The milkman of human kindness

My father was a milkman. So, I delivered milk.
Karl Malden

My father was a filmmaker. So, I watched movies.
Feel my pulse

Tuesday 3 October

I was at the Dendy cinema at Opera Quays in Sydney alone, skiving off from university to watch a film on my own. I had worked from 7am to 9pm and needed to have some escapism before I went home to my loneliness. I saw a film called the Wind that shakes the Barley. It stars a guy called Cillian Murphy who was also in my favourite film of this year, Breakfast on Pluto.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley was set in the 1920’s and explained some of the experiences between the Irish Catholics and the Protestants. It was terribly sad. I liked the fact that it wasn’t just black and white for the two main characters, who were brothers. At different times of their lives they reeled against the violence and at other times they led it in defiance of their oppression. I thought it was insightful study of the perpetual nature of war mongering. Vengeance begets vengeance and ultimately destroys their relationship.

Wednesday 4 October

I went to dinner with my Canadian friend at a Thai Restaurant near where I live careful to discretely order things that are still left on the list of things I CAN still eat on these MAOI’s. We are settling back into the groove after two years break. I guess my giving up alcohol and her embracing it with a vengeance (there’s that word again) had a lot to do with it. I am an interior and introverted person. She is the opposite of  me in that way. Although, I still manage to make her belly laugh, even if my stories aren’t about bar hopping any more. We made a date for the following fortnight and I suggested we go to the theatre together.  

Thursday 5 October

I watched a DVD late at night called "No Mans Land". It is about two enemy soldiers caught in the crossfire of the Bosnian Serb war. I know, re-occurring theme. It makes me remember just how apathetic most people are in Western countries. They watch the news, they don’t think critically about what their governments choose to take exception to and what to ignore.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.
George Orwell

Friday 6 October

I watched a DVD that wasn’t about war. It was about love, or so I thought. This was one of those unknown movies that you buy for five bucks in the video store bin. It was called Dot the ‘i’ and starred Gael Garcia Bernal. He was the lead male protagonist in Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros and Bad Education. I thought, hey, even if the movie is crap, I can turn down the sound and focus on the eye candy. It had an interesting twist at the end which I did not see coming.

Saturday 7 October

My friend Sarah who is about 5 years younger than me took me out today to help me get out of my rut. She had arranged for some bimbette to do my makeup, which was pretty startling in a pleasantly surprised and in non drag queen way. I realised that alot of the women you see on the red carpet don’t just look like that naturally. Der. However, I don’t think I could stand the regular maintenance that seems to take up so much time for the girls I know. It all seems like smoke and mirrors to me. However, it was surprising to see heads turning and not feel paranoid that I looked like a desperate clown. Perhaps if I ever go out again, I will make the effort to put a mask on. I also bought 5 dresses for summer. Now, I live in black normally, so Sarah had a mission to make me buy colourful and feminine clothes. I am almost ashamed to say that I have several other colours in my wardrobe.  

The busy girl buys beauty
The pretty girl buys style
And the simple girl buys
What she’s told to buy
Through the brightly lit eyes
Of the glossy romance of fashion
Where she can learn…
Top tips for the gas cook
Successful secrets of a sexual kind
The daily drill for beautiful hair
In a mail order paradise…
Billy Bragg

Sunday 8 October

I took my little brother to, yes, you guessed it, to the cinema and we saw Stormbreaker, well he did and I slept through a great deal of it. He had been a naughty little shit earlier in the day, creating a rainbow slurpy that I was left to ditch at the self serve counter as I walked away and counted to ten.  

Her heart was in the right place, but her head wasn’t.
Peter Fonda

Leading up to the feature there was an advertisement for car racing. It was full of machismo and gonad ridden grunt. I was thinking to myself about the irony of our most racing car driver having recently been killed on the race track and that another life had been taking on the day that they were commemorating his death, with the first race since on this very day. When the advertisement had finished there was a brief pause and a silence. Lenny, aged 10 screamed out at the top of his lungs, "Don’t they know it’s a bloody car race, not a war?". Spot on brother. I laughed and all of the bad behaviour earlier was forgiven.

Monday 9 October

I hate mentioning work here. Let it suffice to say that it stressful as all buggery at the moment. I left work and went to a meeting of fellow big brother and big sister volunteers. It was good to have some social interaction with people who are trying to make meaning out the misery of life. It was good to know that there are no simple fucking answers, that your situation was not the worst to be dealing with (either your matched sibling or your own circumstances).

I had been receiving text messages since the previous weekend from my oldest friend, B. We used to be young lovers prior to him getting all fucked up. He has been in a chemical wilderness for the past 20 years. He is recently gone off Heroin, Benzos, Methadone and alcohol. He has overdosed and died over 30 times in this period. It is a truly a miracle that he is still alive.

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e=”Tahoma” size=”2″>He has left behind his partner and child and is coping with the rude awakening of sobriety and re-entering society. He is coming to terms with how his behaviour has impacted the other people around him.

I picked him up. He was dressed well, he always had something stylish about him, even though he was completely disheveled, His hair stood on end, he had a kind of beard, he smelt like he hadn’t showered and had smoked 27 packs of fags.

It felt strange, here is me, in my immaculate new car, picking him up like the hot shot guy picking up the girl for a date. He said the same himself. We went to a local park by the Parramatta River, neutral territory. We both hate pubs, we both only drink lemonade now.

We reminisced and I told him that I had never once judged him. That I only felt sorrow that so long had gone in between our talking (maybe 3-4 times properly over the past near 20 years). We talked about our circular thought patterns and I told him that he was still the only person in all this time who I felt that had ever really understood me. I treasure that. The strange thing was, that for the first time, I could see clearly that we will only ever be friends now. I am not going to be attracted to more mirror images of my dad for me to rescue.

He has been sending me cryptic text messages throughout the past few days. I have ignored them today as I told him that I would contact him later in the week to make sure he was ok.  I am already being torn in a number of directions, working a minimum 60 hour week + full-time university and study + my sisters and family + volunteering.  I need to make time for me and not feel guilty about it. Time where I can just sleep, be idle and recuperate from the week’s onslaught.

Tuesday 10 October
I awake to see that North Korea has now tested a nuclear weapon, underground. We invade Iraq that doesn’t have weapons, we support Israel, US, and the UK and we ignore North Korea all of which do have weapons. I get through work and run of to the shrink. 

We discuss why I mask my emotions from people and I explain that since I was a very early child I used this as a technique for coping. When I was being hit, or hurt emotionally, I would refuse to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how angry they were making me. I would hold it all in and use it for fuel to be channeled into energy to survive and succeed.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya Angelou

Then I explained the only two times that I have really completely lost my rag. The night my brother was killed in a car accident, 13 years ago, where I screamed so loud and long that they called for a doctor to hold me down and shove sedatives down my throat. I didn’t sleep for weeks but I did grow to love pills.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.
Flannery O’Connor 

The other was finding out I was pregnant and feeling that it was the most blissful feeling in the world, in my living memory,  until I knew instinctively what my partner, parents and friends reaction would be. In a split second of having my blood test results I broke down and cried. The nurse said, are those tears of joy? I shook my head with sorrow. It was with rage that I was forced to have a termination of that pregnancy on the anniversary of my brother’s death. It causes me daily immeasurable heartbreak.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

I have just realised that if I had been able to have that baby, he or she would have been my matched sibling Lenny’s age, 10-11.

Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness.
Friedrich Nietzsche