Small Black Pocket Journal (2013ish?)

Small Black Pocket Journal (2013ish?)

Sandy Bull – Gavotte II
Rolling Stones – Sing Altogether
Fred Neil – Everybody’s Talkin’
Eire Apparent – Captive and the Sun
The Four Tops – Last train to Clarkesville
Byrds – So You Wanna Be A Rock n Roll Star
The Beach Boys – Sloop John B
Mendelbaum – Since I Met Her
The Easybeats – Fallin’ Off The Edge of the World
Pink Floyd – Let there be Light
Wailing Wall – Hot Summer’s Night
Ultimate Spinach – What You’re Thinking Of
Can – Outside Your Door
The Common People – Take From You
David Bowie – Space Oddity
Spirit – Why Can’t I Be Free
David Axelrod & Cannonball Adderly
Comus – Bitter
CCR – I Put A Spell On You
Spirit – Street Worm
Ill Wind – It’s Your Life
The Animals – We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
The Troggs – Wild Thing
The Beatles – I Want You
Tim Buckley – Cafe
Nick Drake – Way to Blue
Vashti Bunyan – Winter is Blue
Sandy Bull – Gavotte II
Tom Waits – Closing Time

NO SLEEP UNTIL DREAMING 

The Angels – Am I ever gonna see your face again

What do you want on the inside?
I’d plant a little lightbulb and come Spring, out would pop a chandelier

I understand your trepidation

What about the game? Fuck the game.

All those people you used to hate.
Well you are one of them now.

“So here we are honey.
Flying somewhere between heaven and earth.
Lost in the stars.” QAFS2ep10

“There is so much infelicity,” said the Poet, “in the world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the comparative happiness of others.”
Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas.
Ignorance is merely privation, by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn and grieve when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude, that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequences of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range...”
“The Europeans,” answered Imlac “are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.”
pg 66 The History of Rasselas

So much lambasting of having to work, the pretence of participating in a career. But when you are faced with the uncertainty of the future of being a working cog, we suffer anxiety. Cower and shiver from freedom.
The lodestone of a fettered life is not so much a burden as a constant presence to be borne.

27/03/2011 9pm
Whithersoever you go, sting of sea breeze, sighing of smouldering sunsets. The tears of us humans contain exactly the same salt of the earth.

27/3/2011 FB: 21:11pm
Be prepared to let go and fade into unsentimental obscurity. All things must pass even spiritual hangovers.

29/03/2011 12:30am
Insomnia returns like ascending up an escalator, completely unaided to its prominence. Well it could have been the ice tea and Jolly Rancher lolly which I consumed. The Jolly Rancher was an odd thing in its reaction. I had consumed some beer and others in a tired state. The small “Hard Candy” lozenge of bizarre bright transparent colour (like a stained-glass window) smashed me like a rush of amphetaminal energy yet it was only the high sugar, corn fructose & colouring which wizzed me out. (I assume) I can’t sleep, my mind is thinking persistently, naggingly about a whole manner of present and future occurences.

“WE ALWAYS REJOICE WHEN WE FORGET,
AND GRIEVE
WHEN WE
LEARN”

“If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveller” by Italo Calvino (recommendation from Daniel Cummings)

Mourn the losses because they’re many
but celebrate the victories because they’re few.

29/03/2011
Very tired. From busy work and insomnia. Waiting for a friend on the corner of Roslyn St & Darlinghurst Rd in the Cross.
Mish mash of leather jackets, unshaven faces, shades and general shadiness. Even the guys in suits look slightly predatory.
Gazing geezers that pluck their nose hairs out with tweezers. Not that much different from me really. Damn my Slavic blood for its propensity to festoon me with annoying hair growth.

Later in the night about 9:30pm
I’m finally home. Walked through the alternately muggy, cloying sections as well as the gusty, fresh sections. Saw the entire spectrum of city life. Starting at St Leonards train station, mazing it through Town Hall then to King’s X. Then walk with friend to Rushcutter’s Bay. Blaze, leave via the wrong bus (I wanted to go to Railway Square, not Hyde Park).
Bus goes to King’s X, Potts Point, Wooloomooloo, St James. I walk through Hyde Park, Castlereagh St, Belmore Park, Pitt St, George St, Broadway, Back Alley, Knox St.
Now i’m here and too exerted from the visual stimuli of the walk, legs hurt a bit too lol.

Excogitation = to invent, to strike out by thinking.

“I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there it could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to live in affluence.
Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest: they support themselves by temporary expedients and every day is lost in contriving for the morrow.”
pg 89, end 1st Volume. History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

There is more to learn from yourself analysing your own poo that there is from analysing yourself in the eyes of others
me, today, 29/03/2011

Chapter XXX
“It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of life, you neglect to live. You wander about a single city, which, however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties, and forget that you are in a country, famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants; a country where the sciences first dawned that illuminate the world.”
Rasselas pg 98

I was wearing of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned away wearing in the evening
Rasselas pg 115

Henry and June – JOURNAL OF LOVE, Anais Nin
“Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists & perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.” pg 4

What do you believe in?
Ease of existence
Absorption of experience
A minimum of scruples
Principles: adherance to the abandonment of scruples
Wanderlust, pioneering, atonement, interludes of music, conflict that builds character. The slim possibility that love might be real.
Art, nature, peace and beauty. Happiness outside of suburbanite confines.
Action and Peace.
Idolatry & Freneticism.

7/4/2011
So many people are attempting to judge thineself voraciously as an arbiter of your faith, as a querolous adjudicator. If I was religious I would proclaim that the judgement passed by a man onto his fellow man is naught but egotistical pre-amblee before the ubiquitous gaze of God. I am secular and ambivalent towards believing in any higher power so i Believe the conceited opinions of man can suck my cock.

Light Bearer
the only thing worse than someone breaking your heart is you breaking your own heart.

11/4/2011 IXINX
It’s not so much the case of searching for that strike of love @ first sight, nor of seeking your soulmate insofar as it is a case of finding that person who contains within them all those beautiful things that remain unseen by all others so far life.

We’ll see each other in the future, down the track. Or we wont see each other at all. We’ll be older and who can predict whether times will be colder. I predict further dissolution of self regardless of any probable outcome, vituperative occurence.

In today’s age, sense of self, or ego is too closely connected to marketing and media to be in tune in its previous sense of the wor.d
Yes, I am a rapidly aging old cunt.

18/4/2011 IXINX

You know what you are
not is what you see reflected in
the mirror back at you.

14/4/2011 – MUMTAZ KADER
‘ a beautiful morning annihilating scumbags: no mercy no forgiveness – given half a chance, they’ll try to fuck their victim’s ego. 47Min ago 9:28 Sydney Timne. Location of Post, Cape Town, South Africa.

15/4/2011
Unexpected anger and fury placated by brutal death metal in the morning to placate me. Works a treat. It’s like a balm to the open wounds of my angst. I need to paint.

The more affluent the child’s ______, the more poor the adult.

When one is of the sought (sort) that provides much less than the typical sorts of ideas, then the expectations of the others have already been conceived by the others typical sorta ideas. IXIN 16/4/2011

The best way to deal with people by and large is not have expectations of them. IXINX 16/4/2011

25/4/2011
Infernal wastrels – denizen of dank, subterranean oubliettes.
Whirling dervish crossed to the danse macabre.

It’s 9pm, I’m sitting at the front of the Broadway Lounge drinking a Bluetongue and waiting for Link & Andy to arrive. I left my now nearly bare apartment to walk over before 9pm, paranoid that they would stop serving food. Place the order for all at 9pm.
Early nights still. Food service ends at 11pm. This time tomorrow I would have been near three hours in QLD, the Gold Coast. I am so over the entire procedure behind the interstate translocation, ____ this fact registers no excitement from me.
Nor trepidation, just the slightest hint of acknowledgment. I’m drinking beer like water. So this is my last night on Broadway. I like the kitsch appeal of naming a busy strip in Sydney after a threate strip in New York City. Yeah man, I’ve lived on Broadway groan
There’s still people dressed up like they’re gonna go out. I guess they are going out if they are dressed up and out, per se.
I’m not going to be hearing tons of car traffic like I am subjected to now, once I move. I am not going to be hearing the pounding, the throb and hum of condensed city environments. My mind cannot fathom in its current state how my mind will react; it’s been so, so long since I’ve been in no noise, pollutionless calm. It’s all relative, it’s all relative.

26th April 2011 – Overhead in the Sky.
I like flying . I like my my little overhead light shining on the item assembly on the folding table. It feels like a stage is set. Cabaret Voltaire competes with the muffled roar of plane engines. The empty 50mL Gordon’s Gin bottle sits on a napkin labelled Air Fare which in my current addled state rang funny in the ineer voice as “affair.”
I have stuffed the credit card receipt into the bottle, rolled up, a message in a bottle. To send back to Sydney?
Strange, I don’t feel like I’m missing anyone there. I’ve always been intrinsically alone when it comes down to it and that works in my aid in moments like these suspended over 600 metres high in the air. Nice.
Gin and tonic will ALWAYS be the balm to my stresses and anxieties in life, gin and tonic needs to be given a female name to accompany the other woman who fortifies me: Mary Jane.

I wonder if you can smoke cigarettes on international flights to countries which are especially fond of smoking. Currently I would like to exhale a cancerous billow of foul smoke after a surreptitious sip of my G & T.

I have no expecatations upon my near future now. I’m not expecting or envisaging or planning anything. This lack of stress placed upon the common man from common tasks from common experience makes me feel like I’m floating. It’s the entire opposite of enervation, it’s so simple and sublime. I don’t want much, I don’t want anything at all. It’s a cheeky glimpse into the precipice of Nirvana. GREAT BAND.

15/8/2011
Aaaaagh don’t want ya fucken’ money, It’s only gonna buy me secondhand cufflinks that catch on my business shirts.

19/10/2011
It’s Divine’s birthday today. Probably the best thing about today.

Still oscillating between utter loathing and despondency with my life in Perth.
Some words; cranky, unsettling, dissillusioning, boring, dull, ugly, perthetic: UNINSPIRING.

Perhaps I’ll get back in touch with my irascible and sardonic side while I’m living here. Because at the moment I’m struggling to find anything worth staying here for. The dullness is so unbelievably uninspiring I just want to wither into a dried stalk of a person and decompose.

So I’m meant to be meeting a dude tonight for a beer. I wholly expect him to pike. Also meant to be having Lauren over for dinner on Friday.
I will be pleasantly surprised if either make the effort.
My friend Anna whose brother I knew from Sydney has pretty much been my saviour here. Reliable, cranky and makes the effort to stay in touch. And would you believe I’ve known her the least amount of time out of all my old friends in Perth.

Discarded single pearls broken from the string, littering the public park with no insight to bring.
Scraggly emo fashion and pointless meandering. People and places not changing for the better slowly de-evolving, the interesting ones leave. Lisa Scaffildi is the City of Perth’s Lord Mayor for another four years. Idea to make Lisa Scaffolding labels & sticking them on scaffolding. Yep that’s about the sum of my creative limits here, lame.

19/4/2012
I am going to commence writing regularly again as over the past few days I have enjoyed trawling through my entries written over east. It helps serve to remind myself that I am perceptive and at times diabolically humorous.
I’ve come to the steadfast conclusion that Perth is not for me.
A previous entry in here dated Oct 2011 still holds true. It is not necessarily a bad place but it is unbelievably dull.
I feel very privileged that my trip to Sydney is bringing so much excitement amongst my friends, they are literally fighting over who I should visit and stay with. The complete opposite of Perth.
I’ve become very jaded with life here. The days are interchangable, no variation, friends that I had are overall an aimless if nice bunch. My current partner Sven epitomises that but I still like him.
Davo hasn’t been responding to my attempts at contact so I’ve not bothered since Easter now. I’m sure his girlfriend is playing a large part in this ostracizing, I felt very abandoned initially but now I couldn’t care less.
I would experience massive mood swings where I would be overcome by a suddent need to burst into tears. I realise this was because each day spent here felt like a waste, a step backward. I knew I wasn’t where I wanted to be and my soul was screaming because of it.
I’m ok now though, mood buoyant with my Sydney holiday coming in 20 days!

20/4/2012
Chilly morning, slept like a baby again, Sven came over for dinner and told me he’s had trouble sleeping. I gave him some panadeinee.

13/5/2013
Update Linked.In profile. Clean up gmails.

3/6/2013
The 2L Brownes Milk expires todaya but it was fine.

It’s “W.A Day” and i’m off to have lunch at Mum’s via the train networks and riding my bike. Went through Karrakatta as usual thinking to myself how peaceful and quaint Karrakatta is. Only saw a few mourners.
I arrive at the train to Perth platform and am immediately approached by a man around my age wearing jeans and a navy blue singlet. He asks me a question and then launches into batshit crazy mode.
I was soo deeply in my own winter morning fuzz that his slurring, revving words washed over me a few times before they sunk in.
He appeared crazed in a sense I hadn’t experienced in myself or others for quite some time. His eyes were a clear dark blue with a red-ringed and shattered look. His face was fixed like a perplexed mask with only a slight flicker of emotion showing the various states of fury, of fervent desperation, accusation and uneasiness.
He was exceptionally handsome, being of French origin as I later found out. He had a very electric ‘live-wire’ intensity that I read not just in his eyes but meandering body language: a ceaseless roaming. Probably methamphetamine.

He had deep old scars on his body which were readily displayed around his wifebeater singlet. One ran down from top of his shoulder to his wrist, was the deepest of all and I could not imagine it being self-inflicted or what sort of surgical operation could do that.
He wanted to fight, he also wanted steak and xanax. The modafinil he tried to sell me wasn’t good enough. There was a wound on his neck, fresh with speck of fresh blood oozing through the crusted old.
The whole encounter between us and other passengers waiting on the train will remain in my mind for quite some time as not just because it was terrifying, it was also beautifully eloquent. A snapshot with what can go so terribly wrong. Immortalised and crystallized.
I felt not just scared but deeply empathetic. Crazed 32 year old went off on a tangent “You probably think you’re better than me, like all cunts do. Thinking some shit,” I shrugged and said in my most empathetically WA Day way “Nah, not at all hey,” to which he judged me to be truthful (thank Lord) and said knowingly “yeah we’re in the same boat,” and tore off to wait upon the platform by himself near the end until the train came.
I believe that he wanted to kill me but a part of him took control and sped his legs away from me. He certainly loved to fight; others, himself. Fight on the inside, fight on the outside.

Tuesday 19th November 2013
Back in Clarkson. Demographic slightly changed (overheard on bus “is ya missus African?” “Nah, she’s British”) but same problems exist.
There are very poor tags on a brickwall on the side of a house about 50m down my street as well as beer bottles and broken glass. There is generally more rubbish and premature signs of suburban decay.
Gardens are non-existant or unkempt. The roads are deathly silent and there is hardly anybody about.
Not quite sure how to feel being back. Quietly bemused but not upset. My worries, observations and media is far more global now than when I moved back to Clarkson in Sep 2011.

I think I still hold some anxiety and guilt over not workinng. I am so heavily conditioned by my education and society to work always, it is going to be a few more weeks before I am settled within myself.
I’ve had bad sleeps the past two nights, my mind races to 2am or later usually. The jaw clenching and sore guts returns too.

17/12/2013
Said at work today to the office administrator that I am happy with what I have and don’t need much more.
Self reflection on Public Transport home: have I missed out on not having all that others have? Marriage, mortgage, car, partner?
I’m not sure; comparing them & I, I can’t decide who is happier. I don’t really want much at all . No Goals!

9/1/2014
After games night last night I was dropped off at Glendalough Train Station by Liz and Tim. As soon as I got out the car I noticed two youngish girls walking around the station with one girl wearing what appeared to be a black nightie on. They were dressed badly and skimpily. Whatever.
I sat at my usual spot far away from others I could smoke without disturbing others. The two girls came and stood near me. It appeared that some mulletted fiend was following them around the train station. He was wearing masseur sandals with socks on. The fiend walked up to us and he was like “why are you running away from me?” They walked off together, the girls obviously not wanting to be near him.

10 minutes later mullet-man walks back to me giving me that look of a meth addict, where they are staring intensely at a spot directly next to you, as if they are unable to look at you.
He was on Meth, completely dialled. Hadn’t slept for a week and started saying how those girls were begging for a hard fuck / rape.
He tried to sell me some mething, I replied i’ve had enough of that rubbish ten years ago only smoked weed.
Mullet man then regaled me with how he can’t smoke weed because he has to take drug tests because he has to be sober to see his child (he lost custody). Meth doesn’t stay as long in the bloodstream as pot. He loves the stuff, had a shitload in his bag, smoked a gram a moment ago and had smoked a quarter of an ounce at the start of the week.
I played it cool and listened to his self-interrupting prattle.
He was going to Como to offload some meth to teenagers. They were all under 18 except for one guy who was 18 and he could buy all the crack for them, whatever that meant.
It occurred to me to dob him in, but my apathy and disdain for this city got the better of me.
At Edgewater Station a kid that looked about 14 got on the train all battered and bruised.
At Clarkson station the dregs hovered aimlessly around the station. It was 10:15pm SKID ROW

3/4/2014
Been a while since I picked up a pen and wrote my thoughts. Drinking red wine again :-)
On the train to work, not even here, Megadeth’s songs soothe me.

2/6/2014
Watched Vivid Sydney 2014, lighting of the Opera House Sails last night online. It was spectacular and made me pained with nostalgia.
I awoke from dreams of being in outer Sydney, St Albans or Wiseman’s Ferry during a large festival. Full of life; of places and people loved but still sorely missed.
At the end Tom was there and I kissed him goodbye like I always wanted to.
“I’ll probably never see you again,” and walked against the direction of the throng around me.
I could hear and see my figure receding and quickly swallowed up by the mass of people from Tom’s point of view.
So wistful, such longing...