Life on the Edge

Some days there is little joy. I woke up this morning knowing that the only way through the next twenty four hours was to grit my teeth, take a deep breath and push myself out of bed with a steely determination to get the job done. It was not going to be easy as many distractions lay in wait; have lain in wait the previous nine months and been successful in seducing me away from the task at hand. Like this morning, for instance: blue skies, calm wind, wood begging to be carved, birds asking that their song be heard and the ground pleading to be massaged by my feet. But the hour of reckoning was approaching. The knocking; the ever incessant knocking on the door was getting louder and louder. The tax man cometh. And today, I had to give myself over to the arduous task of preparing last year's tax.

My dad was an accountant. And every year he would wait until the last possible day to file our family's income tax. Like father, like son. I, also, avoid doing taxes until the last possible moment as I constantly battle against being forced indoors to organise a box full of bits of paper into meaningful small piles of tax avoidance. Tonight the dining table is the dreaded Tax Table. Where usually one encounters conversation, platters of food, silverware and candles, at this late hour there is just a rising resentment to an Australian government that takes half a billion dollars in tax money to purchase 59 "used" eleven year old Abrams tanks from the US military. Will these tanks be used to round up aborigines in the central desert? Or blast away at the half starved refugee boat people that try to come ashore seeking freedom from the countries they have fled? Where our my guests to fill the vacant chairs and offer me cheer? Is there no one to tell me that the tanks are a mistake and that actually $500,000,000 will be spent on providing clean water to all the refugee camps in the world? Is there anyone out there who can hear me screaming?