I'm sitting in my soon-to-be-ex-loungeroom, having trouble looking at anything because i know i'll have to pack it. Back in Alice, but landed in something of a hole.
I left Darwin somewhat reluctantly. I was having a lot of fun with my old friends and their other friends and generally enjoying a simple existence revolving around food, drink, nightcliff pool, and hilarity. Perhaps there was a little too much of the second one, but that's what happens when you've all been disgruntled social workers for far too long. We grow old! We still act young. Traced our shadows on a freshly painted roof which was luminous in the full moonlight. We went to the new Pirates movie dressed like pirates and met a real one (well, he lived in a boat).
I also went to a Meet the Publisher weekend put on by the fabulous NT Writers Centre where I Met some Publishers. Structured networking is good. It seemed to be valued by both parties. Having a stated agenda ('i am trying to sell you something') is a relief. I've often said i'm crap at schmoozing, but actually i'm not. I'm just crap at dissembling. It was very productive. There was occasion for punching the air at more than one point. I have some good leads on the birthing of this book thing.
Darwin is nice except a bit overdeveloped. It's odd to be somewhere that's really not very big but has all the infrastructure of a major city - parliament, gallery, etc - there's even an overpass (it scared me). Apart from my mates I liked the wingnuts and itinerants best and the backpackers worst.
Despite having to go home early, it felt good to be back on the highway.
For the first couple hundred k, anyway. then Disaster Struck.
Caulfield lost third gear somewhere past Adelaide River, and we made it to Katherine in second. The mechanics tried to fix her and killed the rest of the gears, so she's coming home on a truck. I was sad for a good few hours, then realised that i have become emotionally dependent on a motor vehicle. Oops. Anyway it is fixable and i am assisted by the holden nerd community.
I may have just been miserable because i was put on an overnight greyhound (thanks to the AANT). They are designed to induce emotional vulnerability. It's as if you and the other thirty-forty people are all sharing a private darkness, one that none of you can admit to. Transit spaces are often like this, shadowed by the spectre of relinquished control, the visions of potential disaster that could keep us from our imagined destinations; the tragedy that the real places will inevitably disappoint us. Buses stink of hope.
But it washes off. I am clean, of both dirt and hope, for the first time in months. I must move out of the shed where i have been living for (gosh!) the last 18 months. Helpfully, I already moved out, but now i have nowhere to put anything. The fact that my car is gonna be in the shop is a leetle bit inconvenient, but something will come up.
I'm not moving into a house again for a while. I have moved into a PO Box instead - now that's commitment. The plan is to find a housesit over summer and work on the next book. Keen to get started, but also making myself available for other interesting projects that may or may not materialise. Cautiously of course. Cautiously and selectively.
Fuck, it's good to be home. The desert still takes my breath away, and happens to be home to a few excellent souls - who somehow make up for an entire military occupation.
I left Darwin somewhat reluctantly. I was having a lot of fun with my old friends and their other friends and generally enjoying a simple existence revolving around food, drink, nightcliff pool, and hilarity. Perhaps there was a little too much of the second one, but that's what happens when you've all been disgruntled social workers for far too long. We grow old! We still act young. Traced our shadows on a freshly painted roof which was luminous in the full moonlight. We went to the new Pirates movie dressed like pirates and met a real one (well, he lived in a boat).
I also went to a Meet the Publisher weekend put on by the fabulous NT Writers Centre where I Met some Publishers. Structured networking is good. It seemed to be valued by both parties. Having a stated agenda ('i am trying to sell you something') is a relief. I've often said i'm crap at schmoozing, but actually i'm not. I'm just crap at dissembling. It was very productive. There was occasion for punching the air at more than one point. I have some good leads on the birthing of this book thing.
Darwin is nice except a bit overdeveloped. It's odd to be somewhere that's really not very big but has all the infrastructure of a major city - parliament, gallery, etc - there's even an overpass (it scared me). Apart from my mates I liked the wingnuts and itinerants best and the backpackers worst.
Despite having to go home early, it felt good to be back on the highway.
For the first couple hundred k, anyway. then Disaster Struck.
Caulfield lost third gear somewhere past Adelaide River, and we made it to Katherine in second. The mechanics tried to fix her and killed the rest of the gears, so she's coming home on a truck. I was sad for a good few hours, then realised that i have become emotionally dependent on a motor vehicle. Oops. Anyway it is fixable and i am assisted by the holden nerd community.
I may have just been miserable because i was put on an overnight greyhound (thanks to the AANT). They are designed to induce emotional vulnerability. It's as if you and the other thirty-forty people are all sharing a private darkness, one that none of you can admit to. Transit spaces are often like this, shadowed by the spectre of relinquished control, the visions of potential disaster that could keep us from our imagined destinations; the tragedy that the real places will inevitably disappoint us. Buses stink of hope.
But it washes off. I am clean, of both dirt and hope, for the first time in months. I must move out of the shed where i have been living for (gosh!) the last 18 months. Helpfully, I already moved out, but now i have nowhere to put anything. The fact that my car is gonna be in the shop is a leetle bit inconvenient, but something will come up.
I'm not moving into a house again for a while. I have moved into a PO Box instead - now that's commitment. The plan is to find a housesit over summer and work on the next book. Keen to get started, but also making myself available for other interesting projects that may or may not materialise. Cautiously of course. Cautiously and selectively.
Fuck, it's good to be home. The desert still takes my breath away, and happens to be home to a few excellent souls - who somehow make up for an entire military occupation.
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2 Comments:
hmmm, my god, you drive a car called caufield....isn't that holden's surname....another hopelessly hopeful cynic oxy-moronically exploring the city from the outsider viewpoint when we're all outside really..buses stink of hope...ha,ha,ha, its turn of phrases like this that will surely charm those publishers...i'm missing that damn horroscope...do the math...i need a new longer term reading if you've ever got the time, darling...purdy please....you last one was ominous and right on the money in that squatted nursery, what a shit time i've had this year...cynical buddists and a gaggle of lesbian parents have been my salvation, 'friends' have indeed dropped like flies..we'll drink and giggle and slur our way through those moments sometime, i'm convinced. Loving the roadtrip/desert photography, its rather good you know..thought i'd never been in a desert, but i've been nowhere but all my life but your desert is so alive, colorful, etc.....i've only lived in city deserts/emotional deserts/ agricultural deserts...i'm stopping know but will tune in again...much love...francis xx
francis me long-lost kin! your life sounds like queer as folk. i'll email you. thanks for visiting... if only it wasn't virtual.
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