1. Holes in gardening gloves make them redundant. Bite the bullet and chuck them out.
2. Dogs dislike the smell of nail varnish.
3. My snooze button only works for 45 minutes.
4. Ridley Scott is working on a new Sci Fi film. OMG.
5. I can knit a scarf or a beanie in a weekend - but not both.
6. Not many people hire out carnival/movie style popcorn machines.
7. Mum's homegrown mandarins taste brilliant.
8. Soy sauce stains books badly when it spills unnoticed in the carrybag.
9. There are people in the world who will wish you a "Happy New Year" today. And they are not joking or being ironic.
10. Taking photographs of objects is not as straightforward as it may initially seem.
11. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy the hardcover edition of an old book on Amazon. Go figure.
12. Imagining is a lot easier than creating.
13. Scones taste best fresh. Good jam will carry the day.
14. There is no satisfaction in being right about grim things.
15. The ancient Romans used to make a silica based concrete that modern science is now advocating we return to due to its much lower carbon footprint.
16. Reading a great work of literature in small blocks (of two and a bit pages) does not diminish its impact.
17. Hollywood does not, in the end, shy away from using images of a dead star to heavily promote a forthcoming film. Actually almost featuring them. Macabre.
18. Sometimes, people who write about art don't want you to understand what they're talking about. That would spoil the fun.
19. Being able to grow things is marvelous, and possibly a right that is under more threats than we feel comfortable acknowledging.
20. Being lonely every now and then isn't so bad.
*Some items re-learnt from previous years.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Can we find another Ace?
It's winter solstice time again. The mornings have been foggy on and off for the last two weeks - lending a slight air of mystery to our walks. It burns off by 8.30 and then the days have been largely clear and bright. I can hardly believe it's winter. The full moon is gorgeous in the bright nights and I'm looking forward to Spring when I'll have my outdoor-moon-chair set up. The yard is still not an enticing place to spend time, but it will get there eventually. Or I'll leave. You know how it goes. So for solstice tonight it's just some incense, a candle in the window, some pondering ont he cylces of our world and a good dinner.
Rumi the Giant Snow Cat has taken to eating Riley's dinner as well. Riley sits and looks on with a slightly sad face as if to say "If that's what you really want, I'm not going to stand in your way." Meanwhile, Rumi seems to be attempting to grow to rival Iorek Byrnison for the kingship of the Ice Bears, but somehow is unable to stand his ground against Tiger the three-legged tabby who's just moved in next door.
I have been forgetting things lately. I've found it difficult to connect the list of words I know I have somewhere in my head with the idea I'm trying to express. Also, just simple forgetting - leaving my lunch on the kitchen bench, completely erasing conversations, tasks that need doing, or things I intend to do. It's really confusing. The world has a different tone to it. I think I'm still remembering the important stuff - but who's to say?
Last night on the "7.30 Report" (go the ABC) there was a fairly sober interview with an Chappie about how the price of oil is just going to keep going up, and how urgent it is to start switching over to renewable resources and so on and so on. I sat on the couch, thinking how nearly everything in the house (and the house itself) is cheap-oil dependent. Me too. I'm cheap oil dependent, I think nearly all of us are. Anyway, I won't get onto this again, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned peak oil before, and immanent ecological downspin etc etc etc Al Gore etc etc etc Global Warming etc etc etc Carbon Footprint etc etc etc. It was just, to hear this step-by-step implications on the ABC and realise that these issues do still not have a mainstream understanding, was beyond sobering. It was shocking all over again. If Kerry O'Brien has to work that hard to get his head around it (or to feel confident that his audience has their head around it), and the pollies have gone back to ducking the issue, what hope do we really have? If we wait too late we won't even have the reserves to build the new infrastructure we need! Isn't anyone project managing this thing? There are critical paths people!
I'm not a big fan of humans generally. Obviously there are some stunning human achievements, but they just don't seem to make up for this greedy, self-destructive impulse that over-rides all in it's path. We could call it the Trump Factor. Like there's this idea in the back of people's minds that we've anthropomorphised "Mother Earth" into reality, and like all mothers we can either threaten her children or pay her off, and she'll back down. It's Trump Brinkmanship. we are going to fuck ourselves because we can't grasp the simple rules of the game, and we think that oceans of cash will sort it out.
*sigh*
Rumi the Giant Snow Cat has taken to eating Riley's dinner as well. Riley sits and looks on with a slightly sad face as if to say "If that's what you really want, I'm not going to stand in your way." Meanwhile, Rumi seems to be attempting to grow to rival Iorek Byrnison for the kingship of the Ice Bears, but somehow is unable to stand his ground against Tiger the three-legged tabby who's just moved in next door.
I have been forgetting things lately. I've found it difficult to connect the list of words I know I have somewhere in my head with the idea I'm trying to express. Also, just simple forgetting - leaving my lunch on the kitchen bench, completely erasing conversations, tasks that need doing, or things I intend to do. It's really confusing. The world has a different tone to it. I think I'm still remembering the important stuff - but who's to say?
Last night on the "7.30 Report" (go the ABC) there was a fairly sober interview with an Chappie about how the price of oil is just going to keep going up, and how urgent it is to start switching over to renewable resources and so on and so on. I sat on the couch, thinking how nearly everything in the house (and the house itself) is cheap-oil dependent. Me too. I'm cheap oil dependent, I think nearly all of us are. Anyway, I won't get onto this again, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned peak oil before, and immanent ecological downspin etc etc etc Al Gore etc etc etc Global Warming etc etc etc Carbon Footprint etc etc etc. It was just, to hear this step-by-step implications on the ABC and realise that these issues do still not have a mainstream understanding, was beyond sobering. It was shocking all over again. If Kerry O'Brien has to work that hard to get his head around it (or to feel confident that his audience has their head around it), and the pollies have gone back to ducking the issue, what hope do we really have? If we wait too late we won't even have the reserves to build the new infrastructure we need! Isn't anyone project managing this thing? There are critical paths people!
I'm not a big fan of humans generally. Obviously there are some stunning human achievements, but they just don't seem to make up for this greedy, self-destructive impulse that over-rides all in it's path. We could call it the Trump Factor. Like there's this idea in the back of people's minds that we've anthropomorphised "Mother Earth" into reality, and like all mothers we can either threaten her children or pay her off, and she'll back down. It's Trump Brinkmanship. we are going to fuck ourselves because we can't grasp the simple rules of the game, and we think that oceans of cash will sort it out.
*sigh*
Monday, June 16, 2008
Bloomsday
Well and it is Bloomsday again, and I'm reading my way through Ulysses. Not the first time I've started, but hopefully a finish this time. It is (for anyone who hasn't read it) a dense and rolling read with so many things going on that may (or more usually) may not make any sense. I'm not far in, but I'm already further than I've ever been (that's sounding very Star Trek, isn't it!?) and there's something alien and seductive about this work.
Here's the passage I'm up to:
"Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves."
It starts out like a normal paragraph, and then.... goes somewhere else altogether. I love it.
I remember the first year I discovered Bloomsday, and went to the reading at the Mitchell wing of the state library in Sydney. They had put a first edition of Ulysses in a glass case towards the front of the room, and to me that physical book was a miracle. It was a big moment to consider all the effort, all the writing, all the energy and attention and love and passion that had gone into every single stage of getting those words into that order (look at one of his manuscripts if you ever get a chance - it will rock your world) those pages typed up and the damn thing published, let alone all the way across the world to Sydney.
Forget the travails of Rowling - James Joyce couldn't get a publisher! In the end, Shakespeare and Co. in Paris printed 750 copies (in about 1922). What if there hadn't been anyone willing to risk the prudes, the nay-sayers, the economic uncertainty and publish it at all? But they did, and the world of human literature is richer for it. Is 'human literature' a tautology? At the moment I guess it is, but I'd like to think "not for long"!
Anyway, happy Bloomsday!
Yes! She cried, Yes!!
Here's the passage I'm up to:
"Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves."
It starts out like a normal paragraph, and then.... goes somewhere else altogether. I love it.
I remember the first year I discovered Bloomsday, and went to the reading at the Mitchell wing of the state library in Sydney. They had put a first edition of Ulysses in a glass case towards the front of the room, and to me that physical book was a miracle. It was a big moment to consider all the effort, all the writing, all the energy and attention and love and passion that had gone into every single stage of getting those words into that order (look at one of his manuscripts if you ever get a chance - it will rock your world) those pages typed up and the damn thing published, let alone all the way across the world to Sydney.
Forget the travails of Rowling - James Joyce couldn't get a publisher! In the end, Shakespeare and Co. in Paris printed 750 copies (in about 1922). What if there hadn't been anyone willing to risk the prudes, the nay-sayers, the economic uncertainty and publish it at all? But they did, and the world of human literature is richer for it. Is 'human literature' a tautology? At the moment I guess it is, but I'd like to think "not for long"!
Anyway, happy Bloomsday!
Yes! She cried, Yes!!
Quote of the Week: Sunsets
"Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunsets. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand, they go on."
Oscar Wilde
"The Decay of Lying"
Oscar Wilde
"The Decay of Lying"
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Hollow Promises
This afternoon I found myself looking forward to grocery shopping. I had decided to go to the bigger store over the river which is set in a big complex thing rather than the normal strip of shops type place. You know the kind of place I mean, it's large enough to have 3 or 4 major traders and then a B-list string of food franchises and XXX "Specialty Stores". Lots of white lights rather than 'warm' lights. Why was I looking forward to it?
I don't know.
I hate the place.
The larger store stocks items I don't need very often and can't get at the normal store. It has a wider range of vegetables and cheeses, but is the same in every other regard - except for the tempting idea of neighbouring "specialty stores".
This is the pattern. I go, and wander for nearly an hour getting sore feet and a headache, not finding anything of a special nature. Instead I am shocked and awed by the physical and emotional parade of my fellow shoppers, I am numbed by the blandness on offer. This is not a particular insult to this town. I think it's fair to say that most if not all suburban shopping centers are like this. Middle-ness in essence.
The logic is that folk want roughly 20% of stuff 80% of the time. Think about groceries - bread and milk and potatoes every shop, but all those other 10 aisles .... well we pick and choose. I skip about a third of aisles every visit and probably you do too. Anyway, of that 20% ... most folk then have only one or two preferences.
Ice cream? "Sure!" Says most folks, then they split between Chocolate and Vanilla. There's the odd statistical anomaly who wants Strawberry, and then there's all those "special occasion" ice-creams, but for the bog-standard 4litre Ice Cream purchase (yes, I said 4L!) it's choc or vanilla. So extrapolate that out, and let the logic run for a while. No wonder there are people who just don't realise that you can get pistachio ice-cream, because even in an internationally award-winning mid-sized city with XXX specialty stores, there's not a one selling anything too far different from everything else everyone already has. They're offering hollow promises,
So to come back to where I started, I grocery shopped tonight with speed, precision and organisation (possibly the only realm of my life where I can muster all three skills in one place) and was in and out of there in 50 minutes (almost a personal best!). I looked in the windows of the stores as I walked briskly past them, and confirmed that I don't need any of that shit. I was grateful to be able to get the stuff I did need, but came home as quickly as possible to enjoy my time and thoughts (and maybe a little bit of ebay activity, where the 80/20 rule does not hold sway and the erratic and irrational have their power returned).
It was good to get out unscathed, but I am am not always this calm and controlled. I resent the foggy numbness that sometimes comes over me. I don't even have to be in the endless mall/centre for it to happen (so I can't blame the lights or the mirrors or that insidious fake-food smell that Subway pumps out) but when it does I become a wandering, impulse-shopping zombie. Something that works to snap me out of it, if I have any intelligence left flickering in my cranium, is to imagine the stare of withering derision that Henry Rollins would give me if he caught me doing this, and that sorts me out quick smart. Of course, Hank wouldn't know me from a baboon, but in some Jungian way I have taken all that I admire from him and Batman that possibly has a faint echo in myself and given it his face (the cowl was too hidden in the end for my own already hidden corners) so I can accord it some respect. Having said that if the chance to actually differentiate myself from a baboon in Henry Rollins' consciousness ever did present itself I would jump on him. I mean it, jump on it. The opportunity, I'd be all over it, not Henry. He's too big. Not that I'd try, you know, to literally *jump* on him, but, oh forget it. This is going from bad to worse.
I am so uncool. I'll just stop there.
I don't know.
I hate the place.
The larger store stocks items I don't need very often and can't get at the normal store. It has a wider range of vegetables and cheeses, but is the same in every other regard - except for the tempting idea of neighbouring "specialty stores".
This is the pattern. I go, and wander for nearly an hour getting sore feet and a headache, not finding anything of a special nature. Instead I am shocked and awed by the physical and emotional parade of my fellow shoppers, I am numbed by the blandness on offer. This is not a particular insult to this town. I think it's fair to say that most if not all suburban shopping centers are like this. Middle-ness in essence.
The logic is that folk want roughly 20% of stuff 80% of the time. Think about groceries - bread and milk and potatoes every shop, but all those other 10 aisles .... well we pick and choose. I skip about a third of aisles every visit and probably you do too. Anyway, of that 20% ... most folk then have only one or two preferences.
Ice cream? "Sure!" Says most folks, then they split between Chocolate and Vanilla. There's the odd statistical anomaly who wants Strawberry, and then there's all those "special occasion" ice-creams, but for the bog-standard 4litre Ice Cream purchase (yes, I said 4L!) it's choc or vanilla. So extrapolate that out, and let the logic run for a while. No wonder there are people who just don't realise that you can get pistachio ice-cream, because even in an internationally award-winning mid-sized city with XXX specialty stores, there's not a one selling anything too far different from everything else everyone already has. They're offering hollow promises,
So to come back to where I started, I grocery shopped tonight with speed, precision and organisation (possibly the only realm of my life where I can muster all three skills in one place) and was in and out of there in 50 minutes (almost a personal best!). I looked in the windows of the stores as I walked briskly past them, and confirmed that I don't need any of that shit. I was grateful to be able to get the stuff I did need, but came home as quickly as possible to enjoy my time and thoughts (and maybe a little bit of ebay activity, where the 80/20 rule does not hold sway and the erratic and irrational have their power returned).
It was good to get out unscathed, but I am am not always this calm and controlled. I resent the foggy numbness that sometimes comes over me. I don't even have to be in the endless mall/centre for it to happen (so I can't blame the lights or the mirrors or that insidious fake-food smell that Subway pumps out) but when it does I become a wandering, impulse-shopping zombie. Something that works to snap me out of it, if I have any intelligence left flickering in my cranium, is to imagine the stare of withering derision that Henry Rollins would give me if he caught me doing this, and that sorts me out quick smart. Of course, Hank wouldn't know me from a baboon, but in some Jungian way I have taken all that I admire from him and Batman that possibly has a faint echo in myself and given it his face (the cowl was too hidden in the end for my own already hidden corners) so I can accord it some respect. Having said that if the chance to actually differentiate myself from a baboon in Henry Rollins' consciousness ever did present itself I would jump on him. I mean it, jump on it. The opportunity, I'd be all over it, not Henry. He's too big. Not that I'd try, you know, to literally *jump* on him, but, oh forget it. This is going from bad to worse.
I am so uncool. I'll just stop there.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Night Sweats
The last week or so I've been having night sweats.
In case you've gotten through life without experiencing this kind of thing, let me just say - it's unpleasant, but not dangerous. It's also kind of weird to suddenly have a haywire temperature regulation system that is haphazard in its activity. Just a bit unnerving.
Feeling a bit hypochondriac about it all, I thought I might see if it was related to the meds I'm on for the colitis (Dr Holt is always asking me about a string of side-effect symptoms), and whaddya know, loads of people get them, so I start reading one of the forum threads - where folks are trying to find correlations between their meds, the flare/remission, the intensity or onset of the sweats and like most human things - it's all over the shop. There's no single answer.
In a way, I did get an answer though.
He's a sample of the dozens of posts - this one by "BadGut" (the member names of these forums are brilliant) : 'When I first was diagnosed I suffered severe bed sweats at night - I used sleep on a towel and t-shirt which then I would have to get up 2-3x a night to change due to the wetness of it all. '
Wow. Other people wrote in too - changing PJs 3 times in a night, sleeping on towels, getting plastic sheets for the beds and so on. Mine are very mild in comparison! I am so lucky to have such manageable symptoms, and to effectively be in remission again. I have had flare-ups of only a month or two - some of these people have never had a remission! I really feel for them. I wouldn't be able to work, heck, I found it tough just to get my groceries done when I was in a full flare!
So basically I am now feeling very grateful today for what I do have, instead of worrying over what is really, in the scheme of things, some pretty inconsequential stuff. There was a great line in a film I watched on the weekend. It went something like "While you're trying so hard to claw back what you lost, a whole lot more can walk out the door". It was in No Country for Old Men - towards the end.
One of the forums suggested that as a first step to healing I should laugh more, everybody should laugh more. Excellent! How often does the Dr prescribe laughter?
I'm going to take the script to the Chemist and see if I can get some laughter in bulk. Can you get a discount if you show your medicare card?
In case you've gotten through life without experiencing this kind of thing, let me just say - it's unpleasant, but not dangerous. It's also kind of weird to suddenly have a haywire temperature regulation system that is haphazard in its activity. Just a bit unnerving.
Feeling a bit hypochondriac about it all, I thought I might see if it was related to the meds I'm on for the colitis (Dr Holt is always asking me about a string of side-effect symptoms), and whaddya know, loads of people get them, so I start reading one of the forum threads - where folks are trying to find correlations between their meds, the flare/remission, the intensity or onset of the sweats and like most human things - it's all over the shop. There's no single answer.
In a way, I did get an answer though.
He's a sample of the dozens of posts - this one by "BadGut" (the member names of these forums are brilliant) : 'When I first was diagnosed I suffered severe bed sweats at night - I used sleep on a towel and t-shirt which then I would have to get up 2-3x a night to change due to the wetness of it all. '
Wow. Other people wrote in too - changing PJs 3 times in a night, sleeping on towels, getting plastic sheets for the beds and so on. Mine are very mild in comparison! I am so lucky to have such manageable symptoms, and to effectively be in remission again. I have had flare-ups of only a month or two - some of these people have never had a remission! I really feel for them. I wouldn't be able to work, heck, I found it tough just to get my groceries done when I was in a full flare!
So basically I am now feeling very grateful today for what I do have, instead of worrying over what is really, in the scheme of things, some pretty inconsequential stuff. There was a great line in a film I watched on the weekend. It went something like "While you're trying so hard to claw back what you lost, a whole lot more can walk out the door". It was in No Country for Old Men - towards the end.
One of the forums suggested that as a first step to healing I should laugh more, everybody should laugh more. Excellent! How often does the Dr prescribe laughter?
I'm going to take the script to the Chemist and see if I can get some laughter in bulk. Can you get a discount if you show your medicare card?
Quote of the Week!
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
Chinese Proverb.
Chinese Proverb.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Pitter Patter of Very Little Feet
I'm delighted to announce that we've had some new members of our family join us!
Last night, cogitating on the throne in the bathroom I idly mused "gosh, that bit of dust looks like a tiny weeny lizard!" dust balls being both common and dynamic in my my house.
When lo! the tiny weeny lizard did move in a non-dustball manner and prove itself to be a newly hatched Gekkonidae! Woot! I watched it for a moment, with a feeling of amazement - where could it have come from? Do they miraculously emerge from tiles if the grout is really festy? But, no, there in the corner was a weeny little egg cracked open. It was fresh! But then I was all concern - it was wading through dust and a long way from anything a baby gecko might be able to eat or drink. From a viewpoint about 3mm off the ground my bathroom would seem an immense, arid landscape, devoid of life.
So I tried to pick the little guy up. Hi-larious. My giant sausage fingers were skyscrapers and it just scampered between cracks I couldn't see. Eventually he ran up my hands and I tried to cup firmly but gently around a body like a cobweb and hustled him out to the parsley. At least there in the nascent herb patch he has some chance of getting insects and water before his egg sac juices run out. I went back to look at the egg ... and there was his little sister - even smaller, even fainter, even harder to pick up! But after a brief fumbling debacle which I fear tired her out considerably, she too was relocated to the teeming Gecko Forest that was once a simple parsley plant. I went back to the bathroom and made a slow scan just in case any other hatchlings were looking for a herbivore to bond with.
I feel that in some small way I have been able to demostrate my grief over the accident that took the life of my work-gecko some unknown time ago. I discovered his/her little body about 2 weeks ago, pinned by the bulky transformer on the powerboard that sits on my desk. The body was dessicated and I felt terrible that I didn't even know when it had happened. I took the little corpse home in a tissue and buried it in the yard.
This afternoon I'm thinking of the new babies and hope they're enjoying discovering the world in the leafy green shade of the herbs, and most importantly, that they don't draw the attention of the cat.
Last night, cogitating on the throne in the bathroom I idly mused "gosh, that bit of dust looks like a tiny weeny lizard!" dust balls being both common and dynamic in my my house.
When lo! the tiny weeny lizard did move in a non-dustball manner and prove itself to be a newly hatched Gekkonidae! Woot! I watched it for a moment, with a feeling of amazement - where could it have come from? Do they miraculously emerge from tiles if the grout is really festy? But, no, there in the corner was a weeny little egg cracked open. It was fresh! But then I was all concern - it was wading through dust and a long way from anything a baby gecko might be able to eat or drink. From a viewpoint about 3mm off the ground my bathroom would seem an immense, arid landscape, devoid of life.
So I tried to pick the little guy up. Hi-larious. My giant sausage fingers were skyscrapers and it just scampered between cracks I couldn't see. Eventually he ran up my hands and I tried to cup firmly but gently around a body like a cobweb and hustled him out to the parsley. At least there in the nascent herb patch he has some chance of getting insects and water before his egg sac juices run out. I went back to look at the egg ... and there was his little sister - even smaller, even fainter, even harder to pick up! But after a brief fumbling debacle which I fear tired her out considerably, she too was relocated to the teeming Gecko Forest that was once a simple parsley plant. I went back to the bathroom and made a slow scan just in case any other hatchlings were looking for a herbivore to bond with.
I feel that in some small way I have been able to demostrate my grief over the accident that took the life of my work-gecko some unknown time ago. I discovered his/her little body about 2 weeks ago, pinned by the bulky transformer on the powerboard that sits on my desk. The body was dessicated and I felt terrible that I didn't even know when it had happened. I took the little corpse home in a tissue and buried it in the yard.
This afternoon I'm thinking of the new babies and hope they're enjoying discovering the world in the leafy green shade of the herbs, and most importantly, that they don't draw the attention of the cat.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Weighed, Measured, Found Wanting.
I've been in lockdown at work for the last two days, being "developed". Not with the white room crew, but with the balloons and sausage-sizzle side of the operation.
The teams that really need some development don't put their hand up for this kind of thing normally, so in a way it's an easy win. You get to go 'off campus' and sit in a room with a flipcharts and coloured pens talking about how great it would be if we all respected and valued each others differences, share some dodgy catering and look out of a different window for a while. Normally I'd sign right up for a tour of duty, and in fact that's excatly what I did when this was mooted. It's been ages now since I left the corporate world, and I thought I'd get the same kick out of doing the quiz and getting the little graph or chart or colour code, or animal sign or whatever the fuck this one would be, as I used to. It was one of the perks of working in a giant company - the world-class quizzes. They end up being in the realm of 'emergency fallback conversation topics' just under Monty Python and just above root canal dentistry for being largely neutral politically and a pretty wide-reaching experience that people have an opinion about.
Somewhere along the line, something's changed for me. There was no frisson of discovery as I recieved my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours. There was no passionate buy-in from me as the team decided that all their core values and beliefs stemmed from LOVE and made that the umbrella statement for the shared vision, with all the fabulous, feel good generic statements actively dot-pointed underneath. It was a pumping workshop, and where was I? It turned out that I was the one with the cynical eyebrow and the willingness to ask the facilitator "why?". I was the grouch, the fly in the ointment, the devil's advocate. I'm still not really sure why I wanted so badly to piss on that chirpy rainbow, but there was something deeply inauthentic about letting a room full of kids and newbies get carried away with such starry-eyed hope and glamour before we put in any groundwork and built up some (any?) skills about what it really takes to accomodate difference, handle the consequences of honesty or even simple communication such as confirming meanings people have for words that seem simple. Words like, say, "communication" which someone was adamantly arguing was sufficient to cover 'feedback', 'teamwork', 'honesty' AND (my favourite) 'measures'. Woah! Busy word!!
So did I do any good? I'm not sure that I did. It was my intention to influence the group to aim for something shared and incremental. My experience has taught me that small but real/concrete gains are far better than large, vague, hugely far reaching and perfectly unattainable gains (such as a mission statement including clauses along the lines of "create pride in the city") that half of the attendees never opened their mouths to support, didn't have an opportunity to contribute to in their "prefered mode of communication" (one of the major "linking skills" we did the quiz to uncover) nor in a way that reflected the established diversity of profile strengths. All I managed was to get a few people confused, one or two people nodding, a further reputation as a pointless ranter and condescendingly co-opted to 'write up the outcomes as you're so good with words'. Great. Oh yeah, and give myself a massive headache.
It reminds me of the only time I've done one of these and didn't get a little print-out with a chart. The pair of people running the session really knew their stuff, and they stood us up in the drab motel conference room and called out names, grouping people around the room in what seemed like no particular order. I was on my own. I didn't get to hear what anyone else was told. There was no high-fiving. I can barely remember what they said to me, because the surprise of the first part stopped too much of the rest of it sinking in.
"You are a fool." They told me. "You are the court jester, and you will tell the truth, and no one will listen."
I thought about that conversation this afternoon as I came home. I pondered the workshop, and the workplace I returned to. I thought about my own under-siege sense of joy and resiliance in the face of constant frustrations and limitations and I wished for two things. I wished I could remember anything else those people had said on that long afternoon all those years ago that might help me make more sense of what to do with my life now, and I wished that I'd lightly shrugged very early today and let it all go with a smile and a quip, had a bit of a caper and a jape, and not tried to take on the weight of the world, at least not without giving folks a joke to take the edge off.
One more thing I wish for. I wish that I hadn't read my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours where it said "Creativity: 18%".
The teams that really need some development don't put their hand up for this kind of thing normally, so in a way it's an easy win. You get to go 'off campus' and sit in a room with a flipcharts and coloured pens talking about how great it would be if we all respected and valued each others differences, share some dodgy catering and look out of a different window for a while. Normally I'd sign right up for a tour of duty, and in fact that's excatly what I did when this was mooted. It's been ages now since I left the corporate world, and I thought I'd get the same kick out of doing the quiz and getting the little graph or chart or colour code, or animal sign or whatever the fuck this one would be, as I used to. It was one of the perks of working in a giant company - the world-class quizzes. They end up being in the realm of 'emergency fallback conversation topics' just under Monty Python and just above root canal dentistry for being largely neutral politically and a pretty wide-reaching experience that people have an opinion about.
Somewhere along the line, something's changed for me. There was no frisson of discovery as I recieved my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours. There was no passionate buy-in from me as the team decided that all their core values and beliefs stemmed from LOVE and made that the umbrella statement for the shared vision, with all the fabulous, feel good generic statements actively dot-pointed underneath. It was a pumping workshop, and where was I? It turned out that I was the one with the cynical eyebrow and the willingness to ask the facilitator "why?". I was the grouch, the fly in the ointment, the devil's advocate. I'm still not really sure why I wanted so badly to piss on that chirpy rainbow, but there was something deeply inauthentic about letting a room full of kids and newbies get carried away with such starry-eyed hope and glamour before we put in any groundwork and built up some (any?) skills about what it really takes to accomodate difference, handle the consequences of honesty or even simple communication such as confirming meanings people have for words that seem simple. Words like, say, "communication" which someone was adamantly arguing was sufficient to cover 'feedback', 'teamwork', 'honesty' AND (my favourite) 'measures'. Woah! Busy word!!
So did I do any good? I'm not sure that I did. It was my intention to influence the group to aim for something shared and incremental. My experience has taught me that small but real/concrete gains are far better than large, vague, hugely far reaching and perfectly unattainable gains (such as a mission statement including clauses along the lines of "create pride in the city") that half of the attendees never opened their mouths to support, didn't have an opportunity to contribute to in their "prefered mode of communication" (one of the major "linking skills" we did the quiz to uncover) nor in a way that reflected the established diversity of profile strengths. All I managed was to get a few people confused, one or two people nodding, a further reputation as a pointless ranter and condescendingly co-opted to 'write up the outcomes as you're so good with words'. Great. Oh yeah, and give myself a massive headache.
It reminds me of the only time I've done one of these and didn't get a little print-out with a chart. The pair of people running the session really knew their stuff, and they stood us up in the drab motel conference room and called out names, grouping people around the room in what seemed like no particular order. I was on my own. I didn't get to hear what anyone else was told. There was no high-fiving. I can barely remember what they said to me, because the surprise of the first part stopped too much of the rest of it sinking in.
"You are a fool." They told me. "You are the court jester, and you will tell the truth, and no one will listen."
I thought about that conversation this afternoon as I came home. I pondered the workshop, and the workplace I returned to. I thought about my own under-siege sense of joy and resiliance in the face of constant frustrations and limitations and I wished for two things. I wished I could remember anything else those people had said on that long afternoon all those years ago that might help me make more sense of what to do with my life now, and I wished that I'd lightly shrugged very early today and let it all go with a smile and a quip, had a bit of a caper and a jape, and not tried to take on the weight of the world, at least not without giving folks a joke to take the edge off.
One more thing I wish for. I wish that I hadn't read my little animated trivial pursuit pie chart of rainbow colours where it said "Creativity: 18%".
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
A bit of Rain
Oh what a miracle!
Water falls from the sky - freely
unwalled
unmeasured
untimed!
There's precious water sloshing
onto us, onto the ground
wasted on the bitumen
washing away the dust
Water wallowing
pooling and soaking
Oh it's a miracle!
Water falls from the sky - freely
unwalled
unmeasured
untimed!
There's precious water sloshing
onto us, onto the ground
wasted on the bitumen
washing away the dust
Water wallowing
pooling and soaking
Oh it's a miracle!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)