Summer blew in on an easterly wind one unsuspecting Thursday about a month too early for my liking. I began to groan, to hmph to hmm and harr about the heat, the flies, the impending crimson skin. I spent the afternoon dusting off the fans, slowly mourning cool mornings.
The day wore on.
Then a beautiful evening blossomed in the eastern sky, stretching its arms slowly westward, the breeze snuck off for a nap and the heat subsided, edged away quietly. Cycling along the river felt more like gliding, for once, and it was as if, as if my very soul re-emerged from its dormant slumber. Words itched at my palms, jostling against each other in a heady, summer-surge of breathless-evening-freedom. There is just something about cycling under a paling purple sky beside an orange ball of fire and amongst the scent, the smell of a hot and tired day - it’s like a key that fits inside my head to awaken me.
“Perth?! Is it Perth?” Another cyclist yells at me suddenly in broken English, a lost and sweaty face by the river.
“Yes,” I said. “I think…” Alternatively it is either heaven or hell, I am undecided.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Sunday morning musing
This morning as I locked my bike up in a bleary-eyed Sunday-city, a familiar confusion roared through me like wild fire. Why, under these blue skies, in this country, on our city streets are people so young crumpled behind neatly written cardboard pleas for spare change? Why, in a city where the Lord Mayor and her opposition candidate battle it out for the top job by promising free Wi-Fi city wide, more facilities for cyclists or more affordable – but not social – housing, does someone my age with four limbs, clear eyes, a faint smile and the ability to write a neat and correctly spelt sign feel that this forlorn begging is the only option left to them? Why is this the case in every affluent city and country in the world?
In Australia at least we live in a social democracy which, for all its problems, provides welfare, public housing and services to the impoverished. So why still this lack? Why still does a family feel its only option is to live in a caravan in a free camp?
Throughout human history there have always been the poor and the homeless. Barely a century ago it was believed to be the fault and crime of the low born that they were born low and some still seem to hold this for truth.
And yet there has never been this much support for people in our society before. The idea niggles at your brain, a feeling of rising indignation, why should I hand out my hard earned change reaped from hours of my own toil, to someone simply sitting, asking, waiting – throwing their hopelessness before me as if purposely to disturb my thoughts? For truth be told, I, we, the most-of-us, we have enough. We have Buckets of Enough. And so? We pay taxes which eventually filter into government welfare cheques – why do they need my change?
Why indeed? Some of ‘them’ carry the burden of disability, mental illness, the misfortune of being born in to undesirable circumstances, others seem to have tripped and fallen along the way on drugs, alcohol or other faults, seemingly of their own making.
But in the end, does it matter how they got there? The fact of the matter is that the gutter is where they are and they, them, are really just us. For someone to kneel before you and quietly persist through the indignity of begging there must be a genuine need – mustn’t there?
“And if we empty our pockets of rogue 5c bits into their open palms, what will they spend it on?” barks the cynic. Addiction and debauchery no doubt. So give them nothing, or give them food.
But no – for doesn’t the human heart require more than just food to survive? Yes – in this world, we need those dollars. And if it still sits uneasy, as it does with me in my general confusion at this world, then give to the outreach programs that may one day provide this person with the opportunity to realise their abilities.
Giving money to the homeless may be about as much ‘solving a problem’ as pouring aid into Africa year after year is. But however you choose to react to another human asking for help – don’t ever just walk past unchanged.
Signed,
Equal parts cynic, pessimist and idealist.
In Australia at least we live in a social democracy which, for all its problems, provides welfare, public housing and services to the impoverished. So why still this lack? Why still does a family feel its only option is to live in a caravan in a free camp?
Throughout human history there have always been the poor and the homeless. Barely a century ago it was believed to be the fault and crime of the low born that they were born low and some still seem to hold this for truth.
And yet there has never been this much support for people in our society before. The idea niggles at your brain, a feeling of rising indignation, why should I hand out my hard earned change reaped from hours of my own toil, to someone simply sitting, asking, waiting – throwing their hopelessness before me as if purposely to disturb my thoughts? For truth be told, I, we, the most-of-us, we have enough. We have Buckets of Enough. And so? We pay taxes which eventually filter into government welfare cheques – why do they need my change?
Why indeed? Some of ‘them’ carry the burden of disability, mental illness, the misfortune of being born in to undesirable circumstances, others seem to have tripped and fallen along the way on drugs, alcohol or other faults, seemingly of their own making.
But in the end, does it matter how they got there? The fact of the matter is that the gutter is where they are and they, them, are really just us. For someone to kneel before you and quietly persist through the indignity of begging there must be a genuine need – mustn’t there?
“And if we empty our pockets of rogue 5c bits into their open palms, what will they spend it on?” barks the cynic. Addiction and debauchery no doubt. So give them nothing, or give them food.
But no – for doesn’t the human heart require more than just food to survive? Yes – in this world, we need those dollars. And if it still sits uneasy, as it does with me in my general confusion at this world, then give to the outreach programs that may one day provide this person with the opportunity to realise their abilities.
Giving money to the homeless may be about as much ‘solving a problem’ as pouring aid into Africa year after year is. But however you choose to react to another human asking for help – don’t ever just walk past unchanged.
Signed,
Equal parts cynic, pessimist and idealist.
Monday, October 3, 2011
I hear it's October..
As quiet and perpetually slow as things were 3 weeks ago, things are now bustling along with the velocity of three jobs. I am thankful for the sense of purpose that fills my shoes, for the boredom of menial tasks and the beginning of my teaching career.
I have little to say that I have not said before, and yet only a passing glance over my tea cup reveals the changes underway. At this time of year, Nasturtiums are running amok in gardens fat with flowers. Soon the summer burn will turn their tender broad leaves to cinders but right now the essence of spring is contained in the tiniest of flowers that sprout everywhere they aren’t meant to. There lies the truth always, in the smallest of things, in children’s sticky hands and the fleetingly small touches that make up a love. I’m waiting for my poppies to flower and the mint to grow into its container. While I wait, I hope tentatively that my strawberries will turn sparkling red. The four European seasons, I have come to realise, are ill-fitted to this climate, like a baggy t-shirt disguising the subtle figure, but nonetheless we note their passing. Just as we note the gradually gathering of dust on bookshelves that we have not often visited.
The busier you are the more you realise – you can live a lifetime in one moment. A moment of elation sat atop a mountain, casting my eye over a foreign city of delight, sticks in my memory. A breath of air as I roll along the river, homeward bound on a heavenly afternoon. An instant spent day dreaming about where my shoes will journey next in this world. The jingle of keys as love walks in the door smiling.
I have little to say that I have not said before, and yet only a passing glance over my tea cup reveals the changes underway. At this time of year, Nasturtiums are running amok in gardens fat with flowers. Soon the summer burn will turn their tender broad leaves to cinders but right now the essence of spring is contained in the tiniest of flowers that sprout everywhere they aren’t meant to. There lies the truth always, in the smallest of things, in children’s sticky hands and the fleetingly small touches that make up a love. I’m waiting for my poppies to flower and the mint to grow into its container. While I wait, I hope tentatively that my strawberries will turn sparkling red. The four European seasons, I have come to realise, are ill-fitted to this climate, like a baggy t-shirt disguising the subtle figure, but nonetheless we note their passing. Just as we note the gradually gathering of dust on bookshelves that we have not often visited.
The busier you are the more you realise – you can live a lifetime in one moment. A moment of elation sat atop a mountain, casting my eye over a foreign city of delight, sticks in my memory. A breath of air as I roll along the river, homeward bound on a heavenly afternoon. An instant spent day dreaming about where my shoes will journey next in this world. The jingle of keys as love walks in the door smiling.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Sponge
My mind, my inner voice, is like a sponge. It begins to talk, you see, exactly how whatever it has been absorbing talks. For instance, if I’ve been reading Jane Austen my mind ponders breakfast like so “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a piece of toast in possession of peanut butter, must be in want of some jam.” I start declaring how ardently I admire this or that for it is exceedingly handsome, and no it shall not do, for work is simply tiresome and should rather be left for the maid to do. In this frame of mind, I make simply unbearable company. Usually I waffle and write in long, linking sentences. Just recently I read ‘The curious incidence of a dog in the night time’ in which the narrator and protagonist is autistic and writes in short definite sentences, I began to speak and write like that too. “I am nervous. This is a bad idea.” If I read in German I start asking for Wasser when I want water, say Danke Schoen and exclaim Echt? and otherwise process my thoughts in stunted German.
This absorption technique gets awkward when I get an Irish or Scottish customer and they say “How much is dat?” and I say “Dats 24 dollars.”
Oops.
This absorption technique gets awkward when I get an Irish or Scottish customer and they say “How much is dat?” and I say “Dats 24 dollars.”
Oops.
On the itinerary for today
The Library is a splendid destination for those of plentiful time and negligible money. It’s an excuse to leave the house and seek out the society of books, in a very public display of intention and affection, which will not cost you the solar system and it’s many moons.
Twas in the library late yesterday as I browsed the shelves for a read not entirely Literary, in that virtually unreadable Virginia Woolfe-Kafka-Joyce sense, but one that’s blurb didn’t begin “Mary Little thought she knew what love and life was about until she met Ryan, her husbands estranged brother....” Oh! The Espionage! I sought something funny, but not pitifully lame, something to delight in that would not suck the will to live from my wavering eyes... In short – I went in search of a good book.
It was in this quest that I noticed that some books on the alphabetised shelves were ‘Fiction’ or ‘Romance’ while others were ‘Literary Fiction’. This term I had heard before, but I got to wondering, what on earth does it mean anyway? Are those books better, or just more nose-to-sky intellectual? For it seems we attach that term to the hefty, critically-acclaimed, multi-award winning books that make the majority of us go....
What?!
They are the kind of books that you might conceivably purchase to line a shelf in your house labelled “Oh yes, I’ve read that.” They are the name-droppers, the no-idea-what-it-was-about-but-ha!-I-read-it type of books.
A confession: I own many of these. I have read most of these. I usually don’t understand why they have been adored for generations.
Why do I read them? Because they are the books that are referenced by books that wish to be cool by association. They form the extensive body of those books referred to in sentences such as “This book is reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau’s timeless essay Walden...” I read them to broaden my mind. Usually, I get a headache. Literary fiction is all about the imagery, the intense layers of meaning, the unforgettable characters and usually, the fact that we have NO IDEA what the author was smoking at the time but, hey, it must have been good.
In the end the book I picked was labelled Literary Fiction. But what I’ve discovered is a gem of a book, a book that makes you go “Aww” and giggle, get teary and wonder how to go on when it’s over. And then, next time I need to sound like a wanker, “Oh, have you read this..?”
Twas in the library late yesterday as I browsed the shelves for a read not entirely Literary, in that virtually unreadable Virginia Woolfe-Kafka-Joyce sense, but one that’s blurb didn’t begin “Mary Little thought she knew what love and life was about until she met Ryan, her husbands estranged brother....” Oh! The Espionage! I sought something funny, but not pitifully lame, something to delight in that would not suck the will to live from my wavering eyes... In short – I went in search of a good book.
It was in this quest that I noticed that some books on the alphabetised shelves were ‘Fiction’ or ‘Romance’ while others were ‘Literary Fiction’. This term I had heard before, but I got to wondering, what on earth does it mean anyway? Are those books better, or just more nose-to-sky intellectual? For it seems we attach that term to the hefty, critically-acclaimed, multi-award winning books that make the majority of us go....
What?!
They are the kind of books that you might conceivably purchase to line a shelf in your house labelled “Oh yes, I’ve read that.” They are the name-droppers, the no-idea-what-it-was-about-but-ha!-I-read-it type of books.
A confession: I own many of these. I have read most of these. I usually don’t understand why they have been adored for generations.
Why do I read them? Because they are the books that are referenced by books that wish to be cool by association. They form the extensive body of those books referred to in sentences such as “This book is reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau’s timeless essay Walden...” I read them to broaden my mind. Usually, I get a headache. Literary fiction is all about the imagery, the intense layers of meaning, the unforgettable characters and usually, the fact that we have NO IDEA what the author was smoking at the time but, hey, it must have been good.
In the end the book I picked was labelled Literary Fiction. But what I’ve discovered is a gem of a book, a book that makes you go “Aww” and giggle, get teary and wonder how to go on when it’s over. And then, next time I need to sound like a wanker, “Oh, have you read this..?”
On Adulthood and other Disasters
I am so damn sick of being an adult. Here are 4 examples why I currently find being an adult a very unsatisfactory situation.
Example 1:
Bills, bills, bills. You pay one and another jumps up and hits you on the back of the head. How friggin injust.
Example 2:
Interviews. In fact the whole damn employment process. Construct a CV from the bits and pieces of your life. Deploy a winning argument to prove you have skills, disguise it in an attention grabbing but not overly self-absorbed cover letter.
Wait.
Receive a call. Go to an interview, dressed like someone with “Please hire me” tattooed across their forehead, nervous as hell you must then expound upon the aforementioned skills.
This is no time to change the subject.
‘Great, I’ll call you back tomorrow,’ says the Prospective Employer. Invariably, they don’t. Did they just forget? Were they never going to? How long do I wait before I fire bomb them?
Example 3:
Washing, sweeping, doing dishes, cleaning up after pets... you no longer have anyone to defer these jobs to. If you chuck a tantrum and absolutley REFUSE to do them, nobody will care. You'll just be the smelly person no one wants to visit.
Example 4:
In fact, when the going gets tough, you have no one to defer your life to at all. You’re in charge buddy, step up and make decisions.
Example 1:
Bills, bills, bills. You pay one and another jumps up and hits you on the back of the head. How friggin injust.
Example 2:
Interviews. In fact the whole damn employment process. Construct a CV from the bits and pieces of your life. Deploy a winning argument to prove you have skills, disguise it in an attention grabbing but not overly self-absorbed cover letter.
Wait.
Receive a call. Go to an interview, dressed like someone with “Please hire me” tattooed across their forehead, nervous as hell you must then expound upon the aforementioned skills.
This is no time to change the subject.
‘Great, I’ll call you back tomorrow,’ says the Prospective Employer. Invariably, they don’t. Did they just forget? Were they never going to? How long do I wait before I fire bomb them?
Example 3:
Washing, sweeping, doing dishes, cleaning up after pets... you no longer have anyone to defer these jobs to. If you chuck a tantrum and absolutley REFUSE to do them, nobody will care. You'll just be the smelly person no one wants to visit.
Example 4:
In fact, when the going gets tough, you have no one to defer your life to at all. You’re in charge buddy, step up and make decisions.
Friday, July 29, 2011
You may be aware that I am a lady of many hats. Indeed of late, I have tried buckets of different hats on, just to see what it might be like. I have become fed quite fed up with the uni students hat, and have decided to cast it to the wayside for a time. Since then I have dabbled with the idea of a gardeners sun hat, but found it didn’t fit quite right. In sheer panic I reached out for any menial, wage-paying hat that would rescue me from destitution but to no avail; it was not the right hat for me.
Finally, this week, I have found my new hat. In the space of a week I have gone from a bundle of couch-bound tears to someone with a goal and a purpose; a busy-bee engaged in the business of becoming an English Teacher.
Here’s to unlocking the secrets of the English language and to finally having a hat that fits.
Finally, this week, I have found my new hat. In the space of a week I have gone from a bundle of couch-bound tears to someone with a goal and a purpose; a busy-bee engaged in the business of becoming an English Teacher.
Here’s to unlocking the secrets of the English language and to finally having a hat that fits.
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