Gnarled and pitted wood rests where it has fallen, shapes transformed by the tiny creeping filaments of the moss that covers everything, in this place so textured with age. It is in everything: in the soil woven thick with fibrous, sinewy roots, in the song of the tiny birds that whip amongst the canopy, and in the Maori prayer that echoes through the trees, a complex baritone chant that surrounds the knuckly boughs and reverberates, liquid and substantial. But most of all, it is in him, as he towers above, timeless and massive. There is an air of certainty here. Of inevitability.

Kauris spend the first hundred years of their life fighting to clear the canopy, and to reach into the sun. There are trees of that age scattered around the edges of the clearing and their slender trunks look fragile in comparison to the massive bulk of Tane Mahuta squatted in front of us. This is the world’s largest known kauri, and it is some two and half thousand years old. His name means the “Lord of the Forest” and he is the one that dug his shoulder into the muddy ground, coiled, heaved, and rent Papatuanuku and Ranginui asunder. In this, he created the earth, and the sky, and brought the huddled god-children, blinking, into the light.

I spin a slow circle and take in the vertical abbreviations in endless green, and try and judge their age. It is sobering to think that before these trees reach the sunlight, we will again be returned to dust in the ground. Still he towers above us.

.

A school of fish are pinned to the wall with nails. They spell the Maori word, Koha. It means a gratuity, a gift. The fish are chocolate, and I take one from the wall and chew on it. Behind me, a mountain of butter or, more specifically, a particular mountain modelled in miniature, in butter, shares centre stage with a radio in the shape of pavlova. I am in New Zealand. I ponder if I can get away with taking a second fish.

..

It took longer than we had planned to clear the sprawl of the city of sails, Auckland’s network of freeways, perpetually under-construction, are lined with witches hats and empty in the pre-dawn light.

In time the blocks of prefab industrial buildings give way to the rolling greenery of the hill country, the road ducking and weaving between hedges of scraggly gorse. On the way we talk of the burden of assumed responsibility, and she says, “It’s getting easier, you know, getting easier every day. At first it was demanding, and difficult, and it put me in a bad place. It still is, of course. It still is difficult. I guess there was an element of guilt there, a sense that somehow, in some way, there was something you could have done differently that would have changed things. You have to let that go, or it’ll tear you open, but once you do, it becomes much easier.”

She had mentioned this in December, briefly, as she stood by the window and looked out over the city. A punctuation, a pause, and a furrowed brow before she turned away and pointed out her school, her college, the path we had traced in the rain as we tramped the back streets beside backpackers on the piss. The lines on the hotel window remind me of those painted on the inside of the cabin that undulate as they trace the curve of the fuselage.

…

I have spent fifteen minutes in an unfocused daze glaring at the walls of the cabin. The lines. This is dendrochronology for the jet-set: a record of the passing of designer signed glasses over dappled grey Formica, white linen, and perfect half triangles of folded navy-blue tissue paper. My head rests against the wall of the cabin, and the gentle vibration of the engines rattles my teeth.

I follow these lines as they buck and curve, cut short by dotted plexiglass, and the blue on blue on blue of the early morning Tasman beyond. The Weather Report mutter in my ears in approbation, bass, strings, and the clicking of my teeth an unintended solo.

I have the volume down enough to hear cabin noise and this half-heard jazz is entirely at odds with the Chilean pop, as interpreted by the immaculately-manicured hostie, that issues from the galley behind me, accompanied by the soft clinking of cutlery.

The seat belt sign above me illuminates, dings, and Senores Pasajeros are asked to secure their seatbelts. I drift out of consciousness.

….

The sign, framed in the green and yellow so favoured by the DOC, informs me that this tree is partnered with another. One whose clumpy, knotted branches stretch into the mountainside mists of a pentagonal island several hundred kilometres off the southernmost tip of the four major islands of Japan. I’ve been there too. It took a pre-dawn departure and seven hours hiking up trails set between the roots before we stood at the top and leant back slowly, marvelling at the spread of branches shaped over four thousand years.

Jōmon has rested there since humans huddled in groups around their fires, set between the barrows, shaping tools of bronze. This squatting giant felt the pull of seasons before people had arrived, before roads, before cars, and before the view from the clearing took in the structures erected on the islands in the blue haze of distance. Cranes and gantries that plot the initial point in the parabolas of white scrawled across the sky, tracing the rockets launched from Tanegashima as they claw their way beyond the pull of the earth. That there is evidence standing in front of us of these kind of time frames leads to a very acute feeling of insignificance, and the realisation that we humans, for all our bluster and self-worth, are but a buzzing noise, half-heard, at the edge of the world’s history.

…..

We collapse onto the grass at Manukau, and my heart soars. The spray-flecked breeze brings with it the smell of chips, and the laughter of the kids playing touch with a rolled-up ball of newspaper beside the fountain. I can just make out a santa-hatted figure at the far end of the beach, reaching forward into a yoga pose I cannot identify, nor replicate. We are engulfed by the familiar sounds of summer: that meaty thwomp of a wet tennis ball being lofted into the ocean by a cricket bat, the squawks of those enormous red-beaked gulls as they fossick amongst the kelp, the snap of unfurling canvas in the breeze.

The essence of the Pursuit of Happyness, she says, lies in seeing mistakes, feeling the shape of them, and then laughing them off for their triviality. That y, for example, it has always bugged me, “and that’s the point,” she says, “that’s the whole point of the movie. Seeing the frivolous for what it is and moving past it.” This resonates, the cracks meld, and I stretch back and take in the sun. One of the kids has scored a try and is thumping his chest, newspaper held aloft.

……

This has been a pilgrimage of sorts, I think, a quest to reach out for something spiritual, if spiritual is the right word for we two godless, empty vessels. But there is spirituality, for me, in the wonder I feel in these two places separated by hemispheres. For all the treated pine boardwalks, the shutters of cameras clicking behind me, and the carefully hidden dark green barbed wire wrapped around the base of the tree, there is something beyond measure in the age of this place.

Our fingers wrap, brown on white against green. She is back then, for a second, and I drink it in.

Then it flickers and fades and she recedes. Disconnects. I fail to chase it because I know something has changed. Something fundamental. And from that comes a powerful desire to grasp the present and to shape it. To leap between the connections and to trace them back to their source, and be kinetic and frantic and alive in the way only humans can. For all the crossed paths, confusion, and duality of the past few days, this is good madness. It is transient in a way that is entirely at odds with this place, but that is human, and it lifts me up and gives me purpose.

We look out over the forest. There is a spider crouched on a broad leaf at eye level, powerful jet-black front legs tapering to a rear of mustard yellow, the outline of a smaller spider in reverse, and its whole function centres around this deception. It jerks a few steps backward then leaps forward and is gone, in the perfect choreography of something that is not what it appears to be.

We are here, both of us, in this place beyond time, and we are both thousands of miles away, seagulls chasing each other into the pines and the smell of salty air as irresistible as the call of friends and family, as they collapse onto the grass ahead of us, laughing. The future unfurls beneath my feet. It ripples and shears, and is beautiful in all its scattered, tangled complexity.

Posted in Mwah on Sunday May 30, 2010. Shoutouts.

A stream of Daft Punk helmeted motorcyclists zip past, the single traffic light reflected as a jagged lipstick red smear in their mirrored visages. They lean hard to avoid the bus. Kick up dust. I give my window a half-hearted tug, but it’s wedged open, and the tiny half curtains ripple in the morning breeze. The dust has shaded the walls of the houses facing us a burnt ochre, and on one huge letters spell, “Welcome” and “LOVE” in lazy broken loops of white spray-paint. We are angled diagonally across the intersection, stuck behind a teetering pile of wooden wardrobes being drawn by a vehicle that resembles the result of a drunken tryst between a ride-on lawnmower and a bullock cart.

Emerging from the stalls that line the road, snack food vendors use the opportunity of a halt in motion to push their way through the swarm of old women negotiating the loading of a stack of chairs, and step up onto the bus. The driver and conductor share a brief exchange as the light changes to green, and manoeuvre the bus past wardrobes, escaped chickens, and stacks of wilting vegetables, before returning to their primary conversations on respective mobiles. The last stack of tightly-bound red plastic chairs is heaved onto the roof with a clatter and the women push forward to climb aboard. Inside the bus, vendors weave their way up and down the aisle, tiny chickens splayed wide across single skewers, glistening with honey and oil. The couple in front of me haggle for chicken livers with a girl who cannot be more than fifteen years old.

On the other side of the road, behind a perfectly level fence that doesn’t quite reach the ground, sits a chipped and colourless temple. It is straddled by an equally chipped and colourless concrete Buddha, with prominent nipples and a beatific gaze that takes in the shabby wooden lodgings scattered around him like discarded children’s toys. An old monk, hand holding his glasses against his nose, and waving frantically to catch the driver’s attention, begins to head in our direction. As he crosses the courtyard in front of the wat, three novitiates, orange-robed and running, converge on the shuffling older man. First a bag is slipped over one shoulder, a water bottle pressed into a waiting hand, and a sheaf of bank notes slipped into a pouch around his neck. At the threshold they stop and stand in a line, grinning.

The monk steps aboard and stops, blinks, and for a moment looks concerned. As if only just learning where he is, he pats the pouch at his side, and begins rifling urgently through its contents. Papers and water are held, chin to chest, as he rummages through the bag. Finally he smiles, nods, and withdraws a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a battered phone. He waves at the trio of shaven-headed, saffron-robed youngsters and begins to shuffle to the back of the bus, before being instructed by the driver to ride shotgun, up front, robes curling around the gearstick.

Ever since we set off, the TV mounted to the front dash has played karaoke, and the video to every song is a slight variation on the same story: a woman, who works in a restaurant, stares wistfully at her mobile, waiting for it to ring. We cut to the love interest who is busy in his inevitably solid and respectable job: smashing rocks into smaller rocks, delivering large bottles of water, or welding something to something else. There are several closeups of his mobile, sitting just out of sight. Perhaps it has slipped out of his pocket, or between the seats of his car. It is ringing, and he cannot hear it. She is lost, unsure what to do, and so she rings again. And again. When it seems all is lost, and our girl is stumbling through the rain-lashed streets, crying, the phone will ring. We see it again, close, and it’s definitely his name and suddenly he’s there with an umbrella, and an easy smile, and they duck into a restaurant so that she can look bashful as she feeds him a spoonful of noodles. Their phones rest against each other on the table, together at last. These bricks of plastic are the stars of this show, and the people surround them mere props, useful only in bringing them together.

The girl with the livers has failed to convince the couple in front that they represent a sensible investment, and so she scrambles to the front to step down and off. Her hands and face are streaked with the red black dirt that covers everything, and there are shining streaks where the fat from the chicken has run down her arms. As she nears the steps her pocket begins to ring, and she hands her skewers to a friend and pulls a phone from her jumper.

With a sigh, the wind kicks up again. The sting of dust particles prickles against my cheek, and clumps of discarded plastic press against the bus, then drop to the ground, lifeless. There will be no rain today, and restaurants in this part of the country are few and far between, but I wonder who is on the other end of the line. Whether she has a water delivery man of her own, and if their mobiles huddle together at night, waiting for their time in the spotlight.

Posted in Travel on Tuesday April 6, 2010. Shoutouts.

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- Mark Strand (via. 3qD)

Posted in Textism on Tuesday March 23, 2010. Shoutouts.

Although I use Dopplr to keep track of where I’m travelling to next, I thought I’d steal a leaf from Kottke’s book and record cities I’ve been to each year. Here’s 2009:

Adelaide *
Agra
Amritsar
Auckland *
Aurangabad
Brisbane *
Bundi
Canberra *
Christchurch *
Dandenong
Delhi
Hobart
Indore
Jaipur
Jalgaon
Launceston
Mandu
Melbourne *
Mumbai
Omkareshwar
Parramatta
Perth *
Queenstown
Sydney *
Udaipur

26 in total. One or more days were spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Posted in Travel on Friday January 1, 2010. Shoutouts.

The station in Jalgaon is small in comparison to the Victorian grandeur of Chattrapati Shivaji in Mumbai. Three sleepy platforms, attendants sprawled head to toe against the dusty outbuildings, as the pakora vendors heat oil for the first batch of the day. Even the flies seem slow and disinterested. The clipped voice of a woman, the same as can be heard in every station across the country, repeats departure announcements over and over, first in Hindi, then English, until they lose meaning and become tone poems celebrating destinations unknown.

2621 Chatabadi Express to Bhopal 8 hour fifteen minute departing.
8601 Darjeeling Mail to Varanasi 8 hour twenty minute departing.

I’m still teetering from my bout of food poisoning the day before, and I blink in the harsh glare of the morning sun. The temperature is pushing thirty and it’s barely gone eight. On the far side of the tracks, behind the hodgepodge of crumbling station buildings comes the scattered honking of the swarming rickshaws at the main entrance, mingled with the sounds of the market beyond.

With a rumble that drowns out the rickshaws, a train draws into view and, in a second, the vendors are up and moving with purpose. They sweep up baskets of snacks, piles of tiffins, pots and mugs and swing themselves aboard before it has pulled to a stop, to ply their wares of chips and chai, locks and trinkets as they yell their slogans at the top of their voices. “Chai-wallah chai, ah, garam chai, masala chai, chai, chai, ah, chai-wallah chai.” Pakoras are dunked in sizzling oil and the smell of deep fried batter mingles with the stench of cow shit and human sweat. This train has the same number as the one I’m to catch, and what appears to be the same destination hand painted in light-blue letters on the side. It is on the opposite platform.

I stand, swing my backpack up, and ponder whether I need to hoof it across the footbridge. “You’re going to Chittaurgarh, sir? Not that train, sir. This platform. Two trains cross. The same number but one goes up and the other down,” says a bespectacled man who has appeared at my elbow. After barely two weeks in the country, I have developed a healthy sense of scepticism in regard to any directions, instructions, guidance, help or support given to me by anyone.

The Italians have elevated the robbery of tourists into an art form as revered as the works of Puccini or Rossini: a beautiful theatre of spilled drinks, swapped tables and waiters in collusion with the pickpockets. Even the most opportunistic of South East Asian scammer will attempt to fleece you with a grin, “the temple is closed, mister” and striking a bargain in China is similar, a transaction, hard fought, where both parties will swear at each other, curse and bicker, and then smile and nod after the deal is done. It’s just business. It’s very different here, where an edge, a real sense of desperation, underlies everything.

“Thank you,” I say, and turn my back on him as I try and decipher the platform information on the crumpled scrap of paper that is my ticket. He is right. I sit back down. “What country you are from, sir?” asks the man, and this is always the second question. I tell him Australia, and he smiles broadly, “I have just been there, to Sydney.” I am surprised, and it must show on my face, because he rushes to explain, “my bank had a conference there. World-wide. They sent a few people from India. My bank was chosen.” I ask him how he found Sydney, “it is a beautiful city, but empty. I would walk at night and see empty streets, empty shops. I felt alone.”

We stand and watch the hive of activity across the platform. “In India, connectivity is no problem,” he says, and he’s right, there is usually a train running from whatever part of the country you are in to wherever you need to get to. It’s capacity that is the issue. For a country teeming with people, any infrastructure built around moving them from one point to another must have capacity and flexibility that would make most Western transport planners go weak at the knees. The trains are full, the buses are full, the share jeeps weave delicate patterns around the cows milling in the street, as those unlucky enough not to have a seat inside the car cling to the running boards, the doors, or anywhere a hand hold can be found.

But connectivity is not a problem, and right on time the train to Chittaurgarh grinds to a halt. I bid the banker goodbye and pull myself aboard. The cabin is full, the odd bunk here and there still folded up and out of reach, but most are occupied by families sitting cross-legged, children on their laps. The floor is covered with food scraps and rubbish, and a child with a tangle of stumps, rather than legs, pulls himself along the floor of the carriage, sweeping a filthy cleaning cloth ineffectually with one arm. The other is used to reach for handholds, and to pull himself forward. Passengers push him aside with their feet as they shove luggage onto racks, before bending down to continue their negotiation with drink vendors through the windows of the carriage. There is a shudder, the train lurches into motion, and the boy grabs at my ankle.

We clear the platform and, as the last of the vendors swing themselves back down off the train and begin the walk back to the shade of the station, I notice that the walls of huts facing the tracks have been covered in hand-painted advertising slogans. Sandwiched between a freshly painted Tata Indicom logo and a whitewashed advertisement for locally manufactured bicycles, is a faded blue and gold slogan for what appears to be an energy drink: 2Tough – Strength is life, weakness is death.

The boy is still holding my leg, and he cups a hand and places it on my knee. There are Taj shaped haystacks in the fields, and it is hot.

Posted in Travel on Monday December 7, 2009. Shoutouts.

It’s not just desert out there in the middle. When I drove from Perth to Canberra last year, I stuck the camera out the window for the first minute on the road each morning. This is the result:

Posted in Oz on Sunday October 25, 2009. Shoutouts.

korean girls locked in embrace
in a rooftop pool whose
steam drifts between adjoining buildings
coiling into the clouds
and me
jetlagged and broken
staring at the moon

Posted in Travel on Friday September 11, 2009. Shoutouts.

There is lightning on the horizon as we begin our approach, and each flash lights the tumultuous clouds from within as they roll toward the harbour. It’s been a jumpy ride so far, the propellers on the tiny Dash-8 they use on Canberra to Sydney runs whining as we jostle and bump our way through the pre-storm turbulence. I watch the lights of boats below and wonder whether they’re heading out into the storm, or returning home.

I notice three boats in a row, lights blinking in sequence: red, white, red, white. It’s very hard to get a sense of perspective in the dark and I can’t tell which of the boats is closest. Then there’s another flash of lightning and the red light I’m watching reveals itself to be the tail section of another plane, silhouetted for a second against the ocean. We bank to the right and drop down over the headland, and it’s staggering how quickly we close the distance. What was a beating red light against the blackness is now a plane in full form. I can make out windows against the fuselage, and the shapes of people behind them. We can’t be more than a few hundred metres apart.

My heart jumps involuntarily into my throat and I look around at the other passengers to judge their reaction. It’s impossible to know if this is normal, but I fly a lot, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. People seem calm, engrossed with blackberries, piles of documents, disposable container of crackers and cheese, and I think I’m the only one looking out the window. Behind me, a business suited couple continue their conversation about digital radio.

Another shudder of turbulence jumps us to the right, and we’re closer still, mirror planes in reflection as gear unlock and lower in flawless synchronisation. Our wing and theirs signalling each other: red, white, red, white. I watch their wheels smoke and spin as they touch the tarmac and a second later am pressed backward into my seat as ours do the same.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sydney, where the local time is 9:32 pm. While we are on the ground, we do want you to remain completely safe, so please do not move around the cabin until we have come to a complete stop at the terminal gate. Please also be careful when opening the overhead lockers because, as we all know, shift happens.”

Posted in Travel on Sunday August 2, 2009. Shoutouts.

“Biju looked at him and had to avert his gaze as if from an obscenity. In its own way it was like a prostitute – it showed too much. The book in his hand had a cover of Krishna on the battlefield in lurid colours, the same ones used in movie posters. What was India to these people? How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people’s countries. Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his own did to him?”

- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

I read this passage while perched on the stairs of the Ganesh guest house, listening to the incessant rhythmless drumming of the three French backpackers who’d sprawled across the roof. They’d rolled joints and over the next forty minutes their drumming echoes over the town, as it gets louder and less in time, and drowns out sounds of worship from the temple next door.

That morning, a sixty-plus American draped in loose, coarse fabric had stormed out of the hostel, calling the owner a “blasted fishwife” after being told they had no fresh milk. The guy who clears the tables rolls his eyes and tells another story from his twenty years spent in hostels across India.

He explains that inflation is changing travel for both domestic and international tourists, but that raising prices at any hostel results in torrents of abuse from the granola crowd. “They come at the same time every year. Work five months over there then fly via Dubai. Five, six month a time. That fellow,” and he nods to one of the tangled-headed men on the roof, “Every year. This year four month only. Bad year in France.”

Over the past three years he says the price of a room has increased by 100 rupees. That’s about $2.30 Australian. And they argue, and argue.

Like Biju, I don’t understand what version of this country people are buying into. Where this idea of India came from. They act with complete disrespect toward locals, flaunt local customs and display a general lack of humanity which is shrugged off with a simple, “nah man, these are my people. I feel them” and a gesture toward the tilaka smeared across their forehead by a passing Sadhu looking for change.

I think a lot of travellers would do well to stop consulting these meticulously constructed mental maps as to what country stands for, and actually open their eyes to the people they’re interacting with every day.

I read Inheritance until the buzzing of mosquitoes sent me scurrying under the net and into bed. The next day, I was awoken at dawn by monkeys throwing themselves from the trees onto the electric wires that ran over the balcony outside my room. I stumbled out of bed and climbed to the roof and recorded this. I think it’s beautiful:

Posted in Travel on Monday May 25, 2009. Shoutouts.

India Highlights is a set on Flickr with some of the photos I took whilst winding my way through a month in India.

Posted in Travel on Sunday May 17, 2009. Shoutouts.