Darwin

My recent denouncement and departure from Darwin was preceded 48 hours earlier by the travel book publisher Lonely Planet recommending the city in the top ten cities in the world to see for 2011.

It spoke of a bustling nightlife; access to an ancient culture and pristine wilderness; and of a city with energy and oomph. Maybe not those exact words but that was the gist of it.

I don't want to sound like my hipster friend Cathie but I liked Darwin before it was cool.


It isn't though. With all feedback, you must take it as input in to your system and weight it with what drove the source to say it, or in this case rank it.

Lonely Planet was the travel book of choice when I was a crumpled, life-in-a-backpack traveling twenty something. It was for those moments when I took a break in my life and on a budget travelled the world in search of people to drink with and adventures to have.

There is no shame in that. Lonely Planet was my $50 travel guide as I saw places I had read of in books or googled while cheating at pub quizzes. It took me beyond the Eiffel Tower and to a lovely wine and cheese stall that allowed me to buy a bottle and some milk products and gaze upon that industrial marvel from a nearby park, while others sweated and stood in a line to be sheared at the top of the lift of the tower, all the while being unable to see the forest for the tourists.

Lonely Planet led me down thousand year old streets to restaurants in dark dodgy parts of town where I was welcomed joyfully and replied in broken language, only to discover the waiter was from Melbourne.

Lonely Planet took me to vending machines that sold beer, ice cream and used school girls knickers and on to restaurants that displayed lacquered food while serving fresh minky on dried seaweed.

Lonely Planet took me everywhere, made me feel safe, slept in bed bug ridden sheets, sat next to me while I was kissed in Paris, was a pillow on trains across the worlds greatest mountain ranges and even silenced a very annoying Irish backpacker when I needed to sleep.

So when my home town is named as a top ten city to see, I may still agree with Paul Keating and say "The best view of Darwin is from 40,000 feet in the air on your way to Paris" but that is my 35 year old self speaking.


There is a reason for the youthful traveller with their unkempt hair and non-Veuve budget to come here. It will give them stories, experiences, tales, memories and heartache for places that are so different to what we grew up with that we take a breath as we survey them and hope that our mum will wire us some money when we blow our last money on a cold local beer.

Airports and Roundabouts

There are a lot of beautiful things in the world and many many mundane ones. Inanimate things. Areas. Spaces. Structures that give you no thought but to negotiate your way past without hitting them.

It's a case of airports and roundabouts.

Thing is that if you stall long enough to have to think about them, they are magic in their own way.

The modern roundabout is simple and highly effective. It is a control structure that regulates traffic with easy rules and without bringing everyone to a stand still. There is immense beauty in its simplicity. Simple rules of uni-directional flow and everyone knowing who gives way to who.

Next time you meet a roundabout, absorb the structure and give way to the right.


Then there are airports. You enter through some sliding doors and check luggage and print tickets and clear security and drink bad coffee. Around you, large canisters full of highly explosive jet fuel hit the ground and leave it at extreme speed. A bunch of people in a tower sew their paths, as thousands of people arrive and depart on their way to another identical depot.

At the most, you walk a hundred meters to a gate and wait in managed silence for your horseless, groundless, floating carriage to arrive. Then you climb aboard a vehicle with a hundred strangers to share air and bad food, while you achieve uplift and cut what was months of travel in to an annoying several hours.

People talk of smart phones, mapping the genome and coloured contact lenses and they are fabulous. There are also things we take for granted that if you stop and think of, you will release that we live in the future.

He doubts my source

Today he told me on the phone that pain only initiates the art and that my beautiful words then flow afterwards.

He is wrong.

When a passionate emotion owns me (beit pain or lust or love or hate or exhaustion), it drives every word I write. There is no eloquence in starting a sentence with it and ending it with another.

It is his way of living with the bump in joy he causes me. Bump down. Bump up. All cause.

I write it. I feel it as I write. It is good.

If you read this and feel the ride then say. Tell him, he is wrong.

Fatalism and Free Spirits

Last week left me with many thoughts after a 3 hour conversation with an old acquaintance. It is not a conversation that I see being repeated but it was an awakening moment.

This person kept telling me that he is a free spirit. That he deals with the here and now and does not plan for things to come or worry about things that have passed. I listened carefully and with interest because even though I am quite random at times, my view of life and destiny are quite separate from his.

He spoke of life happening and just taking it as it comes. I cringed.

I have heard this cry from many people. They are usually stuck in a rut of some sort. They are uneducated; unable to turn the tide that carries them in to and out of situations of life; and they are happy in their silent surrender.

There is peace and happiness in accepting your lot in life but I believe there is meaning and adventure in owning each turn you choose to make and driving out a life based on choice and consequence.

Life is not something that happens to a person. Happiness does not choose or unchoose you. It is not written by a deity with all knowledge, all sight and all presence. For me, I am lucid. I am conscious. I am the person who decides what happens to me.

Maybe, I am not a free spirit who can just sail along on the crest of existence, only breathing and sleeping and eating and... well, all those basic things. There has to be more and I make it so.

The second that I lie down and believe that the outcome is determined before I took the steps towards it, is the day that I will give up.

The free spirit thing is fine as long as they are not actually a fatalist that has signed a contract with lazy and opted for letting life happen to them.

Absense

I stopped writing when I found you.

It took a long time to work out why I stopped writing. It wasn't you. Don't flatter yourself. My drivers are intrinsic.

It was the lack of pain.

The pain gave me a certain kind of agony that no one else can know but someone who knows exactly how to explain their feelings. If you have the words to describe it then you should be able to solve it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Sometimes seeing something with clarity only means that you can watch in instant replay, the person who stabs your naked body repeatedly while you float above it feeling the knife as it slices your soul. Bleeding nothing but the essence of who you are.

Pain leads to art. Pain leads to music... paintings... drawings... words of whim... words of wisdom. Pain is truth. Truth is pain. There is nothing more honest that the rare raw bruised feeling that life leaves you with after you've stood and fought or loved or represented and then lost.

A friend once told me that there is no losing in life. That life is not a competition. Any true perfectionist will explain to you that losing is a game against yourself. It is the motivation to be more than you are and then the inability to reach an _apparently_ unattainable goal. Try tell the perfectionist that they can not reach that apple and they will make you sit in a comfortable chair as they prove you wrong.

The words come from the tearing of your being. They are the beauty you can only show when the lights are out, the vodka has been poured and the world has forgotten you.

I'm getting harder on the inside

My smile travels to my eyes but not my heart anymore.

lolhorsie

My head is stuck in the clouds

I met him again. He's stuck in my head. My head is stuck in the clouds. It's one of those never-gonna-happen situations. That doesn't seem to kill it. It just is what it is. Over-thinking it will make it more than what it is or ever will be. Breathe. Live it. Let it happen. Then let it die.

Memories in red and green

I married in dappled sunlight under the trees of a rainforest next to an emerald green river, surrounded by everyone I loved. I wore red.

She rises up like the tide

This weekend past, was a lot like those weekends I remember when I was a teeny bopper. It started with a fabulous night out with my girlfriends. We drank bubbly, met two new girls to add to our crew and then danced until our feet hurt and our eyes went all blinky. Then we went to a mates where we cooked frozen chips and covered them in MSG loaded chicken salt (with some Seth Arfikan) name.

The rest has been a slow blur of chained naps, necromancy via fiction, teddy bears with 20's headbands and constant grazing.

Tomorrow, it's back to work with early breakfast meetings to head off project dramas and then on to writing code and getting stuff done.

There is only one thing I need to get life to the point where I am 100% satisfied with it - physical health and that starts Tuesday with my new personal trainer. Apparently, his name is Dorian. I can only imagine he is super fit and hides a painting at home of an ugly fat man. Oscar Wilde would be happy with that scenario.

Maybe happiness is just being who you want to be.

Now you're just somebody that I used to know

There is a song bouncing off the walls at the moment by Gotye called Somebody that I used to know. My need to listen to it over and over again comes late at night at that time when it takes clenching teeth to keep my eyes open.

I was sitting at my work desk on the 22nd of September wondering what I'd forgotten to do. Did I miss someone's birthday? Did I have an appointment for a pedi or a massage? Was there a bill due?

I forgot it again. Even after toughening myself up a couple of weeks in advance for what would have been my fifth wedding anniversary or our 14th year together, I still forgot.

Right now, that seems to be a good thing but I can't lie. When I did remember, it ached. Ached through my entire body. Skin, organs, limbs and the split ends lying on the floor of my hairdresser's floor.

There may always be a pain there... where he used to be. Even now he's just somebody that I used to know.

Style

Make me your radio and turn me up when you feel low

Loving this song atm...

Miss this shit

This is my attention span

Plain White T's

My head is stuck in the clouds
She begs me to come down
Says "Boy quit foolin' around"
I told her "I love the view from up here
Warm sun and wind in my ear
We'll watch the world from above
As it turns to the rhythm of love"

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun you're mine all mine
Play the Music low and swing to the rhythm of love

My heart beats like a drum
A guitar string to the strum
A beautiful song should be sung
She's got blue eyes deep like the sea
That roll back when she's laughing at me
She rises up like the tide
The moment her lips meet mine

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun you're mine all mine
Play the Music low and swing to the rhythm of love

When the moon is low
We can dance in slow motion
And all your tears will subside
All your tears will dry

Ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba
Da da-da dum Da da-da dum
ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba ba-ba
Da da-da dum Da da-da dum

And long after I've gone
You'll still be humming along
And I will keep you in my mind
The way you make love so fine

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun you're mine all mine
Play the music low and swing to the rhythm of love
Ohhhhhh
Play the music low and swing to the rhythm of love
Yeah swing to the rhythm of love

This song is totally about me

I'm disturbed by how much this makes sense to me. Nobody's Perfect.

Understanding of the Speed of Light

Circles within circles

The other night, I was talking to a friend who was describing the difference between the way his inner circle looks compared to mine. He said that he has a lot of people in the circle closest to him and then the circle furthest away. There is nothing in the middle.

He says that my circles would look like a liberally applied pepper shaker applied to all circles.

Even if he is right, there is nothing wrong with either model. There seem to be definitions of what this type of person does and what that type of person does but I don't think they mean much. They are indicative but are not definitive.

For everything you do, there are people who will tell you who and how you should be. My favourite thing to remind people who come and ask me what I think of their's or someone else's situation is to let them know that what they are feeling is normal. It's all good.

Unless you are seriously mentally ill or have some type of personality disorder that messes with the way you think then you are probably doing fine. There is actually no right or wrong. There just is.

Walk your own individual path through life. Be free. Be whatever and whoever the hell you are. Let no other person living or dead, tell you who you should be. Try to tread carefully when your path crosses the paths of others.

Everything else is easy then.

100 Years of Fashion