Hieronymous the Anonymous

Easy days and sleep-ins

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If Christmas eve is a day that leaves me mainly indifferent then Boxing day is one of my favourite days of the year. Sandwiched in between is Christmas day, which is neither one nor the other for me - which is pretty appropriate really.

For me the period leading up to Christmas can be a frenzy of social activity. More often than not I find myself doing things because I think I should rather than from a real desire to do them. By the time Christmas comes around I am pretty well socially exhausted and generally over it. Boxing day though and everything starts again. You draw a deep breath and relax.

That's certainly my intention. I can recall this period 2 years ago, which lingers in my mind as the near perfect template for post-Christmas perambulations. I did nothing exciting. I hardly saw a soul outside of my occasional ventures to the shops or a local cafe, and that suited me fine. After a hectic few months - I had returned from Morocco a little more than a month before, and was in the middle of my Jennie phase - I wanted nothing more than to live quietly and within myself. Fortunately for me I had a pile of very good books, and amid the occasional break for a cup of tea or coffee, I read my way through them. I think I figured I read somewhere around 900 words in 4 days, a pretty good effort.

The other thing I did was let my mind ramble. Everyone needs me time, but everyone needs it for different things. Like most people I like to get back in touch with my true self, but unlike most that involves me following the labyrinthine path of my own curiosity. In part that was kicked along by my reading material, but the recent events in my life at that time added some extra spice - though my inquiries were never less than objective. It might seem odd, but it is at times like those when I feel myself most fully (which is different to 'most like myself', which generally is the case when I'm travelling).

This year I'm hoping for something similar. I have a bunch of books to read. I hope to do some writing. I'll do a bit of cooking. I may pop down to the MCG tomorrow to catch a bit of the test match; and on Monday I might trundle into town for an hour or so to check out the sales and get some fresh coffee. My ambitions extend no further than that - and that makes me perfectly happy.

Christmas eve: what is it good for?

Even after all these years I don’t know what to make of Christmas Eve.
 
I don’t mind being at work on the day. There’s a festive air and while you work hard for a bit there comes a time when you lay down tools to enjoy the occasion. Some places I’ve been we’ve popped a bottle or two of bubbles, and almost invariably have a Kris Kringle involving a lot of laughter. We always knock off early. All in all it feels like a different, special day.
 
Outside it is all a frenzy as last minute shoppers scour the department stores for the gifts they’ve left too late. Christmas carols play as muzak, Santa’s are to be found all over town, and more than one person is walking around with a set of reindeer ears or red Santa’s hat on their head. It’s all happening but it’s not a bad vibe. Then, sometime in the afternoon it begins to tail off, the shoppers with their newly purchased and wrapped presents head home leaving only the diehards and truly disorganised to wander the increasingly deserted streets of the city.
 
This is the bit that I don’t like. At the risk of sounding a bit like Scrooge I find the evening of Christmas Eve boring verging on the depressing. I understand how many people want to spend it with their family, though it’s an urge I’ve never experienced. I do, but in the vacuum it creates is a kind of dead world where those of us more inclined to party find ourselves floundering. Left without options you flick on the TV to take in the viewing options: a variety of Christmas related films and the inevitable carols by candlelight.
 
Now carols by candlelight are a Melbourne institution. They’re always a very big deal at the Myer Music Bowl, a great venue, and generally the performers are pretty good to childish. It’s not my thing though. I find it hard to be critical, but the fact is that nothing is more certain of making me miserable than watching them. It’s strange because my Dad, a tough old boot if ever there was one, swears by them and wouldn’t miss them. For him it’s part of his Christmas tradition. For me avoiding them is a big part of my Christmas tradition.
 
I'm half inclined to venture into town and start the seasons celebrations with a backpacker or two, but chances are instead I'll be home with Rigby, just the two of us.  Maybe we’ll watch a slasher movie together.
 
Speaking of festive airs, this place where I’m working right now really gets into it. You have to admit that they’re a pretty generous and warm-hearted joint. A few days after I began everyone in the organisation got a beach themed hamper, worth a couple of hundred dollars I would tip – including me. In my time here they’ve had several themed presentations and get-togethers, and as I write this the kids of the people working here are in the cafe enjoying party pies, fruit and the entertainment provided by a few lissom Santa helpers in red outfits singing along to the brightly garish Christmas songs. And as I write Santa has just arrived to great acclaim. I’m not sure if that’s a job I’d fancy – I’d be frazzled in no time – but it’s great to see a corporation take the time to give something back to their staff and their families.

Fading honour

I’m standing at a tram stop at about 7 last night waiting for the tram to come rattling down the road. I’m listening to my iPhone, a playlist that includes Under the Milky Way, Monkey’s Gone to Heaven and Love My Way. It’s not cold, but the sky is dim and pregnant with rain. It had rained all afternoon, heavily at times, and walking home I had been caught in it so that my suit became a shapeless, soggy mess and my hair thick and tangled. For now though the rain has paused.

The tram comes along. I board, buy my ticket, and take seat. I am weary but somehow refreshed from a hot shower and a change of clothes. I listen to my music and peer out the window. I am afraid of being late, but should know better but to worry. I am 5 minutes later than I had planned – late for me – but Donna is her standard 20 minutes behind schedule. I stand in Flinders Lane outside the restaurant waiting for her, before directing her to the car park next door.

We sit and order a glass of bubbles each. This is one of the best restaurants in town, and this is our little Christmas celebration. The surroundings are elegant, the service cool and efficient. After some debate between us we order our respective meals and order some wine. We chat about the most recent things, my job, the little escapades I’ve been on, her new landscaped garden, a restaurant she went to. The food arrives, entree, gnocchi for her, stuffed zucchini leaves for me. Both are good, mine delicately constructed and full of flavour. Then our mains arrive, duck for Donna, and roast chicken for me. The chicken is good, but the Asian inspired sauce a little sweet for my palate (I have a sweet tooth, but like my savoury dishes to be savoury).

We have more wine, cast an eye about the room, speculate whether the two darked haired women along the way are lesbian. Down the end is a beautifully dressed old man, a gentleman of the old school, suit and regimental tie. Sitting with him is a tanned woman of about 25 dressed in a frilly dress, her blonde tresses tumbling over her bare shoulders. She looks like Shirley Temple. This starts another conversation, then digresses: do you think people these days know who Shirley Temple is?

As is the theme these days we then start up about Y generation. It seems amazing to me that once more this is being brought up as a topic of conversation – Whisky last Friday, the two women on the nights before, now Donna. The conversations are similar: each profess some bewilderment at the very least, and some disdain at worst. Of course I have an opinion and launch in on that. We order dessert.

Dessert is a wonderful array of sweets. They look beautiful on the plate and taste just as good. This is much more, much better than the usual dessert fare. Both of us fall into raptures. I sip a dessert wine, an excellent Italian soave.

The conversation shifts a few degrees. We find ourselves talking about the recent police crackdown in the city and Donna mentions, as she has many times before, how she worries about me in the city late at night. She thinks I am the assertive type, not inclined to let things go, ripe for fronting up and being set upon, and she tells me a story.

She tells me of a male acquaintance of hers, someone she has mentioned a few times before. He is a lovely man she says, considerate, confident much like you, assertive also though not as much as you. She told me how she had received news of him the day before. He had been in South Melbourne over the weekend with a friend of his, an off-duty cop. They had left a pub and were out in the street where they witnessed a young couple hail a cab. As they are about to get in a gang comes up to them trying to claim the taxi. A melee ensues in which the male is struck and the woman has her head slammed into the boot of the car. Seeing this the two men run to their aid, but as seems to be normal these days are king hit from behind and then kicked mercilessly as they fall to the ground. He is now in hospital, several bones broken and his eye half out of his head. A proud, good looking man he will need plastic surgery and refuses visitors. He does not want anyone to see him like this.

It’s a shocking story, but you hear stories like this more often these days. We puzzled over it, Donna and I, what honour there is in ganging up on people, in hitting them from behind. None, but honour now is an archaic concept.

This is what she worries will happen to me some day. But what are you supposed to do? I asked. They did the right thing. People were in trouble and they went to help them. Yes, she knew that, but perhaps the times are that one becomes more prudent. But that’s the end of civilisation I said in different words to that. The day we stop doing the right thing is the day our society is in terminal decline. Yes, that’s true, she understood that. But what do you do? I know it’s tough for your friend I said, but I hope in the wash-up he has no regrets at his action. All the while I’m imagining myself in the same situation. I know I wouldn’t even stop to think. Past experience has told me my body would take over, I would react and step in. None of my friends would do anything different.

I fear the direction society is heading and blame my generation for it. We have let too much go, been lax when we should have been harder. It’s ironic that my generation – generally a tougher, more independent, more self-reliant generation – should have failed for being too soft. This is a conversation for another time, but increasingly I have a sour taste in my mouth at the direction things are heading.

Whisky said on Friday night that we were born 20 years too late. Maybe. My life is good, I am happy, but I fear the day will come when I will want nothing more to do with the society I am part of. Well maybe that’s overstating it, and maybe this is normal for one generation looking over their shoulder at the next one coming along. Yet it’s hard not to believe that for all the great advances and relative prosperity that in some aspects things have never been worse. I trust this is a passing phase that will be corrected, otherwise I’ll truly become an old fogey and grumpy old man.

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Has this happened to you? It hasn't to me, not in the way that's described in this piece, but I can understand it. It's a sign of the times, times that have become more casual and less formal, more laid-back and less structured. Is that a good or bad thing?

It's both in different ways I think. I miss some of the more formal rituals that my parents generation shared, even if they were wild in other ways. I've experienced enough of those rituals myself to know the pleasure they bestow among the recipients of them. One of the things we have lost is the sense of occasion, and because of that it's a great pleasure to actually indulge by dressing up and making a big deal of it when the random opportunity presents itself.

Casual makes things easy though - possibly too much so. I know I invariably head out in a pair of good jeans, a nice shirt, and a sports jacket as the occasional concession to respectability. Because there are so many more options these days and, I suspect, we are a much more social generation (that's gen X), those 'occasions' are integrated into our normal life. They're fun, but they're no longer special.

Still, I think, there are standards. I had a big birthday party a few years back and went all out. I hired out the upstairs function room of a cool restaurant in Greville Street. There were drinks on tap and food laid on; I got WEG along to draw one of his famous caricatures for whoever wanted one, and even got a girl jumping out of the cake - something I'd always wanted. It was a great night and paid for every cent of it - as it should be.

There is another grey area which is very common these days: restaurant bills. Do you apportion them out evenly amongst the company, or do you all get your calculator out and tally up your contribution? In my group we normally do the first, though there are some obvious inequities in that.

Wine often makes up a good portion of a bill, yet there are people who don't drink, or hardly at all. Is it fair for them to subsidise another? I think that depends on how you look upon it. If you look at it as a contribution to the occasion as a whole then that's perfectly fair; but if looked upon as payment for consumption then clearly it's not.

I went to the George last Friday night for a birthday dinner. Entrees were shared, with platters placed the length of the table to help yourself. Now I'm allergic to seafood and all but one of the plates were from the ocean. I managed a small bite and went hungry while everybody else feasted. Should I have paid for that?

I did, and without complaint. It is what it is, and ultimately it's all swings and roundabouts. We may sling a non-drinker a $20 refund on the bill occasionally, but the reality is that more often than not it evens itself out. And for the cost you get the great pleasure of sharing good times with your friends. I can't complain at that.

Googling me

On a whim I did a google search on my name. Of the results probably ten were related to me. They picked up my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and found a few articles I have had published. One of the odder results was a link to a book of records an old school friend had kept and put online. I was glad to see that I still hold two records: for memorising pi to 150 decimal places (actually 155), and for stool holding, which is 5 minutes.

There was one result that seemed familiar even though I couldn't recall it. When I clicked on it I found it was for another person with the same name as me. What was strange is that he has the same, non-name related, nick-name. What are the odds of that?

The flight of Icarus

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It was not so long ago that I was beginning to think of myself a bit like Icarus. Icarus, if you remember, is the character from Greek mythology who flies too close to the sun despite the warnings of his father, and plunges to his death as the wax in his wings melt. It's a really good story, and very much a story with a message.

It was only 2 weeks ago that I drifted around Toorak shopping centre wondering if there was something I should be learning. Being in Toorak was significant. For many years I lived a stone's throw away, and knew the place like the back of my hand. I looked at the familiar, poked my head inside shops, browsed the newsagents wondering, where did it go wrong? Was it still right here? Where did I take the wrong turn?

I felt chastened. Icarus came naturally to mind as a like figure, not just for me but friends of mine once high flying now earthbound. Did I take it for granted? Did I expect it ever to be so? Yes, probably I did. Was I arrogant? I baulked at that. It was hard not to feel that we were paying for our collective hubris, yet I could not detail what that hubris was. Perhaps I was careless, but I was never arrogant.

Yet there I was, questioning, a little lost, like my friends the CFO's of yesterday, the FC's, wondering how this could be and what would come of it. I remember that day entering a deli and being greeted by the French couple running it. She was a vivacious, lively woman and we engaged in banter. She made me a coffee. We talked some more. It came out easily and well, almost too much so. Even as I spoke and smiled and browsed the shelves and sipped the coffee she had made me my mind was fixed on this one thing. I felt like I had lost. I had played, had won for a long time, but ultimately lost.

I was not bitter. I could laugh after all with the French lady. And I knew no matter how bleak things appeared it was not the end of it: the sun would rise again on the morrow, I would get another chance to play. Yet I wondered if it would be for the same stakes as before. In a sense that seemed a very true metaphor. I had spent most of my recent life playing at the big table; now I had lost my stake and had too little to buy in. Now I could only watch.

There is little sense in dwelling upon the bleak reality; just as there is little sense in avoiding it. Pragmatic but positive is the way to be, and thankfully that is my default setting - with a dash of the intense. I wondered if I would ever reclaim my place. I wanted to, if only to prove that I could. And in all honesty I hate being a supplicant, and I passionately dislike not having control over my life.

There was a larger question I asked of myself though. It is characteristic of my personality and my outlook that I pondered if there was a deeper meaning to all this. My friends in similar positions shrugged their shoulders; I had to know. I had got past the earlier reflex questions, but at the same time I wondered if in the sequence of events there was not a message for me. Most particularly I wondered if I should change my ways - strive less, expect less, lower my ambitions, live smaller. Had I, like Icarus, overestimated my own ability? Need I fly lower, be safer?

You have no idea how difficult these questions are for me to deal with. It goes against the grain to conform to some standard: that's not who I want to be. And while I admit to being ambitious and aggressive and yes, ruthless occasionally, I have always sought to be decent and honest. I believe I am a kind and compassionate man and I am happy to be that. I would be gentler if I could be, but I think I am gentler than most. So...

Where I outreached myself was in how I began to 'value' what was good and not so good in my life. I strayed from the values inside me to more conventional and materialistic values without. I have never been one to judge myself on what I have done, more how I have done it. I lost some sight of that, much as I described a few weeks back. Well, that was settled, perhaps, but what of the larger question?

A man can't be happy unless he is true to himself. It's a simple axiom but very true - and often overlooked. It's not the secret to happiness - happiness comes in many guises - but it's certain that happiness cannot exist unless one accepts that self inside.

I'm a gambler, that's my personality. I play poker and I'm a bluffer. I've spent a career defying my credentials to climb to heights I don't belong. I always go for the high risk/return option with my investments. I prefer movement to stability. I like change, mostly, and enjoy challenging the status quo. I want to push and to agitate and to apply my might, I want to be used, filled, want to be involved because to be involved is to feel alive. I want to challenge the boundaries and go by them. This is who I am. For fucks sake, I'm Icarus, and if my destiny is to go down in flames then so be it. The only way you'll discover what is possible is by testing it. That's who I am, that's who I want to be - and I guess I get to fly.

What I'm saying is being safe and conservative is not who I am, and not who I'm meant to be. I'm not crazy, I'm not about to fly into the sun to prove a point. I'm a smart man. I'll measure, I'll calculate, I'll assess, and then I'll opt for the choice which seems most fun - invariable the edgier option. So be it. I'm too old to change now, and too grumpy to try it.

That's where I am. I'm sure, for what it's worth, that I will get all the way back, and beyond. I've lost a lot, but there's no value in thinking on that - better to focus on what can be won. I believe in karma, in everything evening out within the space of a few lifetimes, I believe the wheel turns eternally and that if you're tough enough to hang in there it'll turn for you.

Too soon to say, and many years and mysteries before me, but in the last few weeks it has begun to turn. True to my spirit I went hard, double or nothing, and I look like doubling, touch wood. And from having no choices I now seem to have a plenitude of them. The trick now is to respect them, and not take them for granted. Still a long journey ahead.

Preponing

Fong has been in India on holiday. I'm sitting on my couch before watching 30 Rock when my phone beeps at me. It's Fong. I've been preponed she tells me. Preponed? What's that? Well apparently preponed is the opposite of postponed, which sort of makes sense except as a concept I didn't know it existed. Which it doesn't really, except in India, where it happens regularly.

So Fong explains, she was due to be coming home and she got told she had to come to the airport early to catch her flight. Isn't that just an earlier flight? No, it's not. She's been preponed.

I mean really, this is silly. And it would piss you off. You're having a long breakfast when you get the call. Or maybe you have a day planned at the Taj Mahal. Or perhaps you've already paid for your accommodation for another night. Then bang, shazam, you've been preponed.

I can't approve of this. Fong, who is a prickly type, seemed pretty cool with it, but that could be just India. Don't quote me, but India is one of those places that wears you out. It's an assault on every sense, and very little is comfortable or easy. Leave early? Yeah alright.

Preponed. Strange. Sounds very Indian.

Resisting the Sirens

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There are occasions on these pages where you'll see an internal debate take shape. Generally it starts with an exasperated rant as the pendulum reaches its apex. What the fuck is all this about, and why, seems to be the general tenor of the outburst. What was accepted previously is now questioned, and the whole basis of my lifestyle is scrutinised.

It may seem a little bi-polar, but in fact despite the occasional sharp tone the process is reasonably measured, and follows a familiar pattern. I rant and then I settle, recognising that in the rant there are some kernels of insight worth following up. By now I am completely calm, the frustration that led to the rant now burnt out in much the same way as a match momentarily fizzles when first struck.

I turn my mind to the issue. As much as I think it through I feel a kind of truth in my gut. This is what I feel, now, how do I justify it? As it turns out that is rarely difficult. Step by step I develop an answer, an explanation more correctly, building a bridge then between what I think and what I feel. What then?

If there is anything untoward about the process it is that it must be repeated again and again. Much as I would like to settle on the one true way and stick to it I know that's not who I am. Besides, is there one true way? All my life I have veered between two poles, from indulgent excess to high minded asceticism. It may seem more sensible to average them out and travel down the middle road, but that seems not to be my style - and I'm glad of it. I'm not a man of wild extremes - there is always a mind watching, ticking over - but I think these extremes are necessary to my development as a human being, to my perception of the world and ultimately, perhaps, to my art.

As of last night my stomach has turned against the sensual, Rabelaisian lifestyle I have been indulging in lately. My 'self' looks in another direction, turning from the obvious pleasures of the flesh and the senses to the pleasures of the mind. There is nothing inherently wrong in enjoying good food and wine at fine restaurants; nothing wrong in partying with my friends; and not necessarily bad to aspire to nice things, a shiny new car, a flash flat screen TV - yet now I can look past these things and realise it is not enough.

I believe in living fully, and in the ideal life that would be giving every sense and inclination an equal go. I would enjoy all the good things in the right perspective, whilst equally following the lead my mind takes, searching, exploring, looking to understand. As I write this I wonder if I have been a little harsh on myself - I don't ever seem to disavow that need for enquiry no matter how self-indulgent I become, and yet I know I am not wrong. The balance is thrown out, I live out of kilter.

There are two Roman schools of philosophy that I have long felt some kinship to: the epicurean and the stoic. Their labels are revealing. I have a great affinity to the epicurean lifestyle, to the good things that life provides. I believe they should be enjoyed, even in my most stoic moments. In fact that is what prevents me from describing myself as a stoic. I see little sense in renouncing what is good in the service of a rigorous philosophy, yet I see a lot of the stoic in me, in how I view the world, in what I believe. I am neither, or both, and see the difference between them that being an epicurean is a way of life, while to be a stoic is a way of being.

And so we come to last night and this morning. Last night I ranted. I thought about it overnight. This morning I have concluded. There was much in the wild thoughts I flung out that had some merit. I am not about to live on a commune or to renounce anything, yet the thrust of my rant was revealing. In a superficial way you could say that Mammon had me in her thrall for a while, in how I lived, in what I desired. This is not the first time (nor likely the last). Deep down I knew there was something not right. This was not who I wanted to be. I had fallen into a groove like on a record and like on a record I would go round and round without getting anywhere unless I made a change.

As I say, I'm not about to change my life radically, though I am happy to live more quietly for a while. More to the point I want to live closer to what is true to me. I have to question my motives and return to what is right for me as a human being. It is very easy to be seduced by the call of the Sirens: this is what you can be, this is what you should be. I have heard their song and found myself drifting towards them. Vanity and ambition are fine in small parts, but they should never be the overweening purpose of your existence. There is more, and much more inside than out to be discovered if we close our ears to the Siren's call.

What is right for me can only be decided by me, not by society or peer group pressure or heady ambition; and only by looking deep inside myself can I recognise the truth. This is what I've failed to do: I look too shallowly. Ultimately there is a deeper and more substantial meaning to all of our lives that if we are true to leads to happiness. I know that makes me sound like a Pollyanna, but I believe it to be true. The trick is to recognise that meaning, and to stay close to it - the toughest challenge of all.

Hotly reckless and wild at heart

It's a hot night and I'm in one of those moods I feel like doing something dangerous. Not dangerous dangerous, more dangerous reckless. Toss everything in. Go live on a commune. Run off with the girl I dream about but never speak of. Shoulder a backpack again and head off once more for parts unknown. Forget the career, become a writer. And so on.

Moments of clarity like this soon pass, don't worry. I'll be back on the treadmill again tomorrow.

Hot in November

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Another warm day in the middle of a warm week. I have meetings out this afternoon, necessitating suit and tie, not to mention a formal demeanour. Great nuisance in weather like this, and with the air-con in the car not working (hopefully collect the new car tomorrow).

It seems odd to have such a chunk of warm weather this early in the season. Random days here and there are no issue, but a week of weather in the low to mid-30's is unusual, and does not bode well for a mild summer. In fact I'm beginning to believe mild summers might be a thing of the past. Everyone is on tenterhooks after the bushfires last season, and the reality is that we'll likely have many more scorching days ahead of us and dire risk of further great conflagrations.

I know there are global warming sceptics, but my own experience leaves me in little doubt. Every summer is hotter than the summer before, and to compare today to 20 years ago when I was a kid is to compare two very different things. Now, in early-November, the still, hot summer days we know so well are upon us, and will likely be here until well into March.

What's strange about this spate of weather, though entirely in character with Melbourne's quirky weather patterns, is that there has been no real transition. We've jumped from days of 21 or 22 to temperatures from 29 into the mid-30's. No incremental increase, no pleasant 25, 26 degree days on the way through, it's bang!, mild then hot.