‘Straya – The Myth, The Malaise, The Mirror

I often gaze upon my own anaemic skin and wonder how I came to be here, and indeed whether the premature-ejaculation that whisked me into the nightmares of so many was to be more effectively utilised in flavouring a pervert’s frappe, or even extinguishing the diminutive fires of a gutter-bound Zigaretten lest thine progeny wrap its filthy lips around its posterior en route to the first of many addictions.

Self-revulsion is an important component in the fabric of ones’ existence, fulfilling its duties herein as the violent harbinger of mortifying introspection and thus comparison with the other mammals absorbing your Vitamin D and depleting your ozone with methane-payloads at near-Bush Jr. levels.

Recounting this most absurd being as the bastard child of a weaponised cactus, the next misstep in this 496-step plan is of course to wallow in the acrid aroma of the scorched earth inclusively before, around and within my every indent : ‘Straya (nee Van Diemen’s Land and the malignant mass attached to it), and naturally its enclosed meat-pit comprised of every gutter-snipe whom escaped both incarceration and the ravages of both physical and moral hygiene.

I am acutely aware of your status as a “good global-citizen” and your classic tenure as an easily-patronised provincial backwater; the unassuming, inoffensive boy at the rear of this insidiously decaying classroom.

The truth is that I see you, ‘Straya.

Yes, I did notice the dense tattoo of the Southern Cross on your pasty shoulder – your patriotism and masculinity palpable indeed.

Yes, I have seen your bloated ‘Strayan sedan snorting along with its Detroit-sourced engine and transmission, and numerous other “foreign” components including the airbag that promises to spare the least stupid part of your face when that pole leaps out at you – an irony sadly lost on you and the hubris coursing through your veins.

Oh yes, I have been in the very thrall of the beating of your meaty fists against your pale chest as you recount “true-blue” sporting victories, cheap conquests and the cultured sensation of “chinning” that bloke down the Pokies in true “larrikin” spirit.

In fact, dear ‘Straya, I see you everywhere.

I see you concussed on countless suburban pavements on Friday night as two others just like you scowl and prepare to arbitrarily end your existence with boots manufactured for  $0.13 in some hell-hole outsourced by another "fair-dinkum" ‘Strayan company amidst the throng of acoustic-rock and belated sirens.

I see your suburban enclaves and the filth strewn across your lawn; I see you at the local shopping centre with your 17-year-old de-facto and your 3 children on a Tuesday afternoon; I see you in tabloid newspapers and on social networking sites venting your prejudices, obviously formed by your forebears and peers, and yet ingrained in your mind forever with no dissection or analysis; I see the glazed expression on your face when you are confronted with change, difference of opinion or creed or in fact any other alternative to that which you continue to believe defines you.

Most distressingly, ‘Straya, I see you in the mirror – my sinews ablaze with the knowledge that we are as inseparable as any other disease at the molecular level.

Being the product and ultimately by-product of one of your typical households - and most importantly the calcified remnants of a hollow afterbirth upon your cold linoleum - I am thrilled to half-mast in recounting unto you that I don’t identify with you at all in spite of our verbatim aesthetic and what you expect of me by my very birth-right.

This sick shell of mine belongs to you, and frankly you are welcome to it. The congealed marrow within, however, will drift in your ether forever more until such a time as your own egoism and myopia consumes you in entirety.

You are but a name, a flight-of-fancy for the thick; an out-dated ideal that grows increasingly irrelevant as your crust hardens and the few remaining survivors of your perpetual lobotomy awaken to this fact.

Dearest ‘Straya, I can see your scars and no amount of foundation will ever conceal them.

I saw you on that beach in December 2005; I saw you baying as one misguided, embarrassing entity raging against fellow ‘Strayans who had, and continue to have an equal claim to the soil their assailants most certainly did not sprout from – a contemporary lynch-mob fuelled by a pathetic hatred steeped in the notion that their status as immigrants was less pronounced, whilst Charles Darwin injected another ounce into his cornea from whichever nirvana his genius warranted.

I have seen, and continue to see how you disregard and marginalise your indigenous population, reinforcing historical stereotypes and incorporating double-standards and scathing stigmas to ensure that this status-quo is maintained and the down-beaten remain as such.

I still see you clinging desperately to your false deities and historical comforts and ignoring the ever-escalating death-rattle permeating the deafening silence in place of your accountability, but this is to be your Waterloo (and not in the multi-platinum Scandinavian sense).

You embarrass us all, ‘Straya - now brush your tooth and go to bed.