The Pull of the Bush

Rising up out of Sawyer's Valley the highway careens at almost the level of the treetops. The forest sprawls out, a shawl over the dry land. It is an honour to see it from this level. The air tunneling through the two front windows makes the car shake. I am driving at 100 km/h and I am listening to "The Dreaming" by Kate Bush, and I am singing loudly and the sky is large and baby blue above me.

See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand.

I break, and the trailer (heavy with the luggage of twenty-six newly arrived CISV teens who themselves are carving crushes and hopes and impressions on each other in the bus just behind me) jolts the car forward as if being toyed with by a hidden magnet. An old wooden train carriage in a small paddock. The rust tin roofs. On the road's edge I pass a car crash memorial; plastic flowers scattered in murky jars on the gravel and a Metallica flag hugging the death tree, refusing to let it forget its charges.

At the turnoff I get out to open the sheep gate; unclipping the chain, throwing the two gates swinging, barefeet on the red stones, Kate Bush spilling out across the yellow grass. I have been listening to this album on repeat the whole way from the city and its beautiful, its perfect. In the bus windows Scandinavian and North American faces are pushed to the glass, anxiously staring at their new temporary life. There is a rattle in the bonnet of the car. The patriotic SHOOSH of wind in the eucalypts. Its nice to drive in one certain direction. It feels like home.

See the light ram through the gaps in the land.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Går å Norge

In 2007, I'm going to live in Norway.

All these photos of Norway are from Fecal Face dot com, and are by Corey Arnold

State of My Life Address, 8th December 2006

A. Today I have lived for exactly 26 years, which means I am no longer classified, formally, as "youth". I have been alive for 9496 days.

B. I am currently living in an old terrace house, which I share with two girls, Jess and Laura. The house has the word MENAI printed on its front facade, above the roof of the front porch. The Menai were the Greek goddesses of the lunar months, the fifty daughters of Selene (the Moon) and Endymion, the king of Elis and Olympia. They each represented one of the fifty lunar months of the four year Olympiad. I have the third room as you progress from the front door, down the hallway. My bedroom is fairly full of items, clothes, books, boxes, cds and other items. On the walls there are 42 postcards, a chart with the letters of the Arabic alphabet, a large diagram of the skeletal system, a reprint of an old map of Australia (missing Tasmania), 24 prints of drawings by Marcel Dzama which are attached to metal rods with bulldog clips, a framed poster advertising a 2003 Mount Eerie/Mountain Goats/Baptist Generals concert in Anacortes, Washington, six small black frames containing Chinese paper-cut characters, and a reproduction print of a 1936 promotional poster for the Palestinian Tourist Association. My bedspread is navy blue with a very fine pin stripe and my bed linen is black. My house is in Lake Street, which is geographically in Northbridge, but technically counted as Perth (because of strange jig-jagged urban zoning) which is the state capital of Western Australia, Australia.

C. I am currently in bed, with my computer on my lap, a wonderful breeze coming through my window and the occasional light spindrift from the thin mist of summer rain hitting my bare shoulders. I am listening to Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. There is soft light from a paper lantern. It is after 1.00am on December 8th and I am tired, having worked ten hours today over a 13 hour period.

D. I am also hungry. In the last 24 hours I have eaten: 1 x bowl of Wild Berry Fruity Bix with milk; many chocolates while in a three hour meeting at work; a Bean Burger with chili cream from Retro Betty's Burgers in Oxford Street, Leederville and two fairly old mini chocolate muffins which were home-made by my boss, Sharon. I was planning to go to the Moon cafe for dinner after work but then I had emails to write and this thing to write, so hungry I remain. This is a common pattern for me - I am terrible at keeping myself in supply of three balanced meals a day. Despite this I currently weigh 70 kilograms and I am 182 cms tall, making my body mass index 21.1, which is healthy enough, apparently.

E. I currently have two paid jobs (bookstore, out-of-school care centre), one smooth alabaster 1.83GHz Macbook, one dental filling, no pets. I am borrowing a car from Gene Eaton, who is in Europe, for a couple of weeks, but usually I ride my bike almost everywhere. My favourite ride is from Leederville to home when its a beautiful still night and the road is empty of traffic and the Morton Bay Fig trees smell rich and pungent. My least favourite ride is around the river towards the university when the sea-breeze is blowin' right towards me and my backpack is very heavy.

F. I have earlier tonight been notified that I am one of seven Australians who have been accepted to the Peace and Conflict Studies Specialisation, as part of a Master of Arts (International Relations) at the Australian National University in Canberra and the International Peace Research Institute / Bjørknes College in Oslo, Norway in 2007. This means that (if I choose to accept) I will spend six months in Canberra from February next year, followed by a semester in Oslo and then another in Canberra. This is exciting news, but there is still a little bit of thinking to be done, as I have also been accepted for a Master of Social Science (International Development) at RMIT in Melbourne, and this also looks like a great course. That said, I think the Canberra/Oslo option is the way I am likely to go, despite the fact that pretty much the best thing our capital had going for it - the legality of fireworks - is no longer applicable.

G. I am not affiliated with any organised religions, though I believe humans should remain humble and inquisitive always, and that we have, on the whole invented a reality to frame ourselves in which is inherently corrupt, self-serving and largely arrogant, and that needs to be changed, in significant ways. I believe strongly in non-violence, but am not strictly a pacifist. I identify in particular ways with all three monotheistic religions and find myself regularly concerned with trying to help rescue Islam in particular from misunderstandings, distortions or misrepresentations. Which is kinda like trying to use a farm plough to flatten the oceans, I fully realise.

H. I currently have about 402 Australian dollars in my savings account, along with $A28.50 in my wallet. I will be paid a further $A298 later today. There's another $US10 in my desk drawer, along with coins from Colombia, Israel, Thailand and Costa Rica. I owe $A100 to my parents for a speeding fine I apparently (according to the multinova photographs) attracted a few months ago, which I have only just found out about.

I. I have been to 34 countries (Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, Philippines, Hong Kong (pre-unification), Israel, Egypt, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Spain, France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Czech Republic, Austria, Canada, USA, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina) - 35 if you count the Palestinian Territories (actually, I do).

J. I am currently the co-President of the Perth chapter of CISV - Building Global Friendships. I am a director on the National Board of CISV Australia and a trainee on the CISV International Mosaic Committee. CISV is a worldwide non profit organisation working with young people to promote peace education and cross cultural friendship. In the last 365 days I have attended three international events for this organisation - an International People's Project in Phang Nga, Thailand; the Asia Pacific Regional Workshop in Manila, Philippines and a Seminar Camp in Medellin, Colombia.

K. My appearance has changed very little since last year. Until a week ago I had a month-old moustache for reasons of charity, but it has been replaced by the regular facial hair. On my wrists are two Brazilian wish band ribbons, one green and the other red, as well as two bracelets (1x black, 1x brown) from the Colombian Amazon, made from vegetable ivory. At the moment I am otherwise naked, unless you count the doona.

L. On my birthday today (after I sleep for four hours or so) I will be rising early, going to Claremont Pool, completing a refresher training for my Aquatic Rescue certificate, coming home, sleeping a little more, going to work at the bookstore and fielding enquiries regarding the location (in our store) of this Christmas's sleeper hit(!) book title, Where's Bin Laden, which is kinda like Where's Waldo/Wally but, like, with Osama instead of big Wal, which, wow, how clever, don't you think Carrie will think this is hilarious, what a perfect Xmas pressie, maybe I'll get one for Rebecca too, but is it her sense of humour, oh yeah sure, why not, get three etc. Also: I will eat cake.

M. I am currently reading The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. The last DVD I hired and watched was The L Word Season 2 Disc 1. The last gig I went to was Jason Molina at the Rosemount Hotel. The last girl I kissed will have to remain nameless this year, as I am fairly confident she would prefer it that way.

N. I do not currently have a girlfriend, I am not dating anybody, I am not engaging in repeated casual sexual relations with anybody and I do not have any crushes of significance. I am aiming to seperate the intimate and the sexual into two different spheres, and feel mostly like they would best be coming from mutually exclusive sources at this point rather than combined into the package of a single romantic relationship. And, in fact, the sexual I am putting aside as much as possible for as long as possible, so to concentrate almost exclusively (or at least increasingly) on the intimate (ie: close friendships, without lies or fictions). I need this.

O. I have a goal to speak English, French, Spanish and Arabic fluently by 2014 - there has been little progress on this plan in the last year, and while I have refreshed my Spanish brain while in Colombia and maybe added a bit of knowledge in this area I have carelessly lost a lot of the Arabic I gained in 2005. I plan to concentrate on the Spanish in 2007 and also add to this a devoted one year goal to getting some Norwegian under my wing, should I actually come to live there. Sommerfugl = butterfly or, literally, "summerbird". I hope!

P. I have never taken mind-altering or hallucinogenic drugs, I have never smoked cigarettes, I have never been drunk and I have never drunk coffee. I do eat meat though, and I eat a lot of sugar.

Q. Often, recently, I have felt so distanced from people and from the world and from all the values and opinions and lifestyles and reactions and emotions that humans seem to have, that at times I have ended up feeling almost invisible. Sometimes this makes me feel angry, sometimes very sad. Sometimes it makes me feel resolute and strong and gives me direction - sometimes it thrashes me down and renders me completely directionless. Sometimes I don't understand people so much I want to scream and melt. That said, there are a selection of people I am fortunate enough to know and love who just seem so ready to change everything, just teetering there, just on the ridge of great things, or, actually, possibly already achieving them right now, right under my nose, and I'm just not noticing properly while I'm focusing too much on all the people who aren't. These people, these people who swirl around me and perform brilliantly, and who we are all blessed to live alongside, I also sometimes feel invisible in their world, ghost-like and shadowed, but at the same time, they are and they will always be a constant inspiration and source of wonder to me.


State of My Life Address 2005 (25 years)

Disputes / fruits

I was born just under twenty six years ago in a hospital in Subiaco, Western Australia. Most of the first seven years of my childhood, however, were spent in a small town called Donnybrook. The word donnybrook means “a brawl or fracas”, “a scene of chaos” or “a heated quarrel or dispute”, a usage which comes from the Donnybrook Fair, held from the time of King John onwards in a Dublin suburb of the same name (Irish: Domhnach Broc, meaning Church of [Saint] Broc). The fair was notorious for drunkenness and violent disorder and was eventually banned in 1855.

Indeed, it is from these Donnybrook days that I remember my first experience with conflict. When I was six or seven some of our sheep escaped from our paddocks and into the neighbouring fields, the result of some poor fencing. Our neighbour, whose name was Mrs Strong, came over to our house and proceeded to confront my mum and dad and lambaste them hysterically and aggressively for their negligence. At some stage my mother reached out her hand in an effort to make peace, and gently placed her hand on Mrs Strong’s arm while pleading for calm. Her reaction was to shout wildly and to go straight to the police to report that mum had physically abused her. The police laughed (they knew the Strongs well) and refused to press charges. Throughout the incident I hid in my bedroom with my sister, Kate, and I distinctly remember that first ever taste of fear and horror as my utopian world (of goslings, of willow trees, of old barns and orange school buses) was invaded by this sudden barrage of hatred and hostility, right out there on my own porch, forcing itself upon my own parents.

I invite you now to enjoy the following, from the current Wikipedia entry on the Donnybrook of Western Australia, the place of my childhood:

DONNYBROOK (WESTERN AUSTRALIA)

Donnybrook is situated between Boyanup and Kirup on the South Western Highway, 210km south of Perth, Western Australia. The region is known for its apple production.

Apples
Donnybrook is long proud of its apple production and has many town icons bearing the fruit. Such can be seen on the main street, where apple shaped lights line the entrance of the Old Railway Station. These lights (six in total, on three posts) have in recent years been restored to their former luscious green glory. Atop the east Donnybrook hill lies an even larger tribute to the apple, a giant tower with an apple at the top. From the top of the apple visitors can view Donnybrook and its surrounding areas.

A yearly tradition in Donnybrook occurring in Easter is the Donnybrook Apple Festival. In recent years the festival has not occurred, but community interest assures it will continue again in the future. During the apple festival, the citizens of Donnybrook gather on Egan Park to celebrate the apple. The festival includes agricultural displays, sideshow alley and of course, the crowning of the Apple Queen.

The Apple Queen has long been a citizen of the Donnybrook/Balingup area, aged between 17 and 25 years. In recent years this has been changed to the title of "Ambassador" and males are now allowed to enter. During the contest, local girls compete for the title by attending dinners, doing community service and riding on giant apple shaped floats. From these floats they give apples, fruit and lollies to the children lining the closed-off section of the South Western Highway.

During the street parade the Catholic Church of Donnybrook blesses the holy apple, assuring a good harvest in the years to come.

The Shire of Donnybrook also had a mascot, Donny Applebrook. Donny was a giant green apple who promoted the festival. Donny has since disappeared from public life.


Tourism
Aside from apples, Donnybrook economy also relies on tourism. Many tourists pass through the town, admire the apples and sometimes enjoy apple treats at local cafes. Other visitors include backpackers from all over the world. Many of these backpackers earn money by picking fruit in the area.

First Daylight Saved

7.30pm - Hyde Park, Perth - Christina, Chris, Lauren
Mutual Love Club

Remastered, Repackaged, Rereleased.

As even the most casual of readers would have noticed, we at the Standard Line Delivery Corporation have sought to rejuvenate our image and souls with a fresh new layout. This is a strategic move which we felt would, in a utopian reality, persuade us to once again fall in love with the "blog" medium, and this "blog" in particular, and maybe lead to our scribbling more on its walls and skin, with more frequency and less despair about any monotony a Perth life may or may not lead. The artist whose trees and humans line the background is Marcel Dzama, who is Manitoban and uses root beer to paint with and is a member of the Royal Art Lodge.

So, now that this post has served its primary purpose, which is to inform you of something which is plainly visually obvious, no one should have cause for complaint if it now degenerates into a late-night attempt on my behalf to piece together a quick abstract of life, recently, for me and those around me.

• Tonight is the final night of Movember, and the potentially unhealthy men of Australia are $330 richer thanks to the rich generosity of a small handful of kind benefactors. Thank you to you all. As there was next to no visible change in the quantity of hair since the below photo (taken almost a month ago) I have opted not to post an end-of-month update, and you'll have to believe me when I tell you it wasn't that good. Surprisingly.
  
• I have decided that the closest thing I have to a chapel (or alternative place-of-worship) right now is the underpass below the Narrows Bridge, right on the side of the Swan, where the sea-breeze whips and gusts where the concrete pylons and the road above perfectly frame the old brewery and the lightly rippling river and the magic-hour sun leers just above the cliffs running up to Kings Park as I am riding home from work, and there are silhouettes of anglers on the banks, and the rays of light fall sharply between the grey slats of the bridge's underbelly and even when I am in the foulest of moods and every motorist and most pedestrians I have passed since leaving work has attracted my swelling hosility, even then it still feels (just for a moment) as though if a manifestation of Yahweh might exist anywhere at all in Perth, this is where it must surely (surely!) be, at this exact time.
  
• Which will be an hour later next week because: daylight saving trial!
  
• Life right now = approximately 25% sleep, 10.7% bookstore, 12.5% afterschool care, 7 - 15% CISV, 5% reading, 2% socialising with housemates, 10% socialising with other friends, 2% chores, 8% wasting time on computer, 5% transport time... the rest=other.
• In the last month I have been threatened and chased on my bike by five guys in a car with no lights on, at three in the morning; I have seen a motorcycle-car accident; I have requested a police welfare check on a drug-fucked guy passed out on the verge outside my house (a job they only half saw through, leaving the woken guy angry and violent outside my front door); I have witnessed a major car collison; I have seen three police cars busting kids who had been harrassing neighbourhood homes; I have seen a thuggish looking guy holding another guys hands on his head and making him kneel next to a sports car on the pavement.... all of this within three blocks of my house.
• Oh, it's late, there's work tomorrow; I will continue my directionless scatter soon enough.
• x Out.
  

Mo' Money

Hi there,
I've never been all that much a fan of the moustache... It's not been something I've considered strongly as a worthwhile addition to my face, not without accompanying stubble anyway. But, this month is Movember (the month formally known as November) and along with beer swiggin' males all over Australia I have decided to (attempt to) grow a mo for one month only. All the money goes to organisations working on men's health - focusing on prostate cancer and male depression mostly - and you too can send me a couple of bucks if you choose, by visiting http://www.movember.com.au/au/sponsor and then entering my rego number, which is 22309. Meanwhile, you can expect to see occasional photos here on this blog of the progress of the growth, although I'd warn you not to expect all that much, as I am not all that adept at facial hair growth, depsite long term asperations to a Sam Beam style beard, or at least Colin Farrell type stubble. But I will do my best.

Anyway, at the moment I look like this:

24 Hour Comic

The comic I did a few weekends ago for the 24 Hour Comic project is now printed and ready for reading. If you would like a copy, please smile in my general direction, or even better, give me some sugar in any way you deem appropriate.

The comic is about the conflict situation in Colombia and is based partly on my time there, but also on recent reports by Medecins Sans Frontieres and Human Rights Watch.

A Location, A Menu, An Adventure, An Image

You can tell summer is here, because there’s moths whapping across the iridescent bulbs in the bookstore, and posters stuck with Blue-Tac are curling from the walls and by 10am its already too hot to be still in bed on a lazy Saturday morning like today’s. But here at Hyde Park, where I have come to type the afternoon away, the sun is bright but the wind is still strong and the air is filled with dragonflies and with falling leaves and with whole swarms of dancing blossom, buds of which are dropping onto my laptop and getting stuck between the keys. I am seated on my rainbow rug, alone, with a makeshift picnic consisting of White Rabbit milk and rice paper lollies (from China), SOTO cuttlefish flavoured snacks (from Malaysia) and a Berri 2.4L Family Pack container of Apple Juice (from Australia). The crows caw in crescendos, ducks preen, Italian men gather in brimmed hats, glittering ribbon hangs from the twigs of trees, remnants of a long faded park-based celebration. A lone, dumpy woman sits still, slumped slightly forward, on a bench nearby, staring off blankly across the park, white, knobbly legs poking out from a pale blue skirt like broken pegs. Groups of rosellas, swirling oaks, a wedding limousine, a girl’s laughter. The White Rabbits are not anywhere as good as I remember them to be.

Last weekend I cooked a dinner party for some people and although I had some valuable assistance from a few key individuals it was, I think, the first time I could honestly say that I had done that, of my own accord, in my lifetime. It was all Middle Eastern food, as will be the successive dinner parties or picnics which are planned to occur on a fortnightly schedule from this day forward, and to which you might be invited if you are both within proximity and particularly strategic in your dealings with me (Let us assume, for the purposes of this blog, that the food will be at least, somewhat, good). The previous menu, which all but eight of you missed out on, read as follows:

Mezze
Warm Lebanese pita bread
Olive Oil
Za’atar
Fresh Hummus (made from hand-peeled chickpeas, kids)
Muhammara (Red pepper and walnut paste)
Baba Ghanoush
Eggah (Parsley omelette)

Mains
Moghrabieh (Lebanese giant couscous) with chicken and lemon zest
Stuffed red peppers & stuffed tomatoes

To Drink
Chilled Egyptian Karkadai (hibiscus infusion drink)

In summary, I have decided that cooking can be rather fun and isn’t all that stressful after all.

In other recent news:
I have, in the course of three weeks, twice had to foil attempts to steal from the bookstore. The first time we were tipped off by a nearby store owner who suspected that the woman had just stolen some cards and maybe a tshirt from him and that she was now in our store, which she was. I watched as she tucked a number of books into her bag and then made sure than she realised that I was watching until she sheepishly, and not altogether stealthfully, removed the stack from her bag (3 x Jodie Picoult novels and 1 x WA lesbian magazine) and tried to balance them on a nearby display shelf as if nothing had ever happened. She then bought two other books and mumbled something non-sensical which I presume was aimed to throw me off making any comment about her poor attempt at crime. The other time was last weekend, when I was again tipped off, this time by the kebab store guys from next door, that a girl had just stuffed a calendar in her bag and walked a little way down the street. My reponse this time was somewhat more direct as I approached from behind and took the calendar from her bag before threatening, rather hollowly, to contact the cops. Her excuse went something like “Oh some girl just GAVE it to me to put in my bag. I dunno WHO she was! She just said ‘Here, put this in your bag and walk away’. Yeah, I don’t know what that was about”. And really there’s not all that much you can say to an alibi as strong as that.

I leave you now with a Clip-Out-And-Keep souvenir photo of me which I will take right now, with my computer, of me sitting in the park in my traditional Colombian hat. Good day.

Time capsule letter

Below is a letter I wrote to myself while I was on the Seminar Camp in Israel in August last year. The idea was for our letters to be sent to us one year or so later, which they were, and I received mine this week. Thankyou Eva, for remembering to send it out.

------------------

3 August 2005, Bet Govrin, Israel, 5.00pm

Dear Chris,
Last night there were jackals. Of course there has often, or always, been jackals before last night, every night, for a number of millennia anyway. But last night there began to be jackals for me. Jackals entered my mind, my sphere, with a distant hoot, heard above the growling cello coming through my headphones. Suddenly there I was, contemplating jackals. Contemplating my proximity to jackals. There were jackals last night.

About a week ago it had been the same thing with warplanes. Their roar filled the sky, an echoing boom over the kibbutz. Before that it had been Helene, one of the most gorgeous people who ever did live. Before that there was Eva, whose presence filled everywhere with light.

This camp has also bought new things from within. I know, now, some of my most significant and most dangerous flaws. Before, I might have guessed at them or seen them in miniature, but I may not have held them in my palms like plump, round plums. There they sit now, wet and dark, firm and promising, one in each palm, ready for me to decide what to do with them now. I cannot leave them behind: in many ways they are attached to my skin, they are attached deeper. I must carry them, learn to carry them, to hold them well. I must cherish and admire them, like terrible monsters in a nearby cage. I must learn and understand the howl of a jackal.

I wonder what the next six months will bring, what the next year will bring, what new things will grow from within me or approach from outside? What will a month of focused attention in Cairo do or bring? A month or two of desert solitude? A few weeks in Palestine? Will my heart and head jumble further, get dry, soak and expand, explode completely? Already (it’s been less than a month) I feel better, stronger, more focused, less bored – will this trend continue or will I sink back into post camp ennui? Hopeless sadness? Self doubt?

This night is advancing, we approach the close of camp. We will be spread, soon, smeared again in the CISV Diaspora. The group, unbreakable; broken. And the warplanes will roar and the jackals will howl.

And those I love and those I can no longer live without, they will be in every song, they will be in every wish. They will be the birds and the drums and the gorgeous masts of old ships. Our love can, and our love always will, from this point forward, float on.

I hope you are well & happy & safe.

Chris.

News Feed

After over a month with no contact I return, loyal subscribers, to your bedsides and Electric Viewing Consoles™, humble with apology and laden with tawdry gossip. Since returning home from the cloud-crested mountainsides of Colombia I have been gradually resettling, a process which took significantly longer than I think anyone could have anticipated, but which seems to have advanced to a stage with which I can feel comfortable and ready to call life "on track," once again.

I have recently added a StatCounter to this blog which lets me to see quite a lot of information about every single one of you who comes to read about me and I am happy to report recent visitors from places such as Lithuania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Guatemala. I can see that due to the second last sentence of my last post I have attracted hits from charming North American pedophiles Googling "adorable pre-teens," and that, mysteriously, I have developed a fanbase in Canberra, a city in which I know no one but produces more hits than any other city in the world including Perth. I do now realise, however, just how much people actually look at this thing, which is more than I ever expected, and so in order to satisfy the clearly insatiable appetite of my legions of world-wide fans I present, just quickly, a digest version of news from the last few weeks of my life:

1. I am now the owner of a new laptop which means that, in theory, blog entries should be much more frequent as I am able to compose updates from basically anywhere - the beach, buses, strip clubs, hospital beds and so on. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the small Chinese child who was employed to assemble my machine out of its composite parts, in poor conditions, for very little pay. You are whole, you are much-loved.
2. A lot of my days are spent fiddling around on this new computer in the snug and lovely environs of a small alleyway cafe in the city called Tiger Tiger which was apparently not named after the Mandarin phrase "Horse horse tiger tiger" (ma ma hu hu) which means "so so" or "comme ci comme ça"; nor was it named after the line in the William Blake poem "Tiger" (Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night); although it was, however, named from an artpiece in the WA State Art Gallery which was in turn named for the Blake poem, according to reasoned speculation. The cafe has lovely wooden tables and communal couches and a candy jar and staff who grin & joke and wireless internet & "special" hot chocolates with all sorts of surprises mixed in including, but not limited to, shredded coconut, cinnamon and sesame seeds. Anyway, I am here at this place a lot of the time, drinking such hot chocolates while the speakers play Dylan or Tim Buckley or Ryan Adams or Bon Jovi and the grey clouds spatter rain on the city streets.
3. Next week I am moving into a new house, away from the oversized parental home by the coast and into Northbridge, in a street scattered with the houses of friends and which runs into Hyde Park, which remains one of the most beautiful urban parks I have ever seen. I am moving in with two girls - Jess (who was formally known by me and select others as "Lil Cutie" until I swore I would stop calling her that if I moved in) and Laura (about whom I know not enough to give even a brief anecdote). The house is a terrace which is exactly opposite in layout to the next door house, and the girls have a cat who used to live next door until the owner killed its siblings and said it would have to die too unless someone could take it. Which Jess and Laura did, and for a while the cat was so confused when it came into the house because all the rooms were in reverse.
4. I am no longer "seeing anyone" and can guarantee that I won't be for some time.
5. Today I went for a ride by the river. Let me paint the picture. It's overcast, ok; theres a chilled wind and maybe a bit of drizzle, and my knuckles are bitten with cold. My bike sweeps around the river's edge, the water glinting a metallic brown blue, flat, calm. The trees are tipping down the cliffs on the edge of King's Park, dark and drooped and speckled with clusters of yellow acacia. The sky is rich with clouds, and its making the earth glow. There's black cormorants, proud and still, with wings cocked; there's pelicans; there's shelducks followed by furry ducklings the size of children's teacups. Theres a row of Australian flags pointing northwest and flicking in the winds, which makes the flagpoles squeak like hospital-bed wheels. I am riding through puddles. Two guys in beanies are playfighting on the grassy banks. A girl in tight ponytail stares at the water. There are streaks on sunlight emerging from behind cloud on the banks over Freeway South. The low cluster of city skyscrapers. Engine Oil. Cold sweat under my backpack. The smell, everywhere the smell, of wet leaves.
6. Last week I was in hospital for a double-ended visual inspection of my digestive system. If you get my meaning. I got to starve myself for 4o hours or so, then drink litres of a solution that tasted like sea-water. Then I got to see a televisual broadcast of the inside of my empty gut, which was mostly healthy except for a little mini polyp in there somewhere which got lanced by a little mini laser before it could grow into something sinister and nasty.
7. There are two courses I am applying for next year. One is a Masters in International Relations, specialising in Peace and Conflict Studies, at ANU in Canberra for one year and at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo for six months. The other is a Masters in International Development at RMIT in Melbourne. There are certainly positives and negatives in both courses, so my policy right now is just to wait and hope that the universities help me by deciding for me...
8. I will soon be participating in a local project in conjunction with International 24 Hour Comics Day which will lead to my being locked in the WA Film and Television Institute for a full day, in which time I must personally complete a 24 page comic, which at first didn't seem too hard until I considered the idea of a page an hour, which assuming there's about 10 frames a page is a frame every six minutes without counting time for eating or thinking or planning or going to the toilet or whatever. Which: Ha!

That's the news, folks.
Now that that's out of the way, expect future posts to stick to descriptions of sunsets and trees with occasional ill-informed diatribes about social justice and complaints about the absolute static stillness of Perth and the aggression exhibited by its bored, mindless citizens when fueled on alcohol and even occasionally, actually, not.

It is about time to get out of this town, more or less for good.

Important Notice

Dear Passenger C. J. Stokes:

Due to "communication problems" currently being suffered by Bogota El Dorado International Airport your aeroplane to Buenos Aries, Argentina, which you'll no doubt recall was due for departure at the exciting hour of 6.55am has unfortunately been delayed. We also regret to inform you that the original delay of three hours has now been extended to five hours. We at Aerolineas Argentinas reserve the right (of course!) to extend this delay further, and request that in the ensuing waiting period you sit tight, smile, and ignore the headaches, oncoming diarrhoea, gut-squeltching and need to vomit that you have been experiencing for the past 14 hours, as caused (one assumes) by a combination of sunburn, inhaled peach-flavoured shisha smoke and the consumption of a bad patacon. Please feel free to make full use of our small box-like room with a paper sign reading Sala 10 sticky-taped to the window, in which there are not enough seats nor access to entertainment and which is currently filled to overflowing with frustrated Latin Americans. Please do not find a place to lie down on three empty seats in another section of the airport, because if you do we will be forced to wait until you have just fallen asleep then send a member of the airport police squad to wake you up, mutter something to you in Spanish, then proceed to write down on a sheet of paper your name, passport number, address, educational level, current occupation, birthdate and marital status. He will not give a full explanation of this process but will instead just smile and push on to the next possible-vagrant/terrorist who likes to lie down on seats. You may proceed, instead, to the fast food resturaunt named Presto, where we will be happy to serve you a complementary breakfast of dry eggs, dry arepas, coffee and a small thimble of orange juice which tastes similar to a mezcla of bodily fluids. Take the time to watch, on our wall-mounted televisions, back episodes of Colombia's hit television show "The X Factor... for kids!" where you can see adorable pre-teens croonin', krumpin' and caterwallin' while tiny niñas lay down the freshest booty-shakin' reggaeton dance styles.

We thankyou for your patience and look forward to having you on board Aerolineas Argentinas sometime in the next day or so.

Best,
The Smiley Crew at A.A.

Nights alone, nights in company

Cartegena de Indias. Wooden balconies, coloured stone walls with green flowering creepers, horses pulling carts with massive wheels. A carved cross above a window in the Palace of the Inquisition, the window from which heretics were denounced. The crashing surf just beyond the thick city walls. The smell of arepas with cheese, of fried chicken, of sweat and salt. Slow moving tourists, looking up, looking everywhere. The hollers of frizzy haired teens in school uniform. Limestone churches with huge wooden doors and tall ceilings and pews dotted with quiet people, sitting, crossing themselves. Carts of avocados and limes and eggplant. Heat.

In Plaza de Bolívar troops of dancers perform for thickets of tourists, twitching and shaking and jumping and wiggling to the rapid thump of large drums, their hips quaking and feet stomping, tall, beautiful, African Colombians, barefoot and dressed in bright primary colours, black muscles, big grins. They collect money in straw hats, and the spectators disperse around the square, past perfect fountains and the old men selling collared shirts and flavoured ice and cups of watermelon juice from square tubs on wooden wagons. It is late in the day, it is almost magic hour, but the humidity is still strong, and the outdoor cafes are filling up with groups of tourists from across Colombia, the Americas, the world.

Then it is night. In the Plaza de las Coches skinny whores wait in the yellow lights beneath the arches of the old city wall. "Hola, mi amor!" they whisper, holding slender white cigarettes between brown fingers and winding their waists subtlely to the reggaeton spilling from a tinny radio. There is not much work tonight - President Uribe is in town this monday and there has been a city wide ban on alcohol declared for the whole weekend, - so without nightclubs to comb through the girls are left to roam in the quiet squares. I stop and talk a while to a girl named Erica; a gentle mulatta with big eyes and a white skirt that flicks up in the breeze. She tells me about her life - she has been working this way for two months, she has a one year old daughter called Rosario whose father is gone, and they live with her parents in a distant bario. She is studying cosmetics by day and working by night. She is nineteen years old.

We sit astride wooden benches and watch the soldiers with their heavy black guns pacing the streets. We drink freshly squeezed lemonade through thin straws as blue clouds pass across the sad, bent moon. She says she wants to be alone with me in a hotel, that its a quiet night and so it will cost me just 30,000 pesos, which is just under $US13. I decline, but give her 40,000 pesos instead to walk with me a while through the old city. Her real name is not Erica, it is Marja. We walk, and we dodge the approaches of smug dealers offering 'crystal', and watch as the well dressed trickle in and out of a private wedding party as warm light and the rhythm of vallenato blasts over the wall and through the trees and into the shuttered streets. We converse in a combination of Spanish and charades and the night presses on and turns into morning and so we bid farewell beneath the illuminated face of the plaza clock. I give her another 5,000 for the moto-taxi home, to her parents, her daughter, her real life.

I make other friends too, while in Cartegena. While loitering under the huge street lantern in Plaza Santa Domingo I meet Camillo, my first bonafide Colombian hipster, who works in television and is due to act as third producer on the up-and-coming British film production of Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, which I have just finished reading, and which is due to start filming soon around both Mompox and Cartegena. While on a boat cruise out to some nearby islands I meet Jenniffer, a hard-rock loving teenager with huge biker sunglasses, and her working-class Bogota family who have saved hard for a four day trip to the coast, by a bus trip of 24 hours each way, to see the ocean for the first time. She approaches me on board the boat and gives me a gift, a small white and brown shell she has found while beachcombing, after she sees me grinning sheepishly at her after thinking that she sees me taking sneak pictures of her, along with many other awkward looking tourists, from across the deck of the boat. It is a warm gesture, and a brave one, and the next day when I bump into her family under the statue of Bolívar's horse they invite me to walk with them, and eat with them, and visit the grey sand beach with them, where they spend hours lolling in the shallows in unfashionable clothing while Jenniffer sings, in makeshift English, all her favourite songs to me ('Stairway to Heaven', 'Enter Sandman', and so on) on the jagged rocks where crabs scuttle and waves smash.

On the bus to Santa Marta I meet a woman from Cali, her face thick with make-up, who interupts my reading to quiz me in heavily accented Castilian. She is in private security, she works around Cali with the obscenely rich and/or famous as a private bodyguard, in a company called SNIPER. At the moment she is in the employment of the owner of a large hacienda, with cows and coffee and sugar cane but, she assures me, without cocaine. She is one of ten (10) men and women employed to protect this one guy and his family from the threat of murder, kidnapping and theft. She says she loves her job, which only occasionally actually involves violence. She touches my leg a lot and giggles and asks if I have a girlfriend. Soon after I say that I do she cuts the conversation short and drifts into sleep and I go back to Garcia Marquez's autobiography. Past Barranquilla we skirt the coast line on a thin road cutting across the Ciénaga Grande, an expansive area of swamp land which laps upto the Caribbean Sea, and then there, in front of us, across the plains of cartoon cacti and brown marsh sits the purple mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, rising sudden and triumphant out of the coast, steep and snowcapped.

Here I am, now, at the foot of this moutain range, my feet in the ocean and my skin burned, drinking juices made from fruits with names that sound like distant planets: Lulo, Cipote, Maracuyá, Guanabana. It is a small town, this Taganga, packed with backpackers from all over, but overwhelmingly from Israel, scores of them, hippified and with grins of mischief, their presence being so overwhelming that it leads juice stand proprietors and hotel owners to have a great number of their signs in Hebrew and Spanish, with English third if there at all. Small boats wedge in the dirty sand, five metre cacti pierce the sky along the hillsides, rainbow coloured fish live on in the smashed up former reef. It is from here that I depart: tomorrow to Bogotá, and then half a day later back home to Australia. I'm out of time. Oh Colombia, there's so much more, but I'm out of time.

This Macondo, Mompox.

I have been in the town of Mompox for three days now, and for three days I have been teaching short English lessons in the early mornings at the local high school. "English lessons" is what I would like to call them, but really they consist of me drawing a mud-map of the world on the white board to try and explain where Australia is, followed by a field of Spanish questions about my life from giggling teenage girls. "How long will you be here in Mompox?" they ask. "Do you like to dance salsa?""Do you have a girlfriend?" "Do you think Colombian girls have beautiful eyes?" I try to answer in English, but they protest, loudly, in thick costeño accents: "Noooo! E-pañol!" The lesson then deteriorates into a mass photo session, while girls from the younger classes, who have been watching from the doorway, pass notes inviting me to teach in their class tomorrow.

Suffice to say that with enthusiasm like that there are not so many foreign tourists here, in this town. Nor anywhere, much, in Colombia. Presumably the legions of backpackers seeking new and remote locations round the globe are still detered by false conceptions about the threats of narco-terrorism, kidnapping and paramilitary warfare. Somehow both the international media and foreign governments , and with them the tourists, have missed the updates - its not 1991 anymore; Escobar is long-dead, the cartels of Medellin and Cali mostly dismantled, the guerrilla groups pushed deep into the jungles. Colombians are literally scratching their heads as they search for ways to bring the world up to speed on what the actual situation is like, to bring the people in to what is truely a spectacularly beautiful country.

Arriving in Mompox (or, alternatively, Mompós - take your pick) in particular, its impossible not to be completely enchanted. From Bucaramanga I took a combination of bus, car, boat, motorbike and wooden canoe, and dismounted in Plaza de Bolívar in awe. This is a town which is completely off the main roads of Colombia - virtually in the middle of nowhere - but which glows with a colonial charm unlike anywhere else I've been with the exception of Havana. Founded in 1537, Mompox was originally an important trading center and active port, through which all the merchandise from the Caribbean city of Cartegena passed, via the Rio Magdalena to the interior of the colony. In 1810 it was the first town to declare independence from Spain, and here Simón Bolívar conscripted many men for his liberation campaign. By the end of the 19th century, however, shipping was diverted to the other branch of the Magdalena and the town was left to its isolation.

Today, Mompox is a lazy town of long, hot streets lined with whitewashed houses. The windows, open behind elaborate wrought-iron grills, reveal ornate living rooms filled with antique furniture. Through the doors you can see central courtyards, filled with plants and fountains, and bathed in sunlight, while family members inside tip gently in thin rocking chairs made of wicker and dark wood. In the streets men sell lottery tickets for the daily draw, which happens in the middle of the square at four o'clock. Boys wield trays of queso de capa, long stringy tapes of salty cheese wrapped into small balls, while nearby ladies pump metal fruit presses to squeeze the sweetest, most gorgeous orange juice into tin cups. In the botanic garden a medley of the world's trees shelter parakeets, hummingbirds and butterflies. School kids in checked skirts are transported by motorised rickshaws, old toothy men in straw sombreros park their ancient bicycles on kerbsides, young women with podgy stomaches poking over the top of tight jeans cross themselves as they scoot past the churches by motorbike. On the riverfront large trees shelter the roadway from the overwhelming heat, multi-coloured mansions boast massive wooden doors, grey and green iguanas thud along the sloping banks. Clods of grass and tree branches take the fast flow of the brown Magdalena while fish flip and splash by the staircases which run down to the water. There is the sound of bells from balconied church towers. The amazed smile and inquisitive queries of little kids, scampering in little gangs along the malecón. And at night the iron street lanterns, the candlelit bars on the riverside playing old latin tunes on crackling vinyl, the chirping bats, the portable trolleys carting wood ovens from where you can buy guanábana pizza by the slice.

I was meant to be here two days but I extended and have stayed three. Still, it is with great reluctance that I head off tomorrow morning, particularly because tomorrow is the beginning of the town's five day fiesta in celebration of independence; unfortunately I just can't afford any more time if I want to get to everything I want to see on the coast. I have, however, explored real estate prices (anyone wanna share the cost of a $100,000 Spanish colonial mansion with me?) and I have found and bought myself my very own school t-shirt from the college where I have inadvertedly become a sort of local celebrity, so I live in hope that one day I too can be an old Momposino man, wiping sweat from my brow from my very own rocking chair in my very own courtyard, watching my very own granddaughters who flirt with their thick accents that ignore the "s" in "español" and who know how to sing all the words to all the latest reggaeton hits from Puerto Rico without taking even a breath.

Qana

I'm in a bus station in Bucaramanga, waiting for the onwards journey to Mompós, where I plan to sit in rocking chairs and read Latin American literature while bats play in the sunset. But, as I have time to kill, and as my heart is pretty heavy after hearing of todays events, I have chosen to subject you all to a bit more about the Middle East. My apologies if this disappoints you in any way, dear reader, in case you were hungry for more gossip about my lonely existence in the plazas and courtyards of steamy central Colombia. Please understand though that right now, to me, this stuff is way more important than my attempts at tourism, and that I have literally no one to talk about this all to, except for the glass-faced CNN presenters on my hotel televisions and you all. Its a form of coping I guess.

-----------------------

The Lebanese believe that Qana, a hill town in the south of their country, is the spot where Jesus turned water into wine.

On April 11, 1996, in response to cease fire violations by the Hizbollah, Israel used SLA radio stations to warn the civilians of forty four southern Lebanese villages and towns to evacuate within 24 hours. By April 14th 745 people were occupying the United Nations compound in Qana in an attempt to seek refuge - this number had reached 800 by April 18th. On this day the Hezbollah fired two Katyusha rockets and eight motar shells at Israel from areas about 200 metres southwest and 350 metres southeast of the UN compound. Fifteen minutes later an Israeli unit responded by shelling the area 32 times. Two-thirds of the of the shells were equipped with proximity fuses, an anti-personnel mechanism that causes the weapon to explode above the ground. Of these 32 shells 13 exploded within or above the compound and 4 exploded very close to it.

106 civilians were killed, mostly women and children. Four were UN troops. Their bodies were ripped apart, beheaded, disembowelled. Israel immediately expressed sorrow for their "mistake".

Today Israel made the same "mistake" again. This time 56 civilians are dead, including 34 children. Israel has once again expressed regret, but added that residents had been warned to leave the area. Because, as the residents of Qana know, that works so well.

Having spent time in Israel and having friends who are Israeli I feel as though I know in some small way the way Israelis think and feel about this conflict and about their neighbours. I know that the results of both of these attacks were unintentional. I know that Israelis (extremist settlers I met around the West Bank excluded) do not like killing Arab women and children. But this sort of thing has stopped becoming a surprise. It has stopped becoming something you can refer to as a "mistake". A mistake is something you learn from, an opportunity to grow. Israel is powerful and strong; it is using this power and this strength to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people. This is well understood, and completely ongoing. This is not a mistake.

An Open Letter to the Government of Israel and to All Their Apologisers and Supporters.

I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall—I will do such things,— What they are yet I know not,—but they shall be The terrors of the earth. - Shakespeare: King Lear, Act II Scene IV. Dear Israel and friends, The other day, on a television in my dingy hotel room in a Colombian small town, I saw Arye Mekel, Israel's Consol General, telling the BBC that Israel is "doing the Lebanese a favour" by bombing the Hizbollah. With a straight face he told the camera that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing". Of course it is true that a majority of Lebanese ordinarily oppose the actions of the Hizbollah. It is true that the Hizbollah are a ruthless and destructive guerilla army whose killing of Israelis and contribution to the continual culture of violence in Lebanon are not only counter-productive to their "cause" but heartbreaking terrible and entirely unforgivable. One would think from comments like Mekel's that Israel is well aware of the difference between the Hizbollah and Lebanon. But it is impossible to understand one's values, one's beliefs, one's mind without taking into account his actions. In the past two weeks Israel has decimated the infrastructure of Lebanon and targeted and killed both the civilian and humanitarian population. You have flattened schools and airports, bridges and hospitals, homes and petrol stations. You have sent missiles into the new aqueduct built by Rafik Hariri with aid from the Italian government - a symbol of cooperation between Lebanon and the European Union. You have bombed milk factories and pharmaceutical factories. You have once again displaced over half a million people from their homes, killed hundreds, maimed thousands. You have bombed Red Cross vehicles, you have killed UN volunteers and health workers, you have ordered the evacuation of southern villages then bombed and murdered the fleeing convey of civilian vehicles. You have broken the heart and soul of Lebanon right at the time the country was starting to blossom after decades of civil and regional war. Your aim undoubtably is to defeat "terrorism" and to defend your citizens. But what you are destroying is not terrorism. You are destroying a country, a people, a sense of hope, a future. You are fertilising the Arab and Muslim world, and Lebanon in particular, with anger, with fear, with hatred. You are teaching a whole new, young, largely educated, multi-lingual generation of Lebanese - many of whom missed the pure horror of the country's previous years of conflict - why it is their parents and their grandparents had so much resentment for and fury at Israel. You are breeding terrorism. You are teaching that violence is the only solution. And you are dooming your own people, and with them the entire world, to decades, if not centuries, of continued bloodshed. A young and concered Mexican asked me the other day why the Israeli army and their unfaltering supporters (the US, for example) does not attack Syria, if they are the political supporters of the Hizbollah. Why attack Lebanon? I would like to propose an answer to this question; tell me if I'm mistaken. If Israel was to attack Syria, the response would be obvious. Syria has the military capabilities to immediately respond; they could hurl rockets at Tel Aviv, at Ashkelon, at West Jerusalem. Lebanon has none of this military power. Its air force is made up of three ancient Hawker Hunters and an equally ancient fleet of Vietnam-era Huey helicopters. So it is Lebanon which you attack. We know well that members and sympatisers of "terrorist" or guerilla organisations live throughout Lebanon, just as they live throughout the world. We know they live in Gaza, they live in Tehran, they live in Paris, they live in New Jersey. To bomb Beirut and to bomb South Lebanon in order to "break" the Hizbollah makes as much sense as bombing the United States once suspected terrorists are located. And such acts are as close to "terrorism" as any acts by Hizbollah. I laugh to think of what the international reaction would have been if in the last year, after one of the Israeli armys frequent incursions into southern Lebanon to "capture" Hizbollah fighters, the impotent Lebanese army had responded by bombing Israeli cities and bridges, by destroying Ben Guiron airport, by killing hundreds of Israeli citizens. Such an act would have universally been called terrorism. Yet Israel's attacks are, at worst, described by the EU, and even by the timid Lebanese prime minister as "disproportionate". In your country's 1982 invasion of Lebanon 17,500 people were killed. Please, please stop this before we reach anywhere near this number again and set Lebanon, the region, and indeed the world back another 24 years. Yours Sincerely, Christopher John Stokes Girón, Colombia, 2006

Timeline of Important Events, Part III

NOTE: This is the third time I will write this entry. The first time I was over halfway through when a hit of the backspace key once again mysteriously erased the entire piece. This made me aggrevated but I decided the only thing to rid me of my heartbreak was just to write it again while it was fresh in my mind. The second time I was just about finished, just deciding if I needed another sentence to finish it all off, when my computer just suddenly restarted itself. None of the other computers in the internet place did this - just mine. For reasons which now escape me I had once again not saved the entry. The man behind the counter sort of shrugged and charged me the full amount. I had been in the internet cafe for almost five hours. I went out into the plaza, into the cool air, and just stared at the trees. I have decided, though, that as this day has already been pretty much given over completely to the internet I will attempt to reproduce this for a third time. After all, Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas wrote a number of the novels in his Petagonia up to five times when his manuscripts they were stolen, seized, lost or destroyed. So, with Reinaldo on my mind I return, and, having eaten a very late meat-based lunch and watched the music video for Hips Don't Lie by Shakira and Wyclef Jean for what is, quite literally, the 70-somethingth time since being in Colombia, I feel refreshed and ready to start again. I must defeat this pincha entry. I will not sleep until this fucker is down. -------------------- At night the town of Barichara is still and completely silent. The sloping streets are streaked in yellow light, the cobblestones small and dark, the houses sit shuttered and proud with their whitewashed walls and red roof tiles. There are almost no vehicles, not even parked on the roadsides. The sandstone cathedral glows orange under floodlight. In the canyon behind the town silent lightning flashes behind low clouds. The sparks of light reveal cats behind rubbish cans, tall crucifix gravestones in the tightly packed cemetary, a duo of young lovers on a park bench in the town plaza. Ana, Jorge and I are eating Brazilian cashews near one of the smaller churches and we are arguing for and against the existence of elves. We are drinking tap water from a red bulletproof Canadian drink canister with a maple leaf design and a sticker saying "Made in USA". We are imagining ourselves as characters in Hollywood slasher flicks, but what with the darkness and the eerie silence and the lightning and the squeaking of wheeling bats, we have decided actually not to jump over the wall to the cemetary. Instead we approach the open metal gate of the Children's Park. Outside there is a parked motorcycle. We tiptoe into the blackness and we are clutching each other tight and glancing around. Under the rotunda there is a hulking, black silhouette, and Ana's eyes are wide as she breathes "It's a person! Lets GO!". We go, moving like shadows. Back in the light of the streetlamps Jorge and I have lost our fear of a few moments ago and dismiss any notion that there is any thing dangerous ever in this tiny town. We are talking at full volume now, which makes everything seem less scary. Ana is not convinced, however, and chooses to stay sitting alone by the benches in the alameda. We turn to go, though and she squeaks "mmmMMMMWAAAIT!" and runs to join us. We stop to read the sign on the wall by the gate; "Parque Infantil," it reads, then below it a phrase with missing letters - "R ED R U IO", which gets us talking about The Shining and makes me start growling "redrumredrumredrum!" in a kinda gruff voice. It is at this moment that Ana freezes and goes white and I turn around and see, behind the metal grate in the wall, a man's moustached face, staring silently at us from the darkness. Now, my subsequent reaction is one that I can not justify or explain, even after extensive cross-examination from both Ana and Jorge, and it has become, since, a cause of much humour in our little trio. My reaction was: in shock, to raise both arms up, like an attacking bear or big cat, and to claw the air viciously while yelping, loudly, "REDRUMREDRUMREDRUM!!" at the face of the man, as if trying to exorcise him from the park. There was no thought process to this, and once I registered what I was doing and what he must think I backed away silently while the face disappeared and the man in full appeared at the entrance to the park, startling Jorge who hadn't yet seen the face and was just puzzled about my sudden outburst. "Is something the matter?" the man asked in Spanish, looking suspiciously at his motorbike. Jorge replied, "No Señor, we were just wanting to come into the park but we weren't sure if it was open". "It's always open" he answered, and shrunk back again. We went in, quickly and I avoided the mans gaze but noticed, as we passed ,his girlfriend hidden away in the darkness. They left, and we played on the see-saw and danced and laughed and encountered a huge millipede. We owned that park, then. But still, we remained giddy with soft fear. Still there were the sounds of bats, still the silent lightning. Still the street lamps mysteriously switching off around us. Still the wind and the quiet emptiness of the stone town. Still, the shadows. -------------------- By day, Barichara is a gentler, kinder place, its ghosts and elves long gone. In the mornings a thick mist hangs through the streets as stores open their wooden doors to sell handicrafts and creamy brown tubs of arequipe. The fresh sun glistens on the cobblestones after the morning rains. Old men in wide cowboy hats lean on slender canes and amble slowly up the hills. The sounds of church bells and the tooting of the minibus horn. School children gathering in the main plaza to flirt and gossip. Smells from the resturants of cooked trout and goat. The cathedral rises bold and splendid. Purple flowers, overhanging the white walls from the courtyards. One of the mornings we head by bus into the nearby town of San Gil to do some white water rafting. On the walk along the riverside malecon I kick my foot and crack my big toenail into two pieces, which is painful. A lady from the rafting company fixes it up with some disinfectant and a bandaid while we are waiting for our guide. He is late because he ran into the river to avoid the approaching army. The army is currently making a sweep through the town in an attempt to recruit men, and indeed, as we wait here come soldiers on motorcycles, black guns poised and tall, heads turning as they look for any possible candidates. What they are looking for are young, male Colombians - if they ask you must be able to produce, on the spot, evidence that you either have already served in the military or are exempt from doing so, otherwise you will be taken immediately for an interview. Unless you are incredibly lucky you then must front up for intensive training before a lottery to find out where you will be serving for the next year and a half. If you are really unlucky your location will be on the front, in the jungle, fighting and possibly dying in the long battle against the country's everpresent guerilla groups like the FARC and ELN. For this reason we instantly forgive our guide's AWOL status and wait in the sun for him to return. Which he does, grinning, and we begin our rafting. The rapids are fun and we get wet, but whats really special is everything happening around us. The sky is clear and glowing and the banks are lined with brown willow trees, drooping spectacular. The rocks are dark and jagged, the water murky and brown. There are groups of thin cattle, lazing by the water, there are black vultures hopping, there are swarms of butterflies whipping in mini hurricanes, storming in flashes of white and orange. We float downstream, in and out of the raft, and we listen to the water and the wind and the chirruping, giggling birds.

Timeline of Important Events, part II

Theres been ten days since the end of camp, when we all assembled in our final circle on the bug infested grass and there were tears and there were proclaimations of love and thanks and sorrow and hope. Surrounding us was the colour green, swirling botantic, fresh and broken only by flecks and patches of colour; the white trunks of the eucalypts, the dirt road, the bright flowers of red and blue. Our chugging hearts, the desperate hugs, this familar scene. All of us, fast inventing futures in our tired minds. The arms were loosened, last wet kisses, and we were on the bus. Away, to Medellin.

Since then the group has been shrinking daily, people being shaved away by buses and aeroplanes, to school and families, from 27 of us to just me. Today, in the multilayered Bucaramanga station I watched as Jorge and Ana's bus backed out into the soft rain, their faces smooshed to the glass, fingers pulled into sideways vees like presenters on the Colombian music television show Cool Play. This is loneliness. It's been three days with just the three of us, three days in the small town of Barichara, but this time seems longer to me than the whole time the camp lasted. It only seemed right that they join me for the rest of it. But now it is only me.

But first, lets backtrack. In Medellin we celebrated the eve of Colombia's independence by dancing with whistles and flags in a large and famed nightclub crammed full of cowboy gear. On the bartops were teams of professional dancers, gorgeous women with elliptical plastic breasts and sparkles on their skin, thick jawed men built like tree trunks, and midgets chucking headstands. After an hours sleep we head southwards, thirteen of us now, to the Zona Cafetera, our minivans hugging the lush hills stacked with coffee plantations. We bathe in thermal springs, our bodies light and soft in the steam and sulfur and the jungled mountains hugging us tight as the afternoon light glows then fades. We hire a mariachi band to perform two tender songs to us under the looming statue of Simon Bolivar in the empty Pereira plaza. At the Parque Nacional del Café (like a coffee themed Disneyland for 6 year olds, without any actual attractions) we form a guerilla organisation, las FACEP (Fuerzas Armadas Contra el Patacon), committed to ridding Colombia of one of its more bland foods, the mashed plantain patty known as Patacon. Jorge accepts my 5000 peso dare to approach patacon stores and announce our groups intentions to overtake them and "take all the patacon hostage," much to the confusion and amusement of the store ladies. One reaches for the money she is counting out and tucks it away, worriedly.

The highlight of the coffee zone, though, is Valle de Cocora, where tropical looking wax palms rise tall out of the thick white cloud which blankets the forest. We take horses along the valley, over gushing streams and vibrant meadows, the hills on either side eerie and beautiful, the cloud spectral and the tall palms emerging slender, like roman candles. The farms end and we are engulfed by jungle, where we dismount and explore a waterfall before trotting back along the valley as the sun disappears and we pile 16 into an open backed jeep back to town. Darkness now, and the fields along the roadside are coated with, literally, millions of fireflies, glittering like static in the black grass.

We took the nightbus to Bogota. We had to choose between companies, and the one we didn't take rolled into the capital behind us with a shattered window. Woah, we said, and Jorge asked a little girl what had happened. It had been a direct bus to Bogota, but a man had wanted to get off along the way. When the bus driver refused the man took the little red hammer and just smashed the emergency window out, which as you might imagine left many passengers pretty cold for the remaining journey over the high passes of the Andes.

When it was just the three of us left we headed northwards again, to San Gil, and to Barichara.

Entry Two

Entry Two in the "What Chris is Doing In Colombia Over the Next Month" creative writing competition.

by David Parsons of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Chris boards the bus wearing a new shirt: tree-frog green, greyshort-sleeves, and an italicized elephant screen-printed in flat blue above his washboard stomach.

The mall was cool, air-conditioned, made him uncomfortable. His new ranchero hat keeps the sun from his eyes as the sun shines in the window; it reminds him of the mall, and this he does not like. It comes to mind now: why, he wonders, doesn't he like the hat reminding him of the mall? He thinks on it, and begins to like the memory. The small, semi-private internet cubicle at Marión with a keyboard he could hardly navigate for the accents and a photograph of the swiss alps with the word SUISSE in red letters on top; buying Mexican candies in a small Colombian hardware store because the shopkeeper told him, "Son los mejores, mi amigo."

Memory is like that, he realizes, as he watches the others board the bus and lurches as the yellow bus -- "East Mississippi School Bo rd: Bus 14"emblazoned in black on one side, the "a" conspicuously missing -- begins the short ride back to camp. We remember things as we like to. His distaste for the cool consumerism of the mall will metamorph into an appreciation of the differences of pop-culture that come with language and geography changes: he will remember smiling as he heard a deep masculine voice ringing out, "doble-ve doble-ve doble-ve punto coca-cola punto com," as a radio commercial played over the speakers of a clothing store. He will realize that he can't be sure whether things happened as he remembers or whether they may as well have happened because he remembers.

The lush green foliage, the smells of corn and smoke from roadside vendors selling food to people inside noisy buses and trucks, the sound of horns honking and spanish pop-music -- they all seem to float by as his mind weaves them into his story.

Together, here.

One week into the camp; its shopping day and I'm taking refuge from the big shopping mall in a stationary supply store called Marión which has, as a logo, an elephant that looks like its been italicised. It's the only place here with internet, and so I have dashed here first thing, like some kind of desperate smack addict while most of the rest of the camp eat chorizo or watch the Italy-Germany game or shop for bluejeans.

All goes well so far. Last night was the first serious simulation type game of the Seminar and was themed around prejudice. It involved teams of four or five running between stations manned by people who were not very nice to certain people, especially one guy who was highlighting the issue of women hating by making the girls peel oranges while shouting at them and then forcing me to shove three (minature, granted, but still) oranges into one girls mouth in order to give us the next clue. All agreed it was a good activity, albeit scary and confronting. Yes, I realise this CISV thing sounds weird to those from outside it. That? is because it is weird.

But fun, y'know, too. Our camp site is gorgeous, surrounded in green hills where horses graze and green fireflies speckle in the fruit trees in the black night. Geese slide across lillypadded lakes, which are surrounded by Australian eucalypts and strange pom pom trees which look like monster cheerleaders. By day we run barefoot through the soft grass, kick footballs, smack volleyballs, search for Colombian fruits that you can break open (the insides look like fish eggs) and eat with teaspoons. At night there is a log fire, bottles of beer, salsa music, the loaded massages of young couples on the verge of becoming young lovers. There are 27 of us altogether, and for the first time on one of these seminars (this is my third in 18 months) I really feel like we are one group. There is noone at all that I cannot stand. And, of course, there are individuals within that group who are wonderful, beautiful, inspiring. Jorge from Mexico, always excited and curious about art and politics; the soft and smiling Brazilian Ana, confusing the boys and possibily herself, a monument to all that is great about teenagehood; Sara from Sweden, a gum chewin', tobacco-lipped, headrollin' type of hiphop girl with whom I have developed a secret communication method using English words written in a hybrid Arabic/Persian script (her family is from Iran) with which we compose broken letters about the cute boys at the camp and urging each other to have fun cleaning the bathrooms.

Actually, now it's time I left, the bus is nearly departing and I haven't done my neccessary shopping (deoderant, candy, a ranchero hat if there's time) so I bid you all farewell for now. Greeting from Antioquia, Colombia, and I hope with everything I have that you can all safely say that you, like me, are pretty much at peace.

Entry One

Entry One in the "What Chris is Doing In Colombia Over the Next Month" creative writing competition.

By Molly Greene, 15, of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Chris rises at dawn, drinks a glass of water and eats some Vegemite. On a rice cracker. He is prepared for a new day at a lovely seminar camp. Unfortunately, he discovers he can't discover or recall where he left his favorite shirt, dyed in the Himalayas by Wiccans in the most delicate shade of saffron. It is the only shirt that matches his parachute pants, the only clean pants he has. "Good grief," he thinks to himself. "Whatever shall I do?" At this moment a water spirit appears in the doorway. "Christopher, matchy-matchy is out, as everyone knows," the water spirit announced. She had long spidery hair carefully clothing her scale-y body and Christopher wondered how a naked water spirit could be advising him regarding style."What are you doing here?" he wondered aloud. "There isn't water for acres." "Ahh, foolish lad," she replied wisely. "The true water is found in the mind." At that moment, Chris knew what had befallen his favorite saffron shirt. "You!" he cried. "You have my shirt." "Nay, nay," she whispered. "The shirt too is found in the mind." Chris, usually a mild soul, began to lose his temper. "Beastly wench," he hissed. "Return my shirt to me immediately.""Only if you answer me one question: Why is the ocean blue?" She looked a thim smugly because surely no one knows why the ocean is blue. However, Christopher knew. "The ocean is blue because it reflects the sky, which is also blue." At that moment the water spirit disappeared, replaced by the saffron shirt, which Chris wore for the duration of the seminar camp and grew to love more and more every single day. The end.

Please send further entries to standardlinedelivery@gmail.com in order to fill the void in posts over the coming months.

One Week Report, Illustrated.

(Figures 1 and 2: Antony Gormley artwork titled "Asian Field", exhibited at Pier 2/3 as part of the Biennale of Sydney, 2006. Gormley got a village in China to make these critters out of local clay and then assembles them in various galleries around the globe. There are over 180 000 figures in all. The art of setting them up and transporting them is the most impressive part and it was truely one of the most beautiful art pieces I have ever seen.)

(Figure 3: The main Cathedral in Bogotá, with cloudcrested Andean peaks behind it. Bogotá is a city with many pigeons, gracious old churches and girls with big asses in tight jeans. It has this crazy cool transport system which is called Transmilenio, which is like a metro system but with special buses, with their own traffic lanes and stations and it's very cheap and crowded and wonderful.)
(Figure 4. Downtown Bogotá street. Bogotá also has many lovely streets and small children who, very cleverly speak Spanish. Both are present in this illustration. What you can't see is that in Bogotá there are well dressed and altogther finely presented young people dancing well to Latin music in many many swanky nightclubs. It was at one of these such places that I danced next to the famous ex-child actor Carla Giraldo who, years ago, played the title character in the Colombian telenovela "Lolita" and recently posed naked and discussed her bi-sexuality in a mens magazine. She was indeed, kissing girls in said nightclub. I attempted the salsa and didn't do so well.)
(Figure 5: the tips of the mountains that overshadow Bogotá on the eastern side. At least three people told me to use the mountains to keep orientated in Bogotá. So I did. Bogotá is at about 2500 metres above sea level and it is possible to suffer some effects due to the altitude. I didn't, unless you can count the strange and vivid dreams I was having each night, which come to think of it I also had while trekking in Nepal. I've mentioned the Guus dream in a previous entry, but others involved me seeing four people from the upcoming Seminar camp being ripped apart by a bus and also me sucking, briefly, the tongue of a fifteen year old girl and worrying that my breath smelled. Both of these dreams resulted in my waking up and wondering if they were real or not for at least 30 seconds.)

(Figure 6: A cloud above the campsite, in el Retiro, near Medellin. The campsite, which we visited today, is incredibly beautiful, with ponds and geese and green trees everywhere and a cosy house with big windows and a wood fireplace. The nearby town is just as wonderful, with little dim cantinas gathered around a cute main square, packed with old men with moustaches drinking aguardiente and eating chorizo. I'm actually not sure I've ever been to a country so consistantly attractive before in my entire life. Anyway, I leave to the camp site on Monday, so this may be my last entry for some time. Enjoy the rest of the World Cup, readers, and remember me in your autobiographies. All the best. )