First, I’m in favour of marriage equality. I am strongly of the view that same-sex and different-sex relationships ought to be treated exactly the same under the law. It is a next stage to de-pathologising homosexuality in our society and removing legal discrimination against GLBT citizens. We are tantalisingly close to that reality in Australia, so close in fact it seems silly not to close this gap.

Second, I’m against legal marriage in general for several reasons. One is that marriage is an ancient, cultural and religious practice with various political and moral connotations some of which are quite lovely and some of which are simply awful. Most people who get married think they can pick and choose between those connotations, but their ability to really do that is circumscribed by the cultural embeddedness of the institution.

Another is that I think it’s reasonable to claim, reading the Constitution, that the founders of Australia intended it to be a secular society (which I understand to mean government and the state independent of religion, rather than the abolition of all religion). Regardless of their intent, I think religion and politics rise to their greatest social benefit when they occupy separate and distinct social realms. Marriage law is one of the few places under Australian law which muddles the two, which is why religious groups appear to have so much say in what is a legal and civil rights issue.

To illustrate that tension, consider that the Marriage Act defines what a marriage celebrant is. There are two kinds, civil and religious. Religious marriage celebrants are authorised by the religious denomination. The list of recognised denominations (PDF) is defined by a vice-regal proclamation. The Australian constitution prohibits the government from establishing a state religion and, as far as I know this is the only place under Australian law which comes close.

Marriage in a legal sense is a very special kind of corporate entity it’s a certain kind of legal partnership. The cultural/religious rite (let’s call it “matrimony” is the sanctification of a human relationship by cultural and spiritual practices. Sometimes obscured by the legal and cultural veils is the actual human relationship between two human beings in love. Legal marriage doesn’t make that relationship, in fact sometimes it makes it a great deal harder than it needs to be.

What makes this all a bit odd is this concept we have called “de facto relationships“, which are almost identical to marriage except that the legal entity is formed by co-habiting for a couple of years, rather than by paying some money to a civil celebrant or convincing a priest you love each other. Ironically, at the federal level at least, same-sex de factos enjoy exactly the same rights and responsibilities as different-sex de factos. Which form of legal partnership more accurately follows the reality of a relationship, the one where you can get married at the registry office on a drunken whim or the one where you have to keep a household together for two years?

My third commitment, as a priest, is to an understanding that it’s valid to anoint the spiritual character that the bond of love between two people displays. The sacred encounter between two people which opens into love and devotion is one of the most effective modes human transformation ever devised. Matrimony is a blessing and acknowledgement of this encounter with the Divine in the face of the Other.

So, I’ve come to a position which allows me to maintain each of these commitments about which I’m passionate. It’s actually quite simple:

Repeal the Marriage Act.

Remove all references to marriage from all three layers of government, retain civil partnerships formed solely through the current de facto arrangements. If there situations like immigration which require a relationship to be registered before two years have elapsed then allow a couple to register themselves as “intended partners”, a fact which could grant them a temporary visa, which becomes permanent when they become actual de factos.

Make matrimony a cultural custom which religious and cultural organisations can define however they wish, with no legal force. Some couples may decide to undertake matrimony before they become de facto partners, some after – it’s up to them. Churches like mine and the Unitarians and the Buddhists will continue to marry gay and lesbian couples and the Sydney Anglicans and the Roman Catholics can continue to refuse and… well… who cares, really?

I’m far from the first person to suggest this, but I thought I’d add my voice to a growing chorus. I argue that this proposal “retains the sanctity of marriage” more effectively than religious groups trying to maintain control over an aspect of federal law, which pollutes both religion and politics in a manner which I find increasingly abhorrent. I’m not pretending there aren’t some wrinkles to iron out, but I think this is the right way to start.

It’s not too late to make this a reality. It actually serves the demands of all parties better than most of the current suggestions. It’s simple. It’s bold. Let’s do it.

Repeal the Marriage Act.

I’ll make the t-shirts if you’ll wear ‘em.

UPDATE: Just wanted to add a shout-out to Julian and Tailsteak who got here way before me. If you know other people making the same argument, please link ‘em up in the comments.

The Royal Family gather in the Temple to make the traditional blood sacrifices to the Archons #royalwedding

Queen reportedly impressed that Kate only issued muffled shrieks as the Royal cranial symbiote was implanted#royalwedding

Some controversy over which former Prime Minister will be fed to Rex Mundi as it manifests in Westminster Abbey#royalwedding

Spectators urged to watch for nanoswarm outbreaks and wandering shoggoths while in Mall area. #royalwedding

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes his formal entry to the Abbey bearing the Hand of Glory #royalwedding

Spectators unsurprised at the complete invisibility of the Queen’s Ninjas who are reportedly dotted all over Mall and Abbey#royalwedding

RT @LondonPolice Please take care and avoid spatial rifts as ArchCant performs opening invocations #royalwedding

SBSNews: People stared into a nightmare and lived to tell the tale #royalwedding (OK, Anton was talking about the tornadoes in the USA, but he did say it.)

Crowds cheer as the grenadiers begin to bait the great spirithooks with the corpses of the homeless #royalwedding

I hoped there might be less horror and darkness at this #royalwedding given Will’s rep #nosuchluck #alwaysawindsor

On a lighter note: as Princess Anne’s personal cyborg regiment assemble into a giant centaur the mob cheers#royalwedding #breadandcircuses

Warning: all spectators in Union Jack bowler hats are shoggoths in rubber human suits. Avoid!!! Please RT!#royalwedding

Clarence House insists the Duke of Cambridge is wearing his actual body not an android duplicate #royalwedding

Dogs reportedly howling as far away as Cambridge as the Royal Anathematicians begin to rend time #royalwedding

A gallery of accidental reveals of the Duke of Edinburgh’s dorsal tentacles over the years http://bit.ly/tdf5rQ #royalwedding#hilarious (in case anyone’s confused, that’s a fake URL. Philip has successfully concealed his dorsal tentacles all these years. Or at least, if anyone got a photo, they haven’t been permitted to live)

Very disappointed to see JG consent to that blue fungal cerebral parasite. Humiliating to see our PM enslaved as a drone #royalwedding (Did you see that thing?)

OMG Royal Vampyres quantum tunneling into my spacetime! Help! #royalwedding

No! Argh! My eyes! My eyes! The pain! Speak well of me… When I’m… Gone…#royalwedding

Then my mate Ian and I ended up in an odd conversation via SMS that somehow wound up producing these:

(which I’ll own is a slight misquote. But don’t you think Harry looks like he’s plotting something devilish?)

At least one friend has condemned me to pun hell as a result. I’m personally quite proud of making a very sweet, romantic shot look sinister. Or Thelemic. Or something.

Oh well, you know what I say about mainstream epimedia – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

(If I ever teach philosophy, in their final assignment students will have to prove their grasp of their chosen philosopher by rewriting the lyrics of a popular song to reflect his or her key ideas. Marks will be given for concise expression, accurate exposition and maintaining the backbeat.)

I asked my social media friends (on Twitter and Facebook) for recommendations on where to start with the thought of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) – a name I first started encountering in the early 90s. The edgy kids were all talking about Deleuze and Guattari‘s Anti-Oedipus (which I tried and failed to read) at the time. In the intervening years, he’s become more and more influential to contemporary thought and I’ve started to feel that I’m missing out by not at least trying to grok him a little.

So, thanks to @Eventmechanics, Dr Eimer and His Grace Dr Behun, His Grace Bishop Thomas Langley, Dr Ben Kraal, Trish Nowland and Orion Mitchell for their helpful suggestions. Here is a beginner’s introductory  list for CP302 – The Thought of Gilles Deleuze – my imaginary contemporary philosophy course.

To begin with, ABC Radio National’s “The Philosopher’s Zone” recently featured a two-part interview (part 1, part 2) between Alan Saunders and Robert Sinnerbrink from Macquarie Uni, so if you want to know what the fuss is about, that seems a good place to start.

When trying to understand a new philosopher, I almost always start with secondary sources, herewith…

Understanding Deleuze by Claire Colebrook (amzn – there’s a Kindle edition) got a couple of recommendations. Apparently, “Claire Colebrook has produced a truly accessible pathway into the labyrinthine enchantments offered for contemporary thought by Deleuzianism, making concepts clear, showing their political and theoretical complexity, elaborating their social and artistic relevance.” – according to one reviewer. She’s also written “Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed” – which is a little shorter.

Manuel DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (amzn), provides what sounds like a good approach for people coming from the sciences, rather than the humanities. Here’s some blog traffic: “DeLanda couches Deleuze’s realist ontology in terms understandable not only to philosophers, but also to scientists. No easy task. But thanks to his efforts, I am for the first time convinced that there is some light for a realist ontology in science . It is an area that, ever since Nietzsche said: “There are no facts, only interpretations”, has looked very shaky.”

My tweep @Eventmechanics, suggested Signature of the World by Eric Alliez (pub) and especially the preface by Alberto Toscano as essential reading for Deleuze and Guattari (the other D+G) beginners. He also pointed out this review of the book by John Protevi that expresses some of the difficulties in representing GD’s work.

In terms of Deleuze’s actual works, here are some recommendations:

“Kafka: toward a minor literature“, U of Minnesota Press, 1986 – at least the first section as an intro to earlier work

“What is Philosophy?“, Verso, 1994 – as an intro to later work

“Postscript on the Societies of Control” October, Vol. 59. (Winter, 1992), pp. 3-7.

“Proust and Signs“, Athlone, 2000

Myself, after the ABC interview, I’m going to start on Colebrook and then jump straight into “Postscript on the Societies of Control” and see how I do. I hope this little summary is some use to someone else.

… always remember: you can dance… for inspiration

… well maybe one small thing. Pretty much every day, when I go to use the boy’s loo, I find an empty toilet paper roll – someone has used the last of the paper and failed to replace the roll. I would have thought maybe they couldn’t find them (in the only cupboard in the room near the door), but then a few times I’ve seen a fresh roll balanced on the empty roll… At least once a day and sometimes twice a day.

Now, there are a few instructional signs around the place suggesting in fairly stern terms that residents do the washing up and mop the bathroom floor if they have a shower, so I considered making another sign… but… I’ve had some good results in the past by approaching issues like this assuming a skill gap rather malice and using humour rather than gravitas.

Enter “Bog Roll School”, an instructional comic on how to change the toilet paper. I put a copy up above the toilet roll holder a couple of days ago and so far… no empty toilet rolls. Let’s see how we go over the longer term.

Please enjoy. The original is in ComicLife, so if you could find a use for it around your office or home, drop me a note

The final thing that I’d say … and you’ll all go and look at my maiden speech after this because, and I hadn’t looked at it for quite some time, it’s not really worth reading. But I’ll go to part of it that I think was because I think it’s very pertinent to today’s decision. Obviously many people would have thought the electorate of New England, given its history, the member would possibly vote for the coalition. When I first came into this place and when I was in the State parliament, one of the fascinating parts about the political process was how country people never took advantage of their vote. Their vote was always sidelined and in a sense the National Party, until recently the Country Liberal party was seen as the representative of country people. What has happened through the amalgamation, or the coalition of the Nationals and the Liberal Party, is that the country vote and the same applies to country Labor and the Labor Party, the country vote has been subsumed into the two major parties which are dominated by the city based majority. And the elections have been fought in the Western suburbs of our major cities, so that country issues haven’t really come to the foore in relation to the policy debate because they’ve been assumed by one side and taken for granted by the other. And the fact that there are country independents in this building indicates that country people have had enough of that … particularly over the last 15 years, where the two major parties are actually virtually the same in terms of policy, a few minor changes on the side and we saw that at the election where Tony Abbott went to the polls with the union movement’s industrial relations legislation. And Julia Gillard went to the polls with the Liberal Party’s boat people policy. So we’ve seen this merging of philosophies in a sense, and in that there is an enormous opportunity for country people through their representatives to deal with either side of the parliament and actually take political advantage of that moment. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here, exactly what we’re doing here, is actually taking advantage of that moment and sending a signal to country people that if you wanted to be taken for granted in the future, go back to the old ways because that’s exactly what will happen to you. The admission by both parties through their various documents … the admission is that they have neglected country Australians and they are attempting through this process because of the way the numbers have been crunched to try and rectify that particular situation. So I make this plea to country people, some of whom who don’t agree with the Labor Party, this isn’t about philosophy. Philosophy, in terms of both these parties, died about a decade ago or probably longer. This is about using the political system to advantage the people we represent and those people in regional Australia. I do conclude, my vote will be going to the Gillard government. I won’t support trivial no-confidence motions, I will support supply and I will reserve the right to represent my constituency on any vote in parliament, I also reserve the right to move a no-confidence motion in the government as I see fit. Thank you.

A more cautious approach to globalisation, commitment to addressing climate change, addressing indigenous (especially rural and remote indigenous) disadvantage, repairing the river systems, environmental decay etc. In short, giving some kind of a toss about the issues that vex people living more than 60 minutes outside the CBD of a capital city.

You look at the list of demands that former National Party independent Bob Katter’s making of the Labor Party and you see why he’s an independent. But how many of those items would look out of place for a Greens candidate?

I’m on the record as saying that one day soon the Nationals will realise that they’ve got more in common with the Greens than with the Liberals and they’ll start asking themselves who they really ought to be in coalition with. After all the colours of the logo match much better.

Two years ago, this sounded like one of my crazy rants that I do when I’ve had too much coffee just to get people annoyed, but how crazy does it sound this week?

• in a check-up with Gerard, my nutritionist, two months ago my bodyfat had crept back up to nearly 19%
• I’ve been travelling a bit in the last few weeks, including a trip to the USA, but I worked on my diet and went back to eating Ful for breakfast instead of porridge, tried to keep starches out of most meals, upped my vegetable intake
• I haven’t been exercising much over that time
• I had a check-up last week and my bodyfat was a bit over 18%
• Gerard let me know he’s leaving the practice to become a schoolteacher – apparently that’s fun!
• this morning I got my own Tanita bodyfat scale so I can monitor my bodyfat daily or weekly if I want to
• Niche and I are kicking up our workout consistency this week and I’m planning to fit in more high intensity cardio.

So, on balance, things are good

Dad, me and Mum around 1968 or 1969

Ten years ago today, John Arthur Mansfield, my Dad, died.

He was at home. Jenny, Tess and I had seen him that day and Mum was with him at the moment he breathed out for the last time.

Here’s something I wrote about him and me. Here’s the eulogy I said at his funeral.

He loved Stravinsky and Jazz music, Peter Sellers and Stan Freberg. He used to shout at the television when the football was on.

I still miss his bald head and his kind hands. I miss his constant support. I miss his sense of humour. I miss both his courage and his weakness.

We miss you, Dad.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him.

That's the way we like it.

I have nothing against Adobe’s Flash as a technology. We wouldn’t have YouTube without it and look how much good that’s done for civilization!

The thing is, I’m in a slightly annoying computing situation – entirely of my own making, I stress. I work on a MacBook Air that I insisted my job buy for me (Noo, I don’t want a MacBook Pro! It’s far too heavy!).

Indeed the Air is light and thin and gives me a lot of gadget kudos at airport security. It also has a common, completely disastrous bug. When the machine gets hot, as the processor temperature passes some critical threshold and for reasons I don’t understand, the kernel task goes nutso and starts eating the twin CPUs, using 150% all on its own (more typically it sits at around 1.5%) and all work grinds to a halt.

Not every Air does this, only the lucky ones. In hot weather, mine does it several times a day and all I can really do it put it to sleep and go catch up on reading while it cools down.

I tried using a very geeky application called CoolBook which helps you undervolt the CPU to manage the CPU temperature, but I’ll confess I don’t understand what I’m doing well enough to make that work.

Then I read a tip about installing a Safari plugin called ClickToFlash (there are similar programs for Firefox) which doesn’t load Flash programs embedded in web pages until you click on them. In the meantime they get replaced with a handsome gray rectangle. I was pretty skeptical this would make any difference to my CPU problems.

But three days later, and my processor load is so low the load graph on Activity Monitor barely shows a blip (see illustration above). Turns out most web pages have some Flash on them, often just to make small animated ads, but I guess a lot of it is fairly inefficient code and eats up a lot of processor. Many pages are littered with Flash ads, all running at the same time.

So, my advice? Seriously, get a Flash blocker for your browser. Also I guess I should recommend that you seriously consider if you really need a MacBook Air.

The visible progress has all been good. Gerard (my naturopath-nutritionist) has been watching my bodyfat measure on his scale drop from my original 22% three months ago down to 15% and my waistline shows the difference, so he and Nick (my psychotherapist-GP) agreed that it was time to get a second round of tests.

Last week, Nick and I sat down to review the results. The liver numbers on the blood report were all in the middle of the normal range, way down from their elevated levels that sparked this whole project off. The golden moment, though, was the ultrasound report. Nick had request that the sonographer compare this exam with the film from the previous exam. Here’s the conclusion:

The findings previously of fatty infiltration of the liver have resolved.

So, in a very technical sense, I’m well.

Gerard and I spoke last week about adapting my diet out of “crisis mode”. We all understand that if I go back to the way I was living for the last few years I will wind up in the same spot or worse in a few years, so we talked about how to keep the current plan sustainable: another serve of wholegrains a day, lots of variety , sticking with regular exercise and finding fun ways to get it. The usual.

I think one of the many things I’ve got out of this is that to frame my former way of eating and exercising (or not) as “abuse”, now that I’ve adopted a new set of behaviours I’ve got all the indicators to show that I’m “normal”, but my aim is to weave them into a sustainable lifestyle that is recognisably “healthy”.

Wish me luck!

Leaving aside whether it’s useful or sensible to give up coffee, I thought it might be interesting to post some thoughts about how to give up. Perhaps these thoughts might apply to other kinds of habit-forming substances. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve given up coffee several times, for several reasons. I’m not suggesting you do and if you do, I’m not suggesting you do it forever. You may have some short term reason for doing so, or you might want to do it for the long-term. My suggestions about getting off, because I’ve gone on and off, I don’t have much to offer about long-term strategies other than – if you end up with a habit again, just do all this again.

The main thing I want to point out is that most coffee habits actually have three distinct aspects woven together: addiction, psychological habit and social habit.

Addiction is a physical dependency. Your brain builds a dependency on having caffeine fed to it regularly, when you stop it goes into caffeine withdrawal causing headaches (and possibly other side-effects). I once went from about 7-8 espressos a day to none overnight – I’ve described the effect as “wearing the iron crown” for three days. Imagine a big crown cast from pig iron with spikes that dig into your head. As I recall it was also three days in which everyone hated me and I hated everyone: I really don’t recommend it.

Because addiction is a physical dependency based on chemical needs, I’d recommend treating it chemically – just make sure that you wean yourself off caffeine over a few days. You can do this by cutting down cups, slowly substituting decaf for caffeinated coffee or using caffeine pills (much like you’d use nicotine gum or lozenges when quitting smoking).

But, you’re also likely to have a psychological habit of drinking coffee – maybe you associate coffee as a reward drink, a drink marking a mid-point in the afternoon, a drink you have when you wake up. You have an individual pattern of associations between various times and actions and drinking coffee.

An approach to giving up that deals purely with the chemical addiction, but not with the habitual behaviour patterns is less likely to work. I’d recommend finding substitute behaviours – maybe other drinks to fill the gap: tea, decaf, herbal drinks – or in the case of rewards things like dark chocolate. However in the world of rewards you tend to drift to booze, candy and cigarettes and really, coffee’s the lesser of many evils, but if you can find a healthy substitute reward that works for you, go for it.

The final aspect is the social habit. You probably “go for coffee” with friends. I have always had a cup of coffee with my beloved as a way to start the day, coffee often comes after a shared meal and so on. In many cases, we hang out with other coffee drinkers whose social persona includes “coffee drinker” as a self-identifier, as does one’s own. This aspect is not about your personal habit, or your chemical dependency, it’s about social pressure.

Depending on how big a part coffee drinking plays in the group’s culture, this part can be easy or very, very hard. If it’s just a basic social habit to have a cup of coffee with friends, it’s fairly easy to substitute green tea or a herbal tea for your usual cup of coffee without much problem.

But if you hang out with people whose usual drink is a single shot of espresso, who know what a ristretto is and who laugh out loud when a friend orders a “decaf skim latte”, you may have some issues.

You’ve really got three options in my view:

1. show up a little late and order a decaf so that no-one can hear
2. order whatever you want and soldier through the derision
3. find new friends and stop hanging out with the coffee pushers

My approach this time through has been aimed at minimising pain and taking it easy.

• I bought a really nice-tasting, organic, Fair Trade decaf coffee for our espresso machine
• I started substituting decaf espressos in place of my usual, without changing frequency
• after a couple of days, I tried only drinking decaf until I started to feel a headache or some withdrawal symptoms and then add a “medicinal dose” of caffeinated espresso
• over a week or so, those incidents naturally started to space out
• I started to substitute green tea and herbals in place of some of the decafs

… and that’s pretty much it. Now once or twice a week I have a cup of caffeinated coffee if I feel like it, and I rarely do. I start the day with a decaf with Anthony because we like to make coffee for each other. If my friends raise their eyebrows when I order decaf (and they mostly don’t) I laugh.

That’s my thoughts. Your mileage may, of course, vary. I hope some of that’s been of some value.

The fatty liver issue has meant that I need to restrict my intake of caffeinated coffee (green tea is OK). So, while I have still “just had coffee”, it’s now the decaf stuff. Nice, fair-trade, organic decaf, but decaf nevertheless.

In any case, the bodyfat percentage is down. In a couple of months, we’ll test my blood again and see if my liver’s recovering.

In May this year I turned 42. I figured a prudent step might be to go see a physician and get a medical check-up just to see if anything was amiss. I’ve spent so much time in the last ten years trying to cajole my late mother into seeing a doctor, it seemed a bit hypocritical not to.

I found the kind of General Practitioner I’ve always fantasised about: Dr Nick Bassal. Nick started the Wholistic Medical Centre a couple of decades ago to provide integrated health management. There’s four medical doctors and a whole crew of naturopaths, osteos, nutritionists, masseurs, acupuncturists and so on. I like using alternative therapies, but I’ve always wanted a GP who could refer me to what was the right one to use. Now I’ve got one.

The check-up involved mostly blood tests, which showed skewed liver numbers. We followed up with an ultrasound which showed I have a “fatty liver“: my spreading girth (or “central adiposity” as the medicos like to euphemistically phrase it) is accompanied by visceral fat around my organs and fatty pockets inside my liver. Early signs of Metabolic Syndrome, says Dr Nick. The liver condition will get worse if I don’t change my lifestyle – pockets of fat in my liver gradually squeeze healthy liver cells rendering my liver less functional. Diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, cancer.

Well. That’s why you get a check-up I guess.

So, off to see Gerard the naturopathically-qualified nutritionist to talk about my diet. I saunter in holding a food log from the previous month anticipating a relaxed chat about ways I could improve my diet. Gerard has other ideas.

He hands me a booklet called “Whole Life Vitality” which firmly lays down the law on (previously loved) foods which are forbidden and (previously ignored) foods which are now mandatory. And 60 mins of exercise per day. Every day.

No potatoes of any kind. No white rice. No sweets or chocolate. I count my blessings that he crosses out the “no coffee” part, but seriously, is life worth living without potatoes?

I take a deep breath. It’s not that bad. I’ve done crazier diets and this one’s for serious (as my beloved sister likes to say). I need to work out how to keep this up basically forever or at least until my live gets less fatty.

This is my fourth day. It takes a lot more forethought and planning about my diet than I’m used to. My usual approach is to just do what ever I’m doing until roused by hunger pangs, survey the immediate environment and scavenge food. This approach will no longer work.

I’m kind of in shock about it all. It all seems a bit big. I’ll try to check back in when I’m the swing of things, if that ever happens.

Wish me luck!

Edit: all posts about my fatty liver lifestyle are here: Fatty liver

I twittered this fact and asked for feedback from people and got some interesting responses (mostly cheers) via Twitter and Facebook. In order to calm people down a little: I still have a Visa debit card, so I can still shop online. My friend Lochy asked me to blog a little about how the whole experiment goes and I think that’s an interesting idea, so here’s some first thoughts:

First, it’s exhilarating. Every personal finance book I’ve ever read starts with the advice: “first, pay off your credit cards” and I have to say it feels very good, both doing it and knowing I have enough money in reserve to cover some basic emergencies. Even while using credit cards constantly, I have irrationally resented the banks for giving them to me and for constantly raising both the interest rate and my credit limit. Really though, I should read the product disclosure statement, have some self-control, turn down credit limit increases.

So second, I want to come out in public and say: I’m not good with credit. I’m the ideal credit card customer who fills the card, stays just under the limit, pays pretty regularly and never quite pays it off. Banks love me. The clever credit users pay the card down to zero regularly, never spend more than they can repay within the interest-free period and never get charged late fees. Banks hate those guys – they’re a drain on a perfectly good profit-making system. I aspired to be one of those people. But I’m not.

I’m a person who lends money and then forgets the debt within a few weeks. I can rarely answer how much things I bought cost. I don’t bargain. I mentally use the same anticipated income to pay more than one debt. I’m not what you’d call “deft” with my finances.

I’ve come to acknowledge that I have a mental deficiency… let’s call it, Idunno… Profound Financial Aphasia or something. I’m a little retarded about money. Some people need books with big print and small words. I need to only spend what I have.

Third, having something saved makes me feel like saving. There’s a few things I want, nothing urgent. I could just buy them, or I could save some money over the next few months, make a little extra interest and buy them later. Here’s the weird thing: for the first time, I feel like waiting. So not me.

I’ve waited to buy a few things recently: some computer gear, some books, a cassock. I’ve had no credit to spend, no cash in reserve, I’ve just had to wait. You know what? Just like Grandma used to say, having to wait makes it genuinely more delightful when I finally get the thing. I’m sure it’s something I really want, not just a passing whim. Waiting makes me feel like I deserved it.

So, why not wait, save up and buy it when I have some more money saved? My friends who don’t have PFA are ROFLing right now, but pause, reflect on how insane a lot of my behaviour has seemed over the years and share a moment of happiness with me that perhaps I finally get it.

… and check back with me in six months to see how I’m doing.

Most people probably assume that this is all nonsense and none of it’s had any effect, but while the frequency of me talking about my back hasn’t diminished much over the years, the actual pain definitely has. The various therapies have helped me get a better sense of the emotional repressions I habitually do, which result in constantly winding more tension into my back. They’ve also helped me end many of those habits. Simple, practical stuff like a good working chair and a better arranged workspace helps me not re-offend, as does some exercise, chiefly: walking.

I’ve been reading stuff about walking and running barefoot for a couple of years and recently I’ve started trying to go for long-ish walks barefoot. A few things seem to be happening as a consequence:

• I’m learning to engage with the ground in a different way, more involving my big toe and the ball of my foot, this seems to be gradually making the painful bit of connective tissue behind the ball of my foot calm down. Win!
• The whole way my legs and pelvis work together as I walk is balancing in a different way, this seems to be shifting my spine to a more balanced position, and I’ll be darned if my shoulders aren’t shifting naturally backwards, my neck getting more erect and the shoulder pain lessening one more quantum. Win!
• This is a big one: it’s really, really joyful to walk barefoot. I feel like breaking into a run spontaneously. I feel connected to the ground in a more intimate way. A surge of energy seems to rush out of the ground and up the front of my body from time to time. I feel like a kid, I want to hope up on walls and jump over things. This isn’t exercise, this is hilarious. Win!!!

Summary: Win! I like going barefoot.

But… it’s winter in Sydney and in the mornings (my favourite walking time) it’s just too cold to comfortably walk, the pavements have broken glass, all the palm trees are dropping little hard seeds, every little rock and bump hurts more when your feet are cold. It’s a low-joy event.

Enter the compassionate hand of My Beloved who decided to buy me for my birthday a pair of FiveFingers Classics. We went to pick them up today and I walked home in them. As advertised, just like going barefoot, with a tiny bit of cushioning, so that hard things don’t hurt, I don’t fear broken glass, but I still get that direct perceptual link to the ground.

It’s very hard to convey how happy I’ve been from the simple act of walking home “barefoot”. I may never wear a normal shoe again.

OK, so first up, I am not on a diet.

People who’ve known me for a while have seen me do all kinds of crazy diets to either put on muscle or lose fat. I’m not dissing the craziness — most of those diets worked and the speed with which they did was pretty motivating.

But the stuff dieticians tell you has been true for me, when I make an extreme change to my regular way of eating, it might work, but a few months later I’m back more or less where I started.

So now I’m focussing on gradual, bearable, sustainable changes to how I choose, prepare and consume food. I want to change my personal “food culture” to improve my body composition and (directly and indirectly) my health.

One thing I’m messing with is a kind of “slow carb” eating (which is to say you aim for low GI foods) which incorporates beans. I found it on Tim Ferriss’s blog and something about the idea appealed to me. The key idea is that each meal contains some kind of straight-up protein: meat, eggs, tofu (I guess); some kind of legume or bean and some kind of vegetables. Close to the Paleolithic Diet in some ways, similar to a Low Carb diet in others — but beans as well as being low GI also bring along a whole lot of health benefits.

Subjectively, when I eat just meat and vegies, I get all the odd jittery effects I’ve come to expect on a low carb diet (at least in the first week) when I add beans I get this nice, steady thrum of energy that lasts from meal to meal. I crave sugar and fat less, my energy levels are more stable. It’s nice.

When I started, I was pretty bean clueless so I used canned baked beans and canned chickpeas… which is fine, but a little dull. In the last few weeks, I’ve been keeping my eyes out for good bean recipes. My favourite so far is a dish called Ful Medames. “Ful” is the Egyptian word for Fava (or broad) beans and this dish has been filling the bellies of the hard-working Egyptian people since the place was called Kemet (or so Meave O’Meara assured us on the episode of Food Safari I found the dish on).

It’s a slow-cooked mix of red lentils and fava beans with cumin, salt, pepper and a dash of olive oil added. You eat it with flat bread and a boiled egg or salad. It’s like the ultimate breakfast of champions.

I have another mediterranean-style thing I do with chicken, but I’ll save that for another time. One day perhaps I’ll be able to brag about making feijoada… but not yet.

Workmen by Adrian Stewart

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