Let Me Clear My Throat Before I Begin... One Of These Days It Will Be With METH!

Let me clear my throat before I begin... One of these days it will be with meth. I need my Benzedrine fix. I need some sort of medicated-codeine-high-octane-behind-the-counter-legit-smack-kind-a-shit.

And so I found myself walking... It was still light out surprisingly as the days fall away too fast, by 5pm it’s like midnight out. I happened upon Lisa. I think I could be her some days, sitting next to her begging on a street corner so we could buy a packet of cigarettes together and split the ends.

Lisa was anxious she kept telling me she had to go change her coins into a note to make it something more manageable. I imagine it is less embarrassing at the tobacconist than to arrive splaying a mountain of dirty silver coins on to the countertop. Furthermore I imagine it would be to buy those cheap and nasty ones. The Chinese cigarettes that feel like you have smoked asbestos filled fibreglass through a plastic straw. 

That afternoon was different an older gentleman was passing by and recognised Lisa. He came and sat in between us on the bench. Purposefully he didn't say his name and he wasn't letting me in on it either.

He was well dressed - a navy blue blazer-white shirt and leather boating shoes. I was confused with what sort of pants he was wearing. Until Lisa posed the question, “why he had blue ski pants on?” He replied that he “slept outside these days.”  It was winter so he came cut-corrected in his ski apparel and added that he had made in the passing days, maybe weeks months or even years “the decision to live in his clothes.” I liked this guy.

He told us that he had to go into the bottle shop and would be back. Lisa then left to go make other peoples small coined offerings into a note. The gentleman returned, I told him Lisa would be back shortly. He sat down next to me. I asked him what he had bought; he told me it was a bottle of, “Southern Comfort.”

It only seemed apt all so fitting living in the city of the South under these southern skies and it was that other word as well that hovered and resonated in the air- comfort. It seemed to spell it all out for me – my mood.

I guess it is what we all look for is comfort. To fill that void inside us that we no longer fill with the love of god and he had found his in his glass bottle filled up with amber liqueur like spirits. The effect temporary never permanent always wearing off. Perhaps like returning to his mother’s breast nuzzling into the warm and golden licks. I wish I could do that give into something completely with disregard for all other things. I have behaved like this on occasion and believe in addiction there is a relinquishing of living in prescribed modern terms but it is a love affair or liaison with nihilism that ends in fatalism giving into oblivion but I argue that we all must die someday.

I always imagined I would meet my end by being unceremoniously hit by a car. One night in a drunken state I found the location. I recall the lure of the flashing lights of the heavy traffic on the corner of Beauchamp and Oxford Streets. That night on that corner it seemed all so tempting to do such a simple act as to put one foot in front of the other and step into the heavy moving metal.

It was obvious the gentleman had a gambling problem and was on the drink as well. I imagine black jack not the misery of the poker machines with their flashing lights and buzz-cock-high-pitched- ringing-in-your-ears-giving-you-a-headache. He took the large hip flask sized glass bottle out of the paper bag wrapping and slowly unscrewed the lid. He then mentioned if he drank it all in one he would be paralytic he snarled a laugh. He had enough social graces to say, “Cheers,” to me and made a gesture with the bottle up towards the sky. I said, "Santé," he then usurped me and one better and said, "Saluté." 

He placed the bottle to his mouth, his southern comfort, his mother’s glass nipple, his comfort. He titled his head back slightly he didn’t gulp or swallow the amber bourboneque-syrup just flowed down trickling down his throat. He had mastered this motion, this ritual, his throat didn't hesitate either it was waiting for this moment.

I felt I was a party to his misdeeds and impending paralysis. I couldn't stop myself I had to say something I said “woo-oh.” He stopped and looked at me. I looked at the bottle he had drunk about one-eighth.

I felt relieved in that moment that Lisa had returned. They now both felt awkward around me and left together. Lisa hadn't made enough money for a $5 note. I couldn't follow them they were trying to get away from me for fucks sake. I knew all too well that I was not low brow enough to beg with them too well dressed with my hair still wet hair from the shower.

At least they could see till the bottom of the bottle or until they made enough coins to make that five dollar note in their hand and they would have company. Unlike me they both knew exactly where they were going. I knew as well, the corner of High Street and Belmore Road just outside the Night Owl. It was obvious that I wasn't invited. Evidently too much like a tourist in their waking world.

I keep coming back to this point that I write in circles but always return to the fact that writing from the heart will inevitably be messy, anarchic, chaotic and in disarray however in trying to make sense of it all when the smoke clears I must continue to write but not like a woman - like a motherfucker. 

In Search of the Prols in a Hipster Wasteland

A city’s skyline forged on banalities a true representation of what runs this town. As Marx put it, "money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold. All other values are defeated - honour, integrity, truth, justice, loyalty, even blood kin. Nothing remains but filthy lucre."

I went out late night moonlight rolling out before me in search of derive in search of some of life’s truths I came up trumps. This city has spent decades trying to erase the face of the poor and now even the characters, the true individuals have been erased designed out pushed so far out of sight all that is left is a wasteland of hipsters. Who the fuck wants these pro-conformist–pseudo-counter-culture-profiteers that are or esteem to be the moneyed contradiction that they are. 

Truth be told I was out in search of the prols. I believe the term is called going slumming. How could I forget this town has no recognisable venue for them to inhabit all there endroits have been razed to the ground, renovated beyond recognition or turned into upmarket apartments. I question if these places still exist perhaps only in memories glimpsed in my youth.

All in bed at 9 or glued to the TV screen still tut tut tut off to bed in time to make the daily commute. 

Fuck this postcard town. Fuck everyone in it who is sleepwalking through this city languishing in its ever present.

I felt defeated last night the only signs of life were the police siren whirling giving me a head ache. I understood why men in this city glass, king hit and kick each other, it is to feel alive. To see blood surge and bring the shock of life into vivid being. I am now assured this city  has no heart beat anymore just the ring of the till. The prols are sleeping. This city is expensive. The only light on in my street was from the bedroom of the video game addict that lives above my apartment and his occasional, "fuck you!" yelled at his television screen.

Chasing the Almighty Dollar

Are you chasing the almighty dollar? I am, not because I want to but because I have to. We all do. It’s nice to eat.

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

-Bukowski

Mr. Harry Morgan

Cara Andréa,

I am abroad thinking of my home town of Sydney, to see you again at Bar Milazzo and to take a macchiato together made by that other expat paysano Claudio. I miss you my dear Italian friend. I miss you like I miss my city made up of all my old haunts, my family, my dear friends, and all those much loved and renowned of Sydney's inner city street urchins.

The day before departing I came across a man that I have seen about town from time to time for many years. He calls himself Harry Morgan however I have never been certain if this is his real name as he may have appropriated it from the longest serving WWII veteran of the same name. He roams the inner city much like the man on his maroon moped on high speed, on all the footpaths who blasts Elvis songs from speakers secured firmly to the back for everyone’s pleasure.

I met Harry all those years ago on the corner of Oxford and Brisbane Streets when Surry Hills had not yet been completely annihilated and unravelled by gentrifiers. The White Horse Hotel lay as a vacant shell, rumours of Mafioso biker gangs letting it decay and lay to waste away—I believe they call it demolition by neglect. It was still adorned and crowning with the original crumbling statue horse—hooves proud in the air—wild and unbridled—the building boarded up.

Harry is known to most shop keepers around Oxford Street and the art school students that tramp up and down that street, too impoverished to catch the bus to the train station. He is a darling of the inner city, one of Sydney’s much loved sons. I believe it is because Harry is tuned into life in such a way he doesn't miss a moment of it.

By day he wanders the inner city perhaps unknowingly in search of dérive—an unconscious-altruistic-flâneur-par-hasard-by-chance. To me Harry is a reassuring face in the endless hoards of faceless insincere crowds that march in one direction or the other. What is his story? I have often wondered what was the sudden change or the moment of impact that let voices speak aloud inside his mind. He has his ways I am sure, his idiosyncrasies-a-plenty, less able to disguise them as the rest of us who attempt to present ourselves as normal-well-adjusted-beings. A friend of mine told me once that the world is just one big open asylum. He looks better these days, less distressed than those days of my younger self walking up and down Oxford Street, on my way to-ing and fro-ing from art school, saving the bus fare to buy a cup of coffee. He seems more self assured these days as we all get with age.

I always took a deep breath when exiting at Town Hall Station. The cool air always a stark contrast from the stale-stuffy –putrid-bowels below hot with human-humidity. I felt then and now still how the train delivered me into the mouth of the monster of the world, for me to go into battle with the big bad city. Then making my way to or from art school, I would usually catch Harry standing on Oxford Street wearing his fatigues. He was clean shaven then, but he had the wild look of disturbed thoughts that marched through his head. He would carry on and rant, lost in his schizophrenic scatting, angry at the world. I felt the same, raging against it and yet trying to find my place in it.

There is one day in particular in 2001 all those years ago that I still recall to this day. I must have had bus fare that day as I saw Harry from the bus on the corner of Oxford and Pelican Streets. He was in his full army regalia with his matching metal army helmet, waving the front page of the newspaper, overwhelmingly distressed and distraught. Harry was screaming and the front page he was brandishing read ‘WAR!’

I felt Harry's distress and he was right all along. Why nobody else was screaming along with him I do not know. I wanted to wrap my arms around Harry and tell him the dismal truth. That it would be alright, that there in that far flung outpost we would be left untouched, and the world’s indifference would let life continue as normal there in that city of ours.

I then think to a bicycle courier, one of the many that race about town and gather at Martin Place and drink directly from their brown bottled long necks on Friday afternoons, on the steps to the GPO Building. However, this one bicycle courier is special to me and possibly many silent others I suspect whom traipse the State Street line. In between errands he plays his trumpet for the people of his city, his siren song to the city of the South. Yet his presence and his playing are only for the uptown-Hunter-State-Street-elite where he rides. His sounds catch me and the music resonating, hanging in the air, opening up my unknowing heart.

When he plays he speaks to all the tears that have filled up my paper heart—he echoes all the great sadness’s I have felt in my life in that city. He plays it all out on the streets of Market, King, Hunter and Elizabeth, killing me with his playing. He plays out all the darkest secrets of my woodwork heart and my metallic soul which cannot help but trip up on that trumpet of his, echoing all the solemn cries of the past, as I listen intently before having to break away. As I always do—I toss a coin—offer a polite smile and walk on— letting him and his song fade into the crowd—fade into the background—fade into the past—his songbook still ringing out to all the people of the southern skies.

On that last day before departure, seeing Harry on the steps of the Energy Australia Building, on the corner of Bathurst and George Streets, I shared my umbrella with him as it was raining. He told me that he lived in a house now, by himself in Redfern, and he was happy with that. He explained to me that he did not have any money until pay day. I gave him all of my coins—they mean nothing much to me but yet another cup of coffee. In return he gave me a kiss on the cheek, his razor sharp stubble prickling the side of my face as he moved his face away. As we stood under my umbrella I noticed that he was dressed warmly and he started smoking a cigarette, I smoked one with him.

I always thought of Harry as Sydney’s enfant terrible and me some sort of tortured ingénue. He is as much a part of the city in the way we all are, swallowed whole into the mouth of the monster, making the machine turn as we all do, and he is unable to escape.

Now I find myself here displaced, lost amongst the buildings in search of my own dérive, I am here in Paris to be exact and like that last day in Sydney there is the same sadness that surrounds me yet compounded by the crisis here. It is evident all around this city. I am staying haphazardly apart, yet removed in la belle quartier but I know there is always a homeless person somewhere just out of sight.

I was walking along the spiralling intersection on Avenue de Saint-Ouen across the street from the brasserie La Chope nearing the Periferique, late night—last night. I thought I saw a man slowly tumble out of a moving car. I rushed towards him not knowing if he had been thrown from a taxi and was crawling—weaving a path in between the traffic. As he worked his way up to the curb, he made himself comfortable as if he were sunbaking in the gutter, reclining, or daydreaming on a gravely-bitumen-beach at midnight. Strange? A drunken madman I thought being dismissive.

The man rested in my thoughts turning the corner making my way up Rue Marcadet to my apartment building after midnight. Something occurred to me, that the unknown man lying on the curb side, one arm bent holding up his head, gazing wild-eyed at the oncoming traffic was perhaps in effect watching as if the whole world, modern life itself was some sort of curiosity, a spectacle or slow-motion car crash. I felt as if he was lying there literally at the crossroads of living in the moment and eternity near the last exit ramp at Empires end. To reach this conclusion the transformation of my ideas often takes hold in the small hours of the morning—the perfect time when the moon shines, the squares are asleep, and dreamers share while wide awake and me walking underneath the darkened sky going nowhere.

What can any of us do against the failure of Capitalism, sit au café and take our café crème to just wash over the thoughts of today and tomorrow and think dearly of those who we care for, to think of you my dear friend Andréa.

Now looking out over the tin rooftops, terracotta chimneys and arrow-headed-pointed antennas, that stretch out seemingly endlessly to form a distinctive Parisian skyline, a thought overcomes me of how much these grey-topped beige buildings have seen—how many sunsets and bitter winters—the seemingly endless persistence of time and the passing days of old and new—of life here in this city. Like the geraniums that still flower in autumn from the balconies.

What to make of a world gone mad in this grand open asylum waking up from the hangover of Capitalisms glut. Or sit roadside letting it all unravel before us, as if it were some great spectacle made up of flashing lights and moving metal. Or stand road side on an inner city street corner screaming—calling out—imploring for others to take note!

And so I am writing from here, to be by your side and to see you once again Andréa, from your friend thinking of all of you back home,

Fayroze.