In part one of a three-part series, I take you down an overgrown path of wayward thoughts. Like many travellers, my mind is a blizzard of fantastic observations, and open wounds of silence. Life fascinates me. I’m addicted to thinking.
I was recently defuzzing my phone, when I realised their was a trail of breadcrumbs I had left behind on The Trail; a cache of quick notes, squeezed into my mobile phone’s outbox by my ageing Gen-Y thumbs. Like a literary version of Innerspace, I thought you’d like to see them.
“The hardest thing to pull off in art, is simplicity”
“If my way into Russia was pictorial, it would consist of a blob for my port of entry, Moscow and a long slender tail for my mega-journey east along the Trans-Mongolian railway. Subsequently it would look rather like a sperm trying to impregnate Europe, which is itself quite pertinent.”
“Shoulder screaming.
My neck, that pivot of life now BETRAYING me.
I want to cry, tears of agony.
She’s there. Sleeping.
SOMEBODY, do something.
Release me from these crows.
Am I so evil?
I’m not. I plea. I’m not.
It burns.
Pure.
It’s telling me something but I cannot hear,
because my shoulder,
it’s SCREAMING.”
“I like to stay in a place till I hate it enough to leave, and love it”
“Corruption is a crime of the coward. No company can cure loneliness”
“Craving happiness. That’s why people spend half an hour choosing a ring tone that will give them five seconds of happiness”
“For every new car that rolls off the production line, that’s how many rich people there are. For every old car in the scrap yard, that’s how many wasted their money on a car”
“Travel writing, or writing travel?”
“I’m the kind of guy who uses the back of the DVD box to keep up with the movie”
“The sound of a radiator cooling down is perhaps the world’s most annoying”
“Those gentle moments when your train window pulls up aside another. Fragrant seconds, frozen in time between your panes”
“Morning commute is silent, but for the alien youth reciting his travel dreams to a pair of feline friends. The Economist. The company report. The yellowing book. Silence, but for the most annoying noise of recycled music from his headphones. As people board, they look surprised that I might be standing with my four brethren, while the galleys are a sea of right-angled calves and thighs — but surely this must be a daily occurrence in a city of 2 million mutes.
Note: this is 9am, because Australia is one of those peculiar anomalies that doesn’t open its doors till 10 (and usually has them shut by 6). But for those eight hours, they work like artisans creating a glorious vibe for when they lay down their tools.”
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