Chris: How is your lump going cass?

Cass: My lump is lovely, they all love this lump

Chris: I agree. Mine has become bigger. Do you know anyone who owns a sun?

Cass: Yes, my friend jesus is the sun of god

Chris: So god is your answer?

Cass: Yes, but since god is everyone, everyone is my answer.

Chris: Yes, and everything is everything. Therefore the answer is anything. Or for some, nothing.

Cass: Poopsicle

Chris: Matt groening

Cass: In the beginning there was nothing, so does that mean we’re all just beginning? Starter party!

Chris: Lol. So therefore lifes a party?

Cass: That’s what your mum said

Chris: Lol. eat cake Bitch!

Chris: How is tim tim and nap nap?

Cass: They are both good! Tim tim gets home this Saturday! I’m psyched! Napnap plays the piano accordian and wins competitions and makes me proud.

Chris: Lmao. My baby is home all the time. He uses the stove quite well and takes me on walks to the shops and I am also proud.

Cass: What do u do most of the time?

Chris: Attend meetings at sarina russo and wait to see what doon will do next and worry and sometimes plan and sometimes take action. What do you do most of the time?

Cass: I spend most of my time feeling warm and happy, except when it is too hot, then i spend time feeling cranky. I also sometimes download the internets. Don’t trust Sarina, she’s a robot in disguise.

Although this is going to possibly be the laziest post ever (being that I didn’t actually write the content), it could also be the most intelligent and well-informed body of text to ever appear on this website. Unless Neil tells me more stories, in which case, get ready for more fun and existential crises! (I had an existential crisis yesterday walking home from the train. Then I felt happy for no reason, and it was good enough for me to be able to learn these things, deal with them, and just get on with life and be myself and exist.) I like existing.

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Me: Something I don’t understand, and which you may be able to explain(…)– murdering is a sin, right? One of the big ones… however, in the Bible, God killed thousands and thousands of people, whereas Satan only killed maybe 10 or so. How does the concept of good vs. evil explain away that little oddity?

Neil: See it all depends on who is making the good vs evil claim. See GWB – he reckons the Iranians are “evil” and that “god” (as in the American notion of god) is about to return. 120 million Americans believe in the apocalypse (GWB is one of them). The book of revelation says that the “lakes will boil dry and fire will reign from the sky). Then “god” will turn up and save the believers. Ironically, those people who believe in this actually want climate change to continue because they see it as the first sign that the apocalypse is nigh!….

However, 7000 miles away in sunny Tehran, you’ve got a wee boy called Mahmud Ahmadinejad. He’s the president of Iran and GWB’s no 1 enemy. Iran is a theocratic state who believe in sharia law. They believe in their own version of the apocalypse. They also believe that America is the “great satan”. They believe that the 13th prophet – the hidden ummah – is destined to make a return soon (note they are also building a nuclear programme..not without coincidence – fire from the sky and all that!) and their enemies (no 1 is the US) will be defeated and the Iranian people will be triumphant.

All of this is fact, check it out on the web. Bush believes his god will help America prevail over the evil Iranians and Mahmud believes his ummah will help his boys prevail over the nasty US. So “good vs evil” statements are dependant on which side of the fence you are on.

Another US/Iran tension that has helped stoked the flames. Oil. The price of oil is indexed to US$. The Iranians (3rd? Largest oilfields in the world – Iraq is No 2 surprise, surprise) know this and threatened two-three years ago to switch the sale of their oil to Euros. Needless to say, the US was enraged. That switch has a destabilising effect on the US$ and the yanks know it. I think the Iranians switched to EU’s in March. Needless to say, the EU love it as it helps stabilise the Euro. And just to make it intriguing, the US – whose national debt is owned by????? The chinese !! – have been told in no uncertain terms by the chinese that an attack on Iran will force them to dump US debt which would destroy the States economically. Very smart those Chinese guys. In effect, they own the US through debt.

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About GWB (Everything below taken from emails from Neil, with permission.)

Do you know that his “good ol texan drawl” is deliberate?. It makes him appeal to the uneducated/lesser well educated masses of which there are plenty in the States. Consider the following picture.

Society is a hierarchy, yes?. The top triangle represents the elite, middle the middle classes/affluent etc and the bottom everyone else (lower classes/poor). If you wanted to win an election, which demographic do you need to pander to the most?. You certainly would like the elite because they have the finance and the clout and you need that to become president. More on the elite later. As you can see from the area under what I have called lower/poor, that represents the biggest area and one that is absolutely essential to win in order to get elected.

The best way to get the vote of the unquestioning, uneducated is through a campaign of fear. Nazi Germany went one better in convincing every tier of society that the Jews were the devil and need eliminated. I have an excellent book on this subject if you require further info. The best way to garner public support from the lower echelons of society is to galvanise them through fear so that they blame their ills on an ill-defined bogeyman. This trick has been played throughout time and it is a con. This is what is currently happening in the States. People who were dumbfounded when Bush got re-elected in 2004 have no reason to be. I saw the demographic figures for who voted where and GWB managed to convince exactly those people at the bottom of the pyramid to vote for him. He was never going to win a fight with the intelligentsia so he didn’t even pander to them – they typically vote democrat anyway. As for the bottom tier, they have been conned by the biggest Orwellian trick of all. Do you know that 40% of American’s don’t have a passport and have never even left their state, never mind their country. How can they possibly make informed decisions?

As for the elite. Dick Cheyney used to be the CEO of…..any guesses….Halliburton. Guess who now has just about every contract for the rebuilding of Iraq? – Got it in one. GWB used to be an oilman – well looks like US oil companies will do very well in terms of reaping the benefits of Iraqi oil. And the bigs arms companies in the US – some of which I have worked for – have done very very very well. War is good for business. I have seen presentations given where people stand up and make no bones that the Iraq war has been great for them and long may it continue. I tell people that GWB has done a brilliant job as president and if you hear me out, you may just accept I have a point. He has done an excellent job of paying back the elite who backed him – The Halliburtons, the oil companies etc. While he may go on record as saying “we can’t rely on the middle east for oil”, he is not being sincere. Look what has happened to oil prices as a result of the war – rocketed up to unprecedented highs. Well his friends in the oil industry are not unhappy about that, are they?. Bush knows that he won’t have to tackle the diminishing oil problem – someone else will get that problem once he’s out of office. But he has paid back those who backed him – and handsomely.

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So that leads me to my existential crisis. If I keep thinking about everything I might just go crazy. There are things that are wrong in the world, but I’m not cut out to be an activist – unless I am 100% sure of something, believe in it 100%, I find it difficult not to be swayed by those who have a different perspective, and offer a reasonable argument and back it up with facts. Still, even then I will do my own research. If something catches my attention and interest, then it’s worth my time to investigate further.

How do we decide what’s good or bad? Is there any other way to categorise things than by comparing it to something else and seeing if it matches up? Good is only good because bad exists. We only know happiness from experiencing sadness, or ambivalence, so that we have something to compare the feeling to. I don’t think that the Garden of Eden would be paradise… not feeling pain or sadness might be a positive, until you look at the flipside of not knowing joy, and happiness.

An example – after Christian and I broke up, I was devastated. I was so down, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again. Everything was difficult. It was hard just getting through a day of work, or being at home by myself. After I started to come back out of the grief, as my mood slowly elevated and the sun started shining again, the feeling of well-being was so strong that I literally felt like someone had injected me with a happiness drug. I couldn’t think of any reason that I should be happy. But it was there. It was one of the best feelings ever – like one of those flying dreams where you soar above everything, only I was awake (and obviously not literally flying). So anyway, I think that the acceptance that follows grief, when you’ve come to terms with a situation, and can feel good about life again, is one of the most amazing feelings. And if you hadn’t felt the sadness, how could you appreciate the good, when it eventually came along?

Reading over everything, things I didn’t know about the world and the way things work, the way people bask in their own ignorance and prefer it to stay that way, there’s no reason that in the aftermath of this awareness I should be happy at all. How can you feel happy when you are one step closer to the truth about the state of the world, and it sucks? So the pessimists were right? Why should optimism exist at all? Maybe optimism is just another word for naivete.

That said, I’m more aware of some things, come to terms with others, and I’m not angry at anyone. I still feel happy. I still like being alive. There’s nothing more perfect than just being.

I am such a geek.

This evening marks the close to a relatively stressful week for me. Even though it was a short week, and even though it should have been a fun week because it was my birthday on Monday, the other side of Wednesday just seemed to go to shit. (eep!)

Tim left for his holiday today, three weeks in Ireland & Scotland. I got teary when I was speaking to him on the phone before he boarded, and then afterwards, felt embarrassed in retrospect by my own emotions. How very girly of me! I think that my emotions have been stuffed around somewhat by the horrible experience I had last week. I think that perhaps I’m feeling a bit unsafe, a bit co-dependent – not just on one person, but a whole lot of people, and a bit unsure of myself. I think it’s time for me to just start taking baby steps back towards what I perceive as normality in my own life. I miss my independence. I miss feeling safe. I want to take these things back from the person who made me feel afraid to just step outside on my own.

Here are some more blasphemous images. I don’t know why people would care – God told everyone not to make false idols, so what do Catholics do? Plaster them up all over their places of worship! lol!1

I think that life might be easier for people who don’t believe in anything (agnostic? atheist?). They’ll never be disappointed by something they put their faith in. Being brought up Catholic serves only to create, for me, an underlying insidious feeling of guilt about whatever I’m doing.

Therefore, why shouldn’t I renounce my religion? Is there any reason I can’t simply exist, with my thoughts and feelings mine alone and not dictated by some higher power? So disbelief is the last vestige of the selfish, the wicked, the evil. Ben was telling me and Calum about how, in his faith, there is no devil or hell. When you die, if you’re not one of the chosen few, then you simply go back to where you first came from: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I like that theory better than the whole fire and brimstone thing, but maybe that’s because I’ve acknowledged to myself that, if I still followed my faith, I would be a sinner, and probably would be spending several lifetimes in purgatory if not going straight to hell.

Anyway, I’m not sure what’s sparked the topic for this blog.

Anyway, I have to go and get ready because Willy and Chris will be over at 11:00am so we can go down to Ikea. Yesssssssssssssssssssssss.

I’ve nearly finished making everything nice and spic and span for tomorrow night. I feel like scrubbing down the entire bathroom, because of the dubious clean it got on Saturday (despite my eventual assistance), but I don’t have the time or the energy. Already I’m feeling drained, because I had such a stressful day. I think that tomorrow will be extremely stressful. Hopefully all goes as planned. But there is that saying, “How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” And God could be in the mood for laughing. Typical of all men! I’m going to say a million Hail Mary’s tomorrow, and pray to Pa a million times over. It felt like that’s all that was going through my head today… hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswithyou blessedartthouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywomb Jesus

holymarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeaths AMEN.

Calum and I went for a walk after work today. He bought us both a hot chocolate from coffee club and we went and sat at the edge of the watersense garden in king George square. Some guy came up to Calum just as he lit up a cigarette and said, “can I have one of your cigarettes?” Calum said “no.” and the guy just went all weird and immediately said, “no? I don’t need any of yours anyway; I got some of me own! What would I need yours for? You can shove ‘em up your ass, you’d probably like that ya poofta!” He was such a derro. Calum did his usual “go back to Burpengary” and then later thought of awesome comebacks.

Apparently Calum has previously had a run-in with this guy in king George square, over cigarettes, of all things! He thought he might be in for a fight this afternoon, but luckily it didn’t escalate to that level.

Some photos, just because I haven’t done this in a while:

Baby Napoleon on the couch, on his first day at our house. Look how little he is!

A card that I found at the cheapo shop in the valley, just down from Brunswick St train station. I don’t get it.

I found this coaster somewhere, from when Kirra, Charmaine, Chris & I went to Noosa for a weekend. We went to some RSL or something for lunch, and there was a family of mullets. Chris wrote this on the coaster and threatened to give it to the teenage boy of the family.

Update! I just burnt my hand by pouring boiling hot water straight from the pot all over it. It kills.

Okay y’all, I don’t usually do this, but I have a couple of links for you:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/04/uhoh.html

Firstly, a very topical (and scarily coincidental) blog entry on the Dilbert Blog about the mistakes that have been made in the transcription and transliteration and re-writing and re-recording of the Bible over the last zillion years (you’ll find out why this is so topical in a moment.)

Aaaaand (Drum roll please)…..

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/thesimpsonsmovie/

The Simpsons Movie!!! Omg! July 27th 2007! How do they know that? Or is that just a made-up date, like how they told us we’d be moving into Brisbane Square in June but now they’re making a conservative estimate (AKA stupid guess) of September? I don’t even really care about the new building, I just want a new computer and XP! (anything has got to be better than crappy Windows 97 or NT). But yeah, the Simpsons movie! wow! Awesome!

So anyways, back to the first point… Today (Good Friday) we visited the Buddhist Temple out at Underwood. It was beautiful, I was disappointed that my camera still hasn’t arrived back from the insurance people (they said it might be here Thursday or Friday, but as Friday is today and it’s a public holiday, my last chance before the long weekend was yesterday) because from the very first moment that you drive through the gates you feel like you’ve stepped into another country — perhaps Tibet… There are grey stone statues lining the drive, and the actual temple rises high above rows of steps bordered on either side by carefully manicured trees and clear fountains (no water restrictions?!). It’s just beautiful. There’s an aura of calm that surrounds the whole place. Everything is clean, peaceful and quiet.

Our friend used to be the gardener there, which was a huge job as the gardens are very important. They weren’t so impressive today… it looked like a war zone in which only the Temple Building remained unscathed. They’re apparently doing renovations and re-landscaping the gardens as well. I want to go back and see once they’re finished.

Noelle & I were wandering around and noticed Clare talking to some random guy at the entrance to the main worship room. I said, “who’s that guy?” And Noelle said she doesn’t ask questions like that anymore. I was curious, so we wandered over that way, and surreptitiously stood by until we became a part of the conversation. The first words I heard of the conversation were from Clare, and that was “So it’s magic.” The man she was talking to gave a non-committal, non-word answer before Clare said “Well, if it’s magic, then how can it be proven?”. I thought the man was a Buddhist, but what they were saying didn’t really fit and so I listened in a while longer and it soon enough became clear that the man wasn’t a Buddhist, he was a Born-Again christian. He then started talking about how Born-Again Christians were not humans, they were a different creature all together. He said he was two beings – a human and a spirit, in the one body. Then he said that when the holy spirit first entered him, he spoke in tongues. Apparently everyone in their church spoke in tongues when they were first ‘re-baptised’. He also explained that he could think and speak at the same time, and, according to him, no other human being on the planet can think and speak at the same time. We ended up having a dead-end discussion about beliefs (according to him, it’s knowledge, not belief) and Noelle said “What about all the contradictions in the Bible? We are told to shun homosexuals and that they’ll be condemned to hell, but then it also says “Judge not lest ye be judged, for on judgment day he shall do the judging”” or something along those lines. To which he responded “God has given me the right to judge. We don’t say homosexuals aren’t allowed, but when they come to church they’re healed, and they give up their life of sin. They no longer practice homosexuality.” So apparently, the rules do apply unless God tells you otherwise. Ro said “Anyone can ask for God’s forgiveness” and he got a mite irked by this. He claimed to be perfect, which allowed him to judge others, but then said taht the first time he received the holy spirit he then went straight from church back to the bar for another drink. So Clare said “if you were perfect you wouldn’t have done that. You would never sin. If that were true.” and he said “The flesh isn’t that strong!”

It was a pointless argument, i’m not being very eloquent here in my retelling of it, but at one point I mentioned that the stories in the bible were suspiciously similar to those in the Anceint Sumerian texts written some years beforehand, to which he responded, “well you sound like you know about as much about it as I do!”, and I’m still not sure if that was an insult or a compliment. Him being perfect and all. In the end, mum came up and did the finger-across-neck gesture that stood for “get out of there!” so we finished off and wandered away again, with a weak excuse of “do you know where the bathroom is?”. Lucky that, or the discussion would have never finished. He gave Clare a little brochure, which she recited from in an indignant tone in the car on the way home. I wasn’t as incensed as Noelle & Clare, but I was a little frustrated by his dogmatic, single-minded categorical refusal to take any other points of view into account. He even said, “I brought my grandson along today because he wanted to see the place. But look at that (pointing to an eight-armed statue)! That’s unnatural.” Nevermind that it might have stood for something, nevermind looking further and actually doing some research and having some knowledge of the religion. He asked Clare to read the pamphlet and if she wanted, to come along to one of their masses. Clare said, fine, you do something for me. Find out about Buddhism. Read up on it. Which I thought was very reasonable. How can you condemn something that you know nothing about?

Other than that, the day was nice. We had a picnic by a little pond with lily-pads and a curvy bridge, in which some kids were fishing. They didn’t catch anything, and we pondered over the probability of there being fish in the pond in the first place. A little while later I saw a fish jump out of the water as if to say, “Haha! i’m the greatest fish alive! No one can catch me!” It made me feel glad.

Today is a memory day.

* I remember having blond hair and brown skin and going to the beach every single day

* I remember going for a drive with dad out to the Point during a hurricane. I was afraid. Dad told me about how when he was younger and lived in Sydney, he’d go down to circular quay when big storms came in and ride the ferry just before they cancelled it due to bad weather, because it was fun being on the ferry in the huge waves and pouring rain. I remember thinking that our car was going to be blown off the road, and not being able to see two feet ahead of us, and everything was grey. We went home.

* I remember church on Christmas Eve being so crowded that people lined up outside, and all the kids were outside running around in the yard and everyone was friends with everyone else, and it didn’t matter if we all ran off to the park, it was still counted as being there because we showed up and couldn’t get in, and all the parents stood around outside talking about parent type things.

* I remember when the circus was in town, standing out on our balcony late at night and seeing a drunk guy passed out in the church yard across the street from our place, and hearing the circus music in the background.

* I remember going to the library almost every day after tafe (NERD!), or going to the library in town every second weekend and sitting on the beanbags in the kids section and reading the new kids books, until I turned 11 and started reading from the adult section (and got told off by the librarian – “you can’t read that! Your section is over there —>”)

* I remember going to a party with Chris, and Noelle came too because she was staying with us for the holidays, and we left and met some random guy called Dan, which reminded Noelle and I of an ad for prune juice (Dan Presser, managing director of sunraysia natural beverages, is talking to his mum ruby about a new drink he’s created…) and then we walked down the main street of town and a girl was walking along with a guy, and he was drunk. He pushed Chris into the wall and said “Watch where you’re f**king going!” and the girl who was with him said “Go. Just run.” And we did.

* I remember using the metre-rulers from the blackboard as skis in year six, just before we went on our holiday to the snow, and being strongly reprimanded by the teacher for it (”these aren’t skis! they’re school equipment!”)

* I remember a boy from my class going missing at sea during a storm just after we had started high school. His own father found his body two weeks later at the docks. We had a memorial for him at the church behind our old primary school, and they arranged for all those who had known him to take the afternoon off school and provided a bus from high school to the primary school. It was a sad start to the year.

* I remember going up to the sports field of our village one night, and seeing glowing lines on the ground. One of the parents told us that the glowing stuff was left behind by slugs. I never actually saw any of the slugs.

* I remember going into the bushland surrounding the sports field, and finding paths cut through the scrub that you couldn’t see from the outside. They led to secret hideouts and clearings, and places where other kids had dragged sheets of corrugated iron or cardboard and made shelters and stored things there.

* I remember Noelle, Anna & Clare coming down for Christmas holidays and playing Super Mario Bros 3 and Spy Vs Spy on their Super Nintendo when they stayed out at the farm.

* I remember a Christmas when all the cousins came down to visit, and we put on a show for the parents, and we had tents in our backyard because there were so many people staying.

* I remember taking a kayak out on the lake and discovering what was on the further edges. There were islands and a huge black skeletal tree.

* I remember feeling content.

I must remember not to turn my computer on when I am trying to get ready for work. The pro of having a clock constantly there with the time (otherwise I have to keep checking my phone) is far outweighed by the con – being that I cannot just leave the computer to sit there, I think I have time to surf… “maybe just while I’m drying my hair…” which turns into half an hour and that’s half my time gone. Then I know I’ll never be ready for the first bus, so I think I’ll just catch the next bus, then that bus becomes the next one and so on, until I have no hope of getting to work on time. Maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. But it’s harder to make up the time when I get to work late, because my entire day is planned around me getting to work early and finishing early.

I met up with Noelle in the city today after I finished work at 1pm. We were supposed to be watching the St. Paddy’s day parade (which, for some reason, isn’t on St. Pat’s day but is on the week before) but it turned out that it finished at 12pm, so I was never going to be out in time for that anyway. We ran errands – which means we went shopping. I managed not to buy anything today – shock-horror! Ooops apart from groceries that is. We were trying to find some shoes for Noelle, but had no luck. Nothing that inspiring around. We picked up her photos though, and had a look through them while waiting for the bus.

There were so many emos crowding around near speakers corner in King George Square today. Some of them had letters on their shirts, and they started lining up so the words were spelling something. Noelle was shocked. “Those emos are organised emos!” She said. Luckily she had her camera, and was wearing emo clothes, so she went up and took a photo. Bold move! She got death stared by an emo for laughing at something one of them said. Also in King George Square, further down near the crossing to the mall, there were some evangelists with a recording playing from a boom box. We pondered over their definition of adultery for a minute, and pretended to look interested. I wanted one of them to come over to us and offer us one of their little pamphlets, then I could say, “hey, buddy, you’re preaching to the choir.” And it would be funny because he was preaching, even if I’m not in the choir. But I don’t like the evangelists. It’s like they’re trying to shove something down your throat, and I don’t think it’s worthwhile unless you come to the conclusion yourself that this is the road you need to be following. It’s not about someone telling you the right way to go – you’ve got to figure that out for yourself or you’ll never understand it from your own point of view. I said “JUDGE NOT LEST YE BE JUDGED!” Which seems to be my catch cry at the moment, and Noelle said “Maybe they want to be judged, because they think they’re perfect, so that’s why they’re judging other people.” Which I hadn’t thought about before, but now it makes sense. Self-righteous sanctimonious ecclesiastical sycophants. Who’s judging who now? WHO’S PERFECT NOW?

Anyway, today was fun. Once I finished work that is. Work was boring boring boring. So boring you can’t even imagine. I was looking at my future holiday accrual balances, and I’m not sure if I should take extra days off after my holiday. I will need to book it in now, to make sure no one else takes the dates that I want to take! Melinda and I can’t be off at the same time, as there needs to be a mentor there. But what if we were both sick on the same day? They should be prepared for instances such as that. But apparently there shouldn’t be any jet-lag when I go to China because China is only two hours behind us, and the flight isn’t that long. I’m not having any of the food on the plane. I can hold out until I get to Shanghai. The plane food on the way home from London made me so sick, just thinking about it makes me feel slightly queasy. Yuck.

I’m up late again! But at least I can sleep in tomorrow YAY. Sleeeep. I love sleep.

So. Last night, instead of going to sleep, I wrote a whole stream of consciousness down on paper, and it makes no sense whatsoever. But this is what’s in my head.

Happiness is a bell ringing
At the back of your throat
And when you open your mouth
Shiny sounds tumble out!

Those who told you
“Life is lived through sunshine alone!”
Will stay silent when night falls
And they don’t know how to live!

I watched them all gather in a corner
Pronouncing us a lost cause
And, with a sigh, moving on.
Next order of business! …
Killing time!
Minute taker, take an hour
I’ve got no use for all this time
The day’s stretched out before me
Like a blank page
And me without a pen!

I followed the path but it
turned out to be a furrow in
a field of angry red flowers,
where I am standing, dismayed
and disenchanted.

I followed a path of angry followers on
an angry mission to rid the world
of amibvalence
Anything to feel something!

There was smoke curling in tendrils
From the corners of your mouth
You were on fire and I was
on the edge of my seat
But you are all burnt out and black inside.

That’s how I began.

Wait for the green to start over again, and
it will grow. It won’t become what you want it to be,
but I was much more impresed by the ending anyway.
Tell me again.

I love autumn.

I walked out of work today to a cloudy sky, and everything was fresh and cool. There was a man standing in Poet’s corner (I believe that it’s actually called Speaker’s corner, but I like poet’s corner better) near the deliberating statues shouting at no one in particular about Jesus being our saviour. Accept Jesus into your hearts! God does not scorn the weak and impudent! And nothing he said made any sense. He didn’t look like the usual yeller-outers either – before he started talking, I thought he was just one of the usual emo or goth crowd. He was wearing black and red. I wonder about these people… did they, in school or uni, join a Society for the Appreciation of Talking Loudly At Passers-By? And then discovered that if he talked loudly about Christian things, he could do his favourite thing all day in an area of high pedestrian traffic? It might be a dream come true for him. I think it’s a dream come true for the guy who wears a silk sash as a belt. But I think he was more part of the “Society for the cultivation of God’s Right-Hand Man Complex”, because he’s allowed to judge everyone by telling everyone they shouldn’t judge, and by denouncing the godless heathens in Asia who deserved to be killed and their homes destroyed by the tsunami because they hadn’t accepted Jesus as their saviour.
Puh-lease.
He sometimes starts his little lectures by saying “Hello. Hell-oh. Hell oooooh.” And the only reason I know this is because he’s at the crossing when I walk back to work from the mall if I am out at lunch, or sometimes he’s there in the mornings. But not lately because the bus I catch means I don’t have to walk past that particular bit of unpleasantness.

…To continue with the theme of calm, peace, and generally good feelings, the bus ride home this afternoon must have been the best I have ever taken in my entire life. It was my favourite time of day (late afternoon) my favourite type of day (steel grey clouds with darker clouds threatening in the background) and everything had a strange feel to it, like I was watching it from a memory. This was probably because most things I saw conjured up images from memories that made me feel happy and nostalgic (I live my life in a perpetually nostalgic state). I remembered:

* the trip we took to Sydney a few years ago, and although the reason for the trip wasn’t the most pleasant, the outcome was acceptable and the rest of the time we were there was good. It wasn’t good that every relative we visited had prepared us a wonderful meal of spaghetti (!), and having to eat it so as not to be rude. Since that time I’ve always felt slightly ill when confronted with a plate of it.

* The general mood of the afternoon also reminded me of watching storms move in through the valley from the dining room window of our house on top of the hill, feeling safe while still seeing the danger of the storm, the wind in the pine trees and the chill from the cold front, and watching as the gales blew little white caps on the river (which we called white horses).

* And I remembered catching the bus home from school during flood season, seeing the river travelling beside the road muddy and bloated, as if it was trying to race us home and get there before us so it could block our way back into town (this a constant source of anxiety for me, and on really rainy days I’d stall so long that I eventually never left for school, and would stay home feeling relieved until the next day when I had to go to school and take the chance that, although the roads into town were open when we left, the aqueduct might have flooded by the time school let out and then we wouldn’t be able to get home.) Each day we would listen to the radio to hear whether the highway was open or not. Days when it wasn’t open were like snow days for kids in the Northern Hemisphere, except without all the snow to play with. And we stayed inside because it as raining. Later, after the flood water had dissipated and evaporated somewhat, the stench of the paddocks with stagnant water in the low spots was terrible, like something had died and was just left to rot in the sun. I think it was just rotting vegetation, but you’d never know. There could be dead cows or anything under the water in the dips.

* I remember sitting on the deck at Martin & Jenny’s house listening to the rain on the tin roof (one of the best sounds in the world) watching everything get slowly soaked, and Martin daring me to stand underneath the storm water drain. I did, the water was so clean from days of rain washing everything out, and there was pure white sand underneath from so many people coming back in from the beach and rinsing off outside under the drain pipe. It sounds bad but was nice really. The water was shockingly cold.

———-

The view of the headlights through the tint of the bus windows at dusk on a cloudy day was calming. And even though it was dusk, everything was very clear because of the rain. Rain on cool days clears the air. I’m so glad that summer is over, though I think we’re probably in for a few more hot days before it gives up for good. For the most part, I couldn’t have asked for a better afternoon.

Roshard and I had dinner in the Village. It started raining on the walk down, and we twirled our umbrellas until long after it stopped raining and our umbrellas were dry. It didn’t rain on the way back.

I made an appointment at Escape for Friday, to talk over options. (what are my options?)

And whatever Dad said, whatever mum might have countered with, I am not over it and it is not over. It’s not as if something like that can happen and then you just say, “Oh rightio then, I won’t worry about it.” It doesn’t work that way. I am worried about it. And someone can’t just say, “I didn’t want you to get upset about it.” As an excuse for saying something upsetting. Just because that wasn’t the intention doesn’t mean that wasn’t always going to be the result. If someone was less self-absorbed, they would realise that. And yes, I realise that it’s unfair of him to do that, but I can’t stop feeling like it’s my responsibility. It was asked of me. Someone needed something. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have told anyone. I should have just helped. It was me being weak, and I knew what I was doing when I let go of the secret. I was letting someone else take some of the weight off my shoulders and it wasn’t fair of it to be on my shoulders in the first place, but then it wasn’t fair of me to offload it onto someone else.

Anyway. My nickname is Town Drunk, according to the program sent around in the email. Oh so very apt. Because, lyk, I get drunk lyk all tha time. It’s a shame I couldn’t send it on, it was very funny.

It is lent. Tomorrow is my lent, as I didn’t realise that it was Shrove Tuesday yesterday. And it doesn’t feel like Ash Wednesday unless you go to mass and get the little ashen cross drawn on your forehead.

So I am always a day behind.