All I have is a voice

A week ago, I went to see the beautiful new film, "The Visitor", by the director of "The Station Agent". I hadn't been overly inspired by the idea of his first film, and never got around to watching it, even though many raved about it. When I saw the preview for "The Visitor", I must admit what went through my mind was something along the lines of, "Not another Sundance film about uptight Westerners being transformed by exotic ethnic types". Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about what was probably one of the most touching and amazing films I have seen in a while.

I won't tell you what happens in it, because I want you to watch it, but (small spoiler alert), what remains with me most from the film is the image of a man sitting at a Subway station playing a jembe with increasing anger, while no-one listens. And, as the lights came up our little Carlton cinema and I heard the "Ahs" and "Oohs" that came from a delighted, if a little surprised, crowd, I thought, "What will be different when we walk outside? Will we do a single thing about what he have just seen?"

Then, on Thursday night, I went with some people from my Bible study to see Unsung, a local folk quartet playing at the Northcote Town Hall as part of the Darebin Music Feast. Now, the music was, generally, quite amazing, and often deeply compelling, but nothing more so than the closing number, a song about refugees with the repeated chorus, "Our hearts are bigger than this. Our hearts are bigger than this." The small woman with an amazingly powerful voice told us to "join in" with singing the chorus, but we weren't game. Perhaps we just couldn't compete, or perhaps she was breaking up something that we were holding onto a little too dearly - the illusion that this was something we were watching, not something we needed to participate in.

And, walking out of the hall, I felt the same sensation that I had felt after watching "The Visitor", and, wandering down High Street towards my car, I realised why the jembe player was so angry, and who he was angry at.

Moreland Graffiti

Someone on my route to work has a thing about sexualised advertising - and don't we all. We either like it (whether we're aware of this or not), or hate it. But few take it upon themselves to fight it, fewer still at a grass roots level.

But there's someone, or perhaps a group of someones, who feel that the road between Pascoe Vale and West Preston should be cleared of all sexist advertising. It first began with a reasonably disgusting David Jones lingerie ad which appeared in a few places on my road home. Eventually, all the ads had to be removed and replaced by pictures of women with more clothes on and in less suggestive poses. Why? Because they were all graffitied over to the point of being unrecogniseable.

So David Jones replaced them. But it wasn't long before those women just had to start shedding layers again. If, the marketing geniuses reasoned, the Moreland public couldn't handle lingerie, perhaps they could handle swimwear? After all, it's the Olympics and all that, Ozzie spirit, Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy, oi oi oi, and so forth.

But the citizens of Moreland said "No." Those ads too were graffitied - most of them, at least, and those left untouched were taken down before the graffiti-vigilantes got to them too.

Today's victims were: a curious ad with a woman wearing a black blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra, with the caption "Confidence"; and a Bonds undies and singlet ad that was only put up two days ago.

It's refreshing to see that, in a world so immune to such things, someone cares enough to keep sticking it to the man in this way. Only it's a bit of a sad reminder of how little the vast majority of us care.

Why I love teaching

The other day, I was supervising a bunch of Year 9 boys kicking a soccer ball around outside. A few of them found it hilarious (as you do) to keep kicking the ball against the brick wall of one of the school buildings. Eventually, I went over to speak to one of the main culprits and said, "Dom, I don't see these people that you're kicking the ball to." To which Dom replied: "Yeah, they're my friends: Frank, Bobby and Jimmy." I mentioned that, if he wanted to keep kicking the ball to them, he could perhaps go and introduce his friends to his co-ordinator.

When, a few minutes later, Dom again kicked the ball into the wall, I went over to speak to him once more, this time with a more serious tone of voice: "Come on, Dom, I've asked you not to." And Dom's reply: "But sir, it's not my fault that Bobby's shit."

Backwards, coming forward

I've never been much of a go-getter. Not that I'm unambitious, or passive; I just don't like to rush things, and don't particularly enjoy pushing my luck. I read a description of my personality category in the Myers-Briggs study today which said that people of my "type" (only 1 to 4% of the population, by the way) don't act until they've thought carefully about what they are doing; they like time to reflect. Which is great, but doesn't get many things done, particularly when, like me or my television equivalent Ted Mosby, you overthink, to the point of confused inactivity.

It's been an interesting experience, therefore, to start thinking that my writing might be something worth pursuing actively, rather than just sitting back and wanting the Swedish Academy to contact me. I'm all for playing it cool, but it's hardly managed to get me published in the however-many-years that I've been writing.

I don't like taking risks, and hate setting myself up for failure. The trouble, of course, with avoiding failure is that, in doing nothing, you also tend to avoid success.

Find myself a city, find myself a city to live in

It's a dangerous business going travelling. There's a fair chance that, if you even vaguely enjoy it, you'll catch the notorious travel bug - after all, other places are always so much more interesting than home, whatever Dorothy and the Wizard might want us to believe. And yes, sure enough, I caught that bug, along with a few others, while in China for two weeks. The holiday was too short to really do the country justice, often just giving me glimpses of what could be an amazing place to explore more (albeit with improved Mandarin), and also reminding me of other, nearby places (Mongolia, Nepal, South Korea) that I'd also love to see. Ah, if only we could do nothing but travel.

Which, of course, we can't, much as the British girls I met climbing the Wall might like to believe differently. Yet even they recognised that there was a difference between the kinds of places it would be fun to visit and the sorts of places where you could handle living - because, at the end of the day, we can't always travel; we do also need some kind of home.

In many senses, my home has become Melbourne. I've almost been here for seven years, which is the equal record for the longest I've ever lived in the one place. I like it here, and it seems to like me, as much as a place can, and I've got family here. It's important for me to be near family and friends, and, much as I love the idea of travelling, I doubt I could uproot and spend the rest of my life somewhere else.

That said, I am finding myself increasingly attracted to the idea of teaching overseas for a year or two, yet don't want to do so just for the hell of it. Too many people want to live overseas for the wrong motives: because they find their own lives boring and suspect they'll be more interesting elsewhere. My Year 12 Literature class have learnt from Chekhov that an attitude of "life will be better in Moscow" (or any city/country/place) is based on a fundamental inability to be happy where you are: something that will plague you wherever you go.

If I do work overseas, I want it to be for the right motives, not because I am easily bored and want to escape into another culture to feel like my life is somehow now more exciting. Other people's lives are not there to be stolen for our own pleasure. Other people's homes are not there to be invaded to help us feel more alive.

We can learn from going somewhere else. We can benefit from travelling, even living, overseas; and, on the right occasion, others can benefit from us doing so. But we have to remember: everywhere we go, short of Antarctica, is someone's home, and so everywhere we visit, someone has to make do with life there, boring as it may well seem to them. Which means that, when we go overseas, we need to be going there with a view to making life sustainable - either in settling down in another place, or in coming back home having benefited from what we experienced.

I'm not sure how to do that yet. But I suspect it's something I'll spend quite a bit of time thinking about.