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31 May 2006 : inanities
i am in canberra and the lucksmiths are nowhere to be found.
it hurts my heart a little.
we drove over the great dividing range on sunday and it felt like being infinite; for a moment i was convinced that nothing was insurmountable.
no dice, though.
i got hit on by two thirteen year old boys today.
posted by lindsay at 01:23 :: 2 comments
29 May 2006 : fair bloody dinkum.
i have yet to find any sense of cohesion or consensus here. australia has been a flood of vivid colors and aching, moments stretched out over unknown periods of time. cigarettes cost anywhere from 8.50 to 11.90 a pack, and i forgot to break in my shoes. but i haven't figured out what i am doing here or how i am working right now, other than following the pack from behind (and getting annoyed when someone interrupts my lagging by asking if i am okay). we are a dynamic bunch - most mornings we wake up sore in face and abdomen from laughing. everything here has a punchline.
sydney was not my favorite place - beautiful, yes, but those cities are no longer for me. too many people, too many choices, too little conversation. i walk too slowly for such a city. but we have found canberra recently, a city that i want to lick and stick to the back of my notebook like an exotic stamp. today, black swans with red beaks and white cockatoos, and a museum exhibit called cirque - all video displays and moving chairs, so beautiful it made my teeth hurt.
we chose the right time, i think, to be here - it's fall in canberra (-4 celsius when we left for city center this morning) and the foliage is a sight to behold. beyond that, both the film festival and the annual writers festival spanned our time in sydney and i found myself pushing harder than i thought possible to find a space in every thing i could. i missed frank moorhouse and clive hamilton, naomi wolf and maya angelou.
but the highlight of sydney, i think, was probably the panel of indigenous writers at the writers festival, to which i followed ian (up up up uphill) on a whim - it gets dark around 5pm and i was frozen to my toes, but went anyway for the chance to hear what they had to say. joseph boyden (canada), tara june winch (australia), alootook ipellie (baffin island), and sherman alexie. my heart sputtered with their words, some so powerful that you had to look away from them - alootook ipellie read a poem about the most unimaginably destructive force that the white men brought with them as they made their way onto baffin island, which was noise. the white man effectively ended nature's silence.
and sherman alexie, he stood up and made everyone gasp with laughter - the desperate kind because we were momentarily kindred and we all knew that to laugh at these situations was the only way to look past them. he was astonishing, all brash reality and calm truth, telling us about the death of his alcoholic father and his son playing gameboy in a windowseat over a stunning view of darling harbor ("portrait of oppressed indigenous youth").
truth be told, everything has been so tough, so rigorous, so painful thus far that i have little will to focus on academics. reality's not given up, and will continue nipping at my heels until i sit down with her, but for now it's early dinners with the rest of the group (dr. ian spaghetti mcintosh, who once defeated an attacking shark by snapping his fingers and making the ocean around them boil, presiding), and those tiny moments of breathtaking beauty.
we head to darwin on thursday and i can't say there's anything i've anticipated more - i'm tired of these cities and these endless skyscrapers against an unfathomably perfect (endless) blue sky.
posted by lindsay at 01:43 :: 2 comments
21 May 2006 : for to carry me home.
there are many, many things a girl must fit into her carryon when packing for a trip like the one i'm about to take. a few examples:
- insect repellent with 40% deet (because insect life in australia is large and aggressive)
- sunscreen spf 45 (because pink-cheeked white girls need help surviving the desert)
- a water bottle that holds 32 fluid ounces
- a couple of books for easy reading
- a list of postcard addressees (send me an email if you want one)
and about a million other things (about 100$ worth at your friendly local discount store, truth be told).
but what is truly elemental to the sucess of an outing such as this one is bravery - and that's something wal-mart can't squeeze out of a producer in south america for 2.98 a bottle.
in with the nervous making, because this is my first chance to dig my fingers in. this is my first chance to do ethnographic research, to put to use those things i've been learning with the purpose of dedicating the rest of my life to something. my first chance to make or break.
i could falter. i've been known to lose my words when i am put on the spot. any eloquence i may posess decides to take a personal day every time it's imperative i put it to use. people intimidate me if i want to impress them. i shake and my face burns, i have trouble breathing and i start saying "uhm," about every third word.
there's some major intimidation factor at work here, see. peter garrett, who we will meet with on our second day in country, already has me quaking in my rugged offroad trainers. How am I supposed to be hip, rock and roll, beautiful, confident, eloquent and brilliant all at the same time? most days i have the energy for about one of those things. Lunch with dr. peter read of australian national university? i have to do all those things and eat while i'm doing it!
beyond that, walking up to a stranger and introducing myself is something i've never done in the united states, let alone in a country where responses to my presence may include assumptions about fat, rich americans and their exaggerated sense of entitlement and presumption. color me excited (i am actually, just terrified at the same time).
and what's most important, really, is the idea that this is where i put my feet in the water and figure out if i've really got what it takes to dedicate myself to this work. the rest of my life is a very long time and academia is oh-so-fickle. perhaps i can't make the cut; maybe my insecurities will force me back to the shelter of a university where i will teach and publish and teach and publish and cry for boredom on my lunch hour every day.
then again, this entire entry is about me - and that atlas complex, well, it's got sharp fingernails and they've dug themselves deep into my palms. because if i really care to do something about anything, if i really want to make a difference to someone (anyone), if i really want to embrace this bleeding heart i've got fueling those warm-fuzzy feelings toward humanity as a whole, then i'll suck it the fuck up and do what has to be done. because it doesn't have anything to do with me. it has to do with other people - entire populations of them - who have no choice, no representation, no rights and no options.
that's why i think i'll succeed.
well. that, a bottle of red wine, a conversation with lisa, and my deeply rooted belief that i am better than everyone at everything and can do pretty much anything should i deign to give it a bit of effort.
my flight leaves at 6pm on monday. i'll be there with boots on.
posted by lindsay at 01:59 :: 3 comments
17 May 2006 : red rose blooming on another man's vine.
so many things could have been said. to paraphrase someone i love, there were riots in my head. uncertainty has an almost pleasant flavor of familiarity, as do most less enjoyable emotions once you've spent several long, romantic evenings with them.
i tend to lose the big picture, this i know. details attach themselves to me, worrying. i hate to rely on the dog and the bone, but cliche is cliche for a reason. compounded, those details work themselves into a single, nerve-raw mass of pure energy. there's a sore spot, a specific one, and though it moves and varies in size and intensity, it never quite heals. when it gets hit, i'm down for the count.
there are a few things i rely on; the words in my head which these days get so rarely written down, fictional love affairs on deserted islands and the excitement of burgeoning friendships. to-do lists and etymolgies can sometimes comfort me. my plans, i wear them like armor. one of these days i'll fly out of here with only the things i can carry, and mimic the motions of the puppy with her unspent energy. these are the most important. i'll scrape my skin against the bare earth wherever i can find it and rub my muzzle against every available surface. if i'm lucky, somewhere along the line there will be sand in which to dig my wandering toes. no matter because in this respect the journey is not the destination but only just the journey, and i'll come out the end red and new and sensitive, scoured free of the sticky residue of privelege, the unbearable stink of entitlement.
that's not to say i do not struggle, because i do - mostly existentially as my life to date has been almost unfairly (and unfortunately) simple, free of many tensions with which most of the rest of the world must grapple. there are behaviors i can't break open, attachments i hate but fear relinquishing. socializations it could take lifetimes to bury. someone once told me i needed reprogramming, and he was right but for all the wrong reasons - those were selfish months, when neither of us could have cared less about anything but the two of us.
the point is that i know wanting something does not mean it will happen, and talking about it does not hurry it along. waiting is elemental - and luckily, something i for which i have a talent. i tend to look at change in terms of "eye of the tiger" on the boombox and a flippy ponytail with really cute workout clothes that never get sweatstains. i think that progress has been made, progress continues - in the past few months i've done some pretty brave things that i would have never believed possible.
what i wonder is, how many times can we choke it back? how many things have one of us wanted to say but didn't, for whatever reason? proximity is dangerous i know, and we hardly wear our hearts where they can be seen. but i know that with this tenuous stability, at least i am sometimes holding back enough to clog things up - having to shape my words around something in the back of my throat sticky and dense, like chocolate with too much cocoa. it won't quite melt and it won't quite move, and it has accented everything i say with timidity and a little taste of shame.
so tonight i am thankful for my friends, who are so beautiful, kind, thoughtful, patient and most every other positive adjective the infrastructure could bear. i spent most of yesterday near tears, winning fights in my head and trying hard to breathe normally. you follow them because you have the privelege, and luck is when you're loved back.
anger fades, as does insecurity. sometimes all you need is an evening.
posted by lindsay at 22:39 :: 1 comments
i am in canberra and the lucksmiths are nowhere to be found.
it hurts my heart a little.
we drove over the great dividing range on sunday and it felt like being infinite; for a moment i was convinced that nothing was insurmountable.
no dice, though.
i got hit on by two thirteen year old boys today.
Labels: Australia
posted by lindsay at 01:23 :: 2 comments
29 May 2006 : fair bloody dinkum.
i have yet to find any sense of cohesion or consensus here. australia has been a flood of vivid colors and aching, moments stretched out over unknown periods of time. cigarettes cost anywhere from 8.50 to 11.90 a pack, and i forgot to break in my shoes. but i haven't figured out what i am doing here or how i am working right now, other than following the pack from behind (and getting annoyed when someone interrupts my lagging by asking if i am okay). we are a dynamic bunch - most mornings we wake up sore in face and abdomen from laughing. everything here has a punchline.
sydney was not my favorite place - beautiful, yes, but those cities are no longer for me. too many people, too many choices, too little conversation. i walk too slowly for such a city. but we have found canberra recently, a city that i want to lick and stick to the back of my notebook like an exotic stamp. today, black swans with red beaks and white cockatoos, and a museum exhibit called cirque - all video displays and moving chairs, so beautiful it made my teeth hurt.
we chose the right time, i think, to be here - it's fall in canberra (-4 celsius when we left for city center this morning) and the foliage is a sight to behold. beyond that, both the film festival and the annual writers festival spanned our time in sydney and i found myself pushing harder than i thought possible to find a space in every thing i could. i missed frank moorhouse and clive hamilton, naomi wolf and maya angelou.
but the highlight of sydney, i think, was probably the panel of indigenous writers at the writers festival, to which i followed ian (up up up uphill) on a whim - it gets dark around 5pm and i was frozen to my toes, but went anyway for the chance to hear what they had to say. joseph boyden (canada), tara june winch (australia), alootook ipellie (baffin island), and sherman alexie. my heart sputtered with their words, some so powerful that you had to look away from them - alootook ipellie read a poem about the most unimaginably destructive force that the white men brought with them as they made their way onto baffin island, which was noise. the white man effectively ended nature's silence.
and sherman alexie, he stood up and made everyone gasp with laughter - the desperate kind because we were momentarily kindred and we all knew that to laugh at these situations was the only way to look past them. he was astonishing, all brash reality and calm truth, telling us about the death of his alcoholic father and his son playing gameboy in a windowseat over a stunning view of darling harbor ("portrait of oppressed indigenous youth").
truth be told, everything has been so tough, so rigorous, so painful thus far that i have little will to focus on academics. reality's not given up, and will continue nipping at my heels until i sit down with her, but for now it's early dinners with the rest of the group (dr. ian spaghetti mcintosh, who once defeated an attacking shark by snapping his fingers and making the ocean around them boil, presiding), and those tiny moments of breathtaking beauty.
we head to darwin on thursday and i can't say there's anything i've anticipated more - i'm tired of these cities and these endless skyscrapers against an unfathomably perfect (endless) blue sky.
Labels: Australia
posted by lindsay at 01:43 :: 2 comments
21 May 2006 : for to carry me home.
there are many, many things a girl must fit into her carryon when packing for a trip like the one i'm about to take. a few examples:
- insect repellent with 40% deet (because insect life in australia is large and aggressive)
- sunscreen spf 45 (because pink-cheeked white girls need help surviving the desert)
- a water bottle that holds 32 fluid ounces
- a couple of books for easy reading
- a list of postcard addressees (send me an email if you want one)
and about a million other things (about 100$ worth at your friendly local discount store, truth be told).
but what is truly elemental to the sucess of an outing such as this one is bravery - and that's something wal-mart can't squeeze out of a producer in south america for 2.98 a bottle.
in with the nervous making, because this is my first chance to dig my fingers in. this is my first chance to do ethnographic research, to put to use those things i've been learning with the purpose of dedicating the rest of my life to something. my first chance to make or break.
i could falter. i've been known to lose my words when i am put on the spot. any eloquence i may posess decides to take a personal day every time it's imperative i put it to use. people intimidate me if i want to impress them. i shake and my face burns, i have trouble breathing and i start saying "uhm," about every third word.
there's some major intimidation factor at work here, see. peter garrett, who we will meet with on our second day in country, already has me quaking in my rugged offroad trainers. How am I supposed to be hip, rock and roll, beautiful, confident, eloquent and brilliant all at the same time? most days i have the energy for about one of those things. Lunch with dr. peter read of australian national university? i have to do all those things and eat while i'm doing it!
beyond that, walking up to a stranger and introducing myself is something i've never done in the united states, let alone in a country where responses to my presence may include assumptions about fat, rich americans and their exaggerated sense of entitlement and presumption. color me excited (i am actually, just terrified at the same time).
and what's most important, really, is the idea that this is where i put my feet in the water and figure out if i've really got what it takes to dedicate myself to this work. the rest of my life is a very long time and academia is oh-so-fickle. perhaps i can't make the cut; maybe my insecurities will force me back to the shelter of a university where i will teach and publish and teach and publish and cry for boredom on my lunch hour every day.
then again, this entire entry is about me - and that atlas complex, well, it's got sharp fingernails and they've dug themselves deep into my palms. because if i really care to do something about anything, if i really want to make a difference to someone (anyone), if i really want to embrace this bleeding heart i've got fueling those warm-fuzzy feelings toward humanity as a whole, then i'll suck it the fuck up and do what has to be done. because it doesn't have anything to do with me. it has to do with other people - entire populations of them - who have no choice, no representation, no rights and no options.
that's why i think i'll succeed.
well. that, a bottle of red wine, a conversation with lisa, and my deeply rooted belief that i am better than everyone at everything and can do pretty much anything should i deign to give it a bit of effort.
my flight leaves at 6pm on monday. i'll be there with boots on.
Labels: Australia, When I grow up
posted by lindsay at 01:59 :: 3 comments
17 May 2006 : red rose blooming on another man's vine.
so many things could have been said. to paraphrase someone i love, there were riots in my head. uncertainty has an almost pleasant flavor of familiarity, as do most less enjoyable emotions once you've spent several long, romantic evenings with them.
i tend to lose the big picture, this i know. details attach themselves to me, worrying. i hate to rely on the dog and the bone, but cliche is cliche for a reason. compounded, those details work themselves into a single, nerve-raw mass of pure energy. there's a sore spot, a specific one, and though it moves and varies in size and intensity, it never quite heals. when it gets hit, i'm down for the count.
there are a few things i rely on; the words in my head which these days get so rarely written down, fictional love affairs on deserted islands and the excitement of burgeoning friendships. to-do lists and etymolgies can sometimes comfort me. my plans, i wear them like armor. one of these days i'll fly out of here with only the things i can carry, and mimic the motions of the puppy with her unspent energy. these are the most important. i'll scrape my skin against the bare earth wherever i can find it and rub my muzzle against every available surface. if i'm lucky, somewhere along the line there will be sand in which to dig my wandering toes. no matter because in this respect the journey is not the destination but only just the journey, and i'll come out the end red and new and sensitive, scoured free of the sticky residue of privelege, the unbearable stink of entitlement.
that's not to say i do not struggle, because i do - mostly existentially as my life to date has been almost unfairly (and unfortunately) simple, free of many tensions with which most of the rest of the world must grapple. there are behaviors i can't break open, attachments i hate but fear relinquishing. socializations it could take lifetimes to bury. someone once told me i needed reprogramming, and he was right but for all the wrong reasons - those were selfish months, when neither of us could have cared less about anything but the two of us.
the point is that i know wanting something does not mean it will happen, and talking about it does not hurry it along. waiting is elemental - and luckily, something i for which i have a talent. i tend to look at change in terms of "eye of the tiger" on the boombox and a flippy ponytail with really cute workout clothes that never get sweatstains. i think that progress has been made, progress continues - in the past few months i've done some pretty brave things that i would have never believed possible.
what i wonder is, how many times can we choke it back? how many things have one of us wanted to say but didn't, for whatever reason? proximity is dangerous i know, and we hardly wear our hearts where they can be seen. but i know that with this tenuous stability, at least i am sometimes holding back enough to clog things up - having to shape my words around something in the back of my throat sticky and dense, like chocolate with too much cocoa. it won't quite melt and it won't quite move, and it has accented everything i say with timidity and a little taste of shame.
so tonight i am thankful for my friends, who are so beautiful, kind, thoughtful, patient and most every other positive adjective the infrastructure could bear. i spent most of yesterday near tears, winning fights in my head and trying hard to breathe normally. you follow them because you have the privelege, and luck is when you're loved back.
anger fades, as does insecurity. sometimes all you need is an evening.
Labels: When I grow up
posted by lindsay at 22:39 :: 1 comments