Magnum has left the building
July 19, 2005Machans Beach, Qld, Australia
The mustache is gone.
Weeping will not be tolerated.
Love to all,
J.
Ok one more….hee hee.
July 18, 2005
Machans Beach Qld, Australia
10:39am
It’s the day before we leave Cairns.
I always want to come up with something profound and introspective on the last day about the things I learned on my quest to be someone different. Alas all I have is the memories of the things I saw and the things we did. Steph suggested that life is all about building memories. A definitive episodic string of events that help define the person you are or at least the person you strive to be. You choose the opportunity to experience things, whether that’s skydiving from 14,000 feet or looking at large fig trees that resemble curtains. You choose that tour bus or that white compact rental car. You stop in that restaurant for takeaway, or that bar for sixteen pints and a broken nose. You choose to watch your blonde-haired boy dip his face into the ocean to see a real live Nemo. You choose to swim in testicle shrinking ice water just to let the weight of thousands of tons of water hit you in the back as you dive through a water fall. You choose to sit in sand, watching your wife read, thinking how she just keeps getting prettier.
I have these moments, etched in my brain like fingers in new concrete. They are hardening as I write this. I can feel the old, less valuable memories disappearing, red bandanna and stick in hand, kicking dusty rocks as the horizon eats them like cake.
There is so much time to think here, or anywhere when you do not have the rigorous splatter of a life we had back home. I get lost in it sometimes, staring off in the distance, replacing my supposed quiet time when I tiptoe off somewhere to read. I still feel somewhat lost, as I did back home, here there is just better scenery. It’s not like I had this goal of finding myself on this trip. This is not the seventies. I am not a recently divorced woman. To find one’s self you have to have some idea of what to look for. I still just exist, not attacking life, its still happening to me, instead of me happening to it.
There are things I know for sure. The love I have for my wife. The love I have for my son. These are immediate, apparent and I use them as armor. I figure if I have these massive feelings, these oppressive burdens of joy, then I can get by. I can rely on these feelings to take me through the day with a guarantee of multiple smiles, of laughter, of comfortable warmth.
So I am happy. I am happy right? I am happy. Right? This is what it feels like sometimes. I have created basically a perfect scenario to feel happy. Climate is ideal, culture is so laid back and wistful that its almost somnambulant. My immediate and dear family is never more than a dinner call away. I have money, not lots of it, but enough to make sure the next year is covered with bounty and safety. I have the absolute love and geographically conditional support of my umpteen parents and siblings. I am relatively healthy, minus the blubber and the somewhat dramatic need to harm myself with random intoxicants. So why do I feel sometimes half done, a forgotten puzzle underneath some cottage couch, chunks complete, but so many pieces still scattered about. Why is there a constant ball of anxiety crouched, biting its nails in the cellar of my stomach? Is this my nervous destiny? Or maybe I am just not cut out for this type of lifestyle. Maybe I am better suited sitting in a cubicle surfing movie quote websites, licking my lips cause its payday. Maybe it’s not knowing what one’s destiny is, or even having a hint of what it is. Or maybe I am just chicken and lazy and using all this self-analytical crud as an excuse to watch television, hand draped over the edge of couch, submerged in a bag of salty snacks. Maybe I am just afraid of it all. Career success, a sense of true completion, is foreign things to me. I have never completed anything serious in my life. I have left everything hanging. I am like the first up the mountain to base camp, and instead of using it as a place to get warm and gear up for the rest of the ascent, the harder part, I stay there, steaming cup of hot chocolate in my hand, saying I’m good here thanks.
That is why the novel is so important to me. I truly don’t see it as the light at the end of the tunnel. My pragmatism is too stifling. I do potentially see it as a personal victory. To have an actual completed novel, in a stack of double spaced sheets of paper no doubt, would mean something to me, and me alone. But already I am disappointed in myself. I have written maybe 2000 words in two months. The 44,398 words I have written in this journal are an accomplishment, but it’s too feathery, too flaky to ever submit anywhere.
It’s too personal for that matter as well.
I guess it is a diary after all.
Next stop, Noosa Heads, 150km north of Brisbane for three days. Then Byron Bay for three weeks. Then four days traveling the east coast and Sydney. And then Tasmania for a week. We booked it. Neat.
Love to all,
J.
July 17, 2005
Machans Beach, Qld, Australia
7:14am
There was peanut butter on the fridge handle this morning. There is no doubt who left it there. I will always be the kind of guy that leaves smears of peanut butter in random locations around the house. It’s like the sun and the stars and the black soil that helps things grow. It’s just the way it is.
Sleep is an issue again. Or at least last night it was. It’s always near the end of a rental period, so there is no big Scooby doo mystery. Last night I stayed up late and this morning I woke up early. I was frustrated I could not fall back asleep, knowing that later today I will lash out or make some caustic remark to Stephanie just because I am tired. The fact that I just wrote that down is hopefully enough to stop me from committing this common relationship crime. It’s amazing how one’s partner bares the brunt of such mild internal struggles.
This morning, after sighing and harrumphing, I rose from Hud’s bed (he was in ours, so I tried his) and grabbed the camera to take a picture of the sunrise. I crept down the silent stairs and looked out the window at a magnificent crimson sky. Light from the sun was just starting to throw light through the clouds. Camera in hand, I went for the door when a rumble beneath the equator told me there was a morning ritual to take care off before Ansel Adamsing across the street to the bench facing the sunrise and ocean. No worries I thought, what could change in a couple of minutes? Flush. Open door. Red sky completely gone. Once again foiled by my all too regular system.
Needless to say, the sky was still streaked with tinges of pink and grey faraway clouds. Barges ached along the horizon, sea birds flew into frame on cue and I was able to take a few nice pictures for the sunrise series.
I brought my book to read in between shots. I am reading 1984 now, and liking Winston Smith and his meager, yet furiously hopeful existence.
The first arc of the sun made its appearance around 6:45. I opened the camera to get a couple more shots. The bench I was sitting on is built on a small strip of grass right on top of the large, sharp rocks that serve as a break wall. If you look close enough, on one of the rocks, you can see the pink skin from the nose bridge of one drunken, husky fucker. Beneath this break wall, the waves lap against the shore or against the rocks, depending on the tide. This morning it was about midway between the two tides. I recognize this only because I make a habit of looking where the surf strikes at different points of the day.
So I am taking pictures. At different angles and different zooms when I hear the unmistaken rustle of fish in water to my immediate left. I look down and see, about fifteen feet offshore, in I think only about 10 feet of water, two dolphins trying to snag a fish. My eyes bulge, my stomach heaves and I watch them play with this fish for a couple of seconds before I realize what was in my hand. A camera you idiot! The dolphins had caught their fish and were now heading off down the coast. I was lucky enough to get a couple of dorsal fin shots as they periodically surfaced and bananad along the horizon. They are not great shots, but it was proof that they were indeed there, for Steph and for myself, hoping this was not some acid flashback from the eighties.
So wild dolphins. Check.
Yesterday Steph went to Cairns to do three hours of investigation regarding the 10-day gap between Byron Bay and Sydney that we have yet to book. We were trying to find three locations on the coast that would be worthwhile to stay and investigate. But. Something is brewing in our heads about what we want to do for that time period. It has something to do with the devil.
Oh I am such a cheeky chimp, we are thinking of going to Tasmania for that period instead. Just do the drive to Sydney in two days instead of 10 and hop on a flight from Sydney for the two-hour flight to Hobart. We did the math and it’s doable, without much cause for belt tightening either. So it’s snowballing, this idea, which is an appropriate term as it will be quite chilly on the island this time of year. But we are hearty Canadians. We can take a little Antarctic wind.
It just seems like the kind of place that we want to experience. It is more about the landscape and the scenery than the available, and expensive activities.
Anyway, we shall see. Saying you are going to Tasmania is one thing. Going there is another.
It would be nice to be face to face with the devil for a spell I reckon.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 7:10 PM
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