I am Steve Hutton’s Stalker

Something about travelling gives one a sense of freedom.
Starting in a new town can be like that too – completely anonymous. No expectations – internal or external. No habits about what or who belongs where, or what should happen when. It’s almost addictive, if it didn’t come at the cost of some pretty nice feelings – belonging with friends, warm cosy home feelings, clean laundry.
Anyway. One of the things about being an outsider is how different everything looks - it's possible to really *see* things. In my first few weeks as a temp in the TCSW, I got to go to a lot of minor events where I could just stare slack-jawed at the world around me. One of the things that caught my eye was a (presumably) innocent man called Steve Hutton. He's the general manager at the local paper and as such gets invited to a large number of meetings, launches, receptions, discussions, and openings. He's a good looking man - a little taller than I am with dark hair, well-formed brows, and a charming smile. In other words - easy on the eyes. In this town that is a standout feature.
Being a minion, I usually have nothing else to do, but to find a vantage point where I can be simultaneously called upon by my boss at any time, and comfortably stare at Steve Hutton. After a few months, he has started to notice that I do this. As a continuation of my anthropological experiment, I have decided not to stop. Frankly, I'm amazed I got away with it for so long. Very 'Fight Club' if you take my meaning.

It's great to have a hobby.
It really is very minimal stalking - I haven't ever gone to his workplace, taken surveillance photos, found out his wife's name - none of the basic things. It is piss-weak stalking I know - but I just keep hearing Edward Norton's voice saying "I am Steve Hutton’s Stalker" and it makes me laugh. You know, why get all bent out of shape about Brad Pitt (or Angelina) when there's perfectly good-looking people who are a lot more accessible to watch? I'll never get to meet Brangelina in person, but I can offer Steve Hutton a badly cooked entree every other week.

Let's hope he's got as a good a sense of humour as I have imagined that he has. Otherwise, I'll have to find out if blogging constitutes a breach of a restraining order.

Lost in Redbank

Stupid roads. Stupid signs.
Exploring somewhere new is probably not done best in the dark, when one is hungry, and need to pee.
Hurtling down the highway the turn-offs seem to loom rather quickly and there's little time to evaluate if it's the right one (how can there be so many turn offs so far apart for the same places?) and wham! you turn and drive, and 20 minutes later when you nearly hit a knagaroo on a deserted, unlit backroad, you realise this probably isn't the way to the big shopping centre. Turnaround and another 20 minutes, then the next exit, still not the right one. An hour it took. AN HOUR.
Embarrassing? Yes.
Want to know what's humiliating? I got lost on the way back too.
The shops weren't even that good either. What a wash-out.

Get Up start ramping up

That fabulous organ of democracy - GetUp - are in pre-election mode.
Unlike most politicians, this means that they are canvassing people like you and I for our opinions and concerns.
Radical huh?

They are currently surveying their members and asking all kinds of intrusive and offensive questions like:
"Why do you think this election is important?"
(I'm paraphrasing) and they let you write as much as you like! Most of the rest of it is ticking boxes, so I thought I would share with you what came to me as I thought about that question. Coz it's a good question. I know a lot of people don't care about politics, but our world really is run on it (or fucked -up by it) whichever way you look at it, better to yell and throw a rock to get the bus to swerve this time.
C'mon - go have a look at their site! They don't expoect you to agree with everything, but give it a crack.
http://www.getup.org.au

So here's my rant:
"This is a pivotal time to make a difference in how we survive climate change. Howard's policitical maneuvering to keep all ecological issues sidelined has undermined our economy because the economy is based on a presumption of ecological stability and safety. Australia is geologically and ecologically vulnerable to the effects of climate change and we cannot go on under a leader to refuses to act in our greater interests.

Secondly, the shame of the Tampa, of our woeful track-record in the health and well being of our Aboriginal peoples, of our neglect for David Hicks, of our disregard as a country for those who have been abused, ill-treated and those who seek refuge has reached tipping-point. Once again, our country is looking for heartfelt leadership and compassion. No-one in this country wants prosperity at the cost of human kindness. The Howard Government has hidden behind this rhetoric for long enough, and must be called to account for the actions they took on our behalf.
Thirdly, our nation is caught in a short-sighted boom based on non-renewable resources. Where is the investment in the sciences and skills of the future? What do we have to offer China after all our ore is gone?
Fourthly, Fifthly and Sixthly, the mining of uranium, the wastage of water to corporations (and industries) and the increasing privitisation of our public services are all eroding our integrity and identity as a nation and as a caretaker for the future.
Finally, and seventhly, the creeping "churchification" (mostly via rhetoric I admit) of our governing bodies really pisses me off. We are a secular nation - all the better to embrace the peoples from many cultures and backrounds that make us up. This is enshrined in our constitution (section 116 I think from memory) and it specifically prohibits religious intrusions into state (secular) activites - for example Citizenship Ceremonies. Just as politicians ought to be scrupulous about declaring their share holdings, filing their original receipts for expense claims, so they ought keep their own staunch belief in an imaginary friend out of representational politics.

Thanks for listening."

101 Posts!

It's these little milestones that give a sense of richness ... don't you think?

Gandalf Pig Dream

Last night I dreamt about pigs. Clever, talking pigs and Gandalf. There was some kind of pig quest, and dark foresty bits where good pigs wouldn't go.
There were mean pigs but hope too - the hope for a better future and fresh hay kept us all going.
I'm not sure what Gandalf had to do with anything, I think he was running a Wizards Master Class for some other pigs and just got swept up in events.

SHAOLIN SHOALHAVEN!

Wow!
I am too excited to type properly!

Exclamation marksss!!!

I've just read in the paper that the Shaolin Temple are pretty seriously looking at building a temple at Jervis Bay. Here, in Australia!! A Shaolin Temple!! HERE!!
OH MY BUDDHA!

Of Course, being the forward thinkers that they are, they plan to update the layout a bit - including a 1500-seat exhibition hall, golf course, hotel and 800 residential lots.
Genius.

That's going to put the Aikido and TaiKwonDo crowds on the unbalanced back foot. Yeah. It seems the NSW govt is keen and supportive (der!) the only complaints so far has been from some local christians (der!).

I think this is an awesome move, and possibly could be a way to get Jackie Chan to spend more time in our country. Beats the panty-waist options like Martha Spewart Homes - where you move into a suburb she has total design control over. I'd rather do kata before breakfast thanks!

Not That Much of Any One Thing

I've been tumbling one or two words around in my mental spinner and rather than getting polished, they got kinda dry and withered. So that stuffed that post idea.

Yesterday was a big day - a lot busier at work than I had hoped for and weird oversized taffic on the road (the ARMY was on the move in oversize Aliens-inspired things that I can only guess were APCs) then late at night huge trucks all with the weird super-yellow flashing lights and OVERSIZE oversize signs. One had a yaht with a keel as high as the mast (heading inland!) and of course the invasion of the watertanks proceeds apace and half a house (not as unusual as it sounds). It's in the car when I see things like this, or hear something on the radio that clashes well against something in my head that I most miss having the linked, clever tools i now associate the keyboard with (god, remember the grim days when you used to have to know what a modem was?).

I did have a notebook in the car up until recently and would scribble things as I could grab them. After one day a car passed me with the whole load of the passengers utterly loosing it watching me driving and writing I did have a minor re-think. Audrey has a much differently shaped steering wheel than the road monster - it was kinda bench-like but the drawback was that I would be beeping the horn and not realise it. So in Audrey, I can't get any traction. I think I need to find one of those little pad setups that cabbies mount on the dash to the right of the wheel just next to the side mirror area. Anyway. writing and driving don't really mix.

So I'm feeling pretty good for no apparent reason, but I'll take that (thank you very much universe) and if there is some credit, we can chalk it up to dark chocolate (Jamacian Rum today) and just knowing that Neil Gaiman is out there in the world (go now, and feel the love) and that there is half of a new William Gibson novel waiting for me at home tonight (review, yes, I've promised a review. Stay tuned, or stay "Feeded").
Yeah. Life is good!

Bogan Lunch

When in Rome...

Completely out of prepared lunch imagination and home-assembled salads, I opted for the Bogan Lunch today.
Went to the "Hoe Inn" (pun-riffic name huh?!) and ordered a Veggie Burger (no onion, bbq sauce) and a chocolate milk (small). For $7.25 I got a meal roughly half the cubic size of my head. Full as a goog - I even ate all my crusts.
There's something to be said for burgers - and I haven't had the 3pm dizzy either.

Day before the day before the hump

Some Mondays are a bit more "monday" than others. You know what I mean - the ones following a long weekend - for example, can start with a bit of a false high (adrenaline/caffine) and then plummet quickly (some might say immediately) into a dystopian low (generally as I walk in and suffer the simultaneous onslaught of the flourescent lights and the smell of the place).

Eeuw.

But here I am and here we go - another week in the Trash City Sheltered Workshop. I've come in to find that some wag in the office has got me a packet of 24 colouring-in pencils via the corporate stationery order. Hil-Ar-ity.

Gotta get my head around it. C'mon! Slap! Slap!!
Reality hurts.

Serious Monkey

Marianne made me a monkey.
He has a big wrinkly forehead and is quite serious about life.
I love him already - he is on my Panel of the Interior (you know - the rabble of voices bickering and battling for the upper hand inside the echo-chamber of the head).
Marianne has put a face to something in me that often hoots with derision & I have had no name for. I am so very pleased with this toy and the mirror he holds back to me. 

From the outside it must seem very childish and 
infantile for a woman to play so readily. 
But really, I cannot think of anything more valuable or hard - won in my life than this fragile capacity.

There was a comment this morning about culture being the outcome of humans' ability to sustain play into adulthood. Andy had been explaining the concept of Neotony (in relation to Anime and manga art styles) and then *pop* out comes this dazzling sideways link and I thought of my grim monkey and new wind-up dinosaur, and the softening they facilitate and the stories and talks they spark and allow.

So much has hapened before lunch today. My head is a little foggy from the wine last night and I don't feel up to being witty or intelligent. I am just a squirrel faced with an overabundance of nuts. I've momentarilly run out of places to stuff goodies.
There is something very tasty in these two things to come back to, I'm sure it will keep.

Laughing

Last night started out with a modest dinner in a good qaulity family-run resturaunt. It was so good to see some familiar faces and I felt relaxed and happy. A busy day after what has been in some ways an ordinary week - but an ordinary week in which a lot of thngs shifted around inside me and I feel able to make new accomodations for the complexities of my life.

A bottle of wine was opened and shared.
Another bottle appeared with mian course -
thank you wine fairy -
i wasn't really in touch with the practical mechanics  of things by then. 
And that is the magic of a nightout, isn't it? 
Sharing a meal, telling stories, laughing and being loud. 
Laughing some more. 
Tipping and praising the patient, tired staff. 
Spilling into the street for circular goodbyes and
'which way are you going?' muddling.

Guilt-free pleasure and belonging.
Wonderful, just wonderful.

A Life in Words by David Malouf

' "One life, one writing," Robert Lowell proclaims in one of his poems in For the Union Dead. It's a condition any serious writer takes for grnated, and living up to it is what such writers use a  test of their integrity, of whether what they are tempted to write belongs to the real body of their work. In the end a writer is the work that appears under his name, not a personality or character; all that in time gets lost. What remains, embodied in the work, is a consciousness with its own peculiar pre-occupations, quirks, questions, doubts, insights; a set of responses to the isness of things, the great plural world of phenomena - light, colour, landscape, atmosphere, all the tumbling paraphernalia of livingand, more quiretly, a voice with its individual cadence.

It takes a little time to discover you may be a writer.What consolidates it for you, as they come (slowly sometimes) and accumulate, are the writings: poems, stories, the second novel rather than the first.

Until these are solidly there your being a writer is an aspiration more than a fact. After that it is the body of work that defines you and the body of work to which you are committed.'

(This is the opening to an essay titled "A Life in Words" by David Malbouf published in The Weekend Australian: Review Section May 5-6 2007)

So Over It

The olive harvest continues - it's been over a month - nearly six or seven weeks now I think. There's still about a fifth of the trees to go, and it's an Occam's Razor setup - the closer we are to the end the more there is to go. It feels like it will never end. The weather has stayed fine and hot so the trees are continuing to ripen. Ripening, and over-ripening. There's so much fruit on every tree now, a lot more like it should be, but almost half of it is too ripe and has to be thrown away (bruised, rotten or otherwised damed fruit can't be used).
In Mum's words "I'm so over it. We're finishing at the end of May".

That's how it goes. I think it's been a harvest of only about 3 tonne as of last weekend. I'm only involved on the weekends when I help grade (sort) the fruit. In a normal (non-drought) season, we would expect to get about 12 tonne. Frankly, we couldn't have gotten it off the trees this year. Of our regular pickers, about half didn't want to work this year, the people we selel the fruit too got a bee in their bonnet about only taking 'A Grade' so we've put a lot more to oil than we ordinarilly would (which makes us a lot less money), we've needed to make capital investments in a grading machine, and then further purchases on the right crates and tbs to use at either end of it. Dad's been getting radio-treatment for a face cancer every weekday, so he's doing a 200klm round trip every day, unless he's delivering our fruit to the oil press and then it's a 500klm day. I've never been so grateful to have an office job.

Kids, wear sunscreen. You so very do not want to get skin cancer.

Last night someone asked me if mum and dad make money.
No. No they don't.
Maybe if we got the 12 tonne instead of the 3 they would have a chance to recoup the costs - but even getting it off the trees and graded takes so much human effort. They're really banking on the mechanical harvesting techniques improving, and someone buying equiptment and being willing to lease it out for a week or so with a good driver for next year.

Of course, all the planning in the world won't help if there's no rain.
This farming stuff is heartbreaking in bad times.

Normal Things

Have just been doing normal things. Being sick sure puts "uphill" into the day to day doesn't it? I'm happy that all I have is a cold - but how much heavier my body feels when faced with stairs (or even getting up out of the recliner-rocker). Health is important people, give yourselves some protection from the winter sniffles!

I lashed out this week, got myself some slippers from BigDub. Can't actually remember the last time I owned slippers. Of course the cool weather has given way back to stunningly oppressive heat again, so there goes twelve bucks up the chute. I also upped the ante on the tissues in the house. We've gone from black and white homebrand (800 grain sandpaper anybody?) to 3-ply aloe vera infused nose-towls. Pure luxury.

Speaking of sandpaper, I'm feeling a little proud of myself tonight. I have done my first ever car-rust-sanding type thing. There's probably a name for this. Sanding out the rust, spraying it with that grey primer undercoat stuff, and then, I'll do the white coat tomorrow. Pretty clever huh? These manual skills things really get a workout up here. Why don't guys call doing car stuff craft? Just coz there's no yarn or needles, doesn't mean it's not craft. I also sanded my new set of shelves (I held the bits while Dad nail-gunned it into submission), stained it (with tea: Bushells - if you're interested) and gave it a first coat of estapol. I was feeling a little bit pleased with myself. Right up to the point where I got a bit disorientated and knocked the tin of estapol over. Gee that stuff gets really sticky really quickly.

At least the scones worked out for morno's.
Jam anybody?

Tick Tock

May already.

Last week I got a little car. Her name is Audrey and she is white. She's a 1981 Mazda 323.
Full moon last night - so bright I had to pull the blind across, but then, there were some other reasons I wasn't sleeping so well.

I have an interview today - I'm really nervous. I got up early to have an extra special shower and have extra time for getting dressed, and now I think I may have not put on the deoderant. ARGH!
Interview is at 2 pm, and because I am still getting to know my new phone, I'd forgotten to put the appointment in for 14:00 hours, so at 1:50 am my phone went ballistic warning me I had only 10 minutes to get to the board room for this meeting. It's just gone 8 am , and I'm trying to feel like it's early and there's plenty of time and everything's ok, and actually I just feel slightly panicked and can't breathe.

It's all over now - I think I did ok. The mananger of the position - who has interviewed people twice before and never filled the role- smiled a lot (including going and fetching me a strepsil when I had a coughing attack).

Stinky coughing girl seemed to do ok.

Mum's weaning the calves, and they've been bellowing for two days. Their throats are starting to sound like mine. A hoarse household.
Audrey doesn't have much of a radio, and my little pod thing is out of juice. I need some kind of major gadget audit/integration project.
Yes. There's also got to be rust-sanding projects.
I digress.

Actually today is one of those days where there's *only*digressions.

Philosophy Does Have its Consolations

Aphorisms are the fast food of philosophy, they give a great sound-bite and can stand in for actual conversations an extraordinary amount of the time. However, for the long hours alone with doubt, nothing has the staying power of full-strength philosophy - even for a dabbler such as myself.

Everything you can think of - every pain and ache and anguish. Poets have been there and carved the passage they took into the stones along the way. Philosophers eat those stones and eat the pain and eat down all the doubt and sit, alert and still while giant eggs of wisdom form in them and get squeezed out their eyes. Well, that's how it seems, although most philosophers seem keen to point out that they do their own laundry and washing up. So maybe those eggs need movement of the body to help them come out.

There is a feeling of exile at the moment. I am homesick again. I do have a plan for being here, it's not subtle or sophisticated - make money and set up the infrastructure for a life.
It is starting to come together too, and that's why I came - these things are attainable here. But of course they're *here*. I have the habits of a decade to appraise and choose to keep or not. The short-term plan is still in it's first third. One year or two is not so long int he bigger picture, after all.

Plans do unfold as long as you have them and tend them. Better hope I planned for the right things then!

Another Lowpoint

Some milestones should not be recorded, but i am feeling macabre this week.

In 1988 I purchased "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco from the Koala Park newsagency. It was the first grown-up book I'd ever handed over money for, and expanded my book buying from Kmart (where I'd picked up a copy of Shakespeare). Shakey hadn't counted as a grown-up purchase because I'd heard of him at school, and he was in the library there, and I knew there would be more of him to come. But Eco, well, that was something else altogther! Plus, $15 was a lot of money to me then. I could fill my car for $20 and buy a record for $12. I still have that book. It was within months of this that I discovered that there were still "bookstores". I had heard of them in my reading, but I had never been anywhere that had a whole store devoted to books - so at that time I thought it was an old-fashioned thing.

So I have never even considered buying a book from a news agent since then. Until yesterday. I was looking for The Monthly (only stocked in one news agent in area!) and in front of me was a rack of remainders - all penguins! There was the last a-format paperback by Orson Scott Card - "Shadow of the Giant" which must be number 3 in the Bean series, which makes it - what?- number 7? in the Ender world? Orson Scott-Card is making a chronology of books more comlpex than the Star Wars universe. Anyway, got the mag, and picked up the book ($7!) and there you have it. Read it in an overnight binge on SF and Ender backstory. My first book purchase from a news agent in 19 years.

Oh Kino! How I miss you so!

Last week I was at the Gallery of Modern Art - which is right next door to the State Library. I did browse their bookstore, but it was kindof the book equivalent of Gourmet Traveller magazine - good looking, glossy, plenty of ads, and really, largely unsatisfying for being spread too thin over too much bread.

There's plenty more to say about that day, but this is not the time.
The upside is, at least I read a book!! And it was good!! And i had fun!!
Yay. Shame it has that nasty black marker-pen slash on the bottom, but a little bit of fine sandpaper will fix that!

ANZAC Day

Here it is again, dawn services to commemorate the sacrifices of our brave soldiers and fighting forces in wars and military actions of all shapes and sizes but basically the landing at Channackle in the Dardanelles as part of an English offensive to piss Russia off, and put pressure on the Turkish.
Was it the right kind of pressure to put on a degenerate state?

I learnt something about our history this year that shocked me.

It's been a long time since I was shocked by atrocity, usually i feel resigned and numb to what has happened and seems like will always happen. Humans are such shit-bags so much of the time. Somehow, this cut through to me so that yesterday and today have been made fresh again. Perhaps this is old news for you, so patience please for those among us to whom this is new. Ordinarily I wouldn't try and parse something this big, I would refer you to a text or to a web page.
So here's Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_massacre
and another Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Day
and my story for today falls in the gap between the two.

The massacre and then our landing. Do we hold any responsibility for the actions of the Ottomans against the Armenians? Perhaps not - certainly not directly - but should this atrocity have it's place in our commemoration of this time? Absolutely!

After all, isn't that the point of ANZAC Day? That it's important to remember these things, and wars are bad but it's good people who fight them, and so on. But that doesn't seem to be what we do so much anymore. We seem to be glorifying, mythologising and embroidering a story about war, getting further and further from the messy truth of the matter rather than feeling the immediacy of loss and interrogating our present actions as a nation in light of the pain of the past.

Which is to say that the landing in that small shingle cove was wrapped up in a flow of other events that we deliberately stay blind to.

If we insist that we "came of age as a nation" in that landing, then we must remember the full nature of that phrase. A loss of innocence is important because it is about accepting the full range of costs an adult can understand. We were not just as a fighting force mis-used at the hands of our British masters, but as must accept our complicity in a bungled foreign policy where a whole race of people suffered the consequences. That is what has been lost along the way.

That our heartfelt pilgrimages to the cove (Yes, I went there, as so many people my age have done, and like them, I didn't hear of the Armenian massacre from my charming Turkish hosts) and the hair-raising on our arms and necks during these most solemn services are sincere is not in question, but the point of these services must also to refresh the sense of responsibility that we as citizens have for the actions of our warriors and their leaders.

Australian and New Zealand troops landed on a small cove, north of the main English action. They weren't quite in the right spot, but no real matter - warfare is like that. The ground rose steeply and their objective was to take the high ground. Soldiers since Sun Tzu would recognise the objective. A dawn landing would give them the advantage of surprise - it's all by the book. Our enemy was known to be ruthless, vicious and ready to defend their land, and they did so successfully.

Knowing they could not fight on two fronts, they slaughtered the civilians who were rebelling against mistreatment, and focused their energies on repelling the foreign invaders. We turned the Turks into a part of our fairytale about manhood and nationhood and for all our rhetoric about *remembrance* we seem deeply unwilling to remember the cost the invasion had for the Armenian people. They should be our partners in this story. They should have a place in our services and our myth.

It turns out that even now, the victors still get to write the history.
Today, as I made the traditional biscuits that will go up to Ma & Pa picking in the patch, and I know that Grandad would be coming home from the service, and even now, as I finish writing, my work colleagues are laying wreaths and listening to speeches, I could not think of anything but how horrible, how utterly saddening that slaughter was in thought and in deed. How interwoven it is with our small, blind role in a ill-managed battle, how it is but a thread in what was to become the Second World War, where Hitler remembered what the Turks had gotten away with when he had his own *troublesome* internal populations to deal with.

I honour our warriors and commemorate their personal sacrifices. As a thinking citizen, I also interrogate our role in wars, in battles, in invading other countries. If we do not remember the ugly consequences of some of these actions, we risk diminishing those sacrifices. Sun Tzu also pointed out that the best way to win was to plan to not fight - that negotiation, maneuvering, information, terrain, politics, so many things could be used by a good leader before force should be deployed.
Today I am sorrowful for the deaths of the soldiers on that harsh ground and am shaken that we choose not to remember the full actions of our enemies at that time in preference for glorifying our ability to take a beating. Not much of a myth to live up to when you look at it that way.

New Phone Parable

My old mobile couldn’t talk for very long anymore. You know how it goes – it would charge all the way and last forever if you only wanted to SMS people and tell the time, but call someone and within 5 minutes or so it’s bleating for some juice.
Poor little chook, and it feels like I’ve had it forever. The numbers are worn off the keypad and I can set the alarm in the dark half asleep.
So I went into the Telstra shop, and said “I’m out of contract and I want a new phone.”

Erin helped me out.
And by that, I mean that Erin confused the fuck out of me with a torrent of technojumbo and shiny things with far far too many features. Reeling and intimidated, I did what I did last time, and said “I want a nokia, and give me a fairly simple one.”
So here I am with the Nokia N80, which has more computing power than my first 3 computers *put*together*.
It’s not even officially a phone, it’s a “multimedia device”.

Actually, it’s kinda hard to use it as a phone – that command is about 5 or 6 actions down the menu structure. It has a little blue light that keeps flashing, it came with more cables than my laptop. It’s clearly a hardcore piece of technology and I’m not sure I should have it.

I’m starting to think I should have just scrounged around and got a new battery and keypad for my old one. At least I didn’t need my glasses on to operate it, and I could make a call with just my thumb. This is exactly how the Cylons end up destroying us isn’t it? This thing can connect to the internet – in fact I don’t know how to *not* make it do that. Maybe I’ll be okay as long as it doesn’t remember my credit card number. Maybe it has a swipe reader I haven’t found in the manual yet.

We may have to institute Turing tests for these posts.

Doubts

"I would like to be a writer - but how! My style is poor, my vocabulary lamentably small, and my ideas indistinct. Yet I do receive inspiration, by which I mean my mind becomes filled with an idea, and I want to develop it - then I am excited ... to achieve my goal I must (i) Discipline myself - no excesses - an artist should observe (ii) Note down my ideas and impressions (iii) Not be dependent on people."

Manning Clark 1942

(as quoted in 'The Monthly' March Issue 2007, pg 25)

More Poker Madness

My nieces were on Easter break last week and stayed with us at the farm so Sis2 could work.
Hilarity all 'round.

Then of course, they want to play games in the evening after dinner and before bed.
What do you think is the favourite game of the eleven and six year olds?

That's right - Texas Hold 'Em!

Yup, gambling teaches great numeracy skills, as well as process, rule interpretation and statistical likelihood. Not only that, but who to be a gracious looser, and in their case, non-gloating winners.

Little one had a bit of a tell though, when she had a strong hand she would say:
"I'm liken' *that* pot!"

Fold, fold, fold around the table.

User Pays

I wasn't all *that* shocked that I couldn't get tempeh in the supermarket. I did laugh at the woman's face when I went to ask them to order it, and this is Woolworths remember, and she said:
"We can only get what we already have."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA.
Okay - no love there.
So I went tot eh health food store - no, we don't have it.
"Do you ever have it?"
"Yeah, well you can special order it."
"Ok, fair enough. When is the next order and how much will it be?"
"No idea."

*sigh*
so I pushed ahead and placed the order, and three weeks later they've rung me - it's in.
Great.
"How much is it?"
(This is protein for me - daily serve type situation)
"It's a 250gram block and it's $6.65."
"You're joking."
.... silence....

No, they aren't. Vegos can fucking pay for the privilege thank you very much. Well, I'm sick of tofu to the point of homocide, so extortion seems like the easy way out.

On the way to the store, I drop by the photo place thinking to make a cd of all the cruft on my camera.
"Hi, how much is it to burn a CD?"
"How big is your chip?"
"Umm, I'll check - 512."
"Okay - that'll be $15."
"What. Does the size of the chip make a difference ?"
"Yeah! Takes a different amount of time to run it, and if it's a gig chip, then it's more than one cd."
"I'll skip it today thanks."

FIFTEEN BUCKS!!!?
What are they thinking? And I'm a "so-called" VIP member!

You want to make your own culture here - there's a surcharge.

I am very tempted to overuse the exclamation point.

"We Need to Talk About Kevin"

What a great book!
I love the epistolary form and it works so well for this contemporary story.
There's such tension between the size of the "polt" and the personal immedicacy of her letters.

Put it on your reading list.
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" Lionel Shriver.
(http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/guest/cgi-bin/bookseaohb.cgi?ISBN=1921145080&AREA=06)

Very satisfying fiction.

Nothing to Write Home About

Thankfully, yesterday afternoon was anti-climactic in the "personal danger - excitement of living" area.
Good.
There a many, many people in the world who would draw a great deal of inspiration and srt from such a moment, and I am not one of them. I am dull.

Today I saw an antique steam train in pristine "Harry Potter" condition chugging across the old rail bridge (which I had been told was no longer in use). I was in almost the identical spot as yesterday when I saw the bomber. Perhaps TC has it's own tiny Bermuda Triangle? How intriguing!! I may have to swing by it more often and see if I can catch glimpses of bogans throughout the ages.
I wonder if the marketing team have thought of this?
They could use the help - currently the "Top 20 Reasons to Visit Ipswich" lists (with a straight face) (in no particular order) golf (!), dining (!), walking tours (listed 3 times - city, bush & heritage), friendly clubs (local leagues club!) and, shopping (! yes, the people are standing out the front of a Wendy's Donuts!).
In this light the odd bomber sighting must be utterly gripping - better spice up this Bermuda Triangle link asap.

Bomber Passing Over

Well the long weekend whooshed by in the usual blur of feasting, working and a bit of booze. It was great to see my sisters and nieces and Grandad Luxton stayed over and cleaned us out of crosswords.
The olives are horribly light-on, and if we get even two tonne we'll be considering it a win (after revising our expectations down to about 6 tonne around October last year). So much rain was promised and so very very little actually precipitated. We're basically lucky our trees are alive, let alone managing to push out an average of about 10 to 15 kilos each.
Returning to work is always a bit of a strain on mondays, but after 4 days it can be so much harder, and it was. Although the farm is struggling, and the work is draining, it's such a continual pleasure to feel the ground under my feet and feel air all around me. The sky has been dazzling, and Riley drops at the end of his days into a contented stupor.

There were two other great highlights last week - just prior to the long weekend - Upstairs Tom came through town on the home-leg of a 5 week journey. He'd been across to Adelaide, up through the red heart, across to the reef and down. We had noodles out on the Bremer and the bats came up the river and it was great to hear him tell his stories of the trip and to see a familiar face. Upstairs Tom has a great laugh and a sly sense of humour. After dinner we had a beer and attempted a stroll. My first visitor! Glorious.

Then, a shock - I went to a book launch at the Art Gallery and - it was great!! A local (prolific) artist has self-published a book - on the creative process. Well. I was hobnobbing it with the TC Arts Crowd and didn't all 10 of us have a top night. The highlight of the night for me was hearing the guest speaker - Dr Gilbert Burgh (lecturer in philosophy) give a fairly radical point of view on the role of art in life. I did buy a copy of the book, as it looks great and will probably get a bit of air-time here once I've read it!

Wednesday is, of course, hump-day and needs no other reason to be mentioned, except that two very odd things have already happened. Yesterday I zoomed past a middle-aged man hitchhiking on the highway heading west. He looked a lot like Nicholas Higgens (from North & South) and that got me to thinking how he's probably doing it tough and here I am in the Road Monster, shuttleing backwards and forwards. So this morning at 7.15 am, I picked up a white-haired fellow who introduced himself as Barry Johns. I just accidentally typed "Batty" Johns and considered letting it stand. He was as full of shit as a nappy left at a picnic site. Sis2 saw me drop him off at the Amberley Roadhouse and SMSed me with dire warnings and imprecations against doing this kind of thing again. Now I thought that it was *being* the hitch-hiker that was dangerous. After all - how did he know that I wasn't some nutter with an intimate knowledge of the local scrub and a penchant for forensic science? He didn't. So my day started with a slightly random, barely thought through exploration of annonymous generosity and it's relationship to personal danger.

The personal danger theme was obliquely developed when on an errand out and about, a giant, fat, heavy plane dragged itself over the sky above me. Feeling small and vulnerable, I looked up at its belly and realised "those are *bomb*doors* above me." Right above me. Other people started taking photos - I was looking around for somewhere to run to. The immediate urge passed, and the bomber took a few slow orbits to find the right runway or whatever it was looking for. Apparently this is considered a bit of an attraction around here. Frankly, I found it disturbing. A lot more disturbing that Batty Johns who was *right*there* next to me for half an hour. But no-one wants to stop and take a photo of old Batty, or the unknown Nicholas Higgens of yesterday.

If things come in threes, this arvo ought to be a corker.

Wrapping up the "Festival of J9"

It's been a fully chockas coupla weeks and they came to a close on Sunday with a batch of Gingernuts and a GIANT catch-up with Sis2 and Maritiming Mez.

{contented sigh}

Let me give the action-packed synopsis.

Sat 24 March: Festival opens with a HOEDOWN party at Sis2's place. Costumes hired, racks of shot glasses, crates of booze, and stodgy camp-food to fill the most ravenous cowboys. Gun ratio of roughly 3 (cap) guns per child led to an authentic pandemonium. Costumes and decorations created desired ambiance leading to a poker tournament (of 14!!) filled with drunken claims of cheating, suprise pot scoops, and ultimately a first-time player/granny beating everyone out with her cool head and calm play.
Utterly Hilarious.
Brother in-laws both got rat-faced to the point of legless/sick. A job well done, I say.

Tue 27 March: Enter my first ever Texas-Hold'em Poker Tournament. One of 4 women in a room of 48 intense guys. AWESOME! Was *not* first person knocked out - made it to about midfield and had a ball. Took about 2 rounds before I stopped visibly shaking, and another 8 or so before I could join in the table banter. They kept apologising to me when they swore, and I let them. hehehehe. Wrapped the night up with a late-night session of baking and watching "The Libertine". *dark*swoon*.

Wed 28 March: The actual day of celebration. Diet thrown to the wind, I bake the giant carrot-cake of LOVE and throw myself a party at work. Bewildered workmates all to happy to join in the spirit and some bring food too - minor feast seems to spontaneously combust out of an empty desk. Very gratefully receive unexpected gifts from co-workers. Go to lunch with Sis3 and enjoy discovering *excellent* deli does exist. Mass sensations of peace and good-will to all mankind lasts until the coffee wears off (around 3pm).

Randomly scattered throughout week: Come home to find the mail has delivered boxes, cards, good wishes and lots of fun. DVDs and books feature highly and the slightly glamorous feeling of being loved by people not immediately present is deeply gratifying.

Friday 30 March: After work swing by S3's place and check in on brother-in-law and general hello-ness. Lovely to be able to do a drop-in for a half hour. S2 and kids at the farm all having dinner when I get back. Family, family, family.

Saturday 31 March: Outdoor concert of jazz and classical music in lush gardens of nearby luxury b&b starts in afternoon with local talent performing extrordinary original compositions (a la Michael Nyman) and then old standards etc. Wonderful music marred only by the usual propensity of humans at live events where it's a "picnic style" event to become sidetracked by their eskies and thence by chatting. Local mountains provided excellent backdrop. Glass of wine and comfy seat was perfect. Just perfect.

And so here we are. Thirty-six years old, and still happy-enough to own up to it.

Friday Night Special

Cruise home in the Road Monster to find Sister2 + nieces in place at the farm. Kids soaking up the Simpsons and S2 in the car mellowing out. Fortuitously, I had stopped off at "The Glades" to pick up a 6pack (undoubtely more to come on the salubrious *Glades* at another time) of Melbourne Bitter to wash away the worst sins of the week.
We moved onto the front porch and sat in the gloom shooting off our mouths about how crap things had been, and who's workmates are the bigger dickheads. Pa & I cracked a brew each, Ma arrived home - the kids washed in and out giving us updates on the TV dramas unfolding. Two beers in, Kirralee (the 6 year old) goes, "Can we play a game?" which is usually a prelude to an enforced round or two of Uno.
"Sure sweety, " I saw, feeling two-beers generous, "You go get it."
Off she scuttles, and just moments later prances back in holding aloft her mighty prize - my poker chips set.

Let's hope this one doesn't make it to show and tell.
So we set up, deal out and she's into it. There's 6 of us including the girls and we go quite a few hands, with the little one scooping the pot more than once. That's got to be the highlight of my week - coaching my tiny niece on the correct ettiquette for calling, raising, going "all in" and how to announce she whopped yer ass.
"Now you say, 'two pair, aces high.'.... good girl!!"
Yes sir, that's just brilliant.
Particularly when she beat out a full house with a straight.
Makes that shitty day in the office fade into the background.
Let's crack open that last stubbie and put the feet up.

Cheers.

Truth Blurt

So JennaBear and I are kneeling on the floor either side of a desk to move and stack a dozen boxes. She on the populated side of the desk, where the man chuckles and goes for his belt saying "While you're down there...."
as you do.
And little JB goes all red - she's a true innocent.
In the past this guy has told me that his partner's pillow talk with him is that he "has slutty eyes". Romantic!
So I say "You really are the Sluttiest guy I've ever met."
Not one to shrink he bounces back "I doubt that."
Without editing I say "Well, let me clarify - you're the sluttiest guy I've ever met that I haven't had a one night stand with."

Kapow.
I win another round - sort of, and JennaBear has to go to the bathroom and splash her face with water.
heheheheheheee.
Just don't care today, after being told that my jeans are *too* casual for casual friday. Frayed hems are not ok. Just not done.
Other people in this place are wearing see-though negligee tops and sandals today.
*sigh*
Go Figure.

OMG "Camo" wool in Big Dub

Having recently finished the Giant Nana Rug (see previous week) I was vulnerable to the idea that I was project-free. (You know this to be a lie - by the nature of craft-nerd, this is *always* a lie. But I digress).
A note in the lunchroom caught my eye - poor tiny AIDS babies in war-torn Africa need our help - they go home wrapped in newspapers for warmth - little teeny blankies are needed for them. Some good soul in the Trash City Sheltered Workshop has started up a knitting circle, and here's a one page sheet of instructions and please make one or donate wool or whatever charity you can spare.
"That sounds pretty feel-good", I thought to myself. "I can use the left-over wool from the rug."

Yeah. Right.

I would have sworn on my first editions that I was going to use left-overs - honestly!! Really & Truly!! But then I started thinking about the other wool I had, and that reminded me of how many things were still stuck on needles, and then how, you know - it's meant to be autumn now - there should be new wool in the stores, and I just *happened* to be walking past the craft store and so on and so on. You know the pitiful addict's mantra of circumstance all too well.

Suffice it to say that I have bought a new ball of wool.
But I HAD to.
No, Really, *had* to.

"Camouflage Wool" it promises on the label - yes you can now knit cams (stay tuned for a photo - this has to be seen to be believed). We've all seen varigated wool in olive and brown tones - but this is something else altogether! Where is this going? Craft while on active duty? "Make it yourself" creative outlet for troops on R&R!? Suddenly I have the irony equivalent of vertigo - I *want* this wool, but the official next project is a little bunny rug for an AIDS baby from war-torn Africa. It is, would be, and always will be just *wrong* to undertake this project using Camo wool. Surely the world does not need this product. Yet it is so post-modern that everyone wants it. All other balls of wool - funky purples and groovy blues were chockas - I snaffled one of the last 5 or 6!!

Looks like I'll be using left over wool anyway for the little babies - I gotta knit me a new beanie!!

Cat in a Vat

There’s been a couple of corkers on the farm lately.

Last weekend Warren (our Black Angus Bull) who had been behaving himself so well, got a devil inside him for the cows that moved into the neighbour’s paddock and decided to go head-to-head with Michael, the big red bull who's herd it was. Warren walked through a few fences to get there - sprang sprang went the barbed wire - "Oh Fuck" went our neighbour Peter who was between Warren and the cows.... For the next hour Ma & Peter chased Warren up and down the long paddock *in*their*utes* trying to herd him back into our property. A couple of times he charged the utes and things were a bit heated. In the end, Warren had a few hours to try his luck, until Michael sent him limping home battered and repentant. There was no love waiting for him here though, his little hijinks have eant him a one-way ticket to the sale yards as soon as he heals up.

Zac, who *loves* to find odd places to sleep in, was experimenting in the shed and had a near escape with the whole "curiosity killed the cat" meme when he fell into an open vat of olive oil. Nearly used up, the vat had been opened to equalise the pressure and assist in the removal of the last foot of oil. It's a vat almost as tall as I am and stainless steel. Actually, I've often thought that it looks a lot like the second stage of a propulsion system. Anyway, with attention diverted (perhaps due to Warren's frolicking around trying to mate with utes) the lid was left off, and just a covering sheet over the top.
Yes, CAT in a VAT. Zac didn't die, coz Ma heard an unearthly howling and scrabbling (Cat's Claws: Nil, Stainless Steel: One) but it was close. After we got over the shock, and the mess - try and imagine a large cat dunked into oil - those penguins from the ValDez have our sympathies all over again - the sheet pulled in after him, things knocked over, and then mopping and bathing the cat. It has now begun to enter into near-mythical status in the Family Story Parthenon.

In amongst all these happenings, my moment of spiritual clarity that happened on monday night has been (probably rightly) lost. It came about thusly - working late (conferring citizenship an another 68 keen new Ipswichians) then scooting down the freeway - reflecting on a crappy, long day. Then realising it was a new moon and that new energy should be due to cascade forth. Yes. Profound. In synchronicity with this thought, the Road Monster cut the lights. Everything but the dash readout telling me I was speeding went to black. For a moment my heart poised, debating if it should beat again or not, then reason kicked in.
"It's ok" I calmly told myself, "the headlights of that oncoming semi-trailer are sufficiently lighting my path" and indeed they were, and it did, and then reason reached for the Hazard Lights button, and in a very slow orange strobe we were able to slow safely down to the verge. Whereupon all the lights blinked back into life.
Genius.
So yes, after the adrenaline and multiple possible near death moments, there is a sense of fresh energy in my life this week. Life, if not great, is always endearingly chaotic.

Moderately Self-Referential

Looking to lighten up, I turn, as so very many of us do, to some favourite bloggers out there and lo, I discover this *hil-ar-ious* listing of reasons people have given for not blogging:
http://www.jennshreve.com/thefblog/2006/10/sorry-i-havent-posted-in-awhile.html

This is a huge page by the way.
I can't believe how much this has cheered me up.

Along the way I also found this link to a petition page to get this character his own action figure:

http://www.geocities.com/ocb75/

Bwahahahahahaaa! Ah, that's better!!

Craft Triumph

Sunday saw me finish my largest ever craft project. I started a crocheted Nana blanket at the beginning of the year as a gift for the spare room. Ma & Pa's spare room is all done in lavender and white so naturally the bedspread blanket was in red, yellow and orange. Immediate Visual Headache. So I started a simple alternating lavendar/white one to replace it.

After countless balls of wool and the purchse of a rubber thimble for my thumb, it's done. It even looks good too! The IVH has been consigned to the back of the couch and if only all my crap wasn't bundled up everywhere, the spare room would look *beautiful* in a very *cottage* kindof way.

The only tricky bit turned out to be levering the dog and the cat up for long enough to do the big switcheroo.

Other craft on the weekend was focused around the kitchen - I made a carrot cake which seemed to evapoate off the plate, hash browns from scratch, pizzas and an amazing beans dish. Very satisfying in the tummy and a pleasure to create.

This week I'll test out a corn-fritters recipe and maybe continue with the other blanket I've started (it's based on those pink galahs - they seem to be everywhere here).
Roll on winter!

St Pat's

The Wearing of the Green is a political, religious and cultural statement in Ireland.
Here it is fun - a theme-day for bored cubicle inmates.

I wore it anyway. Green is my new black.
I got thinking about flags, and how many things they mean, and how all these people who know to wear green for this day never hear about William of Orange (even I didn't know for a long time that my family is/was Protestant - how secular is that!!?!) or think about what that white inbetween the two colours on the Irish flag really represents. For so long the best could be a cease-fire. Should one day peace and reconciliation be reached, do you think they might be able to let go of that divided flag and all the blood that's washed through it and take a new one?

Could we?
I think in the Australia I know, that would never happen. In the Australia I can image it would be embraced with a spirit of hope, courage, optimism and growth. The middle path - we''d make another box in another corner, as with the Union Jack. That's what we end up doing when all the ignorance and fear gets to whittle down good ideas, we box things up.

On another track entirely, I was in the greens (spring tones thank you, not the Robin of Sherwood look) with Pa at the hardware store, trying to make conversation with the man behind the counter who has a nice smile.
"Happy St Patrick's Day" I venture.
"Oh, is it?" He says.
"Yeah. If you want any snakes dealt with, today's your day." Trying to get some momentum.
"You like green anyway, don't you." Oh. I realise I always wear the same shirt on the weekend.
"Ha ha. Yeah. Don't really need an excuse to wear green huh." Crash and Burn. again.

Ah Well

We were meant to be getting broadband via satellight or something cool like that installed at the farm today. Our appointment for Wednesday got bumped to Friday, and then we didn't hear and didn't hear for what time to expect the technicians.
This was happening under a subsidy from the government, one of these *clever country* type initiatives. Mum has been jigging around the house for weeks looking forward to this. KA got it a few weeks ago, although she had to pay for the full installation as she was within 5klm (ish) of the exchange. It's rocked her world, I can tell you that. So many of us live parts of our intellectual, social, cultural and entertainment lives through this technology that the speed and ease we can access it (or not) is so effecting. Instant access to Google and Wikipedia even just for a few hours a day is so very addictive. On the farm all this happens between real world activities. Mum mustered the cattle by 9.30 this morning so she could work with them around dealing with installers. She did the shopping yesterday (instead of today) and was muttering to herself last night while on Ebay "not like this tomorrow, I can tell you that" as each tiny stamp-sized picture took nearly a full minute to appear.

Can you feel where this is going? She rang to see if there was an appointment time yet: they aren't coming. The subsidy has run out. Apparently we don't need to be too clever.

We heard this week that the subsidy for rainwater tanks may have run out too (I'll leave the obvious puns to the papers).

It's not just the elements we battle here.
Ma is pretty pissed, I can tell you. I feel a lot more cynical about the world, so I don't feel as personally let down as she does. Neither of us is showing that bouncy can-do spirit that salt-of-the-earth types are meant to exude. I think I'm more pepper than salt in this regard - a lot less useful and can go stale. On the other hand, it is an election period, they'll find money somewhere probably. Things will work out ok.

Fundraisers

So a guy at work brings in his fundraiser for his kids' school. They're going to buy some more playground equipment - do some awareness raising about health and fitness activities. You know, the whole child obesity thing. Fair enough.
There's a lot of fundraising goes on in offices like this. There's the chocolate bars in the fridge for a dollar that goes towards the Christmas feast, there's the books in the staff room that go to a playgroup, there's the guy going to shave off his quiff (Elvis impersonator) for leukemia, there's the teddy bears, pens and bracelets for every special day you can think of, and a pie and lamington drive for Mission Australia.
So here we are buying stuff to raise money to get kids active, and what are we buying? DVDs. Yep, don't sell the couch off just yet! Of the 3-page-long list, one and a half pages are kids films. There's no exercise ones either (in case you think I'm being a smart arse), not even Pumping Iron, let alone, you know, "Bollywood Pilates" or something like that.

Love it.

Oh yeah, I'll be putting my order in ....

Got a Few Roos Loose

This morning, pulling out of the driveway, I disturbed three roos who had been feeding the long paddock.
How rude of me.
They took off, parallel to the road, so we all cruised towards the corner at about 40klms an hour. For what seemed like ages I was in my own little mini documentary as I could look just out my window and see their amazing legs and tails and heads and paws bounding along right *there*. They tired of the game fairly quickly and cut across through the fence and off towards the water hole.

The whole thing lasted for only a minute or two, but it's been with me all day. This is exactly what is brilliant about being in the country.

DVDs are Different to VHS

Der!!!

But think about *why* really* when they have the same story on them.
The same movie, dialogue, shots, plot, score, actors and scenery.
It's not just that we tend to be watching them on *much* larger tellies these days, with surround sound - there's something that dvd can add to the story - I can *feel* it.

Let me give you an example of how my own consumption has changed. In 1986, a film came out called "Highlander" and it was neat. It had a rockin' score, a huge scary bad guy, and swords!! (Yeah, pretty sword-starved in those days) or, if that is too groan-worthy for you, another favourite film of the time was Dirty Dancing (no link needed). So we watched these films on VHS over and over and over. I was 15 then - I didn't have a car, I didn't have any study  load, I had part-time jobs that my folks had to drive me to, so they were local labouring things, and tv, if you can believe it, was even more barren than it is now (we can debate that another time if anyone feels the need). So each of my sisters and I had at least 15 to 20 tapes that we would tape stuff onto so we could watch things.
Now, I'm not talking about the ability of a DVD to jump to chapters - we had a time code on the VHS and we knew how to use it. I'm not talking about the "making of" stuff (which I *love and watch loads of) even though that always seems to include the directer 
wanking on about how critical the story was to the core of the vision of the 
crew and the love-in and blah blah blah, coz, that was available too. 
(Check the making of "Goldfinger" for an amazing analogue version of the
 'making of' featurette).

No, I think that there's two things that particularly suggests the future will be very different.

One is language. DVDs are much easier to add subtitles too. We don't notice this so much because we're English speakers consuming films made in English. But go through your favourite films, and look at the wealth of languages you could experience them in. This is one thing that hollywood does much more than the English film industry. Why would a region 4 disc have Hungarian rather than Mandarin or Malay? I'm not sure, and I've distracted myself from my point. They have subtitles out the wa-hoo, and about 50% of the time, a whole 'nother dubbed language too!
You can watch the "Fifth Element" in French. "V for Vendetta", "Starship Troopers" and "Batman Begins" in German. Yes way.
Also in German: "Unforgiven", "Black Rain" and Blade Runner. 
Look at the stories we're sharing with other people!! 
Name a German film you've seen with English subtitles.
No, "Nightwatch" was Russian.
"Der Himmel Uber Berlin" is the only one I can think of - sure I've been out of the loop for a while, but I'd love to be corrected.
There's a huge number of people who are hungry for inspiration and entertainment, and they aren't waiting for free-to-air to provide it anymore. SBS is onto a good thing - there's a lot more stories out there about to come to English speakers - if we're lucky.

Secondly, is the sheer portability of the format and the breadth of machines it's loaded into. DVD players are tiny, they are light, they plug into nearly anything, and they masquerade as anything from laptops to Xboxes.
Yesterday, Lee loaded an episode of Battle Star Gallactica into his *phone*.
His phone!!

Our stories, the universes we love to escape to or emulate can be with us wherever we can re-charge our phone. My old VHS could never do that - I had to deal with reality all through the 80s, and most of the 90s....

Actually, there's been a slight historical inaccuracy for part of this blog, we had a Beta, not a VHS for the first few years.

Bankrupt

Trash city is bankrupt.
No - there's plenty of cash floating round - despite the appearance of poverty. That's the secret to this place - it's *trashy*, not poor.

I mean that it is ethically and intellectually (and therefore artistically and aesthetically) bankrupt. To look around and see people living in squalor, in filthy clothes with their skin nearly peeling off their necks and arms from malnutrition and grime, loading bulging trollies of plastic food in shiny foil packages into the boots of their giant new sedans with the optional metallic paint and spoilers is to see the human condition in a cold light.

This city is a place where every discount store chain (and many independent ones) has a shop - a large one. You know the ones I mean - "Everything $2!" - container loads of crap from China: plastic ponchos, toiletry sets in presentation bags, tourist shirts, tat, tat, and more tat. It's all here, and it's doing a roaring trade. These stores make up the majority of shopping in Trash City. Apart from what passes as *food* here of course. This is heartbreaking. There is a huge amount of wealth here. Natural resources (mining!), clean air and space, industry (jobs), military bases (more jobs), a river, fertile soils ... and yet these people choose to make themselves into trash. Seemingly all for the want of the idea that it could be any other way.

I remember one day standing on a worn carpet on a hand-made balcony looking down and out over a vista of stinking pits. I had never seen anything like it in my life and it shocked me at every level. These pits were utterly gorgeous to look at, and in pictures they're very pretty. But each adobe pit was filled with stinking, sulpherous chemicals made from dung and urine, and in every single pit, was a child. Those children were doing the legwork (literally) of the famous leather of Fez which is all hand-cured, hand dyed and hand sewn, or was. Now they have a lot of sewing machines (so they can whip you up a knock-off Prada bag by lunch). So this was *obviously* a hard life.
In Morocco for example, nothing would go unsalvaged. Everything would be put to use - over and over again until it decomposed in service. Even a scrap of paper, that one might wrap a sandwich in, was a resource with other uses to be fufilled. Yet, this place felt rich. Rich in culture, rich in care, rich in purpose. On that trip I saw a lot of poverty, and I felt like an ignorant and foolish person, becuase at nearly every interaction I was at a loss to match the dignity and self-possession of the people I met.
To see the denizens of Trash City deliberately squandering themselves and their wealth to create a plastic bubble of failure and miserable consumption denigrates the honour of all those people in the world, and in our history who truely do suffer and strive to live and to thrive. My pain at seeing it must be as a mere droplet in the greater spirit's pain of this travesty.

This is what lies behind so much of my anger at this place - is the pain of the waste and the ignorance that if remedied could so easily form these exact same people and resources into a vibrant, soulful, healthy place.
Instead, I see their own leaders gull them at every turn and bank upon their ignorance and plight. I am disgusted to my core and sick with the stench of failure.
I have been unable to wake even my closest co- workers up - to even the suggestion of change. I've always belived that the personal *is* political, that living one's beliefs is the first, best
contribution to make. In this place, all of my beliefs are under siege.
Do I have the strength to stay on, or do I beat a strategic retreat?

The Treason of the Artist

 "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it.

"But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold, we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."

-Ursula Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,"
in*The Wind's Twelve Quarters*

The Long Summer Days Drag By

One of my work colleagues yesterday was struggling to describe a particular piece of magnificence that she saw mounted on the bonnet of the Governor’s car. Hands flailing around, she was starting to get quite flustered – apparently it was very cool – whatever it was.
“What did it look like?”
“Kinda round – you know, the Queen’s hat!”

the *Queen’s*hat*


“That would be called The Crown.”
“Whatever – it was really cool.”

Today, she asked, and remember we are the events team here, today she asked if anyone knew when ANZAC Day was going to be.

We all have our challenges.

Drudge

Wednesday. Hump Day.
Kirsty brings around the payslips at morning tea. Not many people have to wonder what they’ll spend it on, or even have to look to know who much will be there. It’s still enough of a novelty for me that I enjoy tearing along the little perforations and reading how much tax I paid, and perhaps even circling the amount that will be in my account some mysterious time tomorrow. But not today. Today is Hump Day and the day before pay day.
Today my goal is to stay awake and respond to my name when it is called.
It’s 4.40pm – the office has emptied out apart from the lifers.
Made it.

Caricatures & Stereotypes

It's one of the great ironies that every now and then one comes across a person who reminds one of where a stereotype of a personality originates. When this happens, it is so very hard to treat that person with respect, with compassion, with even a straight face. In fact, I find it downright hard not to stare at them in a horrified/appalled/intrigued trance, wondering what utterly predictable thing they'll do next, forgetting that they are in fact a sentient creature, not some lab rat. A creature who can respond, maybe slap one in the face. That kind of thing.

This then was very nearly my undoing in the midst of my first triumph in Trash City. A chance to show my chops in the workplace, take on some responsibility, send some unproof-read faxes, lick a few envelopes off my own initiative. You know what I mean - put it out there. And it was all going just fine until The Mayor turned up.

Imagine The Mayor of a small time town, an E.B Farnum if you will, a local boy made good. Someone with a touch of the TV smiles about him, someone to whom no vote might be too small to chase, no photo op too demeaning to consider NAY demand! Imagine that here in Trash City he likes to know that his name is gold, that he's the man, he's your *mate*. And he is, for he is The Mayor. It's a blue-singlet town, an old style safe Labor seat (with a white flush of Pauline Hanson washing through it every few years) and it's grass-roots party politics all the way. The doctrine of the separation of powers is really only considered a suggestion in Queensland. Really, every pollie seems to consider themselves a benevolent *father* (dictator sounds so harsh) who doesn't need to be encumbered by all those useless rules that lesser mortals must swelter under.

Forgetting all that I had learned in life, in politics and in corporate survival, I made a mistake. I barred the entry of a minor to a licensed premise. Sorry, let me rephrase that: I momentarily interrupted the consumption and enjoyment of a future voter, and a person of influence in the life of an existing voter. Fool. Fool that I am I made it worse when questioned by TM - I said it was the law.
Well.

There is no other law than HIS whim - clearly my wits had fled. I was caught in a dance, not quite as old as time, but certainly not too much younger: it was a predictable crash in slow motion. Floating above my stupid, possibly pointless body, my soul watched and could not stop watching as this simple scene unfolded.

1. Happy People
2. Future Voter given boundaries for behaviour
3. [no complaint WHATSOEVER made by anybody]
4. Storm cloud over brow of TM
5. Question
6. Statement
7. FURY
8. Deferment to senior officers
9. FURY PLOTS REVENGE
10. Staff continues to run event and go on to bump out 2 hours after TM's departure

Epilogue:
1. He calls for my dismissal
2. Senior officers protect me on the grounds I am *still*useful*
3. Grudging acceptance

End of Scene: Applause

Have you every met a petty tyrant? It's fascinating to see how they manipulate, threaten, sulk, bully and fake their way through life. It's not pleasant at all to physically be near, or indeed to experience working with the kind of people who can survive it. It's also constantly intriguing that someone can be such a stereotypical [expletive] and not seem to have any self-conciousness about that at all.

Another day - another facet revealed of this mysterious gem: the Sheltered Workshop of Trash City.

Family BBQ in Booval

We all ended up at Yvj & Don's place today having a barbie in the 34degree heat, slamming back dad's moonshine, telling tall tales, and whinging in a freeform, group kinda way. The nieces stayed ensconced in the room with the digital media, making forays away from the Simpsons bonanza only for sangas & sauce, or to make plaintive requests for ice-cream. Good on em. After Don bought the house, the *first* thing he got was a giant barbie, and today in his bright new blue singlet, he was the very picture of emancipated australian manhood. Proudly pronging the sangas to get the juices squirting out of 'em, tinny in the other hand, he was the man of the moment. They're all moved in, he's had a few repayments, and the plans for the renos are now hitting high beam - just as the money has pretty much troughed out. They're going to have to live with that hideous bathroom for a while longer.
But this is a success story! Moving here marks a net increase in their assets, even though the general quality of life has taken one to the kidneys culturally speaking. It means a house and a yard, and neighbours extra meters away on each side, room for kids, and a shed! A Shed! Yeah, Nahh, today's it's all good, and it was bloody brilliant to sit back and tuck into me veggie burger (the forbidden pleasures of a fluffy white roll included) , me can of lemon squash, and me family around me doing what they do best. Sure I got heat stroke and nausea, but that passes. I'm left with sore cheeks from laughing and a day spent together.
Noice.

The Brass Monkey

isn't it amazing what you learn on navy websites....
You have probably heard the expression 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey' , but what does it mean?
In the 17th and 18th centuries, cannon balls were stored on the decks of a war-ship in a pyramid shaped pile using a frame called a monkey to keep them in place. Sometimes these frames were made of brass, which could contract substantially in very cold weather and the balls would roll out of the frames. Hence the expression!
http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.3806

Piggsie

The Pig type is usually an honest, straightforward and patient person. She is a modest, shy character who prefers to work quietly behind the scenes. When others despair, She is often there to offer support. This type of person is reserved with those they do not know too well, but as time passes and they gain confidence, those around them may discover a lively and warm-hearted person behind that mask of aloofness. Despite those born in the year of pig having a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, they have few close friends who understand them and share their inner thoughts and feelings. It is easy to put trust in pig type; he/she won't let you down and will never even attempt to do so. Such people simply want to do everything right according to social norms.
It is important to remember that these people are not vengeful creatures. If someone tries to take advantage of him/her, the pig type tend to withdraw to reflect on the problem and protect themselves. All they need in such situations is a little time to find a constructive way to respond. The people of the pig type are conservative creatures of habit. They dislike being made to travel too far from familiar surroundings, unless it is a trip to the countryside. They love nature and are never happier than when they are out somewhere, far from the city.

There is a tolerant and peaceful side to their character. Such people are never afraid to allow others their freedom of expression; they do not want to cause arguments and if there is any way to avoid arguing, they will probably take this option. They are not weak, however, and if the situation forces them to fight these people will rise to the occasion, whether it is to defend themselves or those close to them. People of the Pig type are the most admired by others.

Happy New Year

I meant to write this on the weekend – but here we are – Happy Year of the Golden Pig!!

In the past I have not usually volounteered the information that I am a pig, but part of being me now, is all about owning the whole package. Giant hips, poor knees, failing memory - all part of who I am. Likewise, the pig. BTW I much prefer pig to boar. Sounds too much like bore for my taste, so if you could, thanks.
Anyoldhoo, further to my previous meanderings on being a muslim in orbit (thanks to Beth for her comments), I read today a much more balanced view, and this was either on the BBC or a webpage called "the conservative voice" which I found from an *image* search. Sure Reagan and Schwarzennegger are both pigs too, but that doesn't mean anything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6368383.stm

"For the first time in its history, Indonesia introduced a special set of postal stamps to mark the Lunar New Year. But concerns over Muslim sensitivities led the postal service to drop plans to put a large pig on the stamps. It chose a Chinese temple instead.
"We took the middle path," said Hana Suryana, director of the Indonesian postal service."

We took the middle path - what a great quote. That guy has a future in politics!!

Anyway - Happy New Year!
I'll put all the great stuff about being a pig in another post.

Occidental & Oriental

Watched "Last Samurai" last night - Yes, I know it's Tom Cruise sans 4111 etc, but is actually good. Makes a nice nod to Kurosawa without getting bogged (excuse the pun) down in it, and managed a hollywoodesqe ending without going OTT in that direction either. but that was *after* they did a rosebud.
huzzah!
and it had ponies.
kinda like a western in japan.
oh deadwood! oh firefly!
maybe it's because i largely missed out on the film-noir thing for the "honourable man in a dishonourable world" trope until it was too late (and no ponies, ever, in noir) but was suckled on westerns, and then westerns in space (star wars 4, 5 & 6, outlands, alien2).
then yesterday, i googled deadwood + feminism, and whatdya know?! but there's a call for papers.
hmmm.
am i up to it?

mobile friends

people go travelling and some people I know are doing so *right*now*
these links will end up in y sidebar, but for the moment here they are:
Roger & Stringy: http://www.ballofdirt.com/members/77143.html
Marianne & Owen: http://www.maritiming.vox.com

One hot, the other cold.
Viva la difference!!

ps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Where's Mecca?

Inspired by Lee's story of finding an arrow in a drawer while staying in a hotel in Malaysia, I decided to try and find out what direction Mecca is from our farm (nearest town Aratula). My Dad insists that it's just west or north, or something equally simplistic (and WRONG) and naturally we didn't have an atlas to hand (curse my stuff being in boxes!!!). So I did what we all do, I turned to Google and was *immediately* sidetracked by the practical difficulties faced by Islamic astronauts.

Then, I discovered the CIA World Fact book (!) has a listing of major places latitude and longitude: Mecca (city) Saudi Arabia 21 27 N 39 49 E, but having only read Neal Stephenson, and not being a geography geek in my own right, I can't immediately tell if this is enough minutes of accuracy, or how to make a bearing from here (despite having my compass with me right now). Strangely, the CIA factbook has no listing for Aratula, or even Ipswich. Mustn't be the hotbed of libertine activism I'd hoped for.... but they do have Brisvegas. Brisbane (city) Australia 27 28 S 153 02 E. Excellent.

Roughly then, we'd need to go 114 degrees west and 48 degrees north to get to Mecca from our place. That's West North-West isn't it? Maybe now I need one of those fandangled maritime compass things. Or, I could just go to the library at lunchtime and look at an Atlas.

Basically though, I'm surprised there's not a simple tool where you put your city in, and it tells you which way to face. Don't you think that's odd? I just think it's polite to at least have an idea.

Unexpected Valentine Wish

Oh Valentine, my valentine, my love for you does flow
I wag my tail and shed a tear whenoff to work you go
I mope arounf the house all day and chew on an old bone
'till 6 o'clock when my heart's delight comes driving back to home
I run & jump, you scratch my back, & throw squeaky time after time
You are my joy my master- you are my Valentine.
Whoff! Whoff!

Riley.

(as transcribed and faxed to me at work by Dad)

Howard's Foot in Mouth

What a blessing Howard has given us this week, a gaffe so monumental that no-one can ignore it, he can't say "I was misunderstood" (like last week over climate change), that even the Americans have turned the flame of their scorn on him. Hehehehehe, and he does love the Americans so.
Here's a quote from the paper "Mr Howard sparked the row on Sunday when he said: "If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.""
Genius.
Does he thinkBush will send him flowers for this? Meant perhaps to deflect attention from the mounting pressure to take actual action on climate change, Howard has debased his own credibility beautifully. Is he loosing his version of mojo? If I prayed, I'd be praying now that he comes out swinging on this one and buries himself long before we need to deal with another election.

Dubbya

There was always talk about Dubbya in Sydney - or at least in the circles I was in. Maybe that's part of the Inner West lifestyle - being engaged with world politics and the issues our country embroils itself in. Reading "Rabbit Syndrome" by Don Watson is a great stimulation to think about our relationship with America in a different light and with more context. It's a great essay, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. I've been thinking longingly of lingering over a coffee up on King street and discussing the interesting point in it about our constitution, and America's love of capital punishement. But I digress.
Here in Ipswich there's a lot of talk about Dubbya too. But Dubbya here is an object of reverence, gratitude, almost love. Yes, granted this is the area that spawned the One Nation party but that's not quite it either. You see, it's Big Dubbya who really rules here. If you can't buy it at Big Dub, well, it's probably not worth having, or you're a wanker. Opening hours are right up there with interest rate rises as discussion topics. Not even Satate politics have much of a profile here it seems, unless it's water. Everyone suddenly has an opinion on water. There's no interest in national concerns or foreign policy, but say out loud that you'll be heading to Big Dub and there's a clamour of input, offers for tips on parking, suggestions about when's best, or how to handle the food court. The only ace over Big Dub here is Maccas, still and forever the golden-crowned king of aimless consumption.

Many Faces of Ipswich

I had originally thought to call this "the other ipswiches", but just try saying "Ipswiches".
I constantly feel slightly pissed "Ips swicsh Schitty Counssil" all starts to run together and sound suspiciously like too much Bundaberg Rum. But back to business: Ipswich the Worldwide Phenomenon!

1. United Kingdom: Britian, Suffolk, on the Orwell Estuary on the North Sea.
2. United States of America: Massachusetts, inland from Plum Island Sound on the Atlantic Ocean.
3. United States of America: South Dakota. Anbody?
4. Australia: Queensland, on the Bremer River.
5. United States of America: New Hampshire. This one is called "New Ipswich" Yeah - like that helps.

Please insert some homily here about quilts or tapestries and the wonderful threads of meaning we carry from place to place and link ourselves to each other across time and history blah blah blah.

Pain of New Shoes

I've known I've needed new shoes for the last 8 weeks - ever since my other pair's sole broke laterally, and the sole rubber wore through and started falling off in clumps. Yeah - that's time - but still I clung to them. Until I was seduced yesterday by the cutest little flats in the world - and on sale too the vixens! Last pair - in nearly my size!
So now I am hobbling around with the gorgeous shoes that are just too tight across the top and nipping at the back and stabbing that right foot that is a quarter size bigger than the left. It's ok though, I have the old trusty pair here for in another hour or so when the pain is too much to bear. As I polished the old shoes this morning, it came back to me the first day I wore them, and how tight and unhappy they were to be leaving their box, a memory long faded in the 2 years since.
Then, as I made my morning cuppa, standing watching the tea bag do its thing, it aoccured that new shoes are a great metaphor for the process of leaving hearth and home and moving to the hot dusty frontier. It hurts, it rubs, it's hard to believe it will ever get any better and you forget why you wanted to change.
With material like that, I could be writing for Readers Digest!

Ipswich City Council

Or the ICC as of course it gets called.
Working here (as I have been for 5 weeks, 2 days and one and a quarter hours)is as close as I'll ever get to experiencing socialism.
No where else could so many people with so few skills find such gainful employment? I haven't written much about my new life in the last few weeks. Mostly because I still have a very strong injunction that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". That crack about socialism is as close as I've been able to come about finding something "nice" about Ipswich.
By the way, that's Ipswich, QUEENSLAND ... not any one of the other 5 places in the world called Ipswich. Five! I wonder what the others are like?

Cowgirl Barristas!

In the paper today, I read that Seattle (home of coffee apparently) is leading the world in the new marketing phenomenon for coffee (like caffeine needs any help in selling itself)... Lingerie themed stores (including drive-through windows - good for leaning out of). Yes, America now has Cowgirls Espresso, Moka Girls, The Sweet Spot Cafe, Bikini Espresso and Natte Latte. All are already chains of stores.
Here's a quote from Associated Press:
"Candice Law, leaning provocatively out the drive-through window in a black bra that didn't quite cover her shiny purple pasties, and Toni Morgan, wearing a skimpy halter top, see-through red lace panties and chaps, seemed to know every customer.
Most of the customers declined to give their names or be interviewed - "Nobody wants to admit to their wives that they're here," Law says. One who did, a 25-year-old diesel mechanic named Mike West, says he comes every day for the coffee.
"I couldn't care less what they wear," he says."

Indeed.

Up Before the Sun

I'm not really a morning person. There's nothing new in saying this. So to get up at body-clock time of 3.45am this morning was an unusual experience. It's an eerie time of the morning, and having organised well the night before, I could take a moment to pause and look out from the balcony in Clovelly into the trusting sleep of Sydney.
I felt good. I was on the road from 4am to 9am to get to a day of work. It's really fun to visit and leave, and make variety and vibrancy a destination. The sense of sleep deprivation and dislocation gives a detatchment to seeing other people's everyday. Now I'm winding down and starting to digest all that happened, and didn't happen. I've printed out a snap of ordinary grafitti from Camperdown and in Ipswich it is cool urban art on my grey cubicle wall.
That's kindof what travel is about - cross pollinating places and people, rewiring things in ones' own brain, stepping into another time in the same place.
Glad to go, glad to come back, booking the next one soon.

Flushed with Life

A trip to my hometown has been a welcome expedition this weekend, and it's a blessing to be able to fill every hour with loved faces and voices. Food too, of course, for what other ritural do we have that so beautifully encapsulates trust and friendship than to share the staff of life? All my troubles and the troubles of the world and worries of my future have been laid down for 3 days and it is wonderful. A reminder that things don't always need to make sense or conform to a big plan.
Old friends have come home, and it is so very good to put flesh back onto the email. To see the delectable V&B back in Newtown was to see something put right in the world. I met some new souls too - Ross, writing in Stanthorpe; Stephen, funny and clever from Canberra.

Walking down King Street yesterday, chatting on the phone, I had been feeling uneasy I might run into someone particular with whom things for me would be uncomfortable. That queasy feeling of unrealistic expectation that can sometimes overtake a sunny day. Glancing up, I sawa tall man looking directly at me and there was a split second of mayhem in my brain and the entire system shut down. Was it the man I was wanting so desperately to avoid? He clearly recognised me, and I him. I had stopped mid word, stopped mid step, was literally standing gaping at him. His lights changed, the person on my phone said something, I stepped, he crossed the street we all moved on. Who was it? Where was I? God, he was beautiful. How could I know him? A few more paces and it all came back. I had worked with him briefly two or three years ago, and he had been beautiful then too, but arrogant and laughable. We had been telling his story just last December to entertain, as he'd been booted from the most tolerant workplace in the world. Here he was, etched into my mind, and I couldn't help but wonder what the river of life had bought to him in the years since he had earnt my emnity. There seems to be a current of meaning in running into him in this way at this time, but I can't figure it out right now. Coming home I saw him again, and neither of us had the mood to stop or acknolwedge the other. But we looked, and in looking what did we say?
I don't know.
But I'm writing again and the mysteries of human life are the most precious secrets in the world.

Australian of the Year

Congratumalations to Tim Flannery for being awarded the Australian of the Year. Yay! In "The Australian" he was refered to as 'a successful alarmist'  - well I guess you have to take what recognition you can get in Australian when you're not a  sportsperson.Still, it put climate change back on the front page for a day, and with an entire state on fire, floods and drought, that can only be a good thing.
Keep on alarming the bastards Tim!

and we're funny too

"Vegetarians take their place at the head of IQ"

THE elite high-IQ group Mensa has more than its fair share of
vegetarians.

That might be more than coincidental, according to new research which suggests that people who choose the vegetarian path are smarter than their carnivorous counterparts.

The study, published in the medical journal BMJ, traced 8000 people from birth and found those who became vegetarian by 30 had an IQ five points above the average at the age of 10.

They also tended to be better educated and of higher social class, but even after adjusting for this, they were still more intelligent, the University of Southampton study showed.

It's only logical that smart people are more likely to spurn meat, said Trish Kennett, chief executive of Mensa in Australia and a non-red meat eater.

"Smart people consider all aspects of their life very, very carefully. People who think about the ethics of killing animals will naturally choose vegetarianism, and variations of that, more often."

The nutritionist Rosemary Stanton said a vegetarian diet could not enhance intelligence, especially if people eschewed the brain-building qualities of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish.

But people with high IQs were likely to be thinkers, "and thinkers are probably going to realise the ethical and health-related benefits of not eating meat", she said.
(SMH)

Long Summer Weeks

Well they felt long, until I started working.

Isn't it amazing how sometimes life can just scoop you up and bundle you along. It doesn't feel like I've been doing all that much, but three weeks have flown by. Now the days seem packed to the gills with nothing but just getting through everything that needs to be done. Perhaps that's an outcome of the travel, of having a 9 - 5  type job, and being too tired to scratch by 10pm.

Some parts of the country have started to get some rain, and it seems like every newscaster in the country feels the need to quote the only line of Dorothea Mackeller that anyone knows. And no, I don't mean the one that goes "Green tangle of the brushes, Where lithe lianas coil" even though it is the best to say. It astounds me that in the one snippit of one line, they manage to get the sing-song voice in so you know it must be kulcha. We have a great range of clouds moving over and around our property. Riley found a crack in the ground last week that was so large, he put nearly his whole head in it. His whole head. I grant you, you doesn't have a really large head, but for a split moment, the scene shifted, and it looked like the earth was eating him.

 

Now I'm stuck on "My Country". I prepared that poem for a reading that didn't happen a few years ago. I do really like it, but there's some funny things about it that, if I had less irony, might be problematic to enjoying it. Did you know that it, one of the most famous Australian poems, is actually in part about the joy of watching grass grow! Hilarious. no really! Don't believe me? Fair enough ...here's the second-last stanza:

 

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

Puddle!

We got some rain! There was a puddle!!!!!

The mountains were all misty and greeny grey with their tops stuck into cloud and it was gorgeous!

Cracks in the ground have mostly closed up and one of the tanks is full again.

Yay!

New Year's Day

Another day of watching the sky - plenty of rain clouds around the country - none of them interested in lingering over our patch.

 

A fence needed mending this morning, and the lost cows were found. Guests from last night drifted off throughout the day. I had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, and crocheted myself to a standstill. I cooked moroccan lentil stew/dahl for lunch and vego shepherds pie for dinner. Here's 2007 - do I have the energy to be optimistic about it? I've been caught out so many times, that this year I'm feeling that whatever will be, will be. I'll just use last year's resolutions and goals, no use re-inventing the wheel now is there?

Full moon tomorrow night. I'm sleeping with all the curtains open so I can drift off looking at the stars.