I don't do reunions

Recently the ten-year photo challenge swept my social media.  I had it pop up in another part of my life the other day.  The experience was ... illuminating.

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I want my 2006 face and body back! I promise I’ll take good care of it this time!!! #howhardhasaginghityou

A post shared by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Jan 12, 2019 at 8:12pm PST

I have a fairly dismissive view of  my high school, with its snobberies and vanity and bottomless self-congratulation.  I have an even more scornful attitude to its ex-students' association, which seems to consist of people who peaked in high school and can't move on at all..  Nevertheless, it was a bit of a shock to get a message out of the blue from a person who was my friend in high school with a dinner invitation:

I think the last time I saw this fellow (or indeed, any of that group of sometime friends) was in 2007 or 2008, after I was married but before the girls were born, when my wife and I went to dinner with them.  Nevertheless, I was stunned by the physiological reaction that kicked in for me.  My stomach felt terribly tense and I could not keep still.  My head suddenly felt like ants were crawling around in my skull.  I don't understand why I reacted this way.

I suppose it was inevitable that I would refuse the invitation.  These are people to whom I've not spoken in over a decade.  And so much has changed for me - so much has changed me - that I would be basically a stranger to them and vice versa.  Divorce ... loss of children ... moving to the country and back to the city ... near-ruin financially ... a couple of fatal accidents ...  No sir, I'm not the man I used to be.  I thought about replying with an excuse.  I could have claimed to be running a trial in Warrnambool that week.  And then I thought be buggered to that.  I'm not going to pretend to be what I no longer am.

Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was attracting.  "The old me is dead!" he raved, "Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!"

- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at

the End of the Universe, Ch. 3

This was the reply I sent -

I'm not going to lie: I feel proud of myself over this.  I know what I am, with warts and scar tissue and armour-plating and all.  I know what sorts of relationships - friendly and otherwise - I will find rewarding.  And I have not compromised for the sake of some sort of bollocks about school days being the best days of your life.

Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today,
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder
What you were like in your work and your play,
Then, it may be, there will often come o’er you,
Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song –
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along

The past can stay right where it is.  I'm doing just fine without it.

A killing. Facta non verba

I haven't had time to do more than glance at the news today.  Perhaps that's just as well, because I know it'll annoy me.

Yesterday a young women was found fatally injured and sexually assaulted in Bundoora.  As crimes go, it resembles the murders of Jill Meagher and Eurydice Dixon and more than a few others.  The Homicide Squad has been doing its usual highly capable work, and the Facebook pages of news outlets have their usual combination of condolences and calls for the death penalty.

By tomorrow the editorial and op-ed pages of the Age and the Herald-Sun and any number of segments on radio and TV will fill up with the usual headlines about a war on women and toxic masculinity and the roots of male rage.  No doubt the Gillette ad will get a guernsey.  I expect the incels will also rate a mention. And as always, it will all be talk, and intellectualism, and abstractions, and big ideas.  By way of example -

Some undeniable truths from @clementine_ford from her articles clearly about the rape and murder of Aiia Maasarwe. Yet there will be denials and defensiveness in abundance. #masculinity pic.twitter.com/1ZKZitxpVN

— Dr Steven Roberts (@SteveRoberts_) January 17, 2019

Last night, I took part in the evidence search conducted by Victoria Police.  This crime occurred in my SES Unit's area and so we were called upon to provide scene protection as well as extra bodies and eyes.  Clearly I shouldn't talk about what we did, and so I won't.  What resonated for me was that that literally nobody at the scene was talking in abstractions, or showing their own cleverness, or signalling their wokeness.  Each person was following instructions and doing their own greater or lesser part in helping the authorities investigate the crime and uphold the law.

Image Credit: Herald-Sun newspaper

The key word here is doing.  Doing seems remarkably unattractive to people who most love talking.  It's hard, for instance, to imagine many members of the commentariat slogging through brushwood in overalls and heavy boots looking for anything out of place.  It's not in the least sexy or heroic.  You can't take a break to go and get a good coffee and browse Twitter and attempt to "subvert the dominant paradigm" (as a student slogan in my University days wordily put it).  And a suspicious attitude to following the directions of the person in charge may seriously affect the entire project.

Why is it special? Because you say it is? Because some other symbolism says it is?

It’s actually a surrender of autonomy and a pledge to thoughtlessly obey instruction. It’s only special because some people believe it is.

— Duade Borg - Independent for QLD Senate (@DuadeBorg) December 22, 2018

I think one can concede good will to the commentariat and the other virtue-signallers.  No doubt they believe that their hearts are in the right place and that their words are a valuable and worthwhile service.  But I don't think one should concede that what they do makes a difference.

Image Credit: The Age newspaper

Do you want to make the world a better place?  Find some overalls and a good pair of boots.  Come and get your hands dirty.  Facta non Verba

Cool Change

And finally, we get some relief from the heat.  Yesterday was a fiercely hot day: 45C in much of the north of the State.  Every time you went outside, the sun hit you with a real sting.  Everything seemed to be trying to avoid the fire of the day: birds were clustering in the shadow cast by the house and the pump room was full of flies.  The cool change came a bit later than expected.  It was cooler when I went to bed but that seemed to be mainly because the sun had gone down.  It cooled off overnight, and right now it's a balmy 21C before it begins to climb again tomorrow.

Oldest Sister Economist and I spent most of yesterday in town so that she could get some shopping done before heading back to Indonesia.  It was good to catch up an we certainly had a great lunch at the Australia Hotel.  Shepparton is a good place, but I'm still glad I left for Melbourne.  I'd exhausted the range of experiences I could have here.

I'm feeling remarkably peaceful about the year ahead, and so far I'm doing well with taking care about what I put in my head.  I've got three very dfficult cases coming up, but what of it?  I like a challenge.  My only concern is that this job won't last forever.  Unemployment still scares the bejeezus out of me and probably will forever.  While the future does not wholly exist for me, I would like to have at least a plan.

I need to enter a few races.  The plan to do a few over the break was overtaken by work with cattle, but there's still ample summer and autumn left, thank heaven.

No more for now.  I'll try and write something a bit more coherent later on.

What am I putting in my head?

The start of 2019 finds me in a reflective mood.  I've been up here on the farm for my summer break through a particularly protracted run of hot days.  Camus spoke of a situation like this as a time to take the measure of one's riches (Summer in Algiers).  On balance, I think this is a dangerous thing.  Taking the measure of what one has inevitably leads to pondering what one does not have, and this is the root of dissatisfaction.

Some of you will know that I've been pondering a lack of friends lately.  An oddish thing that I've realised is that there are a couple of people in my current circle I could become close friends with.  I've deliberately held back on moving things in that direction.  This has actually surprised me a little.  I can't say I decided (not) to do it, so much as rationalised a visceral reaction.  I don't know why that is, except that people seem to spend much of their time trying to hurt and damage each other or to secure emotional ascendancy over each other.  I don't have it in me to turn my life into a psychological game of Risk.  This is an odd thing.  Google comes up with multiple suggestions for people who are mateless over summer, but they tend to involve making friends.  By contrast, being without a significant other over summer is viewed as a broadly positive option.  Does anyone else think that being a loner or a hermit needs to be offered as a positive life choice a bit more?

The other lack that I've detected in my life that I can remedy is much easier to address.  There's a persistent lack of peace of mind that I tend to put down to my (over)use of social media.  This may itself be a reflection of the preceding paragraph, but that's another matter.  Anyway, on my to-do list is a purge of my Facebook for "friends" I never interact with or scarcely know, and also of pages that tend to be a waste of time.  Even more serious is a purge of Twitter: the number of people I need to mute is quite long.  At any rate, the criteria I feel I need to apply are -

• Is it illuminating?
• It it uplifting?
• Is it ennobling?
• Is it funny?

If the answer to all of these is "no" then it's probably not adding anything of value to my life.

Looking over this post, I think the lesson is that I need to be as canny about what I put into my brain as I amd about what goes into my body.

New Years Eve 2018: Good news is a rope and a muddy dog

And so New Years Eve 2018 has hit.  I'm at the kitchen table on a borrowed computer typing this post at 11pm.  I have a nice chilled white wine at my elbow though, and that's good enough for me.

 

I should have some deep insightful post to share, but everyone has them.  Everyone also seems to have a list of great things they'll achieve.  My final observation for 2018 is (on its face) a little macabre but also perhaps the best of recent times.

 

I imagine most of you (I'm assuming I have actual readers) know I have a history with depression.  The recent years of unstable (often demoralising) employment and still more frequent unemployment have taken a psychological toll too.  At some point I took to keeping under my bed a rope tied in a noose.  During that miserable job in Mooroopna I started carrying it in the boot of my car.  I wasn't actively planning to do myself a mischief.  I just found it reassuring (for want of a better adjective) to know that I could make the bad feelings stop if I really wanted to.

 

Yes, it's a noose.

Now, this is usually where people leap in with a variant of "are you OK" or "you should talk to someone".  I am not a fan of doing that, at least where it concerns myself.  To me, this feels like too heavy a cross to ask someone to bear on my behalf.  It doesn't help that one of the greatest of exponents of RUOK Day I know is also a relentless virtue-signaller.  Besides, I haven't felt like that since I got my life back on track, so it's kind of academic.

 

Which brings me to today.  Oldest Sister Economist has her dog with her on this visit.  She's been loving having the whole farm to roam around on, and she even enjoys paddling in the dam (the dog, that is).  Well, today she was roaming a bit too independently and then, when she was coming back, decided to go for a paddle where she got stuck in the muddy bottom of the dam.

 

Dog, bogged

The dog was cajoled to make the effort to un-bog herself, but it was decided that a little time being tied up might be a good thing.  And what seemed to be the best piece of rope for the purpose?  The one in the boot of my car.  It was with no regret at all that I broke the hangman's knot and untwisted the rope.  What knots took their place?  Good, simple workmanlike ones.  Ones I used in my general rescue training.  Ones that (as part of a broader operation) can be used to save lives and alleviate suffering.

To secure the rope to a post in the garden, a reef knot (right over left, then under; left over right, then under) -

Reef knot

And to secure the dog, a bowline (form a loop in the rope, then "out of the hole, around the tree, back down the hole and away goes he") -

Bowline with Solomon Islands dog

This year has been the most incredible roller coaster.  And this seems to me the best conceivable way to finish it.  To break the nodum informis leti and convert it to a simple tool to keep man's best friend safe?  That looks pretty good to me.

Boxing Week review: love and other catastrophes.

Regular readers will remember that I can't remarry and that a decent whack of my energies in 2018 went into making peace with that reality.  It shouldn't have been a problem of course.  There was an incident at the start of the year that purged me of carnal desire for quite a long time -

Considering things over the long view, I find there are four particular advantages to the way I live

1.  You appreciate happy families more

There are three family bloggers (should I say mommy-bloggers?) I regularly read -

Allie at Living My Full Life
Amy at A Desert Girl
Nikki at From My Life to Our Life

I always wanted a family: a wife 2.6 kids, a white picket fence and a basset hound.  That, clearly, will never happen now.  I find it makes me happy to know that someone else does have it.

2.  The friendzone is just fine

I've never been good at making friends, and most of those that I have made tend to be women.  Instagram gives a good idea of the numbers -

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#workfriends #realfriends

A post shared by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Dec 18, 2018 at 12:32am PST

As a result, that side of my life basically resides in a permanent friendzone.  And I think this is a pretty good thing.  Why should a man object to having friends of any sort?

3.  It alarms the right sort of people

In a booze-fuelled and slightly surreal moment this year, a certain fellow enthusiastically claimed that a mutual acquaintance wanted to go to bed with me.  With the candour that alcohol brings, I replied that it would never happen and I explained why.  His genuine bewilderment - indeed, near horror - left me feeling remarkably powerful. 

4.  It obliterates the future

This one is a silver lining.  Once you know that you'll never have an orthodox family and will probably die alone, the future stops existing and you stop being overly worried about it.  Time, or at least your life-time, becomes essentially a very long "now".  You want to enter a race in Sydney?  Can you afford it?  Then do it!  Feel like a beer on a Sunday afternoon?  Nobody cares when you get home from the pub.  Want to put long hours into becoming the best lawyer you can be?  There's work for the asking.

Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac (from here)

It doesn't matter a curse what you do.  Put that Deadhead sticker on your Cadillac.

Assessment?

I've never felt more positive about what the future might hold!

Boxing Week review: ups and downs

Christmas has passed, and now I enter one of the best stages of summer: the span of days between Boxing Day and New Years where you can evaluate your life and your year and consider what comes next.

This year has been positively heavenly for me, with new friends and a fantastic job and a chance to make my own life again.  I'm in an SES Unit that I like serving with.  The only restraint on my fitness activities is the number of hours in the day. 

A diary is the gift you give yourself.  What does mine tell me?  In my diary entry for 3 January 2018 is this passage -

In the afternoon I was already stressed thinking about SES.  Then driving to the Blood Bank about 4pm I saw a 'pylon' sign outside O'Brien's Glass and this made me think about work.  I found my chest getting tight and my heart felt like it was beating very heavily.  Lying in the chair at the Blood Bank I felt like my whole ribcage was visibly shaking.  The nurse assessed my heart rate at 67 bpm and blood pressure at 134/82.

The other great asset of a diary is reading it knowing what you didn't know at the time of writing.  On 22 January 2018 - the day before I was fired from Goulburn Valley Signmakers - I wrote about being sent to Melbourne to work with Nathan Sali, one of the bosses -

First job was to remove signs at KFC Wallan (easy).  Called by Claudio while driving.  After discussion they sent me on to Dandenong in Sali's ute with tandem trailer to get stock while Sali did job at Ravenhill.  Noted that Claudio said "he'll crash your ute for sure" (referring to me).  Naturally I drove very carefully and strapped load down very very carefully.  Was late because of this.  Sali annoyed.

The next day I was fired.  Diary notes that on that day I was sent on errands to get cigarettes and coffees for the bosses, to buy hose, and to install signs at the various entries to Shepparton.  And then I mistakenly stripped some vinyl off a sheet of perspex, leading to my dismissal.  I noted that Dad was visibly disappointed that I was unemployed again.

And within less than a month I'd had two job interviews, attended my first barre and yoga classes, moved to Brunswick and started my new job as a lawyer.  I have a hard time believing life could have such a rapid reversal of fortune.

It's a trite learning, but there's a lesson in not giving up: hard work and good luck can mean a reversal of fortune is just around the corner.

For the linkup: how has 2018 treated you?  Well, or harshly?  Are you on the way up, or weathering a storm?  And how do you think 2019 will go?