Wrish

Gardening has long been considered the domain of the aged, alone, and curious abominations with scissors for fingers, I considered this fact for a moment, then, realising that I was most of these things, headed out into the garden.

With little understanding of the actual act of Gardening, I set about making things look a little prettier by giving my garden the equivalent of a haircut. As I stood, casually hacking my way through dried banana fronds with an oversized pair of nail clippers, I wondered to myself – why is it that weaver ants always manage to find the softest most sensitive part of your body to sink their tiny pincers in? The answer is simple, and occurred to me shortly after realising my entire body was covered with little green bastards, tripping over, rolling down a hill and hitting my head on the sharp coner of a large brick structure – my house.

There is somethign about waking up with a mild sunburn and concussion after having received paper cuts to hundreds of places on your body that is truely enlightening – no wonder I paid people to do this before.

A soft expansive pillow of celestial white draped its seductive lures over my imagination, and soon, a week had drowned in anticipation; my holiday was nigh.

We stayed at the High Country Mountain Resort. Ever descriptive in title, this humble nook of eternal calm is situated on the range, overlooking a picturesque valley, surrounded by a dazzling 180° mountain-scape.

Snowboarding rocks my socks, and several of my joints, my skull and most of my muscular structure. It is easy to be bold when injuries are unlikely to be superficial.
The snow in a word, beautiful, perhaps not the soft, natural furnishing that I had envisaged, but still an overwhelming experience, grandeur at every crest. The people were great, and the sport shall remain with me as long as this bruise on my leg; my calf had a slight altercation with a snowboard.

I lost some shit, cost an arm, but who cares. I would trade it for nothing!

It was a dark and gloomy night, scratch that, it was a fine evening, effing fine in fact, and I don’t use poorly disguised profanity for just any situation.

Freely flowing alcohol, a lingering smell cigarette smoke and spectacular karaoke, the best my little town has to offer.

The company was charming and beautiful, though, as usual I failed to hold my end of the bargain. The grim realisation of my own magnificent inadequacies distracted me into a series of obscure silences. A few million years away from flinging feces and walking on my forearms, and I still couldn’t hold a conversation to save the life a pup eyed orphan named Tom-Tom.

All is not lost; I am one pub wiser, four drinks stupider and have set the record straight with regard to my ability to hold a note whilst flailing frantically as if leaping from sinking cruise vessel.

Here’s one for ethanol.

I could be anywhere; I know where I am going even if no one else does. Dragging my job behind me, walking casually in the direction from which I had come only minutes earlier.

It’s a busy day today, there are people purposefully moving around. Consternation, compassion and indifference, each expression drawn so clearly on their faces, primitive symbols for the emotions they feel, or want to feel. His face was lost, eyes swollen, he would have been a small child crying into his own hands, shut the world out and crawled into corner, resigned himself to weep for an eternity, only one thing held him into the shaky frame which now drew him quietly across the room.

I had seen her the previous day; her yellow skin was wrapped around a large plastic tube which forced her life continue. I remember not breathing because of the smell of urine and body fluids at the door, I remember taking only a quick glance in her direction, I remember the way that her image lingered on my mind for several seconds after I had looked away, I remember wondering how she found herself in such a predicament. I remember wondering what she looked like beneath the swollen flesh that crowded her face.

She was different today, I hadn’t noticed as I passed her on my way in, I had strained not to test another glance in her direction. Instead, I saw only the shapes that etched themselves on my peripheral vision. The shape of a person, his shape beside her bed, hunched low in sullen epitomisation of grief. He carried it with him now, arms across his chest to keep in the calming warmth, shoulders down and eyes that would rather gaze into emptiness than be forced to make contact with another’s.

He motioned weakly in her direction and looked around for the nearest receptive individual, wondered who he would break from their infinitely important task, his jaw hung for a moment before he spoke.
“She’s not well,” his words were interrupted by a much louder plea, coming from her,
“Somebody please help me!” Once again, nothing more than an instinctive peak at her contorted frame, now sitting, was enough to force my mind into the laborious task of examining every detail of her face and posture.

While my body continued along its way, even inviting a staffer into conversation, my mind scrutinised the scene it had just witnessed. Why did she hold her arms so, her mouth had hung open as if she didn’t know what to do with it, had she vomited, or just forgotten how to swallow the thickened fluids she was being asked to consume. Her eyes were so mournful on a face that longed to live without this pain.

The nurse spoke, I heard her words, even over another plea for assistance, but somehow they didn’t make sense, they were just words, each with its own definition, but their net meaning was nil. I spoke, then left.

While I continued on my way from another moment of experience, the voice of a young woman begging for her life echoed through my skull and I never felt so useless.

It is the first rising of the celestial torch that finds me now. It has been another night of sporadic and disjointed rest; in waking, I find my eyelids cemented shut by the solidified secretions from the lacrimal gland.

Those initial seconds of confusion pass, a brief and painful rubbing relents the blinds to allow a vague perception of light; then detail.

The vision before me is foreign, a set of dark objects that seem not to make sense. It takes a while, but soon my visual cortex remembers the natural phenomena of perspective. Distant objects will converge upon each other; the scene morphs out of ambiguity revealing my own room.

This is the second morning I have awoken this way, eyes bloodshot, unrested, unrefreshed, not another. Please make it stop.

It’s like I blinked and forgot to update the site for an eon, I have no excuse, I am sure you wouldn’t care if I did. Lets just pretend that a giant watermelon ate the last month of my life and that the next century or two will be coated in giant black watermelon droplets.

I came back from Brisbane, defeated the odds and failed to come to a sudden and explosive end at the cliff face of a heavily clouded mountain. But not all is lost, I also managed to make absolutely nothing of the 4 days spent parading around Brisbane toting my knowledge of Citrix and its various capabilities. Oh, if only I didn’t have a mind like a sieve.

Then there was Xmas, drunken shenanigans were enjoyed by all, litres of noxious fluid were consumed, livers were damaged, brain cells were tormented with verbal excrement, fortunately we managed to avoid the demon of all parties, the Karaoke bar.

New Years was uneventful, the call of work standing over me, I was forced to remain entirely sober, I like being designated driver. There was a brief spout of aimless flailing under the sporadic flickering of coloured lights, as usual, people looked, pointed and laughed hysterically before I called upon Ra the god of war to smite them.

Now, life is back in full swing, my short-lived and frequently interrupted holiday has broken away and I am left with the empty shell that is everyday life.

Things that have infiltrated my life recently; Prince of Persia, Need for Speed, Call of Duty, pornography, so much for the watermelon.

Through the wonder of enterprise training, I am in a capital city, to experience new things and learning new skills; but mostly I get to sit around listenting to a lad named Terry.

The course, Citrix MetaFrame XP for Windows Administration will undoubtedly inform me of of the power of Citrix, and introduce me to a range of qualifications which will become useful in later life. At least that is what I say now.

The thing about training, is that it rarely fulfills any significant role in the learning process, I have attended many courses and listened to all too many lecturers. So far, aside from facilitating uncomfortable sleep patterns, classes such as this have a tendancy to fade into the oblivion past short term memory

So far, my fanhood has passed from Microsoft to Citrix when it comes to training.