I was lying on my bed with a slightly sore toe. I stood up in the night and stepped on the dog Angelo and the angel thought I was the devil or  an intruder or murderer so bit my left big toe and wouldn't let lose !!
I screamed out and Clemens got up out of a deep sleep and separated teeth from toe. Poor Angelo was over me like  a loving dog but my toe was leaking badly.

Anyway, I was thinking: Goodness, we live in a lucky country indeed.  And very very tolerant.
 
We have a woman Prime-Minister, I voted for her, living in sin with a man. And we have a greens senator for Tasmania who is openly gay and a big eared Liberal leader without a clue. Like a sweet jumping chimpanzee.
 
A Chinese minister for Finance who, also, is openly a lesbian.
Every two weeks I get $840 for just breathing and if I had a problem with breathing an ambulance would be at the front door before I could exhale !!

 
Here in Cairns in our suburb we are in the minority race wise but no nothing, no shit, no unfriendlyness or what-so-ever.
Try Europe or America. Been to both.
In  Florida I spent a few months with an old friend of mine, a New York Jewish genteman,  and in our group of friends there was one black guy, and gay too, but he told me it was a battle. Being black, not being gay,  not for a handsome young man with teeth to kill for.
So am I happy with our world.
It is so difficult.
Here I am eating fruity strawberry icecream with double cream and in Somalia they are starving.
I lived in Iran and once saw a boy evading the beggars while he was carring a bowl of food and dropped it on the dusty ground.
He picked it up carefully while keeping off the beggars and starving dogs.
This was in Abadan, it had then the biggest oil refinery on Earth, for Heavens sake. In 1962.
We lived in an enclosed erea that  only permitted people like sevants in. And the Muslim clergy who came begging in the name of Allah. And taxis where sometimes young beggars would hide in the boot with nasty men exploiting them to beg for them. I suppose the nasty men gave the poor boys something.
 
My favorite is Malcom Turnbill, a liberal but he left that mad mob of Big-ears because he was also 'green' at heart.
And it all is possible.
We are as tollerant as can be expected. Life is like, I imagine as I have never been to one, a football match.
With fair rules and honest referees.
One can get a little hot under the collar.
In Iran my parents, and Clemens parents too, were a small group and Captain Franks was the goodlooking KLM pilot who flew in every so often and he and his wifie had two kids and lived in Abadan too.. One, the eldest and a girl was  Jacqui, a few years younger than I was, I am.

We still are in a close contact albeit she lives 2000 km south with her lovely Scotish husmand Alan.
I had sent her one of my cut up paintings. I cut the paintings, large ones, into 10x10 cm squares.
Anyway, Alan and Jacqui pieced it together again and made this wonderful hanging sliced up painting but it looks so lovely.
I can say that,  I am partly responsible.
But it made me take a look at it as from a strangers point of view. And I was proud !
For goodness sake, if an artist doesn't like his or her own paintings they should go somewhere else!
Jacqui stuck the painting together again with great respect and wrote a poem to accompeny it. Here the painting and her poem:

The Tree of Life
has strong roots and many branches

When a harsh season strikes
or a branch falls
we grieve and mourn the loss

We also learn to take comfort
from the new growth
of our own roots and branches

Jacqui Murray
2011