Thursday, August 21, 2014

A Justification of Picking One's Nose

One of the great, treasured joys in my life is a good, thorough pick of the nose. I know it's gross or whatever, but it's also one of those minute social taboos where you know people can see it, but you're not shitting on a park bench or anything, so people just pretend not to notice. I like it that way, and I know most of you are squirming right now a going, “Dude, really? We get it, your nose whatever, but do you really have to talk about it?” Well no I guess not, but what the fuck else am I going to talk about?

I got in to London today at 7am after a presumably long bus ride that was rendered short and blissful by the second-last 10mg valium tablet of the pack of 12 given to me by my friend Kay the week I left Melbourne. I arrived at Victoria Bus Station, and walked for about 80 minutes with all my bags and sweat and organs and shit to my hostel just North of Park Lane and Hyde Park (CLANG NAMEDROP!!) and after hanging out for a while applying for barista jobs online I decided to go for a walk past Marylebone Station (CLANG!!) towards Fleet Street (CLANG!!!) before I transformed into a little toy figurine of an Artillery and... okay sorry I'll stop.

I'm a little over-excited I think... or maybe I'm not, I don't know. I don't feel the same sense of awe and wonder that I remember feeling when I first got to Melbourne, although maybe I didn't feel it back then either, and I'm just romanticising the past as often is so tempting.

“It would be nice to entertain the idea that I, Aidan Jones, am a trailblazing nomad beating down a path never before seen or even considered in the history of human experience... but that would also be completely fucking retarded.”

That's what I wrote last time, day one, July 11th 2012. This time I feel a bit more sure of myself, I know what I'm doing a little better, and I'm trying not to write so grandiose...ly(?).

Oh jesus I just realized I just quoted myself. Wow. Fuck. Sorry. Oh my god... anyway. Bah.

It would be nice to say that it feels like love at first sight with London, I mean that would fit the narrative perfectly: “young man travels across globe with twenty pounds and a towel, falls in love with city, wins life, dies surrounded by loved ones aged 85¼”. I don't think it quite is though, I just walked around today trying to feel that sense of wonder and awe, trying to tease it out of myself, but instead just feeling sort of content. I think it may be a case of, “let's definitely keep seeing each other”, rather than love at first sight this time. I will keep putting that phrase in here though, because even if I don't feel it, it's bound to turn up a few hits to my blog from popular Google searches. “'Love at first sight'? Oh I LOVE love!” LOLOLOL. While we're at it: “does he really like me?”; “why does it hurt when I pee?”; “how to make moonshine”. It's a numbers game guys, let's be honest with ourselves.

I meandered through the centre of the city today, my hostel being on the Western side and an interview for a barista job being on the East. The place just keeps going, I walked for almost two hours in a straight line and the rolling buildings four, five, six stories high just kept coming and coming and coming. I waited out the front of the cafe for like half an hour and did some writing, then went inside, made some coffees, chatted to the guy and got a final trial shift for Tuesday. I left feeling great.

Also someone from Melbourne said something really nice to me over Facebook chat, and so as I walked down more streets surrounded by looming stone giants my smiling turned to heel-clicks and I broke out into a weird, celebratory jog/skip for a few metres every block or so. It sounds dumb here, and I'm sure it looks dumb in person too, but I have fun guys, I really do. Promise.

I had a rest underneath this statue of some guy called Charles James Fox who I've never heard of and is more famous that I'll ever be, and noticed that my left foot hurt from all the walking – three hours. My body felt weird from the coffee – double shot: unnecessary. I was cold and hot at the same time, and couldn't figure out whether to leave my jacket on or off, or draped around my shoulders, or whether I should just throw it over a tree branch and abandon it forever. Charles James Fox eh? Good on ya, I wonder if old Foxey ever went for a bit of the Ye Olde Nose-Pick? Because that's what I did sitting at the foot of his grand statue there, looking stately, erected MDCCCXVI. I sat there for at least a whole minute, picking away, and that was the highlight of my first day in London.

If you're reading this and feel in any way connected to the things I've just said, then please walk down the street and click your own heels, or say something nice to a friend you love and admire, and if you see someone picking their nose call out to them, wave, and then give them a thumbs up. Because it's nice, and they've earned it.

Peace, Taco.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Smokers are Jokers

Today I climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat with two girls I met last night in my hostel, and then on the climb down I ruined any possibly lingering chance of getting with either of them by engaging in a lengthy conversation about our recent sexual encounters. A fair trade, I guess, to find out what Tessa and Amanda (well, Tessa mainly) have been getting up to in the last few weeks. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband smiled out of her phone from drunken wedding pictures, as she told us about a Welshman's... eguh actually no.

What I really wanted to write about was smoking, I've been doing it again lately. Well, fuck for like two months now – it creeps up on you doesn't it, like friendship, or love for a small child. “Goo-goo-ga-ga I luv you I luv you”, says the cigarette.
       "I guess you can stay”, says the Me, “but ONLY for a few weeks!”
       "Goo-goo-ga-ga,” says the cigarette, clearly thrilled with the offer.

I said when I was enjoying the last weeks of my life in Melbourne that I'd just do it as a celebration: “fuck it, I'm doing everything else, why not now I've been off them for four years!” Well I'm still technically off them, I guess, because I haven't bought a packet, but today while climbing that small less-than-300m mountain (hill? It's not “a seat”, and in fact I have no idea why it's called that because it doesn't look like one either) I felt that tightness of chest and shortness of breath and Tessa ahead of me said “my smoking lungs need a rest.” I agreed with her, and at the same time admitted to myself that although she had paid for the pack in her backpack, we were in the same boat.

For shame, for shame. Smokers are Jokers.

Back in 2009 I used to coo that out to my friends while we were drinking at UniBar in Adelaide, out on the balcony with plastic cups full of Coopers that we were still pretending we knew how to like. “Smokers are Jokers guys AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Exaggerated, mocking laughter. So they started putting cigarettes in my mouth to shut me up while I was drunk, and I took them because they were free and because I started to see why everyone thought they were so fucking cool.

They've really done a number on us these companies, peddling their wizard fire-sticks to us that burn our lungs and stain our fingers and make that gross paste-y stuff come out of whatever pink tube that guy squeezes it out of on the anti-smoking advert. They've really done a fantastic job making us think that these things are awesome, because that's what I genuinely believe. It's a beautiful cherry on top of that sloppy, Saturday Night Cake, late at a dingy bar with a pool table inside, beer in hand that I know how to like now because I taught myself... it really is great to have a cigarette.

So now it's a war between them and me. Between the people who would have my money off me, and the shirt off my back too I'm sure if they could, for some stupid little fucking fire sticks that hang out of my mouth when I'm feeling needy. It makes me angry to know that some company who wants nothing more than to use me like a plot of land to farm money off of has driven me so far away from my own self-interest that I know sincerely believe that this thing that they are selling me. This poisonous, addictive, pointless and utterly evil thing, makes me into a more interesting person.

Sigh. Cough. Sigh again. Smokers are jokers. Smokers are jokers.

It's tempting to say, “oh but smokers aren't the jokers, the joke is on them!” and that would be fine, and true, but it's too damn simple, isn't it. I'm sure there are some people that really enjoy smoking and feel like it adds something tangible to their lives, and is worth the years they are taking off of it at the end. I'm sure too that if smoking were not advertised as invasively as it is today and all the health risks were known, there would still be people out there doing it. Just like heroin, just like everything – there's a market for anything, and anyone will try something once.

So there's no joke really, there's some people trying to make money off of some other people like me, who resent being made money off of, and there are other people, maybe a less complicated folk, who don't find themselves bothered by these kinds of thoughts: not bothered – as I clearly am – with obsessions over power. Not constantly paranoid about it's role in their lives. From me, I say good on those people, and to the people trying to make money off of my weaknesses, I say fuck you they're mine, and get your hands out my pockets.

Smokers are Jokers... I think I might stop saying that.

Peace, Taco.

Friday, August 15, 2014

I Can't Focus

The world is so fucking hard to take in. In the early hours of yesterday's morning I was drunk and sent a message to the effect of “comedy is hard, life is hard, agh agh AGH! Sadthings HELP!?” to Melanie in France, and after passing out, awoke at midday feeling hungover but contrastingly happy about life. It was sunny in Edinburgh, and I went to the park to enjoy a sit in the warm grass, the length of which should surprise every weatherman in a 10km radius. After grinning while watching a young couple be in love with each other and giving them a round of applause as they walked off hand-in-hand sighing into each other's eyelids, I checked my phone to see that I had a response from Melanie. A beautiful, thoughtful, and concerned response to my saddened messages the night before.

“But I don't feel like that anymore?”

The relentless up-and-down sickness of day to day life is... well it's relentless is what it is. If ever I manage actually pin down one specific feeling at any moment in a day, I've learned that the best bet is that that feeling will be gone the next time I have the chance to take stock. It's like being below deck in a ship during a storm, and the light keeps flicking off for long periods of time, only coming on for a few minutes at a time, and during those minutes of valuable clarity I quickly scan my surroundings checking the position of the bed, desk, chair, chamber pot, stove, various spoons etc. The storm doesn't stop, but at least when the lights go out again I'll have something to go by. And they go out again, and again I'm tossing and turning below deck in the dark, fumbling around for a spatula.

That's why it's so hard to grasp at any particular thought for an extended period of time and flesh it out. That's the most frustrating thing, it's what keeps these posts flailing around the 1000-word mark, and what keeps me sending messages full of emoticons to the phones and laptops of friends across the world telling them that I just found a penny.

I read something yesterday about a guy who spent 18 months without a phone or computer or anything, and he made a great point that I've heard made before about how the internet is another dimension of our world. It's amazing that we are able to traverse this new dimension, full of information and entertainment, and connectivity to other people, but while we try to focus on this new dimension, the physical one we already occupy is still all around us, so we can never fully BE in one or the other. We're stuck in limbo, with one foot in each of these worlds, and therefore never experiencing anything. That's why these thoughts that I keep having come and go like lightning strikes, so bold and clear one minute, then racing away the next. A flash, a shadow in the sky, and then gone.

I had two great gigs yesterday, and met some cool people in my dorm, but I also read about the outbreak of police brutality and attacking of protesters in the US town of Ferguson. So I made new friends, and then was made angry by something happening overseas. And then I went for my walk, and witnessed young love, and clapped, and then it rained and my shoes got wet, and then I did some great gigs, but before that I had to flyer in the rain and someone was a dick to me. And I remember it all so clearly, I must have been up and down three or four times, and that's worrying because I know there's always a danger that with too much colour in a palette it can all start turning to grey.

I guess I just need to slow down a little with this life shit. Don't want to blow a fuse now. I'm wearing a really bright shirt today, for no other reason than the guys in my dorm were drinking Jim Beam at 10am, and I wanted to match their enthusiasm. I wish these blogs would turn out better, but they're really not right now, they're just coming out like quaint little travelogues, but I guess that's just one more thing that I'm going to have to be okay with.

Peace, Taco.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Forty-Eight Hours Later

When something happens – it could be anything – it's hard to say whether that thing that's happened is definitively good or bad. Even when you might feel feelings about it, and think a certain way, you can't tell whether your feelings are the right ones, or whether they're discoloured by some attachment you have to what's going on. Maybe there aren't even any right feelings, they just are. There. They just exist and you feel them and then they leave and who cares anyway because what the fuck even are feelings except thoughts made of fairy-floss for sissies?

And it's hard.

I promise this will make sense later, I'm not just telling you because it's funny, although that is one reason why I want to tell you that... yesterday, twice, I sat on a toilet and looked about in a panic, suddenly realizing that my cubicle had no toilet paper. Twice... some people don't even sit on a toilet twice in one day at all, but I guess I don't get to be one of those people. This is one thing I have feelings about.

The second time I was in a trendy bar in Liverpool and it was around 8pm, I had met up with Faye, a girl I met at a comedy show in Melbourne earlier this year, and another friend of hers to drink and be merry. I escaped my dilemma in in the toilet when I found a few scraps of paper on the windowsill. Afterwards we all left for her friend's twin sister's house, I played pool against some Liverpudlian (oooooh that's weird and fun!) guys and we got proper drunk. I woke up in the morning on a deflated inflatable mattress in a room that smelled intensely of mango-scented candles.

The first time I'd found myself trapped in a toilet was just after eating breakfast at some diner, it was £6.50 and fine – everything sort of tasted the same. I tore out a page from my notebook this time – reminiscing about Bolivia where I learned that trick – and then pulled up my pants from the floor to hear the unexpected PLOP of my phone dropping into the bowl. My knuckles may have brushed poop – it all happened so fast I can't remember exactly – but when I got it out it was broken, so an hour later I bought a new one.

Before that, in the morning, I went for a walk from my hostel, which I had booked for the wrong weekend but luckily, upon arriving the night before managed to secure a bed at anyway after five minutes of gripping terror at the prospect of having spent £21.50 to take a cab from one place I wasn't allowed to sleep at to another. The stroll took me through thirty minutes of bleak semi-industrial blocks, fenced off areas, and a highway without crossing lights, in the rain, which definitely became heavier the further I walked from shelter.

The night before I had been on a flight from Geneva to Liverpool which left at 9:45pm, I ordered a chicken soup because I thought it would be nice, and “some water” because I thought it would be free. Neither turned out to be true, and after paying £7 for the two and taking a sip of my water I contemplated the depths of my own righteous fury, which distracted me for the rest of the flight and well into Liverpool's John Lennon Airport, where I finally realized that I had left my three-pound bottle of water on the plane.

So yeah, these are all stupid things and mostly my fault, and I keep noticing myself in these situations and genuinely laughing at my dumbfulness... and then I get confused, why am I laughing? Phones cost money. Bums need to be wiped. Sleeping on the street on you first night in a new country is not a thrilling adventure, and £7 is a lot of fucking money... I am reacting strangely to this world.

Like right now I'm sitting in a dorm room at a hostel with five other guys, none of whom are talking to eachother, and one of whom keeps clearing his sinuses in that really gross INWARD-SNIFF way that I admittedly have been guilty of before, in my feebler moments. I am fuming with rage right here, but I can feel how unreasonable my negative reaction to this all is – I keep looking around wide-eyed like someone is going to turn to me and go, “I KNOW RIGHT! This dorm sucks haha! Let's go get cocktails!” But they don't, they just keep watching movies and scratching their various itches and that one guy's sinuses just keep needing to be sniffed clear while he sits on his bed eating CHIPS!!?

Really though I think I'm just feeling a little isolated, delicate, and precariously alone.

At the airport, in Geneva, just before walking through the security screening gate, where I would clumsily pull my laptop out of my bag and unwrap the towel that I keep around it for padding. Before I lost my first bottle of water and my almost-new can of deodorant to the border patrol. Before I hurriedly stuffed books in my pockets to make sure my hand-luggage would be light enough to travel after hearing that oversized bags would be turned away, and before I knew how stupid the next 48 hours would be. Before all of that, I shared a hug, and a kiss Рthe last one Рwith M̩lanie Cartal, the girl I fell in love with three years ago, and have second-guessed ever since. We shone under fluorescent lights. That night we took one last breath, and then closed the book, and ended our story together.

It's... intense. You know? Because for three years I've held a tiny hope for me and her, and that doomed flame has kept me going at times, but that night we extinguished it, because if we're both honest with ourselves, it was never going to burn again on its own anyway. There is sadness there, but also joy because now for the first time in almost three years, in that part of me, I think I just may be right with myself.

I don't know why this guy with his fucking chips is making me brainstorm efficient strategies for night-time murder-suicides, or why I'm laughing while my life, which I have packed into two bags that both pre-date my high school graduation, is falling apart around me, those feelings confuse me. But thinking about the end of that thing that ended on Friday, strange and indefinable as it was, that's not confusing, it's just hard. It means that I'm feeling slightly shaky right now, because my heart is a little bit broken from doing the right thing for once.

Oh my god he just fucking sniffed again I'm actually going to burn this fucking place to the ground.

Peace, Taco.