The costs of captivity.

This post was inspired by the shooting death of a gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo in the US last weekend after it "attacked" a three-year-old boy who crawled into its enclosure.

I should probably say at the outset I doubt anybody would call me an objective person, and I am not a vegetarian or vegan, although I do try to have at least one meat-free day each week. But I am very much a nature and animal lover, and I have been for much of my life. I have numerous outdoor places, be they national parks or my local botanic gardens, I can visit where I am transfixed in every way, the whole time, every time, with the aura they have. They stimulate and nourish me profoundly, and watching the wildlife there interacting with each other and even us humans, and how they work WITH rather than against their own environment, can teach all us humans a thing or to. I even have several nature books at home, each of which I can spend at least an hour slowly flicking through.

But late last year, despite the mixed feelings I already had about them, I visited a chimpanzee feeding at a zoo hoping to see a co-dependent interaction between them and their handlers. Instead I saw them being made to eat yoghurt from a punnet (with a spoon and all) and to drink juice from a popper, rather than being free to consume them as they would in the wild, and of course for an audience. That was when I walked off in disgust; as far as I was concerned, that was just plain exploitation. I went and sat down then at the kiosk area and was nearly in tears, which prompted a lady nearby to come and ask me if I was okay. And last night when I heard on Facebook about the news from Cincinnati Zoo, I was even more upset and angry.

That has not abated at all. I can understand the handlers there were just trying to do their job, and I'm certainly glad the boy was rescued in time, and plus visitor safety should never be taken for granted anywhere. But here, well beforehand, it was. The gorilla's enclosure had a VISIBLE BARRIER at ground level which any unsupervised child could easily open and crawl through. That is a stunningly irresponsible oversight which would've been a piece of cake to avoid while they were building the damn thing. Secondly, what the hell were the boy's parents and all the other visitors doing while all this was happening? Clearly not WATCHING or trying to stop him. Plus, while it may not have realised its behaviour towards the boy could've seemed dangerous or threatening to humans, the gorilla really was just playfully and curiously shaking the boy around, and in many cases they are likely just as scared of us as vice versa.

I acknowledge how important zoos are for conservation, and how much enjoyment many others, particularly children, get from them as outlets for seeing endangered wildlife up close and personal. None of you have to agree with any of my views anyhow. But for me, tragic incidents like this particularly cannot help but reinforce the question: when living in captivity, are animals really free, and safe, from EVERYTHING?

The brain: everybody's upper hand, with a million and one uses!

Today I want to discuss something about knowledge. I'll try my best to make it engaging and unpretentious, because whenever you get a teacher saying they're trying to making learning fun, let's face it, in most cases they fail. I'm not meaning general academic knowledge or streetsmarts et cetera either; none of you need educating there, and I often resent being lectured (even though I often NEED that) anyway. I'm talking about a form of knowledge that's more intimate and doesn't seem to get very much focus from what I can see: our knowledge of ourselves, individually.

I know it's such a cliché, but whenever you stand before a mirror, what do you REALLY see? It's much more than just your reflection or exterior. We mightn't realise it often (perhaps because we all see ourselves daily), but we really all see a person – a life – we know better than anyone else at all. And I do mean anyone else at all, however many other people might know you well, or in what way.

You might be happily married long-term, or well-known publicly (or both), and indeed sometimes others pick up on traits of our which we DON'T notice or acknowledge ourselves. But at least in most cases, we are more familiar with our pasts, and more aware of what we are thinking (particularly if we're alone or in a rather quiet environment), than anybody else. All emotions can be very easy to sense or express, and then there are introverts who just prefer to leave the limelight to the extroverts (although, me, I'm an ambivert, which is the middle ground there). But even so, the bulk of the time, your own mind, in all its departments and whatever its colour, is something you know and understand like nobody else. And that is a form of knowledge as powerful than any other.

Let me introduce myself...

I'm totally winging this. It's my first time blogging for about six years, but I'm back anyway (admittedly, though, after getting some professional motivation, which I appreciate). I'm 27 now, I live in Central Queensland, Australia, which is nice, and I'm a proud nutcase. I have Asperger's syndrome, and with that last remark I don't mean to tar everybody on the autism spectrum with the same brush; I'm just being self-effacing. I've publicised that quite a lot since coming out about it (with all due respect to the LGBTQ community, coming out can be a thing for us also), but I have many other facets and keen interests which I hope to cover here.

In 2012 I completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours Degree at Central Queensland University, and that really was the best thing I have ever done, as tough as it was. Not just for how much more I learned about many subjects I love and life and the greater world, but because I forged so many very close friendships there, and falling in with so many unashamedly crazy arts types helped me accept my own differences. But this is now. I've since undertaken various forms of employment, of course to get by, and now I'm back on the job hunt (for the record, however, my last work ended on mutually good terms), but there is very little work here in my preferred fields, and with my degree I find I'm usually over- or underqualified for other work. I'm not quite sure what I'm currently doing overall with my life, if I'm truly honest. But I have a solid support network to count on, and I CAN tell you about something new I've recently undertaken, to my great enjoyment: amateur theatre. I'm a member of the Little Theatre groups in both Rockhampton and Yeppoon, and after attending their shows actively for several years, two good friends and fellow members kept egging me on to audition for a role in a production. I always really thought I'd get incredible stage fright but earlier this year I finally gave in, and was cast first in Richard the Third's Revenge (a contemporary sequel to Shakespeare's Richard III) as a very grumpy theatre auditioner. Then, following several weeks of rehearsals, it was showtime and I swear to God, every time I walked out on that stage I felt genuinely comfortable! I never expected that for a second. The play was a hit and I had real fun (although it must be said: the character's grumpiness didn't require that much acting from me) all four performances. It was one of four short plays being staged together as a festival, and I also played a cameraman in a dramatic play, We Wait; that role was basically leftover after a few weeks and it was just two lines, so I was talked into doing it.

Then last month, Yeppoon Little Theatre produced a new shorts festival for Anzac Day, Spirit of the Anzacs. For this I played a fictionalization of the Unknown Soldier in a play called Too Ambitious. I was opposite the powers behind the Gallipoli campaign who were all either praising it or lamenting it for how it impacted their careers, and meanwhile I'm basically like "Uh, hello! A hundred and twenty thousand casualties there were!" The opening night went okay, except for two of my co-stars forgetting their lines briefly (during that part I was standing there struggling to think of how to save the moment), but we all still went out there gave it a real shot. Thankfully, however, the Saturday matinee performance went flawlessly. That time as I was doing my final angry monologue, I even noticed a camera flash from the front row in what appeared to be my direction! But if they were taking a shot of all of us, that's still flattering.

And now, just this week I've been cast in two roles in the same play (but different scenes, obviously) in the next short play festival. I would describe the play and roles here and now, but I don't want to spoil anything. Stay tuned - for the play and for more about my absurd life!