Road trip, from Coffs

I've worked my way down the coast a bit more so

What's special about Yamba
I think it's mostly this pub. The town is a really good size like small enough all the locals can hang out and the tourists add to the place but don't ruin it. Yamba is structured so the beach is a cliff, less good for running out for a quick swim, bc you have to march all the way down and all the way back up. But this is great for the Yamba Hotel (Note: in Oz pubs are called hotels mostly cause back when all these places were villages the pub public house you know was like the real public building and also had a few rooms for rent and they are still my first port of call if there is no hostel, like the second cheapest room in that way ) Anyway the Yamba Hotel has floor to ceiling glass windows and is on this cliff just above the main beach so an incredible view out over the water and my first day in Yamba I took a break day there to play on my book and read and I was actually talked into it by the pub itself, I go in and the restaurant isn't open yet, I ask about a coffee but the pub kind of is hello alcoholism but they don't serve coffee but they're like feel free to have a drink or get this go get a take away coffee somewhere else and hang out for our views so I grabbed a series of lemon lime and bitters and made a day of their view.
I also saw fantastic beasts and how to find them 2 which was super thematic because I was reading the Harry Potter series on my way down the coast plus there's the world's most local movie theater in Yamba. And there I ran into a guy I knew from teaching, Graham who retired with his now husband (he was actually part of the marriage campaign in Yamba and said everyone was super supportive yay) of like 20 years in what used to be their vacation home and is now their life. And he is in like 12 local community campaigns and seems really joyful in retirement, where he used to be a bit cynical at work so I'm really glad it worked out for him so well tho I didn't get quite as much chatting with him as I would have liked, despite his best efforts.  Anyway the town is special in that I was there for 2 or 3 days but I managed to drop into my new local bookstore twice and was treated so nice, this pub every day, visit the local cinema use my local bakery as a great takeaway to the beach breakfast option more than once you know I just felt like a simalcrum of living there comfortably almost immediately. Also I slow walked this ace lighthouse walk along more rocky cliffs.

About Angourie
There were blue pools and green pools and it managed to be both super quiet and also like a real hot spot for families and teens swimming etc. The cool part tho was that I had a picnic breakfast of pie and coffee, so I walked at an angle to the second nearest beach I hadn't seen, and then I noticed that you could totally walk along the beach to the next town, and so I just started out figuring if it was all too much I could always turn back and drive but I walked all the way out there and all the way back along the beach so it was like two hours of beach walking and then a couple hours of hanging around the the pools and then lunch out there and then a drink at the local pub in the evening and then home for dinner.

Red Cliff
Ok I'm on the road now so I had a model this trip where I basically picked the most small sometimes dirt coastal road and ducked into inlets like every 20-40 minutes down the road which is not far on these kinds of roads. Some places I just had a look, sometimes I went for a swim or a short walk or read my book on the beach for a bit, but like Byron, Yamba, Coffs Harbor, Port Macquarie, Newcastle, is the tourist trail, those are the major stops and have hostels and most people like bus between those, Yamba is barely even on that but these other places are like villages with maybe a campsite down a national park dirt road or a caravan park at the edge of town. And I'm only hanging out some of these places like 30 minutes rather than a couple of days. Still I think all my true favorite places were of this variety, tiny village, big national park, deserted beach, you know the other places are like towns which means they have grocery stores and places to eat and stay and lifeguarded beaches and maybe sights but also just a bit less atmospheric.

Ok Red Cliff itself, so named for its cliffs is on this hike which I would totally be into doing someday which is like a rudementary coastal trail that strings for four days from about Yamba down to broom's Head through the Yurangir national park. This national park rules, I drove through it for ages, littoral rainforest regular forest one gorgeous white sand cove after another just awesome. This campsite was super basic, a drinking water tap at the entrance to refill your tanks, basic campsites, a bank of chemical toilets. I thought my in-laws with their camping truck would be perfect here, pull up, set up your little kitchen and shower, use the facilities, you can stumble over a dune to a gorgeous private beach and there's a coastal day track if you want it. I did the lookout, cliffs and red rocks and walked a little down the trail but not far.

Broom's Head
If it had been later this was a great place to pull up my car and park for the night, nice little picnic area, particularly gorgeous beach. As it was I took the little very well maintained loop track to the lookout and back around through the forest. But it totally went to the next gorgeous cove and on and on. It's one of the places I marked in my head for the way back/ next trip. Freaking awesome.

Sandon River
The campsite here is all the way down an endless dirt road on a spit. I checked it out with intent thinking about staying here but wound up backtracking down the dirt road to a random beach access and taking a late afternoon swim on a completely deserted beach. I got out my towel and everything, swam walked up the beach swam again walked back swam again layed out on my towel reading and dozing while sunset started to happen and the breeze and sun wafted over me. I considered just sleeping right there on the beach, but I decided when it got cold from night it would stop being fun fast so I headed down the road as night fell.

Wooli
Wooli is an incredible and almost certainly totally underrated town, where the river meets the ocean over a long long spit. The town is further up and then as you go out the spit it gets more and more residential and scraggly. There's a long river walk, a sidewalk and then the beach goes on.  I got in here late, as darkness fell and drove down this long long spit in the dark. Ate a cold supper in the back of my car and slept out here. In the morning I woke at dawn, of course, took a sunrise walk along the spit of beach. It was a good sunrise too, right over the point, and then when the sun crested I took a dawn swim. Showered in the public toilets and combed my hair at the river.

Mullaway
This was one of my places I marked for the way back, cause it was awesome, but a bit much for before breakfast, one of those coves between two hills Oz is great at, I took the little overlook walk and then jetted, but here would have been good to stay as well.

Woolgoolga
Had breakfast of champions and poked in a little used bookstore. Maybe my first espresso of the trip, very satisfying. The rest of the day I think was a lot of driving down dirt roads hopping out at various points, it was front loaded though and I wound up in coffs by the afternoon.

Coffs Harbor
I did a lot of walking at Coffs. The beaches are very picturesque but a bit cold and no surf but it's got a big foreshore and a lot of little paths. So the first day I walked out to Corambirra point where there's an old bunker and a hill lookout and a break wall that goes out a long way. Second day I wandered around on the piers and beach coves. On the morning of my last day I climbed up muttenbird island which is sort of the highlight of this place. It did command a lovely view.

Road trip, from Byron

I got to my secret cove a little before low tide this morning. It's Riki tiki tavi's cove, one of the places he hides out, out of reach of the British frigates, impassible at certain times. The ocean has changed, so it's harder to get to, I didn't trust it at all at high tide and when I came back the outer beach was all gone, underwater now, and you could only get to the cove with significant wading and clambering. Inside, it was still quiet, shaded, excellent. Two hawks landed, each on a tree on each side, and one called and screed, a high pitched keening, to the other one, who cleaned her tail and paid him no mind. Eventually he came over to her branch, still singing. They were close enough to me I could see his mouth move.  I got out of there, took a swim before the sun got too high, and got back to my hostel in time to shower before breakfast.

I've managed to get a sunburn on my first day, which is inspiring me to move on today, as an alternative to spending five hours on the beach again, but I've been slow to move out. I read in the hostel and tried to download things, and then I've been doing the big loop trail up to the lighthouse, so I suspect it will feel a bit like evening before I really leave.

But the trail can be done with clothes on which lets my burn heal. It is hot though. Off the Eastern most point in Australia lookout, there was a pod of dolphins. They were basically resting, slowly swimming parallel to the coast, then turning out a bit to see. It's not every day you see a pod of wild dolphins off the furthest point in the country, though from where I live, it basically could be.

It was either here or Noosa I first really saw the Pacific, high points you know so you can see the turquoise of the shallow water, and the deep blue of the deep, and the purpling of the rocks underneath, the ice milk color I associate now with Alpine lakes where it churnes up close to shore. When I saw it like that, at the time I didn't know it could be like that, so clear the color changes when there's clouds.

When I went swimming this morning it was early and empty enough there were fish.

My signature scent

White flowers (frangipani, mock orange gardenias etc, there's this specific thing they all smell like)

When the air turns warm (there's a thing that happens when the air heats up a little and it's decay and ripening fruit and new growth leaves and warmth itself. It smells like life to me)

New cut grass- just always has been

Neck hollow (there's this scent in the hollow of the neck of certain boys that's like the morning dew, it's like fresh water but it's integrally connected to who I've been attracted to etc over my life)

The sea cause of course and the cool thing about the sea is you can catch the scent from way way off.

Fresh air- maybe this is the same as the other air one? But indoor air has the smell of like dust and suffocation most notable in industrially enclosed places like hospitals and shopping malls and outdoor air like blows that funk away.

I don't have a strong sense of smell, allergies etc, but I can catch a lot of scents pretty faint and they're jacked into my consciousness in that way, a weak nose but extra attention I suppose.

Stuff I can make

I was thinking about grocery shopping and this is the by no means comprehensive list of like stuff I cook on a regular (or not so regular) basis. I thought it would help us figure out what to buy and eat if we could like pick it off a list so I sent it to Jem.

Indian
Daal
Palak paneer
Vegetable korma

Chinese/korean
Sirachi soy stir fry
Dumplings +/-
Garlic stir fry
Honey soy chicken and veggies
Satay vegetables
Duck and bak choy

Italian/greek
Mushroom pasta (spaghetti Bolognese)
Mushroom pasta (cream sauce)
Mushroom pizzas (of mushrooms)
Pesto broccoli pasta
Pizza and salad
Lasagna
Ravioli
Eggplant parmesan
Eggplant and goats cheese pasta

Other Euro
Falafel platter
Spanikopita
Pasta salad
Baked brie and baguette
Quiche

American
Mac and cheese
Chicken cutlet +veg and carb maybe
Burgers
Chicken and chips
Oven roasted veggies
Lentil meatloaf
Mushroom burgers
Green bean casserole
Egg salad

Thai
Tom yum soup
Curry (need paste)

Mexican/Texmex
Enchiladas
Soft or hard tacos
Nachos
Black beans and sweet potatoes
Chili and cornbread

Black lives matter?

So I just wrote this thing to my dad. Those familiar with me will recognise it as the most of my thoughts/ feelings I have expressed to my dad in a decade or so. I have an accelerated heart rate as a result. I dunno.

Hey Dad,

So while we were out to dinner you brought up black lives matter and said that every case of a black person shot by police officers had been armed. 

And I didn't respond to that at the time, I was kind of shocked for a start, I've never heard any one say anything close to that and also I don't have a quick encyclopedic kind of memory. But I've been thinking about it a lot recently, maybe because I'm listening to the new season of serial or maybe because I'm thinking about you cause I'm thinking about grandfather more recently. 

But it's just not true is the thing

Like

Stephon Clark St Louis had a cell phone not a gun

Alton Sterling Louisiana CDs no gun

Terence crutcher Tulsa hands up no gun 

Walter Scott shot five times in the back unarmed ran from a broken taillight stop SC

Rumain Brisbon hand in pocket unarmed shot to death over a drug thing

Micheal brown the guy from Ferguson was unarmed and sitting in his car

Eric Gardiner the I can't breathe guy was unarmed and selling single cigarettes

Charles Kinsey who wasn't actually killed but was one of the cases that most affected me want unarmed of course he was caring for an autistic adult and was begging the police not to shoot his charge at the time. They were both sitting down on the road. 

Micheal brown the hands up don't shoot guy, there's different reports as to if his hands were up and if he really said that Ferguson mi but he was unarmed and was shot and I'm pretty sure that was the same town where they charged a guy for bleeding on the officers shoes after a beating, you know destroying police property which affected me almost more than the killing.  

Tamir Rice 12 years old had a toy gun do you count that?  I played cops and robbers as a kid and had a BB gun 

This is not exhaustive by any means, I just lifted a few. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/29/police-killings-black-men-us-and-what-happened-officers/469467002/

http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article144190724.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don't_shoot

And of course some people were armed but then there's the other thing that it's not actually illegal to be armed in the US and it sure as hell doesn't carry the death penalty.

Look I know you like to stir people up a bit so I don't know if you even mean this stuff you say or if you're just trying to get a rise out of me, which I get, I like to poke a controversy stick sometimes and see what falls out sometimes. 

And I know you're super right wing and I'm super left wing so we're never really going to see eye to eye on a lot of what's going on in the world kind of stuff. We just have really different value systems and opinions on how things should be. And that's ok too I guess. But like surely we can agree that facts exist? That would make it easier to talk anyway. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. That's what I've been thinking.

Hugs,

Maile

Aaaanyway Jes said that it wasn't necessarily doing my dad any favors to be pleasant to him at the cost of not telling him literally anything about myself and she accepts some degree of conflict to be her authentic self in her family relationships and that is fraught but leads to the relationships like really existing and having meaning and stuff. So maybe I'm trying that?

I've learned on my refugee podcast

The US is the largest funder of refugees worldwide by like an order of magnitude. I don't think I knew that before. Both I don't think that I really credit or understand properly how much money the US has vs other countries, in much the same way as we can't really understand how much money the 1% has or whatever.  Your instinct is to be like yes there's rich people and they're richer than us but you don't really get how there's like 50 people who control the GDP of the world and then the rest of us kind of live off the rounding error like it's that different and as a part of that you also can't really understand how much the world could be different if we could use that 90% of the world's wealth by the principles at which we currently use 10% of the world's wealth like what are we paying for the luxury of having a super rich elite exist. For deciding inequality is like kind of ok if we're not desperate. Which we aren't largely that's the devil's bargain of the post WWII first world right we get to eat and have shelter and not have kids chewed up in mines and even get our cancer cured and stuff it's a lot better than the last peasant serf deal. Still. That's a tangent.

The US is like the whole pie of refugee funding worldwide. That's something I kind of didn't notice and part of the reason is because of the above and the other part is because on the left you're more focused on the deficit rhetoric of how small a piece of the US discretionary spending/national budget/ GDP pie that is ( BTW did you know Britain just committed to .7 % of their one of those it's a big deal imagine if that were the world standard what we could do?) But that can blind you to how much it means that we do what we do.

This is less out of texts than my own head but I find it interesting that both my birth country and even more so my adoptive countries are all immigrant nations. I mean we killed off the overwhelming majority of our native born populations (Aboriginal Australians and native Americans both represent like a percent of the country's population today). And something like two thirds of Australia has a parent born overseas. Like it's extreme. So what's interesting is the total lack of self reflection in the national debate of both places when talking about"immigrants." I mean racism is strong I guess but the ability of a country where literally every person has immigrants in their family tree to have a problem with immigrants as a monolithic other is confusing to me. Like I really don't understand how it's possible.

On Deck with the House

New stove
Bedroom door
Fixed fence

Nearest pathway to be able to rent the room to strangers.

Michael and Hannah aren't moving out but their dream is a townhouse, and I want to be ready not hopelessly confused when the time comes and they are ready. Plus it's a downside of being in the apartment that it becomes possible to just ignore stuff about the house and our lifestyle there that makes us unhappy, cause we'll always be gone in a few hours. But in Europe I was far enough away to see what I wanted.  Plus the stove was making them crazy too. And just makes us more pro.

Spring means growth

Put the garden to bed
New mulch?
Pruning before the grow season
Possoms in the roof again

This is just making me happier stuff. Michael takes care of the mowing atm but there's a bunch of stuff beyond that which requires our knowledge of what is good and bad and what we want where and what trees need to be dug up.  I gotta be in it but there's a lot of it and it's in such a below my standards state that working feels like being not good enough not like accomplishing things.

Micheal and Hannah's house project

So they have moved a couple of times and when they moved with us there were a bunch of cardboard boxes below. When we were mostly in the apartment they started going through it all, and that's been kind of ongoing but Hannah just left for the states and that was there completion plan so now I could help Michael finish bc it's mostly done.

Our lifestyle stuff
Stop crouching over a laptop with your food in bed like a gollum
Be able to find a towel without having to sort through stuff
Dresser combined
Move out big dresser
Move in couch
Get 3d monitor screen and docking station to house
Blackout curtain behind?
Clear linen closet

When we moved into the back of the house we put both our dressers in the library where the click clack bed used to be so they fit nice but there's no place in our area to sit. Which we've still got the living room but a bunch of things happened. Mostly we moved the computer out of there and the TV is useless to us without it but also there was sorting in there and j is a total introvert who retreats into his hidey hole (he and Michael living together alone would like never see each other boys are weird). But I can't cope with the rat in a nest thing and I miss having a quiet place to sit that's not my bed and you don't always want to take over the public area. So anyhow we combined our dressers into the smaller dresser and moved the big dresser to the front room and etc. Now we have both a couch and a guest bed in there.

Stuff we always want both places, should I rebuy
Espresso machine
Sonicare toothbrushes
Js razor we kinda accidentally rebought

Cleaning out our filthnests
Ok there's two, one of balls just needs to go to Goodwill, plus empty tubs but maybe they're a part of papers

Papers is the hard one but I need a staging area for that so it's at least after the M&H sorting project finishes and also I need to commit to doing it like a job once it gets started and I have no idea files, notebooks what's the form of this but it needs to happen bc Lord knows what's under there and it's the last of my coming home projects.

Rent out front room

Empty front room
Clear linen closet
Lockable door
Improve back door maybe combination
Occupied thing on bathroom
Maybe a locking hardware on Michael and Hannahs room, same as ours
Rejig living room
TV in one of the bedrooms instead?
Table in living room with two couches as social space can it happen?
Get rid of linen closet or dresser for new person
New bed
Is it worthwhile to try to create second real carpark?
Clearing projects
Bathroom, we need to go from two drawers to one or install a medicine cabinet gordion knot question what is the length of screw that won't pierce my single skin walls
Kitchen reduce and combine appliances so we can have 3rd shelf free.
Go through pots, sell copper etc to create zones for people if they cook
Dishes and glassware do they need to change?
Is a bigger fridge a necessity, how big will fit in that hole

Bear in mind at the start that everyone's against this plan to begin with so it may not even happen, and of course it's a negotiation with Michael and Hannah too (which room do they want bedroom is bigger but front room could have the closer entrance, good parking space, exclusive use of the porch) but of course they might not even be there when that is happening so we'll see and don't want to change their world til it's actually necessary. But I consider most all the stuff on that list good ideas just because, there's a lot of things I still have full time stuff there for and I'm living there part time, you gotta change with your life. So I'm gonna proceed down the list and see where we are.

So I've done a bunch of this stuff already, the stove, I've found the doors, we've mostly moved into our space and I've swapped the couch in. And a bunch is unstarted. I'm kind of planning on this project taking me to the end of the year. So we'll check in on what's left then. Me going domestic out of town a bunch is also a thing tho.

Turtles all the way down

The best thing about it is the theme of hosts and parasites bigger and smaller organisms and what that means for identity.

Like the bacteria are our parasites and maybe they are calling the shots or maybe they're just hitching a ride.

But also we are like the bacteria of our institutions of the schools and society, and maybe we're calling the shots or maybe we're just hitching a ride.

And knowing which we are, bacteria or host, as well as knowing who's in charge, is not easy.

Quitting teaching

You know it's just hard to know after a while if you're doing any good, if anyone cares, if you're not just a professional I'm screaming at children. And I've had real moments, evidence I hope that that's not the case but there's a lot of the people you're trying to help telling you that you're no good and they don't want it and it becomes tempting at some point to just say ok.

And you get a thicker skin to it after a while but you know with your skin so thick it becomes harder to feel anything. And I wanted to leave it before I stopped caring, always. I kind of left it at the peak of my career and my powers but that is like me too I suppose.

People always say it's not the kids it's the bureaucracy and bullshit that makes them leave, but not me. I mean it's the kids that make me stay as well, I mean they're the thing I care about. Bureaucracy might add hours to my day but it doesn't give me feelings. If anything it's not the actual reporting on stuff that I mind it's like the way the tools we have to use are made to be super user unfriendly which means you know that my life being faster and easier, my time was not valued by the institution. And it's very hierarchical which is not the best way to run an organisation and they try to pretend it's not in some ways which just makes you more resentful.

But most of all it's just exhausting kind of work, sandpaper on the skin, so much stimulus and noise and aggression from all sides. I'm not sure I can plunge back into that cold bath. I stayed pretty good for a long time. I went in there singing right to the end. I just don't want to yell anymore. I don't want to beg to be heard.

Influential Books

0-10
The Borrowers
The Hobbit
Elf Quest
Swallows and Amazons
The Pink Motel
The Boxcar Children
That book about the foxes where one of them lies down in the train tracks at one point

(Narnia, Roald Dahl, Dealing with Dragons, young children ones eg The Castle of Cats or Goodnight Moon?)

10-20

The Castle Franz Kafka
Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
The Chocolate War Robert Cormier
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock TS Eliot
Judas Iscariot Countee Cullen
Moby Dick Herman Melville
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

20-30
The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky
War and Peace Tolstoy
Lolita Nabokov
Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
The Jungle Upton Sinclair
A Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mother Courage and her Children Bertolt Brecht

30-40
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
Daniel Deronda George Eliot
Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood
Walking Naked Alyssa Brugman
A Brief History of Seven Killings Marlon James?

Why I won't sell the house

So I'm walking home to pick up the car at about 6:30 at night. It's August here just coming out of winter and sweater weather if I weren't stubborn.  Anyway I'm coming through the park and the air is like perfumed. It's the frangipani or something, that white flower smell that's one of my all time favorite smell in the crisp air.  But it's so potent, it feels like there's almost visible globules of that scent hanging from the dark trees. It's like a fairyland.  I love my sky palace. I really do. We're totally obsessed with it at the moment and always want to be there. But in the burbs, this is just what coming home on a regular Thursday is like.

Churches of Paris

We went to four churches in Paris.

Notre Dame: I had been to before, my memory of it was very romantic, cavernous, dark, crowded with visitors, lit only by candlelight, and I lit a candle there too, for for my grandmother, this was right after she died.  This time my experience was more pedestrian. I still loved it, the iconic shape, the famous stained glass, the dozen art alcoves, but there was not that additional personal inclusion. It's still deservedly a central sight of Paris, and it was lovely to see the spires of Notre Dame from all sorts of different angles, you hit the Seine from our apartment and could see them in the distance.

Picpus Cemetery and church: Harmony wanted to go here for Lafayette's grave, and it's a very small and unknown little church buried in the 11th arrondissement. It is also however, the location of the mass graves for the victims of the French terror.  It was the most spiritual church we've been to for me. We arrived on Harmony's first night, with a burgeoning thunderstorm. There was a sweet scented rose garden outside. You squeezed through a heavy blue door into one of those grey stone churches that look like concrete but aren't. We were literally the only people inside, and it was that late afternoon, starting to cool into evening. The distant boom of thunder seemed to shake the roof of the church and increased the hush inside. The names of all the terror victims were carved in marble on the wall, and there were fresh flowers inside the church. It felt like a prayer. Outside was the graveyard with Lafayette. Harmony brought a rock from Mt Vernon to leave there as an offering, and she wasn't the only one, there was heaps of US dollars and bits of US battlefields there. Behind the graveyard were the two mass graves and the last empty ones.  Banks of roses and mock orange grew along the pathways, all of them perfumed. Tall oakish trees lined the other side.  There were chickens who wandered through the yard and a small bee hutch. The gates where the bodies were brought in were still there.

Saint Sulpice: The Delacroix museum's special exhibit was all about Delacroix's influences and artistic process when making this major mural. The exhibit was interesting, but possessed a lack of major finished Delacroix works.  Kind of buried in all the description about this mural though, was an interesting tidbit that Delacroix took these apartments for their proximity to the church and that you could retrace his footsteps. Intrigued, but doubting it could be real, we did that thing. There around a nondescript corner was a fantastic gothic church with this major trio of Delacroix murals one on each side panel and the ceiling, plus we'd just finished learning all about how his Jacob wrestling the angel showed them as two equals, man wrestling his destiny, etc.  In the same church was also a little modern art exhibit of crumpled white cloth pictures and incense, very atmospheric, and outside there was a nice public fountain and some soccer playing boys.

Saint Chappelle

This church was a real highlight of the whole trip. Harmony had read somewhere that it was one of the best examples of stained glass in Europe and it was an example of guide books not overstating the matter. Pro tip about Paris, this church is about two blocks from Notre Dame, just as good, much less visited, and very different in type, def put it on that day of Paris wandering wherein you go see Notre Dame. It does cost a mint to get in, ten or 15 euros but it's worth it. You go up a narrow stairwell into this cavernous space every inch of which is done up in stained glass. It has an incredible Rosa, and then it's got these very high Gothic points and the tops of them tell say the Bible story and then there's the middle with all these saints and etc, like you could look into each panel for sometime and there are like 15 panels that go around. Not windows in the way you think of churches, but these are like the walls. They have leaned into a lot of colour, so each panel is a rich rainbow. All of the woodwork around the windows has been richly painted, which apparently used to be common, but it's mostly worn off places and they've mostly left it worn off bc they don't want to paint over the church.  Here the paint is in full effect, either that well preserved or they decided to restore it so of course the gilding and rich rainbow suffuses every square inch of wall. It was pretty incredible. On the top five most lovely churches I've ever seen.

Which would be what btw?

Basilica de San Petro (Rome) I mean c'mon it's got Michaelangelo's pieta in it, plus is maybe the best of the white marble dome variety of churches

Sagrada Familia gotta give a shout out to the only truly great church of the modern age and the light, pretty incredible

Surely a Russian one, maybe St Isaac's? What was the one that was across the street from us the first time we went, that's the strongest feels, or church of the spilled blood with the glittering mosaics, but I didn't feel as much, or the white one where pussy riot performed, or the onion dome one, best outside but that one doesn't have the best inside

The half bombed church in Berlin I don't know if would make the final cut but is definitely one of my favorite ever and fusion of traditional and modern so effective.

Saint Chappelle best stained glass. Nuff said.

Well that's five but I could I get into to top ten territory here pretty easy.
Notre Dame would be somewhere on the top ten list as well, but I don't know where it ranks vs the Russians What am I forgetting travel partners? Any votes?

Travel journal, Paris-Warsaw

23 May
Notre Dame
Saint Chapelle
Lourve open til 10, floor 2 Dutch masters, Delacroix exhibit, floor 1 Mona Lisa and Italian masters
Evening Eiffel tower and pyramid over Tuilleries
Omelette dinner

24 May
Eat everything breakfast, pasta and tarts
Pack up
Musee d'Orsay Last of post impressionists Luce, redo floor 5 and Van Gogh, finish floor 0 orientalists and Millet
Baguette lunch on deck of Musee d'Orsey, bass trip
Catch flight to Warsaw
Winging it getting back at midnight plus kebab

25 May
Deep sleep in til noon
Wake up laze til 3
Walk to old town and have lunch of Destiny
Walk through old town, church and castle, overlooks over river
Return via neighborhoods, park with memorial service and junior army scouts
Grocery stores and home, cheese and bread dinner

26 May
Sleep in, leave at noon
Tomb of the unknown soldier, changing of the guard
Lutheran church
Chopin's heart church
Chopin museum
Taxi home to pasta in the rain

Travel journal, day by day, Paris

May 16
Arrive cry
Apartment
Glory cafe
Bed

May 17
Bath
Walk to Lourve
Bastille monument
Market wallet
Walk along Seine
Lourve antiquities, floor -1

May 18
Lourve French sculptures, long time. Floor -1, half of 0
Near Eastern artifacts, Hammurabi's code
Get mom from airport
Steak and asparagus

May 19
Walk to Bastille
Victor Hugo house and park
Seine walk
Notre Dame
Shakespeare and company
Cafe de Flore, Camus cafe
Delacroix museum house, rose garden, piano recital
Saint Sulpice church, Delacroix frescos
Falafel and white asparagus

May 20
Bus to Musee d'Orsey
Floor 1 and 5, mostly, Manet, Toulouse, Degas, Symbolists, Cailebotte, Millet, Morisot, Fantin
Pasta

May 21
Up before five
Wash clothes
Cafe macaroons and cappuccino
Pere Lachaise cemetery
Ethiopian lunch
Lourve, floor 2, half, French older painting, Dutch masters up through Rubens
Collapse omelette

May 22
Up at 5:30
Bath
Bus to Musee d'Orsey, line cause free
Floor 2 three quarters, sculpture, Rodin Claudel, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Art deco rooms and objects
Get Harmony from airport
Come home, cappuccino, wine shop, pee
Picpus cemetery, Lafayette, French terror victims
Walk home, rain
Protest, storm bank, riot police, internationale
Steak and asparagus
Pixies concert and scream dancing

Arrival gates

So this last blog was written in the innocent time before I arrived in Paris.

My mom and I had responsibly made a plan to meet in the Sheraton lobby which is in the middle of Charles de Gaulle airport, have a celebratory wine in the hotel bar, and then figure out the train into Paris. My plane got in 20 minutes after hers but she was coming into terminal one which was further away.

I go to the Sheraton as planned. The guard there did skeezily hit on me but like four other French people were pretty nice to me today despite me being a pretty bumbling American asking for a lot of help so we'll mark it an overall win for the French people. After an hour or so I took my phone off airplane mode to see if I could change the clock to local and maybe find some WiFi and apparently I had roaming turned on cause all my notifications came through. Including a text from my mom which referenced crying and the 18th.  

I went to find a SIM card at this stage, and was basically having a panic attack very quietly in the newsagent not able to get my SIM card slot open why is it made to be impossible. The helpful people helped after I stood in their way for long enough and I was able to whatsapp call my mom.

Long story short it's all true, big storms over new York, her domestic flight was cancelled, so she couldn't make her connection, she managed the delta and Norwegian reschedule on her own but of course wasn't the only one doing that and it's not ideal but Melinda checked everything off the internet and it's the best we could do.

Poor thing was stuck at the Raleigh airport for like eight hours with it being delayed and then they put them on the tarmac and then took them back off again and Harmony had to go back and pick her up, all a sad drag.

Things that made me cry:

1) There was a really big expectation vs reality disconnect between the moment I was sure was going to happen any minute of embracing my mom and having a drink together in a luxury hotel before going to nest in our apartment together and this moment sitting alone on an airport floor crying.

2) My mom was looking up and researching and finding stuff to do and getting excited about Paris more than anything. Now there's two less days and there was already too few days to do what she dreamed.

3) I didn't even want to go to Paris you know? This is not fully true of course I'm not going to not enjoy it. But the point of this trip in its inception was to show my mom Paris because I thought she would love the art so, and the triumphant return to St. Petersburg. I didn't have a big independent dream of Paris to do now.

4) Plus of course the obvious thing that I was just off a 20 hour flight and had few emotional reserves to cope with disappointment at the moment.

But you know, we're all safe and ok, we'll still get to see Paris together, and we've got a six week holiday which means by the end of it this will be a distant memory. I kept saying it will never be worse than it is right this second.

And then I wiped my tears and found the train and negotiated the metro and came out of the metro station into the world's most Parisian neighborhood.

Omg it's like a caricature of all things French. You come out of the metro into a sidewalk cafe. There is on this one intersection two cafes, a patisserie a butcher a wine shop and a florist. All the buildings are these five story white apartments that look very classic. There's a little sidewalk garden that has roses and those cabbage flowers and old French men in vests glaring at passers by. Literally every people in the cafe I went to was having aperitif de maison and chatting in groups. I sat in the outdoor area despite the smoke and watched the passersby. I had a goat cheese salad and omelette and two happy hour cocktails and an aperitif and spent like forty euros but jiminy I lacked the will to be frugal right then. I start my financial diet tomorrow. Then I went to the grocery store and spent a much more responsible forty euros on some really nice food and have already cooked my own breakfast this morning of hard boiled eggs and croissants and delicious gem cantelope.

I went home and basically to bed after that, falling asleep at 9:30 with the lights still on. I woke up a couple of times but basically awoke at 7 am this morning.  Thanks body for being great at your job. This morning I took a bath, unpacked made breakfast and wrote this over a second cup of coffee. Now it's 10:40 and I'll probably make a move. I was thinking about the Bastille as a place I might like more than my mom, that's also near, and the Lourve as a place I can spend an extra day in that will take nothing away from anyone cause it's too big.

Voila as the French say, which I think is on the level of de nada/ no worries in being a sentiment you always want to say that there is no word for in a lot of languages. You know a word that means ok there you go we're done here but not in like a negative way at all just like here it is.

Travel impressiooons

This samosa is like the literal best samosa. It's huge and there was a bucket of sweet sauce that went in it and it tasted of mint and spice and came with a freaking real coffee.

Abu Dhabi loves its customers by having like reclining chairs for like a quarter of its chairs.

I freaking hate however airport gates that you have to go through a damn checkpoint and then be locked in. This one at least didn't lock me in.

I miss the days when the airline stewards used to come by at times other than meal services. I still fondly remember my first ever British airlines trip where they plied us with wine the whole flight.

I scored again on my 14 hour leg of my flight by getting me and a sweet girl with an empty middle seat between us. Not only did this big international liner have excellent leg room to start with, my knees did not even a little touch the back of the seat, but I got to cross my legs all into this extra space and the other chick curled up on the middle seat some. It was sweet.

Abu Dhabi to Paris is only like seven hours but it's the second flight so you're half as patient for sure.

My special places, Brisbane edition:

The square across Adelaide street from Anzac square and the view of the city there from like every angle, and relatedly the walk from central station out across the skyway, over Anzac square through that square to my doctor and the post office and then through the stealth alley to where the only branch oft bank used to be and the circle tree and then the river if you want it is right there.

The secret armchairs on the second floor of wintergarden.

The museum of Brisbane, though that may be more so a few years ago.

Kurilpa bridge, and it up to the upside down elephant.

The park across the street from me in eagle junction.

The batty boat cruise.

Special restaurants:

Well I made sure to eat at Guzman and Gomez, Hanachai, and Netherworld before I left plus I had like eight games of pinball at Netherworld.

Three monkeys

I'm really into miso happy ramen right now.

Thai wi rat still sticks around

Palak paneer from sitar. It's not good but it totally is Indian takeaway for me.

Soundtrack

My coffee shop is literally playing the Queer as Folk soundtrack right now. They just went up four levels in my estimation.

In general, businesses of the world, what music is playing in your establishment is a thing I generally both notice and recognize and give out brownie points if it's something I love.

Ok survey question, now that I have two houses, what do I call them? Old house and new house seems unloving to old house, which is what I've been doing, valley and Wooloowin isn't quite how I think about it. House and apartment Jeremy's doing but that doesn't feel quite right either. Apartment and Queenslander maybe. Anne would name them both. Anyway saying I'm going home is becoming a little complicated in my life. Especially because I have a tendency to call wherever I'm staying home, it was sticking even with Mat and Bs house in Sydney this week. It defs happens when I'm home in Gso.

Gogol Bordello

We got there early, before the opening act started, and I started to come up on the music before it even got going. Bharath and I were talking, and I got up front like on the second row right from the start, and stayed there, with a little shifting to and fro, for the whole concert.

The opening act was this jazz funk horn group who had some really great trumpet and trombone solos and could def play their instruments. I enjoyed and started dancing of course, and then we talked more between the acts, and then they came out.

He led with wanderlust king, not the first song but like the third and I remember being really amused that there was like no fear of blowing your wad early, playing your hit such as you have them in the first half, because if any band always knows they can top themselves, it's Gogol Bordello. 

At the end of the concert they were waving and saying goodbye and they played Redemption Song. And I was thinking of the long history of songs of freedom and how Gogol is a part of it. Singing songs of freedom and how the good old days are today and tomorrow as both Gogol Bordello and the Libertines say. And then I was thinking about Marlon James in the brief history of seven killings talking about the murmur of all the sufferahs  around the world lifting up their voice. And about how I went around the world myself and nowhere anywhere do you find someone who doesn't love Marley. The way he plays in Peruvian cars and Cuban clubs. And then I started to cry while the strains of it played.

The lineup of the band was different. Of course it always is, some always going some always coming like the castle of cats. There was a new drummer (both new and old were awesome) the same bassist, who is getting visibly older but still grooving, a new female vocalist who does more real vocals but less ululating and leaping than the big brass drum girl who was there last, the bongos guy was still there, but I think he has really improved since last time I saw him, like developed. The first gig I found him a bit gimmicky or something, but now he's taking some lead vocals off Eugene, doing the bongos, some Peruvian whistling (like the whistle that summons Mailes) to replace the big brass drum girl, and some backup dancing and leaps, it's a more rounded role and I thought he did it better. There was a new lead guitarist, who was a somewhat nondescript young white guy. I admit I judged the book by its cover and dismissed him, but he had an incredible shredding guitar solo and showmanship bit that singlehandedly converted me to his cause. But the only really tragic replacement was that Yuri their accordianist and founding member was replaced by a new accordion player. And it's just not the same, Yuri was a bit the beating heart of the band, full of a certain shy sweetness that balanced the personality of the band well, and also his playing was just very vocal, really using the carrying melodic capacity of the instrument.  But I later found out he's off doing a solo tribute album or something and was a part of the hire of the new guy but still.

Upside of this is that now Sergey the violinist and Eugene Hutz are the only constants kind of left, and one cool thing about this is that it sort of elevates Sergey's status within the band. First he seemed to have his own independent fan base like when he would step up to work the crowd they would have this special cheer almost like for Eugene. And then he was also working the crowd more, he came right out into us next to the barrier and played in the crowds embrace, and was also just generally more up front, expressive, showy, where he had kept to the background a little more. It was nice to see him out of his shell, insofar as any Gogol member is ever in his shell. 

Performance wise more generally, the band was a little less high energy than the last show I saw. Don't get me wrong, these people came into my arms and so I can vouch empirically that they were drenched with sweat, but first they were doing a move where like half the band would be up front going crazy and half would be sort of in the back resting a bit. Plus from Eugene who of course has to carry all this stuff the most a bit more reliance on expansive gesture and expression than straight up leaping. Still a low energy Gogol show is a high energy anyone else show. And he did this cute move where he pretended to read a book, like story time and got from there to vocals.

Most leet moment of the show? Eugene did the thing which I've seen on YouTube videos but never experienced myself, where he put the drum in the crowd, which we all lifted as one, and then climbed atop it still singing, over the barrier into us, and then did a somersault off of it into the crowd to get down again. Even better, I was so up front and center that I was holding the drum aloft with my compatriots.  It is such a high intensity moment the kind of thing you know no one does.

They played Sally (my moment of peak insanity) and start wearing purple and the I'm a little chavo I don't even have a guitar song and thing globally fuck locally and alcohol (always a crowd pleaser). I was as always so impressed by the crowd control, we'd be taken as high as we can go, and then brought back down and then up at will. The violining was so awesome this time.

And at the end of the show the drummer threw his sticks into the crowd and I caught one right out of the air. This is literally the second time I've done this exact move at a Gogol concert. I now have a set of drumsticks from two different drummers collected years apart. It was excellent, and the stick itself had this giant chip out of it from excessive shredding.

Bharath, who I went with, did not know the band at all, but I invited him, and he said yes. I was not a good host, being right up front and leaping as I needed but he entered into it so utterly and awesomely. I would slightly turn to beam beatifically at all those around me in concert ecstasy, and there he would be, drenched with sweat and leaping too. It was a wonderful experience and wonderful to share it with him and wonderful that he shared it with me so fully.

Old me vs New me

If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see, I'd put you in the mirror I put in front of me.

Old me was a planner, I used to be booked like two weeks in advance from any given date or experience. And if you tried to reach me, there'd be like a 24 hour turn around because I would be doing things until then. Emails phone calls etc would generally not get through. New me lives a deeply unstructured life, like people ask me what I'm doing today and I have no answer to that question. There is generally a bin of things I could do today or some day but which of those eventuates depends on my mood a lot, and I don't really know from one 15 minute interval to the next what my decision will be. It makes a lot more sense to ask me what I have done because I know the past.

Old me was super social and active, out five nights a week fairly reliably. New me goes out maybe once a month? Jeremy is still out twice a week and also those nights I tend to go home on my own instead of home with him. New me does not socially organise, where old me was the social planner of my group. And I'm calling my close friends, people I love or have known a long time, but not the more casual connections I used to socialize with at all. I also for the first time in years do not have any plan or process to bring new people into my life.

This means new me is alone a lot. Old me was alone up to one night a week but new me is alone all day every day and about three nights a week. Aficionados of old me should be impressed at my failure to have a mental breakdown under this stimulus. New me is lonely, but interestingly, not a lot more lonely than old me. I'd say the version of me who saw hundreds of people a day felt intense pangs of loneliness about half to three quarters the amount of time that the version of me who has between one and three in person human relations does.

New me is not engaged in any political activism or volunteerism for now that I think of it the first time in my adult life. And it's getting to be a break that feels longer than a transition.

New me doesn't listen to a lot of music, but is listening on an infinite loop to a lot of podcasts, news stories, editorial kind of thinking about the world in which we live.

New me is quieter. This is a change that's been happening for a long time, influenced by Jeremy, but a thing I think a lot of people close to me have managed not to notice about me, because I do still get loud and sassy and performative when I'm in public or tipsy or happy or excited. But my average is quieter, more serious, less inclined to say everything I think or know and it's a sea change I think people don't notice about me to their own peril.

But speaking of thinking, old me had this mile a minute frission mind, drawing conclusions, having ideas, synthesizing inputs and spewing out patterns theories thoughts conclusions. If you asked me what I was thinking and I said nothing I inevitably meant it's too involved and wordy to be worth explaining, or I don't think you'll be interested, or that's a part of me you don't like, or I don't think you'll understand, or there's four things and I can't sort them out right now, never really nothing. But now if I said nothing, I might really mean nothing, or not much. I don't think a lot of things anymore, and the things I do think are more hesitant, or diffident. Some of this is simple aging, a great gift of growing older is uncertainty.

But some of it is like I'm listening, hard for the voice of god. And it's told me things but they're not the kind of terribly well structured or relevant things. But I am listening to a lot of voices right now. I'm reading a lot, and I'm listening to a lot of podcasts, and I'm walking a lot, and I'm alone a lot, and I'm not talking a lot. So one thing I heard and this took a couple months could largely be summed up by that stuff I wrote about Brisbane last year, the specialness of my town and that part of my life.

And there's another thing which I don't know fully what it is yet, but is about Marlon James, and Toni Morrison, and the war between the sides of you and how you can be a slave in your heart or kill them all but neither of those things is you and the part that's you is more like the part that will jump off the cliff and fly. And then that thread is also connected to Marley and the redemption song thing and how everyone around the world loves Marley and the ecstasy of punk rock and the bands where the love is the music and sufferahs lifting up their voice and places where you can't write the ugliness because you make it too beautiful. There's a war on and it's inside you.

And there's a third thing that I know what it is even less that comes from sort of the Cuban People, which feels like it should have those capitals and salsa is life and it is everyone's responsibility to be sexy and how if you were here you would never know that you weren't good enough because there would never have been an industry of people tasked with telling you that you weren't good enough so you just wouldn't know that you were too old and too fat and not in the right clothes and not when you get right down to it very good at this there would just be do you salsa yes/no salsa. And that's related to but not the same as the way that there's just this absence a bit like stepping on a stair that isn't there of people in Africa hating your whiteness. It's a jolt but it's wrapped up in this thing where no one has time to question or undermine good things that come up cause you're not vouchsafed an oversurfeit of them or something the stuff in Africa is not right but there's something there something with the difference between a politeness culture and a friendliness culture and something about the layering of identity and language Lara/Congolese/African or Jesus I forget/Tanzanian/Swahili and the smell of the border between gentle tranquility and sudden violence and the ability to contain really diverse things in a place that is also in another way all one thing.

And there's a fourth thing I just said to Bharath yesterday about how you want to fight the real battles but there's all this petty shit and egos and factions and people stopping you. And I know I know in my heart that the solution cannot be to take these people out so then you can do what you want because it's this Hatfield McCoy thing where those people somehow keep multiplying and who even knows who started it and who's defending themselves, and then there's the other solution where you just stand there fighting the good fight and lose every time which is not fun but maybe worth it if it's valuable but then again maybe it isn't valuable. And then there's quitting which is what I'm doing right now but also does not feel like a real solution, and then there's Toney's solution, quitting institutions but not goodness and you know, acting locally, individual giving, helping your neighbors and all that stuff which does demonstrable good but then my mind and body rebels against it because it doesn't solve the Cambodia thing, the Yemeni thing, the Sudanese thing even the fucking Malawi thing hell even the Glenwood thing that we live in a walled garden where everyone with any kind of power and resources is carefully separated from people with any need so a disaster in New Orleans will raise ten times the caring and resources than the same one in Pakistan because we just will not understand that geography does not make us more and less human than each other. Ok so so none of that is a solution right but there's gotta be somewhere where people are pulling an oar and they're probably not even that hard to find but I'm not ready yet and the whole scene has something to do with power too dogs tearing at the one bone of power but I don't know how yet.

Ok so none of these make very good answers to questions like what are you doing with your life and what do you do all day and what are your plans and how long do you think it's ok for Jeremy to support you. Which are the questions I get from the world and for which I have no answers, no more answer than I did a year ago. Except maybe the answer that I'm listening, listening to god and I think he'll tell me when he's ready. But I'm not sure of that.

Nor do I think these insights are necessarily more profound than the ones I used to have when I was working full time and volunteering part time and had a full social life on the side but they're what I've got.

New me is also moved to tears super easily. I've been reading more poetry and also books and also YouTube videos. Not really sorrow tears but like moved, love and beauty and loss stuff but even where it's a really silly context anything with that sentimental feelscape and I'm there, tender and full. I don't know what that means at all yet.

Also I'm pretty sure I'm happy and content but I'm not totally sure.

Also here's another thing I'm not sure about, if the subtle avoidance in my own mind of the parts of my life and heart I cannot face and fear will hurt me are making it impossible for me to progress or be reborn. My whole process is about the connectivity of the subconscious and conscious mind so you just know what you need because you know who you are like the way magic works. But if you want to block off and hide from stuff that you are you lose access to a lot of other stuff like when I went sane and so couldn't go to my land anymore. That's possible but also possibly irrelevant and also by engaging with some of this stuff you can make it worse or just be ridiculous and I am at the core of me, ridiculous. Like prufrock right?

Ok thank you, for listening.

The Libertines

This is probably my favourite band that I have never seen in concert. It was a strange experience, intense and tense, wild and unexpected. My biggest feeling was of being out of control. I got that feeling that is what rock concerts are for of an ecstatic loss of identity but it also felt strange and dangerous this time, like no one knew what they were doing here, like you could get hurt.

So Pete Doherty comes out and starts the gig by throwing his mike stand into the crowd. Starts the gig.  I mean this is a big end of the show trash the stage finishing move, but he starts like this, just so you know what kind of gig it's going to be.

I didn't get there crazy early, and I'm kinda too old to push to the front, so I was in the back of the initial press, which was a great spot, people were still jumping up and down and having a great time, but there was like maybe a foot of space between us.  I was centered right in front of the central microphone, which was awesome for me because that was in front of Carl Barat's mic, who is my favourite member of the band.

The Libertine's music is a mix of really intense, fast paced punk rock and thoughtful alt ballads, and they used this contrast masterfully to ratchet up and down the pressure of the crowd. Like right when we were about to riot, they would take it down a notch, and when we caught our breath, they'd take it up a notch. 

It was a long set, well a regular length main set and then their encore set was like six songs long instead of one or two which made it feel like a whole second act.

And the crowd, including me of course, knew nearly all words to nearly all songs, so it was an energy that could be brought to a boil really easily.

So I'm rocking back there and they're playing some songs definitely not on my favourites list, but still great and I'm jumping and singing. A mosh pit starts up and I stay behind it a bit but decide to mosh.

A few words about mosh pits. So they've got this reputation as an out of control street brawl, where people get punched in the face and stuff.  And maybe some of them are, but this has been my experience. Generally speaking there's like a bunch of giant burly shaved head neo Nazi looking people you'd find really threatening anywhere else, and they kind of form a protective ring. And then you've got a middle section where a bunch of people, from like 3-100 including some other muscley guys and some kind of wiry punks that got stuff started and you'd all be launching yourselves at each other off balance and crazy.  And the big people on the rim sort of shove the people who launch/ fall into them back into the centre and the wiry punks launch themselves all crazy and airbourne. Yes it's a largely male environs, but I'm there and you also get some little punk rock girls who ping pong ball themselves around this.

So injury is a possibility of course. I have been elbowed in the face before, I've lost a shoe, done the rest of the mosh pit hopping, and then couldn't find it after the gig. I've never gone down but I've come really close and had to be lifted up bodily. Jem's come out with a boot print on his face before. It's a chaotic scene, you are physically out of control, and a lot of times you launch yourself or are shoved so that you would fall down if you didn't fall into someone else, and that's kind of the whole point. The mosh pit is a community experience, and while it's a violent kind of cuddle, it feels like a hug. And like when someone falls, air opens up around them right away and someone pulls them up fast fast because that's dangerous, there's a lot of boots down there. And the biggest burliest guys, the ones who could really take you out, they're kind of the den mothers of the scene, they keep a kind of line between the pit and the people just standing around it, and pick up people who are falling and don't get hurt when people launch into them. And people are a little gentler shoving a smaller less muscley person than a bigger one.

And I have heard other people talk about the kind of pits where like it's just a fist fight and you want to fuck people up but it's ok, like a fight club orgy or something, but I've never been in one like that, never seen one, or anybody doing anything like that. I have almost passed out before in crowd press more than once, but like when I half fainted on this other girl she looked around for a sec like what's up with you drunko and then when she realised I was in strife, helped get me out of the press where I'd be safe.

Also I'd say because I came up in the mid-late 90's, it was kind of past the true era of crowd surfing. It was big in the Nirvana era, and some people got dropped on their heads, there were maybe even a couple of deaths, but suffice it to say that it got big and then around my teenage years there was a real crackdown, like people would be ejected from the venue if they did it. So people still did, and I was at one gig where the guy was trying to surf away from security so they didn't eject him like the world's cutest road chase. People still did it, but it would be like one or two times during a concert, not a big thing.

So this gig, the mosh pit was really weird and out of control. Not the orderly caring pod with roles and rules, but like an every man for himself kind of thrash dance crash. Like there was no barrier, that's the first thing, which did a lot to make it really chaotic because it was hard to tell if anyone in the pit wanted to be there, which is important when you're smashing into someone, and also it would move all over the place, be more intense in one section and then another. And there was no rhythm, because everyone was just crashing and thrash dancing in their own way so to stay up I would just grab onto a couple of rando dudes and ride them like a sail.  And like giant muscley dudes were ping ponging around like little girls and like crashing into people much smaller than them. It was chaos, like intense and a little scary, you had no idea what was going to happen.  I saw like four people lose their shoes and a guy go down and get back up again.  I lost track at some points of who I was and where I was and like for I Get Along (My second favourite song and played in their encore set, and like their most moshable crazy fast punk number) I wound up exiting the mosh pit to the side so I could watch the band because I could kind of not see or even hear them anymore over the madness. Straight up crazy.


And like people were crowd surfing continuously and wildly and everyone helping them up and then crashing them away. And the screams man my eardrums got blasted as much by the crowd as the speakers and you know they're not amplified.


Ok back to the Libertines themselves. They had a really mobile band presence, Carl would walk from the drums to his mike a lot, both would face away and towards the crowd at intervals, and they would go over to each other's mikes, a lot of movement from both Pete and Carl especially Carl, and you saw a bit why Pete was seen as more the front man because he was definitely better at intense mic faces and spent much less time with his back to the crowd.

They split lead vocalist a lot, but I don't think I realised how much. They trade off every song, every line, and it's a really shared effort, maybe more than any band I've ever seen. And they do this thing which is pretty famous, where they share a mic and are also sharing vocals, singing together or trading off, and they get so close, so close and whisper things to each other between songs, it's like they're making out. With the mic, with each other.

What you have to remember is that the Libertines are a love band, like the White Stripes, or Sonic Youth. What the band is really about, more than any one of them, more even than the music, is their love for each other.  I saw this album cover on a billboard in London in 2004 and was so drawn to it I bought it, and it still says everything you need to know about the band.

Their intimacy, their self destruction, their tenderness, their intensity. They are lovers and friends, and bandmates, and co writers and co singers and all those things are the same thing. (Btw there's no reason to believe that Pete Doherty and Carl Barat actually slept together but the irrelevance of that is part of the point.) They are darkly sexual and innocently tender at the same time. They share everything, even their tattoos.

So then also remember that this band being back together is like playing with your exes. Pete was a junkie and blew a lot of gigs, tours, relationships. He got kicked out of the band, but neither of them was as good apart. There is a spark missing from both Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things albums (a spark not missing from either Graham Coxon or Gorrilas albums because Blur was about something different) and that spark is their love. Their love, more than either of them, drove this music.

So now they're back together making out with microphones and group hugging with the whole four band and a roadie who I guess has been there from the start as well. And it's good, don't get me wrong it's good, but my guess is it's not what it was, because they used to be 20 year old men who were in love and now they're 40 year old men who get along. It's different.  But they still have something.

And about halfway through the first set, in the mosh pit and beyond I reached that feeling, that rock show feeling where you have a loss of personal identity, you stop the selfish and self involved posturing which low level buzzes tediously through our lives and you are in the music and in each other. And paired with that is this transcendant ecstasy. 

My top moment of the gig?  They played my favourite song as the closing of the first set The Good Old Days, and I lost my shit completely of course, it was sweet enough even live and then those crashing guitars which only reach their zenith live.

I got a souvenir, they were handing out set lists and I got a shredded scrap of one, kind of representative of this crazy chaotic, maybe a little broken show. Rock on Albion. 

News of the World

I have so much news, it's all happened so fast. It feels like every day magic, I got ready for things to happen to me again and they started right away.

1.  We bought an apartment. Got a pretty great price on a place without any catch we could find, did a lot of due diligence and we're taking possession the day we got back from Thailand. I think about this quote I read one time, it was about how somebody lost their fortune, or power, or how a revolution happened or something and he said "slowly, and then all at once."  That's how I feel about buying this place. I had looked a lot and had a short list we decided not to action, and then I was keeping a casual eye on things and I saw this place come up way under market and thought what's the catch, so I went to view it and then within two days we were making an offer. It was pretty incredible. And then the whirlwind of reading contracts and body corporate documents etc. And now here we are about to embark on that next adventure.  It's a one bedroom one bathroom, no car park apartment in the valley, in a 160 unit building that's all long term rentals. It has a lap pool and lagoon pool, outdoor unheated, a quality gym, big entertainment area with couches and a pool table and a rooftop viewing area as well as a reading room and a grassy central area. It's 50 square meters so pretty small but we plan to keep a foot in our house and all our stuff as we get it set up, so no drastic moving and liquidating plans. It's a 12 minute walk from Jeremy's work. I've been jokingly calling it our pied a terre and my birthday present.

2.  Well I am on my way to a week in Thailand right now. We're doing a week, resort style, poolside bar, daily massages, great food, relaxing. It's a detox vacation for Jem basically, it's been a year since he went on vacation and starting a new job and all means he's extra ready for one. But we conveniently planned it over Valentine's day and my birthday so I feel there's a lot there for me as well.

3.  I'm taking off for three months over the winter again, May 15- August 20 or so. I'm meeting my mom in Paris, then we're traveling together on a loop from Paris to Amsterdam (probably) to St. Petersburg back to Munich, the black forest and back to Paris over about six weeks.  Anne and RJ are meeting us in Munich for a group trip there.

Then we fly home with a quick couple day stopover for an art and Claudia trip in Boston. My mom heads home and I head to Ann Arbor to visit Nick and Kimmi, who moved out there last year. Come back about the seventh, girls trip with Anne etc on the 13th weekend, then probably VA and back in Gboro from about the 20th to about the seventh.

August 7 or so I route back out to London, spend a week crashing with Joanna and partying in London and surrounds and then hop my flight to Paris, and home from there.

So it's a big figure eight kind of loop. And I keep my status as a migratory bird.