As Australia edged towards victory in the Adelaide test match late last year, I began to experience a strange and complex set of emotions that I hadn’t felt since observing a remarkably unremarkable boy on a Mumbai ferry some six months earlier. How were these events related, I wondered?
The emotional triplet began with pity, gave way almost instantaneously to guilt (at feeling pity, because pity implies superiority), and then slowly morphed into a deep and unreasonable sadness; and I mean unreasonable in the literal, dictionary-defined sense – that is “not governed by or acting according to reason”.
Every time Andrew Flintoff’s sagging, ashen face graced the screen on the fifth day in Adelaide, I recoiled as a fallen skateboarder recoils from the sickening sight of his own splintered forearm. His eyes were filled with the glassy, helpless terror of a poorly-anaesthetised man lying conscious through his own open-heart surgery. It was terribly difficult to watch, even for an Australian. I felt unable to revel in our victory because I felt so bad for the English*.
Precisely six months earlier, my comrade Tim and I were aboard a wooden ferry returning from an island in the Mumbai harbour. It was the final evening of our journey around India, and the setting was ideal for the resultant languid reflection - the boat advancing almost imperceptibly through the oily brown water; the sun sinking through the suffocating haze just as the light was metaphorically fading on our savage and testing oddyssey.
A glance around the ferry revealed a large component of relatively wealthy Indian tourists - the dignified parents, the spoilt, slightly flabby sons, and the heart-wrenchingly beautiful daughters - all chatting, laughing and texting. As an aside (grant me a moment of indulgence), no-one in the world delivers a more heavenly interpretation of the English language than a young, well-educated Indian woman - their frivolous, delighfully-inflected banter is the auditory equivalent of rolling around naked in silken bedsheets.
Anyway, juxtaposed against this well-to-do crowd was the remarkably unremarkable boy. He had a dark, serious face and wore a short-sleeved chequered shirt, a navy blue pair of straight-legged, long-zipped jeans, and a set of worn black leather shoes. He and his friend both had stern expressions that seemed completely at odds with both their age - which I estimated to be around 18 - and the jolly, relaxed tone of the tourist-filled vessel.
The critical event that triggered the pity-guilt-sadness complex was when the boy pulled out his positively monstrous camera - this thing must have been from the 1960s or 1970s. As he wound the film on he looked around and saw many of the younger, digital camera-owning people openly pointing and giggling, and when his mate took the photo - a photo that should have immortalised what was probably a rare and exciting experience - the boy wore an unforgettably sad expression, just like Andrew Flintoff's.
Q: What common factor links the remarkably unremarkable boy with England's defeat, and causes the pity-guilt-sadness emotional triplet?
A: Inevitability.
There is tragedy in the inevitability of heartless class discrimination, just as there was tragedy in the inevitability of the Adelaide test match.
Oh well, I've answered the question that was bugging me - whether or not you got anything out of it is another matter entirely. Sorry if I've wasted your time.
* Un-Australian I know.
Saturday 27 January 2007
Saturday 20 January 2007
Kalgoorlie Miner (17): Bicycle
A wise man who, like all wise men I know of, had a penchant for wearing tight leather pants, once said: “I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like.”
Like Freddie Mercury, I want to ride my bike. Like Freddie Mercury I also believe that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, I rarely feel compelled to sing “I want to break free” while mopping the floor in women’s clothing.
But back to the bicycle, and to a point of clarification. When I say I want to ride my bike, I suppose I should say I do ride my bike, and I guess I do ride my bike because I have to ride my bike, and I must concede I have to ride my bike because I was caught drunk-driving, and it shames me to say I was drunk-driving because…
(cue blurry screen, descending harp arpeggio)
Judge (red-faced, spitting): Have you any excuse young man? Any excuse at all?
Villain (cooler than something very, very cold): Yes, Your Honour. The ridiculous amount of alcohol in my bloodstream made it quite impossible for me to determine right from wrong. I wouldn’t have even contemplated drink-driving, had I been sober.
(cue blurry screen, ascending harp arpeggio)
I’m sure that legal loophole has been closed, though it does seem to get people out of other offences: “I only bashed that granny because I had snorted three grams of cocaine”. That’s another column entirely though – the sort of fire-and-brimstone column best written by Graeme Campbell or Doug Daws. Has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?
I am digressing again. Sorry.
I’m super-glad that John Q. Law stripped me of my driver’s license, because it has enabled me to re-discover the joys of bicycle riding. Such a smashing way to get around, I tell you.
I revel in the feeling of traveling under my own steam, watching the cars go by with the straight-backed nobility of an aging horseman in an era of helicopter cattle mustering; the dumb pride of an amoeba in a world dominated by multi-cellular organisms.
I pity the fools in their air-conditioned vehicles, for whom every trip is an inconvenience – for me every ride is the trial-filled (prickles, unfavourable winds) equivalent of Ulysses journey home from Troy.
While drivers ruefully glance down at their pale, limp bellies, I gorge myself with high-energy food so that I may propel to and from work in world-record time, and as they furrow their brows over fuel prices, the screaming of my parched, oxygen-deprived lungs drowns out any such trivialities.
Like Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (see columns 1 and 4 on the website), I have become tuned to my bicycle. It is an extension of my body. I feel and hear it’s every flaw and tinker with it religiously, despite the fact that, historically speaking, I am far more an “in-the-grand-scheme-of-the-universe-who-cares-about-a-squeaky-chain” sort of person, than a tinkerer.
I leave you today with a tale.
I was powering through a deserted Centennial Park during an electrical storm late last year, and was overcome by a feeling that I was about to be struck by lightning. The funny thing was I really didn’t care – in fact I went no-hands, raised my arms in a Jeff Farmer post-wizardry salute to the sky and screamed “Take me Lord, take me now you bastard!”
He didn’t take me, but I think it would have been a fine way to go – fanging along in top gear, hair streaming out behind, adrenalin pumping. Oh well, there’ll be other storms.
On your bikes!
Like Freddie Mercury, I want to ride my bike. Like Freddie Mercury I also believe that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, I rarely feel compelled to sing “I want to break free” while mopping the floor in women’s clothing.
But back to the bicycle, and to a point of clarification. When I say I want to ride my bike, I suppose I should say I do ride my bike, and I guess I do ride my bike because I have to ride my bike, and I must concede I have to ride my bike because I was caught drunk-driving, and it shames me to say I was drunk-driving because…
(cue blurry screen, descending harp arpeggio)
Judge (red-faced, spitting): Have you any excuse young man? Any excuse at all?
Villain (cooler than something very, very cold): Yes, Your Honour. The ridiculous amount of alcohol in my bloodstream made it quite impossible for me to determine right from wrong. I wouldn’t have even contemplated drink-driving, had I been sober.
(cue blurry screen, ascending harp arpeggio)
I’m sure that legal loophole has been closed, though it does seem to get people out of other offences: “I only bashed that granny because I had snorted three grams of cocaine”. That’s another column entirely though – the sort of fire-and-brimstone column best written by Graeme Campbell or Doug Daws. Has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?
I am digressing again. Sorry.
I’m super-glad that John Q. Law stripped me of my driver’s license, because it has enabled me to re-discover the joys of bicycle riding. Such a smashing way to get around, I tell you.
I revel in the feeling of traveling under my own steam, watching the cars go by with the straight-backed nobility of an aging horseman in an era of helicopter cattle mustering; the dumb pride of an amoeba in a world dominated by multi-cellular organisms.
I pity the fools in their air-conditioned vehicles, for whom every trip is an inconvenience – for me every ride is the trial-filled (prickles, unfavourable winds) equivalent of Ulysses journey home from Troy.
While drivers ruefully glance down at their pale, limp bellies, I gorge myself with high-energy food so that I may propel to and from work in world-record time, and as they furrow their brows over fuel prices, the screaming of my parched, oxygen-deprived lungs drowns out any such trivialities.
Like Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (see columns 1 and 4 on the website), I have become tuned to my bicycle. It is an extension of my body. I feel and hear it’s every flaw and tinker with it religiously, despite the fact that, historically speaking, I am far more an “in-the-grand-scheme-of-the-universe-who-cares-about-a-squeaky-chain” sort of person, than a tinkerer.
I leave you today with a tale.
I was powering through a deserted Centennial Park during an electrical storm late last year, and was overcome by a feeling that I was about to be struck by lightning. The funny thing was I really didn’t care – in fact I went no-hands, raised my arms in a Jeff Farmer post-wizardry salute to the sky and screamed “Take me Lord, take me now you bastard!”
He didn’t take me, but I think it would have been a fine way to go – fanging along in top gear, hair streaming out behind, adrenalin pumping. Oh well, there’ll be other storms.
On your bikes!
Saturday 13 January 2007
Kalgoorlie Miner (16): Shane
I’ve decided to write about Shane Warne’s greatness – a subject so clichéd that to call it a cliché is itself a cliché. In order to differentiate between myself and other admirers though, I specifically want to write about Shane’s face (first name basis lends the column an intimate air).
The seeds of this column were planted in my mind last Sunday afternoon aboard the Prospector (yes I’ve been to Perth and back on the Prospector again*), just 8 throbbing, hazy hours after I had been dragged out of Fremantle’s “The Clink” by a mean-spirited Indian doorman.
Admittedly I made several mistakes in the nightclub, not least of which was trying to reason with him in Hindi, a language in which I know just three phrases: namaste (hello/goodbye), apka shubh nam kya hai (what is your name?), and kanjus makhi chus (you are a miser and a fly-sucker). You can probably guess which one came to mind after 27 gin-and-tonics.
But I digress.
On the train I began idly thumbing through my cohort Rhett's Sunday Times and was stunned to see, on the front cover of the TV magazine, a raw, stark close-up photograph of Shane’s face. No airbrushing, no make-up.
I simply could not look away; partly due to the dull catatonia that defines the savage transition from drunk to hung-over, partly due to the numbing effect of a mouthful of pain-killers, and partly due to shock at seeing something of quality within the pages of a newspaper that is to the Kalgoorlie Miner what Danni Minogue is to Kylie. But mostly it was due to the intense character and meaning in the photograph.
His eyes were the first thing that struck me; army green irises with flecks and rough streaks of a sulphorous yellow (lookout Mills & Boon). Almost crocodilian. Gloriously bright – not in colour, but in stored and radiant energy. The intensity of the whites doubly strengthened by their frames of darkened skin.
A deeply-etched fan of grooves could be seen escaping from the outer point of each eye, like so many rays from a Japanese Imperial sun. The term “laughter lines” is misleading for these grooves, because the causal accordion motion of the skin can also be attributed to toil, stress, anger, or despair, and one strongly suspects that Shane has experienced all of these emotions many times over.
The skin on his face was that of an average man twice his age. Deeply weathered and pock-marked. The sun damage on his upper cheeks and nose has exposed a fine mesh of red capillary veins, the likes of which one would usually expect to see covering the face of a gout-ridden barfly in a darkened English alehouse. No doubt Shane has been there too.
The overall impression of the face is that it belongs to a man who has lived a life worth living; a life spent amongst the towering peaks and frightening troughs of the Southern Ocean, while others were happy to languish in sheltered bays.
His face contains happiness and laughter, not only at his successes and strengths, but also at his failures and weaknesses. He so closely approached perfection in his craft, but is sage enough to know that perfection is unattainable, and that it is necessary to make light of one’s mistakes. The key to his legend is that, unlike a Tiger Woods or an Ian Thorpe, he is gloriously, magnificently human.
Later in the train trip I was reading a book called “Eyeless in Gaza” by Aldous Huxley, and came across this pertinent passage:
"Progress may, perhaps, be perceived by historians; it can never be felt by those actually involved in the supposed advance. The young are born into the advancing circumstances, the old take them for granted within a few months or years."
People of my generation, though they may not fully recognise it now, have been thoroughly blessed to have grown up as the legend of Shane Keith Warne was being written.
Shane, I salute you and everything you stand for.
*Thanks for the free coffee Di – I won’t tell your boss.
The seeds of this column were planted in my mind last Sunday afternoon aboard the Prospector (yes I’ve been to Perth and back on the Prospector again*), just 8 throbbing, hazy hours after I had been dragged out of Fremantle’s “The Clink” by a mean-spirited Indian doorman.
Admittedly I made several mistakes in the nightclub, not least of which was trying to reason with him in Hindi, a language in which I know just three phrases: namaste (hello/goodbye), apka shubh nam kya hai (what is your name?), and kanjus makhi chus (you are a miser and a fly-sucker). You can probably guess which one came to mind after 27 gin-and-tonics.
But I digress.
On the train I began idly thumbing through my cohort Rhett's Sunday Times and was stunned to see, on the front cover of the TV magazine, a raw, stark close-up photograph of Shane’s face. No airbrushing, no make-up.
I simply could not look away; partly due to the dull catatonia that defines the savage transition from drunk to hung-over, partly due to the numbing effect of a mouthful of pain-killers, and partly due to shock at seeing something of quality within the pages of a newspaper that is to the Kalgoorlie Miner what Danni Minogue is to Kylie. But mostly it was due to the intense character and meaning in the photograph.
His eyes were the first thing that struck me; army green irises with flecks and rough streaks of a sulphorous yellow (lookout Mills & Boon). Almost crocodilian. Gloriously bright – not in colour, but in stored and radiant energy. The intensity of the whites doubly strengthened by their frames of darkened skin.
A deeply-etched fan of grooves could be seen escaping from the outer point of each eye, like so many rays from a Japanese Imperial sun. The term “laughter lines” is misleading for these grooves, because the causal accordion motion of the skin can also be attributed to toil, stress, anger, or despair, and one strongly suspects that Shane has experienced all of these emotions many times over.
The skin on his face was that of an average man twice his age. Deeply weathered and pock-marked. The sun damage on his upper cheeks and nose has exposed a fine mesh of red capillary veins, the likes of which one would usually expect to see covering the face of a gout-ridden barfly in a darkened English alehouse. No doubt Shane has been there too.
The overall impression of the face is that it belongs to a man who has lived a life worth living; a life spent amongst the towering peaks and frightening troughs of the Southern Ocean, while others were happy to languish in sheltered bays.
His face contains happiness and laughter, not only at his successes and strengths, but also at his failures and weaknesses. He so closely approached perfection in his craft, but is sage enough to know that perfection is unattainable, and that it is necessary to make light of one’s mistakes. The key to his legend is that, unlike a Tiger Woods or an Ian Thorpe, he is gloriously, magnificently human.
Later in the train trip I was reading a book called “Eyeless in Gaza” by Aldous Huxley, and came across this pertinent passage:
"Progress may, perhaps, be perceived by historians; it can never be felt by those actually involved in the supposed advance. The young are born into the advancing circumstances, the old take them for granted within a few months or years."
People of my generation, though they may not fully recognise it now, have been thoroughly blessed to have grown up as the legend of Shane Keith Warne was being written.
Shane, I salute you and everything you stand for.
*Thanks for the free coffee Di – I won’t tell your boss.
Saturday 6 January 2007
Kalgoorlie Miner (15): Uncertainty
In 1927, young German physicist Werner Heisenberg discovered that the more accurately one measures a sub-atomic particle's velocity at any instant, the less accurately one is able to measure that particle's position in space. He wrote down his findings, rewarded himself with an super-sized bratwurst and sauerkraut value meal, then downed 13 steins of lager at the local beer hall.* He fell while clumsily attempting a complex German dance step, and was thrown out by over-zealous security guards.*
Next morning he decided that, in order for his theory to catch on, it would need a really mintox name. Unfortunately, due to a cruel mind-numbing hangover, the best he could come up with was "The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" (today he'd have to call it something like "The Werner3000 Xtreme Particulator System" in order to be noticed).
Despite it's inglorious name Werner's principle soon turned the world on it's head (at least it would have if the world actually possessed a head), because it revealed to physicists that they could never achieve perfect predictive knowledge of the sub-atomic environment – something that, up until that point, had been thought obtainable.
This all seems very boring, despite my attempts to "sex it up", doesn't it? Well look into my eyes much-loved reader (in the eyes, not around the eyes) and promise me that you won't turn the page just yet. Soon the subject will switch to cricket and skimpies - it really will.
One effect of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that no matter how closely we look at the physical world, there will always be blurriness. Just when we believe we are on the threshold of gaining perfect understanding, we discover that our goal is as far away as ever.
Cricket broadcasters use increasingly complex technology every summer as part of their quest to come up with the perfect judgement of a dismissal, apparently unaware that young Werner doomed them to failure back in 1927. Channel Nine could study a caught-behind decision with an electron microscope and still be uncertain if the leather atom struck the willow atom – just as uncertain as the umpire who watched the event with the naked eye.
Lesson One: Like a cartoon donkey chasing a dangling carrot strapped to his head, so is the person who strives for perfect knowledge.
Say you wanted to check out (insert name of semi-precious gemstone here) – the newest skimpy at the Federal Hotel. From across the bar she might look glamorous, maybe even better right up close, but what would happen if you studied her with a magnifying glass (assuming you don’t get kicked out), determined to see her beauty on a whole new level? You may start to uncover imperfections – a mole on her back, fine hair on her upper lip, tiny wrinkles around her eyes – and your worship of her as an impeccable goddess fades. By finding fault in her detail, you forget her general loveliness.
Lesson Two: While striving for detailed knowledge should be encouraged, it is important to remember the bigger picture. Be sure to see the trees AND the forest.
So think about Werner next time you’re at the pub. Study the effect of alcohol on blurriness and scribble your own thesis onto a beer coaster. Scream “Don’t you know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?” at Ian Chappell when he starts his inevitable whinge about umpiring standards. Quantum physics is fun!
* Almost certainly not true.
Next morning he decided that, in order for his theory to catch on, it would need a really mintox name. Unfortunately, due to a cruel mind-numbing hangover, the best he could come up with was "The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" (today he'd have to call it something like "The Werner3000 Xtreme Particulator System" in order to be noticed).
Despite it's inglorious name Werner's principle soon turned the world on it's head (at least it would have if the world actually possessed a head), because it revealed to physicists that they could never achieve perfect predictive knowledge of the sub-atomic environment – something that, up until that point, had been thought obtainable.
This all seems very boring, despite my attempts to "sex it up", doesn't it? Well look into my eyes much-loved reader (in the eyes, not around the eyes) and promise me that you won't turn the page just yet. Soon the subject will switch to cricket and skimpies - it really will.
One effect of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that no matter how closely we look at the physical world, there will always be blurriness. Just when we believe we are on the threshold of gaining perfect understanding, we discover that our goal is as far away as ever.
Cricket broadcasters use increasingly complex technology every summer as part of their quest to come up with the perfect judgement of a dismissal, apparently unaware that young Werner doomed them to failure back in 1927. Channel Nine could study a caught-behind decision with an electron microscope and still be uncertain if the leather atom struck the willow atom – just as uncertain as the umpire who watched the event with the naked eye.
Lesson One: Like a cartoon donkey chasing a dangling carrot strapped to his head, so is the person who strives for perfect knowledge.
Say you wanted to check out (insert name of semi-precious gemstone here) – the newest skimpy at the Federal Hotel. From across the bar she might look glamorous, maybe even better right up close, but what would happen if you studied her with a magnifying glass (assuming you don’t get kicked out), determined to see her beauty on a whole new level? You may start to uncover imperfections – a mole on her back, fine hair on her upper lip, tiny wrinkles around her eyes – and your worship of her as an impeccable goddess fades. By finding fault in her detail, you forget her general loveliness.
Lesson Two: While striving for detailed knowledge should be encouraged, it is important to remember the bigger picture. Be sure to see the trees AND the forest.
So think about Werner next time you’re at the pub. Study the effect of alcohol on blurriness and scribble your own thesis onto a beer coaster. Scream “Don’t you know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?” at Ian Chappell when he starts his inevitable whinge about umpiring standards. Quantum physics is fun!
* Almost certainly not true.
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