In other worlds, in other ways I live my life, side by side with this one and yet somewhere else entirely.. this is a world of fiction, these are the tales of other lives, these are my characters, they come and they go and sometimes, in fact often, they are far more interesting than me.

Sonja felt as though she was the breeze. A happiness rose from somewhere deep inside her, it seemed to scratch at her navel and tingle behind her knees until it burst out across her face and raced down the hill away from her. On the swings the smell of the metal chain and sunscreen mingled under her nose, sending her back, way back into the vaults of her memories. Sometimes she could recall so clearly it was as if she had spent her childhood gathering tiny splinter memories in a wicker basket. The air whirred in her ears on the downward arc, her feet stretched out before her. It was strange, she thought, how her legs seemed to know to bend and tuck up underneath her on the upwards swing, an instinct that she had to actively resist just to test the theory. She wanted to let go of the chains and hold out her arms until she floated away, such was the rush of happiness inside of her, so much stronger than it had been in a long time. She didn’t understand why the park was so empty while the road screeched and growled away behind her. But she rejoiced in having the whole green expanse to herself, she was alone with the rush of the leaves in the tree’s and for that moment in time it didn’t matter at all that she was alone. She swung her legs back and forth, building the arch of her swings higher and higher each time. There was something she wanted to do, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She let go of the chain and tucked her elbows into her side and then, arms spread out wide she jumped from the swing . She was flying but, for a short time at least, it didn’t feel like falling.

***

This Christmas.

Christmas is hard work. As I’m writing this I’m full and bursting with food, my eyelids are threatening to close up shop for the evening and i can feel the snores coming on already. I should mention it’s only 4pm. We just arrived home from visiting the people you generally only see once a year at Christmas, ones you can’t decide if you only visit them at Christmas because they are so special or if there’s a reason you only see them once a year.

I know Christmas, the season of festive frivolity, can be a terrible time of year. I know that in some houses Christmases are remarkable for the absence of food and piles of wrapping paper. In so many ways we who stuff and overstuff ourselves are amazingly blessed, blessed with the opportunity to go back for seconds, to float in the pool and nap in the sunchair.

And this is not all that is bad about Christmas. Christmas sucks when you’re an adult. It’s magic gets checked out at the shop counter where you maxed out your credit card. No one can be bothered to put the tree up, tiny hands don’t tug on Dads pinkie begging to pull the decorations out anymore, the suspense has fizzled out of the month of December because you aren’t counting off the days till Santa visits. Somebody eventually puts the tree up anyway, like a priest who’s forgotten why he prays but remembers where to put his hands. Then suddenly the 23rd is upon you and so to the realisation that the tree doesn’t sparkle anymore, it’s all just plastic and that’s some terrible type of fake. You whinge about the terrible time of year, and everyone agrees, the stress, the total absence of car parks, the wait in the queue at the post office, which is the only queue longer than the one at the bank. Christmas is not only so far removed from the religious celebration of the holy myth, it’s a grand consumerist orgy. In this credit crunching cult people who already have so much have a Christmas splash out that’s more like a king tide, so devoid of meaning it feels we are adrift in a sea of plastic cups and broken toys.

And yet, and yet and yet, it’s still something so much more than this. On the beach watching my dog run here and there at a dizzying pace stealing everybody else’s ball, there are big dogs and small dogs, fat men and pretty women, children running and somebody kayaking, people are smiling and sharing drinks out of eskies, dogs are barking and prancing about with tinsel collars and the cool blue waters are a welcome respite. The narrow beach was full of people celebrating life and enjoying the very best of a summers day with family they might only see once a year, maybe because that’s about all they can handle.

Christmas is all these things at once and it only happens once a year, once a year to over indulge, once a year to put plastic tinsel on plastic trees and put up with long queues in supermarkets. Speeding along the road on the way home, past fire engines and the smoking cinders of someone’s Christmas lunch gone up in flames, I feel asleep in the car like a 5 year old, a very happy 5 year old on Christmas evening.

Summertime

It's summer on these streets. For long burning hours the sun beats down upon the path, fries the grass, tans the leaves, bleaches, drains and burns. Shoppers flock like birds to water, to air-conditioned worlds and jostle through the crowds carrying tinsel, beer and junk. In backyards kids splash in paddling pools and race under sprinklers, while Dads and uncles absentmindedly turn sausages in the tired afternoon sun. Working her way slowly up a sticky hill on a yellow bicycle in the middle of this clichéd suburban scene is a girl with a backpack full of books, with more bags of books hanging off the handle bars. It’s not particularly discernable at a first, second or even a third glance, but she is rather unhappy. Inside her mind is only a dark and dreary hole, despite, or perhaps because of the sun, the struggling breeze and the lemon-scented bush.

Welcome to the inaugural Summer edition of this bloggety-blog, summer has in fact been kicking along for at least a month now, but I think I just woke up and felt the sunburn on my nose. Inaccuracies aside, I’ve decided that this summer is not about losing weight, or eating healthy, drinking less coffee, saving the planet or any of the ho-har, but that it is absolutely necessary that I dance in my underpants more often. In so many ways I am the bane of my own existence. Henceforth, I intend to reverse this ridiculous state of affairs and go on a summer journey, a search if you will, for the good things, the positives and some deeper, hopefully not mythological, state of contentment. Hitch a ride if you like ;-)

I’ve been thinking about freedom a bit these last few days. Come hang out with me for a little while I try and put my thoughts into words.

The reason it's been on my mind, is because it's been all over the news, in the celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall and communism, the keyword freedom is on everyone’s tongue. We had it, they didn’t, that’s why we won the Cold war. That’s why we sit here pretty in our free, democratic states and don’t really ever have to think about freedom, because we just know, this is it. Freedom is what people living in dictatorships like Iran or North Korea do not have. The particular type of freedom they need is free market capitalism of course, but that should also include freedom of speech, movement, association, oh and you know, to walk to the market without being blown up.

I put the question to google, just for kicks. Tell me, kind sir, genius and gateway to the knowledge, I asked, what is freedom? The answer according to Wiki: its the right to act according to ones will without being held up by the power of others. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes both Freedom to and freedom from for every member of the human race. Freedom to join trade unions, take holidays, to worship where they like, or to chose not to worship if they so please. So too is it every individual’s right to be free from persecution, slavery, discrimination, torture or arbitrary arrest.

There’s something heart-warmingly comforting when you read the UDHR, the great declaration forged from the joining of so many nations which should govern all of their actions. It’s something I believe in wholeheartedly. It’s something I want to paint in big fat letters across the sky so that everybody throughout the world can see the thread of respect that unifies us. Or rather, should unify us. It’s something I want to believe can govern the world, despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite the fact that human rights abuses occur everyday, all over the world and that individual freedom is so transient, still. We hope, some people pray, others protest, politicians sign papers in pursuit of the goal of universal freedom, to make universal human rights actually be universal. Some people go to war and fight for these freedoms, or for the freedoms of others. But I don’t really want to dwell on the inherent ironies of pointing a gun at someones head and throwing democracy at them. Or blowing up other people so you can force them to live their lives how you think they should.

What I’ve actually been thinking about, is what freedom means for us in our air conditioned lounges on a quiet evening writing blogs. I live in a society where I am free to write a blog, and in it I could satirise or criticise my countries government as I please without fear of the website being shut down or getting myself arrested. I live in a country where I can question God and not be declared a blasphemous heretic worthy of public beheading. I’m even so lucky to live in a society where “freedom from want” is addressed, and an individual’s right to health care is honoured.

But while all the world leaders praise how free the free world is, comparatively, in so many ways our freedom is an illusion. Certainly, in contrast to a gay man in Saudi Arabia, I am very much free. I am more free than I would be if I had of been born a woman 60 years ago. But the idea that we are 100% free agents is an illusion. Even the free world isn’t free when you require passports and visas and documentation to go anywhere. Where you get fined for not wearing a helmet on a bicycle or the police can arbitrarily search you. Where if you are a refugee, travelling across wide oceans in little boats, running away from injustice in pursuit of freedom, chances are the free world is going to treat you like a quasi-criminal engaging in an illegal activity.
True freedom would theoretically be anarchy, open borders. I do not hold such faith in humanity that these things are actually a good idea. Take away all laws and lines in the sand and I know there will still be someone ready to tell you how to live your life, and be prepared to force you to do it.

But even if I think the notion of true freedom is little more than an illusion, I think there is real danger in forgetting the meaning of freedom and forgetting that we do have it. In the “free world” we don’t have to think about freedom on a daily basis. We lose touch with how thankful we should be to live in democratic societies. Our key concern should be with maintaining our freedoms and rights, and sharing them. But instead, with our notion of our own freedom vaguely in the back of our minds, we call for tougher policing and tighter border security.

Even as my cynicism and my realism destabilises my fleeting youthful idealism, I’ll continue to believe wholeheartedly in the United Nations and the dreamy notion of a world where “..recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace..” This will be my only religion.

Please take me book, absorb me body and soul...

I can only begin to imagine how it would feel to be haunted by terrifying memories of war, to flinch at sudden sounds and be paralysed by reoccurring images. I’m familiar with the power of happy memories that bring a smile to your face at the most random of times or make you burst out laughing for no apparent reason. But I can’t begin to understand how it would feel to wake feverishly in the night at the slightest sound, to be pursued by frightful memories of the past or terrorised by images of death, disease and despair. I have enough trouble with happy memories that time has turned into cement blocks of regret, memories of emotion that can very nearly wind me as I walk down the street, memories that should in no way be significant, but are to me.
When uni classes finish and free time abounds, these memories begin to prey on me. I drag myself down into despair and allow negative thoughts and images to stampede into my brain, just because my neurons have suddenly found themselves without sufficient stimuli or indeed a reason to get up and dressed and ready for the day. I have this feeling hanging over my head like an irritating fly buzzing about my ears that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. That I’m wasting my time, my life yadayada... It seems I function best if my brain is too busy to be concerned with itself.

Finding myself with time, I picked a random book off the bookshelf that I hadn’t got round to reading and escaped out the back door. I soon found myself so completely and utterly drawn into its pages that the prospect of finishing it scared me to death. I felt safe in this fictionalised world. I remember once reading an article that discussed how our brains categorise characters that we meet in books or on TV as our friends, perhaps a little sad, but definitely true. I had the sense that I would be ok as long as I was reading, as long as I was in this slow meandering story of other lives. I read and read and read, all day long, in the park, on the train, on my couch, in a different park. This was a world in which I didn’t have to make decisions, where I had no memories, all I had to do was float and watch it pass me by. I dreaded the time that I’d eventually have to go back out there to the world I rather not be in, the one in which I’m the main character and the plot is only halfway appealing 20% of the time. The story gave me a purpose. I worried about what I would do when I finished the book, about how I could actually go on without it.

And now here I am, out in that world again, waking, sleeping, drifting... It is an incredible paradox that I’m free to do exactly what I like, and yet I’ve never felt so unfree, mentally.

sleepless musings

It’s late and I’m tired but I’ve had too much coke (of the cola variety) - which I never drink and now I remember why. My eyes feel like they are wedged open by toothpicks but they are itching to close, despite the fact they just will not shut and my mind is ticking over almost audibly...

Or perhaps that’s some cheeky cicada outside my window?

Anyway, I’m thinking about people. Awesome people in particular. People who in their own unique way embody the best of what is generosity, or good humour, positivity, drinking ability, wisdom or just plain good company. Why is it that so often the very best of people are the ones that are only in your life for the blink of an eye? Awesome people who live miles and miles away, whose path you cross only rarely or who you get to know well before they disappear into the vastness of the universe again... or become lost behind the heavy stones of their barricades.

Is it purely so you appreciate having met them more? Probably. It’s God’s plan, fate, just the way it is etc etc.

All the caffeine in my system is leading me to conclusions. Primarily, I wish there was a way to keep the awesome people on the same continent. But I know there is email and jet planes and paths that cross again and funny memories in the meantime. In other cases, I wish there was a way to stop good friendships from dying horribly slow deaths at my own hands. But I know I should know by now when to stop shaking the life out of it.

Coke you see, provides the answers, but not the sleep.

Send me back to suburbia, before academia claims my soul

[Warning: Rant will ensue.]

Here’s a fact for you, I am sick to death of facts. I have a growing distaste for words I can barely lift with a forklift and metaphors you have to hurl an encyclopaedia, a PhD and two separate bi-lingual dictionaries at before you can even begin to understand what they might be getting at. Historians and their truths, lies and unknowns are getting on my nerves, as are the high and mighty in-joke’s that fly around in the reputably stale old world of academia. It’s not all that stodgy and stale most of the time, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’m playing in a sea of theoretical codswallop larger than I can handle. Post-structuralism, deconstructionism, superstructure, cultural hegemony, truth...

...or dare? No? Ok...

Nobody appreciates jokes in languages they can’t understand, or names of people they don’t know that espoused theories that they’ve never heard of but oh-my-you-really-should-know-that. Those kinds of intellectualities are why people don’t like the cultural elites that hide in their university offices dressing things up in big-big-words and arguing over the nitty-gritty and bemoaning common society before retiring to their books and fantasies. I belong to this less than heavenly world of pen and paper. I spend my time philosophising and hurling large, ridiculous words at people. I kind of like it. But right now I’m entering the final round of semester with only 2 essays to knock out and I’m about to start flatlining on the brain monitor. The realisation is fast approaching that I’m 99% sure I cannot remember a damned thing I’ve been studiously attempting to absorb all day because low and behold, my carefactor is speedily approaching 0 with 1/1000 chance of radical turnaround.

Disenchanted? Disengaged? Dis-dis-dissertation will be the end of me.