Snow in Novvy Urengoy

It's snowing in Novvy Urengoy. Under the cover of darkness a man is coming home, carrying a pot his colleague's wife threw away. There's vodka on his breath, but no-one will mind. He is thinking that he should have washed the sheets.

Imagine yourself there.

Now imagine you're in Algiers. It's hot, but raining. It never rains. I'm there too. I'm shaving, carefully. The door to the bathroom is open wide, and there's still steam escaping out into the bedroom. There's a girl in my bed, asleep. I can see her shoulderblade in the mirror, and I can hear the rain on the tiles outside. I won't leave.

In a while, you'll imagine you're somewhere else. They always do.

I think: somewhere, right now, someone is warming their hands on a fire, and someone else just threw off their doona and leapt from their mattress hopping around like the carpet was full of needles.

I think: I could fall in love with someone who is making love right now to someone else.

And she is thinking: Everything I wanted will come true if I just try hard enough.

I guess there would be about 15 million office blocks in the world. How many of them are absolutely empty right now? In Calafate, there are only seven office blocks. All of them are empty of people, except one, which is full of a woman crying in the stairwell. She is not dressed in a suit. She has a t-shirt on, and it says "la vida es llena con sorpresas". Outside the building, a car chokes cloudy fumes into the cold air. The door is open, and the driver is staring straight at the dashboard, which says 237,664km. He's thinking: I could have driven from here all the way around the world six times.

None of the billions of crabs in the ocean, or any hiding under rocks on the beach, are thinking these things. Nor are any of the babies in baby-containers or wadded in blankets or lying like upside down millipedes.

One baby is naked. He is cold. He can see out the window, and he can see stars. Millions of them. He doesn't know they're stars. I'd like to tell him that stars are holes in a blanket that covers the world, that we can see through to the other side. While he'd still believe me.

The Last Man of the 21st

Amidst the crowd the medals shone in the crisp Melbourne sun. The air was bright and thin. The sky seemed so far away. We felt small, but safe.

I saw the banner, handmade, supported by strong young men in suits standing like flagpoles. There I found the last man of the 21st battalion. He didn't look like a man who'd been sent to kill other men.

Back in Bandaneira, another old-timer told me he remembered the Australians. He laughed, remembering how the Japanese had run for cover when the planes flew over. He gripped my hands, his leathery fingers surprisingly strong, and thanked me. Makasih ya... Our eyes watered.

So standing on Flinders Street, I told the last man of the 21st about his Indonesian comrade, and about the manicured lawns of the cemetery in Ambon where his other comrades lay. When the band started up, his banner started moving and he went to join the parade.

I weaved my way through the crowds to the shrine, and then on home past footy fans in red white and black drinking beer on the lawns of the MCG.

Music

I need more music in my life.

Gazing at the sun

Gazing at the sun. We people love it. Kick back on the beach grasping a cold beer, toes in the warm sand, grilled fish on its way, golden rays on the water, Manu Chao on the air. We're compelled by the colours. We can't help staring straight at that fiery ball as it gets bigger and redder and slips off the edge of the earth. You can imagine our most ancient, primitive ancestors doing the same thing. It's like our bodies know that ball of flame disappearing below the horizon is the source of all life, and we watch it go hoping it will come back.

So why don't we do this when we're NOT on holiday? How many times have you sat and watched the sun set in your home town? Could our failure to watch the sunset be the source of all the melancholy of routine life?

In my town, the dying red streaks of sunlight hit a glass telephone box that contained a man. He was describing the immaculately paved street, the neatly cut grass on the sidewalk and the water trickling neatly down the gutters. He was a Chinese man. The plastic receiver connected to wires that ran deep underground and underwater, past the bay and beyond the setting sun. I ran past the telephone box, breathing hard and blinking sweat and sunlight.

The stab of sadness

The stab of sadness, felt right under the heart.

It's a lonely kind of sadness, just yours. It's the type you know can't be fixed. It's human.

Words

What I want to know is what motivates a person to spend their life finding and describing as many words as possible to make into a dictionary. I mean, we need people like this, right? But you wouldn't want to be friends with one... What does that mean for human society? How many dull but very useful (in a generational, developmental sense) people are discouraged from following their passion for improving the ball-point system of pens or perfecting the flush systems on toilets, just because it won't get them a girlfriend? How much unexplored potential are we losing???

Masai Warriors

A group of Masai warriors just ran the London marathon carrying massive leather shields, staffs and shoes made of old tires. I just ran 9 km in New Balance runners and Nike shorts and I'm stuffed.

Yesterday I was thinking about dumb people.

Given that these people exist, and seem to make up a good proportion of the world's population, how can we deal with them?

Here's my advice. You have to accept that they exist. Don't get disappointed every time you meet one in the street, see one on the news, or drive past one bashing another in the face in front of a pub you'd never go into. They are there, and they always will be.

Accept that you can't change all of these people. You probably can't even change more than one or two. People change incrementally, over many many years, and not much.

It is important for smart people and principled people to recognise how many dumb and unprincipled people there are running things: governments, companies, local sports clubs, families etc etc. It is important because smart and principled people need to start running things too, instead of just sitting around writing blogs, browsing new cafes and bars, and pondering things. Ok?

Middle-class guilt

Middle-class guilt. Doesn't last long.

America's relations with Iran. Probably the biggest fuckup in American foreign policy. It does defy belief that such a seemingly successful nation could produce such criminally incompetent or (if you take the less benevolent view) machiavellian leadership.

Chinese martial arts films and calligraphy. I just watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The aesthetics are stunning (not as beautiful as Hero).

Giving expert testimony. Must make you feel really smart.