Boris

Boris Karloff who played original Frankenstein was also the voice of the grinch.  Life is weird.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I've been fooling around starting devilled eggs tonight.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Arundhati Roy's new joint

Her first reaction was to feel her heart constrict and her bones turn to ash. Her second reaction was to take another look to make sure she was not mistaken.   Her third reaction was to recoil from what she had created while her bowels convulsed and a thin stream of shit ran down her legs.  Her fourth reaction was to contemplate killing herself and her child.   Her fifth reaction was to pick her baby up and hold him close while she fell through a crack between the world she knew and worlds she did not know existed.  There, in the abyss, spinning through the darkness everything she had been sure of until then, every single thing, from the smallest to the biggest, ceased to make sense to her.

He ( the dog) drank everything Anjum drank ate everything that she ate - biriani, korma, samosas, hawks, falooda, phirni, zamzam, mangoes in summer, oranges in winter.  It was terrible for his body but excellent for his soul.

" Oh we have ways of assessing the warmth of the welcome," Amrik Singh said.  "We have our own thermometers."
Maybe.  But you have no understanding of the depths of Kashmiri duplicity, Musa  thought but did not say.  You have no idea how a people like us, who have survived a history and a geography such as ours, have learned to drive our pride underground.  Duplicity is the only weapon we have.  You don't know how radiantly we smile when our hearts are broken.  How ferociously we can turn on those we love while we graciously embrace those whom we despise.  You have no idea how warmly we can welcome you when all we really want is for you to go away.  Your thermometer is quite useless here.

In every part of the legendary Valley of Kashmir, whatever people might be doing - walking, praying, bathing, cracking jokes,  shelling walnuts, making love or taking a bus-ride home-they were in the rifle-sights of a soldier.  And because they were in the rifle-sights of a soldier, whatever they might be doing - walking, praying, bathing, cracking jokes, shelling walnuts, making love or taking a bus-ride home - they were a legitimate target.

It was possible for Tilo and Musa to have this strange conversation about a third loved one because they were concurrently sweethearts and ex-sweethearts, lovers and ex-lovers, siblings and ex-siblings, classmates and ex-classmates.  Because they trusted each other so peculiarly that they knew, even if they were hurt by it, that whoever it was that the other person loved had to be worth loving.

Its roof had fallen in and the moon shone through its skeleton of rafters that loomed against the night - a luminous heart in an angular ribcage.

There was more than one patient in every bed.  There were patients on the floor, most of the visitors and family members who were crowded around them looked just as ill.  Harried doctors and nurses picked their way through the chaos.  It was like a wartime ward.  Except that in Delhi there was no war other than the usual one - the war of the rich against the poor.

The young taxi driver . . . whose body had been recovered from a field and delivered to his family with earth in his clenched fists and mustard flowers growing through his fingers. . . He would leave for Kashmir the next morning to return to a new phase in an old war from which, this time, he would not return.  He would die the way he wanted to, with his Asal boot on.  He would be buried the way he wanted to be- a faceless man in a nameless grave.  The younger men who would take his place would be harder, narrower, and less forgiving.  They would be more likely to win any war that they fought, because they belonged to a generation that had known nothing but war.

How to tell a shattered story?  By slowly becoming everybody?  No, by slowly becoming everything.

Nobel prize

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel prize for Literature this year.

He's my favourite living author. He has written about six books, very diverse in setting, but consistent in theme. He treats almost unbearable poignancy, the simultaneous observation of completely pure, total, and lifelong love and the certainty that it will be corrupted, unrealised and lost. To read his books is a heartbreak, but is also to convince you utterly of goodness.

He was up against Murakami and Atwood, two brilliant authors of probably greater cultural significance who would have each certainly made an excellent choice themselves.

But Ishiguro for me has the most singularly fine writing of any living author. He is one for the ages. Congratulations. 

Warm air

So it's blown up heat wise here and the biggest side effect of that is that the air smells, really good, like walking through syrup, that sweetness. Incidentally it's warm enough now that the honey flows properly which all feels like part of it. 

On the way in this morning you could smell the dew first, that freshcoolness. Then the sugar sweet flowers we walk by somewhere, they trailed the whole way up to the train station. Then hot oil and baked goods from the shops, and then I didn't notice anything on the train but the city has that sugar flower smell combined with like a hint of woodsmoke this morning.

It makes me feel more alive, this start of spring start of summer feeling. And reminds me a little of when I went to Mexico, my first time out of the country and felt like the syran wrap was taken off my life. Colors were brighter, sounds were louder, tastes were fuller, smells more rich. 

It's like when you're cooking something and it starts getting going and you can smell it from the other room. It's like that but with the world, the air starts to warm a little bit and you can just smell and feel the life stirring, everywhere.

Prison sentences

So there's a controversy in Iceland right now about a guy who was friends with the father of the prime minister. He raped his five year old daughter for twelve years and was sentenced to five years. His friend was writing a character letter to get his record expunged. But you know my top take away was, what the hell is he doing out of prison after only five years?

So then I'm trying out this new podcast ear hustle, broadcast from prison. The two hosts are doing 15 and 30 years respectively for armed robbery. "31 year to life for attempted second degree robbery."  But you know my top takeaway was, what the hell is he doing in prison for thirty years?

But you know, not to be reductive but I bet you can guess one of the differences between the two.

Stuff in the sky

On my walk today I saw:
A gala with its underbelly rose like the setting sun.
A bat flapping slowly, in fat furry flaps.
A crow quacking in a budding jacaranda tree.
It's evening now, probably time to head home.

Marley

When I hear Bob Marley songs now I think about Jamaica because of that Marlon James book.

It's silly I suppose because I never really thought of him connected to Jamaica before. He seemed bigger than that or whatever. You know he created/ popularized a whole genre of music. And he's maybe the most international star I've ever seen.

Seriously it was one of the lessons of my round the world trip. People fucking love Marley all over the world. Truck drivers in Peru, bars in Tanzania, clubs in Cuba, on the streets in the air. Mostly poor people. Everyone grooving out.

I never thought about him, with the crime, the corruption of Kingston. It adds a dimension. And while his music is political, I often don't think of him as that punk, but it seems I should.

Look this is my second blog about other random stuff and I feel like I should say, you know Jeremy changed jobs and said goodbye to his old co workers and it was a whole thing, he's at Skedulo now, it's going well, but of course there's been lots of feelings and this just feels a bit public for all that so just know that he changes and it was powerful and moving and good.

Voting

Democrats have not won the white vote since LBJ signed the civil rights act into law.

That kind of breaks me, I find it a staggering statistic. Did white people really just part company at that point? If you're going to call black people human, we're done. Is that really the world?

Leave

My leave just got approved. I am officially a free agent until 2019. I felt more ecstatic about it than I expected to. Really joyful here.

Brisbane

I think of Brisbane as a city with an.overwhelming amount of small beauty. It doesn't have much of the kind of loveliness that people will travel to see, and I've even been sad before that I don't think I've been able to adequately show it to people who visit. But it feels like you can't go far in any direction without hitting it.

I have all these loops I walk. Like sort of to the grocery store but I go via a couple of different park options. And we live on the floodway creek, and you can reliably see lizards and water birds, herons and egrets, stuff that I think of as a special occasion but they're every day here. And then about midway you get to the tall trees, eucalyptus mostly where the cockatoos roost. Reliably a flock of some kind of parrots fly over. Reliably there's a child's birthday party in both the parks. Reliably some little kid is playing catch or cricket bucolicly with their parent. Reliably every south Asian guy in the state is having a pickup cricket or soccer match on the field. Reliably a crew of enthusiastic speed bikers speeds by.

Or like there's the city where there's no worthy architecture but every building has been designed. I can walk up Queen Street mall with all the other pedestrians. And there is definitely a street performer there and probably some kind of lame event. I can go up the side where there's city hall and the quiet little museum and the too exposed square and the church bells. Or I can go across the giant intersection where there's always a flood of humanity heading somewhere and cut through the fancy shops, or I can take the skyway over Anzac square where the external flame is through post office square where there's all the community chairs and usually some students or a little meeting and the homeless guys hang out, meet at the start of the day. And then Queen Street mall takes you straight up the hill to the bridge and you cross the river.  The river defines my city like so many others. There are four or five bridges across my city but I have a couple favourites. This one that arcs across and you can really see the water, and the best view of the skyline. And Kurilpa or sneaky bridge which cuts from Roma street back over to the art museum.

Ok so you crossed the river and now you can go left or right. Left takes you past the giant Ferris wheel and along the river or along the bougainvillia walk you can choose and eventually there's another bridge and you can come back along the river as well. Oh and there's students and trendy shops and markets through here. Or right past the art museum, library, modern art museum to kurilpa bridge which shows up like a secret so we call it sneaky bridge.

And that's not talking about the botanical gardens or the parks every minute that split up the inner urban because it's not just builders ripping up every green here.

There's a pink tree that was in full spectacular bloom a few weeks ago and now it's switched to this yellow one, the jacarandas will come at the end of the month. But it's always the time for something to bloom and something to fruit, they fold in on each other like a braided rope.

Anyway there's more and more and more and that's kind of part of it. It's not the kind of stuff that would be worth saying all of, but it's like everywhere you go, beauty unfolds itself to you around each corner, in each crevice and so you are rewarded.

That's some of what I'm thinking these days, as I wander around the city, playing Pokemon or whatever just walking these circles and loops for hours. It continues to be worthwhile, and it's not something I can show other people well, but it's something I see all the time.

On Madeleine L'Engle

I've been going back to the Wrinkle in Time books, a bit of nostalgiacide there because I remembered them as deeper than they are. But that's not what I came here to tell you about.

The best thing about the books is that in each of them someone is humanized who was dehumanized before. In that sense the first book is the weakest because it is only the people we expect, and a few monsters. But in the second book it is the elementary school principal and in the third it is her mother in law. Unloveable characters who do not understand or like our protagonist, but they become loveable and important. I think that's a valuable and beautiful theme almost never seen in fiction and kind of provides the walking the walk proof of the larger themes of universal God like love.

Al Jazeera

Israel declared against Al Jazeera today, which surprised me. I wasn't surprised by the move from Saudi Arabia. Firstly Al Jazeera is the most effective competitor against Saudi state TV and secondly they were passionately supportive of the Arab Spring, cover Saudi massacres in Yemen where no one else will, and have been reasonably positive in their coverage of Iran in Syria.  And of course Egypt has jailed an Al Jazeera journalist for years so they are no surprise.

But Israel, they are at least nominally on the side of liberal values e.g. a free press and also there's no other Arabic news source which is so balanced on Israel. Not balanced mind, they're very pro Palestinian, but like civil and they seek comment from Israel etc. It's not heathen devil coverage anyway. 

Anyway I wouldn't have thought that a news organization that contains like 30 percent ex BBC journalists would come under this kind of fire. Especially basically without western support and with some western aggression. I knew the west supported Saudi Arabia despite its human rights violations but I didn't expect this kind of acceptance of an overt attack on one of the most effective journalistic institutions in the world.

So I guess with that in mind...

Why I watch Al Jazeera

1.) Journalists on the ground.
It's no secret that pundits talking in your newsroom is a lot cheaper and makes just as many ratings as getting someone out to where the story is to cover it. Al Jazeera is one of the very few organizations that still funds field reporting in a major way someone actually on the ground talking to people.

2) Worldwide coverage
Al Jazeera does have a bit of a Muslim world focus but it's truly international and they cover the whole planet mostly equally.

3) Coverage of Africa

You might think this is the same as 2 but most outlets have a real blind spot when it comes to Africa and I seek out coverage specifically. That's actually how I got into Al Jazeera to start with. I was trying to understand the DRC or something and they were the only ones doing any kind of regular coverage so you could follow a story from one week ( or month) to the next.

4) Focus on poor people

If Al Jazeera has a bias I think it is less pro Muslim or pro Arab and more pro poor. It is literally the only news outlet I can go to in print audio or TV that regularly covers ordinary people or people's movements, and good news stories as well. I saw a thing about new solar cookers going into villages there, an in depth piece on a woman raped repeatedly who had made a farming commune on marginal land for rape victims, artists in this slum in India who the government was trying to shift. For both stories like that about changes to people's lives and just interviewing civilian individuals living through the big stories there's no beating them.

5) They take in depth reporting to a new level.

I always tell the story of one of my favourite stories Al Jazeera covered about Somali refugees who were fleeing to Yemen (that's right folks to Yemen in case you thought Somalia didn't suck) and the reporter got in with the refugees and interviewed a bunch of them on the docks and then get this smuggled himself on one of the dodgy fishing boats run by not nice pirates. He got like threatened and semibeaten by these people along with the refugees and then thrown off the boat into the waves off the coast of their destination.

You can't get the story at the coal face like that any other way and it's a whole new dimension to really see it rather than like the journalists embedded with friendly troops.

6) Balance of coverage

All my other news sources are western and they have blind spots when it comes to stuff done by the west or its allies. So you hear lots about Isis but never about Yemen or Bahrain. And the Turkish connection to Isis is hushed a little. Socialist leaders in Latin America who don't play ball are strongmen. And you hear a lot more about human rights atrocities in the siege of Aleppo than the siege of Mosul.

Al Jazeera has it's blind spots too, but they're different and so I feel like I get a more complete picture having coverage from more than one different alliance grouping.

7) They're "objective"

Ok so I know no one's really objective and everyone comes from their own perspective and blah blah blah but I think there's still a difference between organizations that may have a view but let the facts speak e.g. BBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, the Economist, prolly still NYT and Wall street journal, the Guardian places where the story is the story and places where the story is largely created to serve the ideology like Fox news, MSNBC, the leftist rags I get on the street, Saudi and Chinese state TV. Ok so I don't really have a lot of experience with Le Monde or Chinese state TV but you get the point right?

So in conclusion they're not my only news source but they're a source for good and the free press and people having a voice that otherwise wouldn't and they sure as hell have a lot of hate for the terrorist organizations they're being accused of supporting.  More than that, they will interview both those terrorists and their victims and the Muslim civilian population that fears and hates them in a way few other people will and that I think is more damning than just calling them evildoers from across an ocean.

And if you've only ever heard Al Jazeera talked about on US news, you should check them out.  They stream online live round the clock.

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Preacher says there is a god shaped void in everybody life but the only thing ghetto people can fill a void with is void.

I'm not calling him a coward.  I'm not saying he's stingy. But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness.

Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it's some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way not to live at all is to take life one day at a time.  It's the way I've discovered to not do a damn thing.

Even if it never comes the point is I'll be waiting for it and the waiting is just as bad because you can't do anything else in Jamaica but wait for something to happen to you.  This applies to good stuff too.  It never happens.  All you have is the waiting for it.

He say the point over and over, from one direction then the next with new words and the same words until he figure they get him point.  But as usual white bwoi think black man stupid.  Them get the message from he come through the door.  Stop mess with white people.

I am slowly realising that even though the Singer is the centre of the story that it isn't really his story.  Like there's a version of this story that's not really about him, but about the people around him, the ones who come and go that might actually provide a bigger picture than me asking him why he smokes ganja.

I wonder if you find this as obscene as I do that they are so quiet, as if this is work.  There will be no last words.  I wonder if you are crying now.  I wonder if you hope somehow the Singer will hear you begging for mercy.
But you should know this.
The living, they never listen.

Make me ask you something, you think Trench Town is a favourite spot for anybody living in Trench Town?  You think any of them sitting on a stoop saying, Now this is the life?  Tourist funny, boy.

Bushwick.  I still working my brain on how Jamaicans can come to a ghetto 5 time as big and with tenement three time as high and think they're better off.  What, nobody know the difference between a good thing and a bigger bad thing?  That must be for some other brother to figure out.

Hey me now... these meant something to me but they don't really give the full sense. When it starts, a boy is being buried alive. The Singer is in it but not of it, and there is a building inevitability to a climax that happens like midway, and then consequences spill out slow and certain for years and decades and may be  only at the end of all that do you know why. And there are times you lose what is going on in the language and times it seems perfectly clear. And it understands real poverty in a way nothing else does.

And I forgot to mark my favourite line where he says it's so ugly a picture couldn't cover it because a picture would smooth the lines have some beauty. And then later someone else says that that beautiful line also has too much beauty.

Like the difference between poverty and the povertiresque in Pierre. 

Anyway, I would read this one again and anything else by him too. It gets into something... Like Arundhati Roy says... How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everyone? No, by slowly becoming everything.

How we live now

On the way to breakfast this morning the whole breakfast crew happened to be on the same train on the same car going in. So we all walked together. It was my pick so we went to this trendy cafe down an alley off queen street where they serve craft beer after ten.

Jem and I mowed the lawn and lost the lawnmower gas cap over the weekend. While I did that he pruned the lime, not fully but enough to take some of the most egregious out of it. It's still got a bit of fruit from last season and is already starting to bloom again.

Spring is coming. You can feel it, but it's still so dark and cold each morning that getting up is like a daily struggle.

I levelled last week in Pokemon there was a double everything event on and I played like a fiend, plus got an amazing legendary of both kinds.

My new income requires budgeting. We figured out it's less than the dole. If course I don't have bills which assists in all that but still. It's so easy to forget how to live without tons of money. I used to rule at it, but you forget and it's such a luxury not to think about it. In Brisbane it's all about having more meals at home.

I have a date night movie with Jeremy tonight, we're going to see Magnus, the Scandinavian film about Magnus Carlson. I'm pretty excited. We saw Dunkirk and Gold for Jeremy over the weekend.

Nick and Kimmi are leaving town on like the 14th. We're giving them a going away party on the 12th. That's like two weeks away and then they will just be gone. I feel longing about that but it doesn't seem real.

Jules has invited me to a cider night Friday, and we have the lan party Wed as always, and I have dreams about working through some projects and pruning the rest of that tree.

I'm lonely, but I don't really want to see anyone.

I bought external batteries and jean shorts last week.

My school contacted me about the letter I need to send back as far as what I'm doing next year. For now I'm stalling but not for long.

Today is about my diary and letters from Joanna and walking the streets and Pokemon, I plan to stay out straight to the evening. Tomorrow should be cleaning the house and then we'll see.

Verses from Adelaide

These are a couple of prose poems/ babble I wrote while in Adelaide. I got to see fall twice this year which felt pretty great and there was a lot of running around both kangaroo island, really pretty nature place and barossa valley wine country.

The Southern Ocean

A deeper blue
Beneath this water, other water
Between the waters and the waters
The sand like white powder, soft
Limestone cliffs, carved out in convoluted hollows
Gentle waves flutter against them, digging further
Rocks on the shore, tumbling like giant's playthings
And underground, like the crystal caves of dwarves.

Adelaide Hills

Crimson leaves
Fall in the cemetery, fall in the hills
Drive out to watch the colours.
Apples growing pendulous in the trees
And grapes post harvest with a yellow tinge and flares of scarlet, crowning leaves.
Roads wind
Hills up and hills down and vistas on hills looking down.
Fat eucalyptus trees
Apple orchards
The Chardonnay tastes like butter just like books
Shades of plum and red pepper
Leaf litter in the rain.
A gulf opens up, hazy and grey into spectacles of farmland.

The Enchantress of Florence

In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveller coming this way...might believe...the monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow on the earth to dazzle and awe his guests...Nor were there guards at the golden water's edge; was the king so generous then that he allowed all his subjects...to draw up liquid bounty from the lake? ...But then the sun fell below the horizon, the gold sank beneath the water's surface, and was lost. Mermaids and serpents would guard it until the return of daylight. Until then, water itself would be the only treasure on offer, a gift the thirsty traveller gratefully accepted.

"Keep your secret," he said.  "Secrets are for children, and spies."  The stranger got down ... "And for sorcerers," he told the driver of the bullock cart.  "And for lovers too.  And kings."

Without water we are nothing, the traveller thought.  Even an emperor, denied water, will swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

Fires began to burn in the twilight like warnings.  From the black bowl of the sky came the answering fires of the stars.  As if the earth and the heavens were armies preparing for battle, he thought.  As if their encampments lie quiet at night and await the war of the day to come.

We will take your finest offspring from you and we will transform them utterly. We will make them forget you and turn them into the force that keeps you under our heel. By your own lost children will you be ruled.

Tell me everything. . . and then you will be free.

And in the absence of the men the women of the capital learnt all over again that they were not made of lies and treasons but only of hair and skin and flesh, that they were all as imperfect as each other, and that there was nothing special if they were hiding from one another, no poisons, no plots and that even sisters can in the end find a way of getting along.

"I jostled her," she said, " I shoved so that she almost fell and she was my senior. I did not honour her and now she is gone."   Akbar comforted his mother.  "She knew you loved her," he said.  "She knew that a woman maybe a bad jostled and a good friend as well."   But the Queen mother was inconsolable.  "She always seemed so young," she said.  "The angel made a mistake.  I am the one who was just waiting to die."

In bed she whispered to him that she had another self inside her, a bad self, and when that self took over she was no longer responsible for her actions, she might do anything, anything.

Return to Oz

The Adelaide botanical gardens are a gateway into faerie. I came back here because it is the space where I broke and made my life, all alone, 16 years ago. I wasn't sure what I would find, probably nothing. The significance of this kind of place tends to move when you go away from it for a while, and like always when chasing dreams, the map is fuzzy and unreliable.

Just inside the gate in the deep shade of a fig tree, an old woman was in gentle tears, perhaps seeking its lifegiving comfort. Her voice was matter of fact, a notebook open in front of her. She was relaying the details of someone's coma, their next step treatment, the spectre of death nowhere in her words or tone but everywhere in her face.

Follies and fake Greek statuary littered the path as I went further in, like a stage set signifying opulence. I saw a tall cigar pine, the last clue of a childhood scavenger hunt, so went that way. It led me to a missing link pine, one known through its fossils but then discovered to still be alive in 1994. I was alive.

I found my way to civilization and my innards pulled against it. Circled the water lilies with their fable of the girl who fell in love with the moon and trying to get closer to him fell in a lake and drowned. The moon took pity on her and turned her into the Amazonian water lily, who only blooms at night when her lover gazes on her.  (The moon is drowning while I sleep.)

I circled the Appolonian aisle, all Japanese river fountains, feng shui, hedges, and then the Dionysian aisle, an arbor of wisteria. A child screamed, barbaric and raw. The birds screamed, dulcent and free.

A tunnel of pine boughs led me underneath a troll bridge. I felt a thrill of fear. I was careful that I let no branches touch me but as I crawled under another bridge, and then another I began to wonder if I was on a path at all.

I climbed out before the cliff. Back almost civilized people picnicking, I don't know where I'm going but I can feel so strongly where I should not be.  Then lorikeets played in a formal fountain, Versailles in paradise.

I can see a glass palace in front of me. Is this where I am going? It seems too large, too grand. When are things bigger than you imagined them? I thought it always went the other way.

And yet, and yet there is something familiar about these sealed shut panes of glass. The fronds and vines that press hungrily against the barrier, reaching for me. The giant grotto, shaped like the large fireplace in the witch's house, shaped like my heart, at one end.

Both doors were open. I held the threshold, held back by an invisible force. Do I want to go in, after all? Do I want to give it up, all those years of wanting? Will that be some kind of end to it all? But then again haven't I already walked through these doors? Didn't it already happen, in dreams? I held my breath, and stepped inside.

Dreams from the last two months.

The last one was last night

It was me and Jeremy and we were going from one factory to another. We had to engage them, start them running. Big and silver like a futuristic hospital. The rhythm of the dream was kind of like a computer game. Like we'd go out and come back and it was like you'd level up. There was one factory and it was so nanotechnology inspired that the whole facility looked like a USB stick but you could look at it zoomed way in and see all these component parts.

We were in this really fun high energy rock band. We were working on out next album in this shabby but capacious share house. White boards, all one level, kind of a mess. The main character was this blonde girl who looked a little like tank girl but was kind of innocent, gullible, silly. She had all these necklaces around her neck including a miniature teddy bear she called Steve, who had this little key attached to him as well. Anyway there was a whole part where we were at the house talking about or trying to write some songs. It was a little creative difference ish, but not in the screaming breaking up way, it just wasn't that easy. And then we had to go to our concert. It was like living end style music, a little pop punk but good, kind of jumpy v high energy and cheerful. She's singing, Geena in empire records ish, and there's some glancing to and fro at bandmates etc. All good feelings. At the end of the concert the band had like six people and the front four jumped into the crowd, one after the other. Blonde girl has been making eyes at this shaved headed kind of homeless looking punk dude during the concert and jumps into his arms. Then after he's like holding her and they're talking. He is shallowly charming, and he's spinning this whole line about how his friend wanted nachos but they got messed up. It seems kind of transparently untrue but she's kind of uncertain but falling for it a little, in that you know something bad is up but you don't know how to get out of it so you go with it even though your instinct is being sticky and bad kind of way. She's like you want to make nachos? And he's like that's the beauty of it we don't have to. Then he hooks Steve on his finger and looks at it and says you hide that and she murmurs. But that kind of convinces her like a sign. So then we have an establishing shot of the house and then I woke up. He wasn't going to like rape her, but maybe rob the house or maybe just like score a free meal. He was dodgy though.

I was at Tony's house and his girlfriend was into indoor gardening. He had a lot of beautifully constructed small tendrilly vines.

The younger brother of the family maybe 12 or 13 had been hit by a car,or run into one anyway. He was in hospital and the family was talking about admitting their daughter, about 19 to the hospital to keep him company. But the girl was heavily pregnant, and the family was afraid she'd pop in the hospital and that doctor had refused to deal with the birth.

Before that I was in their yard, a long prospect of grass, splendid but featureless. And the servants, an older woman from the house and a gardener were telling me stories from the family, this one among them. They had a big house, white.

But before that, Jes and I were at these people's house before a concert and she was irritated because she was ready to go and I kept having things to do. I took cheese and butter from their house sort of ganking it bc I forgot it from the start. Like at the shops I was at before.

I was the captain of a space ship, male, a disk ship. We were a kind of space adventurer. There was a villainous lizard race. We were at war with them and trying to avoid them mostly as they were stronger. I could shrink the spaceship or the people were miniaturised. So when I was on shore on a planet I could carry the spaceship in my arms and talk to my crew through a slot . The war with the lizard people went on for a while . I was on a barren planet and how I remember it was that someone creeped up behind me . I thought it was one of the lizard men . How I remember it when I was attacked from behind and I grabbed my attacker and choked him and then broke his neck but after he was dead I realised it was not a lizard person but another humanoid race . I started to stash his body in a pile of leaves but then dragged it into a nearby marsh. He turned out to have a crew that had landed on the same planet. In the meantime my ship had a navigational fault. This ship navigated by a jumping method . It would identify an area of space with less than 30% density and then leap the ship there. This enabled us to avoid our enemies because we could jump from place to place far away in space with little control but fair certainty of safety. Since it organised the galaxy by density rather than linearly we could run and hide very effectively. However without the navigation system we could not necessarily avoid jumping into the middle of a star or planet. So we needed the assistance of the other crew to repair the navigation system and I did not trust them enough to tell them I had killed their friend. The other crew was also space adventurers but they had been less involved in the war. I did not think they would understand how trigger happy I had gotten. Further we were stranded so very vulnerable. They were looking for their mate and I was going through the motions of looking with them cognizant that the body was not well hidden though it was a swampy planet.

At the base of the garden was a tiny gate. Big enough to crawl through but not big enough to walk through. She walked me down there and was going to turn over the key to me, so wanted to show me the basics so I could explore. She deliberately didn't tell me everything she knew though.  The door was a small arched wooden gate, well seated into the back fence, and the key was an old fashioned wooden pencil. You could use the pencil to note your thoughts and experiences but even if the lead broke, the wooden bit would fit in the keyhole. So she showed me how to use the key and then I went through. I think only one person could go through at a time because if I went, she stayed, and the idea was that she had gotten what she needed to out of the place and was handing it over to me, thought I needed something too. She explained to me that the tiny people lived here. There was a path that went left and right, and a small creek. There was a sign that said to stay off the path, but it was really the only way to go, so both of us walked on it. I started out crawling. She said there was a better chance of seeing the tiny people that way. They were there and she had seen them, but they were shy and not that common. There were a race of bigger people who lived further in. Anyway, the rocks and bark hurt my knees so I stood up. Cats could live back in this world but no people. Still you'd see the occasional neighborhood cat you recognised.

I walked along the path to the left first. It seemed to be the longer way. The creek followed the road, and it was lovely in an English countryside kind of way. Far in the distance I could hear was seemed to be excited voices going up in cheers and cries, and I could see a bunch of dots that would seem to converse, then a cry would go up and they would all move. This, I thought must be the tiny people. But when I got there, they were birds. Tiny finches, green on on the back, white belly, with both black and scarlet on their heads. They were lovely, and it wasn't a kind of bird I had seen before, but I was still a little disappointed I hadn't seen the people.

The path continued up a green hill and turned, it seemed to go on a long way, and so I wanted to wait to go too far until I had more time, a proper expedition. So I turned back and went to the right of the gate. This way the road didn't extend far before you got to a small tavern. This thing had room after room and there were people carousing in one room, playing darts in another, and some people actually lived there. There was a girl a couple sizes smaller than me because I tried on her clothes, who had a whole walk in wardrobe and a couple of rooms. And a boy who also lived there. He was interested in the key but I got the impression it wasn't easy to take if I didn't let him.

Over the course of several visits we got to know these people and there was this whole plan to do a prank on these kids, we were going to take the girl's clothes to our side of the gate. It was like a joke, but also we really wanted something too. Then I woke up.

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

– William Butler Yeats

Hello World

I've been hiding out from the world of the internet for a little while here. I think I don't want to attempt to express, at least not publicly, what I'm feeling, what I'm doing.  There's been a lot of transitions and feelings, getting home, Jes leaving. And a lot of conversations, or maybe just one, that I don't want to have with the world. I was pretty successful in communicating to everyone last year, that I didn't want to know what I was doing with this year and wanted to let it come to me/find it this year. Only now of course it's this year, and I still feel a strong compulsion to not know the answers to a lot of questions. Am I going back to work? What do I want to do this year? Do I want more education? To try to get another job? And I mean it's May today, it's not just this year, the year is half over. Or close to that.

But I've been pretty happy, and pretty invested in what I've been doing. But the things I've been doing are kind of indefensible as far as what I'm going to make my life about. But I don't want to address that, or defend it. I have this certainty (mostly) that it's going to come to me, or it won't and that will also be ok.

So what I've been doing since I got home Feb 15 has basically been cleaning my house. Though those who know me know that that's been pretty involved. Furniture has been bought, shelves installed. That's a major life project or something that's in its final stages, but as yet incomplete. All the rooms look like how I want them now, clean basically and organised and the right things in each room and with that airy openness and no filth jumbles and no roach crap and fit for purpose of what we're doing with our lives right now. But I still haven't dug out and cleaned all the books in the library, or faced my personal papers, or washed the walls, or rehung the art. Some of that is stuff I need to do with Jeremy, and some is just stuff that feels like a drag. But Jes and I spent a month just working on the kitchen.

And going to Sydney, and playing Pokemon, and celebrating my birthday and talking about our lives, and saying goodbye to each other, and having welcome back parties with everyone I know. So lots of stuff.

Another thing I've been doing is repairing Jeremy's mind and heart, which needed some doing, and we're seeing some progress on. He's still more tired than I would like, and restless in a way that needs addressing. But he's having his own ideas about what he'd like, to eat to do to see, and that sense of dragging himself each day into his life is subsiding some.

And another thing I've had sort of continuous house guests. Jes left March 15th, and Vanessa showed up two days later. I had a week or two after that and then Kelvin came, and then Bharath and Mat arrived the day after that. They left last weekend, by which I mean Tuesday so a three day week and a cold later and now Jeremy and I are sitting around both with colds on our three day weekend. I'm heading out to see Ducky in a week or so, so the friend bomb will keep going off for a while yet. I've seen Marie a few times, she's been her usual showing up with bubbles awesome self, and Nick and Kimmi are regular features, and Jules has made plans with me a couple good times, but I haven't seen Neil since my coming home party and you know, I am spending most of my time on my own, or with my out of towners or with Jeremy.

I might write about the future later. And I have written a bunch of things over the last couple months which I might post. But this is my now, mostly.

Plato's shadows

Parini imagines Melville in this book I'm reading. In it, Melville imagines the mind of a whale. A father on Al Jazeera imagines his son, working with Al Shebab. He imagines a brutal murderer, but also someone he loves. Jessamyn imagines Thomas Jefferson making love to Sally Hemingway but leaving her in chains. We are masks and masks within masks and down it goes Mitchell says. John Green did a beautiful metaphor of meaning asked if it was constructed or real where he said if you found an eternal flame that needed no wood or tending that it would always give warmth and light and would be good but if there was no such thing, or if you didn't find it, then you could build a fire and strike a spark and feed it, and maybe that would be worse, but also better in some ways because you're a part of it and he would argue that both gave light and warmth of equal value. It is an eloquent defense of constructed meaning, but I think with a stealth defense of objective meaning. Because we do not build our fires out of nothing. That wood, that flint, that fuel is real. When we imagine each other, we are real, and the things we imagine are also real. We cannot build a fire only in our mind, built out of only shadows.

Send me a leaf

Send me a leaf, but from a little tree
That grows no nearer your house
Than half an hour away. For then
You will have to walk, you will get strong and I
Shall thank you for the pretty leaf.

-Bertolt Brecht

Homecoming

I Everyone picked me up from the airport and it was pretty magic. Zak managed to delay his flight so I got a couple of days with him,  all happening, and some by ourselves talking time as well. Especially after this year with him, I really needed to like hold on.

I am up to actually making plans on a day with my dad. That's a thing.

I have been loving so much all these tiny familiar things. Where my bedroom is, 24 hour western style hot water. Food I know what's in it. I actually like American cuisine, I'm gonna say it. And the leaves of the Christmas tree were still moist and it's raining for winter in North Carolina. I can't describe it, I just know where everything is and how to do things. There's nothing to be figured out and I know where I'm going to sleep tomorrow.

There's just a thousand tiny familiar things and I think I'm a bit ready to know what's going to happen.

Last day in chile was a bit magic. We went to Neruda's house which was a bit of an art home, designed by an architect friend of his with beautiful inside and outside connectivity. It was a bit of an art collector's house as well, with his passion for well selected objects collected over the years. And it was a bit of an artist's house where he lived with his lover and friends, entertaining passionately.

I learned a lot about him too. Like he had a whole political career with the Allende government, so when he died people supporting the dictatorship vandalized his house. His wife, hard as nails (there's a Diego Rivera of her in the house) did his wake in the wrecked house for all the world to see. People came out in masses to carry his body and it was described as the first mass demonstration against the regime.

I bought a bilingual copy of the captains song.

It's a few days after I started writing this. I went up to VA to see Toney and Melinda the day after Zak left. It was a lovely day but big. Then I had a mom/Michael split yesterday and a Harmony /mom split today. We've got Harmony's house half clean. Some steps taken to figure out mom's Medicare stuff. I did some crap paperwork that's important. Micheal made me a lovely meal and we watched ballet docos.  Been on a couple walks. Caught a buffalo in pokémon. Pretty tired and maybe getting sick. The weather has been positively spring like, daffodils are coming up everywhere.

Los desaparacidos

One guy when he was interviewed kept saying how they beat him but didn't ask him any questions, he kept saying they asked the man in the bunk underneath me, but not me, not me.

They are not afraid to show things, diagrams of the types of torture, direct full text of the commission on truth and reconciliation report. I guess all the silence makes them not want to leave anything out.

The handicrafts people made, doves breaking out of bars, hands holding the barbed wire which opens a gap to look out, embroidery by one prisoner of another prisoner carving things from bone. They are all so gentle.

The families of the disappeared did this dance called the lonely coalco (sp?).  It's a traditional dance in chile, but you see it's performed by a couple. So these women, they would do it alone because their husband, brother, son, had vanished.

Apparently sting was also affected by this because there was a song.

In unlimited badass news, everyone really should look up Chilean two time president Michelle Bachelet, who was herself detained and interrogated by Pinochet's regime along with her mother, and whose father was disappeared and killed by the regime. She founded this museum, and donated a copper plate carved by her father in detention.

The pope visits, and so people assemble, and this becomes this tremendous protest, or riot. The tremendous power of the Catholic Church sometimes, as a rallying point for revolution and hope.

And then just people came out and voted and it was all over. History is hard to believe.

I find it tough to get into the heads of people living through this because so many just didn't capitulate. Some schoolteacher who tried to intervene in a kidnapping, like years in. I think I would just look down. You could be next. I mean when you know how many of the relatives of the disappeared were themselves disappeared, yet still the group persists, people join.

I guess to quote my audio guide "this is not a history of which we are ashamed because of the horrors committed by the dictatorship, it is a history of which we are proud because of the infinite ability of men and women to overcome adversity, horror and oblivion and continue fighting to build a country at peace in which human rights are respected. "

So I'm on my way from the museum to the detention centre memorial, and Google lets me down, the address is way wrong. I don't know this so I'm asking a random local for directions. He walks me around the block to his friend who has great English. On the way he tells me Pinochet was the best president ever, developed the country more than any other. His friend says the memorial is "a small memory" "the memory of the left",  but then his friend shows up and says that it has some memories that need remembering significantly, and they mutter to each other for a while, and then do dualing directions for me, helping a damsel in distress seeming to cut right across the political aisle. Left friend says it divides the country, but he hopes less and less. I wonder what these old men think of the disappeared. Trumped up? Overblown? False? Worth it? I don't ask though, they're at work and I want to listen to what they do say.  Especially since it's so far outside of my understanding or experience. How do you like a guy who demonstrably tortured a bunch of people to death?

And then I went to the real 38 Londres, an unremarkable house on the nice side of the city centre, three stories, a balcony onto the street. Which was one of the number of torture and detention centers scattered around Santiago, like seven in santiago and 400 in the country. An empty house, abandoned feeling, with some quotes or lines stenciled on the walls.

The most confronting thing was that if just watched at the human rights museum a video of a guy being interviewed walking through this house and explaining how he was tortured and where.

But went through it quickly because there wasn't much and then home to jes and a giant Mexican dinner (skipped lunch) and thinkings.

I fly to the USA tomorrow. God help me. Trump is inaugurated while I'm in the air.

Crossing the border

The border between Chile and Argentina is framed by two small towns,  Chile Chico and Los Antiguas, our precedent and destination.

The border is a river and the two towns are both about 4-5 km from the river.

You are not allowed to take a tour of people across the border without bringing them back but you are allowed to cross the border on foot.

So here's what we did. We got a taxi to the border, crossed on foot. Walked the 5km to the river where we had set up a tour operator to pick us up. He was supposed to get us and drive us to the other border which we would then walk across, and then take us to the ferry terminal, where we would buy the ferry tickets across the lake and onward minibus tickets to Cohaique. Then he'd take us on a tour and stuff.

Unexpectedly this whole plan came off without a hitch, and by ten in the morning we were headed off to a national park.

Now I had booked this tour because I had read in a guidebook about a turquoise lake full of flamingos. Spoiler alert, this turned out to be a brown lake with two flamingos. Far away. In a paddock.

However it wasn't that disappointing for two reasons. Firstly, our best day in Los Antiguas happened to drive by two other flamingos in a puddle in a field who were fantastic colors, pink and scarlet, and who we pulled over to look at and then took off, showing the scarlet and black undersides of their wings.  So we did get to see a couple beautiful flamingos in the wild and that's actually what made me remember to go here. The second reason is that we started the day with an excellent 7 km hike so I was already full of awesome when we got there.

So the hike. The Patagonian landscape is hills, still the Andes, covered with deserty bushes that flower at least now in summer, and provide canyon gulfs with rivers between them. Some snow capped peaks depending on the elevation. Few big trees, those are more north and on the Chilean side. They say the Andes are born in Venezuela and go all the way to Antarctica. They run north South, except just above ushuaia where the continental plates bend them and they go east west. We crossed them there but that's another story.

This whole time we've worked our way up the Andes.

So the hike. We started a gentle uphill, a Mongolian kind of slope, straight up but even and not too steep. Straight along through the deserty bluff until we got to the mouth of the canyon. Then it turned greener, the trickling waterway through the canyon feeding brighter plants. We made our way further up the canyon base until we hit these impressive rock formations. Think like the Torres in Torres del Paine. The best one was a total totem pole, 40m high and 4m diameter. And standing all alone so it was tall and stark.

Then we started the most serious climbing, cresting the ridge at a saddle back that was also a view point. This had a great view of the next canyon, and the jagged rocks that led into there. A baby condor flew over.

From there we descended on a bit of a curve to a little cave of the hands. Now this was not an impressive display compared to the one we went to on the best Las Antiguas day, but you could totally make out prehistoric hand prints and you could go right inside the cave so you could get as close as you wanted. I could have touched them though of course I didn't.

Then we descended steeply down, and you had to be careful with your footing because it was treacherous. Jes fell but did not retwist her ankle. I got a bit behind, but when I rounded a corner I saw Jes and the guide on top of a giant white rock in a white stone landscape. A moonscape the sign read and so I called it right away as volcanic. Because when I went hiking in the canary island they called the striking post volcanic rocky desolation a moonscape. 

This one was magic because it was white. So I get there and climb this 3m tall white rock which totally has like a ramp up the back. And all around us are these crazy convoluted rock formations. The guide says it's where the volcano imploded and then a river poured in making all the swirls and pockets.

Then we clambered down the cliff back to the car. A long way but satisfying. And then to the disappointing flamingo Lake and then to Chile Chico, where we spent the night in a palatial hotel room which we got cheap because it was under construction 👷. This tragically meant there was no heat but we got space heaters which worked good and cooked Asian food and slept in a bed with crisp white sheets.

Next afternoon we took the ferry across the lake. The lake of our heart, lake Buenos Aires / Lake general Carrera that we've been at for days now, said goodbye to the lake and minibussed up to Cohaique. The regional capital where we worked out our next step, did laundry, and solved our cash problems.

Booked the ferry from Puerto aysen to Isla grande de chiloe, a 24 hour ferry, booked our first night on the isla,investigated a bunch of options that led to that. Made Mexican food. Did I say that jes lost her debit card that can take out cash? Probably in the atm. Managed to western union ourselves some money after investigating some options. Walked around the square. Played some pokémon.  Also this hostel did not have heat. Also the dogs of chile are adorable.

Then today we got up, had a leisurely morning, then got the minibus to Puerto aysen, and then the other minibus to the ferry port, and now we're on our ferry. A little two bunk cabin with a window, our home for the next day.

Slade house

I have nightmares about running out of food
Go to bed with a packet of digestives.
Not that kind of food
What other kinds are there?
Food that makes you hungrier, the more of it you eat.

You may find a weapon in the cracks... For you it's too late, but pass it on.

Promise me, promise me I'm not dreaming you.... And you're not dreaming me?

People are masks, with masks under those masks and masks under those, and down you go.

Little fluffy clouds by Orb! Is a song that I've been looking for for years and it's here in this book! Also honorable mention to a double supergrass joke. As well as the diving bell and the butterfly. Oh Mitchell you own my soul. You don't even need to drink.

What if slade house is the hallucination and this door's my way back? Not a rabbit hole into wonderland but the rabbit hole home?

My stubborn Me insists

Grief is an amputation, but hope is an incurable hemophilia : you bleed and bleed.

Once you've been a psychiatric patient, nobody ever gives you the benefit of the doubt again. Easier to fix a bad credit rating than a bad credibility rating.

Eternity, jade. It's Maori. I chose it, I wrapped it, I sent it once to someone I loved.

Perhaps this calm is the silty stillness between the sucked away and the tsunamis roaring horizon wide hill high arrival, but while it lasts, I'll use it.

Hatred is a thing one hosts: the lust I feel to harm, maim, wreck and kill this woman is less an emotion I hold than what I am now become.

Traditionally we'd stage another climactic battle between good and evil. We'd never agree which of us is which however and the only prize on offer is a slower death.