Update coming

Various things have reminded me of the urgency of living, thus I’ve delved back into reading, running, taking photos.

I want to go here: www.dirkhartogisland.com

Be good to each other.

Fever

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahabatmanhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahafeverhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahakillme

I busted some cartlidge in my chest while boarding again the other day. That’s shitted me off because I can’t go bodyboarding, and my vet friend has recommended I also refrain from running for a few weeks to allow the cartlidge to heal. Something about if I keep breaking it in the same place it’ll weaken it.

So here I sit, in my flanny, wondering wtf to do next.

I’m going for a run in the morning. It’s been one and a half weeks. She’ll be right.

Nothing else interesting to report. Apart from the fact we had a party on the weekend then went ice skating the next day.

No interesting thoughts or stories or embellishments. Work has dulled this feller.

Stay tuned though I guess.

More reflection

From rainy Monday:

Faithless is the shit. I’m home alone in the pink shack. Woke up late this morning to find the outside world raining softly. I went sik on the guitar till my fingers gave in, now I’m finding another way to amuse myself.

Firstly a whinge:
So the job is turning out to be harder than training led me to believe it would be. I guess I wanted something where I could rock up, do my duty, let my mind wonder, and not really care.

This job however seems to demand one hundred percent concentration over the entire eight hours. I can do it. It’s just a bit more challenging that Telstra was. So much knowlege required.

On the topic of knowledge, the other night I realised I’ve become this walking dispensary of practical advice on a broad range of topics. I’ve dabbled in a variety of interests and earned a crust in several fields in my short life. And consequently friends call me asking advice on IT, car buying, car fixing, vegan eating, fitness, accounting, law, and now, insurance as well.

I’ve always spread myself too thin. This slew of practical knowledge regarding every which thing is all well and good, it’s frequently beneficial, but is it really *necessary*. What if I’d invested that energy and intellectual capacity, focussed it on a smaller area.
Maybe I could have maybe achieved something.

But I mention “capacity”. Is it even finite?

Not really. One should technically be able to fit in as much as one can absorb during the limited hours in the day.

If I didn’t sleep could I know twice as much?

I don’t have regrets about how I’ve invested my time. I don’t have a killer career or a university degree. But I like having a fairly broad knowlege of different aspects of the modern world. Knowlege is power. It’s easier to get what you need when you know how the system works.

Highway Ephiphanies

I was up the coast for a few days for Easter, then did a late Sunday night run home to beat the traffic. Cruise set to 120, seat back, rain softly hitting the windscreen, thundering across the  dark open plain stretching before me, I did some thinking.

Nothing lasts forever. All we have are the moments.

So many, myself included, spend their lives railing against the hand we’re dealt when things don’t go our way. When we’re single we pine for love, closeness and certainty. When in a long relationship we crave time alone, adventure and thrills. As one of the majority who’s been from one extreme to the other, and has now run the full circle, I kind of wonder what to chase next.

The usual of course is to recommence the circle. However I question that. I used to say that circle was life. That was it. You crush, you chase, you get a little thrill, then usually get hurt. Sometimes it goes further and there’s love. Then it ends and you’re back to the beginning. Whenever a friend sobbed to me in the aftermath of it all falling apart, I would rehash the same pep talk. It’s all part of the tapestry baby. This is your life, that’s all there is. Take it all in.

And while to an extent, I think I was kind of right, last night, thundering down a lonely Bruce Highway, I suddenly reached a totally new way of looking at it all.

It’s been coming awhile. But it didn’t hit home till I really thought about it. Nothing lasts forever. All we have are the moments. One needs to cease the concern over the future because it doesn’t exist. Neither does the past. The present exists, we’re in it now. Cherish it. See, now that moment’s gone. Lost forever and it’s all you had at that moment. But you did have it there. Did you appreciate it?

It’s easy to fall into the trap of defining oneself by the have-not’s. What about what you have? It’s cliched, but I never properly thought about it till recently.

“Ride the wave.” I said to my friend that the other night. I only realised the significance after it was said. Life is about the now, and to a large extent going with the flow. Not so much accepting shitty situations, but picking which fights to fight, and by riding the wave during the easier, better times, by not continually dwelling on the have-nots, saving one’s energy for the fights that really count.

And that brings me to the next epiphany. It seems to me that we need to ride the wave not just as individuals, but also as a collective.

To me, nature is perfection. Chaos and the progression of time have produced a system so incredibly powerful, uncompromising and complex, I believe our fundamental error as a species and as members of this system has been to think we can successfully adapt it to suit ourselves, rather than adapt to it, as has each and every other one of the trillions of species we share the planet with. Concrete. Walls. Dams. Each stupid little barrier is nothing compared to the force of perfection which is nature. Her energy and patience is infinite and she will slowly but surely crush each and every arrogant, pitiful, bullshit attempt isolating ourselves from it. Attempting to convince ourselves we’re special and somehow different from all the other animals is the grossest waste of energy.

This realisation will be key to our ultimate survival as a species. That nature can never be imitated. Man seems to think he will be best off in an artificial, built environment. But that’s not the case. We’re still part of nature, as much as we try and convince ourselves otherwise through our man made shit.

“Humanity’s first notions of power came from primitive encounters with nature – the flash of lightning in the sky, a sudden flood, the speed and ferocity of a wild animal. These forces required no thinking or planning – they awed us by their sudden appearance, their gracefulness and their power over life and death. And this remains the power we have always wanted to imitate.”
- Robert Greene

We never will come close to imitating it. Better then that we learn to live in harmony with the system which sustains us, instead of cutting it, burning it, and generally pissing it off.

The global warming thing scares me, not so much because of the extent of the challenges we face, but the extent to which, as a collective, we seem to have already given in. Everyone pays lip service, but get people on their own after a few drinks and they confess they feel it’s all futile. We’re fucked. We’re on a burning express train to the apocalypse. Exponential population growth, catastrophic global warming and ultimately the nuclear war it will spark might wipe us out. Everyone’s already accepted it. Wtf mate?

The cynic in me says the third world’s already stuffed because they won’t stop friggin’ breeding. Educating small groups of the destitute on safe sex and giving them condoms just seems so laughably insignificant when you consider the billions of people inhabiting these countries, and the fact that due to their incredibly tough lives, they have no real context which which to understand how their snap decisions have flow on effects to their entire lives and the lives of others. There’s got to be some other way to help them.

Anyway me being the idealistic sceptic I am, I believe doom is quite avoidable. Scientists tell us exactly what we need to do to avoid this. Why aren’t we doing it? We as westerners have the power and the knowledge to fix everything. What a crime if we failed to make use of these things and let it all fall apart.

I love that even at this eleventh hour, Tories still get flustered over practical suggestions like carbon taxing, shrieking that it will “increase the cost of energy”.

Um. Yes, it will. That’s the purpose guys.

Peter Garrett will also stop you mowing your lawn.

Anyway back to the man vs nature thing, you know what I admire most about nature, and animals in particular? They don’t give in like humans do. You don’t see animals deciding it’s all too hard and having a cry. They get on with existing. If faced with an obstacle they either overcome it, or die trying.

Humanity better not wuss out of the challenges we face as a race. I’m ready to do my bit. I’ll pay more for my energy, I’ll stop doing burnouts. I’m prepared to give up whatever material shit I have to to ensure the planet stays a nice place for me to exist. Because at the end of the day, it’s the simple things which make me happy. Doesn’t matter how shit artificial stuff like work gets. If we can swim in the clean ocean, walk through a forest and suck in clean air, everything’s okay. That’s all I really want. Sleep now.

Last storm of summer [Introspective rambling follows]

Ten at night and I’m out in the yard pulling washing off the line as a thunderstorm looms. Drunk student types run around noisily out in the streets of Taringa. I’m lost in thought, meandering through my past, present, my future as lightning goes off overhead and rain starts to spit. I reflect that this far into the year, April, this is perhaps the last gasp of the season. Which of course leads to more widespread reflection of the summer that was.
And I distinctly hear my younger self, cheering from 2004.
I like the fact that I talked the talk and subsequently walked the walk. I don’t think it was generally expected that I’d come through. My plan of shaking it all up, relocating, resettling, gaining more suitable employment. It’s proceeding exactly as it should. The big life restructure. Bloody tiring, but the only way I know to be true to oneself and lead your life the way that, deep down,  you want to. No compromises. The only way to delete all the clutter so you can focus and work out wtf you’re all about and what you want to do. I’ve spent the last five years trying in vain. Only when I so drastically changed stuff did the logical answers reveal themselves. It’s so refreshing, just knowing.
The other benefit of course was the enjoyment of just letting so much crap go. I let loose with the fun random Dirk that got lost for so long. Armed with his body board, falcon and tent, he traced a path of laughter and mayhem across South East Queensland. Various pictures spring to mind and I smile:

• Lying sprawled by myself out on a beach south of Byron, staring up at the clear night sky, cool sand in my   hair, while two sets of bongo’s are echoing call and response. One from down near the breaking waves, one from high atop the dunes.
• Walking down the same beach and a huge black man running at me, madly playing bongo’s, me diving out the way, and him obliviously barreling onward down the beach, with his frenzied running and playing.
• Lying on a different beach, Rainbow, a few nights before new years, with my brothers, seeing a ufo and laughing hysterically.
• Me and Mike down on the beach one night. Seeing some lights in the distance. Deciding to walk towards the lights and the adventure which ensued.
• Nevereverland. The Presets.The Green Laser Show. Fwoah.
• Bodyboarding every second day.
• Learning guitar.
• The rain storm that hit while me and Toine were camping, us sitting by the fire under a well installed tarp, eating hashbrowns and drinking tea while we watched the entire beach get chased way. Subsequently looting in their wake.
• Drunk hookups with pretty girls in the ocean at night, water sparkling with plankton.

I stuffed up a few things as well. I handled a few things poorly. I learnt from them. I’ve continued to work stuff out on my own terms. One day I’ll have all the answers. When I’ve made all the mistakes.
Much remains to be done. Aside from the full and complete execution of the plan there are some assorted other things I’d like to accomplish this year. Listed as follows:

• Become decent at body boarding.
  I know you don’t have to be good at something to love it, but given the fact that I gush about it all the time, I think it’s only reasonable I be able to efficiently deal with nasty shorebreaks and not get wiped out as much as I do. Certainly a work in progress..
• Become decent at guitar.
  I can play songs now, go cleanly between most of the chords. I make up folky riffs and strum till my fingers can’t take it anymore. And everything feels better.
• Pinch some milk crates.
  A rite of passage.
• Improve at photography.
  My goal is to make like a portfolio of Brisbane photos. Of the places I go and the people I hang with. It’s much harder than I thought it would be.
• Read more.
  While I wasn’t working I made some excellent inroads in this area, demolishing some awesome books and reveling in the new, interesting perspectives that I arrived at with each one. Since starting full time work and the associated intensive training I haven’t been able to bring myself to read in the evenings. That should change once I get up to speed proper and work is not such a big issue on my radar.

Speaking of work, for those who care, I am now an Insurance Services Officer in the inbound travel claims enquiries section of a major international insurer. It’s turned out to be better than I expected, with regards to conditions and the interestingness of the work. Travel insurance is cool because you hear about people’s misadventures all over the world. Sucks when you have to tell them they’re not covered for the trip home to their grandma’s funeral because her medical condition was pre existing. I deliver the blow with a sweet voice and my superiors like me.
Once a month the entire company gets together on a massive open air deck on the top story, with sweeping 180 degree views of the Brisbane skyline, and drinks Boags until it runs out. There’s something awesome about drinking free, good quality beer on work time. These guys know how to do it.
My favourite aspect of all remains the fact that it’s situated a pleasant fifteen minute walk from my house. Not commuting on trains and roads makes my day so much shorter, cheaper, healthier, and generally more pleasant.
I’ve spent the last few months learning new things. The brain’s constantly awash with new and interesting knowledge. Practical skills like guitar, boarding or surviving in the city, photography skills, as well as mental such as slabs of knowledge for work. My brain’s in constant learning mode, absorbing new information like a sponge. I like it. I don’t want to stop learning. I like knowing.
So the summer party’s kind of over. For now. The head is down, I’m charging toward the goal. Like the Ox. After all it is the year thereof. IM NOT INTO THAT HOCUS POCUS MATE, but it’s my reminder to myself of what this year should be about.
Heh. I’m attempting introspection and just blaring some kind of quasi motivational monologue. I have friends who reflect on the world and their philosophical struggles and so easily paint their intelligent thoughts into eloquent paragraphs. Meanwhile I rail against tangible annoyances such as parking inspectors, possums digging up my parsley, and the fact that the footpath outside my window gets whippersnipped and leafblown every second friggin day.
I think that may be it from me for now anyway, dear readers. I’ll try to keep up the writing so I don’t disappear into a haze of insurance doublespeak. Meanwhile the uni and career goal sits in the background, awaiting the appropriate time. I’m so keen.

Footy, Wipeout

Mum and Dad came down for the weekend and stayed in a hotel in the city. On Saturday we went to the Gabba to see the Lions play their opening match of the season.

I’m not mad about footy. But Dad quite likes it, and I used to watch it with him as a kid. Back when the Lions used to win everything. Since then things have changed. I’ve grown from a little smartarse into a big smartarse, and the Lions have deteriorated from a once near un-beatable team, to the fairly mediocre standard which saw them finish last season pondering not even making the top eight.

And so I found myself at the Gabba, on the cool Saturday evening, nice and close to the field with a view across the stadium. Watching them getting beaten up in their home ground by the West Coast Eagles.

It was just ridiculous man, the Eagles came out hard and fast and left the Lions running around aimlessly, game plan out the window, along with all hints of confidence. At one point three of the guys went to mark the same ball, crashed into each other and fell into a heap. Meanwhile an Eagle plucked it out of the air and sent it up the field and they scored another.

A couple of times in the past the Lions have staged momentous comebacks. But this time it was a big ask, even for them. Furthermore, they are for the first time without their legendary coach Leigh Matthews and many of the star players that comprised the unbeatable Lions machine that won three straight premierships. It was ex-captain Michael Voss’s first time coaching the side and it was beginning to look pretty embarrassing for him.

So anyway, the siren sounded to signal the end of the first quarter. Score something stupid like 12-50 and the crowd was spewing. A few people walked out.

Vossy cruised onto the field brandishing a whiteboard and the team gathered around sullenly. He spent the next five minutes scrawling madly upon it, and gesticulating wildly. The break ended and Voss left the field. Play recommenced with the ball-up, and suddenly, everything changed.

I don’t know what Michael Voss said to the team in that five minutes, but for the next two hours the  crowd of Lions fans was treated to a most almighty resurgence. Cheering every mark. Roaring at every tackle. The Lions kicked about five unanswered goals and equalised. Insane. In the fourth quarter they streaked ahead by a couple of goals and held the margin right to the end. The buzz in the stadium was awesome.

So I’m not a huge footy fan. But watching that courageous victory I really enjoyed. I loved chanting and taunting the Eagles supporters in front of us as the game slipped from their grasp. I especially enjoyed when Jonathan Brown hammered some little Eagles player about 20m from where we were sitting. We were on our feet, fists in the air. I have to admit there’s something pretty cool about watching fast, violent ball games in a stadium. I never really got it when I watched it on TV. Now I understand.

I don’t understand the old guys who take it really serious. You know the ones who yell advice to the players. “RUN IT MGRATH!” “LIONS I WANNA SEE YOU WINNING THOSE CONTESTS AYE!”
Shut up mate, you’re an insurance salesman, not the friggin’ coach. Noone cares about your half baked bullshit advice. Get off your soap box and stop embarrassing your wife.

Sunday me and Mike went bodyboarding. It was my second time out after I had a month out of the water as a result of me injuring my chest. It proved to be quite an intense afternoon. A strong south easterly wind whipped up after lunch and sent big dumping waves into the open beach we were stupidly attempting to surf.

I now have a new record for my worst wipe out ever. I got out past the main break and saw a big one coming. It wasn’t too steep and didn’t look that nasty. I started to paddle. Suddenly it was 80 degrees steep and I was teetering on the top, like two metres up in the air. I could either attempt to abort and probably go down backwards and get smashed. Or I could attempt to catch it and shoot out the bottom.

I went for the latter. I sent the board flying down the front, but I got too much air and lost it when I hit the water and the whole show exploded on top of me. My face hit the sand numerous times, and I surfaced about fifty metres down the beach.

I trudged out of the water, seeing stars and sat on the beach quietly for the next ten minutes or so. Realising I’m not really that great at bodyboarding.

Not that you have to be good at something to love it.

I mean I’m alright. I’m certainly a lot less fit due to the afore-mentioned injury. But I shouldn’t have gotten that injury either. It was due to stupid technique. I really need to refine stuff like that. And possibly surf on a better beach than the spit. I think I might have a crack at Burleigh Heads this weekend. I’m sick of negotiating dumpers and crashing through white foam. It’s fun for awhile but there’s no finesse, and it’s pretty dangerous.

Dreams, fights, explosions, mince

So once again I find myself contributing the blogosphere. Sitting up in my room in this pink shack. At some point tonight I’d like to go downstairs to punch and lift and stuff that guys my age do to mitigate instinctive tendencies toward aggression. Which reminds me of a recurring dream I’ll get to in a bit. Anyway, I’m blogging instead of going downstairs right now. In order to exit the house and go downstairs I have to run the gauntlet of three women cooking mince and their associated revelry. It’s not something I feel like facing at this juncture.

It’s just the cooking mince really. Man, even when I ate meat as a kid, I still found that smell pretty oppressive. As a child I’d note the swarms of blowflies crowding the kitchen screens when mince cooking was in progress, and wonder wtf the deal was.

We were meant to eat it.

Hello to you Cara, if you are reading!

Back to the aggression thing. Me and my brocousin have tried to commit as far as possible to remembering and writing down dreams upon waking of a morning. The goal is lucid dreaming. I haven’t come close to achieving that so far, but I sometimes remember to write down the dreams. And I’ve begun to notice some recurring themes emerging. The most obvious is the last three nights or so, and generally fairly often throughout the last few weeks, my dreams have roughly culminated in me beating the absolute shit out of someone. I didn’t think I was a real angry guy – ever since the jobquit and subsequent summer of fun, I’ve been chilled as. Yet here I am in my dreams, pounding and kicking people till they’re on the ground, and continuing to give them a good thrashing until others drag me away.

I used to always dream of running, sometimes away from danger or annoyance, but just as often for the sheer thrill. I never dream I’m running from people anymore. They run from me.

I’ve watched a couple of violent films lately. That could be to blame. Due to the fact I stopped playing violent games years ago, and don’t watch any TV or many movies, I’m not as desensitised to violence as most. So when I AM confronted with it, it’s pretty significant.

I also dreamt the world ended a few weeks ago. I wrote it all out, remembering it in fairly intricate detail, right up to and including explosions ripping across the land, being engulfed in flames and lava and my limbs going in different directions. I posted it here briefly, then decided it too horrific and promptly pulled it down. It remains in the vault with the other weirdness.
(#)
My dreams are often apocalyptic, but they’ve never been as horrendous as the afore-mentioned one. I woke up paralysed with shock. Took me a few days to get over. Thankfully no more have come.

The last few dreams have been boring as hell, probably due to not doing too much interesting most days.

I was going to talk about how I got a job, and nearly collapsed my lung and couldn’t bodyboard for a month, and how I went with my first ride on a small inflatable object towed by a sports boat at about forty knots.

That might wait till next time, got to go get some exercise before I fall asleep.

Ten percent less?

In the last few months, I’m guessing you’ve come across an advertising campaign such as this one:

http://evolve.ergon.com.au/10Less.aspx

I think it’s rather misleading when the privatised energy industry runs ads encouraging domestic consumers to cut their usage. Come again? Do they expect me to believe that they genuinely want to see a ten percent reduction in residential usage? Surely that would mean a ten percent reduction in profits in that sector as well. That’s got to be a massive amount of cash. I honestly doubt any company in western society would *actually* want or expect this to come true.

In my view it’s just a PR exercise. In this post-Inconvenient Truth world, corporations of all kinds have scrambled to incorporate feel-good green symbolism into their reams of sanitised, unrealistic policy.

I have a hunch they know people won’t voluntarily cut their energy consumption by anywhere near enough to have any impact on climate change or their profits.

It peeves me a little that while industry, transportation and agriculture spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on extraordinary levels, energy retailers get all patronising and tell residential consumers to cut their usage. I’d wager industrial and commercial usage of electricity would outstrip residential by quite a margin. This business of turning off lights when you’re not in the room is fair enough, but it’s unrealistic to believe it’s going to make a difference to the big picture. Unless of course it’s just one mini component of a giant, well executed scheme to bring shit under control and avert oblivion. Which, unlike many of my peers, I reckon would be pretty achievable if people hardened the f*ck up and accepted that a pay-to-pollute scheme would discourage pollution and encourage investment in clean, renewable technology.

“But my bill will go up, aye?”

“I dig coal out of the ground, I expected to have a job forever. Now you wanna put me out of a job. You greenie sons of bitches”

If that’s your attitude, learn to swim.

Anyway. Speaking of feel good symbolism, the idea of a few thousand residents turning off the lights in their home for one hour, on one day out of three hundred and sixty-five is patently ridiculous. Even on a symbolic level.

Yup, its that time of year again.When I first heard of Earth Hour, I was initially quite skeptical of the concept.

Surely I could be forgiven for that though. Pretty sure that the coal fired power station is going to continue consuming just as much coal, and polluting just as much for the entire duration of the “earth hour”. They can’t just turn em on and off, it takes hours to get them on and offline.

So what the hell does this achieve? Well today I read this article, and it made me a little less cynical:

“THE NSW Government has backed calls for Earth Hour to be viewed as a referendum on greenhouse gas cuts and be taken into account at an international climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, this year”

The idea that millions of individuals can gain the attention of populist governments and instigate a real, an actual shift in paradigm and pave the way for a brighter, more sensible future is incredibly appealing to me. I might be idealistic, but it’s better than the alternative..

Queensland election 2009

……CHOOSE…….

The Borg [in full intellectual stride.] Or  Bligh [I'm scared too.]

Apparently there’s an election in a week. Quick! Decide!

I’m actually happy with the way it’s gone down because the biggest problem I have with elections is the incredibly drawn-out campaign process. What a waste of time and resources.

As for my weapon of choice, Borg/Bligh, I can’t bring myself to vote for either.

Like many other Queenslanders I’m a little disgruntled with the sitting government. They’ve proven a special kind of ineptitude I assumed only possible under the administration of a bunch of .. monkeys? Five year olds? No, that would be unfair to the animals and kids. Health scandal, power station scandal, grand plans for gross environmental vandalism, not to mention exorbitant spending on patronising PR campaign after patronising PR campaign.

So yeah, I’m pretty pissed. I’d like to get some revenge at the polls, however it involves me voting for this guy

The Borg actually seems like an okay guy. It’s more his cronies and their collective ideology that bothers me. The Liberal and National parties in Queensland have such a ridiculous history, and even though they’ve had over a decade to think about why everyone hated them, I’m pretty sure they haven’t evolved sufficiently to be a viable alternative government in modern Australia.

I would like to give the Borg the vote just because he tries so hard, and face it, he’s hilarious. But if, in the incredible scenario where the LNP somehow pulls off a win next week, they won’t deserve it. It won’t be anything to do with them or their policies. It’ll be how much Labor sucks and how sick we all are of seeing Bligh in that hard hat.

Ah well, 1 the greens, blank the rest.