For those without the joy of regular contact, you may have interpreted my lack of reflection about life on this blog to be characteristic of my intermitent interest in publically musing on my life’s goings on.

Unfortunately, for the past several months, I haven’t been able to find the words for what three men stole from me in the dark. The inventory of what was stolen was quite small, a wallet and a phone. Your standard late night mugging really.

However, the effect this had on me at a time when I was already highly stressed about finishing Honours was enormous. While, it’s true I needed to become some what of a hermit in order to focus on my work — this event forced me into the isolation of a dark abyss. 

I am now 17 days away from thesis deadline. I now know that soon I will have time to build a life again. Oh, for the freedom to take a few “Life Days” to sort myself out! I’m excited to think that my life will never look the same.   

At least throughout this extremely traumatic time — I’ve managed to produce some great paintings (even if they are all in fetal position!).  

Upon my recent decision to start recording my thoughts here, I made a few promises to myself:

a) I will update regularly;
b) I will not undertake long diatribes about the purpose/s of this blog;
c) Times when I found it difficult to update, I would be particularly disciplined and force myself to write even just a few thoughts.

Then IT happened. 

Not some season of drunken debauchery or unriveled apathy, just a late night mugging, a broken relationship, a father hospitalised and a thesis deadline. And suddenly a whole winter has passed without an update.

1. Upon my return I am certainly advocating a mass exodus to Melbourne for 2008. Although, the question did remain why go to city that reminds me of Europe when I could just go to Europe? I guess, Melbourne’s just a little cheaper for the weekend!
2. While I am certainly in agreement that Melbourne may be cooler or trendier or whatever, I have to say it instantly looses points for reminding itself of that every fucking three seconds.
3. Despite feeling like I was on a set for an incredibly complex staging of Waiting for Godot, with constant talking about The New World Order’s Revolutionary Leader (who for the purposes of satire and privacy we shall just call Che) I was happy to see all those that I visited still possessed those strong beliefs and commitments to bringing about social change, that I found so inspiring to be around in our past life together in StinkTown. This was certainly the vegan pumpkin soup for the soul that I desperately needed, so thanks kids, and sorry for my increasingly cynical and jaded world views!

Even when not paying attention — it’s hard to ignore your place. I mean we’ve all moments where we’ve forgotten our place, and usually somebody is more than willing to put us back there. But the weekend’s travels have reminded me that, yep, that only solution when the going gets tough, is to fuck off!

I was astounded with how quickly a different side of me came out so quickly in the southern capital. I mean sure, partly the reason we travel is to escape so we are ready for change anyway. I certainly had realised that while I may’ve been slogging away in ThesisLand I was no longer being effective. I had to escape; I needed a change of scenery. But I am still just marveling about how well it worked.

Batteries recharged, friends commented that I indeed looked refreshed.

Everybody knows I’m one to loose perspective fairly quickly — so I guess a better metaphor would be travel as vision correction. It was just really exciting to remember that there are people that I have real connections with outside the people that form my everyday, and a reminder that other cities provide opportunities unimaginable in this small regional backwater.

So, while I will be sad tomorrow bidding another of the ever shrinking number of locally based friends bon voyage as she sets off on international adventures. I do find it comforting to remember that those connections with people can often be picked up again in another time and place. And it’s even more exciting when those connections can be picked up again despite dramatic changes that both parties have gone through, with out having to resort to the charade of the way things were.

i know i’m only going to Melbourne for the weekend.

Comparatively it’s a short journey a jaunt really. 963 kilometers the internet tells me. Pales in comparison to some of my other journeys NYC: 15977.21 Kms, Utrecht: 16630.98.

But i guess the thing is that those journeys were about proving something, this journey is the proof.

See since my spontaneous decision to leave StinkTown and go to Melbourne for the weekend yesterday, i can’t help thinking what a change in myself this is representative of. The last two years rheiner and i have just been treading water. And while we’ve had some spectacular escapes like to Cambodge, i was always very frugal in terms of going any where else. (And it must be stated, i even complained about the extravagance of our overseas trip endlessly). See last year i was just so focused on ”setting myself” up for this year — i was too scared to live. (Of course anybody who knows me, can read between the lines, and knows what that means is that i would continually try to deny myself of fun, until I would explode in fantastic bursts of drunken debauchery.) But this year, i’m just doing it. This is why i can decide to bugger off to Melbourne on a whim despite what can only be described as a bleak financial situation. This is life. This is what i was saving myself for. And it is just the fucking same.

Which isn’t as dissapointing as it sounds. This realisation is part of the reason why i’m not as “stressed” as i imagined i would be about the final result. i’ve realised that while i’m certainly still trying for a 1st — i am doing my life. And not getting a first isn’t going to stop me living my life. Sure it may define how i go about the external details of my life a bit. But books will always be there. i will always be able to make things. i will always be able to force myself to write. (And this year has taught me that i do actually need to force myself to write — it doesn’t come naturally to me.)

It should not be any suprise to anyone, after those rambly paragraphs then that i have been so obsessed with the künstlerroman. i’ve always been partial to a good coming-of-age-tale. If i just think of the movies or novels that i’ve connected with most, there’ve always revolved around this narrative structure. 

And for anybody who hasn’t connected it already, the foetus paintings were/are definately part of this obsession.

So, since this blog is primarily for me, i feel justified in posting things of interest solely to me. For those stumbling upon this blog who don’t want to read purple explorations of my inner thoughts, scroll now.

i’ve been wondering all year what significance this is year will have for me. the pressure on myself to do well is almost crippling, can we all say self-sabotage? However, there have been some healthier attempts to try and make this year “work” for me. Regardless of the roller-coaster like world that is ThesisLand, i have attempted to stay in touch with where i am on the ride.

One thing i’ve picked up over the last few years is that i go out-of-control most when i’m not keeping a check on myself. All of my most regretable experiences have occured while drinking at times where i was too busy, too involved to spend time with myself. Knowing that i couldn’t afford to be off the rails for any extended period this year, i would jokingly tell everybody that i was running away to become a hermit. And i thought that is what would be required.

However, i’ve noticed that wasn’t what was required. Isolation isn’t what i needed, focus was.

This anagnorisis was spurred on by a re-occuring card that kept popping up in my tarot readings.

From Learn Tarot:
On the Eight of Pentacles we see a young man who is hammering away at a coin. He has finished six and has another coin to go. It is clear that he is in the middle of a project that absorbs all his attention. He’s isolated himself from others (the town in the background) in order to concentrate. In this scene we see the essential elements of the Eight of Pentacles: hard work and attention to detail.

This card often implies a time of great diligence and focus. It advises you to hammer away at the business of the moment, whether a work project, family difficulty, personal goal or unpleasant duty. Sometimes blessings fall into our laps to be enjoyed. Other times we must put out great effort to obtain them. The Eight of Pentacles represents moments when you must give 110%. Just buckle down and do it. Fortunately, this kind of work is invigorating and leads to superb results. The labor of the Eight of Pentacles is deeply satisfying and productive.

The Eight of Pentacles can also symbolize the impulse to learn – to broaden horizons (to use an old-fashioned term). Sometimes we need to develop new skills. We do research, dig out facts or search for expertise. The Hermit is looking for inner knowledge. The man on the Eight of Pentacles seeks external knowledge – the how and why of the material world.

This card can also show the need for meticulous attention. People who are painstaking are often dismissed as nit-pickers, but their extra effort ensures everything is as it should be. It’s a matter of caring – taking the time to check the little details. Now is not the time to be slipshod or casual. Look for errors, and tie up loose ends. The key to success is an extraordinary effort. Whatever your task, the Eight of Pentacles tells you to give it your all in every way.

i couldn’t say it better myself.

Most days I add to an ever growing list of things I should’ve done or worse should’ve done differently. While I certainly added a few to List A today, I managed to cross a few off from days gone by. Of those I managed to put a thin red line through today, most I shall allow to go undocumented (as my irregular dentist visit really doesn’t warrant extended analysis, although I can’t prevent a short aside about the incredible powers of rhetoric operating in this country that has somehow explained the mouth out of the body. How else could we have ended up with a health care system that excludes access to basic dentistry?).

However, it seems appropriate that I reflect on a saga long forgotten, as I’ve finally had reason to contact the person most affected by the controversy and have had the chance to clear the air. In reflecting, she also highlighted that it was an enormous learning experience, and so in that vein, I open a stale wound in order to draw out what I learned from the experience.

I am assuming that anybody stumbling upon this blog already knows some basic personal information:

1. I spent many years treading water working for my school’s marketing arm in numerous joints;
2. that prior to treading water, I spent a few years thrashing around in baby pool of student activism trying not to drown in machinery of the degree factory that is higher education in Australia;
3. that amidst all the trashing I managed displace my body on exchange and got swept up into a radical arts collective: cease and desist.

Now these three narrative strands form a solid braid around Diversity Week this year. A friend of mine Signorina L, was invited to curate a show. Much of my work revolves around issues of gender and that being the theme; I was asked to participate (Strand c desperate to participate in any exhibition won out over Strand b’s concerns about the political appropriateness of a week predicated on shallow celebratory discourses of difference).

The internal compromise I thought I had reached at this point though was overturned when I discovered my school’s choice to open the event and the exhibition: DeSEN. After registering dissent, about this decision, the c+d collective met for the first time in years and decided to produce a work. In our mind we had wanted to provide information and awareness about this public figure who was invited to represent Diversity at the university by alerting viewers to some of the information that had been put on the public record. So while realizing that the ideas behind Diversity Week probably couldn’t sustain such radical difference of opinion we thought we could at least provide enough information for people to start questioning what ideas it could sustain. 

What we thought was rather a modest and discrete object of dissent emerged quickly to cause an enormous furore.

This all emerged the Thursday prior to the exhibition opening when Signorina L innocently discussing her excitement with event organizers about the quality of the exhibition mentioned the true diversity lurking behind the veneer of well behaved art. This resulted in ceased (spokesperson for the c+d collective) receiving a phone call from a senior university bureaucrat, (RightCat) saying that while the school’s president refused to censor the work, if the work was hung he would cancel the invitation for DeSEN to open the whole event and that would leave 40 Disabled Artists with nobody to open their exhibition, some of whom had life threatening illnesses and this would be their only opportunity to exhibit their work.

Rather a hard ball to throw when nobody had even seen the work. Being caught by surprise that old first stage of our collective adaptive response kicked in and ceased began to fight. Pointing out the hypocrisy of limiting student’s abilities to engage in discussion on a week designed to celebrate our Diversity, which one would assume should flow through to opinion. To which RightCat questioned how would ceased react if she invited him to a party simply for the party to ridicule him. Neurons now firing in random directions, he countered that indeed he would feel similar to when being forced to endure homophobic graffiti in the toilet every time he used a cubicle at the University. RightCat attempted to clarify the metaphor by specifying it was a private party, to which he politely declined the invitation and pointed out there was nothing private about criticizing a public figure during a public forum, but the cat was trapped in her own metaphor.

He decided better to move for an adjournment and consult with Signorina L overnight.

After much discussion and electronic relays Signorina L and the collective decided it best to agree to removal of the work until DeSEN was off campus. The work was never intended to be about DeSEN rather raise awareness amongst students about issues public representatives put on the public record supposedly in our name. RightCat of course snaps up this little SnappyTom and for a few brief hours resolution provided a moment of clarity.

Approximately two hours later RightCat calls ceased to inform him that the school’s president has reconsidered and decided to call DeSEN directly. DeSEN was now insisting that the offending work be hung or else she would refuse to open the show and as RightCat was quick to remind ceased that would leave 40 disabled artists without their one opportunity for a show. This time the pressure was too much and ceased, who’d spent the intervening hours in tears, confessed he couldn’t make a decision on the spot (plus he really needed to run this by the collective).

Hopefully, the previous 700 words have provided an interesting context in which to understand this image.

I have to include here that my favourite anecdote from this saga is that while sitting in the postgrad room first year students waiting in the corridor were heard musing over what in hell could be so bad that it had to be removed from a University gallery space.

All these words seem at odds with four little 10×15 hand coloured iconic photos with badly Photoshopped faces of a public figure.

But that’s the world of images, words never seem quite at ease with them.

ps: sorry folks, links to images will be fixed once i regain access to my server…

i’ve been skipping roll call of late.

i was never one for marking my attandance — leave that for the archivist, i say.

So there is no evidence of my existence. This universe refuses to mark my place. The only trace i leave is held in the minds of those i entertain. As such, there are currently traces on almost every continent as we speak, but not a single ex marks the spot.

——————
To come at things from another direction, ThesisLand has been hell, mostly. It’s like a rollercoaster, as you approach the end the ups and downs are simulatneously streching and contracting. So, when things are good there’s weight behind that feeling, there’s concrete ideas and partially emerged products of real benefit. As well when things don’t look so shiny there’s the full weight of the ocean pressing against your frail body and you’ve been swimming for so long there’s no red and gold flag to guide your return.

Perhaps the abscence of my guides contributes to this sinking feeling. Never have i approached such a formidable goal post, one that doesn’t have a victory march already mapped. My mind is unable to comprehend anything beyond October 29. 

i would like the terrain of this sprint surveyed, prior to the starting gun being shot, but past survivors tell me that no two races are the same and i will just have to watch my steps.

i’ll attempt to dispatch the odd missive, but please go gentle if they’re delayed in the post.

Do people in your life keep opening conversations with the line “Do I know you?” Does you best friend or lover leave you wondering where you’d seen that face before?

My Heritage with their new face recognition interface may just have the answer for you…