August

I've just realised that I posted nothing at all for August. I was busy in my own head, turning 40. I'm sure you understand. Consider it a period in a cocoon, preparing for my time as a curvier, wrinklier, wiser butterfly.

Breaks Radio Silence

I break this (undramatic) silence to tell you about something beautiful I saw online tonight: Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre's photographs of Detroit in decay. Oddly enough for someone living on the other side of the globe to Detroit -- in fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to get further away from it, geographically -- I've seen quite a lot about the decay of Motor City recently. Funny how things go in waves like that. I have seen enough, however, to regret not having known about is when I was in that part of the world. Everything I've seen seems poignant, beautiful and heartbreakingly tragic. I really, really want to go there. In the meantime, please enjoy the photos.




From the Time website:

On their website, the photographers write, "Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes...the volatile result of the change of eras and the fall of empires. This fragility leads us to watch them one very last time: to be dismayed, or to admire, it makes us wonder about the permanence of things."

A couple of the "places" I've seen Detroit recently are also worth a mention. Firstly, the always excellent Foreign Correspondent featured Detroit a few weeks ago; Stephen Fry's compelling Stephen Fry in America also paid a visit. Or did he? Now that I look at the website I think I may be mistaken. Either way, his show is wonderful, and you'll be a better person for tuning in. 7:30pm Sundays for the Antipodeans reading.


Time's collection of the Marchand/Meffre Detroit photographs

le Tour and le Ashes

It's Tour de France time, and as usual SBS is embracing it and giving it a very continental double cheek kiss.

For your enjoyment, every Australian's favorite frog, Gabriel Gate, gives his now regular gastronomic tour. I have a few of Gabriel's cookbooks, and while they're excellent, they don't allow me to hear his fabulous accent, so his Taste le Tour spot is just that bit better. I have onions sauteing as I type for the pissaladière. Won't be doing anything good to my breath, but I'm not too concerned!

I like to catch up with the Tour highlights every night, but I have to admit that I don't really follow the race itself. I enjoy the spectacle of so many men on cycles bunched together like that. It's suspenseful. Any minute they could go down in a spectacular heap. Once one goes down, that's it for anyone but the most fortunate. The bikes look so spindly and slight. And the men themselves do if you really look at them. And those outfits; that's part of the interest. I live at the foot of a so-called mountain that attracts cyclists from all over town. They look quite hilarious in their tight little outfits, but during the Tour that's the standard! One of the few places in the world you're not risking a beating by venturing out in public in an outfit that is little more modest than paint.

Image from Britain's Daily Mail

The other thing I love seeing is the French countryside. Generally if I'm watching I'm looking over the cyclists' shoulders at the vista. I don't get sick of that.


These days the first thing the Tour de France brings to my mind is Kraftwerk. It's my favorite of all their albums, and you can get a little bit of it here.

While we're tuned to SBS, the novelty of them hosting The Ashes isn't wearing off any time soon. Cricket on telly without having to suffer Tony Greig or Bill Lawry, or the strangeness of having the radio on and the television turned down! No limited edition autographed prints for sale for several hundred dollars! No Tubby Taylor and his inanity! Wonderful! Stuart McGill is turning out to be an urbane and witty host, too.

Image from SBS

I think it's safe to say that this year's Ashes have made Nathan Hauritz Hervey Bay's most famous son. Poor guy has had a nasty finger dislocation -- his spinning finger, too! -- so will most likely be out for a while, but still. He's one of ours, and we love him for it.

Farewell, Fellows.

It's my second last day at work today — I resigned a few weeks ago — and as I was waiting for my regular 6:39 am bus this morning I felt a sudden surge of sentimental sadness. I've been seeing many of the same people each morning for a year, and this morning I feel as though I'll miss them terribly. I feel I should be saying goodbye, letting them know where I am just so they don't worry.

Bye, cute 50-something obvious smoker. All your lovely waist-length hair is going to fall out once you're on chemo, you know. Try to pack the fags in, won't you? And just so you know, Mandrake-look-alike man with long leather coat, I won't be catching this bus anymore. All the best, eh?

And there's the gorgeous young woman who gets on in Ashgrove, if she's on time. When I do see her she's running across Waterworks Road, barely missing the traffic to get to the bus. I'm guessing the bright red coat she wears was a gift from a concerned friend, so at least drivers can see her darting madly about, and have a chance at dodging her. I really want to know who cuts her hair.




And there's the guy with one arm. He's about my age, and I'm guessing the absence of his arm is due to Thalidomide. I recall seeing Thalidomide-affected kids around when I was young, but I don't notice them grown up and out and about these days.

There's also the guy who combines office and cowboy wear to endearing effect.

And the otherwise quite nice woman who gets on at my stop and manages to inject religion into even the briefest exchange. The insurers didn't repair her roof for around six months after the big storm, and you can see discolouring where the tarp was.

And the high school-aged twins who go to Kelvin Grove, but have to turn up early for orchestra practice. The boy of the pair has a harder time getting out of bed than she does; I hear his sister telling her friend what excuse she's been asked to relay for the day.


Later in my commute, I pass by Woolloongabba bus station, where a Buddhist nun gets on, and a schoolboy aged about nine or so. He's a bit of a misfit; you can just see that he's not one of the cool kids, and is a bit awkward and odd. I like him for that. The nun seems to have taken a bit of a shine to him, and wraps up a smiling conversation as they get on each day. She has that typical peaceful happiness that committed Buddhists often do. As the weather has become more frigid, I've fantasised about making her an arm warmer. She puts heavier fabrics around herself, but her right arm has to make its own way out in the cold. It bothers me. The imaginary arm warmer is a beautiful yarn, soft and warm but not sweaty, and just the right colour. She loves it, but can't wear it because the arm has to stay bare. She likes the gesture anyway, and I'm happy with that.

The commute for me is much more than a means of getting to work. These days I am enslaved to my domestic obligations, and this small amount of time I get two days a week is precious. I can wander off and get a quiet coffee if I feel like it. I can go to the library. I can browse the shoe store. I can do whatever I damn well please, so long as it doesn't take too long. I can't see how I'll get that regular freedom again in the foreseeable future. The commuters I'll forget in just a few weeks; that tiny window of small freedoms will be missed sorely.

Pictures from Creative Commons.

Some days my spectacles have Diane Arbus lenses. People look really weird, but oddly dignified.

Collins St, 5pm

In the Weekend Australian a couple of weeks ago I read an extended article about John Brack's work. It was largely critical, the author's main gripe being how remote Brack was from his subject, how unsympathetic. The painting below, Collins St, 5pm, is the example most often cited when discussing this aspect of his work.


If we're discussing his nudes I agree. I don't like them either, and for the same reason. But today I'd like to argue in favour of Collins St, 5pm.

A common interpretation of this painting is that it depicts the old faceless automaton, the mindless drones returning from slaving witlessly for The Man, heading back to their sterile boxes like sheep. Get a grip. That view is lazy and ignorant.

As most people who do it daily know, commuting is the only time in some people's day they have to themselves. That's certainly how it is for me. And it's a time when no-one asks too much of you. For me, it's that precious window between where-are-my-glasses-no-put-that-down-don't-bite-your-sister-eat-your-toast-don't-forget-to-hang-out-the-washing and have-you-sent-that-email-what's-the-deadline-on-that-and-can-I-have-an-extension-what's-to-be-done-about-the-coffee-machine. You can go into standby, conserve some energy or build some, or absorb yourself thoroughly in your thoughts. Prepare yourself. Just be.

And those faces that Brack put on that canvas all those decades ago are doing just that. To one person, they may be blank and moronic. To me, they are thoughtful, going over the events of the day and planning what to have for dinner, and perhaps just tired. Just as people are at peak hour.

1984

I've been reflective lately, and happily so. A couple of months ago I was among the first to be contacted by three women organising a reunion for our year at high school. It seemed like such a big job, so I duly offered to help. Immediately I wondered if I'd regret it, as I so often seem to when I make these offers. In fact it's been wonderful.

Over the past couple of months I've heard from people I'd not seen or even thought of for decades. The truly amazing thing is that they remember me. I always assume -- or perhaps hope -- that people won't.

One friend I heard from was amazed I'd tracked him down all the way to Trinity College, Dublin. The way he wrote it you'd think I'll physically tracked him across the globe following the trail of broken twigs and fibres snagged on fences. But despite the fact it wasn't me who found him at all, but another friend of ours, it isn't actually that great a feat. Trinity College is one of the the most famous universities there are, and we now have this remarkable thing called the internet. Being an academic perhaps he's not heard of it. I searched for him myself later, too lazy to look for the email containing the link, and he came up on the first page of Google results.

Another long-lost classmate got me thinking when, commenting on our year 10 photograph, he said, "Look at us - heads full of hair and the world at our feet."* My hair hasn't taken leave, but it's an interesting thought to reflect on. We do take changes like mobile phones and the internet for granted, but if those 15 year-olds in that photo had been shown these things in 1984 we would have been apoplectic with astonishment. We were told it was going to be all jet-packs and nuclear winter. And so much leisure time due to computers and robots taking over the lion's share of our labour that the industry of "leisure management" was where the smart folk were heading. (Seriously. I recall one of our Phys. Ed. teachers telling us this repeatedly, trying to urge us into this economic liferaft.)

Robot slave. On the left, a tin man.

Instead, life is quite ordinary; I don't go in a hover car to my two-hour-per-week job supervising robot slaves, nor do I have antennae implanted in my head. But the ordinariness of my world in the ordinary suburbs diverts attention from just how fantastic and "futuristic" it all is. As I sit in the bus writing this, most other passengers have MP3 players plugged into their ears. When I was at school everyone was excited about their Walkman, a portable cassette player about the size of a boot, that chewed through batteries like billy-o. MP3 players fit in a matchbox, carry hundreds of songs and can be plugged into the mains to recharge. Can you imagine being shown one 25 years ago? Or a laptop computer? For starters, it has colours on the screen! And for eveyone except our household, they boot up on under half an hour, and without cassette tapes! Even some of the fabrics we wear today would be foreign and wonderful to my 15 year old self.

A Walkman, like the makeup, turned up too loud.

But is it a better world? I think so. Today we are more accepting of people who aren't white, straight, able-bodied males. We are generally more self-aware, so we have more opportunity to develop ourselves and live happier and fuller lives. While I think we are polluting more, we are aware enough of that that big polluters like industry are beginning to be pulled into line. And in Queensland, we are blessed with a social and political world that is infinitely more kind than it was in the mid-Eighties.



About six months ago I dreamed that my current self woke up one morning in the body and life of my high school self. I was very grateful to wake up for real. As sentimental as this reunion business has made me recently, I would struggle terribly in 1984.


*It always seems to be about the hair when looking at old photographs. Women: Look at my hideous hair! Men: Look at all my beautiful hair!