The Girls in Brisbane

Some shorter and longer anecdotes from our trip to Brisbane:

 Sunday.  No appetite but navigating Brissy seems Sinch.  Warm day, bed and book- just perfect :)

Monday.  Lounging in deck chairs surrounded by that humid spring heat watching the rainbow playground clamber over the soft fall.  Fake beach a solid mirage amidst the city.  Skyline BRISBANE Skyline.  Yummy all day breakfast omelette 7.50.  Thongs digging into my feet.  :D ^.^ :P

Tuesday.  Getting lost in the car. Griffith uni.  City cat 33 degrees, 3 hours, putting me to sleep.  Appetite :) kebab $4 at West End

Wednesday.  The queen street mall and we're hummingbird shopping. Our eyes flit from store to store and we walking but never stopping.  Aromas of at least seven kingdoms in a marvelous food market- a bubbling yummy concoction that's too hot to touch.  

South bank is just as lesuirely as always; like a cool breath upon a harried soul.  Even though my feet feel like over grilled fish we meander through QAG(the art gallery) until my eyes are permanently wide and my elbow are getting cold from the air conditioning.  At night we experience some night life on boundary street at the beach burrito.  Warm air and frozen margaritas, that's the life.

Thursday.

Busy streets, to a gigantum Moreton Bay, whipped green toilet water rising beach less towards us in the most disturbing fashion.  A cute water park; slides and mushrooms. 

Hell in circles past Roma Street and all I wanted to do was get out and take a picture of the spectacular blue storm clouds behind the sky scrapers and cathedrals.  Unnatural as though it was trying to pass for a cloudless sky to those city dwellers so focused on their work.  And still it was dark as though you could fall through it into some new dimension.  Stuck yet as the rain begins on the right side of the river traffic jams hard, all the cogs locked into stasis.  An object slams my window and turning I watch splinters of white dart away.  The size of my fist shattering a second time on the black road.  White ice.  A rageful motorist launching their fury off the bridge above at me.  Or not I find mere minutes later.

Smashing onto my side of the car is everything mother nature can throw.  Fist sized balls of ice sound like viking hammers.  Thrashing trees and twigs thwack the windscreen.  Rain sloshes and splashes on every side. Stuck still.  Red brake lights sneer at me through a wall of Grey and we might as well be stuck in a cyclone.  A tiny tin car, fragile glass windows just being hammered by divine fury.  Please don't break.  Please don't break.  Please.  Its not like I can hear anything over the storm.  Can't go forwards, can't go backwards, no way to go around.  My sister almost two in the backseat awoke in terror.  I masked my panic and helplessness with those reassuring adult smiles that lie and lie and lie.  There was nothing more to do.

Like countless others even as the storm eased we were blown off course, battered driftwood far from home.  You're always told: "Don't drive through floodwaters" but we had nowhere else to go.  In my mind I replayed images of dirty rvers in the road just like that one about those cars that rose u predictably.  A branch like that once carried on the flood or one larger, dangerous half a tree swept down to pummel the exhausted refugees.  Finally, tsunami, flood or cyclone I used to watch cars picked up like toy boats sickenly turning upon their side, or drowned under in waters to unknowable to fear.    The fuel light again shone.  My eyes were skewered when I glanced right, the shattered shards of the plastic window guard crushed beneath its onslaught.

Perhaps chaos could describe what we saw through the dropping rain.  The trees had to have been  savaged to provide such a litter along the streets.   A tin shed and a corrigated patio- one slumped exhausted on the path and the second a twisted traffic stop.  But over the panic that fluttered every heart - why what had occured- a steely layer of boredom grew at the unmoved tail lights before me.  Stuck somewhere new but stuck fast, not even the rain left to convince you that peak hour requires patience.

Is there anything that can make you feel better after such an experience?  Strangely the devastation around us.  We pass into a new street and there a typical two storey hotel faces mournfully south.  The top floor windows smashed right in.  One two three four five six.  Busted blank holes.  And its not the only one. We pick them here there and everywhere, glass joining the leaves upon the street.

To the north the clouds are angelic.  The fluff and catch the last of the sun, rimming a perfect blue.  A tease.  Then south that steel grey sheeted the sky still in warning.  Go home it screamed while you can.

Then.  Blackout across eighty two thousand homes.  The city still burns over the river, painting the night sky red.  Top side of the street well light, packed with hungry people with no way to cook for themselves. And then like a slammed door across the bustling footpath the lights stop.   Supreme darkness has taken the lower end.   There you just glimpse the writhing of bodies.  In the dark they move the same as us.  But it is inky there and so we turn back.  These traffic lights are on, shiny green.  Yah, go!

The Frankenstein Connection: stating obvious of a Comparitive Study

So I've been told that I don't address "form" in my essays. Well here is what I DO know about the difference in form between Frankenstein and Blade Runner.

 It's as simple as this: Frankenstein is a BOOK/ novel/ prose fiction narrative (or however you want to phrase it).  That means that its lots of writing, it isn't poetry and HEADS UP! they didn't have movies in the 18-whenevers (the exact date of which I should look up so that I don't sound this ignorant in my exam).*

So apart from that uber-obvious observation its also written like of collection of letters- which in academic speech in called EPISTOLARY form.

 Why would anyone do something like this? Well not only was Ms Mary Shelly was writing before film, when novels were novel and women writing them was even more so BUT she also knew that "form" would effect the way we think about was she is trying to say.

 Lets examine the effects: because its a book we get lots of detail, lots of language techniques and since good things come in threes lots of references to *cough, cough* important literature. I could evidence these from all through the book but my favourites are these: "the glorious presence chamber of imperial nature" which uses personification and grand connotational adjectives. "they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives and the Sorrows of Werter" where Shelly inserts some books that were really popular at the time into the monster's hands through a random "leather portmanteau" left on the ground. And my favourite of all is that Walton and Frankenstein's plots are parallel with the tragedy of the Ancient Mariner- from a contemporary poem in 1818- and Shelly points it out- "to the "land of mist and snow" but I will kill no albatross."

Now epistolary form (for me, anyway) emphasises the importance of family. Like Walton's whole premise for writing his journey down is to send the account to his sister, even though he is primarily alone and cut off from all family. "Farwell my dear, excellent Margaret." Frankenstein's family likewise reaches out to him through the letters he relates, particularly Elizabeth's after his sickness in Inglostadt. "My Dearest cousin, You have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear kind Henry are not sufficent to reassure me on your account."

Okay now lets look at Blade Runner which is a MOVIE/ film /hollywood blockbuster. That means that its made up of moving pictures, soundtrack and dialogue, visual symbols and mise en scene a word which here refers to the fact that Ridley Scott packed the set full of rubbish (pun intended). So yah! lots of techniques entirely unrelated to books and barely related to words.

So the other "form" things worth mentioning in Blade Runner are related to genre. Neo-noir (literally new black, ironically enough) which is a resurgence of 40's dark detective film styles constantly used in Blade Runner- have look at Deckard's dress and character, or the lighting used Leo's first scene. Scifi- which is mainly in the dystopian future context and the casting of Deckard (Hans Solo anyone?).

You can probably tell that Blade Runner is not my favourite movie but I will give that its COMPLEX. That's all I have to say.

 HP out.


* sorry about that- Mary Shelley first published Frankenstein in 1818.

Where does the classroom belong?

Once upon a time, in a far away land known as junior high school I belonged at the head of the class. Every word that fell from my mouth was a golden apple, every stroke of my pen perfection.   That was before the glass ceiling was installed by the board.

Although looking straight up all that was visible was the epic blue sky, I would glance edgeways and glimpse the true surroundings.  A mesh of greasy metal was creeping up the walls, leaving soot across the carpet.  Gears clicked and grinded their teeth, wires snapped and buzzed and the ceiling began to sink slowly.  

Three grey clouds drifted across our fenstration to the sky.  Depression rained from the first, death from the second and failure from the third.  The patter of the rain's lonesome hands on the ceiling awoke the class from their slumber.   You could see each member lower their head from the sky and stretch.  Each one stared around them in shock, taking in the horror of their new surrounds.  Eyes were rubbed and arms pinched. They lifted their shoes with little sucking noises from the slush of medieval and industrial sludge that had quietly slunk under the door.  The empty space had been filled with the twisted hulks of metal animals, clinging to the chair legs and tables with their claws.

The light had faded amid the rain and we all noticed how close the ceiling had gotten to our heads.   Confusion changed to anger.  Voices raised and fists began to pound upon the glass.   "I don't want to be here" "I hate this," "What did I do wrong?" "Why, why, why?" "Where are you?"  They began to scream although no one could hear them.  

One boy was separate from all the rest.  He was crouched beside a metal beast, so close that his nose brushed the monster's snout.  He stared deep into its glowing red eyes without fear.  The others weren't watching but if they had have they would have seen his watery blue eyes become infected. The rims at first grew redder like he was about to cry.  Then the veins in his eyeballs turned scarlett creeping in to devour the black pit of his pupil.  The beast's dried out skeleton, robotic and half-dead passed its malevolent spark onto the unwary boy, manifesting in the brilliant crimson eyes that looked at the world through a film of blood. 

 The others had worked themselves into a frenzy against the people that kept them there and began to yell more and more illegibly.  The ceiling sunk further.  The sludge rose to clasp their calves.   The boy with the red eyes began to laugh, a sound at once like a tractor and a church bell.  Now it was the machines' turn to awaken.  They yawned in the closing space and began to reach out their fingers to the students, one by one.  

 The slowest was another boy, lanky like a bean sprout, who within seconds had two demon machines with glowing eyes clutching both his legs.  The lanky boy gathered all the paper he could into a bundle and whacked it against the monsters, uselessly.  The others had enough time to chuck him their own paper but even that wasn't enough.  

The girls were huddled on their tables banging their heads against the glass.  They were sure there was sunshine out there.  Some days there were clouds and some days there were none- if only they could escape this mysterious hell they'd found themselves in.   Every inch of effort was put into the glass without a single crack.  Each received a pounding headache and the glass was as firm as a brick wall.  They were all doomed to die where they crouched.

The metal monsters saw their advantage and grasped each child, pulling them down, down, down into the depths of literary history.  Heads arced in the exquisite pain near death, gasping against the toxic sludge for any wisp of oxygen left in their air conditioned classroom.   The red eyed clock on the wall clicked to midnight.

The boy with the red eyes stood suddenly, startling all the beasts, his fist crashing through the glass ceiling, splintering shards like nails into the bodies of his afflicted classmates.  

What should have then happened is thus:  The clouds cleared above their window and the red-eyed boy was lifted like a marionette from the room.  Each student then began to rise, pulled from above out of the sludge.  The metal hands cringed from the light, hiding in the cupboards and cornices where they belonged.  

 But this is really what happened:  The rain had built up upon the ceiling gushed down in a grey tumble of depression, death and failure.  It stole all semblance of breath from the lips of the students and their once-struggling heads disappeared below the dusty water.  

 The red eyed boy who stood in the centre turned to stone with each drop of water that touched him.  A single rubric floated by on the waters.   "An engaging piece..." it dissolved back into the water.

The stone boy over many months grew metal upon his limbs, but he stayed forever looking at the sky.
 And me?  I only belong among the sludge at the bottom of the classroom muck, a slab of rusted metal masking half my face, directing my movements into jerky, ungraceful motions.  The mud of centuries has clustered around me so tightly that I can no longer see the sky that I so wanted to reach. Is this truly our path to freedom?

Inspiring Change: 2014 International Women's Day Breakfast

Is there a story that comes close to your heart? One that when spoken aloud inspires a flame of hope and wonder that will never die?

What about Julia becoming the first female prime minister in Australia; Or Quentin, first female governor general or Catherine Hamlin an Australian obstetrician who started a hospital in Ethiopia for women suffering after childbirth.

Can you guess which story would be closest to my heart? A seventeen year old in Year 12 at _____ High School?

Right at this very moment it’s a twenty dollar note.

If we view this as a symbol woes of everyday life then it’s a common misstep to keep this note close to your heart. To let life make you forget to care for others. To care for the fate of Ethiopian women.

Obviously this doesn't have to be the case. So lets stop looking at this as a symbol: forget what its monetary value happens to be.

It's made of polymer, its red and it has pictures on it. There's a woman. Who is she? How many times have you seen this note and been completely unaware of this story?

Let me take you back in time to the England of 1790 where a girl called Mary Haydock was working for a living in a grammar school. She was thirteen years old and this was the industrial revolution. Eight years ago Mary's parents had died leaving her an orphan without a family.

Even at this age though she was smart. She devised a plan of escape from her servitude. She didn't just waltz out through the gates. She dressed herself as a boy and took on the alias of James Barrow. Disguised thus she escaped the school forever.

Unfortunately, James was captured with a stolen horse and sentenced to death. Our young hero's story would have been forgotten if he'd been hung that day. Instead good fortune looked upon the young boy who was sent to the colony of New South Wales as a convict instead.

Shortly before departure the authorities finally realised that James was female and Mary came to Australia under her original name.

In Australia Mary, grew up, married a young fellow named Thomas Reibey, got his surname and they lived happily ever after. *sigh* I wish. But the world didn't work like that back then; Thomas died just forty-two years old.

Together they had bought a farm and started a shipping line. Now a widow Mary raised their seven children, expanded the shipping business, started investing in real estate across sydney, opened a shop in the rocks and generally went about being a successful business woman.

They say that's why she's on the twenty dollar note. Because she was Australia's first business woman. But I believe it is her whole tremendous story means she deserves to be here.

I've always loved her story: one of cleverness, of daring and resilience. I hope I have learnt these from Mary, my great great great great great great grandmother. You see her story is close to my heart figuratively and literally.

Now you know Mary's story too.  So each time you open your wallet you can think about Mary, the orphan who worked for a living or James the runaway horse thief who nearly hanged or about M. Reibey, Australia's first business woman and her legacy which still shines in our lives today.

Gasping for Breath; for Top Marks

Breathing metaphorically, I feel as though my mind palace is shoved full of things, half squished and cramped up to fit, so that each individual idea is bent beyond recognition. Like so much useless chatter I feel word after word get stuck between my ears in an opaque mess of thought. Question marks, black and red, are scrawled in front of me, hanging from every neuron, so that when I sit at a desk I cannot even see the board in front of me though I push my glasses higher.

Where before I struggled to find something I couldn't ace; these past weeks I just don't know. I can't recall what I know, I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to know and I have no idea what I don't know. Knowledge flees from me as from a burning building. I stare agape as the numbers peel from the page and jig before me in a parody of my dreams.

No sooner have I half figured out a concept, barely had the breath to ask why!?- than the next giant theory is upon me, with half grasped rules. Finish this, finish that, you've got homework to do if you don't. They pile up so that my future is booked to the moon with the things I should have done yesterday. I can barely unstick my mind from its present hurried task to contemplate finding real understanding by revision and study.

If only I had a pet dragon to yell out, "I don't understand!" in order to slow the runaway train that is our maths lessons.

The class' understanding is reminiscent already of the train wreck that our exams will surely be. Our blood will run like sweat as we hunch nervous over the paper and strings of invisible algebra will drift over the hall like motes of dust in the sunlight, called pi, Greek, xylophone and Euler. Stares will blankly examine the log that is now a table before the clocks flies to 2. Mark my numbers this is a torturous blind fold of confusion soaked in chloroform.

Save me before I drown.