Another bar, another beer, and another cry for help offered up to my friends as a conveniently digestible aphorism – the only times one ever feels like a normal person are when one is working or drinking. The rest is scary and confusing. I think most of my drinking buddies like it when I tie things up in neat little packages like that. It makes it seem less like I’m making pleading personal confessions and more like I’m making some insightful commentary on the human condition in general. It’s less confronting. Who likes ‘confronting’?
People are always at their most sincere when being flippant. The truth always comes quickest as it’s at the top of the web of lies. It’s both a defence mechanism and a cathartic necessity. Get it off your chest, then palm it off as being a joke. Ha ha, aren’t I clever and naughty. *dusts off hands* Scott free.
It doesn’t help that cruelty is so entertaining. The truth is so often cruel and, so slightly more often, hilarious. A cheap shot’s a good shot. Perhaps that’s why people get so uncomfortable when you openly offer up your own truth. Why would one do that to oneself? What am I walking into here? What manner of cruelty are they trying to draw out of me? Perhaps that’s why I find it expedient to make my personal misgivings into a complaint of a generation.
The only times people ever feel normal are when they’re working or drinking. Tidy as it may be, it’s also largely true. These are the times when we… fuck it… when I’m sufficiently busied or blinded by the activity at hand that I don’t need or feel or want – I just do. The time spent always passes quickly and is usually unremarkable, but it is quiet and untroubled. I appreciate it.
I would wish it more often, or in other facets of life, if I didn’t fear the whole thing might just pass by in an unremarkable quickness. But isn’t that always the way – he says, drawing yet another leaf from his Mammoth Book of Maxims – when life is busied, passing quickly, we always wish it to slow down, yet when life slows down we wish it to hasten. I’m getting good at these self-reflexive adages – one might say good in the worst possible way.
I like work. And I like drinking. They are genuinely the times I feel most at home these days. Perhaps because those are the times I’m surrounded by friends. Maybe I’m an alcoholic. That’s possible. Maybe I’m a work-a-holic. Yeah, that’s pretty fucking unlikely. I guess I’ll just have to continue my research. Which is lucky – there’s a lot of working and drinking in my immediate future. At least I know I’ll be safe and happy and normal. That’s the truth.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Stars
Every Saturday starts the same way. I lurch from my bed at the sound of my phone’s alarm, vibrating its way across my hardwood floor. Vrrrrtt Vrrrrtt Vrrrrrtt. I bash through the shower, and try not to freeze my nuts off as I chuck on my work clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt – a classic combo as old as whichever item was invented last. Pat-check my pockets. Wallet. Smokes. Keys. Phone. I’m ready to leave the house. I swing the door shut behind me and light a dirty morning cigarette. My eyes squint against the light and my wet hair sticks cold against my head. I start begrudgingly in the direction of Greville Street.
At a particular point about two houses down the street, where I’m feeling at my most apathetic about the day, someone has taken the liberty of a small street-installation artwork. Sprayed-white stencil, on the asphalt: “there are stars beneath your feet”. At first I thought it marked the site of some sort of sacred celebrity burial ground. But no. How facetiously tainted and trained my brain has become. Thankyou, E! News.
The words must have been put there by some tiresome hippy, still brimming with the wonder found in the everyday. I hate those people – more than most. Their Zenless content in nothingness makes me uncomfortable. It’s condescending. But something about this particular phrase captures my imagination. Stars beneath my feet. All the way through the asphalt, through the dirt, the rock, the magma, and the core, the magma, the rock, the dirt, and the asphalt are the stars above the heads of the people on the other side of the world. And for that minute I’m washed with a perspective of my exact place in the universe – the vastness, the 3-dimentionality, the insignificance, the circularity, the minuteness, the importance, the gravity. It never fails to steal a smile across my face. Tired, wet and smoking, I feel like a full and proper person.
It is all shattered when I realise that in that moment, I’m no better than that tiresome, condescending hippy.
At a particular point about two houses down the street, where I’m feeling at my most apathetic about the day, someone has taken the liberty of a small street-installation artwork. Sprayed-white stencil, on the asphalt: “there are stars beneath your feet”. At first I thought it marked the site of some sort of sacred celebrity burial ground. But no. How facetiously tainted and trained my brain has become. Thankyou, E! News.
The words must have been put there by some tiresome hippy, still brimming with the wonder found in the everyday. I hate those people – more than most. Their Zenless content in nothingness makes me uncomfortable. It’s condescending. But something about this particular phrase captures my imagination. Stars beneath my feet. All the way through the asphalt, through the dirt, the rock, the magma, and the core, the magma, the rock, the dirt, and the asphalt are the stars above the heads of the people on the other side of the world. And for that minute I’m washed with a perspective of my exact place in the universe – the vastness, the 3-dimentionality, the insignificance, the circularity, the minuteness, the importance, the gravity. It never fails to steal a smile across my face. Tired, wet and smoking, I feel like a full and proper person.
It is all shattered when I realise that in that moment, I’m no better than that tiresome, condescending hippy.
Bookstores
Bookstores are great places. You look seem like a better person just for walking in the door. People think you're a smarter, more sensitive person just for being there. You can’t help but play up to that. I like to make sure I'm catching the eye of the cute girls - 'yeah, that's right, baby. I'm in the philosophy section. No sci-fi for me. I'm a real man. I don't even wear glasses or anything. I'm not even a virgin... technically.'
The best part about bookstores is they're like libraries - except they're well stocked, adequately staffed and don't smell of children and old people. You can saunter in, read a bunch of blurbs and leave with a whole canon of fodder (see what I did there?) for dinner parties. Who am I kidding? My friends don't have dinner parties. They have souvlakis at three in the morning in an attempt to cork the inevitable geyser of frothy, yeasty vomit fermenting below. There are, of course, many opportunities for sterling intellectual repartee before the great greasy lamb-damming, but the satisfaction of passing-off someone else's great idea as your own lacks a little lustre when no one can remember your brilliance the next day. More's the pity.
One such great concept I recently flogged came from a book about habit, ritual and addiction. I think it was called "Habit, Ritual & Addiction" - these academics bore the shit out of people for a living, the title is nothing if not fitting. The work riffed on this idea of 'mythicised participation' which particularly tickled my nuts. It was a critique on how modern man, stripped of religion and his affinity with the land, has no ritual in his life. Listless and without community, he turns to the drink. The only solace left to seek is that in this "mythical" perception that when he drinks, he is actually part of something - a socially acceptable pastime. A way of life.
There's no activity so ambivalently righteous and wretched as drinking. A night slamming cans can make or break a man. Make or break. Sometimes the difference is only a pint in either direction. I've seen it. I've been it. But, for the most part, we drinking men who are neither great nor garish live comfortably cushioned in the ether of the inbetween. Our boozy buffer from the world of 'real human moments' is only ever as alienating as the particular stool we choose at that evening's bar. Thankfully now we have the endearing exile of outdoor smoking to draw us closer together - the mythical is practically tangible.
Bars are great places. You seem like a better person just for walking in the door. People think you're a cooler, more interesting person just for being there. You can't help but play up to that. I like to make sure I'm catching the ey of the cute girls - 'yeah, that's right baby. I'm having casual conversation with the bartender. He totally knows me. And look at the size of the beer I'm drinking! It's like a fucking fish bowl! Oh, yeah I'm a real man. If I could see you across the room without closing one eye, I might even try to talk to you. Maybe I need glasses... maybe then I wouldn't be a virgin... technically.'
The best part about bookstores is they're like libraries - except they're well stocked, adequately staffed and don't smell of children and old people. You can saunter in, read a bunch of blurbs and leave with a whole canon of fodder (see what I did there?) for dinner parties. Who am I kidding? My friends don't have dinner parties. They have souvlakis at three in the morning in an attempt to cork the inevitable geyser of frothy, yeasty vomit fermenting below. There are, of course, many opportunities for sterling intellectual repartee before the great greasy lamb-damming, but the satisfaction of passing-off someone else's great idea as your own lacks a little lustre when no one can remember your brilliance the next day. More's the pity.
One such great concept I recently flogged came from a book about habit, ritual and addiction. I think it was called "Habit, Ritual & Addiction" - these academics bore the shit out of people for a living, the title is nothing if not fitting. The work riffed on this idea of 'mythicised participation' which particularly tickled my nuts. It was a critique on how modern man, stripped of religion and his affinity with the land, has no ritual in his life. Listless and without community, he turns to the drink. The only solace left to seek is that in this "mythical" perception that when he drinks, he is actually part of something - a socially acceptable pastime. A way of life.
There's no activity so ambivalently righteous and wretched as drinking. A night slamming cans can make or break a man. Make or break. Sometimes the difference is only a pint in either direction. I've seen it. I've been it. But, for the most part, we drinking men who are neither great nor garish live comfortably cushioned in the ether of the inbetween. Our boozy buffer from the world of 'real human moments' is only ever as alienating as the particular stool we choose at that evening's bar. Thankfully now we have the endearing exile of outdoor smoking to draw us closer together - the mythical is practically tangible.
Bars are great places. You seem like a better person just for walking in the door. People think you're a cooler, more interesting person just for being there. You can't help but play up to that. I like to make sure I'm catching the ey of the cute girls - 'yeah, that's right baby. I'm having casual conversation with the bartender. He totally knows me. And look at the size of the beer I'm drinking! It's like a fucking fish bowl! Oh, yeah I'm a real man. If I could see you across the room without closing one eye, I might even try to talk to you. Maybe I need glasses... maybe then I wouldn't be a virgin... technically.'
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
