This Is Nothing New

Worms

2011-02-28T09:04:00.003+11:00

As I look down into the dirt

I know the worms are there

Writhing and shitting

I know they are there messing things up slowly

Making their way to the surface but

Instead of getting dirty and digging them out

I shovel more soil on top and

Keep them in the dark

Teaching is a selfish profession

2009-07-28T17:44:00.002+10:00

School teachers are probably good people mostly. They give up their chance at a striving world- crushing career to tie shoelaces and listen to whining children for what can be a lot of stress and not a lot of money. I however am in the profession for all the selfish gain I can get.

As a student there was one particular teacher who I looked up to like a hero; I was twelve and I admired his basketball skills; his jokes; his eminent coolness and his goatee (which in hindsight was a childish and immature reason for thinking someone was the best thing since plate glass). I did look up to him and he gave me advice which I ate like Weet- Bix on any given afternoon and which subsequently changed the course of my life.

When I was in university studying to be a primary school teacher and people would press me as to why I wanted to be a teacher I would cite the influence of this teacher and that I much like him wanted to influence lives for the better. However this is simply not true and now I realise that I just want children to look up to me in the same way that I did that teacher: I want the credit for changing lives. Since realising this and also that teaching is a bad way to get glory these days (the internet does a much better job than me) I have devised a list of ways a could satiate my glory- hungry personality:

Grow an insanely big beard. My friend had a huge one once upon a time and had admirers come from all over the pub to gawk and compliment; admittedly he hated it.
Learn CPR and hook up with that guy from Choke*. This way I can save his life everytime he decides to fake- die and we both win.
Decide once and for all to be an actual writer and commit to submitting articles or simply writing something with a little continuity and depth so I become published famous and interviewed.
Act crazy all the time. Crazy people get lots of attention and praise in modern day society just look at Richard Branson and the bird from Crystal Castles.
Become a social photographer (no justification required).

That is all.

*A book by Chuck Palahniuk; read it.

I hate the way you roll your eyes*

2009-07-27T19:59:00.004+10:00

When I go out I can never escape the flaccid eye- roll; it may come from another or from myself but it permeates life in its disinterested boredom. Earnestness falls in its wake for fear of irrelevance or arrogance. When I am earnest I risk irrelevance or possibly arrogance and so I err on the side of irony. The eye- roll is aimed at anything possibly genuine but repeated; a dance; a smile; a joy at a song; a good night; being drunk (again); feeling that mystical connection that people say is friendship and the list goes on. The eye roll speaks of experience and a tired worn life broken by the savage pain of being a man; and as the world is perpetuated by the hyperweb and the expanding enveloping feeling of knowitallness and seenitbefority the eye- roll becomes more and more prevalent. I cannot risk irrelevance or arrogance in its face and the old maxim holds true: "if you can't beat 'em join 'em".

My love is destroyed by the possibility of nothing; a gaping swallowing hungry nothing devouring the world for the sake of insecurity. Really though I want to love something enough for me not to be afraid of letting everything else go. For some sort of consummation of my life so I no longer have to be rolled up in eyes.

If you are still reading this Sunset Rubdown's Dragonslayer is unreal; get it completely legitimately right now.

* This was said to me semi- recently; so I am not accusing you. The way you roll your eyes is probably quite endearing and sweet like the wife from Mad Men.

Community Investment

2009-07-17T08:54:00.002+10:00

Oatley seems like a pretty solid community; I have only lived here for about half a year now but it has a family vibe and something sinister about it. I remember seeing the banners "Maintain the Rage" hanging over the main street of Oatley a couple of years ago in regards to the new Coles that was being planned.

Oatley didn't want a Coles because it probably was an indication of a few things. First it probably meant the reduction of custom to local businesses in the area. Second it also indicates a violation of the community ethics. Oatley is proud of its suburban village image that it has carved out for itself; the last old- fashioned bastion against corporately overrun neighbouring suburbs like Hurstville and Rockdale. Having a Coles in Oatley sets a frightening precedent; Coles represents a monolithic corporation shadowing the village setting and community atmosphere. Third it also meant the ungluing of community cohesiveness. Shopping at local businesses probably increases the level of cooperation and happiness within that local area so by Coles setting up their convenient practical supermarket people shop less locally and more corporately; thus disabling the potential for real community connections.

Despite 'the rage' Oatley still got a Coles and yet Oatley; the hallowed bastion of village atmosphere; remains. It makes me wonder about what real community investment looks like. Oatley is a fairly affluent suburb and people here probably don't want for very much apart from a trimmer backside and a 44 inch Plasma. For all the 'village atmosphere' that is here there really isn't any community investment or exciting opportunities for young people. I think the whole objection to Coles was more of a snobby status thing. So that people who lived here could say that they are still living inside the dream of pre- corporate Australia in some throwback era long forgotten in most of St George.

Making Money

2009-07-15T19:51:00.002+10:00

I make great money. Really great money, actually I am sitting firmly in the middle class; I am earning enough to buy a house and pay off a mortgage and do everything that a regular person aspires to do. It is no good though, I don't really care about this money and it seems that all it serves to do is force me into new ways of laziness and apathy.

Let me explain:

While I was at uni I earned a pittance but I managed to find creative ways of living, slower ways of living. I shopped at op shops, had little to no phone credit and caught the train to places, slept where I could and drank lambrusco out of a paper bag. Now, I have too much money to bother with op shops and everything I want is within striking distance and I have no restraint in my spending or desire to spend. I can feel my addiction to spending money slowly arcing outside of my control and my wants growing larger as I grow older; furniture, photography, snowboarding, bodyboarding, magazines, the list goes on. As I shop I grow more and more numb to any sort of raw primacy and energy for life. I just want to grow my stuff, and somehow appease the gnawing restlessness inside of me.

I saw a preview for No Impact Man the other day and it is somewhat inspiring to know that there are others out there trying a different way of life. I am not so sure what it is that I want from life yet but just to consume and complain and work seems like a hoax. Also on this, I know I have an aversion to hard work, to giving all of myself to one single purpose for fear that I choose to live balls out for a lie but as I piss away the days halfheartedly thinking these ideas out I grow more and more discontent.

All I know is:

You need more stuff and I need more money.

This entry really took a sour turn, sorry.

The Lambs are Angry

2009-07-14T12:34:00.002+10:00

Laserdisc was a completely missed technology. I remember being about eleven when my neighbours in Western Australia invited around to watch Spacejam on Laserdisc. It was amazing a huge optical disc that played (to me) exactly like a video. I remember at the time it seemed so futuristic but also incredibly unnecessary and already superseded like Blade Runner or the 80s imagining of Back to the Future.

Mr Oizo's Lambs Anger reminds me of Laserdisc. It sounds like the future but a retro analog future that has already been surpassed by electro mainstream pop. The album pops and bleeps in some kind of disco homage to dark 80s arcades and it seems as though in another reality music could have possibly gone this way; that Mr Oizo is the technical superior when it comes to French dance music but it is just too awkward to be truly popular.

The album cuts so close to awesome banality but just avoids it in every track. 'Cut Dick' is a great dance track carving a great beat and building a stairway into nowhere not for the rise and fall but simply the groove. 'Positif' sounds like it could be a trance winner with it's high driving electro brutality and 'vous etes des animal' (or whatever she says) but then Mr Oizo punctures the song with disco samples and an 80s drum machine and there isn't anywhere the song can belong but some alternate future where Laserdisc was the technology that won.

Don't take the obsolete technology comparison the wrong way: I love this album the same way I love polaroids 35mm film and holgas. It is satisfying; difficult and no one will understand the appeal.

Here is the clip for Positif; not my favourite track but it has some sweet beats:

Brilliance in its early stages

2009-06-28T08:25:00.002+10:00

In some feeble effort to keep creativity going here are some ideas I have had over the last few days for different stories/ whatever the hell you could call them:

- A story about a James Dean style teacher; he wears a leather jacket; rides a motorbike; smokes and drinks on the job and swears in front of the children. Despite all this parents and teachers love him and kids want to be like him titled: 'Rebel with a Pseudo Cause'

- A comment on why people drive like douche bags with the music up really loud and my subsequent succumbing to their ranks. While at the same time exploring the bizarre reader/ author relationship in parentheses and thus confounding the original meaning of the piece.

- A low brow sitcom style prank in which I try to write a tribute for Michael Jackson but confuse his life with disgraced athlete Michael Johnson. I would still use Jackson's name but just animate with the corpse (Thriller reference) of Johnson's once formidable career.

- A review of Mr Oizo's Lambs Anger. Even though this is almost a year old now I just thought I wouldn't mind writing some stuff about it because it is an interesting record.

So over the next few days I may give a lame duck attempt at writing any one of these ideas out and hopefully I can keep this up and as school holidays begin in just over a week I really have no excuse.

Re- reading

2009-06-23T14:34:00.002+10:00

One; this no comma thing is really starting to annoy me. I am going insane filling in all my comma spaces with semi-colons; they are pretentious and most of the time a dramatic break when all is needed is a brief breath.

Two; I just spent a good half hour rereading a lot of my old posts on this blog that stretch back all the way to 2006. The most shocking thing is that they are actually good. I am impressed with my own writing and thoughts which sounds conceited but I always viewed my own writing as some mixed up babbling and anyone who complimented me as someone who was seriously demented (sorry Marc).

I am surprised that I make some coherent arguments and some flowing (comma) musical prose. It is a bit ranty and a very self conscious but really (comma) can you expect anything less? In light of this rediscovery of sorts I am going to go back to the daily post and see writing- wise where it takes me. I need practice again even if this writing never goes anywhere and even if this poor keyboard doesn't have a working comma key (or working one (comma) four and seven keys; equally as frustrating)

La Bookshoppe

2009-06-21T11:59:00.006+10:00

Everybody who has known me over the past few years has probably heard me rant and rave about opening a bookshop and while this has really never been a possibility (for monies- reasons) now it seems within my reach. Which is bone- tingling for me; for a number of reasons...

Of course one of the questions I have to ask is what kind of bookshop should it be? Here are two examples:

Above are photos of Shakespeare and Company in Paris; a bookshop I admire greatly for their hospitality and the way the place feels like the home of an old friend. When I visited we sat upstairs chatting with an American literature student who had been working on a cartoon before meeting some Italian girls and a Canadian who we ended up spending that night with walking around Paris taking in the crazy French.

The other bookshop was Massolit Books in Krakow Poland (my comma is still broken). This place was relaxed and homely with books on every subject and great coffee. It was tucked away out of the main centre of Krakow and felt somehow special; somehow like home. If I open a bookshop; that is how I want it to feel.

I am None

2009-06-16T16:05:00.002+10:00

Bodyboarders used to be my heroes; as a kid growing up in south west WA nobody was cooler. However something happened and I saw that the bodyboarding mind was closed and the culture they had created seemed stagnant and; well crude.

Until last week; it had been years since I picked up a copy of Riptide or any bodyboarding mag at all but since I have had a renewed passion for the sport (thanks to my new NMD board; but no thanks to the agro pinheaded stick monkeys out at island on Saturday) I thought I would; and it surprised me.

I had long forsaken bodyboarding culture as a microcosm of us vs them mentality and a creative vacuum; oh how I was wrong. The current riptide issue is brimming with interesting ideas and raw passion.

Case in point: I am None. I never imagined to see a decent fashion label with solid fringe support from artists and photographers emerge from the bodyboarding scene. Yet they did and a bodyboarder is once again a hero of mine: Alex Bunting you are the man.

Captain Neckbeard

2009-06-11T22:11:00.002+10:00

Recently I was having a conversation with Paul and we talked about our lame-o-ness in the beard growing / manliness department as both of us can only grow the lowly neckbeard. Paul remarked that he was "Captain Neckbeard" which made me wonder "what rank would I hold as a filthy neckbearded pirate?"

Obviously there would be no Captains who could only grow neckbeards unless they were in charge of a whole neckbeard pirate ship which would either be a savage set of red flag flying bloodthirsty psychos (angry at society and their fathers for their bad beard growing genes); or they would be the ugliest and most underconfident seamen to ever sail.

Either way; I think that on a pirate ship I would probably be "Hey You!" be it a neckbeard ship or not. I've never punched anyone square in the face before and I think that would be a prerequisite to getting some kind of reasonable respect. However I am looking to increase my pirate rep so watch your face.

With my shovel shaped hands (pt. two)

2007-04-14T09:46:00.000+10:00

nightimes against my health
the whole ramshackle thing lies down my sleeve
spread out lazy and desperate
I am a poorly planned city versus all the other buildings
I throw my hands deep into the mud and it bubbles up to that bony part on my wrist
heaving it out up to my forearms and spreading it across the face of an innocent man
the waves never stop for my hand
these rainbows just seem to be following me everywhere
and I have no one who can wipe this muck off me; your hands are as dirty as mine.

Reveries of a solitary walker*

2007-03-28T23:20:00.000+10:00

I heard somewhere off somebody that walking is a discipline and I thought it was true when I heard it but now I know it is even more true. I have tried to make a habit of walking at night for several reasons:

- it gives me time to think
- the sky at night with all the stars firing their lasers off is spellbinding
- so I don't end up on the Biggest Loser
- it makes me think that perhaps our world isn't as mean and nasty as the news and papers have us believe.
- perhaps I will make a new friend
- I can be an asshole and say things to complete strangers like: "beautiful night(?)" or "evening!"

The whole nightwalking thing also makes me wonder about how much I miss when I am inside. The world seems to sparkle at me when I walk and I don't go very far- maybe thirty or forty minutes- and yet I know that the outdoors is precious and special.

I wonder how someone like John Howard, who walks every morning, can emphasise all those buildings and numbers and business deals over the beauty of sunrise or the way the stars fall into the cracks of darkness. I enjoy the outside world far more than flashy, big television screens but I am a long way away from finding a rhythm to describe what God has done. My prayer is that my rhetoric rests in my heart and that the environment breaks through my ribs and out of my mouth.

If you have read this far: I like you, thankyou very much.

*This title is stolen from the book of the same name by Jean- Jaques Rousseau. Most of my ideas and much of my philosophy is based on his writing so you should check him out.

Community

2007-03-27T12:52:00.000+10:00

There must be some point in which every thought you have ever had culminates into some overwhelming force that you can throw at people: this is how I imagine academics and authors: that they would just hurl massive oceans and powers at the general public for them to be hit like a cannonball into a crowd of people: the cannonball then opens up massive avenues in the crowd and the academic/ author strolls down waving and smiling: the people who have been hit with the cannonball all just lay around there wincing and say 'ow': I am one of those wincing at the whole author/ cannonball thing.

But seriously, what do you want? A nice house/ good family/ easy job (heck yes)/ no job? I don't know what I want, I just know it's the same thing that you want. I think I want a community to be a part of: a community that loves people, actually, really loves people and not what people can give them. So many 'communities' only grow out of a mutual need, for example, we all NEED to be real cool: right? right. So the whole idea of a scene (indie, electro, rock n' roll) fills that need but only by me leeching off you and you taking from me. I want a community that says: "I love you because for no good reason and you are really good at this and I will lift you up and put you above my own self even though I am incomplete and really need someone to tell me that I am okay just as much as you, but I love you so it doesn't matter".

I don't think that sort of selflessness can happen without Jesus. He is a pretty good guy like that I think Jesus just loves us for no reason except that he loves us. Maybe someone can disprove this to me but through all I have learned about Jesus and us humans it would seem he really would have no reason to care about us: but he does and he says crazy things that I hope to understand one day.

Nothing new, as usual

2007-02-25T12:45:00.000+11:00

I'm pretty cynical about the whole thing. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, the new Arcade Fire album, the last thing I wrote, your myspace profile, my sniffling nose, the idea of Christianity and the idea of life and friendship and working and all that stuff. But being cynical hasn't really gotten me anywhere at all. It has earned me a lot of awkward moments between people, I mean, who really likes that moment where someone says something sucks and the other thinks otherwise. Cynicism seems to sap us from being excited and sometimes being excited, even about the worst things is a great privilege.

The more and more cynical I get (I usually like to think the cleverer and cleverer I get) the less good the whole thing seems. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, going out late at night, rain, sunny days, being able to work, hearing organs, my ipod; it is all so passe really. I think my spirit needs to be redeemed, so I can love again perhaps or just so I can enjoy the nothing that always happens a whole lot more than the everything. I just want to be simple and remember people and how special they are and love those in my life and those who pass me in the street or sit next to me on the train.

Being cynical will make you cool but it won't make you happy, it is almost like a ball and chain dragging you down and away from wondering. As you fall the list of things you can enjoy just decreases and decreases until nothing really means anything anymore except the most visceral of acts like sex and war and having a really high flying job and a huge television and all that really physical stuff. Stuff that is like an exclamation mark to everybody else; showing off and saying 'I get lots of sex' or 'I killed hundreds' or 'Have a look at the picture on this baby'. I think really that we want to impress people because we are lonely and we want them to say they love us and then know that we are good and worthwhile and important. And we do what the world says in advertisements because we all think that is what it takes for people to say that we are special and important, all the ads say that if we own this car we will have a feeling of power or a feeling of exclusivity. But companies discriminate; they want money and the poor don't have it and the poor suffer as being lesser humans and they probably feel like they can't be special or beautiful or important (but I don't know really because I am not poor).

Imagine if you were very rich and had a lot of friends and knew a lot of important people and then just chose to quit your very important job and go and wash homeless people in some warehouse in a forgotten part of town. Imagine how much of a demotion that would be, people would imagine you were crazy. You would probably lose of lot of your important friends and you might not be able to keep your large house, flashy car and Bang & Olufsen sound system. But I think that would change you inside, you would be telling these homeless people, these people worth nothing in dollar terms that they are more important than the men you danced with in the thousand floor buildings and more important than all those business deals and handshakes and contracts and clients and Italian furniture and feta cheese. I think these people, if they realised what you did for them would look at you with tears in their eyes and probably just hug you or collapse. I don't really know what they would do because I have never done it. But you might start loving things again like hearing a certain cracked voice sing a song or feeling the sun on your face or coming home to a bed that you have by grace. When we don't deserve anything everything is a gift and imagine if we lived Christmas everyday, that would be exciting.

I don't think this is a change or anything different for me. I still think I am being cynical of all the usual things like capitalism and materialism and the whole rat race. I am praying for something to change though; I am praying for the day when I can sit on a train of suits and shirts and somehow show them a love that they have not known. Not a denouncing, ugly, cynical young man who is disillusioned but a bright eyed, enthusiastic old man still closing his eyes and smiling into the blue skies and their ability to search out and illuminate the shadows.

Romance

2007-02-02T10:26:00.000+11:00

I think being single would be difficult. Most of the time though I think being in a long term relationship is harder, I mean that is why most people aren't in them right? I don't really know if it is a question of 'the right person' but probably a question of romance. After five years I obviously am not the same person I was when I began dating Marianne but I am inescapably the same as well.

As a child I was terrified of the idea of having to be romantic. I imagined that the world was swarming with these suave, debonair men just sweeping women off their feet with roses, horses and piles and piles of clever, sophisticated words. "I don't even know how to be a man" I thought. I was scared to buy flowers and terrified of walking into a jewelry store lest I be arrested for being there. I realise now though that I had a really narrow picture of romance, and I probably still do. Romance stretches far beyond my capacity to do anything. Romance is me listening; it is me looking and admiring and having my breath taken away. True romantics are changed from the inside by the wonder of the whole world and then, as an act of gratitude, pour themselves out into their beloved. The more I sit in the silence and wonder of life asking God questions without answers the more patient and distant I become with every hard word and business deal. All the advertising, all the concrete in the world cannot blanket the gift we have been given.

I think G.K. Chesterton said that: "The world is in no need of wonders, what it needs is wonder". I love that. If you are reading this, stop. If you are still reading, stop. Go outside, lie down and cry at all the tragedy, laugh at all irony and sigh at all the beauty. If you had listened to what I said earlier though you would not have read this and the above part; you would already be breathing life and not wasting your time reading the musings of a confused child.

How to get more money in less time with less stress

2007-02-01T18:15:00.000+11:00

Step one: The Realist / Wonder

I actually don't know the first thing about how to do anything with money. Except buy books; I am good at that. And if I did know anything about making money I think I would be out in the real world striding across concrete fumbling habitually with my ring and beaming my gaze across and through the horizon. Instead of the visceral world I would break upon the earth blazing in formulas and success- a beacon of truth of one sort or another. The numbers would fly through the air just waiting for that masterful hand to raid their providence. That masterful hand, of course, would be mine and I would not sit behind a computer after a day contemplating the futility of the rat race with good friends, great friends actually who, on a day overcast and ugly, all pretended that the sun was shining across a cloudless blue sky. With my money I could prove the unprovable: money = happiness. All good research only needs benefactors. I would be the Santa sack of the world: an endless, pouring, benevolent gesture capturing the imagination of a society obsessed with all my accomplishments.

Step two: The Emerging Megalomaniac

I know it sounds evil but so do you when you chime on and on about saving society from all its ills. I'm pretty sick of it really. Here is the point: you are so content and stuffed (see the Leunig cartoon of the same name for this reference) that you have nothing to bigger to do than place those contributing members of society below you in a hypocritical rave. All production adds value and morality unto society; whilst some production is misdirected Nietzsche's theory of eternal return sees that this fluff floats off and is forgotten as if it never existed. All other goodness of industry catapults down the snowy mountain picking up speed and weight and power and terrifying beauty until it imposes itself as a juggernaut against eternity itself. All this of course is the pathway of humanity so that if we are not unified underneath the glamour of purpose our forces become unstuck and like a snowball breaking against a cliff face we scatter the earth and fall white over the entire landscape. I believe that there exists a similar downfall: Babel, supposedly their cliff face was God.

Step three: What our forgetfulness breeds! (a lament)

When all falls at the feet of eternity in a great garbage heap of hopeless exhaustion we will finally see that all human endeavour was only for the purpose of not being bored. Our time is both short and neverending but we only count for one split second burning like a rocket through the hole of forever. Today you set the catapult in time against the rest of your soul's life outside of time. Our eyes burn with the fragility of this decaying, heaving, choking husk of life and then they tire out and grow dim and light becomes hard to see apart from where it is thrust against us in a haze of neon fantastic. The cities of our sprawling stacked atop one another weep and sweat at all of the misery they have seen. And if concrete could wail we would lose our ears to the din raining on us day and night. All of this, at our hands, we spent, we bred and we nurtured because we were bored. And now plunging our heads through the entirety of infinity we have so much time to think about all of the times we forgot to take time to plan for the time in which there would be no time but instead an endless supply of it (time, that is). I don't know about you but the thought of perpetually remembering how I wasted my life tearing down a planet in order to build a machine is a thought I cannot ignore.

Step four: Reducing Stress

While the principles of stress reduction run through all of the above principles in neat, discernible lines it is also necessary to allocate space specific to stress reduction techniques. The reduction of stress can only really be examined properly by first understanding what stress is and where it is birthed from. Stress is a culmination of mental, emotional and physical weights and may manifest itself in all three in any particular combination although increasingly today's society there tends to be an increasing emphasis on physical well being and emotional fitness over mental health. Consequently mental health in the Western world is losing grip (excuse the pun). Because of this phenomenon we will tackle some strategies for reducing mental stress and anxiety first.
Remember: it is all in your head. For mental stress nothing works better than an illusionary cure, also known as a placebo. Think of something that you can trust as really relieving stress and by simply believing that it works you will see your mental health climb like a monkey. Some ideas include: squishy, coloured stress balls, sleeping, insulting your boss in shrewd sarcastic ways, pirating music, buying things, sugar pills, heroin or cocaine (even crack cocaine will do although not if you are used to A- grade purity), exercising, biting your nails, screaming at your wife and children, combing your hair till it falls out, playing golf, blogging, crying in the dark, laughing loudly at unfunny jokes, wearing clothes, being naked, organising events for your company social that involve the harm of other employees (paintball etc.) or breathing correctly.

A spear, from inside directed outward and not the other way around

2007-01-31T07:40:00.000+11:00

I stand in the middle of a large, flat plain. Hands by my side and eyes straight ahead. If you look closer though you will notice that tentacles rage out from inside me flailing in wild objection. That is the nature of my belief. Even my greatest composure cannot for all time betray the murder inside me and exiled on this plain my black arms cannot injure.

Before I arrived here I saw a crowd of one million men and women all suppressing themselves and going insane. Their evil nature overcame them and from the mass spewed ugly complacency and inurgency and all the things that constitute a wasting society. I fell to my knees and prayed, I said: "Lord, Lord, change me from inside and let me not strive with actions alone for I am futility and destitution wrapped up in skin and bones". And so I ran. Out of my home and my town into the land of nobody and of nothing all for nothing. I then felt that with all the running I will do in this lifetime that I will never get any closer than I have already; I will be no closer to the goal which is infinite and yet I will continue to move from my starting place. I am perpetually a beginner and confined to the realm of finitude acting upon the infinity that is weaving through my bones and bursting me outward at the seams.

We hear wonderful things when we listen. But that is hard to remember and even harder to do.

Fight! Fight! Win! Win! OR serve, serve, lose, lose

2007-01-29T09:08:00.000+11:00

Just enrolled properly for uni and got my timetable and everything. How very exciting. Being my last year I am going to be swimming in education propaganda and probably drown because of it. My hope is that I can get out of education and into academia- hopefully philosophy or literature. It's not very interesting this whole thing but I am fairly tired and it can be so difficult trying to come up with something creative every day- particularly when you are feeling not so.

My humanities subject this semester is modernism which should prove to be interesting and Anthony Uhlmann is a good teacher. I could hijack the elective in some great protest of objective progress but I don't think they would tolerate that from a novice upstart. That sort of thing is more reserved for institutionalised intellectuals and raving madmen (Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault and Derrida). Besides we tried being unintentionally postmodern in our high school English when they asked us to write 'an essay' we literally wrote: 'an essay'. It was incredibly witty and clever at the time although we couldn't really express why.

I sat in church last night and thought about how I shouldn't be able to sit in church. How the church is a dynamic people and how we are the church. The guy up the front (it wasn't a church I attend on any regular basis) talked about how to respond to cults like Jehovah's Witnesses. It seemed very defensive to me and I just wondered what is it that we defend in Christianity? I don't think we really have to defend the Church or tradition or history, if anything, we should probably divest ourselves of history. Is it worth defending the influence of the Church today? I don't really think so. I mean Jesus had a tremendous influence although he did not pursue it. On the one hand I understand that the Church is defending freedom in the end. The freedom to believe and also defending a number of parts that culminate into the freedom that Jesus talked about. But on the other hand, freedom is never taken it only can be given (I think). A lot of people talk about how Jesus defeated sin on the cross and use a lot of war analogies but I think that it kind of strange that he died in order to do so.

I have never studied theology and I don't know anything about substitutionary atonement blah blah etc. but God did not take faithful people out of the world and grant them salvation instead he gave of himself in order to save all. I wish I saw the Church do the same thing. A lady the other day came into Word Bookstore unaware it was a Christian store and upon realising what it was shook her head at me and said how sad it was that religion and commerce cavorted in the same bed. I wanted to agree with her but I was powerless to do so.

Night time at home

2007-01-28T10:56:00.000+11:00

I am hoping to throw away all my axes. I spent most of my teenage years building a beautiful, dazzling collection and grinding and grinding until they were sharp enough- for what?- for anything. The biggest problem is that I never had the guts to use them- like a nuclear superpower stocking weapons for that great war that would never happen we all imitate our surroundings. The political climate of fear flowed like a waterfall from on high and I would plan and plot my relationships. Plot against my friends and family that if ever that day would arise where nuclear (family) war would break out I would be prepared with an arsenal to rival the best.

How do I throw away such fear? For I am afraid, that much is true. Now I sit in silence at home throwing prayers skyward in a bid for two things: desire and love (and also patience). My whole being winces at the idea of more and more demands but I just need this much and then I will be set.

Oh, sweet Father, Father, Father. Now speak and I will listen.

A cake cut into halves into quarters

2007-01-26T09:31:00.000+11:00

Last night I was Sal Paradise. I sat in the middle of a huge wine glass as the wine was poured from a cask toward me and life splashed and twirled and collapsed and dizzied itself around me. I was nearly drowned in the life that suffocated me- it was beautiful. The people swaggered and staggered spilling out 'hey baby's' and 'nice to see you's' laughing raucously destroying any air of 'I don't really know you'. They mixed and eddied and danced and fell and rose and got shot and stumbled over lounge seats waving cigarettes warning people. I sat there with legs crossed taking it all in, I smiled and smiled till my face stayed that way.

The music bound my ears and I bounced and nodded and closed my eyes and swayed and shook and took out all my inhibitions. The night stretched from my birth until eternity and we wrote poetry and forgot and walked up stairs and leaned against walls and let life overtake us as we ran at breakneck speed to keep up with it all. The Moroccan gentleman on the way home was dynamite. He spoke with a French accent and spewed crazy Australia better than Cronulla and Bondi and Manly combined. I was raptured by him; I wanted to go home and meet his family: 'how do you do?' bowing low and English- like. I wanted him to take me to Morocco and show me where to eat and walk through the deserts and rush through marketplaces knocking down fruit stands.

When I arrived home my heart was swimming and waterlogged. Both heavy and light and dancing and aching and stretched out over my bed I closed my eyes and fell asleep into yet another dream.

Hoppípolla: Sigur Rós

2007-01-25T09:08:00.001+11:00

This video is for Marianne. I hope that if we do grow old together that we never stop having fun and that youth sits in us like a consistently exploding bomb.

Fly by mouth

2007-01-24T08:24:00.001+11:00

OMG! A river! It fell from the sky!
The whole town was swallowed by it!
The virgins all drowned! (how sad, how sad)
The television stars all cried! (how true, how true)
Helicopters were crushed and crashed!
It was on the news, I saw it. (mutter, mutter, horrific, blah, blah)
I hear that it is now a serene countryside with cows and old fences and grasses and trees and farmers saying hello to neighbours and passers-by.
Oh what a tragedy! (what a waste)
We all wept for days and to celebrate our sorrow we bought new clothes (hooray, what did you get?)

Toward revolutions

2007-01-23T09:09:00.000+11:00

Daniel lies on his back, eyes open to the ceiling, blurring his vision so that the cream canopy seeps down over the walls and the room melts into a haze of off- white. Today is another day. Not that day in which all things take place but a day in which all things are thrown aside. That day in which ideas come and go like visitors and where everything is fluid. The worst part is Daniel knows it. He can feel the aching complacency growing heavy and solidifying in his bones as though it were a natural process.

As the world is bathed in a creamy blur he has an idea. An idea for a piece. He will write out his frustration and his anxiety toward revolutions. A revolution against revolutions if you will. The usual questions assault his mind. Medium? Form? Language? It is probably not worth writing. He tracks the idea instead; where it came from and where it will stop:

'I heard a song yesterday, about being a revolution. It was disgusting and made me want to hurl rocks at young people. The revolution went something like this: I (the instigator of this new avant garde) am indefinable, I defy you to label me, to pigeon hole me. I am a million things at once, so much so that I cannot even give you a cohesive answer for my dynamism. Perhaps one word would suffice one word can sum up my brilliant, erratic, unpeggable character: I am a revolution.

'That is no revolution, a revolution stands and is a consistent torpedo through society. It runs a course that is predictable and steady but because of the wavering and crying and bending within the majority of culture a revolution stands out. The whole idea though kills me; I want to begin a revolution but it is beyond me if only an idea could be birthed by me and nurtured and grown into maturity by somebody else. I think that society has enough babies though. Perhaps that is why no- one can raise up mature ideas anymore. We have petulant children of thought exploding all over the earth in magazines, newspapers, televisions and movies. My thoughts are no better though. I have no firm missile to launch into the bowels of society and rupture a response. I simply just lay here and wrestle with myself and debate and whine about how I cannot pick up my stories where I leave them. Somebody else will have to do it.'

Daniel put his pad down on top of the alarm clock that would not ring and slid over the opposite side of his bed facing the wall. He let out a large sigh and let darkness cross his eyelids. His bedroom was neat. Across the side of the room, opposite his bed, was a large study desk which also doubled as a book shelf. Along it were volumes of poetry from the English greats as well as literature from contemporary writers whom he found amusing: Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Don Delilo, Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski. At the end of the room was a large window which overlooked the park behind his house. Just below the sill was a window seat covered in all sorts of accumulated boxes and unfinished projects. Spray cans, canvasses, large sheets of paper, art books, pens, paints and all sorts lay strewn about the neglected end of his room. Daniel would fall asleep for another two hours before waking up again. Upon which he would again sigh then throw together some clothes and go and drink bad coffee down the road. The coffee, set against his brain and coupled with the weight of complacency would drive him to head home and fall asleep again on the lounge. For now though, he is still thinking about how he will never fall back asleep in his single bed; he opens his eyes for a second and staring at the wall he forgets everything he ever thought about.

Imagining to be a writer

2007-01-22T08:03:00.000+11:00

I am twenty one years old. I really do not know much about anything, I am not sure what I want to do and I have no idea where life is going to take me. I do know that I do not want to be enslaved to a full time job and all the pointlessness of the chase for wealth. Fulfillment lies beyond wealth and material satisfaction. It is as though sometimes I feel by sating our immediate desire for the material we deny any deeper reality and consequently let ourselves be short changed. We sell out. Selling out to what we can see, touch, hear, smell and taste is so easy though and often it is so good. It is only through desiring a deeper truth or a more satisfying experience that we can be led to that.

I deeply wish to be a writer. I have no idea what it takes and I have no idea if I am any good; I have never taken any writing courses or studied how to write but ideas and thoughts brim in me and I have nothing to do but scrawl them down in all their incomplete, incomprehensible gibberish. The question though that supersedes me being a writer is what is it that God wants? What is God's will for my life?

One thing, in relation to Christianity, that I often think about is my failure in prayer. I am hopeless at praying and I do not really know how it works. My ideal is obviously Jesus who healed sick people with just a word (and sometimes not even that). The first thing I should say is that I do not want to be some superpowerful healer dude who just walks around selling wellness. I want to know God so well that I know God's will so well that I can heal in a word, or so that I can walk in confidence in whatever I am doing knowing that God is laying the path before me, with me and behind me.

So while I have a desire to be a writer I have no idea whether or not it is within the will of God. And if you have made it this far please remember that I do not know what I am talking about but I am hoping to incite conversation (I love using incite there because it has such a violent tone as opposed to conversation). I am only twenty one years old. And I hope things work out.

Cava bien

2007-01-21T08:17:00.000+11:00

At this riverbank the sun falls and old men in their dark worn trousers and pastel shirts with the first few buttons open to dark, leathery chests wail to each other. Tired and exhausted horns spread their wings and glide over the river and the whole world feels like a Polaroid of the past.
A young man with a bad case of heartache plays the tambourine and sings sorrow into the cupped ears of the fishermen. The grasses are still and orange is stretched over the sky as though a painter has streaked the canvas and created something accidentally beautiful. The smell of open air and running water and freedom break over the atmosphere and for the first time I run my hand across the top of the tall grass and know that I am not alone.
As the dark overtakes I slowly stand and begin to walk back listening to the beautiful chatter chatter of other languages. As I stumble back into town I pass the entirety of my wealth to the young man and his tambourine and crackly old gramophone and sore, bruised heart. He continues to wail and moan with eyes closed and it fills me with a great hope; the kind of hope that breaks on the shores of beaches or that grows toward the sky in rainforests or that cooks fish to perfection in the tired and warm glow of Sunday afternoon.

Inside

2007-01-19T10:07:00.000+11:00

inside he bungled across deserts in a rusty suit of armour
outside it was incorrectly fitted and he often had to carry it

at night I stand face first into bushes and she walked on ahead
who knows what acrobatics the back of the back of her head is doing
the dolls teeter and squeeze me into cracks all Russian in their dress
it is hopeless really to think that I could run through this fun house

the sun melts his wax fortress of solitude and ragged and blind
and aching and his heart beating so fast that it may come outside
he walks across the room and drops a piece of paper that reads:

"if you stretched your hands upward, as if to the sky, you would be beautiful from your toes until your fingertips"

You are in a hurricane and you don't even know it or You write with too many brackets!

2007-01-18T09:50:00.000+11:00

The circle was either a sun or a moon. I think each person in the circle thought they were a sun. Our writer's collective was like that. Every person there felt their own writing so much more powerfully than each others, apart from one girl, who barely read us anything. Whether she wrote or not at all we all silently wondered, I think. I mean, it wasn't like we discussed it, we all had our suspicions though (or perhaps it was just me). Writers (if what was collected in that large, echoing room every fortnight could be called that) are funny. So many seem to just manufacture depth and experiences from nothing. It seems all very deceptive; they come off sounding like authorities but to give these guys any grounding would see your life thrown into a hurricane.

Collectively through, through the lens of the entire history of the world: we were a tiny, tiny moon. We basked in reflected glory and shone down on everyone else; actually it was less shining and more gloating down on everyone else. Anyway, the point is we were not a sun. We did nothing new and spent most of the time suspecting each other of not fulfilling the quota that we would set each time we met (every fortnight if you weren't paying attention). So sitting in a ragged circle in a large, old classroom with wooden floors and stone walls (basically a machine for generating noise- squeaking chairs, a cough, the following 'excuse me', then of course the drone of the person telling their story which sounded as though it were spoken from a narrow hallway and bounced off every wall as it ran up to meet you, or the way I ten- pin bowl. We would reel off stories, mostly just written for each other, and suspect each other (silently of course) of plagiarism or perhaps just ponder exploding out of the group with delusions of grandeur.

I have really no way of finishing this expect to point out what I tried to do. Firstly, those who know me will know that this is all lies- I do not attend a 'writer's collective' but if I did I think I just convinced myself to leave. Secondly, being false, I tried to critique myself and you as the reader by having a go at writers and their crazy plans for world domination (or maybe me and my crazy plans for world domination). Thirdly, I tried to write in a lighter, more personal and ultimately more comedic tone. And lastly it was just practice and I had to come up with something...

I'd love to know what you think so send me a letter (a real letter, not one of these crazy e- letter things) at 17 Neirbo Ave Hurstville 2220. And please don't firebomb my house and for those actually considering writing a letter remember how hard it is and long it takes to walk to the post box, and you don't have any stamps anyway.

Potential

2007-01-17T08:50:00.000+11:00

The things that everybody said rattled around in his head for every day that he did not fulfill his promise. They would bounce in between conscious thought and that hideous sneaking fear that something, anything is going to swallow you whole. Most of the time what everybody said would condense down into one word; like a sun dying and collapsing in on itself until it is no bigger than a basketball but weighing one million times more than he was capable of.

The biggest problem was that he did not know what to do with this curse (or blessing). On occasion he would wear it, a medal around his neck to convince others of the truth of the promise that he made to the world. Other times, the times it would crush him underneath, he would pray for it to be gone or for freedom from it.

He read a lot of books. He read a lot of great books by great, dead men (and some great, dead women). He was well aware that artistic brilliance shines through the worst times of ones life but he was always curious as to whether these great, dead men ever felt the weight of the promise they showed the world and whether they were ever paralysed by it. No doubt there were millions of artistic nobodies who fell by the wayside in the great march of lineal history. Who were paralysed by the weight of their own expectation. But they were nobodies and he would not be relegated to their ranks, a cast of billions, perhaps.

He stood at bus stops for hours hoping to wilt away into the scenery. He would stalk the streets at midnight hoping that someone would think him dangerous and cross the road to avoid him. He really just wanted to follow through though and actually steal from someone, give them something real to fear. He desired to be a rich man who threw plasma televisions from his fourth floor balcony and who still bought home brand groceries. It was the stereotype that fascinated him. He would deliberately conjure himself up to be an ironic stereotype that would give people reasons to say cliche things.

One day though, his parents died in a horrific car crash with an evil drunk driver who survived. He quit university, got a job managing a book store and spent his nights remembering the joyous weight that promise felt like; wondering if anyone would ever say it to him again.

Three styles, all done badly

2007-01-16T09:29:00.000+11:00

I would be a person as well. Religious conviction has laid me low and transformed my opinion. I am the stereotype and not the archetype. It is strange how Christians are regarded as less human; as not having had to deal with life. In some ways I can see how this is right but in others I grow frustrated because my own wrestling with Christianity is not seen as legitimate within or without the Church. In this way I find the Church wildly ungracious and if it were not for Jesus I'd probably give the whole thing in.

Last night I drove an hour with my girlfriend to visit an old friend of mine. We had a great night together- eating dinner and telling stories and being together. For some reason there was never that awkward air that seems to attach itself to me and the way I relate with everybody else. We drove to dinner in the one car and put on Cansei De Ser Sexy's "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" and danced in true Sao Paulo style; it was wonderful.

On a completely different note I have now come to think that marketing is perhaps the most evil of all corporate devices. The whole machine of marketing is driven in order for people to be unhappy. In capitalism, in order to keep everybody busy, there is massive overproduction of goods; so, somehow those goods have to be used (at least for some time) and the only way to keep it true to capitalism is sell them. To sell them though you need to create a need- a market. This involves making people feel as though they are unsatisfied or unhappy with their lives without that product. As we weary on though our lives become more and more meaningless with our ever- increasing amount of stuff. Therefore whether marketing only creates need or creates and fulfills it, it only succeeds in propagating the unhappiness that is rife within the capitalism ethic of 'more'.

A praise chorus

2006-11-23T12:34:00.000+11:00

The creator of the universe
The father of our hope

It is in our broken failures and death that you are shining, not glittering but shining as though perfection and sunlight were one; a strong light that shatters all clouds and darknesses and all of our petty instants

The author of all narratives
The first and the final

An eternal tube piercing time and space and scattering it unto infinite ends O! how we will never understand the depth of your infinity, of your love, of your knowledge, of your creativity. O God who holds me so precious be praised above mine eyes, so blind; lead us forward to your purposes and into your kingdom that is a kingdom that will endure after all eternity has passed, after time itself has long died

Stay with me

Be a father where I have not known a father
Be my strength where I have not strength
Be a friend where I have not known friendship

Why no regrets and a mountain of regret are the same

2006-10-24T12:23:00.000+10:00

When you have no regrets you deny the past saying "I would never go back to that moment or to any moment because I did it perfectly the first time" and thus this enables you to plunge headlong, dancing into the future with a recklessness characterised by suicide. You can never make a regret and so your future is assured: it is success! Congratulations!

This attitude is the same as having mountains of regrets. These people wander around shackled to their past like prisoners, they drag it and weep on it and spend endless amounts of time trying to intellectually break free from it. Their binding to the past is their assurance of their future, which is why these two polar extremes are the same, both are suicidal and both will achieve what they invest in, the truly cursed are those who carry regrets and success; they are stricken with uncertainty and a fear of more regrets yet still hopeful of more success. You would expect this to amount to balance but no; they are paralysed by either hope or fear (when you examine this deeper it really boils down to false hope and fear; false hope springs from fear so it really is just fear).

This was supposed to be a daily thing

2006-10-23T21:22:00.000+10:00

I started this blog to promote creativity, the idea was that people would read it and think I was a genius and leave all manner of comments and praise thus inspiring me to write more and more and with an overwhelming momentum behind me I would be propelled into a literary career sure to dazzle and sparkle and yet puzzle and befuddle at the same time.

The dream has died. My blog is almost untouched and virtually unread. I think and glorify everyday the position of a writer and how romantic it would be to hole myself up in a small room for weeks on end with nothing but a typewriter and walls made of literature. I always marvel at how writer's, such antisocial beings, manage to produce such sharp indictments of the modern world; surely it has to be pure genius. More likely than that though is the power of words. If it is a printed source do I take it to be truth? To what lengths do I evaluate the writer's opinion? Perhaps such a critical rethinking is a bad thing, I mean it largely just produces mountains of critics and few appreciators (something we seem to have these days).

The problem lies in our desire to snatch glory for ourselves (when I say our I mean my, and when I say ourselves I mean myself). Through being a critic rather than something proactive (a critic is reactive) we are able tear down an upheld value or piece or achievement in a hope of placing something of our own in that place, there is of course use in being a critic (such as maintaining a quality or fostering progress) but this I think has died in my generation and in it's place is a clawing, desperate golem with green eyes.

What do I ever say? Nothing, the answer is nothing. Ever.

I am a perfectionist

2006-10-08T19:36:00.000+10:00

I have a lot of conversation with a lot of different people but it always seems to revolve around one thing: the vacuity of my generation and my consequent isolation from it. I love my generation, I love how we are opposed to everything, how we are cynical and how we prefer the easy way out, mainly because we lack vision for the future.

Despite all this love I have no idea how to be a part of my generation; I feel outside of it, like a detatched spectator who is much older and is able to grow a decent amount of facial hair. So I have all the disadvantages of being isolated and distant but no advantages of being able to have a beard. I often go to pubs and just sit there, I try and just listen to conversation but nothing really interests me these days; people mostly just talk about other people anyway, about what Sarah said and- oh my god- what Dave did to Brad for Kate. Somebody occasionally want to talk to me but I mostly exude some terrible smartass, knowitall complex.

A question I like to ask people is: what do you want to be when you grow up? This doesn't get me very far though, in fact, most of the time people's ambitions resort to getting drunk or 'scoring' that night. I confess, on my best nights I cannot be so sure of what I am to do. It is in this way that these people are better people; they are sure, they know and then they act. They make positive decisions (that is, they make decisions to do, I make decisions to not do) and end up in exactly the place they knew they would. What is more is that they all cascade into that place between fits and laughter and being barely able to walk, a druken stupor of alcholism and elation.

I drink to forget usually, forget that I am tormented by an anti- existentialism. I pretend that I am making decisions to become something, striving to a noble and great existence. I think that I am more likely to tie myself off in a knot of confusion and intellectual puzzles. Soren Kierkgaard defeats himself utterly in this regard. He comes to the conclusion that the highest sphere of life is religion, these days religion is relagated (academically speaking) to the reaches of superstition and a lack of resolve or ability to 'do' life. Kierkgaard said that the paradoxes of religion (especially Jesus, the supreme paradox) were to be accepted as a sign of faith and that was a measure of our ability to recognise our inability. Philosophy is a tangle of giving up, we can never really know anything, never know if anything exists or how to act; how then should we act? We are cursed with the knowledge of our uncertainty, yet we must move forward lest we be swallowed by the deluge of progressive society as we stand back and think in a sea of runners.

I hope to be something someday, to make a decision that is not perfect but right.

Inspiration

2006-09-26T10:59:00.000+10:00

There are times when you simply lack motivation or ideas and you just cannot bring yourself to write, right now is one of those times. So, in an effort for inspiration I sometimes use a dictionary to find a random word, which then gives me an opportunity to write on a topic.

My word is "MODERNISM"; really. I cannot believe I got modernism. I have to write an essay on fundamentalism as a reaction to modernism and I am also reading a few books on the idea of modernism, so I guess this blog will have to serve as a precursor to work I should be investing in.

Descartes is often described as the father of modern philosophy (and modern mathematics) and in terms of epistemology (the science of knowledge, how we know things) he proposed an absolutism that typically characterises modernism. He set out to find 'first principles' that is, indisputable knowledge on which we can build Truth (yes, capital T) consequently in this search for Truth he was led to the famous maxim: "I think, therefore I am". Today, at least in the last six or seven decades this absolutism has been eroded, at least at a scholarly level. A new epistemological understanding is taking shape, one largely proposed by those crafty, crafty French.

I cannot believe modernism was the word I got, it makes for a horribly boring blog. I am going to change the word then, to "MODEM", I didn't pull it from a dictionary, instead there is one right in front of me.

Modem o, modem, that is all I have got. Nighty night.

It came full circle, ugliness

2006-09-17T23:11:00.000+10:00

We are all hopeless, it cannot be escaped. My heart is still beating but I feel as though my soul has stopped beating with it a long time ago. My soul is not a living thing but in a state of dying, like it has achieved its peak and is gradually fading away into a death, into a severance of body and soul, where my being will be split asunder (I have always loved that word, it speaks of lighting bolts and incomprehensible power; anything that is beyond human comprehension is worth recognition). What has propelled me toward such a bleak and unsatisfying end? I do not know.

I do know that my friendships are strictly business: "what is that you do?", "what is that you can do?", "what is it that you can do for me?". There is a strange space that exists between a connection and the hope of a future connection. You meet someone new, someone different perhaps, or beautiful, or admirable, talented, intriguing or just someone like yourself. In this meeting the opposite person is thinking that you possess some of the previous qualities and so some form of connection is established and you both leave your first meeting in the hope of another. You are too shy, too afraid of rejection or too convinced of your worthlessness to think that they would be also thinking the same thing. And so you see your hope around, here and there but never to approach just in case you spoil the sacred moment of your first meeting. Every exchange of words from then is weak and makes you feel short of breath, you squirm and glance away, looking for a way out or an easy way in, forget about it, you cannot walk upright through a crack in the brickwork.

Then, of course, there is that rare and decisive moment of hope in which a step of uncertainty is made and a connection is remade, in that oxygen instance you have floods of ideas and unity, passion and an unstable desire to conquer the world. Or you could just kick them in the face and spit on them running away quickly so that as they see your back a voice whispers in their head that eventually spews out of every orifice cursing and remembering what you did in between shaking their head and shaking the heads of everybody they know. You know better than them.

You always did.

Welcome ignorance!

2006-09-15T15:45:00.000+10:00

Why do we all wish that we were more idotic? I feel as though our generation, more than any other, are content to while away the time in recreation and abasement. It is because we can, right? We have no pressing danger or immediate urgency and so we are allowed to waste our lives in a material squalor. Sing, Sing the message of our generation to the older, the younger, the poorer and there are no richer.

"You need more stuff"

Echoes the chorus while the verses rattle off the ills of society worth fleeing from:

"learning, critical thinking, books, questions; these are the dangers we face"

We are the idiot nation, welcome ignorance!

Committing, quitting

2006-09-08T13:18:00.000+10:00

I work at Word Bookstore, Word is a Christian bookstore chain who take advantage of the Christian consumer market and while purporting to sell 'resources' usually only advertise what sells rather than what is actually good. What does it mean to commit to your ethics? I believe that Word exploit the weaknesses within the church in order to make money. I vehemently disagree with this but should I quit on the basis of such a belief?

I had a conversation once with a friend who said that I was thinking too small if I didn't take a job based on ethical values. He said that it can be our duty to enter a workplace and reform it; to change it from the inside out. I would have preferred to extricate myself from the world and create my own bubble of community that lacks the reality of tragedy.

This begs the question, what is fundamentally wrong with Word? It surely is not the people I work with who are some of the most creative, loving and passionate people who I know. The conclusion I have rested with is the capitalist framework in which Word operates. The enemy of capitalism has always seemed to be communism, or some form of socialism. At the core of socialism is the other, whilst the core of capitalism is the self. Saying that, the answer is not workplace socialism; that is equally as wrong and would place a business outside the field of real competitiveness. The answer is dedication to the other, as opposed to the self.

Capitalism crumbles at humility and servanthood as it is built on a foundation of competition and comparison. The furthest we can move toward humility is embodied in the greatest victims of our western salvation, the homeless. If, as a functioning business, we were to support the most poor and destitute of our society how would that change a business? Obviously I am in no position to make executive decisions about who we support corporately; but I am endeavouring to influence a quiet revolution. In my few encounters with manifest brokenness (the homeless) I have come to terms with the lack of character inside myself. I believe Jesus called us unto people like this for our benefit and not theirs; I realise this now because I have nothing, beyond dollars (which are hollow to starving people), to give.

It is my goal to use the vehicle of industry and commerce as a ironic catalyst for social change; much in the vein of the Horse of Troy. Such a business I think would have to be retail in essential nature as this provides the greatest opportunity for human connection. If anyone reads this (which is unlikely) and feels gravitated toward something new and anti- anti then please either comment this or message me through myspace, the link is on your right.

My ideas are just ideas, but I hope to cultivate some commitment in myself.

Neglect

2006-09-07T13:49:00.000+10:00

Plato talks about education being the answer to all wrongdoing. He says that we only do wrong things out of our ignorance and that if we really knew the effect of what we did we would not do it. I thought this was really good but after consistently desiring good and failing to achieve it I see that it is not through not knowing the good that I fail but an undisciplined and lacking life. The worst of me always comes out when I am complacent and neglect the responsibilities I committed myself to.

I am reading Silas Marner by George Eliot and have four pages left; four and yet I cannot bring myself to pick up the book and finish. Also on my reading list at the moment is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Textures

2006-09-07T13:02:00.000+10:00

That ether sky

2006-09-05T20:02:00.000+10:00

I often walk alone at night
my shoes nearly falling off and
my mouth bustling with words and phrases

The ground falls away and gives unto
the lonely sky that swallows up
in order to give wonder a new birth

I always preferred a country sky,
the stars cascade and bow in
cosmic decadence, the entire universe was for me

I often walk carefully at night
and you should take my busy hands and
brush them softly, whispering that

that I don't have to...anymore.

Control

2006-09-04T22:05:00.000+10:00

This is such an ambiguous concept, but then I guess any abstract noun presents difficulties. I mean, I say something (like control) and who knows what it rattles in your brain; it moves through the conduit of your previous experience and forms a terminally subjective meaning that is far removed from what I am talking about. Hence, virtually all of post- modern philosophy ends up tearing up the classical philosophers because the words they used really have no meaning, words are dead. Can we connect? I do not really know.

Anyway! I am supposed to be writing on control.

The word would mean that we have some mastery of our environment, a feeling (real or imagined) of authority. The greatest degree of this control could lean toward power but the least degree of control would fall into the jaws of helplessness. We are told that control is a good thing, that control is directly linked with purpose, that if we purposefully strive ahead and control, take-a-hold-of our situations that will turn out the way we want them. For the most part, this is true and not a bad thing; illusion, however, is.

Control is necessary but even more important is looking like we are in control, because if we can't be in control then why not at least seem like it? Right? I realise that all these issues (that I blog about) stem from a core problem but I will not address this problem just yet. I grip the illusion of control like grim death, as if you imagining I had control would count to real control. The short story is my life has moved beyond my control and become a monster of it's own. I used to think that this was a fantastic thing but it has moved into areas to which I never wanted, let me illustrate.

A hydra is a mythical beast, when you cut off one of it's heads it simply grows two more to replace it, making it virtually unbeatable, Hercules did apparently but God only knows how. My life is much like a hydra, I had a single head or purpose; then it got cut off. To compensate I grew two heads, diversifying my purpose and not limiting my options, sounds like sensible business to me. By 21 I have had my head cut off so many times that I have about 57 heads and I do not even know which one I really am, this angry monster now just rampages following whichever head is out front. I have a complete lack of control despite every head being a part of my body that just feels the weight of the world crushing it.

I am the hydra, and you are next.

Night times

2006-09-03T19:04:00.000+10:00

I was hoping to have my next blog entry broken up by photos and I have heaps of them ready but a friend has the cable and so I can't take them from my camera just yet. So, in a desperate attempt to not lose momentum this blog entry will be another all - text one.

People do not know what they want, I think maybe it could be that we are all afraid of what we want or that what we want is 'wrong' and so we don't stop wanting it but instead just deny that we want it. Which brings us to an interesting situation... when we pretend not to desire something we have to pretend to desire something else. This blurs the line between reality and fiction; and how do we know what we want if we really don't want it? I think we have to take our cues from somewhere or someone else.

For example, somebody seems to be doing really well wanting a full- time job that is not nessecarily fulfilling but it pays the bills as well as a weekend of excesses. He is able to work this job with minimal stress and has even been promoted. Now, you, on the other hand, don't want a full- time job. You think you want to do something creative and different to change people's minds and hearts while retaining your soul. You really want to be brilliant. Mr Jobs (as we will call him) seems to be achieving some form of brilliance, at least on the weekends, if nowhere else. He has enough money to treat his social inadequacy with drugs and alchohol and seems to be unaffected by it, I mean, his work is not a place that demands integrity. What is it that you want? Brilliance. Who says what brilliance is? The answer is simply other people, they weigh your worth. Mr Jobs is your new standard of brilliance and so you begin to take cues from him without actually realising that he does not share your desires to maintain the goodness of his heart and purity of character. You sold yourself short for a cheaper dream imagined in the mind of bang gangers and junkies.

I don't think I came to a point but I rarely do, writing can only reflect life and right now my life serves little purpose other than capitalist waste and consumption. With all our false wants and confused ideas we career through an oblivious existence to an obvious end.

Prattle, prattle

2006-08-27T18:38:00.000+10:00

What is the point of a diary / blog / thinking?
I pretty much have no idea but exploring other blogs makes me think I should be doing one of the following:

a) Writing about the daily happenings of my life, which would interest virtually nobody and only serve to justify anything stupid I do.

b) Grinding some axe or agenda, unfortunately this generally requires some kind of opinion based on either a big life experience (like beating cancer) or having a giant asshole complex.

c) Exposing the secret dirty underbelly of something. Again I am not deeply involved in anything that has a dirty underbelly, and I am certainly in no place to expose it if I am.

d) Whining.

e) Exhibiting my flowing and gorgeous prose and beating off book offers with a golf club.

It is abundantly clear that in order to achieve the fame, respect and unrelenting adulation of the world I will have to do all five. So that means: daily happenings, an agenda (probably brotherhood of humanity or something), dirt (Sydney has enough to fill plenty - a - blog), whining (something I seem to do ad nauseam) and brilliance (again ad nauseam).

You forget, this is nothing new.

2006-08-26T19:05:00.000+10:00

This is nothing new, so if that is what you are after, forget about it. I am the cut copy of millions of others and in all my efforts to distinguish myself I have only succeeded in separating myself from success (in material terms).

In a class the other week another student said that life is just a parade unto death, that in life we simply move toward our eternal destiny, which he believed was a really long sleep, a sleep for eternity in fact, he also said that eternity frightened him. I guess this is understandable as it comlpetely inconceivable to our human minds. His fear also lay in the fact that nothing good stays good, so whatever lay behind eternity (however good) could not be eternally good. If this life is a waterfall into oblivion / eternity; what contributes to making a difference to eternity? If eternity is a reality then is my immediate physical experience is simply a distraction? It would make sense since we know that from science that the physical body dies, thereby rendering all physical attainment pointless and foolish. I heard on the radio that philosophy is not about prescribing right answers but about asking right questions, having said that, what is the purpose of a question? In the English language it would be to obtain information, and certainly when we ask questions of philosophy and of life we obtain information but it is not calculable or measurable. We would be rendering character unto ourselves with this information, rather than achieving a peaceful answer. So we are left with a negative proof, in the Socratic tradition, crossing off all possibilities and proposing no new solutions.

So much of my life is socially constructed and I have no desire to escape it's tentacles because without it so much of my pleasure will disappear. As a result of this conclusion tonight will be a party and probably a messy, regret filled night. Socrates, shake your head.