Don't Write March...

I feel like this should be a "music free" post, but I'm also in the middle of a nostalgia-dive on YouTube so have a belated "Vale Peter Steele": Type O Negative - I Don't Wanna Be Me 

I'm tired. 
And sick. 
Sick and tired, in fact. 

The cost of doing business... took a lot out of me. For most of January I was convinced I'd never finish it and just wanted to purge the lot, but whether through deadheaded determination, or belligerent bloody-mindedness, I got there in the end and... I'm actually fucking proud of what I created. 

It says what I wanted to say, and more besides, with both depth and nuance that I've spent the last couple of years practicing how to deliver. In conversation recently, Ian described the way I write as "meaning-dense", his way of acknowledging how much meaning I try to load into a sentence by way of reference and repetition. Scott mirrored that sentiment beautifully, in his own way, when he told me "it's obvious how carefully and intentionally you pick each word to say all the things you want them to mean." 

It's so nice to be 'seen', isn't it? 

But... this used to be fun, and it's not any more. It used to be an escape, and now I feel trapped by it. What used to bring me joy (which is something you can share the taste of, and is indescribably more valuable to me than pride which no one can really stomach when it's anyone else's) has gone a long way past the point where it started to hurt (and in doing throws into sharp relief how well correlated "the things I'm proud of" are with "the things which hurt me to do" in my personal history). Now I'm somewhere in a zone where (all the session-drinking and chain-smoking I do to keep me) doing this is causing me actual damage. 

A week ago I closed the tabs I've had open to this site for the first time since I moved back to Canberra, and spent the time (between then and shortly before I started writing this) both sober and nicotine-free. I've decided that I'm going to spend the month of March not writing (much). I've long-since gone past the point where I'm "on" edge to the one where I'm on the verge of being "over it", so I decided to take a break before I do. 

Or more than I already have. 

Today I found myself winding up a punch I almost didn't throw and while it didn't connect, that moment (which I'm far from being proud of) was connected to more than a thousand words could graph. It might not be enough to Save Me, but the only way I know to start means that first I need to Stop; 

The cost of doing business... (Part III: Aphelion)

I want to use 3 Doors Down, but you know it's Enter Shikari all the way down... 

Enter Shikari - Redshift

Have you noticed that everything I say goes around in circles? Just like everything around us,
Drawn together by chance or circumstance, revolving; 
Ships in the night falling into and flying out of each other's orbit.
Points of light, dancing amongst the stars. 
Repeat after me... 

It's said that you can't cross the same river twice. The silt you kick up and the ripples you cause change it forever; it can never be the same again. Likewise, the you who crosses the next time around isn't the same person, they just remember being the person who did it the time before. 
The name of the river might be the same but the river itself has been changed by your passing, and so have you. 

Names are important; they help us to identify one person from another in the stories we tell. Our names can be the shape we pour ourselves into, or the one that grows around us as we reach our final form. Laika tipped her hat to her Russian heritage, and adopted The First Dog In Space when she declared her old name dead and buried. Jason was given a good, strong name, which he never saw the point of changing because it suited him just fine, and me... I have a name I chose to adopt because, in part, of all the people who refused to call me by anything else. Some people are born to a name, some have a name thrust upon them, and who am I to deny the wisdom of crowds when the one they formed around me fits so well? 

In Pete's Apocryphal Pocket Dictionary there's a girl with an angelic smile you might have glimpsed when you were flicking past the letter A. I never did find out what name her Persian parents gave her; I called her خواهر کوچک, but she introduced herself as Anna V----, and that was how I greeted her the day she called me at my desk to ask for some information about [Civil Construction Client]'s servers. 

"What's it say in the doco?" 
"There isn't any, that's why I called."
"Oh?" I replied innocently, but with an escalating growl, "are you sure about that?" 
"..." 
"Remember who you're talking to here. 
"Were you not able to find it, or did you just assume?" 
"Oh shoot. 
"I'm sorry, I didn't think.
"I should have checked." 

Not gonna lie, that sort of honesty buys you a metric-fuckton of my time. 

"I just looked and it's right there.
"I'm so used to [Allied Health Client]'s KB, it's so out of date. 
"I'm SO SORRY!" 
"I'll let you off," I said, because kicking puppies is the antithesis of my idea of a good time, "but it's going to cost you. 
"Your penance will be getting [Allied Health Client]'s server pages up to the same level of detail as [Civil Construction Client]'s." 
"... Oh fiddlesticks." 
"Have fun! Let me know if you need a hand..." 

Anna was a ray of sunshine sat in the middle of the Service Desk, who somehow made the whole crew better just by being there, so when Rowan and I lit our respective rockets and blasted off in pursuit of our respective launch-windows we broke the gender-parity we'd achieved in the team and filled the vacuum we left by promoting her to Lead the Team who had come to revolve around her. 

Time passed. 
My mentor Row'd his boat into deeper waters. 
Boldilocks and Michael bounced over the fence into greener pastures, and Anna was headhunted to build the Service Desk for a competitor, because Service Desk is an incubator where IT professional careers are laid, not where they hatch; attrition and churn are a fact of life. 

When I was made redundant a couple of years later I'd trained up Jake to take my place, and served out my notice period winding things up with [Civil Construction Client]. I worked it all the way through to the end, and had just hung up from TNM after apologising for running out of steam on my last day when my phone rang again, this time with Anna's name on the screen. 

She'd heard through the grapevine that the chapter of my story she'd been a part of was coming to an end after all those years, so called to check in and hear me tell it. 
She didn't call to offer help, but was there to give it if I asked. 
She knew I wasn't short on friends; she wanted me to know that she'd be one if she could, whether I needed it or not. 

So we talked about what had happened, and my plans for what what I was going to do next, and she offered to put me in touch with some people who could use a freelancer to help with their clients in Perth. The grapevine works both ways tho, and I'd heard how she'd not been well, so I asked. 

I was prepared for the ovarian cancer diagnosis she told me about, and the less-than-positive prognosis she'd been given; it was the absolute absence of self-pity and -abnegation in her voice that left me on my knees on the side of William St when I hung up the phone. 

"Man, it's like you're Wonder Woman or something," I mused, "you're not going to let anything stop you, are you?"
"Would you?" she asked, "I learned from the best." 

Looking at the blank screen of my phone, I picked myself up, finished my day, and handed my laptop and other corporate accoutrement over to Jake before dragging him out for drinks with a bunch of my other friends. 

Anna and I kept in touch, and true to her word I picked up many billable hours to invoice her contacts for. Months went by with the memory of that conversation bouncing around between the bones of my head, and an idea formed which led to (an actual) pen clumsily meeting (actual) paper, which I tied closed with a ribbon and sealed with an enamel pin I found on eBay: 

خواهر کوچک

There's not a lot of people in this world I really like, and even fewer who I respect. 
You've always been one of the few who was both. 
As I got to know you, you became one of the rarest people in my life. 
Those I've found truly inspiring. 
I wanted to send you something you could carry with you as a reminder of how wonderful you are, and what a powerful impact you have on the people who cross your path, 
and that the world has been a better place with you in it. 

.صلح

Peter Raven

In the photo I took the last time I laid eyes on her in August 2019, Anna is sat to the left of the group because she'd arrived late and needed to leave early; chemo doesn't leave you with the energy to do much, but when I came to town and got Yael, Boldilocks, Gabe, Chris (and his adorable daughters), and Michael from her old team together, she spent what she had to come and see us: 

Six months before her journey ended, three months before that photo was taken, I sent her a 'heartbeat check' message whilst on another work-trip to Melbourne, and worked out that a meeting I had scheduled in Box Hill would be finishing up around the same time as her chemo appointment across the road that day, so I did what any good Agile-minded Project Manager would do: 

I managed expectations, adjusted commitments, made apologies where necessary, and ditched the client to make time in my schedule to be waiting for her in the plaza outside Box Hill Train Station afterwards. When she joined me I was sitting cross-legged on a concrete bench in the shade wearing my royal-blue suit, and she was wearing the Wonder Woman pin I'd sent on the strap of her satchel. 

She sat down in the vacant space I'd left for her, and asked me how I was. 

"Oh, you know, building stuff, fixing shit, surrounded by incompetent fucktards, doing what I can to make things better..." 
"The usual then." 
"Pretty much, yeah." 
"You'll get it sorted out, you always do. You're so good at it." 
"I guess," I replied, taking an embarrassed drag at my cigarette, "what else can I do? How about you?"
"Oh, you know; it is what it is. One day at a time, spending what I have with my husband and son, what else can I do? 
"But," she said, looking at me critically, "are you OK, really? 
"You look so tired, are you getting enough sleep?" 
"4 or 5 hours a night, I make do." 
"You really do need to take better care of yourself," she chiled me, her sternly maternal tone belied by the smile creeping across her face, "it's not like you let anyone do it for you." 
"..."

Completing its transit, Anna's smile lit up Main St so bright it darkened the sun as she affectionately patted my arm.

"You're not Superman, you know?" 

... 

She was wearing that cheap memento mori again at what would turn out to be our last meeting. She said not a word about it, but when she arrived it caught my eye, and she caught my look, and her smile met mine in the middle. If you look closely at the grainy photo I took on my phone that day you can see it right were everyone could see, but no one else was going to notice: 

One last parting gift, as if her presence wasn't enough. 

Now, years later, I find myself sitting here, wondering. 

Because whilst I can tally up everything I've spent, and all the things I've given, the support I've received from the Laika's and Jason's and Gabe's and Boldilock's and Michael's and Anna's has been immeasurable; if I can't even count what I've received, can what it cost me count for anything? If I could say, with a straight face, that I've given everything, it would imply that at one point or another I'd had everything to give. Somehow now matter how much I give nothing is taken, yet returns threefold.  No matter how much of myself I give away, I always have more coming back at me; my cup runneth over, and what I have left afterwards is better than I was before. 

How could I possibly ask for more? 

I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 

The cost of doing business... (Part II: Transit)

Somehow I just can't seem to get enough of: Enter Shikari - Pack of Thieves

Have you been listening or just watching the scene unfold, waiting for me to get to the point? 
The lede is buried between the lines; 
I could point it out but you'll learn better if you go find it yourself.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
I've got all the time in the world. 

Is it weird that I'm more avuncularly inclined towards my Padawans than I am to the memory of Younger Pete? It must seem unfair to hold them to a lesser standard, but I swear I don't; The Best Pete is the benchmark I hold myself to, and 99 times out of 10 (Ian notwithstanding; he'll always be the Paragon-ideal I know my Renegade-self can never achieve) that guy is the North Star I try to point people towards (because whilst Ian'ing is a virtue, the rest of us are only human). I won't pretend to meeting that standard myself, but he's the Ideal I'm always trying to be, the light shining tantalisingly over the hill I know I'll one day die on whilst it hangs perpetually out of reach. When I meet someone who wants to be The Best Them he's the example I offer them because (no one can be as Good as Ian, and who am I to give people a goal I know is unachievable; I'm not The Buddha, I'm just A Boy Who's Lost, just like the rest of you) the The Best Me I Can Be is easy to compare to the Me they can see. So don't mistake me for suggesting that being The Best Them looks anything like The Best Pete (let alone Ian); I've only managed to look like that guy on a hand-full of occasions, and even then it's only when you tilt your head 42 degrees and squint, but he's the mould I'm trying to shape myself into because he's the best I've got to be. I barely wanna be me, so why the fuck would I want that for anyone else? Making more of me would just give me another face I want to punch, and if there's a single more self-defeating idea than that I sure can't think of any. 

I've got no time for anyone who wants to be me, even The Best Me, but when someone wants to be The Best Them they can be... 
I've got all the time in the world. 

I still remember my first real Padawan like it was yesterday, but that isn't a stretch; I saw him a couple of months ago in Perth. If you look up "responsible young man" in Pete's Pocket Dictionary you'll find yourself peering at a photo of Jason U------- looking back with an expression somewhere between "respectfully attentive" and "if you gave the order I'd crawl on my belly through broken glass with my fly unzipped, sir". When he spotted my Facebook post saying I was visiting again he reached out to see if I had time for him to catch me up on what he's been going through, so I made damn-sure I found some. When I first laid eyes on him a decade-and-change ago he was a quiet, timid, unassuming little lamb wrapped in 6 feet of gym-junkie beefcake who seemed afraid to take up space. Over the years I've watched as he replaced timidity with self-assurance, and the humble lion who picked me up from Mother Dear's house had filled every one of those 72 inches with 'himself' in the best possible way. 

His life has gone to shit over the last year or so but that's not my story to tell, it's just the one he wanted to tell me. 
So I listened, and we talked, and there was fuck-all I could do to help, but he knew I'd get it. 
He thinks of me as a friend, and thought I'd like to know, and whether I could help or not was completely irrelevant; he doesn't need me to, but he knows that I would if I could. 

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "leadership" lately. I could blame Ian, and I will regardless of how apropos for comic-effect, but he'd be the first to point out (if he were the sort to disagree, and not stop and first hear out your point of view, then question the evidence upon which you based your analysis later) that Leadership was one of the majors printed on the MBA that's been hanging on my wall since long before the conversations we've had since he started on his. 

There are a pile of different perspectives on what it is to lead, and how to do it best, from 'despotic' to 'transactional', all the way through to 'transformational'. In a more avant-garde (and less peer-reviewed)  mindset, Ian is fond of 'poetic' (there's only one article I've seen on the concept; he linked it to me when he was researching his assignment), whereas I favour 'transgressive' (for which there are none I can find; I haven't written one yet). He'll point to Napoleon and Patton, whereas I'll veer towards Churchill and Rommel. Ultimately, there are three (3) archetypes you can play that have been shown to work depending on your mindset and circumstance: 

1) "I'm going this away,"; 
2) "You're going that way,"; and the one I favour
3) "We're going over there. Get onboard or make your own way, but I'll see you there unless I don't."

I'm not sure if that's what Gabe S------ was looking for when she pinged me a month-and-change ago asking for advice. Beyond the occasional "I'll be in Melbourne, drinking in [this] pub if you're free after work that day," I hadn't heard from her in any meaningful way in years, then out of nowhere my phone pinged with a Message that knocked me out of my chair: 

"Hey
I was just laying here thinking how far I've come in IT
I have my first solution architecture job, which i landed by shear luck and clients loving me.

After this one I will be contracting as a solutions architect not as high as my mum but it makes me so close.

Wanted say thanks for all the training you gave me at beginning"
- 18/11/2024, 17:03

Gabe's mum was the Rockstar Solution Architect who'd been engaged on the Citrix VDI project the Company I Used To Work For was delivering for one of our clients, with a formidable rep, and a form 17 pages long. The project went to shit, but it wasn't mine to manage, or my client who dumped us as a result of our Tech Lead's incompetence, so I won't pretend I give a fuck. That hadn't happened yet when I was in Melbourne for my annual Work "Non-Denominational End of Year Celebration" Pilgrimage and Rowan grabbed me to see if I was free to jump in on an interview panel to play the Voice of Tech. When I was hired I had to go three rounds against an autistic savant from Melbourne who was driving between sites in Sydney with the GPS calling directions in the background. He was a little distracted, but did not in any way go easy on me. I found out later that he was more-than-a-little impressed, but at the time I was surprised when I progressed to the final bossfight. 

Now here I was standing in his shoes. 

"We interviewing her on her own merits, or are we sucking up to her mum?" 
Rowan made a hand-wringing gesture and dissembled, "no of course not, she's junior but she's got some experience."
"So kid gloves, or...?"
"Be fair, but work out what level she's at." 
"Got it." 

An hour or so later I was refreshing my coffee when Row approached with an empty mug and That Look on his face: 

"Remind me to give you a better definition of 'fair' next time."
"What?? I smiled all reassuring'n'shit, didn't even show teeth."
"..." 
"I went easy on her; remind me to tell you how Ken and I made this South African guy, who drew his 9mm on four armed car-jackers and killed three of them, weep in his interview some time." 
"YOU FUCKING WHAT?" 
"Not important. 
"Back to Gabe... 
"She's terrified she's only here because of her mum, it was written all over her anxiety; I didn't want her thinking this was a courtesy-interview. 
"You said to find her level, and if someone answers right you keep asking harder questions until they can't. 
"She did well, solid basic knowledge, and when she didn't know the answer you could see she was freaking out, but she said as much, kept it together, and didn't break. 
"Cried less than Paul The Killer-Saffa, that's for sure." 
"Hmm..." 
"She doesn't have her visa riding on it, and her family's safety on the line, so different stress-factor. 
"Anyway, she's got potential. Gotta work on her confidence tho - reckon we can support her in that?" 
"You know we can." 
"Golden, because by the time she spins up I'll be back in Perth and it's you she'll look to on the daily, but if we give her the opportunity to get out of her mum's shadow on her own merits she'll be ours forever. 
"You want to seal that deal, make the offer in the next couple of days, up it by $5k, and invite her to the party on Saturday. She'll hit the ground running so hard she'll barely touch it."

A couple of weeks ago I received another message: 

"Well I applied for a senior/coordinator role
Not solution architect but will give me leadership and make it easier to get one later.

They are looking for someone to lead the service desk while they focus on growing the company
So essentially I'd be the manager of service desk

Got feed back saying I was great in interview
Think I'd be great fit and knowledgeable 

The people choosing has covid so won't find out till next week but sounds like I may have the job

Any advice on leadership?"
- 13/12/2024, 15:51

"Jeez...
"Where to start...
"I mean..." 

She's going to do great (whether I have anything to do with it or not). 

In my digital memory archive there's a photo of her sitting immediately to the left of Boldilocks in a pub somewhere near Richmond; their desks were only slightly further apart when they worked together. He still calls me 'sir', but that's just his way of making me feel better. We both know he transitioned into being a 'confidant', 'Pete's Support Potato', and 'well-spring of well-good Metalcore' a long time ago, to become one of my Secretaries. Never forget that a 'secretary' was never about being someone's shit-kicker, it's derived from 'secretarius' which is the latin word for 'confidential letter writer'. Boldilocks doesn't fetch my coffee and sit on my lap to take dictation in a short skirt (OK, he does, but let's set 'recreational' context apart from 'professional' here), he's a keeper of my secrets. You never stop being someone's Padawan tho, and he lets me maintain some of the illusion of self-worth I get from believing that. Just as I like to call him Mr Fantastic, that's just the sort of friend he is. 

Ian joined a WA Government Mentorship Programme at the beginning of 2023, and spent most of it working with a young lad who needed a LOT of help. At the end of what turned out to be something of a harrowing year he told me they'd gone out to an "expensive steak place" to put a full-stop at the end of that sentence, which the kid paid for by way of thanks. I replied: 

"Welcome to 'mentoring' and 'taking on Padawans'.
"It's soul-destroying effort, encouraging them, supporting them, dragging them back from the abyss, picking them up when they fall, rubbing their noses in it...
"but then they surprise you by actually learning, moving forward, getting their shit together, becoming the best-self you imagined they could be. 
"And if you think that's rewarding, imagine what it's like when you get your first Dark Apprentice."
 - 08/12/2023, 21:07

Mine (there've only ever been two) is in that same photo, sitting second-right, goes by Michael B--------, and there's no one on this planet I've fought as hard, or as often, who I'd still shout a pint for. You know that 'uppity smart-arse prick' who's convinced he knows better, wants to hear the justification for every direction, and argues every decision, because he's convinced he knows better? 
That's Michael's shit-eating grin you're looking at under 'U' in Pete's Pocket Dictionary. 

I can't remember who hired him, but it was probably Rowan; he hired me, and he could always smell his own. The New Management who took over after Rowan moved up-and-left had more of a "just do what you're told" mindset than Row's sense-making sensibility, and by the time I received a call asking me to "take him under my wing" they'd rubbed each other so far the wrong way there was enough static in the air to give everyone a bad hair-day. Thing was, Michael actually DID know better more often than not, he'd just been saddled with Managers who couldn't see the walls of the box they were living in, let along think outside of them, with whom he'd had to go to war to get anything done so often, and for so long, he came at every barrier put in front of him fist-first. 

Sound familiar? 

He was good at his job, which was the only reason he still had one, but TNM didn't have the energy or wherewithal to keep fighting for him to keep it. They didn't not-care tho, which is why they called me in to knock some sense into the guy when he fucked up for the penultimate time. I listened to their story, read up on the tickets, did a bit of outside-the-box homework, gave him a call, and offered him a different face to take a swing at. 

"So TNM asked me to look into the Incident at [Financial Services Client]."
"<sigh> Do I really have to go over this again? I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'll do better."
"No one here's saying that..."
"TNM is."
"...but they're not here, and you seem to be mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck. If I was going to take their word on it I wouldn't have wasted my time calling you, so can we skip past the bullshit before we get old?" 
"..."
"Client's pretty pissed off tho, so let's look at that instead, yeah? 
"Now TNM sent you out at 4PM to do this install?" 
"No..." 
"The client wanted it done at 4 then?" 
"No... I just got told it had to be done ASAP."
"But you called them and made sure they'd be there so you could get them logged in and set up, yeah? Then they weren't around when you got there?" 
"No..."
"Right... but you called next morning to remote in and finish it off? I'm not seeing that in the ticket notes, but it's the only thing which makes sense." 
"No, I mean, I left the login details..." 
"... and you checked FIRST THING the next morning to make sure they found the instructions, were up and running, yeah?" 
"No... I mean... it's not hard tho!" 
"For you or me it's not, but they're a Receptionist." 
"Who doesn't know shit!" 
"No, but knowing shit is what they pay *us* for, so why would they need to?" 
"..." 
"Sounds to me like you were playing for a protest-fail and half-arsed the job to make a point, shot yourself in the foot, and you've been blaming everyone else for limping. 
"Rookie move, man." 
"No! But, I mean... fuck..." 
"Now we're getting somewhere. 
"So are you going to work with me to unfuck this mess, or should I just go back to doing the job they actually fucking pay me for?" 

Putty doesn't mould as easily as Michael did after that... for a while anyway. Not much time had passed before he felt he'd learned enough kung fu, and came at me. 

So I beat him down again. 
And again. 
And again. 
And each time it got harder, because each time he'd got better, faster, and stronger. 

"I don't know why you kept putting up with that," one of my colleagues in the Leadership In Practice unit of my MBA said when I recounted this story. 
"He'd had so many Managers who didn't know shit acting like they knew better, but really didn't. He needed to know that I really did. Challenging The Master was how he tested himself, but it also proved I was worth listening to. He got harder to beat each time because he was *learning*." 
"But what if he learned everything you knew and took your job?" 
"If he gets good enough to take my job, he can have it; he'll have earned it."
"But..." 
"But what... you think I wasn't getting better at the same time? Everything he took away from me was one more thing I didn't have to do any more, and I got to pick up something else which moved me forward. 
"Everything he took was something I gave to him, and if I can't keep up, if he overtakes me... that's on me. I've no more right to stand in his way than Moses had to enter The Promised Land." 
"..." 
"You HAVE been paying attention in this course, haven't you?" 

He actually did thank me, just once, years later. I'd re-tell the conversation, but after the ridiculous number of pints he shouted me that night I honestly can't remember what it was he said. 
I can tell you he's kicking arse, tho. 
I'm pretty sure I could still beat him, although when I saw him back in April he let me maintain my illusion of self-worth by not making me prove it. 

What is a relationship after all, but a closed system;
Nothing taken that wasn't given freely
And returned in exchange, 
If not in kind;
Because the world can be anything but. 
But we can be if we choose. 

Concludes in Part III: Perihelion...

Provenance...

 When Boldilocks arrived I took him for a walk around Braddon and Civic; he'd been on the road for four-hours-and-change, getting the city you're visiting under your feet is a great way to unclench after a long drive, and as comfortable as the 6th-floor office I call 'Home' might be there'd be plenty of time to drink in the view. Hitting Northbourne Ave we started catching up on what we've been up to since last he graced my presence in April because whilst we're in semi-regular contact and we've heard it all before, it's important not to underestimate how much better it is to hear someone's stories transmitted directly from voice-box to tympanic membrane through the vibration of Nitrogen/Oxygen/Argon than when there's an electronic intermediary, and how much easier it is to read the mind of the man who's been your friend for longer than you care to calculate, even if you still think of him as the Padawan who could never get his timesheets submitted reliably, from the twitch of the muscles in his face than the pattern of white-and-black pixels preceding a blinking cursor on the LED screen of this year's laptop. 

Turning left onto Elouera St, I started pointing out The Sights: 

"There's Bent Spoke; there are two main micro-breweries in Canberra, the other's Capital, but Bent Spoke's my 'local'. This is where Ian and I were sinking pints when I realised I'd decided I was going to move back." 

"Check out the Rainbow round-a-bout ahead - they made it even-more-inclusive a year or so ago by cutting a quarter off the Pride Flag-ring and replacing it with the Trans/Ace/fucked-if-I-know colours."
"..."
"Yeah I lose track, but it's not for us, is it? Nice that everyone gets to feel 'seen' tho, yeah?"

The story I heard was that the rainbow had been painted on the road of the Lonsdale/Elouera roundabout for Pride one year, and when a bunch of wowsers complained the Road Transport Authority at ACT Government went and made it permanent to spite them. It may be apocryphal, but my theory is that if I click my heels together and tell it enough it will become 'true'. 

"Look left? Up there is the bottlo from the 'Deadman' post where I trip because a pretty girl smiled at me."
"Blackhearts & Sparrows?"
"That's the one. We'll cruise past there later. Hang a right..." 

"Hey, remember in 'Going nowhere fast' and I talk about walking past a gym full of people running on the spot, and what both of us are doing is pointless but at least they're honest about it? 
"That's it, right there." 
"Huh. Yeah?" 
"And in the 'chaotic magnitude' post and I talk about a 'pool table in a dingy pub on a Friday night'?" 
I point over at The Civic Hotel, "that's the pub." 

I haven't been back there in years, but I've heard that they refurbished recently and replaced the pool tables in the back-room with a dining area; I could go and confirm, but I have so many fond memories of those days I'd rather keep them intact than replace them with whatever's now 'true'. 

"Oh hey, and in the 'Resurrection Deluge' when I land back here and talk about making three trips to Coles in two days, and 'keeping my feet between my face and the pavement'?" 
"Yeah?" 
"Well," I point my face south-and-east across Cooyong St, "there's the Coles," then down at my feet, "and there's the pavement." 

We cruised through Garema Place to see the Dodgy Sheep and the weird Whispering Wall thing, although the Doug Anthony All Stars plaque turned out to be covered by the astroturf at the pro-Palestine Protest. Back at my place later, the Show & Tell continued: 

"Oh! There on the wall? That's my half of the Art Project!"
"Shit, I spotted that earlier! What happened to the other half?"
"Wound up on the wall in Penpal's daughter's room, she said."
"..."
"Yeah, kinda weird, but apparently she took a shine to it and there was a vacant hook." 

"Oh! Check this out!" I say, handing him a mug with stylised technicolour double-helixes on each side. 
"What's this?"
I pull the business card out of it and show it to him, "that's Occam's Canadan Amy - she gave it to me when I saw her last in Perth." 
"Oh..."
"Yeah, she's real - that's her biz."

"Check this out," I drag him around to the desk-side of the display cabinet in the middle of the room, "see the little plushie octopus in the top-left corner?" 
"Holding a little hand-drawn card?"
"That's the one. After she read the 'It's not you... it's me' post, Bridget asked me if the 'tiny octopus' bit at the beginning was a secret reference to 'giant pacific octopus' by Enter Shikari. 
"It wasn't, but it's become a bit of a thing. 
"She's taken to keeping the side-pockets of her backpack stocked with little plushies from Ikea, gives them out to random strangers at the lights when she's riding her bike, asked if I wanted one. She had a turtle, an orca, or... so I picked that one; thought it was adorb's."
"She really is."
"Shush, you. 
"It's one of two things in this cabinet which faces towards my desk. Can you spot the other one?"
"Behold," he reads, "My field of fucks; and see that it is barren." 
"That's the one.
"Sandra cross-stitched it, mailed it to me years ago, so I found a frame and it used to hang from a vacant hook in my old office." 
"THAT Sandra?"
"The one and only." 

"But hey, speaking of ocean-critters, check this out," I duck to the fridge and grab a stainless-steel flask. 
"The water bottle from 'The thing I do for a living'? That's it."
"Damn..." he said, weighing it in his hand as moisture began condensing on the surface. 
"Yeah, funny thing; turns out I also snagged a tshirt on that trip," I say, waving it at him, "so it WASN'T the only memento I took away. 
"Ain't ret-con'ing the post tho, just sayin'."
"Nah, why ruin it?"
"Exactly. I like that bit - it was punchy." 

We pour a couple of glasses from the bottle of Chivas Regal he'd picked up from the First Choice across the road on Mort St on our way back, and I chuckle to myself as I remember the flight back from my last trip to Perth as we head out to the balcony: 

"That's The Seat I sit in when I'm writing, and over in the corner is the one I bought from a thrift store for 5$. Don't sit in it; it really is falling apart. 
"But seriously, check out the view. 
"There's Black Mountain and Minas Telstra, which is right up there as far as 'iconic Canberra' goes. 
"Over there's ANU, and the CSIRO Lab's."
"From 'Drowning in silence'."
"Yeah. Same dive trip." 
"Shit," he muttered, looking at the flask he was still holding. 
Looking to the right as he leaned against the balustrade, "oh... those traffic lights... but in the fog?"
"Yeah, from 'It's not you... it's me'. Really did happen just as I was writing that bit and it was too perfect not to include."
"Shit, man. 
"It's...
"It's a lot more 'real', standing here, y'know?"
I nod, staring into space. 
"It is real. 
"All of it. 
"The narrative might be selective at times, but not one word of it's a lie. 
"But hey," I look over and proffer my glass, "thank you for the part you've played in making it happen. 
"Throwing me music to listen to, the sanity-checks, the peer-reviews." 
Our glasses meet in the middle with a <clink>, "and hey, thanks for coming to visit." 

The cost of doing business... (Part I: Perihelion)

 Musical accompaniment: Enter Shikari - The Last Garrison

I used to think I was playing the lead in my own story, and... you never know I may even have been right, but as the days roll by I find myself haunted by the idea that I've quietly transitioned to playing a walk-on role in other people's. It's easy to mistake the part we play for 'titular' when it's really 'supporting' after all; our perspective of the events we participate in is recorded from our own (statistically) binocular PoV, so when you're focused on wearing down your teeth chewing the scenery it's easy to forget the BLOCKCAP advice the Director included in the footnotes on every page of the script you skimmed, which read: 

REMEMBER: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.

I've been wading through the endless-seaming river of my professional life with my feet in two very different streams of consciousness. On one side I've been working hard to keep my existing clients happy, or in the case of Marine#2 frantically keeping them from getting too pissed off (they eventually signed off on the VOIP solution I sold them, and everything that could possibly go wrong subsequently has). On the other has been an ongoing struggle to convince someone in Canberra to let me solve big problems for them for big money. Whilst time-consuming, neither of those activities have come close to utilising the complete range of my skillset, so in the middle of the two there's been a lot of room to put some of the other tools I keep handy to use. Some days it's felt like I've brought more of those resources to bear, and exerted more effort, for other people's benefit than my own. I could pretend to a perspective of Zen selflessness and talk about that being OK because we all know there's only one of me, and I am Nothing, but then I'd be skipping everything in the other half of the story to create a false-perception of depth. Whilst spending the coin of my knowledge and experience brings me nothing but joy, I can't actually say that with a straight face because each of those coins is two-sided, and on the other defaced side there's an aspect of me which still yearns for recognition. Every bit of credit I have to spend cost me a piece of myself to acquire; whether the currency was opportunity, or my finite energy, an eigth of a pound of flesh, or one irrecoverable moment of my time, I paid a price for everything I have and there's a bit of me that wants something in return. 

But who the fuck am I to ask for it, when everything I built myself from was given to me by someone else? When your boot is sitting next to the thimble, roadster, and terrier on Go with an empty board in front of you and a pair of dice in your hand, the play money you start with had to come from somewhere. 

As we walk our own lonely Road of Bones, the only road that we have ever known, it's too easy to forget that we walk on the the clean-pecked scapulas and clavicles of giants to whom we can never repay the favour; we owe it to the next set of calloused feet to make sure that when we fall ours rest as tall as Phlebas, and provides a higher perspective. 

Backing track: AViVA - Sacrifice

My phone rang a couple of weeks ago at 12:47PM with the name of my 2023 Padawan on the screen. The time of day told me something was up, but that wasn't the half of it: 

She was calling me. 
On the phone. 
Laika's a member of the emergent generation for whom a "phone" is a pocket-sized internet portal, who consider the bit where it can be made to ring because someone wants to talk to you using their voice an insufferable affront to social decency. 

I remember being taught how to use a rotary-dial phone, the numbers you entered sequentially came printed on a kilo of dead-tree each year, or were written down carefully by hand in an alphabetised notebook, and calling across the country was an expensive extravagance.
Now we call numbers we can't remember and talk to people we'll never meet on the far-side of the globe for the fun of it, and for free. 
Yeah, I know, I'm old; Laika's young enough to be my daughter. 

And she was calling me. 
On the phone. 
"What the fuck?" I thought, "what's gone wrong...?" 

Turns out the answer to that was 'plenty' but that's not my story to tell, it's just the one she called to tell me.
But she wasn't calling me because she wanted to ask for help, she was calling because she needed to tell someone who'd get it without needing to have 'it' explained.
She needed a friend who'd answer the phone when it rang, who wouldn't judge her for what she told them, who'd help if they could without being asked. 

I plead guilty on both charges, Your Honour. 
I do what I can, and there are a lot of things I can do. 
I throw myself on the mercy of the court. 

I've been taking on Padawans for a long time now, and it's a thing I can say, without prejudice, that I take pride from. I can't tell you when I started exactly, but it's a truth universally acknowledged, that a no-longer-young professional in possession of a good knowledge of The Job, must want to show the colleagues more junior to them how better it might be done. One day you turn around and realise that the earnest kid you're performance managing isn't just taking your workplace lessons to heart, they've started emulating you in their personal life as well, and if that doesn't leave a mark like Bruce Lee kicking you in the face whilst wearing sneakers with "RESPONSIBILITY" moulded into the sole, you don't have one. 

Call it a messiah complex, call it inferred generational debt, or my nascent paternal instinct, call it what you will. I decided a long time ago that I was never having children of my own; I've been told countless times that I'd come to regret my decision "one day", but just like 'tomorrow' and Godot that day has remained stubbornly on the other side of the horizon, and never seems to arrive. I'm fairly certain I was born to be an uncle - all care and no responsibility, gone the moment a nappy needs changing, and long before bedtime. The thing we all need to remember is that no one is born knowing everything they need to know. Some people are preternaturally quick on the uptake (which comes with its own dumpstats) but for the rest of us, unless we're just going to repeat the same old mistakes we need to learn from someone else. There are many from whom I learned, and there are a growing, happy few who've learned from me. 

I have exemplary credentials, I'll have you know; I've made a LOT of mistakes. 

Being an 'uncle' means getting to choose your level of involvement; when you should stay, and when you should go. 'Deadbeat dads' notwithstanding, parenthood is a "Hotel California"-style life-choice, and I've stubbornly refused to relinquish my right to leave the moment I decide to check out. If you think that sounds selfish and irresponsible, I'll say to you the same thing I said to my father when he denounced me for refusing to sacrifice my existential autonomy in the name of progenitating grandchildren to carry on his name: 

"Yeah, nah, go fuck yourself." 
I know what I'm good at, and there's a lot of good I can do. 
But playing the role of "consistently positive role-model" ain't one of them. 

I hold parents to a pretty high standard; my father never met it, and I'm far-too-much my father's son. "Mother," according to Thackeray, "is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children," but it's also true that fathers are their own flavour of role models, so if your father bails what does that tell you? "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you." 

Not being that guy is not the worst thing that can happen. 

I was never going to be anyone's 'forever-father', but 'dad-for-a-day' is something I can pick up and run with. It's the sort of relationship no one asks for directly, and no one accepts, because you fall in and out of it naturally. There's no application process, and no one gets an invitation to apply, although there've been exceptions... 

Like the conversation I had with young Andy, who looked at me in awe when I was talking one day about some difficult shit I'd been dealing with at work. 
"I just... you have now idea how badly I want to be like you."
"Seriously dude? You... do you have any idea? 
"I..." quoted Perry Cox, "only barely want to be like me?" 

Adoration may taste like heaven, but that moment was one I didn't want to drink; it tasted like acetone, and as I fled for the nearest horizon so fast my boots barely touched the ground I felt quite alone. 

Laika took what was offered, and that seems to have been enough, because she picked it up and ran, leaving me right where I belong; alone in the dust of her wake. 

Does that sound like a tragedy? It's not. 
Because it ain't over yet. 
If you haven't worked it out, 
Let me tell you what: 
Watching them de-rez into a b1t on the horizon
Is the p0int. 

Continued in Part II: Transit...

Rituals...

Backing track: Marshmello - Alone 

 When I flew in to Perth in June, Ricky picked me up from the airport late in the evening and ran me out to my mother's house, then hung around for an hour or so before leaving me to get far-too-little sleep.
When I left, Ian picked me up after work and we went to The Kewdale Tavern for dinner before he dropped me off for my redeye-horror flight back. 
The next morning, after transiting through Melbourne, Bridget picked me up bleary-eyed on her way to work and took me home, where I collapsed into bed and slept for most of the day. 

When I flew into Perth a fortnight ago, Ricky picked me up from the airport and drove us out to Alfred's Kitchen to get a late-night feed and hang around the fire for an hour or so before running me out to my mother's house to sleep far-too-little.
On my way back, Ian came out to pick me up after work, and took me to The Kewdale Tavern for dinner before dropping me off for my cushy Business Class redeye flight out.
I was just as bleary-eyed when Bridget picked me up to take me home, then worked from my desk for the rest of the day when I crashed out in my own bed and slept through the day. 

The first two times I went back to Perth after Leaving For Good, I wrote trilogies of blog posts about my sense of dysphoria as I went; one on the flight over, one whilst there, the last on the flight back.
This time I seem to have managed to leave that dysphoria behind, so I talked about that, and the Joy Of Work instead, and when I settled into my extravagantly-comfortable paid-for-with-Points fully-reclining seat I realised there was nothing I felt the need to say, so enjoyed a glass of Chivas Regal while I read my book then found some sleep, and let the third trilogy end at two parts. 

Backing track: Pendulum - Not Alone (Calvin Harris cover) 

I can't help but notice patterns, and I'm instinctively inclined towards building seamless systems that work smoothly. I might walk a path that's chaotic, but I have routines which ensure that every time I walk out the door I'm prepared, with all of my tools exactly where I expect to find them when the next wave hits; book-ending the chaos with order helps me stay in control, and means I never leave my phone charger in the hotel room when I check out. 

My mission over the last few months has been to break the patterns I've found myself trapped in so that I can walk a new, different path, without leaving Beckett waterlogged and glowering at me from the gutter where I emptied my bath of self-pity. Mostly, I seem to be succeeding. 

"I enjoyed your last post," Ian told me over Beef Brisket Rendang and Chicken Korma, "it's a departure from your recent milieu, but the character is still recognisably 'you'. 'A day in the life' is an established literary mode and you do it well. How you banged that out while travelling and staving off sleep deprivation is impressive." 

I might be making an effort to reinvent and resurrect, but I *am* still Me; Me with my penchant for three's, and my cyclical narrative-style. Breaking the cycle of misery and cutting out the things that make you miserable doesn't necessarily mean making wholesale changes like throwing out the bathwater, and your furbaby along with it. It can be as simple as changing your approach in smol ways, like limiting your lists to two things instead of three, and using fewer semi-colons.

You can, and should, take a knife to anything that stands between you and where you need to be; yesterday's Sacred Cow is today's graven image.

You can, and should, hold on to the rituals you take comfort from when you kick yourself out your Comfort(ably Numb)-zone; we may have put down childish things when we became a 'man', but we still observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. 

The space you carve out between the two can become room for a New Covenant you make with yourself to be a You that's better, maybe even one that's more whole. 

No matter what tho, always leave room for another Special at your Favourite Burger Joint On The Planet, or this week's Brisket Special at the Conveniently Out-of-the-way Gastropub, so that when the opportunity arises you can enjoy them with your sweetest friends, who'll love you no matter what you become. 

Vapour trails...

 I've developed what I can't think of a better word for than a habit, it seems. There's a case to be made for suggesting that if "once is happenstance," "twice is coincidence," and "three times is enemy action," I could try framing my sense of unease around that, but I'm not feeling particularly combative, let alone under-fire, so that isn't sitting comfortably with me any more than I (or the fidgety young man sitting next to me) seem to be able to get comfortable in the chair I'll be sitting in for the next three-and-a-half hours. 

I'm on my way to Perth again, and we all know what that means... 

Perth music: Bend The Sky - Navigator

This is my third trip back in slightly less than a year, and by this point in the 7ish-hour "Canberra -> Somewhere -> The Most Isolated Regional Capital In The World" route I've been had to resort to using because Australia can't seem to grok the concept of "healthy competition in the airline market" is where I find I'm struggling to focus on whatever book I'm reading (The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, because I ran out of Culture novels and I very much owe it to Ian to read something he suggested and provide an asked-for opinion for a change), pull my laptop out, and give voice to the discomfort, dysphoria, and dread that place evokes in me. This flight I find myself staring at the screen of my laptop (as is the young man sitting to my right, I can see out of the corner of my eye. Don't use too many of the words you read here around your mum, kid. She'll thrash the fucking shit out of you, I swear) and... I got nothing. I'm scratching my head as to why, to be honest: 

Perhaps I've used up all of my wellspring of corrosive vitriol and smouldering rage? 
No, that can't be right; we might be cruising ~10km above the ground, but this is far from heaven. 
Could it be that after ~10,000 words of increasingly wanktastic self-paced catharsis my spleen is finally vented?
No way to prove or disprove that one, really; it's a scenario that's never been observed in nature.
Maybe I'm finally over hating on that ~100km-long skidmark of a town smeared along left-hand side of the map like a crusty old pair of y-fronts clinging to the arse-end of the country badly in need of a soak in sulfuric acid and ritual cremation, where the only redeemable examples of humanity dream desperately of getting out or, when precluded from doing so by fate or poor life-choices, conspire to lure me back... 

Ah Darkness, my old friend, there you are. Funny how when you lose something it always turns up in the last place you look, don't you find that? 

Sincerest apologies to Andrew the Shipwright tho; it's going to take more than a couple of new clients to entice me off my balcony for more than a week or two, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the effort any less, or that I'm suggesting he stop. 

I'd make a joke about how "better men than him have tried", but that would imply that there's an intersection of those two sets of people, and bearing in mind how vanishingly small the first group is the resulting venn diagram would be comically difficult to represent in any meaningfully proportionate way. Andrew the Shipwright didn't introduce me to the new client I picked up recently, who's new site spin-up was (only just) big enough a job to make it worth contributing to the world's carbon dioxide burden, but he DID recommend me to Marine#2, who in turn introduced me to Marine#3 and now #4;  unlike blame and effluent, thanks flow uphill. It's been quite a while since I landed a new client, in fact I've not added anyone regular to my invoice-cycle since quite a while before The Job That Brought Me Back To Canberra. Adding complement to amelioration, this one came to me on reputation; they saw what I'd done with Marine#2 and said "we'll have what they're having", so like a double entendre I'm going to give it to them. 

The west isn't my only prospect for amusement or a paycheck tho, thank fuck. I have what has every semblance of momentum building on the "fixing big problems for big money" front back home, and meetings booked for when I get back. I also have Bridget picking me up from the airport to look forward to, which is nice. No, we didn't get back together; why try to resurrect something it turns out was better off dead when you can climb aboard the bloated corpse, stick a pole with a sheet tied to it up its arse, and sail away on a wave of mutilation? Breaking up seems to be just what our relationship needed, so we're going with whatever-the-fuck-this-is because what the fuck even are labels anyway? 

Funny ol' language, English. On one hand we have words like "expiate" for a concept which seems more-than-adequately serviced in the lexicon. On the other we have this word "relationship" which we use to refer to interpersonal arrangements involving romance, lust, or (occasionally) love, but fundamentally describes any ongoing interaction between two or more people. It's all a bit confusing when you thi... 

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking something which is really, fiendishly, diabolically straight-forward; so remarkably and elegantly simple that we go and make it complicated because we can't see it without thinking "that can't be all there is to it, surely," so we miss what's right on front of us. I've been missing it myself until now, because I only just realised that both uses of the word "relationship" are actually the same, and all this time I've been using it right entirely by accident. 

How about that? 

But here I go getting all meta again. What can I say? It's a long flight, I get bored easily, and it amuses me, so don't expect an apology; I'd have thought that after all we've gone through together you'd have a pretty good understanding of who and what I am; what else did you think I use the meta for? 

Ian...

Musical introduction: dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip - Stunner

"OK, look. 
"'You're good at this 'empathy' shit, right?
"So I want you to put yourself in the position of this guy I know."

"Alright."

"He's been dumped out of the blue, he's trying to be a good guy about it.
"He knows she's got her own shit going on, but so does he. 
"He's feeling lost, he's feeling alone. 
"He's trying to be noble, but this is hurting. 
"What would you say... 
"Fucking... 
"Can you please for fuck's sake let yourself be angry and stop trying to take care of everyone around you?" 

"I appreciate what you're trying to say and I'll absolutely take that on-board because there's a ring of truth to it and I'll certainly consider applying self-care but..."

"FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER FUCKING FUCK!" I growled, waving both middle-fingers at my webcam. 

Because no matter how much I might try to apply ethical frameworks to the world around me, Ian is the best of all of us; if you ever want to know what hill I will willingly die on tomorrow, look to windward and see where Ian is standing now. 

Because no matter how sick I am of how that guy always makes me look bad by comparison, I hope he never stops. 

Where for most people I have anecdotes to illustrate a narrative, for Ian I have only sentiment.
Where for most people I use allegory to illuminate, Ian has always been luminary.
Where for most people I try to set an example by which to lead, Ian is someone I try to exemplify so that one day he may lead us all. 

Hoobastank - Born To Lead

Not that he ever would, because whilst he'd appreciate the sentiment he'd assure you that there are other luminaries who can bring a more expansive skill-set to bear on that particular requirement and, as flattered as he is to be considered, he's comfortable engaging in a supporting role and would hate to tread on the toes of others who... 

would walk the fuck over him because their hubris was greater than his humility.  

But if there was anyone's army I'd volunteer to lead simply because I know he'd never ask, it would be Ian's. 

The story of how Ian and my lives intersected is as annoying to attempt to retell as it is to remember; we met at a party, and the rest is a history which I'm long past caring about. Regardless, I owe a debt of gratitude to Jenna for the part she played in bringing us together. Sifting my memory, a better one works its way to the surface: 

Back in October last year, Ian pinged me randomly with a link to the Good Things Festival saying, "BTW, this festival is on in Sydney the day after my conference. I suppose I may as well." 
"Hook me up, I'll meet you there. 
"I said that BEFORE I looked down and saw Enter Shikari, Hanabie... JEBEDIAH???
"DAFUQWAT?"
"Leave it with me," he replied, stealing one of my favourite lines. 
"FUCK YOU!
"Oh gods, I'm defensive. 
"How are you better at my catch-phrases than I am? So naturally?" 

He chose, wisely, not to respond, but a couple of days later a ticket landed offhandedly in my inbox by way of reply. 

After PayID'ing him, we caught up in Perth a couple of weeks later (see #perthistential crisis), and when I got back to Canberra I booked seats on the Murray's service to-and-from Sydney, as well as a place to stay so I wouldn't have to try driving there and back the same day. Then, in early December I headed up and managed to catch the tail-end of Enter Shikari, then all of Hanabie, at one end of the event before meeting him up during Sepultura at the other. As I made my way over I happened to be passing the main stage where Slowly Slowly were playing their one song I knew, a cover of a Blink 182 song I've always felt sentimental for, so I stopped and listened; leaning against the fence around a lighting rig with a stupid grin lighting up my face, it was a perfect fucking moment. 

Shortly afterwards I was sitting under the shade of one of the few trees inside the perimeter at Centennial Park, listening to Corey Taylor belt out Before I Forget, filling my sweetest friend in on the fascinating Redheaded Distraction (aka Bridget) I'd met shortly after I saw him last: 

Storytime continued as we shifted back to the left to fulfil my teenage dream of seeing Jebediah live, interrupted whenever "18-year old Pete" had a happy. 

It was a fucking sweet day out, so good even having to evacuate three songs into Fallout Boy's headline performance thanks to an incoming thunderstorm, whilst lightning cracked overhead, and getting drenched to the bone during the downpour which followed couldn't dampen my fondness; but it was nowhere near as sweet as the sorrow I felt saying goodnight later at Sydney Central Station. 

Loyalty can't exist without trust.
Trust can be earned or broken, never bought or sold; somehow I, wherefore I know not, came to find myself in possession of Ian's.
How could I not repay that non-performatively, and in kind, when undeserving as I might be he has been nothing but? 

Rare indeed are people whom I consider a peer, let alone an equal; Ian is one of the rarest kind, who'll ask "How the fuck are you, man?" before I can. 

Where most Aussie Blokes sling shit at each other as a sign of affection, we sling compliments. 
Where most men joust with their phallus, we join the dots with our pens.  
Where most would pontificate, Ian's a man who's sentiment is all-but-silent but speaks Louder Than Words. 

 - 06/01/2024, 00:52

Sepia stained skies...

The duty that had dragged me back discharged, I waited until darkness and a cool breeze fell, and with both the mosquitos and Mother Dear having taken themselves to bed I finally let myself flow like the rest of the waste-water down to my old spot by the river. 

I'll no less pretend to having an unpleasant time over the last three days than I will having much to say to the old friends at Ricky's party yesterday. I've certainly had a busy schedule, but also a fairly relaxed one, with plenty of time to look at the scenery as I go from one place to the next. This evening's been the first really empty space I could slot myself into, so I have. I nearly wound up here that first night, but Binky was free and it was a good opportunity to get in some quality time. Friday was good, if somewhat over-inebriated fun, which left me a little the worse for wear, and late for the event on Saturday. I hadn't intended on making an entrance, but being 45min late to the party will do that. I'd telegraphed my attendance only slightly more loudly than I had my departure so there were a few looks of surprise when I walked prodigally through the door. 

"Yes, I'm still alive."
<No, I've barely given you a second thought since quite some time before I left.>
"Yes, my cat is still a douche-canoe."
<Oh, didn't you hear I have a cat? He moved into my carport last December and now he's stuck with me.>
"I'm finding Canberra exactly where I left it, but also strangely peaceful."
<I suppose you could call 7 months and 24 days worth of planning "sudden" when you didn't care enough to talk to me the entire time, and I didn't care enough to tell you.>
<Plus I fucking de-friended you, but I guess you didn't notice.>
"I'm pretty heavily booked for the next week, I'm afraid."
<You didn't have time for me last summer when I was being excluded from all the social events, so don't go getting your hopes up.>
"Still working with the same mob, they keep finding things for me to unfuck."
<You couldn't understand it a year ago, and it's only gotten weirder since then, so let's save some oxygen, shall we?>

Ian was there tho, as he'd been the night before, which was nice. 

Afterwards I went back to Ricky's and we settled down on the couch with pizza before she passed out 5 min into the second episode of Loki, then we watched the rest of it whilst she nursed her hangover this morning, went for brunch, and then passed out again for the middle hour of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It was a pleasant time, all told. Just after 3PM I packed my bag, said goodbye to her dad for what may well (bearing in mind his health is anything but) be the last time, and hiked over to Gosnells Station to catch the train back up to Lathlain. 

Something that's been hitting me in the eyeballs everywhere I've gone over the last 77 hours has been just how flat, and brown, this place is. Not just the topography, but the houses as well. Half-built single-storey beige shoe-boxes rising out of grey sand under a washed-out sky the colour of dust and stagnation. I've become so used to looking out over verdant-green hills under vivid skies of blue and violet and rose-gold and peach. It's not that Canberra is 'new'; it's just 'now', but Perth has been feeling very 'old', and entirely 'then'. 

I've been trying to put my finger on why the word I keep coming back to is "peaceful", but the mercury bead refuses to stay on the page. My lifestyle's not changed all that much; I still spend most of my time alone, I just seem to be choosing that instead of the alternative being too hard do deal with. I walk more, but I'm still just walking to a workplace, or the grocery store. I still work, and work some more, then sit around watching the world grow dark chatting to people online, listening to music, and bashing words into this year's laptop. Perhaps it's as simple as the view; a wide, open expanse full of colour and movement feels a lot more free, but also connected, especially when compared to the white picket fence under the branches of the trees I let grow over the yard. More and more it seems that the barrier I used to keep the rest of the world out was just as much a cage I locked myself into, or the cast on a broken limb left on long after the bone had set and was now causing the muscles to atrophy. 

Even sitting here along the river with a cool breeze on the back of my neck... it's nice here, but the city lights which have provided a backdrop for so many hundreds of conversations seem so very far away and washed out right now. It's all so familiar, and all so the same, and for all that I'm sitting still and my phone's GPS is pinning me to this spot on the map, I feel like I'm so very far away and still accelerating. 

I'm here for another week, and whilst I did what I came here to do there's still plenty to get done, so no point in whinging about it. So much of my world exists in the place between my ears anyway, when I close my eyes... really, I could be anywhere. On the day I left I spoke about "accept[ing] the fall", so now must be time to accept the landing and that this is just where my feet need to be. 

Musical afterthought: Metric - Oh Please

The rest is on me. 

"Flying Dutchman"-level ghosting...

 I hadn't decided whether this was going on the blog or not - I figured I'd work that out when I finished it. I wanted it out of my head tho, so sent it to my Penpal('s email address which has been my "grief toilet" for some time, and whilst she's not replied in a while I was also asked not to stop so I intend to continue dumping this shit into it until that changes or the address gives me splash-backs). 

I was listening to this when I sent the following message to Ian, and the combination made me realise that more words needed to be generated: 

Twenty One Pilots - Trees (Vessel Album version)

"For those who are keeping score, it's now been 2 weeks since I sent Jenna that 'fuck you and the rest of the money you owe me' email. 
"I can't say I really expected one, but at this point I reckon that ship has sailed and it's a 'Flying Dutchman'-level ghosting.
"Or, as Jeff Murdock in Coupling would have said:
"'Result!''" 
 - 11/09/2023, 20:33

Edit: Fri, 15 Sept 20:38
I wrote (most of) this on Monday night, and was in such a mess I'm pretty sure the last 500ish words are garbage and need to be rewritten. I say this here, because I'm about to read it through and attempt to do that now, and that means cranking the same tunes on repeat whilst I do to get myself back in the same headspace that had me quietly weeping through the early hours of Tuesday morning. Depending on what I find, further annotations may be included. Or not. I'll work that out when I get there. 

I also cc'd Ian when my finger stabbed the blue button marked "Send", because Ian'ing is a virtue. 

 And on that note (the first of which I believe is a D5#), here I go....  

---

Three months ago I was checking my bank accounts and updating my spreadsheets and made a decision - I have one I keep for my rental property (created a decade ago when I first started renting my spare rooms to keep track of income and expenses, making tax time easier), and others for my "loan shark" activities. I have a history of bailing people out of debt, starting with Kat (long before our getting together was even vaguely a consideration, mind you), followed by Jenna a year after she moved in with me, and then Sandra. I had a quarter of a million dollars of inheritance, I knew people who were paying ruinous amounts of interest on barely-serviceable debt, and buying debt is a time-honoured wog tradition. A lot of people I've known over the years rate high on executive dysfunction, and banks and credit-providers are geared specifically to take advantage of people who blank out when the numbers which describe their problems are too big to face. If I could offer half the rate whilst still making a profit it wasn't just ethically positive, it was mutually beneficial. 

I solve problems for a living, and have demonstrated that I can consistently polish a turd. An easy win-win is, for me, a no-brainer, and as Scott once (or twice, has) said to me: 

"If you lend someone $50 and you never see them again, it was money well spent." 

That probably wasn't meant to extend three orders of magnitude, but "in for a penny, in for a pound", right? Whether "Sterling" or "of flesh" is just a question of currency. 

Kat I floated $10k not long after I started getting to know her, when Jenna and I were still "fresh", so she could clear credit card debt accrued from a trip to the Worldcon Sci Fi Convention in London with her immediate ex. For a couple of years she made her payments, and I kept my spreadsheet updated. When we'd go hang out by the river we'd invariably stop at the servo for Iced Coffee, or grab a bite to eat at the nearby Hungry Jack's, or she'd be short on cigarettes, and I'd usually play the "I know how much debt you're in" card, and cover it. Much later when we were together, and she received her own inheritance from her mother's estate, she cleared the slate, and I told her that I'd been consciously using the interest she was paying to cover dinner. 

She was SO PISSED OFF at me she wouldn't speak to me for quite some time afterwards, but that was fine because she was kissing me so hard my lips bled. 

I floated Sandra $50k when she started up The Blind Dove Cafe, which was just off the intersection of Flemington Rd and Nullarbor Ave in Franklin, ACT. The best offer she had from a bank was 50% of the equity at 13.5% interest (which she couldn't get near because they had no equity worth mentioning), so I offered her the lot at 10%. She sent me her Business Case, I sent her contract documents; she sent them back signed and witnessed, I sent her a bunch of cash. I might have loved her to bits (and still do), but it was "business", and we treated it as such. I still paid my coffee and lunch tab when I came to visit and set up shop in the corner to work remotely on a couple of my trips over, just like anyone else. 

They extended it another $20k to invest in a grease trap (which never got installed, but the timing coincided with the end of the apartment construction boom, and the ensuing drop-off in trade, so they needed it to keep afloat). When they were on the verge of going under in 2019 I offered (and they accepted) a "repayment holiday" (including interest) for 3 months over summer, which kept them going for another year. Later when they wound the Dove down during covid and still owed me a sizeable chunk of cash, I dropped the interest rate to match what I was paying on my mortgage (~4ish%), then extended it another $24k so they could replace their dying Suzuki Vitara with a Subaru VX - I called it "protecting my investment", with a side of "I'm no worse off, but you're much better, plus fuck the banks in the ear with a tuning fork". After picking up the work which ultimately brought me back to Canberra and was able to slam enough cash into my offset account that it zero'd the remaining mortgage, I gave her a call: 

"So hey, about your loan, I need to do a review on your rate."
"Oh? Yeah, you said that might need to happen. Couldn't expect it to stay so low forever I guess. Can you do up the doc's and send me the updated amortisation schedule please?"
"Of course - it's already in your inbox. Can you give it a glance and make sure you're OK with it?"
"Yeah, I guess? Might take me a minute...?"
"No stress. I'll wait."

Sandra's laptop was 6 years old at that point, and so shit even I couldn't get it running well, but I was in no rush. 

"OK. Got your email. Schedule looks reasonable, we can manage the fortnightly OK, might even be able to get ahead on it."
"All good with me - long as you're comfortable with it. Interest rate OK tho?" 
"Oh, I hadn't spotted that, let me loo...
"WHAT TH...?
"1%?
"THE FUCK?
"Did you forget to add a zero?"
"Nah, <I explained my own debt position> and you always insisted I had to be making some money off it, so went with that.
"You alright with it tho?
"I can drop it down to like... a half or something?"
"<insert swearing, recriminations, what sounded like tears, suggestions of my having been born outside of wedlock, and other vitriol>... You're amazing. Thank you. Are you sure...? Oh my god thank you."
"Don't stress. Just... don't go missing a payment or I'll send Scotty 'round for Timo's kneecaps. I know where you live 'n' shit..." 

Just before I moved over in March and they were buying their place in Captain's Flat they had $4ish-k left, and were close to the line on their loan approval. They were running thru my broker/mate/client FinBro, and we had a chat about it - he wanted me to draft a letter saying what the initial value was, what repayments had been, how much they'd paid, and (most importantly) that they'd finished paying it all off.

"Of course, no worries," I told him, and gave him shit for being surprised when I had it to him in under 20min. 

I mean... this is why you keep a tracking spreadsheet, right? 

So I gave Sandra another call to let her know: 

"Oh, thanks, yeah, you said that might need to happen. Once we've settled and the loan's all secure we'll get back on the repayments and sort the rest out. Might be a bit less than before, but we'll do the best we can."
"Yeah, about that. I kinda did sign a document saying you were already square, and looking at my spreadsheets I've made a bunch more out of you than what's outstanding, so... yeah, I reckon I've made enough at this point, so 'happy birthday' or fuckever." 
"..."
"You ain't getting a fucking housewarming present tho. Just sayin'..."
"<further vitriol, empty promises of repercussions next time she saw me, suggestions of my possessing far more warmth and greater depth than can be empirically proven>," but did you know money CAN, in fact, buy you love? 
"Eh. I never sent you a wedding present either, unless you want to count Rickrolling you in the speech I con'd Scott into reading, so don't mention it. 
No, seriously, don't mention it, You'll ruin my reputation.*"
"Reputation as a big softie, you mean?" 
"Sure, whatever, it's your fucking birthday, now fuck off and go deal with buying a house.
"Congratulations. 
"And when you bend Timo over the lounge later, make sure he calls you 'Pete'."

* 

Musical accompaniment: Lauren Marie - Trees (Twenty One Pilots Cover) 

In the month-or-so gap between when she cheated** on me, and our first anniversary. Jenna finally told me about her debt. There was a Car Loan, plus a Personal Loan, and then there were the two credit cards she'd maxed out; one of her mechanisms for coping with depression after escaping her abusive ex was to shout rounds at overly fancy bars for her broke friends, and fly others over from Melbourne to visit her. Her debt was structured so poorly that most of her income was spent servicing the interest without actually touching the principal. 

** It's complicated - there'd been an "in principle" discussion about such things a while before, and I made it clear that as far as I was concerned she'd not done anything wrong. I guess you could say I was something of a crimeless-victim, but none of that made the feeling of being stabbed in the gut any less real, and it took some time to process afterwards. 

I wasn't upset about the existence of debt, but I was apoplectic-near-speechless that she'd taken a year to tell me about it, for a number of reasons: 

 - For a start, Jenna and I actually "dated", as in "went out on dates" both in our early courtship and throughout, and with both of us having decently-paying jobs we'd go to Nice Although Not Necessarily Extravagant Places with the agreement that we'd alternate; I got the first, she the second, and so on. I wouldn't have flinched at covering the tab if I knew she was in the hole, or at very least dropped the "fancy" a couple of notches. I can enjoy an evening with a beautiful, fascinating girl over fish & chips and a lukewarm bag of goon sitting on a rug in the park, after all. I was pissed off that she let me unwittingly help dig her deeper into that hole; I felt unconsentingly complicit in a circumstance I could have circumvented.
- I was pissed off that this brilliant, talented girl who was so passionate about what she did, who I'd spent a year falling for, after which I was Absolutely Not Bored, who after all these years of so-near-but-so-far, I could actually see myself building A Life with, could "lie-of-omission" to me for so long.
- I was pissed off that she'd hidden it so well that I hadn't caught on. 

and... 

- After all those years of subsistence-living, dating PYT's who Never Quite Fit or Just Couldn't Keep Up (not to mention Emma's Gaslight Sonata), after I'd Wandered The World Having Adventures, then scrimped and saved my way to Home Ownership, I'd embarked on this amazing new Adventure called Settling Down. I was prepared to do it on my own, but I wanted to do it with Someone, An Equal, who had dreams as bold and vivid as mine, who was a partner-not-a-dependent, where neither of us needed the other to achieve what we wanted, but could work together to Build Something Better.
- But more than anything else, I wanted to Do It With Her. 

Suddenly our "partnership of equals" wasn't, and our equal footing was separated by a divide measuring forty-seven thousand dollars. She may not have been dependent, but she certainly wasn't going to be able to contribute equally. This dream I'd allowed myself to have of having Someone To Build With had turned into Someone I'd Need To Carry, or for whom everything we did would mean delaying her own financial equilibrium, let alone actualisation. 

For the second time in a couple of months I left her place feeling gutted, needing time to process. 

I nearly walked; I'd been in a facsimile of "here" before and I'd sworn on my pinkie "Never Again"; Emma had strung me along for a year before revealing that we had life-goals which were Poles Apart: 

"Don't you want to create a new person who's half you and half me, and loves us unconditionally?"
"THE FUCK NO! HOLY FUCK! WHAT FUCKING DRUGS ARE YOU ON? HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT WAS HALF ME COULD POSSIBLY BE LIKE THAT? HOW THE FUCK NAIVE ARE YOU, HAVE YOU FUCKING MET ME??? I'M A FUCKING SOCIOPATH!!!"
"...But... It's what I want more than anything."
"And it's the thing I want so little that maybe, just maybe, if I had three lives, I'd almost consider doing it in one***." 

*** Reference to a line from Melbourne by The Whitlams: 

She found some guy on OKCupid or EHarmony or something and had a kid not long afterwards. From what I saw when I went stalking on Facebook he seemed a nice enough bloke, the kid was pretty adorable, and she looked happy. Maybe she even is, and good for her if so. I hope she's having a nice life. 

Now Jenna had done the same thing in her own way; we'd Made Plans, Created Dreams, Ideated A Life Together, and there I was calculating how little of that was now actually possible in the cold blue-shifted light when "the world is our oyster" contracts because "shit's expensive, yo". 

We'd planned the home we'd build together; her bookshelf-walled Library with the comfy chairs where we could read together just inside of arms-reach, with conveniently-placed side-tables for our cups of tea; my tech-dungeon with the gaming rigs we'd use to go on endless Borderlands runs together; the dinners we'd cook together in the open-plan kitchen, and the spaces around the dining table we'd set aside for her cats so they could be near the people who'd come round to share it with us... 

... until suddenly I found myself staring at the compromises we'd need to make if I wanted to get close to achieving a low-budget version of that using my income alone, but as much as I care more for the home than the house, it wasn't something we could do 'together' any more. 

We'd talked for days about the travel I'd done, and she wanted to do, and where the two of us were going to go; she wanted to go to Iceland for her 30th - we'd talked about it at length. Her Geologist-Lady-Boner for the place was immense, throbbing, and so wonderous to behold you couldn't help but want to touch it. It was the perfect blend of her professional passion, and my passion for travel, a place she wanted to go, and a place I'd never been; it was a few years away so it was absolutely doable... 

... until suddenly it wasn't... at least not in a way that would be 'ours'. 

After taking a week to clear my head and recalculate the vectors, in the end, for better or worse, I stayed, but I issued an ultimatum: she had a month to Get Her Shit In One Sock, and get her debt restructured. I promised to help if she asked, but unless she did I'd not push, prod, poke, or pester, in fact I'd posit not one unprompted word. A fortnight later, give-or-take, she asked me to come to Westpac and hold her hand whilst she signed the papers on her Debt Consolidation Loan, which of course I ditched work to attend. Leaving the bank with a debt she could actually service, we agreed to some new ground-rules for our dates, and hit what I guess you'd call a "Restart" button; of course, I took her out to dinner to celebrate. 

A year later my paternal grandmother had passed away, a quarter of a million dollars had landed in my bank account, and suddenly I was sneezing-distance from being able to pay off my modest little duplex. I had no intention of doing that tho, because it was far too small for the two of us and her three cats, so we'd been house hunting (I started off looking at places two streets over on Mars St on a whim because of her love-affair with that planet; she'd done her Geology Honours Project on mineral surveys of NASA's proposed landing sites for the Curiosity Rover, using their satellite data. She loves Mars like I love the idea of sitting in a pub until the end of my days with people paying my bar tab in return for solving their problems, or being able to instantly teleport so I can be in Paris for breakfast on a whim). 

A year after we'd moved into the place I moved out of in March to come back to Canberra, I finally asked how her loan was going. She made mumbling noises about how little progress is made in the first year or so because compound interest and blah-blah-what-the-fuckever; I made the <yeah-yeah, blah-blah, skip to the end> hand gesture, "I fucking know how loans work. Second mortgage and shit? What's the damage look like?"
She looked it up, told me the number.
"Hmm...k, what was your interest rate again? Like... 12%?"
She gave another number, slightly less than that.
"Aight, well I've got some cash left after paying the deposit on this place. Can you hit Westpac up for a payout figure? I want to buy your loan - I can halve your interest rate and still be ahead on what I'd pull leaving it in the offset, and we'd have you clear like 2 years sooner." 

Skipping past the protest, my accepting when she declined, then a day or three later confirming that the offer was still, in fact, on the table when she asked, confirming that I was actually sure, in fact I had a boilerplate Contract drawn up ready to go, and that it was in my own best interest across at least three different metrics, I bought her debt. 

The girls at Westpac, she told me later, were so enviously approving they waived the Break Fee for her. 

A couple of years later we went to Iceland. We couldn't time things to be there on her birthday, sadly, because she wasn't going to have quite enough leave accrued in time, plus the 30th of June is Ruinously Expensive since it's the height of Peak Season; we were there for mine tho, so I shared it with her. Standing on the frigid Reykjavik foreshore after dinner on the night of the day I turned 36, arms wrapped around her in the heavy coats we'd picked up in Berlin, she leaned her head back against my chest whilst we watched the Aurora Borealis flutter and dance in the solar wind across a silent sky, and that awe-struck moment was neither hers, no mine; it was ours. 

She absolutely couldn't afford that trip, but she paid for her Her Stuff, and I paid for mine. She was still deep in debt at the time, so her half of the Shared Expenses (flights, accommodation, so on) I paid for and added to her tab. That way it was, at least nominally, over a relevant time-frame, still "our" trip. 

This, from earlier that year, was on me: 

She left out of her description that the band was an alloy comprised of 95% Platinum and 5% Iridium, included in the design in part because neither of us are into gold, but more importantly because Iridium isn't a naturally occurring element on Earth; the only Iridium on Earth comes from meteorites which have fallen from space. Because (a lot of things, but this is pithy): 

"We are all stardust."
- Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Six-and-a-quarter years ago, after she handballed me to Kat, there was a period of discord - despite their instigating the exchange of these Damaged Goods, they each decided that they'd been somehow slighted by the other, and I went from having a girlfriend-and-a-friend to having a girlfriend-and-an-ex-I'd-have-liked-to-have-been-friends-with-if-shit-hadn't-got-weird. Jenna and I kept in touch sporadically, and I watched her burn through a couple of boyfriends as she went; her most recent (to my count) ex and I get along pretty well, amusingly. Somehow, despite her having instigated and encouraged it, as recently as the last time we exchanged screams she still holds that against me. 

Two-and-a-half years ago we reconnected in the aftermath of Kat's departure. It took some effort to drag her out of the rabbit-hole she'd crawled down after ending things with J------ (the younger, chubbier, lawyerier version of me), but she got me in a way no one had done before and regardless of anything else, I Missed My Friend. She was on the rocks with S---- (the younger, less-refined, redheaded, dreadlocked version of me), and wound up ditching him after setting us up to become mates. The friendship got worked on... or at least fed with wedges and watered by an impressive number of pints which I snuck into my corporate "Client/Partner Meeting Expenses" Account because we'd mentioned "computers" in the conversation at some point Mr Taxman, I swear. 

A year ago we had a falling out, which is a polite way of saying "I came one slow-breath from kicking her out of my car on the side of Roe Hwy without slowing down from the 100kph speed limit whilst driving her drunk-arse home". I'd bought her ticket to come to the Monolith gig and see a bunch of bands I'd got her into, and a couple we'd come to love together. I wasn't in much of a mood to drink, so I offered to drive her, Ricky, and Priya, and was taking her to her boyfriend-after-the-boyfriend-after-the-boyfriend-after-me's place so he wouldn't have to drag his exhausted arse out of bed and come collect her from mine. I was in a REALLY bad headspace, skirting burnout having not long returned from my month in Canberra after delivering The Impossible Project, still missing Kat to bits after not-quite-two years, and coming up on four years working non-stop, finishing my MBA, and recovering from a-bike-accident-and-two-surgeries without a break. I was so on-edge that I recoiled whenever we made contact. Eventually she tried resting her head on my shoulder and I teleported six inches, pulling myself into the smallest ball I could and had to reject her when she reached out, invading my personal space with her hand this time (in a way which I know was meant to be comforting but was anything but), asking if I was OK. 

But we all know the answer to that question, because I'm not now, and certainly wasn't then; my equilibrium has been delicate to say the least, and that sort of "companionable contact" has become the opposite of comforting, so I spoke honestly, and told her: 

"No. Please don't touch me." 

It was a lovely day tho - Ricky has loved Karnivool to death since long before we crossed paths, Priya's all over Perth Prog like a Malaysian girl on a Laksa, and Jenna... let's just say that there was nothing played on stage that day that either of us wasn't absolutely into, and very little we hadn't listened to in one of the other's car at some point. It had been a really, uncynically, lovely day: 

The gig over, having dragged Jenna's drunk arse off some hapless bloke who was less interested in the mineral assets her mining-magnate boss controls than the ones she presents far more tangibly, then carrying Ricky's joyously sozzled one across the car park, and pouring them both into the FrogRocket whilst P performed a supportive shepherding role, and my own arse ensconced in the heated driver's seat, Jenna took One Of [Her] Turns. It was all of those nights when she had one too many and flipped from "the one person so empathic she guided my drunken arse, who hadn't realised he was grieving, out our front door early on a Saturday morning after watching my favourite Trek film (The Undiscovered Country) and sat me down in the driveway of the house (which, for all that it was legally 'mine', was emotionally 'ours') so I could look up at the stars whilst tears rolled down my face, weeping on her shoulder, because Leonard Nimoy had died, and my template for existing in a world of raging emotions I had no idea how to deal with and fought constantly to control along with him" to full-on just-like-the-bad-old-days dissociative. 

I won't relate her tirade - explaining the multiple layers of context would take more words than I have energy to spend, it's getting late, I'm tired, and my cheeks keep getting wet from that last anecdote. I've been gaslit by professionals, but Jenna's a far more dangerous flavour of crazy; when she flips, she believes in her pocket-universe one-hundred-and-crazy percent. When you've been told your perceptions are wrong for so long, by so many people, you find you're never quite sure; when one day you find that singular point in the heavens which stays still when the whole world around you is spinning, that one Star which always points North, the Legrange Point where your fingers touch becomes an axis around which you can calculate every vector, and any moment. When your reference point inverts gravity and polarity without warning, utterly convinced that what you thought was black is actually white, and that this up was never down, where else can you possibly find yourself but in freefall? It took a long time for me to learn to trust my senses when my source-of-truth started screaming otherwise and my inner-ear couldn't tell the difference. 

That night I took control of my breathing, and Set The FrogRocket's cruise-Control to the Heart of the Speed Limit, let the white stitching on the steering wheel serve as my reference to "up", and the red line in front of the X-Wing on my GPS point the way forward. 

I kept my tongue clamped between my teeth as she escalated, pausing when I dropped Priya off, and Ricky passed out peacefully in the back seat.
I chewed my lip whilst she berated me for abandoning her for the year she wouldn't respond to my increasingly urgent pings asking "R U OK???"
I finally broke composure when she started attacking Ian; because by that point my tongue was swollen, my lips were bleeding, and enough was enough (and no one insults my Ian but me). 

The rest of the trip played out to the soundtrack of a dissociative's lament, a whining turbocharger, a sociopath's repudiation, a squealing of tyres pushed beyond their grip-rating, a rev-limiter protesting its artificial limitation, ending with a handbrake-turn and a 

"Get the fuck out."

A furious foot introducing pedal to metal, a couple of high-speed turns, and a full-throttle thrash down the ramp back onto Roe Hwy later, Ricky opened her eyes in my rear-view mirror: 

"Your ex be cray-cray."
"Ricky, you know I love you'n'shit, right, but Shut The Fuck Up."
"You know I'm right."
"Ain't sayin' you're wrong, but you can still Shut The Fuck Up. Now go the fuck to sleep. Also, I love you."
"I love you tzzzzzzzz...." 

(Finally getting to the first thing I wrote when I started relating this story) A month and a half ago I (realised how much context this statement was going to need to make sense, and have spent the last 6+ hours listening to versions of the same song whilst I fill it in, followed by 2 x 4 hour editing sessions making sure it all made sense) was in the fourth hour of a Teams call with Ian, helping him with his second MBA unit because he and Jenny broke up recently and "helping a fellow traveller on their own MBA Journey" is a Fantastic Way For Us Both To Not Deal With That, and the topic of The Last Time I Saw Or Exchanged Words With Jenna (or Priya, for that matter) came up. A high-speed debrief on "Leadership through motivation", psychoanalysing his South African colleague, and a bottle-and-a-half of wine" are my excuses for not remembering what he told me Jenna had said-or-done immediately following our breakup six-and-change years earlier, motivating me to declare: 

"Seriously? You know what... seriously, fuck that bitch. Fuck that lying fucking dissociative fucking pity-whore..."
"<Ian'ing ensues>"
"Nah, fuck you Mr Empathy Man; empathise with this, motherfucker: you know that bitch still owes me money? You know how I wiped Sanda's slate a while back? I was going to do the same thing for Jenna at the same point, but... nah man, fuck that, and fuck her. She can wait another month. Shit just cost her a thousand dollars."
"<Ian'ing intensifies>"
"Nah, this shit ain't your fault. Thank you for telling me. You're a better friend than either of us deserve, but <waving both middle fingers at the webcam> now I'm fucking pissed." 

Two weeks ago I sent the following email to Jenna, BCC'ing Ian so there'd be a witness: 

Subject: "Loan cancellation"

"Jenna, 

Looking at my spreadsheet there's ~$3k left on your tab, but I just bumped up my rate to [my main client] and I'm sick of people owing me money so I'm calling it. Happy Birthday (or whatever occasion you prefer). 

Have a nice life. 

Regards, 

Peter." 

Six and a half hours ago I pinged Ian again: 

Thing is... I still love her, and I miss her to death, I desperately hope she gets better, and I sincerely wish her the nicest possible life. 

I won't pretend she didn't hurt me, but for all that I try to be the Ian'er man, I'm still bleeding where she pricked me, and I know I'll never be Ian enough to not twist the knife when, from hell's heart, I stabbingly take my revenge; cold as the stars which shone down uncaring whilst I sat with her in our driveway, or the tears which fell in the quiet stillness of that night just as they do now; for all that I'm relieved to have received silence as a reply, there remains a smouldering ember in my cold and otherwise-empty heart that still remembers the warmth of the arms wrapped around me whilst I grieved, and mine around her as we stared in awe, and desperately wants to see a reply in my inbox, even if all it said was: 

"Hello."