New bike and future rider

After much searching on eBay, I finallybought my own bike. It's almost a toy bike by serious biker standards but I just love the styling of the Yamaha Virago- retro (like me), minimalist (like I'd like to be) and stylish (I wish).

Anyway, the idea is to use this bike to get my roadcraft and skills up and then- once I'm convinced I'm serious about this- to go for a bigger, more powerful bike.

Mess is Good...

An article by Michael Duffy in the SMH this weekend, says exactly the right things to me:

The decline of mess and the pursuit of neatness start early. We abort foetuses if they show any sign of not being perfect. We're world leaders in our enthusiasm for caesarean births, which do away with much of the mess of ordinary labour. Imperfect, emotionally messy marriages are terminated. Children are farmed out to child-care centres. Old people are put into nursing homes. Those with a low IQ or a mental illness are hidden in welfare sinks such as Minto and Mount Druitt.

Religion, which helps people to cope with the existential messiness of life, is no longer necessary for most of us, except to provide a backdrop for wedding photos.

Our desire to eliminate mess is reflected in our obsession with health and gyms and cosmetic surgery. We see it in the gentrification that has transformed the cityscape, with good taste breaking out in homes and gardens and public places. Everything is new, renovated, freshly painted or planted. In dozens of housing estates around the city fringe this has been taken to extremes, with literally every square metre landscaped. The messy city I grew up in, a place of unguttered streets, vacant blocks and untidy backyards, has almost disappeared beneath the tide of gleaming new apartment blocks, and interesting street furniture.

For some years now I've been wanting to present a eulogy for mess, but I've felt so alone it didn't seem worth the effort. In the relentless search for heritage paint charts, tighter tummies and the perfect olive oil, who would listen? People I talked to about mess often turned out to be wracked by anxiety.

He goes on to quote the authors of a book in USA about the difference between people whose desks are tidy versus those whose aren't- this being the model behaviour that all the efficiently and time management gurus want us to strive to achieve:

[they] are particularly sceptical about personal organisers, who claim that having a messy desk means you waste an hour a day in looking for stuff. They surveyed real office workers and found that people with very neat desks spent 36 per cent more time on organising and searching than people with fairly messy ones. This is probably because an apparently messy desk reflects some intuitive organising principle inside its user's mind.

I knew that.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Coming Out in Style

That was the subject header in a recent email we received from a relative from M's side. The sender has decided to out himself as a gay person and his email went on to say:

Hey all,

Ah, I'm such a dork for doing this in an email but being the champion for cowardice that I am and promoter of the joys of talking about people behind their backs, email it is! So, yeah, I'm gay and that's the first and last, the this and that, thick and thin, and ying and yang of it.

Most of you, I believe, I've told (or hit on!) quite a while ago but being also a champion for lethargy and couldn't-be-bothered-ness, I couldn't be buggered to sort email addresses.

Nah man, this is not an email 'defending' myself or going on some rant and rave so all you wanting a show, move along now! But if you feel I must 'defend' myself, well you'll just have to fuck off coz I couldn't be bothered! If you don't feel I must, well, then I definitely do owe you an apology, at least. It was certainly not a reflection of any mistrust of you but a more general, hard-to-explain weariness. To draw on preeminent 90's philosopher George Castanza, I'm basically giving you the 'It's Not You, It's Me' routine!

But anyway, now that we're done with his, it doesn't have to be anybody, does it? Perhaps, I'm okay, you're okay?

On the 'other news' front, I'm into Month 2 at the PhD program at Stony Brook and I'm finally settling into the grind of readings and classes again after my beautiful 15-month 'sabbatical'. I've got my house (and roommates!) in order and need now only to convince some very smart people for 5/6 years straight that I'm worthy. Shouldn't be too hard. So long as I 'ah-hmm' and clear my throat appropriately during class discussions and punctuate perfectly in my writing, I can't think of what else there is to it...

Very good then. As you were...

Brave, funny and direct. I wish people in my part of the family who I know are gay were able to come to terms with their own sexuality and bring it out in the open in a similar way.