Leave Room For The Gaps

So, I went to The Met to say Good-Bye;
Not the Final Good-Bye, but to begin a sort of 'Long Good-Bye';

I am leaving.

Soon.

I think.

I hope.

And I must pay tribute to the tribute I will leave behind;

I will return.

Soon.

I think.

I hope.

You, who's eyes look away as much as they look towards;

You, who rolled carpet;

You, who will not follow, for fear of leading;

and

They, who owe me for what they no longer have;

Will come with me for "as if it was a purse" it is ready for travel;

And I;

As I do;

Live with the over-the-shoulder-flicked: "No Good-Byes!".

But

That which is unchanging - if not for mood of light;

That which enters from the 'six inches in front of your face';

And stays visual  not animate;

That, we say Good-Bye to.

If I choose;

And I do.

Look, the bottom line is, that the Dribble above probably wont make that much sense. To you. It does to me, cause I know The Key to unlocking it's meaning. I will read it back knowing that it is Fiction simply spiced with Reality. You, who does not make sense of it, will ignore the Fiction, attach your procedure of Logic to the Reality part - because it is familiar to you - and will not be able to see the forest for the trees.

Too bad.

For if you could understand it like I, you would see it for the Dribble it is.....

All therapy lies in the process - the complete process - so the Subway ride uptown is where it begins for me. Underground trains and I have had a fractious relationship over the years, but they have always brought me upon another story and this forgives all their misdeeds. One pops back above-ground few blocks east of The Park and must walk past toy stores, street vendors, the elderly in Parisian Brown fur and the hotel job I never did take. This utility of traverse is perhaps best endowed with purpose and if one uses the time it consumes to select the appropriate album on the iPod to soundtrack the visit itself, such purpose will be achieved. Cross 5th and gallop up those off-grey steps, suggest your own 'Suggested Admission' and in you go.

Time/Place

There's a time and a place for everything.

Conversely, everything has it's own time and place.

This is what I believe. I'm not saying that these above statements are The Gospel to be taken in and under as such by one and all. No, I am not. These statements have, over the course of time, become the faith of my days and of the ones that are to follow. Occasionally, this faith will run up and against those of differing faiths and it is always, at the very least, a discord of unease that will ensue. Those such opponents may be friends living in studios or strangers hiding in iPods on trains or ex's at the beer taps or leaders written in print or lovers who disclose via street-art or hopelessly inefficient servers at a bagel shop (just because your lifelong dream of finding happiness in the warm satisfaction of a growing career with The Sanitation Department has failed, there's no need to stunt the flow of my morning by taking umbrage with the fact that people in a bagel shop just want their fucking bagels quickly and efficiently. The bagel shop IS the time and the place for bagels....).

In certain circumstances, I am not at ease with this unease - however it chooses to manifest. Mostly, I couldn't give two shits about the wider public's consciousness and expressions, but there are certain people, who, for varied reasons, have a place in my heart and their 'upset' makes this here boy 'upset'. It is a difficult quandary to be in - caring generally is -  for, though I can become even desperate at times to placate and restabilise a loved one's 'upset', I simply cannot concede any ground whatsoever in the faith I began this piece with.

There is a time and a place for everything.

Bit of Turf

It's just easier for me to associate people with places. Not easier in the way that Memory Association Triggers work. More so, I find it easier to use the simple tag of a city or a country or a place, to wrap up and concisely state the emotional compartment of my heart and mind, that I may reside a particular individual in, or express the initial first judgment I made of their strength of character, or romanticise the wistful, longing, yet forgotten or lost connection I have or had with and for them, or even just describe the way they appear in their physical presentation to me.

Sorrow is Pleasure When You Want It Instead

Do you know what Sorrow is? Not pain, not depression, not misery, not sadness; not that feeling of not getting that job you really wanted; not the doubt that creeps in when you turn back from that corner you've forced yourself into, only to find that the room has cleared out completely and its just you left alone to face your aloneness; not the compression felt when happenstance runs against your best intentions and the ensuing weight of which pushes down on your tanned, but brittle shoulders; not the stranded emptiness left behind when the show you've been putting on, is shown to be just a show; not the cat running away; not your guitar-picking-fingers torn apart by a still full, shattered beer glass; not the rain, not the wind, not a storm, not the searing heat and definitely not just the clouds above.

Bring Me Release

In strange moments and at totally uncalled for circumstance and time, random memories of my youth, will dance across my consciousness. I'm not one of those that mentally suppresses a childhood passed. In the memories my younger days, lie quite the fair share of pain, shame and remorse, that I choose to not share with many - if any - but I never hide from myself. My younger days are mine and I hold onto them as proudly (and arrogantly) as I hold onto the man I am today. They are the truth and are therefore never avoided. However, considering how far beyond that fat little kid I've moved, I am understandably surprised when lessons learnt back then, finally, and for the first time at all, have application, considering the so very different context I find myself.

Breakfast of Champions

First let me start with this:


I never knew what this blog was supposed to be. I did, however, know what I didn't want it to be. I never wanted it to become a lyrical, yet accurate journal - a sort of document that documented my traverse across distance and space. Sure, there are stories from my days -my days of traverse- that make it up onto here, but my life and the dramas that pull me into it, need not be recorded. I live them and they pass. My life and my writing, whilst at times interwoven, are very much separate whirlpools and I wish to keep them that way.


This being said, there are times when one of these whirlpools spins out, over and upon the other. The past few weeks have been such a time. In fact, if I am true and honest (something  I very much like to avoid on this here page), the past few months have seen a steady increase of said swirling and distracting mass of water - the one that is Real Life. I would like to say that I am out the other end of this particular episode but, what I like and what is actual is not necessarily in perfect alignment here.


What I am trying to say, is that if my life outside this page, has unconsciously slipped onto it (and it has - not in the words and paragraphs you are thinking of now nor would be obvious to you, but it has still stained it nonetheless), I am sorry. I am. I am not so insecure that I am unable to raise my hand and admit to culpability. It may very well happen again, for I know not why I make so many of the same mistakes over and over again and when this does happen, once again, I will raise my hand in admission.


I want you to like the blog. I want you to read it. I want you to return to it. I want you to demand (as some of you have) that I return to it. And I know what I don't want it to be.




Ok, now on with the business of the day.

Old Men

My father was the principal of the orthodox, Jewish day school I attended. (For the record, someone suggested to me recently, that I may be short on material to write about and so consequently, consciously and somehow create pain in my life just to fill that void - almost like a perverse form of research. Besides being a statement that hurt me immensely, the opening sentence above obviously renders their notion completely false. Anyone who can claim to have experienced any, let alone all the elements of that sentence, possesses enough mental anguish to fill books with.) Whilst all old collegians, excepting those that may have been his oldest son, remember him as warm, trusting and as a sort of early mentor, at the time they were passing through their days of attendance, they saw him a little differently. See, the old man, whilst on the surface quite cherry and literal, was also an incredibly and unconsciously idiosyncratic fellow. Extremely.

Of Dreams and Highways

On their 2001 album, 'Time (The Revelator)', Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings close out with a sweet, sparse, fifteen minute, song that drifts, lifts and rambles its way from pain to hope and back again, in the golden way that only they can. The song is called 'I Dream a Highway'.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

In my favourite moments of self-determination, this song is exactly how I see this whole wandering routine that I'm on. I'm simply heading my way back to you, I just need to find the ribbon with a band of gold that will lead me there. That's wrong, actually. I have found it and I'm trying now to find you. I must have found it, for I can see it. It's real. In my mind anyway, but I can see it and if I can see it, it's real. A real passage with real moments. A real winding highway.

Next Time

I used to manage Australia's first, fine-dining, certified organic restaurant. Or something like that. I'm not sure if it was the very, very first, or if it was precisely fine-dining, but it was at least an approximation, if not an exaction, of the two. It's regardless, for either way it doesn't really have that much to do with the story I wish to tell you here today. I used that statement, just to provide a historical timeline and framework. It was my first, real, restaurant management job. I was grossly under qualified and only won the position due to a combination of personal, dashing charm and a Machiavellian power struggle and reshuffling between some of the directors of the group, that owned the place. My hiring was meant to provoke a further on reaction and I am not so vain as to be so unawares, that I was simply a pawn in their game.

The Bicycle Thief

If you were to step out the entrance door of my East Village apartment and onto the sidewalk, the first thing you would notice would be the tangled up mess of rusted steel, that is four bicycles, chained together and around one of those upside-down-U-shaped metal pylons. The sort of thing that councils install, to act as a docking and locking up point for your environmentally friendly mode of transport.

Nothing unusual there. Yet.

Now, look across to the East (that's towards the direction of The East River, for those of you who seem confused by direction. Can't imagine why they called it The East River.....). Only but a few feet away, stands another one of these blackened steel pylons. This is a fancier one, as it  more so resembles an upside-down-W and is able support more bicycles. Congregated around this one, is an even denser throng of rusted steel. This time, the orange of said rust is darker, richer and thicker. So thick, that one wouldn't even need to notice the punctured tires or the twisted spokes or the broken chains, to surmise that no one has sat on any of their seats or turned any of their pedals, for some time. Now look back to the first pylon, the one just outside my front door, and you'll realise that the bicycles around it, suffer from the very same tell-tale signs of idle languor.


So far, not too much to write home about. These two 'Living Sculptures' are interesting enough, but perhaps they are just an odd, isolated 'Happening'.

Ok, well, now suppose a friend of yours was going away and you were charged with the responsibility of dog-sitting her little joy. Let's say, for example's sake, that this particular Jack Russell Terrier was fairly advanced in years and, as such, ambled along on his several daily walks, at a particularly sedate and restrained pace. Furthermore (and I'm sure this is the domain of all dogs, so I'm not singling out this dear old fellow), his stumbling stagger, would be punctuated by frequent attempts to sniff at each and every street-sign, tree, dust bin, flower bed, pylon and, well, virtually anything that is stationary and rising up from the sidewalk.

'How Much?' in Two Parts - Second Part

Dear Reader,

I was going to wait until tomorrow, but a bit of Britpop on the iPod has fueled me. Here's the second half, freshly minted.

(if you are reading this one first, skip to the one below it and then return to this one second.)
hershatlarge

How much?

I'll tell you how much: Everything.

Personally, I'm willing to give everything. Not because it's that important; nor because I'm the sort that is prepared to risk all; nor because I need your love beyond the reasonable level of desperation; nor because I've put you up on a proverbial pedestal and feel that the corresponding, perceived, example of perfection that I see you as, requires the highest price it's possible to be paid, in order to deserving of you; nor because a shortage of love provided during adolescent years, has resulted in a great fear of rejection and as such, I am afraid to let even the smallest spark fade out, for it brings up and out all those old, dark corners of depression; nor because your smile is my muse; nor because I'm too tired to do anything but lay my head down on your soft pillow.

'How Much?' in Two Parts

Dear Reader,


Today I wish to conduct a little experiment. All the postings you read on this page, are exercises in stream of consciousness. Not so much the flow and rhythm of the sentences and phrases, but more so the content of the ideas, emotions, stories and confessions. The ramble of the prose is somewhat more calculated and drafted, but the subject matter is supposed to be a collection random remembered emotions and happenings of the few days prior to construction. I believe this allows me to be most honest, for I am expressing with as little perspective of rational distance as possible.


However, this post will be written in two parts. The first will be with the agitated mindset of this morning and the second half will be with a more sedate and embarrassed mindset of in a day or two's time.


Feel free to Feedback me in between.


Hershatlarge

Love, or the expression of it, requires self-sacrifice - the sacrifice of 'Self'. To state it; to show it; to convey it and pine for a reciprocation of it, requires an action far outside one's 'Self'. An action that, if it is committed in a true, accurate and total way, removes one from within the comforting barriers, borders and turf of Self and Self-Preservation and risks the probable concession of some of those very borders and turf. To me, love needs expression. Not to make Love 'real' - not to validate it by action - but rather because Love is not and never can be passive. Otherwise, it is simply a deduced opinion on the emotional position one may have towards another, existing only in the mind and not in The World. One needs outlets to bring Love out into The World and one needs The World for Love.

Turn Off The VCR

Do you suffer from Vocabulary Correctness Readjustment? This is the syndrome that describes the particular type of confusion, blended with personal embarrassment and panic that one experiences when faced with the sudden realisation that a word, phrase, cliche or proverb that they took to mean one thing, actually means something else. VCR specifically only applies to that exact moment and not to the process of incorrect use of language prior to the realignment. I once went out with a girl who would mix her cliches in delightful fluidity like "don't burn your bridge until you come up to it" and "the early bird is better than two in the bush".  She has never experienced VCR, for, still to this day, she believes those tellings, those usages of language, to be correct. Her vocabulary has never been realigned and she has never had to suffer the reentry pangs of such.

But, to those of us who have experienced the rug of correctness-security being pulled from under our feet, the debilitating symptoms of VCR are well known. In a shifting flurry across the memory storage areas of the brain, the sufferer of VCR scans in harried, mental desperation back over the past for all the times his or her vocabulary was misappropriated. At the same time, he/she stares madly off into an imagined future, creating supposed instances where vocabulary is used with more accuracy and relevance, in a bid to reconcile these new requirements with their goals, dreams and visions for their life to come. Its a frightening moment, akin to the seemingly endless increasing peak of a panic attack, but, because attacks of VCR subside and pass with less visible impact than other social mental syndromes, many would not even know it exists or existed and choose to not even acknowledge it - just like the piece of outdated technology it shares an acronym with.

The Word and You

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Panama. All I wanted to do out there, was sit on a beach and immerse myself in The Pacific - some sort of quasi-metaphysical quest for cleansing and recharge. So I packed light. A few shorts and T-shirts, the obligatory couple of white button down shirts and some underwear. I packed it all into the overnight bag I had borrowed from The Luxembourger, and threw it on the floor next to my bed, where it sat half empty and projecting a depression at it's unfulfilled potential. It was still in that pose, slouched over and deflated by emptiness, when I arose at 4:30am to head to LaGuardia Airport. It called for more contents. Dazed by the premature rise from slumber, I scanned my room looking for what void in packing I had left. Of course! I had only thought of clothing, but I had forgotten to preempt for other requirements of eventualities. In the muted shadows of the early dawn, I danced around my bedroom gathering a couple of F. Scott books, a Hemingway and even a Saul Bellow. Then I tossed in the iPod, followed by all my writing gear. In went a half dozen varieties of pencils, a couple of sharpeners and the black Moleskin. Ontop of all that, went a copy of Vanity Fair and the bag was now full;. my luggage was now complete. I had packed 'Distraction'. 

The Deep South

Out on a far edge of Melbourne's inner-city, Hipster neighborhood, sits a small pub. In my mind, I can still see it clearly. The all dark, time stained wood, dusty floors, worn high-stool seats and formica tables, with dozens of retro, antique cowboy boots snaking their way along the top shelf of the island bar. There's a pool table directly to the right as you walk in, dual Technics Decks in the left hand corner and a small dining room and kitchen out the back. The men's toilets are lined with a wallpaper that consists of black and white, sketched recreations of famous photographs of greats of The South like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, The King and others I can't seem to remember.

Of Sandwiches, Shakespeare and Salvation

The sandwich is back!

Yep, there's a proclamation. One must always proclaim at the beginning. William Shakespeare taught me that, with such epic opening to his little plays like:

"Well, now is the winter of our discontent...."

Awesome. Grab the audience with a bold statement, pull them closer with the intrigue of that which requires explanation, set the table for what is to follow and they are yours, for however long your literary skills allow you to hold them. All one has to do, is follow such an opening with a few hours worth of dialogue, throw in something like 'a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' at the end, and you have something approaching the quality of Richard III. Easy as that, if you just start it off right.

Fodder

Previously, I have tried to ensure that my postings have not been targeted at anyone I know. They certainly have mentioned people I happen to come across and postulate upon others I may know a little more intimately, but they are 'about' them, rather than 'at' them. I speak only of my reactions to and lessons learned from interacting with certain people. This distinction is very important, for it provides me with the guilt-free freedom to broadcast stories and opinions on many of you who read this damn thing and not be later shaken off or up, by the numerous (and there are those, so don't think you are alone) emails that I receive with the most bizarre protestations of re clarification. (for the record - if you live in Darwin, then you are a Darwinite!)

Today, we break this barrier.

One Day

When banks first started coming out with ATMs, there was a certain reticence, on the public's behalf, against replacing their transactions involving human contact inside the bank, with an interaction with a hulking computer, stuck outside the front. People grow fond of tradition and get comfortable with systems of repetition. Change, even when the obvious and logical benefits of progression seem clear and self evident, can, sometimes, be hard to implement. So, in their wisdom, The Banks decided to make the use of all transactions on ATMs, free. The idea being, that there was already enough hindering a mass conversion to a system the banks hoped to, one day, save them millions upon millions of dollars in unpaid wages, that it would be counterproductive to encumber the public with another reason to avoid useage.

Their plan involved growing a comfortability and dependence upon, what would one day, become colloquially known as, 'the hole in the wall' and to eventually drip fees and charges into the process. This is exactly what happened. I remember, when Australian banks, unilaterally and quietly, went from 25 cents a transaction up to 50 cents, thinking that we had opened Pandora's Box and these charges could spiral out of control. Today, banks all over the world, reap billions of dollars in ATM transaction fees.

Simple plan and brilliant execution.

An intervention Letter From Australia

Dear New York City,

I love you. Totally. I always have. Even before I first arrived here to rest for a while, I adored you from afar. At that time, The romance may have been fueled by just the experiences and stories heard from those who had seen you or felt you or fed by further other's artistic interpretations and reconstructions, but, even then, the passion and emotion was true and mine. I loved you so much, from before I knew you and now, that I do know you, that love has only grown.

But......

And I say this because of the love I have for you.

But....

Goddamn it, noone in this fucking city has a fucking sense of humor!

Its not sitting well with me and, Big Apple, its time to shape up.

Someone on a Train

One day, I'm gonna fall in love on a train. 

I already sorta do. All the time. I'll be pulling into Union Square and the way that blond wistfully twirls the straw raising up from her smoothie, will seem familiar - a subtle revelation of a both calm and playful approach to the mundane of day to day. She'll remind me of someone I've never met. Someone that I will, one day, try so hard to forget. Someone, that in-between those times will seem so right; so connected; so easy. Then, the doors open and she melts out into the wider world, whilst I stay onboard for one stop more. Love gone.

I'm Back

In his book, 'Status Anxiety', Alain de Botton...

Hang on one sec. Let me quickly confess to something. I've been dying to start off a blog with a sentence like that. Not only a de Botton quote and/or thought, but a post opened up with the exact line "In his book....". My Rehabilitated Queenslander friend, the current 'Front of House of the Year' holder, berated me the other day for being all a bit too philosophical on this here page. When philosophy is mentioned, the place my mind immediately runs to, is one of the Mel Brooks characters in 'History of the World'. Have you seen it? In one of the stories, set in ancient Rome, he plays an unemployed Standup Philosopher. The premise being, that those early posturing, preening and proclaiming preachers and prophets, were essentially ancient precursors to latter day, modern Standup Comedians (for those of you keeping score at home, that's a sentence with 6 words that begin with 'pr'. Bonus points?). After a wistful wander across catchphrases like "walk this way" and "its good to be the king", the second place my mental mess runs to, is Alain de Botton.

Why Leave London?

The Canadian was very insistent. Apparently, my words are needed to express his pain. In reality, his words are actually pretty good - for a Canadian- but I'll happily help him out, for his pain is not his alone. You see, i already planned to post about this very topic he demands. More than just having it in or on my mind, I actually started a draft on my BlackBerry a while back. I think this was a rant I had in mind to save up for a rainy day. A day when I was stuck for ideas or at a loss for sarcastic inspiration. Well, as mentioned in the last post, my voice is still not yet completely in rhythm with my pencil, so off the bench comes this rant.

Oh Canada, this song is for you.

Another Chapter From Don't Wanna Go Home

I really don't know that much about writing. I know a little. I know what writers I like and that I believe the stuff I write is really good (hard to shake this arrogance). I know which pencils lend to the most legible handwriting. I know how to use spell check, press save on Word and how to format this blog. Where I'm lacking, in the 'knowing' department, is more so in preconceived construct and technical outlay. You see, as I never have anything resembling a formal education in writing, my style and approach is an entirely haphazard conglomeration of ideals and theories, made up of whatever I have been able to garner over the years, acquired from random sources and folk. I've always felt that the information that improves and changes us, is best inherited when least expected. Surprise-Inspiration feels so much more personal and is therefore so much more effective. You'll always remember the street busker showing you how to tune your guitar to Open-G, but find it harder to recall the point of Venn Diagrams (interestingly enough, Venn Diagrams is actually the only thing from high school, that I actually do remember).

Umbrellas

Lots of umbrellas



Scarves, single gloves, vintage, teak coloured pumps, address books, wedding dress quotes, private member club applications, credit cards, reading glasses, child's scooters, baby's drinking bottle, your mum's favourite brooch, birthday gifts, anniversary flowers, wallets, handbags and umbrellas. Lots and lots of umbrellas. This is an abbreviated list of some of the items that have, either actually or allegedly, been left behind by customers over the past month or so. Seriously, just the past month. Some of these, we never actually found and pretty much 99% of the stuff we did find, still sits unclaimed up in the top floor office. Please take note of how I didn't mention mobile phones in the list. This important distinction will become relevant later.

Fancy a Letter?

Why do this? Why write, edit, spell-check, delete, re-write, compare different fonts, scan the internet for a piece of art that I once saw hanging in a gallery and that reminds me of the general tone of the piece, post and then delete and re-write again? Why suffer the buffoon of a chef, who, due to a remnant issue from childhood that caused a need to be the centre of attention at all times, throws fresh eggs at me and threatens to drop his trousers, whenever I'm editing a post on the computer downstairs and trying to ignore him? Why put up with the woman on the other side of this internet cafe who just blew her nose in one, extended, low pitched, gurgle that lasted (no exaggeration) for thirty seconds? (And there she goes again. How is this possible? Thirty, uninterrupted seconds, I tell ya! How does she even have enough breath to blow that long? It's like she's perfected some freak strain of circular breathing. She is the Louis Armstrong of noses. I always wonder what would happen if your parents neglected to illustrate how to correctly execute some of the more menial elements of human, decent conduct. Here's an answer.) Why trade the time I could spend in the pool getting back into the long and lean shape that The City and my friends there will demand of me? Why aren’t I spending my free time in The Studio finishing those songs? Why not just lay in bed a little longer? Or agree to stay over at your house? Or agree to come over to your house? Or keep up this 'every two days' commitment? Why?

Of Ex's and Films

I'm gonna revisit the ‘ex-girlfriends and their catchphrases’ theme from the yesterday (the friend mentioned in the last post, The Darwinite, was and is an ex). Last night, as I was putting into practice my current, urgent, last minute, money saving theory, that involves spending days off immersed in the wonders of SKY+ and not leaving house to spend a penny (Pause. Take breath. This is already quite a long sentence.), the remote control landed onto Cameron Crowe's 2005 film, Elizabethtown. The first time I saw this movie, was in a cinema in North London. This particular cinema had a ticketing booth and concession stand on the ground level, whilst all the actual screening rooms were located on the level below. This meant, that an industrious fellow could pay only but one entrance fee and wander from room to room, viewing as many movies as his little heart desired. Brilliant. Great way to spend a day - those large rooms, near total emptiness during the day, isolated and cut off from the sound and fury of the outside world, whilst the expressions and fictions of Hollywood and Beyond took one on a journey, that came complete with an individual ending. Escapism for two and a half hours, multiplied by three. Or sometimes, even four movies in a row.

Dear London: Here's My Keys

One of my friend's has a catchphrase. Or she had one, anyway - not sure if she still uses it. You see, she now lives way up in the Northern reaches of Central Australia, in a town that draws it's name from The Father of The Theory of Evolution. This is quite apt, for, from what I can gather, the region and it's folk can be fairly, shall we say, primitive. In the way my mind takes snobbish, snap-judgement to the nth degree, I believe I can state with total conviction, that, as a now permanent resident of Darwin, N.T., she perhaps no longer communicates in words, sentences and the like and perhaps has done away with her catchphrase. But she used to use it alot; virtually every time she was hungry:


"I'm craving something, but I don't know what."

Experiment in Rhythm

ACT I


I was up in the office on the third floor. Not doing much. Just staring blankly at a spreadsheet. I wasn't exhausted, nor sleep deprived, yet my energies felt hollow – an echo of it’s real strengths. Every year, during the week immediately following the oppressive month of December, we waiters experience ‘aftershock-lethargy’, as a consequence of the dramatic downturn in customer levels and requirements. The pre-Xmas period mainly consists of office and work end-of-year parties, so is dense with throngs of folk who normally don't get out that often and therefore necessitate so much more effort to serve. 'Amateur Month' is the handle we apply to the whole period up to New Year's Day. By the time the end is within sight, we're all pretty much running on fumes. Sleep starved, weight receding, new grey hairs appearing, drug intake alarmingly increasing and the fighting-spirit fading, every year seems to get harder. But we always get that one week afterwards to recover; one week to wander upstairs, whilst the last customers on a Sunday night are finishing their desserts and just stare at the computer screen.

Gotta Go To Work

Golders Green Station, North London. About 11am. Probably later. But I meant to get here an hour before I am due at work, so we'll call it 11am. Fictitious license, allows this here waiter to be viewed as punctual. The Charring Cross train arrives in three minutes and I wonder along, to the top of the platform. The wrought iron, Art-Nuevo, canopy shelter, drapes out only up to where the front doors of the second carriage will pull up to. It's not raining, but the roof also provides barrier protection from the cold, so I stop well short of the end of the ash felt platform. Despite the distracting, loud Bluegrass that the iPod is blowing into my head, I sense a lone, 28 year old female walking towards me. She walks heavy. Heavier than you'd expect of a girl as diminutive as her. Her petite feet are driven by gymnast strength calves into the ground. Those calves drive them feet hard. So hard, that, even though she's ten to fifteen meters away from me, I can feel her footsteps tremor through the ash felt, concrete and steel below my feet.

I'm Sure NZ Is Actually A Very Nice Place

I'm going to use the last post, 'Distance Will Come', like a permission note to school, from my Mum. It's going to excuse me from having to write about The Present. Well, for one more post anyway. I am sure tomorrow will find me something like UGGs or Fat People or Women's Tennis to rant about and this will drag me back into the present. (Very different to 'moaning' is 'ranting' - 'Moaning', needs a listener; a person to bring down to the moaner's level of suffering. 'Ranting' is launching a borderline senile, monologue at no one in particular and therefore, has a negative impact upon no one) For now however, I'm taking the note that got me out of wearing full uniform yesterday and illegally recycling it again today.

Distance Will Come

Seems to me, that lately I've been writing quite a bit about the past. Not just in the postings you get to see on this here page, but also in the notepads I use for the book I'm working on. Even trawling the paragraphs of the half started drafts for blogs I never actually upload, I've noticed less about London and The Road and more anecdotes that are set in St. Kilda and The US. Some Storytellers harvest in fields rich with fantasy, prediction and preemption. Their homes have windows that looks out into the forward distance and they are able to gaze out them with ease and at whim. My window looks out into Golders Green - a Jewish neighborhood so very similar to the one I grew up in. How's that for my life imitating my art?

Warning: This Blog May Contain Coffee Machine Technical Terms

I once ran a Gastropub back in Melbourne. A large venue, based in an inner-city, pocket of a neighbourhood. I didn't work there for a very long time and neither do I think we every got to truly be a Gastropub. When I came onboard, it was essentially operating like a confused and earnestly hip restaurant, that some nights would convert into a cheap nightclub. I immediately decided that my first aim was to try and make the whole product function in one cohesive presentation. One easily defined product.

I Really Should Know Better

I was born into a family so very affected by xenophobia. So too, the families of the kids i grew up around and with. The Melbourne Jewish Community, as it stands today, is the product of a genesis founded by an influx of immigrant individuals and families who fled the midsts, remains or precursors to religious persecution across Europe. They arrived on the shores of Australia's great Southern city and went about their rebirth as survivors. They recovered, rebuilt, grew, multiplied and re-established themselves in another place and time.


Jews carry stories with them like Americans carry Patriotism, Catholics carry Repression and The Irish carry Alcoholism. Whether its fantastical legends that border on the absurd, to side-splitting humorous retellings of a mundane every-day occurrence,  to more somber cautionary tales, stories are the key to the fabric of the very culture that unites Jews into a common and shared expression of existence. It's a stereotype, but as George Clooney's character in Up in the Air says, "I stereotype - it's quicker.".

Chapter from Don't Wanna Go Home

Performance Art.


When someone throws out that term, they are are speaking of the toil and expression of Rock Stars, Broadways Dancers and aging Stuntmen. Of Actors, Stand-Up comics, Trapeze Artists and Lion Tamers. Perhaps you may be a little bit more pretentious than your neighbor and you term 'Performance Art' as differing from the more mainstream 'Performing Arts'. You would then only use the 'Performance' term to refer those (supposedly) avante-garde and (supposedly) intellectual 'happenings', that range from public poetry readings and naked gardening, to Street-Theater and suspending one's self in a clear perspex box for a week. Even the fool standing right now at the entrance to Covent Garden Market, painted entirely in grey and frozen in a pose whilst he waits for someone to throw a Pound at him so he can reward them with the amazingly complex and brilliantly challenging action of moving an arm or some such shit, is a Performance Artist.

Faith No More or Bob Dylan?

'Wonder Boys' was released in 2000 and is a film based on the novel by Michael Chabon. I've never read the book. In fact, I've never read any of his work, though lately quite a few folk have recommended The Yiddish Policeman's Union to me, so perhaps soon enough I will take up the weight of direction and read the man's work. I’ve never seen the film either. Well, that’s not true. I have seen virtually every scene and heard nearly every line of dialogue. To be entirely accurate, what I should have said was that I’ve never seen the film in it's entirety IN ONE SITTING. Over the past decade, I reckon it's at least a dozen times that I have turned on a TV and landed somewhere along the 111 minutes that the film runs for.

I am Spartacus Happy Pants

There is this photographer I know. He lives in LA now, somewhere downtown I believe. I first met him on The West Coast, but it was back in NYC that I got to know him better. He is one of those people who projects that very specific So-Cal, laid-back, beachy and breezy charm. It emits from his eyes, his sandy facial hair and the way his accent drawls and draws out the end of his paragraphs. He has compiled photo essays of war-addled Afghanistan, has been embedded with some sort of African Charity Soccer Team, held house parties way up in The Beverly Hills and signs off his letters with "Send my regards to The Queen". One of the things I like most about him is how his experience in and of the past so clearly dictates, informs and composes the character he is now in the present. He is only who he is and is that person to everyone. He is truthful in the image he projects. I don't know many people about whom I can say that.

Premeditation just results in too many parentheses....( )

I've written this posting several times. Not completely, but I’ve drafted the introduction, imagined a middle and constructed an ending. Whether in my mind or with pencil on my Europa Major Pad or even on my BlackBerry, whilst fighting against the predictive inaneness of (the so called)Sure-Type, I’ve put sentences together. I've tested the waters with discussions about some of it's key points and I’ve impassioned it's arguments. It's become so much more involved and weightier than the actual worth of a couple paragraphs which, at best, would be read by only three people(That excludes my Mum. Never count your Mum as a fan, viewer or follower - that's just cheating.). So much so, that the other night, somewhat drunk, I over ambitiously referred to it as 'an article'.

I've seen you before.

Have you ever run away?


Inadequately packed a swag, stumbled across the threshold, shouted a triumph over your shoulder, pinned your ears back and just ran. Eyes open, but rage or fear or love or desperation blinding any registered sight. You may have been pre-adolescent or post-university or in the twighlight of a cancer grip. Maybe it was after the third child was born, or just before the wife came back from the nail salon. Perhaps you were right, perhaps you should have stayed to fight your corner, perhaps it would have gotten better. Perhaps destiny chose your need to escape or maybe a deficiency in your character informed your selection. You may have left a note, your may have tried your hardest to close the French-Doors without emitting a sound or maybe you violently smashed that vase his mum gave to him on your way out, using the explosion of Mexican Glass to serve as the exclamation point to finish your rant.

Head/Skin

Skin. Head.


Head and Skin.


Two different words with two very distinctly different meanings.


"I've got you, under my skin" sings Frank Sinatra or Louis Prima (depending which version you prefer of the Cole Porter song - at the moment i'm more so into the Louis Prima and Keely Smith one)


"Man, that girl really got into my head." announces to me my friend from The South.


Skin and Head.


They can't both be talking about the same feeling, for Head and Skin are so very different.