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As I grumblingly accept my lot in the big wheel of the wage economy and bemoan the loss of free time, I’ve noticed a dangerous little feeling brewing. The feeling that this existence – for all its family-sized upside-down fridges and missed lunch breaks – is somehow comforting. Like the progression of a clock: the tick-tock repetition, while illustrating your dwindling years/weeks/hours, is also oddly soothing. Call it a whacked biological need for regime, but this knowing-what-you’re-doing-tomorrow bizzo has definite - albeit mysterious - appeal. Maybe it’s because I’ve been seriously deprived of structure/trivia and the ego-entrapment of office life. Whatever. About the same time I began musing over this little irony, my ping-pong relationship with Bligh’s Army was formally and publicly acknowledged. Last week I took out the Groundhog Day title in our unit’s frivolous awards bestowal. I am so Bill Murray with a microphone in the snow waiting for a furry animal to forecast the weather. Luckily, I've moved through re-integration wobbles and a protracted bout of cultural alienation. Now I'm going to have some fun with the Punxsutawney locals.
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Savouring domestic novelties:
DVD watching – the whole first season of Love My Way. That’s ten episodes in one week... a couch-sitting personal best. I blame it on the cult of Claudia, who I have loved since she celebrated all the good bits about share-housing in St Kilda.
Small talk with the cat.
A proper bed. A big bed. Soft sheets. Totally underrated. I would give it all up for just this… if only the birds and sunshine didn't start at 5am.
Last week I moved house - again! - and moved in with Mr T, a cat pushing the ‘aloof’ edge of the feline sociability scale. He is also rather accident prone. The night before his mum departed the country, he had an investigative encounter with a long piece of wire and got horribly tangled, and then horribly anxious to get free, cutting his lip and back leg in the process. Thankfully mum (who is probably at this moment drinking gluwein for breakfast in Prague) whipped him off to the emergency vet before leaving.
Mr T's general post-traumatic narkiness has not helped us to bond as house-mates. He has generally avoided my company, and despite offers of fresh meat, has preferred instead to spent large amounts of time amidst the fabric mounds in the linen cupboard.
Yesterday afternoon was round two at the vets. Off we trundled for a check up, after several attempts at going in the box and a close encounter between claws and a long necklace. I should have made like Hannibal and drugged him in preparedness for travel. But I didn't. (Pity the fool.) He growled about going in the box. He growled about going in the car. He growled about the dogs in the waiting room. And then silently complied as the vet ripped off his scabs ("to check for abcesses"), doused the open wounds with Betadine and jerried a thermometer up him.
What the...? From Wrestlemania-style defence to complete and total submission? And all I did was show him the door to a small box, purportedly one of his most favourite places! Oh to bottle the magical powers invested in the vet's table...
When we got home, things got even more bizarre. I opened the box. He sauntered out, rubbed at my heels and purred deeply. He even let me scratch his neck for FIVE seconds. I know better than to question feline behaviour. But I think I can venture that we have begun to bond...
Oh dear. Paid work is so uncool for my blogging. Anyway, here's a small parable. As the rain falls in Brisbane and grows my Black Russians like beanstalks...---I know of two worlds. One I live in but don’t believe in. The other I believe in but can’t quite reach.
One has mobile phone towers and kept lawns, suburb to city commutes and satellites orbiting through space to get us there. It breathes air-conditioning upon us, which stealthily sucks our lifeforce. It has a strange obsession with plastic packaging, which it goes to greath lengths to manufacture, only to immediately throw away. It squeezes us through a series of institutions designed to crush our uniqueness, creativity and spirit, so that we may become full and conforming participants in the Economy. With its high demands on our time, the Economy keeps thought trimmed inside little boxes. This world relies on insulating constructs that remove us from our humanity, that deny our relationship with the earth, that impose falsity at every turn and propagate rampant unwellness. This world is a bubble of unreality. Inside the bubble there is only the bubble; it is difficult to imagine an outside to the bubble. Perhaps this is because, for the most part, we don’t see the bubble, let alone recognise its delicate nature.
The other world has none of these things. It has land and sea scapes and natural abundance and diversity and community and art and stories and ideas. It lacks disposable income but has bountiful simplicity and mass wellbeing. It has a different kind of knowledge. It knows about growing, building, sharing and looking after people. And it is not just one world, but many. They are the many small, purposed and felt traditional worlds of humankind.
These small, bountiful worlds once held us all, to varying degrees, in their embrace. But then agriculture was born in the Fertile Crescent. We domesticated plants and animals, stored food and became settled. Well-fed populations trebled. Land was put under lock and key, and with it, the freedom to feed your family by the sweat of your brow. Many peasants were ‘freed’ from food production to toil in trades. Labour was divided, giving us artisans, who were later replaced by experts. One of whom invented the modern steam engine, giving birth to Industralisation and exploding us into a new age of mechanised largesse. The bubble blew bigger and bigger. With our armies of well-fed experts, technology bounded ahead and distributed knowledge to the masses – which told us to buy, buy, buy. And so the bubble bulged until it was bulbously magnificent.
Now grows a small movement that can’t make sense of the bubble. Some intuit the bubble’s wrongness but are caught in its maw. They believe life is inherently combative and destructive. They believe in the inevitabilty of our culture: you can hear them teach it to others by saying things like ‘such is life’. Such believed impotency makes them sad. Through this immobilised sadness they press on with air-conditioning and kept lawns and the distraction of new dresses, growing ever more deeply indebted to the bubble they can neither make sense of, nor escape. They are the anxious and depressed.
Some others – artists, landholders, marginalised liberals – increasingly muse that the bubble is precariously inflated and not at all magnificent. Their worldview is unrelentingly at odds with the bubble. They sing of those other small worlds of bounty. Their voices grow in volume and number. Somehow, whilst living in the world that shoehorns thought, they are able to imagine real and beautiful alternatives. Some of them have gone beyond imagination, beyond the bubble. They are true visionaries, who have the sense of self to play what they hear in a world that is largely tonedeaf. They inhabit the world I believe in... those worlds beyond the bubble.
On a good day I have trouble deciding what to put on my toast. But today, when I really could have used it, my well-thumbed handle on indecision deserted me.I was presented with the kind of challenge I knew would eventuate when I rejoined the salaried life… though didn't quite expect so soon. My manager asked if I wanted to relieve in her role for a couple of months. I’ve done this job many times. It really doesn’t have that much to recommend it. Other than more money.And ... I ... bit ... the ... carrot.
It was the kind of moment when the world slows down and you feel yourself saying something you can’t quite comprehend you're saying, but can't quite stop yourself from saying either.
Like yes.
And that was BEFORE I found out the position has been regraded up a level during my absence. I will shimmy up two pay brackets. Quite phenomenal if you could see my last tax return.
Three weeks ago I was crafting my resignation letter. I had a valid health care card, confidence wobbles and a dream. I am supposed to be finding a way out of communications. Not burrowing further into it.
Maybe it was all that leftover electricity in the air.
I feel dirty. I feel compromised. I am going to hate myself in the morning. Every morning. For at least the next two and a half months. I’ve just discovered my price.
Here is a list summarising the first week back in life and desk. Seems I can only think in lists and dot points this week. Strange. Hmmph. Think I need one of those website counters - the ones that count down the days til some important event – in my case, the end of my ‘gap’ year back behind the desk.
1. Freaking acronyms. They should all be hogtied, painted with honey and stuffed in a small cage with a hungry brown bear. Except TOIL and ATL, which are quite dandy acronyms which I hope to become better aquainted with. So far I’ve acquainted myself with lots of zzzzzzzzzzs and gotten friendly with a few G&Ts. I would also like to retain the many-purposed WTF in my arsenal. It’s come in handy several times this week.
2. WTF is with the sudden profusion of white – yes, WHITE – hairs????? Mysteriously this little jab to the jugular coincided with my return to a lifestyle I deem to be in contempt of life. Maybe it's not the profusion but my noticing that is sudden. Perhaps my renewed compulsion to preen after a lull has afforded me a fast-forward from ‘before’ to ‘after’, otherwise denied by continual attendance to mirrors. Either way, WTF??
3. Sports shoes that pretend they’re office shoes: it is my week’s mission to find some. After three blisters on day one in my formerly comfortable flats, I am starting a homy-peds facebook fan club.
4. Quietly freaking out after re-reading points two and three in succession. Moving quickly to convince myself it is not a sign I’m upon old lady days, merely an indication of my slide even further to the left… and, well… I can’t think of any positive reinterpretation whatsoever for WHITE HAIR.
5. Ah Brisvegas. You have Campos coffee. You have Avid Reader and the awesome West End markets. You have cute Queenslander houses (albeit now totally unaffordable) and mango trees and sunshine. You even have a smattering of decent cultural institutions and events. But you are also painfully thin on the ground with the good stuff. Why do I always forget how small and unsophisticated you are? I am bemoaning the demise of your cheap-ass Dendy, which is clearly a ploy to get us to drive to the upmarket one in a posh suburb in a bling retail development on the river and pay more. Pfff.
6. Had also forgotten how small Bligh’s Army is. And how postively miniscule is Bligh’s Army of Spin. I like the sound of that, we could almost be a cricket team. Except I don't like cricket. Almost made it through one week without an urgent request for speech notes from the Office of the Lesser Grand Poo-bah. Am taking rehydration salts to work tomorrow after spending a week dying of thirst in the stupid airconditioning. WHINGE.
7. Someone asked if I’d planted the herbs and black russian tomato seedlings I brought with me from Vic. Let's see... arrived Friday PM, spent weekend getting self into new lodgings/retreiving work things from storage, started work Monday... When would I have done that? I’d forgotten how close to impossible it is for a desk hound to have time for much else other than work during the week. Sob.
8. A couple of points in opposition to my general brooding cynicism: I am secretly amazed by the little ripples we unknowingly make. I am also running away with Leunig this week.
9. Back to the brooding. I sense that with my return to desk-bindings, the part of my brain disposed to ideas and deep thinking is involuntarily shutting down. It – which thrives on idle time – is being usurped by the (still sluggish) part that has been called into action to juggle multiple compact chunks of information. Like lists and bullet points. I want to scream that these little information snacks are useless to me, they are merely functional, inconsequential snippets of trivia, unrelated and meaningless to my place in the world. But no one is listening. So I am running away with Leunig, he understands.
10. A concentration of sympathy and wellness vibes to all the poorly kitties and all their mums and dads. I fear it will be my turn soon and the little blighter’s in a different state.
Tonight I stumbled across bugheart, a blogger (who also has a great idea for a photo blog) who made a list of 34 goals on her 34th birthday. Spooky, since tomorrow is my 34th birthday. It's probably unwise to ignore such blatant/weirdo prompting from the universe, and I've kinda been in renewal mode anyway, so here's my to-do list for the coming year...
1. Find a job in policy (and change blog subtitle to Life And Desk).
2. Save save save and buy some land.
3. Research and design my little sustainable house.
4. Persevere with a potted herb garden.
5. Sell my photos.
6. Sell my cards (or at least give them to family and friends on card-type occasions).
7. Eat more ethically.
8. Buy goods in bulk in own containers.
9. Continue making all my own bread.
10. Stick to pilates and walking 3 times/week each.
11. Do a first aid, safety at sea and sail training course.
12. Investigate Indigenous kitchen garden idea.
13. Read about transition culture.
14. Knit R a beanie in time for Japan.
15. Send a krama to N.
16. Blog more regularly. Post more for streeteditors. Keep writing for Dumbo Feather.
17. Get my typewriter fixed.
18. Do more creative work.
19. Do something eco-preneurial / creative with R.
20. Make and give away recycled notebooks.
21. Redevelop Pelican’s website.
22. Start giving blood again.
23. Learn the violin. And pick up my guitar more often.
24. Visit the Bunya Mountains.
25. Go for bushwalks.
26. Get a bike and ride it (and this time, don’t give it away!)
27. Do more for others.
28. Get an address book and keep track of friends/family contact details and birthdays.
29. Apply to become a foster carer.
30. Find out about rent a chook and herdshare.
31. Go to Sunday comedy & jazz @ the Powerhouse again.
32. Try to be more open to the possibility of meeting a single/available/adjusted boy with similar interests/values/goals.
33. Accept the journey, where ever it goes, and trust myself more.
34. Do one thing that's not on this list that I would normally say ‘no’ to!
My enviro-mentors from the Strezleckis came for lunch today. (The enviro-mentors who I planted a walnut grove with, who henceforth have looked upon me beamingly as their little green disciple. They who shall now be known as 'Gifted With Asparagus & Artichokes' for their bestowal of two shopping bags heaving with the season's best from their garden. I will be weeing green before the week is out!)
Ahem.
So after emptying several glasses of champagne - ten days til I clink the desk shackles back on & damned if I'm going to let the opportunity for daytime carousing pass - I told Gifted about my plans re work. He replied with a parable from the Tao Te Ching. Something about a cup of water being valuable, a cup of wine being even more valuable, and a cup of diamonds being more valuable still. But what trumps them all, he said, is the empty cup, which can be filled with anything.
Me: ......................Hopefully I looked very zen. And not at all like someone experiencing mild panic over a recent and fairly life-altering decision after being ambushed with the Tao. And DEFINITELY not like someone wondering if the empty cup could be filled with champagne and that was why it was the most valuable.
No. I think the little parable turned something in me. When I was a desk hound, no one would've recited the Tao in response to something I said. Never. Nor would they have brought champagne and home-grown asparagus for lunch. I think it’s an achievement that I’ve trotted on my idealistic high horse back to reality. But it's still a way from the saddle to the 40-hour grey-walled commute-consume pantomime which I've philosophically divorced. For a long time before I left work, I felt like I didn't make sense in that world anymore. It's not just a different drummer thing. I feel like I'm on tour with the whole freakin' band. Hrrrmmmmppph. Empty cup. Empty cup. Empty cup.
