Trapped

When you came into the house, I scratched you.

I screamed.

I pushed you as hard as I could.

I ran around in that confined space, desperate and scared.

I bit you.

But you brushed me aside.

You swore at me.

You were sarcastic.

You asked what the fuck was wrong with me this time.

But I couldn't answer.

And you didn't see him.

And I couldn't stop him.

Just as I couldn't tell you that he was there.

Because I'm just a cat.

And now you're dead.

And I'm sorry.

And I miss your warmth.

And your touch.

And the food.

And it's been days now.

And no-one has come.

And I'm hungry.

I need the meat.

Causality Not Fate

I've never been one of those people who believe that 'everything happens for a reason' or that '[insert name of your deity of choice here] has a plan' because of what that would mean.

If it's true for us, we people who are well off enough to have access to the internet which argues that we're probably doing OK on a couple of levels, then it would have to be true for everyone and that just does not work.

It's OK to try and be positive as you consider the challenges in your life and to to try see the opportunities for growth and change that they can offer you but saying God has a plan for everyone would mean telling a child that God wanted them to be molested because it's part of His 'plan'.

Anyone who genuinely believes that, ugh.
UGH!

Johnny Citizen can lose his job and have a crisis and have to work out what his strengths and priorities are, almost lose his house, get a better job and feel that 'Wow, that hardship happened for a reason'.

But if you tell me that someone planting subsistence crops standing on a landmine and losing a leg is going to teach them to be a better person, I will fistfight you.

If you try to say that people suffering from malnutrition in third world countries are learning important lessons, I will put my foot to your genitals.

What would be even worse is if the 'reason' these things are happening is so that some sanctimonious jerk in a suburban house can tell their fretful, sulking children 'There are kids in Africa who would be very grateful for that food!'.

Yes. There are.

Anyway before I start ranting in earnest, back to my point.

I don't believe that things happen for a reason but once they have happened, they change what happens afterward.

That's simple cause and effect in linear time.

Nothing mystical about that*.

If I hadn't got sick, I wouldn't have started walking every day in an attempt to feel less powerless and to help improve my health and increase my chances of recovery.

If I hadn't kept walking every day, I wouldn't be in what is probably the best physical condition that I've been in for years.

If I hadn't been so mad keen for walking and feeling pretty good about my physical fitness, I would never have even considered saying yes to the Nepal trip.
I wouldn't have had any confidence in my ability to train up for it, let alone attempt it.

It didn't happen for a reason but because it happened my life has taken a different path that it would have and who knows how far those two paths will diverge from each other over time.


Disclaimer: Yes, I am aware that I am still super privileged in being able to consider my situation in this light after receiving adequate medical attention, support from my family and being in a financial position to go on a trip overseas.
But at least I'm not saying that I deserve it or that a divine being changed the course of history so that I would get to go on a trip because it is my destiny!!!



*Unless you think linear time is an amazing construct/mass hallucination.

Going Wild

For the last year or so, my brain has obviously been developing some new neural pathways or mutating for maximum efficiency of getting really excited about random stuff because every couple of weeks it seems to bail me up in the corner like a cheerful drunk at a party and go 'HEY, YOU REMEMBER WHEN-' and just won't shut up about whatever it is into at the moment.

One of the things it's been yammering about recently is camping.

My family hasn't been camping for years.

The last time I remember was... 2004, just before I had my wisdom teeth out and was consigned to the scrap heap with the rest of the unwise.

And I haven't got any friends who go camping regularly - if at all - so I haven't gone on any exciting non-family camping trips since then either.

But at the moment it is all I can think about.

I want to go camping.

I want to put a tent, an air mattress, a sleeping bag, a handful of clothes and a bucketful of bug spray into my car and piss off somewhere camping.

I know that there is a nostalgia factor.

That there are things about camping that are extra annoying in any setting and things that are extra annoying in specific settings*.

I like the simplicity of only having what you brought with you.

No paralysis of choice on what to do because you've only got what you brought with you and the location you're in as options.

I like waking up going 'Jesus Christ, it must be like 10am! I must have slept in like crazy because it is BAKING in here!' and getting out of your tent to find that it's actually 7:30am and pleasantly mild once you're not inside a synthetic chamber of temperature amplification.

I like not having electricity because you have to REALLY want to finish that chapter in the book to sit there holding a book in one hand and a torch in the other.
Or with a torch clamped between chin and neck.
Or with the torch stuck in your mouth like the world's most unsuccessful pacifier.

I like being able to sit around in a folding chair or flop around in a hammock and not having to think 'I should get up and do that housework/shopping/organising/mending' because you've left all that bullshit at home.

I like the food, even when you cock it up.

It's handy that this trek in Nepal is going to have a camping component so I can calm my jonesing body down and get it to focus on other things that its sudden resurgent camping addiction**.

And when I get back and it's all summer and lovely, I might somehow manage to fit in some camping.

Though I'll be fighting the rest of Australia to find room anywhere decent at that time of year...



*In specific settings this will either relate to the terrain, the weather, or your fellow campers (e.g. drunks staggering home loudly late at night or tiny children running about screaming ridiculously early in the morning. Though if the kids run screaming around the tents of those shitty drunks while they're getting over their hangovers... Heh heh.)

**In Nepal I'll probably be distracted from my camping addiction by how tired I am and how my feet don't love me no more.

Needlessly Philosophical

I've been thinking a little bit about the nature of internet friendships and relationships recently.

Of all the people I've 'met' since I started putting things into the internet instead of just taking things out.

Those I'm still in touch with and those who drifted away.

Those who died out in the real world and left a quiet space in the virtual world where I knew them.

Of the communities I've been a part of.

And they really are like nothing else.

All human relationships start with a small amount of information and build their way up from there.

You bump into someone on the street and you're both wearing the same band t-shirt and you might end up a part of that person's life for 10 years based on that one thing that caught your eye and that just happened to be one aspect of a person who had enough in common with you and enough diversity from you to be an awesome friend.

You bump into someone on the internet and there's some of that same initial information gathering but it happens on a slightly different scale and under different conditions.

Whether you roam the internet under a pseudonym or under your real name, with a photo avatar or a screen cap of your favourite character, you are only putting small slices of your personality online at a time.

Whether it is on Twitter, on a blog, as part of a forum community or anywhere else on the internet, it is offering parts of yourself in bite-sized chunks.

If you read something someone has written and it resonates with you, you want to read more.

If it keeps resonating with you and you don't hit a sample that reveals that they believe something that you very much definitely do not, you start to feel a connection with them even before you've exchanged any kind of communication.

Communicating with people you know exclusively online allows you to slowly build a better picture of them, though there's always some things that you'll have trouble getting a feel for without ye olde body language or facial expressions, and there's the fact that when we're presenting ourselves there are always things we push to the fore or shove to the back or simply forget about.

This doesn't mean that internet friendships are any less valid, on the contrary a lot of the internet friendships I've had have been very deep and supportive and I've said things to internet friends that I've not shared with real life meat-space friends just because our dynamic is different.

With text-based communications there are opportunities for miscommunications or personal-bias interpretations but there is also the potential for really deep exchanges.
You get the chance to think things out and lay those thoughts down in a way that they wouldn't come out if spoken.
You get to show a different side to yourself and the see the different sides of many other people.

You can learn a lot about yourself by talking with people online.
You notice habits you have, turns of phrase or tendencies that with reflection reveal things about you that you weren't even aware of.
You can become aware of biases or presumptions that you weren't even aware you held.
You can find the courage to be your online self in the real world or to share your real self in the online world.

Or you can just dick around having a good time without getting so introspective.

Losing touch with someone you only known online can be quite jarring.
If you have no way of contacting them you have no idea if they've stopped updating their website/visiting your community/commenting on photos because they're busy/have lost interest/got a romantic partner and are too busy having crazy sex all the time/forgot their password or if they might be sick or even dead.

When someone drops out of contact you keep checking back, hoping that they're OK, wondering what's up and depending on the situation you may one day find out or you may just have to accept that they're gone and move on.

Sometimes, like regular meat-space friendships, you lose contact with someone because something specific happens - like a conflict - or you finally find that bit of information that makes you realise that the two of you aren't quite as similar as you thought and things gently drift apart.

The perceptions we bring to the internet are pretty much the same ones we bring to real life.

We build a picture of a person based on the information we have and then fill in the gaps.

Depending on the person we may idealise them a bit and then have to revise as we take into account their human flaws and foibles, the same way you do in real life.

It's just easier to hang onto the you-built-version of a person for longer online and that can either facilitate the start of something else, maintain a great friendship or lead to disappointment further down the track when you realise you were wrong.

Getting to know people online is amazing.

Even when it goes wrong it can show you other parts of life and the world that you may not have seen before.

Some of it may be stuff you would rather not have seen but for most people the stuff you treasure makes all that other bullshit worth wading through.

Cancelled

With a little bit over a month until my friend's wedding we were all running about getting the last important big ticket items locked in.

Making sure we'd had our bridesmaid dresses altered, hair and make up had been scheduled, flowers had been arranged, the menu had been planned, the celebrant and photographer booked, accommodation confirmed, the usual.

Last Sunday I got a phone call which I assumed was going to be about buying our shoes or arrangements for the hen's night or something.

Turns out the wedding is off...

Huh.

Alrighty...

Huh...

I was shocked.

And then I thought about it and I wasn't.

And then I was shocked that I wasn't shocked.

So I guess my original shock was just surprise rather than having trouble wrapping my head around the fact.

They've been together for 6 years and have been fairly solid for that time but they had their problems and had never really given off that 'soul mate' vibe.
Going into a marriage you'd assume you'd want that 'I want to be with this person forever' vibe to be pretty strong or you'd wonder if it was really a good fit.

My friend seems to be taking things surprisingly well - probably another indicator that she's done the right thing - and so my main concern will be being there for her when she needs me.

Even if she's done the right thing you have to assume there will be some 'I've just come out of a 6 year relationship' emotional turbulence somewhere down the track.

Now if only I could get my brain to fully absorb this new reality and stop thinking stupid things like this:

• "I'm forgetting something... Oh, right! I still haven't picked a song to request for the receptio- Oh..."
• "Man, I had better buy my shoes pretty quickly or- Oh..."
• "I haven't got my outfit organised for the hen's ni- Right..."
• "Better remember to ask my boss for time off so I can help organise the- No, wait..."
• "I wonder if they've got all the RSVPaaahwaitasecond..."

Get this straight, brain, before you say something really inappropriate at a really stupid time.

No, not like usual, I mean really bad.

The other inappropriate stuff you say is friggin' hilarious, you keep that up.

Elusive Architecture

Architecture is a bastard.

There's a type of room I've wanted to include in my dream house floor plan for ages. I’ve known about this room since I’ve been to a couple of houses that featured it but I had to do a bunch of weird and sort of randomly worded searching to actually find out what it was called.

A mud room.

I’m sure there are other names for it but all the ones suggested by helpful folk were a bit too general for internet image searches.

When I plugged in ‘vestibule’, ‘lobby’, ‘antechamber’ and other entrance way type names, I got an array of pictures or descriptions which didn’t match what I was envisioning.

I finally hit upon the term ‘mud room’ and all the images that turned up for that term are exactly what I meant.

And I didn’t know how much I wanted one until I saw that bundle of images pop up.

They satisfy my organisation, tidiness and keeping-muck-out-of-my-house urges.

And my no-i-am-not-going-to-have-jackets-hanging-on-the-back-of-every-single-door determination.

These things here…

…very useful sure but once you’ve bought one you’ll end up with a whole collection of the damn things.

Put your coat in the wardrobe or have a special coat wardrobe if you’re into clothing segregation.

Don’t have them taking space up on the back of every bedroom, laundry and whatever-else door.

They make the room look all cluttered and you can’t open your doors all the way.

A mud room.

Added to the ‘must have’ list for my notional ‘one day’ house.

Disclaimer: My house will never at any time contain that many baseball caps.

The Sunnies Saga

I admit I get a bit attached to things.

Not in a deep emotional way, for the most part, but I don’t like throwing things out while they still work and I don’t like losing things when I’m still using them.

So when I couldn’t find my sunglasses on Saturday when taking the family dogs for a walk, I assumed I’d left them at my flat.

When I got back to my flat and remembered to look around for them, they weren’t there either.

In the car?

Nope.

Dang...

This meant one of two things.

I hadn’t searched around at my parents’ house thoroughly enough or I’d lost them somewhere.

This was bound to drive me crazy.

I hate losing things.

I did some more searching.

I texted people I’d spent time with at the end of the week.

I did some extra searching in some slightly outlandish places where I might have put sunglasses down but would have been highly unlikely to.
Example: the freezer.

I admitted that they were gone and that as they were only a $10 pair of sunnies that my brother had bought from a petrol station once and given to me when I needed a pair, I should just let it go.

I didn’t let it go.

The last place I remembered having them was in my friend’s car on the way out for dinner and a movie with mates.

I definitely had them in the car on the way there.

I didn’t remember having them on the way home and didn’t have them after that.

Craps.

This meant I’d either left them at the restaurant or I’d dropped them in the cinema.

If I’d left them in the restaurant they might still be around but by now it’s Monday night and there’s a chance they might have been tossed or mislaid or accidentally tidied away.

If I’d left them in the cinema they were almost certainly gone.
Either kicked under a seat, trodden on, thrown out, picked up.
Much less of a likelihood that they would have ended up in a lost property box.

So, fingers crossed, I called up the restaurant.

They were there.

They had my sunnies.

The girl who answered the phone just happened to be the girl who had served us that night.

Hooray!

Of course… The thing about this restaurant is that it is an hour away from my flat…

What a sane person would do – especially a sane person who is soon going to buy a higher quality pair of sunglasses for her trip to Nepal – would be forget the sunglasses.
Tell the nice lady on the phone that it was OK to either keep them or toss them, whatever she felt like.

That’s what a sane person would do.

Guuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeess who just took a two hour round trip to pick up her sunglasses!?

Guuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeess who is super stoked about having her sunglasses back!?

Everything is right with the world again!

Really, I’m very very easily pleased.

The other amusing thing is that when bereft of sunglasses, my mother loaned me a pair that she assumed my sister had left at the family home.

I asked my sister about them.
Not hers.

I asked my brother’s girlfriend.
Not hers.

I cannot think of anybody else who has stopped by recently who could have left them here.

Mystery bonus sunglasses.

It’d be nice if they had a button or switch on them that give them infrared or x-ray filters but I expect they just keep the sun out of your eyes which is a handy feature that the human eye doesn’t offer as standard.