Did you get all that Google? Route them all to right here.
Progressive ideals and a socialistic mentality rise to the surface here, coating it like a gel, settling over this population like invisible anthrax. The Right Thing To Do undebated, no time wasted on the pursuit of money and power, morals not based on 2000 year old scriptures, but on common human understanding, positive nature, Workable Solutions. And for all of that, you have to stand back and applaud. Shitting hell, they're light years ahead of us in that regard. At least they'll be first picked for the good jobs when the Chinese are carving up the planet like colonial Africa in a matter of decades.
Pulled over the eyes, though, a government dead as the church that supported it - a monarchy and parliament gone sour and meaningless with time, leaving the people crying out for the mother figure to set it all right, yet lacking provisions to rebel against this old order. Socialism bent by traditions. Marxism it's not. Progressive ideals being boiled by too much state involvement, burning off the fragile, essential meanings, leaving the only the Procedural.
And so it happens that you would like to institute a governmental policy to keep safe cars on the road, forcing drivers to repair their vehicles every six months to a standard set by the state. And so it happens that the hammer falls hard on the drivers of the sketchier vehicles. And so it happens that the drivers seek out the sketchier mechanics, and vice versa, and the cracks open, and the entire operation is exposed as meaningless and trivial, not solving the problem at all, never stopping a crime, only inventing an infraction, taking it away from its goal. The state saying to us that it is not necessary to carry insurance, and if you hit someone else, figure it out in court. But drive with a bald tire and you can get a fine.
I suppose it makes a small bit of sense in a country where you drive south to get to the colder temps, and mountains hold snow in the summer.
The thing is, the ideal itself stands up to reason, and the underlying force, that of socialism, drives our humanness in an essential direction, it connects us and creates more good than bad. It sees our flaws, asks and answers, bathing itself in our own human foolishness and ability to amaze. But it's never pure. By its own definition it isn't white, it isn't 24 karat. It can never be. I suppose the call for common sense in this system disappears down the well, into an abyss, echoing back like an unanswerable riddle. So you don't use heat to regulate the temps of the buildings, you just let the bodies do their work. You don't tax purchases, you tax income. You don't instigate wars, you don't overspend, overtax, you do it fairly and equally, you cut the fat and lean the pigs. Well, it's a nice feeling, but there's too much that hides, too much invisible. Behind it, rearing its face when most inconvenient, is a system lousy with old-world problems, the monarchy praised, silently sacrificed to. Like platelets, small components of the nation's blood too measurable to quantify, too essential to change.
And so, National Identity achieved. Borne of old colonial attitudes, the Empire standing tall, the Union Jack with the ever watchful eye. Yet reared with native culture, mixed, mashed, a child growing slowly, never rebelling, not making much noise, the people rising to be the most precious commodity.
Look, I come from the Land of Guns. I'm too familiar with shit going on behind the curtain, and I guess that's what pisses me off the most. That I would find it going on in a pure land such as this. That I could find a taint, a thumb print on the pristine paint. If it's here, it's everywhere, and that means it's everyone, and that's not the news I hoped to deliver.
So, essentially, give a government a chance, and it will eventually balls-up a simple concept. That's not a civics lesson, that's shit you already knew.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
I Coulda Been A Contender, Instead Of A Bum, Which Is What I Am, I Mean Let's Face It
What follows is the tale of a night spent working on the docks in Nelson Port, New Zealand.
The sun's going down and the tide's coming up, but the shifts of nature have no pragmatic purpose to the people in this place. The earth may be spinning, the darkness may blanket us all, and the cold Tasman breeze may kick up a few more knots, but regardless, those sacks of meal aren't going to move themselves. It's time for work.
8pm. Talley's Wharf. Nelson, New Zealand. I walk through a gigantic gate and down an immense docking zone, towards central base. Shadows in the distance, huge hulking figures like statues, some spitting, most smoking. As I arrive at the smoko, I see men young and old, some frail, some built like tanks, nearly every one of them very, very intimidating. The little ones are the talkers: young Maori boys for the most part, cussing and gesturing, constantly running their mouths about all manner of activities in their lives - legal and not. The big ones are just goddamned huge, big enough to play professional sports, me thinks. They stay quiet, only fixing me with their eyes, seemingly sizing me up. I just look at the ground. If one of them talks to me, I'll just turn around and walk out of here. It feels like a prison work release program because I'm surrounded by insanely large and very, very pissed-off-looking men, and nobody has smiled once since I got here. I think it's going to be a long night.
My contact told me to ask for Bull or Wattie, so I bite the bullet and ask the biggest guy I can find if he knows where I can find Bull, hoping he'll say "Yeah, that's me" and we will both smile and I will have a moment to share with him later when I'm on the stand testifying against one of the workers. No dice. The man just points to the door and says what I figure out 4 minutes later is "He's through there". Most of the time in this country, I have no problem cutting through the accent, but that's because I've been dealing primarily with New Zealanders involved in travel and hospitality. These aren't them. They curse non-stop, and use almost exclusively slang. So as I stand trying to figure out what "Aye, Bully's frough dere, eh?" means, I take a leave and throw my lunch in the fridge.
A few moments later, Bull steps out from the "office" (I suppose there's a desk in there somewhere, but it looks like a bar urinal with pictures of ships on the wall). I know he's Bull with one look. Easily topping 350, decked in an extremely tight tank top and sweat pants gone rotten with sea salt, he's got a cigarette dangling from his lips, and he's fishing another one out of the pack (no pun intended). He labors to the picnic table that doubles as "office furniture" and sits down breathing alarmingly heavy. He begins giving out assignments to everyone, usually with one or two words, sometimes with simple grunts and gestures. One of the talkative kids he tells to "gear up for meal", to which the kid screams out profanity and saunters to the booth to get his overalls. He turns to me, asks me my name, says "Ok, Brew, you're Team 3, with this guy." Before I can point out his mistake, a wiry, scruffed, middle-aged man walks up next to me and introduces himself as Stephen. He rolls a cigarette, looking up at the fading night sky. Bull glances around and says "Alright. Now who's got wheels?"
We load into whatever transport we can find and drive to the other end of the port, a wharf revealing a towering ship packed to the gills with frozen foods. The sun is down now, purple light reflecting off the clouds and seagulls chattering and screeching, growing impatient. We're shown to a truck-sized container and are told we have to fit 650 sacks into it. We wait in silence, and soon enough, the forklift arrives, driven by Ben Kingsley himself. Completely bald, with a very small patch of beard, and cursing every other word, I find it strange that Don Logan from Sexy Beast has gone on to drive lifts on the docks in Nelson, but before I can comment, he asks me where I'm from. "Aye, a bloody fookin American, getting a bit rough in there, in't it?" I drop a sack of fish meal on Stephen's foot. "Must be all that fookin wrestlin' yous got over there!" Later, after discovering he hasn't had a break for over 2 hours, he proclaims to us "Aye, Dougie's taken 2 fookin smokos, I'm sittin here bloody fooked with nay a smoko in 2 hours, waitin on him takin his sweet time, and fook it all, I'll just fook off and the fook with all of them, I'll be right down the road straightaway, know what I mean?" He explains to us that he used to do what we are doing - lifting 66 pound bags of dried fish meal and stacking them to the ceiling of the container - but he then decided it would be easier to just drive the forklift around instead. Stephen acknowledges this by falling into a violent coughing fit that doubles him over. Later, he tells me that a few years ago, he injured his back so bad on the job that the surgeon told him he was never going to walk again. Stephen replied "Fookin watch me" and walked out of the hospital 2 months later. He works without a back brace, explaining that if he gets hurt again, "the boss men are going to have bloody hell to pay".
We work for an hour, then we get a half hour break (dubbed a "smoko" here, for reasons unknown), then we're back on, and repeat. It sounds like a nice rotation, but the half hour break is absolutely needed. By the end of the first hour of work, I'm already wasted. We unload an average of 8 containers of sacks every hour, each with around 25 sacks. That equates to 100 a piece, which means I'm pretty much constantly lifting 30kg bags of nasty fish meal and positioning them so we can fit more into the truck. When smoko comes, it comes with huge relief. We head to the trailer for some Milo drink and whatever food we brought with us. A huge sign above the garbage can proclaims "If you don't want to use this rubbish bin, DON'T use this smoko!" I glance around the tiny room and every table is littered with trash. Half eaten chicken bones, empty McDonald's wrappers, sandwiches unwrapped and attracting flies, chipbags and soda cans literally cover every square inch. I look at the nearly-empty garbage can, 9 feet away. It stands at the entrance to the trailer, meaning these men must've just finished whatever they were eating, dropped it on the table without a second thought, and walked out the door for their shift. No wonder the seagulls are going crazy. They know that just through this door, it's paradise.
"Fook these bloody fookin overalls!!" An old man has stumbled into the trailer and proclaims this to no one in particular. He strips off the one piece suit - designed with Hannibal Lecter in mind - and throws it to the ground. He turns to me. "THIS is how I want to work!" He is standing there before me, dressed in a filthy undershirt (a size too small, naturally) and a New Zealand knock-off of Umbro soccer shorts. He's about two quick awkward movements away from giving us all a peep show. He flies towards the door yelling "And if the boss men don't like it they can take a hard shit!" The whole encounter has lasted 25 seconds, but it will burn my brain for weeks to come.
We throw sacks of fish meal all night, one container after the other, moving around the wharf and loading them into whatever they tell us to. Bull oversees the whole operation, and like he's in the Usual Suspects, he's smoking every single time I see him. The work that we do depends on a lot of different steps and people, so if the kids in the hole don't load the sacks faster than we can unload them, we've got heaps of down time. If the driver accidentally runs over a brick and has to get another forklift to lift his forklift off of it, then more down time. When the crane operator nearly takes an entire pallet over the edge and into the yawning sea, even more down time. All of it provides an opportunity to watch the sun rise behind the mountains. It shows itself briefly, then disappears beneath the clouds, the day waking under an overcast sky covered with ominous black spots. It's 7am. We have an hour and a half left.
Towards the end, we've separated the men from the beasts, as it were. Stephen and I are demolished, now leaning against anything we can between containers - which are being delivered faster than we can keep up with. However, at 8:00, a gigantic man emerges from the hole. He strides down the ladder like he just got to work, and proceeds to more than triple the pace of both Stephen and I. He lifts sacks like they are pillows, tossing them 5 feet, one on top of the other, at an unending pace. He's an absolute machine. He's spent the entire night inside the ship without a whisp of fresh air, picking these huge hulking bags off the floor and tossing them up onto the deck, and now he's down here loading them off as if he's just going through the motions. At times, I just want to stand back and watch him go, but I feel compelled to at least help a tiny bit, so every now and again I grab a sack and set it down, trying to not get in his way. He sees me nearly defeated with exhaustion and says "Take a small break bro, you've been doing this all night, no worries." Yeah, but so have you. "Aye, no bother to me though, is it?"
Quitting time comes at 8:30am, and we all shuffle towards the trailer to grab our stuff and catch a ride back to the carpark on the other side of the port. Bull gets everyone around, thanks them for the work, and tells us that there is going to be a second shift that afternoon, at 2pm. God in heaven above. As we split up, he comes around asking us if we're going to be there. Almost unanimously, these men agree to come back in 5 and a half hours to do this again. When Bull gets near, he looks at me and sees a broken man covered in sweat and fish meal, arms cut through from the vinyl coverings, hunched and panting. He just raises his eyebrows in questioning. I say "I can't". He nods. I've never seen someone less surprised.
We go our separate ways, gathering up our things and heading back home. To most, that means a short nap and then back at it again. To me, I'm going down for the count, a 10 hour day sleep in which you could fire a shotgun in the room and I wouldn't be bothered to even turn over. The shift is over, the day has begun, and the clouds start to burn off. Soon, sunshine beams off the Tasman, and I stare out towards the wharf, hoping to holy hell I never find myself back there, but wondering just how far I could push myself if I absolutely had to.
Then sleep comes, and I dream of fish meal.
The sun's going down and the tide's coming up, but the shifts of nature have no pragmatic purpose to the people in this place. The earth may be spinning, the darkness may blanket us all, and the cold Tasman breeze may kick up a few more knots, but regardless, those sacks of meal aren't going to move themselves. It's time for work.
8pm. Talley's Wharf. Nelson, New Zealand. I walk through a gigantic gate and down an immense docking zone, towards central base. Shadows in the distance, huge hulking figures like statues, some spitting, most smoking. As I arrive at the smoko, I see men young and old, some frail, some built like tanks, nearly every one of them very, very intimidating. The little ones are the talkers: young Maori boys for the most part, cussing and gesturing, constantly running their mouths about all manner of activities in their lives - legal and not. The big ones are just goddamned huge, big enough to play professional sports, me thinks. They stay quiet, only fixing me with their eyes, seemingly sizing me up. I just look at the ground. If one of them talks to me, I'll just turn around and walk out of here. It feels like a prison work release program because I'm surrounded by insanely large and very, very pissed-off-looking men, and nobody has smiled once since I got here. I think it's going to be a long night.
My contact told me to ask for Bull or Wattie, so I bite the bullet and ask the biggest guy I can find if he knows where I can find Bull, hoping he'll say "Yeah, that's me" and we will both smile and I will have a moment to share with him later when I'm on the stand testifying against one of the workers. No dice. The man just points to the door and says what I figure out 4 minutes later is "He's through there". Most of the time in this country, I have no problem cutting through the accent, but that's because I've been dealing primarily with New Zealanders involved in travel and hospitality. These aren't them. They curse non-stop, and use almost exclusively slang. So as I stand trying to figure out what "Aye, Bully's frough dere, eh?" means, I take a leave and throw my lunch in the fridge.
A few moments later, Bull steps out from the "office" (I suppose there's a desk in there somewhere, but it looks like a bar urinal with pictures of ships on the wall). I know he's Bull with one look. Easily topping 350, decked in an extremely tight tank top and sweat pants gone rotten with sea salt, he's got a cigarette dangling from his lips, and he's fishing another one out of the pack (no pun intended). He labors to the picnic table that doubles as "office furniture" and sits down breathing alarmingly heavy. He begins giving out assignments to everyone, usually with one or two words, sometimes with simple grunts and gestures. One of the talkative kids he tells to "gear up for meal", to which the kid screams out profanity and saunters to the booth to get his overalls. He turns to me, asks me my name, says "Ok, Brew, you're Team 3, with this guy." Before I can point out his mistake, a wiry, scruffed, middle-aged man walks up next to me and introduces himself as Stephen. He rolls a cigarette, looking up at the fading night sky. Bull glances around and says "Alright. Now who's got wheels?"
We load into whatever transport we can find and drive to the other end of the port, a wharf revealing a towering ship packed to the gills with frozen foods. The sun is down now, purple light reflecting off the clouds and seagulls chattering and screeching, growing impatient. We're shown to a truck-sized container and are told we have to fit 650 sacks into it. We wait in silence, and soon enough, the forklift arrives, driven by Ben Kingsley himself. Completely bald, with a very small patch of beard, and cursing every other word, I find it strange that Don Logan from Sexy Beast has gone on to drive lifts on the docks in Nelson, but before I can comment, he asks me where I'm from. "Aye, a bloody fookin American, getting a bit rough in there, in't it?" I drop a sack of fish meal on Stephen's foot. "Must be all that fookin wrestlin' yous got over there!" Later, after discovering he hasn't had a break for over 2 hours, he proclaims to us "Aye, Dougie's taken 2 fookin smokos, I'm sittin here bloody fooked with nay a smoko in 2 hours, waitin on him takin his sweet time, and fook it all, I'll just fook off and the fook with all of them, I'll be right down the road straightaway, know what I mean?" He explains to us that he used to do what we are doing - lifting 66 pound bags of dried fish meal and stacking them to the ceiling of the container - but he then decided it would be easier to just drive the forklift around instead. Stephen acknowledges this by falling into a violent coughing fit that doubles him over. Later, he tells me that a few years ago, he injured his back so bad on the job that the surgeon told him he was never going to walk again. Stephen replied "Fookin watch me" and walked out of the hospital 2 months later. He works without a back brace, explaining that if he gets hurt again, "the boss men are going to have bloody hell to pay".
We work for an hour, then we get a half hour break (dubbed a "smoko" here, for reasons unknown), then we're back on, and repeat. It sounds like a nice rotation, but the half hour break is absolutely needed. By the end of the first hour of work, I'm already wasted. We unload an average of 8 containers of sacks every hour, each with around 25 sacks. That equates to 100 a piece, which means I'm pretty much constantly lifting 30kg bags of nasty fish meal and positioning them so we can fit more into the truck. When smoko comes, it comes with huge relief. We head to the trailer for some Milo drink and whatever food we brought with us. A huge sign above the garbage can proclaims "If you don't want to use this rubbish bin, DON'T use this smoko!" I glance around the tiny room and every table is littered with trash. Half eaten chicken bones, empty McDonald's wrappers, sandwiches unwrapped and attracting flies, chipbags and soda cans literally cover every square inch. I look at the nearly-empty garbage can, 9 feet away. It stands at the entrance to the trailer, meaning these men must've just finished whatever they were eating, dropped it on the table without a second thought, and walked out the door for their shift. No wonder the seagulls are going crazy. They know that just through this door, it's paradise.
"Fook these bloody fookin overalls!!" An old man has stumbled into the trailer and proclaims this to no one in particular. He strips off the one piece suit - designed with Hannibal Lecter in mind - and throws it to the ground. He turns to me. "THIS is how I want to work!" He is standing there before me, dressed in a filthy undershirt (a size too small, naturally) and a New Zealand knock-off of Umbro soccer shorts. He's about two quick awkward movements away from giving us all a peep show. He flies towards the door yelling "And if the boss men don't like it they can take a hard shit!" The whole encounter has lasted 25 seconds, but it will burn my brain for weeks to come.
We throw sacks of fish meal all night, one container after the other, moving around the wharf and loading them into whatever they tell us to. Bull oversees the whole operation, and like he's in the Usual Suspects, he's smoking every single time I see him. The work that we do depends on a lot of different steps and people, so if the kids in the hole don't load the sacks faster than we can unload them, we've got heaps of down time. If the driver accidentally runs over a brick and has to get another forklift to lift his forklift off of it, then more down time. When the crane operator nearly takes an entire pallet over the edge and into the yawning sea, even more down time. All of it provides an opportunity to watch the sun rise behind the mountains. It shows itself briefly, then disappears beneath the clouds, the day waking under an overcast sky covered with ominous black spots. It's 7am. We have an hour and a half left.
Towards the end, we've separated the men from the beasts, as it were. Stephen and I are demolished, now leaning against anything we can between containers - which are being delivered faster than we can keep up with. However, at 8:00, a gigantic man emerges from the hole. He strides down the ladder like he just got to work, and proceeds to more than triple the pace of both Stephen and I. He lifts sacks like they are pillows, tossing them 5 feet, one on top of the other, at an unending pace. He's an absolute machine. He's spent the entire night inside the ship without a whisp of fresh air, picking these huge hulking bags off the floor and tossing them up onto the deck, and now he's down here loading them off as if he's just going through the motions. At times, I just want to stand back and watch him go, but I feel compelled to at least help a tiny bit, so every now and again I grab a sack and set it down, trying to not get in his way. He sees me nearly defeated with exhaustion and says "Take a small break bro, you've been doing this all night, no worries." Yeah, but so have you. "Aye, no bother to me though, is it?"
Quitting time comes at 8:30am, and we all shuffle towards the trailer to grab our stuff and catch a ride back to the carpark on the other side of the port. Bull gets everyone around, thanks them for the work, and tells us that there is going to be a second shift that afternoon, at 2pm. God in heaven above. As we split up, he comes around asking us if we're going to be there. Almost unanimously, these men agree to come back in 5 and a half hours to do this again. When Bull gets near, he looks at me and sees a broken man covered in sweat and fish meal, arms cut through from the vinyl coverings, hunched and panting. He just raises his eyebrows in questioning. I say "I can't". He nods. I've never seen someone less surprised.
We go our separate ways, gathering up our things and heading back home. To most, that means a short nap and then back at it again. To me, I'm going down for the count, a 10 hour day sleep in which you could fire a shotgun in the room and I wouldn't be bothered to even turn over. The shift is over, the day has begun, and the clouds start to burn off. Soon, sunshine beams off the Tasman, and I stare out towards the wharf, hoping to holy hell I never find myself back there, but wondering just how far I could push myself if I absolutely had to.
Then sleep comes, and I dream of fish meal.
Friday, February 09, 2007
The wheelbarrow is full
When you mine for gold in Dealville, sometimes you get lucky. Sure, skill plays a large part, but sometimes you just find gold even when you're not looking for it. And that's California Gold right there, surrounding you like an ocean breeze, wandering runaway or discarded can of spray paint.
This evening, DZA and I will attend a television show taping in Hollywood. The content of this show is not something that deserves elaboration. But one of the guests does: Tenacious D. Yes, the most rocking band in history will take the stage. We will watch them play many songs. We will rock out to the songs while girls will get pregnant just by listening to them rock.
Of course, that's what I think will happen. I am not aware of the actuality of my evening. I was once told a story from someone who's name is of no consequence. He was a teen at the time, and was joining a friend at a twi-night doubleheader at Met Stadium in August of 1979. A's vs. Twins. Unbeknownst to him, his friend convinced his dad to drop him off at the stadium instead of staying with them. The pair made some fast friends amongst the empty seats, and next thing you know, they are in someone's van, driving to the new Eden Prairie mall to see a midnight showing of "The Song Remains the Same." So, in a haze, you can't fault the guy for calling his father at 3AM from a gas station asking for a ride because; let's face it, would YOU want to walk 10 miles down a highway to get home? Shit, you'd be lucky if you even knew your name.
Point being: if, later on, I'm at an all-night Chinese restaurant singing songs from the Pretenders, sitting on a sidewalk eating terrible pizza, or trying to pick up a radio station from Mexico, know that I have no idea what the fuck is going on. But it's all gold.
This evening, DZA and I will attend a television show taping in Hollywood. The content of this show is not something that deserves elaboration. But one of the guests does: Tenacious D. Yes, the most rocking band in history will take the stage. We will watch them play many songs. We will rock out to the songs while girls will get pregnant just by listening to them rock.
Of course, that's what I think will happen. I am not aware of the actuality of my evening. I was once told a story from someone who's name is of no consequence. He was a teen at the time, and was joining a friend at a twi-night doubleheader at Met Stadium in August of 1979. A's vs. Twins. Unbeknownst to him, his friend convinced his dad to drop him off at the stadium instead of staying with them. The pair made some fast friends amongst the empty seats, and next thing you know, they are in someone's van, driving to the new Eden Prairie mall to see a midnight showing of "The Song Remains the Same." So, in a haze, you can't fault the guy for calling his father at 3AM from a gas station asking for a ride because; let's face it, would YOU want to walk 10 miles down a highway to get home? Shit, you'd be lucky if you even knew your name.
Point being: if, later on, I'm at an all-night Chinese restaurant singing songs from the Pretenders, sitting on a sidewalk eating terrible pizza, or trying to pick up a radio station from Mexico, know that I have no idea what the fuck is going on. But it's all gold.
Friday, February 02, 2007
If You Get That Big Score, Then You Never Have To Wake Up Early
(Editor's Note: We've had only intermittant contact with Dee Louis as he has progressed further into the dredges of the southernmost places of the earth. As he teeters on the edge, we provide this dispatch, looking more like a cry for help than informed literature. The title is quoted from a particularly sauce-drenched conversation with Ms. Shady, his muse)
A long time ago, I visited the state of my birth, Arkansas. A hot, dusty place inhabited by hair and empty wallets, universities and hippie communes, somehow both lost AND forgotten. I thought of the sun-parched earth "How could any roots take hold here?" Folks drift through towns like Eureka Springs and Ballmer like ditchweeds. The past seemingly unable to get a grip, stories and generations flying away in the singing sand. I do specifically remember ordering a footlong and seeing the confusing sign reading "Absolutely NO SHARING!", so it wasn't all bad I guess.
I suppose that lack of permanence, that shifting sands and winds feel, it concentrates strongly in a place like this. We're operating without a chute now, totally floating from place to place and slowly are losing our sense of home. That word never lends itself to any positive thought. Home is too entrenched, too constricting. I'd much prefer "Sleep Hole". Nah, but without that pull, without much to bother and complain about, life becomes something of an oddity. Honestly, how can you get down about anything in a situation like this? The only thing that is amplified to an extreme negative is the lazy behavior, but that's just because there's nothing else to focus on. It's easy to sit and talk about shit you ain't gonna do when rent's coming up and your car's in the shit house.
Another thing you must understand is that - like the pull of the tide - this place turns my writing to a convoluted fucking mess. So bear with me.
They tumble through this place and others, worshipping at the feet of this particular buddha, holding out for that dying candle, that flicker of permanence, letting it slip away and facing themselves in the reflection. Cut loose with 25,000 frequent flyer miles, lives wedged into people-sized luggage, eyes ever wide and sponge-like. True warriors, I suppose. Fighting against ideals that in the place where I now call home - The Great White - are suffocating and all-encompassing. To witness a backpacker in Minny is like meeting a Turkish German. Once in a lifetime if you're lucky, and thanks to christ, not once more.
This wave of temporary people, they crash through and recede and another arrives with stunning regularity and sameness, but the personalities behind the numbers are insanely different. The stories are filling up like a hard drive, and we're going to have to begin dumping. The situations, the backgrounds, never in my life have I come across this hodge-podge of humanity, and that includes 8 trips to Vegas. Hell, there, you're just looking at 3 million different versions of the same sad story. Here, you're tasting the corners, licking the salt as it were.
There's something burning in them, something like a booster always giving them movement, if not always direction. As the sign says, "The best plan is no plan". This coming from the mouth of a German who parked a mile away from a vineyard to hear Eric Clapton make it talk. It's just natural, a way of life to them. Just as you would parrot back a list of your values and hopes, they would rifle off Capitals, Culture, and Time Spent. It really makes for good talk, all of this stimuli like nothing you've ever heard, sentences presented in semi-english that you wouldn't even understand if the Queen herself spoke them. The home fires burn out, but the soul is wealthy in fuel.
I figure that wealth must be something unmeasurable, something that not many from back in The White have a sense of, something not to be revered but bottled up and mocked. I figure, also, that I would've been one to do that as well, so it stands to reason that I should be here, now looking through the mirror, forced into a change brought on by 19 hours of travel. Payment for my past transgressions - pennance for my former prejudices. The only ignorance I have ever so knowingly nurtured, so expressly embraced, is one of Isolation. That's the big bear in the room, the swinging left turn that lives hinge on. You can't go back from either direction... once you're here, you have no steps to retrace. Thinking about it only deepens the resolve, only further smashes your previous actions, only swims you out, beyond the chop.
And, like I said, once you take off, sever those roots, start treading on hollowed ground, well that's when it starts to make more sense. I guess it's not knowledge per se - something parallel to that, something words only dramatize.
You could call it soul, and you wouldn't get much argument.
The past lingers in memories stored in caverns of The Grey, and likely will never relenquish its grip on unconscious thought. Burn the home down, but it just keeps right on blazing in your mind. Fight like hell to get out of it, and like me, you'll end up making the memory stronger, feeling your roots like appendages, unable to shake what feels unnecessary. The only solution is to force it. The only way you cut the ties is with a violent jerk, something so strong mere electrical brain power can't keep up. A flight lasting almost an entire day to a place where shadow is in sunlight, and you meet a guy on a beach with two dogs that are part dingo. This is how it happens, how you change.
This is how you start to understand these travellers. How friendship and Good Contact takes the place of ignorance and apathy.
You look through the one way mirror, and it only strengthens your sight, only sharpens your rods and cones.
Then you can recognize yourself when it turns around.
A long time ago, I visited the state of my birth, Arkansas. A hot, dusty place inhabited by hair and empty wallets, universities and hippie communes, somehow both lost AND forgotten. I thought of the sun-parched earth "How could any roots take hold here?" Folks drift through towns like Eureka Springs and Ballmer like ditchweeds. The past seemingly unable to get a grip, stories and generations flying away in the singing sand. I do specifically remember ordering a footlong and seeing the confusing sign reading "Absolutely NO SHARING!", so it wasn't all bad I guess.
I suppose that lack of permanence, that shifting sands and winds feel, it concentrates strongly in a place like this. We're operating without a chute now, totally floating from place to place and slowly are losing our sense of home. That word never lends itself to any positive thought. Home is too entrenched, too constricting. I'd much prefer "Sleep Hole". Nah, but without that pull, without much to bother and complain about, life becomes something of an oddity. Honestly, how can you get down about anything in a situation like this? The only thing that is amplified to an extreme negative is the lazy behavior, but that's just because there's nothing else to focus on. It's easy to sit and talk about shit you ain't gonna do when rent's coming up and your car's in the shit house.
Another thing you must understand is that - like the pull of the tide - this place turns my writing to a convoluted fucking mess. So bear with me.
They tumble through this place and others, worshipping at the feet of this particular buddha, holding out for that dying candle, that flicker of permanence, letting it slip away and facing themselves in the reflection. Cut loose with 25,000 frequent flyer miles, lives wedged into people-sized luggage, eyes ever wide and sponge-like. True warriors, I suppose. Fighting against ideals that in the place where I now call home - The Great White - are suffocating and all-encompassing. To witness a backpacker in Minny is like meeting a Turkish German. Once in a lifetime if you're lucky, and thanks to christ, not once more.
This wave of temporary people, they crash through and recede and another arrives with stunning regularity and sameness, but the personalities behind the numbers are insanely different. The stories are filling up like a hard drive, and we're going to have to begin dumping. The situations, the backgrounds, never in my life have I come across this hodge-podge of humanity, and that includes 8 trips to Vegas. Hell, there, you're just looking at 3 million different versions of the same sad story. Here, you're tasting the corners, licking the salt as it were.
There's something burning in them, something like a booster always giving them movement, if not always direction. As the sign says, "The best plan is no plan". This coming from the mouth of a German who parked a mile away from a vineyard to hear Eric Clapton make it talk. It's just natural, a way of life to them. Just as you would parrot back a list of your values and hopes, they would rifle off Capitals, Culture, and Time Spent. It really makes for good talk, all of this stimuli like nothing you've ever heard, sentences presented in semi-english that you wouldn't even understand if the Queen herself spoke them. The home fires burn out, but the soul is wealthy in fuel.
I figure that wealth must be something unmeasurable, something that not many from back in The White have a sense of, something not to be revered but bottled up and mocked. I figure, also, that I would've been one to do that as well, so it stands to reason that I should be here, now looking through the mirror, forced into a change brought on by 19 hours of travel. Payment for my past transgressions - pennance for my former prejudices. The only ignorance I have ever so knowingly nurtured, so expressly embraced, is one of Isolation. That's the big bear in the room, the swinging left turn that lives hinge on. You can't go back from either direction... once you're here, you have no steps to retrace. Thinking about it only deepens the resolve, only further smashes your previous actions, only swims you out, beyond the chop.
And, like I said, once you take off, sever those roots, start treading on hollowed ground, well that's when it starts to make more sense. I guess it's not knowledge per se - something parallel to that, something words only dramatize.
You could call it soul, and you wouldn't get much argument.
The past lingers in memories stored in caverns of The Grey, and likely will never relenquish its grip on unconscious thought. Burn the home down, but it just keeps right on blazing in your mind. Fight like hell to get out of it, and like me, you'll end up making the memory stronger, feeling your roots like appendages, unable to shake what feels unnecessary. The only solution is to force it. The only way you cut the ties is with a violent jerk, something so strong mere electrical brain power can't keep up. A flight lasting almost an entire day to a place where shadow is in sunlight, and you meet a guy on a beach with two dogs that are part dingo. This is how it happens, how you change.
This is how you start to understand these travellers. How friendship and Good Contact takes the place of ignorance and apathy.
You look through the one way mirror, and it only strengthens your sight, only sharpens your rods and cones.
Then you can recognize yourself when it turns around.
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