Sunday, October 9, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
The simple joy of owning a houseplant
Having a blog is like buying a big fancy houseplant. You could be one of those people who, upon setting up their big fancy houseplant in the corner of the room, diligently waters it every thirty-six hours, checks the pH level of the soil once a month, gently trims sick leaves and nurtures healthy ones, croons to it at midnight, takes it for walks (or whatever you do with houseplants) and, after months of selfless care, ends up with a lovely, verdant companion. Or you could be like me, who buys a big fancy houseplant and, after an initial burst of botanic enthusiasm, completely neglects it, then watches guiltily as it transforms from a big fancy houseplant into a brown stick in a pot of dust.
But, houseplants can be saved. Even the most negligent houseplant owner can attest to the remarkable resilience possessed by their leafy wards, which can bounce back from the dead when their owner, struck with a plant-friendly combination of horticultural enthusiasm and guilt, actually waters the damn thing. That arduous task been taken care of, the owner will happily bask in his plant's chlorophyillic affection, and promise to never again be so neglectful.
Have I beaten you to death with that metaphor yet? I suppose not, because you're still reading (or you're a zombie, in which case, awesome). I knew at the back of my mind that it had been a long time between blog entries, and then all of the sudden I woke up and it was October. The moment of truth had arrived - if I didn't sit down and write today, then my poor little trusting blog was going to dry up and turn into a sickly mummified relic of an enthusiasm for New York that I'm not always entirely sure I still possess.
But don't worry: this entry is not going to be the bitter diatribe of a few weeks ago. If anything, this is the first tangible step I've taken in a couple of weeks towards getting back to my old go-get-'em self. It's the first step in reminding myself why I came over here in the first place, that I actually wanted to live here and there's a lot of great stuff going on. Over the past couple of months I've sunk into this gloomy pessimistic rut, making "this-is-too-hard" grumbles and "what's-the-point-of-all-this" whinges. And yeah, it has been a fucking hard couple of months, I don't think that I'm being a drama queen about it. I just know that there comes a point where you have to make a conscious decision to take the first step towards getting back on top of things. To start telling yourself how good things will be and affirming to yourself that you're good at what you do, to be kind to yourself and to take joy in the simple stuff that's at your fingertips if you just be in the present moment instead of wallowing in the past or fretting about the future. A good friend taught me that, and I'd forgotten it.
Anyway... this is not my finest blog entry, I'll admit that. Next one will be much more interesting, I promise. This entry is more for me to say sorry to my poor little blog for being so neglectful, and from now on he and I will go on together and enjoy our time in New York, for however long that time will be.
But, houseplants can be saved. Even the most negligent houseplant owner can attest to the remarkable resilience possessed by their leafy wards, which can bounce back from the dead when their owner, struck with a plant-friendly combination of horticultural enthusiasm and guilt, actually waters the damn thing. That arduous task been taken care of, the owner will happily bask in his plant's chlorophyillic affection, and promise to never again be so neglectful.
Have I beaten you to death with that metaphor yet? I suppose not, because you're still reading (or you're a zombie, in which case, awesome). I knew at the back of my mind that it had been a long time between blog entries, and then all of the sudden I woke up and it was October. The moment of truth had arrived - if I didn't sit down and write today, then my poor little trusting blog was going to dry up and turn into a sickly mummified relic of an enthusiasm for New York that I'm not always entirely sure I still possess.
But don't worry: this entry is not going to be the bitter diatribe of a few weeks ago. If anything, this is the first tangible step I've taken in a couple of weeks towards getting back to my old go-get-'em self. It's the first step in reminding myself why I came over here in the first place, that I actually wanted to live here and there's a lot of great stuff going on. Over the past couple of months I've sunk into this gloomy pessimistic rut, making "this-is-too-hard" grumbles and "what's-the-point-of-all-this" whinges. And yeah, it has been a fucking hard couple of months, I don't think that I'm being a drama queen about it. I just know that there comes a point where you have to make a conscious decision to take the first step towards getting back on top of things. To start telling yourself how good things will be and affirming to yourself that you're good at what you do, to be kind to yourself and to take joy in the simple stuff that's at your fingertips if you just be in the present moment instead of wallowing in the past or fretting about the future. A good friend taught me that, and I'd forgotten it.
Anyway... this is not my finest blog entry, I'll admit that. Next one will be much more interesting, I promise. This entry is more for me to say sorry to my poor little blog for being so neglectful, and from now on he and I will go on together and enjoy our time in New York, for however long that time will be.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Mixed Messages
This morning I was woken up by an SMS popping up on my phone. It was from my cellphone company, T-Mobile. It said, "You have been a T-Mobile customer for one year. Thank you for being a loyal customer". When I read this, my stomach gave a little twist and I barked out a short ironic laugh: ha! You see, as touching as it was for my phone company to want to mark this auspicious occasion, the pedestrian nature of the message stood in pretty stark contrast to the crazy mix of emotions I have to this anniversary. Not the anniversary of me joining the ranks of mildly satisfied T-Mobile customers - today is the anniversary of my arrival in the USA.
Actually, technically yesterday was the day I arrived in the USA. The 22nd August. But I arrived late in the day and so the 23rd was the first day I woke up a resident of New York City. I still remember the sunlight streaming through the window of my brand new bedroom, almost completely bare of furniture, and feeling completely at ease with the world. I lay on my bed listening to the murmuring city outside and contentedly mused on the fact that I had achieved something that for years I thought was utterly impossible: I had moved to the USA. I felt reborn. I had a totally new lease on life. Anything was possible, and the only way was up. I was a mess of optimistic cliches, and it felt fucking awesome.
It's twelve months later, and in case you have trouble discerning the slightly cynical tone subtly tucked away in the last couple of paragraphs, things don't feel quite so rosy for me at the moment. I've known this anniversary was on the horizon for quite a few weeks now. I've seen it looming in the distance, like an iceberg in the fog, and I've tried not to think about it. I wasn't really sure if it was something I wanted to mark. A lot has happened since that day a year ago that I woke up in my nice, shiny, brand-new life. I'm not the same person I was then. I've learned a lot about the world, music and myself. Some of it is good. Not all of it is nice.
I know now that I am definitely a composer. That's a big one, and a good thing to know. When I first arrived here I still had my doubts, that maybe I was still just play-acting and eventually I'd have to settle down and get a "real" job. No longer. I know in my heart I'm the real deal. I'm confident about showing strangers my music or declaring that I am a composer - that's a pretty significant change from the person who woke up in that empty room a year ago.
But I miss home every day. I get homesick regularly, and wish that I would walk into my local cafe or bar and see familiar friends sitting there. For a long time I felt ashamed of myself, or ungrateful that I could get so homesick. But I've recently concluded that my homesickness wasn't me being ungrateful, it's a genuine longing to be with people I love. So now I feel pissed off when I express my homesickness to someone and they say stuff like, "What? You're in New York. Shut up, you shouldn't be homesick. I wish I was living in New York." For the record, I never said I didn't like living in New York, I said I missed my friends and family. Would you prefer me to say, "Friends? Family? Oh shit! I totally forgot about you guys! I'm having such a blast here that relationships that took a lifetime to foster are completely meaningless to me now!" (Just keep that in mind next time someone, like me for example, says they're homesick).
And this leads me to probably one of the biggest realisations of all. I've always known that I am an ambitious person, and for a long time I thought that was a good thing. A great thing. A completely 100% positive characteristic. But I'm coming to realise that ambition is impersonal, like the weather. It can go both ways; a force to nurture or a force to destroy. It is good to be ambitious, but you need to temper your ambition with the things that nourish that ambition and created it in the first place, otherwise you'll end up a long way from where you started with no idea what you're doing there. This is where I am now. I spent so much of the last few years fixated on moving to the US, to "prove" to the world that I was a real composer, that I've sacrificed the simple joys of being around the people that I love to do it. Now I'm faced with having to figure out how to continue on the path I've set myself without having these people around me. The fruits of ambition are pretty bland unless you have someone to share them with.
Anyway...
When I was 18 I marveled at how I could finish high school and suddenly... BAM! I was an adult. I didn't feel any different. I still felt like a kid. Then adult stuff started happening to me. My first job, finishing uni, accepting that I was gay, deciding that I needed to go back to school to pursue music, my first love and heartbreak, my first real professional recognition, the death of my cousin, the marriages of close friends... a gloriously misguided attempt at moving overseas, humbly returning to Australia to rebuild my life and triumphantly moving across the globe to one of the greatest cultural powerhouses on the face of the earth... the transformation of my parents from brutal overlords to two of my best friends, the ups and downs of my beloved siblings' lives and loves, and the three incredible people they've brought into my life, and the sudden death of a friend that we all thought would live forever.... becoming an adult isn't a smooth upward trajectory, it's a series of calm plateaux interspersed with dramatic upheavals that launch you further into the realm of being a grown-up and further away from your childhood. Some are unexpected, others are self-inflicted, but almost all of them change you in ways that you never thought you could be changed. Right now I know I'm in the midst of one of those changes. It's not pleasant. And I don't really know what the outcome of this upheaval will be. A year ago today I was naively certain that everything from here on would be smooth sailing, and here I am more confused than ever, because I've never felt more like a kid and an adult at the same time than I do right now.
Actually, technically yesterday was the day I arrived in the USA. The 22nd August. But I arrived late in the day and so the 23rd was the first day I woke up a resident of New York City. I still remember the sunlight streaming through the window of my brand new bedroom, almost completely bare of furniture, and feeling completely at ease with the world. I lay on my bed listening to the murmuring city outside and contentedly mused on the fact that I had achieved something that for years I thought was utterly impossible: I had moved to the USA. I felt reborn. I had a totally new lease on life. Anything was possible, and the only way was up. I was a mess of optimistic cliches, and it felt fucking awesome.
It's twelve months later, and in case you have trouble discerning the slightly cynical tone subtly tucked away in the last couple of paragraphs, things don't feel quite so rosy for me at the moment. I've known this anniversary was on the horizon for quite a few weeks now. I've seen it looming in the distance, like an iceberg in the fog, and I've tried not to think about it. I wasn't really sure if it was something I wanted to mark. A lot has happened since that day a year ago that I woke up in my nice, shiny, brand-new life. I'm not the same person I was then. I've learned a lot about the world, music and myself. Some of it is good. Not all of it is nice.
I know now that I am definitely a composer. That's a big one, and a good thing to know. When I first arrived here I still had my doubts, that maybe I was still just play-acting and eventually I'd have to settle down and get a "real" job. No longer. I know in my heart I'm the real deal. I'm confident about showing strangers my music or declaring that I am a composer - that's a pretty significant change from the person who woke up in that empty room a year ago.
But I miss home every day. I get homesick regularly, and wish that I would walk into my local cafe or bar and see familiar friends sitting there. For a long time I felt ashamed of myself, or ungrateful that I could get so homesick. But I've recently concluded that my homesickness wasn't me being ungrateful, it's a genuine longing to be with people I love. So now I feel pissed off when I express my homesickness to someone and they say stuff like, "What? You're in New York. Shut up, you shouldn't be homesick. I wish I was living in New York." For the record, I never said I didn't like living in New York, I said I missed my friends and family. Would you prefer me to say, "Friends? Family? Oh shit! I totally forgot about you guys! I'm having such a blast here that relationships that took a lifetime to foster are completely meaningless to me now!" (Just keep that in mind next time someone, like me for example, says they're homesick).
And this leads me to probably one of the biggest realisations of all. I've always known that I am an ambitious person, and for a long time I thought that was a good thing. A great thing. A completely 100% positive characteristic. But I'm coming to realise that ambition is impersonal, like the weather. It can go both ways; a force to nurture or a force to destroy. It is good to be ambitious, but you need to temper your ambition with the things that nourish that ambition and created it in the first place, otherwise you'll end up a long way from where you started with no idea what you're doing there. This is where I am now. I spent so much of the last few years fixated on moving to the US, to "prove" to the world that I was a real composer, that I've sacrificed the simple joys of being around the people that I love to do it. Now I'm faced with having to figure out how to continue on the path I've set myself without having these people around me. The fruits of ambition are pretty bland unless you have someone to share them with.
Anyway...
When I was 18 I marveled at how I could finish high school and suddenly... BAM! I was an adult. I didn't feel any different. I still felt like a kid. Then adult stuff started happening to me. My first job, finishing uni, accepting that I was gay, deciding that I needed to go back to school to pursue music, my first love and heartbreak, my first real professional recognition, the death of my cousin, the marriages of close friends... a gloriously misguided attempt at moving overseas, humbly returning to Australia to rebuild my life and triumphantly moving across the globe to one of the greatest cultural powerhouses on the face of the earth... the transformation of my parents from brutal overlords to two of my best friends, the ups and downs of my beloved siblings' lives and loves, and the three incredible people they've brought into my life, and the sudden death of a friend that we all thought would live forever.... becoming an adult isn't a smooth upward trajectory, it's a series of calm plateaux interspersed with dramatic upheavals that launch you further into the realm of being a grown-up and further away from your childhood. Some are unexpected, others are self-inflicted, but almost all of them change you in ways that you never thought you could be changed. Right now I know I'm in the midst of one of those changes. It's not pleasant. And I don't really know what the outcome of this upheaval will be. A year ago today I was naively certain that everything from here on would be smooth sailing, and here I am more confused than ever, because I've never felt more like a kid and an adult at the same time than I do right now.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
A.A.W.W.W Syndrome
To whom it may concern:
We, at the New York Hospital for Completely Made Up Diseases, wish to advise that we are currently caring for one Timothy "Spiderman" Hansen (most likely a moniker, but strangely this is his name as indicated on his passport).
Mr Spiderman Hansen is currently in a semi-vegetative state, only communicating with our doctors with a series of non-sensical goo-goo noises and scrunch-faces. We believe that he suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown as the result of an extremely rare and dangerous condition known as Acute Absorption of Widdle Woo Woosiecutsiedoodles (better known by its acronym "A.A.W.W.W. Syndrome"). This insidiously crippling disorder is brought about by a sudden and intense exposure to "Cute". The sufferer finds his or her carefully constructed wall of cynicism completely worn down, resulting in unnaturally high levels of good will towards humanity and the world in general.
We were able to go through Mr Spiderman Hansen's photo album and reassemble the weekend that brought about his breakdown; due to the extreme levels of cute we strongly advise utmost caution in viewing these photos, and at the first signs of unnaturally high levels of good-will towards the world please call your local Bob Katter or Rev. Fred Nile to get really f*cking disillusioned again.
As you can see, his weekend began innocuously enough:
But things rapidly took a turn for the worse:
The introduction of kittens into the mix proved to be the beginning of the downward slide for Mr Spiderman Hansen:
Things only became more surreal as the weekend progressed:
The situation became critical however when Mr Spiderman Hansen apparently went to a lake. Small children and water are a bad enough combination:
... but in his weakened state Mr Spiderman Hansen was unable to resist succumbing to the mind-numbing cuteness of...
It was at this point that Mr Spiderman Hansen became catatonic with sugary, diabetic-inducing levels of cutsie-wootsieness. Fortunately he was transported to our facility in the nick of time, where our crack team of experts delivered the only known treatment of A.A.W.W.W. Syndrome: Marilyn Manson reading excerpts of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar combined with repeated forced viewings of Bjork's Dancer in the Dark, Clockwork Orange style (bizarrely, this was covered by his Health Insurance). Mr Spiderman Hansen is showing signs of improvement, and we're confident that within a few weeks he should be able to return to work, once again ready to be crushed by the weight of a cruel and indifferent world.
Yours Sincerely,
The New York Hospital for Completely Made Up Diseases.
We, at the New York Hospital for Completely Made Up Diseases, wish to advise that we are currently caring for one Timothy "Spiderman" Hansen (most likely a moniker, but strangely this is his name as indicated on his passport).
Mr Spiderman Hansen is currently in a semi-vegetative state, only communicating with our doctors with a series of non-sensical goo-goo noises and scrunch-faces. We believe that he suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown as the result of an extremely rare and dangerous condition known as Acute Absorption of Widdle Woo Woosiecutsiedoodles (better known by its acronym "A.A.W.W.W. Syndrome"). This insidiously crippling disorder is brought about by a sudden and intense exposure to "Cute". The sufferer finds his or her carefully constructed wall of cynicism completely worn down, resulting in unnaturally high levels of good will towards humanity and the world in general.
We were able to go through Mr Spiderman Hansen's photo album and reassemble the weekend that brought about his breakdown; due to the extreme levels of cute we strongly advise utmost caution in viewing these photos, and at the first signs of unnaturally high levels of good-will towards the world please call your local Bob Katter or Rev. Fred Nile to get really f*cking disillusioned again.
As you can see, his weekend began innocuously enough:
 | ||
| Aww... Paula and Stashu... Cute! |
 | ||
| Hai-Nhu with Evelyn and baby Bea! So CUTE!!! |
 | |
| OMG!!! Rhea with a KITTEN!!! SO CUTE!!! OMG!!!! |
 | |
| OMG!!! "I can haz kitteh?!" OMG OMG OMG!! CUTE!!!! |
 | |
| THEY THINK THEYZ PEEPLZ!!!! WIDDLE WOO WOOS!!! |
 | ||||||||||||||
| Evelyn is JUMPING!!! I WANTS TO JUMPING TOO!!!! |
 | |
| I IZ JUMPING 2!!! CUUUUUUTE!!! gngnAAAARGH!!!! |
 |
| NOW I IZ ON A HORSY!!! NEEIGH!!! OMG!!!! |
 | |
| IZ SMALL HORSY!!! IZ KYEUTEST HORSY EVA!!! OMG!!! |
The situation became critical however when Mr Spiderman Hansen apparently went to a lake. Small children and water are a bad enough combination:
 | |
| KIDZ IN DE WATA!!!! OMGGGGGBSgajhzguydfq&*dF!@ |
 | |
| CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!!!!!!! |
 | |
| ....gnnGGnngn...ggnugnngGU... |
 | |
| PUPPEEEEIIIZZEZ!!! |
 | ||
| PUPPIEZZEZ SLEEPZ!! |
 | |
| PUPPIEZZ HAZ MONKEY!!!! OOMMMGGGG!!!! |
 |
| PUPPIEZZ SLEEPZ IN A BED!!!! PUPPIEZ IZNT PEEPLZE!! PUPPOESIAIYOIQJWKQJGSNASMGhasfj,.as |
Yours Sincerely,
The New York Hospital for Completely Made Up Diseases.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The Politics of Air Conditioning
It's two a.m. My bedroom is about 35 degrees celcius. I have an upright fan that I've positioned inches from my bed, and in the stiflingly hot night air it's doing a great job of simulating the winds of the Sahara. I think I've had about seventeen minutes of dozey napping so far tonight. Not what you would call actual sleep though. But I don't care. I am strong. I am Australian.
I don't need air conditioning.
Ugh... so hot...
Shit... two-thirty... I'm convinced one of my housemates snuck into my room before I went to bed and replaced my bedsheets with wet towels. That's what it feels like: I'm sleeping on a nest of goddam wet towels. Big thick wet towels soaked through with hot water. That's the most logical explanation at two-thirty in the morning after a week of sketchy, feverish, sweaty attempts at sleep.
Wait, did I say two-thirty? It's three. Three a.m. and still no sleep. This is good though. I am strong. I am environmentally conscious. Let the molly-coddled mummy's boys of America have their air conditioning. I am Australian. I grew up on the most arid continent on the planet. I grew up expecting that any moment an army of red-bellied black snakes and funnel web spiders were going drop from the sky and eat my face off (or something. I may have gotten a little confused about that along the way). I am tougher than I appear. I may be as camp as a row of tents but by God I don't need a freaking air conditioner.
...gng.... I think I'm having a moment like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting where he sees the baby crawling across the ceiling, except instead of dead babies I see a procession of penguins carrying trays of icey cold water.
I turn on my side, partly to expose my back to my Sahara fan and partly to ignore the penguins cheerfully traipsing across my ceiling. Still can't sleep, and like most people do when they can't sleep, I begin introspective musings on why I can't sleep...
I hate people telling me what to do. When I got here, one of the first things Daniel said to me was "you're going to have to buy an air conditioner". Phshaw, I said to him. I hate air conditioning. I'm Australian. I don't need air conditioning. "You're going to need to buy an air conditioner," he said again as though speaking to a developmentally disabled child. My resolve hardened: I would not need to buy an air conditioner.
Why so proud, Tim? What, are you in a Greek Tragedy? Your hubris refuses to allow you to see the wisdom in buying an air conditioner? The blind prophet Tiresias appears, foretelling doom, misery, and crappy sleep patterns unless you yield and get an air conditioner, and you, in your stubborn pride, toss him out of the city with warnings never to return... The gods are displeased...
God I need some sleep.
Shit, it's three-thirty. Three-thirty! I remember what sleep was like. It was so nice. So... not damp... or something.
You know what else? I hate not knowing something. I came over here thinking that the Australian summer was about as hot as anything I would need to live through. But New York is just as hot. Maybe hotter. It's definitely more humid. Some mornings I get up and there's a haze in the air like fog, except it's steam. Steam. Like in a sauna. It's so freaking damp and hot in the city that the air becomes STEAMY. I didn't know this before I came over. So I pretend like I always knew, and made a conscious decision not to buy an air conditioner despite knowing that New York in Summer is like living on the planet Venus, because if I was to buy an air conditioner then everyone would know that I didn't know and... and... well I'm not sure exactly what would happen but I'll be damned if I give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me not know something.
The penguins have set up a little wading pool near my closet. One of them smugly waves his little black flipper at me. Yeah, rub it in you tuxedo-wearing jerk. Not all of us can afford a swimming pool. What an ass-hat.
I roll onto my other side, so now I'm getting a faceful of hot air. It's about as refreshing as lying in front of an industrial-strength hand-dryer in a public restroom.
Four a.m... the sun will be up soon... (don't think about it because then you'll get even shittier and won't be able to sleep even more and that will just make you crankier and you have a hard enough time getting any work done in this oven of a bedroom as it is and if you've had no sleep at all then you may as well just pack it in because you'll be as productive as a sack of hammers)...
WHY IS IT SOOO HOT.... In Australia right now, it's winter... lovely, cool, sleety winter... bliss...
The resident penguins have called all their penguin-friends over for a penguin-party. They show up in their little air-conditioned penguin-minivans, carrying penguin-picnic baskets, penguin-kids chasing each other around their harried but happy penguin-parents, squawking cheerful hellos to each other. But they all keep one eye on the sweaty human lying prostrate in front what is essentially a decorative fan, like the crazy-cat-lady's house in a Stepford Wives' neighborhood... squawk squak squwaaaak... no air conditioning....
I hate doing something just because everyone else does it. "Gee willikers! You mean everyone in New York has an air conditioner? Well golly whiz, I guess I better get one, too! Because if everyone does something then it automatically is the best thing to do! I mean, if history has taught us one thing, it's that it's best to just do everything that everyone else does all the time! Wowee zowee! Off I go to buy an air conditioner!"
My sarcastic monologue ignores the Ireland-debacle of '09.
I hate being wrong.
However... I also hate my nighttimes being reduced to fitful bouts of sweaty half-sleep as I lay spreadeagled and damp on top of my bed like a decomposing starfish. Sunlight begins to insinuate itself through the curtains, promising that things are only going to get hotter than they are now. I finally crack. I half bellow and stagger to my feet, standing on my bed, swaying from side to side, dripping with sweat and fury and torment. The penguins, sensing something biblical is about to happen, pack up their picnic baskets and the wading pool and their icey drinks with comic haste and escape squawking behind my chest of drawers. I barely notice. I begin to tear my bedding apart in a primeval physical expression of the battle that rages inside me. The suffocating air in my room is filled with inhuman grunts and feathers from my pillow.
...UNGGH... Why do I resist air conditioning? ...NGNUGH... Am I freakin' Amish? ...ggnARGH... Do I not enjoy all the other benefits of modern civilization? Do I eschew the virtues of public transport, lattes, antibiotics, thermal underwear, iPods, Hollywood movies, refrigerators, elevators, ball-point pens, electric lights, democracy, internet pornography, Converse sneakers, supermarkets, non-institutionalised religion, shampoo specifically designed for curly hair, year-round tomatoes, dental floss, mobile phones, universal equality, Ray Ban sunglasses, laptop computers, orthopedic mattresses, digital cameras or frozen yoghurt? NO! I DON'T! So why the hell do I refuse to succumb to GODDAM AIR CONDITIONING?! ...gnnnnaAAAAAAAAARGGHH!!!!!!....
...
So I bought an air conditioner and now my room is lovely and cool and I sleep like a baby every night and my pride and Australian cultural stereotypes and the environment and the penguins can go to hell.
I don't need air conditioning.
Ugh... so hot...
Shit... two-thirty... I'm convinced one of my housemates snuck into my room before I went to bed and replaced my bedsheets with wet towels. That's what it feels like: I'm sleeping on a nest of goddam wet towels. Big thick wet towels soaked through with hot water. That's the most logical explanation at two-thirty in the morning after a week of sketchy, feverish, sweaty attempts at sleep.
Wait, did I say two-thirty? It's three. Three a.m. and still no sleep. This is good though. I am strong. I am environmentally conscious. Let the molly-coddled mummy's boys of America have their air conditioning. I am Australian. I grew up on the most arid continent on the planet. I grew up expecting that any moment an army of red-bellied black snakes and funnel web spiders were going drop from the sky and eat my face off (or something. I may have gotten a little confused about that along the way). I am tougher than I appear. I may be as camp as a row of tents but by God I don't need a freaking air conditioner.
...gng.... I think I'm having a moment like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting where he sees the baby crawling across the ceiling, except instead of dead babies I see a procession of penguins carrying trays of icey cold water.
I turn on my side, partly to expose my back to my Sahara fan and partly to ignore the penguins cheerfully traipsing across my ceiling. Still can't sleep, and like most people do when they can't sleep, I begin introspective musings on why I can't sleep...
I hate people telling me what to do. When I got here, one of the first things Daniel said to me was "you're going to have to buy an air conditioner". Phshaw, I said to him. I hate air conditioning. I'm Australian. I don't need air conditioning. "You're going to need to buy an air conditioner," he said again as though speaking to a developmentally disabled child. My resolve hardened: I would not need to buy an air conditioner.
Why so proud, Tim? What, are you in a Greek Tragedy? Your hubris refuses to allow you to see the wisdom in buying an air conditioner? The blind prophet Tiresias appears, foretelling doom, misery, and crappy sleep patterns unless you yield and get an air conditioner, and you, in your stubborn pride, toss him out of the city with warnings never to return... The gods are displeased...
God I need some sleep.
Shit, it's three-thirty. Three-thirty! I remember what sleep was like. It was so nice. So... not damp... or something.
You know what else? I hate not knowing something. I came over here thinking that the Australian summer was about as hot as anything I would need to live through. But New York is just as hot. Maybe hotter. It's definitely more humid. Some mornings I get up and there's a haze in the air like fog, except it's steam. Steam. Like in a sauna. It's so freaking damp and hot in the city that the air becomes STEAMY. I didn't know this before I came over. So I pretend like I always knew, and made a conscious decision not to buy an air conditioner despite knowing that New York in Summer is like living on the planet Venus, because if I was to buy an air conditioner then everyone would know that I didn't know and... and... well I'm not sure exactly what would happen but I'll be damned if I give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me not know something.
The penguins have set up a little wading pool near my closet. One of them smugly waves his little black flipper at me. Yeah, rub it in you tuxedo-wearing jerk. Not all of us can afford a swimming pool. What an ass-hat.
I roll onto my other side, so now I'm getting a faceful of hot air. It's about as refreshing as lying in front of an industrial-strength hand-dryer in a public restroom.
Four a.m... the sun will be up soon... (don't think about it because then you'll get even shittier and won't be able to sleep even more and that will just make you crankier and you have a hard enough time getting any work done in this oven of a bedroom as it is and if you've had no sleep at all then you may as well just pack it in because you'll be as productive as a sack of hammers)...
WHY IS IT SOOO HOT.... In Australia right now, it's winter... lovely, cool, sleety winter... bliss...
The resident penguins have called all their penguin-friends over for a penguin-party. They show up in their little air-conditioned penguin-minivans, carrying penguin-picnic baskets, penguin-kids chasing each other around their harried but happy penguin-parents, squawking cheerful hellos to each other. But they all keep one eye on the sweaty human lying prostrate in front what is essentially a decorative fan, like the crazy-cat-lady's house in a Stepford Wives' neighborhood... squawk squak squwaaaak... no air conditioning....
I hate doing something just because everyone else does it. "Gee willikers! You mean everyone in New York has an air conditioner? Well golly whiz, I guess I better get one, too! Because if everyone does something then it automatically is the best thing to do! I mean, if history has taught us one thing, it's that it's best to just do everything that everyone else does all the time! Wowee zowee! Off I go to buy an air conditioner!"
My sarcastic monologue ignores the Ireland-debacle of '09.
I hate being wrong.
However... I also hate my nighttimes being reduced to fitful bouts of sweaty half-sleep as I lay spreadeagled and damp on top of my bed like a decomposing starfish. Sunlight begins to insinuate itself through the curtains, promising that things are only going to get hotter than they are now. I finally crack. I half bellow and stagger to my feet, standing on my bed, swaying from side to side, dripping with sweat and fury and torment. The penguins, sensing something biblical is about to happen, pack up their picnic baskets and the wading pool and their icey drinks with comic haste and escape squawking behind my chest of drawers. I barely notice. I begin to tear my bedding apart in a primeval physical expression of the battle that rages inside me. The suffocating air in my room is filled with inhuman grunts and feathers from my pillow.
...UNGGH... Why do I resist air conditioning? ...NGNUGH... Am I freakin' Amish? ...ggnARGH... Do I not enjoy all the other benefits of modern civilization? Do I eschew the virtues of public transport, lattes, antibiotics, thermal underwear, iPods, Hollywood movies, refrigerators, elevators, ball-point pens, electric lights, democracy, internet pornography, Converse sneakers, supermarkets, non-institutionalised religion, shampoo specifically designed for curly hair, year-round tomatoes, dental floss, mobile phones, universal equality, Ray Ban sunglasses, laptop computers, orthopedic mattresses, digital cameras or frozen yoghurt? NO! I DON'T! So why the hell do I refuse to succumb to GODDAM AIR CONDITIONING?! ...gnnnnaAAAAAAAAARGGHH!!!!!!....
...
So I bought an air conditioner and now my room is lovely and cool and I sleep like a baby every night and my pride and Australian cultural stereotypes and the environment and the penguins can go to hell.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
A Nice Man
Brains are weird. When they go wrong, all kinds of bananas can break loose. At the more benign end of the spectrum there is stuff like colour blindness. These poor souls cannot distinguish between red and blue, or blue and yellow, or sometimes any colour at all, and so are doomed to wander the earth in paisley shirts and striped trousers. Other unfortunate individuals suffer from amusia, which sounds like a made-up clown disease but refers to the condition in which the sufferer is unable to differentiate between musical pitches, and is thus unable to enjoy, or even recognise music. When we move up a few levels we enter the territory of things like prosopagnosia, the inability to tell one face from another, Capgras Delusion, where a person is convinced that a close family member has been replaced by an identical looking imposter, or something called Paris Syndrome, which is suffered almost exclusively by Japanese tourists who, having spent years romanticising the City of Light, are unable to reconcile their idealised notions of the French capital with their first interactions with the breathtaking rudeness of actual French people, and as such suffer such severe culture shock that they undergo a mental breakdown from bottling up all their anger at douchey French waiters (there's even a support hotline for Paris Syndrome operated by the Japanese Embassy in Paris. This is completely true).
Since I moved to New York I've become convinced that I, too, suffer from an insidious misfiring of the brain. Whilst some people are forced to endure being unable to recognise colour, music, other people's faces, or that their wife isn't a robot, or that the best way to deal with a jerk waiter is to pour all the sugar all over the table as you're leaving, I am apparently unable to distinguish the difference between my home and New York's Grand Central Station, as evidenced by the fact that every single time I have to catch a train anywhere I'm still calmly sitting in my room googling images of lolcats when I should be well and truly on the subway if I expect to actually catch said train. As such, despite the blood-oaths I make to myself every time I'm sprinting through the terminal with a goddam backpack the size of a Galapagos tortoise on my back that the next time I have to catch a train I will bloody well leave the house with a window of more than fifteen nanoseconds to spare, I inevitably repeat my panicked mad dash through the streets of New York every few weeks or so. Being an intelligent adult capable of undertaking complicated planning procedures, the only conclusion I can draw from my Groundhog Day-like approach to interstate travel is that I must suffer from an acute inability to understand that trains to Connecticut do not leave from my bathroom.
The most recent attack of my unfortunate disorder occurred a few weeks ago when I had to go upstate for the Norfolk Music Festival. The closest train station to Norfolk from New York was about an hour's drive away, and so I had to be on a specific train at a specific time to be met by someone with a car to take me the rest of the way there, otherwise I would be walking to Norfolk. Of course, forty minutes before my train left Grand Central I was still toodling around in my bedroom, probably engaged in some task of breathtaking import like alphabetising my underwear, and when the realisation hit me that I had done this f@*&ing shit all over again I grabbed my backpack (which mercifully I had packed the night before) and ran out the door. The subway wouldn't get me there in time though. I had to catch a cab. That's okay, cabs are always going over the Williamsburg bridge near my house. Easy. Cabs.
There must have been a no-cabs convention or some shit because fifteen minutes later I was still standing like a pickle on the side of the road desperately hailing anything that even looked like a cab, including school buses, ice-cream trucks, and a lady pushing a yellow pram. As my panic and self-reproach began to approach tears-in-public level (I am such a baby), a cab finally pulled over. I gratefully flung open the door and prepared to hurl my backpack in.
"I'm off duty," the guy said.
"...?" says I.
"I'm off duty," he says again.
"You're off duty? You pulled over to tell me you're OFF DUTY?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" Ishrieked calmly inquired (meanwhile, four vacant cabs that had apparently been skulking out of sight and waiting for me to be distracted made a break for it and whizzed past me triumphantly over the bridge).
"I have to go to Mosque," the guy explained. Ah. Of course (?).
"Come on, man, my train leaves in like thirty minutes, and I'm totally stuck!" I begged.
"... okay, okay, just get in, I'll take you over the bridge but I won't charge you."
All I really heard was "get in" so it wasn't until we were actually moving that I processed the rest of the sentence.
"You won't charge me? Don't be silly, I have to pay you."
"No, no, I'm going over that way anyway, I have to go to Mosque, so I won't charge you. I'll get you as close as I can to Grand Central, then I'll get you another cab".
Which he did. Traffic on the bridge was unusually light, and my man got me a mere ten blocks from my destination before he was satisfied that I'd be able to catch another cab without too much hassle. I tried one more time to pay him, but he insisted: no money, he was going to Mosque. A little stunned by this completely un-New Yorkish approach to taking other people's cash, I thanked him, ran out into the middle of the street and jumped into the cab that screeched to a halt to avoid running me down. I made it to the station with ten minutes to spare and so have probably learned nothing from the experience, except that once people learn you suffer from a disabling brain disorder like mine, they can be really, really nice.
Since I moved to New York I've become convinced that I, too, suffer from an insidious misfiring of the brain. Whilst some people are forced to endure being unable to recognise colour, music, other people's faces, or that their wife isn't a robot, or that the best way to deal with a jerk waiter is to pour all the sugar all over the table as you're leaving, I am apparently unable to distinguish the difference between my home and New York's Grand Central Station, as evidenced by the fact that every single time I have to catch a train anywhere I'm still calmly sitting in my room googling images of lolcats when I should be well and truly on the subway if I expect to actually catch said train. As such, despite the blood-oaths I make to myself every time I'm sprinting through the terminal with a goddam backpack the size of a Galapagos tortoise on my back that the next time I have to catch a train I will bloody well leave the house with a window of more than fifteen nanoseconds to spare, I inevitably repeat my panicked mad dash through the streets of New York every few weeks or so. Being an intelligent adult capable of undertaking complicated planning procedures, the only conclusion I can draw from my Groundhog Day-like approach to interstate travel is that I must suffer from an acute inability to understand that trains to Connecticut do not leave from my bathroom.
The most recent attack of my unfortunate disorder occurred a few weeks ago when I had to go upstate for the Norfolk Music Festival. The closest train station to Norfolk from New York was about an hour's drive away, and so I had to be on a specific train at a specific time to be met by someone with a car to take me the rest of the way there, otherwise I would be walking to Norfolk. Of course, forty minutes before my train left Grand Central I was still toodling around in my bedroom, probably engaged in some task of breathtaking import like alphabetising my underwear, and when the realisation hit me that I had done this f@*&ing shit all over again I grabbed my backpack (which mercifully I had packed the night before) and ran out the door. The subway wouldn't get me there in time though. I had to catch a cab. That's okay, cabs are always going over the Williamsburg bridge near my house. Easy. Cabs.
There must have been a no-cabs convention or some shit because fifteen minutes later I was still standing like a pickle on the side of the road desperately hailing anything that even looked like a cab, including school buses, ice-cream trucks, and a lady pushing a yellow pram. As my panic and self-reproach began to approach tears-in-public level (I am such a baby), a cab finally pulled over. I gratefully flung open the door and prepared to hurl my backpack in.
"I'm off duty," the guy said.
"...?" says I.
"I'm off duty," he says again.
"You're off duty? You pulled over to tell me you're OFF DUTY?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" I
"I have to go to Mosque," the guy explained. Ah. Of course (?).
"Come on, man, my train leaves in like thirty minutes, and I'm totally stuck!" I begged.
"... okay, okay, just get in, I'll take you over the bridge but I won't charge you."
All I really heard was "get in" so it wasn't until we were actually moving that I processed the rest of the sentence.
"You won't charge me? Don't be silly, I have to pay you."
"No, no, I'm going over that way anyway, I have to go to Mosque, so I won't charge you. I'll get you as close as I can to Grand Central, then I'll get you another cab".
Which he did. Traffic on the bridge was unusually light, and my man got me a mere ten blocks from my destination before he was satisfied that I'd be able to catch another cab without too much hassle. I tried one more time to pay him, but he insisted: no money, he was going to Mosque. A little stunned by this completely un-New Yorkish approach to taking other people's cash, I thanked him, ran out into the middle of the street and jumped into the cab that screeched to a halt to avoid running me down. I made it to the station with ten minutes to spare and so have probably learned nothing from the experience, except that once people learn you suffer from a disabling brain disorder like mine, they can be really, really nice.
Friday, July 1, 2011
American Summer
I have a friend... for the sake of anonymity let's call him N. Luff... No, that's too obvious... let's call him Nathan L... So Nathan grew up in the remote confines of Yass, an inland country town known for agriculture and being closely situated to Canberra (although not as close as Queanbeyan. I'm not really sure who the winner is in this urban ménage à trois). When I say Nathan grew up in Yass, as far as I can tell he really grew up in Yass. You see, Nathan didn't see the ocean until he was nineteen. I mean, he'd seen pictures of the ocean, and no doubt had seen movies and television shows with nautical themes, and was vaguely aware on a conceptual level of the pelagic nature of the edge of the continent, but the first time he stood on a beach with the sand between his toes, the sun above his head, seagulls squarking in his ears and the eye-sucking vastness of the Pacific Ocean before him was at an age when the average person's "firsts" consist of consuming and experiencing as many illicit, immoral and illegal pleasures that hitherto had been off-limits as quickly and as often as possible. Prior to this, Nathan's concept of standing on a beach was on the same level as standing on the moon: some people had done it, but not him, and it was unlikely in the near future he would be able to join their ranks. Not being Nathan, I can't be 100% about this, but I can speculate that after finally, for the first time, experiencing the splendor of the ocean (and experiencing the less splendorous finding-sand-in-every-nook-and-cranny-of-the-goddam-car-for-months-afterwards) Nathan was like "huh.... it all makes sense now..."
I'll admit that until recently I firmly believed that whatever these uppity Northern Hemisphere countries thought of as "Summer" would pale in comparison to an authentic Aussie summer. In some respects, I'm right. New Yorkers bitch and moan about heat that the average Australian would consider to be a mild December afternoon. But now that we're officially two or so weeks into the US Summer (they do their seasons by the solstices... pagans...) I think they may be on to something pretty sweet here. It's difficult to articulate, but the cut-throat, desperate rat-race feeling that usually pervades the city seems to have evaporated into a cloud of sunglasses, coronas and thongs (the Australian kind. And maybe the American kind too, but I don't often get to see those). It's like the whole of New York has gone on vacation to New York.
Parks are full of people. And I mean FULL. There's a lot of people here and virtually none of them have backyards, or even a balcony. For most of the time, their "outside" time is spent on sidewalks, trudging from the subway to work to the gym to the pub and back home again. So when the sun comes out, hordes of New Yorkers descend upon their local public park, quickly filling every available square inch with people reading, lazing, talking, watching squirrels, or playing instruments (including one ambitious guy who drags an upright piano to the park near my school every lunchtime and plays rags for an hour or so).
My neighborhood has a distinctively party feeling. It's made up primarily of Dominicans or Puerto Ricans, and these guys take relaxing pretty seriously. All day long they guys will set up charcoal barbeques in the streets and play dominoes. In the evenings people hang out on their stoops drinking beer and talking long after the sun has gone down. Kids knock the covers off fire hydrants and play in the spray. Latin music blares from every window (and, to be perfectly honest, this drives me bats.) Walking home from the pub it feels like you've been to a party that's spread out across the entire neighborhood. Everything might look decrepit, but it feels awesome. Its what I imagine Cuba would be like, if Cuba was a filthy bastion of capitalism instead of a bolshy haven for pinko commies.
The weird thing is that this seems incredibly familiar even though these scenes are NOT at all what my summers are like in Australia (for, unlike our anonymous friend in the first paragraph, I've been to the beach every summer since I was a born). Think about it: Sesame Street, Seinfeld, Friends, Sex in the City, even NYPD Blue (remember that show? I HATED THAT SHOW. KEEP THE GODDAM CAMERA STILL, YOU DICKWADS), all of these shows have action that takes place in the summer, and every one of them will have scenes like I described above. Any Australian that grew up in front of the idiot box and then comes to New York in the summer will straight away know what I mean. It won't be like, "What the hell? Where are the backyard barbeques, or the sunday sessions in the pubs, or the days lounging around on the beach? How do these people enjoy summer?"... it'll be more like, "huh.... it all makes sense now..."
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