Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: entitlement

  • why am I having to go through this??

    The last time I was at the airport I watched a band of six merry hipsters in beards (boys) and ballet flats (girls) and narrow cuffed jeans stop at the boarding gate to take a picture of themselves. One volunteered to be not in the picture and the rest fell instantly into a Tommy Hilfiger pose, falling comfortably against each other, one shoulder sliding up and another down, all of them availed of a facial expression they could hold for many seconds without distress or strain. We went through the glass gate one by one holding our passports and our passes. The sixth and final hipster made an unhappy discovery: unlike his five friends, he had not paid extra for “speedy boarding” and was compelled to turn right where they all turned left and wait in the longer queue with all of us schlubbs. His face fell apart. It was wonderful to watch. He was tall and broad-shouldered and carrying a dense brown beard. His shirt resembled a lumberjack’s jacket. His voice came out whiny and high and aggrieved. He went all the way round behind the counter to reason with the airline crew member, waving his boarding pass: But you don’t understand! We’re all travelling together! Her expression was priceless. She tried a couple of times to explain the airline’s policy, too polite to point out that he and his friends were probably seated together and would all be reunited after fifty metres of tarmac in another four or five minutes. He looked as though he was going to cry. The woman rolled her eyes and let him pass. On the tarmac I saw two people kneeling in front of their carry-on suitcases, called out of the queue, stuffing in the extra handbags they’d thought they alone would be allowed to bring onboard. The tickets had cost around 70 Euros each and the airline’s posters at Schoenefeld Airport said, showing a man in a wheelchair, Travel Is Everyone’s Right. It seems to me equality and access are everyone’s right but jet travel is a fast-ending luxury. When we got on the bus at the other end of our short flight a beautiful milky-skinned red-headed girl was just in front of me. She showed the driver her pass and explained in careful German where it was she wanted to get to. He told her she would have to buy an extra ticket, her Eurail or whatever it was didn’t cover that. “But…” she said. She showed it to him again. With great courtesy he explained that this airport was outside the metropolitan zone, therefore: fresh ticket. She threw her head back and wailed. In English: “Why am I having to go through this?”

    At the Turkish place round the corner from my street the guy rolled out a long streak of dough and made me a Turkish pizza from scratch, although rain was falling outside and it was five minutes to closing. I carried it home warming my hand, walking through the soft rain, watching how the illustrated stickers of snowy revellers in the windows of the Apotheke blared colourful contrast to the black sticky wastes of nighttime in December in Berlin. A small woman on the subway train had made a speech about how she is “im Moment Obdachlos”, homeless right now, and because she cannot live on “Luft und Liebe” alone, on air and love, she would be grateful for any small donation anyone could spare. Then she walked the length of the carriage stopping to ask everybody, and thanking with her musical voice anyone who put their hand in their pocket and gave her a small part of the passport to the travel that is everyone’s right.

  • nett cost

    Walking down the street in the wake of three blokes as confident as three galleons. Their coats blow open. It’s a fresh sunny day. Something small flies off to the side & I follow it into the flowerbed: one of those tiny, slender plastic stirrers that have, to my mind, no excuse for existing in the first place when the good Lord has given us reusable Spoons. I pick it up. Talking to myself (“C’mon, c’mon, so they get angry, you’ll live”) I catch them up and speak to the centre galleon, whose billowing trail of steam indicates he has bought a coffee. “Entschulding. Ist das deine?” Excuse me, is this yours? He looks pained. “Ich werfe es in die Müll,” I tell him: I’ll drop it in the garbage. “Weil es so viel…” searching for the word and bailing out, “so viel netter ist.” Because that’s so much… nicer.

    He sort of smiles. “Das ist ja sehr nett von Ihnen.” That is very… nice of you. “Danke,” he says. I say, “Danke,” and the small storm of distress in my heart lifts and blows away. Confirmed once again in the ancient prejudice that people are sweet and kind, we just get confused, we just need to keep reaching one another.

     

  • snap

    Tonight I saw a man pull over in his shiny red car – more small round bubble than lippy convertible – leave the car running in the empty lane of traffic, as Berliners sometimes do, climb out and stroll over to a tree I was approaching on my walk – a sidewalk tree outside a darkened school, turtlenecked in asphalt – pull down his tracksuit pants, piss, pull his pants up with a satisfied >snap<, climb into the vehicle and drive away.

  • visiting Berlin Wall

    Passed a remaining section of the Berlin Wall and saw tourists of all languages leaning up against it for photographs, posing with big smiles and often two thumbs up; one Japanese girl had a coy, sexy grin. I wonder what it is they imagine they are visiting.

    photograph is of a building-site skip transformed into street art with the aid of a shopping trolley turret, carpet-roll gun & many layers of clingwrap plastic.

    H2O HoL gladwrap tank

  • monumentally ill

    Whenever I pass someone having their photo taken by a friend, this is me in Berlin, this is me in front of a famous monument, I feel the urge to put up my fingers in bunny ears behind the head of the one taking the photo. Generally it makes them laugh. I figure they’ll have umpteen hundred snapshots of ‘this is me in front of the museum’ and one where they’re actually laughing.

    H2O HoL strawberry graffiti

  • the splay

    the splay

    People in coffee shops who wipe down their table with the paper napkin and push their splayed chairs back in. People at bus stops who engross three seats for their handbags and parcels when elderly women are standing. I’d rather give a shit than be one.

    H2O HoL copenhagen ladybird

  • Eddie McGuire & Adam Goodes

    Eddie McGuire & Adam Goodes

    Eddie McGuire, prominent Australian broadcaster, compares Adam Goodes, respected Aboriginal footballer, to King Kong. The conversation, outraged on both sides, focuses on whether or not Eddie “is” racist. Thus it gets nowhere because no one can establish what lurks in the depths of his heart.

    If a child gets run over “by accident”, or because a distracted driver did not take sufficient care to prevent it, the child is still run over whether or not that driver “is” a “killer.” Let’s stop competing for most enlightened person who has the most Aboriginal friends, and focus on the damage and pain our unconscious, casual, lazy, habitual, over-entitled, selfish, spoilt racism inflicts.

    Even the fact that I label Adam Goodes “Aboriginal” and Eddie McGuire “Australian” shows racism. And ill logic, given that the truest possible “Australians” are indigenous. Let’s move this conversation on and start urgently examining and addressing our actions, our inaction, and their effects, before we get round to finally being more honest about the subtle motivations and conflicts in our hearts.

     

  • no news is good

    no news is good

    Watching television news for the first time in several years. Things have changed. The screen (huge!) is split into seven sections with different background footage, text, or video showing in each of them. A continuously changing crawl line along the bottom distracts attention from the main ‘story’, with unrelated headlines. There’s even a graphic indicating the state of the stock exchange at allegedly this very moment. (My investments! My fleet of investment advisors! My inflamed self-importance!) The ‘story’ is about the arrest of three more suspects in the Boston bombing and the reporter on the scene seems to be speculating & conducting her own investigation. Her storytelling is looping and diffuse. But it’s hard to notice that because of the intrusive text flashes & gripping minute-by-minute footage of a black van being backed very slowly, over and over again, into the garage of a large building. What the hell is going on? This show seems intended to make the viewer feel like they are the centre of operations in some big detective show. In fact the information given, before boredom and frustration drove me from the room, is minimal and almost meaningless. As though it were a gossip magazine the ‘news’ describes the appearance and apparent mood of the suspects. They talk to ‘neighbours’ who say I’m shocked, this sort of thing doesn’t happen here, etc. I have never looked to television news as a font of insight and wisdom but still: the level of stupidness seems to have risen markedly.

    If you have a TV and if you feel that watching this stuff is helping you ‘keep up to date’: maybe think again.

    H2O HoL turkish erode floor

  • great parents, both healthy

    great parents, both healthy

    I shared a restaurant nook tonight with three dinosaurs in suits, entertaining a young lady. The young lady was “three weeks pregnant” to the oldest dinosaur and hardly said a word. (“We’re not telling anybody yet.”) He sat with his arm linked loosely round her chair, establishing claim, while parsing the charms of various female executives as lazily as though picking his teeth. Gosh, I disliked him. Several times his voice rose on the repeated phrase “these ridiculous wind farms.” He talked about firms being “ripe for the picking” and a “young” female CEO of “42 or 43” who inexplicably had become suicidal when her high-riding company suddenly collapsed. The three of them leaned back to dismiss, one by one, the possible “real” reasons for her despair: Great parents, both healthy. She’s got a sister, they get on. She’s in a plum position, the world is her oyster. She’s charismatic and, frankly, gorgeous. The little wife sat with her hands folded under her chin during this recital and her baby, I guess, nestled under her ribs getting used to the uninterrupted sound of its father’s voice as he laid out the state of things for the education of the room at large. Oysters and plums. Niggles & Pimms.

  • hot pink banners

    hot pink banners

    Tomorrow I take the train back to Berlin, traversing again this ancestral landscape. What a beautiful week it’s been, I’m so thankful. A girl in a sunstruck cafe told me that Denmark is the happiest nation on earth. “Our third year running!” Every time I remember our conversation I mishear it as “friendliest” and have to correct myself. We got to talking because as I was falling into drowses in the afternoon sun through the window a buoyant demonstration flowed past, stopping and starting in laughing clots. It resembled a dance party or flash mob. Lots of young people dressed in black & carrying hot pink banners. What were they so, uh, angry about? She looked wry. She almost sneered. “Well, they are students – like me – only I live in an apartment and pay my own rent – these guys live with their parents and the money is so good, unbelievably good – the government’s cutting it back – we are so lucky – the world is in recession.” I studied her, she was very beautiful. What are you studying? “Law,” she said. I thought of all the Aboriginal students in outback Queensland who would love to go to university or even high school. The little girls in Afghanistan who are barred from owning books. Malala. Those of us who have this spilling, squandering, golden good fortune ~ let’s be kind with it. It may not last and it’s really not rightfully ours. Let’s keep handing it on, like coin. Hand to hand.

    H2O HoL archway to the castle