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.

V.O.P

It's come to my attention that an alien-life form is inhabiting Europe. They're everywhere, taking root - if Triffids wore trilbies I'd swear it was the second coming. But despite all appearances, they're actually not creatures from another planet - just from a few decades ago.

They're old people, and they're everywhere.

V.O.P., or Visible Old People, are a phenomenon I've really only encountered whilst on the continent. Wherever there's a fountain, a park bench, or somewhere that serves coffee that could power a Mac Truck, you're sure to find them sitting, staring, and occasionally smacking someone with their stick. While it can be unsettling to go about my business with forty replicas of my European granparents watching, I really like this aspect of the culture. I think there's more of an emphasis on the family, so the elderly aren't simply shunted into retirement homes where, if they weren't senile before they will be soon. Instead, they prop themselves in prime position, watching, and sometimes being watched by, the world around them.

Not to get morbid about things, and I know it's a kind of a horrible comparison, but it makes me think a little of the medieval 'danse macabre' theme, where death dances with kings, queens, infants, etc etc, making evident it's status as the one great leveller.




Or perhaps a less grisly comparison would be the 'ubi sunt' motif, which focusses on the transience of life and it's beauty, a popular theme in medieval Latin poetry and subject of my, ahem, erstwhile thesis. With the elderly so central to the daily comings and goings, it makes it almost impossible to remove yourself from the acceptance of, and understanding, of age, intellect, and experience -things I occasionally feel are totally lacking in Australian society. It does make me wonder too, whether if for our youth obsessed society, aging isn't taking on a similar role to the 'unknowability' of death that medieval artists tried to grapple with - one that, if we pretend enough, shunt them away, and use enough botox, it just won't happen to us.

Let's play a game ...

Imagine your favourite food.

No, wait. This is my blog, so here's a better one - imagine one of my favourite foods. Struggling? I'll help you out - a Portuguese custard tart.

Having no luck with the pastry p*rn? Try this:






Now imagine you are in a country where they are a national speciality.

Now imagine they cost a mere 85c.

Now imagine you have started dreaming about them every night.


Now imagine my arse.

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!

Will you be our mother?

Sound familiar? If you too have managed to attract enough Lost Boys to field a football team, we’re more similar than previously thought. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but over the last few years I’ve noticed a definite pattern present in the men who come a’knocking at my door. Either they are so old that they do it with a Parkinson’s tremor, need their food made denture friendly, and a microchip so they don’t wander off from the home again; or so young and miserable that they only want red wine, and will ask for the cork in order to plug their stigmata. Although a staple gun and a barcode can fix the elderlys without too much hassle, it is these guys my own age, these unhappy men, men with problems, men continually searching, that are tricky. It doesn’t seem to matter where I am or who I’m with, I always seem to find (or be found by, I’m not quite sure which) men who need someone to talk with, someone to lean on, someone to help them weather the storm. These are guys who don’t just have baggage; they have their own cargo hold.

Yet so many of the men I know have this fragility, a definite eggshell quality that lies beneath the occasionally-muscled façade. Perhaps that’s one of the joys of spending time with people who ‘think’ for a living, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is so. Rather, I wonder if it’s symptomatic of the general lack of communication and coping skills of so many men out there, something that is perhaps no great surprise to anyone who has a father, brother, husband, or boyfriend. Interestingly, men supposedly use (on average) less than two thirds of a woman’s spoken vocabulary. Thus they seem to be hardwired, or at the very least predestined, to work, play, and, of course, suffer in silence. In Australia, male suicides outnumber female by about 4-1.
A young Australian guy I met recently articulated this differences in a way both poignant and telling. We’d been discussing his family issues and relationships, when he said: “I don’t read, so when stuff happens or things go wrong, I want to talk about it, and, you know, express it, but when I really need to, I try and … I just don’t have … the words”. I knew he wasn’t the most ‘literary’ of my acquaintances, but he was clever and eloquent, and his confession left me genuinely floored. I tried to imagine a world in which my tools of self-expression—reading, writing, and talking—were either denied or out of reach, and simply couldn’t make it work. What would it feel like to look within and find a dyslexic game of Scrabble? How would you cope with a death, a break up, a friend’s betrayal, if all you had to work with was the equivalent of Pig Latin?

I listened to him continue with story, one not dissimilar from many men that I have known, and wondered again at what actually made him this time, and in this place, so haltingly spill it. Was it because we were both on our own? Was it the beer? Or was it just because I was female? And what was he looking for? Just the comfortable anonymity of a fellow country(wo)man who could understand right now but who would never turn up later in his ‘real’ life? Or was he seeking the opportunity to discuss and change the life that had led him thus far? Whatever it was, afterwards I began to ruminate on his admissions, and the strange fact that I often elicit such confessions from people, without ever been entirely sure why: I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t go to me if I had a problem.

Unlike when I was younger, however, I’m also now more cautious of my entanglements with these people. I listen rather than expound, and facilitate rather than advise. After too many encounters with men on self-destructo, or those longing to be fixed, I find that I’m getting slightly wary of the Sati game, and approach such guys with an equal mixture of compassion and caution. It seems wrong sometimes to worry about how to extricate my own life from this unhappiness, and as I get older I wonder whether self-preservation is the aim of the game, no matter how uncharitable it makes me feel.

Perhaps it’s worth remembering who shoots the ´Wendy bird´.