rehabilitating the Blog

Blogging can sometimes feel obsolete... "Retro".

Now, post-Tumblr & Facebook,

it's all bite-sized chunks of information.

I've gone from novels to essays to paragraphs to status updates, to twitter hashtags

teeny word summaries of other tiny sums,

to cross-posting, without further comment.

 

Post-phone

Attention to how much I have relied on my phone for a sense of self or continuity

Broke my phone

State of panic.

Homophobia

Homophobia:
"Because Father does not love me unconditionally."

Last Night

A conversation between myself and 4 other Asian men at a bar in Newtown, NSW... Sparring wits about dancing, travel, sexuality, colonisation, Aboriginal Australian history, asylum seekers in Australia, and racism.

One of those evenings with the thought: This whole conversation should be hashtagged.

Food and Work

A reflection... That every single thing I do at work and in my life would be enhanced and nurtured by improving my relationship to food. I do not simply nor even primarily mean this in the sense of nutrition, but rather in terms of centralising the role that food can play in community development, community engagement, community investment in any event, issue, evolution.

I love food, but I have been a real prince about food in my life. I primarily rely on others to grow the vegetables or the livestock, or to collect the eggs or seduce the bees to steal their honey. I rely on others to ship the food, to ferment it, distill it, chop it, wash it, package it, prepare it, cook it.

I primarily eat it.

I want to incorporate food more healthfully into my "events" for work, from support groups to a presence at festivals. I want to nurture my relationship to food producers to be more in connection with their social conscience, at the same time that I develop my own food consciousness as part of my own social conscience.

Reflections.

the sense...

The sense, this morning,
of a spectacle of ordinariness,
the magic of mundanity...

I am called to witness
my own participation,
complicity in the shaping
of the normal
through all its global manifestations.

Simply by breathing, loving,
complaining, cajoling, or otherwise standing still under a gentle shower
scrubbing yesterday away,
making room for tomorrow's insights
to glow eagerly from under my skin

Tall Poppy Syndrome

"THE TALL POPPY SYNDROME:
ON THE RE-EMERGENCE IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIA
OF AN ANCIENT GREEK AND LATIN MOTIVE

According to the Australian National Dictionary (AND; Ramson 1988: 494), echoed by the
Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary of current English (Moore 1997: 1393), a tall poppy is ‘a
person who is conspicuously successful; freq. one whose distinction, rank, or wealth attracts
envious notice or hostility’. The Dinkum Dictionary (Johansen 1988: 414) provides a similar,
two-part definition: it talks about a ‘very important person; influential person; person with status
– often held in contempt by others, who try to bring about this person’s downfall or ruin’. In
spite of recent attempts to revalue the term tall poppy (Peeters forthcoming), most Australians
remain convinced that tall poppies must be cut down or cut down to size. This is usually done by
uttering criticism or by adversely commenting on a reverse in status. It is said that Australians
derive a great deal of pleasure or satisfaction from engaging in this activity."

Fanon's Final Prayer

The final pages of Black Skin, White Masks

Fanon's Freedom

"Some men want to fill the world with their presence. A German philosopher described this mechanism as the pathology of freedom."
- Frantz Fanon, from Black Skin, White Masks, pg 226

Also quoted from Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks"

Core work

Sciatica, ouch.

Then: Osteopathy at Inner North Osteo, a 5 minute walk from my workplace.

Now: Mmm... happy puppy.

I am pledging to myself, from now on, to begin every weight training session with core-muscle exercises. If I do not have the energy to do ab work, then I should not have the energy to do any other muscle exercises.

I must make the time and the space to strengthen my core, as the very basis upon which any other physical work can be done.

an amazing poem

I've quoted this from Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks"...

This poem is originally by David Diop...

Amalgamation

Perhaps...:
Neither assimilation nor integration, but rather:
Amalgamation

A sum total greater than my parts, yet inseparable from them, and indissoluble even if they were repressed, denied, foregone or forgotten...

The parts also, themselves, in each perhaps also containing the whole.

I am an amalgam of composite parts, and I am the parts which both pre-empt and are perhaps greater than a composite whole.

"Tall Poppies Club"

A hypothetical club...


Tall Poppies Club

A club for Tall Poppies. People who are tired of keeping our talents hidden. We wish to share them with one another, to learn from one another, to grow with one another, to develop through the vulnerability of visibility.

We are proud of our achievements and wish to share them with others. We acknowledge the virtue of modesty, at the same time that we wish to emphasise the reality of our excellence; not in order to sideline others, but in order to build a community of excellence, and a culture of innovation.

We are tall poppies who refuse to be cut down. Instead, we choose to remain tall, and encourage others to stand tall with us. We aspire to be taller, to become better at our work and our crafts, to share our successes with one another, alongside the lessons we have learned from our mistakes.


As part of Tall Poppies, I will:

- Be proud of my achievements
- Acknowledge the people who have supported me through my work in order to achieve what I have achieved
- Share my achievements with others
- Encourage others to share their achievements with me and with one another
- Commit to nurturing and sustaining a community that is proud of our achievements
- Aspire to continuing a cultural cycle of excellence

(at least) One blogpost per day

I have decided to set myself a challenge...

To blog one page a day, for the rest of this month...

Even if it is a single sentence, a single phrase, a single word.
It could be a quotation from someone, or a vague sense of an idea.
It could be an image I'm cross-posting off the internet.

Mostly, it is to revisit this blog as an alternative to Facebook, which I've been disconnected from since the beginning of the month, in an attempt to reclaim an intellectual, social, and emotional space that doesn't hinge on the fickle whims of an aggressive newsfeed.

This blogpost per day is an exploration of discipline.
A recognition that "being a writer" is not (only) about moments of extreme genius, when the Muse has visited and blessed me with his presence, motivating me to gush words like libidinal spurts of wishful thinking, inviting praise and celebration.

No.

Rather, I want to connect with writing as a discipline, as a meditation, as itself an invitation to conversation, to dialogue... That all my writing will not only be in discrete, self-contained essays which are complete unto themselves, fully fleshed out and self-knowing. I want to write not only to indicate my knowing, but also as an expression of my unknowing, my undoing, my unknotting, my unfurling.

Perhaps nobody will read this.

Perhaps nobody will care.

And so what? I have not prefigured this blog to be for mass consumption, or accessibility, even as I do not either wish to overly glamourise obscurity at the expense of relationship.

I write because I care, or perhaps because I only want to care, and that may have to be enough.

This will be this for now.

Art Videos

I have been watching quite a lot of art videos on Youtube recently, and I've decided to share a few that I've found to be especially exquisite...

"Satisfaction"

Satisfaction.

The Latin "Satis", to mean "sufficient" or "adequate"...

Sufficient Action.
Adequate Action.

This is, by definition, Satisfaction.

A day's work well done.
A life's work well lived.

Stepping Stones

The exquisite beauty of stepping stones.

They are, in themselves, a path for others and the final product of themselves. Stepping stones, in their fullness, are but stepping stones on the way to somewhere, and that is why they are perfect...

Notes on Fail Fast, Fail Often #3

The Lean Approach to Careers

1. Make the smallest viable action plan - just enough to take the next positive action.
   Don't worry about making a plan for the next three months, one year, or five years; instead focus on what you can do in the next week to have new experiences and learn.
   
2. Be good at taking small steps that allow you to try and learn about many things.
   Learn to enjoy initiating small actions that lead to immediate feedback.
   
3. Perform experiments to confirm or disprove your assumptions about occupations that you are curious about.Don't believe what you hear about a career or what you have learned from books and television. Come up with your own experiments that allow you to find out how you feel about an occupation, how hard it is to do, how good you are at it, and so on. For example, try volunteering, enriolling in an introductory course, taking an internship, or getting a part-time job.
   
4. Be prepared to change course; expect to make many small adjustments, as well as some big ones.Don't get stuck pursuing one career, even if you have committed time and resources preparing for it. It is normal and to be expected to adjust course according to what you learn and how your interests change.
   
5. Avoid big investments in education, training and preparation until you have learned as much as possible.Don't make a long-term commitment until you have taken steps to try things, test your ideas, and learn more. For example, if you are interested in being a doctor, volunteer at a hospital, take a chemistry course, and see how you do on practice MCAT tests before you commit to a pre-med plan.
   
6. Keep your plans informal.
   When your friends and family ask you what career you want to pursue, resist giving a specific answer. Instead, tell them that you are testing out a number of different ideas (and ask for their input). That way you can collect facts and change direction without feeling embarrassment or being called a quitter.