Christmas for the Godless

I'm told Christmas is meant to be a little different when you don't think the Christian god is real, or when you're not compelled to celebrate the birth of a child that he implanted a virgin. Personally, I see it a little differently. The stories are all there, like when you're a kid and the floor is lava; it's a game full of charm and wonder. I'll just stop playing when I go back to work on Monday.

For this Christmas I will be drawing on a wild variety of traditions, instead of just Christian. I'll celebrate it around the winter solstice like Orisis, an Egyptian god who battled evil, died and is now judge of the dead. I'll probably have a feast and "Yule" celebration like the Germanic pagans did too. I'll even have a Nordic tree, and decorate it like the Romans would have for fertility. I'll swop gifts like at the Saturnalia, and might squeeze in Coca-Cola's red Santa Claus. Eventually we'll celebrate the famous mother and child from the 3,000BC to 400AD Greko-Roman world, Isis and Horus.

I know it sounds messy to work so many together, but I'm going to try. Anyone with me?

Travel

They always look at you funny when you have a guitar slung over your back with no case. I think they're just in awe of how awesome it looks. These guys let me take it on, so after shuffling past people in the aisle and waiting for a lady to spend forever sorting her bag, I find two empty seats and make sure she's (the guitar) seatbelted comfortably in beside me. The "in-flight" movie is Tron, (soundtrack by Daft Punk). There is a toilet, but no one will use it.

After a mid morning transfer to a train, I settle down again, reading occasionally, dosing fitfully. I've been travelling for 24 hours now, awake for about 30, and have the sharp situational awareness that only comes from sleep deprivation. Rustling bags arouse attention. Voices in conversation, voices in urgency, voices blending together. A clock flicks another number on a platform. An inspector ambled past.

The weather has been dank for a few days and there's a misty blanket of rain across the countryside that makes the mountains farther away look like ghosts. Water trickels down the window, dragged backward by the speed of the train. Under the rain, everything green nearby looks greener, browns darker. The roads reflect the sky and shapes.

I am passenger 73591 and these commuters don't know how far I've come, but they can probably guess.

Swallows and Amazons

I remember it being read to me as a child, and I remember remembering it when I lived it, mucking about in boats, building little piers with secret entrances. I remember landing on islands and climbing around old ruins.

In many ways, my dad had the same attitude as the dad in that book. It's been fairly defining and probably why I got to do everything I really wanted as a kid. It's summed up in the telegram the kids get when they ask for permission to go exploring.

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS, IF NOT DUFFERS WON'T DROWN

Toiling in the Fields

The eco lights turn off at sundown.

Another Day Ends

I'm walking into Stanthorpe. It's a small country town with a few churches, shopping centres, the odd cafe run by kindly local ladies with calked up menus, and three pubs, each with its regulars.

It sits low so as you walk in, you can see the hills around with varying levels of haze, and from the valley, spires stick up, outlining the streets you know below.

The day is still warm enough to go out with just a t-shirt, but you can take a jumper if you want to be cosy. The sun has sunk to eye level and without it's menacing heat, it feels quite homely. It's keeping the sky yellow and turquoise before the night paints it a more royal blue and finally throws over a wizard's cloak of stars.

The Balloon

For those who have asked me to write more "situations" and the others who just want something approaching light porn, this is for you.


I bumped into her in a crowd. Honestly I didn't know she'd be there. I had no idea. It took me an eternity to register her. What's it called when you do three double takes? Her mouth moved. A brief flash of perfect teeth through deep pink lips.

"Hello!"

Cheerful, even saying so little. Her eyes squint as she smiles.

"Hi." Awestruck.

She looks down, smiling, and with her weight on one foot, twists the toes of the other foot lightly into the ground. She peers up from under her fringe.

The crowd isn't there anymore. People don't bump into us, they slide around as if we're no longer here; as if we've slipped out of that universe and into our private one. It's quiet. Only her words, her mouth, her hair failling above her eyes. Youthful happiness. 23 but forever 17.

Idle chatter. She's shopping. I have no idea why; she looks perfect in a plain white t-shirt, or an oversized hoodie, buried into a couch watching a movie. Anything else just takes from her her-ness.

We talk about nothing. The kind of things you say to someone intimate. The conversation would make no sense to an observer; the laughter, the mock offence, the occasional smirk, all tied up in an artist's palette of words.

Too soon we must part. Our goodbyes are full of last minute things that have to be said. There is too much familiarity for a real parting.

And then she turns to leave. Saunters away. I can still see her weaving, but I don't see the crowd. Only her, a single bright balloon drifting into the sky.

I have completely forgotten where I'm going.

Fathers and their Sons

For all the sons I talked to who told me about their fathers, don't worry; it's the same for everyone.

There is a lot of pride at stake when a father and a son talk. There is a lot to be won and lost. The son wishes for the father to be proud and to recognise him as a person; strong and independent in his own right. The father wants the love and respect of the son, and gratitude for the life he gave and the sacrifices he made. There is a lot to be one and a lot to be lost.

There is awareness to family too. You know each other well. You have seen one another's best and worst; all those close moments. You know what one another hold dear. This works in two ways.

If a stranger insults you it washes off. Who are they? They dont know you. An insult from a father or son cuts deeper; when it comes from as close as can be, an insult stings far more. And as the insult is thrown, someone you love becomes insulted, so the knife bounces back and chips away at you.

But by that same token a compliment matters so much; the pide in a fathers eyes watching his son grow into a man, or the idoltry of a son who sees that his dad is also a man who has already made and has learned from the mistakes he has yet to make. Both slowly recognising what it is to be related; to share even hair and a smile, a sense of humor, a metabolism, a taste in music. Realising that the one was quite literally made from the other, and that there is almost no one closer in the world who was made so similar.

When a father and a son talk there is a lot of pride at stake. Pride is how you judge yourself, and they're a part of you.

Farming

For my first trick, I'm going to turn this dirt into a cabbage.

Later I'll show you how to make a sheep out of grass using only two other sheep and some water.

Language

I'm feeling a little linguistically impaired these days because I spend all my time around non native speakers. My vocabulary is pared back to the words I can say in other languages so I'm sure to be understood. It's like baby talk, or talking to someone in a bar who you think might stab you if he realises you went to college.

It's funny what words we do learn; how to get to the post office, how to present our passports, how to order the duck with mashed potatoes, a little veg, and many very thank you Mister sir. Earlier I heard an Italian guy use his school-learned vocab about "the problems of drugs" to buy weed. Irony is a dish best served stoned and stuttering.

Realistically you need a different set of words to what you cram in high school. You need to know how to curse or you wont understand movies. You need to know how to say "hey!" in a way that doesn't sound like you're at an interview. You need to be able to flirt without sounding like a loved up teenager from an 80s romcom screaming "je t'aime" at a first story window and holding a stereo over your head.

I miss the blaze and glory of the English language, the colour and texture of good conversation, and being understood when I say something like "an intruiging interlocutor".

Show me to Australia's English department.

Skill of the Moment

I used think it was important to underatand everything. To know the workings of things in order to better use them. These days that is less true. I would settle for better presentation.

If you're flirting with a girl, you don't want to be thinking about the farcical nature of social contracts. You want to say funny, witty things about stuff she has heard of, maybe show a passion for something in life. If you work on a farm you don't need to know the theory of sowing crops, you need to be fit, strong, and not mind long hours.

Understanding is not always a path to happiness, but participation usually is. Being in a moment and engaging with it. That will give you more enjoyment than knowing how many neutrinos hit you every hour.

Engage with the moment like you're playing a sport; with a clear mind and absolute conviction. The exam is over. Put down your pens. Life starts now.

Value Systems

So you start off being nice to everything. Kind to animals, kind to people; murder completely out of the question. You see yourself as moral and your morality means no death and torture.

Then you think, hey, a steak or a fried egg every so often is pretty good, so suddenly a little death isn't that bad. You don't have to kill and you don't have to see the killing, so why not. And if it's $2.95 for eggs from chickens cramped in cages with their beaks cut off or $4.20 for one that sauntered around a field, you're going to start justifying the cage pretty quickly too.

Then you drive to work late and someone cuts you off in traffic so you call him a fucking asshole. This stranger. This person who just thought they could nip out in front of you because they had been patiently waiting for almost 10 minutes, staring at lines of cars filing past. Suddenly all your rage and wrath rises and is focused on them. But that's not who you think you are. It's not who you wanted to be when you got out of bed in the morning. You're moral.

So to keep your title you redefine your morality. If you're wrong and you want to be right, the easiest thing to do is change your definitions. You say for pain and death, animals don't count. Not tasty ones. Maybe dogs and pandas because they're cute. With people you can shout at them but not hit someone. Unless there's a war. Then you can kill everyone, and probably should.

And so your childhood fantasy of being a friend to all peels away over the course of a Tuesday morning until you realise that the real world is not governed by what you should do, but by what you can do. The language of well meaning that decides how you see things peels away like skin off a carcass and leaves the flesh of life beneath, terrifying, nurishing, and real.

Purpose

Dual Core A5 Chip. What the hell does that mean? I'm in electronics and we talk about these things as if they matter. 1500 more colours. I can't tell that many apart. 15 gig ram. What are you going to do with that?  Word processing? Fully digitised optronoscopy. I don't even know what that means.

Somewhere along the line we've forgotten what we're buying. We've forgotten it's just images and sounds. 10MB/s downloads. What are you gonna do? Browse Facebook faster? The words have become meaningless. Abstracted. They no longer align with our experience.

I'd like to see what the actual differences are. Not just the fancy names for things I don't need.

Silence

The secret to wearing earplugs while in a room with someone you don't want to listen to but can't afford to offend is to buy noise cancelling headphones and plug them into an mp3 player that isn't on.

Glorious silence, be mine once more.

Impulsiveness

Being impulsive and living in the moment is not about spontaneously doing random things, contrary to the common conception. It is not about taking off in a strange direction whenever you're bored, because most of the time this doesn't work. It feels forced, contrived, and unnatural.

Rather, it is being ready, having a good state of mind and resources, and then recognising opportunities and capitalising on them. Circumstance is the main factor in the enjoyment of life and you can only manipulate it so much. Sometimes you have to wait for the chaos of the world to send you a good flow, and when it does, paddle fast.

The Meaning of Life

People keep asking in person and in literature "what is the meaning of life" so I've dedicated the past five minutes to the question, applying my rule that I'm a genius and can do this sort of thing elegantly and in a short space of time.

First, one must understand the question, so apply the question to something banal and terrestrial. "What is the meaning of chair?" It's a non statement. It almost disproves the validity of the question. So say we take the spirit the question was intended in and rephrase. "What is a chair for?" A chair is for sitting on.

Secondly, we'll apply our meaningful question to the original problem. "What is life for?" There are only three things you can do with it. Create it, destroy it, or live it. You can't create your own, and destroying it seems innately bad, so I'll conclude in good spirits that life is for living.

Thirdly, you're going to want to do something useful with this information, so make sure that when you're living, you're living well. If you're having trouble, use analogies, like a fan, a chair and a football.

Stay cool, be comfortable, have fun.

Youth

Recently, I've been coasting. I have been sliding along not taking a real interest, lazing in a haze of pleasantness. It's easy to do when life is this good. I forgot to taste food when I eat it. I forgot to enjoy the feel of sunshine, and wind. I forgot to really listen to new people for their take on life.

Eventually, you start to feel like you have things set. Like you have the right outlook and the right knowledge to be happy. As if anything else is unnecessary bunk just floating around.

But life isn't about arriving, it's about moving, about change, new things, experiences. It's about feeling like you're about to take that last step off a diving board every second. It's about participating, and letting what's out there get to you, affect you, and become a part of you.

That's what being young is. Being affected. Listening. Being open to change in your heart and your mind. And if you remember that, you can be young for as long as you want.

Philip K. Dick

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Clubs

Outside, I can already hear the bass, like a premonition of what's to come. It sounds like sweat and drunkenness, public urination, and late nights standing in a chipper swaying gently in the sterile lighting trying to focus on the menu while an Italian behind the counter stares at you like you're what's wrong with capitalism. But it hasn't come to that yet. The night is young.

The place is glitzy, and a thousand people pass by. A guy in a shirt and pointed brown shoes, next a girl in a frilly blouse and heels, the next in a long dress and hair flowing. They all flit around the street, offerening themselves up like art. I am a conaisseur; appreciating, admiring, ranking.

Two tattood men are wearing suits at the door. Bouncers are the only tattood people I've seen in suits. It makes them look simultaneously more menacing, official, and moronic. They let me straight in wothout id and stop a guy who's clearly 30 after me.

Bouncers always let me in. I think it's for the same reason girls' parents like me. I've never punched anyone and I wouldn't know where to start. I know when to hold eye contact and when to avoid it.

The brunette at the bar ; good time to hold eye contact. After we've "eyefucked" for a few moments, I go up to the bar and she starts saying something but the music is too loud. I lean in and she repeats it once in a normal voice, the second time shouting. If it was witty at first, it isn't anymore.

"I like your shirt."

Everyone loves a stripey blue shirt. I smile and mime "thank you" and she smiles to herself. Realistically, it's going to be hard to get a conversation going here, so I ask her if she wants to dance which of course she does.

On the dancefloor there isn't enough space to swing or anything, so we stand about doing that sort of silly dancing that is a step below epilepsy and a step above transferring your weight from foot to foot while standing.

From here we could kiss without even exchanging names. Why not. Get your kicks for the evening, make you feel like you're there for a reason. No one will even be surprised if you don't know.

Eventually we're glistening with sweat and I gesture toward the smoking area for some air. The irony is wasted on no one.

Outside, the music is quieter, and the sounds of chatter spread out takes over. Laughs, shouts, drunken arguements come from all around. It's only then I pick up her accent.

She starts telling me about her trip. All the usual crap. This isn't her yet, this is a montage of cut outs from ads for camper vans and hostels and trips to the great barrier reef. She's not used to her own words so she has to warm up to get there.

I ask what her favourite thing was. Skydiving. Freedom. Exhilaration. I ask what she wants to do most. Hold a Koala. Cute. Then I ask my favourite; why did you leave home? She gives the usual... job, sun, experiences, travel, whatever.

This is my favourite part.

I ask "why did you *really* leave?"  and I look at her as if I *know*, and she doesn't have to lie to me. She starts flowing then. Tells me real things about herself like what she things of her friends, who she loves in her life, who messed her up. Important things. Things you don't get at a wine and cheese reception, chortling over a good bailout joke.

A while passes and we chat. We bond. We share. It's wonderful to have someone let you in, even if there are cigarette butts all over the floor, and beer mixed with ash in the glass ashtray.

A little later a friend of hers passes by and I take the opportunity to excuse myself to the WC. I smile as I walk away so she knows I'm coming back.

I walk across the loud dancefloor, pushing through the crowd, and in the door into the toilet. A guy pushes out past me as i walk in, and the hand drier that was on winds down.  The music is far away again as soon as the door shuts behind me.

I walk up to a urinal. There's piss on the floor. Seriously, after 20 years of practise, you'd think people could hit the bowl. The only things you do more are breathe and walk.

I start going and pee yellow because its the 21st century and I eat more vitamins than I need. Some guy pushing in the door of the toilet shouts back at his friend and, laughing to himself, slides up to the urinal beside mine even though there're three free beside eachother.

"Good night buddy?"

He broke unial etiquette. He's clearly a douchebag. Close this conversation down.

"Pretty good."

Perfect. Polite, and non committal.

"Oh! Very nice! Got any foxy ladies then?"

Seriously, who says foxy ladies. I smile, as though smiling means something.

In a moment we've finished, zipped. We're shuffling to the sinks and the mirrors and the door.

"Ha! Good on ya man!"

I see it coming before it happens, and when it happens it does so in slow motion. Dread. His whole body opens as he swings about and pats me on the shoulder with his disgusting unwashed hand. That was completely unnecessary.

I shrug in an "I don't know" way to get rid of him, and he leaves the way he came in, laughing to himself. The club gets louder for a second as he opens the door and then turns to a low din as it slams.

I look at myself in the mirror.

This is clubbing.

Drying Clothes

They're not going to dry in the room, and driers are crap.

Put 'em on. Go for a 10 minute walk. Come home, change clothes. Repeat.

Books

I'm tired and sick today, so I'm reading a book. This is what I've read so far on my travels. The scores are for enjoyability, roughly out of 9.

Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert (8)
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (8)
Julliet, Naked - Nick Hornby (8)
Losing My Virginity - Richard Branson (5)
Down Under - Bill Bryson (4)
Skippy Dies - Paul Sth...  (8)
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack DeCrow - Alexander James McKinnon (6)
The Game - Neil Strauss (9)
Lolita - Vladimir Nobokov (6)
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (5)
The Fellowship of the Ring - J R Tolkein (8)
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (9)
The Two Towers - J R Tolkein (8)
The Return of the King - J R Tolkein (8)
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3)
Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (9)
Cash - Johnny Cash (3)
Limitless - Alan Glynn (7)
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk (8)
The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut (7)
Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke(7)
Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman - Richard Feynman (6.5)
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (current, and fantastic)

The Gruen Transfer

When you walk into a supermarket, there's never anything right beside you. Its because nothing sells there. People need to feel like they've looked for what they're buying to have a more satisfying purchasing experience.

Milk is always down the back. It means you have to walk past everything when you want to pick some up. Chances are you'll buy more when you see it all. Chocolates are always by the checkout for the same reason.

The layout is changed all the time, just to fock with you. And that tinny background music? That's there to fock with you too. Shops are designed to confuse and daze you. To turn you into a zombie.

The moment a shopper disorientates, their eyes glaze over and they walk slower. Its a switch from conscious, active thought and passive wandering. It's called the Gruen Transfer. You probably don't even notice it happening to you.

Supermarkets have always been the closest thing to a zombie apocalypse I've experienced; the good people of the world, all tranced out, wandering aimlessly about and getting in the way while I powerwalk about looking for what I came in for. Damn zombies.

Next time you shop, write down what you want before you go in, and listen to music in headphones. Play it loud enough not to hear the crappy supermarket music. Only buy the things on the list. You'll feel the difference and you'll notice the zombies.

The Kinds Of Love

I've felt a lot of things I could describe as "love" through life, and find the word a little ambiguous and undescriptive. There are so many kinds of love ; so many subtle variations that entirely change the experience. Here are a few I've come across. If you have any more, let me know.

Family : love of siblings and parents
Infatuation : intensely fancying someone
Attrition : hanging out with someone until you love them
Familiarity : old friends who are almost a part of you
Romantic : traditional long term love

I can't pick a favourite. Writing the list brought back good memories though. :)

Catholicism

The more I travel, the more I believe catholicism is a joke. There are parts that just make no direct sense. The following are a few off the top of my head;

• the virgin birth
• "died for your sins"
• transubstantiation (creepy cannibalism)
• the bible, in general
• who created god
• original sin, or the idea that a new born baby is innately corrupt.

When I first stopped thinking that god in the catholic form existed, I still felt god. I still had the feeling something was there, because I was raised to think something was there. For an hour a week I had repeated the same droning doctrine designed to drill it into your head.

It took almost a year for me to feel free. To lose the voice. To feel like there wasn't something watching my thoughts.

Now, I can scarcely imagine what it's like to believe in god. Life makes so much more sense when you remove the blur that the whole concept seems barmy. You don't have to worry about silly things like "why are thousands of children dying of starvation if god loves them" because it becomes a non-point. There is no god, and they just are. Don't pray, give them food.

I find I enjoy the world far more as an athiest. There is a natural beauty to things; an elegance of all that is. Without background magic, innate guilt or obligation, the world appears as the world is. It's beautiful. It doesn't need a magic story. And it becomes more beautiful the more you understand of it; the more you learn of how it works, and what is and was. It is something to marvel at.

Above all, the strangest part of catholicism is why people want to believe in the catholic god, what with him being a complete asshole. All the nonsensical sexism, racism, murder, torment and genocide is unfathomably cruel, and I don't know how anyone could align themselves with such a creature, real or fictional. It reminds me of my first thought on the road to atheism, much more elegantly put thousands of years ago.

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” 

― Marcus Aurelius

Rooms

When I walk into a room, the first thing I do is stereotype everyone. It's like getting to know them, only faster. There's the band's friends up front screaming. There's the girl and guy at the bar in the little world of eachothers' smiles. Two friends collapsed in a couch. A girl third wheeling.

I count how many of them I've been. The best friends. The queit one. The drunk one. Even the Guy on the stage.

People says I understand them quickly. It's probably because I am them. Or at least I was once.

War

Brett showed me a quote from Farewell to Arms. It's fantastic. It sums up war. A man, considering the honors that will be bestowed on his injured colleague, asks him of the circumstances. "Tell me exactly what happened. Did you do any heroic act?" "No, I was blown up eating cheese."


I think that's how most people live. Bewildered by the great things around them, etching out a life as best they can until someday, while nibbling on some cheddar, they're unexpectedly exploded by cancer or a drunk driver or chronic cholesterol.

If you keep your eyes on the road you'll never see the mountains

If you keep your wheels on the path you'll never roam the fields

If you keep your hands in your pockets, you'll never touch the water

If you keep your head in a manteau, you'll never feel the rain

You have to travel before you can settle

You've got to work before you know how

You've got to spend before you'll try saving

You've got to run before you can walk

I believe you've met in passing.

Some people have the great fortune of spending their lives in love. They don't know what it is, but the joy fills them, and they're sprightly, youthful, and charming wherever they go.

Love life. Know it'll break your heart and love it anyway. Let it break your heart and love it again.

Let life be your lover, not your acquaintance.

Le Destin se Moque Bien de Nous

Three stops to redland bay. You tense your arm holding the pole every time you think the bus driver is going to do something dramatic, but you still sway like a drunk on a merry go round.


At 8am the IQ on a bus probably sums to 20. Take the same people with a tactical injection of coffee and a chance to read their email and they could run the country. People aren't 9 to 5 creatures. If we were, we wouldn't spend the morning in a daze, the hours up to lunch working furiously, and then the afternoon in a diabetic stupor.


Eating takes time. Even digestion.


A young business woman passes by on the street. Eyes copied from Marie Claire, hair blowdried, large hand bag, white runners for the walk, heels are probably in the bag. My friends I meet in the pub probably become these impersonal newspaper cut outs of professionalism when I don't see them. Walk down the road, head held high, bathing in the glory of their own self image reflected in the determined, forlorn, expressionless faces that wash past.


Everything takes time. Especially appearance.


The art corner is where you want to be. It makes you forget that you don't have cufflinks and polished shoes. It's full of men in cardigans and think framed glasses with fake laughs and pointless opinions. It's hard not to feel cosy there, surrounded by culture. It has a longevity that makes it feel homely. It lives beyond it's creator. He might have been an asshole, but his paintings were pretty. Judge him on them and he was a great man. Imagine being loved by people you don't know.


The Queen visited and there are children rising out of the crowd, climbing trees and monuments. I hear she's very charming, but I've never met her or heard a quote or a speech from her. I'd say she's great at crosswords. I wonder if she ever put on music and danced in her room while no one was watching or if she's ever tripped and looked around quickly to see if anyone's noticed. Usain Bolt ate Chicken McNuggets and watched tv the morning he set the world record for a 100m sprint.


We're all just people.

Art Galleries

I see a video of black and white images with a deep voice over and piano music that justifies the painoforte name. I see a head that doesn't look like a head. I see a face that looks like it's drawn by a child, a painting that looks like a ball of scribbles.

A couple stop by one of them for a respectful pause, then giggle and walk on. A man stares at the half drawn body of a woman as though her dismembered limbs mean something.

Show me to the paintings that look like what they're of.

Empire State of Mind

Today I woke up in Brisbane in a five storey listed building stashed amid the skyscrapers. Eight people sleep in my room and the floor is covered in clothes and bags, as backpackers temporarily take residence. The halls smell like and old hotel.

I wind down the corridors, past the rooms with different voices and languages chattering inside, through the lobby full of brochures and into the openness of the street.

People don't J-walk here, so the street corners are always packed with people waiting intently, occasionally turning and laughing. The buildings are tall, but no one ever looks up.

It's quite disquieting to return to a city after so long travelling, and a number of things appear quite apparent which would not otherwise be.

One man, head lowered, races to where he needs to be.

People are quite out of shape, or fat. In the country, people looked lively and healthy. Here, adorned in city fashion, everyone is a little paler. A little more sickly. A little less like what a person should be.

A woman, head tilted back, breathes in the city, savouring his ten minutes of daily morning freedom.

People look very busy. They are thinking things and doing things, worrying about who, when and where, while out bush one lives in a meditatively peaceful state.

A man in a suit talks slowly and pointedly into his phone.

People work all the time. A lot of people in the country will work a month on and two off, or one in three. Working all year and spending it on a car and an apartment with a slightly better view than the other apartment so some old stressed important man who is you in ten years will think more of you seems absurd when you could work six months and the lie on a beach for the rest of the year.

A man tells his boss to eff off.

The din of the cars is so constant hardly anyone even notices. The noise is constant, everywhere, thundering.

A bus hisses as it stops. A truck swings wide to take a city corner. A man shouts down from a high up building site. A coffee grinder winds up and stops. A car moves roars from one traffic light to the next.

A man can't hear his own footsteps.

Thunder

The thunderstorms for the last two nights have been immense. We had to pull over the rain was so heavy, washing down the road like a river, but we couldn't even see the turn off.
So there we are, tearing down the motorway in an 1991 toyota van that can only do 80kmph wearing only shorts, blaring the 1812 Overture (and later the Sorcerors Apprentice), our path lit every few seconds by flashes, the air trembling from the constant roll of thunder, and the headlights barely tunnelling a few metres through the rain.

It was beautiful. I've never seen anything like it.

Eventually we found a rest area, crawled into the back of the van, and fell asleep before the storm had fully passed. It's strange how peaceful the rough noise of a storm can be.

Fear Me!!

Some of the wildlife in Australia is particularly indifferent, if not aggressive towards people, which is strange if you're used to everything fleeing from your path as happens in Ireland.

The birds in north Queensland are jerks. They will steal food as you hold it, so you end up throwing things at them to keep them away, but it hardly phases them. It's not that you want to harm them, you just want them to fear you.

Life

I have a bag full of dirty clothes and I live on around $10 a day plus gas. I swim in any water I see ; rivers, pools, oceans. I get up with the sun and play guitar long into the night. I work one month in three. I don't really need anything.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose an office. Choose 50 weeks working and 2 weeks off. Choose waking up in the morning and wondering when it's going to pay off. Choose sterile lighting and assholes for colleagues. Choose a new car every three years. Choose a career path. Choose that feeling of dread every day you wake up. Choose baggy eyes and early onset heart disease. Choose following.

Or think it through and choose a beach.

Songwriting

I wrote a song two days ago to a tune given to me by the good people of The Strand a few years back. It took a roadside carpark in the middle of the night, but finally the words sound right. Birch, expect mail.

Distance

The concept of scale is rather different here. "Nipping up the road" can refer to any journey that will take less than a day.

Stumpy Joe in Tennant Creek

The following is an incomplete entry I began a few days ago. We have since journeyed to the east coast and upward via the beautiful Townsville, and are making out way to Cairns.

Anyway, excerpt begins;

I am trapped in Tennant Creek.

Three days ago I set off in a '91 Toyota van with a Canadian guy called Brett heading south. The road has been kind, but the van has a few oddities to it.

Firstly, it overheats in the mid day sun, so we have to drive through the morning and pause between 12 and 2:30.

Secondly, the regulator on the alternator borked so the battery is cooking under the 18volts (inatead of 14) and the whole place smells like sulphur. The acid burned through some of the wires and I had to patch 'em back up.

Excerpt ends.

What happened in the end, was we hung out with an auto electrician and camped in his yard while he fixed up Stumpy Joe. Drinks were taken, banter was had. Then we rode east over bushland with the Lord of the Rings theme music blaring.

Dogs 2

You always miss your dog most. Taffy, you were a fine stand in, but you're no Sola.

Leaving Darwin

The hardest part of travelling is leaving people all the time. In the backpacking world, everyone has a plan and the plan is to keep moving. That's the only inflexible part. You can do anything you want as long as it's new. Every day is a new day, every day is a new goodbye, and every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Day 135 - My Precarious Financial State

The Story So Far

I’ve never had any concept of the value of money. It’s something that has always floated around, but never been necessary. If I wanted to eat out, I ate out; if I wanted to go to the cinema, I went to the cinema; if I wanted to go drinking, I went drinking. I always had something to eat. I always had somewhere to live. Part of this whole “Australia” lark was to get some sense that it meant something. This has taken a while, but I think I’m finally there.

The Prediction

I left Ireland with something in the region of €8,000. I cautiously budgeted that I’d spend €70 a day, which is reasonable if you’re buying petrol, eating in restaurants, and buying anything digital that takes your fancy. Which of course I did. Anyway, factor in €600 overdraft, another €300 cash, and $800 that I earned re-wiring a boat, and the math tells you that I should last almost exactly 135 days, which means that my guess was about right, and that I now have no money.

The Predicament

And so, to the present, where I sit on the balcony of a quiet hostel outside of town, with an empty petrol tank, and all the money I possess; $10.80 made up from loose change I found in the car. I’m planning tomorrow night’s busking, which I need to do to pay for petrol to drive to work the day after. “How did this happen?“, you might ask. Good question.

The Experience

It was probably all the dinners. And breakfasts, lunches and brunches. The ones I bought myself while no one was looking; the ones I bought other people because I like to dine. It might have been the drinks, or all the sunglasses I’ve gone through. Or it might have been the digital camera, the phone, the three sim cards, or the car. Either way, most of it I blew on fun things I simply wanted, and the rest I squandered.

The Situation

So I’m working out in the university to earn some beer tokens before heading east toward surfers’ paradise and the rising sun. The guys with the money have seemingly had some difficulty in organizing a clever way of getting it from their account into mine, and since I haven’t cashed in my pocket full of mumbles yet, it makes sense that now I have nothing but considerable unpaid wages and minor (yet maximum) debts to various financial institutions.

The Solution

Turns out if I want some money I’m going to have to sing for it. Which is ironic, because I think that’s what my dad used to say in a figurative sense. I think I’ve learned something though. Something important. Something about money and how when it really comes down to it, in a situation like this, with all things taken into account and factored in, and taking a broad yet pinpointed view, when all else is… is… I’ve quite lost my train of thought. But I’ve definitely learned something.

Awkward

So I'm walking along the waterfront, past the wave pool, and I start thinking the inside of my lower front teeth feel a little weird. I'm checking this out and looking absent mindedly about when suddenly I notice I'm looking at a girl and she's looking back. She sees me notice, and smiles. But I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of my teeth, and feel suddenly compelled to stick my hand in my mouth and find out why the hell they feel so weird.

The girl looked horrified. I laughed but I had my hand in my mouth so it came out as "hahghrjlarfgh".

Crying Women and Why I Have a Beard

This post is long overdue, as it relates to something that happened five times over a period of about two weeks in early July. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life, so I can't leave Darwin without writing about it somewhere. What happened is that women started crying around me.

It's been a long, sunny, enjoyable day. I've been swimming and hanging out with the gang down by the water front; I've played some guitar and had a laugh. We've all gone for drinks. I've gotten hungry and nipped out for a bite. I've grabbed some food at a kebab place and sat down outside. A girl has sat down beside me. She's pretty, but tired. I already know what's going to happen.

She starts making small talk. I'm short with her and ignore most of what she says. She starts telling me about her travels. I barely say a word. She starts talking about her friends back home. I stare at my food. Then something flicks. The tone of the conversation changes. It's like she was a sunday diver in a village of conversation before, and she's just found the slip road onto the motorway.

She talks more quickly. It's hard for her to fit a breath into her sentences. She starts getting agitated. The words make less sense. Her eyes redden. The first drop of water appears. She stops talking. Here we go.

I drop my fork into the food and look at her; I say something meaningless and comforting, but the barrier has come down and it has to run its course. It peaks with angry words, sad words, twisted words. Water flows down her face and after a while subsides into sniffs, and eventually apologies. "I never do this." The words of an emotional petite mort. They're the same every time.

There has been a connection, somewhere along the line. She has opened up to me and feels a bond. I just want to finish my kebab. She'll talk to me again in a few days and expect another transformational heart-to-heart, but I'll probably wrap up the conversation quickly and go to the TONR. You have to be firm and polite with these people; there are just too many of them.

After talking about it with a few of the greatest minds in Darwin, I eventually decided that if I grew a beard I'd be a little less accessible, and it's seems to have worked so far. I'm a little worried about shaving so I'm going to keep it until I head east side.

You can't be too careful.

The Guy Who Recommends You Music

**Rant Warning**

I get a lot of different reactions to carrying a guitar everywhere. Some people go totally crazy for it, some think it's an every day thing. Most just look a little brightly and don't say a word. There's only one type that really bothers me. It's The Guy Who Recommends You Music.

A standard thing for The Guy Who Recommends You Music to say is "Hey you have a guitar! You'd love this obscure piece of crap music because I girl I liked years ago said she liked it once and I've listened to it a million times since." (They don't punctuate.) This is usually followed by them fumbling with phones, mp3 players, and websites, trying to communicate to you the brilliance and emotional weight of the life changing experience that is this music. Usually it's just one guy with a poorly mic'd guitar whining clichéd lyrics in a post Elliott Smith lament over a lost love.

Don't get me wrong, I have my own strange music I listen to, and I like a bit of Elliott Smith now and again, but I don't stop strangers on the street and make them listen to it. The main problem is that The Guy Who Recommends You Music is usually enthusiastic and clueless, so you can't be outright rude to him; it's a social trap of politeness.

One day someone will recommend me a band and I'll punch them without a word of warning.

Just you wait.


References:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes?qt=qt0479121
http://xkcd.com/920/

Heat

A moment ago I stepped into a room air conditioned to 25 degrees and thought I was going to freeze to death. It's about 3 months since I've had just call to wear a jumper, and you sweat without moving in the sun. I only vaguely remember what it's like to have to wear a coat.

There are two seasons; wet and dry. Both are hot. Both are consistent.

The Darwin climate. Mad for it.

Mixed Metaphor Day

Recently, I started working in Charles Darwin University's IT department. I'm on the helpdesk, and get barraged with an infinite number of emails asking questions all day; some silly, some very, very hard to fix.

Surviving in IT isn't particularly easy so I've come up with a number of ways to live through it. Today was mixed metaphor day. Below are a few excerpts from mails I sent out.

On waiting for a fault to re-occur: "A watched kettle gathers no moss."

On solving a problem using the off-and-on-again method; "Glad we saw the light at the end of the rainbow quickly there."

On a problem getting held up; " sounds like your rolling beanstalk is gathering moss. "

On a guy being very busy; "I know you guys are juggling a lot of magic beanstalks at the moment..."

On a job being completed; " Donna will be as happy as a pig in a barrel."

On a phishing mail being reported; "a stitch in time saves shooting fish in a haystack." 

On forms; "a form in the hand is worth two in the haystack."

On being thanked for doing a good job; "They do say I’m the beanstalk at the end of the rainbow."

On being called up for using awful metaphors; "There’s no point crying over spilt eggs in the one haystack."

On taking your chances with a new idea; "If that’s the case you’ll just have to plan your magic beans and see if they gather moss."

On finishing a job; "I’m glad we could put that sleeping horse to rest."

The Recruitment Agency

With my funds dwindling and life of eternal comfort becoming threatened I decided it was finally in my interests to get a job. Everyone had spoken highly of Julia Ross so two weeks ago I merrily dropped in a cv and never heard from them again.

Of course this suited my leisurely living so I ignored them until two days ago. I had come from a horrendous morning of basking which was cut short by my lack of a licence. I dragged myself to the agency in low spirits. This time they decided to ask me to take a word, excel and typing test. I clicked too quickly quite often and had a conversation in the middle of the typing. It was thoroughly disastrous.

When the girl printed out the results she looked shocked. I apologised until she said she was shocked because I had scored at least twice the average in everything. Suddenly everyone was interested in me.

The next morning I got a call from the regional manager. I dropped in to town to see him, delighted to have work so soon. When I got there though, there was no such news.

As it turned out, he had read the sailing aspect of my CV and wanted me to work on his yacht.

I dropped down late after a leisurely morning, not even having a chance to wash off the mist of the last nights indiscretion. We chatted for hours and bonded over boating and, after some planning of the electronics, the next day he invited me to a family dinner.

I have just returned from it.

So to sum up, in two days I have gone from being completely ignored by the main recruitment agency in Darwin to being friends with the head man in the area.

Now all I need is a job.

Posterity

Thank you Ben, Ian, Sue and Robbie for the trip on the boat yesterday. Pleasure jamming with you.

Bathroom Banter

Bathroom banter at karaoke night; a girl a-tonally screams the "heeey!!" from "What's Up" by the Four Non Blonds.

"Jesus. That can't be good for business."

Quality.

Strippers

Those who we've befriended turn out to want to get pissed and listen to dance music all day. I was sorely disappointed after harboring a secret hope for a challenging conversation that would culminate in a heartwarming reaffirmation of the hidden goodness of humanity.

Damn boring strippers. Ruining everything.

Gary

Gary is a strange fellow I almost instantly decided I didn't like, but I haven't admitted it to myself yet. He chases tail like no person I have ever met. He has shagged a lady boy and tried it on with a crying girl. He is now on 103 for Oz. He disturbs me.

And yet he's an alright guy. Always smiles, has good banter, and is very honest about all his life. He doesn't hide anything or use any subterfuge to entice women. He is simply relentless and happy, and that's all he needs.

By now we're all entering a friendly realm of existentialism brought on by an abundance of sunshine, and in more distant moments he appears like Marla, blowing smoke in my face while I'm trying to find my power animal.

I Love Radiohead

Though originally I completely took to anyone who claimed to share my taste in music, I've become much more cautious about it in the last two years. A surprising number of girls have told me they loved Radiohead and later were scarcely familiar with High and Dry.

It's not that I'm a music sob; I'd like to think those days are behind me. My knowledge is way out of date anyway. It's that I don't want to make a connection with someone I have a false idea of, talking about something they don't get.

Now whenever someone makes the claim I sigh with a mix of past disappointment and waning hope, and launch into a subtle quiz, a conversational dance, searching to see if this one is telling the truth.

Update; Found a fan. Way random.

Straight Tens

For years I had joked about ranking things out of ten. It kicked off as a college joke where whenever anything happened or someone said something, you said a number out of ten and it was understood that what had just happened had been judged.

Meanwhile, in Darwin, TOT (Tits Out Tuesday) was happening, waiting for judgement.

Years later, yesterday, scorecards were made and banter was had. It was like art attack hit the hostel; prit stick and bits of cardboard covered the bottle crowded table. In the end the masterpieces were unveiled to the amusement of all, and Brambo happily kept.up his notoriety.

Day ?

I awoke in an unfamiliar location unsure of my surroundings and sat upright, allowing the room's gentle swaying to stop. The air conditioning got louder and quieter and eventually settled down as the room came into focus. People. Clothes. Daemons. Colours. All packed into the same room. I turned to my dog who was floating somewhere near the ceiling. "We'll be lucky to get out of this one alive."

The people were now staring at me. Vultures the lot of them. Not to be trusted. Luckily the door opened and we made a dash into the corridor. Can't be too careful these days.

Dogs

If you ask any travelling dog owner who they miss most from home, they'll always say their dog. Friends and family are close to the top, sure, but the dog always tops the poll by an indisputable margin. On the road up to Darwin, and even in Darwin, wherever there was a dog we were all over it.

In the same way that talking to an old friend does, playing with a dog just feels like home.

Spontaneity

An impromptu water fight at a petrol station between several Australian, Canadian and German girls broke out in Jabiru and it was wonderful.

The French Exit

You're out drinking with your friends. You get very drunk and suddenly feel completely compelled to leave the pub or club you're in. 40 minutes later your friends wonder where you are.

You have made a French Exit.

The Cav

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Immortalised

Every so often someone does something defining that becomes named after them. Their name or names become synonymous with the action, and history remembers their folly through the deeds of others.

Here, I present two oldies, along with a new entry from last night.

***Paragraph Removed***

THE ROB
To be frustrated by a cyclist or driver, drop a gear, floor the accelerator, and eject your exhaust. Or to act out of rage and fail instantly.
NEW: THE JESS AND BRAYDEN
To like someone who you annoy the crap out of, get drunk, and leave 16 missed calls from 4 different numbers making everyone think you're a psycho.
I'd love to know if anyone else has any of these.

Introductions

Recently on my travels I met Stu.

A little about him... When Brayden sourced a wheelchair Stu went on a night out in the chair claiming to have bruised his lower spine skydiving. He was welcomed into the main club in town by the manager.
Stu is insane.

Acclimatising... Making the climate right.

How to acclimatise; you will need
1 Car
1 Large and well placed continent
1 Thermometer.

Only Step
Choose your desired temperature and drive up and down until you find it.

Funny hat day

We dropped out to see the gals working. There were hats. :-)

The Road

Australia is like a Dreamworld. It's so vast there is an infinity of bushland in every direction. A cloud dashed blue expanse overhead is so unchanging and unending it is like existing in a bubble seperate to the rest of the world; a self contained universe of sun and green lands.

You get the feel that all you see is all that exists in every direction.

Group Dynamics

If they're right for eachother matchmaking will be like pairing socks.

Details can be so vulgar.

There's a strange equality to backpacking. You don't know where anyone lives, how smart they are or what they've done. All you know is what their accent gives away and how well you get on. There's a childlike simplicity to it.

The Dark Side of the Boom

I’m quite stricken recently by the sadness of people about the emigration in Ireland. Mass emigration to me had always been something that happened in the past and that we were glad to be out of. Songs of coffin ships were part of the romantic gloom of history.

When I decided to take a ramble around the planet it was a fairly light hearted decision. You go on the web one night with a credit card and a silly notion, and in 30 minutes you have a visa. Another 25 minutes later you have flights, and all of a sudden you’re giving up a job and flying to another continent.

The goodbyes are where it started to twinge with a sting that comes more from my country’s past than my own. I am perfectly happy to take a wander. It’ll be crap not to see friends, but it’ll be exciting to see this planet of ours. Yet still there’s a lingering, almost genetic sorrow in it, most likely brought on by listening to a lot of Christy Moore songs as a young boy.

Loneliness is a foreign land. When you’re at home you’re defined by your character. How you behave is who you are. When you travel, your identity is your country and if you left it in sorrow you can spend a lifetime of longing under Piccadilly's neon.

Write it, seal it, send it.

My attention span is not what it used to be. These days instead of reading a book, I easily lose an evening meandering the infinite fields of the internet with streamlined software, becoming ever more efficient at consuming vast quantities of vaguely amusing content.

*Scroll* *Click* "heh" *Click* *Scroll* *Scroll*

Looking back, it's a world away from my activities of old; I used read books, listen to albums in their entirety, and when I'd write a song I'd keep rewriting it until it became something complete.

But then of course, that's not really true. I've always been surrounded by albums I've only half listened to. I have drawers full of scraps of paper with a tenth of a song, or a clever line or a thought for a theme scratched onto them.

Maybe, then, it's just the things you finish that you remember. They're the things that write themselves into your life and become a part of you, and give a fullness to your past. And if that's true, that's all that matters. The scatty airy time wasted should be forgone, and in it's place a subject of substance that would stay the unbearable lightness.

The Past and Pending

A lot of people have a morbid fascination with the past. In the modern age where data is cheap, all emails are preserved, facebook preserves your old conversations, and you're constantly reminded of how you once looked and who you once knew.

The obsession permeates into the present. Anywhere something beautiful is happening you're guaranteed to see five cameras pointing at it. People are so preoccupied with preemptive reminiscence they barely realise they were there to see what was in the photo they just took.

A dimension of the hollowness comes from the focus on sight, as if all our perception is wrapped up in this one sense. For me, experiencing a moment is much more than that; there is subtle a feel to a place that can be masked by trying to fit it in a photo; chasing it and trying to hold it for eternity so that it runs away like a spooked animal.

To experience a place I allow it be tied to a time and become lost in the moment, and in that way it becomes part of the eternal wash of the world, mine, and no one's.

The Past and Pending

React

There are a lot of things that annoy me and my family know how to do most of them instinctively. Most of them aren't justifiable in any way, but when you're a twenty two year old guy living at home all those years, rationality starts to fly somewhere along the way.

When someone really gets under my skin I see in myself a usual progression; seething and angry, aware of the anger, and then mellow, melancholic, apathetic and unmotivated. Originally that progression would have taken a number of hours to work through, but these days I can move from the offending moment to dummed out gazing at reddit in about 40 seconds.

The problem I have with this isn't the easy offence or any of the obvious things. The problem is the apathy and melancholy that floods in quickly afterward in an attempt to suppress the anger, and that once I'm there I find it hard to achieve.

And so in a backward way I find myself wanting to be angry a lot, because if I'm angry I can achieve; I can roll with the emotion and knock down tasks in record speed; always winning.

While I don't know if it would an eternal win to be almost permanently angry at home, it'd probably better than not the inertia of unacknowledged emotion.

Eight Months Older, Two Facts Richer

One of the great things about working for a sleep company is that every so often you get to lie on the floor for the day and get paid for it. It's the little things in life, but it's the little things that make up life. It wasn't until late 2011 that I learned that terrifying fact; "eventually the short term becomes the long term". Revolutionary. Empowering. Terrifying.

In school when I was trying to choose a third level course I did what most students did and took aptitude tests. My ambivalence toward my own future, partly brought on by the chemical lethargy induced by being coeliac, meant that I was happy to run with whatever I was good at. Preference by attraction wasn't high on the list of influences.

Unfortunately, I was told I was equally amazing at everything, which aside from being unhelpful, reaffirmed my teenaged suspicion that I was in fact the brightest spark in creation and that contrary to the blasphemous claims of modern physics, I was the center of the universe.

After that some time passed, deadlines loomed, and in the end I chose Engineering because I was lead to believe I wasn't actually making a choice. I wanted to postpone the whole business of choosing a future until I had some opinion on it, and I was told I could go anywhere with an Engineering degree behind me.

When the Leaving Cert results arrived, I was pleased to discover I had enough points to get into the course, and baffled to discover that English was my best subject, with Physics trailing at poorest. And so the degree, originally an inconsequential whim in the grand flow of my life, became a looming task before me.

I spent the first two years in denial. I read novels in the back of mathematics lectures, skipped thermodynamics to drink coffee and read poetry, and whenever I had a lyrical thought I scribbled it on a scrap of paper or a notebook. I gig'd and composed, grew my hair and wore out my shoes.

Of course four years later I graduated and to my astonishment it was considerably easier to get a job in Engineering than in any of those other areas I had not ruled out yet. I started working in a company on the grounds of the college to earn some quick money while I looked for a proper job.

It's now eight months on and I am still working in that company. I've since increased in pay and opinions, implemented some databasing solutions, and done stints in China working in mass production of electronics.

I hate databasing.

This brings me on to the second point. One my boss would repeat to me with a cheeky grin whenever he asked me to do something repetitive or boring. "Be careful what you're good at."

Everyone up to that point had encouraged me to learn everything I could as fast as I could as well as I could and yet here was a man who had lived a life very similar to mine telling me to take another look at the playing field.

And so I did. And I am. And every day these two snippets of wisdom chisel away into my reality, becoming more defining in my life, giving balance to things previously unquestioned. I have a fondness of how them that goes beyond the aesthetic and the lyrical. A fondness for their inward facing foreign perspective.

And truth be told, he most important thing you'll ever see is yourself through another person's eyes.

Festival State of Mind

The first thing I did when I thought of the line "thinking about clouds" was google it. It seems like a good way of verifying originality. I would think in this age with most people in the English speaking world consuming the same popular media material the chances of two or more people independently coming up with the same idea is quite high, so it's always worth checking these things.

At the time I envisaged it as an xkcd style comic. It came into my head as a full idea; a simple matchstick drawing I moved from mind to paper. A matchstick man with thought bubbles that kept getting larger and eventually became clouds. It conveyed the lightness of the time.

It wasn't until I came to fire up this blog and was faced with naming it that I thought back to it and a myriad of other lines I had scrawled on scraps of paper in lectures or while on nights out or jamming or on trains and busses. All of the lines poured back, each with their own feeling, their own atmosphere, their own time.

It turns out a lot of them are now registered blogs.

I looked at songs I loved; defining ones, ones I could identify with. I carefully extracted my favourite lines and again discovered that they were other peoples' favourites too. So many shared motifs. So many kindred souls.

I'll be travelling soon, with the grace of God, and God I shall hope to find while I travel, but it's exciting to think I've already found people who have written the same lines as I have, who have shared a mindset before even meeting.

And the mindset is pivotal. I named this blog as I did to remind me that when I look at the world I should see it with the flair they have. I want to see it with frizzy hair and morning eyes a smile that knows, and a festival state of mind.