no, can't do it

Can't go to bed. Having revellations instead.

When I was surfing before (see below), one of the sites I went to was the main one for the town of Thredbo, where the ski fields are, and ski season is now open so there are some live snow-cams and snow reports and lovely photos all over the site of a snowy town with colourful, twinkly lights. So I was fantasizing about going there to ski, which I won't do this year because I don't have the money, but still, it's fun to think about. And as part of my ongoing inappropriate crush on the Italian guy at work, I was imagining going skiing with him, because of course he would ski, he's from not very far from Mont Blanc.

And then I thought, I would be there with his friends and it would be like when he talks on his mobile to them, all rapid colloquial Milanese Italian, and even if I really studied hard I would certainly not be able to keep up.

And I recalled times with my Austrian boyfriend, when I would sit at a table full of German speakers, a whole dinner with no English, and I can still conjure up how I felt, like some idiot mute child they'd tied up to the chair with a dishrag, propped up for show but only just tolerated, not really considered human. It made me feel very bad, everyone speaking German and nobody speaking English to me.

But then, but then, I thought, I actually know that I'm an interesting person. I know that I've had some very unusual experiences that people would be interested in talking about, and that I'm smart and clever and kind and have lots of interesting things to think and say. So, I thought, I could totally go skiing with a whole group of Italian speakers who ignored me due to a language barrier (because it's easier for them and they want to be with each other), because even if I sat there mute, I would sit there fully me, my whole full interesting self. It doesn't matter if no one asks me questions to find out about that self. I am not interesting only in the act of being verbally interesting to some interviewer. Not only in response to a direct question that hits on the right subject matter. I am that person all the time.

Sitting in a group of people speaking a language I don't speak used to be alienating. But now I think I could handle it. Or at least, once I finish my powerful journey of self-discovery, I will be able to.

And I'll bet if I remember this in my regular English-speaking life, it will help me along on the journey. I can feel like that interesting person with depth, all the time. Quietly in a corner, ignored with no one talking to me. Makes no difference. Still fully me.

twelve o.....

So.

Dum, de dum.

(Click. Surf. Browse. Refresh.)

Did you see that article about the thing?

Oh, that looks like it might be a good movie.

Dum de dum.

What else, what else?

Hmm hm hm. Hmm hm, HM, hm hm hm hmmm.

(tap. tap.)

I know, I know. Go to bed.

weekend away up the coast

So I've been watching for a weekend when I had both days free, and one came around last weekend, and on Thursday night at like 1:30 in the morning I got onto Wotif.com and booked a place up the coast, the Ettalong Beach Tourist Resort. I did it all very leisurely - had a play to go to on Friday night (Exit the King starring Geoffrey Rush of all people, at the Belvoir), so Saturday I got up and just took my time having breakfast and getting packed. I caught a train sometime around noonish and rode up to Woy Woy. Was planning on taking a taxi from the station but there were no taxis and there was a bus with "Ettalong" displayed on the front. I double-checked with the driver that she went there, and had my first experience of being not-in-Sydney - the bus driver was warm and friendly, and said, "Yes, love! Two dollars thirty thanks!" Sydney bus drivers always look at you like they want to kill you, and never smile or say any words at all, must less call you love. People in small towns are just friendlier.

The hotel was a blast, completely quirky but so welcoming. The complex has rooms on the floor above the ground ("first floor" in Aus., "second floor" for you Yanks), in a vast maze of cute tiled walkways and federation colours and palm trees and little tables for two sitting around everywhere. The ground floor has markets - lots of stalls with $2 things, and hippy clothes, and handbags and belts and cacti and a fruit stand and live music and places to buy food. The markets were on both days, so the first day I did recognaissance and the second day I bought stuff - a jumper (actually down the road at the hemp store - but it's actually quite nice!), two silver necklace chains and three spencers for the cold weather. The first day I ate at one of the little cafés and had a homemade meat pie with homemade tomato sauce, and the owners lovely old dog Rosie came up and nudged me with her nose to pat her for a while. The hotel also has a cinema built in, in fact you can buy a package that includes a room and cinema tickets, so I had planned to see lots of movies but in fact didn't need to. Next time I go up there on a rainy winter weekend, though, I'm totally on it.

I went for a long walk along the water, remembered all the birds you see up there, and watched the view change as I walked along - across to the last houses at Wagstaff, and then out to where the waves were breaking white as they came past the heads at Patonga, and then further around so you could see the expanse between the peninsula and Barrenjoey head.

I had a big nap, took myself out to dinner at a nice restaurant, thought about a movie but ended up finishing my book for book club (Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan), and the next day pretty much did the same thing all again, had lunch in Woy Woy, trained home, arrived just ahead of a another batch of cold rain, and took another big nap.

It was a lovely weekend. I won't lie, I was in a strange mood while I was up there, and so the experience while I was having it wasn't just pure enjoyment. I was exhausted from long days at work and several nights running of bad sleep. I was still feeling bad about being 44 - exacerbated at work when I mentioned to the office manager that I was going up the coast for the weekend and she said, "Oooo! Are you going with that guy you talked about, the one at the philosophy group?" I've lost track of which one she even meant, but kind of snapped at her, no, there's no prospects there, I'm going alone! Okay?

So I was feeling torment about that, and about the future - which country should I live in? How can I decide? How will I make it happen? And of course I was feeling torment about the past, because S and I lived up there for three years and I hadn't been back, certainly not to Ettalong, since either a doctor's appointment at the medical centre there, or maybe it was a Sunday late-night run to the only late-night chemist to get him some nicotine patches. We definitely went to the movies there, and he brought me to the markets once as well. So, there was that.

But what I find now is the real benefit of a change of scenery - I remember the scenes. I know that on that walk along the water my feet hurt, my shoulders hurt, it was cold, I could feel the tired creases under my eyes, I was checking out all the fishermen and feeling sorry for myself for being single, I recall all that torment and both physical and emotional pain, but now when I think back on it I just remember what it looked like to look out upon. I remember the trees, the birds, the water, the dunes, the changing view, the wind, the freshness of the air. It's wonderful. It's a really happy thing to remember. So, that's the first relevation of travelling - it's worth pushing through and going out to have the experience even if your feet hurt and your shoulders hurt, because you won't remember the pain, you will remember the scene, and the scene will do you good when you get home.

Second thing is I was noticing that funny thing that happens to the traveller brain that you find yourself catapulted into thinking, "This would be a nice place to live. I could live here. I should live here! How can I live here?" I know it wasn't just me, because I saw lots of other people pulled to the pictures in the realtor's windows like they were magnets, all weekend. So what is it about the traveller's brain, that the minute you arrive you start to imagine a future where you permanently live in the place, and in doing that you somehow don't realise that you actually are in that place, right then. When I had my cute lunch at the cute place in the markets, with the tasty pie and the nice dog, my brain was going, "If I lived here, I could have lunch here. It would be nice to live here. But maybe hard to get to work. Maybe I could live in Sydney but just come up here on weekends, and then I could have lunch here." I do live in Sydney, it was a weekend, I was in fact there, I was in fact eating lunch at that café. Right then. What's wrong with the traveller's brain, that it does that?

An extension of this thought happened later that evening when I was tormenting about which country I should live in, and how I can decide, and how I can make it happen, and when to make it happen, and I was feeling very distressed until the revelation came to me - if you are yourself, you can be yourself wherever you live. Your identity won't be changed just because you live in a different place. I don't have to live in Newcastle to embrace my League fan self and the salt of the earth people I like to be around. If I live in Denver I won't be eaten out from the inside by the hikey-bikey outdoorsy health people. I can be in Denver and be me, because I will take me along. Duh! So, in a deep way, it doesn't matter where I live. There is no right place where I can be the most me. I will be me wherever. My selfhood, my roots, go way down deep.

This seemed obvious but also kinda profound. It fits with the stuff that Astrobarry and Salem Tarot have been telling me about my upcoming months. A powerful journey of self-discovery. Okay then. Bring it on! And if the me I discover and then fully become ends up living in Ettalong and going to that café all the time for lunch, I will be me. And if, as I hope, I find my way back to Denver to be near my family, I will take Aussie me home and still be her. And if I never end up living in New York at all, my Inner New Yorker will still be artistic, a little bit punk, and an academic on weekends.

So, that's what my traveller brain was thinking about in the funny little hotel in Ettalong on a very cold and wet Saturday night. And now my post-travel brain can think back on the funny little room and the comfy blue chair and the dicky heater and the saggy bed, and forget that I felt any torment while I was there, and only remember the scene.

feeling much better

You knew I would, didn't you? An episode like last night's always gets better after a night's sleep.

And the sun came out today, I think it gave all of us a bit of perspective and optimism today, the boss even said as much.

I wrestled a few projects into order, and recovered semi-gracefully from a near-disaster which actually became kind of hilarious in the end (email with white text on a white background, I'll say no more than that).

And then after work had dinner at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Glebe where I hadn't been before, and had fish tacos! If they make a decent marguerita it will have everything!

And then after that sat in the very front row of a packed house for my second experiencing of Keating! The Musical. Which is such rollicking fun that it would cheer anybody up.

So, feeling much better. More interesting thoughts in forthcoming days.

another festival of the bullet point

I seem to do this when I'm really tired and really grumpy:

• I am behind on sleep, behind on money, behind on hours at work. How will I ever catch up? I have way way too many things to do at work, and was going to come home and work all night but I'm so behind on etc above that I couldn't. But now I can't sleep either due to worry. What am I going to do?
• I have a really hard job with lots of responsibility, which is a good thing, and I can handle it, but it's very hard to do with absolutely no support from anyone in this world. Hence...
• I have been feeling really bad about the nobody-asks-me-how-my-day-was thing. Is it really so horrible to every now and again not have a perfectly even temper? Is it really such an unbearable burden on someone to display a little bit of vulnerability to them? Apparently.
• I probably come across as really needy because I am fucking really needy.
• The cycle - behind on sleep, behind on hours at work, behind on money, no groceries, too much takeaway, costs too much money, has too much salt and oil and calories, so you are not only tired with purple skin and black eyes but fat, and feel bad and unhealthy because of the no sleep and no exercise and bad food, and also have bad posture and poor muscle tone because of no exercise. Frumpy and fat. And old. And frumpy. But how will I ever get ahead? With no support?
• The crush at work probably does more harm than good. I will end up embarassing myself and making him uncomfortable, and also I was reminded this week that I am a manager, I am management, I have the ear of the boss, I'm supposed to execute the instructions of the boss which sometimes means not thinking the designer is the greatest thing since sliced bread and the most talented genius in the universe. I shouldn't fraternise with the staff. Rats. I've been trying to lay low for a couple of days but probably have not, and then with all the second guessing and neediness, I'm probably embarassing myself even more and making him uncomfortable already.
• But if I just pack it in and chuck a sickie tomorrow and actually rest, just call a break to things and rest, I will lose all momentum, and create chaos and confusion, and have more to catch up on and repair when I return, and lose the opportunity to actually put the last crucial bit of effort in and actually see things through. I am very good at taking projects that are in chaos and sorting them out and getting back on course - I can make lists and break things into steps and I can stay calm and explain things carefully to people, and call clients and finalise quotes and sort out scope and document things and file and announce and etc. But actually seeing things through to a finish. Doing all those things and then putting in the extra push required to get it done, or tested, or get some fucking body else to fucking take some initiative and responsibility so you could trust them, you don't have to do a detailed brief that takes five hours longer to write than the task takes to do (and then they say, "I'm out of things to dooooo. Do you have anything I can doooooo?"), and then it takes five more hours to test it all and still months later you find it never actually worked at all, the fuckers (If someone had asked how my day was yesterday, there's a story about that which I would have told them). So, I'm managing at work with no support either!
• There's no deadlines tomorrow. That's probably why everything seems a disaster - all the clients are writing and saying where is it, where is it, but nothing's actually due so it's all equally important and you can't prioritise or move ahead on anything.
• And dumb Senior Programmer, who's also Sys Admin, has been out of commission for two days fixing a server that fell over! How are we supposed to finish things when our only guy who can do things is too busy to do anything?
• And why am I feeling like this is my fault?
• I think I have a bit of buried frustration with my work!
• I missed/skipped/blew off/rejected the philosophy group, again, tonight. Just couldn't face it. It seemed more like work than like relaxation. Maybe it's going to be not part of my life so much anymore. But I have a hard job with lots of responsibility! That's kind of my main focus just now.
• I would give anything just to have some fun! Just to go to a pub and hang out with someone, and enjoy each other's company and laugh and both want to do the same things at the same time. Just for one evening. But I have not called the ex, even though there's a standing invitation from him to go out and do just that. Who else can I do that with? I need a best friend. I need a Bridget-Jones-type coterie of best friends. There's nothing more crushing than the feeling of the big empty space where those people should be. It's been overwhelming me lately, on the walk to work, on the walk back to work after a meeting today, on these nights when I should go to bed.
• This is probably getting really old, to all of you strangers out there. What are you thinking? "She should just go out and MAKE some best friends!" "Why is she telling us strangers this, why doesn't she call a real human person?" "Is this chick self-obsessed or what? She needs to just get over it." But none of the real human people would sit and listen to this, would they? Too burdensome. Too needy. So, guess what, you're it! (If you're thinking anything else and you think it might actually be helpful advice, please leave a comment below. Because what have you all done for me lately? You never write, you never call....)
• I know what I need to do, I suppose. Right now, go to bed. Tomorrow, eat properly. At work, and what the heck also at home, make lists and prioritise and assign times and due dates for things and break them down into small manageble steps. Try to get some exercise. Call my counselly lady for a big session of whinging and vulnerability and neediness. And pay her, so I don't feel like I'm unfairly burdening someone. A few days of sleeping, exercising, eating properly and breaking things into small steps and I will be out of this slump. I need to mantra that attractiveness to men is not a measure of self-worth and I'm probably not all that hideous as I'm thinking I am right now. Mantra that, try to get the rational part of my brain to take control. What else? Schedule in some beautiful time, not just "resting" (lying in stressy coma in front of the tv) but going out and filling the well with experience. Go to bed now. Just do the next step. I will certainly feel this way again in my life (I could probably count how many days typically elapse between these episodes from this very blog - so it is at least of scientific value, fuck you, even if content-wise you think it's a waste of pixels). But if I can turn things around a bit in those little ways I won't feel like this in a few days' time.
• I think this damn birthday has hit me hard. The birthday itself was fun, but the number. I think I might be having a bit of a hard time with it.
• I have, personally, a number of friends who had their first baby at age 42, or even 43, but I know no one who had their first baby at age 44, and I don't even know anyone I'd like to sleep with, just now, and I don't even know what country I want to live in, so it's a 2-4 year prospect even hooking up, even if it ever happens at all which doesn't seem likely at the moment, so that would make me 48, and that means it's officially all over.
• That's making me cry.
• Maybe I should have a funeral for my babies I'm not going to have. In memorium. There should be a Hallmark card for this. "So, you're 44 and for sure won't be having any babies!"
• Aren't you strangers all feeling smug right now. You did the trick, in fact. Better than a therapist. You knew there was something else underneath all this and you just waited until the nerve was hit.
• I'm 44 and I will for sure not be having any babies. And I have only just realised that I would really like to have a wonderful husband and some babies. And it's too late. And it's hitting me hard, and making me sad.
• Fine. Pleased with yourselves?
• How do you catch up from this? Same way, I guess. Go to bed now, eat properly tomorrow, break each day into little managable tasks and just get through them, one at a time.
• Damn.
• God help youse all when you turn 44.
• But if you've got this far, thanks for being part of this evening's Grumpy Festival of the Bullet Point.

way back

Tonight I had dinner with a friend who lives overseas, and his girlfriend. Sounds straightforward, doesn't it? But the friend and girlfriend, although employed overseas, are actually working in Canberra and then are being put up in Sydney for a few weeks by Sydney University. So he kind of lives in town, and in country, rather than overseas although that's not who's paying their wages. And he's a friend now, definitely a friend, but he started out as a student of mine. I thought he had been an Honours student (trans. for Yanks - the fourth year you do after your 3-year bachelor's degree, and depending on your results you get to go on to a PhD or not), but after comparing notes realised he had taken some of my undergrad classes, including an early-morning Philosophy of Language.

So we go way back.

In fact, I most likely met him in my very first week in Brisbane, because the Australian conference was on and that's when I met everybody. So that's 15 years ago, 15 years exactly in a little more than a week.

I live in Sydney, but I haven't lived in Sydney for that long, and I live alone in Sydney, and although I have quite a few friends I don't have any bestest friends, something which I'm sure I whinge about here all the time. I come home to a house on my own and I don't have anyone to cry upon or pour me a drink when I've had a rough day at work, or to hear the "And then he said..." narratives of my romantic life. I've only lived here since 2001, which for here is not that long, and while I have friends in Sydney I don't have best friends.

But this guy and I, we go way back. We talked about people I hadn't even thought about for ten years. He's been traipsing around the world seeing people I have thought about but have seen for ages and ages. And he knew me when I was part of the world that he now lives in, in fact occupies a really prominent and successful spot in. We always knew he had talent, and that he'd probably hit the big-time, even though his orientation was in sort of old-timey metaphysics (still is, but it's come back in vogue). Now he has truly hit the big-time. He has PhD students of his own. He writes recommendation letters for people who are looking for jobs. He has at least one book out, maybe more. He gets asked to review things. He knows everybody. He gets put up in Sydney for weeks on end, just to hang around and give talks and do research and things. Big time. And he's got a very high-powered academic girlfriend too, and they've got two positions in the same place and have been collaborating on articles.

It was lovely to see them. I asked what sort of cuisine they don't get enough of at home, and we settled on Lebanese, and we went down to my fave place on the corner and for most of the time were the only ones there (the weather had warned everyone to stay in if possible tonight because a cyclone-force storm is supposed to hit the coast (except it's not due in Sydney until early in the morning), and so they did, and the restaurant was empty but for us). We naturally had all kinds of things to talk about, and hopefully didn't just name-drop about the old days so the girlfriend wasn't too bored. He said at the end that I looked really good, and look like I'm doing really well - and I so don't, I've had black eyes and a red nose for weeks because of the weather and tiredness, and have horribly bloodshot eyes from having to do much testing of a form at work this evening. But it was nice of him to say, and hopefully he was responding to some background strength and good-doingness of mine that shows through the surface tiredness.

Nobody else around has known me for that long, or knows me in that capacity. Really knew me in that life. I guess someone who was a student really knows what I used to think and teach, more than even my colleagues would have (this guy did exams in it!). And someone who's so high up in the profession now appreciates what it must have been like to be at San Diego when I was, back when all those folks were there. So he knows me not just from way back but in a certain context and with a certain set of his own credentials for understanding what it means. Which is weird. Because I don't get to walk around the world as that girl very often. But she's me, or one of me, anyway.

And it was nice to see this friend and be her for a little while!

And then it was nice to see this friend.

And he looks really good and looks like he's doing very well as well.

And his girlfriend is lovely.

this week's poem

not a particle but a wave

light is vibrations.
vibe me your eyes light
blue.

sound is vibrations.
sound your voice, owl cello.
tremble me.

tides are watery vibrations.
rock me, tide me, ocean
blue.
only a wave.

jazz-fired pizza

My former neighbors and surrogate parents often get free tickets to concerts at the Wood Fired Pizza restaurant in Double Bay, right near the Golden Sheaf Hotel. It used to be that he would ring up when free passes were advertised on the radio, but he won them so often that they got to know the managers and now just ring up and get however many free tickets they want. So I've been about four times. The restaurant is a big room divided by a big black curtain. Outside is just a bog-ordinary family restaurant. Inside is a jazz venue. The menu is printed on two sides, one side is the eponymous pizzas, and the other side is authentico Hungarian food. A whole page of it, probably 40 different dishes, but nonetheless I always get the same thing - Paprika Veal Goulash, hot, with Nokedli (spaetzle, in German), with sour cream and a side of cucumber and something else probably more sour cream. It's amazing, and tonight was especially nice. The gig is free but dinner isn't, but then it seems a small price to pay.

The gig tonight was the best one yet. Adrian Cunningham in tribute to the great clarinettists of the 1930's. Given past performances I'd been to on the recommendation of the surrogate parents, I was expecting a grey-haired jazz session man with a modest local following. No. Adrian Cunningham is young, very young, and so spunky I would have paid for the ticket to just watch him stand there for two hours. Dark spiked-up hair, dark very smiley eyes, white shirt with double-buttons and a long black coat like a frock coat but it had a zipper, and black trousers. He's also a very good showman, very relaxed but speaks from the heart when he introduces the song, and is able to acknowledge the solos and extract applause from the audience without seeming at all cheesy or patronising. And the music! Just lovely. Just mesmerising. I have a new 1930's clarinettist to look up, Sydney Bichet, because they did two of his numbers, Petit Fleur and Stranger on the Shore, and I was mesmerised by each of them.

Because it's such a nice place, because I always have such an easy good time, because it's music you know, every time I'm there I pine to be there with a boy that I love. I pine for someone I could take a long who would love the moment as much as I do. I vet potential boyfriends in my head based on whether they would like it or not. Not everyone would like it. Dinner at a table for four with my surrogate parents, who are 60-lots of years old and would also be attending very scrutinizingly to any boy I brought along. Old-fashioned music. Funny semi-humble venue with the music area cordoned off from the bog-ordinary family pizza restaurant with a black curtain. My heart swelled, tonight, with wistful desire for a boy to share all that music with, but who do I know, who is there aged 20 years either side of me, who would enjoy it?

The other funny thing is that is must be a unique experience to be the kind of musician, or to play the kind of gig, where every time you announce what song you're going to play next the entire audience sighs. "Begin the Beguine" he said. "Siiighhhhh," went the audience. "Avalon." "Ahhhhhhh." "Sing Sing," he said, to finish. "Ohhh! Ahhhh," went the delighted audience. I guess I grew up on "Wooooooo", like: "And this next one's a little number called 'Rock Rock Till You Drop!'" "Wooooooo!" Must be funny to play for sighing people instead of rocking people.

It's now absolutely pouring rain, and absolutely cold, 10 degrees acc the SMH homepage. Time to curl the fuck up.

Dream sweet jazz dreams of Hungarian goulash and pizza, tonight.

Rock on.

a little bit punk

You know that quiz result I posted a few days ago? The "what neighborhood in New York should you live in" one? I find I keep thinking about it. It's helping me achieve a feeling of self-definition in moments of alienation. I'm actually amazed and disturbed how many moments like that I seem to have. But it's been helping me.

A lot of it I think comes from living in a city with nice weather and beaches, like the cities I've been living in since I was 25, but places that don't really suit me or attract my type of person.

My profile said I was "arty, and a little bit punk." I'm feeling so comforted by that! When I wonder how to define myself politically, whether I can really call myself Left if I disagree with the Green Left so strongly, or whether I have to be Right if I am a capitalist - then I remember, I'm arty, and a little bit punk. Arty left, not Green Left or Wear a Big Sign Denouncing Anyone In Power left or Socialist Left. I believe in creativity and self-expression and humanism, but I can still have cynicism about what it all means or what we're doing to the planet or blah blah blah.

When I worry if I'm worthy as a woman - attractive enough, fashionable enough, thin enough, young enough to still be desired by anyone (esp post-birthday) - then I remember, I'm a little bit punk! I grew up wearing black! My hair hangs in my eyes! I feel cynical about girly stuff like fashion and thinness. We punks think the world is basically fucked, right? And we feel most at home in semi-derelict urban environments, because we embrace human development and progress, yet are appropriately cynical about its success or sustainability. I don't have to surf. I don't have to do E's and dance at night clubs. I'm a punk! We hate dance music. We hate nightclubs. We don't do E's, we drink lots of coffee. We have sex, but we feel cynical about it. We don't expect happiness or health. We have cutting senses of humour. We read too much and have soft muscles.

I'm just feeling so comforted by this. I feel like I can really latch onto that definition of me. I can use it as a filter - "Should I worry about calling Mercedes Boy or him calling me? No! I belong in the East Village drinking coffee, not on the arm of some overdressed scatty wanker!" Or, "Should I start going to the gym at 5am so that my arms are as hard as my boss's who's a long-distance maniac bicyclist? No! I'm a punk, and an academic on the weekends. We have soft bodies! It's what we do!" Or, "Will any boy ever like me? Should I be going for short meaningless flings or hold out for someone who's actually husband material? Did I actually want a husband and kids, and should I fell devastated now that I have neither? NO! The world is fucked! A nuclear war could start any time! Maggie Thatcher is closing the mines and privatising the public utilities (well, she was back when we were all being punks), and anyway we're all fucked! Don't worry yourself about husbands and babies, how impossibly suburban and bourgeois. Just sit here amidst this urban decay drinking coffee and being clever until the apocalypse comes."

Maybe it's a feature of being forty-something. You finally begin to know yourself, which also means knowing who you are not.

We're desperate. Get used to it.

Resolutions

In the approach up to my birthday, I've found myself making resolutions. It's not the New Year for everyone and not the season for it, but something about the birthday seems to have prompted me to make some fresh starts and be a better person.

So far I've resolved:

• to whinge less at work and not be negative about clients when talking to our staff
• to use an absolute maximum of one exclamation point per email (they are useful to indicate a rising intonation at the end of a sentence and a certain friendliness, but if I have any pride as a writer left I should be able to restrict myself to just one)
• to drink the beers I have at home rather than the beers in the pubs on the way home from work
• not to volunteer a story about myself when someone says something to me - to follow with a question instead.

Forty Fucking Four

• Yesterday was my party but today is my actual birthday, and tomorrow is my US birthday, so we're kind of right in the middle of it now.
• This morning someone looked at me, shocked, and said, "Do you have a cold? You look really tired." Just before inviting me to have cake with the rest of the office.
• The Italian guy at work thought I was 34, which is only 6 years older than him rather than 16. Will he think of me differently now? Of course he will. But then, I assumed he already assumed I was as old as I am.
• He said, "It's how you feel inside that's the important thing, anyway."
• On the walk home from work (cold, dark) I felt hung over and like I was getting a cold.
• Being 44 is better than the alternative, isn't that what they say?
• I had the people who love me around me yesterday, and the party was really fun and people said they enjoyed it, but where are they now?
• I'm whinging. It's my party!
• ("It's My Party" is actually my song, it was #1 on the Billboard Top 40 the day I was born, and the song that was number one is supposed to determine your life. It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.)
• I knew Pointy Head was back in town because I saw him and his work colleague on the other side of the road last week when I was walking home, and I didn't stop or say hi or anything. That night I looked really tired too. You want to wait until you're in a strong position before seeing your ex, don't you? Like going to a High School reunion.
• This morning he sent me an eCard, so I could think with poignant symmetry, "Four years ago you took me to Tetsuya's, now you send me an eCard." But then he sent an actual email too, and suggested getting together, which occasion I've been dreading because I've planned the reply, "Actually, I'm kind of enjoying having you be part of my distant past, so I'll say no." But now the invitation is actually there, and I'm finding it hard to say that. I got surpringly sort of a little emotional about it this morning. I will perhaps never be over him. I will perhaps always want him back.
• Quote from my neighbor about something else: "I don't want closure, I just want him back!"
• There is the step-kid issue. I'll have to see him to see her, which I have to. But maybe not just now, just today, on my birthday.
• It's been cold and rainy, and tonight it is just cold.
• I still have to mop the floor from the party.
• Mercedes Guy is gorgeous and perhaps the best-dressed man I've ever met in my life, but the boss described him as "scatty", and I think he's even kind of mean. Not a go.
• Italian guy is not a go because I work with him, not to mention that he's 16 years younger than me and now knows that.
• I'm probably just hung over.
• I might be getting a cold.
• It is nice having a birthday, and I got an email from my sister just on midnight to ring it in with celebration and happiness.
• I got a Happy Plant, from some friends who are moving, and I moved it from the front door where the happiness might go out, to right in the back in the romance spot. That should do the trick, hey?
• What I was gunna do is write poetry and do homework, but here I am just bogging again.
• I was also gunna get some Singapore Noodles from across the street but instead just had party leftovers. Steamed the cut veggies that I had cut up to put in dip. Probably v. healthy. So good for me.
• Birthdays are nice and it's nice to have a June birthday, and all the other June birthdays are happy and it's nice.

___

p.s. After writing that very whingey and sorry-for-self birthday post, I got a call from a dear friend who didn't even remember that it was my birthday, and is having new-relationship dramas and needed to talk. And I realised that my problems are very minor, and that I do have love all around, and birthdays are just another day to most everyone but oneself, and it's all fine.

Sam DeBrito did a good blog on being a good listener today, and I was trying to do that tonight, but in the end had to give some potted advice and fell back on Dr Phil. Thank goodness for Dr Phil.

Happy birthday to me, everyone! Forty fucking four, as my friend Todd said, when he turned it first. He's right, though - we are just as cute, but older and wiser.

What I really do think about truth

The subject came up at dinner tonight about how philosophers tend to adopt extreme views and defend them, even though it's more likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle. And the issue came up about whether the philosophers who defend the extreme view for a living actually believe them.

I do know that when I was a professional philosopher, I did feel I had to adopt extreme views, probably for a variety of reasons - to contrast myself to others, to align myself with a school of thought, for marketing to make my views easy to remember. I remember distinctly that once I wasn't working in the field any more, I was free to acknowledge that the truth was probably somewhere in the middle, some modest position that most people would agree to. And now I've been back into it, I find myself once again defending extreme views, most recently that there's no such thing as consciousness and no difference between conscious and unconscious states.

So, the question tonight was, to what extent does the philosophers who makes a living defending a view actually believe it, and both of my interlocutors, neither of whom has ever done philosophy for a living, thought they didn't. But I think they do, or rather, that the difference between really believing something to be true and defending it loud is pretty blurry, and that you would eventually convince yourself of your own arguments.

Because what I think about beliefs is, it really really is, that in order to get by you make some core assumptions and decide to stick to them in the face of almost all evidence. You adjust beliefs on the periphery on the basis of new evidence and hypothesis and testing, but the core ones you hang onto, just because they are your core, and you require much bigger proof and argument before you give them up. But because the human theorising mind works this way, you live always with the possibility that your core assumptions might be radically false.

I really do really believe this. I really believe that I might be deeply, radically wrong about the most basic beliefs - about life, and the universe, and colour, and atoms and everything. Perhaps at too impressionable an age I read all the brain-in-a-vat stuff, or maybe it goes back as far as Horton Hears a Who, but I really do honestly believe that I might be completely, radically wrong about everything, and I've lived with this skepticism for most of my life, and it doesn't really bother me. I think it leads to a kind of cynicism, a kind of nihilism, but it's a cheerful nihilism. That's what I really, honestly do think about belief and truth - it's not just an extreme position I'm adopting as a philosopher.

Strange conversation

actual conversation had today:

Person 1: "Tickets to the film?"

Person 2: "Tickets to the film."

Person 1: "Just one?"

Person 2: "Just one."

Person 1: "There you go. It starts at 2."

Person 2: "It starts at 2."

(Person 2 smiles and walks away. Person 1 wonders if Person 2 was mocking her...)

Happy 105th Post!

I was going to make a big deal about my 100th post, but it passed right by. Happy 105!

Is abnegation of desire actually good?

Because the thing I really want right now is so far off and will take a while to get to, I've been trying to focus on living in the now. I've been trying to have no desires, so that I don't feel bad that those desires are frustrated.

But today it occurred to me. If you live without desire, does that also destroy your imagination? When I had all the desire about the polyamorous one, it was because I imagined how magnificent our collaboration could be if we truly pushed it to its limits. I even made a big list once, in a fit of mad desire - all the conditions and locations in which we could do Dialectics together, eg in the dark, while very hot, while very cold, while wet, in an empty movie theatre, in a balloon - it went on and on. It was a great list. The collaboration it described would have been so limit-pushing it would have shaken the universe. It would be a way of relating that probably no two people have ever related in before. If I tried to live without desire, would it stop me from imagining such an interesting life for myself?

I mean, no one ever agrees to this kind of proposal. Why don't they ever agree? But no one ever does - I have no adventurous friends or acquaintences at all. So maybe it would be better to not have desires than to imagine them, but I think it's more fun to imagine even if you end up frustrated.

Fiscal control

So, when I got back from my trip I started this thing that's supposed to help you get your finances under control, just like writing down everything you eat is supposed to help you get your diet under control. I've been writing down every cent I spend. I've been putting everything in a little notebook, and the most obsessive thing is when I go buy groceries, I don't just put "Groceries" and a total, I've been writing down each item individually, and then marking against each item which meal I have it in. So I'll be able to tell how many meals I get out of each object (box of pasta, pack of cous cous, loaf of bread, box of Special K), but by dividing up all those fractions I'll be able to work out how much each meal cost.

I might never get to that obsessive level of analysis, but if you don't record the data along the way you'll never even have the opportunity for obsessive analysis.

The thing is, even without doing the totals (ave. cost per meal, cost of dining in v dining out, percentage expenditure on dining in, dining out, entertainment and alcohol, etc), the practice is having some big benefits. As my sister said I would, I now triple-think each expense. And if I have beer at home, I don't stop for beer at the pub near work, and if I have bread, I absolutely spend the extra five minutes in the morning to make lunch no matter how late and lazy I feel.

It's more than that. I find I'm able to do brave things now. I guess walking home instead of stopping at the pub is a brave thing, because the walk takes effort and sometimes the prospect of a night at home cooking my own dinner is very non-fun. But I push myself and do the brave thing, and it's never so bad, and the memory of the pub beer wouldn't have been that great anyway, and I get closer to my goal. I'm even pushing myself to do non-financial brave things - go ahead and exercise, launch right into that brief at work even though I just finished another one and feel like I deserve 15 minutes to surf the Sydney Morning Herald web site. Stay back at work to finish off the things that will be useful to be done in the morning. Actually put my hours into our time-tracking system. All sorts of painful things, but I'm now just putting my shoulder down and charging into them, instead of focussing on feeling sorry for myself and like if I'm not maximally pleasured and entertained I will just die.

Discipline. I am gaining financial discipline, and through it I am gaining broader self-disclipine.

And guess what? The universe's magic fairies are rewarding me. Twice this week I have found money in coat pockets that I didn't remember I had. My broadband company gave me a free bonus week. My extra hours at work (doing brave things rather than putting them off) will add up to extra pay in this paycheck. And lo and behold I do have a little bit spare, at the end of a two-week period, that I can use to continue my agressive treatment of my credit card.

I highly recommend this way of living. If you're struggling with something, if you are feeling like a victim or alternatively are feeling guilty and like you could do better all the time, try to micromanage for a month. Write everything down. Even the writing down of it makes you more aware, and that brings its own benefits, but once you can the analysis, you can constantly improve.

p.s. The other thing I keep thinking of is what that guy said in that green book that I have quoted here before - bad things happen quickly. Good things take a long time to happen. It takes a long time to amass the pennies and get your finances turned around, but you can do it, and then the momentum takes hold and you end up much better off.

My Inner New Yorker - no surprises there

You Belong in the East Village

A little bit arty, a little bit punk - you seem to set trends that many people follow. It's likely that you're an academic of sorts, even if it's just on the weekends.

Where Should Your Inner New Yorker Live?

Second poem for class

Sentinel

Blue sky but a chill wind picks up
and whips across the ground.
The grass is sharp, still green, but dry.
People in the stands pull hats and scarves tight
and think how the wind must feel
on the bare legs of the players.
A white cloud passes.

Behind the stands, a sandstone escarpment
watches the white cloud go,
green grass hair on top, its sandy face
turned up and away, to different threats
in the distant sky.