On being 'at one'

I love Bali. Until I came here, I never thought it would be quite my scene. I’d imagined a country resplendent with Bintang singlets and which boasted a 1000 Corbeys for every Corey. But I was absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Aside from the shit-scary feral dogs everywhere, Bali is a beautiful place, and, after fairly regular massages, great food, and some quality time with my mastercard, I’m about as zen as I’ll ever be this side of a lobotomy.

You know what I don’t love though? Hippies. I’m sorry; I know it’s wrong of me, but it’s true. Furthermore, not only do I not love them, I think I might hate them. Or perhaps it’s just the one. The one who sat next to me at dinner and insisted on ‘conversing’ in a language made up almost entirely of vacant glances into the middle distance. If you’ve never experienced hippie-speak in full flight, it can be a distracting and confusing linguistic mode to both the uninitiated and the uninterested. With its stream of dangling referents and nonsensical clauses and sub-clauses, hippie-speak has the power to dupe its recipient into thinking that a sentence has been completed, a meal can be consumed, and a conversation closed. Suffice to say, these will never occur. Ever.

It’s probably my fault, though. I should never have ordered dessert because as soon as he sat down, I knew I was in trouble. With Madonna-style arms, lustful glances at my tofu, and the slightly bugged-out eyes of someone who’s spent too much time contemplating the relation of their navel to the macrocosm, I knew a devotee of Guru Bullshit had entered my dharmic field.

Now, I think I’ve already discussed my particular gift for attracting strange, miserable men before, and tonight was a reassuring reminder that my madness mojo remains intact. And clearly, it’s a give and take relationship, as every time I encounter these people I seem to get one more stamp in my passport to Crazy Town. They stress me out with their need for me to deal with problems I know nothing about that involve people I have no connection with. And yet, despite the fact that they’re clearly a little bit on the strangeo-side, I’m always mystified by their continual and total inability to take a polite hint.

Why do some men think that a girl on her own automatically signals that she wants to talk to them? And why do attractive men who missed the headcase gene never possess this assumption? Furthermore, why do the crazy ones assume that, when they talk to me about their guru who channels Jesus (in Aramaic, no less), I have actually choked on my goreng, rather than being, as some more astute conversationalists may realise, on the verge of releasing both my inner child and my bladder?

I’m sorry, I do try to be a good person, but it’s not my fault: he told me to be “in trance with the dance”. The only reason I didn’t snort was because I had started to die on the inside.

But it never just stops there. In order to excuse the fact that they are sucking the life-juice from a total stranger, they must, in a token attempt to play by the rules of engagement, make a show of being interested in what I’m into. This is, of course, despite the evidence before them that what I’m clearly into IS MY BOOK. Furthermore, when it gets around to the fact that I worked in medieval literature, specifically on a rewriting of the Trojan War epic, rather than, say, accountancy, the explanations, plot outlines, and general defence of my existence become both excruciating and predictable.

‘Medieval literature, you say? Medeeyevaal … heh heh … like Harry Potter?’ For future reference, forty is never the appropriate age to try the ‘ignorance is cute’ hat on for size. Trust me, it will never, ever, fit, and will make you look like one of those bogans at the tennis who makes his headwear out of a VB carton. But it gets worse. Because after eliciting my ‘secret past’, they feel they have to make connections, show me how much they understand me, because we’re different, you know? And then, a hippie-style lightbulb moment occurs and they realise that they know of something similar that totally fits into their world-view, and if they’re lucky, might just fit into mine. Or my pants.

The horror.

Or, more precisely, The Ramayana. For your next dining experience, may I suggest an epic poem retold, explained, punctuated, and verbally footnoted by someone who

speaks

like

this.

After one hour, I wanted to vacuum my eyeballs out.

Lucky I’m having a full day-spa tomorrow; otherwise, I might just have to kill someone.

Homeward bound

When you plan to leave home, reactions are always mixed: excitement from friends, concern from parents, and, for the less geographically-inclined, puzzlement (or perhaps the last only applies when you move to Belgium; I had some questions about it too… like where it is). People ask if you’re nervous, if you’re worried about moving away, leaving family and friends, contending with another language and a new place. They’re full of tips on how to meet new people and how to ensure that you ‘really experience the culture’, all the while confiding different methods that will enable you to preserve a little bit of home. It’s all welcome, and provides a discordant medley to distract from that moment when the airport gates close, when you know that it’s going to be an awfully long time until you hear those voices again, face to face. With only two weeks to go, however, and excited about coming home, I suppose I’m also in a bit of a quandary. No-one dishes out tips on what to do when you return.

Looking back on the last year or so, I perhaps feel like I’ve been living in a bit of a vacuum. With ailing grandparents and other upheavals stemming from Melbourne-ways, all of a sudden my Belgian swaddling cloths are about to be, if not willingly shed, then well and truly stripped from me in about two weeks. Personally and professionally, life in rural Flanders was always going to be the equivalent of a rather bucolic black hole, and now, in my last port of call, Indonesia, the reality that this point in my life has ended is starting to hit: I’m going home. I don’t have a house. I don’t have a job. I don’t exactly, at the age of almost 26, have a discernible direction.

I also don’t have an excuse any more.

I know I want to write, but I’m not sure what, or for whom, or if anyone would take ‘what I do’, whatever that is. This blog was always a testing place, a space outside the academic context I’d been operating in for so long where I could produce work that I’m perhaps not rigorously able to defend, work that, being an anal, obsessive drafter, I’m frequently unhappy with, yet work that needs to stand up and, at the very least, be readable. I take comfort in cliches and tell myself ‘it’s all about the process’, all the while trying not to fiddle with posts too much, despite the fact that I find some incredibly flip, poorly expressed, or just, to be an articulate self-critic, plain dumb.

I realise this is a lot of angst to fit between beachside meanderings, but it’s the first time in the last few months that I’ve had time to think, and for the reality of home to be somewhat tangible. I’m here with one of my closest friends and we’re having a fabulous time, catching up, sounding things out, beaching, eating and drinking. But at the same time, it’s made me realise that while it’s true that nothing ever changes, equally apt is the notion that life goes on. My friends all have jobs, homes, and partners, whereas I feel almost like I’ll be setting up in a new place again, despite the fact that Melbourne contains so many of the people and places that I love.

So what to do? Find some form of gainful employ, a roof, and hopefully write, one would presume. But how will other things pan out? Will this blog have run its use-by date? Would I be better off channelling my energies into finding publications that will accept my miscellaneous wordy stuff? Shouldn’t I be working on a folio, gathering some examples of my communication skills that don’t involve a cocktail glass and a raised eyebrow? I just don’t know; it’s all a bit too hard.

Perhaps I’ll just work on getting out of my banana lounge first.

We meet again

So ... it's been a while. Having never had the foresight or the gumption to extricate myself from a relationship first, I've always wondered what it feels like to just stop calling someone. Now I know. You feel vaguely irritated, a little bit guilty, but not quite enough to actually do anything about it. After a while you stop thinking about the object of your erstwhile affections until you either walk past a particularly attractive form of statistician (and they, ladies, are definitely a rarity) or sit down at a keyboard that smells a little bit like hot chips and you think: shit. The blog.

It was never you though. I had some things going on, I wasn't really in a good 'place', you know. Maybe not now, but one day, perhaps, we could get it back together ...

Kidding!

I should be back on the wagon now.

I was just hanging out with one of my best friends in San Sebastian and Northern Spain for two weeks. In three words : Tapas tapas tapas. Well, that's really just one, so I'll add this: actual conversations with someone who's known me for longer than 2 days. It was so great.

What was less great was the return to Brussels in the midst of the baggage handlers' strike. Chaos has no meaning for me now. We're talking flights canceled, thousands of bags dumped anywhere, police bringing in emergency water for people, screaming, Linda Blair-style children. Adding to my crazy lady vibe, I lost my baggage receipt, and found my bag just by fluke 4 hours later. Because of the delay, I missed meeting up with one of my closest friends in Belgium, and didn't get to my hostel until after midnight. When I flew out to Frankfurt the next day I may, or may not, have flipped la Bruxelles the bird on my way up.

Furthermore, you'd never believe it, but the reason for the strike was that the baggage handlers find their workplace policies 'anti-social'.

The irony.

The Belgians.

Carlos' House of Horrors

I am currently writing this under my bunk. Well, technically speaking, not under my bunk, but under the bunk above me. It’s super comfy, my head is tilted almost at 90 degrees and the pins and needles in my arm are morphing into a whole sewing kit. Why would I choose such cramped surrounds to spin my textual tapestry, I hear you ask? Am I trying to ‘method write’ a Kafkaesque tale of confinement and constriction? Am I channelling the spirit of some long-dead literary genius - did Tolstoy work under such conditions? Did Barbara Cartland? Unfortunately no. I am running with the whole mind over matter thing because I have just stumbled into the hostel from hell. It’s true. I am currently staying in the worst, most horrible, seriously ick, hostel I have stayed in, I think pretty much ever. But, except for the unfortunate fragrance of eau de bin, it’s not the place; I’m going to be a judgemental beeyatch and put it out there: it’s the people.

See, this place was supposed to be relaxed. Chilled out, but not in filthpig fashion, just in a cruisey, friendly, nice easy place if you’re travelling on your own, sort of way. The kind of hostel where you meet people, have a few beers, hang out. You know. Normal. Easygoing. Friendly. Ja. Whatever. Apparently, it’s so friendly here that two of the inhabitants had sex outside my window on the footpath last night. But don’t worry, it’s ok – they can’t remember any of it. Nothing. That makes it alright.

Clearly I’m a geriatric prude stuck in the occasionally-maintained body of a 25 year old woman, but I truly hate these kind of hostels, hostels where there’s zero private space and people push and push for you to go out for 2 euro shots at whatever grotty club is down the road. I usually avoid them like I would sharing a toothbrush with someone who has oral thrush, so it’s unfortunate when, Colgate in hand, you realise that your bathroom buddies request was used to ameliorate his odd resemblance to Old Yeller. It’s just a really gross place. I travel in a way I enjoy – lots of reading, talking, and relaxing, and it’s annoying when all these things are made impossible by your choice of accommodation, particularly when you realise this after you’ve already paid.

What is it about some people that the minute they get on foreign soil they just behave like utter tools? I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here, and assuming they aren’t like this all the time. I really hope so, anyway. And these aren’t even just Australian bogans, who I could almost forgive, as they tend to get a little excited about the change of hemisphere thing—these ones are internationally sourced. And they're just as bad. I’m cranky, I’m going to bed. Ergh.

Postscript: the next day. I thought someone had cooked me fried eggs for breakfast this morning. But no, that was just the topless vision that greeted me of the girl who had sex in the bunk above me last night. Hurrah!

On having some 'me' time

When is a little thinking time too much thinking time? When you think you’ve had enough time to think about it? Or when you know you’ve had enough time to think about it, analyse it, write a pros and cons list, and consider it as a possible phd topic? Funnily enough, this is something that, aptly, I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s one of the pleasures and the pains of travelling alone. On the plus side, you get to meet amazing, generous people willing to share a drink or a life story; on the down side those people can be few and far between, often leaving you with those who are all too willing to share the tales of their airline ‘pee-yuuwk’, complain about the heat (it’s Spain), and get you to read the map for them. That’s when the big guns, or at the very least, a big book, need to be pulled out in order to end all spurious, stultifying, or just plain stupid conversations.

I have done the long-term travelling alone thing before, and still recall those months upon months of having the same conversation -‘where have you been, where are you going, how long are you away for’ - with a bit of a shudder. I really didn’t want to do it again. This time, however, I’ve organised myself so that three weeks is all the time I have until I meet up with a friend. I know, I’m spoilt, but it’s still feeling a bit long.

I was very resistant to coming to Belgium in the first place, primarily because my Masters degree had been so incredibly isolating. I couldn’t imagine how topping two years of hardcore library time with a stint in a small village where I didn’t speak the language would improve my ability to make like a human, a skill I occasionally worry is getting rustier.

I’m not quite sure how, but over the last few years I seem, somehow, to have taken part in a pattern of ‘aloneness’. Not necessarily ‘loneliness’, although sometimes that follows; but somehow as I’ve got older, the things I enjoy doing (reading, writing, exercising, playing music) have all become things that one does alone [Stephanie Trigg has recently written on something similar here]. Furthermore, as I’m one of the few of my friends who doesn’t live with a partner nor have an all-consuming 9-5 (or 7-10) job, occasionally I’ve sensed that the line between time out and simply time passing is starting to blur.

I do wonder if this is just a part of my character type: a watcher rather than a doer, a thinker rather than a player, but I’m not entirely sure. I still remember on my year 12 school report, my English teacher wrote that I had ‘slyly never answered questions in class’ (yes, that was ‘slyly’, not ‘shyly’). I was gobsmacked, as I thought that I genuinely didn’t know the answers until I went away, thought about them, and wrote them down - very much a case of the old adage “how do I know what I think until I see what I say?”*.

I find that I need time away from things to understand them, shape them, and process them in a way that enables me and my world view to fit. Is this right though? Should I be down in the lobby of my hostel signing up for a bar crawl with all the eighteen year olds on gap years? I don’t think so, but I hope this doesn’t make me the human version of the cockroaches I just saw crawling all over the jambon in a window display: in prime position but still scuttling out of view.

At worst, at least I’ll have 400 million years to get it right.

* I should just point out here to those few people who read this blog who don’t know me – I am actually not as obnoxious as it, on occasion, makes me out to be. I swear.

Hola!

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

As I’m currently sporting bad skin, frizzy hair, and a crooked spine courtesy of my heavy pack, I don’t expect a panting squawk of “it’s you!” a lá Catherine Zeta Jones. I do, however, have one nice excuse for my heat related frumpery – I’m in Madrid and it’s hot hot hot. I now have five weeks to slough the mildew from my skin, replace it with a tan, and acclimatise myself for a later jaunt to the tropics.

However, I’ve just spent the last four days in London, staying with a very dear friend who was visiting on a research trip. We’d both never really been before, and funnily enough, had the same reaction. Blergh. I’ve never been in a city that seemed to be so entirely characterised by ‘busyness’. There are amazing things to see, of course (the Tate Modern is incredible, and all the museums are free – hurrah!), and I’m sure there are wonderful areas to live, but in between seemed to be such a blur of rushing greyness. We did, however, unlike so many people visiting the UK, have no complaints about the food. Perhaps I have a slight predilection for all things potato, but we had some great stodge that fortified us for the days spent battling the tube.

However, one particular aspect of staying with this friend was food related, as she has a severe nut allergy. I’d always known this, but had never really appreciated how difficult it was for her until now. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but absolutely everything contains traces of nuts, possible traces of nuts, maybe one atom of a nut, and if that’s the case, she just can’t eat it. Food labels were read, products sourced and some were even brought over from Australia – thanks, lack of UK customs.

It really got me thinking about the way in which I travel, as for me, food is an integral part of the experience. To the detriment of my tailoring, I do tend to treat travel like a global buffet, sampling bits and pieces as I make my way. Thus I’m pretty excited about the whole tapas experience that Spain has to offer. Having zero Spanish (I didn’t even know the word for ‘beer’ – devastating), it’s such a pot luck, pointing to the menu and waiting to see what turns up. Add to this a night owl culture, super friendly (and, er, hot) people, and sangria by the cask, and I think I may have just found my home away from home.

XXX marks the spot

Say, perchance, you’ve just finished your stint in a very small town. You want to live it up a little, out your inner hedonist, and make a little crazy; but where to go? Contemplating my future post-Tiny Town and with Sin City on my doorstep, how could I resist? I scrubbed off that pesky wholesome visage and exchanged it for a sunken pallor and a pair of regulation DDs: it was time to visit the ‘Dam.

Although I wasn’t too enthused by the prospect, I have to say, I’m a convert (although not quite in the way my accommodation intended). I love Amsterdam. Love it. I had no idea that through the marijuana and neon haze it would be so beautiful. It’s an amazing city, vibrant, relaxed, and I would love to be able to take a speedboat to my friend’s house; it certainly beats the hell out of taking a tram. It had great walks, great drinks, and a great atmosphere.

But we will not speak about the food. We will not. Hot meals from a vending machine make baby Jesus cry. People do not eat that.

Tastebuds aside, Amsterdam and I rubbed along quite nicely in a non-contagious fashion. I was staying right on the edge of the red-light district, oddly enough, in what was a Christian hostel. This wasn’t just any Christian hostel, though. This was like the S & M, latex, leather spikes, and vaginal muscle display of Christian hostels: it was hardcore. I’ve stayed in Catholic hostels in Italy before and assumed this would be similar – bit of a curfew in exchange for church subsidised rates and a few creepy crucifixion pictures. Nothing doing. Instead I found myself in a terrifying parallel universe where people kept asking me to prayer club all the time. Where’s the charity in that?

My 16-bed dorm was also filled with 15 cheerleaderish missionary types (and I’m not talking about their post-marital position of choice, either, they were actually young missionaries) from Tennessee and myself. When I asked them what they were doing in Amsterdam, one of them trilled, “We’re just lettin’ peeyoople know how march Jeesus loves them; watch y’all doin’ here?” ‘Jesus’ and ‘y’all’ in one breath and one very well-packed dorm? My eyes started rolling back into my head and my mouth started to froth – grammar and God all in one sentence. It was just too much.

As I mentioned before, I am an atheist, and I find the whole young-religious phenomenon just a bit weird. I think it’s a lack of irony thing, and that so many young people I know who have faith are just missing that certain something … which I suppose, is doubt. They’re just so sure about everything in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. I’m not anti-religion, however, and I don’t mind church. Perhaps I just love a bit of hierarchy and the razzle-dazzle of the Catholic mass, and it irritates me when the Hillsong yoof throw a ‘God bless you’, or ‘God loves you’ at me, every time I leave the room; I would never even presume to speak on behalf of my own father, let alone for everyone elses. But hey, I suppose that’s faith, and that’s why they have it and I don’t. At the very least, points for actually going to a place where maybe they are needed.

Suffice to say, I had a grand couple of days and am now back in Belgium. More just passing through, really, spending the night in a hostel in Brussels. Which I think is how I think my relationship with Brussels should forever stay. See, Brussels and I, we have a few issues; we don’t always see eye-to-eye; we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, in lurve. I don’t know quite why, as I think it’s a cool city, but something about it just doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it’s the fact that every time I come here I get chronically, disorientingly, train-missingly lost; perhaps it’s because I still don’t really like waffles; or, perhaps it’s because every time I’ve ever been here it’s rained like a mofo. That’s right, even coming from a sunny 30 C in Amsterdam, Belgium was wet wet wet (but not wild – they definitely leave that side of things up to their northern cousins). And today I got caught short. No brolley. Stupid, idiot me. Stupid wet, idiot, wet, me, idiot. Wet.

It’s something that’s difficult to understand in sunny Oztralia, just how insidious the rain here can be. Absolutely everyone has SADs, and I’m fairly sure that if for no other reason this is because they are all be chronically afflicted with tinea (my hostel room was sporting a bottle labelled “Fungarest”. Ergh). It’s an amazing sight, though, when the sun comes out: people spend all day outside and turn themselves towards the sun like steadily reddening blossoms. Of course, as soon as a cloud comes along (and you know it will) they all close up a little, wilt, fade, get quieter and then go inside again, all the while planning their next solarium session.

I never thought it was possible to miss the drought, but even if it means we’re all showering in each other’s urine by the time I get back home, bring. it. on.

That’s sure to help with the tinea, too.

A little jaunt to the wall

Hello darlings (and yes, I have just referred to myself by a pet name and in the plural. Revelatory of the incestuous relationship between the sole reader and the sole writer of this blog? Or perhaps just a conjuring trick intended to people this site with the fahbulous little hipster androgynes I've been rubbing pointy shoulders with this week. You be the judge.
Schnookums likes it when you get all stern and uncompromising-like ...)

Ahem. Sorry. As I was saying, the hiatus in posting on this barely-conceived blog is not due to a lack of commitment or dedication on my behalf. No, good people. Rather, this interruption to our scheduled programme was because, for 5 whole days, I saw the light. It was warm, it was golden; my astygmatic eyes squinted lovingly into it, I even bathed in it, until someone politely suggested that what I was doing might be considered illegal.

As you've probably guessed, I haven't returned from a hallucinogenic journey through the looking glass (although I do have some rather dubious-looking cuts on my knees), nor have I been in discussions with Our Lord of Thetan Enterprises, Inc. Rather, the truth is even better: I have just returned from 5 days in Berlin. That's right. I spent 5 days in the city of rapid and radical reinvention, and I'll let you in on a little secret:

I'm. In. Love.

Not with my rather delightful Gallic companion, Battiste, whose proposal that we enjoy the forbidden fruits of hostel-dormitory romance was rejected because,

a) I possess one small shred of dignity; I keep this last bastion of self-respect in a locket around my neck and I'm saving it for a special occasion, and

b) I'm too old to get a nasty case of crabs in a room that is not only inhabited by other people, but by 18-year-old people who have just vomited into the sink.

Instead, with ovaries exploding like the face of a fifteen-year old boy, I've decided to save myself for someone special.

I'm in love with a city, and only the human incarnation of it will do.

Not to get all Gattaca about things (and I'm aware that, with this particular city's history of ah, devastating racial and religious vilification, this may not be the most ideal metaphor to play with, but bear with me), but before this, I was quite certain I was going to have (if any) children of your garden variety, cave-dweller genus. They would be vaguely myopic, allergic to nuts, and possess not only a consistent problem with pronouncing the letter 's', but a kindly, dorkus father of much the same qualities.

After Berlin, however, (or my life AB, as it shall now be known), I long to earn my baby bonus with someone from the East side of the Wall. Together, we will produce insouciant little avant-garders who, even in utero, will reject the nourishment of a nice homecooked placenta in favour of a world-weary glance and a handrolled cigarette. I can see it now: in a perfect model of good parenting and generational social adjustment, my little ubertrendbots will take over the world. Fly, my pretties, fly!


Yikes! Clearly I ingested more than the German cooking. I have to say that, upon return, Villageville has never seemed so green or so wholesome. My initial desire to call for revolution and round up all the SUVs, golden retrievers, and their perfectly-clad owners in this dear little country was quickly quashed when I realised that not only do we need to learn from the mistakes of history, but that, judging by historical trends, revolutions generally come back to bite you pretty damn fast. I work in an academic publishing house that is located in a convent, so, odds are, if anyone's going to be taken to headquarters and charged with crimes against coolness, I'll be the first to go.

Thus, with bubble-a-bursting and Icarus wings a-melting, I say goodnight, and trudge down the hallway to my tiny monastic cell. With my French compadre long-disappeared into mindless hedonism, it’s so quiet here. I wouldn't mind some company, I don't suppose ... I mean, before I go... I was just wondering if you'd seen that guy who was here earlier? You know, slightly balding, in the cardigan? Yeah, little bit of dandruff, didn’t smell so hot. No? Oh well. It doesn't matter. I thought, well ... you know... he jutht theemed really nithe.