To The Knuckle, Ya Hear?

After nearly a week back in Oz, I think I’ve expelled the last of the junk that China, Tibet and Nepal laid in my nose.

Most travels become centred on the excretions of the bowel, whether or not this is admitted in polite company. Mess with the diet, never know where the next loo is and have to conquer squats and cesspits – it’s all about the poop.

This trip was equally focused on the excretions of the nasal cavity, as you just can't have too many orifices expelling at the same time, and upon which I shall elaborate upon now.

Beijing

Beijing has no sky.



That is the first photograph I took on Chinese soil, the first thing I saw upon leaving the airport, and yeah, I totally freaked out at the thought of breathing for the next few days.

I’m exaggerating. Mildly. There were blue skies while I was in the city.

But the pollution. The pollution! Blasphemy.

At Tiananmen Square they raise the Chinese flag every sunrise, and lower it every sunset. It’s quite the ritual, with a squad of the People's Liberation Army marching out from beneath Chairman Mao’s portrait over the gate to the Forbidden City, perfectly choreographed so they take 108 paces per minute, 75cm per pace, and timed so that the flag comes down exactly when the sun disappears below the horizon.

It would be more impressive if the sun had not disappeared behind the pollution half an hour before hand.



There it goes.

I commented to a local who was “practicing his English on me” that no one would know if the timing was out with the pollution hiding the sunset. He told me that oh, the air pollution had improved so much since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when all the big factories had been moved away from the city. It was so much better now, amazing.

This was an improvement?

Don’t think I did a good job of hiding my horror.

China Proper left black boogers in my nose, solid like concrete. Took some blowing and then poking to get them moving.

Tibet

The Tibetan Plateau is free of China’s air issues, much to my relief. It is, however, dusty.



No, I mean it. The whole country is dusty.



Seriously.



Really.



We spent a day in this dust storm. There was more dust than air about, visibility was frequently zilch and we spent a good deal of time stopped, hoping no one ran into us while the dust washed up against the windows like water.

And that shit gets everywhere, and you would not believe how much dust your nasal cavity can contain.

The air is also incredibly cold and bone-dry. Combined with the altitude, I had a permanent blood nose. No major gushing, but a perpetual ooze.

In this regard, the dust was useful. I let it collect and act as a clotting agent. While the others were occupied with clearing their noses at every opportunity, I only got the tissues out of an evening, and proceeded with the excavation before bed. With body systems slowing down with sleep, the body struggles even further getting oxygen around at altitude, so you need all the space in your nose you can get.

This did mean that I was blowing a day's worth of junk out, and oh my lord Buddha. Some of those chunks were as big as my thumbnail, no exaggeration. Green and brown, and with blood clots. First time I was afraid I'd blown out a bit of my brain. The stuff down the nostril passage was dry and caked on too. It was amazing. Seriously, could have used this stuff as mortar in the Great Wall.

Wasn't just the poor soft foreigners either. I have a very clear and distinct and unfortunately precise memory of witnessing a woman who ran a food tent snot into her palm, try to wipe it on her shoe and then turn her hand over to inspect it when it didn't come off. I saw. Oh, I saw. It was fucking huge. Then she gave me my pot noodle.

Nepal

Coming down from altitude, we were told we'd be near high with oxygen. Oxygen!

This was a lie, as the water to oxygen ratio in the air was about equal. Plus, Kathmandu Valley does not boast particularly clean air either.



Left over blood nose from Tibet plus pollution, but less dust and actual moisture in the air meant a downgrade in the alert status of what came out my nose, which, given that normally nothing comes out my nose, still meant those boogers had punch.

Didn't need to know all that?

This is the real world, kids. Snot happens.




Nose is still bleeding, actually. I think it's a touch traumatised.

I know it's only because I'm suffering some serious fatigue and am PMSing like a feral bushpig, but today is horrible and I hope it ends soon.

Happy birthday, me.

Monday I was back.
Today is Thursday.
I am not unpacked.





Tired.

Nihao! Tashi Delek! Namaste!

Dude. Running water? HOT running water? All the time?
Toilets? That are clean? And not pits? That are Western style? That I am not afraid to put my bum on?
...fruit?

Holy goats and caviar, Batman, I must be home.

This New World Order doesn't look all that different from the Old World Order, I must say. That's okay, I'm cool with that. Some creature comforts are certainly welcome right now. I haven't done laundry for more than two weeks, and I think I've only showered 30% of those two weeks as well. Still, I've seen Qomolongma aka Everest 3 times in 4 days.

How've you been?

(Shark Puppet would like it known not all of those finger puppets are staying with me. Some are presents. He wouldn't let me bring home a whole football club of puppets.)

Fly, you fools!

Roight. Bags are packed, tracksuit pants are on, me and Shark Puppet my BFF are off to China. I'm running on about two hours sleep at this point, so I'm anticipating being entirely oblivious to the 7 hours it takes to get to Singapore. The lovely KJ Bishop informs me there is a Butterfly Enclosure at Changi Airport to entertain me while I await my next flight. Sorted.

While I am away, I encourage you to indulge in mischief and mayhem. The involvement of elephants and/or strawberry mousse will not be frowned upon.

See you at the cliff of autumn.

<3

I just knowingly and deliberately damaged a book.

Hold me.

I am AWESOME, hear me AWESOME.

Did you see Karen Healey's Rally to Awesome?

Ladies, I have had enough. ENOUGH.

Too often we put ourselves down. Too often we think we are useless, not good enough, less than perfect and thus less than acceptable. Too often we demur praise, or will not praise ourselves. Often we outright hate ourselves, and much of the dominant media and various cultures around us are determined to make us feel as bad as possible, usually so that we will buy things.

In the comments to this post, I cordially invite you to tell me why you are awesome.

WORD, I say, MUTHAFUCKEN WORD.

Of course, I did not comment on said post. Intellectually I cheered and rushed to join the revolution. Emotionally I was...not awesome.

I have been awesome, I will be awesome, but at that point in time I was a cringing little thing, and did not have it within me to be happy with myself. These things happen. There's nothing to do but wait.

Last night, Karen posted again when the Claim Your Awesome movement REVOLUTION exploded in her comments, and she said:

Saddest of all, I have seen people respond to the claiming of awesome movement by protesting that truly awesome people don't need to claim their awesomeness. Truly awesome people are so awesome that they can be humble.

Well, I am a truly awesome woman who does need to claim it. Because I need the reminder.

There is basically no chance that I will ever forget that I am not perfect, that I do many things badly, that I have made terrible decisions and failed at many goals. I don't need to practice humility; downplaying my achievements is my default state.

But, despite the, I say with no modesty whatsoever, overwhelming evidence in favour of my awesomeness, I forget that I am awesome all the time.

I am late to the revolution, and am failing to join the main body of the revolution entirely and have formed my own little splinter cell group and together me, myself, and I, we sit in this cold room with two pairs of socks on and a desk cluttered with travel paraphernalia and finger puppets, and make our stand.

I am fucking awesome.

And I don't need to qualify it.

You're Too Old For Toys, Woman. (It's a good thing they're action figures then.)

Happy little family of intergalactic soldiers, aren't they?

Herbie the HS10 shot this. I was sitting on the floor in the far corner of the lounge room. The blinds were down, and the only light one incandescent globe. Herbie was only resting on my knees. That is at full zoom.

The colours are crud, but that's partly the light. I'm surprised at the lack of shake, considering. The noise levels are acceptable. Not bad, considering.

He had far more trouble when I just turned the light out and we were pretty much sitting in the dark with light bleeding in only from a door way that didn't actually illuminate the happy little family.



Noise is bad enough to almost be artistic, and who knows what the colours are doing. Regardless, this is bloody impressive given that through the view finder I could only just make out the vague shape of the stormtrooper to lock onto, and didn't think it'd focus at all, let alone have such minimal shake.



Second shelf from the top, to the right. There's the happy family. That's without any zoom at all, just to give some perspective.

Don't look at the clothes horse.

I had a faff around shooting movies on Herbie too. Herbie isn't really designed to use macro in movie mode. This is an issue when you're experimenting with finger puppets in low lighting.

Baggage Has Skin

As grafted by Andrew McKiernan.

In the quote on the back VanderMeer describes 'Acception' as "incendiary".

This has me equal parts strutting and crowing like a rooster, and cowering under my bed waiting to be shouted down as a charlatan.

(Actually what I think he really means is that the story dooms the book to be burned. BURNED. BUUUUUURNED.)

Sid & Herbie: My All-Seeing Eyes

This is the FujiFilm Finepix S9500. My computers have names, my phone and iPod have names, but my camera does not, which is unusual given it's the oldest piece of technological fun I have. I suspect this is because it plays a different role to the rest. The others are servants, they carry things around and do things for me, not unlike familiars. The camera however acts merely as an extension of myself.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm calling him Sid.

Sid is four years old. I bought him just before I went to the USA in 2006, and we got to know each other very well as I went hiking through the Rockies. He's been to Japan and Patagonia, down the Great Ocean Road, to the zoo, and chances are if a photo on this blog is not a dodgy webcam shot, it's one of Sid's.

Sid and I have a very happy relationship.

That said, Sid is four years old, which in the digital world is quite a few rings around the trunk. I was content with him until in Patagonia, where everyone else on the truck had newer, more powerful cameras, and I got some serious camera envy going on. When there were others to compare him to, I felt Sid's limitations.

I wasn't really planning on buying a new camera, but, uh, these things happen.

Sorry, Sid.



This is the FujiFilm Finepix HS10. For the sake of simplicity, I'm calling him Herbert.

As you can tell from the photo, Herbie and I are currently in that awkward getting-to-know you stage of the relationship, in which there are more faux pas than anything else.

When it came time to fork over the money, the choice lay between Canon and Fuji for hybrids, purely because they were the only ones that offered AA battery as a power source (very important if you intend to traipse about the mountains and not see a power point for days on end).

I decided to stick with Fuji less out of brand loyalty (although, seriously, Sid is the best camera ever) and more because it was only a few weeks before I leave for China. The last thing I wanted to do was learn a new camera and menu system while out on the road. If I took that risk, I knew I'd end up with a series of photos that get progressively better as they go on, meaning all the early shots (which will be of BEI-FUCKING-JING) will be considerably less than awesome. I'm not okay with that.

And okay, a little out of brand loyalty, because seriously, Sid is just that awesome.

On paper, Herbie appeared to be perfect. He was presented as the current equivalent of what Sid was, the biggest difference being zoom. Sid can do x10 optical. Herbie can do x30 optical.

Which...holy carp and swordfish.

Of course, even staying within the brand, there was going to be a teething period. Yesterday, that came to a head.

I took Herbie for a walk in the Yarra Bend. Well. I say 'walk', but the way I hike with camera is really an 'series of stops with intermittent ambling'.

Herbie shat me to no end.

I had him set to record photos as RAW+JPEG. I don't work with RAW, but as someone pointed out, just because I don't now doesn't mean I won't later. If I save as both, I can put the RAW away on a disc somewhere and forget about them, and should 'later' ever come about, then they're there for me to tweak to my heart's content.

It takes Herbie TEN FUCKING SECONDS to write RAW to the memory card.

This would be okay if I was, say, taking a photo of a rock that was being a rock and not moving. And my light source was consistent. And I wasn't in a rush or anything. And didn't mind TEN SECONDS OF MY LIFE being eaten by an overworked processor. Might as well go make a cup of tea while waiting to be able to take another photo.

That isn't how I take photos though. That is way, way, way, way, WAY too long.

He also appeared to be having issues focusing, and that I wasn't pleased with either.

I played with the Panorama function. This initially had me very excited in a capslock sort of way. Are you thinking panorama of the Himalayas? I am.

Panorama is a temperamental function. It won't have a bar of any zoom whatsoever, and seems to make up its own mind about when a sweep is complete, regardless of what you're doing.

I did get to play with the zoom though, and that was...holy carp and swordfish. I sniped a starling so close it gave me a fright.

Not entirely satisfied with the field test, I took Herbie home to give the results a good going over. Hooked him up to Eddie (my MacBook), at which point they entirely failed to talk.

When I plug Sid into Eddie, they get along wonderfully. Eddie recognises Sid as a big ol' harddrive and I pull pictures off without needing any finicky photo storing program interfering. I APPROVE.

Herbie refused to reveal himself to Eddie at all.

This, I am not cool with, as Eddie is my photo computer.

Disgruntled, I poked around online looking for USB drivers or the like, only to find that as Herbie is so new, only a couple of months on the market, he has no support.

Well, surely they wouldn't have shipped him without drivers. Further disgruntled, I installed the Finepix Viewing Software, and unsurprisingly this made exactly no difference.

Fine. Whatever.

Fortunately Herbie did talk to the Decepticon (my desktop PC), and I was able to finally get the photos off the camera.

To discover that saving as RAW+JPEG does not actually save two file types, one being JPEG. It saves two RAW files. With marginally different file names, but definitely two RAW files. Being as all my photo software is on Eddie, the Decepticon had no idea what to do with RAWs, so even further disgruntled I installed the bloody Fuji shyte program on him too.

For the record, the Finepix Viewing Application is ugly and useless on both platforms.

So! Finally managed to view the bloody RAW files, and they looked like shyte. Noisy and horrible and full of dull colours. This is no doubt because I'm used to working in JPEG, and am not used to uncompressed noise.

Regardless, this isn't something you want to see your brand new camera do.

Figured the only thing to do was get the photos onto Eddie where I could view them in the same software as my other photos, to make a comparison. Dragged the files across the network.

Discovered Fuji does not save as RAW at all. RAW is supposed to be universal and unowned. But no, Fuji save as Fuji RAW.

My program looked at it, looked at me, and said, "WTF is RAF?"

To which I replied, "RAF is fucking inconvenient, that's what RAF is."

Queue more installing and grumbling and discovering yes they're still noisy as fuck and the panoramas look like rubbish. The panorama function is limited to no taller than 720 pixels, which is nothing, it's blocky horrible chunky crap, and the stitching generally not very good. The colours were poor in everything.

At this point I went and did something else and didn't look at them again for the rest of the night.

Today, I took both Sid and Herbie to the Royal Botanical Gardens. I was pretty much set on taking Herbie back, but had to be sure. Comparison shots were required. I took Herbie off RAW entirely, and when shooting purely JPEG his write speed is fine. As much as was possible between the two, I had them on the same settings.

First comes Sid, then comes Herbie;

In the 'Silver Garden'.





I really should pay attention to the names of the plants I'm shooting. This plant was decorated with leave balls.





CATERPILLAR ATTACK!





I shot this plant just to freak them out, but both cameras handled the colour bombardment pretty well.





Aside from shrinking them to a sensible size, none of these photos have been adjusted.

Not much difference to speak of. When I had all the photos together to have a good comparison, I was pretty happy.

When viewed at 100% zoom, Sid still beats Herbie in image quality. Sid's photos are smoother. There's a speckledness in Herbie's photos, and I'm told this is in part to compensate for his ridiculous zoom. It's minimal, to say the least.

Panorama still utter shyte.

The zoom blew me away. Especially on macro. I died. This is an area Sid simply cannot compete in.

Herbie still won't talk to Eddie, but that's something I'm sure software/firmware will fix in due time. I'm still pissed about the RAW thing. It feels very much like I've paid for something I haven't received. RAW taking so long to write and then being Fuji tilted is useless.

Tomorrow I'll take them for another walk, probably up Ruckers Hill to get some landscape scenery type shots (I get far too carried away with macro on the gardens). At this point, however, much less inclined to return Herbie. I suspect the HS10 is one of those cameras that, in another couple of years or so, will be unbelievable, but right now has some growing pains.

Aaaaand, here are a few other shots that I just adore;

LOOK AT THIS.
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT.
IT IS AN INSANE PHOTO.
I DIDN'T TAKE IT, THE CAMERA DID. I JUST PRESSED THE BUTTON.

(Regardless of how Herbie compares to Sid, he's still quite an amazing camera.)







The heron has spied a tasty snack. By tasty snack I do of course mean crunchy dragon fly. The heron is all about tasty snacks. It does not care if the tasty snack goes straight to its hips. It's a heron on a mission.



And the heron has its tasty snack!

I'm particularly taken with this photo as also caught in the photo is a second dragonfly buzzing by the heron's beak, probably screaming, "You ate my girlfriend! NoooooOOOOOooooOOOOOOooooo...!"

T-Shirt of Oarsum Timing!

SharkPuppet: Evening.
SirTessa: HIIIIIII!
SharkPuppet: You're..."perky"...tonight.
SirTessa: Yes! I am!
SharkPuppet: Come on. Just say it. I'm not going to ask, so just say it.
SirTessa: ...

ONE. DUCKING. HUNDRED. DUCKING. THOUSAND. WORDS.

BOOYAH MUTHADUCKA.

SharkPuppet: Nice screencap.
SirTessa: Innit just? A golden moment, pure fried gold with chips.
SharkPuppet: I hear you overshot by 23 words and had to do a quick count, ctrl-x and ctrl-z to get that screencap.
SirTessa: ...shuttup, SharkPuppet.
SharkPuppet: You can't even pretend to be affronted. Get your glee out of your system and stop fidgeting already. Dance, you stupid monkey.
SirTessa: :D



Section 1(a): Withheld from public consumption due to being complete and utter shit from a bull.

I never claimed any of those one hundred thousand words were any good.

Stranger Things Happen At Sea

The Most Loyal of Black Dogs

Yesterday a friend dreamed of having a great big wolfy dog that never left their side. Yesterday my mum dreamed of one of our current dogs and one of our past dogs and the work she had to do to get them out of a thunderbowl.

It is therefore not particularly surprising that this morning I dreamed of dogs. One of our current dogs playing with an enormous St Bernard who simply adored her, as everyone does. A surprisingly non-confrontational dream, considering. Not at all my unconscious's standard fare.

What You Choose To Be Proud Of

I just put my laptop Eddie on mute.

Only one person reading this will understand the satisfaction I take from this statement. That person is probably laughing at me.

Sharks, Dolphins, Barracuda, Tuna, Whales, Gannets, and You

There was no summary of the year type post for 2009. This was partly because I was out of the country when the new year rolled around, but I had intended to write something up when I was reinserted in my life.

I wrote that post about four times, and then walked away. I'm still not entirely sure why. Sometimes I think it's because I'm still in the midst of some turning tides, and so have no perspective from which to analyse even that which is a year behind me. Say nothing unless you are sure of what you're saying. Don't give your future self any more ammunition to use against yourself. Or, it could simply be that the territory in which the currents have shifted the most are territories I do not wish to share indiscriminately with the internet. With increasingly frequency I pause when posting, as I do not know who reads this any more.

The vaguest of summaries states that in 2009 I became a solid person.

Entering 2009 I wrote;

We come into the world without shape. We're perpetual works in progress. We die unfinished. I have pondered what I need to do in order to recover and regain the parts of me I have lost, but I will take no such steps. The world will do with me what it will, and make of me what it would. We're none of us given time to be whole. We'll never be whole, always being shaped by what's come, and what's yet to come.

I also wrote:

Never been single-minded about anything.

I'm a school of fish. Not a very coherent school of fish. The individual parts of me were in constant opposition. Fish were zipping around in all directions, no agreement between any of them, with 'school' being used in the loosest possible sense.

There have been predators disturbing the water and so disrupting the fish, but I can't blame it all on the sharks and gulls. Even without exterior threats, this school of fish would be a churning chaos of frenetic fish going nowhere and doing nothing.

Last year, not only did all the predators disappear, but the fish just...came together. It almost felt like I'd reached the age I am supposed to be. Maybe it's the first calm water I've ever been in. I don't know why, but suddenly all the fish started moving in unison.

I just...I've never felt so whole. Solid. Strong. Certain. I trusted myself with myself, trusted myself with the decisions I made and that I could weather any consequences that came from them.

Which isn't to say I was a person, no. Just because a million fish move in unison doesn't stop them being a million fish, but if they behave as if they are one mind, then nearly the same as really being one mind.

Lately, there have been sharks in the water.



Doubt, my old friend. I haven't missed you.

This Shell Is Bigger Than I (and I haven't finished mapping it)

Every time anyone asked me what I was planning to do over the four-day weekend, I exuberantly replied, "SLEEP!"

Most people were not impressed with this. Fair enough, it's not the most interesting activity out there. The lack of empathy surprised me a bit though. Is everyone else in the world getting a good amount of sleep? Are all the people around me not weary?

This is hard to believe. Perhaps they're just better at faking it than I am.

No plans were made, in fact I made anti-plans and said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, long after people stopped asking. No one will invite me out again, and oh please let that be the case. 'Sleep' is one way of saying 'rest', and 'rest' can mean many things.

I pulled myself in, an operation that started some time in the week before, when I found myself compulsively checking my phone and email accounts for any sort of contact that meant someone out there was thinking of me, which would validate my existence for maybe the next minute, if I was lucky, this validation seldom lasted long enough to see me through to the next such instance of contact, and so I'd find myself wondering what I could do to increase the regularity of these instances, and acting before thinking and with the most pathetic motivations.

Interestingly, the source of this behaviour doesn't lie in depression and insecurity as it usually does.

The 34 days I spent in Patagonia I was constantly surrounded by people. There was not a moment I had to myself, no quiet time, and these weren't quiet people. They were boisterous and rowdy and hilarious. They didn't stop. Pretty early on they twigged that I wasn't quite fitting the mold, and to fend off any future troubles I told them I wasn't a people person and in a couple of weeks would probably over-saturate from social exposure, cease all communication and disappear off on my own for great tracts of time.

This failed to happen, which they called me on, and fuck me if I wasn't the most surprised of everyone. It wasn't just that I coped the shit out it, I wasn't actually 'coping' at all, it was no trial, I did not have to be careful with myself, I was having a freaking awesome time and it never occurred to me that I needed to fall apart at any point in time.

Do you know how that feels? To find the boundaries of your introversion do not lie where you assumed they did?

To feel like maybe you're a normal person?

That feels amazing.

Addictive.

I came back, and carried on with this new assumption that I could be a normal person with a fun and happening social life. I've done so much stuff in the last couple of months it's ridiculous, from concerts to cocktails, phone calls to rampant text messages. I'm not ruled by introversion! I can be normal! I can take it!

And, yes, well, no, actually, I can't.

For a moment there I was closer, much closer, to being a person I've wanted to be for my whole life. But I'm not her. Or rather, I can't always be her. She's unsustainable, and not good for me.

In withdrawing (yet again), breaking myself of this validation-chasing habit (yet again), I've given myself a different sort of validation, more unwanted but not unexpected confirmation than validation I suppose. Not saying anything is good for me. Not waiting for something to be said to me is even better.

I've been over-indulging in the wrong sorts of words. Too much discourse, too much effort spent trying to predict or bait the response I wanted. Too many words spent communicating.

It seems a sad thing to live in a world in which there is no shortage of fascinating people with interesting things to say, and yet I must spend time talking and listening only to myself.

It doesn't matter that right now there is no great turbulence in my life. There need be no howling and the volume need not be on full for me to spend time listening to the tides in my thoughts. What goes on in me now is quiet and soft, which makes it no less important to listen to, only that I must listen harder.

Every time I do this I despise myself a little more. Inconsistent and unreliable. I am sorry.

It was fun, and now it's not.

Operation: Shut The Fuck Up gogogo

[ETA: On considering, this has probably been further exacerbated by my means of communication, being little snippets here and there as I'm still wary of my hands. Twitter and Facebook are fun, but lacking substance. Like eating fast food, it's fine for a bit but doesn't take long before you want something real.]

now's a bad a time as any

Wednesday night I saw Imogen Heap play at Billboard, and she was extraordinary. Musicians who have mastered instruments to the point of becoming artists are always impressive, but she has branched out to master live mixing and looping, making music from the most unusual of found sounds, and to watch her create a thickly-layered and wildly-varying song on her own before a live audience was awe-inspiring. I have loved her music since first discovering her, and now love her even more. Anyone checking can see I've been spamming her on last.fm.

(Enjoyment of 'Hide and Seek' somewhat hindered by the girl behind me singing enthusiastically (you win points!) and so appallingly out of tune (YOU LOSE POINTS!) I had to exert will power to restrain myself from turning to shhhh her.)



'Speeding Cars' is one of the greatest songs about depression you will find. I can't listen to it without clenching my whole existence, it teases the tear ducts and closes my throat even as it soothes the heart. She performed it, and a bar full of drunks sang along, and I was glad the place was dark.

Today I attended a Beyond Blue seminar held through work, which looks at raising awareness regarding mental illness and equipping people with strategies to deal with it in the workplace. I've been wanting to attend one of these for a while, just to see exactly what is being taught and what attitudes are being brought to them. This particular one was tailored to sworn members in managerial roles, neither of which I am, but it certainly was interesting.

Loss of identity came up as a contributing factor for depression an anxiety, which I've tangled with far too recently. When discussing depression and anxiety and the circumstances that can trigger them, this is rarely something that pops up, yet now strikes me as perhaps one of the factors with most cause for concern. To lose a sense of who you are casts you adrift without anchor not only in the present, but renders your future vast and unknown, and your past invalid. You lose you, and if you lose you, then what are you fighting for?

Why fight to keep your head above water at all?

It was an exceptionally good session, and I hope it really does make a difference out there. I know, I'm all for pushing others to seek help while refusing to do so myself, and I'm a hypocrite. I'm a self-managing hypocrite.

Despite being really good right now, it was still a confronting day.

They passed a book around that detailed the various remedies for treating depression. The results regarding the effectiveness of chocolate were inconclusive. I ate a bar anyway.

Sightings In The Wild

On the train home, sitting in the priority seat by the door, headphones and Imogen Heap on, notebook open, pen vomiting thoughts, I pause a moment, look up and-

ENTER STAGE LEFT: a ginger nut in a grey and red striped top reading the latest issue of Weird Tales.

-total brain freeze.

Do I;

1. Blurt enthusiasm and approval of his choice in reading matter at him?
2. Tell him I'm an editorial assistant and I'm incoherent at the sight of seeing a total stranger reading it in public?

Perhaps this doesn't happen so much in the magazine's home land, but here, I'm the only person who seems to have copies of the dear old rag. I just assume that...well, I just assume.

Oh. OH.

Is that;

1. ...one of the issues I gave away on this here blog?

So then;

1. Does this total stranger recognise me?

Wait. Wait. Hang on. One local I gave copies to indicated he was going to pass them on to others, being an excellent little literary infector cell.

So then;

1. This total stranger could know me from this blog.
2. This total stranger could have no idea of my existence and the source of his reading material.
3. This total stranger could actually have a subscription to the magazine.

So then;

1. WTF do I do?

I could practically hear the adrenaline chutes clang as they opened.

If he knows me, then, to be honest, this is a situation I dread most as the consequence of having a blog. People I don't know who know me, or have the impression of knowing me, or certainly know more about me than has been earned in mutual interaction. Initiating a conversation with a stranger is already a massive leap off a cliff for me. Initiating it with someone who is less stranger than stranger;

1. He might not know me, and then I'd look like a twat.
2. I could simply not question where his acquired the magazine, and just compliment his tastes.
3. Is blurting out "I'm an editorial assistant!" kinda, you know, pretentious wankery oh look at me lah-di-dah pat my head and be impressed?
   

But then what if I did that and he did know me?

Hang on;

1. In every single photo of myself that I post on this blog I look like a bloody muppet,
2. I am in respectable office clothes right now and not pulling faces.
3. Unless my thinking face is funny.
4. It could be.
5. Oshi-
   

Stop. Tessa, you are dehydrated, having a blood sugar crash, and still quite wobbly from this random bout of unwellness. Look at the closed-logic rampage your thoughts are careening around in. You are going to;

1. Keep your mouth shut. You can't even think coherently, let alone form words. No matter what the actual situation is, you are going to make an arse out of yourself.
2. Also, you just left a group because you're an introvert in sore need of some alone time. You can't do social right now.
3. Plus, you're stupid. Remember? You got up this morning. That was a stupid thing to do. Don't bring any more stupid upon yourself. Don't inflict it on other people either.

Head down. Write some more. Keep an eye on the stations passing. Cap pen, close notebook, stand-

EXIT TRAIN DOORS: a ginger nut in a grey and red striped top reading the latest issue of Weird Tales.

-total brain freeze.

The fact that I didn't have far to go was going to be my polite and fast escape if the conversation was a mistake.

The fact that he got off at my stop effectively nutted my Plan B.

...Awkward.

The Moral Of The Story:

1. Hello ginger nut in the red and grey striped top. If you are in fact a reader, dude, you get so many kudos for reading Weird Tales.
   
2. Sorry for not saying hi.
   
3. And yeah, I really am a neurotic anti-social misanthropic introverted cranky hermit crab.
   

YAH RLY.

If you think the only reason I bought this bar of chocolate was because it had "ORLY" as a brand name, you would be 100% correct.

It was good chocolate too.

Meat

Today I did not go to work because I felt rotten. This happens exactly never, as I have an immune system that is never defeated, and because I'm one of those horrible people who just goes to work even when feeling a bit crook.

When the alarm went off this morning, I felt ghastly enough to decide that yes, actually, sleeping for the whole day was in everyone's best interests. So I did.

I haven't eaten for more than 24 hours. Considering my current condition and two seconds spend pondering my recent diet, I figured I probably needed some iron, so meat was the go. To the shops I shambled, and spent a lot of time staring blankly at the shelves and counting the money in my pocket because right now, counting and decision making are beyond me.

Eventually I found some 'spinach and meat cannelloni' on discount. Spinach AND meat! There's some good hearty iron. And I can afford it too, bonus!

Having just consumed a couple, I can state with all certainty that there was no spinach or meat involved, and what I just ate was in fact a couple of tubes of cheese.

I'm going back to bed.

She wants me dead.

Spam imitating life?



So true.





Except for the part about the cat.

(As if I'd need help naming a cat. Pfffft.)

This post is here to freak you out.

The Surinam Toad, video courtesy of Ugly Overload.

The beastie is already bizarre to look at. Practically flat, like a leaf, which means they don't get to croak like other toads. But then when reproducing the eggs get embedded in the female's back, and then sort of sink in or the skin swells over them to protect them, so the eggs are in nice pockets and her back is basically turned into honeycomb and then the little froglettes just...burst...out.

I have the very strong urge to take to my back with steel wool after watching that, yet I can't stop hitting replay.



Blood Falls at Taylors Glacier, Antarctica thanks to Jesse Bullington.

It's a pocket of primordial ooze that has been slowly shuffled along by the glacier for who knows how long, to finally end its journey in the sea.

The glacier is bleeding.

The glacier is bleeding.

Bleeding.

"No one is the master of Disk Eyes!", or, VIGILANTELOPE BOOYAH!

Last year the Dashing Deb and I saw Vigilantelope at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. They performed The Tale of the Golden Lease which remains not only the funniest, but the best written show I've ever seen. For weeks afterward we'd have conversations that were nothing but quotes from the show, and still fall into that pit occasionally. We loved it so much, we dragged everyone we knew to see it again when they performed at the Melbourne Fringe Festival.



And we loff them. Oh we do.

Alert! The 2010 Comedy Festival is coming up and THEY HAVE A NEW SHOW.

AAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!

If you're not planning on going to anything at the Comedy Festival, if you've never even heard of the Comedy Festival, GO TO THIS SHOW. If you are planning on going to the Comedy Festival and are doing that crazy thing like we're doing and breaking our credit cards and diaries with all the stuff we're going to, GO TO THIS SHOW. If you don't actually live in Melbourne, GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND GET HERE AND GO. TO. THIS. SHOW.

I'm going on the 26th of March, aaaaaand to be honest, after watching that highlight reel, I think I'm going to go at least a couple more times on top of that. Hollar if you're going!

The Bachelor

A co-worker asked me what was for dinner tonight. "Probably peanut butter toast," I said, without really thinking. "That's, um...nutritious." She disapproved of my dinner, I think.

Someone completely unrelated told me I was "such a teenager" upon hearing of my dinner practices.

First of all, I live alone. Cooking for one is not worth the hassle. There's no one else to do the dishes either.
Second, dinner isn't my big meal for the day. Lunch is, it makes more sense. After work I get home and sit here, so eating a proper cooked meal seems like a waste of food-converted-into-energy.
Third, I'm not a teenager.

I'm a bachelor, and I shall bloody well live like one.

And I happen to really like peanut butter toast.

Normally I'd have a cup of tea with my peanut butter toast, but tonight I'm having grog. The official definition of grog is watered down rum. I have no mixers nor the motivation to go out and get any.

The cobbler on Lonsdale Street is quite a straight-faced gruff man, and with his rich and abrupt accent from the heart of Eastern Europe he can come across as just plain grumpy. I suspected first impressions were misleading, and my suspicions were rewarded with him gently insisting that my quiet Friday night at home must have one glass of red wine. At least one.

I don't have any red wine, or any wine at all, as I have no palate for the stuff. The grog is a crude bacheloresque substitute, as I always do what I'm told.

Now I'm going to walk around with no pants on and drink milk from the carton.

Did something just tap on my window?

Insistently?




Irregularly?


Yet,
repeatedly?

What Happened Next: I did not climb a volcano.

After a couple of days being messed about by Aerolineas Argentinas, not sleeping and wearing the one set of clothes, I arrived in Santiago, Chile, exactly where I was supposed to be and although I'd missed the whole meet 'n greet trip meeting, I wasn't going to be left behind.

Being in the right country and city can be an immense relief. As a result, I felt I could stop rushrushrushing as I had been, and after fumbling my way through customs and immigration (the officer processing me refused to believe I could not speak Spanish; I disproved him with my utter bewilderment), I made my way to the shuttle bus operators. There were two options offered me, 1) collectivo, being a shuttle bus that dropped everyone off at their hotels and could conceivably take an hour to get me to mine, or 2) private, which was essentially a taxi, but cheaper. What's the rush? I chose the collectivo, and piled into a van with some Americans, Germans, and locals.

By then the sun had set, and the trip was scheduled to leave at six the following morning. I saw nothing of Santiago.

By chance I was the second person dropped off. The lovely driver pointed me towards the hotel, as by this time I was so exhausted I literally could not see the enormous lit up sign, and waved me on my way. I shambled into the lobby in my two day old funk, thinking it was actually a very nice lobby and my funk was not at all appropriate, and attempted to check in.

You see the key word there: attempted.

Reception could find no reservation for me. At all. Ever. By this point I was so immune to massive setbacks that this minor hiccough didn't phase me other than delaying me from being able to really well and truly stop. I asked if there was any room available, and whatever it was, I'd take it, by Zeus's Mighty Nose Hairs, I'd take it.

While he was organising this, I discovered the notice board, where the various tour groups departing from this hotel left their Need To Knows, and found one for my trip, with my name on it no less that said, that said, it said-

It said there'd been a change of plans and the trip was departing not tomorrow morning, but tonight at 10 o'clock, to make a 10 hour drive through the night straight down to Pucón.

What's the time? I asked faintly.

5 to 10, replied a woman loitering in the lobby. Are you with us?

At this point, I just started laughing.

And thus began my tour.

The truck managed, miraculously, to be louder than a plane, and considerably less comfortable, and by now I was so wired and my body clock so completely flummoxed as to what time it was that I still didn't sleep. I spent those 10 hours looking out the window at the Milky Way and wishing I'd had a chance to get any other clothing out of my rucksack before it was thrown in the back, because even in summer Chile is fucking freezing at night, and I was barefoot with only thin trackies, a hoodie and t-shirt on, and quietly dying of frostbite. Got very cozy with a mad irishman who smelt of spilt beer and a lack of shower because it was that or die. (I may be exaggerating there.)

Some of the shapes passing in the night nudged my addled mind, and at one of the service stations we stopped at I asked if I was hallucinating, or if there were in fact eucalyptus trees everywhere.

They're a bit of a pest, I was told. You go gum trees! We passed through bushland, a proper thick gum tree forest just on sunrise, and I could smell them.

When we finally pulled into the camp at Pucón, we bogged the truck. Instantly.



And it was raining. And I was barefoot. And cold. And very, very, very tired. And we set up our tents, in the rain. And then the boss lady said we were all going into town to organise a climb of the volcano Villarrica for tomorrow, and I had to say stop, please, can you just let me put some actual clothes on I'm kinda dying here.

Sitting in the company office and having the volcano climb explained - get up at dawn, climb this bit up to the snowline, put on crampons, climb snow all the way to the peak some 1,400 feet or metres, I really don't remember - the fact that I had not slept in three days punched me in the face, and I sat outside and tried not to vomit.

I really wanted to climb the volcano. I mean, fuck! It's a volcano! But the nausea and dizziness and weakness were signs I knew too well from nightshift. I was just too tired, to the point where I couldn't justify climbing a volcano as crazy, it would only be stupid and dangerous.

So I did not climb the volcano.

Sigh.

Instead, the following day I and a handful of the older people on the truck went to Huerquehue NP. Try saying that three times fast. In fact, try saying it at all.

Here, we were told, was a lovely level hike that was easy and looped through several lakes.

This was of course completely and utterly and totally and so very not true.

It began with a path through the woods by the lake. I cannot tell you which lake in all honesty, there are that many of the things around. Funnily enough, the area is called the Lakes District. It was lovely and dim in the trees.



This path washed us up on the road. Which was a lovely road, and it was a gorgeous day, and there were lovely odd little plants around, and the mountains being all moody and towering above us, and the group came to understand what I meant when I told them not to wait for me as I'd be snap happy.

In particular, I fell in love with these guys.



Are they not just gorgeous? They're everywhere, all over Patagonia on both sides of the Andes. Clingy and furious little buggers. I adore them. I have so many photos of them it's sad. They are Acaena Magallanes, bringing back punk, flora style.







The sun was out, the sky a brilliant blue, but goblins live in the mountains. You can tell, because despite a summer day, the mountains were busy being broody and moody and gloomy and other words with 'oo'.



The road eventually ended and we were back on a path wending its way though sun-speared forest, the sort of thing that when I encounter in a work of fiction I don't really believe in, 'cause such idyllic scenery just doesn't happen.

Here's photographic evidence of my wrongness.

There were even motes caught in the breeze passing through the sunlight, in order to dazzle just so. Fucking ridiculous.



And then, THEN, we came to the trail head.
Erm.



The yellow hike is the one we were doing. We'd done the walk up from the park gate, and there was still some ways to go before even beginning the loop. And it was going uphill. We'd already ascended more than we'd expected. I just feel a need to point this out, as when I looked at the map I didn't think the ascent was all that much. UH HUH.

Shortly after, we came to the first mirador (view point) of Villarrica.



She something, isn't she? Our comrades were on that snow, somewhere.

From there on the path zigzagged up, and up, and up. There were a great many curious little undergrowth lives for me to point my camera at.









I stopped at the second mirador for lunch. Only, this was my second day out on the ground, and I had no idea what a mirador actually was, and thought the signs indicated the distance to the next mirador, whatever a mirador was. So the below photo is incorrect, I'm at the second mirador at an altitude of over a kilometre.



Shark Puppet neglected to point this out.

It had taken the better part of the day to get that far, and we still hadn't reached the loop. Unfortunately we were on a schedule, due to meet our transport back at the gate to take us back to town, so couldn't take our time, plus one of our number was struggling considerably with the climb.

The whole time I'd been playing leap frog with a Chilean family; husband and wife, son, grandmother and grandfather. The son disappeared quite early, which was alarming. Even more alarming was the grandmother, who was getting along with a tripod walking stick. This was not an easy hike. It was steep, muddy, slippery, uneven, and there were logs and rocks all over the path. She made excellent time though, overtaking me whenever I got caught up in taking photos, but still.

This was not the walk they or we had been offered.

Still, I pushed on up to the third mirador, and the first high altitude lake, Lagos Chico.

Which was also idyllic and lovely and serene. Total shit from a horse, all this tranquility.



It was even lined with water plants. So, you know, if you happened to tumble in you wouldn't crack your head open. Because the world is nice like that. (Which won't stop you from being swept over the edge of the mountain by the massive waterfall plunging onto rocks and more rocks and yet more rocks for at least a kilometre into the lake below, but you can't have everything.)



And then hightailed it back down the mountain to meet our pick up.

BUT FIRST THERE WAS A TARANTULA.



AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

At the time, I was with an English couple, and clearly there is no such thing as an angry spider in England because this guy, this English gentleman, proceeded to get a stick and POKE THE TARANTULA. AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! TO GET IT OFF THE PATH. AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! And I actually shouted at him not to do that, but no, it wasn't until the TARANTULA. AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! reared up its legs and had a go at him that he understood YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH THE TARANTULA. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

We let the tarantula have the path. And ran away.

Later, when we were back at camp with a cup of tea, we worked out we'd made the same ascent we would have made had we climbed the volcano. This discovery pissed me off to no end, because I'd made my choice assuming I would not be physically capable of conquering mountains when bloody exhausted, but clearly I was wrong.

That was Christmas Day. When everyone returned, we ate a lot, and drank a lot, my exhaustion did kick in with a total failure to cope with lots of strangers and loud noise, so I drank some more and fixed that, punch is deadly stuff kids, sang Champagne Supernova, kept the whole damn campsite awake, and eventually staggered off to bed where I froze in my sleeping bag because my tent mate found somewhere else to sleep thus failed to contribute body heat to the tent.

The End.

Game - Conrad Williams

buy - author site

(There was a magnificent sleight of hand involving pigs early in the story. Petite Porker still doesn't get it, and needs to get out of the damn photo.)

I was wretchedly directionless and restless yesterday, and the Wise and Sensible Deb Biancotti told me to: Read a book. Let someone else's world right yours. That's what I do.

So, yeah, I went and picked up my last Conrad Williams book.

Sometimes, the mind can be soothed by feeding it love, warmth, hope and delight.

But when that fails, giving it something a hell of a lot more fucked up than it will ever be can do the trick too.

Game is a short sharp novella that, after the punch-you-in-the-face-kick-you-in-the-gut END OF THE DAMN WORLD horror and despair of the last few novels and novellas of his I have read, is a subtle and restrained creature, all the more sinister because of it.

Bas Eachus is exacting a little revenge that is far beyond what the perceived crimes against him call for. His grand scheme (and as far as revenge goes, it is a fine one) sees Rache and Fi, two of his chosen targets, forced to tear around from one place to another hunting out Bas's other targets and doing his wetwork for him to a specific timetable, as if they fail Bas will drain another pint of blood from Liam. Add into this Ness, a woman who suffers from premonitions more than most fictional characters with premonitions suffer, and what you have is a brilliant and grueling little story.

The characters are marvelously drawn; it's desperation that drives this narrative, and while the dictionary definition of desperation is uniform, how it manifests and shapes the individual it is consuming is a varied and nuanced thing. Each of these characters is driven to such lengths by their desperation, resorting to such means and consciously the future consequences, because here and now there is work to be done and only one goal to be achieved, anything else being a distraction - they haul the story along at an incredible pace, to a conclusion that I truly did not see coming and crowed with satisfaction when it came.

It was also excellent to be served a plate of characters with different vital statistics. Just chance has seen the last few of Williams's story consumed to be centred on the same character structure; the family unit of father, mother and son, with the father as point of focus. Great to witness Williams flaunt is ability to nail university students with lousy boyfriends, sappy sad romantic psychics and criminal entrepreneurs who are perhaps past their prime but not quite ready to fully admit that.

The prose didn't linger as lovingly on the gore, now I think on it. There was opportunity to do so, but in this case there were more important things to be done. The horror being evoked in the reader did not stem from the visual image of the deeds done, but the emotional and spiritual destruction that came from doing the deeds themselves. Quite to my tastes.

Verdict: The Source of Awesome. Damn fine, I say, damn fine. I know Williams has a crime book coming out soon, and the way this story unfolded it had more than a little of a crime bouquet about it. If it be anything like this saucy little darling, cannot wait to get my paws on it.

Tender Morsels - Margo Lanagan

buy - author site

(Miss Apricot thinks Mister Bear has inflamed tonsils.)

There was a lot of bruhaha in the reviewsphere about the events contained in the book and whether it was obscene material that should be burned, I say, burned, or not. I didn't read any of this, but I was aware of it. It was at the front of my mind when I started, a sort of mental readiness that what was to come was probably not pleasant (and knowing Margo's style, that's only to be expected).

And still, that first session I had to stop not because I was ready to stop reading - I wasn't, actually - but because I'd reached my horror saturation point and had to go find some rainbows and unicorns to snort.

It was quite a relief when that section passed. I almost understood, then, why the bruhaha, and having read the book do not agree with it. It does deal with some heinous crimes and taboos, but does not exploit them. Margo handles them with an honesty that makes liars of us all, she doesn't shy away from the consequences that follow such events, be they emotional, practical or social, nor does she make any attempt to belittle how lasting the effects can be on a person. The ending is better than the start, which is all that can be hoped for, really.

This is a recasting of Snow White, Rose Red, which is a fairytale I'm not well acquainted with. It spans two worlds, each with their joys and savage flaws, and some three generations of women who fit in neither world, and make their own world between themselves. It's a subtle fantasy, not feeling much need to be loud and brash in its unworldliness. The magic exists to serve the themes of struggle, defeat and the furious unfairness of ordinary people. The magic bends its knee to a story driven by characters.

The prose itself is an incredible magic, Margo having a precision of feeling in the details she chooses and the words she chooses to denote those details that stems from an almost childlike-innocence view of the world, before the rules of language dictate what word applied to what. It's through this delicate, exquisite prose that the atrocities are delivered, and I cannot tell you if that makes them easier or harder to stomach. Regardless, it made the book a wonder of craft.

(I had a moment, in that delightful warm burly section with the visit of First Bear, thinking of Florence, and oh my heart wanted...)

The end left me a touch disgruntled, as for me the story was always Liga's story, she who had endured the most and still endured against the demons her trials had gifted her, and yet, it is the best ending to be wished for. This story has its roots in a fairytale, but it is not a Disney fairytale with a happily ever after, nor it is a traditional fairytale with everyone dying horribly, in fact it's not a fairytale at all.

It's life. You don't get what you deserve. You can only make a life with what you get.

But, despite all the atrocities and scars, or perhaps because of them, this is first and foremost, a love story. This book is so saturated with love, the love of mothers and daughters, of sisters, of the family you make for yourself, it made me hurt it was so sweet.

Verdict: Exquisite. An incredibly powerful book, and so honest about the psychological and emotional scars that shape us long after the wound that made them has healed over. Do not read if you are feeling at all vulnerable.

Additional Blather: I consumed this as an audiobook, and dude, I'm not sure I'll do that again. The iPod just isn't set up to deal with audiobooks nicely. Possibly I have to rummage around for obscure settings some more, but on starting the book I couldn't use my iPod for anything else because otherwise I'd lose my place again, with 1134 tracks to hunt through, never find it again. Audiobooks also take much longer to consume. I'd have probably eaten the book in a couple of days, but this went on for about a month.

That said, it was wonderful to be read to, and the readers, Anne Flosnik and Michael Page, were perfectly suited to the story.