I am wanting to change this blog into less stream of consciousness and more in the essence of blogs that I enjoy reading. Less complex and sometimes try-hard sentencing structure and more like an update to a friend. I think that is way more enjoyable. I think this decision matches my growth state at the moment where I am coming to the adjustment stage of the adjusting process.
I spent the past 4 days in the outback, seeing Uluru and various red national parks and feeling the winds and the stars which is always an amazing experience. I am now back home on a grey Saturday watching girls after eating so much bread and nuts and cheese as if I am trying to compensate for my body only taking in camel burgers for the past 4 days.
I have learnt many new things and have felt severely stifled by some people. I feel connections intensely and I have come to terms with my complete lack of interest in small talk. I have learnt about stories of the well-adjusted; alcoholism and childlessness.
If I could fit this prose into a fitted and corsetted frame then I could be an astounding writer, I just know it. And some things about growth which I hope I can mangle into something more romantic. Unfortunately, this is a stream of consciousness again. I am so trapped in this
Scorn, wrath, guilt and numerous negronis mark my Friday night in an “izakaya”, an unfortunate appropriation for a hotel bar who’s only resemblance to Japan was that a few of the cocktails contained Yuzu. Quite the cultural experience, not dissimilar to a Disney cruise.
The bar was moderate and reminded me of an airport. Dusky lights and low ceilings and circular stools and long wooden tables. Nothing special but servicable.
I have recently made a friend. A girl who instantly passed my litmus test of a horrid mixture of online jokes, liberal views and garnished with a few jagged personal opinions that sweetly differ from my own. This is my delicious recipe for friendship which enlightened me. I have many people around me in my new life but none that can offer me emotional depth to the level that I breathe, writhe and shudder within.
We have spent time within work hours and on local adventures. My current state of some crises of identity has led me to become an exhaustive, self-centred and emotional shadow that latches onto anyone who may be able to read my mind, offer me context and hopefully, define my new self. Without mirrors in the form of my dear friends and family, my dimensions do not exist. I test the boundaries with my new friend, being grossly provocative with my world views to evoke a curated argument on the battleground of a culture war which could feed me and paint a picture of me. This portrait could then be hung and exhibited in a grand reveal before my eyes so that I know how I am existing at the moment. This has been the basis of our friendship, selfishly defined by myself.
After a few drinks, she makes a statement about being and how she is agreeable and goes along with things no matter how uncomfortable. This obviously rips open my constructed third space that I have opened with the sole reason to build my identity in my new world and new life. I feel betrayal simply for the reason that I needed this, but to know it wasn’t the truth was distressing. But I am also aware that this is my fault for building some false sense of security by hauling emotional analyses onto someone that doesn’t know me that well. I could dive through a million meta layers here, many of them I already have done but I will save you this dull wormhole or self-reflections.
She also mentions sometimes my provocation of opinions and harsh critique makes her feel uncomfortable. I am relieved that it is a psyche-induced non-comfortability more than anything else and that it is less to do with the content of what I am saying and more of the position it puts people in. This is somewhat relieving, and I do not bother to offer condolences for a weak-will, it can’t be remedied by my actions. Cruelly, I don’t respect that kind of acquiescence — though I know the cruelty says as much about me as it does about her.
So here I am: still talking about myself at length, still trying to define a self I don’t fully recognise. My greatest fear is that I’m giving bad reads of myself on purpose, just to be reassured that I am not the worst version of what I project.
I leave the bar weird and squeezed, yet on the brink of something. Perhaps this is what a breakthrough looks like: not a grand revelation, but the faint outline of a self slowly coming into view under the low light of the city.
As sunset folds into a glinting 80s metropolitan skyline, I couldn’t help but wonder- what happens if you gave country people a city.
I have been in Brisbane for 8 weeks now and have conjured many a philosophy and ethos about my new home. Something that stands consistent is the transactional heartbeat of Brisbane.
Brisbane operates as a city. Not vacant nor thriving but it does what it should do.
Much different to european cities that are embroiled in history, politics, money and technology, Brisbane feels like a Sims (TM) expansion pack of a “city”. The reason for this is the people.
Brisbaners are country folk, tanned and languid leisurely ancestors forged Brisbane into a comfortable country town.
It feels like it was never meant to become this big. It feels like when you give a child an expensive, glass-tempered gift and they are more interested and satisfied with the box.
To be a successful city, the residents must want it. They must plead to die there, burying their bones in a churchyard across the road from where they used to buy milk. An ultimatum of life bound by an extortionate rental agreement. A consensual marriage to the inanimate.
Brisbaners are much happier with the box: owning land, curating country rallies and boot-scooting honkytonks. There is not unhappiness here, which is interesting, but an air of “ok”.
I imagine this is why the turmoil and demolition of the city’s history was so easily approved. There is no saving the city that does not reflect its people. How can a city become sublime and alive when its people do not desire its fruits?
Like any blog-writer, I was unsure where to take this. I’m cautiously aware (tautology) that experiences and “I did this…” is not interesting to read and barely interesting to hear. Equally aware that the inner working of a person’s mind is proportionally only as interesting as the closeness to said individual. Equally aware that journalistic stylish writing doesn’t bare enough grit to pierce the threshold of becoming ‘moving’. Equally aware that I have used “Equally aware” 3 times.
But- maybe this could be interesting and potentially be humorous. And I would love it to be moving. These are my comments on the “who r u” of Londoners vs Brisbaners
When I meet new people, their outlook is important. Beyond the monkey grips of politics (obviously important), I have to know you can dig a bit deeper. Not through waters of trauma but more how one can digest the present. I find artists to be the most crystallised examples of this.
London creatives are often stoic, aloof and cutting. Brisbane artists are airy, friendly and ambitious. I wonder if it is the deeper epidermis of the Australian sunshine-smile disposition which dilutes the frosty pretention into a lukewarm fizzle. I crave both, yet the first gives desirable challenge.
I am unsure if I miss home. Is it like being a doctor, where if I really wanted to be a doctor then I would know for sure? I am trying to ease myself out of such a black and white logic and see more of the chromatic grey spectre in everything. I think that must be where intricacy lays low, smiling wryly (so overused in literature) in a “oh you finally got it” way.
I wonder if my life is yet memoir worthy. My vocabulary is tight and wide enough to produce a rhythm in writing, but I think I miss a story that can move. My goal is to be able to etch stories with words, descriptive enough to scratch rich acrylic into memory but with enough blowing breath for a reader to absorb and ideally become changed. I feel like I lack the first one and I admire those who can do both.
I understand that every word must have meaning, and I would love to let them. Or maybe this is garbage (or e-garbage because it is online).
My goal here is to speak less on my internal workings and more on what I see and how they make me feel. I have a long journey until I can mutate my own conscious thoughts into verbiage neither trite nor irrelevant and instead contorting into a self-indulgent Henry the 8th-style, monstrously delicious banquet of things that make me sound like I think I am better than other people.
So we will just stick to what I have seen and what is moving about it. But potentially, a tidal movement into the latter may be natural and hopefully painless.
Australia is a curious place. I feel that the use of “curious” evokes 19th century literature describing a child that is mentally unwell e.g. “He was a curious child, rambunctious and cantankerous, he heeded no loyalty or care to the ruling of mother and father” but curious feels like an appropriate word for Australia. Like any typical mid-20s laurel canyon wannabe, I find myself trying to capture the “vibe” (unfortunately the best word I can use for this). Vibe encompasses national heritage, geopolitics, social attitudes and idiosyncrasies and a whole lot more, like a mosaic that moves and breathes.
I am itching to use the words denizen and cicerone as I have recently learnt their meaning but that again plunges me into pretention territory, something I skirt around and occasionally divulge. Like a plate of forbidden honey, just more annoying.
Heritage is important to Australians. I often find them puzzled by the lack of something that should be there, like a phantom limb. Recently, I went to the Griffith review in the suburb of West End, a trendy and bruised puddle with shadows of 1970s Brooklyn. I have never attended a literature review and I had no idea that this world of sparkling ideas, both complimentingand refuting, could exist.
*Naivety is a trend here, but what is youth without it?- they are two holding hands!* (Eat your heart out Virginia Woolf).
Here, there were three speakers discussing their essays on brain-rot language and its’ cultural prowess, women in Australian sport and re-identification of Australian heritage. In summary, there is a movement for Australians to want to identify their roots, but they are aware of colonial guilt (a recurring theme) but also debate the weight of said guilt if ancestry is Irish. There were plenty of other things said but this was the important point I took away and I was also two glasses of red wine down.
This is one of many examples of Australians disclosing their heritage with me on first meeting me. I am aware that this is because I am European and a human response to a stranger is finding common ground, but I have never seen this before. There is an obsession with their trips to Europe and the history that sleeps under walls, roads and rocks. Random mentions of Ipswich and North Wales, far astray to normal tourist chatter of red bus tours in London or Christmas time in Edinburgh. It is almost as if the ancestral European ghost lives within an Australian’s bones. Vampiric but with high-grade coffee instead of a virgin’s blood.
It seems that every mention of life goes back to First Nations colonialisation and every sentence is punctuated with apology. I find it quite shocking. Acknowledgement seems to mean a lot to them, but why? What is the function of it? I think that it benefits neither White Australians nor Aboriginal people.
And I am not making the point that social politics is superficial when there are Aboriginals living in tents with no access to welfare or education. I am looking a bit deeper than that, it is almost like Australians walk on scorched earth. It is akin to an Orwellian novel where the jungle shows it’s teethand lumbering roots to those that are unwelcome. It is like all Australians are waiting in an airport lounge, they feel ashamed of history and like any home is temporary.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going.
We Are Going (1964) Oodgeroo Noonuccal
On the flip side, after speaking to some astute colleagues about this, they summarised Brisbane as ‘hopeful’, which is an interesting word to use. ‘Hopeful’ is usually reserved for a tsunami-torn island or a country blasted by civil unrest, a place that is recovering from disaster. In my definition, a place where people live comfortably is never ‘Hopeful’. Instead, it is ‘cosy’ or ‘bustling’ or ‘beautiful’. ‘Hopeful’ is an afterbirth of despair, a keloid scar.
This brings me to the idea that Australians are subconsciously and generationally traumatised. A wild statement with garish flair (weirdly Nigella Lawson-esque).
I can see this through the nature, the art and the literature. Something is afoot but not quite uneasy. It is bright and Australians are kind and deeply maternal (a different point I want to expand on). Any place that has a booming literature scene usually has secrets and revolution of the highest decree. A pirate flag symbolising ‘cultural innovation and understanding’, rather than treachery and murder.
But I am enjoying uncovering all of these truths, and I hope they belong to Australia and are not just fashioned from what I want to see in a new place. But I must be less emboldened with my words.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” (Proverbs 18:21, ESV)
Must Be That 