I lie to hippies.

I’m walking along the street when I see them standing up ahead, almost looming tall above me, looking menacing with their fisherman’s pants and clipboards, I dance one step left, two steps right, but bam, he has me cornered.

So I tell them I’m already a member of their organisation, or some other organisation that does what they do, but a little differently... Why is that? Is it just because I haven’t factored the awkward little chat with dreadlocked hippy-harry who wants my money into my day? Surely it’s not because I don’t support what they do, and yet despite my glaring Hug a Tree T-shirt I know I don’t want to give them my money, not even so they can more productively show the trees some love.

I told Matt I had to admit, I have never heard what Greenpeace has actually achieved. I know what they try to do, what they want to do, what they protest against, but what have they actually done?

Well they got Kleenex to agree to stop using the Amazon Rainforest for manufacturing snot-rags,

That’s impressive.

They are on the ground in Papua New Guinea, teaching locals more sustainable logging practices

Ok...

They have a seat on the International Whaling Commission

(Hope it’s a comfortable chair...)

And they are active in campaigning for proper labelling of Genetically Modified foods in Australia

The list, he implies, goes on.

I don’t own a car and choose to cycle as much as possible. I’m vegetarian partly because its greener, I’ll sign petitions and espouse green views but I feel uncomfortable giving them my money, or paying Virgin Blue extra money so they will supposedly pay someone to plant trees to absorb the carbon emitted by my flight across the country. I’m cynical about ‘carbon neutral’ 4WD’s, whose owners have paid some company to plant trees so they can keep burning heaps of fuel and of political leaders who bicker incessantly over which of them will be the one to save the world. Should we have the Prime Ministers emissions trading scheme or the opposition leaders ‘practical policy’ of supporting renewable energy, or did we just want to take the Greek salad after all? I’m cynical about them because it’s obvious to me we need both. And its obvious to me, the more political rhetoric I absorb, that politicians are as useless as ‘tits on a bull’, to quote my mother.

And yet, I still don’t want to give Greenpeace my money. And let’s face it, if I lie to them, if even I who gives a shit about trees and climate change, about whales and baby orang-utans won’t give them my money – who the fuck will?

All this and more was running through my head as I walked away, but the thought that begun to take over, to annoy me no end, is pure frustration that there is always something in the back of my mind that seems to prevent me from believing wholeheartedly in anything. A permanent division inside that has me always hedging my bets, doubting, distrusting.

An allem ist zu zweifeln, said Karl Marx. Doubt everything.

But must I really?

[I regret to inform you that this blog will be left inconclusive]

Inhale the day.

It stinks of wastage.

Midmorning bed tangles smell like pillow and cosy blankets, spiced with a teasing lateness. You’re once again late, but for nothing in particular, except life in general.

The absence of a clear and logical approach to the day has a very particular fragrance, it smells of rambling bambling bumbling through the house. Picking up socks, putting down mugs, chewing toast, pressing play, shuffling papers. Much like the smell of dust it tugs at your nose hairs until you sneeze, Ah-choo.

The smell of avoidance floats through you head as you spray and wipe to clean out your brain. Dusting off the shelves, rearranging files... even as I close my eyes and turn the music up, tickling my nose is that scent, the insipid odour of wasting time.

It smells worse than the lady who crosses my path looking like a bottle of beer, all hips and fat neck and smelling like a cigarette packet. I, engaging in random acts of consumption, trace the smell of donuts to its source. The scent of a fake shopping mission billows after me and mingles with the sweat of other-peoples-productivity to only vaguely disguise idle spending.

The afternoon is heavy with the off putting aroma of regret and guilt and soon, the smell of a wasted day festers and simmers into the stench of a whole week that reeks sour of idleness and procrastination. The distinctly nauseating scent of failing no one but yourself burns as it rises through your nostrils. It causes a trickling, stinging nose bleed that masks the smell of holidays and chases away the light airy fragrance of a casual summers evening, leaving you sniffing, snorting, smelling blood.

No my dear, it doesn't make sense at all.

I’m sitting here listening to sweet music while wind sweeps around my head, like these thoughts sweep around my heart, my head, my deep

What are they? I don’t know.
I know I don’t trust enough sometimes to trust even myself

- Let alone other people

You are always scared people will lie to you, when you lie to them.


I’m sitting in my thinking chair
which is now my drinking chair,
which has been my crying chair, once when it was cold
it’s a wardrobe chair, most days of the week
and it would be a smoking chair, if
only if,
I had a pipe.

It’s a chair for poor poetry or sloppy prose
a chair for loneliness and happiness
hopelessness and fears
but right now it’s just a drinking chair
an I-won’t-cry-for-nothing chair
a chair to hide in,
to hope in
a wondering chair that doesn’t wander

And then the words escaped him, all of them – just left.
They slammed the door in his face and he was alone facing a wall, a blank wordless wall with not a clue what to do in their absence, after all, what was he without them?

All tubes and heartbeats and surging nameless nothings inside him...

Where do you turn when you don’t know where to begin,

how do you speak when there are no words left inside you?

How do you even breath without a name to call that which you inhale?

What am I, without words?

It’s just a crumbled page full of drunken words, she whispered. Stop reading so much into it.

Under the sea

Today was a Saturday.

I fully intended to get up with the sun and greet it, drink some lemon juice, snort some energising herbs and pull some muscles pretending I am a yogini.

At 7 I thumped my rude alarm clock in absolute disgust.

At 8.30 I rolled over surprised to notice it was bright in my room. That inconsiderate sun, thinks the whole damn world revolves around it.

At 9.30 I woke with a start. “Whythefuckamistillinbed?” I yawned.

At 10am I disentangled myself from my sheets and leapt ungracefully from bed. I should go snorkelling, I decided.

And I did. A phone call, some frantic searching for my bathers and cursing that I could not find my flippers later, and we were cruising along the coast in all its vast blue splendour. And it was particularly vast and blue this morning, not least because my eyes were still blurred with sleep.

My nose was still blocked from my recent bout of summer swine/bird/monkey flu, my voice sounded like someone elses entirely, but under the sea, in the water, I found that little piece of heaven we search for in the everyday.

*Everybody sigh*

Yes under the water, with the seaweed and the sand and the total lack of breathable oxygen, is a wonderful place to be. Time moves differently, or perhaps I simply stop noticing it because before my very eyes, a whole-nother world, so beautifully far removed from the world of history research... Whilst here, as a passing tourist in the underwater world, life is as simple as breathing, in and out. As simple as watching the fish watch me and drifting along seaweed cliffs...

Waking up underwater was all I needed. The rest of the day the memory of the morning carried me through. I did absolutely nothing I intended to do with my Saturday, and I had a tremendously wonderful day.

Amen to that ;-)

"Under the sea
Under the sea
Darling it's better
Down where it's wetter
Take it from me
Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away
While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Under the sea"
From the Little Mermaid (she should know)

The Dogwalker.

It is probably only on this street, in this neighbourhood, in this particular city, that a girl wearing headphones and ill-conceived shoes whilst walking a giant Labrador could be a recipe for disaster.

Yes, I think it’s only here, in this park, under these trees that people could see a shuffling figure in the distance, trying to walk while a large dog bounces around her in a tight circle slobbering “Ball, Ball, BALLL!!!!”, and practically scream for someone to stop them, stop them before they come any closer.

When I can’t think, I’m angry, sad, hung over, elated, confused, bored, procrastinating, tired, asleep, or even perhaps just feel like exercising, I take my dog for a walk. It doesn’t really matter when, how or what I’m wearing when I walk out of the house with the intention of taking Baloo for a walk, he knows it, like he feels it in the air, and before I’ve even grabbed the lead he’s gone stir-friggin-crazy.

He must sit at the gate though, or we won’t go. I have rules you see, and I’m in charge. But after he’s sat still for almost a whole second while I clip the lead on and open the gate, it’s all go again and as soon as the gate is open far enough for him to fit his fat head through, he leaps down the stairs like a horse over a jump and I lurch out after his wagging tail, every damn time.

First stop upon arrival at the park is to pee on this stump tree, and then this particular fence post, at which point he starts kicking up the dirt behind him, proudly proclaiming his presence in the park. Baloo loves the park. Whether the park loves him or not, is undecided. In the park there are friendly dogs with grumpy owners, mean dogs with apologetic owners, ugly dogs with kooky owners, ladies with matching dogs, dogs with tennis balls, owners with poopy-bags and the odd dogless walker or kid playing footy. And then there is Baloo, who I think, considers himself the welcoming party. Because Baloo is a happy dog, a non stop tail-wagging, infinite source of bounding energy that dashes across the park in a heartbeat to say hello, sniff-sniff, wanna play?

Which frankly, not everyone appreciates. Sadly, not everyone see’s the beautiful side of a gigantic Labrador sprinting at them, their toddler or worse still, their football. This is about when they scream stop, don’t come any closer.

But there’s no stopping the love, folks.

Except when daddy’s at home. Because sometimes, on very rare occasions, I decide I want to go for a walk and Baloo doesn’t actually agree, because Dad’s at home and Dad’s not coming. Not being one to take that kind of rejection, I insist we go anyway, and drag the strangely unenthusiastic Baloo out the gate. It doesn’t work out to be much fun for me, but the other people in the park must breathe a sigh of relief, because when they see that crazy kid and her big dog arrive at the park, and she lets the dog off the leash and turns around to change the song on her mp3 player... he sprints back home.

That poor crazy kid, the last they saw of her she was sprinting through the park, headphones bouncing around her neck, in pursuit of a golden Labrador, that menace, nightmare, child-licker, cutie, pretty boy, beautiful big, poo eater.

Waiting on the breeze.

I have given in to the heat. It’s been enveloping me all day, as it tends to at this time of the year, when it falls down upon this city for days at a time. I have succumbed to its bidding and ceased to try and do anything productive today. Instead I’m trying to keep exceptionally still, to concentrate on being immobile, and searching inside my mental world for an icy cold oasis, sweet like an icy pole, cool like the very opposite of the space within these four walls. I’ve sat at my desk, rested on the floor against my bed, positioned myself upside down and sideways on my couch, and from all angles it has become painfully apparent that the most productive thing my ceiling fan can do is make the shadows and the light flash spectacularly on my grey white ceiling. The pictures on my wall have risen, curled at the edges like the thoughts in my head. The numbing tones of Leonard Cohen are helping me keep still, still like a mouse, a dead mouse rotting in the putrid heat. Even the dog has been let inside, to rest on the tiles near the tired old air conditioner, which whirs away at the end of the house, so loud you can hear it trying, humming in its brackets from across the street. If you were stupid enough to go outside that is, and you’d have to be stupid, stupid like mad dogs and Englishmen.

Yep, you gotta love summertime.

Got to love those summer afternoons when you take one step outside the door and you’re bathed in sweat, when you venture outside to hang just one t-shirt on the line and your pale Anglo complexion is already rosy red and the shirt is not only covered in fly shit but dried crusty and faded from brown to yellow. When you roll down the street on your bicycle and you’ve got sweat coming out your ears, your thongs have melted into your feet and the tip of your nose, let alone the road, is hot enough to fry an egg on.

Summertime in Perth, a time not of love, but of rising tensions when it is as if, as I once heard someone say, God were trying to burn this city from the surface of his earth. Or at the very least, this is where his missus does the baking.

Right now while I try so hard to not exist I only sweat more, the wind outside is hotter than the air itself. I’m waiting for the wind to change and the breeze to arrive for the afternoon. For it to swing away from the steaming hills and race across the ocean, up the hill, through the park and in my front door where I will wait for it, like a long lost friend, with my nose pressed to the flywire, wait for the breeze to blow the mist from the sprinklers in against my skin...and when this oppressive heat is gone, perhaps to these stifling thoughts.

[This blog goes out to anyone freezing their arse off in the Northern Hemisphere, trust me if I could, I’d spam this heat to you.]

Being studious in the abscence of a highlighter.

I’m studying very hard right now. I’m studying my little head off in fact. You can probably see the beads of perspiration running down my forehead from where you are. I have pages and pages of notes before me and a steadily growing pile of books that have been freshly squeezed of all there obscure information and will soon be returned to whence they came to resume rotting away on dusty shelves. No time is being wasted here, none at all. Nope, no siree... what would a humble student like me have to gain from wasting time after all?

Okay.

Okay.

So shoot me.

But it’s all right really, I am not in fact wasting time at all. In fact, I’ve actually stopped time just to bring this 2.50pm breaking news update to you. Yes that’s right, I have engineered a way to actually stop the clock, hold pages in mid air and pause my dog mid-snore on his couch. Right now wherever you are, dear reader, you’ve been stopped mid ball-scratch, been left hovering halfway out of your car, because I have stopped time, stopped the press, stopped everything, except of course for me and the tippitytappity of my keyboard.

But the question here that is of such fundamental and pressing nature that I should stoop to stop time and turn away from my excessively interesting studies, is this: Why is it impossible to buy just one green highlighter? This is the real reason you see, why I had to deviate from my studies, cycle very slowly to the shops furthest away from me, in search of a very important green highlighter. Perhaps, given the evident difficulty in locating just one, lonesome and preferably cheap green highlighter, I shouldn’t be so colour specific. Perhaps I should have just got Dora the Explorer Crayons and been contented. But I wasn’t you see, it was a green highlighter I required, and only one. Instead I had the option of purchasing a pack of four different coloured highlighters, 3 of which I don’t need or a pack of 6 highlighters, 5 of which I don’t need. In the end, after storming up and down the highlighter-aisle, I had to purchase a pack of two, which means I came home with a yellow highlighter I neither wanted nor needed, just because of the unavailability of a single, green highlighter. I was forced into buying more than I need, forced into submission by big-chain-stores and Faber-fucking-Castell. I left the store peeved, irritated and returned home with a superabundance of unwanted yellow highlighters.

And that my friends, is how the little people are fucked over, every single day.
And um, yes well... that was it really so...I shall resume my invigorating studies. Not that I ever stopped mind you.

P.S. [If you should like to invest in one of these “Stopper of Time” devices you can pick up one for only a quarter of your yearly salary at fuckoffitsmine.com.au]