Swallows and Amazons

I remember it being read to me as a child, and I remember remembering it when I lived it, mucking about in boats, building little piers with secret entrances. I remember landing on islands and climbing around old ruins.

In many ways, my dad had the same attitude as the dad in that book. It's been fairly defining and probably why I got to do everything I really wanted as a kid. It's summed up in the telegram the kids get when they ask for permission to go exploring.

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS, IF NOT DUFFERS WON'T DROWN

Toiling in the Fields

The eco lights turn off at sundown.

Another Day Ends

I'm walking into Stanthorpe. It's a small country town with a few churches, shopping centres, the odd cafe run by kindly local ladies with calked up menus, and three pubs, each with its regulars.

It sits low so as you walk in, you can see the hills around with varying levels of haze, and from the valley, spires stick up, outlining the streets you know below.

The day is still warm enough to go out with just a t-shirt, but you can take a jumper if you want to be cosy. The sun has sunk to eye level and without it's menacing heat, it feels quite homely. It's keeping the sky yellow and turquoise before the night paints it a more royal blue and finally throws over a wizard's cloak of stars.

The Balloon

For those who have asked me to write more "situations" and the others who just want something approaching light porn, this is for you.


I bumped into her in a crowd. Honestly I didn't know she'd be there. I had no idea. It took me an eternity to register her. What's it called when you do three double takes? Her mouth moved. A brief flash of perfect teeth through deep pink lips.

"Hello!"

Cheerful, even saying so little. Her eyes squint as she smiles.

"Hi." Awestruck.

She looks down, smiling, and with her weight on one foot, twists the toes of the other foot lightly into the ground. She peers up from under her fringe.

The crowd isn't there anymore. People don't bump into us, they slide around as if we're no longer here; as if we've slipped out of that universe and into our private one. It's quiet. Only her words, her mouth, her hair failling above her eyes. Youthful happiness. 23 but forever 17.

Idle chatter. She's shopping. I have no idea why; she looks perfect in a plain white t-shirt, or an oversized hoodie, buried into a couch watching a movie. Anything else just takes from her her-ness.

We talk about nothing. The kind of things you say to someone intimate. The conversation would make no sense to an observer; the laughter, the mock offence, the occasional smirk, all tied up in an artist's palette of words.

Too soon we must part. Our goodbyes are full of last minute things that have to be said. There is too much familiarity for a real parting.

And then she turns to leave. Saunters away. I can still see her weaving, but I don't see the crowd. Only her, a single bright balloon drifting into the sky.

I have completely forgotten where I'm going.

Fathers and their Sons

For all the sons I talked to who told me about their fathers, don't worry; it's the same for everyone.

There is a lot of pride at stake when a father and a son talk. There is a lot to be won and lost. The son wishes for the father to be proud and to recognise him as a person; strong and independent in his own right. The father wants the love and respect of the son, and gratitude for the life he gave and the sacrifices he made. There is a lot to be one and a lot to be lost.

There is awareness to family too. You know each other well. You have seen one another's best and worst; all those close moments. You know what one another hold dear. This works in two ways.

If a stranger insults you it washes off. Who are they? They dont know you. An insult from a father or son cuts deeper; when it comes from as close as can be, an insult stings far more. And as the insult is thrown, someone you love becomes insulted, so the knife bounces back and chips away at you.

But by that same token a compliment matters so much; the pide in a fathers eyes watching his son grow into a man, or the idoltry of a son who sees that his dad is also a man who has already made and has learned from the mistakes he has yet to make. Both slowly recognising what it is to be related; to share even hair and a smile, a sense of humor, a metabolism, a taste in music. Realising that the one was quite literally made from the other, and that there is almost no one closer in the world who was made so similar.

When a father and a son talk there is a lot of pride at stake. Pride is how you judge yourself, and they're a part of you.

Farming

For my first trick, I'm going to turn this dirt into a cabbage.

Later I'll show you how to make a sheep out of grass using only two other sheep and some water.

Language

I'm feeling a little linguistically impaired these days because I spend all my time around non native speakers. My vocabulary is pared back to the words I can say in other languages so I'm sure to be understood. It's like baby talk, or talking to someone in a bar who you think might stab you if he realises you went to college.

It's funny what words we do learn; how to get to the post office, how to present our passports, how to order the duck with mashed potatoes, a little veg, and many very thank you Mister sir. Earlier I heard an Italian guy use his school-learned vocab about "the problems of drugs" to buy weed. Irony is a dish best served stoned and stuttering.

Realistically you need a different set of words to what you cram in high school. You need to know how to curse or you wont understand movies. You need to know how to say "hey!" in a way that doesn't sound like you're at an interview. You need to be able to flirt without sounding like a loved up teenager from an 80s romcom screaming "je t'aime" at a first story window and holding a stereo over your head.

I miss the blaze and glory of the English language, the colour and texture of good conversation, and being understood when I say something like "an intruiging interlocutor".

Show me to Australia's English department.

Skill of the Moment

I used think it was important to underatand everything. To know the workings of things in order to better use them. These days that is less true. I would settle for better presentation.

If you're flirting with a girl, you don't want to be thinking about the farcical nature of social contracts. You want to say funny, witty things about stuff she has heard of, maybe show a passion for something in life. If you work on a farm you don't need to know the theory of sowing crops, you need to be fit, strong, and not mind long hours.

Understanding is not always a path to happiness, but participation usually is. Being in a moment and engaging with it. That will give you more enjoyment than knowing how many neutrinos hit you every hour.

Engage with the moment like you're playing a sport; with a clear mind and absolute conviction. The exam is over. Put down your pens. Life starts now.

Value Systems

So you start off being nice to everything. Kind to animals, kind to people; murder completely out of the question. You see yourself as moral and your morality means no death and torture.

Then you think, hey, a steak or a fried egg every so often is pretty good, so suddenly a little death isn't that bad. You don't have to kill and you don't have to see the killing, so why not. And if it's $2.95 for eggs from chickens cramped in cages with their beaks cut off or $4.20 for one that sauntered around a field, you're going to start justifying the cage pretty quickly too.

Then you drive to work late and someone cuts you off in traffic so you call him a fucking asshole. This stranger. This person who just thought they could nip out in front of you because they had been patiently waiting for almost 10 minutes, staring at lines of cars filing past. Suddenly all your rage and wrath rises and is focused on them. But that's not who you think you are. It's not who you wanted to be when you got out of bed in the morning. You're moral.

So to keep your title you redefine your morality. If you're wrong and you want to be right, the easiest thing to do is change your definitions. You say for pain and death, animals don't count. Not tasty ones. Maybe dogs and pandas because they're cute. With people you can shout at them but not hit someone. Unless there's a war. Then you can kill everyone, and probably should.

And so your childhood fantasy of being a friend to all peels away over the course of a Tuesday morning until you realise that the real world is not governed by what you should do, but by what you can do. The language of well meaning that decides how you see things peels away like skin off a carcass and leaves the flesh of life beneath, terrifying, nurishing, and real.

Purpose

Dual Core A5 Chip. What the hell does that mean? I'm in electronics and we talk about these things as if they matter. 1500 more colours. I can't tell that many apart. 15 gig ram. What are you going to do with that?  Word processing? Fully digitised optronoscopy. I don't even know what that means.

Somewhere along the line we've forgotten what we're buying. We've forgotten it's just images and sounds. 10MB/s downloads. What are you gonna do? Browse Facebook faster? The words have become meaningless. Abstracted. They no longer align with our experience.

I'd like to see what the actual differences are. Not just the fancy names for things I don't need.

Silence

The secret to wearing earplugs while in a room with someone you don't want to listen to but can't afford to offend is to buy noise cancelling headphones and plug them into an mp3 player that isn't on.

Glorious silence, be mine once more.

Impulsiveness

Being impulsive and living in the moment is not about spontaneously doing random things, contrary to the common conception. It is not about taking off in a strange direction whenever you're bored, because most of the time this doesn't work. It feels forced, contrived, and unnatural.

Rather, it is being ready, having a good state of mind and resources, and then recognising opportunities and capitalising on them. Circumstance is the main factor in the enjoyment of life and you can only manipulate it so much. Sometimes you have to wait for the chaos of the world to send you a good flow, and when it does, paddle fast.

The Meaning of Life

People keep asking in person and in literature "what is the meaning of life" so I've dedicated the past five minutes to the question, applying my rule that I'm a genius and can do this sort of thing elegantly and in a short space of time.

First, one must understand the question, so apply the question to something banal and terrestrial. "What is the meaning of chair?" It's a non statement. It almost disproves the validity of the question. So say we take the spirit the question was intended in and rephrase. "What is a chair for?" A chair is for sitting on.

Secondly, we'll apply our meaningful question to the original problem. "What is life for?" There are only three things you can do with it. Create it, destroy it, or live it. You can't create your own, and destroying it seems innately bad, so I'll conclude in good spirits that life is for living.

Thirdly, you're going to want to do something useful with this information, so make sure that when you're living, you're living well. If you're having trouble, use analogies, like a fan, a chair and a football.

Stay cool, be comfortable, have fun.

Youth

Recently, I've been coasting. I have been sliding along not taking a real interest, lazing in a haze of pleasantness. It's easy to do when life is this good. I forgot to taste food when I eat it. I forgot to enjoy the feel of sunshine, and wind. I forgot to really listen to new people for their take on life.

Eventually, you start to feel like you have things set. Like you have the right outlook and the right knowledge to be happy. As if anything else is unnecessary bunk just floating around.

But life isn't about arriving, it's about moving, about change, new things, experiences. It's about feeling like you're about to take that last step off a diving board every second. It's about participating, and letting what's out there get to you, affect you, and become a part of you.

That's what being young is. Being affected. Listening. Being open to change in your heart and your mind. And if you remember that, you can be young for as long as you want.

Philip K. Dick

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Clubs

Outside, I can already hear the bass, like a premonition of what's to come. It sounds like sweat and drunkenness, public urination, and late nights standing in a chipper swaying gently in the sterile lighting trying to focus on the menu while an Italian behind the counter stares at you like you're what's wrong with capitalism. But it hasn't come to that yet. The night is young.

The place is glitzy, and a thousand people pass by. A guy in a shirt and pointed brown shoes, next a girl in a frilly blouse and heels, the next in a long dress and hair flowing. They all flit around the street, offerening themselves up like art. I am a conaisseur; appreciating, admiring, ranking.

Two tattood men are wearing suits at the door. Bouncers are the only tattood people I've seen in suits. It makes them look simultaneously more menacing, official, and moronic. They let me straight in wothout id and stop a guy who's clearly 30 after me.

Bouncers always let me in. I think it's for the same reason girls' parents like me. I've never punched anyone and I wouldn't know where to start. I know when to hold eye contact and when to avoid it.

The brunette at the bar ; good time to hold eye contact. After we've "eyefucked" for a few moments, I go up to the bar and she starts saying something but the music is too loud. I lean in and she repeats it once in a normal voice, the second time shouting. If it was witty at first, it isn't anymore.

"I like your shirt."

Everyone loves a stripey blue shirt. I smile and mime "thank you" and she smiles to herself. Realistically, it's going to be hard to get a conversation going here, so I ask her if she wants to dance which of course she does.

On the dancefloor there isn't enough space to swing or anything, so we stand about doing that sort of silly dancing that is a step below epilepsy and a step above transferring your weight from foot to foot while standing.

From here we could kiss without even exchanging names. Why not. Get your kicks for the evening, make you feel like you're there for a reason. No one will even be surprised if you don't know.

Eventually we're glistening with sweat and I gesture toward the smoking area for some air. The irony is wasted on no one.

Outside, the music is quieter, and the sounds of chatter spread out takes over. Laughs, shouts, drunken arguements come from all around. It's only then I pick up her accent.

She starts telling me about her trip. All the usual crap. This isn't her yet, this is a montage of cut outs from ads for camper vans and hostels and trips to the great barrier reef. She's not used to her own words so she has to warm up to get there.

I ask what her favourite thing was. Skydiving. Freedom. Exhilaration. I ask what she wants to do most. Hold a Koala. Cute. Then I ask my favourite; why did you leave home? She gives the usual... job, sun, experiences, travel, whatever.

This is my favourite part.

I ask "why did you *really* leave?"  and I look at her as if I *know*, and she doesn't have to lie to me. She starts flowing then. Tells me real things about herself like what she things of her friends, who she loves in her life, who messed her up. Important things. Things you don't get at a wine and cheese reception, chortling over a good bailout joke.

A while passes and we chat. We bond. We share. It's wonderful to have someone let you in, even if there are cigarette butts all over the floor, and beer mixed with ash in the glass ashtray.

A little later a friend of hers passes by and I take the opportunity to excuse myself to the WC. I smile as I walk away so she knows I'm coming back.

I walk across the loud dancefloor, pushing through the crowd, and in the door into the toilet. A guy pushes out past me as i walk in, and the hand drier that was on winds down.  The music is far away again as soon as the door shuts behind me.

I walk up to a urinal. There's piss on the floor. Seriously, after 20 years of practise, you'd think people could hit the bowl. The only things you do more are breathe and walk.

I start going and pee yellow because its the 21st century and I eat more vitamins than I need. Some guy pushing in the door of the toilet shouts back at his friend and, laughing to himself, slides up to the urinal beside mine even though there're three free beside eachother.

"Good night buddy?"

He broke unial etiquette. He's clearly a douchebag. Close this conversation down.

"Pretty good."

Perfect. Polite, and non committal.

"Oh! Very nice! Got any foxy ladies then?"

Seriously, who says foxy ladies. I smile, as though smiling means something.

In a moment we've finished, zipped. We're shuffling to the sinks and the mirrors and the door.

"Ha! Good on ya man!"

I see it coming before it happens, and when it happens it does so in slow motion. Dread. His whole body opens as he swings about and pats me on the shoulder with his disgusting unwashed hand. That was completely unnecessary.

I shrug in an "I don't know" way to get rid of him, and he leaves the way he came in, laughing to himself. The club gets louder for a second as he opens the door and then turns to a low din as it slams.

I look at myself in the mirror.

This is clubbing.

Drying Clothes

They're not going to dry in the room, and driers are crap.

Put 'em on. Go for a 10 minute walk. Come home, change clothes. Repeat.