Of an Age (2022) Goran Stolevski, Australia

Melbourne, 1999. A young Serbian-Australian ballroom dancer on the verge of adulthood discovers a surprising connection with the calm older brother of his chaotic best friend.

A tightly focussed dramatic portrait that successfully reveals the protagonist's emotional state-of-being. Capturing that vivid moment at the end of high school where he has not had a chance to yet discover who he is, how he will live or even what life is really like for a queer boy who will inevitably have to find his own way in a world that offers no role-models. He is so used to being lonely that he is genuinely shocked to discover someone who is not only openly gay, but who he actually likes and can effortlessly connect with in a meaningful and genuine way. Though the connection is brief, the need behind it is deep and long-lasting. Ten years later, the tragedy is that his life has changed drastically but the need is the same and remains equally unfulfilled.

The film focuses on only three characters at two distinct moments to make the most of its limitations. One day in 1999 the two men meet in transitional moments for them both and find a feeling of stability together. One day in 2010 they meet again and the resonance of that brief meeting ten years earlier is felt very strongly. Though the best friend/sister who connects them is vividly drawn and enthusiastically performed, the social milieu of the characters swirls around them and the film wastes no time in cutting to its primary focus. The depth and subtlety of how this brief and genuine encounter plays out, and what it means for the protagonist, are conveyed in a naturalistic way that continues to resonate after the film is over.

Lonesome (2022) Craig Boreham, Australia -95m-

A young rural Australian man escapes a small-town scandal to Sydney, meeting another guy through Grindr.

The plot feels less important than the intimacy between the lead actor and the filmmaker. The filmmaking is stark and direct, dealing with the moment-to-moment reality of the protagonist's marginal life. The impressive performance of lead Josh Lavery is unusual and takes time to reach its full impact. At first I thought his character was too underplayed, but slowly throughout the film I felt the impact of his hopelessness and the tangible reality of his survival-mode. Similarly, there is a lot of nudity and no aspect of his experience is excluded for good taste, the cumulative effect of which is deep empathy and familiarity, like the intimacy of getting to know a new lover. Subsequently, the extent of my identification with the protagonist by the end of the film was quite shocking.

His relationship with the Grindr hook-up that doesn't end is also depicted in a matter-of-fact way that somehow creates a cumulative impact, where the casualness of their commitment to each other obscures the evident fact that they have something very real and significant to offer each other. I hope this film gets a chance to reach the world and that Josh Lavery gets opportunities to surprise us further as a performer.

Blueback (2022) Robert Connolly

Abby, a young woman working as a marine biologist, recalls her teenage years with her mother in Western Australia. She is introduced to the diverse marine life in the bay she grew up in, makes friends with a blue groper and helps her mother fight to protect the bay's marine life from encroaching property developers.

A straight-forward, heart-felt film with a pleasant, leisurely pace about pursuing a passion to protect something you care about, aimed at a young audience. The flash-back narrative structure is nostalgic and makes clear why the adult Abby is working to protect the bleaching coral reef, but it obviates any emotional or dramatic impact from either time-period. The underwater photography of the ocean life, and the actors interacting with it, is very beautifully shot, tranquil and convincing of the film's thesis, to protect ocean life. Though short on depth and complexity the film successfully depicts the simplicity and integrity of spending your life caring for your immediate environment.

When it's in my stomach it's mine

I translate memory into language and store them in stories.  I believe too much of what I tell myself to be free and too little of what I am told to be respectable.  I fluctuate with drastic anarchy and return to some temporary equilibrium.  Technically I'm always me but I don't know who that is when I'm not at home and my home can change from day to day. 

I am surrounded by a beauty I cannot possess so I eat stolen food because when it's in my stomach it's mine.  I want to kick the habit of disempowerment but I'm paranoid I'll offend the state.  Prohibition signs scare me more than anthills or strangers.

I want to receive the human glory of every beautiful man I meet but to receive one must first ask.  Only the vast ocean is big enough to receive the expanse of my love. 

I choose not to limit my imagination with boundaries nor my life by imagination.  The best things happen to those who are ignorant.  I breathe myself into existence; I breathe myself into intense presence; I try to breathe in unison with my lover.

I am free to run but must dodge the psychopathy of uniforms.  I bleed only when it is necessary to rupture my aura with the mini-death of healing or pain.  I am a hyper-dimensional psychic entity and must eat a lot to sustain my social normality.  I reluctantly explain and justify my presence and observe my form become syntax; this disturbs a part of myself I cannot attribute linguistically and therefore does not exist. 

Theoretically much of my behaviour is illegal, but no one arrests me.

Worst holiday ever

I was born in New Zealand and the first time I left the country, going "overseas" as we call it in these Pacific island nations, was seven years ago when my brothers flew me over to Gold Coast to spend ten days with them. This is not the most interesting holiday to write about because I mostly stayed at the house while my brothers were at work and when I did go out it was only to go shopping.  At this time my brother was young, more productive, and he drank out of joy, rather than depression.  He made his own home-brew so there was always copious amounts of beer and I drank with him every day.  Eventually it got to the point, at the height of the holiday, that I had my first beer with my breakfast cereal and drank all day.  When my brother got home we got into the bourbon and by the time we went out that night we tried playing pool upon arriving at the first club and I couldn't hit the white ball; then I took half an ecstasy tablet, having never tried the drug before.  My version of ecstasy at this time was slapping guys on the arse on the dancefloor of the club.  My brothers' friend didn't take it too seriously but some other drunk guy threatened to attack me if I continued and when I did continue he swung his fist at me and missed.  I swung my fist at him and missed and suddenly the bouncers were throwing us both onto the street where I, ravenous with aggression, wanted to violently attack this stranger who I had recently been sexually attracted to.  I spent the rest of the night bent over to the left and unable to stand up straight without the utmost concentration so we were not allowed into anymore clubs.  Having not yet got laid my brother attempted to accost men on the street to have sex with me, unsuccessfully.  When we got back to the house he went through the Yellow Pages looking for prostitutes.  He found two women but despite his efforts no male prostitute for me to have sex with.  Two women were ordered and when the first one arrived and turned out to be of Asian heritage, one brother said to the other, "This one's yours."  The second prostitute never turned up and so two of us went without sex that night.  I don't remember being frustrated enough to masturbate, but I do remember making an effort to make the prostitute feel comfortable, offering her a cup of tea upon her arrival.

I can write about these things freely because no one in my family take any interest in my writing.

Four years later one of my brothers, Brendon, was living with me in Auckland.  He had come to stay with me after our mother's death and fallen in love with my flatmate, Catriona.  They subsequently had a child together and the four of us were again invited back to Gold Coast by the remaining brother, Barry.  It was over new year and it was definitely the worst holiday ever.

South-east Queensland in the middle of summer is hot and this was a very hot holiday.  Barry went to a lot of effort and a lot of expense before we arrived, including installing a air-conditioning system in the living room of his not-yet-completed house, primarily for the comfort of 1.7-year-old Sakura.  Catriona subsequently spent much of her time laying on the couch in the living room with the air-conditioning on full, when I preferred to be in the shade outsde, in Sakura's blow-up paddling pool.

Because of the heat, or some other unimportant excuse, we spent most of our holiday laying around my brother's dusty house.  The idea that we do something with ourselves was generally agreed to be a good idea, but perhaps an overwhelming one.  So I found a couple of books in Barry's garage to read.  One was about a child who was systematically abused by his mother, which he describes in great detail and the other was about the careers of two English magicians.  I spent a great deal of time reading because for some reason, when the adults discussed what we should do with each day my ideas were completely ignored.  Whenever I suggested an activity it did not even justify a response; perhaps I would get a derisive stare in reply.  I was only ten days younger than the next-youngest adult.  I have spent the subsequent two years diverging greatly from my family's idea of fun but at this time, mostly, my ideas consisted of going to the beach, which I maintain is a good idea any day of the week.

Unlike my first Gold Coast holiday, my local brother took the whole holiday off work so we could have had fun every day.  We did go to the beach two or three times in ten days, though.  However, the mornings would turn to afternoons and quickly it would be too late in the day to spend an hour driving anywhere along those endless Queensland motorways.  I won't spend any of my present-day morning calculating what percentage of our trip was spent driving along the motorway.

The big day of the trip, somewhat more wholesome than the last due to 1.7-year-old Sakura being the heart of the holiday, was a long drive to Australia Zoo a few hundred kilometres up the coast.  Australia Zoo is a big place and there are a lot of imprisoned animals to look at and Catriona and I wanted to see as many as possible.  Brendon and Barry, however, after spending hours driving there, decided to wander around slowly, dawdling.  Hearing that the camel was being fed Catriona and I decided to run off together to see this once-a-day phenomenon.  The beautiful strange specter of the lone camel in his pen was the highlight of my day.  We figured out later, however, that this assertion of will by Catriona and I annoyed Barry.

I had salad for lunch and everyone else had fried food, which didn't seem appropriate to me in that weather.  My self-righteous self-respecting awareness of my bodies dietry needs may have contributed to the fact that by the end of the long hot day my anger had passed through me very quickly but the other four members of my family ruined each other's and their own days by marinading in their anger for hours.  Barry decided to be so angry that he did not speak to us for the remainder of the holiday, another few days, and once driving us home from Australia Zoo refused to drive us anywhere in the vehicle he had hired and he and Brendon had paid half-each for.

Every morning of this hot, boring holiday I would be woken up at 05.00 by the heat of the day.  The latest I ever slept was 06.00.  Sakura would also wake up early and somehow everyone else would sleep in for hours.  So the first few hours of every day was spent with my beautiful niece in peace, sitting outside in her paddling pool, Sakura usually naked and me in my underwear.

On the morning of new year's day the other adults slept in even longer than usual and so Sakura and I had the whole morning alone together.  We took a walk down to the supermarket which turned out to be very far with a 1.7-year-old.  It was a particularly hot morning and my beautiful little niece and I got hot and thirsty and very iritated with each other.  On the way back she was insolent and I was impatient and she was crying and I was swearing.  We decided to stop at the park halfway home and sit in the shade.  The best moment of the whole holiday was when Sakura sat on my lap, hungry, thirsty and hot, and stuffed her face with watermelon.  The poor desperate girl in haled this juicy watermelon and juice poured from her mouth all over my body as she quenched her thirst and raised her blood-sugar.  We walked the rest of the way home somewhat more calm and energised.

The last few days of our lame holiday in Gold Coast our brother and host did not say a word to us, even to tell us why he was angry.  We figured out that it was because of the events at Australia Zoo but he told me later that it was because Catriona is generally inconsiderate.  Brendon was justifiably annoyed about Barry's behaviour and considered packing our bags and going somewhere else for the last few days.  At this time of crisis, when no one else knew how to behave, I was able to step up and be listened to.  I calmly suggested that we leave our belongings at Barry's house and focus on enjoying our day.  The four of us took a bus into Surfers Paradise and we went to the beach, having the best outing of all at the low point of the whole holiday. We had a wonderful day and I realised that the heart of Gold Coast culture is the beach, the rest being vapid consumerism.

The only thing Barry allowed himself to do for us over those last few days is drive us to the airport when it was time to fly away.  We left early that morning, which was lucky because there was a massive traffic jam on the motorway and we had to wait on the tarmac in the sun for hours.  Catriona was apparently put off eating eggs from caged chickens because one of the vehicles next to us was full of hundreds of miserable imprisoned chickens.

We got to the airport just in time to rush through the procedures.  Barry always says "I love you" as a form of goodbye and I am sure he still loved me despite his wrathful frustration, however when we departed and I said "I love you" he did not answer.  I took my flight back to New Zealand glad to leave this socially and culturally impoverished over-developed area and relieved to end my holiday.

It's funny to look back on the fact that I was invited on this holiday involuntarily.  Brendon and Catriona and Sakura were planning to go together but Brendon and Catriona broke up and so I was offered her ticket.  When they got back together Catriona decided it was not fair that my ticket suddenly went back to her and she convinced Brendon, without consulting me, to buy me a ticket.  I would much preferred to have let this little family take their holiday alone together, but that's not how it turned out.  Otherwise I would have gone to Prada in Coromandel with Lauren and had a wonderful time, as she did, swimming naked on the beach and spending time with hundreds of beautiful open-hearted strangers.  Rather, I spent my holiday as described above.

I feel uncomfortable sharing my freedom with people who are incorrect

We live under the illusion of control of a state who, if they do not like you, will forcibly and, if necessary, violently take possession of your body until you are judged to be sufficiently submissive to their authority and law. For the duration of this period in which possession of your life has passed from yourself and God to the state, you will likely be contained in a small room within what is known as a “correctional facility”. You are not allowed to leave, in fact you are forced to stay.

The name "correctional facility" is entirely political because almost everyone calls these institutions prisons or jails. This name does not imply that these institutions are in any way correct; the name suggests that their purpose is to correct people who are deemed by the state to be incorrect.

A correct person, I presume, is one who accepts the authority of the state despite the fact that its authority is not natural or legitimate and has no history of success. A correct person submits to the authority of Police, not only to enforce the state's laws but also to arbitrarily intimidate, waste time and seek justification for your behaviour. A correct person does what they are told. A correct person lives in fear of being caught. A correct person obeys. A correct person is economically productive, producing consumable items to increase the tax revenue of the state. A correct person behaves in a way that correlates with the official culture and does not express ideas that contradict this culture. A correct person does not expose their genitals.

Naming prisons correctional facilities suggests that the people in them are incorrect. There are a number of ways a person can be deemed incorrect. In New Zealand, 14% of people are Maori, whereas 50% of the officially incorrect are Maori. In Australia 2.5% of people are original Australians, whereas 24% of incorrect people are original.

This suggests to me that if you are a Pacific person whose home was infiltrated by the illegal authority of Europe you are far more likely to find yourself to be incorrect, presumably because your natural behaviour correlates less with the behaviour the state finds acceptable, perhaps because you have had fewer generations of experience with this type of submission to authority. This behaviour is so unnatural that it takes many generations of reinforcement before submission is sufficiently normalised and the state is able to retain control of the minds and bodies of its subjects.

While hitchhiking I met a man who has worked at a prison in New Zealand for many years. He estimates that 60% of the prison population are mentally ill. He suggests that the best solution to drastically reducing the number of incorrect people in our society who need to be imprisoned is to test young children for minor sight and hearing difficulties such as glue ear or long-sightedness. In this way they won't fall behind at the beginning of their school career and they will be able to participate and flourish in the schooling environment. He claims lack of this type of simple testing and assistance for our children is the primary cause of incorrectness.

He does not use the term "correctional facility" but like almost everyone else uses the term prison. He tells me that the notion of rehabilitation has no basis in reality. He tells me that nobody benefits from being in prison and in fact people are severely damaged by being forced against their will to stay in prison until they are deemed sufficiently acceptable to participate again in the natural processes of life.

Like you I did not question the idea that some people in our society are simply too incorrect to retain control over their own lives and bodies; they hurt people and property. However, through a serious of synchronistic events in my life, such as the meeting of the above person and the possibility that a gentle friend of mine might be imprisoned for a demonstration against violence, I realised that I felt deep within my person a strong revulsion at the idea that any human being would lock any other human being in a room against their will and keep them there for many years. Any type of moral justification or unfounded suggestions of practicality do not justify the naturally abhorrent nature of this act that we all feel as empathetic beings.

One method, of course, of suppressing this natural empathy is to make distinct those people we imprison with the use of language. When we define them as "criminals" suddenly it is acceptable to imprison them.

I am a sensitive person and I find the idea that anyone I love may be imprisoned at the whim of what is known as the "justice system" sickening. I have a tendency, however irrational, to trust my own responses over the official belief systems of the state and I am therefore uncomfortable with imprisonment as a method for producing a healthy society. Nobody has convinced me that this method is in any way effective.

So why do we have prisons? Some people I have spoken to, in order to justify a reality they do not necessarily agree with but would rather not acknowledge, have suggested that some people are simply not able to function within society because they hurt others, therefore they should be imprisoned. This is not the "you will be corrected" concept suggested by the state in renaming their prisons "correctional facilities" but an entirely separate concept in which these people are inherently incorrect and can not be assisted in any way. Some people are simply incorrect and instead of finding out why we will imprison them perpetually.

If anybody can suggest an alternative to my empathetic belief system regarding imprisonment that they truly feel or believe, rather than simply repeating the official doctrines of the state, I would very much like to hear it. Now is the time to engage in a dialogue regarding the legitimacy and effectiveness of our behaviour as a society.

End the British occupation of Australia

Less than 300 years ago Australia was invaded and colonised by the British without regard to the people already living on the land. The British Crown obstinately instigated a government for a land which does not belong to them and through no other means but force and time is the government recognised today as the primary authority on this continent. There is a natural authority which is all-pervasive and undeniable, however not economically relevant. There is a human authority that is thousands of years old, developing with the planet's oldest living human culture. This is also not considered relevant because it does not strengthen the control and economic dominance of the regime.

In this enlightened age when we have massive institutions like the United Nations to make sure human rights are supported by other massive institutions with excessive amounts of power we recognise that it is not acceptable, not legal, to invade and settle any land, dispossessing, dislocating and destroying its people. However the Australian government is allowed to stay because it will be too difficult to hand the authority back to the people who possess it naturally. It has been 230 years and this institution is now an established and permanent part of this country. The previous authority barely lasted 100,000 years.

We are as arrogant as we have ever been and now is the time not to make public apologies but to withdraw the illegal occupation of this land and return the authority to the people who have walked this land for thousands of years, the people who respect and understand this land, the people who belong to this land. Whether our family has been here for five generations, hundreds of generations or we arrived yesterday, this is our world and we deserve to be here. However, we have no right, legally or morally, to then impose European law on a continent in the Pacific and use this arbitrary illogical law, which clearly does not work because it requires Police and prisons to implement it, to intimidate, control and disempower people.

Recently I worked in the cherry capital of Australia, Young, labouring in the major industry of the town, picking cherries. We were received with warmth and curiosity by the locals, contempt and suspicion by the police. We heard plenty of anecdotal evidence to back up our experience that every year when many people come into Young to pick cherries for $0.70/kilogram they are targeted and harassed by the police, who converge on the town from surrounding areas for the picking season. Our experience was of being threatened and fined by the police for committing the heinous crimes of swimming naked and not wearing a seatbelt. It is easy to recognise the deep sickness in any institution by simply observing their behaviour. The government-funded gang known as Police have targeted and intimidated economically-supportive international travellers in one particular case in Young, presumably because of the cultural diversity and sense of chaos we bring with us.

Aside from the obvious overwhelming importance of the economy, the government's responsibility is to maintain a static obedient European capitalist monoculture here in the Pacific. Any threat to this monoculture must be policied and Policed out of existence. We are not able to maintain, let alone explore and enjoy, some of the oldest and richest human cultures on this planet because it doesn't reinforce the quasi-European monoculture that we are trying to enforce and maintain at the expense of everything and anything.

We should count ourselves lucky that we live in an age of democracy and not anarchy, capitalism and not survival, regulation and not chaos. How can we possibly survive in this world if we are forced to depend upon the land, if we are forced into a culture that is fluid and dynamic? If we do not heavily regulate this land and enforce these regulations with threats of imprisonment, people will die everywhere. We will die.

What could possibly be more of a threat to our noble desperation for civilised mind-control and wage-slavery than a nomadic people who don't wear clothes or live in houses? What can we sell them if they don't recognise the concept of ownership and they eat insects and other non-processed non-packaged non-marketed foods?

God help all of us who subscribe to a democracy that must be enforced by Police.

Baptism by dumpster juice

Last night I found in a dumpster behind the supermarket the exact organic spelt bread that I mentioned yesterday morning I would like, but is too expensive. I cannot eat gluten, so it was very nice to find sitting peacefully on top of this dumpster three loaves of organic spelt and organic kamut bread. Is this merely a coincidence?

When I was in Australia last time, travelling with four Swedish men and dumpster diving everywhere we went, we noticed a lot of these coincidences and started joking about "Dumpster God", who would regularly answer our prayers and provide us with exactly what we needed or wanted; especially when we didn't realise we were praying.

This god is obviously a metaphor for something real that we experience. Does this mean our god exists? Does this mean our god does not exist? We continue to be amazed at the abundance and joy that Dumpster God brings us through her divine dumpsters, or even an average dumpster transformed by her divine presence.

Of course Dumpster God does not exist because we made her up. Every time we reference her it is a joke, though in terms of our own communication as a group, she has entered our language and has become a useful metaphor for communicating something palpably real to us all. It makes me question whether metaphor and myth are as real as anything else we experience. We must create a word to describe it because there is no physical measurable scientifically-proven word to explain this thing that is clearly a daily part of our lives.

If Dumpster God is the only god that we experience, what about all these other gods people talk about? Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, Baal, Zeus, etcetera; can these gods really exist in comparison to the true god, Dumpster God, who I know exists because I have experienced her presence and her benevolent effect in my life? Surely Dumpster God is the one true god because she is my name for the infinite inexplicable benevolence of the universe.

I know that in Australia, where so much food is thrown away every day for no reason and usually with no benefactor, I will never be hungry, because Dumpster God is on my side, protecting me and providing for me and my friends. Only, however, the ones who show their belief with a joy and exuberance and shameless confidence that brings us together and brings us into the sticky glory of baptism by dumpster juice.