I think I’m turning into a sooky-la-la! For the past couple of months, I just haven’t been able to stop crying!
Imagine that! Strong, masculine Donkey, snivelling away in front of the TV; bawling on the train; wailing on the plane; sooking at the movies!
What’s this? Are we talking about the same Donkey who kicked Brad McMahon in the arse all those years ago? Surely not!
Is this the same Donkey who used to sit in the back row of the bus with all the tough kids and bellow intimidations at the young tykes as they huddled in safety behind the driver? It couldn’t be!
Surely not our Donkey, who cuts up mountains of onions every night, with narry a tear!
Not our Donkey; three times, back-to-back title-holder at La Trobe University for being able to squeeze more lemons into his eye than any other!
It couldn’t be our Donkey – he’s as stone-cold and unemotional as Val Kilmer in Top Gun! Donkey just does not cry!
But alas it’s true, I’ve become a sop! It all started a couple of months ago when I was sitting on the couch, watching the Amazing Race Asia. Our contestants were racing through Auckland, and as is customary at the end of each leg of the race, they are welcomed to the country by a representative of the people, usually dolled-up in some form of traditional dress. So it might be a mountie in Canada, a bikini-clad model in Brazil or a Renaissance courtier in Venice.
But of course, this time we were in New Zealand, and the welcoming official was a Maori man in traditional dress, who blew through his conch shell, and said, “Kia’ora! Welcome to New Zealand”. And when he blew that shell, I immediately deteriorated on the couch into a blubbering mess!
A couple of weeks later, I was travelling by train back into Delhi, sitting between two colleagues, and listening to my Zen in order to ward off further Saving the World shop-talk. Restlessly, I browsed through my library for a while, before settling on a mix of music from Samoa and the Solomons, and some occasional offerings from other parts of the Pacific. And for the next hour and a half, there I sat, hunched forward in the foetal position to keep my face shadowed from my colleagues, stricken with tears as it was, sobbing along to Sharzy, Te Vaka and Tihati.
Not long after that, again back on the couch, I was cranking-up the DVD of Remote Area Nurse (RAN), and just as the menu display was coming on-line, so too did the amazing, haunting voices of the Torres Straight Islanders, as they thundered over the “home theatre system” in incredible, four-part harmony – and I wept! And with Mrs Donkey falling into step beside me, I continued to do so for the next two hours as we saw our beloved Pacific – this time portrayed as a part of our own land, with all the breath-taking scenery, familiarly alien sounds and heart-wrenching drama of that remarkable culture.
And then, a week later, while curled up on a plane seat, blanket over my head so that my neighbour wouldn’t get scared and dob me into the Sky Marshalls, I wept as the music from RAN washed over me once again.
What’s going on … what’s happening to me? I’m still yer regular, macho, red-blooded male Donkey, with an eye for a dame and a thirst for a big, cold beer. I love kickin’ the footy, wrestlin’ with me mates and eating a pint of raw chillies if that’s what I’m dared to do.
I’m tough … and I’m strong … and I’m not a girly sook! But something is happening. I’m feeling more and more displaced. I am missing something … missing someone … missing home … missing a home …
Someone … something … somewhere … is calling.
NB: Just watched the last episode of RAN …and was a blubbering idiot by the end!
Something is drawing me back ... I wonder what it could be? Pic: Sally
Back in the 80s, long before North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, or Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were threatening worldwide nuclear destruction; back when another psychopathic madman, Ronald Reagan, was getting on the Russians' tits about everything from trade and arms, to the arms-trade; back when Sting was cranking-up a flagging solo career with soppy, one-sided, social-conscience ballads; and back when Pete Garrett, fresh from the barber-shop, was televising an epileptic fit in front of the US’s giant, white, nuclear golf-ball located slap-bang in the middle of the Australian desert, every young Aussie Donkey worth his radiation-proof suit was shitting himself about an impending nuclear war which was looking like wiping human-kind off the face of the planet.
At the time, the pervading global angst associated with our prophesized shortened lifespan influenced a massive booty of books, movies and TV shows aiming to get us ready for the new big bang. Books like Z for Zachariah, Brother in the Land, Children of the Dust and The Chrysalids were all set in the uncertain days following the near-extinction of the human race. Mad Mel Gibson (before he really did go a bit loopy) brought it all to life for us Australians on the big screen as Max negotiated his way through the post-apocalyptic Outback, and this was followed up by the action comic adventures of Tank Girl.
There were a heap of TV shows as well (although admittedly these were usually the B-grade TV shows from the US that were only screened during the holiday season), such as Other World, and The Highwayman (ouch, that was bad! Even our very own Jacko didn’t help to bring that one back from the poo-pile), but there were some more thoughtful attempts as well, which were usually one-offs, such as the Australian Winners series. Of course, some of the old faithfuls, like Dr Who and Blakes’ 7 contributed their fair share of adventures in the post-nuclear landscape.
One that particularly springs to mind, however (and the actual reason for this rabid spray) was a Manga cartoon which we got to see in Australia in the 80s, and which probably had some awesome Japanese name which would be roughly translated to something like, “Super-Sexy, Funky, Young, Intergalactic Warrior Freedom Fighters Exploring the Galaxy to Save Mankind”, but which our linguistically challenged, 1980s translators decided to call Starblazers*.
The basic plot of Starblazers was that nuclear war had forced small pockets of human survivors to live in underground cities. The surface had become so hot and uninhabitable, and so devoid of life, that the survivors, realising it was time to return to the surface, were forced to go searching the universe for other inhabited worlds on which the remnants of mankind could carve out a new, more eco-friendly existence. So off they went, aboard a massive space-craft that had been converted from a 20th century sea-vessel. Weird, hey? Those crazy Japanese writers!
Anyway, Starblazers was, if I recall, a rather lengthy series, and the action sequences that kids love were liberally punctuated with all the soap-opera and relationships drama that Manga does so well, and I recall one episode when the crew had returned to Earth from their intergalactic exploratory mission empty-handed, and one of the main protagonists had journeyed back to the now abandoned underground cities with his main squeeze, a suitably waif-like, saucer-eyed, blond beauty. Our hero, his back turned from his beautiful, concerned companion, was reviewing flash-backs from his miserable, underground childhood, and was spitting anger from between his gritted teeth as he vowed to do all within his power to ensure his people would never have to live here again, like rats trapped in a cage, with nothing but vast, empty, isolating wastelands beyond.
Following this angst-ie speech, the Manga camera panned away from our pair in suitably dramatic stages, and what we saw was first the abandoned, littered street, then the line of sky-scraper like buildings lining the street, then more of them as we panned-out further, and then a whole, futuristic, but dilapidated city full of towers and sky scrapers – not a tree or any life in sight – and then further, we saw the edge of this concrete monstrosity, before empty, lifeless rock and rubble, and then, finally, the walls of the hollowed-out caverns.
I hadn’t thought I had remembered any of this, but obviously my own fear of nuclear destruction at the time had ensured that this scene was burned into one of the trillions of unused caverns in my limp Donkey brain, ‘cause just this week, I was unfortunate enough, as I flew over the capital of the sunny Maldives on a mission for Saving the World HQ, to witness “in the flesh”, this same post-apocalyptic city … and it all came flooding back.
“Oh no” thinks you, “Donkey’s lost it this time … the Maldives is that place where lily-white Europeans escape the winter to lay about in ultra-luxury on beautiful decks or under waving palms, sipping cocktails as they stare at the azure sky and turquoise reef, returning home a week later, brown as a berry and covered in hickeys!”. Well yeah, that is the very same Maldives, but those worshippers of the Roman god, Sol, generally land on the airport island, are ushered by resort operators to their luxury sea craft, and then whisked away to a dream existence of sun, sex, booze and … sex for a week, before returning back to the airport and to Europe.
What they usually do not do, is visit Male’. Male’, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, is a tiny island sitting in the middle of a vast, empty ocean - an emptiness which, on the surface at least, appears to the viewer flying above, as being devoid of life.
This enormous, featureless, blue emptiness stretches from Sri Lanka to Madagascar. There’s nothing between these except the undulating sea … and of course Male’. An island packed solid, from one artificial, reclaimed perimeter to the next, with tall, multi-storied apartment buildings, government offices, mosques and presidential palaces. Almost devoid of trees, this mountain of grey and white concrete, with its flashing, neon crown of advertising rises out of the flat, blue like some steep-sided volcano … or like some science fiction space colony, full of frightened humans trying to hang onto their last memory of humanity in a post apocalyptic world.
These were my first impressions of Male’, where I would spend the next few days in some kind of spiritual agony. Where were the tree-lined streets along the sea front, like in my beloved capital cities of the Pacific? Where were the old warehouses and rickety colonial houses? Where were the bustling fish markets? The dilapidated fleet pushing the bounds of seaworthiness? Where were the fat women selling papaya and kumara? Where was the island life I have loved and which I was expecting to find after so long in exile?
Not in Male’! In Male’ I found a polished, urban jungle which had wiped away all physical traces of its history, and which has unconditionally embraced wealth and consumerism in the form of cars, phones, luxury boats and motorcycles (and bear in mind that the whole island is only two square kilometres).
As I explored Male’ in those first days, my heart ached at the loss of a way of life that the ancestors of these people must have once enjoyed … a life that sustained. And as I wandered along the sea wall at night, past the hundreds of Maldivian young people who gather there every night (because there is no where else for them to go), I wondered whether, like our young Japanese hero of Starblazers, one of them would one day growl that he would do everything he could to ensure that his people would never again have to live like this, pent up in this concrete bunker like rats in a trap!
More on Male’ later…
Starblazers - it was a long time ago, but it seems to have left an indelible mark on my brain. Pic: Google images.
* Hey, guess what? I wasn’t quite on the mark, but Wikipedia informs me that it was really called Space Battleship Yamato.
DISCLAIMER: You might remember a while ago my writing in response to an assignment from the good folk over at the House of Sternberg. Well here we are again … the assignment as follows;
Using first person narration from the gender perspective opposite your own, write seven hundred words about unrequited love using the title: HEAD RUSH. And just to make it more interesting, your character must have some deformity, imagined or otherwise.
DISCLAIMER II: No need to read this one, Mum.
“Sure Baby, I’ll have another gin. Thanks Gorgeous”, I drawl as his silver beard slobbers on my cheek before departing towards the bar; the lingering memory of raw onions complementing the visual of his huge form waddling across the disco lights reflected in the polished floor.
As always, in order to keep my revulsion under control, my thoughts wander dreamily to Ang; that perfect, golden, hairless chest rising from his rippling abdomen – just perfect! I love the way he lets me caress his torso; run my tongue across his nipple, and I adore how I loll-off slightly as he whispers in his deep, but almost inaudible voice – hypnotized, my whole body tingles sleepily as I enjoy the comforting, dampened, buzzing in my ears; strangely electrifying and meditating at the same time – God I love him.
He’s back now … this Barry. He’s banging-on about the days when he used to play football. I wonder to myself just how long ago that must have been as I look at how his stool has completely disappeared beneath his enormous gut, and how his plump arms seem to protrude grotesquely from the front of his trembling body rather than from the sides like everyone else.
I’m saying all the right things, “Mmmm … you must be one strong guy … I love big, strong men” but I’m not even thinking about it, and in fact I’m starting to disengage mentally as he starts to rub his beer-sticky hands up my inner thigh. As he slobbers on my neck, I cope with this the only way I know how … I think of this afternoon … I think of Ang.
In the heat of the day, when all the rest of the girls are out shopping and working, he comes creeping through the darkness, and I rub his knotty back. He caresses my hair and we make love. He is always shy at first – his gentleness a familiar game, before we become more and more needy; our desires for each other growing frantic and urgent.
My thoughts have the usual, unwanted, shameful effect. My hideous deformity impossible to hide as this drunken, slavering hog finds what he’s been searching for and mistakenly chortles with self-congratulation at what he thinks he has done.
How many more times will I have to endure this? I start doing the sums in my head … five times a week for another six weeks, I figure – as I get caught up in the calculations, my heavily breathing companion starts to get agitated. He growls his annoyance and I am forced to refocus.
The effect, again, is visible, and I all but blush (not quite, though, that’d be bad for business) when I recall Ang’s anguished confusion as he looked at me dressing that first day. How I hated myself as he looked away from my abomination. The distaste in his eyes still returns to haunt me every day, just before 2pm, as I lay in the darkened room in my underwear, waiting with anticipation for him to come creeping into the cot beside me, feeling sure that today he has met another – one who is not hideously disfigured, who he will follow to another darkened room. I hold my breath as I wait, as if that would make any difference, but I know I would never breathe again if he didn’t come … the thought of being without him is as hideous to me as my distorted body is to him.
The sweating heap of lard beside me is literally panting now with exertion. The back of my neck is soaked with drool … thirty-four more times I will go through this before I have enough bhat to pay the doctor, and then Ang will come to me in daylight – he will look me in the eye, and he will whisper to me, making me tingle all over, and tell me that he loves me.
I want him so much, but for that I need to be healed. The truth is, thirty-four times is not too many; I would go through this sixty-eight times if it means I will have my Ang … I just hope he will wait.
Looking back, it’s been a pretty exciting year – and Mrs Donkey and I have visited some of the most amazing party spots in history.
It all started in the menacing island of Malaita, home to the fiercest of Solomon Island headhunters, an activity which would have involved a long row across the Indispensable Straight in war canoes to rape and pillage foreign shores, and which usually culminated in week-long feasts and celebrations, complete with human brain soup and concubine selection and sampling. Fortunately, our Christian forefathers put a stop to all those shenanigans, and our final party in that marvelous place was more tinged with sadness at having to say farewell to our wonderful friends and neighbours, rather than anything which featured all-night parties, music, sex and madness induced from the consumption of human flesh.
Our next stop, of course, was Delhi. Here the Mughals, the former Persian rulers of what is now Northern India, erected huge, marble-arched pavilions under which they reclined on massive, ornate, jewel-encrusted thrones while slaves fanned them with branches, and a multitude of nubile young women from the royal harem danced before you and your court by day, and above you by night. Here you would sample amazing dishes with influences from Baghdad to Yangon, and experience the peace induced by the bubbling of piped water fountains in the corners of each room. One would enjoy the scent of jasmine burning in the ornate sconces which would both drowse by day, and arouse by night, highlighting the contrast between the tranquility of daily life with the lechery and debauchery of the all-night parties.
On the other side of the country, in the jungle state of Orissa, Donkey experienced debauchery on a whole new lever – OK, better be careful here … not “experienced”, exactly … perhaps “saw evidence of” might be a more accurate, and definitely safer expression. Here I visited the ancient Sun Temple in Konark, and saw, carved into the massive stone walls of that incredible, imposing structure, in three dimensional, sculpted, graphic detail, the kinds of things that went on between the priests and devotees of that amazing religious cult; things which sadly do not continue today, thanks to those meddling Christian missionaries! Ah yes, the good people of Konark – now they really knew how to party!
The next stop was Singapore, where no one’s allowed to even smile in public, let alone have fun, for fear of incarceration without trial, followed by a hastily-assembled firing squad at dawn before your own embassy even gets a sniff of anything untoward going down. Not really a party town at all.
It was then back to good ol’ Aussie, where a wedding party is celebrated as it should be - amongst wonderful friends on a sandy beach, followed by twelve hours of drinking beneath a piece of canvas as a winter storm rages above you – the warmth of a fire and the love of good friends ingredients enough to bake an exciting, sustained celebration which lasts for days.
In Kathmandu, traditional parties are held in large, heavy-beamed, low-ceilinged banquet halls where course-after-course of spicy dishes are served amidst traditional dancing and endless consumption of blow-yer-head-off raksi; the traditional, very alcoholic, vodka-like Nepali spirit which is served from long-spouted brass pots and which must by thrown back in one gulp before your cup is immediately refilled. What happens at these celebrations after an hour or two I’m not quite able to tell you – it all gets a bit hazy, I’m afraid. But I can confirm that there is lots of shouting and smiling and laughter, so I’d assume it’s a pretty good party!
In Izmir, the Byzantine port city in modern-day Turkey, a nightly celebration takes place with Efes Beer and raki (another potent liquid which was recently declined by NASA as an alternative fuel when it was found to result in seven out of every eight space craft over-shooting the intended destination!). In Izmir, if you can manage to peer through the smoke of three-hundred chain-smoking young Turkish men and women, you might just make out all-night group dancing, frantic drinking and drunken revelers sucking back on the intoxicating, spiced mixtures within their ornate, person-sized nagile (hookah pipes), which stand to attention beside each table. When it comes to partying, young Turks have definietly got it goin' on.
Not far from Izmir is the ancient Greek, and later Roman city of Ephesus where, at least until St Paul came along with all his crazy ideas about treating each other with love and respect and denying oneself the material pleasures of this world, a new form of decadence had been born and refined, in which the rich and powerful enjoyed the finest of arts and culture, beneath beautifully-crafted columns and arches, drinking gallons of fine wine, bathing and playing sport together and sampling superb fare, all on the backs of armies and armies of slaves from across the empire … and I really don’t think I need to go into too much detail about the famous orgies of Roman times to highlight that having a great time was the single most important goal of any young Roman nobleman or woman.
And finally, to top-off a year-long tour of the great party destinations of the world, yesterday I toured the Prince Regent (later King George IV)’s Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England. This pleasure-dome is the embodiment of decadence, built as it was during a time when most of it's owner's subjects were languishing in the depths of extreme poverty. The Pavilion looks like a palace from a tale of the Arabian Knights, with its Persian minarets and onion domes outside, whilst inside, it is fitted with sparkling, jewel-encrusted chandeliers, incredible sculptures, rich, thick, soft carpets, guilt, domed ceilings and it is painted throughout in a style reminiscent of a pre-colonial Chinese palace, accentuating all the extravagance and more which is characteristic of history's most severe oriental dictators. The whole palace was designed and built to indulge the Prince Regent’s addiction to excess, and to house the nightly carousels; banquets, cigars, dancing and live music, and all within easy access to the royal suite for when things got a bit too hot for the public eye … a great temple to a life of hedonistic abandon – and a tremendous contrast to the squalor which existed not twenty metres away, in the muddy street outside. Yes, in Regency England, when it came to celebrations and parties, it was good to be the King!
And that’s really it for this well-traveled year. In a couple of days time, the Donkeys will enjoy a much less extravagant, but hopefully no-less enjoyable Christmas celebration in the cozy living room of Mrs Donkey’s sister in South London. There will be wine, great food, presents, music … piped, hot water … maybe some incense and many of the good things passed down to us from some of the great revelers of history. No harem, I suspect, this year … but it’s always good to have something to work towards for next Christmas.
THIS PIC HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY REMOVED
This could have been anywhere in India, but just happens to be a manufactured pleasure dome in the UK. Sally at the Royal Pavillion in Brighton. Pic: Hagas
Mrs Donkey’s away and I’m back here holding the chilly fort … which means I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want. No restrictions, no protocols. So, if I wanna drink strong, black, thick-as-treacle coffee at 11.30pm, I can (Mrs Donkey hates coffee, she HATES me banging-on about it all the time and she definitely doesn’t like me talking about it at dinner parties – it’s a long story; some people dig on wine, others porn, but me, it’s coffee …. and it might be fair to say that I’m a bit obsessive).
But Mrs Donkey’s off in France, so if I want, I can write coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.
Hee haw – yeah, that felt pretty good … let’s go again. Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.
Ha ha, the freedom! Donkey needs no baby-sitter! Donkey’s his own Donkey – so while Mrs D’s away, it’s been a lot of coffee, and a lot of Blogging, and lately, there’s been a bit of TV thrown-in (hang-on, is it just me or is this starting to sound just a little bit sad?).
So each night I’ve been working late, getting home, shaking up some high-class grub, banging out a wicked-strength espresso, and lately I have been sitting down at 9pm to flick through the channels on the Teev to catch-up on what that Crazy Commodore is doing to poor old Fiji, and also to check-out what schlock the two movie channels are bashing-out … and here’s where things start to become unstuck for this timid, barnyard beast of burden.
A little while ago, some schmuck programmed the Star World channel so that it sits directly between Star Movies and HBO. This means that when I’m flicking between the two movie channels at 9pm, I tend to cop bits and pieces of that Gawd-awful Jennifer Love Hewitt show, the Ghost Whisperer. Now I haven’t ever watched a whole episode ‘cause it basically looks really bad, but I generally, unwittingly watch the opening sequence, which is the bit where some ghost-child or ghost-bride with fangs, eyeballs hanging out, screaming maw or whatever flashes up on the screen - all flying hair, sunken eye sockets and claws - and this is the last thing I see (and remember) before I flick it onto AusTV to catch the Pacific correspondent, live from the action (‘cause by then I know that the choice of movies is deplorable).
From there, I basically settle comfortably into enjoying the nightly thrills, spills and intrigues of Australia’s farcical foreign policy in the Pacific, and there I remain, quite content for a few hours, what with my steaming mug of freshly brewed coffee.
At about 11.30pm, the box goes off and I have a read. I then happily take a shower, and get ready to turn-in. Off goes the light, and I lay back to think about my day and my love, over there in France, living it up with all those hot French boys … and then it happens. Two cups of coffee in three hours, mixed with paper-thin walls and strange, creaking doors and cupboards coming from the house next door, followed by the arrival of an unshakable mental picture of screaming, eye-less, faceless, bleeding, angry ghosts from the 45 seconds that I saw of the Ghost Whisperer, and that’s it – I’m officially done with the dark for the night!
For two weeks now, I have slept with the fluorescent light on so that the ghosts can’t come out of the cupboard, and with my MP3 player banging out happy, all-night reggae on full volume so that I can’t hear the creaks from next door, and the bedroom door firmly locked and bolted as only the most secure fire-traps should be.
Each day at work I’m so tired as to resemble a Tim Burton-esque walking corpse (another week of this and I might even get a part in the season finale of the Ghost Whisperer!). I’m exhausted, and am having trouble staying awake at work – what am I going to do? I need to wake up … a strong coffee should do the trick…
Shit, it's that bloody Casper again ... better break out the Bob Marley tunes... Pic: Google images
Sometimes I really wish the faerie tales were real …
For starters, all the chicks in them are seriously hot! And they’re always on the lookout for a man. Oh yeah, and they’re generally loaded, too.
Take Sleeping Beauty for example; tall, blond, blue eyes and … well, not surprisingly, beautiful … and a princess too, if I’m not mistaken … or at least, she was eventually.Then there was Snow White; not blond, perhaps, but tall, blue eyes, unblemished skin and, again if my memory serves, got her piece of the monarchy action in the end.Cinderella – now here’s a peach! She’s just like you and me, but get a frock on her and she catches every young prince’s eye, what with the tallness, the blondness, the blue-eyedness and a certain poise and posture which just happens to be exactly what they like up there at the Palace.
And it goes on – the Princess and the Pea – blond and princess; Rapunzel – that’s always blond hair hanging out that window; Rumpelstiltskin – beautiful, yet tragically afflicted princess makes a deal with the devil; the Frog Prince – beautiful young princess with an affinity for amphibious royalty; Beauty and the Beast - tall, blond and quite a mover on the dance floor.OK, you get the picture … and hopefully, you also get the common elements; these gals are usually rich and royal, and are generally beautiful, often owing to their blond hair, which as you and I both know, is more often found on your general, garden-variety white person. What I’m trying to labour here, is how the faerie stories which many of us grew up with, are about really wonderful, magical good fortunes which shine on the most deserving. And those most deserving, if the Brothers Grimm and their guild-fellows are to be believed, are young, rich, white people. Is it true?
Perhaps it is … if you believe in magic. If you don’t, you’ll realise that there are far more sinister foes loose in the world than wicked witches, goblins or trolls. Things called G8; called politicians; called development banks; “Think Tanks”; multinational corporations … and religion.
If the faerie stories were real, then it’d be great for those of us with the white skin, that’d be about 25% of us humans, which are not bad odds for being more likely to receive a slice of the faerie-magic pie. For everyone else, all 4.5 billion of you, well … I’m afraid you guys aren’t eligible.
For many of the rest of you, I’m afraid you’re going to have to resign yourselves to a life devoid of magical intervention. Most of you, of course, will be living on one of the muddy banks beside the filthy, stinking river beds of this, and hundreds of other towns the world over; in homes with no clean water, no sanitation; no warmth; no food; places where your baby brothers and sisters will die; and where diseases exist that the rest of the world has not known for decades.Places where, as a three year old, dressed in a rag and covered in filth, you are sent to the traffic lights every day to beg for money just to avoid a beating.I saw you this morning, Alita, taking time-out from your "duties" at the lights. You were standing by a new, sleek, parked car. I saw you stretching up onto your filthy, barefooted tippy-toes, straining your neck in order to see your scab-encrusted face in the polished side mirror. I saw you standing there, mesmerised, perhaps for the first time, by your own, pitiful reflection.Oh, Alita! How I longed right then to believe the faerie stories. How I ached to run up behind you and to shove you through that mirror into a new world, away from this abusive shit-hole that you inhabit … but I’m sorry, my poor, poor Alita, for you are not blond and your eyes are not blue. The world has decided that you are not worthy … and you will never, ever be allowed into our Wonderland.
If only. Pic: www.win.tue.nl
Although clearly a Donkey, I have at times played at being a Horse (although I admit that in attempting this, I usually tend to come across looking more like a Zebra), but this kind of double-life has, on occasions, led me into some very interesting situations, and from time to time, has been the source of some very powerful soul-searching.
Today is World AIDS Day, and on this day, one such experience which springs to mind saw a much younger, and more innocent “Horse” meeting a young man who, after a serious heroin bender, had fallen “asleep” for 36 hours, lying awkwardly on one leg, cutting off the circulation. Starved of oxygen, the leg had gone into complete shut-down, and the muscles had started to degenerate.
The nerves had also stopped doing their thing, which was great for Jason, because without any sensation of pain, he was able to continue his daily routine of pounding the pavements in search of a fix, a bed, a smoke, a partner or whatever. Pretty soon, his heel and the ball of his foot were gone, worn completely away, and his Hep C had advanced enough that his chances of healing, unless some pretty major lifestyle changes were initiated and sustained, were pretty slim.
As I said, this didn’t pose much of a problem to him, until he was admitted to hospital by a concerned social worker, and this was a problem, not because he had a stinking, rotting, more-or-less useless leg, but because he was not allowed to “use” while he was admitted as an in-patient.
And so began his relationship with a young, naive “Horse. They both got on very well, and Horse swallowed all Jason’s shit about wanting to turn over a new leaf. Horse, more-or-less fresh from his sheltered, suburban up-bringing, worked very hard to convince Jason that he would be able to save the young man’s leg, and Jason was very grateful ... right up until the point where he discovered that the treatment would take three or four months.
It was at that point that a young medical practitioner in the same hospital was also pretending to be something he was not - a surgeon, and he was all but drooling over Jason’s rotting limb. Despite some seriously heart-felt reasoning from Horse that three months was a small price to pay for a functioning limb, the wanna-be surgeon’s offer of an overnight operation and “back on the street by Thursday” was more attractive to Jason, and that was the last Horse ever saw of him…
Donkey, on the other hand, was at that time engaged in some other work activities, and came across Jason a few weeks later in a men’s shelter in Melbourne’s grotty inner-west. He was wheelchair bound, and had not once returned to hospital to dress his stump, which was evident from about twenty feet away. He’d been off his head for three weeks, and despite the stench, had an impressive entourage “looking after him”, who, like Jason, were enjoying the freedom of his extra welfare payments.
For two weeks, Donkey/Horse implored Jason to come back to the clinic to have his dressings changed. The next week, I asked some of the infamous entourage where Jason had gone, and the shrug of the shoulders by way of reply spoke volumes about the end of Jason’s welfare payments, but very little about his actual welfare!
It was a rude awakening for a would-be-Horse, and pushed me one step closer to accepting my true place in the barn yard. Jason taught me that for some people, in the face of limited choices (real or perceived) their health is a secondary consideration, and that unless those Horses, “surgeons” and others who are entrusted with their care understand this, they are, through their naivety, risking the lives of those within their care.
After Jason, who I never saw or heard from again, I came to learn a lot more about intravenous transmission of Hepatitis C, and of course, it’s intravenous bed-fellow, HIV. I learned about a group of people whose needs often override their ability to prioritise in favour of their health, and their lives, and I learned about a society who is happy to turn a blind eye, believing intravenous transmission of HIV through injecting drug use to be someone else’s problem.
Since then, a much-prouder-to-be Donkey has also learned how people from that same society have unprotected sex with other people who have had unprotected sex with injecting drug users, and Donkey understands all too well why HIV through injecting with unclean, unsafe equipment is EVERYBODY’S problem.
Donkey has come to understand that protecting injecting drug users through supply of safe, clean injecting equipment also protects the rest of society from HIV and AIDS.
Out there somewhere, if he is still alive, there is a one-legged man who’s responsible for teaching me this … and although I may have failed Jason, I have turned my ignorance into a life-pursuit in an attempt to ensure that others are not forced to suffer the same risks as Jason and his mates.
World AIDS Day, 2006. Pic: www.news.utoronto.ca
DISCLAIMER: The following post is a bit of a departure from the norm. It’s in response to the House of Sternberg’s assignment to whack together 700 words of bad writing (which I think I have achieved admirably), under the heading, "The holidays were no fun for someone with holes in his pockets."
DISCLAIMER II: Sorry people, there’re a few Australianisms in this one, let me know if a translation is necessary.
The holidays were no fun for someone with holes in his pockets.“Fark!” screamed Harry as we slopped onto the muddy trench floor for the fifth time in as many minutes, “That one was real close … What do ya reckon, Stu? You think Fritz is lookin’ to join us for Christmas dinner?”.
“None of my business, H!,” I ventured with forced humour as I wiped mud and debris from my face and stumbled further along the trench, “I’ll be in St Patrick’s for midnight mass and Soho for an early pressie before Santa has even started loading-up. Give Gerry a kiss for me, though!”
“Lucky Bastard”, Harry laughed, and I mouthed a prayer for deliverance as another mortar exploded, sending us face-first into the filthy muck once again. With numb feet thanks to the cold water seeping through the holes in our boots, we scrambled off down the muddy line.
Later, we stopped to rest and I bummed-around for a smoke and a jiffy - like my boots, me pockets had finally given up the ghost the day before, and I’d lost me lighter and fags somewhere in no-man’s land, along with most of my ammo and me only photo of Jules. Bloody army!
As if he could read my thoughts, Harry, an unlit rolly hanging out of the corner of his mouth, complained loudly, “How the hell are we supposed to fight a bloody war in the snow without any decent clobber?” He held up his soaking, mud-caked sock which he’d received in his red-cross parcel three days before; the label read, “Knitted by the Griffith Ladies Auxiliary for Our Boys in Wipers”. Poking three fingers through three separate holes, he grinned, “I reckon Stu’s missus must’ve knitted these … probably reminded her of her Old Man’s brain”.
That earned him a few good-natured grunts, but I wasn’t really up to humouring anyone. The shells were going off almost every other minute, and were definitely nudging closer. All I could think about was getting out of that muddy hell-hole and onto a boat for London by nightfall. I was bloody lucky to have been given Christmas off, my first holiday since arriving in The Somme four months earlier; I was exhausted and cold, my ears were shot, I had lice and foot-rot and I hadn’t slept in days. I was desperate to get back home to Jules, but until then, London was gonna have to do. Just a few more hours…
“Look out, Joe!” We all hit the mud again as a shell exploded right on top of us, blowing half the trench apart only yards from where we’d been sitting. I looked up and waited for the smoke to clear, and despite the buzzing in me ears, I still caught the guttural screams of a dozen berserk Germans as they roared down upon us. As usual, Harry was there first, letting fly with his rifle and sending one of them screaming onto his back. I was right behind him, with a similar result but was vaguely aware of Stevo going down beside me. I fired again and set off towards the ‘krauts who were retreating off into the muck.
I slid along in pursuit, but pulled-up short when I rounded a corner and stood facing a lone German. He was fumbling in his pocket for bullets and I shouldered my rifle and fired…
“click”.
I remember what followed in minute detail. I reached into my own pocket for bullets and felt cold daylight on my finger tips as they protruded through the holes. With a sudden chill, I charged forward, my bayonet poised, but I knew it was hopeless when he raised his rifle. As I dove into the mud, I felt the hot, painful tug in my shoulder. My last memory was a blurred Harry, followed by the blood-curdling crunch of steel on bone as he drove his bayonet through the poor bugger’s ribs.
I lay unconscious in the mud for eight hours while the Germans came at us in waves. Harry, with two broken ribs, carried me three miles to the field hospital where, on Christmas day, they removed my right arm. Not quite the holiday I’d been looking forward to, but at least I was goin’ home.
Allied soldiers in the trenches in The Somme. Pic: www.channel4.com
Talk about a contrast from the norm…
This morning, I woke up in my hotel bed, with its crisp, white clean sheets, freshly laundered each day. I turned the light on … and it worked. And so too did the toilet and the taps, and there was even hot water, too.
I did all the usual bits and pieces, and then wandered down to the hotel restaurant, where I had a fantastic breakfast of three different types of cheeses, four different types of marinated olives, five different types of bread and tomato, cold meat, HONEYCOMB(!!!), scrambled eggs and, the piece de resistance, the wonderful, donut-shaped Turkish ekmek (bread), with it’s fluffy white interior encased in a crust of sesame seeds. All this was washed down with three cups of the most wonderful, thick, black coffee, all served with a smile from the hotel staff. F’n fantastic!
I then wrapped myself up, and set out into the refreshing, sunny chill of Izmir, and wandered with the citizens as they made their way to work, along beautiful, clean, tree-lined streets, on smooth, paved walkways.
The chill air electrified my every step as I made my way to the Old Bazaar. In this enchanting, cobbled street, I meandered beneath the canopy of vines as the vendors set-up their shops for the day. Amongst the bustle, I saw the centuries-old processes of laying out the fish on wooden slabs, marinating barrels and barrels of hundreds and hundreds of different, dark and juicy olives. I was comforted by the homely smell of slabs and slabs of goats’ cheese lying beneath fragrant olive oil in huge vats, and was dazzled by the vibrant greens, reds, yellows and oranges of the fruit and vegetable stalls.
I laughed with the butchers as they delighted in an age-old game which, although occurring on a daily basis, perhaps for hundreds of years, they still enjoy. While executing their grisly work at their benches, they would keep a watchful eye out for the many alley-cats who would come creeping up to the door in the hope of stealing a meaty morsel, only to be sent scampering into the street as the burley men let fly with a projectile of old bone which was always sitting close to hand.
I pressed on, and while passing a side street, some heavy-looking, oddly stacked stones sitting on a large, open expanse caught my attention, so I detoured left to investigate. I soon found myself staggering, wide-eyed with awe, through the catacombs of the Smyrna Agora; the oldest agora (Greek market) in the world, founded and built by Alexander the Great, and later extended by the Romans and Byzantines. The ancient, arched walkways which honeycomb beneath the open expanse of ground above are slowly being excavated, and for less than AU$2, I was allowed to wander through, completely alone and unmolested as the sun began to rise high enough to cast ghostly shafts of light down, through the fog and into through the various holes in the massive stones of the vaulted ceilings high overhead.
Invigorated from my brief encounter with these once magnificent, and incredibly advanced civilizations, I retraced my steps to the bazaar, and soon entered the closeness of the more frenzied, older streets. As I picked my way past steaming hot nuts, trinkets and sparkling jewellery, I heard a wailing overhead, and raised my eyes to an opening in the canvas which was stretched across the alley to protect the vendors from the weather. There, towering above, were the massive, arched windows and imposing grey dome of a late 18th century mosque, so large that it felt like I could reach up and touch it. And from the pointed, Rapunzel-like minaret, I saw the Imam melodically calling his faithful to prayer, as his ancestors had done for centuries.
I smiled ironically at my own prejudices as I watched two imposing, tough-looking young men greet each other with a hand-shake and then two rough, un-shaven kisses on each others cheeks, and all around me, I heard the laughs and shouts, and felt the warmth from the smiles and nods of Izmir’s citizens.
Time was ticking, and I had a plane to catch. I set-off beneath ornate, wrought iron, Ottoman balconies and passed through the remaining arches of the city’s imposing, ancient stone walls, heading for the harbour. Here I heard the hubbub of harsh, guttural chatter from hundreds of happy Turks enjoying thick, Turksih coffee at tables along the waterfront.
On my way to the hotel, I stopped off for a final indulgence at a small, glass booth, where a man, cigarette sticking out the side of his thin lips, placed some steaming-hot lamb, fresh tomato, lettuce, onion and chilli sauce onto some wonderfully smelling pide and wrapped it all up into the most portable, tastiest snack in the known world. My Doner Kabap was the last in an infinite collection of fond memories gained over the previous ten days.
Goodbye Turkey … until next time … I will surely miss you.
The remarkable, encanting arches of the Smyrna Agora - an auspicious find for a curious Donkey. Pics: www.fakkw.uni-paderborn.de and www.ntimages.com respectively.
One thing you notice, when listening to the REM song, is the anguish in Michael Stipe’s voice as he struggles with his new-found torment. It seems from the song that, prior to some recent events, he has been a man of faith, comfortable in the knowledge that there was something out there for him when his time comes to shrug off his mortal coil; there’s something for him to move towards; something to drive him to do good.
But for reasons unknown to the listener, that promise of something great to come is lost to Mr Stipe now, and he is tormented about the great and difficult task that lies ahead of him … the task of living. A task which, I’m sure many of you will agree, is difficult enough as it stands, but for Michael Stipe, with the added fear that he is now facing, fear of having to continue to live-on and to experience all the pain and frustration that the modern world inflicts upon its inhabitants, without any material or heavenly reward at the end, is proving to be more than he believes he has the strength to withstand. Michael Stipe is desperately and dangerously close to despair, and right now, at the time of singing this song, he can see no way to continue.
Losing one’s religion, or faith, or spirituality, can be an enormous moral and physical calamity for anyone.
Saving the World HQ has recently sent Donkey to Turkey to attend a summit of the World’s Super Heroes, and yesterday we were granted an afternoon off from the high-level discussions to take-in a bit of history from this incredible part of the ancient world. We visited Roman, Greek, Christian and Persian ruins on the western coast, and we were all suitably shocked and awed at the magnificent civilisations that have grown, flourished and disappeared over the centuries. For this na?ve Donkey, coming from a country whose oldest buildings are not much more than about 170 years old, it was truly an awesome experience.
On the way back to the Super Hero Summit, we stopped at what is said to have been the last known house of the Virgin Mary. St John, entrusted by Jesus to look after his sacred and beloved mother as he perished on the cross, is said to have taken Mary with him as he set about spreading Christianity throughout the world, and the last place they lived before dying was here at Ephesus, high up on a windswept hill.
The location of Mary’s last days remained unknown until a German nun had a vision sometime in the mid twentieth century, and after years of searching, and finding, and partitioning the Vatican, the Church declared the authenticity of the site in the mid 60s. Now, of course, pilgrims flock to the little stone chapel which has been built on the site, and yesterday, Donkey too stopped for a look at what perhaps may be “one of the most holy sites for Catholicism in the world”.
Amongst the Super Heroes gathered, there were Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, and with the exception of the first and some of the second group, many of the visitors had questions about the site, and the lady to whom it is dedicated, and Donkey, being both the hoary old Catholic and social butterfly that he is, found himself explaining the whole Jesus, Mary and St John thing to them all as we wandered up the hill to the little stone chapel. So by the time we burst through the door, Donkey was more into an historical, explanatory frame-of-mind than one which might normally have been expected from a Catholic lad entering “one of the most holy sites for Catholicism in the world”.
It was the looks of rapturous, spiritual wonder radiating from the faces of the other Catholics from our party, who had reached the chapel before us and who were silently kneeling and praying, which startled me into realising where I was, and I quickly checked myself and made the appropriate, habitual gestures before quietening my thoughts with a view to some kind of respectful prayer or reflection, but you know what? Nothing came.
“What’s going on?”, I wondered. Once upon a time, Donkey would have shut everything else out, and would have concentrated on this place and moment, affording it all the love and respect that “one of the most holy sites for Catholicism in the world” deserves. But I felt nothing from the place – there was no power, no inner strength, just the cold stone from a 40 year-old building which could not possibly have been anything like the last house of Our Lady of Efes, which would have been built some 2000 years before.
And it was with these thoughts, very much focused on the academic (“this could not have been the house she lived in, it’s too new”), rather than the spiritual (“the last known house of Holy Mary, Mother of God”), that I wandered back down the hill in the rain, feeling as though I had just been taken to another dodgy tourist attraction. I knew in my heart that this was the wrong approach, and that I perhaps had just missed a great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it was my head, not my heart, which was calling the shots that afternoon.
Upon rejoining my colleagues, I could see how uplifted were the Catholics amongst them, and it made me feel even worse, not because they had felt so much, and I nothing, but rather that I was so disturbed by my lack of feeling.
You see, for years now I have based my spirituality on a belief in people, and the power that they bring to me and each other through compassion and interaction. It is this which empowers me to interact with people from all faiths, and all walks of life, and it was probably this which resulted in my patiently answering questions about the Bible from Buddhists and Hindus as we wandered up the hill towards Mary’s House.
I have believed in the good will and power of mutual interaction and love for years now, and have been convinced that it is by far a greater road to world peace and harmony than following a confused collection of antiquated dogma. I believe … no, I know that it is the right way forward … so why then do I feel so bad about my lack of any spiritual epiphany at Mary’s House? After all, I can sit quietly in a Hindu or Buddhist temple, or under a tree or by the sea, and after a period of quiet self-reflection, feel completely up-lifted.
Am I starting to get scared that I don’t have a contingency plan if the end day comes and I’ve in fact been wrong all these years? Should I be hedging my bets and put a bit more effort into trying to feel something in a cold stone chapel in the mountains of Turkey … y’know, just in case?
Losing one’s religion is indeed very painful … but so is searching without and within to try to hang onto it. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be less painful to just follow blindly … but, deep down, while I might back myself to be able to fool God, or gods, I’m not sure I’d ever really be able to fool myself.
REM's Michael Stipe; haunting anguish in Losing my religion. Pic: Google images.
