on body art

I'm afraid I just don't get tattoos. And I don't understand why so many people seem to want them on so many parts of their bodies. I'm not talking about the little heart or celtic antiquary discreetly placed. Nor even the ubiquitous t-bar that graces the lower back of so many young women.

I do mean, however, the labrinthyne spawl across the forearm. The names of children etched in gothic font upon the thigh or ankle. The huge floral arrangement upon the neck or fantastical creature flung onto the back. Or single letters across the fingers in menacing procession, spelling, often as not, an expletive. And how about ridiculous slogans or sayings like 'such is life' about the upper chest? Well, how about them?

Really, when you start seriously and permanently doodling on you body, it seems to me that you are essentially just giving the big finger to your skin. It's like saying "You may be the biggest organ on or in my body but I hate you anyway and I'm going to scribble ugly, amateurish grafitti all over you. So there."

The very least these folk could do is hire an exterior designer, someone to organise the bits into a visually congruent whole. Ten different directors never did make a coherent movie, after all.

Of course, I don't understand any of this and it's none of my business anyway. But I'd like an explanation just the same.

floods 2

this summer has lolloped
in huge wellies across the landscape,
leaving only hope dry.

floods

awnings of water
interrogate the north, the south
wet summer lamina
of disquietude.

for flood and fire and famine

Lately Australians have been revisiting some of the reasons that this country can be harsh and quixotic. Two years ago we had the catastrophic fires in Victoria. This week we have had the floods in Queensland. The continent has a habit of reducing human activity and the complacency of human occupation to a more realistic level. We set ourselves apart from the natural world and yet we are enmeshed with it, like it or not.

All school children once learned (maybe still do) the second verse of Dorothea Mackellar's My Country. The title for this entry comes from that poem, as does the more famous, 'of droughts and flooding rains.' Floods get a couple of mentions, actually, so it's probably right that we pay attention to them. I live in a bush-fire prone area and we will get a big one, some day in the near future. Every summer, they hove into our consciousnesses and we finally get to let down our guard come early autumn.

The loss of life and general destruction and dislocation is saddening, wherever it happens. Several hundred people appear to have died in terrible floods and mudslides in Brazil this week also. What can we say but how sorry we are. The world continues to defy our demand that it act in accordance with our wishes. As I say to Tom, there is just no telling how things will turn out in life, plan them how we will. But we have to keep on planning anyway. There is no choice, if you think about it.

Meanwhile, let us mourn with those who mourn.

bondi

premonition...

at the seaside
shore-borne waves tackle and track,
menacingly, north.

resolutions anonymous

Traditionally, today is the time to make a list of resolutions for the coming year. Most of us aspire to be better people in some way, and resolutions seem to fit that bill. The only problem is - they are almost impossible to keep. Why?

Well, it's not rocket science, but having studied behaviourism, it's possible to see resolutions as merely wishful thinking, without the planning and execution required to become sustainable projects. For example, say I resolve to lose weight this year. A noble and very commonly articulated objective. So, hypothetical me goes for a week or so with a planned diet and a regular exercise program. The momentum is sustained by my initial enthusiasm and the relative novelty of the goal. Rather soonish though, I get back into old habits and the resolution is ultimately broken.

Now, if I had set up a reasonable, specific and achievable goal (I will lose 10 kilos in 8 weeks), created a pathway to achieving the goal ( a diary of scheduled meals and calories, support persons, rewards and punishments, weekly targets etc), I would have been well on the way to achieving my resolution.

So really, resolutions are just a lot of hot air expended in the service of delayed disappointment. Keep making them by all means. I won't be making any that I can't follow through on. Hopefully.

Happy New Year.