Ballet of Agonies

When I was a kid watching videos of huge barrelling waves, I used to dream of being able to freeze time in a way that would leave me free to walk into the maw of the giant tubes and to explore amongst the spray and exploding water. To trace the contours of the almost impossible to surf waves and to find out just how far back the tubes tunnelled into the collapsing swell they had been born from.

This video is astounding, the next best thing to my dream. Watch it. Watch it full screen.

Marvel also at the agonising ballet as the surfers try to stay on top of the water before eventually pirouetting into the all consuming wall of energy…

Meanwhile from the marketing department…

The wrapper of a sweet given to us in a course recently.

Rich in Glucose!

Puzzling the Signs

On Permanence

Photo taken in Honiara

The Lake

My like for Lake George stems from the following:

1. No one else seems to notice it.
2. Something particularly Australian about a lake that’s been dry for years and only recently returned.
3. It’s the closest place to home that feels swallowing and spacious like Australia should.
4. What the clouds and light did.
5. Windmills!

Australia, Decoding the Signs: the Beach

Australia, where even trips to the beach are exercises in managed peril…

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is dead. His arguments were almost always witty, eloquent, and intelligent. And yet they were also often wrong.

Like Danyl I think he was at his most wrong, most pugnacious and most repugnant over Iraq. And yet I think I can forgive all that having heard his thoughts on death.

“It will happen to all of that at some point you’ll be tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party is over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on but you have to leave.”

Will Franzen Set them Free?

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (a review from halfway through the book)

Your parents they fuck you up they do

Your kids – they get to finish you off

This morning I was halfway through Jonathan Franzen’s novel ‘Freedom’, when the penny dropped. The book is the story of a musician, the couple who are his closest friends, and the couple’s children. According to one of the enthusiastic review quotes on the inside cover it is a ‘great American novel’. According to another, it is an ‘indelible portrait of our times’. Maybe. But first and foremost, I realised as I read it earlier under a threatening sky, the book is a horror story. A tale told to frighten the middle-aged.

Dim the lights and contemplate – if you dare – the rapid erosion of the freedom that you doodled day dreams all over in your youth. Ponder uncomfortably the path dependency of relationships and how this allows time to take the small flaws we all have and use them to pry people apart. Squirm as the author shows how spookily easy it is to ruin your kids, and how it will be easier still for them repay the favour. Good politics won’t save your personal life, nor will being well read. The gym and veganism won’t help either. And love and kindness will just as readily lead your deeper into the woods as show you the way out.

However fiendish the characters are in Stephen King novels, at least they live for the most part in cemeteries, or other dimensions, or cottages out along gravel roads in distant woods. Franzen’s demons, on the other hand, are much closer to home – your partner’s lingering silence at breakfast this morning, the preciousness of your five year old. The haunted houses here are our own.

I stopped regularly reading fiction about five years ago. It wasn’t a principled stand to do with the decline of the modern novel or anything like that; rather I was, I think, simply tired (probably right after reading the God of Small Things) of how cruelly most authors treated their characters. I’m misanthropic enough in my way: I despair of humanity as a whole, am mildly frightened and repelled by strangers and somewhat vexed by the many of the people I know,  and yet tell me someone’s story and I can’t help but care about them. Paint it vividly and evocatively and, to be honest, I’m just simply not going to enjoy it when by the final chapter you leave them so broken as to only be able to engage in incest.

I suppose what I should have done when I realised this was research my books a bit before I read them: read only Annie Proulx novels and not her collected short stories, or something like that. But there was a whole heap of non-fiction to read, not to mention the internet, and so I quit.

What about Franzen then, will he lead me back to the world of stories? I’m certainly enjoying devouring a book, having to force myself to put it down, feeling emotionally involved, and possibly learning something at the same time. It’s not a perfect novel, I think, good but not perfect. The characters aren’t always convincing, and I’m not totally sold on the structure. And yet it’s certainly dragged me in.

Ultimately, my fiction reading fate may depend on how many of the main characters get splattered before the sun comes up. If they all end up lifeless husks with their souls sucked out of them then I doubt I’ll be racing to read ‘the Corrections’. On the other hand, if at least a couple manage to emerge into the light of a new day, bent and bloodied, but not broken, then maybe I will.

[Update: Never mind profound questions about the modern novelist, what about the modern reader? Absolutely un-pleasable. No sooner had I got to the end of the book and discovered - to my relief - that the demons are vanquished and that most of the characters live to see the light of day, then by brain kicked in and I'm like hhhmmmm...was pretty, two dimensional, doomed Lalitha anything other than deus ex machina?]

The Giant Hunter

We met our first ever giant hunter in a port town on the island of Malaita. He was a great big man with a tidy beard and short brown hair. He wore clean black t-shirts and a National Geographic hat. He strode about purposefully. We got to talking with him in the dimly lit general store, surrounded by jars of Chinese peanut butter and Indonesian soft drink.

“Hey mate, how’s it going?”

“I am good. How are you?” He spoke deep, purposeful words with a German accent.

“Good. Good. What brings you to Malaita?”

“Giants. I am studying Giants.”

“Oh. You’re an anthropologist. I’m studying political science. Have you collected many legends of giants? I didn’t know giant stories were part of the culture here.”

“No. I am not collecting legends. I am here to study giants.”

“ ”

“ ”

“G-giants. Um, ah, have you seen any yet?”

“No. I am going into the mountains to find them this week.”

“Oh. Um, what are you going to do when you find them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe take some photos.”

“Oh…okay…um…Good luck.”

The next day we headed off to the Langa Langa lagoon in search of answers to electoral questions.

Three weeks later, laden down with data, we clattered back, riding a wheezing old bus. The giant hunting German was there again too. Still walking around with great big strides. Still looking tidy, but also unravelling just a bit, on the way to becoming dishevelled. When he walked by, the guys at the general store joked in a way that suggested they’d situated him as weird. Feeling awkward, I avoided him.

The last we saw of him was on the ship back to Guadalcanal. As we came into berth he descended the stairs from the first class compartment, ignored us, heaved his great big pack, covered with an XXL rain shield, onto his great big shoulders and strode off into the sweaty streets of Honiara.
As he walked away I felt sorry. Great big forlorn strides. I imagined the sorts of sad stories that might send a mildly delusional German man to Western Melanesia in search of creatures that don’t exist. I wondered what would become of him.

And then, for the briefest of moments, I entertained the thought…maybe this wasn’t a tale of delusions at all. Or of a lonely, slightly-odd guy striding in search of apparitions around a lost little tropical island.

Maybe the joke will end up on me and the guys in the store after all. Maybe that pack was filled with film.

Let me know if the National Geographic starts publishing pictures of the ‘Giant Men of Malaita’ any time soon.

Ouch!

An interesting article in the Economist about alternative therapies and the placebo effect.

Giving pretend painkillers, for instance, can reduce the amount of pain a patient experiences. A study carried out in 2002 suggested that fake surgery for arthritis in the knee provides similar benefits to the real thing.

and

Despite the power of placebos, many conventional doctors are leery of prescribing them. They worry that to do so is to deceive their patients. Yet perhaps the most fascinating results in placebo research—most recently examined by Ted Kaptchuk and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School, in the context of irritable-bowel syndrome—is that the effect may persist even if patients are told that they are getting placebo treatments.

! – although I wonder if the weren’t just capturing some form of regression to the mean here?

Iron Bottom Sound

Welcome to the Twentieth Century.

Rain squall over IBS

From 1942 until 1945 the Second World War bashed through the Solomon Islands. Sea battles, land campaigns, dog fights. Tens of thousands dead. So many ships were sunk in the strait between Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands that it’s now called Iron Bottom Sound.

We went snorkelling this morning on the South Western edge of the sound. Swimming in grey, pre-trade wind calm. There’s a wreck on the edge of the beach, a Japanese troop ship bombed full of holes. The hull is worn and rusted now, torn iron giving into the sea; an attraction for divers who clamber through what’s left. It wasn’t the wreck we went to see though. Over the years coral has covered the steel. Grown like flowers. Slender fronds and solid swirls. Fish everywhere amongst the polyps’ sculptures. Colour, shape, movement, colour. Darting, schooling.

We bobbed above it all, low-tech divers peering out of swimming goggles. As we floated, the sun started to filter through the clouds and the grey sea turned to blue. Golden lines of light bounced about. Striped orange characters from Disney movies floated amongst sea anemones and little fish coloured like rainbows watched us from just beyond our reach.

Most war memorials make me uneasy. Too martial and too little remorse. Proud leaders and proud concrete. Yet this morning watching that grave returned to life, I found a war memorial which felt right. The softness of the sea, the patterns of colour, the sway of the swell. The way time was patiently covering the ruins with living things. The fact that Jo and I had dinner with a Japanese friend the other night. How peaceful it was. That’s the way to commemorate war, by growing its alternative.

May your weapons rust.

Star Dust

Three of my all time favourite travel books are by C.S Lewis: The Magician’s Nephew, Silver Chair and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Nowadays, now that I notice these things, the bilious conservatism and the cruelty of Lewis’ religious views make it harder for me to enjoy the Narnia Chronicles, but as a kid – like most of his youthful readers, I suspect – I missed all that, caught up in the stories and the magic. For me, much of that magic came in the unfurling of new worlds. Literal creation in the Magician’s Nephew, especially the scene where Digby and Polly watch from the back of a Pegasus as the world takes shape, and discovery in Silver Chair and Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Reading them now it’s hard to shake the feeling that in the latter two books Lewis, once he’d gotten his obligatory attacks on liberals out of the way, was simply enjoying filling in some of the blanks in the maps of his creation.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader doesn’t have much of a story to it at all really above and beyond travel adventure. Sure there’s the search for the lords but that’s nothing like the existential challenges that the Narnians face in most of the rest of the Chronicles. This was always fine with me — adventures strung together by journey across the sea. It’s pretty much how my own surf travels played out years later.

Unfortunately, the absence of a single evil, or single climatic contest, containing a story was obviously too much for the producers of the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. And so they mangled Lewis’ original tale in the name of creating an overarching foe (the Mist!). I’m aware that movies are never (or only very,very rarely) going to be adequate when weighed up against the internal images and excitement of one’s favourite childhood books, so I had low expectations, but even coming from a low base I struggled to enjoy the film — the travel tale had been replaced by a Story and that didn’t work.

Another favourite travel book of mine is Comet in Moomanland. Once again there’s imagination, and a journey, and big adventure for little people. An added bonus is that I can still read this book as an adult and not feel repelled by the author’s worldview.

In addition to stoking my childhood desire to travel, I’m pretty sure Comet in Moomanland also helped feed my fascination with observatories. A few weeks back we went out to Mount Stromlo to attend an open night of the Canberra astronomy society. Astronomy society members brought their telescopes and the public got to gaze through them. People patiently explained to us what we were looking at but, other than the Moon, the details didn’t stick. Stars galaxies, nebula: pretty distant dots.

We went to a talk too and, as is always the case when I’m reminded of it, the sheer size and age of the universe (or, to put it another way, our own infinite brevity and tininess) left me awed. Best of all though was to learn that all the elements that make up our bodies were themselves born in stars.

If you’ve read Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you’ll remember that in the end Caspian wins the heart of, and gets to marry, Ramandu’s daughter — the daughter of a star. I always thought that — marrying a the daughter of a celestial body — was pretty darn cool in a romantic kindof way.

Cooler still to learn though, that we ourselves have our origins in the stars. Forget about marrying the daughter of a star; we’re all, each and every one of us, our own special, tiny little dot of star dust.

Just a link…

…for myself really: 10 tips on academic writing.

The Friday Affair…

Well, I’ll confess, I chuckled at how awful the song was, and marvelled at the Bob Dylan ‘cover’. Or I did at least until I heard the singer wasn’t really a pop star but actually just a teenage girl propelled to infamy by her parents and a vanity video publishing outfit. After that the chorus of internet jeers started to sound gross.

Anyhow, Charlie Brooker says all this much better than me. And I’m glad to learn there was a happy ending of sorts.

This was the week of the rebellion in Libya and the tsunami in Japan. It’s depressing to think that the thing that came closest to uniting large portions of the Internet over those few days wasn’t human decency but schadenfreude and the opportunity to sound like this guy.

Oh yeah, and for what it’s worth, Friday wasn’t even close to being the worst video of all time. Watch the raining champ…

Brief Thoughts on Doing a PhD

Two XKCD comics handily sum up two of the most prominent aspects of my PhD experience thus far…

The Internet…such a powerful tool…such a powerful distraction.

And

…the challenge of whittling a general academic interest in an area down to something that approximates a viable 3 year study.

Webs

For the first two weeks of the year it rained almost every day. The sky was cluttered with damp, dreary clouds and the air almost cool.

The end of the rain came one morning when, instead of gathering, the clouds gave way to the insistent sun. And from then on it was dry, defying the weather bureau who kept confidently predicting showers. The dry built. Culminating one day with temperatures of nearly 40 degrees and a hot, arid wind that felt like it was blowing from a desert somewhere. And then the whether turned again. Still hot but humid now, with most days ending in booming thunderstorms, purple strokes of lightening and flooded streets.

With it the water brings life. After the rain, the park behind our house fills with what we think are tiny whistling frogs chirping from the tops of trees. Insects too. Our flat is home to a bunch of gangly, spindly house spiders that hunt mosquitoes, moths, and the little black flies that are everywhere now. At night either these spiders, or some secretive cousin of theirs has taken to criss-crossing the flat. Abseiling from ceilings, and sailing across the spaces between walls, trailing thread in their wake. I don’t know why they do it, the single strands can’t possibly catch anything. Maybe they’re safety ropes for arachnid alpinists, or the bungees of base jumping bugs. Either way they’re left waiting for us in the morning, long after their owners have retreated to dark distant corners.

And so the barely awake stumblings of our early mornings are accompanied by gossamer tickles. It’s too fine, and not sticky enough, to be unpleasant. Just an almost intangible aid to awakening, courtesy of the Canberra rains, and everything that flows from them.

Present

For all intents and purposes Christmas day begins on the eastern end of Lyall Bay Beach. It’s not yet 7am but the stretched out summer day is already under way. The water is clear. The sky is clear. The wind is light. The surf is flat. The wave models were wrong. Out on the sand a couple of early risers are walking their dogs. In my car I’m chewing glumly over the absence of waves. No surf, I’m short of sleep, and my arthritic aches are more severe than usual.  Each of these things combining to add to my gloom. Slightly teary (the arthritis does that to me) and topped up with self-doubt, I’m trying to calculate my options. I could go for a swim or a paddle. But neither really seem worth the discomfort of contorting myself into my wetsuit for. So the real choice is going home and keeping mum company while she cooks, or chasing the remnants of the northwest wind swell on the west coast.

I’m good at doubting myself. So I make the decision to head west several times only to have it repealed by something akin to guilt. What sort of man chases waves on Christmas morning? The empty ocean in front of you is a sign, you should go home. It’s at least 10 dollars petrol extra if you go to the west coast. Think about how much money you’ve spent already. Think about the CO2 emissions. Anyhow, the tide’s wrong up there. And you’ll be late home.

Fortunately I’m even better at ignoring my doubts, eventually, once they’ve kicked me around a bit. And so, next I know, I’m speeding along an almost empty SH1 and into an empty car park at Titahi Bay.

Waves!

The tide’s wrong. But the swell’s there. Slow sloping lefts peeling across the bay. Not bad for an arthritic old guy on a longboard. Barely pausing to look I’m shoving protesting limbs into neoprene. Hoping that my joints will actually let me get to my feet when I’m out there.

Did they?

Of course they did. Slow and sore, sure. But able to get there in the end. In time to make it down the line.

Wave after wave, after wave. And then I’m driving home, endorphins or whatever they are, conspiring with replayed rides, ridding me of aches and doubts. And the morning’s impossibly nice. Like Christmas in Wellington never is. Still and sunny.

As I drive choral music plays on the radio. And I wonder about that. Enjoying it. Agnostic. The sound is sweet – devine. First I figure maybe it really is evidence of god. Could something so beautiful really arise by chance? Could it? In the end I decide it could. Which seems forlorn in a way. All that effort and beauty misdirected. All those appeals unheard. Eventually, though, I conclude, cheery again, that, no, any god that could create something as beautiful as this music deserves some credit. It’s quite an achievement — especially if you don’t exist.

Dusk

From melting midday heat in Honiara, to chilled, fragile aeroplane oxygen, to Brisbane on dusk.

Outside the terminal the warmth is striking. Not hot, warm. Still t-shirt and shorts but also move-without-sweating.

As I wander to the train station the world glows with the falling sun. Pools of red form on metal panels, occasional orange strokes of cloud hang over the horizon, and the light is kind enough for even the concrete and tarmac to look forgiven.

Next train 4 minutes

Over the road from the platform giant, billowing purple trees, sway back and forth in the breeze. The air smells sweet, like purple flowers.

In the distance, out in the suburbs, lights are being turned on and I day dream about a 1,000 barbecues, imagining happy tanned people in tidy backyards. Deciding, as the train pulls into the station, that the nicest place is probably the one where you never actually stay but just get to glimpse as the evening gives out and you continue on your way.

 

Dawn

On the edge of dawn. Somewhere between Goulburn and Mildura. Outside, the stars ebb back into the sky while, inside, we wait for breakfast, our bus stopped at a truck stop. Fluorescent light, pastel plastic, and “serve yourself and pay at the counter, mate.” I feel grimy and unslept. Hungry and queezy at once.

I load my plate with egg-like stuff, chewy toast and collapsing fried-tomato, and sit down, hardly noticing the woman next to me. Instead I stare at the TV on the wall. It’s evangelical hour — a broadcast from an American mega-church. The thing is like a stadium. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, in row after row of cinema chairs. It’s clean, glitzy and ugly. The preacher’s doll-like, decked out in a suit and tie. His voice rises and falls, loves and condemns, advises and exhorts. The parishioners are ecstatic.

“Looks like a horrible place”

That’s the lady next to me. I’ve nothing against churches but she’s right: this one looks appalling.

“Yeah. I guess  it doesn’t look that nice”. I glance at her then down at my plate, wary of speaking to people met on bus journeys. It’s still hours until Mildura…

“I used to go to a church like that”.

I look over at her. She’s middle aged with dark curly hair.

“Oh, um, what was it like?”

“Awful. They manipulated us. We had to give so much money. And when we left they threatened us and then told our friends never to speak to us again.”

“That sounds really wrong.” I’m looking at her more closely now. She’s lucid, sensible, suburban. Not rich or trendy, but tidy. In her 40s I guess. Her face is kind-of round, criss-crossed with care lines. By the looks of it, she’s dealing with sleep deprivation a lot better than me. How, I wonder to myself, did she end up beholden to religion?

“At first we thought they were wonderful. Just like a family. Felt at home. So secure. But they wanted to control our lives. And take our money. You had to pay so much.”

“So what did you do? How’d you leave?”

“Oh, it was awful. In the end we had to move houses. And the people we’d met there, our friends, none of them spoke to us again.”

On TV the audience was cheering. The preacher bathing in adulation.

“Oh, that’s um…so why are you going to Mildura?”

“I’m not. All the way to Adelaide for me.”

“A holiday?”

“No my daughter lives there, but she’s in trouble. Trouble with her husband. So I’m off to bring her home.”

“Oh god – that sounds like a difficult trip.”

“Yeah.”

When the bus driver announces it’s time to go we get up. Leave the TV behind. She’s short. Not slender but not chubby either. She moves carefully and deliberately. Outside, the tarmac’s speckled with litter. And determined, thirsty little trees are bracing themselves for the sun.

She’s seated near the front. My seat is down the back.

“Hey, um, nice to meet you and, um, good luck with Adelaide.”

“Thanks.”

Once the bus has pulled back onto the road, I put my walkman on, and sit there, looking out at the unending land. Mulling over people and gods, children and parents, lives and stories. And hoping for a happy ending to the story I’d just heard. Hoping for this lady, and the daughter I’d never met.

Honiara

If you wanted to you could: focus on the air so hot and humid it makes you sweat in streams; or the grubby tilted footpaths daubed with blood-red pools of betelnut spit; or the angry addled Quazo-drunks. You could. But if you did you’d likely miss the market’s busy business chatter, and the soft-friendliness of the people. And you’d probably never get to marvel at the bus conductors’ slang as you wove around the city. Worst of all, if you hunkered down away from it all, like I did from time to time, gulping in quiet and refrigerated air, you might miss your chance to stare out at the morning sea, pretty, patient, glassy-smooth, and punctuated with islands.

Grasping for Metaphors…

Slow internet. Slow internet. Sllllooooooowwwwww innterrnettttt.

How slow?

Slower than the doldrums.

Slower than siesta in the south of Spain.

Slower than a tortoise towing a glacier.

That slow.

Since the beginning of time…

Inspired by Garth George I finally found this quote:

Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the
          Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you
          must be very proud.
   Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet] No, not while my greatest
          nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and
          energy.  I call this enemy...the sun.
           [throws a switch; a control panel appears at his desk]
           [another button slides the floor off a model of Springfield]
          Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the
          sun.  I will do the next best thing...block it out!
           [another button raises a shield over the model town]
Smithers: Good God!

Travelling Light

I once met a girl in Central America. She was a New Yorker, her parents were Yemeni, I think. She was pretty, and smart. And I was seeing someone else at the time. So, over the few days we shared a dorm room, I busied myself trying not to develop a crush on her.  Tried – she was striking. Although the thing that strikes me most now was just how light she travelled. A comfortably stuffed day-pack was enough to keep her clad, clean and groomed over several months of travel. This contrasted with me. A great hulking board bag, packed with two or maybe three boards. And still smelling of the ding repair kit which had leaked in it on the way to Mexico. In addition to the boardbag I had a day-pack that would barely close, filled with books, and note books, and tapes, and a walkman, and a camera. And then I had my pack. Contents – a tent, a sleeping bag, warm clothes for the south, cool clothes for the north, a few more books, a camp stove, and cooking utensils. I was cumbersome. I moved like a camel train. When she left for Honduras she just picked up her day-pack, scribbled me a note goodbye and sailed off over the border.

I’ve never travelled light. In the Cape Verde Islands I carried all the usual plus the wheels and axle from a pram, which I’d strap to my board bag so I could drag it rather than carry it.

I’ve never travelled light. Which must explain why, tomorrow, Jo and I, who are off to the Northern Territory for a week’s holiday – no surf, one temperature zone, no stove – are laden with my bulging-at-the-seams backpack. Key contents: deckchairs.

Yes people. I am travelling with deck chairs. Like I said, I never travel light.

Aches and Pain

Thanks to Carina who sent me the link, an interesting article in Salon about pain.

It’s the pain tired nexus that gets me. Pain makes me tired. Being tired causes me pain.

The pain makes me tired bit makes sense: in particular my shoulder and lower back often wake me sometime around 3 or 4 am. Also, being sore has a fatigue of it’s own. It takes an effort. And so it leaves me tired even when I sleep well.

The other link in the chain is something slightly stranger. If I don’t get enough sleep, I end up sorer. Or, more accurately, if I have a late night, I don’t necessarily hurt more, but if I wake early in the morning I do. I haven’t the faintest idea why this might be but fitting into the cycle as it does, it’s a real pain.

The Australian People Have Spoken!

But what on Earth have they said?

Three thoughts:

1. If current seat predictions hold true, I reckon it’s almost beyond Labor’s reach. Admittedly, I don’t know the background (hey this is a blog) but I imagine it would be hard for Labor to hold together a coalition which comprises of an urban Green, an independent greenish MP from Tasmania, and 3 or 4 former National Party (and so, I assume, socially conservative at least) MPs who are now independents. On the other hand, one of these independents was just on the radio saying (approximately) “I don’t suffer fools gladly and Barnaby Joyce [leader of the Nationals] is certainly a fool”.

2. Remember the following when it comes time to vote on the MMP referendum in New Zealand: FPP (as in England) and STV (as in Australia) can also lead to minority/coalition governments. They’re not the exclusive domain of MMP.

3. Also remember, from this most recent Australian campaign that under STV, effectively, if you didn’t live in a marginal electorate, you didn’t count. Parties pitched their policies are voters in these electorates and the pork barrel spending tilted in their direction was significant. Do we really want to subject ourselves to that? Also, it’s quite possible that Labor will win the two party preferred vote and not win government. This happens quite regularly in Australian politics, it used to happen in New Zealand too under FPP. Does anyone really want a return to that either?

Meanwhile, in the world of strange search engine queries

To the person who found my blog by Googling, “what is a wandering terrance?”. I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself for years…

Worst. Election. Ever.

Almost over. Just a week to go. So close, and yet so far.

And via Johann Hari, Benjamin Barber has some good advice, initially given to Bill Clinton, but relevant to any centre left politician.

You don’t always have to tack to the polls. Our extraordinary eloquence and capacity to mould opinion can change how polls read and where the wind blows.

Lake Envy

Under the arthritis diary I’ve been chatting with a fellow surfer and arthritis sufferer, who happens to live on the Great Lakes. Which reminds me…

Growing up in the harbour we relied on southerly storms or huge south ground swells to provide us with waves. When they came, the ground swells in particular, could be great, but the wait in between could be agonising, especially in summer.

And so, in between the big south swells we’d do what we could to keep the surf stoke coming. Riding pushbikes miles out along a closed gravel road to the harbour mouth, to a couple of sketchy rocky reefs that broke in polluted water. Catching the ferry to Lambton quay and then the bus to Lyall Bay, pleading our way past drivers and ticket collectors, trying to convince them that they could indeed carry our surfboards. Sliding down pine-needle covered hillsides on skateboards with their trucks removed, pretending we were on snow boards (this we called Pine Boarding – it sort of worked but you couldn’t turn and the wipeouts hurt.)

One other alternative presented itself from time to time. When the nor’wester was particularly fierce, on the days when the hillsides roared with the sound of the wind tearing at the trees, and when the harbour was covered in white horses. Then we could surf at the Yacht Club, a beach that faced north west, inwards, away from the open sea, towards Petone and the other end of the harbour. The fetch wasn’t long: 7km to be exact (4.3 miles) but for a 40 knot nor’westerly that was still long enough. And so we’d surf these wind ‘swells’ in the stinging salt and sand. It was difficult, although not because the waves were too small, they’d actually get up to head high when the wind was really blowing. The trouble was the wind, and the current that came with it. Too often we’d spend all our time paddling, spindly little arms flailing against the current, slowly drifting south down the beach. Still, amongst all that we’d usually get something. It wasn’t much but we were in the water at least.

The best surf I ever had at the Yacht Club was probably my last, right on the edge of getting my driver’s license and all the open coast that came with it. It was evening, after school, and the salt spray was melting the setting sun over the Western Hills. I was out on my own. For some reason, maybe the wind was more westerly, or maybe I was simply growing stronger, I was able to hold my own against the current. And the tide, or the wind, or something was right too, and so one torn windy peak after another came to me. Short, steep and surfable. Turn after turn. Each one no-doubt much better in my head than in reality. Nevertheless, I was surfing, having a ball. Singing away to myself.

Among the other side effects (terrible surfers ear for a start) of the Yacht club days, one thing I acquired was an ongoing interest in surfing in confined bodies of water. We found an old surf guide once that claimed there were surf sports on Lake Taupo. We wondered what they’d be like. One, supposedly, was a point.

“Points never break any good in wind-swells” my friend Jerry informed me authoritatively. He was already a Yacht Club sceptic.

We read also read about the Great Lakes, in Surfing and Surfer magazines. Their Californian editors were sceptics too of course. Although, I, ever the day-dreamer, got my atlas out and measured the fetch of Lake Superior: over 200km. If 7km was enough for head high waves, who knows what they got on those lakes.

I don’t think I ever surfed the Yacht Club again after that best-ever surf there. With access to a car, I was able to go to Titahi Bay instead when the Nor’Wester was blowing. Still not a great surf spot but actual ocean waves of a sort. And then there was the South and East coasts with real groundswells and offshore winds.

Crazy as it seems though, I’m still kind of hopeful I might get to surf the Yacht Club again. Nostalgia, of course, and curiosity (did the waves really get that big?) and also the fact that when your last memory of a spot is a good one, you always want to surf it again.

Come to think of it, I still day dream about getting to the Great Lakes one day too. Although, for the time being, I’m just hoping I’ll be well enough tomorrow morning to get down to Bawley point for a few.

Tony Judt

Sad news: Tony Judt has died.

[Update: actually I was going to write more - how much I liked Reflections, how I was a fan of his politics, how I admired the dignity of his writing about disease and decline - but I ran out of words. Or, at least, words which seemed worthwhile when measured against the sad, slightly frightening, story of someone's world caving inwards the way his did. When weighed up against that, words didn't seem worth it. Although, more happily perhaps, I don't think Tony Judt would have agreed.]

[Update 2: Adam Shatz has a wonderful personal obit for Judt at the LRB blog.]

Water’s Edge

The risk, I guess, is that this becomes the first ever Lake George fan blog, but we were out there again today. Lured by the promise of the water’s edge, the return of the long lost lake, and weather we woke up to. The west wind and the scudding clouds, and me thinking it was the sort of day best enjoyed surrounded by space.

And so we drove out there, to find it bigger, closer, but still out of reach of the road. So we satisfied our lake hunting impulse by walking out across the flat land of the lake bed towards the glint of water. In front of us the windmills spiraling and light and shade surfing with the clouds riding rising storm.

We turned around with the first drops of rain, just beating the cloudburst to the car, and with me enthusing about the beauty of windmills and as jubilant in my way as the passing westerly storm.

Star Harbour

Ok, so generally English language place names are pretty bleak – Johnsonville, Lower Hutt, Palmerston North – but there’s an exception to every rule. Star Harbour, in this case – a place name poetic enough to make me want to go there simply for its sound alone.

Fan-blogging: the winter sun

Yet more weather blogging, I know: but winter days, when it’s cool and crisp, and when blue stretches across the impossible span from horizon to horizon, and when the sun is so unambiguously your friend, days like today, have my vote for the best weather days of them all. Off for a walk.

Lost

Yesterday, and it’s fine with a cool nor-westerly carrying bunches of cloud out towards the sea. I’ve spent most of the morning in bed and decide I want to get out and amongst that weather. The best option is Mount Ainslie; the track starts not far from our flat; it’s steep enough to be good exercise; and the view from the top will be sweet I figure – cloud patterns over the sprawling land.

About halfway up the track, and puffing heavily, I have one of my ‘memory spells’ – a sense of deja vu and then my memories aren’t my own. Or they are, but they’re not of things that happened. I think they come from dreams. It’s not an overpowering sensation: my conscious mind knows the memories aren’t real, even as my sub-conscious keeps sending them up out of the depths of wherever. It’s not an overpowering sensation: I can function while it’s happening – can hold down conversations. It’s not an overpowering sensation: but it’s troubling. Troubling to be deceived by my mind like that. Also, while the spell is occurring, my own real world memory becomes thoroughly patchy. I could hold a conversation with you, but I probably won’t remember what you said.

Generally, the spells have been less frequent over the last month or so, although they’d been particularly prevalent last week – a response to being tired. So I wasn’t happy to discover I was having one as I walked. But I kept walking, and waited to weather it out.

Except this spell didn’t go – or it went but then came back and went again. Waves of clarity and uncertainty which lasted for the next couple of hours. Only slowly ebbing away in the late afternoon.

No calamity. Like I said I could still function. But frightening at the time: what was happening? why were the rules of unwell being changed? would the spell ever stop? had I forgotten something important?

I don’t want to bang on about this side-effect of the surgery that saved my life. But it’s hard not to fixate on it. Memories, I’ve discovered, however, imperfect, are like maps. Tracing paths from where you were to where you are. And, in doing this, giving you a sense of where you’re going. Lose them and you’re  lost. Or that’s how it feels for me – for the conscious planning part of my brain – that struggles on in their intermittent absence.

And maybe that’s the heart of the problem. Of my worry. Simply that being lost is unnerving – especially when it’s within yourself.

Anyhow, I’m feeling much better today – albeit tired. Off home to rest.

Loneliness

The people on the bus ride home suggest there’s more to Ainslie than the cozy suburban street where we live:

A ramshackle guy speaking into a big old cell phone.

“If I could just get to see a psychiatrist or something.”

Pleading with someone: his wife? a case worker?

Another rough looking bloke is drunk, almost asleep on one of the seats. Somehow, despite being barely conscious, he remembers his stop.

Tired people. Old people. Tidy people. Shabby people. Drunks. Kids.

Teenager’s mill around, foils for the rest of us. Young and healthy. Groomed and good looking. Awkward in their way, with the hunch and poise of those not quite yet grown into themselves.

Sitting next to me are two women. One, in her forties or early fifties, is tidily dressed. With a sensible swoop of hair and glasses that sit neatly on a crooked, determined nose. The other is older, her hair’s still dark but the curls are thinning. She’s rounded and bent down a bit, wearing a cheep pink fleece and wrinkled old pants.

The younger woman’s doing the bulk of the talking. She’s calm but her words have a force.

“…too many drug addicts and alcoholics, not good people. I’m not happy there.”

“Could you find another church?” The older lady’s voice is weaker. I have to strain to eavesdrop.

“That’s what I’m doing. It’s difficult for me – on my own. One guy used to keep calling me up asking me to drive him everywhere. And there’s a big woman, who bosses me around. One of those big women. I can’t put up with that.”

“Maybe another church would be better.”

“That’s right. I’m going to move. But I told the big woman, and now she wants to come with me. It’s difficult for me on my own. You must know what it’s like. When did you say your husband died?”

“30 years ago.”

“Do you…”

“…I still miss him sometimes. It’s been a long time.”

“You see. It’s different for me. I’ve always been on my own. I think I always will.”

The older lady’s looking for words, but her companion starts up again before she finds any.

“I’m used to it. But I still get lonely. It was better when I worked you see, but now I’m just on my own. And the people at church are no good.”

“No, I think you should change churches.”

“Oh that’s my stop.”

“See you later. Good luck. I’m Mary by the way.”

Surprisingly, for someone who talks so much, I’m not a sociable person. With the exception of my wife and a few close friends, I find socialising hard work. Nevertheless, I think to myself as I limp the last little bit of my journey home, I’d crumple in an instant under the weight of that much loneliness.

Lady, I really hope you find a better church.

And now wet is the new dry…

Apologies in advance for the continued weather blogging…

The sun shone for a spell round the middle of the day but by dusk a sulking grey sky gave way to rain. Thick and thorough, filling puddles and quenching drains. Adding an edge to the traffic. And soaking the cyclists, including me.

Rain.

Comic Sans Strikes Back!

As far as fonts go, Comic Sans has it tough. Generally decried as tacky, unsophisticated and ugly, its the subject of jokes and derision. There is a campaign to ban it. And even its creator has disowned it.

However, finally, the font is fighting back, with a column in McSweeney’s.

Here’s an excerpt:

Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

Read the rest.

HT (who else): Chris Blattman.

Meanwhile, from the Department of Eeewww

Want to keep your valuables safe whilst traveling overseas? Discovered on Amazon: The “Brief Safe” Fake Secret Compartment Dirty Underwear

Feel free to go over to Amazon and have a look at the product picture; while you’re at it read the review. Apparently the fake soiling is very convincing.

Despite this fact, to be honest, I think I’ll stick to a money belt for the time being…

Flood

And the rain continues.

Lake Bed

Flying back from Melbourne yesterday I finally saw lake George, which so far has been nothing more than a great big, flat field. The ghost of a lake, left empty by drought.

Today that view, snatched from a plane window, took us out lake-hunting. Although, in the end, we couldn’t find a way to the part of the lake bed that was actually covered with water. Still we found space, and the sweeping patterns of clouds, trailing east on the winter winds.

On the other side, across the lake bed, and over a distant strip of water, that same wind had brought the wind farm to life. Long loping arms making electricity.

Windmills Swallowed by Cellphone Pixels

Plenty of people hate windmills and what they do to the view, but looking across that ‘lake’ today I realised that, above and beyond the environmental benefits, I love the damn things. Count me a fan for aesthetic reasons. Take a ridge, long ago denuded of trees, and whack up windmills, and the horizon becomes more interesting, more peaceful in a way. And more beautiful too.

Rain

In March, we arrived in the rain. Sunday evening, Canberra airport, and a thick clingy drizzle. Being Wellingtonians this wasn’t anything particularly new. We just adopted our weather posture (a hunch, shrinking back into one’s clothes like a tortoise into its shell) and hurried to the rent-a-car, trying to keep our bags dry.

Rain in Wellington is so common it doesn’t even warrant comment. This isn’t the case in Canberra though. Over the next few days people advised us that the drizzle which had welcomed us to the city was really quite something.

“Several days of it.”

“Most rain we’ve had in 4 years, mate.”

Over time, and with the occasional intermittent deluge, that number increased.

“Dams haven’t been this high in 7 years.”

“Hasn’t been this much rain for 14 years.”

Finally the TV weatherman gave the official verdict.

“Canberra has had its wettest month in 20 years. The drought is over.”

That last comment made me chuckle. The drought breaking weather we’ve been experiencing – the most rain in 20 years! – equates to one, maybe two, days of rain a fortnight. Small bursts of wetness punctuating otherwise blue skies.

I’m pretty sure Canberra’s recent wet-spell would qualify as a plant destroying drought in Wellington.

Anyhow, I’m not complaining. Although, today, the weather is actually really, really bad. Even by New Zealand standards. A low, grey, damp, blanket of clouds across the sky. Windy, wet and cold.

Safe to say, I’m feeling more or less at home.

Link Time!

A very good essay on Ayn Rand in the Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/article/garbage-and-gravitas

[And more]

Could the Guardian become paper free and free, sustained by online adds alone:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-05/20/ad-funded-guardian-could-switch-off-presses-by-2015