Roma Street Gardens

The water makes a sound like trickling as it falls down, not very far – it's almost quiet. Mother and daughter, speaking between awed faces with voices that drift away, they barely disturb the silence. A friend is with them, leans down and takes a picture. Construction-site noises in the background, the melodious grating of a circular blade winds through the greenery. See trees moving but hear no wind. Feel no cold. Breathe shimmering stillness. The water, trickle, trickle.

“Come on!” urges the little girl with her mother and friend, they're behind me now. Some distant crashing is muffled by the all encompassing surrounds, these sounds enter and bounce off a craggy rock face. Maybe a plane, up above? Or just the unidentifiable rushing movements of the world, keeping pace. Staying in movement. Never stops

That was a bird, there was a definite chirp, unmistakeable. Tiny insects hover in front of this scene, too close for eyes to focus. More voices drift in, and out, and the water falls, and then ripples off into the reeds. The constant sounds of silence. Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Peace, Taco.

On the Road and Other Medications

Reading Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' the first time was a bit of a blur for me to be honest, I was in Bolivia, and I read the entire thing on my HTC Desire HD screen (that's a phone, if you were unsure) in less than twenty-four hours. Most of those hours were spent on a bus, sitting next to a Bolivian kid who was sixteen or seventeen if I remember correctly. I read the book for hour-long stints at a time, and then would turn to the kid and continue the conversation we'd been having before I had dipped off into my reading and he back into the 'cincuenta centavo' (50 Cent) playing on his iPod. I don't think I rushed through it, but the book has a real habit of lifting you out of whatever you are doing and taking you away on the journey, the road, off into the distance with it... so I definitely read it quicker than I would have a normal book. I'm reading it for the second time now though – I'm typing it out actually, word-for-word on my laptop – and this time I'm taking it much slower.

I've just reached the start of part two, and I'm only going about four or five pages each sitting, because to type about that many pages takes around forty minutes to an hour, depending on how good a day my fingers are having. But I'm loving the fact that it's so slow. I almost forget about this ongoing project every few days, but it sits there – the Penguin-Paperback copy of 'On the Road', the clothes-peg I use to hold the pages open, and the hardcover children's 'The Fun-To-Learn Picture Dictionary' that I use as a board to peg the pages of the book onto – it all sits there on the back corner of my desk, waiting to be opened whenever I feel a little desperate. Typing out books is something that I've grown to really depend on in the past year; first it was Orwell's '1984', and now this. It's a great way to immerse myself in someone else's words and thoughts, forcibly and directly, and take my busy mind off of whatever frantic problems are troubling me. The idea came from Hunter S. Thompson and my former obsession with his wild, drug-addled life and persona, but now that I've appropriated his activity as my own I can see benefits completely separate from what he described – or what were described on his behalf. He did it to “see what it felt like to write a great novel”, if I remember correctly – he typed out F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' – but his motivation is of much lesser concern to me. My aims are much more simple, but much more immediate, and vital as well.

I just passed over a part in 'On the Road' where Dean Moriarty has left his second wife, Camille, with their child to go back to his first wife, Marylou, and beg on his knees for her to take him back. She does, and in Kerouac's own words;

“She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad.”

More reassuring words have never been written, and upon typing them out as my eyes flitted over the page I felt a wave of understanding and hope wash over me. I recently watched a video of Neal Cassady, upon whom Moriarty is famously based, when he was on the bus with the Merry Pransters in the early-mid sixties and to be perfectly honest, he looks and sounds like a complete lunatic. A madman. But sometimes it's hard not to feel, in the furious changing tides of life, that I am mad as well. Although maybe not as outwardly eccentric as Cassady/Moriarty, I'm sure every one of us feels at some point as if they are the exception to some sane rule of the world, an outlier on the bell curve of acceptable normalcy. “Am. I. Insane?”

Well maybe you are, and maybe I am, but Jack Kerouac, in a surely unplanned but far from accidental stroke-of-genius example here, shows that no matter how crazy you think you are, or how crazy you are by everyone else's admission, you still have a place in this world, and you can still find someone to love you. Dean Moriarty, with his head in the hands of his sweetheart, is proof enough of that.

Sometimes I wonder when I'll get tired of the violent up-and-down cycle of my mood and of my life and of the world that I constantly create around myself. I find myself hoping that that day will come soon; “soon, surely, soon I'll find it within myself to settle down and find a level of balance in my life, soon I'll be able to relax.” But every time I find myself repeating this tired inner dialogue, I am tempted, once again, by the promise of a higher tomorrow, and the irresistible, surging rise of a brand new peak. For as long as I am tempted by these peaks though, there will be a frightening low waiting in the trough, and that's where Jack Kerouac and his famous tale of freedom come in. Whenever I feel like I need something else to hold onto, to support me while I ride out the lows and confront the fear, I turn to the pages of this book – and when it's done, the pages of another classic that I'll start typing out – to escape to the open spaces of someone else's words, and leave the dark churnings of my own mind behind for a while. In this way, I remind myself that a new high is coming, and peace is a comfort that, for the moment, I do not need. Not just yet, Tugzy. Not today.

Peace, Taco.

Last Night I Had a Good Gig

I'm heading out to do my first MC gig in a second, but I thought I'd sit down and write something first before I slide into the engulfing black that promises to be Saturday night. After I finish writing this, I'm going to change into my new jeans – hoping they fit properly – and walk out of the house with my notebooks, wallet and phone. Then I'll go get some fried rice from Loi Loi, around the corner. I love fried rice. I've been practising eating with chopsticks.

This MC gig – it's at Voltaire, a little upstairs performance space in North Melbourne that hosts an open mic every Sunday – isn't a comedy night, oh no no no. It's a burlesque show, so already, things are looking interesting. I'm excited though, because the fact that it's not a comedy show means that the audience, and even the performers, will have never heard any of my material before. I have a completely clean slate. Add to that the optimism that I've been feeling lately about my pool of material as a whole – I think I might almost be up to twenty usable, if not killer, minutes of stuff – and this gig is looking like it might just go okay.

Last night I had a spot at Fishface comedy in Footscray that went fucking brilliantly, which was nice. I tried a couple of bits that I've written in the last week and hadn't performed yet, as well as a bit that I did for the first and second time this week, and my bit about birdwatching and my mum that is turning into a pretty strong opener that reveals something about my personal life. The two new bits: last and second last, both killed, but the last one did especially well. It involves me yelling and screaming 'DUH DUH DERRRRR' whilst stomping around the stage for about a minute, and I'm really excited by it because I think I may have managed to write a bit that breaks out of the normal formula of 'stand on stage and say something funny' that stand up threatens to be trapped by, whilst still containing a conventional 'set-up, punchline' structure at its heart. I think I'm being a little pretentious here, and maybe reading Stewart Lee's book where he analyses three of his shows with liner notes has pushed me over the edge and into a pool of self-congratulatory wank. Hopefully not, friends. I need to remain vigilant.

All I think I'm trying to say here, is that I'm really looking forward to this MC gig, and I'm hoping it goes well and I get to do a good amount of material including some new stuff. I'll have to work on winning the crowd over with some of my more bankable material and then coming out with the weirder stuff, whilst still making sure that the stage is set for the burlesque acts themselves. Seven at the start of each bracket... wait... are there brackets in a burlesque show? Eh, this will all be a strange learning experience. I just want to get on stage, to be honest.

Feeling dangerously selfish, maybe? Over-confident after a good gig? Only time will tell.

Peace, Taco.

Daydreams

Today I was eating a banana and daydreaming on the tram on my way down to lunch with a bunch of comedians. I had already finished my first banana and chucked the peel in the bin before I got on the tram, but I was about to be faced with the problem of what to do with the second peel: there are no bins on the tram, and it was looking like a solid ten minute wait between my projected banana finish-time and my stop, where I could get out and find a bin. Ten minutes holding a banana peel? Pffft... not likely, so I thought about throwing it out the window.

The tram coasted past the police station on the corner of Church St and Bridge Rd and I imagined throwing the peel out the half-open window and it landing on the bonnet of one of the three police cruisers parked on the side of the road. Glorious, I could see it there. To throw it out of the window accurately and make sure it landed on the car I would probably have had to stand up, turn around and aim my throw carefully, but if I did it deliberately then I'd run the risk of someone seeing – it was broad daylight and the tram was stopping at the lights and opening its doors. If someone – a police officer maybe? – saw me throw the peel intentionally onto their shiny police car, then I'd be in trouble. They probably couldn't pin me with much, maybe a fine for littering or at worst some trumped-up vandalism charge, but regardless, I don't need that right now. The fine for littering is probably over a hundred dollars, and I need to pay rent god DAMN it.

I imagined the police officer, just walking out to his car after grabbing a coffee or whatever police do in the station, when he sees a young, dark-haired, olive-skinned youth wearing a red Adidas jacket intentionally throw a banana peel out of a tram window at his vehicle. He would yell, “OI!”, drop his coffee on the ground and give chase. “Stop the tram! OI! YOU!”
At this point I'd be sitting in the tram, fretting and trying to think of how to get out of my fine, the cute couple sitting across from me would be smirking at me, having seen what I'd done, and now knowing they were about to see me get caught. I would run up to the front of the tram and beg the tram driver to keep going; “Pretend you didn't hear him! Please dude, just go!”

And he probably would go, because he's cool. He doesn't like cops either, and it's perfectly plausible that he didn't see or hear the police officer, who is now just an angry, but receding figure in his side-mirror, yell 'stop'. After another couple stops though, the tram driver would tell me that I had to get out, I couldn't stay in the tram – he'd be remembering his responsibility here, plus what if the cop called in another car to intercept the tram? He wouldn't want to get involved in this thing. But all the while I'd be reassuring myself that it was only a banana on a police car – how could he possibly care that much about a little, frivolous act of trivial civil disobedience. I'm sure police get that shit all the time...

I get out of the tram, and wonder where I'm going to walk now, because I still need to get to lunch, but before I can really do anything I hear more shouting, and see the angry, yelling figure running up the slight hill on Church St. Running right towards me. WHAT THE FUCK?! Overzealous motherfucker... so I run. Bolt down a side street and into the suburbs, but I know he saw where I was running, so I know I have to get away. I need to hide somewhere, I need to blend in. I stumble upon a sunny park at the end of the street with a playground and two single mums playing with their kids. Some guy in skins is doing laps of the oval before lunch and a girl is sitting on the hill reading a book with the midday sun on her back. I run, panting, up to her and sit down, still looking over my shoulder.
“We've been talking all morning.” I try to run her through my alibi.
“What? Who are you?
“It doesn't matter, look, we've been talking all morning, okay? I've been here with you all morning.”
The shouting comes from behind us and the cop charges over the little hill and runs down it, straight at me and dives, arms out and face red with fury. Tackle. He lands on top of me and we both go flying a good couple metres along the grass before he pins me to the ground and shouts something about a little prick. My ribs feel broken, I can't move, everything hurts.
“What the fuck?!” the girl jumps up and screams, looking accusingly at the officer.
“This young man is under arrest for wilfully vandalising police property! THE CHASE IS OVER BUD!”
“What chase, what are you talking about? We've been sitting here all morning!” She sticks to the script perfectly, and at that precise moment, I fall in love.

During the lengthy court proceedings that draw out over many long and arduous months, I learn her name, and her birthday, and her likes and dislikes and all her favourite things as we fight in the halls of justice against police brutality. I even remember the colour of her eyes: green. She is my witness and with her help I win a victory worth millions in compensation for the injuries I sustained, I was an innocent bystander randomly attacked by a deranged agent of the law. My injuries keep me from work and I lay a spurious claim to a life-long disability pension. Me and my beautiful witness kiss outside the courtroom, and then go off to spend our millions on eating, drinking, and being merry. I propose to her in the park where we met and for the rest of our lives we are happy, and in love.

I imagine this all, while I am sitting on the tram holding the now-finished banana peel in my hand. I imagine it, but it never happens, because I am way too scared of getting caught and fined for littering. Instead the peel goes under the seat, and I brush my hands clean, before pulling out my notebook and writing the story I am not yet brave enough to live.

Peace, Taco.

Understanding Cliches

I'm starting to understand a few things a lot better lately. Things that other people have said, and yes, some of them are cliched to the hilt... but things are cliched for a reason, namely, that they are often true.

Hunter S. Thompson said – and no, I can't remember where, but he did say it – that “music is fuel”. He sort of approached that realization by talking about how most people have a very sentimental attachment to music and they over-complicate their relationship with music by making it into some all-mighty force, some god to worship that saves them from the black abysses and carries them through life. I feel you there, Hunter, there was some video by a fairly run-of-the-mill late-emo band whose name I forget that I remember had the band playing their song life, interspersed with footage of their fans, all emoed out, staring into the camera and saying how music had 'saved their life' while choking back tears and shrieking. Ok, fair enough, if you feel that way. But what HST said is beginning to resonate very much with me because even though I still have an intense connection to some of my favourite artists, music as a whole is more like a thing that I find keeps me going when I get bored. The sensation of finding new music and listening to something – discovering it for the first time – is pretty hard to match, and that's where the analogy to fuel comes in I think: finding a whole bunch of new music over the last few days has given me so much energy and from feeling pretty shitty on Saturday afternoon, I suddenly feel pretty damn good. Great, even. And if we are going to get really picky or defensive about the 'music saved my life' thing, well music is just the medium through which amazing artists work, really. It's not music itself that saved you from ending it all when you were fifteen, it was the artist – The Used, or Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, or Bullet for my Valentine, or whatever guitar-saviour you happened to stumble upon when you needed help. They are responsible.

The next thing that I've started to understand a whole lot better, and I realize now that there are only two 'things', even though at the start I said that there would be 'a few'. Oops... the next thing is that thing that comedians tend to say about comedy, that they, “feel like they can be themselves when they are on stage.” Nothing sounds more cliched and over-sentimental, I recoil at the thought of ever saying those words to someone without a meaty preface and some damn strong context, but it seems that they are starting to become true. For me. That's right. When I first thought them I thought the speakers were trying to say that they don't have the courage to be themselves in other situations, or trying to imply that they are somehow being brave by getting up on stage and 'being themselves'. Those explanations don't really make complete sense though, and so when Rach and I were in the middle of an afternoon-long 'talk' ('talk' as in 'we need to talk' talk) and the conversation came round to my love of standup, it started to hit me. On stage, it's so much easier for the things that I say and the way that I am to align with my internal monologue – that ever-present voice inside my head that represents the way that I would ultimately like to express myself but that I can never perfectly match because of the limiting distance between my brain and my mouth. On stage, there is no one talking back, and diluting my thoughts with their silly external opinions in real time: this is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because I can get whatever thoughts I have out there without interruption, even if, admittedly, at this stage the thoughts that I'm 'getting out there' aren't that groundbreaking or important (“it's not so easy for guys to pee standing up, you better RECOGNIZE!”). It's a bad thing though because sometimes it's good to have someone else keeping my thoughts reined in, in real time, because if they are allowed to run wild and unchecked then there is the very real possibility of my unrestrained ego having a field day and saying something stupid and regrettable. Something that I don't really mean, that maybe seemed fair at the time, after five straight minutes of me, me, ME!!!

And I think that's just about enough of exactly that, for now. I downloaded a pretty cool skip-hop/ambient mix yesterday from the Friends of Friends mixtape series, and it feels like my day is amping on the up-and-up. Day time. Yes.

Peace, Taco.

...aaaaand we're back

Two weeks exactly since my last post, and things have changed quite a bit in those two weeks, but I don't even want to talk about those things. I just want to sit. I want to write something. I just found this mixtape by a dude called Joey Bada$$ whose name I have heard around the place in the last few months, but as is always the case with new music, I've been way late to jump onto the new stuff coming out, even if it is TRAGICALLY up my alley. Basically the idea behind this guy and his crew (Pro Era) is that they love the 90's New York hip hop sound, and they are making music in the style that came out of the greatest city in the world during the Golden Era. I cannot express how much I would have absolutely lost my mind over this about eighteen months ago. Two years ago. This would have been the most amazing thing in the world. Now, it's just a nice surprise.

Today has been a nice surprise, sunny outside, and at ten-thirty I woke up after getting to bed at four-thirty in the morning, and felt great. I felt so great, in fact, that I went for a run with the Vintage Beatlab Podcast number twenty pumping through the headphones I found at the Workers last night. Luck luck luck motherfuckers, it's coming in through the windows.

I've been stressing this week about the looming rent day on the sixteenth, which is tomorrow now, and I was about ready to cruise down to the bank with a pocket full of coins and fifty bucks I'd borrowed off of Benny to pump my account up to what would have been about fifty cents above the required amount. Shit was deep. Things were getting thingy. But then, just as I was finally contemplating the beginning of preparations to leave, I saw an email come in – PAY SLIP. I'd forgotten about my pay from the one night I worked at Yah Yah's on the weekend. That's A-Hunned-and Twenty-Fo' of them sweet sweet dorrah ladies and gentlemen. Crisis averted. The lucky streak continues.

Tonight I'm going to kick the football around with Rich and Mick in Flagstaff Gardens – and yes, by football I do mean soccer ball... oh how I await the day when I don't feel the need to clarify on that point. Then, after a bit of social outdoorsing, I've got a gig at Stomach Ache in Collingwood where I'm OPENING of all things, and have a seven minute spot. I've written a bit of new shit over the past few days and am actually feeling okay about it. This week is going to be all about new material. Heaps of new. I've been getting a bit lazy on that front I think.

Okay, so maybe I will talk about what's been happening lately, I guess I kind of can now, I feel okay about it. Not great, but okay. Rach and I broke up. I mean, we talked for ages and it was shaky and we couldn't come to a decision, but I think I've sussed out that I need to be by myself. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Who cares. HAH! This music is so fucking good. The 1999 Mixtape by Joey Bada$$ – it came out in June last year – so about the time that I was heading over to Melbourne DAYM SUHN... but I'm recommending it now. Listen.

Wow that feels good, finally, something written down. Stay tuned, whoever is tuned at the moment, I feel a resurgence coming on. Fuck, I just jinxed it.

Peace, Taco.

What was Two-Thousand and Twelve?

Last year started with a crusty-eyed glance out of a second-story bedroom window in the Cactus Hostel in La Paz Bolivia. As I focussed my vision and adjusted to the harsh light coming in through the thin, high-altitude air, I saw a condom – mine, fresh from the early-morning ,sloppy, drunk frecking only a few hours before – dangling off of an electricity cable over the street and dripping Nobel Prize Winners onto the pavement below. Two-Thousand and Twelve was a good year.

When I came back from Bolivia it was the middle of February, and I had a girl travelling from France – the other side of the world – to Australia to come and be with me. No story has ever begun more beautifully, but it only took me five weeks between her decision and her arrival for me to ruin it... not that I'm bitter or angry at myself, these things just happen, and the luxury of time passed allows me to speak so frankly about it. But I messed that one up, and hurt a lovely girl quite unnecessarily in the process, she really was lovely. She really is. Lovely. We were together for two weeks full of shame and falsity and when everything unravelled it took only a few days to destroy a summer's worth of good memories. They weren't destroyed forever, I look back and smile now, but when it was happening, it was tough. Easter was tough. I bawled my eyes out after she left in the side-street behind the Cranka just of Rundle, but after that I couldn't cry anymore, which surprised me a little. Two-Thousand and Twelve surprised me.

I stayed at uni for another semester, but you know me – and by you, I mean me, because let's face it, I'm talking to myself here – I sat around and did the minimum required to feel fulfilment at the end... that's two years of a three year degree finished, but I can't see the final year materializing in the near future to be honest. I volunteered at a Salvation Army store because I thought it would look good on my resume and I couldn't think of someone who would give me a nice reference – OH! That's the other thing, I spent like six months desperately unemployed – the first six months of this year. Jesus that was terrible, I don't ever want to be that unemployed again, lucky I turn twenty-two in a month and qualify for Centrelink (YES!)(Yes?). Two-Thousand and Twelve was skint, and really, really slow to get started.

I finally landed a job around June selling energy door-to-door for a joke of a man named Nathan in his AIDA franchise in Adelaide. That job lasted for two and a half weeks and was easily the worst stretch of employment I've ever had, even if it was also the shortest... a few funny things happened at that place though: getting screamed at by the office pussy for lighting up in the back of his brand-new car and spending the day at the pub instead of knocking doors. Roaming the streets of some shitty suburban region of mid-northern Adelaide belting out Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team' between houses and sitting by the river under the bridge in Black Forest hiding from the boss... not everything about that place was terrible. The people and the routine got me out of the house for about twelve days, and the brutal stupidity of my situation for those two and a half weeks finally pushed me over the edge and into Melbourne. Two-Thousand and Twelve was dumb.

I just remembered that we're supposed to be pronouncing it 'twenty-twelve'. Sorry guys, too bad, looks like the programming hasn't quite sunk in has it? Two-thousand and Twelve. I'm not changing just because it's quicker – I'm going to need a really clever piece of marketing directed at me from 180 degrees backwards and wrapped in chocolate to get me to kick this inefficient habit of pronunciation. Two-Thousand and Twelve sounds sexier.

Melbourne has been a constant firestorm of new faces, busy evenings, words, pictures, and no pedestrians... that doesn't really sound like a firestorm does it? I think I'm trying to be over-dramatic... but Twenty-Twelve was a bit like that as well... inconsistent. I found a calling this year – maybe that's a bit over-dramatic as well, but it sounds ok to me, not completely superficial. Stand up comedy has given me a place to go where before there was only the night stretching out past sunset and it has filled the void that used to bring so much dangerous introspection. I finally feel like I am going somewhere, and doing something with purpose, not just because I know it's healthy for me to be filling my time with things. Two-Thousand and Twelve has given me something that I am going to be able to carry around with me for the rest of my life – a purpose. Don't ask me what that is just yet, I'm not that far, I'm still figuring these things out, but Two-Thousand and Twelve helped. Thanks Two-Thousand and Twelve, cheers for the hand.

Quote of the year, although I think I might have actually heard it last year to be honest, is as follows:

There is no way to happiness,
happiness is the way

That's Buddha, apparently, but it doesn't really matter who it is, just what it says. After everything that's happened in the last three-hundred and sixty-five days, I feel like that quote could sum it all up pretty near perfectly – the whole year, and all of the years before it, I have only been having as much fun as I have been willing to admit. And now that I'm over in the most hyped youth destination in the fucking world, it's almost like I have to report back that I'm having the time of my life... it's no coincidence though, that I really, completely am having that time. The best time ever. And whether it's because I came to a place that was supposed to be brilliant, or because I found that place within myself, and then happened to move cities, it doesn't matter. Two-Thousand and Twelve was Happy.

Twenty-Thirteen?... let's go for 'spontaneous'. Sorry about the sappy, seriousness of this post for anyone wonderful enough to have made it this far. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, to be serious for a second, if you have ever taken the time out of your day to read anything that I've written and pushed out into the ether, it means more to me than I can put into words here. Thankyou.
And I promise I'll put more funnies in next time. Until then, dicks dicks dicks. Big fat willy. Asses.

Happy New Year everyone.
Peace, Taco.

3121 Hangs

Yesterday I had only one person on my tour, an Indonesian girl called Neysha, and so instead of packing my bags and going back home in a huff, I decided to take her on a quick tour in exchange for her buying me lunch (atlantic salmon... I get my money's worth). We were going to go check out Ballarat after lunch which would have been nice but in the end we couldn't because it got a bit late in the day, so we went our separate ways. It was a lovely afternoon all in all, and I'd like to thank the lovely Neysha for lunch, although … (I pondered long and hard over which conjunction to use here because it seems that the use of either 'and' or 'but' to preface the information I'm about to deliver would set the tone for the rest of this bit and betray my feelings towards the events I intend to describe... I have definitely over-thought this... hurry up Taco, people are getting bored) … there was something else that was far more interesting than salmon.

We were sitting at the tram stop in Richmond waiting for the tram to head back into the city to Southern Cross Station. I sat on the end of the bench on the corner of Church and Victoria streets and Neysha sat in the middle, to my right. To her right again there sat an old man, probably around sixty-five or seventy years old, dressed as most old men usually dress and waiting for the tram like we were. Neysha and I talked for a while about Richmond and why I love living in this suburb – to paraphrase my housemate Brodie, “it's that 3121 real shit” – there's a real grittiness about Richmond and I told her I enjoyed that. While we were talking, as if on cue, a local smackhead approached the bench. I've seen this girl before, wandering aimlessly around Victoria street in the middle of the day, stumbling, glazed eyes, riding the tram with a lost look on her face. She's one of many sad characters that populate the streets in this shitty inner-city suburb of Melbourne, and I'd always had my suspicions.

She approached from the right – from the other side of Church St – and looked first at me, but must have assumed that the girl I was with, being as she was roughly the same age as me, was my girlfriend. Her eyes then fixed on the old man, and she stopped herself just in front of him and squatted on the footpath in a submissive, prostrate position before looking up at him and engaging in conversation. Her voice was thin and high-pitched, and she was clearly drifting in and out of lucid consciousness, never fully in control of herself, but she grabbed the reins for long enough to look into his eyes and ask, “you looking for a good time?” As she said it she made a motion with her right hand to imitate the way she would suck his tired, sixty-five-year-old dick to a climax for some pithy sum of money that I didn't quite manage to overhear. I was paying as much attention as I could at this point while still trying not to be too obvious... it was hard to maintain an air of normality and Neysha and I had stopped talking as soon as the afternoon's twisted courtship had commenced. I wanted desperately to hear what he was saying, but I couldn't grasp much of anything. Maybe he said something to her that I didn't hear, or maybe he didn't even reply to her, but whatever his voice did or didn't tell her, I could understand everything from his uncomfortable body language... he tacitly refused her subsequent urges and offers to give him her phone number. “Do you want to call me later?” She asked. “I just need some money for food and a packet of smokes.” She was getting a little more forceful, sensing, surely, that there was no relief to be had here.

All this time I said nothing, and Neysha said nothing, and we both allowed what was definitely the saddest, most enthralling spectacle we were likely to see for quite a while, to play out. The woman with the thin voice stood up after about thirty seconds, having obtained neither business nor money from her client, and walked away in the direction that she had come. Once she was out of earshot I resumed talking to Neysha and told her about how I'd seen this woman before. I saw her with a bunch of other broken, drug types across the road from Woolies a month or so ago; one of the guys she was with was trying to sell a gold necklace to some fresh looking Asian kid with a hoodie and trackies. He was talking with quick, dirty slang about how he'd stolen the necklace off of some guy he'd bashed the night before, and was using words like 'bruz', which made my skin crawl. It reminded me of the way some of my friends back in Adelaide talk, and it scared me to think that people I know are constantly only three bad decisions away from staring this life in the face too. They had left the hooded Asian with the promise to be back in half an hour – they were “going off to hit the hammer” (inject heroin). I told Neysha this other story to go with what we had just seen, but I left out the part about it reminding me of people I knew because I didn't want to start down that depressing conversational path, only having met this person five or six hours ago.

Both times I've seen glimpses of the course underside of Victoria Street, 3121, I have laughed to myself. I don't really know why, I don't know what about seeing a drug addict solicit prostitution or overhearing another try to sell stolen jewellery is funny – actually I don't think anything about it is funny, not at its core. At the very base of it, it's fucking sad. It's terrible, but it's also surprising – not that it exists at all, but that it exists right there, right in front of me. It's kind of scary, but also kind of exhilarating too, although the naivete required to believe that makes me want to rethink myself a little... nevertheless though, the sheer shock of the whole situation is where the laughter comes from. When the heroin lady walked away from us after failing to pick up her lonely, uncomfortable target, Neysha and I both laughed to eachother with raised eyebrows and twisted faces. We weren't laughing out of amusement, we were just shocked... so fucking shocked... we knew what we'd seen, and as much as we were laughing, we both knew that neither of us was making a joke.

“When the heroin lady walked away...” that's how I started that sentence. That's how I described her. “The heroin lady.” That's all she is to me, that is her only distinguishing characteristic. Not her face, not her eyes, not her hair or her voice or her clothes or her views on China. Heroin... that's who she is, and that's what she does. Jesus Christ... where do I even begin?

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Laundry

My Beautiful Laundrette is on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, contains a number of washing machines in varying sizes and dryers of varying noisiness. It is a pleasant, if bare environment, and always seems to be kept at optimal room-temperature by fans – I haven't counted how many – positioned in above eye level and hanging from the walls or ceiling. I go there every couple weeks to do my laundry (duh, fuckhead) and... wait... hold up... ok, what the fuck was that?

In the past months I've become increasingly frustrated by what I have started to understand is the biggest problem with my comedy. As much as I pet and cajole myself after every gig, and as much as I mentally prepare myself beforehand, I can't seem to reliably win the audience over. Every now and then I'll have a great gig, but that's nothing to celebrate – everyone gets lucky every now and then. For the majority of my mediocre spots I seem to have the audience steadily suspended somewhere between vague enjoyment and frightened annoyance and as great as this may sound, it really is not gold comedy territory. So I've been thinking about why this is and what I can do about it, and I think I've hit upon a small something... hopefully? Maybe? We'll see I guess.

Firstly, I mentioned that I've had good gigs, but I mentioned it dismissively, and with good reason – it seems to me that most, if not all, of the really good gigs I've had have been mostly down to luck, and I say that not because I'm trying to get down on myself, but because it's true. The approach that I've been taking with comedy has been very much along the lines of “write material; decide whether it's funny enough to do on stage; do new material on stage; decide whether I should keep it; compose predetermined sets from bits of new material that worked mixed with old material”. I guess there's no problem with that approach, in theory – ah those beautiful words – in theory it should be fine. In theory I can continue to push through a wall of silence after my opener falls flat, or receives a lukewarm response. In theory I should just keep going and try the next joke. Maybe they'll like this one better? Maybe that was just a false start? NO! That's a stupid fucking theory; comedy isn't about theories, and comedy isn't about robots getting on stage telling joke after joke after joke and crossing their fingers in the hope that a few of them stick... fuck... FUCK... COME ON...

I had noticed that my gigs had been falling in quality – maybe a better way of putting it would be that they have been lacking in consistency or predictability – and I tried a few things. You'll notice up top there at the start of this piece that I reached out for anger and attacked you, my gentle readers, when I realised that I had gone three sentences into my intro without cracking one joke – I got nervous and lashed out... it was a cheap shot borne of fear, and I need to dead those cheap shots. Put them away, and start really reading the audience. Connecting with them. I need to tell them – let them know? – that it's ok, that I'm in control. Maybe first it would be nice to actually be in control, but hopefully one will beget the other I guess... ugh, thinking about comedy is hard. Comedy is hard. Look guys, all I'm trying to say, and all I will say for the moment, is I've realised that in order to regain control over the quality of my gigs, I'm going to have to go out on a limb and break the fourth wall. Break it, smash it, shit on it, and eat it for breakfast. The audience need to feel like they have some control over what is happening so that when the comedian jumps out and surprises them from behind his cleverly placed misdirections and traps and cleverly constructed sentences, they aren't so surprised that they turn on him. They need to trust me. Trust me audience... please?... Ok., working on it.

By the way the laundrette really is quite nice. Four dollars for a wash cycle, one dollar for fifteen minutes of drying, and everything I said about the room-temperature was true. My Beautiful Laundrette Brunswick St, Fitzroy – I recommend it.

Peace, Taco.

Asian Man

Today I was having a little kick around on my skateboard. (just as an aside, I feel so utterly worthless and lame saying, or even typing the word 'skateboard', but I don't know how else to describe the object in question. 'Board' implies a level of familiarity that neither I nor my readers have with the thing, and with that out, that leaves no other option... I've taken to writing 'bateskoard' instead, because I figure if I'm going to be a try-hard loser, I might at least spoonerise) Shit ok, that was a long aside, let's start again... Today I was having a little kick around on my bateskoard in the parking lot of a bunch of council flats where I've taken to practising. It's quiet, usually pretty empty of cars, and there's no one around to watch me eat shit as I regularly do when I try to pull off a kickflip. (yet to land one) Anyway, so my bag was half-hidden behind one of the parked cars while I skated back and forth, ollieing over the crack in the smooth cement and then turning around to go again. It was warm but not hot. I was wearing the same t-shirt I am now – grey with a picture of a withered tree drawn on the front and 'RaymunDo 1108' signed at the bottom. Vintage.

I decided to take a sideways run-up and try an ollie up the kerb and onto the footpath that borders the carpark – the kerb isn't very high, but at this point I was still yet to land anything other than a regular flat ollie, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Anyway, cue the inspirational music maestro, because I did it – kicked up, jump, landed on the higher part of the kerb and kept rolling, maintaining my balance. Let the trumpets play!

I went back for another shot, just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke the first time – “I am the greatest bateskoarder the world has ever seen”, I thought to myself in a moment of self-indulgent weakness. Up again, landed again. This time though, I had an audience; a decrepit, old Asian man with a walking frame had stopped next to the part of the kerb I was jumping up and had decided to watch me. ME! He saw what I was doing, and saw that it was good! So I went back again, and again, and again, I landed four of those jump-up-the-kerb-trickydoos in a row. It felt good. Something about the whole situation felt kind of off though. While I knew that I liked the appreciation of this near-invalid who, let's be fair, was probably just happy to be watching anything other than rent collection happen in his tired little corner of the world, it felt awkward to be examined so intently. He just stood there and watched, smiling at me and nodding each time I completed my little trick. I felt inadequate – I knew that there was nothing else I could offer him, I had no other tricks up my sleeve; no more songs in my repertoire. Every time I paced back to jump up the kerb another time I felt like I owed him something more for his continued interest, but there was nothing else to give.

Eventually, after like, I dunno, let's say three minutes? After about three minutes I jumped back on my board, went over to the other side of the parking lot and grabbed my bag from behind the car where I'd put it before. I had a few sips of water, then walked over the metal grate at the entrance to the car park and started skating away down the street. I waved goodbye to the frail old man who had been my number one fan for the afternoon and turned down another side street, then another, finally making my way to Aldi to buy some milk, razors, cheese, onions, lettuce. The story trails off here, and there's no moral... probably because for a moral to be found, there has to be some sort of challenge to be overcome. This afternoon was nice, and that man was even nicer. I hope he comes out again one time, but maybe not for a few weeks so I can hopefully have something new to show him next time. I'll start working on my handstand I guess.

Peace, Taco.

She Was Fucked, Basically

She was fucked, basically; two days to go and not a single inch closer to Newport. She hated that she thought in inches – the old, archaic measurements of the past had been long outdated by the metric system and she well knew that and had grown up favouring decimals – but she couldn't help it. Something about the inch, an inch, the word itself, sounded poetic and subtle, as if the simple act of saying she wasn't a single inch closer made real her predicament, and would somehow inspire motivation in her to move. She repeated it over to herself again, “not a single inch closer, not a single inch closer, I'm no closer, not one single inch... fucked, fucked, absolutely fucked...” She was muttering.

The road stretched out ahead of her, and no helpful vehicles were approaching up its long, narrow length, this final semi was definitely her last chance. Time to wait a second, maybe two, before approaching, but any hesitation would be sniffed out immediately so it was imperative – completely and without question – that she act fast, act now. She picked up her bag.

“Excuse me!” her voice was sucked up by the dusty air and soon drowned out by the silence around her, so she began to walk forwards, but still tentative and careful in her approach.
“Excuse me! Sir! Excuse me?” no trace of her anxiety could be allowed to seep into the next sentence or the whole thing would be finished and she might as well turn around and walk back to the city that dwindled in the distance behind her. His head turned, not a pretty head, or even a welcoming one, and two startled flies flew off his cap and zipped off above the tin roof. Here it was, “Here it is.” – her internal monologue shoving one last jolt of encouragement up her spine before finally delivering the five words she'd been storing up and preparing for this one crucial moment. The time for backing out had passed, and she welled up all of the air inside her lungs before measuring out six even syllables in about two and a half seconds of pure terror:

“Mind if I ride along?”

“Sure love, jump on up there with me.” He said it, and she stood there for a second while the sound passed between them as if she'd been struck by a brick. The flies were about to land down on her bag as she jolted out of her trance and quickly sealed their official agreement, “uuuuh... thanks.” And without waiting for his final nod, she started scaling the stairs and threw her bag at her feet in the cabin of the dirty machine.

She settled down and waited for him to finish his pit-stop; now she finally had time to calm herself in silence. Looking around for the first time at her surroundings, she saw all that there was to see – and it wasn't very much to begin with – was covered in tiny red particles. The desert sand was all-encompassing, pervasive, and seemed to swallow any object past the middle distance except the long, thin road that stretched out in front. The sky was an angry yellow-white with the sun still setting in the west and the world was deathly still and silent. Winds were blowing sand around the floor. The petrol station where she had been sitting for the last day and a half was already like a foreign world painted onto the window, rather than the unfortunate outpost of civilization that served as a refuelling depot to interstate travellers. She did not recognize a single detail, and hoped soon to forget even the location of this hopeless little point, with its lifeless tin roof and its shade bereft of shelter. “Finally, we're away,” she said, again to herself, and she picked her bag up from the spot she had put it at first and clutched it to her chest, drawing it closer and waiting for her driver to join them. A day and a half – the unhappy stagnation.

She heard a sound like quick rattling coming from around the back of the cab, the tank was full and he was shaking the last drops of petrol from the metal hose – the last drops we all shake out, whenever we are given the opportunity. “Cost effective,” she mused, “is it cheating the system to milk those last droplets, or is the system cheating you if you don't?” She didn't have time to pursue the idle thought any further, because the driver's side door opened, and the cabin filled momentarily with wind and chill before once again sealing them off from the world. He started the engine. The truck roared to life. The ground started to move and the giant beast lurched forwards. Two days left, and finally, just an inch closer to Newport.

***

Her eyes opened up sharp as she snapped out of her dream like a child's hand recoiling from a flame. The world flooded back.

“What's the time?” the words came scrambled out of her mouth. She wasn't sure who she was saying them to.

“Just past four in the morning”, he said – the truckdriver. He didn't turn his head from the wheel, but every now and then his eyes were glancing up at the rear-view mirror which was tilted in her direction. It struck her that the centre mirror in a truck is superfluous, as the trailer would always obscure the view from behind, even if there was a good-sized window in the back. The thought struck her from side on, and it seemed somehow important, so she held on to it as a piece of trivia for the future. She remembered her conversation with the driver before she had fallen asleep, although she was unsure at what point she had trailed off.

His name was D... or 'Dee'? That was all he had said; she was definitely not mistaken in the pronunciation as she had made sure to memorise it the first time it had been told to her, mostly out of politeness.

“Dee”, she muttered to herself. “It's Dee.” She was always muttering.

“That's the one.” He replied, eyes darting up to the mirror for a second.
She began to recall their conversation in detail, the six or seven minutes of it before she had fallen away into sleep, and she remembered that he had made a good impression on her. He was gruff and brisk with his words, but not angry or reserved, just efficient. The truck had been like a cradle, slowly rocking her back and forth as it shuddered with the bumpy road and churned under its own weight and momentum. Back and forth. Back and forth. One way with the wind. The other way with the slope of the road. She had realized so suddenly that she was unbearably tired, and while it would have been nicer to stay awake and keep this man company while he drove – and truly, he was her saving grace – she could not bear it. Sleep.

The truck had ploughed on, past the sunset, and on into the night. She had told him she was going to Newport and he didn't ask why, he didn't need to, she needn't have even told him that much – he could have guessed. She was asleep by the time the sun was down, and the time in the cabin had passed quicker without the sun beating on the road in front of them. Dee had been silent with his hands on the wheel and allowed her all the rest she needed. Now she was awake, and she spoke, not to herself this time, but directly to him;

“Did I sleep for long?”

“Around eight hours”, he replied briskly, his voice was immediately clear and crisp and stood out amongst the other noises coming from the engine and the mass of metal behind them.

“Eight hours...” she repeated to herself, “I'm sorry for not staying awake to keep you company”, she looked over to him as she apologised, and waited for him to say something back. He just smiled, and flashed his eyes up to the mirror while she looked at him directly. They were looking at eachother, although because of this triangular arrangement, their eyes never actually met.

“How long were you waiting at that petrol station?” he asked her later.

“A day and a night or thereabouts, I caught the bus out from town.”
“And which town would that be?” Dee asked this fair enough question abruptly but it seemed odd to her that as she ventured out of Hampstead her safe, cosy identity could be left at home with her old life behind her.

“I came from Hampstead”, she answered, smiling to herself as she realised her potential for anonymity.
“Me too,” Dee replied, “stayed there 'till I was old enough to read a map.” His eyes stayed steady on the road as he said this, the cab was quiet for a second – was that a joke? She thought quickly to herself that if he had meant what he'd said to be funny, then he might have laughed at it himself to indicate so... but then again he had a way of talking that seemed as if he might be one to let something like that slip by as if it were an accident that he had ever said it at all. A wry smile appeared at the corner of his lips as he saw her mind ticking over; “laugh if you want, it's only the truth.” He had seen through her uneasiness instantly, and that set her back in her seat and made her comfortable.

“Do you pick up many travellers on the road?” she asked him after another break.

“Every now and then – if a person asks, I'll take them as far as I can.”

“Not many people I've met would have the heart to pick up a traveller off the road like this. Someone they've never met before, never even laid eyes on – most people I know would be pretty afraid of that.”

“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” he offered back to her, his eyes lazily drifting back up to the mirror to look at her, it definitely wasn't a question, he was telling her plainly. “The way I see it, if someone's asking for a lift, then they're always gonna give someone who comes to them asking something the same courtesy they asked for.”

“Well yeah, maybe that's...”

“Maybe they're asking out of humility, or maybe out of desperation, but either way, if someone's asking for help, then you can be sure that they'd never turn their back on someone they found in a similar position.” This time his words hung on the cabin for a while, she wanted to let him finish his answer properly and felt sorry for interrupting the first time.
“...and I guess everyone needs help from somebody at some point...” she chimed in after she judged that enough time had passed.
“Exactly,” he nodded. “It'd be a dead, unfeeling wretch who could accept help with one hand, and refuse it to his fellow man with the other – I've never met anyone that cold inside.”
“Maybe you just haven't met many people yet.” she said with a wry smile creeping across her dry lips. She saw the corner of Dee's mouth rise a little too, and she smiled more at seeing this. She liked the way his face looked, and she was proud of having made him smile for a second. The truck and it's heavy wheels pulled the road underneath them like a conveyor belt. The sky stood still and the sun burned overhead while the two companions sat comfortably in eachother's company.

***

After another long while and a pit stop and a small flock of birds in the distance they came to the place where the desert meets the sea. The sun was setting, and the truck turned North and followed the coast up towards the apex of the peninsula; Dee would be leaving her there while he headed inland, Newport lay to the West, just one more day across the desert. She looked back over to him and cocked her head to the side before asking him another question.
“When was the last time you picked someone up in your truck?” She wished she could have phrased it better after it came out, she thought it had sounded clumsy and stupid.

“A few weeks ago I had two boys, a couple brothers, sitting where you are now. They talked and talked about their plans for Newport, the summer and the women they were looking for. I set them off by the train station because they said they wanted to try and jump a freighter going across East. Funny boys, but stupid, I'd say they made it over alright though. Then there was another lady a few days before that, heading back East after losing herself. She'd been over in Newport but she said she'd grown tired of it all... I can't say whether she was telling the truth or not, but she wasn't staying gone for good, no way. She was going back, I could feel it. Everyone goes back. No one can ever stay away.”

“What's it like?” She asked him.
“You'll see.” He smiled again, the same smile as before, and nodded his head to the mirror. “I'll be back there myself before long no doubt... just for now though I like to live through the people I meet on the road, out here in the desert. It's nice to put your life on hold for a second, and appreciate the joy in someone else's eyes as they head out and search for their own happiness.”

“I imagine it is, but I can't say I'm...”

“The part of your story that you share here with me, you'll carry that with you now, for as far as your journey takes you I'll be there as a tiny character. I have no way of knowing where all the people I meet end up, and maybe some of them don't end up too well, who knows what happens to you as soon as you get out of this truck... but it's nice to think that out there in the world there are a few people who can remember the guy who picked them up when they needed a hand, held them a while and then set them loose, back into the empty world.”

“I guess that means you're not so selfless then.” She quipped straight away and eyed him from the side again. She felt his eyes looking at her in the mirror like they had been for most of their conversation, and this time finally brought up the courage to peel her eyes away from the side of his face and meet his gaze in the reflection. They stared for a second. Two seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty-five. Someone blinked, and then the moment was broken.

She retreated back into herself after this, and although the mood in the cabin was still good-natured and pleasant, the unsteady suspicion rose within her that this man was not as calm, as perfect, as simple as he had initially seemed. 'Why should he get to ride the glory of other people's accomplishments?' she questioned. 'Why should I suffer and toil to reach my pinnacle when he can simply offer lifts and stand there with me for free?' She felt cheated somehow, she knew she shouldn't be feeling resentful, but something about his peaceful solitude threatened her. She had steeled herself with tough resolve to be ready for every trial that she knew her new life would have ready for her, and she was prepared to face each challenge head on. Greatness only comes through hardship, and yet this man expected to share in others' greatness, without also bearing a share of their pain. The idea repulsed her and seemed parasitic, but she resolved to put it out of her mind. She softened, and then, after realising her harshness, almost pitied him. He would never know the glory of truly achieving a goal, of suffering through the greatest ordeals only to come out the other side and beat them. To be crowned lord of everything, and rise above impossibility. To live. In her mind it was inevitable – the sky was where she was headed.

***

When they pulled in to the train station she slowly stirred from where she had been, propped up against the door half sleeping. Grabbing her bag from between her legs where it had lay in the shade, away from the burning sun, she checked it once to make sure nothing had fallen out. It hadn't, she was ready to go.
“Thankyou again.” she smiled, and looked up at the mirror to meet his gaze, only this time he had ventured to look directly at her as the need to keep his eyes on the road had vanished. She looked at his eyes in the mirror, and he saw the side of her face in profile, once again their gazes never met, and only after she turned away did he return her farewell.
“Good luck.” the last words he offered her. By the time they reached her ears she was already halfway out the door and jumping down the ladder, the train she wanted to jump onto was getting ready to leave. She had to make it, she refused to be caught waiting.

He looked through the glass as she gathered speed and jogged, then ran towards the depot, jumping the fence between the parking lot and the track. She was impatient, but impatience was good, useful, he started the engine again and turned the big hunk of metal around and back out onto the road. Another story he could hold on to, he was part of another victory. Or maybe another defeat, but either way, he had played his part.

She ran fast for the train, panting, pressing on. The weight of her bag was not significant, but it swayed from side to side with her movement as she swung her shoulders to steady herself while running. She held onto the straps and tried to keep the swinging mass still. Full pelt, maximum speed. The train shuddered first from the front way up ahead but she saw it even as far as she was, as she ran she tried to pick out a carriage to jump on to. Something covered but open where she would be sheltered but not cramped. She couldn't sit on an exposed flatbed, she would freeze to death – she needed an open container. She could hear the clicking of the connectors between each carriage get closer and closer together as the front end of the train edged forward and each successive section was picked up. Clang, Clang, Clang. They sounded out across the yards like a row of steel dominoes. She spotted an open door and knew that this was her chance. It was a little towards the back of the train, but if she kept on her current trajectory, even if it was some way behind her when she reached the tracks, she would easily be able to jump on.

She reached the tracks, the open door drew up close until it was almost level with her. She slowed her pace to draw even. Unhooked her bag from around her shoulders and whipped over with her left arm, it landed with a thud inside the dark, empty space. Something inside there smelled and she winced internally, this was going to be a long night devoid of sleep. She would reek of fertilizer on her first night in Newport. Her right hand stretched out to grab onto something, the edge of the train, her fingers reached around quickly for a steady hold but none was there to grab on to. She stopped looking at the ground, she couldn't, she had to watch her hand, to look for something. Something to grab on to. She looked, but there was nothing. Her left foot slipped on a loose rock, 'why are train tracks always built on mounds of rocks?' she thought, infuriated, muttering it to herself. She slipped again, but her hand grabbed something. Yes! She could feel it! And the train was going faster now, faster than she could run, and her feet were completely away from the ground. Off the ground. Moving! Her left hand struggled to join her right and her feet swung around to the inside, in towards the spinning wheels and slowly accelerating machinery. She clung on as the train kept speeding up, speeding up. Much faster and faster and faster. Her legs lurched inwards again and caught something. She swung her hand, another time, wildly, frantically, desperately. Too late. Too slow. Too much ambition.

As she was pulled under, her feet first before her body, the train kept accelerating. It chewed her up indifferently and left her on the tracks, remorseless. She never made it to Newport.

Today I Had the Idea of Doing This

I seem to be on the downward side of one of my frequent oscillations between king-hitting happiness and the trough; a sad, abandoned laziness best captured by the word 'no'. So, in light of my recognition of this mental state, I have decided to play a game: every day, for as long as I feel like doing it... maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks... fuck it, I might even stop after today... but every day until I stop, I'm going to describe something that has happened to me in the twenty-four-ish hours since my last entry. So I'll start with today I guess.

Today I had the idea to do this thing, this writing thing, the thing that I'm doing right now. I was not so much sitting or lying down, but maybe a fair way to give a quick description of my position would be to say that I was in a position halfway between the two. I was on my knees, knelt at the side of my bed with my head and the upper part of my torso slumped across my mattress in a sort of groaning-prayer position. I had my eyes closed, and it's likely that my mouth was openly drooling. One of my books was in front of me with the title 'Retelling Something Daily' scrawled hurriedly on to the top of a new page – I was looking for something to write about. The idea had come to me tentatively as I was reading Catch-22 – well I wasn't so much reading it as I was looking at the words for the first two paragraphs of chapter eleven, I can tell when I'm not actually reading something because I start to get mental images of things that have nothing to do with what I'm pretending to be taking in.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there is it? No. I had the idea to write about something every day – some episode or story or happening or just something interesting that I can retell in a chronological way so that I might practice pure storytelling and focus my style away from pretentious, stream-of-consciousness ramblings on random, disconnected topics. I keep giving myself excuses to continue with the patterns of writing that I find easy: 'stay true to yourself', 'genius is often misunderstood', 'develop your own unique style'. These petty reaffirmations are useless and will only serve to distance me further from any potential development. I need to push myself. Pressure. Focus. Force. Words. Do not become comfortable.

So I wrote down 'Today I had the idea of doing this' on the first line of the page. I wrote it just under the heading that I'd scrawled quickly before dumping my face on the bed in a tantrum of self-defeating exhaustion. I went back to reading with a bit more focus, and with a reasonable confidence that in around half an hour or so I would embark on the first of what will hopefully be many quick retellings of odd, daily events. “Do one thing, every day, that scares you” – I am scared of writing drivel, and as far as I can see, the day-to-day life of a barely employed twenty-one year old contains nothing but, so here we go. I am afraid.

Peace, Taco.

Insecure Ramblings of the Fearfully Conscious Mind

I am walking down the road wearing clothes, experiencing the weather, and thinking about nothing in particular. I am always reliably secure in my thoughts and free of worry when I am alone, and alone I am right now. Two guys turn around the corner in the middle distance – fifty metres – and they're walking towards me. The sidewalk is narrow, just wide enough for two people to walk abreast, although not comfortably. It is always the way on these sorts of narrow sidewalks that groups of three are awkwardly split into two walking abreast, and one walking in front or behind, straining to listen and participate in the conversation of the other two. “These are treacherous walkways”, are the words that I think to myself as the two strangers pace towards me, and I towards them. Strange words, they are odd, and so I trace over them several times in my mind. “These are treacherous walkways”, “treacherous walkways be these”.

A car whizzes past on my right from behind me, and swishes off into the distance, stopping abruptly at the spoon-drain that marks the intersection of the road the two guys just turned off of – they are getting closer now. Almost within earshot. The one on my left is talking, with his left hand – the one closest to his partner – gesturing slowly and making circles in the space in front of them. Who are they, what are they talking about? What do they do here and why this street? Why now? They both look up together, simultaneously, and spot me as I had spotted them just before. The tone of the speaker dips slightly as they approach me, surely an unconscious reflex, but I wonder to myself though, what is it that they were talking about, and why am I not permitted to listen? Even by accident, even by complete chance. Surely their conversation is not relevant to me. Surely not? Surely. Surely.

I furtively throw my gaze up from the pavement for one last time before we pass and resume our previous roles of complete strangers – never having met, or even exchanged pleasantries. Their gazes haunt me though, as the distance between our backs grows at the same rate as before. My walk speeds up slightly, and my brain races along with the determined stride of my feet that carry my along the thin footpath. What if they were talking about me? They had every opportunity to look me up and down as soon as they rounded the corner; as soon as I could judge them, so they could judge me in turn. What anomaly could be so obvious in my appearance that they would have discussed it at length, before secretively hushing their judgement as we crossed paths? What did they see? What is wrong with my clothes? My face? My hair or the way that I walk? Why do they hate me, these strangers, two men who I have never met?

Maybe their stares were ones of pity, or sadness, as they saw my pathetic figure approaching them, alone and depressed, with my hands hanging down my sides like limp appendages, swinging without purpose. Maybe they could see in me what I have not yet identified myself, some awful predisposition to failure, or unhappiness. They could tell more about me from one quick glance, than I could possibly have discovered in all my life, after all my wanderings, and searchings, and introspective thoughts. Maybe that is the very reason they could see it... because I have searched so long for imperfections within myself that the truth of my complete inadequacy has eluded me... glaringly obvious as it is, sitting right in front of my nose. I think these thoughts, and I trace them over several times in my mind. “Complete inadequacy”, “obvious, complete inadequacy”.

I think of turning around. I twist my head. They are far behind me... almost far enough to shout? To call out to them? “WHAT IS IT? WHAT DID YOU SEE?” I consider screaming, for a second, consider running, consider finding out. But it would be no use. I march on, slowly rationalizing things and coming back to myself. Of course they didn't see anything, they were just two people, the same sort of people as me. They were talking to eachother, as friends often do, and they maybe glanced up at me as we passed and saw some menace in my eyes. Some judgement that maybe provoked fear in the scared corners of their hearts as well... maybe not, but they surely weren't judging me. I make these things up, these frantic, fretfully insecure worryings... and as I walk down the road, I realize this, and laugh to myself. “They were just the same as me, repeat it Taco.” I say that to myself as I walk on, slowing down slightly and again becoming comfortable. “Everyone is just the same as me.”

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Brick Wall

I have always viewed the tendency of our over-sentimental Facebook generation to preface comments on current feelings with the qualifier 'sometimes' as pointless and evasive. Sentences like “sometimes it hurts too much to think”, or “sometimes you miss them and you don't even know why”, or “sometimes I masturbate to people's tumblr feeds” are perfectly normal declarations, obscured by the dirty word 'sometimes' which dilutes their power and sullies their meaning. I was tempted to commit this foul sin just now, as I started to write this blog, but instead decided to comment on it which, as far as I have thought in my own silly mind, counts as not doing it. The following are not emotions that happen 'sometimes', no matter what qualifiers I slap onto my sentences out of habit and laziness; the following are things which I am feeling right now.

I am currently finding it hard to muster up the courage (courage really isn't the right word here... maybe strength? Or 'emotional resources'? Something something something, you get the point) to write more comedy and perform stuff, or work on stuff, or whatever I need to do. I'm just finding it hard right now is what I'm saying. It's weird, I know I can do well on stage because I've done so before, and I've had good gigs on nights that other comedians have done poorly – ie. it wasn't just because of a good crowd that my best gigs have happened. But lately I've been dying a lot more... well not dying per se, just not doing well... getting a few laughs here and there but not loads and I'm having a fucking hard time figuring out why that is.

I have been told by a few people that I need to write some self-deprecating material and open with it so that I can get the audience on side and then have license to get angry and rant about whatever else I want to rant about. I've even had a go at writing some stuff like that, but the first crack I had at it led to my worst gig ever, and the material ended up having the opposite effect to what I had desired – almost making me come off a bit conceited and arrogant. God damn it. GOD DAMN IT. How does this stuff work? Sometimes (FUCK! there it is – I'll leave it in a a punishment, come on Tuck, you can do better) I feel like I want to just stop doing the whole comedy thing and retreat behind the shield of approval that is the written word. Behind my keyboard no one can really harm me and if my sentiments or attempts at humour fall flat, no one is around to be silent and stare up sympathetically. It's safe. Secure. Easy. Tame.

But that's exactly why I need to NOT stay back here in safety, because it is good to do one thing every day that scares you. Well I don't have gigs every day, but maybe if I scare myself two or three times a week then I'll meet enough of the quota... I don't get that nervous before gigs any more – not the regular gigs that I've been doing anyway – because they are just that, regular gigs. But maybe I should be getting more stressed out before gigs... I certainly haven't had a really good one in a while (notwithstanding the aristocrats night at Station 59 where I wasn't doing material) so maybe I should be feeling a little concerned that people may begin to see me in a negative light if I keep going this way. These are rantings of a paranoid mind, I know that even as I type them, but I can't help feeling stressed. Comedy is hard... fucking hard... I'm hitting a wall here people, and I don't know how to make it work again.

Frustrated. Scared. Paranoid. Feeling alone.

Peace, Taco.

A Bad Day Turned Good

This blogging thing seems to be going in cycles and I've decided to stop trying to force it so much and just let it happen. That's not to say that I won't be pushing myself to write whenever I have a free moment – hell yes I'm going to be writing as much as possible. Just that if I've just had a few good weeks of solid output, I can accept maybe that my brain might need some time to catch up. I CAN'T KEEP UP MY RED-HOT, FULL-TILT, MAXIMUM PACE ALL THE TIME!!! That was a Red Dwarf quote, for those of you playing at home.

So today has been a great day so far, and it only promises to get better. If we are going by the conventional 'midnight-to-midnight' day system – and for the purposes of this recap I think we just may – then the day started rather poorly with me beginning my shift at Yah Yah's. Yah Yah's is a great place to work; it's fucking brilliant actually, but starting work is never any good... although, being as it was that my shift started at midnight exactly, and that I had realistically already started working by 11:55pm, it could be said that the worst part of my shirt – the dreading anticipation of a night's labour – was already over by the time the thirteenth of October, twenty-twelve was upon us. I only worked until three because I had to give a tour this morning at 10:30am, which required a 9am alarm and it seemed the day was going to be one feral shit-storm from the get-go, but I think all that sad, dejected moping about how much my Saturday was going to suck has ended up turning things on their head.

So I got home at three thirty to my housemates (and OH what mates they are) parting hearty in the lounge room with thudding house music and deep grooves aplenty. I bought a pack of Doritos (Cheese Supreme you FUCK what else?) on the way home with five dong I found on the floor at work and skated down the big hill. Yes, yes and yes. The scenes I return home to after work every weekend are inspiring to say the least. This is the house I always wanted to live in from ages eighteen to twenty – a natural after-party destination that any self-respecting head would want to return to after the din of the dancefloor dies down. It is precisely because of my adolescent desire for such a place that I never was able to create one in those days, and the greatest comic irony of the whole thing is now that I live in the house of my naïve, popularity-obsessed self's dreams, I don't so much care about the parties that happen here. I'm willing to join in for a while, maybe suck down a few puffs of the spliff in circulation, but before long I'm in bed, and sleeping while the walls continue to shake.

I did my tour – woke up at nine, pickups in town from ten, tour until one, and made eighty cash units from the seven people on my tour, although I did forget to take the photo of the group (god DAMN it I keep forgetting that shit) so I'm looking at a thirty-dollar pay-in for that one. 'E neva lerns, duz e'? Nope. Also ran into an old friend from way back in Adelaide – Dom the Drummer from Brighton. He picked me out of the lineup at Aldi and by the sounds of it he's doing the do just like everyone else is over here in Melbourne; tearing shit up and screaming down the dangerous road. Numbers were exchanged and I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of olde Dominic from now on.

Back at home by one-thirty and in bed watching season two of Community with commentaries by two, and now I'm up at five thirty after a quick chat to Peter Pan of Neverland fame about how he's striking his demons back with bamboo poles and a head of positivity... things are looking up. Tonight I'm doing a spot at Station 59 for the late show, and then work, which somehow seems a lot less ominous after last night's shift and the catharsis of writing this post. Everything is so much simpler when it's laid out in simple terms doncharekkin? Yes, is the answer we were looking for there. Yes people. Just yes.

Peace, Taco.

A Message For You

When is it time to let go?

In recent years (like pretty much, this one) I have gained a deep respect and admiration for my mother for allowing me to do what I did in the years after I finished school. I won't bore you with the OUTRAGEOUSLY INTERESTING details, but I definitely took life by the horns. (note: replace 'life by the horns' with 'quite a lot of drugs') I was eighteen, and then nineteen, and then even twenty for a while, and the train kept speeding up and gaining momentum, and from the outside it must have looked pretty out of control. I always knew I was going to be fine, but I guess I can only say that confidently now having fairly emerged from the clouded mist of loud, thumping bass music and Monday morning blood-vomit... I always knew I was going to be fine – that's what everyone says when they reach the other side.

So for those three-ish years of steadily increasing drinking and two, three, four day benders, my mum (and my dad too, but really he was always chillin' so my mum mostly) was probably scared shitless that her son was going to end up a defective homeless man, scrounging through the gutters of some third-world slum, trying to find algae to cook into a stew... and I guess that fear was well justified. The party lifestyle is an alluring temptress, and there is a very real chance for anyone who is drawn in by it to come out the other side ravaged and broken, their life withered away to nothing. That's why I have such admiration for the courage that I now recognize in the way that she allowed me to go off and do my own thing for those first years of semi-adulthood and independence. If she had reigned me in and tried to stifle me – and doubtless she could have, and would have been acting only out of love – I probably would have rejected those attempts and no doubt run further away. She didn't though, she let me do what I had to do, and now I'm better for it. Good on YOU mum. Well done. Champion effort; here is your first-prize colouring in book.

Thing is though, how far do you let them slip? How long would it have been before ol' mum dawgz had said 'enough' (and she would have said it just like that too... “WOMEN” – amirite?) and told me that I had gone too far. We all know the saying, 'if you love them, let them go'. The implication there, is that if they love you back, then they'll return after realizing themselves the error of their ways, and that that self-induced revelation will be far more lasting and profound than anything that can be taught or imparted second-hand. Well I assume there would have been a point – and maybe I was audacious/stupid/lucky/wary enough to just tickle that point myself in my most self-destructive days, but my exploits in the field of drugs and alcohol really never even approached the levels of those around me. Those for whom drugs were not just simply a recreation, but an escape. Those who possessed an incurable itch which could be momentarily scratched by the familiar, overpowering calm of one or another addictive substance... from what I'm told it's a bleak world out there. I could never see it, but for those who can, I'm told any escape will do.

So they keep falling, or maybe driving themselves downwards. Burning a trail down and down and down into the abyss, happy to be rid of the light and the brutal pains of a world they are increasingly unable to relate to. To understand. What a luxury. I am only assuming here based either on my own extrapolations, or careful observations from half remembered weekends – only those who have crossed over the edge fully understand what is on the other side, but by that time most if not all could not care less about spreading the word. The edge is not a goal to shoot for. This is not a field trip, you can't just stare in, you fall all at once, and you fall all the way.

And this person who keeps pressing on, passing the point of no return, only to have others around them revise that point, and revise it again and again... a glimmer of hope, a moment of possibility. They give up all hope, only to have hope restored to them, almost against their will... and then dashed again. And again and again and again. You think I'm talking about a specific person here, but I'm not. This story is a generic one, fit to be told in generalities. The people who are reading this story are not living it, and those living it are definitely not reading. Not this. Not now. But what would a mother do for this person? This being who admits themselves to being without hope, and has all but consigned themselves to oblivion. What can a mother do? Or a brother? Or a friend? Can we let them keep falling, knowing that they don't even want to be picked back up? Is that a grave injustice? Or are there some who should be allowed to fade away, just as they have always wanted... these are the most painful thoughts my friends, the decisions that no one should ever have to make.

I've tried searching out the blameworthy parties. Doctors. Teachers. Parents. Friends. The government. The clubs. The party people. The scene. The dealer who sold that first bag of weed – marijuana: the gateway drug. The drugs themselves. Some other force, surely something outside of us can carry the blame. God? The Devil? No one is there. No one is listening. No one is going to answer... I don't know what to do anymore... and how selfish of me to make this about myself, I'm not even living it. I'm safe in my perched position, far far away from the edge. Never looking down.

All I have left to say is that if you can hold on, and even the smallest part of you wants to, then please do. We don't want to lose you. Not now, not yet, not ever. I could never hold someone responsible for giving up when their task seems too hard, there is no blame to be found there either. I wish I could do it for you, but I can't... but if you can hold on...

Don't do it. I love you.

Peace, Taco.

Starship Troopers: An Attempt at Persuasion

Lost in deep cover
"Dear John," said his lover's last letter
Emptied a full clip to feel better
Slipped a rung on Jacob's ladder
Desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder
Don't get mad get even madder
A10 tank killer fodder
Interrogate? Why bother...
My brother for a last cigarette, no please not yet
One last dance, lest we regret
Look me in the eye, GI, and tell me you're not tired
I'm tired to death sir, I'm tired till it hurts
But when you thought it couldn't get much worse
Well it may...
We march at the break of day
Come what may, rules of engagement say
We will stand to the very last, shrapnel blast
A casket goes home...
Sons and daughters wrapped in stars and stripes to keep 'em warm

("Give peace a chance... that doesn't mean anything"
"It's like give peace a chance")

Under an orange dawn we draw the line
And those on the other side must stand and fight
Tracers like fourth of July in the night
Lighting up like Hiroshima
The perfect sight

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad, transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier, with skin boils from Ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I was only nineteen
Joined for the pay packet
Now my full metal jacket won't take one more hit
I don't give two shits about oil interests
But depleted uranium, just gave Joe a fit
Captain Kurtz said, "fight till the hurt stops"
Yet all I can see is burned crops
And mates shell-shocked
Morphine under lock and key
Their AK's talking to my M16
Pray for friendly fire
Haven't seen a priest, but plenty of funeral pyres
Triage nurse is dying
My name in the paper
Next to a faceless dictator
And another flag to drape
Here's the commanding officer
A total mess again
Crying in the mess tent
How to make mice or mince meat of his men

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier with skin boils from ebola
I'll bring you back a souvenir of what we stole

I'm a Starship Trooper
This is my letter to dad
Transferred from Saigon to Baghdad
And now I'm dead
An allied soldier...

Those are the lyrics to 'Starship Troopers', a bleak, eerie song by The Herd that lays an impassioned image of the futility of modern war. I have always loved this song – I feel it has, along with Apocalypta from the same album (The Sun Never Sets), much more replay value and deep passion to be had than many of the other songs on the album, despite it being far less accessible a topic than, for example, a young man's relationship with his grandma (Under Pressure) or even their more popular war song, the cover of Redgum's 'I Was Only 19'.

When I was in high school – now that I try and remember I think it was year twelve, so I was seventeen – I wrote out the lyrics to this song, along with Apocalypta, and put them in an email which I sent to my English teacher at the time. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish at this point; we'd been studying poetry and I think I just wanted to show someone who I vaguely looked up to that I really was interested in what he was teaching, while at the same time also showing off a bit of my own knowledge coloured with the contemporary style of 'poetry' (hip hop) that I was familiar with. I don't know whether he received the email, although he must have, the teachers' email accounts were assigned by some formula or another and I was seventeen, sure, but I wasn't a fucking moron... but I always kind of wondered whether something had gone astray, because he never replied. Isn't that strange, that I still remember that even, and not only did he never reply, but he never even spoke of it to me... I found that really weird because he was the kind of dude that I thought would be completely stoked about having a kid in his class send him some shit that was kind of to do with what he was teaching, completely of his own volition. Apparently not though. The email went unread and I never got to share the song with anyone.

This was by no means the first time that I had tried to share a song that I loved with someone, and it definitely would not be the last. I have a long and proud history of being extremely forceful and single-minded when I get the idea in my head that so-and-so would like to listen to such-and-such song. I obsess over it. As soon as I see the person next, I'll have my phone ready with headphones and ambush them like a music rapist, before making them sit in complete silence while my anticipatory stares burn holes in the side of their head... appreciate or die, I can't help it guys, I just really want you to listen.

So anyway, I thought of all this today, because I started the afternoon off by listening to some Urthboy and reminiscing of the ethereal spring of 2009, and then, once I remembered how Urthboy is the best lyricist in Aussie hip hop, I moved on to a quick revisit of The Sun Never Sets, (easily top three Australian albums EVER by the way... cheers) and without fail, whenever this album makes it into my headphones Starship Troopers is always the standout. Every time. This song... fuck man, this song is like... I was listening to it on the tram home not fourty-five minutes ago, slowly building up the idea of writing this blog in my head, and thinking of what it is that I can say about it. What do I like about the song? What makes it good? What makes it stand out from the rest of the album? I don't know, it just fits together so brilliantly, and Urthboy's lyrics, especially the fifth line “desert boot camp deserter got stung by death adder”... I mean that's fucking brilliant. Seriously. The image of the desert and the allusion to operation desert storm. The alliteration on the three strongest words of the line; 'desert', 'deserter', 'death'. The rhyme of adder with ladder – Jacob's ladder, an allusion to the bible story where Jacob ascends a ladder to heaven in his dream. The deserter slipped though, he didn't make it to heaven, he was stung. Dead. Fucked. Fuck. Fuck. AAAAAAAAGH. I was listening to this song and walking down the darkened streets out of the gritty Asian streets of North Richmond and I wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs. Not anything, no words, just scream. Just to release some energy – thins song makes me edgy and stirs up turmoil within my body's walls. Please listen to it. Please. I don't know what else to say.

I can't force you physically, but fuck. If anyone can persuade a bunch of internet readers to listen to some song off of an eight-year-old Aussie hip hop album with only furious words and lot of swearing, it's me.
Because I'm fucking brilliant.

Peace, Taco.