If you are reading this then I am already dead.

Wait, sorry. That is a whole other blog entry. If you are reading this one it means that I am officially 27 years old. Of course through the wonders of technology by the time this goes live I’ll be sleeping. I hope, on some level, that I will wake up energised and refreshed. But I already know that I will wake up older. (I am so tempted at this point to resort to a slew of cliches. Time waits for no man. Age Is Just A Number. And you’re only as old as you feel. Or, perhaps, as the Spice Girls blurted out during a television celebration for Ellen DeGeneres’ birthday – you’re only as old as the woman you’re feeling. Perhaps not.)

And this year I seem to share it with a Presidential Inauguration. Truthfully not exactly – my birthday and the inauguration happen on different days but the time difference between Washington and Sydney is such to give the illusion. Indeed as I wake up Americans everywhere will still be in the throes of Obama-fever. It would be lovely to think the mere proximity of the event to my birthday would result in a transference of warm fuzzy feelings, however I don’t expect so.

My point is, somewhat unlike Ellen, I don’t really have one. I may be older but I doubt I am any wiser.

Someone asked me earlier if I could travel back in time and address a ten year younger version of myself, what advice would I give this younger me. (For the purposes of an internet meme not so much as a poignant reflection on this, the eve of my birth.) It is an interesting question. Ten years ago I had just graduated from high school. I had just moved to a surburb of Sydney known mostly for its proximity to the airport. I was about to start my music business management/audio engineering studies at the JMC Academy. It was an exciting time. It was a terrifying time. The best of times, the blurst of times, perhaps?

I’ve come to romanticise my Sydney experience some years since. But at the time it was painful. I felt so isolated. I was so isolated. I remember getting on the 309 bus at the Mascot shops and getting off somewhere near Central train station, walking up to the Academy steps and becoming a different person. Somehow I decided if I acted aloof enough people would assume I was more ‘eccentric’ than ‘social leper.’ In the same year I became momentarily involved with someone whose interest in me was fleeting at best. It was a devastating development and I became even more jaded and reclusive than ever. The whole experience was a strange pressure cooker of events, thoughts and emotions. If you were to look at some of the things I was working on, some of the things I was writing at the time you would’ve thought I had lost my mind! I had these feelings that I was convinced were coming from beyond me somehow. And there was a story that came with the feeling. Was this house possessed? Had I just lost my mind? A friend suggested it was much more Freudian than that.

I tell you all this simply to preface the advice I would give to that younger me, and, if you’ll have it, all of you reading now.

My advice?

A lot of things won’t ever make sense. You’ll save yourself a lot of energy and a lot of grief if you stop analysing them. There actually isn’t a particular answer to that question, “Why doesn’t [person x] love me?” Not a personally useful one at any rate. Things won’t always work. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you’re being punished by some unseen deity. The Cole Porter lyric might be poetic but if you stop to meditate upon it for any period of time it will only drive you nuts.

Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye
Why the Gods above me
Who must be in the know
Think so little of me
they allow you to go.

Art can be therapeutic. Reliving painful experiences for the purposes of adding realism to artworks or inflicting a personal experience of penance – not so much. Giving up can be empowering and liberating. It made no sense at the time but I wrote a couple of verses of poetry that basically said ‘You know what? I’m done’ and somehow, for the most part, I was.

The Maze of Smoke and Mirrors
I take you through the maze
of smoke and mirrors
It’s a long way to my heart
I bet you’re wondering if it’s worth it
Truth is I’ve never done this before
Forgive me if I’m ill-informed
Feels like I’m in a completely
different world now;
The adornments and the adored.

[Taken from Smoke And Mirrors]

A lot of people won’t ‘get’ it… but that isn’t a reflection of its value, or yours for that matter. Trust your instincts and keep going. Pay no attention to the current fad. Just concentrate on being authentically you.

And finally, it might feel weird to say, and even harder to believe… but you’re actually wonderful.

Happy Birthday to me.

Most of the sources I cite as inspiration for this column come from a handful of websites. This one, however, came to me quite organically as an American friend was lamenting on Twitter how she felt:

I’m seriously so sick over that. That one article could reach people all over the world who think that ALL catholics agree with that bullshit and I just don’t. And the church wonders why so many people hate catholics??

(The more astute of you will realise this was more than 140 characters and actually is the combination of two separate tweets.)

While clearly a lot of people felt deeply engaged in the political process for the recent US Presidential elections, I was astonished to discover some Catholics who felt deeply anguished when presented with the apparent dilemma of McCain versus Obama. For the most part it seemed they felt war was a sin and expected McCain as president would lead to a continuance of war; yet there was an uneasy feeling that when it came to abortion Obama was at best Pro-Choice and perhaps, at worst, Pro-Abortion.

According to Boston.com:

The pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Greenville, SC, is urging parishioners who voted for Barack Obama not to present themselves for Communion unless they go to confession first because they have cooperated with “intrinsic evil” by voting for a candidate who supports abortion rights over a candidate who does not. The Rev. Jay Scott Newman told the Greenville News that he doesn’t intend to deny anyone Communion, but made it clear that his view is that Obama voters should not present themselves without seeking penance first “lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

The Boston.com article goes on to quote a letter penned by Newman originally posted on the parish website explaining his rationale. In this letter he makes two observations, so I feel it is only appropriate that I do the same.

Firstly – and this should be a ‘no brainer’ – Barack Obama was voted in as America’s next president. According to US Census information in 2001, 50,873 members of the Adult Population (207,980) identified themselves as being ‘Catholic.’ That’s a pretty sizable chunk of the population. I put to you that a lot of Catholics must’ve voted for Obama. Whether they felt conflicted like the woman described in an earlier version of this column but voted for him anyway, or whether they didn’t share the opinions of Newman is difficult to determine. However, anecdotally, through my own interactions with Catholic Americans – as well as many of the comments on the Boston.com article – I am inclined to think there must be a considerable quantity who fall in to the latter category.

Secondly, all references to the remarks about Obama on the Saint Mary’s Catholic Church website have been removed. All the links to the site from the Boston.com article produce “Page Not Found” errors. Eventually I found a page titled To Those Responding to the AP Story. It contained only one line:

Please see the website of the Diocese of Charleston at
www.catholic-doc.org

And this, dear readers, is where it gets really interesting! Whether or not the opinion was shared by voters, it doesn’t appear to have gone down well with Church hierarchy. Monsignor Martin T. Laughlin, Administrator of the Diocese of Charleston, has gone into damage control. In his statement, he explains:

As Administrator of the Diocese of Charleston, let me state with clarity that Father Newman’s statements do not adequately reflect the Catholic Church’s teachings. Any comments or statements to the contrary are repudiated.

[...]

Christ gives us freedom to explore our own conscience and to make our own decisions while adhering to the law of God and the teachings of the faith. Therefore, if a person has formed his or her conscience well, he or she should not be denied Communion, nor be told to go to confession before receiving Communion.

Perhaps Newman needs to reacquaint himself with that dubious publication the Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics.

In Other News…

According to Physorg.com:

Pope Benedict XVI called on the scientific community Friday to find a new consensus for determining when someone’s life ends that takes into account technological advances.

Now many people will insist there are very important reasons relating to moral issues such as ‘when a coma patient is actually dead’ and things like organ transplants. However I prefer to think it is motivated by the wonderful Weekend At Bernies type performances Pope John Paul II used to pull…

Happy Sunday!