chapter in your life

turkuazimtrak: istanbul, Türkiye

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:58:51 -0400

istanbul, Türkiye

This used to be a blog about travelling, but things have changed and not changed. Michael Ondaatje...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:31:00 -0400

This used to be a blog about travelling, but things have changed and not changed. Michael Ondaatje once wrote: “Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.” The same will apply here.

I have a habit of visiting the capital city during Easter, when the air is cool and the people are kind and the wide streets stretch long and empty. It was an excuse for eating and talking with old friends, but mostly I’m in it for the bus ride, for the scrub and the sky, for silence and solitude and a chance to pretend we know where we are and where we’re going.

On the ride home I managed half an essay in notes while passengers fussed or slept. Lazily scratched out words, circled passages and rearranged them by chronology, idea, distance. Then I listened to old records, slowly read ‘My Hard Heart’ by Helen Garner, and felt something splinter and crack. Kanye shuffled on my playlist like an old friend, and subconsciously I mouthed along with him: I asked her where she wanna be when she 25 / She turned around and looked at me and she said “alive”

I thought about the last time I made this trip, tried to square my emotional progression with the reality of present life. College friends are en route to the comfortable lives they sketched for themselves at the end of adolescence. Two separate school friends got engaged today and others are on the cusp - our social exchanges are now perfunctory, polite, balancing obligation with the subtle need for human contact.

And yet others are stuck, unfulfilled, feel the creeping fear that they’ve chosen a path they can’t step away from. It’s worse when your parents tumble from the authoritative pedestal they’re welded to and now seek your help and advice. Everyone is getting on with life and bettering themselves - on paper I’m far from it - and yet every other day someone still reaches out and says I’m holding on, I’m fine, though the subtext is tell me how to make it better

What can I say? Stop listening to wealthy rappers? Right now the only thing that affords me genuine joy is the time spent in my garden, thinking and watching the greenery unfurl. And people are beautiful again, I’d like to see how we’d align - but I’m confused by invisible ties, by the need to flatten the richness of lived experience into something quantifiable and mundane. I’m annoyed that I’m actively contributing to this, that hierarchies of expectation and power are unresolved but I don’t take steps to address them, that I fell into damaging experiences and took so long to climb out again.

I’m not the only one floored by the enormity of things and learning to lift the weight. Frankly it’s amazing that I rely on the old faiths of literature, love, the powers of tea and wine and silence. I still believe in an unshakeable trust, an outward curiosity, the necessity of movement. But there is a bridge I’ve crossed and boundaries locked in place. Now I’ve papered my interior with memories, hindsight is tapping an amen break along my spine, and - somehow - I have a fragile grasp on the things that help maintain my centre. You’ll have to read my essay to find out how it goes from here.

christchurch

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 03:46:12 -0400

christchurch

cassgrant: PS - here are some photos in lieu of words PS2 - heading to nz for a whirlwind tour...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:19:00 -0500

cassgrant:

PS - here are some photos in lieu of words

PS2 - heading to nz for a whirlwind tour with my mama! 2013: the year of family bonding

PS3 - aka my brother’s favourite gaming console

Now what

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 05:15:52 -0500

Today marks six months of travelling! I fly home this weekend. More thoughts to come re: this moment, be sure of it.

Thailand

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:47:00 -0400

We are creeping towards the end of October and for many this means sexual corsage, a social unlacing, but in the animal warmth of South-East Asia I can feel my thoughts fracture along fault lines of one more month one mor emonth noe mere month no more -

Lately I have taken to tracking the passage of time from the shadows cast by bar lamps, hawker carts, raft-house lanterns, the hiss of tungsten street lights. Our smartphones capture terrible sunsets and the brilliant futures embedded in glowing railway destination signs (#nofilter) but at the end of the day a cheap trick is still a trick. There are things you cannot document with any accuracy. Meanwhile the smells of poverty mingle with expectation and the weight of history, and seventy million souls hold themselves together through trade and touristic ambition.

Khao soi, noodle soups, pad kra pao, morning glory. Hunger is a companion whose physical presence - burnt tongue, sharpened scents, the restless search for the next food stand - reveals the absence of its spiritual counterpart. I may have spent five months stumbling through dozens of countries around the world, but it’s only in the last few weeks that things have clicked into place. One difficult thing I have learned is how to excavate your life’s raw material. The other thing I have acquired is a small wealth of patience.

I think there’s a full moon this week. Finally finished a book of short stories, gave it to a friend who’ll read it in a different light. Conrad in my favourite novel: “I have taught you that the sky in all its zones is mortal… Let me now re-emphasise the extreme looseness of the structure of all objects.” Geckos clinging to old plaster. The smell of aniseed and petrol on the breeze. Migrating teeth undoing years of expensive alignment. Struck dumb by new language, we’ll grow flowers on abandoned rooftops and train them to follow the sun. Monsoon rains - tidal flow - the place where old selves go to die. Morning light leaking through grimy windows. I woke up and remembered it was Tuesday.

Hung out with some teenagers and played with an SLR for the...

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 17:22:00 -0400

Hung out with some teenagers and played with an SLR for the first time in 6 months. Pretty keen on my street food, street art, happy accidents.

"Reading your old marginalia is like talking to an old boyfriend––you see how your way of thinking..."

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:25:25 -0400

“Reading your old marginalia is like talking to an old boyfriend––you see how your way of thinking has changed since you last were acquainted. The narratives of real life are often more interesting than the narratives of fiction, although it is hard for me not to believe that all narratives are fundamentally fictive.”

- RIGHT NOW, forever.

THE GREAT UNRAVELLING

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:06:25 -0400

Hello! Four months into my trip I’m feeling dusty and precarious. Caught traveller’s cough which lengthened into bronchitis, and the antibiotics also erased a lingering bug I must have contracted in Asia. Now I have much more energy and (for now) the time to sift through the constellation of events that make up my personal horoscope.

Things have been interesting and good and sad and good. Since my birthdate was spent unslept, in transit, I dedicated the entirety of September for self-absorbed celebration. Here are some unfinished notes from the dream-country triad of Spain/Morocco/Turkey:

getting pulped at the Tomatina Festival and smelling like gazpacho for days
dancing all night in Barcelona and swimming in the sea under the full moon, then waking up with torn clothes and a bed full of sand
when homeless guy 1 tried to rap about Christian faith in English and Spanish
when homeless guy 2 rammed his music-playing phone against my ear and we jazz-handed to acid house on the promenade
the Magic Fountain, and watching coloured water twist and curve in geometric precision: eighth-grade mathematics finally explained
learning how to lindy-hop, and understanding the importance of trust and letting someone else take the lead
hiking in the Pyrenees
pintxos pub crawls in tiny beach towns
riding camels into the heart of the desert and letting Marrakech swallow you whole
smoking shisha and watching shooting stars on rooftops cradled by mountains on all sides
making friends with cats in every single city
the Hagia Sophia perfectly demonstrating Istanbul’s mosaic history — ancient layers of religion and colour delivering a moment both immense and profound

I’ve travelled with strangers and old friend and people who remind me of home. I’ve been asked ‘Are you homesick?’ and the answer has always been ‘No, no, not yet.’ Each city I visit has its history and inhabitants and customs so distinct from my own, and each carries personal life lessons. There are turning points and the gentle realignment of ideas, and the strengthening of personal boundaries. The days unwind as we follow summer across time zones, sunshine creeping east in search of its — our — final resting place.

Long-haul travellers say they can’t remember why they left in the first place, but you see its traces in their nervous twitches and pained recollections of home. We are running from and heading towards the same thing, but for now the only thing worth doing is the constant immersion of colour and noise and movement and texture. One day it will all make sense.

Even now, when I gaze at the same blue sky pinning together a dozen different countries, everything starts to look like home: the catholic architecture of Old Europe reminds me of Flinders Street Station, the red dust and heat of Morocco echoes an outback I’ve never explored. From a distance the long range of the Pyrenees appear painted onto the grey-fogged horizon, but up close they mimic the rocky slopes lining the freeway to the Blue Mountains in Sydney.

And roadtrips with Australians can be disorientating: when San Sebastian was a coloured dot on a shaky map, it took instinct and a watered-down music playlist to lead us in the right direction. There is a dense quality when travelling with compatriots, a thickening of cultural values that emerge in old-fashioned slang and an anxious readjustment of mindset. It results in an unmooring of our immediate car space from the surrounding landscape. A taste of home from a distance.

Right now I am juggling plane flights and future plans and friends in every country urging me to join them for another adventure. It’s all exciting and confusing, and every decision is dismantled by the next development in whatever story I am mapping out for myself. I have no idea what will unfold in the next few months. I only hope I remember to remind myself: you are here and there is nothing but this moment. That’s all there is to it.

ISTANBUL HAS A LOT OF CATS

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:24:00 -0400

ISTANBUL HAS A LOT OF CATS

where in the world is camel sandiego?

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:17:00 -0400

where in the world is camel sandiego?

Where are your friends tonight?

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:05:21 -0400

Where are your friends tonight?

amsterdam pride weekend

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 05:42:21 -0400

amsterdam pride weekend

coupland:

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:11:41 -0400

…She breaks the silence by saying that it’s not healthy to live life as a succession of isolated little cool moments. “Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them.”

I agree. Dag agrees. We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert - to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process.

paris

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 09:19:00 -0400

paris

MISS U FARM LIFE

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:06:48 -0400

MISS U FARM LIFE

if we say so we can make it real

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:32:55 -0400

After three blissful weeks on an English farm, I’m heading off for the Western Europe leg of my trip! Finally locked in the next month and it’s looking pretty sweet:

July 18: Bristol
July 20: Birmingham
July 23: Paris
July 28: Lyon
August 1: Amsterdam
August 6: Berlin
August 10: Prague
August 13: Vienna
August 16: Frankfurt
August 20: Edinburgh
August 22: Glenelg highlands
August 25: Glasgow
August 28: start of my South Euro leg…

Ready for cramped coach rides, dry granola mouth, forward Frenchmen, getting lost on the u-bahn, abandoned power stations, spilling loose change in the red light district, sleep-deprived tantrums in airports, etc etc etc

It’s my last night on the farm, living with friends I’ve missed since we ended the west coast dream. The knowledge of their absence was my constant companion these last two years; reunited, and living with them again, it’s easy to forget all about the outside world. But it’s waiting for you.

Tomorrow it starts up again: the thud of feet on sidewalks, grinding tractor engines preparing for harvest, cabin pressure a dry pain against the back of your eyes. Travel means ongoing discomfort. But underneath the stress and grime, and the blurring colour of a million cities passing you by, still there lingers the faint pulse of my piecemeal heart, reminding me why I started this journey, reminding me how to head home.

Norwich.

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:14:00 -0400

Norwich.

thank you, divey jkt markets

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:57:00 -0400

thank you, divey jkt markets

this last week

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:45:00 -0400

rode passenger on three (3) scooters
trundled through pitch-black jungle at 3am to reach a mountaintop and watch the sunrise
went horseback (ponyback?) riding through a desert seabed
climbed a hundred crumbling steps through a dust storm to reach an active volcano crater
waterfalls!
picked apples at a farmers’ collective fruit plantation
passed a mud lake that flooded out eighteen villages due to the incompetence of foreign construction companies
accidentally had an argument re: feminist expectation and the negotiation of economic realities while visiting a tobacco factory
convinced a zookeeper to let me play with and bottle-feed a baby orangutan abandoned by its mother
finally met Dhany, light of my life, third culture sister, fellow dashboard-banger
stayed in a refurbished kampung villa that fed into my complex cultural guilt, but damn was it beautiful
contributed to a lipdub
bought some art
ate my way through the rich & spicy terrain of regional cuisine
see also: horse satays, cartilage fruit salad (!!!)
saw incredible monuments that, for the local tourists, attracted nowhere near enough interest as the American dudes in our entourage - at last count we had 24 requests for photos wit dem whities
visited the blasted remains of a village destroyed in a volcanic eruption two years ago. the refugees still live in temporary camps and their only source of income comes from locals fascinated by disaster tourism (ie us)
visited the yogyakarta palace and identified the ninth sultan as the Ultimate Hipster
met some media/advertising types in the middle of some sort of training session, shared beer and a few words, felt oddly homesick for the frenzied pace the industry inspires in people, then glanced at the rice fields and lush tropics surrounding me and thought ‘I’d give up everything for this.’

Jakarta is tough and wet and grubby and everything I remembered from my last visit. I’m only two weeks into my four-month trip and everything is telling me I made the right choice for the point I’m at in my life. Still figuring out what, exactly, that means. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to sleep before my 7am wake-up call for a full-body massage scrub. It’s a hard life.