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.