Here are some statements about the human condition which are a smokescreen for statements about god. They come from the typing manual we used at work to learn to type.

1. The joke of cur life is that the personal qualities and integrity of the men and women employed in banks have been used as a smoke screen behind which money has been enthroned as a god, whose appeasement may require the brazen exploitation of a whole nation.

(Why not the whole world?)

2. Judging from the annual sacrifice of between six and seven thousand lives on our roads, it would seem that the motor car has been raised to quite godlike status by the members of our so-called civilized society.

(But why does the car have status?)

Here I collect information and if you can imagine it as I imagine it, it’s like this – a camera started either rolling or snapping shots. Some time ago. There are many mysteries in life but we have evidence if not the comprehension or interpretation of the evidence. We look at our old family snapshots and we can understand some things now we didn’t understand then. The sight of ourselves looking at a parent from the other side of the lens. Trying to look through the lens the wrong way at the eye on the other side of the camera. Doing the same with binoculars, opera glasses, ordinary spectacles, telescopes, drinking tumblers and crinkled glass windows. Apart from the family pictures, real photos we have, there are the thousands of amazing memories which are like stills from the film you missed when it was on in town. Evidence, traces, manifestations. Like a play you can read again and again fixed rigidly in another period of time which has its own history. My own history is part of this history and is pervaded by it. Pervaded and invaded by official history. The icons of the era float by – the girl guides’ badge, the school prefect’s badge, sports captain badge, felt insignias we sewed on our school uniforms, athletics trophies, academic trophies, kangaroos, wattle, the RSL.

What I remember most of our history class is the sight of the belt around our teacher’s waist. She had the belt tight but mysteriously it didn’t crumple, as though it was made of something very stiff. But it looked as though it was made from the same material as her dress so whatever was stopping it from bending up like my belts always did, was hidden. The eternal mystery of my childhood: How come everyone else looks like they know what’s going on when I feel confused by everything? How do the girls know what to say to boys? How does everybody know what the teachers mean in our lessons, except that they mean we should do this – as in – Now class, do this. No explanations, nothing.

I expected the intentions of the education system to make themselves known to me. They were rigid, they were implicit, they were there but they were hidden. My first working hypothesis was that it was chaotic and illogical. An understandable mistake. I became interested in Enid Blyton’s mystery books so I could read about kids who weren’t like me, discovering things. Later I left that behind and rather than read detective novels, I decided to become the detective. The evidence is endless.