March 2025- May 2025

The rich think everybody's rich. That's their si

n, forgetfulness - Tim Winton in the winter dark

The thing with NK jenison is that the younger  versions of herself, are credibly different characters and this doesn't feel like a conceit, it feels like a profound truth she's trying to express about middle age, which is that the younger versions of yourself are like strangers in your own conception. 

Distant thunder

Pretty 

Carolina blue sky on the other side of the gorgeous black and grey clouds

Hail!! 

- text mesaage from my mom that felt like a haiku

I'm always happy when I'm in the music. 

The smell of jasmine suffuses Brisbane.

Some versions of the night sky feel like day

There is always a part of us that does not want to win, wants to stay down in the low and familiar. -Ta-Nehisi Coates The water dancer 

If you could be happy about it, you would be fine, so just take a breath and let it have happened, with your coconut fingers and your honey coloured hair

Samoweiss is a hospital administrator who discovered you should wash your hands I'm reading about in Phantom plague. And he does a bunch of great scientific method in eliminating variables etc, but more so what sets him apart is is willingness to not know. Like there were a bunch of bad air style explanations which just didn't make sense like the air and crowding were worse in the midwives clinic with a quarter of the death rates, but we'd rather know so people kept mouthing these explanations you can prove aren't true. And what set this guy apart is he was willing to understand he didn't know and so try to find out. 

Well I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them, they say sing while you slave and I just get bored

So maybe music is a sublimated sex impulse hard to tell but I like to think of it more like both things produce ecstacy so there's similarities in the responses there.

Reflections on Antigone vs home fire: 1. The mundanity of the conflict between sisters one trying to follow the rules one trying to rebel fighting but clearly with such a long relationship translates so well that you hear the modern dialogue in the ancient, just such a relatable relationship. 2. Antigone who will "stop at nothing" she says herself on like the second page. "A girl who looks like that, and will do anything" this is perhaps the defining characteristic of the character.

Need to get aeschelus seven against thebes

But before you as before a god we lie, miserable. Come grant an unexpected grace. -Oedipus at colonus which also has stranger in a strange land in it. 

I do not wish to feel pain twice, first doing the labor and then again speaking of it 

 -Oedipus at colonus

Fantasy trip to Charleville:

Day 1 after work you take off fast. As soon as you can get the car four or five and go the 2 hours to Toowoomba where you have dinner, then try to make two to three more hours after dinner to wherever you can get to to take a bite out of the trip. 

Day 2: you want to hit the road early You've targeted hitting Roma this night but that's pretty optimistic (like 51/2 hours that first night) so you might have only made it to Miles (home of cronuts four hours out) this first day.  This means you've got between 3 and 4.5 hours to go to hit Charleville. You've got time for a breakfast somewhere but want to limit side quests cause you want to hit Charleville pretty early. What you want to do there: 

1. Botanical gardens this is a 2k walk and a 20-30k driving loop but the driving loop will take a couple hours so this is what the am is for, or youll want to take a session out of the afternoon.

2. The planetarium. 2 key shows the sun show is at 2pm and the star show is at 7 pm. There's also a few regular planetarium shows you can see between times if you have an hour to kill and the interest and there's a little exhibit you can walk through.

3. The flying doctor exhibit, self paced and pretty quick and next door to the planetarium so you want to do these at the same time.

4. Drink at the longest bar in Australia as well as the pub with no beer, you want to stay in the historic pub hotel its got some cute stuff and a lovely atmosphere and pretty nice rooms for a pub. You can have a night cap here after the star show. 

Day 3: head back this is 9 hours about so you want to break it up with some side quests but also be conscious of time.

This is the regular weekend version of the plan, as you can see its a bit of a killer of a drive. More ideal is the 3 d weekend version which lets you not do the botanical drive when you've just driven and choose a nice stop eg roma to take a little time at plus more random side quests on your way. If a four day weekend you can even look at the northern loop. 

Western loop I actually did which inspired this future plan: 

Day 1: Got out of work early and was on the road with the car filled up by like four which got me there like dinner ish tho pretty hungry and wrecked hence the new Toowoomba dinner plan. 

Day 2: took off straight away stopped for breakfast at miles which had a high quality tho not veg friendly breakfast -- quality cronuts identified here which were rich enough they lasted us all day. Took a walk around their river park as well.  All these western towns seem to be built around some creek and they've got a public park on like an identical design looping around it, with a troll bridge and a path and some nice plantings and probs some geese. We stopped at a few of these and they were pretty good value. 

Lunch in roma which J had described as a like one building operation but I found a full town you could live in like it was Brisbane unless you wanted like theater or something. Had a veggie parmy which was great and watched the people go by. 

We took a bunch of brochures from roma, its a bit of a hub and went to the big rig, roadside thing there which os a giant oil rig you can see a view from and a museum with a bunch of oil marketing info about how oil saves the whales as well as some fun big machinery and info. Also went to the biggest baobab tree in town, they're not really called baobab but the Aussie equivalent. It was a killer tree like 15 steps around. 

And then onward to Charleville which is the pub with no beer. We went through some lovely big sky pastureland this afternoon. Charleville we stayed in this v old pub which had a little museum of the pld stuff of the original family who owned it and maybe still does. I had to drive some in the dark both days which was hare raising because of the animals.

Day 3: Charleville we had breakfast the next morning and went to see the flying doctor museum, and explored the pubs little artifacts and then left town down into tiny roads now.down to cunnamulla. We hit cunnamulla in the afternoon and there was high winds, the cunnamulla fella was there and a storm was brewing so we took off pretty quick and kept rolling. Smallish darkish roads with goats everywhere. There were some old water sources indigenous people used to use when they were on their way to the bunya pines. 

I saw a flock of wild emus, two crossed the road and when you glanced where they went it was 10-12 more.

We landed in time for footy and a big feed in a amall town by the river, forget its name

Day 4 then the next day we had a nice Riverwalk and found an adorable coffee truck and hit the road, torching back all the way to Brisbane with some stops. The most impressive of these was this giant mural which goes across like 6 grain silos in Yelarbon where we also stopped at a park for a bit of a walk but mostly the giant ness of the mural! And you see a lot of these little half dead towns that feel like they're dying, but also a lot of little towns with a lot of sense of themselves and passion to keep going and Charleville and Yelarbon both felt like that. 

After Yelarbon we started to kick it pretty hard for home, still had some hours but managed to make it back to Brisbane for a well deserved sitar dinner, with only a small issue with the police due to a ill advised u turn right in front of them. 

If god existed and gos were benevolent and god were omnipresent then what would God want of me

Weekend dreams

Wax legs

Have bath

Eat something 

Make tea 

Write diary

Get pedicure 

Watch movie

Write letter

Play civ

Ok May is over tomorrow. Jeremy got home yesterday. It's time for life and love to change again. 

Notes from the heart Jan 2024 -Sept 2024 incl NY Resolutions

The dogwood trees teach us things about September

They lose their leaves and don't remember

My signature scent

Frangipani/ gardenia,. White flowers

Cut grass

Baking bread

Honey/ beewax

Cocoa butter

Pine forest, pine sap

"You can have vengeance or you can have peace but you cannot have both" Herbert Hoover (to Truman 1946)

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Cormac McCarthy 

Something to determine someday: what do you do when you feel shitty that's not just call Jeremy and get him to fix your brain, or self harm.

Alternate weekend plans

And a bath on a Sunday morning 

2 fancy brunches

3 movies

And read the letters and wrote one, and about a hundred pages of book, and some real computer game serves

Walk in roma st

Play expanse game, play computer games

Bath

Letters

Boy wjth heron 12:20 myer 3:30 barracks 

Chicago 7sat  6 sun?

Pedicure

When I'm near a store

Dish soap

Trash bags

Olive oil

Olives

Mustard 

Hand towels

Tartan fabric

Pay off house by 45th birthday

Go on five dates 1

Go to Sydney and Melbourne

Telling people every move to make, reaction when people tell me, how will I lnow when I'm doing it

What went well this year? What was the year like? What occurred or was accomplished?

How do you want this year to be different? 

Look to sub goals

Mankind

Adam Cole

Iishi

L

El Hijo del vikengo 

Brian Danielson

Edge

Timeless Toni Storm

Hart, Julia (Hayman, Paul?)

Will Osprey

Adam Page

L

Kommander

E

Rhea Ripley

There's ways Saigon is like Brisbane, that wide slow sweep of the mangrove river

Recognize someone every day who I haven't recognized in the last week

Origin, selma movies to check out

Everything felt strange and bright and unfamiliar, and I didn’t know if the world was a different place now because I knew it had such things in it, or if I was a different person now having seen it, and I didn’t know which possibility was more terrifying, or more exhilarating.

What I said was: if you feel unaffected by any amount of kindness and acceptance, and the smallest negative things you find to be someone attacking you or persecuting you, that is an internal process you have to manage internally. There is no way to change other people's behavior enough to not feel this way because you will never be able to ensure that every person is treating you the way you have in your mind every minute. And so the self selection of your data pool is so strong you cannot modify it externally, because no matter how people treat you you will feel victimised by whatever parts of that treatment aren't what you expect or want. You have to change your observations and relationship to these inputs, to be able to see when people are treating you well and how their behavior and thoughts feel to them. 

75 percent of journalists killed in the world were killed in Gaza 

Best part of hanging out with a toddler "if i had a friendship party I would invite everyone I know and love especially you" 

Zermatt 5

Day 6 Funincular

I had wanted to experience some of the alpine landscapes and was fired up by seeing the glacier so we decided to book tickets to the very top of the mountain in what's called Matterhorn glacial paradise. You go up a few stages on a cable car. This is the highest altitude cable car in the world, crossing over the Alps and going into Italy, you can do the border crossing by cable car which is so cool we almost did it.  These things are pricey but we signed up for the like 100 dollar ticket cause I basically said I was not going to be able to get up an alp without it and wanted to get up an alp while I'm in the alps. 

So up we went. The Funincular ride itself was pretty majestic, you are floating above this landscape rising in height for a long time, like an hour and you get a bird's eye view of everywhere we'd been walking and more.  

We went up to Trockener Steg which was the second highest station at about 3000 m which is the true arctic landscape like a moonscape black tumbled rocks and ice. 

So we had some adversity, there was something wrong with the funincular up to the top station, you could see it but they change you to another cable car line and that one couldn't go for some reason that was not clear with the German information offering level. So we hung around at Trockener Steg for a while taking pictures. It was a delightfully clear day, really great views of the Matterhorn and the briethorn with its hood of snow, and views across to the hornli hut where the Matterhorn hikers start their summit attempts, and views down to some of the other huts like the one at the end of the cog railway that goes up a different mountain. 

Jeremy found it so so cold though, like every time the wind blew he was about out. There's a hard line for him that happens like 0-5 degrees like just below where it ever ever gets in Oz and he just checks out like you can't live. I get that way too like weeping cold but it's gotta get a little worse or I can cope better if I have the right clothes or something. 

There was uncertainty that seemed to be leaning to forget about it from the funincular so we took a little walk forward up the road to have a look see, get closer to the glacier, which turned out to be a walk that led right up to the glacier. Like you could get up to it and touch it and walk along it. I've never been to a glacier you were allowed to literally interact with before and it was so cool, so we walked up to it and up into it like 10m.  A glacier is made of ice see so it was kind of no joke you cant walk on it.

 Some of the ultra prepared swiss hikers were, busting out their hiking poles and crampons and marching up the glacier to the Matterhorn glacial paradise and good on them. This is the one place I've ever been where I've looked at the ultra prepared hikers and seen the point, like the tech legitimately allows them to do more, rather than just being fashion. 

All in all it was a little hour up and back to the glaciers and then we had a coffee at the restaurant that was of course there, and walked in the photo point circle one more time and then headed down and nabbed a partial refund. 

We thought about trying to hike down part of the way but decided it was too cold to seem fun and it was just as well as they had closed some other stages of the funincular due to winds by the time we headed down. 

All in all it sort of gave me what I wanted: seeing the true alpine landscapes, being up at alp level surrounded by the alps at eye level, and a big bonus getting to touch a glacier. 

Zermatt 4

Day 5 Hike 4

We were really planning on a nice easy day today, we had signed up for a fondue night that afternoon, so we made a plan to walk to the next town along the rail line trail, which looked flat - right next to the rail line (it wasn't, a challenge in Switzerland is that things can seem right close to the river or train line but actually be 200 m above these things and it's not obvious on the map, there are no flat trails you are going straight up or straight down a mountain at all times this was the closest we got though) and not too challenging (which it wasn't but that just meant we walked two towns over instead of one).  

So we walked out. The exciting sights of this were

1. So in a place this hilly some of how they ship goods is by helecopter no joke-- how else do you ge the beer to the top of the mountain where of course there's an alpine restaurant hut. So as we walked we got to see this helecopter make a couple of laden and unladen trips.

2. We passed like 3 quite good waterfalls. So there's a lot of water around, alpine springs and rivers, snow melt and so you can run into a steep and impressive waterfall all the time. 

3. The trail kind of followed the river which I did like.

4. We cut across the river over a historical covered bridge! I didn't realize those were a thing here. It was especially charming with the loud rushing and roaring of the river around you. 

We had intended to go on a little forest loop but from what my limited German and the pictographs on the signs could say it was closed due to them blasting rocks in the area so maybe avalanches can happen? We definitely passed some quarry areas and a rock processing facility. 

So we took this trail to two towns over where there was another alpine lake I wanted to see. This one had a reggae bar and a jet ski training school. Why Switzerland? Note: please learn what a gorgeous alpine lake is for. And took the train back home, in time to rest and shower for our fondue dinner. 

Which was actually really special. Our hotellier made his own fondue so lots of herbs and wine and shaved garlic mixed in, and poured wine and eventually schnapps down our throats all night. There were three couples one speaking English (us) one German and one French/ Swiss dialect so we had a good rollicking conversation in pidgin between us cause everyone spoke two languages (minimum) so different combinations of people were chatting in different overlap languages. We got good and drunk and eventually the party broke up and we passed out. 

Zermatt 3

Day 4 Hike 3

By this stage we were feeling a bit wiped, this whole week we were sleeping probably 10 hours per night with muscle repair energy. We woke up this morning moving really slow and took the morning off. J was wanting to do the elusive four hour hike. I made us I think the fried potato rostis and fried eggs for a sumptuous brunch, this was something we'd seen advertised at some of the alpine cottage restaurants and I bought the rosti packs and did it. Maybe nows a good time to mention I did a bit of cooking I was proud of during this week. My best was probably a block of smoked tofu in a mushroom sauce, they had a pack but functionally a mushroom gravy with stir fried snow peas they also had a lovely frozen pack of. It was really substantial but also not reliant on a big sack of carbs. We've been eating a lot of bread and cheese interspersed by bread and ham or bread and hummus meals but what bread and what cheese. I even got into bread and butter and jam cause the quality was so good. 

Ok so we hit the trail maybe 11:30 a straight out one on a slow but consistent uphill climb. This trail functionally took you straight back to the glacier. Again we got about half way to the glacier but up to the point where you got a real view of it. This was weirdly one of my favorite trails but it's quite hard to describe. It took you straight out always climbing but never like summiting a hill. And past like farmers cottages. There was just that heart lifting feeling of the road going on and on, and you being kind of about midway up with the peaks far above you and the valley and the river far below you. It went from the river to the woods above that to the farmer's cottages and gardens above that to the alpine meadows and goat pastures above that to the end of where we went where you crested a hill and there below you surging with snow was the glacier.

And from the glacier the river flows, at the point where we stopped was a lake, really a dam and a hydroelectric facility there, so big concrete walls and buildings like a dam but an alpine lake below the glacier. 

All over in the city river they keep saying don't hang out in the river cause they can unexpectedly release water from the hydroelectric plant and here's where it all happens. 

We had planned to take an alternative route back but we decided to go back the way we came cause it was so nice, so we blitzed back down the hill about twice as fast as we went up. 

Zermatt 2

Day 3 Hike 2 the Glacier garden

We took off the second day along the river. The river flowing by the town is glacial green the same one we came up on by the railroad. This devolved to following under the funicular heading up to alpine levels and then evolved into the Kulturweg, a trail that takes you through various alpine villages, historical huts which are built around. There's a trail which takes you all through them, we didn't do the whole of this but a good bit.

The target for today's hike was the Furi suspension bridge. We hiked up to Furi. About an hour and a half uphill, and then there was an incredibly charming woodland walk up to the bridge.

The further interesting thing about this hike is that it follows the path of the glacier as it receded. In the centre of town there is a church tower, classic European city style. The church tower has been there since before the glacier receded, you can see a pic where the glacier comes into town in sight of the tower, right where we've walked circa 1890 the little ice age.

So we're basically walking up the path of the retreating glacier. And the larch trees are a reclamation plant, they're one of the first plants to come back when land becomes available. I learned later they're able to survive the harsh winters because they shed their leaves like deciduous trees in winter to give them less to freeze and their sap is more sugary than other pines too which makes it less prone to freezing.

J had already decided he preferred the below the treeline landscape because it's more lush, less barren up to circa 2500m above sea level? Then you get the alpine meadow kind of landscape to 3000-3500 and then the true alpine like moonscape rocks and snow.

Ok so we get to the suspension bridge through an almost marshy landscape.  There was a couple there psyching themselves up to go on it, so we took pictures of the views and settled there for a while, they went out on the bridge got a quarter of the way out and the husband was like not today Satan and noped back off the bridge. We went on and I swear I could feel the exact spot where he gave up, I mean the bridge is off a cliff but there's a moment where the earth just falls away.

It's a very good single person suspension bridge, lots of handholds, a good two foot width so you can get a good stance, quality Swiss engineering, and I made it across with even being able to look. Down, out, the river below and the gorge, the breadth looking out. I couldn't take pictures because I needed both hands to hold on tho.

The suspension bridge was the target for the day but we wandered on planning to loop a separate way back. We wound up adding an extra hour onto our day that day by walking up to the little glacial garden park. This is a part of the glacier recession walk that takes you all the way to the glacier if you keep going, but it's this little park founded by a local innkeep and geology enthusiast during the 1800s or so right after the glacier retreated. It had these strange like pots carved into the rocks that happen when the glaciers move or more to the point from the water flows that flow under the glaciers. In the middle ages there were stories about them being the tools and households of giants and that makes a lot of sense, they look super machined, manmade from how finished they are. We picniced there and walked back along the bike path, so a super serpentine pathway back through the larch forests, going by lumber mills and little cottages at intervals on the other side of the river from what we came up. 

Zermatt 1

. 

Zermatt

Day one

We arrived about 3 and got picked up by the hotellier, Richard, who was name checked in many positive reviews. 

We had come up by the mountain train which has a central gear link between its tracks to stop it rolling backwards on the high slopes. We ran by the glacial river for a good long way. We had not gotten a seat for this last leg so stood in the vestibule which was kind of good because we could look out of both doors, small mountain towns and the river rushing below and the Alps rising up around us shrouded in mist and always rising. 

We got groceries designed for a real kitchen and a full week at the coop which was a madhouse. Frozen veg and all sorts. Potato rostis etc. By the way the coop is an actual coop its like the food lion or woolies of Switzerland but its a cooperatively owned business with an alliegence to things like free range eggs and local produce. The things we can do if we do things other than corporate profit, it's incredible. Fully unpacked my stuff and fell into bed. Views of the Matterhorn from outside our door, shrouded in cloud. 

Day 2 Hike 1

The larch trees are soft, like fur soft, and their boughs droop down, tiny pinecones. We took a short cut, steep zigzag path up the hill and at the top we were rewarded with more matterhorn views. Now the clouds were clinging to it's head so you could see the height of it but the clouds seem to catch on the top and get stuck in billows. Then on upwards through the small town -- the hikes never get truly remote in this area of the world, you keep wandering through mountain huts, the little restaurant hotels which exist in the most remote places, cultural villages, and highset little towns. 

The lake when we got there was a bit of a train station. In Slovakia I'm used to crystalline alpine lakes in the glacial colors. This was a brown lake with a children's playground next to it. This system of disappointing alpine lakes continued throughout our experience of Switzerland.  Honestly, the most beautiful lakes we saw in Switzerland by far were the ones in the towns Zurich lake and lake Geneva were both gorgeous. Clear, with swans swimming in them, people bathing in the lakes because they were that clean, and blue so blue. 

But when we reached the first lake of the five lakes trail the clouds cleared off entirely and we got our first complete picture postcard view of the Matterhorn. This is what it's all about people. The full incredible sillouette, it seems almost unreal at times because you've seen the image so much before. And knowing my cloudy European weather as I do, I was gonna be satisfied with the views we'd had so far and figure they do the postcards on the one clear day of the year. But no it's all true, crisp beautiful views. 

The Matterhorn appears sometimes to be an old man on a shaggy mountain horse with the snow as his beard. 

So we climbed a bit above the funicular train station and found a likely looking rock to picnic on, gazing at the Matterhorn. After some soul and time searching we decided to turn back here, and make our way back to town.

We took another shortcut back down, a treacherously steep little track which went straight down half the elevation with no switchbacks. It snuck by a couple of old bunkers set into the mountain side Ww2 holdovers oder etwas. It was quite lush the groundcover, but we had to climb down really delicately. We found out some of the way down that this was a Matterhorn training track, if you can make it up this thing at a run in 20 mins, you're ready for the Matterhorn. 

We took the gentler sloped bike way back to town, a forest walk again that belled to the side of the town and then back. We were out about 7-8 hours that day with 800m elevation gain, probably the highest of our trip. 

We turned back with an eye to returning with the energy to make dinner and live a little instead of having chips and beer while we cried -- but in the end we had chips and beer and cried, the first in a long line of trying to pick within our capabilities in an environment where everyone else is a Matterhorn summiting alien and failing utterly, both at resembling a Matterhorn summiting alien and and remaining within our capabilities. 

Our hotel, as advertised had a Matterhorn view, and so when we got back over our chips and beer we could still watch it all evening until the lure of being spread-eagle was too strong. 

 

Zurich and Bern

Zurich as a town seems like a nice but unremarkable neighborhood say in a row house district of London, say Nottingham or something, and then out of nowhere these fantasy elements show up. A wild little red turret with bronze, an unexpected observatory in the middle of town. A strange golden date on the clock towers. Birdhouses like miniatures of the houses they perch atop of on roofs. 

The lake is clear, like Sydney harbor, and swans and ducks collect on it, people are swimming out in the bay. It's a wild thing to think about people swimming in their city river. Like you wouldn't do that in the Themes or Brisbane. 

We spent like six hours over two days just walking down one side of the lake then the other.

Bern

Einstein thought that nationalism was the greatest danger, motivator to war,whereas Freud thought it was the urge towards violence and the death instinct. What do you think? 

There are bears in the bear pit so my work here is done. Also our hotel is up the biggest hill in the world which has an amazing view over the city. Thw river, glacial blue, still runs fast below. 

We've been eating almost all our meals as cheese and bread in the hotel room, which has been a fun experience so far. It has sort of afforded us luxurious coffees out at riverside cafes and craft beers at cellar bars, and croissants and chocolates. Like by not spending 50-100 bucks a meal we can guilt free enjoy indulgences at whim. 

My relationship to eating has been different too, we have skipped a meal nearly every day just from being busy. Our 4 pm dinners aren't helping my 7 pm bedtime at the moment but I feel really sated with a lot less even though I'm eating a lot less often. 

We visited the Bern bears on the way in and out of town every day. Sometimes they were really active and sometimes invisible, and one day we saw all three together! 

2022

The shape of the year

2022 was really defined for me by Jeremy being gone for 6 months and being with my mother for five. Everyone who's an expat is starting to do last year the big trip home to see the family who they haven't seen since it's before Covid and mine happened then too.  I got to spend 5 weeks in the US and meet Dorothy who was born after I left and see everyone. This was the first break I'd taken since I started working too. So got my mind actually out of the work zone for the first time in two years.  

And then my mum got to come live with me for 4 months and be in my life here. And she gave me a whole lease on life too. You know it would be a random part of the afternoon and then all the sudden we'd have to take a look at the sky break because it was turning some magical shade of scarlet or there had been an amazing cloud or the moon was visible. That kind of enthusiasm for the beauty and wonder of my life helped me to reconnect to it. And then we were cooking all the time too doing these recipe projects. I think having projects in general. Me and Jeremy have like computer games and walks and trips. But we don't really have projects. We set up our lives so that there's not a whole lot of things that we like should do. But some of what I like about going to the US is getting into those life improvement projects going through stuff for appearing houses or organising lives.  Plus we went to Vanuatu and read Middlemarch you know classic life of beauty and wonder stuff.

And then also Jeremy going and I had to cope both with like basic taking care of myself, life management, kind of things which I did better than expected on. And a positive side effect of being on my own is I really put some energy into building my social life which now I feel like actually exists again.

New Year's resolutions

1.  Apply for a new job. This one was set for me by Jeremy and the idea is to alter my way of thinking about my job. The plan is to really get to know what's out there and disconnect the idea of doing good work for society and my identity from the job I'm currently in. I can save the world with people I love at Micah but that's not the only way I can.  In classic me style. I've already done that one. There was some real serendipity and a really interesting role doing capacity building for the housing providers came across my desk with an organisation I'd looked at as an alternative. A lot of roles I see are like what I'm doing but less awesome, but this one is a truly different thing with different skills. I spent like 6 hours January 6th ish updating my resume and writing to the selection criteria which is a lot of work but also transferable if I were to see something else that excited me.

This whole idea is in response to what was maybe the biggest challenge of 2022, which is a bit of loss of innocence around my job. I still love it but Ryan at my work always talked about me as having drunk the Micah Kool-Aid and I really really had. There's been some stuff going on minor in the scheme of things but just the kind of politics that stymie you from doing the work. I still have infinite energy for doing the work so I don't feel burnt out but I wonder also if that's a bit of it. People are expected to turn over in crisis work about every 3 years and I've been there two and a half. I don't feel tired of doing what I'm doing but I wonder if the sense of nothing's getting better is grinding me down and then the things I'm getting pissed at that seem to be stopping me from making it better is like a side effect of that.

2. Something diet related. This one's still in the workshopping phase. I've looked at options like having soup or salad for dinner while Jeremy is gone which is most of the year. Or not having beer or wine in the house. Or not having snacks, chips or candy in the house.  I'm not sure what I want to do with this. Jeremy thinks calorie tracking is beyond the pale of the effort I want to put into it but this comes out of getting the sleep apnoea diagnosis and seeing the ear, nose and throat guy. The ear nose and throat specialist talked about what he could do but basically said he could not cure it. And that what does cure it is going to be dying and exercise such that I am less heavy and more toned. And I know there's some stupid and idea things that would be low hanging fruit in sort of improving health and wellness in my current lifestyle.  I'm also going to the regular doctor next week to look at my blood work and see how all that health and wellness crap is going in general.

3. Getting the total mortgage under 100,000. This is a little ambitious but not as ambitious as this year's target which I did not hit. In 2022 I changed my superannuation to be contributing basically the maximum that you can get a tax benefit on as voluntary contributions. This is good news for my retirement and creams off some money out of my pay but it does lower how much I've got in my take-home pay to be paying down the mortgage. It was basically my answer to diversifying what's happening with my money. Because my superannuation is stocks so it's sort of like having stocks as well as property.  We're still twiddling our thumbs a bit as far as if we want to buy the place we're living and if we want to buy something else period. But at the moment the mortgage is still there and we can just watch it come down so it's not urgent. I'm not sure what I want to do long-term as far as that and we haven't found a product we can't refuse yet. We've talked about buying where we are living which has the benefit of not paying our two grand a month in rent. And we love it. And we've talked about getting one of the other apartments I looked at when I was shopping hard, which is perhaps a bit better value for money proposition, but it's no longer where we're passionate about living. And we've talked about looking in the US or property prices are lower and we've got my mom and harmony to help with management and repair. 

4. This one's still being workshopped as well but something along the lines of don't put off for a week which you could do and literally 2 minutes. It's not well defined, but I feel like there's a lot of things like in the nature of a dirty shirt in the middle of the floor that I just get annoyed with every time I walk by but do not take the 5 seconds to put into the laundry basket. And that's just not me.

Ishiguro partial review

I've read two different reviews which described Ishiguro's prose as bland.  Here's my counterargument. The animating theme of Ishiguro's work is dehumanization. A category or person is defined as unworthy of full human status. A servant in remains of the day, a robot in Clara and the Sun, the clones in never let me go. Ishiguro's novels center this person and bestows them with a breathtaking humanity. They experience full and complex feelings, passions and ideas. But the language they have to express their inner life is limited, because language is the first limitation society places on them.  Klara has only the words that she has heard in her short life in a department store. She calls all the people of the outside world passers- by. She does not call them commuters or citizens because these things are outside of her experience. She only understands passers-by in the window or customers in the store.  Ishiguro's characters are full, but their language is limited, because their language is the language the society around them believes they will need to express what that society believes they are capable of feeling or worth. And that disconnect we feel between the simple things they can express and the depth and strength of what they are trying to reach for is the first injustice they experience in their deeply unjust lives. Which is a great deal of the reason why they are written this way. We begin to immediately and intuitively understand that these characters are circumscribed, that they are more than they are let to be. 

Hummingbird poem

I sat under a mimosa pink sky of contentment

Some white night blooming flower sank into its scent

Hummingbirds abandoned their feeders to flit through fluffy flowers

Militant mockingbirds patrolled the blackberry patch

The first fireflies flickered ahead

The twilight fades

The bright birds whiz

In silhouette 

To sweeter nectar

I too can drink

The sweeter sip

While evening pales

To home

In Virginia at Toneys I was cleaning the oven and my mom sent me outside for a break and I really did see hummingbirds zipping through the mimosa tree. There's like 60 pairs of them at the feeders in the summer and you can watch them on the porch but they like the wild nectar when the mimosas bloom. I had that real overriding feeling of peace well being and contentment and wrote this, then went back to scrubbing a wee oven. 

Takeaways from Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates

The rage that lives in all African Americans, a collective feeling of disgrace that borders on self-hatred.

This one reninds me of Toni Morrison and Marlon James, this rage that appears in their work that I don't understand but can recognize. 

Listening to . . . Things that I could have explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long lost friend, have not yet run out of time though I know that we all run out of time and some of us run out of it faster.

This I identify with, the longing to not have your sense of wonder exhaust, though I had just the kind of life he's talking about here where you get to travel and go to college and be young for longer. The idea of engaging with joy and wonder like a long lost friend. 

New poem

About the view out my window in the middle of the night

This farfetched starlight

Beyond the point where sleep comes soon 

Behind the setting of the moon 

A fatalistic sense of doom 

Can't quite inspire

Ill planned adventure

Between the sheets and void of mist

With racing heart and unchained breath

An unconscious shibboleth

Unlocks self censure

Mind's lonely mission

Moody clouds in black on grey

Too many hours til break of day

And yet they quickly slip away

In nervous frisson

Red rimmed sky eye

Disrupts the edge of patient dark

As silhouettes emerge more stark

A night that leaves its only mark

Passing by my eyes

Halloween- Let the season begin

My happening Halloween 🎃

-I dressed up as a nightmare weaver and went out with people from work to Netherworld. It felt like real social not work social tho, people brought their friends and there was mixing of people from all areas and heaps of people showed.

-We went on the spooky Halloween maze on the 30th. This is not quite my thing but it was max Halloweeny. I wore my bat costume all day and there were dressed up nightmare creatures who leaped from the shadows. 

-Today we explored the new Victoria park, a converted golf course they're taking back for the public, and were rewarded with a Halloween maze. 

-And finished it all off with Halloween at O'Skulligans, an indie rock gig with a couple of bands, lots of people in costume and every rock kid still living large. 

I feel we've really broken out to the holiday season. 

A new wind

A new wind blew through town this morning, and on its back was the first day of spring. 

We're in the middle of winter here, so its too early for this feeling, that the hard times are over and the golden days are coming, but when you smell the warmth and life on the back of the wind it's impossible to deny. 

It felt like the air was coming from someplace else, out of Faerie, a distant land where it is already, or always, springtime. 

New year's Resolutions

My new years resolution for last year was to get a job. I applied intensively and really made it the mission of my life until I got my job at Micah. For this year I had two, pay off my apartment meaning get it to 100% offset and move in to my house meaning get everything out of Steve's. The interesting thing is both last year and this year I will have accomplish them before half the year is out. The apartment will be at 100% offset at my next pay and we talk Easter weekend to move my library. There's a few things left to do. The art still needs to be hung or figured out, and the goodwill and trash needs to be actually gotten out of the house, and there are a few piles under the bed such as important tax paperwork which may not all be important and my sentimental letters and papers, always the last to go. But literally everything of mine is out of Steve's and the apartment looks great. Honestly, I thought it would be harder. With the money goal that's just melting away since I got a job. We were living fine off Jeremy's salary so now that I'm working full-time basically my whole salary can just go on the mortgage. I'm trying to think what my next goal will be. 

Working world

I thought I haven't posted in like a year but that's not really true. What is true is that I haven't posted since I got my job. Almost exactly. 

In May last year I was coming home from one of my daily two hour Covid walks and I saw my homeless neighbors, at that time a little group that lived in the gazebo at Bowen Park. Well I didn't see them, which was kind of the problem, I saw the team of council workers with a truck loading up all their stuff they used to make the gazebo into a camp. 

So I came back a bit old man yelling at cloud to Jeremy, and I had come across Micah projects looking at NGOs for job searching already, maybe even found their volunteer sign up page and dismissed it because I was looking for a real job. Anyway I had put a ton of irons in the fire, and wasn't quite getting anywhere, plus it was covid so I was a bit bored, anyway I went to Micah's website and signed up for what looked like their most serious volunteer thing which was a 3 day commitment a week doing data entry. 

So that's how I came to be doing all of Cats and Sths Monthly status updates, and at that point they were so behind that I did let's say April's and went straight into May's.  And there were like up to seven of us working, so I became the queen of the broken toys because I was a natural teacher and also arrogant enough to make a best guess as to the right thing to do, and then willing to show it to everyone else. And Liana and Anna the at that time team leaders were so snowed under it would take like an hour to get a question answered so that kind of moxy was valuable. 

And that's how I came under Jim's eyes because I stole his chair every day bc he was always in meetings. I don't know who really saw me, Jim was there and he observed me but for like moments and he's a savant but that's nuts. Nat trained me and sat next to me, but I don't know if she'd care. Margie saw me, and I looked her in the eye and told her I'd be working here or somewhere else, but not as more special than the other volunteers. Anna saw my work and rated me as competent, but as what I was, not as a replacement for her. 

Whatever happened, I got picked up for the three month contract, and had that three months to learn what small team leadership was, what the social service industry was, what homelessness was, and convince my team and colleagues I knew any of these things. The whirlwind began. 

But it was such an incredible opportunity. I had time in my four months of applying, to figure out what I really wanted out of a job:

1. Working for something I cared about. I applied for the most lowly jobs in Queensland health, but would whiz by anything in sales or marketing with scorn in my heart. 

2. Some element of leadership. I'd been ready to lead for so long, but the people I was working for never thought I was ready. To be looked at cold as someone with leadership qualities was something I wanted, and to have some direction of what we were doing, making plans and thinking of how to execute them.

3. Some blend of my love of analytical thinking and my love of humanist thinking. Straight data jobs weren't the most attractive nor were jobs that were all touchy feely. Some blend of data/ analytics with the caring arts were what I wanted. 

4. Someplace cool to work. I'd been trying to adopt Jeremy's awesome start-up work friends as my new friend population for years. Part of this was a way to expand my circle and life.

5. Learning some new skills I might be able to deploy later. 

And Micah was all of these in spades, and getting to be in an issue that has started to matter to me personally a bit more as well, living in the valley. And it's a nuts good job, real pay real levelling real holiday allowances, a union. This was a job that from day one felt like more than a job, like my second act dream career. Like if I was this and a teacher over my life that would be like the perfect career. 

So I volunteered nearly full time for like a month, in May, then got picked up doing a contract analysing processes for three months, then got the job properly. I've been there eight months now, long enough that I've started to come out of the tunnel of it, to be able to think of anything else. 

It's been a not entirely pleasant journey, I've been in a near continuous anxiety attack, punctuated with spasms of self hatred and humiliation. My ego is too fragile to be in a job where constantly performing social interactions correctly is like the whole competency. 

But it's an interesting internal process that while I've been basically constantly in the grip of not really positive emotions, I would describe myself in general as really happy, I've been so fulfilled, I really want this, it feels like all my dreams are coming true. I haven't had a moment of doubt as to if I want to do this despite feeling like this all the time. 

The next decision point will come this June, when Anna will come back to my job or her pilot will be extended. But I have definitely until then to do what I can with this.  

A bit blase

I am lonely.

Jem says it's applying for jobs.

The internet says it's covid. 

Jes says to do your self care checklist.

Kelvin says it's the weather.

I don't know what it is, but it's been a little while now. 

Kindness of strangers

So here's two things that have happened to me recently, like since quarentine. 

Two drivers

So Jeremy and I are walking along Brunswick street (big four lane road) towards the bridge when a wildly gesticulating driver gets my attention sort of yelling at me. I am nervous at first then she seems to be saying behind me so I look back confused. Then the next driver down the road (in a truck this time so he can lean out better) tells me it's on the road behind me. And it's Jeremy's go card which had fallen out of his phone while he was walking holding it. I was touched that it took two people to stop us being dopes and then having an annoying problem but they did it.

Two flowers

So Jem and I are walking through the park and there's a guy on an industrial mower who stops what he's doing when he sees us and leaps off the mower to give me a flower. He sort of twigs to Jeremy being there in the middle and says like just giving the flower mate in a don't shoot kind of way. Must have broken it while he was mowing and then didn't want to waste it. 

And then this Monday an older man was walking up and saw me and handed me a flower, then walked on just dreamy. 

It's been a good month for the love of strangers around here. 

Takeaways from Naomi Klein's book

The root of the climate crisis [is] the dominant economic logic of our time: extractivism to feed perpetual growth rooted in ever increasing consumption.

This is kind of her central thesis. Is it true? Does it make sense? I liked her ability to see the environment and social justice not as competing priorities but on a level the same thing. As the ex president of Greens Against the Environment it's interesting to me.

And just the idea that taking every tree in the forest, or every skerrick of oil from the ground, and taking every second of breathing time from your workers are based in the capitalist idea that you have to keep expanding, keep grinding out the last drop, in order to maximize profits.

And that the mentality behind grabbing indigenous rainforest in Brazil, and grabbing women by the pussy are underpinned by the same philosophy: that powerful people are entitled to do whatever they are able to do, that if they screw over other people they are being smart and working the system, and that you deserve whatever you are able to take, and if someone is not able to stop you, then they deserve whatever it is you did to them. This is the philosophy that underpins Trump's presidency, but in underpins a lot more too.

Anyway there was some stuff I eyerolled about in the book too, and some stuff that I felt she was light on substance on, but I found it unusual and interesting that she connected a lot of these dots. It's a paradigm shift that I think is useful, and that sidesteps the "issue competition" that can be a distraction from productive conversations. Ok let me know what you think here or in messages, I'd be interested.