The more things change, the more things change.

Change is scary. Change is good. Change is hard work. Change is bad. Change is necessary. Most of all - change is inevitable, because change is growth.

It's 1999 and I'm in high school at the library for history class.  Suddenly, the class-clown leaps up and loudly proclaims, "Eureka!  Everybody can stop looking - I've found the meaning of life!"  All heads turn to him.  He looks down to the open book held in one hand and says, "LIFE: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death."  With a smug grin he snaps the dictionary shut, sits back down, stretches his arms out behind his head and leans back on his chair, satisfied.

Nothing is ever still, even when the appearance says otherwise. It only takes a bit of perspective to remember that we are, in fact, hurtling through space at thousands of kilometres per hour; that our hearts are beating at so many thrusts per second; that blood is pumping; stars are dying; cells are dividing; time is flowing; breath is being inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

But these aren’t really changes. They are the definition of constancy. They are predictably changeless in their relentless changing. Knowing this is inimitable for detaching yourself from a situation in the hope of gaining a broader view, and fucking useless for gleaning insight into the same.

It is perspective vs. perception.

It's 2001 and I'm in my final year of high school.  I am having an affair with my best friend's long-term girlfriend.  It's the first girl I will ever love, but not the last.  It's one of those rare moments when we are alone together and not having an argument over whether she'll decide to leave her boyfriend for me - whether she'll make a change.  

I am driving past a field of flowers and I slow down, pull over the car and tell her to get out as I do the same.  I walk around to her side and tell her to look at the field.  I say, "In five, ten, fifteen and thirty years from now - this field will still be here.  These flowers will still grow and die.  We will be older and different, but this will still exist - everything will still exist - it has existed for millions of years before us, and will continue, for millions of years without us.  This, whatever this is, between us, is fleeting in comparison to that."

We actively try to change so many aspects of ourselves - to get better jobs, to improve our skills, to cut our bad habits, to grow, to succeed, to be smarter, to be better, to be more compassionate. To resist change is to stagnate, and to stagnate is to die - there is a spark of immortal consciousness in all of us that primitively understands this; and yet, the majority of us resist change fiercely, knowingly, unconsciously and more, with deliberate inconsistently. 

I want to change, but I want you to stay the same or; I want you to change, but I want to stay the same or; I want us both to change, but I don't want you to change if it conflicts with my change, because I Love You, and what if Your change excludes me? 

Or worse: I don’t want us to change.

It’s 2005; you are seventeen and finish school with less-than-favourable grades as a result of a senior year spent partying.  With the hope of giving you a greater perspective of yourself, your parents present you with a surprise graduation gift – a holiday in America.  In the months abroad, you begin to wonder if your life thus far has been defined by the common perception that you are beautiful, and desired.  You begin to understand the nature of change.

You stop wearing makeup, you stop wearing mini-skirts; you do not try to hide your beauty, but deliberately do not emphasise it.  You break ties with former friends and resolve to become a teacher, to dedicate your life to helping others.  You excel at university and promise yourself that you will never let your desire to be desired affect you again.  

Consciously and unconsciously, change thrums like the beat of a slave drum at every level of human life - occurs without us really knowing that it's happening. 

We can shape it, but we can't control it. 

But the conscious changes we enact are more interesting, because these are the aspects which both separate and connect us - from the minute changes we strive for in our personal habits, to the broader changes we wish for on a global scale: conscious change occurs because we WANT to change. 

It is 2006; You are a fresh eighteen and standing at the front counter preparing stock for the evening.  I come around the corner, punch in the code and enter and see you and stop.

Change is infinite; is constant in its constancy. Before you, there were women that I loved so deeply that I honestly believed I would never love anyone else. 

But that changed – I met you. 

It is 2007; I have just turned twenty-three and you are still eighteen.  We have dinner and wine in the tacky kitchen of my studio apartment.  We have been dating for several months, and I already know that I love you.  

You get drunk quickly, and as I stand outside on my steps, smoking a cigarette, you confess, "I feel like you have this idea in your head of who I am that is wrong."  You look at me, that spark of confused desperation so evident in your face, and say, "I'm scared I'm going to let you down."

What we think about, what we ponder, what we desire, what we imagine: these are the blueprints around which change takes shape. 

These desires may never be anything more than unconscious whispers we strive to ignore. Or, they might bloom to consume us, forcing us to actively create the change we seek. 

It is 2008; I am twenty-four and You are twenty.  We are driving back from my friend’s house and You are furious because You just found out that I have started smoking again, despite my telling You that I had quit.  I pull the car over on the side of an expanse of cement because I can’t tolerate Your icy silence.  Slowly, and with great deliberation, you say: “Denis: we’re going to be together for a long time – I want My future to be with You.  But if you keep smoking, then at some point You’re going to die before me and I will have to keep living for a long time afterwards!” You turn to face me, that spark of disbelieving exasperation so evident in your eyes.  “I’m Mongolian!  My great-grandmother is one hundred this year!  Am I supposed to live five, ten, thirty years after you’re gone?”

Change is a verb; it is active: to Change is to be involved. Change is a noun; it is a thing that exists: Change is tangible. Change is an active tangibility; it is alive.

It’s 2010; I am twenty-six and you are twenty-two, and you come round to see me - the first time since your European jaunt with the new French boyfriend.  After wine and food we sit on the back deck and I listen to you talk optimistically about all the changes in your life.  You glance upon the surface of something deep like a medieval knight seeking only to wound.  I want you to be the you you were, so I turn the topic – I want to kill.  I tell you about my friend’s wedding, describe how nice it was, and how we all got drunk and danced and then I walked home in the rain wishing for nothing else in this universe but that you were there also (but I fail to mention this last part).  

I take a risk and tell you then about how I imagined our wedding.  You cock your head and scrunch your face and say, “Really?” as if the thought had never crossed your mind.

The most honest you'll ever be with your lover is when you're on the edge of sleep. In our final weeks together those were my islands of refuge as the expansive ocean of change climbed up the shores of our continental love and sucked it all back under. 

It is 2009, early, around 1 am, only a few weeks before The End; you stir from your sleep - I am already awake; skinny from anxiety and haggard from lack of REM. You are the last woman I loved, but not the last I will love.  You roll into me and hold your warm flesh against mine, press your bare breasts into my body and I almost start to cry because you don't really touch me anymore when you are awake.

With your eyes closed, you begin to talk, and I still don't know if you knew what you said, but I remember every word:  "I was dreaming of you.  I was... running, across a field... and as I ran I was... turning into a balloon filled with... helium, and I began to float.  And you were chasing me... jumping and waving and trying to hold onto my feet... but I just kept floating up, and up, and up...”

We all reach points in our life where it is no longer okay to expect that the old excuses will continue protecting us from choices we know are causing stagnation. At these points, change changes from a noun to a verb and we recognize that we can make the choice to change. At these points we recognize that it’s no longer okay to say, “I’m just not a morning person,” or; “I know I should quit but I can’t help it,” or; “I don’t know what to do with my life!”

Or worse: “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

It's 2011 and that field I once romantically pointed out to a girl I used to love has long since been cleared and paved and now has an industrial warehouse sitting on top of it, and the girl I once loved now lives in London.  

Things change. 

I stand on the front balcony of the beautifully restored Queenslander I live in smoking a cigarette.  

Some things don't change. 

It's a wintery Saturday night - and the slope of the hill provides a clear view of angular tin roofs receding to a distant cityscape poking amber holes in the purply atmosphere.  All my housemates are out, and, despite the commonalities I still find within myself - the habits, the thought-processes, the questions, the familiar frustrations - the outer shell of the life I now live has changed considerably from the one I used to know.  How did I get here?  Did I choose this?

Somewhere deep inside me stirs the longing for something I once had - for a moment of shared truth with someone whom I know and knows me in the pits of my soul.  I put the cigarette to my lips, reach into my pocket and pull out my phone to call you.

But I won't. 

What I will do instead is read back through our old text messages, our emails, our facebook conversations.  I will search your name in email accounts that I no longer use and read four year old, two-sentence correspondences synchronising times and places where we would meet that no longer mean anything, but at one point in time meant more than everything.  I will do this actively, consciously and knowingly aware of the heartache that it will cause, and that things have changed, and it won't change any thing.  I will do this because I want to communicate not with the you now, but the you then - the you who loved me and who I loved, and with whom communication was constant foreplay.   I will do this because I can't talk to you now, because we both speak different languages; because despite my best efforts, I just cannot find that place where we intersect any more.  Because you changed, and I didn't.  Because I could not find a way to understand your change, even as I sought my own.  Because your change was a verb, and mine was a noun.

Change is the thing we get back from a teller when we’ve handed them too much for something we wish to purchase. In this manner, it is also commonly referred to as shrapnel: fragments of a bomb, shell, or other object thrown out by an explosion.

It's 2008 on Christmas Eve and I suddenly am sick to the pit of my stomach with the notion that you will leave me soon.  I can't explain it, and curse myself for such negative thoughts - blame it on the fact that we are a hundred kilometres apart at this time of year.  At midnight, you call me, drunk, stumbling back from the pub with Him and with that spark of wilful obliviousness so evident in your voice say, "Merry Christmas baby!  I loooovveee you!  You know - I loooveee you so much and right now, right now I'm with J---,” (who’s J---?!) “And I know that he wants to sleep with me, and you know, if I didn't love you so much, I would actually consider it - but I am so in love with you, that I won't do it - isn't that nice to know?  I mean, that we can be tempted by something but have the strength of love to resist it? That’s what love means, right?"

Our selves are slaves to our perceptions, our perceptions are slaves to our habits, and our habits are slaves to our selves. Where do we make the incision? Where do we make the change? 

To change our habits, we must detach ourselves from our selves – from our perceptions and from our desires. But this will only give us perspective – and by that I mean it will only give us the ability to see our lives in the grander scheme of existence, which is utterly beautiful, and utterly useless unless you wish to regard your life with the same benign objectivity as that of a flower in a passing field.

Two nights later, the ex-girlfriend of my old best friend from high school comes over.  We're both back in our old stomping ground visiting our parents for Christmas.  That night, we kiss.  A kiss - a drunken, stupid, meaningless kiss with the weight of a black hole tied to the taste of it.  

Despite my instincts, I do not tell you about it.  I do not tell you about it even when, only a month or so later, the silence begins.  In fact, I will not tell you about it until close to the end of the year, when you are already in France, and long after we have already ended.  

For years I will wonder if telling you sooner would have changed anything.

It’s five days after that – New Year’s Eve, now the New Year of 2009.  You get drunk early and pass-out in my bed.  When I join you hours later, Your facebook is open on my computer and I read the conversation you had with Him.

Change occurs when you stop wanting the things you used to want and most distinctly does not occur when you continue wanting the same things you always wanted.

It is sometime after, and I say, “I will never love anyone as I did you.”  

You say, “You have always said that.”

Betwixt spring and city, I wander.

From Lygon st at around half past eight, I walk idly through the sleepiness of a warm spring eve, hands in the pockets of my unbuttoned jacket, and through my headphones The Middle East yearning in a lilting cadence of The Land of the Bloody Unknown.

The thin trees lining the sidewalk glow in a luminous halo, their fresh leaves lit bright green by amber streetlights rebounding off sandstone churches and grizzled asphalt.  From the cosy warmth of a bakery window, a blackboard sign proclaims in multi-coloured chalk, WELCOME BACK, SPRING!

A euphoria fills me, sets my heart to tingling, and wondrous awe takes me over; I peer at the world like an infant, or a tourist, and giddily find evidence of the changing season everywhere, lying over the world like a thin sheet draped comfortably across a naked body on a tepid night.

I grin dreamily and unashamed, and slow my step to glance lovingly along streets that swathe the suburb in a cross-stitch, each seam pressed by solemn buildings all thin and packed up hard against one another.

They seem to me like totem poles laid out on their sides; each a face with eyes closed and mouth slightly ajar, as if sculpted thus while offering a prophecy that has long since been dutifully scooped from out that yawn by the ancient wind - like pollen from newly budded flowers, to be carried away on the currents and populate the world anew with secrets and hidden memory.

All Done Things

All good things
Still go away in the end.
- Because -
They become tainted by their own sense of time.
'Tisn't (just) you what makes it so -
They have their own sense of identity.

Who are we to impose our will upon theirs?

So get along then;
Kick them out the door and
Get it over quick
Because the grieving will never end, otherwise.

(You may come back over the years
To revisit them
But they will always look different
To the photographs you have in your mind -
They grow older
Get fatter about the face
Grow more placid, or hostile;
But they will always answer in predictable patterns.)

A Midnight Hanging

And the moon
Always staring
Like the ever-open eye of God a'glaring
At the brilliant banalities
You'd bled with no regret,
Looked on as if
Watching someone else's razed homestead
Burn bright across the neighbourly fence;
Your disconnect
All keen and wed,
Tied up tight 'round
The intellect 'pon which you fed...
...But nothing new now
To be a found from this pon'dring:
Midnight has called,
And the mob's come a'thronging.

What sensational fury
That rose up from the crowd!
And you withdrew to your space of the
'Here', and 
the 'Now'
And forgot the rope 'round your neck
Somehow, 
Inept with all the sins that found you out
You wept for the Grace of a God you'd denounced!
Your death bed now a'glimmer,
A shroud in the definitively singular encroachment
Of an impossibly infinite reproachment
Of all you'd done
To bring you thus:
No more will they shout "ONE OF US!"
Yer just another torso,
Dropped three feet through the trap door,
Swinging in the dust.

The Enthusiast

As I lay in bed this morning, I found myself inhabiting a strange world where creatures walked on their hind legs, and had relationships with one another, and built peculiar structures from synthetic materials, and devised elaborate ways to manage their understandings of space, and time, and mortality.

As I wandered about this place, I felt as if I were in a labyrinthine art gallery with infinite wall space; the paintings all alive and animate with the landscapes and objects they depicted.

The paintings did not know that they were only paintings, mere imitations of life; and the scenes caught by brush and stroke moved and breathed in a grotesque mockery of their two-dimensionality, ignorant of their frames' constraints. 

I haunted in an idle daze through the echoing belly of the endless curation - surely the most exquisite and elaborate amassing of masterpieces ever known to humankind - and I lingered my gaze upon the various depictions of life with all the sombre detachment of an accomplished art enthusiast; silently drifting past the works which left me unmoved, and pausing by the ones that hungered at the intangible intellect of my soul to reflect, ponderously, upon the artists' intent.

Oh there were all manner of styles present.  Abstract, impressionist, romantic, modernist, post-modern.  But those that sang the strongest lure, riveting my attention like Odysseus amid the sirens were the realists: all green and brown and beige and crimson, they caught in snapshots all things mundane: blank faced figures chopping wood, playing cards, drawing a bath, staring. 

It woozily began to feel as if I had one foot in their world; and the longer I looked, the more it seemed as if they knew I was there, watching them like a voyeur.  That if I whispered, they would hear my words rolling like a breeze along the hills, bristling through the leaves in an imitation of syllables, whistling up cracks in floorboards like the sighing of dying memories.  

Or perhaps it was more like this: although unaware of the gallery from which I appraised them, my detachment was not absolute - the paintings were cognizant of me, could somehow see me - and I existed as surely in their paintings as they; an unseen figure beyond the frame, behind the canvas.

I wondered then if perhaps there might not be another painting, hung somewhere else, of a thin, lone figure walking through an infinite gallery of bleaching white surfaces, dwarfed by enormous works of art, unaware of its own flimsy dimensions, and unaware that it, too, was being contemplated.

Pigeon English

I am sitting in post office square park, having a cigarette with the unhealthy birds that graze here.
They prowl by my ankles, curiously bobbing their heads as if to ask if what I have, they may have also.
Their feathers are brown, where once they were white.  I know this, because I have seen pigeons in other places, and was shocked to see them so different.
These ones have a dull sheen of disease, and I wonder if they know of their brothers and sisters who are free, who have clean feathers and strong beaks, who ride the wind to foreign places and fight with exotic predators for triumph and pride.
A homeless man approaches.  He throws a bucket of bread on the ground, and they swarm the scraps, pecking and praying at that sacrilegious shrine.
No.  They do not care for their kindred.  'Why should I go?'  They must think.  Better to grow fat and dirty with comfort and ease than to risk life and leg in the mysteries of the unknown.  'I have all I need right here.'
They finish their scraps and a few come back my way.
I try to tell them that cigarettes are not for birds, but I get stuck trying to figure out if they are really meant for humans either.

Overheard Conversations: The Gender Divide

I was sitting on a bench on the rooftop bar of 'The Order', rolling a cigarette and composing a text message when the conversation next to me caught my attention.

I turned slightly, so as to better eavesdrop, and from my peripherals I noted four people sitting around a table - two guys and two girls. They were all rather pleasant looking people, and it seemed to me that it was a double date.  

The two guys were involved in an earnest and impassioned conversation.  One of them, a taller fellow with a straggly beard and long, wavy hair said, "YES! But that's EXACTLY why time is our prisoner!" (This is what initially caught my attention.)

The fellow he was talking to had a more clean-cut and fashionable image - styled hair and clothes that emphasised his physique.  He eagerly nodded along as his friend said this, then twisted away to the girls, a bemused and enthusiastic grin on his face.

Now, to my left, and adjacent to these two chaps this whole time were the girls; perhaps in their early twenties, quite cute and dressed in low-cut yet respectable clothes.  The entire while that their male counterparts had been engaging in their philosophical musings, they had also been chatting, almost convulsively so.  It was a continuous bubbling of giddy and euphoric sounds; the shape of each word indistinct beneath the melody of their combined voices; a conversation of undecipherable syllables all dizzy and cacaphonic.  It was not unpleasant though, and appeared more to me that they were simply very good friends.  They actually were nearly sitting on each other, they were so close, and they laughed and hooted often.

Anyway - the fashionable man turned to them, and reached over to lay a hand upon the closest knee, drawing their attention.  

They shut up instantaneously and looked at him.

Eyes a'glow, he announced, "Ladies!" (And here he paused, revelling in his moment and beaming a wry grin of pride.) "Ladies - WE have been discussing - TIME!"

The girls looked at him, then looked at each other, and then looked back at him.  The closest one to him, the one upon whose knee he'd laid his hand playfully chirruped, "Really?! WE'VE been talking about SEX!!"

Prometheus: Reviewed by my dad and I over text-message.

Just one of many reasons why I love him.
P.S. Toot is my step-mum, i.e. dad's wife.

ME:
Welp - I thought Prometheus was as boring as batshit.  What'd you think?

DAD:
Batshit would've been wonderful! What the fuck was that all about? Toot kept looking at me to see if she was missing something. I said, 'No dear, it is just stupid.' :\

Overhead Conversations: Blinded by the Light

Girl:
(In outraged voice) I watched the transit of Venus today, and I think I fucked my eyes!
(switches to matter-of-fact tone) I was reading a little later that you can seriously damage your corneas from staring at the sun.

Long pause.

Guy:
(bewildered) Dude! You weren't supposed to just stare at the sun! Didn't you use goggles or something??

Excerpt from the Raymond Carver interview with the Paris Review

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver#.T7Za3X8MmaU.twitter

INTERVIEWER

What are your writing habits like? Are you always working on a story?

CARVER

When I'm writing, I write every day. It's lovely when that's happening. One day dovetailing into the next. Sometimes I don't even know what day of the week it is. The “paddle-wheel of days,” John Ashbery has called it. When I'm not writing, like now, when I'm tied up with teaching duties as I have been the last while, it's as if I've never written a word or had any desire to write. I fall into bad habits. I stay up too late and sleep in too long. But it's okay. I've learned to be patient and to bide my time. I had to learn that a long time ago. Patience. If I believed in signs, I suppose my sign would be the sign of the turtle. I write in fits and starts. But when I'm writing, I put in a lot of hours at the desk, ten or twelve or fifteen hours at a stretch, day after day. I love that, when that's happening. Much of this work time, understand, is given over to revising and rewriting. There's not much that I like better than to take a story that I've had around the house for a while and work it over again. It's the same with the poems I write. I'm in no hurry to send something off just after I write it, and I sometimes keep it around the house for months doing this or that to it, taking this out and putting that in. It doesn't take that long to do the first draft of the story, that usually happens in one sitting, but it does take a while to do the various versions of the story. I've done as many as twenty or thirty drafts of a story. Never less than ten or twelve drafts. It's instructive, and heartening both, to look at the early drafts of great writers. I'm thinking of the photographs of galleys belonging to Tolstoy, to name one writer who loved to revise. I mean, I don't know if he loved it or not, but he did a great deal of it. He was always revising, right down to the time of page proofs. He went through and rewrote War and Peace eight times and was still making corrections in the galleys. Things like this should hearten every writer whose first drafts are dreadful, like mine are.

No bus numbers: mustn't be stopping here.

Thoughts on a watery autumn evening,

This particular poet's dreaming,

A romance of the senses breathing a heaving 

Denouncement of the collective keening

'To keep the moment beating!

To believe the movement teeming!'

To descry the knowledge of all we wanted

And laugh for the love of being.

This earth is a play ground,

I am awake within it.

I keep my back upon the rock and stare up;

My eyes the framework for some fantastic cinema of the senses:

The clouds are white and skittish,

A frozen ripple of droplets floating in space,

The tree branches out,

A foreground focus,

A beautiful composition.

I send text messages, smoke cigarettes, 

Enjoy myself;

Grow heavy with the caffeeine stimulus,

And let light love me to the point of exaggerated movements;

Neurotic stutterings -

Entertainment for the masses.

What better way to spend a day

Than as yourself?

They say that the universe began with a great big bang,

And that all the particles which make us up,

Went hurtling into space.

Which became planets

And suns

And moons and ice and oxygen

And molten lava

And toast and bananas and grass

And toe nails

And reptilian creatures which stomped and roared

And meteors and chemicals and dreams.

They say that eventually,

This vast experience which began so furiously

Will lose steam in its argument for territory

And become introspective,

Slowly withdraw from the fight

And suck itself inwards to that point of light

That place where we all began,

To muse upon its journey.

So when all the universe does come crashing back into place,

I take solace in the fact

That though we may be apart now,

There, at least,

We will be whole again.

Something that meant something

The sheen
Is slick with amber
The streets all a'glow
Some footsteps might make a sound
An echo
Before the sole crunches the pavement
A sound born from
Beyond where it came
Going back to the same place
That it sprung.

Sitting out here,
Watching all this,
Thinking these things -
Oh my
How lovely.

They come from nowhere
Disappear hence,
But have their opinions;
Have their
Ways of seeing.

How lovely.
Isn't it?

Well,
What's the alternative?

Not much.
But one could always argue otherwise.
In fact,
Isn't that the whole point?

Heh.

Yes but -
Extremes.
And values!
And this
And that.
Means -
Something.
Something good.
Something pure.
Something
Definable.
And
Worthy.

Yes.
We'll change the world,
Shall we?

With this,
And that,
And,

There was this woman,
That I knew
Who was
Perfect.
Difficult to describe
(even for a ----),
Yet still -
She existed.

We had a lot of fun.

Didn't talk so much about
This.
Why?

Because we existed.
And was fun.

Echoes
Incontrovertible with
A footfall.
Something
That meant something.
(at the time)

Fuck Zen: Thoughts on Inspiration.

• Sever your incoming connections with the world.
  Isolate yourself within yourself.
  Yes - even email:
  Especially email.

• To get inspired, watch, read or listen to something awful that someone you know has made.
  Do not despise them for making it - celebrate it! They created something! That is a powerful achievement!  And to boot, they are now one up on you!
  But still allow yourself to feel mortified that it is out in the world, and then steel your resolve!
  Use the anger to get motivated, and make something better!


• Do not write cold.
  Warm up.
  Would you expect an athlete to compete in an olympic competition without stretching?


• Fuck zen.


• If you can't write, draw.
  If you can't draw, play guitar.
  If you can't play guitar, pace in circles around your room.
  If you can't pace in circles around your room, sleep.
  If you can't sleep, write.


• The internet is not your friend.
  It hates you.


• Do not think.
  Once again: DO NOT THINK.


• Holism.
  Write from the middle of your torso, just below your heart,
  Where you can still feel your guts in it.


• Background music is okay if you don't know the lyrics.


• Stop trying.


• Abundance; not scarcity.
  Why can't I have everything I want, when I want it, as I want it?


• Do not sit back in your chair.
  Lean forward.
  It may be bad for your posture, but it's good for your soul.

28 and Counting or, How Glow Worms Showed Me The Light.

Earlier today, I returned to Brisbane from a lovely, two and a half day birthday weekend away; the first part of which entailed spending an evening with my father, step-mother, sister and girlfriend on my parents' one and a half acre property out at New Beith, which is just behind Beaudesert.

My father has never been the kind of man to do things by halves, and he is very much a human who enjoys his creature-comforts.  Going out to visit them at their house is one my favourite escapes; not simply because their house is so homely and welcoming, and not just because their expansive and knowledgeable wine selection always takes a hearty beating on such visits - but because they are the nicest, most generous people that I know, and our lengthy and convoluted conversations are always so spiced with positivity, passion, humour and fond sentiments, that an evening with them always soothes whatever subconsciously ails me.  Unfortunately, I am a mortal creature, and will freely admit that I all too often take their existence for granted; but with my impending move to Melbourne looming, as my girlfriend and I drove away from their lovely house on Sunday afternoon, the reality of that yearning physical distance came at me with such force that I'm unashamed to admit I cried for my love of them, and my gratitude at being blessed with such wonderful people in my life, and for all the future occasions of drinking and talking that won't be quite as frequent.

The second part of my weekend was to be a surprise.

When I awoke (reluctantly, and in great agony) on Sunday morning, my lovely girlfriend (who had been clever enough NOT to take (first) the butterscotch schnapps and (second)the ice-cold sambuca my father, in all his wisdom, deemed appropriate to proffer at the close of the night) pounced on me, shaking me enthusiastically while singing happy birthday.  It was not the way I would've wished to greet the day, and despite her honorable sentiments, it would still take several hours, a few poached eggs, and many glasses of water interspersed with potent coffee before my ageing brains could solidify beneath the acidic bite of so much booze to even begin to contemplate anything other than crawling into the nearest hole and stuffing mud in my ears.  Around about the time Tess began to realise that the hangover was a good 'un, doubt consumed her; "You're going to hate what I've got planned for you today," she half-joked.  Palms pressed firmly into the sockets of my eyes, I mumbled from beneath the blankets, "I'm sure it will be perfect - unless you're taking me to a waterslide, bungee jumping, or anything to do with alcohol."
It was a brewery.

Now, I like to have a joke about my fondness for alcohol, but in all seriousness - drinking is one of my favourite pass-times.  And in actuality, being taken to a brewery for my birthday is probably one of the most thoughtful things anyone could possibly do for me (I am certain that it is no accident my first name is the modern derivative of that old Greek demi-god of wine and festivity).  Nonetheless, at first I thought she was joking - and when it became apparent that she wasn't, I sucked up as much good-will as I could muster and tried to feel both enthused at the notion of putting more alcohol into my shaking body, and grateful for the gift.

Thankfully, we arrived at the bed and breakfast shortly after the brewery had closed, and were content to spend the evening in a much more moderated way; with a beautiful meal at The Old Church (exactly as the name describes), before returning to our snug cottage at Camelot (nothing like the name describes) where we contented ourselves to playing grown-up by dressing in robes and lying on the divinely sumptuous bed while listening to jazz and eating a chocolate parfait the restaurant kindly made up us as a take-away.  


This morning, we found ourselves much recovered from Saturday's excess, and took our lazy old time with returning to Brisbane.  Although not technically my birthday, Tess was kind enough to allow me free reign of activities, and so at my child-like request, we made a bee-line for the famous glowworm caves, where I was ecstatic to find it nothing like what I had imagined.

Let me explain: as an ageing Gen-Y-er with my new-media job, remote-working situation, and plug-in, always online lifestyle, I have found in the last two years my expectations for 'entertainment' and 'experience' have crumbled beneath the seething weight of an Internet-induced fugue.  It shocks me to say I spend upwards of 90% of my day staring at a computer screen, either "working", "entertaining," "socialising," or "educating" myself, i.e. editing corporate videos for Internet distribution, distracting myself with that's-actually-not-very-funny-or-clever-when-you-really-think-about-it memes, loathsome forums populated with the damnable opinions of idiots all the world round, or the mosquito-like buzzing of constant-ticker, doom-and-gloom news.  I never wished, nor imagined I would permit myself to fall into such a mind-numbing loop; but unfortunately some rather dubious choices have lead me exactly thus.  But, despite having such easy, all-hours access to the world of ever-buzzing distraction, today I was over the moon to be meet a fellow who lived and breathed glow-worms as if they were the cure for cancer (and, they actually are helping with that); but not only this - this Aussie as okka, khaki-clad, cigarette smelling, Steve Irwin mimic (and I mean that with extraordinary tenderness) was bloody entertaining!

You see, my initial imagining of the place was as literal as you could think it - glow-worm caves.
Yep - caves with worms.  That glow.

Here I was thinking we'd go for a stroll through a cave, have a look-see, and then be on our merry way, having satisfied our minimal requirements for partaking in nature's evolutionary glory.  What I was amazed to find was a complete environmental preserve set up around these incredible little insects, with real human beings who did not give a damn about the latest Internet fad, or 'content'.  They were real people who made jokes, and were entertaining - actually entertaining - and not once during the thirty-minute tour did I doubt his sincerity.

I'm sure that ours was not the first, nor the last tour he would have taken through that day; yet he spoke every word with such a smile, with such natural enthusiasm, it was impossible not to grin back, and not to get more than a little excited about glowworms.

After we left the caves, we decided that it might be okay after all to drop in to the brewery for a small beer or two (lights, mind you); and our lunch consisted of a delicious cheese platter from the local cheese-makers.

It was, quite simply, the best birthday I've ever had.

But possibly the greatest thing of all happened when we got home.

A temperamental thing to begin with, in times of wet weather our Internet router becomes as dramatic as a Greek tragedy, dropping in and out of reception like a wailing chorus.  When we arrived back in Brisbane, our Internet router refused to connect me to the World Wide Web for several hours, forcing me to find other things to do.

So I wrote this.

And I am thankful for that, because I thoroughly enjoyed it - I thoroughly enjoyed reliving the past two days in my memory as I wrote it, and I thoroughly enjoyed reminding myself of what it is that I truly value in life; and it has nothing to do with "connecting", or "communities", or "experience."  It has to do with connecting, and community, and experience - in the real world.

And so I am going to make damned sure that I do more of it from now on.