Float

I open the door to my balcony
and the bright cold air
gathers prickles and bumps
to my skin
I grin
and my chin lifts
as the balloon people
float by.

I think;

You know what..
even if I'm invisible to them
solitary...
there is joy
in this moment.

The day starts.

Everyone moves on.

 

Sleep.

We always talk
in my dreams
you and I
always go over
old ground
the how and
the why
it's like
it can only be done
at night
when Time's
not around
but in the dreams
it still matters
I don't know what
that means
it seems odd it seems strange
because you are so gay
as you talk
to me
too
I hear your voice
inside me
electric alive
and we are fine
we are fine
just two people
passing time
and
chatting with candour
about the things
that led
to our death.

Moon Things

 

Up in the sky,
the moon climbs higher
to get a better view.
And as I keep walking
down
the
street, I smile
at the thought
of what it can see.
The vast forever.
Step and repeat.
Patterns in you,
me,
the trees

and

everything

 in

between.

45. Witches

The first thing I am aware of 
is not Light, but Sound
slow and determined
building louder and louder until 
unable to bear its weight I open my eyes and scream.

And that's when I taste the dirt
that's when I wake choking
buried in the earth, remembering nothing
of who or where I am.

I am in a forest
I am cold
I am naked
I am lost

and
that's when The Terror begins.

********

She spots him as she drives the highway. The location changes slightly every time, but his eyes do not, they are wide, white and wild with terror. He is running through the trees, naked and mad and ignorant. Here she always feels a slight compassion. But not enough to break the cycle, just enough to convince herself She is Good, and He the Other. She slows as his route converges and slips into character. He begs for help, he is lost, he can't remember, he sobs and shivers and she opens the door of her car and he jumps in and sits weak and pathetic in the back seat and holds his arms around himself and she tells him, sorry, I have no blanket, no jacket and he always breaks here, always breaks and she always watches him cry in the mirror as she picks up speed and heads into town.

It's twenty miles to Town, she tells him. We'll get you sorted out. We'll get to the bottom of this. You just need some rest.

He is grateful here, there is never any danger from Him.

She often wonders how he ever managed to be dangerous.

Still, she drives fast to Town.

It's always better in Town.

Ladyb

 Saskia died.

A month ago. I didn't know. 

Last night here in Auckland, after work, I turned it on a little.

The giant moon was low, the work was hard, and Old Me peered over the edges of exhaustion and I drank sake and ate sushi and I let myself Howl a Little and I didn't understand why. It was out of character these days, but I could feel the demon again and I let him have just a tiny, gasping breath.

Back in the hotel I couldn't sleep.

Reading about the world, Trawling, 3am Eternal. 

When I randomly came across her Obituary in The Age.

Saskia died.

It didn't say how. 

So much of this blog was hers, of her, for her, so many years ago. 

God it was Huge. 

That pain, that eclipse.

And now...now I don't know. 

She can't have died well and that makes me sad.

I don't know if she had any friends left and that makes me sad.

There was a time when she was everything and anything and my stomach would flip and my heart would crack.

There was a time when we would truly, truly be awful to each other.

There was a time when I had to let her go.

Another time I have to let her go.

I don't know, 

yet, 

if this will stay in the box,

but I imagine it will

 

Digest.

Everything comes in waves.

I thought maybe I could write about it.

The fear, the depths, the tears, the joy.

Maybe one day I'll be able to express that to you.

For now, I'll just keep learning how to surf this life.

And maybe inspire you to do the same. 

MB xo

 

 

 

 

Central bound.

 Here it is. 

The familiar unknown.

Blank page.

Plane ticket and

*sharpens pencil* 

empty mind.

Soundtrack: Parsley Sound / Ease Yourself & Glide

Strange to be carrying a surfboard though.

Two even.

Mountain - For John

The best was when the fire was outside. 

Everyone sat wrapped in thick jumpers staring at the flames with dirty cigarette fingers and cold beers nestled between the thighs.

We'd get a good one burning and then what we'd do is throw copper wire and piping on it.

And the old metal would burn all sorts of colours.

Orange sunsets and bruised purples and the green was life in that fire, and the fire was life in us, and we would sit all night under the stars just dreaming alone together and sometimes...

 

well sometimes 

 

I'm afraid of the darkness and forever that lives in the night, but up there on that mountain, up there the whole damn sky was a diamond and I was never afraid, not once.

Dreaming

Life's just dreaming
faded colours
on an empty wall
makes no sense at all

all those pictures
hanging like dead men
one day they'll fall
no memory at all

down in the old bar
Time stands still by
his lover's heart
and her eyes are dark

lights are feelings
burning questions
though i can't recall
no answers at all

The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

My family
we
built this place
together, you know
been here since
before the Great
War, my Grandfather's
Father cleared these
paddocks, calloused
hands and an axe
that's all it bloody
took, honest work
and a place
t' drink
at the end
of the day
and look at it now
good people punished
an Act of God
you say
well he better
bloody stand back
the mongrel
'fore I wave my fist
and shout
ya
took my two brothers
in Normandy
my son in Vietnam
and three
innocent grand children
tiny kids you bastard
2, 4 and 7
here
afraid and burnin'
alive

and

got halfway
down the track when
I realised I'd forgotten
the bloody dog
had to go back
didn't I
anyway
she was there
under the porch
ran straight to me
but we both knew
it was too late
the sky was thick
and the heat, mate
so
I sprayed her with a hose
and told her
get under, dog
under
and she did
with a look
as I climbed
up the roof
hose in hand
to spray the serpent
The Devil himself
in the eye
and
screamin'
piss off, ya bastard
piss off, would ya
and wouldn't you know it
the prick
heard me
stopped at the fence
turned and
ran a yellow
backed coward

and
gone, all gone

and here and there
the souls of the dead
live in the eyes of the living
the wing of the moth
crumbling with a tender
touch

and
maybe a spark
will jump the lines
in the unified heart
of a sun blistered
country
take my hand, brother
we will stand together
and I will
listen as

she was my
everything
you know
fifty five years
t'morra
would've been
since
that night
at the dance
red haired just like...
and a temperament to match
I tell ya
I just knew
first time she
smiled
I coulda sworn
me heart
broke
then and there
and the air was
like stardust
sprinkled silver
with
real magic
my Love
a true blue sheila
through it all
and now
she's
and he's
and it's
this whole damn place
every memory
lost
in the ashes
buried
somewhere under this
rubble
and if I can just find
one, mate
just
one bloody piece
of yesterday
to grip tight
in these wrinkled
and useless
hands
then who knows
I might cry
a river
to douse
forever
this damned
Hell.

Jodi-Pops.

Today I say goodbye to my sister.

I say goodbye to my sister whose sadness was a weight, whose sorrow was an ocean and whose tenuous grip on life was a broken hand clinging to the hard ships which had carried her so far but were destined to never reach the promised land her heart had set to find all those years ago. I say goodbye to my sister who could no longer carry the heartache, violence and pain which had plagued her one true desperate search, the search for a Love through which to transcend herself and find peace.

This sister passed two weeks ago in a final act of stubborn defiance, a lonely raging against all that cursed this beautiful but fragile journey that she called Life.

To this sister I say I love you and goodbye, beautiful. Goodbye my broken but beloved Jodi-Pops.

Today I welcome, greet and happily introduce to you all to the incredible, powerful and inspiring sister of my memory and heart. The sister that I knew in her True Form. For my sister was not defined by the often difficult circumstances of her life. The sister I knew lived, laughed and loved despite of them. She danced in open spite of them.

So I will not stand here and openly examine what brought her heart to an end but instead share with you what end her heart brought to us. I will share with you the meaning that my sister's heart meant to me.

Determination, strength, humour, loyalty, kindness, generosity and love.

Jodi was determined, stubborn and strong. She was an Atlas, an ox, an elephant. She never forgot but would always forgive. When I was thirteen years old a very tall, very strong, very blonde man held my tiny five foot two mother against a wall and punched her repeatedly. I stood there in shock. Jodi did not. Jodi was seventeen years old and leaped into the fray without a single thought for her well being. Her only instinct was to protect those she loved. I watched her punch a grown man in the face to protect her mother. And the shock of her doing that made everything and everyone stop. The grown ups walked away and went to separate bedrooms. I stood open mouthed in the hallway until Jodi said, let's go downstairs and steal some wine, matty, you look like you need some. I did. We did.

Jodi fought her entire life.

In the late eighties, early nineties, the Australian Navy picked a fight with Jodi over the fact that she loved women. They made her life so difficult and did things to her so terrible that even now as I recite her life for you to understand, I still will not share the things I know they did to her.

For the simple crime of loving women, The Navy made life so difficult for Jodi that she was left with little recourse than to fight back. In a counter strike worthy of a master politician Jodi appeared out of the blue as a double page spread in the centre of Who Magazine. Her big, beautiful face on the paper with the words "gays in the military" splashed across it and her bleeding heart splashed wide open in the article that ran beside it. The Australian Navy had picked a fight with my sister and stubborn and proud of who she was she would not lie down and disappear. Her instinct was to protect herself, to fight for her rights and the women she loved. But to do so openly. To call the world to her aid.

What possible crime had she committed, she would cry. What right does any organisation have to tell a single, free soul who they can or cannot love. Jodi was right, they were wrong and she knew it. I learned a lot from my sister back then. I learned the value of fighting for what you believed in, no matter the cost. Not long after, Jodi was dishonourably discharged. The fight was over and to everyone but Jodi the Navy had won.

24 years later Jodi received a substantial payout and apology from the Navy. Never in those 24 years did Jodi stray from her conviction. I love her for that. I love her for knowing what was right and not letting go, no matter what the world did to her.

Jodi was silly, fun, hilarious, unabashed and unashamed. Jodi was a bumbling, trembling, clumsy goofball. Jodi could be so dumb that she would forget she was so perceptive and intelligent. But Jodi's intelligence was not mathematical or analytical. Jodi's intelligence and smarts were born of a simple, clear vision of the world. She saw clearly what this world has the capacity to be and how it has lost its way. Jodi didn't believe in things, she knew things.

She saw the deep and simple truth that the world needs laughter, it needs to dance, it needs to feel joy, to be playful and childlike. The world needs to be pushed, to be embarrassed out of its self infatuation into humility.

This world that "powerful men" have created needs to be shown for the self-important, self-destructive bullshit it really is. But this world fights against people like Jodi who live outside its confines, it actively seeks to destroy them, to cut the non-conforming cells out of the body and force compliance upon them.

Tonight in celebration I see Jodi clear as day, lighting one last cigarette, drinking one last can and staring the grey, lifeless world in the eyes as it came for her that one last time. Tonight I see Jodi saying, if I am going to die, I will die in my own way. This world will not kill me. I will kill me.

Fuck yeah.

Jodi was kindness and generosity.

She lived and taught the understanding that at the moment of death a person should measure their life not by how much they have accumulated, but by how much they have given.

Jodi was the first to ask when she needed help, whether it was money, a place to stay or simply a hug. But if Jodi ever saw someone in need, she would give everything, anything she owned to help that person. Like a pauper in desperate need of change, Jodi would gladly hand the world around her the last of her coins.

The religions of the world pretend to worship people like that

But more than any other quality, Jodi was Love. Being the recipient of this love for 42 years I can describe its every detail, its incredible spirit, its all powerful, all consuming warmth. Jodi had a star burning in her heart so mighty she was unable to control it. Its force led her to adopt stray dogs by the dozen, big ones, little ones, ones with no teeth as well as four stray cats, two snakes, stray plants, stray friends, stray lovers, other people's families, other people's friends, other people's lovers. Nothing could escape the light of Jodi's love once it had proved its worth to her. And like a star, Jodi gave and gave, selflessly bringing light to every corner of her life, some so dark no one but Jodi could or would love them. Because of this, some people thought Jodi was a mess.

But I saw her true form. Jodi was a saint. An angel whose capacity for loving those around her could not be sustained by her physical form. She ached for someone to love her in this same way. When I told her I did she would say, no…I need more than that...and she would leave my house and follow her blazing heart down some other pathway, some other alley, into some other dark corner of the world where people would receive her love with selfish gratitude whether they were able to return it or not.

This is the Jodi that lives on today. The bright burning star of Love. This is the sister that I introduce to you today and who stands beside me now, and will forever live inside me and inspire me to be a greater, more giving person. This is the Jodi that is here with us now and who feels nothing but giddy love, joy and sparkly goofy gratitude that we are today able to come together like this and finally appreciate her for who she was.

This is my best friend, my protector, my sister, my parent and my child. And I am grateful to have known a Jodi that some of you have met, and some of you have misunderstood but all of you have loved. And I am grateful that in the 42 years I shared with Jodi, I found many opportunities to say to her the things I say to you today. I love you, Pops, Poopy Poo, Bum Fluff. I love you.

Always have, always will.

Routine.

You wake, sit up
and stare
there are sounds
a bird, a different bird
then cars, the footsteps
of people going to work,
a train
all that nothing
continuing and you think
my sister hanged herself
and nothing happens
you don't cry or feel
you just sit in your bed
with open eyes
thinking that the tide must be out
and you know it'll return
maybe later in the day
maybe lunchtime when you're about
but for now
there is a lady beside you
and a cat at your feet
and they both breathe slow and sleep
so you edge out
pad barefoot
around
this room that room
bathroom
where you stare at yourself
and say it again
into your own eyes
but nothing comes
so you just
do
what
comes
next.

Again and again.

Old age / bad hips

You assholes, he screams,
you broke writing, you broke it
you took what we gave you and you fucking broke it
 I mean you fucking interview each other
nodding and bobbing your
proud empty sneer
as though that's a fucking piece
your little articles stuck on a wall
like semen stains in a public lavatory,
all beard, no balls, jerking off in a public john…

 I see a tattooed girl touch her
striped and lumbering captain
as he feigns indignation
ready to strike

 but he doesn't

none of them do.

Visions.

I've been noticing,
as I walk,
more and more people just
standing and staring.

And I turn to see what
it is
that catches their attention
but there is nothing there.

The first time this happened
I giggled
at the thought
of the person
drifting off
and after another time
I began to think
perhaps a sadness
larger than all of us
had began to creep in
so much so
that one by one
we were all just
stopping
dead
in our track
to stare in idle patience
waiting for the tired
to come in.

But today
when I passed yet another
I perceived an almost imperceptible
smile
on the face of the one who stood
and I realised that they were
seeing something beyond
all this nothing
a something
a further something.

These days
I walk to the coffee shop
every day
hoping to come
to a sudden halt.

Night.

We sit atop the truck and talk but we don't talk much. Deer ghost just far enough away as to not wake Moose, the dog, who lies beside the front wheel. His ears twitch in semi-sleep. The moon is in hiding, giving light to all those worlds that exist behind it. Billions of lights amongst that red mist which spears the spine of the sky, your side, my side, past and present, now and forever.

We pass the cigarette back and forth.

So many things disappear as smoke.

I have learned that.

Earth.

There is dust in the air as we walk. Dust which kicks and eddies up off the chalk dry field and settles on your skin, your hair, your teeth. There's been no rain for almost ten years now. None to speak of anyhow. There is dust in  his voice as he speaks, saying -

My father grabs me by the arm as he lay in the bed. And he was still real strong, though he was pushing ninety. I was crying though I couldn't help it. Crying even when my wife came back in the room and daddy was screaming at me, screaming - you got to do this son, you got to do what I tell ya, bring me that gun, bring me that gun - and was all I could do to tell my daddy, no, I can't do it. I can't do it. And I had to walk out that room and have all them doctors and what not see me cry with my woman wiping my face and my daddy screaming for me to bring his gun...

The dog comes close. We stop walking and everything is still.

...he died next day though it wasn't of his own hand like he want to. And I swear that's the last time I cry and I won't never cry again.

I turn to look but he stares straight ahead.

I see a long, hard desert in his eyes and I know his words to be true.

4.

We catch a bus from the airport, back 600 years into the Old Town, where all the beauties are collected together in a square dedicated to Freedom. 

Beauty of face, beauty of architecture, beauty of heart and beauty of soul. I stroll in this place and I laugh and wave to the family that dust the streets with memories. 

Tallin, Estonia is another home. These friends another family. We drink beer. The sun does not sink below the horizon. I stand up high on a cliff face with a thousand year old stone fence as guardian, and stare out over the Baltic Sea towards what is still to come, but it is no surprise that here I am content. And yet, what true journey man is ever blessed with bliss, settled upon the word content. I say goodbye in the square, my friends close their eyes when I speak of where I am going. They thank me, I thank them.

In the morning, Sam and I walk slow toward the dock, a languid parting with this beautiful, aged city. We travel over the sea, in a box built of lights, shopping, queues and ovine chatter which crescendos down the corridors of the ferry as a Momentus tide, as though the very beigeness of all aboard, is enough to keep us afloat upon these cobalt plains.

And initially, this is my impression of Helsinki. Land in mass of writhing trolleys, ages of elbows which muscle and need, sun baked fanaticism to be one in front and potato people baking in a glass oven on a snail pace highway into the city centre - I am thrown, this chapter all grey, steaming and jagged stares though just as all is dizzy and fit we find our tradition, the first beer in a new city, and we drink to leaving this place with a different impression than This we have found upon arrival.

There must be something here.

Our text arrives.
We trolley off.

 A host with most gracious handshake and grin, my first Fin, who laughs at the pressure and yet can give stories out like candy cane, as my ears act like children, greedily gobbling them up and yet always hungry for more. And then, as he talks, he moulds this city around us. I the observer, desperate to see how he does this, am too lost in the beauty he creates to follow his words, his hands, but in the course of a few minutes walking, he has turned these brackish steel streets into a forest fantasy the equal of which I have barely seen. This land a land beyond a billion lands, over the reaches and into The Heavens we have travelled to sit beside and admire this mirror of the gods, the surface broken only by the dance of a single white swan and the sky seduced by the face of The Sun herself to turning a roguish pink as the fir trees release their evening aroma and all the animals look at me with knowing Narnian eyes. 

Here in the city - this great, wild surprise.

2.

How is this possible? I recall the tram to work, the stone faced hypnosis of the tired mass, the dreaming. Or do I? Perhaps I no longer recall these things. Here in my kitchen in Oslo. I will make coffee now. And eat caramelised cheese on dark Norwegian bread. Outside the rare cloud shifts position as if to stretch itself after an afternoon nap. The unceasing sun is not weary of its tireless shift. At 3am he will barely disappear, shading the night in pink, iced with scattered stars. Soft noises rise from the street. A truck passes apologetically. Everything is illuminated by the magic of the journey. It is Thursday afternoon, 3pm, and I am free to nothing. Though I will play guitar.

Days ago, Monday Morning, I woke on the grass, breathing the fragrant air of Dresden, East Germany. I was surrounded by friends. Our candles had burned themselves as we slept. The rug was as grassy as my hair. We all laughed. Monday Morning. Collecting our things we danced down the street to where was parked a green and white van. We climbed in. Once a police van it was now a haven. We rolled a joint. Someone filmed us. Guitar, violin, singing, the magic of the night here in the morning. We could barely say a word to each other. So we played and played and played. Monday Morning. At lunchtime we giggled home. Coffee. More music. The violinist and I devoted friends for life, such was the joy we found in the music. I will find her and she will play on the record. Here in Dresden.

Tears when we leave. Tears and fists over hearts and looks in our eyes and a jasmine memory sure to last. The Mayor of Neustadt insists we share a final coffee with him in his rooftop apartment and I listen to his histories as I hold dear the warm cup and look at the rooftops below. Such magic here. Deserted buildings garnished with graffiti and held together by the rapturous embrace of ivy vines, desperate to drag their new love into the ground, down, down, down, to cement the passing of time. We say goodbye. Goodbye. I stare quietly out the window as we drive. The Swiss girl next to me tells stories of lakes and parties and friends and plans and pasts and I do not tire of listening though I do so passively and let the road hypnosis take me.

Home base, Berlin. One night. Another wanderer, another wayward breed to sit beside and share stories. Another member of this Gypsy Family. How very true it is. We smile. Ten seconds and we are brothers. That's the feeling of The Road. My Road. I do not pretend to own any other than my own.

Sun, fast, snap, wake, coffee, croissant, airport. Over the Baltic and into Oslo. My other brother, the mentor, meets us at the train station. And we cook and laugh, three souls at the sublime serendipity of it all. A beer. Trails and strings that reach around the world and tie us all together, him to her to me to a friend to a city to a moment and back again. The world contracts around us and we drink whiskey to celebrate. There are shows to play here before we head further north. Deeper in. Estonia, Finland, Sweden...and beyond. A life now. A true, traveller's life. A dream come true.

And Elizabeth is coming. To Berlin. In three weeks.

I cannot wait to share this freedom.

1.

There's so much room to breathe here in Berlin. I didn't expect that. It's like Paris, but without the weight and peacoque expectation of beauty. There's an emptiness which exists as a perfect palette upon which to create. The streets are quiet. People move almost as ghosts, as though to draw attention would be to break the spell. I roll a cigarette and stand on the balcony and I can see beautiful apartment buildings hunched beside post-war brutalist blocks and everything just fits. I can hear birds singing at dusk.

This is my life now. I will never turn back. I have a background in normality. As normal as all that ever was. Tomorrow the travelling, the playing, the work, the joy of walking my own path begins. I clean the blood off the guitar, caked and black from last week's goodbye. I make hand made CDs to sell as I go. I stay home, happy to be alone, drinking tea and quiet. I drink the quiet. I can't remember the last time I did that. I sit by myself, happy in a room with tall ceilings and a high lamp, though I am never alone these days. A happy thought synched with the buzzing of my phone. Oh, hello. Not long. I'm on my way. Just got to go through Europe to get there.

Life has sure taken a turn. I have begun to learn the Art of Happiness.

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
Let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water.
See who is in there with you and Celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.

We are the one's we've been waiting for.