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The Odyssey

February 10, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

The Odyssean Lifestyle

I recently came across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled “Odyssean lifestyle makes a comeback”. I liked the title and was immediately curious, partly because, being a Sydney newspaper, my first thought was that its author was in fact the very David Brooks who had been one of my profs at The University of Sydney. It was not so – the article, which had first appeared in the New York Times, was written by an altogether different David Brooks.

Brooks writes:

“There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the additions, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.”

The odyssean lifestyle is aided by new workplace flexibility, social media, easier and broader access to tertiary education, vastly changed perceptions of roles and status according to sex, gender, race and cultural background, ease and affordability of travel, more flexible social mores, online dating, the list goes on. The world has never been so full of choice and possibility, or, for that matter, such a variety of role-models. Personal development now includes a far richer range of experiences and opportunities, and the naturally curious human species is exploiting this to the full where possible.

Brooks is likely correct in suggesting the odyssean stage of ones life typically spans a single decade, yet there is, arguably, no limit to how long this may run. I myself have been on an odyssey since I left high school twenty years ago and, let’s face it, I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing with myself. It’s fair to say, however, that despite having three degrees, including a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney, I haven’t exactly been successful.

It has also become increasingly difficult as I age to justify my lack of assets and financial security. Most would consider the odyssean phase to be one in which one tried ones hand at various things, ultimately with the aim of finding a suitable situation, career, partner and place to settle down at the end of the odyssey. Rather than merely accepting the old paradigm of finding a career either immediately after high school or university, many now prefer to try a variety of options until their tastes mature sufficiently to make a more satisfying choice of lifestyle. My problem, however, is that the paths I have chosen have so far proven to be dead-ends or have not been satisfying. I also suffer from a rather short attention span, or, conversely, an almost pathologically intense period of focus which, after some years, leaves me totally and utterly sick of whatever it was I was doing. Just like Zorba the Greek, who, as a child, loved cherries so much that he ate them until he was sick, I too tend to overdo things until they no longer give me pleasure. The law of diminishing returns is one of the few laws to which I subscribe without hesitation.

I have already experienced this sudden, plummeting loss of interest in the study of history and writing novels, though I’m still hitting the keys, as is here evident. Perhaps it is merely lack of success in these fields that has left a bitter taste in my mouth, but also a quite incurable restlessness finds me dreaming of further career possibilities at the age of 38 – architecture, photography, archaeology, biology, environmental management and planning… the list goes on.

The job for which I yearn most of all, however, is that of a holiday package tester. Yes, people do do this for a living – going on a package tour and rating the quality of the holiday experience. Many people I know do not like flying, become frustrated upon entering an airport, and are unhappy to have a schedule that is regularly disrupted by travel and jetlag. I, however, love these things dearly and feel most comfortable when constantly confronted by new stimuli – be it a crappy hotel room or second-rate buffet breakfast. Anything novel is, well, novel, for better or for worse, which is, I suppose, part of the reason for my clinging to the odyssean phase of my life for as long as possible.

One interesting upshot of the Odyssey is a loss of any coherent understanding of how or where I am supposed to be at any given stage of my life. There are clear signs all about; many of my friends are breeding, married and have successful careers, yet this process has had almost no impact on me whatsoever, other than to confirm my worst suspicions that it looks more complicated than desirable. Having always disregarded social convention, initially for the sake of rebellion and later through a philosophical rejection of materialism, careerism and acquisitiveness, I still believed that eventually I would, to some degree, fall into line.

This future point in my life, possibly involving marriage, the production of children and permanent, professional employment, combined with an attempt to latch onto the lower rungs of the property ladder, was always, from the age of around twenty-eight onwards, five years away. Nothing has changed, it is still five years away, and I believe I have at last begun to understand just why this is so. It is not so much a question of the necessary elements being in place, but rather one of the absence of any desire to set this process in motion. I quite simply don’t want to own anything or anyone, nor have to make life-decisions that depend on someone else’s say-so.

The unsettled, curiosity-driven, admittedly aimless, wandering lifestyle has become so integral for me as to be the only lifestyle I am capable of imagining. I have been through several mental exercises, imagining myself in the role of father and husband, or father and partner, or as permanently co-habiting childless, home-owner, or even, simply, home owner, but it all seems so farfetched. I have begun to wonder, does the old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, come into play so far as lifestyle is concerned? Is it possible that I have become so detached from and spent so long avoiding exposure to these more settled lifestyles, that I am not actually capable of living such a life? Am I too set in my ways to adapt to it without suffering from crippling wanderlust and eternal, dispiriting restlessness?

The unwillingness to commit is often derided as a flaw; yet, I feel this attitude is out of touch with modern reality. Certainly there can be advantages to commitment, but without a sufficient level of in-built flexibility, anyone already well-used to freedom of movement is inevitably going to feel significantly restricted. Ultimately it comes down to a question of what is more important and what compromises we are willing to make, yet an unwillingness to compromise and a failure to rate permanence as highly as impermanence, should by no means be derided.

Perhaps it was my father’s work as a foreign and war correspondent that made me so attached to the idea of travel. Of course I was never actually doing any of the travelling, but remained transfixed by his tales of adventure. This no doubt helped to fuel my early and ongoing obsession with fantasy role-playing games. I had an intrinsic idolisation of characters who went off adventuring by themselves or with others. I spent my childhood pretending to be an “adventurer” and of all the literature I encountered, it was more often than not quest narratives that held the greatest attraction.

These particular influences and preferences are personal rather than broadly social or generational. Yet, finding myself in a global society marked by  the rise of flexibility and mobility in all things from work, education, relationships and gender and with rapidly rising narcissistic individualism, I have been perfectly primed to embark upon and sustain an Odyssean lifestyle. Quicker than I could decide what my own chosen norms were, the norms have changed.

There has only been a slight shift in self perception. A growing awareness that I am ageing – greying hair, lower back pain, longer warm up times when running – yet I still consider myself to be young. In fact, I rarely consider myself to be an adult, but a young man. My latest theory is that so long as I have hair, I am young. And, yes, I still have plenty of hair still on my head!

The original article link is below:

http://bit.ly/ibhXeB

Posted in The Odyssey of Life | Leave a Comment »

The Benefits of a Broad Education

February 10, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This short story was a third and final chapter in the life of Oliver, a semi-autobiographical character whose misfortunes I greatly enjoyed charting in a variety of circumstances. Indecisive, snobbish and self-important, Oliver also has the more positive qualities of being intelligent and romantic, if in an all-too autistic fashion. The story needs to be fleshed out more and is more of a sketch than anything else. It is also dependent, to some degree, on being united with its predecessors. I have, however, other plans for the fate of this character, thus making this installment redundant.

 

The Benefits of a Broad Education

Oliver’s thoughts were on Wordsworth as he sat in the box office, for he had just finished reading Lyrical Ballads. The poems had left him with a feeling both beautiful and sad, and he was pleased in the late afternoon that business was quiet. It was a perfect prelude to the busy evening to come, when customers would arrive in droves to collect their tickets for the night’s performance.

At around seven two young couples, whom Oliver guessed to be just out of school, approached the counter. While taking an order from one of the girls, he could not help overhearing the loud and slightly inebriated conversation of the other three.

“So what’s Greg doing at university?” asked the other girl.

“He’s doing history,” said one of the young men.

“Like, why?” said the girl, with such astonishment that Oliver felt a stab in the breast.

“Hell knows,” said the young man. “He’s always been into that sort of stuff.”

“Yeah, but like why?” said the girl. “What’s the point of doing history? What’s he supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” replied the young man. “It’s like Arts full stop, what’s that going to get you? It’s a total waste of time.”

Oliver kept his cool. He was sorely tempted to speak in defence of the arts, yet was tired now and did not feel sufficiently articulate. In fact he was sorely tempted to bash them all over the head and drag them off somewhere to be quietly gassed. So often in his life he had come across people with the same attitude and he had wanted to murder every single one of them. They were clearly beyond redemption as human beings, if indeed, they were human to begin with. His ire was rising and his neck was reddening, but he caught himself just in time. No, no, he cautioned internally, heart pumping fast, he was being unfair. They were ignorant and naïve, they had been brainwashed by materialism and acquisitiveness. It was re-education that they required, not extermination.

Following on from this caveat to himself, and in spite of the burning hostility in his breast, Oliver’s thoughts took on a more charitable aspect. He longed to tell them of the benefits, both to the individual and society, of a broad and specific education in the arts. Yet, as such words hovered, not so much on the tip of his tongue as at the back of his throat, it struck him that were he to mention having a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge, and add to that the observation that he found the study of history both fulfilling and worthwhile, they would have immediately pointed out to him that he was working in the box office of a theatre. Perhaps they had a point after all.

When the young customers had departed and the strange mix of rage and shame had settled down in him, Oliver was left soul searching. What was he doing with his life? What was his story? He wasn’t by any means useless; indeed, he regarded himself as rather versatile, having majored in Literature as well. But still, what was his story? What was he doing? If there was one thing the study of literature had taught him, it was that from start to finish a story must demonstrate a process of transformation in the main character; bringing them to a new understanding of themselves or their circumstances. There had to be a trajectory of sorts – the character arc – for surely that is the nature of a story; to start one place and finish somewhere else.

Yet what, Oliver asked himself, was his own character arc? He had been through many emotional ups and downs and seen significant changes to his circumstances, yet had he changed at all or was he more than ever himself? If the latter, could that be considered change? He had resigned himself to a fate of diminishing returns, yet was that progress or change of emphasis? He had to grab at things faster and faster, his relationships grew shorter and shorter and he had less time for making amends when things were not working. Yet was that change or acceleration?

Oliver had always been a man of phases and, in reflection, it seemed to him that for the last few years he had merely switched between old and understood phases with varying degrees of intensity; work, play, obsession, mission, lust and asexuality. His life was not an arc, but a dial. It was a turntable. Nothing really changed him, but the disc kept spinning. It wasn’t a lack of experience, but rather a consequence of having experience. Indeed, Oliver felt so saturated by experience that he did not see how anything could change him without being extremely traumatic.

What was to be done? What might shake him from his torpor?

Oliver sat at his desk, furiously tapping his leg up and down. He felt a great, energetic, vigorous disappointment. Soon, however, the stream of customers had him on his feet again; twirling, stretching, fetching their tickets from the bench upon which they were arranged. He smiled and exuded good cheer, yet behind the helpful eyes his displeasure was paramount.

How angry that girl’s comments had made him! If she and her friends lacked the foresight to see just what one might do with a mind geared for lateral thinking, for query and inquisition, then it was time someone got up and showed them.

***************

In Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth he makes the point that ten to fifteen years from now there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. How is it possible that things could have come to such a pass? Will nature one day be merely a subject for nostalgia?

William Wordsworth had just an inkling of what we were doing. He knew the way things were going when he walked through the smog and stink of industrial London. He’d seen the hellish fires across France as well, seen the towers of smoke and plume. It was clear to him that industry had entered a phase of expansion and intensification that was liable to be ongoing and, if left unchecked, potentially devastating.

In itself, industry on a large scale was nothing new. The Romans had built factories too; huge industrial workshops for beating out thousands upon thousands of swords and shields; great mints for smelting metals and clinking out coins; foundries, tanners, whole hillsides of waterwheels for the mass production of flour. Yet, the scale of Roman industry was hampered by the comparatively primitive nature of their mining and exploration. Most don’t realise that the curious pocks hacked into the masonry of ancient buildings were caused by thieves seeking scrap; the lead-coated braces of iron that secured the stone blocks. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and tin, though plentiful in China, was extremely rare in the west. By the sixth century, the classical world had run significantly short of metal.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, new sources of raw materials sprang up like mushrooms after imperial rain and Wordsworth found himself choking. He saw what monstrous tumours were growing in the hearts of the towns and called upon his contemporaries to return to the earth. He saw just how greatly the conditions and consequences of industry were degrading the human condition and he exhorted people to fill their lives with natural beauty.

His poems, therefore, as much as they were a genuinely heartfelt celebration of the wonders of nature, were a reaction against the industrial revolution. For many years his contemporaries laughed him off as childish and unrealistic; coy and “namby pamby”. His poetry was roundly dismissed as so much dreamy claptrap, just as, until very recently, the greens were so often dismissed as a bunch of unrealistic lunatics.

Yet, whilst Wordsworth rebelled against the destruction of the human soul and the turning of people into termites; while he recoiled from the blight of the towns and the smog and the slurry, unlike the green movement he could never have imagined that whole natural vistas could actually turn to deserts; that once snow-capped mountains, whose thaws fed vital rivers, might be snow-capped no more and the rivers vanish. Nature was surely too great, too powerful, to be affected this way. Could mankind truly create a wasteland? For Wordsworth the more obvious and immediate concern was the wasteland of the soul. We might have divorced ourselves from nature, but surely we could not destroy it altogether.

“Oh, Nature,” thought Oliver, channelling Wordsworth as he sat out the end of his shift staring at the cover of Lyrical Ballads with its watercolour of the Lakes District, “how often have our spirits turned from thee!”

_____________________________________________________________

 

It was to prove a fateful evening for Oliver. As they were about to close the doors of the box office, a tall, tanned, middle-aged man walked in, wishing to purchase tickets for a concert the following week. While Oliver took care of the transaction, the customer stood examining the large, colour photograph of the interior of the venue, displayed beside the counter.

“So, for a standing show,” asked the man, “all the seating comes out downstairs, is that correct?”

“Spot on,” said Oliver, looking up from his monitor.

“And the only seating for this show is on the balcony?”

“That’s right.”

“So, how does it work? Do you mean that every time you have a standing show, someone has to take all of those seats out and put them back in the next day?”

“Pretty much. They often go from standing to seating and back again on consecutive nights. It can go on like that for weeks, until we get a longer running show.”

“My god,” said the man, “that’s gotta be a hell of a job, to have to do that every day.”

“Yeah,” said Oliver. “Strange, but I never really thought of it like that.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“It’s a hell of a job,” the man said again.

“It does seem like a hell of a job,” said Oliver, “but then, the world is full of awful jobs, isn’t it? I mean, some people cut the heads off fish for a living, others shovel manure, some have to patrol war zones; in the scale of things, it’s not so bad.”

“I suppose not. Though that all depends on how much you get paid for it.”

“Not a lot, I imagine,” said Oliver. “And anyway, that’s not necessarily any consolation. I think it was Aristotle who said that all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”

“Well, you wouldn’t catch me doing it.”

“No,” said Oliver, “I guess not.”

____________________________________________________________

 

Cycling through the streets of Cambridge on the way home that evening, Oliver pondered the spiritual penury of his circumstances. He was a nobody who was doing nothing to save a dying world; a nobody whose education ought to cut him out for greater things; a person whose wisdom should find a more practical application. He saw himself as a wasted resource, an untapped vein, and if it wasn’t his wisdom or education they needed, then hell, surely someone, somewhere, working for a good cause must need a spare pair of hands?

Oliver was a man who had played a lot of role-playing games in his thirty-two years on the planet and, almost invariably, he played a bard or minstrel character. The ultimate jack of all trades and master of none, bards were the show-ponies of the adventuring world; all lyrics and no action, they added more colour than punch. It was no great leap of the imagination for Oliver to see the parallel between himself and his avatars, and though this occasionally made him feel effete and useless, he did at times remind himself of the true greatness of bards: not only did they significantly boost morale, they were famed for their knowledge of lore and could try their hand at anything.

Perhaps, he wondered, it was really his context that was at fault. For the last two years he had been unable to find any work in his field, and outside of it, nothing that was morally, ethically, or intellectually stimulating. This had, admittedly, a good deal to do with his over-qualification, his lack of practical experience, and a certain unwillingness to compromise by committing himself to anything distastefully serious. Yet he found himself increasingly blaming not merely the particular city in which he dwelt, but the entire country.

Perhaps, he reasoned, in some troubled land, the absence of properly qualified people might allow for their substitution with intelligent, lateral thinkers. Must he now go in search of such a land? Must he join a team of adventurers who were off on some vital quest to save a people, a nation, or indeed, the entire planet? The planet was dying, people were dying. He had heard and ignored the call of the trumpet all his life and now the trumpet was blowing louder than ever! Yes, thought Oliver, pushing his way through the cool, thin evening, balancing the ideas and emotions that had assailed him that day, it was time to take up the reins of adventure.

He stopped a moment to chide himself. Was it right to make vital decisions such as this whilst examining his life through the prism of fantasy role-playing? Wasn’t he the first person to criticise misguided, foolhardy, romantic adventurism? Had he not just recently argued that the real reason Tony Blair went to war in Iraq was because his favourite novel is Ivanhoe?

“The imperial romance,” said Oliver aloud, “the fairytale of the damsel in distress. Huh! But these people run the world. Well, the hell with them,” he muttered, wheeling his bike across the footbridge over the lock, “if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Why can’t I have a crack at rescuing the world as well?”

His voice went unheard; lost in the winds that swept the empty dark of Jesus Green.

___________________________________________________________

 

When the ice-shelf gave way, Oliver knew instantly that it was all over. Curiosity had caught him out, trying to take a photograph he should never have attempted. Still, how was he to know when his luck would run out?

Tumbling head-first into the crevasse, he emitted a piercing cry. This time, his voice did not go unheard, though his colleagues from the Scott Polar Research Institute were in no position to help him. They had told him not to go, told him that it was risky, and still he went, though he was not a reckless person; not normally anyway. Perhaps, given time, he might have become one. The mission would have to end now, and soon his colleagues would all leave Greenland. Had he survived the fall, he might have wondered at how, in the end, he had come only to hamper the efforts of the true. So much for volunteering to make a difference! So much for the dabblers of this world! How often fate can be cruel to them; how often it turns out that they are, after all, just in the way of everyone else.

Posted in Novel Excerpts, Short Stories | Leave a Comment »

Hashish

February 10, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is a chapter from Volume I of my autobiography entitled Sex with a Sunburnt Penis. The chapter was in fact removed from the second draft as part of a lengthy culling process and re-organisation of the material. Sex with a Suburnt Penis (hereafter, SWASP) was written between July and November of 1997 after a particularly bad break-up of a relationship that had lasted four and a half years. It goes without saying that I brought it all upon myself through repeated misdemeanours, but still was genuinely devastated when the shit hit the fan. It set me off on a particularly introspective  period of binge-drinking and autobiographical writing, inspired by Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell and Ernest Hemingway to name a few. My habit of diary-keeping – still have not missed a day since 1986 – made this process considerably easier as I had a wealth of material to mine, alongside my then more vivid recollections of the events.  Whilst not in evidence here, I still consider some of the the stronger passages of SWASP to be my most visceral and honest writing to date.

 

Hashish

One afternoon when I was sixteen years old, whilst helping my dad to paint the lounge-room, he asked me a question out of the blue.

“Mate, do you smoke marijuana?”

“Ummm, no,” I replied.

“Look,” he said, “I used to smoke it a bit myself, and I’m not against it. But I still think you’re a bit young to be getting into it.”

I nodded and said, without making eye contact, “Well, I haven’t tried it.”

“Well, look, mate,” said my dad, squaring up, “if you ever take anything, for whatever reason, and you get into any trouble, I want you to know that you can always call your dad. Just get straight on the phone and I’ll come and get you, wherever you are. Don’t be afraid of being in trouble – the first priority is to make sure you’re alright.”

He was looking at me so intently that I felt embarrassed. I was glad to have the roller in my hand.

“You’re my son,” he said, “and I don’t want you to do anything stupid, obviously. But we all make mistakes. Don’t be afraid of calling your dad if you need any help.”

“Umm, I won’t. Thanks.”

He turned back to the wall and smiled to himself.

“I tell you what,” he said, “smoking dope used to make me as hungry as buggery.”

The truth, of course, was that I had started smoking dope the year previous, though I never seemed to get properly stoned. I rather wondered what all the fuss was about, for none of my friends seemed to get stoned either. My closest friend, Jason, tried his best to prove otherwise one truant afternoon by hiding in the cupboard and pretending to be linen, but it didn’t exactly wash. I felt sure he was faking it, and so did everyone else, yet our doubts were mixed with the envious fear that he was actually stoned. It seemed churlish to challenge him so I just pretended I was stoned as well. We all did.

Such pretending certainly had its precedents, for, earlier that year, Jason and I had spent many hours practising with tea-leaves. One terribly immature evening we donned some paisley head-scarves, ordered a pizza and rolled up a savage, nine-skin, Earl Grey and Russian Caravan Tea joint. After a heavy dose of bergamot we upped the ante with a few lines of sherbet, put on The Tracks of my Tears and re-enacted the scene from Platoon in which Charlie Sheen smokes through a gun-barrel, albeit with Irish Breakfast and a plastic tube. It was a farcical charade of retro cool, but at fifteen we longed for a taste of counter culture so badly that even mere pretence had the tang of rebellion.

Well versed as I was on the subject of tea, when it came to marijuana I was entirely ignorant of the varieties and in all likelihood we were only smoking leaf. No wonder we never got stoned, but then, getting hold of any stuff, let alone good stuff, was a serious obstacle. In my third year of high school Jason and I had tried to buy our first “foil” from a classmate called Duke. A few days later in maths he handed our twenty dollars back. No luck. It was to become a familiar story and our hopes were regularly dashed in this fashion.

By the time we were sixteen, marijuana began to show up at parties. I puffed away on the rare and holy joints of empty leaf, but so little effect did it have beyond inducing an overexcited and ultimately frustrated musing on its workings, that I entrusted my evenings to the siege engines of tequila. Not having been properly stoned made it difficult to know what to recognise when it finally happened. Yet, when I did find out, the contrast was immediately apparent and set a benchmark I was unlikely ever to forget.

Like so many pivotal moments in life, fortune smiled from the unmapped realm of the random. One Friday night, a mere week after my father’s enquiry, I walked into the Paddington Green hotel to see if anyone was about. This pub was notorious for turning a blind eye to underage drinkers and was a favourite haunt of the more game amongst my high school peers. “Game” was a tag to which I keenly aspired.

In the front room I spotted two friends, James and Rowena, who were playing the card machines. They seemed happy to see me, so I bought a beer and pulled up a stool.

“I’m having shit luck,” said James. “Why don’t you have a crack?”

“Okey dokes, though I haven’t the faintest…”

They showed me what to do and I doubled up a few hands; a fifty-fifty choice between red or black cards. I can only assume that it was a brilliant spate of beginner’s luck, but within five minutes I had won them forty dollars. It was no piddling amount for a teenager back then.

“Fucking excellent,” said James. “What a champion. We should go and get smashed!”

Both he and Rowena were keen as mustard to get hammered and it was plain they knew how to make it happen. I was scared of their capability; James and Rowena were united in rebellion against school and convention and were known to indulge in harder things than booze and pot. Despite being curious and adventurous, I retained much childhood timidity.

“Maybe we could get some speed as well,” said James, confirming all of my worst fears.

“Oh, no,” I protested nervously, “I don’t want to get involved with anything like that.”

“Nah, well, don’t worry, man,” said James, “we wouldn’t want to do make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

I was pleased with how quickly they ruled it out. I felt completely reassured and my spirits rose again. They were going to look after me! I was excited by the prospect of heading into a world with a harder edge; nothing too dramatic, and hardly a patch on what was to come only a year later, yet it had all the gravity of anticipated significance.

Before long we were on the ever-reliable 380 bus to Bondi. The long bus swung and dipped its winding way to the Royal Hotel, where James said a quick score was certain. “We’ll get some hash, man. Have you ever smoked hash?”

“Nah,” I said, swallowing my resurrected uncertainty.

“It’s just like dope, man. It’s the same stuff. But different. Better.”

Rowena smiled. She was beautiful, Italian, wearing a little too much foundation.

“I love hash,” she said.

It sure seemed sexy now.

The pub terrified me. I’d never seen a place with so many rough blokes in it and there was none bigger and rougher than the bloke whom James approached and disappeared with into the toilets. I waited outside on the street with my nerves crippling my conversation. I liked Rowena, but she was so grown up for a girl her age that I felt like a child beside her. I stood dumb, expecting something awful to happen; that somehow we would all be the victims of violence. The real world could be frightening, exposing the thinness of my bravado. It was vast and I felt small. It struck me that out on the edge there was less room to run.

When James emerged a couple of minutes later I couldn’t wait to get moving. “It’s sweet, man,” he said, “I got a hell-good deal.”

The humid air was full of spring blossom and the sea. We hurried off into the night, all of us with an extra spring in our step.

“Have a look, man,” said James, offering me a stick of hash. I had no preconception of what hashish might look like and was surprised to find a slightly sticky, malleable brown lump in my hand. It was like the chocolate Spacefood bars I’d eaten in primary school and similarly moulded into a rectangle. I gave it a light squeeze and took a sniff. It was nutty, pungent and dusky. I smiled and handed it back to James.

Away from the main strip I was able to relax. Since being harassed by Nazi punks only a year before, I was wary of everyone and felt more at ease away from the main strip. In the side streets I could hide in the shadows, but Bondi Road swarmed with fired up, drunk young men and it was anyone’s guess as to who or what they might not like.

Before long we arrived at James’ house. It was a modern, red-brick semi which mirrored the one adjacent; set back from the road down a fragrant path.

“My mum’s home downstairs,” he said, “so we have to be real quiet.”

We tip-toed along a hall and into the front room; James held his finger to his lips. This was much more familiar territory; a game I knew only too well. I was adept at being stealthy and had a whisper so low it might be mistaken for the brush of silk.

We settled against bookshelves, sitting cross-legged. “I’ll be back,” said James, and snuck off into the hall. Rowena and I remained silent, smiling and raising eyebrows. I wondered what she saw in James. He might be cool and know a thing or two, but he was jug-eared and acned. It must have been his street cred, his dedication to the dark side that gave him the upper hand.

He returned just two minutes later with a bowl, a bong and a packet of biscuits.

“Are you mixing?” James asked, handing the bowl to Rowena to confirm this demarcation.

She took the hash from him and squeezed it into a ball. In the bowl was an unfolded, blackened paperclip. Using the paperclip as a prong, she stuck the round ball of hash on the spike, then placed it beside her. Without a word she removed a cigarette from the packet and began toasting it with the lighter; running flame up and down its length. The paper browned and blackened in spots and soon, satisfied, she put down the lighter and rubbed the cigarette between her fingers. The now drier and more brittle tobacco spilled out into the bowl. Next she took the paperclip in her fingers and held the lighter under the ball of hash. She turned this over and over in the flames, flicking it in and out and being careful not to set it alight. Sweet and heady smoke arose to mix with the toasted tobacco smell, and then, in a quick move, she pinched the hash from the end between thumb and forefinger, plunged it into the tobacco and began to work the mix with her fingers. In no time she had transformed the contents of the bowl into a dark, finely ground powder. I’d never seen anything like it and had watched the whole process in silent awe. Marijuana was marijuana, but this looked more like drugs. Perhaps it was really Rowena who had all the cred, and it was James who was along for the ride.

I still did not say a word; partly in honour of the request to remain silent, and partly out of a desire not to reveal my ignorance by asking naïve questions. James just sat smiling, saying nothing either. Rowena now packed this powder into the cone of the bong and handed it to me with a lighter.

“You go first,” she said, with a polite smile.

“Are you sure?” I whispered?

“Yeah, go on.”

I put the bong to my lips, put my thumb across the air hole and fired up the cone. The smoke tasted as rich as it smelled; it was a brown and heavy flavour, dusty and woody, and within seconds of tasting it I felt my head reeling. I leaned back against the bookshelf and didn’t move or say a word. I knew it was regarded as unmanly not to “punch” a cone, to finish it in one hit, but I took it slowly through several breaths. By the time I placed the bong on the floor and nodded silent thanks, I was well on my way to a new sensation.

James and Rowena smiled and turned their focus back to the business of packing and smoking their own cones. I sat silently, feeling myself accelerate and slow simultaneously. I guessed that this must be it, that I must be becoming stoned! Time slowed down further and my heart began pounding in my chest; the few words uttered by James and Rowena reverberated in my ears. The quiet, almost inaudible sounds of the room became echoes in what seemed a vast soundscape. I shuddered with the sounds; I shuddered in myself; I heard a sliding, throbbing noise and listened to the blood coursing through my veins. I pressed myself close against the bookshelf and watched the other two going through the motions of smoking. I had absolutely nothing to say. I was afraid of hearing my voice.

I felt both fearful and elated; and rose and dipped rapidly between the two. James and Rowena were smiling. “Excellent,” said James. “Excellent hash,” and I found myself laughing, having never heard anything so funny before in my life. It was the release I needed, but it was not enough. A moment later I felt the shelves against my spine and began to reason my way through this.

“Okay,” I thought, “this must be it. So, I’m stoned at last – tick – but what the hell do I do now? What happens next?” It was almost unbearable being forced to sit here so quietly, and then I realised that James was talking. He was talking to Rowena! Weren’t we supposed to be quiet? I couldn’t really understand what they were saying, for by the time he’d reached the end of a sentence, I’d forgotten how it started. I blinked and then closed my eyes, but things began to spin, so I opened them again and looked straight ahead. The packet of biscuits was being offered to me.

“Have one,” said James, “they’re fucking excellent.”

The biscuits were crisp and cheesy and I took two. I stuck one in my mouth and broke it in my teeth. It was dry and so was my mouth, yet in no time I chewed it into a salty, cheddary paste. They were superb biscuits! I felt the world had once again grounded itself. This was the key – sustenance! How could mankind live without food? I felt myself growing hysterically excited, tears welled in the corners of my eyes, my throat caught and thickened , but I said nothing. I was afraid of what might happen if I started to speak. What would come out? My words or someone else’s?

I ate the second biscuit. It was an historic moment. Here, still, after thousands of years, we were making things from wheat, as once they had in the fertile crescent. Where would we be without crops? Without agriculture? Where we would be without all these slow accumulations?

I was nodding to myself, nodding and chewing my way through that second biscuit. Damn the biscuit was good. I reached out and took another one. So this was what they called ‘the munchies.’ Now I could say I’d officially had the munchies, and yes, I was officially stoned!

James got up to leave the room again. Suddenly there were only two of us – how odd it all seemed. This room felt desultory. I hated overhead lights, yet, propped like some quarto volume leaned against the shelves – a book full of words and pictures – I felt small and inconspicuous. Safe enough to begin speaking.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I hadn’t prepared anything at all. Where should I start?

“I’m really stoned,” said Rowena.

“Yes, yes, me too!” I said, thrilled to have a contribution. So, it wasn’t just me, of course! We were both stoned. And what about James? He must be stoned as well. How was he faring out there, sneaking like a cat, like a hunching goblin, picking adventurers’ pockets, hiding the gems in his little chest…

I spoke on; unfocussed, confused inanities to Rowena. James returned and smiled at us. No toilet had flushed, no tap had run – where had he gone? I dived back into the crackers like a man possessed. I needed something to do; I needed to return to the Fertile Crescent. I ate three, four, five more biscuits; but still could not think of a way to start a conversation. I saw Rowena reaching for the bowl, saw her filling the cone. Was she mad? Was it time for another? How much time had gone by? Oh my god, what day was it? Where the hell was I? She was leaning forward with her almond eyes, her cunning smile, her lures and wiles all just for James. I took the proffered bong – it had come from a beautiful woman. Could I say no and still be a man? I smoked it, more quickly this time. By gosh my mouth was dry.

Time stretched out, accordion-like, and I tumbled backwards into the widening distance. It was slow in there, heart-pumpingly slow. I took a deep breath and fell further back into a new and juddering slowness, only this time I kept falling. I could feel the bookshelves against my back, but no longer did they anchor me to the world. I was turning over and over, in an ever-faster spin. I pushed myself more firmly against the shelves to discomfort myself back to reality. It didn’t change anything; I tumbled ever on into a ghastly image of an Icelandic maelstrom conjured from some children’s book.

Oh god, I thought, and suddenly felt very sick indeed.

“James,” I said, breathing carefully, trying to right myself, “I don’t feel so good. I think I need some fresh air.”

“Okay man,” he said.

“Are you alright?” asked Rowena.

“I dunno,” I said. The saliva rushing into my cheeks was sobering; enough to give me speech, but not enough to stop the spinning.

I stood up, climbing hand over hand behind my back, shelf by shelf. James steadied my elbow and guided me through the door. I was listing and reeling, but I stayed my course and we made it to the entrance.

“Are you alright, man?” asked James.

“I’ll just be a bit,” I said and left him standing in the doorway.

I stumbled into the night and made straight for the nature strip, feeling sure I was going to puke. I lay on the grass and welcomed the cool of the springy blades, stretching my neck to place my cheeks on the cold concrete gutter. I had learned from several overzealous tequila nights that cold floors were my salvation. Ideally I’d be lying on bathroom tiles, but at least the air was fresh out here.

I held off the first wave of nausea and tried to haul myself in. I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep, but could only avoid the spins by keeping them open and focussed on the streetlights. What was wrong, I wondered? Was it the cheese biscuits? The earlier beers? Or could hash do this all by itself? What would my father think of all this?

I slowly managed to get myself together. I felt confused and disoriented, but my stomach had stopped its lurching. I couldn’t stay out here forever and decided, after some time that I was well enough to go in.

I stood up, turned around and found myself in serious trouble. The two houses in front of me were identical, and like a butterfly print, their doors faced the same central path. I remembered that the door had been on my left when I came outside, and therefore, I reasoned, it must be the door on the left. I walked towards it and tried the handle, but it was locked. I was afraid that I had been locked out accidentally and reached for the buzzer. It was only then that I realised my mistake. I stepped back, walked over to the door on the right, found it unlocked, and went back inside the house.

I made it through to the room where James and Rowena were sitting, gave a little wave and welcomed their smiles, but the moment I caught a whiff of the hash my stomach vaulted. My head reeled and saliva rushed again to flood my gums. I wobbled, flushed with panic and turned straight back around to head for the pavement once more.

I took up my previous position. The grass was waxy and sharp and pressed through my loose black shirt. The concrete smelled of stale sun. I could scent the cool rubber of a car tyre and the metallic grease of the brakes. I desperately wanted some water, but had not had the good sense to ask for it. I was still an amateur at looking after myself, still working out all the cures. I stared at the lights, hiding in the shadows. At first I had been too anxious to be ashamed, but now I was beginning to feel conspicuous.

I pulled myself together, stood up and brushed myself down. I was dizzy and confused, but my stomach felt sound. I made for the doorway but once again faced a dilemma. Which door was it? The left or the right? I struggled to remember. All I knew was that I had gotten it wrong last time. I recalled my previous mistake and tried to work through it – I had started confident but came to the wrong conclusion. Only where had I started from last time? What was the basis of my previously flawed logic? I could not remember, but the door on the left looked attractive. It looked familiar. Had I not perhaps gone through it before?

I tried the handle on the screen door. It was locked again! I couldn’t think at all. What had happened last time? Had I rung the buzzer? Had I knocked on the window? I couldn’t remember a thing. Was this what it was like to be stoned? I pressed the buzzer. What the hell, I needed water; I needed to get inside. I waited only a few seconds before being struck by the terrifying realisation that this was the wrong door. Of course! The other door had been open all along. I ran across the path, tried the other door and was through into the hall in a flash.

I needed water, but wasn’t going to try finding the bathroom by myself, so I walked through to where James and Rowena were sitting. It looked and smelled as though they’d just had another cone; the air was thick with smoke, coiling around the glaring, ugly light. The reek was dreadful, overpowering, and before I could say a thing I felt myself reeling again. “Oh, god,” I said, “get me some water!” Then I turned straight back, ran this time through the front door, lunged towards the gutter and vomited into the concrete.

“Oh, god, oh god,” I moaned, as the full scale of my cheese-cracker consumption became gaudily apparent.

I rose with the heaving retches, otherwise lying flat as a lizard. I don’t imagine anyone likes to vomit, yet I had lived with a phobia of it since suffering a terrible bout of gastro-enteritis at the age of eleven. I was old enough to know I would shrug it off, however, and did not feel overly concerned, but rather, humiliated, ashamed, longing for home. My father’s words now came back to me clearly. His offer of assistance would be more than welcome now, yet my troubles did not seem to be on the scale his words had suggested. Still I imagined him helping me up, grabbing me under the armpits and lifting me to my feet. “We’ll get you home, don’t worry, son. You’ll be alright.”

My home grew great and necessary in my heart. What was wrong within me to make me seek these alternatives, these frontiers? Could I not be happy at home, clean and fed, loved and looked after? Of course it came with a swathe of attendant woes, but the core things, beyond all the bickering, brought a simple, profound happiness. I wished these truths could be always predominant. What a pleasure it would be to go home now and feel them in my body and soul; to feel the safety, comfort and love.

One evening when I was twelve years old, walking home with my father along Oxford Street, we passed by a scene that shocked me to the core. On the bus-stop bench sat two young men with a girl lying across their lap. The girl was, to all intents and purposes, unconscious and had vomit trickling from her mouth, right into the lap of one of the blokes, who seemed so out of it as not to care.

“Jesus,” said my father, “who bloody-well sold them the booze?”

I felt at the time a mix of fear and shame, but worst of all, it made me feel very, very ill owing to my morbid, indeed, at the time, pathological phobia of vomiting. I could not comprehend how people could put themselves into such situations. And yet, look at me now! Perhaps it wasn’t always so obvious where the limits lay.

I retched and retched until I could retch no more, praying that no one would walk past, wanting neither their scorn, their charity or their pity. I was especially fearful that some young child might walk past with their father or mother and that I would become the fearful blueprint of how not to behave. I cursed my fate. So, being stoned could make you sick as well? I suppose I wasn’t to know.

After fifteen minutes I stood up and steadied myself. I was disappointed that neither James nor Rowena had come to check on me; yet perhaps things were more discrete without a pavement congregation. I faced my foe one last time: the two identical doors. Surely I could not make the same mistake a third time, and yet I did, trying the handle repeatedly on their tight screen door. I stood a while shaking my head. How could I be so useless? How I longed to be home, showered and changed, warm in my bed with a good book and the dogs snoring at my feet. How I looked forward to the happy normality of Sunday, killing time with my brother.

I soon realised my mistake and crossed to the right side of the path. I turned the handle and walked on in, back with the low, roiling scents of oily hash. I marched straight through to see James and Rowena and told them I was leaving.

“Can you call me a taxi?” I asked, and they were more than obliging. Perhaps they had just forgotten about me out there; perhaps they had simply not cared. I couldn’t be sure, but I was pleased to be leaving.

“Can I use the bathroom, man?”

“Sure thing.”

Rowena showed me through with a curious, sorrowful smile. I wondered if their hearts were hardening in this life they led, or were they harder to begin with.

I washed my face and hands, rinsed out my mouth, drank a small amount of water. When I emerged from the bathroom, James and Rowena were waiting to see me off.

“Taxi’s coming,” said James, “it won’t be long now.”

We all walked outside.

Later that night as I sat up in bed, freshly showered, book on my lap, nursing a hot cup of tea, I made a silent promise that my father need never come fetch me. Despite his willingness, was it really necessary for him to know of my shame?

So it was, that on the hard nights to come, on the speed and acid, coke and ecstasy nights of the reeling future, I didn’t muck around, but instead went straight to hospital.

Posted in Memoir, Novel Excerpts | Leave a Comment »

An Academic Fear of Blogging

February 7, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

I have long had a fear of blogging, because I’ve always made the error of regarding it in the same light as opinion writing, and, sadly quite a lot of rubbish is written in the guise of “opinion”. Don’t think I don’t see the danger and the irony in making this statement in a blog, but there you have it. I felt it was necessary to make this point, both by way of a disclaimer and as an excuse for why I have been for so long so reluctant to blog.

I am fully cognisant of the fact that the term blog derives from “web log” and means, in effect, an online journal or diary. It is not by any means necessarily supposed to be a forum for debate or the equivalent of an opinion column or leading article. Yet the simple fact remains that many blogs do constitute precisely this. They are often used as an informal means of addressing contemporary critical debate and, all too often, the flimsiness of their academic foundations are immediately evident.

Having pursued research to a post-doctoral level, it is difficult to be sympathetic to arguments (which, frankly, is what opinions essentially are) that lack the same depth of academic credibility. It does not mean they ought to be dismissed, but they do rather reek of agenda as opposed to impartiality.

But isn’t the whole point about opinion partiality, I hear you cry? Yes, it is, but that thought doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable when reading poorly constructed arguments. It goes without saying that the construction of any argument will always be a highly selective process, yet at least within the academic world this process is, ideally, achieved through consideration and demonstration of knowledge of the available evidence and literature on the subject.

Clearly it is impossible to be an expert on everything before forming an opinion on something, just as it is also possible for people to form relatively accurate assessments with only a relatively limited amount of information. I guess I’ve always thought it was a little presumptuous or even arrogant to seek to influence people with opinions that were based on relatively little research. More often than not, these arguments are constructed purely for the sake of a political, economic or social agenda. So why should anyone trust such hastily composed, poorly researched blabber as often can be found in blogs?

So what the hell am I banging on about?

Opinion is also very much of the moment. In commenting on recent events it is impractical to expect any writer to have at their disposal the full spectrum of academic and non-academic research and analysis in order to pass authoritative judgement – a judgement which might, through proper review, turn out to be flawed in its conclusions.

So who do we trust? And how can one be so bold as to make a statement of their own? This has long been my principal objection to blogging. I have no desire to see statements restricted to people with the appropriate qualifications, though this might quell a great deal of unnecessary hysteria and prevent many of the worst consequences of populism, my objections have essentially rested with the arrogance of many commentators who were clearly unqualified to pass judgement on anything. In such a light, how could I possibly justify making my own contributions to the world of opinion writing? Is it arrogant of me to comment on politics, when there are so many established, better qualified political commentators? Could I write about psychological issues, when my doctorate is in history and not psychology? Am I qualified to comment on society as a whole when not a sociologist who has conducted research into precisely the social phenomenon upon which I am commenting? Can I have any confidence that my opinion will not be misleading, and thereby, dangerous, as so many other misleading and patently incorrect opinions can be? And, let’s face it, I’m a really opinionated sonofabitch.

I’d like to think that it was a deficit of arrogance that has kept me from blogging al this time; an academic distrust of opinion and argument that lacked the depth and the checks and balances of academic work. Perhaps it is as much timidity as anything else. After all, as Yossarian said in Catch 22 in response to the question – “But what if everyone thought like that?” – “Then I’d be a damn fool to think otherwise.”

 

Wtf, I’m blogging now, so to hell with it all.

 

Yours truly, Herr Professor Dr. Rollmops.

Posted in Disclaimers | 3 Comments »

The Reliability of Change

February 6, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is a chapter from a novel I wrote between 1998 and 2004 entitled Et in Antipodes, Ego. It was intended to be something of a romantic epic, but lacked sufficient gism to make it readable. Too long and slow, the romantic elements were based, at times quite painstakingly, on personal experiences I had in the period prior to its conception. The story centred around Edward Cockfoster and his uncovering of a literary controversy whilst writing a PhD on the fictional Australian author, Bryce Chapman. His unexpected, serendipitous success with his research contrasted with the failure of his relationship with the Cambridge-bound Pandora.

Whilst containing some, if I may say so myself, quite beautiful moments, there was too much pedantic and pedestrian detail which could only be described as self-indulgent. With the first draft running to 140,000 words, it was terribly overwritten, yet at the time I was too precious to take the axe to it in the way that was necessary. In retrospect, it was good “marathon training”, but not something I intend to go back, having moved so far away from its characters, themes and sentiment. This passage comes from, well, somewhere in the middle.

 

The Reliability of Change

“So come on then, what’s the big surprise?”

Edward was standing in a bath full of hot water and bubbles. The soft pop and tickle on his shins was a welcome distraction from the mild scalding his feet had just received. They were at Pandora’s parents’ house, having taken the opportunity of their absence to indulge in a little luxury.

“I told you I would show you once we were in the bath,” said Pandora.

“Alright, alright.”

“Well, how is the water?”

“It’s a bit of a shock at first, but after that…”

He began to lower himself into the bath. Pandora removed her towel and poked a pointed foot in at the other end. “Ooh, it does feel hot,” she said. Edward emitted a high-pitched whine as his testicles touched the hot water. They tingled fiercely; a delicious sensation.

“Where is it hidden?” he asked, rubbing his delicacy.

Pandora stepped fully into the bath and stood over him, smirking. Her high, pointed breasts sporting long, erect nipples.

“On the chair. Under the towel.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Do I look like an Amazon?” she asked; sounding English, like her mother.

“You need a tan,” he said, “and one less breast.”

“Oh goodness, I forgot about that.”

Your shoulders are a tad too round as well, was Edward’s unvoiced thought.

“So come on, how about this surprise?” he said. “We are both now in the bath after all.”

“I’m not fully in yet.”

Edward tutted. “Well… I’m going to have to lift up the towel.”

Pandora smiled.

“No, wait. Close your eyes.”

“Now we’re talking.”

Edward slid down in the bath so that his mouth was level with the foam. He closed his eyes to a world of red warmth. He heard Pandora lifting the towel, imagined her leaning and reaching. Then he felt a soft tap on the head; something light and thin.

“Come on.”

He reached out awkwardly and grabbed what she was holding.

“Da da!” said Pandora, as Edward opened his eyes. In his hands was a set of plastic farm animals, still in the cardboard-backed, clear plastic package.

“Fantastic!” said Edward. “You found the duck and geese set!”

Edward stared lovingly at the packet; steamed and wet from his hands.

“Can I open it?”

“Of course.”

He pulled free the plastic cover and released the animals: two ducks and a goose.

“These are quality ducks,” said Edward, admiring them.

Pandora nodded, then leaned over and reached for her dressing gown.

“And look,” she said, “I brought Otto and Merrylegs as well.” From the dressing gown pocket she produced a plastic sheep and border collie.

“Brilliant.” Edward lined the new animals up along the edge of the bath. Pandora placed Otto and Merrylegs next to them, then sat down in the water.

“So, what shall we call these fine ducks?” asked Edward.

“They must have names that match their aristocratic looks.”

They examined them closely for a moment.

“I think this one looks quite cheeky,” said Edward. “He might be a bit of a womaniser.”

“I think they’re both womanisers,” said Pandora. “This one’s awfully sure of himself.”

Pandora nestled further into the foam, pushing her legs past Edward’s hips. She studied the ducks a moment longer.

“Casanova,” she said. “Let’s call one of them Casanova.”

“Cool,” laughed Edward. “I was thinking of the name Rudolf.”

“Wonderful, duckest. Rudolf and Casanova it is.”

“Does it matter which one is which?”

“I don’t think so. They can be like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

They lay back and played with the animals; walking them over foam hills and down to popping dales. When the bubbles vanished, they swam the small ducks through the cooling water, then ran more hot and paddled it around.

After their bath, Edward and Pandora cooked pasta for dinner, then settled down to eat in front of The Bridges of Madison County. Sitting behind an oil heater, legs covered by a picnic blanket, they marvelled at Meryl Streep’s accent. When the film was finished they sat on stools in the kitchen and ate ice-cream.

“It’s a very sad movie,” said Pandora. “Beautiful and sad.”

“Beautifully sad,” said Edward, his teeth aflame with cold.

“There was a lot of truth in that movie,” said Pandora. “That line about change being the only thing you can depend on in life, and not to be afraid of it. It really is true.”

“I suppose. For better or for worse, change happens.”

“And if it is for worse, then next time it might be for the best.”

Edward switched on the electric jug and stood with his eyes lowered. He did not look up when Pandora touched his shoulder.

“Duck,” she said, “are you alright?”

“Of course. I was just thinking about the movie.”

“It really was very good.”

She took two teacups from the cupboard.

“You look sad,” she said.

“I feel a bit sad,” said Edward. He looked at Rudolf and Casanova, sitting on the kitchen bench. “I don’t want things to change. I want things to stay the same.”

“Poor, sad duck.” She took his upper arm and turned him to face her. “Your little squirrel still loves you.”

Edward stuck out his lower lip.

“But you won’t always be my little squirrel, will you?”

“What do you mean?”

He rubbed his nose.

“I mean, if you do go to Cambridge. Everything will change and you’ll leave me for someone else.”

“Edward, that’s a horrible thing to say. What makes you think I’ll leave you?”

“I don’t know. You said that when you got overseas you’d have to think about everything again. Re-evaluate how you relate to everything.”

“Well, firstly there’s no when about it. And anyway, what sort of person do you think I am? How do you think that reflects on me?”

“I don’t mean it like that.”

“Don’t you think I’m telling you the truth when I tell you I love you?”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s just that you’ll be far away and you’ll meet other men and you’ll forget about me. Change. It’s inevitable – the one thing you can depend upon.”

“Edward, that’s a horrid thing to say, when you make it mean that.”

Pandora’s eyes went moist and her lip faltered.

“You’ll just as soon find another girlfriend,” she said, her voice quivering. “If anyone’s shown evidence of poor character in the past, it’s you, Edward.”

“No I won’t,” he said. “I don’t ever want another girlfriend.” He reached out toward her and she pushed his hand away.

“I’m sorry, Panda. I didn’t want to make you upset. It’s just I was thinking about what you said the other week – that you would have to think about everything again. I’ve been despairing about it ever since.”

“Why do you have to bring that up now?”

“Why did you have to say that in the first place?”

“What you said was cruel.”

“So was what you said. You know how afraid I am of you going.”

She pushed back her hair and folded her arms.

“But you’re always pressuring me to reassure you. I have to be realistic. And anyway, I didn’t necessarily mean I’d have to think twice about you.”

“Well, what did you mean?”

“I don’t know, Edward, I don’t know. I don’t think you should have said what you did. You’re the one who’s going to find someone else if anyone is.”

“Well if I’m of such poor character, why don’t you leave me now? If that’s what you think, how do I know you won’t try to get in first?”

Pandora began to sob, shaking her head. The electric jug clicked and Edward inclined his head toward it, Pandora’s eyes followed his and they both stared at the steam pouring from the lip of the jug. Pandora tried to hold her position but had to unfold her arms to wipe her tears and rub her eyes.

“Why do you have to ruin everything, Edward? I don’t need all this extra pressure. It’s hard enough as it is, waiting and not knowing.”

Edward set his jaw. He felt as if he was falling and was uncertain how hard the ground might be.

“Well I’m in the same boat. Except whereas you stand to win, I only stand to lose.”

“Well that isn’t my fault! So stop taking it out on me.”

She stared at him with her red eyes wide and cheeks blotched with anger and Edward could not meet her gaze. He looked again at the jug and felt ashamed.

“But can’t you stop making me feel so insecure?” It was a measured half-whisper, keeping his eyes low.

“You started this. I’m not the one who should be making concessions.”

Edward moved towards the jug and poured the hot water into the two cups.

“Do you still want tea?” he asked. She stared at him and said nothing, so he turned around and tried to meet her gaze, but again he felt ashamed and cast his eyes to the floor.

“I’m sorry, Panda. I didn’t want to have a fight.”

“Well what did you expect?” she snapped. “You can’t just say things like that and expect me not to react. You should have said nothing at all.”

He nodded solemnly, easing himself into penance.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue any more.”

“I never wanted to argue in the first place. You have to stop torturing me about this – and yourself. Even if I’m going I don’t start until October, and that’s six months away. How do you know whether or not things will change?”

Edward shrugged weakly and picked up the jug. He poured both cups in silence, then jiggled the tea bags. It was true, he didn’t know if she was going and worrying about it would change nothing. Then again, he thought, staring into the worn and holed yellow stove-mit hanging from a hook in front of him, for better or for worse, change was the one thing upon which he could depend and, from a starting point of rare happiness, things could only get worse.

**********

Edward slipped his arms through the dressing gown and pulled it across his chest. He was nearly out the bedroom door when Pandora mumbled: “Do you have to be such a big, noisy monster, Duck?”

“Sorry,” he breathed. “I have to go to the toilet.”

She said nothing more and he closed the door behind him. After going to the bathroom, he was taken with the idea of a cheese sandwich and walked on through to the kitchen.

Edward’s thoughts had kept him awake for some time and eventually he had found the effort to lie still too taxing to endure. He was heavily prone to insomnia. At home he would lie awake for hours, sweating tight little beads. After a time he would throw the sheets off and listen to his heartbeat, all the while trying to concentrate on breathing steadily and doing anything other than listening to his heartbeat. At night everything seemed so impossible, but when the morning came and everything was possible again, he would be too tired to address whatever had kept him awake. The inefficiency of it was maddening.

He took bread and butter from the fridge and began to search for cheese. A moment later he spotted a hunk of neatly-wrapped cheddar.

What had compelled him to ruin the evening with Pandora? He should have known what would come of raising the question of her departure again. Again, the inefficiency of it all was maddening. All he had hoped for was a night of lovemaking and a long, easy sleep. He and Pandora rarely spent the night together anymore, not that they had ever done so very often. The habit had formed at Pandora’s instigation, for she did not like to have her rest disturbed and tended to sleep an hour or so later than Edward, who hopped up shortly after dawn.

He took a plate from the cupboard and began to slice the cheese.

Their first ever night together had been an awkward squeeze in Edward’s bed and neither of them slept a wink. At five that morning a flatbed truck had huffed and clanked into the back lane and Vietnamese voices unloaded huge sacks of flour for the bakery next door. Fatigue was the talking point of the coming day and the following night they slept apart.

Edward buttered the bread and began arranging the cheese on his sandwich. In those first few late November days, now more than a year ago, all Edward had longed for was a holiday from work and good sense; for the chance to plunge into love. Having yearned for Pandora to the point of distraction for so many months beforehand and having found his feelings requited, he had rather hoped that the intensity of his passion would also be requited. Yet soon the exhaustion of the chase became matched by the exhaustion of the beginning and their love-life began in syncopation; halting progress and mounting failure. Such was Edward’s concern to get things right that he was unable for many weeks to rise to the occasion. Deeply disappointed by this and considerably embarrassed, despite his attempts to dismiss the paradigmatic anxieties of masculinity, the more he failed, the harder he was inclined to try. Every time he went home alone was a missed opportunity to prove his prowess or, at least, his basic competence, until, exhausted by desire and unable to convince Pandora that they should spend the night together more often, he was forced to admit that sex was a lesser priority and to agree that sleeping soundly made more sense than lying awake in discomfort. So it was that Edward went back to masturbating, and with the steam let out, everything began to go more smoothly.

He finished the preparation of his sandwich, cut it down the middle and, poured a glass of milk.

For all his agonising over their sex life, Edward was over the moon to be with Pandora in those first months. When she moved from her old room to a new and furnished flat in the same suburb, acquiring a double bed in the process, Edward was allowed to stay at weekends. By this time, however, he had become so used to parting at the end of the night, even after lovemaking, that he rarely did stay over. When he did, he rose early and left first thing to avoid being reprimanded for reading too loudly. The new discipline they came to encourage in each other had entrenched itself, and the anxieties of the beginning had passed sufficiently to smother the desperation for her to be there always. Needless to say, he preferred it when she was.

How long it now seemed since they had established these rhythms. How certain he was that change must come. Why this must happen, even when a flawless happiness had been so painstakingly established, was anyone’s guess.

Edward chose to eat in the lounge-room. Before him the dark windows swayed with liquidambar. Starlight flowed across the floor like the glimpse of a river through trees and ran to the low shelves alongside the hearth. Edward traced the paintbrush curves to a set of bold letters, stark against a dark spine on the shelves: The Atlas of the Viking World. He squinted at the title a while, then took this quarto volume and placed it in his lap.

Below the title he could just make out a photo of a grass-roofed bungalow, built of stone and sunk in soft dips of hill. From the grey chimney rose a long rope of smoke, barely visible against the grass and overcast sky. Inside he imagined a warm fire and a long table, a double cot and a smoky smell at dawn in the high places. It was coziness and isolation; a nest for lovers who needed nothing more than each other; where even through acres of grey, the sunlight fell, if muted. There everything was narrowed to simplicity; and there, across oceans of time and distance and under a roof of grass, Edward might know that they were together for good.

He chewed into his sandwich with a thick throat, wondering what on earth there was to eat in those empty hills.

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Advance Australia, Farewell

February 6, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This is the first chapter of a novel I wrote in 2005 called Advance Australia, Farewell. A first-person narrative from the point of view of Harrison Borgnine, a 17-year old boy who is deeply traumatised by the death of his family in a terrorist incident in Sydney Harbour, it was set in a distopian Australia in the year 2030. The novel was inspired by my total and utter hatred of the conservative government of John Howard and all they stood for. It posited a callous future of collapsed social services, restricted individual freedom, draconian employment laws, selfishness, obesity, military adventurism, publicly muscular “Christianity”, overzealous nationalism, both legal and rhetorical, flag-worship, unaffordable medical services, environmental degradation and, ultimately, Australia’s ostracism by Europe and other right-thinking governments through the vehicle of trade and sports sanctions. The novel was not intended to be an accurate prediction of the future, but rather the worst-case scenario of a dangerous political ideology and bad policy. Most of all it was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek rollicking yarn, based very loosely on the 1608 picaresque Spanish novella The Swindler by Francisco de Queveda. It begins when Harrison flees from his school to join a group called the Sydney School of Mendicants, who specialise in fraudulent means of extracting charity. Ultimately, having rescued his friend Alfonse from one of Australia’s fortified schools for politically suspect children, completely fed up with Australia, he escapes on a boat as a refugee to New Zealand.

 

Advance Australia, Farewell

It’s the joy of forgetting, such a joy to forget

But we killed all our first born, we slashed and we burned

And we sold off the paddocks, and we raped and we gouged

On the wings of a six-pack will we ever learn?

– Midnight Oil, Who Can Stand in the Way

 

So here I was jigging school, having a cigarette with my zits stinging and my tie hanging out of my top pocket. It wasn’t even midday and there was plenty of time to kill. I was still cruising on the juicy rush of my legendary escape and was happy to sit it out for a bit. I didn’t have to be anywhere until about one-thirty, and when one-thirty came around, you betcha, I had somewhere to be alright.

Lorna Fishburn. Need I say more?

Now, obviously today was a special day, and apart from a certain forecast rendez-vous, it was also the day on which I’d decided to make a run for it. It was time to do what my champion brother used to call the hell U-bolt, and break out of school once and for all.

During recess, before the playground patrol started mopping up stragglers, I’d hidden myself under the demountables and disabled my tracking tag. It was piss easy to do, and everyone knew the trick. My bag was chock-a-block with all the stuff you need to survive – like clothes and a toothbrush – but I’d still found room for a few of my favourite Conan books. You can’t beat Conan when you need to gee up for the odd mission impossible and, sure enough, as I lay there with all the rubbish and spiders, I pulled out an old fave and got stuck into some quality reading.

Ten minutes later, I was itching to go. The playground looked clear and with Conan on my side, I was fully psyched. I put away my book, pushed my bag out and rolled from under the building like some army hero. I was up near the tennis courts and had a pretty good view across the yard, and couldn’t see a rat’s flap. I got my bag on, got into a champion crouch, hung on just a moment, then made my break.

Would you believe it, but just as I hit the palm tree, I heard this dude shouting at me, and next thing Blinky Bill’s on my heels. He’s the school caretaker, and though he’s a mere kumquat of a man, he came at me like a falling coconut. I fully stepped on the gas and went like crazy, and Blinky kept on coming. I was amazed to see him run like that because we all know he’s smashed beyond the realms of a goat by lunch-time. Admittedly, it was only recess, but he would’ve had a few already to be sure. I ran like the wind in your hair on a beachfront cliff, and looking over my shoulder, Blinky was doing the same. I was touched to see him put in such an effort on my behalf, especially when I knew I was leaving him for dead. His stumpy legs meant he ran like a right lump, and it wasn’t exactly a coat of varnish job in the end. I was out that gate like a gold medallist.

Now that’s all very well, me getting away, but more importantly I don’t reckon he saw my face and the camera on that gate is stuffed. They may well be into some hi-tech paranoid bullshit, but that school doesn’t exactly have electric fences and savage pit-bulls like some of the private ones. My dad reckoned back in his days it was much easier to jig school. These days you need a change of clothes and an all-round plan and a bit of a taste for skulking about in sewers, and that plan had better be a good one or else you’ll have a hell of a lot to answer for and wind up in the state barracks.

Fear not though, comrades, for let me assure you that on this stinking hot day of quality escapology I had a totally first-rate plan that was flawless in every regard. The fact of the matter was that no pisspanhandling spermivore was going to stop Harrison Borgnine from reaching the goal of his expedition. For, lo and be bold, I had a date with Lorna Fishburn.

You might have guessed already that she’d be a bit of a hottie – a truly Ghengis-looking girl with top quality legs and a brain-bending bosom to boot. The honest truth is she had loads of things going for her and not just the looks or the intravenous talk she could pull off, but she was gifted with all kinds of friends in low places. Make no mistake, Lorna knew a thing or two about skulking about in sewers.

But hang on there, son. Hold your horses, old boy, as my dad used to say. Shut up, Harrison, you little spew-bag, you don’t wanna spill the seed too early. Enough about Lorna for the moment – it’s no good wearing her out before she’s even on the scene. When she turns up she’s bound to do herself justice with her world-series looks and lurid qualities. It’d be a tragedy to soil the expectation.

So there I was sitting in the park and slowly roasting. I’m always getting sunburnt, like my mum used to tell me to be careful and put cream on and not sit around without a hat and sure enough I’d come home looking like Abraham Spastoonce, that guy who locked himself in a glass cage in the Himalayas and lost a testicle or something. Not like I lost a testicle, though. I mean, as if, but I was prone to looking like a lobster.

I tossed a few rocks at the carp in the water, but they weren’t doing squat. I half expected one of them to have a heart-attack because one time when I jigged with my best mate Alfonse, we got busted throwing rocks at the ducks by a couple of rangers. Not like Aragorn and his bunch, but those bullshit park cops who are just trumped-up gardeners. These guys came over and said, “I hope that’s bread you’re throwing. You better like show us the loaf, or you’ll be in hot water.” Actually, they weren’t too aggro about it, but they did get shirty and wanna see I.D. and naturally we were packing about getting busted. So I pulled out a bullshit bus-pass I’d nicked off a bloke who baled out of school called Donnie Candles, and when they wrote down Donnie I could have pissed myself laughing, except right then and there I was so scared I nearly shat myself. Alfonse didn’t have any fake I.D., only the stolen Cab-charge which said he was Jenny Fu. Then they said we were going to be deep in shit, and that tomorrow there’d probably be about eight dead ducks floating on the lake, with them being so prone to heart attacks if you give them a scare. I reckon they were full of shit though because when we got to school the next day, there was no hoop-la at all. So take note – those lazy bastards didn’t do their jobs properly. I should have taken their names and reported them for bloody negligence, even if they did me a favour. No wonder I wanted to smash the state.

The duck incident happened a while back, well before I got my stupid medal and even before Alfonse got done for terrorism. And what the hell, I was just a kid who liked throwing rocks at ducks and Alfonse was just a kid who liked having a few words here and there, and kids get up to plenty worse shit these days, like you wouldn’t believe. My dad reckoned, back in his day, it was just hooking up car batteries to troughs, letting off stink-bombs and the odd friendly stabbing. Now kids go around gassing people and shit; gassing and shooting and pipe bombs and blowing up trains and gang-raping whole gangs – serious stuff. But it’s hardly surprising what with about eight million wars and religious freaks everywhere and that tanker they blew up in the harbour. No wonder some kids wanna run away and smash the state. I reckon it’s fair enough, and at the end of the day, I guess I’m one of those kids. Well, sorta, kinda. See, smashing the state seemed like it was way too big a job, so I went for a compromise. I decided to dodge it instead, and that’s kind of what this story’s all about.

Either way, I was just a kid and you can’t do too much about that. I never asked for anything and this all just came along – everything and nothing – and maybe I’m better for it, after such a run of bad luck. And just as I didn’t know what was coming back then, I’ll likewise lay it all out so you don’t know what’s coming. A big old pile of carpet no one’s ever seen before, rolling out after a quality boot with some screwed up pattern by a crazy weaver going nowhere and always different – never a dull moment; not in this day and age.

So go on, comrades, lend me your ears!

But you can keep the blackheads and the wax.

**********

So there I was down at the park with a bunch of mutant fish and I started to get a bit worried. Hell knows why I was sitting around in the open. It’s always the way – along comes some cop who’s been having a wank in the bushes and next thing it’s hand-jobs all round or off to the barracks.

It was high time to make for the public dunsters and get out of my “prison garb”. I’d even brought some clean pairs of dungers with me, in case Lorna took pity. After all, you never know your luck. That’s the sort of thing Conan might have said if he wasn’t so hard-core and spent a bit more time philosophising. In this old film of Conan, Conan’s dad told him to learn the riddle of steel and only trust his sword – not men, not women, not beasts. My dad gave me good advice too, and he reckoned you make your own luck. So, sure enough, I brought a clean pair of dungers with me.

I stepped out after a couple of minutes in my funky pants, trainers and a black tee-shirt – nothing conspicuous, then set off towards the comforts of Redfern. The sparkling glories of the mall were in my sights. My dad reckoned Redfern was a slum about twelve thousand years ago, though I can’t see it myself. You still get a few mutants down the shopping village. Bums love seats – it’s the simple truth. I kind of like bums myself. Both kinds, like especially the ones on women. This bloke was saying the other day, arse is the new tits, arse is the new tits in some crazy mantra, which is like when they say the hundred’s the new fifty with inflation on the up. But really I do like bums, and I quite like boobs as well, now that you mention it.

You can see I was thinking about Lorna. Not like I’ve ever seen her breasts, only the outline, pressing through her tops – it’s sick the way they do that, I swear to cod. The more I’d think about her though, the more nervous I’d get. Alfonse only ever saw her once but he reckoned she was hot as and described her as “sultry.” I reckon! Supple as a panther, like the birds in Conan, supple and lithe and all things nice, and either a total sack-monster, or she’d be shit hot with a scimitar and a complete legend at climbing walls with daggers – that’s the birds in Conan, not Lorna. But Lorna did have a body like those Brythunian women Conan’s always finding in Zamoran brothels and seedy Zingaran taverns. Or at least, so I reckoned, not ever having been to Hyborea and seen such ladies in the flesh.

I ducked down a few back streets to steer clear of the cameras and it wasn’t long before I was a mere block from the untold pleasures of what my brother used to call the Pigslops Bonanza. I never understood why, just like he used to call Angus and Robertson, Hangin’ for Robinson and Barbecues Galore, Bumroots Gaylord. He used to call people Turk-farts – not like it meant anything, but then he was always creative with language. Didn’t matter if what he said made sense, or whether it was logical or anything, but my brother had a word for everything under the sun. Brown Spiderman was one of his.

I made straight for the hot bread shop where they sold the cheese and bacon rolls and stood in front of the cutesy Chinese chick who I secretly hoped was a chronic sperm bandit. I was running a bit of a risk because some turd-burglar of a security guard was struggling to hold up a vast gut right next to the shop. I could see he was checking out the Chinese chick too, filthy old fatso. He had a head like a cup of hot fat and when he saw me approach his face screwed right up like he smelled a runny one from a prison plops bucket. I stuck out my chest and cleared my throat and thought I’d better talk all neat and trim.

“Hello,” I said, “could I please have two of your finest cheese and bacon rolls, and a half-dozen sugar and cinnamon donuts.”

I was all politeness and there was no stopping me now, so I turned to the keg and flashed him a smile, all the while thinking, Cuuuuuuuunnnnnnnntttttttttt…  He really was a hideous fucksplint and I was afraid for a second he might want a piece of me too.

The Chinese chick handed over the paper bags and hit me up for nineteen bucks. I pulled out my wallet and smiled like a total gonad.

“No sweat,” I said, “inasmuch as I have the wherewithal herein,” which was a favourite line of my brother’s when he was trying to sound like a ponce. I don’t think she had the faintest ballsplinter of what I was saying, but man she was tasty, and who could deny a feisty one smelling of bacon rolls and donuts with flour fingerprints on her cheeks? If I wasn’t meeting Lorna, I might have asked her out. Yeah, right, just like I did all the other times too…

I squeezed off and took up pole position on one of the benches. I was getting more and more nervous by the minute and didn’t have half the hunger I thought I did. I knew I’d be packing the moment Lorna showed up. I had to distract myself and get off the nerve rack and the easiest way was to visualise a bit of quality hack and slash. Sometimes I could really paint a picture, and this time around I had no trouble getting started. I opened my bag and had a squiz at the cover of Conan of Aquilonia and whooshka! – my mind was off.

In runs Conan and he’s heading straight for the Cup of Fat. The Cup’s seen nothing and before he can even get his hands out of his pockets and off his nob, there goes the arm in a flash of broadsword and a torrent of grease. Then Conan, bristling with steely thews, shears through the other one for good measure and the Cup’s going down like that Black Forest cake my dad cooked once using margarine instead of butter. Next thing Conan goes nuts when he realises he’s surrounded by a bunch of useless, retarded parasites loaded with booty and he’s swinging like a propeller, scything through skin and bone and cartilage and brains and ears and noses and guts and there’s no shortage of carnage whatsoever.

I was clamping my eyes hard conjuring this massacre and made it get so big I saw myself jumping over the counter and hiding with the Chinese chick under a couple of old flour sacks until the butchering’s done and Conan’s made his way back to the war galley he filched from some Hyrkanian pansy, leaving a trail of twitching gore.

My head was nodding up and down with the pace of my unfolding vision, and next thing I stopped dead in my tracks. I realised my legs were shaking and my fists were clenched tight and my mouth was all gummed up with bacon roll. I wasn’t panting but I sure was swallowing heartbeats. I’d gotten myself real geed up in a welter of violence and my head was starting to spin. The old panic set in and I got this feeling as if everyone really might die as I’d imagined, or like maybe I’d be the one to do it, or worse that I might die too. I had to pull myself in and stop the fear, because I knew where it would lead and then I’d get the sweats.

I chewed my dry mouth of bacon roll and took a deep breath. Like how crazy is that – that you can think some shit up for the hell of it and totally horrify yourself in the process? I clamped down on those thoughts right away. Man, I used to really love violence, but then all that shit happened and the government gave me that bloody medal like they wanted to insult me. And how fucking dumb was that – getting a bravery medal for not being somewhere when the shit hit the fan? If they’d told me what they were really doing to my mate Alfonse I might not have spat on that guy when he handed it over like he was real sorry and it wasn’t their fault in the first place anyway.

They kept an eye on me after that. But my brother would have done even better. My brother would have told them they were about as much use as a dead bear in a dust-storm. He would have asked them about Alfonse and made them tell him what they were doing to him, even if they didn’t know shit. Christ I missed my brother. But like the psyche-man said, be brave, be brave, and a huge, steaming pile of other positive ballslap that’s no consolation for a whole harbour full of people. At least I had my Conan books, and even if they were a bit violent and got me so fired right up that sometimes I got scared, I could still think about Conan taking a mighty sword to whoever the hell it was that killed my family and all the people who drove them to it. Conan was the only brother I had now.

And then I was all choked up. My bacon roll was gumming my mouth something savage and I couldn’t swallow because of the lump in my throat. I managed to get some of it down, but there were sniffles as well and I was shaking like a leaf, feeling weak and down in the dumps and scared shitless about meeting Lorna and her friends in low places and what was going to come of it all once we started skulking about in sewers.

And would you believe it, but I started crying. Right there in the shopping village with Lorna about to show. Huge, pathetic, milksop tears running down my cheeks and I could hardly breathe with all the thick gooey mess of roll in my mouth. I needed a drink real bad and couldn’t work out why the hell I hadn’t bought one at the bread shop, but I just clean forgot. I tried to stop crying, but I was fully packing now and my father and mother and brother were all there in my head and not even Lorna Fishburn was going to stop me thinking about them. And the tears just kept on coming and my cheeks were puffed right out and I tried hiding behind my hand, but nothing could stop me looking like an unblown nose.

And that’s how she found me, crying like a sissy; having a first-rate bawl with bacon chunks in my cheeks. It pretty well goes without saying that it wasn’t the way I had planned it.

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Realpolitik

January 25, 2011 by Professor Rollmops

This article was published on Al Jazeera’s website on 31 Jan, 2009. I must confess I was rather pleased to see it on the front page ; ) Unfortunately, however, I accidentally sent the wrong draft, which lacked a few minor changes and additions. The correct draft appears below.

Hope for Realpolitik?

The seductive powers of Barack Obama’s rhetoric are well noted. Throughout the primary contest and presidential campaign his stirring speeches captivated millions, both inside and outside of America. Yet, what made his core message of hope and change so entrancing, was not merely the skill of his rhetoric, but the growing perception that behind this message lay a great pragmatism, common sense, and an inspiring work ethic. For all his uplifting talk, Barack Obama comes across as a practitioner of realpolitik.

The Oxford English dictionary defines realpolitik as “politics based on realities and material needs, rather than morals or ideas.” President Obama’s cabinet choices reflect this. Whereas George W. Bush largely surrounded himself with Neo-con ideologues, (or rather, it might be said, they put forward Bush as their spokesman) Obama has selected a capable team of qualified people. The message is clear – the problems faced by the United States and the world are huge and Obama is serious about finding solutions.

It is unfortunate that the same cannot be said of the situation in Israel and Palestine. Rarely, in recent years, has realpolitik had a look-in. To the outside observer, there seems only one viable option – the two-state solution born of a land-for-peace deal, including East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital. The occupation which began in 1967 is a ceaseless source of resentment amongst Palestinians, and a powerful spur to violent resistance. The ending of this occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state will not solve all the region’s problems, but it is a clear pre-requisite for peace. This is the practical solution; it is realpolitik.

With an election on February 10, Israel seems poised to place its trust once again in the right, in the form of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party. Both are in favour of a land for peace settlement, but reject Palestinian demands for East Jerusalem as capital of a Palestinian state. Sadly, it is unlikely that any process will move forward without this issue on the agenda.

In an interview in Yedioth Ahronoth last September, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that Israel must accept a land for peace deal. “We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories.” Olmert also acknowledged that Israel must consider relinquishing parts of East Jerusalem. Whilst Kadima party head, Tzipi Livni and Labor Party chairman, Ehud Barak have suggested they are amenable to a two-state solution with Jerusalem as Palestinian capital, both are unlikely to wield much influence in the aftermath of the election.

Whatever the case, such sentiments have not translated into action in recent years. Far from it. The West Bank holds no less than 149 Israeli settlements, with an estimated population of 460,000. New construction is underway in 88 settlements, in which population growth is thrice that of Israel proper. More than 38 per cent of the West Bank is now occupied by settlements, roadblocks, outposts, military compounds, nature reserves and settler roads closed to Palestinian traffic. This is an ever-present source of humiliation; an open sore for the Palestinians.

Strategically, Israel’s policy can only have one purpose: to make a more compelling case for the retention of as much land as possible in any final settlement. Indeed, this strategy has a name – “facts on the ground”, and the policy is facilitated by cheap and easy loans from the Israeli government for those wishing to settle. Were Israel at all serious about relinquishing this territory in a peace deal, then one might expect a reversal of settler expansion – if only to avert the internal upheaval the dismantling of even a minority of these settlements would entail. Instead, however, colonisation of the West Bank continues apace. Even were the Obama administration to cut US $1 Billion in loan guarantees to Israel, in accordance with pre-conditions that the money not be invested in settlements, as has been recently speculated, it seems unlikely that Israel will reverse its current policy. This is not a viable road to peace.

It goes without saying that the Palestinians, too, must make concessions; they too must practice realpolitik. Firstly, Hamas must recognise Israel – an Israel bounded by its pre-1967 perimeter. Not to do so is pure intransigence, and utterly impractical. Israel is there to stay – the only remaining questions regard its size and shape. There is no questioning the folly, and, in many ways, the counterproductive, almost counter-intuitive provocation of Israel by Hamas militants. Like a punch-drunk boxer desperate to salvage some pride and a last paycheck, Hamas has not acted in its best interests. Hamas must rein in its militants and dismantle its infrastructure of violence; it must walk the path of the IRA; strengthening its political arm, whilst discouraging violent resistance.

UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard concluded in his January 2008 report, that Palestinian terrorism is the “inevitable consequence” of Israeli occupation. While Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable, “they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation.” Power brings responsibility. The more powerful a state, the greater the consequences when it acts. To consider that there is any equivalence between the actions of Hamas militants and the IDF is ludicrous. Israel must act first by accepting its illegal appropriation of Palestinian land is the principal obstacle. “In other situations, for example Namibia, peace has been achieved by the ending of occupation, without setting the end of resistance as a precondition.”

Israel is an occupying power and to act contrary to this truth is not to play realpolitik. The Northern Island peace process was a victory for and because of realpolitik. It was successful because all major players made the compromises that had to be made. It survived through the admirable restraint shown by all sides in the face of intransigence. In the Occupied Territories, land is the principal grievance. At the price of short to medium-term political upheaval, Israel can guarantee a long-term peace and viable local economy for both Israelis and Palestinians.

It doesn’t matter that this is no easy solution. The status quo is far harder, far less agreeable. One shudders to think of the scale of disadvantage faced by children growing up in Gaza now; of the young men and women whose education and social development has been retarded by ceaseless deprivation, fear and anxiety. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, should be subject to gunfire, sonic booms, rocket attacks, nor should they have their doors kicked in and their few possessions destroyed. Yet, it is mostly Palestinians who do the suffering; the hapless victims of colonialism, apartheid, disproportionate military aggression, and, one must add, poor leadership and administration. These people need jobs, food, housing and most of all, hope.

How Obama will choose to engage with Israel, and whether or not he will be willing to engage with Hamas, with, or without conditions, remains to be seen. In the meantime we can only hope the ceasefire holds and wait for new initiatives, for a new Israeli government. Pragmatism must overcome ideology. Now is the time for realpolitik.

http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/A_hope_for_realpolitik.html

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Books, Gods and Summertime

September 2, 2010 by Professor Rollmops

“Do you want some books? Some English books?”

It was Sunil speaking, my auto-rickshaw driver for the last two days in Jaipur.

Jaipur - The Boss

“I have two books. You can take them with you.”

“What books?”

“Two English books. A girl gave them to me to read. She said they are very good books. She gave them to me to read them when I learn to read properly.”

“Oh, nice. What books are they?”

“I’ll get them.” He stood up in his chair and I rose halfway myself.

“No, it’s cool, man,” I said. “Don’t worry. It’s too much trouble.”

“No, it’s no trouble. I live across the road. I’ll get them.”

“Really, only if it’s no trouble.”

He laughed and smiled again. “It’s just across the road.”

“Okay, sure. If you want to, thanks.”

Sunil left in a flash and I eased back into my chair. I was sitting on the open rooftop of the hotel; drinking black tea and picking away at a paratha. For the last twenty-four hours I’d had stomach problems aplenty and had only just gotten through the day’s activities: a visit to the Jantar Mantar and Amber Fort; a test of endurance in forty degree heat.

Amber Fort, Jaipur
At the far end of the rooftop, before a painted arch, a two-man troupe were putting on a puppet show; stories of the Ramayana. At times the volume was too much, the cymbals too clanging. I was too fragile for much patience, but also a tad too weak to feel any annoyance. I was still acclimatising to India, to Rajasthan, and I guess getting sick was part of the trip.
Sunil and I had just cut a deal. His uncle, Shyam, was to drive me around Rajasthan for the next ten days, starting the following morning. The price was fair and it seemed a far more convenient arrangement than taking my chances with the local buses and trains. It would also ensure I could see the more remote forts and temples, provided I was well enough.
I began to wonder about the books Sunil was bringing. What would they be? Rudyard Kipling, for heaven’s sake? I wasn’t terribly optimistic, though I wasn’t too pessimistic either. The worst case scenario would be a couple of airport potboilers, or some junk about spiritual enlightenment, though I most expected him to hand me some inoffensive, lightweight fiction.

Jaipur Hotel
Sunil returned after five minutes, wielding two books. One was a hardback, the other, a floppy paperback.

“Here they are!” he said.

He was slightly out of breath. A short, moustachioed, rotund and cheerful man in his mid-thirties, Sunil always had an air of abundant enthusiasm.
He placed the books on the table and as soon as I saw the titles, I was pleased and surprised.
Summertime by J.M. Coetzee and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
I had read neither of them, but had wanted to do so, and now I was free to take them with me around Rajasthan.

“Oh, cool,” I said. “Excellent.” I picked up Summertime.

Summertime - Coetzee

“This guy, Coetzee, is a very famous author. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“He won the Booker prize, twice. It’s like the biggest prize in writing and only two or three people have won it twice. I’ve read about six of his books. Hell, I even taught his stuff once!”

“But that’s great,” said Sunil. “See, I knew these books would be good. The girl was very nice, very clever.”

“And have you heard of Arundhati Roy?”

He shook his head.

“She’s Indian, though I don’t know where from. This book also won the Booker prize. It’s supposed to be very, very good.”

“Very good then! And now, you can read them and tell me what you think. One day, I will read them too.”

We turned back to planning my route through Rajasthan over a large map of the region. I was very excited, though uneasy with stomach cramps. As we sat there over the next half hour, I kept glancing at the books and wondering whether or not these would really be the best place to start reading English literature. Coetzee might be just the thing, with his terse, laconic use of language and simple sentences, but I had no idea what to expect from Arundhati Roy. Still, as an Indian writing about India, the book could well be a lot more interesting and accessible for Sunil. There was only one way to find out: Read them.
The following morning I set off for Pushkar with Sunil’s uncle, Shyam. I had decided, on account of recurrent stomach problems, to hole up there for a couple of days in the hope of getting over my illness. The drive was easy, if disappointingly desolate, until the final stretch that is, when we turned off the main road. The land became more fertile, with many trees and patches of green growth; it was a yellow land, the colour of wheat heads, baking in the sun at the end of the long, hot dry, yet nourished by wells and tanks from the last monsoon.

Shyam!
We arrived at just after one in the afternoon, and made straight for the hotel. It took some time to rouse reception, but once on hand, it wasn’t long before I had the keys. I had booked a somewhat luxurious room – white marble, high ceiling, fan, air-con, a king-sized bed – all subtly decorated with painted flowers and curlicues. The small balcony overlooked the swimming pool and surrounding countryside; framed by tall hills of scrub and martian rock, the low-land was bright with crops of flowers grown for Puja. It was stupidly cheap at twenty dollars a night.

Pushkar street
After a swim and a meal of dry garlic naan and black tea, I set off into town to explore. My fragile stomach rebelled at the powerful scents of dung and refuse, and, feeling physically exhausted, I was not in the mood for solicitations. I lasted only two hours before heading back to the hotel; tired, with a headache, wanting to have eaten, but having no appetite whatsoever. It was simply too hot, at thirty-six degrees and there was nothing for it but to read. I picked up The God of Small Things and lay down by the bright window. I was soon completely hooked.

God of small things
The following day, my guts had not improved and I again only managed a short visit to town. It was disappointing, but I made the most of the time and took some good photographs. I was quite content to stay in the hotel anyway, with my imperial view across the fields of flowers to the hills, the swimming pool and abundant natural light. I spent a couple of hours watching women in traditional clothes harvesting flowers in the fields, before returning to my room to read.
Late that afternoon, as the sun fell quickly behind the turrets, painting the sky a brief pink and purple, I finished the book. I felt immediately bereft, having gained and lost so much so quickly.

Pushkar

Pushkar
I was exhausted and weak. I’d eaten some bananas and half a pineapple that day, along with more dry bread and black tea, but it was nowhere near enough food and I had to force myself to eat it. I decided I needed antibiotics, but had left it rather late to get something.
Tired, yet restless, I forced myself to start reading Summertime, if only not to feel so hollow. It took me a while to get started, but slowly and surely, it drew me in and gave me sufficient solace to get through the evening.
The following morning, Shyam and I left early to head down through Chittorgarh, en route for Udaipur, where I finally got hold of some antibiotics. I left Summertime in the car by accident, but was not in any great hurry to finish it.

Ranakpur

Jodphur

Jaisalmer

Shekhawati Shyam

There was now the Indian Premier League Cricket to watch, and, with my recovery starting the moment I took the first pill, I wanted to spend the time seeing things and taking photographs.

It was thus more than a week later, at the end of the Rajasthani tour, driving from Jaisalmer to Bikaner, that I finished reading the book. It had had its moments, though I was left feeling a tad nonplussed. The organisation of the book seemed too arbitrary, too random, though the writing throughout was quality.

When Sunil and I finally sat down together again in Jaipur, eleven days after our last encounter, I brought the two books with me. Sunil produced a small bottle of rum and poured us both a glass.

Team Jaipur!

“Do you know what rum means?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. Does it mean something?”

“Yes,” said Sunil. “The letters. R.U.M – Regular Use Medicine.”

We laughed together and I took a slug of Sunil’s medicine. Soon the waiter came by and I ordered a vegetarian thali and a bottle of beer.

“Look, about these books. I’m not sure that either of them is a good place to start reading.”

“Why not?”

“Basically, I think you’ll find Summertime rather boring and too academic. It has some very simple and easily understood parts to it, but it also discusses literature, theory – university stuff. It’s not really going to be that easy, I think, if you don’t know half the words. And, you know, that’s kind of the problem with The God of Small Things. I loved this book, it’s a great read – yet the language is very idiosyncratic. I mean, she uses a lot of words in strange ways, in different ways, and here and there she adds new words. It also moves back and forth in time, and has some complicated scenes where it was at first difficult to work out who was who. I had to read the first chapter twice to work out who the people were. I think it’s going to be a hard place to start reading English novels!”

I was concerned that he might think I thought him stupid, whereas I knew from our conversations that he had a very agile mind. But I also knew how limited his writing and reading skills were, because he had asked me to compose and type text messages for him to his English-speaking French girlfriend, so uncomfortable was he with spelling and grammar. What he needed was a great novel with simple language and limited nuance, though not devoid of it.

“But you liked the books? They are good?”

“Yes, I liked the books a lot. This one in particular,” I pointed to The God of Small Things. “But maybe you’d be better off starting with something else. Something with easier language in it.”

I began to wonder if he wouldn’t just prefer to read a crime thriller or action story of some kind. In truth, I hardly knew the guy, and apart from his professed interest in women of all shapes and sizes, I didn’t have a handle on his tastes. Then, I had an idea.

“Hang on. I think I have a suggestion. I’ll write it down for you.” I felt in the front pocket of my bag. “Oh crap.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a pen.”

He turned and called out in Hindi. The waiter came over with a pen.

“Write on the napkin,” said the waiter.

“No, no,” said Sunil. “I want to keep it. A napkin is not good paper.”

“Hang on,” I said, taking the pen. I pulled a folded sheet with an old hotel booking from my bag, pressed the folds and tore off a quarter. The waiter moved away.

“The book is called The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. It’s a great classic and you’ll be able to find it in India, no problem.”

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Not long afterwards we parted ways for the last time and I returned to my hotel room. I smoked a little hashish, watched the cricket and went to bed. Before sleeping, I thought more about my recommendation. The choice seemed sound enough, and I felt rather too smugly pleased with myself for having suggested it. I suppose, having read a lot of novels and studied literature at university for years, along with teaching English, I ought to be able to make a good recommendation for a first English novel, or at least reserve the right not to feel like a total fraud in doing so. Still, what troubled me was that I had only read The Old Man and the Sea once, more than twenty years ago, when still in high school. Did I really know what I was talking about?

Four days later, sitting in the German bakery overlooking the wire suspension bridge, Lakshman Jhula, in Rishikesh, I noticed that there was a bookstore next door. I had walked straight past it and missed it altogether, yet they had a side window that opened into the café; a window, I had, strangely mistaken for either a mirror or a poster. Precisely what it was supposed to be reflecting or advertising, I can’t say.
I finished my meal of fruit salad, banana pancake with honey and two bowel-shifting filter coffees, and walked inside. By coincidence, the first shelf I looked at contained a collection of Hemingway novels and short stories. Sure enough, there it was: The Old Man and the Sea. I pulled it out and flipped it over: one hundred and ten rupees, or two dollars fifty. I could hardly just leave it, especially as, with a mere hundred pages, it would be no burden to cart around with me.
That day I took it back to my room at the Jaipur Inn; an expensive place at almost thirty dollars a night, but all I had been able to find at this time of year. It wasn’t quite full season yet, but the Kumbh Mela, a once-every-four-year Hindu festival of epic proportions, indeed, the largest gathering of people on Earth, was on down in Haridwar, a mere ten miles from Rishikesh. I was lucky to have a room at all, for the town was jam-packed full of pilgrims, sadhus, nomads, middle and upper class Indians, and tourists who had come either to find or lose themselves.

Rishikesh

Rishikesh

Rishikesh

Rishikesh

I needed a break from the throng, and, after negotiating the ever-crowded Lakshman Jhula, I showered, lay down on my bed and began to read the book.

Oh dear, was my first thought, as the characters began to speak. I have never been entirely comfortable with Hemingway’s dialogue; at times it has a crisp and simple reality to it; his characters speak in no-nonsense, no-frills, laconic utterances; brutally factual, often quietly defensive, formidably stoic. At other times, the tone is lighter; a slight playfulness creeps in, if somewhat reluctant, hard-boiled, guarded. Yet all too often, Hemingway’s characters speak with an odd and awkward formality. One understands that, particularly in his Spanish-speaking characters, he is attempting to replicate the more formal qualities of the grammar and niceties of the language. Yet it feels inauthentic, staid and archaic. In an attempt to create something naturalistic, there is too much evident process. His characters sound more like people reading lines, uncomfortably; like people bent on finishing their sentences with peculiar completeness.
This was my response to The Old Man and the Sea. I pushed on through the first twenty pages, wondering how on earth I could have recommended this novel. It wasn’t that it was bad, in fact, I was very much enjoying the setting, the observational detail, the tone and mood. But it struck me as a very odd book to choose as one’s first novel to read in English. It was full of jargon peculiar to fishing; hooks, lines, hawsers, thwarts. Would my Rajasthani friend bother reaching for his dictionary to understand the anatomy of a boat, of the fisherman’s trade? I very much doubted it. Would the story interest him; this slow-starting yarn of physical and psychological endurance? This melancholy tale of struggle, victory, loss and quiet respect? I very much doubted it.

I finished the book in an hour and a half, then got up to go back outside. I was very much inside the story, and it was very much inside me. I relished the intensity of mood it had brought on; it truly was a great story, and very well told, but I couldn’t help feeling I had given my friend a bum steer.
After a couple of minutes, my embarrassment passed. I began to laugh to myself. Hadn’t Sunil, after all, given me a bum steer as well? Hadn’t he told me that the Kumbh Mela would in no way effect Rishikesh, for all the pilgrims and tourists stayed in Haridwar? Hadn’t he told me I’d have no trouble getting up to Gangotri, only to find on arrival in Rishikesh that the road was closed until opened by the army on May 15? Hadn’t he sent me to the wrong bus-station in Delhi? I smiled at the thought of him settling in with The Old Man and the Sea. Perhaps he would find a way in, just as I had made my way here and found a hotel room despite tribulations. Yet, somehow, I didn’t think English novels were for him.

Posted in India, Memoir, On Writing, Travelogues | Leave a Comment »

Inside Enemy Territory

August 10, 2010 by Professor Rollmops

Elections can be rather polarising affairs across all spectra – at a social and personal level. I tend to become rather short-tempered during campaigns, responding with at times intense emotion to the events as they unfold, generally through fear of a conservative victory. Without any true party of the left in Australia, however, every election seems to be a conservative victory, irrespective of whether or not the Liberal or Labor Party wins. That said, there is little point in disguising my hatred and contempt for everything the Liberal Party stands for, and it is the prospect of their being elected that frightens me the most.

All this makes it difficult to remain level-headed, especially when living in the Paddington / Woollahra area, which is overdosed with conservative prats. Their smug, carefree and occasionally disgusting affluence flies in the face of any hopes one might harbour for a sustainable future where personal greed and indulgence are marginalised in favour of the greater good. But what really upset me most of all last Saturday night, was the awful blandness and barbarism of many present in this electorate.

I needed to get out, somewhere, anywhere, “where there’s music and people and they’re young and alive.” With a loose arrangement to meet a friend on Queen Street, I thought it best to stay within the vicinity, so I wandered into the Light Brigade Hotel on Oxford Street. I should have known better, having been there many times in the past on account of its proximity. It was early evening but the place was entirely packed. Australia was playing New Zealand in the rugby, about which I would have been happy to remain ignorant. Rugby is a tiresome, messy game, which people continually tell me is tactically more sophisticated than Rugby League. Empirical observation however, has shown it to be merely a bunch of violent boofheads jumping on each other, then kicking the ball first chance they get. Where exactly the skill or tactics reside in this dreadfully boring mess is a mystery to me.

The crowd was not unlike the usual collection of dullards, however, on this occasion, multiplied by a significant factor. A most moribund collection of collared shirts, tucked-in! and that most awful type of person – the man who wears a suit on a Saturday WHEN HE DOESN’T HAVE TO. I have never really understood this phenomenon, with the exception of say, a fine-quality three-piece retro number or something in blue velvet. But this was like a real-estate agents’ convention. Pretty well everyone else was attired in striped-shirts, with the effect that, were an alien observer to take this random sample, they might conclude that the human species generated offspring through a process of cloning.

I pushed my way through to the bar thinking, hell, I’m here now – one beer then out. I figured I could lean against a wall, sipping away, and at least not feel as lonely as I had done prior to entering. Indeed, my initial response was more positive than the above paragraph would suggest. Yes, here were people and plenty of them. What harm could it do to warm up for the evening in a warm atmosphere?

It was surprisingly easy to get served, after which I found a great spot to lean against the wall. This vacancy was ensured by the fact that, from this vantage point, it was not possible to see any of the two-hundred odd screens with the rugby on. I surveyed the crowd, noting here and there the rare individual who had made some effort, albeit a conservative one, to appear to be an individual. It struck me immediately that from this bunch, the Liberal Party was getting a big fat number 1 on the ballot paper come August 21. The true awfulness of the people, however, was yet to reveal itself!

This was the eye of the storm. I had entered during the half-time break, and once that whistle blew time on, all hell broke loose. The loud chorus of banter now began to show more uniform emotional responses. Approval or disapproval erupted in bursts of emotion, in accordance with the fortunes of the shaved apes on the screen. Yet, there was something very disturbing about it all – both the positive and negative shouts seemed  fuelled by anger and invective. One rather frightening-looking fellow, standing a mere four feet from me, was swearing his head off. “Fuck you” this and “Fuck you” that, apparently oblivious to the presence of a civilised human-being within his earshot. Indeed, it occurred to me after a time that he thought this sort of behaviour might earn approval from those around him – something even more frightening to consider.

The game was not going well for Australia, or so I gathered, and my delight at this grew with every angry shout from these hideous barbarians around me. And why not let the New Zealanders have it? It seems to mean a whole lot more to them anyway. Clearly some of the fools in the pub needed a good dose of humility. Anyone who finds it necessary to shout “Die, you cunts!” at a rugby game, has their priorities wrong. I could understand if John Howard had appeared on the screen, though of course, amidst this crowd they would be far more likely to applaud.

It wasn’t long before I’d had enough. I had come here to feel less lonely, but now I felt more lonely than ever. These people really sucked balls, to put it mildly, and they were, with each passing moment of Labor’s fumbled election campaign, moving ever closer to an insufferable joy at the victory of that Catholic misogynist Tony Abbott. The idea was so dreadful that I simply had to get out, and so I did.

I freely admit that it had been a gross error of judgement to go into the pub in the first place, yet to then follow it up by walking down to the Woollahra hotel, borders on the criminally insane. I have long known that this is a haunt of the worst kind of toffs imaginable, and yet, still awaiting contact from my old friend, who was somewhere in the locale, it seemed to make tactical sense to remain hereabouts.

I walked down Queen Street, enjoying the cool air. I was free for now, and some levity returned to my mood. Indeed, I felt as though my loneliness were beginning to vanish on the back of a wave of self-appreciation. There wasn’t a great deal to appreciate, with the exception of the fact that I was not one of those people I had left behind. Negativity is rarely a good starting point for positivity, yet for now it was working.

The Woollahra Hotel was at least blissfully quiet. The rugby was on too, sure, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly loud and the crowd was comparatively thin. It was, however, equally unpromising. Not only were the same clones present as had been in attendance up the road, but the suit count here was even higher, and despite the apparently higher socio-economic status of the clientele, the taste on display was, to put it mildly, extremely disappointing. Suits and ties on a Saturday, with no discernible motive are bad enough, but sloppy, ill-fitting suits on sloppy, under-exercised men are positively revolting. Bad suits, bad ties, bad vibes. And, ye gods, the few ladies present were, to quote René Artois from ‘Allo ‘allo, “dressed-up like the dinner of a dog.” Perhaps it is unfair to judge people by their appearance, but when they have spent a lot of money on rubbish, thus displaying extremely questionable taste, and are likely to vote Liberal, it’s very very hard to like them.

What on earth was I doing here? I was in the heartland of the enemy; the very people who want to turn this country into a gauche playground for the mega-rich, while all artistic sensibility was crushed beneath the weight of their four-wheel drives. They glanced at me occasionally as though I were some odd curiosity; clearly out of place for not wearing the regulation uniform of the rich and dull. I sank into a chair, again, lonely and persecuted, only now, angry and a little exhausted. I knew there was only one thing to do, and I should have done it long before. Finish up and get the hell out of the eastern suburbs. Surry Hills was calling, and, a few minutes later, off I went!

Posted in Political Whinging | Leave a Comment »

Delhi to Agra, 20/03/10

July 1, 2010 by Professor Rollmops

New Delhi train station was a daunting sight. The air was a combination of acrid and flatulent scents. Human and animal excrement, raw exhaust from a variety of fuels; smog, wood-smoke, burning manure, charcoal fires, kerosene, refuse and sewage. The people did not seem threatening, but their poverty assailed me in a way I had not expected. I had seen very poor people in Cambodia and Vietnam, yet here they seemed far poorer and dirtier. Indeed, some men, some children, seemed as lank and undernourished as the hungry, mangy animals; the eczema dogs, the cataract cats. It was heart-breaking. In their midst I didn’t feel so much like a target as a brazen show of opulence, if only for being clean and well-fed; like the occupants of the billboards, who smiled down with success.

It was five in the morning and the floor of the station concourse was full of sleeping people. Either they slept here regularly or were awaiting early trains. Where was this fabled new middle class, I wondered? Perhaps they would arrive later in taxis.

Having been the unsuccessful target of several confidence tricks already, I was wary, but confident now that I would not be fooled; or, at least, not fooled in a way that was not to my advantage. I stepped through the people, who oddly enough paid no attention to me, until I was closer to the ticket window. A man spotted me and called.

“Ticket, ticket!”

“Yes sir.”

“Here, you must come here, fill in form.”

“What form?”

“Here, form for ticket.”

I followed him, expecting another scam of some sort. He took me to the far ticket window and picked up a form from the counter, handing it to me.

“Here fill in, then must come to office. Office is closed, so you go to emergency office. Come.”

He started to walk off. So perfunctory! I followed him. I had read that there was an office for foreigners upstairs that opened at eight. So far, he seemed to be telling the truth. I looked at the form, it was shabbily printed from and antiquated stencil, but it could well be legitimate. What would I know? I followed him back out of the station; through the jostling, belching auto-rickshaws, across the potholes and puddles, down a street full of rubbish. Again I saw an office with an official sounding name, this time up a steep and narrow staircase across a temporary bridge over an open sewer. The man motioned me to follow him up the stairs. I went up, head ducked against the low roof. Inside was a tired little office and a tired little man. His forehead was covered in sweat and his eyes were red. He looked half asleep and entirely exhausted. I thought he might be sick, and a moment later, he coughed as he tried to speak, then gave up.

The man who had brought me here spoke in Hindi. I heard the word Agra and figured he now knew my purpose. Immediately after speaking, my escort left.

“The six-fifteen,” I reiterated. “Please, thank you.”

The tired man turned on his computer and I began to despair. If this was the official, emergency tourist office, why was his computer off in the first place? I felt sure once again that I had been brought to another poser who would sooner have me in the back of his brother’s taxi than on the train to Agra.

His computer took forever to boot, and tired and nervous, I laughed. If his computer was as shit as this, then it likely was the official office! At least now I was near the train station and soon it would be light. If he couldn’t help me, someone nearby surely could. After a time, he had the website up on his screen. He looked. I looked. It was entirely different to the one I had seen earlier in the other conman’s office.

“No,” he said. “No tickets. But, you can go on the eleven-thirty train. No problems.”

It was a set-back, but I was pleased. I suddenly felt a strong inclination to trust him. He looked tired and bored enough not to be trying to sell me something. He had an air of exhausted honesty about him.

“That’s good,” I said. “But it is much later. Does the ticket office open at eight?”

“Yes, at eight o’clock.”

“Good. Then, I will go there at eight.”

I wanted to get away, though I wasn’t sure where. It never occurred to me to ask him about buses, and I walked out of the office with the idea in mind that I would go and find out about these. Where, exactly, I did not know, but I had seen many buses in the car park and figured the train station might also serve as a bus station.

I crossed the sewer, crossed the road, and walked to the ticket terrace at the front of the station. Now I was approached by another man. He was tall and lean, with hollow cheeks and a short, sparse beard. He had a laid-back wisdom in his eyes, and something about his expression suggested he was genuine.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as everyone had before.

“To Agra. But the train is full.”

“Do you have a piece of paper? A pen?”

“Yes.”

I pulled some paper from my pocket and handed it to him.

“Agra, yes?”

“Yes.”

He turned to the wall, and, leaning on it, proceeded to write some numbers down.

“This is the train you want. Number 2165. This is the time, 0615.”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “But I have no ticket. The train is full.”

“You need a ticket? Then come with me.”

I wondered why he seemed so genuinely concerned. Perhaps he hoped for a tip of some kind. Either way, he seemed to want to help me and I was grateful. The first three people I’d met had tried to con me. The next three had tried to help. The balance sheet was evening up and already I felt more hopeful about the next couple of months. It was, after all, only reasonable to expect rip-off artists in a big, poor city like Delhi. It was hardly any different in Naples.

He led me the same way that the first man had led me; through the crowd of people and rickshaws, through the mud and dogs and cows. I began to smile with bemusement as he showed me to the very same office to which the other man had showed me.

“Oh, yes, I have been here before.”

“Come,” he said, and led me up the stairs.

There, once again, was the tired, sick man behind his desk. He smiled at me, a little surprised to see me again. Or was it because he had been expecting me? I fumbled in my pocket for a small note, but I only had 500s. I wanted to tip the man who had brought me here. I apologised, but he waved it away. At last, a truly honest man!

The lean man spoke in Hindi, and again I heard the word Agra.

“I know, the train is full,” I said, over their conversation. “Is there a bus?”

“Yes, there is a bus at six thirty,” said the man behind the desk.

“Perfect, I’ll take the bus.”

The lean man left, and I stood before the desk.

“Why not sit down?”

“OK, I will sit down.”

I took off my bag and sat on the cushioned bench before his desk. His eyes were more alert and his face less pasty. He wiped his brow with a cloth.

“There is the normal bus, or the tourist bus. The normal bus takes six and a half hours, and the tourist bus four and a half. They are three hundred or seven hundred and fifty.”

“Definitely the tourist bus.”

“No problem.”

He tapped into his keyboard, then picked up his mobile phone.

“Just for one? You?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the time. It was five forty five. I was going to get to Agra after all, this very day. My plans were not to be thwarted.

When he had finished on the phone he smiled at me again.

“Relax. The bus will come here.”

“And it’s direct to Agra?”

“Yes direct. Tea?”

“Sorry?”

“Do you want some tea?”

“Umm, yes. Sure.”

He stood up and walked to the top of the stairs, calling out.

“They will bring,” he said, on returning to his desk.

I paid him the money and he printed the ticket, and a couple of minutes later, a man arrived with two cups of hot, sweet, milky tea. It seemed the largest hurdle was behind me; the size of which I had not foreseen.

I decided to introduce myself properly. His name was Sharad Kumar, a name I shan’t forget in a hurry for being so curiously hospitable. We talked about my further plans, the proposed trip around Rajasthan after Agra. Again he suggested taking a private taxi to tour around the region. His offer was not dissimilar to the first one I received, only it was a hundred dollars cheaper, and I promised that I would consider it. I took his card.

The tall lean man, my second helper, returned to the office. This time he brought two Asian girls with him. I quickly moved across to the other bench so they could sit in front of his desk. They too wanted to go to Agra.

Mr Kumar introduced himself, but before he could address their needs, his phone rang, so it was I who explained about the trains and buses. Julie was Chinese Canadian, whilst Naoko was from Japan. It wasn’t long before they were booked on the same bus as myself. Just in time for its arrival.

We sat waiting in the office and I chatted to the two girls. I was exhausted, but had passed my lowest point and felt stronger knowing I would have comrades on this journey. Julie had been travelling in India for a month already and would be a very useful ally. Naoko had just flown in that morning, and it was equally comforting to have another noob with which to share my general culture shock and astonishment.

When we stepped out into the street, dawn had already come. The sun hung under an overpass at the end of the street like a polished gong, its outline visibly distinct with the smog to cushion the glare. What it illuminated was even more chaotic than what had been visible in the dark, if less threatening with the addition of colour. Caravaggio’s  chiaroscuro often seemed stripped of menace, though we know that behind it lay swordplay and vendettas.

I was surprised to see a camel pulling a cart, cows grazing the rubbish heaps, men so lean and small beneath heavy burdens. The road was a mere remnant of itself, kept flat by the constant steamroller of traffic. I stopped to take a photograph and the girls got ahead of me, so I followed their backpacks up the street. We walked under the footbridge, past roadside stalls, beggars and rickshaws. Around the corner was a stretch of ruined buildings; like war damage. Walls had collapsed, roofs caved in, and the piles of bricks spilled down into the street. It seemed these tall, jagged, irregular buildings were still inhabited.

Everything was fascinating to me. I thought, having been to Cambodia and Vietnam, that I was prepared for anything India could offer; yet this seemed to go far beyond it somehow. It must be the scale, I thought; the sheer number of people, the great burden, the pressure on everything. How else could a city, not currently at war, be so derelict? Then again, I reminded myself, this was the train station, and major train stations the world over are often in pretty run-down locales. Was not Piazza Garibaldi in Naples something of a mess? Was not Kings Cross in London surrounded by bleak concrete grime? Yet nowhere, surely, that I could recall, was as battered and wasted as this.

We walked past the rubble, skipped over the potholes. People called on either side.

“Hey, Hello, sir!” but we were on a mission and nothing was going to slow me down. I nodded, smiled, waved.

A hundred metres down the street we reached the bus. It was a battered old thing with patched Perspex windows and the back bumper tied to the chassis. So long as it drove, I wasn’t too fussed. We stepped through the doors and were sent to the back, to a long, deep bench seat. It was dirty and sticky, but it looked very comfortable. I thought I was fortunate in getting a window seat in the corner, and opened it wide to look out at the rubble across the street.

At last! I was on a bus for Agra. Again, I reflected on my victory over the liars and cheats. My mission was still on track. I’d expected to be on a 0630 train, but a 0630 bus would do fine. The sunrise shone orange through the back window. I smiled into it and forced a positive frame of mind. Delhi was always going to be the worst, I told myself. Everything else will be easier, more cool, more shanti. I’ve never liked big cities; especially not polluted, heaving, overpopulated ones. India had given me a shock, but so had Rome when first I stepped out there; so had Bratislava; so had Sarajevo, so had Hanoi.

The bus began to drive, and I smiled across to the two girls who had come aboard with me.

“This is comfortable enough,” said Julie.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

After a few hundred metres the bus stopped in heavy traffic, and more people were brought on board. Three people, who looked European, were led to the very back bench on which we were sitting. It was, at a stretch, designed to seat five. They were crammed in between us. I pressed myself into the corner, my bag lifted up onto my lap. Now things were very far from being comfortable. Inwardly I groaned. Oh god, just get me there! Now the five hours struck me as being a very long time. I wondered if we would in fact arrive in five hours. Would there be delays?

I introduced myself to the chap next to me. He was a young, short, blonde guy with an angular face and pointed jaw.

“I am Alex,” he said. “Russian.”

“Aha!”

The bus, however, was going nowhere. We sat and grew increasingly uncomfortable on that back bench for the next half hour. I passed the time watching Indians at work through the window. One young man had been sleeping on top of his truck. He woke up and leaned over to chat to his friends or colleagues below. An old man walked by, carrying a staff and a small metal pail. Stretched above and hanging low, a jumble of wires. Behind it all, dirty shops with faded posters, roller doors, hand-painted advertisements, flaked and darkened with soot. All about, horns sounded, scooters, rickshaws, cars and buses wove in a slow mess.

Then, at last, we started to move through the traffic. I was already in great discomfort. Having had no sleep or food and being already physically and mentally exhausted made it difficult to marshal good spirits. I tried as best as I could, but my legs were stiff and cramped and the bag on my knees was very heavy.

On we drove, down the dirty road. Never in my life had I seen such poverty; people as black as soot, with matted hair, lying in dirt by the road, begging from hell knows who; children, naked in piles of refuse; men, lean and greased, dressed only in loin-cloths, working with rusty car parts. We drove past shanties, slums, past plastic-sheet and cardboard dwellings, cripples crawling to vehicles at the traffic lights.

Where was the fabled middle class? Where was all the new money? The whole length of the road, through the first four hours of driving, seemed lined only with the poor, rubbing shoulders with the desperately poor. How anyone made any money from the few things they had to offer, with so many seeming thousands offering exactly the same, was beyond me. And perhaps that was exactly it. No one wanted what they sold, and so they made no money, but there was nothing else for them at all. And those with the stalls were the lucky ones. Still, this was a major road leading out of town, not a fashionable new suburb, and it was likely offering a particular view; the lower caste, working class side of town. Perhaps soon my eyes would adjust and I would see things differently. The people did not all look unhappy, and many were impeccably groomed, if clearly not wealthy. And of course! The middle class were tucked away in the other cars on the road.

I realised what I should have realised earlier. That the poverty in India was far worse than I had ever imagined; that despite having heard often, and seen on television, stories of the poor and desperate, I had never in my life imagined it to be on such a grand scale. How could so many people be so utterly destitute? How could this road, which ran for mile after mile, be lined with such terrible despair? As yet I had not understood. I had been in shock, I had my own concerns. I was searching for an escape, for an exit, for a long ride away from the things that upset me, towards something more beautiful, more clean. But I realised now that my own concerns were terribly petty. There was nothing I had to face that came close to the abject nature of some of these people’s lives, nor would there ever be. I was Australian and even the worst-off and most neglected people in my country could seek help and redress; it was there for them in some form; and certainly more so than it seemed to be here. I could always escape, indeed, I was always escaping. But these people would never escape. They were trapped in poverty for ever; for some, it was on the cruellest, most persistent, most hellishly relentless scale.

I straightened up in my chair. I was awfully uncomfortable, exhausted. The young Russian’s head was banging against my shoulder. He’d fallen asleep again. So long as he did not drool, then I had no problem. I adjusted my nuts. I stretched my back and shoulders, then pushed up and re-seated myself. It did not matter that I was hot, sweaty, sticky, sore, stiff, hungry and needing the toilet. It did not matter that I must spend the next four hours stuck in this same cramped position, the underside of the footrest cutting into my leg, bottom aching. The truth was that in a few hours I’d be in a shower, in a hotel, with a clean bed to lie on and plenty of money to spend on food. I was rich. Richer than a hundred of these people put together. I was the raja, and so I should bloody well stop thinking about myself as though I were in some way unfortunate to be cramped in the back of this shabby bus. The truth was that I had it all, and the poor bloody Indians outside my window didn’t have a goddamned thing. How awful it was that I would soon try to put them from my mind and enjoy myself.

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