philomena ruth rush r.i.p.

I attended my second cousin's (my mother's cousin) funeral yesterday.
It was a strange experience. I didn't like it much for many reasons.
Fortunately, my brother also attended with his partner.
For some reason my Mum didn't want to come up from Tasmania to commemorate Mena or send her wishes to her family in person. I don't understand Mum sometimes...
A close friend of mine told me about her experience of a funeral last year where she sat up the back of the chapel and was faced with numerous mourners' indifferent backs. She told me how alienating it was. I had a similar understanding of the process yesterday. I felt faintly excluded from the process and fair enough. I never knew Mena that well or spent much time with her, living in different states as we did. But I always enjoyed her company whenever I spent any time with her.
I never knew this but she had a clique with a name. They called themselves The Peasants and they used to have all kinds of low brow fun together, such as dressing in weirdo old lady drag. Sort of Queen Mother style. Dancing drunk from sherry on tables was another practice.
I found it hard keeping the others' grief out of my head. I suppose that's because it's a grief I shared with them. At least in part.
The low point of the proceedings would definitely have to have been the photo slideshow montage with a soundtrack from Hell: Celine Dion's cover of Power of Love.
I don't know how someone misconstrued Celine for affecting or appropriate. Perhaps there was a message in there for her husband, dear Jeff. He's devastated of course, after sixty years of marriage.
As her coffin was loaded into the hearse, four doves - one for each of their children - was released into the air. My brother and I looked at each other with a smile and the same unspoken question, "Are they homing doves?" It's much more cost effective to have homing doves. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Turns out they are homing doves. Mum's twin sister, Aunty Naomi, asked Jeff and he confirmed our thoughts. The doves are trained to circle twice before heading for home.
Aunty Naomi is a funny one. I had thought I might point out to her the fact that the ring I wear on my finger is her Dad's wedding ring (her Dad being a well-respected man in the family). But then I questioned my motives and realised I would only be drawing attention to that because I was feeling left out. Whatever you call that feeling. The feeling of leftoutness. Unacknowledged. Because Mum maried above her station (for station read class, a corollary of which is, somehow, against the odds, Dad married beneath his.) I felt quite different to the family and further out of place. I guess the Catholicism didn't help there.
Speaking of religion, I found a lovely little leaflet about how you can help any loved one in your life to overcome their SSA. Same-sex attraction, that is.
Oh yes! The pamplet (pictured) offers such pearls of wisdom as:
"Same-sex attraction is not the work of God ... There is no scientific proof that SSA is the result of genetic factors. SSA is an aspect of underdeveloped sexuality."
I wonder which scientific bases they used to make these assertions. Umm... Yes, let's empirically research the origins of queer sexualities... Yep, just as we suspected: definitely not the work of God. And as for not being genetic, well no shit.
And this one:
"The orientation of SSA, although disordered, is not in itself sinful. Homosexual acts, however, are sinful and do not lead a person to a deeper life in Jesus Christ."
You don't say? "I don't know about you, Hon, but I really am looking forward to a hetero marriage so our sex-life can lead us to a deeper life in Christ Jesus."
Oh now I get it! I'm underdeveloped and my heterosexual friends are fully developed. Yep, it's true. I probably hate my mother too. Nice one.
I've decided I hate it when people try to link sexuality to spirituality. In fact, I'm not spiritual these days. Sexuality and spirituality are about as compatible as me and Priests.
Anyway, that pamphlet sure brightened up my day, providing me, as it did, with comic relief.
Now Playing: Severed Heads - Guests

taslandia

So I was down in Tassie recently and here are the photos to prove it.
I had a great time, managing to catch up with friends and family in Launceston and Hobart, taking heaps of photos on my new digital camera and op-shopping with Mum, inbetween buying her a pack of Horizon menthol light 2mg cigarettes, which she proceeded to surreptitiously suck the death out of in various nooks and crannies around Launceston, lest anyone from her church should catch her, smoke in hand.
That was funny.
There's a photo in this posting of her with her new boyfriend - don't tell Dad.
We had lunch at Fitzies' (S)C(hy)i(t)ty Caf, which is a venue that sells English-style food, roasted and mass produced like pig slops, frequented by flannelette-wearing rural folks and the blue rinse set (those in this cohort who still have hair left), whereupon I whinged at her for not talking to Dad about my being queer. There's still a massive not-so-invisible barrier between me and my parents and I'm eager to see it surmounted, despite running off to the big smoke directly after making it apparent. It's funny how my parents demanded honesty and inclusion from their children - but only up to a point! Well, I'm doing what I can, but with Dad's health not what it used to be, it'd be nice if they'd help each other come to some space where they can acknowledge it. Apparently, I'm asking too much from them and I should just be grateful that they haven't disowned me but that would be buying into a minoritarian position that I refuse to accept. I demand a relative equality from my parents! I should settle for no less, damnit! I'm not going to accept their oppressive conservative 'Christian' values. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that I will never even gain a passive acceptance from them on this count and so there will always be a tension between us. But I want them to know that that tension is their making. Or a product of their socialisation and in no way my fault.
This is another reason why friendships are so important. Gosh, I've got some great friends too! Dave and Phoebe happened to be in Launceston when I arrived and took me down to Hobart, putting me up for a night and feeding me. Thanks! I've known these guys for so long and have travelled along a sometimes difficult way with them, just a little. What a privilege.
Compare this to the slightly stilted conversations with people at our mutual friend's bucks party where the obligatory, "So, what have you been doing?" conversation yielded less than I'd hoped for. What I'd give to find out what people think of me. There's a culture of decline in much of Tasmania. Very passive.
Saria! Wow, what an amazing friendship we share. I miss her company so much. She, Dave, Phoebe, Chris, Jacob; nothing if not active. Saria and I have travelled a far along similiar trajectories. Ours is a frienship that will never quit. Why won't you guys move to Melbourne?
I took a photo of a Gunns holding lot or something in Launceston. It's disgusting. All that old growth forest coverted into stacks of drying, dead wood. It's worse in Burnie, where they woodchip the wood and ship it out to other countries, whereupon it's converted into something 'useful' (but probably unnecessary) and then sold back to us at a much great price. The woodchip piles are so huge that the massive bulldozers used to regulate them for whatever reasons look like toy tonka trucks. It's fucked. And of course, the Labor Party are in Gunns pockets helping them make profits at the environment (and tax payers' [whatever]) expense. Meanwhile the Upper Florentine is being raped and protesters arrested for trying to protect it. Sigh.
Anyway, it was a really good trip. Not least of all because it affirmed the life I lead in Melbourne. As much as I love Tasmania, I really love living in Melbourne.
I'll move back to Tassie to spend my later years I reckon in contemplative retirement. Either that or I'll be just another environmental refugee when the planet decides it wants to evict humanity for being such bad residents. I'll grow organic vegies on some small patch of turf on the East Coast, living in a solar powered tee-pee, living in harmony with the quolls and paddymelons, communicating via drum circles in a perpetual post-human twilight.

ex-mass time

Well, Christmas hasn't arrived yet and I've already been showered with a whole bunch of really good gifts.
And I'm such a greedy fucker to my family I haven't really spent much time or thought on the gifts I've given them. Oh well.
I've received a great set of Sennheiser headphones from me man and he's got another surprise in store for me yet. Nice.
And if you're marveling at the artwork that adorns this post, one of them is a gift from my good mate Dave and you can check out more his stylee at this link.
Thanks Dave.
On a different note, there seems to be an assumption that the festy season is a time of year when everyone's supposed to be doing the family thing. I love my family and all but that doesn't mean I feel an obligation to be with them. I spend a reasonable amount of time with them and go out of my way to be with them often enough so this Christmas is going to be a time for friends.
That's right, this year I'm going to hang out with my fellow expat Tasmanian friends who I don't spend nearly enough quality time with. Nice, nice.
There's a real pleasure in spending time in good company with great friends. I live for that. Friends are affirming in ways that family often struggles to be.
I think families are a given, there's little choice around whether or not you accept your family. I mean, I can try and divorce my family if I wanted (which I don't) but there'd always be a sense of lack or loss, I reckon. Whereas, I've lost friends and it's been fairly easy to move on from that. Likewise, family has a way of dragging a person back into its fold. Friends don't. Friendships have to be maintained a lot more I reckon. Family is always there. And it's possible to love someone because they're family as much as because of who they are. I choose to be a friend with my friends. I can't choose my family. That's special in its own way, too.
As is Squarepusher.
now playing with extreme pleasure: squarepusher - hello meow