Elliterate – post-modern musings of an inkslinger

New York’s a big city, I’m not going to lie, I have a lot of fun here. But it was a relief to move out to New Jersey and the sleepy little town of River Edge. I can do what I want there.

There is something really liberating about solitude. There is something in silent streets at night that resonates deeply within me. I assume it’s got something to do with how and where I grew up.

This morning was nice. The train was quiet as I took the later service, and the snow was falling softly, blanketing everything in white. By the time I got off the train at Penn Station it was coming down steadily, sprinkling all the early more commuters with a fine white dust.

On the train ride into New York I had dedicated most of my attention to the pages of my book. William McKeen’s Outlaw Journalist. A birthday gift from my friend back home, a man of Letters himself, David Gear, as I seated myself on the train that morning I had decided that thing I most enjoyed about my new job was the chance it gave me to read. I’ve had this book since June 4^th last year and I still hadn’t finished it. Working 3 jobs and ensuring I said my goodbyes to everyone back home in Perth before I left the country had kept me from really sinking my teeth into it, and then the combination of frenetic job hunting and the irresistible lure of New York City night life had it laid away in the bottom of my suitcase.

But, finally, I pulled it out and since last Wednesday have been devouring it with the sort of voracity that you see when you give a puppy a bone.

It was this morning that I realized why I adore Hunter S. Thompson so much. It’s not just because I see him as an inspiration, or a guide, it’s because I see a little bit of myself in him.

Not only is there the appreciation for the small town life that I wrote of above the need to retreat from the neon and glitz and get back to somewhere that feels more real. There’s more.

The indignant rages that I fly into when something irks my liberal sensibilities. My passion for freedom in all aspects of existence. My love of experimentation, not only with the written word, but also with my interactions with people and substances.

My eldest brother put me on to Hunter S. Thompson. An ardent substance abuser with a heart of gold, my brother Marco walks a thin, thin line between (as he mentioned to me in an email) pious priest and junkie psycho. He is exactly the type of individual that Hunter would have hated. A sloppy drunk, someone dependant on drugs not just for inspiration, but for functionality.

Hunter and his relationship with illicit substances reminds me so much of my own. They’re a great ride to go on, but they have a height limit and you shouldn’t ride them if you’re pregnant or you’ve got heart conditions.

Hunter and his relationship with the written word appears to mirror my own in many ways. Like he, I will spend countless hours crafting one sentence to get the perfect mood and cadence. And I often find myself getting embroiled in the subject matter of my stories. Although not being a journalist I do not have the enemy of deadlines or the challenge of getting the story to fuel my own involvement. For me, it’s probably much more purely narcissistic, especially since no one is really paying me to write anything. I’m also liable to drop everything anywhere when inspiration strikes. My notebook and pen are the only constants in the clutter I call a handbag, and the only two things which I can actually call to hand in a matter of seconds. (Anything else requires constant digging in, or worse, emptying of the bottomless pit to be located.)

But I think the thing that most strikes me, the thing I love the most about Hunter S. Thompson, and the thing that I believe we both share completely, is his unwillingness to compromise his values for anyone. And when he felt he was going to be forced to. He said

“Fuck it.”

Currently, I’m in a position which is forcing me to come face to face with the ugliness of corporate greed, the selfishness of the spoiled elite which I have always loathed. I’ve never been quiet with regards to my dissent and distaste for the sort of behavior which the individuals I now work beneath engage in.

If I really want to claim the good Doctor as my mentor, then I must be brave and bold and stand up for what I believe to be right. Otherwise I’ll be no better than a hack, a sham, a hypocrite.

This is a spiritual test. If I want to pass it, then I should do exactly as Hunter would have.

Fuck it.

I can’t decide what I like best. The king size bed with the Ralph Lauren sheets, or the kitchen with its blue and white cupboards. Or maybe, it’s the cuckoo clock, with it’s little pencil like bird which pops out erratically because the crank is a bit worn.

Sure, it’s not perfect. There is some paint peeling here and there, and some plaster coming away from the wall, but every hour I hear church bells chiming sweetly, and there is whistle of the train as it approaches the nearby station. And the sounds do nothing but add to the sweetness.

It’s home, already, after only a week. I love sitting here, in my kitchen, at my small round table next to the radiator. Typing away on my keyboard, letting the faint sunlight spill through my curtains and warm my face. It’s deceptive, this sunlight. There is nothing warm about the world outside my little home. It’s cold, snow has collected on the window sills and turned to ice. And the weather is only going to get colder.

I don’t mind that though. The cold is a novelty for me, and I like the way the trees look, bare of leaves and dusted with sprinkles of white. The foreign landscape is new and inspirational to my sun-soaked, desert eyes.

We don’t have a dishwasher, but I have no real problems with that. I have long found the act of washing dishes therapeutic.

A washer and dryer would be nice. But there is the laundromat just a few minutes away by car. And I am lucky enough to have someone to drive me.

The only thing that really irks me here, in my new little nest, is the worry that I’ll have to leave it sooner than I’d like.

Sometimes, the confidence that other people place in me boarders on terrifying.

Here I am, winding into my 4th month in this new place, with a list of stories of the “have to have happened to be thought of” variety longer than my arm, and still no concrete employment prospect. Without that, it means that when summer starts to wind down into fall, I’m back to that sunburnt country. Like it or not. And I don’t like it. Not one bit.

But as soon as I start to mention the bothersome possibility, he’ll turn to me and say, “Of course you’ll get a job. I believe in you!” and I, for the life of me, can’t understand why he would. (Another list longer than my arm of reasons why he shouldn’t.) “If anyone can do this, you can.” He’ll tell me, with such conviction in his voice. It does two things, grants me a bit of confidence to keep trying, and also puts such a fear into me, if I should fail.

I suppose, the trick is to keep the confidence and lose the fear. Then failure won’t be a possibility.

A conversation recently held between myself, and my buddy Brock.

“I still have sugar under my fingernails.”

“More evidence.”

“I’m like an ant.”

“An ant that can only eat sugar.”

“Yeah well, you know I’m good for it.”

“Seriously, did we buy anything without sugar? Ok, the milk has no sugar. What else did we buy? Fruit, stolen baked goods?”

“Yeah it’s true.”

There was a slight lull in the conversation here, and then…

“I had to hunt this strawberry.”

“No you didn’t, Brock. You just paid money for it, actually, Mitchell paid money for it. Actually, in reality no one hunted that strawberry, someone just picked it off a bush and then someone else packed it in a punnet, and then we paid money for it.”

“Yeah, but that’s the equivalent of hunting now days.”

And that’s when I stopped eating the strawberry and looked at it and wondered.

This time next week I will literally be touching down on the other side of the world. I will be heading out into a brand new hunting ground. And I am going to have to hunt that Strawberry. I am going to have to be as fast and ruthless as I have ever been in my life. I am going to have to beat every other strawberry hunter to the punnet.

Because if I don’t get that punnet, I might not get to eat the strawberry. Or worse, someone might say to me “You didn’t hunt that strawberry.”

It’s really quiet now.

I first noticed this quiet the other day, but it’s much more pronounced now.

The other day I put on your sweater and shirt. The ones you had been wearing to go to the shop, and had left discarded on the bed here, in your study. I stood there for a while, in my underwear and your still warm clothes, and looked at your bookshelf. Your house is full of beautiful books. Books I want to read, books I have read, empty books with soft cream pages, and books that aren’t even yours. Then I noticed it, the quiet. It wasn’t just an absence of sound, it was a feeling that permeated everything, as ingrained as the air I breathed. The sort of silence that accompanies absence (A sound I am all too familiar with.) I walked around softly on the balls of my feet on the way back to your bedroom. I took notice of all the little signs of you as I passed and even though I knew it was only a matter of time before this very same quiet took a hold I crawled back into your bed and fell asleep. 

Now, here it is again. My attempt to combat this heavy silence? Music of course. I’ve opened up your itunes and scrolled through, and found Nightswimming by R.E.M. The only song by Stipes and Co in your whole music library, and it just happens to be my favorite. It’s not just the melody that I love, which swells and ebbs just as a gentle tide should, it’s the way the words and the voice evoke that feeling of nostalgia so perfectly. Nice choice, if I could only have one R.E.M song, Nightswimming would be it. 

Still, this isn’t the sort of silence you get rid of with a pop ballad. Although it does provide a nice soundtrack I suppose…

You should see your place now, the parlor is filled with all sorts of junk. Boxes of linen, screwdriver sets, a sandwich press, an old analog television, a clock. But let’s face it, your house is in need of a clock. It seems so full, you can barely move through the rooms. But it is so very empty. Your absence is overstated, everywhere I look it confronts me. No escaping it. And that’s what makes this quiet different from the other day. The other day, as I snuggled back down beneath the covers, inhaling the smell of you on the sheets I knew you’d be back. Now I don’t know if we’ll ever both be laying in that room on those sheets again. It’s a much more pronounced quiet. 

I feel a bit like a voyeur really. I’m noticing all these little things I didn’t see before, for instance; You’ve got writing on your desk, but it’s faded and I can’t make out all the words. You’ve got a really good nail file. You keep a lot of old receipts.

I know for a fact, that eventually you forget the sound of people’s voices, the smell of their skin. I want to try and remember for as long as I can.

I am pretty guilty of always asking why too.

I have been asking why a lot today.

And yesterday.

And the day before.

And I recall it was the first thought on my mind after “where” when I woke up on Friday.

But something tells me the how is the more important question. If you ask the how, you attempt an explanation of the whole course of events, and not just the final moment.

So I am going to start asking how. Right now.

But it’s not easy.

Then again, nothing worth doing ever is, right?