could be moving house

The MDMA thing needs a rethink, or a rejigging of my existence. Into something more of a life. Of course I’ve not contacted Cath, and that’s part of the problem. Not a problem vis-à-vis Cath herself, but the problem of my generally hesitating and losing. I have no context for the enjoyment of the drug, no group of sympa friends to ecstasise around, I’ve so effectively kept myself out of contact. For example, didn’t check out courses and classes on the net last night, I chased other priorities, which were so much the worse for me. Even a trip to the pool would be something much more positive.

Just emerged from a La Luna meeting which was expected possibly to be fiery but fizzed rather, though not with champagne, only still semillon chardonnay from Banrock Station. Sarah wants to move from next door, the house, shaped precisely as mine is, is too big for her. Too many things horded, too many nooks for animals to dump in, too many dishes for junkies to junk, too many bedrooms and beds for kids to scramble and jumble, too too much garden to tend and keep from becoming a fire hazard in globally warmed summers. She’s had her eye on Corey’s smaller space, but he’s in two minds about swap-shifting, especially to this high crime area with thousands of dollars in musical equipment. His current place in Ridleyton wouldn’t be much better crimewise but at least the place is secure. There’s also the daunting garden (which would be this still-establishing one, I’d hop next door) and the regular trains across the road. He’s an insomniac.

There are other options though, such as one of the new Browning Street properties. If Corey chooses to take that, then Sarah and I will do the moves and my place will become available, perhaps for Alex, who has chosen not to move to Wilkins Street, thus leaving it for Karen. But Alex may also wish to take up the Nieass Place house, vacated by Karen. If he does so then his place at Wilkinson Court will become available. Also Jenna’s house in West Hindmarsh will become available, probably for one of our prospective members, such as James, now that she’s moving to the other of the Browning Street houses. I’m sure there are other permutations, but I need a good lie down.

First step in creating a sex life is to create a social life. Currently my social life revolves around my pets, don’t want to go any further with that (the still nameless crippled kitten has survived the dread injection and bounds from strength to strength). Shared some chardonnay with fellow La Lunies, but still, apart from Sarah, no further. Really need some new contacts anyhow. Will report progress tomorrow, promise.

Nutrition report. Breakfast, the usual muesli with yoghurt. Toast with avocado (no butter of course). Lunch in the meeting, a couple of wee butties, chicken and cheese, and Sarah’s delicious lemon cake. And chardonnay, and coffee. Dinner I’ll report tomorrow (still a couple of days behind).

a dream of feelings shared

Oh that ole time religion. An article in the national rag bemoaning the misogynism of our Polish Pope. While explaining it too, in psychological-cultural terms. The war, the mother. I skimmed it, it made me too angry, too depressed. Twenty years ago I was reading the Warsaw diaries of Kazimierz Brandys, a Polish literary elder, written during the fighting, frightening days of Solidarnosc. The Pope then was seen as a beacon for anti-communist humanism, and Brandys marvelled in his solemn slow pace of a gardener. I try to feel a fondness.

What this antisexual popery underlines is the absurdity of Catholicism’s claim to eternal truths or doctrines. Each new infallible adjutant to the Holy Smokery hijacks the tradition, sculpts it to his own design. According to his swag of personal failings. Asinine, the infallibility thing, of course, but it leads to intriguing outcomes, new muddles to quake over.

Another New Scientist read cover to cover, so proud, feel it in my newly expansive chest, and still haven’t begun the real man exercises. Again nothing on global warming, a weeny bit worrying for something so catastrophic, but the future of flat-panel TV’s much brighter than the planet’s so maybe they’re accentuating the positive. My fave piece this week was on microbes, clever little colonies whose intricate intracommunications we’re just starting to shed light on. And there was me complaining about Christian attitudes to the brute beasts. The meaning of life for a bacterium’s as unfathomable and as vital as for us, take that Mister Carroll, you humanist you.

Still the only exercise motivator’s the pedo, which has fluctuated recently. Better today with the temperature just dipping. This house’s long corridor greatly helps – hardly have to step out. I dither about, headless, for 400 steps without noticing, getting nowhere. Belly’s still most palpable though. Didn’t I promise to monitor food intake? Let’s see, today, my muesli with flavoured yoghurt. Bread with the last smear of cream cheese, garden salad and lean bacon. Lunch I can’t recall. A banana. Coffee after coffee (drinking it now), and an energy drink. Dinner courtesy of Sarah, a tuna pasta bake, with parmigiana. A small serve. Feeling pretty damn good. Now what about the social side?

Could take Italian classes. Pilates classes. Beginners’ yoga. Cooking for two. Exercising for two. Folk dancing. Conversations in English. With anyone. Chat rooms? Yes, a conversation with JS needed here. Desperate position, desperate measures.

sweet dreams of a bad girl

Behindhand, old story, willing to catch up, especially in the mornings, fresh and still with an almost ageless spring, but there’s also the physical battle – I dream of swimming in a neat, marked pool in this weather, lap after boring lap, pushed, only for four or five laps or so, by fear of drowning.

Mentioned, supposedly yesterday, the party at Richard’s (his former sister-in-law calls him Rick, ‘that’s what he likes to be called’, new to us), and we went, friend Sarah, her grand-daughter Courtney and I, and talked to nobody except the aforesaid former sis-in-law. By the time Cath arrived, ever late, with a few of her crowd, we were both already in reverse gear.

If asked, but who would ask, I’d say I was only there to check out another new city apartment-house. Always a touch of defensive hostility when checking out others’ homes, especially those better off, so don’t believe me when I say these places seem too accessorised and designer-streamlined. Richard’s less so than Stephen’s admittedly. I think myself of ideal spaces to inhabit, with much spareness and whiteness and extraordinary enlivening dabs here and there, but in thus idealising I leave myself out of that picture, my messy mind and activities, though much of it routine (coffee after coffee), haphazard and half-hearted, projects taken up and dropped all over tabletops, cooking causes and effects spread and spattered on benches and stovetop, pets’ and kids’ effects endlessly tripped over, kicked into corners, ground into fragments by garden-earthy footwear. A bedroom and a bed of twisted and heaped linen with which, once emerged into the day, I no longer want to deal.

A couple of incidents to record for what they’re worth. ‘Isn’t Courtney looking lovely tonight,’ Sarah beamed at Cath, encouraging the two-year-old’s preening. She’d sacrificed to the girl the necklace she’d first chosen for herself, and it fairly sparkled on Courtney’s throat. Cath made the obligatory fuss, then spoke to me about reinforcing femininity – but ‘oh well, it’s all good fun’. Strange Cath should be so quick to note this, considering that when Isabelle was Courtney’s age, Cath would literally spend hours, hairbrush in hand, silkening the girl’s tresses, and you could almost hear that hairbrush chant ‘you’re a girl, you’re a girl, you’re a girl, never, never forget…’

Stendhal and me

Falling behind with the diarising again, when you’re at home rather than in a stranger’s house as I was at Edwardstown there’s 1001 things you can fiddle about with, including gardening, funny porn sites, trying to master digital camera software, painting the walls, blogsurfing, pet fussing, visiting next door, new recipes, exercising, email crap, playing old records, reading old records, shopping, visiting the local watering hole, even watching telly. So it’s time to bring out the lash and play the workaholic.

My pedo figure plummeted yesterday (today’s the 27th), going below 10000, and well under it, for the first time in almost a week. If I’d gone out to the West End open night I’d have been fine, and might’ve had something interesting to report as a bonus. Now I have to claw my way back to respectability. There’s a party on tonight and I intend to attend and make up for lost ground. It really is hard though in this heat, you really want to lie back and think of those loves you never knew, rather than trying with boring repetitions to sweat your stomach away.

Sex? On the back burner, which doesn’t work and hasn’t been repaired for years.

ego versus truth?

There are of course plenty of other clashes of this kind between science and religious teachings about the origins of life and the world and their implications for how we are supposed to live in the present, so I don’t believe that attempts, however well-intentioned, to separate science and religion into mutually exclusive spheres will ever succeed. I recall that certain philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century, the logical positivists as they called themselves, tried to eliminate, or at least to drastically limit religious speculation by declaring that why questions had no logical validity, that only how questions were really permissible. I’m probably hugely misrepresenting some of these philosophers here, but my intuitive feeling is that there’s a more fuzzy logic behind the scientific quest for understanding, and that this quest springs from motives that have much in common with religious speculation. The how and the why are messily implicated in each other.

So I think there’s plenty of competition between science and religion still. Religion will continue to begrudgingly accept the necessity of scientific endeavour while relegating it to being an examination of the mere how of things, while science will continue to begrudgingly accept, or blithely ignore, religious thought, relegating it to more or less irrelevant and unanswerable why questions.

The how questions are certainly easier to tackle, and science has been much more impressive in tackling them than religion has been in achieving clarity or ‘truth’ in its particular sphere. Scientific theory has also been without doubt a major influence on modern religion. Ancient religious beliefs about heaven, hell and the hereafter, as well as about the origins of life and the world, have been pushed more and more into the realm of the metaphysical by the unqualified success of science’s accounts of every aspect of the material universe, past present and future. What has been particularly remarkable about this, to me at any rate, is the fact that such delimiting and marginalising of religion’s account of our material being has not diminished the human hunger for religious belief.

Can this be entirely accounted for by scientific ignorance? Well, I do believe that scientific ignorance is an appalling thing that should be rectified as much as possible, and that such a rectifying will undermine some of the more egregious religious dogmas, but I think that the human will to believe in its own superhuman destiny, the human refusal to accept that all its sophistication, its suffering and its genius will be snuffed out and turned to dust, the human refusal to accept its own contingency and animality, is too powerful to ever be extinguished. The ego hasn’t landed, and it probably never will.

I do get a bit high-flown myself sometimes. The weather has turned v hot and I’m not always keeping up my steps, or even my housework. A chance to go out last night was not taken up due to sluggishness. I worry about isolation. Having surfed a few blogs in recent days I realise how awful isolation can be for a person’s thinking. There’s some worrisome stuff out there, but also great things like Rhea’s fantastic blog, etc etc.

meaningful stuff

I’ve already touched on what I perceive to be the reason for the enormous and ongoing popularity of belief in souls and spirits, namely that there seems to be a near universal human desire to transcend or avoid the implications of physical death. I’ve also argued that the human ego vis-à-vis this issue is a more powerful force than all the laws of nature combined. No doubt some would find this a hostile and cynical approach to the serious, profound and multi-faceted subject of religion. For example, it’s been argued that religion is the only thing that gives life meaning, that without religion we are as the brute beasts, simply driven by instinct, living lives devoid of any purpose higher than survival and proliferation of our kind.
To cast religion in this light seems, on the surface of it, to remove the egotistical elements that I’ve claimed are inherent in religious belief. However, I’m not so sure about that. There’s no doubt that ‘the meaning of life’ question is more often than not central to religious discussion, but this enormously fraught and difficult word, ‘meaning’, is almost invariably considered in human terms. Indeed, it is often considered in direct contrast to the supposed meaninglessness of non-human life.

This is the problem. The religious-minded, when they talk of meaning, are always seeming to infer some sort of ultimate meaning – the Higher Purpose already referred to. All other meanings are insignificant, hence the disdain for mere animal existence. However science tells us that we are animals, no more and no less. It also tells us that our disdain for mere animals is misplaced, to put it mildly – though we could just as well tell ourselves that by simple observation. Of course it’s terribly bruising to the ego – and therefore to most people just plain unacceptable – to be told that our lives are no more essential, in some ultimate sense, than that of our pet moggie. The more sophisticated or determined religious thinkers try to get around this by claiming that science really tells us nothing about religion (and many scientists have colluded in this view) because science is only able to ask how questions and not the why questions intrinsic to religious speculation. They often use this distinction to delimit science, to render it irrelevant to the kind of questioning that leads to the development of religious belief.

However history, as well as some pretty basic reflection, tells us that science and religion have explanations of the world that do in fact clash, and continue to compete for the hearts and minds of individual seekers after truth. There are some people, for example, who have argued that Adam and Eve were in fact the first humans on earth, and as such were God’s models to us all, and that their heterosexual, necessarily monogamous relationship was a sign to us of the type of relationship we should have, the only relationship that is pleasing to the eyes of God. The scientific theory about the origin of the human species, based on all the available evidence, contradicts this account of a spontaneously created heterosexual couple. The account it gives is of a gradual evolution of the homo sapiens species, with complex traits which cannot easily be defined in terms of hetero- or homosexuality, or as purely or predominantly monogamous.

this bloated body is all that exists

Again five figures on the pedo today and I think I’m safe in saying that’ll be regular from now on. A combination of definitely more activity and finding a spot wide on the hip that keeps the pedo ticking over rapidly.

It’s only the merest start though, the tiniest victory in the battle of the bulge, in the inexorable march toward superspecimenhood. I visited the mirror today, aka the Russian front, and I must deliver the grim news on my torso. White and tripey (though the backs of my hands and my lower forearms are of a more pleasant café au lait), and in the chest and upper back region, grey and hairy too. The greatest challenge for the future (let’s be optimistic) lurks in the sad sack of my soft underbelly, where the relentless pressure of gravity is barely contained by a pale flaccid envelope of flesh. My weight, in jocks, on an unreliable bathroom scale, is around 76 kilos, and I should be aiming for under or around 70 as a proper weight for height ratio. I don’t get to the Central market so much these days, but I must remember, when there, to weigh myself on their excellent scales by the escalators. Need to monitor here my food intake as well, amount as well as type.

Bought a new exercise machine, cheap, from Sarah’s daughter. Thought a lot about that expressive word 'junky' last night while painting my lounge-room wall grey. Junkies - a term which should be used for anyone dependent on mind-altering substances, including alcohol - really do seem to accumulate junk, turn their possessions to junk, junk their relationships, junk up their minds. Their cars in particular crumble predictably into junk and have to be towed away to junkyards. Now there’s a pile of junk in my carport which I won’t be clear of for months, if not years, due to my ‘good-heartedness’ (really laziness or weakness) in respect of a pair of junkies. Anyway, the exercise machine pumps up the calves and thighs mainly I think.

I want to turn to what I hope will be a major theme of this journal, which is the consternation that religion and spiritualism have always caused me. Consternation’s a good old-fashioned word which most effectively describes my mixture of confusion, anger, resentment, frustration, contempt, wonder and outright astonishment I feel at the prevalence of religious belief, spiritual longings and the like, throughout human society. Susan Blackmore, in New Scientist (Nov 13 2004, p36), is admirably succinct and certain in her view: Throughout history many people have believed in a soul or spirit. Yet science has long known that this cannot be so. There is just a brain that is made of exactly the same kind of stuff as the world around it. I agree that all the evidence supports this view, but of course it’s not just in history that people have believed in these things, billions of people believe right now in souls or spirits. Most of these people know little and care less about evolutionary theory or philosophical materialism.

fitness, drugs and the universe

Pedo for yesterday at last up to five figures, 10259, taking my average over 6 days to over 7000 which isn’t bad, but the unreliability of this little counter’s a bit of a joke. Today, hurray back in Devon Park/Prospect, I walked up the Prospect hill, doing only about 400 steps in ten minutes, about a third of what I achieved when I measured it in Edwardstown. Then later in the day the counter seemed to be recording every breath I took as a step. Anyway, whatever happens, by hook or by crook I’m going to get that counter up to 10000 every day from now on, as a first step so to speak.

Since returning I’ve been slack and self-indulgent, though at least I’ve progressed with some spring-cleaning, and of course the pedo stuff is positive. Haven’t yet been to the vet re the lame kitten, who’s moving more freely than ever now. I’ve also agreed to take on Poppy, Sarah’s dumb little mini fox terrier Jack Russell cross, so now that’s three cats and a dog. I actually felt some relief at not having pets at Edwardstown, they get so much in the way, break up reading concentration and the like with their demands. Bête, the kitten’s mum, is yowlier and it seems scrawnier than ever, probably stress-induced.

I’ve read the November 13 edition of the weekly New Scientist from cover to cover, and hope to do that every week from now on, in the hope that something will sink in. Nothing on global warming in that issue. Perhaps because it was easiest to understand, the most memorable topic covered was the headline topic, mind-altering drugs. The mag takes a liberal stance on drug use, criticising the prohibitionist position of recent political administrations, particularly in America. So I should take their lead and try something illicit, in a sensible manner. And since sex, and superspecimenhood, are the current themes of my life and journal, MDMA’s the preferred option. MDMA (the full name’s 3,4 methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) is an amphetamine derivative. Its street name is ecstacy, though what is sold as such often contains no MDMA. Not known to be toxic, though there are dangers of overheating, dehydration and a build up of fluid in tissues, due to the drug’s inhibiting of the production of urine. The positive effects, worrying and exciting, include a sense of energy and euphoria, as well as empathy (this was an earlier name for the drug, and it is known as an ‘empathogen’), and a desire for physical contact. Worrying, as this desire is already pretty well unbearable for me, but it might break down a few British barriers.

Nothing in NS about global warming, unfortunately, but an interesting piece on the age of the universe. I read some time ago that they’d accurately calculated the birth of the universe as having occurred some 13 odd billion years ago, but that was based inter alia on a particular figure for the Hubble constant, a measure for the universe’s expansion rate. Recent studies of cosmic gravitational lenses have led some researchers and theorists to question this measure. They argue that the Hubble constant should be adjusted downwards, which would mean a substantially greater age being attributed to the universe. What would Bishop Ussher say?

more days at Edwardstown

The playstation stuff is a particular drawback. It’s quite similar to gambling, with its instances of success or near-success, its gratifications, its hooks. You keep going because you want to work it out once and for all, to master it. Kids hardly have a fighting chance. I know I wouldn’t, at that age.

Feeling slack. Yesterday I had three champagnes with Sarah at the Royal Oak, and that was too many. My pedo reading consequently suffered; it was down to 4239. I must decide, do I want to loll about indulging myself, watching the bubbles winking at the brim, feeling my arm muscles turn to butter, seeing at the end of the day an unsheathed body that looks like pubic hairs sprouting from a tub of rancid lard? Or do I seriously want to achieve superspecimenhood? Besides, I’m now suffering painfully from acid because of those champagnes, and I didn’t bring my H2 blockers with me.

So, 5524, 5539, 4239. Must graph them, even if the thing’s unreliable, and must get the average up to 6000 plus a day and rising. Almost time for a walk.

During yesterday’s conversation, in which I brought up my issues with Sarah’s mother, Sarah assured me that her mother only ‘had a go’ at me, or made as if to, because she was annoyed about the dedication ceremony herself and felt put out that others could turn up to the festive stuff without having to sit through the grind of the religious ceremony. So, the tirade I invented about how can such a mean-spirited, manipulative one presume to tell others how they should behave within this family, might’ve been a little over the top. Of course, she didn’t have to attend the ceremony any more than I did, and there was certainly something wrong in her thinking that I should somehow conform to a view that all members of this family should show ‘solidarity’ by attending any and every weird and wonderful ceremony devised by particular family members in conjunction with some aspect of the wider community, however much it goes against the grain.

I think, though, there were other issues involved, such as my place in this family. Sarah’s mother tends to patrol the boundaries of family as much as she can, like a sheep dog rounding up the sheep and trying to keep them together. My own place in this family is of course doubtful and so I stand out as a week or anomalous link, ripe for particular attention. She seems to feel the need to snap at me from time to time to see if I’ll fall in with the rest of the flock or go my separate way and no longer be a matter of concern. None of this would be in any way conscious of course.

Which brings me to the real issue of my place in this family. Strictly speaking, I’m not Sarah’s partner. We’re friends, and we support each other. We’re also a separated married couple. When family members have something on, such as this recent dedication for Zach, Sarah’s youngest grandchild, I am never invited separately, it’s just assumed that I’ll be informed through Sarah.

Sarah, feeling floaty with alcohol (it really would be a great drug if not for all the terrible side-effects), spoke of us getting city apartments side by side, or even one to share, strictly as housemates, one (or two) provided by the government or the housing trust via the co-op. Someone at the trust did make positive noises about this a few months ago when as Tenancy officer I handed back our two city flats. She was harking back to the early years of our marriage, book launches (the days when I looked like having a future as a writer), art exhibitions, café breakfasts and the like. She finds her wonderful garden (largely my creation I’m proud to say, in terms of the physical work at least) too much to maintain, and would love to simplify her life. And of course I’d be delighted to live in the city. Then of course there’s the really vexed question of privacy, autonomy, and sex.

From my perspective, foster-caring is a vital part of my immediate and possibly long-term future, but I definitely think we should pursue the trust or whoever we can pursue for some city dwellings to replace those we handed back. An important start.

Almost officially unemployed at last. I won’t feel that way until I’ve received an actual benefit.

Pedo reading for yesterday up to 7140, a wee record but clearly to get up to the 10000 mark, thus being in with a chance of superspecimenhood, will require regular almost daily bushwalking and the like. Can’t wait to see if cycling will work, but I doubt it.

The news is that I’ve got only two more sleeps here, will be paid till Sunday, will receive a bit of money from Esther, and quite a bit of back money from Centrelink on Monday, and then more money from them in the middle of next week, and my final CYFS money for a while on Friday. Sorry, but it’s the energy that pushes the social world around.

The sex life? Well… New Scientist contains a letter about asexuals, those with no sex drive. Yes, in some sense I am jealous. The writer makes a plea for asexuals; don’t treat them as abnormal, as genetic mistakes. ‘Sex is not like breathing. It is not for everyone.’ Could be a problem if they were too many of them, but I suppose the same goes for exclusive homosexuals. Still, suppose it would be pleasant to be released from ‘confusing, overbearing, life-limiting drives’. Remember childhood, before dick rose his head? And now I’m subjecting myself to the tyranny of trying to achieve superspecimenhood, in the hope of maybe experiencing one more inout-inout before I drop off.

As to superspecimenhood, it’s damn clear I’m not going to achieve it through pedometer-power, but it’s a start. So far, I’ve not really pushed myself, not at all. Going full tilt, I can clock up between 1000 and 1300 steps in just ten minutes, so there’s really no excuse for not yet having broken the 10000 in a day. I think I should make it today though. And I’ll make sure it’s a regular thing from now on, even if I have to sleepwalk.

And then there’s the gym, when I get back to Devon Park. No more buttery arms. In fact I’ll have to research superspecimenhood and how to attain it when I get back. It’ll probably require a full body wax and various piercings, as well as endless Pilates and the like.

Slight embarrassment of encountering Sarah’s half-witted younger bro (he was oxygen-deprived at birth), who lives round here, while on my walk this arvo. Carrying pillows from Castleplazaland, returning to Beryl to give her a piece of his mind for standing him up. “I’ve been waiting there two bloody hours, yes I have. She could’ve rung me on my mobile, there’s really no excuse, not in the post mobile age.” He flashed his big black mobile. Can’t imagine he gets many calls on it. Always makes me sorry and slightly shame-faced and uncomfortable.

Some of the boffins are now saying the global warming phenomenon could be worse in its effects than previously thought. Hoping the bastard naysayers will have their noses rubbed into their wrongness, which isn’t very rational or scientific of me. Need to know more about this one.

Pedo 9392 yesterday, so 10000 is v possible, but the pedo’s none too scientific, it can depend where you put it on your clothing, which side of the belt, really quite ridiculous. This morning, helping the new carer Carol move in here from two doors down, and the first half-hour of backwardsandforwardsing chalked up a mere 19 steps. Shifted the pedo to my left side, and the next half hour had it up to 1800. Well, keep it on the left from now on and just go for it. Physique unchanged in the past few days. Why does it take so long?

Tomorrow, home for spring-cleaning, just before the end of spring. Loovly Esther here for the review yesterday, but Nat didn’t turn up. Allowed us to natter without him. All considered, it was an easy placement, which could’ve been tougher if I’d bought in to trying to reform him. Nat has potential, which frustrates. Foodwise, and this is the hugest issue, he is more open than the other kids, yet he can’t beat a lifetime of junk food. Fact is, Nat’s obese, as are his parents, especially his mum (grotesquely so, sadly). So, although he likes mushrooms and avocado, unlike other kids, he’d be happy to live on potato chips and lots of em. While stretched on the couch, remote in hand.

Not that I refrained entirely from comment. I told him one evening, after asking him to clear his chip packets out of the living room, that of all the junk foods, this stuff was about the worst, just flakes of fat. He gaped, perhaps shocked that finally I’d chosen to state the obvious. And for a couple of days, or maybe a day, he didn’t eat a chip.

Poor Nat. He’s up against a lifetime of conditioning, and perhaps even a genetic inheritance or predisposition. Clearly it’s a losing battle. Not that he’s putting up much of a fight, but how can anyone like myself see things from his environmental/genetic space? How can we experience the forces operating upon him? Esther says he’s much improved since entering the program. Home life was particularly chaotic for this young couch macfeast. He loves to cook, and speaks at least of loving salad and the like, but he snacks hugely between meals on high fat rubbish, almost always chips, proving Charlize Theron’s point that such a diet can horribly blotch up your skin as well as swelling your waistline. So that when he wails that no girl would ever look twice at him, it’s hard to resist making again the obvious point. For of course he knows that he eats way too much. And he probably knows too that the oleaginous morsels he’s addicted to constitute the main obstacle to his possibly achieving the male equivalent of Charlize Theron superspecimenhood, and moving with new agility toward blissful communion with the girl next door over whom he languidly languishes.

On the evening of my arrival here at Edwardstown I asked Nat about any interesting attractions in the neighbourhood. This was his answer, honest injun. ‘Well, there’s the Red Rooster just up there on the way to Castle Plaza, that’s the closest, and across the road from it’s a KFC. Further up the road there’s a Hungry Jack’s, and there’s a Macdonald’s in the opposite direction, over there… uhh, that’s about it.’ I must say that I gaped at him with an exaggerated horror. Not wanting to be overtly didactic, I needed to give him the idea via my astonished look that such preoccupations were a little unusual if not disturbing, and I think it worked. He began to look self-conscious and uncertain. He’s certainly smart enough to work it out, but I suspect it’s an addiction, and the will to change is certainly not there right now.

towards superspecimenhood et al

The stepometer (I’ll call it a pedo from now on, it’s sexier) has failed me. After such a good opening burst my reading for the day was a mere 5524, well under the 10000 daily requirement for superspecimenhood. True, yesterday the full day’s stepping wasn’t measured, but the latter half of the day was too much taken up with sitting at a computer and at meetings – working hard mind you. Need a handometer. Also a speechometer to measure how many words spoken daily (I’d be even more down in that department). So I’ve decided to cut down my reading quota, and when I’ve caught up I’ll cut down my writing quota too, to better balance the body-mind equation.

Sexwise, I did talk to my favourite La Luna female person (apart from Sarah of course, who took the night off) last night. A slim young woman with the most sublime dark tangle of hair. During the break, I asked about her weeding (I saw her back on Thursday night at the Maintenance Committee meeting, where she informed us jestingly that her social life consisted of voluntary weeding on weekends. She’s doing an environmental and parks management course).

She’s not the slightest bit interested in me sexually I might add. I’m just trying to move onto the edge of her radar screen. So apparently her weekend activity didn’t consist of weeding but wild orchid hunting up in the lower reaches of the Flinders Ranges. Awesome, she found it. This word I only find complete torture when it comes from English literature students (sorry Kirsten). So she rapturously described the cute little specimens and the veteran knowledgeable types who collect and monitor them. Followed by a brief discussion of her course, her future, her garden, her bantams and the co-op. Lots of mental snapshots of her fascinatingly expressive pale black-eyed elfin face.

That’s all I have to report on sexual personal liberation and progress. The meeting did go into interesting stuff on energy audits, and how to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Apparently our state government has a push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in poorer households like ours by the end of the year. We were shown a meter for monitoring and converting energy outputs, which was part of a kit including door-stops, lagging, fancy thermometers and the like. One of our houses is going to be monitored using this kit, and hopefully the rest will too eventually. Quite interested in this, especially as, for the time being at least, I’m going to be paying my own energy bills. Also useful for Sarah.

With my pedo strapped on, went for a walk this morning. Fortunately I got a bit lost, so I did a good 3000 steps, around Edwardstown and Clovelly Park, up to a Sacred Heart College (Catholic in the Marist tradition), until I found a bus stop with a map. Walking’s great for getting to really know a neighbourhood. As everywhere, there’s a lot of new construction going on, and it must be said that even the new flats in less classy suburbs are a vast improvement on seventies functional design. La Luna’s own new homes, more or less typical of on-the-cheap construction for the low-income end, are much more appealing environmentally and design-wise than earlier stuff, and Edwardstown’s new medium-density constructions appear to be diversifying from the awful Macmansions of the nineties, the stuff going up in Mile End and Thebarton when we lived there.

Walking also brings you up close to people’s gardens and the effort put into them, inspired or otherwise, it bulks out individuals, you can’t be quite so scathing, in that Nietzschean sense, about petty virtues and little people. Suddenly you find yourself here and there impressed, even dazzled, at colourful displays and imaginative combinations. I wonder if they have veggies growing out the back, Nat says you couldn’t do it here because the soil’s probably poisoned, but he would say that, he’s a bit of a slacker, I really should buy a pedo for him, give him the shock of his life, by the way mine says currently 5489, so should improve slightly on yesterdays’s effort, the dating system’s still all wrong but I’m getting closer.

Worried about the lad’s isolation, thankfully we’ll be having a review meeting on Friday, sort a few things out, he’s back on his playstation now, but it has been a more successful day than usual. After my walk this morning, during which he at last did his household chore, cleaning up the wet areas, we sat down and planned a couple of dinners for him to cook – tacos and apricot chicken. Then, after for me a quick trip back home (Exeter Terrace) to collect my wallet, we went to Coles at Castleplazaland and shopped for ingredients and other extras. Back home, we organized which film to see at Marion megaplex. He was happy to see anything, he said, but I encouraged him to choose. Unfortunately, for he picked a thing called Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.

The film was an early one, beginning at 5pm, so we quickly got stuck into making tacos, something I’ve never done before, and they turned out very well. We used soft burritos (I think that’s what they were) rather than hard taco shells, which was good. So, mince with onions in a chili sauce, with tomatoes, cheese, and avocado (at last, a teenager who likes avocados – and he even says he likes mushrooms). And then, the movie.

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is a truly awful piece of yank teen schlock, sloppily directed, lazy, fatuous, typical, predictable. Directed at a late teen audience, perhaps of engineering students, it trots out all the issues of late teen life; getting laid, eating the best junk food in the world, and getting laid. It features shitting competitions (particularly cringy), freakshow godbotherers, the possibilities of group sex, unfunny wackyweed merchants, the workshy dilemma, the general shyness dilemma, big dick jokes, corny special effects, very frequent use of the word awesome, and of course Winning Out Over Your Enemies By Standing Up For Yourself In The Good Old American Way, in predictably cathartic fashion of course. Nat got quite a few laughs out of it, and I felt suitably martyred. It’s a genre thing, but we didn’t have films like this targeted specifically for us when I was a teen. In fact, I feel an important reflection about this coming on.

My pedo showed 5538 by the end of the day yesterday, a very slight improvement, and it’s clear now that to get myself up to 10000 will require considerable effort. Furthermore, there’s little scientific about it. Yesterday morning, following Sarah’s suggestion, I walked for 100 counted steps then checked the pedo reading. It came in at 95, which was excellent, but late last night in a bid to get my figure up I did a hundred steps on the spot in my tiny bedroom. The pedo reading was zero. This morning, pedo, connected, I padded round the kitchen for a while, preparing breakfast. The pedo recorded only six steps, which was way under what I did. I’ll continue to monitor and report.

About teen movies and teen activities. Now when ah were a lad, there were, for a start, no cinemas for many miles around. Of course there were no videos either, and no computer games and playstations. By the time I was sixteen I think I’d been to the cinema about twice. At fourteen or fifteen I went with my older brother and his friends to see Barbarella, a most memorable turn-on. Later, I saw The Hireling, based on an L P Hartley novel, starring Robert Shaw and Sarah Miles, also memorable. That’s all I can recall. We did occasionally go to the drive-in. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was one I saw there I think.

Of course there were no mobile phones, and no walkmans. We hung around the shopping centres and mooched about, talking, smoking and drinking coke (I didn’t do any talking though), and in the other life of my double life I read books (there was also TV, but in my later childhood that would mean spending time in the same room as my parents, a big ask. Having a TV in the bedroom, or two TVs in the house, was inconceivable). There was a library a hundred yards down the road.

I never read ‘teen’ books either, I hardly knew such things existed, if in fact they did. Sure I read bits of Noel Streatfield and Anna Sewell, but I didn’t categorise them, except that I wanted to read ‘real’ adult stuff – by which I mean Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Hardy, not the naughties.

I compare all this with kids today who are so targeted, by the book market, the movie market, the video game market. Who, before having reached double figures agewise might’ve watched the same video thirty times over, after which they’re ripe for interactive gaming which will absorb so much time that might’ve been taken up, in an earlier era, by reading and contemplating the imaginative power of language. I really don’t know what to make of all this. Nat has told me that ‘he really likes reading’, and his reasoning is excellent – books, he says, allow you the freedom to picture the scene almost any way you like, they give much freer play to the imagination. Fine, but he has spent a thousand times more time on his playstation and watching TV than he has spent reading.

the new place and such

I’m now temporarily in a new place, Nat’s place here in Edwardstown. Old housing trust stock, attached to the neighbour, crumbly standard red brick in a compact square, in a light industrial area. Inside, not too squeezy, with broad polished floorboards, pokey bedrooms, and a fair-sized dining section. Not exactly inspiring, but adequate. Not unlike our connected Ridleyton properties. Will miss the internet, and other home comforts, but it’s only for a fortnight, and the job of caring for Nat isn’t too onerous. A bit of yukkiness here and there, with the previous carer having left in acrimonious circs and likely not wanting to buff the silverware etc after being so ill-treated for his pains. So I’ve cleaned out the microwave and removed the pissy old mattress from my bedroom, and I’m ready to baby-sit.

As I’ve already mentioned, I think, my young charge is addicted to playstation 2, the game being Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. There’s another one, which he’s played out, called Vice City. This is my first exposure to these games, which are like interactive shoot-em-up movies, which seem to go on infinitely if you want them to, which Nat does. I’ve been sitting in this unfamiliar living-room for the past four hours reading Proust and watching Nat’s black character, CJ (not Carl Jung, but Carl Johnson) stealing cars, trucks, boats and planes and murdering hundreds of putative rival gang members, as part of his respect-gaining missions. I know how addictive such games can become, and I need to put some brakes on the lad, who neglects everything, even food, and certainly such basics as showering, properly dressing, cleaning up his environment, interacting (though he talks chirpily enough about his black dude’s adventures) and sleeping, in order to carry out just that one next mission. Take him out to a movie, shopping, the beach, any dose of reality you like.

I’ve now met both Nat’s parents. They are big people, especially his mother, huge-girthed and regular fish and chip and potato crisp eaters. Young Nat’s a beanpole by comparison, which makes me a bee’s whisker. I told Nat to help himself to my fish curry but he preferred potato crisps, of which he ate an enormous packet. When I asked him for some local knowledge about places to go in the ‘hood (that’s Grand Theft Auto lingo), he gave me directions to the local Red Rooster, McDonalds, Hungry Jack’s and KFC. Kind of leaves me speechless, but altogether I’m being too passive with him. Need to be more insistent about eating dinner at table, with TV off, restricting PS2 playing, encouraging a greater variety of activities, getting him to cook more, to go shopping, which reminds me I haven’t received his board yet. A little sit down chat is required.

Proust and his precious hated Guermantes set, they’re such a yawn most of the time, and the talk of inferiors and superiors, in people and out people, becomes so predictable after a while, I’m not always sure why I persevere. The Dreyfus factor, which adds a different element of puerility to the mix, does heighten the interest a little more, but not much. Can’t wait for him to get back to lust, inversion and the nature of memory.

Here at the holiday home in Edwardstown I wake up late, just before 8am, and flip up the noisy blind on the window facing south. The bedroom’s small but so is the bed, so all in all I have more room. This computer has some weird quirks, and it’s not internet connected, so it’s going to be awkward. I’m finding that playing music on this and my own computer as I work doesn’t work, there’s a continual stop-start thing happening. Best to obtain a little portable CD player.

At least got Nat to watch the Sunday program this morning. His views on the death of Arafat, ‘yeah, it’s sad, the Palestinians, they’ve got more people than the Israelis and yet they won’t even give them any land, and when they do they start taking it off them again, they won’t even let them have it in peace.’ And then it was back to video games and car parts, but at least this went further than anything I got from my previous two lads.

A brief time out, at Café Va Bene in Campbelltown or thereabouts for lunch with a tableful of Sarah’s family and friends – or rather Rachel’s. They had been to a ‘dedication’, something religious for Rachel’s youngest child Zach, one year old, held at a nearby Baptist Church. Naturally I wasn’t keen on overseeing the ceremony but was happy to partake of the lunch afterwards. This was acceptable to Rachel and Dave, and more than acceptable to Sarah who was relying on me to pay for her lunch (I should say that since I’m paid relatively generously as a foster carer and Sarah isn’t paid at all as a constantly on call mother and grandmother and hostess to various waifs and strays, I’m more than happy to help her out financially).

However it didn’t surprise me in the least that one of the first persons to speak to me when I entered the café was the infamous G-G (aka Winifred, Sarah’s mum, Rachel and Catherine and Fiona’s gran, Michael and Isabelle and Olivia and Courtney and Zach’s G-G). ‘Were you at the church?’ she asked me accusingly. I told her in a firm tone and with a cordial smile that I wasn’t, half-hoping she would ‘make something of it’. However, Sarah, ever-hovering, interposed with the remark that I had a ‘prior engagement’. I was molto peeved about this, but it’s typical of this family, in which major issues are never openly discussed for fear of causing offence. So I was given the option either to acquiesce in Sarah’s lie, or to contradict her, in effect showing her up as a liar in front of her mother. But there was a third option, that of silence, neither confirming nor denying, which I took. None too satisfactory, for I would’ve preferred to confront this controlling busybody head-on. Her response was ‘well, you don’t get to eat then’, with a great laugh, to indicate the obvious fact that this was too ridiculous an instruction to be taken seriously. In other words, she’d ‘chickened out’ and deprived me of the opportunity of giving her the right royal bollocking that she deserved, that everyone knows she deserves and that nobody has the heart or courage to give her.

It occurs to me sadly that since I dislike religion mainly because it’s a ruse to deny or transcend (via the human ego) the unbearable fact of physical death, I’m allowed to avoid going into a church except when funerals come along, when it would seem churlish to hold out on entering a church merely on principle. And of course it’s usually during funeral ceremonies that this denial of death is at its most hysterical. Can’t win. Feel surrounded by aliens sometimes (imagine if I was living in America, not to mention Iraq or Afghanistan, or Israel…).

Locked in my small new room with Nat bored in the lounge, playing stations, both in his game and on TV, wondering about money having paid for three meals (Fiona’s too, and she had scrubbed up rather well, I know I know), thinking about stepometers and gymnasia and Penis Rising once again, all isn’t lost, tomorrow must ask what Nat’s doing tomorrow, I’ve got a La Luna meeting to prepare for, a finance report and some payments, and this stepometer, really, and Centrelink to chase up just in case, and maybe I’ll approach Catherine about this cheque that Barbara Lloyd’s dad may not have received, that’ll be a worthwhile device to start a careful regeneration of friendliness, but probably not tomorrow it being La Luna day and Tuesdays are her co-op days, maybe Wednesday, these things must be planned, but I feel confident now, I’m working myself up. Confident because it’s so far away, timewise? Tempted to bring it up with Sarah but that would get me nowhere, and I shouldn’t think poor Sarah, she gets a lot from me, just about as much as I can give.

Something cheery from King John:
the glorious sun
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,
Turning with splendour of his precious eye
The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold
Unfortunately though it’s a mechanic’s handkerchief sky again.

Apart from yesterday’s stint at Café Va Bene, a quiet time reading, mainly yesterday Moorehead’s pacey account of the allied campaign in North Africa, with a bit of Joyce and Proust to slow things down. Today to look forward to, cleaning, shopping, La Luna work, maybe a stepometer, dragging things from home. Floppy disk, power board, shirts, jumper. Would like to buy a mini CD player if it’s not too much.

Castleplazaland, not as big as it seems (it’s a small world after all), bought a stepometer (every step you take), which in a matter of two and a half hours has already reached over 3000 steps (don’t trust it as a measure, but useful as long as it’s internally consistent, that’s to say as long as it uses the same dubious measures day in day out). They say 10 thousand’s the lower limit to aim for, which seems about right, even if steps are measured strangely – hooking the thing on took up 10 steps, though I hadn’t moved from my bench seat. Visited Target, looked at portable CD players (too expensive for now), bought some floppy disks, plus the stepometer, a New Scientist and a latte.

Soon I’ll be leaving to spend a few hours first at Exeter Terrace then at Nieass Place for the La Luna meeting. I must ring Centrelink, and I must take, but it probably won’t happen today, 100 points identification plus the AGM minutes to the Hindmarsh branch of Bank SA. Maybe tomorrow for that one, today I must try to finish October’s Finance Report, and especially prepare the October SACHA and Comhouse payments. This is all voluntary, mind. Tenancy’s another matter to be dealt with when all that’s over. Also, need to work out my rent situation properly.

Sitting down to read New Scientist is always a treat, and I often think, yes, I’ll devote my life to this, to the understanding of and expounding upon scientific developments, if only to myself, because it’s something I believe in, something that energises me, I world I’d like to inhabit, even if the cutting edges give my brain some pain. Or even to write something fictional with a ‘rational’ narrator, science-obsessed, who tries and fails to woo a few lovers, on scientific principles. Something tragic-comic, as usual. So maybe that’s what I should focus on, for a laugh. Sex and science.

Currently, I’m unattached – in fact there are times when I seriously wonder whether I’ll ever have sex again. Should I more seriously consider the penis enlargement proposals floating about in cyberspace? Not at this stage. I have a friend who tells me that chat rooms are the go, but for the next couple of weeks I’ll be out of touch with the internet. I should use the interval to build myself up into the kind of super-specimen women look at more than once, though after forty-eight years of neglect, that’s a tall order.

La Luna Housing Co-operative Inc

Always restless these days, reading has particularly become quite a chore, should go out and do it in public, locked away here is no good. Did attend quite a useful La Luna meeting, the La Luna Housing Co-operative, of which I’m treasurer, is from time to time a fillip to my spirits because my expertise is recognised, my overall grasp of housing issues as they pertain to the co-op, the interface between government, our subsidisers, and co-op management, the interest of government to get those who can afford it, or might be able to afford it, out of community housing and into the private rental market versus the interest of co-ops to keep people on board who are motivated in the direction of community housing, who are reliable and efficient, and to resist government pushing us into a ‘welfare’ ghetto of low-income people with barely acceptable (and certainly never cutting edge) housing. Having said that, we’ve managed, or will have managed by the end of this year, to acquire six brand new homes (called new-builds) since September 2000, just over four years. These new houses were none of them graced by the presence of an architect, unlike the homes of my mate John S of MERZ Co-op (an artists’ co-op, if only in name) and of my quondam daughter-in-law Catherine of Halifax Eco-City Co-op. Basically, SACHA (the South Australian Community Housing Authority), our funding authority, has discouraged if not scrapped the use of architects in recent years, both for financial reasons and for reasons of control. Architects had a habit of subverting the Authority’s authority, cutting corners, ignoring budgets, pushing the envelope, innovating. There were accusations of middle-class wankerdom replacing lower-class gratitude. So now the genie has been put firmly back in the bottle, and we take what we can get with bowed heads. Our new-builds are design-and-construct affairs, but not bad for all that, a slight improvement on the old housing trust models, with some care, albeit inconsistent, taken over issues such as disability and conservation, in respect of the width of hallways, the placement and type of door-handles, the placement of windows. Currently we’re looking at budgeting for car-ports for those properties needing them (only three out of fourteen current properties – sixteen by the end of the year), as well as pergolas for shade and so forth. One of the dilemmas for our houses is that if we do grand improvements, our property values go up, pushing the ceiling rent for our tenants up. This isn’t a problem for those on low incomes, more or less permanently, such as myself, but it is for those who might even temporarily earn a high wage. Property values are sky-rocketing as it is, even without our improvements, and some of our members are feeling the pinch. Four options, they could quit their jobs, or move into cheaper, poorer co-op houses (not always available in any case), or quit the co-op, or put up with high rents. So, that’s a brief intro to co-op life and issues.

the usual urgings

The rain pours down on my poor red armchair, and my health has certainly improved but there are sniffles aplenty and this weather doesn’t help. Tomorrow the move to Edwardstown, plenty of tidying up not to do beforehand. There’s a meeting nearby tonight, suddenly problematic with all this rain. With the car tomorrow and with the money situation slowly improving, I will need to be getting out more regularly, making more of a life for myself. Fitness too with a good bike, sure a mountain bike, heavy of metal and heavy of friction, but with such minutely calibrated gears, probably nothing in today’s world but for me a joy to ride. Need a lock. The gym’s the thing, before the year ends, when the Centrelink calculations are done and dusted. Big hope is for a new lad who will be more permanent and easy enough. We have no choice, Nat too complains of the lack of choice in carers but there’s not a lot of choice out there. He’s happy enough with his proposed new carer, who I think will be available from the 28th or so, leaving me briefly in the lurch but I’ll hear more from Esther on that. Anglicare are angling to make the reviews for me and Nat fortnightly as they have more pressing cases to attend to. That’ll probably work out fine as long as I show enough backbone to keep his play-station viewing in check and keep his personal care and housecleaning on target. He knows about Casey Lifeskills, perhaps that should be pushed. When I’m finished here I’ll either go for a bike ride or I’ll try for some abs exercises with my kit, or at the very least some dumb-bell stuff. Strike while I’m in the mood, which is rare enough. Don’t here from John S much lately on going out, he’s given up on me, which in some ways is good for I don’t want to go out to the Radisson or to those nostalgic Royal Oak nights. A visiting lecture, a play, a film, these are more promising. Visited adultfuckfinder the other day because I’ve received a few emails, god it’s depressing, attractive women making demands even on the amount of semen they expect their would-be partners to eject during intercourse, not much room for imagination in their lives it would seem. My fault for even looking at the details of these twenty-something chicks for whom someone of my age is nothing but a walking corpse, sexually speaking. Slightly better than looking at porn sites, okay now and then but on a regular basis a loser’s game. So, to cultivate my garden, time to trim away the dead bits of the transplanted miniature roses, and the lettuces are all getting a bit tough, but then nobody could eat that much salad in a season. Another mow required, and the fig tree planted, a scary proposition, and a considerable degree of planning needed, or maybe just hands on going for it. Thinking of espaliering quinces, another scary proposition.

Hollywood, Devon Park, Palestine

There’s also the sexual competing between mother and daughter, highlighted in the film by a real blurring of identities through dress sense and wild behaviour – we viewers all had difficulties at times picking out the mother and daughter in certain scenes. Both females have their moments of dysfunctional fantasy, though there is an essential bond and a positivity which helps with grounding. They’re surrounded too by other problem, complicating people, with no wiseheads to neatly place the issues ‘in a nutshell’ as the girl’s time-pressed, ever-absent father wants them placed.

Robert Fisk was interesting this morning on the possibly late Arafat, describing him as in the late stages of his career having failed his people, being used by the Israelis as the Palestinians’ policeman, loathed of course by them and having lost a great deal of legitimacy in the wider world due to corruption and inflexibility. The Israelis, many of them, are celebrating his demise, while the Palestinians may have ultimately more reason to celebrate, if they can find a less corrupt, less dictatorial leader able to express their aspirations and stand up to the Israeli leadership with more authority and more nous. After all, the Palestinians have many good arguments on their side in this struggle, the bottom line always being that they were the ones who were dispossessed.

some good works, and a film

Spending a little time looking at Adelaide blogs, not very successfully, I’m impatient at the slowness of my computer and I wish I had a computer geek permanently resident on my shoulder explaining to me about links and things. It seems all these bloggers talk to each other or something. The most annoying thing though is when I click their recommended blogs and end up somewhere in America, not that I’ve got anything against your everyday Yank it’s just that they dominate the waves and I prefer to hear from otherwheres. Or I end up with teens or youngsters raving about Resident Evil. And it seems that photo-filled blogs (probably the best ones) are the ones that take an eternity to open, I just haven’t that sort of patience.

Did some of the right stuff today, as a carer. That’s to say, I rode my treadley up the steep Prospect hill to the supermarket, and shopped for a recipe. And cooked, a variation on something from the Hot Food Cool Jazz recipe book. Fishy noodles, with snapper pieces, onion, matchstick carrots, egg noodles, bean sprouts, fish sauce, soy sauce, tomato sauce, oyster sauce and Worcestershire sauce, and some curry paste, and capsicum, and spring onions and lettuce from the garden, and bean sprouts. Quite a feast, certainly Nat appreciated it. The noodles were a bit overdone-limp but apart from that…

And afterwards, hopped on treadley again, uphill again, to rent a DVD for the night, at Sarah’s request. My choice, and I picked on Thirteen. Hey, a great choice for Sarah, all about mums and daughters and taking drugs and almost falling apart. Still, she seemed absorbed enough, mollified by a magnum. A little different from your average teen flick, more about family dysfunction, even foster caring got a guernsey. Nat’s final comment was interesting – after the final scene in which the teenage heroine screamed on a swing, scream of release, frustration, fear, excitement, Nat said the film’s unclear ending reminded him of some of the short stories he’d read (presumably for school), which so many of his school friends ‘didn’t get’. ‘Like, you have to use your imagination,’ he said scornfully. Generally the film covers teenage fears, pressures, ambitions better than most, while also trying to capture the pace of actual life and the half-baked decisions made out of a haze of hormones, drugs, reactions to parental pressure, identity struggles and such (one of the techniques for creating this sense of barely-controledness was the notorious hand-held, which sometimes worked, sometimes irritated). The heroine’s friend, a girl under more or less inappropriate foster-care, is at turns manipulative and vulnerable, seeking to make the most of an abused past, one which is probably very real, but which we find impossible to assess through the lies, exaggerations and contradictions. The film does a good job of presenting this girl as a victim at the same time as being thoroughly unlikeable, just as most victims of childhood abuse so tragically are. The heroine herself is not much more appealing – to many parents, the early teen period is a horror stretch, especially for girls, and you just have to try and hang on through a bumpy ride.

India and Iraq

In Alan Moorehead’s The March to Tunis (so rarely burrow into reading these days – spend more time pacing about or doing tiny bits of this or that) there’s a period of respite when he’s in India just as Britain’s representative, Cripps (apparently not the Viceroy) is presenting the blueprint for Indian independence after the war (not now please, I just want you to hold off the Japs for us first). He manages to interview many of the principal figures, including Ghandi, Nehru and the Moslem nationalist, Jinnah. By far the most interesting figure, to my mind, was Nehru, whose fine writings were liberally quoted. Interesting I suppose because he was the most secular of the leaders, but also the most open-minded and therefore the most aware of complexities (such people don’t usually become leaders). His descriptions of riots and the nasty magnificence of the police ironically reminded me of Rohinton Mistry’s descriptions of similar events under the state of emergency proclaimed by Nehru’s own daughter (or granddaughter, or niece?), Indira Ghandi. More interesting still is the comparison between ‘pre-democratic’ India under a largely hated colonial power and ‘pre-democratic’ Iraq under occupation from the old arch-enemy. Trying to manage the different religious, political and cultural factions, wondering if they can fit under one banner or if separate states will have to be created. The British quickly saw the need to allow a separate homeland for the Moslems – nobody seems willing to allow such a separate identity for the Kurds, especially with such fierce hostility from Turkey. Yet democracy, of a sort, did get going in India, and most importantly they avoided, largely, becoming a client state, so the Indian example is one worth exploring. I mean, it’s probably no more of a basket case than it ever was.

elections and funny governments

Fabulous weather to stretch into, and my feverishness has faded.

Friday, November 19, Enfield, 10 am, for interview. Bring filled out forms sent. Bring copy of lease, and other documents, for identification and other purposes.

Bush’s America. Crikey reports that even the Grand Canyon has to bow to this regime’s religious take on the world. The US Parks Service has been ordered to stock a publication called Grand Canyon: a different view, in which geological gradualism is denied in favour of six-day creationism. They don’t say who made the order.

The Iraqi elections will use the Hare system of proportional representation, and all of Iraq will form a single electorate. I don’t know if the Hare System is identical to the Hare Clark Quota Preferential Method, favoured by Australia’s Proportional Representation Society, but it sounds like an effective election system. Most European democracies favour some sort of proportional representation system, unlike America of course.

domestic international linguistic whatnot

The AGL buggerup was partly my fault, the previous tenants didn’t properly finalise their account but neither did I properly open my own. As it stands I owe AGL a fair whack and I better start paying it as soon as the money seeps back into me. The Centrelink buggerup is based on their claim that I missed an interview date on October 22. First I’ve heard of such an interview. They’ve rescheduled it for November 19 or so. I’m hoping they send me some paperwork, but still I must ensure that this date doesn’t slip by. I’m assured that I’ll be back-paid to October 13. Meanwhile, heaps of stuff to get ready for the interview. It’s tough with the country on almost full employment (by modern slack standards). At the end of November, if all goes well, Nat will be in the hands of another carer, and I’ll be between jobs once more. Surely nothing more terrible can happen to my car, but even without that I’ll be in trouble, as I won’t have anything saved. Two thousand dollars is nothing, I’m quickly learning.

No rent money through from Anglicare directly, so I’m hoping to receive a cheque today, and if not I must contact Esther, who I need to talk to anyway about Nat.

The phonics versus whole of language approach is being debated with a high profile, as figures come out about alarming rates of literacy. Phonics, a more traditional approach, has apparently more scientific backing and the neglect of phonics teaching to teachers has resulted in kids, especially at the lower end of the learning spectrum, actually getting through their school lives without the basic skills.

Meanwhile the counter-insurgency operations are beginning in Fellujah, with no doubt all the neighbouring nations assuming this to be an American operation, smoothing the path toward cosy relations with a client state. But we all know we’re really fighting for democracy.

Isabelle made an entrance yesterday, in her flairs and white fluffy top, to visit ‘her’ kitten for the first time. I had to tell her the news in stages, that the kitten is permanently incapacitated, and probably won’t be able to live long. She took it well enough, as expected, but meanwhile Nat’s eyes were popping. Isabelle continued to charm, with her recollections of old Simpsons episodes. I could see his disappointment on discovering that she wasn’t staying for dinner. A relief to be worrying about others’ sexuality and not my own, and a sign of the times.

the car, mostly

The repairmen, they’re still all men, are now waiting for a rocker arm. They’ve detected a broken rocker arm and are now waiting for the replacement to arrive before they put the welded cylinder head back on, a three hour job. I mentioned it to Fiona and Daniel, and there was mumbling about an extra three or four hundred dollars. Esther has kindly said Anglicare will help out financially, how much is a question. I’ll ring DP, the repair place, at the end of the working day to check on progress. Maybe not till tomorrow, and only then if I can afford it, which maybe I can’t. So what’s a rocker arm?

The valve-in-head engine has pushrods that extend upward from the cam followers to rocker arms mounted on the cylinder head that contact the valve stems and transmit the motion produced by the cam profile to the valves. Clearance (usually termed tappet clearance) must be maintained between the ends of the valve stems and the lifter mechanism to assure proper closing… Got it? That’s from EB online. For the rest I need to organise a free trial. Does this explain things? The first sentence is helpful. Still I’d need to know what cam followers are, and a cam profile. And a cam.

I have pics, but too hard to work out how to post them.

And the final news at the end of the day is that they can’t get a new rocker arm for my ancient machine so they’ve got their agents scouring the wrecker’s yards, with no luck so far. So car may not be available for days, and cylinder head can’t be replaced without rocker arm, they’ll call me…

The upshot of all this is that I won’t be going to Edwardstown tomorrow. Nat has proved quite amenable to this, and the move will now be dependent on when the car is ready and paid for. Esther has offered somewhere between $100 and $150 on behalf of Anglicare, and she has assured me that my rent is being paid, which I’ll have to check up on. With all that, I couldn’t hep but blow a bit of money on dinner at the BBC for the three of us, Sarah, Nat and myself – along with little Courtney, two-year-old star and refugee from her parents’ hideous bickering and dead lifestyle.

Fact is I enjoy dining out less and less and would rather spend the money on a flick or play, the thing is to make the effort to turn things around with Sarah, or to find someone else to play with.

Amongst many dramas this evening, our electricity was cut off. Still I managed to deal with AGL (I wrote up my lease at last, and faxed it to them), with DP mechanics, and with Centrelink, all in one day. As well as with Anglicare, twice. These are small breakthrough events, to be built upon.

10

The annual herb day, run by the State Herb Society or somesuch, at Fullarton, which I’ve attended three times in the past four years, struck us as a little more pared-down and mundane than usual, with perhaps fewer stalls though some familiar faces. Still unwell but it helped cheer me up. Financially chary, I still bought a few standard items for my fledgling garden, sage, coriander, marjoram and aloe vera, and the slightly more exotic, from my perspective, Echinacea, influenced by its alleged bronchitis-combating qualities. Sarah bought me an alarming fig tree, we’ll have to discuss its location. Apart from the ficus, I’ve already planted the lot, rather willy-nilly, not sure for example, whether Echinacea’s a wet or a dry. I’ve put it in what used to be my wet bed, where the sorrel is, and sprinkled a bit of fertiliser about. The sage I’ve put in with the lemon verbena and aloe vera, a supposedly dry bed, but wet now with all the recent rains. Working in the garden, however briefly and always slap-dashedly, has shaken me from the most depressing thoughts of a coughing spluttering lie-abed, thinking I’ll never be clear of the dreaded tainted sputum, that it’ll kill me one day, and meanwhile gradually make my life a throat-burning hell, but Monday is on its way, and here are the things I must do, make a doctor’s appointment, collect and pay for my car, contact Centrelink re my status, contact Esther regarding Nat and my financial and rent situations, and perhaps contact the vet re the future life of a mildly deformed kitten. There are women dying of breast cancer, there are fourteen thousand motor neurone disease sufferers in the country, I have enjoyed rude health much of my life and I can certainly improve my current situation, not simply by believing or hoping that the most recent coughing fit was my very last. Shakespeare’s life at its height would’ve been interesting, trying to please, trying to forge new things, trying to pick the political winds, juggling different audiences, a bit of magic in the late plays, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, to please the royal author of Daemonology, and succeeding to the point of having the critics raging and raving over the centuries, arguing the point, the purpose of the statue, the reason for Leontes’ jealousy, are we to admire him or loathe him at the end, ditto Coriolanus, why Shakespeare has lasted, the ambiguities and question marks, the foibles of heroes, the strength which is also cruelty, the irony dipping toward callousness, the reckless courageous interventions, the uneasy struggles between classes and sexes, issues we still all struggle with. Focus on such things, anything, not such self-absorption, and soon I’ll be in Edwardstown for a while, in a single bed, in Nat’s home, trying to regulate his PS2 usage. I’m being a very weak carer at the moment. Sarah next door struggles under the burden of her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and her full-on two year old grand-daughter, doing a sterling job.

9

Looking forward to reporting more outgoing stuff but it’s bitter cold, well not that cold but staying in weather, and I’ve just checked my bank account in the hope that rent money might’ve been put directly into it by Anglicare since I haven’t received anything in the post so far, and if I’ve not received anything by Monday I’ll start panicking and contact Esther about it, also Centrelink Monday, I hope John doesn’t ask me to work that day. Yesterday in spite of weakness I went to John’s to do a half-clean, and took only twenty dollars for it, much of which I spent on lunch. I really need this weather to improve for the sake of my illness, and also I should make a doctor’s appointment, Monday. This morning several coughing fits to the point of vomitousness and blue-in-the-faceness, need to pin some doctor down on what can be done, I can’t go on like this, others tell me I can’t just lie there and take it, I’ve got to beat it, what about a specialist, is it an allergy (of course it’s not a fucking allergy), try a naturopath, you can’t rely on antibiotics, hope and endurance, shall I do another round of web-searching, it got me nowhere last time. Slight exaggeration. I still don’t know if my illness can be classified as chronic bronchitis. Are my air passages in the lung enflamed? Are my mucus-producing glands in the bronchi enlarged? It’s commonest in men over forty, and I’m that but I’ve had it, gradually worsening, for twenty years or more. Often overcome when spirits are low, I recall in 1982 when the lively share-house I was part of came to an abrupt end, it was late winter, and I was forced to move in with a former old friend who now had a male lover who was jealous of me, and everything had gone to pot and I came down with just this searing coughing, holed up in my room with just Gus the cat as my companion, and complaints from the lover about my rackety noise and when was I leaving? But was the illness cause or effect, or both, or neither? Not caused by smoking anyway. A history of frequent upper respiratory illnesses, well yes. Now get this - Symptoms similar to asthma may develop, including wheezing and shortness of breath. Yes, yes. When significant airway obstruction develops in addition to a chronic cough, the airways become narrowed, limiting the amount of oxygen that gets to the air sacs. Blood vessels constrict in an attempt to divert the blood to better-oxygenated areas of the lung. Blood vessel constriction leads to high pressures in the arteries that feed the lungs and puts a strain on the right side of the heart. Eventually, if blood pressure remains high enough in the lungs, heart failure develops, and blood backs up in the liver, abdomen and legs. No, no, no. But I do think it’s reached the stage where I can safely say I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and there’s no real cure, but plenty can be done to relieve the symptoms – and to minimise flare-ups?

8

Getting further behind unfortunately, letting only myself down, and so little to report too, lots of flaccidity, lots of exhaustion, many worries, including a kitten with a deformity I have to find the courage to put down, lots of La Luna work to get on top of, a broken car to pay for, a house to clean, not my own, a new home to go to temporarily with my new foster-lad, and so much more. Best thing to do under these circs might be to look outside yourself for subjects to write about, fictional or non, but funny how illness, my regular illnesses, turn you back on yourself, you become insular, the world tunes out, it’s almost scary, I lie on the bed, unable to read, almost unable to move, even sex holds little appeal, all fancy fled, but I can and should put my small talent to good use, for example Sarah showed me an email Catherine sent her, I think from an Amnesty International person, suggesting that the government is already changing its tune toward Baxter detainees post-election, describing secret deportations and media compliance. Sarah thinks I should do something about it, what should I do, join Amnesty, write to pollies, mobilise the people, start my own magazine, my own lobby group, become an activist, a writer espousing causes, defending the right, the downtrodden, the voiceless, or at least write a letter to the editor, any editor, or ring a radio station, a church, that’s what the email suggests, it’s a post-moral Australia it says, would need to confirm the allegations first I suppose, but in Wednesday’s paper another immigration issue, involving the deportation of a woman here since 1989, Fijian I think, and her Australian-born children having no option but to accompany her in exile, and their Adventist school is writing to the Minister, please don’t do this, why must you do this, rules are rules, no place for compassion or special pleading, we haven’t the staff to deal with special pleaders, we don’t want everything going pear-shaped, what would be the point of the department at all at all? We know they’re deserving enough, but we can’t base things on deservingness, too vague you must understand, we must have standards, and we’ll publish them so everyone knows, they’ll only have themselves to blame, when in Australia do as the government instructs, same as elsewhere, it’s nothing personal. Anyway I don’t know the rules, how do you deport people after fifteen years, after they’ve had children here, brought them up here, are these things not taken into account, and are the reasons for these particular decisions open to scrutiny? Time to visit a website or two, ask a few questions. Goodbye John Kerry, farewell Yasser Arafat, I’m trying to believe my health is on the mend, but oh how I rue not attending the gym as planned, planned for just this purpose, physical self-overcoming, but I’ll recover my health, and I’ll recover my money, my energy, my lust.

7

I’ve become unwell once again, furry throat and tongue, pain at the top of the throat, overproduction of phlegm and fever, weakness, headaches, convulsive coughing, all brought about likely by the consuming of something not quite right at a party on Saturday night, a bacterial infection, often happens, incredibly susceptible, my sense is that I’m overly sensitive to others’ germs, maybe accidentally having drunk out of another’s glass, eaten party food lying out and handled by others, I wish I could isolate the problem. The party was quite an important event, though I should’ve saved myself for Andrew’s sixtieth the next day, a more important event because he’s a closer friend, but I didn’t because I was beginning to decline, and as usual I didn’t ring and apologise, this unwillingness to communicate is a real problem, I’m isolating myself more and more, à éliminer! The importance of the do for me was that it involved my first run-in with Catherine since our email exchange. I’d been thinking that I would confront her with something like ‘how’s the court case going?’ or even, ‘well, apology please?’, but she gave me a brief kindly smile and all that went by the bye. The usual proof that a couple of moments, even a split second, in the other’s company can do more to mend relations than scads of paperwork, not that things were mended exactly but we were both comfortable enough in each others’ company having gotten what we needed to get off our chests. I doubt if I’ll ever find out what she thought of my response, or if she ever read it, but I think it was a damn good one, and later her boyfriend Richard turned up, at least briefly, and gave me a wary but ultimately friendly hello, and I hope he too read my response, as I asked Catherine to send it to her ‘friends and supporters’. He seems a reasonable fellow, I hope they discussed the matter between them, discussed its truth and exaggerations and wit, for my ego’s sake. Now the party, terrible that I fell ill because of it, I get out and about so rarely and this has so put me off getting out and about again, in fact I’m now writing days later, having spent much time in bed, phlegmish, achey-jointed, runny-bummed, banging away like a motor with a blown head gasket (yes I've experienced that recently), the party was in the city, three narrow flights and very pristine, all metallic sheen and clean lines, a showpiece, a showpony, spangling new, with the owner’s classy brassy urban photos on the wall, Tokyo exotica on a neon backdrop, and we danced to Austin Powers eviscerated retro, mirrorball overhead in a narrow rectangle, nothing out of place, not a book to be seen, and I came shave-pated and suitable, looked the part to the point that even attractive women looked me over, not dead yet, but I avoided them and they drifted to more animate bodies, I was feeling my way, and feeling down, with all my money worries, money is energy.

6

Reading about the method for determining the winner in the upcoming US elections, and what a headspin that is. Voting takes place on November 2 but don’t expect that we’ll wake up next day knowing who the President-elect is, and now I read that the Lancet-published and perhaps backed study finding about 100,000 Iraqi deaths since the US invasion is being treated, surprise surprise, as utter tosh, biased, hopelessly flawed, deliberately timed to come out before the election to give the shrub a hard time, and of course you can read chapter and verse of the criticism or demolition job online, all of which just underlines how imperfect such studies naturally are, dealing as they must with extrapolation from samples, necessary assumptions and the like, and all will have their trenchant critics, even assessments made by the American military, who are in the best position of anyone to calculate the human damage they've done but who simply refuse point blank to do such calculations, and this is more than mean-spirited, it’s criminal negligence on the part of an outfit engaging more or less unilaterally in conflict with other nations (okay, sure they’re just obeying orders, so it’s the ones doing the ordering that’re shirking their responsibility), always with a huge imbalance of firepower, and a huge imbalance in human carnage, so we must bring pressure to bear on the Americans to keep figures on this, and to be open at how they arrive at those figures, let’s begin a campaign. Anyway, good to see the focus is back on the cost to the Iraqis, where it belongs, rather than the cost to the Americans, and then of course you must compare all this with life under Saddam, but I’m thinking again about the Vietnam war, and all the publicity we got about America’s scars and so little about the devastation of little Vietnam, the piles of innocent dead and the devastated earth. Anyway methinks the neocons will win, closer though than it was in Oz, and it’s probably true that they’ll be less adventurous over the next four years, tied down as they still are in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to balance the democratic push and the pro-American push, but who knows what might come up, maybe at last they’ll make an all-out effort to flush out Osama, if it does them any good. Back to the home front and foster-caring, listening to stuff on the lack of research about outcomes for foster-cared kids, one of the problems, and it's a problem in my approach, is the lack of ongoing support after foster-care, how much does the foster-carer provide ongoing parental guidance in the manner of a true parent, in my case so far not at all, I don’t make close bonds easily, and my bonds with these kids are really a bit artificial, I’m just providing a safe haven and many of them don’t want, or say they don’t want, foster-carers to be parents as such, to come on strong with rules and regulations, but they actually do wants bonds, we all do, when the right types come along.