Lip Service

Her name was Simone, and I met her on the bus. This was while I was still at university and still too busy enjoying my youth to save up enough to buy a car. We were both sitting in a four seater facing each other.

Beautiful.

She had long obsidian hair that could set the sun on her command, dark eyes and rich exotic features that softly chanted tales of distant hilltops overlooking moonlit seas. I stammered up enough courage to approximate what more accomplished men do when they ask women on a date. After eyeing me for a moment, she agreed. But one date only she insisted. That is all I would have.

Like a salesman sensing when their foot was in the door I still felt I was in with a chance. Sure she might say one date now, but given the opportunity and setting the right mood, I was sure I could solicit more rendezvous. I started to make suggestions and elaborate plans, but she cut me short.

“When we get off this bus, we are on our date. We’ll go to the park, sit down and talk. Take it or leave it.”

Taken.

We settled in the shade of a small tree and began to talk. It turned out she was what she called a lip reader. I say reading lips like I say people read your tea leaves or your coffee grounds. Much to my delight though, she read lips through touch. She would run her fingers delicately across my lips and could offer vague references to my life. These were really the things of most psychic pretenders, but I didn’t mind. Her fingers seemed to find the grooves of my lips and release a silent melody of emotion. Not to forget, she was beautiful, and I was happy for her to play DJ with my lips.

An air of frustration set in for her after a while though, she crossed arms and softly sighed “Hmph.” She eyed me, looked at my lips again and remarked:

“It’s not working the way it should, nothing’s clear. I don’t think we’ll get to the bottom of this unless I kiss you.”

Here was me thinking I’d have to be smooth and suggest that very thing.

So we kissed. I can only describe it in terms of how the release of pressure must be when a dam near overflow is relieved. The rhythm of her lips and their caress on my seem to pull many a tension built up inside me. She said that I was a constant thinker, and the desire to not be too biased with any conclusion I came to in my thoughts meant an infinite number of reconsiderations on any particular issue. This resulted in my relative silence in conversation, for fear of seeming too biased, and a somewhat aloof appearance around my peers. She suggested that I perhaps speak up more often, and allow others to take up the alternate considerations for me, saying it was easier for them to formulate while I listen, than formulate all on my own.

“Learn to delegate.” She said.

I was taken aback. The idea was somewhat new to me but somehow made sense.

“And with that”, she said, “Our date is at and end”

I was still coming to terms with what she was saying as she walked away. I gathered my senses enough to shout after her.

“HEY!”

She turned around and regarded me with a warm questioning smile.

The effort of shouting had exerted much of the physical effort I had left in me after my experience. All I could do was mouth silently and deliberately to her:

“Thank you.”

She looked at me strangely and yelled back:

“HUH?”

Post Whisperer

I did get involved with someone I met online once. Her name was Raven Osslimstich. She came into my life with the following email:

Re: Emy Coligado is mad quirky cool

“You’ve got something there.”

“Emy Coligado was great in Malcolm in the Middle, although her character suffered for losing her sass as the show progressed. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re likely to see her much from now on other than bit parts in TV shows and small movies like ctrl-Z.”

“Unfortunately people in film and television land don’t share your enthusiasm for diverse casting.”

Of course, the first instinct in this scenario was to assume spam. But the subject was one close to my heart and I had to reply with an inquisitive:

Re: Emy Coligado is mad quirky cool

“Huh?”

And that’s how it started. It turned out she was replying to some forgotten post I’d made on a message board some years ago. She was a curator of what she called a post orphanage. Designing a programme to scour the message boards she was a member of enabled her to download and save any posts that had a zero post count. All life was precious to Raven, even the life of a post, and she felt that in her care posts that would otherwise die lonely deaths gained a fair chance at life with her reading them, then replying to the authors. Through her experience she’d found that often posts that went without comment carried wisdom, but often didn’t solicit comment because online there wasn’t a huge market for balanced post agreement. Her revival process was not perfect however, she explained: many parents of the original posts didn’t wish to reply to her, even if they remembered posting the message in the first place. It concerned her a little, but she could only put her best effort forward. If the parent wished to abandon the child, she said, what more could she possibly do anyway?

It’s fair to say I liked her almost straight away.

She was a great exponent of the art of language. Less an academic talent, she had more an innate ability to soak up what emotion struck what chord in a person. She described it as a chemistry between her heart, her fingers and the keyboard. It was its own little eco-system where each sustained the other, and her expressions less the discipline of intellect than an instinct of rhythm for finger on key. I was quickly seduced by the magic of her words and spent hours online with her. We never met in person; it all seemed that much better in the abstract. It was our online selves who were in love, and we did not wish for reality to place its grubby hands on the delicate binary of our connection.

I learnt much from her about how to craft a post, and enter a certain character relevant to the kind of responses I could expect. Holding the tone not just for the original post, but through all the replies was of utmost importance. She was a stickler for good stewardship of a post too. Each person who responds must in turn be responded to, until the tangent was exhausted. Respect the post and it will respect you, she’d say.

Suffice to say that while under her wing I enjoyed a small period of notoriety on the boards I frequented at the time. With her as my post whisperer I entertained other members with well expressed intelligence and wit.

Sadly it was not to last. She ruined the ligaments in her fingers in what she would only describe as a bizarre sewing accident. Because her fingers had betrayed their fidelity to the keyboard with a seam work flirtation, she had paid a price. These fingers were only meant for one purpose, she explained, and she had strayed from their first love. The mojo was lost from her fingers, the damage robbing her fingers of their rhythm. She would never post, and I would never ‘see’ her again.

I was crestfallen, and without her, could not post with the same verve I once did. I still make posts that no-one responds to though, in the hopes that she still at least gives them a home.

Posts are literature too.

Norman Huddensclove

Quite a curious fellow, who was into making sculpture out of tampons. When he wasn’t designing scale models of buildings with them, he was designing period design tampon firing weaponry to lay siege to them with.

Watching the progress of Norman’s sculptural efforts was like watching the evolution of man’s technology over time. Through the stone, bronze and iron ages forward each new year was greeted with a new period of building design, with the siege weaponry to go with it. He said he kept old period pieces in a storage locker in the suburbs. Buildings would be populated by tampons secured to a small carboard base with meticulously painted body and facial features. His ability to bring out great painted detail despite the absorbent nature of the tampon was truly something both fascinating and worrying.

Norman of course was a huge history buff, and that’s how I got to know him. If you could stand to wade through a white sea of historic structural decay and broken ammunition in his small flat he had much to offer in the way of study aids, and he helped me through some of my history papers at university. Nothing quite sticks in the mind like a historical scene re-enacted entire through the mediums of paint and tampon.

Unfortunately, Norman’s career was washed into oblivion in a flash flood. The irony was rich when it was noted that the tampons had soaked up most of the damage, while leaving his other, less prized possessions, mostly untouched as a result. A particular favourite of Norman’s had been a staging of the story of the fourty-seven Ronin, who, for a second time it seemed, had sacrificed themselves in the name of their master Norman, but in doing so had hurt him all the more in the process.

The whole event was too much for Norman to absorb. He tried to make a claim through his insurance, but of course no-one at the company would put a value on what he had lost.

I never saw Norman again after that. Last I heard he was living an isolated life by a beach, and now apparently works on pontoon technology to help save stranded dolphins and whales.

Conrad Shipwhittle

I met him at a cemetery. This was while I was dating a woman whose ex was dead. She lost him on their honeymoon at a pretty young age. I believe her family name was and to this day still is hyphenated with his, even now that she is married to someone new. Some things stay with you forever I guess. We weren’t really right for each other and it was, truth be told, the wrong time in our lives for each other. But she lent on me and the force of that against my own then listing self held me upright. It lasted for as long as it did, and every third Sunday of each month during that time we’d make the trip to her ex’s grave.

Every time I went I saw Conrad there. He had a mess of brown hair that always appeared to be in the same configuration every time I met him, like a surfer who’s stayed by the sea until the salt cakes his hair into place, never to move again. Otherwise there wasn’t much about him to look at, always the same pair of overalls, beat up no brand shoes and a pair of engaging but somehow distant eyes.

Except for the fact that he looked all of 17 years old, working in a cemetery.

I didn’t get to know him until after the woman and I broke up. In the aftermath I still took her to the grave (she didn’t drive, not since the accident) but she always insisted on catching the bus back. That gave me more time to kill once she’d finished visiting the graves, and I’d linger over the others, quietly leafing my way through concise memories that loved ones had defined lost lives with.

I was considering the life of one Peter McDowlingstock 1925 – 1981: “He loved hard, until his heart couldn’t take it anymore” when I heard a voice from behind:

“Makes you think, doesn’t it.” he said.

“Yeah, almost rude in a way, a headstone really ought to give a SPOILER alert before doing that to you. I’d like to be asked first, not be made to think. Besides, it can ruin the road of life when things point out the potholes like that.”

“To be honest, I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah? You have no thought one way or another?”

“Not on life itself, I’ve kind of taken a break from it.”

“Hmm… thus you spend your time here with the dead?”

“Sort of. I’m here free of charge. The church that looks after this place gives me a room, food, and an internet connection, so I can frequent the cemetery caretakers chat rooms and get the latest on ground and headstone care. I’m here for free, and I think my form of gratuity comes in paying respect to the dead. I’m here off the back of people who leave loved ones here and are separated from visiting them by life. I’ve stepped out of life and found a place where I fit in their stead.”

“That’s strangely introspective for a teenager.”

“My friend, I’m already 28. I’ve lived life to the fullest. Since day one, my parents told me, I was full tilt, didn’t know how to stop. I’ve run with the bulls, climbed Mt Everest, played medic to guerilla insurgents, learnt seven languages, built homes for the poor, fought with sharks, plus a little more. Even met a woman.”

“Here we go.”

“You might say that. She was the first woman, the first thing, to ever make me stop to take a breath, because in the following instant she’d always steal it away again. I loved her, but my passion, like so many other things, was too full on, too much. There was no balance. In my passion for her I neglected myself. I actually aged in that time terribly. She couldn’t stand to see what she felt I was doing to myself, and said leaving me, while breaking her heart, was eventually for my own good.

“Wow, how do you recover from that?” I interjected.

“I don’t know, I’m still recovering. I’ve taken a holiday from life, and my body, as you can see, is getting back into shape, but the rest of me… I dunno. I feel like I take it easy, I feel like I slow down with these people of the past who have now stopped forever. But I look around me, and the work I do here…”

“This is one of the most well kept spaces of earth I’ve ever seen. It’s almost CGI good.” I continued for him.

“That’s right. I don’t know if I’ve learnt how to slow down enough to get back into life. I don’t know if having my breath taken away again means having it taken away for good.”

“And now here we are, with Peter McDowlingstock.” I finished.

“Yeah.”

I lost track of Conrad after a while. I stopped taking the woman to the grave, and going there just to chat to Conrad seemed an extravagance in a life of pressing matters that required attending. He no longer works there, and he’s no longer to be found on any cemetery caretaker message boards. Rumour on the net had it that he’d gone to take care of a small plot in the Ainu community in Northern Hokkaido. At his cemetery they said they thought he’d gone off to study Archaeology.

I sometimes wonder what his headstone will read.

I once knew this guy called Charles Gnollworthy

Unfortunate name, but that was the least of his troubles. Guy had a real appetite for destruction. Loved nothing more than taking something off you and rendering it incapable of its intended function. Snapping pencils was his favourite. Needless to say, despite his talent for draught work, it wasn’t long before he was kicked out of graphics and design class with a habit like that.

Guy found it really hard to hold relationships and friends too. Heaven forbid you ever left him alone at your place. You’d discover he’d melted your toothbrush with a lighter he always carried around with himself, or a bent spoon you were sure wasn’t bent before. Of course he wasn’t careful with his own possessions either. I’ve never seen a guy more happy with his own split ends. In the more advanced days of his affliction he really got to working with machines, figuring out exactly what made them tick, so he could remove a small but vital piece of material or programming to render the item unfit for use. Fixing audio equipment so that you weren’t able to lower the volume was a favourite.

Funnily enough, Charles was eventually able to curb his tendencies by encouraging them in another. He now works with other people who have compulsive and anti-social habits, while in a strange way normalising but not fully resolving his own.

He says he now breaks other people’s addictions for a living. Apparently nothing more satisfying in life than breaking an ‘unbreakable’ habit so that it never works again.

I’m quietly annoyed at the amount of money he makes. Never had to study for his expertise, the tenacity of which was gained much at my expense. Still, at least I can have him over without worrying about my toothbrush or iPod now.

So I knew this guy called Kimble back in the day

he street I work on is at a funny intersection of society. Back in the day it used to be a neighbourhood of students and more working class folk. Now, because of its proximity to the city and great views, it has reinvented itself as a sort of boutique mecca where a lot of the stylish set hang out as well. So you get an interesting mix of people from various backgrounds.

Enter Kimble.

Everyone knew him as Kimble. Apparently that wasn’t his last name or his first name, but everyone knew him as Kimble. He was known for his epic runs around that part of town. You might go return from lunch and see him run past and give you a wave, then you’d see him again as you headed home after work, still in the same clothes, apparently on the same run. Usually new looking shiny short shorts, an old and slightly yellowed singlet top and new balance shoes. Always green socks, like spirulina green.

Sometimes you’d be sitting at a park bench in the nearby reserve and you could tell he was passing by the signature *huff huff* sound of his breath as he passed by. The regularity was such that you almost felt you could keep time by it. Sometimes you didn’t even see him as he passed, just heard the noise, like an unseen train approaching and receding in the distance.

No-one could tell me exactly what Kimble did for a living. The rumour was candle recycling, but he was always cagey about his business affairs. He just said he worked for himself.

Apparently (here’s the relevance) he had an extreme personal trainer phobia. Like some people are scared of clowns, he was scared of personal trainers. The reasons were never made clear although the rumours swung from overbearing jazzercise mother to a treadmill accident while doing PE at school as a boy. Couldn’t stand to set foot in a gym, wouldn’t watch any TV channel that had exercise related infomercials. This fed into a general unwillingness to be told what to do and perhaps explained the mysterious nature of his occupation.

He was also, as a result, extremely cautious and conscious about his health, thus the long runs and his claims of being careful with his diet.

We sadly had to bid farewell to Kimble. He was the victim of an awful home invasion. The perpetrators cased Kimble and his phobia, robbing him of all his valuables (including his life savings, which of course he didn’t keep in the bank) armed with nothing more than some leotards, head and arm bands and some shouted imperatives.

Last I heard he was living a quiet life in the Chatham Islands.

Wherein is the love

There’s a lot to get mixed up in when it comes to religious dogma. When you start to talk about holy texts to me it’s a minefield of perspective that’s open to alienation and manipulation for the sake of control. Get into the fine print of the texts and you can come out with saints or the Ku Klux Klan.

When you learn a language, one of the lessons they try to press home on students is not to try to understand every single word; word for word. You’re supposed to get a general feel for meaning in all cases, often enough in translating one language to another you miss something when you’re too rigid or literal with meaning.

I think it’s the same if you’re searching for something of the divine. For me, whenever I think about religion in a way that’s acceptable and makes sense to me, it’s that love is always the back drop. If you get to the core of what I believe, and my interpretation of the bible, it’s that god=love. That’s the starting and the end point. Whenever you read or try to understand a mystery of life for yourself, the issues that really matter can only reach a balanced assessment with this permutation present in the formula.

This is the principal reason why most organised religion turns me off today, especially what is so prevalent in the media. When you have muslim figures saying women only have themselves to blame when raped because of the way they dress, or one of Senator McCain’s spiritual advisors saying that christians need to eradicate Islam or whatever, it fails to connect with me because I don’t see the love behind the statement. I don’t see how using love as your north star you could be pointed in such directions. Moreover, time and again I meet people who don’t believe as I do, or perhaps don’t believe in the idea of a god at all, and I connect with them so much more because I see how much love is the backdrop of their lives and how they relate to other people. I see the divine in that, because if ever there was an ideal of an all powerful creator worth following, it is the embodiment of love.

It is love that first grants free will, because as we know love cannot be coerced, or it is a souless and more practical servitude. It allows therefore for the creation of one’s own destiny, even if it be at the expense of others. It comes into the bargain of freewill with a mix of faith and forgiveness. There’s a faith that one will strive to be better than what they currently are, despite the continuing evidence that may say that they’re not, and forgiveness when that faith is broken through yet another failing. There’s compassion for the circumstance outside one’s control that contribute to one’s failings, but also an honesty that will quickly remind that the failure falls on that one and that one alone.

To me, that’s something that most people can understand and see as an ideal. It’s not something that will work as a practical matter for us humans, because we are imperfect products in imperfect environments.

But I feel like so many in the media, and in general in the field of organised religion, miss this. It’s so easy to go off on a rant and exhort rigid values for the benefit of some,  and the subjugation or destruction of others. This is where they clash with each other and further alienate those who might otherwise be part of the discussion.

It saddens me because I think it hurts the idea of fellowship. People coming together from different beliefs to talk and find a common ground that give equitable outcomes, or perhaps simply points where each can be happy to agree to disagree and marvel at the variety of human life. It beggars people and their growth to reject the ideas of others outright, when the other person is truly trying to understand and grow themselves. That thinking betrays an arrogance that one is above the wisdom of others, and can judge such wisdom based upon a preconceived label to be placed on someone based upon their appearance or the title of the book they like to carry around with themselves.

I learnt a lot about myself and also the beauty of Islam, in one form, from a Muslim taxi driver. I’ve often  been guilty myself of writing off people based upon superficial reasonings, but that moment of clarity has always served as the lesson to listen to someone carefully before deciding not to listen at all.

Even when you despise someone’s character or viewpoint, it doesn’t make them any less correct when they contend that 2 plus 2 equals four. Listen carefully, because you never know when they might be telling you another equally immutable truth about something much more profound. 

All work with no breaks

Makes this a jack all updated blog.

Or as Bruce Campbell might say:

I’m not updating but two things right now: jack, and shit, and jack left town.

Year end for an accountant is just oh so much fun!

Realisations

I am probably, in a broad sense, more comfortable around her aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, than I am my own.

Youth, while perhaps a state of mind

Is still a most divisive element in daily interaction, in the sense that you can sometimes mark your movement towards the upper limit of a certain age band by the way those in the lower bands respond to you. There are those ever so sweet moments, when you realise there’s no interest between you and the attractive 22 year old waiting with you in line at the bank, when the rust in your finger joints see you start to suffer successive defeats against younger wards in console gaming, when a younger client approaches you with the reverent deference to your professional knowledge as a pilgrim might approach a sage.

You start to realise the progression of time.

My little brother is a good ten years younger than me, and occupies an age group that increasingly interrupts my aging body’s nightly rest periods with modified exhausts and gregarious house parties. It’s with much amusement that I note in my annoyance how I was most likely once the object of such annoyed views. Sometimes an overdeveloped sense of one’s hypocrisy can be detrimental to a desire for day to day curmudgeonly convenience. When it’s 1:00am in the morning and you’re trying to sleep, it can help a lot to lightening your mood and let you laugh at yourself.

In a perverse way I look forward to being a curmudgeon. Well, maybe just a little bit.