How to take flight
Hey Sam,
I took the training wheels off your bike yesterday. We crossed the road to the thin strip of park by the beach and, shaded by a tall column of pines, I held your shoulder while you rode. It was a procession of sorts, I guess. The trees rose high either side of us, fanning themselves into the blue and I held you tight, telling you to make me run.
I tried to release you. I wanted to. In my mind was the image of me letting go and you flying off, kind of like ET. Instead, every time I took my hand away you panicked and lifted your feet off the pedals.
After a short time you said it was enough. I convinced you to go one more time around the rotunda but you told me not to let go because it made you feel something, a word I couldn’t make out. It sounded like ‘skewered’. I got the drift though, you weren’t ready to ride on your own, so I ran beside you and we circled the small picnic hut and came back to where we started.
We finished, sat on the grass for a bit and I told you the sensations I have when I ride a bike, the feeling that the wind is passing through me, the turn and dip of the bike, the independence. That last idea seemed to resonate because I think you are missing your independence from us, now that we are all trapped together and your Mum and I are trying to be your teachers as well as your parents.
Riding a bike was the first thing I did that made me feel free. I didn’t learn to drive until I was in my twenties because I had no interest in it. I prided myself on my bike skills instead, able to beat friends in cars across town to parties. It was never a fair race. Part of the freedom I found on my bike was the freedom from rules.
I ran traffic lights all the time, cut through public spaces, dodged cars. I rode like the crow flies, slicing the city into the shapes I wanted it to be and carving through it as though the heart of it was soft.
I backed myself, riding through the centre of town in rush hour just for the thrill of it. I put all of my fearlessness into my bike, a classic steel framed white Peugot racing bike from the 70’s. I found it in a newspaper ad and it cost me $100. I named it Pegasus because in my mind, it was my winged horse and I was flying.
That’s the feeling I tried to describe to you. To take flight. Lift off. Defy the rules that bind us to this earth. That’s what I want for you, a flight that happens in the imagination, a moment when the rules you’ve been given (or more often than not, given yourself) no longer apply.
Because Sam, rules are malleable things, like cityscapes. You need to weave through them, avoid collisions, react spontaneously and carve your own path. Most importantly you need to find your freedom within their constraints.
This is probably not good parental advice, I have to admit. The greatest flight I ever took lifted off from the bonnet of a car when I was 16, after I cut a blind corner with my headphones over my ears, playing Violent Femmes ‘Why can’t I get just one…(censored)’. I flew past our school’s team bus which was waiting to turn, half my year’s football team were looking out the window. They saw it all, me hitting the car head on, my headphone cable detaching from it’s socket and whipping through the air behind me, my shoulder already dipping back down to earth as I crested the bonnet. The car I hit screeched to a halt and I caught their startled faces too, beneath the windscreen. All around me were faces pressed against glass, open mouthed, slowed to stillness, witnessing my flight.
After your first ride we sat on the grass beneath the tall pines and you told me how you felt when I took my hand away. You used the word again and I realised you meant insecure, not ‘skewered’.
When you let me go it makes me feel insecure. You repeated it.
Sitting on the grass beneath the pines, I looked up. There were parades of butterflies above our heads, passing down the parade ground of trees, blue and black wings beating at the air without sound. More butterflies than I’d ever seen, as though this virus that is striking us humans down is releasing nature from a set of rules and constraints.
I know you’ll learn to ride on your own soon and you won’t panic when I release your shoulder. I know you’ll find freedom and I think you might enjoy the feeling of the wind passing through you as you ride, just like me. Before too long we’ll be able to ride together and it won’t be too long after that, as the crow flies, that I guess you will be able to ride faster and further than me. When that happens I’ll have to let you go, even if it makes me feel insecure.
Love,
Ragnar.
Borneo
Hey Sam,
That's you.
Behind the leaf.
And yeah I know what you’re thinking, that’s a big leaf, bigger than your face!
It’s the kind of leaf that only grows in places where it's hot,
and humid,
like the tropics.
And that would be correct because that photo was taken in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia.
Whereas this one…
…was taken in Borneo. In Gunung Mulu National Park to be exact.
You know, as a kid, I dreamt about travelling to Borneo, anywhere with jungles really. I’d open our Encyclopedia Britannica Atlas and look for the pages where they dialled up the green. I was searching for a vastness of not knowing. I’d trace my finger down rivers that wove intricate patterns through jungles that could hide whole civilisations from the rest of the world.
Borneo, Congo, Amazon, I could almost taste the words as I sounded them out. For some reason these places all seemed to have big ‘o’ sounds, like a giant snake swallowing a goat. When I tried them out it felt like I was speaking another language and discovering something previously hidden from me, my finger a small wooden canoe travelling places no white person had ever seen.
Ok, I know it all sounds a little colonial now but at eleven it’s safe to say I was just curious. And I guess that fascination has always stayed with me, even now when we head up to Springbrook National Park and go rock hopping in the creek. There’s a bit of that eleven year old alive in me still whenever I try to get you interested in the life cycle of a strangler fig.
And to be honest, I’d like to tell you that the idea for posing with big leaves in front of your face was yours, but the truth is I forced you to do it. I was planning a whole leaf series, thinking that perhaps I would start a blog that would become an internet sensation and set us up to travel the world for the rest of our lives, writing, taking photos, sponsored by Patagonia…
But by the second leaf you made it pretty clear you weren't into my journey and I had to shelve all of our future goals for more short term ones, such as enjoying our holiday.
Which we did.
Here are some of the reasons we picked Malaysia as our travel destination:
Laksa
Bearded pigs
Giant caves
and cat museums
in case you missed it,
Cat Museums...
Anyway, let's just say there were a lot of reasons I wanted you to see Malaysia. Cat museums weren’t on the list when we started but it’s important to improvise when you’re travelling or else you might miss something...
But in truth, one of the main reasons we went had nothing to do with tourism, it was about masculinity.
You've just had your first year of school and we’ve noticed you've started to change your ideas about gender. You grew up among artists and it’s fair to say you were exposed to a lot of options about what it means to be a boy. You were always highly emotional, your hair was long, you loved Frozen and you often preferred to play with girls because they played the same kinds of games as you. Now you're in school all bets are off.
One day as I was walking you home you said this to me:
Boys are strong,
like King Kong.
Girls are weak,
chuck them in the creek.
We talked it over and after a bit you agreed it was unfair to claim girls were weak and even more unfair to want to throw them in the creek, so after a bit of a think you changed the lyrics to:
Girls and boys are strong,
like King Kong.
Doors are weak,
chuck them in the creek.
I'm not sure what you have against doors but I decided to let it go…
After that your Mum and I decided it was a good time to travel again, to show you the possibilities of other cultures, because the world around us is much bigger than we believe it is and our beliefs shape the way we are. When I visited Malaysia for work a few months before I felt like there was an alternate version of masculinity on offer. Men really looked me in the eye and smiled warmly and affectionately. They held my gaze and I was moved by it, because in Australia, I have to say, it’s rare for men to look at each other like that.
Since we left Malaysia Australia has burned and Coronavirus has shut us all down. In Borneo I asked a taxi driver if the sky was always hazy and he said yes. he said it was because the jungle was being burned down to clear it for palm oil plantations. Now Borneo has less than half of the forest it had when I was a kid. The Atlas I used to look at would now be totally wrong.
As we flew home I was grateful for the pristine natural world on our doorstep but within a week of landing the sky at home was filled with bushfire smoke and it stayed that way for more than three months.
And now sitting at home all day I remember my naivety, thinking we were somehow immune to what was happening on our planet. I look at you and wonder what it will hold when you're an adult. Will Borneo still have forests for you to find giant leaves in?
I hope with all my heart you can have a sense of adventure, the feeling that the world is discoverable and timeless. I can’t really bear to think about any other options for you but I have to consider them, because if I don’t then maybe I am not being your father, I’m just pretending to be a boy with an atlas, my fingers tracing images of a world that no longer exists.
It’s a hard thought for me and I’m not sure I know how to balance knowledge of the world with hope. I’m not sure how those two things fit together anymore, but I know you make it worth the attempt, because in your eyes the creek is a jungle that has no end.
I don’t know how the world will turn out or indeed how you will either. I can only hope for futures I can’t see, that are hidden, like the hope that you will get to keep the part of you that loves Frozen, and that you become a man who feels things deeply and who cries when he’s upset. I hope you get as many possibilities as you can and I also hope Frozen 3, 4, 5 and 6 live up to all of our expectations.
Love,
Ragnar.
Bill Gates, wild horses and the legacy of our passage through the world
Hey Sam,
this morning at the farmer's market (still open) the woman who sold me olives said Bill Gates engineered Coronavirus as a covert way to microchip humanity. She didn't explain the connection between our current state of lock down and the microchipping, but I think it had something to do with the 5G network. The olive woman herself was not a believer in the theory, she was just passing it on as an example of how stupid her friends are. The olives, incidentally, were $12 and delicious.
We used to go to the market every Saturday as a family. You’d play on the playground, I’d get the food, your Mum would buy the gozleme, we’d catch up with friends. Currently I head there on my own, enter the market from one side and shuffle along with everyone else in the same direction, following the arrows and exiting next to where I came in. A quick squirt of hand sanitiser once I’m back in the safety of the car.
At home now, I’ve unpacked the shopping and I’m sitting down at my new desk, which was only $20 on Gumtree and which you believe is partly yours to use. I'm determined it's not, it’s my writing nook, which I’m trying to use productively but right now I'm listening to you through the wall as you build a submarine from bits of cardboard with your Mum. I want to block the sound of you out even though I'm writing this letter to you. That contradiction probably goes a long way to explaining parenting.
It’s become a weekly thing to share conspiracy theories with the olive woman. She’s from Byron Bay and all her friends are obviously a bit radical. She told me a hundred people were involved in a protest against the 5G network in Mullumbimbi. When she shares her friend’s theories I shake my head and laugh but between you and me, I don't disbelieve the theories themselves. I’m laughing out of companionship. Secretly I like to keep my options open.
My indecision might be a weakness of character, I still haven't decided, but at the moment I don’t think there’s any theory that shouldn’t at least be considered. I have a few of my own to share with you, even if I haven’t mentioned them to the olive woman yet.
I think that nature has released this virus to make us shut up and listen.
And it’s working. There's no doubt the natural world is bouncing back. Not surprising either. If you were the natural world wouldn't you like us all to just bugger off and stay home sometimes? A few years ago I visited Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the nuclear power plant that melted down and spread a cloud of radiation across Europe in the 80’s. It was part of a research grant I got to make a show about quarantine, which seems ironic now, but that’s not my point. In Chernobyl, and especially Pripyat, the local city that was evacuated, nature has reclaimed everything.
There are moose, wild horses, boar, red fox, raccoon dogs, Eurasian lynx, deer, beaver, owls, brown bear, lynx, and wolves roaming the empty streets. It's a kind of natural paradise and weirdly peaceful. It occurred to me then that Mother Nature appears to like it when we get our arses kicked.
What's on my mind this morning, as I sip a cup of tea and listen to you through the wall, is the legacy of our passage through this world. Another weakness of character I have is that I need to construct something positive out of chaos. If we construct theories that mean we're all screwed it pretty much makes me feel like we're all screwed and that leads me to a state of inaction. If I am going to create theories out of the state of the world, they won't involve Bill Gates and the microchipping of humanity. A theory is a creative act that fabricates a future and personally I prefer to make futures I want you to see you inhabiting. Positive acts.
Never before have we all just stopped like this. The whole world, all of humanity with time to reflect on what we do next.
I hear you through the wall laughing with your Mum, that deep throaty, dirty laugh you have. It always makes me smile.
I sit back on my stool, take a sip of tea and feel it pass my lips. In doing so the tea becomes a part of me. Something that was outside me is now a part of my body. It’s a kind of miraculous act I am performing and I am humbled by it. I breathe out and that bit of me goes back out into the world, returning the favour.
In Chernobyl there is always the invisible threat of radiation. It creates a hyper awareness of your environment because the thing that might sicken you, even kill you, could be anywhere and you wouldn’t even know. But that becomes part of a state of peace, an understanding that our place on this planet, even the planet itself, is fragile.
My life. My breath. My acts in the landscape of time. They carve a small valley in the rock, a place where water flows, and time collects.
Love, Ragnar
things I don’t understand
Hey Sam,
Here's a list of things I don't understand:
Dow Jones, who is he?
What makes waves?
Success, what does it look like?
Did Tom Hanks die from Corona virus?
Donald Trump
Parenting
It's that last one I want to talk to you about because I'm not sure I'm doing it right…
We watched the first three episodes of Star Wars last week to fill up some of our quarantine time. I'm talking about the original three movies... not the ones that come first in the series... the ones that came first in reality... not in the reality of the Star wars universe, but in our reality...
I’m talking about the films that came before Jar Jar Binks.
Anyway we watched all three and this is a list of things I never expected to say out loud:
Darth Vader gets his power from broccoli
Never use a force grip on strangers
Please don't lick the lighthouse.
You have a very active imagination. We've pretty much let it run wild over the years and, like ivy climbing outside a window, it has come to dominate your view of the world. You live mostly in your imagination and embody things with total conviction. Animals, people, robots, plants, whatever. Usually you change character day by day but after the Star Wars marathon Darth Vader set a new record for total immersion. Three days sleeping in the outfit we made. Three days practising your force grip, accompanying yourself with your own theme music. Three days of confusion about who was who's father. Three days of Yoda voices from yours truly which led to a sore throat and fresh fears of Corona virus. Three days wrestling with the dark side in search of your humanity. Throughout it all you were like a three foot high Daniel Day Lewis, totally committed to your role.
Your Mum and I believe in imagination as a force for good (search your feelings, you know it to be true), and we encourage you to be as individual and eccentric as you want, but my question is, in the long run, has it worked? Did our parenting style pay off?
Now I just have to point out that I'm basing this question on the theory that you are reading this, which means it is some time in the future and you are older. Inherent in that hypothesis is the following:
1) You are able to read.
2) You have at least a passing interest in what I have to say.
3) The internet still exists.
While you're here as your older self, I have a few questions for you:
1) How did you turn out? Tough one I know, but I'm hoping for some rigorous self evaluation as a result of our parenting.
2) Am I dead? Sorry, it's just that I'm not the youngest parent and I was just wondering how long I last...
3) How's the world look?
I wish I could hear your voice from the future but I'm also glad I can't, it's probably better left where it belongs, stretched out in time away from me. You are our only child Sam and there are a bunch of reasons for that but I'm not going to list them here, even though I like lists. Instead let's focus on the world that I can see, the one in the middle of a global pandemic, a world stopped in its tracks.
I don't know what it's going to be like in future, the future you're in, but it seems a lot more complicated already than the one I grew up with. I know old people always say that but I have to admit I don't know the best way to prepare you for what's coming, for what exists outside your window as you read this.
And that’s because, unlike you, my imagination has limits.
In these past few weeks of Covid19 the world has gone quiet. Sometimes in the silence, when I take a breath and hear the sound of a wave crashing on the beach in front of our apartment, when I sit back on the couch and watch you rushing towards me, when I watch you crashing into me, a tiny Darth, all in black, eyeholes cut through pillow slips, eyes wide and bright, force grip extended, like a wave crashing into my chest, pinning me with the force of this moment, the weight of you holding me fast to this place and this time when the world stopped.
Then I understand not just one thing,
but everything.
And all of my questions dissolve unanswered.
Love, Ragnar.
Age more than a count of heartbeats is. Age is how many mistakes you have made.
Yoda