There she goes…
The years are passing by like cars on a country road – infrequently, but with a strangely determined haste. It’s a little scary. I have to stop and remind myself that each day still has a full 24 hours to enjoy, even if the months seem to pass by in minutes…
2006 is one for the history books – as are all years that have already happened. It has probably been my most varied and interesting year to date, yet oddly enough I can’t seem to think of anything to say about it. I guess, if anything, 2006 gave me some perspective.
I would usually use my annual public address to tell you all that I love you (though we never say it enough). And I do (though we don’t) but fuck that for a bit…
I spent half of 2006 away from home and it became clear that ‘I love you’s shot across a globe are inane. They are a feeble call-and-response - an arbitrary search for validation.
‘I love you’…
*off in the distance*
“I love you tooooo…”
Most birds communicate in more complicated ways, and we all know how fucking stupid birds are… especially the ibis.
What does that mean anyway? Go on - define ‘love’. Then try to explain the idiosyncrasies of the love being express for a particular individual, making clear the context and intention of the expression. 25 words or less please.
There’s another expression that we don’t use enough, that I have chosen to lament this season – “I worry about you”.
I realise the inherent negativity of the saying but rest assured an “I worry” is no accusation of guilt, stupidity or incompetence… unless of course you ARE actually guilty of stupidity and incompetence.
“I worry” already has an “I love you” built in - you wouldn’t worry if you didn’t love – but “I worry” expresses so much more than just that.
Saying “I worry” is asking to be let in – I want to be a part of your life. I want to know what you do with yourself, in lieu of actually being able to be there with you. I want assurances that you’re as happy as you can be, because I want to know when I might have the opportunity to help out – to do what I can to make you happy.
It’s an invitation to sincere and open expression. Because I want your life to be great. Because I don’t ever want you to be afraid to ask. Because I want to be there for you. Because I love you.
“I worry”s have had a bad wrap recently. Too often they are bandied about by insincere professionals and overbearing naggers. I want to you all to forget about those these holidays.
So, as you enjoy the festive season, know that I wish I could be there with you, and that I worry about you. I hope you’re well, and I hope you tell me if you’re ever not. Because I want to be a part of your life… you make me look less stupid and incompetent.
Here’s to the New Year. May it bring a smile.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Dots
I used to be illusioned and gruntled - now I am the exact opposite. I feel a little robbed, and I reckon if more people actually knew it, they'd feel a bit ripped off too. This is what happens when you learn shit - it changes the way you think about stuff. It's never good. I reckon we should start suicide bombing schools. Pack little Timmy a 'lunch box', if you know what I mean. The unsuspecting assailant - the perfect crime. The worst part about learning something is having to admit that you just found it out to somebody who already knew it. "Oh, you didn't know that!?" they'll sneer, smugly. "I thought everybody knew that!"
Aboriginal dot-painting has only been around since about 1970. I'm serious. I thought there was like 80,000 years of development and perfection behind every painting. I used to stand in front of Aboriginal dot paintings in awe and reverence - as if I was getting an insight into an ancient culture. The dreamy expressions of a proud and meticulous people. And for WHAT? It's not! Some guy just thought it up one day. It's just stock-standard modern art. It's no more culturally significant than any Jackson Pollock or Pro Hart.
I don't want to detract from the artistic efforts put in to creating these works. It's art, as good as any. In fact, it deserves a lot of credit. Dot-painting requires boundless creativity and level of patience usually reserved for stoners and model-train enthusiasts. The Aboriginals may have the niche cornered but there isn't anything specifically Aboriginal about it - they didn't even really invent it. So when I went to Jabiru I was determined to find out what old-school Aboriginal art was all about.
Kakadu National Park, on a scale of 1 to pretty fucking cool, is pretty fucking cool. We pulled the troopee into a tourist-parky bit - it was full of old people pulling caravans, pinkened backpackers and hot, bored children. 'Look, Tarquin! It's a big rock!' What parents always seem to forget when they stop to enjoy the view on a roadtrip, is that the kids have been looking at the same 'view' for five fucking hours out of the car window. We avoided the tour groups and took a stroll to find some rock paintings.
The path was graveled and well defined. The first paintings we came across had a rail in front of them which kinda detracted from my whole experience of being 'at one with the land'. I put a handful of dirty and bark down my pants to bridge the gap. I was surprised at first - no dot paintings, no hand out-line thingies like I was expecting (the ABC has a lot to answer for – stereotype mongers). What I saw were ancient stick figure men with big dongs. Really big dongs. The traditional owners of Kakadu weren't shy. Nor, evidently, need they be.
Around another corner and halfway up a big rocky hill there were more paintings of men. These ones were without big dongs. They had guns - a common substitute for a functioning dick. They were the white men. These paintings could barely be two hundred years old. Yeah, that's pretty old, guess... and it was pretty funny that the white men were dickless... but it was still not really the artistic insight I was hoping to gain... we headed for the next corner.
Out of nowhere a massive stone mantle appeared. Huge overhanging rocks created an enormous natural atrium 30 feet high. The ancient locals had made the entire thing - every surface - into a gallery. No, not a gallery - a menu! Each painting was a scale drawing of the foods of the area. Each fish, bird, lizard, snake, and mammal in the area - each in perfect detail. They were incredibly accurate and structural, right down to the last fish scale - they reminded me of Da Vinci's illicit anatomical drawings. These were people who knew their world inside out. I was totally awestruck. I wondered where they got their inspiration to draw. Looking to the sky, I found it.
The stone roof was one great slab of sedimentary rock. In it, scattered throughout, were fossils. Ancient birds and fish, twisted in death-poses - each bone pressed flat and perfectly preserved in the rock. The locals believed that these were the drawings of the Gods - chiseled in solid rock, high in the roof, well out of the reach of man. They were perfect pictures that understood the animals' workings from the inside out. The locals followed that lead, and in doing so became Gods themselves - masters of their domain. Thousands of years ago the Aboriginals already knew that what is inside is far more profound than anything it can produce outside. "Oh, you didn't know that!?" say the Aboriginals, sneering smugly. "I thought everybody knew that!"
Anyway, dot-painting sucks – I can say that now without any social or cultural guilt. It’s like saying you don’t like rap music, or tap dance, or time-out parenting. If any of them are still around in 80,000 years I’ll start to show them a little respect. Maybe. If I’m not busy that week.
Aboriginal dot-painting has only been around since about 1970. I'm serious. I thought there was like 80,000 years of development and perfection behind every painting. I used to stand in front of Aboriginal dot paintings in awe and reverence - as if I was getting an insight into an ancient culture. The dreamy expressions of a proud and meticulous people. And for WHAT? It's not! Some guy just thought it up one day. It's just stock-standard modern art. It's no more culturally significant than any Jackson Pollock or Pro Hart.
I don't want to detract from the artistic efforts put in to creating these works. It's art, as good as any. In fact, it deserves a lot of credit. Dot-painting requires boundless creativity and level of patience usually reserved for stoners and model-train enthusiasts. The Aboriginals may have the niche cornered but there isn't anything specifically Aboriginal about it - they didn't even really invent it. So when I went to Jabiru I was determined to find out what old-school Aboriginal art was all about.
Kakadu National Park, on a scale of 1 to pretty fucking cool, is pretty fucking cool. We pulled the troopee into a tourist-parky bit - it was full of old people pulling caravans, pinkened backpackers and hot, bored children. 'Look, Tarquin! It's a big rock!' What parents always seem to forget when they stop to enjoy the view on a roadtrip, is that the kids have been looking at the same 'view' for five fucking hours out of the car window. We avoided the tour groups and took a stroll to find some rock paintings.
The path was graveled and well defined. The first paintings we came across had a rail in front of them which kinda detracted from my whole experience of being 'at one with the land'. I put a handful of dirty and bark down my pants to bridge the gap. I was surprised at first - no dot paintings, no hand out-line thingies like I was expecting (the ABC has a lot to answer for – stereotype mongers). What I saw were ancient stick figure men with big dongs. Really big dongs. The traditional owners of Kakadu weren't shy. Nor, evidently, need they be.
Around another corner and halfway up a big rocky hill there were more paintings of men. These ones were without big dongs. They had guns - a common substitute for a functioning dick. They were the white men. These paintings could barely be two hundred years old. Yeah, that's pretty old, guess... and it was pretty funny that the white men were dickless... but it was still not really the artistic insight I was hoping to gain... we headed for the next corner.
Out of nowhere a massive stone mantle appeared. Huge overhanging rocks created an enormous natural atrium 30 feet high. The ancient locals had made the entire thing - every surface - into a gallery. No, not a gallery - a menu! Each painting was a scale drawing of the foods of the area. Each fish, bird, lizard, snake, and mammal in the area - each in perfect detail. They were incredibly accurate and structural, right down to the last fish scale - they reminded me of Da Vinci's illicit anatomical drawings. These were people who knew their world inside out. I was totally awestruck. I wondered where they got their inspiration to draw. Looking to the sky, I found it.
The stone roof was one great slab of sedimentary rock. In it, scattered throughout, were fossils. Ancient birds and fish, twisted in death-poses - each bone pressed flat and perfectly preserved in the rock. The locals believed that these were the drawings of the Gods - chiseled in solid rock, high in the roof, well out of the reach of man. They were perfect pictures that understood the animals' workings from the inside out. The locals followed that lead, and in doing so became Gods themselves - masters of their domain. Thousands of years ago the Aboriginals already knew that what is inside is far more profound than anything it can produce outside. "Oh, you didn't know that!?" say the Aboriginals, sneering smugly. "I thought everybody knew that!"
Anyway, dot-painting sucks – I can say that now without any social or cultural guilt. It’s like saying you don’t like rap music, or tap dance, or time-out parenting. If any of them are still around in 80,000 years I’ll start to show them a little respect. Maybe. If I’m not busy that week.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Mah!
Aboriginals are often confused for being rude. They're occasionally confused for being Sidney Poitier, and on very odd occasions confused for being a streetsign or a packet of low-fat chips. This all comes from a certain degree of cultural misunderstanding. Aboriginals are from a largely tribal culture, into which an ethos of give-and-take is ingrained. It's said that in many Aboriginal languages there's no real words for 'please' and 'thankyou'. There's no need for them.
If you ask someone for something there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't willingly give it to you. Pleasantries are redundant - like an overhead projector at a school for the blind. Still, I've found most Aboriginals in Maningrida to be very well trained. They deliver genuine 'pleases and thanks' in all the right spots. But they've also introduced me to my new favourite word, commonly used in conversational English, that harks back to the good old days. That word is, very simply, 'Mah!'
Mah basically means 'OK, we're done here', and at the same time, so much more than that. Someone will ask you for something, and as soon as you get to the point that they understand that you can't help them they'll say 'Mah!' and leave the conversation without another word. It's the equivalent of throwing a hand in the air and saying, 'Whatever!' The first time it happened to me I thought I was in an Aboriginal Jerry Springer so I showed everybody my tits and hit some guy with a chair. What? You don't know me!
Mah is like a free ticket out. I don't like this conversation, 'Mah!' End of argument, 'Mah!' I'm off for a pint, 'Mah!' That's the beauty of it - it comes with no explanation. Mah is all the recipient needs to know. It can really mean any number of things. 'You bore me! NEXT!' "Actually, I just really don't want to help you." 'Love to chat, but gotta crap.' "You've disappointed me - a curse on your family and a plague in your pants." 'I'm due home for a wank and a sudoku.' It's all in the tone, and therein lie the prickly bits.
If you get Mah'd in a conversation you can spend the rest of the day wondering exactly what was meant by it. Do not underestimate it - a simple Mah can be venomous. I've heard Mahs that could give you a nipple cripple from forty paces. Mahs that could cut the brake lines on your four-wheel drive. Mahs that could paralyze the devil himself, which is bad news because there are no wheelchair ramps in hell. You be surprised just how inconsiderately designed Haedes is. I've written many letters to council but all council employees are on the books.
Mahs can also be friendly - a simple 'righto, see you later.' It comes in handy 'round a place like Maningrida. There's not much point saying formal goodbyes when it is highly likely it won’t be more than a few hours before you see any given person again. Anyway, I'm due home for a wank and a sudoku. I mean… Mah!
If you ask someone for something there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't willingly give it to you. Pleasantries are redundant - like an overhead projector at a school for the blind. Still, I've found most Aboriginals in Maningrida to be very well trained. They deliver genuine 'pleases and thanks' in all the right spots. But they've also introduced me to my new favourite word, commonly used in conversational English, that harks back to the good old days. That word is, very simply, 'Mah!'
Mah basically means 'OK, we're done here', and at the same time, so much more than that. Someone will ask you for something, and as soon as you get to the point that they understand that you can't help them they'll say 'Mah!' and leave the conversation without another word. It's the equivalent of throwing a hand in the air and saying, 'Whatever!' The first time it happened to me I thought I was in an Aboriginal Jerry Springer so I showed everybody my tits and hit some guy with a chair. What? You don't know me!
Mah is like a free ticket out. I don't like this conversation, 'Mah!' End of argument, 'Mah!' I'm off for a pint, 'Mah!' That's the beauty of it - it comes with no explanation. Mah is all the recipient needs to know. It can really mean any number of things. 'You bore me! NEXT!' "Actually, I just really don't want to help you." 'Love to chat, but gotta crap.' "You've disappointed me - a curse on your family and a plague in your pants." 'I'm due home for a wank and a sudoku.' It's all in the tone, and therein lie the prickly bits.
If you get Mah'd in a conversation you can spend the rest of the day wondering exactly what was meant by it. Do not underestimate it - a simple Mah can be venomous. I've heard Mahs that could give you a nipple cripple from forty paces. Mahs that could cut the brake lines on your four-wheel drive. Mahs that could paralyze the devil himself, which is bad news because there are no wheelchair ramps in hell. You be surprised just how inconsiderately designed Haedes is. I've written many letters to council but all council employees are on the books.
Mahs can also be friendly - a simple 'righto, see you later.' It comes in handy 'round a place like Maningrida. There's not much point saying formal goodbyes when it is highly likely it won’t be more than a few hours before you see any given person again. Anyway, I'm due home for a wank and a sudoku. I mean… Mah!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
World
While Google Earth cannot be used to crack a nut or put together an Ikea flatpack, it is a fantastic tool to remind you exactly where in the world you are. I'd been plugging in a few places in the world I'd spent a bit of time. A paddock in Scotland where exhausted myself trying to touch a sheep. A street in Paris where I smugly let an American tourist try to ask me for directions in French. A museum on a hill in Linz where I watched snow falling on Hitler's favorite city - a breathtaking sight, but still not enough to put the 'Ryan' back in Aryan.
My little friend Martha snuck in to the office and surprised me by tickling my neck like a spider... again. 'Look, here's us.' I showed her Maningrida from above. 'And this,' I tapped the keyboard, 'is where I lived in Melbourne.' The computer zoomed out and whizzed across Australia, finally focusing on a little suburban house. Martha looked at me suspiciously, then a big cheeky grin spread across her face, "Bullshit."
I'm told you set a poor example to laugh out loud when a kid swears in front of you. I guess scratching her belly and feeding her liver-treats was only exacerbating that poor example. What? She's not my kid. If she were my kid, she'd be addressing all adults as 'Jack' and flipping the bird at parking officers, the elderly and anyone on a mobile phone. It's good to teach kids to be assertive. That way you never have to hit your child. You can wait for the general public to do it for you.
Besides, I knew what she was talking about. I wake up every morning and look out the window and think, bullshit. When did we get to Disneyland? How the hell did I end up here? Wasn't I living a cushy life in a big cosmopolitan city before I went to bed? I swear, the last thing I remember I was sitting at a bar in St. Kilda and getting a phone call. The voice at the other end was upfront. "Do you want to go to the Northern Territory?"
'Yeah, sure, I guess. Just let me finish this pint.' Twenty-three seconds later I was on a plane or something. All I know is I could hear stewardesses voices and rushing wind. Perhaps I'd fallen asleep under the hand-drier in the women's toilet. That'd explain the poor service, the slimy peanuts and that graffiti on my arse.
I'm in the middle of nowhere and it really helps to be reminded of that every now and then. It helps put all the gossip, the motivations and global politics in perspective. When you fly out of Maningrida you look back down at that collection of sheds in the bush and wonder why everything seemed to mean so much there. It's not just little towns - I get the same feeling flying out of Melbourne. Places are all the same. The only things that change are the architecture, the taste of the water and the quality of the coffee. The quality of the Coffey always remains the same. BAM! ZING! PAH-CHING! Excuse me for a second while I do a short but intricately rehearsed victory dance. Two great name gags in one entry - I may have accidentally knocked the top off. 'Clean up to aisle five!'
Here's the pitch: a new reality TV show called 'Population Swap'. Take two countries of massively disproportionate populations and have them swap countries for a week. We send the Japanese to South Africa, the Chinese to Tuvalu, and the English to Wales. It'd be a hit. We'd laugh, we'd cry, we'd all learn a lesson - it'd be like a high-school run entirely by clowns with AIDS. All we need is a celebrity host with a massive rack. Hey, if Apple ever brought out breast implants would they call them iRaqs? Just a thought for you boys at Apple. I know you could always use an extra penny. Feel free to steal my shit - I'm stealing yours.
So there you go - the world's problems solved once again. I'm getting good at this. I should really open up like a worlds consultancy firm or something. I'd be all like, 'So what's your problem?' And the world would be like,
"Yeah, nothing. I was just chilling and shit."
'Then why are you wasting my time, bitch? You think you're the only world in the universe?' And the world would be all like, "Nah-yeah, I don't have a problem. But I got this friend who's a world and he just can't seem to get his shit together." I'd like walk him to the window and point out at the night sky - business hours are late 'cause I've got tanning to do during the day. 'See that world there?' I'd ask the world.
"Yeah?"
'That's where I come from, Jack!' The world would look at me suspiciously, then a big cheeky grin spread across its face, "Bullshit."
My little friend Martha snuck in to the office and surprised me by tickling my neck like a spider... again. 'Look, here's us.' I showed her Maningrida from above. 'And this,' I tapped the keyboard, 'is where I lived in Melbourne.' The computer zoomed out and whizzed across Australia, finally focusing on a little suburban house. Martha looked at me suspiciously, then a big cheeky grin spread across her face, "Bullshit."
I'm told you set a poor example to laugh out loud when a kid swears in front of you. I guess scratching her belly and feeding her liver-treats was only exacerbating that poor example. What? She's not my kid. If she were my kid, she'd be addressing all adults as 'Jack' and flipping the bird at parking officers, the elderly and anyone on a mobile phone. It's good to teach kids to be assertive. That way you never have to hit your child. You can wait for the general public to do it for you.
Besides, I knew what she was talking about. I wake up every morning and look out the window and think, bullshit. When did we get to Disneyland? How the hell did I end up here? Wasn't I living a cushy life in a big cosmopolitan city before I went to bed? I swear, the last thing I remember I was sitting at a bar in St. Kilda and getting a phone call. The voice at the other end was upfront. "Do you want to go to the Northern Territory?"
'Yeah, sure, I guess. Just let me finish this pint.' Twenty-three seconds later I was on a plane or something. All I know is I could hear stewardesses voices and rushing wind. Perhaps I'd fallen asleep under the hand-drier in the women's toilet. That'd explain the poor service, the slimy peanuts and that graffiti on my arse.
I'm in the middle of nowhere and it really helps to be reminded of that every now and then. It helps put all the gossip, the motivations and global politics in perspective. When you fly out of Maningrida you look back down at that collection of sheds in the bush and wonder why everything seemed to mean so much there. It's not just little towns - I get the same feeling flying out of Melbourne. Places are all the same. The only things that change are the architecture, the taste of the water and the quality of the coffee. The quality of the Coffey always remains the same. BAM! ZING! PAH-CHING! Excuse me for a second while I do a short but intricately rehearsed victory dance. Two great name gags in one entry - I may have accidentally knocked the top off. 'Clean up to aisle five!'
Here's the pitch: a new reality TV show called 'Population Swap'. Take two countries of massively disproportionate populations and have them swap countries for a week. We send the Japanese to South Africa, the Chinese to Tuvalu, and the English to Wales. It'd be a hit. We'd laugh, we'd cry, we'd all learn a lesson - it'd be like a high-school run entirely by clowns with AIDS. All we need is a celebrity host with a massive rack. Hey, if Apple ever brought out breast implants would they call them iRaqs? Just a thought for you boys at Apple. I know you could always use an extra penny. Feel free to steal my shit - I'm stealing yours.
So there you go - the world's problems solved once again. I'm getting good at this. I should really open up like a worlds consultancy firm or something. I'd be all like, 'So what's your problem?' And the world would be like,
"Yeah, nothing. I was just chilling and shit."
'Then why are you wasting my time, bitch? You think you're the only world in the universe?' And the world would be all like, "Nah-yeah, I don't have a problem. But I got this friend who's a world and he just can't seem to get his shit together." I'd like walk him to the window and point out at the night sky - business hours are late 'cause I've got tanning to do during the day. 'See that world there?' I'd ask the world.
"Yeah?"
'That's where I come from, Jack!' The world would look at me suspiciously, then a big cheeky grin spread across its face, "Bullshit."
Monday, November 20, 2006
Men
If I was an Aboriginal I'd be nearly middle aged. That'd be great - I've always wanted a little red convertible and a young, attractive and irritatingly stupid girlfriend. It's in these times of personal crisis when a man knows he's really alive. He hates his life, but at least he has a dynamic and emotional relationship with it. He has drive and passion and hateful passive-aggressive responses to arbitrary things. It's a special time - a coming of age. I think I'd enjoy that. It'd give me an excuse to do all those really fun self-destructive behaviors like drink-driving, drink-drinking and drink-parasailing. But I'm not an Aboriginal - something about me not being black and having no basis to my claim of traditional land rights to that apartment block in St Kilda. Aboriginal men seem to have a life crisis completely different to our own.
For a middle-class white male the character arc is simple. You spend your childhood believing that you've inherited the earth and all its freedoms. The world is a safe place, your Dad's the strongest man in the world, and you don't understand why your mother, with a universe of choice at her fingertips, insists on serving you peas. You hit adolescence, get a job at Safeway and live like the crowned prince of Belgium on 100 bucks a week. Life is all bikes and chocolate. Your parents and teachers try to weigh you down with all this shit about social responsibility and morality, but you'll be shoplifting and blowing up letterboxes well into your late teens. They call this the honeymoon period. Mainly because life is sweet and you moon people like your arse was suffocating in your shorts.
Then comes the quarter life crisis. You find out the world is not going to come through on its promise of that life it owes you. You panic. Take a year in London to 'find yourself', only to 'find yourself' working a shittier job than the one you had at home and not-getting-laid by chicks from all over the world. Back home uni is finished and the degree you've got doesn't translate to any tangible employment. While deferring further study, fall into a job that accidentally becomes a career. Propose to that girl you've been going out with for 2 or more years, basically because you're getting fat and complacent. Besides, one 2 year relationship is enough to warn anyone off a second. Do the mortgage thing. Suffer children. Buy a really big telly and a Playstation. Fill the time sitting around and listening to your wife tell you that you're lazy.
Mid-life crisis. Wake up one day and wonder what the fuck happened to the last 10 years. Realise that you didn't want to be a fat, bored desk-jockey. Buy a set of weights and put them in the garage where you'll never use them. Have an affair, file for divorce or both. Write that book you always planned to and get writers-block halfway through chapter one. Books are long - you forgot that bit. Invest money in some stupid enterprise, like that restaurant you always wanted to own. Be a silent partner so you can silently hemorrhage as your money vanishes quicker than tiramisu at pregnant mother's club. Realise that you were less miserable before you found out you were miserable. Try to rebuild.
Three quarter life crisis. Where ever you are by now, you're old. You've just retired knowing full well that the super you've accumulated is not keep you fed until your life expectancy expires. Can't wish to die just yet because your yuppie kids haven't had children yet, and you don't want to pass from this earth until you're sure that they've suffered the same twisted torture they put you through. Face a fate of knowing that you'll live out the same week over and over for 20 more years, while everything around you gets faster, more confusing and shiny. Sound tough? Don’t be petty.
It's been a particularly rough run for Aboriginal men for some time now - I don't know... 220 years, give or take. They've copped the brunt of the stereotyping and animosity towards Aboriginals - right in the brunt copper. People don't often complain about the lazy, drunken Aboriginal women of the world. The public don't fear crime and violence from our dark skinned ladies. And, let's face it, it's hard to flog a woman for being unemployed when she's got a houseful of kids to chase after. So the blokes cop it. It's their faces we see in Crimestoppers reconstructions, it's their hands that orchestrate the sexual abuse, it's their spears that killed white settlers. Masculinity is the symbol of all that is feared and despised in the Aboriginal people. It hangs like a storm cloud over the average life of a Maningrida man.
Grow up half-naked and oblivious, surrounded by noise and family, though somehow remaining a little attention starved. Muck around, miss a lot of school and be initiated as a man long before you actually are one – exacerbate your feelings of inadequacy and isolation. Be exposed to world of sex, drugs and alcohol all the while listening to funny sounding pale people who tell you to avoid all three, but who never hang about long enough to make a lasting impression. Feel abandoned and inferior - take solace in the music of angry black Americans (suicide is also a common option at this point).
Want to leave home but have nowhere to go, and no means to go there. Find out that all the school you missed will stop you from getting a job - though truth be told you still wouldn't be 'educated' if you went to all of it, but fuck it, there aren't any jobs to get here anyway. Feel stranded, forgotten, and patronized. Get depressed, get government money, get yourself in a family way, and start to get physically sick. Get to a big city get drunk and live up to the nation’s expectations for you, bitterly and deliberately. If this is not your story, it is the story of many of your friends and family. If you want to, you can spend your nights working yourself into knots over that. Follow with a hearty dose of depression and helplessness. Die young.
I never know, when I start these entries, what I'm going to write about. I start with some glib comment and see where it takes me. Usually halfway through I find a way to tie it all together that reflects the positive spirit of the people of Maningrida and makes Balandas look like the twats they are. It didn't work this time. Sometimes things are genuinely fucked up. There's no laughing at that. No pithy solutions. No coming back. I feel guilty for writing it down - making it real. But what else is there to feel when this is the earth you have inherited, and this is how people enjoy its freedoms. Maningrida is a bullshit, industry-less town fabricated in the 50’s to stop Aboriginals from moving to big cities. It’s social growth has outstripped it’s economic growth. It’s a dead end. A government funded black-hole that will take generations to turn into a place of any viable and accessible opportunity. If I was Aboriginal I'd nearly be middle aged - halfway through a lifelong crisis.
For a middle-class white male the character arc is simple. You spend your childhood believing that you've inherited the earth and all its freedoms. The world is a safe place, your Dad's the strongest man in the world, and you don't understand why your mother, with a universe of choice at her fingertips, insists on serving you peas. You hit adolescence, get a job at Safeway and live like the crowned prince of Belgium on 100 bucks a week. Life is all bikes and chocolate. Your parents and teachers try to weigh you down with all this shit about social responsibility and morality, but you'll be shoplifting and blowing up letterboxes well into your late teens. They call this the honeymoon period. Mainly because life is sweet and you moon people like your arse was suffocating in your shorts.
Then comes the quarter life crisis. You find out the world is not going to come through on its promise of that life it owes you. You panic. Take a year in London to 'find yourself', only to 'find yourself' working a shittier job than the one you had at home and not-getting-laid by chicks from all over the world. Back home uni is finished and the degree you've got doesn't translate to any tangible employment. While deferring further study, fall into a job that accidentally becomes a career. Propose to that girl you've been going out with for 2 or more years, basically because you're getting fat and complacent. Besides, one 2 year relationship is enough to warn anyone off a second. Do the mortgage thing. Suffer children. Buy a really big telly and a Playstation. Fill the time sitting around and listening to your wife tell you that you're lazy.
Mid-life crisis. Wake up one day and wonder what the fuck happened to the last 10 years. Realise that you didn't want to be a fat, bored desk-jockey. Buy a set of weights and put them in the garage where you'll never use them. Have an affair, file for divorce or both. Write that book you always planned to and get writers-block halfway through chapter one. Books are long - you forgot that bit. Invest money in some stupid enterprise, like that restaurant you always wanted to own. Be a silent partner so you can silently hemorrhage as your money vanishes quicker than tiramisu at pregnant mother's club. Realise that you were less miserable before you found out you were miserable. Try to rebuild.
Three quarter life crisis. Where ever you are by now, you're old. You've just retired knowing full well that the super you've accumulated is not keep you fed until your life expectancy expires. Can't wish to die just yet because your yuppie kids haven't had children yet, and you don't want to pass from this earth until you're sure that they've suffered the same twisted torture they put you through. Face a fate of knowing that you'll live out the same week over and over for 20 more years, while everything around you gets faster, more confusing and shiny. Sound tough? Don’t be petty.
It's been a particularly rough run for Aboriginal men for some time now - I don't know... 220 years, give or take. They've copped the brunt of the stereotyping and animosity towards Aboriginals - right in the brunt copper. People don't often complain about the lazy, drunken Aboriginal women of the world. The public don't fear crime and violence from our dark skinned ladies. And, let's face it, it's hard to flog a woman for being unemployed when she's got a houseful of kids to chase after. So the blokes cop it. It's their faces we see in Crimestoppers reconstructions, it's their hands that orchestrate the sexual abuse, it's their spears that killed white settlers. Masculinity is the symbol of all that is feared and despised in the Aboriginal people. It hangs like a storm cloud over the average life of a Maningrida man.
Grow up half-naked and oblivious, surrounded by noise and family, though somehow remaining a little attention starved. Muck around, miss a lot of school and be initiated as a man long before you actually are one – exacerbate your feelings of inadequacy and isolation. Be exposed to world of sex, drugs and alcohol all the while listening to funny sounding pale people who tell you to avoid all three, but who never hang about long enough to make a lasting impression. Feel abandoned and inferior - take solace in the music of angry black Americans (suicide is also a common option at this point).
Want to leave home but have nowhere to go, and no means to go there. Find out that all the school you missed will stop you from getting a job - though truth be told you still wouldn't be 'educated' if you went to all of it, but fuck it, there aren't any jobs to get here anyway. Feel stranded, forgotten, and patronized. Get depressed, get government money, get yourself in a family way, and start to get physically sick. Get to a big city get drunk and live up to the nation’s expectations for you, bitterly and deliberately. If this is not your story, it is the story of many of your friends and family. If you want to, you can spend your nights working yourself into knots over that. Follow with a hearty dose of depression and helplessness. Die young.
I never know, when I start these entries, what I'm going to write about. I start with some glib comment and see where it takes me. Usually halfway through I find a way to tie it all together that reflects the positive spirit of the people of Maningrida and makes Balandas look like the twats they are. It didn't work this time. Sometimes things are genuinely fucked up. There's no laughing at that. No pithy solutions. No coming back. I feel guilty for writing it down - making it real. But what else is there to feel when this is the earth you have inherited, and this is how people enjoy its freedoms. Maningrida is a bullshit, industry-less town fabricated in the 50’s to stop Aboriginals from moving to big cities. It’s social growth has outstripped it’s economic growth. It’s a dead end. A government funded black-hole that will take generations to turn into a place of any viable and accessible opportunity. If I was Aboriginal I'd nearly be middle aged - halfway through a lifelong crisis.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Weather
I am so fucking sick of talking about the weather;
'Yep, sure is hot.'
"Yep. It got cool for a little while there."
'Yep, cool down is exactly what it did."
"I think it was caused by some sort of temperature drop - it's like it got less warm or something. But, you know what it did? Went and got hot again."
'Yeah-nah, it's definitely warmer now than it was when it was cooler.'
Yes, for the love of Sarah Michelle Geller, it's hot. It'll probably be hot again tomorrow, and lather my nuts if it wont be hot the day after that. The only thing that shits me more than people is dumb people. Dumb people with scabies.
I was watching some Dutch movie and the guy in it was wearing a jacket - I know, those crazy Dutch fuckers - and it made me realise how much I miss the cold. There is nothing finer than stepping out of the house in the morning, resplendent to be seen wrapped in a scarf, overcoat flowing the icy wind, flatcap pulled firmly down. Your breath swirls before your face as you trudge off into the great grey. All the cool cities of the world have a really good solid winter. London, Paris, New York. Even Melbourne's winters are blessedly shitty. I wager all good work - art, engineering, and ingenuity - comes from the introspection of a wondrous and wooly winter.
Nothing cool comes from hot places. The people are lethargic and bored - it's like being in Question Time but outdoors. I'd found myself falling ill from this same foul fog of sweaty indifference. My brain was filling up with stupid, and my butt-crack was filling up with fingers... fingers that were scratching my arse... that didn't sound right did it!? I hadn't had an interesting conversation in so long that I'd completely stopped using words with more than 3 syllables, which made it impossible to order watermelon at the shop. And you know how much I like watermelon. Seven. Yes, I like it seven.
So Saturday came with another grog delivery - chilled ales to cool my overheated brain and give me back a little of that razor wit and obnoxious argumentativity I'm so famous for. I slung half a slab in a bag and headed to the doctors house. We settled down on the porch and talked. Hours we talked for. Hours are the unit of measurement that would accurately document the amount of time for which we talked. It was great. Free, floating conversation that meandered through the evening like a clumsy bumble bee. We bumped into all kinds of topics - sport (or our disinterest therein), travel, education, life, love and medicine. Not once do I remember broaching the topic of the weather. It was a real fucking treat.
Phil's great - he's full of philosophies and a hasty sense of adventure. He's convinced that I should be a pilot - mainly because he wants to be a pilot but can't justify abandoning 10 years of studying to be a doctor. If that doesn't work out, I should get a job as a journalist at a newspaper in Papua New Guinea - same diff. He also chose last night to start dabbling as a psychic. Apparently I'm going to knock up a girl called Maggie who will give birth to twins in April 08. This is why I should be a pilot, I guess, so I can fly the fuck away. He calls it 'Plan B'. I'm just pleased to know I'm actually going to get laid some time in 2007.
Around midnight the girls had escaped from some fund-raiser party that had begun to resemble a sorority bash - tits-out, drunken girl-on-girl action. That'd be fine if it was happening with anyone other than the Balanda women of Maningrida - *shudder*. We spent a little time looking at the stars upsidedown to make it look like we were in Scotland. Apparently Orion actually looks more like an archer the other way up, but I defended the Southern Hemisphere on the basis that we were more imaginative - mainly because I couldn't make up anything more creative.
The next morning I felt sick as shit from drinking mid-strength, but it had been well worth it. I rolled around the house all day watching shitty television and napping. It rained this afternoon. That was pretty cool. I guess we'll all have something to talk about at work tomorrow. Which is nice.
'Yep, sure is hot.'
"Yep. It got cool for a little while there."
'Yep, cool down is exactly what it did."
"I think it was caused by some sort of temperature drop - it's like it got less warm or something. But, you know what it did? Went and got hot again."
'Yeah-nah, it's definitely warmer now than it was when it was cooler.'
Yes, for the love of Sarah Michelle Geller, it's hot. It'll probably be hot again tomorrow, and lather my nuts if it wont be hot the day after that. The only thing that shits me more than people is dumb people. Dumb people with scabies.
I was watching some Dutch movie and the guy in it was wearing a jacket - I know, those crazy Dutch fuckers - and it made me realise how much I miss the cold. There is nothing finer than stepping out of the house in the morning, resplendent to be seen wrapped in a scarf, overcoat flowing the icy wind, flatcap pulled firmly down. Your breath swirls before your face as you trudge off into the great grey. All the cool cities of the world have a really good solid winter. London, Paris, New York. Even Melbourne's winters are blessedly shitty. I wager all good work - art, engineering, and ingenuity - comes from the introspection of a wondrous and wooly winter.
Nothing cool comes from hot places. The people are lethargic and bored - it's like being in Question Time but outdoors. I'd found myself falling ill from this same foul fog of sweaty indifference. My brain was filling up with stupid, and my butt-crack was filling up with fingers... fingers that were scratching my arse... that didn't sound right did it!? I hadn't had an interesting conversation in so long that I'd completely stopped using words with more than 3 syllables, which made it impossible to order watermelon at the shop. And you know how much I like watermelon. Seven. Yes, I like it seven.
So Saturday came with another grog delivery - chilled ales to cool my overheated brain and give me back a little of that razor wit and obnoxious argumentativity I'm so famous for. I slung half a slab in a bag and headed to the doctors house. We settled down on the porch and talked. Hours we talked for. Hours are the unit of measurement that would accurately document the amount of time for which we talked. It was great. Free, floating conversation that meandered through the evening like a clumsy bumble bee. We bumped into all kinds of topics - sport (or our disinterest therein), travel, education, life, love and medicine. Not once do I remember broaching the topic of the weather. It was a real fucking treat.
Phil's great - he's full of philosophies and a hasty sense of adventure. He's convinced that I should be a pilot - mainly because he wants to be a pilot but can't justify abandoning 10 years of studying to be a doctor. If that doesn't work out, I should get a job as a journalist at a newspaper in Papua New Guinea - same diff. He also chose last night to start dabbling as a psychic. Apparently I'm going to knock up a girl called Maggie who will give birth to twins in April 08. This is why I should be a pilot, I guess, so I can fly the fuck away. He calls it 'Plan B'. I'm just pleased to know I'm actually going to get laid some time in 2007.
Around midnight the girls had escaped from some fund-raiser party that had begun to resemble a sorority bash - tits-out, drunken girl-on-girl action. That'd be fine if it was happening with anyone other than the Balanda women of Maningrida - *shudder*. We spent a little time looking at the stars upsidedown to make it look like we were in Scotland. Apparently Orion actually looks more like an archer the other way up, but I defended the Southern Hemisphere on the basis that we were more imaginative - mainly because I couldn't make up anything more creative.
The next morning I felt sick as shit from drinking mid-strength, but it had been well worth it. I rolled around the house all day watching shitty television and napping. It rained this afternoon. That was pretty cool. I guess we'll all have something to talk about at work tomorrow. Which is nice.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Build Up
The dogs start getting toey - seems a storm is brewing. Either that or the dogs are all just fucking psychopaths. Jury's out. It could go either way. The clouds build like great grey mountains in the west. It's raining somewhere over there - you can almost smell it. The temperature drops ever so slightly and the first cracks of thunder call out from the distance. It's going to rain, you're almost certain. Then the winds comes. Hot and thicker than before. By the time it gets dark the clouds are ushered back to the horizon. There'll be no rain - just another sticky night. That's the way it happens - every night. They call it the Build Up. I call it the bullshit fucken.
Frustrating as that is, things are getting pretty interesting around here. It's as humid as a fat man's bathroom and I smell like an arse-full of compost. I traced the sour-metal smell developing in my armpit back to the soap I was using. I've since switched brands and ordered a new set of armpits on the net - the ones with the braid-able hair. I was going to wait and treat myself for Christmas but fuck that - Christmas is for Jews. I've spent all my time up here stowing my money in an account I don't have internet access to, so I'm gagging for a little retail therapy. Sadly, splurging on crappy plastic water pistols at the top shop wont cut it.
There is something truly satisfying about dropping the wad on something you really want. I shop in that proper blokey way. I can tell from the outside of a shop if there's anything inside that I'll want. I don't even leave the house on an expenditure expedition unless I know exactly what I want and whereabouts in the shop it is. And once I get there I don't give a fuck how much it costs. No haggling, no 'shopping around' like some kinda bitch - if you can't afford it, don't even bother wanting it, dickflop. Spend confidently - be oblivious to the fact that you're getting ripped off. That is how ninjas would shop if they ever needed shit. But ninjas don't really exist - they're like Eskimos, or 'victims'.
Guitars are my weakness. I'd buy a new guitar every week if I thought I wouldn't starve - you know, like if they came with a packet of peanuts or something. And the great thing about guitars is that there are heaps of really good ones that float around the $2000 mark. THAT is a satisfying spend. It's also the an amount of money that will make those smug pricks that work in music store kiss your arse for a while. What? If you're such a fucking good musician, why are you working here for 16 bucks an hour? Maybe if you spent more time developing people skills, and less time alone in your room 'practising' you might have enough machismo to inspire an audience at your local RSL. Take your long hair and your Zappa albums and go. eat. a. dick.
But then come the really good guitars. The pant-creaming, face-melting, ball-bursting beauties. Guitars so well made, so pure of tone, so free in action that they need not be played - just held - to achieve musical greatness. These don't come cheap. So it is that any time I get more that $5000 in my bank account I think, 'Shit, THAT may just be the $5000 woman I want to marry!' She's curvy, she smells nice and looks great in my lap. She could be the one. The one guitar I don't treat like shit, neglect and butt cigarettes out on. The one to last a lifetime. And fuck me if I don't get a bit of that feeling right now. I'm also a bit hungry, and slightly Asian.
I know the one I want. I know what shop it's in, on what rack and how much it costs. With Melbourne looming on the horizon, only three short weeks away, I can almost taste it. This is my gathering cloud, my mounting humidity, this is my Build Up. But no. Not yet. Not this time. Not this year - probably not the next. Because what does one do after he has everything he wants? I can wait. She'll wait for me. Until then I'm more than happy to linger in the the bullshit fucken.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Run
I went for a run on Sunday - an 8k round trip that consisted of a solid 2k walking warm-up and down. It's when you're warming up, still walking, having not even lifted your heart-rate, and you realize that you're already sweating profusely that you realise the broad light of a Maningrida day is not the best time to exercise. Still, it's the best time to go - it's so hot that the dogs can't be fucked to chase you. Running at night might be cooler, but it's hard to hit your stride when you have to stop every 10 meters to kick a dog. Such training might best be suited to some kind of dog-soccer. 'Strap on you bitch boots, sports fans...'
I was dripping with sweat - there was a point where I started trying to drink the drops forming on the end of my nose, for fear that I'd sultana-ise before I got home. If weight-loss was my aim it'd've been perfect. Stripping 6 kilos in an hour would be considered a miracle for any over-weight housewife, but when it's practically one tenth of your bodyweight you're toeing the line of medical catastrophe. I was ruined - you know when you're so thirsty you're drinking the shower water to save time. Still, it hasn't appeared to do any permanent damage. Though I did piss dust for a couple of days after... It was a good run.
I've felt crappy ever since. Nothing to do with the physical exertion. I've just suddenly been hit by a bout of feeling bored and lonely. Funny that that should happen in a place so remote and isolated. It's nothing to worry about - it doesn't even really bother me. It's just how I feel. Kinda matteroffact. I'm actually surprised at how long it took for me to get to this point. I look to the return to Melbourne with growing anticipation. Time's passing so fast, I'll be back before I realise - sitting in cafes with friends, wondering what the fuck they do with their time and money, and wishing I was back in Maningrida where people seem real and ordinary shit matters.
It's difficult to get perspective in a place where most people genuinely don't realise that money comes from places other than the government - everything here is 'funded' and 'subsidised'. Stuff happens here, it's just difficult to gain access to it. People seem to keep to themselves, by and large. I don't blame them. I can feel the walls of the small community closing in on me sometimes. You know when you're just walking to work, having not even cleaned the cornflakes from your eyes, and you really don't want to have to wave to every person you pass. I want to use words like suffocating and claustrophobic, but they don't fit. At best, it's a minor irritation.
I remember walking around the Louvre in Paris (not the one in Hoppers Crossing). There are thousands of significant works there - not all of which featured in the Da Vinci Code sadly, but that book was already 300 pages too long. People say that you need a couple of days to see the whole thing. I did it in 3 hours. I appreciate art as much as the next man, perhaps even more than some men I know, but I found it awe-exhausting. Chewing gum doesn't actually lose it's flavour - your mouth just gets used to the taste and stops noticing it. The same can be said of priceless art - if you eat enough of it, eventually it'll taste like chicken... or Brett Whitely or some hack.
So, Maningrida, it seems I have become accustomed to your smile - and now I want to bang the babysitter. And when I do, and you leave me, I'll realise that I really enjoyed what I had. And after you have a brief fling with that Steve guy from the gym, we'll get back together and I'll enjoy you even more - even thought there's certain things you wont let me do in the bedroom anymore. That makes me happy. As much as I like to think about a stint in Melbourne, I like to think about coming back here and falling in love all over again. To be bored and lonely for a couple of days out of a few months is not a big deal... It's been a good run.
Post Script - A late night cigarette looking up at the stars and suddenly the relevance of this whole entry melted away... I don't know. Perhaps it was just getting it all of my chest. Or something I hadn't seen before in the sky. It made me smile. Suddenly I'm looking forward to another day. How fickle feelings can be...
Monday, November 13, 2006
Movember
Fuck it. I'm calling it.
Movember is over... this thing's starting to shit me...
*note slightly swollen left eye. Makes me look drunk....
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Horse
You can lead a horse to water, but it's really hard to drown one - sometimes you can take all the right steps and still not get the result you want. A visiting friend bought Jenny a blow up pool but try as she might, Jen was never going to be able to stop it from becoming a stagnant puddle of red mud, mosquitoes and canine skin disease. Still we spent most of the day drinking beer on the verandah, dangling our feet and fishing for larvae. I stopped when I reeled in a four-pounder - that's dinner sorted.
Visitors came and went throughout the day but conversation tended to linger around work - it's a little depressing at times but that's pretty much all that happens around here. If it didn't happen at your work, it happened at someone else's. Sometimes someone will go on an adventure out of the community and that can be relived in excruciating detail. Fortunately these re-tellings are usually given while half-drunk, so details are forgotten and one anecdote can be stretched out to three or four gatherings. You often find yourself making that face, as if politely listening to a joke you've already heard. It's usually followed by supportive laughter, and mimed attempts at suicide.
Jenny had just returned from one such adventure, and it had been a fortuitously interesting one, so we had plenty to talk about. She'd been to some community, to do some course by some guy (my fastidious attention to detail is suffocating). It gave us all the opportunity to talk about our favourite topic - how we, the country, deal with the Aboriginal situation. It is often claimed in these parts, 'the more I learn about the Aboriginal situation, the less I know'. I think it's more a self-protection mechanism than an actual belief. It's like working your way through a packet of cigarettes and saying that you're 'not really smoking'.
I was sitting around Big Mouth with Jojo, knocking back 3/4 lattes and 'not really smoking', when I first heard about the new fad in scholastic sponsorship. It is in vogue at the moment for prestigious schools in Melbourne and Sydney to bring an Aboriginal kid out from a community, give them food, board and a full education then send them back in the hope that they can use their skills to be the new leaders of the community. It sounded like a new 'Stolen Generation' to me, right off the bat, but what do I know?
Seemingly, the communities very readily offer up their kids - it is understood (dogmatically insinuated?) that an education is the way forward. But word was (and is) that the posh schools are struggling with the kids, the kids are struggling with the big-city system, and that the time and distance is just alienating the kids from their culture and, perhaps more importantly, their community. This was one of the things that guy that Jenny had seen had been talking about.
He'd used the analogy of a university. To take an undergrad out of the system, teach him 'the new way', then send him back to the university at the level of professor and expect him to be accepted by the academic community is absurd. In a hierarchical environment, as communities are, change and ideas must begin at the top and filter down.
I liken the situation to the failing plight of inter-galactic aliens. They keep abducting hicks out of America's southern states and expect that they'll pass on the wisdom of the cosmos to all mankind. Come down and talk to the president directly or don't bother. You're just making a fool of the hicks, and yourselves - what's the word for 'dicknose' in your language? Because you are one. Dicknose.
The Aboriginal people are in a time of massive transition. The way to manage that will differ from community to community - perhaps even from individual to individual. This management can not be simply offered to a community, it has to be slowly integrated into the way of life. That is, supposedly, why most Balandas are here.
The average contract for any Balanda position here is about 2 years - perhaps 4 for some teachers. The Aboriginals are very conscious of the ephemeral presence of white workers. Apparently there are slurs fro white people that equate to ‘bird’ – we fly in take what we want and fly out – and to ‘tissue’ – take one out of the box, use it throw it away, get another one out of the box.
We just don’t stay long. It's almost impossible to work your way up the hierarchy in that time, and even if one did, what is the good of their influence if it is offered only in passing? I praise the people who spend time in communities - it's something. That's better than nothing, isn't it? More importantly, I am beginning to understand the personal conflict that they suffer.
What a good Balanda will realise, the more they learn, is that it would take a life long commitment to a single community to have a lasting influence in helping the transition of the Aboriginals therein. The confusion comes when they realise they never had that intention. They have a life somewhere else that they had fully intended on returning to. The confusion comes from the conflict between what needs to be done and what they are willing to do. Anyone can lead a horse to water. Few have the conviction to stay until it is confident enough to drink without fear of drowning.
Visitors came and went throughout the day but conversation tended to linger around work - it's a little depressing at times but that's pretty much all that happens around here. If it didn't happen at your work, it happened at someone else's. Sometimes someone will go on an adventure out of the community and that can be relived in excruciating detail. Fortunately these re-tellings are usually given while half-drunk, so details are forgotten and one anecdote can be stretched out to three or four gatherings. You often find yourself making that face, as if politely listening to a joke you've already heard. It's usually followed by supportive laughter, and mimed attempts at suicide.
Jenny had just returned from one such adventure, and it had been a fortuitously interesting one, so we had plenty to talk about. She'd been to some community, to do some course by some guy (my fastidious attention to detail is suffocating). It gave us all the opportunity to talk about our favourite topic - how we, the country, deal with the Aboriginal situation. It is often claimed in these parts, 'the more I learn about the Aboriginal situation, the less I know'. I think it's more a self-protection mechanism than an actual belief. It's like working your way through a packet of cigarettes and saying that you're 'not really smoking'.
I was sitting around Big Mouth with Jojo, knocking back 3/4 lattes and 'not really smoking', when I first heard about the new fad in scholastic sponsorship. It is in vogue at the moment for prestigious schools in Melbourne and Sydney to bring an Aboriginal kid out from a community, give them food, board and a full education then send them back in the hope that they can use their skills to be the new leaders of the community. It sounded like a new 'Stolen Generation' to me, right off the bat, but what do I know?
Seemingly, the communities very readily offer up their kids - it is understood (dogmatically insinuated?) that an education is the way forward. But word was (and is) that the posh schools are struggling with the kids, the kids are struggling with the big-city system, and that the time and distance is just alienating the kids from their culture and, perhaps more importantly, their community. This was one of the things that guy that Jenny had seen had been talking about.
He'd used the analogy of a university. To take an undergrad out of the system, teach him 'the new way', then send him back to the university at the level of professor and expect him to be accepted by the academic community is absurd. In a hierarchical environment, as communities are, change and ideas must begin at the top and filter down.
I liken the situation to the failing plight of inter-galactic aliens. They keep abducting hicks out of America's southern states and expect that they'll pass on the wisdom of the cosmos to all mankind. Come down and talk to the president directly or don't bother. You're just making a fool of the hicks, and yourselves - what's the word for 'dicknose' in your language? Because you are one. Dicknose.
The Aboriginal people are in a time of massive transition. The way to manage that will differ from community to community - perhaps even from individual to individual. This management can not be simply offered to a community, it has to be slowly integrated into the way of life. That is, supposedly, why most Balandas are here.
The average contract for any Balanda position here is about 2 years - perhaps 4 for some teachers. The Aboriginals are very conscious of the ephemeral presence of white workers. Apparently there are slurs fro white people that equate to ‘bird’ – we fly in take what we want and fly out – and to ‘tissue’ – take one out of the box, use it throw it away, get another one out of the box.
We just don’t stay long. It's almost impossible to work your way up the hierarchy in that time, and even if one did, what is the good of their influence if it is offered only in passing? I praise the people who spend time in communities - it's something. That's better than nothing, isn't it? More importantly, I am beginning to understand the personal conflict that they suffer.
What a good Balanda will realise, the more they learn, is that it would take a life long commitment to a single community to have a lasting influence in helping the transition of the Aboriginals therein. The confusion comes when they realise they never had that intention. They have a life somewhere else that they had fully intended on returning to. The confusion comes from the conflict between what needs to be done and what they are willing to do. Anyone can lead a horse to water. Few have the conviction to stay until it is confident enough to drink without fear of drowning.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Clinic
There was an ad on the telly. 'We believe that everyone in the world has the right to medical treatment...' another religiously based charity was begging for money to have the flies surgically removed from some African kid's eyes. All very well, but how can you appeal to such an ideal when you live in a country where medical attention isn't a right - and rightfully free? Does charity not begin at home - or at the very least, in the backyard or over at the neighbors'? 'Thanks for the invite, Kev. I brought a slab and an esky full of transplant corneas. Geez, the lawn's looking nice!'
I've been blaming my gritty and watery eyes on the constant air-conditioning, dusty winds and cursedly short and un-flirtatious eyelashes. But after waking up this morning with my left lids caked over in eye-snot, I figured I might have conjunctivitis. I'd never had it before, but you don't need to be a doctor to read the symptoms of 'pink-eye'. You do, however, need to be a doctor to bag yourself a good Jewish girl. Another sad failure in my life - not even Jews-for-Jesus are interested in a sporadically employed aspiring writer with 'pink-eye'.
Off to the doctor. The clinic in Maningrida is exactly like health clinics everywhere - full of sick minority groups, narky staff and waiting lists. I wandered in and put my name down. The list looked long through my good eye, but blurred and non-threatening through my bad. I split the difference and took a seat. I'd been asked to sit with the other Balanda blokes, as not to intimidate the locals. Not wanting to tarnish my reputation, I headbutted the nurse and kicked a kid, just for good measure. At least it they wouldn't have to go far for medical attention.
The mood was somber. Air-con was on high and the tiles were cold - all the chairs had their foam showing. The walls, drab and covered in posters that remind you you're going to die. If you weren't depressed and tired and sick when you went in, it wouldn't take long. Luckily for the locals, most of them can't read. 'Don't touch the fish tank!' snapped a nurse, 'The sign says "Don't Touch!"' Good one, dipshit. That's like calling 'Fore!' on a golf course for the deaf. One of the nurses (just one, this is not to be taken as one of my standard all indicting generalisations) was walking around talking to Aboriginal people like they were retarded and she was angry - I fear the case was quite the reverse.
There was a Balanda lady - long grey-brown hair, nobly elbows, dressed in an oversize caftan. She had a sick Aboriginal child in her lap. The woman was the chatty type. She was boring some guy she didn't know with her life story, that consisted mainly of self-righteous tales poor service at the clinic, suggestions of how the clinic could improve its service, and the 'real' reasons why everyone is sick that the doctors don't acknowledge. When the guy-she-was-talking-to's head exploded in frustration, she directed her anecdotes at me. Hadn't she seen me kick the kid? How many have to die…?
I heard of her tales of living in Byron (surprise, surprise, sur-fucking-prise), how she once replaced reconstructive surgery with acupuncture, and how she once dreamed of the suicide attempts of a boy she never knew. I was suitably bored shitless, and it didn't make the 2 HOUR wait ANY LONGER. Now, I ike Byron, I am all for alternative therapies, and understand the significance of dreams but all these great things were hi-jacked by a bunch of new-age terrorists and have since been rendered shit. Howard should run on a war against hippies - it's not like he doesn't want to.
Fortunately my name was eventually called. My consultation was quickly, efficient and very friendly. The whole ordeal, including medication, was free. No bulk-billing, no Medi-Care numbers, no nothing. It became clear how the clinic was funded. It's a body, not a business. That's practically a mandate for it to be inefficiently run, under-staffed and over worked. It all made sense. And, to their credit, they are doing a good job with what they’ve got.
Medical attention is not the 'right' of anyone in any country - I don't give a fuck what the UN said. People have got this whole 'rights and responsibilities' thing arse-about. It is said 'everyone has rights, and it is our responsibility to uphold those rights'. Bullshit. That's presumptuous and self-serving. People have responsibilities, and when those are met by everybody, your 'rights' are inherently tended. If privileged people are meeting their responsibilities, those people in need will get the attention they require.
The key to getting free health care is to get yourself fucked over by powerful and privileged people - guilt will ensure you get a doctor. They'll fly one out gratis. Be an African or an Aboriginal - it may not be glamorous, but the drugs are free.
I've been blaming my gritty and watery eyes on the constant air-conditioning, dusty winds and cursedly short and un-flirtatious eyelashes. But after waking up this morning with my left lids caked over in eye-snot, I figured I might have conjunctivitis. I'd never had it before, but you don't need to be a doctor to read the symptoms of 'pink-eye'. You do, however, need to be a doctor to bag yourself a good Jewish girl. Another sad failure in my life - not even Jews-for-Jesus are interested in a sporadically employed aspiring writer with 'pink-eye'.
Off to the doctor. The clinic in Maningrida is exactly like health clinics everywhere - full of sick minority groups, narky staff and waiting lists. I wandered in and put my name down. The list looked long through my good eye, but blurred and non-threatening through my bad. I split the difference and took a seat. I'd been asked to sit with the other Balanda blokes, as not to intimidate the locals. Not wanting to tarnish my reputation, I headbutted the nurse and kicked a kid, just for good measure. At least it they wouldn't have to go far for medical attention.
The mood was somber. Air-con was on high and the tiles were cold - all the chairs had their foam showing. The walls, drab and covered in posters that remind you you're going to die. If you weren't depressed and tired and sick when you went in, it wouldn't take long. Luckily for the locals, most of them can't read. 'Don't touch the fish tank!' snapped a nurse, 'The sign says "Don't Touch!"' Good one, dipshit. That's like calling 'Fore!' on a golf course for the deaf. One of the nurses (just one, this is not to be taken as one of my standard all indicting generalisations) was walking around talking to Aboriginal people like they were retarded and she was angry - I fear the case was quite the reverse.
There was a Balanda lady - long grey-brown hair, nobly elbows, dressed in an oversize caftan. She had a sick Aboriginal child in her lap. The woman was the chatty type. She was boring some guy she didn't know with her life story, that consisted mainly of self-righteous tales poor service at the clinic, suggestions of how the clinic could improve its service, and the 'real' reasons why everyone is sick that the doctors don't acknowledge. When the guy-she-was-talking-to's head exploded in frustration, she directed her anecdotes at me. Hadn't she seen me kick the kid? How many have to die…?
I heard of her tales of living in Byron (surprise, surprise, sur-fucking-prise), how she once replaced reconstructive surgery with acupuncture, and how she once dreamed of the suicide attempts of a boy she never knew. I was suitably bored shitless, and it didn't make the 2 HOUR wait ANY LONGER. Now, I ike Byron, I am all for alternative therapies, and understand the significance of dreams but all these great things were hi-jacked by a bunch of new-age terrorists and have since been rendered shit. Howard should run on a war against hippies - it's not like he doesn't want to.
Fortunately my name was eventually called. My consultation was quickly, efficient and very friendly. The whole ordeal, including medication, was free. No bulk-billing, no Medi-Care numbers, no nothing. It became clear how the clinic was funded. It's a body, not a business. That's practically a mandate for it to be inefficiently run, under-staffed and over worked. It all made sense. And, to their credit, they are doing a good job with what they’ve got.
Medical attention is not the 'right' of anyone in any country - I don't give a fuck what the UN said. People have got this whole 'rights and responsibilities' thing arse-about. It is said 'everyone has rights, and it is our responsibility to uphold those rights'. Bullshit. That's presumptuous and self-serving. People have responsibilities, and when those are met by everybody, your 'rights' are inherently tended. If privileged people are meeting their responsibilities, those people in need will get the attention they require.
The key to getting free health care is to get yourself fucked over by powerful and privileged people - guilt will ensure you get a doctor. They'll fly one out gratis. Be an African or an Aboriginal - it may not be glamorous, but the drugs are free.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Fragility
Something caught the corner of my eye - something was jumping on the outside furniture. I walked to the window, half-ready shout out and tell whatever it was to 'fuck off'. The unflattering yellow fluorescents sketched out two kittens in the darkness, busy exploring the verandah. I couldn't help but watch them. My mood was suddenly one of levity.
Their inquisitive eyes narrowed in on a gecko. Though it was well out of reach, they made a playful ploy at him - a jump and swipe and a stumble. Something else finally captured their attention and they wandered off into the night. They'll be dead before their first birthday, there's no doubt in my mind. It's just the way it is. Maningrida is no place for two unprotected kittens.
Katie sent a group e-mail - photos of a baby, framed by an ever-loving mother. I'd met the child for the first time in May, she was about 9 months - not at all like the kid in these photos. A little blonde person, walking around, surefooted and curious - a far cry from the drooling, crawling, charismatic twinkly-eyed shit-machine I'd been hanging out with. In just a couple of months someone had gone and got all grown up - it wasn't me.
She looked happy and secure in that kind of oblivious way that only kids do - perhaps that only kids can. Where the only thing in the universe is the biscuit in your hand, the bug on the leaf, or Mum's big hug. She'll be fine. At some point she'll hate her parents, then hate her boyfriends, her job, perhaps dabble in hating global politics. But in the end, she'll be OK - there's no doubt in my mind. It’s just the way it is.
My best friends here are a couple of kids. They visit me in my office and we chat about stuff. I draw pictures, they colour them in, we pull silly faces at the camera and make hilarious music videos. One of the girls, a regular sidekick off mine, must be about 7, I figure - when you ask no one seems to give you a straight answer. 'She teasing you!' a gaggle will giggle. "That's alright," I sob mockingly, "I can take it."
One day me and my sidekick were drawing, then spelling out the names of the animals we'd drawn. With much cheeky prompting and playful cheating, we got it done in the end. She smiled a massive proud smile. Only 35% of school students here are literate - that's 35% of the kids who actually go to school. That's not counting the mass of kids that don't bother to enroll. There's one kid, the rumour goes, in year 10 that can read at a reasonable standard. Just one.
One of the older boys is about 10. His father is a respectable member of the community, but he wants to be a gangsta like every other boy around here. Ma and him have talked about boys his age - his mates - smoking pot, drinking, attempting suicide. He is lucky to be from a good family - he'll probably do what he sees and follow in his father's footsteps. Probably. Even if it means giving up his dreams of being a rapper. We used the new microphone and cut a demo on the computer, just in case...
Things are different here. People have different aspirations and ideas of success. I see that. There are no doctors or lawyers here - there are good parents and strong leaders. What I don’t see (yet?) is the structure of security. What gives one child any better chance at life than the next? Who gets to have a future? And where is that future? One ‘good family’ might have 10 kids. What happens when Maningrida finds it can not support its own social growth?
It has started to rain outside, and life just became a little bit harder for the two kittens - it's not called a tropical downpour because it contains ham and pineapple. I make light of the situation because I have to. It takes a lifetime to save a life. In the end, they're just cats. It's the way it is. Maningrida is no place for the unprotected. Sometimes it feels like it is no place at all.
Their inquisitive eyes narrowed in on a gecko. Though it was well out of reach, they made a playful ploy at him - a jump and swipe and a stumble. Something else finally captured their attention and they wandered off into the night. They'll be dead before their first birthday, there's no doubt in my mind. It's just the way it is. Maningrida is no place for two unprotected kittens.
Katie sent a group e-mail - photos of a baby, framed by an ever-loving mother. I'd met the child for the first time in May, she was about 9 months - not at all like the kid in these photos. A little blonde person, walking around, surefooted and curious - a far cry from the drooling, crawling, charismatic twinkly-eyed shit-machine I'd been hanging out with. In just a couple of months someone had gone and got all grown up - it wasn't me.
She looked happy and secure in that kind of oblivious way that only kids do - perhaps that only kids can. Where the only thing in the universe is the biscuit in your hand, the bug on the leaf, or Mum's big hug. She'll be fine. At some point she'll hate her parents, then hate her boyfriends, her job, perhaps dabble in hating global politics. But in the end, she'll be OK - there's no doubt in my mind. It’s just the way it is.
My best friends here are a couple of kids. They visit me in my office and we chat about stuff. I draw pictures, they colour them in, we pull silly faces at the camera and make hilarious music videos. One of the girls, a regular sidekick off mine, must be about 7, I figure - when you ask no one seems to give you a straight answer. 'She teasing you!' a gaggle will giggle. "That's alright," I sob mockingly, "I can take it."
One day me and my sidekick were drawing, then spelling out the names of the animals we'd drawn. With much cheeky prompting and playful cheating, we got it done in the end. She smiled a massive proud smile. Only 35% of school students here are literate - that's 35% of the kids who actually go to school. That's not counting the mass of kids that don't bother to enroll. There's one kid, the rumour goes, in year 10 that can read at a reasonable standard. Just one.
One of the older boys is about 10. His father is a respectable member of the community, but he wants to be a gangsta like every other boy around here. Ma and him have talked about boys his age - his mates - smoking pot, drinking, attempting suicide. He is lucky to be from a good family - he'll probably do what he sees and follow in his father's footsteps. Probably. Even if it means giving up his dreams of being a rapper. We used the new microphone and cut a demo on the computer, just in case...
Things are different here. People have different aspirations and ideas of success. I see that. There are no doctors or lawyers here - there are good parents and strong leaders. What I don’t see (yet?) is the structure of security. What gives one child any better chance at life than the next? Who gets to have a future? And where is that future? One ‘good family’ might have 10 kids. What happens when Maningrida finds it can not support its own social growth?
It has started to rain outside, and life just became a little bit harder for the two kittens - it's not called a tropical downpour because it contains ham and pineapple. I make light of the situation because I have to. It takes a lifetime to save a life. In the end, they're just cats. It's the way it is. Maningrida is no place for the unprotected. Sometimes it feels like it is no place at all.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Rain
And then the rain came...
Phil came around to pick up the dog around 6 - we'd been watching some crappy TV together. Phil was exhausted from driving all day - I was half way through a slab, so I didn't think it odd. After a some chit-chat about his trip to Darwin he took the dog off into the distance. I went back to the telly and wondered if I could really be fucked making myself any dinner. I ate a couple of slices of ham out of an open packet in the fridge and slumped on the couch. Hang on… I never bought any ham…
I'd seen that episode of America Dad before, and I couldn't quite pay attention to it. There was something in the air. Much unlike the tension of a Grog Night, a new state of anxiousness hung heavy on the breeze. It smelled like rain - a luscious wet, the air came into town on with gathering intensity. Gusty and growling through the trees.
I wandered out on to the verandah to look around. Through the blackness out the back I could see every beam from each street light; stark in the dust kicked up by the storm. Phil said it had been raining in Darwin, but word was Maningrida copped the storms weeks later.
I went back inside - 'heavy storms' had cut the satellite TV. The roof began to hiss, and a cracking sound ran through the house that made all the electrical appliances beep. The rain had started. Big and thick and warm and wet.
I stood in the downpour – it seemed like the sort of thing I’d do if my life was a movie; enjoy the first rains of The Wet. I felt like a farmer from the far flung outback – by that I mean I felt like I had cirrhosis of the liver, was bankrupt and borderline suicidal. Not true, but funny. I felt great. The air was cool, and water flowed like a curtain off the corrugated roof. Dogs barked and joyful squeals came from the street. The whole town was waking up – refreshed. I went to bed with a smile on my face – it was wrinkled and bent out of shape by the time I woke up.
The morning sun sparkled through my window the way it always had. By the time I headed out the door it had got hot. HOT. The night’s rainfall was evaporating out of the dirt and hanging in the air. Humidity was at around 95% - sticky and thick. It’s like every breath you take has already been breathed by someone else. The air is so wet your lungs seize a little every time you draw breath, for fear that they’re about to drown. Overnight the climate had changed completely. Welcome to the new world. It’s only wetter and hotter from here on in…
Phil came around to pick up the dog around 6 - we'd been watching some crappy TV together. Phil was exhausted from driving all day - I was half way through a slab, so I didn't think it odd. After a some chit-chat about his trip to Darwin he took the dog off into the distance. I went back to the telly and wondered if I could really be fucked making myself any dinner. I ate a couple of slices of ham out of an open packet in the fridge and slumped on the couch. Hang on… I never bought any ham…
I'd seen that episode of America Dad before, and I couldn't quite pay attention to it. There was something in the air. Much unlike the tension of a Grog Night, a new state of anxiousness hung heavy on the breeze. It smelled like rain - a luscious wet, the air came into town on with gathering intensity. Gusty and growling through the trees.
I wandered out on to the verandah to look around. Through the blackness out the back I could see every beam from each street light; stark in the dust kicked up by the storm. Phil said it had been raining in Darwin, but word was Maningrida copped the storms weeks later.
I went back inside - 'heavy storms' had cut the satellite TV. The roof began to hiss, and a cracking sound ran through the house that made all the electrical appliances beep. The rain had started. Big and thick and warm and wet.
I stood in the downpour – it seemed like the sort of thing I’d do if my life was a movie; enjoy the first rains of The Wet. I felt like a farmer from the far flung outback – by that I mean I felt like I had cirrhosis of the liver, was bankrupt and borderline suicidal. Not true, but funny. I felt great. The air was cool, and water flowed like a curtain off the corrugated roof. Dogs barked and joyful squeals came from the street. The whole town was waking up – refreshed. I went to bed with a smile on my face – it was wrinkled and bent out of shape by the time I woke up.
The morning sun sparkled through my window the way it always had. By the time I headed out the door it had got hot. HOT. The night’s rainfall was evaporating out of the dirt and hanging in the air. Humidity was at around 95% - sticky and thick. It’s like every breath you take has already been breathed by someone else. The air is so wet your lungs seize a little every time you draw breath, for fear that they’re about to drown. Overnight the climate had changed completely. Welcome to the new world. It’s only wetter and hotter from here on in…
Snooze
Operation 'Drunken Snooze' was an abject failure. I guess I'm still in shock. The whole episode just doesn't seem real. How could it have happened to me? Being drunk was only thing I've ever really been good at. I put in years of training, and for what? I can't complete a simple mission to get blind and pass-out on the couch. They say a poor tradesman blames his tools. Be that as it may, I have a new nemesis - mid-strength beer.
Back in the old days the game plan was always simple. Two pints in the first half-hour, then one pint every half-hour after that. It was fool-proof - a recipe even a backpacker could follow. Get a buzz going early and build until you're slobbering and abusive - like a layer-cake of self-loathing. But if being a drunken body was a temple, this was only ever the blue print.
Then the artistry comes into play. You can't just slap an evening of physical impairment and unwanted sexual advances together. You have to craft it. Have principles. That is why I drink pints only in prime numbers. It helps you to set goals in an evening - to visualise and achieve states of inebriation though meditation and heavy drinking. Prime numbers are the way to intoxicated enlightenment.
1, 2 & 3 - They're all pretty much the same thing. They fall under the 'in for a penny' syndrome. They're the drinks you can have with someone if you have somewhere else to be, or the drinks you tolerate politely with people you don't really like that much. They're nothing drinks. You're not going to do any damage with them. Three pints is the kind of stint you might expect at a business breakfast, PTA meeting, or at half-time from the under 8's mixed netball team.
5 pints is going to give you a good solid buzz that should last you most of the drive home. If you've made it to 5 you've established that this is a 'drink'. You're not just here for a quick sip and a hat tip - the gulp and go, the drink and slink, the knock-off and fuck off. The snag, of course, being that if you've had five you'll still be at the bar for...
7. This is perhaps the most important pint. Take into account you've probably been in the bar for 3 hours now, you're officially drunk - perhaps not the best time for you to have a decision to make. But a jump lies ahead - a leap of faith. The abyss between 7 and 11 prime pints. Are you going to stay and make a proper mess of yourself or are you going to take the safe route, buy a souvlaki and go home? This leap is not to be underestimated. It's a deceivingly long stretch. Many a novice drinker has stumbled at this point and perished in the vomitous ether of no-man's-land. Only the penitent pisshead shall pass.
11 &13. You've made it this far, you're obviously good at what you do. If you can do 11, 13 is not such a stretch. These are two very good opportunities to call it a night. At this point you're BAC is around 1.03, and will clock over any breathaliser, giving a reading of a very legal .03. If you have a partner it's a great opportunity to play a game of 'let's go home and see if my dick still works'. But if you are truly dedicated - a sage of the sauce - take a deep breath and make a visit to the ATM.
17 & 19. We enter the realm of the truly talented. You are wasted at this point and the greatest challenge you face will be convincing the barkeeper to pour you another one - it's a good idea to tip well from the beginning. You'll begin to see and hear things that aren't really happening and will have forgotten them all by morning. Your friends or the police will be sure to remind you of all the things you'd rather forget. You've made it this far - why not one last ditch effort...
23. The true insight of oblivion. I, to my knowledge, have never made it to this dizzying realm - I broke my collar-bone walking home defeated somewhere around 21. Apparently 23 holds wonders untold, or wonders slurred so badly that they become incomprehensible. It is a mystical magical place, that I as a student will one day achieve.
So why, oh why, could I not execute the simple task of getting drunk on a Saturday afternoon? I set a blistering pace, right from the get-go. One can after another, barely letting the condensation... condense. I hadn't eaten anything especially to help the cause. But as my svelte figure swelled with fluid I began to feel sick. The 'reduced alcohol' beer was thin and metallic tasting. It churned my insides like a bile-flavored ice-cream soda. I'd worked up a bit of a buzz, but I felt tormented and head-achy.
My belly distended, my bladder bursting, my brain clear and reason-ready, it was pointless. I gave up. I had been beaten some damned well-intentioned regulatory board - those heartless overlords. In 5 short weeks I will once again taste the sweet bitter tang of a Carlton Draught. That said, I'm trying to get drunk again now. Perhaps I will build up an immunity to this caustic and insipid brew - or get bloated and miserable trying!
Back in the old days the game plan was always simple. Two pints in the first half-hour, then one pint every half-hour after that. It was fool-proof - a recipe even a backpacker could follow. Get a buzz going early and build until you're slobbering and abusive - like a layer-cake of self-loathing. But if being a drunken body was a temple, this was only ever the blue print.
Then the artistry comes into play. You can't just slap an evening of physical impairment and unwanted sexual advances together. You have to craft it. Have principles. That is why I drink pints only in prime numbers. It helps you to set goals in an evening - to visualise and achieve states of inebriation though meditation and heavy drinking. Prime numbers are the way to intoxicated enlightenment.
1, 2 & 3 - They're all pretty much the same thing. They fall under the 'in for a penny' syndrome. They're the drinks you can have with someone if you have somewhere else to be, or the drinks you tolerate politely with people you don't really like that much. They're nothing drinks. You're not going to do any damage with them. Three pints is the kind of stint you might expect at a business breakfast, PTA meeting, or at half-time from the under 8's mixed netball team.
5 pints is going to give you a good solid buzz that should last you most of the drive home. If you've made it to 5 you've established that this is a 'drink'. You're not just here for a quick sip and a hat tip - the gulp and go, the drink and slink, the knock-off and fuck off. The snag, of course, being that if you've had five you'll still be at the bar for...
7. This is perhaps the most important pint. Take into account you've probably been in the bar for 3 hours now, you're officially drunk - perhaps not the best time for you to have a decision to make. But a jump lies ahead - a leap of faith. The abyss between 7 and 11 prime pints. Are you going to stay and make a proper mess of yourself or are you going to take the safe route, buy a souvlaki and go home? This leap is not to be underestimated. It's a deceivingly long stretch. Many a novice drinker has stumbled at this point and perished in the vomitous ether of no-man's-land. Only the penitent pisshead shall pass.
11 &13. You've made it this far, you're obviously good at what you do. If you can do 11, 13 is not such a stretch. These are two very good opportunities to call it a night. At this point you're BAC is around 1.03, and will clock over any breathaliser, giving a reading of a very legal .03. If you have a partner it's a great opportunity to play a game of 'let's go home and see if my dick still works'. But if you are truly dedicated - a sage of the sauce - take a deep breath and make a visit to the ATM.
17 & 19. We enter the realm of the truly talented. You are wasted at this point and the greatest challenge you face will be convincing the barkeeper to pour you another one - it's a good idea to tip well from the beginning. You'll begin to see and hear things that aren't really happening and will have forgotten them all by morning. Your friends or the police will be sure to remind you of all the things you'd rather forget. You've made it this far - why not one last ditch effort...
23. The true insight of oblivion. I, to my knowledge, have never made it to this dizzying realm - I broke my collar-bone walking home defeated somewhere around 21. Apparently 23 holds wonders untold, or wonders slurred so badly that they become incomprehensible. It is a mystical magical place, that I as a student will one day achieve.
So why, oh why, could I not execute the simple task of getting drunk on a Saturday afternoon? I set a blistering pace, right from the get-go. One can after another, barely letting the condensation... condense. I hadn't eaten anything especially to help the cause. But as my svelte figure swelled with fluid I began to feel sick. The 'reduced alcohol' beer was thin and metallic tasting. It churned my insides like a bile-flavored ice-cream soda. I'd worked up a bit of a buzz, but I felt tormented and head-achy.
My belly distended, my bladder bursting, my brain clear and reason-ready, it was pointless. I gave up. I had been beaten some damned well-intentioned regulatory board - those heartless overlords. In 5 short weeks I will once again taste the sweet bitter tang of a Carlton Draught. That said, I'm trying to get drunk again now. Perhaps I will build up an immunity to this caustic and insipid brew - or get bloated and miserable trying!
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Ceremony
What could be more Australian than a man, his dog, a breezy back verandah and a cold can of beer? Perhaps an immigrant, some vermin kangaroo, an unwanted pregnancy and a drinking problem - that might just tip the scales. But today I am enjoying the former. Me and Wilson are lazing about on the porch, smoking cigarettes and watching the world go by. I told him that he shouldn't smoke - dog years go by so quickly - he just coughed and flipped me the bird. Usually I'd've been a little hurt by such obscene gestures from a smoking dog, but today nothing can dampen my spirits. I have just been to my first Grog Ceremony.
Your grog might arrive in town on any barge - barge-days are Mondays and Thursdays - but pick up time is very strictly Saturdays at 11am every fortnight. It is known throughout the community as 'getting your grog on', 'getting a grog up ya' and 'Grog-a-palooza' - all of which I just made up then. If you happen to miss the proceedings of the morning your booze is stored in the police station, where it cannot be picked up until Monday. Being without a drink on a Grog Weekend is the equivalent of going to a school formal with a leper - the adventure, however well-intentioned, is bound to fall apart.
Two large refrigerated containers store the booze, as if Pandora's box had manifested as pair of meat lockers. Cars begin to line the street. Sunburnt white faces emerge, and huddle into neat and cliquey groups. Men with grey hair and blue shirts over there. Younger guys with bogan goatees over there. And a bunch of fat-ankled lesbians scattered throughout. There must be 20 cars, 50 odd people. The excitement in the air is so thick you could fill a bowl with it and call it custard. The police car rolls slowly into the lot - crunching and popping the gravelly dirt. They are The Deciders. They are the Keepers of the Chamber. They ...are the Key Masters.
'Mick Stevens!' The roll call begins. The lady cop has been stuck with the job of unloading all the slabs from the crate, while the bloke ticks stuff off on a clipboard. It must have been all the studies of Sexual Politics and Feminism at uni, but I can't help but find that amusing. 'Jack Thomas' The list reads like a 'who's who' of red-neck Australia. I feel like I'm at a graduation ceremony for a mature-age TAFE VCE course. 'Please accept this slab and a hearty hand-shake as a token of our congratulations!' The proud parents clap and wave stupidly from behind the camcorder. 'That's my boy!'
For me this is more important than any graduation. This is like receiving an Academy Award. My name comes up early - the light-beer slabs are on the top to deter break-and-enters - Huh? Me? Was that really me? Oh, my God, I don't believe it!
'Oh'
*breathlessly - even though I was sitting only a few feet away*
Thank you, Tony.
*kisses police man on both cheeks*
Oh, God. This is such an unexpected surprise...
*pulls a wad of palm cards from breast pocket*
'Oh, I'm so nervous...
*becomes suddenly calm and serious*
'I'd like to thank John and all the people at Malabam for giving me this opportunity to sink piss in a place where not everybody is allowed to. You took a chance on an unknown kid, now it's my turn to make you regret it. I'd like to thank the guys at the council for clearing my permit even though I haven't been here for three months. Oh, God...
*waves at someone in the audience*
'I know there's a million people I'm forgetting to thank, and you know who you are... and last of all I want to say thanks to my beautiful wife. Darling, you've always been there for me. I love you. And once I've finished this slab I'm going to try to have sex with you, then smack you around a bit for saying that I can't get it up... even though you’re right. Thank you again. Have a great night and God bless.'
There it is. I am now a man. I'm already three beers in to this entry, it's 10 past midday. The plan is to get myself drunk and sleep on the couch. Now THAT my friends, is living. Here's to responsible drinking.
Your grog might arrive in town on any barge - barge-days are Mondays and Thursdays - but pick up time is very strictly Saturdays at 11am every fortnight. It is known throughout the community as 'getting your grog on', 'getting a grog up ya' and 'Grog-a-palooza' - all of which I just made up then. If you happen to miss the proceedings of the morning your booze is stored in the police station, where it cannot be picked up until Monday. Being without a drink on a Grog Weekend is the equivalent of going to a school formal with a leper - the adventure, however well-intentioned, is bound to fall apart.
Two large refrigerated containers store the booze, as if Pandora's box had manifested as pair of meat lockers. Cars begin to line the street. Sunburnt white faces emerge, and huddle into neat and cliquey groups. Men with grey hair and blue shirts over there. Younger guys with bogan goatees over there. And a bunch of fat-ankled lesbians scattered throughout. There must be 20 cars, 50 odd people. The excitement in the air is so thick you could fill a bowl with it and call it custard. The police car rolls slowly into the lot - crunching and popping the gravelly dirt. They are The Deciders. They are the Keepers of the Chamber. They ...are the Key Masters.
'Mick Stevens!' The roll call begins. The lady cop has been stuck with the job of unloading all the slabs from the crate, while the bloke ticks stuff off on a clipboard. It must have been all the studies of Sexual Politics and Feminism at uni, but I can't help but find that amusing. 'Jack Thomas' The list reads like a 'who's who' of red-neck Australia. I feel like I'm at a graduation ceremony for a mature-age TAFE VCE course. 'Please accept this slab and a hearty hand-shake as a token of our congratulations!' The proud parents clap and wave stupidly from behind the camcorder. 'That's my boy!'
For me this is more important than any graduation. This is like receiving an Academy Award. My name comes up early - the light-beer slabs are on the top to deter break-and-enters - Huh? Me? Was that really me? Oh, my God, I don't believe it!
'Oh'
*breathlessly - even though I was sitting only a few feet away*
Thank you, Tony.
*kisses police man on both cheeks*
Oh, God. This is such an unexpected surprise...
*pulls a wad of palm cards from breast pocket*
'Oh, I'm so nervous...
*becomes suddenly calm and serious*
'I'd like to thank John and all the people at Malabam for giving me this opportunity to sink piss in a place where not everybody is allowed to. You took a chance on an unknown kid, now it's my turn to make you regret it. I'd like to thank the guys at the council for clearing my permit even though I haven't been here for three months. Oh, God...
*waves at someone in the audience*
'I know there's a million people I'm forgetting to thank, and you know who you are... and last of all I want to say thanks to my beautiful wife. Darling, you've always been there for me. I love you. And once I've finished this slab I'm going to try to have sex with you, then smack you around a bit for saying that I can't get it up... even though you’re right. Thank you again. Have a great night and God bless.'
There it is. I am now a man. I'm already three beers in to this entry, it's 10 past midday. The plan is to get myself drunk and sleep on the couch. Now THAT my friends, is living. Here's to responsible drinking.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Shops
The supermarket in Maningrida is like a big milkbar stocked by Campbell's Cash'n'Carry. You can't get rice, sugar or flour in anything less than a 4 kilo bucket - which is lucky, because I'm eating a lot more flour than I usually would. It's good for you. Angries up the blood. Keeps you constipated, so you spend less on grocery bills. It's hard to get your peck on when you've got a colon full of slowly self-raising wheatmeal. And when you finish, you can use the bucket to keep your lovelorn tears, broken dreams and hospital bills. Pop it on the fire and you've got yourself a billy of misery tea.
I love the shop. It's almost entirely stocked with tinned meat, 2-minute noodles and cheap plastic children's toys. Then a few odds and ends - a washing machine, a bike, some seaweed rice crackers and a can of squirty cream. I smell a Dutch film in the making. Everything you could possibly need is probably not in the shop. But there's heaps of other shit you don't need to take your mind off it.
The shop's not that bad. They just cater to the tastes of the Aboriginals. Apparently there are some pubs near communities that serve Weet-bix and Spam (separately, unless otherwise indicated) to punters. I remember when I first got here I used to grab an apple on the way out the door for the walk to work, then feel all bad because I was eating in public. Then I thought, 'Hold up, I'm in Maningrida, not Ethiopia. These kids aren't starving, they're malnourished!' There's a difference. Anyway, there's a lot to be said for a diet of meat pies and Coke - it keeps your legs really skinny and protects against skin cancer. It's almost un-heard-of up here.
The MPA store (Maningrida Progress Association - whatever that means) it the smaller of two supermarkety shops. The other one's a shed on the other side of town. I haven't been there. I like to support local businesses. There's also hole-in-the-wall stores at the council and the airport, bit(e)s and pieces at the BAC fuel shop, the school tuck-shop, the Hasty-Tasty for greasy takeaway, and the Good Food Kitchen for sandwiches and other gay stuff. You're unlikely to go hungry here, unless you're anorexic, agoraphobic or both. Stupid skinny shut-in.
MPA have a very limited selection of lollies - they try not to encourage eating crap (try). Still, one packet stood out from the rest. I gathered what other crap I needed and headed home. Tonight is a night of sitting around on the couch, watching a shit DVD from Bali and eating Chicos (chocolate jelly babies, for anyone who hasn't had the blissful pleasure). I don't know what it is with these Aboriginals. Black condoms, black confectionary, black on their flag - you'd think they were having some kind of identity crisis... ah, yes... silly me...
Tonight is not an ordinary night. I have guests. Finally, some intelligent conversation. I've made friends with the new doctor, his lovely wife and their 10-month-old Betsy. Sadly, they're in Darwin. But I'm looking after their dog while they're away. So it's me, Lois and Wilson the Whippet Puppy (named after the ball - that's like calling a child Nintendo... hmmm... *scrawls note to future self*). I suggested they call him Steve. And people say I'm unimaginative.
I've made the promise not to kill Wilson over the weekend - accidentally or intentionally. The insurance just wont cover it. He's good company. He seems to like flour too, which is good. There's no way I'm having that thing shit in my house. I don't care how good a guest he is.
I love the shop. It's almost entirely stocked with tinned meat, 2-minute noodles and cheap plastic children's toys. Then a few odds and ends - a washing machine, a bike, some seaweed rice crackers and a can of squirty cream. I smell a Dutch film in the making. Everything you could possibly need is probably not in the shop. But there's heaps of other shit you don't need to take your mind off it.
The shop's not that bad. They just cater to the tastes of the Aboriginals. Apparently there are some pubs near communities that serve Weet-bix and Spam (separately, unless otherwise indicated) to punters. I remember when I first got here I used to grab an apple on the way out the door for the walk to work, then feel all bad because I was eating in public. Then I thought, 'Hold up, I'm in Maningrida, not Ethiopia. These kids aren't starving, they're malnourished!' There's a difference. Anyway, there's a lot to be said for a diet of meat pies and Coke - it keeps your legs really skinny and protects against skin cancer. It's almost un-heard-of up here.
The MPA store (Maningrida Progress Association - whatever that means) it the smaller of two supermarkety shops. The other one's a shed on the other side of town. I haven't been there. I like to support local businesses. There's also hole-in-the-wall stores at the council and the airport, bit(e)s and pieces at the BAC fuel shop, the school tuck-shop, the Hasty-Tasty for greasy takeaway, and the Good Food Kitchen for sandwiches and other gay stuff. You're unlikely to go hungry here, unless you're anorexic, agoraphobic or both. Stupid skinny shut-in.
MPA have a very limited selection of lollies - they try not to encourage eating crap (try). Still, one packet stood out from the rest. I gathered what other crap I needed and headed home. Tonight is a night of sitting around on the couch, watching a shit DVD from Bali and eating Chicos (chocolate jelly babies, for anyone who hasn't had the blissful pleasure). I don't know what it is with these Aboriginals. Black condoms, black confectionary, black on their flag - you'd think they were having some kind of identity crisis... ah, yes... silly me...
Tonight is not an ordinary night. I have guests. Finally, some intelligent conversation. I've made friends with the new doctor, his lovely wife and their 10-month-old Betsy. Sadly, they're in Darwin. But I'm looking after their dog while they're away. So it's me, Lois and Wilson the Whippet Puppy (named after the ball - that's like calling a child Nintendo... hmmm... *scrawls note to future self*). I suggested they call him Steve. And people say I'm unimaginative.
I've made the promise not to kill Wilson over the weekend - accidentally or intentionally. The insurance just wont cover it. He's good company. He seems to like flour too, which is good. There's no way I'm having that thing shit in my house. I don't care how good a guest he is.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Coconut
My uniformly fuzzy muff of a hair-do was dented from a night on the sheets. I look like a coconut that's been beaten out of shape by a hungry, but mentally retarded ape. No, scratch that. I look like a hungry and mentally retarded ape. I must admit, I haven't been paying a whole heap of attention to standards of personal presentation and hygiene.
There are now permanent dirt-stains on my feet, my eyebrows have met in the middle for the first time since year 8, and my right armpit (and strangely only the right) has taken on the odour of some kind of industrial solvent - acrid and metallic. It's very much unlike my regular odour of heat-sweat cheeses and thick oily beer - I smell like a Belgian deli on a hot day.
It is Mo-vember again (a month of moustache cultivation, for the uninitiated). Participants take the month to grow their most styling facial hair for presentations and parades on the 30th. Some use it to raise money for charity, others to shelter small birds. I once heard that a man successfully cross-bred his moustache with a guinea pig. I myself 'stache for sport. The sport of repulsing chicks.
Unless you're over forty, a police officer or a woman of the Mediterranean you probably shouldn't wear a moustache. There are some young guys today who can get away with a moustache in that cool, retro, ironic kind of way. So square it's hip. Sadly I am not one of these guys. I look like an accountant who wears a moustache for the sub-conscious purpose of alerting the world he is some kind of repressed leather-daddy. I can't have that - I think the buttless chaps are signal enough.
Still, I don't care. Vanity motivates only one thing for me in Maningrida; exercise. I'd love to say that I'm out sweating away the body fat and accumulating muscle mass like it was porn, but that's just not true. I'm barely sweating away the oily build-up in my pores and only accumulating a fine layer of dust... on my porn. I only ever exercise if I happen to catch a glimpse of myself and think, ‘ooh, I look a little bloated today.’ That’s the regime.
But today the internet told me that I don’t even have to worry about that anymore. I have an IQ of 138. It must be true because I did the test without even cheating. That means my Intellectual Type is 'Visionary Philosopher' - which I'd somehow always suspected anyway. It means I am 'highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways'. I guess they factored in my ambi-dexterity. These IQ tests get a really thorough insight from 50 questions of basic comprehension.
'Like Plato', my 'exceptional math and verbal skills' make me 'very adept at explaining things to others' - you dipshits getting this?? I am also great at 'anticipating and predicting patterns'. That's why I bought those tartan slacks - in anticipation of the Fall season. Wheneverthefuck Fall is. Surely these are all talents and traits I can utilise while being fat and ugly.
138 is such a great IQ to have. You have all the pleasure of being smarter than lots of people, yet none of the depressive and suicidal effects of the pressure of being a genius. It suits me. It's a load off to know that I never have to deal with those tossers from MENSA, and that I've been quite rightly looking down my nose at... the very end part of my nose. I can put my dented coconut to bed tonight knowing that I'm much smarter than your average retarded ape, and twice as hungry.
There are now permanent dirt-stains on my feet, my eyebrows have met in the middle for the first time since year 8, and my right armpit (and strangely only the right) has taken on the odour of some kind of industrial solvent - acrid and metallic. It's very much unlike my regular odour of heat-sweat cheeses and thick oily beer - I smell like a Belgian deli on a hot day.
It is Mo-vember again (a month of moustache cultivation, for the uninitiated). Participants take the month to grow their most styling facial hair for presentations and parades on the 30th. Some use it to raise money for charity, others to shelter small birds. I once heard that a man successfully cross-bred his moustache with a guinea pig. I myself 'stache for sport. The sport of repulsing chicks.
Unless you're over forty, a police officer or a woman of the Mediterranean you probably shouldn't wear a moustache. There are some young guys today who can get away with a moustache in that cool, retro, ironic kind of way. So square it's hip. Sadly I am not one of these guys. I look like an accountant who wears a moustache for the sub-conscious purpose of alerting the world he is some kind of repressed leather-daddy. I can't have that - I think the buttless chaps are signal enough.
Still, I don't care. Vanity motivates only one thing for me in Maningrida; exercise. I'd love to say that I'm out sweating away the body fat and accumulating muscle mass like it was porn, but that's just not true. I'm barely sweating away the oily build-up in my pores and only accumulating a fine layer of dust... on my porn. I only ever exercise if I happen to catch a glimpse of myself and think, ‘ooh, I look a little bloated today.’ That’s the regime.
But today the internet told me that I don’t even have to worry about that anymore. I have an IQ of 138. It must be true because I did the test without even cheating. That means my Intellectual Type is 'Visionary Philosopher' - which I'd somehow always suspected anyway. It means I am 'highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways'. I guess they factored in my ambi-dexterity. These IQ tests get a really thorough insight from 50 questions of basic comprehension.
'Like Plato', my 'exceptional math and verbal skills' make me 'very adept at explaining things to others' - you dipshits getting this?? I am also great at 'anticipating and predicting patterns'. That's why I bought those tartan slacks - in anticipation of the Fall season. Wheneverthefuck Fall is. Surely these are all talents and traits I can utilise while being fat and ugly.
138 is such a great IQ to have. You have all the pleasure of being smarter than lots of people, yet none of the depressive and suicidal effects of the pressure of being a genius. It suits me. It's a load off to know that I never have to deal with those tossers from MENSA, and that I've been quite rightly looking down my nose at... the very end part of my nose. I can put my dented coconut to bed tonight knowing that I'm much smarter than your average retarded ape, and twice as hungry.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Tool
Work has stalled, and through necessity comes invention - I've created innovative ways of looking busy in the workplace, even at close quarters. The key is having a question ready at all times.
'Ryan, is that terrorist porn you're...'
"Ah-ha!" I interject, "Just the person I wanted to see. I was wondering about blah blah blah..." (Blah Blah Blah is the name of a community just outside of Wasnt-reelee Doinmuch)
It's not that work has stalled - it is difficult to stop that which you have not started (thank you Isaac Newton). And like the invading armies in Iraq, I just don't seem to be able to make any progress. There are a few projects that we aim to complete here at the Health Board. However, I am just a tool within these projects.
I am the means by which other people accomplish objectives. Someone wants to get a film about smoking put together - I make their intentions a reality. Another wants to document their efforts and approaches to managing mental health in the community - I, like a big hairy camera, capture that and present it to an audience.
For each person's will, I am the way. A role I'm very comfortable with. But at the moment all the 'wills' are either absent or unready, and while I always thought I really liked not doing anything, I've discovered that I really can't stand not-having a project. Usually I would create my own project, but if there's one thing that Maningrida does not need is another Balanda with an agenda. If there were two things Maningrida didn't need, it'd be the Olsen twins.
The one thing that I've learnt about dealing with Aboriginal people is that most people don't get it. We're here to help! - it's the catch-cry of white workforce. Respect is the buzz-word. We claim to be an 'invisible' force that assists an Aboriginal community to operate efficiently in the way that it would feel most comfortable - being respectful of cultural sensibility. This is done by introducing/imposing a process or institution on the community, teaching them 'how it is run', then leaving them (eventually/hopefully) to run it themselves. Welcome to the West, you can do whatever you like here, as long as it's exactly what we say.
It's a cultural insensitivity that is at the very center of our sensibility. We live under a secular government that gives national public holidays for Christian celebrations. 'I know you're Jewish, but what do you mean you don't celebrate Christmas? How does Santa know which house to go to?' It seems we look at Aboriginals and never imagine that what they want might not be exactly what we want - fame, fortune, freedom, success, tax-exemption, a magic carpet and an 18 year old girlfriend. Or even better, an 18 year old carpet and a magic girlfriend. Imagine that, Poncho. Imagine that.
I exaggerate for the sake of summary. In truth, some institutions are actually listening and the people of Maningrida have some sock-pulling-up to do (necessarily, if reluctantly). The fact remains that every idea I have about the ways to communicate through film are biased towards a life's education in Melbourne. And what I'm learning here will be methods of communication effective exclusively in Maningrida - not Aboriginals collectively. And so I am a tool - a filter through which ideas pass and come out in DVD form. Which is good - most things I process come out in the form of shit.
Nonetheless I am creating my own project, in the hope that it can be hijacked by the people of Maningrida and put to work to whatever ends they dare deem. Trying to create an entity that is fleshed-out yet formless. A template that is waiting for someone to fill in the blanks. It's an exciting and challenging endeavor. I'm really enjoying the work, even if I hate the waiting.
It took a while for me to come to terms with the fact that my films would be valueless outside of the community walls - poorly put together, and largely in languages that not even I understand. Still there's a strange satisfaction in the knowledge that I am not the point or the purpose of my profession - in giving up ownership of my work. I just hope it can help to make a little impression on the object of its intent - the Olsen twins. It may take two to tango, but it takes three to build a human pyramid.
'Ryan, is that terrorist porn you're...'
"Ah-ha!" I interject, "Just the person I wanted to see. I was wondering about blah blah blah..." (Blah Blah Blah is the name of a community just outside of Wasnt-reelee Doinmuch)
It's not that work has stalled - it is difficult to stop that which you have not started (thank you Isaac Newton). And like the invading armies in Iraq, I just don't seem to be able to make any progress. There are a few projects that we aim to complete here at the Health Board. However, I am just a tool within these projects.
I am the means by which other people accomplish objectives. Someone wants to get a film about smoking put together - I make their intentions a reality. Another wants to document their efforts and approaches to managing mental health in the community - I, like a big hairy camera, capture that and present it to an audience.
For each person's will, I am the way. A role I'm very comfortable with. But at the moment all the 'wills' are either absent or unready, and while I always thought I really liked not doing anything, I've discovered that I really can't stand not-having a project. Usually I would create my own project, but if there's one thing that Maningrida does not need is another Balanda with an agenda. If there were two things Maningrida didn't need, it'd be the Olsen twins.
The one thing that I've learnt about dealing with Aboriginal people is that most people don't get it. We're here to help! - it's the catch-cry of white workforce. Respect is the buzz-word. We claim to be an 'invisible' force that assists an Aboriginal community to operate efficiently in the way that it would feel most comfortable - being respectful of cultural sensibility. This is done by introducing/imposing a process or institution on the community, teaching them 'how it is run', then leaving them (eventually/hopefully) to run it themselves. Welcome to the West, you can do whatever you like here, as long as it's exactly what we say.
It's a cultural insensitivity that is at the very center of our sensibility. We live under a secular government that gives national public holidays for Christian celebrations. 'I know you're Jewish, but what do you mean you don't celebrate Christmas? How does Santa know which house to go to?' It seems we look at Aboriginals and never imagine that what they want might not be exactly what we want - fame, fortune, freedom, success, tax-exemption, a magic carpet and an 18 year old girlfriend. Or even better, an 18 year old carpet and a magic girlfriend. Imagine that, Poncho. Imagine that.
I exaggerate for the sake of summary. In truth, some institutions are actually listening and the people of Maningrida have some sock-pulling-up to do (necessarily, if reluctantly). The fact remains that every idea I have about the ways to communicate through film are biased towards a life's education in Melbourne. And what I'm learning here will be methods of communication effective exclusively in Maningrida - not Aboriginals collectively. And so I am a tool - a filter through which ideas pass and come out in DVD form. Which is good - most things I process come out in the form of shit.
Nonetheless I am creating my own project, in the hope that it can be hijacked by the people of Maningrida and put to work to whatever ends they dare deem. Trying to create an entity that is fleshed-out yet formless. A template that is waiting for someone to fill in the blanks. It's an exciting and challenging endeavor. I'm really enjoying the work, even if I hate the waiting.
It took a while for me to come to terms with the fact that my films would be valueless outside of the community walls - poorly put together, and largely in languages that not even I understand. Still there's a strange satisfaction in the knowledge that I am not the point or the purpose of my profession - in giving up ownership of my work. I just hope it can help to make a little impression on the object of its intent - the Olsen twins. It may take two to tango, but it takes three to build a human pyramid.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Lessons
Never take candy from strangers - ask if they have any carrot sticks. A simple rule, but pretty much the only one I live by. 128 days since my last abduction. To tell the truth, I feel a little lost when I'm not being abducted. I went to a support group for missing persons, but no one showed up. I consoled myself with seaweed rice-crackers and tabouli, even though I wasn't really sure what 'tabouli' was. Apparently it's Arabic for arse-paste.
The candy rule is one of those universal laws you're taught as a kid. Like don't lick knives in the toaster, don't blow-dry the cat while taking a bath, and try not to 'go on fire'. I'd say pretty safely that none of these fundemental rules have been taught here in Maningrida. The kids seem to do whatever they like, and what they like is screaming indoors, climbing on stuff and throwing rocks at shit. They are not so much misbehaved as they are acting like drunk adults. They should know better.
On the way back from lunch I saw three little boys playing in an old water-filled esky, splashing and laughing. Gone are the days when I could just hang out with a couple of my mates, naked in a small plastic box. Childhood is a time of exploration. But what lies ahead for children who don't have any rules worth breaking? And how well equipped will they be to face a world should they ever find themselves outside the insulated world of the esky?
It makes me wonder what other life-skills they might be missing out on. I'm told (by a close personal friend) that Jennifer Love-Hewitt can't ride a bike. She was an awkward pre-pubescent, like a chicken fillet gone wrong - a breastless skin. Her busy professional childhood denied her what many of us take for granted; poverty. Here in Maningrida bikes seem awfully scarce. Where's the joy in getting testicular cancer if you can't use your super-chemo powers to win the Tour De France?
They're in the middle of building a 25m swimming pool here - that's about twelve and an half meters. The plan is to get Bronze Medallions for 30 locals and have them staff it. Although the town may be right by the seaside, swimming (ie. certain death by crocodile) has never been high on the agenda. The beach is so shallow here, even if you did want to get your nipples wet you'd have to pack a lunch for the wade out. Asking locals to get a bronze medallion is like rounding up a herd of cattle and asking them to sit for a motorcycle licence.
I can't comprehend not being able to swim, but thousands of episodes of Baywatch serve as solid evidence that the affliction is rife. Open seas may be one thing, but how do you drown in a pool unless it's of your own vomit? Isn't the human body naturally boyant? Even unconscious people only drown half the time. Babies know how to swim instinctively - we all know how hard it is to drown one of them. Is swimming like getting an erection; when you think about it too much it becomes really difficult to do? Oh, the shame and stigma.
I've decided to put together a basic survial guide for the young people of today. It'll have all the essentials; don't take candy from strangers, but get your drugs from any scummbag who knows a friend of a friend of a friend; don't run with scissors, but keep your cancer-causing mobile phone close to your genitals at all times; don't sit too close to the TV, just get a bigger fucking telly, you cheap bastard. As for the swimming and the bike riding? Enter them all in a triathalon and let Darwin sort them out.
The candy rule is one of those universal laws you're taught as a kid. Like don't lick knives in the toaster, don't blow-dry the cat while taking a bath, and try not to 'go on fire'. I'd say pretty safely that none of these fundemental rules have been taught here in Maningrida. The kids seem to do whatever they like, and what they like is screaming indoors, climbing on stuff and throwing rocks at shit. They are not so much misbehaved as they are acting like drunk adults. They should know better.
On the way back from lunch I saw three little boys playing in an old water-filled esky, splashing and laughing. Gone are the days when I could just hang out with a couple of my mates, naked in a small plastic box. Childhood is a time of exploration. But what lies ahead for children who don't have any rules worth breaking? And how well equipped will they be to face a world should they ever find themselves outside the insulated world of the esky?
It makes me wonder what other life-skills they might be missing out on. I'm told (by a close personal friend) that Jennifer Love-Hewitt can't ride a bike. She was an awkward pre-pubescent, like a chicken fillet gone wrong - a breastless skin. Her busy professional childhood denied her what many of us take for granted; poverty. Here in Maningrida bikes seem awfully scarce. Where's the joy in getting testicular cancer if you can't use your super-chemo powers to win the Tour De France?
They're in the middle of building a 25m swimming pool here - that's about twelve and an half meters. The plan is to get Bronze Medallions for 30 locals and have them staff it. Although the town may be right by the seaside, swimming (ie. certain death by crocodile) has never been high on the agenda. The beach is so shallow here, even if you did want to get your nipples wet you'd have to pack a lunch for the wade out. Asking locals to get a bronze medallion is like rounding up a herd of cattle and asking them to sit for a motorcycle licence.
I can't comprehend not being able to swim, but thousands of episodes of Baywatch serve as solid evidence that the affliction is rife. Open seas may be one thing, but how do you drown in a pool unless it's of your own vomit? Isn't the human body naturally boyant? Even unconscious people only drown half the time. Babies know how to swim instinctively - we all know how hard it is to drown one of them. Is swimming like getting an erection; when you think about it too much it becomes really difficult to do? Oh, the shame and stigma.
I've decided to put together a basic survial guide for the young people of today. It'll have all the essentials; don't take candy from strangers, but get your drugs from any scummbag who knows a friend of a friend of a friend; don't run with scissors, but keep your cancer-causing mobile phone close to your genitals at all times; don't sit too close to the TV, just get a bigger fucking telly, you cheap bastard. As for the swimming and the bike riding? Enter them all in a triathalon and let Darwin sort them out.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Recalibrated
It's happening again. In Adelaide it was a cockroach called Bernard. This time I've started having conversations with a grasshopper that lives in my kitchen. Her name is Lois. Usually I'd talk to my self, but I've been starting to piss me off lately, so I'm giving myself the silent treatment. The stupid thing is I don't even know what I'm mad at me for. Still, I'm determined to make myself stew until I figure it out. I don't mind the silence, I just miss the sex.
Lois started it. Polite 'hello's on the way to the laundry. Some chit-chat about the weather.
'So... hot today, isn't it.'
"Yes, Lois. It's always hot."
'You don't have to bite my head off! That's praying mantises!''
"Why do we always fight?" The relationship developed quickly - like a pre-pubescent full of chicken hormones. There was a time when I thought there might be something between us. Now we're 'just good friends'. She's off every night with that fucking gecko from Accounts. Smarmy little sticky-footed prick - I can hear him laughing at me. He's just using her as an appetizer.
I tried feeding her for a while, but I found I have no idea what grasshoppers eat. I still haven't worked it out exactly, but I know it's not fillet miniogn - there's $23 I'll never see again. She is fond of Hokkien noodles - perhaps the kung fu connection is stronger than I thought. She doesn't like that I'm smoking again. She says I'm ruining my health. I guess that shit is more important when you're lifespan can be anticipated on one page of a calendar.
Smoking is a strange thing. It's said that no matter how long you quit for, you never stop wanting one. For me the triggers were always simple - drinking and watching people smoke on telly. Pour me a beer and pass the sparkie. It's like coffee and newspapers, peanut-butter and bacon, milkshakes and spraypaint - born to be together. However, lately I've been finding I've been having an odd association. It's all because of that disgusting mouth-cancer warning sticker. Now, every time I see someone with a horrible disfiguring mouth-cancer, I'm literally salivating for a cigarette. It's all Pavlovian and shit - and not in a good meringue-y way. It's interesting how quickly the mind can adapt.
It's 10 o'clock and the excitement from Thursday late-night shopping is yet to simmer down. Dogs are fighting wildly in the distance and the headlights of the night-patrol vehicle cut a swathe through the blackness out the back verandah. I've turned the fan off - the constantly moving air has started to give me a headache. And for the first time in ages there is silence. Dogs barking, people yelling, distant doof - it's all like white noise now. I've re-calibrated my senses. This is silence. For future reference; stinky is the new scentless, I engage with the world through my seeing-eye dog, and I've replaced my entire sense of touch with a bowl of packet-made soup.
Fuck it. I've gotta turn that fan back on. I'm sweating like a junkie in a sauna. But apart from that, everything up here is like normal life. The alienness has evaporated. My life here is fun, comfortable and normal. Now I can spend my days talking to my only friend the grasshopper, until one day I wake up to find her dead on the kitchen bench being eaten by ants... what? what? why are you looking at me?
Lois started it. Polite 'hello's on the way to the laundry. Some chit-chat about the weather.
'So... hot today, isn't it.'
"Yes, Lois. It's always hot."
'You don't have to bite my head off! That's praying mantises!''
"Why do we always fight?" The relationship developed quickly - like a pre-pubescent full of chicken hormones. There was a time when I thought there might be something between us. Now we're 'just good friends'. She's off every night with that fucking gecko from Accounts. Smarmy little sticky-footed prick - I can hear him laughing at me. He's just using her as an appetizer.
I tried feeding her for a while, but I found I have no idea what grasshoppers eat. I still haven't worked it out exactly, but I know it's not fillet miniogn - there's $23 I'll never see again. She is fond of Hokkien noodles - perhaps the kung fu connection is stronger than I thought. She doesn't like that I'm smoking again. She says I'm ruining my health. I guess that shit is more important when you're lifespan can be anticipated on one page of a calendar.
Smoking is a strange thing. It's said that no matter how long you quit for, you never stop wanting one. For me the triggers were always simple - drinking and watching people smoke on telly. Pour me a beer and pass the sparkie. It's like coffee and newspapers, peanut-butter and bacon, milkshakes and spraypaint - born to be together. However, lately I've been finding I've been having an odd association. It's all because of that disgusting mouth-cancer warning sticker. Now, every time I see someone with a horrible disfiguring mouth-cancer, I'm literally salivating for a cigarette. It's all Pavlovian and shit - and not in a good meringue-y way. It's interesting how quickly the mind can adapt.
It's 10 o'clock and the excitement from Thursday late-night shopping is yet to simmer down. Dogs are fighting wildly in the distance and the headlights of the night-patrol vehicle cut a swathe through the blackness out the back verandah. I've turned the fan off - the constantly moving air has started to give me a headache. And for the first time in ages there is silence. Dogs barking, people yelling, distant doof - it's all like white noise now. I've re-calibrated my senses. This is silence. For future reference; stinky is the new scentless, I engage with the world through my seeing-eye dog, and I've replaced my entire sense of touch with a bowl of packet-made soup.
Fuck it. I've gotta turn that fan back on. I'm sweating like a junkie in a sauna. But apart from that, everything up here is like normal life. The alienness has evaporated. My life here is fun, comfortable and normal. Now I can spend my days talking to my only friend the grasshopper, until one day I wake up to find her dead on the kitchen bench being eaten by ants... what? what? why are you looking at me?
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Future
When we were 18 me and the boys went to Schoolies Week. We had t-shirts printed up that said 'SECURITY' and spent the rest of the week walking around looking unconvincing. Good times.
Months later I was hanging-out with a girl I was sleeping with - I happened to be wearing the t-shirt. 'Hmph! Security?!' she scoffed, 'you might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says 'COMMITMENT'!' Much has changed since then. For one that girl learnt to keep her smart mouth shut. To this day no one has found the body.
In all honesty not that much has changed. For a second there I had a little crisis and thought I'd better start looking to settle down. But that passed like a nation at a Republic referendum - hastily, without thought or discussion. No, no. Think of the future? That's not for me. That should be left for paranoid schizophrenics, over-bearing parents and paleontologists.
The only time I ever considered a 5 year plan, I'd been arrested for possession with intent to traffic. Luckily, when I got to court, the judge kept calling me Chuck, gave me a balloon and sent me down the shops for cigarettes... and they say the system doesn't work.
I bring this up because for the first time (this month) I'm wondering exactly what the future will bring. Will I really send my kids to school on jetpacks? Will DVD give way to 'BrainFilms' administered directly into the eye with a paintball gun? Will religious tensions bring down society like an epileptic fitting at a game of Pick Up Sticks?
If I come back here next year (as it appears I may) will it mean that I'll be celebrating my 25th birthday while on a return visit to my parents house? Living with my parents at 25?! Isn't that like a litmus test for serial killers, paedophiles and bloggers? I'm not that guy, am I?
My name is Ryan Coffey. My hobbies include sitting around in my undies, eating a sandwich. (I was going to say 'eating a sandwich in my undies' but that conjures pictures. Hairy, salty pictures.) Usually I sleep with just a sheet over me, but sometimes I like to use a blanket, but leave the fan on low. I use mouthwash even though I don't like the taste. One time, on the weekend, I got a call from a market researcher and I happily provided her all the information she required.
What a confession. I feel like I should present myself to a police station for chemical castration. Or just whack one of my nuts flat on the counter with a rolling pin. Just one. I want the other one to watch - make him squirm for a while, eventually he'll talk. Then I'd have a talking nut. That'd be something, wouldn't it? Alas, my gormless existence.
Don't fret for me. This listlessness will pass, like my future so far has already. I guess I just wish I had married that girl when I was 18. She was funny. I like that. There's no laughing about a smashed nut.
Months later I was hanging-out with a girl I was sleeping with - I happened to be wearing the t-shirt. 'Hmph! Security?!' she scoffed, 'you might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says 'COMMITMENT'!' Much has changed since then. For one that girl learnt to keep her smart mouth shut. To this day no one has found the body.
In all honesty not that much has changed. For a second there I had a little crisis and thought I'd better start looking to settle down. But that passed like a nation at a Republic referendum - hastily, without thought or discussion. No, no. Think of the future? That's not for me. That should be left for paranoid schizophrenics, over-bearing parents and paleontologists.
The only time I ever considered a 5 year plan, I'd been arrested for possession with intent to traffic. Luckily, when I got to court, the judge kept calling me Chuck, gave me a balloon and sent me down the shops for cigarettes... and they say the system doesn't work.
I bring this up because for the first time (this month) I'm wondering exactly what the future will bring. Will I really send my kids to school on jetpacks? Will DVD give way to 'BrainFilms' administered directly into the eye with a paintball gun? Will religious tensions bring down society like an epileptic fitting at a game of Pick Up Sticks?
If I come back here next year (as it appears I may) will it mean that I'll be celebrating my 25th birthday while on a return visit to my parents house? Living with my parents at 25?! Isn't that like a litmus test for serial killers, paedophiles and bloggers? I'm not that guy, am I?
My name is Ryan Coffey. My hobbies include sitting around in my undies, eating a sandwich. (I was going to say 'eating a sandwich in my undies' but that conjures pictures. Hairy, salty pictures.) Usually I sleep with just a sheet over me, but sometimes I like to use a blanket, but leave the fan on low. I use mouthwash even though I don't like the taste. One time, on the weekend, I got a call from a market researcher and I happily provided her all the information she required.
What a confession. I feel like I should present myself to a police station for chemical castration. Or just whack one of my nuts flat on the counter with a rolling pin. Just one. I want the other one to watch - make him squirm for a while, eventually he'll talk. Then I'd have a talking nut. That'd be something, wouldn't it? Alas, my gormless existence.
Don't fret for me. This listlessness will pass, like my future so far has already. I guess I just wish I had married that girl when I was 18. She was funny. I like that. There's no laughing about a smashed nut.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Permission
The day has come. It almost took me by surprise. I had forgotten about the wondrous possibilities of life. A new world has opened to me. It is a day for smelling the roses, shaking hands with babies, and self-congratulatory flagellation. I am now the proud owner of a Maningrida Alcohol Permit.
Each fortnight I am now entitled to have shipped in to the community a dozen bottles of wine or 2 slabs of mid-strength beer. It doesn't sound like much, but I've done the math. It's about five cans a night. Apparently having more than six on any given night of the week is considered unhealthy consumption, but those kind of statistics are put out by the government and they've been wrong before. Like the war. If a tree falls in the forest, let it fucking lie, boys. Let it lie. Mixing metaphors there. That'll throw a spanner at the bird in the bush... I wonder if Kath and Kim are looking for writers. I'm unimaginative and trite.
Permits are only allocated to people who have been here three months or more. Even then you have to spend another three months relegated to reduced-alcohol beer to prove you're not going to be a menace to society - more importantly, to society's road signs and witches hats; irresistible to the intoxicated collector. If had been given 10 bucks in place of every piece of traffic paraphernalia I'd picked up drunk, the roads would be a much safer place.
The odd thing is I'm not really sure if I want an alcohol permit. I'm not taking any moral highground, saying that I'll deny my access to booze on account of the many Aboriginal people who aren't allowed the same privilege. Phil took that route. Gave up after a month. Then his application got lost in the processes. He's been dry for six months. Bless his well-intentioned heart. Luckily I have no such valor.
I'm just not sure if I want all that beer in my house - have no doubt, I'll drink it whether I want it or not. I've always said that I'm not an alcoholic, just extremely susceptible to suggestion. While I've always thought strippers a little sleazy and a bit of a turn-off, if a mate walked me in to a strip club and said 'this one's on me' I can not be held responsible for what ever solicited acts that may occur in my lap. I mean, what good is a beer in the fridge?
I'll take it though. It's mid-strength - what damage could I possibly do with it? There'll only be three deliveries before I head back to Melbourne anyway. Six slabs - a drop in the ocean. The ocean of slabs. *salivates heavily*
The real issue is this place - this lifestyle - lends itself heavily to addictive behavior. Plenty of fuck-all to do and beer in the fridge - doesn't take a genius to work that out. A simple abacus would suffice. Substance abuse is a big issue in the community (and kinda the entire reason I'm getting paid to be here). It's like any community - this size, this remote - it's all about drugs, grog, teen pregnancy, poor education, boredom and suicide. The six stalwarts of rural living. Chuck in some country music and you've got yourself a fucking B and S ball!
There's only one option. I'll buy a cowboy hat, grow a moustache, pull on a wifebeater and get the fuck on with it. Luckily, after a dozen mid-strengths I'll probably still be sober enough to stay on the mechanical bull at the barn dance. The chicks'll be all over me... now where do I stick the $20?
Each fortnight I am now entitled to have shipped in to the community a dozen bottles of wine or 2 slabs of mid-strength beer. It doesn't sound like much, but I've done the math. It's about five cans a night. Apparently having more than six on any given night of the week is considered unhealthy consumption, but those kind of statistics are put out by the government and they've been wrong before. Like the war. If a tree falls in the forest, let it fucking lie, boys. Let it lie. Mixing metaphors there. That'll throw a spanner at the bird in the bush... I wonder if Kath and Kim are looking for writers. I'm unimaginative and trite.
Permits are only allocated to people who have been here three months or more. Even then you have to spend another three months relegated to reduced-alcohol beer to prove you're not going to be a menace to society - more importantly, to society's road signs and witches hats; irresistible to the intoxicated collector. If had been given 10 bucks in place of every piece of traffic paraphernalia I'd picked up drunk, the roads would be a much safer place.
The odd thing is I'm not really sure if I want an alcohol permit. I'm not taking any moral highground, saying that I'll deny my access to booze on account of the many Aboriginal people who aren't allowed the same privilege. Phil took that route. Gave up after a month. Then his application got lost in the processes. He's been dry for six months. Bless his well-intentioned heart. Luckily I have no such valor.
I'm just not sure if I want all that beer in my house - have no doubt, I'll drink it whether I want it or not. I've always said that I'm not an alcoholic, just extremely susceptible to suggestion. While I've always thought strippers a little sleazy and a bit of a turn-off, if a mate walked me in to a strip club and said 'this one's on me' I can not be held responsible for what ever solicited acts that may occur in my lap. I mean, what good is a beer in the fridge?
I'll take it though. It's mid-strength - what damage could I possibly do with it? There'll only be three deliveries before I head back to Melbourne anyway. Six slabs - a drop in the ocean. The ocean of slabs. *salivates heavily*
The real issue is this place - this lifestyle - lends itself heavily to addictive behavior. Plenty of fuck-all to do and beer in the fridge - doesn't take a genius to work that out. A simple abacus would suffice. Substance abuse is a big issue in the community (and kinda the entire reason I'm getting paid to be here). It's like any community - this size, this remote - it's all about drugs, grog, teen pregnancy, poor education, boredom and suicide. The six stalwarts of rural living. Chuck in some country music and you've got yourself a fucking B and S ball!
There's only one option. I'll buy a cowboy hat, grow a moustache, pull on a wifebeater and get the fuck on with it. Luckily, after a dozen mid-strengths I'll probably still be sober enough to stay on the mechanical bull at the barn dance. The chicks'll be all over me... now where do I stick the $20?
Monday, October 23, 2006
Tower
It's the classic story...
... boy finds tower...
...boy climbs tower...
...boy takes photo of road into town...
(see those two anntenae? That's town.)
(bare patch on far right is airport)
...and of the space between Maningrida and Darwin...
(a whole lot of fuck all out there... unles you like trees and shit)
...boy gets bored... takes photo of himself...
(unwittingly making his blog no better than any other dipshit)
... boy watches sunset...
...commits NT photographic cliche...
... tale as old as time...
... boy finds tower...
...boy climbs tower...
...boy takes photo of road into town...
(see those two anntenae? That's town.)
(bare patch on far right is airport)
...and of the space between Maningrida and Darwin...
(a whole lot of fuck all out there... unles you like trees and shit)
...boy gets bored... takes photo of himself...
(unwittingly making his blog no better than any other dipshit)
... boy watches sunset...
...commits NT photographic cliche...
... tale as old as time...
Chlamydia
Suddenly I'm back in London. The crowded basement dining-room of a cheap hostel - stuffy and fluorescently lit - is seething with foreign languages and sexual tension. I'm feeling lethargic from my diet of carbohydrates and cigarettes. I don't really remember the last time I took a shit.
Someone tries to talk to me. I try subversively to make it obvious I'm not a fun person to talk to - I'm either too subtle or irrepressibly charismatic. One can't help but suspect the latter. The conversation reads like a bad play that gives away all its plot twists in the first act. A group has formed. A plan is made. We all end up drunk and I realise my first impressions were uncharacteristically shortsighted - these people are bigger dicks than my paltry imagination ventured. I wonder, for the fourth time today, 'what the fuck am I doing here?'
Maningrida is still hot and the evenings are still long. Never being one to shy away from new things the laptop has made its maiden voyage to the toilet with me. It's a test of endurance - butt vs. batteries. The light is awful, the fan is too loud and the unmistakable yet mystifying odour of catfood hangs thick in the air. Still, its an opportunity to take advantage of time spent sitting down, and it was too much trouble to drag the piano in. Some might have hygienic concerns - I don't. It's not my laptop.
On hygiene, the dirt up here is really dirty - who'da thunk? It's said, if you get enough of it in your blood stream it can give you all kinds of diseases... and dirty blood. I'm not a doctor - technically my qualifications are not recognised in this country - and I'm not sure if you can actually contract anything from eating dirt, but Chlamydia was a sand-garnish I've heard mentioned that caught my attention. Chlamydia is a bitch. Half the time you'll never know you have it and it almost always leaves you completely sterile. Not that I'll have to worry, my plums will shrivel up and drop off from neglect long before then. 'Call it; time of death, October 06...'
Chlamydia has always been battling with Gonorrhoea for the title of 'Coolest Name' of all STDs. It's a tough match up. They're equally fun to say and hard to spell. And the idea that you can get this little 'thumb-twister' (what's a better epithet for things that are hard to spell?) just from walking on the ground is kinda scary. There's dirt on everything. It's dusty as a dead woman's diaphragm around here. The slightest breeze leaves a layer of silt on every surface. I heard a story of a cat curling up for a nap one windy day - 3 hours later it was a fossil. A lesser writer would have used an exclamation mark.
Filth is an inescapable reality of community life. Dust gets in everything. The sand is so fine you can actually use it to lubricate a car engine - a very cool sounding yet inexplicable falsehood. Pertinently, every spare foot of earth is also covered in rubbish. Wrappers, paper, cigarette butts, broken toys and shattered dreams. *stares into the middle-distance as a single tear rolls down cheek*
I've heard Balandas lament, 'I always thought that Aboriginals were more connected to the land than us, but then you see them just throw rubbish on the ground.' I'd argue that even the most diligent environmentalists would struggle to compete with the roaming packs of dogs that scavenge through the bins on a nightly basis. Besides - without wanting to offer this as an 'excuse' - I'm not exactly sure that the streets of Maningrida are the 'land' that any traditional owners feel connected to.
The Council here is working on the issue. I'm sure they have initiatives or some such bureaucratic bullshit in 'action'. It'd be nice to get the place cleaned up, but that's far from the root of the community's problems. Overcrowding seems to be a central issue. Maningrida has a housing backlog that would take up an entire year's Aboriginal Housing budget to fulfill.
An average of 17 people (average! - who's the lesser writer now?) live in the sheds that pass for houses here. That produces a lot of rubbish, which causes sickness, which causes crowding as families are called on to care for each other, which spreads sickness, which cause more crowding, which causes more rubbish, which keeps those fucking dogs alive. I've oversimplified to the point of stupidity here, but you can see how so many well-intentioned people can arrive at a community and stumble - 'Where the fuck can you start?'
I like Maningrida. Though it's dirty, stuff and fluorescently lit, it's a place where life happens. People just go about whateverthefuck it is they do. Happiness, sadness, grief, laughter, worry, hope - all the problems and politics of just being a person. Not half of the bullshit that reality is often buried under elsewhere. I've never once asked myself, 'what the fuck am I doing here?' Nor should I. I probably had more chance of contracting chlamydia in a hostel in London.
Someone tries to talk to me. I try subversively to make it obvious I'm not a fun person to talk to - I'm either too subtle or irrepressibly charismatic. One can't help but suspect the latter. The conversation reads like a bad play that gives away all its plot twists in the first act. A group has formed. A plan is made. We all end up drunk and I realise my first impressions were uncharacteristically shortsighted - these people are bigger dicks than my paltry imagination ventured. I wonder, for the fourth time today, 'what the fuck am I doing here?'
Maningrida is still hot and the evenings are still long. Never being one to shy away from new things the laptop has made its maiden voyage to the toilet with me. It's a test of endurance - butt vs. batteries. The light is awful, the fan is too loud and the unmistakable yet mystifying odour of catfood hangs thick in the air. Still, its an opportunity to take advantage of time spent sitting down, and it was too much trouble to drag the piano in. Some might have hygienic concerns - I don't. It's not my laptop.
On hygiene, the dirt up here is really dirty - who'da thunk? It's said, if you get enough of it in your blood stream it can give you all kinds of diseases... and dirty blood. I'm not a doctor - technically my qualifications are not recognised in this country - and I'm not sure if you can actually contract anything from eating dirt, but Chlamydia was a sand-garnish I've heard mentioned that caught my attention. Chlamydia is a bitch. Half the time you'll never know you have it and it almost always leaves you completely sterile. Not that I'll have to worry, my plums will shrivel up and drop off from neglect long before then. 'Call it; time of death, October 06...'
Chlamydia has always been battling with Gonorrhoea for the title of 'Coolest Name' of all STDs. It's a tough match up. They're equally fun to say and hard to spell. And the idea that you can get this little 'thumb-twister' (what's a better epithet for things that are hard to spell?) just from walking on the ground is kinda scary. There's dirt on everything. It's dusty as a dead woman's diaphragm around here. The slightest breeze leaves a layer of silt on every surface. I heard a story of a cat curling up for a nap one windy day - 3 hours later it was a fossil. A lesser writer would have used an exclamation mark.
Filth is an inescapable reality of community life. Dust gets in everything. The sand is so fine you can actually use it to lubricate a car engine - a very cool sounding yet inexplicable falsehood. Pertinently, every spare foot of earth is also covered in rubbish. Wrappers, paper, cigarette butts, broken toys and shattered dreams. *stares into the middle-distance as a single tear rolls down cheek*
I've heard Balandas lament, 'I always thought that Aboriginals were more connected to the land than us, but then you see them just throw rubbish on the ground.' I'd argue that even the most diligent environmentalists would struggle to compete with the roaming packs of dogs that scavenge through the bins on a nightly basis. Besides - without wanting to offer this as an 'excuse' - I'm not exactly sure that the streets of Maningrida are the 'land' that any traditional owners feel connected to.
The Council here is working on the issue. I'm sure they have initiatives or some such bureaucratic bullshit in 'action'. It'd be nice to get the place cleaned up, but that's far from the root of the community's problems. Overcrowding seems to be a central issue. Maningrida has a housing backlog that would take up an entire year's Aboriginal Housing budget to fulfill.
An average of 17 people (average! - who's the lesser writer now?) live in the sheds that pass for houses here. That produces a lot of rubbish, which causes sickness, which causes crowding as families are called on to care for each other, which spreads sickness, which cause more crowding, which causes more rubbish, which keeps those fucking dogs alive. I've oversimplified to the point of stupidity here, but you can see how so many well-intentioned people can arrive at a community and stumble - 'Where the fuck can you start?'
I like Maningrida. Though it's dirty, stuff and fluorescently lit, it's a place where life happens. People just go about whateverthefuck it is they do. Happiness, sadness, grief, laughter, worry, hope - all the problems and politics of just being a person. Not half of the bullshit that reality is often buried under elsewhere. I've never once asked myself, 'what the fuck am I doing here?' Nor should I. I probably had more chance of contracting chlamydia in a hostel in London.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Here Now, There Then
Cameras don't show you what you see - they show you what's actually there. The amount of light, the sense of space, the colours. Everything is interpreted by your brain like a Rorschach inkblot - it sees what it wants to see. That's why practically no one likes to see themselves in photos. Pictures hold the truth, and the truth is we're all uglier, fatter and more drunk than we believe ourselves to be.
I looked at the photos I sent out only to realise that I don't actually identify with that place at all. That isn't where I live. That place looks bleak and barren. Remote and inescapable. Dirty and boring. Ok, it is a little dirty, but no dirtier than your average Japanese school-girl. And, yes, it can be boring, but no more boring than your garden-variety stripper. "I must say, racy they may be, those gnomes really brighten up the yard - all the time raising the value of our property!"
I wake up to the kiss of a slow orange sunrise. The air is still cool and wet from the star smattered night. Red, green, blue - the colours of the dirt, trees and sky are painted on deep and thick in the long light of morning. And every single day as I climb aboard that crusty 4WD, or feel the first film of sand between my toes as I drag my dawdling thongs to work, a smile breaks involuntarily across my face. Broad and bemused. "Faaark. I'm really living here!"
There's barely a spot in Maningrida where you can’t see the ocean if you stick your head around the nearest house. It's a brilliant and tantilising turquoise. Distant shores whisper words of untouched beaches and tropical plantlife through a shimmering chiffon of rising heat. So flat and vast an horizon it seems you can see the curve of the earth itself. The beach planes away so subtly you could walk out in to the sea for miles before getting your shorts wet. The cruel irony being you'd much sooner lose your bird-burley to a crocodile than to shrink-dink. (You heard it here first folks - bird-burley! Orderly line, ladies. Orderly line.)
The sky. Oh, sweet fuck, the sky. Blue. Blue. A blue that goes on forever in every direction. The sun smiles out of it and warms your face in that way that makes you softly shut your eyes and tilt your head gently to it. You can feel your body rouse as it sinks into your skin, then is feathered away by cool ocean breezes. Hot sun, soft wind. The tease and the torture.
Photographs, to their lament, have borders. A shot is framed - four walls to each window. Maningrida doesn't have that. I don't walk to work through a viewfinder. This town, this land, this life is all around me. Infinite space in all directions, and with it opportunity, adventure and freedom. I hear they're also building an Ikea here next Autumn... so that should be good too... if you like, um... if you like Ikeas...
In a big city you can get ahead of yourself. With walls and blocks and barriers you can very rarely see where you need to be. Oft times in your mind, you'll already be at the meeting you're running late for, making over-rehearsed excuses and apologies. With space comes perspective. Of all the many places you can see, by miles or meters, you are only in one place. Here. Right here. Even if you can see where you need to be - it's over there. You're here. Leave there 'til then. There's here now. Only here now... so when will then be now?
Soon...
I looked at the photos I sent out only to realise that I don't actually identify with that place at all. That isn't where I live. That place looks bleak and barren. Remote and inescapable. Dirty and boring. Ok, it is a little dirty, but no dirtier than your average Japanese school-girl. And, yes, it can be boring, but no more boring than your garden-variety stripper. "I must say, racy they may be, those gnomes really brighten up the yard - all the time raising the value of our property!"
I wake up to the kiss of a slow orange sunrise. The air is still cool and wet from the star smattered night. Red, green, blue - the colours of the dirt, trees and sky are painted on deep and thick in the long light of morning. And every single day as I climb aboard that crusty 4WD, or feel the first film of sand between my toes as I drag my dawdling thongs to work, a smile breaks involuntarily across my face. Broad and bemused. "Faaark. I'm really living here!"
There's barely a spot in Maningrida where you can’t see the ocean if you stick your head around the nearest house. It's a brilliant and tantilising turquoise. Distant shores whisper words of untouched beaches and tropical plantlife through a shimmering chiffon of rising heat. So flat and vast an horizon it seems you can see the curve of the earth itself. The beach planes away so subtly you could walk out in to the sea for miles before getting your shorts wet. The cruel irony being you'd much sooner lose your bird-burley to a crocodile than to shrink-dink. (You heard it here first folks - bird-burley! Orderly line, ladies. Orderly line.)
The sky. Oh, sweet fuck, the sky. Blue. Blue. A blue that goes on forever in every direction. The sun smiles out of it and warms your face in that way that makes you softly shut your eyes and tilt your head gently to it. You can feel your body rouse as it sinks into your skin, then is feathered away by cool ocean breezes. Hot sun, soft wind. The tease and the torture.
Photographs, to their lament, have borders. A shot is framed - four walls to each window. Maningrida doesn't have that. I don't walk to work through a viewfinder. This town, this land, this life is all around me. Infinite space in all directions, and with it opportunity, adventure and freedom. I hear they're also building an Ikea here next Autumn... so that should be good too... if you like, um... if you like Ikeas...
In a big city you can get ahead of yourself. With walls and blocks and barriers you can very rarely see where you need to be. Oft times in your mind, you'll already be at the meeting you're running late for, making over-rehearsed excuses and apologies. With space comes perspective. Of all the many places you can see, by miles or meters, you are only in one place. Here. Right here. Even if you can see where you need to be - it's over there. You're here. Leave there 'til then. There's here now. Only here now... so when will then be now?
Soon...
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