in medias res
despite its absolute, bone-jarring familiarity--the sense of always being in progress, a beginningless beginning or an endless ending (hell, why not both)--i am, just as always, flummoxed by it.
yesterday, when i started writing this post, was a "get to it" day: get up, get going, get out, get stuff, get back. get-get-get. i'm sure the sound of it could be neatly mapped onto one of the strange avian species that australians rarely notice, but i can't not. (it was also a day of double negatives and negative doubles. a wrigley's gum day, in an inverted sort of way.)
today, i have no idea what i'm doing, saying, thinking, feeling, but in furtherance of getting to it, i'm just getting something down. so those of you, like mr. barker, who's eyes are set to rolling by my flash-flood stream of consciousness, may wish to read no further. you have been warned.
lindy and i drove to margaret river on friday (august 25) and stayed with her friends, patsy & chris, until monday (august 28). there was wine, there was tremendous food, there was footy. in fact, i will take this opportunity to come fully out of the spacious, if not especially well-appointed, footy closet. appointments can be highly overrated, especially when there are footy players to engage one's renegade attention.
although we were piled up inThe Knights Inn of the Margaret River Resort to experience the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, i feel giddily confident that it wouldn't really matter who was playing. i am
(wait for it)
a fan of the Australian Football League (AFL).
to my neophyte's eye, the game plays out as a dizzy fusion of (north american) football, rugby, soccer and basketball with a volleyball garnish. i have yet to figure out the rules completely, but at the moment, they seem to be extraordinarily secondary. tertiary, in fact, since the game itself is secondary to the players. don't mistunderstand me: it's a game of truly bewildering stamina and athleticism. these guys are are incomprehensibly fit. but after all, it's like all other incomprehensible games in which very fit men are paid incomprehensible heaps of cash to chase a small object around a playing surface according to incomprehensible rules in order to sell incomprehensible products to an incomprehensible audience. we won't talk about the distressing prevalence in "aussie rules" of the so-called "micro-mullet". we'll simply note the otherwise unobjectionable Ben Cousins, Chad Fletcher & Matthew Pavlich and move on.
there has been watching of australian idol, too, which somehow manages to defy my disgust, but that may have something to do with the accent. of those who might actually have a shot at winning, i'm cheering for dean geyer. of the others, bobby flynn is truly brilliant, truly individual. he could hold his own against the damien rices and jack johnsons of the world.
ask me about aussie slang when you next speak to me.
over the course of the weekend holiday, lindy and i also visited two of the Margaret River Caves--Jewel and Lake--the Brown Hill winery, Canal Rocks in Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park near Yallingup (the countryside is sprinkled liberally with placenames suffixed with "up", which means "water" in the local aboriginal dialect) and Gunyulgup Galleries. there were far too many cakes and creamy desserts involved, but the enormous karri trees foresting the southwest really demanded a special diet to be appreciated properly. i shouldn't be so glib: this part of southwestern australia is wildly beautiful. the coast is the most spectacular i've experienced. unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead, so i have no pictures of our drive back to perth along the coast. i'm hoping lindy will share hers.
and now that i've spent the entire post babbling about australian pop culture and touching only lightly on the country itself, i feel really super-tired. i want to write more. i want to be witty and fresh. i want to dazzle & delight. i want to entertain with my finely-tuned observations about australian life, culture and the environment. all quite beyond me at the moment, they are.
all of which really means that i'm about to leave "western" culture behind very early tomorrow morning (airport by 5:15am) and i'm craving distraction. i have a 16-hour day of travelling in 2 legs (perth to singapore, singapore to delhi) with a 5-hour layover in singapore. i have to overnight in delhi before leaving for kathmandu midday on friday, which requires some sort of accommodation that i haven't organized and am not even sure i want to. i may curl up in a corner of the airport wrapped around my bags like a needy lover.
mostly, i'm looking forward to being in one place for awhile. being able to call kathmandu "home" for the next 3 months is bizarre and comforting. i'm excited to meet the staff and the children, but naturally terrified of what the whole experience is going to be about.
(there was to be something about "clean coal" initiatives in australia and a really magnificent riff on the similarities between underground storage of carbon dioxide and human anxiety and depression, but, you know, stuff happens and it's time for dinner)
and now i'm done faffing about.
may you all be well, peaceful and happy.
yesterday, when i started writing this post, was a "get to it" day: get up, get going, get out, get stuff, get back. get-get-get. i'm sure the sound of it could be neatly mapped onto one of the strange avian species that australians rarely notice, but i can't not. (it was also a day of double negatives and negative doubles. a wrigley's gum day, in an inverted sort of way.)
today, i have no idea what i'm doing, saying, thinking, feeling, but in furtherance of getting to it, i'm just getting something down. so those of you, like mr. barker, who's eyes are set to rolling by my flash-flood stream of consciousness, may wish to read no further. you have been warned.
lindy and i drove to margaret river on friday (august 25) and stayed with her friends, patsy & chris, until monday (august 28). there was wine, there was tremendous food, there was footy. in fact, i will take this opportunity to come fully out of the spacious, if not especially well-appointed, footy closet. appointments can be highly overrated, especially when there are footy players to engage one's renegade attention.
although we were piled up inThe Knights Inn of the Margaret River Resort to experience the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, i feel giddily confident that it wouldn't really matter who was playing. i am
(wait for it)
a fan of the Australian Football League (AFL).
to my neophyte's eye, the game plays out as a dizzy fusion of (north american) football, rugby, soccer and basketball with a volleyball garnish. i have yet to figure out the rules completely, but at the moment, they seem to be extraordinarily secondary. tertiary, in fact, since the game itself is secondary to the players. don't mistunderstand me: it's a game of truly bewildering stamina and athleticism. these guys are are incomprehensibly fit. but after all, it's like all other incomprehensible games in which very fit men are paid incomprehensible heaps of cash to chase a small object around a playing surface according to incomprehensible rules in order to sell incomprehensible products to an incomprehensible audience. we won't talk about the distressing prevalence in "aussie rules" of the so-called "micro-mullet". we'll simply note the otherwise unobjectionable Ben Cousins, Chad Fletcher & Matthew Pavlich and move on.
there has been watching of australian idol, too, which somehow manages to defy my disgust, but that may have something to do with the accent. of those who might actually have a shot at winning, i'm cheering for dean geyer. of the others, bobby flynn is truly brilliant, truly individual. he could hold his own against the damien rices and jack johnsons of the world.
ask me about aussie slang when you next speak to me.
over the course of the weekend holiday, lindy and i also visited two of the Margaret River Caves--Jewel and Lake--the Brown Hill winery, Canal Rocks in Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park near Yallingup (the countryside is sprinkled liberally with placenames suffixed with "up", which means "water" in the local aboriginal dialect) and Gunyulgup Galleries. there were far too many cakes and creamy desserts involved, but the enormous karri trees foresting the southwest really demanded a special diet to be appreciated properly. i shouldn't be so glib: this part of southwestern australia is wildly beautiful. the coast is the most spectacular i've experienced. unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead, so i have no pictures of our drive back to perth along the coast. i'm hoping lindy will share hers.
and now that i've spent the entire post babbling about australian pop culture and touching only lightly on the country itself, i feel really super-tired. i want to write more. i want to be witty and fresh. i want to dazzle & delight. i want to entertain with my finely-tuned observations about australian life, culture and the environment. all quite beyond me at the moment, they are.
all of which really means that i'm about to leave "western" culture behind very early tomorrow morning (airport by 5:15am) and i'm craving distraction. i have a 16-hour day of travelling in 2 legs (perth to singapore, singapore to delhi) with a 5-hour layover in singapore. i have to overnight in delhi before leaving for kathmandu midday on friday, which requires some sort of accommodation that i haven't organized and am not even sure i want to. i may curl up in a corner of the airport wrapped around my bags like a needy lover.
mostly, i'm looking forward to being in one place for awhile. being able to call kathmandu "home" for the next 3 months is bizarre and comforting. i'm excited to meet the staff and the children, but naturally terrified of what the whole experience is going to be about.
(there was to be something about "clean coal" initiatives in australia and a really magnificent riff on the similarities between underground storage of carbon dioxide and human anxiety and depression, but, you know, stuff happens and it's time for dinner)
and now i'm done faffing about.
may you all be well, peaceful and happy.
posted by allan at
4:06 a.m.
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