Texan Flashback

Location: Dallas, Texas

Weather: Hot

Reading: Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

Watching: Arrested Development (retro television pleasure)

I used to live in Dallas, Texas. I was one so I don't remember anything but I believe that my first word was McDonalds. Enough said.

Twenty-five years after we lived in Dallas, my Mum and I returned. Sitting on the stoop of 1714 Treehouse Lane, Plano, a slew of thoughts ran through my head. A smattering of my stream of consciousness...

...Community pools are nice. Unless the kids in the community pee in them a lot and there is not enough chlorine...

...Everything in Dallas is a chain. The gourmet sandwich shop is a chain. It feels like an oxymoron to have a gourmet chain. Even the houses are a chain. I saw a housing development of hundreds of identical Tudor mansions. I would hate to try and walk home drunk. There is also a Home Depot on every corner. Why do they need so many Home Depots when their houses look exactly the same- surely they could just borrow from their neighbours?

...I enjoy people who like to air their beliefs. Texans enjoy this. One house had an Uncle Sam on a bike with moving wheels on its lawn. Its owner sat on a chair, drinking a beer (at 10am) proudly guarding his wares. Another had a path of star spangled banners leading up to a sign at the top saying "He is risen"...

...Refer to final sentence above. Interesting use of the English language. Americans don't speak English, they speak American. A man on the plane did not enjoy this observation.

Supersize me

Everything in Dallas is huge. Houses are beyond mansion proportions. Cars are trucks. A humble salad could feed a small third world country. It would be difficult to absorb such a super-sized city without concern for the immense energy that must be required to sustain such an obese society.

Our delightful South African come Texan host commented that Dallas only exists because of oil and air-conditioning. The city was built because of the discovery of oil but could only flourish because air-conditioning meant that people could work in the stultifying heat. With these beginnings global warming is an inevitable outcome of Dallas.

It is not however the oil and air-conditioning that perpetuate global warming, it is the attitude that huge is acceptable, that there is nothing wrong with driving a car that eats a tank of petrol a day, or that the shopping centre needs a fully maintained ice-rink in the summer.

An attitudinal change could easily alter Dallas’s environmental influences. The Dallas summer penetrates an intense heat that could be effectively harnessed as solar energy. Furthermore, Dallas has a noticeable emphasis on community- groups of homes share recreation facilities and churches and temples litter the landscape. Utilising the community lifestyle would be an easy way of lowering carbon emissions.

Mum said that Dallas was a ‘nice’ place to live. Values are entrenched, convenience is religious and life is comfortable. It struck me that one could live in Dallas without any awareness of the world around them. The very concept of global warming would only disrupt this ignorant utopia.

Goodbye

Name: still Lucy

Age: still 26

Watching: In Treatment

Listening to: O.N.E, Yeasayer

Disposition: reflective 

Quote: "When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences- their insignificant, everyday experiences- so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others- and how many there are!- are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain at the top, bobbing like a cork,t hen we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make the much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All too Human

Leaving Home

Until recently, I have consciously avoided the study of philosophy. Said abstinence was likely prompted by a fear that philosophical discussion would involve deliberation on the notions that we are all merely descendants of matter which would compel a nihilistic depression that I am often afflicted with (such bouts usually begin with the news of a new moon on Saturn or something equally as trivial).

On Monday I leave home for the fifth time in almost the same number of years. Curiously, my recent foray into philosophical writing has somewhat lessened my habitual raiser angst. While propelling me into this coming adventure, the philosophies have encouraged me to reflect on the past, and my interpretations of it.

Making much of little

I was extremely apprehensive to begin my legal 'traineeship' 18 months ago. The nerves, combined with a fairly virulent bout of Africa induced giardia, caused me to need to take a sick day in my very first week of work. It would not be overstating the matter to say that I never wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.

In the spirit of Nietzsche I will say however that I did not hate being a lawyer. At times my cases were like puzzles in which I had to find the pieces in the law and then neatly arrange them to fit the facts. There was poetic satisfaction when the completed puzzle looked pretty. I also found somewhat perverse delight when the completed puzzle looked perfect but the case fell apart because of human relationships. I learnt the invaluable lesson that if we can put aside our human differences and learn qualities like tolerance and forgiveness, then we would never need to be subject to the laws of society.

What saddened me about my time as a lawyer was the inequality in our legal system. My cases were almost exclusively the egotistical battles of people and companies with so much money that it can be squandered on proving a point. Money attracts the best lawyers and the most attention. Once a month on a Monday night I volunteered at a community legal centre. Despite the unfathomable dedication and altruism of the staff, the clients travelled far and wide to get to the centre where due to the instability of volunteer turnout they waited sometimes hours for an appointment they had booked in months before with a volunteer who may or may not be able to help them. It seems a dreadful travesty that we lay a red carpet for the rich and greedy while we close the door to the vulnerable and needy.

Bonne journée, Auf Wiedersehen, Shalom, Arrivederci, Sayonara, Vale, Adios, Até a vista, Kwaheri, Usale kakuhle

If words signal their intended meaning then languages show that leaving should not be a sad thing. It is often goodbye, good journey, safe travels. Many languages use the same word for hello as good bye. The association of sadness with goodbye is imagined.

It is a goodbye Melbourne, although you have treated me well, I am not sad to be leaving you. This is the beginning for me.