Yet Untitled 129 - Lead. Fear. Sparks. Stars. And a Whirl of Polka Dots

A Summary Of My Time Away

Dearest Yet Untitler

In the time since I last was in your inbox, I drove, walked, traipsed across a beautiful faraway country with my family.

I also got punched in the face.

It wasn’t as painful as I would have imagined. More shock, barely any pain. There was some blood, which added to the shock. The near absence of pain was pretty downright surprising.

There isn’t much to the context. A very drunk person who was likely soliciting some contraband took offence to my pointing a camera in his direction (which in fact was pointed towards a band who had just started playing the first strains of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart”). The drunk person charged at me with a look in his eye that made me withdraw. Some invective followed, damning me for taking his picture without his permission. And then, BAM.

My first response was irritation at the ridiculousness of it all, like who in darn hell actually hits someone else in public in this here modern age? It was quickly replaced by the awareness that the guy wasn’t done. He reached for a glass bottle, by which time my wife noticed and made some noise.

He withdrew and so did we.

The man in question, in the red rectangle, Byron Bay, Dec 2024

Later that night, miles away from the scene, I replayed the scenario many times in my head. In some renditions, I was Steven Seagal who stepped forward instead of stepping back and dislocated the dude’s wrist. In others, I cried out for help at the right time and the incident never happened. Every re-rendering was bookended by half-imagined outcomes that went south, some involving the bottle and others involving various hidden weapons (knives, razor-blades and the like) that I had seen no evidence of but imagined were there anyway.

By morning, my irritation had acquired an absurd twist. I kept wondering whether I would forever associate INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” - a song I love, a song I love to sing - with this punch in the nose and its complex and phantom pain?

"I, I was standing
You were there
Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart…"

(from - “Never Tear us Apart” by INXS)

It’s probably true. That punching person and I are now connected for life. And it wasn’t only my world that collided with his: my children saw the whole thing and bravely concealed their fear in the aftermath. Whenever we encounter a band playing on a beach front in the open air - all of us will remember that person and our collision with him.

It’s inevitable.

Right after the incident, a police patrol van in the vicinity saw a frantic Indian family of four - us - hailing them down as if pointing out a fire on their rear bumper. We reported the incident and were asked if we wanted to press charges. We asked that the man be spoken to and warned against further aggression. It felt like the right decision at the time.

The next day, post my many reimaginings while lying in bed, we found ourselves in the vicinity of the same beach. Part of me wanted to walk back to it, perhaps to prove something to myself, perhaps to my children.

It’s a fatherly thing I’ve done before, this.

Once, at a petting zoo in Berlin, a pygmy horse decided to use my arm as a teething post - all in plain sight of my daughters - who were around 3 and half then. Here, there was pain - stinging and immediate - which I totally swallowed up, thinking something like perhaps this will stop any fear of animals from imprinting on my children’s impressionable minds. But - inevitably - my daughters reference a certain purple circle of toothmarks on my arm whenever we visit zoos or encounter horses. Not hard to imagine that they’re both a little extra-wary around the creatures.

Horse bite, Berlin, c.2017

“We could live
For a thousand years
And if I hurt you
I’d make wine from your tears”

(from - “Never Tear us Apart” by INXS)

As we neared what my kids had started referring to as ‘boxing beach’, I kept hiding my fear, but it was futile. My girls have strong EQs and could sense my disquiet. After a point I relented and said “let’s not go there” and I think everyone collectively breathed a sigh of relief, because we had all likely been disguising our anxiety about meeting that man again.

Secretly, another imagined scenario that had been drawing me towards Boxing Beach was…well…meeting that man again in a different tone. Buying him a coffee? Hearing his life’s story? While this thought seems like a rosy fantasy, I’ll say this - I don’t for one second doubt that it’s possible. But, pragmatically, there were too many variables suggesting other possible outcomes. We detoured and avoided Boxing Beach.

Some days later, I found myself inside a submarine.

I kid you not.

HMAS Onslow, Maritime museum, Sydney, c. 2025

It wasn’t yellow - but black, twenty-four torpedo tubes and all. It was a part of a permanent museum exhibit and the tour was replete with information about how 68 sailors at a time had manned this boat when it was in service.

At some point during the tour, my claustropbia kicked in. It was triggered by the sight of a bunk bed that looked only fit for a hobbit let alone an average sized man. It had all manner of piping and gauges bearing down on the airspace where the hobbit-sailor-man would have rested his head, leaving him only a few inches of room to shift about.

The thought of it filled my chest with lead and I found it difficult to breathe for a few minutes.

Again, I found myself hiding this from my daughters who were with me on this tour, even while one of them was complaining of her own discomfort at walking through such a cramped space. I’m pretty sure this emerges from a parental tendency of mine to make my kids world-ready now, free of vulnerability now, able to face anything that life throws at them now.

I think at some point in this ongoing timeline of reflection I did acknowledge that nothing had prepared me for the punch in the face that I received in my 44th year. It came to me as a bundle - packaged with shock, fear and confusion and there wan’t anything I could have done to prevent myself from the feeling it all. Even the absence of pain was an experience I wasn’t prepared for. It was just one more thing to work through, just as my daughter would have to work through her fear of cramped spaces. Even thought it’s a fear we share, she would have to work through it herself.

After I confessed my own fear to her. I held her hand tighter, considering that had I confessed my discomfort earlier, perhaps she might have felt a bit more at ease with her own fear.

I told you
That we could fly
'Cause we all have wings
But some of us don't know why

(from - “Never Tear us Apart” by INXS)

Dearest YUer.

I missed you. Thank you for all your lovely messages of encouragement when I decided to shut shop for a bit. There was so much validation in your responses, enough to make a punched man stand up once again and keep going.

The time away from the rhythm of writing every week didn’t feel very different. Once in a while, my reflexes kicked in and I’d send myself a whatsapp with a one liner for a potential instalment, but at no point was I overcome by some urgency to publish. I savoured the extra hours I had in the week to stretch my legs and walk into a variety of experiences. The experiences themselves did not overtly feel like that were dramatically filling some near-empty tank as I imagined they might. It just felt like living.

But I think there was much going on under the hood. All kinds of sparks.

Yayoi Kusama exhibition, NGV, Melbourne, c. 2024

The artist Yayoi Kusama is known for her obsession with polka dots. A polka dot could be seen as the first element of a line, a node from which a branch emerges. A polka dot could be seen as a spark.

Stars have been compared to sparks. When Bluto punched Popeye, Popeye saw stars. Because Popeye saw stars, he ate his spinach and became a hero.

Since the time that I last dropped into your inbox, I was not only punched in the face. I also had a chance to gaze at Saturn and its rings through a telescope in the past weeks. Saturn was a litte dot with a line running through it.

Telescope man, Byron Bay, c. 2024

On another day, lines of sparks flew through the sky before my eyes, etching themselves inside me and continuing their trajectories within, riddling whatever block of lead may have been obstructing my breathing with holes, pulverising it.

Lead. Fear. Sparks. Stars. And a whirl of polka dots.

That would be an honest summary of my time away.

Thank you for listening. Let’s keep going, no matter what life throws at us.

Lots of love and happy new year!

V

Fireworks display, Harbour Bridge, Sydney, c. 2024/25

PS: Someone from my year in college once called INXS “the most wannabe U2 band ever”.

This had irritated me to no end.

Taken, their songs aren’t overtly deep, but they’re far from shallow. And the late Michael Hutchence had an energy about him - a Jaggeresque charisma - that captivated my teenage mind far more decisively than Bono and U2’s gravitas - which to me sometimes felt a bit studied and overdone.

Bas. Needed to say it! See ya next week. Same YU time! Same YU channel!

Drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you!