THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Apologies to Mr Milan Kundera. In a few days I will be moving to Melbourne. As far as moving places goes the mov isn't a big one. However as someone who doesn't go on holidays, the longest I have been out of Sydney (unless you count being out of my mind as out of Sydney) is about a week.

I'm really looking forward to the move, but there are things I will miss. Obviously my friends and family (particularly my nieces and nephews). But some of them are small things like going to get me lunch when I am at work, and everyone there knowing me and knowing what I order. The group of 13 very Large crows who live near my place who I will often just sit and look at on the weekend. The buildings and trees that I see on my way to work from the train. Even the trains that rattle past my window every 5 minutes. Why will I miss them? Because they are reassuring, things that I can count on that provide some sense of stability in my life. But sometimes we need to take risks and move from that stability. Besides, I will inevitably create that stability in my new environment anyway.

In my last job, I was told to keep track of the thank emails I received from members to use in performance reviews. Invariably you would build up 6 to 10 of them. I decicided to do the same with this job. After almst 3 years I have over 300. It's nice to know that you have made a difference. It is also nice to know that you will be missed by those members, which seems to be the case given the responses I have received. Similarly it was nice when at my last Greens meeting most people came to the pub for a farewell drink.

Oh well, bye Sydney, hello Melbourne.

Harry Houdini

I'm like Harry Houdini - I disappear. For weeks or months on end. I cut myself off for months not just from my online friends, but from friends who I have known since school. Why? I just don't want to have to deal with people on a personal level. So I find things I can lost in for hours on end, things that will keep my mind occupied for long periods of time.

In many ways work is my salvation - it keeps me occupied and provides me with a sense of self worth that I don't find anywhere else. But too many things happened over the last year and I needed to get away from my present life, put myself in a new environment. So I found a new job, another union job, and will be leaving Sydney in less than 2 weeks to move down to start a job in Melbourne. My apprehensions have all but disappeared and I am looking forward to this, hoping that a new start will help me. There is another little thing too.

Last year, my sister had 2 miscarriages, and both were devastating to the family, a major loss because nothing is more beautiful or cherished than a new baby. But any day now my sister will give birth to another baby which will hopefully makes things better, while still not taking away all the pain. I will miss not being able to see my nieces and nephews as often as I have been, and not being able to see my new little nephew or niece as often as I would like too.

On Sunday I, inadvertantly at first, watched an episode of a program called Joan of Arcadia, which deals with a girl who thinks she can speak to god (like Joan of Arc), and her faily and friends. Normally I would have changed the channel and steered way clear or even thrown something at the TV, but a discussion amongst the characters about god, where some of them said that how could god exist in the world today, how could he/she let horrible things happen made me watch, and I was very surprised.

Besides the ongoing plotline of Joan "speaking" to God there were 3 other plots that ran through the episode. The first involves Joan's brother, who has been a paraplegic since a car he was in driven by his best friend, who was drunk at the time, crashed. Yet it is his friend that is suing Joan's brother. Why? Because he knew his friend was drunk but still let him drive instead of stopping him. It's a scenario most of us will have been in - a friend who wants to drive while drunk. How many of us stop them?

The second plot revolved around a friend of Joan's who drinks too much and almost dies of alcohol poisoning. Again Joan realises that she should have stopped her friend from drinking so much but she didn't - again, sound familiar? Both of these plots say the same thing - sometimes it's not what you do that is the problem, it is what you don't do. It's easy to blame others for what they have done to us, when the reality is we are to blame as well for allowing that to happen, instead of trying to stop it happening. I can definately see that I do this all too easily.

The last plot reveolved around Joan's father, who is a police investigator. A young boy is killed in a drive-by shooting by some gansters. Even though the people in the community know who did it, they wouldn't tell for they fear the consequences. However eventually a woman does come forward and identify the killers, but not long after she is killed and her house burnt. The moral? In a perfect world those who did what was right would be would not have to face any negative consequences. But the world isn't a prefect place, and sometimes those who do do what is right suffer as a result. I think I will try to continue watching the show.

Lastly my friends, and thank you to all of you with your messages of support, I would like to share a a poem from you by Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish/Lithuanian nobel prize winning poet:

NOT MINE

All my life to pretend this world of their is mine
And to know such pretending is disgraceful.
But what can I do? Suppose I suddenly screamed
And started to prophesy. No one would hear me.
Their screens and microphones are not for that.
Others like me wander the streets
And talk to themselves. Sleep on benches in parks,
Or on pavements in alleys. For there aren't enough prisons
To lock up all the poor. I smile and keep Quiet
They won't get me now.
To feast with the chosen - that I do well