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Thinking inside a box Saturday July 30 Lonely Planet loneliness is, for me, the strongest emotion. given time to grow, it becomes this heavy shroud covering every moment of your life. you can feel the emptiness of space around you, the distance between phone calls, human voices. i reckon it to be over three weeks now since anybody has called me (steve texting me to water his marijuana plants doesn't count). i could almost get obsessive enough about it to start counting days. i am listening to Roy Orbison songs. i feel heavy emotions welling up in me, based on the tiniest moments: seeing someone enthusiastically meet a lover in the street, hearing Bob Dylan's voice float down from a second-storey window. every moment of human emotion cuts straight to my heart and draws blood. talking to people is difficult because it feels too novel, i am like a fish out of water, and there is too much at stake. when i do find human contact it makes me flighty, always ready to leave and escape the source of anxiety. it's okay as long as there's no-one to not ring me. does that make sense? when no-one calls, but there's someone who you wish would call, that is by far the worst of horrible situations. when there just isn't anybody out there the feeling is very different. just this huge empty bubble of melancholy - almost frightening, and awesome. i could write a book on the different types of loneliness. due to something i had been reading, i started wondering lately if God has something to do with this. has humanity found a new depth of loneliness now that we have done away with God? did He used to keep people in company, since He was always watching, would always Be there to Hear peoples' Prayers And Petitions? sometimes i think i am the epitomy of supposed postmodern humanity. i move constantly from one part of the globe to another, i have no God, i live through computers, i am post-ideological, believe that truth is relative, i am staunchly individual and independent, maritally single, draw my interests and influences from radically heterogenous sources and cultural traditions. in general i find theories of human fragmentation quite convincing, though i can also see that there is a large part of me that is fairly constant. there is definitely a 'real me', though i would not say that it is entirely impervious to outside influences. i am not stagnant, i don't think. i had this idea of starting an online dating service called 'Lonely Planet'. i reckon it would get lots of traffic, just from people stumbling across it while searching for travel books. maybe the world-wide travel publisher would sue my pants off. i read that some smalltime internet entrepreneur established a successful business based on the discovery that 20% of Britney Spears searches are spelt incorrectly (for obvious reasons), so he set up a site that was highly optimised to rank top of Google searches on mis-spelt Britney, and voila, 20% of the B.S. online market - which would be HUGE traffic, believe me. or so goes the anecdote, anyway. --- i have been reading a very fine book recently. it has no title, and the author is anonymous. it is printed simply and bound in plain white cardboard, no peripheral information. the text is the epic fragmentary self-flagellation of an alienated adolescent. but in a good way. just a series of short fragments, each separated by a gap. they are all written in what i would call 'the general past tense'. the author never specifies time, place, context. just trying to create the feeling of a certain 'scene'. some sample fragments (there is no context given by previous paragraphs):
the book is hyperbolic, histrionic, way more dramatic than it needs to be on the topic of an american kid who hitches west because he doesn't like college. but this is perfect: the authentic representation of adolescence's specific insanity. and there is something inspiring about finding that such an original, beautifully written book has been brought into existence without its creator feeling the need to claim credit (or even copyright, for that matter). it is totally anonymous, humble, just an unidentified piece of writing that someone picked up in a zine shop in London and then passed on to me. its lack of identifying trappings is deeply ascetic - a self-effacing presentation for a self-dramatising text. and it is also very intimate: the lack of mediating clues brings me closer to the author, because he is speaking to me directly. the text is more honest because it does not have to live up to a cover design, a blurb, an identifiable 'author'. --- sometimes there is not loneliness, but solitude. solitude is different - it is being alone and not trying to be otherwise. finding something special by becoming closer to yourself. when you're not bouncing off anyone else, you have an opportunity to get to know yourself better. your inner voice becomes clearer. the house is empty. it is 10:30 on a Saturday night. i had planned to go out to the techno club, but i am very tired now. i feel like i could sleep forever.
Thursday July 28, Dublin Thanks to Lara for putting me onto this: surely one of the most ingenious contemporary fashion sites online, www.hatsofmeat.com God bless America .
Monday July 25, Belfast After I wrote my blog entry yesterday, everything went right. I went back to the conference at the end of the day, even though the only event left on the program was a whisky tasting lecture for which I hadn't the required ticket. As soon as I got to the college, not really sure what I was there for, I ran in Moritz, who offered me ticket for the whisky tasting, since he didn't really want to go. It was a very fine lecture. We were lined up in the pues of an old lecture theatre, each with four single-malt whiskies in front of us. We were given a one-hour introductory talk on Scotch whisky, and instructed to drink each of the four glasses before us at various points, to demonstrate the flavours the speaker was desribing. I thought I didn't like whisky, but was pleasantly surprised to find four complex, very distinctive, even delicate drinks. We were encouraged to make tasting notes, and mine were as follows:
By the last part of the lecture, one-hundred normally very polite and attentive academics were completely ignoring the speaker, instead talking loudly to one another and generally acting like primary school children on the last day of term. A middle-aged Scottish lady in my pue, quite unexpectedly, invited me and another of the younger scholars back to her house for dinner, saying she thought we might not have much money to eat out. We both accepted. By the time we left the lecture theatre our host, Rosemary, had picked up another couple of young scholars, taking us all back to her house where she immediately sat us down in her garden with a bottle of wine, then set about making us dinner. If there be gods, they will surely look favourably upon Rosemary. Later I went as promised to the Scottish Hobo Society night at the Bongo Club. Indifferent bands alternated with spoken word performances in a large, dark university basement. My only distinct memory is a tall smoking Scotsman performing a particularly belligerant and obscene poem which returned on each verse to the refrain of ' Who's been eating mah porridge? '
Sunday July 24, Edinburgh Though I am overwhelmingly glad that I have come to Edinburgh for the weekend, it has had the unfortunate side-effect of reminding me about all the things that I am dissatisfied with in Dublin . Edinburgh is chic, trendy, sophisticated, loaded with alternative cultures and progressive movements; i.e. everything that Dublin is not (sorry Dubs!). There are flyers everywhere promoting all manner of enigmatic evening entertainments - tonight I plan to go to the Scottish Hobo Society at the Bongo Bar. There is loads of free stuff on - museums, galleries, music - and both food and drink are quite reasonably priced (in pounds nonetheless, so not exactly cheap). The streetscape is made intensely beautiful by two things: 1. the buildings are almost all old and built from hewn grey stone; 2. the town centre is built across a few steep slopes and cliffs, making it very 'three-dimensional' - you might be walking down one street and cross a bridge, looking over the wall to see an intersecting street twenty metres below. There are steep stone stairways winding down from one level to another. Part of me wishes that I was living here rather than Dublin , although I suspect it would be far more difficult to get work beyond the hospitality industry. Edinburgh seems too small and beautiful to be a true commercial centre. I don't see much evidence of local industry beyond the tourist trade and cultural offerings. In fact, one detraction from its beauty is that it is very touristy. Meanwhile, I really wish I wasn't travelling here alone. I am growing sick of being more-or-less alone, now that the first phase of liberated travel-wonder has passed. I am sinking back inside my own head, finding it harder to talk to strangers, feeling like an outsider and worried that this will be obvious to everyone. I came here this weekend to give a paper on the history of book-covers at an academic conference, and I was hoping to meet people of similar interests and dispositions (meeting 'people of similar interests' is not really about having some special topic to talk about, it's more based on the hope that someone who is interested in the same things as you will probably have a similar world-view). But I ended up sitting in the corner the whole time (hideously aware of my defunct body language), obsessing over how much more professionally dressed, scholarly and knowledgable everyone else was. Such behavious is just narcissism as far as I'm concerned. It's so stupid, but so hard to break out of! So hard to break out of because the mindset does show, and it retards your capacity for human communication. Anyway, when it came to today's conference coffee-break I didn't know the 'protocol', due to having missed most of the conference from disorganisation and indifference. So I just stood there drinking coffee nervously, pretending not to be nervous but actually thoughtful. Luckily, some German guy called Moritz with perfect English walked up to me, said 'Hi' and jsut started as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, it is.
Friday July 22 I just realised what London needs: Sherlock Holmes! He is the only person who I can imagine would be able to deal with these dastardly criminals. Or the only real person, anyway - superheroes and fictional characters are obviously excluded. --- Read a great news leader in an Irish paper last night. There was a story on the proliferation of shit off Dublin 's beaches, carrying the headline: 'Close Encounters of the Turd Kind'.
Thursday July 21 - 2pm Reports are filtering through of more bomb attacks in London about an hour ago. News travels so fast these days. I feel this slight extra-alertness, a tremble of fear - even though London is not really that close. But I wish they wouldn't blow people up. It's frightening and horrible and ... a hideous projection of individuals' own emotional issues onto others. I am convinced that all these middle-class English terrorists are just emotional fuck-ups with identity crises. This is no way to express it.
Tuesday July 19 My sister Clare finally sent me the URL for her blog, so I spent a good part of last night reading that. I liked it. It has this personal, flaws-and-all intimacy which I don't think I get much of into my journal. I have sometimes worried that I present myself in too much of a good light in this weblog - I am aware that I tend to write up good things that I do, noble experiences I have engaged in, but not so much of that which may appear embarrassing or abject. Clare devotes a substantial proportion of her blog to the love/sex/romance side of her experiences, and this is something I have left out entirely from this blog. Maybe its easier for a woman, be it my sister, be it Bridget Jones, to report on her love life. A woman can write of advances received, rejected, encouraged. It sounds quite a heady adventure to me. But what would a single guy write? 'Today I tried to smile flirtatiously at a girl in the street. She pretended not to see and walked faster ... Today I rang so-and-so for the third time. She still doesn't seem to be home.' Hmmm. Don't know why I'd want to share that sort of thing. Actually, I have been silent on the topic of amorous adventures because there has been oh so little to write about. Oh so little. Ha ha ha. When I was working at the nightclub, I took a great fancy to a Finnish girl who was working as a glass collector. And she seemed to smile at me whenever I saw her - but then you never know if someone is just a smiley person. Anyway, I never actually managed to have a conversation with her, given that we were working on opposite sides of a bar in a workplace regaled by continous loud dance-mixes of Brintey Spears, J-Lo et al. Still, there did seem to be something about her. Without having exchanged barely a word, I became convinced she was a really nice person (not to mention stunningly Scandinavianly beautiful). So I asked her out. Out of the blue. She said no, quite sensibly. Good for her. * * * A Dream I dreamt that was back in Australia , but I was about to leave the country for a while. Because I was soon to go, I was spending time with members of my family, in particular my mother and my brother. As my family talked to me, I was somewhat ridiculously trying to hang out some washing to dry, while holding two open cans of lager. The beer was Hollandia, the cheapest available in Dublin and therefore my staple purchase here. I was hanging out the washing in a public place, and a policewoman was watching me with some amusement. As I struggled with the taks, my brother came over and showed me a method whereby the cans of beer (now empty) could be hung on the washing line, freeing up my hands to deal with the washing. The policewoman came over and helped with this. Then the members of my family wandered off somewhere, and as I turned to follow them, the policewoman asked me how I felt about leaving. Her asking me caused an intense wave of sadness to pass through me. I thought about my family, and also the girl I was seeing before I left. I felt so sad that I would not be seeing any of them. But the policewoman gave me encouragement, advising that there is a website called Roxy.com, through which I could keep up with people using pictures.
Monday July 18 The news over here has of course been full of bombings recently. The Turkish beach resort bombing on Saturday killed both English and Irish nationals, claiming front-page status in the Sunday papers. I later looked up the location, Kusadasi, in the Lonely Planet guide - I wondered if this was the same source the terrorists had used to select their target, as LP described the town as a 'shameless tourist trap'. Before the weekend, of course, the London bombings were the hot media topic. Indeed, it was a little disturbing to have such bloodshed to close at hand, in places I have recently been, places I could have been on the Thursday before last. What made it really shocking was the lack of specific targeting. To blow up public transport in London means to blow up a random cross-section of different nationalities, religions and political beliefs. It would be very hard to portray these bombings as an attack on Bush's alliance, or on capitalism, or even on Christianity. This was randomised killing - generalised violence as a media tool. Scary. Meanwhile, a single column reported this morning that 150 have been killed in suicide bombings in Iraq over the weekend. I haven't heard anyone suggest two minutes' silence. Thankfully, one of my favourite newspapers, the Independent, has picked up and reported this comparison. Dear Reader, did you vote for the governments promoting the invasion of Iraq ? If you did, I hope you can see the connection between bloodshed and your ballot. * * * My friend Daniel came over from London on Friday. He did not seem too shaken or disturbed by the bombings. More visibly he was annoyed at Blair for leaping on the occasion as an opportunity to broadcast thinly veiled advertisements for the war. Daniel was also amused by Blair's rousing speeches on the 'resolute' and 'determined' Londoners who commuted to work again the next day, 'defying' the terrorist threat. Daniel points out that people went back to work because they had to or they'd lose their jobs. On another cynical note: I read in today's Age that the Australian intelligence agencies are as dazzling as ever. They have recently uncovered anti-Western Islamic texts, tracking the subversive documents to the front window of an Islamic bookshop in Sydney . Fortress Australia, impenetrable as ever!
Friday July 15 Advertisements that display a perfect blend of racial representations are trying to make up for the Holocaust.
Tuesday July 12 The following is perhaps only of interest to Adelaide persons. And maybe only a certain type of Adelaide person. Nonetheless, I wish to proudly reproduce the full text entry from the beer menu of the Porterouse pub, Dublin , regarding Cooper's Sparkling Ale, mostly because it vindicates an opinion I have long held myself: Cooper's Sparkling Ale is Australia 's best kept secret. The only independent brewery in Australia , was for years regarded as an idiosyncrasy by macho beer drinkers, drunk only by a handful of aficionados, especially as its heavy yeast sediment meant that it was cloudy rather than sparkling. It is a wonderful, complex beer with a fruity hoppiness, similar in style to the Trappist ale, Orval. *** I have spent the morning in breathless correspondence with William Wildblood, Editorial Secretary at BBC Homes & Antiques magazine. I don't know if they are interested in the article I am offering, but I was glad of the opportunity to call up and talk with the man in person, just to hear how a person with such an amazing name might present himself. He was soft-spoken, polite, ultra-English. When I made some sort of suggestion, he said, 'Yes, I think that's what we shall do.' In stark contrast, I found it difficult to maintain my composure through the conversation, feeling a constant urge to make wild and immoderate comments.
Saturday July 9 I have been working seven days a week lately, so most of what I have to report comes from those bits of time that are measured in money. At present I am valued at €10.60 an hour - €11 an hour on weekends. Monday-Friday I work in the office, pursuing diverse means of publicising a design academy; late on Friday night and late on Saturday night I work in a night-club, at their cocktail bar. After this weekend I will quit the club, because I need some of my life back - but at least the gruesome schedule of late has dug me safely out of financial strife. I will be just a little sorry to quit the club, in fact. I like 'my' cocktail bar: it is relaxed, usually not too many customers - so I just stand around trying to look cool, and making drinks for girls. I am quite often asked to 'surprise' people, so in the quiet times I have devised the following: Girl from Ipanema Cocktail glass half-full of ice Mix in a shaker with ice: shot white rum, half-shot Malibu , half-shot Midori, about 250ml pineapple juice Shake mixer hard enough that it will come out frothy, pale green - pour into glass Pour a dash of blue curacao carefully down the inside of the glass - it will slide to the bottom making a second colour layer Serve with all the garnishes, bells & whistles you can lay your hands on. Tips are all in the garnishes. --- I also like the bar job because the floor staff are really nice. The club has some weird hierarchy in its staffing, whereby all the bar staff are Irish or Australian, while the floor staff (glass-collectors) are from every other part of the world. On breaks, the bar staff sit in one place, and the floor staff sit somewhere else altogether. I sit with the bar staff because I feel like it would create scandal if I broke ranks - but actually I don't really get along with the other bar staff, and I would rather sit with the floor staff. The bar staff seem too aware of their hierarchical superiority - they remind me of the footy jocks in high school; while the floor staff are easy-going, chatty, always exchanging information and stories of distant lands. There are floor staff from Poland , Finland , Holland , Pakistan , Bangladesh , Turkey and Uzbekistan . No Irish person would work as a floor staff. As for my day job - I'm getting paid to write! I have been writing and editing articles on interior design and garden design, and trying to get them placed in English magazines. I enjoy the challenge; I only wish I had more independence to pursue publicity opportunities on my own authority. At the moment I get very held-up waiting for approval from above, and waiting for them to give me access to parts of the computer system that I need to go ahead. I'm not sure if they realise how badly they are limiting my productivity (I have started dropping hints) - for instance part of my brief is to try to increase traffic to our website, but they haven't given me regular administrative access to edit the content of the site. I have to ask specially, and wait, every time I want to do anything.
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