I used to be the only kid that brought chicken curry for lunch. Amazing you say, except I wanted what everyone else had: peanut butter or marmite sandwiches. My sister and I also used to write and illustrate extremely elaborate accounts of Greek and Roman mythology. Then act it out, draped in old flannel bedsheets. For the record, she’s a lot weirder than I am. Her recently re-discovered box of childhood treasures included a plastic model T Rex with only the head painted brown, several diodes, one of them light-emitting, and a tooth.

I also used to live in paranoid fear about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, my parents splitting up, getting diabetes and friends you would normally knock around with confessing a crush on me. If a boy told me he liked me he would automatically become someone I could never speak to again. I guess even then I thought the worst fate ever would be to get married and live happily ever after. I dealt with these fears by diligently researching strategies for dealing with natural disasters and practising them (a lot): eating hot chips rather than lollies; secretly but unscientifically monitoring the health of my parents’ relationship; and being uncompromisingly obnoxious to those boys who might have been in danger of falling in love with me. Truth be told, those boys did not number in the hundreds. Or even the tens really. I’m really sorry John Walker, i still feel bad for calling you a pig when we were in Standard 2. You weren’t, you were really nice, if misguided, for saying that you thought I could have been Vicki Vale. I hope I haven’t ruined you for other women.

When I was a young teen, I thought music was the only real, pure, thing. Especially if it was epic and overblown and sung through Billy Corgan’s nostrils.  I guess this wasn’t especially weird for the time. I read a lot of poetry, mainly TS Eliot and Wallace Stevens. Then when I got bit older I thought the only worthy, real thing in life was experience and the collecting of those, but no photographs because these would only destroy the sanctity of experiencing and collecting those moments. Of course now I know that memory is totally malleable and I could have just spun those experiences from a scrap of someone else’s late night bar story. But anyway, for some reason I was fascinated by Americana, the deep south, bluegrass and hippies. Tom Waits seduced me with his heart of Saturday night and I felt a twangy resonance with the romance of nighthawks at the diner. I loved the idea of a drifter’s life of coffee and cigarettes, jousting satirical wit with strangers and friends (all preferably single and similarly commitment-phobic). I pictured good will, low light, sardonic laughter and expert smoke rings. While I drank a lot of coffee, the plan was somewhat stymied by not having ever smoked a cigarette until I was 28, which is probably a little too advanced to be calling oneself “bohemian” or “youth”. Most importantly, I always felt like a part of me was separate, observing only. It was like having a constant film critic in my head, where the (largely uneventful) film was my life.

As I got older I learned how to take the more obvious edge off this weirdness, mainly by talking less. This has of course made my social life a little easier. The most obvious lightbulb moment was when I’d just come back from Vietnam and realised that all my life I’d been battling the mainstream: convenience supermarkets, disposable packs of prewashed salads, home ownership, making a salary. I also finally emotionally understood why people do it: it’s.so.damned.easy.

I’ve started to give in I think. I am in a long term relationship. We talk about “building equity” and pensions.  We have been going through big life events together. I often don’t notice myself observing myself anymore.

While it is something of a relief that I can participate, at least by making sympathetic noises, like a normal well-adjusted adult in conversations about the difficulties of live-in renovations, I miss the things I used to think, the things I used to notice when I was an “outsider”: more socially awkward, but more given to insight. I miss the self-reflection that takes place when you are your own most critical critic. I miss the richness of my interior life. I miss the rub that the disconnect between my minority culture and my surroundings created. I miss having that feeling of a dangerously over-crowded brain such that a burst of some creative act or brief brush with intense beauty or both was absolutely necessary lest my brain blow up. Assimilation into social normality has been double-edged sword. It has brought security in my “place” in society. This is something I suspect that someone who has never been a visible minority or displaced in some other way might never truly comprehend or appreciate. But the price of this security and safety has been a loss of awareness, a loss of the meta-thoughts, of what Terry Pratchett calls Second Thoughts, ie what you think about what you’re thinking. I’m not sure where I’m going with this except to say that I sometimes miss being that weird, awkward kid who lived a lot inside my head and who knew that the Basenji is an Egyptian breed of “barkless” dog but often didn’t know that most other 12 year old girls at a slumber party would not find this even slightly interesting.

What have I done this year that I’m proud of? I knitted and felted a pair of slippers. It was a fairly unattractive pair of shoes in the end, and the felting took me about six hours of vigorous stirring (and then finally shameful capitulation to the washing machine’s superiority for such jobs), and wasted more water than our desert country can probably bear. But, the feeling of learning something new and going through with it to the end was immensely satisfying.

I made the enormous (for me) move of moving in with someone. Again, those of you who know me know my preferred mode of operation is playing things loosey goosey with one foot in the door at all times. For all of life in general, let alone matters of personal commitment.  It has been at various turns wonderful, frightening, frustrating, comfortable, dissatisfying, pedestrian, wounding, affirming. As you can see, I’m still undecided about the net worth of this enterprise. However, connected to this moving in with one person thing, I also made the unprecedented move of giving up the last bite of something I actually wanted. Is this life’s progress?

I also like to think I have started to make some changes that will make a difference to the legal profession in NSW, in relation to its relationship with Aboriginal Australia. Never before in its 127 year history had the Law Society of NSW thoroughly considered its relationship with, and responsibility towards Indigenous Australia, and this year for the first time it did so, via a series of small, intensive consultations, and then, a large public consultation.  Mullanjeiwaka, the first Aboriginal barrister, and also the first Aboriginal Wallaby, said this at the public consultation: “No institution has done more damage to Aboriginal people than the law.” This year, I tried to start to change this. I can’t say much more except that subject to the various approvals, I am hoping for bigger things to roll out next year.

I’m also quietly satisfied with my new relationship with Australia. That is to say, knowing more about Indigenous Australia, and walking on Western Arrenrte country with Western Arrenrte guides and Elders, finally made me care about that great brown land. If not for me, then for them and ultimately, for the health of our planet. Yes. I may or may not be born-again hippie bogan.

But, there are things I feel could have been better about this year. If I were to be brutally honest, I was, on the whole, bored with my lot. I wish I could’ve written more. I struggled with obtaining more meaning out of my days. I struggled with finding those moments of transcendence I feel were more readily accessible before this year of Settling Down. I felt dulled, less interesting by virtue of my 9-5 job. I was angry too much. I watched too much TV.

I’m not sure what this is a product of specifically. Of course, everything has a hand to play in this, but is there one particular choice one can point to that may be more or less responsible for this joy-stealing situation? Where does an atheist really find transcendence? What can I do differently to get back to where I have been? I’m impatient with waiting, but perhaps the waiting is what I’ve been doing wrong.

But it has its drawbacks too. And one of the biggest ones is that you broaden your portfolio of all the awesome people that you don’t get to have in your life on a daily basis. That is to say, my absolute hands-down favourite part of going to other places, and living elsewhere is meeting people who grew up in a totally different place from you, went to a different school, perhaps speak other languages and listened to different music, and yet still finding a way to connect with them. What a privilege that is. And I have been so lucky to have met some truly incredible people in my travels, and – I miss them all the time. Not you know, in a paralysing “I’m so sad I can’t do my laces up because I can’t see from crying” way, which would be kind of debilitating, let alone creepy. But in a, “Oh I could really use a beer with this person right now but they’re not here that sucks rotten eggcheese” sort of way. And you miss out on the big things that are happening in their lives too, like them getting married, having a kid or a dog, getting inked, breaking up, making up, making bread, reading a book that blew their mind, and the hundreds of epiphanies that one tends to share with the people who are closest in proximity, but not necessarily closest in the ways of the heartmindgut (the location of all sentiment and intellectual warmth and person-to-person regard).

So I had kind of a crazy September where I spent a week and a half in Toronto/Georgian Bay, then immediately followed up by a week in central Australian desert country. Both of those things were exactly what I needed – a balm for my soul if I were to wax lyrical – but in different ways. I came home from both having had a straight-up joy injection. Happiness, but deeper than that. If I were religious or spiritual at all, I’d probably have better vocabulary to explain it. But as it is, all I can say is that it was:

[            THIS            ] good. Maybe even better than that.

Canada was a homecoming. Dancing like a saucy turkey, Labour Day Jack Layton memorial march, exhaustive trips to MEC, eating my way through Kensington market, drinking till irresponsibility on a school night, and the plentiful bellybusting laughing. It filled the hole I didn’t notice I had in the old heartmindgut and it is an enormous comfort to know that good, smart peoples are still around, people who walk the talk, people you don’t have to explain yourself to, people you know that you trust and respect. It’s a big thing when life can sometimes seem to be a series of cynical positional plays, petty politics and people who disappoint by being weak of principle, or just plain banal. So thank you. It hit the spot and I am grateful.

The desert walk was a whole different life. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about that yet.

Ormiston Gorge, around 4pm during bushfire season

But you can look at all the pictures here.

We walked and had campfire talks, laughs and songs with the traditional owners and custodians of Western Arrernte country. People there shared their view of the world with us. It seems so trite when I say it in this way, such a weak way to describe the magnitude of something that was basically life-changing. Perhaps a better explanation is that while walking on country, I realized that I was pretty much completely landscape illiterate, blind even. If the country around me was a book, I’d be staring senselessly at scribbly marks that held no intrinsic meaning. But as we walked with Nicky and as he pointed things out, and explained other things in that patient, as-it-is way he has, it was like the world around me started to come into focus and filling with colour. It started to have meaning and significance in and of itself, and wasn’t just stunning landscape. Things around me started to become more like words that you can read without thinking about it, and to which you automatically ascribe meaning, and are meaningful because you understand it. And the more I started to know about something, the more I could see it around me. Look, here are perentie tracks, there are bush tomatoes. This here is pituri (native tobacco) – you stuff it between your teeth and lips, but don’t swallow! That bush is called Dead Finish because once the cattle are desperate enough to eat it, you know you’re stuffed.

There was so much to process – how much more alive and in touch with my senses I was, how much there is to learn from Aboriginal Australia and how completely different and rich that perspective is. Mainstream Australia is losing out on so much by not recognizing and respecting that ancient knowledge, and I am really really scared that we will lose access to that whole cosmology and be so much poorer for it. The people we walked with understand, know and care for the country in a way that makes us seem like blind infant mole rats.  The whole experience was a little too powerful, kind of an intellectual and emotional overload. I came home feeling out of control of my emotions. I mean, I cried watching Red Dog on the flight home, not just cried, but blubbed, snotty tears and everything. Sitting right next to my co-worker. And this is a film that my sister had watched in the city and pronounced “a bit too naff.”

But for this I am grateful too. For the incredible warmth and generosity that Nicky, Malcolm and Mavis showed to us. For the profound connection to country that they shared. For making my nerve receptors feel alive and human again. For making me care about and connect to Australia, for the very first time in my life.

Sometimes the song is embarrassing (something by The Carpenters) or really embarrassing (something by Enrique Iglesias). Today’s is neither, but I suspect it’s not exactly accurate either. The problem with this is that, regardless of how many words of the song I actually know, I’ll be stuck with singing snatches of it to myself all day…

…Janie’s got a bum, Janie’s gotta bum, nyeuu nyeuu nyeuu nyeuu nyeuuu. What did her daddy dooo? He put a meat pie on youuuu…

But for some reason I am struck completely dumb when it comes to hairdressers. When hairdressers make conversation with me, no matter how scintillating or potentially interesting they seem, all I seem to be able to manage is ” ‘s” and, if they’re really engaging, sometimes “-nkyu.”

Yes, I go to a proper hairdresser now! Not my mum, or even a Chinatown man barber.

The quickest way to cosifying and also possibly low-techifying the most advanced piece of technology I’ve ever owned is to knit a sock for it. Then insist that the sock has a ladybird on it. It might also have an inbuilt microfibre cleaning cloth, right in the sock! Triumph.

To kickstart this rusty old cortex, I wanted to write about something cool. I remembered that I’d already blogged about dolphins with lasers. Not much is cooler than dolphins with lasers, except for maybe amber with prehistoric bugs in it, or smart octopuses and their coconut-dwelling ways. Lauryn Hill’s comeback tour is pretty frinkin cool too:

(I originally wanted to link to this vid, but I couldn’t handle her shirt and vest combination – it made her look like some sort of sadistic gran with a penchant for attacking and skinning couches, then wearing them as spoils of battle).

But I didn’t want to write about things that were merely cool. I wanted to write about the coolest thing ever. And only google could have provided me with the answer:

OHHHH YEAH.

The only drawback is that it is *so* cool, that there are no words left.

I like Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed “Fit for Democracy”. He makes a point to rebut the pernicious sentiment held by some people that certain parts of the world are not ready, or are somehow unsuited to democracy.

The common thread of this year’s democracy movement from Tunisia to Iran, from Yemen to Libya, has been undaunted courage. I’ll never forget a double-amputee I met in Tahrir Square in Cairo when Hosni Mubarak’s thugs were attacking with rocks, clubs and Molotov cocktails. This young man rolled his wheelchair to the front lines. And we doubt his understanding of what democracy means?

In Bahrain, I watched a column of men and women march unarmed toward security forces when, a day earlier, the troops had opened fire with live ammunition. Anyone dare say that such people are too immature to handle democracy?

Yah. You know, this isn’t surprising. Sixty percent of the population of the Arab region is under 30. Like most under 30s, they are savvy and globally connected in real time via the intertubes. I’m pretty sure these people understand – intimately - what they don’t yet have, and what it is they are sacrificing for.

Unlike fixie-riding hipster posers, these people get it

Source

I should have seen that mood coming though I guess.

I’ve been awash with nostalgia of late. Last week I had a wonderful conversation with a wonderful person I miss like a phantom limb, which opened up an old patch of skin I didn’t even know had closed over. Consequently, I spent all week remembering how deeply happy I was in Toronto, and how I’d forgotten how that sort of quiet joy feels as a purely physiological experience. Then I watched a movie full of mountain music and dopehead hippies in plaid shirts and that transported me to a time in my life when I spent a bit of time in Southern Ontario feeling extremely Asian amongst a bunch of Deadhead hippies who were partial to mountain music and plaid shirts (good times).  Maybe nothing ever feels as bright and keen as when it’s new (and when you’re young enough to really believe that you’re the first person in the history of the world to ever feel that way). Couple that with the recent infiltration of my earsicles by slide guitar and there was no escaping that seeping, self-indulgent melancholy.

Actually, I don’t feel like taking this post much further, except to say that after all that nostalgia burned off in the light of day, I am super-excited to be on the verge of a new project that might come from this EXCELLENT “from bush to the table” native food workshop that N and I just attended run by John Lennis, a Dharawal man who appears to know everything.

(We are trying to take “eat local” to its logical conclusion by eating, as much as possible, stuff that has evolved to live in the Australian environment and is therefore is more sustainable. Like kangaroos as opposed to eg beef, which doesn’t have to be farmed, and is in fact culled. Seriously, why are we raising cattle in Australia? They individually drink 100 litres of water a day. Apparently, we still haven’t noticed that this island continent is predominantly desert.) I won’t say more about this possible project unless and until it comes to fruition (get it? get it??), but suffice to say, I’m so excited I’m wriggly.

Just call me witchetty