Dead Trees Come Alive

I'm here to pull apart
Le Bonaparte mentality
that's come between you and me
the trinity
two humans and their spirit; three
and I'm sure that you'll agree
never to disagree that a tree is green
and all the things we've seen and done
when divided by the final sum
equal out to one

even the Math Rabbit running
8-bit laps in my mind sees it
and he's from a consciousness of raw logic
Commodore 64
and very little more, you see
we grew tired
and hardwired
on the plastic canvas
and brand this
The Golden Cow
The 电脑 (dian nao / computer)
但是这个有问题 (dan shi zhe ge you wen ti / there's a problem with this)
这个没有 creativity (zhe ge mei you / this doesn't have...)
这个没有 the ability (zhe ge mei you / this doesn't have...)
to see with more than electric eyes
and catalogue eclectic styles
and all the while we model our minds
and build our bodies in the blocky style
of 0's and 1's

the machine flexes its guns
but I can see it's come undone
Frank Booth broke the back off
of knock-off tape decks
torn up and rewired
Ghetto style
Bubonic-ebonic-electronics
because they made a better noise
as they were being destroyed
this is the subconcious reemployed
thought was meant to be enjoyed
not toyed and fucked with
till it fit on a floppy disk
hold up
let me list the risks of thinking that thought is otherwise:
1.) To so compromise our minds might make madness the foreman of art, rather than the other way around
2.) The crown of thorns was worn by he who wanted us to see that we are one. If we forget the battles fought for freedom of thought then it's fair the think that we in turn will bear the burden of a hopeless flight to barbarism.
3.) Without a mind to mix, melodies will sound like this--

Guangzhou Schedule

The woman at Starbucks speaks Chinese to me and English to the Chinese customers who enter after me. I order a Tuna Puff and a Grande Coffee of the Week. I know all the language except for "Tuna Puff" and "Coffee of the Week" and I get what I want.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the witching hour because the cats were playing a banjo and the juxtaposition made me feel uncomfortable.

Don't Be Such A Melancholy Bitch At 10am

I wake up to rain. The padlock on my window rusts a little faster. Perhaps one day it will rust through and I might open the anti-theft bars to let in the 7 story tree that I stare at each day.

The rain continues. The rain slows. The rain nearly stops and I know that if I look out my window and down to the street I'll see all the pollution it has picked up making sick little rivers. The construction sounds start again. It's 10:16am.

My friend, the tree outside the window, is looking fresh and clean. There are clustered buds of will-be flowers growing between the leaves. It will bloom for the Spring festival, perhaps in yellow or red.

But I've never seen bees here. All the hummingbirds are kept in cages.

Karst

In a world of land walkers
where depths are greater than heights
where
"Because it's there"
keeps lashing me forward
I find myself again in the
heart of the middle of nowhere
Yangshuo County
counting out the last hour of being 23
the second consecutive birthday abroad
beside the best broad of my life
surrounded by the dog-eared pages
of climbing guides
and accounted memories
staring into the past
and reading about the future
yet I'm not the first here
I am one of the many few
that find this way in life
this path that doesn't end
yet isn't finished

I hear the click of karabiners
and the shuffle of rope bags
and try to squint far enough ahead
to see past the leaders

I've never heard a rock-drill
so I think about buying one
a battery, spare bits
and a pint of Guinness
I think about sharp edges
shallow pockets
pinches
and a desperate gaston
I produce a short film in my mind
and title it
The One That Wouldn't Go
wonder why we wish we could
but never do
I feel my palms sweat
and crack my knuckles
to remind myself that tendons are
stronger than bone
that if you pull hard enough
eventually the skeleton of doubt
will break
and rake my fingers through
a month's beard growth
the rest is in the first step forward
and these soles aren't yet worn through

Where The Fuck Were You?

You missed it. You stayed at home. You don't have an excuse as to why you weren't there to cut through the thick clouds of cigarette smoke and anxiety. Frank Booth mashed electro-noise rock and we found the only answer to the tightening in our chests was to move closer. Our tympanum collapsed and stayed marked with the creases you find in recycled tinfoil and can never iron out.

Justice Yeldham took the stage and pressed his face against glass. Pushed until it broke, pushed until blood coloured his beard, pushed until we pushed back and the moment collapsed as he smashed the last pane over his head.

Then silence.

Then applause and we jumped and we hollered. We were cowboys' children with no manners and proud for the ringing in our ears.

We've been waiting to ask you, "where the fuck have you been?"

Soundtrack To Another Country

It's quite possible that everything I've done has been done so as to be cut up into scenes. These scenes could then be rearranged to fit with a soundtrack. Preferably something French. I've always felt the French were more emotionally endowed. Maybe I mean The Europeans. I guess I mean Scandinavians.

There was this one scene the other day. I was sitting in an office with glass walls which really made me conscious of my chronic nose-picking habit. When I though Chronic I think I may have made a mistake in language. There are books about this. They call it Manifestation. So I thought Chronic and I Manifested something else. Somewhere in my brain some neurons sparked to life at the same time I thought Chronic and they said Eye Thing.

I got Eye Thing for the first time in India and I thought Hot Compress. This helped me to Un-Manifest, which is in and of itself also Manifest. Manifest and Compress worked together and I got better. This time, this time with my finger up my nose, Eye Thing latched onto Self-Conscious and together they got red and swollen and sore. I didn't swear. Well I did, in my brain, but I don't think anyone was listening, at least not Eye Thing. Self-Conscious might have heard though. Actually, I'm pretty sure he did.

Right now, right while I'm writing this but not right while you're reading this, I'm sitting at home watching The L Word. I didn't leave the apartment today because Self-Conscious needed some one-on-one time. Instead I spent the day doing everyone's laundry. It was just my roommates' so I don't mean EVERYONE, but there weren't enough hangers. It took me a long time and I forgot to cook them dinner and now, right now, they feel like Everyone.

In the fragile time between hanging and switching and folding and hanging Everyone's laundry I paused The L Word. This made the time less fragile. This made me feel Different. Not different as in, wow this is completely new, different as in wow this is the me I keep trying to find. I lost Different somewhere back home and I thought that maybe he went travelling so I went travelling, too. Now Different and I are living in China. We even share a bed.

With The L Word not there to converse with Self-Conscious Different got a little bigger. Different really wanted to Be. Who wouldn't? I opened a chat window on the internet and worked with Different to talk to a friend in Norway. Her name is Line. Some people read that and think it's like a line you draw on a piece of paper. I, Different and I, both feel that we shouldn't let people think that. So don't think that. Think leenah instead. You probably feel a little bit more worldly now. Me, too.

I told Lina about a band that will be playing here soon. We agreed that Shining was pretty good. They have a really different sound. Some people call them jazz or heavy metal or electro. I think they sound like a soundtrack. I even have a good idea about a scene or two they would work well with.

In Brief

I haven't written about my individual travel experiences for some time now as they seem to have all coalesced into one homogeneous learning experience. I look back now, not on highlights, but rather on the process of becoming something new, something rooted not where my feet meet the ground, but rather where my life meets experience. I look back now and no longer try to dissect who or what got me here.

Sometimes though, the important experiences draw an obvious connection to their end result. As simple as 70 metres of rope between my harness and a new friend's belay device.

The world is our testpiece.