You didn’t hunt that strawberry.
A conversation recently held between myself, and my buddy Brock.
“I still have sugar under my fingernails.”
“More evidence.”
“I’m like an ant.”
“An ant that can only eat sugar.”
“Yeah well, you know I’m good for it.”
“Seriously, did we buy anything without sugar? Ok, the milk has no sugar. What else did we buy? Fruit, stolen baked goods?”
“Yeah it’s true.”
There was a slight lull in the conversation here, and then…
“I had to hunt this strawberry.”
“No you didn’t, Brock. You just paid money for it, actually, Mitchell paid money for it. Actually, in reality no one hunted that strawberry, someone just picked it off a bush and then someone else packed it in a punnet, and then we paid money for it.”
“Yeah, but that’s the equivalent of hunting now days.”
And that’s when I stopped eating the strawberry and looked at it and wondered.
This time next week I will literally be touching down on the other side of the world. I will be heading out into a brand new hunting ground. And I am going to have to hunt that Strawberry. I am going to have to be as fast and ruthless as I have ever been in my life. I am going to have to beat every other strawberry hunter to the punnet.
Because if I don’t get that punnet, I might not get to eat the strawberry. Or worse, someone might say to me “You didn’t hunt that strawberry.”
Nightswimming
It’s really quiet now.
I first noticed this quiet the other day, but it’s much more pronounced now.
The other day I put on your sweater and shirt. The ones you had been wearing to go to the shop, and had left discarded on the bed here, in your study. I stood there for a while, in my underwear and your still warm clothes, and looked at your bookshelf. Your house is full of beautiful books. Books I want to read, books I have read, empty books with soft cream pages, and books that aren’t even yours. Then I noticed it, the quiet. It wasn’t just an absence of sound, it was a feeling that permeated everything, as ingrained as the air I breathed. The sort of silence that accompanies absence (A sound I am all too familiar with.) I walked around softly on the balls of my feet on the way back to your bedroom. I took notice of all the little signs of you as I passed and even though I knew it was only a matter of time before this very same quiet took a hold I crawled back into your bed and fell asleep.
Now, here it is again. My attempt to combat this heavy silence? Music of course. I’ve opened up your itunes and scrolled through, and found Nightswimming by R.E.M. The only song by Stipes and Co in your whole music library, and it just happens to be my favorite. It’s not just the melody that I love, which swells and ebbs just as a gentle tide should, it’s the way the words and the voice evoke that feeling of nostalgia so perfectly. Nice choice, if I could only have one R.E.M song, Nightswimming would be it.
Still, this isn’t the sort of silence you get rid of with a pop ballad. Although it does provide a nice soundtrack I suppose…
You should see your place now, the parlor is filled with all sorts of junk. Boxes of linen, screwdriver sets, a sandwich press, an old analog television, a clock. But let’s face it, your house is in need of a clock. It seems so full, you can barely move through the rooms. But it is so very empty. Your absence is overstated, everywhere I look it confronts me. No escaping it. And that’s what makes this quiet different from the other day. The other day, as I snuggled back down beneath the covers, inhaling the smell of you on the sheets I knew you’d be back. Now I don’t know if we’ll ever both be laying in that room on those sheets again. It’s a much more pronounced quiet.
I feel a bit like a voyeur really. I’m noticing all these little things I didn’t see before, for instance; You’ve got writing on your desk, but it’s faded and I can’t make out all the words. You’ve got a really good nail file. You keep a lot of old receipts.
I know for a fact, that eventually you forget the sound of people’s voices, the smell of their skin. I want to try and remember for as long as I can.
No one ever asks how do they? They always ask why.
I am pretty guilty of always asking why too.
I have been asking why a lot today.
And yesterday.
And the day before.
And I recall it was the first thought on my mind after “where” when I woke up on Friday.
But something tells me the how is the more important question. If you ask the how, you attempt an explanation of the whole course of events, and not just the final moment.
So I am going to start asking how. Right now.
But it’s not easy.
Then again, nothing worth doing ever is, right?
Good night, sweet dreams.
Whispered in the night,
In the dark recess of my mind,
Are fears, unconquered,
Of what is known and what is lost,
Fragments of space and time,
Played out like children’s lullabies.
And I am a ghost,
Floating down familiar passage ways,
Watching the process,
Hearing the protests,
But mute to speak my mind.
“Running over the same old ground”
But I’m just walking along,
That ground beneath my feet,
Learning to find strength,
In the eyes of the strangers on the street.
Sometimes what you want,
Is never what you need,
And sometimes what you need,
Is something no one else can provide.
—
I went for a walk last night, after the witching hour and watched the lightning through my father’s old binoculars. There was a storm in the sky and a storm in my head. But even though a thunder storm is frightening, there’s a dangerous beauty about it. I feel like my life’s a bit like a storm at the moment. A lot of uncertainty, but I think it’ll be followed by something as majestic and powerful as the lightning that splits the sky.
Or at least that’s what I hope.
Questions, questions, questions.
Why don’t people ask the question?
Or, why don’t the right people ask the question?
Is it just the way of the world that the people you want to ask never will, is it your wanting that prevents it?
Should you just be showing anyway, regardless of if the question has been asked. Should you give away the answer freely? But no, I’ve always believed you should ask for answers. The act of asking its self is part of the answer.
How much do you give before you stop and say ‘No, I’m keeping this for me.’ Is there a correct amount? If you’ve given to much can you ever take it back? And if you want something in return, and no hand is giving it to you, should you steal it? (Zarathustra says yes.)
I’m so confused at the moment, and I very much fear I’m destined to live in this sort of confusion for the rest of my mortal life.
When are the meanings going to crystalize? (Maybe the answer is never, and that’s why no one asks for it. Because it’s too depressing.)
I hate it when I say things that I only half mean to people. When I say what I want to say, and not what I feel. Why am I so ashamed of my own feelings? Is it because I have to conquer them?
What’s the reward for the conquerer? And what happens to the conquered?
Ah. Questions, questions, questions.
Can’t you let me be, for just one day?
A promise, to myself.
Today I will avoid everything. All of it. After this moment I will not think of it. I will stop frowning.
At work I will focus my energy on the job. I will smile at every single person. I will finish the rest of my work for the week.
After work I will go and buy myself a good bottle of Pinot Noir. The kind I usually only buy for special occasions.
Then, tonight I will go home, and cook a dinner, and sit on the chair outside and drink my pinot. I will laugh with my friends.
I will run a warm bath, I will let myself relax. Then I will try and let everything go with the water as it runs down the drain.
I will get an early night. I’ll let sleep take me, I won’t resist it. I won’t ask the empty air for answers.
And. Tomorrow morning, when I open my eyes, I’ll try again, to avoid everything.
Love of wisdom.
The last issue of Grok was sitting on the library counter this morning.
And due to lack of patrons to serve, I had a flip through and read it. I came across an article entitled “Life After Arts Degrees” by Jessica Craig Parker. Being an Arts Grad myself, it piqued my interest and I decided to read it.
When I reached the end, I found myself feeling inexplicably saddened by its content. Not because it was badly written, (quite the opposite, it was wonderfully written and thoroughly enjoyable to read!) but because it highlighted that prevailing ideology in the world today that an arts degree is useless.
I have long been used to the playful jibes from my friends,
“Oh. You know you could get your degree off the back of a cornflakes packet right?”
“Can you even do anything useful with philosophy anyway!?”
“Who cares about Literature! No one actually analyzes it anymore anyway!”
The comments were made in jest by budding psychologists and aspiring engineers. Jaded law students and cynical occupational therapists to be. The only meaning behind their words was a playful one, none of them seriously believed my degree was worth any more or less than theirs. As a good friend of mine studying Multimedia and Tourism said “Universities in Perth today are just places where you go to buy a degree. They’re not making us learn anything. We’re just going through the motions so we can come out with a piece of paper that says we’re worth something.”
Certainly, my partner, who studied broadcast and print journalism at university says the same thing. All through his degree he was harping on about how he didn’t feel as if he was learning anything in his core units. And the only classes he really enjoyed were his history electives.
So here I am. The arts grad. The one with the cereal box degree, and I seem to be the only one of my friends who doesn’t feel like my studies were a waste of time.
My Mother is never ashamed to tell people that her daughter studied an arts degree. She says it proudly. When people roll their eyes or suggest that I wasted my time and money, my Mama, she just laughs at them.
“Oh, I don’t know.” she says, “My daughter seems to know more about the world than most of us.”
It’s touching my Mum thinks that. But why is it that she thinks that way?
I certainly won’t pretend to know the answer. (One thing I learned whilst studying metaphysics and existentialism was that there’s no point pretending to understand the way another person thinks.) But what I will say is this…
In my first year of tertiary study my philosophy professor reminded us what the roots of the word philosophy really meant. phileîn, and sophía are the ancient Greek words which make up the modern word Philosophy, and they translate simply to “love of wisdom”. My Prof, who I will probably list as one of my hero’s for the rest of my life, went on to say that as long as one was always inquiring, always searching, always seeking, they would be honoring a proud tradition which has brought so much to our world.
What can you do with philosophy? An interesting question. What have the bright minds of our past done with it? The answer lies all around us. Science, Politics, Psychology, Sociology… and these are just a few disciplines I’ve pulled from the top of my head which have their roots in philosophy.
Who cares about literature? Every single one of us. We care about recording our ideas, our thoughts, we care about creating a testament to the time we live in, and trying to understand the times which have passed before.
Could I have got my degree off the back of a cornflakes packet? Certainly, I could probably have bought it from some website lurking in some corner of the cyber realm.
But if I did that, would I have learnt the patience to interpret Nietzsche, Hume and Descartes? Would I have discovered the joys of Kierkegaard and Husserl? Would I have delved into the post atomic bomb psyche of the Japanese? Would I have ever read A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul? Or Things Falling Apart By Achebe? Would I proudly quote Fanon when speaking passionately about the dangers of nationalism? (Because ‘National Consciousness which is not Nationalism is the only thing that will give us an International Dimension’ Thanks Frantz!) Would I care so deeply about social divide in the middle east, or the exploitation of people in South East Asia by Global conglomerates? (Perhaps, but would I look to philosophy and literature to try to gain an understanding of it!?) Would I still state proudly that Shakespeare taught me that past is prologue, that only by dwelling upon what has gone before us, can we write a new chapter for tomorrow?
Would I spend my time sitting here, typing up all these rambling words and projecting them out onto the internet for strangers to read?!
Probably not.
Without my ‘useless’ arts degree, I would probably never spend my time questioning the dangers of apathy, or wondering how C.G. Jung’s theories of archetypes can help us understand different cultures. I wouldn’t attempt to apply post colonial theory to Vietnamese and Soviet literature, to try and understand what the voices of those oppressed peoples were trying to explain.
I wouldn’t think about any of these things, because I would have never been exposed to them. But I was exposed to them. And rather than feeling like that exposure was a waste of time which just let me use (as Ms. Parker put it) Cunt and Voltaire in the same sentence. I graduated from my degree feeling emboldened by what I’d learned. And ready to keep searching for answers to the questions which we as human beings are eternally asking.
No time spent learning, is ever time wasted. Regardless of what it is you’ve learned.
There is at least one thing me and the author of that Grok article agree on. An arts degree really is what you make it. So make it into something. Don’t be afraid of it.
Close friends.
Death and I are very close friends.
Although she saddens me, with her abrupt ways. Angers me, with her stubborn sense of finality,
I still have in my heart, a profound reverence towards her.
Today was a beautiful windswept day. Perhaps the last of the winter rains fell last night, spring has arrived and although it’s days number only one, there was a sense of the freshness of spring apparent in the air today. The tulips and rhododendrons I had planted at the onset of winter showed their first sprouts to me today. They peeked above the dark soil, bright green globes of life against the cool black. I spied them on my way out the front door this afternoon, I set out with a troupe to the local store to buy ingredients for nachos. My two neighbors, two other friends, the boy, and myself. All six of us trotted down the shop, enjoying the soft sunlight, watching its brilliant afternoon glow. It wasn’t yet twilight when we set out, the sky was still a cornflower blue and the world was still lit up brightly, the smokey lilac of dusk only just seeping in at the edge of the horizon.
I was absorbed the entire walk, both to the shops and back. Whilst my male companions all became fixated on a piece of metal jutting out of the ground at the junction between the oval and the bin for red cross donations, I remained fixated on the flutter of a willy wag-tail. The mischievous little bird dancing about in front of our path, almost as if his flitter back and forth was an act of defiance towards us.
My friends set about the task of trying to pull out the metallic shaft. My prince charming leading the way by giving it a good kick with his foot and then wiggling it back and forth in the earth. I resolved to retrieve the nachos on my own. Sat my beer down on top of the Salvo’s bin and walked the last few hundred meters to the shop alone. Inside I managed to avoid an acquaintance that I didn’t wish to speak to and retrieve the required ingredients in good time. At the cashier I bought a lollipop as a treat for myself and was hurrying back to my beer and friends when I was suddenly struck with the memory of our last remaining rat, Jacques. Jacques was the last of four brothers, and we had given him some cabbage early this morning. I thought of left over baked potatoes in our fridge and resolved to give the little guy a treat when I got home, he deserved one too. He lived all alone in his large cage. A cage that had once housed his siblings. He rarely bothered to climb to the top level anymore. Preferring the dark bottom corner with all the torn up sheets and sawdust and bedding.
As we walked down Love St I was captivated by the deciduous trees in the area. They hold a strange beauty, with there bare limbs silhouetted against the sky. Staring up at the branches, exposed and barren I foolishly loosened my grip on my beer and it fell to the ground. Smashing the neck and spilling the last few mouthfuls. I felt a bit silly having dropped it as It was only the second drink I’d partaken in the whole day. With the jeers of my compatriots in my ears I picked up the glass and deposited it in the nearest bin. I spent the rest of the walk back relatively silent. I consoled myself about the beer with my lollipop and only made a few throw away comments, hardly following the conversation.
As soon as we walked through the door I headed for the fridge, pulling out a baked potato and slicing it in half. Jacques slept under the awning by the back door, right next to the parsley and basil. When I opened the door to his cage to give him his well deserved potato, I found him lying still upon his bed.
You always know when the life has left something. The absence of spirit is painfully obvious. His breakfast was barely touched. Only a few meager bite marks littered the edges. I felt my throat tighten as I moved my hand to touch him, there was no warmth left in his tiny black and white body, and a trail of tiny black ants were moving in an orderly procession to and from the corner of the cage.
I sat there for a moment, my hand resting on his tiny frame, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Because he had always been a resourceful little man, and to some people he might have been a plague bearer, but to me he was a hero, a survivor. The last of his tribe.
I went back inside to ask my neighbor to borrow a shovel and dug a hole by the lavender bush. I put him to rest there, with his brother and his cousin, our cat Enki. I committed him into the earth for it to do with as it wishes. Then I sat there, my hands on his resting place, and I talked to death again.
She frequents my life, she seems to visit me quite often. I remember our first encounter, the day after my 7th Birthday, when Reginald my Grandfather dropped to the floor, it was a hemorrhage in his brain.
I was sad, that first meeting, and it wasn’t my Mother’s promise that I’d see Grandad again that stemmed my tears. It was something else, a strange feeling of clarity. Like a softly whispered epiphany. Something that made my mind turn my eyes to the sky and see the sun, feel the wind, hear the gentle heartbeat of existence which every created thing possesses. Then, when I was seven, I thought that sweet realization was my Grandfathers soul ascending to heaven. When I was 15 and I held the cold, still hand of my Father I knew it was death. Her presence laden with melancholy, but offering a bitter-sweet comfort. For even though her presence only manifests when a life is taken, she always leaves the living with gentle memories. Each of them etched deeply in the heart because of her arrival.
I shed a few tears at this meeting. Not as many as our first, but still, they wet the soil, and I asked death if she was swift. But she couldn’t answer, she never can. She just stood there, stoic, silent, evanescent by my side. A heavy hand on my shoulder, helping me say my goodbyes, as she always does. Then, when I knew my heart had nothing left to say, I almost felt her hands softly touch my face, and I almost heard her sentimental reassuarance that we will meet again.
So. Here we are.
So.
Here we are.
I could go to the effort of typing up a lengthy introduction, telling you a mountain of boring facts and figures that “sum” me up, but that sort of thing isn’t really my style, it’s a bit to stifling, in my humble opinion, to try and record the details of your life like some sort of report.
After several years of studying literary theory I like to think I have become a bit of a “post-modern enigma”, that I’ve surrendered my identity to the simulacrum of the internet and the facets of my personality are left to others to re-construct, however they see fit.
However that doesn’t mean I intend to fill this here “blog” with nothing but existential questions and lengthy philosophical diatribes. They will crop up from time to time, when the menagerie in my mind makes an interesting suggestion, or when I come across an issue or idea and I feel the need to over-analyse it. There will be just as many posts on the mundane and mediocre aspects of my existence, trust me. I will tell you about myself, but in dribs and drabs. Little packets of information, much like the packets of data traveling from my desktop PC here at my work, to whatever technological medium you’re viewing this on.
Now, for the first data packet.
I have a thin, but still rather nasty cut running from the middle of the cupids bow on my top lip, all the way through to my plump bottom lip. It was inflicted upon me by my precious little chimera, Cat Benatar. (Yes, like Pat Benatar. But she’s a cat. Thus, Cat Benatar.) We were indulging in one of our favorite pass times, playing with a ball of wool, or for any readers in the northern hemisphere, a ball of yarn. She is quite protective of her little ball of wool. My Mother, who adamantly insists she hates cats, made her the tiny little ball of pink thread to bat around to her heart’s content, and to keep her claws away from the lounge. (I don’t usually stay with my Mother, but I am there at the moment, with my Partner and our kitten until our new living arrangements are finalized. It has been two weeks, and although I love my Mother, and her Husband, it has not been the easiest two weeks. Mother’s are notoriously difficult creatures to please.)
Ever since Mum presented little Benatar with this new toy a week ago she has hardly been seen without it. She picks it up in her mouth and trots about with it, from room to room, dropping it at the feet of whoever is present and then staring up with her amber eyes and making a plaintiff little “mew” sound until they resign to play with her. Well, last night, shortly after arriving home I was made subject to this adorable performance and decided to give in to the calico cat and sprawled myself on the lounge room floor and picked up the ball of wall and begin to indulge my beloved pet in a game of tug-o-war. Well the game got progressively more ebullient, and little Benatar got progressively more frenetic, until finally, one tug led to another and I had a tiny paw, needle like claws extended, rake across my lips.
Well there was swearing, and blood, and needless to say, the tug-o-war ended with Benatar the clear victor. While I, the wounded loser, slinked off to the bathroom to procure some toilet tissue to dab at the incision. When I was satisfied that the bleeding had well and truly stopped, (I’ve never been a fan of blood.) I decided to nurse my lip back to health by getting a beer. I’m a strong believer in adding a slice of lemon to beer. Even if it isn’t a corona. (Lime works well too!) So after I’d stuffed the lemon down the neck of the bottle I proceeded to take a swig.
Instead of enjoying the refreshing tang of citrus and lager, my lips were set ablaze with a stinging sensation. Alcohol does not mix well with open wounds, even if they are only sliver thin.
Today, the cut on my lip is raised, and my usually pale pink pout is red and puffy. I’ve attempted to refrain from touching it, but there is something about running your finger over a raised wound that is strangely appealing to my sense of touch… is this just me? Or does everyone subconsciously enjoy the feeling?
1:15pm. Fifteen minutes till my lunch date. Outlook express has just kindly reminded me with it’s chiming pop-up. So here is as good-a-place as any to end this first post. The weekend starts at 4pm. I’m hoping for adventure, we’ll have to see what the storm clouds bring!
