I’m tired. Just turned off my computer again. Lying on my arm-chair. Been a very productive day at home. Just couldn’t make myself stop until now.
The world has changed yeah. And it hasn’t. I hope people will take time in lock down to catch up on world news and science research. Now that they aren’t able to ignore the world through work, and getting away from serious stuff, like work.
I’ve been posting old pieces of writing over the weekend on this blog. One Fiction and the rest are memoir pieces that were just gathering dust. The exception being the Burnout is back and its ok one. I started that a couple of weeks ago.
I had a terrible weekend starting Friday, full of nightmares – three each night, and a cancelled rental inspection. I knew I needed something productive to do, that I can say “That was hell, but you made it through and did something big”.
There was no way I could make it to a Black Lives Matter march. I feel useless any way.
What I could do was donate to Sisters Inside‘s childrens fund, listen to a bit of Dark Emu again, and listened to a personal story in Anita Hiess’s anthology Growing up Aboriginal in Australia.
That was hard, looking at the index online, and listening to two stories. The way I treated Aboriginals in my seven schools and high-schools must have been demoralising at times.
Demanding to know why a kid who looked white to me was on an all-black football team and not understanding it for years.
Using words like Abo, even in a friendly context. As always, the time I said “The Abo’s are coming” about kids that I occasionally hung out with, walking down the hill near our place. Mum gave me a good talking-to, I’ll tell you.
Even asking questions that I cringe at now like “exactly how many parts Aboriginal are you? Like I’m part Yugoslav and part Indian. What about you?” I hadn’t realised until this afternoon how dismissive that is. I knew it was, but not why.
Hell, I’ve probably done it late into my 20’s. I’d hope not since seeing an SBS Insight program with people explaining how they are treated and feel trying to prove their origins to access health and other basic services.
Man, I’m tired. I don’t know how to end this update.
Try to blog later, when I’ve recovered. I think I’ll be napping most of tomorrow and Wednesday.
See ya,
Love Karletta.
Musings of KarlettaA 