The presenter

His speech would pause and then dash forwards. Pause and dash. Tension and release. His tone rose and fell. Words snapped shut for emphasis.

All of this brought the ideas to life, made them look crisp and respectable like he did in his expensive suit. But if you listened, if you tried to follow where each individual train of thought was going, all you found was ideas that wove about, flurried enticingly, and went nowhere in the end.

The audience waxed — caught in his energy — and then waned as the temperature and lack of oxygen in the large grubby lecture hall imposed an unavoidable drowsiness.

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Ghost stories

The town lay in the hook of a great grey bay. On a hill above a grubby port. Hemmed in by giant, forest-cloaked mountains. The clouds never cleared. It could rain for weeks on end. I had to work with a local team observing elections. I didn’t speak the language. I never really knew who was lying to me and who was telling the truth.

The hotel had thick metal gates. There was no question of going out at night. A waitress from the hotel’s restaurant told me how afraid she was walking to and from work. Even during the day, I was anxious whenever I walked out on the streets. The ute we rented some days was missing a front-passenger seatbelt. The first time I reached for it the driver told me it had been cut out and used to tie someone up in a car-jacking.

The room had a tiny TV and a giant fake leather couch. The air-conditioning made me cough. Every day as I typed away on my computer I would be interrupted mid-morning by the woman who cleaned the rooms. She was from Bougainville and had pitch black skin. She wanted to go home she told me, but she needed the work. Occasionally, my awkward comments and attempts at chatter would cause her to smile, or even laugh, but usually all I would get was curt, cold replies.

One night as I went to bed two men started talking in heated tones in the room next to mine. I was numb with bone ache and tired. I felt irritated, but went to sleep nonetheless.

I was a nervous child. I’ve never watched horror movies. I had an older cousin who relished them though. He also took great joy at retelling every detail, to me, alongside ghost stories of his own. So I grew up frightened of the dark, convinced there were beasts in the gully below our house, and fully aware what poltergeists were.

I woke about an hour later. Now the men were shouting in the room next to me. An argument was worth worrying about. There were lots of guns about. And elections could be particularly violent. Two voices, perhaps three. Shouting. Fervent. Furious. What were they saying? I put my ear to the wall, but couldn’t catch the rapid-fire pijin. There was so much anger and intensity in their words, but slowly, as I listened, I came to figure they weren’t arguing. There might be interruptions but arguments go back and forth. But they were all shouting simultaneously. Not coordinated. They weren’t chanting. There was no unity. Just rapid, individual angry, endless streams of words. Cautiously, I opened the door out to the courtyard the rooms were around. The shouting was harder to hear out there. But there was no one round, just florescent light. I closed the door again. What were they doing? On drugs? Worshipping something? These three voices going on and on. I stood for a bit in my room. There was nothing I could do. I could try and find a guard. But the rule of thumb, that everyone — especially the unarmed security guards — followed, for surviving, was don’t involve yourself in other people’s business. The nearest police officer who would have cared in the slightest was in Queensland.

Who were they? What were they doing? What were they…

With nothing better to do I stuffed my earplugs as hard as I could into my ears. Stomped on my irrational childhood fears and my sensible adult concerns. And I willed myself back to the weariness of a guy with a million things to get done in a place where it was hard to get anything done.

When I woke the next morning it was raining. The shouting was gone. Complete silence from the room. Just the sound of cars coming and going and food being prepared in the kitchen. I stopped worrying about ghosts, started thinking about breakfast, and started – as usual – worrying about work.

Moresby

The plane smelt of farts. It was filled with well-muscled white men, and a gorgeous couple with diplomatic passports. Minerals and Australian diplomats. Welcome to Papua New Guinea. In my safety briefing I was told, “we’re going at one car-jacking a day”.

So I’m sitting in my room on the seventh floor of the hotel. Inside the fences. A personal GPS locator with a panic button blinking. Struggling with data. Avoiding writing presentations. Staring our the window as the sunset flushes colours across the mountains east of town. Looking down at the city, wishing it was Honiara, where I could walk about during the day. Wishing I knew the place better, so I could work out my odds. Wanting to say sorry to everyone for being on the comfortable side of those fences. Eager not to catch scabies from the bedsheets, like one of my colleagues. Awkwardly trying to be friendly and polite. Trying not to be an arrogant outsider. Stumbling because I’m self-concious, and because trying not to be something isn’t what we were designed for.

The soft smoke of every third world city is adding haze to dusk, and below the road is losing its Jeeps. The vendors have packed up their cardboard and beads, and headed home. Wishing I knew more. Lonely. And happy in the blurry view.

Run!

It happens quite often, but it’s particularly acute today, after flight, after flight, after flight. Jet lagged and tired. The sky outside Sydney airport is blue and billowing. The coast we flew over this morning had golden turns to the horizon. It looked so empty after London. I have no good reason. But there’s that feeling again. The desire to quit everything, especially the weeks ahead, buy a ticket on a plane, and go surfing…

Dodged a bullet

People say that Windows 10 is much, much better than Windows 8. I never used Windows 8. The more I endure Windows 10, the more I feel I must of dodged one heck of a bullet with Windows 8.

Snow in Canberra

It snowed on me this morning. As I rode to work just before dawn. As the first cockatoos swirled out of the gum trees. White flakes drifting in the beam of my light. Snowing as I trundled past kangaroos chewing grass on playing fields. Snowing as I wove along the bike trail through the suburbs. Snowing as I passed cold joggers. Still snowing when I got to campus. Dark, blurry clouds racing the westerly gale.

The flurries never quite settled, but the hills to the east and west of town were white enough to look like somewhere else. All this in a land of deserts and droughts. In a city where it gets so hot in summer it barely feels safe to cross the campus in the middle of the day. In a country that advertises itself with beaches and snorkeling. Snow. Happy. Pretty. Flakes of snow.

A black and white sea

 

An eagle!

Something in the eagle’s flight put me in desperate need of a photograph. I scrambled to get my camera out. I fumbled round. I turned dials. I changed settings. I dropped my lens cap. I got a moderately bad picture.

And the thing was, the thing that made its flight so enticing was nothing a photo would ever catch. It was its size, and the slow, efficient movement of its wings. Its glide.

I haven’t learnt my lesson though.

The sky above our street

Going places above the languid summer trees.

Birds

Even though — with their call, and soaring and surfing in the wind — currawongs are probably the most beautiful bird in Canberra, it would be pointless trying to photograph them. Their beauty doesn’t sit still. In photos they look like crows.

Corellas, on the other hand, are easy to miss. A small pale cockatoo. They don’t have the colours of galahs or the bright yellow crest of sulphur crested cockatoos. And yet in photos…

 

 

Clouds

Sailing, trailing, travelling, fading.

Coming in to land…

…on a swaying wire. Nowhere near as easy, I imagine, as they make it look.

A bird on a wire

Or, more technically, a Corella, gnawing at the insulation of a wire.

Alone on the lake

The beauty of our Lake George car park is that we’re almost always alone. By ourselves in the space of the flat dry lake bed. Taking in the view of the wind turbines on our own.

On Sunday there was another car in the car park though. A rough looking Holden or Ford. Its fuel cap had been prized off. Its driver’s face was pudgy. His hair thinning and ginger. He had a paunch and was holding a large bottle of Coke. He was wearing a high viz top: tradesman’s uniform. He looked self-concious. Or maybe I felt self-concious.

He barely replied to Jo’s cheerful greeting. ‘What a bogan’, I muttered.

He got out of his car, got out of his high-viz top and pulled out an old cloth shopping bag. Beer, I figured. Then he reached into his car and got something I didn’t expect: a tripod.

He ignored us and walked out onto the lake bed. Maybe 100 metres out he set up the tripod and put a camera with a telephoto lens on it.

And that’s how he spent his evening. As we ate our dinner in the car, and went for a walk, he took photos of the eastern edge of the lake, and its windmills, with the light ebbing, and the sky filling up with colour.

And all of us, ‘bogans’ and suburban snobs, enjoyed the peace and that space–still big enough, it turns out, to leave us happily alone.

Corellas

Corellas surfing the wire in a south wind.

Boy racer blur

The skies

The skies over Canberra have forgotten how to be clear blue. They are either thick with thunder cloud, or traffic-jammed with cirrus and contrails caught on the west wind.

Water and flower

The flower the same as ever; the water, frozen in time by the speed of the shutter.

Gum trees

The patterns on their trunks looking like silver grey sea and jagged tan continents.

Utopia? Bust?

Utopia or Bust is eloquent. I share Benjamin Kunkel’s despair with the world we live in. There has been some social improvement in some places, and a lot of technological progress. But we ought to be able to do much better than we do. We ought to live in a fairer world that parcels out the fruits of our technologies in ways that raises most people’s well-being to levels a lot higher than they are today. We ought to end discrimination. The trouble with Utopia or Bust is it provides no cause to believe we can. Instead there are Marxist literary critics (yawn), the contradictions of David Harvey, the confusions of Slavoj Žižek, and so on.

Meanwhile, history and theory give us very good cause to believe there are no utopias to be had. Look at those dreamed up to date:

(Setting aside racist lunacy that is clearly evil) the main right wing utopian doctrine is libertarianism, where the state is a ‘night watchman’ (or in some variants—which could only seem plausible after smoking something—non-existent, replaced by competing security firms). The state provides for private property rights, protects against invasion and does nothing else. Taxes are low, bludgers are gone, economic growth is spectacular. What’s not to like? A lot. There is no evidence that the main driver of economic growth is incentives born of low taxes. In reality much of the technological change that drives growth has come from government investment. And the individual genius that brings new ideas comes from being well and well-educated. Nothing suggests a libertarian utopia will maximise these attributes, except for a fortunate few. Being well and well-educated have non-instrumental worth too: they are part of the good life. And history has shown that some pubic provision is needed to extend such welfare to most people in a society. Then there’s the issue of the environment. How does a libertarian government take care of common pool resources? On the basis of my limited exposure, most libertarians simply deny the issues exist, although I’ve also heard of the idea of issuing private property rights for every known common pool resource, including the air we breathe. Can you imagine the bureaucracy? Ah freedom! The final hurdle for libertarianism is that could never be democratic—have a look at election results, libertarian parties never perform well, presumably because most voters sensibly like at least some of what their governments do. So if libertarianism were ever to come about it would be by imposition. Imposed freedom. Moving along…

Libertarianism’s distant relative (not on speaking terms) on the left is anarchism. Which, strictly speaking, means the absence of the state, and the absence of private property rights. Anarchist collective action is based around cooperation, anarchist production around non-excusive title to resources. (I say strictly speaking because quite often anarchism is defined by what it is against—i.e. ‘the state, when the state is unjust’ rather than what it’s for. Seeing as this blog is about alternatives, I will ignore such antagonistic definitions.) The big problem with anarchism (as defined) is that we aren’t a cooperative enough species to be able to engage in large scale collective action without some coercion and rules—in other words a state. One alternative would be a world of villages and bands. A world free of states! But it also wouldn’t be a utopia. It would, plus some legacy technologies from the bygone age of states, be most of human history. It would be bereft of the specialisation that trade allows. It wouldn’t be free of predation between groups. It’s also likely there would be coercion within groups too. We aren’t that nice a creature. Perhaps aware of all this, many anarchists spend more time decrying the evils of the state than they do talking about how their alternative would work. They’re right that many states are abysmal and even the best are far from perfect. But far from perfect is a lot better than a return to life in villages or hunter-gatherer bands.

Communism barely needs a mention any more. Nevertheless (with respect to how it actually existed, rather than Marx’s effectively anarchist end-stage): a state which is almost entirely the government brings with it a big risk of the over-concentration of power (Stalin, Mao, etc.) Perhaps this could be offset by coupling communism with robust democratic institutions. But communism usually has very strong internal opponents meaning it’s not clear that this could actually, practically, happen, prior to these opponents being crushed. And history suggests once states acquire a taste for crushing, it takes a long time for them to lose it. Radially remaking a society would also require more than one electoral term, so I would imagine that any genuinely communist government would be very tempted to do away with elections. Even if communism could deal with issues of power, there remains the problem of the inefficiencies of a state-planned economy. States aren’t able to aggregate information as adroitly as markets do. One option would be to couple communism (a very muscular state, collectively owned means of productions) with markets. I concede I don’t know how well this worked out for Tito (although I’m guessing not that well on the basis of the fact his vision, not to mention Yugoslavia, no longer exists), but on the basis of the present I think the most likely outcome of a muscular state and markets, would be accompanying concentrations of wealth—and, ultimately the end of popular control of the means of production. Something that looks a lot like today’s China, which is better than Mao’s China, but hardly a workers’ paradise.

This ought to be the point where I start clucking happily about social democracy as the best option we’ve found. But that’s hard to do too. Be it 1970s style muscular social democracy, or today’s third way, social democracy has never been able to muster quite enough tax revenue to provide social services that are as good as they could be, and its social safety net is always threadbare. It works quite well for the voting middle class, but not nearly as well for those on the periphery. It is also not that democratic. Economic inequality brings political inequality. And human failings to do with the way we see ‘others’ often see voters distracted by non-issues (from the perspective of their own welfare) such as refugees, rather than real issues (inequality, climate change). There are things we don’t talk about but should (raising taxes to provide for good health care into the future). There are things we talk far too much about but needn’t (should gays be allowed to get married; of course they should; it astounds me that opposition to this basic right exists). The only real defence of social democracy that it is (to paraphrase Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Churchill) the least worst system we’ve come up with.

For now, least-worst is a tolerable place. As Steven Radelet, Charles Kenny, and Steven Pinker show in recent books, in part because of the gifts technology has brought, in part because of genuine social change associated with the near miraculous, but frighteningly fragile, expansion of humans’ spheres of concern, and in part because of our ability to muddle through, life for most of the people on our planet is better than it has ever been.

Yet the big questions remain. Will this continue? (Only good luck prevented the cold war from becoming a nuclear war. We aren’t doing enough to prevent climate change The world’s sole superpower is a mess.) And can’t we do better? Make our countries more caring, our democracies more deliberative, our power more diluted?

And, if we can, how?

If there’s a left wing book that seriously, and non-dogmatically, asks that question, I would be a very eager reader.

Swimmers

I didn’t pay them much attention. They looked unsure about the small changing shed attached to the public toilets. Her lycra bathing suit was unfair to her shape. He was pale. They paused at the water’s edge, then carefully stepped in.

I’d never thought about swimming in Lake Burley Griffin, in the middle of Canberra. Man made by damming a creek. Closed when the algae become toxic. Plagued with carp. Sad little beaches hemmed in by slimy stones.

But as Jo and I sat on the park bench–me thinking about work, families, and side-effects–they swum out around the triathlon training buoys. Calm. The water was pale, mirror-blue. Tiny ripples turned the reflections of trees with yellow flowers into brush strokes. He swam perfectly: noticeably smooth and fast. She wasn’t far behind. At the pace they were going there must have been tightness in their lungs, and aching in their arms. But from where we watched there was nothing except easy forward motion. They swum round the first buoy, then the second, taking maybe twenty minutes before returning to the lake’s edge. Nothing awkward or uncertain now. They both had the muscles of swimmers, and that done-something, after exercise glow. We got back on our bikes, me doing a better job for a while of watching, not thinking.

Rain again

The day before was one of those days with a swallowing sky. Burning blue, no clouds. A hot, dry wind.

Today started the same, until the thunderstorm. The downpour wasn’t long, but in its wake it drizzled all afternoon. A horrid grey drizzle, with a sky filled up with low, clingy clouds. And that determined rain that soaks you, without being heavy.

There are places I would have complained about riding home in it. But not Canberra. Not riding along bike trails amongst avidly green trees, and by a grateful smelling soil. Not riding past canals that were flushing with water. Not riding past brand new ponds occupied by busy, happy ducks.

I keep writing about it, but that’s because it’s such a strange thing to find yourself liking in a place. The fact that its so hot and dry as to make rain a treat. Even when your shoes are sodden, and there’s a creeping damp claiming your clothes, and as you try to avoid the puddles sprawled across the cycleway.

Rain

A strange thing to like about Australia: rain. Staves off bush fires. Makes the garden happy. And leaves everything smelling like a quenched thirst.

Flattened

The seizure meant more medicine. Both to reduce the risk of another one, and to try and eliminate the spells of confusion I’ve been having ever since surgery. That one fully fledged seizure had the neurologists more inclined, even if still uncertain, to classify the episodes of confusion as a type of epilepsy.

And so I started adding anti-epileptics on top of Warfarin, Losartan, and Humira. First came Sodium Valproate, smooth purple pills in soft plastic foil packaging. I was so worried about the side effects—hallucinations, depression, strange behaviour—that, because Jo was travelling, I asked a colleague to call Jo if I seemed weird, and asked a friend to check in on me.

There were no side effects. Nothing. And that was the problem with Sodium Valproate. I didn’t have any more tonic-clonic seizures, but I’d only ever had one in the eight years since surgery, so they weren’t frequent events. And the spells of confusion, which were the best yardstick of treatment efficacy, kept trundling through my life as they always had.

And so I added Kepra, starting on a low dose and slowly increasing it. Kepra did something, perhaps: about the time I got to a therapeutic dose I went six weeks without any spells of confusion. This was at least twice as long as I’d ever gone before. Jo and I started to hope intensely. I would be able to drive again. Jo wouldn’t have to accompany me every surf. Life would be normal in its unusual kind of way. But then the spells came back.

So I kept upping the dose of Kepra, but with this came a mild lethargy, and although the spells were less frequent they were still quite frequent.

Next I started Tegretol, increasing the dose while I weaned myself off Sodium Valproate. And now I’m on the full dose, with the useless Sodium Valproate no longer in my pill box. As I type this I’ve been about three weeks (and carefully counting) without any confused spells. This is long enough for the medicine to be promising me, but not yet making any guarantees—I’ve been three weeks often enough before. And I now know that even six weeks doesn’t necessarily mean problem solved.

Tegretol hasn’t been easy either. It impedes the absorption of Warfarin, so I’m on an ever increasing dose of Warfarin, wondering if my liver can cope (although there’s no medical reason to think it can’t). Worse, Tegretol is flattening me, in a slightly sad sort of way. It makes it hard to find the energy. It makes chores feel like a chore. It makes it harder to believe in things in the way you need to believe. This isn’t insufferable, or impenetrable: after surfing I still glow; and happy conversations still bounce along. Reading still works, more or less. And if I try I can push back against the effect.

So, here I am, mostly hoping the Tegretol works, but part of me hoping it doesn’t. Because if it doesn’t I will wean myself off it as-fast-as-I-can.

Disclaimer 1: I realise things could be worse.

Disclaimer 2: My medical situation is my medical situation. Yours will be different. Make your choices on the basis of what medical professionals tell you, not what you read here.

How surfing works

Here’s how it works.

There’s a shrieking nor’west gale, the sort that has Wellington clinging to its hillsides. It is sunny, but the sky’s muffled by salt haze. I get a glimpse of the ocean as I turn down the road to the beach at Titahi Bay – a torn, grey-green sea, tatters of foam and crests of waves stretched out to Mana Island.

I park in the bottom carpark, in the shelter of a low bank. It’s Friday, I’m recovering from a relapse and only working part time – this is my day off for the week. In the back I have a bigger than usual surfboard, to forgive the slowness that comes with arthritic limbs. I’m the only person there.

The day before we’d had our work Christmas do. The job had been a godsend, arriving when I needed it, coinciding with treatment and better mobility. Less pain and a new routine. The NGO was like a family too, friendly and happy for all its idiosyncrasies. Which made what happened at the Christmas party even worse. One of the guys, who everyone, including me, liked a lot, ended up shouting abuse at one of the women staff of the party venue. There’s more to the story: his explosion of anger, the words he used, the proximity to violence, the unfairness of his past and how it might forgive him, but that’s not my tale.

I’d spent the morning trying not to think about it. Trying. The words he used; the way he flipped; so near to violence; would he lose his job? Amongst all the things that go wrong on our planet it was nothing, of course. But it was sad enough, and close enough, for me to be chewing it over, again and again.

I get out of the car, holding the door against the wind, walk to a perch where I can watch the sea, and look out to the south end of the bay. There at the base of low cliffs, a point of slippery, angled rocks juts out. I try to watch, but it’s too windy: in between the salt spray and sand I can’t stare long enough to gauge the quality of the waves. I trudge back to the car, open the door, holding it with one hand, and fish out some cheap, scratched service station sunglasses with the other.

You know enough about surfing to know how it works. Toned young men in board shorts, yoga-enabled women. Gold beaches with warm water. Perfect waves, healthy bodies, ability, youth, mates. The appeal is obvious. That’s how it works.

The sunglasses did the trick, they stopped the sand and spray, and I could watch the sea.

Titahi Bay wants for a lot: most of the time the northern end of the South Island deprives it of groundswells, the cornerstone of good surf. (These are swells from far away storms, groomed by travel, which arrive ready to be perfect – think surf from distant cyclones on the East Coast of Australia, or swells from the Southern Indian Ocean in Bali). Then there are the sand shoals off Mana Island that further sap the waves of their strength. Then there are Wellington’s endless nor’westerlies, which are onshore. And yet, Titahi Bay has its tricks. Somehow bathymetry and the bay’s bend tidy up the storm surf that bashes Wellington’s west coast and make it manageable. And, just a little, the wind rides up over the hills, meaning that out in the line-up it’s a bit less windy than anywhere else. Then there’s that rocky point at the bay’s southern end.

Hunched against the wind, I watch a stormy wave stand up on it, lurching, breaking over a shallow ledge, peeling, slowing for a moment, and then unfolding quickly along an underwater finger of rock. I imagine the feel of riding it, the lines to take, the race to the shallows…

I run back to the car, contort myself into my wetsuit and wetsuit boots. I pull on a wetsuit hood. I stretch. I jog down to the water’s edge, past dilapidated boatsheds, my board kicking under my arm in the wind.

In the water I’m alone: no one in the surf, no one else even checking the surf. The sea’s turbulent and my eyes are stinging, but I’ve been surfing the rock point half my life, so I know where to wait, lined up with a gully in the hill and a pyramid shaped rock. A big set comes, signalled by blown foam on the outside sandbanks. The waves start to crumble out there, then back off in the deeper water just out from the point. I paddle over the first wave, and spin in front of the second. It’s big, perhaps twice my height. I’m close to the rocks, above the underwater ledge, the right place to catch it. I paddle, just one or two strokes, enough to have me moving forward as the wave pulls me to its crest. As the ledge trips it, the wave changes in a moment from a mound of swell to a vertical drop off. I get to my feet with the sea falling under me. I’m mid-air. I land, the edge of my board’s rail getting purchase. I’m hit by breaking water, but I’m there, tilting, angling, turning, using momentum, and the water’s curve to drive myself out onto the wall. I change my line, trimming over the slower part of the wave, adjusting again, then I fly along the last section, racing as it crashes across the shallow inside reef. Drop, turn, speed, turn, flight. As the wave reaches deeper water off the point I angle over the back. I’m not Kelly Slater. I did nothing spectacular. The wave was tricky rather than perfect. The water is so murky I can’t see my hands as I paddle. The salt spray is nearly blinding. But: drop, turn, speed, turn, flight! I paddle back out as fast as I can, singing happily.

Two hours later the sun is lower, the green-grey has hints of yellow and orange. I’m worn out. Wave after wave, on my own. Back in the carpark I have an after-exercise glow, and a calm—from the storm, from finding the right line, ride after ride. And from making the waves, from the rock ledge to the inside shallows. I’m not thinking about other things.

Warm water, perfect swells, flawless reefs, I’ve surfed all that. It’s great, easier to enjoy, but the essential ingredients were there at Titahi Bay that afternoon. That’s how it works.

Laughter

We were of an age when mothers were starting to worry about marijuana. This was a reasonable concern. I was starting to dabble. And some of my friends were beginning long druggy journeys. But on this evening we were innocent. The culprit was nothing more sinister than the fish and chip shop at Riversdale Beach. A small square building nestled down near the northern end of a long beach that is empty for all but two weeks of the year.

Dave, Jerry and I were in the midst of an Easter surf adventure. We’d started at White Rock, Dave weaving my mother’s Toyota along the tightly-wound gravel road, and over the almost washed away track at the end. We’d surfed thick glassy walls along the point at Seconds, and lonely reef break peaks at the end of the Spit. We’d marvelled at how early the sun set behind the mountains, and we’d gazed, spooked at a decomposed shark’s head that lay on the rocks. Then we moved to the tricky reefs of Dolphin Bay, and after that Riversdale, where there were beach breaks, a place to stay with our friend Barney, whose mother had rented a farm cottage with some other adults, and food that wasn’t two minute noodles.

We arrived in Riversdale in the late evening, which is when the fish and chip shop betrayed us. We ordered and then waited, waited and waited. All the while orders, which weren’t ours, started piling up, uncollected, on the counter. At some point one of us started giggling. Not stoned, just childish, provoked by the absurdity of having to wait 45 minutes in a fish and chip shop that was busy cooking food for non-existent people.

From there it was downhill. We spluttered our way through dinner at a picnic table. Then our merriment was fuelled by nerves as we drove to the farm house (we were arriving unannounced; how would Barney’s mother react?), before being set fully ablaze by the fact that if we arrived amidst clouds of laughter all the adults would think we were stoned. We knew that much. And so, try as we might, we couldn’t stop laughing. When we thought the giggles were done, they would erupt again.

We got through the front door, stifling ourselves, “Hi Mrs G., we were just um he..he..here to see Barne..he..he”. “Oh ha..ha..hey Barney.” “Would it be alrigh..h..ht..t if we stayed tonight.”

We looked at our shoes. We tried not to look at each other. We spluttered. We stank of self-consciousness. Our cheeks puffed from holding in guffaws. We were saved by the fact Barney’s mum was cool.

“Of course you can stay. There’s a great spare room.”

The moment Barney had us alone in that room he castigated us. “You! Can’t! Come! Here! Stoned!”

“We’re not, honest. It was just the fish and ch..hi..hi..hip sh..hh..op.”

And with that I collapsed again, accompanied by Dave and Jerry, into what must have been for the three of us, one of our last true bouts of giddy childhood laughter.

Port Moresby

If you want to picture Port Moresby start with Western Melanesia. That is, diversity. Hundreds of languages. Different customs. Different legends. Distinct regions. And a weak state in which all these fragments are bound together by interpersonal ties and something akin to a softness of manner, where most people — though not always young men — try hard not to unnecessarily antagonise because conflict, once started, is hard to dowse.

Next, if like me your frame of reference is Honiara, where all of the above is also the case, add in some Suva. This means an obvious indigenous upper middle class, which populates shopping malls and has its own fashion magazines and mores, and style. Honiara is bereft of most of this.

Then, take a big leap, and blend in your imagined Sao Paulo. Mineral wealth has brought inequality to PNG big time, and even before it did Moresby was a dangerous city. There’s a motorway, and cranes, and grand hotels, and more shopping malls on their way. But there’s also giant tangles of slums. And there is razor wire, and compounds, and nervous expats driving SUVs with doors locked anxiously awaiting car-jacking.

That’s Port Moresby, or at least how it seemed to me on my first visit.

The gentle invasion

Sometimes, after dusk, Kangaroos invade our suburb — infiltrating, filtering down from amidst the gums on the slopes of Mount Majura.

It’s a silent invasion: Kangaroos are built to blend in, with gumtrees and termite mounds originally, but their trick works just as well with letterboxes and lampposts. Even in flight, somehow they hop without sharp transitions, which means you can find yourself cycling along the poorly-lit streets of suburban Canberra, accompanied by a kangaroo, grey and ghost-like. You unaware, and it trying to distance itself from you, unable for the time being, hemmed in as it is, by the fences and houses of your neighbours.

The Weather Coast

When I travel the first part of me to arrive is my imagination. It scouts the route ahead, sketching scenes and picturing people. Empty spaces make it uneasy. Given the chance it races to fill them.

I had been imagining the Weather Coast for months before we actually got there. It was at the heart of the civil war that submerged the Solomon Islands from 1999 until 2003. It was another land, people in Honiara assured me: only 15 minutes away by helicopter but in every other aspect as remote as the archipelago’s most distant atolls. For Jo and I it was unavoidable — one of my PhD field sites.

When it rains on the Weather Coast, people said, paths become rivers and rivers torrents. And when the swell picks up, they told me, it becomes impossible to land boats on the shingle beaches; villages are cut off for months. While people talked, I pictured steep cliffs falling into a groaning, grey ocean, and I day-dreamt of floods and swallowing seas.

Of the three villages we planned to visit the one that caught my imagination most was Sughu, our second destination. Sughu had been home to Harold Keke, the most notorious of all the militia leaders. A man who had terrorised the Weather Coast, evading government forces and killing their soldiers. He executed priests, villagers and his own troops too. As people told me this, I thought about the legacy of war, and decommissioned fighters returned to their villages.

I imagined our welcome in Sughu. Unlike most of the places we were to visit, I wasn’t confident that people in Sughu knew we were coming. There was no cell phone access, no road access, no regular postal service, no regular boat. No way of finding out if we were welcome. One afternoon a friend of mine from the Weather Coast drove me down to the Honiara wharves and found a boat that was heading to a village about eight hours walk from Sughu. On board he found a relative of his who was from a village near Sughu. We gave the relative a letter for the chief of Sughu, sealed in an optimistic yellow envelope, and that was my introduction, hopefully destined to arrive in advance of Jo and I.

From Kuma, our first stop on the Weather Coast, we’d hoped to take a boat down to Sughu. But on the day the boat never arrived. Eventually the captain sent us a message. To travel to Sughu we would have to pay an extortionate fare. And so we decided to walk. Abandoning as much of our gear as possible in Kuma.

For the residents of the Weather Coast walking is the main way of getting anywhere. A two day traverse of steep mountain passes is how many travel to Honiara. An hour walk to tend hillside gardens is common. It is a land of amazing walkers. Locals assured us that they could walk from Kuma to Sughu in two hours. Although, after a considered look, they figured it would take us four.

We left Kuma in the early afternoon, accompanied by the chief’s daughter, who was heading to her high school between Kuma and Sughu, and two women who took pity on us after they spotted us wading precariously across the Kuma river.

We rotated packs, the women making much lighter work of the load than we did. After two hours of trudging, kept almost cool by intermittent puffs of trade wind we finally rounded a corner and saw in the distance a headland that our guides identified as Sughu. It was nothing more than a silhouette, smothered in clouds, but at least we could see it.

As we walked further the cloud came to greet us, wandering in on the wind, arcs of rain in its wake. And as the showers closed in, our companions departed. The chief’s daughter turned off towards her school and the other two young women turned back to Kuma, seeking to make it home before dusk. Jo and I walked on, Jo carrying the largest backpack and me carrying the small pack along with the day bag. Walking, wondering what lay in wait.

Solomon Islands fell into conflict in the late 1990s. First, militants from Guadalcanal expelled Malaitan settlers, then Malaitan resistance arose, taking control of Honiara. Combatants began to extort money from the government and then from their own people. In rural Guadalcanal the armed militia splintered and then retreated in the face of government policing operations. Keke, in charge of one of the militia groups, based himself on the Weather Coast, marching from Sughu to the other end of the Weather Coast and then inland. His troops caught and executed a band of Malaitan ‘commandos’ that had been sent to hunt them, and Sughu was razed by government troops. Keke flayed some of his own soldiers to death on trees. Possibly as a result of injuries, his mental health frayed until he was, by all accounts, insane. In the end he surrendered without a fight to Australian peacekeepers.

As I chewed over this, plodding across the shingle, the clouds grew to fill the sky and rain started to patter on the beach around us. Keke was safely in prison now, and there was no reason to expect Sughu to be any different from any of the other villages we had visited as part of my study. But it was also unknown, and I filled that unknown with worry.

After a while we were joined by a group of boys who materialised as we passed a small coastal village. They weren’t unfriendly, but they weren’t smiling either. If they exuded anything it was uncertainty. Most of them hung back, watching, silent, leaving two of the younger boys to come up and speak to us.

“You going where?”

“What country you coming from?”

They tried to speak to us in English, but their accents and broken grammar made understanding them almost impossible. And when I tried to speak in Pijin, my questions drew confused stares, my own grammar and accent rendering Solomons’ lingua franca unintelligible. Not being able to communicate we couldn’t ask the questions we wanted to ask (How far was it to Sughu? Had anyone there mentioned us?), and we couldn’t explain what brought us to be walking along their isolated stretch of beach. But despite all this they wanted to help.

“We carry you bags?”

It was help I didn’t really want. I didn’t want to hand over my research notes or the EPERB, our lifeline to the outside world. And I didn’t want to think about whether we could trust this group of boys in the middle of nowhere. But equally I didn’t want to offend them and turn their tentative friendliness into resentment. And so we unburdened ourselves and, as the rain came and went, acquired an entourage, the two talkative kids confidently shouldering our packs, and their mob of teenage accomplices walking along with us, watching quietly.

Eventually, we arrived.

“Displace Sughu,” one of the boys announced.

It was almost dusk. The village sat beyond a rise on the South East side of a bay. As we walked across the shingle we could see a few houses on top of the rise but nothing of the rest of the village.

“I guess we need to find the chief?”

“Mifala nid fo tok tok wetem seif. Iu save findem?” I tried asking one of the boys.

It was then, as I was trying to convey this message, that we noticed a woman standing on the top of the rise, waving her arms, calling out something. At first I thought she was shouting at the boys but then it became clear her attention was directed at us. She strode in our direction. Calling out. I tried to figure out what she was saying.

She was short and slender, with an angled face that was topped by an explosion of black, curly hair. When she reached us she spoke again. This time I could almost make out what she was saying

“Hello-i’m-Gladys-we’ve-been-waiting-all-day-for-you,” her English was clear but so rapid fire that her sentences tumbled out as if one big long word.

“Waiting?”

“Yes. We thought you were going to arrive this morning, and we organised a welcome party for you. Everyone’s gone home now. But the kids are still waiting in the church. They are going to sing you some songs.”

“A welcome party?” If my imagination had been scouting ahead trying to picture Sughu, my conscious thought was now struggling to keep up with the reality of the place. “You knew we were coming?”

“Yes. We had most of the village out here waiting for you. The kids were going to sing.”

“It’s ok for us to stay?”

“Of course”, she smiled, “you will stay in the church guest house. We’ve prepared it for you. The pastor’s wife has cooked for you. I will take you to the guest house. But can we go to the church first? The kids are still waiting there? They want to sing.”

“Um. Sure. Sure. That sounds great.”

And so we wandered up into the village, over the coral pebbles that they used to cover the ground, and past poor but tidy houses. From doorways people waved. We stumbled into the old wooden church and sat down on pews at the front. And on Gladys’s urging a group of teenagers in clean white shirts began to sing.

We were tired and we were damp. And the hard work of my research still lay ahead. But we had arrived. To a far friendlier reality than any I’d dared imagine. And so, as puddles formed on the wooden floor around my feet, I soaked up the hospitality, gave into relief, and set my imagination to thinking about dinner.

Show me how you do it…

“You — strange as angels.”

Quite possibly the best pop song simile ever.

Reading the signs: Canberra

Good ol’ Canberra. Here’s a question for a philosopher: even if you view an individual as possessing right to get high, can you also argue that it is someone else’s responsibility to slow down for them when they go for a walk to the nearest servo to address their munchies?

Pop-pretty-pop

cause I keep wanting to sing along

and no one is pretending this is as beautiful as the real thing. yet that almost makes it better…

oh, and this too!

Ceremony

Graduation ceremonies are not for me. I imagine wilting pomp and standing, bored. I don’t begrudge other people wanting to mark their achievement with this, but it wouldn’t make me happy.

And so, instead, two days after I handed in that final hard-bound thesis, to make something of the flush of relief, and to give me a full stop, Jo and I drove out to Lake George.

There, the west wind, already summery-warm and dry, had the windmills busy, and purple flowers were splashed up the hillsides. Gallahs and Rosellas flew about while we sat eating sandwiches, and I thought about old uncertainties. Could I get a research permit? Could I get access to villages? Would people speak to me? Could we manage my health? What would the travel be like? Could I find questions? Answers?

I also thought about the work: the chasing, the making contacts, the organising, the re-organising. And I could have thought about the small group of people who made it harder than it should have been. But it was too nice a day for this. And it was a celebration. So instead, Jo and I talked about everyone who had helped. And we thought back over the adventure — the travel, around parts of the Solomon Islands that we would have seen no other way. Rainforest tumbling down mountainsides into the grey seas of the Weather Coast. The sunsets of Langalanga lagoon. The flower-clad villages of Gao-Bugotu. The way thunder storms thumped over Iron Bottom Sound.

I’m still waiting for the university to confer my degree “in absentia” but, fuck it, we had our ceremony. That was graduation. And as Jo could make out from my happy chatter, it felt as good as it should.

Sweden Strikes Back!

My memory isn’t what it used to be (or maybe it never was, I’m not too sure about these things anymore). This isn’t always bad. Seasons bring surprises, for example.

I’d forgotten the things spring does to campus. Willow trees swaying in the westerly, plump with leaves they could never possibly lose. Late blossoms. Early flowers. And something gone to seed that has set flurries of cotton-snow drifting over the grass and whirling by buildings.

It’s pretty. Though not nearly as pretty as this. Sweden, and country and western: what could go right?

Everything, it turns out.

More molten sky

From the plane again…

 

And King’s Canyon on Dusk

 

Seizure

I turned up just after 2am. I found my self sitting on a bed. Sitting on our bed. Someone – Jo – was standing next to me. There was a woman at the end of the hall dressed in blue and white. I’d never seen her before but there wasn’t enough of me there yet for this to be unusual. For it to be anything.

Jo was speaking to me.

Do you know what’s happening?

No.

My neck was aching. One of the joints in my back hurt too.

You’ve had a seizure.

I was with it enough now to think first – driving – and then: shit, we were going surfing this weekend.

There were two women at the end of the corridor now.

They’re from the ambulance. They’re going to take you to hospital. I’ll drive our car.

How long did the seizure last?

You were convulsing for about two minutes. That was 15 minutes ago. I need to get you dressed.

I’d wet myself.

I was walked out to the ambulance, and then lay there as they put a needle into my arm and hooked me up to something. One of the nurses had worked in Solomon Islands; Jo was talking to her about that. Then we were driving.

I don’t recall much of the drive. Being wheeled into hospital was odd and upside down, but from then I found my way to a normal quite quickly.

I lay in a bed in A & E. Jo sat with me. And I felt sore ­­– my joints must have crunched convulsing – and sort of sick. Although once I was allowed to eat I felt less ill.

And that was me discovering I had epilepsy. A month ago now.

Ever since open heart surgery I have had spells of something akin to confusion. Deja vu, and a rush of memories of things which never happened.

Several years ago in Canberra I went and saw a neurologist: a chubby puffed-up man who thought way too much of himself, who told me I was suffering nothing more than anxiety.

I’ve suffered anxiety, and these spells were nothing like it. But while they weren’t pleasant, I couldn’t see the point of doing anything else after the dead end of that medical ‘professional’.

And so I went on, hoping I wouldn’t have an episode while giving a seminar, and not enjoying the spells when they occurred, but usually they were gone within 15 minutes. And I could live with that.

Then finally I had the tonic clonic seizure. And here I am now, struggling with not being able to drive. And wondering whether I can safely surf. And worrying about side effects of sodium valproate, and whether it will interact with warfarin. But at the same time better for having a proper diagnosis.

Some lessons:

As philosopher Havi Carel wrote, when you are ill, how you are treated makes a big difference. I’m very lucky to have the support of my wife and family. It would be very hard to navigate all this on my own. Also, two weeks ago I had my first neurology appointment at one of Canberra’s public hospitals. The appointment lasted over an hour. The registrar was incredibly thorough, and the consultant was considered and decent. And they went out of their way to explain, and to answer our questions. Which helped a lot. According to the consultant, the seizures probably stem from something akin to a small stroke, which I must have had shortly after open heart surgery.

Some advice:

If you end up with a serious chronic illness, address the illness itself as best you can, but also prepare for, and manage, non-biological changes to your life. There’s a lot more to it than your physical symptoms. Your relationships may change. Your career may be harder to maintain. Your goals may have to shift. You can’t cure any of this as such, but being aware and managing it helps. And hopefully you, like me, will find plenty of space to be happy, even if it’s a struggle at times.

And don’t worry (although always get symptoms checked by a medical professional): seizures in the wake of open heart surgery appear to be rare, and heart problems as a consequence of Reactive Arthritis or Ankylosing Spondylitis are not common.

And then:

Sometime around dawn they discharged me from A & E, and Jo and I decided to take the weekend we already had planned. We watched Brazil beat Chile in the soccer, then drove to Braidwood where we had coffee and food, and then made our way down to the coast, where we lay and read on the beach, under the winter sun, watching the sparkling sea.

useful grammar

dull but useful: stephen pinker’s gammar advice.

Melting

From the window of a plane, an Australian evening melts into the night.

The Tropics!

An end of a day across Langalanga Lagoon.

From Fairy Bower

Up on Fairy Bower the webcam captures Manly, floating like a phantom city, amidst a winter night.