perspective

the last few days I have had cherese staying with me. cherese is like a bit of a sister to me; we sharehoused together for a few years in melbourne, at really confusing times in our lives, and though we are completely different people, developed this deep mutual respect (I assume it's mutual anyways). she also happened to spend a chunk of her childhood living in queensland, and some of that on the sunshine coast, so we 'get' eachother in that subtropical kind of way. today we bought the biggest mangoes either of us had ever seen, went to a waterfall, and then euphorically rubbed them all over our pasty freckled bodies. qld

these days I spend so much time alone and happily adrift in the countryside, now with plans to do that in a mobile kind of way, so there is something very grounding about being placed back into some kind of context as a human being. to be reminded of my history, my story. it has been a pretty strange ride. remembering that makes me feel stronger. nine years ago I moved to melbourne with this sense that city life and academia would satiate my anxieties. my biggest lesson, which I am still learning, is that cities blow and that my primary motivation in life is to find that one thing that they can never provide; peace and fucking quiet. you don't satiate anxieties, you only grow them. the only remedy is starvation i.e. simplicity. ofcourse not everyone needs to live in a cabin in the countryside to manifest simplicity - which is excellent because I'd rather everyone stay over there and just sort their shit out in the city - but I do

I'm not sure what this post is even about. basically hanging out with old friends is good and grounding. my trajectory has purpose, if a bit convoluted. it has always been me, trying to find what truly brings my mind peace. it has been confusing but looking back I'm glad I pushed through with my gut instincts, because now I get to live the country dream with complete abandon, no regrets

I suppose it also helps to observe how your mates are just infused with that citylife tension, and be glad that it's them getting on the train/plane back to that, not you...

dreamtime

one of the guys I went to tafe with is a member of this brisbane psych rock band called dreamtime, and just sent me a download code for their new album, strange pleasures. I'd heard about them a few years back but never looked into them much. what an enormous loss. they are next level shamanic lords of the subterranean consciousness, damn. this is this best music I have heard in ages. it is so intelligent and profound, like a cosmic guide leading you through a prehistoric psychedelic ritual, into your soul, out the other side, and off into the lysergic void. amazing

animal testing

today mim showed me a radiolab podcast that she was super excited about, it was about another potential step in the cure for alzheimers. it was pretty cool; apparently flashing lights at the gamma frequency (around 40 flashes per second, associated with higher-order thought) into the eyes of mice for an hour clears away 50% of the beta amyloid build up (for 24 hrs til it builds up again). this seems to allow them to remember stuff better, or something. I dunno. it sounded pretty straight forwards and with real potential for application. but then in the last minute or so of the podcast they casually mentioned that something like 99.6% of all successful mice studies don't end up translating to human subjects. that made me so angry. I've always had a huge problem with animal testing, but had never heard a figure like that before, which showcases just how senseless all this cruelty is. the amount of mice that are electrocuted, infected with viruses, bred to have specific diseases, made cancerous, etc etc etc. all for a 0.4% applicability to humans. and for them to just mention it in passing like it was barely relevant. I'd be interested to know what that figure is for primates, dogs, all the other animals that get abused like this. it is so absurd, so unconscionable

and here they were excitedly yapping away, like as if the deal was almost done. that includes the head researcher. usually it is the media that hypes small, preliminary findings to sound like grand panaceas, but here was the scientist herself (who also happens to be the director of the institute) implying as much. blegh, makes me sick. I mean...I can understand the joy of a positive result, no matter how initial- science is hard- but that 99.6% figure just sets my teeth on edge. I really hope it's not long til we have reliable medical modelling software, so that we can stop being such goddamned monsters

another step stepped

last friday I submitted my last assessment for tafe, and within an hour got an email from the lecturer saying I'd passed everything, i.e. that I now have a diploma of conservation and land management (yae!) it was a surprisingly emotional moment, I felt pretty bewildered and teary. the last few months have been hell and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I only barely made it through. tafe became a bit of burden during that time, but also kept me from dropping off the face of the earth. my classmates were all so goddamned beautiful and inspiring and I always left class glad that it was a part of my life

so there was that, but also there's this profoundly satisfying feeling that I've finally put myself on the right path. I floundered around uni for six years and still had no idea who I was or what I actually deeply valued. after only a year at tafe there seems to be very little doubt left. not necessarily because of the course content or anything, but it happily coincided with some big realisations and lifestyle changes, and just fit like a friggen glove

after our farewell party at wappa dam yesterday I know I'm going to miss it a lot, mostly for the company. to be honest there's also a big part of me that hates institutionalised education and is kinda bitter about blowing $11,500 on knowledge I could have easily gained from self-education and the age old process of just hanging out and yappin. but any step in the right direction is valuable, as it seems all too easy to drift off into weird trajectories. so yes, all in all I'm stoked and ready embark on my new career as a feral bushbum. not like I needed a qualification for that tho, just this beast (sry climate change):

git dem hogs

today marks the return of my joy for academia. I’ve been at tafe a year now but I’ve generally found the level of engagement with ideas kinda low and therefore not super satisfying. I could have just tried real hard anyways, done some bang up jobs. but I never did (lazy)

so now I’m sitting here writing pretty much the last assessment for my diploma, and finally rediscovering that deep satisfaction that uni used to bring me. and of all the things to get excited about,  it happens to be strategising about how best to destroy pigs. millions of them. but I love pigs?? it’s for a course in pest management. I’m specifically researching their damaging effects in cape york, on endangered sea turtle populations. in one survey area on the west coast during the years of 2009-2013, not a single nest survived predation by feral pigs. that is, 100% of eggs got et up by the hungry hogs. 100%. four whole generations just wiped out (from that area). that’s not so noticeable now, but there will come a time when adult turtles just stop showing up on those beaches to breed. so sad

cape york has the highest density of piggies in all of australia, check this map:

depending on the season and climatic conditions for the year, the population in cape york alone fluctuates between one and three million. they have gone troppo. despite being able to weigh up to 200kg+ the breeding capacity of these guys is best compared to rabbits, which is unusual for such big beasties. their extremely flexible omnivorous diet allows them to flourish wherever there is water- they devour native plants and animals, agricultural crops like sugarcane, legumes, fruit and veg, and have even forced some sheep farmers to change to running cattle due to losing 40% of their newborn lambs each year to predation. they are the ultimate survivors

the most common and effective means of control are baiting with 1080 (takes several painful hours to die), and aerial shooting. more humane means like trapping and expert ground shooting are extremely resource intensive and ultimately ineffective, as 75% of a population has to be culled every year in order to affect decline (due to those rabbit-like reproductive rates). 75% of a few million is a fuck-tonne of dead pigs. it’s just not feasible. so they’ve kind of given up on elimination and are just focusing on damage mitigation, like trying to protect sea turtle nests

something to come out of this that has upset me alot is the lack of commercial interest in australia for feral pig products (this is called the much more appealing ‘wild boar’ in other countries). there is a commercial industry, but the vast majority of it gets exported to europe and japan. wild boar has historically been a delicacy there but through over-exploitation their own populations have been lost. infact, australia exports 40% of the world’s wild boar products. so where the hell are they in our supermarkets? not even a squeak. I guess we’re all just grossed out a bit, have this idea they’re dirty and full of worms or something. but if we’re popping them off en masse to europe and japan then I’m pretty sure she’s right mate

it’s an industry already worth well over 100 million dollars, providing employment in rural communities, contributing to conservation efforts, and- hugely- with the potential to reduce our reliance on fucking industrial scale farming. which is just the commercially legitimised version of introduced species destroying native habitat. deer is another under-exploited pest species, though I did see some wid-caught venison in the supermarket for the first time the other day. we need to start shifting our mindsets away from the traditional, and into an integrated conservation/sustainability approach. there are millions of tasty animals destroying our last remaining pristine ecosystems- if you need to eat a living thing, eat that guy, no?

I identify with vegan principles to a large extent. where I differ is on the wholesale write-off of consuming animal products. the cycle of life doesn’t upset me; industrial scale farming is the bad guy here, with its unnsustainable practices, environmental degradation, and cruelty. I’m lucky enough that I don’t even need to eat animal  products with my current privileged aussie lifestyle; I have access to non-animal protein sources from all over the world. legumes shipped from south america, nuts from vietnam, tofu made in where ever tofu is made. that’s great. but I actually don’t want my diet to come from every corner of the globe, burning fossil fuels and consuming other valuable resources to make it to my plate. afterall it is just food, a part of life that ultimately has a mundane purpose. that purpose is to sustain me. I mean…amazing food can bring be to my knees; it’s possibly the closest thing I have to a religion. but I acknowledge that having non-perfunctory food every day is an enormous privilege

here’s a trendy word for you, ‘locavore’. that’s what I aspire to. use only what is grown, foraged, traded, or (as it is increasingly seeming acceptable to me) hunted locally. so in that way I want to learn how to hunt and prepare animals, because a localised diet would struggle to bring me enough protein and iron etc. one feral pig would feed me for a year. that is amazing. I would be so insanely thankful for that, particularly after the hard work and visceral challenge that should be involved with taking a life to sustain your own

anyways in conclusion after that personal tangent: feral pigs, deer, camel, whatever. let’s eat them instead please and save the olive ridley and flatback sea turtles

belye nochi pochtalona

last night I had a hankering for a quiet, beautiful film. after a bit of reading I found out about this gem, the postman’s white nights, which sounds clunky in english but is really quite lovely in russian. it is set in northern russia in an isolated community. the cast are actual villagers. it apparently took the film makers a year to find the right man to be their protagonist

it is a truly unassuming film. it just follows the postman, lyokha, living life in an absurdly beautiful yet remote part of the world. the performances were so compelling at times that I’m left wondering how much was scripted and how much was just pure documentation. particularly the moments with his neighbour’s son timur, and kolobok (which means ‘bun’), a chronic drunk. something that really strikes me in russian cinema is how proud they often are of their hard-living rural culture and history. there really are an abundance of films about these people’s stories- never romanticised, always necessarily bleak. but still proud. the postman’s white nights is the closest to a rosey picture of country life I’ve seen from russian cinema, and I suspect that to most people it would still seem harsh. I thought it was so wonderful, so humane. and with landscapes so intensely luscious that you can’t possibly fill your eyes up enough with them

cities are really only a modern phenomenon in most of russia. the rest is basically made up of these small villages. they are forgotten places that the state’s wealth has never quite reached. I read one review that described their lifestyle in the film as “neolithic”- I thought that was a bit harsh. regardless, there is increasing desperation as the cities draw away their young, leaving the old to fall into decrepitude along with their beautiful wood cabins and vegetable gardens. I really enjoyed this movie, with its elements of sweetness and contentment, for the alternative picture it painted of what is typically portrayed as a brutal existence

p.s. no torrents exist for it on english sites, so you’ll have to grab it from a russian site. I used this one which has heaps of different file sizes. then get the english subtitles here

clouds

rain has finally arrived in the valley. proper, drenching rain. the grass has been so dry it is like walking on sticks. it seemed like the heavy black cloud was going to slide by to the south of our valley, as it too often does, so I hiked to the top of the hill to see what was in store for us. though the darkest part of the front did sidestep coolabine, a thick wall of rain dropped over mapleton, through the obi valley, then came to spend the day with us. the raindrops were fat and cool and my heart bunched all up as it soaked through my clothes. I felt like our plants’s desiccated leaves, slurping up the water, filling out and flushing green again. it is hard to concentrate when you are so thirsty. now I am smashing out assessments that have been sitting untouched for weeks. still not sure what my brain function is proportional to; it could just be rain. but maybe it’s general ambiance, or change, or ease of living. when an area is dependent on regular rains like it is here, the struggle to survive becomes apparent pretty quickly during scorching weather. you can really feel the teetering, and it has a psychological effect. you can’t help but end up stressed and anxious and depleted on some level. with the rains yesterday and a drizzly day today, life is back on track, the plants are relieved and so am I