There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be spending the ridiculous amount of time we currently engage in online communication as it is undoubtedly helpful in bringing us together. The real concern arises when the technoface of the modern day becomes the standard for portrayal and manipulation of self-image, such that we look to imagined paragons online for the latest digest on what is most appealing and socially acceptable. But more importantly, networking sites bring the inherent desire to appear popular and claim some of the overwhelming limelight for oneself. As with all things, moderation is the key but when does exhibiting the gifts and strengths of oneself become excessive to the point of waging a bloodfest for king of the hill?

Everybody has been starstruck at some stage in their lives, or has at least a claim of six degrees in the family lineage that joins the hallowed artists of the film and music industries. In this way, we don’t feel so bad about missing out on the fortunes of being noticed and acknowledged by the broader community. After all, all that merchandise and all those gossip magazines and websites help to bridge the gap that has been left in the wake of dreaming for a pedestal to exhibit oneself. 

It would be a strange world if everybody acknowledged that in some way, they were famous. In the microcosmic sense, we are. We are famous for owning the same brand of bread as that of the loaf in the President’s kitchen, we are famous for  standing on the same rock as a dinosaur stood some thousand years ago, for sharing the same brand of drinking water as a superstar, we are famous again for sitting on designer lounges and drinking signature coffee and smoking cigarettes of a person we are not even sure exists and so on. Is it really necessary to attach so much cathexis to the branding of ourselves and depend upon labels to signify our values and scruples? By the same token, my meticulous shaving style doesn’t liken me to Tiger Woods on the back of the Men’s Health magazine, does it?

Whether we like it or not, everybody is famous because they identify, at least on the most primal level, within the sake of their individual footprint. I understand that in the rehashing of this idea, I am (but don’t mean to be) conjuring images of dead clichees of cartoon characters teaching children to love themselves before loving another. Rather than looking into cyberspace for the cornerstore selling egocentric goods, the traits of individuality are found diffuse in what occupies our mind and actions in our spare time and as a stamp in our preference for our vocation.

There can be several psychologist-to-be guitarists from Sydney who listen to Coldplay late at night, but there is no certainty that each person extracts the same qualities or shows the same kind of interest. 

Expressed better still, true fame rests in having attained the self-realisation that you are able to excel in what you excel, you have outlined and live with one’s own faults and in the rhythmic exercises of the monotonous everyday experience, carry the crest of your consistent and holistic self. 

To this end, although we are all perfectly capable of tracking down that elusive Hollywood star online, it often makes more sense to us (as it should) that a paragon  of realised self-image is a chiselled porcelain statue whilst the facade of popular appeal is a glasshouse: transparent, brittle, fragile, transient. There is no shame in the craft of acting, singing, counting or writing to whatever degree, for each ultimately open doors furthermore to important revelatory experiences that shape us - we cannot and should not deprive ourselves of the art of weaving our essential being from the precious fragments awarded to us in packages over time. 

I have spent the better part of my life in apartment living, consistently downsizing in personal space rather than increasing as time moves on, always mindful of the expenses and the factors of privacy, security and serenity. But as the demand for rental property increases in Sydney and the scruples of the real estate agents fall to their temptation of a quick dollar, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a place to call home with the comforts of a well-maintained foundation. Whoever thought a two-bedroom ground floor apartment could ever be approved to hold seven tenants? (and I’m not referring to goldfish or cats as respective tenants!)

It’s hardly rare anymore in the inner western city metropolis, and has been a commonplace occurrence in many other places around the world — with the desperate juggle for a vacancy for all, Sydney is finally catching up to it’s reputation as a ‘world-class city’.

To illustrate this change of dwelling over time I refer to moving along a continuum, starting at the youngest age in the castle of the family home, to the post-divorce settlement villa, the university apartment of present and beyond. Not that there is anything inherently ‘wrong’ or disadvantageous about any of these dwellings; in fact, one could argue that apartments are lower maintenance due to their size and the relative difference in expense can be attributed largely to the level of the building they are located upon. But at the end of the day, there is there is certainly no place more inviting and accommodating than a house - be it a semi, a duplex, a townhouse, Victorian terrace, double-storey mansion or even a granny flat - it has all the space and seclusion you need, without the need to polish those social skills for the unexpected ‘bump-into-the-neighbour’ or the charisma for ensuring you never need hear another slamming door.

The great Australian dream to owning your own home seems further out of grasp with the great influx of demand and interest rates which are hardly interesting at all — the young generation of Sydneysiders are to grapple with the prospect of never owning an affordable house. But is the reality of living really that harsh, or are we forgetting that with rising population comes the need to be generous and share some of the land upon which stands the exuberant perks of our crested metropolitan estate?

Owning your own home has reached the iconic status of representing the rich, the hard-working and the lucky with little room for deviance, and even as economic experts confess that house ownership is a quest not everybody can fulfill, this has never stopped many from trying.  But is it really that bad  to strike up a conversation with your neighbour and even form a friendship of accord? After all, noise from your neighbour would not be such an awkward issue to dispel. Easily accessible, comfortable and secure apartment living is a fundamental aspect of many parts of developed Asia and Europe, and interior designers are forever aware of the tighter constraints of space that furniture can be purchased that fits and has a great aesthetic. It would be ideal for a piece of backyard, a front lawn and a spacious interior for everybody, but this simply isn’t feasible. Perhaps we are stuck in the mindset of some fifty years ago, where the population was at a manageable pace and the Western suburbs were a relatively safer place to live.

Naturally, if the center of Australia wasn’t a sandpit scorched by the hole in the depletion of ozone layer, everybody could live in a house with a matching front lawn and backyard and fences all around. We need variation in accommodation that suits the spacial and comfort needs of every kind of person. No need to recall memories of American Beauty for a clear-cut suburbia; the vision of ‘equally structured’ housing sounds horrific.

There seems to be only band-aid solutions to these escalating problems of housing, but the simplest and most effective shortcut to a remedial act is to learn to live with less. There is hardly a concern for the majority of us who can still stretch their arms and legs in either direction and not touch the adjacent wall - choosing the right property takes initiative and responsibility; the two attributes missing in smart home-hunting. It makes little sense for families in excess of four or five members to squeeze into a two-bedroom apartment  where they could fit comfortably in a house, or for DINKS (double-income, no kids) earners to reserve those spare bedrooms for ‘esteemed’ guests, where an apartment offers the low-maintenance solution of a couple working to find the right home to place their work boots and future children’s shoes.

In the meantime, the three member household in the two-bedroom apartment living beside the freight train track, beneath the aircraft, kilometres from the highway and sandwiched between the foyer and the car park will not complain — we’re students after all, with the maturity to comprehend the words ‘temporary’ and ’suitable’. Everybody’s story is unique and amazing in its own right, but there is no reason why we shouldn’t think about the other people in our society who are looking for the same thing - the right place to hang our blue and white collared sleeved shirts, bearing our hearts in an emblem on each one.

Much the same to the first of kin
The smith took to his jaded armor suit
Splint and chain and leather weave of earthly fleshes
Laboured by the raging furnace of his aching soul
Meeting hammer to anvil in lightning thrusts of might
Fielding the shoulder shield and longbow too
That the wild beast fair and strong should follow
Become the warding head of his wooden lintel cabin
For even when the smith took his bravery and brawn
His anvil the platform to iron the splinter imperfections
He struck the blows of bread and wine
And though they glowed amber-red from the edge of zeal
And danced the devil’s dance of desecration,
He was master and voice of the craft of making
Day n’er passed without a fruitful yield

Once upon the final days of their induction
The paintersmith and bloodwine birthed the consciousness
Divine and stoic adjudicator of our raging passions
And the utterance of her lips alone, the whisper
Affirmed that we took to our craft for the self-making
And for each day we took to fuse
Our dazzling fruits and falterings
The flesh of life would proudly marry the tapestry

Ostracism.

If we extended the pouch metaphor to consider all of the pouches in society, it is easily recognizable that each social construction such as sport and music and blogging is a niche belonging to a hierarchy of respect and of rewards. For the music world for example, the broader your tastes in music, the more likely your tastes are to coincide with another individual and a bridge of acquaintance is made. The greater practice or the more natural your talent with a musical instrument, the more recognition you receive in the field of professional sound, for example.

My job at the university as a more concrete example, is a position as I.T. Support Officer. Despite the limitations of my position such as income and respect and office space, as well as the obvious specificity of my job title, I am engaged in every working day in altruistic acts. As much as I possibly can, I try to help freshmen (first-year students) with enrolment, with directions on campus, with advice on that tedious language exam for Spanish, even though this is not a requirement or a necessary of my job. Why bother, then?

Essentially, each lecture and university day is the same monotonous drear; the flood of unbothered students clogging up the main walkways, discussing their lives outside of university, where to eat, who makes the best coffee, how much all things cost on campus. Sadly, I am not a part of this crowd, not due to exclusive ostracism of my part, but because of my status as a staff member on campus. And this is the smallest and least affective example I can think up.

Exclusion zones like this are everpresent in the pace of the modern day, where the squeeze of the rat race has forced us to cling to our divisions, to our groups which validate our sense of importance and our position in society. More than ever before, our professional and personal group associations are becoming our identity tokens and pushing us into the great divide between ‘my ground and yours’. What ever happened to common ground, like parks or walkways or even that unoccupied cafe seat, that once functioned as such effective social lubricants to meeting strangers and making friends?

I don’t know if it is just that self-righteous bone of mine speaking, but sometimes I yearn for an opportunity to break out of my group labelling, my ‘brandedness’, to socialise with humans like humans do, about the great ideological changes occurring in our young century. It is such a shame that even my most treasured friends typify this kind of branded behaviour, and try to better me with their university-gained knowledge and expertise about shared hobbies of which we were once gleeful, modest adepts.

Who cares if you’re the CEO of a multinational conglomerate whose every whims are secured by the prestige of your title, let me count your E.Q. points and see who you really are when you bring your lunch to work one day.

I might be a staff member of the university, and I could be a chief officer for any department or in a league of my own, but I will never shy away from the ‘dirty work’ that we shun nowadays - if someone needs help, I do away with the facade of self-importance and relate face-to-face like equals. There’s enough leverage in the world as it is that might soon enough destroy the concepts of humbleness and common standing if we don’t reach out once in a while.

By some uncalled feat of bravery and spite
He escaped an urban duel to feast with wild things
Weaved the richest silk and sowed the bitter opium
Grew the sharpest bamboo thicket alone
And once sat upon his laurels too long
That he never had the chance to see it bloom
Soon sinking into his throne of bayonets
Perhaps all that while he remained knowing
That blood and bone made fuel for Dante’s flames
And some day he would return to dance for their flicker

In the hallowed halls of champions comes a tremor
Of triumph and torment that he surely kept close
As he felt the message in squiggled wooden walls
So close to touch the untouchable
A phenomena so unutterable to those who did listen

Many days past your honor it rains in your rockpool
And the cinderblock and kerosene fail justice to your memory
At night, when you are found dreaming in the saddle boat
Making soft tremors that are carried to sea
Had you only known that your bait would catch a yield!