comealongway

2250 km or thereabouts last week - as though i'm trying to make up for sitting still by running faster. three solid days of hitching with a couple of days' stop in coober pedy on the way, to have a look around. went blacklighting for worthless opal and poked around in dugouts. drank beer in the opal inn where a 64yo man with no teeth asked, 'how much are you?'
'i'm free,' i answered. somehow we ended up arm-wrestling.
funny place. fulla weirdos livin down holes. as i said to my mate there, being surrounded by that many wingnuts somehow makes you feel better about yourself.

after which i raced to melbourne via adelaide in two days, slept in a construction site in the hills overnight and woke to cold and fog, completely psychologically unprepared for both gated suburban developments and wet weather.

'we're making good time,' my last ride said, and the highway feels like that's possible - that the longer you can get from where you started the more time you win - artificial longevity as some kind of reward for endurance.

if only it was that easy.

i was hoping the first act of the rudd.gov would be to apologise to the indigenous people of this country. instead they ratified kyoto, which is good, but not good enough.

last night i went to see liyarn ngarn with a new friend, a special screening followed by a live show from archie roach and friends. it was a lovely evening. made me think a lot about survival, and about returning to the same mistakes. distance and resilience have their uses but their limits. as i said in a recent essay, acknowledging someone's survival might be solidarity, but asking them to keep surviving is just sadistic. i'm trying to make sense of this on a personal level as well as a political one.

we've come a long way to get nowhere.

don't get me wrong - melbourne is wonderful self-indulgent fun. but my preoccupations seem to have followed me down each of those 2250km of highway. guess i gotta run faster.