What it looks like when you blow up the earth

Witnessed recently at Bulga open cut coal mine.

If there is a blast nearby to where you are working at the time, you are evacuated to a safe position, where you can sometimes witness the shot being fired. Sentries are placed at the perimeter of the safe distance so that nobody can enter the shot zone. Radio silence is called, so that all two-way communications are ceased except for the shot firers. You can tune in and listen to it all being called and counted down while you sit back and watch.

The best thing here for me is that not only am I being paid while I have been evacuated from my workplace, I get to see some truly awesome sights (not to mention pass them on as best I can)!

Once the sentries are in place - which are just guys in four-wheel drives at every entry point to the shot zone - an all clear is given and the shot is counted down from ten. Depending upon your proximity to the shot and how deep it is into the cut you will hear it go off as a boom and a rumble. The higher up it is (this one is on the top of the cut) the better the sound seems to travel. The ground will shake for a period. Then it's called as all clear and off we all go back to work.

At work

Meet Shooter. He's one of the guys I work with in my cleaning job at the mines. Shooter is dressed in what we typically have to wear to scrape grease and shit from places it has accumulated in massive machines - a disposable overall suit. He is doing what we spend a lot of time doing: sitting around waiting to work.

Shooter makes my day. He's a motor-mouth. He says things before thinking and is as funny as hell. He's refreshing because you can't take things seriously around him. Young, full of himself... you can't help but love the guy.

Coping mechanisms

For the last week or so I've been unusually happy. Something snapped in me on the way home from a shit day at work one evening, and I where I would normally go home and be reclusive or ideally drink it off while being reclusive, I laughed out loud instead. I laughed all the way home. I came home and danced. While standing in the kitchen eating, I danced alone. Then I danced with the dog, because he was nearby and an inoccent victim I could rope into my happiness without noticeable complaint.

Work saw a different side of me. I'll write more about what I currently do for money at another point in the week, but suffice it to say the work is shit and the pay isn't great. But I've got renewed enthusiasm and have showed more of my old self to my relatively new workmates. My old self - the one who is not afraid to be seen as a bit of a dickhead, who isn't afraid to jerk around, but also who gets in and gets the dirty work done.

In short, I had my groove back.

My first in-depth appointment with my psych was on Saturday. We talked about the ex from over two years ago, mainly. Her task for me: write a letter to the ex describing all the ways she hurt me. Not a letter to be sent, I guess, but one that lets it all come escaping out of me and forces me to put it into form. Since this suggestion I've been fighting for my good mood. I have flat points - moments where I cannot comprehend anything that is going around me, even the smallest things. It's like time slows for me into dreamlike unreality, and then I wake up from the dream bleary eyed and unable to remember exactly what it was about.

These are things I need to confront. They are going to be painful but ultimately for my own benefit. The pain is scary beyond belief. How do people going into life threatening operations cope? I cannot comprehend it. This shit is not physical, it's only my thoughts! Somehow I'm afraid to face what I know I have to in order to get on with living.

I feel between a rock and a hard place when it comes to coping. Where I would normally shut myself away and blare some weird music on my stereo, I find myself only with my laptop speakers and a tenth of my music collection. The rest - the kickarse stereo and the collection of CDs that I have accumulated over so many changes in my life - are in storage at my parents' house about ten hours drive away. I cannot go there to retrieve them, because my dealings with them are a large part of the reason I've sought therapy in the first place.

So what do I do about this letter? How do I cope with writing it? How do I bust down all the mental barriers I've put up over the two years to block the bitch out of my head? And what do I do to save those surrounding me from having to see my pain?

Mailbox Monday

It's been a while. Not that I've stopped the hunt for mailboxes - I just keep forgetting that it's Monday until Monday is over.



So this one appears to have it's own crash barrier. Did it get run into too many times? Or is the owner a go-cart driver?

Sunday adventures

I got new toys today - a couple of filters for my camera. Naturally all I wanted to do straight away was go out and play with them. I decided to stop on the way home from the store and reef them out of the packet right there in a carpark at the nature reserve.

What did I find? Kids. Plenty of the little buggers everywhere. In prams, running around kicking footballs, throwing bread to the already fat ducks in the pond. So I wandered off in search of seclusion and nature, only to find that nature has kids too.

Air Guitar: Aussie Style

Coming to you from the Stroud International Brick and Rolling Pin throwing contest.

Preparing for battle with Boring the Great

It dons the full body sperm suit, elbow length gloves and safety glasses.

It removes the crusty acid drum from the pallet of other crusty acid drums.

It dips the crusty acid drum in the corrosive detergent goop.

It takes the high pressure water gun and sprays the crusty off the drum, usually wearing the blasted crusty bits from head to toe.

It places the clean drum on a new pallet.

It rinses and repeats for seven hours and three extended smoko breaks.

It leaves the site of the battle and heads for home.

It puts the lotion on it's skin.

PhotoHunt: Hanging

What do you do when you take off just one of your football socks?

Leave just that one on the fence and walk away, of course.

Project Black #5

I've been reading travel magazines lately. Obviously the urge to go discover is coming back with a vengeance, and this time around when I finally do unleash myself on the countryside, I hope I will be better armed to cope photographically... not to mention mentally.

In an editorial piece a mocking challenge is set to any person travelling to Broome. See if you can resist taking a photo of camels walking in a line along the beach with the sun setting behind them. Now the only camels I've ever come across are the ones at that spend their weekends carrying sets of children around in an endless procession at various market days and country shows, and the occasoinal camel race for charity. I've never been to Broome either. But the statement strikes a chord with me. I love a silhouette in the sunset. Can I resist it?

This tower is on a beach not far from home. It's a moody beach, and my experiences there match it. I've laughed and been consumed by love there. I've grinned at the waves in defiance. I've roared and screamed and been consumed by terror there. I've even unwittingly exposed my arse to an entire wedding party there.

The moods change, the weather changes, yet in this place there is one constant: the tower.

Project Black #4

Meet Joey the Turdlet, also affectionately known as BlackTurd. This boy is the biggest sook known to caninekind. He will stand at the back door, bouncing up and down and barking, causing a menace until he is let inside. From the second he is inside he turns to butter. He just lays around sleeping and begging affection.

Project Black #3

i = dx

where d is the distance removed from home,
x is the age of the relevant monument
and i is the resulting factor of interest.

It’s funny how travelling changes our perspectives and our willingness or desire to see certain things. Around home, wherever that may be, I have absolutely no desire to spend time wandering around churches. I have no sneaking religious tendencies and therefore no business being in these places. But… take me away on a road trip and suddenly they are architectural wonders that captivate me and draw me in.

Project Black #2

Two hundred and thirty million years ago trees were dying in swamps. Enormous forests sank bleow the water, and after the debris collected in the basins of water that had drowned them they were eventually covered by large quantities of mud and sand. This process happened over and over again, with layer upon layer compacting onto the last. Somewhere down the line heat and pressure come into play. Layered in between sandstone and other sedimentary rock, like a club sandwich, we have the final product: Coal. Disaster, dead trees, and time.

Pisshead

Cigarettes in this country come with a warning label by law. A series of government warnings that say such things as
SMOKING KILLS
and SMOKING WHEN PREGNANT HARMS YOUR BABY.
When the warnings first came out, a lot of guys I knew would only buy the packets with that last warning on them.

I indulged in a moderate night of drinking last night. I can remember everything, I didn’t make an idiot of myself, and I went to bed before I was anywhere near sloshed. I even had the presence of mind to drink a shitload of water before thinking of going to bed. In the aftermath I have a dehydration hangover from hell. I’ve drunk litre after litre of water and I feel like I have mutated into a piece of sandstone. Why so bad today when it appears I did all the right things?

Red wine.

I think it should come with a government warning label also. Something like
RED WINE WILL DEHYDRATE YOU
or THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOTTLE WILL CAUSE YOUR BODY TO HAVE THE PROPERTIES OF A POROUS STONE
or perhaps a more simple warning of REMEMBER THE LAST TIME?.

This could extend to cartons of beer also.
FRIDAY NIGHT? AS IF YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE IT SLOW!!!
Others could be labelled with
WARNING: POSSESSION OF A CARTON MAY CAUSE YOU TO EXPECT OTHERS TO DRINK WITH YOU.

Project Black #1

Ten days ago Anna started Project Black. Somewhere between going on road trips to the Blue Mountains and work and generally having my head up my arse, I missed the entire thing. I thought Dammit, Vic. You missed another opportunity to push yourself. But did I really? I'm late with it, but this is the net after all. I can publish what the hell I want whenever I want. There are no rules and that's why I love blogging so damn much.



Black: the absence of colour. The muso uniform. I look around the space I am in and immediately I see muso paraphernalia staring at me. Amplifiers, cases, accessories. Even my folders of music are black. You get so used to it in music that diversions from this are unusual and interesting. For that reason I love my red classical guitar case. It's falling apart and is essentially pretty tragic, (especially when you see the yellow plush lining inside), but hell does it stand out.

PhotoHunt: What IS that?

Yes, it's a bird.
In fact I'm pretty sure it's a Crimson Rosella.
But why the hell does it have something pink in it's mouth?
What the hell IS that?



The answer? Chewing gum.

Creature Comforts

One hundred and seventy-something million years in the making, it appears that a local network of limestone caves has evolved not only as a place of amazing beauty, but has also evolved to meet modern waste disposal demands.

Half-Nekkid Thursday: Tied ankles

On a road to nowhere

In honour of Dive's week of Car Porn I thought I would post an excerpt from the recent adventures of EspressoHead and myself.



A graveyard of machinery in the middle of nowhere.
Of course we had to climb on it.

What do you feel on the edge?

I've just been away for a random destination weekend with a good friend. It was brilliant not to be constrained by time for a couple of days. Decisions about where to go next were made on the basis of Why the fuck not? and without much other limitation. Want to stop there? Why the fuck not!

Of the many adventures we had - ghost towns, mailboxes galore, crystal blue rivers and limestone caves - the most brilliant was finding a random walking track in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. National Parks signs always lie - this is a fact that I have always been aware of and will forget without fail before embarking on a walk - a walk that is signposted as just over a kilometre will always be a shitload more. I think they are working in conjunction with personal trainers. Just a little bit further is in fact twice as far as you've already come. We walked and walked. I whinged and whinged. We ran to make the distance fall away quicker and still we weren't at anything that looked remotely like a lookout. But what do you do? They have you over a barrel. If you give up and turn around because the sign lied about the distance you miss out on the reward at the end. So you keep going. And going.

Then you come across something truly amazing. A view that puts your life in perspective. A view that has been formed over millions and millions of years and my existence is not even a breath of wind compared to it's lifespan. Yet I can stand on the edge of this amazing formation and be completely overwhelmed by the experience. As beings, we are driven by emotion and each of our individual experiences are completely unique. I am the only person who can ever experience my own emotions, as much as the person next to me can only ever experience their own emotions.



I have been driven by a need to share my own experiences with others and I have come to realise how pointless that actually is. While it is awesome to have travelling companions and shared adventures the only emotional experiences I really need to nurture are my own.

Who

I am Vic.
I love catchy music, whether it be funky basslines, elctro, classical or any other genre you can throw into my circle of aural judgement.
I can't draw for shit.
I am an intellectual snob - I have little to no tolerance for idiots.
I like to be surrounded by order in the form of alphabetisation and categorisation.
I hate to sleep alone. I have a teddy bear that keeps me company now and I stress if I cannot find her to snuggle to as I am falling asleep.
I am a sucker for anything limited edition. I am a marketer's dream.
Fresh fruit and vegetables make me happy, and rump steak is my absolute favourite cut of beef.
I take photographs. I am not an artist, just a collector of my own visions and experiences.
A genuine smile from a stranger, or a fun conversation, will make my day.