Of Eggs And Chickens
Returning early from work on Tuesday afternoon, I found a slip of cardboard in my letterbox informing me that I had a package to collect. ‘Ah!’ I thought. ‘My visa and passport have been returned! Lovely!’ – whereupon I grabbed my purse and rode straight up to the post office. Once I reached the counter, however, I found myself thwarted by a Postal Chick. The conversation went like this:
ME: Hello! I’ve got a package to pick up. Here’s the slip from my mailbox.
POSTAL CHICK: That’s fine. Do you have any ID?
ME: No, that’s what I’m here to pick up. It’s my visa application stuff.
POSTAL CHICK: I’m sorry, I can’t give you the parcel without seeing some ID.
ME: But all my ID is in the parcel. I can’t show you any ID until you give it to me.
POSTAL CHICK: You have no ID?
ME: No, I do have ID – it’s just all in the package. Look, I don’t have a valid driver’s license or a student card. My passport is my only form of photo ID, and that’s what I’m here to collect.
POSTAL CHICK: Do you have any other ID with your name on it?
ME: Yes and, again, no. All my cards still have my maiden name on them, but the package has my married name on it. Which I know, because I wrote the address. It’s a reply-paid parcel. I bought and sent it from here on Monday. That lady next to you served me.
POSTAL CHICK: Sorry, we serve millions of people a week. We don’t remember you.
ME, Internally: I’m sorry – you, personally, serve millions of customers per week in this tiny suburban post office, or Australia Post serves millions of customers? Because there’s a difference!
ME, out loud: Really? You don’t remember me?
NICE LADY WHO HELPED ME ON MONDAY: I’m sorry, no.
ME: Ah. Fair enough.
POSTAL CHICK: Do you have any utility bills in your name?
ME: No, they’re all in my husband’s name. I just pay them.
POSTAL CHICK: Do you have a lease agreement, then? A bank statement?
ME: I have no idea where our lease is, and I don’t have a current bank statement.
POSTAL CHICK, disbelievingly: You don’t have a bank statement?
ME, internally: OK. Does anyone on Earth keep their old bank statements lying around for just this eventuality? Do you keep your bank statements, Postal Chick? I think not!
ME, out loud: My bank statements come every two months. The next one isn’t due until July. The only one I have is, once again, in the package. I had to order it from the bank especially for my passport application. Which is what I’ve come to pick up. It contains my visa, my current passport, my childhood passport, my marriage certificate, my birth certificate, a bank statement and a copy of my ticket to Heathrow. All my ID. In the parcel.
POSTAL CHICK: I can’t give you the parcel until you show me some ID.
ME: This is a chicken and egg dilemma! I can’t show you my ID until you give me the parcel, but you won’t give me the parcel because I don’t have ID! Look, the first time I had to get one of these back, I just had to sign for it at the door. What’s wrong with doing that here?
POSTAL CHICK: Yes, but that was because it was the postie delivering it. That’s different.
ME, internally: But that’s entirely stupid! Either there is a rigid, unbendable standard in place on showing ID to collect a parcel, or there isn’t! I could just as easily have lied to the postie as to you – but it’s my parcel! Addressed in my handwriting!
ME, out loud: This is ridiculous. Isn’t there anything else I can do?
POSTAL CHICK: You can’t show me any ID?
ME: No!
POSTAL CHICK: I’m sorry, but I can’t hand over the parcel without ID.
NICE LADY WHO HELPED ME ON MONDAY, listening in: What about the tracking number I would’ve given you from the bottom of the package?
ME, processing vague memories of a plastic-looking satchel-strip shoved in the bottom of my bag: Yes! I have that! But it’s in my bag. At home.
NICE LADY WHO HELPED ME ON MONDAY: Are you able to go and get it?
ME: Yes.
NICE LADY WHO HELPED ME ON MONDAY: Then that’s fine. Just come straight to the counter when you get back, and we’ll help you.
ME, internally: Thank you, Nice Lady! Now why the hell couldn’t the damn Postal Chick have suggested that TEN FREAKING MINUTES AGO?
So I rode back home, found my bag, rode back to the post office, got my parcel and opened it at the counter. With a certain grim satisfaction, I pulled out my passport and waved it at the Postal Chick.
ME: See? ID!
End result: I have my documents back. But I hate Australia Post.
Victory Is Mine!
My last exam is done.
My visa has been approved.
I’ve been offered a job doing YA fantasy manuscript assessment.
There is free champagne tonight.
Also, free nibbles.
I just had an awesome muffin.
Blueberries were involved.
Do I seem food-obsessed?
My mother is visiting.
I have new pants for the first time in, like, six years.
And they fit.
Plus and also? Life is good.
Poem/Spooks In The Machine
Warning the First: This is what happens when I read about Twitter coverage of the Iranian election and start thinking about Little Brother, Serenity, The Gone-Away World and The X-Files in confluence. (With apologies to Cory Doctorow, Joss Whedon, Nick Harkaway and Chris Carter.)
Warning the Second: I am a giant geek.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.
spooks in the machine
& in my head I hear them shouting -
Take it back! wrote Doctorow; & as the smoke
of bloody bombs and tiger-fires lights the way,
young fingers dance a typeset revolution, row on row, and say! –
don’t updates sound like Mr Universe? You cannot stop the signal.
True. Technology’s an everloving curse.
The youth are fighting back. From pens & swords
we battle guns & tweets; and shockingly the old wives’ mandate
(tell it to the bees) has proven true:
the hivemind waits, a hydra craving news.
The truth is out there. All along the pipe of pipes,
we raise a cry: the The FOX is going up!
& when we look and look again
there is no lie, no crawling, poor excuse to tell
that begs our ignorance of broken men,
the brimstone-charred apologists of hell.
Words thrive in spaces other norms refuse: they
grow like ivy, breed like mushrooms, eat the smart refuse
of dreams, & when the firewalls are trashed
they revel in it: long live youth! whose busy thumbs in World War III
(should trenches ever come again, & schnapps, & soccer skirting bombs)
might save the Christmas Truce!
Hurdle The Last (I Hope)
So, I’ve been quiet of late. My last three uni assignments have been written and handed in, my second visa application has been posted off in the special ultra-expensive platinum courier express shinybag demanded by the British Consulate, and I am back to something which vaguely resembles a normal working week after a fortnight of random illness. But before I lie, shipwrecked and comatose on the shores of Guiltless Free Time, there is one last hurdle: a sit-down exam on Thursday. As per Nigel Havers in Chariots of Fire, I’m of half a mind to add a brimming glass of perilously balanced champagne to the mixture, just to make things interesting.
Or then again, maybe not.
Poem/Wine & Wildness
The following poem is all Nick Harkaway’s fault.
wine & wildness
Poets are creatures of wine & wildness,
rose-wounded, briar marked by their
insatiable insensate longings: let them
go forth & craftily beggar the branches
of Idun’s gold tree; let them ferment
the apples of youth & drown in nepenthe,
crossing the Styx with four cold coins
for a return journey. Moon-touched
let them howl at the atoms of sky
and the jaws of surf; let them be wrecks,
mahogany bones jutting skywards
through a billion billion grains of desert
sand; & while they have strength, let them
bear that rage, that terrible sharp love
from which we shrink, until it silences
their music, blood, hands
Linkalicious
Like most people, I occasionally Google myself. (Shut up.) Perhaps unlike most people, I habitually learn something I didn’t actually know, but probably should’ve done. Hence the following, quasi-belated links:
Running Deep, a short story;
The Nihilist Ice-Cream Parlour, another short story; and
An interview with Paul Collins, my publisher, in which (among other things) my book is mentioned.
Squee!
Cab Conversation
Circa last midnight, I caught a taxi home. I was tired, but still happy to chat with the driver, a young Indian man with perfect English. The conversation went something like this:
Driver: So, have you just finished work?
Me: No. I was meant to go to a philosophy talk with my husband, but the speaker never showed up, so everyone went to the pub. I’m a bit tired today, though, so I’ve decided to head home.
Driver: You’re married?
Me: Yes.
Driver: What country are you from?
Me: From here. I’m Australian.
Driver: Australian? You’re the first married Australian girl I’ve ever met. And you’re young. Here, it’s not common to be married young. Most married Australian women I meet are thirty, thirty-five.
Me: Yes, it can be like that. It’s funny, I don’t think my family thought I’d get married – I always said I wouldn’t. Actually, I married at a younger age than either my mother or grandmother.
Driver: [curious] But did they ask you to get married? I mean, did you choose your husband?
Me: [laughing] Yes. It was our choice. We weren’t engaged for long – we didn’t even have a ring, but my mother in law had some family rings she said I could choose from -
Driver: So your families approved? They met?
Me: Yes, they all get along. Everyone’s lovely.
Driver: [laughing] You’re very lucky. And your husband, he was a good choice? You like him?
Me: [laughing] Very much. Very happy with the choice.
(beat)
Me: [after giving directions] I’m so tired today. But at least it’s my short week at work. I work part-time.
Driver: Where do you work?
Me: For the government. I do administrative stuff.
Driver: Really? And you’re so young. How old are you?
Me: Twenty-three.
Driver: You know, most Australian girls I see, they aren’t nice like you, they’re always loud and drink too much. But you’re married at twenty-three!
Me: And you?
Driver: Me? No, I’m twenty-three, too, I’m not married. For me, twenty-five, twenty-six – that’s a good age to get married. But, you know, like I said, it’s difficult with the Australian girls. My family is traditional.
Me: Yeah? I can understand that. Back in highschool, I went out with an Indian boy, but his family weren’t allowed to know about me. Then one day, we were hanging out at the shops, and his parents showed up early to pick him up, so I had to duck around the corner and hide. They were fine after that, I think, but we only went out for a few months, anyway.
Driver: [interested] Really? And do you still see him now? I mean, are you still friends?
Me: I guess so. We still have friends in common, we didn’t really break up on bad terms or anything -
Driver: [laughing] See, he was lucky with you. He should’ve married you!
Me: [laughing] Somehow, I don’t think that would’ve worked. It was highschool.
Driver: Fair enough, fair enough. But with the traditional families, it’s hard, you know?
Me: Yeah. Although another friend of mine married an Indian girl, and their families all get along. They’re a good couple.
Driver: He was Indian?
Me: No, he’s white. She’s Indian.
Driver: [wistfully] Ah, it’s easier for the Indian girls, though. They like the white skin, because it’s beautiful.
News Of Humanity
The following poem comes courtesy of e. e. cummings:
“Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you”
The following headlines come from a glance at today’s Time:
Why Rookie Lawyers Get $60,000 Paid Vacations
Russia to Gays: Get Back into the Closet
Spray-On Condoms: Still A Hard Sell
Holy Union: A Polish Monk’s Divine-Sex Guide
Conclusion: My species is doomed. Weird, predictable, sad and doomed. And frequently absurd.
