sleep

i am blurry eyed. i didn't sleep. it's all i could do to focus on the plughole when cleaning my teeth this morning, before commencing a day of being able beyond my means. i don't know what kept me awake. i had insomnia for years, but haven't suffered for a while until last night. it was a fizzing night of restlessness that had me imagining ghosts and nonsense in the sounds outside my window. not fearful ghosts you understand - just history of intent - the echos of the men who carved this hill, who cut the road that leads up to this place. the stars were incredible last night. new zealand has sweet stella activity. i watched a satellite for a while - it moved like beauty itself across the southern hemisphere. someone will be able to watch football now - someone will make a phone call, someone will be able to gather intelligence before a bombing raid. today i am not able. i am not focused. i am going from one thing to the next, nicking my fingers and burning my tongue. it's time to relax or make tea.

pass

i missed walking on pavements in america. they use cars more and don't pace the streets, as much as folk do in other countries. imagine you're walking along a pavement and someone, a stranger is coming toward you, you stride left to avoid a collision, but they head the same way. you both hesitate and step to the opposite side, simultaneously. then back, and sometimes back again, as if you're trying to waltz your way around one another. you smile at one another and you've made a connection. those are the moments in life that gently thrill. i missed that; the awkwardly innocent human exchanges.

truth

the dream was on a loop. every night i walked beside an elephant, a small round indian elephant. through jungles or on dirt tracks, we paced together as friends. during the days the dream continued to play and it seemed that i would see elephants everywhere. in carvings, on signs, in writings or in the clouds; elephants. i wondered what it meant. i asked a friend who informed me that the elephant was simply my truth. 'very powerful answer' i thought. 'but it's an answer that means nothing' i went to the zoo and sketched the elephants, everything about them. the details of their long eyelashes, the creases behind their knees, the wire wool of their tails. for six weeks this owned me. then the dreams stopped, but still i wonder; what did the elephants mean?

place

sometimes you can find yourself in exactly the right place at the right time and be utterly aware of your reality, being crisp and definite and good. more often we forget the moment and place that we inhabit. we get caught up in projections, perceptions and worrying about the probabilities of life. we work out percentages, consider risks and invent worries to hinder progress. as soon as we let all of that stuff go, loosen the grip on what we had planned, we can actually start to live. you soon realise that you're not lost; you're simply in a place that you hadn't planned on. usually when you're there, in that place, at that time, is when the universe starts to grin all about you. i, myself, am lost pretty much every day.

cash

a meat packer in southern california lost both an arm and a leg in a weird industrial accident. doctors were able to save the limbs, but at a cost. without sufficient medical insurance the man's family resorted to extreme measures. they donated kidneys and lungs for transplant, and with the cash they raised, helped the man back to health. a year later, almost fully recovered, the man would discover that he had won the lottery. he hid the money from his family and built a subterranean house in the desert near santa fe, where he would live with a 16 year old girl who looked like frida kahlo with a glass eye.

peace

i own a pair of german army para-boots. i would once wear nothing else on my feet but these boots. for a period of six years i would buy a new pair every year and wear them every day. saying goodbye to the old pair like a friend, whilst actually storing them all beneath my bed 'just in case'. shine them up and they hold the deepest black polish and they become smart enough to get into any fine establishment you wish. scuff them up you can frequent any back street bar. cover them in wax and you can walk through water with no fear. i love a universe that homes so many pacifists and peace activists clothing themselves in army surplus. (i am a pacifist but very rarely active) i see them though, on tv and on the occaisonal march i've joined, naively thinking enough people can stop an illegal, oily invasion. activists wrapped in warm camo-gear and sensible boots. sometimes i think the revolutionaries of the world just dress better than those of us sitting at home watching tv or quietly reading.

roads

on the same stretch of road that james dean died on (many years before) i saw a women roll her car, tail over nose. she was in an suv. a table fell from a truck in front of her car, landed upright on the road as she approached. i'd heard that suv's were prone to rolling, but i hadn't ever expected to see high-speed, slow-mo proof anywhere but on tv. time slowed down as i saw her face flipping and rolling towards me in the oncoming traffic. sometimes, when i close my eyes at night i can still see this happening. she came to a dusty rest in the ditch at the side of the road, and climbed out, relatively unscathed. i would have hated it if she was scathed. further up the road i bought a bag of salted nuts from a mexican who spoke no english. he seemed exhausted, and a little eager to sell more nuts than i was prepared to buy. there's only so many nuts you can eat. later in the day i would take a wrong turn and pass fields of cattle, black as ash, in sun bleached yellow grass. i wrote to a friend 'if there was a god in this landscape of peasants, drama and colour, it would be van gogh.' later that night, eating bean tacos in a hotel bar i saw a man with only one ear. he was drunk on magaritas.

mist

a place called klamath. up in the northwest where the redwoods make everything quiet. on a misty day i walked on a grey beach, with white sands and silver water. in the mist was a sweat lodge made entirely with wood, right down to the fixtures. only a row of nails, hammered into the crossbeam were metal; a nod to modernity. i wondered what would hang from those nails, perhaps fish to be smoked. later, in a tiny town of one store, one bar and one diner, i ate breakfast and asked a 12 year old waitress about bears. 'sure' she said. 'hang 'round that river long enough, you're gonna see a whole bunch of stuff.' she was a ninety year old woman trapped in that little girl. i tipped heavily and left, forgetting, and losing forever a favourite hat on the seat by the window of that diner. if you're ever there, tell them it's yours and that you're there to claim it. i don't mind.

age

to furnish my new zealand life with things i went to a house clearance sale. an old man had died, leaving the neighbourhood to rifle through his treasures and junk. i discovered an old valve radio in a terrible state, hidden beneath a pile of fishing rods. i couldn't wait to get the thing home and begin repairs. on a working radio i heard the news. in court that day chaos reigned. an 89 year old man was facing stalking charges for harrassing, (with love letters and unwanted remarks) a 74 year old lady, residing in the same retirement home. proceedings ground to a hault when no one could hear what was going on. the judge ordered a break in proceedings until such time that all parties had been fitted with hearing aids.

smile

somehow i was upgraded. i was leaving india and smiled at the right person at check-in. sitting in first-class ruining the taste of apple juice with a mouthful of free toffee i became aware of a commotion. across the aisle and toward the back of the cabin a young child was kicking and stamping at the floor. somehow a cockroach had survived the sweet smelling kill-all spray. it was one of those big sorts, with yellowish wings that made a clicking sound as it attempted flight. the child was screaming that the bug had bitten her. the rest of us did what crowds always do. we looked at each other knowingly. that's not the kind of bug that bites. we rolled our eyes. true, that bug is ugly, but that kid just wants to make noise. no one got bitten, but still they had to scream. pretty soon the pilot came from the flight deck, he swooped in as if he were the only adult aboard. i don't know what happened to the bug, it must have been murdered. for 10 hours that little kid talked about her bite.

art

.....the end would come when the artists failed to stop their strokes inside the frame. when the poets scribbled beyond the papers of their tiny rooms. the world would not end through an act of colossal destruction, but through an act of endless, uncontrolled creation

high

i lived in the himalayas. meditating with tibetan lamas in ladakh. part of my job was to tidy the temple and maintain stinking oil-burning lamps. even the hindus would come and ask for lamps to be lit for buddha. one day i was blinded after meditation. two hours of sitting to lift my gaze to a vision of margot tenenbaum. personification of sarcasm. the wind chimes were made from soda bottles left by travellers, they screwed with the silence of the place, whilst lizards ate one another beneath the prayer flags. of all the things i've learned in life, it was here that water preservation, good tea and self forgiveness really occurred for the first time. one night before i arrived in the mountains, when back in england i had a dream of a buddha statue with a broken nose, hidden in the shadow of the monastery. six weeks later when i arrived i saw that statue for real, collapsing, forgotten, into an irrigation ditch. jung would call it synchronicity.

fun

back in south carolina the majority of people spend their time fearful. fearful of war and terrorism, fearful of death and disease, fearful of their house foreclosing or even a god who may not go bankrupt but may lose interest. there is very little in the religion of the south that had anything to do with reflection, calm and abiding. the devil stalks the flea markets selling crystal meth, rolling blunts out back between the piles of garbage. a one armed man played guitar, strumming country laments with his naked foot. wonderful dark and inky songs about murder and jesus. they sell rifles, replica weapons and bibles from the same tables. i lived with these people and kept a diary, some of the pages i ate, through fear of them discovering how i felt.

sport

barcelona in the rain. i added to the graffiti of the universe by growing a beard. spain is weird about terrorists. they hurry them through the cities in invisible white vans. i like the buildings of catalunya, the pock marked shrapnel stains of civil war. the spray can kids sulked around underpasses and back alleys where once the jews traded and medical wonders were the reserve of monastic gents, drunk on wine and fried eggs. where history is covered in history and sediments of many generations settle, i am always happiest. the gothic quarter held the smell of nine hundred years of damp. pickpockets and graffiti kids made me smile, smiling as they noticed me watching them. i watched lionel messi at camp nou. it almost made me want to be catholic.

storm

new zealand. i live here now. storm debris and death on a beach where just previously i had watched a sharks fin out in the surf. standing on the beach i traced it's progress, filled with a breed of dishevelled awe. too tired and pragmatic to be entirely excited at my first wild siting.

that evening i made tea with cardoman pods and considered the southern cross. around my ankles were the burning bites of ants, excited by the electricty in the sky. i read that in iraq people are appalled by wheelchair-bound suicide bombers. why complain at the gathering momentum of equal opportunities? do those folk restricted to wheelchairs need their own 'special conflicts' perhaps running in tandem, every four years with the 'special olympics'

rust

at the end of a track in south carolina. there was a snake following beside me as i walked. snakes listen to the world through the earth. they respond to vibrations they feel coming up through their bellies. usually a snake would have been scared of me and made it's way back into the long grass. in this instance i think the snake was deaf, or disinterested, or simply knew i posed no threat. perhaps it was charmed by the rythmn of my walking, scuffing through the world with 'the first person to see an elephant' playing on my mp3 contraption.

begin

this was a year ago. a newspaper blew across the parking lot. it missed the puddles and i picked it up, as it it had a life of it's own and needed saving. there was a story about a chimpanzee in las vegas. it had escaped the cage in which it was meant to live between magic shows. somehow the chimp had laid it's hands on a gun, a small feminine pistol from the bag of a showgirl's changing room. it swung from the window and made it's way to the rooftop swimming pool. for three hours the chimpanzee took pot shots at the universe. he emptied the chamber of the gun into the sky. a stray bullet lodged itself in the hip bone of an aged nun, down in the street. to end the 'stand off' the chimpanzee was sedated with a tranquiliser dart and later visited the nun in the downtown catholic hospital.