This will hurt me...

The things that you see when sitting on the toilet. The toilet, Mayfair Plaza, Sandy Bay. October 2011. I always seem to be finishing books on the Friday and consequently posting the review the following week, so forgive me if I’m a little vague on Herta Müller’s The Appointment . I shall confess that I was not familiar with Müller’s work until she was awarded the awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Müller is a Romanian-born German novelist and poet most noted for her exploration of the effects of violence, cruelty and terror; usually in the setting of Communist Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu. It is this stifling atmosphere of repression that pervades throughout The Apartment . The unnamed narrator – a young, female factory worker – has been summoned for questioning by the secret police for a relatively benign crime. From this point, her life has become subject to the whims of Major Albu, who summons her for random interrogation sessions with seemingly little purpose other tha...

No sign of Charlie Brown anywhere near this poor, lonely kite trapped in the power lines down by the Cenotaph here in Hobart. It strikes me as a most apt image for this weeks Theme Thursday . You see, I have been informed that this week's Theme Thursday has been cancelled! Yes, cancelled ! Apparently there is some odd little holiday called Thanksgiving . I can see why the fellows in the funny hats would want to say thank you for a delicious meal of turkey and yams! As to the question of whether the inhabitants of the New World - be it the Americas or Australasia - would want to thank Europeans for the changes they wrought, I am less certain. In the absence of a theme, I am like the kite pictured above: dangling and without purpose...

Here is the stark reality of alienation as seen from the eastern side of the wall. Brother set against brother is unfortunately as old as time itself...

So it is Theme Thursday again, and when this post appears I shall be sitting at the desk I have photographed above wishing that I was anywhere but here. The theme then, is apt: VACATION . The trouble - of course - is that what I really need is a permanent and everlasting and everlasting one! Two weeks is not enough. Hell, two YEARS is not enough. I want to retire right now! You see, my problem is a familiar tale: I've become alienated from my Gattungswesen . It turns out that Marx was right! I can never truly become an autonomous, self-realised human being, except the way that the bourgeois want me - the worker bee - to be realised. Moreover, I don't blame the capitalist, not at all. My J'accuse! is firmly pointed in the direction of the sort of do nothing do gooders who not only tolerate, but perpetuate mediocrity in their monotonous, wretched and insipid insistence that ‘merit’ equals ‘time served’. I'm jammed stuck inside this stahlhartes Gehäuse - which, inci...

Here is Henry zealously approaching the slide down at Bicentennial Park for the umpteenth time. Oh how I long for those blissful, carefree and innocent days of youth. A time when one's greatest concern tended towards whether one would be able to squeeze in one more go of the slide before dusk set in. [Such a memory must have been before the public housing estate really kicked off, and one's concern tended towards "is that a human poo/broken glass/a used condom/syringe on the slide?"] Where was I? Ah,the heady days of youth! A time far away from the realisation of the crushing reality of bills, mortgages and the soul destroying banality of a job you now struggle to remember even getting. Alienated from the ends of my production? Check. Uh oh. Somehow I've been denied my capacity to transform the world and it turns out that Marx was right! In having to work , rather than slide , I've become alienated from my very own nature. It is a spiritual, rather than mate...

I really do need to post this now. This was (one very small part) of my tale of woe yesterday.

Obviously back to my trend of photographs that suggest the alienation of modern human beings, and the disenchantment that for many accompanies modernity. It has always struck me as vaguely amusing that although life - for Westerners at least - is immeasurably better today than ever before in human history (less people go hungry, gender inequality is relatively narrow, people live longer, possess more, are safer amongst many other indicators), so very many people do nothing but complain all the time.