Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Sydney - Part One


I have become the most contented zombie alive. I can’t tell you exactly when this metamorphosis took place, but that seems far from important now. I am Kafka with a happy ending, and no, I don’t give a fuck how pissed he’d be to hear that. Maybe it’s this city... Traversing foreign concrete on feet that lost a great deal of their feeling long ago, I am hellbent on satisfying this newly adopted Dionysian diet. You think it’d be easy here. This place is a smorgasbord of sensory satiation, but I’ve garnered a glutton’s appetite, beset with unquestionable tenacity. I’m still hungry. And it’s that newborn perpetual hunger that has kept my heart and mind metabolizing in double-time, everything in sight and sound, while my body shut down around what I believe to be about a day and a half ago. I’ve slept seven hours in the last seventy. My feet are elevated now as I write this--one on top of the other--swollen, red, and dead, like suicidal lobsters with a penchant for Shakespearean melodrama. And all I can think of doing is strapping them up once again, and having them carry me back into this city.


Our plane touched down at seven in the morning in Sydney. Finally... Please don’t take this the wrong way, the plane itself was brimmed with comfort from corner to corner, and just about everything you could think of to keep your mind off of the fact that it was your mobile prison for the duration of fifteen hours--good food, good drinks, and an entire ‘Hollywood Hits’ list to keep your brain busy, right at your fingertips--I just think small seats for that amount of time were tough situations for two kids with big ambition. The gentleman next to us had made the flight regularly for business to and from The States, and his calm beside our antsy exuberance amazed me. I thank him for his patience. I imagine it nerve-racking to see me jostle about the confines of seat 60A like a half jacked-off dog in a winged cage.


Regardless, we made it, and met our driver at the airport doors. Dave, our driver, greeted us with morning-after booze breath and the red you get in your eyes after a black-out night on white lightening. Kevin and I looked at each other and chuckled as we both noticed. There was comfort in the fact that although we weren’t sure if we were in good hands, at least we were in familiar ones. We made it to the van and started off towards the hostel. My eyes ran rampant behind the van’s windows, swallowing in everything in sight. It was eight in the morning is Sydney, Australia, and the sun sitting over the ocean soaked itself through the sky, saturating everything in crystalline brilliance--buildings, trees, and grass alike--the greens themselves, lustered with neon lemon light.


Wow...


We arrived at the G’day hostel a short fifteen minutes later in Wooloomoolloo, about a block away from King’s Cross, which equates itself to The Red Light District of Amsterdam. Booze, brothels, and chicks with dicks sized well enough to put mine to shame are found by the handfuls, or so says Dave... He instructed us to give a cup check if we made our way into a bordello or two, with a wink and a snicker. A snicker intentionally sounded in a manner to let us know he’s laden with secrets and stories on the matter, should our curiosity and his BAC reach requisites for disclosure on them. And from the stumble in his steps towards the hostel, I’m fairly sure we were about three-quarters of the way there. My curiosity constructed comical scenes in my head, and I chuckled to myself as I was brought to thought of tricky trips to TJ pioneered by my better than good friend Nick Colla.


We dropped our bags off at the front desk of the hostel with hesitance. Not that we didn’t trust Dave, who also worked there, I think we were just taken aback a bit by the fact that the place reminded me of a PBS special I once saw on Bosnia circa ’94. But we’ll get that in a second. We headed out to grab some grub and some coffee at an old fashioned Italian cafe called Bill & Toni’s around the corner, and were first introduced to the art that is coffee making in Sydney. Maybe we’ve just been lucky, but it seems that everywhere we’ve gone here, the coffee has been some of the best we’ve ever had. Australians in Sydney make the shit out of some delicious coffee.


So, back to the hostel. I’ll be as candid as I always am. It totally fucking sucks... The people seem friendly enough, it just seems that the joint dons a dereliction you’d find in a Golden Hills halfway home. Our room seems to maintain a thick miasma of dook, and for some strange reason all I can think of is an Indian dude dropping a curry-cut deuce into a chunk of garbage-salvaged Tupperware and giving it a slow sweat in the microwave. Kevin and I are convinced it might be our UK roommate on the bunk above me. He spends all day in bed sweating into dirty clothes and reading sci-fi novels through coke bottle-lensed glasses. The last thing I could think of doing in a city this beautiful. Different strokes for different blokes, I suppose.


Maybe he’s just done everything to do already...


Either way, I wasn’t going to ask. It’s not my place. Additionally, Kevin and I had earlier made the mistake of eliciting a bit of chatter from him, and were nearly laid to waste by a breath that made you wonder if he’s started every day for the last fifteen years of his life by chomping down on a heaping bowl of shit.


Our German roommate is super mellow, and she shares our thoughts on the dilapidated dormitory. But enough about that, we’ve barely wasted much time there anyways... The city beckons us.


We spent our entire first day walking up and down the streets. We trekked from our hostel, to the Sydney Opera House, to the Harbour Bridge, back and forth. The sun lacquered the glass and concrete from street to rooftop with a vibrant golden glaze. Seeing the Opera House left me lifted. Please excuse the triteness of the statement, but something about it just took me off of my feet. I’ve rarely been star-struck, but at the moment, it seems like the most applicable analogy available. You’ve seen it on screen, and you’ve heard all about it, but the time between aspiring to see it and actually seeing it does nothing to prepare you. It is some of my favorite heroes as architecture. Close up, the arching white rooftops, built in the semblance of sails, cut across the sky like giant canines chomping at the brilliant blue above and behind it. We are midgets beneath it. Glinting expanses of cobalt-colored water surrounded us on both sides. The Sydney Harbour is an open mouth to the Pacific Ocean, rowed with rocky teeth that are its many peninsulas. You can glance from one landmark on the far edge of peninsula, across a stretch of water, and right onto another one. We decided to grab a seat at the bar, a stone’s throw outside of the Opera House and found a bench just a few feet away from where the white and blue waves licked the the sea wall below us. We sat in the warm, slow breeze, drinking in more with our eyes than we did with our throats. The Harbour Bridge sprawled across a massive chunk of skyline to the north east of us. The sun sat just behind it blasting rays of light through every opening between its steel beams. It hovered above the water hauntingly, like the skeleton of some massive mythical feline that used to rome this land.


“I can’t believe we’re here,” became our staple phrase for the next two days, and tumbled out of our mouths at least a dozen times while we sat beside that water.


The air here seems cleansing. Just inhaling amidst the our new found surroundings arouses elation, and has done well to perpetuate the production of adrenaline that courses through our systems. This city seems void of that brown collective of combustion you find looming over some of Southern California’s cities. The giant shit-clouds, so to speak. Other than that, the weather here feels a lot like Coastal Southern California so far. It’s autumn and we’ve been walking comfortably in shorts and t-shirts. There’s a pleasant wind along the water that lifts your spirits as it lifts your nose. In fact, between the coastal breeze and scattered palm trees, we’re reminded a lot of San Diego. Fucking awesome... We both love that.


We started making our way back through the busy streets and back to the hostel late in the afternoon. We stopped along the way for a quick beer, and were introduced to two middle-aged couples from Townsville. The next largest town just south of Cairns. Hearing them talk and hearing them describe it--somewhere between the homegrown pride, and the indirect skin-color prejudice--I was automatically reminded of a lot of the time I spent in Temecula. And no, fuckers, not all of Temecula, believe it or not, I do have a bit of a place in my heart for Ol‘ T-mec, it’s just that a large portion of its population happens to harbor an abundance of that small-town-bred racism that I find slightly amusing on behalf of the absolutely nil amount of critical thought or rationality that was exercised in its conception. I suppose most sentiments of the like are birthed in such fashion. C’est la vie. I think the next bit of information garnered, however, was what really sealed the deal. A minute and a half later, I asked them what brought them to Sydney.


“Travis Pastrana.”


No fucking way... Small world.


Apparently there was a giant motocross race the night before featuring Mr. Pastrana himself. A spectacle to which I was first introduced during my days in T-mec.


They taught us a good deal, and comically made it a point for us to watch ourselves amongst the “pooftas” of King’s Cross, although since they didn’t know much about us, we might enjoy a poofta or two. A bit of contemplation led me to discern that they were indirectly making us out to be a good old fashion pair of homosexuals. A familiar accusation that made me feel right at home in a place so far away. A few drinks and a few laughs later, we had made some friends and made our way back.


A twenty minute walk seemed more like two minute swim, treading beneath the city lights with my head bent back and a substantial BAC. Either way, we made it back to the Dook Dorm and decided that the best way to avoid the stench would be to keep our noses submerged in cups of whiskey we bought at the duty free joint in the airport. We made it through three cups and passed out like a pair of pooftas. It was 9:30 in the evening.


The both of us were up the next day at 6:35 AM. We had our shoes on, teeth brushed, and were out the door by 6:40. We were thrown off a bit. The sun here sits at angles that make an early Sydney morning feel like a late San Diego afternoon. I think what we see now, juxtaposed with what we’ve seen most of our lives, has our brains in a bit of a stewy time warp.


We headed up the street towards Hyde Park to find a mass of people decked out in distance running attire, congregating in a swarm on the streets and grass. As we got closer, a pasty Prefontaine or two would blast past us to meet the slow growing marathoner amoeba before it soon purged itself onto the city streets. Kevin and I exchanged expressions of exuberance once again.


Awesome...


I’ve never once given a shit about seeing a marathon, but the fact that I was to now witness my first, throughout Sydney, I was strangely ecstatic. It was the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon. The race started off with a roar of cheers and applause, and Kevin and I grabbed coffees, and followed the thunder of footsteps about the asphalt. We crossed intersections, cheered and chewed the fat with skinny sideline supporters, played a bit of Marathon Frogger, and made our way to the stairs of the Harbour Bridge. Holy shit, the whole city was alive and thriving at seven o’clock on Sunday morning. And that thought itself seemed even more so apropos as we climbed the stairs to the bridge and were laid witness to the Harbour awakening below us. A giant beneath our feet, living and breathing, as it’s done for so many eons on end.


Now, I know I’d be doing the whole turd recycle thing once again to delve into some seemingly pretentious, and void of novelty diatribe, on how our obsessions to immerse ourselves in high speed connections from day to day, do well to rob us of making witness to the mind exploding display that is the natural world we are already immersed in. I understand. I find myself drowning in the race all of the time and missing out on life’s finer gifts that surround me, (It’s especially easy for those who spend the majority of their time beneath towers of shadows and concrete in a busy cities). That disquieting feeling garnered in reflecting on the “miss out” is a part of what launched these legs onto this adventure in the first place. The race totally fucking sucks. Hurry up and Facebook. Hurry up and text. Hurry up and meet with clients. Hurry up that BWM into that big garage. Hurry up and tie that knot. Penetrate. Impregnate. Separate. Load that 401K. Hurry up and freak the fuck out. Hurry up and die. The decadence of everything but self-assigned precedence. Blah, blah, blah. I know, you’ve heard it before. I’m not carving out any new niche. Every Coffee Shop Jock with a pack of American Spirits and a Macbook Pro is blogging about the same shit in one poetic fashion or another. “You totally don’t even understand what it all means until you’ve smoked Sour Diesel and spent a day at Scripps...” says Captain Cookie Cut while sipping a 32 oz. Coke, post-tirade on atrocities birthed in the wake of corporate imperialism. And I could easily cop-out, follow suite, and conclude this with an excerpt some hoard of hipsters has already lifted from Lao Tzu, plastered on a bumper sticker, and turned into some misunderstood cum-dumpster of a quote, but I’d rather not. Either way, my sentiments are completely honest... The Coffee Shop Jocks who really mean and understand it, are totally right on this one. It really is a bit of a discomforting thought to think of how many nights I’ve gone to bed in San Diego without taking a minute or two to appreciate how fucking beautiful it really is. The sun, the beaches, the trees, the canyons, Balboa Fucking Park! And it’s not just in San Diego, it’s all over the world. Sometimes it takes something like standing on the Harbour Bridge to watch the sun rise higher into the sky, to really knock me back into that frame of mind. Our selfish, ephemeral agendas can seem so trifling in juxtaposition to this big world. This big, natural world that was here long before we were. I had a feeling there were many more sights to come to keep such cognition consistent...


The wind hit us immediately as we made it out onto the platform of the Bridge from the steps. Our tired feet were tangled a bit as it carried us wayward. We gained our footing and turned, and it pushed against our backs to aid our flight across. We floated halfway, and stopped at a break in the mesh to take it all in.


“Holy shit...”


“Yeah, fucking incredible...”


The sun hovered slightly above our horizontal line of sight, looking a bit down on us. A suspended beacon in the distance, like a Cheshire Cat laughing and lighting this place to life with his bright whites. It hung over the Harbour, slavering vibrance onto the water below. Light pooled onto the surface until the surface itself donned a diamond luster that then bled into the Pacific. The whole thing was ablaze. It seemed you could stand on that sheen, and follow those flames to Mexico. The greens did the same. The browns, the grays, the blues, blacks, reds, and oranges. The sun torched them all to life. The sun torched everything to life. It was all on fire. The Harbour and its inhabitants, the trees, the birds, the insects, the fish, the plankton, Kevin, me... This whole place was alive. It was long before I came to be that way, and will be long after I’m gone. My cell phone doesn’t mean shit here. My high speed hankering doesn’t mean shit here. There is so much more than us. And for the first time in so long, since reading Daniel Quinn’s, “Providence,” I felt a bit more familiar with what he referenced as the “fire of life”. And while I’m not going to sit here and try and tell you what I think god is (I hate using that term to describe it, and I don’t really know what it is for sure), I was cathartically reminded of where, what I call god, was. That fire of life that lives and breathes inside of everything that lives and breathes. If you look right, you can see it in the eyes of others. I’m reminded of days I spent with my nephew.


We stood on that bridge for a twenty minutes that felt like a life time. A steel beam beneath my chin, and the air across my face, I could have stayed and stared until the sun torched my eyes out. We turned and made our way back to the streets. They were still rumbling beneath the stampede. A few more games of Marathon Frogger and we crashed into our rust-ravaged beds at the hostel.


We didn’t last long there, neither of us could sleep. We mostly just tossed back and forth in our beds. A concerto of old, metal creaks and squeaks, that only exacerbated the discomfort of the room itself, and our antsy dispositions.


“Jesus Christ my sheets smell...”


“Yeah, mine too... The tiny dinosaurs on my sheets smell like something they shouldn’t”


“My fucking mattress too...”


*held out dino sheet*


“Gross...”


*sniff*


“Oh my god! Dude, I bet that trio of Scandinavians downstairs probably totally slimed your little dinoes in ropey Swede Sauce post-gang bang, earlier.”


“Bro...”


“Look dude, that little stegosaurus totally just became a meat-eater over the weekend. I think he just winked at you.”


“Dude, fuck you.”


“You should play him some techno. Sven! Take me to Disco! I lovez your locks!


“Okay!”


“Seriously though, you’re bed smells like a dubbed version of Debbie Does Dallas...”


“...”


“Except Debbie’s a swedish dude with twelve pound balls and a mustache on his cock.”


“Fuck it, I’m drinking.”


“Sweet, make it two. I’m going to hop in the shower.”


A quick shower to soap the scum off my sack, and we were just about ready to head back out a few minutes later. Just about... The bad news, was that exhaustion had begun to set in heavily, cramping around joints and nerves. The good news, was that we had enough booze to force forgetting what joints and nerves were even for, or if we should even care. Three hours and an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s later, our brains and bodies were well lubed in libations. We stumbled out of the Hostile Hostel (a term for it that would later come in handy), and marched forward, with waves of whiskey washing against the insides of our guts and a determination on par with retard-strength. We’ll soon learn something important about said retard-strength. The sun was just beginning to set.


We made it about nine blocks before we staggered into a hotel for a bite and a beer. My body gunned for the table next to the massive support beam. My mind, running a step and a half behind, would later process that it would be something to lean against while I sat. We picked the first things to catch our eyes on the menu, and were almost immediately introduced to ten dollar burgers that couldn’t have come sooner than me, that one awful, awful time in Vegas... That my friends, however, is another story for another time.


Now, the beauty of dropping a three pound gut-bomb of burger and fries into my system after a half bottle of whiskey, is that I’m less prone to drinking more and putting myself in an objectionable, yet familiar situation, in a strange country. The drawback comes in concocting a Hypnos Elixir that seemed to do me just as well as downing an entire bottle of NyQuil, Greg Frank style, circa 2002, would. Crash.


I’m fried...


“I think this whiskey has me heavy.”


“Huh?”


It was an eyes-glazed, mind-dazed “huh?” that set to question not only the statement that preceded it, but also the entire situation that surrounded us. Delirium had taken a seat beside us. Both of our heads began to hang and sway about our necks. My eyelids were heavy shudders, sliding slowly over globs of glue. I started to see shit. Like those crows from Disney’s Dumbo sitting at the table next to us; cigars and all. You know, the ones saturated with that signature Disney racism, far too adorable for children to dissect? They didn’t want to be bothered.


What the fuck?


I suppose retard-strength isn’t renowned for its longevity. Name one job Corky had after Life Goes On. Awww... Bad taste right? Fuck that noise, he’s the one that got greedy with the chromosomes. I kid...


We finished our meals, and made it about halfway around the city once more. Dragging our feet along sidewalks soaked in Warhol-esque arrangements of neon, via business window lights, they still felt as if the were dragging through the remains of the Titanic at this point. I chuckled at that thought. My head on the other hand, was still halfway to Sirius. Elated. Kevin threw on his MP3 player and blasted “Eye of The Tiger” for the majority of the way back, sporadically fist pumping like an epileptic at a disco. I joined in for a verse or two; my eyes still swimming through a sea of city lights. The colossal, electric Coke sign hanging just ahead at the King’s Cross entrance intersection, beckoned and mesmerized. We stopped a block short of the rabbit hole and turned in towards our hostel.


Up the stairs.


Brush the teeth.


Try to sleep.


Better luck next time. Fuck you, Hypnos... I open my notebook and begin to write. It feels good to stare at that page. This is what I wanted. So much to say. So much I want to do. Where the fuck do I start?



I have become the most contented zombie alive...

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