I don't know if I really want to write today, but as an author it's probably best to do some type of exercise. I'm feeling incredibly blasé and blah. This is not how I like to be feeling. My gut is also not its usual self today, and I have had very little appetite. This is not like me at all. I am a little down in the dumps. Yesterday I was coasting on a high; today I feel like climbing into bed. I'm tired. So tired. Probably experiencing symptoms of peri-menopause. If this is the case, I am not bothered - it's the body doing what it's meant to be doing. Just not enjoying feeling lethargic, that's all. I had plans. Glorious plans. I was going to go to the gym. I didn't. Well, my little one had to stay home from school because he was unwell, anyway. What I am suffering today is not what he has, so I haven't caught anything from him. Tomorrow, we are going to have a horde of children descending upon us, as he celebrates the magnificence of having turned eleven this week. Loud ten- and eleven-year-old boys, hyped up on lollies and soft drink, shouting at each other over the x-box, and my fourteen-year-old will be lording it over them like a despot. Dear-oh-dear-oh-dear.
This evening, I am planning to go to the opening of an exhibition at the local art gallery. The management there have always been incredibly supportive and allowed me to launch my novels there with no venue hire fee, so I will be supportive in return. I will rub shoulders with my fellow artsy-fartsy types, and drink a glass or two of shiraz from our local wineries. I will no doubt pig in to the cheese and crackers, and my gut will then feel worse.
What could cheer me now? Maybe a moratorium from the media that their publications, be they paper or cyber, be declared Adam Goodes-free zones for about two weeks. Sick of it. Is there a systemic problem of racism in the AFL? Address it, and stamp that fucker out. Likewise, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and any other form of bigotry and hated should be afforded the same treatment. I'm fed up with it now. Whether what's happening to Goodes is racially motivated is starting to get beyond my ken, I fear, but I do hope he gets counselling for what is clearly bothering him a great deal. I don't wish unhappiness on the man. To those who say it's not racism, I say: Goodes' perception is his reality, and to him it IS racism. For the record, I don't believe if someone doesn't like a person, the colour of that person's skin is necessarily the reason. People are fed up being told they are racists on the basis they merely think someone is a bit of a flog. People are fed up. I am fed up. I did not appreciate being informed by someone the other night on social media I have the stain of racism upon me, and that I sit in my 'smug, white, middle-class existence'. I challenged my detractor to explain how he had reached that conclusion, and asked was it on the basis 'that I look like a mature Daphne from Scooby Doo' (well, I thought it was funny, anyway). My detractor said he had looked not at my photo, but into my soul, and I asked my detractor was he some kind of incubus. Said detractor told me I have to change, I told my detractor HE should change, and start with his doctor. The argument went nowhere, as stupid name-calling arguments on social media threads are wont to do. I like a good stoush with the written word, but this is all spiralling out of control now. I feel the world I know is turning into some kind of 21st century, Australian version of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities'. If you don't get the reference, read the book. Wonderful Eighties satire by Tom Wolfe. Don't watch the movie with Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffiths, and Bruce Willis because it totally sucks the dried faecal matter from the matted fur around a Maltese terrier's arse.
'Tis all for now.
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