no.stal.gia

Earlier this week, a very Italian customer with the name of Evangelini (bearers of good news) asked me "do you nostalgia your home?" His strange use of 'nostalgia' as a verb sparked a questioning of just what I feel about the past - do i miss it? do i cherish it? am i glad its over?

Maybe it's the shifting season and daylight savings, but I am feeling nostalgic. Missing eras, people, places, and things that have somehow resigned themselves to the past. Today I had a strong craving for hashbrowns and the American diner experience.

Jane and I were talking about childhood Christmas decorations and the 'concertina snowflakes' as we dubbed them --- is there a word for them? The store-bought ones that start flat and open out into 3d tissue-paper creations - usually snowflakes or wedding bells... they seem so hard to find these days.

"concertina snowflake".... that's a pretty drag name. I nostalgia concertina snowflakes and American hashbrowns.

At a loss.

Things that don't mix:

pet cats and pet fish.
wristwatches and tanning beds.
alcohol and mobile phones.
blog writing and having nothing to say.


This last one of course leads to dangerous secret-telling. My current secret is that I'm seriously working too much... not just that, but the secret is how I get through it. On my drives to and from work I think of those documentaries about the factory workers in China who work 12+ hour days, and spend the rest of their time eating and sleeping. My weekdays are 10-12 hour days, and my days "off" still end up including 5 hours of work. The upside is I'm sleeping better.

On other days, on other drives - I think of people who spend every day of the summer at the beach. People who perhaps relax too much.

Today I thought about the coincidence that antipodean cities Chicago and Melbourne both had marathons at the same time. And the coincidence that both times Wisconsin made it into international news this year it was for shootings, and both times Mark was in Hong Kong when it happened.

Now I'm going to sleep. Mark returns soon. My mother turns 49 today. I will become Australian this week. And Mrs Kristin Hersh visits Melbourne this week. I'll need my sleep.

Good night.
Sleep tight.

say what you do what you say

I'm a bit of a fan of L'occitane products -- and while the prices are a bit inflated, they always throw in a lagniappe or two to help stave off the buyer's remorse. One recent gift was a sample of their new "youth concentrate" moisturizer. With the hopes of any 30 year old to regain the irresistible flesh of a twentysomething, I applied the cream and after a few days I really did appear 13 years younger! Looking in the mirror I saw my seventeen-year-old self again, complete with a visage dotted with pimples. I suppose there's a moral in there somewhere about getting what you wish for...

At least the product did what it said it would. I remember being very confused as a child trying to understand shampoo that was "for dry hair" / "for normal hair" / "for oily hair". Thinking the adjective applied to the result, I questioned why anyone would choose the shampoo that made their hair dry or oily. Unless it was some punkrock rejection of the "normal". Or if you had dry hair, you'd need to treat it with the oily shampoo to compensate.

I also had trouble with the concepts of 'probably' & 'perhaps' & 'possibly' & 'maybe' not understanding the element of deferral and indecision-- concepts I've now more-than-mastered. In the engendered binary word-pairs, these words are classified as both feminine and postmodernist. I wonder if anyone's written a thesis called "the feminine deferral" incorporating elements of feminist criticism and deconstruction? Of course the delicious bit of the essay would suggest the feminine deferral is somehow related to the many billboards around Melbourne these days that simply ask "Want longer lasting sex?"

See also: Bjork's "Possibly Maybe" & The Kills' "Wait"

Insomniac !

Insomniac -- not just an echobelly song. I was up half the night, thinking those late night thoughts, and recalling things I haven't thought of in years, and brought myself to laughter at 4 am remembering the short film I was once going to make. It was meant to run for about 20 seconds and was called Relationships, Claymationships. Basically it was a claymation film of couples that merge, swirl, and melt down into clay and reform into boats and sail away. 20 seconds of poorly crafted claymation complete with inherent ships-passing-in-the-night cliches. It never happened. It was one of those concepts where the idea was more important than the reality.

(Speaking of those excellent-ideas-never-realized -- Shiloh, I'm still waiting for the first issue of Serepolyzine to arrive in my mailbox... another memory that recurred last night and had me smiling at 4 am.)

So I sat up reading Jen Trynin's memoir "Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be" instead. It's sooo good for folks who recall the mid-90s music scene - those strange years between grunge and trip hop. You might remember her song Better Than Nothing.

Now that my camera is recharged, here's some hot cacti pics for your enjoyment.


The first pic is one of the costly cacti filled with illicit substance. The second pic are some other faves, which also support Mark's theory that I like these plants for their suggestive shapes... and perhaps I do.

spineless

It is indeed a luxuriant lifestyle when my biggest purchase in yonks occurred today -- and consisted only of hundreds of dollars of cacti. A slow shopper, I mulled over the nursery choices for my new backyard designs and made my choices based upon symbolism -- trichocereus scopulicolis -- a s p i n e l e s s cactus with large night-blooming flowers, beautiful and defenseless.

"They put a needle once in my spine, it took them so long to find it" -- Stina Nordenstam, Get On With Your Life

Transacting my purchase, a rather curious employee regaled me with stories of his rowdy days and his mates who also adored this cactus, but for its chemical components. Sure enough, some dodgy internet resources confirm some psychotropic effect from the alkalides found in this cactus.

"Bloody your hands on a cactus tree, wipe it on your dress and send it to me" -- Pixies, Cactus

While my experimental days have long expired, it is fascinating to know it's there... like a long-stale joint hidden once and nearly forgotten. And to think that today's purchase could in some way be viewed as a drug deal.

on books on tape on cd

So my new career is closing in soon -- being in charge, managing. imagining. there's of course the desire to storm in on the first official day with the proclamation (a la Dallas or Dynasty) -- "You all work for ME now!" and be really * in control * ...but that's not me.

The new direction hasn't reduced my commute (unfortunately) but it did give me a new direction to drive. Having previously cured my road rage with "learn a language while you drive" CDs (German is the best).... my newest habit is "books on tape" that are technically on CD. Though I find I have to listen a few times to catch the nuances.

This week is Heathcote Williams' "Whale Nation" as read by the author, complete with English accent and slight lisp -- it's a wonderfully entertaining and informative epic poem about Whales (and conversely, about man). You might remember Heathcote Williams as the writer of Marianne Faithfull's extremely explicit hit song "Why D'ya Do It?" In "Whale Nation" Williams presents an amazing mix of poetry, mythology, fun facts, and lists. The best bits are his dolphin impersonations, his extremely lengthy (thus, mesmerising) lists of products made from whales, and the best line of the entire poem - the one that stays with me all day:

"Imagine blowing soap bubbles and food drops out of the sky!"

maybe / world

you are very lucky / as you travel think of us occasionally / cause you're here some / then you're not some -- "golden cities"

guiltiest of pleasures... i am wallowing with lisa germano tonight. maybe not wallowing, maybe introspectiv-ing, in the most honest and almost cruel way. for the uninitiated, lisa is a very specific taste - and much of her music sounds the same, variations on a theme - emphasizing the cruciality of each songs lyrics.

if you ever want to / change before you die / change the way you're losing / change the way you hide / carry down the reasons / carry down the why / it's such a heavy load / for such a lying mind / you know just what you're doing / you've known it all along / you drag your living feelings / where they don't belong -- "moon in hell"

vague enough so each song relates to you specifically... perhaps just the most self-destructive and self-critical parts of you. those parts ultimately know that "happiness is like tv -- on or off, it's up to me." and so much of it truly is a conscious decision.

it's the memory / of the onset / of a lifetime full of wonder / and the constant falling under ... what did you do to be like this / and what do you do / when you feel it and you don't go / pretend that you don't know -- "the day"

human..... land... mark.. s.

Like most who have ever called Minneapolis home, I too was fixated on the reporting of the bridge collapse -- thinking of people I knew then, and thinking of who still lives there. Here I was treated to the Australian take on the news of an event occurring in a place many non-Americans have never heard of (Prince and Mary Tyler Moore remain the likeliest human landmarks). Headlines here sometimes referred to it as the "Mississippi disaster" because international audiences know the river, but not the city -- and good on us, too -- being more familiar with a major waterway than a mid-sized metropolis. Fair enough.

Eschewing the obvious metaphor for a bridge-collapse as a relationship divider, I have heard from more lost-long city-mates in the past week than in the past 5 years. There's nothing like a disaster to bring out the old housemates, old friends, and old lovers... These humans remain landmarks, too. Personal reference points despite their changing landscapes.

The stylist who cut my hair today recognized my tell-tale accent and asked if I'd been to Minneapolis. She then drew a connection to last month's New York City steam explosion and concluded that the USA is falling apart.

Tired, ill, or angry, or numb?

The search for the start of a career path is like the search for the start of a roll of tape -- you need to have fingernails.

I've kept up with my applications, submitting 5-10 per week - only applying for jobs that I actually want (which seems like common sense, but is really a bit of a skill - when you're hungry, everything looks good - plus there's the temptation to revert to 8 year-old thinking -- "I want to be a policeman! I want to be a vet!"). I've had a couple interviews and met with recruitment agencies. Surprisingly, I'm hearing back about the jobs that I seem less qualified for, and being instantly rejected for the jobs I'm certain I could already do... But maybe that's for the best.

Yesterday, as part of an extensive application process I was asked to complete some online tests like data entry and basic computer skills. These tests I did quite well at, despite the inherent distractions of taking the test at home among the cats. The other online test was more of a personality test - self-reporting of what you like, what you've done, and how you see yourself.

My favourite question: "how often have you owned merchandise someone else may have stolen?"

One entire section of perhaps 30 questions asked me to choose one word from each group of three words that I feel best describes * me *. For example, am I -- cheerful, brave, or clever? It seems like an easy test until you're 18 questions in and you begin overanalysing every option. I got completely stumped on: Am I eager, skillful, or honest? It reminded me of a game collegiate-friend Valerie and I used to play -- giving two incongruent options, asking eachother: "Are you hungry or are you distracted? Are you tired or are you valiant?" So now this test was asking me: "Are you eager, skillful, or honest?" Are those qualities in any way mutually exclusive?

I have an interview tomorrow morning... I'll likely be asking myself beforehand whether I feel nervous or if I feel lucky... if I'm honest, It'll be a mix of both.

bag, man, bag.

The big birthday has come and gone... featuring japanese dinner for sixteen in a tatami room ("wear nice socks, just in case" I told party guests). I'm always amazed at the wonderful things people find as gifts. Especially since I have a hard enough time shopping for myself... so anyone who asked was told -- buy me something disposable, something that gets used up or experienced, some kind of guilty pleasure or vice... lottery tickets, alcohol, drugs.

Today a package arrived from UK-based Shiloh... with an entirely different sort of contraband.
Fascinating! - you're thinking... but... what is it? Never one to shy from the trendy terminology of the day - not only is it a manbag in the traditional sense (click on the "manbag" link and see definition #1), but also the leather is treated in such a way that the bag keeps its shape and its wrinkles (thus also referencing "manbag" definition #3). Sorry Shi, but it's true and very funny and very wonderful!

That connection reminds me of 90s pop group Dubstar and the original cover to their album Disgraceful with the controversial coin-purse image which was later replaced with a single bunny slipper.

Strangely its my first experience with such a fashion accoutrement... and I expect when I first venture out in the street and someone says "nice manbag" I'll be laughing while I work out just where they're looking.

Cross Reclycler.

Having given up a life of continuous educational pursuits, I find (like most people do) the main alternative is a career path -- Something I haven't really had since 2001. In tribute to Jerri Blank, I'm attempting to pick up that same career path just where I left off. Yesterday was my first interview with a potential employer (after meeting twice with a recruitment agency). At first all was great -- I was looking good, wearing my luckiest clothing -- grandpa's old tie clip, holding my favourite Vivienne Westwood tie in place, and my 'jason' socks (to remind me who I am). After about 20 minutes of lovely and casual getting-to-know-you conversation, the gears shift and suddenly and we're in hardcore interview mode.

"Tell me about a time you worked in a team when things didn't go according to plan and why things went wrong and what you would do differently in the future." That was seriously put to me as a single enquiry. The problem with these questions is they are so scripted and unnaturally worded that they create a self-conscious interview. Instead of a conversation, the environment is suddenly an Interview! and I'm being judged by my responses. It's a strange situation -- and so far removed from any reflection of real ability and skills related to the job.

On the upside, the interview went for more than an hour which is perhaps a good sign. I'll find out next week. In the meantime, applying to 10-15 jobs per week -- being a bit more choosy than usual -- grateful that I'm not in a desperate situation, forced to take a job I'd hate... like car salesman, taxi driver, or truck driver. Speaking of, I saw the best truck today. It was for a company called Southern Cross Metal Reclyclers (they have a surprisingly interesting website), but the way the words were laid out on the back doors of the truck, it seemed to read "Southern Metal" on one door and "Cross Recyclers" on the other. One side, a genre of harcore rock music featuring fiddles and harmonicas, banjos and mouth harps. The other side, disgruntled workers who find new uses for religious icons, giving them a second life -- resurrections.

Along with "Teller" and "Control Officer" (jobs I've actually applied for), I reckon "Cross Recycler" is an excellent job title -- one I'd be proud to have on a business card.

HK5 -- Hitting the ground.

Down on the streets, between the buildings and in the alleys and sidestreets... Hong Kong keeps a good pace - not as pushy and frantic as New York... I think the heat slows everyone down. One of my personal favourite elements of Hong Kong is its skyways... though not elaborate enough to compete with those of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, you can still walk a fair distance without leaving the buildings of HK.
Though not the most amazing example we witnessed, here is bamboo being used in scaffolding. It is a surreal juxtaposition of natural materials being used within, and to create, an otherwise synthetic urban environment. From the windows of lofty hotel rooms and restaurants we saw traffic islands completely unaccessible to pedestrians planted and cultivated like oases -- manicured nature to be viewed from afar, and to have some tiny counter-effect against the smog.

And here's an example of the wonderfully simple and comforting store and company names found in Hong Kong. If this store were in the US, the name would undoubtedly be shortened to some nonsensical term: Fritradco perhaps. Though it is strange to consider that friendship and consumerism can be somehow merged, and to find true friendship in a store... and how sad that friendship could be read as a commodity in this signage.

This is likely to be my last post on Honkers... if we meet one day for lunch, remind me to tell you my Hong Kong stories about the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware, three massages, dim sum, Australia's richest man, toilets with glass doors, the many homes of Jackie Chan, and my dubious sighting of Mr. Matthew Broderick-Parker.

HK4 -- Feng shui and the flight paths of dragons

In the foreground of this photo is the skyline of central Hong Kong, as viewed from halfway up the peak. The close proximity of mountains and the sea are truly awe-inspiring to my mind, having been brought up in the USA's midwest whose features include the Great Lakes and such idiosyncratic topography as kettles and dells. I am from a land shaped by glaciers... Hong Kong it seems was shaped by volcanos.

The city's architecture is influenced by feng shui masters (or so said our driver Jackie when we hired a car one day to show us around). He told us of the dragons who live in the mountains and each day fly down to the harbour for a drink. Buildings have been built with the flight paths of the dragons in mind because the last thing you want is a dragon smashing into your building. One hotel (on the south side of the island) has a huge square cut out of the middle for the dragon to pass through, which brings luck to the building and its inhabitants.
And here is the harbour, with water like dragon-nectar. It is taken from our hotel room window in central Hong Kong, with views across the harbour to Kowloon. Although not explicit in this photograph, this is one of the busiest harbours I've seen... even more action than Sydney's famous harbour. The best part is the extreme variety of vessels we saw: ferries, small cruise ships, barges with cranes, junk boats, and so many others (to attempt to describe them would only exhibit my ignorance of watercraft).

Every night at 8 pm, many of the buildings of Hong Kong participate in a light show, coordinating patterns of flickering lights of varying colours. It lasts about 15 minutes. I wondered if it was somehow set to music, but I never heard anything that matched what I was seeing.. and my attempts to compose a private soundtrack to the sporatic flashes proved futile. It seems you'd have a better vantage point from outside the city centre, or flying over in an airplane. Perhaps it is for the amusement of the dragons on their flights home to the mountain peaks.

HK3 -- Strange fruit and fresh meat

Some alleys of Hong Kong are fresh food markets that go on for blocks. This section specialized on fruits and vegetables. I was able to identify most of what I saw - from the common grape to the spiky-shelled lychee, the chartreuse-coloured starfruit and gorgeous dragonfruit. There remains a fruit I'm stumped by, and regret that I do not have a photograph of it. Shaped like a pear with the peel of an apple... one Hong Kongian translated the name as a "strawberry apple". The internal texture was also pear-like. It is one of the best pleasures of travel - discovering that there are fruits and animals, foods and plants that you've never heard of or imagined.

And there were meats. This picture is one of the tamer stalls - I'm amazed that meat is simply hung out in the open which seems to un-hygenic to my western eyes. I wonder if conditions are so different in Australia or just better hidden from view. Another shop had an entire pig hanging from his hind legs. And yet another had a range of even less-appetizing animal parts hanging from strings. I'll spare you the details. At restaurants there I never got more adventurous than pigeon (a favourite) and goose (a first for me).
Some fish were dead, most were alive. In the foreground of this photograph is a tank of live prawns. There were fish swimming in large buckets, occasionally making an attempt at escape and winding up on the footpath. There they would flail around until the shopkeeper scooped him back into his bucket. Somehow by mixing his metaphors the fish survives -- kicking the fishes, sleeping with the bucket.

HK2 -- the flu(ent) birds.

It was raining on the day we went to see the Yuen Po Street bird garden in Kowloon. It is actually more of a market than a garden, consisting of about 50 vendor stalls selling birds, bird cages and accoutrements, bird seed and feed and bags of live crickets, et cetera. The street runs at a skewed tangent to the flower market. Having never lived in a city with distinct markets and districts, I'm fascinated by the idea of stores organized by their contents -- and how do they compete with one another?Some stalls did specialize. One seemed to only sell exquisite wooden and metal cages, another sold only parrots. You can hear the market from a few blocks away with the steady chirps, squawks and caws of the birds. The parrots had a lot to say, and perhaps they were mimicking some words, but few were fluent in English - endlessly playing the role of a shrill store greeter - "hello...hello"

At this stall, the green parrots were walking free around the countertop - invited to help themselves to the sunflower seeds there. At the bird market and at the Hong Kong Park Aviary, there were signs reminding us to be cautious due to the possibility of the bird flu. Fly --> flew --> has flown.

HK1 -- Nag champa?

Naw, it wasn't nag champa... but I haven't been in a room this incense-filled since I was at university (the first time around). Each of these coils is made of incense. The red card hanging in the center of each is enscribed with a wish or prayer written by one of the visitors to the Man Mo Temple in Hong Kong. The incense coil burns as a continuous wishing, sending smoke skyward. The largest coils were easily a meter in diameter at the widest point, and would take up to a week to burn down completely.

The temple pays tribute to the gods of literature and war -- a fitting combination says this former student of literary criticism. In addition to the coils, there are shrines to each deity and visitors bring fruit and flowers to leave for them. Incense sticks are also for sale in the shrine.

When leaving the temple, those who have made prayers beat a large drum as if to say to the gods: I'm done now, did you get all that?!

Hong Kong Garden

Much of this week has been preparation for my upcoming trip to Hong Kong... the place Aussies so affectionately call "Honkers" (of course pronounced 'honkas'). Some people read travel books or study maps -- I prefer to read fiction, see films, and listen to music. So I'm focusing on those from Hong Kong (Wong Kar-wai, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Faye Wong, etc), and those about Hong Kong... the most interesting being Siouxsie and The Banshees' Hong Kong Garden (1978), with lyrics which change perspective over four verses, from the descriptive (yet very subjective) first lines:

Harmful elements in the air, symbols clashing everywhere...

the second verse, critical of archaic cultural practices:

Junk floats on polluted water, an old custom to sell your daughter...

the third verse of the curious yet cautious tourist:

Tourists flock to see your face, Confucius has a puzzling grace...

finally the ridiculous, the voice of those who only acknowledge Hong Kong through Westernized cuisine and stereotypes:

Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise, a race of bodies small in size,
Chicken chow-mein and chop suey, Hong Kong Garden takeaway

Sioux claims the song was her reaction against racist abuse of the owners of a Chinese restaurant in the UK. In later years, Sioux would prove to be a keen critic of cultural practices and histories. See also: Swimming Horses, Arabian Knights.

Of course this tangent of research tells me very little of Hong Kong... Yet currently in my mind, Honkers will be a sublime mix of the picturesque cinematography of Kar-wai but with an underlying punk aesthetic. Here's hoping...

Shouting at the bar...

Last night there were drinks at a CBD bar (CBD = central business district. The US equivalent is 'downtown') toasting a friend's upcoming 30th birthday. So it was filled with the after-work business crowd until suddenly at 8pm the lights dimmed even more and the music grew louder and suddenly I am shouting things I would normally whisper. In those toxic bar environments I find myself putting on a bit of superficial banter, a false persona of tavern wit, saying things like "do you think many dyslexics spit in the tips jar?" and gossiping about strangers.

It reminds me of driving... I tell people that I hate to drive, which is true... but I rarely tell why. Truth is, it makes me into someone I don't like -- impatient and irritable. At the bar, shallow and clever.

Often I'd rather stay home and read. Or like the David Bowie song goes: "I don't want to go out, I want to stay in / get things done". It's true. I'm ankle-deep in the E.L. Doctorow novel Ragtime (1975) and am enjoying it. It has an element of postmodernist intertextuality that I enjoy -- historical figures interacting with fictional characters, which I suppose would be related to what Linda Hutcheon once termed "historiographic metafiction".

It's a concept that would complicate those disclaimers at the end of fiction films and the start of fiction monographs that (paraphrasing) the characters are fictional and any similarities to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

Instead, some of the characters are real, some are not, you be the judge. Very much like a night at the bar after all.

I don't want to swim the ocean...

It's been a week of facing limitations, and accepting them. Somehow it seems the key is no longer wanting those out-of-reach things.

It's strange -- I've had so many people ask me recently, "are you okay?" and in a way I wasn't. I was drifting too far out in the dark waters of Academian Sea, freaking out whenever some seaweed touched my legs... and now I'm heading back to shore, no longer fighting the tide.

I'm amazed at those people who seem so unstoppable. But even Mark stops for an evening now and then, settles down in front of the television in his pajamas/pyjamas. And Shiloh has a built-in mechanism -- her body says "slow down, soldier!" and she's learned to listen.

My good friend Matt just completed his first year of law school in New York -- (no one lives in Minneapolis anymore) -- "Good on him" as the Aussies say. It's an exquisite meshing when your abilities meet your ambitions. Well done, Matty.

Le Web et Les Chats

Hmmm... I've been feeling nostalgic for the old internet, perhaps more appropriately refered to as the 'world wide web' or the 'information superhighway'... vrooom. It used to be so lo-tech, in a way. All the pages looked more or less the same, and so much of it truly was filled with cliched pages about pets... "Hi, this is me and this is my dog". I imagine these quaint pages are still hidden around somewhere, but they've actually become difficult to find. Perhaps there is indeed an internet janitor who is deleting the old stuff.

So this blog entry is dedicated to my cats. First here's Liz.

To anthropomorphise her... she's sweet but simple, and very loquacious. She humours my attempts to speak her language.

She likes to eat a lot and she sleeps in the bed with me. She's a Sagittarius and was named after HM Queen Elizabeth.


And here is Maggie. Namesake of HRH Princess Margaret.

Her hobbies include: killing small animals, extensive stretching exercises resembling yoga, and generally harassing Liz.

Her anthropomorphisms: She's a bit of a snob, but it's more of a show to mask her shyness.

Maggie is an Aries. Her hidden talent: she can meow some television show theme songs.


Lately, in the tradition of some classic film noir, there has been a third cat... Some dark grey interloper sneaks into the house sometimes to eat the uneaten cat food and is presumably trying to usurp the thrones of Queen Liz and Princess Maggie. Thus the third cat has been dubbed Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor. I've had to break up many a cat turf war in this neighbourhood of cat fanciers. My theory: their antics are all just to rate a mention on this world wide web we weave.

...and then it got cool

Last night Adam and I were high above a river and tipsy, crossing the bridge from North Fitzroy to West Garth in search of a quiet tavern in which to study... and later we crossed back. I thought of other bridges I'd crossed with other people. I told him about my thrill-seeking sister and how she made me climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge a few years back.

I thought of rope-bridge crossing with good mate Shiloh. It was the Carrick-a-Rede in Northern Ireland midway through 2001 when everyone reckons the world was different though it had already changed for me. She took a photograph of me and I took one of her in the midst of crossing. In mine I'm clasping both ropes - it was so windy and I was afraid. In hers, she's fearless. (Mark has that pic of me on his office desk).

There is The Whitney Pedestrian Bridge in Minneapolis - a bridge of yellow and blue, sand and water - that I've crossed more than any other. It spans umpteen lanes of traffic and I would always read that John Ashbury quote inscribed on its beams... The bit I remember, paraphrased from memory: "it is so much like a beach after all - a point at which you stop and think of going no further."

Bridges are meant for decision-making. The perilous height helps the process. By the time you reach the other side, you will have your answer... Ashbury's right, it is like a beach.

(...and later we crossed back)

"...and then it got cool" --J. Ashbury

Fake Thesis # 1 -- The Spectacle of the Breast

In the tradition of coming up with band names with no intention of forming a band... Might I suggest someone write a thesis entitled "The Spectacle of the Breast: Australia's visual fixation with the tit." The thesis is founded on the warcry of the Australian male: "show us ya tits!" For those of you outside the borders of the island continent, the phrase really is an Australian mantra. No lie.

You'd think every day is Mardi Gras (a la New Orleans, not Sydney) here, with women flashing their breasts in return for some plastic beads... But the flashing rarely occurs on the streets of Melbourne, despite the constant requests from the Aussie blokes. Remember Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction a few years back? The media here repeated video and photos of the incident without any of prudish America's breast blurring. What's the big deal, asked Australia!?!

In related news, I saw a young woman on campus recently. She was a typical collegiate -- rather studious looking, attractive but not stunning, dressed for comfort -- with a t-shirt that read: they're real. Of course the shirt drew my attention to her rather large (and apparently natural) breasts... I took her shirt's word for it.

So if anyone wants to write a thesis about breasts in Australia, you're welcome to the topic. And would someone else please explain America's new habit of blurring the mouths of people swearing on television... with the sound already beeped, it all looks like "vacuum" and "lasso" and "beach" to me. Is it possible that children were learning new swear words by watching the movement of silent mouths? If so, that's fascinating and grant-worthy.

Quote Unquote.

"His eye disease rendered his tears ambivalent. But, since he had the simple heart of one who boos the villain, when, as he often did, he found he was crying, he usually became sad." -- Angela Carter, Love (1971)

I read a lot of fiction, and take many notes. A novel regardless of its size usually results in one A4 page of bibliographic information, summary, and the best bit: favourite quotes. The quotes are usually the sort that work well out of the context of the novel often as a bit of wisdom, or passages that introduce a particularly stunning metaphor.

"As long as I could make-believe that love lasted, I was happy - I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck." -- Graham Greene, The End of The Affair (1951)

Before I started taking notes I would read books and promptly forget them. I would forget the glorious details hiding between the covers. Though I will concede there are many experiences that you would prefer to promptly forget, but books aren't one of them.

"...and that's the thing about some librarians - they love telling you a book is out of print, borrowed, lost, or not even written yet. I have a list of titles that I leave at the desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue." -- Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping (2004).

The best thing: Taking down a quote and not quite knowing why at the time, but one day it will make sense -- when you meet or become the library-user, the neck-wringer, or the boy with the leaking eyes.

Game cards do not actually talk.

The childhood game that I miss the most: Guess Who? My sister and I never owned a set and only got to know the game at friends' and relatives' houses.

I have a slight craving to play the game again, but of course as an adult I would prefer to alter the rules. Instead of objective questions (e.g. 'is your person a man?'), it would become a game of subjective questions. Something along the lines of: "would you sleep with that person?" or "would you trust that person with a large sum of money?" or "has your person ever tried heroin?"

Rather than reinforcing an agreed-upon reality, you test how well you know your opponent, and get to know them better in the process. At the same time, you might learn more about your own preferences and prejudices of the characters based solely on their appearance. There would be an element of satire in the realization that you're actually passing judgments on 2 x 3 inch cartoon caricatures.

Is life so much like this game? Each day our relationships, tastes, and insticts about other people change. When we meet someone new, we may notice their gender, hair colour, etc... but what we're really thinking is: 'would I sleep with him?' or 'can i trust her?'

Then again, it may be a sad state if you could claim: 'everything I need to know in life I learned by playing Guess Who?'.

Coconut Shy.

Who doesn't love stumbling across a word or phrase that is unfamiliar to them? Especially when the phrase ends up meaning something completely different to what you'd imagine...

Today's phrase: coconut shy. At first I thought: that's me! I'm coconut shy.

A trip to any reputable dictionary, or online resource quickly dispels this thought. A coconut shy is a sideshow at a fair in which contestants throw (shy = toss, throw) balls at coconuts that are balanced on rings or cups, attempting to knock them off and win a prize -- perhaps the coconut itself.

While I would cringe at the thought of a coconut prize, I would relish the opportunity to torture the foul-tasting nuts by hurling balls at them.

Thanks to H.G. Well's The Invisible Man (1897) for introducing me to this phrase, which I will endeavour to utilize at every possible opportunity.

A Diagnostic.

Those who have known me for long know that I am susceptible to minor bouts of hypochondria, at least as much as the next guy. Over the years I've been heard to proclaim: "If I die from an aneurysm, I called it" as if the shots needed to be called, as in billiards.

It was Rilke who wrote: "one dies the death that belongs to the disease one has."

And in a story by Carson McCullers: "Some night you'll go to sleep with your big nose in a mug and drown... Prominent transient drowns in beer. That would be a cute death."

My newest concern: transcortical sensory aphasia. It is basically the inability to understand spoken or written language while retaining the ability to speak and write. Lately I've had a brain cloud that seems to have settled in, making it difficult to concentrate on any text, and when people speak I just stare at their mouths trying to make sense of it... I know what you're thinking: Is it transcortical sensory aphasia or is it just a case of "what the heck are you even talking about?!"

Perhaps it seems crude to speak of tsa in a seemingly trivial way, but joking aside, if this does turn out to be transcortical sensory aphasia, I called it.

In lieu of a soft beating... a second story of the Menzies building

I'm awful at blogkeeping, so I'm trying to develop some discipline -- a soft beating, if you will (yes, thanks A.B.). The first step, telling people I know that this blog exists and how to find it, and likewise linking blog to blog, like some kind of virtual docking (in all of its meanings).

There was a reiteration today, the same conversation from this blog's entry number one. This time resultant of an attempt to close the windows in the Menzies building, and still talks of suicide ensued. Perhaps the reason we close windows in the autumn ('the fall') has less to do with cold temperatures and more to prevent [the need for woolly] jumpers.

It is somewhat concerning that my colleagues are so a/pathetic -- regarding the ultimate culmination of Thanatos (albeit in its conscious variation).

The Infernal Dictionary Test 2007

I’ve been trying to buy a new dictionary and have been paralyzed with the choice. At the university bookstore there are at least 20 to choose from, different styles from 5 different publishers – it’s the usual suspects: Oxford, Macquarie, Penguin, Webster’s, etc.

Of course they try to provide guidance by assigning levels of depth to dictionaries: concise, abridged, collegiate, pocket. And there are editions and publication years to look out for. Some say you should look for dictionaries that include the current buzz words.

For my own money, I’ve developed what I call the Infernal Dictionary Test 2007: Open the dictionary to ‘infernal’ if there is a separate definition for ‘infernal machine,’ that’s the one to buy.

Kudos go to Angela Carter and her novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), for necessitating my trip to the dictionary so long ago to discover the distinction.

Quadrumvirate

I used to paint, with oils. These are a group of four that I completed a few years ago, tied together in perhaps too many ways: colour palate, canvas size, and theme.

Of course this digital photo representation doesn't do them justice, really. The colour range is actually stronger, the darkest bits are blues and maroons.

I am most interested in art that straddles the border between abstract and representational - shapes are suggested, as well as shadow. Though I'm not saying I've accomplished that here.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who does, knows about, or has an interest in: any art that straddles the border between abstract and representational, especially the notion of abstract photography.

One story of the Menzies Building

In the first class of the semester, your forehead delivers its own unique blend of salted water to your brow, and you get to know each other in the most primal way, deciphering one another from the blended musk. We wield the syllabi like harisens.

“I’ve just turned on the fan, but I don’t know if it will do much good,” offers the professor, “and the windows don’t open any further.” They’re open enough to fit your arm up to the shoulder.

“The windows used to open more and you used to be able to go up on the roof too,” says one of the returning students who knows the whole story, “But one person ruined it for all of us.”