Good Morning Melbourne, 29th July 2014

I woke up at 3:30am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. It was actually the same time as when I finished work the day before. This often happens when I'm adjusting to a "normal" daily schedule after working nights. Anyway, I decided not to fight it, so went out for a photo walk instead - to take some pictures of Melbourne as it wakes up between 5:40am and 8am or so.

Sunrise is at around 7:30am these days, so most of the walk was during darkness and first light, with only a bit of daylight at the end. It was cloudy, so unfortunately no nice colourful sunrise.

Note: Times are approximate, as I was too lazy to keep track of time stamps on the photos, so they're based on my general memory of the walk.

Bourke Street, 5:50am

Southbank from William Barak Bridge, 6am

Southbank from Birrarung Marr, 6:15am

City from Southbank, 6:30am

Queensbridge Square, Southbank, 7am

City from Crown promenade, 7am

City from Southbank, 7:20am

City from Southbank, 7:35am

Still At War With Labels

I'm still at war with the "demisexual" label. Scratch that - I've basically dropped it. I just changed the wording on my About page here to say "grey-asexual", because it's probably more accurate for me - being a general umbrella term. It's more general and less prescriptive.

Not that I don't still need a solid connection to be interested in getting sexual with someone - that part is quite accurate - but the part that's starting to feel inaccurate is how there isn't really a well-defined place or progression for sex in my relationships. I used to feel that once a particular kind of connection is in place, that I would then be much like a "normal" sexual person in that relationship (whatever that is?). But really, it's more like sex is just something that happens or doesn't happen in particular relationships, if it makes sense with that particular person or not. It doesn't define the relationship.

I think relationship anarchy might have affected how I look at all of this too. I've become quite used to the idea of "customised commitments", and generally taking each relationship for what it is - free from cultural and social norms that dictate which features that general social category of relationship should contain. I think this has helped me see that sex can have a different place in different relationships (both mine and others'), and that it can be quite a subjective thing what it means to people.

Maybe it's a bit flaky and misleading to talk about being on the asexual spectrum and being a relationship anarchist in the same breath - given that one is talking about inherent internal tendencies and the other is a set of values that can be taken up voluntarily and consciously, but I think this can be the name of the game a bit when you're discussing relationships. In fact, I'd say conventional relationship norms themselves often go with tendencies and orientations which are on the thick parts of bell curves of what people want to do with their lives, so I think quite a lot of this actually goes on anyway, even in "mainstream" relationship dialogue.

Not much has ultimately changed here. I guess I just find it more accurate to identify as a broadly "asexual spectrum person" than as explicitly demisexual, for what these labels are worth anyway.

What precipitated all this? A few online discussions I've taken part in lately, which were about the merits and drawbacks of labels. My current school of thought is that labels are far more useful when they're descriptive than when they're prescriptive - and this is where this little muse (and minor label adjustment) is coming from. I might have demisexual tendencies, but a more broad "on the asexual spectrum" label fits better, and it's more descriptive and general than "demisexual".

As I always say however - I think labels should be used sparingly and on a need-to-know basis. Overuse and overidentification is what seems to give them too much of a life of their own, and often make them too prescriptive and limiting.

Rare Views of Melbourne City

I had last Sunday off, so I went for a couple of massive photo walks.

My mission was to try to get some shots of the Melbourne CBD from unusual angles. "Unusual" in the sense of not being the easy-to-find vantage points in Southbank, or from the immediate south end in general.

For those who don't know Melbourne: The city has a lot of open space, riverside promenades and parkland just to the south of the main central business district, so it's the most common vantage point for getting stereotypical touristy snapshots of the main city skyline. Other views that take in the skyline nicely tend to be more distant, and good lookouts are harder to find.

These shots are collected from several days of photo walks, but the bulk of them are from Sunday 13th July.

North (Saturday 12th July): To get a nice elevated view from the north, I headed up to Carlton and went to the top of the Women's Hospital car park (corner of Grattan and Cardigan streets). Unfortunately, it doesn't have sweeping views southwards, only to the east and west, but I was able to get a few partial shots of the CBD sideways, as well as some nice views of Carlton itself.

West (Sunday 13th July): Footscray train station is the only elevated spot I could find to get a shot directly from the west. It's the most disappointing one of all. Quite a distant view and not a great angle.

South West (Sunday 13th July): Williamstown. I finally revisited this place after over a year. It was fun remembering what I did there with my old point and click camera a year ago! With the zoom capabilities of my new one, the city views (with yachts in the foreground) came out much clearer.

South East (Thursday 3rd July): St Kilda Pier. Not exactly a rare or exotic location for views of the city. In fact, it's quite a common one with postcards, but still some way out, and a bit of a distant angle.

West Closeup (Sunday 13th July): Finally, on Sunday night I walked along from Docklands to the far western end of Southbank, and got some shots from the South Wharf area. Some of these really revealed how much light pollution there is in Melbourne - the low clouds were lit up like a Christmas tree.

View from Women's Hospital car park, Carlton

Closeup from Women's Hospital car park

Women's Hospital car park, Dramatic Tone filter

From Footscray train station, Dramatic Tone filter

From Williamstown marina

Zoomed view from Williamstown marina

From St Kilda Pier

Zoomed in from St Kilda Pier

Docklands looking towards city

From South Wharf

Yarra Bend Park

I went for a massive walk around Yarra Bend Park today. At first I didn't intend for it to be such a massive walk, but it turned into one by virtue of getting somewhat lost in there!

The park isn't actually very big, it's just that the paths wind along bends in the Yarra river, so there's no quick way to walk across it. If you're doing any kind of big "loop" around - and want to see different sides of the park (which was what I wanted to do) - it's a massive walk indeed.

I started on the Richmond/Abbotsford side, then went along the east banks of the Yarra up to Johnston Street Bridge. Then I did some bushwhacking to get through to another bend of the river, near the Studley Park Boathouse. Then I crossed the footbridge near the boathouse and came back down to Collingwood along the Main Yarra Trail. If anyone knows the park at all, you'll be able to appreciate exactly how long this walk actually was!

I haven't really done anything particularly "interesting" on this walk, photography-wise. But here's a selection of some shots from along the route.

Crow

Yarra Bend, near Abbotsford

Abbotsford Convent, from across the river

Johnston Street Bridge

Under Bridge Footpath Art

View of Melbourne City skyline, Dramatic Tone filter

View east, from the top of Yarra Bend

Flower Closeup

Richmond public housing, Dramatic Tone filter

Winter Trees, park near Studley Park Boathouse

Footbridge at Studley Park Boathouse

Autumn Leaves I

Studley Park Boathouse

Yarra River And Gumtree

Autumn Leaves II

Brown Yarra, Green Cliffs

Main Yarra Trail - Collingwood

"Yesterday's ice cubes are water today"

Johnston Street Bridge - from the other side

Collingwood Children's Farm

Collingwood Children's Farm and Abbotsford Convent