I want friendship (The Group is a Cult)

In the group, inside
You’ll find it easy for a time
See the line
A rope pulled tight
Once you get the balance right
Feels a lot like taking flight
I promise you, you’ll laugh all night

Try an image: Sunlight on-
What did you care about again?
Try a sound- Bluetooth blasting
Wonder how we keep it lasting
Wonder how we keep it up
As you drain another cup
Drunken by the worn-in pattern
Watching conversations happen

Something in you’s losing strength
Like a shadow losing length
You want to linger for a time
frozen in a dusk sublime
we’ll keep you close, inside a bind
we’ll pull the leash inside your mind

Watch that line, it’s always moving
your balance could do with improving
Getting weaker, feeling stronger
watch your shadow growing longer

Try to plan your getaway
Just try and escape Footscray
inhale the exhaust and motion
transform into a human totem
You’ll contort all expectations
replay every conversation
and only ever know a fraction
yet you’ll call it satisfaction

As every shadow joins the earth
Dusk is death and dawn is birth
stretching out from underneath
surrender to the one belief

Money is here (a rejection)

Do I want money?

Not exactly.

I want to feel important

I want to feel listened to

I want to feel a sense of influence- a sense of control 

To feel what I say and think cannot be challenged 

Because I have money and therefore, I am right.

With money, what I say

goes

I get used to it

I talk over you 

I exclude you 

I build giant walls

with tiny doors

And I promise I will let you through 

But only if I control what you say and do.

I am rarely challenged 

I like to think it’s because of my character, my smarts, my common sense.

Don’t stand in the way of common sense 

I know you won’t

Because you want money

You will behave

So one day

you can determine what gets made

you can determine  

The Future

Because, let’s be honest, you also think you know what’s right

And if only you had money,

everyone would listen to you

You would have control 

but then

everyone would want your money

Because,

They all want to feel listened to

They all want to feel a sense of control- 

to feel what they say and think should not be challenged 

If only they could only get their hands on your money… 

But you can’t let them

You can’t let them have your money

Because then who would be in control?

Then who would be listened to?

So that is why it’s a no

You understand 

You cannot have my money

But you can keep staring up that giant wall

Keep looking for that tiny door

And I promise I will let you through 

If I control what you say and do 

It began in waves

He watched us pick our way towards the steep beach track. I remember Christine’s breasts pillowing out the side of her bikini behind me. By the time our feet hit the sand, she’d taken off her bathing suit. We thought we were alone.

Christine was for no one but herself. She had declared those exact words that morning, as she was filling the car with petrol. These are the years, she’d said, where no one can take us up.

On the beach, Christine and I took turns passing a new translation of the Second Sex back and forth. We read aloud to each other, stopping to forensically discuss each paragraph. The first page was the subject of that morning’s drive towards the coast: in 1949, de Beauvoir was sick of people writing about the ‘problem of women’. The subject was annoying to her.

Back at the car, a paper flyer flapped against the windshield. The text advertised a gig, which was happening at the local pub down the road from the campgrounds. Now, I wonder if he watched us read it.

On the Pub’s wide deck, I waited for Christine, absorbing the last of the daylight colour as it played on the surface of the ocean. A guy approached me. He was holding a walnut and goats cheese salad, which loomed nutrient dense and expensive under his chin. I smiled sideways at him. He asked if I was there for the band. Without waiting for an answer, he told me he was mates with the drummer- they went to the same private school near Geelong.
Any good? I asked. Yeah, it’s the best school in Australia.
I meant the band. He explained how his drummer friend wrote the lyrics too, inspired by early 20th century literature.
Oh really? Like who? I asked. What do you mean? He shoved a piece of oily lettuce into his mouth. I liked how he looked at me, into both my eyes, one at a time.
Which 20th century authors? I asked. Oh. Hemingway, obviously, and DH Lawrence. Virginia Woolf too.
Nice. It was an automatic response but his smile seemed rewarding. At that moment, Christine arrived with wet hair. The guy looked at her. He asked if he could hang with us until after the gig, and then, if we liked, we could have a few drinks with the band. I said of course. Christine looked from me to him and said nothing.

I stood between them while surfer rock washed over the sandy basement. A red light flickered beside the door, where a young girl sat scrolling on her phone. Christine leaned over and yelled into my ear. Why do you think this guy is hanging with us? If he knows people here?
I looked around. There were other girls dotted in the crowed. I shrugged. We’re getting along, I said. I turned away from her and put my hand on his shoulder. His body was warm under his t-shirt. At my touch, he leaned his ear towards me. I don’t know if he heard what I said, but he nodded and smiled.

After the band played, we followed him to the picnic tables under the deck. The air had cooled. Moonlight flecked the shoreline, whitening the sand. It looked hard, like marble. Jugs of beer and bottles of Jack Daniels were being passed around. I took a full pint and carried another over to Christine. She was talking to the girl who’d been sitting at the door, they were watching videos on YouTube. I returned to the table, to the guy. He was looking over at Christine. I apologised for her, she’s not usually this antisocial, I said. He asked me what her name was, and I told him. Then he introduced me to his friend, the drummer, who asked me if I was an A&R executive. I asked him what that was. He said, you look sophisticated, that’s all. Thought you might be someone important. I laughed, genuinley, and turned to share the joke, but the guy was gone. I turned back to the drummer, who told me he was going on tour, using the summer break to play as many gigs as possible before uni goes back. What did he do at uni? Commerce.
But anyway, he said, you’ve just spent the last hour watching me drum, enough about me, what about you? What was your name? I told him. The first time I’d said my name all night. Do you study? He wanted to know. He got me talking.

The drummer was filling my glass again when Christine came over and sat beside me. I could feel her waiting for a gap in the conversation. She was leaving.
Why? I asked.
He asked me if I wanted to give him head, she said.
Who?
The guy- your mate. He said, as soon as he saw me tonight, he recognised me from the beach near his house. He doesn’t know a fucking thing about me, but he just said, I’ve been thinking about you all day, I feel like it’s destiny. Those lips of yours. Now I see you up close, of course they belong to your body. Please? He said, it’s all I can think about. Would you? Please?
At that moment, the guy crossed my eye-line. He glanced towards us and away again. I still didn’t know his name. What did you say to him? I asked.
I said, you’re a fucking perve. I’m not here so you can look at me or sexualise me. I’m leaving. So, I’m leaving. Are you coming?
The drummer, who had heard everything, said nothing. I put my drink down and stood. Well, see ya, I shrugged, and followed Christine into the night.

On the walk back to the campground, Christine was yelling things like, they all think we’re for them! Still!
At the camp site, she slammed car boot and continued, do they think we exist only as a function for their needs? How is it still like this?

The sky had clouded over. In the dark, we propped up our phones against the car tyres. Sharp shadows of blades in the grass. We began setting up our tent.

I sighed, it’s because they’ve all been bought up that way. It’s the culture we live in.

Yeah, a culture that makes them think they have the right to- to…

I knew she was right. But I also thought, at least he wanted you. As I pushed a metal peg into the soft earth, I asked myself if I would have said yes if he’d asked me.

It’s dehumanising! shouted Christine, they want you paralysed-

GIRLS! A woman’s voice slapped the air. We froze. A tall woman in a dark sarong slid out of her tent. Please girls, she said, crossing her arms to cover her braless chest, it’s very late. We can hear everything you’re saying. We’re all in tents, you know.

Sorry, yes of course. Sorry.

We apologised in unison. Then we set up the tent in silence. I knew Christine sort of blamed me for what had happened- for inviting the guy into our sphere. But she could have spoken up. She could have said no. She did say no. Nothing actually happened.

We went to sleep without saying goodnight.

I have forgotten how to be your friend, have I?

it takes us forever to say hello
i used to think that was a testament
now i don’t know. maybe we’ve never met
never satisfied. that’s how you are
that’s how i am with you
you demand, i’m consumed
there’s no way i could maintain that
so i pull / pulled back
i had to / i have to
but in my heart i drop everything, for you
you know that.
don’t you?
i want to stay a child. us both
you want me to stay small
but the hairs at your temples
are grey now
so
we survive off brief eye-contact and
rare outbursts of affection
but i have forgotten how to be your friend.
have i?
i always thought of you as mine
but never myself as yours
i want you to have everything you want
because
even from this distance,
i can see your promise

My boy is sad and he doesn’t know why
(notes in a phone from years ago)

My boy is sad and he doesn’t know why
But I know

He’s a good man
The best
I am the bad one 
though I’ve done nothing wrong

yet

The voice is loud
telling me to turn my pockets out
show him some truth

a crumb
a pill

but that’s serious
and I want to stay in control

My boy is sad and he doesn’t know why
And I leave him to question
That’s worse
what do I owe him? 

I am holding on to a phantom version
of a life I think I want
a part of me wants to risk it all
when I already have more than I deserve

I love him
That’s the truth
And if you love someone you tell them the truth
Even if they might not love you
Once they know

Tell him
Let life be more
Than what you expect of it

The most beautiful play to have ever been made
(After reading Val Plumwood)

If all the worlds’ a stage,
then the most beautiful play to have ever been made
is the high stakes production of the natural world
Eons in the making

The symbiosis of its players
their trust
in chain-reactions and precise cooperation
allows miracles
before your eyes! in real time!
Perfectly arranged to meet the shifts and tides
to let great stories play out
The greatest stories of all time, like

The moon’s tidal pull
exposes white sand
a nocturnal crescent
enough room for a hundred tiny moons
to be laid and buried beneath
temperature balanced silicon
then,
emerald shells emerge
know the shoreline laps
population numbers sustain birdlife
while at sea, adult turtles glide  

Stories without justice or revenge
or good or evil
Stories about taking and giving
Stories we have forgotten
that we are a part of

We’ve made up others instead, like

The one about saviour and sin
about a father and son
and a deserved conscious
eternity beyond death
about being chosen, made in His image
about never having to give back
all we take

The real story has no main characters
It’s devised from an ensemble
and it’s rules are self evident  
returning releasing
nourishing converging
growing creating
withering returning

our made-up stories
our make-believe separations
our dualities
have doomed us

A new story plays out: a chaos
Precision is uncommon
Affiliations vanish
Chains become untethered
Patterns are altered
In real time
  In our time
On our watch
Faster than we understand
But we must understand
Because if all the worlds’ a stage
we stand to lose
the most beautiful story to have ever been told
Eons in the making

The House – The Apartment

 We went for a walk in the heat of the night, towards the river. The water’s greasy liquid reflected our upside-down city. It looked like tractor oil, thick and black.  

I spoke of the apartment.

I feel hopeless. 

Why?

We live in sight of an oil refinery, a concrete wall, a construction site. Every day I feel the western sun beating through the glass, baking the walls. No tree grows high enough to shade our windows. The potted balcony plants live exposed, outside, windy, hot, noisy. I don’t like where we live.

We passed under a bridge. The heated air was trapped beneath, stifling. Rats scampered to safety.

I continued,

The concrete, the noise- Why have we moved to a place- this place- that reminds me every day…

Reminds you of what? 

Of what the world is, of what the requirements are- what is needed to sustain millions of us city dwellers.
I can’t change the systems that’re needed to keep a city running, but must I be reminded of them every time I look up?  

The view from the apartment is vast. To the west, it includes a glimpse of an alternative life, of the outer suburbs. A new belt of houses, a supply created by demand. Big houses on small blocks. No room for back yards, no time to garden, between the commute and the job and the family and all the other commitments. No time to mow a nature strip either- most cover theirs over with AstroTurf.

A nature strip. A strip of nature. A place where insects and birds and possums belong. A place for rainwater to soak.
In the older, unaffordable inner suburb where I grew up, footpaths were shaded by old, foreign trees. The sounds of woodchippers and power tools mingled with the calls of magpies on weekends.

There won’t be much shade around the outer suburbs, not for twenty years, not until the saplings grow. And what do we do between then and now? Attempt a good life. Drive through the grids of hot, black roads. Absorb the daytime heat, feel it radiate through the air. Listen to the hum of air conditioning at night, vibrating through sleep, replacing the zeds. Black roofs stretch from the road to the back of the property. We maximise indoor space. It’s not safe outdoors anymore. Not pleasant. To hot, too windy, too rainy, too flooded.

 We turn towards home.

 Again, I say,

I am unhappy, living in the apartment. I want to look out upon trees. 

But others have it so much worse.  

He does not say this.  

He does not even think it. But I do. I am ashamed of myself- of my complaints. Others are living in packed numbers without running water or waste disposal networks. Without clean surfaces. Without time. Without freedom to walk by the river at night.  

But I won’t be stopped. Not this time. I used to pretend I was happy with what I had, maybe I was, but shame is no match for greed, for desperate longing, for selfish desire, for a fantasy about a green, treelined outlook. 

Despite knowing how much I already have, I want more.  

I want to lean on the system, on the infrastructure, whilst forgetting it is there. 

When we get home, I look out, into the darkening skyline. I spy the bridges, roads, trains, trucks, cranes, exhausts, chemicals, storage facilities, delivery vehicles, warehouses, shipping containers, churches, supermarkets, drainage systems, clouds- everything it takes everything it takes to sustain us. 

Sustain.  

To sustain means to strengthen or support what already is. To make sure what is happening now can happen tomorrow and the next day and the next. The infrastructure I can see from my kitchen table are the systems we have put in place. If we want to make this life sustainable, we must strengthen and support these systems.
To support what already is.

I see the suburbs, the Westgate, the refinery, the factories, the cranes building another new apartment block.

The night is warm and clear.  

From my balcony, I can see the stars.

Flashback to a suburban life

I’ve been marking a house
Framing photos to hang
Shifting furniture
Scrubbing skirting boards
My feet are sore from tip-towing
over mopped floors
Their wet gloss reflects
defused suburban light
I’ve planted seedlings in pots
Tomatoes, pumpkin, zucchini
Anxious they will grow
while I sit still in my nest
Stable for a year at least
Now we’ve signed the lease

Legacy is insecurity.

A small team of old men are devoting their time and resources to a project that identifies veteran corpses in unmarked graves. These dead people were born more than a hundred years ago, and their names have been forgotten by the generations who have lived since. The team of men consider this a tragedy, so with each unmarked grave, a trove of research is conducted. The process is painstaking: names are pulled from databases and soil is tested for flesh remains. Once a grave is matched with an identity, the two are fastened together by a concrete headstone, and there they will remain for another hundred years, enabling future generations to contemplate the plight of the ANZAC.

When we contemplate death, we can’t help but reflect on our own mortality and our own fear of being forgotten. The desire for legacy reveals a very common insecurity; a fear that while we’re alive, we’re wasting our time. This motivates us to live. Many interoperate the act of living as ‘doing something worthy of being remembered’. But if legacy ceases to be important to you once you’re dead, perhaps the intelligent thing to do is to enjoy life.

It’s a fact that one in fourteen Australian WWI soldiers deserted the cause during the war, choosing to defy orders and stray from battle. To those men, coming so close to death must have reinforced how precious life can be. These men are rarely talked about now; their actions are considered dishonourable, and so we intentionally forget to include them in the ANZAC myth.

Years ago, a teacher of mine was dying of breast cancer. Every day, she’d go for long walks, resting on public benches when needed. The locals who knew her would sit and chat if they had time. She’d ask all about their children and future plans while staring out to sea, or up at a canopy of autumn leaves, taking in the light. When she died, those who knew her remembered her by placing a bench in the corner of the primary school’s oval, under a grove of deciduous trees. She did not ask for this. Her final years were lived with the intention of finding beauty and pleasure in the natural world. It was up to the living to write down her name.

To me, devoting time and resources to ensure you are remembered and appreciated by future people you’ll never meet seems rather irrational. However, the terror of death provides an explanation as to why a small team of men would devote their time and effort to a project such as this: by enforcing the remembrance of other’s, perhaps they too may be considered worthy of a plaque?

HEROS AND VILLAINS

February 2021

I don’t know if what I think is worth writing down. I don’t know if there is a point to making art. I haven't been inspired towards necessity. Even this now, me expressing my lack of enthusiasm, is not worth the electricity this computer is powered on. We still haven't switched to renewables. This is costing the world co2. There is a feeling of doom in the back ground, like the noise from roadworks. It makes things not matter. But it’s not even that. It’s that I don’t believe what I have to say is engaging or original. Others are erudite and articulate and formulate concise responses. Do we really need my perspective added to the noise? To the roadwork?
Rod told me about a graphic novel where fictional characters were summoned into reality by artificial intelligence. In the story, an AI had assumed the complex characters that exist in novels and television were real, if not more so, than actual people. But as we know, these fictional characters are violent and vengeful and care not for moral consequence. They kill. They murder.

More and more things are "like a movie". Recently I was standing with Louie, looking at the night sky, and she said, “it looks fake, like if I saw it on a screen I would think the compositor had done a bad job.” People have been comparing real life to television and movies a lot lately: seeing virtual realities as reality itself. People often say things like, it’s like something out of Lord of the Rings .

When they stormed the capital, a man called out "Nancy, Nancy" in a threatening, chastising voice. The first thing I thought was, “it's like a villain out of Bat Man”. Am I so used to the violence of Americans on my screens, the sinister hunt of a man villain... or was this man himself, this real life man, mimicking the villains he had seen in fiction? Will there be a tipping point in which we become like those characters, unaware of the consequences of our actions, hidden behind anonymity and screens, so when we venture out, the digital frame we are familiar with is applied to the moral and physical landscape of the real world?

Archive It

December 2020

The time travelling table had been hiding in a cupboard in Heidelberg Heights with its legs screwed off for the past three years. Its previous custodians had bought it from a friend for $300 and never used it. In the darkness, it reverberated the muffled sounds of life beyond the cupboard door. Then they took a photograph of it, and uploaded the image to the internet.

On a phone across town, Luke scrolled through a grid of dining tables. A rainstorm had passed outside the window. Shards of late sun ignited the nature strip and formed long pointed shadows on the bitumen. I sat beside Luke with the Saturday paper and a glass of wine.

“How about this one?” he poked the phone into my line of sight and scrolled through three photographs of the same table. New images of an old object. “They want $250 for it“.

The table slipped neatly into the back of our Ford. It had a mahogany inlay. I liked the way its timber legs tapered down to a thin, metallic foot. Luke piled the un-screwed legs behind the driver’s seat. He held one up and said, “this would be perfect for clubbing someone to death.”

Back in our dining room that afternoon, Luke looked for a label on the table’s underside, but couldn’t find one. “I wonder who the furniture maker was.” I squatted beside him, turning a leg around and around, spiralling it into place until it refused to twist any further. Then, carefully, we stood the table up. I wanted to see what it looked like against the wall, but it was better in the middle of the room.

We collected four hand-me-down chairs and placed them beside the table. They fitted. I took a photograph on my phone. Another image added to a grid. I thought, perhaps my photograph of this seventy year old table will be glimpsed in seventy years’ time. Or, it will exist forever, never to be looked at again. What counts as existing?

Luke set up his students’ essays at the head of the table and got busy marking. That was the table’s first job in our household.

Luke is a teacher, so I guess $125 of the $250 that we used to buy the table had been earned through Luke’s teaching job. I am never certain where my own money comes from, because occasionally I get paid to write or produce theatre, but I also work at the library and that’s how I make the money to pay for most things. So perhaps my half came from there. Also this year I received government payments. I have been ‘under employed’ due to the pandemic.

I was living in Sydney when I met Luke, who was living in Melbourne. I called off the burgeoning affair about a month in, as I couldn’t see long distance working. But then, a month later, I called him to start it up again. That was deliberate. Considered. Six years later, we bought a table together and stood it up in the dining room and for some reason that makes me feel like there is something deliberate here, or at least, a direction. As soon as the table came out of its cupboard in Hiedelburg Heights, it was put to use. I have felt a bit like that, like I’ve been in a sort of cupboard, not being used correctly. Things seemed accidental. But maybe it’s the little accidents that make up a life. I fell into writing whilst waiting for something more useful to happen. In the past eight years I’ve written seven plays, had six of them produced and had two of them published. Could that all have been by accident? When I applied for my job at the library, I practised my answers to the interview questions in the car outside the council office. That behaviour seems more deliberate than not.

Michael arrived at six thirty that night. I had been in the front room playing Paul McCartney songs on the piano, but had given myself a headache from singing too loud. I’d begun exploring the progressions from A Minor Seven to D Minor to B flat Major to F Major. Luke was in the lounge room playing a video game. When Michael arrived, we showed him a few new things we’d bought since last we’d met. I showed him a hair curling wand, which I bought from the chemist for $29. Michael commented on the predictability of my getting the cheapest option. I asked him what the difference was between this curling wand and a hundred-dollar curling wand, but by that point he’d seen the table.

He loved the table without asking. He said it reminded him of a 90‘s board room, but in a good way.

After dinner, we played a Greek game called Pente, which Luke had bought online from a man in Adelaide. He had paid more for the shipping than for the game. We drank whisky from small, glass tumblers, which I’d found at Savers; six small glasses that slotted neatly into a red, wire carrier for $6.50. We played two rounds before it was time for Michael to walk the few blocks home to his own rental. Yet he lingered, talking about music and the housing market. He announced he’d decided he was going to buy a house, somewhere, someday, but was unsure of the possibility of that ever eventuating. Luke and I had been looking at apartments for a while and could not decide if it was worth spending half a million on something four stories high, or to just keep renting a house on the ground. Michael said spending time around homeowners makes you want to be a homeowner. I said, spending time around artists makes you want to be an artist. Then I told him about a photographer I had recently interviewed for a local festival. She had explained to me, ‘times and places in the past, moments that we can never quite return to, that’s what’s interesting’.

I said, “either way, you’ll do the right thing because that is what you will do. There’s no clone of you who is doing something better. There is only us, and whatever we do is what we will do. We are not really competing against anyone, not even ourselves.”

I thought about this later. Perhaps I can steer my way towards a life I want by using the life I already have.

Woman Child

October 2020

Yesterday, Shanks told me about a movie in which two forty-something men still live at home with their parents. They are forced to move in together when their parents marry each other. The movie’s axis revolves around a joke about the ‘man child’.

The story goes that women stay home and in, while men go out and do. When those stereotypes are inverted, a statement or joke is being made. Of course that’s out dated, yet this year, I have stayed home for most hours of the day while Luke has gone to work. I haven’t even had the warewithall to have dinner laid out on the table. He cooks mostly. So what use am I? What use is a women who is educated and underemployed and unwilling to cook?

On Friday night, Luke and I took four beers and a packet of chips down to the park. By the end of the first beer I was ranting about gender representation. “The men on the front of the news paper are the decision makers, while the women on the front of the magazines pose with closed mouths. They are powerful women with things to say but the imagery is telling us that they are still only there to be looked at.”

I feel like a bad feminist for not being independent enough. I keep reading about the freedom that comes with the slog of finally having control over your domain. Over your life. Maybe I’m too good at being cared for. I am the youngest sister, so a lot has been done for me. I’ve let things be done for me.

The other night I woke with Luke clinging to me for warmth. The doona had bunched up inside its cover and he was sleeping under empty linen. Rising in the darkness, I went to the cupboard, reaching for the second doona which we had stored away when the air got warm. I laid the blanket out across his sleeping body. It felt good to take charge, to do something for someone else.

Could it be that I have too much in common with Austin’s Elizabeth Bennet? During the day, I keep the kitchen clean and listen to philosophy and music podcasts. I write. I read novels. I love nature, and taking long walks alone. Just like Elizabeth, I’m cultured and conversational but otherwise useless. After she moved to Pemberly with Mr Darcy, what did she do with her days? I suppose she stared out the window and wondered what life was all about like me.

When we were teenage girls, Emmy said that she couldn’t see me working a normal job, that I’d end up doing something different. I think I took it as a compliment, although I was bewildered. What would I do with myself? How would I gain independence?

This apartment that Luke and I might buy- he’s he one who’s been communicating with the agent. Half of the money is mine. Not that I earned it. I inherited it from my great aunt. Her and her husband husband worked their whole lives, and bought a home in Brighton to grown old in. When they passed away, my family sold the house and came into 1.3 million. A sixth of the money came to me. That was five years ago. I haven’t spent a cent of it. The auction for the apartment is tonight.

I keep having the same sequence of thoughts:
I inherited this money- I did not earn it.
Luke is borrowing his half from the bank.
He will pay it off with money he earns. It will be his money so the apartment will be more his than mine.
But right now, he couldn’t afford the place without the deposit which is coming from the money I inherited.
So I am useful to someone.

I deleted instagram from my phone a few days ago. I’ve been feeling really sad ever since. A thought came to me today that maybe it’s dopamine withdrawal- my regular mini-hits aren’t being fired as frequently and my brain is starving. Now when I pick up my phone to open the app, I scroll to where it used to be before I remember it’s not there. Then I put my phone down. I heard a man on the radio say that you can’t expect to always be happy. Is that what I had Instagram for? It filled in the gaps of waiting. It distracted me. But happiness is not distraction.
The day I deleted it, I was waiting for Luke to fill up the car with petrol. When he got back in the car I asked him how it had been out there in the world. He said cold and boring. Is being bored better than any feeling Instagram ever gave me?

I decided I was allowed to be sad today. It was the first time I didn’t feel I needed to cheer myself up. But I was not left alone with my misery for long. Luke and Kiah both came into my room at different times. This added to my sadness, which was brought about by not having space to myself. What does all this sadness do? Sometimes I wish I could cut that part out of me. Or just wax it off like pubic hair- it will grow back thick and quickly, but for a few days I’ll feel the world’s smooth air up close against my skin.

A few weeks ago I drove to Williamstown after a rain storm had just passed through. No one was out- in every direction I was alone. The sky billowed and buffeted my face, the world close to my skin. I was happy.

The Older Artist

If I could have the perfect conversation, I’d invite the older artist around to my back yard. Although we’ve not spent any time together, the older artist would feel at ease in my company. We’d sit in the shade and watch the lemon tree, its leaves beaming green colour into sunlight.

He’d begin to tell me about his life, because I would ask him. He wouldn’t be the kind of man who could only talk about himself- as so many older men are. He would pause when an insect strayed into his line of site and together, we’d marvel at its exoskeletal mechanics. Then he’d continue on. He’d say things like, ‘it’s difficult to be constantly inspired’ and ‘sometimes, fearing a pattern can become a pattern itself’. And I would know what he meant. We wouldn’t need alcohol. Alcohol is too easy, I’d say, like having the rail guards up when you go bowling. He and I would be so good at conversation we wouldn’t need rail guards. We’d be natural. We’d be effortless. We would listen to each other and direct our words in surprising ways, introducing ideas and spiralling back into unplanned connections.

He’d say something like, ‘when I see sun on a leaf, I’m forced to think about the nothingness between us and the sun, and that fact: the sun is a star around which our planet revolves. There’s nothing to block the path of light- or at least, nothing so big or solid that light can’t find a way to reach earth.’ I’d respond, ‘I admire the trust plants have in that pathway of light. It gives them permission to flourish- to expect a future for themselves, and for their species.’ He would nod, sensing the tint I had introduced to the conversation. Ideas of a warming globe would teeter on the peripheries.

At times, we would disagree- perhaps because of the difference between our generations, perhaps because he is a man and I am a woman, perhaps because of our limited understanding of age and sexuality. But we’d be eloquent and open in our conflict, learning from the other’s perspectives.

In a month, this won’t be my back yard anymore. I am moving out. This lemon tree will flourish and fruit without me. I won’t see the lemons bulge and ripen. I won’t harvest the peaches in autumn. But I will have this good conversation in the back yard. I will learn from the people I know, yet never speak to. I will put them at ease, relax into time, exude the tacit knowledge that we both want to be there- that there’s nowhere else we’d rather be.

Separation Creek

When Peter introduced me to his goat, Lourdes, he told me she was fourteen.

‘That’s just about how old goats get. She’s stopped eating. Her teeth are falling out.‘

‘She should get dentures’ I replied.

I didn’t say it to be funny or to make him laugh- it was more a genuine solution- but he laughed anyway, then said, ‘Yeah’. 

Although we’d just met, I could tell Peter was sad that his goats’ life was ending. Instinctually, I wanted to ease his pain. I wanted to impart my own understanding and say, ‘hey man, this impending death is tragic and important, perhaps not to me, but especially to you.’ 

But I didn’t say that. Instead, I suggested dentures. I didn’t understand, not really.

Fourteen years. Think back to fourteen years ago. How old were you? Now try and remember what you did every year in those fourteen years. What changed? How did you feel about yourself and the people in your life? Think about the changing landscape of politics. Now imagine that on each day of those fourteen years you saw this goat. You fed it, you experienced it falling pregnant and giving birth, you saw it raise its kids, you helped it survive a bushfire. And those were just the moments of drama and tension- the flashing punctuations in an otherwise harmonious life. During most days, you’d see her cloud-white body in the yard, down the creek, up on the hill.  This goat, Lourdes, had been part of the time Peter had spent alive, she had been a continuous presence. 

Fourteen years.
She should get dentures.
He didn’t need a solution. 

I didn’t understand, because I have nothing like that. I grew up in the city, where things are fast consumed then forgotten. I have moved every year since I was 17. I’ve had a string of casual jobs, a string of relationships, I’ve rented nine different rooms in nine different houses. I haven’t been still enough to watch the world change around me. I’ve never known my world enough to protect it. Or to know what’s coming. 

Out at Separation Creek, Peter tells me the council wants to begin construction on a new bridge over the creek. Only Peter, who’s been there for forty-eight years, told them to wait a few months, ‘If they begin construction now, the eels won’t be able to get upstream come November’, he says, pointing towards the coast. He explains that the eels have begun migrating down from the Coral Sea, and soon they’ll arrive at the beaches that carve through the Great Ocean Road. They’ll search for the inlets that their ancestors slithered down and they’ll slither back up them to breed in the lagoons and pools inland. Peter fought the council and they postponed the construction project. Now he’s waiting for the eels. 

In the city, we care about rights and equality and green spaces. We care about representation and power structures. We consider these things as matters of urgency; we use our recreational time to shake our fists and march in protest. These are fights to be fought. We have so many battles that they begin to blend, one distracts from another, and the passion dissolves under the weight of the next outrage. This is nobody’s fault. There is only so much we can know and do at any given time. We are in support of them all and we fit them in between work and bedtime reading. But it leaves me feeling half-arsed. Because when every part of my life is non-committal, what do I really care about? 

So, a girl from the city who is used to things coming easy goes to stay out bush for the weekend. She brushes off the ‘fourteen years’, as if it was casual, as if dentures can solve the problem. But she doesn’t hear what the problem is. Peter’s not talking about the death that will come, his trying to express the rich and meaningful life that was lived. Standing on the hillside, Peter knew to focus on the dramatic. He grabbed my attention by mentioning death. He didn’t tell me about the quiet moments he shared with Lourdes, side by side in life. 

To keep something alive.
To exist alongside it.
To do something this year that will mean something next year.
To trust that time will pass and one day something will have grown.
To invest meaning into a goat, so it will reward you with the feeling of despair at its death. 

That’s what he meant when he told me she was fourteen. That’s about as old as goats get.

3rd May, 2020

Shares Kneaded.

Everyone’s making bread again. It’s like we’ve returned to a former time in human history when each family in the village had a bread stamp and a secret recipe.

My feed is now saturated with serrated edged knifes cutting into crust and sour dough. Big reveals cascade through my scrolling. Can’t bake a loaf without high definition footage capturing the first incision. Capturing and sharing. Documentation and affirmation - those are our obsessions now. The impulse to share has been plucked and rubbed- manipulated. When I was in Italy, I went to a town where all the folk shared the same oven. We don’t do that anymore- we can’t share much at the moment, even if we wanted to- so we share it with the Zuckerberg empire.

Perhaps there’s a coil within us that guides the return of simple satisfactions: flour and water and yeast and heat. The essentials that existed alongside us since we drank from streams and plucked feathers from trapped fowl. 

The sense of accomplishment in completing something so fundamental.

To be useful, to be counted, to return to something basic and comforting- is that why we do it?  And what could be more comforting than bread? I should know, my housemates feed their sour dough staters like the adult version of a Tamagotchi.

The Cockatoo.

The young man from South Korea bought a French pastry from a beachside café in Lorne. From the seat of a sheltered picnic table, he watched the timeless waves roll in. As loose flakes of pastry fell away from their croissant-corpus, platitudes began to sprinkle his perception.

How long have these waves been shaping the shoreline? He thought. Yet each wave is so different- so unique, so special…

A cockatoo landed beside him on the table, unapologetically interrupting his human ruminations. Still clumsily flapping, he felt the wind of the bird’s wings settle across his breakfast.

The man and the cockatoo shared a sideways glance. He noticed it’s lemon crest, at first erect in an unintentional salute, quickly flattened into a polite, slicked back curl. It’s feet began their gentle edging.

The man clutched his pastry tighter, watching the cautious, ladder-step of the cockatoo edge towards him. The white bird stopped close, bowed its head and brought its grey, stoney tongue down to touch an escaped flake, which was resting on the table.

They can live up to eighty years. The fact curled beneath his mind. The cockatoo had now come across a lager scrap of pastry and was clasping the clump it in its wrinkled foot, gently nibbling the caramelised corner. He watched, realising that this bird, with its round, hooked beak and lidded eyes, could be his elder.

He’d been traveling in Australia for three weeks now, yet this was his first close encounter with an animal. He’d seen cockatoos in the distance, from the window of the tour bus. He’d noticed the blatant exhibition of their sulphur crests. He’d heard them screeching; that daring, non-self-conscious sound that ripped through the canopy. He’d seen the white flashes of a flock through the trees. But now, he saw a different side to the bird. The individual in the flock. The gentle strength of its beak, grinding down food to a size its stomach could manage. Again, he thought, it takes eighty years for a cockatoo’s life to be lived. And then, perhaps that’s why, despite their appetite to entertain, Cockatoos are birds of patience. Then he wondered; are these qualities I aspire to? Is this the way I ought to be?

Absently chewing down the remaining pastry, his final contemplation was this: Perhaps there’s something about Australia fits neatly into the character of a cockatoo. Something about the way it lands feel first, always busy with the next project.

Upon his last mouthful, he wished he’d saved more for the bird. He knew that as soon as the crumbs were gone, the cockatoo would lose interest. He watched it flap away, towards a green slope of grass, where some other tourists had begun laying out a picnic rug.

Looking back to the waves, their foamy peaks suddenly reminded him of the bird’s crisp white feathers.

Monday 27th April, 2020

Accounts from an Undergrad

I’m standing in the weak sunlight that filters across the tram cables, waiting for the lights to change with a sweet takeaway coffee in hand. I wish I could meet someone. I feel so far from myself as I watch groups of three and five students cross together. The rare times that I have gone for coffee in a group like that, I’ve always walked a little too fast. I’ve never known what to say, or how to relax into my thoughts so they connect up with my mouth. No matter how much I yearn for company, when I get it, I always feel uncomfortable and tense and want the experience to end.

I follow the students back towards campus. I still have thirty minutes until class begins. It’s cold but I never feel comfortable sitting inside cafes, always like I’m taking someone’s seat. Reaching campus, I pick up a copy of the student magazine from a stack outside the tram stop. I’ll find a place in the sun nearby and read this cover to cover. I settle on a low brick wall and take off my backpack. My shoulders stiffen against the air rattling between buildings. I look back at the structures. Their towering architecture seems old and grand and important. What rooms are inside them? I don’t feel permission to enter- the only rooms I’ve seen inside are the ones my timetable directs me to.

In one of my first ever lectures, a group of students had burst through the door and interrupted the lesson. The students were naked. They said or yelled something, and then climbed up through the seats. I remember one girl climbing almost over me and seeing her impossibly flat stomach. I felt sick with shame at my own body. This is why I’ll never be free like her.

Opening the magazine, I spy a poem. It’s short so I read it and it’s funny. I didn’t know poems could be funny. I wonder how you become involved in this student magazine. Who are its writers and editors? Where is it based on campus? I look up and around, as if expecting to see a sign pointing to the magazine offices. But I can hardly keep up with my classes as it is, I think. There’s no way I can take on more than I’m already doing. I have very poor organisational skills. I turn to the next page and read a review. I check my phone. Some of my high school friends are having a gathering tonight. I text and say I’ll go.

My course is so big that there aren’t many faces I recognise from tute to tute. This one is small though, and is taught by a young guy, a writer, I think. I keep quiet, not wanting to say anything that will embarrass me. We read a student’s opinion piece and are asked to give critiques. The writing references the ABC as ‘Aunty’. I have never heard this before, so assume it’s the student creating a metonym. I speak up and say ‘I don’t know that the ABC is our Aunty, maybe it’s more like a mother, especially in the context of this op-ed.’

People look at me confused.

‘That’s what it’s called though’, someone says, ‘like, a colloquialism.’

‘Oh’ I say. I wish I had never spoken.

Later that day, I attend a creative writing class.
‘The only thing we can be sure about is that we’ll all die’, one girl keeps saying. My gut tells me this statement isn’t as profound as the girl believes it to be, but at the same time, what she’s saying is true, and what’s more profound than the truth? I can’t think of anything to say, so I don’t say anything.
It’s time to critique my work. I have written a thinly vailed story about a ‘girl’ (me) who breaks up with her boyfriend, continues to sleep with him anyway, sleeps with another guy who is the singer of the band she’s in, sleeps with her ex again, finds out she’s pregnant and gets an abortion. I lie that my story is based on an experience that happened to someone I know.

‘But why would she go back to her ex if there’s this new guy?’ someone asks.

I shrug my shoulders. ‘That’s just not what- I mean, that’s just not what happened- to this girl. I am trying to capture the events in as truthful a way as possible.’

The Death Girl contributes, ‘but this is a fiction writing class- we shouldn’t be basing this off real life.’

I know I will not get a good mark for this story. My grades have been dismal so far. But I’m here at university, so I continue forward feeling vast and empty.

Meet ups and hang outs are taking place all around me as I walk alone though campus. I do know a few people here. Most of them are from my high school. One is my ex-boyfriend. Another is a different ex-boyfriend. Another is a good friend who I’ve known since I was a child, she is doing music and opera. Another is also doing writing but she’s a year ahead of me. Sometimes, we find each other and sit on the grass to eat our cheap food court lunches. I have bought a mango lassi to get me through. I look around at the other people our age, all sitting on the grass looking relaxed and valuable. I wonder how I’ll meet them, if they want to meet me. They are all so confident and self-assured.

My sister is doing an engineering degree at this university. She is involved in societies and groups and runs and organises things. She knows lots of people. Sometimes I’ll walk past where she congregates with a seemingly overflowing crowd of people. I’ll say hello if I recognise someone and join a circle of people I don’t know, listening to their conversation. I can feel my failure to contribute trickle into their awareness. Their eyes look me up and down, comparing my body to my sister’s tall, slim, blonde frame.

At the end of the day I put my headphones on and catch the bus to the train station. I get off the train and buy a cheap bottle of wine, and then walk to the high school gathering. Here, I can relax because every conversation has been had before. I click open the bottle and pour it into a tumbler before heading out the back. I take a seat and listen to what’s being said. Someone passes me a joint, I take a drag. I wash the hot taste of smoke away with more wine. I wish I could meet someone.

Sunday 26th April

What can I do, really?

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslim refugees have washed up on a beach in the black of night. They are emaciated, all bones with dark brown skin and huge domed eyes. Wet from the sea, they collapsed on solid ground for the first time in months. Cameras were there to capture the moment. A journalist explains they left Myanmar on a fishing boat and headed for Malaysia, but because all boarders have been closed due to Covid-19, they had been forcibly turned around, and have floated in the sea between Bangladesh and Thailand for weeks.

When I was at the Venice Biennale last year, I saw a piece of visual art created by a Syrian refugee and former astronaut. He had made prototype plans for habitation on Mars. His rationale was that there’s nowhere for him to go on Earth, but perhaps if we were able to colonise Mars, there would be a place he could finally belong.

I have always struggled to reconcile knowledge of this kind of extreme suffering and trauma with my own life of extreme ease and luxury. The common humanity I share with the people on the TV screen is obvious. The only difference is that I was born here, in this land full of space and plenty, while these people were violently thrown from the land of their ancestors. I did nothing to deserve my set of circumstances, and they did nothing to deserve theirs. The paralysed inaction that washes over me after viewing a news story with images like the ones of the Rohingya Muslim refugees has become too familiar.

People have been disputing land and territory for thousands of years. Civilians have been driven out by marauders and conquerors. Indigenous populations have been forced out or wiped out by colonisers. I am simply the benefactor of a thousand years of pillaging. Fairness has never been a force in these events. Brute strength, violence and manipulation are the tactics of history’s victors. So, last night as I was tucking into my pasta and sipping on a glass of wine, the unjust trauma experienced by the people on the screen blurred the safety and luxury of my own world. What can I do? How can I help? Are these problems so beyond the horizon that I cannot contribute to change?

I typed into Google, ‘how can I help the Rohingya refugees’ and World Vision gave me two options: give or pray.

Last night, I talked to Crispin about prayer. What interested me were the times he’d asked god for a picture and he’d received one. He read a previous encounter of this happening: the picture he received was of two snakes swimming in a river. I wondered if I closed my eyes and waited for a symbol, would it come? I almost feel too scared to try.

I could give to charity- to the UNHCR... However, it seems to me that the amount I can afford to give versus the amount of money that would solve the problem is a wide gap. I could fundraise and donate the profits to the UNHCR.  They would then have more money to support the ever-growing refugee camp in Bangladesh. But what they really need is inter-government contributions. So, I could write to our local member of parliament. What can I ask my local member to do? Convince the government to open our boarders during a time of pandemic? Convince the government to donate generously to the UNHCR during a time of unprecedented debt? Even if the UNHCR had all the money in the world, the problem of displacement would still be there. Bangladesh doesn’t want Rohingya Muslim refugees in their country. They certainly don’t want permanent structures built by the UNHCR that would indicate settlement. So, it’s about finding a place for over a million people to settle peacefully and sustainably into the future. It’s at this point that the problem becomes too large, and then I don’t do anything at all, despite my empathy and knowledge of the situation. How do I move beyond this?

On Saturday afternoon I went to Footscray market with dad. He wanted to buy a whole fish. They all looked so tragic, laying there motionless on the ice. Their eyes looked so shocked, as if they could see where they were, but couldn’t believe it. Dad picked two Barramundis and the dudes behind the counter got to work scaling and gutting them. Watching the guts fall out, the romance of their life ceased as well. I turned to dad and said, ‘a thing that’s alive is just a bag of guts, all pumping and intermingled.’    

17/04/2020

Theo

Theo came to our school in the middle of year nine. He’d been at a private school, one of the big fancy collages down by the Yarra. By then his mum and dad had split and the family had gone broke, so Theo went from wearing a strict uniform and chanting with the boys on the train, to a local, liberal state school. Ours was the type of school that had an ‘address the teacher by their first name’ kind of learning. 

Theo was smart. He was interested in physics and maths. There were some kids at our school who were already getting into serious drugs, but Theo steered clear of them and instead gravitated towards us.

By year nine, our group was solid. I’d met most of my friends in year seven when I’d joined the World Music Band as a singer along with Fran, who had been the singer of the rock band in primary school. Her voice was like her- strong and charismatic. Mine was weaker, breathier, but I had a good ear and a natural sense of timing. The bass player, Vince, was a tall guy with big lips and steady, blue eyes. He was so cool that if you called him that he’d shun you. Everyone wanted Vince’s approval. If there was a song you wanted to learn, you’d have to convince Vince first. Naturally, he became the leader of the group, and Fran’s boyfriend.

The Group, as it came to be known, played music together at school, rode bikes to each other’s houses after, and smoked weed in dark parks on the weekends. By year ten it was made up of boys and girls, some couples, some wannabe couples, some best friends. The acquisition of Theo came at an opportune time. Theo lived pretty much alone, with his younger brother Jess. His mum would come in and out of the house every so often. She had a new boyfriend and so would stay at his most of the time. Later, we found out his mum had been taken to hospital the year before with manic depression. Theo’s dad was in the Air Force, based out of Indonesia, where he’d met a woman and married her.

Everybody liked Theo. He had an intensity and a candidness that instantly made you feel like you wanted to be his friend. We all agreed he was like an injured angel, like he would become something powerful and brilliant if he was cared for in the right way. We all came from relatively well-off families, not flush but stable and supportive. Most of us could score a little money off our parents if we needed, and if shit went wrong, we had a safe place to return. So, we were in a good position to befriend Theo.

The convenience of Theo’s empty house did not go ignored for long. There were odd objects and photographs around the place, and we’d find boxes full of old photographs in the garage and ask him questions about his old life. He’d spent a few years with his dad in Indonesia and he made us laugh with stories about maids and being scared of all the frogs that congregated around the pool.

Theo was sensitive and open. He was just as good at talking to girls as boys. The friends he made in class quickly became our friends. Soon, there were weekend congregations of all sorts of kids, coming and going from Theo’s strange, sparsely furnished house.

I developed a crush on Theo during year 10 woodwork. I was convinced that Theo had no romantic interest in me, but still wanted to be close to him. We’d sit close together in class, avoiding doing any actual work. Sometimes we’d both ask to go to the toilet at the same time and then just walk around the campus, bumping shoulders and scuffing pinecones along the cement yard. After class, we’d go to Coles and buy a loaf of cheap bread to feed to the seagulls down by the pier. There were days when I was filled with the oxygen of Theo, and days when I’d see him with another girl and feel an intense, sick jealousy.

ANGUS

Angus and I became friends in year seven. He was a prodigal musician. He could play guitar and piano and could work out the chords to any song on request. Angus was tightly wound, nervous and neurotic. He couldn’t eat in front of other people. He was a small and skinny kid. But he was incredibly quick, extremely smart and the funniest person I’d ever met. I was warm, calm and open. I never wore shoes and I detested exclusivity. I guess he liked my steady, grounded nature. I was capable of talking about world issues and was interested in expressing emotions. We talked on the phone most nights and played video games together. In year eight, Angus organised a surprise birthday party for me, and when he visited family in New Zealand in year nine, we emailed each other non-stop.  

From what I knew, Angus had never been interested in boys before he’d met Theo. Like Angus, Theo was also skittish and distracted, but Theo made Angus feel focused, made him more patient. When there was a question is class that Theo was stuck on, Angus would calm himself and re-explain what the teacher had missed.

There were times when I thought Angus and I might become more than friends. When I got my first boyfriend, Boyd, Angus became extremely possessive. He’d call me when he knew I had plans with Boyd. He’d come over and watch movies and get very close under the blankets. But when I confronted him, he denied having feelings for me. I believed him but broke up with Boyd anyway. I didn’t feel like I was being honest.

Angus told about his feelings for Theo on the phone, after school one night towards the beginning of year ten. Angus had been getting drunk on the weekends- really drunk- counting gulps of goon to one hundred and then vomiting it all up. He’d started hanging out with his older sister and her friends, who were heavily into weed and had been giving him alcohol and valium. He told me that a few nights previous, he had shoved a fork into his thigh while drunk off vodka.
Angus had always told me how he was feeling, what he was thinking. Now, I felt like he was an entirely different person, disappearing into this other world. I pushed him to give me an explanation. Finally, he told me how he felt about Theo. He was almost laughing, incapable of being fully earnest even at his most vulnerable. It’s not just a crush- it’s- love – I am obsessed. He is all I think about. When I heard this, my heart pounded and sank at the same time, like a coin turning over itself. My beloved friend was in love with someone who, as far as I knew, would never feel the same way. My beloved friend was also in love with the person I was in love with.

Angus continued to torture himself, spending all his time with Theo, punishing his own dishonesty and lustful obsession. He admitted he had a photograph of Theo getting changed and looked at it while masturbating. I don’t think I’m gay- its just- Theo. He insisted upon it. He was so intensely confused, and shameful, and in love all at the same time. I said I understood. I knew exactly how he felt about Theo.

It was strange being the only one who knew. Angus’ secret bonded us. We became closer than ever. I now understood why, at parties, he’d get so wasted if Theo brought a girl. Once, at a party at Meg’s parents’ house, he locked himself in Meg’s room and threw up on her computer keyboard. She yelled at him, told him to get the fuck out. I followed him onto the nature strip and watched him vomit into the gutter. We sat there, on the quiet street, side by side. I didn’t know what to say to him, but I felt just being there might help.

Unable to tell Theo, but unable to stop feeling the way he felt, Angus continued this for weeks, then months, then years. We all turned 15 then 16, and this aching for Theo became a part of Angus, growing up and around it like a vine up a trellis. There were times when I almost let slip. Around the time I was breaking up with Boyd, I went to Fran’s house to talk it all out. We cracked open a goon sack and a deck of cigarettes. Taking a drag, Fran probed, I mean, I don’t see you with Boyd. She said Why don’t you date Theo- or Angus? You seem so close with Angus, it’s weird you’re not together. I couldn’t tell her the reasoning, I couldn’t tell her that Angus was a friend, and Theo was off limits because of Angus.

***

At the beginning of VCE, Angus became interested in a girl in his visual art class. She seemed smart, funny and they’d go on long walks together. He talked about her all the time and I encouraged it, thinking that it was better for him to go for someone actually attainable, whose sexual orientation was focused around being attracted to guys. The crush didn’t go anywhere, but at parties, when Angus would drink, he’d sloppy-kiss a few other girls from time to time. He’d stopped mentioning Theo to me. When I asked him about it, he shrugged it off. I took this to mean his feelings were fading, or perhaps he’d just given up. Theo’s obvious interest in women had begun to intensify over the last year, and he’d had a girlfriend or two by then. Nothing was ever going to happen with Theo- Angus was smart enough to know that. The aching throb had become numb.

Meanwhile, however, Angus and Theo and had become inseparable friends. Their names seemed to go together, and you’d often find yourself asking, did you invite Angus and Theo? As if they came in a pair.

***

It was the beginning of the summer holidays, at the end of year eleven. The Air Force had relocated Theo’s dad back to Australia and had set him up with a big house at the edge of town. Theo had moved out of his mum’s house and into this new one, but his dad had gone back to Indonesia to help his wife with the move, so again, Theo had a house to himself.

It was a hot afternoon. We all had ice buckets full of beer and vodka cruises. There was back yard cricket being played and gossiping and fighting. Paul and Rachel were breaking up, yet again, and everyone was deciding whose fault it was. Angus had texted and told me he wasn’t going to come. I was disappointed. Whenever the conversation deteriorated like this, I could always turn to Angus and talk about movies or books or art. I was interested in his opinions, and his tint of humour always lead to improvisational tangents. Angus was the only person who could fill my belly with laughter.

The sun sank and the music was turned up. Fran and Vince disappeared into Theo’s dad’s room. Theo turned to me and told me he wanted to show me something on his computer. We left the yard and headed upstairs to his bedroom. We sat on his bed, and I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling. He lay down next to me, and we talked about the heat. Before long we were kissing. I could feel Theo’s soft skin and thick hair, his firm arms and stomach. His arms around me, his hands on me…

A few of us slept at Theo’s that night. Fran and Vince slept in his dad’s bed. Harry and Rach and Jack slept downstairs. And I slept in Theo’s bed with him. In the morning, we all walked to the shopping strip to get breakfast. I was filled with the happy secret of the night before. Flashes kept coming back to me- of how good the kisses had been, pushing against each other, being so close we could feel each other’s heat. The laughter. The whispered conversation after we’d had enough. I had asked him not to tell Angus. He shrugged. Okay. I wanted to be the first to tell him. I left it at that.

At breakfast, we kept looking at each other, obviously glancing away when we caught the other’s eye. Then I went home. The curtains in my room were still drawn from days of holiday laziness. I picked up the home phone and dialled Angus’ number. He asked me how the night before had been. In the dim light of my room, I took a deep breath. My heart began to ache beneath my ribs. We’d been drinking all afternoon… When Angus heard my news about Theo, he went quiet. I said his name. Angus? He sighed. I’m sorry, I said. I wanted you to hear it from me. Who else knows? He asked. No one, I don’t think.

A week later, we were all back at Theo’s house. Angus came this time. The usual smoking and drinking was happening in the yard, and throughout the house there was dancing and yelling. I was anxious to make sure Angus was having an alright time. He didn’t seem to be- he seemed miserable, sitting on a plastic white chair, staring at the ground. I took his hand and lead him up to the quiet of Theo’s room. We sat on Theo’s bed and talked. Since the phone call, I hadn’t mentioned the kiss. I guessed his deflation meant maybe he still had feelings for Theo and was really hurt by what I had done. I certainly felt like I had betrayed him. I tried to broach the topic but couldn’t find the words. I sighed and lay down on the bed. Angus lay down next to me. I rolled over to face him and put my hand on his cheek. Then I kissed him. He kissed back. The two of us began to kiss with a furious intensity. I could feel his braces and lips and tongue in my mouth. It was so different to Theo. Just as I was thinking this, Theo appeared at the door. Angus and I broke apart. What are you doing?

Fuck. The word came from Angus. He sat up and looked at Theo in desperation. Suddenly it all became clear to me. Of course, Angus still had feelings for Theo, he was probably in love with him, more than ever. He’d just stopped mentioning it because he was sick of sharing it. Maybe the fantasy felt more real if it was just his. Why dredge up the hard stuff, why not just live in the fantasy? Why not just keep it hidden, suppressed? It was then that I made a decision. My intuition guided me to force the truth out of Angus.

I asked Theo to sit down. This has to stop, I said. Angus couldn’t keep falling into despair every time Theo kissed a girl, even if I was the girl Theo was kissing.

Theo looked bewildered. Angus looked betrayed. I asked Angus to be honest with Theo.
What are you talking about? They both said, almost in unison. I looked at Angus. Angus, you know what I’m talking about. You have to tell Theo the truth- tell him how you feel. Angus looked at the floor. The silence lasted until a guttural exhalation squeezed its way out of him.

I have feelings for you, Theo.

It all happened at once. Angus stood and let out another painful sound. He left the room, punching the wall outside, leaving a fist sized hole in the plaster as he passed. Angus! I shouted after him. He ran down the stairs and fled the house, walking with furious power into the dark street. Go after him, I said to Theo. Let him explain himself. Theo ran after him, and I watched the two of them disappear at pace around a corner. I burst into tears. Fran and Vince were standing in the front doorway. What the fuck is happening? Fran asked. So I told her. I told her everything. About how Angus felt and how I felt and how I’d kissed them both. Angus is gay? Vince asked. No, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe. But I think it’s just a Theo thing.

And what about you? Asked Vince. How do you feel about Theo?

I didn’t know. He seemed so off limits. He had always been off limits. Even if Angus couldn’t have Theo, my best friend was in love with someone, and good friends don’t pursue their friend’s loves.

The following week, Angus wouldn’t speak to me. I sent him a message, telling him I understood if he never wanted to speak to me again and that I was sorry. Theo, on the other hand, invited me to come for a walk to the beach. I met him as the moon was rising. We sat and talked about everything. He now understood why I hadn’t seemed keen to pursue him after the night we’d kissed. He asked me how I felt about him. I like you, I said. I have for a while. But we can’t do anything.

I like you too, he said

He walked me home. On the way, we stopped under a big elm tree in the park and he kissed me. The kiss was so good, even better than the first one. Soon we were on the grass, bodies against each other again. I felt awful and ecstatic at once.

***

The group went away to a house in Lorne for New Year’s Eve. Angus didn’t come. In the weeks prior, Theo and I kept meeting up, but nothing had been established. I was determined to maintain my friendship with Angus and so was he, but we couldn’t resist each other.

Rachel knew a few year twelves from another school were celebrating finishing exams a few houses up fro ours. The first night, three of the guys came over and hung out on our balcony. I was sitting on a year twelve’s lap when I caught Theo’s eye. He looked hurt. I stood up. Why did I keep hurting people? What was wrong with me? Theo and I went for a walk. He told me he wanted to be with me. I said I wanted to be with him too. From that moment on we were a couple. 

That was a summer of missing Angus and falling in love with Theo. I wanted to share things with Angus about this new relationship, but it was all wrong and I knew it. As the school year approached, he began to see me again, but we didn’t talk about Theo. I kept things from him, changed the topic if I could see the conversation getting too close. He and Theo had remained friends, hanging out regularly all summer. By the time classes began, the three of us could hang out, but I still wasn’t sure if Angus would ever forgive me.

In the March holidays I called Veronica. She was visiting family in Tassie. I told her my news: we’d had sex. There was a silence and then the question: how did it feel? It was excellent, I said. It was the first time for us both. It was slow and lasting, and I felt ready and it felt great.

After that I lost myself in School and Theo. He’d come over in the morning and we’d get coffee and strawberries and go to class. We’d hang out with friends of the weekend and study together during the week. Angus and I became close again. If he still had feelings for Theo, he hid them from me. I felt grateful for his friendship. He was an important person in my life, and my heart would have broken if he’d ceased communication with me.

***

Theo and I stayed together until we were 19. The breakup was awful and elongated. I hated him for a few months after for going out with someone else. But Angus and I have stayed good friends. We even lived together for a while. Now, ten years later, we’re both with different people, him with a wonderful woman and me with an excellent man. We talk almost every day. It’s a complex friendship though. Although we’ve lasted this long, some patterns from this time remain.

16/04/2020

DEFENDING KAREN

Yesterday I spoke to Shanks on the phone. He told me of a prediction he was formulating, that white women will outstrip white men as the dominant internet villain. He illustrated his point by referencing the ‘Karens’ of the internet. Karens are middle aged, white women who take issue with petty problems that may not even affect them. Karens are demanding, personally offended and will blast any business or its employees on social media if they do not get their way. Originating as a shorthand for a common experience held by people of colour in service positions, the word ‘Karen’ has expanded into an umbrella term for any middle aged, white mother, who seems to have an unjustifiable, unreasonable and entitled will to complain. This, of course, is an age-old trope that comes with its pre-Karen descriptors such as ‘shrew’, ‘crone’, ‘battle axe’ or simply ‘bitch’.

I asked Shanks, ‘why do you think these women complain the way they do?’
He replied, ‘because they’ve never heard the word ‘no’ in their lives and they carry that entitlement around with them everywhere they go.’

I agreed. Karens are horrible to deal with. No one wants to live in a world where the only way to get your way is by asking to speak to the manager. It rewards such undignified behaviour. But Karens don’t have dignity. Karens are middle-aged white women, and there is nothing less dignified that desperately fighting for power in an economy that devalues everything you are.
Karens are plus 45 year-old mothers who are experiencing a sense of societally-enforced, dissolving visibility. Their children are becoming teenagers, and therefore the ego death that they felt upon giving birth is now fully manifest. They are looking around and attempting to pick up the pieces, find the person they once were pre-children, and stitch it to the person they are now. Their looks, which were their main point of value according to every article they’ve read since they were children, are fading. They are looking up and around themselves for the first time in years and realising that any authority they thought they had is going, going, gone. They are losing the little currency they once laid claim to. They feel disempowered. Of course, they’re lashing out, trying to assert dominance in a domain they never really resided over in the first place.

A lot of white, middle-class men, on the other hand, are peaking around this time. They’re becoming experts in their field, receiving promotions, making money. The ‘stay at home’ tendencies of their Karen-type wives have enabled them to go for those promotions, to go on those weeklong seminars. If your a middle aged white man, you’ve got your own cross to bare, but chances are your power is on the rise, not on the decline.
Still, we demonise the Karens.

Perhaps Karens complain to the kids working behind the counter (kids young enough to be their own children) because of their fading dignity. They know that these people in customer service positions, working for huge companies, have zero personal stake in whatever is being complained about. These kids show up, clock in, serve the foamed milk drinks and leave. When there is a problem, they don’t feel accountable because they are so removed from the means of production- why should they feel responsible if there’s too much chocolate in a moca-chino? Then in comes Karen, thinking the might of her complaint-power will change the way things get done around here. Where’s the dignity in such obvious punching down?

Just like the rest of society, these kids see Karens as people with no real power. Indeed, the whitewashed name Karen used to describe any middle-aged women with a complaint, works to emphasise their non-importance, their anonymity, the fussiness of the complaint. This is how you strip away power and erase individuality in a culture that worships the individual. These women don’t have inner lives or expertise, they are simply annoying and old and should shut up and stay home. To me, Karens are a symptom of a bigger problem.

The sycophantic smile of a cusping adult behind the counter, nodding and toeing the corporate line, is surely enough to set any rational person off. How is a customer supposed to react when they complain about a defective product, only to receive a ‘yes mam, I appreciate what you’re saying but move along please’ response. The frustration that Karen’s feel is wrongly placed, of course. She shouldn’t be taking it out on the lowest status employee she can find. But the robotic, masked, antiseptic response she receives is not only infuriating, it’s reinforcing the existential malaise of our hyper-accelerated, capitalist existence.

Imagine if, instead of disempowering and silencing these people, we live in a society that afforded opportunity to progress and achieve, regardless of age or beauty or sex. If that were the case, if there was an inbuilt culture of respect for women (instead of the complete opposite) then there’d be no way Karens would exist. They wouldn’t feel the need to assert themselves in those petty ways, or desperately and embarrassingly display what little power they have left in a public arena, towards service-workers half their age. They would be supported to become something greater than a complainer at a drive though.

The real tragedy is that so many women have no choice but to become Karens. Their duties of wife and mother are ending, their identities are folding in on themselves. There is a gap in the market here. All of these women’s energy and attention could be wrangled away from complaining about the service at McDonalds and towards complaining about human rights violations, overconsumption, deforestation, rare animal trading, corporate tax evasion… Real change could be made. There is energy and power in numbers. But I wonder, even if these complaints were well researched and articulate, would they be listened to? Is the problem Karen, or the societal disregard for anything Karen has to say? Even female politicians- women who have been voted into office because of what they have to say- still have to fight for their voices to be herd. The recent appointment of Jess Phillips, UK shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, has already been labeled a Karen. Is the real problem that no one wants to listen to women over a certain age? After all, the origins of the term ‘Karen’ reside in a vitriolic reddit post written by an ex husband who’s wife’s name was Karen. The post was titled fuckyoukaren and the subreddit now has over 500,000 members. This does not bode well.

Wednesday March 11

In three days, I will have been home for two months. When I returned it seemed like nothing was ok. The country was ablaze- people were dying in the worst bush fire season ever recorded. Then Jane died of cancer. And now this virus. No one seems happy. Everyone seems lost.

Last night Luke said he wanted to get Corona Virus because he could do a lot with the two weeks of quarintine. I think a lot of people feel the same way- we all seem to be hoping for the worst, wishing for a catastrophe to propperly derail our lives. That’s why there’s a hint of glee in all of this toilet paper stockpiling. We’d rather get sick than face the idea that this is our life, forever.

I went to the NGV this morning- the one at Fed Square. Almost had the place to myself. There was a painting of Swanston Street from the bridge, painted in the 1800’s. A green meadow was dotted with brown horses, grazing by the river. Now, there’s a Formula 1 Grand Prix brand activation tent in the exact same spot.

This is a strange country- and a strange time to be in it. The unconsidered life of a suburban Australian, habitually skirting over what others might stop to think about. That’s why they cut funding to the arts- artists scrounge around- they dig past the surface…but there are still no answers. Truth about this place wanders in the vast interiors, while our prime minister lies about surface things that don’t matter. The artist in me resists Australia. It doesn’t know what it is. I see these paintings of landscapes and think of infertility. Who am I to feel welcome here?

Listened to silence on the radio this morning. A reporter had gone out to the bush, to the fire-scorched places on the East coast. “Listen- there are no insects, no birds, nothing to catch the wind. Everything is black” he said, “that’s the sound of death.”
How many tragedies can we hold within us?

At dinner the other night, my father and I discussed detachment.
“But where’s the meaning in it?” I asked. I told him about a man I’d stayed with at Wyre River. He’d been living on the property for thirty years. He knew when the eels migrated up the creek that ran through his valley. “Isn’t that why we’re here- To observe- to be a part of something, to belong to a place, to attach ourselves to something?”
“But don’t you see”, dad said, “it’s about ego. That man in Wyre River- well, to me, you just described detachment”

4 March 2020

A quote: success comes when you’re too busy to notice.

I stood in the kitchen with Emmy last night.
‘I’m overwhelmed’, she said, wiping away tears. ‘I’m scared he’ll end things with me, because I don’t know how to be in a relationship’. 
I thanked her for talking to me about it- although Luke was there too. Sometimes I feel like I can never get a moment alone in this house.
Kiah and Alex got home with a full account of a rebuff they received at a housewarming. Emmy wiped her eyes and picked a fight with Kiah. Later when she went to bed, I gave her a hug and told her I loved her.

TUESDAY 3rd March

Went to a street art festival on Saturday night. Drank a lot and ended up getting sweaty on the dance floor. Still feeling dull about being back in Melbourne- the exclusiveness, the corporate-ness… but it was still the best art I’ve seen in ages. Full of politics- clever images with thousands of things to say.

All of this theatre making is so negative and messy- so much delving into unsolvable, cylindrical issues. Images are so clean, efficient. The street art was about something other than the artist who made them. Pollution, climate change, corporate greed- there was one of six world leaders standing shoulder to shoulder, eating out of their neighbour’s bowl with chopsticks. I realised I haven’t seen anything like that for ages. Either I consume facts-based media like the news, or I go to consume art that’s all about the personal experience of the creator. Maybe art’s only good when it’s about something other than the creator. But I love Helen Garner.

Dreamed I was at the theatre, waiting for the show to begin. We moved seats to get a better view. Everyone was waiting for the after party. I ran into dad who was sipping whisky. He smelled like weed and a stranger asked him for a joint. “After the show” he said. He told me there were all sorts of important people sitting up where he was. He had been chatting to them and had secured his next job. I was jealous, but also judgmental- Is that why we come to the theatre? To drink and smoke and schmooze?

In the next dream, I was watching a film. It was a thriller, and I entered the story. A movie director was putting me up for the night in his fancy apartment. He’d had his assistant meet me at a restaurant. She was young and serious. As we walked together, she changed into an older woman. ‘This is the conceit of the film’ she explained. The director told me he’d just moved to Melbourne, ‘I’m sick of the commute’.

Dave Burrowes called and told me about a poem that he was basing his next project on. The poem was about how you multiply yourself into different people when you work. Soon, you don’t know which is the original.

Tuesday March 3rd

Nature is encroaching

Saturday night, inner-city dinner. Crinkle-pink prawns stick to her tongue. I'm already hungover she thinks. She talks about Aboriginal history and the oppression of women’s clothing and the necessities of local city councils. She feels something light and sticky, like hooks are catching on the skin of her shin. She reaches down and catches a cockroach in the leg of her pants, crushing it beneath loose linen. Burying the corpse in a fluorescent orange napkin, she takes it outside and throws it in a public garbage bin.   

At Karaoke she doesn’t get drunk. She chooses a song by Lana Del Rey and realises she has no idea how it goes. She watches the screen. The moving images behind the words are lurid and sexual. She’s transfixed. Everyone is wasted. I want to leave. Closing her eyes, she can still feel the phantom crawl on her shin. Protect me from what will get me in the end.

Monday morning, a suburban dog park. Stacked shipping-containers obscure city views. She runs laps of a detergent-green oval that was built for cricket, while Fran Kelly pummels a politician inside her headphones. Bird shit, flung from the cloaca of a native wattle, lands on her shoulder. She tries to wipe it off with a plastic bag. She feels the seep of the bird’s insides, cold and damp on her skin.            
No one’s home when she returns. She throws her t-shirt in the wash and forgets where the water came from. Protect me from what will get me in the end. In the shower, she cleans her vagina. She feels something odd and grabs hold of a translucent, gluey glob. She holds it close to her face. It almost looks like a fish egg. Involuntarily, she darts her tongue towards it to taste its surface- it tastes like snot. She retches and lets the water wash the glob away, off her palm and down the drain. She dries herself and googles sticky glob came out of my vagina. Almost immediately, she finds a forum describing the exact same kind of glob, coming from the exact same place. You’re ovulating it says. She googles mucus you get while ovulating and finds a picture of an identical looking glob, held on the end of an anonymous finger.

The beginning of a wedding. A man holds three branches from three ancient species. He talks about their properties: welcoming, healing and a sleep toxin for the fish. He holds flame to leaf and a white smoke is conjured. It blows South West. The fire is invisible under direct sunlight. The next day is sweltering. She drives down the coast and finds a park. She watches an echidna cross the shimmering black tar and disappear into the native scrub. Down on the sand, two little boys wrestle. Their mums are close by, making sure it doesn’t get too rough, but there are kicks and punches and sand is getting in their eyes. Then there are tears. The boys are very young- three at the oldest. When did they learn this? A blowfly nips her ankle. She stands and approaches the shoreline. Ignoring the sting of cold, she plunges her body into the icy coastal water and listens to the brittle clink of life beneath the waves. Return to stillness, return to nature. She surfaces to a squall. The sea's flecked white with waves. The water's is side-lit, olive green. The sky is charcoal grey. She turns her back on the wind and looks at the high cliffs that rim the beach. She feels her eyes drink in the red clay, feeling a ragged tug inside her.

That night, before the unconsciousness of sleep, her heart pounds. She dreams of the sunset spectacular, lit up beneath her eyelids. Return to stillness, return to nature. Return to what will get me in the end.

Monday March 2nd

Why don’t men treat women like they treat men?

I’m sitting on the beach watching two little boys wrestle on the sand. Their mums are watching them, making sure it doesn’t get too rough, but there are kicks and punches and sand is getting in their eyes. Then there are tears. I find it interesting that their mothers don’t step in when the sand begins to fly. I wonder if they were girls, weather there would have been more intervention, or more behavioural correction. The boys are very young- three at the oldest, so I find myself thinking, surely their behaviour is coming from natural impulses… where else would they have learnt this aggression and violence?

Last week, I spent a few days making theatre with some very mature and level headed young men. We talked a lot about male behaviour.

ME:                  Why don’t men treat women like they treat men? Straight, cis men, I mean?

MAN 1:            You know how men look at you when you’re walking down the street? 

ME:                  Yes, I call it the ‘assessment scan’…

MAN 1:            Well, that’s our basic instinct rearing its head- that’s the ancient brain going ‘she’s got a vagina- look’.

ME:                  What- and that’s why men don’t treat women like they treat men- Because women have vaginas?

MAN 3:            We can practise- we try to deactivate it- or just not look.

MAN 1:             But the impulse is there.

MAN 2:            Always.

MAN 3:            Yeah and it’s almost not manly if you resist it.

MAN 2:            There’s something about us that disallows us from- at first- seeing women as whole humans-

MAN 3:            Yeah, instead we see them as humans with holes-

ME:                  Gross. Do you think this is innate- like, does it exist in the Y chromosome- this instantaneous association between women and sex? Is it like a switch, or a key turning inside you?

MAN 1:            It doesn’t help that it’s encouraged... Like, every girl you see in a music video or an ad or whatever, they’re always so sexual- the way they look and how they act. Society indulges it- even trains us to look at women as sexual before anything else. Even news reporters are made up to look attractive... it’s like, if a woman wants to be in public, she has to have some sort of sex appeal. It makes you- especially when you’re young- it makes you think- or like- equate women with sex.

ME:                 Yeah. When guys are asked about women, or like, feminism, you often hear them saying things like, ‘I have a sister, so I understand’ or ‘I’ve got daughters, so of course think women deserve safety’- right? Whenever I hear that, I always think, why do you need a sister or a daughter to empathise with women?

MAN 2:            Because- other than the women we’re directly related to, most men see all other women as potential sexual partners before anything else… so they find it hard to empathise in the same way as they would if she was a man.

ME:                  Because her sexual-ness reduces her to that one thing?

MAN 3:            At first- But then the rational brain kicks in and we see beyond that- see the women as a person too.

ME:                  But a lot of women want to have sex with men, right? So why can women do it? Why can women see men as whole people- as sexual partners as well as…whoever else they are?

MAN 2:            Because girls get their periods

MAN 1:            What?

MAN 2:            Each month, they’re like, forced to learn about their bodies, and how emotion can control their behaviour. They learn how to contend with, articulate and embrace their emotions. They practise processing and expressing their impulses. Whereas when we were that age, we were like, watching war films and playing video games- The only acceptable forms of emotion were like, anger or lust… so those impulses- well, personally, I had to work really hard later in my life to unlearn to just instantly follow them… or not give in to them as much. But then it’s like, where’s my masculinity gone?

MAN 1:                  Also, girls grow up seeing men as multi skilled… like, guitar players and plumbers and political leaders and doctors and fire fighters and fathers. Whereas a lot of adult men have only seen women depicted as carers or like, sexy.

MAN 3:            Or sexy carers.

MAN 1:            So, men are depicted as more well-rounded people… maybe that’s why women don’t just see men as sexual. Whereas the way women are represented- as like, sexy- that perpetuates our association between women and sex. That’s why we treat women differently.

Could all of this explain how in Australia, one woman dies at the hand of a current or former partner every week?

These innate tendencies towards violence and sex exist to some degree within us all. But these tendencies seem to be encouraged in boys more than girls, so much so that their expression has come to define the contours of masculinity. Young men are taught to follow these impulses rather than process or regulate them- they are rewarded when they exhibit behaviour like physical dominance and sexual prowess. Combine this with their lack of eduaction around emotion, conflict between men can quickly turn into violence. This means men often don’t trust each other and don’t feel safe in each other’s company. Just as men assess women on the street for potential sexual partnerships, they assess each other for potential physical opponents. If they are not playing within established rules, the ambiguity and unpredictability of other men lifts tensions so high that violence becomes a possibility.

The company of women is often the only safe place for men in the world. Men turn to women for safety and trust, and so when women betray these expectations, men have no way of processing their emotions outside of anger and violence- they were never taught anything else.

Instead, men are taught that they are expected to be the leader and protector- they should be the ones in control. In turn, they need someone to lead and protect- and that someone becomes the woman they turned to for saftey and trust. If that woman defies their leadership, or rejects their protection, the man feels denied. Unable to process these feelings of rejection due to their lack of emotional education, the man begins to self-hate, developing feelings of failure that emasculate and isolate him. Having never learnt to self-reflect, he will begin to blame the external world for putting him in this position. Then he will seek revenge or to punish, in order to regain control. Often these actions are impulse driven, rather than calculating or rational. Some men will wait and plan their revenge in a more sophisticated and cunning manner, but the motive is still there: to get even, to regain control. Some men will then use violence to assert their dominance and punish those who defied them.

In light of all of this, how can a womans experience be understood or empathised with?

23 February, 2020

Lessons

Saturday night.
City dinner.
Crinkle-pink prawns stick to my tongue.
China town then karaoke.
That’s the plan.
How many times have I done this?
I’m already hungover.
I come for the experience- to wake up the next day with new memories of new conversations and new realisations.
I’ve become a serious person.
A person who thinks all week about the problems of the world.
I sit next to Stu at dinner and we talk about Aboriginal history and women’s clothing affecting their movement and the necessities of local city councils…
I don’t get drunk.
At Karaoke there are songs I don’t know.
I choose one by Lana Del Rey and realise I have no idea how it goes.
I watch the screen.
The moving images behind the words are lurid and sexual. I’m transfixed and depressed. Everyone is drunk. I want to leave.
Lesson- never go looking for details. You will only feel left out.

Friendship in your late twenties 

Once, when it was winter, you lived around the corner, so I walked you home.
I told you I was happy that, despite their nakedness, all the trees on your street were growing. 

You laughed. A single ‘ha’ of genuine surprise. I beamed- to be your source of delight on that cold, wet street in that afternoon light… it made me feel worthy.

It’s harder to surprise you now

On Lunar New Year we went to dinner.
The only place on Barkly Street left open had metal chopsticks on the tables.
With some environmental streak inside, I noticed them alloud.
 
‘You’re so easily impressed’ is all you could say.

That meal’s inside me now.
I can hear it churning , while the star of truth glows in the dark above.
It whispers from the ceiling, ‘things have changed’

Now it’s easy for you to turn me into tissue paper and put me out in the rain.
I’m so unnecessary to your world, but I’ll disintegrate all the same.

Thursday 13 February, 2020

Dog Walking Fugitive

The sharp angles of suburban shadows look ready to paint this morning. The sunlight has lost its smoky sepia- instead it decorates the weatherboards of Walter street with stark, diagonal lines. We have a house inspection this morning, so I walk Harry up the hill towards the shops. Having never secured permission to live here, both of us are on the run.

I sit in a park and let Harry sniff around the bottom of trees in the dewy grass. I call Jacky, who is at work in Sydney’s north. She tells me about her ceramics course and the deluge they had gotten, post fires.

JACKY: Trees have fallen down all over the place. They don’t have that many roots, these gum trees. There’s much more tree than root.

She tells me about her front yard,

JACKY: It was a dust bowl, and now it’s a swamp.

She drove out to the Blue Mountains a few weeks ago and stopped to look at the baked landscape. Black bark everywhere, beautiful in its own way. I wondered if we like the look of the black trees because they seem more traditional, more like European trees. Their rain-induced regrowth is stark and brilliant against the charred trunks. As White Australians we are used to white trunks; trunks that look so strange compared to the places from which our ancestors came. Not that I really know anything about my ancestors.

Jacky asked me about how I was settling back into Melbourne after having been away for so long.

ME: Not so well

I told her about my depression, how I couldn’t see the point in writing plays anymore. How the theatre industry seems so small and petty and unimaginative. She told me she felt the same way when she got back last year.

ME : When I got back all I could ask myself was, why? Why did I find all of this so important before I left?

JACKY: You have a certain objectivity about your life when you return from travel- it’s a chance to see it from the outside- your life.’

I asked her,

ME: What about now? Are you feeling better- back into things?

JACKY: Yes- although I’m less ambitious- before I left, I was going to quit my job and go and do my masters in Canberra. But I realised that was a bit drastic, so now I’m doing reduced hours at work and a diploma.

It’s difficult to know what truth to tell yourself- is this sense of objectivity really the truth?
What do you do when you feel so outside your own story, as I do?

Jacky had to get back to work, so I called Harry over and clipped his lead back onto his collar. We walked to Michael and Louie’s house, through the back lanes of Seddon. Big tree roots had lifted fence posts and split through the bitumen. I paused at a corner to let harry sniff at something and watched the wind show itself- a few leaves scraped their way down a side street.
When I arrived at the house, neither Michael nor Louie had pants on. Michael made me a coffee while Louie buttered some toast. Michael had been to a screening of his short film the night before, and told us all about some ‘fans’ of his, who had shown up and hovered around until they mustered up the courage to talk to him. As he talked, I pictured his mind like a projector. I felt I was seeing his expressions and hearing his fast words, but behind that, a whirring, complex machine was working away. I enjoyed feeling the difference between us- how our minds work. It reminded me why I’ve spent so much of my time hanging around him.

I began to think, maybe all a conversation is, is simply an exercise in confirming your position within the other persons esteem. I never realise I’m doing it, but when a rant takes hold of me, or a point seems to need to be urgently made, I think, what I’m really doing is trying to say to the listener,

ME: See, I’m interesting, I think about things, I can articulate an opinion.

The content doesn’t matter so much- it’s more the act of saying it- the proving of capability.
When does what we say to each other actually matter?

I finished my coffee and put Harry back on the lead. We walked home through the side streets, avoiding the main road and the loud trucks that make us both uneasy. The nature strip outside our house looked hungover as I approached- half shaven and shabby. The grass has gotten so long that a lawnmower conks out when confronted with it’s green blades. The frangipani tree is flowering though. White flowers rest, buoyant in the grass, their yellow centres pungent with the smell of holidays.

Monday 10th February, 2020

What is ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ in the age of Climate Change?

All the doors in our house have shifted in their swollen frames. It’s been warm enough for bare legs, so I’ve been shaving my shins and calfs and traipsing around Melbourne with smooth, brown stalks jutting out beneath my short skirts. But it’s also been wet. Because of this, the grass is ripe- green and robust, bursting from the nature strip into the world. My housemates and I have been wresting with the lawn, enlisting borrowed weaponry- a whipper snipper from Louie, a push mower from Sam- to hack it back before it grows again, with even more determination and ferocity.
Summers used to be dry. I remember the nature strips in the Rifle Range, outside Ash’s dad’s house. They were straw yellow- frayed and crackle dry, so dry the grass looked dead- flat, pale lines of Couch grass, snaking in parallel with the shimmering road. But it always came back. Now it looks like we’re living in the tropics. Each weekend, it rains before it shines. The tropical air charges the suburban green. It’s February and everything seems fluorescent. The climate is changing.

The beauty of nature is something I quickly begin to crave in suburban life. For this reason, as well as many others, I support the protection and preservation of the environment- obviously. I don’t think humans are any better than animals. I don’t think people deserve any portion of the land or water more than plants. Nature is humbling because nature is a part of us- it’s the best part of us- it’s where we belong. Therefore I think it is rational to claim that we all have the same fate, and protecting the environment is protecting ourselves.

But I’m curious. We live in a society that claims there is no objective morality anymore. Pre enlightenment, it was all:

“We have one god, one set of morals, and therefore it is clear what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’, and everyone must believe and obey this dichotomy”

But these days, you can have your set of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and I can have mine. We are of course bound by the law, which punishes us when we behave in certain ways, and we are expected to uphold each other’s rights and responsibilities, which guide and mould our behaviour, but we are also allowed to believe what we want to believe. I’m allowed to make my own value judgment, which at the moment is this:

”I think it’s ‘good’ that we live in a society where you can sit next to someone on a bus who has a completely different conception of how one should behave, dress, talk- even cook.”

Last weekend, I had a beer with a man of Jewish heritage who claimed he was an atheist but supported the Israeli cause. When I pressed him on this, curious to know why he considered Israelis more deserving of the land than Palestinians, he sighed and said:

“It’s very complex’.

And of course it is, but also, it seemed to be something that he believed- despite his atheism- that Israelis deserve the land god promised them.

Again, I am glad we live in a society where we are allowed to have our own nuanced set of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. My own set of morals and beliefs give me the opinion that this leads to marvellous diversity, freedom of speech and is a corner stone of democracy. However, it does mean that in most circles, you can easily stray into territories where such disagreement can get fraught and end with people yelling in faces and slamming doors. I remember one wine-fuelled night when I was claiming that the Kardashians are ‘bad’ while a good friend of mine was claiming the opposite. The night ended it upset apologies and heartfelt text messages. It’s difficult to find a subject where everyone can simply uphold the same beliefs.

Unless you’re talking about the environment.

The environment seems to be the only current subject that aligns everyone’s sense of ‘good’ and ’bad’. I’m not basing that claim on an opinion or a hunch. Action is being taken on a structural level that reflects this new set of beliefs (beliefs that are based on research, evidence and facts).
Local councils have introduced new bin systems that increase recycling and decrease waste, plastic bags have been banned in all leading supermarkets, and the state government has introduced zero emissions targets by 2050. Even though the federal government seems to be upholding their on-brand sense of reluctance to say the double C word (Climate Change), they have begrudgingly admitted that, since the bushfires, the environment deserves its place on the list of priorities. Environmentalism has snuck into the mainstream and assumed a place of objectivity. And all in all, this is a good thing, right? You’d be an outlier if you disagreed with the following:

Recycling is ‘good’.
Compost is ‘good’.
Plastic bags are ‘bad’.  
Renewable energy is ‘good’.
If we all work together and uphold this new set of moral principles, me might just avoid the worst of an impending climate catastrophe.

Objective moral frameworks seem to be something that humans are naturally attracted to. Perhaps its because we are aware of our own mortality- we want to know the best way to live our one life, and this desire to optimise makes us keen to know the rules and categories during our short time on earth. When god left the picture, we managed to stay organised enough, but the void of moral objectivity left us vulnerable. Although most of us have a ‘live and let live’ approach, when a new objective moral framework enters the picture, such as Environmentalism, we become more than willing to enforce the new set of rules in order to strengthen the moral code.

Last Friday, my housemate bought me a huge bag of coffee beans from a local roaster she knows. I was in the middle of thanking her when she told me where they were from: Indonesia.

My mind began to race- Indonesia? And more specifically, Sumatra? You mean the place that is rife with deforestation, that is killing orang-utans and pigmy rhinos for the sake of coffee and palm oil plantations? How could you buy me this giant bag of coffee knowing it hails from a place of such potent evil? Now with every sip of coffee, I will think of the disappearing call of the pigmy rhino and despair.

My other housemate, upon hearing this story, said, ‘oh, that makes sense. She doesn’t care about that sort of thing. As long as the price is low and the quality is high, she won’t care about anything the environmental impact’ .

I don’t know if that’s true, but there was a moral judgment in that character summary. In other contexts, this character assessment would be seen as virtuous; in the past, it’s been good to get your money’s worth. But now, as environmentalism reigns supreme, it is deemed ‘bad’ to ‘not care’. According to this new set of morals, people ‘should’ purchase expensive products that are of low quality rather than tacitly contribute to the destruction of the environment.
A large part of me is aligned with that moral assumption. But I am concerned that judgements like these are becoming more and more frequent, and more and more dictatorial. The moral objectivity that environmentalism now provides us with is becoming an easy stick with which to measure each other’s sins and virtues.
We have seen this sort of authoritarianism in the past- this sort of ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ mentality. Just as Hannah Arendt says, humans without an objective moral framework are vulnerable to totalitarianism. The magnetic pull of ‘something to believe in’ becomes irresistible, and we follow in good faith, without question. Perhaps in this circumstance, when we are looking into a future of fires and floods and rising sea levels, it’s this sort of authoritarianism that is needed to get people into line. But I think an awareness of where the facts stop and the moral judgments begin ‘should’ remain at the centre of our thinking when approaching the changing climate of the future. But maybe that’s just my own version of objective morality.

Wednesday 5th February, 2020

TOTAL SPIRITUAL FULFILMENT

(the third pillar needs attention)

It’s early. I’m standing beside the fridge, watching the indoor houseplants wake up. I’m mimicking their stillness- their drooping leaves. After a time, I give them some water, feeling as though the droop might be emblematic of something deeper . I check for dark patches in the soil first- someone else living in this house could have watered them before I awoke. I empty a glass over the China Doll and the Rubber plant. I snap off a dead flower from the Peace Lily. I stand with them, quietly. Living quietly. Quietly living.

Although its summer the house is cold in the mornings. Luke left for school about 40 minutes ago. Emmy’s at Brandon’s. Kiah and Alex are still sleeping. Long streaks of shadows punctuate the apricot sunlight, which is falling on Walter Street’s smooth, black bitumen. Young women stride up and down the footpath. They take advantage of the light incline, challenging their glutes to keep pace as they charge up the street. Beginning the day in motion, they wear white runners and tight tops and channel fast beats into their ears. Feet on the rubber on the pavement. Squinting in the low morning sun.

Last night I dreamed I met a tennis player. She confided in me that although she loved playing tennis, she loved watching it more. But the sad thing was, she spent so much time playing her own games she never got to watch anyone else’s.

Yesterday, Kiah told me about an old Greek woman in Sydney. This woman has a lot of family members, therefore she always has someone to drive her around if need be. But she realised her situation wasn’t everyone’s situation. Some older people also need to get to the shops or appointments, but have no one to drive them. They therefore have to get a taxi or an Uber. But many older people find this difficult- they feel vulnerable in a stranger’s car and the Uber app is not friendly to the digital illiterate. So, the Greek lady started a business. She recruited five or six drivers, mostly mothers with kids at school during the day, and employed them to drive around clients who had money, but no one to rely on. The drivers and the clients began to form relationships. The older people became less lonely and the drivers got some extra cash.

A few days ago, I learnt about the political theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt says there are three pillars to the human condition:

The first: the labour we do, that is, domestic tasks, feeding ourselves and others, maintaining the house, keeping clean and healthy.
The second: the work we do, what we wake up and get paid to do every day- the activity we undertake that somehow contributes to the culture at large.
The third: what we do to connect with others in our community, to enter the public realm and engage in discourse.

She says:

Hannah: We need all three pillars to be spiritually satisfied.

However, Hannah also says that since the enlightenment, the third pillar has been neglected, or worse, disregarded. People are still undertaking the household labour element, as well as emphasising and prioritising work, but most people are ignoring the third pillar, the ‘need to connect with others in our community’ pillar. A lot of people try to find this connection in labour’s domesticity, or by working hard all their life, but these are futile attempts. The third pillar, she says, is one all of its own, and without nourishing it, a human will not be truly whole, and a human society will be vulnerable to the forces of totalitarianism.

When Facebook began, it was perceived the place we’d been waiting for, a place to share ideas and connect with each other, a ‘public realm’- but that soon became co-opted and transformed into a data-harvesting echo chamber. Contemporary people have no access to the public realm, and therefore, no way of nourishing the third pillar. This is evident in our extremely limited our ability to question or criticise each other’s beliefs without the becoming defensive and incendiary. We are therefore unable to truly connect with each other.

When I was in Europe and Mexico, I noticed that every town had a central square, a plaza, a zocalo. Every town had inbuilt spaces for people to congregate freely. These spaces provided people with a perfect stage to engage with the ‘public realm’. Granted, these central squares were built for and by people with faith, people with a vast amount of economic power, people who belonged to a religious community. Many of these central squares were affronted by grand cathedrals, and were built as a place for people to gather before and after mass. However, the squares were still used by others as a place to congregate.
Australian cities are not designed like this. We do not have central squares for the public to gather. Those ‘rational’ and ‘enlightened’ people of modernity, people like me, don’t have such a clear-cut way of feeling spiritually fulfilled. The church was never replaced in secular society, the central square was never built, and we are feeling the void. We are desperate for something to believe in, for something to connect with and it feels like a pillar inside us is crumbling.

This morning, I received an email from the City of Melbourne with the subject: 11 Things to Do in Melbourne This Week. Every ‘thing’ was a suggestion to ‘check out a new bar’, ‘attend a disco’, or ‘shop till you drop’. The City Council’s way of encouraging us to enter the public realm is by spending money.

The other night I was having dinner with some friends. Two of them, (who are currently entangled in a fresh romance), talked with vigorous passion for twenty minutes about a shopping complex in Sunshine East. This shopping complex had a Coles AND an Aldi AND a cheap fruit shop. They listed the items they bought at each business. They spoke with the enthusiasm that only two people in love could muster, a love that has seemed to blossom through a mutual love of grocery shopping. Perhaps there’s more to the story and I’m drawing a long bow, but having said that, this couple recently announced they are buying one-way tickets to Berlin, where they plan to relocate for the foreseeable future.

What does Berlin have that Australia doesn’t? What’s wrong with our post-colonial, post religious, culturally cringing, tall poppy syndrom-ed, fragmented society?

What we are reduced to when there is no public realm? What are we reduced to when we look for Total-Spiritual-Fulfilment in Work and Labour. We concentrate on our work status, or on our bodies, or we accumulate material possessions. But this is neither sophisticated or sustainable. There is an epidemic of loneliness in our cities. We crave connection and spiritual fulfilment. We yearn to reconnect with public discourse and re-learn how to converse and connect. We need to stop-gap the third pillar. Stop it from crumbling.

But how do we begin to create space for people to engage in the public realm?

In her book, Art and Social Change, activist and theatre maker Donna Jackson says:

Donna:            I wanted to make theatre that was useful and utilitarian, both in the process used to create it and finish the work.

She also says:

Donna:            Through making this kind of theatre, I am trying to make some social/political/economic changes to my world. Both big and small.

Perhaps the disciplines and rituals of theatre could help us strengthen the third pillar. Perhaps that’s the role of theatre in modernity. To be a place of connection. To enable people to enter the public realm and engage in discourse.

THE THIRD PILLAR NEEDS ATTENTION

I want to make a piece of theatre so that when people walk out they will feel connected.

What connects strangers?

-       Being in the same photo
-       Laughter (all getting the same joke)
-       Eating (sharing food, experiencing the same taste)
-       Death (sharing human beliefs in life after death from all over the world)
-       Hair (getting your hair cut)
-       Animals (showing mercy and kindness to something weaker than ourselves)
-       Rituals (lighting a candle and singing in unison)
-       Childhood (skipping in a big rope, drawing with chalk on the pavement, dress ups, bikes)
-       The land upon which we live (bare feet on the grass, bare feet in the sand)
-       Shoes
-       Working together to make something (planting seeds in a garden, erecting a tent, weaving a rug, decorating a tree)
-       A common belief in the goodness and worth of ourselves and others

Monday 3rd February, 2020

VICTIM BLAMING

I’m 28 and 11 Months and I don’t know what I’m doing

My sister Grace and I sneak downstairs at Jane’s funeral. Halfway down the stairs we see mum on the ground floor, absorbed as she always is in close-talking conversation. We slip behind her, through an open door and down a dark hall. We emerge out into the light of the afternoon and are greeted by a boat yard. I can see the horizon through a metal fence. The line between the ocean and the sky is still smokey from the bush fires, but the air above us is clear and blue. We pass a Corona back and forth and stretch out our bare legs in the sun and talk about what it means to ‘live well’. This is something I had been thinking about a lot lately.

ME:      Take you for example, I can’t imagine you doing anything else. Your work is the thing you’re best at- there’s nothing else you should be doing other than what you are doing. It’s the only thing your good for.

G:        Yeah, but it’s not as important as family. You’re lucky you have Luke- someone to bring you genuine joy and fulfilment. A job is just a job at the end of the day.

I have a partner. His name is Luke. We make each other very happy. That’s what I’m good at: Being in relationships. Being a good friend. A good companion. A good listener. An alright conversationalist.

But I still don’t know what I’m ‘good for’.

In the last hour of my life (before writing this), I finished my shift at the library, crossed the car park and went into a sushi restaurant. I opened up a book I’d just borrowed (a collection of interviews with Australian writers) and continued reading an interview with Tegan Bennett Daylight. She was saying that new writers tend to write stories about themselves in order to convince themselves that they are the victim. I immediately resonated with this. I frequently catch myself regretting a lot of past decisions and taking minimal responsibility for them. I am constantly thinking how I could be in a different, better place, (professionally at least) had certain events not occurred. I often feel sorry for myself. And the worse thing is, even though I am aware of this, these are thought patterns that I can’t break out of.

I pass the Corona back to Grace and try to have a conversation with her. It is a conversation I have tried to have with her many times before, but every time I’ve tried, I’ve never gotten the answers I want.

ME       I’m feeling unfulfilled at the library. I shouldn’t be able to go to bed at 4am and still feel like I’ll be able to do my job the next day, it shows the jobs too easy.

G         What about your play writing?

ME       I’m starting to think I chose to write plays because I was never serious- or - I never really believed I could be a real writer so I chose something that was almost impossible to succeed in.

G         Why don’t you go into television or film?

ME       There are so many people doing that already. It’s almost as impossible as being a playwright.

G Pays better though.

ME I wouldn’t know where to begin. And I don’t know if it’s what I should be spending my time doing anyway. People who write- I think they have to write… because they can’t do anything else. But I feel like I could be doing other things with my time…

G         Like what?

ME       Like- helping people. Like the people in the fires. Or the people suffering from drought. Or the environment. Just spending my days helping others, instead of worrying about myself. I just have a feeling I would find that work much more fulfilling- even if it’s frustrating because things change at such a slow pace, it would be less frustrating than trying to become a playwright.

G         So is it just that you’re frustrated?

…

When I was 17 and had just finished year 12, I went to England as a part of a year-long Gap Year. The organisation paired me with a school, Westonbirt, which was a private girls school situated in a Downton Abbey esque manor, deep in the Gloucestershire country side. I now realise that every time I look back on this year, I position myself as a victim. For starters, I say to myself: 

ME       I went there against my will.

I had a boyfriend at the time, and my fantasy Gap Year plan was to work for six months and then travel with him for six months. Mum had other ideas. I remember her once confessing years later, in a soft confrontation, that at the time she thought Ash (the boyfriend) and should have broken up. That’s why she pushed so much for the Gap Year. So, in 2009 I spent a less-than-ideal year wandering around the English country side, teaching dyslexic girls, discovering my own mild dyslexia, playing piano, waiting for dinner, going to the gym and generally avoiding responsibility. Ash and I stayed together anyway. He came over in the European summer and we travelled to Italy and France together. Then he went home, and I waited five long months to return to Australia. When I got home, I remember my friend Sam saying:

S          You haven’t changed at all.

And that was exactly right. I see that year as if I was frozen, on ice, just waiting to come home.

The next year I went to Melbourne Uni to begin my arts degree. I had originally gotten into ‘environments’ but not really knowing what that was I switched to Arts. Reading the Environments course description now, it looks like the perfect course for me. But like most things in my life, I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing or why I was doing it. So, I did an Arts degree and kept dating Ash and hanging out with my high school friends on weekends. Somewhere in there, Ash and I broke up and I got pregnant in a ‘make up sex’ session and didn’t realise until a month later and had to have a late-term abortion. This was the first time I had ever made any real decision for myself and it was very traumatic as well as liberating.

I joined a band that my friend Billy was putting together. This meant spending a lot of time on the 86 tram and staying out in Preston for days on end. It felt good to branch out and spend time with new people. But again, the band was just a background thing. Although I had written songs and played piano since I was a teenager, I was too self-conscious to show anyone my songs, so we just played the lead singers’ songs which all sounded the same. I did have sex with a few boys, including the lead singer, and went to parties where I didn’t know anyone and rode in the back of cars without knowing who the driver was.

During that time, I was generally dirty and happy. I had moved into a place in Seddon with Michael Shanks and various other people and that was domestically pleasant too. The abortion had added another six months to my degree, so I finished mid-year in 2013. I ended up majoring in Creative Writing (again, through no sense of direction or ambition, just because I liked it, and I got a few good marks). So I wrote my first play during that last semester, Plastic Pacific. Mum saw the Substation was calling for grant applicants for the Fringe Festival. She encouraged me to put it on, and with a lot of help from both of my parents, it did go on and it wasn’t that shit because they have a lot of experience making theatre. And then I saw that NIDA’s playwriting master’s was open for applicants. I applied and got in and that’s how I ended up moving to Sydney to study playwriting. 

By this point I was about 22 or 23. I had another boyfriend- Mark- who was 28. He ended up coming to Sydney with me but we broke up later that year. In the play writing class was a boy called Michael and I was overwhelmed by him. He was the only straight guy there and also he was really smart and well-read which I liked (although I never felt worthy of such lofty intellectualism). I crushed on him pretty hard, always seeking out moments to spend with him alone. But he had a girlfriend.
Our class went to Berlin that year and one night my friend Chris got hit by a car. Michael and I both saw the accident happen and spent a week together, visiting Chris at the hospital and waiting for his parents to arrive. That week, Michael and I kissed twice. I thought that might have meant something, but I was too scared to talk about it or even mention it. When we got back to Australia, we never talked about it either. Even though we spent a lot of time together (including him sleeping over multiple times) we never kissed again, and he went back to Perth to his girlfriend (who he is still with).  The other thing I did that year was write a play. And people at the end of the year thought the play was really good so they decided to pay me for it and put it on the next year. So you can see how I was encouraged with these early successes. Even writing about them now makes me feel like I shouldn’t stop. I am good at writing plays, I think. Even if I find it really hard and don’t really see the point in it anymore. But if it comes down to ‘what you’re good for’ maybe writing plays is what I’m good for.

Around this time, I met Luke. Luke is by far the best person I have ever met, and I don’t think I knew what love was until I met him. I now think he is the only good thing in my life which is dangerous because it makes me very depressed to admit that. I have begun to wonder if I am depressed. My friend Emmy said her councillor said that if you wake up in the middle of the night and just think over the same depressing thoughts over and over that means you’re depressed.

Between then and now I have founded a theatre company, travelled the world, moved house five times, written a lot of plays, produced a lot of plays, worked in customer service, attended birthdays and weddings… done all that. I’m still with Luke and I think I will be for the rest of my life. I have the relationship down. But is a relationship all I’m ‘good for’?

Last night I woke up and began thinking about all of this. It was the first time in a few months, but it’s something I am very used to. It happened last October and continued into Mexico and happened a bit in Europe and before that too. Last October I had a night where I was convinced the world would be better if I just died. That’s pretty depressing. I guess I’m writing all of this to see if I should go to a doctor to get a mental health plan. Maybe talking to someone could help me put a few things in order.

I guess all of this wandering and aimlessness that I’ve done since leaving high school- all this just letting shit happen to me and going with the flow- has finally caught up with me. Now, I am staring at a future that I want to have some control over, but I have no idea how to direct myself because I’ve never felt I’ve had much control over anything I’ve done in my life so far.

I am 28 and these are the things I want:

I want to be much more autonomous than I am right now
I want to enable other people to feel heard and valued
I want to live a life that has minimal impact on the environment
I want to learn
I want to keep writing because it’s pleasurable and my way of making sense of the world
I want to find a job that I have to go to bed early for
I want to be able/have the capacity and fortitude and confidence to run seminars or workshops and have people enjoy them and get a lot out of
I want to know how to achieve all of this- I want to be able to make this happen for myself

I am scared that I might need to go back and do some sort of vocational training, but I already owe so much in HECs already. What if it’s another dead end? Is being a playwright actually impossible? Although I had some early successes, it kind of depresses and frustrates me now. But maybe that’s how you feel before something great happens.

Friday 31st January, 2020

BODY HORROR

Is there really power in beauty?

At a pool party in grade six I noticed I was the only girl with hairy legs. I quickly sat up on my knees to hide my shins from sight. Everyone else at the party looked like the girls on the cover of magazines. Only me, surely, could have such an affliction. 

Around this time, hair removal rituals began: The shaving, the waxing, the epilating and the sand papering. The toxic smell of hair removal cream began to regularly ooze down the drain.

When my breasts started growing, I wore padded bras to high school. The bras made my boobs look round and plump under my white polo t-shirt. One boy in my woodwork class explained to me, ‘breasts fall into two categories’. He assured me that mine were ‘the firm kind’. He could tell just by looking. Taking him as a certified expert, I was terrified he’d find out that it was all a deception-- that under all that padding, there were only budding, puffy nipples. It consumed me- what if he found out? Who would he tell? No one can know. There were so many ways a girl should look, and I didn’t look like any of them. This body. This disgusting body. I could never show it to anybody.

I was overwhelmed with the terrific, adolescent fear of being seen naked.

Fourteen years later, I’m on the plane, towards the end of a long-haul flight to Athens. I’m observing a young woman with fake eye lashes and glossy hair shuffle down the aisle- she’s a passenger, not an attendant. I go to the tiny, sliding door bathroom and look at myself in the mirror as I wee. I instinctually pat down my fly-away hairs and rub the darkening circles beneath my eyes. Even at 40,000 feet in the air, under slept and delirious, an effort must be made to look good. An announcement interrupts my inspection- we have begun our descent. The seatbelt sign comes. I return to my seat.
In the airport, I rub my eyes again and wait for my bag at the caracal. Above the scrolling bags it is a giant image of Natalie Portman, next to an oversize Jennifer Lawrence, beside a goliath Margot Robbie. Silent, still and beautiful, all three women are modern day goddesses. The three gaze out at us, imploring the crowd to buy products that could make them more desirable, more attractive, more valuable- more like them.
I repeat a sort of mantra to myself- the same I’ve been repeating for months now:

Your looks are not the most important thing about you, you have value beyond your appearance.

But how can that be true beneath these silent, beautiful women? As I step out into the daylight of a new country, I re-immerse myself in an old economy- the value system of appearance, one in which I’ve never managed to escape.

I ‘took control’ of my body when I was 15. I stopped drinking juice, got a gym membership and counted calories. I burned. I ate a boiled egg for lunch every day. I lost weight. Family friends started saying I was beautiful. My current partner looks at photos from that time and proclaims it was the year that I ‘got hot’.
I have never known how I look. Not many people say I’m beautiful these days. This is either because I’m not, so seeing me doesn’t inspire the compliment, or because I am, and they think I already know it. Who knows? Or more's the point, who cares?

I am 28 and home alone, getting ready for a wedding. I pluck my eyebrows. I shave my legs. The ritual. In haste, I cut the skin behind the knee. Blood pours down my calf. I turn the water on in the shower. I wince at the sting of water hitting the deep gash. I scrub away at the dead skin on my arms while I wait for the bleeding to stop.
At the wedding, I stand with some male friends of the groom.
“Who’s the hottest bridesmaid?” one of them asks. The boy’s glance at me for permission. I play along. I don’t want to be what they expect. I am wearing too much lipstick for that- and besides, this is a wedding, hardly the place to begin attacking the patriarchy.
We peak through the vine-covered lattice that separates the venue from the garden. The bridesmaids are having their photo taken. We scan their bodies, their faces- we compare and contrast. It is decided that the thinnest one with the tanned skin and the big smile is the hottest. Obviously.
Silently, I make a vow never to be a bridesmaid- I never want my appearance to be subject to such judgement and scrutiny. But then I remember, it’s too late for that- I would have already been judged and ranked subconsciously by half the people at this wedding. That’s how it works. I have no choice. Who cares how you look? Sort of everyone.

Humans are visual animals. It makes sense that the complexity of wanting to seem attractive, presumably to attract a mate, has always been a part of us. Surly that’s why we are so concerned with our exterior appearance. Surly?

 STILL, SILENT AND BEAUTIFUL 

It’s a Sunday in Athens. I take the bus to the coast to wash off the jet lag. Lime stone cliffs plunge into turquoise water and silver sardines glitter in the deep. Lots of young men and women are splashing and flirting in the shallows. The men have dark tans, dark hair and muscles defining their stomachs and arms. Their hands are always the same; expressive, stocky, with short, rounded fingernails at the tips. They have big mouths and full lips and long dark eyelashes framing their deep brown eyes.
All the young women are in bikinis. They all have cleavages that sit like fresh scoops of caramel ice-cream atop flat, tanned stomachs. Their pert bums, great skin, big smiles and thick, wavy hair match their big dark eyes, with those long lashes, beautiful and glistening with beads of salt water. All these people would be twenty or younger. They are idyllic. As far as the currency of appearance goes, they have a laughable amount. Even in abundance, there seems to be undeniable value in their beauty.

On the crowded, slow, sweaty bus back to Athens, I look around. Lots of girls on the bus are seated alone, adjusting their bikini straps and hemlines in the heat. They are just like the girls in the shallows; stunning breasts, amazing bodies, perfect skin, wide smiles… except on the bus, they are still, silent, like self-aware photographs, practising being watched. When a person is that passive, man or woman, the only thing you can observe about them is their looks. But when looks carry so much value, does it really increase their power?

 The economy of beauty is a mind fuck for women, not just as they grow up but also as they grow old. Beauty will fade, inevitably, which means the thing you were once most valued for will be taken from you without your consent or control. That see-saw of value must haunt you. Perhaps this is why mother’s pressure their daughters to capitalise on their beauty while they’re ‘still young’, subliminally suggesting that the best thing a girl can do is be looked at. But when girls grow up looking at women who are supremely valued for their looks, do they really believe the best thing they can be is still, silent and beautiful?

At the back of the bus, some topless boys begin to play trap beats on a Bluetooth speaker. A few girls nearby get into the music, singing the Greek lyrics over the top. I notice one girl with unusually pale skin. She has long, flowing red hair, thin arms and 1950’s-esque sunglasses. She’s a little taller than her friends, who she’s making laugh as she raps over the boy’s music. She has just the right amount of self-awareness, moving her shoulders in time with the beat, with just the right amount of irony in her performance. Watching her, I realise she is totally in control of how her behaviour should be interpreted. She is being active, not passive, she is giving no permission to be looked at in ‘that way’, she is free of unsolicited sexualisation because she is not being silent or still. She is playing, laughing, distracting her friends on the long, packed bus ride back to Athens.

THE MOST VISIBLE INVISIBLE FORCE

A friend of mine once lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time. I remember her describing how differently she was treated by strangers when she lost the weight.

‘It was as if people trusted me more.’

‘Really- how so?’

‘People are just generally nicer.’

It is true that we exist in an economy of female beauty that goes beyond the beach and the bus, it permeates every experience; promotions, partnerships, perhaps even weather or not we’ll get a home loan.

The society I grew up in goes beyond valuing women for their looks- it is socially engineered to objectify women in order to sell products. For a capitalist, objectifying women is the perfect money-making formula. First, establish a set of expectations: your value and power as a woman lies in your exterior appearance. Then, saturate society with images of unattainable feminine beauty that stimulate our innate tendency to compare ourselves with others. This will result in a value-deficit, as those less beautiful than an airbrushed model (i.e, all of us) will deem themselves as ‘less valuable’ in comparison. Finally, offer women a product that will ‘restore’ their value (and charge them through the nose for it). Repeat the exercise a hundred times a day, and you’ve got yourself a billon dollar industry.

It’s a game we are taught to play from birth: the more we see women being admired for their appearance, the more we strive to become the perfect object ourselves. But it’s a losing game.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Recently, I was in Mexico City. During my last few days there, I realised something was missing: there were no billboards, or any public advertisements, that objectified or sexualised the female body. Indecently, I had been feeling really good about myself over the previous few weeks. I hadn’t even thought about my body, other than, is it clean or is it dirty? I realised that there was an obvious correlation- my line of vision hadn’t been saturated with images of still, silent, beautiful women, so I hadn’t thought that I should be still, silent or beautiful.

Of course, I hadn’t avoided female objectification all together- I had watched movies and TV made in Hollywood that upheld the western obligation of reducing females to sexual objects. However, these viewing sessions were intentional and contextualised- I had knowingly consumed them in my own time and space. I had therefore been able to filter the images through an analytical lens, distancing myself from the expectations upheld by the women on the screen: this is just a movie; this is just a TV show.

Adds are different. Advertising exists in the realm of real life- they enter your reality unfiltered. You don’t even realise what you’re seeing until it’s a part of your consciousness. For example, a few years ago I was walking to the train station in Brunswick when I saw a photograph of a gorgeous, scantily clad woman advertising a USB Stick above a slogan that said, ‘stick it in’. So innocuous, adds like this shape the way you expect reality to manifest until you don’t even blink when you see a sexual act being associated with a computer storage device.
Wandering around Mexico City, the main image of a female in a public space is Frida Kahlo. Her striking uni-browed expression of challenge, defiance, confidence and integrity is everywhere- on walls, blankets, even the $500 peso note. Her constant presence reminded me of who I could be as a woman, of what I could achieve if I was purely myself; a stark contrast to fashion models reminding me of what I could never be. The constant presence of Frida was a constant reminder that women can be more than a place to ‘stick it in’.

It’s not until we leave our cities, towns or even countries, that we realise the expectations placed upon us are subjective, even irrelevant in other places around the world. I became hyper-sensitive to this sort of advertising upon returning to Australia. I noticed it as soon as I got through security at the airport. I looked up and there was a woman in lingerie striding towards me beneath a Victoria’s Secret sign. Suddenly, the social engineering of Western culture was back, baby, sending me the same old message: you’re not good enough the way you are, buy these products and you could have as much vale as this lingerie model.

There is, however, something more insidious within this specific brand of social engineering- something worse than a woman looking in the mirror and feeling ‘not good enough’, something worse that a 12 year old girl wishing she were thinner, taller, shorter, paler, darker, wishing she could ‘fix’ whatever about her needs to be ‘fixed’.

 When Eurydice Dixon died, I went on reddit and searched ‘why do men rape’. I found an AMA, full of anonymous guys confessing times when they came close to committing rape. One guy wrote about being upstairs at a party with a girl. She was so drunk she’d passed out. He describes lifting up her dress, looking at her legs and belly and getting hard. He took off her undies, but then she made a sound which made him look up, at her face. It was only then he remembered that she was a person. He was horrified at what he was about to do and fled the room. 

Q. How can one person forget the human-ness of another person so easily? 

A. Because the hyper sexualisation of the female body in advertising socially engineers us to associate women with objects- with something that can be acted upon.

I’m not blaming the objectification of women in advertising alone for sexual violence. There are many reasons, historical, social and economic, for this shameful reality. Despite the lack of female objectification on public billboards in Mexico, 41% of Mexican women have suffered from sexual violence. I am however, positive that if we even just reduced sexualising and objectifying women in Australia, there would be a gradual reduction in sexual violence. If we socially engineer a society to value girls for what they can do, not as well as how they look but instead of how they look, then they will be encouraged to put their energy into pursuits that they can get better at over time, instead of external appearance that will be harshly judged, before fading as time goes by. People will retort this by stating that it’s already the case that we value women for more than their appearance. This may be so, but women are judged much harsher than men on their appearance in public (think of journalists, sports players and politicians) and we do it almost subconsciously. My point is, lets begin to ask ourselves why we do this, and then actively change things so we stop doing it. Because even if a women is beautiful, valuing her appearance before anything else about her sill ultimately reduces her power.

 I just glanced up from my keyboard and saw a book on my desk by George Megalogenis entitled, ‘The Australian Moment- How We Were Made for These Times’. On the front cover are seven men and two women (one of which is Kim from Kath and Kim). I wonder what that ratio says about the power of female beauty and the currency it holds.

3am Musings from Mexico City

Five first impressions of Mexico City:

1. It's very far away. Having just been in Europe, you'd think I'd be used to the disruption of circadian rhythms, but Mexico takes 25 hours to get to from Melbourne, and is 17 hours behind, and that makes for some hallucinogenic jet lag. It's currently 3am here and I'm wide awake, while at 3pm I was dreamily delighting over the ubiquitous concrete man-hole coverings that dot the footpaths. I'm very glad we have two months here- it takes the pressure off the rapid acclimatisation that other tourists have to go through.

2. Everyone speaks Spanish!! Gone are the care free days of European signage, where you could count on spotting some sort of anglo word to point you in the right direction. Everything, from announcements, to street signs, to menus, is strictly in Spanish. Our major interactions have been with waiters, and an attempt to say 'hola, soy Australiano, no habla Espanol, habla ingles?' (hello, I am Australian, I don't speak Spanish, do you speak English?) gets met with a barrage of Spanish. It's fantastic- we are having to pick up the language fast and with every interaction we feel a little more confident. We are leaning heavily on the back pages of the Lonely Planet, where you can find the language section and which is supplying us with much needed phrases like 'ke recomendacion?' (what do you recommend?) Speaking of which...

3. The food is MUY BIEN. Winners so far have been pulled-chicken in tortilla raps, bathed in a limey spice sauce, covered in melted cheese. Another winner is spicy guacamole with crunchy crickets. Others are pork tacos, fish tacos, a roll with twice fried beans and slow cooked beef shoulder. Everything comes in little serving sizes so you can try two or three dishes each meal, which is why after only 24 hours here I already have such an adamant obsession with the cuisine. And of course, it's all extremely affordable. The only problem is, we keep forgetting the Spanish names for the dishes we are ordering, so when we really love something, it's difficult to order it again elsewhere! Another problem is I am already craving fresh veggies. First thing tomorrow, we are heading to a super market to buy some fresh food, which we will wash with filtered water at our Air BnB. There was a moment yesterday when we were in a little Cantina and there was a self serve salad bar that was calling me like the sirens on The Odyssey. Luke had to remind me three times of the single piece of advice that Mickey and Katie demanded we follow: DON'T EAT THE SALAD (unless you want to be diarrheaing and throwing up for days). No one seems to be too worried about keeping trim, and I wonder if it's because food here tastes so good that vanity has taken a back seat in Mexican culture.

4. Music is everywhere. I often think of sound like I imagine smell; wafting invisibly through the air, existing in varying strengths, sometimes extremely pleasant, other times not so much, sometimes completely over powering, sometimes just a hint of the essence of what the scent might be. Mexican pop music carries the same elements as their more traditional music, so there is a lovely consistency to the sound track as we walk around the city. The sounds of trumpets and dance hall beats waft out of cars, restaurants, Cantinas, shops, even the underground trains have music... it's almost like there is a policy that says, if you can have music, why not play? Last night, we went to Plaza Garabaldi for a quick sight recci. It's a square where Mariachi musicians wait around like living Juke Boxes for people to approach them and request a song. They're all men, wearing suits and hats, many peacocking in silver studded black pants. When someone pays for a song, there's no holding back- they belt out traditional songs in three part harmonies, expertly playing their instruments, which don't stop at the classic guitar and trumpet; there are also violins, harps and drums. We stopped off at a Cantina on the perimeter of the square to watch the scene. Soon, an extremely rotund man arrived with his date and sat at the table behind us. He ordered a full bottle of Johnny Walker black label and gestured to a four piece Mariachi band, who immediately swooped in. I have no idea what he paid them, but they performed a private concert for him and his date for the next half hour, during which a hat seller sold him two cowboy hats, a scarf seller sold him two scarfs and a rose seller sold him a dozen red roses, which his date put in the ice bucket next to the Johnny Walker. We got to freeload by listening to the concert. We had no cash on us and therefore couldn't pay for our own request, but we will return and partake in the ritual. There is something incredibly charming about approaching someone for a song- it feels like the best way you could possibly spend money.

5. The city is brimming with people, and most of them are Mexican (surprise surprise). Flying in, the streets were glittering and twinkling with bumper to bumper traffic, the slow movement of which has quickly become just another kinetic element of the city. It's easy to duck down a side street and walk under leafy, tree-lined streets, where the traffic is one way and therefore lighter. The variety of cars is very charming, from 1970's VW beetles to very modern police cars with LED indicators, it certainly feels like a car culture. Until you enter the subway, that is. The subway ebbs and flows with torrential amounts of crowds alighting and descending at all hours of the day and night. The design of the subway is evidence that user experience can be transformed with good graphic design. The subway maps are for everyone- even illiterate people can navigate their way around (and even non-Spanish speakers find it simple and easy!). It's colour coded, and every stop has a simple cartoon picture to signify the station. For example, an eagle head, a fountain, a duck on water or a man with a stethoscope indicate the various places on the pink line. The flow of crowds is expertly managed too, with a stream of people going one way in the middle, and a stream of people going the other way on both edges. These are marked by simple lines and arrows of the floor, which everyone follows in a pleasant, constant pace. Having been to India, where chaos is king, this city has a very calm order to it which imbibes a total feeling of safety. Many of the high colonial buildings that line the streets are jauntily sinking into the land below, and many have weeds growing out of their roofs and turrets. We were reminded of Calcutta- a smoggy, ramshackle, vibrant and contemporary city resting on the shoulders of a lot of history. Speaking of, tomorrow we will head off to the Templo de Mayor, which is an Aztec sight in the centre of town… 

ON INDULGENCE – Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Last night it was 3 degrees outside. As we were leaving netball, I could see my breath tumble out of my nostrils and escape into the dark world. We all exclaimed at the temperature.

Laura F said, ‘It’s fine, we all have houses.’

And we do have houses with heating and double doonas and kettles and hot water bottles and electric blankets and thick explorer socks. There’s nothing indulgent about that, is there? All those things we have- they are to eliminate suffering, and anything that reduces our suffering is morally justifiable, right? But what is suffering for those who have houses and explorer socks- for those who rarely go without. This is the question that has been bothering me: When does the reduction of suffering become indulgent behaviour?

I have always been good at having the kind of mindset that repeats the mantra, ‘there’s always someone worse off than you out there.’

This mindset keeps me from complaining too much when things aren’t going my way. For example, when I have to walk home in the rain and it’s freezing and there’s no shelter and I can feel the downpour soaking through my socks and running down my neck, I am effortless at telling myself: ‘There are some people who have to walk in the rain every day. In fact, there are some people who have nowhere to walk home to, at least when you get home it will be dry and warm. Actually, there are some places where it never rains, and people are suffering from dehydration- their crops are failing, their livestock is perishing, and it’s all because it doesn’t rain enough. You should be grateful for this rain. Let it plummet down upon you and soak into your bones and think about how lucky you are.’

This mindset also kicks in when I feel uneasy with my own, more indulgent behaviour. For example, say I get a lump sum of inheritance and decide to spend some of it on a three-month trip to Europe. Some people would call that indulgent; some would say there are much more generous, or even more responsible ways to spend that money. I excuse my decision by comparing myself to others and pointing to their more tacky displays of wealth:

 ‘At least I’m not the kind of person who’s go to Europe and hangs out on luxury Yachts’ I tell myself, ‘…or what about those men who hire prostitutes and snort coke off their cleavages?’

Con once told me about a friend of his who received a large sum of inheritance. He got heavily into drugs. He threw parties for everyone and bought them anything they wanted, as long as they could keep up with him. He travelled the world doing this. Con met up with him in Berlin one morning. The friend had been up all night at a sex club doing Ice and fucking strangers. He was wired and confused. Con gave him his headphones and got him to listen to a band they used to like, thinking music would calm him down. The friend freaked out and ran off with Con’s phone and headphones. Con spent the rest of the day trying to track him down. That story makes me feel better.

‘What a waste’, I think, ‘all that money- squandered on this poor guy, who has fried himself into a wide-eyed animal, belonging nowhere, running from his friends.’

Money affords us the ability to sink into ourselves, to shun responsibility and self-discipline, to curate our lives, limiting the amount of discomfort we are willing to experience and the amount of exposure to others we are willing to participate in. But aren’t personal discomfort and exposure to others are both necessary if we are going to have any sort of perspective about our own behaviour? If we are going to have compassion, if we are going to monitor personal indulgence, we need to be put out of our comfort zones; we need to experience suffering to know the difference between what alleviates suffering and what is a flat out indulgence.

The drive to indulge is almost animal; it’s at the base of our instincts.

I remember once Luke and I were looking after his parent’s farm. It was very cold; squalls of rain lashed the valley. Luke and I huddled around the blazing fire in the stove. The chooks and pigs sheltered inside their tin huts. But the goat had nowhere to go. Tethered to a metal stake in their middle of a field, unable to get away, unable to find shelter, it sat drenched in the freezing wind. Fuelled by compassion, Luke and I dashed out between downpours and erected a small shelter for the goat. The ground was still wet, so we fetched some hay from the shed and covered the floor of the shelter with it, to give the animal somewhere dry to rest. The goat saw the dry hay and immediately began chomping it up. We had used a whole bail to cover the ground, and remembering an article about how goats can eat themselves to death, we both realised that the goat could keep eating the hay until it was gone. We began bailing the hay back up, putting it out of reach of the tethered goat. We left just enough to coax it into the shelter, so when the next storm hit, it had somewhere to keep dry.

Humans, like goats, are easily seduced by the consumption of what lays before them. The goat did what we all do: when times are good, one must gorge oneself, lest the opportunity never present itself again. This animal drive can at times masquerade as rational argument. If you’re a cave man and you come across a beehive, you find a way to access the honey- you take advantage of the situation. Humans have been know to eat themselves to death… or drink themselves to death, or smoke themselves to death, or party themselves to death, or fuck themselves to death, or buy themselves to death, or work themselves to death. But is this not just humans taking advantage?

I love to drink- that is probably my greatest indulgence. It’s what I spend the most amount of money on. It’s what I find the most fun. I do it with my colleagues, my friends, my partner and my family. I sometimes do it alone, although rarely. 

On Easter Sunday this year, I attended a ‘long lunch’ at Kedda and Stu’s house. Everyone brought a plate of food, and due to the quantity of people there, there was way too much food. Everyone also brought wine. Later, after we had eaten, there was still plenty of food left, but we had run out of wine, so Luke and Sam walked the three blocks to Mr. West to get some more. Then hours passed and that second supply ran out, so again, they went and got more.

Kedda and Stu had recently installed a Google Home in their house. If you want to listen to music via the Google Home, you have to say ‘ok Google’ and then command it to play a song. Unfortunately, Google Home can’t understand voice command at the best of times, let alone commands that are drunkenly slurred across the room five times. That sort of behaviour always puts a stop to conversation, so the room became full of people shouting ‘hey google’ over one and other and nothing much else.
Luke and Sam got back from the Bottle-O and the third round of bottles were opened. Everyone got so drunk they slipped and stumbled into boredom. Desperate for stimulation, one of the girls made all the other ones show their breasts to her. The men pretended to look away. It took Shanks a six-pack and a bottle of wine to open up to Ash. He cried about their past. And he is one of the more sensible ones. I tried to leave. Louie and I walked to a Karaoke bar a few blocks away but it was closed for Easter, so we walked back. It was then I had to quit the party. I looked around at these people in their late 20’s on full-time salaries, guzzling wine and yelling ‘ok Google’- all these people so drunk they wont remember it the next day.

Two nights previous, Michael, Luke and I were hung over. We had been up until 4.30am with Liam and Crispin. The five of us had gone to a comedy show, then gone out for wines at Siglo, then for beers at Lanes Edge, then headed back to Luke and my apartment for tinnies. The conversation that night was flowing, interesting, urgent and conscious. We stayed up late because we had so much to say to each other- we had to keep talking, so we had to keep drinking.

The next night, after dropping in at Em Crocks birthday drinks that afternoon, Michael, Luke and I planned on watching a movie back at the apartment. We stopped off at Seddon Wine Store and Michael and Luke got out while I stayed in the car. They came back with three bottles of wine – one for each of us – to drink while we watched a movie. I remember almost falling asleep after the second glass, so I sopped drinking. But by the end of the night, the bottles were empty. I don’t remember what movie we watched.

I keep imagining how much money we spent on alcohol so that weekend. And that was before the long lunch. The behaviour exhibited by all of us at that lunch was so ugly. The bacchanalian indulgence should not be encouraged. The wines purchased and poured (exxy and premium) went under-appreciated because of the excess amount of them. We are living in a culture of saturation. We are never satisfied. Isn’t this the wrong time in history for all that?

A few months ago, I arrived late to a gathering at Emmy’s house. I had been working on the bar at MTC. As I walked in I noticed that everyone was drunk, nothing new. I poured myself a glass of red. A thought struck me, so I said it aloud,

‘Alcohol makes us cationic- unmotivated- doesn’t it? Hangovers make us so inarticulate and exhausted.’

‘So?’

‘So perhaps this suits current power structures. A hung over nation is easily controlled. If the youth population spends every weekend drinking, they’re less likely to detect corruption, deceit, exploitation, injustice or malpractice. They’re less likely to be well informed and take action. All this cheap wine and beer could just be a conspiracy, a way of subduing the masses.’

Everyone quickly looked away. Some people even left the table. Perhaps I had gotten there too late for this kind of conversation. Matt, my wine-making friend, got offended because he thought I was blaming the wine industry. I suppose he had cause to get defensive. The only person who agreed with me was Sam, who had drunk the most out of anyone. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure if my provocation had any grounding in truth. Maybe the intuition was right, but in places like India, where drinking is not a part of the culture, there is still mass government corruption and injustice. Hangovers aren’t the only barrier between utopia and us. 

Indulgences were a thing in the Catholic Church in the middle ages. People would confess their sins, then the priest would give them penance, (which is a list of tasks they would need to complete to restore them to grace).  Alternatively, you could pay for an indulgence. This meant giving the church some money instead of carrying out the assigned penance. At first, this was seen as a good thing. Instead of selfishly praying over rosary beads or going on a pilgrimage, you were giving back to your local church, which was after all the only community safety net in the middle ages.
But it soon went to shit, when people realised they could sin and then pay for their soul to be cleansed. Those who could afford it began to sin all the time. Roman priests began openly visiting prostitutes and paying for an ‘indulgence’ later to cleanse their souls. Meanwhile, poor people began spending half their yearly wages on indulgences, out of fear that their sins would go unrepented unless they paid up. Martin Luther observed this and did not approve, which is why the protestant reformation happened, which lead to political and religious freedom in Europe. But somewhere along the way, the gap between ‘sin’ and ‘indulgence’ began to narrow.

The morality of indulgence was proclaimed as ‘sinful’ and if we think about it, that residual association is still present in the word ‘indulge’. We live in a culture that is constantly encouraging us to ‘give into temptation’, ‘live the dream’, ‘live your fantasy’, ‘because you’re worth it’, ‘indulge yourself, you deserve it’. Have we all become varying degrees of those catholic priests?

I don’t believe in sin. I think humans can have morality without believing in god- many philosophers and ethicists have argued the same. But capitalism is very good at filling the void of religion, and without a set of moral codes to hold us to account, to elevate moderation as a virtue and discourage indulgence, we have begun to live to excess. As a result, we have begun to kill the planet. A walk along the shoreline reveals how much plastic waste washes up from our daily practices of indulgence. We don’t feel our lives have meaning unless we are buying things, excess to requirement. I always think of that scene in cast away, when Tom Hanks finally gets off the island and goes to a media event to celebrate his return to society. In the middle of the room, there is a table over flowing with food. The party ends, everyone leaves, and Tom stands there, transfixed by the amount of food still spread out on the table, all destined to go to waste.

There is an immaturity than comes with this way of living. Kids left to their own devices will eat ice-cream for every meal, stay up late and then feel sick and unfocused the next day. Humans have the ability to learn about the benefits of moderation, and as such, many cultures bestow virtue to moderation. Depriving oneself of pleasures makes them all the more significant when one is allowed to sample their delights. Even in our greedy Western culture, in this so-called ‘late stage’ of capitalism, those who have the self-discipline of moderation are seen as inspirational figures. Yet those people are not the common, every day, layman. You make more of a buck telling people they should want more, that they deserve more. And we fall for it.

“I want it all, I want it now.” Yells freddy mercury
“More. More. More.How do you like it? How do you like it?” Croons Andréa True Connection. 

‘All things in moderation’ is the catch cry I aspire to live by- but why do I assume I have a right to ‘all things’ to begin with? We have been seduced by the signifiers of wealth. We tell ourselves, (or we are told) that we work hard, we deserve that new BMW, that leather couch, the 400k HD TV (these are all items recently purchased by Luke’s brother Josh). But do we deserve these things? According to who’s rules? Are we just suckers- exploited and manipulated into thinking we want/deserve these things? What else could the money we make buy us, that might be more rewarding in the long term? Or are material indulgences the pinnacle of what it is to be alive- to be human?

I have recently chosen to spend a lot of money going to Europe. This is indulgent. I distance myself from my own hypocrisy by comparing myself to people like Josh.

 ‘Sure’, I say, ‘I am spending this money of jet planes, nice weather, good food, relaxation, great views, but I am also looking for experiences that get me out of my comfort zone, that force me into situations I wouldn’t enter into in my daily life, experiences that expose me to other people’s lives, other people’s realities and beliefs, so I can discover other cultures and better understand the species I am a part of. So I can understand the difference between alleviating suffering and pure indulgence.’

But something tells me that the practice of comparing myself to other people, whether they be invisible, mystical other people, or people I know closely, (like Josh) is an exercise in excuse manufacturing. I am not making myself accountable. According to my moral code, there are worse people than me doing worse things with their money, but the next obvious thought crashes in the same wave: there are also people doing better things with their money. So I am just as indulgent.