publish or perish ~ Words Are My Power!

still syncing

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:27:00 +0000

I have wanted to write this post for weeks now. I originally intended writing it on a Thursday evening, since Thursday used to be the day before my day off (and Fridays meant taking the girls swimming in the morning, then lunch at Hungry Jack’s). Granted, it may only have been for a few weeks, but the memory was lasting. Instead, I’m now writing it on a Monday night, where in the recent past I would have finished writing and published in the early hours of Tuesday morning on my night shift, after which I would have returned home as Mrs H and the girls were heading off, and I would have woken after three or four hours sleep to a quiet house, and time alone.

Don’t worry, I’m not getting misty-eyed; I remember vividly the many frustrations, the sleep deprivation and the purposelessness of that job. But I also miss the free time, the weekdays off and – and that’s about it.

around less, present more

Mrs H observed very soon after I started working days again, that although I was around home less, I was present more. Instead of fighting the tiredness and the sense that family life was competing with my desire for personal space, I’m generally happier, and more energetic than I was say even six months ago. The skin complaint on my hand is almost better – and has improved noticeably almost daily since I started this job. The heartburn and acid in my stomach is gone. And just today I started a new exercise routine aimed at shedding those 25 to 30 kilos gained from stress and night work.

Things are going well. I’ve been in my new job with one of Australia’s Big Four banks for close enough to three months now. I am currently mid-way through nine days training for the next skill level, and begin in this role next Wednesday. And while the bank may have over 24,000 employees, handling some 30-40 million transactions a day, my sense of personal value, worth and opportunity has never been higher in any previous workplace. That in itself surprises me.

I’m past the probation period (if in fact there was one). I have no doubt I’ll be staying here longer, and I now have a six month plan and goal, and already a few ideas about areas of the bank I’d possibly like to get into beyond that point.

Part of my thinking behind taking the job with the bank (apart from the fact that it was the only application in eighteen months which led to a successful offer) was that a bank was probably one of the safest places to be in our economic climate. Not to mention the fact that there would be benefits for me as an employee down the track, especially since I have been with the bank as a contented customer for at least the past twelve years or more. And of course, with 24,000 employees, there would have to be opportunities aplenty.

It’s already apparent that my mix of service, sales and communication skills, combined with my innate abilities such as attention to detail and an enthusiasm for numbers is an advantage for me. Plus, I have formed strong relationships both within my team of twelve bankers, as well as with my team leader. The workplace culture fits for me, again, like no other place I’ve worked before. And that’s somewhere around sixteen places, from memory.

“subject to change”

Last week I learned that when quoting interest rates at the bank, I must always add the clause “subject to change”. I smiled, thinking how aptly this suited my life philosophy – that change is the only constant. I still wonder how I’m going to pull it off; how I’m going to escape my debts. Even as I celebrate this newfound workplace content, I quietly wonder how my life might have been different if I had been able to achieve this cohesion say, sixteen years ago, when I started my adult working life. Back then I chose the road less travelled, with all its consequences, mistakes made and failures past.

Down the line that led me to the brash decision to risk everything on the idea of my former business, so full of conviction was I that I could turn a profit out of sheer hopefulness, and an arguably good idea, albeit one which was financially shaky. When I borrowed against our home to finance the business, I remember boldly asserting to Mrs H that I would be a millionaire by the time I turned 40. I had a vision of a franchise of Healthy Lunch mobiles – a vision that now makes me feel ill to imagine. That wasn’t so long ago. And here I am now, not far short of that milestone, still trying to make ends meet month after month. My self-esteem or lack of self-worth, which hit an all-time low in the course of my last job, is returning in leaps and bounds. Well, something like it anyway.

Let the mistakes of the past not be made again. I am here to write about a brighter future, about never giving up, about persistence, if you will.

Thanks for being here,

MH

last night

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:19:00 +0000

There’s something I have left to tell you. If you haven’t already heard, I have accepted a new job. Monday to Friday, working days, starting next week. (That was me hollering “WOO HOO!”) I won’t go into the specifics here; that’s not the point of this post. The point is, this is my last post. So to speak.

I have just worked my last night. These last two nights (Monday and Tuesday) I have been training one of my colleagues in the role, as he will be filling my place for two nights each week, starting next week. I have three more day shifts to go.

I hardly made it through Monday night without falling asleep, and my sleep during the day yesterday was interrupted. So by the time the girls went to bed, I passed out on the couch and overslept, and ended up arriving a few minutes late for work. A first. Good thing my colleague had already arrived.

Taking the bins out for the last time, the fire escape alley looked as if it had been washed down; as if for my departure. The stench of food waste and used cooking oil from the French restaurant next door was gone. There were pools of water on the uneven, pot-holed ground. It had been raining outside, but how the rain comes down the covered fire escape I have never been able to work out. There must be leaks, I suppose.

I took the bins out with my mind in another place, reflecting on how many times I’ve imagined this night. It’s hard to believe the time has come. In a venomous time past (September 25, 2008), I even drafted the blog post – titled “take this job and shove it,” with a reference to the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer movie of the same name. I’ve never seen the movie, but reading Mad magazine or Marvel comics as a kid, I knew the title and it stayed in my mind.

There was this guy /
Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge /
From New York and New Jersey

I find the lyrics of Pixies’ Monkey Gone To Heaven playing in my mind. I guess it’s because I feel I’m shaking the monkey off my back.

My draft notes were: “A hotel with no Coke, a hotel with no working espresso machine. I walk to 7 Eleven on the corner and hit the button for a short black, then do it again. Add frothed milk. Two dollars, but I have no cash and the EFTPOS minimum charge is $3. I pick a Cadbury Dairy Milk (75g - 11.1g fat PER SERVING. Allegedly there are two servings here. I think not.) and add it.” Some things have changed since then, others have not.

I’ve left here before, of course.

And although you may not know what happened then, the experience has been added to that indelibly itemised mental inventory of my failures. That won’t happen this time. History will not repeat. I know that. I have waited longer than ever before to get out of this job. Not through lack of desperation, but just because of the market at present. Maybe working nights has prejudiced prospective employers against me; I have believed that, right or wrong. Plus, I have needed to leverage my experience and skills into a new role where I will have room to advance my career, responsibilities and earning potential fairly quickly. That, or our future is indeed bleak. But I won’t allow that to happen. Finally, I am ready to accept responsibility for working hard and providing for my family.

I have mentioned the significance of Tom Petty’s song Free Fallin’ before, and when it made its appearance on my Recently Added playlist tonight, in the soundtrack at the background while we worked, I note it. It was no coincidence.

166 posts, last published May 6. This is the end. This is it. My diminishing post frequency in recent months has been brought about by the never-ending stress of shift work, sleep deprivation, and the desperation of speculating how and when I would find a way out, to a brighter future. That time is about to start.

My current workplace and I have outgrown each other. Working nights has served its purpose, even if I haven’t been able to realise the idea of starting a copywriting and proofreading business alongside working full-time. On the positive side, I have grown much closer to my girls over the last two years, and I have accepted my role as Dad to the two most wonderful girls in the world. I will miss walking them home from day care on my days off.

The return is our opportunity to share weekends together as a family for the first time since the girls joined us.

I look forward to one day saying goodbye to the heartburn and acid burning in my stomach, which I’m sure can be ultimately traced to night work. Ditto for the still slow-healing skin condition on my hand. I am similarly enthusiastic about sleeping nights at home with the family, getting more than five hours sleep in a row, and no longer spending nights away from Mrs H.

My shedding some 25 or 30 kilograms of extra weight gained since the fall of my business, and increased health and fitness are on the horizon as well (and most definitely in the sights for my tireless personal trainer and spouse).

There is some fear in the mix too. An element of risk, uncertainty. But change is a constant, and I embrace it. We all know I’m not risk-averse.

The writing will continue. No doubt. It may be a while. But that story of my life is yet to be told in full glory and gory detail. And there may yet be more to tell about Edward Snark. I ain’t promising, all I’m saying is there are more words for me to wield yet, and plenty of stories yet to be told.

For now though, it’s good night and good day from me, and thanks for being here.

Authentically, always

MH

heartland part two (The Joshua Tree)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Hey. Back again. Thanks for coming back. Evidently some people want to read more, and even if I’ve been avoiding the task for perhaps my longest period since I started this blog, it’s not that I haven’t thought about writing; I probably have, every day. But the procrastinations and distractions of everyday family life, and the increasingly unserviceable debt of my business failure hanging over us like the darkening clouds of an impending thunderstorm have conspired to make the practice of writing just about the farthest thing from my mind.

But enough of that. I’m back. In truth, following up my last post has been cause for avoidance too, because I’m now getting into terrain which is like an overgrown, tangled garden in need of much attention; pruning and weeding, trimming back the bad to set free the good, and more than anything somehow making peace with the now long-distant but still ever-present past, the mistakes and misadventures of my post-adolescent folly.

Last time our cliffhanger ending left our protagonist, sixteen year old “Herb” pulled from the clutches of his older flame and his blossoming friendships and part-time acting hobby in Zimbabwe as he left with his family for the other side of the world, a land called Oz. It would have been one thing if that journey was the usual long distant flight of 24 hours or so, but my journey wasn’t as direct as that. Instead, we flew to England, where my Dad’s UK-based company was organising visas for us to immigrate to Australia.

London town. Wow. We stayed there for maybe a few weeks. I had access to real music stores for the first time in my life – HMV, Virgin Megastore, and Tower Records, my favourite. TVs played videos in the stores and suddenly I was out of the boondocks and into the “real” world, the first world. Or at least, that was how I saw it, impressionable and voracious teenager that I was. It was delicious entertainment, but it didn’t fill the longing I felt inside, my heart pumping with love’s first flushes, and half a world away from all the friends I knew. Not to mention her. Lovesick letters and cards were penned and criss-crossed (this was before email, remember). My teenage skin, already somewhat problematic in Africa, erupted into hideous full-blown acne – I think in response to the stress of our upheaval. Just as well I had no love interests around me.

And somewhere amidst all this, I found comfort in rock music. Specifically U2’s The Joshua Tree album, which at that time was at the top of charts, as well as on the cover of Time magazine, and all over TV. You couldn’t escape it. Up to this point I had only known U2 incidentally, when my friend Ned, from Boston, talked up The Unforgettable Fire while we played Dungeons and Dragons on his porch in Zimbabwe. His older brother Sandy was a fan of the band. And I knew Bono was the little guy dressed all in black and wearing a mullet, singing at the forefront of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” video alongside Simon Le Bon, Paul Young, George Michael and Boy George.

“With Or Without You”, what poetry, I thought. “I can’t live with or without you.” Oh, twist the knife. And the way the song first built up, and then released tension in an aural climax of pounding drums and The Edge’s chiming guitars was nothing but musical catharsis.

After a time in London, the family was relocated to another English town. We had a small beige company car – a Ford Escort, maybe – and drove through rolling green English countryside to a soundtrack of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and The Joshua Tree played on cassette on constant repeat.

Days wore on. Weeks turned into months, thanks to unexpected delays with the immigration process. I spent friendless days alone, pining, playing cassettes and LPs on my portable three-in-one music station, going deeper into the music, the sound, the production. Lost in the music. It wasn’t new – I had loved music for all my life, and had spent a good part of my earlier teenage years prone on the champagne coloured shag pile carpet in our lounge room in Harare with headphones on, lost in the sonic world of Queen, Styx, Air Supply, and of course, Adam and The Ants, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. The difference was the intensity with which I turned to music now, now that I really felt something had really been taken away from me. And U2 spoke on a different emotional level than any of my former musical inspirations, with the exception of some of Martin Gore’s lyrics with Depeche Mode.

Eventually, after six months in England, we were on our way to Australia. Still, this was only one step further in the story of my coming of age. More steps will follow, and now that I have the bit between my teeth again, I’d like to promise you it won’t be so long before I’m back with the next stage. I’d like to promise you, but I’d better not.

Until then, catch you on the flip!

MH

heartland (part one)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:57:00 +0000

If you’ve been following my updates via FriendFeed or Facebook this week, you may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot about rediscovering the band U2. The band’s three albums from 1987 to 1992, The Joshua Tree (1987), Rattle and Hum (1988) and Achtung Baby (1991) were the soundtrack to my coming of age, the time of my first love/s, and that period was a catalytic, and ultimately defining period of my life.

It began as a time when the world seemed brighter, offered more hope, and my potential – and life’s vista – was limitless. Within five years, the world had became a much darker place for me.

I’ve had it in mind to put this into words – in truth, all the stories I ever aspire to writing lead back to this era in my life – and today is the start of that process, the first time I intend grappling with this fertile source material. Knowing where to begin is hard. I keep starting sentences and deleting the words. That’s not normal for me, and it tells me how much this means to me. I want to get it right.

I guess I’ll just dive in.

1987 was the year when my parents and I moved from Zimbabwe to Australia (from Z to A). I was sixteen. My teenage years to that point had been an internal odyssey of fantasy and rebellion; the crucible was the strict Jesuit Catholic schooling at my Dad’s alma mater, boys-only St George’s College. Sport was mandatory, and success at sport was imperative for emerging alpha males. I was a nerd, a nerd who was big for his age. So I was thrust into rugby and swimming, and I achieved some success, most of it against my will.

I am an only child, and just like the best underdog superheroes, from Superman to Spiderman to The Incredible Hulk, part of my identity, my pride derived from seeing myself as being “not like the others”. Dungeons and Dragons, Marvel Comics, and plenty of movies (John Hughes the favourite choice) were the primary forms of escape. My two greatest musical influences were on one hand the glamour of Duran Duran, and on the other, the perversity, torment and darkness of Adam Ant and Depeche Mode.

Girls were the great unknown, most desired intent for me and my nerd friends. (If any of those friends are reading this, I don’t believe they will object to that term). Partly as a means for me to socialise, and partly as an outlet for my creative energy, under the suggestion of my Mom – and not without some resistance – I began attending Repteens, a weekend drama school for, you guessed it, teens. What an outlet it turned out to be. I enjoyed acting greatly – my life outside school was already spent in fantasy for the most part – and I enjoyed the social company of girls for the first time. You know where this is going, don’t you?

Her name was Kate. She was a year or two older than me. Her boyfriend was the son of the coordinator of the acting group. And all the while knowing I would soon be leaving the country – the continent even, to live at the other side of the world – or maybe because of that fact, we became madly smitten with each other.

I will never forget my first kiss, at a social night with the group, as Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics sang “Here Comes The Rain Again” in the background (“here comes the rain again / raining in my head like a tragedy / tearing me apart like a new emotion / I want to breathe in the open wind / I want to kiss like lovers do / I want to dive into your ocean…”).

And at the airport on the night of my family’s departure, as the group (who at that time had all become my friends) stood together to say goodbye, as we went through Customs and I turned to face them for one last time, Kate strained away from her boyfriend’s arms, calling out – crying out, I tell you, “I love you, Herb!”

And that was how I left Africa, and started my journey to Oz. And what does this have to do with U2? You’ll have to find out next time.

Until then, have a safe and Happy Easter!

MH (aka Herb)

the happier whale

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:25:00 +0000

One of the things I didn’t get around to mentioning last time was my decision to upgrade my T shirt collection, which is mainly comprised of band T shirts at least 12-15 years old (Bettie who?, Archers of what?), a black Bose T shirt given to me during my time as a purveyor of BGM (aka Muzak), and Polo Ralph Lauren shirts bought on one of our overseas holidays in the rose-tinted pre-parenthood days, most of which are now stretched out of shape through wear and washing. Now I have a locker at work and I travel there on the tram in the pre-dawn chill of Melbourne autumn three days of the week, then return in the heat of the day (such as it was last week anyway), successful layering is the key, and I was tired of sporting the same old shirts week after week.

I found some colourful polo shirts, cheap ones, at Cotton On Clothing – without generic logos and branding – and after rummaging around, I even found size XL in each one. But holding the shirts up, I thought they looked a bit on the small side. I found XXL sizes in some of the colours, and tried each. The bad news – shock even – was that even the XXL only just fitted me. Not good. And not comfortable enough for me to part with my money.

I am reading this interesting piece on night work and weight gain, and you may already know anti-depressants can also cause weight gain – for a reported 25% of those like me who take them. And while I am certainly a brighter person than I was even a couple of months ago, thanks in part to the medication I am taking, I am also heavier now than I have ever been. And I really feel it.

I’ve dieted before. But if I can refer to only my previous post, my problem has always been self-discipline. (And this, despite – or because of – my Jesuit Catholic schooling, he laughed). Once – a good 15 years ago, in one of my lowest psychological and emotional phases – I got my weight down a good thirty kilos on my current mass.

always look on the bright side (slight reprise)

“Your stomach looks like a bowling ball,” Mrs H observed as I dressed for work. I think it’s more like a pillow, but either way, the changed silhouette, and clear and present danger is noted. (I imagine my colleagues, whispering in the idle hours at work: “Have you seen Matt these days? Oh my God.”)

The wife laughed: “At least your head doesn’t look so big now.”

“When it comes to food, you and I are at opposite extremes of the scale,” I replied.

“I know. I don’t know why we are together.” Her tone was incredulous.

“That’s why we’re good for each other; we meet somewhere in the middle, sometimes,” I explained.

“I know, I understand. This is what I deal with; I help clients who are like you. But I don’t know how I can help you.”

“I am your greatest challenge,” I said, with a passing vocal reference to Darth Vader.

“I see how you eat a Scotch Finger biscuit – you just put the whole thing in your mouth.”

“How else do you eat it?” I laughed.

“I might have one as an afternoon snack, eating it slowly,” she emphasised the last word, and the delight it implied. “But you, you just put the whole thing in – whoop. I’ve put on one kilo and I feel disgusted.”

“I had one this morning, after breakfast.” In truth, it was more like three, snuck from the container one by one, while the sound from the water from Mrs H showering in the bathroom next to the kitchen obscured my activity. This was after a bowl of four Weet-Bix, with bran, a dollop of full cream vanilla yoghurt, a banana and full cream milk, mind you. It’s important to have a good breakfast, I’ve always been good about that. And even in yesterday’s Herald Sun, there was an article about Weet-Bix being the best cereal choice. But eating a big breakfast, healthy or not, isn’t really a good idea if all you’re going to do is sleep for three or four hours, then spend the time after waking in a drowsy stupor on the couch.

I justified my morning ritual to the wife: “I want to spend some time with you and the girls before I go to bed. See, if I was alone, I’d probably just go straight to bed after work. Actually, no, I’d probably stay up longer, eating more, because I’d be too depressed,” I reconsidered.

“I was on the couch with Littlest Miss H this afternoon, after her nap, and I saw the Jenny Craig ad with Magda holding the tray with fifteen kilos of butter, and I thought maybe the time has come. Maybe I should just call Jenny...” I went on.

“You have to be ready for it. I can draw up a plan for you,” Mrs H said.

And when I had finished dressing, and went into the bedroom to say goodbye, she presented me with her handwritten “Matt’s Food Diary”. “1 WEEK” was noted at the top right corner. That is the length of the prescribed trial period.

“Where’s the Coke?” I asked.

“No Coke,” she replied. I noted two glasses of water underlined at least five times during the plan for the day. Prompted by my question about Coke, she wrote at the bottom, “coffee as you like.” I expected she’d add “no sugar”, but I was safe. I didn’t mention it, just in case she changed her mind.

ready to take a chance again

Coming in, listening to a compilation I haven’t played for ages, and randomly selected just as I was about to walk out into the cold night, Barry Manilow’s “Ready To Take A Chance Again” (theme from Foul Play) was followed by Moving Pictures’ “What About Me?”, and the plea of the song’s dramatic climax (“I’ve had enough, now I want my share! / Can’t you see, I wanna live! / But you just take more / You just take more / You just take more than you give!”) offered some kind of catharsis, as I turned the volume up and sang along. It was my Jerry Maguire moment again, perhaps.

(“Boys of Summer” came next, and its slinky rhythm easily brought to mind images of rippling tanned six packs on a golden beach – but I was quick to pan my mind’s eye to change the latent homo-erotic focus that image represented. Catholic education eh? Sheesh.)

So here goes for my first day the week ahead. Wish me well.

MH

best intentions

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:47:00 +0000

here is the news

Hello again my friend. It’s been way too long since we were together like this, and I have no-one to blame but myself. Like so many other aspects of my life, I have the best intentions; it’s just my follow-through which is lacking. In some kind of sequential flow then, these are some of my notes from the past ten days or so:

Tuesday morn

I wake before my alarm. It’s set for 4:45AM. Pour myself a glass of water while the coffee machine warms up. I pop my pills, cereal in the bowl, and I find myself thinking about the Kerouac book Wake Up, and the conflict and complexity of Jack’s Catholic upbringing and later embrace of Buddhism. I reflect on how I don’t believe in one absolute unique god, and this openness – one of only a few of my personality qualities which I value – itself a definite connection to my neuroticism, allowing me to be easily led, easily distracted – is something I don’t want to influence or undermine my girls’ character development. I don’t want them to learn it from me, or I hope they don’t inherit it from me. I see Little Miss H is already a follower, and a mimic par excellence, but I want her to have the self-esteem, self-confidence, and security I once possessed too.

it’s hard to be a saint in the city – and it’s hard to be a dad in the suburbs

On my way to work last Sunday night – after the Grand Prix – I thought I’d duck in to Borders on Lygon Street, to pick up a copy of Wired magazine. I used to loyally (slavishly) purchase it each month, just for its stylish heft on my desk; the semi-gloss sheen of the pages lightly perfumed, the unquestionably futurist/consumerist direction of the editorial content. It got to the stage where I was buying the magazine out of habit, and as an accessory (as if to prove something to myself, rather than to impress others), and I never actually got to read through the text. That content never interested me as much as the form, the form, the form.

I have the best intentions; it’s just my follow-through which is lacking.

Wired magazine was an unbudgeted expense I could not justify, but what do you know, there was a spot right out of Borders, and if that wasn’t a sign, I don’t know what it was. I seized the opportunity the universe proffered me.

After Friday and Saturday night’s pre-race crowd, where it seemed every Ferrari in Melbourne had convened on Lygon Street for the tifosi fiesta (if that’s not too multicultural a supposition), with bad Italo house (is there any other kind?) pumping from the souvenir booths and Victorian terrace restaurants and cafes, Sunday’s parking was a little less congested, but still, a place out front of Borders was not to be ignored.

I duly found two issues of Wired – the latest with its fluro green Air Freighted sticker and inflated price tag – and the not-so-latest, at a less exaggerated cost. I picked it up, and I leafed through it cursorily. But something was wrong. Very wrong. The periodical had no prowess, it was too slight, it had next no weight now. Presumably all that advertising and content I had lapped up in the pre-interweb days (I told you it was a long time ago – more than ten years now), all that good stuff had been migrated online.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t commit to the spend. There would be no positive return on investment, I just knew it. I looked vainly for a copy of The Ultimate iPhone Guide, which I had seen in the newsagent opposite Coles after shopping with my assistant that morning (it must surely offer some insights for its $14.95 sticker price), and I even considered browsing the Transport section (I prefer to think of it as the “car porn” section), but it was too crowded with middle-aged fellows with corresponding spreads more or less like mine.

I left, frustrated, unsatisfied, and as I went to the car making a mental note of the phrase “car porn”, as if on cue, a big black Cadillac Eldorado convertible cruised past, its driver wearing a ten gallon cowboy hat. I had to smile.

Lygon Street was my focus again later in the week, when I sent King and Godfree – “Fine Wine and Food Specialists” an email enquiry about vialone nano rice following Matt Preston’s namechecking it in The Age’s Epicure guide the week before. The fact that their site was hosted by citysearch should have been a sign, but nonetheless, I submitted my enquiry form, asking for a reply by phone when prompted. And that was 6AM Thursday. Five days later, nada. Not even an auto-response. Just another dof interweb presence.

We had friends Rita and Sab and their two little boys over for dinner on Friday night, and Herbie’s Healthy Kidney Bean Risotto with Spinach and Feta was the planned meal. Hence the vialone nano. Nevermind, it would have to be arborio as usual. It still went down well. And the girls enjoyed having the boys over for company.

Sab showed me Rita’s new car – a 2005 5.7 litre V8 Holden wagon. I had to laugh when he told me it had more power than a V6. It’s a shopping car; what difference does power make? What about fuel consumption? Sab turned on the engine so I could hear the impressive rumble from the twin chrome tailpipes he had installed – a steal at just $450 fitted, he told me. Rita and Sab have no mortgage, you see. Ow, ow, ow – (excuse me, that’s just me hitting myself on the back of my head again for the debt I brought upon our family with the cost of my business failure).

went in with a flat tyre, came out deeper in debt

Waiting outside to welcome Mrs H home from her aerobics class on Thursday night after the girls had gone to bed, I had heard her coming for some way down our darkened quiet street. She had picked up a flat tyre – quite likely through sabotage, when I saw the odd-shaped sharp bit of steel which had sliced an opening in the tyre.

That meant I had to change the wheel first thing Friday morning – in itself an almost blogworthy event, or at least one which I wanted to show the girls. Littlest Miss H asked, as if in a loop: “But why change tyre?” She must have asked me a dozen times.

At Kmart Tyre and Auto, after repairing the puncture, the guy told me both front tyres were unroadworthy. I had already noticed they looked a little bald when I changed the rear flat, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise. The bad news was, they were expensive tyres – “because the car is designed and built in Germany, you see,” he explained.

“It’s actually built in South Africa,” I corrected.

“Right. Well, anyway, it’s the European design. It’s an odd size.” (205x55x16, just for reference).

When he quoted me $198 I thought it wasn’t too bad after all. Then he quoted a total of $479 for the job, and I asked how he came up with that figure. Then I learned the tyres were $198 each, plus fitting and repair of the spare.

The calamitous impact on our bank account of unexpected but completely normal running costs such as these has never diminished over my time as an adult and owner of successive cars; I think I would be better suited as some type of bohemian bum, with no material possessions, and no debt, a drifting and sometimes blogging pontificator – “he might be a father, but he sure ain’t a dad” the critic coos like a siren in my head. Ha, but that ain’t my life.

Thinking I might just be the victim of creative quoting, I called Bayford, and found their quote was the same – and they could only do the job later in the week. What could I do but bite the bullet?

Audi not Aldi

On Saturday morning, going shopping with my assistant in the back seat, as we drove past Aldi she told me “I like this one. I don’t like Coles.” And there I am, the self-professed “I Love Coles!” Guy – I thought she was Little Miss Coles by any other name. I know the reason she prefers Aldi: we buy her nappies there – the ones with kangaroos on the front and back. She thinks they’re cute.

As we parked the car, there an ad for Audi Centre Brighton played on the radio, and she asked, “Why say Aldi on music?” I cherished the moment, and turned to face her so I could mouth the similar but not identical words. (The day before, when I was playing Talking Heads Remain In Light CD in the car, she piped up: “Not this one. Change it, I don’t like it.” She’s nothing if not assertive, my Littlest Miss H).

I cooked one of Mrs H’s favourite meals for dinner this evening – Pumpkin and Tofu with Spinach and Green Beans, plus Roast Cashews and Rice Noodles. Mrs H was occupying the girls in their room, so I connected the iPhone through the stereo system and cranked up the volume listening to my Recently Added Playlist. It’s been a while since I cooked to music played loud, and I had forgotten how energising it is – it was the way I worked in the shop. Tonight I heard a young Chan Marshall singing “Rockets” from Cat Power’s Myra Lee CD, and Talking Heads’ “Born Under Punches” and “Cross-eyed and Painless”, then Tina Turner was singing about the “Acid Queen” from the Tommy soundtrack, when the girls joined me, my littlest one dancing about madly and playing her air guitar.

I had more to tell you, but I’ve tried to edit as much as I could. Honest.

Good times to you, until next time

MH

three days, one post

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:25:00 +0000

Monday

I woke up after less than three hours sleep after finishing my Sunday night at work. I wanted to spend some time with the girls. It was also time for a visit to Bill of Northcote for a haircut, and with Littlest Miss H down for her afternoon nap, I tried in vain to cajole her big sister into accompanying me, so Mrs H could have some time alone. But no go.

Off I went, in a daze, a daydream of sorts. As I drove up to Bill’s, who should I find myself next to at the lights on Separation St and St George’s Rd, in a 30 year old clapped-out BMW 633 with window rubber lining hanging low above the passenger’s head? None other than my former employer, and former owner of Gaslight Music – a place that in hindsight has turned out to be my best-yet job. I was conflicted for a moment – what to do? Honk the horn? Wave? Roll down the window? Or look straight ahead and hope I went unnoticed? I did the latter.

I was missing my iPhone and its gooey seductive interface with the world – it was day five or six without it, after I was forced to take it back to the dealer when its Home key stopped functioning. I was given a crappy ancient Nokia as a loaner, and my 3G adventures and productive multi-tasking on the tram was no more. I missed the phone.

Over the weekend I had begun using my Twitter account. Well, since Facebook seemed to have fallen out of favour with so many following its latest Facelift. Although I feared I was too old to learn a hip new language of tweets and twits and twats and who knows what, I did like the idea I could follow people like former Pixies guitarist, Joey Santiago, even if I wasn’t able to find Bret Easton Ellis. The affinity between “following” and “stalking” was not lost on me, but I was able to put it aside. One difference between Twitter and Facebook was, Joey Santiago was unlikely to take up my Friend request on Facebook – if I had made one.

And I was excited – without words even – when Jake Gyllenhall (or someone purporting to be Jake Gyllenhall) sent an update to his or her followers, myself included, asking, “How is everyone doing?” What could I say? I’ve yet to hear an update from catpower80 (could it be Chan?) beyond her 9:13AM Feb 20th “Cat is drinking a Beck's and contemplating a day well done! ;-)” I don’t think it’s her, but of the many responses when I searched for Cat Power, this profile seemed the most legit. Ha ha ha. What a scam. And what about sp@m followers? Sp@m friend requests is something I’ve never experienced on Facebook, but in my first days active on Twitter, I had a half dozen. Nothing since. I am using it, but I remain unconvinced; Facebook remains my social media profile of choice, lousy new look or not.

I left barber Bill newly shorn, and found myself thinking of scrambled eggs – it was my Saturday morning, wasn’t it? I had just finished my weekend work – the hard part of my week – and it was my day off. Yes, it was mid-afternoon, but for a night shift worker that was really the morning. Wasn’t it? I was still confused.

Don’t go fopping on an empty stomach

Not fopping as in fopping, but rather as my littlest one pronounces “shopping” when she loyally accompanies me each week. We needed only a couple of things, but I regretted not scooping up that Cadbury Dairy Milk on Saturday – two family blocks for $6 was a deal too good to ignore, weight gain or no, so I made amends. And when I found myself in the dairy section, I couldn’t help noticing chocolate ice cream on sale for just $2.90. It wasn’t caramel triple swirl – my first choice – but $2.90 for two litres was about half price. Resistance is futile. Sold.

2:20AM Tuesday – I dream of possessions

I wake from a dream so vivid, so symbolic, I must write it down. I would blog it if I didn’t need to get more sleep. But I make it through to the kitchen in the dark, and take out a business card sized note from the box a guest at the hotel gave me only the other day (“don’t tell me you bought that,” Mrs H had responded, before I could explain it was given to me, and I thought it would be handy to pop into the kitchen drawer to jot down grocery needs as we identified them).

Anyway, in the dream it was night (as it always is in my dreams), and I was separated from Mrs H and the girls. She called me on the phone and told me they were lost in Mansfield. I was in Numurkah, I learned. These country locations were in mind following the Black Saturday bushfires.

I entered our house and found it had been ransacked. There were flood waters in our bedroom and our bed was lopsided and had sunk into the floor, where the floorboards were dipped down. It looked like the house stumps had caved in. In our lounge room there was a lady with big hair, who only looked back at me quizzically when I reacted with the surprise and affront appropriate to the situation on discovering her there.

The Salvation Army had gathered our belongings with those of all other similarly affected families, and everything was stacked and piled in an enormous hangar of a warehouse – the kind of place the Lost Ark was stored in at the end of Raiders.

As I loaded up our car, and piled boxes onto the roof, attempting to tie everything down with ropes only (an unsecured load by any other name), I was raided, and what was left of our salvaged belongings was taken by unseen forces.

I found myself in a bank on King St, where my Platinum Amex card (which I don’t possess in fact) did not work; I couldn’t get any money, in other words.

Back at our house, I ran into a real-life former friend and classmate of mine from Uni. I had recently looked him up on Twitter and Facebook, so he had been in mind. After Uni he had taken up further academic work, and remained studious, even grave at times. He was, therefore, not a likely candidate for social media’s whimsy and frivolity, but you know how it is when you start wondering, “I wonder what ever happened to...?”

Now, as I exited this forsaken house of ours, here was my old friend, looking sharp and cheery. Turned out he had recast himself as a used car salesman, and doing very well, thank you very much. On TV and everything, he was. (I knew that because when I noticed he was wearing foundation, he explained he had just come from the studio where he had recorded an infomercial). Well, I was impressed – and we connected like old chums again. But I had no business cards on me to give to him. We would have to remain out of touch.

And then I woke up.

I got the iPhone back on Tuesday – “re-bricked and extensively tested, no true fault found,” the report read. Bah! Re-bricking – I think that was equivalent to Restoring – meant I had to reload all my six days worth of music, and all my contacts. The photos I’d taken and not yet downloaded were gone forever. But at least I had the iPhone back. Status updates on the go could resume!

You say it’s your birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. I was awed by the number of birthday wishes posted to my wall on Facebook – most of them from real “offline” friends, too. Having exchanged only brief farewells with Mrs H when I set off for work in the dark before the girls woke, I came home to find an envelope atop my laptop keyboard. She knew where I would go first, as soon as I returned home. The picture on the card reminded me of how I so often felt – alone, on the outer. Her wording (“wishing you inner happiness for your birthday”) told me that she knew me best, and knew the one thing I wanted more than any material wealth, or anything else.

I picked up the girls from day care and when we returned home, Little Miss H bestowed upon me the bounty of drawings and cards she had prepared for me, including a couple of Easter cards (“it’s nearly Easter,” she said), plus a beautifully drawn Christmas tree as well, just for good measure. Meanwhile her little sister was quick to change into her ballet tutu “for the party”.

And with my family happy with me, I had the happiest birthday yet.

I wish you happy days too.

MH

another Saturday night

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Saturday night again. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, going to work at 10PM on a Saturday night “both sucks and blows” – unless it’s working for Capt’n Twister, which it’s not, in my present case.

I rise from my nap on the sofa in the path of the air-conditioner and make another espresso. We’re out of ice cream tonight after I finished off this week’s tub last night and dared not replenish it when shopping with Littlest Miss H this morning.

After showering for the second time today, I walk through to the bedroom with the towel around my waist.

Mrs H is in bed and looks at me with a faint sort of disdain.

“Have a look at yourself side on in the mirror,” she says.

“I know. I just did,” I reply. I caught sight of the mirror as I entered.

Her eyes are looking for an explanation.

“You’re not going to work at ten o’clock on a Saturday night,” I say by way of reply.

“Ice cream and Coke won’t keep you up,” she says.

“It’s not that.”

“It’s comfort,” she says, and she is right. I nod. One day this week, the Front Office Manager asked me where my jacket was. “At home,” I said. “It’s too hot for me to wear it in here,” I explained.

“You should wear it. It helps cover your gut,” he said, and in writing that looks harsher than it was meant. I’m sure.

I nodded anyway. “I know, but I’m too hot. The sweaty receptionist isn’t a good look either,” I said.

So back in the air-conditioned lounge room, where I hang my suit and maroon shirt so I can get dressed for work without disturbing the rest of the house too much, I hold my breath and grasp the button of my trousers between my thumb and forefinger. It slips for the third time. One more try; breathe in some more. That’s it. Phew.

“the day since I met her I can’t believe it’s true”

I have it in mind to listen to the live recording of Pixies’ “Letter To Memphis” from their BBC Sessions CD again, and as I do, I am reminded of standing in the kitchen for my former business, in the last months, when the writing was on the wall, and talking with my chef, Lisa, after I had just watched the Pixies documentary, loudQUIETloud. I observed how former drummer David Lovering just sort of disappeared after the band broke up, spending his days apparently metal detecting on the beach, as I remember, and this very carefree abandonment made me wonder (as always) just how much money he had to his name, and/or how much he earned in royalties (if anything). How much is enough? (As an editorial note, according to this Wikipedia entry, the documentary’s portrayal of Lovering may be a little one-sided, and I perhaps share more in common with him than I at first thought).

On William St, in the shadows I see a couple gripping each other and having a pash. I analyse my feelings as I close in on the blocks surrounding the hotel, the heart of the nightclub strip: I’m already angry toward the young drunks, the innocents, and the imbeciles; I’m pissed at the girls who act all cute and mime “making pee pee” bent at the knees at the locked doors. Angry because these kids have a different experience of young adult life than I did; ~~angry because a part of me wants to live my young adulthood over~~ – no, I’ve accepted that. I’m angry at their carefree abandonment, angry at their joie de vivre. This has rarely been my experience of life.

These kids make me feel like a faded and jaded grumpy old fogey.

I get a couple of sachets of International Roast from the housekeeping room on the first floor, and in one of the rooms nearby I can hear a fellow’s final thrust n’ lunge toward the inevitable. That’s how thin the walls are in the hotel. I don’t know whether he’s playing solitaire; if he has company, it’s silent. As compelling and repugnant as the soundtrack is, I hope it’s that, rather than what happened on or around December 10, 2007, when I wrote this post (if you have already seen it, I apologise):

I’m still getting over the shock of my shift yesterday morning. I had to call the MICA Paramedics to assist a guest who the ambos reckon had taken ice or GBH. “The kids love this stuff,” the lead officer commented, when he appraised the victim after arriving at the hotel. I thought at first he was having an epileptic fit, after I found him standing rigidly on the fifth floor balcony, with his arms wrapped around himself and flailing around wildly. I spoke to him, but he didn’t register, only bugged his eyes out, and blew out of his mouth.

I went back down to reception and called 000, and observed the ambos in awe when they arrived. I stood by, helpless, fascinated, terrified, while they wrestled with the man, then inserted a mouth guard, and fitted the oxygen mask. Immediately his erratic breathing sounded as measured and heavy as a SCUBA diver’s. Then they strapped him to the chair they had brought with them, and I followed them down to the lobby and out to the ambulance.

After they left I was still in a state of shock for the remaining hours of my shift. The drive home, always so lonely - and soporific in the last few kilometres - had me feeling for the victim, as I idly considered what sort of events in his life might have led him to this point. Seeing him completely out of control like that, I couldn’t really imagine why anyone would want to risk getting into that condition.

When I got home to the morning warmth of my girls, always so happy to see their Dad again, I broke into tears sitting beside Little Miss H on the couch, and held her tightly to me. I told her no matter what she did, I would always love her, and she would always have a home with me. I never imagined I would be having this exchange with my daughter at the age of three, but I guess that’s the world we live in.
Until next time,

MH

how

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:35:00 +0000

Tuesday

So I checked my bank balance and I found my new pay had gone in. Less than I earned before, working five nights, and that wasn’t enough to cover our cost of living each month. This is the price I must pay to hold my family together, and to regain my sleep.

I woke after 3AM. I went through to the kitchen to make my coffee not long after. I imagine Little Miss H abed dimly registering the morning sounds of the coffee machine the way I did when I was young – except now it’s an espresso machine not a percolator – and when I shave and shower in the bathroom, with its wall on the other side of her bed, I wonder if she hears the water in the sink, and me splashing.

Leaving the house, I had an idea to play TISM’s “Greg, The Stop Sign!” – speeding motorists going to and from work the past two nights have put it in my mind – but I search for it on the iPhone, and I don’t have it. I scroll to You Am I’s “How Much Is Enough”, and that is quite an apt choice, so I walk out of our house with that as my soundtrack. The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” follows. Both titles are questions I still want answered.

“How” is a question and an answer. “How to do it?” the frustrated mind wonders when the way is not known, and “how I did it” the victor boasts when he achieves his goal.

“How” is “Woh” in reverse – it’s like the way I exhale with relief, or exhaustion.

I walk down the middle of the road, away from the shadows and the trees and their potentially hidden dangers. That way I am able to stare straight down the road ahead, watching the tram track with an eye for that one light and the destination board above it; when I see it I can lock it in and make it to the stop in time – if I have time. “I have you in my sights”… “stay on target”. The tram is not running early this morning. Good.

I walk straight through the middle of the roundabout and over to the other side, and at the tram stop there’s the woman who I’ve seen catching the morning train or tram to work for I don’t know how many years, each time I’ve worked in the city. I’ve had that many different jobs that keep luring me back to the City; I suspect she’s had just the one. Her glasses are thick and she wears tight jeans and sneakers. Although her face is familiar to me, she never registers any recognition. Nevermind. The tram arrives right on time.

On board, with the construction workers in their bright orange and yellow tops dirty from yesterday, hands unwashed and King Gee khakis with torn knees; on board with the man who always sits down the back, opposite me. He must be sixty plus, and he wears a short-sleeved shirt, even though the mornings are getting chilly, at least this early in the day. The skin on his forearms looks soft and smooth, and he has no hair on his arms either. I wonder whether he’s having the same therapy as my Dad.

Nick Cave is singing about “The Mercy Seat” and I flash back again to those lonesome nights upstairs at Dream nightclub, on the rickety dance floor, amid the Goths and the smell of damp towels and share houses, and me not knowing the lyrics, but mimicking the actions, the dance of the possessed, the lurching, shuffling backward and forward, head cast down, head held up to sing a line I knew: “And the mercy seat is waiting / and I think my head is burning / and in a way I’m yearning / to be done with all this measuring of truth. An eye for an eye / a tooth for a tooth / and anyway I told the truth. And I’m not afraid to die.”

“I’ve walked these city streets /
I’ve known victory and defeat”

On my lunch break I decide I’ll go for a walk down to Elizabeth St: the block where Minotaur and Mag Nation face each other. I stop in at the Rivers store on Collins when I think they could have a replacement pair of sandals for my six year old Colorado pair, which are well and truly falling apart. They have a range to choose from, but priced at $80 to $100, it’s more than I can or want to pay. And even though I consider the return on investment – six years wear for $80 is pretty good value – I can’t commit. (When I relate this story to Mrs H later that night, she is quick to remind me I had no hesitation buying my iPhone).

I make it to Mag Nation, and I roam up to the new third floor – and I decide I’d better get out of there fast.

I’m walking too fast to blog, but the thoughts are all there, the sensors are on overload:

Two men laugh boisterously together outside a building, and it sounds like bravado, a bluff. Who’s fooling who?

Women in coats talk quietly, huddled, their eyes focussed on the middle distance somewhere ahead of them, downward.

A man and woman – colleagues – share a table outside and a smoke and I think of Chris Rock’s line – any time a man’s being nice to a woman, he’s thinking, “How about some dick?”

I didn’t notice the walk light was red and I’m nearly run over as I high tail it over William St caught up in my status update

inspired (believe it or not) after a brisk walk among the lunch crowd in the city

Getting back to the lobby, the air is stale compared to all that freshness outside, and my heels ache in my Julius Marlows, from carrying all my extra weight. But I’m glad I did it.

always look on the bright side of life

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:02:00 +0000

You probably already know Sunday night and Monday morning is my reward, my quiet time, after working Saturday night, with all the acid stomach stress that causes me. Well, I’m back in the zone.

So I’ve been telling you lately about my newfound energy and enthusiasm for life in general, thanks mostly to my switch to days at work, three days out of five. And having Monday and Friday off – a split weekend – breaks up my working week nicely, too. I didn’t go into detail last time about just how small, but profound this change is. Here’s one example: after our recent rain, I took it upon myself, unprompted, to trim back the nature strip grass – or at least, two sides of it. The rest will have to wait. That’s something I have probably neglected for about two years, I’d say. There was a time when our neighbour used to do it, when he’d mow the nature strip itself – since we don’t own or need a lawnmower. Then he stopped, which was fair enough. But I never picked it up again. Too busy with the business at one point, then too overwhelmed with stress and or sleep deprivation. But that’s coming to an end.

Yesterday afternoon, without a plan as such, I got stuck into tidying our attic a little, and moving my tools, the cans of paint and a whole lot more out into our new shed. Little Miss H scaled the fold-down attic staircase (closely monitored by me), and I showed her around the roof space. She loved it. Then she helped me carry all the things out into the shed and store them in there. After her sister woke from her afternoon nap, I suggested we take their bikes for a ride to the park, and I’d pack the Littlest One’s Winnie the Pooh ball so we could have a kick and play. Incidentally, we’d also be giving Mrs H some much-needed space and quiet time alone. Off we set.

We were probably out for less than fifteen minutes, because although we were having fun at the park, the black clouds threatening overhead started to pelt down heavy raindrops, and mindful of the head cold I am still trying to shake after I got drenched walking home unprotected in the pouring rain ten days ago, I had no intentions of us risking another soaking. We made it home, with Littlest Miss H’s legs pedalling at record speed as I pushed her bike by the remote steering handle at the rear. And wouldn’t you know it, we had hardly walked in when the rain stopped and the skies cleared up again. I committed to the girls to us going back to the park for more this afternoon if the weather is good.

Well, buoyed by the positive afternoon spent with my eldest, and with the day being wintery and cold, I suggested we have early dinner and Family Night – which means us watching a movie together, and sharing popcorn made on the stovetop by Mrs H. Sometimes Family Night also means the girls get to stay up past their bedtime, but since I needed to get my sleep in before I went to work, I made sure we started watching the DVD at 5. Finding Nemo was my suggestion, since we haven’t watched it for a while, and it never disappoints. Watching the colourful undersea reef scenes, I asked Little Miss H if she would like to go diving one day. Getting my SCUBA diving license and exploring the reef together is one of the dreams I have for my firstborn and I (driving to the beach and unloading from the back of a red Volvo V50 wagon, if you remember me writing about that last April). But while Little Miss H was noncommittal to my idea, her younger sister piped up, “Me!” and I could only smile.

While Mrs H was getting the girls ready for bed – telling them her rendition of Rumpelstiltskin again (its Little Miss H’s absolute favourite, and she can repeat it practically verbatim), I checked my facebook profile for the first time in, oh, almost seven hours, where I saw Her Majesty had posted that her two boys had returned from their grandparents with a couple of Barbie dolls, who they had named after my two. No, not Little and Littlest Miss H; their real names. I reported this to the girls in the bedroom and they were tickled by it.

I went to bed before story time was over because I’m starting to understand the times when my presence is redundant relative to the circle of power my three girls create. Besides, after all of three hours in bed after getting home in the morning, I really needed the sleep.

After the iPhone’s marimba alarm sounded two deeply slept hours later, Mrs H told me how the girls had said their prayers, and Littlest Miss H, when praying for tomorrow, had prayed “to go to the park, on the bike, with the ball.” Dear friend and reader, you must know how happy that made me.

I’m making little changes.

Mrs H has suggested I drink more water, which I am doing. You already know I’m drinking coffee again, just as much as before, despite claiming not so long ago I had gone cold turkey. As I prepared to leave last night, Mrs H said “Don’t tell me you’re going to buy a Mars bar at the petrol station on the way to work.” She suspects me. But she need not.

Not knowing if I would be able to find the words or the time to write this tonight, I again packed my copy of The Australian New Car Buyer Guide for some daydream fantasies in the quiet closing hours of my night (I paged through it at home this afternoon with my novice car enthusiast, Littlest Miss H, while we were sitting beside each other, driving our cardboard box “cars” on the kitchen floor). On Saturday, when we went to the Woolhouse Park after picking her sister up from gymnastics class, I encouraged the girls to join me in an up-close inspection of a copper coloured stock ’57 Chevy Bel-Air parked at a factory over the road. I drew their attention to its fins, the chrome edged side arrow panel and the “bullets” in the hood. Never too young, dear reader, never too young.

Until next time, you know what I say...

May your days be authentic,

MH

afternoon shift

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:37:00 +0000

In the milk bar there are 1980’s soft porn DVDs in a display box and the windows are covered with ads for calling cards. I buy a Golden Gaytime listening to Grandaddy and sitting at the tram stop with my backpack on with my legs straddled because the backpack is pressing against the glass of the tram shelter and my pants are at least one size too small so they fit like a sausage skin and suddenly sooner than I expected my tram is there and I clamour aboard clutching my things and as I try to make my way to the only seat available at the back of the tram we are already lurching around the same corner where I went a sixer coming home yesterday afternoon and fell all over the Mary Immaculate girls’ backpacks piled on the floor and inadvertently also pulled my hamstring as I twisted and apologised, “Sorry girls,” with my headphones on but my voice projected at a speaking level and it's this injury minor as it is combined with the fact I will not be with the family tonight which has put me in a bad mood and even though I should have enjoyed the morning alone at home, I felt guilty instead.

This post was written using iPhone Notes, and e-mailed to GMail, then edited (the auto-complete is pretty good on the iPhone but I was typing so fast it couldn’t be expected to get all my words right) and posted via Blogger. Matt is a fan of 3G and the 21st Century. Over and out.

magic Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:32:00 +0000

I did it. I hit the sweet spot. Woke at 3:10 (AM). My time to write this post before I go to work. I imagined myself doing this when working days again, and I’m excited it has already happened. This time of day is my time, this time of day has always been my time to create. But enough of the preamble; I’m on a deadline – I have less than two hours to write, edit and publish this.

magic Monday

I worked Saturday and Sunday night, and even going to work on Sunday I was feeling good, because it felt like the hard part of my working week was already out of the way. Monday was Labour Day – a public holiday in Victoria. That meant there was the sort of quiet – at least at home and around the streets, away from the bustle of the shops – you don’t get on a Saturday or even a Sunday. I slept for around four hours, and rather than waking to the sound of the girls fighting, or Mrs H disciplining my wilful firstborn, I woke to the two of them playing shopkeeper on the back deck while Littlest Miss H was napping.

Mrs H and I mutely traded places and I joined in the game – Little Miss H was seated at her desk with her play money and her “stock” arranged on the table. I told her my daughter likes gardening with me and I was looking to buy something we could plant in our garden, but I needed something which would tolerate our dry conditions. Little Miss H replied earnestly that she ordered all her plants “with rain”, so that was fine. What a fantastic idea! I was delighted – and when I learned that all her stock was priced at either one dollar or two dollars, I could only smile.

FG G6E Turbo – say it with me: FG G6E

On Sunday we went to Mrs H’s sister for afternoon tea, and when we were leaving my brother-in-law showed me over his brand spanking new Ford FG G6E Turbo. He has worked for Ford since he completed his University education as an Engineer. I coveted the car – despite its entirely non-inspirational and not to mention cumbersome name. As we drove home, I told Mrs H how impressed I was by the car.

“He’s worked there for twenty years. Imagine if you had stayed at Foxtel all that time. You’d have a car like that too. But you have life experience instead,” she said. I was surprised and pleased by her pragmatic outlook. It’s what I tell myself too, you know it. I have to believe it, to reconcile the desire for material possessions, given our world’s endless stimulus to consume – Little Miss H and I saw one of those lustrous Macbook ads on TV over the weekend, and even though I said nothing (probably because I was just sitting there on the couch looking gobsmacked), she turned to me and noted, “Do you want an Apple computer?”

Edward Scissorhands

On Saturday night we had started watching Edward Scissorhands on TV, and the girls were captivated by its fairy tale quality. I was reminded how much I enjoyed it all those years ago, when Winona Ryder was a central preoccupation in my mind, and that of much of the general public as well. I remember Rolling Stone magazine’s 1991 Hot issue, with her looking alluring on the cover in a Herb Ritts photo session, and her and Johnny Depp being Hollywood’s Hot couple of the moment. Yes, all that came to mind, and even though we had to cut short our watching of the film, because it was the girls’ bed time, and I needed to get a nap before going to work Saturday night, I made a mental note to buy a copy of the film on DVD so we could watch it together in full.

With the realisation Mrs H wouldn’t be taking her regular Monday night aerobics class, and since I had the night off so I wouldn’t have to nap before work, I decided to call around to see if the DVD was in stock. No luck at my first call, Borders, which I tipped would be the most likely place to find it. Better luck at JB Hi-Fi in Preston. I asked them to hold a copy and told them I would be there within the hour.

Although I couldn’t persuade Little Miss H to join me – despite the lure of a drive-thru stop at Hungry Jack’s to get some fries – I left the house alone, with only the mix CD my friend Paula had given to me when we caught up last weekend for the first time in too long. The music was a much-needed sample of what’s current in good music, and it was a reminder of when we used to work together at Gaslight Music, and we’d be exposed to all that was good and new thanks to the buyers constantly playing new releases or significant back catalogue selections on the CD player in the upstairs office. It was something like my best-ever working environment.

I couldn’t shake the melody of MGMT’s song “Time To Pretend”, and indeed I played it loud as I drove to Northland, and returned with Tim Burton’s DVD as my prize on the passenger seat. And yes, I even resisted the temptation to snap up more CDs and DVDs while I browsed the racks at JB. (Updating my Amazon wishlist – well, my birthday is only days away, after all...) Even this DVD purchase was not on our budget, but I justified it with the notion of a “family night” well spent together.

And as I drove home, with Nick Cave’s Grinderman singing about the “No Pussy Blues” (“I patted her revolting little Chihuahua”) and conjuring images of me like the crooner thrusting my pelvis and hips with the frustrated potency his baritone voice brought to mind, and even as the distorted guitar solo squelched and fuzzed and jammed with a blistering ferocity, I caught sight of what looks like an unfinished piece of urban art on the wall of a shop just up the road from where I will catch the 5:59 tram to work this morning.

Moon Pix

After I returned from my shopping expedition, and Littlest Miss H was up from her nap, the girls helped me deflate their jumping castle to store it in the shed until we (maybe) inflate it again next summer. It was “stacks on Dad”, as their added weight on the castle helped force the air out. Talk about cheap fun!

Family night went well. We had dinner al fresco on the back deck, then Mrs H made fresh popcorn (on the stove, not in the microwave), and Little Miss H lay with me on the couch, while we watched the movie from the start again. She had a few questions, and by the time the story had climaxed, with its moderately bloody murder of Anthony Michael Hall’s antagonist Jim and Edward Scissorhands and his love interest Kim (Winona Ryder)’s eternal forced separation, the wife wondered quietly whether the content was too mature for the girls. I think not. It’s a fairy tale after all, and its message is true: Edward can’t hold onto Kim because he might hurt her, and he can’t live in her world, because the people there don’t accept him, so they have to be forever apart. That is why they must cherish the time they had together. At least, that was the essence I put into words for Little Miss H when she asked why the story ended the way it did.

The movie ended a little after the girls’ 7:30 bedtime, and after they brushed their teeth with their Mum, I took them outside to see the Moon, which was bright and looked almost full in the sky. My littlest one loves to see the Moon, and she’s fascinated by it – just as airplanes and balloons hold her interest as well. I wished them sweet dreams and told them although I wouldn’t see them in the morning, because I would leave for work before they got up, I would pick them up from day care in the afternoon, and our night faded out. I prepared our lunches for the morning and washed up, and by the time I came to write this post, I realised I didn’t have the energy or clarity I needed, so I pulled the plug and hoped the universe – or at least my natural body clock – would allow me to wake early to get all the words out. I was lucky.

Until next time, may your days be authentic and full of magic too,

MH

why Kerouac?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:47:00 +0000

a Words Are My Power guest post, by author Rick Dale

Rick Dale, author of The Beat Handbook is a professor in the Special Education Department at a state university in Maine. He is also a Jack Kerouac enthusiast, and The Beat Handbook is his first book. After he noticed my earlier post about Kerouac, I invited him to write this guest post for Words Are My Power, about what Jack Kerouac means to him.

I’ve been invited to write about my affinity for Jack Kerouac and the beats. I’m going to focus on Kerouac, since any affinity I have for the beats in general is a direct offshoot of my affinity for Jack. This post started out in my mind with a scholarly bent, and then it veered into a mostly personal perspective.

I received an excellent high school and undergraduate education, yet where literature is concerned, I don’t remember encountering Kerouac. Maybe I was exposed to beat literature and it just didn’t “take.” The first exposure I remember came in 2002, courtesy of my great friend, Keith – a huge Kerouac fan – who encouraged me to read On The Road. I was living alone at the time, reading voraciously, and frequenting the local tavern much more than necessary or healthful (living like Jack?).

A number of things in On The Road spoke to me. I’m reminded of Bob Dylan’s description: “Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.” I guess Jack’s was the first prose that really spoke my own language: the spontaneity, the passion, the freedom, and of course the style in which those were conveyed grabbed my attention and held it, and holds it to this day (I’m currently reading The Subterraneans). Jack’s was the first prose I’d ever read where it seemed as if comprehension was only part of the ride. I could read entire passages, enjoy them, and not really know exactly what Kerouac was talking about.

In a comment on my February 22, 2009 post on my blog, The Daily Beat, “the right guy” said about Kerouac, “reading his work is more like experiencing something than reading and digestion.” Yes! That is what I love about reading Kerouac – it’s an experience!

The second Kerouac novel I read was The Dharma Bums. I must admit that I preferred it – and still do – over On The Road. I know that statement probably amounts to beat anathema, but it’s the truth. My truth, anyway. I think “Bums” originally appealed to me because I was coming off a heavy Buddhist kick at the time. “Bums” had many of the same features as “Road”, but with a more explicit spiritual theme.

Next I read Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, by Gerald Nicosia. I became fascinated with Kerouac the human being: driven, questioning, passionate, flawed. I related to his trials, envied his exploits, and empathized with his losses. There are just some eerie parallels between our lives. I grew up in the Northeast. I had lost a brother, too, not young like Gerard, but young. My brother was gay, so I could relate to Jack’s homosexual exploits. I’d been married three times (so had Jack). My mom was born two years after Jack, but my dad was born in 1904, so I had a mixed cultural experience where generational issues are concerned. In Jack’s essay, “The Origins of the Beat Generation,” he lists a number of things that the beat generation “goes back to.” Following are some items directly from Jack’s list:

W.C. Fields
The Three Stooges
The Marx Brothers
Krazy Kat
Laurel and Hardy
Count Dracula
Popeye
King Kong
Basil Rathbone [as Sherlock Holmes]

If I independently created a list of cultural influences from my youth, I would have included those same influences.

Jack’s oft-quoted “the only people for me are the mad ones...” has been a theme in my life, yet I never thought about it until I read that passage in On The Road. I don’t know where that character trait had its seed, but I suspect it may have come from growing up living in a hotel where my dad was the manager. I was surrounded by characters at all times, from the guests to the bellhops to the front desk managers to the chefs in the kitchen. I remember one time my friends and I were teasing the prep cooks – as we often did – down in the vast kitchen prep room in the basement. One time, several of the cooks grabbed my friend Joe and threw him on the prep table, started the meat grinder, and pretended they were going to run his arm through it!

Like I said, I grew up around some very interesting characters.

At the same time, I experienced quite a strict upbringing courtesy of my mother (undue motherly influence – another Kerouac similarity?). I never really cut loose until college, and even then my conditioning for 17 years kept me fairly constrained. I went the conservative route, true to my upbringing, until a classic “mid-life” crisis in my mid-forties resulted in me dumping my marriage, career, lifestyle, everything.

That was right before I discovered Kerouac, and the freedom he espoused and lived strongly validated the radical changes I’d made in my life.

I admire Jack Kerouac for his dedication to craft. He was a writer because he wrote. He said, “Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” Think about that. Even a famous author is only read by a small percentage of the human beings on the planet. Much of what writers put to paper (or hard drive or blog) never gets read by anyone except the writer. Ultimately, you are writing for yourself out of some innate drive to do it. You see yourself as a writer, so you write.

I’ve posted about how a writer needs three things: something to say, a way to say it, and someone to say it to. I’ve always felt like a writer, even excelling at it in school, but the “something to say” part stymied me until I encountered Kerouac. He wrote what he knew. That inspired me. I knew I could write, and I knew there was an audience for good writing. All I needed was something to say.

Jack provided me with the latter. His two books, On The Road and The Dharma Bums, became the fodder for my first book, The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions.

Along my path to self-publication (which I will detail in a future post), the words of Sylvia Plath kept me moving forward: "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

I owe Jack Kerouac a true debt of gratitude. Without him, I would not be a published author. It’s that simple. And it’s that complicated.

Thanks for your post, Rick, and for the first guest post on Words Are My Power. I for one look forward to learning more about how you turned your passion for writing into a published reality, and your personal experience of the self-publishing process.

Until next time, may your days be authentic.

MH

good morning

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:12:00 +0000

*ahem* I’m back. Again. I know, it’s been a while. Even I wondered whether I’d ever be back on this space.

A lot has changed since I last wrote. Firstly, and probably most significantly, I’m now working days three days of the week. Still doing Saturday and Sunday nights, but Tuesday to Thursday I see daylight. And I get to sleep for seven to eight hours five nights a week now, instead of two. It’s an amazing difference. The first day I was in, the hotel looked so different with daylight shining through the windows I popped out onto the sixth floor rooftop and snapped these two images of King St by day.

pictures taken March 4, 9:11AM.

Quite a difference to the Saturday night image I captured on my phone camera some time last winter:

There are many flow-on benefits from this increased sleep and time with the family. Already my Saturday is more the way I would like it to be – with lots of time spent with the girls; taking Little Miss H to gymnastics (accompanied by Mrs H), then spending one on one time with Littlest Miss H.

This Saturday Little Miss H and I spent some time gardening together, and I introduced her to the centipedes I had discovered among the grass I was removing. She was fascinated, and we studied them, all curled tight, with their many tiny legs like eyelashes, then one finally stretched itself out in my hand and tickled down my palm and onto the ground again. I told her how small they were compared to the millipedes which I used to see when I was living in Zimbabwe as a kid. I hoped it would be the kind of shared moment she would later be able to recollect fondly.

Later we spent time reading one of my childhood books, The Further Adventures of Captain William Walrus, wherein the intrepid Captain and his crew encounter the Seasaurus Giganticus amid the ice floes. I thought my dinosaur-enthusiast daughter would like the giant sea dragon and indeed artist Giannini’s colourful tableaux. I would post links if I could find them.

PS Although this post barely touched on some of the content I wanted to write about (blame it on falling out of practice), as I passed the remaining hours of my shift I reflected on the fun I had putting in an offstage vocal performance as the Big Bad Wolf, when Mrs H recounted the story of the Three Little Pigs for the girls at story time on Friday and Saturday night. My Big Bad Wolf is a Strine carnivore and a half, with a hankering for roast pork... Ah, you had to be there. Littlest Miss H covers herself with the sheet completely and is tickled by the whole experience. I love it!

Coming up next time, a guest post from fellow Jack Kerouac enthusiast and writer, Rick Dale, author of The Beat Handbook.

Until then,

MH

good news

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:41:00 +0000

Good news. I write this feeling a new energy, a new positivity, engaged with my family in a way I haven’t yet been. I’ve had a shift in perspective, even if only a slight one. I can see the dawn, the light at the end of this very long night. Stepping stones, if I can draw you back to last June. The eczema on my hand which has plagued me for the last four months is even clearing up.

All By Myself is playing. That used to be my theme song. What shall my new theme be? Only time will tell. Thinks: Brand New Life (theme from Who’s The Boss?) Ruminates. Maybe.

I’ve been turning over ideas for that longstanding story I talk about writing. Seeing which of the old ideas are still relevant to me now, which ones hold any energy to carry me forward. And I find I have a deeper understanding of certain aspects of the story. That’s thanks to my own experience. More and more I see the story as a character study of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, thinking about ritualistic actions repeated over and over, a person living in a trance-like state. Trapped like that tired metaphorical rat in his cage, running, running, running. Chasing something – chasing something, some-thing... that’s... not... there. An illusion, in the end.

Hey, sound familiar?

An open ending, leaving the viewer to join the dots themself. Isn’t that how life is? Life is not linear. Life is not easy, essentially. Or am I wrong? I can only tell it like I see it.

it’s me, I’m back

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Well, one week ago – just one week ago – I wrote that I would be updating this blog less frequently, as I intended focussing my writing on my much-mooted fictionalised life story. That bold claim has amounted to nought so far, and with one thing and another, I’m back. For now anyway.

I feel tentative publishing again. So much has happened since I was last here; the world has turned – to quote Weezer. So much has happened since that fateful trip of ours to Geelong at the end of January. Wow, just over two weeks. Since then, among other things, I have dallied with the notion of axing my creative urges altogether, in support of living in the real world versus the world of the fantastic and imaginary. That position may not be sustainable in the long run; creative output has been the way I’ve found meaning for so long in my life, and I know I have loyal readers who enjoy my work, even if their number is small right now. I may not have riches or status, but at least I can express myself. That’s the idea, at its base level.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

So, this blog has become something other than I imagined it to be when I started it last year. Increasingly, it has become a document of my life as a parent. More precisely, a Dad. And a good Dad at that, or at least that is my aim. Tonight I changed “parenting” tags to “becoming a Dad”, since that’s my journey, and it’s more specific than the generic “parenting”. In my most-recent meeting with the Magician last week, I talked about the dramatic changes in my personal life, and how I’m now seeing myself in relation to my nuclear family, connected, rather than alone, the way I have done for so many years. And as I talked I had in mind an image which is probably more like our solar system than anything else, but blame that confusion on my laughably low interest in the scientific world. Still, interconnectedness, interdependence are the keys. And these are subjects this only child has to learn; they don’t come naturally.

me and my shadow

We also talked about my relationship with my Shadow, and its Projections. And this is not the place to get into the specifics of that dialogue, but I found it liberating, to say the least. Setting down emotional baggage and all that. So much so that I have taken the as yet unprecedented step of a two week break until my next meeting with him. Stepping stones...

the joy of the five day shuffle

I am writing this to the sound of my newly updated iTunes library on my iPhone. Yes, that’s right. I feel guilty admitting it, but I am now the proud owner of an iPhone. Here’s what happened: the hand-me-down Motorola V3 Razr from my brother-in-law had ceased: its keypad wasn’t responding. So I took it into the shop and asked about getting it repaired. The sales guy suggested I get a new phone, and I emphasised it had to be at no cost upfront, with comparable monthly payments. And so it was that I walked away with a shiny new iPhone on a plan which will save me a couple of dollars a month compared with the ancient plan I have been on all these years. I couldn’t believe it. And of course, the phone has an 8GB iPod included, which neatly doubled the size of my beloved nano given to me by Mrs H for my birthday only last year. Five days of music. Five days of shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Yeah.

So this post is written to a soundtrack of Beth Orton (Central Reservation), Jane’s Addiction (Ritual De Lo Habitual, and I never knew the background/inspiration to the “second side”, or latter half of the disc – my preferred by a long margin), Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation), T. Rex, Taylor Dayne (don’t hold it against me), Escape (The Pina Colada Song) (I said please don’t), and all the usual eclectic suspects.

Until next time (whenever that may be), may your days be authentic.

where is Matt?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:58:00 +0000

I am going to be updating this blog less frequently for a while, as I am going to be devoting my available time to writing the story / novel idea I have been carrying for many years. I expect to drop back now and then to let you know how it’s going, as well as anything else which may seem relevant.

One of the purposes of this blog was to reinvigorate my writing, to get me into the habit of writing regularly, and more or less, that is what it has done. Now I plan to focus that writing on one story and see if I can make some sense of it all.

Thanks for reading,

MH

PS Here are some recent photos from my desk at home. I think any writers or aspiring writers may have a laugh at the chaos and mess. Others may shudder in horror.

acceptance

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:30:00 +0000

txt msg, meeting, anti-climax

On Tuesday evening I received a text message from the Front Office Manager asking me to stay back yesterday morning at the end of my shift to meet the new Hotel Manager.

Through the night I felt buoyed, light. Motivated. Energised. Here would be some confirmation of that light at the end of the night, confirmation of exactly what my two colleagues had meant when they said to me earlier that I’d soon be joining them on day shifts.

The meeting was over relatively quickly; I was told that despite what might have been said already, no changes would be made just yet.

I had taken the tram in on Tuesday night, so Mrs H would be able to drive the girls to day care without having to wait for my return – so I wouldn’t feel any pressure to get home, so I could make the most of my meeting with the new boss. I walked down to Collins St, dazed and confused.

Now I was feeling so tired, my eyelids were heavy, my face drawn. I caught sight of my reflection in the tram window, and was shocked by how stern I looked. I compared how I feel right then with how I felt through the night. Now I would have to start again. Arguing my case, negotiating, waiting. Waiting. “The waiting is the hardest part,” said Paul Westerberg, and it’s true for me.

Home for a few hours sleep, then woken by the alarm, to get up and make it back into the City for my regular Wednesday afternoon meeting with the magician. We were out of coffee. I considered an International Roast, but thought better of it, given the already high temperature.

I caught the tram, and then walked up to the Plaza for the necessity: two 250g bricks of Lavazza crema e gusto. They used to be just $10, and even with the price rise to $12 the pair, it’s still great value. Into my backpack they went and I was back to the tram stop, then into the City. This time, with the events of the last week, and then the underwhelming outcome of the morning’s meeting at work, I at least had something fresh in mind to discuss, I thought.

we had another good session

We talked about my sense of self-esteem (or lack thereof), and he asked what qualities I value in myself. I paused for a good while, then I was able to list some things: my writing, I’m a good cook, I like to think my complexity makes me interesting... I’m becoming a better Dad...

I told him how my My Personality profile shows my Openness trait to be quite high, and I think that quality is an asset. It also means I sometimes have a hard time focussing in any one particular direction. (I didn’t mention my Neuroticism score, but I think he already knows about that one...)

Then he asked me to look for anything positive in my perceived failures, and although it took me a little while, I recognised that even though the decisions I made didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I was at least able to make a decision, to take action, and that took a type of courage, leadership even, to do. And that was another good quality to possess, in my eyes.

I made a note on the back of a copy of the previous night’s post:

“My perceived failures in the past are not my doing alone, but rather the consequence of a number of things.”

That’s a biggie for me to realise.

With our time almost up, he suggested we try something. He asked me to close my eyes, and after a beat’s hesitation, I did so. Then he asked me to imagine a time when I felt like a failure... To imagine the colour of the feeling, the shape of it, the texture of it, the way it looked... and it was a perfect exercise for the visual person I am.

In my mind’s eye I recalled the morning, how I felt a sense of tunnel vision, as if I was underneath a brooding, heavy sky, dark grey like a thunderstorm.

Then he asked me how this feeling changed if I felt better, and I recalled stepping off at my tram stop near home that morning. The brightness and openness of day was back, and even though my head was downcast rather than held high, I had a sense of just keeping on. Trudging on, back home. That’s life. And we concurred that sometimes, that’s the way you get through life. That’s dealing with reality.

I surprised myself by noting how effective the contemplative exercise – the meditation, if you like – was, especially in the short time it took.

Our time was up. I left feeling sleepy, calm, relaxed. As I walked to the elevator, I felt as if my step had a bounce in it again. I felt like I was a nine year old boy, dressed as I was in my green Vans and the polo shirt with the green stripes.

Downstairs, I considered buying a caffe latte takeaway – the thought was extravagant, but I considered it all the same. I could call The Wife, to tell her, but I choose not to. I just held the feeling instead.

And as I reached the tram stop, even though snippets from Funky Cold Medina and November Rain were playing in my head the way they always do (!?), I for once avoided putting on the little white bud headphones, like so many others do, me included. I chose the City soundtrack instead: Mechanised sounds. Anonymous. Real. The afternoon light on Collins St, the long shadows across the street, and the brightness of sunshine on the buildings on the East side. I felt carefree. I had hope. There was a stillness. The storm had passed again. I was in the world, and at peace with it.

epilogue

Instead of going straight to day care to pick up the girls, as I usually do, I made a trip home to pick up their bikes. I was busting to make a coffee, but I held off. It was already past the girls’ usual pick-up time of 4:30PM. In a few minutes I made it down to the centre, pushing the two bikes, to another smiling welcome with kisses and hugs. And that was before I told them I had brought their bikes with me...

Once we got out the front, they rode across the car park to show their friends still inside, which caused much excitement from the other kids. The others called out farewells in chorus as my girls rode off, bells ringing.

On the way back home, I noticed Little Miss H had stopped pedalling. I asked her what was wrong. She told me it was because she had fallen off the other morning. I reminded her of Dory the fish in Finding Nemo; when Nemo’s father Marlon loses hope and doesn’t want to continue the search for his son, she sings to him, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming...” I said it was the same with bike riding.

Speaking of which, today is the start of my weekend, and I plan to start it by taking the girls for a lap (or two) around the block when I get home, and then making it down to the Aquatic Centre for a swim together there, to survive the heat forecast for the day.

Until next time, just keep swimming. Or cycling. Or trudging. Or keeping on.

MH

self-actualising ain't easy

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:10:00 +0000

(but it sure is fun)

Excuse my absence. It’s been an interesting few days since I last wrote. Our trip to Geelong wasn’t the exciting carefree escape I’d hoped it would be. Although it started well, the combination of a change of routine, tiredness on my part, and the anticipation of having to go to work that night, underscored by the general heat exhaustion we probably all felt, meant that by the end of the day, my dearest Little Miss H bore the brunt of my frustrations, and in turn the wife had to cope with my blind rage in the background while she tried to convey her excitement about her recent exam score to her sister on the phone. Loyal reader, it was not at all pretty, and all sorts of other underlying issues were dug up in the aftermath.

But the good thing was, it forced me to change – for the better.

is this the way life’s meant to be?

I had already been disturbed by the horrific news of four year old Darcey Iris Freeman allegedly being thrown from the West Gate bridge to her death, by her father, Arthur Phillip Freeman (on what was meant to be her first day of school), last Thursday.

That news was distressing enough for the depressive in me. I learned that, on average, one person every three weeks kills themselves by jumping from the bridge. And I was reminded that last year a young mother had thrown herself and her 18 month old off the bridge as well.

Why do I write this? Because following my outburst (blind rage, it’s true), my wife told me she no longer trusted me to take the girls out alone – as I had done so successfully only the morning before. That really hurt. I could see her point of view, but at the same time, although I can too vividly picture exactly what may have happened that morning on the bridge, just as I can imagine the circumstances which may have led up to it, the actual decision of the father to get out of the car and throw his own daughter – if that was what happened – only leaves me feeling sickened and saddened.

I decided I had to change my approach with my girls.

I couldn’t risk any further progress down the other path. So, the next morning, after returning from my night at work, instead of going straight to bed, I took the girls for a bike ride around the block. Usually we just go up and down the footpath outside the front of our house, never more than that. The night before my little one had asked me to take her for a ride, and I had told her we’d do it the next morning. Well, this time I was going to stick to my word. And the girls loved it.

The next morning – Monday – we did it again, going the other way down our street, and stopped off at the park. How long had it been since I took the girls there? I couldn’t remember.

And yesterday morning – Tuesday, when the girls go to day care – they wanted to have a bike ride. It was already becoming a habit; I was stoked. I told them we couldn’t ride on school days, because there wasn’t time, but we could ride every other day. In reply, they asked if I could bring their bikes when I picked them up, rather than the pram they share as carriage home.

a new leaf

On Monday night the City streets near work were covered in maple leaves, presumably casualties from last week’s heat. Even though it’s summer, it looked like autumn (fall), so heavy was the layer of brown, gold and green leaves. One was trapped in the vent of the car, and I removed it when I got home, and took it in to show the girls. Oh, the delight – I couldn’t have anticipated it would generate such enthusiasm. Little Miss H loves collecting fallen leaves whenever we’re outside, and offers them to her Mum or I as gifts. The other morning when I was sleeping, and Mrs H had taken the girls out for a walk, on returning my daughter had come around to my bedside table and delivered a handful of leaves – “Here you go, Daddy, that’s for you,” she announced, then she was off.

The maple leaf was so different in colour, texture and shape to the gum leaves she usually collects from the tree out the front of our property. But when I unthinkingly gave it to her sister – and I had only brought one leaf home with me – I knew I would have to make up for it tonight. So I bagged a selection of different coloured ones, and will present them to my loved one when I pick her up later today. It’s that easy.

(And even as I marvel at the wonder and innocence of childhood, I can’t help thinking about that poor little girl who won’t get to experience this.)

Yesterday, after three hours deep, solid sleep, I woke feeling recharged, and after spending the requisite time catching up with Facebook friends, amongst other things chatting about the benefits of going commando style, I got stuck into some gardening. In the midday heat and sunshine I was soon sweaty and dirty, but I loved it, and felt so much better for doing it.

That hardworking man across the road – The Architect, who labours day and night in 40 degree plus heat to rebuild his home – he won’t get all the glory from our house any more, I thought to myself as I worked... The wife is going to be reminded why she decided to marry this once determined visionary who may appear to have lapsed into a heavyweight schlub, and she will remember this: The Dream Isn’t Over...

When I walked to the day care centre to pick the girls up later, I got the most enthusiastic greeting I’ve yet had there. And after they ate their watermelon and pineapple on the back deck (seated on their bikes), when Mrs H came home, Little Miss H told her that the best part of her day was when Dad came to pick her up. And the story will go on...

This post was written to a soundtrack composed of Electric Light Orchestra, Bananarama and Fun Boy Three, Chantoozies, Big Audio Dynamite, Air Supply, Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey, Hall and Oates, Love & Rockets, Beatmasters, Bros, Bucks Fizz, Dead Or Alive, Eurythmics, Depeche Mode and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

PS While we’re on the subject of the 80’s and good music, if you’re interested in The Church and/or Steve Kilbey check out this latest video catching up with Steve, from my friend and loyal former Herbie’s Healthy customer, Matt Hopper of inframe.tv.

Until next time, may your times be good times.

MH

roll with it

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:07:00 +0000

3AM eternal

It is the weekend. I am writing this by candlelight in the black cool spot of the night, on our back deck, after the standard procrastinations of Facebook checks, coffee, and e-mail replies. Behind me the neighbours’ air conditioner provides a background hum. My fingers dancing across the key pad are the only other sound. My time again.

Tonight I slept on the back deck, under the stars, on a mattress improvised from two of the cushions from our outdoor chairs. A cool change late last evening gave me the idea. It was a change from the night before, when I slept (pretty well, if truth be told) on the couch in the path of our air conditioner. The only thing about sleeping under air conditioning is waking with cold symptoms; sore throat and sniffles. You don’t get that sleeping under the stars. All I was concerned about being low on the deck was perhaps being on the receiving end of a visit from las cucarachas in our house – or worse, not... even... knowing that the creepy little critters had been crawling all over me in my slumber... I shudder to think.

But I feel I have discovered something new; it’s planted the seed of camping under starlight, by the beach. And I know the girls would love it too. I make a mental note to plan for a trip away like that. It’s a flashback to my early teenage years, sleeping on my Dad’s company boat on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe.

a trip to the seaside

We had planned a trip to see my friend John and his family and get to the beach in Geelong today, taking the train instead of driving, thanks to V Line’s great value $26.50 return family ticket. Cheaper than the cost of fuel driving there and back, and it will be the first trip on the train for the girls. We didn’t count on the extreme heat of the past three days, which is probably going to continue through today, until a storm hopefully breaks it late in the day. I suppose we’ll need to check the train lines haven’t buckled before we go... (I kid you not; check out the link if you are reading this outside Melbourne).

When I ordered the tickets online last weekend, there was an option for Express Post delivery ($4.30), but I thought I’d save and just pick the tickets up from Southern Cross station, which is only one block from work. I arrived early for work one night and walked down to the station, but found the site map to be no help locating the ticket collection point. Foiled, I returned to work hot and sweaty after the short round trip in my suit in the 30 degree heat.

a trip with the girls (and false economy)

Yesterday morning I took the girls in to the City, giving Mrs H a window of last minute study for her exam in the afternoon, and en route I received countless drawings from my girls working feverishly on their seatback drawing packs. Unable to park on the street (I had only about $1.80 cash on me; enough to pay for an hour of Melbourne CBD parking circa 1995 maybe, but not today, where it’s $3.50 per hour). Without further options I drove up to Southern Cross station, where the parking prices sign is located at the top of a one-storey drive up, where you have no chance of backing away. Anyway, $8 it would be, charged to the Mastercard, and my girls and I set off for our hike three city blocks down to the ticket booth.

It was a fun round trip, with rides on the travelators – down first, then on an escalator at the station, then down stairs, then up another travelator back to the car park just before our hour was up. Along the way we had a quick chance to do some sandal shopping for me, which was fruitless, but gave the girls the chance to walk barefoot, cooling their already hot little feet on the concrete floor of the DFO mall. I couldn’t help smiling to myself when I saw the ticket office’s hours of business: they opened at 5:40AM. I could have so easily picked the tickets up one morning. But then I wouldn’t have had the chance to have this trip with the girls.

I spent the afternoon with the girls, while Mrs H drove across town to Brighton to take her exam. We had the air conditioner on, and were doing pretty well until the first power cut-off left us with no cooling, no power, no phone, no internet. I was fuming, incredulous that such essential services can still be so precariously provided in a developed nation in the 21st century. This is not the Third World. Still, what could I do? My rage was pointless. An hour later the power returned, and so did my calm.

foiled again

When Mrs H returned an hour earlier than expected, with the news she had passed her exam – not only passed it, but passed it with a grade of 92% (she wasn’t satisfied, not knowing what she had got wrong) – we decided a celebratory shopping excursion was in order. After a little negotiation on the venue of choice, we decided on Brand Junction for its relative proximity to us, we left the air conditioning on to keep the house cool while we were out and we all bundled into the car and set off. More drawings were proffered from our back seat duo. And on arrival about 6:15, we learned that the new shopping development, while trading seven days, closed 6PM. Back home, where we found the power had been cut again. The railway crossing was out of order, the traffic lights were out of order, and we cautiously negotiated both to limp home and finally get some relief from the heat by opening the doors and windows.

a kind of new beginning

The girls’ room was still stifling but there was nowhere else for them to sleep. Spraying them down with water, Mrs H got them to bed, while I poured a couple of glasses of wine for us – Grenache shiraz for me, white shiraz for her – and when the power returned and I could light the oven, I made a margarita pizza for us, which we shared on the back deck. We toasted her success in the exam, and she talked about her plans for the girls’ birthday parties.

And right there, watching the clouds change colour as the sun set and the stars appeared, and spending precious time alone with my wife, I forgot about debt and stress, because I knew I already had everything that really mattered.

a trip to the hospital

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:03:00 +0000

losing the reasons why

So anyway, I’m reading this book at the moment. I intended writing, starting the novel (again) two nights ago, but in the process of tidying up our study, I came across this book I was pretty sure I hadn’t read, and well, I always like to read up on writing before actually writing. You see. Living The Writer’s Life, by Eric Maisel Ph.D. is subtitled a Complete Self-Help Guide, and with billing like that, how could I afford not to read it?

Seriously though, one of the (many) idle thoughts I’ve had over the years is along the lines of just how does one live the writer’s life. It’s not on the curriculum in school. I mean, apart from the obvious part: writing. But how to live with the rest of it, things like the procrastination and the avoidance? One of the points Maisel makes is just how hard it is for a writer to not write; just how much energy is consumed avoiding what it is we really want/need to do. And in time he talks about how writers are prone to depression, and the part of this observation I really enjoyed was when he writes:

... it seems to me that a lot of the depression writers experience has to do with meaning drains and meaning losses. We regularly lose our reasons for living. Because a writer has seen through to the fact that there is no ultimate meaning and that all meanings are personal and transient, [he] may put on a good face and continue to invest meaning in [his] writing, but [he] is making this effort against a background of real meaninglessness. This background reality has the power to come forward at any moment and produce a serious existential depression.
Well. My day turned out a bit different than I had expected.

take me down to the hospital

I’ve spoken before about my struggle against morbid self-absorption, but over the last few days I’ve been getting splitting headaches whenever I cough (I still seem to have some vestiges of the bronchitis remaining, so I am coughing every now and then, and with the cough comes a pain in the head like I’ve been clubbed). The thing that bothered me a just a little was that the pain was targeted in the area of my brain injury all those years ago. Maybe it was a tumour... Maybe my days were numbered...

Despite not wishing to be a hypochondriac (nor wanting to pay for another visit to our GP), I thought I’d call Nurse Online. I went through my symptoms, and the nurse noted that it sounded like it could be high blood pressure – an observation Mrs H supported (on account of my morbid obesity), and the nurse said I should get myself down to the Emergency ward at the hospital tout de suite.

I called off my weekly visit to the Magician – and wondered if I’d have to use another day of annual leave if I had to call in sick for work (again) tonight. Please no.

I was thankful Mrs H had the day off, as we drove off in the 40+ degree C heat (100+ F) with the air conditioning on full.

The wife dropped me and went back home to resume her studying. She expected I could be waiting several hours. In the unfamiliar environment of the Emergency department I was attended to by the male triage nurse, who took my pulse by holding my wrists, checked my temperature with a digital thermometer in my ear and directed me to wait. I had brought my book with me, and carrying it, with its bold title, Living The Writer’s Life, I felt like some sort of phony, a branded observer, while around me patients, real people, nursed bandaged hands or limped on crutches and plastered feet.

projection and attachment

I only waited an hour, then I was seen by a young doctor who introduced herself as Janine, and impressed me with her gentle touch and empathetic manner. As I admired her competence I thought I would like to tag her as “my friend”, like the always-friendly receptionist at our local clinic, the way Littlest Miss H likes to identify people she likes. Anyway, the tests of my “vitals” – blood pressure and neuromuscular responses (I guess that’s the right term) were all good. No clues.

My doctor brought her “consultant” out to assess. He suggested it could be some dehydration, stress, just a headache. Quietly I thought to myself, if only I could have known the effects failing in my own business, I would never ever have started it – the depression, the stomach ulcer, the headaches, the debt... The debt, the debt... (I imagined Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now). Still, at least I wouldn’t have to add any more meds to my daily intake.

Outside again, in the baking late afternoon heat, my heart skipped a beat as a guy seemed to materialise from nowhere and walked directly in front of me, in my personal space, wearing a hoody, with a red face and a toothpick between grinning teeth.

I was glad to see Mrs H with the girls in the back seat, very excited to see their Dad at the hospital of all places. And I had all the material for another blog post. Living The Writer’s Life indeed.

Thanks to Cat Power and Paul Westerberg for the inspiration behind two out of three of this post’s headlines.

the artist's novel

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:08:00 +0000

So, why yesterday’s post, you may wonder. What was the motivation?

change is the only constant

That quote’s from Heraclitus, appropriately enough. I thought all these years it was mine. Ha! I must have picked it up from my Cinema Studies lecturer / existentialist philosopher in Crow Town, Garry Gary Bates. (We called him Garry Gary, after INXS’ bass player, Garry Gary Beers). But, as usual, I digress...

The reason for yesterday’s post was to record the transformation of another of my Melbourne landmarks. To mark change, progress if you like. The passage of things. Places and landmarks have such a loaded meaning to me, especially in my adopted home town, Melbourne, where I have lived for the past 16 years. The corollary to my lack of national affiliation due to the moves in my early years is a perhaps over-active investment in the significance of landmarks – when the landscape or buildings change, it causes a blip on my consciousness.

I mention this lack of national affiliation, because yesterday was also Australia Day, and coincidentally the twenty-first anniversary of my naturalisation as an Australian citizen. To think, all those years, and still nothing by way of flag waving for this happy loner.

Australia Day as it was

I was feeling good at the end of my shift, looking forward to getting home and seeing my girls. I had the car windows down, playing The Blues Brothers’ Shake A Tail Feather, and this attracted the attention of one of three young louts, who approached my stationary car and started boogying about. I just looked at him with disdain. But when the light turned green, and I pulled away, I roared a stream of suggestive abuse out the window at him and his crew – and afterward caught myself by surprise by cackling like a madman, or perhaps a witch from a Disney movie, as I drove off.

Since it was a mild and sunshiny afternoon, I decided we’d eat dinner alfresco on the back deck (vege spaghetti bolognaise (don’t ask), a long-standing Monday night favourite dinner for me). The girls love eating outside, so we enlisted their help to clean our outdoor table, a task they took to with a bucket of soapy water and two cloths, and completed with relish and a surprising attention to detail. I overheard Little Miss H telling her sister, “No, not like that, sweetheart, I’ll show you...” and I could only smile.

Little Miss H wanted to be the waitress for our dinner, so she put on her apron and hat (a woolly one – in lieu of a chef’s hat, I guess), and then she took each of our orders, asking how to spell “spaghetti”, which Mrs H duly spelled out for her, while she transcribed it to her notepad.

With some good sleep during the day, and a nap before work, and knowing the revelry of Australia Day Eve was behind me, I came to work feeling good. While I’m no patriot, I have to pause to admire the young Aussies who proudly wrap themselves in little but the Australian flag over their shorts and singlets, as they stroll the city streets at the end of a long day celebrating. There is a little chicane of sorts coming around the corner of Franklin and Queen and up by the markets, and as I pass through there I like driving the car like I stole it. It’s only two blocks, but I feel like I’m in a PlayStation game for the brief moments I’m passing through.

Which leads me to the Künstlerroman of my life, the work in progress – or more, the imagined work.

Something about hearing Cat Power the other day, stumbling across a track which meant so much to me, rekindled the never fully extinguished embers of my idea. I knew for a long time it would be a coming of age story, and reading the Wiki definition of Bildungsroman in the context of my Jack Kerouac book last week, I read about the sub-genre of Künstlerroman – “a novel about an artist’s growth to maturity”.

From the definition of Bildungsroman:

The protagonist grows from child to adult.

The protagonist must have a reason to embark upon his or her journey. A loss or discontent must, at an early stage, jar him or her away from their home or family setting.

The process of maturation is long, arduous and gradual, involving repeated clashes between the hero’s needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order. This bears some similarity to Sigmund Freud’s concept of the Pleasure principle versus the Reality principle.

Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is ultimately accommodated into the society. The novel ends with the protagonist’s assessment of himself and his new place in that society.
Well, there you have it. I didn’t know there was a genre as such, but this was in fact the form I had long imagined for my story. And now I had a reference for the form, this could only be an asset.

Part of the conflict between needs and desires would also be the rescue fantasy wherein the protagonist pursues the idea of saving another person, rather than focus on turning his gaze inward, and investing meaning in his own life. Sound familiar?

Now I think it’s time for me listen to Cat Power’s Moon Pix CD once more.

Until next time, I am

MH

Hellenic Republic

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:21:00 +0000

A while ago I showed you what had happened to Felice Desserts, “The Original Cheesecake Outlet” near us. I can’t believe that was over six months ago. Well, in just that time, look what has taken place on the site... Not the seemingly inevitable block of vogue townhouses – maybe that stretch of Lygon St is zoned for business only.

Instead, George Calombaris (of The Press Club fame – or Ready Steady Cook fame, if you are a Channel Ten viewer) presents his latest creation, Hellenic Republic, a 100 seat restaurant attempting to present the authentic “Taverna” experience (complete with wine served by the kilo or half kilo). It has an imposing street frontage, and seemed to be doing a roaring trade since opening before Christmas. I can only think the steadily warming weather will boost business further for them.

I snapped this shot on the way to work one night a couple of weeks ago, then stopped by in the morning to capture the morning light on the interior of the restaurant.

I glanced over the menu too, but much as I like Mediterranean flavours, there wasn’t a lot to choose from for us vegetarians. Perhaps we’ll hike up from our place one weekend for a “Modern Greek breakfast... house made yogurts, fresh fruit and Greek breakfast delights.” Perhaps.

persistence

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Excuse me if I ramble

It’s been a while. It’s been too long. Why haven’t I written this week? I’m not sure. I know I’ve been stressing about work, and although I’m not about to report anything just yet, there could be some good news on that subject soon. A light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak... Stay tuned.

I began my week getting to the end of reading Steve Turner’s book Jack Kerouac Angelheaded Hipster. Subtitled “a life of Jack Kerouac in words and pictures”, the key words may well be “a life”, rather than “the life”. I have read about Kerouac’s life before, but this book really seemed to take me there, to the scenes.

I had been raving on to Mrs H every day about the similarities and affinities I felt with Jack – the sense of loss which hung over him all of his life, following the death of his brother Gerard at age ten; his search for identity, his thirst for more, more, more, and perhaps most of all, his perpetual conflict between spirit and the world. His sense of living with authenticity, with purpose, and pursuing an artistic or creative end – at least in his early years – is probably the greatest reason I admire Kerouac.

But then the egg cracked. I realised in his later life, after his success, Jack was a drunk. Pure and simple. Not cool. And you probably already know I have zero tolerance for drug use. I hadn’t realised how extensively, how uninhibitedly, the Beats had consumed not just drugs, but everything. I suppose it was consumption that killed Kerouac in the end; his body just gave up. It was a sad ending, in my eyes. He died with less than a dollar to his name.

What do you want? What do you need?

I met with the magician on Wednesday again in my ongoing reformatting of my mental hard drive, my positive mental tune-up, if you like. Damn, it was another breakthrough session, all the more surprising because I again went there without an agenda – thinking maybe I didn’t need to go after all. Waiting in the lobby, I read this essay in Time magazine, God is Black, which I enjoyed. But don’t let me digress. Read it later if you want.

Although he hadn’t yet managed to get a copy of the career test which could help me identify jobs which suit my personality, having noted that I felt depressed, he had brought a depression test for me to complete. Inwardly, I was frustrated that I still wasn’t getting the career direction I had hoped for, and I also felt it was redundant to do another depression test. But I did it anyway. And this one was different; some of the multiple choice answers had me chuckling to myself, and when my counsellor asked me – a little bemused – why I had laughed at some of the questions, I explained that the answers, odd as they might seem to someone else, gave me confirmation that I wasn’t alone for thinking that way. Know what I mean?

Anyway, he totalled my scores, and told me I was “severely depressed”, albeit on the top end, the narrow point of that scale. That was some satisfaction for me, even as it was a bit of a surprise for him. He suggested I cover it well. Which may be so, to those who don’t know me closely.

We talked about some of the issues which frustrate me, and those which I carry like baggage. And when he asked me what I wanted, it wasn’t anything as simple – albeit impossible to practice – as the chance to turn back time, to live my youth again, another way. No, I surprised myself when I heard my own answer:

“It’s not what I want. It’s what I need,” I said.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“To accept myself, and to love myself,” I replied.

And there you have it, loyal reader. That’s what it all comes down to. No material thing, no external relationship, or interpersonal distraction.

So the good mage asked what one thing I could do there and then to make my baggage feel lighter. And even talking about it, talking about my problem on this level, my load already started feeling lighter.

We talked about scheduling meditation – practising mindfulness – five minutes a day, and walking too. Just around the block to start, nothing too life-threatening. I said I could do it; I said I would do it. (Thus far, three days on, I haven’t yet done it).

“Don’t give up,” the magician smiled.

Dame Jenny’s Neverfail Writer’s Block Tonic

All this depression, disappointment and stress meant that by Thursday I still hadn’t got around to writing anything – other than bemoaning my lack of output to my Facebook friends – which earned me some direct advice from my erstwhile editor, Lew D, and also untapped the advice of our mutual writer friend, Dame Jenny, to just write anything, to get started, then edit later. Well, I knew that was a good idea, but... I was tired... and I was stressed... and now I was home with the family, it was my weekend... and, and... no writing got done then.

Dead on!

As Mrs H and I lay in bed on the edge of sleep, she told me she had thought of a new career direction for me: working as a funeral director. I scoffed. Then she went on: I present well, my sales background could be used establishing the needs for the funeral service, I would be dealing with people who were in a worse emotional state than me, and so on. The more I listened, the more I thought she was onto something. It would certainly be an interesting experience for me as a writer.

And with that in mind, I went to sleep.

The weekend as it was

I collected the 750 kilograms or thereabouts of concrete paving tiles for our new shed with Mrs H’s uncle, in his vintage Lite-Ace van.

And, after taking delivery of half a cubic metre each of crushed rock and washed sand, I carted this from our driveway to the shed at the back of the property. I had to visit The Architect over the road, to borrow his wheelbarrow with the solid tyre, after I discovered our wheelbarrow not only has a flat tyre, but also needs a new wheel (both the result of my over-zealous steering it over extremely uneven concrete and who knows what around our house). Add that to the to-do list.

Visiting The Architect on the site of the home he’s almost singlehandedly demolishing and rebuilding, I was amazed to see he has the rubble piled in neat stacks around the property – like with like. Crates, cartons even, filled. All neat and proper. It is without a doubt the cleanest worksite I have ever seen. I was amazed.

I got the crushed rock into the back yard after dinner on Friday night, before the sun went down. And on Saturday morning I got stuck into the sand.

This is what Real Men do, I tell myself; I’m not being a pussy lying on the couch. And the girls love to be outside with me and see me working: “What doing, Daddy?” my littlest one asks.

I estimate how many barrow loads of sand I have left; I’m feeling it in my leg and in my shoulders. I expect I’ll be in more pain later tonight, at work. Bah! Onward.

Our neighbour next door is outside on the stepladder, cleaning his windows with glass spray. First from the outside, then from the inside. While I admire his dedication to cleanliness (and want to skulk away when I consider how sullen our panes must appear in comparison – I wonder, does he look at the rain spots and dust streaks on them and shake his head quietly with contempt?) another part of me is amazed at the waste of energy, not to mention detergents, and in turn, cash. I wonder if that’s what retirement holds for me. It makes me determine to clean our shower tonight, before I go to work. (When the time comes, and the alarm vibrates to wake me from my pre-work nap, you know it doesn’t happen. Tomorrow, tomorrow).

Our spring cleaning, making way for our “new” study continues, and you may be surprised to learn I have made a document template for labels for the boxes – ha, no more guessing what’s inside. I love the crisp snap of packing tape as I stick the first of my labels on the box of books I will probably never look at again, but can’t bear to part with all the same.

And since it’s Sunday – our wash day – I remember I didn’t get to tell you about the incident in our laundry last Sunday morning, where I came home from work to the discovery that our taps were locked shut, and following my complete incapability to remedy the situation, along with the well-intentioned assistance of our neighbour (The Window Cleaner) with similar results while I slept, on waking I was sent to the family home of another neighbour down the street, where the three sons work as a carpenter, an electrician, and a plumber.

Handy people to know, even as informally as we do; but calling on the plumber on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I felt like a heel. Nonetheless, he came around later in the afternoon, and in no time, he’d fixed the problem. (“Watch him, watch what he’s doing, so you know for next time,” the wife virtually Super Poked me). While he was there, we asked him to fix our second kitchen sink – the rinse sink – where the waste basket had become stuck also. It was easily fixed. Of course. And now I have my rinse sink back, washing up provides me with all the delight it used to – I had forgotten how good it felt. No more kitchen sink angst for now...

Until next time, I will close with the words of Calvin Coolidge, which I have on one of those small motivational cards you get in gift shops, which I believe my Dad gave to me when I was in recovery after my car accident. I have internalised this as a mantra (whether I choose to play it or not is another story, but still...):

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated failures.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

fixing a shed

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:33:00 +0000

Saturday was a good day. One week on from the breakthrough of last weekend, Mrs H and I were once again able to get some precious time alone together to work on our relationship. But my day began with another project altogether – with my friend Mick’s help putting up the shed we recently bought. You may recall Mick from his earlier assistance helping hang a gate at our house. Well, the shed was a bigger project, and something we had been preparing for with our spring clean of the mess formerly and now once again known as our study.

I was up early – thanks to Littlest Miss H joining us in bed before 5AM, and kicking me in the lower back (affectionately, I’m sure). Since I was up early, I finally got around to removing one of our silver birch trees in the front garden, which had evidently died recently. I was hoping it would recover, but its lack of foliage was a giveaway to even a novice gardener like me. And when I started trimming its branches, I could hear just how dried out it was.

I cleared the shed area – uneven as it was – and soon enough Mick joined me, and I helped him as much as I could. Working together it didn’t take long to get the walls up, and I was so glad Mick had volunteered to assist, because the world of rivet guns and barge flashing is completely foreign to me.

By the time we came to the intricacies of putting the roof on, I was pretty much redundant, and all I could do was watch and admire Mick’s skill at work. I was reminded of the last time I wrote about growing up in South Africa, when I was talking about the creeping racism I learned there. In South Africa – even today – I, as “bwana” or “boss” would likely have had an “umfaan” (gardener or “servant”) who would have been enlisted to take care of such menial physical chores.

I meditated on this as I stood by, as if to provide some form of solidarity with my labouring friend. My hands fell naturally to my hips, and I felt like the Director on a film set again, overseeing the work, keeping an eye on the big picture. Or so I told myself, in my defence. (Littlest Miss H, watching from inside, asked “What Nick doing?” I had to smile).

At the end of it all, I was delighted with the shed, and thanked Mick profusely. After he left, and my youngest one woke from her nap, her utmost concern was “Where Nick gone?”

three a day is the way

...or so we used to say when I was selling cable TV on the doorsteps of the unsuspecting Australian public all those years ago. Three sales a day was the way we would lay the foundation for us to get our sales target – and of course, Saturdays, working all day “in the field”, the sky was the limit. At least it was for some smooth talkers.

Three a day was my coffee habit for a very long time as well. Only recently, with night work, did I step up to a maximum of six a day – and even then, only occasionally. I know, I know.

I mention this to you, because today I once again had three coffees. This is despite my recently avowed going cold turkey on the drug. And I haven’t even included the one International Roast I drank while I prepared the day’s reports, around 2AM. Like any habit, the more I drink, the more I want to drink.

On Friday I looked after the girls while Mrs H went to work, after swapping her work days this week. We went to see Granny and Grandpa, walked to their local park, and played a game of “Old Maid”. And we had a good time at home afterward. When the time came to pick up their beloved Mum from the tram stop, only a couple of kilometres away, the girls packed enough things for an overnight stay for the two or three minute car trip: there were baby dolls, handbags, backpacks, a keyboard and who knows what else in the back seat with them.

On Friday night I was at a bit of a loss, since I wasn’t going to work as Barryoke KJ. The wife jested that I’d only done it two or three times – I think it was more like six times – but the point was, it meant a great deal to me; I loved doing it and I felt great coming home from it at the end of the night. Anyway, we watched an episode of Starsky and Hutch together and at least I was able to stay awake through it.

a special dinner for the girls

On Saturday night the girls had a special dinner arranged by Granny and Grandpa, who had offered to come around, so Mrs H and I could have another evening off.

The day before Granny had told the girls they would need to dress up for the dinner, and so Little Miss H and her sister were in their dresses, with magic wands in hand. To our surprise my folks drew up, and we saw Grandpa was wearing a bow tie with his shirt – and they not only carried dinner (vegetarian Singapore noodles), but Granny had made a dessert (strawberry meringue mousse), and my Dad had even designed and printed a menu for the special event for my girls. I had to take my hat off to my folks for their sense of play and their effort.

and a special dinner for us

Mrs H and I slipped away while Granny took the girls for a ride on the imaginary bus on the couch, and together we had a good chat at Toto’s on Lygon St – one of our favourite old haunts. The tone of our exchange was remarkably different from when we went out to dinner together last weekend. Our only error of judgment was arriving home at the exact time Granny and Grandpa were trying to put the girls to bed – and of course, our arrival made a mess of those plans. We managed to get the girls to bed a while later using all our best negotiating skills, and I was still able to steal ninety vital minutes of sleep before the alarm buzzed and woke me for the start of my week.

I’ll never get used to a week starting at 10PM Saturday night; it’s not natural. But for a Saturday the night really wasn’t too feral, and on the back of a day like yesterday, I could only feel well chuffed, satisfied with life.

Until next time, I am yours authentically.

MH