What’s that, you ask? Why, that is, of course, the Japanese philosophical concept wherein one feels a certain specific kind of sadness due to the transient nature of the human condition.

I am currently suffering under a hefty dose of this particular flavour of sadness. I have come to the realisation that, these days, there’s not actually much left of my early life. And realisation has me constantly feeling slightly abraded, like I’ve managed to accidentally drag my very soul across a lurking, hidden cheese grater while washing the dishes.

My father died when I was very young – I have zero personal memories of him, everything I know about him comes second-hand from family and friends who knew him – every single one of them has nothing but good things to say. He sounds like an awesome guy. I wish I’d known him. But, alas, nope. My earliest memory is telling my Mum that I was, despite her insistence, NOT going to go to this “school” place. I was five. My next oldest memory is late in primary school, so there’s some big chunks missing there. But my dad was gone before even the school thing! I have no memories of him at all.

My mother, on the other hand, died recently. She raised me by herself, and I was (and still kinda am) fairly shattered by her passing. Unless I keep myself busy with other stuff, I find my thoughts turning to her. We had an occasionally tumultuous relationship, but I would give a lot to talk to her again.

The point of this, though is that there’s nothing quite like having both parents gone, when you have a kid of your own, to make you 100%, completely, fully aware that you sure do have zero claim to not being An Adult. You had better get to Adulting, yo. No-one else is gonna do it.

Mono no aware.

A few years back, I found pictures on Trademe of the house I grew up in. It was being advertised for sale, and the interior had been completely gutted and renovated, but there was enough left of the bones of the place to recognise it. The alterations were considerable. They’d subdivided the land, gutted and redecorated the interior, and painted the red brick of the outside. Also, while looking at that on google maps, I found that the block of shops near that house, including the bookshop I used to frequent and the fish and chip place where I played my ever first arcade game (Space Invaders! A classic) are now not even shops any more. They’re all part of some kind of megachurch complex. Sheesh. The primary and high schools I went to are all still much the same, but I have few good memories of those.

Oh, that brings my thoughts so the best place I ever lived in while in Christchurch, a huge chunk of an old house that had been turned into a studio flat. Rent was $50/week, cheap even back then, and someone (not sure who, could’ve been anyone) had hacked the prepay power meter so that it measured 1/10 of the power that you were actually using. The landlord used to show up at weekends, having done his day job all week, and work on the house – I remember helping him carry in a huge beam that he spent all day getting installed to replace the ageing, possibly rotten original. He did that kinda work CONSTANTLY. Always replacing, upgrading, repairing that house. He was always talking about how great the place was going to be when he was done. That whole house is gone now, red-zoned, a victim of the 2011 earthquake. Nothing left there but grass. I can only imagine how angry the landlord was.

The excellent brutalist 70’s university students association building I spent much of the 90s hanging out at was also badly damaged in the same earthquake. It was deemed not economic to repair. They built a quite nice looking new building, but it doesn’t have the common areas that the old one used to have, where students could hang out. Sure does have shops, though. So it’s got that going for it. But all the places where I spent time? Gone.

Mono no aware.

I see very few of my friends from before I moved to Auckland. Some of them have passed on as well, including my friend Nigel B, whom I managed to beat at Quake deathmatch a total of four (4) times ever, and my mate Scott, owner of a series of the most absurdly modified Mark 1 Ford Escorts that Timaru had ever seen. And a handful of other friends, also deceased. I find myself missing them all.

The other day I had some difficulty remember what my first cat looked like. That’s not a pleasing thing to have happen. I did remember, eventually! Dinky (name choice by my Mum. Not me. Just to be clear) was in fact a tuxedo cat, sharply delineated black and white, and he was very cuddly and very sweet. He lived into his late teens. Not bad! But it’s a hell of thing to reach for a memory of your first pet and not find it straight away.

I even find myself missing ex girlfriends – not even in any kind of prurient fashion, it’s just that they used to mean a lot to me, I still think fondly of all of them, and I hope they’re doing well. But for many of them, I have NO IDEA if they’re doing well or not. We’re simply dropped completely out of touch. They were very important to me, and now … maybe they’re doing great? Maybe things have gone badly for them? Maybe they need help? It seems like I should know, but I sure don’t.

Mono no aware.

LEST THIS BECOME A PITY PARTY, please realise that my life NOW is very, very excellent. My stepfather is still around, still fit and healthy, I talk to or message with him every day. I am happily married to a wife who is WAY more awesome than I deserve, we have a kid who is as COOL AS HELL. We have a nice house here in Auckland, our mortgage is not too absurd, by NZ standards at least. I am back to being a student – this time I may actually finish my degree. I have extended family in Canada, and when Covid backs off a bit, we may even get to go visit them. My little family is the best, and they make my life great.

Plus, of course, it’s 2022, THE FUTURE, and I do kinda live in the sci-fi cyber utopia I wanted. We all have pocket supercomputers and there’s a global data network that links you to the totality of human knowledge plus twitter, and my pocket supercomputer has literally thousands of books on it and network access to buy basically any book that isn’t already there and I can read ANY of them ANYTIME I WANT, and I drive an electric car that goes WHOOSH when you accelerate and the video games here in the future have AMAZING graphics, and they made an Iron Man movie and it ruled and I can watch any episode of any tv show I want whenever I want including every episode of Star Trek, and honestly kid me would likely have given five or ten years of his life just for the tv show thing, never mind all the other cool nerd shit.

The future is good, and life is good!

I have very few complaints about my life as an adult, but … it is definitely different from when I was younger. And the key point, of course, is that there is certainly no going back – those changes are permanent. Time surely is a one-way street. And I’m feeling the fundamental sorrow of that in a way that I never used to.

Mono no aware.

I’m one of those people.

As a result, I have a bunch of shitty old servers in my garage, and I recently decided to sort them out and get rid of the more useless ones. I decided to install ubuntu linux server on all of them, just to have something to boot so as to show anyone interested that they do actually work.

I have installed a LOT of linux since I first started tinkering with it (Slackware v1, back in the 90s), I am extremely familiar and comfortable with it, but unfortunately it has now progressed to the point where it just makes me feel ancient.

I go to the Ubuntu site to download a current installer, and it’s like “Hey, you want to install this using Multipass?” and I’m suddently Leeloo Dallas. “Mul..tee..pass?” I ask, and it’s like “Oh? No Multipass? O..kay. Okay, you probably want to use MMAS Automated Server Provisioning then?” and suddenly I have to go full Hank Hill…

Eventually, the Ubuntu site grudgingly submits (“Here’s your ISO, grandad!”) and yes, fine, good.

So now I make an install USB out of the ISO and install it on these servers. Full credit to Ubuntu, it works fine on these ancient bits of gear, including weird old SAS raid controllers and such. Nice!

The final indignity awaits, though. Ubuntu Server is like “Would you care to install any or all of these HILARIOUSLY common things, which OBVIOUSLY are used by EVERYONE?” and then presents a list of tickable items for all these ubiquitous services.

It all looks like this:

• [ ] Framp – Framp Ultravisor
• [ ] Zlum – Blockchain Initiator
• [ ] Fleeker – Manger for Fleeks
• [ ] Blembo – Nomad. Warrior. King.
• [ ] Crembo – Father of Blembo
• [ ] CUMP – Undefined
• [ ] Eramp – BSD Licensed replacement for Framp

Reader, I don’t know what any of these things do, or are.

I just want a picture of a goddamn hot dog.

Speaking of firearms, fewer of these books than you would imagine spend all their time detailing weapons specifications. But more of these books than you would imagine spend their time detailing Generic Military Minutia like barracks layouts and how to get a weekend pass to go off base and oh GOD there’s so much about Chow Time and food seriously you have no idea. There’s a strong crossover with The Space Navy especially with regards to weird obsessions with process, outfits, and meal times.

These books generally have titles featuring one (or more!) colons. If you’re in the airport bookshop and you see books titled Siege Point: Combat Zone or Code Black: Strike Area, you’re on the right track.

If I were to write one, I would title it either Special Squad: Chow Time or maybe War Fighters: Gun Havers or just go all in with Dark Ops Squad Cell: Shadow Rain: Combat Breach.

• The song “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be A Dream)” covered by a local ska band.
• A pair of “Docker” pants, unironed.
• Wearing a pair of very dark blue socks with a black suit.
• A powerpoint presentation about Bono from U2.
• A party political broadcast on behalf of the opposition party.
• Updating your CV to show that one of your personal hobbies is “Reading.”
• Coldplay.

The three of them are on their way somewhere, in no hurry. They’re all obviously friends, laughing and talking. Bogan Dude is cracking jokes, interestingly directing them at Friendly-Looking Girl, rather than Well-Groomed Guy. They’ve had a few drinks.

Friendly girl produces a necklace, and asks Well-Groomed guy to help her put it on. While he does so, Bogan Dude laughs and says “Puttin’ on girls jewlery, FAGGOTY FAG!”

So, some points:

(1) Friendly-Looking Girl could have put that on herself. But instead she asked Well-Groomed Guy to “help” by putting it on her.

(2) In order to do this, Friendly-Looking Girl had to press her back and ass up against the front of Well-Groomed Guy, and also pull her long hair aside, bend her head forward and expose her neck to Well-Groomed guy, who had to put his arms around her to arrange the necklace before fixing the clasp. [2]

(3) Well-Groomed Guy could get it from Friendly-Looking Girl. 100%. FACT. And judging by the way he rather slowly put the thing on her, and his focus while he did so, he is fully agreeable with this concept.

(4) That Bogan Dude doesn’t see this means that he is apparently the least observant person in the universe when it comes to body language, or maybe he just doesn’t want to see it. If forced to bet either way, my money would be on the latter.

That’s it, that’s the whole story. They wandered off down the road. For a moment, I felt a bit bad for Bogan Dude, but hey, he’s the kind of guy that uses “Faggoty Fag” as an insult, so you know what fuck him, I hope he walks in on Well-Groomed Guy doing Friendly Girl from behind. And doing her well.

[1] Yep. I think I did.

[2] And I’m not even going to get into the symbolism of a girl asking a dude to put a chain around her in the first place.

I cannot describe the result.

“MORE OF A MYSTERY THAN ANYTHING”

Willow refuses to explain. We’re baffled. And delighted.