Part of our job is education

About three months ago I fell off my bike and hit my head. It was a beautiful balmy Friday evening on bike-friendly Rae Street. I left the house at the time that I was actually meant to meet my friend, putting me 20 minutes in the red. I was accelerating hard, thinking, I bet I can make it from Fitzroy to Brunswick East in 15 minutes, then I’ll only be 15 minutes late, which is socially acceptable! Shortly afterwards I lost my balance and rocketed through the air, landing first on my ribs and winding myself. I thought, I’m falling hard. This seems like the worst fall I’ve had. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. At the end my bike fell onto my head. It all seemed to unfold in slow motion. I can even remember the shocked faces of bystanders watching me tumble, which must surely be an invented memory.

Everyone was out on the street because it was such a beautiful night, and because Rae Street is so pleasant. Kind people gathered around, shielding me from oncoming traffic, untangling my hair from my bike. The neighbours Phil and Jean invited me into their house but I couldn’t move, so sat there on the curb. ‘Did you hit your head?’ a man asked. ‘Yeah, my bike hit my head but not very hard.’ His gorgeous little kid was right in front of my face, staring at me. Then the kid’s face started going blurry and I felt myself losing consciousness.

Could this be dying? I wondered. Seeing as there were no obvious wounds I had no idea why I’d be dying. Maybe internal bleeding? So this is how it can happen, I thought, shocked. A dumb, mundane mistake and your whole life, that felt so big and important to you at the time, is easily obliterated. And you can’t reverse it. For some reason the death scene from the movie Margaret came into my head. The dying actor is CJ Cregg from the West Wing so you feel like you know her, making her death especially unbelievable and tragic.

I got up on my haunches in an attempt to regain a grip on the world, and it helped. My vision gradually came back but I still felt like I was swimming in the world; my head was soupy and everything excessively bright. I wasn’t sure how this was all going to turn out. There was this sour, metallic taste in my mouth. I thought maybe it was blood from internal bleeding but the neighbour, Phil said it was probably just concussion – he played rugby so he knew. Phil and Jean helped me into their house and offered to drive me to emergency. At first I refused but then agreed, figuring that the human race is definitely screwed if you can’t accept favours at times like this (I was to need – and actively seek – many such favours over the following few months).

‘The injured person needs to sit in the front seat,’ said Jean. ‘That’s the one thing I remember from school.’ We drove a kilometre to St Vinnies emergency. My friend was with me by that stage. In the waiting room, he tried to cheer me up by explaining the plot of the movie playing overhead. I pretended to be entertained but actually couldn’t follow what he was saying. Neither of us had eaten dinner so my friend bought me some hot chocolate and chips from the vending machine, and we shared them. I googled concussion on my phone.

The triage nurse, when we finally got to see her, was reading a magazine, chewing gum and looking bored.

‘Were you wearing a helmet?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She looked annoyed. ‘You should always wear your helmet,’ she said. ‘If you were wearing a helmet, you wouldn’t be here.’

‘That doesn’t help me much now,’ I said mildly.

‘Well part of our job is education,’ she said with a sense of importance.

‘Is it really the right time for education?’ I asked, bewildered.

After about ten minutes they took me into the emergency room, where the nurses, young girls, asked lots of questions, like what year it was, and how old I was, and of course, whether I had been wearing a helmet. They looked at each other, worried. ‘I don’t know, she seems a bit confused. I think we might need to collar her.’ I remember thinking they seemed really sweet in their worry. Then I was collared and forced to lie down while I waited for them to X-ray my spine.

A male nurse, about my age, asked me about the accident, did some tests and felt my head for damage. ‘Hmm…there doesn’t seem to be any blood, but can’t really see much with all that hair.’ His arms were lean, muscly and tattooed. He said he was a cyclist too. ‘Please don’t lecture me about not wearing a helmet!’ I pleaded. ‘I don’t really think that’s my job!’ he said. Then he left me for a moment, giving my feet this little pat before he left the room.

While we waited, my friend, sitting at the side of the bed, looked at Linus bikes on his smartphone. He showed me an image. ‘I know this is kind of a weird time,’ he said, ‘but what do you think about this one?’

Why look at the lolly if you can’t have a suck

It was real…interesting

I went to Hobart for the weekend with two of my girlfriends, primarily to visit Mona but we but had an extra day to kill and planned to spend it going up Mount Wellington.

Unfortunately it was raining, but not too badly.

The hotel staff told us to there was a bus to the base of the mountain, and sent us to the Metro office to find out more.

‘There’s no bus to Mount Wellington!’ crowed the Metro officer. She seemed almost exultant at our stupidity.

‘But isn’t there a bus to Fern Tree?’ we asked (the mountain base?).

‘Yes that’s right. But why would you want to go there on a day like this?’ She banged her chest at this point, for some unknown reason. ‘You won’t be able to see the view!’

‘Well we don’t really mind. We’ll just go for a walk somewhere around Hobart. Do you know anywhere?’

‘Got a vehicle?’

‘No.’

‘Well I don’t know then. Why would you want to go walking on a day like this anyway? You better speak to tourist information – this is just the Metro office.’ She gave us a gappy smile.

The tourist information office was staffed by a guy with fairy floss hair and pebble teeth.

We told him we were thinking about going to Mount Wellington, but asked whether there were any other nice local walks we could do.

‘Not a good day for going up Mount Wellington today! You won’t be able to see the view!’ (We were puzzled by this assumption that we only wanted to go to Mount Wellington to see the view, but maybe that’s what people go for).

‘Got a vehicle?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He paused, thinking, and looked at us.

‘You got an open mind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Heard  of Mona?’

‘Yes, we’re planning to go there tomorrow.’

‘My son’s been there. Some of the stuff there’s pretty…’ – he gave us a conspiratorial grimace.

‘You girls from Melbourne?’

‘Yes.’

‘I been to Melbourne for the Anzac Day celebrations. It was real…interesting.’ He smirked knowingly, waiting for us to enquire further. We didn’t.

‘What about Port Arthur? Can we go there for a day trip?’

‘Not sure. You know about what happened there with Martin Bryant?’

‘Yes’, we said. There was a solemn pause.

‘You interested in the paranormal?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

His face lit up. ‘They run these ghost tours through the old jail in Port Arthur. They start at 10pm and end at 2am. The guy that sold me my mobile phone showed me a picture he’d taken on his phone. Get this. It was just this grey background and – a yellow face. You wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Mmm…’ we said. ‘We really don’t mind where we go; we just want to go for a day walk?’

There was a long pause again.

‘What about Battery Point?’ we prompted.

‘Well there’s lots of historical buildings to see there. But you girls don’t look like you’d be interested in history.’

‘What about the Florentine Valley? Can you get there in a day?’

‘Hmm…not sure. I think I went there about two years ago.’

Then he pulled out a booklet of day walks and gave it to us.

‘Have a look through that, you might see something you like there.’

I just think it’s a sign of respect to look after yourself

That night, we went to Rektango, an outdoor area in Salamanca with a cover band and lots of folky-looking types in woollen jumpers.

We met this middle-aged blonde man.

We were trying to get a photo of all of us, and he offered to help. He inspected the photo afterwards, telling us it was a good one. He complained that he always looks like a serial killer in photo. I could see how that would be the case – his neck looked a bit tense and ropey.

We commenced what I remember as a relatively civil conversation, although the details now elude me. But at some stage in the conversation he started telling us how women lose their attractiveness when they turn 30, whereas men just get more and more attractive as they get older.

‘I don’t believe you; I’ve got male friends who aren’t into girls that are too young for them,’ I exclaimed. ‘Anyway, what about Asher Keddie? She’s 38!’

‘OK, she’s hot. But she’s in good shape.’

‘We’re not so far away from 30,’ I said.

He looked us up and down. ‘Really? Well maybe you guys will be alright, because you’re not fat.’

‘What’s wrong with fat women?’ we asked.

‘Maybe it’s because I’m really into fitness, I just think it’s a sign of respect to look after yourself,’ he said.

I could feel negativity welling within me so decided to wander off, having spotted someone I vaguely knew, leaving my poor friends to continue this conversation. Apparently after I left he started telling them about all the women he’d been out who weren’t ‘typically attractive’, but who were really beautiful to him. He was single.

We all felt slightly disconcerted by the sentiments he had expressed. We weren’t sure whether he was saying something everyone else is too scared to say – after all, there is that thing how women get invisible when they’re older, whereas the older man is like the experienced, silver fox.

Why look at the lolly when you can’t have a suck? 

The following day, we were on the ferry back from Mona. It’s luxurious: inside it’s like a cafe; with tables, coffee, cake and booze. Beside us were a group of girls in skimpy dresses and high heels, obviously there for a hen’s party. The bride-to-be had a bell on her cup and she’d ring it to ask for more booze. Me and my friend were mean about her under our breath.

The ferry stopped and they got off. The waiter came up to us as we stood up.  ’Don’t worry,’ the waiter he said. ‘The hen’s party’s gone now.’

Now just to give you the context for this situation, we’d met this guy on the way there, and had the impression that he was friendly, arty and sensitive, which was our pre-determined stereotype of all Mona staff.

‘I don’t like hen’s parties even when it’s my friend’, I said.

He agreed. ‘Yeah, last time I went to one there was a female stripper there. Not my thing at all.’

‘Well, women’s hen’s parties sometimes have male strippers too. I went to one with a male stripper once. I honestly think most people felt uncomfortable.’

He nudged me with his elbow, ‘Well you know what I reckon. Why look at the lolly if you can’t have a suck?’

My friend and I laughed nervously and looked at each other. ‘Well, see you later!’ we said, and quickly left the ferry.

Questions:  i) did he really think his final rejoinder was acceptable and that we would enjoy the cheeky joke? OR ii) was it a conscious or subconscious way of trying to make us feel uncomfortable? I’m tending toward the latter.

*Not a representation of Hobart. Just a few weird experiences that I wanted to share.*

He was an ugly bald man with muscles

I had my typical nightmare last night that I was being chased by a serial killer.  He was an ugly bald man with muscles, and looked like a cross between a bikie and an energy retail industry person I met yesterday at a report launch. He had already killed someone else. I went back to the victim’s house to get my homework. I needed it to finish an assignment, otherwise I wouldn’t pass uni. The house was empty – everyone who lived there had left for their own safety. The victim’s body was on the floor in a body bag and blood was all over my homework. I was reaching for my blood stained homework and cringing. It was gross but I needed it to finish my assignment. A young girl came over who was formerly the housemate of the first victim, and in the house when she was killed. She was now living next door for her own safety. The girl tried to tell me something. Then the serial killer appeared. I don’t think I got away because he cornered me with his gun and then I woke up in a sweat.  The nightmares of a 90s kid, I think. All those serial killer stories and slasher films.

Mental process when other cyclists (and especially men) overtake me

Rush of blood to head, aggressive thoughts.

Whaat… how dare you?! I’m actually quite fast you know. I’m just choosing to go slow. Well maybe I’ll just show you how fast I am!

Faint echo of self-chastising thoughts
why are you being so pathetic? just go at your own pace!  
quickly extinguished by a potent mix of adrenaline and something like testosterone

Then: speed up, but by all means do not show them your panting and sweating.

It must look effortless.

Like a tractor

Just now the ALP voted to change their platform to support gay marriage. This is good. But they also voted for a conscience vote, which is probably bad, because any gay marriage law is unlikely to get enough votes to pass.

We heard this politician called Polley whom I’ve never heard of before standing up there to say it was hard for people like her to stand up and, ‘as a minority’, argue against ALP support of gay marriage. Similarly, Deborah O’Neill, also previously unknown to me, suggested, sounding like an annoying 1st year arts student, that the gay marriage supporters were conducting some kind of smear campaign based on construing anti gay marriage people’s ‘other-ness’. That these politicians felt, as opponents of marriage equality, that they were somehow a persecuted minority is obscenely ironic. But obviously not the kind of parallels and links between concepts that their minds draw easily. Oops but look, now I’m at it too: construing them as ‘other’.

It’s all so depressing, not just because opposition to gay marriage hurts gay people but because in most cases it probably reflects an inability to imagine what it would actually be like to be gay and have your own government refuse to acknowledge that you’re ‘normal’.

A lack of imagination, and the closely related inability to understand or acknowledge nuance, is what makes politicians and politics so boring. On message on message on message, driving their message home in the same predictable way, like a tractor.

They think that’s what people want, the certainty and predictability. Maybe they’re right. Just repeat the words ‘Make History Melbourne’ (Greens) or ‘Victorian families’ (Labor) or ‘environmental vandal’ (Greens) or ‘bad tax’ (Liberal) and the voters will roll over and show you their bellies, the logic goes.

I’ve just been reading this, another David Foster Wallace gem from Up, Simba, an essay in Consider The Lobster.

‘It’s hard to get good answers as to why Young Voters are so uninterested in politics. This is probably because it’s next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he’s not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry; the fact of the feeling’s enough. Surely one reason, though, is that…cool, interesting alive people are not drawn to the political process. Think back to the sort of kids in highschool who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game…In fact, the likeliest reason that many of us care so little about politics is because modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard to name, much less talk about.’*

*1) I was a prefect at school, and occasionally suffer from being ambitious in a sad way 2) I do know some nice politicians who don’t hurt me deep down in ways that are hard to name*

Images from the toy section in Kmart Barkly Square, Brunswick (or anywhere, I guess)

‘Hello girls. Can I get in?’

‘Not with those horrific stripey boardies on!’

‘What about these then?’

‘No fucking way man.’ (OK, I cheated, the licorice allsorts jocks were in the men’s underwear section, which I was in all honesty perusing for the sole purpose of seeing whether there were some really, really bad undies. Yes, I was a bit bored).

Girls Dress Up Set: ‘Great for Developing Your Child’s Imagination’. Yeah, really extending them.

Piles and piles of soldiers. Because, you know, that’s what we want to inspire our boys to do when they grow up.

Boy playing with trucks.

Teaching girls how to be ‘little mommies’?

This is actually a dart gun.

This packet features a picture of a young boy with ammunition strapped onto him. Only $15.

More pretty stuff for the girls.

And here, little boys with guns. Awesome!

No honey you can’t have a gun but you can have…um… a princess teapot!

Quick! We need some engineers to fix our public transport infrastructure!

Ever seen a female drummer? They’re pretty awesome.

These barbies looked entombed. But I think that’s just the flash.

This girl is very cute, I have to admit. She gets a pink and purple tricycle.

Or would you prefer this?

And here’s some gender-neutral entertainment.

News bulletin 10002.8391

Dear Diary,

Today a man in the lift gave me an intense, indiscernable stare. I learned two wonderful new words: Investment Logic Mapping and Early Kickoff Pack. I ate a Boost Bar (delicious). At a subsequent meeting I discovered small pieces of chocolate on my skirt and stockings, disguising them by implementing a crafty yet precarious leg folding arrangement.

It was a good day. I am going home now.

FuckWalk – protests in poor taste

Protests are a funny one aren’t they? Lately I’ve been to a few that have stuck in my craw. On Saturday it was FuckWalk – a protest against Baillieu’s swear laws, a cause which I wholeheartedly agree with, although the protest was also used to promote a broader social agenda. I didn’t originally intend to go, but found myself at Bourke St mall and the protestors just marched up to me.

It was a pretty young crowd, with a a predominance of hippy left-wing fashions – dyed hair, dreadies, piercings, badges, berets, hoodies, sloganed T-shirts. Socialist Alliance and Resistance spoke at the rally and SA had a large banner right at the front – it seemed like they had organised it.

As I arrived, one of the speakers was yelling ‘Unfuck Victoria!’ and getting the crowd to repeat it after him.  They obliged. I stood on a bench so as to get a better view of the speakers.

One of the girls behind me commented, ‘You’d think they would have thought a bit harder about what they were going to say!’ I turned around and said in solidarity, ‘Yeah, Unfuck Victoria?’ She laughed: ‘Sounds like they’re trying to give back its virginity or something!’ Then she offered me some of her popcorn.

The last speaker compared the laws to Nazism – ‘since when was all these Nazi views imposed on us as a country,’ – and called on the crowd to ‘fuck being a conformist – fight now.’ He compared this amassing of people to the Arab spring ‘All over the world, people are getting together and telling the government to get fucked!.. Fuck you! We are not fucking prisoners!’ He then invited people to come to a  a ‘meeting’ at Melbourne University on Thursday night (I’ve since realised this is the Economic and Social Outlook conference), where Abbott, Ferguson, Swan and other politicians would talk about ‘how they control you and the resources boom.’ ‘Come along and tell them to get fucked!’ he shouted in a sandpaper voice. The aggressive tone was quite brutal on my hangovered ears.

This doesn’t seem like the best tactic to engage people. The aggression is one thing, and to my mind, that’s obviously wrong, although there’s undoubtedly a fine line between revving people up and coming on a bit too strong. The situation with the event being so Socialist is a bit of a different thing though.

It reminds me of the Wikileaks protest, where there was a sea of red Socialist flags and crackly loudspeaker which denounced neo-liberalism and the Northern Territory intervention.  At that protest, it seemed to me like freedom of expression was being claimed as a socialist or ultra-left-wing issue,  which would have alienated some potential supporters. Some of my friends who rocked up to that protest in full solidarity with the cause, but left quickly once they absorbed the tone of it.

But as someone pointed out to me when I was bitching about red flags at Wikileaks, freedom of expression (which is what both of these protests were about) means just that – so you can’t really criticise people for choosing whatever mode of expression they want. Some people feel similarly about Greens triangles – in the past, I’ve heard that some concerned members of environment groups have tried to get people to put them away at climate rallies, for fear that the cause would be branded as a political issue owned by The Greens.

The thing with Socialist Alliance is, whether or not you agree with all of their views, at least they’re out there and doing something about issues they care about (some of which I care about, too, but obviously not enough to organise a protest about it). If Socialist Alliance do dominate protests, isn’t that because they’re the ones that bothered to show up? If more people were committed enough to come, the composition of the crowd would become more diverse. But I know some people, who might potentially come, are alienated by the heavy presence of the Socialist types. So it’s a bit of a Catch 22.

Youtube of the protest

Western tourists in India

Someone should and probably has written a thesis about the ambivalent position of Western tourists in India. Travelling in India maxed out my middle-class guilt and existential angst, which sits at a pretty high base level at the best of times. I mean, we were there, like cashed up enlightenment bogans, chasing spiritual and personal fulfilment, reaping the benefits of cheap prices, yet completely dependent on the assistance of Indians, as if we were babies. Because you’re so dependent, and you have money, sometimes it almost feels like you’re acting like a bit of a lord, expecting them to meet your every needs, even when those needs might seem bizarre to them.

I felt like a bit of an incompetent fool. I remember this one time, we stopped at a family restaurant and my friend and I needed to use the toilet. We were the only women at the whole restaurant. They had to open up a roller door to get us into the toilet. But it was dark, so we couldn’t really see inside the cubicle. I had to get my head torch from the car, and we put in on our head while we were peeing. Then there was nothing to flush the toilet with, no bucket, no jug, and no tap. So I went to ask one of the young guys, who couldn’t speak English, for water.

He offered me a jug for drinking water, but after I gestured that I needed flushing water, he changed it for a bucket and some water. After we finished in the toilet we needed more water to wash our hands. I asked him, wanting to do it myself, but because I couldn’t really communicate that, he ended up washing my hands for me, splashing water over them while I lathered them up with some soap.

I didn’t know what to do with the soap at the end – I offered it up to him as a way to ask him where to put it – but then he ended up taking it from me – which made me feel guilty – because him taking the soap I’d used to wash my sullied hands seemed a bit dirty, and maybe he was just being polite.

On my very first day in the country, a group of little beggar girls with atypically dark skin and bright clothing grabbed on to my skirts, refused to let go, and started shrieking. I think they were enjoying my obvious discomfort, in a normal group-mentality kid bratty kind of a way. I usually do give money to beggars, but because I was freaked out, and didn’t have my money organised in my pocket, I didn’t give them anything that time. So I tried to cross the road and they hung onto my skirts across the whole six-lane highway. Sounds pretty dangerous, but the traffic doesn’t move as fast in India. I mean, they have cows. Which are cute.

I’ve been to Indonesia, South Africa, and Pakistan, but don’t remember the poverty being as visible in any of these places as in India. Or maybe I was more blase when I was younger. Whatever the reason, the squallor seemed more extreme in India, and there were many more beggars on the street than even in Pakistan, which is ostensibly a poorer country.

The worst scenes for me were on our way to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. The previous day we’d been looking around old Delhi, where we saw shit like kids rooting around in the rubbish. My friend had made the point that even though the poverty was so dire, people still took a lot of care in their environment; the arrangement of fruit, spices, colourful Gods, etc – so there was a kind of beautiful dignity there.

But what we saw on the way to Agra seemed to have little that was redeeming about it – it was horrible, just rubble, piles of stuff and buildings falling down and scaffolding and desperate poverty and complete ugliness. Which is not to say that these people didn’t have any dignity or whatever, but just that the poverty was severe and the scene was shocking.

How far could the $1500 used to pay for my plane ticket have gone towards helping people? I mean, it would have been relatively easy for me to give this money instead of taking the trip, if I actually cared enough. And what’s the use of even talking about the unfairness of wealth inequality if you’re not going to anything? Analysing it is almost more hypocritical, because you make yourself feel better but you don’t actually do anything.

In terms of benefiting from inequality, there’s really no difference between being in India or in Australia. In Australia, we’re still benefiting from economic exploitation – for example, the only reason things are so cheap is because it’s produced under horrible, cost-cutting labour conditions. The inequity is just more obvious in India.

It’s amazing how quick you slip into an entitlement mentality. When I was in Islamabad in Pakistan doing volunteer work, I stayed for a month with an older man, the father of my university lecturer. He had servants. The house servant, who cooked every single meal for us, including my customised breakfast every day, used to watch TV from outside the door of the lounge room, he wasn’t allowed to come in. And he would sleep on the floor of the kitchen. But my host also supported the servant and his family in a number of ways.

Despite the kindness of my hosts in having me, I was getting a bit frustrated – my host was, naturally, very concerned about my safety, so wouldn’t let me go outside the house by myself. I’d never experienced that before.

I wanted to do some exercise at least, so insisted, against a little resistance (which was partly on safety concerns and partly, I think, on a class thing about walking around being something lower-class people do), that he let me go for a walk each day. So he did, but made one of the servants come with me. They wouldn’t walk beside me, they’d just tail behind. I think walking is something that the lower-classes do (except if you’re like a rich Pakistani cosmopolitanite who wears a tracksuit and goes for brisk exercise walks).So the servants really, really hated coming for those walks. You could tell.

One day, one of them said they had a sore foot and they couldn’t come. It seemed pretty obvious to me that they were faking it. But my host backed them up, because I think he didn’t like the walks anyway. I was frustrated. I whinged, from memory, although I think I gave up quickly. But what struck me from that experience was how easily this sense of entitlement, and expectation of servitude, become naturalised.

Guy looking after pot plants at Delhi airport – carpet is very Indian.

Richer people at Coffee-A-Day at Delhi domestic airport. Best airport I’ve ever been to. They had free internet.

My theory is that most people only do good things when it’s easy and suits us. This is p apparent when it comes to environmental issues, too. Which is why young, fit, fearless bike riders who live in the inner-city, or people with money who buy organic vegetables and solar panels shouldn’t feel too shiny.

Look at these guys. We saw them in Calcutta. I have blanked out their faces, because I am about to make fun of them.

Anyway, these guys were just walking around the streets of Kolkata with their shoes off, something no Indian would ever do, except maybe the sadhus. I think they’re saying: ‘We’re so OK with all this, that we’re happy to walk around and step on dirt and cow poo and possibly human faeces.’

I don’t knock people who go to India for spiritual enlightenment, I can identify with it and wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of doing it myself someday (maybe soon?).  But I felt embarrassed by these guys – it was like they represented Western faux-hemian culture, something which I suspect I might be mildly a part of..

Anyway, I’m going to write more about India, I want to write about some of the cultural and intellectual stuff we saw, it wasn’t just the poverty but that’s something that was on my mind today. And so…

Paying the bills

Life is not all fun and bouncy.

I saw this photo on the way to work.

I may yet become this man.