Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 4 ~

we're beyond the tipping point of the trip now, so everything has a sadness to it as i watch lived reality petrify into memory. driving to the airport i will look back and see all the world crystallize into salt, while i arch my back and sigh, sliding back into liquid life.

Explosions in the Sky - Greet Death



we went to a smattering of north hobart venues today to absorb the hot august jazz festival. so much living culture there that the vibrancy shone out the slightly blustery day which was prelude to the cold front landing (to deliver steady rain late this evening, snow above 500 metres the crackling wireless informs me {lies! oh the liberties he takes ladies and gentlem(a)n}). one gig was from a wonderful gypsy duo, Serenation, in a fish and chip shop. it was satisfying to have the lunchtime crowd break out in applause over their gelati and deepfry. a purely capitalist space penetrated by culture, gypsy standards in accordion and violin yarn-bombing boutique counter lunches. jazz people are wonderfully unpretentious, possessed as they are of a musical culture and tradition that reaches far, far back into our post-colonial history... which brings me to what i was grasping to remember last night - overlayed reality. something in the landscape of tasmania shows you the teeth of our land, where the maw of existence still slathers.

so much of australia feels impermanent and scrabbling that i can't balance it against the incredibly heavy counterweight of our black history; our overlayed reality a thin film of terra-nullus mythology. No matter what i read about the beginning of the colony, the first fleet, Nue Hollandia, our industrialisation and centuries of politic/art/behaviour, i always feel i am waiting for some fulcrum moment wherein the coiled rainbow kraken of our continent's living history blazes out our shallow set cityscapes, an iridescent fire gorging itself on the vestiges of our vain, frantic desperation. the omition from history burns with all that guilt and entitlment we have built into our power structures, and informs my deep and abiding inability to empathise with the mundane complaints of civilization in the face of our terrifying, ancient continent and our impotent, inherited contentment.

i really, truly feel as though at any moment our whole modern australia could turn sideways, thin as a sliver, and fold into another passing dream, while the slumbering island asserts another dream-form as simply as a fart in your sleep.

where is this 'real' world, this mainstream australia? this supposed consensus reality no one is happy with yet accedes & subscribes to, like rubberneckers unable to drive on without turning to glimpse the pornography of carnage? take it with you, leave me my atomised, dissenting humanism. messy and fertile from centuries of mistakes and love, the compost of the soul.

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on a lighter note i think you can say a place is home when you start repeating behaviours there, which is much of what today was. pleasant, living ritual filled our morning and evening. more tea and soup and rumpole, more avocado toast and building fires from a single ember. i wonder if this is how life would be here, shackled to animal husbandry and piles of unopened cd's. avoiding praise like so many men and their sons of those generations before me? what's that all about baby boomers? sheesh.

i am so very glad i made the choice to take this trip, the obscene amounts of de ja vu would seem to indicate it was a good one.

Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 3 ~

I have been learning to play a piece of music that holds intense nostalgia for me, a good listen while reading. it fills the space between here {the terrain, weather, smells and presence of dad} to the countryside around the small town where i grew up, listening to this music for hours on end. a musical bridge between that space and father that left me behind and the one i rejoin with here. the song relies on "diminished" chords, the vibrancy and impact of which leaves you unsettled yet resolved, this naming when measured against the dramatic response created by this chord change is literally an irony {not your 90's faux post-modern sardonics}.



went to the salamanca markets today, surrounded by people in dark blue jeans and sensible shoes clutching their many things. being away from my partner i become very libidinal, seeking my aesthetic in my surrounds, watching for the suggestion of erotics in the movements of beautiful people around me. a thai girl jumping into straddle on a male friend turned and looked at me, the curve of her thigh and buttock and the look of being caught {in both senses of the word} on her face i carried with me all afternoon through the sea of greige. thinking of the warmth in her and the playfulness, i miss my wife.

the women in hobart would turn away without looking at me honestly the way they do in newcastle or melbourne, it feels like there's something in the cold and the smallness here that has a more de-libidinounising effect on people. not so much in the men however, there was much more aesthetic eye contact and comparison of threads. though maybe i should remember that i am an imposing person to look at, all hair and honest eyes. i find it works in my favour though, bringing me that quality of person. so i found them too, those there in recognition of bare self, one named louise {an off the grid, analog culture, clothes maker} and also with lotus {a master hackey sack juggler, and a bared soul street performer} they were refreshing in their honesty.

Made dad my risotto, it was probably the best one i've ever made, he had 3 bowls of it. I've been cooking it since 2001, and this is the first time i think i've ever made it for him... i want my children raised to understand that there are only actions and consequences in this world, everything else is shadow play and perception.

touch more listography:

- Had chilli ginger beer and chilli raspberry beer, jesus fuckin h fuckin christ.

- saw some grungy blues with a long limbed kid, called imself Mangus - www.myspace.com/mangustasroots - http://www.triplejunearthed.com/mangus

- revisited margate train, sans adventure kitten, no pretty vintage keys to buy for her... that sucked.

- built amazingly fun fire, wood is so very beautiful.

- had something else to say, forgot, took it as a sign to sleep.

hello 2am, I haven't seen you in the longest time.

I leave you with Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders - Cold Feet. the perfect intersection of Joy Division, Nick Cave and my romanticised notions of heroin addiction in 90's Scotland.

Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 2 ~

yesterday was a blur of airport, breathtaking countryside, amazing air and light, homely home with rising damp, dad's veggie soup, a season of rumpole of the bailey, feeling awkward, overcoming that boundary, seemingly infinite amounts of tea.

today i:

woke up late {9am} and had the muesli of contentment for breakfast. i swapped music with dad and found we had a mutual distaste for white boy blues for it's lack of veracity before we moved a tonne of firewood in under cover.

{3 cups of tea}

pottered about in the garden building a 'no dig' potato patch by clearing weeds and spreading hay ready for composting over last seasons super successful patch. talked about the respective natures of myself and adventure kitten in relation to myers briggs assessments, dad is a very good listener.

talked to adventure kitten who seemed much happier on her holiday now that we had out sourced the cleaning of old home.

had the christophe approved chi-realignment breakfast for lunch, avocado, sea salt and lemon on brown bread toast, fuck yeah chakras!

{2 cups of tea}

dug in the garden, making a trench for dad's new gravel path, a zigzagging 3 inch trough waiting to be filled. it started to drizzle and i could see my breath, at 3pm... fuck yeah tasmania!

discussed our mutual distaste for the idea of "the best man" at weddings.

came inside and had another cup of tea, wrote this post.



highlights so far:

discovering the phrase: "zigzagging 3 inch trough"

becoming happily sad about getting to use the phrase "i did [x] with dad."

outsmarting 70's tv shows

feeling good about writing in this space again.

Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 1~

having left my beautified partner to finish the last of our move on her own i flew south for the last month of winter. this trip was born of a moment of selfishness where i planned a few events for myself to complete alone, and i'm glad of it.

i love myself and need to spend more time with him.