tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-129338932024-03-07T19:36:29.481-08:00webvoyeurTales of blood and deception (interspersed with large amounts of boring autobiography). Read at your peril!Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.comBlogger149125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-26554305245858409162009-05-28T19:09:00.000-07:002009-05-28T21:58:24.381-07:00Warsaw (from memory)Warsaw is a city where you feel constantly exposed. Perhaps this sensation is a hangover from viewing old aerial photographs of the city after the war, the ruined buildings poking out of the rubble with their entrails exposed, miles and miles of them, layers of history obliterated in a few months. People say that it is one of the few cities in history to undergo such systematic destruction that it consequently lost its soul. Or perhaps it comes from the width of the streets, made for the passage of tanks and marching armies. The boulevards of Warsaw could host an unforgettable car chase if not for the inhibiting factor of traffic gridlock at most hours of the day. Perhaps it is the bulk of the Palac Kultury i Nauki looming over the city, the building which Stalin gave to the Poles in the fifties. It has been endlessly maligned but I reserve an affection for it as the site of many cinematic escapades and tete-a-tetes (tetes-a tete?), a place to view and review Warsaw on every visit. (Click <a href="http://www.hum.au.dk/ckulturf/pages/publications/mz/architect.htm">here</a> if you want to read more about 'the Palace's unique ability to encode and compel the changing constructions of individual and collective narratives of Polish identity.' )<br /><br />It is this sense of exposure which makes the boltholes that much more attractive where they can be found. One of these is a bar known to me only as 'the kurwidołek' (vulg., 'place where there are prostitutes'), within a block or two of Marcin's old apartment building on Ulica Hoza. It is a dim-lit place, presided over by a pockmarked, long-haired barman who looks as though he has been taking lifestyle advice from Keith Richards. The walls are draped (in memory if not in fact) in purple velvet. It is a place without windows, entirely divorced from external reality, which closes when everybody goes home. It has the ambience of someone's loungeroom, with couches strewn about and such limited visibility that you can only see the person you came with, and others recede to shapes in the gloom. In this womblike space love affairs grow (including mine), watered by vodka, and sometimes die for lack of sun.<br /><br />These are my twin impressions of Warsaw: the secret city, with its renewed soul, its lovers and drunks and whores, and the wide-open city made for constant surveillance. It's easier to pronounce like this from a distance, where the detail doesn't interfere.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-8332210196648908542009-05-27T15:32:00.001-07:002009-05-28T21:59:45.601-07:00Luisa Helen FreyToday I read of the death of Luisa Frey, whose blog I have followed for the past couple of years, admiring her discipline, enjoying her love for S. and passion for words, appreciating her honesty. Her life has touched mine, gently, obliquely, from the other side of the world. Now her death touches me too. I am thinking of S., who must be living a nightmare that defies imagination.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-26655771859099162652009-04-08T15:46:00.000-07:002009-05-27T15:31:54.848-07:00Reading Czeslaw Milosz, looking for the keys to the Slavic soul, I find instead something more complicated. I find myself understanding for the first time that religion matters, and that the ferocious battles of the Enlightenment (science vs religion, God vs nature, empiricism vs metaphysics) have left their mark on my own mind. I have never bothered to consider religion in any way- I have always thought that the discussion is over and that it's entirely beside the point. The things which Christianity provided- a sense of the centrality of human beings in the universal scheme, a sense of wonder- seem to me to be perfectly possible without God.<br /><br />It turns out that my atheism is not a straightforward inheritance from my parents, bolstered by my own adult tendency to empiricism. In fact I am heir to these ancient struggles, and my currents of thought have roots in a time long before my conception.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-12785476596436104542009-03-26T15:16:00.000-07:002009-04-02T20:28:09.527-07:00New Zealand againSome months later, and the details have faded before I have managed to record them here. What's left is a distillation of selected highlights. (What this means is that although I think I can remember every meal we ate, place we slept and person we spoke to, I'm not going to inflict it on my readers).<br /><br />Coming down to The Gates of Haast from the pass through a drenched vertical landscape thunderous with the descent of water, steep walls rising on either side. It is gloomy and excessively green, vegetation crawling on every surface. We stop to let our brakes cool and take some photos but the strange chlorophyll light won't allow itself to be captured: the pictures are saturated with brightness in some parts, sodden with darkness in others. The air is so wet that I can feel its damp touch on my skin. When we're finally disgorged into the grassy, innocuous flatlands, it's a relief.<br /><br />Waking up to see the white flanks of a mountain that had been cowled in cloud all afternoon finally revealing itself, and riding all morning beside blue-green rivers. Around every corner another peak slides into view. A car passes us with a trailer full of dead deer: there is dew caught in their fur and the inert bodies jig slightly as the trailer sways on a bend.<br /><br />Riding all day in the rain, with nowhere to stop for 60 km except the Copland Bus Shelter. We set our sights on it for 40 km but when we arrive find it infested with sandflies. We eat a muesli bar, standing, and converse with some malodorous hikers who have just traversed the Alps from Mount Cook.<br /><br />The first sight of the tongue of Fox Glacier, protruding down through the rainforest from its mist-veiled neve. We walk up from the carpark with our heavy boots and woollen socks dragging at the end of our legs. When we step out onto the ice, everything is suddenly different. The temperature drops 10 degrees and the light shifts from green to blue-white. The crampons even necessitate another way of walking, feet flat to the ground, biting into the ice and requiring a slight wrench to free them. There are layers of ash in the glacier that have blown across the Tasman from our own domestic bushfires. I stand on the surface, eroded like limestone into crevasses and strange peaks, listening to the water run in its invisible channels and feeling fragile and organic .<br /><br />For a while after returning, I see things in my world I have never seen before. I read the placards scattered along Canada Bay describing estuarine ecology and the mechanics of mangroves I pay attention to a (very large) sandstone house near Tarban Creek that I have been riding past every day for years and have never noticed. This new vision lasts for a couple of weeks before it is eroded by familiarity and I am back in my old mental landscape, blinded by routine to everything around me.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-77197795040226508292009-02-24T13:40:00.000-08:002009-02-24T14:00:59.415-08:00Queenstown-Lake Hawea: 3 JanWe started to ride early, up the valley to Arrowtown, sun shining, birds singing, traffic mercifully light. After an hour or so of riding my ankle was still intact (to my great relief) so I took 2 ibuprofen and we proceeded to the Crown Range Road. Followed around 20 km of climbing , watching the snowy peaks slowly emerge all around us as we got higher and higher, trying to ride in a straight line and keep our wheels on the ground during the final near-vertical kilometre. On the top there was a tortured tree and a little plaque naming the pass as the highest (paved) road in NZ, and a road sign warning traffic that the next 40 km would be downhill (!!!!!!).<br /><br />And so it was. Initially a steep drop through a lot of switchbacks, crossing the Cardrona River 12 times in its infant stages. Then down down down, all the way to the lakeside at Wanaka. Another spectacular blue wind-whipped lake, surrounded by more steep young mountains. We weren't tired yet so continued on to Lake Hawea where we spent the night listening to the (head) wind blowing through the trees around the tent and hoping for a meteorological miracle to bring us a southerly in the morning.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-33742255060697790482009-02-23T12:52:00.000-08:002009-02-24T13:40:45.790-08:00Queenstown 1-2 JanAgain woke up feeling like hit by a truck, a sensation similar to jetlag but in the body rather than the head. Before too long we had an argument and decided to avoid each other for the afternoon. Having the advantage of not being hungover, I went walking beside the lake, and took a thousand photos of the scenic peaks, blue choppy water and the steamboat beating across to Walter Peak farm on the other side of Lake Wakatipu (it later transpired that Marcin had gone one better, descending into a glass-walled tank below the water to observe the incredible diving ducks).<br /><br />I had a pain in my Achilles which got worse and worse as the day progressed- by evening I felt like a zombie with a sports injury. I hobbled around town feeling more and more paranoid that I wouldn't be able to ride. It rained all day. When we got up the next day it was raining again and we decided not to go anywhere. We went up the mountain during the day (rain) and I limped around complaining and generally ruining our fun. In the evening we ate dinner with a Dutch couple who were also cycling - one was a doctor and we talked about his doctoring days in Zambia and I got some free medical advice about my ankle. Early to bed, me with my foot on the pannier as a belated attempt at elevation of the afflicted limb.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-7495321765925992322009-02-21T11:56:00.000-08:002009-02-22T13:51:52.858-08:00The Otago Rail Trail-29-31 DecWake up in Middlemarch and do some tyre-switching, and set off around 11. It is burning hot with a huge sky- the countryside is barren and shadeless and looks like a steppe or a prairie. We ride and eat, eat and ride. In the middle of the afternoon we nap by a stream in a shaded gorge. There is an insistent piping sound and I wonder, half-asleep, if there is an exotic flightless bird in the vicinity. After a while it becomes clear that it's a lost lamb looking for its mother. These (and rabbits) are still the only animals we've seen.]<br /><br />There are plaques every couple of kilometres beside the trail and we stop conscientiously to read them all. Thus we learn about the Taieri Pet, a cloud formation created when the north-westerly blows up over the Rock and Pillar Range, piling the cloud in towering layers. We also learn that the steam trains were liable to set the countryside on fire with sparks from their engine-boxes, and that barrels of water were kept near wooden bridges so that any passersby could douse them if they caught alight.<br /><br />In the evening we start to ride again. About ten or fifteen kilometres from Ranfurly we stop at a pub to fill our water. There are unfriendly signs on the door threatening cyclists who try to have a surreptitious piss and get unauthorised liquids. It turns out to be the last preserve of the local bogan species and we have a beer and watch them come and go in their trucks, red swollen men and little dessicated women, all with fags hanging from their hands.<br />We sleep in the campground at Ranfurly. Because the sun goes down so late, it's hard to stay awake until dark. We are fed, watered and reading <em>The New Yorker</em> (told you it had a lot of words) by sunset.<br /><br /><br />I wake up in the morning feeling like I've been hit by a truck. Probably the heat the previous day. We pack everything anyway, choke down some unadorned porridge then go to the supermarket for real breakfast. When we start riding I feel OK. It's cooler than the previous day but the wind is picking up again. We cross the pass and also the 45th parallel, halfway between the south pole and the equator. From there we are suddenly riding downhill all the way to Omakau and our second night's camp.<br /><br />In the campground we meet a scientist working on discovering the causes of diurnal changes in diameter of pine trees. He is utterly incapable of small talk so we discuss stem diameters and dendrographs for a while. There are also 2 kids riding the trail with their parents- their mother tells us that there's a no-whingeing policy, but when the going gets tough they get a piece of chocolate every 3 kilometres. Nobody seems to have informed them about stranger danger so they pop up every few minutes asking questions- what do you eat for energy? Where do you come from? Why do you have accents? When are you catching the boat to Wellington. Camped beside us are another family from a different demographic (the kids have mullets and have to carry all their own gear) who keep to themselves and strenuously ignore us when we try to talk to them.<br /><br /><br />In the morning the scientist is up first- he sleeps in a coffin-like bivvy bag and has no incentive to linger in bed. We are also up early and eat a huge plate of leftover pasta before setting off. We cover the 30 km to Clyde a bit sadly, stopping every 10 seconds to take photos. There are fields of purple flowers everywhere and we pass the smallest post office in NZ. We try to buy a postcard to send Ange and Renee but nobody's around. It's still more or less downhill, beside a river now so that the enormous sky is held at bay. At the very end of the trail we see a family who's just started riding and have a puncture already. That's the only puncture we've seen on the whole trail.<br /><br />At the end of the trail we stop and eat all the food we have left- cheese sandwiches, nutella, some tomatoes that have seen better days. We sit on the damp grass, eating and looking at the road we're going to take- it's uphill and the traffic is heavy, and we both get depressed.<br />The hill is brief but the traffic is real. After 3 days on a carless track we're used to being kings of the road and aren't keen on sharing. Also, there is a raging headwind that sweeps occasional showers towards us. We labour up the valley towards Cromwell beside a milky-blue dam, half considering stopping there for the night. The next town after that is Queenstown, another 50 km away.<br /><br />We eat in Cromwell and I buy a tube to replace the one that exploded. It's still early so we decide to keep going, thinking that we can spend NY Eve in Queenstown living it up. The wind is still raging and we stop to buy cherries just outside town-we can't carry them so we just sit there next to the road in the eddies of dust and eat half a kilo of them. Then off we go.<br /><br />The road is narrow and rather busy. We're riding in a gorge with a speedy river the same colour as the dam roiling along beside us. It starts raining but there's nowhere to stop and put on our rain gear so we just keep going. There's about 20 cm of chewed-up shoulder we can claim as our own, and it takes all our concentration to stay on the white line and keep off the road, while also avoiding falling over the railing into the gorge. The shoulder is populated with the damp, decomposing bodies of stoats which we ride over every few kilometres.<br /><br />It keeps on raining. Apart from the lack of space, the cycling isn't bad-the elevation drawing made it look like an endless uphill but it's not the case. Coming out of the gorge there is a break in the traffic and we ride along for a few peaceful minutes through the misty hills with the hawks circling above us. We stop for 3 minutes to eat our emergency cake but have to start agan because we start to freeze.<br /><br />On and on through the rain. We arrive, finally, in Queenstown in the evening, and find there's nowhere to stay except the rugby field. We desperately don't want to sleep there and eventually find a place in the campground, though not without considerable risk to our marriage. We find a bungalow which is not being used, and pitch our tent on the verandah. It's dry there, secluded, and we have a view down over the lake and the peaks of the Remarkables (they are).<br />After dinner we sit on our verandah with a bottle of wine, not saying much. Marcin suggests we go into the tent and talk in there. Within 10 seconds we're both unconscious, and the midnight fireworks barely make an impression.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-76815609779476318162009-02-03T13:41:00.000-08:002009-02-05T19:16:39.802-08:0028 December<div><br /><div><div>Finally left Dunedin after a long morning- coffee, further gossip, farewells. Marcin hadn't smoked for three days and when we stopped to provision in the city I begged him to let me buy some nicotine patches, but to no avail.<br /></div><div>We didn't really start riding until midday, and consequently when difficulties started it was in the hottest part of the day. At the foot of the first (highly vertical )climb, a puncture, which we repaired in the blazing sun because we were unwilling to lost the 10 m of altitude we'd gained so far. When we replaced the tube and pumped up the new one, it exploded. We had a heated discussion about the cause of the detonation- I say it's defective gauge on the new pump, leading to over-inflation, Marcin says it's the edge of the valve-hole cutting into the valve stem. We gave up the discussion when it became clear nobody was going to back down.<br /></div><div>On the second attempt, success, but I rode off very gingerly, expecting another eruption at any minute. We continued climbing, in the heat, with a headwind. 6km/ hour. The roadside sheep ogled us with barely concealed amusement. There was nowhere to shelter and we kept riding without stopping except to consult our map. An unspoken mantra of <em>how far now?</em> hung in the air.</div><br /><div></div><div>Finally we arrived at Clarkes Junction, went into the pub and ate 2 stacked plates of salt and saturated fat while the publican's daughter, who looked about 8, conscientiously smeared the tables with a damp cloth. After this Marcin miraculously recovered and we set off again on the 'downhill' portion to Middlemarch, which still included a couple of significant uphills. It was getting late and the trickle of cars slowed- we had the whole great grassy desolate expanse to ourselves. We photographed ourselves silly and finally descended to arrive in Middlemarch just on dusk, and took a hut in the campground.</div><div><br /> </div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnxkc8dkLQUpJn9nhdLbckIYtZJNPu7TF11X3htkO8Vo-YIQAOLdHfTyNzebTPlVtC8WzCrfH1JaY76jcxCaYfcOakbm92DP94DB4Uw7UZLavtPOlmPJfGMWLilCmia9K_N5Y/s1600-h/IMG_2766.JPG"></a> </div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBnxkc8dkLQUpJn9nhdLbckIYtZJNPu7TF11X3htkO8Vo-YIQAOLdHfTyNzebTPlVtC8WzCrfH1JaY76jcxCaYfcOakbm92DP94DB4Uw7UZLavtPOlmPJfGMWLilCmia9K_N5Y/s1600-h/IMG_2766.JPG"></a> </div></div></div>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-78823382891937398782009-02-01T13:46:00.000-08:002009-02-03T13:41:02.419-08:00Boxing DayAnother early morning. I would sell my mother for another 2 hours sleep. We drift through the empty city to the bus stop and load our gear onto the bus to Dunedin, and proceed through alternating tropic and arctic temperatures through the morning. (The driver is cold. He turns on the heating. When it reaches 35 degrees he gets hot. He turns off the heating. When it reaches 15 degrees he gets cold. He turns on the heating. And so on.) The country is flat, fenced and utterly tame. The only things that stand out from the landscape are huge box hedges grown along the sides of the fields as windbreaks. Marcin says <em>Ahh... the land of the long green tree</em>, and we laugh halfway to Dunedin. I don't feel a moment's regret for not riding on this road: the traffic is heavy, the wind howls, and the cultivation is relentless.<br /><br /><br />From Dunedin we ride up to Sawyers Bay along the harbour rimmed with petrol storage tanks and industrial buildings emitting a questionable smell. My friend Ange and her partner Renee have just bought a house up there, with a soft green lawn and a spectacular vegetable patch which sends me into the first of several pastoral reveries. We sleep in their guest room in the most beautiful bed in the world. I tell Marcin that we should consider acquiring this sort of linen for our guests and he says <em>We should have it for ourselves, you show off pony</em>.<br /><br />We graze their Christmas leftovers for several hours and then they take us down the peninsula to see the penguins. The sun doesn't set until about 10:00 at this time of year so we have plenty of time. They show us a sheep farm where you can go and choose a sheep to produce you a custom made jumper. You pick the colour and the type of wool and they send you the jumper and pictures of the naked sheep as proof of its provenance. At the end of the peninsula there is a car park perched on windy cliffs, with an albatross colony (the only mainland one in the world) on the outcrop above and the sea beating on the rocks below. We see some albatross and smell some seals (they stink like an old can of tuna which has been left in the fridge for a week). Renee knows everything about the plants and animals in the area- she is a marine biologist working for the Dunedin City Council, and tells us that young female sea lions often turn up on the beaches around Dunedin where they go to escape rape by romantically inclined males.<br /><br /><br />Then we settle down to wait for the penguins. As sunset approaches a small crowd gathers, including a pair of Americans who cannot shut up and commentate every vacuous thought that goes through their heads. We are waiting to see the disturbance of the water which marks the approach of the penguins as they come ashore in a 'raft'- it is a windy evening and every ruffle on the water is discussed extensively by the Americans. The penguins (more cautious than David Attenborough would have us believe) wait until the sun has set to come ashore. They waddle hesitantly out of the scrub, freezing every time a flash goes off or somebody shifts and mutters. It takes them over an hour to be convinced it's safe enough to come out of the bushes. They move slowly up to their burrows and we start to hear the happy sounds of homecoming.<br /><br />Anyway, the whole process was very long for someone who has watched too many nature documentaries and expects penguins to leap out of the water and race heedlessly for home. More like the 'making of ' extra, where you see how long it really takes to film five beautiful minutes of animal activity (eg three years in a row of failed snow leopard expeditions to the Himalaya before getting any footage at all.)Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-79912120551017024072009-02-01T12:48:00.000-08:002009-02-01T13:46:29.621-08:00New Zealand New ZealandChristmas Day 2008.<br /><br />We get up at 5 in the morning. Marcin trips the first crisis by pretending not to have the keys to get back into the house after the first load (I really don't have any). I narrowly avoid killing him in the staircase while he smirks down at me in glee.<br /><br />Even the taxi driver is stunned into silence at the obscenity of the hour. At the airport it transpires that our luggage is overweight. This is mainly because I have decided to pack all my warm clothes and my sleeping bag in my hand baggage in the event that we crash land in the mountains, survive, and need to keep warm while waiting for rescue. This means I can't use the usual packing technique of compressing all the heavy things into a leaden but innocuous-looking carry-on bag, leaving the checked baggage within the weight limit. Marcin's smirk (from this angle it must look charming rather than invite a homicide) convinces the woman at the check-in to give us a discount.<br /><br />Now we have to wait because in my overcaution we have arrived 2 1/2 hours before the flight actually departs. There is a lego display of a wind farm and propellor-driven boats which you can activate by blowing into a hole in the glass case that contains them, and we spend a long time examining them- the model builder has gone into great detail and included a lego diver being approached by a lego shark, some lego sunbathers on deck being watched by a voyeur through lego binoculars, some lego barnyard animals grazing around the base of the lego wind turbines. Then we buy a copy of <em>The New Yorker</em> which is so dense that it lasts us almost the entire trip. Such profligacy with words is unheard-of, even in the weekend magazine. There is an article about what makes a good teacher that rests on an intricate analogy with choosing a quarterback (apparently it's as impossible to predict when promise will fulfil itself on the gridiron field as it is in the classroom); the first thousand words are about football, and only then is the real point of the article introduced.<br /><br />On board the plane, we forget all about <em>The New Yorker</em> , because we have been upgraded to business class! That means real cutlery, remote-controlled seats, a personal conversation with the hostess. I spend most of the flight with my feet sticking out in front of me, marvelling that they don't even come close to the next seat back. Marcin listens to a voice recording of a book about building your wealth. By the time we land it feels like we have already lived several extra unexpected lifetimes, as early risers, business class travellers and readers of the <em>New Yorker</em>.<br /><br />In Christchurch airport there is a bike assembly area. It is located right next to the smokers area so we assemble our bikes in a cloud of carcinogenic smoke. We go into the city and eat something and meet 2 cyclists who have just finished their trip. In the evening we go and drink beer with them and they give us their cycling guide and their address in Singapore. By the end of the day we have spoken to more strangers in 24 hours than in the past 6 months combined.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-20916176259206096972008-11-14T17:12:00.000-08:002008-11-28T19:31:11.936-08:00The American elections are over, the end of another piece of theatre which has held me in thrall for a number of weeks. McCain, arms windmilling, eyes popping, little engine whining against the ever-steepening gradient to victory. Obama, cool as a cucumber, bringing his hand down emphatically on the podium and swearing to change the world as we know it. It is so absorbing that I overcome my customary squeamishness and listen open-mouthed to the blame and hope and promises that fly through the air, faster and faster, a manic tornado of claim and counterclaim which is suddenly doused by the climactic election of the first black American president of all time.<br /><br />According to the rules of Hollywood, the story ends here. Disadvantaged (but virtuous and intelligent) black man overcomes all odds to reach the pinnacle of success. Violins swell. The crowd goes wild. Tears well in the eyes of disadvantaged black man as he accepts their homage. The credits roll.<br /><br />Reality, on the other hand, is an affront to our sense of narrative. The story is over. Good has prevailed. This is the problem with politics: the frenzied leadup to elections leaves everyone with a hangover.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-24070454421803064742008-10-25T13:47:00.000-07:002008-11-14T17:01:55.239-08:00At the theatre after some years of relying on the cinema for my visual stimulus, I am shocked by the three dimensional bodies of actors rotating and breathing in front of me. Cinema is a flat world swelled only by music, where everything you see is included for a reason, and body parts are amputated and blown up on the screen as ciphers of feeling. The camera zooms in on hands, twisting in nervousness or reaching for a gun or clasping one another in fear or desire or an attempt not to fall from the 25th floor. Eyes, lips, heaving breasts fill the field of vision as the violins howl. Each body part carries such a surfeit of meaning (apparently Hugh Jackman's beard had its own separate screen tests for <em>Australia)</em> that the sight of an entire organism could overwhelm the viewer completely. All that exists is the piece in the frame.<br /><br />At the theatre, on the contrary, there they are, living human anatomies, the kneebone connected to the thighbone connected to the hipbone. Nothing is obscured, nothing is irrelevant. You can see their eyes and feet all at once; their fronts have backs, their tops have bottoms. The character is built slowly, in the thrust of a hip, the motion of a wrist, a shifty sideways glance. The bodies must only move as the person they are pretending to be, in a dance equal parts freedom and constraint.<br /><br />At first I find them oddly unconvincing: they are too much on display, they cannot possibly be anything but themselves, clumsily faking another set of mannerisms, another life. But look what happens as the show proceeds: I am drawn in, slowly but completely, to this imaginary world, to the orbit of these three bodies. It is only a story, but a story lived in every muscle and sinew of the three men on stage, who must surely forget who they are for the duration of the show, who must surely <em>cease to be</em> who they are until they are recalled to themselves by the applause of the audience.<br /><br />It is pure magic. The human body, unairbrushed, unmade up, unrepentantly flesh, is more lovely and more expressive in its entirety than it could ever be when decomposed on screen.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-29577461382214933842008-10-22T12:33:00.000-07:002008-10-25T13:46:53.266-07:00Enough about the crazy right, what about the crazy left? Politics in the (Irish) pub on Friday night, a talk about Iran and Palestine (War or Dialogue?). A quick perusal of the internet reveals a large amount of cyber-bile directed at the two speakers, one of whom sweats heavily and stumbles over his words, the other honey-tongued and welling with smooth private-school confidence. The crowd is what is really interesting- mostly over 50, and all deranged to various degrees. I have the impression that they are desperately seeking their 15 minutes of fame behind the microphone in question time. None of them actually asks a question, using up their allocated minute on establishing their credentials to be there in the first place. <em>I am from Middle East, I am an academic who...., I have been to the middle east etc etc etc . </em>There is a man in a beret (yes, a beret) seated at the back of the room who devotes himself to drinking and heckling in the time-honoured tradition of beret-wearers. There is bad feeling, resentments and general pettiness- more like a 2UE talkback session than a gathering of intellectuals, which is how they bill themselves. I feel simultaneously disappointed and vindicated: as with hippies, left wing intellectuals are no more virtuous than anyone else.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-41581400814898537872008-10-09T15:46:00.000-07:002008-10-09T16:10:54.179-07:00A long weekend of good feeling and alcohol in the City of Melbourne, reconstituting lost pieces of myself that reside in the memories of Marcelle and Brendan Renkin. The week starts with initial apprehension- Brendan and his friend Damien are in Sydney. There is old love and hurt feelings, and the possibility of awkwardness. For some reason this awkwardness doesn't materialise, as it sometimes does, in defensive sparring and mockery: we drive to Melbourne together in harmony, talking about Australian identity, about pedophilia, laughing at the contraband foodstuffs in the boot that Brendan's brother has acquired by questionable means and sent south to his numerous relatives. Marcin and Brendan talk about Russian politics. I watch them with proprietorial pride- such good boys, look how they get along. They turn out to have other things in common besides their romantic involvement with me. Look how modern, how mature we all are, driving towards Melbourne without discomfort or envy, discussing the nature of the universe and smiling at each other. As I write this I realise it sounds as though we are driving towards some horrible denoument, but we aren't. Things are simply alright.<br /><br />In Melbourne there are shades of scores of other trips to stay with Marcelle. We giggle for days about nothing much, consume bottles and bottles of booze, dance and drink and eat. We lie in bed and talk to Marita and cuddle her daughter. We go to the shopping centre and buy cheap and hideous Australiana for Marcelle to distribute when she gets back to Panajachel. We finally have time for silence as well as constant jabber.<br /><br />When we leave them on Sunday afternoon I succumb to a terrible feeling of loss which I have not felt since Marcin left me 5 years ago in Awasa. I pine (mainly for Marcelle- I have erected defenses against Brendan long ago) all the way to Albury. It takes several days after returning to Sydney for the good feeling to reassert itself, and I remember leaving them another time, nearly ten years ago when I came back to Australia. It was a definitive separation for me and Brendan, though I didn't really acknowledge it at the time. They drove me to the bus station in Manchester. It was a gritty, grey autumn day, eddies of wind blowing takeaway wrappers and empty plastic bottles around the benches. I kissed them goodbye as they stood there in the turbulent air, and instead of doom and impending loss I felt simply happy to know that somewhere in the world, the two of them existed. Toxic blues eliminated through the usual metabolic processes, I feel the same now.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-61996588700303122472008-09-27T15:22:00.000-07:002008-10-09T15:45:07.187-07:00I am spending this early part of Sunday morning finally learning something about the geography of the United States of America. I have managed to absorb all sorts of stereotypes and iconic landscapes (laconic Texans in sheriff's uniforms, fast talking New York cab drivers, ranchers, pioneers, cult leaders, Indians, snow-capped mountains, bayous, seas of prairie-grass, cactus, casinos, border patrols, slavery, obesity, immigrant dreams and nightmares with firearms), all without having any real idea of the shape of the country. Perhaps that's why there's something about it I don't quite recognise, why the idea of America hasn't put down roots in me the same way the idea of Europe has. When I read American fiction I feel a vague sense of alienation; now that I know which side of the country LA is on, maybe it will disappear.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-50532617640496983392008-09-19T18:29:00.000-07:002008-09-19T18:32:59.663-07:00The summer is here, bringing with it lethargy, nakedness and a strange sensation of bodily nostalgia which manifests as a heaviness in the stomach. I feel fuzzy-headed and disinclined to leave the house. Did I really dream of this all winter?Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-62241083493899386472008-09-10T13:19:00.000-07:002008-09-19T18:42:40.185-07:00At this particular point in time, I am not very interested in the present. I spend half of my mental life projecting myself into the imaginary future, envisioning myself as a happy and assimilated Polish migrant. I don't think very hard about how this will happen or what it entails; instead I think about the feeling of effortlessness that marks life here, a sort of daily absence of friction, and project it onto the half- known landscape of Warsaw. It is partly a feeling of being half asleep, of being entitled to ignore my surroundings because I have absorbed and internalised them. I currently spend my trips to Poland with eyes like saucers, staring around me and straining with the effort of trying to understand how it looks to its inhabitants.<br /><br />The other half of the time is spent in the archives of the past. My current self operates as a sort of didactic historian in these circumstances, unearthing strata of old bitterness and old joy, adjusting her pince nez and poking with her tweezers, muttering <em>that's why....... ahh, it's because...... don't you see? </em>This world is like the land of dreams, where I am both myself but not myself. It is a world which- like the dreamworld-makes sense both currently and retrospectively, in two entirely different ways.<br /><br />The present (at present) is nothing but a zone of synthesis for these forces of history and possibility, a cocoon of routine from which I can safely observe what has been and ponder what might become.<br /><br /><em></em>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-55656190972407863502008-08-11T17:19:00.000-07:002008-08-11T19:46:31.901-07:00I am coming to realise that learning Polish is not the satisfying linear process I had hoped for. Vocab comes and goes, submerging itself when needed and then reappearing at will like an unpredictable hippopotamus. I grope for words that I knew 24 hours ago: the intervention of Anglophone jabber has loosened my tentative ability to talk about tightening a bolt. I am able, by virtue of endless repetition, to ask someone if they have seen Warsaw by the light of the moon, but the words for <em>laundry</em> or <em>lock</em> regularly evade me. Not so <em>automatic baggage locker</em> (bezobslugowa przechowalnia bagazu), which has lodged deep in my left hemispheric cortex despite the very remote likelihood that it will ever be any use.<br /><br /><br /><br />I like the term <em>language acquisition</em> for describing this process. <em>Acquisition</em> is less passive than <em>learning</em>, more of a struggle. It describes the strong sense of ownership for words gained and also the almost physical sensation of clutching after expression. Language acquired is mental ground ceded and finally reconquered; language fought for, language possessed, language deserved. <div></div>Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-90762196166129067612008-08-10T17:48:00.000-07:002008-08-10T18:18:34.980-07:00My revelation of the week is that I have a choice. Memories of primary school provide me with an exemplary case.<br /><br />It is nineteen eighty something. I am friends with Shellee Collett, a girl slightly older than me with long, straw-like blonde hair and a nose that looks like it has been broken right in the middle. It hasn't been- two of her sisters have it too and only the youngest, who metamorphosises mysteriously into a snub-nosed, siren-like changeling as the years proceed, has avoided this inheritance.<br /><br />They come from a farming family and along with the nose the three older sisters also have ample buttocks that my brother claims are perfectly designed to fill a tractor seat. The second sister is in my year and on the first day of school, when she stands in front of the class to be introduced, she has a smear of something orange beside her mouth. I have a mental snapshot of this moment which has somehow escaped erasure from my archives: Lori Collett standing in front of 20 children, with a home cut fringe, a pair of terrified hazel eyes and something unidentifiable caught up in the fine blonde hairs along her upper lip.<br /><br />The details of how I came to be friends with Shellee Collett are lost in the mists of time, but I remember that she had an enviable way of flinging the long blonde hair over her shoulder. She lived with her family in a large farmhouse with a wraparound verandah and took showers instead of baths. I don't think our relationship lasted very long, since I can only remember being inside the house once. In fact, I think it was over in the moment I am going to describe to you.<br /><br />I am sitting with her above the oval, watching the boys playing soccer. There is a row of rose bushes along the embankment where we sit. It is morning, before school starts on a warm day, probably early summer. We are watching the game and I make some forgotten comment on the tomboy girls who have joined in the match.<br /><br />Suddenly she stands. She says, <em>I'm a tomboy too, you know.</em> She flings her hair over her shoulder with a determination I have never seen in her before, and plunges down the hill to join the game. I am burning to follow her, having long harboured my own fantasies about sportive inclusion, but I am far too scared of being mocked or rejected. She is absorbed into the game without comment while I peer down bitterly from amongst the rose bushes and curse my own timidity. From this moment onwards, she is one of the girls who has the right to join in all boyish activity on the school grounds.<br /><br />Twenty five years later, I am finally magnanimous enough to openly admire the tractor-arsed Shellee Collett for this magnificent decisive act. It is possible to simply decide that you want to live a certain way, and do so. This is a lovely possibility and I will bear it in mind from now on.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-17391258685746294322008-07-29T21:22:00.000-07:002008-07-29T21:56:39.113-07:00After a month of susceptibility to every winter germ on the market, the colour has gone out of the world somewhat. I have finally succumbed, admitted that my immune system is unequal to the task of eight hour work days, and made the decision to abandon fiscal caution and spend three days at home. The most beautiful part of these days is the morning sleep. Alone in the bed (a blissful condition), I wallow in the morning sun that pours in through the blinds. I wake and read for a while, drink some tea, sleep again. This sleep is populated with swooping circular dreams which inevitably include the plot device of at least one bicycle theft. It seems that this event has replaced the exam nightmares and concentration camp dreams of my early twenties; as if, entering on the decade of greatest solidity, the most fearful prospect is the loss of material possessions.<br /><br />On this subject: facing unemployment (or underemployment) and the prospect of another six months in the country, I'm forced to meditate on a recent penchant for buying clothes and hoarding money, activities which give me a disproportionate satisfaction. I consume therefore I am. A growing wardrobe renders me a person of consequence.<br /><br />I suspect it all means that regardless of my blessings I feel fundamentally unsafe, and wonder if love and luck carry their own dark burden of fear which cancels out the joy. Ahh, the manic-depressive counterpoint of my third decade- a steady drumbeat of prospective loss shadowing the high hopeful strains of possession.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-85901800858336437912008-07-04T15:13:00.000-07:002008-07-04T15:38:13.535-07:00There's something magical about my weekend rides with Marcin around the city. For him it is still a strange land, and he swivels his head, open- mouthed as a showground clown, taking everything in. We sail lycra- clad through the suburbs, stopping to admire an indoor swimming pool enclosed in a high glass cage and drenched in light, a narrow-edged building wedged onto a street corner like a slice of cheese, a lozenge-shaped house perched on the cliffs looking out over the blue wind-whipped Pacific. We explore the brown, oily reaches of the Parramatta River and find a tree with a strange, thick-skinned bulbous fruit on it; we pick one, stomp on it and poke it with a stick to see what's inside. In the space of a single evening we see a fog sculpture ( emitting an atmospheric hiss and a cloud of steam into a stand of casuarinas in Olympic Park), a crowd of football supporters and a Bangladeshi boy band.<br /><br />The seedy, foul and merely depressing are transformed by his presence into the stuff of adventure. We go to the industrial hinterland around the airport and watch the planes take off. One day we find a mound of dumped oranges near a fruit wholesalers on the ring road sending off an acid smell of mould so strong you can almost see it floating by in a blue haze. In the grass nearby there is a rampant crop of zucchini plants running down to the banks of a malodorous canal. We are democratically excited by both a flock of ibises picking at some kind of biological waste, and a 360 degree water view. <br /><br />Only a particular kind of companion can enable you to understand the wonders of rot and sprawl, smoke stacks and industrial waste, freeways and plastic-littered mangroves. On the occasion of our second wedding anniversary, I can confirm that Marcin Ojrzynski is that kind of companion.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-74339070089002281632008-06-27T14:52:00.000-07:002008-06-27T15:34:22.272-07:00Hypochondria part 2It is not the visible ailments which bother me; the bruises and sore muscles and other afflictions of the limbs and skin. These things affect the levers and coating of the body, and can be looked at, prodded and dismissed. What I am concerned with are the more intimate rebellions of the dark damp places at the core of the body, the sticky internal revolts which cannot be gauged from close examination of the surface. What excrescences may be slowly growing across the blood-flushed surfaces there, what sudden failures of lymph might be occurring, what rampant multiplication of cells? These things are as mysterious to me as the workings of an electric circuit, and thus as prone to sudden and inexplicable breakdown.<br /><br /><br /><br />And so I live in frightening and turbulent times. On the surface, all is calm. I wake in the morning and drink my tea, reading a recipe book, watching the football. Slowly my resentment at being conscious at this obscene hour wears off. I leave the house just before sunrise and pedal by the calm reaches of Canada Bay, all rosy and benign in the pre-dawn light, and over the mouth of the Parramatta River. I am thinking about money, our trip to Asia, a photocopy I have forgotten to make, a book I'm reading. Some days I feel stronger, some less strong. Some days there is wind and some days I need gloves to keep my fingers functioning in the cold. I take a shower, turn on the heater, sit at the computer. I sign some papers, give some advice (they are not orders in this business) and the day is over.<br /><br /><br /><br />Superficially it is an ordinary existence. But there is another life I live where I am struck down day after day with terminal ailments: I poke at my underarms and groin, looking for unexplained swellings, obsessively fingering sore places. I watch myself for forgetfulness or lack of balance which may indicate a tumour of the brain. Any pain or abnormality is magnified into something critical. The internet assists in this; a google search of a single given symptom can provide a thousand unpleasant possibilities. My workmate (unaware of my private preoccupations) says, "Cancer always seems to start in the wet places, doesn't it? The mucous membranes, the lymph nodes, the organs." I shudder and spend the day visualising chaos in my own wet places. Then I wonder what effect the chemical accelerations of anxiety might have on this hidden activity.<br /><br /><br />Neurologically speaking, our brain is not developed enough to allow us to fully conceive of consequences or make rational decisions until we are in our twenties. I am now thirty years old, with a well-formed amygdala that allows me to consider the possibilities for the future, and I am suddenly afraid of dying.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-77320613466704825512008-05-30T14:42:00.000-07:002008-05-30T15:29:18.284-07:00I have been a hypochondriac for my entire life. My first phantom illness was at the age of two, when I developed a mysterious limp which lasted for several months. My parents hauled me around the country to all sorts of different specialists after my mother had watched me like a hawk for some time and realised that I was hobbling consistently and not only when I thought somebody was looking. Family wisdom has it that I was inspired to do this in order to compete for concern and attention with my brother, a year younger than me and sickly from the beginning with chronic diarrhea. The specialists found nothing wrong and the limp eventually passed, leaving me with a slightly shrunken leg and my parents none the wiser. I proceeded onto the usual childhood illnesses, the most memorable being a series of bouts of raging tonsillitis, which brought more concrete rewards in the form of special invalid foods: roast chicken and exotic juices and nectars sold in exclusive one-litre cartons instead of cans or plastic bottles.<br /><br />The next serious imaginary illness developed in my teens. At the age of thirteen, I stopped eating. Anorexia was suspected, but in fact it was a conscious ploy to keep me out of school where I was the current pariah amongst my group of female friends. It's a feat which mystifies me even today: I put myself on strict rations of a cup of milk a day, and stayed home in my nightie getting thinner and thinner. I don't know what eventually convinced me to give it up and go back to school; it might have been the get well card which came from my class, signed by my tormentors in a way that made me believe that all was forgiven. It turned out to be a ruse, because on my first day back at school they followed me into the toilets where they loudly declared that they knew I hadn't<em> really</em> been sick, while I cowered in a cubicle and considered my options.<br /><br />After the uncertain success of this illness, the hypochondria went into abeyance for a while. In my early twenties I developed a few real ailments which seem to have kept me busy over this period: cerebral malaria, cervical dysplasia, a Cambodian parasite which had me projectile vomiting for three weeks, a broken collarbone, anaemia.<br /><br />In the last year or so, the phantom diseases have returned. They always have their basis in a real physical symptom which is then magnified into something terminal, helped along by google-diagnosis and a consciousness that I'm now reaching an age where things really might go wrong.<br />They serve a different psychological purpose than their predecessors, which I didn't really believe in but used as means to an end. Now they form part of an elaborate game of worst scenarios which I have started playing, in order to second guess my own physical vulnerability. If I treat every swollen lymph node as lymphoma, I will always be prepared for the worst. This is a hypochondria for the mature years, and probably the thing which convinces me more than anything else that I am ageing.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-67114632896872561752008-05-07T00:55:00.000-07:002008-05-07T01:11:01.790-07:00The connection between armpits and bloggingToday I caught sight of my winter-pale armpit in the mirror as I tried to remove my cycling shirt and put on a jumper at the same time, and realised that I haven't looked closely at my own organism since the end of summer. This led to an equally unexpected craving to return to the public self exposure of blogging. Maybe the strange bodily secrecy of this time of year can find its counterpoint here.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12933893.post-90370445913823385832008-02-06T23:02:00.000-08:002008-02-15T01:09:30.992-08:00Our first death, a drug overdose. Fergus, blue faced and stiff on a Saturday afternoon. The irrevocable words have reverberated all week: Fergus is dead, Fergus is dead, Fergus is dead. I'm unaccustomed to death, and masticate this pronouncement as I go about my business, needing to be convinced. What is the protocol, in these circumstances? He wasn't my friend. I was paid to know him. Nevertheless, I had a great affection for him- lazy, dishonest Fergus whose collection of pornos gave the lie to the claim that psychiatric medication ruins your libido. Well-mannered Fergus who shoved <em>Cum in my Bum</em> out of sight under his couch cushions when we came into his house. Gentle Fergus, who loved his mother and got upset when she split up with her boyfriend. Fergus who loved movies and good music and wrote short ecstatic poems about the small joys of life- trees and birds and the breath in your lungs.<br /><br />I mourn him in a sneaky and sporadic fashion, listening to Union Station (to which he introduced me), looking at the order of service with his grinning bearded face on it, crying sometimes when there is nobody to challenge my right to do so. I look at our other clients and wonder that they are alive and he is not. Mostly, I just wish it hadn't happened.Rosehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242012721077185548noreply@blogger.com3