Pour Vous, A Baradat

To stumble upon my paradise was a wonderful thing. The absence of expectancy gave it an innocent sheen. A mellow surprise that will never lose its luster. It was a revelation. A dawn upon a path. Circumstance had pushed the sun up at that moment when I reached the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind. At a farmhouse in the south of France.

I could feel it every morning when I threw the shutters open. It was underfoot when I creaked down the stairs and crossed the stone floor to sit down at my desk by the wood burner. It was outside the window on the wing of Red Kites circling overhead on the breeze that ran off the mountains. It was in the song of a bird that would fly through a hole in the roof and sing from the banister in the hallway.

With bare feet I bore down upon a dream. My days were spent writing. I took short breaks in long grass between clouds of butterflies. Crouton hay bales garnished the fields. Mourning sunflowers and ranks of vines climbed the hillsides.

In the night I built fires. Bats picked off insect stragglers. I watched the moon from my back. I chased satellites across the sky between a crowd of stars until they burned bright in the light beyond sunset. I was alone but not lonely.

My friends sent themselves to me. Their writing became a new puzzle from old hands. Our letters were a contest of retention much thicker than carbon copies, using our own memories as a server. I felt close to the envelopes on my desktop. I missed the writers very much. But I could reach for them whenever I wanted. And when I heard the exhaust note of the little yellow mail van, I knew they would be arriving in another letter to tide me over until I saw their faces again.

There were other knocks on my door. People keeping an eye out for me. Always there if I needed them. They made me feel at ease with rare words never wasted, synchronised with the pace of life.

When I came back home, I left a part of myself behind. The part of me who would stand outside in a thunderstorm until the clouds broke for the chance of seeing a double-rainbow. The part who relished every moment he was living beyond his means. The part who cried out when he went beyond those means and who came to understand the value of such things in paradise. The part who realised he had no choice but to leave.

If I close my eyes and block out the traffic and the sirens and the chatter, I can take myself back there. I can remember that I achieved what I set out to do, and that I need to be here for now.

Paradise has not gone away. It is still there waiting for me.

Pay Attention

The beautiful are expecting you to join their ranks. They are patrolling the television shows and the newspapers. They are waiting for you on the shop fronts around town. They are falling out of expensive nightclubs, and falling in with expensive bedfellows. Watch and learn. Witness the demonstration of success

You can emulate the beautiful. The blueprint of their lifestyle is everywhere you look. You can consume their clothes. Chase their cars. Drink their drinks. Fall out of a nightclub and you’re half way there.

But that’s close enough. Pick yourself up. Check your pockets. Go home.

When you wake up, the scenery may have changed; the costumes, the props, the faces. Because the beautiful move on - without you, if you cannot afford the chase. So turn on the TV. Turn over the page. Watch and learn.

Witness the all-new demonstration of success.

Weapon X Program

I am being haunted by a symbol. It watches me from the television. Waits for me on billboards. Speaks to me in tongues on the bus stop and on the waves of the radio. Wherever I go or whatever I do I cannot escape it. The symbol is a giant red X. A weapon of propaganda positioned to convert me at every available juncture. The icon of a rich and powerful movement. A movement in which I want no part.

This movement's success is built upon a powerful concept. An idea that resonates deep within the collective subconscious. The notion that everyone has the potential to succeed if they are given the opportunity. In a culture addicted to fame, this idea is ripe for abuse. And the X-Factor movement has grown rich from its understanding of this abuse. It has cooked up a fine opiate that people never even knew they wanted; the chance to not only experience the hallucinatory birth of fame, but also to decide upon the participants within this hallucination. To pass judgement and change someone's life for the better. Who has the X-Factor? You decide.

But the truth is that you do not. You actually decide who does not have the X-Factor. The vote you use for a candidate you like is actually a vote against a candidate who you don't like. This is because the vote itself works by a process of elimination. So, by not voting for candidates, you put them in the firing line of the judges. And the judges get to experience the real high of judgement. The absolute power of elimination. The reality of shattering a dream. Not the passive positive hallucination you experience: the illusion of choice.

This illusion appears to fade in the final stage. The judges turn the gun over to you. But this final choice is just another illusion. Because whoever you choose does not have the X-Factor. This is proved during a comedown period in which the selected candidate fades away at a rate of decline proportional to the quality of marketing applied to them. The fade occurs because the candidate is reliant upon others to propagate their success. They do not have the ability to do so themselves. This is why they joined the movement in the first place. In doing so they demonstrated that they do not have the X-Factor. They demonstrated that they want it.

This flaw is something the end users of the opiate choose to overlook. This is because they simply do not want to believe it is true. They want to believe that they chose who has the X-Factor. They need to believe that they were right in their decision. Right to invest in their judgement. Because it has been demonstrated to them that to invest in judgement is to succeed. This demonstration exists in the form of The X-Factor judges themselves, who repeatedly supercede the success of those upon whom they pass judgement. And this success comes not from the outcome of judgement, of justice, but from the very passing of judgement itself. So when the judges bestow that gift of judgement upon the user, the greatest honour the user can bestow is to give it back. To keep investing in judgement. Keep fuelling the movement.

To be proud of having a big red cross next to their name.

I walk into the tea room. Familiar faces are buried in magazines. They occupy the same places around the same old tables and chairs. They wear empty expressions I thought I had forgotten. Muscle memory takes over as I open all the right cupboards and jars. I pull the handle on the hot water caddy to fill my mug. The resistance is no surprise.
One of the faces looks up. "Hello. Long time no see."
"Yeah."
"How long has it been?"
"18 months."
"How come you're back then?"
"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Mainly because I'm skint."
"How was America?"
I sip my coffee. "Amazing."
"How long have you been back?"
"A year. But I've been in France for 6 months."
"Oh. You get around"
"Yeah. It was beautiful. Vinyards. Sunflowers. The Pyrenees on my doorstep."
"Sounds nice."
"How are you?"
"Same old," she says. "Nothing much changes around here."
"No."
I walk over to the window and look down at the empty lot across the road. In the space between the office blocks, a blanket of long green grass has grown. The blades are thick. They shimmer in the wind. Undulating. Obedient. Defiant. Victorious against the diggers that came and turned a building into rubble, and the rubble into earth. From corner to corner the land has been retaken. Right up to the tired sign leaning against the fence. 'To Let.' A lie. Because verdance is the tennant now. And when eviction day comes she will pay with her life.

"Hello" says a voice.
I turn around. Another familiar face. The rest have gone.
"Long time no see."

Detour

The posts for this trip were often typed in dark, deserted toilet cubicles or under the lonely fluroescent strip lighting that seemed to be ever-present in the rumbling campsite laundries scattered across North America. Long after everyone else had gone to bed, I would squint and blink at the screen into the small hours. Some posts were cut-and-pasted together in the homes of the people that cared for us. Others were carved out in hostel accomodation, or in the score of nameless coffee shops where we loitered with an intent unswerving.
Generally, most were scrawled by my jagged hand in notebooks gifted by friends under torchlight in a small Wal-Mart tent, or in the passenger seat of our trusty Japanese chariot whilst The King of Space worked the pedals and aped the eclectic soundtrack blasting through the speakers with a steady nod or a subtle drum upon on the solar curve of the steering wheel.
These, and a swathe of other memories are set like concrete now in the unsettling fluid rush of the intervening months between this and my last post. Until recently, I had been working in a sunless, overground bunker with a gaggle of lost souls so devoid of fire or passion that they could barely muster the righteous indignation to complain about anything other than the most trivial of matters; if they were to tackle the glaringly obvious, dim-wittedness ignorance of those in charge, they would be broken. Their indelicate fragility smashed.
All for the stuffing of an envelope.
But I work there no more. And today, on my birthday, I sit with all jobs done before I embark upon another adventure. My clothes and books are boxed up. The room in which I have been a most grateful guest of Squiggle (see sidebar) and B, rent free, for these last five months, is cleansed. The King of Space's old computer peers down at me from the top of the stairs. Somewhere across town, my father wings his way towards me this very moment to collect me so that tomorrow we might drive to Poole. The ferry awaits. France will greet us and we will drive its length to reach the rolling beauty of its nether regions. In Gascony I will live in a remote farmhouse belonging to a friend, mostly unaccompanied for the next 4 to 6 months. I will help him renovate, and occasionally work for his parents; a rose grower and a roofer. I will slow burn 400 euros in my pocket. I will to try and get a book written. I will write to my friends because I will miss them, and that will be my only means to communicate; devolution.
Back to the written word.
So, I won't be around here for a while.
If you miss me, take your own journey through this place. The road starts on the toolbar.
It grows late, and I hear a car at the end of the road.

Boys To Men

I open my eyes gingerly. The blank canvas of the ceiling stares back at me. I turn my head sideways and see The King of Space awakening from a black hole slumber in his sleeping bag amidst a cluster of pillowy asteroids. I cannot yet grasp the concept of his pending absence. I have become so accustomed to his ever-presence: 4 months on the road around this almighty continent with day upon day of trading seats at the wheel, tunes on the iPod and quips on the locals, and nary a cross word spoken. If that is not a sign of an unbreakable bond, I do not know what is. So many times we had been asked how we would cope with any fallout. There has been none. So my worries about broaching the subject in print became an irrelevance. He opens his eyes, crossing the event horizon, and grins. We look over to the door and see our stuff piled up and ready to go like kids eager for Disneyland. After a quick shower we step across the threshold into the hallway and I cast a quick eye back. The apartment looks tidy. The absolute least we can do for a couple who showed astonishing trust in allowing two men whom they had never met before to stay in their home in their absence. We never did have enough time with them. We never really had enough time with anyone. I close the door and descend to the lobby, forcing the keys into The Duke and The Princess’ mailbox for a later retrieval. They return home this evening. We will be long gone by then. Out in the streets, students and pensioners shuffle past in worship of their lives. They have no idea what we have been through or how much I will miss their cursory, fleeting appearance. I feel like a deserter. Patch waits with the luggage whilst I flag down a yellow cab on the high street and direct it around the corner. We cram everything in, just, and head off; the final chariot ride, out to the airport. The city fades away behind us. Only the outskirts remain. At departures we pay with the last of our dollars. Incredibly, our budgets were nigh on perfect – except for the terrifying bill that we incurred with the failure of our treacherous behaviour towards the hire car company. Had we pulled that off, we would have been home and dry, breaking even. But no. Dark figures lurk on a balance sheet somewhere in the future. ‘Your excess baggage comes to a total of $160.’ The poker face of the check-in clerk is unmoving as mine drops. ‘How would you like to pay?’ I tell him that I wouldn’t, and that I will be back shortly. He nods tiresomely. We retire to the back side of a pillar. I have to lose 10kg. The King of Space used his extensive training to cleverly wear most of his excess baggage. In direct and logical mockery of a somewhat ridiculous system, he is wearing 6 T-shirts, 2 sweatshirts, 3 pairs of pants, 4 pairs of socks and all of his underwear. He stands tall and proud like the Michelin man – all that fabric bulk accentuating the confidence of his swagger. So it is that I start rummaging through memories. First to go is the tent. I so dearly wanted to keep it; a paean to the reliance of budget camping. $30 from Wal-Mart and it was my house for so long, withstanding biting cold in New Brunswick, torrential rain in Atlanta, and searing hot temperatures in Memphis. We have been through so much together. But alas, it goes in the bin. The cargo pants I bought on recommendation from my ex-girlfriend Monkey go next. They were broken and torn anyway, too big for me. Time is running short. I ditch old t-shirts and jeans and I even throw away the laminated picture of El Ladante that graced the dashboard of the hire car. Our mascot for this trip. Perhaps it is fitting that he performs one last gesture of selflessness in the name of weight loss. Patch shakes his head sadly. Is there nothing else I can lose? No. More clothing goes. Eventually I make it down to the target weight. We are ushered through the gates. Patch strips down to the necessary layers once we are inside, sniggering at the idiocy of the system. ‘How does it make any sense that a person weighing 15 stone has the same baggage weight allowance as someone weighing 8 stone? And how does it make sense that I can do this?’ He points to the pile of smuggled clothes. We play the waiting game. The King Of Space goes for a waste dump. I check my Facebook account. Smudger pops up in the chat window and asks me when the coming home party is. He’s in far away Leeds. It won’t be far away for long. I barely have time to tell him that much before our numbers come up over the crackle of the public address system. We make for the gate and walk out onto the tarmac. I step up onto the boarding ramp. My feet leave this soil. I look back down. That’s it: over. It will be a long time before they touch it again. And they will never touch it in the same way. No return could be as eye-opening. I am lost in a daydream. I come around when I notice there is a queue building behind me. One last sniff of the air and I retreat into the body of the ‘plane. We rumble along the airstrip and the engines build up to a thundering roar. I take a deep breath and the ‘plane rockets along the runway and lifts up into the sky. Canada shrinks down into the distance beneath us until we disappear above the clouds and North America is gone. The sun beams across the cotton wool carpet. I think of all the wonderful bloggers we met. I think of Benji and Suoko in Halifax with their beautiful organic house and their concrete morality in a world of liquid values, Scott in Boston with his boisterous and welcoming heartiness, Shroom Monkey in Atlanta whom I could have treated better after I got distracted by something shiny, Mob in Midland's self aware suburban underground that was far more interesting than the overground, bubbly Yas in Phoenix with her big heart in a small apartment, Deidre: proud child of the desert in Las Cruces, Shari the earth mother in homely Puyallup, ever-mysterious Okami in Calgary, Doozy the dog loving live wire, The Duke of quick wit, Princess of analysis and the supremely enigmatic Trevor in Vancouver; All such generous people who let us have a glimpse into their lives and overwhelmed us with their hospitality and their uninhibited exposure the worlds they live in. People who went out on a limb for a man they never met. People whose lives I had never seen, whose eyes I had never met, whose stories drew me in from a computer screen far away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I think of Topolk in Carolina, Farrago in Chicago, The Topiary Cow in The United States Minor Outlying Islands, Singleton in Florida, Pie! in Munich, Eric in Detroit, Onkle Tom in Calgary and endearingly geeky Doug in LA: all souls whom I would love to have met -had circumstance worked her magic in our favour. I think of all the people the King of Space introduced me to: Tom and Mirta, Mart, Donna and Lisa, and Dottie and Jon. I think of all the fantastic random strangers we crossed paths with: the good old boys by the fireside in New England, Ivan and his family in Bristol, Tennessee, those crazy drinking boys on the road to Montreal, Nichola and friends in San Francisco. My mind aches. The flight is long. The movies are bad. My mind is not really on them. After a long, long time we descend through the clouds and the grey slab of London rises up through the rolling hills of England; home. Smoke flees from the tires as we touch down and the plane grinds to a halt. We wait for our baggage amongst the grim faces of English airport attendants. I fumble through quarters to find mysterious English coins for the vending machines. We emerge into the arrivals area where Space Mother and Trev greet us. I have never met them before. Space Mother is short and generously built with glasses and short blonde hair. Trev is an older Bristolian with a jewel in his ear. Space Mother asks about the trip. ‘How was it?’ To sum up a life changing four month crusade of tens of thousands of kilometres through the highs and lows of North American culture is not an easy task. But I am not put off: ‘Amazing’. She smiles. I expand as much as I can through the jetlag as we wedge ourselves into their little rover and roll out onto the M25. The lanes are narrow, the cars are fast and everything is on the wrong side of the road. The right side now. I peer over the bag squashed on my lap. Sheep graze on the grass verge beneath the end of the runway. Dirty cars and vans squeeze past at ridiculous speeds. Patch tells of his amusing meeting with the homosexual element of the pub next to our motel in San Francisco. ‘Well,’ says Space Mother philosophically ‘One up the bum, no harm done.’ A car cuts her up. ‘F*ckin idiot!’ We reach the M4 and gradually the squeeze lessens. Bristol is half an hour away. Soon I will see the friends I have missed so much. I will see Dogbowl, Motherloaf and Double G. I will see Bowser, C Unit and JayMcGee. I will see Vicks, Wally, Penny, Paul and El Ladante. A weekend's camping trip in Mumbles beckons. Keep on rolling. If I don't sleep, it isn't quite over. The grass of the tumbling fields looks greener than I remember. I smile at the beauty that dislocation reveals when one returns. The old churches dotted around the countryside bear no brown signs of historical illumination: their age is normal here. We turn onto the M32 and swing off onto the ring road. The little rover stops outside my family home and I disembark. My dad is out. I pile up my luggage at the front door. My concentration is broken by the familiar burble of Swedish metal swishing to a halt. Dad emerges with a big grin on his face. We hug and he pats me on the back. ‘How was it?’ I laugh. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Small talk is exchanged and then watches are checked. The King of Space has to be off. We smile at each other and hug. ‘We made it’ he says. We did. There is no one I would rather have done this with. Now our bond is unbreakable. I can feel it in my bones. This is something we will always have. We separate and he grins again and wiggles those suggestive eyebrows. ‘See you later’ he says. I watch him waving out of the back window of the rover as he turns the corner at the end of the street and vanishes. But he isn’t really gone. Dad and I turn towards the house: back at the epicentre, in the town where it all started. Where 34,000 clicks around North America, around the world of my fellow bloggers and around the world of my curiosity began all those years ago when I hovered over the ‘next blog’ button and changed my life: with a single click of the mouse.

Virtually Over

I am carefully guiding the joysticks on the control pad with my thumbs. My onscreen alias is curled up in a ball, shooting through plastic piping. A giant winged beast of alien origin swoops and claws at the tubing in an effort to destroy me. I am trying to reach a distant control room to activate power on a troubled settlement. I flew here to save the local polygons from a life of subjective suffering. ‘Charge up your shot and stun it’ says The King of Space. I take his advice. He didn’t get that title for nothing, and I have faith that he has some experience of negotiation with xenomorphs. It seems to work. Patch takes a slug of juice and nods knowingly. The remains of breakfast litter the table. We have forgone the formality of formal dress. Slobbery prevails in the late morning of our last day on this great adventure. And it will not be wasted. The final hours between sunrise and sunset are being filled with the important task of heroism administered from the chariot of a borrowed sofa. We have been immersing ourselves in Metroid Prime for hours now. No point moving anywhere. We have no money to do anything. Why not indulge in some fantasy and take a virtual journey at the end of our very real expedition? I hammer the buttons mercilessly and grimace at the TV set. The flying space beast retreats. I think of the golden eagle we saw in Yosemite. We were winding the car up the hillside at the fade of day when we saw it in the road. The formidable beak tore great strips of flesh from the bones of a deer with poor road safety awareness. The eagle threw a glance sideways. Those great orange eyeballs clocked approaching cars. The eagle casually scooped up the carcass in its imposing talons and spread out its enormous wings, dropping effortlessly over the verge into the valley below. The tyres of the oncoming automobiles flanked the bloody leftovers. We flashed past and I cast my eye shoulderwards in the hope of seeing the bird rise back up in the distance and soar away into the sunset. But I saw nothing. I jam the joystick to the right and my character pops out of the tube and stands tall in robot form. The viewpoint shifts inside the helmet and I stand ready for action. I run into a room full of hostiles and start shooting. What a life that Eagle must lead; gliding high above matchbox cars tracking around the head of the valley. Perching atop great swathes of conifers, surveying breathtaking lands of which it has the freedom to roam by the currents and eddies of nature’s wind. And whilst all the other eagles swoop and dive through the trunks and branches and swaying grassland to catch their prey, this eagle just waits for the cars to hit and picks up the pieces. A noble vulture. A fast food junkie. I wonder what its doing now. I hit the pause button and put down the controller. For the sake of tradition we adjourn to the local shop and buy tins of Chef Boyardee and Green Beans; our signature dish. It was always there to sustain us when we camped out under the stars. The hob in the apartment seems like futuristic magic after the humble flickering of our rusted camp stove. The soup heats almost instantly. None of the unhurried waiting we are used to. It never bothered me to wait half an hour for the pot to bubble when we were watched over by the arriving light of long-extinguished stars in the night sky. The flicker of the camp fire and the elasticity of time all our own made it okay. After our primal hunger is sated we resume the struggle against virtual odds. I climb into my spaceship and pull up the map. Ours is packed away. I will pull it out upon our return home and retrace the steps we took. I pick a planet and zoom off into the blackness. I wish I had my own spacecraft. I would go to Titan. Then Io. Then Gliese. The day wears on. We build likenesses of ourselves on the Wii. I like the idea that some semblence of our presence will remain in this house after our passing. When The Duke and The Princess go virtual bowling, we will be hanging around in the background like Walter and The Dude, pixelated. I stare out of the window at the very last of the daylight. Its hard to capture the memory of the sun setting for the last time on this place. We have seen so many majestic sunsets. I guess it doesn’t matter if it blends in with all the others. It is more important that they are all there, lodged in the mind. The buildings around us go grey, then black with orange highlights. The man with the shopping cart scoots down the alley again, singing boisterously. The happy homeless. Or the completely bonkers. I leave the window open and pull down the blinds. I lay my head down on a pile of unfamiliar pillows and pull an unfamiliar blanket around my body. Patch snores happily across the room somewhere. I try hard to capture the memory.