Stray Mailer - 19July03

Found myself halfway up a cliff trying to get to a
small castle on private land. For some reason I
thought taking the straightest line between two
points would therefore be the most simple. It also
afforded me some cover from the manor house where I
was definitely not supposed to be anywhere in the
vicinity of.
I do this sometimes and its not until I find my
toes scrabbling against rock and two fingers
hanging by the root of some very unpredictable
looking little plant that I stop to wonder, why
exactly did I think of this? The answer is always
that I didn't think. No thought entered my head. I
just acted. I tried to climb back down but my
daypack was up against a branch pointing upwards,
so I could travel up, but snagged if I tried to go
down. So I had to cut it loose.
As I hung there, scrabbling fitfully, watching my
poor little pack cartwheeling lazily down away from
me, glancing and spinning off rocks to eventually
crash into the heather and sliding down the slope
to impact with a fallen tree I thought, yeah,
that's just great, I really needed to see that
right now. Needed so much to know exactly what's
going to happen to me if I move more than a
millimeter in any direction.

It's horrifyingly fascinating to be completely
aware that it is within your power to fall. That,
actually, given the balance of probability it's
going to take some doing not to fall. See that
little pack down there? That _will_ __WILL__ be me
if that slip I can feel coming with the shakes
setting in isn't prevented somehow. And I don't
know how.

I've lyrically exaggerated the distance I was from
the ground, it would'nt've been more than fifteen
meters or so, not enough to kill me, just really,
really mess me up.
I was climbing back down when I saw another way up,
so forgot all about getting down to safety and
ended up at the top, feeling very proud of myself
and picking stinging nettle shrapnel out of my
hands. At least nettle isn't unpredictable. You
know exactly what the outcome of grabbing a handful
of it is going to be.

And then got into pretty much the same situation in
the castle.
It was little more than a fort, square and blocky.
Three levels that would've been five before the top
two came down. I got stuck on a ledge.

The way I came up was pretty dodgy, involving me
sitting with my legs straddled around a jutting
broken wall, leaning out backwards slightly so that
a fall would've put me down four meters onto my
spine.
I really hate jumping out of things. If I climb a
tree it usually leaves me crouching in the lowest
branches summoning the courage to launch out. Which
is stupid, since I know there's no future for me
that doesn't involve it, so I might as well just do
it. Then I really enjoy it, providing I'm wearing
shoes coz jumping on bare feet really stings, and
usually climb back up a couple of times so I can
jump out again.
But four meters is pushing it.
The only other way down was a ruined circular tower
stair, which was blocked at the bottom by a metal
grill. I tried slipping out but couldn't get my
chest through and I didn't feel like hanging out
stuck halfway through gate until someone showed up
to arrest me.
Finally after sitting on the ledge umming and
ahhing I stormed back to the gate, wrenched off my
tops (grr) and managed to slip through what must've
been less than twenty centimeters of gap.

I've found I'm surprisingly good at wriggling
through small spaces.

I'd spotted the castle as I was heading out on the
ferry to the west Scotland island of Mull, which is
a couple of hours south of the island of Sky. This
was my first serious hitching mission into Scotland
and was well overdue. I mean I love Edinburgh to
bits, but it was damn fine to get clear of it for a
few days.

I've been having big adventures.

It's been a while, eh? Since my last mailout? I
realise this as I try to remember the little
details of the stuff I've been up to. As I've
mentioned in one of these mailers while I was in
Galway, for some reason when I'm settled somewhere
it disinclines me towards journal writing.

So. yeah: stuff. In no particular chronological
order.

We hired a car, seven of us, and drove overnight to
the north coast to see the annular eclipse. A total
eclipse is where the moon is close enough in its
orbit to completely block out the sun and
everything goes dark. In an annular it's further
away and there's a ring of the sun left around the
edge of the moon's silhouette.
We didn't cross the Fife (big river thing that is
Edinburgh's north coast) until eight pm, and didn't
arrive until I think it was three am, I forget now,
but it was very early, incredibly beautiful,
unnervingly like New Zealand, and still so light
there weren't more than half a dozen stars in the
sky.


I have an image burned into my mind from that
morning. It's of Jason standing on the flat sand
with crystal sea behind him. There are tall rock
spires casting long shadows and everything is still
and sparkling. He's thrown a cloth Frisbee; it arcs
through the air towards me under the flaming sickle
of a crescent sun.

The horizon was flat cloud with one dip when we
arrived. I had resigned myself to not seeing
anything, I was along for the ride. About three
forty, half an hour after it was all supposed to
happen we were disappointed but settling into the
perfectly clear day.
Then the perfectly eclipsed ring of what remained
of the sun rose into the one little dip in the
clouds.
Over the next hour and a half the moon moved off
and the ring dissolved into a crescent and then
just the sun.
It was the last one for ninety years.



When me and Ross were getting the thick wooden
dowels for making the war standards we carried in
Beltane I got chatting to the girl who worked in
the timber shop.
Two weeks later, because she invited me, and for
charity, I was strapped into a three hundred meter
long, ten storey high at the start, get up to
eighty kays ph, great big mother of a flying fox.
It was like leaving a tree. You sidle cautiously
onto the platform and peer over, thirty meters or
more to the river Clyde below, and cannot
comprehend the _fact_ that very soon you're going
to willfully step out into the void. And then you
do, and its like all those dreams I have about
flying, and its over and they won't let me do it
again.
But the same charity I was raising money for is
maybe doing a skydive.


Right now I'm sitting behind the desk thing next to
the cash register thing in my first ever ever real
job. Internet café. Thankfully not a real café as
such, coz I've still got that thing about coffee.
Minimum wage, tho more when I do tech support,
choose my own hours. Its probably the easiest job
in the world.

Time to time I'll just drop randomly in when I'm
not rostered and gleefully watch the entire place
instantly shut down around me, then get to spend
the next four hours putting it back up again. I had
to ask my boss at one point, do things ever break
down when I'm /not/ here?


I'm also doing some web design work
www.acedinburgh.com/acrchitect
for example, and that's good work for pretty good
pay.

Is it premonition or manifestation when you decide
something is going to happen and it does? Is it
that you knew it was going to happen or did you
make it happen, or is that the same thing and the
question naive?
I decided that after twenty odd months of living on
a shoestring it was well past time for me to get
some money. No doubt I went on about this in the
last few mailers.
So it came to me that this month, that is to say
last month, would be the final one without cash.
July's rent would be paid not off my credit card,
but with money I earned here. I knew this. And it's
true.


I was almost killed on the day I got this job and
two web page contracts. It was an interesting day.
The traffic had stopped in the far lane of a
freeway so I assumed the light was red and stepped
out. A car doing about fifty flashed a couple of
centimeters or less past my legs. The driver
stopped in the middle of the road and sat for about
a minute, I'm not sure whether to check if I was ok
or because he was having a heart attack. I raised
my hand in apology and finished crossing the street.

Half a step further and I'd've been paté.

Mmmmmmm. paté.



I've come to a conclusion, and like all good
conclusions it's one of been subliminally aware of
for some time. The only way to tolerate the world
is to escape it.

Find those pockets of on-to-it people who are ahead
of the whole rest of the game and sit in the sun
eating well and laughing/lamenting at the rest of
our species. The mundane world of mundane people is
only bearable from the outside. There's no point in
trying to change it, it's defined by its resistance
to change. Just sit in the sun with a vodka and a
drum with the vague hope that someone might follow
your example.

But if they do you don't want to be still around
when they all show up.

"The place to improve the world is first in one's
own heart and head and hands, and then work outward
from there. Other people can talk about how to
expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk
about how to fix a motorcycle. I think what I have
to say has more lasting value."

And, from the same book; 'Zen and the art of
motorcycle maintenance':

"Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep it up
as a serious lifetime occupation."

It's a novel I remember my father giving me to read
when I was eleven, and I thought was about the most
boring book there ever was. Its just not really for
eleven year olds, you have to already know way too
much for your own good before you can get started.

I've been reading a lot lately. 'New scientist'
magazines, 'dialogs with scientists and
sages', 'the never-ending story', Batman. The more
I read the more I realise I already knew. I can see
now I pretty much had the whole thing figured out
at age twelve, we all did. The rest of our lives we
spend trying to learn how to recover from puberty.

Right now I'm in bed in my flat getting over a cold.

Here's a fun game for next time you're in the
company of hippies. Mention tv, then watch them
scrabble to be the furthest person from it. "Tv is
shit, I haven't actually watched it in like six
months."

"Eighteen months"

"Never watched it, don't miss it at all." "Never
seen one." "What's television?"

Bless them.

You can do the same thing with immune systems. It's
a matter of personal pride for most of us, myself
especially, to never get sick. But when you travel
you get diseased, it's only a matter of how
severely. (I originally spelt diseased back there
as 'deseased', and the spell checker wanted to
correct it to 'deceased' and that kind of typo
could've put you all off travelling completely.)

First thing I've got to do is stop sharing drink
bottles and spoons with people. But that's not
easy, like when you're all walking through the bush
and if you take a swig from your sipper bottle
someone's going to be thirsty too, so you can
either just let them drink and take your chances,
or say no and let the bugger dehydrate or quickly
brief them on how to properly squirt themselves
without touching the sipper and look like some anal
retentive freak, or just leave the bottle in your
pocket and be thirsty.

Same deal with food that's being passed around with
only one fork. This may all sound hysterical, but
most of the time I share I get sick. New country
every month and my immune system can only adapt so
fast.

My standard procedure is thus: as soon as I get the
first little symptom immediately cut out all sugar,
dairy, drugs (not really a problem) and especially
alcohol. Then go to bed and annihilate myself with
garlic, fruit and water. After three days I'm
usually good as new. The bed bit is especially good
if you've got no job and someone to look after you.
Naomi, can you go across the road and buy me some
soup.? Thaaanks Nay-omi. Naomi, can you please heat
it up for me.? Thaaanks Nay-omi. I'll just stay
here wrapped up in the hostel dorm reading science
fiction and keeping everyone awake at night
coughing. Where's the grated cheese?

But travelers get sick, especially in hostels, so
before long you're repaying the favor.

Ok, this thing is almost over, which is always a
shame when I enjoy writing it and rack my brains
thinking of more little things to tell you.

New faces this time out, lots of them, friends from
this place Edinburgh that I've finally got around
to adding to the mailing list. For those of you new
here who received this without warning and are
still not entirely sure what the hell is going on,
this is the most recent installment in my travel
log, spanning back what must by now be almost two
years.

Let me know if you want me to send you any of the
old ones.

I've been meaning to get around to this for ages
now, but I will try to scan some of the photos
we've been taking over the last four months and
mail them out.

Lets wind it all up with the standard practice of
filling you in on future plans, which we both know
by now will be startling coincidental in any
resemblance to actual future events.

There are some time restrictions, which always
require plans to be more definite. Namely going
back to Australia for Christmas, and not coming
back to Europe afterwards, maybe.

I'm going to need to stay here for a while to get
some money together. Some people are going to be
meeting up in France for the last week of
September, and I'm invited and I think it'd be
good. Then there are some friends in Italy I
haven't seen in over a year already, and from there
I'd like to get to Turkey via Greece. Then back to
Frankfurt to fly to Oz via Singapore.

Some other people here are gathering in Melbourne
(?) around new years and heading round the
festivals for a month, so I might do that before
heading east.

I want to go to Canada. I'd like to chase up this
film making thing and that seems to mean being in
either London, Australia, the US or Canada, so, um,
Canada.

But I'm thinking if I'm going to do that I might as
well get a round the world ticket, which lets me
catch any plane that'll take me across the planet
once, as long as I'm always heading in one
direction.

So

Western oz, eastern oz, new zealand (hey!), cook
islands, canada, greenland, iceland, (europe?),
nepal, tibet, southeast asia, western oz.

But I'm going to be hard pressed to do this in a
year, which I think is what the ticket is for, so,
I don't know.

I don't know.

I'll be seeing many of you tonight at Michelle's
party (for the rest of you it's theme is bad taste,
so I'm going either as cherry coke or a quadruple
amputee from Iraqansaw.)

Much love

Daniel.