fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

There are places that, despite the fact that you have never been, you feel you know as well as you know your hometown. Listening to the news from Kenya today I heard the names of towns I have known all my life. They are the Kenyan towns in which my mother spent her childhood; Mum and her siblings were born in Kisumu, Nairobi and Mombasa, but they lived in Nakuru , Eldoret and Naivasha . I asked Mum today what she remembers of Naivasha, and she talked of the beauty of the town and the lake pink with flamingos. Of the political landscape my Grandmere remembers that the Luo were the shopkeepers, stereotyped by others as stupid, but in fact clever, whereas the Kikuyu were the intellectuals. The news reports may be from Rift Valley towns that are just names and black and white photos of my Mum to me, but the violence does not just seem closer to home, it is in my home, because those towns are part of my history. As is the rusty, but still scary machete, or panga, my Grandmere has in...

According to glowing reports there are only a few people in the world who would be unhappy to wake up on a Saturday morning with David Beckham. Granted I only woke up to see a photo of him on the cover of a magazine, but I still found myself as disgruntled with his presence in my Saturday morning as I was uncomfortable watching the video installation in the National Portrait Gallery of Beckham sleeping (there was an uncomfortable moment in the video when you can see both of Beckham's hands, and then one disappears offscreen). Of late the merest hint of Britain has started me pining, but seeing Beckham on the cover of a weekend magazine genuinely gave me pause this morning. For a split second I imagined myself back in London and joyously contemplated taking the tube to Kensington and the Museums, then I was back to reality and the lukewarm excitement of Beckham’s pectoral muscles. When I first got to London in late 2003 I was in charge of the Evangelical Alliance’s cuttings and I ...

32 Days until I experience L-Space when reading Terry Pratchett, and not because I can't find a book in the Reid Library. Today I was read a historical monograph of the benandanti of the Fruili region of Italy in the 16th Century. The epically named The Night Battles is a fabulous read, mostly for the extraordinary images of the male witches of the region fighting with fennel and sorghum stalks to determine the fertility of the land and the nefarious Inquisition transforming their agrarian Holy Legions to Demonic Legions by sheer bloody-mindedness. Aquileia Basilica Fruili is the only region of Italy I have actually visited, and the towns of Trieste, Montefalcone and Aquileia mentioned in the text are the towns I know from my few days there with Kim . While reading The Night Battles I could picture the region as I remember it, although my visit in 2003 is separated by oceans of time and context from my reading today. Today I am looking forward to the end of my year of s...

In honour of the release of The Bourne Ultimatum I had decided to make my 'kill-some-brain-cells-to-unwind-before-I-go-to-bed' reading the first of Robert Ludlum's oeuvre I had ever read. Plunging back into the fantastic Corsican landscape with Scofield took me right back to the start of my love of assassins. It was USSR (uninterrupted sustained silent reading) in Yr 7 and as my classmates commenced their Judy Blume and Paul Jennings novellas I pulled out The Materese Circle. Frankly disbelieving, my teacher pulled the schools’ Head Girl up the front to ask in a shocked whisper if my parents knew I was reading the book. I blithely assured him that I was a precocious reader and this was shaping up to be as good a Frederick Forsyth. I was released to read more about the nefarious aims of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) in the conspiratorial and overblown style of Mr Ludlum and in the next book I went on to meet my favourite of Robert’s assassins, Jason Bourne...

In winter last year I was alone in my apartment listening to a storm break around my balcony and reading Beowulf on the couch in a blanket. Falling asleep I dreamt of viking verses and when awake composed my own, incomparably inferior, for my own amusement. Again today the wind is sweeping in from the coast and today, unseasonally warm for spring, has again woken the undistinguished yet unbowed poet within me. We perch before the wind on this scarp of brittle land It bows our trees and scours our beaches and drives the fires on It takes the sun and threads our skin with heat in every strand We perch beneath the blue sky on this slice of salted earth It draws our eyes and drinks our water and meets the sea at last It takes the wind and hurls it down upon the green and burnt We perch, we plunder, we partition, we preserve We persecute, we plow, we plead We pray, we take our pleasure and we play with vultures perched.

It may have been a small turn for mankind, but it was a big turn for me. I cooked my first BBQ meats without male supervision tonight. To perfection. Which is a good thing because it was Father's Day and Dad had especially requested lamp chops and sausages, so I had to make sure it was done well. :) And by golly was it done well! And not well done either, but medium rare, just the way we like it. I even ensured I maintained the 'Aussie Male BBQing Stance' for the duration of the cooking to guarantee optimum BBQing feng shui. Or something. All Aussie men take 'The Stance' when BBQing, although they almost always have a beer in the hand that rests near the hip while the other hand uses the tongs to turn the meat. My variation was a lady-like hand on a pastel-clad hip while I turned the roasting meats. Still, it worked well.

Today Sophie hosted a beautiful High Tea at her house for her 23rd Birthday, with the special guest appearance of a birthday cake made from The Woman's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. Sophie's mother (hereafter referred to as the Legendary Mrs Hall) had provided the following to make her daughter's guests feel as if they were safe amongst the hedgerows and moors of Somerset or Devon: The Legendary Mrs Hall's Menu: Cucumber sandwiches, ham sandwiches and cheese pastries. Chocolate slice and scones, jam and cream. A cake from The Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book and matching cupcakes. Iced tea, champagne, juice, tea and coffee. The party was exclusive and gracious, the Legendary Mrs Hall and Mr Hall fabulous hosts and the food was top-notch nosh. The cheese pastries were tasty, the cucumber sandwiches tart, the chocolate slice rich, the scones bite sized and the marshmallow icing on the dense sponge cake and cupcakes heavenly. Am...

Charlie is from Sri Lanka and has only rudimentary English (far better than my Sri Lankan though). Charlie is gorgeous; tall, broad and velvety. I think Charlie is having a hard time though, because he was, I suspect, a playboy in Sri Lanka. Here he is finding it hard to do ALL his charming non-verbally. He is no slouch at communication though. Delectable in repose, his eyes and his smile communicate oodles of devotion and appreciation with only a smattering of innocuous English words to distract you when he is leaning over you. As you try to piece together his sentences you find yourself glued to a strong dark gaze when you are not dazzled by his grin. I would love to see him operate in his native tongue, I predict he is lethal.

Once upon a time a medieval philosopher told a story about a bird flying from an unknown place of origin through a mead-hall to an unknown destination. The philosopher believed that religion was able to explain the significance of the flight of that bird; the dark from which it came, it’s time in the light of the mead-hall and the dark to which it was returning. The version of the story I heard held that the philosopher was a Christian, telling his story in a pagan mead-hall, and that he succeeded in converting his audience using the metaphor of the bird in flight for the meaning of our life on this earth. I have had my own experience of seeing that bird fly through the mead-hall in which I was sitting, but the religious and scientific philosophers seeking to illuminate the glorious flight of human existence were, to my mind, perched on another cusp of the evolution of knowledge. Religion and philosophy are the explicators of the fact that for humans there is the unknowable; they are...

I hope I never learn everything there is to know about my friends. Since I experienced moving to another country and making new friends, then returning home to old friends, I have devoted many hours to understanding the quirk of fate that allows friends to step out of the stream of humanity to walk beside you. In a strange country with no frames of reference, newly acquired friends tend to be those people who connect with you through interests and personality, without reference to shared history and with a sense of a future still to be shaped. Friends from home possess strong shared history, which often blinds you to change in them, and even sometimes their deeper layers and potential. Returning home has allowed me to use the skills learnt from connecting to a new friend to reviving the intimacy of an old friendship. Most importantly, it has been the act of finding new friends here in Perth that has illuminated each individual friendship, allowing me to find extraordinary new depth...

I do not allow comments on this blog because I prefer to think I write only for the audience I know are reading - those I have invited to view my words. However there is forum for commenting and only two non-invitees have ever emailed me and told me they had found my writing in the 26 months I have been on the net - until about a week before Christmas when I got a very interesting email. It was from an Isreali webmaster who claimed that he had read my writing and wanted me to come and look at a site he thought I would like: [key words omitted so I do not get mistaken for condoning these people] Hi. My name is E** G**. Perhaps we have met online, but more probably you don't know me from Adam. I monitor blogs for S**B**, and came across your post. I'd like to welcome you to look at O** S**'s blog. O** - an anonymous Israeli politician - writes extremely controversial articles about Israel, the Middle East politics, and terrorism. S** is equally critical of Jewish ...

During work hours I deal with Civil Engineering students and academics; shear tests, torsion and suction caissons . In my lunch hours and after work I study History in Fantasy, Fantasy in History and Magic and Marvel in Early Narrative; consensus reality, subversive literature and radical ideology . In the dark hours of the night I keep an eye on the political opponents of the Bush Administration; comedians, cable TV commentators and Islamic scholars . In the last two days I have been able to hear almost 20 of our 60 students give 15 minute talks on their final year thesis' and I have been literally floored by the presentations. Needless to say I was only able to utilise basic understanding of the concepts covered to understand the content, but some of the students were so utterly gifted at explaining engineering background, method and results that even the Arts student kinda got it. The time, talent and theorising that I have been able to witness in the last two days is still ma...

My source in China tells me that this blog is now censored by the Chinese internet and he cannot view it. I just want to say ... Mark, that has made my MONTH! It has enabled me to realise a dream in a way I had not imagined, with an unexpected rapidity. For almost eleven years, from the age of thirteen when I read my first Robert Ludlum , I thought that joining a secret spy agency would be cool. Then, at the age of twenty-four, one of my friends was offered a job at MI5 and turned it down because it didn't pay so well. My entire goal of going to London was to work in a London Museum. Then I was offered a job at the Geffrye Museum and I turned it down because it didn't pay so well. After this, the aforementioned friend and I decided that we were cool for the jobs we had turned down, not the jobs we had accepted, and I discovered that goals were sometimes useful to obtain simply to teach you that your priorities have shifted a little. Lately I have been aspiring to be t...

I had been to two lectures in two weeks that dealt with the issues of fear and violence, both by men who spent 45 minutes flexing their not inconsiderable intellectual muscles to unpack the ideology of 'fear of the other' that is the obsession of the world today. In both lectures, groans of rueful liberal laughter greeted cleverly constructed barbs aimed at the beliefs of those less clever, questioning and therefore enlightened than those in the room, ranging from our boy George to anyone who has read a newspaper article that included the words terrorism, religious war or September 11. The scary thing about people with open minds (I try to belong to this group) is that we are just as absolutist, divisive and irrational as the neo-cons, the evangelicals, the jihadists and the Joe Average that we deride in our little nests of learning. We construct intricate arguments for all sides of the story, go to extraordinary lengths to qualify our remarks and use smoke and mirrors to h...

Second day at home sick, re-reading my post from yesterday , a little concerned that my 'humour'(?) may have been as logical as his 'facts', bored, bored, bored, I think I may have another crack at his ... what I would not like to flatter by calling writing, perhaps more a collection of words ..? Okay, let's start from the top shall we? Spanish Newspaper article on Judiasm (In English) Yup, sure does mention the Jews. Not sure it is an in depth exploration of Judaism as such, but it sure mentions the Jews. Great. Also mentions Muslims at least as prominently. Still, don't want to get too specific here. It is in English also. Points all round for the first line. All European life died in Auschwitz. Snappy, emotive, very self-flagellatory, good parallel between genocide and the death of Western Reason. Plenty of good, fact based arguments coming up I reckon. I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in A...

Just as my soapbox thought it was on holiday for two years as I prepare to write only for my honours thesis , I was gifted with the following annoying piece of written hokum in my inbox. All the senders that were listed on the forwarding addresses are friends, so I would like to preface this with a disclaimer: I am not arguing with anyone that sent it on, just the man who wrote the words and thought he had found the great truth of the 21st Century. Twat. Also, I am home sick with a head cold. Bear, sore head. You get the picture. *Warning - Historical Lessons Die Hideous Deaths Below* [oh, after a quick google I believe it is a Hoax as there seems to be no original source of the article. It has been bandied around the blogs and emails for months now, with so much Acclaim, that I want to say something.] Spanish newspaper article on Judiasm (In English) All European life died in Auschwitz By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discover...

I got the link to One Good Move from the Blog column of The Big Issue, and I have to admit it is my essential US Politics reading each evening. The editor is a big fan of House and often puts up clips, but the majority of the entertainment is from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both US political satire shows. If you like the taster below, I recommend dipping into the archives, as many haha's will ensue. For my money the selections below are the two things that make One Good Move's presence on my favourites toolbar the wisest addition I have made in a long time. *QuickTime is needed* Be Afraid, This Is How They Really See Us This is a clip from The Daily Show with the silver fox Jon Stewart *reowr* He is reporting on the US soccer team, but it is his description of Australians, met with hilarious laughter by the studio audience, that made me shudder instead of laugh. Red Card In my opinion, one can never know too much about how other countries view you ... ...

Ah, NOW we are part of the Beautiful Game! In the 83rd minute we were bored and falling asleep, in the 93rd minute we were punching the air and I was chanting 'Futbol! Futbol! Futbol!' I am glad I got to see Australia's maiden victory in the World Cup. Next game ... Braaaaaaaasiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!

Monica, in real life and on her now inactive blog Th'inkwell , is pretty much my idol when it comes to writing about politics. She sent me this article in reply to my post Baby Steps.

This is saying what I wanted to say in the last post, only better. *sigh* A speech by David Foster Wallace last year at the commencement of the Arts Degree of a major US university.