All creatures great and small..

In light of the Netflix smash hit show ‘Tiger King’, I wanted to talk about the realities of caring for (because one should never own) wild animals, or animals which should be wild. I should admit to never having cared for a big cat of any kind, beyond the oversized lump of fur that is my older cat. While equalling the size of a husky toddler, she poses all the threat to my wellbeing of a salad leaf being added to my daily diet. Her presence is supposed to extend my longevity but eveything else I do kind of cancels it out. I wont comment about the practices of keeping tigers, lions, bobcats and bears (had to throw the panthers in there to avoid the ‘oh my!’ but then it felt silly to say nothing) in cages and without a lot of stimulation. I’ll stick to my views on the overarching principle of keeping wild animals.

When I was about eleven years old, my mother, searching for the kind of unconditional love that a child learns to withhold out of spite, started taking in animals she felt needed rescuing. Its up for debate whether they always genuinely needed rescuing or were in fact kidnapped, but my observational skills and gullibility were both still at the wrong end of their development, and so I saw my mum as some kind Florence Nightingale, for nightingales (except to be accurate, not actual nightingales, who are not indigenous to Australia, so she was more of a Florence Tawny Frogmouth).

It began with ‘saving’ newborn lambs she would ‘find’ ‘abandoned’ in a field opposite her workplace, which was, very ironically, a battery egg farm and hatchery. In an act of world class cognitive dissonance, she was responsible for ‘debeaking’ the day old chicks. This involved pressing their little beaks against a hot iron to blunt them and make pecking egg collectors and other chickens less of an issue. To balance out the hypocrisy there, mum eventually liberated several hens from the battery farm. She performed daily physiotherapy on them to get their legs working again when they progressed to leg strengthening exercises in baby bouncers which hung in a line from the roof of a shed in our backyard. Once fully recovered they were turned out for a lifetime of free range fossicking in our large yard.

Back to the lambs though; Spunky and Maisie were two that stick in my mind. Maisie was friendly, but much less easy going than Spunky, a ram who would happily trot along the road with us on a leash to the playground and didnt seem distressed when we would put him in the toddler swing (although I admit to not paying a lot of attention to his level of comfort in my 11 year old enthusiasm for novelty). Over the years our menagerie increased and mum’s obsession with caring for animals became something bigger. Sheep, goats, ducks and chickens made way for possums, koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, various birds of prey and the occasional reptile. It wasnt long before mum formalised her activities and became a registered wildlife shelter operator, and as with anything else she did, I was her assistant.

Our family home was full of animals. Any call-outs to the vet or the conservation department for animals orphaned or injured in the region were directed to my mum. The boot of the car constantly packed with the things we would need to retrieve and care for these creatures and day or night, when the calls came, we dropped everthing and went out. All sounds quite exciting and wholesome, doesnt it? Ha! Mum was not one for doing things with measured reason. She would often drag me out into the cold night for a rescue without first having checked that we had enough petrol to get us there or knowing we didnt have much, willing to take the chance. She also didnt really believe in maps, or any kind of formal (or informal, for that matter) navigation. If given directions, she would write them down and then invariably forget to bring them, or decide to try an alternate route on rural backroads she didnt know. Despite my fear of being stranded without petrol on the side of a dark rural road in the middle of the night, I found myself caught in the graviational pull of her passion and earnestness to be a saviour to these creatures.

Having wild animals in a family home could be a challenge though. It was more than once that the first sign of a possum having got out of its enclosure was the painful sensation of it crawling up my leg with its razor sharp claws. The shock causing me jump out of bed which only made the possum dig its claws in further to avoid falling to the floor. Wild animals also arent toilet trained. This fact was well demonstrated by Molly, a swamp wallaby joey that we collected on the way to a family holiday, has to share my bed because she needed body heat during the night . Also worth noting is that most wild animals in Australia can and will hurt you. Scratches, kicks and bites from adolescent joeys are par for the course when rearing them. They need to learn how to fight and will practice on you. Koalas are invariably in foul moods and often bite and claw and grunt. I never enjoyed looking after them and have a lifelong disdain for their kind.

Then there is the sorrow of losing anmals you are caring for. The birds were always a challenge because success rates of saving really little baby birds is low, but we raised our share of birds from tawny frogmouths to falcons. My favourite bird to care for was the magpie. Nothing beats a magpie for character and personality though and to this day their presence is a sheer joy to me. A thoroughly beautiful one we rescued that was a true albino only lived a few months, but was the most beautiful, playful and clever bird. Another magpie, Squeaky, was a family favourite, as evidenced by it getting an actual name rather than possie for the possums, duckie for the ducks, chicky for the…you get the picture.

It was far from a nightmare growing up in a household with exposure to animals that many people will never get close to let alone be compelled to share a bed with. Kangaroos have strong personalities and it is really easy to tell them apart when you are rearing several at once. Princess, a girl joey who had very delicate features, would often nuzzle us and loved cuddles, Spikey our most boisterous joey enjoyed leaping on to my dad’s lap while he was watching tv and would lounge around with him for as long as he was allowed. Freddie loved playing with the chicks and baby animals that were around. The aforementioned wallaby Molly was very sweet. She loved cuddles and scratches and had the cutest little face. The various possums we cared for were always pretty cute (unlike amercian opossums which are sinfully ugly and do a real disservice to the species), and even the birds of prey could be pretty adorable. There were never any redeeming features in the koalas; they were just jerks.

Once reared into adulthood, it was really important to reduce our personal contact with the animals. A hard and fast rule of operating a wildlife shelter was that if you take in a wild animal and it cant be rehabilitated to be released back into the wild, it should be euthanised. So with that in mind, adolescence was when we would start to back off and adulthood was virtually no contact until release. Every animal that we had built a relationship with had to be able to feed itself and avoid humans. Most of the kangaroos went to a local wildlife reserve, possums usually went back to where they came from (although survival rates for possums released back into the wild is very low as possums are aggressively territorial) and birds of prey were also let go where they were found. One instance of a hawk with wing damage was different and a local zoo took him in. Occasionally we would visit the wildlife reserve where we released the kangaroos and call their names to no avail. While heartbreaking for my mother, that is how it is meant to be.

We all might want to have these creatures in our lives and within our reach, but we aren’t meant to. People who truly care about animal conservation understand this. My mum was all kinds of crazy when it came to animals. She would regularly patrol local roads hoping to come upon a native animal waving a tiny flare and writing SOS in the dirt, but she would never cross the line of having her need to care for them trump the needs of those beings to be what they are: wild. Dont get me wrong, I have no doubt the sheep were more likely abducted than abandoned. There is also an argument that when these animals became less dependent on her and more grown up, she needed a new fix of something more vulnerable to be suffocated with love, and so was happy to move on to the next orphaned wombat/koala/joey/yeti. It doesnt really matter why she did it (although she once yelled at us that she chose to care for animals because they couldnt talk back to her like we did), it matters that when she cared for wild animals, it was only ever with intention of returning them to the wild. No one should be allowed or ‘own’ exotic or wild animals. They are not ours to own. In fact I also refuse to say I own my cats or my dog. I have cats and a dog in my house that I care for. I dont own them. There is a quid pro quo going on there: I provide food and shelter and love and they get to let me. I still regularly marvel at the idea of one of my animals coming to me for the explicit purpose of being caressed by me. I can kind of understand why mum felt cuddling animals was better than cuddling us, although in fairness in dont recall her ever trying the latter for comparison.

The best laid plans…

The last week has been a delightfully ironic combination of a comedy of errors and all of my chickens coming home to roost to create some kind of karmic Yahtzee. Im sure I am not alone in this, but the sheer volume of failure I have experienced in the past several (because saying seven feels too specific) days feels like it has world record aspirations.

Parenting is always a highlight. Why is it that all of the parenting goals I previously held so dear are now shooting me in the foot? Who wants kids with healthy self esteem and emotional intelligence when you are now all stuck together in a kind of home detention that is social distancing? Not me, it turns out. It appears that my efforts to teach my children that being understanding, kind, compassionate and respectful, means they expect that crap from me now. Who knew that my husband (when he was alive, obviously) arguing for a more totalitarian style of parenting might have had a point after all?

Then there is, of course the wonderful irony of ten years of psychotherapy to get me to a point where I could leave the house for more days of the week than those I didnt. What a bloody waste. But it is how I now have a job, so I guess I should be grateful for that, however given my complex set of mental health issues and personal history, my job comes with its own issues. Its an odd thing to work with the doctors named on your husband’s death certificate. Its hard to know how to broach that at a work social do. I also try very hard not to think about the fact that some of my health services are provided by people who I also have to work with. Thats a lot of people with a lot of very personal information about me who I have to smile at and make small talk with.

Let me say at the outset, there is nothing that makes an uneducated (yet oddly self-important) person feel less worthy of oxygen than working with high level, very accomplished healthcare professionals. Bring on a pandemic, and I retreat to my home office, providing remote support to senior medical consultants and hospital executive staff, while they discuss the realities of personal protective equipment and suitable accommodation for isolation should they become infected with a potentially fatal virus. I am not just in the shadow of greatness, I am the dust on the moss covered pebble, shrouded from sunlight by various large fungi in a distant corner from greatness. If one has no intention to go into the medical field professionally, it can be hard to hold your head high in the circles my work takes me.

I mean, at least when I was handling legal claims (medical whoopsies as it were) at the hospital I was privy to the fact that human imperfection exists in us all. One can definitely even the playing field when one is aware of instances of human error that occur (often due to poor communication, which I assume is because all of these miracle workers probably have the ringing of angel choirs in their ears to contend with – its basically an elevated form of industrial deafness).

So what do I do for a job? I help these incredible specimens allocate their personal time and money to support their peers and further the training and research that goes on in the organisation. Oh, and I facilitate their financial donations to professional acknowledgements and medical charities. That’s right, while they are working all hours, often on little sleep and in less than ideal conditions, teaching medical students, treating patients, undertaking ongoing professional development and then going home to their hobbies such as classical musicianship, spearfishing and orca whispering (I might have made that last one up, but who knows), I press some keys on a keyboard to direct their freely given money to support their colleagues and sponsor medical charity projects. Do you know what I do in my spare time? I play on my ipad! Occasionally, I read a book if I want to feel fancy.

Its hard being surrounded by so much good. Highly educated, highly affluent professionals with experiences I can never dream of. Worse still is that these people are sometimes nearly my age. The comparison grates like knuckles on a pavement (which is an apt descriptor for how evolved I feel in this mix). In fairness to myself, my start was less than ideal. I left home at 15 and spent the first six months after that homeless. I left school just after (barely) completing year 10. Its probably semi-miraculous that I avoided getting pregnant until I was all of 20 years old! As I’ve said before, Chance and Chaos had a party in my life for a LONG time, and clearly Ethics was busy with the people I now work for (there’s a lesson there, kids). Resilience was in a binge-drinking phase and showed up with all the regularity of a fashion model’s menstrual cycle.

But Im still here. I made it this far, against some pretty long odds. Im now half way through a double university degree in criminology and law and the proud holder of a Distinction average mark. However, even if and when I graduate and finally develop my own career trajectory, I cant see myself ever feeling on a par with the people I work with right now. There is a bravery to it that is often unseen. Its not the willingness to expose themselves to this virus, or the long, hard hours, or anything obvious. Its the small scale they work on. They can work their asses off, be incredibly knowledgeable in their field and not only will they save a handful of people’s lives, they will be guaranteed to lose others. There is a bravery in the odds of it and the personal cost-benefit ratio. I also want to do good in the world with my education (should I ever complete it), but the difference is that in my chosen field (public policy) the good I hope to do will be mediocre and large-scale: impersonal. I would never have the courage to attempt to make a real difference to anyone on a personal level because failure on that level would be unbearable to me.

Anyone can aim high because failure is almost guaranteed. Small, realistic goals that really matter to someone else’s life is where the real challenge lies. Sometimes, though, even achieving those goals comes at a cost, like when your 16 year old child with autism who has all the tact and diplomacy of Prince Phillip (Trump was too easy – low hanging fruit) tells you that he doesnt appreciate the attitude you are giving him. Thats what you get for working hard to support his language development.

And now for something completely different…

Today out of sheer boredom I watched a movie I’d had on my list for a while, but never got around to, Baby Driver. Its easy to see why it received acclaim; its music and sound effect composition alone is a pretty stellar effort in my very uninformed opinion. Mostly, I found that something combining my three top loves of cinema, cars and music is a pretty unbeatable combination. The stunt driving before the opening title had me grinning like a lunatic. There is just something about the fluid movement of a grunting car with screeching tyres that makes me very happy. I was looking forward to adding some new tracks to my spotify throughout the movie, but it was not to be. The music choice was was the kind that hipsters claim to enjoy listening to on their gramophone shaped digital music players.

There was an opportunity to chuck in some great contemporary music. Anything with a bit of a beat and a bit of grunt would have had me spellbound. Kaleo, Danzig, Hilltop Hoods, GnR, Myles Kennedy, Metallica, Muse, Tempter Trap, just to name a few (and having a classical music background, I am even open to some Mortzart or Beethoven). For a movie that centres a lot around music (among other things), the selection was about as deep and unpredictable as learning to sing your ABCs in the first year of school. Obviously with music, as with cinema, you cant please everyone, and the makers of this movie clearly had one demographic in mind and I wasnt in it, due to my lack of aforementioned grammaphone shaped iphone speaker. Although in fairness, I have been known to dress ironically (not always on purpose), not wash my hair (not always on purpose) and buy ridiculous crap that I just didnt need (usually on purpose). Its my lack of pretence that precludes me from the group, I think, although maybe using terms pretence IS pretentious…I can only guess.

An attempt to lift the sophistication level with some random, loose choreography came off as more delusional than visionary, although maybe that was the intention? To avoid any chance of overdoing the ‘sophistication’ Baby has a southern drawl. Of course we, the audience, must now consider him some kind of musical, driving idiot-savant! But maybe that all added to the slightly fantastical feel of the movie which included exaggerated lilts, expressions and styling. Im ok with that, have definitely enjoyed my fill of comic book franchise movies to appreciate strongly stylised characters.

Speaking of stylised characters, the uncomfortable appearance of Kevin Spacey was difficult to overlook and watching him calling a (very) young man Baby hit every sour note that exists on an out of tune piano strung with dried citrus pulp. The martyrdom of his character was the only satisfying part of his role and in my opinion came about 55 minutes too late in the movie.

The overused insertion of innocent, disadvantaged doormat love interest has surely had its day? What more does that role have to offer the world? At this point a doe-eyed barely pubescent young woman has done all the caring, waiting and pining that can be done. At which point do we arrive at a new type of love interest? One that isnt simply a token character, subplot, or submissive drip waiting to be ‘saved’ from her own life. I want a typically developed woman who dresses for comfort and who can out stunt drive the stunt driver, all the while giving the finger to the supposed ‘good guy’ and leaving him in the dust.

I notice that even in our somewhat progressive cinematic landscape, when a woman is a lead character and sometimes even a lead action character, you never seem to see submissive, meek male love interests. If it ever is done, I am sure it would be to comedic effect, as it is impossible for a strong woman character to appeal to the masses if that same character had any serious power over a partner, such as we often see with male leads. But I digress, Its just a bit of a stick in my craw that the world is still celebrating tokenism above true equality.

One thing that spoke to me in this movie though, beyond the driving – and I can tell you the idea of being able to drive like that is the stuff of my dreams – was the lead’s desperate efforts to on to the few connections he had with his deceased mother. Eating every day at the same place she worked, holding the recorded sound of her voice as his most prized possession. In a movie about all of the things that light a spark in me, my breath caught for a nanosecond when the character heard his mum’s voice. Its been five years since my mother died (suddenly and traumatically) and eleven since my husband was killed (even more suddenly and traumatically) and the one thing that can still bring a tear to my eye is feeling like the world is still full of their sounds and I have just lost them in static. It always feels like the moment just after someone speaks and a pregnant pause resounds with the dying soundwaves of their voices. To me, that is grief. That split second between sound and no sound.

You are NOT the exception.

Artist: Jake Witcombe (@jankus_wiltbert)

It really is that simple. You can be an award winning writer, a local shop attendant or Bill fricken Gates. You can be Kim Jong-un, or Thanos, or both for that matter (but please dont) but you are still not the exception! You need to stay home unless you are working in essential services. No, pop-ins, no swing-bys, no acts of genocide that require you to emerge from your heavily fortified compound. Every single one of us is way more discriminatory than this virus. The handful of people living in sterilised bubbles around the world are about to become the master race. Let that sink in for a moment while you spread your conspiracy theories about big pharma, China, world governments and the ever maligned health authorities (damn them for trying to keep us all healthy and alive!).

Better still, lets assume whichever convoluted conspiracy you are throwing out is true. Lets say, China is in league with Kim/Thanos and big pharma to throw Chaos loose into the global economy and achieve whatever evil ends are planned. People are still getting very ill. People are still dying. It is very difficult to give the conspirators the proverbial finger from an inert lump of tissue stowed in a makeshift morgue at the local venue for kids iceskating parties and ice cream. In fact, it is difficult to do just about anything when you are an inert lump of tissue in any kind of morgue, because it usually means that you are dead. Even if in your dying moments, you managed to weakly scrawl across a piece of paper “it was Chin…” its going to leave a lot of unanswered questions. In short, whatever theory you support about how a new variant of a reasonably well known type of virus came about, the theory isnt going to do a lot to protect you and will especially do very little to protect the people you care about.

Social media posts promoting virus conspiracies among governments are about as effective as a magician’s act of cutting a man in half by actually really cutting him in half despite a lot of blood and screaming to warn you, and then blaming the maker of the box when the man doesnt become whole again. People still died and common sense could have easily prevailed. Instead it appears that several magicians have decided to replicate the trick, changing nothing and using the easily predictable resulting death as further proof of the box maker plotting against its customers. The thing is, the box maker really needs magicians to stop cutting people in half, however it relied on magicians being cognisant of their own responsibilities to one another, and to possess an ounce of common sense to stop sawing when the blood and screaming happened.

I think it’s fair to say that the rush on purchasing everyday grocery items and America’s current blitz purchasing of guns gives rise to an issue that has been quietly brewing away in the background. While people quite rightly fear common sense is becoming as scarce a commodity as a vegan who likes to keep their dietary preferences out of general conversation, there is another great loss facing our society which I only realised I also lacked when I happened to study it. Critical thinking is something that appears to have declined in exact relativity to its growing necessity. The Information Age ensures it is all but impossible to avoid the insidious and ubiquitous streams of fact, fiction and all of it’s hybrid forms in our everyday lives. As much as the everyday person’s ability to critically examine this influx of words seems to be diminishing, even those well equipped to parse articles and opinions are finding those tasks ever more challenging.

Previously, considerations given to opinions offered as facts involved considering not only the language used, but also who was using that language and more importantly who benefits from the piece. With so many unregulated sources of information (including this one), and the changing mode of communicating facts, figures and opinions, it is understandable that even the experienced among us occasionally decide to simply accept assertions such as ‘not all billionaires have personality disorders’ because sometimes its just not worth the effort. However it’s also less clear these days to figure out who benefits from anything we learn via the media. Global commercial homogeneity makes it difficult to draw a direct line from a single piece of information to the end beneficiary. I cant tell my Barclays from my Legal and General Group (clearly they dont have a strong creative department to assist with their naming decision though) but I do know enough to actually know that. I know that the brand I am buying isnt the multinational entity I am supporting. Hell, if corporate legislators cant keep up with who is doing what and where, I certainly cant be expected to!

It places us in the awkward position of needing to rethink how we apply critical thinking to the information we imbibe. If we cant apply a healthy dose of skepticism to news and opinion articles because the beneficiaries have transcended the usual methods of identification, then we have two options before us: we can either believe virtually everything we read, making adjustments for the hourly updates and corrections, or we can simply lose all faith any readily available public information because it is now just too challenging to work out who benefits and where further research is needed. The first option is the one where we find scammers are thriving. The sensationalisation of the news and tabloid media (not to mention social media which only ever seems to get attention when offering extreme views framed as ‘hot takes) mean that there are a solid chunk of very scared and confused citizens of the world, ripe for manipulation. Its a dangerous combination which is constantly exploited by people in power to further their agenda. The other side of the coin, where people are prone to disbelieve any information from the usual channels is equally problematic. People need information. If people cant trust the public news industry, then their search for reliable intelligence takes them to darker places than that whingeing bastard Frodo ever saw, and the ‘Sauron’ they will find there is far more malicious. Their information sources are nearly always right wing (a pattern there methinks), xenophobic and in support of aggressive bigotry. Rarely do you see an underground network dedicated to promoting acts of compassion and kindness to everyone else regardless of political persuasion, education or race. If in fact they ever did exist, I am sure the cynics of the world would promptly put an end to such clearly subversive activities in the name of the greater good.

So where does this leave us in the current landscape of misinformation, mistrust and maladjustment? It leaves us exactly where we were a week ago and a week before that. Whatever political leaning, education, value system or lifestyle you have, the only thing that should matter is your responsibility to yourself and the people who have to share this world with you. Stockpiling anything will not save you from getting sick. It may mean that you die with a stocked pantry, or that you infect a loved one who then dies while you have a stocked pantry. You might get sick and KNOW that some government/company somewhere caused this, but without access to a ventilator because people didnt stay home, and caused a surge in infections and demand on those ventilators, that knowledge will not save you. You might have seen on social media that a salt water gargle or a home made sanitiser can help you. But if you stay home and have no contact with others, you wont need to find out quite how gullible you were.

We are all in a position to save lives. I know for me that this is likely the closest I will ever get to saving someone’s life, as I dont plan on a frontline medical career. I might never meet the person I save from staying home, and they may never know that but for my self-isolation they are alive and well, but I can absolutely guarantee you that staying home will save lives. The hospital I work at are having to discuss how they will determine priority should medical staff have to choose who gets to be put on ventilation and who doesnt. Im not sure how much clearer it can be for naive among us as well as the cynics: STAY THE FUCK HOME.

And for those of you who like to engage in a little bit of critical thinking and are interested in who benefits from my opinion, the answer is me, you and everyone else.

*This message has been brought to you by Harold J Ethics esq. one of my Magical Unicorns of Existence.

If a problem shared is a problem halved…

Then we should all have this pandemic sorted in no time. Well, actually, probably not. I think this one is a ‘hold on tight’ scenario more than anything. I am reassured that there are minds much greater than mine working around the clock on how to get as many of us through this crisis and to the other side as possible. I am less heartened by the politicising of public health decisions and the opportunism and greed that has emerged. So tonight (1 night later than planned – I honestly couldnt face this blog last night, it was all feeling a bit much because I work in a hospital and the tension and anxiety is high indeed) I would like to share some lessons I have learned along the way in the hope it might help, or even inspire kindness and hope.

As usual, my MUEs have had a great deal to do with what I have learned over the years and seem like a good reference point. For those just joining me (which would be weird, its a blog, read from the start you weirdo), my MUEs are four in number, 7 in beauty and -16 in style. They are (in no particular order) Ethics, Chance, Chaos and Resilience. So maybe its worth considering where your own MUEs fit in your life. This is how my MUEs will influence my actions in the coming days, weeks and months;

Ethics, as usual is just a total PITA. Every possible good idea seems to not meet Ethics’ standards. Stock up on groceries so we know we are set should lockdown come to our town? Ethics has to remind me that greed and self-serving behaviour will only ever met with more of the same, and we cant ALWAYS be on the winning side of that. Want to go out and about because we are young and healthy? Ethics will remind us that all we need to do is spread our ‘young-people’s’ covid-19 germs (without even feeling unwell) to a friend and they bring it home and soon we have created our own game of russian roulette via six degrees of separation. Ethics reminds us that every single time we look out for ourselves, we encourage the person next to us to do the same and when one day we are channeling Blanche DuBois and need to rely upon the kindness of strangers, we will find ourselves very alone. If, on the other hand, we listen to Ethics’ incessant, monotone of judgement and begin to act for the benefit of those around us, we will spread the only thing that ever needs to go viral: kindness. In the end, we will discover, probably quite grudgingly, that the party pooper is almost always right. I mean, if Pooh Bear paid attention to Eeyore more often maybe he would have had a less volatile existence. The worst thing that ever happened to Eeyore was that his twig roof (which NEVER kept the rain off anyway) fell over which in reality was a pretty poor effort at a shelter in best of circumstances.

Chance has its place cemented here at the moment. Chance will continue to claim its victims with inexplicable discernment. There is a sense of being part of a morbid lottery. I think many feel that way, with the exception of such ignorant people as the complete morons who believe sharing a chalice in church is fine because Christ’s blood and body is perfect and therefore they cant get sick. News flash people, even if I buy into the blood and body stuff, it isnt his blood and body that will infect you, it is the saliva and other droplets that the person who partook before you left that will make you sick. Something tells me the fortified wine in church cant kill the viruses that sanitiser made with vodka cant touch. Chance is every idiot’s friend, make no mistake. It will get no admiration from me, mere acceptance at its presence and efforts to stymie its negative impacts on my life. Chance is loving the people in the community right now who seem to think they know better than the experts. These people are fodder for Chance and I can tell you right now, Chance is not a unicorn you want to give a lot of power over your life. Chance right now is a kid in a candy shop.

Talking about kids on sugar highs, Chaos is on a bender and a half. Chaos revels in uncertainty and anxiety. Confusion and frustration are its party drugs. Do you really want to push drugs on a Unicorn?? Is that something you want to see?? The world does not need a bunch of dirty street corners filled with broken down, clapped out unicorns wearing beanies because they sold their horns to witches for spells to keep the Kardashians popular. Who wants that on their conscience? Not to mention unicorns dont even have hands so cant write, let alone hold, a sign to beg for a taste of your angst to satisfy its cravings. Chaos is necessary. There is no doubt about that. Chaos is what makes the universe do its thing and is who we all have to thank for actually existing. Chaos is the reason we are what we are and not some weird life form made up of gas, minerals and liquid and so fragile that the slightest imbalance of that mix can kill us….oh wait….well then, thats just another good reason to stop metaphorically bending over mooning Chaos while it has its metaphorical machine gun aimed at us.

Finally there is Resilience. I admit I do have a bit of a soft spot for good old Resilience. Probably because it’s got me to where I am today, which comparatively, is significantly better than I think anyone had expected (and I refuse to give Chance the credit there). Resilience reminds me of the martial arts master (the one in Kung Fu Panda, specifically), with a deep and strong determination to achieve an outcome it feels is essential for the greater good. I suppose in some ways it encompasses some of the traits of it’s MUE brethren like the morality and nagging presence of Ethics and acts in strange harmony with Chance and Chaos while stopping short of hopeless acceptance. I think that is what appeals to me about Resilience, the belief that Chance and Chaos can absolutely have their fun and Ethics and will keep you pointed in the right direction, but without Resilience nothing could ever be achieved. Resilience gets you where you want to be no matter how many times something blocks your way. Resilience may very well be the difference between, lets say, a painter and genocidal dictator for example.

So while all of the MUE’s play their own part in this viral crisis thought to be the worst in living history, Resilience is the unicorn I would give the short odds to (noting unicorn racing is widely frowned upon – and Chaos cheats anyway). Resilience on days where you are sick of being at home will help you find something to keep you on track, it may even inspire you into creativity. Resilience when you or someone you love gets sick will give you hope and in case of loss, will help you survive. Resilience, when you see how a global financial recession impacts you and those around you will help you find novel and resourceful ways of getting by. Resilience will be the reason that many of us will be able to tell a story to our grandkids about the rise of kindness and compassion during a time when the world was afraid.

If at first you dont succeed…

Still not sure how to end that phrase. The options are boundless, just like viral containment lines. There I’ve done it, I’ve referenced the issue of the day, now can we please move on because honestly I am feeling a bit like COVID is pretty low hanging fruit and I think we can do better. There is certainly some humourous content to be had with COVID but I feel like our various governments have that well covered, so lets shift our focus.

Earlier this week my grandmother died. She was an 81 year old dutch immigrant, mother of four, grandmother of five and great grandmother of my two children. She was a big part of my childhood and a strong female role model in my teens. She was opinionated, clever, practical, capable and often quite hilarious. She came over to Australia on a boat in the 1950’s with her parents, her sister and her sister’s husband to start a new life with her family. She met my grandfather on that boat. My grandfather was a dashing young man in his early 20’s who had escaped the war in what was then Yugoslavia and had found refuge in Italy before being settled in Australia. Neither of my grandparents spoke each other’s language or english when they met. They courted, married and had the aforementioned children. There was clearly some assimilation that occurred during that time as their children’s names evolved from Marjeta, Siebe and Adinda, to Michael. I think the first three kids probably felt slightly ripped off name-wise, especially given how racially tolerant Australia was in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

But I slightly digress, as I want to talk about Grandma, this looming yet benevolent presence in my childhood, urging me to eat her delicious meals, playing the mandolin and singing the Adam’s Family theme tune to her miniature chihuahua, Sheena (who took it like a champ, shaking itself towards its next heart attack, with its only protection from the people around it being its powerfully rancid canine halitosis).

It’s weird though, because somewhere along the line, something changed with my Grandma. She kept making glorious smells waft out of the kitchen, she kept singing at the miniature Chihuahua, although Sheena eventually had one too many heart attacks and Tina took her place. Tina was smaller, more frightened of the world and made Sheena’s breath smell like air freshener, but she was also a biter. Ankles were never safe. The family cockatoo learned that one day the hard way. Incidentally, cockatoos dont tend to live full, rich lives without legs; it makes flying then landing on things terribly awkward.

Again I have been led astray by the weird and wonderful background of our terribly odd family. Back to my Grandma, who as I said, was on her second giant rat and none the worse for wear, or so it appeared. She continued to host card nights, go to local dutch dances, host every family occasion under the sun (and some more on top of that) and played in the orchestra. I dont remember any red flags. I know my mum didnt either and neither did her siblings. But one day, seemingly out of nowhere she told Grandpa that she wanted a divorce. There was no discussion. There was no time to digest. She moved out and the house was put up for sale. She never told Grandpa or anyone else why. It was just something that happened. Like when you sneeze and accidentally break wind aloud. It is no one’s fault and you dont need to explain yourself, these things happen, but it does kind of hang in the air, so to speak.

Weirder still was several months later when the house sold and Grandpa moved into a little flat right next to grandma! And before you think Grandpa is a stalker, Grandma told him about it and suggested he move there. Its beyond teenage drama, it was ‘old people’ drama. Turns out old people drama is a lot less reasonable, goes on for much longer and I swear there is more sex involved. I wish I didnt know that, but I do because Grandma gave me blow by blow (get your mind out of the gutter, thats my grandma!!!) details of her MANY exploits, and now I have shared it with you, so we can both sit with that.

Eventually things got much weirder and even quite horrible and she never really seemed to regain any kind of happiness again. Now she is gone and I hope she felt loved and cared for, but of course I cant know. I do remember sitting with her body earlier this week, looking over at her and wondering what the hell happened? I figure her MUE’s either dropped dead from inhaling the noxious fumes of two ugly rat dogs, or she got discount MUE’s minus the lifetime warranty, which we all know is a scam, and here is an example of a time when the warranty could have changed everything. Or, I dont know, maybe her MUE’s had late onset psychosis, or maybe they just never learned English.

Whatever happened, its hard to see someone you love and admire change like that. It changes your relationship with that person. I managed to make the most of my time with her in her last few weeks, but as I sit here I wonder about all of the stories I never heard. I learned about when her family was buying clothes for their voyage to Australia and her father had found a tailor shop with safari suits. The shop was closed, but her father banged on the door until the tailor let him in and nearly two hours later the family left with two new safari suits in tow and a massive grin on her dad’s face. I heard about when they boarded the boat and a man offered to buy my grandmother from her parents. I heard about Grandma arriving in Melbourne from Perth and meeting Grandpa for the first time at a local hostel…..wait, what??? Yep, you read it right. The romantic story of my grandparents meeting on a 40 day voyage across the globe, unable to communicate and yet they fall in love is (I recently learned) apparently utter tripe! Ive told that story to so many people, and I feel now that ship has sailed (figuratively and literally) and there is no point in correcting that false narrative.

Taking that into consideration I am kind of relieved that I am currently too unwell to attend tomorrow afternoon’s wake for Grandma. I’d probably end up finding out she wasnt even dutch!

RIP Thea Cornelia. Rest Easy.