History Lesson

If there is any doubt that we never learn from our mistakes, then I am living proof.

That is, I have lived so long already that I have seen all the mistakes of our parents and grandparents come back and be perpetrated by our own generation.

What is our problem, even way back in 400 BC, Euripides stated, “Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.”

Over 2000 years later I think we have much to learn indeed.

I remember the stock market melt downs of the 80’s , the 90’s and what did we learn? Seems very little! Greed lead us down the same track yet again within the  new millennium. It just keeps coming!

When I was young I remember the Australian dollar being equal with the US dollar. It took twenty years for my parents investments to get back to being worth something. Now the US Dollar and the Australian are past parity again. I’m resolute to hang onto everything I have for twenty years more, if I have learnt one thing at least it is that everything that does go up, will not stay there for ever, if it doesn’t, I pity my children.

On top of things we seem destined never to learn, there is a growing list of things that have just stayed the same. And I mean have not changed one ounce despite all the technology , all the smarts we think we have?

Man never returned to the moon if indeed he got their the first time! (before you bark, show me proof!) and man never did get to Mars- wat of the childhood fantasy novels of our youth!!

Of things more Earth bound, we learnt in the 70’s and 80’s of millions, dying of hunger, poor medical, poor sanitation, lack of water.

The borders have changed, the names not the same, but it is still there. What has changed is that we now have billionaires, but what has not changed is the numbers of those living in absolute destitution. If it has , it’s only gotten worse.

What about things closer to home. Technology and our airports. They are all much bigger than ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Many more of us travel these days and corporations running them have made massive profits. Yet we are still required to line up like cattle and to catch a bus to the airplanes.  We have spent billions building newer more modern airports, yet planes still don’t fit and their still is not enough  space for them all.

In the 70’s we thought of the Jetsons  animated cartoons as being futuristic. Yet forty years later compared to them, we still seem to dwell Earth bound like the Flintstones.

My other said of things like this, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

I never got that for about 35 years, but it’s becoming quite clear now.

We are moving so fast down the road to technological advancement that we seem to be missing things, quite glaringly obvious things in our quest to slap ourselves on the back and be proud of the few things we are achieving.

I guess it was that ignorance, arrogance and stupidity that lead to General Motors going bankrupt. Continually coming up with new cars, just failing to ensure that enough people where actually buying the old ones. Some things seemed to get missed along the highways of advancement, I guess.

History is our greatest teacher. We should stop for a while and learn from her. An article in a newspaper recently stated that many school children know everything about modern celebrities yet 65% or some ridiculous figure thought that Buzz Lightyear was the first man to step foot on the moon.

If it wasn’t true it would be funny.

I grew up as part of the age that questioned everything, even we conspiracy theorists are glad that Buzz Aldrin seems to finally be getting his time in the limelight.

We as a generation, think we are so smart, yet we are not teaching our children properly about the past. We don’t have to live in it, or dwell upon it,  but we should learn from it, so that we stop repeating past mistakes, learn from our mistakes and move forward as a race.

Otherwise we are bound to end up like the Egyptian, the Mayans,  Aztecs, the Romans, people who built great empires and then disappeared forever.

If we don’t start to learn then the words of W. Edwards Deming (1900 - 1993) will hold our future, “Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.”

A Slice of My Lyfe - Guest Blog

A dear friend and reader of Bahrain This Month's Last Word column asked me to write a guest posting for her blog.
Anita Menon, is not only one of the nicest people around, but also a wizz at the internet and Blog world and I am happy to say she was the teacher to this student of how to get connected into the world of Blogs.
I was only too happy to guest post for her.
http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/a-guest-post-by-james-claire-on-kindness/

Many who read my blog postings may sometimes feel, as was commented to me recently, "your job is to write flowery words", but these blogs are not my job. I write well perhaps, but the underlying words are heartfelt. When you read the posting on "kindness" take a moment to remember that these are not simply words, but part of my history. All that I write about, actually happens or happened to me at one time or another. The emotions are real, the tears are salted and the grief forlorn.
In writing I not only cleanse myself of pains of the past, but hope that I can connect to others who have, had or will suffer or enjoy some of life's inevitable experiences.
A traveller, an adventurer, a writer and a romantic, these postings are life as only I have seen it. Truth, pain, love and fun.
Be safe all and please "Follow Me" to receive the latest writings of an adventurer on the loose.
And follow my friend and blog counterpart Anita, in her Slice of Lyfe adventures too.    http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/
Thank you and see you again soon.

The Truth Does Not Always Set You Free !!!!

A colleague stated today that “I am stupid when it comes to love.”

Funny that she is closing in on 30 and still has the same issues as the majority of us, and is single.

If there is a singular topic that could be endlessly debated amongst people more devisive than religion, politics or sex, I truly believe it would be the issue of “Love.”

“Love” is to everyone person, something completely different.

As I have learnt, just because you love someone and are injected with a passion of a thousand suns for them, just because you can not breathe when they are not with you, just because when you are with them the world feels whole, complete and at peace, unless the other person feels the same, it means nothing toward the chance of a relationship.

I was also told that I “cheapen the word, "Love" because I use it too easily,”

I do not agree.

I am 40 years old, am widely traveled, have enjoyed two successful careers in two vastly different areas and am comfortable in life. The way I see “Love” is that if I feel it, I should say it.

That simple! 

I will not psycho analyse the hell out the situation. I feel love, I feel loved therefore I say I love you.

If that just happens to be the second time I’ve met you then you know what, how about you trust that at 40 I’m actually in tune with my self, my soul and my body and believe the words that I speak.

These blogs where never set up to discuss the trivialities of my love life. 

Even I’m bored about the whole subject. 

What gets me hot is the fact that others see me as crazy, see me as being impetuous, as ruining the word love.

Seriously! You who question me, have never stood in the shoes from whence I see!

You do not know the heart ache and heart break I have endured and you have not endured the life and times that I have, never known the speed at which life can be extinguished leaving you to wish you had said more, faster.

What I learnt from this whole exercise is that we truly are different and unique individuals. 

That love is a fickle topic. 

Just because one person feels love for another, does not mean that happily ever after will ensue.

But what it has shown me even more so, is that even when you speak the truth and plead with another that what you know you are saying is exactly how you feel, well, unless the other person is open minded and can allow themselves to see the world through your eyes, it does not matter, they will still not believe you.

I am starting to see now how someone could be mis-judged guilty when actually innocent of a crime.

The Truth does not always set you free !!! 

It may make you feel better inside about yourself, but it does not mean you will be believed.

I always thought that most people did not like me because I spoke the truth and the truth is not what they wanted to hear all the time. 

Living in denial is easier and less hurt ful.

But this whole “Love” scenario of recent weeks has shown me that even as I have pleaded my case to another, I can see in her eyes that she has already made up her mind that I not telling the truth.

She has based my answers and her expectations on pre-conceived notions of who and what I am. 

I am a writer, therefore the words are fictional flowery and perfect all the time.

I love too easily - thus I lie.

The fact is, she is blinded by her past and the actions of previous boyfriends.

I am superfluous to the whole tale. 

It would not matter who I was in this instance, she was never ever going to believe anyone who told her they loved her.

I am the poor participant in a tragedy due to other people’s lies and hurtful ways toward her.

And so what does this teach me?

Well for one, it teaches me to give up on the notion of love. Way too much time and money is wasted on trying to meet the right person, because even when I have met her, she may not believe me!! Mon Dieu!!

And secondly, it teaches me to never stop telling the truth.

This whole situation is because of other peoples previous lies, which makes her not believe me even though I plead and speak the truth.

If we all spoke the truth, if we all taught children to never lie nor to hurt another with vicious words, then the world would indeed be a better place, where love could be felt, could to told and could be believed by us all.

I think I just fell in love with the “truth”.

Music Is What Feelings Sound Like

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

~Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882)

I’ve often wondered at the correlation between our lives and music. Music is not just entertainment value, it truly transcends our souls and the music we love, (it differs to us all) can elevate our lives, calm us, transport us to happiness or nirvana or chill us out when we need it the most.

For decades music to me was on the same level as books. Unnecessary!!

At school, pre-teens, music classes literally scared me to death.

I took trumpet lessons because the other music classes where taken by a behemoth of a man called Mr. Scott. A somewhat famous piano playing aged hulk of a man, who strode the halls of our educational establishment with ferocity. He taught all instruments available to the under budgeted music department not with pride, but with anger. He grumbled, he growled and he scared the majority of us all.

He carried a large piece of dowel which he stated to parents was to keep us in time with the music. We knew it was just to keep us in line with his temperament.

An artist on the piano himself, he taught our generation the flute recorder. No wonder he was angry. One of the most worthless instruments available on earth I think.

I can’t name one famous recorder blower to save myself.

Music in those days had to be purchased on vinyl records. LP’s and singles, cassettes weren’t even popular yet. But it made no difference, my parents would not cover the cost and I was living in a world where 20 cents was monthly allowance. An LP would have taken me 40 years to afford at that rate.

Perhaps it’s this fear of expense that makes music memorable, even at $1.29 a song its not cheap stuff.

The first piece of music that sticks in my memory was not until 1990. Sinead O’Connor’s  “Nothing compares to you”, was haunting and set a rhythm for the remainder of my life.

Music it would seem, has become a mile marker in my life. It designates the stops and starts, the accidents, the good times and the bad.

When I fall for a song , I fall hard. A bit like my relationships.

I’ll play the song incessantly. Some times on the stereo by my bed. Mostly on my iPod, until eventually the magic of the tune wears out.

Somehow, as I look back now, my life has its own soundtrack. If my life should be made into a movie, I can tell you know the songs that will feature.

My iPod is full of memories. Sindead O’Connor sang her song at the end of a four year relationship I had in Brisbane and reminds me of when my house was robbed. Gino Vanelli and his “Wild Horses” was a happy time of my life when I too was taking riding lessons,,”The Verve”, “Cyndi Lauper” and  Enya all joined me for great phases of my career and right now “David Guetta”(feat Makeba) and his “If We Ever”, lyrics, just understand my love predicament (written about below) so well, that I can have tears welling in my eyes on the way to work, just listening to it.

I've been fragile for a long time

A big old hole inside my heart

And I was searching through the valley

Stumbled on love in the dark

Was afraid to try, but afraid to never know

What it feels like to be loved.

I’m actually not one for lyrics even. Ask me about most of my favorite songs and its not the words that connect with me so much as the beat or the fluidity of the music. Words confuse me and my ears aren’t fast enough to understand rap. I prefer to get lost in Mike Oldfields’ “Tubular Bells” or Pachelbels’ Canon (Canon in D major)   by Johann Sebastian Bach or  Ennio  Moriccone‘s soundtrack of “The Mission”, all for the freedom it gives my soul, rather than work hard at trying to listen to words.

Good music fills our ears with joy, great music sets our souls free among the clouds.

I believe, as some one else stated, ,” Music is what feelings sound like”.

In the right mood I can be set free by a good tune. It as if  I am  sitting in business Class seat on Gulf Air and sinking back into its depth on take off. I’ve taught myself to pass out with the G-forces, and I love the feeling. It comes second only to drugs being pumped up your arm by an anethitist in hospital. That complete release.

We need that in this world.

Music is valuable to us. I don’t feel bad about paying $1.29 for a song on iTunes. It’s the cheapest form of stimulant around and perfectly legal.

I just wish they could take a list of songs that filled your life with memories and burn a disc for us and send it to us on our birthday as the soundtrack to our lives.

So of the correlation of music and our lives, I really do believe that “music is what feelings sound like”.

Some days good feelings, bad feelings, chillout , lounge of heavy metal. We need it all. Some days we can handle everything, other days we can not. We are some times irritated by music or the type of it, just as we are with feelings.

I am in tune with my emotions and feelings,  I love hard and all encompassing and understand that which makes me tick, because my heart is filled with love for all, then that is what gives my life a tendency toward the music I enjoy.

Some people would like it and me, some people could not stand the music that is my life. 

But that’s the beauty of music. 

It is to each of us, as individual as we are to the world.

The soundtrack to my life is as unique as me.

And thankfully my iPod is filled full of it.





Time Limits For Love?

It can be over in an instant, but is their a time limit to how love starts?

In an era when everything is fast, downloadable and texts are delivered and answered at the blink of an eye, I recently told someone that I loved them, only to be told that it was too fast!!

What every happened to love at first sight!

I met someone on a flight from Paris to Bahrain several months ago. On boarding the craft and seeing her standing in the aisle for the first time my breathe exhaled at her absolute beauty. Had you asked me then, I would have stated it was love at first sight for sure. She glowed with an aura of perfection about her. Not only did she look great, she stood tall and straight, my parents told me that’s how proud people st and. She had obviously had theluck of good parentage as well. She was not shy, she spoke with confidence and she was professional in her manner.

As a journalist I have found that to interview some one I’ve never met before, I should always watch them enter a room, the way they sit and the manner on which they leave the interview and the room in which it has been conducted. Body language and mannerism are a bigger “tell” about a person than words. We can all learn a script, but its hard to hide foibles in our mannerisms, hard to find the right way to be polite, a gentleman or a perfect lady at a whim, if we have not practiced the art form since childhood.

As I watch this young lady go about her duties she was unfaultering. Professional, educated, proud, well spoken, not shy and polite. She was perfect! I was in love.

Sadly , professional that she was, I found it difficult to garner her attention for longer than a momentary Please! Thank you! or Can I borrow your pen?

The 12 hour delay in our flight robbed me of a time to talk at length as sleep filled the remainder of the flight, thanks to the peace I find at altitudes.

On landing, phone number was handed to this gorgeous angel of the skies and hopes, prayers and waiting began.

Two days later, I had to relent. She was not going to call! Some one lucky had perhaps already married her, although no ring was seen upon her finger nor any ring mark, or perhaps my number was merely one in thousands that this poor young lass received per month. So amazing was she, I would not be the first to have noticed.

Had she called I would have done anything to make her happy. I knew from my journalistic summation of her, that she was worth fighting for. If in person, away from work, she was even half what I viewed at 35,000 feet, then I was truly in love. My heart had found a home!

No call came ! Heart broken, love had been lost within two days!

That’s how long it took for my friends to tell me how stupid I had been thinking she would actually call.

I am not unaccustomed to the loss of love. Two days was slow. I have, as many other will have too, lost those close to me. Too many to be fair really. I know how fast a love can be gone, life extinguished, hearts broken. In these instances love can be taken within seconds. A blink of an eye can change your universe for a eternity.

If love can be found at first sight, then love too can be taken, at last breathe.

Three and half months have passed since the flight with the Angel.

A few days back she called. Well it started with a text. She was fishing to see if I indeed remembered who she was. I did.

As sad as I had been from no call, my heart leapt with the giddiness of a teen from the very first text.

To have kept the card! To have retained the number! To have called three months later! Meant to me, there had indeed been a feeling in both directions.

I had summed this young lady up into a package called “perfect” on the flight. To speak with her and hear the fun, the accent, the attitude and the manners in her voice, added to the list of amazing attributes had given her from my journalistic summation, made me fall in love again three and half months later.

But I spoke the words within a week.

“I love you,” apparently needs time.

Perhaps it is her past that makes her sceptical! Perhaps it is mine that makes me rush! Perhaps I value life too dearly and know better than many how fast life can be gone! Why wait to tell someone something when your heart is screaming for the words to be spoken?

Things are progressing , but she fears I’m somewhat half crazed or just a wordsmith thanks to my writing, and she shy’s away now when I express my self too deeply.

Part of me understands, part of me does not! I know what I feel, she knows too what she feels.

But am I wrong?

Why should I withhold the truth and the feelings of love that god has given me for another, just because enough time has not elapsed.

I love her now, as much as I did the first time I laid eyes on her. Time has taught me, that my first instincts where right, but my thoughts have never changed. Should this relationship go the distance, I can tell you now, twenty years from now I will feel the same.

Some times in life, when we meet the right person, the planets align, the sun shines brighter and our hearts open up and engulf our brains.

I know love! I know what true love feels like and this it! Life is for living, love makes that living enjoyable. I have never known such a happy world as since the first text message of my new found friend.

I hope she can one day see that, and her heart and mind can feel the words are true.

If not, then a few weeks or months from now, you’ll have to read a column about how fast a heart can be broken.

Because unlike needing to take time to say “I love you!”, when it all comes to an end , few worry about how quickly they cut the ties.

Seems then,  everyone but me, is in a rush.

The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword

Words, just come to me!
Some days its a vision on the drive around the country , some days it's a newspaper headline, a television or movie script that has words that excite me, other days, like today, its the topic subject of anothers' Facebook entry which stirs the fires within.


Today I read the words..."is the Pen still mightier than the sword in a digital age".... okay, okay that is a little out of context and not quite the wording nor pretext of the accompanying blog either. But I saw the headlining words and instantly I had to pull over the car and tap out the following blog - the words where filling my head that fast . (And yes, that does mean I have a laptop in the car and that it is going while driving. And you thought text/driving  was dangerous!!! Well I say if the police can have a laptop in their cars, we all should. They drive safely. So do I. Especially when my internet is out of range. ..ha ha.. I digress.)




Part of the blog which is linked to the headlines that I read, goes onto ask, "What paths did these two disparate instruments travel? What happened to their evolution?"   


Let me say that, I think......... we happened!!
The pen, once a quill or feather, then a fountain pen then a ballpoint and now simply a key to be tapped on a laptop has sent us all introvert. We blog indoors, we message our friends from the comfort of solitude, we message, email and SMS, from private homes, work and cars - alone.
The sword, has been lost as we developed archery, then guns, then missiles. In essence even war went indoors. We became such amazing intelligent beings that both writing and war can now be done from private areas making and allowing us all time to spend by ourselves, on play station, laptops, messenger, Facebook, cell phones, ipads and computers etc. The Sword and the Pen converged in history when humans became more comfortable being alone, rather than being with each other.

Is it still relevant to teach the saying,”the pen is mightier than the sword”, in a digital age where neither are used.

Now I’m of the old guard for sure, but not too old. 

When I wrote my first book and began writing for the newspapers, it was all done on typewriter.

But I'm  also young enough that I have embraced the digital age too. 

This blog; proof of that. 

Most days I have a ridiculous part-tv/part-Walkman strapped to my head ,what we call an iPod. 

I use an Apple Air to belt out my words these days and I stalk friends and acquaintances online with Facebook and annoy them with emails too.

But is all of this worth throwing away the history from whence we came? 

Should we begin deleting portions of our language because they have aged.

Definitely not !!

We still are learning and watching movies based on Shakespeare right ?

It would be like not teaching children about dinosaurs because they are extinct!

Stop teaching about World Wars I or II  because the participants have all passed on, or to stop teaching about cave men and rock paintings because we have evolved into houses!

Just recently a gorgeous friend of mine stated that she could not write with a pen anymore as she never has to. So used to the digital tapping on flat screens and key boards, she finds it cumbersome to handle a pen or pencil.

What happens in an electrical black out !!

I for one could not function without the pen. I write reams of notes and many of my novel first drafts are all hand written and tapped into the laptop at a later date. I fly frequently and numerous times my laptop depletes itself of charge. What then for the remaining six or seven hour journey? I hand write!

When I was at school I was offered the chance to do short hand. Only one boy in my grade took it. I wish so often now that I had joined him. And I wish for the sake of the skill that he eventually found writing or journalism, otherwise he would have wasted it.

The fact behind the statement ,” The pen is mightier than the sword”, was not only about an ink pen and a sharp military weapon, it was about the sentiment. That the written word can have a far harder, longer lasting impact than fighting or arguing for what you believe.

Having written many managerial letters of scorn upon behavior and about particular situations I must say that for the writer also, it is a far more calming clear headed act to sit and write about something rather than running straight in for the attack. Often taking the time to write, calms the situation to the point of resolution , it offers time also for one to re-think their strategy and it offers time to research the particulars of an event.

One swing of the sword or a scornful word in the wrong misdirected un-research area can truly do damage that is irrepairable, and often regretted afterward.

Words used correctly can leave a far deeper cut than any sharp edged blade.

To lose the art of hand writing by pen would be tragic. To lose the sayings, quotes and anecdotes that go along with it and make our blogs, essays and novels so interesting, would be just as regrettable.

Even when things don’t make sense, due to modernity,  we must still teach them - so that others learn from whence we all came, other wise like my gorgeous friend who can not write with a pen these days, we are destined to head back into the caves and start chiseling out our messages on stone again, if the power goes out.

And for those who think that ,”The pen is mightier than the sword,” is actually about combat fighting like another friend of mine, go smack yourself with a iPad and wake up.

Dead To Me Dan

I have a female work colleague. Young, vivacious and stunning, well to others , to me she is more a little sister, or perhaps at my age, as she so often reminds me, perhaps a young niece.

Anyway, she lives life to the fullest. Parties, drinks, enjoys herself and, (how does one state this eloquently), she leaves a similar trail of destruction in the hearts and minds of her partners,  as her male writer “Uncle” once did with his female love interests.

Getting older is nothing if one does not impart a speck of ones knowledge upon the youth whom we see growing up in the same vain as ourselves.

Why must history continue to repeat itself if someone who has already lived the life, knows the sorrow and despair that is to come, and does not tell the youthful colleague before she endures it also.

Which leads me to Dead To Me Dan.

We have this saying at work, once a love interest has departed our transient lives when someone asks about them, we shake our head viciously and simply state,” I have no idea, they are as good as dead to me.”

In little Miss Femme Fatale’s recent history there has been several, including the one we call “Dead To Me Dan.” One day loved, next day not, day after dead to her.

It’s all in jest and fun and most of us around the lunch table have already moved on to other love interests, it just proves what a disposable lifestyle we all have these days. Razors, Cling Film, love interests, all disposed of and sent to the land fill without much of a second thought. (And yes we do lead the lifestyle of the mid-sixties)

But whilst we laugh at the time, it was this morning waking and enjoying my multi storied apartment , making my espresso solo, setting out my own clothing before showering and picking up the morning paper from the front door, that I realized that what is the point of all this if I have no one to share it with.

As fast and as painful as the front door closing on my heels, it struck me just how many “Dead To Me Dan’s” there were in my own trail of heart destruction over the past 35 years.

I am not proud of the numbers. It has never been about a tally or notches in the belt. Simply something within me, never consummates a relationship. I enjoy it for a time and then push away or walk out the door.

I do enjoy my freedom and there are days when married cohorts remind me just how lucky I am. But I guess the true sense of remorse this morning was that each of those whom I have left, must sometimes feel the same as I did today. Even the fact that most are married now and have families there must be a minute per year that they remember. The letters, the cards and the notes I find in boxes upon boxes of my own life history are far too poignant and realistic. Heart felt words truly from the core of their soul, at that moment, to ever truly be forgotten.

In a Hollywood movie landscape, I would at this time of life, before departing on yet another move, contact each one of them to say sorry. I never wanted to fill the world with sadness , hatred or remorse. I truly believe that to have loved for a moment is better than to have not at all. Sadly many of my friends would have preferred to have been the only love and the last.

To all those I have scarred, I apologise, To those I have left mad, I say sorry and to those who think its best to forget and move on, it is not!

I beg you to remember every person who enters your life and never forget the wondrous feelings of early love and the words passed between lips and heart. Those are the true words of absolute love, no matter what occurs in the future.

And as for “Dead To Me Dan”, well both parties of that relationship have moved on, but I hope in the world of my little niece, he is the last person to ever exit her world and to be forgotten.

Peace, love and all things sixties to you all.