Schrodinger's Cat

let the beard grow*

The closest I’ve come to falling in love at first sight would have been in 2000 or 2001, it wasn’t exactly first sight since I met and talked to her twice but I’ve never been able to forget her. She was living a nomadic life travelling around the country and said her name was Tinkerbell. Ever since I’ve been wondering at odd times if I’ll see her again - though she could be anywhere in the world now, maybe married with five screaming kids.

I had the odd experience on Saturday night of going into town and seeing her again, kind of. There was a woman at Happy who looked at least a lot like her, and I just had to go and talk to her. She said her name was Kim, she’s lived in Wellington since 1999, same as me. She’s not into scuba diving (Tinkerbell was) and said she was too tired to answer my questions on astrology which followed from being asked my star sign (Sagittarius) - work stress seemingly. Whereas I’m at the point where the initial rush of horror at unemployment has given way to an enjoyment of its unwinding effects – I’m kind of on holiday, have to be careful not to let that slide over into complacency & indolence. I won’t escape the country without savings & won’t get savings without work. But in the meantime it’s good to be reading a lot (Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt, John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, dipping in & out of Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, and John Pilger’s The New Rulers of the World to keep me anchored), playing guitar (my style’s slowing down in tempo and developing a blues tinge that wasn’t there before) and enjoying the weather.

But what if it was Tinkerbell that I met on Saturday? The name Tinkerbell ties in with the Peter Pan story, so what if the characters from NeverNeverLand grew up and got office jobs?

OK OK so there were drugs involved, me not having to get up in the morning. I shared a joint with a friend and she let me keep the end of it – but in the morning the roach had somehow turned into a cigarette butt. And the carriage turned into a pumpkin. I also went to the Cosmic Capitalist store on Cuba Street where Mike was working and forked out for one of those ‘legal high’ products. Can’t remember the name right now, it was a lab-designed synthetic compound. Like artificial food flavouring, they start with a psychotropic effect in mind and then custom-design the molecules to produce it. Except that artificial flavours never have the rich textures of real food spices. And I prefer listening to musical instruments rather than electronic sounds… It cost $40 and gave a bit of visual distortion in the classic psychedelic way, bringing forth subtext and turning people into cartoon characters – for about 15 minutes. I also tried acid a few years ago, got some spatial distortions from it but never any deep trips beyond the veil of Maya. The thing it is good for is watching a movie, it allows an amazing understanding & evaluation of the direction & camerawork. Maybe one day I’ll take peyote in Mexico but that’s a while off…

Anyway it was a fairly good night, I enjoyed the Scribes of Ra at Happy more than when I’d seen them before. And I’ve relaxed a bit – blaming Elisa for losing the plot on the journalism course because she said ‘I’ve wasted enough time with you’, unnecessary & harsh though it was, was an irrational false pretence: looking back on my attendance record over the whole year I simply skipped a few too many shorthand classes. Well, they were just so bloody boring. Anyway I have to take responsibility for my own (in)actions and all that matters now is whether or how to catch up.

I ended up at Indigo where a guy from Liverpool seemed upset about my writing shorthand in my notebook (one irony is that I actually can write shorthand quite happily now, though not especially fast, I just don’t have the bit of paper that says I can) – thought it looked Arabic which therefore equated me with Osama bin Laden. The times we live in – at least now we know the answer to what comes after postmodernism, the wheel comes around full circle and here we are back in the middle ages! Kill the Moors & Saracens…

And since I'm writing nonsequentially, the evening started with a gig by Richard Whyte & Rick Jensen at 91 Aro Street. This new venue was a great pleasant surprise coming back from Dunedin. I've known these guys for a while, great to see they've put themselves on the map and created a venue. There's a whole pile of good local music for sale there at low prices, including my stuff. Richard did his folk instrumental guitar and Rick played his home-made instruments and sax behind a screen. I'll do a gig there in December, maybe on my birthday (the 9th), when I can get a date organised.

At the moment I’m working on the two new albums (though one was recorded in 1999), and I should get my second volume of short stories finished over the next couple of months. My computer’s broken down though which is a nuisance. I’m on the computer at the university at the moment, hopefully my ID won’t expire just yet. There’s also an Ascension Band jam tonight – we had a Japanese vocalist last time who should be there again and there are rumours of a horn section turning up. This is great. Tomorrow I’ll have a shave & haircut and go out jobhunting. Today though I’m going to go for a swim and read a book in the sun.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

*title of this entry is a reference to the Fall song 'How I Wrote Elastic Man'

Posted by fiffdimension at November 22, 2004 12:11 PM | TrackBack