performance evaluation

For awhile now I've been feeling some quiet discomfort toward facebook. I say 'quiet discomfort' for want of a better expression; although it's been nagging away at me for some time I haven't managed to organise my thoughts into a coherent statement that sums up how I feel. I've been slowly cutting back my fb activity over the past few years - partly as a form of self censorship to avoid those disapproving comments from family members, and partly because I find most of what others post is mundane or cliche and I like to think I'm not so self centred as to think one hundred percent of my activities will be interesting to anyone else.

Then today I caught myself doing something I do quite often, scrolling down my own profile page and imagining how it looks to the casual observer - be that the last friend request I accepted or the guy who was always too cool for me in high school - and I realised that our facebook pages are used to evaluate us as people. I was evaluating myself as I imagine others do, in the same way that I evaluate my facebook friends. And therein lies my discomfort.

I'm dissatisfied with the person facebook makes me out to be. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with what's on there - a gig I went to, some links to blogs and opinion pieces, an information tab that was last updated circa 2008. It's just that, all in all, it doesn't add up to much; certainly it doesn't add up to the way I'd like people to see me, despite my efforts to make it do so. Every post on there has been considered and screened; they are monitored more heavily even than the things I say and do in real life. Facebook is an extension of the performance we partake in every day. It's a refined and cultivated expression of ourselves, by which I mean that it is an expression we actively refine and cultivate, not that it can necessarily be described as 'refined' or 'cultivated' in any way.

I think maybe this discomfort lies at the bottom of the initial backlash against facebook's introduction of the timeline layout. The timeline idea takes this notion that facebook sums us up as individuals and creates an historical archive of online activity, and it's pretty grim to see ourselves laid bare that way. Luckily for facebook, or perhaps it was by design, I think the fun of updating the cover picture has successfully suppressed most people's initial suspicion that facebook was trying to condense and reproduce our lives. Not that I can speak from experience. I'm probably the last person on facebook not to upgrade, which is less of a virtual protest than an expression of laziness. But that's a statement in itself, the same way that suspending your facebook account was a statement when it was in vogue a year or so ago. I never did that either, mainly because I felt it was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are reasons I like facebook, and there are things I hate about it. But I still use it.

This isn't a particularly strong note to end on, but they can't all be winners. It's been a long time since I posted anything on this blog, or on my other one for that matter, so I think it's better to chuck some words out there, regardless of how poignant they may or may not be, than to lay in wait for the perfect combination of inspiration and eloquence to strike. I'm probably going to link this on my facebook page. Oh, the irony.

Climate Change Part 2: It's personal

I have this memory from when I was a kid of asking my mother why people used to smoke in the olden days when smoking is bad for you. Her answer was simple. "They didn't understand that smoking was bad for them. That's why people used to smoke in the olden days". I accepted it, at the time. But years later it occured to me; people did understand. As early as the 1960s everyone knew that smoking wasn't doing them any favours, health wise. But they were addicted.

Just ask these guys.

Anyway, I saw these ads from the Copenhagen Summit in 2009 which made me wonder. Will I, one day, have to explain to my kids why we didn't do something about climate change when we had the chance? Will I have to explain that people drove cars everywhere and threw out food? That we scorned politicians who tried to introduce legislation to tax carbon and that we demanded cheap electricity over renewable energy?

 And most importanly, will I be able to look them in the eye and say 'we didn't understand'? Because I'm just not sure that'll be a good enough excuse. We do understand. And if we don't, we really should.

The information is out there. It has been for a long time.

But just like smokers, we're addicted to our decadent lifestyles. We don't want to quit, and we don't want to believe that we have to. And there are some pretty powerful corporations who have a strong financial interest in keeping us hooked.

The world is going to change. It's inevitable. It always is.
The real question is, are we going to take a measure of control in the direction things go, or will we just be swept along in the consequences?

Climate Change Part 1: It's political

I'm doing a subject on environmental politics at the moment. It's fairly chilling. The inevitability of the massive changes to our current way of life that are going to occur over the next 50 years of human history ... well, it's nothing short of daunting. I have no intention of making a case for the truth of man made climate change here - it's been done so many times in so many different ways I honestly don't know what I could say to change the  mind of someone set on denial. But the biggest thing I've learnt from the course is that, like everything in the world, the environment is not above politics.

One of the reasons there are so many climate sceptics in Australia is because its severity (and indeed, its very existence) is debated daily at the political level. 

Most of the nations that are in a position (both economically and developmentally) to best tackle climate change have leaders who are democratically elected, and election cycles of 4 years or less. This creates an incentive toward short term policy, which is woefully inadequate when it comes to the environment.

The reason European countries like the UK and Germany have far more extensive climate change policies than Australia is that in the 1980s when climate change first became an issue they had conservative governments, lead by politicians with a scientific background.* This meant that they understood the science and took it seriously, and when a change to a non-conservative government occurred the environmental policies already in place were improved upon, rather than scaled back.**

The 'ClimateGate' scandal highlighted that even the world's most respected climate scientists have felt the pull of politics, going so far as to manipulate their scientific findings to make them more politically persuasive and/or palatable.

There are more examples, but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it there. The point is, though, that the political debates surrounding climate change debate can explain a lot about it.

Believe it or not, Europeans aren't all climate change believing, sustainability achieving, bike riders. (Until I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I thought Sweden was full of philanthropists who lived in sustainable apartments, ate organic food, and loved paying taxes. Turns out they have corporate tycoons just like anywhere.)




*Margaret Thatcher studied Chemistry at Oxford before going into politics; West Germany (and later united Germany) was led by conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with environmental expert Klaus Töpfer as Minister for the Environment, Conservation, and Nuclear Safety.
**I unashamedly stole the idea for this dot point from Peter Christoff, lecturer at Uni Melb and actual Climate Policy expert.

If life gives you salt lamps ...

 I bought a salt lamp at one of those Ishka warehouse sales a while back. I've always wanted one - they make such pretty light! - and this one plugs into my computer, which is handy. Plus it was half price.

ooh, salty!

  Sadly, though when I turned it on for the first time I discovered that instead of a plain coloured light bulb which would shine naturally through the salt and make my room into a new age wonderland, the lamp was electric blue. I tried pulling it apart to see if there was a coloured filter I could remove, but no luck.


 

This photo actually does it too much justice -

in real life the colour is far more offensively bright.

Initially I was disappointed, but I've decided to embrace the weirdness of it. I mean, it's a salt lamp designed to correct the imbalance of ions in the air caused by evil technology. But it's the colour of a disco light. New age hippy meets dancing queen.

Anyway, this whole experience has led me to a point where I'm trying to be more positive about things. Rather than despairing when life gives me the proverbial electric blue salt lamp, I intend to dance to techno versions of Bob Dylan songs while wearing a sequined kaftan.

Proverbial sequined kaftan, that is.

songs for the ages

Little girl, do you know who I mean?
Pretty soon she'll be seventeen

From the moment when I first laid eyes on you
All alone, on the edge of seventeen

She's nearly twenty and so very old

She's twenty years of snow
Twenty years of strangers looking into each other's eyes

The world's got me dizzy again
You'd think after twenty two years I'd be used to the spin

three more poems

Degrees of Certainty

if you’d studied nursing, you’d be at work by now

not attending a lecture on an abstract noun

studying with a degree of uncertainty

certainly

the work would be hard, the pay low

(patients require much patience, according to medical shows)

but at least you’d have the Degree

caring is practically a universal language

unlike the philosophical abstractions which

you can never claim to understand with certainty

certainly

you’d have to work the night shift

but your husband could tell the children you’re a witch

and they’d laugh and say “she’s not!” while secretly believing it, to a degree

but it does no good to imagine when

decisions made upon a whim

commit you to a Degree of Uncertainty

About a ring

I bought a ring to replace the one I lost

now my finger feels complete

if only I could say the same                                

Northern Territory Intervention

Because of the intervention

the town was filled with them.

They were camping in the Todd

taking advantage of its dry sandy bed

(we would later see their campfires

as we drove back from a local restaurant).

But during the day they simply

leaned against trees    shops    churches

sat on grass    steps    pavement.

It was meant to be a holiday.

Two weeks away.

Learning about the red centre.

Hands on. Adventurous.

But first – tired from the

flight – we found some

local markets and wandered around.

Because of the intervention

it was hard to look at them.

I wanted to say something,

let them know I was on their side.

“I am ideologically opposed.”

But I was awed by the

insufficiency of my words –

my own ignorance – my political mindset,

so divorced from the reality of their lives.

Because of the intervention

I forced myself to look at them.

I made eye contact with an old man.

He was leaning against a tree,

watching the busy market.

I made eye contact, but he didn’t.

He looked through me

but in his eyes I saw a landscape,

and I moved on hurriedly

unsettled by his stillness

so incongruous with my own

fast paced world.

It didn’t last, but for a second

I understood.

And I mourned for the

souls that were left behind

when we conquered this land.

three poems

Lawyer
my father
wearing a suit of
grease

sitting

cross legged
in the bonnet
of his car

patiently polishing
the space where
the engine should be

Dementia

my grandfather
in his chair

resting his eyes

surrounded by family

even though

there's no one there

Reprise

my sister

singing in the

bathroom

greeting the morning

with music full of

words; joy

ful of sorrow

goalposts

I was thinking the other day about the last time I made a goal and fulfilled it. I'm not a very goal oriented person, usually. And when I do make goals they're usually halfhearted and I don't end up doing much about them. In year 12 I set myself the goal of getting a good enough score to get into law. I didn't particularly want to do law, I just thought it would be a good way to motivate myself. Anyway, I didn't get the score, but I wrote a letter to the law faculty telling them how lucky they'd be to have me and got accepted from that. And then I decided I didn't want to do law at all. So really, the whole setting a goal thing was pretty much a waste of time.

But for some reason, I remembered yesterday the last time I fulfilled a goal. I was about 9 or 10 years old, and I played the recorder in an ensemble, and I set myself the goal of getting into the highest level recorder ensemble at my music school by the time I was 12. And I did it. Not that it really required much effort on my part (in fact I'd forgotten about the goal altogether and only rememberd it later), but since it's the last goal I can remember fulfilling I'll just let that bit slide.

I don't have any goals at the moment. Well, if I do they're very short term ones. For example, my goal tonight is to write another section in the essay I'm working on. And even then, I may just end up watching a few more episodes of Buffy. Whenever she has goals, they're usually along the lines of 'stop the world from ending'. That'd probably be a better motivation than 'hand in essay on time or lose 10% per day'.

Ah Buffy, so much anguish.

poetic justice

I'm taking a class in creative writing this semester. I write a fair bit, on and off, but I've never studied it before. Also, it's a poetry subject. Which I've never written. Ever. Sometimes I write prose which I feel is quite poetic, but it's not poetry. So I'm a little nervous.

I do write songs, though, which is a bit like poetry. And over the past year or so my grandfather has been a little obsessed with figuring out the difference between poetry and lyrics. (And by obsessed, I mean that he's mentioned it to me every time I've seen him, which isn't that often since I live in a different city.) But it sort of got me thinking - what is the difference? The first thing that comes to mind is that it's easy to get away with shit lyrics in a song, because you've got the music to distract the listener. You don't have that luxury in poetry. The words sit starkly on the page. They have to speak for themselves. In a song, you can set the mood with a pretty accompaniment, or link unrelated thoughts together with a catchy riff. You can also repeat words or phrases over and over to go with the music, which can be a good or a bad thing. It can be mediative, or it can be lazy. I suppose you can actually do that with poetry too, but probably not a whole chorus - just a line or a word or something. Also there's no standard length for poetry, not like the 3minute song, so the incentive to repeat things just for the sake of it isn't there.

Anyway, in my first 'workshop' (Creative Writing's answer to the tutorial) last week, we were discussing what makes a poem a poem, instead of just a collection of words on a page. And I had this brainwave of comparing poetry to modern art. Like, what makes a red square on a page art, and not just some shit I could've done myself. (This afternoon I discovered that my 'brainwave' was almost exactly the same as a comment in the required reading for the week, which I failed to do in advance. I'm still claiming it as my own, though.) I didn't really come up with an answer at the time, but I've been thinking about it a lot and I think that what makes the red square on a white canvas 'art', despite the fact that I could've painted it, is the fact that I didn't. I didn't think of painting a red square on a white canvas. No one did. Until someone did. And even though it isn't technically (technique-ly?) very difficult, when it was created it was conceptually new. And that's what makes it art.

Someone else (or maybe the same guy, don't remember) in the reading this week said that 'every time you write something and call it a poem, you answer the question "what is poetry?"'. Which is what I've been doing this afternoon. Trying to write a poem. I'm not sure if it's any good yet. It's definately not finished. But I'm giving it a crack.

op shopping

The other day I went op shopping for the first time in ages. Actually, that's not true - I recently bought a whole lot of furniture from op shops for my bedroom. But this was the first time I've been op shopping for clothes in awhile.

While I was in the Women's Tops - Sleeveless section I overheard a girl complaining to her friends that she could never find anything good at op shops. And I thought of the advice I'd give her if she asked me. But she didn't ask me, so I'm posting it here.

Look for colours you like. Op shops don't display things in attractive ways like regular shops do, so you have to try harder to spend your money. Searching for colours you like to wear is a good way to start.

1. Be creative - don't just view the clothes as they are, think about what you could wear them with, or how you could alter them to make them more attractive.
2. Try stuff on. A lot of clothes in op shops have weird styles, so it's hard to know if they'll look any good til you've tried them on.
3. Be patient, and go often. It's the only way to find the best stuff.

In hindsight, it would have been pretty random if that girl had asked me for advice on op shopping. Nonetheless, I was ready to answer her questions if she chose to direct them to me, as I have demonstrated above.


* As a post script, I should probably add that it's important to note that there are certain things you can't get at op shops (and not just underwear). Nice, plain, simple tops in classic colours are really hard to find because no one ever throws them out, they just wear them til they fall apart. And yep. That's all my advice. In case anyone's interested.

a door to another world

My house has a new front door.
But let me explain.

My parents house got robbed a few months ago. Actually, 'robbed' is a bit too strong a word, cos nothing was taken. Someone got in through the front door, realised my mum was driving down the driveway, and made a speedy exit out the back. So my use of the verb 'to rob' is kind of misleading in this instance. Let's say they got 'broken into'. But I digress.

In response to this 'break in', my parents replaced all the locks. But it turns out that my ancient front door, while having a very sturdy lock, was not very sturdy itself and could easily be busted through. So they had to replace the whole door. When I heard about this on the phone, I was pretty disappointed. The key to our old front door was awesome - a big, gold, old fashioned looking thing. Like a key in a picture from a children's storybook. And I wasn't that pleased about having to give it up.

Despite the forewarning, I got a shock when I came home for the first time after that. It just didn't feel quite the same, entering my house through a different door. And it got me thinking about the symbolic nature of doors. They symbolise security ["behind locked doors"], opportunity ["one door closes, another one opens"], and refuge ["wolves at the door"]. They designate the spaces in our lives, and they allow us to move between them. And they're a good place to hang out during an earthquake, apparently.

I'm getting used to the new front door. I've stopped lifting my foot a little too high when I step over the threshold. The smell of varnish is slowly fading from the wood (I still notice it, though). But I haven't taken the old key off my key ring. To be honest, I'm not sure when I will. Is it "the key to my childhood", perhaps? I think that's taking the symbolism a little too far. Mostly, I just like the way it looks.

secrets

I'm a little bit obsessed with postsecret at the moment. It's a blog where people send in anonymous postcards with a secret written on one side - usually the picture side. They range from the silly and irreverent to the deeply personal and often confronting.

People confess to affairs, petty theft, lies, mistakes they've made, suicide attempts.
They also confess to random acts of kindness, decisions that have changed their lives for the better, fears about their futures.

It often worries me that there's no way of knowing who sends the postcards. I read one a few weeks ago that said "To the lady at the post office who liked my journal: it's full of suicide notes. You can have it when I'm gone." There's no way of knowing whether that person is still alive or not.

I sometimes feel bad for reading other people's secrets. Especially when they're so confronting. But that's kind of the point. The anonymity of the site means that people can express their deepest darkest secrets without fear of discovery. And there's something deeply theraputic about that. Why else do we keep diaries? Or write things on the back of toilet doors? And reading other people's secrets can be theraputic too. They can help you discover a secret you didn't know you had. Or were too afraid to express. Or just let you know you're not alone.

Anyway, I'm hooked.

tea leaves

I've been drinking a lot of tea lately. I used to be a coffee drinker, but after going to Europe and drinking Italian espressos, nothing else seems to cut it. Plus coffee often makes me feel sick. Also I've been lacking in motivation for study, and tea sometimes helps with that. I have a great one called "refresh" which my friend gave me for my birthday. And a green tea with strawberries in it, which is full of caffiene as well as being delish.



I've also been watching The Mighty Boosh, hence the picture. "Howard and Vince are in danger - it's written in the tea leaves!" Classic Naboo.

Reading tea leaves is a funny thing. So arbitrary, really. But on the other hand, random pseudo-psychic things like that can sometimes be revealing. A friend of mine used to have these little cards with words printed on them, and you were meant to pick 5 out and they would tell you stuff about your life. It was all chance, obviously, but we had some great conversations from it. The words were often just enough to trigger a thought or feeling we'd had but haven't been able to put into words. So it's not really psychic, but it can still tell you something about yourself.

Anyway, back to study.

couch surfing

I've been looking for a place to live. It's pretty fun really. Looking up houses online. Going to inspections. Weighing up the pros and cons. Big bedrooms, tiny kitchen. Close to uni, not enough windows. Cheap rent, no heating.

My future housemates and I have only a few criteria. Bedrooms must be big enough for a double bed, wardrobe, and a desk. Kitchen must have enough bench space so we can create vegetarian feasts. The laundry needs to fit a washing machine and dryer, cos one of my housemates scored a set off her grandparents.

I have one or two criteria of my own. I want the house to have some kind of quirk. We looked at one that had a random little nook built into the wall at about head height. I've no idea what it was designed for, but I liked it. Another one had a hollywood star in the middle of the bathroom floor. I'm also a fan of walk in pantries, of which we've seen a few.

Anyway, I keep thinking of this song by Darren Hanlon. I think it's fitting.

Well I haven't paid rent in a month or more
I'm couch surfing
And I don't have a key cause I don't have a door
I'm couch surfing
I'm not taking calls
I'm between houses

Of my material possessions I've lost track
I didn't need them
Everything I need fits in my backpack
I call it freedom
A pair of jeans some shirts and a guitar lead
A toothbrush, socks and a paperback reader
All the rest is what's hanging off of me
I'm not answering questions
I'm between houses

Outside the night is cold and stormy
And you blew up the air mattress for me
We'll talk all night like an open book
And I'll sleep on every breath you took
Before you leave I'll sneak a look up at you

But there's an old saying that could bare retelling
When you're couch surfing:
'the guest should leave before the fish starts smelling'
When your couch surfing
It's romantically existential
To reduce your life to the bare essentials
All that which is inconsequential guides me

But this whole theory really depends
On whether or not you've got good friends
And all this weightlessness the philosophers preach
Reduces you to societies leach
But tonight I've landed on my feet
I'm still one friend away from the bum on the street
And I've used up all my good will vouchers
On every single friend with couches
It won't be long before they'll ask me to leave
It's time I cut myself some keys
Give me a pen I'll sign a lease and go get me a home

given time

I wrote this song about a year ago and I'd almost forgotten about it until I discovered it in my trusty book of songs. (It's not a particularly long book, and half of it is blank pages I've left in the hope that I'll be overcome with lyrical inspiration sometime in the future and finish what I've started. I ususally don't. But nevertheless.) It's kind of a combination of things I was wondering about for fun, and stuff I was wondering about for my philosophy class.

I seem to blog a fair bit about philosophy. I guess it's the subject that manages to interest me above and beyond whatever piece of assessment I have due. Actually that's not true. My other classes do as well, to an extent, although it's mainly a negative one. I've recently been obsessed with a comment someone made in a Political Economy tute last week implying that AIDs was a good thing because it would counter over-population in Africa; I can't stop talking about what a douche this guy is! But that's not so interesting to write about.

Anyway, in true philosophical style, the questions in the song remain questions; I don't know if I have answers for all of them just yet. But still - they're interesting to think about.


Does it still count as being in love if I thought it at the time but have since changed my mind?
What is love, if not the strongest feeling you can feel for a person at a given time
Even if, given time you change your mind?

What is time if not the gradual changes in the light as night turns into day and day turns into night?
Tiny particles reverberate and penetrate the endless empty spaces between me and the edge of time
Even if, the edge of time is only in my mind

And what's my mind if not the stream of images and thoughts that have crossed it since the beginning of my life?
Imagination, concentration, perceieved reality, and memory, and all the bits and pieces that are mine
Even if, given time I lose my mind

Does it still count as being in love if I thought it at the time but have since changed my mind?
What is love, if not the strongest feeling you can feel for a person at a given time
Even if, given time you change your mind?

Given time . . .

hallelujah

I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music
Do you?


Dear Leonard Cohen,

Why did you write such a beautiful song for someone who doesn't "care for music"?

That is all.

thinking about thinking

I was watching a friend's band last week when it suddenly occured to me how rarely I listen to music. That feels like an odd statement, coming from someone who constantly has music playing no matter what I'm doing - in fact, the only times I turn it off are when I'm watching TV, or making music of my own - but it's always the background. Listening to music isn't what I'm doing, it's just incidental. I hardly ever put a song on, sit down, and just listen. I used to. I remember listening to whole albums from end to end without doing anything else at all, but I lost that ability to be still and listen somewhere amidst the busyness of life.

Anyway, this got me thinking about thinking. I tend to avoid letting my mind roam free. Mainly because, I think, for a few years I couldn't trust it not to lead me places I didn't want to go. But now it's such a strong habit to always be distracting myself that I can't let go and just think about whatever comes into my head.

There are a few places where still can, though. Usually whilst doing tasks that require very little brain energy. Like showering. Or driving. Or watching a gig. I'm stuck in one place until I finish whatever it is I'm doing, with little for my mind to do but wonder. And consequently, a large proportion of my songs are written in these places. The shower. Behind the wheel. At gigs. I've always noticed this, but never really thought about why.

steep street

I took this photo in Montemart, Paris. It's my favourite photo from my favourite part of Paris. Thought I'd post it.

motivation

I struggle to get motivated, a lot of the time. I procrastinate. Obsessively. It's actually got to stage where I feel like I can't study if my room is messy, because I associate studying with a clean room thanks to years of cleaning to procrastinate. And it's not that I'm disorganised. I have two 50% essays and a take home exam to complete this weekend, and I've known they were coming for months. I've even been trying to work on the essays for the past few weeks. I've been thinking about them, and worrying about them, but I've done hardly any work on them.

And I'm actually starting to think that my motivation issues are the last bastille of my depression. I've had it for years, and I keep it mostly under control these days. But maybe this is the area where it still gets me. Motivation. Because I actually quite like my classes. Human Rights and Global Justice. Ethical Theory. Media, Politics and Society. Even the names are distinctly identifiable as things that interest me. (I actually do four subjects, but the last one I find so incredibly tiresome that it's not even worth posting here. I'm only taking it cos I think it'll be good for me.)

Anyway, perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself when it comes to study. I've got into the habit lately of handing things in a day or two late. They only take away 2% per day for most of my subjects, and I work much better when I know something's due but I don't have to stress about getting it done on time. Unfortunately, the work I have at the moment will probably take more than a day or two to complete. Hence my motivation struggles today.

But at the same time, I wonder. How different can I really claim to be? Everyone has issues, whether they be based in personality, learned habits, or so called 'mental illness'. This is the ADHD generation, after all. My motivation issues are no more legitimate than anyone else's. Maybe I should just stop making excuses and get back to work.

(Interestingly, my boyfriend sent me this article today. Scary.)

don't let go - kate miller heidke

I've been very busy, lately.


First of all I apologise for this long period of silence
Being busy's no excuse to pull away and lose touch with my friends
Last time we met on the net
Maybe you didn't like those things that I said
But the day I sent you that sad mail
Not one, not two, but three couples of friends just split up

Please don't start your reply with 'sorry I was busy too'
It's the busyness that brings us to our knees
Who invented all these things we have to do?
Cos if I don't have you babe
What I'm trying to say is
Don't let go

And as for me the snow has returned
The cat is scratching at the cotton buds on his fur
Mum never calls, Laura's going to Spain
The ethics teacher killed herself last Saturday

Please don't start your reply with 'sorry I was busy too'
It's the busyness that brings us to our knees
Who invented all these things we have to do?
Cos if I don't have you babe
What I'm trying to say is
Don't let go