...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.