Phatic Communion

Sometimes I do kinda wonder what I’m going to be doing a year from now. I try not to think about it, but well, every once in a while that kind of thinking does get to me. I dunno why I’m thinking about that now really. But well. You see I know a guy who seems pretty nice and all. Not a jerk or anything, he actually seems like he enjoys helping other people. Not sure what he does or where he lives. But I do see him sometimes in a place where he volunteers pretty often.

We got to talking and I found out a bit more about him. He’s here but he has family back home. He watches out for himself, but he watches out for them too. What did I tell you? He’s a nice fella. So he sends transfers to the Philippines sometimes. And he shows me the pics of his relatives all smiley and laughing. It’s times like that that I wonder what I’m doing with my time.

So my Mum and I got to talking a bit. Chit chat with her isn’t really something that I like getting into, since I end up feeling like a little kid again. And not in a good way. No way. So usually if I can get out of it, that’d be better. But while we were talking she mentioned some of the things that I got up to when I was a kid, and some of those memories actually made me laugh a bit.

I remembered that I had a pair of black and red boots that I loved to haul out of the closet whenever a storm came. I don’t even remember where I got them, or if someone gave them to me. Wouldn’t be surprised if they came from some nearby New Zealand gumboot store or something. But man I enjoyed running around in the rain and splashing around in the mud in those things. Those were smaller times, kid times, but yeah they were fun too.

Oh I just wanted to add on a little more from what I said earlier about fleas and how they’re dead, and stuff, so I’m doing two posts today. The reason why I had someone come round to do the carpet was because my Mum was coming to stay with me for a little while, I thought I’d just mention that. If my Mum had come round and stayed in my house, she wouldn’t have liked the dust and fleas very much, I imagine. She’s from Westport, and Westport accommodation is really nice so her standards are really high. If I just had her come without doing the place up, she’d treat me like a little high-schooler again, and I hate that.

I also kind of cleaned out the fridge – and I don’t mean I ate everything, I mean I actually cleaned it, and threw out a whole bunch of nasty stuff. I think the Mystery Meat from the Garfield comics was there, plotting to take over the world, starting from my fridge door. So I saved the day! The Mystery Meat was thrown in the garbage and his evil plot was foiled. Just in time for Mum’s coming.

So yesterday I had this guy come around to clean my carpet for me because I couldn’t be bothered doing it myself and I was pretty impressed. It was quite honestly the most amazing Christchurch carpet cleaning service I had ever seen, and I’ve seen a fair amount. The carpet was black as coal before, and then it was white as snow, like polar bear fur. No thats not true I’m exaggerating but you can understand that there was a lot of dirt that came off. I had no idea that there was so much gunk in my carpet, no wonder I had been wheezy and coughing recently. Maybe thats why I had fleas in my carpet? I’m not sure which came first, the fleas or the dirt. I suppose the fleas would have come first because they were attracted by the dirt, I don’t think the dirt would come because it was attracted by the fleas. Maybe the fleas took the dirt with them as their luggage? I take a lot of luggage when I move house. But no, the dirt was my own fault, I shouldn’t blame the fleas for something I did myself!

Anyway both the fleas and the dirt is gone now because I vacuumed them all up. I don’t feel bad about it either, its my house – or at least, I pay the rent. The fleas certainly do not pay rent.

So I was talking to this girl the other day and she was an Auckland wedding cake specialist, which I thought was pretty interesting, it made for good conversation which is why I’m telling you about it now. I didn’t even really know being a florist was an art, I thought it was just a matter of growing the flowers and then sticking them all randomly together in a vase, but then what would I know about flowers, being a bloke and all. 

So I’d heard of painting with oil paint and water-based paint, and I’ve heard of making art by sculpting stuff like wood or ice or even butter, but I never heard that flower arrangement was an art. Whoa, buzzing out! I suppose they’re all different colours and stuff, so it makes sense, really.

So my friend Jessica is an Auckland portrait photographer, she’s quite good at what she does – and anyway she was showing me some of the pictures that shes taken and they’re really cool, y’know? I’ve never really been into art much, but they look really good and it made me think about getting a camera. I didn’t actually go out and buy a camera, but I started taking pictures on my cellphone for fun. They don’t look nearly as good as Jessica’s photos though.

I was browsing Wikipedia for photography stuff and apparently you can make a bit of money selling your photos on the internet on the cheap. I have a lot of photos of my lunch, I wonder if anybody would buy those?

Welcome to Phatic Communion!  This is a blog about hanging out and talking about stuff.

So why did I call my blog Phatic Communion? I saw this term in a linguistics textbook, and thought it was cool – it basically means something you say that fulfills a social task, rather than actually conveying any meaning.

Okay let me illustrate. I work in a butchery, and its pretty cool, I like it. So you come up to me and tell me that its the best Auckland butchery, and I’m chuffed so I say “thank you” and then you say “you’re welcome” – but that doesn’t actually mean that I’m welcome, its just something you say after I say thank you.

Then communion basically means hanging out and chatting, and phat means awesome. So if you put all of those together, you get a phat conversation that doesn’t actually convey any meaning. Taadaa!

Yeah, I know. “Cool story bro, tell it again”.