THE ENGINEER OF HUMAN SOULS

Apologies to Josef Skorevcky.

I went back up to Sydney on the weekend for my mother's birthday. I got to see my little 3 week old nephew, who I did get to see for 2 days before I moved. I don't think there is anything more beautiful than a baby, and nothing more relaxing than nursing a sleeping baby. He has spends more and more time awake, no doubt trying to make out exactly what this world he now lives in is like.

In Australia we will be having a federal election before the year is out. What fear will Howard play on? What do I mean? Well in 1996 he played on the fear of native title and of people losing their homes to Aboriginal land claims (even though people losing their homes in such a way could never happen). In 1998 he didn't need to play up any fear, because his majority was so large - still he did lose a lot of seats, so he knew he would have to go back to playing on people's fears. In 2001 it was the fear of asylum seekers and refugess being terrorists. In 2004 it was interest rates. In 2007? Well it seems to be Islam and the loss of jobs and economic prosperity (at least for the wealthy minority - the number of people living in poverty is inceasing in these "prosperous times) if Workchoices is overturned.

Faced with this, we have the alternative of a Kevin Rudd led ALP government. The lesser of two evils. The only problem with this is that you are still voting for an evil. Where has the ALP been on the issue of Indigenous rights since 1996? MIA. On refugess? Well they support the government's attacks on asylum seekers (Kevin Rudd particularly) because, well, they introduced the policy. Interest rates? Well they don't want to abolish one of the major causes of high house prices (which makes interest rates such an issue), negative gearing. Islamaphobia? Morris Iemma matches Howard and co on this any day. Hell, they won't even undo all of the Workchoices legislation, let alone the WRA 1996. Oh Peter Garrett, he's a right-to-lifer, a Christian Fundamentalist - as it appears is Rudd. The ALP, a good alternative? What a sick joke. Yet sadly this is what most people will think are the only alternatives, ALP and Liberal, Howard or Rudd.

What has happened to us? Why are we so selfish, so xenophobic, so bigoted that we have become this way, so full of fear, that we not only ignore human suffering, or encourage it, but actively engage in the activities that cause it? Why and who has engineered our soul in such a way?

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

Apologies to Jonathan Saffran Foer. For 5 days now I have resided in Victoria - truth be told there is little difference between it and NSW. Well, unless you are talking about football.

I got to see my new little Nephew for 2 days, and more than anything else I miss being able to see him. Prior to leaving I went through and visited some places that I used to hang around in, but hadn't been in for a while. Memories came flooding back. Similarly I spent a while in my grandparents home, knowing full well it would soon be sold, and it made me sad. Not because it was the loss of a physical house, but because of the way the house triggered memories of my grandparents. It's the same for songs or movies - at one time or another we have had a song or movie become a favourite because of the connection between the music/movie and someone special - which will then cause us to fell hurt when that relationship ends.

In Everything is Illuminated (watch the film first, then read the book) a man goes to look for the village in Ukraine that his Jewish grandfather had escaped from and to look for the woman who had helped save him. After much searching he finds a woman who indicates that he has found the village - inside her rural, isolated house are the physical possessions of the Jewish families that the Nazis had destroyed. The village and it's people were still alive so long as their possesions were there and she remembered the people. I am worried now that the selling of their house will result in some of my memories of them fade as I don't have the house there anymore to remind me.

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

THE SPECTRE OF DEATH

My Grandmother passed away on Saturday night. She is the last of our family members who lived through and suffered that most damning indictment of humanity, World War 2. I wish I could say that her death was peaceful and serene, but it wasn't. I'm an athiest,for me it is impossible to see god when you see someone you love fade away in front of you with so little dignity. I similarly can't see god in the deaths of babies - for me there is no no stronger person than a woman who has had a child grow inside her for 9 months, only to lose them soon after birth. I cannot think of anything more painful.

My grandmother's death has opened up that abyss for me. I had started to regain control of myself, but that is now shot to pieces, and I'm back at the point where I can't help breaking down and crying, even in public. I think about what my grandparents went through, and I feel so pathetic because I can't seem to cope with a life that most people in the world would cherish. I wish I could just go to sleep and either never wake up, or wake up without this cowardice and stupidity.

TIME AND TIME AGAIN

Time flies by way too quickly, yet it simultaneously drifts oh so slowly.

Things have improved for me, and I am spending time looking inwards it isn't nice. I see a person that likes to implode, that is so self-destructive. I turn my back on my good friends, for people who spit me out when they have used me for what I am worth, forsake a woman he was oh so beautiful in all senses of the word, in order to have a fling with someone for whom I was nothing but a play thing. Why? It seems to be a case of self-fulfiling prophicies - I look for people who will turn their back on me, while I turn my back on those people who do care about me, so that in my screwy head I can say to myself that nobody wants me.

In Douglas Copeland's book, Life after God, he says:

And then I felt sad because I realised that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.

And I wonder if that is me - have I become broken to the point where I cannot be fixed? I continue to look to see if this is the case....

BACK AGAIN

Well, I'm back in psych hospital again - out on supervised leave at present, I went back in on Tuesday after cutting my wrists on monday night. I also used a coke can to cut them on Wednesday night in hospital which didn't go down to well. I was on 24 hour watch (level 1) - now am back to level 2 (checked upon every 30 minutes). Last time I cut my wrists it was a release and from that point on I improved. These 2 times however there has been no release. I want nothing more than to end this charade. As Radiohead say in "true love waits" - I'm not living, I'm just killing time. Even my little nephews can't cheer me up.

You know that life is pointless when you place all you hope in one person somehow magically giving life meaning - and when that person doesn't, then everything becomes so much worse. Again I have been fooled by sweet talk, that she liked me because of who I am, that I was sweet, sensitive, intelligent, thoughtful and believed in things, and I so wanted to believe that, because of all the self-doubt and self-loathing. So much so that I let my common sense abandon me. Now, even phone calls are a major effort on her part, even though she knows I am in hospital. And it all comes flooding back - how could anybody like you for who you are. What is there to like? Why is it that so many woman don't even think about me in "that way" - and it is obvious - because I am horrid and repulsive. And I want so much to hate her, but I can't, because I care about her, so that hate is directed at myself instead. And so my lack of a will to live at least now has a purpose.

Last weekend down in Melbourne I spent most of my time with a friend, a very beautiful woman and more importantly a very beautiful person. I found myself attracted to her, though she may be right in saying that is because of our close proximity during the weekend and my trying to tear away from the other. Then again how could I not be attracted to her in some way given both her inner and physical beauty (even though she denies she is beautiful). The moments where we were sitting watching TV, or even doing nothing, and where I had my arm around her or where she was resting her head on me were so beautiful and tranquil. Sunday morning when she came into my bed and just lay there napping was heaven to me - my arm around her and vice versa, and just watching her breathe, looking at her long black eyelashes, her pale white skin and curly brown hair. I wish that moment could be frozen in time, because this is all I want, this is what I have been so missing and what the weekend reminded me about, that sense of contentment just being with another person can bring - and what seems impossible for me.