There has been an absence of blogs for over a month. But Chris, how is your giddy life of sunshine I hear you cry! The initial striking in the face of newness and comparisons wanes into a routine of regular life which is pretty much the same for people anywhere, and therefore giddy life is completely wasted on chumps that get to live in beautiful places and have the temerity to not tremble with excess joy at every second.
I have not written a blog because I have not been ready to get to grips with Things. So, I begin now by throwing myself into just a bit of honesty and integrity – that human quality I have recently been lauding much in myself in my greatest works of fiction to date: my recent job applications.
This again may be a reprimand to all those that gleefully celebrated my opportunity to be a ‘lady of leisure,’ digging me conspiratorially in the side despite my extended withering looks. The trouble is, you can’t create and celebrate a touchy feminist among you, then try to exult the joys of an Edwardian life style. And Purpose, dear friends, Purpose, must not be underestimated in the well-being of a social human. Now I am, of course, for a period of six luxurious long weeks a year, able to fuck around purposelessly, drinking daily, strolling and writing very happily. Purpose here is not denied me. There is certainty in the length of time allotted for such fuckaboutery and Purpose is re-asserted in September, the knowledge of What I Do Is Useful is there throughout. Take it away, and the sunshine fades, the red, greens and blues of rosellas are melancholy and the glorious smells of coffee and avocado in cafes frequented by purposeful people merely mock.
So this is, blates, a first world problem, to wit, Chris gets to go live in Australia at Her Majesty’s expense in a beautiful apartment with her lover and drink wonderful wine and eat gorgeous food and hike in breath-taking landscapes and all this is in danger of meaninglessness because She’s A Bit Bored. I stand here, head hung, ashamed. I walk passed homeless people on my way to buy fennel, and sit in cafes to write capricious fairy stories. Existential crises in such circumstances can frankly fuck off.
Forgive me. But here, for your general edification on the South Pacific, may I open this up to its wider context. There has been a lot in the news in the last few weeks about refugees in the South Pacific seeking asylum in Australia that have been held in a detention centre on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. Now the detention centre is actually referred to as a ‘processing’ centre, in full Orwellian charm, which already treats those people fleeing their homelands as criminals. Now the centre has closed. There are other islands used as holding pens of uncertainty, Nauru, and Christmas island all in similar positions. Men have been left there and their physical and mental health is deteriorating. Medecins Sans Frontieres have been campaigning to get these people off the island limbo and treated, there have been marches in Sydney on the matter. All medical professionals have been removed from the island and the men are sinking into the depression of uncertainty and purposelessness and their suicides are causing a national outrage.
Uncertainty and purposeless kills people. This is the same for a refugee who has lived in England or Australia most of his life, but now education has finished and his status as an immigrant is uncertain, he is unable to work or move on with his life. Intelligent young people, with great potential to contribute positively to society sinking into depression and being wasted. It is the same for a dispossessed aboriginal who has lost their culture and community and don’t fit the white norm around them. It is the same for a person who is unemployed in England on low benefits where working leaves him worse off, who sinks into depression and then homelessness. It is the same for those fleeing war zones who hover in camps; Rohingya, Syria, Yemen, Libya, the jungle at Calais. Only two hundred years ago, these people were the people who society believed to be witches and tortured and executed them in droves, and we all condemn society’s ignorance and misogyny without reflecting for a dark moment that if we were there then, we may well have joined the mob. Sixty years ago, that was the Jews and again with historical hindsight, we pride ourselves on having helped those fleeing the holocaust because our education tells us in uncomplicated black and white: Nazi = bad. We ignore that we resisted Jewish immigration for years, deploying emotive strawman arguments about our sons dying in the war, we ignore that the Dutch helped them far more, and we were plagued with our own anti-Semitism. Apply it now. It applies in today’s context to Syria, to Afghanistan, to Yemen, and yes, it applies to our own citizens who foolishly left to live in ISIS dominated areas in Raqqa because if we turn our backs on human beings, then we are no better than those we condemn as ignorant savages.
So in the wider scope on an objective level, here’s why we should help people out of the limbo of purposelessness even if they don’t seem miserable and pathetic enough, because they have homes and food, or they chose to go to that place, so it’s not that bad.
Well there’s the social and political bit. Back to the microcosm, please be reassured I am in no means in Drastic Circumstance because of the malaise of being purposeless. I did what I often do in these situations, have a word with myself, climb a mountain (wasn’t that high), sink a bottle of wine with Yates, thrash it out and resolve to Cheer Up. And meanwhile we have had a housewarming, (because the flat now has a sofa – the correct number), I’ve been to the cinema to see two films about female friendship with sapphic overtones, been to watch a rugby match, had my aunt and uncle come to visit, seen a platypus, a bandicoot and a poteroo, been on more bike rides round the lake, written lots and had a lovely weekend at Kosciuszko national park where we climbed the highest peak of Australia in an hour and twenty minutes (well, we started from 1400m, then got a chair lift another 500, but it was still a 7K uphill walk) and had a lovely dinner out.
A little more on Kozzie (of course that’s what it’s called!), there was a tarn! Love a glacial tarn, that’s how mountains are formed where I’m from! None of this millennia-of-erosion leaving inexplicable, perfectly rounded rocks. I can understand what a dirty great freakin’ glacier does to a mountain! This particular lake (Australia’s highest lake) had a beautiful name that I’ve not learned to pronounce yet, (you have a go: Cootapatamba) but it meant ‘the place where the eagle drank’ (or rested, or nested, or something.) Anyway, it’s all charged with legend; apparently this eagle brought fire to the south east of Australia. Nice of it! You can’t just tell this story though (well, they did on a plaque by the lake), you have to have an extended several-day telling by only certain people with lots of dancing and songs to tell it properly. Come to think of it, a little sign does seem rather short shrift.
We saw beautiful and delicate white flowers on the mountain side, sort of like snow drops, but without….dropping, and glorious mountain streams with little fishies in them. And the smell! I don’t know what it was, but this wonderful, herby, intoxicating sweet smell that was like heather and lavender (I saw neither of these before you become facetious) and thyme all mixed together. I stuck my face in numerous bushes, much to Yates’ horror, to try to ascertain the cause, but no, it is just the pureness of the air or something, or the left-over smouldering, flickering down the centuries from the time when the Eagle brought fire. There are also lots of snow gums, beautiful bone white forests with no leaves, rippling through the green eucalypts, and as we followed a shimmering, rushing waterfall (waterfalls will insist on rushing, there is no dissuading them) down the mountainside (we coulda taken the chair lift, we just didn’t wanna), these ivory white branches were the perfect seats to throw the giddy colours of rosellas into focus as we chased them down the hill.
And I really enjoyed the wine.