My earthquake experience happened in Bowral, New South Wales, in the middle of the night. I came out of a dream where an angry giant had hold of the corner-post of the eighty-foot verandah and was shaking the whole house. My wife and I sat up in bed and clung to each other like babes in the woods. There was a brief moment of terror when I had no idea what was happening. The rumbles spread out into the cowpastures and the paddocks rippled like waves in the ocean, the lonely, dismayed cows groaning aloud in the dark. It turned out to be 6.9 on the Richter scale, quite high, and yet no major damage ensued. Big earthquakes don't happen in Australia, right? Not yet. Australia has no major fault lines, right? Not yet. Maybe we should ask the traditional occupiers about the history of quakes, since our records go back such a little way.

I don't want to add my confusion to yours. Often I take liberties with my reader, imagining him to be a much closer friend than he thinks he is. He is, even if he doesn't know it. I do this in personal confrontations, too; the person may be thinking "I don't even know you" but he is intrigued by my impertinence, and if I'm lucky this keeps him nailed until I can get his attention by conventional means.

Yet the nub of each and every text of mine is: existence, being, or, if you like, am-ness. This the mystery, this the wall underlying the graffiti - the graffiti of our shimmering brief lives, the scrawl of our stories, our days in the sun, our nights cowering or romping in our beds.. What's it all written ON? Think of all the happenings in our lives - all the drama - yet who are the actors? Pause. Reeeeally PAUSE. ... Imagine if we were all reduced to anonymity - our names, personal histories, our bodies and personalities, our likes-and-dislikes, our self constructs - if all this were erased in one blinding flash of lightning, one awesome roll of thunder - then we would still exist! We'd still BE here: (wherever HERE is) our raw being, our am-ness untouched. This is, according to Dr. Woodbury, the Principal of the Aquinas Academy years ago , what happens to us the moment after death - we see our soul at last, exclaiming: "There's the bugger!!".

I feel quite unable to make small talk. Yet - and yet - and this is in the midst of a profound crisis in Japan - earthquake, tsunami, volcano eruption and nuclear catastrophe - where tens of thousands have perished and most survivors live in suspense with a barely sketched future - I still am seduced by the comforting restriction, an easy smallness... What is this? The reassuring straitjacket of habit, the homely prison cell of my invented self, my personally accepted leg-irons, a self as familiar as old pair of smelly woolen socks, never washed in a lifetime. My self. Love it. Hate it.

My doubt is not whether I actually think as I have described here, but whether I should post this on the blog. But why not? Either no-one is reading this, or perhaps a reader who thinks he doesn't understand turns away in disgust, in which case there is no harm, or that one person - just one - does understand and wants to be part of the conversation, in which case it is definitely worth it. Hey, baby! Welcome aboard. Let's explore the unspoken.