nice and quiet, twilight and dawn, not so much with the talking, lots of good dogs.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
In Hollybank this year some hunger-games team-builders have unintentionally built dream catchers for kids to climb on. High danger, fatal concussions and snapped leg bones disguised as over-scaled prototypes for local jewellery. This is now a park of risk, concentrating into a few sq km the sensations of flying through the air, of slipping on wet rocks, going over the handlebars into a winded curl, hypnic jerks, sleep paralysis 40m up a tree, seeing a mesh of grey stars before fainting, building teams through shared intake of breath, not trusting colleagues, family, harness or helmet, knowing that you’re more likely to fall by braking too hard than from speed.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
I like Canberra now, let’s move there.
because the sky was blue 3 days in a row and the lake and highways stretched out beneath me, and because I had 2 showers everyday and then drip-dried in a hotel room while watching First Dates and drinking mini beer cans and cups of tea. In between serious activities I went to a museum show called something seminal and superlative like ’100 objects of the world’, it was on loan from the British Museum which kind of embarrassed me at first but now I know that it is the basis for a fundamental and poignant Jeppe text I am embarrassed of my shame. each object had a backstory of trade/pillage/finance/industry/war/god/// and they were all connected by an invisible history-web in a shitty dark room in one of Canberra’s museum sheds. It made me consider what the 100 objects of my life would be, but I could only come up with one: a miniature vase that held a quite unpleasant chocolate truffle in Singapore in 1992 that I chose as a treat instead of a delicious mango sorbet so that I had something tangible to carry away with me. Hoping I wouldn’t make that decision again and that 10 year old me would be disappointed.
Friday, September 16, 2016
I’m writing my thesis in threes, for which I blame the principles and now-soon-laters of regeneration documents, not spirituality nor superstition. Last night we went to this bar Troika for old times. I assume the reason they recently celebrated their 18th anniversary was because (3+3)*3 and not because it’s the legal drinking age. To mark the occasion they refreshed the interior. I’ve sat inside the dark comfort of this bar in 2003, a bit in 2006 and 2007, once in 2012, 2014. Now in 2016 the original black-ply-red-canvas fit-out has been replaced with the interior of a tin foil hat to keep the now-soon-later of rampant redevelopment from getting in.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Death in Sarajevo is a film about the depths of a hotel in one of those cities that Easyjet doesn’t fly to. I have read this book In Europe three times. First time it was upsetting in the northern bit of Spain, the second time I wanted to share the pain night by night out loud, and for the third time (which at some point has become the fourth time) we dip in and out, dip in to Bucharest 1989 / Paris 1905 / London 1944. It’s actually a perfect book, and it has taught me that at the centre is Sarajevo. So yesterday I Peggy Olsen-ed myself to a film during business hours. I got a mediocre seat because they let the members of culture in first and there are a lot of members of culture at 4pm during a Melbourne film festival. One of the character’s pleas: ‘protect us from uniform thinking’ reminds me of Helen Small saying that declining to describe our lives as unified stories is the only way we can hope to live out our time other than as tragedy although one talks about social fraternity / enmity and the other is about living long.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Critical Realist abductive approach to Nauru: If you cannot prove the allegations to be true, conceptualise the global structures (real) and institutional practices (actual) that need to be active in a particular (contingent) offshore context to explain the abuses (empirical) and consider whether this builds a more or less believable model of reality.
