Acorn.

Somewhere there is someone traveling interstate to deliver an acorn to a loved one. An acorn found below a tree during an afternoon stroll that was spent inwardly thinking about her. A walk through suburbia, amidst parked cars, lawn mowing and neat bricks with tapered concrete driveways coloured by an inner hue that is anything but paedestrian. An absence of epiphany, kapow and noise. Just an ordinary stroll to the tempo of a meandering mind that culminated under a tree to be that sole witness of an acorn falling to the ground.

So as to be picked up. Delivered. And shared.

Ode to Ocarina

Dear Katherine,

I broke it.

The string got stuck upon the corner of the table as i swiveled in excitement at finding a website that would slowly make a clay musician out of me. It took half a moment to smash upon my ceramic floor.



So sorry.

I still wander why i didn't just attend your graduation when you invited me too. It didn't matter that we were apart. Being there would have.

I remember you. Not always. Not even often. But i remember you. You were a bit crazy. Crazy enough to think that you could change for someone, craziness that made you believe that such a thing would be worth it. It isn't.

Hope you are well, married and happy. Not necessarily in that order.

Remember that leaf, with the ink on it?

I do.

Ordinary things.

Days are filled with moments collected for that conversation. A conversation that explodes from a dormant reservoir of an unshared biography. Moments that are characteristically silent and coloured with the narrowed aperture of eyelids as the spirit focuses it's energy to take an inner photograph in all the dimensions that only an imperfect memory can capture. Which is then stored away, and forgotten indefinitely until it reappears during 'that' conversation.

About filipino chicken feet.

Politics.

Definitions are important when they rest on something that resembles truth and have the quality of being unquestionably obvious. A doctor is defined by their inclination to care for patients. In absence of this simple impetus the role, however monolithically revered by society should erode and dissolve in a vacuous mess of pretense.

Hospital medical administration is defined in a similar manner. It breaks my heart to hear a good friend assert 'they don't care' as if it were an accepted given. We define them.

So i wrote a document with the desire to affect change. A document that was one part diagnosing the particulars of ineffective administration and 3 parts pragmatic suggestions for improvement. Diction was mindfully tempered by a consistent theme of diplomacy but inadequacies were presented adequately blunt to reflect a palpable dissatisfaction that was several generations deep. Said document found it's way up to the meta-administration that is the nebulous locus of administrative control, whom in turn forwarded a directive to not discuss the entire content in absence of appropriate 'executives' being in attendance.

I was summoned to meet with the Medical Director to discuss the 'Bigger than Ben-Hur' nature of my document. Meetings without a clear agenda are like a blood test for anaemia. Repeated tests only yield the same conclusion and quite fragrantly leaves the problem unfixed. I don't like meetings. Would sooner bake a cake.

Rhetoric based on an insidious employment of corporate jargon to confound and dissolve the gravity of a real problem that affects a multitude of doctor's lives and their families and ultimately patients, deserves rhetoric with more substance. Please don't knowingly use terms i don't (need to) understand to attain empty levity in argument and alleged authority on subject matter, because it's quite obvious, suffocatingly myopic and blatantly deceitful. Doctor's are aware of the dubious power that speaking a foreign language in 'English' yields, so let's not play that game.

Politics is vexing. But necessary to alter the status quo. Now is unfortunately not the time to make that change. I will wait until this wee fire burns big enough to not be put out by the wind outside but be fed by it.

I have spoken enough for now, so will return to listening for a while until my next eruption of consciousness.

Grapes.

Ceramic bowl sits stationary with an absence of grapes. Grapes that are no more, and probably busy reincarnating amidst the nocturnal contents of my bowel. Change is constant, but then - what is constant? Something that is fixed, unchanged? A strange paradoxical comment that. So often offered as an unquestioned morsel of profundity during 3am conversations. It's true of course, any statement with the audacity to capture the ambiguous duality of things lies closer to the asymptote of truth than the dirty progeny of reason. Speaking of which, i haven't had one of those for a long while... 3am conversations.

Gladys is dead.

I'm not.

A near death experience keeps one honest. A blessing. Life is (potentially) short. So a fraudulent existence bathed in delusions of longevity, security, predictability and plethora of should-be is the antithesis of the way it can be and will be.

Will sleep now. Pause it all biologically for a wee while, until the eruption of possibility that tomorrow brings wake me up. It's gonna be fucking awesome.

i will...

1. clean my room.

as this will lead to wonderful things...

2. do my taxes

so i can get the red wavemaster XXL for my clean room

3. study

to anchor my energy...

4. get batteries for my remote control spider

and impress caylie.

5. write more blog entries

...to get better at writing for writing sake.

SoFt BLack STArs...

Periods of muddle are sometimes decorated by moments of unexpected insight bathed within a sea of meaninglessness.

A (not-so) nice way to wake up to a feeling of nausea and general sickness is to recklessly consume four sizable thin oblongs of 70% Lindt Dark Chocolate immediately before sleep and refrain from sensible teeth brushing so as said chocolate may wreak its maximal oral havoc over night - a quiet mindless confection-fueled act of rebellion against god-knows-what... that in retrospect, achieved the perfect early-morning physiological unease required to resonate with the contents of a Friday yet to unfold.

It was an end to a beautiful week. A week populated by days punctuated by cycling to work besides a polluted urban creek, with the rude daily yielding to the almighty ferocity of a paternal magpie with a sharp beak underneath the same tree and over the same stretch of wobbly pavement. Anxious daily moments coloured by the same concoction of fear and frustration that gave way to a murderous anger noisily psychologically etched within the cowardly appearance of a grown man cycling speedily away from evil bird to the audience of a good-looking-female-passer-by. Said bird unknowingly triggered an ever-so-natural desire to plot its death for the obvious greater good of future generations of cyclists of wobbly pavement stretch. Alas, crazy bird lives, baby magpies remain blissfully unaware how close they came to being orphaned and those killing instincts willfully disbanded leaving the humbling residue of an awareness of my anthropocentric thoughts.

Beyond magpie mania lies Corella Lodge (Drug and Alcohol Detoxification Centre), a quaint unlocked establishment where hope percolates and less-damaged people attend to more-damaged people with not-infrequent success. Stories are shared, modern alchemy is prescribed and love and a patient audience works the occasional magic. The EEL had given me adequate insight to permit a relatively swift fit into my transient role at Corella. I can't and don't share details, 'cos it's right not to. My quiet diligence was tacitly noted and culminated in an generous invitation to attend a Narcotic Anonymous meeting, so as to see, feel and maybe learn some.

It was a wet Friday night. I was late as i'm of the recent habit of not using an alarm to wake myself up... i was inexplicably agitated. Maybe it was the weather, fatigue from a heavy week, damn bird, lack of sleep, nocturnal chocolate habit? Who knows. Arrived and sat next to Helen and fella with a mustache and good skin for a middle-aged bloke. Listened to the last two 'shares'... neither of which i will share here for obvious reasons. Suffice to say they attested to the eternal human theme that 'choice' coupled with 'responsibility' is what defines each human condition, an old idea that is often forgotten and remembered to epic effect. It was an honor to be privy to it. I looked for and found Mignon (colleague from the EEL) later and almost wept at her story of a client from the EEL, whom we both knew, that recently anticipated his impending death and later in the week died inconspicuously whilst sitting tucked away besides the supermarket i often buy fruit from opposite EEL. Life itself is not sacred. Having an audience is. Mignon has left EEL over the incident and hopes to pour her heart into art therapy. She is the only person I know with Luenig's tree as a tatoo.

Drove home in the rain. Might have thought some, but was exhausted mostly. It was late when i settled into my newish futon - the awesome sleep machine. I stayed awake a while and watched The Science of Sleep. A colourfully sad and beautiful tale of love and untempered neurosis. Neat way to end a day.

'Soft Black Stars' (Antony and the Johnsons) is the looped song that is was typed to and is a divinely ambiguous track i stumbled upon on the ride home on Friday.

So there it is Dale. As i thunk it. No more or less important than a rose or unsharpened pencil...

I hope next week is like the chocolate waterfall in Willy-Wonka's chocolate factory, so as to fluffen-up the chocolate I've ingested in the past week... all good chocolate needs bubbles.