wine on the high wire.

Blog update. Work rushed headlong into Xmas break, my book/website project has been tentatively approved for sponsorship by the faculty, I scored First Class Honours in Law as quietly confirmed (in manner that is not open to most students - so hurrah for working in the faculty), my little bro looks on his way to cruising quite well into a selective school with all his friends (which is all he wants right now, other than more lego and to go to the Powerhouse Star Wars exhibition and play Wii + PS3 and sing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the Bono cover), I fell privy to personal scandal to rival de Sade's finest works (Philosophy in the Bedroom, of course - thank you Iris for that continually amusing book), I am now fully employed and then some, pulled into several projects (Catfox, 85Boroads, the new Communications Law Centre), I caught up with old friends and found new ones, tidied up a little more Japan organising...

...and Julian came back from Vancouver, alive with the wild bug of traveling in a way he's never known before.

This, like so much, is for you.

To the world out there: I expect your intelligence and worldly experience, whether gained from a book or first person, will leave you to infer the finer omitted details.

"Travel & Leisure." (or "Here, the strange familiar.")

You said: I'm home when I'm with you.
Whispered in my ear as we reached (backseat, where else)
For the elusive
In the midnight crisp
By the black shadowed park tall with trees gnarled
Skin dried thin, cracked and peeling with burn
Trees emaciated after an overindulgence of summer.


You said: I found something
The Siren's song, an Absolute
I've sought so long in the strange familiar
Shapes of clouds.
In dead philosophers and suburban churches
In nights deep with you
I found it
In the north of the border city, walled by wide high snowy peaks
All alone but not lonely
Kerouac's months of mountains.

And you should see it.
I want you, you said, to see it.
I heard you. In my head, your voice -
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

I - in stasis so long
Broke.
Fell below bottom and loved the fall.
I rolled as the wind in the tunneling space of no stars, no milky way
Flew me to a place
Free of -
Words and art and other cages
Naming the nameless.
Grasping the Tao - The Great Beyond.

I dipped my pale face, my slender long nose and its midway crook
Into spring bloom roses.
Low hung magnolia seized my senses
And shattered my sensibility.

Oops.
Beyond rock bottom is not a floor
Solid and infallible.
No, it is an endless fall.

Delicious.

And through, you call -
I want you.
I want to give you everything.
I am ready.

I heard you.
I fell through.
Sweet with dinner dates
Clever young men of many inclinations and tastes
Sharing our elitist histories under the glimmer lights, a carnival
This side of the Harbour.

You know as well as I do -
You can lose yourself, you can betray
In many creative and amusing ways.

Et cetera, et cetera.
Singing in my ear, Thom Yorke is so
Beyond the thrall.

You are here. I am here.
I wonder at the lines that have left your face
The world's weight cast from your
Muscular, winter-tanned, taut shoulders
Your Armani exchange and your red muffed headphones
Your bewildered smile. Your assured, self-possessed air
Your confidence.
You speak - but unlike before
With sureness.
Built upon a deeper knowledge and understanding
As always - you say precisely what you mean
And do exactly as you like.
So right.

Though now, it is 5.05.
None of this has happened yet.
You're walking in the store - looking for
Kino's Travel + Leisure
December's evening pleasures.

You're looking, well, very good.
I'm thumbing through Lonely Planet
Budapest - the Avis-itis city
The 'Second city' of the Hapsbergs

You're here. Like The Who:
You're looking at me and I'm looking at you
We - ah. Don't know what to do.

I look you down and size you up.
Head to toe, to fall for.
Absolutely.

Stranger. Familiar.
Later, you will say: for you, I'm here.
For now, I straight-shoot look at you
And say:

"Hello there."