so its

chug-chug and away

on the Karya Utama

that’s the KM Karya Utama

a narrow double-decker wooden boat

where the cleanest and newest thing is the engine

where its motorbikes and poultry and piles of crates and boxes below

and us above, see photos

on an inside deck of ninety thin mattresses

with baggage storage in neat individual wooden compartments beneath them

and with many windows

for watching the river and banks and smoky distance go by

and where we set off a remarkable ten seconds early

at 6.59.50 a m

from the harbour in Samarinda

after i got woken well before by five

by the call to prayer

from a minaret a few short centimetres outside my window

and was soon a little nonplussed by the empty streets

as i needed transport

yet, after a whole minute

a motorbike guy found me

and he turned out to be a tourist guide

with a stutter

and he took me the 6-7 k along the Mahakam to the boat, for 40000 rupiah

and even sorted me a berth

and so here i am

and here i go

chugging smoggily up the vast coal-filthed river

where i’ve even found an English speaker

Dhiki

or rather, him being helpful to the eternally clueless ingenu

he found me

and Dhiki works for an NGO in forest management for the community

up in Melak

which means he helps the local use the land as they wish

without them offending the government

while Dhiki, he has a degree in English Literature

which is a real stroke of luck

for i’ve had no proper conversations in my six days in this country

and cannot trust that i understand the locals

and am pretty certain they don’t understand me

so i’ve got by chiefly by picking things up or pointing

and now?

here i go

the only foreigner on the boat, of course

for i’ve seen absolutely zero whitefolks in my week in this country

and here i go

up the wide river

with its shoreline of semi-dilapidated shacks on poles

stretching for miles outside Samarinda

and with its unceasing succession of vast hulks

heading downstream

piled with massive amounts of coal

pulled by tugs

where i can often see ten or more of these filthy giants

in one sweep of the eye

and so

here i go

its being pretty uncomplicated

as i head windingly North-West

upriver

into a jungly green unknown

to Kota Bangun

a place on a map, near a lake

for some days

then, after another town

whose name i forget

and which i can’t pronounce

ahh, Muaramuntai...

so, after Muaramuntai i’ll reach Melak, where Dhiki is based

then, after a few days

head as far upstream as the river will allow the boats

it being close to Rainy Season, starting November

so the river is near its unnavigable lowest

and i’ll find what’s possible when i get there

for meanwhile?

its a day on a boat

seven hours? ten maybe

friendly, unflashy, matter of fact, just so, daily

with seventy snoozers and browsers and a few chatterers

and some playing children

all settling in for a long haul

as the shacks and corrugated iron and mosques and gangplanks

give way to mangroves and jungle

though it turns out Dhiki

who can’t remember any English novelists from his degree

[maybe he didn’t study any]

yet fondly remembers Indian writers

post-colonial novelists, who write in English

yet it turns out Dhiki is based 30 k from Melak and the river

which sounds like a great expedition when i get there

proper jungle

middle-of-it off-river jungle

where the big issue is snakes, cobras mainly

and not getting lost

so it’ll be good to have a pal

yet that’s in the future

and might not happen

while the fun is the moment

the new is in the now

this everyday for the locals, yet unusual for me

this bus-like boat

chugging smoothly

steadily

up the wide but thinning, muddy, coal-filthed river

between the bankless green

the giant bamboo and mangroves and banana

the large fronds and leafy branches

and huge grasses [?] and high rushes

and bare trunks and winding lianas and draping vines

and purple flowers and enormous leaves

the now thickening, now thinning, riverside forest

and on

round its bends

between that green

deeper

into...

...

...

...

...

in other news

one of my ten best meals ever

last night

a ten minute walk

taking me to quiet streets of moneyed houses

and an expensive restaurant

with zero customers

where it was fish and rice and a fabulous blend of spices

cooked inside a wrapping of banana leaf

quite the best thing all year

which all told me i should dig deeper cuisine-wise

...

...

...

in other news

this whole region is beset by fires

and the smoke and cloud become one

and sit all day above

so the sun, if its visible, is an unnatural orange-pink

and looks like a glowing Mento

...

...

...

in other news

this boat is going much further

so i’ll catch this service again

another day

...

tugs hauling empty hulks back upstream

...

...

in other news

have arrived into Kota Bangun

into my worst room in years

in a shacky town

with some streets of concrete set in wood on wooden girders

subsiding with alarming skew

with very friendly locals

wholly unused to foreigners

where getting out and away

back on the boat

is not going to be easy

...

so, suddenly

much is difficult...

…

as unattractive a backstreet as ever i saw

a higgledy of ungoodlooking buildings

mottled and distempered concrete

bowed wood, bowed metal, bowed stone

wonky balconies

poles with thirty slack wires stretched high but low along

front-ends like back-ends

rusted or ill-painted corrugated iron

broken stone

thrown-out wood and metal in separated piles

...

all dressed coarse and lousy and unappealing

so its

Roget’s Adventures In The Unaesthetic

...

and this short road is apparently called Jl. Gajah Mada

and its in Klandasan Ilir

near Balikpapan Plaza

...

uncared for buildings of one two or three storeys

each different, each ugly

with three small trees

some stone beds of forgotten weeds

and one balcony hint of Islamic ornament

yet with wooden grilles over gutters

potholes

oily puddles

rusted old oxygen tanks

barbed-wire on stone fences

broken windows

peeling plastic

splintered planks, splintered wooden girders, broken fences

with zero showy, no business signs, no advert hoardings

with scrawny cats

bent poles

frayed ropes

mangled truck tyres

with gravelled stone and broken glass and shards of plank

with off-black, off-white, off-sepia, off-yellow, off-brown

with the corrupted, the twisted, the skew

with faded hues

mottled greys

white mould on off-black

and black mould on off-white

with blooms of black mould on pinked red

with no white whites

and where the blackest black is the black of the

black mould

...

quite the ugliest street i ever did see

...

…

of course one simple thing could make it beautiful

and fascinating...

people

lots of people

a market maybe

or any people

where you wouldn’t noticed the broken and bowed and corrugated and bent and sullied

yet there was only a lone motorbike delivery guy bent over his phone

no kids playing, no women selling, no anything

...

so here i am

in yet another country

…

…

i wanted to fling myself into an else

and i seem to have done just that

into this largeish unspecial city

with its superfriendly faces and voices

amongst the busy roads and the traffic growl

the high square concrete

and the low square concrete

where i have no language

and everything is unknown

so nothing is simple

except walking

which is hot, very

...

so its

Balikpapan in Kalimantan

which is Indonesian Borneo

where i’m pretty good with the world

after the family time with the sister

after a long unslept night flown from Sydney

in a journey free of muck-ups

yet filled with the slow samey drabness that is air travel

the muted people

the flatlined unexpectant hours

the commercialised centimetres

the orderedness of shape and colour

culminating in an easy Visa On Arrival

delivering me here

via a taxi ride down a main road of notable unattractiveness

into a proper dump of a hotel

near two busy commercial main roads

into a new world

mine for the wandering

…

...

so

after the easy suburb of south Sydney

its certainly an all change

is a series of soft collisions with the ease-softened head

while its a long time since i was so cast adrift

and by my own whim

so i have that old sense of

the joy of the new

the confrontation of unknowns

for, in India and then Nepal

where i’ve been all year, till Sydney

i knew before i got there how much of it works

and how to need very little

and how to get most of the little i want

...

where my first meal is a cheap and friendly intro

under a stall on the corner

run by a very friendly old bald guy

grinningly happy to be given two Australian cigarettes

each of which cost more than the meal

where the striking newness of the tastes overcomes the low quality

of the rice and tempe and stewed creamy chicken and boiled green veg

...

…

while the online world is not the same as the real real world

and me?

i’ll tell you something you already knew

but it will do you no harm whatsoever to be told again

...

The Online World Is Not The Same As The Real Real World

...

especially here

in a proper unknown

where even food presents issues

while Kalimantan has its own foods

and much of the street food looks great

so the long-learnt trick is to try lots of different places

lots of different foods

and wait for the surprise in the tastes...

as with the grilled fish i just finished

after getting lost in a seaside slum

on gangplanks and poles

where i suddenly felt decidedly conspicuous

in this city where i’ve seen zero foreigners

but do not feel like a novelty

until

the kids

for, when i turned the back corners of this tight waterside slum

i smiled at the wonder of the eye-widening children

some shy, one running away

yet chiefly friendly, calling, question-asking

and where i eventually stumbled out

onto a string of cheap restaurants along the shoreline plankways

and sat at the one with the live-music duo

for half a gallon of iced tea

some decent grilled fish

and an array of side dishes in canteen trays

so i could try a spoonful of seven

where half the tastes came as a good surprise

and three if not four were something

something great

the peanut sauce

the mango

the...

...

…

so i’ve got three days here

before Samarinda

in this ugly concrete mass of sweatboxes on the Straits of Makassar

…

yet i do believe

as i mantra again and again

EVERYWHERE IS FASCINATING

and everything is beautiful

even the uglies

especially in a country i’ve not been to in fifteen years

and Borneo, which i’ve never been to

...

…

so its... broken sidewalks

its... long main roads a slog to walk down

its ...communicating by Google Translate, on their phone

its... a liquid stream of round helmets on mopeds

…

…

while the large square black front is a night-club

Angel Wings

which throbbed bassily all night until exactly 4 a m

oh yes

...

…

so i’ve three days here

where the only real problem is...

the heat

the unaccustomed sweaty sapping heat

33 degrees

for three days

before i head

through the “severe fires”

to Samarinda and the Mahakam River

and an even higher heat...

...

next stop the next stop

...

...

...

...

i’se so lucky i

gets the

opportunity

…

…

October 2006

to October 2026

that’s a long time a-wandering

a long time with no home

…

where its always

one step after another

where its always

next stop the next stop

...

in a 21st Century version of the

eternal notion of the

nomadic poet

the troubadour

the strolling minstrel

the trovatore

the gleeman

the trouvere

...

the peripatetic

pootling

tootler

...

the rambling

roving

rhyming

itinerant

bard

...

while making a living entirely off the door

of performance poetry shows

...

which means i’ve been living wholly off poetry

...

which virtually no-one does

...

no books

no funding

no academe

no stipends

no workshops

no teaching

no fees

just the money the punters pay

...

something very few have ever done

...

twenty years a-wander

...

so there i went

and here i go again

upriver into the unknown jungle

...

across the Equator?

...

though i’ve had some stationary winters

Winnipeg, Edmonton, Edinburgh, Camberley

and twenty-two months in Lockdown Gokarna

yet all these were never permanent

so its pretty much true

...

twenty years of...

...

and now

after seven weeks on a green hillside above Sedi next Pokhara

followed by

some very agreeable family time here in South Sydney

a lesson in the virtues of normalcy

its...

probably

Samarinda

and the Mahakam River

...

“everything is fascinating”

isn’t so much a fact as a

mindset

...

while

as i once said in a show

and will say in every show i ever do from now on

“the

human

brain

is

built

for

fascination”

...

and everywhere IS fascinating

every city, every street, every yard

every path, every river, every tree

...

while i’ve had ever less possessions

have shed the books, the vinyl, the shirts

the Doctor Martens, the bits and bobs...

...

for, as i’ve been saying for a long time

all you need in this world is a passport, a bank card and a laptop

...

while back in the 2000s you only needed passport and card

everywhere in India had internet cafes

so you didn’t even need a laptop

...

so...

as the years pass...

ever less stuff

clutter

things

ever less possessions...

...

back in 2006

releasing myself into

wandering...

baselessness...

eternal mobility...

seemed a natural thing to do

...

where my original reasoning was that

in order to keep doing the fabulous Canadian Fringe Tour

which involved total artistic commitment

and where i actually made money...

so, in order to keep going there

i had to write new shows

and in order to start writing shows

i had to stop running shows

which i’d done masses of

hundreds and hundreds of

in London and Scotland

and i had to stop running shows because

like most people

i find it hard to run shows and write shows at the same time

would always be writing another banging press release

or some dull funding application

rather than creating new poems

yet

to make this new and best life, Canada, possible

i had to be generating new ideas, new poems, new stuff

...

many would agree that

“You Either Administrate Or You Create”

some people can do both

but not me

and not most

...

and so, compellingly

if i wasn’t going to be running shows

if i was writing shows

i could theoretically write them anywhere

while the money i made from tours was good

yet i’d never been to India

had wanted to go to India for decades

had been prevented from travelling by being nailed to

first Islington

and then fastened to Edinburgh

and then to Edinburgh winters with Canada summers

so i had not done much travelling since my Twenties

yet

in 2000

on my way back from here, Sydney

Alison and Patrick’s wedding

i had wandered for six weeks from Malaysia into Thailand

Perhentian Cecil

Songkhla

Ko Pha Ngan

Satun

Penang

and more...

gorgeously, easily...

and therefore i, of course, wanted more of that

lots more of that

months and months of that

and so

i left Edinburgh

and so

I went to India

and so

I went travelling

and i kept travelling

and touring

and travelling

and touring

through the years

for many years

and here i am

many odysseys later

here i am

older and no wiser

heading for another place i never been

Borneo

another city

another river

another newness

...

while this freedom gave me artistic permission

to burn for the aesthetic new, the undone

allowing me to pursue Performance Poetry

which i saw as a new medium

to any extreme i liked

...

to pursue those glimmers i had seen in the clowns

the physical comedians

and do my utmost to drink deep of all this

to fuse it

and make real something new

...

and extreme it was

with a motored lyricism

and an ever-widening physicality

...

so i threw myself out upon the vast and open ocean

and sold my soul to the god of motion

...

and so...

Indonesia

Borneo

Kalimantan

Balikpapan a few days

before Samarinda and

severe forest fires notwithstanding

up the beckoning river

North-West across the Equator...

...

where this might actually be intrepid

though little i do is intrepid...

...

for i can count the proper hardcores of these twenty years on two hands

...

the Annapurna Circuit

proper tough

...

the Via De La Plata

a Camino

from Seville to Santiago

in unseasonal November

with gout

...

a riverboat up the Rio Negro into the Brazilian Amazon

...

a hairy hitch-hike down the unfinished Zanskar Valley road

in Ladakh, just three months ago

...

at the time

i never counted the Camino Frances as hardcore

yet i now guess it is

while i did it twice

plus most of the Camino Del Norte

...

while

there have been a few unwise descents

and some long walks of dubious wisdom

like waist-deep in the sea

50 yards out on the flat plate of the coral

around most of Ai Banda

twice

...

though a long endurance of a bus journey...

Hanoi - Vientiane

Kathmandu - Pashupatinagar

etc...

is too short to be proper hardcore

...

and two long Pandemic years on the beach up from Gokarna was hardcore

yet didn’t involve actually doing anything

...

so, like i say

little i do is dangerous

...

though i should add that one Fringe Tour is hardcore

but twenty-one Fringe Tours is

BEYOND THE HARDEST OF HARDCORE

...

so why not wander?

why possess?

why stand still

when there is an endless newness in this

infinite world

?

...

so go on world

surprise me

...

so here i go

next step the next step

...

Borneo

...

have been reading about Borneo since i was ten

...

one of those names from books and maybe films

but chiefly books

the names of the faraway, the exotic, the difficult...

Timbuctoo, Mandalay, Trincomalee, Zanzibar

Rio De Janeiro, Sidi Bel Abbes, Addis Ababa, Battambang

and Borneo...

so here i go

its currently 33 degrees there

so its all change the all change

and ...

next stop the next stop

...

Borneo

100 k or so from the Equator

...

Borneo

me and some Australians…

the word of the summer?

“Beautiful”

i first used it for Penny Ashton

as in “Hello you beautiful Woman, how are you?”

half way through the giant schlep

the fifteen-week marathon

that is the Fringe Tour

...

but was soon using it about Sydney Hayduk, Paul Strickland [i think], Erika MacDonald, Trina Lee Ferris, Thea Fitz-James, Bill Pats [i think],

and more...

...

while some people avoid the word “beautiful”

because it’s become meaningless,

worn out

blandished

paints with too broad and inexact a stroke

and they’re probably right

especially if you put it under a microscope

and get all forensic

but i think if you use it very lightly

and in no complex context

it does have a meaning

and means ... beautiful

lovely

cheering

always good to see

inspirer of affection

smile inducer

benign

smart

warm

caring

no bullshit

no hatred

no snarky

...

while there was the glowingly expectant

secret-smiled Stephanie Morin Robert

[in the photo above]

and Zita Nyarady, DK Reinemer, Jon Bennett, Jessica Gabriel and Chloe Ziner [i hope], Erin Cunningham [i think], Nick Ryan, Katie Hartman, Tara Travis, Alex Dallas, Susan Freedman

and more

and more

...

while, for me

the word “beautiful”

though unhundredpercent

expresses this best

and easiest

and without unnecessary connotation

ramification

unwantedeness

and simply is...

and simply says

beautiful

...

“hi beautiful, how you doing...?”

...

and it was a tough summer

with my show “GET LOST jem rolls”

though a success

yet every festival was a battle

where i never-lifted-the-foot-from-the-pedal

from first days into final weekend

with audiences bigger, gratifyingly bigger

but rarely bigger enough

...

yet cheered by ever saying

“hi beautiful, how you doing...?”

...

and, from Calgary onwards

it was a sprained-ankle-gruel

a hauling of twingeing or pained or agonised

from morning into evening

day into day

sapping the fun

and shortening the nights

...

yet lifted by

“hi beautiful, how you doing...?”

...

amidst all the on-site

on-message

repetition of effort,

and line,

all the hard flyering

...

all gentled by

“hi beautiful, how you doing...?”

...

with all the laughing

and the rise to the show

and the comedown from the killer show

and the stomach-grumbling hunger

and the occasional brusquesness

or even rudeness

all smoothed by

eased by

lightened by

vanished by

heightened by

“hi beautiful, how you doing...?”

...

...

spinning through the days

until the whirling stops, every second Sunday

...

on through the hours and days and weeks and months

the months and weeks and days and hours and minutes

the faces and bodies

the shining eyes and parting lips and curving cheeks

the next after next after next

until now

at the very far end of the Odyssey

the Stop

.

...

...

...

[this is a repost

from Facebook

from September 27 2017

with added italic stretch]

...

meanwhile its still

Sydney

yet my time here is flying by too fast

...

Kalimantan Monday

Samarinda Wednesday?

Blue Mountains tomorrow
…
…
…

this photo tells of
what i did next

…

the Via De La Plata
Seville to Santiago

this photo is from a month before the post

…

me and Sydney Hayduk

this photo might be from that summer

but it might not

…

me and Bill Pats
…

twilight South Sydney

as the yellow sun disappears over the suburban rooftops

in this lowrise city

after the habitual afternoon nap

and before my sister gets back from work

and the house then livens

to family meal and TV

to fish and cookies

and the concerns of the student teenager

to ritual fruit

followed by ritual chocolate

for i have entered family world

after months of nomadism

and green-terraced hillsides

in India and Nepal

and before more months of wandering

in Indonesian Borneo

Eastern Kalimantan?

and possibly Sulawesi

and then my long-term ambition

the mountains North of Hanoi

for hikes and terraced perches

while this family world is very pleasant

and very functioning

so i’m having a good look at a family

at family-ness

with a longstanding couple

sister Alice and husband Ryan

whose wedding i was last here for

twenty-six years ago

and they have two grown-up children

who have grown up tall

and good-looking

and funny

and easy bright and breezy

and grown up enough to be an

Army Helicopter pilot, Jackson

which is pretty serious

and the result of very serious commitment

where the other is newly a student of

Forensic Criminology, Lily

which also sounds pretty serious

and where all four in this family seem like

well-adjusted human beings

which, after months and months in my own head

and after the stoners of foreigner Nepal

and foreigner India

with their burnouts

and their sardonics

and their slow’n’spacy

and their accumulation of encrusting idiosyncrasies

and after the odd, other family

with their dysfunctions

well, after all that

the Ryans, Alison’s family

seem bright

and shiny

and happy

and achieving

and uncomplicated

and an advert for

well

an advert for normal

the kind of normal i have never even thought

of attempting

to achieve

so its all an

unexpected

eye-opener

for a life not lived

a road not taken

...

...

...

so

do i know anyone in Kalimantan?

…
anyone been up the Mahakam River?

...

had never heard of it until 4 p m Thursday

and now its going to occupy the next bunch of weeks

boat after boat up into jungle

until the river becomes impassable

or i find a lovely village

in jungle or on river

...

so i fly to Balikpapan

and then head for Samarinda

which does sound nice

yet googlemaps

[see image]

says its surrounded by severe fires

though that’s one less fire than yesterday

to the north-west

...

and then its the Mahakam

...

...

...

in other news

the photo at the top...

never used the word “mizzle” before

where it now seems an excellent word

with drizzle dismal and miserable

all in the mix

...

“the dismal mizzle

and the miserable drizzle”

for instance

...

...

…

…

in other news

Chatswood, North Sydney

acutely cuteless

...

the aesthetic of the concrete shopping parade

gets big ideas

runs riot

runs big

and starts to believe in proper scale

...

“acute”, a new word

like “amoral” means moral doesn’t come into it

cute certainly doesn’t come into Chatswood

so its... acute

...

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

though i thought about it for weeks

i didn’t actually do anything about it

…

…

I went to the sea

to where the words went

after they went

when all their meaning had drained

and they were only sounds

...

I stood at the ocean

where the words had gone

when they were gone

and I listened to their

hush

...

i left the waters

and when i soon stood

the sound of those words

was as

breath

...

...

...

Nelson Bay

three or so hours North of Sydney

a morning of one beach after another

Zenith Beach, see photo

Fingal Bay

then Anna Bay

which has camels

for it has a long stretch of desert-like dunes

more desert-like than most of the Sahara i was in

back in just December

yet so long and so far ago

...

...

...

...

a man who walks as if

he has walked ten thousand miles

and is about to walk ten thousand more

...

...

...

in other news

sat on a beach chair

[for the first time in three decades?]

on Dutchmans Beach

looking out into the bay

with huge pelicans

two dolphins

cormorants and more

when

round the head

comes a fizzing patch of water

foaming, darker

and moving

so its a...?

moving dark parch of fizzing whited water

twenty metres by ten?

so its a

errr

shoal of something?

i guess

fish?

small fish?

i guess

moving along the coast

with cormorants and pelicans diving to it

and an occasional dolphin fin surfacing

as the fizzy patch steadily shifts

along the coast

twenty metres from the gentle waterline

round the next head

and gone

...

never seen that before

...

...

first full day in Sydney

after thirty six hours

between departure and arrival

after leaving my Kathmandu hotel

for the ninety-minute walk to the airport

yes, walk

not an outbound form of transport anyone else follows

in the heat and the fumes

the traffic and the throng

the concrete and the tarmac

the bent and the sullied

the friendly and lively

yet delivering me and my

easing-out

departing head

into airport world

that non-time

un-space

monetisation

that absence of

almost anything that makes life good

that airport waiting world where

even more than anywhere else

all heads and necks and eyes are dipped to screen

where all my potential stresses were

stresslesly breezed through

and the best metaphor was the

tasteless sandwich

which could have been a lot worse

literally and metaphorically

as the viscous hours pass

or gloopily drip

from each other

into the next

finally delivering me

unslept at 4.15 am

into fifteen hours

yes, fifteen

in Kuala Lumpur airport

for three hours lumpy broken sleep

on a lumpy uneven row of seats

in some recess

next a clattersome and ksgsxchgging coffee-stall

before i coax a free Burgerking out of Batik Airlines

change some Pounds into Malaysian Ringgit

and begin to expertly deploy coffee

with my lengthily-gained expertise in most aspects of caffeination

to raise my mind to a point of actual functioning

to a crested rise where poetry is possible

and i first muster

then corral

some motes

and grains

and pixels

and dots

of thought

into strokes

and letters

and syllables

and words

and lines

which generate themselves some kind of energy

some semblance of lyrical flow

some momentum of mustered meaning

and which soon become a poem i’ve been contemplating for

errr

years

which i then file away

to come back to

as it turns out my online book

The Disappearers

freshly out

by Marlon James

is actually

and this is a bit rare for a new and fanfared book

is actually GOOD

and an enthralment for my slipshod wearied head

and disappears some hours

with the newish poem and other writing bits

disappearing some more

as i switch from Gay Jamaica in the 80s

to my poem

to an article on the apparent intelligence of slime mould

to the poem

to 80s Kingston

and on through the hours

with slow walks around the nonspace

the untime

the commercialised millimetres

and monetised hours

and sensory vacuum

the white and grey and silver and black

where further sleep is impossible

yet the dimmed life in my subsub head

operating eighty-per-cent capacity at best

allows for thinking [?]

and enjoyment

and newness of word

as the shortened hours slip by

slide away

broken only by the surprise of

the best Malaysian meal i have ever eaten

some kind of spectacular Satay

the rich and savoursome flavours of which kinda shock me

and my slumped head

back into more coffee and reading

and finessed words

until the long fifteen-hour

un-odyssey

of grey-space and

hardless surfaces

and motionlessness

delivers me into the unspecialness of Batik Airlines

and a half-empty plane

where at first i am saved by Marlon James

and his ugly story

and by the good battery in my tablet

rather than the diminishing battery in my laptop

then some more by Marlon James

and his now-much-uglier story

well-told

shocking and

horrible

then by actually managing to sleep

contortedly unstretched-out over three seats

for another three whole hours

making that just six hours of shut-eye in two nights

before i am awoken by sheer discomfort

to see dawn to the East

and it is a long slow descent into Sydney

then a long slow circling

around and above Sydney

for an excess hour

before i am down into airport world

numb-headed in the corridors

and the nonspace

around the soft corners

until confronted by a uniformed

desked

glasswalled

Australian woman who is all

smiles and helpfulness

and then i am out

and its my sister Alison

smiles and ease and lively and welcoming

who, with her family

has me in her house for three weeks

so, after the grey concrete right-angles of an airport car-park

the time of hassles and long-stretch and unspace is over

and i am arrived into

another

unaccustomed world

Mortdale

South Sydney

...

...

...

...

bye to Sedi

and hi to Kathmandu

the big city

a big shock

after seven rustic weeks

of sumptuous verdure

on the green hillside of rice-paddy terraces

...

...

so i made a great pal

Maury the blue-eyed buglist from Brescia

and we said Bye on Thursday

...

so here’s to friendship

...

i mentioned Maury and “Bromance” before

yet its a big shame it comes to an end

...

we’ll meet again

but, don’t know where, don’t know when

...

Maury has a big honest heart

a big honest laugh

high-end resourcefulness

and constant unrestrained enthusiasm

all of which makes for an excellent companion

on the steep sweaty climbs

over another chai

and on the finicky clambers down the old-stone steps

...

Maury

48

ex-trumpeter in the orchestra

Vivaldi’s “Winter” and all that...

ex-army bugler

the boogie-woogie bugle boy from company glee

and all that...

cyclist and hiker

Patagonia, Oaxaca

and all that...

...

...

we went on many excursions

up to Sarangkhot

out to and around Begnas Lake

along to Ghattichina then back around to Pame

up to Methlang then a long way along and down to Pame

the Peace Pagoda and Giant Shiva starting from Damside

the Giant Shiva and Peace Pagoda starting from the Yellow Bridge

over to the next valley for Milanchowk and Hemja and the first river

a Stand Up Paddleboard across Lake Fewa

plus an odyssey to see The Odyssey at Mid-Town

and more

...

while every other day or so i ascended to Lake Lovers

on his doorstep

for a fry-up breakfast

...

and what’s more i, then we

have been consciously wording it a Bromance

for a couple of weeks now

...

voicing it in semi-serious terms

always with a thick coat or light touch of

irony

yet

always with some truth

...

“that’s not Bromantic”
“that’s very Bromantic”

...

while its nice to have a pal

who’s wide knowledge does not overlap much with your own

...

and who wants to get out and about

who makes decisive plans easily

who doesn’t complicate

who doesn’t get fixed on one plan

who walks at the same speed as you

who is interested in everything

and who laughs easily

...

and maybe the above are, in some measure, true of me

yet they are certainly very true of Maury

...

while the chief ungood would be that i often speak my English too fast for him

...

...

Maury

constantly whistling Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

which is, of course, from the ultimate buddy-movie

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

...

...

while his Dad runs a big Italian country restaurant near Brescia

which sounds the absolute pastoral business

yet Maury decided decades ago to get off the career roundabout

and here he is

after much epic wandering

...

...

while an oddity here is that

as i’ve said before

i wrote a poem about Maury before i ever met him

?

about him and his then partner, Iasmina from Warsaw

...

for we were both in Gokarna for Lockdown

in fact living 200 metres from each other

yet never spoke for a long time

and never quite properly met there

...

back in the easy empty pandemic months of 2021

i spotted them walking as happy as larry

along the beach

and up Rudrapad

then over the fields

and i thought of the line-stroke-poem

and so wrote it down for them

even though i’d not met him

then i went round to where he and Iasmina lived

same four-house row as Dylan and Dora

and i left the folded piece of paper on their porch

...

poem was

the couple, joined at the lip

one long smile between them

...

which must have been a weird thing to receive

returning to your home

from someone you don’t know

...

while those lines were even in last year’s Fringe show

in the Movies poem

with an added line

the couple, joined at the lip

one long smile between them

so in love they beam like imbeciles

...

...

...

a very Kathmandu photo

...

in other news

am in Kathmandu

after ten hours of scenic minibus

first next a vomiting Kathmandu-ite

then next a Tibetan Monk wary of the nearing big city

...

the Pokhara-Kathmandu main road is down

due to the awful disaster further up the Trishulu River

so the minibus went south at the Trishulu

where we could see its ominously outsized mudbanks

which tell some of the ugly story of the flashflood disaster

before we head East at Bharatpur

to Hetaudi,

through some notably unattractive roadside-sprawl towns

in a grim deluge

before heading Northish over the mountains

through Baise and Derauli

on the old roads

now the only roads

which are hairpins and steep drops

and long routes along the contours of the river valleys

which were clearly donkey-routes for centuries

and are now back in over-use

as they are currently the chief way between the country’s two biggest cities

Pokhara and KTM

...

yet, after overcoming the frustration

of realising we won’t arrive before

five pm

i rediscovered patience

and lost myself into enjoying the road

the scenic

the pretty

the green

the valleysides

the flat glacial valley bottoms

the waterfalls

until

finally

we are delivered into the big city

where i’ve four nights

to reacquaint

with one of my very favourite places

though

after seven weeks of rustic

Kathmandu seems very errrr city

busy hectic cluttered

...

...

Chongking noodles from the Kung Fu Noodle Shop

where i haven’t quite time to try the whole menu

...

…

in other news

plenty wander

while

many things taste different

because the water was so much purer in Sedi

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

bye Maury

…

so here we are

beneath the sky

looping loops with an easy eye

...

wandering with softly treading feet

over stone and brick and grass and root

and concrete

...

for you have to be somewhere

and we were there

or near

before we were

here

where thereabouts

and whereabouts makes

hereabouts

...

so let us press on

as the crowds allow

towards an if and a why and a where

and a how

and let us listen to the masses in speech,

to the ululation

of the babbling brook

of a thousand voices in confabulation

...

and let us then go see

me and you

where the flowering words open up

towards the blue

...

so let us go walk then

you and i

while words take shape

behind the eye

...

so let us talk, then, us,

we

as sounds lilt from side to side

from me to you to

me

...

…

...

New Pour into The Bucket

Today, September 1st

32 new pieces

...

perhaps clear your cache

...

...

so here i am

lost in the lushest greenery

...

so here i am

staring hard at the tiny leaves of a fern

...

and here i am

stood on the high ridge-top looking down at the jungle in the valley

the snaking river in the ultra-green flat wetland

watching the hazy net-curtain of rain drift over that green

...

here i am

wandering amongst the boughs

beneath the branches

brushing through the leaves

...

and here i go

rolling in slow-motion up around the hairpins

descending the steep old mottle-stone clambering steps

hitch-hiking motorbikes along the high roads

with a view of the two broad valleys

...

so here i am

yet soon i will be

at Kathmandu airport

where my last experience of flying out of there

Spring 2022

was TERRIBLE

...

so there i go

after seven weeks

of sinking deeper and deeper into the greenery

...

...

while its unclear if the road is even open

yet i plan to leave Friday

for a flight in a week

so i will bus twenty miles

then hitch-hike

and possibly walk

over the trouble-zones

if i can...

during monsoon…

...

a pool too busy for the swim

...

...

...

in other news

this means its the last few days of Bromance

with big-hearted Maury from Brescia

who took the photos

...

we are even self-conscious about the fact its a Bromance

our own Buddy Movie

...

yesterday

getting back from Ghattichina does not look straightforward

buses are infrequent

so i say

we could hitch-hike separately?

because getting a motorbike to stop is a doddle

and Maury says

that’s not Bromantic

...

we have done many trips

tough and tougher

up and upper

where he, bad knees, prefers ascents

and i, still the sweatiest person on Earth, prefer descents

...

will be a shame to part

...

...

...

...

in other news

right now

THE LOUDEST HEAVIEST RAIN YET

after seven weeks

an absolute battering deluge

...

...

...

in other news

first photo is me emerging from the underworld

…

…

...

I wrote the wrong poem, by mistake

The idea broke, and I followed the break

I got further and further, and further, away

From anything I ever meant to say

I got so far I couldn’t get back

I had to stay the night and write the wrong tack

And maybe later get on the right track

...

Except I wrote the wrong poem, by mistake

The idea broke, and I followed the break

I got further and further, and further, away

From anything I ever meant to say

I got so far I couldn’t get back

I had to stay the night and write the wrong tack

And maybe later get on the right track

...

...

So she looked at me

And I looked at her,

And she said,

“Well I had this train of thought,

But it clean went out my head,

It was something to do with,

Something I read,

An untrodden path,

Where the treading now led,

I remember now,

It was something you said…

How did it go?” …

“I know”, I said,

“I said

Well I was on my way from a to b,

But right now I’m at zed”

…

So I looked at her,

And she looked at me,

And she said,

“Well I had this train of thought,

but it clean went out my head,

It was something to do with,

Something I read,

An untrodden path,

Where the treading now led,

I remember now,

It was something you said…

How did it go?” …

“I know”, I said,

“i said...

Well I was on my way from a to b,

But right now I’m at zed”

…

...

Where I wrote the wrong poem, by mistake

The idea broke, and I followed the break

I got further and further, and further, away

From anything I ever meant to say

I got so far I couldn’t get back

I had to stay the night and write the wrong tack

And maybe later get on the right track

...

...

And where were we?

We were just around the corner from the confusion

A few yards from the perplexities

Next door but two from the uncertainty

A bit up the street from the ums and the ahs

Down the hill from the befuddlements and the bewilderments

And you know err…

...

So it’s much better than yesterday

We’ve come a long way since yesterday

Where were we yesterday again?

We were in the big barrel of bloated red herrings

Further and further away from the solid ground

Bloody miles from the high point

And just about to enter the darkest of dark dark windy valleys

With all manner of labyrinthine whichways or whatways

On our way to the most lightless of lightless caves

...

...

Where I wrote the wrong poem, by mistake

The idea broke, and I followed the break

I got further and further, and further, away

From anything I ever meant to say

I got so far I couldn’t get back

I had to stay the night and write the wrong tack

And maybe later get on the right track

...

...

So we looked at each other,

And she said,

“Well I had this train of thought,

But it clean went out my head,

It was something to do with,

Something I read,

An untrodden path,

Where the treading now led,

I remember now,

It was something you said…

How did it go?” …

“I know”, I said,

“I was on my way from a to b,

But right now I’m at zed”

…

...

Except I wrote the wrong poem, by mistake

The idea broke, and I followed the break

I got further and further, and further, away

From anything I ever meant to say

I got so far I couldn’t get back

I had to stay the night and write the wrong tack

And maybe later get on the right track

...

…

[back to top]

…

…

…

…

me Maury and Guvan drinking the exotic tongba

…

…

an exotic and venomous guest at breakfast

a Nepalese Pit Viper

in a small low tree three-feet from the breakfast table

yet only spotted after i’d eaten

…

…

…

main image is composed of six pieces already in The Bucket

while here’s a new one

which goes live on Tuesday the 1st

…

four pieces from the next Pour

into

The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

…

...

can i invent the word “wanderalogue”?

...

and write one from my pouch of a perch of a balcony

above Sedi and the lake at Pokhara

where i am once again

alighting from the thermals of the winds of chance

the accidental randoms of the whims of fate

after some easy plan-changing

and easier hitch-hiking

took me where’er the winds would go

and off the route of my planned amble

from Methlang to the chai-shop’s viewpoint

over terraces and jungle and valley and lake and city

after the super-sweaty uphill traipse

from breakfast with Italian cyclist Maury

who doesn’t drink

yet drank exotic ritual Tongba

a fermented rice millet

last night with me and Guvan from Maharashtra

in the fancy-ish East Nepalese resto in Sedi

and wasn’t drunk

but then spent hours lying staringly awake for no apparent reason

and, from now on, will stick to smoking

like all the staying foreigners here

including the Indians

who are all stoners

except me

while breakfast got disturbed by our cook

spotting a venomous green snake in the bush

three feet behind Maury

[see photo]

a Nepalese Pit Snake, no less

which is apparently only dangerous at night ...

yet ...

so, i ascended in the clammiest clammy morning air

and, by the time i got through Methlang to Kabaudi, i

already

looked like i just did an hour Fringe show in a small hot unventilated sweatbox-theatre somewhere in the Canadian Prairies

even though i repeatedly stopped to enjoy the stunning views

of the lake, the forests, the two wide valleys,

of Pokhara itself

which looks much nicer from a distance

as a mosaic of colour rooftops

rather than a tight hodge-podge of distempered concrete and off-greys

busy, friendly, likeable

and more interesting the more i explore

but not pretty

so the hitched motorbike from Methlang is heading up to Sarangkhot

with the temple and the tower and the five-headed Ganesh

up a beautiful winding road of green forest

and green jungle

and greener rice-paddy terraces

yet, unexpectedly, he doesn’t go up the final slope

so i think

should i stay on?

like i did with a bike-lift three days back

when it and i headed way along the high slopes of the ridge into the total unknown

through village after village

until i reached what turned out to be the main road

at a place with many spellings

Nadonda, Naugdanda, Naudanda, and more

and a big road allowing a neat hitch-hike back into the actual city

or

should i head up the steps?

to see if i can break my own unbroken records for sweating

or

should i take the clambersome stone steps directly down

which i guess i should

if i want to get back before mid-afternoon

and get any writing done

so i climb off the bike

creakily

as my tendons are made of unstretchable wire

and take the path down

amongst the old stone houses and banana trees and terraces

and shiny new tiled houses

and barking dogs

where flipflops on the steep stone steps isn’t perfect

but is manageable

till i reach the vistaed chai shop

my original destination

where i don’t have to order

and the woman will simply bring me my cold water and chai

the cold water being my third litre out of at least ten for the day

it being

did i say?

clammier than clammy ever could be

so i rename myself Mr Soggy

while i attempt to finish the Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises

bought because Pokhara has an unspoiling paucity of booky choices

yet elect to wait to finish this not-bad

this increasingly admirable

book

and pick myself up to head down more of the steep

the stone

while i’m again surprised to hear voices above me

which must be swooping paragliders

or passengers in the cable car

and where the utterly irregular steep steps

here overgrown

there flattening into a cliffside amble

require concentration

attention

so descending takes a while

though i can’t stop

because... mosquitoes

though i do have check for leeches

as i work my way down

passing a few support stanchions of the cable car

thinking of the opening of Herzog’s Aguirre: Wrath Of God

and thoroughly, happily

immersed in the lushly sumptuously verdantly jungly greener-than-green

i mean the lush

the sumptuous

the verdant

and the

greener than green

while dripping sweat from my nose and

half-blind from the salt in my eye

as i swivellingly zag

and ziggingly swivel

until i

now renamed Mr Soggy-McSoggy
because Mrs Soggy and Mr McSoggy

met here

and married

and gave birth to me

Mr Jeremy Soggy-McSoggy

until i am down

onto a flattish concrete lane

which will take me drably into Sedi

for quick shopping

some quicker hydration

and the easy walk back up here to my perch

to have a cold shower

and write this

thinking of the minor

and the major

whimsical winds of

fated chance

...

...

...

…

…

in other news

after six weeks

no plans to move for a fortnight

...

...

...

its one of the biggest things that ever happened

it changed everything forever

it happened over a thousand years ago

yet its direct consequences were felt

on a colossal scale

for many centuries

and its repercussions are still keenly seen and felt today

...

plus

its very very funny

...

it concerns some folks

who went messin’ where you shouldn’t go messin’

some guys

who went on a quest

a spiritual quest, a holy quest

for Immortality

The Secret Of Eternal Life

...

is about these Taoist Chinese scholars

chemists, alchemists

who were better at what they did

purifying and mixing powders

than anyone before in all of Human History

better than the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Babylonians

is about some monks who went off on a very serious experimental journey

for two hundred years

in search of an elixir of eternal life

...

...

i’ve been laughing for almost twenty years

yet am i the only person who’s realised how extremely funny it is?

maybe

...

its in Noah Huvari’s SAPIENS

yet he tells it straight

and can’t have realised just how funny it is

...

...

while the unfunny thing is that

to find out what it is

you might have to go behind the paywall of The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

but hey

its just one of 800 or so ideas stories poems

jokes quotes anecdotes facts verses choruses

and ideas again

it’ll cost you just a fiver for a month

and its a right bargain

...

...

while

to achieve the funniest thing that ever happened

it took an institution of devout Taoist scholars a whole two hundred years

maybe more

mixing powders, liquids, burnt seed-pods

combining lead, solve-stone, mercury, arsenic, sulphur, aristolochia, and more

six seven eight generations of monks

mixing powders

working away, trying, for decades

trying, failing, failing again, failing again...

learning constantly, maybe

improving constantly, maybe

solve-stone, sulphur, aristolochia

following dead ends, maybe, for decades

and trying failing learning

for a century, more

till they scented glimmering success in some smouldering

some smoke

some heat

some light

under their pestle in the mortar

...

and these guys ?

they were profoundly religious

and so

because they were so very holy, spiritual, devout

they spent decades in intense commitment

convincing themselves they were ever closer to their great goal

their spiritual culmination

their holiest achievement

the secret of eternal life

...

and so continued

as avidly as ever

perfecting, improving, intensifying

and purifying, ever ever purifying

until they created something very different to their beautiful goal

something entirely different

something that pretty much could not be any more different

for they created...

human destruction...

on a scale never known

...

could this be described as the greatest failure of all time?

perhaps ...

...

...

so this funniest-thing story-angle-event is very big

very dark and

a supreme irony

because, well, you gotta laugh

at human hubris

that such an exalted goal could turn out so historically cataclysmic

...

for they aimed celestially high

yet they ended in the furthest depths of the human abyss

...

for they went messing where you shouldn’t go messing

and the tale of Frankenstein’s Monster

[Oh My God, what have i created]

or of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice

they have nothing on this story

which actually happened

the biggest invention in all of history

...

...

while another unfunny thing might be that

once you’re behind the paywall

and have access to The Bucket

which is the 800+ pieces in completely random order

well, once you’re there

its just one of the very many

so you’ll have to keep looking

till you find it

and it might take a while

...

yet the journey there,

short or long,

will be brimming with notions

new notions

original notions

ideas, stuff

food for the mind

...

...

and the folk who are already wandering through The Bucket

who have dunked their heads in its never-been-done-before-ness

they seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves

...

...

while those guys

those Uber-failures

over a millennia ago

when their mixtures started a-smoking and a-smouldering

they must’ve thought they were achieving their great design

were close so close to their holiest of holy goals

perhaps the greatest of all human ambitions

would achieve immortality

but instead

whoops ...

there goes the next twelve hundred years

whoops ...

there goes hundreds of millions of lives

...

could this fantastic failure be considered the greatest of all failures ever?

...

and you know how good they had to be

to do what they did?

they had to be much better than anyone else

you know how difficult it is

to do what they did?

to create those ingredients with such unprecedented purity?

its extremely incredibly mind-blowingly difficult

which is why no-one else had ever done it

...

and only because they were so smart

so good at what they did

so diligent, tireless, brilliant

could they achieve this

...

and only because they had such a very high goal

were they so driven to spend their whole lives striving for that goal

so it was lifespan after lifespan

of a succession of brilliant men

until... the first smoulder

and then a bigger smoulder

and soon...

...

if they hadn’t had such a holy purpose

would it ever have been achieved?

certainly not so early in human history

...

...

i do think you might laugh when you find it

...

you might even agree its the funniest thing that ever happened

...

...

...

...

...

another take on all this might be

that these Monks’ attempt to break the laws of life

and live forever

was a blasphemy

that they had tried to contravene the very laws of nature

and that Nature

in response

cursed them

their world

their species,

us

...

and that we

our species

has been cursed ever since

by this means of Mass Death

for it has certainly been a curse

destruction, death, misery

the redirection of science, of learning

destruction like never before...

...

...

...

...

...

a collective cultic obsession the world still suffers from?

...

...

...

...

“they were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”?

...

...

...

...

...

...

instead the ripples grew bigger with the centuries

from this most seismic of discoveries...

...

...

...

...

WELL, WE’RE NOT GONNA LIVE FOREVER

BUT WE CAN BLOW A LOT OF PEOPLE UP

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

g

...

...

u

...

...

...

n

...

...

...

...

p

...

...

...

o

...

...

w

...

d

...

e

r

...

...

BANG

…

its taken me a while

over fifteen years

to realise how Tongba is a very sophisticated form of drinking

and this slowness stems chiefly from the first time i found it

in a very low-rent bar-resto in Kathmandu

which had the specific ambience of a dodgy low-rent boozer in London or Glasgow

where everyone has been drinking all day

…

while the waiter was a very drunk ten year old boy in a dress

...

so its Tongba

peculiar to Nepal and, apparently, parts of North-East India

and, that first Kathmandu time, everyone’s steamingly hammered

yet seems to be drinking what looks like clean soil

from a cylindrical wooden pot

so we point quizzically to a pot

and some tables of Nepali locals say “Tongba, Tongba”

so we order Tongba

and it appears, soil-ish in a pot

where the boy then pours

hot but not-boiling water

from a large plastic jug

into the pot

and there’s a straw

so you suck on it

and it tastes more like Sake than anything else

definitely rice-based

and only later do we find out its fermented rice millet

while, when you’ve soonish sucked it dry,

they pour more hot water in

and then repeat a third

and fourth

and even fifth or sixth time

where the first time is strongish

the second time is stronger

and then it gets progressively weaker

which, if you consider it

is a good way of drinking

that it gets weaker with time

where this whole process might take you three hours

so it takes a certain commitment

and you will likely be a stretch tiddly after the fifth time

though you don’t have to finish of course, but hey, that’s the ritual

…

while its a social thing

because who wants to sit drinking alcohol by themselves for three hours in one spot?

...

so i hunted out Tongba here in Sedi

and me and David from Stroud

studying politics at SOAS in London

we head for the up-market East Nepali resto

to find that there

Tongba comes in a nice lidded wooden pot

with a special straw

[see photo]

and this all has a certain elegance

class

...

while i’ve never heard of it anywhere else

yet, internetting, it seems it is not unknown in London

...

…

three hours later we teeter totter tiddle off

and i ain’t seen David since

...

...

...

in other news

speaking of pouring

the next Pour into The Bucket is imminent

September 1

...

…

Begnas Lake, East of Pokhara

...

...

in other news

i’ve made a new pal

Maury, or Maurizio

from Brescia

with blue eyes and something Germanic in the Italian accent

cyclist, superfit, traveller and one-time military bugler

“the boogie-woogie bugle-boy from company glee”, and all that

...

Maury was in Gokarna during lockdown

yet i only occasionally spoke to him

...

in fact i wrote a poem about him, or a couple of lines

before i ever met him

...

the lines were about him and his then partner

and went

“the couple joined at the lip

one long smile between them”
...

and later i added

“so in love they beam like imbeciles”

...

which lines were even in last year’s show

in the Movies Poem

...

“the couple joined at the lip

one long smile between them

so in love they beam like imbeciles”

...

...

and we are going for lots of excursions

long walks

Sarangkhot and the five-headed Ganesh

Damside then Peace Pagoda then Giant Shiva at Pudimkot then Yellow Bridge then Pame, 20+ k

Methlang

Begnas Lake [see photos]

Pame then Yellow Bridge then Shiva then Pagoda then Damside

...

next venture will be SUBs across the lake

...

…

...

...

in other news

these walks have been extremely hot

shatteringly hot

and it is exceedingly EXCEEDINGLY clammy

so i am still the sweatiest person in the world

...

in fact i’ve done more sweating this August

than i would have in the Fringe Theatres of Canada

where i have often been The Sweatiest Person In The Whole Wide World

...

went to Begnas Lake

with Maury

and Bekah from Bath

newly qualified as a physio

and fresh from volunteering in Eastern Nepal

and so, towards the end of our circuit

Bekah spotted a jetty down below

and demanded a swim

while i think

that you, Dear Reader, might not disbelieve me

when i say that

on immersion in the water

my head steamed

and my skull cracked open

revealing not a brain

but what looked like

boiled-dry

spicy

noodles

none of which surprised me

or my pals

...

...

jetty down below at Majhikuna

...

...

in other news

no plans to leave here

i’ve run out of new walks

yet my perch is a pouch...

...

...

Maury Blue Eyes, Bekah Bath and a distracted me

...

...

in other news

half way up a long steep jungly slope

i met a poet called Parwan

which is pronounced par-one

and i immediately thought

golf!

par one!!

a par one hole...

where i reckon a par one hole is gonna be tough

and leaves no room for error

...

and then i thought of par none

par zero

as a metaphor

in which

you cannot win

or

you have already lost

or

you were born up to your neck in debt

...

so i’ll leave you with the cheery notion of

a Par None Hole

hi world

from a bright sunny today

which is definitely the morning after yesterday

where i’m pleasantly weary-limbed

sat on my balconied perch

above Sedi and Lake Pokhara

and i’m looking at yesterday’s excursion

the high ridge beyond the lake

where the giant Shiva is disappearing into the white clouds

and i’m thinking

Blimey, that was a day

for me and Maurizio

the blue-eyed Brescia cyclist

who was also locked down in Gokarna for years

we finally did a walk, a hike

where Maurizio is superfit and capable

and would in fact be a good man to get marooned on a desert island with

for he’d build some huts sharpish

know what every plant is

and whether it can be eaten

would soon dig a well

and then get a vegetable garden going in no time

yet, fortunately i guess

it didn’t come to that

and none of those admirable skills came into play

while the day began with us sauntering for too long along Damside

the riverside stretch of Pokhara

and very nice parks too

but maybe not at the beginning of a long day into the upland greenery

for it was a good to get to the slope, the forest, the trail

and head up into it

through the sumptuous yet monoculturous forest

with just-one-kind-of-tree

to one ridge-top

then around another

to the Peace Pagoda

for a slow chai

while the whole time i’m kind of chary about how i’ll do with the upping

because

two months ago in Ladakh

the ascents made me feel rather unwell

like blackout unwell

like can’t-go-on, lucky-to-find-an-alternative, unwell

yet i’m pretty sure all that was a product of altitude

and of unwisely flying straight from sea-level Chennai

to 3000+ metre Ladakh

so it was pretty reassuring to sit for chai at the Pagoda and

not feel lousy

before me and my Italian pal struggled on

with me once again staking my claim to be...

The Sweatiest Person On Earth

and panting up the steep steps

as we get to the giant Shiva at Pumdikot

almost the highest point of the day

which is good with me

while Maury, superfit

he likes ascents and doesn’t like descents

because of his knees

while for me?

descents are a cruise

are the gravy, the best bit, the unproblem

so we circuit the enormous, 33 metre Shiva

amongst the gazillion tourists

chiefly Indian

none of whom have walked up

so Maury rings the ritual bell

before we strike out along the ridge

losing the crowds immediately

for tourists only do obvious things

while we follow the stepped path along the height of the ridge

looking North down at the Lake

and across to here, Sedi

where i now sit writing this

and then look South down the steep slope or even cliff

to another green valley

where writing that line makes me think i’m not telling this right

for that’s the first time i’ve used the world green

when the word green should be in every line

twice

for its green, very green, very very green

jungle green, tall grass green, rice paddy green, forest green

green

where, after my first day here

i was already complaining aloud there aren’t enough words in the English language for green

which there aren’t

while that valley to the South does look very nice

and explorable

and green

with occasional lone houses that just might be rooms i could book

while me and Maury discuss plans A and B and C

and decide the best option is plan A

the long descent down to the Yellow Bridge

we can see on the Western end of the lake

away from Pokhara

where plan C was a bus back to Damside

a feeble option only tolerable in the event of serious rain

which again, is a word i have should have used by now

for its the Rainy Season

most nights are deluges

everything is sodden

and we, today, thoroughly exposed to the elements

are being lucky

though there are ominous grey clouds about

one of which slowly envelops us

as we walk into it

yet it only lightly spots us

so down we go

first on the winding road

become a muddy track

then on a gorgeous, if precarious, steep trail of stone steps

down amongst the very green greenery

and terraced paddies

hundreds of them

where we’re descending too fast really

for the scale of the surrounding enveloping immediate beauty

till we come out onto the mud track

carved by Caterpillars

and requiring a different kind of negotiation to the

wet steps on the steep path

as we updown the curves of the road to the chai shop

the one where a week ago

after half the mileage of the walk we’ve just done

i was much more exhausted than i am today

so i say hi again to the guy

and we drink chai before i notice blood on my trouser leg

from a leech

a long-gone leech

now probably burping fatly somewhere back along the trail

while us, we slowly make our way across the waterlogged lowland path

between the swollen river

and the extra-green rice paddies

to the Yellow Bridge

to an even more waterlogged burst-bank riverside path

back to the road where we might get a bus

yet i know from my accidentally epic walk the, errrr, day before

that more buses start in the next village

so round one more hill we go

trudgily

to sit on the dilapidated bus

when Maury never gets buses

but we are happy to sit

leg-weary

sweat-sodden

unkempt

filthy

bleeding trickles

for the five k ride back to Sedi and a late snacky lunch of momos

before we hug our goodbyes

and i spend the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing

chiefly because of weariness after our errr, 20-25 k venture

much of it steep

but also because, fortuitously

only now do the heavens decide to open

to chuck buckets down

to deluge so much

it must have been more of a deluge

than any Monsoon night of my four weeks so far here

for rain had even seeped into my room by morning

a morning bright

with some blue sky

and no grey in the puffy white clouds

a morning i intended to do very very little with

beyond looking up at yesterday’s venture

and writing this missive

...

...

…

and

...

...

hi world

from a rainy Sunday

here above the village of Sedi

and the lake at Pokhara

where the usual pattern of dry brighter mornings

is simply not happening

it rained all yesterday

it rained all night

it rained most of the morning

and, though light grey has appeared in the looming dark

it looks like raining all afternoon into

inevitably

another rainy evening and night

and so...

it lightens it brightens

it darkens it starkens

its a deluge a downpour

a drenching a drizzle

its dismal its damp and then its a

deluge all over again

but then

hey

it is the Rainy Season

so what did i expect?

the Monsoon is very literally doing exactly what it says on the tin

raining

rainily

which provides a whole other set of beauties

lesser, to be sure, than the glories of the dry season

yet there is a beauty in the low puffy white grey clouds

across the lake

drifting out of the more muted greens

of what can only be described as jungle

with the full panoply of colour and shape that is the jungle

for the jungle

this jungle

the Andaman Island Jungle

the Brazilian or Ecuadorian Amazon Jungle

the very different Columbian Amazon Jungle

they have more range of shape than any other nature i’ve found

for the shape and size of leaves

of fronds

of trees

of ferns

of bushes of grasses

of vines of creepers of lianas

of bananas of palms of...

is more varying than anywhere else

while lots of nature is much more mono

is unvarying

is stark and bleak

stretches unchanging

like the mountains and valleys of Ladakh

where i was before here

yet here, slightly urbanised

with roads and tracks

and houses and guest-houses and yoga retreats

with ebullient greeneries

and torrenting ditches

the jungly forest is a very rich immediate environment to be in

to surround oneself with

the huge leaves and long fronds

the curlicuing ferns and thick bushes

the long grass and high tangles of vines and branches

and so

with my not-so-trusty umbrella

a victim of my inadvertently collapsing the mud wall of a rice-paddy

on a high stretching slope of dozens [hundreds?] of terraced paddies

on a failed climb of the green slopes across the lake

yes, with my wonky umbrella

i may just have to go out and embrace the weather

where the rain is never as bad as it looks from your dry balcony

except when it is

worse

much worse

full-blown soaking deluge worse

and then when

quite reasonably for an English person

you think, well it can’t get any harder and wetter than this

it does

beltingly

bucketingly

batteringly

and so

here i go

into the wet arms of fate

it darkens it starkens

it lightens it brightens

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

have met a David

Politics student at SOAS in London

and we are off for that ultra exotic form of Nepalese / Tibetan alcohol

tongba

...

which comes in a cylindrical wooden pot

filled with what looks like soil

clean soil

...

i tried the local moonshine

Raksi

which was

a]

just Ok

and

b]

gave my insides a thorough clean out

something people pay proper money for

but which cost me 85 pence twice

...

...

...

in other news

no reason to go anywhere

…

THE LYRICAL ORGASM

…

Ejaculatory spasms

of uncontrollable joy

are shuddering through me

in rhythms and tremors

evoking, enacting

the word curve and gesture

of our delirium

my upheaval

our play

juddered out by

arced out by

fanned out by

my loving tongue

my blurting mouth

my whiplash neck

my spurting heart

my thrownabout

throwaway mind

my body convulsed

from tip to core

from furthermost extremity

to innermost heart

by adrenalin rush

by snatches of word

by shards of thought

by faint fleeting or flooding

pleasure flow

by idea mix

by sensual glow

by my peace-meal past

by an everything-at-once

throbbing through me

reaching surging

welling through me

the body breathering

briefly freewheeling

the mind accelerating

hyperventilating

charging searching

jerking urging

with insatiable desire

lust thirst and thrust

for more and more

for wider larger

subtler sharper

wittier defter

fuller faster

for all and all

on and on

more and more
my catharsis shredded

tinsel shining briefly

in the falling of time

in the light of my mind

the switchbacked rodeo rider

too jampacked in too short a time

holding on

for grim life

for dear life

for all and any life

to skin

to silk

to cream

to cloud

to the motoring discharge

of scraps strands and strains

of word image and sensation

throwing thrilling and shimmying

the merged pleasures

of mind and body

this way and that

that way and this

as the unleashed torrents

of chunks flails and sprays

of jissom and jouissance

gush flooding out

into the world

…

…

poem written in the late Eighties

well before i became a performance poet

...

...

about sex and writing

...

originally called ADRENALINE MUSE

...

influenced by Roland Barthes more than anyone else

...

...

very few people have ever seen this

unfortunate ex-girlfriends mainly

...

...

i did ultimately learn the piece

i was definitely doing it when i lived in Edinburgh in 2002

where it was the piece i’d do at the then new burlesque night, Club Noir

which went on to become quite a thing

though quite what me and my poem were doing at Club Noir is a bit of a mystery to me now

and probably to Tina and Ian who ran it

...

it was also in my first Canadian touring show

...

...

...

...

in other news

i’m still above Sedi

next Pokhara

dodging deluges

ambling the very green greenery

and hardening my leg muscles on the slopes

up to some chai-shops with gorgeous vistas

of the lake, the valleys, the hillsides

...

and i’ve no need or cause to go

anywhere...

so, writing-wise

what you might have been hoping for is

a spanking new jeep-like thing

which runs on little gas

and is good for almost any terrain

but what you get is

emerging slowly from a

rusting corrugated-iron engine-house you

hadn’t even noticed was there

a dilapidated steam engine

groaning and clattering

and bashing against itself

while trundling slowly forward on wonky rails

yet, which

for all its diverse issues

does actually

and this you might celebrate

function

...

...

...

...

in other news

quiet days, maybe many weeks

dodging the spasmodic Monsoon torrents

in the very green grenery

above Sedi, next Pokhara

with lanes, temples, lakeside and more

...

...

...

in other news

after a noisy night of torrential downpour

i was on a hillside of ebullient verdure and no way forward

so, teetering, i had a battle with the terraced mud wall of a paddyfield

and both me and the wall lost

so my wonky umbrella and my browned trousers are each kaput

yet when i looked back the errr sculpted mud bank was errr collapsing

and cascading

in an increasingly kaput kind of way

so, at some length, with some extra misadventure

i retreated way back to my room to watch the Herzog movie Fitzcarraldo again

which is a safer kind of epic activity

...

...

though it was a while before i spotted the bloodstain on the sheets

from the leech i must have acquired

probably whilst walking booted in the stream a path became

...

so i have a curiously symmetrical leech bite on one calf

and a once-big-now-healing spider bite on the other

...

...

...

...

in other news

next step the next steps

round in circles

and back here again

…

…

…

while the fabulous Winnipeg Fringe begins

here are three pieces i wrote about the Canadian Fringes

...

...

THE UNKNOWN FRINGE ARTIST

...

She’s out there now.

He’s out there now.

They’re out there now.

On stage.

In the dressing room.

On the bus.

In the park.

Leaving the theatre.

Running lines, warming up their bodies, their voices, their improv, their minds, their dialogue.

For a show no-one will come to.

Only ten will show up for.

Twelve payers, three volunteers and their billet.

It was the same two days ago.

And it will be the same tomorrow.

Ten. Twenty. Thirty even.

No-one.

Not enough.

Failure again.

And yet they can only do it. Keep doing it.

The show. Their show.

Making it better. Smarter. Funnier. Goofier. Tighter.

And it’s a great show.

They know it. Their mates know it. Lots of audience tell them it.

Yet no-one comes. Word hasn’t spread. The idea hasn’t taken off.

The reviewers hated it. Three-starred it. Avoided it. Nulled it?

And yet these performers? They do it.

Again and again.

In the last city, in the next province, in this town.

Yesterday, tomorrow, now.

They’re losing money. Losing their summer.

And yet they throw themselves into it body and soul. Time and time again.

They have faith in their show, in themselves, in the artform, in providence, in justice.

And they can only keep on.

Sweating, working, thinking, rethinking, playing, outoftheboxing, rehearsing, selling, flyering, talking.

Caring.

About the work, the idea, the language.

Caring. About the comedy, the ideal, the audience.

Can only keep digging the energies, the work, the ideas ,out of themselves.

Can only keep on.

Even though its hopeless.

No-one will come.

Will notice

Will pay attention.

They’re out there now.

About to go in stage.

Revving themselves up.

About to …

...

from August 2011

...

so yes

now that the Prairie Fringes are under way

this post consists of three pieces about the ups and downs of Fringe World

...

the above is a downer

or maybe a human positive from a negative

...

below is an up, from when everything suddenly goes well

from July 2011

...

and at the bottom is a piece from late August 2009

…

Absolute Bingo.

Meltdown.

Melt-Up.

Here i am at the Winnipeg Fringe.

My favourite festival of them all.

and its...

Hundred per cent culmination.

Consummation.

After all that work.

All that keeping the faith.

Sell-out.

Finally.

130 beautiful punters. Crammed in the hot sweaty.

And everything works.

Everything,

Every little nuance of half-gag and semi-demi-wordplay i half wondered...

Would it?

Could it?...

It did.

After all that work.

All that keeping the faith.

Those seven long tough weeks of battling for audience.

For applause.

For laughs.

For anything.

For words.

For clearer,

Funnier.

For integrity.

For functioning ideas.

Words.

Phrases.

After all that work.

All that honing and honing.

All that keeping the faith.

The long hours.

The long days.

The dry weeks.

The parched days.

The airless unbreathable weeks.

Suddenly... double the audience of any other day.

And everything works.

Will work.

Has worked out.

The electric room.

The air ringing with laughter.

The perfect silence for the poetics and iambics.

The rapt and intent.

The shaking shoulders and the widening mouths.

...

And CBC are in so i get the Five Star.

And all is rolling from now on.

All is good.

All is going to work.

To pay off

To be colossal fun.

To not be futile.

O you beauty...

...

...

...

while this is a piece is wrote for CBC in 2009

...

STRAIGHT (FROM THAT SIDE OF TOWN)

...
One thing about the Fringe Tour is, it can be cruel.
...
It’s marvellous, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life and I feel I’ve usually been pretty lucky: with reviews, with venues, with time-slots, with press opportunities, and so on. This also means I’ve had lots of bad luck, but I still reckon the good luck well outweighs the bad.
...
Of course in many ways you make your own luck, and there is nouse in being in the right place at the right time, and fortune certainly favours the brave. But we all know there’s more to it than that.
...
Good luck.
...
And bad luck.
...
And every year on the Fringe Tour there are great shows which get little audience.
...
And there are truly admirable stick-their-neck-out flawed shows which get little audience.
...
And there are usually shows which weren’t much good out East but which, after humungous effort, and bad reviews, and walk-outs, and cutting and chopping and rewrites, and axing scenes and sections and strands, get taken apart and put back together as something which works well … And then they start to succeed somewhere across the Prairies and roll nicely into B.C. for some well-deserved if belated success.
...
But never have I known a show as good as Catherine Montgomery’s Straight (From That Side of Town) to get nowhere.
...
Every act I’ve spoken to loves this show. I love this show. Jonno from The Accident loves this show, Gemma Wilcox from The Honeymoon Period loves this show, Rob Gee from Fruitcake loves this show, my girlfriend Priscilla loves this show, Jayson from Fall Fair loves this show, Keira McDonald from Cherry Cherry Lemon loves this show, Jimmy Hogg from Like A Virgin loves this show, Anders from Uncalled For loves this show … We all love this show.
...
Yet critically, she gets slammed, and audience-wise and cash-wise, she gets very little.
...
It’s not a pretty show and some people are going to walk out. It’s messy, it’s ugly, it depicts grief, it depicts a damaged, drug-addled, booze-ridden young woman failing to get her life together. Yet it shines with … life in the face of darkness, with the love of mother for daughter, and daughter for mother … with the comedy of pain, with teenage hormonal compulsion, with energetic prose, with a face lighting to a glow as it articulates and laughs at the cruelties life throws at her.
...
This is a show written by a young woman with iron guts. The guts to try that. To start a show like that, there. To then take the audience on to that place. To be so aesthetically out there. And it’s performed with a woman with iron guts: to put herself through all that, day after day; to present all that to audiences show after show after show; and to get nothing back for all her heart, her guts, her sweat and her class.
...
The quantity of strength that must be in that performer, any performer, believing in their art and keeping going through all the s**t the days, the shows, the press, the reviews throw at you. To see good shows doing well and yet get nowhere yourself: to see iffy shows doing well and yet get nowhere yourself. Day after day. Show after show. Review after review. City after city.
...
I mean, I’ve had it tough on tours, yet I’m not sure I’ve ever even had it tough in two consecutive cities. I’ve always ridden the updown crashbang rollercoaster but I’ve always had shedloads of ups to shut out the many downs. And Straight (from That Side of Town) is excellently played, it features some great writing and it has the funniest sex-scene I’ve seen in years.
...
And yet she gets no audience. How come?
...
She has so much courage and, aesthetically and acting-wise, she is everything the fringe should be. Unafraid to go for the dark and twisted, unafraid to be go for the poetry in her prose, unafraid to structure a show in seven sections laid out one by one to make what should be a beautifully ugly winning hand.
...
The Fringe is all about risks: Risks in writing, risks in acting, risks in themes. Well, she’s taking every risk going, she’s stuck every neck out and she’s had every neck chopped off.
...
The only sad answer can be that The Fringe milieu is not everything it’s meant to be. Bravery can fail, talent can fail, risk-taking can fail.
...
Who is to blame for this? Catherine for her promotion? Reviewers for not realising the power and quality of the writing and the acting? Audience for ditto? Personally, I hesitate to blame audience for anything, but …
...
Catherine hasn’t failed, her show is a rocking success. The Fringe has failed her.
...
I love this show. It certainly ain’t pretty, but please go see it. Maybe in Victoria or Vancouver she’ll get the response alll of us want her to get. Me, I’m going to read some Corinthians from the Bible. Is it really as great as she makes it sound?
...

August 30, 2009

...

...

...

in other news

quiet life on a wet green hillside

above Sedi

above Phewa Lake

next Pokhara

...

...

in other news

good luck all ye Fringers

...

...

...

and that person who made a big difference is Brian Paisley

the guy who began Canada’s first Fringe festival

Edmonton

who first conceived the Canadian Fringe tour

and who passed earlier this month

...

so this post i have shared below is from Brian’s friend and mine, Ken Brown

and is about the difference made by this guy, and his coterie of hard-working enthusiasts

Ken’s piece gives this a deep perspective within North American theatre i wouldn’t have been capable of...

...

KEN’S POST

My dear friend Brian is dead. His death signifies the end of a vitally important era in the history of Canadian theatre. It also sounds a heavy knoll on those of us who loved him.

Canadian theatre was an evolving entity in 1981. It had gone through a Colonial period, in which nearly all of our theatre was given over to the production of plays from England and the United States. These plays were performed in theatres founded by, and run by, people who did not speak with our accent. Most spoke some version of English from the British Isles. We Canucks had been very busy surviving, and then in the mid-20th Century, helping European civilization survive. It was only in the course of Brian’s lifetime that we finally began to take control of our theatres, to write our own plays, and direct our home-grown actors. From about 1970 until 1982, Canadian theatre invented itself, led by visionaries across the country, from Paul Thompson in Toronto to Gerry Potter in Edmonton, we founded literally hundreds of theatre organizations devoted to the Canadian experience. Then Brian Paisley came back from the Edinborough Fringe Festival with a Big Idea: We could do the same thing as the Scots had done: we could run a festival in the city of Edmonton consisting of whatever work the theatre artists of this town chose to do. In 1982, Brian (and the energetic visionaries around him) got a chance to snag a $60,000 grant that was going unused, and invited a Edmonton theatricians to produce shows.

A bunch of companies responded to that call, and the first Edmonton Fringe Festival was born. To everyone’s surprise, it attracted thousands, many curious just to see what it might be like to drink a beer on the streets (a practice that was all but unknown in our town in 1982). We all know what happened in the years following. Thousands of writers, actors, and directors flocked to our town to seize the opportunity to show their new work. Edmonton developed a whole new language of theatre, as local artists figured out how to produce plays that could be set up in minutes. Great Edmonton playwrights came out ofd this development. We ended up with the largest theatre festival on the continent, attended by scores of thousands of enthusiasts who wanted to see, to hear, to share these new voices.

Through the first ten years of the Festival strode Brian Paisley, thinking up one unlikely idea after another to attract the audience and create a sense of something special happening in Old Strathcona. The sleepy community in which I was born became a raucous celebration of creativity, a vast social experiment, for two weeks every summer. By encouraging outdoor vendors, performers, and a vital street scene, Brian made people want to come out to the festival. This is the man most people remember. Many of us also remember that Brian was a dedicated artist. In the theatre he founded with his then-wife Ti Hallas, known as Chinook Theatre, Brian wrote directed, and produced new work. He invited unknowns like me to use the space (an invitation that was unique in the city). Like so many other artists, I had the opportunity to be heard at Chinook Theatre, to found a theatre company that could seek an audience at the Fringe, and seek to keep it at other times of the year.

Brian gave himself ten years as the Fringe’s Producer, and then, literally at the height of his fame in Edmonton, he walked away from the prestigious position that he had created to run the Princess Theatre. From there, he could encourage and promote the kind of deep cinema experience that was his first love, and open the doors of the Princess to theatre acts that had outgrown the 100-seat venues at the Fringe.

When Brian and his second wife Julia moved away to Victoria, Edmonton lost one of its great visionaries. But he kept many of the friends he had made in Edmonton. For my part, our friendship only deepened as we both became fathers to growing families. I loved Brian for his dry Irish wit, his unfailing curiosity, and his strong opinions. We kept in constant touch over the years, and when he finally moved, alone, to Puerto Escondido, a small town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, he enthused about the house he had built there so frequently and so glowingly, that I finally went down to visit. Thus began a wonderful part of my life after retiring from MacEwan. Every winter I would spend weeks, or months in Mexico, and alway part of it at Brian’s delightful house a few streets from the ocean. We spent our days quietly writing, or taking the “collectivo” truck into the town to shop. We hung out on the beach in the moonlight. We discussed life, art, and love. We watched one movie a night, projected onto the white wall of his living room. Brian was always curious, always critical of foolishness, and always creating. He wrote several novels at “La Casa Mango” and several screenplays. He was an active artist/creator at all times.

Brian died this past weekend. He was 79 years old. Tragically, his end was not easy. He did not have medical insurance, and the weeks that he spent in an American-style clinic were massively expensive. It has been an immense struggle for his family to find money to pay the ongoing medical expenses, and many appeals have been made. I hope you will not find it amiss if I repeat that the need is ongoing. The financial situation is still very difficult for those he left behind, and I encourage you to help. Soon, there will be a musical benefit for Brian at La Cité Francophone. Please attend!

Here is the GoFundMe link: https://gofund.me/70b3543de

Brian was an artist, a social visionary, a critic of bad art and bad politics. He was gregarious, friendly, and outgoing. He was also a tremendously shy person in some ways. Those who knew him well knew that he was very happy with his own company, while being entirely capable of engaging a room. Or a city, for that matter. He created a theatre movement that has literally transformed theatre all over the English-speaking world. He enjoyed it all with an ironic smile on his lips that could break out into a nearly childlike joy when something was really working.

Rest In Peace, my dear of friend. We will all miss you tremendously.

Kenneth Brown

...

Brian is a guy who truly did it

who took an idea and ran with it

for years

the Fringe ideal of a free artistic playground

created, every August, in Edmonton, Alberta

...

he was a great guy...

funny dynamic quick super-smart and enduringly passionate

i didn’t know him well

met him less than twenty times total

did not know what he looked like at forty until three days ago

yet he was always a pleasure

and a laugh

and ever a shot in the arm

...

...

i find it amazing how the Edmonton Fringe

Brian’s great legacy

has kept itself on the straight and narrow so long

in a changing city

and a changing world

yet one must ask

how will it endure?

and will it be betrayed?

...

the obvious comparison is with Edinburgh

the Mother of all Fringes

yet, now that the Edinburgh Fringe has long lost its ideals

people forget how long it held onto those ideals

for decades

for over half its life, from the late 40s until the mid-90s

before its Corporate carve-up

when it turned into the rapacious Libertarian marketplace it has now long been

...

the kind where God is most certainly on the side of the big guns

...

yet Brian first visited Edinburgh in the early 80s

when it still had principles

when it was still possible to use the words “principles” and “Edinburgh Fringe” in the same sentence without it being risible

and, as Ken explains, he took their glorious and thriving founding ideas

and ideals

and ran with them

a team, a coterie, a gang, and more, all formed around him

and they all ran with it full-tilt head-long for years

...

creating an ever-growing and wildly diverse festival of theatre in almost all its forms

with huge audiences

a marvellous atmosphere

and a thrilling array of possibilities for the up-for-it audience

...

so that original artistic dream

long gone in Scotland

still lives on in Canada

because of Brian

...

i’ve said and written repeatedly, ever since i discovered the Canadian Fringes

“if the Canadian Fringes are like a Franklin D Roosevelt version of Capitalism

then Edinburgh is like a Genghis Khan version of Capitalism”

and, errr, nobody tends to disagree with that statement

in the slightest

...

while Brian is the chief reason the Canadian Fringes have still

residually at least

kept their ideals

for the first principle of the Canadian Fringes

devised by Brian

is

“THE ARTIST KEEPS ONE HUNDRED PER CENT OF THE DOOR”

...

which, among other things, has created my living for over twenty years

...

and while all the Canadian Fringes might wriggle around this principle

with “service charges” etc

yet it still holds true-ish

and, if Brian’s principle was removed, everything would become very different very quickly

and it would soon become the rapacious marketplace of Edinburgh, Adelaide and more

but this hasn’t happened yet.

and why?

Brian

...

for in Canada a new artist

with a crazy idea

still has a chance

to succeed

thrive

get spurred

to make another, more

go further

and ...

...

while

in Edinburgh

they are simply another blood-red morsel

dropped into the voracious maw

of the venue-sharks

...

one of the great things about the Edmonton Fringe is that it loudly states

It Does Not Have To Be That Way

...

...

while, amazingly

the Fringe Tour was also Brian’s idea

for this unique and glorious thing

festival after festival in city after city across a vast country

for the whole Summer

was his conception

...

for once Edmonton was up and running

well

why not have a similar festival before, somewhere East of Alberta?

and after, somewhere West... Vancouver?

and soon Festivals spread across Canada

and became that unique wonder, the Canadian Fringe Tour

my living

...

and yes, the person who first thought of this was... Brian Paisley

this is real achievement for just one guy

...

...

of course Edinburgh has the Free Fringe

where, in 97, i ran one of the first two shows in what became that Free Fringe

[i did it less for reasons of ideal

even though i liked the ideal

i did it because it seemed the best way to get an audience and not fail]

...

while, as Brian Paisley would understand very well

what counts is to keep going with an idea

year in year out

and the guy who did that

who started the same year as me [i believe]

was Peter Buckley Hill

who just kept going

rode the sneers and jeers and

won out in the end

...

yet i soon jumped from doing Edinburgh

because i found something much better

much more free of bullshit

and elitism

and corporatism

and sharks

the Canadian Fringe Tour

begun by Brian

a free artistic milieu where you could and can stick your artistic neck right out

and make decent money

...

for the Canadian Fringe is cheap mass theatre

and cheap times mass maybe means plenty

...

...

Brian’s legacy is

of course

not so assured

yet its amazing it has lasted this long

though little lasts forever

...

while i believe i have an advantage in seeing what happens to Edmonton next

for i have been to the future

or, at least, a future

for i was in Edinburgh when the all-change happened

the Corporatism

the theft of innocence

the mid-late 90s

when the venues, the comedy agents and the City Council took over

when it was realised they didn’t have to just make money out of the audience

they could also make money out of the performers

and they certainly did

when they astutely transmuted decades of effort and youth and bravery and creativity into hard coin

as Artists began to lose thousands

and, while many artists were loudly protesting

the small-government Scottish Fringe found itself powerless to do anything about it

...

...

while it would be naive to believe money won’t find a way

that the Edmonton Fringe won’t be sold out somehow

so the question is

how will the Edmonton Fringe betray itself?

...

there are and will be fault-lines

which the following questions might probe at

...

...

what proportion of shows are wholly original?

written from scratch?
and is that proportion declining?

?

...

is the cap on price a socialist hold-out amongst the libertarianisms

?

...

is it true to say

“the women make art, the men make money”?

?

...

is there empire building within the Fringe?

and is the Fringe already facilitating it?

?

...

in the future there will be equivalents to the Pleasance, the Assembly, the Gilded Balloon, etc

who and where and what will these be?

?

...

in what ways are the three best Canadian Fringes, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto, different from each other?
and are these divergences widening?

?

...

how many Canadian Fringes do local companies do for the money?

?

...

is it a triumph that there are TV stars in 450 seat venues?

when the size of that number, 450, means wholescale wipe-out for shows by unknowns

who struggle for a decent-sized audience

of course, TV stars were always going to come sooner or later

its a product of success

though the Fringe didn’t have to allow such huge venues

and therefore change the artistic ecosystem

and wipe-out shows by unknowns

?

...

in Edinburgh there came a point when the big venues could dictate to the Fringe

how far away [decades?] is that time for Edmonton?

?

...

how much harder does it get every year for new companies?

?

...

is there as much artistic risk being taken as there was ten years ago...

twenty?

?

...

...

i wonder what questions other Fringers

performers, audience, administrators

deem the most pertinent?

?

…

in other news

...

Kathmandu

curiously quieter on a Saturday

where i just walked down Freak Street

near the wonderful Durbar Square

and i’m told Freak Street is where the freaks would stay in the 60s and 70s

and the name stuck

...

coincidentally

i’m off to Sedi, above Pokhara

to see my old Gokarna mucker, Dave

who was here in 1976

and who was a “freak”

...

says Dave

WE WEREN’T HIPPIES

HIPPIES WAS MADE OF PLASTIC, MAN

WE WAS FREAKS

...

...

in other news

...

its a Kathmandu of moody skies

where the feet want to wander at near random

down the streets and lanes

and alleys

across the squares

past the old and older

the tumbledown and the tidy

the bustling and the heaving

the crammed and the crammeder

through Kathmandu

the dead-end squares and the long curving exitless streets

where the feet want to and can and shall

pace the straights and

random the corners

so its my third time

in one of my very favourite cities on Earth

maybe my favourite, after Montreal

yet this time its rainy season

which does put a damper

and which means

as the mornings are bright and clear and blue-above

and slowly cloud and grey and drizzle through the afternoon

to many an evening of unadulterated downpour

i should be rising well before six to enjoy the splendours

of the streets before they have people

of the markets as they wake up

of the shrinking shadows

of the empty squares

many with fabulous stupas

a little like a giant white toilet plunger

with weird pairs of eyes drawn here and there

with gentle omming music

and incense rising

and overhanging eaves

and post-earthquake girders, still, holding up old walls

all a fascination for the eye and feet drawn here

and there

through one higgledy-housed square

into another piggledy-housed square

into an alleyway

and maybe into a further smaller head-stooping alleyway

maybe leading to a dead-end where the locals stare at the stymied foreigner

maybe leading on to another white stupa in another irregularly housed square

then, suddenly, another busy street

or busier market

with colourful bunting and flags and pennants

with shiny brass sculpting

with yet more gazillions of shops each overflowing into the street

with the higgledy of the different houses

the shape of many of which i can imagine in pre-Dickens London, centuries ago

as the eye zigzags while the feet zagzig

in a random walk through the old and the ancient

the older and the ancienter

past serene Buddhas

and demonic Gods who will make a passing liar vomit blood

past monks and nuns in maroon

past football shirts and trekker gortex

on a mappy scribble of an extended amble through olde worlde fabulous

for i dunno how long

as i thought i’d leave by now

and head West to see a pal

in the heights above Sedi and Pokhara

yet its much to soon to leave this near endless splendour

where i have a hankering to live off quasi-Chinese street-ish food

and where i should really have a beer

for in Ladakh, India, which i just left

i spent much of June a whole 250 km from any beer

while here its on both corners at the end of the street

yet i haven’t got round to beer yet

and might not for a day or three

of more ambly randoming

up the 365 steps to the famous temple a kilometre West

over the bridge to another old royal capital, Patan

and round and round the lanes and alleys of this Old City once again

...
…
…

…
from remote Ladakh, very Northern India
to Nepal, capital city
...
from cool and bright and open and fresh
to warm and sticky and shadowed and muggy
...
from empty streets and paths
to heaving alleys and lanes
to walk-halting traffic jams on thin roads
...
from a Buddhism
to another Buddhism
...
from tiny villages and two largeish towns
to a giant city sprawling for miles of jagged sullied concrete outside the historic fabulous old
...
from stretched out
to everything on top of each other, packed in, one thing after the next
jammed stuffed crowded rammed
...
from slow
to busy
to busier
...
from gaps between
to the next starting before the last has finished
and more already starting before those have properly begun
...
from muted
to garish
...
from low-rise and wide-open sky
to eaves and rooves above thin streets
...
from stretching out in space
to banging head hard on stone beams
after insufficient stooping in ever-shrinking rain-flooded alleyway
...
from loosely curving lanes
to tight zigzaggery
...
from junctions
to crossroads
...
from one choice, maybe two,
to many
...
from long strides
to short inhibited steps
...
from tallest person in the street
to tallest person in the street
...
from chicken chow mein
to buffalo chow mein
...
from Tibetan / Ladhaki or Indian food
to Chinese or Indian or Nepalese
...
from ice-melt rivers in torrential spate
to rainy season deluge
...
from Buddhism and Islam
to Buddhism-merged-Hinduism
...
from 3500-metre altitude issues
to none
...
from, often, no beer for 240 k
to beer-shops on the corner
...
from breakfast of local honey with tandoori roti from alley-side bakery oven
to hotel buffet breakfast
...
from new streets solely of hotels and guest-houses
to ancient old and older

...

from no pizzas no burgers no franchises no coffee-shops full of westerners

to no pizzas burgers franchises or coffee-shops full of...
...
from stark rocky plunging valleys
to intricately ornamental beauty
...
from rock-falling scree-slopes
to post-earthquake precarious walls
...
from no-mirrors and
i-forgot-what-i-look-like
to oh shit, really?
...
from tumbledown grey-stone hovels
and robust square elegant white new houses
to dilapidated, wonky, bowed, sullied, yawing, crumbling
...
from Leh
to Kathmandu

…

…

…

while this is a picture from my next perch
above Sedi, near Pokara

photo dump Ladakh

...

two nights left of my six weeks wandering the region

...

an astounding place

where i quickly ran out of words for ...

dramatic majestic grand

harsh bleak stark

boulder rock stone scree

sumptuous ebullient verdure verdant green

deep steep plunging

etc

...

so i’ll let the photos do the talking

...

and Ladakh is really not like India

at all

much more Tibetan

much more like the Upper Mustang Valley in Nepal

or, Tibet, i guess

...

enjoy the photos

...

...

...

and its two nights left of my six months in India

...

Kathmandu Saturday

one of my very favourite cities upon this Earth

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

hitch-hiking has been great in this region

and the best way to get around

...

super-easy

no waits over thirty minutes

except the biggest day of the Shia Muslim’s Muharram Festival

when there was zero traffic

...

faster than the bus

where there aren’t many buses anyhow

because there aren’t many inhabitants

because this remote area is pretty empty

and it ain’t easy to find out when the bus is

because maybe the folk you ask don’t understand you

or , very possibly, you don’t understand them

... and anyhow i often ain’t been quite sure where i want to end up

and have happily thrown myself upon the winds of chance

...

done in your own time

as you have long enough

and don’t mind being stuck on a roadside

with an utterly fabulous striking view

for maybe two minutes, maybe thirty

...

safe

EVEN YOUNG LOCAL WOMEN HITCH-HIKE IN THIS REGION

which certainly don’t happen in most of India

where many young women are intimidated by the streets

...

cheap

like free

...

the best way to meet local folk

me i used to hitch-hike masses

back in my Twenties

and it was a great and rewarding way to meet folk i would never meet in any other way

and it still is

i’ve been crammed in cars full of chatty nuns and monks

while my lifts’ English has tended to be excellent

so i’ve met two doctors, an engineer, a crypto-whizzkid, two teachers, three IT guys, plus a civil servant in the Education Ministry, and another... and more

who have given me more of a sense of, an education about, this region than any other source

where one thing i’ve learnt is...

THEY DON’T LIKE RULE FROM DELHI

they’re a Union Territory not a State

which means rule from down South

and the folks i’ve met want Ladakh to be a State

yet they don’t expect this to happen while the BJP are in power

and the BJP ain’t losing power any time soon

...

fun

laughs with the lift

gorgeous roadsides

even when there’s been zero traffic its been an all-surrounding pleasure

...

and liberating

it gives a great sense of freedom to throw oneself on the winds of fate

to be governed by a roll of the random dice

...

and you get there anyhow

wherever it is

sooner or later

...

andnuncomplicated

in Lamaruyu, in Mulbekh, in Kargil, in Brakoo, in Rangdum

you walk out your door and you simply start

...

...

...

...

in other news

i’ve introduced that ubiquitous Canadian joke to a few

“here we have two seasons

winter and construction”

and the Ladakhis they like that joke a lot