Varrqnuht.net

Well, it’s all been officially announced and so on, so I thought I’d put up a note to say I’m changing jobs.

I’ve been at Tas Access for four and a half years, and definitely have some fond memories here. I feel it’s time to move on though, so I am.

I’m moving to a little company out at the Technopark called Deep Design.

Well, it’s being covered non-stop on all media and there’s nothing much I can add, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts down.

First of all, this quote apparently from Nostradamus’ prophecies:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb.

The third big war will begin when the big city is burning
  - Nostradamus 1654

(I haven’t been able to track down which century/quatrain the first bit is, or which one the second bit came from - if anyone knows then please tell me.)

I’ve always been intrigued by Nostradamus’ prophecies, and prophecies in general. I guess that’s partly because of my upbringing, my favourite part of the Bible was Revelation. These days I consider myself an agnostic (in the original sense of the word), and the existence of prophecy doesn’t really fit in with that world view.

Still, stuff like that makes you think.

I remember when I was growing up in the eighties, the Cold War was still going. I saw shows on TV which told you what to do if there was a nuclear war, which basically seemed to amount to "die, either quickly or painfully". That used to scare the shit out of me.

Even now I worry about nuclear war - if anything it seems more likely these days than it did when I was a kid.

This is a terrible tragedy, and I fully support retaliation against those responsible, but hopefully everyone can keep their heads and handle this more like a police man-hunt than like a war.

I’ve been thinking about how little you can rely on your memories, and how much we’re able to alter our memories of things that have happened.

Two completely unrelated incidents:

Lou and I got engaged in June last year, and I had my groomsmen already picked out. I contacted them all, asked them if they’d be groomsmen, everyone said yes and I was happy. Then at a dinner sometime around July this year, one of my mates that I’d picked as a groomsman was very suprised to hear about it.

It turns out I hadn’t asked him at all, and I’d gone thirteen months without realising. I think I must have been meaning to ask him for so long, and gone over the conversation in my head so many times, that in the end I was convinced I’d already asked him and he’d said yes. Luckily he was very happy to be asked (even if it was thirteen months late) and he agreed.

When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11 or so, I saw the movie “Aliens”. For years one scene in that movie stuck in my head as being the most tense and scary movie moment ever. There’s a scene where the soldiers are standing in a room watching their motion detectors, waiting for the aliens to break through a door. The aliens move closer and closer, reaching the boundary of the room on the motion detector, but they haven’t appeared in the doorway and they’re still getting closer. Finally they break through the roof (or floor, or both) instead, scaring the shit out of you if you’re a ten year old kid.

In my mind I’d replayed that scene over and over in my head in the years between seeing the movie for the first time and finally getting around to seeing it again a year ago. I know you can’t be expected to remember little details of something you’d seen once years ago, but because my memory of the scene was so vidid I expected it to be more accurate. Instead, it was completely different. It was almost like I’d read the scene in a book, and then when seeing it on the screen found that the director had a different vision of it to me.

It got me wondering about what else I have vivid memories of that might be heavily “edited”. Everyone has memories that they re-live or treasure, it sucks to think that they might be mostly fake. Probably the good memories get better and the bad ones get worse, but how do you tell the difference between reality and the stuff you’ve made up in your head?

Update: (11:14 AM 11/09/01)
My best man was reading this entry, and just reminded me that we argued for some time over whether I’d actually asked him or not, as well. So that’s two out of three groomsmen I’d slotted in without actually getting around to the asking bit. And what’s worse, I have only the dimmest memory of this first event. Heaven help me if I find the secret to immortality or something..

I was visiting my parents yesterday for Father’s Day, and for some reason grabbed a book of poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon from the bookshelf. I didn’t have time to read much, so I skipped to the back and read the shorter "Miscellaneous Poems". I really liked this poem:

Thick-headed Thoughts
No. I

I’ve something of the bull-dog in my breed,
The spaniel is developed somewhat less;
While life is in me I can fight and bleed,
But never the chastising hand caress.
You say the stroke was well intended. “True.”
You mention “It was meant to do me good.”
“That may be.” “You deserve it.” “Granted, too.”
“Then take it kindly.” “No — I never could.”

How many a resolution to amend
Is made, and broken, as the years run round!
And how can others on your word depend,
When faithless to ourselves we’re often found?
I’ve often swore — “Henceforward I’ll reform,
And bid my vices, follies, all take wing.”
To keep my promise, ‘mid temptation’s storm,
I’ve always found was quite another thing.

I saw a donkey going down the road
The other day; a boy was on his back,
Who on the long-eared quadruped bestowed,
With a stout cudgel, many a hearty thwack;
But lazier and lazier grew the beast,
Until he dwindled to a step so slow
That I felt sure ‘twould take him, at the least,
Full half-an-hour one blessed mile to go.

Soliloquising on this state of things,
“That moke’s like me,” I muttered, with a sigh;
“He might go faster if he’d got some wings,
But Nature’s made him better off than I;
For though I’ve all his obstinacy — aye! all –
His sullen spirit, and his dogged ways,
I’ve not one particle, however small,
Of that praiseworthy patience he displays.”

Mum said she got the book from a nasty old next door neighbour when she was a girl. The neighbour was moving house, and mum had been sent over by her mother to ask for something. When the old lady opened the door, she asked "what do you want?" crossly, and mum asked what she was doing with the books. (Mum didn’t explain this bit to me.. Were the books visible from the door? What prompted her to ask?) The lady said that they were going to the tip, and so mum asked if she could take one. She was offered all of them, but knowing her mother wouldn’t let her keep them she took this small volume of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poetry. She says that she already liked his work, and thinks she was probably about ten years old at the time. I guess she was even more well read than myself at her age.

The cover is of thin paper, and in poor condition, though mum says she’s kept it in the same condition that she received it. Being an old book there isn’t much information in the front as to where it came from (compared to the information present in any reasonably recent book), but it looks like it was printed by the Queensland University Press sometime during or just after 1927.

I guess I get my appreciation of poetry (and whatever limited talent I might have) from my mother. Though I’ve certainly never made much effort to read a lot of it. Most of the stuff I’ve written is either insufferably pompous and boring, or intended as a laugh. I can’t seem to find a middle ground.