A letter to the gas company

Dear Mr/s TRU Energy (if that even is your real name),

It has now been two years since we first contacted you about getting billed for our gas usage at XX XXXXXXXXXXXXX, Collingwood 3066. We aren’t writing to you because we don’t think we should have to pay you anything (after all, we contacted you, not the other way around), it’s that we only want to pay what is fair. In the two years we have been pursuing this matter we have variably been quoted bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to $4889.63. Indeed, on June 12 2012 we were issued with a gas account for $1040.25 (based on an estimated meter reading), including the deduction of just a tick under $4000 from the ‘Opening Balance’. I have no idea how you arrived at this figure, but I have no choice but to trust that you know what you are doing.

But then, with the due date of this bill approaching, we receive another letter from you stating that you have “fixed this now and your bills will be sent to you within the next 10 days”. As I’m sure you can appreciate, we put the previous bill aside and waited expectantly for, after 2 years of phfaphfing around, this whole saga to draw to an end.

But alas, no. What should arrive in the mail this evening (26 July 2012) but a bill for $2,888.12? Oh no. Surely there must be some mistake. You promised this was all going to be resolved soon, but this charade just seems to go on and on and on.

But, I am nothing if not an optimist. I foresee a light at the end of the purgatorial tunnel and we can finally get out of this holding pattern of painfully mixed metaphor and resolve this debacle. For you see, this new bill also contains details of what are supposedly the previous three bills, so we have an ongoing record of exactly how much gas we are supposed to have used, and in which months we used it. For instance, in April/May 2012 we used 24.82Mj of gas per day (2098.11Mj). In Feb/March 2012 we used 34.39Mj of gas per day (1489.79Mj). Included was also a bill for June/July 2012 for 3.85Mj of gas used per day, but I’m prepared to disregard this figure as we moved out of this address early in June.

So, from February to June 2012 we demonstrably used a grand total of 3587.9Mj of gas. At your usage charge for this period of $0.014715/Mj, plus your supply charge of $32.24 for 2 months, this works out to be $117.28 for 4 months worth of normal gas usage. If anything, that seems even less than what an average couple could expect to pay for 4 months of gas. After all, if the amount of something you are actually using is less than the service, you’re probably doing alright.

But, clearly, $117.28 << $2888.

So what should be there, taking up so much space in the bar chart on page 3? Oh wait, that’s supposedly our gas usage for Dec 2011- Jan 2012, weighing in at an astonishing 57 times greater than our usage for the very next period of Feb/March 2012. 57 TIMES! That’s 1974.82Mj! That’s $27.38! PER! DAY! OMG! WTF!

Oh wait, silly me. I forgot that was the period in which I converted our gas system into a flamethrower and started operating a hot air ballooning business out of our kitchen! /sarc

Now here I should probably take a detour and mention that some 18 months after initially making contact with you to send us our gas bill, you finally arranged for a meter reader to come to our house one fine sunny Saturday morning in early summer 2011. The gas meter is, for some reason known only to the owner, buried inside a wall. It is located in the corner behind a kitchen bench, and a layer of plasterboard is nailed in place to cover it. Only while laying cockroach baits in darkened recesses did we happen to stumble across it. And yet as long as it took us to find it, it somehow took you even longer to come around and read it so that you could get paid the money you rightly earned by connecting and supplying gas to our humble, rented abode.

So before December 2011, the gas usage that you claim we used is nothing more than an estimate based upon what I can only imagine to be average usage figures for similar sized homes in similar areas. But even a casual parsing of the bar charts that accompany each bill show that the average usage is far above what has been demonstrated to be our actual usage, even when seasonally adjusted.

Now instead of getting up on our high horses and demanding that we don’t have to pay a cent, or threatening to go to the consumer ombudsman, or worse, Today Tonight, we are prepared to try to strike a compromise.

What we propose is as follows:

We are prepared to pay for 9 months of gas, as is our obligation “under government regulations that apply in your state”.

We will pay at the same rate as you had calculated for the period Feb-May 2012. That is $0.014715/Mj.

The same service fee per billing period ($32.24 for every 2 months) will be paid.

Our usage is to be calculated at 50Mj per day, a figure significantly higher than our highest rate of actual usage (34.39Mj/day for Feb/March 2012).

Now if my calculations were correct, that would be 50Mj/day multiplied by 274 days equals 13,700Mj of gas used.

13,700Mj multiplied by $0.014715 equals $201.60 in gas usage.

Service fee of $32.24/2 months. $32.24 times 4.5 is $145.08.

$201.60 plus $145.08 equals $346.68.

Let’s be generous and make it a rounded $350, payable in a lump sum.

Let us know if you agree.

Synopsis- Between Here and the Sky

When people think of science they think of middle-aged men with crazy hair and white coats pouring some coloured liquid from one beaker into another for no good reason other than it’s a catchy image of something that may indeed save the world. But then people would only be partly right. For while science is conducted by people wearing white coats and often sport wild hair and a glazed half-mad look in their eye, they tend not to be middle aged men but 25-35 year old people of both sexes with real life problems and, dare I say it, real life personalities. And rather than saving the world by splashing coloured liquids around the place, their words tends to be more of the kind that carefully and glacially progresses the limits of what we know so that hopefully what they are doing may someday help in the treatment of some disease or other. Between Here and the Sky follows such a life- a 20-something scientist (Marshall) struggling with his PhD and what it all means in the broad scheme of things, and his search for something more to his life than his day-to-day life in the laboratory. Basically, he’s human. Then one night at a brother of a friend’s party he meets Hazel, a 20-something aspiring writer with eponymous eyes that leads him into the diametrically opposite world of the artist.

Meanwhile, generations earlier, Henry is arriving in Australia as a child of migrant English workers. He narrates his family’s journey into the middle of the tall forest, and their fight with the landscape as they try to establish a farm in harsh and unfamiliar territory. We see his father’s own peculiar methods, his brother’s (Albert) special kindred touch with the land, and how they transform the impenetrable bush into fertile agricultural land. Their wealth accumulates, and the arrival of Henry’s nephew Phillip expands the dynasty even further.

The last act provides a merging of the two previous narratives. It deals with the internal conflict within the major protagonists regarding death, and more broadly the role we play in life and how we must inevitably confront and comes to terms with our own mortality. It is not macabre, but exists as an elegiac meditation on death and our right to die in the manner in which we want.

Within this narrative, Marshall and Hazel retreat to the countryside in an effort to escape the confines of the city. Marshall grew up in the country, and even after his family moved away he would still go and work for Phillip and his wife Beth during university holidays. Phillip asks Marshall for advice regarding his own death- specifically the most peaceful way to do it- rationalising that as Marshall is involved in animal research he would know the most ethical way of administering death. Thereafter, the four main protagonists wrestle with the reality of Phillip’s intentions and how it affects them.

So, as a whole, ‘Between Here and the Sky’ is a life story, a love story, and a death story. While it explores themes as diverse as death, love, family, reincarnation, individuality, science, art, and the perceived conflict between science and art, the uniting undercurrent is of our primordial connection with the environment around us and how when all is said and done we are powerless to stop the turning of the earth. It makes the case that we are merely a small part of the world in which we live, and that a connection with the natural world is essential for our wellbeing, and flows from the hypothesis of Biophilia developed by the scientist and philosopher Edmund O. Wilson, which argues that humans instinctively seek connections with the rest of nature, and need this connection in order to gain fulfilment.

is this the start of something new?

Blowies set to flight off the walls of the foyer in my wake. Dark patches formed in my cotton dress where it met my armpits, my neck and the hollow of my back. Sweat lined my brow more as a blanket than as individual beads and a constant stream flowed down my temples. Dust and hair clung to my skin and turned to mud along the shores of the sweat.

I flung the fly-screen open and stepped out onto the porch. Sunlight slanted in through the gap between the veranda and the peak of the shed across the dun and dusty lawn. Sheets hung heavy and limp from the lines of the washing line, converted to cardboard by the stillness and heat. I held my hand up to shield my eyes towards the horizon, searching for the first hint of the storms that the radio was threatening. Wooly clumps of altocumulus had peeled overhead early in the morning, a portent of the change to come.

My sandals flicked dust up from their heels as I stepped out onto the barely living grass. Summer was supposed to be nearing its end. It had been particularly long and arduous. The wind howled across the deserts, picking up the red dust as it went and delivering it westward where it settled into a fine pinkish layer on top of everything. Only rarely, on days like today, did it relent, and sent everyone into a torpor wishing for it to start up again so that the wind, no mater how hot it was, could give at least some semblance of respite from the cloying and penetrating heat. Rain was but a memory lost to the ages.

The dust seared my skin where it landed, a familiar tingling sensation dampened by months of the same, as though my feet had developed some shell around them to protect against the earth. Even so, I glided quickly across the surface, minimising the amount of dust flung up by the backs of my sandals. I made it to the red-roofed shed and spent a moment cooling myself in the shade. I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly. I leaned forward and spread the mouth of a hessian sack open and peered into the darkness, to be greeted by the welcoming smells of cool dirt. I plunged my hand into its belly and felt around for the firmest specimens. I pulled five large potatoes from the cool darkness. Small knobs protruded from the dust on their wrinkled surfaces; signs of life within the tortures of summer. They were a bit soft, but still short of rotting. I made a pouch out of the front of my dress and placed the roots inside before scurrying back across the yard, up the porch and into the ‘cool’ of the house. Despite the heat of the day outside, a fire still raged in the kitchen, heating beyond what was bearable for any extended period of time. A tray of chops sat melting on the bench beside the stove, and the kettle screeched as it boiled its contents down off to one side of the hotplates. A lone length of wood sat fearfully on the mat in front of the stove.

My mother stood with her hands in the sink, staring vacantly out the window. I placed the spuds on the steel beside her, disrupting her train of thought and bringing her back to the present. She looked at me and softly smiled what may have been a grimace. A long curl of black had escaped from its bun and stuck to her temple, framing her face and hinting at the beauty that must have once shone through.

Vows

As most of you would be aware, on Saturday a small group of family and friends descended the stairs into the basement of DonkeyWheel House to bear witness to my marriage to the one and true love of my life- Tash. It was one of those perfect nights, when the stars and planets align and perfect love is ignited in all involved.

We both wrote our own vows encapsulating our truest feelings. Posted below are my vows.

The Stages of Love

On a couch on a porch on Smith St,

testosterone and estrogen collided to quicken our hearts.

I burned with the excitement of the new

as we chased each other through coffee shops and bedrooms

with a lust for the things that we may never know.

After that deluge I stood within a cloud

in which all that I could see and all that I could hear was you.

Dopamine and serotonin conspired

to create an addiction- an obsession and a compulsion-

that I never want to quit.

I fed you butter, cheese, and bread.

You fed me theatre, art, and wine-

things finer, more abstract, than the science I was used to

as we exchanged the lives that we now share.

Our years are reinforced by Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

The roots of our love continue to entangle and fuse,

and this act of marriage is just one part of that process.

We will continue to grow together.

I will continue to feed and love and cherish you through the good times and bad

for the rest of my life and yours.

My thoughts and emotions all focus on a single point

You. 

A Climber of Things

Even from before he could remember, he was a known climber of things. It didn’t matter what it was- a tree, a wall, a house-, if there was a position elevated above the plane of the ordinary he had to get there. And if he had a couple of drinks in him, then all the better. His mother recalls the story of how he had disappeared from the house one afternoon when he was four. She had left him on the swirling carpet of the lounge room with a ten liter bucket of Lego’s while she tended to the dishes and getting a start on dinner, but when she stuck her head around the corner, the floor was strewn with coloured blocks and a half-finished house, but there was no Tommy to be seen. The empty bucket stood on its mouth in front of the open back door. She rushed outside hoping to see him playing in the garden stood, and nearly fainted when a tiny voice called to her from above. A toddler’s face smiled down on her from over the rim of the guttering, and laughed at the meeting of her eyes with his. She blinked at the shock, as if this action would resolve her vision into something more comprehensible.

“What are you doing up there?” She didn’t yell, or even infantilize her voice, but stated it as if she would to any other adult. The laugh resounded; she snapped back to her senses. She gasped, covered her mouth and took a couple of quick steps backwards. “Oh my god. Stay right there! Move away from the edge, honey.”

She couldn’t figure out how exactly he had gotten up there, only that he had succeeded in his goal. And from that moment forward the doors of the house were locked whenever she was too busy to keep her eyes fixed upon him. Even so, she would come into the room to find him on top of the piano, amongst the silver on top of the cabinet, on top of the wardrobe, halfway up the inside of the chimney covered in soot, and a couple of times even up in the roof, the manhole cover tossed aside pointedly as if it were responsible for his transgressions. It seemed that his compunction to climb was driven more than just a simple desire to be above everyone else, but by the illicitness of the act itself.

Of course he did from time to time fall. One cannot climb for so long without the odd failure, or learning experience. However not once in all his years of climbing did he break a bone (teeth don’t count); he always seemed to bounce. His body had an almost supernatural talent in healing itself, or disguising its injuries to the outside world. By the time he was 12 he had already been winded that many times that he would calmly and patiently wait for the moment to come, which it inevitably did, when he could breath once more. No panic, no fight, no force. He simply waited it out.

As a teen his parents paid for rock-climbing and abseiling classes at the local gym, and as an adult he worked in construction for a while, then tree-lopping, then as a high-rise window washer, but he tired of each task quickly, as though the harnesses and safety equipment nullified the thrill of the climb. Gymnasiums and climbing centers wouldn’t let him climb without the safety of ropes and helmets, so he turned to free-climbing. He joined a club, and together with three or four other guys they would head out every other weekend to the mountains or one of the old abandoned quarries that littered the bush near town. There they would put their skills and cunning and daring to the test.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

Whenever he went out on the town, or to a friend’s barbeque he would invariably find himself up some tree or scaffold or flagpole. He would be called upon to climb up and in through a storey window whenever one of his friends managed to lock themselves out of their apartment. Neighborhood kids would call on him to help retrieve lost balls from their roofs, or else injure themselves trying to emulate his feats.

Some people cook, others write, and still others smoke. Climbing was his vice, his drug of choice. It was his thing, his compulsion. It was setting himself a goal that seemed impossible to others, and going ahead and actually doing it.

He’d seen men dressed in Lycra climbing the matrices of windows and steel on the news- the tallest and most famous buildings in the world being climbed without ropes or wires or helmets. He would sit agape at the sight of these dazzling men on the television screen, with their slender limbs spread out and clinging to the walls like a daddy-long-legs, chalk bag swinging like dog’s bollocks, and imagine him in their stead. Sure there was the fleeting fame and adulation, but the thing that drove them was the sheer thrill of it, the racing heart, the muscles contracted to snapping, the burning fear threatening to overcome and the overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment upon getting to the top alive.

He knew that one day he would join them. It was his reason. He started training- shedding weight, conditioning his muscles, increasing his flexibility. He started out on friend’s apartment blocks. He avoided the easy structures like drainpipes and antenna leads and concentrated on the sheer surfaces like brickwork, windows and the frames in which they sat.