Our Nations Fair Capital
Where does the time go? To live my life, be happy and die happy.
That my four amazing children and their children achieve the same would be a dream come true. To be with a partner who loves me respectfully, lets me grow, treats me well, respects the differences between us and expresses gratitude.
Easy enough you might say. So why does it take till I'm 46 to achieve that simplicity?
I sit here and reflect on a chapter of my life filled with lessons, laments, long drawn out ambitions struggling to arrive at something that is mine, rather what others want, then realise I own none of it anyway.
This land owns me, fate determines only that which I don't know. Everyday a new one filled with challenges, joy and heartache.
I was once told by an old man that in as much as we grow older, we live our lives and either regret or rejoice in reflection. The choice is ours, our only destiny being to accept change or fight it and lose.
Our last gasps as laboured as the first.
The whole of life just a mere dash on our metaphorical tombstone between arriving and passing.
This next chapter in my story finds me driving or travelling by plane to and from Sydney, Australia to a small rural community by the unlikely name of Orange, the colour. In fact, orange is my favourite colour with lots of incredible snippets of beautiful green, electric blue as the weather and seasons allowed.
A provincial town, divided by a train line and savage racism. A cappuccino strip, gold braided belts , lime green tops contrasted with that of "vegemite valley". Disgusting that such abject racism still forms the foundation for many a community spread east and westward.
The occasional flurry of snow white amidst overtures of darkness and divide. The have and the have nots that many rural and remote Australian townships paint prettily or hide judicially.
Despite the many predictions of long standing friends at the time I struck out on a journey of attraction.
Moved from a high paid city job to a fly in and fly out consultant role and as Director in a company I formed with three other people. Contracts with educational organisations I brought into the use of online learning.
More parochial nepotism, new kid on the block, smart ass, dangerous. We don't want change, just more of the same.
Keep your fucking good ideas to yourself, mate.
Had I the foresight of what I know I live by now, then I doubt I would change anything in hindsight except the regretful investment I made in trying to understand HTML, in my myopia, in dreaming dreams and only partially achieving them with bunches of gagglers. The occasional glimmer of hope and even fewer thankyou's.
I gave it all a go as the Aussie in me would have me say.
Long, long hours on stupidly ambitious tasks that took me away from my children, where a simple job teaching or working for an agricultural co-operative may have sufficed.
The birth of a beautiful boy and then another. Incredibly emotional, wonderful, joy filled days, weeks, months.
A flurry of prams, baby capsules, poo filled nappies and all the wonderful things that parenthood has us piled up with as we careen from workplace to home place.
Saturday in shopping malls or behind a push mower. Annual holidays, bathing babies, goo-gooed, happy, fed. Mother's groups, Father's drinking binges, golf karts.
Trips to the local snowfields, on and off frozen tarmacs in a suit, long nights spent glued to a mobile phone or a computer screen, battling the renovation of a home better spent laughing with friends.
The stresses of a random income.
Those years spent driving a ute from country town to city centre blur amongst the joy of children growing swiftly, relatedness swinging like a flock of pigeons streaking across a dusk sky without a home to roost in.
I look at the many many photos I took at the time and wonder as to how I managed to see anything at all but for composing what I wanted to see through that damned lens.
Wanting things to be different. Losing myself. Where the tragedy of life ended up in stoic, stilted form far removed from the lilt of poetry.
The destitution of towns built on the sheep's back, drunken BBQs and walking-anything-but-mindfully all cascading amidst an entropic cacophony - a cathartic nightmare of the mundane.
The lot of people living a Nietzschean hell without any knowledge of its philosophical fore-Father.
I remember with lament but not with regret as I struggled with deep depression in a seemingly perpetual state of joyful sorrow. Long plane trips to empty hotel rooms.
Beautiful cool crisp days with my two growing boys in the park. Swings, slides, climbing frames. The occasional glimmer as weekends folded into wheatbelt weeks.
Caught between spiritual states, amidst beautiful experiences, tragic and lucid sometimes concurrent.
Yet again, not able to tell my story.
Trying to find peace amongst it all...instead I buried myself in busyness, building gardens, drinking beer, getting fat.
Opportunities beckoned. We left and landed in Bungendore, New South Wales, Australia.
Top pub. Bottom pub. Spooks. Humans with dual identities and three times as many secrets.
Time to build a house, work in a university, break my arm, recover and find another job amidst the threat of bankruptcy and foreclosure.
So it came to pass that I snapped, left, partnered with a young, beautiful cackling faery. Learned, came to terms with, let go, grew.
Paid the price.
"...You are a fucking traitor."
"...You should know better c____."
"....Go hang yourself prick."
Wrote my #realstory. Forgave those who hurt me most. Came into me.
There I am stood alone, dreams of a dynamic future collapsed into a fitful present day. Alone and single.
We are all single. We are one person, always.
All these fairytales of two becoming one, promised nothing, our lives subject to the nations lore and law. Religion the scourge of humanity, mayhem in making meaning and controlling.
Breaking down, establish new boundaries, breaking the taboo, letting go, getting fit, getting fucked and falling over again.
I bid farewell to Streamfolio Pty. Ltd. , to five years of hard work, to take up roles that dig deeper into the socio-ethical implications of a contemporaneous data sovereignty, data science, all things networked systems. Add wearable computing and infrastructures supporting transhumanist dreams of the omniscient Singularity.
My creatives endeavours, love of Family, our battle with a fracking consortia hell bent on destroying my country, a post privacy era where transparency is controlled and trawled by surveillant overlords.
I have landed and I am happy. The next chapters will write themselves.
I am grateful for your listening.
