Age three

flood season; at home
soapy waves breach seawalls while
bathing gods giggle

Your negligee is showing

Now that I have written a post about questions… I have a question!

Seeing as the most common defense for racist acts is that any offense was not intended, what role, if any, does negligence play in racism?

Proposing a new term here: the negligee racist, a much more amusing visual combined with a proportionate degree of levity.

Negligent sounds so malignant and you can be assured, anyone using the negligee defense does not want to be considered malignant. In fact, inappropriately bringing up such thoughts can inadvertently bring forth the very malignancy being denied.

So next time you are stereotyped, racially-profiled, mammied, ridiculed, put down, followed around a shop by security, refused service, asked where you are from 17 times in one minute, abused on public transport, die in police custody, etc consider that you’ve not been the victim of racism, you’ve simply been negligee’d.

Negligee racism. A curious but generally considered harmless Aussie social ritual specifically designed for the purposes of paying tribute to the most beautiful, interesting and capable members of our society – really, if you cop some negligee racism, you should feel especially privileged. You’ve been seen, noted, honoured with that special brand of reverse-logic we are famous for and suitably brought back down – to level the playing field somewhat.

You must really spare a thought for those who aren’t special enough to be on the receiving end of such outstanding and effortful tribute. A certain degree of over-stated humility is considered very appropriate when receiving negligee tributes, it makes the racist (oops, negligee-ist) feel their efforts are being appreciated.

ooo…negligee…sounds posh

 

What’s with all the questions?

Answering questions is not my forte.

The big red question button, similar in function to the all-purpose doomsday button

Question me and you will get a response that is almost never what is expected, particularly if you’re wanting me to ease your doubts.

I’ve observed and pondered this quirk in my behaviour for a long time now and these days I can’t quite recall whether I’ve always been this way or it just kind of crept up on me one day – while I was dreaming.

I love to learn – new things, old things, patterns and disruptions, flows and cycles. Life is so endlessly intriguing and engaging through my eyes that it seems impossible for me to imagine any other way of being. So I answer questions with an almost unconscious intent of setting up the conditions for a learning experience, preferably involving laughter, smiles or little nods of recognition that we humans are all, essentially, in the same boat.

It is my heartfelt wish, from the centre of all that I am, to share the joy of learning and living with you. I want us to take a step or two down the road together, however brief.

I want you to offer me some way to relate, to walk away with some idea of how your shoes feel and your most recent speculations on the imprecise nature of our current destination, whatever it is that you’ve got going on.

I want you to take your choice from the menu of delights, insights, delusions and intuitions that may come tumbling from my being in any one moment and use them. Use them to bring yourself home if you’ve lost your centre, use them to inspire you into your next learning or maybe add a little light to your next great or tiny goal.

I most assuredly see myself in the business of elevation and reciprocity.

Sooner or later it also seems to turn out that when you use what I have on offer to constrain or reduce the reality of me, invariably you will find that you’re presenting me with an even greater gift – the irrefutable proof that there are times when people have completely given up on themselves and others. The broken times, when someone has entered the world of self-justifying or self-gratifying illusions.

“Excuse me, I can’t be human right now, I’m right in the thick of my own self-destructive implosion mission. Check back with me later.”

“No worries. I’m glad I’m not you right now.”

We are not separate, I know your pretend vacuum-sealed self is imaginary and hurts you one thousand times more than it hurts me. This is not news. I know because I’ve spent lots of time trying it out. I most certainly cannot conscionably recommend hanging out on that particular limb for too long, it’s bloody exhausting [or bloody and exhausting, your pick].

You don’t have to like me to enjoy the journey. I don’t have to like you for us to exchange genuine service with each other. Vile, virtuous, vexatious or the epitome of verity – I regard your presence as my reward. So go ahead and present yourself as a poo-flavoured dog-biscuit and watch me laugh at all the time and energy that was just wasted.

Seriously, come, lay your doubts on me brothers and sisters, then strap yourselves in and grab hold of your socially-engineered default-configuration hats, I think we’re in for a one hell of a wild ride!

Fantastic! More Wheels

Here is a bit of an update to Only One Wheel? – a post I wrote almost six months ago… before the poetry obsession.

The Smiling Chinese guy is still beaming away like a new dawn, I’m sure he was born with that smile on his face.

The name of the Other Chinese guy is Peter.  He seems to run the place and he clearly loves to entertain his customers. When I mentioned that I had posted a story about him online, I could tell he was pleased.

“How many wheels on a bus?” he said. “I don’t know…” I replied, “but that’s a lot of Wagon Wheels, I’ll get fat.”  He thinks six, I’m still not sure of the correct answer. We did resolve to count them next time we saw a bus but no-one has bothered yet. We frequently ruminate over the number of wheels on a vast array of vehicles and discuss such earth-shattering topics as, whether a Wagon Wheel is really just a fancy jam sandwich after Peter informed me there was an actual, living, human in the UK who has eaten nothing but jam sandwiches his whole life.

In terms of Wagon Wheels, I mixed it up for a little while and then one day I went back to the standard purchase, two x Wagon Wheels. When I got to the counter Peter looked me straight in the eye and nodded in mock seriousness, “Aah, a bicycle” he said. I paused for a second because I could feel a distinct contrariness rising up inside of me, I guess I was a wee bit bored with all this Wagon Wheel talk. I shook my head slowly and replied “Nah, two unicycles – one for each leg!” I think he might have spluttered. For a short while after that we just looked at each other and laughed whenever I walked in the shop.

Since then we have regularly traded all kinds of brilliant quips, puns and half-failed attempts at humour – the full gamut. He mentions sometimes that his young son likes some of the things that I like and I always say it’s because I never grew up. One day he asked where my reusable shopping bag was and I told him the story of how I lost it. The second visit after that he had a new bag for me to use, along with a new recurring pun and a good laugh to go with it.

This is the story that got me laughing today. Yesterday, a couple of customers came in to buy a bottle of Coke. He mentioned there was a special price available, “You can get two bottles for $6 and, since there are two of you” he told them “your friend should get one too”. So the friend dutifully went to the fridge and returned with a bottle of Fanta. Peter is trying not to laugh as he finishes off with a flourish. “The moment he came back with the Fanta, I looked at him and said ‘Now all you need is a stick and you will be fan-ta-stic!'”