Start it up, again
I know it's been a while, but I figure with all the stuff that's going on right now and everyone talking to me about "it" all the time maybe if I put up my basic thoughts here, the conversations I have with everyone who reads this will start at a higher level and allow us to go places reachable only with common knowledge of my exact situation as viewed by me. To review the last week for those of you I haven't talked to:
1. Bruno's has changed hands yet again and I, along with everyone I've worked with for the past 3 years, am out of a job.
2. I don't want to tend bar anymore, and haven't for a while, but I don't know what I should do.
3. I'm thinking about going to work in an office again, or going to school, or something.
4. I want to push myself into uncharted waters, but I'm not sure which waters or how to go about doing that without the looming specter of massive debt.
5. I'm going to Indiana w/ Jamie from the 2'nd of June through the 14'th so I can't really pursue any kind of job whatsoever as I'll need 2 weeks off immediately.
6. Not working gives me anxiety.
7. Coffee also gives me anxiety, so I don't usually drink it but I did today and now my brain won't work right.
Here are some of the photos from the Copeland Track. I wanted to put the panoramas together before I put them up online, but I still don't know how to use that program, so I haven't. In fact I can't even find the program. I'm sure photoshop will do it, but I don't know how to use that either. So this is what you get for now. For more info on the track go back to the "Copeland Track" post from October. Oh and double click on the picture that has "check out the size of that rock" written beneath it. There are TWO people in that photo, one standing in front of the gigantic rock. Click on the title of this post to get to the pics, enjoy.
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So I finally got around to putting some pictures up of a day in NZ. There's extremely limited caption space on .mac as it turns out, but I think you'll get the picture. More pictures of rocks and trees and things are coming up soon.
This just in from the Morison brothers:
Dan has informed me the women in their late 20's hitting on younger men at the bar are called Pumas. Not quite Cougars but on their way.
Tom has commented that fur coats coming back into style is an example of the Mohawk Quotient. I'm not sure if it fits the criteria exactly, but he has a point. When did this become ok again? Is it some kind of fashion trickle down from our newly founded big red nation? Personally I have no problem with people wearing fur, under the following 2 conditions:
1. Those shawls with the skinned faces of the fox/mink etc. still attached. Those are hardcore. If women want to wear the skinned faces of animals I say right on sister, get nasty as you wanna be!
2. The people wearing the fur have killed and eaten the animal from which it came.
I realize the hypocracy involved in having these views and wearing leather, but I'm willing to accept that.
Click on the title or the "Link" below to be taken to my knife page.
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The other day, walking to BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit [the train]) I came across two blind men. Both had those long feeling sticks (anyone know what those are officially called?) and the one behind was grasping the arm of the one in front, just above the elbow. They were having a conversation and feeling their way through the exit of the BART station. Literally the blind leading the blind.
In other news: a couple of terms I'd like to add to the lexicon.
Cougar= an older woman dressed up at the bar preying on younger men. There are all kinds of classifications of cougar, all of which can be found by clicking on the link attached to this post. I obviously didn't make this one up and am one of the last to know but I think it's hilarious; check it out if you've got a moment.
The Mohawk Quotient: This is the phenomenon of former indigenous people's customs being integrated into modern western culture, first through the underground and then into the main stream. Named after the Mohawk haircut, first used by the warriors of the Mohawk tribe in North America, then a hundred years later or so employed by punkers all over the world, then 20 years later embraced by modern fashion slightly altered (the faux-hawk). NZ had a very high Mohawk Quotient as they've only recently taken to actively preserve the Maori culture/language and now all the young Kiwis are walking around with greenstone fish hooks around their necks and many with Maori tattoos as well.
I did make up the Mohawk Quotient and there's probably a better way to describe the phenomena I'm talking about but I haven't figured it out yet. You all will of course be the first to know.
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Notes from home
I've been thinking since before I left about travel and what it does for the mind. I mean besides all the clichéd but true stuff about expansion and growth. For me, and it's only on this trip that I've thought of it this way, it (travel) allows me to see things not only for the first time, but as if for the last time. There's a big difference in how the mind records visual info depending on circumstance, and I think the difference between first sight and last sight is significant. This is only true of course if you let yourself see this way, or rather think of yourself seeing this way as you're seeing things for both the first and last time. There's undoubtedly a better way to say that. Jetlag also does strange things to the mind, this post being a result of one of them.
Another thing with travel is that it bonds you to people with celerity. I know I haven't written much about my friends while on the bus, but I spent all day every day with them and I miss them. Towards the end a few of us even adopted nicknames for each other based on the characters in the bad spy books we were reading. I was Asher Flores but Nibbles just called me Ash. Sam (Nibbles) taught me all that cool slang and was nice enough to laugh at my jokes and let me play her obscure american indie rock. Kate who was wonderfully reserved and proper, but didn't think she was which made it even better. Chris my Scottish partner in crime whose translator I became as I tried secretly to master the accent (I do a pretty good Glaswegian after 5 weeks). And of course Ed (Dick Carriage) who spoke the Queens English and taught me great words like "bowser" (which is a great big thing that holds liquid) and kept us all laughing until woozy. We played a lot of pool, drank a bowser of Brittney’s, went on tours/walks/boats good and bad together. They're all warm, funny, generous people and I hope, unlike what I've written about above, that this is not the last time I will ever see them.
Tattoo
Part of my private itinerary for NZ was to get a rather large tattoo on the inside of my left forearm, up and around the band on my upper arm and ending at the shoulder. I know that sounds like an awful lot of work but the Maori designs work with negative space more than positive, so most of it would be left open. So I asked around and was told that the place to do it would be Christchurch, the last stop on my tour. I made an apointment at a place called Downunder Tattoo and took a cab over this morning to talk to the Gypsy. I'm unclear why so many tattoo artist choose strange nom de' plumes for themselves, but allready having been tattooed by guys named Spider and Slick I figured it was all good. Downunder's out in the industrial part of town, which I liked. I never trust the shops in prime locations, too much foot traffic, lots of cheesey flash work, etc. Temple Tattoo in Oakland was the most trustworthy shop I'd ever been to. They were by appointment only and you had to book 3-4 months in advance to get a session; foot traffic is irrelavent if you're really good. Anyhoo I talked to Gypsy, who owns his own shop up in Hamilton about what I basically wanted, how much space to cover, etc. I've also drawn the majority of my tattoos,so this was a departure in that way as well. I said something like, "I'm really interested inthe negative space aspect of Maori design, how they tell a story and highlight the body." Or some crap like that, and he said, "So you're looking for big, black and open." "Uh, yeah, wide open." He said no worries just give me a few minutes to work it up. He looked at my arma bit and then went in the back and I lingered around the front of the shop looking at all the shit on the walls and the t-shirts. West Coast choppers is huge even down here, unfortunately and the giant iron cross that's Jesse's symbol now adorns heaps of Kiwi boys and their back windows. He came back out with a big piece of flash, huge thivk black lines and placed the paper on my arm saying, "Powerful isn't it." It was, it was also the exact opposite of what I was looking for. It was symetrical and bordered and all in black rather than all open and just generally wrong. So I said, "Something like that, just all the black will be skin and the white black right?" and he said, "Yeah we could do it like that, but it won't be as powerful, but let's play with it." This guy's been tattooing for about 30 years, so I had a fair amount of trust for him. He put me in the chair and shaved my arm,aplied speed stick (preffered antipersperant of tattooist's everywhere) and then placed the carbon on it. When he took it off I looked at it a bit, this giant blue thing, a little larger than the tlingit design I have on my right forearm and then I said, "I'm gonna look at it a while, give me a minute." As an aside I've had this re-occuring dream about having a big fuzzy blue turnip or something on my left forearm and thinking it to be a huge bummer. It's always nice to wake up to my naked arm after that. So I walked around the parking lot out front looking at my forearma nd trying to picture what it would look like in negative. Then I went back inside and told him thanks but no thanks, I offered to pay him for his time, he refused and I walked out. Now I have a bald blue left arm, but nothing that won't come off in a couple days. Oh well, trust your gut. There were lots of other reasons as well, but that would be long and fairly boring.
Outside the hostel here in Christchurch is another giant chess set. I've been watching the locals play and a couple of the guys have game. Behind the chess set is a medium sized cathedral, classically styled. In front of the cathedral is a man reading from the bible standing on a step stool and next to him is a guy dressed up like Gandalf (Gandalf the Grey, beard and everything) standing on a wooden step ladder yelling about the PM and the big bang amoung other things. Next to him, continuing west is a Chippy and a Kebab truck and a giant sculpture that looks like the paper they wrap flowers in, that cone shape, without the flowers. Oh wacky NZ, how I'll mis you. I forgot to mention in my last post that I've discovered it is indeed possible to sleep when one is cold, wet and hungry on a boat in rough seas.
Christchurch
This may or may not be my last post from NZ as I return on wed and am unsure of how much time I want to spend recording the trip while I'm still doing it. I'm looking forward to coming home believe it or not. I'd really like to eat something spicy, this is not possible in NZ as even the hot sauce is misslabeled. This trip wasn't as altering as the last one. I contribute that to NZ being an english speaking 1'st world country and all of the sub reasons that go along with that. I have learned a lot, both about NZ and the UK. I can tell you the difference between a waka and a wekka, a hangi and a hongi. I can distinguish between the Manchester, South London, and the public school accent. No one seems to know why the private schools in england are called public schools. Ed offered that the entrance exams are open to the public, but that doesn't really make sense. I've expanded the Cockney dictionary a bit, I'll be using it when I get home so be prepared to not understand anything I'm saying for a while. Cricket bats are made from willow. Also, no one knows why the british call a sweater a jumper; Woody the doctor offered that he thought it had something to do with the knitting stitch. Interesting. I have had a lot of laughs and onlythe occasional series mood swing, although I think that was due to the vodka which I'm not going to drink any more as it's secretly disgusting. I've become proficient at obscure semi-useless things: the one handed paper fold, multi pocket filing, ipod/digital camera navigation, lightning-fast-2-minute-hung-over-early-morning packing, etc.
Wed I fly out of christchurch at 7:40 in the morning and then:
Christ-Auckland
Auckland to Papeete
Papeete to LA
LA to San Francisco
something crazy like 20+ hours of flying.
Christchurch is a gorgeous little city.
