Historylessness

I was going to say anonymity but that’s not exactly it. People know my name they just don’t have an assumption about what goes with it. People judge me by what I’ve done in the last month – and only that. They’re not expecting me to procrastinate, get drunk and break shit. It’s this kind of historylessness that we white folk go and spend a year ‘overseas’ to discover. But it’s difficult to ‘find yourself’ when the purpose of your travel is procrastination, getting drunk and breaking shit.

Moving day. I was in charge of clearing out all the accumulated shit in the old house. Disused entertainment units, rusted bikes and painful memories. The metaphoric shit was easy to move, but the other stuff would take a few trips to the tip. The tip is a few Ks out of town. Not so much a landfill, as it is the place where they pile shit up and set it on fire – like a Nazi book-burning, only less anti-Semitic. And without books and Nazis.

It’s been a month now I’ve been up here and a lot has changed. The walls of a small community are closing in on me – in good ways and bad. The initial feeling of being alien and isolated has dissipated. I rarely walk from one place to the next now without someone calling my name and waving. I know all the streets now, where every one lives, having added ‘taxi driver’ to my many-feathered hat. People have even stopped pointing and laughing when I wear that ridiculous hat to work.

The shop is just the shop now, not a cultural experience. Locals are no longer delicate toadstools to tiptoe around, just another thing to push past on the way to the merchants of that sweet sweet tobacco. Dogs have stopped smelling my fear – I’ve masked it in urine. And the heat is just the norm – it’s the gusts of the 24-25’s that really make me shiver.

It was from the back of my Hilux, hurling shit on to an even bigger pile of shit - the flies in my eyes, sweat on my brow, sun on my back – that it really hit me. This is where I am. I live in a place where the sky is always blue, the dirt is red, and the sun is round and yellowish. And this person – a man (note: MAN) in a wifebeater and aviators, 7 day growth and a tan-line from his thongs, labouring on the back of a ute – is the person that I am when I’m here.

I’m the guy to be left with the heavy lifting. I’m the guy who’s handy with tools. The guy to strap the cargo to the top of the troop-carrier. I’m the guy who can assemble a barbeque. I’m the guy who carries a knife and is good with knots. A guy who knows how things work and how to fix them. An energetic and enthusiastic guy. A competent and creative chef. A helpful, attentive and well-organised guy. A problem solver. An exerciser. One extremely good looking guy… but that, you already knew.

With the tray cleared I fish-tailed all the way back down the dirt road home (thinking of you Brocky, thinking of you). It’s not often you get a chance to fang about in really light, but very powerful vehicles on roads that don’t have speed restrictions. Boys will be boys… and for once I felt like that adage actually applied to me. I wondered why I had to wait for historylessness to feel it.

I’ve often felt trapped by people’s expectations. Trying to break free, in this way and that – a trip here, a change there, the predictability of being unpredictable. It never works. I’d always end up falling back into old habits. Sometimes just to live up to the expectations I was trying to shirk.

Albert was right. Here, on this land, you can see a long way. I can already see my historylessness receding into the distance, as I take on new expectations from brand spanking ‘others’. It’s a vicious cycle. So what do I do about it? Just amble on into the future and hope that, one day, the expectations of those around you will catch up? Frankly; this day, with this sun, this dirt, and this sweat – I couldn’t give a shit.