An old Tom Waits song comes to mind- '...everything's broken and no-one speaks English...'
It has been gloomy and raining in Maningrida for two days straight - I haven't seen the sun since Melbourne Airport... it's a bit of a shock to my system... getting very quickly depressed. The sands are shifting here - people moving, leaving and making power plays. As ever, there's no housing and it looks like I'll be the one to suffer in any serious shift of the status quo. Still that's all at least a month away...
I managed to shed my city attitudes again like taking off an itchy woolen jumper. I went straight back into my office and into the arms of my best friend - 6 year old Martha. We spent the day catching up and spelling the names of things. When we got to butterfly she couldn't remember what a 'B' looked like. I showed her if you draw two 'B' - one upside-down - right next to each other (then add a couple of feelers) they make a beautiful butterfly. B B. She wont forget again...
Later in the day I went on a trip to an outstation - 5 houses, about an hour out of town. Another little girl adopted me as her own personal booster seat for the ride. We played and pointed and bit each others hands off. The whole landscape has changed. Everything is green, and grass covers every inch of the offroad. The track is a minefield of puddles that explode over the bonnet when you hit them. Everything is alive and exciting. When we arrived at the outsation, the little girl's uncle suggested I come back and stay for a few days - spend some time with the family. There are few things more touching than people who are interested in people.
It is sad that such a wonderful and welcoming place has become a battleground for the wills of white people. Everyone has an agenda. They are well intentioned for the best part. Still, a seedy undercurrent forms as people have to resort to backroom conversations and allegiances to support their intentions.
I feel weird and young – aimless and unwanted here - like I came to a poker game without any chips. I’m not part of anyone’s agenda. My position here is a useful one – not a powerful one. My work is a good tool for communication of ideas. It wont create infrastructure or organize the people. And at the moment, the latter is more important.
I’m trying to make a film for the ABC and I can’t help wanting it to express exactly this. But I can’t – can I? How am I going to convince anyone to be in a film after that? They’d think my own agenda is just to expose everyone’s agenda… which it isn’t… that said, I don’t want to fall into the dizzy trap of bullshitting everyone on the outside world that everything is just swell and peachy.
Give me a day or so… I’ll spark up. There’s plenty of work on. That’s a good thing. It’ll keep me busy. It is good to be back – don’t misread me. It’s just also easy to remember why one might be happy to leave…
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Melbourne
Yesterday I managed to go to a funeral, a wedding and a birthday – in that order.
I helped a mate grieve, I got a drunk friend into a taxi – once she’d finished vomiting – and then I started to make some long over due amends in a friendship that broke down years ago.
I cried when I told a mate’s mum about how this weekend will probably be the last time I see my Grandfather alive. I got misty when I watch a man welcome a new son in to his family. I laughed my arse off just talking shit with my mates.
I ribbed my friends about the responsibilities of getting old. I listened to a taxi driver solve the problems of the middle east (‘it’s all about Israel’ – just so you know). I gushed about the two girls who still haunt my thoughts to the young lady kind enough to drive me home.
I revelled in the fresh country air. I swam in the choppy waves of the bay. I drank martinis and ate a triple cheeseburger from McDonalds.
I hugged and kissed every person that I spoke to yesterday and was able to genuinely and wholeheartedly say that I was happy to see them – as innocuous as those simple words sounded.
I’m going to miss Melbourne – yesterday just made that painfully clear. Still, all days can’t be like yesterday. What would people write songs about if everyone felt safe and loved and supported all of the time?
Melbourne, thankyou and goodnight. I’ll see you in a bit… don’t go changing…
I helped a mate grieve, I got a drunk friend into a taxi – once she’d finished vomiting – and then I started to make some long over due amends in a friendship that broke down years ago.
I cried when I told a mate’s mum about how this weekend will probably be the last time I see my Grandfather alive. I got misty when I watch a man welcome a new son in to his family. I laughed my arse off just talking shit with my mates.
I ribbed my friends about the responsibilities of getting old. I listened to a taxi driver solve the problems of the middle east (‘it’s all about Israel’ – just so you know). I gushed about the two girls who still haunt my thoughts to the young lady kind enough to drive me home.
I revelled in the fresh country air. I swam in the choppy waves of the bay. I drank martinis and ate a triple cheeseburger from McDonalds.
I hugged and kissed every person that I spoke to yesterday and was able to genuinely and wholeheartedly say that I was happy to see them – as innocuous as those simple words sounded.
I’m going to miss Melbourne – yesterday just made that painfully clear. Still, all days can’t be like yesterday. What would people write songs about if everyone felt safe and loved and supported all of the time?
Melbourne, thankyou and goodnight. I’ll see you in a bit… don’t go changing…
Friday, February 09, 2007
Adult-lescence
A few weird things have been happening to me lately that have made me stop and take stock – namely the Myer Boxing Day Stocktake Sale, but I’ll get to the heavily discounted trousers in a moment.
It all started early last year when I was running on the beach in Byron – I’d seen a particularly churlish crab. As I looked back over my shoulder to see if it was still doing that thing with its leg, I had to hold my hand up to look into the sun. I suddenly noticed that the hand I front of me was not my own – it was my father’s. Those thick fingers, those wide nails, the sticky-out bluish veins. I remember tracing those calloused lines on the palm with my fingers as a kid, and pinching and posing the inelastic skin on the back of his knuckles. They’re mine now. Has it been that long? Am I that old?
I should have noticed earlier. The signs were always there, and most of those signs were sounds. I make a noise for nearly every task these days. Even stuff as simple as getting out of a chair - I give a breathy ‘hup!’, as if I’m catapulting an acrobat onto a trapeze. There’s even a noise I make after the physically challenging act, like a self-congratulatory grunt/wheeze thing.
‘Job well done, old man. You stood up. Now try to get to the bathroom without pissing yourself.’
My concentration is shot too. There was a time in high school where I could be doing maths problems, talking to my friends and listening to the teacher all at once, without any difficulty. I took great pleasure, when the teacher snapped around and said “What have I been saying?”, in regurgitating her words verbatim. Petulant little shit I shall be no longer. If I am in a room with someone having a conversation, I can’t hear that person if I am looking at the TV. Sound up, sound down – it doesn’t really matter. The amount of brain power required to decipher images is all the brain power I’ve got. Aim it wisely, you doddering old twat.
So I’m old – that’s what it boils down to. But what I can’t get my head around is what that actually means. I still treat my life as I did when I was 19. In the meantime have gone and done some really ‘adult’ things (and I don’t mean anything sexual – we’ll cross that bridge…) – these were things I really didn’t handle in an adult manner. How much more of my life will I squander away in this adult-lescence?
It has been said that life is basically the process of reconciling the lofty perception that you have of yourself with what everybody else actually thinks about you. It’s part of that whole you-are-what-you-project / you-are-but-a-reflection-of-your-surroundings debate… if there is one… I may have just made that up. I believe all three of these premises to be true. I also believe in manatees, profanities and fairy-winkles.
I AM as self-centred as everyone says I am – though it seems selfish to draw attention to it. I get stuck so far down inside myself that nothing ever gets out. I stew on petty decisions until they become irrelevant, or I take rash and abrasive action and call it ‘seizing the day’. I should probably just call it ‘rash and abrasive action’ – that’d clear up a whole bunch of shit.
I look back on all the ‘progress’ I’ve made over the year and realise I’ve been treading water. I look back on all the water treading I’ve been doing and realise that I’m very quickly running out of breath. Who wants to fish an old guy out of the pool and administer CPR? Even if he is wearing a fashionable pair of heavily discounted trousers from the Myer Stocktake Sale.
It all started early last year when I was running on the beach in Byron – I’d seen a particularly churlish crab. As I looked back over my shoulder to see if it was still doing that thing with its leg, I had to hold my hand up to look into the sun. I suddenly noticed that the hand I front of me was not my own – it was my father’s. Those thick fingers, those wide nails, the sticky-out bluish veins. I remember tracing those calloused lines on the palm with my fingers as a kid, and pinching and posing the inelastic skin on the back of his knuckles. They’re mine now. Has it been that long? Am I that old?
I should have noticed earlier. The signs were always there, and most of those signs were sounds. I make a noise for nearly every task these days. Even stuff as simple as getting out of a chair - I give a breathy ‘hup!’, as if I’m catapulting an acrobat onto a trapeze. There’s even a noise I make after the physically challenging act, like a self-congratulatory grunt/wheeze thing.
‘Job well done, old man. You stood up. Now try to get to the bathroom without pissing yourself.’
My concentration is shot too. There was a time in high school where I could be doing maths problems, talking to my friends and listening to the teacher all at once, without any difficulty. I took great pleasure, when the teacher snapped around and said “What have I been saying?”, in regurgitating her words verbatim. Petulant little shit I shall be no longer. If I am in a room with someone having a conversation, I can’t hear that person if I am looking at the TV. Sound up, sound down – it doesn’t really matter. The amount of brain power required to decipher images is all the brain power I’ve got. Aim it wisely, you doddering old twat.
So I’m old – that’s what it boils down to. But what I can’t get my head around is what that actually means. I still treat my life as I did when I was 19. In the meantime have gone and done some really ‘adult’ things (and I don’t mean anything sexual – we’ll cross that bridge…) – these were things I really didn’t handle in an adult manner. How much more of my life will I squander away in this adult-lescence?
It has been said that life is basically the process of reconciling the lofty perception that you have of yourself with what everybody else actually thinks about you. It’s part of that whole you-are-what-you-project / you-are-but-a-reflection-of-your-surroundings debate… if there is one… I may have just made that up. I believe all three of these premises to be true. I also believe in manatees, profanities and fairy-winkles.
I AM as self-centred as everyone says I am – though it seems selfish to draw attention to it. I get stuck so far down inside myself that nothing ever gets out. I stew on petty decisions until they become irrelevant, or I take rash and abrasive action and call it ‘seizing the day’. I should probably just call it ‘rash and abrasive action’ – that’d clear up a whole bunch of shit.
I look back on all the ‘progress’ I’ve made over the year and realise I’ve been treading water. I look back on all the water treading I’ve been doing and realise that I’m very quickly running out of breath. Who wants to fish an old guy out of the pool and administer CPR? Even if he is wearing a fashionable pair of heavily discounted trousers from the Myer Stocktake Sale.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Nobody and Nothing
The week started off poorly. Half hung over and suffering a bout of poison penis – that’s when you drink so much that your dick completely stops working – I wasn’t feeling all that great about myself.
I was feeling a little highly strung as it was. I hate waiting – it’s the waiting I truly cannot stand. I get bored and frustrated. I get ahead of myself – running over scenario after scenario in my head. I get edgy, antsy and irritated. I self-medicate – sedating myself with booze, weed and daytime television. Then I get all bitter and depressed because I feel like shit and I have to wait around for someone else to tell me that things are moving along and I can start to feel better.
It was at this low ebb that I had a dream that summed it all up and made sure I started today off at the most depressing possible point. It was one of those frustrating dreams. I had a simple task to complete – actually several tasks over the course of the evening but I already feel bad about boring you with the details...
‘I had a dream last night, darling!’
“Really, honey!? Oh, that’s fucking fascinating… let me just make sure this revolver is loaded before I try to eat it for breakfast!”
Anyway, I found myself going through customs, and it just so happened that my pockets were suddenly full of all sorts of illegal shit; handguns, a bag of pot – hell, we’ve all been there. So the customs lady was suspicious as hell, but it turned out that I had pretty legitimate reasons for all the crap I was carrying.
She confiscated all my stuff and gave me forty bucks worth of five dollar notes in exchange. I had no idea what was going on. I wanted my pot and my handguns – what the fuck was I going to do with forty bucks? So I asked the lady what the deal with the fivers was, ‘cause I was lost, and she starts getting all narky at me.
I tried to explain to her that I genuinely did not understand the transaction that had just taken place and she starts to think that I’m taking the piss. The more I tried to calm her down and get a straight-forward answer, the angrier she would become, the more spitefully she would respond, and the more dire my situation would get.
It got to the point where it had been going on for so long that I actually became quite lucid, and wondered; ‘Hey, this is my dream. Why am I putting myself through this?’ I had to consciously choose to wake up. I felt depressed all day.
And I was like ‘faark!’ That is exactly how all of my real-life social transactions have felt recently. It’s like, I find myself in the middle of something and I have no fucking clue how it got to that point. What’s more, I always seem to be the arsehole in the situation. I’m digging holes that I’m too detached to even realise I’m digging.
When did I get so despondent? Last week? New Year’s? High school? Perhaps it’s all just a product of being bored, poor and effectively unemployed, but right now I can’t get excited about anybody or anything…
I got a phone call today. The deadlines are set, the work can begin and the waiting stops. My mood has lifted, if only slightly… and I’m almost afraid of going back to bed, for fear of falling.
I was feeling a little highly strung as it was. I hate waiting – it’s the waiting I truly cannot stand. I get bored and frustrated. I get ahead of myself – running over scenario after scenario in my head. I get edgy, antsy and irritated. I self-medicate – sedating myself with booze, weed and daytime television. Then I get all bitter and depressed because I feel like shit and I have to wait around for someone else to tell me that things are moving along and I can start to feel better.
It was at this low ebb that I had a dream that summed it all up and made sure I started today off at the most depressing possible point. It was one of those frustrating dreams. I had a simple task to complete – actually several tasks over the course of the evening but I already feel bad about boring you with the details...
‘I had a dream last night, darling!’
“Really, honey!? Oh, that’s fucking fascinating… let me just make sure this revolver is loaded before I try to eat it for breakfast!”
Anyway, I found myself going through customs, and it just so happened that my pockets were suddenly full of all sorts of illegal shit; handguns, a bag of pot – hell, we’ve all been there. So the customs lady was suspicious as hell, but it turned out that I had pretty legitimate reasons for all the crap I was carrying.
She confiscated all my stuff and gave me forty bucks worth of five dollar notes in exchange. I had no idea what was going on. I wanted my pot and my handguns – what the fuck was I going to do with forty bucks? So I asked the lady what the deal with the fivers was, ‘cause I was lost, and she starts getting all narky at me.
I tried to explain to her that I genuinely did not understand the transaction that had just taken place and she starts to think that I’m taking the piss. The more I tried to calm her down and get a straight-forward answer, the angrier she would become, the more spitefully she would respond, and the more dire my situation would get.
It got to the point where it had been going on for so long that I actually became quite lucid, and wondered; ‘Hey, this is my dream. Why am I putting myself through this?’ I had to consciously choose to wake up. I felt depressed all day.
And I was like ‘faark!’ That is exactly how all of my real-life social transactions have felt recently. It’s like, I find myself in the middle of something and I have no fucking clue how it got to that point. What’s more, I always seem to be the arsehole in the situation. I’m digging holes that I’m too detached to even realise I’m digging.
When did I get so despondent? Last week? New Year’s? High school? Perhaps it’s all just a product of being bored, poor and effectively unemployed, but right now I can’t get excited about anybody or anything…
I got a phone call today. The deadlines are set, the work can begin and the waiting stops. My mood has lifted, if only slightly… and I’m almost afraid of going back to bed, for fear of falling.
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