The Depths Of Ignorance

The boss is out of town. Earlier today the receptionist put an Ibiza trance rave on the communal television set. It was loud and obnoxious and full of extasy fueled boobs. I liked The Beyonce Experience more. I wish they would put that back on.

Apparently my concern with what's W.A. is waning. Today I caught MYSELF looking at tits in a glass walled office. I think I'm going to try to intern for Vice.

Forgotten Ramblings

Facebook: Blocked
youtube: Blocked
Blogger: Blocked
Twitter: Blocked
Flickr: Sporadically available
most proxies: blocked
My time in China: coming to an end.

I'll be moving on back to South East Asia soon...back to Thailand, back to Tonsai, back to two months of rock climbing and adventurous substance abuse (I only really just said that cos I know my Mom reads this).

I've (99% sure) landed a job in Tonsai working as a professional climbing photographer for OnTheRocks. Dream Job! Hot Damn! Come visit!

I've rediscovered a love for Michael Jackson. I guess that when stars fall out of the sky we are prone to mourning them with our love.

Speaking of stars, I've started to watch BattleStar Galactica. I know that some readers of this blog are saying "finally!" others are saying "lame!" and still others are trying to pronounce "Galactica".

Finally, I may have H1N1. Probably not though as I seem to be getting better and this seems awfully reminiscent of that time that I thought I had SARS the last time I was living here.

The Draw

I've spent nearly the last year in China trying to distill from all the madness and maddening humidity a reason for why I had once loved this place. A reason for why I had once considered this to be as home as any home. I haven't found it.

What I have discovered instead is a certain bitterness for expatriates who insist on residing here without accepting that they are, in fact, living in China. Those who live with blinders to the culture around them. Those who have been here for five years and still can't ask a taxi to take them home because they don't speak a single syllable of Chinese. Those who I once idolised for their liberal lifestyle, I have come to realise are just the people that I never wanted to be, transplanted into a financially fertile environ. I'm not impressed anymore.

Of course there are exceptions to this example...and, in fairness it's biased more towards expats who actually do have a twisted sort of love for this place and do devote themselves to understanding the language and the culture. I have devoted myself to it, and though I do have a certain love for this place, I now understand that China is not my home (at least not the south) and that I must strike out again in search of this idea of home.

I have a ticket for the 7th of September that flies me straight back to Krabi, Thailand for a two month dpearture from obligations and pollution. I'll be climbing and taking pictures and hopefully getting paid for the latter from time to time. Then the great subcontinent of India will finally finish reeling me back in. The heavily perfumed hooks that it left burried in my heart have been pulling tighter and tighter since I last left and it's time to go back. I'll spend another birthday in a world class climbing hotspot. Hampi will take my fingertips and I will take the power of Hanuman.

And then 2010 will arrive. I will head north with the changing climate until I find myself in Nepal. Here I will join my father for a trekking adventure through the Himalayas, drink Chai at altitude and get drunk on fermented Yak lactates. My beard will grow faster than it ever has and I will dream of the Scandinavian country from which my family came but I have never visited and I will visit it. I will plant all three legs of my tripod firmly strandling a fjord and not leave until I have left my mark in every hipster magazine you were ever cool enough to buy at 7-11.

And then Africa.

*in our next intallment we will discuss the big project: home/canada/sustainability and art spaces

Patio Over The Deck

Patio Over The Deck
Originally uploaded by kaare.iverson
on the 14th May, 2009

A day of mega multipitching on limestone Karsts with Hannah Roy in Yangshuo, China

Rendezvous

Rendezvous
Originally uploaded by kaare.iverson
on the 8th May, 2009

Here it is, the first of a new career...well, it's not really anywhere near a career yet, but I did do a restaurant review and this is what came out of it. It's my first (to be) published work with the intent of "being" a photographer.

Yangshuo Assault

Let's take our clothes off and see who's stronger.

Jewnicorn

Nathan moved to China with us! Yay!

No Photo Force

I have no photos to back this up but I did just return from a quick trip to Yangshuo where I saw Chris Sharma and his GF. Sadly I didn't have the opportunity to either meet them or watch them climb. Balls...but I did get to crank on a new project on Lei Pi Shan which I hope to redpoint next week and I did get a gnarly sunburn from an unsuccessful 25km bicycle ride hunt for The Egg (another bluff in Yangshuo).

Overall, after hanging out with traveling climbers again I've been reminded that working is for suckers and dirtball climbing is for winners. I'm going to be a winner again soon. 4 more months...

Cute Eyes

Look at these cute eyes.

Photo Force

I'm trying out some new styles and techniques...and my new lens and flash:

Teaching English as a Second Life

There are 6 folders on my desk. Each folder takes an hour to teach, so each folder represents an hour of work. I hate working for someone else so this work is called labour. There are 6 hours of labour on my desk. I must do them one at a time.

There is one email in my inbox. It is a poignant invitation to work as a photographer in the West Bank of Israel. This is what I want to be doing. I love this idea, so I will call it love. There is one love in my email inbox and I must love it all at once.

Photo-Ma-Blog

Here's hoping that none of my current employers read my blog:

So, in a never ending quest for change and general escapism from complacency (this sentence structure sucks), I'm becoming a photographer...yep, I'm giving up English teaching (after this contract...) and pursuing something that I've loved all along. In as much, here's a photo:

I Like...

I like it when the weatherman stares blankly with that lost expression, standing in front of his green-screen at the end of the report, waiting for the cameras to cut back to the main desk.

I like it when porn stars have pimples on their asses.

I like it when people absently bump into the corner of a shopping mall kiosk and look at it as though it was the corner's fault.

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.

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.