Woollahra

On the edge of this big old park, there's a great little place called Woollahra. In the middle of this great little place there's this local called, The Woollahra. Out back of The Woollahra, there's an even smaller place simply called, the Back Bar. It's a real treat. It's the smokers bar, the pool table bar, the people's of Woollahra, bar. It's got a cigga machine and a room off the side where the pokies hardly ever get played. Scores of interesting folk frequent.

Have gotten familiar with a certain Executive Producer of news and current affair on a certain TV network. A very intense man, driven wholly by a ragin' ego. Take the piss of him, as some of the drinkers have and you get a quick and intense threatening stare, forcing the culprit to back down. A mwith ourour a sense of humor perhaps? He can be a very moody fellow, but I like his work, has greater depth than his rivals. A certain new CEO of an old network plus board members frequent. Am making vague acquaintance, it's all "mate" and stuff. I'm not sure I really like him and I'm not actually sure if anyone else does either. But an old ruthlessly ambitious friend or mine did say how much she would love to "blow him." There is also a smattering of old Aussie actors and the sorts. You'ld know 'em.

There's an old journo who has been writing a weekly business column, in some mag, for 40 years now, just tonight he let slip that Jewish people can be otherwise named a 5 by 2 or a Jew. It's kinda naughty funny but some people choose not to have senses of humour bout some stuff. Gotta love a rhyme. He also let out bout, "When the fan hits the shit!! WHEN-THE-FAN-HITS-THE-SHIT!!" I like that line. There's a gall who runs round with a big bag a coke, who never has no money but surprisingly always gets loans for the pokie machines. She's been a load a fun on several occasions, but wouldn't pick her cherry if it was the last one on earth. Not even if shed dished up that whole bag in one sittin', but a lovely lass nevertheless. She reckons the Back bar is the loneliest place on Earth, but I'm thinking it's that little bag a white talking, it's white magic talkin'. They got each other in the back bar. They got each other, any night of the week to share a coupla drinks with and that's just the way they likes it.

Further down the street, at an earlier hour, everybody without money in Woollahra seems to deal in second hand furniture that they pick up from the council throw outs, it seems. They have a lot of time on their hands, Council throw out only comes every couple a months. There is a load of flash antique shops along Queen Street. But those places make money, apparently.

There's this fab coffee shop, that must make a million coffees a day, so is it so regularly visited. People lining up all down the road. And darn, they's be the best bloody coffee's in the whole town, I must say. A morning giggy (sic) and a soy latte with a whole load of honey and ya start the day with a great BIG SMILE. Everybody's happy in Smurfville, Woollahra. Something bout the air. All that Centennial Park greenery giving off anti-oxidising negative ions or somethink. Perhaps they get out jogging more round here or do the gym more. I know it's not that, but I think they feel like the chosen few. The special souls. The lucky ones. There's just something bout the place, that's hard to put a finger on. Perhaps it could be all that stuff that grows on trees bobbing round, soothin' their peaceful souls...

On Dreaming and Delusion...

Ok. So ones attitude to things has a lot to do with a lot of things… Anything you want really. Our attitudes to things completely create how we live in the world and how we receive what we do and what happens to us. But it’s got to be real. There in lays an interesting conundrum.

Understanding who we are is largely dependent on finding what makes us special. What are we best at and what are we missing. Our attitudes to what befalls us in our lives can be utterly controlled by us for our own benefit, allowing us to grow forward into who we want to be. When we understand where our particular talents lie, then examine our attitudes towards all the beautiful and wonderful shite around us, in regards to these things, we can do as we want without too much grief or time management problems…

I’m sure many of you have understood that for years now…

Mr Shindler’s List, Thomas Keneally said on some TV program recently something like, “That writing is very much a delusional state of mind. That writer’s can get carried away in all sorts of zany, hallucinogenic places.” I think it’s definitely the same for actors. Actors can get carried away in all sorts of weird shite. Least of all work shortage and a roller coaster type of life. The bigger they are the harder they fall, someone said. After all, if your prime occupation is to fantasise states of being, dreaming up or embodying someone else, then where have you got to go but out and away in beautiful La La land…. And I don’t mean Los Angeles, unless of course your lucky and take your bets that way.

So when we eventually work out our own shite, we work out how to stay in the land of the real for longer periods of time and can make appropriate decisions from there… We’re much more effective that way…

I love dreamers. They way they float away someplace else and become hard to contact. We’re their own beliefs come to out weigh everyone else’s’, at least in their own mind. It’s scary stuff for most people.

Going out with dreamers can be hard. Depending on how dreamy they are and how often and where they are at in their current dream cycle. Trust is important in personal relationships. Trusting some dreamers can be very difficult.

My last long term, with a beautiful dreamer left me seeing her walking drunkin across Oxford Street, a couple of days before her birthday, staring at the sky, stars in her eyes, oblivious to my needs, yet direly keen to see me… I knew shed been off playing and partying with someone else. It was so obvious. She had flowers, but wouldn’t tell me where she’d got them from. She really was never the sort to settle for long, preferring to flitter around, spreading herself thinly to those who grabbed her fancy this evening or that….

Ow.

A friend had just told me about an increasingly more prevalent kind of women in Australian urban society, the Okkaette. Women who’s prime fun in life is to drink till blind drunk then screw whoever grabs their fancy when pissed. They are really common these days in inner city Sydney. Sounds like a treat until you decide to settle down with one.

Oppps… Mate, I tell ya don’t even bother. Don’t worry ‘bout what ever you think her particular charms may be. The Okkaette and her mates are a no win situation. They are far too drunk and keen not to give a darn bout what ever plans you might harbour for a decent working relationship. They claim it’s a reaction to feminism.

It's never been that hard for most women to get lucky, if you know what I mean? So a women is pretty lame if they want to get lucky all over town, I figure. I mean there is little challenge in it, so why bother? In our culture women get to dress up all pretty like and act attractive to the opposite sex. Flirting is fairly acceptable in most places. It makes fidelity difficult, attracting all that attention. But how admirable, women who can negotiate this stuff. Or at least talk about what's going on for them. If they can't, you know their hiding something.

If they ask you questions like, “But why do you think I sleep around?” Or “Why do you think I lie?” They are simply trying to correct their behaviour so as to con their numerous men more! Their really not that bright.

I know I can here it now calls of "misogynist!!" going out from all the women reading this... Hey, read it again and think about some of the girls you know. I only write this in the belief that people, underneath it all, want long term and substantial lovers anyway. We all want to be loved and just trying to clear some of the crap stopping this…

If women believe they can duplicate some Aussie male stereotype that has hardly existed for decades, was perpetuated by women’s fear in the first place and concerns some of the less desirable male members and human traits in our culture anyway. From my experience, their numbers are very small and they are usually unrefined and uneducated in countenance, being fairly closed minded and judgemental, which is great if that’s your cuppa tea. But it gets scary when the number of professional, so called socially aware, women behaving this way today begin to far out weigh the men doing it…

Just add booze, or e or ice or coke... You get, instant easy slut factor!!

…And all while they have lovers, they propose to care about, on the side.

Nothing good can come of this.

Let me know if you think I'm wrong!!

Admittedly, it is a difficult thing to gauge.

But you can see it when you come across it, the Okkaette.

The woman, Aussie Jobbo easy to pick up and at a bar near you!!

... Probably, some other blokes lover, who he put in a whole lot of time for, would of ran around the world for and was trying to build a future outta love and some good old fashion hard learnt sense...

If ya can't beat em, perhaps we should join em?!!

I'm off to buy a bag, to land me a bag!!?

Coming?

Just rantin'

And the writer sits alone in his room, writing.

Writing after a week that started with pictures of pre-pubescent Israeli girls writing surely poetic messages of hate in thick texta to their Lebanese sisters on missiles, which will soon be launched upon the neighbouring country.

Just like putting a message in a bottle and little personally meaningful trinket, then throwing to out to sea, in the hope that one day somebody will find it and give you a ring, to let you know!!

Surely a beautiful and regrettable, unforgettable image.

Ohhhh, to those ever growing bags of regrettable unforgettable things…

Writing at the end of the week,
after a succession of job interviews in the financial sector.

Well why the hell not?

One of which required a creative copywriter, who in reality, didn’t need to be all that creative, but more so then their current one, who really couldn’t really write.

I had arced up the big creativity sell of my skills, because the headhunting recruitment agent seemed so adamant that this is what they needed. By his experience in trying to fill the role he seemed to think that most writers are not that creative, so he felt he had to empathise the creative side of the job requirement to me, much to my dismay upon the final interview.

Mmmmm… definitions of creative…

My private thoughts… Those who interviewed me, weren’t very exciting people. Yet, at least they were interesting and seemed to know some clever things about marketing. I do though like open minded, fearless, passionate and self contained, thoughtful people. The current copywriter in the job in question, definitely wasn’t that…. Oh the North Shore…

I summon the gods…. Bring on a full time big agency position.

The more business we do the better we get at it. Our instincts grow acute. We learn who we are dealing with quicker and tailor ourselves accordingly. Our beautiful society is quickly becoming more conservative on the work front and more amoral on the social front. Perhaps it’s just me joining them all…

Oh yes, that’s it.

Writing at the end of a week where mid-week, I became more closely acquainted, but not like that, with a coke addict who tried very hard to bed me on Monday night. It’s so easy to see how people get a taste for that stuff. Talk ‘bout yummy! Just, where for art thou, realism? But for all the up sides, it does seem to help ruin peoples lives and the stuff ain’t cheep…

Oh drugs…

The stories I am hearing about “ice” are shocking. I got one coming out in “User’s News”. It’s a local drugs magazine. People’s friends are dropping off like flies, well off the social psychological radar. They become psychotic to the point of non-communication and we cannot bring them back from here, without having to deal with great amounts of grief. I tried to save one and found it to be a complete waste of time. More Oh's, what do we do.

Writing at the end of a week where I can see why I’m givin’ in to allowing myself not to feel, just like all the others, yet I will keep feeling, but I can choose somehow, how… It seems after a certain number of disappointments and the like it saves a whole lot of time.

So, I join the power hungry chain of socially acceptable human relics.

So we care when we want to, but are free not to, at a whim.

Oh how tough am I.

Pretty tough, I ‘spose.

Oh, for the love of humanity, let them not steal my integrity now!!

I’ve already changed my values and belief system up to a point. All this on the quest to discover what’s out there and how it’s running. So one day I can go back and make some purpose of it all. The class difference, the differing points of view, sub-cultures, personal strengths and weaknesses, special interests and so on…

The funny ways that people be funny, in an ever increasing world of standardised human beings…

Got no time for weirdos now, just got no time….

On feelings...

You know,

I think it's ok to have feelings about things and
it's ok not to have feelings about things...

But, I believe it's better to have feelings about things,
feelings that make us want to do something about whatever
it is were feeling about out of position of strength...

Strong feelings for strong reasons that help us get what ever we
want from life.

I'm sure this might seem obvious to many people,
but I'm not sure I've ever seen it written down before.

Until now.

I've lost something...

I’ve lost something or rather somebody stripped something away from me and in it's place I have gained something else... It is rather harrowing to see the complete decay of ethics and morals in people all around me. It is worse when one falls for someone devoid of such rare virtues, and I mean fall...

Good luck to you.

We've all been there.

Finally, they skilfully slither away, as if they were always poised for the opportunity to do so when a suitable occasion rose. Simply to build on their already too too healthy ego. Nobody likes to get caught out for their dalliances. So telling the perfunctory swag of lies and spin to as many as they can to save whatever face they can muster from a predicament they themselves created becomes the rule of the day.

I'm wondering if it's the back end of the "fabulous darlink" set. Oh, there's nothing like optimism and abundance, to bring about good cheer and high self esteem...

As I sit here wondering “what happened?” and of course luckily, working it out, only to face the daunting prospect of seeing myself once again in all his glorious and not so glorious ways.

When we come to the crunching times of life, however big or small, everything gets thrown up in the air and the pieces plus a few extra, if we’re lucky, come one hopes, gently, to form a new shape and even newer understandings.

There is usually some amount of pain involved, perhaps some regrets, but that’s just the price of one more lesson learnt...

Yes, I am missing someone.

I know, how sensitive of me...

Someone who was probably inappropriate to be involved with in the first place. Someone who I was saddened to find on a pretty good hunch, keeps her personal space her personal space and tells a good tail and weaves a beautiful and admirable accomplished spin.

I let her know this you see, and so she was deeply offended early on in the peace. Of course, all my assumptions were eventually proven to be correct, oh, how fabulous darlink, but still I found her adorable.

I hate that, "I told you so!" stuff…

She was an excitable bubble of almost continual happiness but
also a lousy abusive drunk at least five nights of the week.

What does one do?

They say, you have to take the good with the bad, or do you.

No you don’t, but then one misses out on the good.

There in points to my Danish Prince sized problem.

“To be or not to be, that is the (eternal) question.”

Sometimes there is little to be definately decided amongst the confusion and contradictions of weighing up the virtues and vices of certain options on hand. We sometimes just have to go with the flow...

She loves me, she loves me not. After all these days, for better of for worse, there are many love options in all those bars and parties and this is the game of love how it seems to be most often played in Sydney today. And of course, there are always friends and work to be done etc etc etc…

To care or not to care.

The possibilities are plentiful. Jack Marx, the SMH columnist, who rather brilliantly blew the whistle earlier in the week on his secret dealings with Russell Crowe, has some undeniably interesting things to say on the subject that leave me somewhat squirming and questioning my values.

SEE:

http://blogs.smh.com.au/thedailytruth/archives/2006/06/and_another_thi_1.html

I keep coming up against people who see things as he does and it leaves me wondering if you can’t beat them then why not join them. We still get to have truth and respect amongst our best of friends and all the others can simply negotiate their ways into our hearts or not.

As the late Kurt Cobain wrote in his departure letter, “There is good in everybody,” and that’s just fabulous darlink!!

Sex, drugs & R&R.

Been writing songs lately and jammin'.
Wanna get a punk pop band up and going.

I just love it, can't help it, always have loved it.

Been playin' for years. Haven't had a band in years though.

I've been reading ths book that all about floating yourself
on the market of human competition.

I know, sick hey?

The rules...

Know yourself.
Know ya value.
Make the most of ya best values.
(ie. do what ya best at)
Know ya market.
Go to market and get your valued price.

Yep, what a head trip.

Makes some sense though.

perhaps...

Taking it easy in town...

There's nothing as good as a chuff and a strum of the old guitar late at sunset, on the top end of Centennial Park over looking the suburbs leading up to Botany Bay.

I'll get a photo to show you, now that Google's photo putting function is finally working.

On Relationships...

Hi been a while.

Amongst other things, I have been rewriting the ever elusive novel everyone seems to have locked in the closet or misplaced on c: drive somewhere....

Here a sneek excerpt -

Today, quite unlike any other day the sky was a gigantic TV screen in blue and white. And on the screen the show was the most pleasurable vision I had ever known.

As I walked down these old streets of Fremantle, my body felt more lucid then a well oiled Formula One Racing car. Inside I was revving just as powerfully. I billowed energy, leaving psychedelic streaks like petrol spills all over the pavement, walls and sides of cars. Nothing was excused from my blazing trail. I walked, connected to land and sea and sky above. They all channelled through me, punched through me simultaneously. Suddenly, dropping down to the concrete footpath. I was halted abruptly before a line of all-powerful ants. Carving an ant river far below me. I looked at them way down as if I stood at the top of a water filled canyon. Drawn to the pavement I fell far. Like I leaped off the cliff edge to my hands and knees. Once below my eyes lids closed tight gripping to each other. The side of my face grated against the pavement. My eyes held on even tighter. The feeling was like my eyes imploding. Gripping so tight that the lids started to implode. I was trapped with the need to rub and scratch and gouge my way into the pavement. The deepest irritability imaginable ripping my skin tissue to shreds felt like a very long and well endowed orgasm. On reflection, I had seen the sort in some seventies porno movie. Did they really feel them like that? If they do, I think I'm missing out.

"Lee!" Liz was concerned. She was reminding me that gravel burn hurts.

I opened my eyes and stared up close into the running rapids of ants. To my shock, they all turned around at once, reared on their back legs and saluted me, every single one of them. I had no choice but to salute them back. When in Rome do as the Romans. Then some of them broke line and went on their merry ant like way. While others stood very still giving me a direct eye off. A Mexican stand off. Tense, full eye contact, unbroken concentration, no blinking. I wasn't sure if I'd bitten off more then I could chew. I mean I wasn't sure if ants had eyelids or not and my eyes were throbbing, seething water from the implosion. Today though, lucky I felt very capable. Unless they started throwing granules of sand in my eyes I wasn't giving in. I was getting sucked into the soul of these ants. I could feel my whole being pulling towards them. Or maybe it was my inner being, my golden lifeline, sifting through the eyes of these hard working fellers. My inner being and my outer were indistinguishable. I resisted their pull whole-heartedly. Though, I liked these tiny little plastic black fellers. But I didn't want to give my soul to them. Finally a faint glimmer in their eyes said they seemed to let off. As if we both recognised we were a spiritual match. Their attitudes changed. Less of a confrontation. They seemed to be inquiring about how I was feeling and I was wondering the same thing about them.

Novels need to be written quick or at least all in one go, they get feral pretty quickly if left alone to vegetate unchecked.

Aren't relationships wonderful things!
Especially those of the sexual kind.
Especially.

To make them work, it's not really that hard, assuming you pick a lowish maintenance lover, that is!

High maintenance lovers mean just that, loads of work, ton's of maintaining, heaps of stress and effort.
Some people, most people just can't be bothered.

There is sometimes stuff to gain from that hard work, tryingly difficult and demanding lover.

We can learn loads about ourselves when someone loves us enough to tell us what they think of us.

None of us are perfect.

We're all really quite different, with some similarities between us.

There is an element of having to take the good with the bad or we could decide to shack up with someone conflict and fairly trouble free.

Perhaps this dream person might also be empathetic, considerate, funny, wise, successful, ambitious, have heaps of lovely friends and are also genuine, intelligent, sexy, brave, confident, independent and god forbid full of loyalty and integrity!

Wow how's that for a mix? As if...

Yet perhaps possible...

At least in writing.

But if their not all that, (and if they are then we better hope that we are too or heart break will surely follow), there are insights to gain from the intimacies of romance.

The pendulum of acquiring real trust in a Sydney where there is so many options and partners’ are drunk and socializing oh so very often and therefore of course, being hit on by members of the opposite sex is difficult for so many…

I'm thinking there is even more to the mix then simply knowing oneself impeccably, and as if that isn't a difficult enough task at the best of times. But after these things we do with different kinds of people on their different journeys are over, if we've lucky, we can always look back and smile a gentle smile about what went wrong and why and how and with who etc and quietly remark to ourselves about the new mix of human characteristics we have just discovered in our newly made ex or perhaps we can simply choke bitter angry tears for evermore hoping that they soon drop off the face of the planet and put it all to the back of our mind stored under, "I simply haven't got the time to give a toss!" As we walk over to the bar and offer the spunk in reading glasses a drink. And lets see if we can do it better this time...

I say goodbye, you say hello!

The Cross as we know it may now be gone forever.

The Sydney City Council has placed lovely looking flower
boxes reminisent of Double Bay halfway up the smart polls,
down the entire street.

Surely beautiful limping old people and those with a taste for peaceful, joyous
floral arrangements will love the new changes!

At least they could of made them lower so as to be used for bins.

Me thinks, surprisingly, there isn't enough bins on the strip.
One has to walk half the way down the road to get to one.

Perhaps it's a good thing, at least we get a chance to check out councils
new flowers.

Oh, flowers are so beautiful and now soooo Kings Cross!!

Wanna die, be a Marlboro man!!

Sometimes I think, I smoke too much. I smoke way too much. Except for the days I’ve given up, probably about 10 times since I started, once for almost two weeks, I’ve been smoking at least a packet of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes a day now for about 6 years.

Some days I’ve smoked two. That’s 40 cancer causing, baby killing, brain polluting, oxygen robbing, skin drying, pore cracking, little buggers full of floor cleaning products and rat poisons and car exhaust fumes and 106 other toxic substances that my body really just doesn’t need.

Smoking kills people right. Smoking kills. Repeat after me. Smoking kills and that means dead,
kaput, finished, over, not another breath, astalavista baby, nil, null, void or perhaps heaven or hell, and you know the like...

Smokers are killing themselves very slowly but surely.

It makes sense...

At $9 a packet x 365 days x 6 years, I have paid $19710 to slowly kill myself.

Now isn’t that wonderful.

You can’t smoke in half the bars around here legally anymore, but I still manage to find the ones with a big enough space where you can…

I don’t even think about smoking, when I’m doing it, I just do it???

I could have been dining with some beautiful gall all that time every Saturday night at some very yummy joint round town and picked up the whole bill.

But alas, instead I’ve been making myself feel less good. I’ve slowly been making myself sick, and it’s making myself feel sick just thinking about it…

Tomorrow, I quit!

I WILL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER SMOKE AGAIN AFTER TOMORROW!!

Have a cranky day…



A few months later.... I still haven't quit. But I have cut down! And now I go jogging everyday!!
And I'm no longer coughing!

I'll keep you posted on my giving up... Still trying.