Filed under: Travel
- Upon my return I am certainly advocating a mass exodus to Melbourne for 2008. Although, the question did remain why go to city that reminds me of Europe when I could just go to Europe? I guess, Melbourne’s just a little cheaper for the weekend!
- While I am certainly in agreement that Melbourne may be cooler or trendier or whatever, I have to say it instantly looses points for reminding itself of that every fucking three seconds.
- Despite feeling like I was on a set for an incredibly complex staging of Waiting for Godot, with constant talking about The New World Order’s Revolutionary Leader (who for the purposes of satire and privacy we shall just call Che) I was happy to see all those that I visited still possessed those strong beliefs and commitments to bringing about social change, that I found so inspiring to be around in our past life together in StinkTown. This was certainly the vegan pumpkin soup for the soul that I desperately needed, so thanks kids, and sorry for my increasingly cynical and jaded world views!
Filed under: Travel
Even when not paying attention — it’s hard to ignore your place. I mean we’ve all moments where we’ve forgotten our place, and usually somebody is more than willing to put us back there. But the weekend’s travels have reminded me that, yep, that only solution when the going gets tough, is to fuck off!
I was astounded with how quickly a different side of me came out so quickly in the southern capital. I mean sure, partly the reason we travel is to escape so we are ready for change anyway. I certainly had realised that while I may’ve been slogging away in ThesisLand I was no longer being effective. I had to escape; I needed a change of scenery. But I am still just marveling about how well it worked.
Batteries recharged, friends commented that I indeed looked refreshed.
Everybody knows I’m one to loose perspective fairly quickly — so I guess a better metaphor would be travel as vision correction. It was just really exciting to remember that there are people that I have real connections with outside the people that form my everyday, and a reminder that other cities provide opportunities unimaginable in this small regional backwater.
So, while I will be sad tomorrow bidding another of the ever shrinking number of locally based friends bon voyage as she sets off on international adventures. I do find it comforting to remember that those connections with people can often be picked up again in another time and place. And it’s even more exciting when those connections can be picked up again despite dramatic changes that both parties have gone through, with out having to resort to the charade of the way things were.
i know i’m only going to Melbourne for the weekend.
Comparatively it’s a short journey a jaunt really. 963 kilometers the internet tells me. Pales in comparison to some of my other journeys NYC: 15977.21 Kms, Utrecht: 16630.98.
But i guess the thing is that those journeys were about proving something, this journey is the proof.
See since my spontaneous decision to leave StinkTown and go to Melbourne for the weekend yesterday, i can’t help thinking what a change in myself this is representative of. The last two years rheiner and i have just been treading water. And while we’ve had some spectacular escapes like to Cambodge, i was always very frugal in terms of going any where else. (And it must be stated, i even complained about the extravagance of our overseas trip endlessly). See last year i was just so focused on ”setting myself” up for this year — i was too scared to live. (Of course anybody who knows me, can read between the lines, and knows what that means is that i would continually try to deny myself of fun, until I would explode in fantastic bursts of drunken debauchery.) But this year, i’m just doing it. This is why i can decide to bugger off to Melbourne on a whim despite what can only be described as a bleak financial situation. This is life. This is what i was saving myself for. And it is just the fucking same.
Which isn’t as dissapointing as it sounds. This realisation is part of the reason why i’m not as “stressed” as i imagined i would be about the final result. i’ve realised that while i’m certainly still trying for a 1st — i am doing my life. And not getting a first isn’t going to stop me living my life. Sure it may define how i go about the external details of my life a bit. But books will always be there. i will always be able to make things. i will always be able to force myself to write. (And this year has taught me that i do actually need to force myself to write — it doesn’t come naturally to me.)
It should not be any suprise to anyone, after those rambly paragraphs then that i have been so obsessed with the künstlerroman. i’ve always been partial to a good coming-of-age-tale. If i just think of the movies or novels that i’ve connected with most, there’ve always revolved around this narrative structure.
And for anybody who hasn’t connected it already, the foetus paintings were/are definately part of this obsession.
Sometimes help is on it’s way. Sometimes it is just delayed.
un:
i have been fortunate this week to find the time to finish reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
i have been hit by a semi-trailer. My life is now a blur.
Gertrude has snatched my brain and is frockling with it. This wasn’t without her initially planting some well placed punches.
We went from one room to another and quite frankly we had no idea which
of the pictures the Saturday evening crowd would have thought art and
which were just the attempts of what in France are known as the
Sunday painters, workingmen, hairdressers and veterinaries and visionaries
who only paint once a week when they do not have to work.
Work presses hard on my life. i must confess that i have indeed become one of these Sunday painters. There are no revolutions orbiting around my axis. This is not my life. I don’t remember agreeing to this.
deux:
And i actually really enjoy my job. No day is ever the same. i am building skills that will get me where i want. Imagine if i didn’t.
i signed on to this because i needed to finish my degree. i won’t allow it to prolong any longer. i now wonder whether it would’ve been better staying where i was answering phone calls.
“hello, uniadvice, how can i help you?”
But that was boring and uninspiring. I need to learn to do as much as i can at work and then switch off. they are not paying for this time. This is rent free space – FUCK OFF.
actually the concept of work is not so bad if you realise it is only temporary.
i realise how valuable my life in holland was. i now need to find a way of making that sustainable. i will not be a ricky swallow.
trois:
It’s hard when those around you are in different chapters.
i am reading chapters of budapest of san fran and having london texted in. But it is with these coordinates that allow me to chart my course.
i bought my first sarah tansey on the weekend. i can’t wait to get it.
music < >
I’ve finally started. Predictably, not while I’m swanning around europa or while I sit in a darkened room tending a broken heart. This is not the eve of some great triumph. There is no news. There has been no death or out – of -body experience.
I’m at home. Returning home always generates content for me. I slept in my bed last week for the first time since July 2003. Today, I felt the pain of returning home, it was as if I was just stepping off the plane into the glaring Australian sun. Everybody always says the light is different here. You don’t notice till you return and you feel the light in your eyes. But, everybody says that. Nobody could’ve prepared me for the tears that spontaneously erupted as I carried my first weeks shopping home from Woollies that first Wednesday. Or the sickening revolt that I feel now at how familiar everything is.
How I’ve let myself forget so much in six short weeks. But this is what I know:
Today it was not familiar. Today it bled with the energy of a new cut, attempting to flush clinging bacteria from its site. This is an attempt to not let myself forget. This is the first aid.
