemaker. He then uses a kettle with equally precise digital temperature settings to bring 200ml of water to 98°C before gently pouring about a quarter of it onto the grounds in a slow spiral pattern and leaves the grounds to steep for about 45 seconds before continuing in a similar fashion with the rest of the softly steaming water, which soon drips down into the bottom of the crystal-clear ‘flask’. Written in this fashion, it all sounds a bit fiddly, confusing or even pretentious, but it’s actually very simple and straight-forward – certainly no more involved than making a good cup of tea! And then he pours and proffers a cup to me.

So what does it taste like? This is the first ‘drip-brewed’ coffee I’ve had in the many years since the counter-top home espresso machine supplanted the earlier incarnations of instant coffee, stove-top percolators, Breville drip brewers or Pyrex plungers in many Australian homes. So I’m in no hurry – I start with a long and deep inhalation of the aroma before I take my first tentative sip. Well? This is not espresso! This is not the strong, almost aggressive, punch of flavour I’ve become accustomed to in recent times. This needs a different mindset. This is not ‘good coffee’ (to mis-quote that dreadful Al Pacino advertisement for another coffee brand), this is great coffee. Why? Because it still has all the elements you look for in coffee – aroma, texture, flavour, warmth – but they have a crispness and clarity I’m not expecting. This is strangely ‘light’ in the mouth, but with all the strength and character you want. All the elements seem to have been separated and given the opportunity to stand, and be judged, on their own terms. It’s quite a revelation. Not what I remember ‘drip-brew’ to be. Certainly nothing like the ‘bottomless cup’ of drip or percolated available in every American diner.

More importantly though, it’s not actually the coffee that I’m most interested in just now. Because as we’ve been preparing and savouring the brew, Tony has been filling me in on the Coffee Brothers’ story and it also is not at all what I expected. My assumption was that the Brothers were siblings and that the café was simply another attempt at making a buck in a highly competitive market in difficult financial times. Nothing could be further from the truth. For these ‘Brothers’ (a little like ‘The Blues Brothers’ perhaps) are on a mission, or several missions in fact. Tony already has another job and I’m pretty sure his business partner Mark does too. So why are they putting so much time and effort into Coffee Brothers? It’s simple. Passion. Belief. A genuine desire to ‘make a difference’. That’s why.

You see, Tony is passionate about coffee and he wants to make the best coffee he possibly can to share with his customers. But he also wants them to be able to make the best coffee they possibly can at home too. But then, he also wants to do those things in a way that’s ‘right’ … Ethically, environmentally, socially. So he thinks it’s right to fly to Vanuatu and meet the coffee growers, promise them a good working relationship … Quality beans for a fair price. Supporting the growers and their families in attaining a quality of life. He thinks it’s right to use the Flagstaff Group in Wollongong to roast his Vanuatu Gold, not just because they roast great coffee but because they employ people with disabilities to handle all their packaging … Great coffee and a social conscience. Supporting a marginalised, even almost invisible, sector of our society in likewise attaining a quality of life. He thinks it’s right to spend most of his morning with me, not because I can offer him anything in exchange for his valuable time, knowledge and passion but because he believes in something called community … People from all walks of life sitting, talking, drinking great coffee, sharing and supporting each other. It really is quite a mission (or three) that the Brothers have set themselves but I think their passion is equal to the task. I think they are starting to succeed in their missions.

Back to the coffee once more, Tony is excited by my enthusiastic response to the Vanuatu Gold and instantly starts to prepare a second brew – this time a roast of ‘Tercio Wood Fired’ Brazilian beans. Whilst steeping, its aroma has a distinct similarity to the delightful smell of freshly sawn hardwood (perhaps a Honduras mahogany?) which matures in the cup to a bright, warm caramel nose. The taste, whilst rich with flavours, is almost ‘leafy’ or ‘green’ (Tony suggests the roast is perhaps too young) but soon mellows to a fuller flavour with a crispness and dryness that lends a clarity but is still soft on the tongue. Again, totally unlike my usual espresso, but extraordinary for just that reason. What value exists in each new day if our experience of it is simply a repetition of those that came before? My interest and enthusiasm for savouring ALL the many possibilities that coffee can offer has been awakened. These are, I can see now, just the first steps on a new journey of discovery and I think I shall enjoy each and every new vista.

And where to tread next? Well there’s plenty on offer in this store … café … ‘temple’ to coffee that the Brotherhood have created, even if you are not a coffee drinker: There’s equipment like kettles, espresso machines (including ‘Otto’, the new and improved ‘Atomic’ stove-top espresso maker), scales, cups and glasses, teapots and milk jugs; there’s filter papers, special barista cloth sets, cleaning tablets and beans, beans and more beans; and there’s Prana Chai Masala Blend in 1 kilo. packs, Koko Deluxe drinking chocolate or Cascara organic coffee fruit tea, made from the husk of the coffee berries. Wow, I just have to try that!

So, what counts for greatness? By what measure do we decide which is best? I believe it is passion. And I believe it is a genuine desire to share that passion with a community. (A real community, not some on-line virtual substitute.) And these guys, the Brothers … the Coffee Brothers, have both these things in bucketloads. That, quite aside from the great coffee, makes these guys great. It does indeed make this café the best. Number 1! Seriously … visit Coffee Brothers. Try their coffee. Talk to them. Share their passion. You will not regret it.

http://coffeebros.com.au/Home.php