A shortened horizon

Because my health indicators are all good, I had seen myself as having maybe 10 more years of life. Cancer can however get anyone at any age and it has me firmly in its grip at the moment. I am in no great pain and discomfort so far but my future is now looking short. Modern medicine might save me yet but I have to be prepared for an end fairly soon otherwise.

There is little I can do to deal with a shortened future but I have made some preparations. In particular I have discussed with Joe the future of my large collection of old games computers. They have sentimental value to me and it turns out that they are of a similar value to Joe. So we have agreed that we will gradually transfer them to his place, where he expects to have a room devoted to them. 4 of my old computers are Amiga 500s so I sometimes think we should start an Amiga appreciation society.

Now that my innings is coming to an end, I do think a little about how well I have used the 80 years I have had. And I think I have used those years pretty well. I am satisfied with the life I have lived. One particular source of satisfaction is that I have achieved well in two quite different fields: Business and academe. Those two normally never meet. The people involved tend to despise one another in fact.

But I did very well in academe -- having over 200 papers published in the academic journals over a 20 year period. And a bonus is that even papers I wrote back in the 70s are still widely read. See http://jonjayray.com/citedjr.html

And I did well enough in business to finance both a comfortable later life and allow myself to give extensively to charitable causes. I retired when I was 39 so I have had over 40 years living on my business proceeds.

But I judge my life neither by my academic nor by my business activities. I think that I have had a good life because of the relationdships I have had with women. I have had many pleasing relationships with many women and despite that have no angry women in my past. I regard the 4 marriages I have had as good marriages and the divorces have all been with no acrimony. So that is why I see my 80 years as well-used. I will shuffle off into the night with no major regrets.

One of my girlfriends once said to me: "John, there will be a lot of weeping women at your funeral". I will make sure she gets an invitation

Cancer

I had a CT scan on Tuesday. Yesterday I got the result. I am riddled with cancer. So that explains my very low energy levels in recent weeks. I was of course pretty depressed to get that news but Joe was very helpful that night. He cancelled an appointment and came over to have dinner with me -- at Hungry Jacks, which I like. That did lift my spirits a bit.

And today I have heard from my oncologist. He thinks my main problem is a recurrence of my prostate cancer, which means that immunotherapy is not available for it. But he thinks that radiation could fix me. So now I go for a battery of further tests to see exactly what is going on.

I nearly died from stomach cancer a couple of years ago but recovered after a course of immunontherapy so I am in a sense already in extra time. And in that "extra" time I have got to know Zoe, which I am pleased about. Making new friendships in old age is rare. So I hope I will survive my present crisis to enjoy all my friendships more

Revealing breakfasts

My mother was a rather strange woman unhappy in her marriage. I probably get some strangeness from her. The wonderful woman in my longest-lasting marriage often called me "Mr Difficult".

I would have said that my mother was autistic except that she was a chatterbox, two things that are normally opposite

But I have always said that she gave ne a very permissive and indulgent childhood, which I of course greatly liked. And something comes to mind that shows how indulgent to me she was. Whatever faults she had, I certainly had a loving mother

So what has inspired this reflection? WeetBix. Yes. Weetbix. WeetBix are a very common breakfast cereal in Australia but they are very dry out of the packet. You normally eat them with milk. I still like and eat them on occasions.



But their dryness means that you have to let them stand in the milk for a minute or two before you can eat them. You have to sit in front of your bowl for a minute or two waiting for the milk to soak in. It's only a very small call on your patience.

But my mother spared me even that call on my patience. As soon as she put the bix down in front of me, she would pour hot water on them to soften them immediately so I could eat them immediately. No patience required. As kid, I thought that was normal. But as an adult, I manage to wait a minute or two and just have them with milk, no hot water. She also used always to spinkle sugar on them for me, but these days I just enjoy the taste of the bik by itself.

So I see all that as a vivid sign of how much I was loved. I am very lucky to have had such a start in life. Not all do. And with only a few breaks, my life since has been a cruise. Though my health does sometimes get to me now that I am 80.

The Bhagavad Gita

I have always respected India and Indians so I thought that is was time to read something of their great holy book, written around 200BC.

I have just read the first two chapters and am very impressed. Its thoughts resonate with me. Chapter 1 sets out very vividly the folly of war. Even though I am a former member of the Australian army, war has always seemed a horror to me: So many deaths of so many good men for so little gain. I am at the moment distressed by the war in Ukraine. I have Russian and Ukrainian friends so Russian and Ukrainian deaths are horrible thoughts to me. Why can we not put that ongoing disaster to a stop? And the Hindu prince in the Gita expresses grief at war very vividly. He sets out the folly of war better than I could do. He sounds very modern to me.

I am no pacifist. I accept that if we are attacked, we have to fight back. But the Bhagavad Gita questions the very essence of that. It asks what is the benefit of any attack? Nothing is worth it. The Hindu prince asks should we simply refuse to fight. Is pacifism better?

I have some sympathy for that view. Would rule by Hitler be so bad? Germans loved him. Was it worth all the bloodshed to defeat him? Hitler did after all initially just want to banish all the Jews to Palestine (The Haavara Agreement) but the British and others blocked that. Those are the sorts of doubt that the Hindu prince had in chapter 1 of the Gita. And a couple of hundred years later Jesus said much the same: "Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:38). That scripture has worried me since I was 14 and is why I was a pacifist in my teens

But the Gita said it first and said it much more vividly.

And in chapter 2 the Gita goes on to answer the pacifist doubts. It says your soul is indestructible so what you do in war can cause no serious harm. I don't believe in God or souls so that is no help to me. We atheists are stuck with reality.

I will read on

Cowley beach, a small memoir

Now that I am very old, I am inclined to note changes I have seen

At one stage, I am not sure when, but it was before I was of school age, the family moved and lived in a cane-cutter's barracks at Cowley Beach, not far from Innisfail

Barracks were provided by farmers to house the itinerant cane-cutters who came North for the crushing season. I gather that in the "off" season they were usually let out free to locals whom the farmer knew. It helped keep them maintained. (I myself later lived for a time in barracks free of charge -- when I was about 17).

So there my mother had a wood (burning) stove and no electricity. I remember the carbide lamps and hurricane lamps we used for lighting at night. Carbide (acetylene ) lamps gave a quite bright light.

The walls of the barracks were of corrugated iron and I seem to recollect drinking brackish water there so maybe we relied on a well for water.

I am pretty sure we had a kerosene fridge there that didn't work very well and I remember my mother using a Coolgardie safe and water bag.

Since then I have always liked the design of cane barracks -- a big kitchen/dining room at one end and a straight line of bedrooms running off it and accessed from a verandah. Most post-cyclone houses in Darwin have a similar design -- though they are high-set (elevated).