Public Procrastination

taggy

2007-01-28T12:49:00.000+10:00

whole in the middle

2007-01-24T16:28:00.000+10:00

So it has been a while. (No-one noticed, not even me). I've been thinking about blogging a lot lately, about how it can make you feel like the school outcast without even trying. I am usually way to scared/paranoid to use my blog name when commenting on blogs etc, so I deny myself the route to readers. No-one knows I'm here. This is both wonderful and weird. I seek validation as much as the next neurotic writer online, but feel instinctively that my blog is not 'quality' in the way I think it ought to be. This is diary blog; self-absorbed rabbiting - no narrative center, no narrative drive.

Maybe it was always going to happen that a procrastination blog would end up being avoided by me.

Besides, I like conversations. And whatever people say, blogging is public speaking. Soapbox. You build it, they will come etc. It's a monologue first, a dialogue distant second.

Maybe after the PhD, when my withdrawal symptoms kick in, I'll be a better blogger. Whatever that means.

Research

2006-10-25T15:16:00.000+10:00

Things for chapter three:

Lulublooker on classifying books
on dirty minds
on the prize

Er, this is not pointed! I'm not trying to turn this flimsy little blog into a book in any form. I'm doing a chapter on blogs at the moment, and I thought: hey, I couls troe these links on my blog..seeing as I have no audience, no-one should mind. I think I'll start using this blog as an online notebook for my research... We'll see how it it goes.

Meme

2006-10-23T14:37:00.000+10:00

Pinched, with permission, from Hiromi X — I can never resist a chanc to talk about books!

1. One book that changed your life - hardest question first.

Does a short story count? (“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. I still remember reading this on my mammoth, nearly 2 hour bus-rides when I first started going to uni. Despite falling passionately in love with university, and the world of intelligent argument and free-thinking I found there (so different to the laced-up high school I went to/was intellectually ostracized from) I dropped out after 1 semester: and yes, undoubtedly the two hour bus-rides contributed in large part to this!!! (Well, it was 2 hours each way…I had to change buses twice there and twice back and despite the radiong time, was a complete drag). But I kept loving Kafka. When I finally made it back to uni, I eventually did my Honours dissertation on Kafka, and via Deleuze & Guattari! Take that my sucky high-school English teacher who always gave me B-’s…

(and my Kafka joy nearly overflowed when the fabulous, wonderful Murakami published Kafka by the Shore)

2. One Book That You've Read More Than Once.

Yup, this list is endless for me to! I do love re-reading books, once enough time has passed. My most recent re-read was Keri Hulme The Bone People.

3. One Book That You'd Want On A Desert Island.

Well, I haven’t read War and Peace yet, and that is a big book! I love Anna Karenina and keep meaning to read more Tolstoy. Of course, I’m a practical person: anything about Surviving on Desert Islands would no doubt be handy ;-)

4. One Book That Made You Laugh.

Just one? The reductionist logic of list-making is hard: Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Even though I’ve recently copped some flak from superior-feeling folk who think its crap and me for liking it...

5. One Book That Made You Cry.

Storm Boy by Colin Thiele. And another short story for good measure (surely one of the best saddest stories ever: I love to cry at stories!) : "The Swan" by Roald Dahl (in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar)

6. One Book That You Wish You Had Written.

Prodigal Summer Barbara Kingsolver.

7. One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written.

The Holy Bible. In fact, any book of beautiful, important stories that pretends to be truth and by so doing, creates hate and death. So The Koran, The Torah and etc and etc and so on and so on. (Let the shitfight begin…)

8. One Book That You Are Reading Right Now.

I like this question! I’m not sure if its meant that way, but I’m always reading more than one book at a time… one of the books I am reading right now is Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.

9. One Book That You Have Been Meaning To Read.

Er, any one from the stacks by my bed, in my study, in my car…

10. Tag five others that you would like to do this meme.

Anyone who's reading this, but please let me know in comments so I can go have a look. Also, if you don't have a blog, feel free to answer in comments. {Good idea! I second this proposal!—although, I don’t think I have any readers so the buck probably stops here! No worries—it’s all good procrastination for me!!.}

I'm being noise-stalked

2006-10-16T08:27:00.000+10:00

I am being followed. Everywhere I seem to be now, music follows me. Not in a good way - this is not in an Ally McBeal style personal-theme-song manner, but in a bad noisy neighbours with don't give-a-shit attitude way. It happens most nights in my cosy flat. Sometimes the traffic noise drwons it out, which is bizarrely reassuring. Sometimes its not music, but yelling (apparently our feral (not in a good hippy way but in a mangy escaped domestic cat the size of a small pig way) boy neighbour upstairs is one of those curiously old-fashioned types who compensates for the physical distance of the caller by screaming down the phone line. I though only retired country farmers did that), last night it was TV with canned laughter. Just when I'd had enough, and was about to don stern deranged-housewife dressing gown, it stopped. Blessed be. I rolled over, snuggled in and, they started whooping it up in the bedroom. Must of been some saucy canned laugh-track comedy. Luckily, they lacked stamina or imagination or both and it ceased wonderfully quickly. Now I'm at uni - lulled by the hum of industrial strength air-conditioning, until the wonk next door arrives and pops on commercial radio at a strength loud enough to penetrate the admitedly rather flimsy fibro partition-walls. sigh. I'm not even 30 and all I want is peace and quiet. I'm assailed by other people's noise. It must be time to move to burbs.

Happy happy joy joy

2006-10-03T15:28:00.000+10:00

I forgot my joy.

I've been so worried that I forgot what a PhD is really all about. PhD Comics reminded me: this is the only time in my life I will get to procrastinate on so wildly an exuberant level. I feel like going to Toowong village for a frozen yoghurt? I go. I think abut a dress I saw advertised in the Target catalogue. I go get it girlfriend. (Yes, Target. You got a problem with that?) Coffee with friends? You betcha! Beers with friends? Hold me back. But I forgot. I've been slaving. I have a tight, hot feeling all up my right arm. I've even been doing Yoga online for pity's sake. I've been thesis-whipped. Welll no more.

Break open the Family Guy I'm heading to my TV.

Ok, so as far as rebellion goes, this is pretty lame. But hey. It's a start. I'm going to revive my joy, and work yes, but play too! Woot!

I'll get to the end. I know it. And when I do, it'll be 400X worse than the pressure I'm under now. Er. That's if I get a job...

I'm going to watch Family Guy until I can't feel feelings anymore

Playboy (only for the articles/books...)

2006-09-19T10:23:00.000+10:00

From I Love Books, a list of "Playboy's top 25 books that feature sex". I'm really unsure what Wind-up Bird Chronicle is doing there. I don't remember it being a book about sex at all! I mean, there was sex, but? Make up your own mind...

1. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland
2. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
3. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
4. The Story of O, by Pauline Reage
5. Crash, by J.G. Ballard
6. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
7. Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth
8. The Magus, by John Fowles
9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
10. Endless Love, by Scott Spencer
11. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Carrie's Story, by Molly Weatherfield
13. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
14. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
15. Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
16. The End of Alice, by A.M. Homes
17. Vox, by Nicholson Baker
18. Rapture, by Susan Minot
19. Singular Pleaures, by Harry Mathews
20. In The Cut, By Susanna Moore
21. Brass, by Helen Walsh
22. Candy, by Terry Southern
23. Forever, by Judy Blume
24. An American Dream, by Norman Mailer
25. The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins

Blog-astination

2006-01-17T10:49:00.001+10:00

blogging = phd procrastination. Maybe its the high-speed FREE internet access, combined with the inordinate amount of time spent alone in front of computer computing said Phd. The internet provides pain-free, endlessly fascinating alternatives to the real thinking work. And sometimes, it even feels like work! Especially if, like me, you are doing a humanities project. Surfing blogs, reading on-line news, discovering new and innovative web sites, on-line community projects, non-peer reviewed articls: It all becomes grist for the thesis mill. Ah, cultural studies - so much to thank you for!

Today I spend 30mins updating (playing with) my "43 things" account. What hope is there for me? I have 12 months to go (according to the Her Prof-ness) one chapter down (but in revision) + another 1/2 chapter: 3 chapters, introduction & conclusion to go. OHMIGOD. This last year better be the downhill slope everyone says it is or I'm gonna BASE jump off the PhD cliff without a freakin' parachute. Pucker up! Hard ground of reality here I come.

read this

2006-01-16T16:33:00.000+10:00

Grim, depressing, confusing and ultimately a sad indictment on humanity in general “Emergency Sex” is nonetheless a ripping yarn about three avergage folk working in various guises for the UN in 1990s disaster zones. The emergency sex of the title is one of the workers response to a particulalry close encounter with snipers. It is not in general a saucy book, though it certainly deals with “Adult Themes”: death, sex, drugs. Yipeee! This book left me with a dual yearning to be of use in this fucked up world and relief that I am cosily ensconced in my safe, posession-laden home likely never to be on a forensic detection mission in Bosnia.

2006-01-05T11:53:00.000+10:00

this is just too weird. i think some people really do have too much time on their hands...literally.

drowning, not working

2005-12-22T14:01:00.000+10:00

This work I do that is not work. Because of the flows and fluxes of the writing/researching life, people will often think that you are available at any time they need you. The assume the rhythm of your work, and that entails periods of apparent not-working, to be an indication of the looseness of its grip on your attention. Perhaps, further, an indication of its triviality and disposability; it can be sloughed off or cloaked on at the whim of your delicate genius. Because I often work at home, this further evidence of the dilettante, flimsy nature of your working. So it is that members of my family believe I am on constant stand-by for any daily blip they encounter. (Part of this problem is the curse of the mobile phone; oh how we will rue the day they seduced our souls away). To be fair, it probably is just my family, my mother in particular. Today, for example, they called me from a bookshop. Now I have certainly dedicated goodly portions of my life to bookshop slavery, and I am studying literature, so the connection appears fair and obvious. They wanted to know which was the order of the Narnia chronicles. YOU ARE IN A BOOKSHOP. Ask the assistant; it is their job to answer these kinds of questions. Or, better still, work it out: the books will be numbered, or they should have a list in the book. But why, immediately turn to me? This interruption broke a very good thought-flow that has now acceded to this rant because I am so frustrated. And I know, I know it is nice: my family respect my opinion in all things book, and they assume I have unlimited fonts of information at hand to solve any query, no matter how left-of-field or dead down the middle. But sometimes, I can’t help but read it as disrespect and oblivion for what I do. aargh. This is a spoiled brat rant. Dammit, this stuff confuses me.

lonesome

2005-12-12T10:33:00.000+10:00

There are a lot of things that suck about doing a PhD (besides never being sure if it's PhD or Phd...). There's the stress: the constant, never-lessening grating strain. Maintaining self-motivation, intitiative, and desire in the face of the constant, never-lessening strain. The fear management: am I good enough? Does it even matter? How to progress? How to sustain? The poverty, the teaching, the feeling blindly, the pain of illumination. But what really affects me, is the loneliness. Damn, but it is a lonely, lonely task. The really good majority of my time is spent with me and my computer. I think it is worse now that it is so hot and I'm coming in to uni all the time. Working alone at home doesn't have the same tang to it: I'm usually pretty happy being alone in my home. But here at uni, the sense of solitary confinement is overwhelming. It's weird, I have no idea how many people are in the building, or what they are doing. I have no way of connecting to these other people, they are all cloistered in their little offices and I in mine. I can't believe I am actually fantasising about an open-plan office. But I swear, just knowing other people are here would go a long way to increasing my morale! There is something so damn lonely about this whole business of academia. Even when amongst other people, there is a sense of pervading levels of isolation: status, field, age, place. As a postgrad, I do have better access to a social group and that is not so distinctly stratified as the academics, but even that feels so diminished these days. I know it is summer, and lots of people are away and that is heightening this feeling, but it still sucks. I hate the unsociability of academics and academic work. I hate the absence of a real sense of collegiallity. I'm sure it must be better in smaller departments, or in research centres, but here, connections seem so disparate and ephemeral.
This is part of the biggest battle for me about the whole damn process. Remaining positive about my future gets harder and harder. Not only do opportunities seem thoroughly esoteric, but even f I do get a job, the probable work environment appears wholly unappealing. Yep, mustering motivation gets harder and harder. And I can hear a little voice, romantically charged, imploring that real research is done becasue of inner passion and drive, but I squish it down: I am driven to know, but I also desire a community of interaction that is satsifying and useful. I want a work place. I want to build a relation with my peers that fosters fun and satisfaction while working and that facilitates a supported letting off of steam. Damn. Writing is a solitary slog and really nothing will change that. It's just that today, I feel lonely.

sundreams

2005-12-02T13:46:00.000+10:00

Straddie Dreaming. The rain is beating against my window. It's a white-out out there. I'm dreaming of the beach and the crystal water of Straddie. I want my footprints on the beach again. I want that sun on my salt tight face.

re-birth

2005-11-28T12:46:00.000+10:00

Dear Blog,
It has been 69 days since my last post. I bet you never thought you'd see me again, huh?! What can I say - things have been crazy. I have marked aproximately 100 pieces of assessment, only 34 of them essays for my own class, had a birthday (marked memorably by the incident known generally as the shopping trolley disaster in which I sustained vivid knee bruising, finger scrapes and considerably dinted 29year old dignity), had an engagement party, (3am gypsy dancing on the kitchen table always signals a splendid do I feel), and generally panicked/worked on my thesis. Ah, it's a full life.

So, I'm back. Note, if you will, the addition of "I am consuming." Note further that i have already made various attempts to register things I consume that the site does not acknowledge. For example, I have invented, according to the site, a new thing: book, Kate Holden, In my skin. Oh well, its an American site after all. Still, the facility to add things, rather than the assumption they don't yet exist, would be appreciated.

blahblah. maybe this is why I haven't been bloging really - I don't seem to have very much to say. Too busy doing, to paraphrase Wilde! hehe. sure. Too busy freaking out about the tenuousness of my so-called future post-Phd more likely. Wanted: secure job for over-educated booklover. Will read for food.

work it

2005-09-20T11:28:00.000+10:00

Writing is not a glamorous job. Joan Collins and her ilk may be routinely photographed in this magazine or that with her hair perfectly coiffured and a small fortune in diamonds on her lobes, her over-manicured nails resting lightly on her lacquered partner’s desk, her writing instruments (1 priceless fountain pen and an embossed pad) laid out quaintly before her, but I, I sweat. I sit at my cramped and overflowing book-strewn, vinyl topped chipboard desk in my tracksuit pants and t-shirt, my hair greasy and scraped back from my unwashed face, my lips taut over my uncleaned teeth. I sit and I sweat and I look horrible and I wear my Chinese slippers all day and won’t answer the door or go out because I am only fit to be sitting at my book-strewn, overflowing desk. And it never ceases to amaze me that what is basically mental gymnastics with typing can make me sweat and smell and look like this. Writing is not a glamorous job. Maybe it’s just me.

Divine gifts

2005-09-12T10:05:00.000+10:00

When I got home last night, there was an unexpected obstacle at my front door. On the steps were 4 pot plants and a cd. They had obviously been there a while, the plants were quite sodden as it had been raining. I guess cds are waterproof, so no harm done. I turned the light on for a better look, the cd was a burned disc. It was called: “You will always be my Father.” Hmmm. Ok, now my flatmate is a trance dj and he quite often gets music with placid sounding titles, but that is actually some twisted shit. He would’ve gotten home well before me, but he would’ve entered the house through the garage, and so missed the surprise on the front steps. I assumed the cd was for him, though the plants perturbed me. I had another look: they were rose bushes! One lovely small miniature rose with buds, a bushy one and two heavily pruned bushes that were little more than stumps. I picked up the cd, left the plants were they were and went inside. Dismissing the mysteries of the universe, I went to bed.

When I got up this morning, I asked my flatmate if he’d been expecting a cd and some rose bushes! He was suitably flabbergasted. We discussed possible scenarios: a belated Father’s day gift from an estranged child? What if they didn’t call to confirm receipt and the wedge of alienation was driven deeper between them! Maybe our neighbour had a love-child who wanted to make contact? Curious, we played the cd. As the unmistakeable sounds of Christian folk-music drifted through our lounge room, we realised that this was not a father in the ordinary sense, the father in question was god the saviour! “Father god, I really need you.” intoned the lassie, her guitar accompanied by synthesised drum pulse. “The words you are about to experience, are true. They will change your life, if you let them. For they come from the very heart of god. He loves you and he is the father you have been looking for all your life.” Oh my god, indeed.

So now I wait, doubtless these blandishments were left by some zealot with whom I will have to imminently deal. If not, we scored some nice rose bushes and my flatmate is keen to use one of the tracks (perhaps track 03, where childish voices claim “healer of my soul, lead me along the path where your love flows”) as a trippy contrast to end his next set. Amen.

Virtuous Procrastination

2005-08-23T15:32:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, I practice virtuous procrastination. This is a particularly insidious form of procrastination whereby I substitute working on my thesis for some basically non-essential task that nonetheless preoccupies my immediate and undivided attention. This is the kind of procrastination whereby I find myself, as today, suddenly compelled to rid the fridge of its mysteriously multiplying quantity of empty-but-for-a scrape jars. Of course, this only reveals the level of grime that has accumulated on the shelves and that must then be vanquished. Once the inside is clean enough, well, it just wouldn’t be right not to remove all the accumulated fridge magnets and postcards and old bills and restore the outside to its former gleaming glory.

I mean, it's not like the two guys I live with have ever noticed or will care either way about the cleanliness of our fridge and its not as though it’s a bio hazard, its just, you know, routinely dirty, but its like I can’t stop myself. Its like I’m channelling a fifties housewife (or my mother) and suddenly I just can’t live one minute longer with the fridge and its state of unclean and so I spend 40 minutes cleaning, when I should be writing my bloody thesis chapter.

So then I worry that I’m somehow caught in a kind of feminist-warp of my own making where the intellectual work for which I know I should be valued is relegated to the periphery by a pressing need to clean, in other words, the carrying out of a distinctly undervalued and mostly unnoticed form of work and that has been historically defaulted to women in lieu of intellectual opportunity. I slightly resent that I clean when I procrastinate. Am I am devaluing my intellectual qualities for dexterity with a sponge?

Maybe I should go to uni everyday and not risk blurring the spheres of activity. I wonder if a man would behave like this.

Of course, I think some of my cleaning procrastination behaviour is attached to the actual gratification of completing a task, of seeing manifest results: a gleaming surface. While the thesis feels like some kind of intellectual alphabet soup - I know there’s good stuff in there, but it’s all in pieces and some of it is dissolving and only some of it is clear and the bottom of the bowl is nowhere to be seen. At least when you clean a fridge, it’s clean. Writing is such an endless process of making and discarding and moving and stitching and wondering if its good enough, if I’m good enough if it makes any bloody sense and if there’s a point anyway. I like my house to be clean and completing a task is satisfying, a counterweight to the ongoing stuff of writing. I've just got to get that balance right - I really need to get this chapter finished.

I think the bins need emptying.

Sunday Drive

2005-08-16T17:18:00.000+10:00

So it’s Sunday – a glorious Brissy Sunday with just a faint chill against the brilliant sun. Just the kind of day for hanging about oh-so-slothfully in the morning, and the perfect afternoon for a beer in the sun at my favourite near-local pub, The Melbourne Hotel. I love the Melbourne. It’s very close to Jamie’s house, and that’s probably as good a reason as any for why we go there. Although, really, the choose-your-own bucket of 5 beers for $20 is hardly a deal to be sniffed at. (It’s like a grown-up version of the mixed bag of 1-cent lollies whose selection, to the value of 5c, I used to agonise over at the corner store.)

So it’s 2.45pm and I’m heading over to The Melbourne, (even though Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is on TV and I’m a full sucker for Steve Martin and it has Michael Caine to boot), and good responsible citizen that I am, I’m taking the train. I get to the station, and ever-alert to the dubious running of trains and cognisant of Ekka shenanigans elsewhere that may affect my humble plans, I scope for directives and there are none and I buy my ticket from the machine and assume my normal position on platform 3, the platform city-bound trains always leave from (you can see where this is heading). Flickers of concern will not be suppressed, however, because on platform 4 there is quite a crowd of people and there are only 3 people on platform 3 and I know that sometimes, the trains to the city on the weekend do leave from platform 4, but there are people over here with me, and hey, all 3 of us can’t be wrong, and I even turn to a girl near to me and say, “so this is the platform for the train to the city, right?” and she says “of, course.” And of course, or else she wouldn’t be sitting there. But she’s wrong, and the train arrives on platform 4 and departs sans your narrator. So I head up the ramp towards the station, cursing ‘cos a train won’t arrive for another 30 minutes and Jamie is expecting me and that’s 45 mins (including walking time) at least less drinking time and I could’ve been home catching the end of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels if I’d wanted to catch the 3.26pm train.

At the top of the ramp, is the sign: “Between 1pm-5pm inbound trains for the city will depart form platform 4”.

I am abso-fucking certain that sign was not posted at the far entrance, the one I came in. And muttering and cursing, I go to platform 4 to wait. I call Jamie to let him know I’ll be delayed, and, aghast at missing out on at least 45 mins of drinking time, he says he’ll come pick me up and then we can walk from his place. So I start back up the ramp of platform 4 to wiat in the station carpark, and, descending to platform 3 is a station attendant with a clutch of A4 signs against her more than ample bosom. Cheered by the prospect of my forthcoming ride, I extend solidarity:

“Someone pull the signs off did they? Little buggers.”

“No.” she sallies back.

“Oh.”

“Just putting them up now. Inbound trains from 1pm –5pm are leaving from platform 4.”

“But it’s 3pm now!”

“Yes, but I can see from my video camera if people are waiting on the wrong platform.”

“But I was on platform 3 and I just missed the train.”

“No you weren’t.”

"Yes, I was! And so was this girl, there, in the enormous bright pink puffer jacket, and that guy, the 6ft tall black haired guy. We were all waiting for that train, and we missed it.”

“Oh. Well I’m putting the sign up now.”

And there’s just not much you can say to that really. And to cap it off, the Melbourne’s reigned in the love: only 4 beers for $20 now. Sigh.

A future Mrs Soapbox...

2005-08-11T11:56:00.000+10:00

And so, I’m engaged! Such a funny feeling – one heightened by my understanding of what my friends Michelle and Heather have been going through. Marriage is not a thing to take lightly, and certainly not for granted.

A friend of mine congratulated me on my achievement by noting that is really no small thing to negotiate the “post-modern marriage.” It’s a phrase I like, not least because it tickles my literary critical tastebuds, but because I think he’s hit the nail on the head. Marriage now is different. It’s not something you have to do to get some sanctioned sexual loving, nor a necessary fact of economics – women work now, and most of them are perfectly capable of supporting themselves, not a simple fact of life for many women of my grandmother’s gernation or, to a lesser degree, my mother’s generation – the social taboo on being unmarried has to some extent been lifted and yet, the boundaries of the institution remain as firmly fixed as ever. In Australia, marriage is a ritual reserved for heterosexual relationships. There is power in this rite, and the conservative centre is not prepared to relinquish sacred ground to trespassers. (The reasoning boggles the mind - a reminder of the incredible power church and state still have over little liberal lives. )

For a long time, marriage has functioned as a keystone in democratic and capitalist society building. For a long time, my perception of marriage as a constrictive and normalising institution has encouraged my ready rejection of its precepts. The logic, as I saw it, goes: married people, and especially with families, are invested in a secure economic future. They have mortgages, car loans, and school fees to pay. With such heavy obligations resting like executioner’s axes over their bare necks, there is no time for dissent and resistance. No room for the formulating of sustained and organised opposition to shady prospects or hollow deals proffered by government. With the responsibility of spouse and family weighed into their daily existence, the married become heavily invested in keeping the creaky wheels of society turning. Marriage is also a social tradition that has been far too frequently guilty of exclusion, persecution and oppression against its others: an institution that discriminates against my friends. An institution that in some countries, cultures and traditions, continues to be a market economy for the female body.

Now this kind of logic is one I still hold to some degree as legitimate, though I concede it is also remarkably reactionary - being engaged has forced me to confront my own unexamined prejudices about marriage. I thoroughly adore Peter, I love and respect and admire and empathise with him. How can a public ritual that celebrates what is a conscious relation, a union that has at times been hard-won, demanding the utmost in trust and faith, put my identity at risk? And it's not even as though I'm that politcaly radical, I'm just not, you know...my parents... Maybe this is the crux. I think I've felt that getting married might have to entail some sort of unseen surrender - a relinquishing of licence to contest, disagree and reject the kind of acquisitive material prosperity capitalist governments like ours promote as naturally desirable, a worthy end. The kind of life I always saw the adults around me embrace - the kind of life I thought I'd rejected.

But I am not a drone. I am not a worker bee. I am an anxious subject: I worry over the implications of my actions on my beliefs. I wrestle for the power to grant authority and authenticity to myself. And so, as such things will happen, it was while waiting for take-way from my local Indian restaurant that I was suddenly enlightened: printed on the staff t-shirts, a slogan from Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

It’s the kind of thing that I so admire Michelle and Heather for; despite sustained opposition, and sometimes from the most unlikely of sources, they are not going to let a crusty institution define the paradigms for their existence. They choose to take up the spiritual and emotional resonance of their love and they contest they mechanics of marriage as an exclusionary ideology. They prove that love will always exceed the symbols and rituals designed for its representation but also, that nonetheless, symbols and rituals are vital and alive: that arbitrary exclusion from them is a cruel and unusual act for humans to practice upon each other.

So I am engaged, and I am out and proud about it! I even have a diamond ring. And I'm allowed to get married, because my bits and Pete's bits are in the right place according to the church and state, but we will take up at will, discriminately and with passion the symbols, meanings and traditions of marriage and make them our own. With the same pride and passion, I will support the rally on Saturday for equal marriage rights. I will wear a diamond engagement ring but I will scorn the efforts of a conservative minority to contain to a single idea the rampant, conquering and awe-inspiring acts of love that people enact everyday in a myriad of undescribed ways.

Smash

2005-07-30T03:28:00.000+10:00

Milton Road. 11.40pm. Thursday

I wait for sirens in the night. It is a long time till they chorus. But when they come, they are so loud that I wonder how we ever became immune to the sounds of our emergencies. Nothing stirs around here. The sirens are passing through. Somewhere a dog barks two short cries and they echo in the silent wake. Elsewhere, a radiator steams and hot twisted metal contracts into new grooves. She had white hair and her face was turned away. I have already washed my face and been in bed once. They had stopped traffic. A four-wheel drive mounted the meridian curb and briefly negotiated the smash in a haste that felt unseemly. Taunting the unlucky. We practice circles of politeness whose boundaries are opaque. No getting out and gawking. No time for commiseration or recrimination or engagement. Move along. The three motorcycle police glide up with sirens off and lights strobing. A cortege of blue. The woman in her long leather coat and high heels stands by her car and turns towards us, her face is lit by headlights and shock. She has long brown hair and has probably been to a party. The white haired other driver does not move. Does not move. Her door is pressed shut, smoothed into concave ridges by the impact. I want to stop, to look. I drive slowly through the tableaux. I crane my neck to get a register of what has happened. I think about how whenever there is a disaster shown on TV from some Indian or Middle Eastern people sem to crowd and press and swell around it. They make it visible: “look here. Something has happened.” But we drive by slowly, looking surreptitiously. Appointed emissaries form borders of official concern. Nothing to see here. Everything is in slow motion, unravelling and unwinding at the speed of toffee. I had been home fifteen minutes when the sirens came. While I waited there, at the accident, the traffic lights went through green to red several times. It was hard not to move. There has been a delay.

What the Bleep!

2005-06-30T10:50:00.000+10:00

So I went to "What the Bleep do we know?" the other night, at the newly spankfied Schonell and of course, I had pizza at the irresistibly good pizza caffe
and fortified on my favourite combo: the half Sophia Loren half Rossellini, and after a few glasses of James Squire, armed with a bag of M&M's and secure in the comfort of a really rainy evening outside I settled in for a very weird and invigorating movie experience inded.

Now I'm not going to pretend I'm a moive reviewer, I mean as a literary critic I suck at describing movies (and in fact, Im not to hot on summarising books either!) but suffice to say I was suitably moved in all the right palces by an alternatively joyful, cheesy, engrossing, saccharine and profound documentary/drama/manifesto thingy. These kinds of movies do funny things to my critical cortex. On an entertainment level, the combo of deaf-girl on spiritual journey of Alice-in-Wonderland style self-enlightenment frequently irritated me, but it was touching at the same time and despite the somewhat over-positive closure. The talking heads were the best. I wanted more psychedelic proffesorial spieling: (why are pyhsics prof's always clad in the most doof of knitted fractal sweaters and where can I get one?) and Ramtha, as channeled by J.Z Knight was mesmerising and not just becasue I couldn't shake the sensation of a resemblance to the perenially frightening Jocelyn Wilderstein although JZ Knight is quite beautiful and Wildenstein definitely like the nightmare doppleganger but nonetheless...

So anyway, the movie rocked. (yes, this is why i'm bad at movie reviews: I get sidetracked and then lose interest in details...) Go and see it. It's a free dose of the Pollyannas and despite it's tendency to gloss with an extra heavy hand over a lot of complex stuff, mainly due to it's unself-reflexive Ameri-centrism, I think there's something in it for all of us. Oh, and it tells you why you really ought to speak nicely to your water and that's got to be a good thing.

Gender Genie

2005-06-28T10:06:00.000+10:00

Who's that blogger? Determine gender via algorithmics: gender genie reveals all...

Surf's Up

2005-06-27T14:08:00.000+10:00

aah, it only takes a little surfin' and I'm all bloghappy again! I'm still concerned by what seems to me my excessive banality - but hey - who said my procrastinating was fun? It's routine in here, the same old pattern as production dwindles into paper shufling, pencil sharpening and the neatest damn row of manila folders you ever saw. My latest procrastination destination is the very intriguing postsecret You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel a rising tide of paranoia and despair - it's all good. As a blog, I think it represents so many of the ideal functions of the genre. It's vocal counter-prat is surely here although, from what I've heard so far, one minute is still too long for most people...make them squeeze their manifesto onto a postcard: "and only in slogans is the battle-cry heard" it's less tedious for all.

Authoritah

2005-06-15T10:10:00.000+10:00

Well, the problem with a procrastinative blog, is that inevitably, the procrastination bleeds over here too... Hmm, it seems I have a serious problem with discipline. I'm not altogether sure why, I just know that I characterise my youth as one of relatively reckless disregard for authority. I wouldn't say it was a blind disregard, (though it was definitely short-sighted with regards to consequences) , because I always knew the alternative. I understood exactly and emphatically why my parents would be concerned at me attending parties etc, (hmm - that's a big etc!) but I simply refused to accept their mandate. I guess that's what adolescence is all about - recognising rules and testing them for fit. But I've been thinking more and more about what it is that let's some people drop off the narrow path altogether. How would I replicate for my own children the quality that allows experiments, mistakes and hurts without descent into abjection?

And who says I made it through anyway...

2005-06-11T03:38:00.000+10:00

This blog is about a journey, one I'm making in public and in private. This journey is, bureaucratically defined, more than half over, (i.e. I have exactly 16 months left of my scholarship, and 6 months of that are not confirmed) and yet in some memorably sappy phrase, I feel "it's only just begun". This journey is about my PhD. I've called it "public procrastination" because I've decided to stop selfishly retaining my 3am panics just for me and my trying-to-sleep partner and put it out into the friendly cyber light of day. Yeah, I'm an altruist, what can I say?

Daytime Procrastination + Architectonic Fear of Failure = 3am Panic.

And my dark friend procrastination is not going to go away: I'm not a workaholic and I'm quite, quite OK with that, but perhaps, just maybe it can go to a creative place, and not to Dr Phil. (Please, not Dr Phil!)

Anyway, like I said - it's a journey and please be aware that travel sickness results when conflicting messages are sent to the brain