| (no subject) |
[Apr. 20th, 2012|01:53 am] |
While blood and charge is fresh in neurons. Keep a record.
Tonight I went to some art, performance, hospitality labour.
Then, to some kind of indie folk music thing. Then the odd thing happened. Context first;
The other night I dreamt my academic supervisor and random academic x was angry at me. Then I see supervisor and she is with random academic x. She isn't mad with me, but there is an ancillary issue. Resolved. All good.
I dream that someone finds some pictures of my sister and as a flick through them I am overcome with sadness. Next day, someone is posting old pictures of my sister on Facebook.
Odd couple of coincidences?
Tonight I go to music event and while the guy plays final encore song, cover of "No Surprises", I go to the toilet. Song has emo teenage sombre connection to sister.Toilet is occupied. I make brief small talk with friend who directs me to other toilet.
I go in and glued to the floor is a newspaper headline that reads "Big Sister" that is all. Big Sister. Why is Big Sister glued to the floor moments after I'm triggered for affect and memory about my big sister through song and dream.
Strange things. Because I am not normally like this. I can't stop the swirling dizzy crying. Lock the door. Sit down. Can't breath. Freaking out. What are these dreams? Everything is coming true.
Why is she here now?
Where are you?
Why aren't you here?
I get to talk to someone. Air grievances with the world. Is that was this was about? Is that why you came here? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2012|12:14 pm] |
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I received an LJ cupcake the other day. Is this some kind of new spam/scam that I'm not aware of? If so, how does it even work? |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 23rd, 2012|09:40 pm] |
My court appearance wasn't what I thought it would be, or, to completely reject that statement, it was what I thought it would be but worried it wouldn't be.
Err.
The session was merely to announce my plea (Not Guilty!) and then establish a date for the real trial (April 3rd!). It was very interesting to watch the other people who went before me. I felt a lot more secure given how completely oblivious most of the other self-defenders are about the system that had gotten themselves involved with. People pleading guilty when they wanted to plead not guilty. People who wanted to explain their entire life story as to why they are pleading not guilty. People who think that "err, I thought we wuz innocent until proven guilty" means that all you need to do is say "I didn't do it" as a means to rebut evidence. I felt like a champion of the Law, everyone else is in on stupid matters - speeding, parking fines, dog biting. Me, defender of democracy!
The Registrar already knows I'm with Occupy Sydney - who else get's a fine for 'camping' in Martin Place?
Anyway, it was good to get a feel for what a court is like, where I'd sit, who'd be speaking. I look forward to presenting my case and cross-examining the officer who gave me my infringement notice.
Later that day I am walking past an ATM and notice a few notes are in the dispener slot.
I backtrack and collect. 20x $50 bills. $1000. Just like that.
You think I did the right thing? No, I didn't. I took the money inside the bank and said "I found this in your machine".
Ever since, feels like I lost the $1000. And to make it worse, people aren't praising me as much for my integrity as I had hoped. The social reward was minimal! Outrageous!
Thirdly, today I get my third promotion in 12months. As of next week I'll be acting Manager of Student Services in the biggest Faculty in Australia.
Like a pro, bro. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 16th, 2012|11:18 pm] |
Dream house. It isn't the house my fantasy but the house in which my dreams occur. It is my parents house, or my house, or my home, but not anymore.
For as long as I can remember, the same dreams in the same house.
The kitchen is safe. The foyer, things try to sneak in through the door, outside things. Long black tendrils and spider eyes. The door never quite closes in time, or properly.
The loungeroom, safe, so long as you don't look down the hallway. The veranda, which comes off the lounge, safe, so long as you don't go down the stairs to the cellar or the garden where the little ones are. Barking, skinny shadows. Things come out from there, grab at your legs, chase you up. Dining room is between the lounge and the hallway. Like the lounge it is fairly safe, and it is the last semi-space space before the hallway. When you are there you can hear it, the entity, at the end of the hall. And you can feel it pulling you in, pulling the air, thick air, around you, down into it. First room of the hall is my childhood room. Safe. Getting dragged I might catch the doorway, get inside. Close the door. Stay inside. You can hear it, but it can't get in. But there is the compelling need to open that door to get down that hallway. Your hands are not your own.
When I was a child in that room I would lay awake at night and feel the sheet on top of me flicker and move, and vile and invisible hands come down around me. I think I was awake.
Next room down the hallway, next to mine, is my sisters. It isn't safe, it isn't dangerous. You can get inside there, but things are just waiting to burst out of space. But there is also the safety, everything is threatening but contain. Across from her room, the toilet. Small, concealed. Probably the last reasonable chance to escape. Grab the door handle. Push harder than you can imagine, slip in. Next room down the hall. Bathroom. The strangest room. It isn't safe, not by a little bit. You can feel it all around you. Big Darkness. Something, with diabolical hatred and rage towards for you. Something that wants to be you. You can see it in the fog in the mirror. You can see it cutting at your face. But it still isn't quite there. So many confrontations in the bathroom. Once you make a demand of it, then it is angry, but it shrinks, just a little. Who are you. What are you doing here. Suddenly that tormentor is trying to bring itself to reason. Get out of my dream, you say. But you have to get out of the bathroom first.
End of the hallway. On the left is my parents room. And in front, the room I spent my teenage years in. Everything collapses into darkness if it manages to get you down there. Just, darkness, oblivion. Like your mind is being swallowed. By its hateful self. Parents always in there, always never in there. Indifferent. I can scream, beg for them, but nothing. They float about, with malevolent disregard. The more you fight, the worse the darkness, the worse the hate that thing has for you. It wants to kill you and wake up as you. Parents are frightening in that room. It is always dark. The closet endlessly deep.
My room. You get in there and it is over. You know it. You're trapped in a nightmare forever and you're not waking up. Here's the catch.
Go there by your own free will and everything disappears. It is just room.
My grandmothers house was worse. Just passing by and you'd feel them inside. In my dreams, constantly evicting them. Top of the garden path was close enough for them to drag you into that terror. I was about seventeen when I managed to control them there.
I want to know what that thing is that I make demands of. It is of course me. But it is me that isn't me. It is the boundary of me, the boundary of the reflexivity of brain. It shrinks when I make demands of it because there is nothing behind it. What can I say to myself in my dreams? The edge of myself and that is as far as it can go. I am writing this so I can remember when I next sleep and wake it up. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 15th, 2012|10:14 pm] |
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The Inevitable #Occupy Movement Post; With Particular Regard to #Occupysydney
We were waiting for the iPhone 5
This isn't so much a history of OccupySydney as a reflection of what it was for me and why I was involved, and then not, and then maybe again.
The first day of the Sydney occupation was a beautiful and exciting day, warm and springtime in Sydney. The household went down, not sure what to expect, afraid to be afraid that we would be there with only a handful of others, that it wouldn't work, that everything that is dim and apathetic about Australian activism would be represented by a few lonely faces from a few regular organisations. Other friends came too, and sat with us in the big sun under the big sky outside of the Reserve Bank of Australia and Westpac Bank. We also had a most awesome sign, which also acted as a most awesome sunshade.
When we arrived the crowd was happily numerous, well, by Australian standards, with between one and two thousand people present. We staked a place, sat down, and had a picnic.
My interest with occupation began before it began. By which I mean, the little distant lights were put in place by watching live the occupation of Tahrir Square take place. I spent hours watching these wonderful brave people stare down a dictator and his paramilitary forces. I remember tweeting to a friend who was overseas as police trucks were torched, as the military arrived, as tanks were climbed upon. I remember at the time thinking "It is great the Arab people are fighting for democracy, I wonder when we in the already-liberated West would do the same!" Then, not so long after, Occupy Wall Street began - ah, my question answered. And then the miracle of the Occupy Movement happened. It spread, across the United States, and then across the world. It took in lessons, tactics and motifs from Spanish, Egyptian, Tunisian, Peruvian struggles which were or had been occuring across the globe. I say miracle because it, I believe, literally changed the common understanding of possibility. Whether this will be long term, who the hell knows.
For me Occupy in Australia (and more generally in the USA) is about two fundamental issues: corporatisation of the political franchise and the privatisation of public space. From these arise issues with corporate power, greed, corruption, commodification, democratic restrictions and so on. I felt the "99%" slogan didn't quite fit the Australian context, and especially since one of the key policies during the 2009-2011 global financial crisis was massive cash handouts to taxpayers rather than to corporations, businesses or banks. "They got bailed out, we got sold out" didn't quite work in a country in which, in a sense, the people did get bailed out.
There is a third reason, and that is simply solidarity. The American struggle is one which will potentially impact some of the most important issues facing the planet; economics, ecology, democracy, etc. This reason alone would be sufficient for action - why must I be affected by some circumstance to act in regards to it? Can I not act on anothers behalf? This point I think answers one of the common questions regarding Australian occupations "We're not in the same situation as America!" Really? And?
The first day had a time, 4.30pm, which police had indicated would be the end of the "rally". That time passed without incident. As evening came, tents went up, a kitchen opened, a movie screen was raised etc. At about 9pm the riot squad arrived (first of many visits!) along with police rescue, mounted police and various others. Tents were torn down without resistance. After tents were torn down, they came after anyone who was laying down. That included Marlaina and I, we had a blanket on the ground and some pillows.
Occupy Sydney has being going on for 114 days today.
That makes it one of the longest running occupations in the world. Sydney is the empty, heartless, impersonal city. Which is probably part of the reason why its Occupiers have managed to last this long.
Occupy Sydney started in October last year. It has been subject to near constant policing. There has not been a day where police have not arrested or issued fines. The Occupation was subjected to two large scale evictions at the hands of riot cops, included dog squad and mounted police. I spent many nights at the occupation. They were always emotionally charged, with so many personalities and politics thrust together and deprived of the securities that so many, but not all, of us were used to. Walls. Distraction.
There are three groups in an occupation. The occupiers, who while sometimes difficult are nonetheless more-or-less on the same side. Communists and Capitalists and Anarchists side by side, more-or-less. Maybe less (the first to move away from the occupation were those most politically dedicated to an already-existing solution). The general public. The bemused, interested, and only occasionally hostile people that surround me day in day out. The anonymous man or woman who doesn't stop, but puts twenty bucks in the collection bucket. The wandering clubbers after a late night. The misplaced business people. Office workers.
And then there are the police.
Before Occupy Sydney started I thought that the police were, by and large, a force of good that would only on occasion attempt to destroy the fabric of society. And a hundred days and a bit more days later I am convinced that the police are by and large, a collection of monstrous thugs deserving of everything and nothing at all. It was not even that they opposed us. It was not even that they disagreed. There is still scope for a professional force moved by political heirarchy to act against their best thinking. No, they enjoyed it. They hated us and they loved to hate us. They mocked us. Abused us. Willfully and joyfully harrassed, arrested, stole from and threatened us. And who among them spoke out? None. Every cop is your mate and everyone of them is a bastard.
I stopped going to Occupy when my work began to suffer, my thesis fell away, my supervisor called me into her office, I was tired and drained. 9pm-6am sleepless occupation nights, 9am-5pm work, and then what for the other 4 hours.
The moments of inspiration became fewer and fewer in between. And the exhaustion. And yelling at men. I haven't been there since 19 January 2012. One of the more recent moments of pure, joyful absurdity:
Yet.
Yet, despite all that nonsense. I feel like I've left something important behind. And the loss is not the loss of an object of desire, but the loss of desire itself.
And yet. Each day those old friends and fiends. They are still there, arrested each day, the criminal bluesuits forever at them like a stupid pack of stupid dog. And in my body there is something missung. And, anger.
Next week I go to court to defend myself against a charge of camping. This is the stupidity of it all. It is a war of banalities.
This is the video of my last happy Occupy Sydney moment. I took this after the police raided the occupation during the day, when fewest are around. So, in response, many of us turned up. And we scavanged cardboard from the city and built a cardboard house, 15 feet tall. And we built it because we knew they'd take it down. It was the only way to get them to do what we wanted. This was a fun video to take :)
So, I don't know what comes next.
Ramble.
Ramble.
There are some Special Operations. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 27th, 2011|05:51 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Scout Niblett - Just Do It! | ] |
Let me tell the end of the story about how this guy;
Who turned up with a few of his friends to evict some people who were making home in an, somewhat ironically, abandoned church and boarding house that was ajoined to my university. Students and locals being evicted from abandoned student housing. By my university, I mean my place of work and [sometimes study]. The sight of fully-equipped riot police on my campus was disturbing, that they then forced the gathered student and staff observers out of sight of the building was even worse. A group of about one or two hundred students, who were just peacefully observing, were threatened with arrest if they didn't move. That the University of Sydney security staff actively assisted in this was even more annoying.
Is oddly enough the most pertinent starting location for my meeting this guy, some three months later;
Who is some kind of two-headed, bipedal, mammalian grasshopper.
The simplified, most direct route through the causal-chain/web looks something like this:
16th September, 2011 These riotbastards turn up. I get moved on and pissed off.
Which connects to:
17th September, 2011 Occupy Wall Street starts. I get interested. The politics of occupying public space.
Which leads to:
15th October, 2011 Occupy Sydney starts. I get involved. Spend many nights sleeping under the stars of Martin Place, Sydney.
Which follows on to:
December, 2011 Occupy Sydney continues. Take time out after having flu, getting angry.
Which ends with:
17th December, 2011 Meet the mammalian grasshopper.
But, where does the mammalian grasshopper fit in? After spending so many nights sleeping on concrete with a pillow and sleeping bag (and a yoga mat if I'm lucky)(and getting fined for it, and getting harrassed every morning at 3am for it) I figure that camping out is actually quite fun. I really enjoyed sleeping (well, when I could get sleep) out in the open. So I come up with the idea that if I can sleep out in Martin Place and enjoy it, I'll also enjoy sleeping in a tent in the wilderness. And I am happy to say, I do. This is now the illustrated story of the first time I've gone camping as an adult.
Day 1
We drove from my parents place in Emu Plains to Kanangra Walls, stopping in at Katoomba to get supplies. Kanangra walls are beautiful, and the 30km of unsealed roads are in fantastic condition. The area is astonishingly pretty, and diverse. One of the most interesting things for me is that the area includes the typical beauty of sandstone cliffs, but also geological features you don't normally get in the Blue Mountains.
"There are isolated residual cappings of Permian sandstone in a few places but here the Palaeozoic basement rocks, which are elsewhere buried well below the Permo-Triassic Measures, are on the surface as high land. Rock types include quarzite, diorite, Devonian rhyolites, rhyo-dacites, Silurian phyllites, slates, siltstones and tuff limestones. The Boyd Plateau comprises a dome of Devonian granite intruded into Devonian quarzites and sedimentaries. There are also intrusive igneous rocks from the Carboniferous period. Kanangra Tops at the south-eastern end of the Plateau is one of the Permian outliers. Its fringing faultline scarp - Kanangra Walls - comprises Permian sedimentaries of the Capertee Group which rests uncomformably on a Devonian Lambie Group Basement. Nearby Kanangra Gorge is cut 600-900m deep in rocks of the Lambie Group, and is one of Australia's deepest gorges. Cloudmaker and Guouogang are eroded remnants of Ordovician quarzite. Further East, in the Coxs River area, is the large Kanimbla granite batholith, implaced during the Carboniferous period. Colong Caves is another outstanding feature of the area. The main Upper Silurian limestone belt, in the Jenolan River valley to the north-west, is 300m thick, 8 km long and located in a valley 460m deep. This karst topography, created by the Jenolan and its tributaries, is one of the least understood in Australia." http://www.colongwilderness.org.au/RedIndex/NSW/kanang99.htm
So, whatever that means is that just to the north you have the huge limestone caverns of Jenolan Caves, and mixed in with the sandstone outcrops and walls are extrusions of much, much older rock types. This makes the landscape both familiar (for someone who grew up in the mountains) and strange.
 
 
These are the "Walls" of "Kanangra Walls". 150m sheer sandstone cliffs. Yay! I've wanted to go here for a long time. We set up camp at the Boyd River campsite about 2kms away from the walls. This was exciting! I had a brand new tent to put up. The tent is pretty amazing. It is so easy to put up that well, it puts itself up. It is so eager to put itself up that you literally have to throw it away from yourself or you'll cop a tent to the face as it opens up. Taking it down takes about 2minutes. Pop up tents, who knew!
 
 
While we were wandering around the top of the plateau we stumbled across a slightly overweight and huffing british fellow and his kid. In between long drawn breaths he told us about an amazing waterfall about "30 or 40 steps" down. We stopped counting the steps at about 300, either way, it was well worth it. The stairs took us down into a very narrow canyon, which was like a tiny secret valley of green. In the picture above you can see some of the different geology which is part of a massive "granite*" extrusion that forms the west side of the plateau. It was a warm day and the temperature down here was a good 5-10 degrees cooler. The pool under of the falls was too deep to see the bottom of. Kristian is sporting is "Foverever Alone" T-Shirt and Frances her "Men won't protect you anymore" shirt. We are both sporting the comfort of a married couple in love. Awwww.
 
At the same time that I purchased the tent I also got a butane gas-stove. It was $9.95 and four cans of pressurised butane is $8 ... and we used two over the four days. It is amazing! Our diet for the next few days consisted of quorn, vege-sausages, eggs, vege-bacon, pasta. And a few other things I forget. We didn't eat chocolate as far as I can recall. This is noteworthy because our local grocer knows us as the household that seems to buy only chocolate and never groceries. It is a semi-accurate observation on his behalf.
The first night in the text was a little uncomfortable. Our bedrolls were insufficient for comfort, which, given my Martin Place experience was a little surprising. I gave Frankie my sleeping bag to lay on, since she hadn't been fortified by the Martin place concrete experience and we shared her bag as a blanket, but it was a cold night. I woke nonetheless refreshed and happy. Our camp was surrounded by animals and birds and the other campers were so far away as to be absent.
Day 2
After a delicious fake-meat breakfast we headed out of the national park and were in desperate need of proper coffee. We drove to the small town of Oberon with the [usually hopeless] goal of procuring some fine espresso. We managed to find a "Cafe" and as I recall the coffee itself was fair. Rural Australia is currently in a cross-over period between the old-school coffee which is superheated milk with a half-spoon of instant coffee added to it and a more gentile-urbane notion of coffee i.e something that a good inner-west boy such as myself could fathom to swallow. Five or Ten years ago I guess you were inevitably confined to the former, now it is hit and miss. Like Forrest Gump once said "Life is like a Western New South Wales espresso, you never know what you're going to get".
From Oberon we headed south down the western side of the Great Dividing Range. It was a long day, taken up with what is, to my experience, the most terminally boring stretch of road known to mankind - and one that I inevitably seem to have to drive on at least once a year. The Hume Highway between Goulburn and Albury. There is a lot of history in the area, bushrangers, massacres, tragedy, triumph. The Hume manages to flatten all of this, destroying anything good about the area. Someone once wrote a History Honours thesis on the Hume Highway. What was in it? I don't know. Don't expect me to read! In hindsight, as with every trip that involves the Hume, it was a mistake to take the route. Too much territory to travel and not enough to make it worthwhile. Next time.
This is the one photo I took that day. Tellingly it isn't of or near the Hume Highway.
We made it to the bordertown of Albury-Wodonga at about 1630hrs with a heavy and humid rain sending our camper spirits down. We had a choice to go the rugged way, head over to the State Forest by Lake Hume and camp out there, or stay near town and camp in a commercial camping ground. We took the later, and it was a pretty good choice. Firstly, we got to have a beer in town, and we got to visit Taco Bill's Authentic Mexican restuarant.
Taco Bill had all the right decor for a Mexican restuarant. It also had pretty decent food. Certainly not the best Mexican I've had, not by a long shot. But it was pretty damn good for a place as far away from Mexico as you might be able to get - deep rural New South Wales. The kind of place where they love their Chinese takeout but hate Chinese immigrants. Or used to. The place seemed a little more... something, than the last time I was there some 10 years prior. Still, it is towns like Albury, or indeed, bush towns at all, that makes you wonder about the sensibility of Federalism. Not because the bush are rednecks, or whatever [I include myself as "from the bush" - the first half of my youth our main road wasn't sealed!] but because the needs, culture and expectations between those in the bush and those in the cities are so out of sync - more so I'd imagine than in the USA, where the prevading patriotism keeps some semblance of mutuality in place, or in France or England where the culture is old enough to bind the two demographics. Just a rambled thought. Where was I?
Oh, yes, we had some Mexican and sangria and then drove to the campground and got in our tent - which now featured a hundred dollars worth of extra bedding comfort - and rolled around inside while a thunderstorm rolled around out.
That was the Taco Bill dessert. It was super good.
Day 3
Morning breakfast at the Electra Cafe in Albury. We went there for coffee because I had taken a photograph of the Electra Cafe during my last visit, and it hadn't changed a bit as far as I could tell. Coffee was good, egg and hash roll was good. Things were good. We headed South, off the Hume, and headed to the Victorian Alps. The drive was much better, greener, tiny little towns with cute river bends and bridges. Sudden heavy downpours of rain, and then sunshine, and then another downpour. The weather was all over the place. We were headed for Hotham Heights.
The drive up the mountain was, for the most part, in a dense fog that restricted visibility to about 5-10m. This made for some fun driving, a spooky atmosphere, and poor sight-seeing. The top of the mountain was a visible weather machine. At the summit I stood in a car park and watched to the south skies clearing and to the north cold, wet fog rolling up the valley. Directly above me a patch of blue skies would be revealed and then covered by waves of fog. It was marvellous. We drove a little out of the petulant weather and stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch.
Frankie didn't do all of the cooking. It may look like she did, but only I had the camera, so there is no photograph of me making the food. Our gendered division of labour was most cromulent for the entire trip. Unlike this one family where the dad went for a bike ride while the mum did the laundry.
We spent the night of Day 3 in a small park on the Cann River. We ate a delicious dinner of Angel Hair Pasta, garlic, salt, onion, tomatoes.
Day 4
Day four we drove to Eden and went to Ben-Boyd national park. It was nice. We saw "Boyd Tower" which was a sandstone tower built by Ben Boyd, an egotistical merchant who, having made a bit of a trading empire in South East Australia, decided to have the 5 storey tower built in his honour. Construction, as these things tend to go, sent him almost broke and he went to California to join the gold rush there. Why on earth this guy was granted a National Park in his name, given his history seemed to be one of an exploitative arsehole, I'll never know. Nonetheless, the red cliffs are quite lovely.
The rest of the day was angry. I was in a state of torment for reasons I couldn't quite understand myself. It all seemed to come from, of all places, Occupy Sydney. One of the things that OccupySydney had me thinking about was the overly MANAGED nature of ourselves in modern democratic West. Management is different from authoritarianism - it doesn't violently impose some kind of restrictions on speech, movement and so forth. But it nonetheless does the same job. In our managed "risk averse" society, the point is to give incentives and disinsentives for certain actions. (Isn't this what politics does with the economy, uses monetary policy, welfare and so on to promote/dismote certain behaviours - saving, spending, marriage, singlehood, home-buying etc). Anyway, one of the things that came out of my OccupySydney experience (which I will write about soon) was the constant management by police. Obscure (and ever changing) rules of engagement, rules of what you can or cannot do, of what constitutes camping vs protesting, where and when I can lay down for a rest, and it isn't aggressive/violent/forceful (although that is always just behind, waiting) but it was simply the passive implementation of "reasonableness". So, in terms of camping, this translates into two things; commerical exceptions (camping-grounds can BUY the best positions - loss of commons) or management (you can only camp in designated positions etc). Both of these are "reasonable" - for example; if anyone could camp anywhere it'd be harder to manage (that word!) the environmental impact etc but at the same time they are constraints that I was feeling all too well. Signs everywhere. Rant. Rant.
The short of the story is; we didn't stay in Ben Boyd NP, nor anywhere near Eden, which I might add, is a lovely town but suffers from the "Old-school" coffee. Undrinkable shit that I had to leave behind. Instead we headed a little north to Mimosa Rocks National Park, drive for 20minutes over rough unsealed road and ended up secluded and by the beach, with the sunshine out.
Our final night camp was near perfect. Basically a beach front spot to ourselves, beautiful weather, dolphins riding the waves, later a sky full of stars. It would have been perfect but for two things.
1. For some god fucking knows reason, a dumbass family decided, that despite there being many other spaces available, they would park their big campervan and erect their annexxe right next to us. Our secluded romantic beach side joy was interrupted by a family of four, and everything that comes with that. Why? I believe their proximity was so precise that it was done on purpose just to piss us off!
2. In the middle of the night I was bitten by creatures unknown, had a massive panic about it and had a slightly irrational freakout. The sting didn't hurt so much as itch, but it caused my skin to puff up inside my bicep. Never did find the creature either.
Day 5
Day 5 we drove home. The only thing I will note is the mistake that was stopping at Batemans Bay. Batemans Bay is the maggot infested anal fissure at the "arse end of the world".
And that was the end of the trip.
The best part was having four days with Frankie. The second best part was getting to Kanangra. Now inspired to do Newnes/Kanangra/Stone Garden camping tour - less driving, more adventuring.
*Probably not actually granite. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 30th, 2011|11:53 pm] |
The other thing that happened was that I had my second WiP (Work In Progress) presentation for my thesis. It went fairly okay, in that no one was seriously hurt. I did apparently be a little uncooth by refusing to answer certain questions from important people. I don't know, I find it difficult to think on my feet in a situation I find very stressful. It isn't that I don't have answers, it's just that any answer I give on the spot is invariably wrong. In the sense that I can't express my thoughts through speaking in the same way I can in writing, which evidently isn't much clearer, but at least I can stop to think for six hours if I'm writing. Apparently there was some positive feedback about my work, but who knows really. Positive feedback for some reason has the singular effect of just making me want to ride my bicycle into traffic.
The truth of the matter is as soon as this thesis is finished, and I've written a little over 30,000 (of a maximum 35,000) words so far, my life will be much better, but at the same time, it'll have much less dramatic purpose. Things will be even easier and happier than they are now, and as a result, a bag of depressing horseshit will be tied over my head.
I also got a promotion at work, I still don't know what I'll be doing, but whatever it is will be netting me a cool $75k a year, so, money can't buy happiness, but it can fill my life with things that will make me forget the calamity of the human experience! |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 30th, 2011|11:42 pm] |
Two days ago I went to the dentist, it was the first time I had been to the dentist in about a decade. Given the amount of propaganda that the dental-industrial complex spews out about the need for constant dental upkeep, you'd think that there would be some kind of inevitable long term damage from such a reckless disregard for dental health. But no. Apart from having a good old fashioned scrape of my teeth, which I might just say, felt like fucking heaven, god I love the feeling of floss/piksters/dentistry machines working their magic between my teeth, no further work was required. I had to ask whether I had my wisdom teeth because I had no memory of them arriving, but they are all there, standing up like happy little vegemites.
I send out my condolenses to those who have recently had to undergo major toothworks.
I attribute my fine dental state to the copious amounts of coke that I drink. I believe that if you can clean your toilet with coke, then it must be great for cleaning teeth, since toilets and teeth are both white and get covered in food. |
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| Image Intensive Unit Shifter |
[Aug. 30th, 2011|11:28 pm] |
So, the other week, to mark our anniversary, Frankie and I borrowed my parents car and headed to Newnes, 185km away, to stay in a little cabin. It was very lovely.  Somewhere on the other side of the Blue Mountains is the Wolgan Valley, and at the end of the Wolgan Valley Road is the town of Newnes. Though Newnes is not much of a town anymore, more of a 100 year old pub and a bunch of campsites and ruins. In 1907 the remote valley, with sheer sandstone cliffs looming on either side, was the site of a small farming community - the narrow passes, river and canyons forming natural barriers for livestock. By the 1920s the town was the site of a major coal mining and shale-oil refinery, some two thousand people strong, it had it's own school and a narrow guage railway. It was all gone by about 1932, save for the Newnes pub, the only remaining building.  These are coke ovens. They had a lot of them, I think 92 in total. Most of them are still in pretty good condition. The coke was used to quench the thirst of hungry miners when the pub lost it's liquor license during the prohibition era.  This is a chimney. They used the chimney to direct smoke away from the ground.  This unslightly proboscis causes the tree some manner of embarrassment.  This rusted remains of an ancient machine remind us how futile our pathetic lives would be if we were made of metal.  It is difficult to imagine that not so long ago these bricks were just dirt in the ground.  A lot of effort was taken in building this enormous industrial plant. Now look at it, overgrown with plants.  If it wasn't for the thinned out woods, the flattened ground, abundance of walls and drainage ditches, it'd be difficult to tell that this place was once inhabited by a race of giant space hamsters.  This image demonstrates on a much smaller scale the size of the things that we saw.  This is our cabin. It had gas heating and a really comfortable bed. We played Scrabble, since there was no television, internet or phone reception. Next time we'll take our laptops so we don't have to play so much Scrabble, which is fun for only so long on dark cold nights. In the foreground is a bird.  This is the chickens, and the solar power, which powers everything that isn't powered by gas. The chickens roam around and some times eggs come out of them and you're encouraged to eat the eggs. We didn't. There is also a slightly overgrown vegie patch to raid. 
This is the historic Newnes inn on the historic Wolgan Valley Road. It is currently run by an eccentric German chap by the name of Thomas.
We had a nice time away from places and together.
This is how you get to Newnes, if you wanted to get there. There is also a tunnel, with glowworms inside the tunnel. The railway tunnel used to take the shale-oil and parafin out of Newnes and bring passengers in. Now it has some worms that glow. I would recommend Newnes for some time away from the hustle and bustle of modern life and so on. |
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| Some seriously morbid shit. |
[Jul. 29th, 2011|11:42 pm] |
That is my sister and my nephew. He is learning how to be a person. To be a person you need to know language.
I think the performance of grief is very important and I don't know if it ought to end? At some point the memory of the dead is just the memory of memory. Every day there is a catastrophe of death in the world. The course of everday life is the disavowal of this catastrophe. Every death is important, sure, but not important enough not to be counted among those that constitute the normal running of the world, of the ecosystem, of the status of being. The continual catastrophe of life, so that life pops out as an exception.
The repetition and performance of grief is very important. It marks in my brain the hope of the difference between memory and memory of memory. Of the difference between the Real that is Gone and the Imaginary. For me the imaginary is most of what remains but through performance I get to see the real in the imaginary. The totality of the person who you knew is always necessarily imaginary, the tiny but total void between us all is crossed through a leap of the imagination, we simply assume ourselves into the other - that they are just as I am. So, performance of the imaginary isn't just hollow grief but an attempt to bring back the dead.
There are many days now that I don't think of them. But then again there are many more that I do. What is it that I hope from seeing their picture? Not that they are immortalised somehow through an accurate representation of who or what they were, and not to replace the last moments I had with their bodies, cold and cut and bloody. For me the photographs give context through which I can imagine.
When she first died I wrote that I would find it comforting to ask myself "What would Larissa say?" but that was a lie, an inauthentic attempt to retain her within the world of the living, because she does not speak anymore, nor think, nor move, nor believe or hope for her children. I knew that at the time but it seems a horrible imposition on her now. Like, do not rest in peace, I demand the voices of the deceased!
Jesse would be what, thirteen now? A boy coming into the world. His voice would be changing, he would be at high school with his big sister, I would remember the things he would be encountering in life. Instead I imagine. When I last saw him he was laid out on a steel trolley in a cold room. Tiny and stiff and like clay. And this isn't an exception. I don't understand how this imposition - the dead child - fails to impress upon the world the calamity of death. What can I hope from the world when a hundred thousand boys and girls like him are there like cold clay because we want them there. What rational response can be found when you look into the abyss in the eyes of the dead? In the sense that, what response can be there to the human world, the world of language where persons exist, when that abyss is a matter of desire, choice. Neither the Imaginary nor the Real of life and death seem to be incapable of accounting for the situation. You're either overwhelmed by the infinite proximity of imagination or the infinite distance of the real. I can't get close enough to comprehend death and nor can I imagine far and strong enough to account for the possibilities of life.
I despise writing about my sister and nephew. I feel like a fraud playing a game at grief and loss and repetition. But you have to believe me. This is what ghosts are and why we believe in them. |
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kristian's journal
