I don’t know what becomes of us crazies in the end.

I dreamed last night of an old demi-god who frolicked with a lover and died when he should have been with his true woman. He was born again, but into regret of his mistake. That rebirth was me. Then I was someplace else and I saw the ‘one’ for me. She was stood by a wall. I knew her but couldn’t place her name, and then I woke

to another Friday.

To force myself up out of bed, to work, then to drink, then to a Casino, to lose, to drink some more and then go home.

What becomes of us?

I sit and watch the fan blowing the hot air around.
Thinking about it.

Dark clouds loom and drop rain on the summer. I am here. Writing.
About a life I lived. Maybe more than once. I just don’t know.
I have seen so very much of the truths that are the same for all of us, yet I know so very little.

What exactly we do seems to matter very little. Who we are, or what we try to be; Winners, Losers, Richmen or poor, Hunters, Achievers, Seekers or bums sat watching the slow failure of the human race. What we are, matters very little.

What matters more is that whatever it is we do we strive to remain awake, aware, watching, observing ourselves, become conscious, become present in the moment. All these things seem to me to be more important than what we are actually doing. And yet in the end, they really are not that important at all.

Then I got to thinking; what becomes of us crazies if there is no end?

How To Survive In Paradise. Part 1.

‘They liked your song called ‘African Son Rise’ but they laughed when I played them ‘Been Down’’

‘What dya mean they laughed at it?’ I said.

I felt a momentary twinge. Felt weak, stupid, naive. Music did that to me. I righted myself quickly, but a mild tang remained. My mum was staying with a family in Africa, currently Rwanda, where she was helping victims of atrocities. I was living on a beach in Sydney. I guess just trying to help myself. There was a relative life-equation involved here; could a middle-class white boy from England have had it tough? It was exactly this kind of thing that gave me the urge to try to justify myself. This…This…guilt maybe. It is what had finally brought England to its knees. Lost its white identity. The guts gnawed at from the inside out. No, I hadn’t been gang raped, and I hadn’t had to take a machete to my sister. Hell, at least one of those was true.

What was a guy to do to get some respect, I wondered.

Though it was true I was in green pastures today, at least for now. It didn’t stop the fear though, nor the madness. Funny thing that. The stealth killers of Westerners. The mind had a way of torturing the soul when not occupied with matters of survival. 2000 years of civilsation proved it; if man was ever to really find a state of peace, all hell would break loose. He couldn’t handle it. He’d get bored and end up going insane or murdering his neighbour. Vice , pressure, hardships, poverty, suffering. These things we struggled daily to escape seemed, at the same time, to be the very things we needed in order to be qualified to live. If things got too good, too easy, there was some universal law that would address the balance by throwing in a curveball. Look at Aids, Cancer, obesity, peacetime murder and suicide rates, depression, drug addiction, even in some inverted way terrorism too. I read someplace that more people died in England in 2006 from suicide than from the Iraq war. How many miserable looking people lived in the West, how many people disatisfied with their life? You just had to look at the mounting massive public debt as people tried to satisfy the hole left by curing the daily struggle to survive. 100,000 units for a mortage? You were basically paying 100,000 units just for a feeling. Surely that defined insanity. And the closer you got to curing all ills, the meaner those stealth killers became. People just started to kill themselves. Maybe it had to be that way. All things must find balance. The universe demanded it. But, god damn it, ‘Been down’ was a good song.

‘Well, glad someone enjoyed it’ I relented, finding my sense of balance again. At least someone had listened to it, I figured.

There was a pause during which I realized how much I loved my mum. I could never live up to her amazing selflessness and ability to give. It just wasn’t in me the same.

‘When are you heading back, mum?’

‘I’ll be back around Xmas time, back home to L.A. I have Nairobi first then South Africa for a while to visit friends.’

‘Look after yourself out there, wont you’

I knew she would be ok. They still had respect for the Matriarch in Africa. As mean and cruel a continent as it was, I always felt she had a better chance surviving there than on the streets of L.A.

Living in a Paradise Postcode

Of all the people qualified to make it to paradise, I was actually quite high in the rankings. I had balls. I knew this. It wasn’t out of choice, just that through life I had gotten forced into corners from which I had learned to force my way out. I wasn’t actually very good at it, but once convinced with purpose I could find my way into most things. This had been my ace card during the years I lived in London. Having said that, one of my blind spots was knowing when I should be getting out. I tended to hang about too long in bad business. The problem was I didn’t imagine a better life existed anywhere, so dealing with shit day after day just seemed the norm. If I left this job it would be to another equally meaningless one. If I left this shitty town it will be to an equally shitty one. I knew the world was a lie and I knew wherever I went, whatever I did, I would still be the same person I always had been. So I saw nothing better anywhere. I didn’t really know what better meant. That was how my mind worked. But every now and then something stirred in me, something deep and when it did, in the blink of an eye I would be gone. I moved to London this way from Oxford and I moved to Sydney from London the same. I rarely looked back. Just dropped everything, everyone, and left town. Gone. Never to be heard from again.

Maybe one day I would become like some kind of shadowy legend figure. I liked the idea of it. The mystery. Let people imagine that in the end I finally got away. That would do. And so it was I now mosied the weekends away in what was one Paradise on Earth; Bondi Beach. Where I lived the dream. So they thought. Those I had left behind. I didn’t want to shake their illusion. It was like the film Cool Hand Luke only not quite so cool. People needed dreams, needed heroes and people they could look up to. We all did, even the ones that said they didn’t. Creatures of influence the lot of us. I had seen a lot of hate in mens eyes in my time for it, and a lot of deluded adoration from the ladies too. What the men didn’t know was that I was just as bitter and pained as them, if not more so, and what the women didn’t know, was that I was a useless self-centred shit underneath any stardust veneer, just like all the others. Though a couple had found that out the hard way. I didn’t like preying on peoples foolishness though, it wasn’t my style which was a pity really because I could have done pretty well for myself if I had the nature of a confidence trickster, but I didn’t. I had the opposite; A quite annoying desire to be habitually honest. Though if you scratched deep enough, that too was a lie.

So I finally made it out of the dirty, grey city of London where I had discovered dreams don’t last and the roads weren’t paved with gold but were rather paved in pure, cheap white snow-like disco dust. It wasn’t a bad time. 18 years of it. I had some good times and some tough ones but in the end I had just run out of the energy needed to make the most of a city like London. Truth was, she had been good to me. I didn’t think so in the last couple of years but looking back I know she was my town. My prime was lived on her streets. We had a love affair I wont ever forget. And then, just like I had always predicted, one day I got in one of those planes that I used to watch taking off from Heathrow while sat up on the Hill in Harrow often time feeling a bit whistful, and off I went and never looked back. That was it. 18 years getting to know a whole life, a whole bunch of friends, a city like the back of my hand. 18 years. Done. Walked off. Left it behind. It was like dying. In fact I thought I was going to. I went off into some lonely distant outback and waited for it to come. But to my surprise it didn’t come. So two months later I headed back to Sydney, got a job. Got a place by the ocean right on the front in Bondi Beach, and sat about waiting for life to start over again.

I’d made it to paradise. It was true. I would step out my door each morning heading for a job that wasn’t so bad as some I’d had. I would stand on the top step rising up and down on my toes letting off some pops of morning wind. A little excited because I was looking right at the turquoise blue ocean and white sands of one of the most famous beaches in the world. I would smile like a Cheshire cat and say to myself,

‘Marky boy, you fucking genius! You made it, my son, you absolutely fucking made it!’

And off I would trott to earn the money to stay in paradise, which is pretty much what my money went on. To live in paradise you need two things; Money for expensive rent, and something to do. I was just about getting away with the former and did fine with the latter for the first year and a half. It took about that long before I started to really wonder where I was at. The trouble with staring at paradise every day was that pretty soon you took it for granted. It was hard not to, maybe even impossible. People would hate you for such a comment, but it was true. Paradise only remained Paradise if it could be able to remain a dream. One of the cruel ,twisted truths in the movie we call life, is that the deepest and truest love you will ever feel is the unrequited kind. The dream must remain out of reach to remain a dream. It is the nature of things. We can never really have what it is we seek. That is the law. And once you get that law, once you figure it out. And many do. You start to wonder why you are seeking it in the first place. And there is no real answer to that. You realize that Paradise is an illusion just like everything else. Some tougher days it’s enough to make a man walk off into that beautiful blue ocean until breathing stops, and some have. Again, not really my style. But even so it was god damn beautiful and a place to come home of an evening and imagine I was being healed in some way. I think maybe I even was.

So I had finally done something a little better for myself but , like I said, there were still issues. It was endlessly this. I wasn’t even sure it could be figured out. You fixed one thing only to discover the sense of crisis in life had shifted to another. Now it was my loneliness and my age I was struggling with. Paradise was beautiful but I didn’t feel quite the same on the inside. I tried to. In fact some days I felt positively sinful for not feeling better about the fact that I was living the dream. I did a good job of it but there were farts in the ointment or whatever it is they say. I got pretty healthy for a time and happy too but it would be a lie to say it was perfect. It sure looked perfect and had a perfectness about it, pretty good post code too. 2026. But once you have made your environment idyllic it becomes glaringly obvious that the fault does not lie anywhere around you, but within you. Yes, my friends, you , YOU are to blame for everything you have a problem with. The ego, the I, the curse of mankind. That was what I came to see of myself. But I could not allow myself to fall there. I just couldn’t.

So I sat back, pulled on my board shorts and slipped a pair of soft-soled thongs onto my feet and stepped out into the balmy hot sunny day of yet another Sunday afternoon and strolled the beach looking at tanned blondes, rolling waves and swaythes of the finest golden summer sand this side of Christendom. I had made it. Here I was. Here, I finally was. In a paradise postcode. Sure I was still alone, sometimes lost, sometimes pretty confused and uncertain. Most of all about when the dream was going to end, and when would I be priced out of paradise. But while it was here. While I was right in the middle of it. Staring right down the barrel of the blue. For fucks sake, this was it. This was it! I’d god damn make sure I was going to appreciate every minute of it. Sip the gold and blue nectar of every last drop. Somehow Satan had made it back into Heaven and so far it seemed, no one had noticed.

Qualified.

2009 This was the year that….

I went drug free (excepting a slight altercation with some Methadrone and a bottle of vodka. And some reprobates I befriended one night in the Beach Road Hotel who insisted I join them)

I discovered I am prone to social leprocy and Facebook turettes.

I got my first genuine proposal of marriage. And she wasn’t joking.

I got my first genuine stalker. And she wasn’t joking.

I had more lovers in one fortnight than I had in the last 4 years

I accidently dated a hooker, it lasted a month

I completed my first book

I learnt some more about rejection

I felt I might not survive the year, mentally or physically but spiritually ...somehow I always felt ok.

I discovered being challenged is what makes you get up and get through it.

I grew up a little bit.

...but not too much.

I released another solo album that immediately sailed majestically into plummeting obscurity.

I rediscovered the reasons to see life as an amazing experience to be lived

I bought a drum

All in all it was a pretty good year

Another night spent stumbling around, lost in a city I still don’t seem to know. It used to be easier or maybe it is just the same. I’m so used to dealing with it this way I just don’t know anymore. 2 drinks became 5, became 10, became …stumbling around. The one thing that stays the same, is the loneliness of it all. At which I laugh now, like an old friend you can always count on.

It struck me tonight, as I caught the eye of yet another woman I didn’t approach, that love, marriage, friendship, comfort, genuine kindness and things of the heart, the things women in truth, seem to love to give. You know, these things, they aren’t all that far away. As if I could just reach out to touch and it would be there. It was in her look; a question – was I brave enough to ask.

But tonight, like so many nights before. I just wasn’t able to step up. I couldn’t feel enough like a man, I guess. Not tonight. But I saw that look in her eye. Just like I’ve seen the depths in waters, and the distance in horizons, and the suns dropping low, and the darknesses falling gently down to let the stars come out to light the ways, and I know the loneliness, the fear, will not be forever.

I finished my first book.

I say book, only because I dont know what else to call it, it isnt going to be published and it doesnt have existence in the world. It's just a 120 pages in a word document on a computer.

It's the raw dealio about 5 years that had a big effect on me. shaped me. set me on the road to who I am today. whatever the hell that is.

I never finished anything before quite so perfectly. In fact I dont think I ever finished anything before at all.

There was something about it's completion felt incredibly natural. It just flowed to a stop.

I started it about 8 months ago, found all the bits I needed to include, wrote it up, went through it correcting the mistakes, changed a couple of bits that seemed wrong and then there it was

done

I looked at it in a state of shock and pride this last weekend.

It was actually finished. There was nothing more to do or add or change at all.
It was perfect.

I have been making music for 25 years and I never felt a song complete. never. not like that. It was weird to me, new.

I dont know what this means

I called the book - 'Fear, Discipline, Latin and Lash' and after some deliberation sent it to an ex-girlfriend who always said she wanted to understand why I was the way I was.

I said I hoped it helped

and promised not to include her real name in the next one.

I am feeling swept over by a girl
probably half my age, not much more
a good energy; beautiful, likeable, strong
and so far, completely uninterested in me!
I approached her, …… is her name, she is R.....,
which I have to admit I rarely get along with,
I just don’t seem to trust them at all,
but this is not the point today.
Today, I question my motives.
It’s all too desperate to be true.
Been around this game with myself before;
How I like to kid myself ‘she may be the one’.
How we like to play with that mirage of the self.
Project out of us, and she reflects back from the world
a perfection.
That no girl could hope to live up to.
But, how long have I waited for the one,
that could move me closest to the ultimate essence?
How long have I waited for the one
who I could trust to overwhelm me with beauty, inside and out?
Who I would know to be true, and trust not to one day steal away with
the gemstone of my soul.

Today, I don’t mind.
I revel in it, because,
I know I won’t get to bask in light such as hers for much longer.
It’s just an echo of a past I once might have owned.
Charged down, masculine and powerful, into the fray to win her heart.
Oh, to win her heart and not be
just an echo, of who I once was.
Having instead to accept who I am, and who I am not.
Who I can, and who I cannot ever be.
Letting go of that hunger and longing.
Letting go of what now, I see, was only ever going to be
a need, an imbalance, a vacuum, an emptiness I longed for to fill.

I watch now the projection, as it shines from her skin:
The shape of her hips, the curve of her breasts, the gentle arch of her back.
Her hair long and golden, her scent alluring, dreamy, sexual and sensual.
Her movements, everything I ever wanted her to be.
Yes, she bears it well, my goddess, my princess, my love.
The urge to be in love.
Ha!
I had forgotten.
It has been such a long, long time.

She took another life last night,
my goddess, the ocean.
I stood out on the sands watching the search lights cover the water
Maybe a shark, I thought.
The rip was too calm to have taken him out of the bay so fast.
Yea, maybe a shark.
Someone asked me what had happened.
I looked at the scene and looked back at them. I resisted saying it was a lost dog.
Then I saw his friend.
Sat on a surfboard, the police with dimmed torch lights on his face, asking him questions.
I moved a little closer. Saw his eyes. The confusion, the uncertainty, the disbelief.
Life.
No one expected it to be taken away from us.
And worse.
Taken away from our friends.
That hurt more.
The air thudded as the metal bird flew closer
Lights scanned across the beach and for a moment we lit up
Like a scene from some tragedy,
Always the voyeurs and the vampires in the wings.
The shadow self
Beating a parallel tale
To the story of our lives.
Our heart beats
That so soon to stop
Unexpectedly
And be dragged away
Under the water
By her servants, and soldiers,
Her angels and devils of the deep
Sharks and those fish with jet black eyes
Death, so hollow,
So fearful
So abhorrent, it is everything we are not.
She took another life last night,
My goddess, the ocean.
A sacrifice so that we all might live to worship her another day.
He was 29 years old. Made just a small paragraph in the news.
No one very much knew
That he was gone at all.
He left a bicycle, a surfboard and a friend
who would always remember
That moment on a beach somewhere,
in some unfamiliar country, in some unfamiliar time, in some unfamiliar life
When he woke up to a moment
And how much
that moment really hurt.

'Can I have your number?' I asked her.

She mumbled something about not being in the right place for that at this time. her eyes were on the ground. her feet fidgeting, I could almost see perspiration on her brow. she avoided my eyes. I stopped listening. looked over her shoulder, I could still see her lips move but wasnt paying attention as she went into some kind of unconscious drama. I stood still as I could, politely waiting for it to complete.

'....its not that I dont like you...'

New surfboards out in the shop across the road. I tried to make out the label but it was hard from that distance.

'...my last boyfriend.....'

I was running out of things to look at and my eyes came back to her but she was finishing up.

'um...oh....a I have to go talk to a friend of mine who just came in, bye.'

It was all quite amusing, amazing, disturbing even. I tried to remember the last time someone had gone to quite such lengths to say everything but what they were really thinking. Though I wasnt sure quite what that might have been. I had asked for her number, to go for a drink, so see if we got on, if we could be friends, and who knows, maybe later lovers, I genuinely hadnt thought much past the fact that she appealed to me on some level. I guess that was the extent of my thinking in asking. I now kind of wished I hadnt bothered.

For her. Had I just asked to molest her, or get married?

rejection.

I didnt mind it.

but the lengths people go to avoid making you feel it. yet all along I felt it anyway, dragged out like a slow death. Maybe a simple 'no' would have a been a lot easier on both of us. I was left simply intrigued as to what was wrong with the way that had just played out and why I had caused such a reaction. I had little idea what it was and I was never likely to know.

I had a friend who used to stare at girls until they would come over and demand he explain what he was staring at, at which point he would say -
'I was imagining what you would look like bent over with my prick up your ass'
I recall the first time I heard him say it, and was waiting for hell to break loose, mind you he was a big guy, but she just huffed and turned and walked off.
20 minutes later she left with him. I never quite understood that. Actually , maybe I did.

I looked back over at her, she was talking animatedly but I noticed she was putting little glances over at me. I guess to see if I was still looking. I was never any good at Game, I just blurted out what I thought, cut to the chase. It was honest if nothing else. I hoped so at least. I wasnt even sure I was interested in playing, wasnt interested in anything other than some company at some future time. I wasnt looking for a lay or a girlfriend. I didnt think so but you never really knew what the mind was up to on the lower levels.

I looked around the room. It was late, another night done and dusted. I would go home alone. I didnt mind, there was something easier about it. I left into the street, pleasingly sober, I liked that. Walked past a bar, people falling out of it ugly drunk. It wasnt pretty and I recalled something someone had said to me earlier that day

'If insects disappeared off the planet life would be gone in less than 50 years, but if Mankind disappeared off the planet, it would thrive'

I walked to the bus, stepped over a drunk, dodged a fight, eyed a bit of skirt headed for the clubs in town, got on the bus and wondered why nature let us stay in her heart as long as she had. Maybe we were good for something, but to be honest, I couldnt see what it was.

Its a funny old game.

Here I am watching the weekend begin amazed I am alive, It IS FUCKING AMAZING.

just another day, and yet...

breathing. what is breathing all about.

I sat there this morning reading through my diaries of school days, nearly finished now, nearly ready I am not sure what for. Of a time when I was supposed to take a scholarship to Harrow and ended up. well to be honest, getting truly fucked by some bad experiences and then seeing the machine, the truth, and of course dropping out.
I ended up in Harrow anyway, by the fates.
Used to sit on the hill, where Byron used to wile away the hours. I felt him there, felt the kin-ship there, the ghost. I would watch the sun set over West England, London. See the planes rising from Heathrow into the pink, red sky.
Knowing one day I would be on one of those and never return.

And yet today, watching the sun rise in Bondi, I recalled it so powerfully that the Hill pulled me back and for a moment I was there. It made me jump. That is the power. The earth, the magic of some places.

Did you know the first ever car crash in England happened on that hill, did you know the first ever train crash victim is buried in the little church on that hill, did you know that hill is the highest point between there and the mountains in Urals all the way across to the East. And there are other things too. strange things about that hill.

I know magic, I have lived it, I have walked it and I walk it now. deeper each day but with more clarity too. I thought it was madness I was bound for but now I realise it is something else.

As I step across the wet sand and feel the power of the female goddess that is out there in the oceans in Bondi. I know stuff. fucking weird stuff sometimes. But I know. I see. I am a seer. that's just how it is. just who I am. Byron would have been proud.

Yea, I see it now. I graduated from Harrow like I was supposed to, maybe the streets of Harrow not the school, but in some little way it happened that I gained knowledge there, on that hill and then, like I knew I would, I began to fly.

Feels like you’re clutching at straws sometimes. Just to get a piece of life, a piece of the action. I got obsessed with music again for a while. Under headphones. Back from work. Days and nights. Weekends disappearing. I’d break and walk out to the ocean, see the beauties of Bondi strolling the front, sit smoking and wondering how the hell to break into their world and be accepted. I wanted a piece of something. Maybe just some female company to break my focus, but it wasn’t coming. I was in no state to appeal to anything healthy. So I carried on. It was one of those times when you are left waiting. Waiting. Clinging on to insane behaviour because somehow it was keeping me sane. I waited. Insanely.

Then the burning fever of it all broke, something shifted I don’t know what, felt cosmic, bigger than I, this time I had been under. I read my stars on the way to work. They read good and I needed that. The album was nearly finished, I was nearly finished. Just a few more days. I had holiday coming. 5 days. No money so I wasn’t going anywhere. But just to get off the wheel for a while was a relief. It had been a long, tough year but something told me I had made it through. Obsession isn’t always a bad thing. It keeps you holding your breath that little bit longer than you thought you could. You just stop thinking. Stop being human. Become a machine. Doing it. Whatever IT is. Mindless, soulless. Just doing it. Some shit stupid thing. For me it was music, an album of acoustic stuff. I took the break, lay in bed. Hit the studio finished the album. Lay in bed some more. I swear I was nearly pewking that last day having to listen to those songs for the thousandth time. But I knew, that above the meaninglessness of it all. I had come through something. The music didn’t matter. I hated it but understood why, so didn’t sabotage it. Just called it ‘Of Flesh, Blood, and bone’ like that had some kind of meaning. It did to me. I stepped out from under it all with a CD of tunes. My soul. It wasn’t worth much but to me it wrote the end of a big fucking era. It was something. And that was enough right there. If I had continued, madness would have taken me for sure.

I started drinking again then. Partly to celebrate and partly to shake the feeling of dryness, emptiness that finishing things produced. I broke down some. Had to speak to my family and they intuited something wrong in me. I didn’t like that. I needed to hide but it wasn’t going to work. I was too raw. Soul was bleeding after such intense isolation. Emotions went ballistic, off the scale, this way then that. Argh! Shake it, some how, shake back to life, back to humanity, back to reason. Bring back feelings, like love, like compassion, like purpose and meaning. Stop being such a fucking robotic soulless machine. Booze then more booze, then some Dutch courage took me and in the blindness I started to function again. Little by little. I felt me, down there a million fathoms deep. Little old me. A kid like creature. Covered in mud and slobber. White like Gollum from the years in the mind cave. Up. Into the light. Breaking, breathing sucking it in. realising that I had to laugh at it else I might go crazy for real. Return to being a normal human being. Not pretending but the real thing. Someone people could communicate with about normal stuff, days and TV shows and laughter and light and fun and so on, and so on. But getting back.

The ocean helped, the sunshine and those beauties with long legs and hair blowing over soft faces, eyes alive and loving, wanting to love, to tease, to shine and be honoured.

I sat in the bar until someone came to talk to me. Invited me to join them. The music of some band played in that place, we drank together, beer and tequila liquor until I was so drunk I couldn’t remember who I was. It was easy then. I made pretend like I was part of all this. This world, this game. But it clicked. It started to come back. To ignite and remember in me. It was a phenomenon brought to life. That I should get away with this and yet that I should suffer this. Made no sense. Either way. But I was onto it.

Hell came and it blew out the cobwebs and the morning light glowed redder than anything I had seen before. Red desert dust, they said. I thought the world was on fire. Who gives a damn for Armageddon, we all have one coming like it or not. No preachers on these shores, no lies, no judges, no bullshit, just glorious words and lives and loves, big loves, grown of lust and connections and struggles in a world of amnesiacs and hurt beings who act like they have no inkling of the journey they have made just to be here. Scared to wake up. Scared of the sacredness of it all. Not knowing how to be that little bit more. Shaking in the fear of awareness when it threatens to leap upon them and open their eyes. Little fish swimming up a womb river, morphing into beings that sit and wait in this place, big eyes, just eyes, looking, and mouths that say – ‘we are lost though, aren’t we?’ Lost in reflections of self projection. Sure. Lost. No one is lost. We are here. Play the part and swim in your own dark strangeness, create wonder that no one will notice. That’s just how it is. Expect nothing. Be nothing. And you can steal the world and touch another and risk to say - I love you now, but you owe me nothing.

And then it was over.

My brief sojourn to the fathomless place.

And I was back to work and onto the wheel, and it didn’t feel so bad, it made me feel quite normal again. Sometimes the grind is a healing thing. And the people who had annoyed me before , I kind of felt like hugging. Silent thankyous were duly given to my challengers. The game had changed, turned. Life moved on, eras passed away. Times, the times, like waves. Yet I was still here.

So I got me up and went and played some gigs. That got me out the flat. Then a couple of visits to a massage parlour one lunch time after sitting in a park and wondering what to do, brought me an unexpected moment of loving connection. Love pops up in the strangest places. Sweet kisses, and young life shining eyes and strokes that made me feel wanted in the cool fragrant darkness of a willow world scene. I’d grown old while I wasn’t looking, the mirror scared me now, but she didn’t seem to notice or care, just touched my face and brought her lips to meet mine. Sweet cherry taste. So unexpected, and pure. I didn’t know what to do. I touched her leg, let my fingers move over the silky flesh of her thigh and noticed the start of age lines on my hand of all places. The contrast of her against my wiry skin and bone seemed somehow right, I didn’t know why. We had something to offer each other. Something unspoken yet known to us both. A secret, un-shareable in the world because the world is insane and so full of cruelty that has no acceptance of some soft truths, just the callous media frenzy of shark-like fanaticism that feeds on anything beautiful and sucks it dry and to death. Guilt. Guilt and cruelty will rule here forever until kingdom come. But it will come.

And in that quiet darkness I was fed with a divine feeling that told me to keep clutching for those straws and fighting the same old useless blind fight, because once in a while the magic seemed to burst right through, and when it does, and you are wide awake and crying, screaming out amidst the suffering blandness of it all, right there. Right in that briefest of moments, it all comes alive, like it was nothing to have to wait so long, and you know. That beautiful little moment of truth and honesty and magic. So precious, and fragile, and brief. Was what you were living for all this time. And you found it in the most gentle touch.

Take all your hopes and dreams to a casino. And throw them on the rocks.
That is what I do.
Stand watching a fish swimming round in endless circles.
Dropping chips like lucky charms on the low dozen. turns dirty. 21 times.
It should have come in by now.
I swear it has bounced out of the 4 and 12 like some magnetic propulsion is at work behind the scenes.
Couple of chinese men looking shifty.
I buy a beer and try to remind myself why I came.

Stand outside, smoking, looking out over the harbour.
Glass partition. High. To stop me throwing myself off.
Just in case.
'Chicago' starlights glitter.
And that fish just keeps swimming round and round.

Am I happy? I lost my shirt. I knew I would.
took me two and a half hours.
I've had worse days.
Put it all on 12,8 and 5.
Just in case.
Finally it came in.
on 7.
Motherfucker!
I retire to the Losers Lounge for buffet. Via one more beer that I recieve.
Last.

I see my reflection, worn out playboy's eyes.
I, the fish, keep swimming round and round.
Looking for food, shelter, love.
I am done here. Spent. Yes.
There is some satisfaction in that.
Being a loser? Of course it hurts some,
but then being a winner is such a hard position to maintain.
No one does. Not really.
Dont believe the hype.
We all go up, to come down eventually.

See faces I have seen here all night. A little drunk now.
Smile at 'Star City Hostess'
Her legs a little more cellulite than I might have expected. But pretty.
Our conversation wont last.

I think about sex. Had I been a winner. 12, 8, 5.
I would be buffing the ass of a fit young hooker, and ordering cocaine instead of writing this.
It has been known.
On those extra special nights when the fish stop swimming, and your number comes in.
They dont last long but they do happen.
And then.
Then. We live like kings and every song is our tune, and every spank of that peachy, paid for, piece of ass echoes through the chambers of penthouse suites and high roller's minds.

And there.
In that brief moment.
Hopes and dreams thrown at rocks become diamonds
and we can say for a moment back there,
we really lived it well.

F.E.A.R.

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And it is happening again
roller girl hip swing comes by smiling at me
and I join her on the waltzer as the music spins
away we fly on soft magical words, and love growing in the midst of hearts
full of illusion
full of dreams
and kids we will have
and white picket fences
and perfect heaven in perfect lives
we will be
I will bring you this
and it will never shatter like all our lives have shattered until now
Christ, I would, I do believe
again and again and again
and I love you, to leave you eventually
in pain in selfishness of slammed doors and punched walls, and shouting,
and broken souls
abandoned in a planet lonely
to be picked up by another broken brother
pretending, like me, to be some shining knight
and on it goes
and down I go
sabotage my own good soul
with murder and sex and violence and savagery
of wounded knees
to which I fall
to which I fall
again and again
for you
all for you
Romeo, a fake all along
and all because we were just wanting to believe
that something could be good
forever
there is no forever here
just truth as raw as its deal
every time
still I believe like a child
as the body grows old
and the spirit tries so hard to grow
so that ultimately we may rise to be
the gods and goddesses
we truly, deeply are
and I wont lose you
even though I lost you
and we can be rising in love's vapour
rising through the emptiness together, alone, together, alone, together
just to believe
just to believe
I forever will believe
that you and me
that we
can somehow make it
into a real world of the imagined, conjured, beautiful things
that we will make, designed to fly
high above and beyond
this grey world they pulled us down into
of pain, so much pain
how did they ever come to make me think
it was so wrong to be
what we so naturally be
when it has been so hard to open up freely
to this new direction
this new dimension
a tear drop of the gods
through which we could so easily slip away and play

winds blow across the tops of high mountains
where no man stands
and the sun beats down upon days in some kind of eternity
where we sit and wait for change to come
fear biting into the hearts of all
just children of time here
not really knowing anything of this place they find themselves
laws of the universe they can't ever hope to beat against
it goes on here
on and on
forever
even if they were not here, it would be the same
and the cry goes out
as the masses assemble in confusion
looking to anyone for help
hands stretched out like they used to see on tv
and never believe it would one day be them
and the fear, the fear bites in
crushing their bravery
and their hearts
and their homes
and their hunger grows greater
to be released, to escape it all
and they wonder
how did it come to be this way
when we had such dreams, such wishes, such hopes, such futures
such brightness and joy and fun in living
that once was
and now
now what
now how can we stage the revolution
to usurp the gods and bring down the laws
that make scarcity the way of it all
as it was so it shall ever be
until the veil breaks
and some how escape becomes a real thing
can it be
can it ever be like the dream
when fear bites so deep like this
when love cannot sustain
when food becomes famine
and light becomes dark
only intention is left to cry out for
the freedom paradise could bring


viva la revolution

he made it to the ocean, dropped his bags down on the sand, stayed a year and a day.
let the destruction and the bitterness ride out on the waves.
let the sharks swim and circle and threaten in their hunger,
and the waves smash down on his frame
his spirit crying to be released
from the muscles and blood and flesh
that carried him again
across time and land and yet another life
under the stars where the truth, they said, is written
and someone lit a lantern and let it float up into the skies
and someone else whispered 'love' and everyone leaned in to hear
but heard nothing
hungry like the sharks
for their own completion in the end
but never here,
never in this world
will it ever be complete
and that was the sadness and the fuel for the destruction
and the source of the bitterness
and he knew
it was why he came to the ocean
10,000 miles away from home that didnt even exist anymore

he stood out on the shore
bare feet on the sands
each grain battered into its smallest form
by millions of years
and here, now, to be here now
underneath his feet
as he pissed into the ocean
and it lit up phosphorescent
like the stars
he floated in space a while
a smile on his lips
knowing that he was right in the place he was meant to be
and though he had lost everything he had ever loved in his life
every love in his life
can you really grasp that feeling? I dont know.
everything gone
except for the light he followed through all those lives
endlessly

he looked out over those waves
into the depth
into the eye of the deep
stared right into it
with everything his soul knew
and it shone into the void with it's own light
and he knew it was all that was needed
and everything else
was just the rattling chatter
of skeletons who had let their love
become skinned to the bone
by the fear and the absence of soul

i'm just not one of the beautiful people anymore
not sure I really used to be come to think of it, but youth sparkles.
moist
there is a good word.

we are all bridges to the other side
we can feel the light of it shine through
into this world
if we become silent enough

no more guests running rampant round the mind
thoughts come and they go
feelings come and they go
experiences come and they go
but something inside is always there
ageless
timeless
silent
unnameable
conscious
unchanged since the day we were born into this place

I like that

meditation is a big pain in the ass
but it does have it's beneficial side

after a night of uncertain connections that seem to have become lost
in some flat barren emptiness where words feel dead
yet seem to fly around like machine gun bullets from uzi lips
I find myself in silence watching the bloodbath murder of the real

and I am left to walk home alone with questions
of why friends sometimes cant be friends
meditation saves me
from more pointless thoughts
that have no end
but bubble up endlessly, without real substance other than to distract and irritate
and tell me nothing at all about the situation that just was.

so into quiet I go
and into the silent sea I go
to swim the dark depths
of the other side
stretching out from within me on into the beyond
the big blue
quiet
and serene
and still
as it is there

where loneliness does not exist
because there are no thoughts to tell you
how your mind imagines it to be
because it isnt at all the scary thing
we have been led to believe

If I could whisper a word tonight
or maybe just a sound
and have it lead you back to where it began for you
I would
and from in that wholeness of being
from in recognition of how it used to be for us
like innocents to the fear and the crush
set you free again

times up and times down
times around and around and around

on a bed of nails she makes me wait
and I wait, with or without you

I am throwing myself into it all again
I dont know reasons why not
other than it hurts
but then what is a little hurt
makes you know you are alive right.

and you give yourself away

as you do, because it is all you know
you can fight it, fight yourself
but where does that leave you except
nowhere anywhere anyway

used to be easier, I am sure it did
but having said that this game hasnt yet gotten too hard
I just dont seem so interested to play is all
the numbers go by me
on the bus, on the train, in the bar, in the street
and I see the eyes and maybe catch a smile
and its just numbers
and I am just not that interested anymore
in the shallow connection

its got to be able to hurt
else what am I doing it for
it's got to be able to pull the love out of me
kicking and screaming, and passion and
playing with my delirium
delirium
madness
my sanctuary
my lover
the bed in the night and the dreams and the illusions
that feel so real
like we are high, on drugs
and some ways wish we were dying
just so it could stay like this forever
my sweetheart

it was just before dawn, one miserably morning in black 44
when the forward commander was told to sit tight
when he asked that his men be withdrawn
and the generals gave thanks as the other ranks held back the enemy tanks for a while
and the anzio brdigehead was held for the price
of a few hundred ordnary lives



and as ever I wonder in the spaces between acting
just what it's all about
and the question seems foolish in it's own way
feel nostalgic for a moment
think about friends I'll never see again
and all those good good times
to be missed
and savoured

and some kind of life
is always going on
to swim away in
if I desired
into the chaos
and the lovely confusion it brings
connections
all these people I know
and grow
with
towards the knowing
of what this moment really be
and quietly now in this little place
I sit in love
and enjoy the smile
as it beams out from somewhere deep within

I was just getting to the bottom of the escalators at Kings Cross station when I heard it. Like a gunshot. then the train, screeching to a stop. I knew what had happened straight away. I waited for the screams but none came. I stepped into the throng of people, slow moving, incredulous, uncertain. I could feel it. I looked, we always look, we have to know. I knew.
It had happened no more than 10 yards from me. no blood. no bits. but a guard looking down under the train. The emotional bomb wave bursting across people as they understood what had happened. like a nuclear device gone off, I felt it in my belly. growing. people silent. moving. not sure what they were feeling in themselves. trying to gauge it. the bottomlessness of it in the belly and the mind. the unknowable. death does this. suicide. does this. someones last moment on earth born witness to. shit. why did I have to have go and walk into this.

I was silent. observing. too familiar with death to feel the fear reaction. just the suppression. the shutdown. readiness to act. cold. calculating. looking instead at the people around me. such different reactions starting to take place. one man, drunk grabbing people, talking right into their faces

'did you hear it. sounded like a gun. maaan what did they do that for. the trains arent going to be running now'

his energy was ugly. I moved away from him. a girl being comforted by a train guard. she was staring. not speaking, no longer really inside herself. locked up. I could see the eyes. shock. she was gone. the guard trying to take her name and address.
she was just looking into the last place she saw a living being before they leapt.
then a big guy, another guard, starts trying to take control of the situation, move everyone away. he is completely freaked out. angry. scared. reacting by trying to take control. I move away from him too.
I dont like this.
dont like the feeling in me.
this is bad. this is real bad. this is not good.
the sensation that a soul is around here now. lost. confused. gone from this earth.
I look for the signs. why did i walk into this? just yards from me. people gone from the station. maybe just ten of us now lingering. everyone just stood confused. not knowing what to do. I look at the Bondi line, wondering if the train will come but knowing nothing will move now.
the driver comes out of his carriage for the first time. he says something. sounds like he is asking if he should move the train. I see nothing in his reaction. it is as if it never happened.

'you alright mate' shouts another guard up to him from where they are looking under the train trying to figure if the person is alive still.
the driver doesnt respond. just stands there for a moment and says it again.

'should I move the train?'

I dont know what to do here. I feel I should do something, feel like I walked into this for a reason. I have no idea why I am thinking this.
I look around. there is nothing to be done here. this is just the scene of a suicide.
I step back onto the escalator and ride it up to the top.
look at my hands. not shaking yet.
check myself. my emotions. I am cold. there is a cold feeling in my backbone.
I keep thinking about the soul. the spirit. the dead.
where do we go? what happens out there? where is that person? one minute here the next minute gone.

as I climb the escalator I think to myself, this is what they looked at, their last walk knowing that they were going to die down there on the tracks. I try to take it in. looking for something, I am not sure what.
I step out through the ticket gates, people coming in to the station. the guards stopping them. telling them the trains wont be going tonight.
people excited, see it in the eyes. we havent changed since Roman times.

'Are they dead mate?' a guy asks me , his eyes wide. I just walk past him. stupid hunger in him I dont want to honour with response right now.

I step up the last set of escalators that take me to the street. into Kings Cross. the living hell, and as I do I spot the posters on either side of the walls. it makes me angry in ways I cant explain to see them. about ICE and the deadly effects. people scratching sores on the skin, bodies in hospital wards. all with the eyes, clear and dilated, big and scared. Pictures designed to shock, to fuck with your head. I realise this person walked past all this. in the lowest state of their life, to see the eyes in the posters, adverts created by some misguided idiots, where is the fucking love? You dont need this when you are whacked out on drugs, you need the opposite to recover! they are postering hell with pictures of HELL as if that is going to make some ICE head feel like giving it up! all its going to do is make them want to kill themselves. fucking idiots. this is the world we live in. full of fucking idiots. I am angry. its my reaction, finally starting to surface. As I walk into the street to the throng of lights and drunks and druggies and the night time madness and beauty that is Kings Cross, that is the human world we live in today all over this planet. I want to scream at the top of my fucking lungs

'WHERE IS THE LOVE YOU STUPID BASTARDS!'

I know then I am not going to do well tonight. I really actually didnt need this at all right now. I see the ambulance arrive. makes me wonder how the hell they clean these things up. Trains wont be running for a long while that is for sure.
I wonder who it was. didnt even know if it was a male or a female, a boy or a girl, a crack head or a suit lost out on the stock market. Why did I walk into this tonight?

I catch a bus back to bondi. people talking about it on there.
I feel low. the drop. it is coming now.
not good. I need to talk to someone.

I buy some candles from the store. I want to light something to dispel the ghosts that are hanging round me now. Its late I am not sure who to ring. I open my email. message from my recently ex-beau. she is back in town and asking if I want to meet up tomorrow. I need something. I email her. mention my night. then give it five minutes and ring. she doesnt answer. I see a mail come in a little later.

'sorry too tired to ring. speak tomorrow'.

that figures.

I lay on my bed. after her reaction I dont any longer feel like talking to anyone. It isnt something you can really share. Just brings people down into the fear and leaves them there wanting to be somewhere else.

I look at the dancing shadows from my candle. its on my altar where I keep the things that connect me to the otherside. to my own journey, to my own time after this life. things we become aware of as the days go by and death kisses our skin once or twice. you learn. but tonight. that was in my face. I was right by it. I felt it. felt the explosion of the body in my ears, and the end of a life. I can feel it now as I write.
I lie there. looking into those shadows. feeling real fucking raw. life to death. death to life. the cycle. the awareness when it comes. the pain of that. the void. the void gives us nothing back when we stare into it. I stop staring. start to breathe again. each breathe in like the first I ever took, each breathe out, like the last I will ever take. its all in there. just between the breathes. our whole story.

I just breathe
and lie there
letting the feelings bubble up and release out my throat as small sobs.
there is nothing else I can do but let it out right now
each sound a prayer for the lost and the dying on this crazy planet
for the ghosts and the departed
and those who are afraid
and alone
and dont know who they are

tough days these are. jesus so fucking tough.
yet
I am here still
I am here
there must be worth in that.
though sometimes it makes so little sense
I know it is ok
if we just keep breathing
and wishing the darkness into light

I put on Telepopmusik - Just Breathe and let it repeat play until I fall asleep.


"If you're frightened of dying and then you hold on
You'll see devils tearing your life away
But, if you've made your peace
Then the devils are really angels
Freeing you from the Earth..."

Friday night in, the day knocked me out
work stripping energy from me, too much
this is not a good place to be, my eyes hurt, my heart tired
holding out against the feeling inside that this is so wrong
it's a time I recognise
time to change
time to free-fall into space
into the fear
into the void
all the voices of my fathers and teachers in my head
'dont be such a damn fool. you need stability, you need security'
but my heart is being crushed here
a death zone growing harder each day
starving the spirit
killing me softly

I cant stay in this
I just cant
I tried once before 7 years ago
and it did for me then
rewired my brain
in to the mistake
I cant do that to myself a second time
it has taken too much work to bring myself back
to try to learn from that time
when I should have moved, shifted, changed but didnt know how
it is that same feeling now
and I am afraid the same

I hear the quiet voice inside me tonight
I see the cliff face I have come to
another dead end.
I know it could be death down there
destitution
loneliness
pain
the end
down there on the rocks
but I have to believe
that so too it could be salvation
rising on the thermals that might catch me
blown by the gods
as I relinquish control
and they take me higher into the stratosphere
closer to the place I belong
to the paradise
I saw in dreams
so long ago

Its been a long journey
one I must have chosen even at the beginning
to be this way
forever facing darker depths
forever facing this moment alone
with the hounds of hell still upon my trail
and no one to share the solitary decision
the last goodbye
to leap or die
it is leap or die
If I stay in this
I will become like stone
and forever regret not being true
to that voice inside
that no one ever taught me how to trust in
but myself
how do you trust yourself?
and the energy I knew I had hidden there somewhere
if I could only let go
that made me run at the wall
and jump
in faith
knowing
that none of it ever really existed at all

The Other Side

I wont say things are looking up, but you know what, things....you know the rest.

beautiful...strange.....I REALLY do love that tune. by bedrock if you dont know it. download it. shut your eyes. feel the power. it is there. I remember where it began. I was in some club in London, Turnmills. it was 6am I was off my tits and so was everyone else. it was the early 90's. it was ecstacy. it was tribal. I found the vision. it dropped down on me. I looked down. on the floor was this vortex. going down. I wanted to step on it but I knew I would disappear somewhere. so I turned to my pal. Chris was his name.

'can you see that'
'a whirlpool'
'fuck! you can see it'
'yea what about it'
'what you had'
'pill and some acid'
'oooh got acid'
'yea, here you are'
'cool'

and so began the 90's for me and I can hardly remember most of it. but I know it was beautiful and it was strange and though I came back down. eventually. something remained in my heart. the dream. the vision. the opening to something else, a way. of seeing, of being. something beautiful, something divine. something magical. a new world free of it all.
and it is here still
available
and though hell is all around me
and the solitude of this time has nearly killed me
suddenly in the dark I see a light
it has always been there. I just forgot to look
distracted by the madness , the coldness, the aloneness of it all
the life, the death, the travelling on. the endless moving on through people and towns and time and places. the sadness of it sometimes too much to bear.
the endings the beginnings I am so afriad of
because I know they will end, they always do.
and yet such amazing people who come into my life
like you Parmella despite all that pain we went through and probably still will,
fuck. I wouldnt miss this for the world.
and as I rise, because I will. it is what I was destined to do
death is nothing
loss is nothing
love is everything
and when it is beautiful and precious and strange
that is when I love it all the most
and for this life I will be
eternally grateful
fuck
I am feeling it tonight
I hope you all are too.
because it is times like these, I know we could change this god forsaken world
into something worth living in
and I dont mean disarming the nukes or saving the poor and the pandas,
I mean evolving into the beings we should always have been
beautiful...strange....
and full of love and vision that goes so far beyond the walls they keep us in, they taught us to exist in.
it is no surprise we are afraid
and so unable to just let go
we know of nothing else
and yet
we have some of us seen the other side
and though it hurts to remember
to be honest I will never be able to forget
its in my heart and travels with me
on wherever it may be

put on your favourite tune
put it up loud
and let go
I'll be there tonight
on the otherside

and so the dust starts to settle at last
the roller coaster slows to a halt
and I get off
and have a quick vomit, because I never was much good on those rides.
but I feel better for it
not sure I want to go again for a while though
just gonna sit over here for a minute and let the world spin
and watch
and catch my breathe
and smile some

Self pitying sonovabitch but tonight I can't be bothered to hide my ugliness

I saw the headline in the paper on the way home tonight -

‘Mel Gibson being divorced’

and it seemed such a silly thing and yet behind my shades I felt tears well up that had been held at bay. The ocean of my soul wanted to break free and I didn’t know how to stop it.
I felt a shame shiver through me for it. And tried to smile to myself.
Self pity. I always fall for it eventually. Dark horse in the heart stirring again.
So I sat there as the rail car rattled and people read and people thought about things.
And it seemed finally I was facing something I hadn’t really faced these last few weeks and the more I thought about why I was crying the more I realised this was about a lot bigger time than just this week. And I let it come in to me. I let myself remember and the sadness of my life overwhelmed me. And I have to explain one threaded tale of why I am often such a miserable wretch.

I was glad for those shades.

I always knew I would come to Australia. When I was a kid I knew when I used to run about my grandparents garden in the English summer in a sleepy village called Bampton where church bells rang out on Sundays and cars went by every now and then, I’d smell the honeysuckle in the mornings and chase a few wasps with a stick then run in for breakfast to watch Skippy the bush kangaroo on TV. Those blue skies and a talking kangaroo. I wanted to be there one day.

When I saw Mad Max years later that blew me away too. I ended up growing up all over the place. Someone gave me a guitar at 15 and then it was rock and roll all the way. I could hide in the dream.

I moved to Oxford got in a couple of bands but we just got wasted and managed about 3 songs in as many years. I can’t remember half of those days. The girl I got engaged to left and I went down a bad rabbit hole until an opportunity came my way out of the blue. I was never much good at being stoned I couldn’t remember a thing.

I left Oxford for London on a whim. Got offered to sing in a band called Romeo Suspect and it felt right. Kipped on my brothers sofa knowing dreams of rock stardom would be mine. That journey up to London, leaving the mess of my teenage life behind was such a beautiful thing. I knew I was free again in that moment. Like Dick Whittingtons cat, maaaan I was going to find the gold.
I saw a rainbow over Notting Hill as the coach drove up the a40 entering the city and I made a wish –

‘Don’t make me famous until I can handle it’

I’d already crashed on acid, speed and glue, probably smoke too but like I said I never remembered anything when I smoked. I knew what I was like and I was hungry for it all. I hadn’t even got near the cocaine, ectascy and designer drugs by then.

Maybe something heard me. Heard my wish.

10 years later and it wasn’t happening. It hurt for years as age took me away from all that I could have been. Man that hurt. Slow and agonising. I know the meaning of Defeat. I know it in my bones. I had owned the dream for a long while; the drugs, the women, the excess for years and yet I never got that stardom I so longed for. I felt so robbed, couldn’t understand it. I had trusted the signs and trusted the Gods and followed them at the sacrifice of all else.

In the end I was forced to give it up, I joined the rat race. It was fear. I was broke. Beaten. The band wasn’t happening. Music had been my world. It was over. I didn’t know how to end something I had invested so much of my life and love in.

So I tried to settle down. Got with a beautiful office girl, got a house, a job that could have been for life. And sat there one day. Old. Alone, cocained out of my brain staring at the wallpaper that I owned. I finally owned something. She was out. 7 years we had been together and I just knew in an instant that this was it for me. This was the happiness normal people longed for. I was in it. And I was lost. I didn’t know what this was. It fucked with me so much that day. She came home drunk. I lost it. I left. I never went back.

2 years later after living in a van for a few months then getting a small room in the middle of Harrow I realised one embarrassing day that I was in fact just waiting to die. I also realised I needed to leave London to do it. And again out of the blue opportunity came. I thought that was my last walk. To Australia. The dream I had as a kid came back to me, my first dream. I was going to Australia to die. It all made perfect sense. It was kind of tidy in its play out.

So I spent my savings on a touring bicycle and cleared off all my debts and so as not to make a mess somewhere people would find me I headed off up to the Northern Terrority to meet my maker. I figured it would be less of a concern for my family there. I don’t quite know why. I didn’t know what else I could do. Let the devil come to meet me and make it there out of the way where people can make assumptions about what happened but never really know. I was ok with it. It had to happen someplace, right.

He came on the third day.

48 degrees heat passing out sick on the side of the road somewhere between Katherine and Broome. I have no idea where I was. It got dark and I could smell death. I was heat struck and delirious and ready to go to the devil. Fuck it. I had nothing left. I let it go. And waited to experience that final thing. I had no idea what it would be but it would bring relief. Then something kicked in. A fucking survival instinct. I wasn’t ready for that. Some stupid part of me thought I had something to do. It seemed so obvious. So without choice or volition, I did all I could to fight what was coming and next thing I know I made it to Broome. About a month actually but again. I don’t recall much of it.

I felt refreshed and excited, like god gave a shit and had plans for me once again. So I hit a bar to celebrate, pulled a girl , went home with her , fucked her, and promptly got in a fist fight with her flat mate. I had to leave Broome the next day. I fucking hated myself again. Things were back to normal. I was too chicken shit to do myself in, so I went back to Sydney instead to get a job, figure out what to do next and try to stay out of trouble for once. What the hell were the gods up to, I was supposed to be dead?

That was a year ago.

Here I am.

I still have no idea why.

The train rattled into Bondi tonight.
Tears dropped down my face. It is amazing how much passes through your mind in a short space of time. Mel Gibson getting divorced and splashed all over the paper. The whole fucking world knowing his business and as my heart was breaking, or maybe starting to recover I have no fucking idea right now, I was just so glad of those shades and being anonymous. Being a fucking nobody was suddenly very ok in my book. I couldn’t imagine what this moment for me right now would be like if every fucker knew my name and who I was and saw me crying. I thanked the gods in retrospect because they saved my sorry ass again and I had no idea all this time. They never let me be famous. They had honoured my wish when I showed up in London. I wouldn’t have survived it at all. Too much of a dumb cunt. They were doing something now. I didn’t know why but it obviously was for some reason.

I don’t know why I spilled it here, or to who, or for what. Glimpses into gold. Glimpses into the truth. Glimpses into the self and the dreams and the lust and the death and the perception of a man. Brothers and sisters and sufferings the world over. No respite, no sanctuary, no hope in many ways. And I haven’t done much to help any of them, only my selfish self and I didn’t help me much either in the end . Dark. Painful. Cold and Lonely is stuff we just have to experience every now and then. Remind ourselves how fragile we are. And remind ourselves who we are and where we have been. Become humbled again by the immensity of it all and the meaninglessness of us as individuals. Fuck famous, it makes the kill so much more complicated and so much crueller. Try and die and they wont let you. It is a mystery.

Come back to the centre. Look around and see we are just here right now and we have no idea what for, not really. Just to be. But anonymity suddenly makes a lot of fucking sense. I could cry and no one would know who I was. No one could care less, so I cried. It was for myself, not Mel, but that was ok. It had to happen somewhere. Thanks Mel.

I walked out the station hopped on the bus. Breathed the air of the ocean as I reached my small room down the North end of the beach. Yea I was alone again but this recent lost love, my first in Oz, would heal and the devil didn’t seem to know my address. Not yet. Not yet. And I may die tonight as lightening and thunder breaks outside, and on my last breathe I may wonder what it was all for. But if I don’t get taken tonight then tomorrow will be the future and something will come along.

Tomorrow I want to do something for someone else for a change. I’ve always wanted to I just have never known how.

I saw my direction today for the first time in years.

I just spent 3 days at Vipassana meditating in silence. It started off tough. I was frustrated because I meditate a lot and thought I would be ahead of the game. I was way off. Took me the whole first day to get my mind quiet and focused on a single spot. One frustrating fight with the self. but I got there.

that night I slept more than 4 hours, first time in weeks. I needed it and sprang up at 4am, first in the hall, into the silence. I love it. like a duck to water. no talking just going in somewhere and waiting to see what shows up.

that was my next annoyance.

spent most of the day with either the uncannily clear image of my new boss in my head. (A South African arrogant son of a bitch whom right now I detest because he holds my balls in his hand and he is squeezing.) So that was ...nice
and then it was...HER....when he wasnt in there, she was. doing whatever it is she is doing right now with whoever she is doing it.
you know
you really need this stuff in your head, crystal clear, when you are trying to meditate.

So about half way through the day and we break for lunch and I have to go lie down because this whole 'getting away' thing seems to have backfired somewhat. Everyone I wanted to get away from is beautifully emblazoned in my mind in glorious motion technicolour, all the clearer because I am in silence and meditating. fuckin a! what to do.

then as I lie on my bed watching a spider eat a fly which seems strangely poetic at that moment. It dawns on me. There is something I am missing here. The reason I am not getting past all this.

I guess I wanted to sit and chill and stare at stars and peacocks and have a beautiful Zen experience. I should have known better. It was time to get right into my shit and face the music. so I did.

I spent the next half of the afternoon locked up in a 2x4 cell with no windows and no sound and no light. Its the place to be, let me tell you. Terror becomes some kind of freedom in there. Ever seen Midnight Express? You get right into the pain. I mean. RIGHT INTO THE CENTRE OF THAT MOTHERFIUCKING PAIN. and you sit there. squirming. in the prison or your body and into the prison of your own making. knowing it is you and yours alone and you created it and only you can get yourself out, but you cant. YOU CANT. you cunt. YOU CUNT.
you hate yourself. you hate everything. you want to die. DIE DIE DIE. just fucking please STOP IT ALL STOP. But the door is shut and there is no where to go. no where to run. this is it. and you know it. it is time to let go to it.
and so
eventually
after 4 hours
and very fucking sore everything
it stops.

it
just
stops

it had to
eventually

and so

it

did



and right then I knew none of it really was that big a deal
none of it really ever had a hold on me
I just empowered it
for some reason
that would take too long to explain
and I breathed in
as the hurting stopped
and there it was
the way forward
for me
nothing changed
except maybe my outlook
the shit was the same, it wasnt going anywhere
it was going to be there and it was going to fuck with me as much if not more so
than it had been up til now.
but the single difference was
I now had a plan
I knew why it was there and of what use it was going to be to me.

so to my boss and to... HER.
bring it on
because in the end
you may well be the very thing that saves me

Diamonds

coal, soot, carbon, blood, spit, jealousy, anger, frustration, rage, fire, pressure
in the pressure of eternity. stood dying in my room, crushed in the unbelievable pain of it all. going into it, going into it, not letting go, not letting up
keep going in. deeper. into the pain. I have to know this now.
I have to feel it all this time.
tastes like coal and soot. dirty blackness inside, places where they began, this life
somewhere beyond this life, somewhere in the beginning, of me, of me,
keep going until there is no more pain
screaming into the night air
as it implodes
and all agonies start to change
I knew they would, I knew they had to eventually
turn to a sweet ecstacy
until there is nothing left to suffer, nothing left to feel
and I find myself lifting up, rising
coming up for air
breathing deep and hard
bursting through the veil
feel the sex in me
heat like fire,
getting hot like life
in the black
of being so empty
take a new form
and what was a lie
hid a truth all along
there are no words for this freedom
maybe love, but that doesnt describe it

The beautiful lie

I guess I am ready for this. I guess it has come into my life right on time.

At my most solitary, at my most vulnerable, at my most weak. When there is no one around to turn to and take my mind off it, just walls and oceans and long emptiness. The movie plays and she is the star. I have nothing else to do but watch. Is this the story of my own end? The tragedy of whatever I thought Love could be.

I realise I haven’t really been hurt by a woman in many years. It is long overdue. I have left a lot of carnage behind me and in seeing how one has finally gotten to me, I understand that yes, I liked the control it gave me too. I was in balance while someone else needed me, floundered, a little piece of them dying in my hands. Truth is, that felt good. Manipulation, control. Unaware even, that I was doing it so well. Feeding off it. It elevated me and I flew. Energy I didn’t have was suddenly mine. Vampiric almost.

I’d hate myself for it if I could.

But then here I am, watching the girl who managed to finally open me up somehow, put a blade in the wound and turn it. The sweet smile, the words of love she spoke to me before she left still echo as I fall away. I still believe her, even as I watch myself bleeding to death from the wound she has created. How fucking stupid we humans are sometimes. ‘I love you’. How deadly those words are.

It is not her, I tell myself, she is better than this. When she is finished with these other lovers she will come back to me. But she wont. I already know this. Or rather , she will but she was never really there, it was just her need to have something to hold, to pretend in too.

The beautiful lie.

It was always only ever going to be a beautiful lie. We both wanted to believe it. This result was inevitable. I knew this even as I started. And still I let go. Still I opened up. And still the pain came. Letting go totally, I hoped it would free me, I trusted.

It didn’t work at all.

The cruel part, and this is what could drive me to put a slap on her to be honest, is that I get to read all this shit going on via the internet. Indirect love letters of some weird kind to whoever is in her life at that moment, whoever is her love in the minute. Jesus! I would SO do that too if I could, but I am not a hooker, not a woman.
I meet a person of the opposite sex who actually connects with me about once every 2 years at best. She meets someone every time she steps out the door.

And she goes there with them.

I guess there is an honesty in that. Wouldn’t all women do it if they could. Would not all men?

And that’s when it gets strange. Because I would and I know it. So how come I am currently dying like a lost and needy bitch at the hands of this she-devil? I have no idea. I wake to pain, I fall asleep to pain. Heart pain. That gutting sensation that even other people can see in me. Something has been drained from my energy. A Loss. A depletion. I am as good as dead right now. That is what happens when you say those three little words to someone and they then turn and give it away. GIVE IT AWAY. Like it was nothing. Like you are nothing more than another blip in the moment. And you thought you were so special. You needed to be so special. You needed someone else to make you that way. That is what sucks.

There was another girl once, years ago I got like this with. There was something about her. She held me in her hand and she killed me quick. I hated her for it. Looking back I was too childish to handle such power in a person. Now, I just know that I have to. Somehow find a way. To keep that destructive power she has over me at a distance, yet not turn on her. Not hurt her back. Not try to destroy her, or wish her wrong in anyway. There are so many lessons in all this. lessons I could not even dream to face back then. I have become strong, but I have to be stronger. all the while trying to keep that pain at bay and not let her do more damage. She is trying to, whether she knows it or not.

This is the crisis of us all in the world today. We love and someone hurts us when we do. The one we love is the one that will hurt us. The one we let go to. Is the one that will destroy us. If we are lucky they will hide this side from us. This control they know they have suddenly, that feeds them and gives them power that they accept and take and play with. It is down to their nature. And if they hide it, which most people do, then we will never need to know and we can pretend all is ok and all is well, but truth is. There is no love, not that way. It seems we don’t really love the one, we love the many. I never wanted to believe it, but how can I deny it now? How? It is a truth and it is staring me in the face. I just cant deal with it yet.

And this is the pain for me today, and so far, I have no answer, but I don’t want to live anymore in the beautiful lie.

For some reason my LSD days have been coming up again.

Happiness is not a brown microdot while watching Pink Floyd's - The Wall.

I think when you have sat through that experience you can say you have made some kind of grade in the LSD fraternity. Probably should have those letters after my name. I am amazed I dont have a number tattooed on my wrist and a white front door with big locks on. I understand this is nothing to be proud of.

But why after so many years is this stuff coming up for me at the moment? Maybe my body is finally offloading all the highs I put myself through: 2ci, 2cb, dmt, lsd, heroin, crack, smack, ice, cocaine, glue, petrol, tippex thinners, you name it and we take it in the search for that unnameble something.

maybe just some fucking peace from the demons.

I stick to booze and cigarettes now. and have for the last year or so. Life is too fucking insane as it is to be honest. I dont need the additionals. The demons are all still there of course. I wouldnt say being straight is a great substitute. In fact most days I really dont like it one bit.

so insomnia has become my new unwanted friend.

And I am pretty sure it is related to the drug years the more I find myself waking up to it. spangled mindage. I was supposed to be dead before I got 32 like all good rock stars, and here I am 10 years on still walking about like a gormless grinning guppy.

god decided to make it a slow kill.

but I could swear the sharks are circling.

but nevermind that old chestnut, what of insomnia...

I wake at usually somewhere between 2 and 4am and my mind is off like a rabid dog salivating after some such nonsense that seems so relevant at that time of day. 2 hours later I realise I have been thinking over and over some inconsequential moment, yesterday morning it was an acid trip some 20 years ago.

bitch.

the fucking sad thing is that Hunter S Thompson really paved the way to the truth about drugs that all of us high-seekers completely ignore. That in the end, after you stop taking them and the audience stops laughing at how funny you are, you are left with a mind that is confused and a shotgun that is loaded. I mean, blowing your head off while talking to the wife on the phone is a bit off really, it says a lot. It was the inspiration for me to really try to stop so....hell....maybe he did do something good.

There is no pain you are receding
a distant ship smoke on the horizon
you are only coming through in waves
your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
when I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
the child has grown the dream has gone
I have become comfortably numb

I got up at 4am after waiting for my mind to give it a rest. twenty minutes and I couldnt get it under control. I was pissed off actually and hung out my bathroom window looking at the night and smoking. Staring at the cages on the neighbours windows and seeing how much my life is like that. Just bars up. I do everything to escape these chains. I got high to escape these chains. I will die to escape these chains. Just let me the fuck out of this pain that goes round and round without any kind of god damn answer to it.

I read all the healing books, I have done Vipassana, gone to doctors, gone to healers, shamans, lovers, friends, the wise, the insane, the truth. I meditate two or three times a day. I give up the drugs. I give up the fucking lot and am left with these 4am suicidal insanities. They fuck with me deeply.

I wont do it. I dont own a shotgun and I am far too chicken shit. I just live on the dark side of the moon and watch the sun go down each day and know the demons will return tonight, and I will see them and know them and still they will control some part of me I never even liked.

this isnt self pity. It is just the question. inspired by friends who know exactly this same fucked up story because my friends seem to know this pain too. and you probably do too. and thats what makes all this so fucking strange. here we are. wanting salvation and getting nothing but more shit for our troubles.

its the head. the god damn head. the thing I got high to escape. and now I can't even do that anymore. son of a bitch.

watch the sharks circle.
not long now
and this will be the last fists up, try to act brave, give a good final showboat fight in the chaos of all this nonsense.
punch something, a little blood
I'll feel good about that, as I go down.
smiling.
asking god if my face hurt his fist.

fuck it frankly, none of us ever had a hope, just a lie. I hate the lie.

but I guess in truth, I am still grateful for it all, how strange is that. The love especially. The love was what made it all worth it. To love. Just once or twice. Thankyou for that if nothing else.

I am nose up to The Wall again.
banging.
but there is nothing here.
nothing at all.
there never was.
just emptiness in space.

I put the cigarette out, go back to bed alone.

I look at the clock - 5.35am.
put a t-shirt over my head and wonder what comes next.

I will stay here.
I will get up tomorrow and go through it all again.
I will try to get through
to better myself as a person
and all that crap,
to rise up,
to surface from this ocean of dark death,
darker past,
and the deep emotional disturbances
I hide from in the day.

Killing Joke - Love Like Blood

We must play our lives like soldiers in the field
But life is short i'm running faster all the time
Strength and beauty destined to decay
So cut the rose in full bloom
'til the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood, a love like blood

Everyday through all frustration and despair
Love and hate fight with burning hearts
'til legends live and man is god again
and self-preservation rules the day no more

We must dream of promised lands and fields
That never fade in season
As we move towards no end we learn to die
Red tears are shed on grey
'til the fearless come and the act is done
A love like blood, a love like blood

It's never going to be easy
the things we chase
always seem to belong to somebody else
everyone makes it look so simple to attain
as they cruise by in gilded cages of gold
and I remain in the alley with the one-trip ghosts
blade in my hand to deal with the enemy
laugh running down empty streets
crazy drunk or high beyond care
or just insane
because its the way to survive this bullshit

its taken all these days to find something worth keeping
and yet the blood trickles down my heart like an open wound
fists up, shadow boxing dont work so well against this army
fortifications round your heart
you arent ever going to give in
watch me die trying to scale your walls
and see you smile
knowing you wont ever have to pretend again
to anyone
except yourself

here comes the morning
another one I have to face in some way
and try to explain to myself
what the fuck I am doing this for
I have no idea, I never did
just play the part
like it will make any kind of difference
to any of us
in the end

I feel broken, disbanded, lying on the floor
of a chaotic explosion
brick dust and smoke fly away into the air above me
I am winded
but breathing
and I smile
I remember this...this is the weakness
this is when men cannot be men but fall
from tall heights as the world spins
and it all comes crashing down
this is ok.
to feel pain is ok.
pain means
I am still alive.
tomorrow I will get up
but for now
I am just going to lie here
right here
and watch the dust float about me
and laugh a little
or maybe cry
I havent decided yet

I felt it shift again tonight
that elusive truth
we grasp for always
through the moments as they slip by us
I try to sink into it now
try to hold one feeling in place
that might tell me
that the future will bring home
and it will feel like the place I belong
the place I can rest
and feel safe enough
not to chase rainbows
across darkening skies anymore
I love you
more truly than I have ever loved
and yet
and yet
it could slip away and be lost in the dust
trampled in the stampede of all that is to come
and if I try to hold onto it
I might die
and if I let it go
it may be lost for good this time
All I can do is watch
and quietly pray
that it grows strong enough
to make it through
I surrender to trust because, as ever
it is all I can do.

2am and it is like the good old days. wide awake and ready to take on the world.
except this time I am not high

I do miss it, so.

but tomorrow I will be glad

and tomorrow. what of tomorrow.

the current love of my life. and yes it is love. I dont know why or how it has happened but I recognise the signs.

she is a hooker.
how crazy is that
the universe does like to slap me about sometimes.

so I rock up to her place. a hotel where she has been working.
it is afternoon. late. the sun is shining and I am whistling a little ditty. possibly smash it up by the damned. as I stroll into the lobby and nod to the concierge who looks at me with a smile that tells me he thinks I am another punter.
I dont correct him because in a way he is right.

life is like that
it is all about deals and transactions
even love
we are all prostitutes.
no point kidding ourselves
just hustle like the rest of them
and try to steal some for yourself before your time is up.
I am a cat burglar and a damn good one.
you dont need me to explain the pussy pun there do you.

I knock on her door. she opens.
there is something electric about her
she has had three sessions today.
I pause for a moment
uncertain quite how I am going to react
wait. observe the self
ready for explosions that dont come.
I am pleased at my learnedness
and step in


we eat.
it is almost like family together at the table
roast chicken. some salad
love is there
I smile at her
she smiles at me
it is warm
glowing
beautiful
precious

I wonder when it will end and how.

it is only natural

fear.

always a fear.

I tell her.

she understands
but doesnt molly coddle.
she is tough
she has to be.
it has been tough for her too.
this life.
and that is what makes it beautiful.

I guess we are true people
we have true hearts
not broken into bitterness and hatred
not turned into games of control
of destruction
of ownership
of cowardice in the face of the pain.

she steps over to me
sits on my lap
her hair drops down over me and a breast teases me a hello from inside the dressing gown she is wearing.
I look at it.
soft and beautiful
somehow pure
I dont know how
I sigh
feel love in my heart grow with the intake of breath
does it matter that less than an hour ago another man lay on her, lay in her.
strangely
it doesnt.
and yet
my mind sometimes wants to scream
and if others knew, what would they say to my mind
to convince it to implode
I toy with these thoughts
and then feel it overwhelmed by desire for her
in the moment
this moment
it is all that matters
and I sink into that
without any fear at all
with absolute ease
because I belong there
in love and I have already made the decision
that it will be ok
because death will come before we even have time to think about the beautiful moments we forgot to take and wished we had when they came along

and we fell together into a truth that was between us, only us. and no one else
and that was when I understood it for what it is.

Intimacy

I am changing

big things coming, moving, shifting

and thank fucking christ it is about time

the scorpion, the snake,
willing to drop it's guard for a moment.
am I?
am I willing?
have I a choice?

Will my enemies come for me now? of course they will. It will be their call. All I can do is let go.

I bought a book called Intimacy by Osho, the bigger man is willing to face the fear that is Love, surely. I figured I need to learn something here.

other than the involuntary outburst of laughter that brought the 'guru' section of Borders bookstore to a momentary stand still when I read the line -

'intimacy means exposing yourself before strangers'

I found the message I was needing right after that in its pages.

I can't get past the first chaper at the moment, I just keep going over it. finding something new release inside me from the words. I want to share a few


...intimacy brings you close to a stranger. you have to drop all your defenses; only then is intimacy possible. and the fear is that if you drop all your defenses, all your masks, who knows what the stranger will do with you?....

...everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe...you want to be intimate with the other person... you want them to drop their defenses....but you are not dropping your defenses.....

....you have to accept yourself in totality....You have been condemned by everyobdy you have learned one thing: self-condemnation. You go on hiding it, it is not something beautiful to show others. You know ugly things are hidden in you, you know evil things are hidden in you, you know animal is hidden in you.

....If you are simple, loving, open, intimate, you create a paradise around you. If you are closed, constantly on the defensive, always worried that someone may come to know your thoughts, your dreams, your perversions, you are living in hell.


..we are fragile beings - the most fragile in existence. this frailty is not something to be condemned-it is the highest expression of consciousness....the higher expression of anything becomes weaker....it's beauty is because of its not being strong.....everything that is beautiful is going to be very momentary....all you can say is "I am in love with you this moment, and I will give my totality to you. about the next moment I know nothing."


nodoby knows anything about the future...the only thing that is in your hands is your life....by opening yourself to many people you become richer. And if you can live in deep love, in deep friendship, in deep intimacy with many people, you have lived rightly....

without intimacy you are surrounded by strangers, with intimacy you are surrounded by friends, by people who love you.


everybody is afraid of intimacy