Here's a bunch of random musings from an intense day. I'm in Melbourne now, though I almost didn't make it. I've returned to urban civilization; hotel room. My first real shower in over a week.
I love this city instantly. I don't know particularly what it is; just a tone or atmosphere. It's beautiful and unique architecturally, if a little 80s or maybe too chromed out in places. But the feel on the street level is instantly likable; the way people carry themselves and walk and the varieties of life you see. Chinatown is thriving and I wish I had more time to eat here. Already feasted and had the most incredible yellow curry with Snapper for dinner.
-
If you're scared of spiders don't look here. This is right outside the door of an Internet cafe in this little town we were in. I'm right at the door and I hear an American accent: "dude, do not move. Look at your foot." I don't see anything and am confused. His friends chime in and a few start panicking. Right by my foot is a spider the size of my outstretched hand. This picture really doesn't do the thing justice. Everything here is bigger. I like spiders but backed off cause the thing had fangs larger than a thumbtack. Me and the other Yankee picked up the mat it was on and put it in a tree. Poor thing was just trying to get out of the rain. Was told later it was a harmless huntsman, which is only dangerous to birds. This thing eats birds.
-
So we were in Margaret River, holed up in a place called the band house. Which is a house that touring musicians stop overnight in as they cross the country. It looked like about half of all musicians who ever crossed the country had stayed here at one point or another. It was just a cheap convenient place in the middle of nowhere.
We were supposed to be met by a caretaker, who didn't show up. Instead we were looked after by her teenage daughter. I have to admit being taken aback by this; leaving your teenage daughter to look after musicians, especially of the rock variety, freaks out my middle class values. And this, then, was Daisy - half Croatian, half Spanish / Irish. And one time, sure enough, she had to look after the place on her own while a metal band decided to break every window in the house. I'm a sleepless insomniac and part of the agreement for me to take this trip is that I'd be in touch with my producers in New York, who I miss anyway so I've been making the effort, especially as I'm writing treatments while I'm on the road. Nick and Mark went to sleep and I stayed up waiting for notes to come in from NY, and while waiting Daisy proceeded to tell me her life story, the way only teenagers can, very unselfconsciously without stopping to pause for hours straight.
I don't know why but it was one of the most important parts of this trip so far. I really didn't say much at all, just listened very intently. Daisy is someone I wish there was a book about or a character I had dreamt up; but fiction wouldn't do justice to her. She grew up in the bush, which out here is the harsh countryside deep in the center of the country. By her own estimation she has lived in over 172 places in her few years. At one point in an abandoned train car. This is not necessarily of her own choosing; she has idealistic hippie parents who split up and a lot of what she what she said wasn't unfamiliar to me; it reminded me of most of my friends who had radical hippie parents.
But those friends didn't have this country and landscape as a backdrop; and it's hard to communicate in particular the hippie movement here if you haven't seen it, which has similar roots to the crusty movement in Europe, and even deeper to Romany gypsies. It's a very nomadic lifestyle and in some ways more hardcore than our own hippies given that the Green movement itself is more mainstream here. But hearing about what it was like to grow up in an unfathomable environment living completely off the land felt so very unreal; I couldn't imagine it. She knows aboriginal treatments for wounds and how to cook food with pieces of glass. At the age of five she carried a machete.
She's a really sharp kid with a good head on her shoulders, who has had to grow up faster than most and done it very admirably. To be honest I see the difficulty in her life ahead, because I am cynical of utopias and belief in them and what happens when you're raised in that, and she's so open and kind and there are people who will try to take advantage of that. But that very same upbringing has made her tough so I hope she'll be ok. I admire her a lot. I will never see her again but found her life thus far to be fascinating and remarkable and felt better for having heard some of it.
It made me realize all my problems lately have been insular and self obsessed. I don't have it that bad at all. I come from privilige and always will. I've settled into my life and know its direction. I think it's interesting for my generation with its prolonged adolescence: we ape youth but forget what it really feels like; the uncertainty combined with the excitement. And how entire lives can be tipped one way or the other by access and money and all the random elements along the way.
It reconnected with something that has been missing in my life since I have spent the past few years in the states without leaving much - I really, really like going to new places and hearing people's life stories. Part of it is selfishly wanting material for fiction, but part of it is wanting to understand. And understanding that letting people unburden themselves is a simple thing you can do that helps people. Through my life a lot of people have remarked that it seems people confide in me a lot, and I think all it takes is being a good listener. I'd be surprised if Daisy even knows my name, but like the heroine of a fiction I'd want to read, I'll be rooting for her.
-
I wrote this to myself a few days ago, having become lazy about writing in the past few years and trying to get in the discipline of expression by setting it down:
Sometimes you should read people like a book. I don't mean assess them; I mean listening by paying attention as if you were commiting a story to memory. Nothing opens people up like letting them you know that every detail is important not just to themselves. When you come across a beautiful sentence you linger over it, maybe underline it, or fold a corner of the page. Do that with other people's memories and you'll learn more than yourself.
-
I left Margaret River at 4pm on a bus, cheapest way to get out of town. Surfers bailing, too, because of the inclement weather. The five hour drive was remarkable, somehow. I always hate traveling by bus but something resolved and came into focus and as the ride progressed I was swept up by the sense of unadulterated freedom of impulsive travel. I'd no idea what I was really doing or getting myself into, and acceeding control into that felt wonderful. Everything I was going to come across would be completely new and unexpected. I think that's my definition of freedom - a sense of being able to commit to chaos and let it take you where it may with a destination in mind.
Bruce Lee remarked upon bamboo - strong but flexible, able to support buildings but bending in a strong wind. I often think of water and how it reflects energy and its hard not to given how much time in the ocean I've been spending - if you're panicky in water it becomes agitated the same way and cycles it right back to you. If you're patient and relaxed so is its surface. I'm giving myself up to water.
The landscape is obviously remarkable down here - some notes I jotted to myself on the bus ride:
One signifier that you are in a world you don't know is the color of soil. The dirt that hasn't been paved or covered with drought ridden grass is blood red. All this was once empty. The difference here is you can sense it; something odd about suburban america is that those highly clean and flimsy looking targets and walmarts and costcos look as if they have been standing there forever and always will do. Here there is some constant reminder of something primeval and epically transcendent in the earth alone. No wonder Australians seem to have a general singular connection to the environment or obsess over it. Global warming is accepted by everyone here, from cab drivers to shop clerks. The sky here at night is milky, sappy. The stars drip rather than blink. The blue void is full of individual glows.
I saw all of those things out a rickety bus window. I thought at some point I'd be too old to travel like this. I'm so glad I was wrong.
I made friends with an elderly lady who told me a lot about the weather in the country; always a good constant thing to talk about. But going deeper; telling me about the drought that has affected everyone here, how the future forecasts a greener middle of the country but a drier coast where the cities are. Record aberrations in winter. It's surprising that this country, fairly politically conservative (though the joke I keep hearing is that you can't find anyone who will admit to having voted the Bush crony Howard into power), completely accepts on every level that global warming is a reality. Every single person I've talked to has something to say about this state of things and how it will affect them. Here it's not open for discussion; even the right leaning people admit something must be done. They disagree on how, surely, but it's refreshing to see that an entire nation can embrace the idea of tackling a crisis.
-
From there a long cab ride to the airport, and they always say, ask a cab driver...
Heard about camel farming. How Hollywood keeps turning to Australia to cast real men, but how the metrosexual thing is completely out of control here. It's a very macho culture, but man, blond highlights are in on guys. Most interesting thing the cab driver had to say was his compact history of why this country is anti-authoritarian to its core due to its relationship with England. I guess it's why I'm so reminded of Ireland here. But like that country, too, flooded with IT and EU monies, that's changing. The youth here respect more than anything the ability to make money and don't mind what establishment is required to get there. I see this all over the world. There were beautiful things to see on that bus ride... But I also wrote I'm watching the landscape give way to suburban developments and shopping centers with Targets and Blockbuster Videos and Starbucks; outside of which wild kangaroos graze. What must seem matter of fact to the natives strikes me as an image worthy of another planet.
-
Here's how Australia is different than the US, at the airport.
Woman gets asked to take off her shoes at the security checkpoint. She takes offense to this. A horde of rugby playing looking guys whistle and say "take it all off baby". In line for the security checkpoint. Elderly couples laugh at the boys' catcalls. The security screeners laugh. In line for security checkpoint. Like I said, it's macho here. I'm used to damn near stripping every time I have to pass through JFK in NY. Here I go through with bottles of liquids in seconds. I forgot what that's like.
Once everyone boards the plane we end up sitting docked to the terminal for three hours while Qantas tries to find someone who can fix a plane in the middle of the night. My favorite thing we get explained over the PA after a fifteen minute long digression on the beauracratical process required to clear certain radio equipment maintained by people with differing certificate levels (I'm impressed by the transparency here): "We're just as surprised as you are we can't find someone to fix this. Sorta surprising and we'll keep you updated". We get told the flight might get cancelled. There's also that psychological factor you get when you're told the plane you're on needs to be fixed. My heart sinks. This is becoming awful. It's 3 am and no word. Some woman sitting behind is in hysterics at the same episode of Mr. Bean they play in a loop on our headsets to keep us occupied. The high that carries me through the day fades. I remember when flying as a kid it sure didn't feel like getting an overstuffed bus. Flying has become one of the modern circles of deepest hell.
We finally take off. I'm supposed to arrive in Melbourne at 5 am, 2 am to my body clock. At 8am this is what I see out the window.
Another bus to the city.
And another cab from the station to the hotel, which I get in after walking half the 3kms there. My luggage is just too heavy and I'm too damn tired. I don't try to get this driver to tell me everything I can. I sit in silence, take a photo of myself, and stare at all the pretty people in Melbourne, look up at the buildings. Mumble my way into my room key.
And then I got in the shower, saw enough beach sand come out of my scalp to build a castle... All forward momentum ceases and I feel blessed (another small practical thing to help the environment here - your hotel key slots in a port and switches power to the room, so without it no energy is wasted). Go to sleep happy and my head full of wonder. I miss my friends I've separated from but there is something that happens when utterly alone while traveling that lets you meet yourself. I feel I've done that now, and in a mere 24 hours I started to walk on and meet other people. At dinner I meet Mary, who I haven't seen in five years, and am reminded instantly of why I was so in love with her way back when. She doesn't look a day older but you can sense years have passed. Her boyfriend got his dream job here today and they moved into their house. She's going to start a life here. I remember how she used to always talk almost ten years ago about wanting to go see the world and live somewhere else, and here she is. I'm happy for her in a way I can't explain. She's the most quietly impressive person I've ever met.
My advice to all the Daisys and cab drivers and fellow passengers I've ever met and all my friends and all of you who spend time reading here: go see the world. No matter what. We'll be old later. Do it now while you still can.
I love this city instantly. I don't know particularly what it is; just a tone or atmosphere. It's beautiful and unique architecturally, if a little 80s or maybe too chromed out in places. But the feel on the street level is instantly likable; the way people carry themselves and walk and the varieties of life you see. Chinatown is thriving and I wish I had more time to eat here. Already feasted and had the most incredible yellow curry with Snapper for dinner.
-
If you're scared of spiders don't look here. This is right outside the door of an Internet cafe in this little town we were in. I'm right at the door and I hear an American accent: "dude, do not move. Look at your foot." I don't see anything and am confused. His friends chime in and a few start panicking. Right by my foot is a spider the size of my outstretched hand. This picture really doesn't do the thing justice. Everything here is bigger. I like spiders but backed off cause the thing had fangs larger than a thumbtack. Me and the other Yankee picked up the mat it was on and put it in a tree. Poor thing was just trying to get out of the rain. Was told later it was a harmless huntsman, which is only dangerous to birds. This thing eats birds.
-
So we were in Margaret River, holed up in a place called the band house. Which is a house that touring musicians stop overnight in as they cross the country. It looked like about half of all musicians who ever crossed the country had stayed here at one point or another. It was just a cheap convenient place in the middle of nowhere.
We were supposed to be met by a caretaker, who didn't show up. Instead we were looked after by her teenage daughter. I have to admit being taken aback by this; leaving your teenage daughter to look after musicians, especially of the rock variety, freaks out my middle class values. And this, then, was Daisy - half Croatian, half Spanish / Irish. And one time, sure enough, she had to look after the place on her own while a metal band decided to break every window in the house. I'm a sleepless insomniac and part of the agreement for me to take this trip is that I'd be in touch with my producers in New York, who I miss anyway so I've been making the effort, especially as I'm writing treatments while I'm on the road. Nick and Mark went to sleep and I stayed up waiting for notes to come in from NY, and while waiting Daisy proceeded to tell me her life story, the way only teenagers can, very unselfconsciously without stopping to pause for hours straight.
I don't know why but it was one of the most important parts of this trip so far. I really didn't say much at all, just listened very intently. Daisy is someone I wish there was a book about or a character I had dreamt up; but fiction wouldn't do justice to her. She grew up in the bush, which out here is the harsh countryside deep in the center of the country. By her own estimation she has lived in over 172 places in her few years. At one point in an abandoned train car. This is not necessarily of her own choosing; she has idealistic hippie parents who split up and a lot of what she what she said wasn't unfamiliar to me; it reminded me of most of my friends who had radical hippie parents.
But those friends didn't have this country and landscape as a backdrop; and it's hard to communicate in particular the hippie movement here if you haven't seen it, which has similar roots to the crusty movement in Europe, and even deeper to Romany gypsies. It's a very nomadic lifestyle and in some ways more hardcore than our own hippies given that the Green movement itself is more mainstream here. But hearing about what it was like to grow up in an unfathomable environment living completely off the land felt so very unreal; I couldn't imagine it. She knows aboriginal treatments for wounds and how to cook food with pieces of glass. At the age of five she carried a machete.
She's a really sharp kid with a good head on her shoulders, who has had to grow up faster than most and done it very admirably. To be honest I see the difficulty in her life ahead, because I am cynical of utopias and belief in them and what happens when you're raised in that, and she's so open and kind and there are people who will try to take advantage of that. But that very same upbringing has made her tough so I hope she'll be ok. I admire her a lot. I will never see her again but found her life thus far to be fascinating and remarkable and felt better for having heard some of it.
It made me realize all my problems lately have been insular and self obsessed. I don't have it that bad at all. I come from privilige and always will. I've settled into my life and know its direction. I think it's interesting for my generation with its prolonged adolescence: we ape youth but forget what it really feels like; the uncertainty combined with the excitement. And how entire lives can be tipped one way or the other by access and money and all the random elements along the way.
It reconnected with something that has been missing in my life since I have spent the past few years in the states without leaving much - I really, really like going to new places and hearing people's life stories. Part of it is selfishly wanting material for fiction, but part of it is wanting to understand. And understanding that letting people unburden themselves is a simple thing you can do that helps people. Through my life a lot of people have remarked that it seems people confide in me a lot, and I think all it takes is being a good listener. I'd be surprised if Daisy even knows my name, but like the heroine of a fiction I'd want to read, I'll be rooting for her.
-
I wrote this to myself a few days ago, having become lazy about writing in the past few years and trying to get in the discipline of expression by setting it down:
Sometimes you should read people like a book. I don't mean assess them; I mean listening by paying attention as if you were commiting a story to memory. Nothing opens people up like letting them you know that every detail is important not just to themselves. When you come across a beautiful sentence you linger over it, maybe underline it, or fold a corner of the page. Do that with other people's memories and you'll learn more than yourself.
-
I left Margaret River at 4pm on a bus, cheapest way to get out of town. Surfers bailing, too, because of the inclement weather. The five hour drive was remarkable, somehow. I always hate traveling by bus but something resolved and came into focus and as the ride progressed I was swept up by the sense of unadulterated freedom of impulsive travel. I'd no idea what I was really doing or getting myself into, and acceeding control into that felt wonderful. Everything I was going to come across would be completely new and unexpected. I think that's my definition of freedom - a sense of being able to commit to chaos and let it take you where it may with a destination in mind.
Bruce Lee remarked upon bamboo - strong but flexible, able to support buildings but bending in a strong wind. I often think of water and how it reflects energy and its hard not to given how much time in the ocean I've been spending - if you're panicky in water it becomes agitated the same way and cycles it right back to you. If you're patient and relaxed so is its surface. I'm giving myself up to water.
The landscape is obviously remarkable down here - some notes I jotted to myself on the bus ride:
One signifier that you are in a world you don't know is the color of soil. The dirt that hasn't been paved or covered with drought ridden grass is blood red. All this was once empty. The difference here is you can sense it; something odd about suburban america is that those highly clean and flimsy looking targets and walmarts and costcos look as if they have been standing there forever and always will do. Here there is some constant reminder of something primeval and epically transcendent in the earth alone. No wonder Australians seem to have a general singular connection to the environment or obsess over it. Global warming is accepted by everyone here, from cab drivers to shop clerks. The sky here at night is milky, sappy. The stars drip rather than blink. The blue void is full of individual glows.
I saw all of those things out a rickety bus window. I thought at some point I'd be too old to travel like this. I'm so glad I was wrong.
I made friends with an elderly lady who told me a lot about the weather in the country; always a good constant thing to talk about. But going deeper; telling me about the drought that has affected everyone here, how the future forecasts a greener middle of the country but a drier coast where the cities are. Record aberrations in winter. It's surprising that this country, fairly politically conservative (though the joke I keep hearing is that you can't find anyone who will admit to having voted the Bush crony Howard into power), completely accepts on every level that global warming is a reality. Every single person I've talked to has something to say about this state of things and how it will affect them. Here it's not open for discussion; even the right leaning people admit something must be done. They disagree on how, surely, but it's refreshing to see that an entire nation can embrace the idea of tackling a crisis.
-
From there a long cab ride to the airport, and they always say, ask a cab driver...
Heard about camel farming. How Hollywood keeps turning to Australia to cast real men, but how the metrosexual thing is completely out of control here. It's a very macho culture, but man, blond highlights are in on guys. Most interesting thing the cab driver had to say was his compact history of why this country is anti-authoritarian to its core due to its relationship with England. I guess it's why I'm so reminded of Ireland here. But like that country, too, flooded with IT and EU monies, that's changing. The youth here respect more than anything the ability to make money and don't mind what establishment is required to get there. I see this all over the world. There were beautiful things to see on that bus ride... But I also wrote I'm watching the landscape give way to suburban developments and shopping centers with Targets and Blockbuster Videos and Starbucks; outside of which wild kangaroos graze. What must seem matter of fact to the natives strikes me as an image worthy of another planet.
-
Here's how Australia is different than the US, at the airport.
Woman gets asked to take off her shoes at the security checkpoint. She takes offense to this. A horde of rugby playing looking guys whistle and say "take it all off baby". In line for the security checkpoint. Elderly couples laugh at the boys' catcalls. The security screeners laugh. In line for security checkpoint. Like I said, it's macho here. I'm used to damn near stripping every time I have to pass through JFK in NY. Here I go through with bottles of liquids in seconds. I forgot what that's like.
Once everyone boards the plane we end up sitting docked to the terminal for three hours while Qantas tries to find someone who can fix a plane in the middle of the night. My favorite thing we get explained over the PA after a fifteen minute long digression on the beauracratical process required to clear certain radio equipment maintained by people with differing certificate levels (I'm impressed by the transparency here): "We're just as surprised as you are we can't find someone to fix this. Sorta surprising and we'll keep you updated". We get told the flight might get cancelled. There's also that psychological factor you get when you're told the plane you're on needs to be fixed. My heart sinks. This is becoming awful. It's 3 am and no word. Some woman sitting behind is in hysterics at the same episode of Mr. Bean they play in a loop on our headsets to keep us occupied. The high that carries me through the day fades. I remember when flying as a kid it sure didn't feel like getting an overstuffed bus. Flying has become one of the modern circles of deepest hell.
We finally take off. I'm supposed to arrive in Melbourne at 5 am, 2 am to my body clock. At 8am this is what I see out the window.
Another bus to the city.
And another cab from the station to the hotel, which I get in after walking half the 3kms there. My luggage is just too heavy and I'm too damn tired. I don't try to get this driver to tell me everything I can. I sit in silence, take a photo of myself, and stare at all the pretty people in Melbourne, look up at the buildings. Mumble my way into my room key.
And then I got in the shower, saw enough beach sand come out of my scalp to build a castle... All forward momentum ceases and I feel blessed (another small practical thing to help the environment here - your hotel key slots in a port and switches power to the room, so without it no energy is wasted). Go to sleep happy and my head full of wonder. I miss my friends I've separated from but there is something that happens when utterly alone while traveling that lets you meet yourself. I feel I've done that now, and in a mere 24 hours I started to walk on and meet other people. At dinner I meet Mary, who I haven't seen in five years, and am reminded instantly of why I was so in love with her way back when. She doesn't look a day older but you can sense years have passed. Her boyfriend got his dream job here today and they moved into their house. She's going to start a life here. I remember how she used to always talk almost ten years ago about wanting to go see the world and live somewhere else, and here she is. I'm happy for her in a way I can't explain. She's the most quietly impressive person I've ever met.
My advice to all the Daisys and cab drivers and fellow passengers I've ever met and all my friends and all of you who spend time reading here: go see the world. No matter what. We'll be old later. Do it now while you still can.
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