Tuesday
in three parts

It’s only the earliest days of August yet the deepest dark of winter has fully abandoned us. Perth’s winter days are often cold, clear, blue and cloudless but of late the weather has been gentle and warm like a beautiful September afternoon. Despite the prevailing good cycling weather, part of me has begun to despair for the rain that refuses to visit us and to fear the return of summer’s sickly stick before I am good and ready.

I currently dwell in the realm of an all surrounding, ever abounding happiness. But for some reason I fell into a god-awful mood this morning. Recently I have been plagued by such unidentifiable mood swings, easily stressed over goodness-knows-what. I have begun to wonder if the issue is that my life, shorn of any sense of pattern or regularity, is making me dizzy. Or perhaps my ups and downs are more due to the battle between self-confidence and self-doubt that rules my inner world as I strive to figure out what to do “Next.” Sometimes I honestly feel perfectly content with my present life. Sometimes I turn soft and mushy on the inside, letting other peoples words and expectations drip like poison into my heart where the seeds of doubt sprout and grow to forests that preoccupy my mind.

My girlfriend tells me I need a can of toughen-up.

And so, for that matter, do Australian politicians. Politics, being of vital importance to the present and future of our society, generally interests me. I like to be in the know, you might say. However, election media banter has begun to bore me incessantly. I have been listening to politicians vomit shallow policy at the mouth, and slowly slowly, the more attention I pay, the more apathy takes up residence in my heart. All I hear is “vote for me, because I’m not them”. Or better still, “they are sooo stupid”, therefore by implication, you should vote for me. I think I’ll vote green because purple isn’t an option and abstinence is not the best policy.

And when I doze in the kindly afternoon sun with Baloo, I’ll dream of a world in which politicians cease to be nauseating and I have the fortitude to stare down self-doubt. I suspect such a world would be populated by a modestly clad people known as Utopians...