Miscellaneous Brain-spludge

phase shift

2008-04-14T18:50:48Z

I should probably have mentioned by now that I won't be posting directly to livejournal anymore, and instead I'll be ranting away as usual on a simple page at dwightus.com

However if you're too lazy to go over there to read my rubbish, you can always add the livejournal feed from the site, which is basically an automated copy of whatever I put up on dwightus.com (however I may be slow to read and respond to comments posted on the LJ feed).

The place looks a bit dull at the moment, but a lick of paint will do it good and hopefully it'll look a bit more like home soon.

a work in progress

2007-08-20T14:23:48Z

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/dwightus/

I'm currently hacking my way through a transition over to an independant wordpress system. You can add the RSS feed to your LJ friends if you're lazy like I am ;)

fiddlesticks

2007-08-06T08:27:17Z

So I'm bunkered down at home with some manner of head-cold, influenzy chest-cough hellspawned something-or-other, hoping that I luck out and that the cure is some combination of coffee, fruit juice and mind-numbing television.

Being sick does not bring out the best in me I'm afraid. I sleep a lot, don't talk much and generally slither around trying to find a warm rock to curl up on that I can eyeball things from and make snide remarks at under my breath. It's one of those grumpy hermit things, I'd just like to get my regular body functions back in order so I can get on with the business of living.

It's an appalling set of circumstances really, my joints and muscles are rusty or have gone on strike, the lungs and sinuses are operating on a skeleton crew and somebody forgot to check the amount of ventilation inside the skull before mixing those laundry chemicals. It's an atrocious way to be.

But at least I've got my health, and if you haven't got your health then what have you got?

Ahh, crap.

on my mind

2007-07-11T18:23:24Z

far from the way

2007-07-11T14:49:18Z

I'm sitting around listening to the eels and feeling hella moody right about now, but to save you from more of the internet's prime harvest of moody bullshit, instead I thought I'd share some photos I took a few weeks ago outside the Mount Lawley train station. I'd ridden past already, but just had to go back for evidence.

I'd always figured as much.

Not a sound from the pavement

2007-07-09T12:16:10Z

A few weeks ago I went through a number of boxes that I was storing in my parents attic. For some reason or other (possibly in anticipation of some unholy bonfire) I had kept every one of my files, notebooks and other bits of paperwork from Year 8 through to the end of my Bachelor's degree. The purpose behind ploughing through all of the heavily dusted material was to find any old science worksheets that I might find useful to recycle and inflict on my own students, but I spent a lot of time flicking through other notes, scribbles and file graffiti. And after going through every last leaf of paper, there was only this one sketch that I felt worth keeping, science aside.

I can't say for certain when it was done, or even if it's original. But I kinda like it.

fading with the light

2007-07-01T16:26:02Z

Now where was I... oh yes, that's right. I'm terribly grateful right now for the fact that if all goes to plan then I should have more permanent lodgings in place in two weeks time. While I've had a lot of fun living with friends over the past five weeks or so, the appeal of living out of a suitcase on a bedroom floor somehow loses its shine after a while.

Life is always seems to be full of things to throw you into a frenzy. I prefer to avoid being all broad and general like that, but it seems to be my experience of things and I doubt that such contortions of the path are limited to myself.

I fear sometimes that I get too caught up in the grand delusions, that the allure of the fantasy has so much sway that it corrupts the view of what I'm trying to focus on. It's so easy to get caught up in a whirlwind of thoughts, and it's only once you can step outside of them that you can see the monstrous mess that they've been leaving in their wake. Then you wonder if it wasn't better in the eye of the storm.

Now I'm just projecting through a haze of metaphors and euphemisms. I guess it's fair to say that there are a few things weighing on my mind and the more I clear the space around them, the more troublesome they seem to be.

The only times I find myself truly confounded are when trying to get head around my own feelings.

a little less conversation

2007-06-23T14:17:31Z

thought I might break up all the words with some of the contents of my cameras memory cards...

it leads you here despite your destination

2007-06-17T14:53:38Z

So I'm listening to Under The Milky Way through my headphones for something like the fifteenth time in a row, sitting on a mattress with little enough foam to let me feel the missing wooden slats in the bed frame. The notebook keyboard is nice and quiet, as not to wake my hosts in the next room while I sit tapping away, facing the wall to avoid the glare of the bare light bulb that keeps the room alight. Spare rooms are nice things, so much nicer than couches and lounge room floors, for the most part anyhow.

I'm still in transit at the moment, chasing a more full-time place to live. I'm having a great time spending a lot of time with my friends in their houses, but I'm not much of one to mooch, and somewhere a little more permanent would be handy, so that's my main concern at the moment.

Work is great, but requires a bit more of a spiel to do it any justice, so I might save that for another time.

I've been a little out of character at times lately. The simplest thing that I can think to liken it to is that I've been acting like a dog in heat, which is totally against the grain of my regular distracted approach to things. I can only reason that it's been on my mind because everything else in my life is going so swimmingly at the minute. My body isn't recovering from any breakages or major illness, I'm working again, back on my bike, getting to spend lots of time with my friends (and some with family)... I have debts to repay, but nothing insurmountable. Things are, generally speaking, fantastic. And so with no slights against me or obstacles to overcome, the mind is free to wander and consider other playful fancies, or other sources of trouble as the case may likely be.

materials in dead tree version

2007-06-10T08:24:16Z

To write and to publish. It doesn't bother me to scratch out my thoughts on a pad or to further clog up the world's digital networks with my practice, thoughts and banter, but the idea of writing a book, to me, is more sacred. There is so much good that I have left to read, hundreds of years of work and much of it better than anything that I might find at the other end of my pen. Personally I would rather never write anything that is published than to be part of the flacid tripe that obscures truly brilliant works from the eyes of most. I should hesitate to write myself a book until I believe for certain that I have something that I need to say or something truly worth sharing with a multitude of others. So until that time, my literary productions will sit here or in secret, slowly priming for the hour of call for the skills that they have helped to hone.

All in good time.

fenrisolf @ 2007-06-03T11:33:00

2007-06-03T03:40:25Z

I don't know what it is about driveways, maybe it's their transience, that they exist in the moments aside arrival and departure, hellos and goodbyes, or that they offer so prompt an exit should things go awry, but there is a feeling of safety for the uncertain there which gives rest to fears and freedom to the lips. I can not pin point (and not for lack of trying) why it is that so many of my favourite conversations in this life have taken place in darkened driveways and resting cars. At night they hold some kind of magic. Passing them by day they look as a husk, nothing but a ghostly reminder of something that once passed through without a trace, but left marks on those who saw that will seldom ever fade.

waiting for the great leap forwards

2007-06-03T03:33:39Z

My to-do list is enormous. Foreboding. Overwhelming. But for the first time in a long time I feel like I know exactly where I am. I know that's not quite as inspiring as knowing where you're headed or what you've got in store, but it's something. While my list of things to accomplish appears quite intimidating, they're all fairly real tasks. Hopefully once I've eliminated enough of them, the whirlwind in my head might clear just a touch so I might see just what is going on. For there are other less real concerns that I need attend to in time.

sans title

2007-06-03T03:32:34Z

I cut the engine, and I am silent in the dark. Amber light streaks coldly through the window, and as Freddie Mercury serenades Somebody to Love, I sit, stare fixed on the lamp post. The chorus builds for the climax. My eyes spring back into focus and I admire the shadows falling on my arm. But slowly, oh so slowly, my gaze peters off into oblivion once more. I brush the backs of my fingers against the stubble grown from my cheek. Somebody to love. Eyes wander and my fist snaps around the ticket on the dash, and spiralling it flutters into the depths of the passenger footwell. The ignition sounds shut with a click, the radio joins me in my pause. We two share the moment. We are silent, in the dark.

And alone.

our collective reality

2007-05-24T15:59:16Z

As of about mid-last week, I got the all clear from the bone specialist to start using my right hand again as normal, at least as far as I can tolerate the pain and excepting contact sports. So three and a half months on and I'm starting to feel more like a functional human being again. Unfortunately I still haven't managed to get out riding yet. After a fair bit of tinkering, cleaning and fitting spares, the bike looks like a bike and runs, but there's a problem with the clutch it seems, and so I believe I'll have to pay someone who knows about such things to investigate further. Come Monday it'll have been four months since the crash.

On the subject of Monday, I'm finally going to be a contributing part of the economy again when I rock up to work as an Education Assistant (newspeak for Babysitter) at one of the High Schools in Perth. This also means moving back to the city, for which I'm thankful. I love my folks, and Bunbury is swell, but I miss my friends and the opportunities for mischief that living in smogville affords me. I don't have any permanent lodgings arranged at this stage, but hopefully I should be able to get myself bound to an oppressive rental agreement in a reasonably timely fashion, and it's all down hill from there.

So hopefully I'll start to have a few more worthy anecdotes to relay in the coming weeks. If things don't go my way tomorrow morning during a tooth extraction, maybe even sooner than that.

The teaching thing is still on the horizon, as I've slowly been hacking away at the requirements for completing my course. If all goes well in the next few weeks, I should have completed my year-long Dip Ed over a modest five semesters. Arbitrary structured education just isn't my thing, so it would seem.

puzzlement, bordering on alarm

2007-05-06T12:07:38Z

Looking down the cue, it's a straight enough deal. Red ball eight inches from centre pocket, cue ball about two feet away. Clear shot, no obstacles. There's the satisfying sound of thwack, click, thump - but I was hoping for a plonk. I can't seem to peg what it is, but I just haven't been able to make a shot on this table. The last one had a roll to the far right pocket and the lights had shorted out, but at least I knew what was going on. Now I'm clueless and about three balls away from a pants-ing.

I go for another swig of my drink and scout my eyes across the dance floor where a couple of dozen ladies from various decades past flash about in a haze and a blur. A girl eyes back at me and lends me a sultry smile. I flash a grin in kind, but I've got other things on my mind, most prominently trying to forget as much of Spiderman 3 as I can before it starts to decay in my mind.

Giving up on skill, I resort to the hard-as-you-can school of pool shots. Balls scatter everywhere, one bouncing gently into a pocket next to my leg. Hallelujah. Tom gives me a series of hand signals to suggest that particular shot may not have been my intention, as is our only method of communication when affronted by the thousand decibel butchering of Summer of '69 coming from the stage nearby. A game or two later and we take our leave of the place, taking in a brief tour of the street circus of Saturday night.

There are still things on my mind that I'd rather weren't, but sometimes you don't get as much say in the matter as you'd like. I shut off the car in the driveway, emotions undercover still jumping between bitterness, anger, frustration, defeat and anything between. It's been days now and I tire of the way that it clings to my mind like it was the roof of my mouth.

Such sticky matters are always the same, you can never scratch them out as they stand. You need another lump of stick for it to grab to, then you can throw the whole thing out. Of course there's no guarantees with such sticking things, but sometimes you've little other choice.

this is what you want
this is what you get

all severe, and not saying a word

2007-04-30T14:06:21Z

Sometimes you work your way towards knowledge. Most of the time this involves a lot of work. You have to read, learn, contemplate, experience, review, consider, test, develop, question and so on until you have refined your ideas and thoughts into a pristine object carved by hand from a stone of thought.

But other times, knowledge falls into your lap. You might just be sitting there watching Chow Yun Fat shoot up a car wash on film when your friend drops a little black book into your lap that he was given by an old man at a second hand book store, where you trace through the pages until a passage grabs you by the throat and belts you across the face with enough resolve to send your mind into a frenzy.

Narcissus fell in love with his image, taking it to be another.

Jack falls in love with Jill's image of Jack, taking it to be himself.
She must not die, because then he would lose himself.
He is jealous in case any one else's image is reflected in her mirror.

Jill is a distorting mirror to herself.
Jill has to distort herself to appear undistorted to herself.

To undistort herself, she finds Jack to distort her distorted image in his distorting mirror
She hopes that his distortion of her distortion may undistort her image without her having to distort herself.
Knots, R.D. Laing (1970)

I was struck by several other passages in the little black book, but none so sternly as this one.

don't try and fake it

2007-04-25T14:59:55Z

So I've slowly managed to resign myself to my circumstances and truth be told, it's helped ease my mind a hell of a lot. I'm really hoping that everything goes smoothly on Monday with my hand, another several months as an invalid is not what I need right now.

Anyhow, I feel like a lot of built up steam has just been let off and I can think a lot more clearly. I'm starting to think about projects and plans again, which always puts me in a good mood. There's no end to the number of cock-eyed ideas and ludicrous ventures that circulate inside my head, and it's fun just contemplating them sometimes let alone actually bringing any of them to fruition.

I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself however, because at this stage I might still have to write off another few months to bodily repairs and I would rather think worst case scenario and be pleasantly surprised than to get my hopes up and have my heart broken. Still, it will only be another five days and I will be able to line myself up with the real world again and go from there.

In the meantime, tomorrow is another expedition to see the men in white coats about the large cavity in my head. Noises sound terribly funny when they're coming from inside your skull.

she sells sanctuary on a hire purchase plan

2007-04-19T14:05:02Z

Target fixation.

You focus on something, you look towards it, you hit it. It's a straight-forward concept and a trap that catches a lot of new riders out. You see an animal, an oil slick or a stopped car, you look towards it and your head shifts to face it directly. Your shoulders move in turn as do your arms which hold the bars. Unless you catch yourself and look back to the road, before you know it you've steered straight into the very obstacle you wanted to avoid.

The idea of borrowing money has always grated against my mind like fingernails grate across a blackboard. I've paid for cars, furniture, holidays, motorcycles, all with cash in hand. The idea of being obliged to hold a job down, to be routine, to be chained to a wheel as a result of my own impatience or greed is something I spent many years going to great lengths to avoid. But as if I had never tried at all, here I am at the bottom of a great pit of debt to which I am confined until I have slowly, slowly worked my way out through the menial humdrum of the suburban cycle.

Now I am in no need of pity or sympathy, I wouldn't even go so far as to give either to myself. It's just the suffocating irony of the situation, that I, for all of my efforts and desires have ended up in precisely the kind of rut I wanted to avoid. It's worthy of a morbid chuckle if anything is.

However a small ray of hope in the vast darkness that is my life is that in about eleven days time I hope to be given a golden ticket to start using my right arm again as normal. Most profoundly that means that I can ride again, which is something that has been sorely missing from me these last three months, leaving a gaping black hole somewhere in my chest for the thing that makes my heart beat aloud and floods my veins with life like nothing else. A part of me is missing, and I long for it entirely. There is an outside chance that the doctors will advise me that things are not so rosy and that there is worse to come, but I live in eternal hope (it is hard to get by without it some days).

There is yet another reload this weekend (sometimes it feels like they never end), and although I'll be of little use without the capacity to life heavy items or partake of other such two-armed grunt work, I will get to spend some time with a bunch of weirdos that I tend to call my friends.

Between now and then however I will work at getting another haircut. The hair has refused to go down without a fight and as such has grown at an atrocious rate since my shave a mere month ago. It shall bow before the power of the almighty clippers once more, lest it break completely out of control. Such things must be done, as with this unbound growth I am starting to look like some kind of hippie.

the unmistakable taste of blood and peppermint

2007-04-11T13:25:47Z

All the heavy lifting has been done (with as little as possible being performed by me) and I'm now fairly settled in down at Australind until I get my life and bones back in order. I managed to see the whole family over easter, but aside from that I'd say that being a broke and housebound bum is roughly as boring down here as it was back in Perth.

Unfortunately this means that I'm limited in the number of anecdotes that I can relay as I haven't managed to get up to an awful lot besides unpacking and paperwork, with the exception of a visit to the dentist this morning. I haven't been in a good number of months and I was about due for a check-up.

With a dentist in your mouth, you speak only in vowels.

After recalling how delightful a time I have paying folks wearing rubber gloves to stab me in the face with all manner of pointy, whirry and grindy things, followed by a couple of xrays, it's come to light that a couple of teeth at the back of my mouth will need to be ousted in the next few weeks.

As it turns out, a particularly hunch-backed and deceitful-looking wisdom tooth in my bottom left jaw has been muscling in on another fellas territory and smashing up the side of the tooth in front of it. The busted-arse tooth with the hole in the side has then been all roughed up and is decayed right through to the nerve, which I'm told should be excruciatingly painful. One of these days this loopy pain tolerance thing is going to get me into a lot of trouble. Not that this isn't trouble.

Apparently it's regular practice when removing a tooth to yoink its corresponding brother above or below as well, since it will no longer have another tooth to chomp against and that can cause complications. So depending on how beat up the victimisted tooth is I'm looking at loosing somewhere between two and four teeth. Thankfully I've got a mouth full of the little bastards. The operation will probably be more painful financially than physically, and hopefully it won't involve too much eating through a straw afterward.

I'll try and get into a bit more mischief between now and the next time that I post in order to provide a bit more entertainment than a commentary on how my mouth is at war with itself.

heading south for the winter of our discontent

2007-04-03T16:20:18Z

It may surprise some of you to know that being an unemployed cripple does not pay as well as you might think it would.

While I was finally free of my plaster cast on the 26th after eight miserable weeks without a right hand, there is still a lot of recovering left to do. The fracture in my hand still needs several weeks of rest before I can safely begin lifting, pushing or leaping tall buildings in a single bound. At the same time, my wrist is slowly loosening up from the plank-like state it emerged from the cast in and my sunlight-shy forearm is slowly beginning to look like a limb again from the miserable state it managed to wither away to over the past two months.

All of this means that I have still been unable to make any kind of living in the meantime. This is only one of several contributing factors that have led to my new-found situation, that being one wherein a promise that I made in the form of a scholarship agreement is to be broken.

I could spin a few thousand words explaining my personal feelings on certain things or how things outside of my control have affected my circumstances followed by a lengthy spell of ranting and pointing fingers, but for all of our sakes I will be concise. Out of the need to resolve a number of matters personal, financial and medical in nature I have accepted the ego-crushing blow of necessity and hauled my bag of tricks back to stay with my folks. How long for I could not say, at least until I am able to function enough to hold down a job so as to meet my financial responsibilities.

Naturally out of my personal sense of drama, I make this sound much more devastating than is honestly is. I am staying in a huge luxurious house overlooking the water in the South-West with everything I could possibly need and a couple of housemates who are overjoyed that I'm coming to stay.

As a regular reminder that the space-time continuum is functioning as usual, I turned 25 yesterday. Aging is a funny thing. I feel a thousand years old half of the time and then I look in the mirror and see this soft and squishy looking fella who has obviously not yet been around the traps as much as he seems to think he has. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to a bike insurance discount.

didn't feel a thing

2007-03-17T08:42:08Z

So far I've collected over $1300 for the Leukaemia Foundation, which is awesome. I really want to say a huge thankyou to everyone that chipped in and came along last night for the spectacle.

radio silence

2007-03-14T16:27:44Z

If I haven't been writing a lot of late, it would have to be due to a lack of creative thoughts of late, a crime for which there could be any number of culprits. If it isn't tiredness or the frustration and hindrance of my broken hand, I've been dreadfully short of inspiration of late due to falling into the terrible routine of a man unable to operate heavy machinery or do most anything involving the use of both hands.

My emancipation draws nigh however, with only twelve days remaining until I shall be reacquainted with my now withered and feeble forearm.

Sooner still I will be free of another load, that being the hair atop my head. This loss, as opposed to my plaster prison chains, has significantly more dire social consequences. For almost eight years now, I have been recognisable on sight from any angle at as great a distance as you might distinguish one thing from another. My particularly thick red hair, somewhat explosive in nature, is a thing rather uncommon to find in such lengths on the stature of a man. While on occasion it has given me cause to wish it away for the sake of disguise, for the better part of its tenure it has made the arrangement of meetings and my being recognised and recollected quite simple.

In the week gone by, two people the neither or which I have seen in half a decade spotted me walking through the city and made their way over to say hello having spotted me. The Saturday just gone I was walking from a train station to a bar and not one but two cars pulled up within moments of each other to offer me a lift, the first driven by a girl that I know and the other by an older fellow that I had met but once on an evening ride through the hills.

For years my hair has served as a giant reminder, a bright sign posted on my head stating "HERE I AM" and now that sign is coming down. So with my hair, I too lose a part of my identity. Not so much as to affect my sense of self (as is routinely done in military establishments), but as part of my social identity, the perception of myself by those around me. And so I slide into the general anonymity of the crowd once again.

I'm looking forward to the practically non-existent maintenance schedule, but I will only know with time whether people notice me because of myself or because of the mane behind me.

same as it ever was

2007-03-02T18:00:36Z

It's late (again). After briefly entertaining the idea of finding something to nibble on, I remember that the sum of my edible possessions in this world (not including the ingredients for cups of coffee) are a tin of molten "spaghetti" and packet of tomato cup-a-soup which has followed me since two house moves ago. Damn this carefree bachelor lifestyle.

To change topics entirely, today I've cleared a personal procrastinatory hurdle. There were a couple of things that I'd been letting drag out because I wasn't sure exactly where they were going to lead me to, but I can't spend my life sitting around not opening doors. There are things to be done, don't you know?

There are places to see, friends to make and stories to be a part of.

and you may ask yourself

the winds of change

2007-02-28T17:41:38Z

After thinking about it at some length, I've decided to go the whole hog and shave my head in two weeks time to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation.

http://www.worldsgreatestshave.com/profile.php?id=305074

This will include the first time many parts of my head have seen daylight since early 1999, as well as dramatically altering my personal profile, centre of gravity and the number of times blokes in landcruisers wolf-whistle at me (I hope). Many of my friends have never seen me with anything less than the Cousin It look, and I can hardly remember what I'd look like myself.

It's bound to be a psychologically scarring event for me and at the very least entertaining for everyone else, so I hope to see a few faces at The Greenwood Tavern (in Greenwood) on Friday March 16th at 7pm or so for a drink and the widening of eyeballs.

You can either pitch in money through the link above using a credit card (it's a secure site), or you can give me cash personally leading up to the event.

For those who haven't seen me recently (or for those who haven't had their eyes checked lately), I give you: the hair...

The Leukaemia Foundation supports patients and families living with leukaemias, lymphomas, myeloma and related blood disorders and there's more info on the website if you feel like a free haircut yourself.

the grouch

2007-02-19T06:09:31Z

I've been fairly moody the last couple of days. I found out from the specialist on Friday that because of the nature and location of the bone, scaphoid fractures are notoriously slow to heal and can cause a lot of complications if not allowed to heal correctly. Which for me means more time in plaster.

I'm finding so many things frustrating. It frustrates me that I can't write, it bothers me that I keep making typing errors and it takes me twice as long, it drives me nuts that my arm is wasting away and there's nothing I can do about it, it annoys me that with all this free time I can't do anything, it makes me cranky that I can't ride my bike, it gets me aggro that I have to be so damn dependent on everyone, it's just really bloody infuriating to be so damned incapacitated.

*sigh*

And now I'm polluting my blog with this whining crap. Awesome.