Marcus Aurelius, Vitamix Blenders, and the Futility of Stuff

Lessons in detachment from the Australian Tax Office and my father

I didn't disappear; I just moved my family to a nearby apartment, and that whole process dominated my attention for the past two weeks.

Here's an odd realization: I don't seem to have any valid photo identification. I'm an Australian citizen but I lack a driver's license, and this makes interacting with bureaucracy fairly troublesome.

"They won't issue me a driver's license," I explained today to a rather nice but befuddled government bureaucrat. It was the Department of Motor Vehicles and Transport, or whatever it's called now. I went there in person because apparently adults lacking a driver's license are too perplexing to speak with over a phone.

"Something to do with my temperament," I told him. "There's a diagnosis for it but I can't seem to remember what it's called. Long story short, mental health experts seem to feel it might interfere with the safe operation of a motor vehicle."

He had no follow-up questions, which was a pity because I was thoroughly bored and therefore interested in messing with him completely. If he'd asked me for more information then this Substack post would be devoted to that, instead. But sadly he was preoccupied with the problem of my legal existence. Apparently, my situation is a bit negligible.

To prove I was a real person, I'd brought along my Library of Congress card and also my expired Harvard employee badge — both of which have my photo on them. I had also brought along my American green card. This, however, is not deemed a valid form of identification in Australia, because I'm a citizen here and not there. Troublingly, I didn't really have anything else. The poor guy had to go off to talk with his supervisor for ten minutes, which I'm sure he enjoyed.

Years ago, when I was getting my American green card, Homeland Security lost track of me altogether. As in, they lost my file. They actually lost every shred of information about me entirely. I had to go in and prove to them that I was indeed a real person and that I existed, and that they'd even known about me at some point. And I just think it's interesting that, when I returned to Australia, I found myself in a similar situation again.

To this day I still haven't figured out a way to prove my existence to the Australian Tax Office. I wrote about the situation a few years ago and sadly, the situation remain the same.

The lingering issue is that I can't seem to remember where I was living when I last filed taxes in Australia. So, I cannot log in to the government website, or talk to them on the phone about my case. Further complicating matters, my last place of employment in Australia (that is, where I was working when I last filed taxes) was the actual Australian Tax Office.

Anyway, I feel resigned about the whole matter — I mean, I have to be — but every now and then, I try to prove my legal existence to some government department here in Australia, and wind up failing. Anyway, today I may have had a breakthrough. Apparently the Queensland Government is sending me an identity card in the mail. They promised me it would arrive sometime in the next three weeks, so I assume it will be lost in the mail. That's what happened when I sent my fingerprints off to the FBI in the US.

But I realized something the other day. I have now moved so many times that I have subconsciously avoided owning anything that is heavy. I'm something of a minimalist, I guess. I do own a few computers and a few bags of clothing, but that's about it.

I also somewhat dislike sleeping in beds. I'd prefer a bedroll on the floor but for my wife's sake I'm compromising, and we sleep on a mattress on the floor. She doesn't like it, but I don't sleep well on beds and my tossing and turning wakes her up. I know this sounds a bit austere, but really I can't quite help being like this.

The problem is that I rather enjoy the company of women. I also have two young daughters. This means a man like me must make certain concessions and live in a relatively civilized fashion.

Don't get me wrong. Not a day goes by that I don't fantasize about becoming a hermit and disappearing into a forest. YouTube keeps suggesting these videos about men who head out into the woods with nothing but an axe, a shovel, a dog, and a rugged beard. They build these absurdly elaborate log cabins, and I just think to myself ... I could do that! In fact, some days I think I should do that, and just this morning I was thinking I will absolutely do that, as a way to avoid any more of these Kafkaesque conversations with bureaucrats.

Yesterday, I was in a hardware store and I found myself staring longingly at axes and shovels. Fortunately, I didn't have any cash on me, just a few credit cards. I assume Hattie will start dating boys in approximately six years, so I can't very well buy an axe or a shovel using a credit card. I basically assume I will one day appear in court and have to listen to my bank records be read to an impartial jury.

But as I was saying, I don't own too many things and this is a trait I learned from my parents. Though not in the way you might expect. Let me explain.

Once upon a time I owned a lot of books. Then I met a girl. She was American and I thought she was wonderful and interesting and ... well, surely she wouldn't complicate my life, would she? So, off I went overseas. My books, I left with my parents for safekeeping here in Australia. No, I looked into shipping them but it was prohibitively expensive, and — to put this in perspective — when I moved to America I had $600 in my pocket. I also owed about $2000 to my friend Zoya but I repaid that a few months later, courtesy of my final (and fateful!) tax return from the Australian Tax Office — where I'd been working, remember!

Meanwhile, in the eighteen years that followed, those books of mine vanished from the face of the Earth. Some were devoured by mould and others by mice, and many were washed away in a cyclone. Some, my father admitted, he had loaned away to friends. Seemingly nobody had explained to him that loaning a book is a reliable way to never see that book again. Something about loaning books turns one's most honest and loyal friends into terrible thieves. Long story short, of my original book collection, only a dozen mildewed paperbacks remained.

One of those, ironically, is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, which I'd read when I was seventeen. I think I needed to, at the time. I went deep into the Stoic philosophers when I was a teenager. I read anything I could find of Zeno and Seneca. After the Stoics, I began to obsess a little about Diogenes the Cynic, who is said to have given away his only possession, a wooden bowl, after seeing a small boy drinking with cupped hands at a fountain.

I know this might all seem unlikely to you, this young working class kid getting wildly curious about ancient philosophers, but such things can happen, and I am living proof of it. Did my parents encourage me? No, not at all; they only provoked me.

So, let's move forward in time. It was roughly in 2021 when I returned to Australia and finally discovered what had happened to all my books. I was a bit vexed, obviously. I'd looked forward to my reunion with my books and could not possibly have foreseen the mice, the mould, nor even the cyclone. But my father, by way of comforting me, told me not to worry because:

"It's all just stuff, you know? They're only material possessions, Kris."

Did I mention he had been something of a Sixties hippie?

So, I was cross. The edges of my vision clouded. I said nothing to my father; I simply proceeded out the back door of his house and made my way across his backyard to his tool shed in search of both axe and shovel. Then I spotted a crowbar and had a better idea. My father owned a car. He was terrifically fond of it, despite it being only a material possession. Perhaps I could turn the matter into a Teachable Moment?

But then my wife found me and (I somehow think) she seized me by the arm and started talking sense at me. I mean, I assume that's what she did. I didn't hear a word of it. But somehow, over all the noise in my mind, I could hear the words of Marcus Aurelius, who had advised that, 'the best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury'.

This has been the credo by which I have lived. So, I threw down the crowbar and went off on a walk around Redcliffe for a few hours. A man doesn't need to own books, does he? Not when there are libraries? Besides, if I was being honest with myself the only so-called 'material possession' I have truly treasured was my Vitamix blender.

It's a bit of an incongruity about me. It's not at all like me to be so fond of a thing. I had bought my Vitamix in 2011 for precisely $650. And then I used it every day for the next ten years. It was wonderful. It was the only valuable item I had brought with me back to Australia.

But to be clear, my Vitamix Pro 750 Blender was a beast. It had a 2.2 horsepower engine, which made it the culinary equivalent of a wood chipper. You could fill it with frozen apples and it would liquefy them in seconds. I used to fill it with frozen mangos, peaches and strawberries, and turn them into sorbet within moments.

When I returned to Australia, my blender was the first thing I went to unpack. But while I was removing it from its box it somehow slipped from my fingers and the power switch broke off. Never mind, I thought. I could fix it. I've repaired washing machines, I've repaired cell phones, and an endless number of computers. I could fix the power switch on a kitchen appliance.

So, I placed it on the table on my parents' back patio, and got to work. After a while, my father came out and offered to help, but I shooed him away. Then, not long after that, my wife came out and reminded me that we had to walk over to the bank before it closed. I pushed the blender to the side, told my parents we'd be back in half an hour, and left the house.

We were halfway to the bank when I realized that I'd left the blender in the vicinity of my father. Remember my books? Remember the mice, the mould, and the cyclone?

"We should go back," I said to my wife. "I have a presentiment of evil."

Two things. First, that is verbatim what I said, and I know this because my wife still quotes me to this day — in an amused sort of way. And second, I do sometimes experience premonitions, and this one was particularly memorable because ... when we returned, my father was lingering out the front of the house and wearing a sheepish expression.

"Alright," I said to him, feeling strangely resigned. "What have you done now?"

He hadn't done anything, he told me. Though he had attempted to fix the blender for me while I was gone, and in doing so, he'd carefully and methodically placed the broken switch components onto a ceramic saucer. In fact, he was so focused on the task he didn't notice my mother come along and take the saucer away to wash it. And that is how the power switch components ended up being washed down the drain.

"So, really it's all your mother's fault," he concluded, after looking to ensure she wasn't within earshot. He might also have said, 'but your blender, it's just a material possession', but I have no idea what he said. You know, because of all the screaming in my head.

Listen, the one thing any of my friends will say about me is that, for an entire decade back there, I was a blender enthusiast. You couldn't visit my house without being forced to nod politely as I bored you with talk about my blender. Like I said, it's the first and only thing I've ever owned that has impressed me.

I never fetishize objects. I'm not a collector of things and I do not seem to enjoy owning anything. I don't acquire curios, trinkets, baubles or mementos. I've been a habitual nomad. The thought of carting things around with me, needlessly, is something I would generally aim to avoid. Except for that one time when I fell in love with a blender. But which among us is perfect?

I suppose it is only natural that my father would somehow be involved in my blender's demise. I wasn't even annoyed at him — after all, it was me who'd left it in his vicinity. This was, after all, after the mice, the mould, and the cyclone.

But a good blender — and much like democracy, itself — is a wonderful thing to have, and also something you cannot leave in the hands of baby boomers.

My father, who now resides within a small urn on my mother's bookshelf (not thirty centimeters from my water-damaged copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations) will always be, to me, a solemn reminder of the futility of cherishing 'material possessions'.

You know how I mentioned I was in a hardware store, yesterday? Well, I went there looking for graphite powder. The lock on the door of our apartment is a bit stiff, and I happen to know the best lubricant for locks is graphite powder. It's a dry lubricant, which is what you want; an oil-based lubricant will ruin any lock pretty quick. The problem is, hardware stores often don't stock graphite powder.

"What's a good substitute?" I wondered aloud to my wife. Then I had an idea. "Ash! Ash is a good substitute. And actually, I know where I can get my hands on some. On my mother's bookshelf —"

But my wife suggested I buy graphite powder online instead, so we did that. Still, in many respects I feel that living with women makes one's life more complicated.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel