2.04AM at the Hotel Costes

...I miss Japan. Or wherever. Wanderlust. All kinds of lust, really. For the late, late night. For a man. For the world. For recklessness. For cycling downhill in the face of a midwinter chill. For calculated indiscretions engaged upon a whim. Now, isn't everything better in cloaked insinuations? And rain. Everybody seems to hate it, but the truth is, I love it. I want to be bone-drenched. I want a complicated way of living. "Desire, like a promise in the year of election."

2.04AM at the Hotel Costes.

It's dark in the night, the city
Brightening, its arteries - roadways
Aglow with wandering cars
I can't sleep tonight.

I want you.
Simple. Untainted by contrary ambitions
The drive over, the June rain
Pulling up to park
Doused headlights

"You know, I read somewhere
The spaces between objects, inanimate and alive
Are not empty."

Molecules and chemicals and rain.
Rain.
Slipping from my skin to yours

"You're soaking. Come in.
Shower."

Marble tile, floor heated
Glass to ceiling
Steam billowing
Fogging my windows
Beyond, the sleepless city.

2.04AM. Daylight seems
Like another life.
Now, the rain, the night
Stretched bare.

All we have is time.

(c) Wenee Yap

Harvey Wallbanger

You say hello

I say, "Stranger, I don't know

Who you are, how you've been

Here - pour your story in a drink

Let's kick back and

Solve nothing.

Let's talk til 2."

Or let the night wind down

Tell me your troubles 

Without a word.

In your manner of kiss

By the lamplight flicker

As the cold burning stars carve their arc

We, beneath their collisions.

Unravel.

Disassembled.

By four in the morning

Birds call 

From tree to telephone wire

News of the world.

Turning now, toward our nearest star

Light up the darkness.

By the dawn

You remain.

As do I.

Ourselves.

Without a trace.

LLM v PhD. It's a matter of inches.

"We need to break the cycle of take, make, break."

- Panelist, AHRC Corporate Social Responsibility Evening

I attended the Australian Human Rights Centre CSR event this evening. A week's worth of sustained sleep deprivation, mad deadlines, strained overcommitment and strong coffee couldn't keep the nerd within away. It was good. More than. Satisfying. Challenging. Inspiring. Realistic. Provocative. It is what you experience when a group of highly intelligent people come together - that synapse-buzzing rush. 

I am considering postgrad law. Intriguing choice for someone who really did believe they were going to fail, every single semester. Sigh. I just want it. To live the big idealist dream. I want to go all the way to the Un-i-ted Na-tions. (Imagine that, hissed in Hannibal Lecter voice, when he says to Clarise, "You wanted to go all the way to the F...B...I...")

The big dream. Mmm. Minimum qualification for admission is an LLM. Apparently I did well enough to consider a PhD. Indulged in silly Lisa Simpson fantasy as my former thesis supervisor proposed the idea. ("Dr Yap. Paging Dr Yap!" ..."I'm sorry nurse. I only fix...THE LAW.") My friend who studied Landscape Architecture (but, with typical North Sydney Girl bent, could not exit her degree without first gaining First Class Hons, as a kind of par minimum for our peers), is considering postgrad in the States. Which is what I'm considering too.

Then, PhD. I mean, seriously. Now that we're talking crazy here (and I always proposed even honours as a crazy wild idea. My boyfriend has the email entitled: "Crazy wild idea" to prove it), doing an LLM without going on to PhD (esp since I refuse to become a practitioner) is like reaching third base and backtracking. Deeply unsatisfying for all concerned.

Tenuous innuendos aside. I've been mulling over a story I read somewhere many years ago. Possibly Reader's Digest. What? Don't judge me. Sometimes it's good. 

Three brothers found themselves stranded ashore a fertile volcanic island. Discussing amongst themselves, they decided to share the island equally between them, and each set off to claim his stake in the virgin land. (No dinosaurs ala Lost, don't worry.) The first brother, the eldest, found a fruitful stretch of land just within the rainforest. Close to shore, close to water, warm. There he settled. The next brother, the middle child of stranded history, climbed further up the mountain island until he found a more temperate region - further from water, but cooler with views of the sea. He stayed.

The youngest brother left them both as he climbed up the volcanic mountain. Steep and sharp, the forest gave way to ash and craggy rock, moss and snow, crisp winter chill year-round. Still he climbed. He left behind land suited for planting vegetables, rearing animals, pitching tents (presumbly of palm tree leaves and well placed logs.) The air grew thin. The island fell away beneath him. Still he climbed. The peak in view, he looked from the top of the mountain and saw the world stretched out before him, as far as he dared to look. Vertiginous and dizzying. He saw how the sea met the sand, how wild animals hunted their prey, how the weather ebbed and crackled. He saw the connections and patterns underpinning world order. There he stayed. Far from food and water, eating moss, watching the world unfold.

...

As I recall, this story was given as a scenario test to prospective entrepreneurs as a means of measuring where they 'fit' in business. No prizes for guessing how it worked. I think, however, it's a far more telling story. About what drives us. 

Honestly, I don't know. Dizzy with altitude sickness, I can feel my addiction. Not to a substance or a product or even a person. To this feeling. Even if it means scraping moss and never sleeping. It's a dopamine rush within the foggy glass of a car under the thin cover of night, knowing only metres away are a group of prison escapees totally unaware you're even there. (It's a long story.) It's payoff. Knowing all you've worked for is meaningful, is recognised, is...remunerated. Half the time, I'm afraid of being found out to be completely incompetent. The rest, I relish the labels. Star student. Amazing. All of it. 

Even though I know it is meaningless, in many ways. Even though I am the same person today as I was five years ago, or ten, or the day I was born. I have simply followed a course of events, seized upon opportunities offered and run with whatever luck came by. I can't claim to be special, but I like the idea of somehow - yes - being unattainably unsurpassed. 

"I find the impossible far more interesting."

- Elizabeth, The Golden Age.

Haha. Some days, I just want to walk down the street ala Will Smith at the end of The Pursuit of Happiness, applauding. Quiet. Unrecognised. Just for me. Just to know. It's not about you or me, of course. Life. It's about leaving the world better than you have found it. It's about doing good, if you can, where you can. It's about life full volume - the big blind, the rags-to-riches risks. 

Somedays, I just want to celebrate another day of living. Whether you live at the base or the peak of that mountain. 

Like today.

Cue applause.

Go down in style.

Brink.

"On the verge, as always."

               - 'In the Skin of a Lion', Michael Ondaatje

It's the end of the world

All over again

Pack your history

In a suitcase

Flee urban living

The free open country, hills and dusk

At the leatherbound wheel

Of a tax deductible Maserati.

Dr Phil will tell you how 

To live, rebuild.

His New York Times Top 10

Told you so, years ago

It's love - the lack of 

It's heart attacks and hydrogen bombs

It's all there

In ten easy chapters.

Slick your hair

Black suit - a Zegna charcoal

Pour Homme cologne - essence man

Cuff links by Vuitton, a grab bag of Vicodin

Black suit

You always knew

How to go down in style.

Down the barrel of a gun

You can't think of anything

Clever to say.

Your heart in your mouth

Still beating.

Breathe.

In. And out.

All life's essential rhythms

Fall this way.

Here you are

On the verge

Of life, death, sex, conquest

Winning and losing and all that

Never mattered.

You pull up to the drive

Your name on the space.

Another day

In a world of plenty.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

...is a damn good poem.

This one isn't quite T S Eliot. But I try. Humbly speaking. Everyone at (one) of my workplaces is getting married, mortgaged and relishing these marks of adulthood. Because I spend half my week in the Peter Pan-struck postcode of 2010, I also live and breathe the aging hipster fear of growing old, as shown by inappropriate age fashion and mass love of Cheap Mondays jeans.

Enough granny griping. Here's the poem. 

Lie to me.

"There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet..."

('The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.')

I write you no letters.

I give you no rings.

In these modern times

Of obligation free, no guarantees

Consenting liaisons

Quid pro quo

We have an understanding.

You say this is honesty

As the sun shines cold, stolen warmth

For a distant summer.

As dusk drops its shadows in your room

By tree-lined street, the city lights flicker

We are being honest.

Honesty, I replied, is a fallacy

A cool mask cover for whatever agenda

You require.

Love is a game, not a gamble

I always win.

"I've never been in love," you said.

"But I believe in it."

Like God.

Like Radiohead lyrics.

Like freedom, truth, justice, beauty

Love.

So I will write you no letters.

I will give you no rings.

If in the street tomorrow, you passed by and asked

I would tell you, under the cold light of day

"No, no. I have never known love."

Psychiatry is this year's candy pink stovetop.

Don Draper (Mad Men, 1950s Madison Ave Ad Man): 

I can't tell whether you have everything...or nothing.

Midge Daniels (Don's mistress, an artist/commercial illustrator): 

I live in the moment. Nothing is everything.

- Mad Men, Ep 2.

...

I've had a line running through my head for the past month. It's from Lupe Fiasco's 'Superstar' from The Cool. "I try to believe my own hype, but it's too untrue." Mingled in like lemon lime, the various obiter* comments of academics, interviewees and friends on the inherent nature of 'intelligent people.' Call it a vanity interest. What are these comments? That intelligent people are given to peculiarity, idiosyncracy, 'bed-hopping', bent morality and a sense that the rules governing social interaction apply only to the proles, the common people. For whom we may fight, but certainly do not belong in their ranks. We are the special people. As one interviewee told me, "It's disturbing. Here are people who would rather die than be ordinary."

Because as Angela Hayes in American Beauty put it, "There's nothing worse than being ordinary."

Hrm. Does that mean that we strive for only the impossible? Do we get our thrills from doing something that's never been done? I was asked once, as part of some classroom meet+greet, what drove me. I said, "to do something that's never been done." 

Doesn't that stink of vanity? I keep saying that my ultimate ideals are to embrace, cold and clear, the flaws of this world - from markets left to the whim of neo-capitalism to dictators whose rule of law is down the barrel of a gun, or to show a way out from the closing four walls of depression - and from there, from within, from understanding and research and constant questioning, to improve the world's ills. To leave the world better than how I found it. I know - how humble. Haha.

Sometimes, every so often, I love the glow and glory. Pride and vanity. The by-lines like 'star student (wherever you go)' and 'amazing', 'driven', 'ambitious', 'genius'. Sometimes, I want to be a beautiful and unique snowflake, dammit. Haha. Tell me Doctor, is that ego? Is that bad? Do you have a fix-it? A pill cure or expensive rest house in the mountains, by the sea?

Sometimes, I spend so much of my waking life in a pitch, developing palatable spins, window-dressing disasters, being as creative with truth as I am with words, that I can't tell my own hype from what I believe. 

(And on those days, I must be doing a good job.)

Haha, no, that's too cynical. Perhaps I just realised that you can make a comfortable living from being unusually persuasive, from a heady mix of idealistic dream-selling delivered in a proven formula package. 

"I want you to manipulate the media. What else do I pay you for?"

- Head of Lucky Strikes to Don Draper, Mad Men.

Oh well. Perhaps it's all delusions of grandeur and I have nothing to worry my sensitive conscience over. Perhaps the ad-savvy audience of latter day noughties know better than to believe what they read in the news, on TV, on the internet, from their friends, from their favourite stars and pop culture icons. Ah. My conscience. It's very sensitive. (Some would say that's a plus. ;)

So - assume that audiences know exactly what you're doing when you say, position an article, or write one, or pitch a story you know slants facts a little. I'm not saying I've done this. After all, my clients are completely harmless...for now. There's nothing to slant, really, which is why I chose this industry to learn the fine art of media...'relations.' If you assume this, doesn't your act still deprive them of the true variety of thought, opinions and debate a free democracy needs to truly thrive?

Or in this spin-driven world that we live in, should we just forget it, channel some Paul McCartney, and live and let die? 

Have a drink. Have a painkiller. Forget about it. The ability to persuade is like law itself - a tool. The law is not necessarily justice, and nor is persuasion necessarily about offering truth. Truth is personal. Truth is an understanding you hold as you crunch through autumn leaves with nothing but the ground beneath your feet and above, the blue open sky. Knowledge is not a checkbox right answer in the exciting life challenges of academic exams or career climbing. It's cycling in the dawn through the streets of a foreign city, on a bicycle so unsteady you expend every effort just to stay upright. Your mind clears. It forgets to think. A definite virtue.  The mind too, is a tool. We - the 'intelligent people' with our brains packed full of IQ points and pride bursting with all our brilliant possibility - are so busy worshipping our clever minds, we forget this fact. 

And if you let your mind rule, it will forge an empire for you alone, within the confines of your own skull. You, as the warm burning heart of the universe. With your life of dramas and affairs, scandals and successes. Your narrative arc. Your three act finish.

This, of course, is untrue. 

Still, we are living. The dramas keep rolling. The camera's on you. If you don't 'do something', some very great something within the designated time appropriate with your so-called 'life plan', you're clearly a lost cause. You know what I'm talking about. The life plan that some might say ensures you are engaged by 22, married by 24, scaling Everests and conquering the wild unknown on the cover of Time by 27, ready for children by 29, and onward, upward. Ad altiora. No? Don't know it? Your life plan might be a little different. I'm referring to the overachiever's life plan. Lisa Simpson. "Grade me, grade me!"

I am not sure whether I have deftly sidestepped that life plan or found an even more novel way to fall right into it. What I do know is that when you step close to the vertiginous abyss, the blank oblivion depth...and find within it, the possibility of freeing yourself from the tangle of all these...dramas...you are craving peace. The kind you can find deep in a forest. High on a mountain. "I know this from gazing at mountains months on end," said Jack Kerouac. 

I know this from watching the dusk strike the sky alight, a smoky sunlight, ignored by the world below. Busy and important with their own private concerns. I know this from watching a girl cry over scoring 97% on a meaningness mid-term Maths exam - because it wasn't 100%, and this clearly meant her life was doomed. (I wasn't this girl, by the way. I was a consistent 80%...97% would have had me in serious hallelujah.) 

Mmm. I know this from the way words, strung together, mere symbols of our language, of our souls, can sink a writer, reader, into reverie. Which some say is better than sex. Some, I said. Not...in my experience. Haha.

Ah. I know this from those very few moments you might let yourself be. Breathe, and be. 

Maybe, Doctor, you just think I'm crazy. What else am I paying you for?

Still. Talking this way helps me feel a little less crazy in what is really a mad, mad world. 

Or perhaps all of you out there know exactly what you mean to be, need to say, wish to do, and no such questions trouble you. 

So, thanks for listening. How much do I owe you? $400 for an hour? Give me a receipt. I'll claim it as a business expense.

...

* Obiter: legalese to mean a comment made 'in passing.' Frequently turns up in judgments where a judge expresses a digression which might later become law. Or cloaks an irrelevant remark on say, the importance of realising international law via case law, as a human rights norm, bypassing parliament. Obiter. Because even passing comments are a betrayal of intentions perhaps more subversive.

Nicholas Hughes

Nicholas Hughes (1962 – 2009)

The spaces echo empty

Vast black, an eclipse

Of all memory of light

Of solid form.

Nothing lives. Nothing dies.

No conflict or oxygen

Nourish the blood pulse.

It is the longed-for oblivion

Desperate and craved

Annihilation.

A million splintered filaments

Hurled by one’s own hand

So the hand, too – crumbles

Melts and vanishes

Without a history.

Though the void cannot hear

A static radio call

A sister’s eulogy

A husband’s poetry

Splinters are left for the living

Shards of the bomb in their hearts

Inoperable. Holes and spaces

Sewn closed. Locked.

Oblivion.

...

One of my favourite songs is Bob Dylan's 'Tangled up in Blue.' In an interview, Dylan said he aimed to portray a tangled relationship from multiple points of view. He does so well - very well. It's Dylan lyrics at their best, and I'm a writer at heart, so I can't go past some well woven lines.

"From what I've tasted of desire...I hold with those who favour fire."

I suppose this poem has a similar aim: to examine both sides of suicide. The desperate, single-minded intent of the perpetrator, and the living left to shoulder the blame, account for the mess, seek to understand. And sometimes I think there is nothing to understand. As the Holocaust survivor said in The Reader: "If you want catharsis, go to the theatre. Nothing comes out of the camps."

Or the very famous line by Jewish poet after WWII: "No poetry after Auschwitz." As if to say, here lies humanity at its darkest. Its most irrational. Its twisted and broken ends. There is no meaning here. Just consequence. Action taken to see what would happen. To watch the world burn.

...