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.

Salty memories of lighthouses

I don’t like fish or fishermen, but I like their company from afar. I have to admit I don’t see what’s relaxing about fishing, but it relaxes me to watch them busy about their hobby, diligently becoming smelly and salty, enjoying the pretension that they are catching their own food, hunting for their keep, or perhaps just escaping their families. They form part of the scenery, the backdrop in my mind. Their fishing rods merge with the birds and boats. Two kayakers soldier on out into the wind and swell, two white specs disappearing into the grey horizon before me. If I stand here long enough I’m sure I’ll acquire the weather-beaten, rustic look of an old fisherman’s bucket, spotted with fish scales and blood.

It’s the salt air that reminds me how once, sitting on an ocean rock wall on a dark and starless night, I told someone I felt like a lighthouse. That I was a distant flickering light that no one ever really approaches, built on a rocky outcrop, standing strong alone in the cold, crazy world, but not altogether sad. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that perhaps this was information I shouldn’t share, a secret that contained something so vital to my fragile inner existence that when I butchered it, I was left with nothing. Except for the seaweedy taste in my mouth that you get when you give away too much of yourself to someone who doesn’t really want it anyway.

My headphones are like earmuffs but even still, they don’t block out the whistling of the wind in the yacht masts or the rumble of planes overhead. Today I feel neither sad or happy, not exceptionally high or particularly low, I just am. I stand stoically on my rocky outcrop, a quiet lighthouse, seagull crowning my shoulder, salt encrusting my face. A face blanker than Mona’s with a gentle lost look which only the feral rock wall cats notice hiding in its eyes. Tiny birds dart about me. From point to point the coast stretches out either side of me and I can just make out the distant two legged figures pushing on through the sands of the beach, or clinging to their knives and forks in their windowed, sprawling homes, so see-through and yet tall and guarded. Already my leg has begun to cramp up, my jeans slowly being worn away by that steady wind, how long before they are reduced to threads? How long would I have to wait on my rock before I became a statue, or as silent and unseen as a ghost? How long before my heart starts to beat in tune to the tides and the light in my eyes to flicker?

When I turn to leave, to hop across the big rocks that try to keep the waves out and the boats in, I carry with me in my hair, my eyes and my notebook the salt and the clouds, the wind and seagull cries and a tinge of regret that I can’t stand there forever, a lighthouse.

Some random thoughts sewn together while the flowers sleep

I have no idea what I want to say.

There is a story in my heart with a beginning, middle and an end
but it has no characters and the scene is hazy,
the plot eludes me and the words evade me,
all I know is it starts, gets complicated and then ends happily ever after,
several thousand times.

What on earth is goin’ on in my heart?

Has it turned as cold as stone?

Seems these days I don’t feel anythin’

‘Less it cuts me right down to the bone

David Gray

I’ve been a powerhouse of focused reading, a tour de force of note taking. I have submerged myself in a void, and filled it with distraction. But now I’ve lost my mojo, my way and my light. I woke up, or I’ve fallen back asleep. I just want to drink tea and nap, read novels and philosophise. I’ve been day dreaming about hiking mountain ranges and sailing on calm bays of empty thought. It’s all variations of nothing in particular, something so familiar all over again.

There’s a person inside me I want to be, I can see them, but I don’t know whether they are me, or an imaginary being. I’m staring and waving my arms but for some reason I can’t get their attention.

So I bought a shrub. Her name is Boronia and she will be my offering to this world. In this graveyard garden, amongst the remnants of tennis balls, where mangled bones lie on upturned dirt she’s going to flower in the winter and spring, absorb sunshine and carbon and make people smile... if I don’t kill it.

So come along, it wont be long

'Til we return happy

Shut your eyes, there are no lies

In this world we call sleep

Let's desert this day of hurt

Tomorrow we'll be free

Sia

It’s September, did you know? I don’t think I got the memo. Part of my head is still tangled in August’s heartache and July’s nausea while the other, regrettably, is wearing Sunday’s pants in Monday’s world. Apparently there’s no room for slippers in the daily grind, which is where we begin to disagree, the world and me. Spring afternoons are short and sweet like Perth winters and soon forgotten by long summer days. And I am addicted to cloud watching like my contemporaries are to debt and energy highs. I don’t think I dance alone but its where I find myself, day and night, in my slippers, dancing upon pages and words, words upon pages, pages upon words. But just before I drown in the unabated flood of information I arrive at the life raft of knowledge that it’s tea time. This is an ode to the time spent in escape, except that it is no ode at all. And I know before long September will give way to October like sadness gives way to surreal calm or calm gives way to disarray and eventually I’ll have to learn to stop writing in paragraphs that are lost from top to bottom.