Rush of blood to head, aggressive thoughts.
Whaat… how dare you?! I’m actually quite fast you know. I’m just choosing to go slow. Well maybe I’ll just show you how fast I am!
Faint echo of self-chastising thoughts
why are you being so pathetic? just go at your own pace!
quickly extinguished by a potent mix of adrenaline and something like testosterone
Then: speed up, but by all means do not show them your panting and sweating.
It must look effortless.
I have this clear memory of being in a lecture at uni and having this vision of the earth zoomed out, with humans moving around in repetitive, pre-determined patterns, a little bit like ant movements. Teeming humans. I understand what it means intuitively, but can’t really articulate it. It’s something about the limits of our understanding and ability to effect change on the world.
I often get that feeling when I have to ingest a lot of factual information about something, or even analyse a concept. Humans trying to understand and critique human systems of thought and behaviour, using brains that are so unavoidably shaped by the same systems of thought and behaviour. Err…it’s a bit bias. We think we’re a lot smarter than we actually are, or can be.
One of the most crude examples was in Year 10 science when we learned about the stupidity hierarchy of animals – small unexciting sea creatures, insects, dogs, apes, humans (in rough and almost certainly inaccurately remembered order). The intelligence level was determined by their similarity to humans. It doesn’t even pretend to be an objective measure.
I read this fantastic essay by Zadie Smith about David Foster Wallace. I like her non-fiction so much better than her fiction. She talks about ‘Forever Ahead’, one of his stories in Brief Interviews. A boy is at an old public pool resolving to try the diving tank for the first time. He is queuing for the ladder, and watching the woman in front of him dive in:
Smith: “The difference is awareness (this is always the difference in Wallace). The boy seems to see clearly what we, all those years ago, felt only faintly. He seems that ‘the pool is a system of movement’, in which experience is systematized (‘There is a rhythm to it. Like breathing. Like a machine’)…”
Smith, quoting an excerpt from DFW’s story: “Listen. It does not seem good, the way she disappears into a time that passes before she sounds. Like a stone down a well. But you think she did not think so. She was part of a rhythm that excludes thinking. And now you have made yourself part of it too. The rhythm seems blind. Like ants. Like a machine.”
There’s a lot more to Smith’s essay than fear of automatism. But I’ll leave you to read it, and the short story too.
Moments like finding that essay remind me how much I love reading. You think that there’s almost nothing that nobody else has thought about, but there’s almost always someone whose much further along in their thinking than you. It’s hit and miss finding them though.
I don’t know if there’s any intrinsic value to working these conundrums out yourself; it may be a bit overrated.
Got a shock at Southbank on Monday night when the Casino’s fire torches flared up, roaring and blasting heat onto my face. It was already a stinking hot night and from what I understand, Melbourne was under a total fire ban. The Casino must have had a permit, as the New Year’s fireworks did. The torches are an odd symbol in a state beset by bushfires and trying to cut down on its carbon emissions. Apparently they’ve been around for over a decade. What do you think? Hot or not?
I’m not sure why the torches offended me. Maybe because they seem to represent what I hate about the casino: its aggressive promise of glitz, glamour and excitement, and the deliberately contrived atmosphere: safe, sterile and airless; designed to get your head into a space where problem gambling addictions can breed uninterrupted by pesky thoughts about how you’ve just spent beyond your means, or that your family’s worrying about you, or that you’re not, in truth, having that much fun.
Obviously not all Casino experiences are like that, and some people actually enjoy themselves.
A friend pointed out, in a potentially confronting but affectionate reality check, that I’m the prototype of the inner city dweller who looks down on the suburban way of life. You know, that snobby latte sipper who’s said to rain on the parade of everyday Australian suburbanites whenever powerful interests groups want to build a freeway on behalf of said suburbanites?
My friend’s comment was probably justified by a car trip in which me and another friend pulled the shit out of the Glenwaverly to Keysborough stretch of Springvale Road: a tavern advertising Manpower’s imminent visit, homogenous brick houses, ridiculous numbers of chain takeway joints, caravan sale depots, and the Lighthouse Christian church (nothing wrong with religion, just the name – so cheesy).
Anyway, I ended up sheepishly admitting that I suffered from under an unexamined and patronising delusion: life in the city is better than in the suburbs, and if people in the suburbs think they’re happy, then they’re living under some kind of false consciousness. Based on the assumption that everyone likes everything I like, and if they don’t, they should.
Things that I like:
Assumption:
(but what about, for example, Eltham and Sunbury? I could probably tell you others, if I didn’t know so little about the suburbs that I so joyfully write off).
Logical conclusion to my patronising assumptions: if inner city living was more affordable, most people would move from the suburbs; that if public transport was more accessible, comfortable and convenient, most people would catch public transport.
Reality: I’m not sure. Some aspects of ‘liveability’ and ‘amenity’* are no doubt universal – not having to travel too far to work, or having a park to walk around in. Maybe some of the other things I like are too. If there’s any research out there about it, I’d love to see it. I just don’t have time to find it…
But I’m sure some people don’t want to live right next to other people; they want to have a big backyard for their kids to play in, to build that verandah. Some people actually like driving. Maybe they like the privacy. I hate the privacy. I feel like we have too much privacy. The lack of social interaction and diverse external stimuli is bland and uninspiring.
I’m starting to hate cars, but in a mundanely righteous sort of way. I don’t like their noise, and because I’m often riding my bike, I really see them as a danger. Sometimes I judge car drivers, if they have an easily available option to walk or catch public transport and choose to drive instead.
I’m going to try to stop doing this, because it’s completely stupid. One of my criteria for judgement is environmental, but I do all sorts of things that I know are un-environmental, like sometimes going on two overseas trips a year. I really only ride my bike because it’s easy and I like doing it better. But that’s why people drive their cars too.
A few other things:
Turns out there’s a whole Wikipedia entry on suburbia bashing, ‘a negative discourse about Australia suburbia that is relatively prominent in Australia’.
My friends started the Suburbanauts, a blog about exploring life in the Melbourne’s suburbs, specifically, shopping strips (i.e. not malls, but little shop clusters). They are the kind of people who have lots of interesting ideas but don’t share them with enough people.
*Ironically both words purport to describe a state which most people want, yet are bureaucratic or academic jargon to people who are not bureaucrats or academics. Could this be a problem with government and policy more generally when they seek to ‘engage’ the ‘stakeholders’?
Awful mother-daughter conversation overhead on tram. Nagging, stingy. So mundanely base, and yet frighteningly familiar.
Daughter, new uni student, trying to get her mum to buy her an annual metcard. ‘But you bought Alex one.’ She won’t let it go.
Daughter so well dressed – leather handbag, pearl earrings, sophisticated black sweater and jeans – that at first I can’t tell if she’s 20 or 35. Mother is dressed in that ‘funky’ boutique style favoured by some middle-aged women; shapeless garments in good quality fabric and red wooden beads.
Absent brother ‘Alex’ (travelling overseas) had only messaged his mother once, to ask her to pay his phone bill. This mentioned twice.
Mother tells daughter that Alex got her to pay for it by telling her his friends’ parents spent heaps more money on them.
Daughter asks mother if she’s checked the internet for messages from Alex.
The mother had checked his Facebook, ‘But he’s hiding a lot of photos from me. I think he’s doing a lot of drinking.’ Surly daughter mutters, ‘What did you expect?’ Mother poisonously, ‘He’ll get himself into all kinds of trouble, drinking in a place like THAT.’
Daughter checks the internet on her phone. Mother peers over shoulder, ‘You can check Facebook on your phone?’
As I disembark, mother is telling daughter they’re going to buy some linen, for uni. ‘But that’s all we’re buying…Oh, and I have to get some new joggers.’
Brunswick: so delighted to see this riding home one night.
And right next door. How about that hedge?
These two are from another street in Brunswick. Slightly more modest, and a little bit delicately beautiful, I think.
Dazzling kitsch from the Abruzzo Club on Lygon Street.
This was at Esprit in Carlton: just horrible. If you don’t buy stuff from a chain store, you’re not generous, and should feel guilty? (According to beautiful girl with a dreamy cloud of curly hair, who actually looks a bit whingy and insipid?)
More Lygon St East Brunswick action. I guess the Coca Cola industry benefits quite well from Australia’s climatic conditions at Christmas?
Who’s going to stand up for everyday Australian blandness in the face of this cloying whimsy?
Had a weekend in Blairgowrie, hence had time to take photos of Christmas beatles close up. My friends and I actually set these two up. This was the courting period.
Now is this actually mating? Not being familiar with the biology of Christmas beatles, we were unsure. For more insect porn, see Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno. Seahorses are the most romantic.
Christmas bike. Awesomely decadent, entirely unnecessary. Brilliant. At Canning Street lights (best bike lights in Melbourne?)
I featured this guy in my last post. Blow up Santa on blow up snow globe, which actually blows with snow (it’s electrically powered). He’s located in an alley in East Brunswick. People stop and gawp (including young teenage boys on their skateboards, not too cool evidently?)
Anyway, he has a night persona, but it’s friendly and not threatening.
Last I saw he wasn’t doing so well, but yesterday I saw the woman who lives there wearily trying to fix him up, looking a bit weary and sick of the whole thing actually (I guess she’s under pressure from her kids).
post ironic use of omfg
pictures of people getting involved with the wrong people
google says no to independent thought
apping of western culture in india
intra fridge
infrastructure is sexy
i’m cry in the cinema
which of the following factors can be used to help explain why generation y women no longer feel the need to be feminists?
call her ‘julia’ but not abbott ‘tony’
hairy female underarm in slut walk
there is an awful lot of money riding on the continued perception that women are disadvantaged
are teenagers and technologys destroying our beautiful language
what the hell is occupy Melbourne
“even silence has an end”
chernobyl climate change
My nanna used to live on the main street of Toodyay (tiny historical town in WA). She talked about a lot of people we didn’t know and I always told myself she knew everything that was going on in that street. She probably didn’t though. I just liked the cliche, seeing community in the village-style surveillance.
Growing up in Albany, I sometimes used to walk around with mum looking at houses. It was one of our more successful bonding activities. I’d comment too loudly on the houses – ‘Ew! That’s horrible!’ – and mum’d have to tell me to quieten down – ‘Shh.. they might hear you!’
In this era of phone cameras, sometimes I take photos of the front of houses. It feels a bit dodgy though, and I rarely share them with anyone. Is it invasion of privacy? It’s not like any member of the public can’t just walk by and look at it anyway.
Many people seem to dress their house up specifically for the gaze of outsiders. My main concern, really, is that I’ll scare them if they see me taking photos, that they’ll think I’m stalking them or plotting something vile.
Anyway, I took a few of the Christmas decorations in Brunswick East. I figured they’re fair game, as they are definitely in the nature of a big of a public display.
Walking around, it seemed to me that Christmas decorated houses tend to cluster in particular streets. Perhaps the presence of one is like a virus, inspiring others with the spirit of Christmas community and/or mild competition. Obviously I was unscientifically quick to jump to the clustering conclusion; maybe it was just another community-suggestive cliche I wanted to believe in.
Anyway, here is the exhibition so far. Voting opens today.
4 December: Topiary christmas tree
5 December: Blow up santa sitting on blow up snow globe
Erected around 6 December: Christmas commodore decorated with pearls, candy canes, and seashell-shaped alfoil
and on the other side of the same house front yard, a little tree, with that topiary tree looming in the background.
6 December: This is my favourite though. It has a pleasant homeliness.
Just now the ALP voted to change their platform to support gay marriage. This is good. But they also voted for a conscience vote, which is probably bad, because any gay marriage law is unlikely to get enough votes to pass.
We heard this politician called Polley whom I’ve never heard of before standing up there to say it was hard for people like her to stand up and, ‘as a minority’, argue against ALP support of gay marriage. Similarly, Deborah O’Neill, also previously unknown to me, suggested, sounding like an annoying 1st year arts student, that the gay marriage supporters were conducting some kind of smear campaign based on construing anti gay marriage people’s ‘other-ness’. That these politicians felt, as opponents of marriage equality, that they were somehow a persecuted minority is obscenely ironic. But obviously not the kind of parallels and links between concepts that their minds draw easily. Oops but look, now I’m at it too: construing them as ‘other’.
It’s all so depressing, not just because opposition to gay marriage hurts gay people but because in most cases it probably reflects an inability to imagine what it would actually be like to be gay and have your own government refuse to acknowledge that you’re ‘normal’.
A lack of imagination, and the closely related inability to understand or acknowledge nuance, is what makes politicians and politics so boring. On message on message on message, driving their message home in the same predictable way, like a tractor.
They think that’s what people want, the certainty and predictability. Maybe they’re right. Just repeat the words ‘Make History Melbourne’ (Greens) or ‘Victorian families’ (Labor) or ‘environmental vandal’ (Greens) or ‘bad tax’ (Liberal) and the voters will roll over and show you their bellies, the logic goes.
I’ve just been reading this, another David Foster Wallace gem from Up, Simba, an essay in Consider The Lobster.
‘It’s hard to get good answers as to why Young Voters are so uninterested in politics. This is probably because it’s next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he’s not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry; the fact of the feeling’s enough. Surely one reason, though, is that…cool, interesting alive people are not drawn to the political process. Think back to the sort of kids in highschool who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game…In fact, the likeliest reason that many of us care so little about politics is because modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard to name, much less talk about.’*
*1) I was a prefect at school, and occasionally suffer from being ambitious in a sad way 2) I do know some nice politicians who don’t hurt me deep down in ways that are hard to name*
a poem so directly taken from the Herald Sun that its* probably a copyright infringement
mps strike it rich
pay will soar pay will jump pay packet will swell
brace for public backlash
power whack
pre-Christmas Christmas grinch
blow budget blow blow out
bump up annual bills where you live
Victorian families
fear
look who’s a big boy now
yakini tore into his birthday present
easing into his new bachelor pad
touching the hearts of melburnians
keep junk in trunks..
(2 full stops sub-editor error)
boardshorts hotter than budgie smugglers**
poll commissioned by quicksilver***
*sub-editor error
**’A straw poll by the herald sun revealed eight out of 10 women said budgie smugglers were only attractive only on hot bodies’ [n=?]
***[boardshorts manufacturers]
how will we jazz up that miranda devine column about the state anti-corruption commission? a scientific microscope (from year 10) with a map of victoria hanging over the edges.
