Best Before

I was on a first date the other day. We'd chatted for ages on dating apps etc and, well, you know how it is; people are busy and calendars are hard to align and, well, if you're not really sure or feeling a bit stretched... it had been years of chatting, quiet admiration, and unspoken expectation. The date was great. A lovely, summery, January day. We had lunch. He was clever, compact, charming, considerate, cheeky. And that's only the 'c's. The other letters were just as good. We clicked. An instant connection.

Ideal really. There was one downside though. Just one. It emerged towards the end of the date. Just one downside, but it was a biggie. He was poised to leave the country. Permanently. Or for years at least. Off on an adventure. July at the earliest, but more likely October. In other words, he had a "use-by date". A "best before".

Ok. Deep. Breaths.

And then the most unexpected thing happened. The connection deepened. We could let down the firewalls, lower the drawbridges, send home the guards. There was no need for barriers. This was zero risk. Breach the walls, have the keep. Our levels of intimacy skyrocketed. We could share and be vulnerable. It wasn't an investment any longer - no need for compound interest. It was a holiday bromance, but in our own town, with our familiar settings and comforts. A feast to be consumed, not a harvest to be extended. We went to movies, the theatre, dinners, camping, and quiet nights in. No need for family introductions and getting on with friends. And it was good. Or so I thought.

Until one day, at the end of May. You're probably thinking it was the departure day. That the use by date had arrived. No, it was much worse. We were at the beach. He said that he had started to develop feelings for me. "What" I said. "But you can't be! That's not what we agreed. You're going away! You can't be doing that". It was a breach of contract! Accidentally in love.

Arguably I think we only ever really fall in love accidentally. It can be a very painfully transient thing. “But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember” says Gotye. Real love, the best love, sneaks up on you and you're gone before you can escape. Stitched up. But this? This was a Kobayashi Maru. A no-win situation. Stay here with me and abandon your dreams? Fall for him and abandon my heart as he abandons the country. It collapsed. Perhaps we'll be friends. Another one that got away. Perhaps The One, that got away.

I now think that all boyfriends should come with a best before date. It would just save such a lot of angst.

How ironic though, that the use-by date turned out not to be the use-by date.

Indian Summer Haiku

I wrote these Haiku in May 2006. It never ceases to amaze me how the angle of the sun, the smell of the air and the bittersweet fall of summer into autumn into winter always brings me back to that time. My darkest days. The breaking of the world. And beginnings.

Night swimming
sandy salty skin

nestle into warm strong arms

until breakfast kiss.

Winter apart
cold nights warm with dreams

now a chance for men to rest

together apart.

Chris
winter sun bring home

my beautiful traveler

his shoes by my bed.

Pizza night
eyes of sleepy kids

kitchen tables full of kneading

in my heart flowers.

Galacto-intolerance

In Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde writes, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Are you looking at the stars? I don’t mean Beyoncé and Rihanna. I mean the heavens; celestial objects; stars. How long is it since you saw a real life star?

The word galaxy comes from the Greek for milk. Why? Galileo Galilei published his astronomical observations of the skies above Padua in 1610. One of his findings was that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. How could people not know it was made of discrete stellar objects. Did people really think the Milky Way was some kind of aerial fluid? Galileo wrote that the light from the Milky Way was so bright that it cast a shadow on the ground. What if, back then, the light from all those stars was so bright, so solid, it really did resemble a smear of milk? 

Our night skies are now polluted with so much artificial light it has been estimated we are no longer able to see 90 percent of the stars we might once have seen. Our vision is literally clouded with light bouncing back to the ground off our smog and mists.  A particulate reflection of nothing in particular. How ironic that our post enlightenment age has brought darkness to our heavens. A luminous beauty is concealed from us. Our society has made us all galacto-intolerant. A split milk over which we should most definitely cry.

If you want to bask in the natural illumination, you've got to travel to a remote area where the darkness is deeper. Perhaps we all need to find somewhere profoundly dark and distant before we can see clearly again. To lose the reflection of our dissipated energies. And then, some of us can look up and see the stars. Got you lookin' so crazy right now. You and I. You and I, like diamonds in the sky.

Human emulation program 5.0

How would you know if you were an android? I don't mean a dopey "danger Wil Robinson!" clunky, clanky, arm waving robot.  Not even like Commander Data but with a better skin tone.   Or Ripley's synthetic 'friend' Ash. I mean a super sophisticated bio-engineered flesh and blood android.  How would you know?

Would you occasionally struggle with your core programming?  Would your programming feel inadequate to deal with some kinds of human behaviour?

What if you were a spy, left here by an alien civilisation to observe, emulate, and presumably at some stage report back? A sophisticated, interactive CCTV camera. Perhaps you're continuously reporting and not even aware of it. Perhaps the best anthropology is done without violating the prime directive (although as any Trekkie knows there's no such thing as an episode or Star Trek that DOESN'T violate the prime directive).  How would you know?

What would it feel like as you upgraded your human emulation software? When my daughter was very small, we came home to find that our house had been burgled. "Daddy", she asked, "are there bad people living in our world?". Upgrade 1.1 there ARE bad people in our world.  Is grief the sensation of downloading a patch, installing it, and rebooting in safe mode?

Would you laugh at times that seemed to be very different to everyone else? Would things that worry other people simply not be interesting to you? Would you know facts, figures and data and be able to retrieve them much quicker than neurotypicals?

Or do you ever imagine that you were the only human, and everyone else was a flesh and blood android? Like a sophisticated conservation project: a zoo exhibit for human research.

Do you ever ask yourself, "what would a normal human person do in this situation"?

No? Good. Shh! Neither do I. Forget I mentioned it.

What's your superpower

What's your superpower? How would you even know if you had one? Would it come on gradually like baldness or would it be there from birth like an arm? How would you even notice it was there?

My superpower is invisibility. And a wonderful power it is. I can be at work meetings and afterwards people will ask me if I was there. Even if I spoke! A friend recently complained that I wasn't at the pub, but I was standing next to him (and later beating him in a best hairy chest competition, as you do when you're the Bear King, but that's another story).

 

Sometimes it's a bit less convenient though I have to admit. I regularly find automatic doors failing to notice me. I have to wait for someone else to walk through, or wave my arms around until my visibility returns. And people are always bumping into me in the street. I mean, c'mon! It's not as though I'm a sylph of a figure.  Even the kind would describe me as 'well nourished'.

Unfortunately, and this is the real killer, I cannot control when this ability manifests.  Many's the time I would gladly have vanished only to have remained front and centre, even apparently volunteering. And when I most want to be noticed, too often it appears that there is only background. That I have softly and suddenly vanished away.

I recently had to make a public presentation and the host completely forgot I was in the room... or even on the run sheet! Her ditziness or my super-normal abilities? I was amazed.  But this had crossed a line.  Not only was I physically unobservable, but my written name, in her own handwriting, had vanished as well.  How could both have vanished? Which led me to question am I actually invisible, or is my power an ability to block perception? A kind of "these aren't the droids you're looking for" telepathic suggestion. Jedi (for low values of Jedi).

This seems plausible.  Like Douglas Adams' SEP field (the theory of which says more or less, that the technology of actual cloaking devices is so mind-bogglingly complicated that you're better off just painting your space ship hot pink, parking it in plain view, and letting everyone's fragile psychological state decide that it's easier to not notice; that it must be Someone Else's Problem). It also explains why all my clothing would become invisible at the same time as I did (though I must admit I've always found the idea of the invisible man nuding-up kind of erotic, though it must have gotten cold at times). Are all superpowers simply matters of mind over matter? It's a more Tinkerbell model of superpowers: Yes, I DO believe in fairies... therefore I am a fairy? Or a Neil Gaiman American Gods model of divinity. If YOU believe I am invisible perhaps I am. And if YOU believe I can fly perhaps I can too?

So now I guess I need to practice, though without a mentor or an instruction manual it's going to be hit and miss. Seems to work with baldness and arms. Once I do master it though, there will be the most difficult of all questions for emerging supers... Do I use my powers for good, or evil? Or will I just use them for nothing in particular? And what's the difference?

So next time you see me, if I look like I'm concentrating very, very hard, look again. And if I'm not there, feel free to let out a congratulatory cheer.  Or a quiet, "you did it!" and a grope of the air in front of you to land a pat on my back.

T-Rex Hates High-Fives

I bought a great shirt in Macy's that has a picture of two Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs facing each other and the words T-Rex hates high-fives. Think about it. I love wearing it.  It often gets a laugh from people passing me in the street. Sometimes I think they're laughing at me.  Sometimes they probably are.

 

Now there's no evidence in the fossil record that T-Rex ever held business meetings, but look at those tiny arms - they look perfectly evolved for holding a briefcase.  Mobile phones would have been a problem, what with T-Rex ears so high up on their heads, so they must have had Bluetooth and hands free. But what else went on in the lives of T-Rex? What was dinosaur society really like?

Our world is struggling with the greatest problem ever facing mankind - the greatest problem of our age as it has been described. I don't mean programming your video recorder to copy programs from free-to-air or deleting 'friends' off Facebook without them noticing. I'm talking about global warming.  This week, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the remote Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii were the highest ever recorded. Ever. Down here in Sydney we've had 27 consecutive years of it getting hotter and hotter, and the hottest day ever recorded was in January this year. Ever.

The best scientists in the world, in fact, every scientist that isn't paid by an oil, coal or gas company, say that we need to do something about this, and that something we need to do is cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Think about it.  The last time global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  Early dinosaur society clearly must have had a massive CO2 addiction, just like humans. With dinosaurs occupying every ecological niche for more than 180 million years their energy demands must have been phenomenal. Every grain of coal would have been mined to power dinosaur entertainment and air travel. Every drop of oil burnt to transport souvenirs and children's toys from the manufacturing hubs on Laurasia to become landfill in the tech savvy Gondwanaland markets. I have no doubt that dinosaur scientists would have reached the same conclusions as human scientists have 65 million years later: that society must change, that we must do more with less, and that we must move to a low carbon economy.

We should take a lesson from the dinosaurs. While the Jurassic and Triassic periods were marked by rampant capitalism and out of control consumption of resources, the Cretaceous was a golden age of sustainability. Cretaceous dinosaurs embraced low carbon, sustainable society.  Solar thermal, wind and other renewables powered their smart phones and tablets. Over the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous steel and concrete infrastructure of the great Triassic dinosaur cities was replaced by renewable bamboo, rubber and plant fibre technologies. Local production was favoured, helped by the breaking of Pangaea into smaller land masses. Clean-up of old contamination was complete. And  massive reforestation was undertaken on a global scale.  Even Antarctica was forested, as part of the planet's largest ever carbon sequestration project.  How ironic that these have become the coal and oil fields of the human age. The dinosaurs must be horrified. Turning in their fossilised graves.

Yes, the dinosaurs finally succeeded in tackling climate change.  It was a magnificent achievement, unprecedented in the history of the planet. Dinosaur society achieved a nirvana of sustainability. Completely biodegradable. It touched the Earth lightly.  So lightly in fact that not a trace of it remains today.

And 65 million years ago, as the planet's thermostat returned to normal, and the hazy, humid, skies cleared at last so that the stars finally shone again on the surface of the Earth, the first dinosaur astronomers since the early Jurassic began to peer out into the heavens, and finally noticed a large approaching rock.  That's the other reason T-Rexs don't high-five.

World peace, and such...

Bears are all about inclusivity. This time last year I sat in my wrestling singlet tuning my ukulele in the dressing room of the Oxford Hotel, crammed into the tiny space with four other wonderful guys in various states of undress and nerves. Mr Harbour City Bears 2012 competition was in full swing. 

It’s a hard thing sometimes to be yourself. Some people struggle with it their whole lives. I have certainly had my battles with authenticity. That night all five of us were just that – ourselves. Naked on stage, if you will, whether or not we were actually wearing clothes (which was debatable at various stages during the evening as those in the audience can testify). Strange that it should somehow be easier to be yourself in front of a beary, beery, crowd of 200 plus. Or that it should be a strangely personal thing.

Some people complain that the Mr Bear comp is nothing more than a beauty pageant. I’m immensely flattered. (Having won, do they seriously expect me to disagree?) 

So have I achieved world peace? No. Why would anyone expect that? Has the world changed? Yes. Not in a way that history will really remember, but in quiet, important ways. In hundreds of small conversations with other average blokes like me, struggling at times with being themselves. In deep conversations with friends in the midst of depression or addiction. And in interactions, laughs and the occasional pash with acquaintances. And I hope that for a whole heap of strangers, or “friends I haven’t met” as Bert and Ernie would sing, something very important: someone they might not know but might recognise, an ageing bloke, with some grey in his beard and a few extra kilos, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks. And if they are struggling 
with being themselves, like I was, they can see options, and maybe a brighter future. 

Because there is nothing like that feeling of belonging you get from turning the corner into Oxford Street on Mardi Gras evening, with 140 of your mates in the Harbour City Bears float, and seeing the streets packed with cheering spectators; from opening the text message from your mum and dad, wishing you a “great parade and an awesome afterparty”; and when your son tells you the next week, when you pick him up from 
primary school, that his friends told him they were at the parade, and saw “your dad, the Bear King”. If I were to try and condense all of that into a single thought, it might be that even with the benefit of hindsight – ahh, hindsight – if you’ve taken a few wrong turns here and there, and missed a few miles of road you should’ve seen, it’s never too late. You’re not alone. And you have friends and a community. 

Like US presidents, former Mr Bears retain the title for life. Just ask George or Jason or the other one (love your work, Justin). There’s plenty more to do, personally and for the community, so it won’t be the last you’ll see of me. Clearly world peace takes longer than just one year. But as the outgoing PM sings in Keating! The Musical “...though it seems like half an hour since I stumbled into power, it’s time for me to say goodnight”. Maybe it’s time to bust out that number on the uke. 

It’s been a blast, fellas, and I can’t thank you enough for a truly amazing year. In a couple more months I’ll hand over the Mr Australasia title, but for now: the Bear King of Sydney is dead — long live the Bear King!