Chapter. 50: To blog or not to blog?
To blog or not to blog? That is the question! And one which I have seem to have convincingly answered with a 3 month and 13 day lapse since my last entry. But actually it's not so clear cut. It's not that I haven't wanted to blog, or have been too lazy, or have had broken fingers. It’s just that every time I've been inspired to blog, think also “Nooooooooo, I shouldn’t write the blog! Instead I should write the damn albatross-around-my-neck".
Whoops, sorry! Did I say “albatross”? I meant “book”. I meant I should write the damn book. More on this later.
CRAZY SEXY SCARY RIO AND LOVELY MAX
It’s also that a lot has been going on in my life. I went to Carnival in Brazil with Max in February. Rio was fun, crazy, hot, chaotic, beautiful, steamy, violent, sexy, scary. Max and I were attacked once in the streets of Ipanema by some street kids (not seriously), and we nearly got shaken down by the police on a separate occasion after two machine gun toting policemen pulled our taxi over as we were looking for a club called Bitch. It was more than just a little freaky. My friend Chip said that it was "the best holiday ever", but then he always says that about everything he does. Gotta love his enthusiasm, even if sometimes I can't share it myself. The sad news is that after Brazil, after much agonizing, Max and I decided afterwards to go our own separate ways, but with huge respect and love. A wonderful man. In my heart forever.
DONE THE FIRST DRAFT; WHAT NOW?
OK, now you all want to know: What's going on with that goddamn albatross-around-my-neck? Well, I’ve sort of written a first draft, but it’s not really the book I wanted to write, and I just don’t know what to do with it. Burn it, stick it in a drawer, rewrite it to be what I want, or just toss it in the bin and start a new writing project. These are my options. I don't much fancy any of them. So in order to figure it out, I went back to Broome, in North-West Australia, which is where my book is set (in the 1920s). So many of you keep asking, that I'm putting a map here for you. In Broome, I find myself re-enthused and re-daunted in equal measures. But it doesn't matter, I love it up here anyway.
STARGAZING WITH THE KAMIKAZE MOSQUITO SQUAD
I went star gazing the other night with Craig from Astro Tours. He had a white beard down to his navel like Moses and an impressive collection of telescopes set up on a sandy plain just outside of Broome. The evening didn't start well. The sandy plain was situated right beside a mangrove swamp and as soon as I got off the bus, the mosquitoes attacked in coordinated kamikaze swarms. Clothes were no obstacle; the savage buggers crawled up my sleeves, flew up my nose, thrust into my ears, wriggled down the crack of my trousers, clustered on my neck.
When I got home later that night I looked like I had measles and my shirt and pants were absolutely covered in spots of blood. But for every one that I smashed against the fabric of my designer clothing, I think 200 got away with a great bellyful of my blood. It’s a wonder I didn’t faint from loss of blood.
But my goodness, I really didn't care at all because the star gazing was amazing, breathtaking, an absolute revelation! When we arrived, Moses had one telescope set up, pointing at something in the sky, and he invited people to look in it. Everyone stood back shyly like idiots, leaving the field open for me. I had no idea what I was going to see and bugger-me-stupid if it wasn’t Saturn, glowing luminous and perfect, with all of her rings! What I saw looked very close to this picture, except more luminous. I can tell you, friends, you can look at all the NASA pictures in the world, but seeing Saturn for real, so close in this telescope, was one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever seen.
But that was not the end of the wonders Moses showed to us that night. We saw the double star system of Alpha Centauri. (Actually, it's a triple star system but one of them is a tiny brown dwarf, and we could only see the two larger stars in the telescope.) It's the nearest star system to us, but even so at 4.24 light-years it would take the fastest moving man-made object, the Voyager 1, moving at 62,000 km per hour, over 73,000 years to reach it.
We also saw the luminous Magellanic Cloud (the nearest galaxy to ours), the Jewel Box Cluster (a lovely constellation of stars of lots of different colours, including a red supergiant, see picture at left, which doesn't at all do it's beauty any justice). Moses also pointed out to us many of the 88 modern constellations in the sky like the astrological ones in the ecliptic (the plane around the sun through which the planets, including earth, revolve) such as Scorpio (the only one which looks like what it’s supposed to be) and Leo, and 
some of those constellations outside the ecliptic, such as the Southern Cross (which can be used to find the terrestrial south pole) and Canis Major, with Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. We also saw the aboriginal constellation of the Emu, which unlike our constellations really does look like a giant bird flying across the Milky Way.
And then, at the end, a telescope was pointed at an object which had been steadily climbing from the horizon and bugger-me-frontways if I couldn’t see Jupiter, with 3 of her 4 visible moons (the fourth must have been in front or in back.) It was so large and distinct that I could even discern the bands running across her equator. Well, as I said to Moses afterwards “Mate, that’s the best $65 tour I have EVER taken.” (Did you notice how I used the word "mate"? I'm become such a local.)
And the whole experience was really quite moving, not just because of the beauty and fascination in the night sky, but also because it made me think of my poor Dad, dead nearly 8 years now. I thought of how he wanted to be an astronomer, but became a solicitor instead to satisfy his family and social convention, and maybe that’s why he turned to the bottle. And so I was that curious bittersweet nostalgic feeling which can best be described as happy-sad, as I felt close to him then and thought of how we would have shared something nice, sitting out here watching the jeweled night sky.
MAD CAROL: IN SIX MONTHS TIME SHE'LL NEVER NEED TO EAT AGAIN
The night was also special because it enabled me to meet Mad Carol (MC), the Canadian from Winnipeg. When I first saw MC on the bus to the mosquito feeding ground, I noticed two things. First, she had a squeaky baby doll whisper voice. Second, she was bald. In the dark I thought perhaps she was a chemo patient, but I later discovered she shaved her head. Maybe that’s why, aside from our joint Canadianness, why she liked me; we had similar pates. “I have a thyroid problem that I’m not treating medically,” she said, pulling back the mosquito netting that enveloped her head to reveal a fearsome goiter. She grilled me as to the purpose of my presence in Broome and as I quickly found myself on the familiar but ever uncomfortable territory of talking about my albatross (sorry, book) I resorted to my well-honed avoidance technique: I started asking the questions:
Me: “What are you doing here?”
MC: “Oh, I’m a sun gazer. All ancient cultures gazed at the sun. I increase my time each day by 10 seconds, and you should congratulate me because today I hit 15 minutes. Uninterrupted. When I get to 44 minutes, I’ll become a solar chip, like my guru.”
Me: “A solar chip?” I asked
MC: “I’ll draw everything I need directly from the sun. My guru hasn’t eaten in 8 years. Though sometimes he takes a glass of buttermilk or tea for social reasons.”
EWWWWWWWWWW! Now completely aside from highly interesting madness of Mad Carol, at this point I really have to interject, with a question to my readers: If you were not going to eat for 8 years, would the first thing you’d have be BUTTERMILK? I doubt it. BUTTERMILK IS GROSS, AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT! It is a fermented milk product, whose two most marked characteristics are tartness and a thickened clumpy nature, due to bacteria turning lactose into lactic acid and causing the protein casein to precipitate out of the liquid. (Incidentally, this goop is called clabbering, which I think is a lovely word. Oh, the things you can find out on the net!)
Anyway, back to Mad Carol and solar gazing. There is a website you can check out if you want www.solarhealing.com
It makes for absolutely fascinating reading. I only realized quite how mad poor Mad Carol actually was when I read the website. In addition to the stuff about sungazing being the perfect cure for all physical and spiritual ailments, here are a few tidbits on its other benefits:
What could I say? This was her truth, no matter how ludicrous it seemed to me. And it's not so much more crazy than the Hindu's 300 million Gods (yes, that is officially how many deities there are in Hinduism) or Christianity's supposed Virgin Birth. But I also knew that there was something real in what Mad Carol was saying. I don't know how, but somehow I just knew that terrible abuse had happened to her as a child. And so, as I gobbled down a particularly large piece of pavlova in one of my favourite restaurants in the world (Old Zoo Cafe in Broome) I encouraged her to write her truth, her story, even if she couldn't speak it yet. She was very taken with the idea. When we said goodbye, I hugged her and we exchanged email addresses and I made her promise to let me know how she fares with her sun healing. And if the next six months of gazing at the sun in the desert of Alice Springs hasn't fixed her thyroid, I'm gonna do my utmost to persuade her to go under the knife. So maybe that's my purpose in Mad Carol's life. And what's hers in mine? Well, as I swallowed the last glorious spoonful of pavlova, she said “My god you really came alive with passion when you spoke about South Africa. Maybe you should write about that. Maybe you’re not ready to write your albatross yet.” So maybe that's what her purpose was. Or maybe it hasn't been revealed yet.
SOUTH AFRICA ON MY MIND
But it’s true, South Africa keeps popping up in my mind all the time. When I'm standing in line at the post office. When I'm on my bike. When I get up in the morning and drink my tea and stare out the window at the sailboats on the sunny harbour. When I'm writing. When I’m brushing my teeth. And today I realized something that may help to explain this preoccupation: I'm nearly on the decade anniversary of my move there. I really can't quite believe it! I moved to Johannesburg in June 1997 - ten years ago! - and yet it seems like yesterday. I remember everything - absolutely everything! - about my life there. My years in golden, magic, wild, exciting South Africa stand out in a psychological bas-relief as the most vivid of my life. Oh, how I miss it! Oh, I was so lucky to be able to live there when I did. I was lucky, lucky, lucky. Blessed, really, as I have been all my life, and I am so grateful for these blessings.
That's enough for now. If you've made it this far, your eyes are probably as tired as Mad Carols'! I'll write more another time very soon.
Whoops, sorry! Did I say “albatross”? I meant “book”. I meant I should write the damn book. More on this later.
CRAZY SEXY SCARY RIO AND LOVELY MAX
It’s also that a lot has been going on in my life. I went to Carnival in Brazil with Max in February. Rio was fun, crazy, hot, chaotic, beautiful, steamy, violent, sexy, scary. Max and I were attacked once in the streets of Ipanema by some street kids (not seriously), and we nearly got shaken down by the police on a separate occasion after two machine gun toting policemen pulled our taxi over as we were looking for a club called Bitch. It was more than just a little freaky. My friend Chip said that it was "the best holiday ever", but then he always says that about everything he does. Gotta love his enthusiasm, even if sometimes I can't share it myself. The sad news is that after Brazil, after much agonizing, Max and I decided afterwards to go our own separate ways, but with huge respect and love. A wonderful man. In my heart forever.DONE THE FIRST DRAFT; WHAT NOW?
OK, now you all want to know: What's going on with that goddamn albatross-around-my-neck? Well, I’ve sort of written a first draft, but it’s not really the book I wanted to write, and I just don’t know what to do with it. Burn it, stick it in a drawer, rewrite it to be what I want, or just toss it in the bin and start a new writing project. These are my options. I don't much fancy any of them. So in order to figure it out, I went back to Broome, in North-West Australia, which is where my book is set (in the 1920s). So many of you keep asking, that I'm putting a map here for you. In Broome, I find myself re-enthused and re-daunted in equal measures. But it doesn't matter, I love it up here anyway.STARGAZING WITH THE KAMIKAZE MOSQUITO SQUAD
I went star gazing the other night with Craig from Astro Tours. He had a white beard down to his navel like Moses and an impressive collection of telescopes set up on a sandy plain just outside of Broome. The evening didn't start well. The sandy plain was situated right beside a mangrove swamp and as soon as I got off the bus, the mosquitoes attacked in coordinated kamikaze swarms. Clothes were no obstacle; the savage buggers crawled up my sleeves, flew up my nose, thrust into my ears, wriggled down the crack of my trousers, clustered on my neck.
When I got home later that night I looked like I had measles and my shirt and pants were absolutely covered in spots of blood. But for every one that I smashed against the fabric of my designer clothing, I think 200 got away with a great bellyful of my blood. It’s a wonder I didn’t faint from loss of blood.
But my goodness, I really didn't care at all because the star gazing was amazing, breathtaking, an absolute revelation! When we arrived, Moses had one telescope set up, pointing at something in the sky, and he invited people to look in it. Everyone stood back shyly like idiots, leaving the field open for me. I had no idea what I was going to see and bugger-me-stupid if it wasn’t Saturn, glowing luminous and perfect, with all of her rings! What I saw looked very close to this picture, except more luminous. I can tell you, friends, you can look at all the NASA pictures in the world, but seeing Saturn for real, so close in this telescope, was one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever seen.But that was not the end of the wonders Moses showed to us that night. We saw the double star system of Alpha Centauri. (Actually, it's a triple star system but one of them is a tiny brown dwarf, and we could only see the two larger stars in the telescope.) It's the nearest star system to us, but even so at 4.24 light-years it would take the fastest moving man-made object, the Voyager 1, moving at 62,000 km per hour, over 73,000 years to reach it.
We also saw the luminous Magellanic Cloud (the nearest galaxy to ours), the Jewel Box Cluster (a lovely constellation of stars of lots of different colours, including a red supergiant, see picture at left, which doesn't at all do it's beauty any justice). Moses also pointed out to us many of the 88 modern constellations in the sky like the astrological ones in the ecliptic (the plane around the sun through which the planets, including earth, revolve) such as Scorpio (the only one which looks like what it’s supposed to be) and Leo, and 
some of those constellations outside the ecliptic, such as the Southern Cross (which can be used to find the terrestrial south pole) and Canis Major, with Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. We also saw the aboriginal constellation of the Emu, which unlike our constellations really does look like a giant bird flying across the Milky Way.And then, at the end, a telescope was pointed at an object which had been steadily climbing from the horizon and bugger-me-frontways if I couldn’t see Jupiter, with 3 of her 4 visible moons (the fourth must have been in front or in back.) It was so large and distinct that I could even discern the bands running across her equator. Well, as I said to Moses afterwards “Mate, that’s the best $65 tour I have EVER taken.” (Did you notice how I used the word "mate"? I'm become such a local.)
And the whole experience was really quite moving, not just because of the beauty and fascination in the night sky, but also because it made me think of my poor Dad, dead nearly 8 years now. I thought of how he wanted to be an astronomer, but became a solicitor instead to satisfy his family and social convention, and maybe that’s why he turned to the bottle. And so I was that curious bittersweet nostalgic feeling which can best be described as happy-sad, as I felt close to him then and thought of how we would have shared something nice, sitting out here watching the jeweled night sky.
MAD CAROL: IN SIX MONTHS TIME SHE'LL NEVER NEED TO EAT AGAIN
The night was also special because it enabled me to meet Mad Carol (MC), the Canadian from Winnipeg. When I first saw MC on the bus to the mosquito feeding ground, I noticed two things. First, she had a squeaky baby doll whisper voice. Second, she was bald. In the dark I thought perhaps she was a chemo patient, but I later discovered she shaved her head. Maybe that’s why, aside from our joint Canadianness, why she liked me; we had similar pates. “I have a thyroid problem that I’m not treating medically,” she said, pulling back the mosquito netting that enveloped her head to reveal a fearsome goiter. She grilled me as to the purpose of my presence in Broome and as I quickly found myself on the familiar but ever uncomfortable territory of talking about my albatross (sorry, book) I resorted to my well-honed avoidance technique: I started asking the questions:
Me: “What are you doing here?”
MC: “Oh, I’m a sun gazer. All ancient cultures gazed at the sun. I increase my time each day by 10 seconds, and you should congratulate me because today I hit 15 minutes. Uninterrupted. When I get to 44 minutes, I’ll become a solar chip, like my guru.”
Me: “A solar chip?” I asked
MC: “I’ll draw everything I need directly from the sun. My guru hasn’t eaten in 8 years. Though sometimes he takes a glass of buttermilk or tea for social reasons.”
EWWWWWWWWWW! Now completely aside from highly interesting madness of Mad Carol, at this point I really have to interject, with a question to my readers: If you were not going to eat for 8 years, would the first thing you’d have be BUTTERMILK? I doubt it. BUTTERMILK IS GROSS, AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT! It is a fermented milk product, whose two most marked characteristics are tartness and a thickened clumpy nature, due to bacteria turning lactose into lactic acid and causing the protein casein to precipitate out of the liquid. (Incidentally, this goop is called clabbering, which I think is a lovely word. Oh, the things you can find out on the net!)Anyway, back to Mad Carol and solar gazing. There is a website you can check out if you want www.solarhealing.com
It makes for absolutely fascinating reading. I only realized quite how mad poor Mad Carol actually was when I read the website. In addition to the stuff about sungazing being the perfect cure for all physical and spiritual ailments, here are a few tidbits on its other benefits:
- Historically, a lot of people have remained without food. [Yes, starvation has been a problem in history.]
- Accordingly in 1922, the Imperial Medical College in London decreed that solar rays were the ideal food for humans. [I wonder how much you'd have to pay IMC to get them to endorse this statement today.]
- You can develop psychic skills of telepathy, television... [Really? What are psychic skills of television, anyway? Is that when you can predict a sitcom plot within the first three minutes of the episode?]
- You can develop psychic skills of having your body at different places simultaneously [Now this would be useful because sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I need to pee, but I'm too lazy to get out of bed]
- You can read past, present, and future. This method can be safely applied to control obesity. [Notice the nifty segue from the psychic to the physical. I like it. Fatties take note: you need to stare at the sun more.]
- Almost all problems get solved. [Ok, fabulous, because I've got an ingrown toenail which is driving me nuts.]
What could I say? This was her truth, no matter how ludicrous it seemed to me. And it's not so much more crazy than the Hindu's 300 million Gods (yes, that is officially how many deities there are in Hinduism) or Christianity's supposed Virgin Birth. But I also knew that there was something real in what Mad Carol was saying. I don't know how, but somehow I just knew that terrible abuse had happened to her as a child. And so, as I gobbled down a particularly large piece of pavlova in one of my favourite restaurants in the world (Old Zoo Cafe in Broome) I encouraged her to write her truth, her story, even if she couldn't speak it yet. She was very taken with the idea. When we said goodbye, I hugged her and we exchanged email addresses and I made her promise to let me know how she fares with her sun healing. And if the next six months of gazing at the sun in the desert of Alice Springs hasn't fixed her thyroid, I'm gonna do my utmost to persuade her to go under the knife. So maybe that's my purpose in Mad Carol's life. And what's hers in mine? Well, as I swallowed the last glorious spoonful of pavlova, she said “My god you really came alive with passion when you spoke about South Africa. Maybe you should write about that. Maybe you’re not ready to write your albatross yet.” So maybe that's what her purpose was. Or maybe it hasn't been revealed yet.
SOUTH AFRICA ON MY MIND
But it’s true, South Africa keeps popping up in my mind all the time. When I'm standing in line at the post office. When I'm on my bike. When I get up in the morning and drink my tea and stare out the window at the sailboats on the sunny harbour. When I'm writing. When I’m brushing my teeth. And today I realized something that may help to explain this preoccupation: I'm nearly on the decade anniversary of my move there. I really can't quite believe it! I moved to Johannesburg in June 1997 - ten years ago! - and yet it seems like yesterday. I remember everything - absolutely everything! - about my life there. My years in golden, magic, wild, exciting South Africa stand out in a psychological bas-relief as the most vivid of my life. Oh, how I miss it! Oh, I was so lucky to be able to live there when I did. I was lucky, lucky, lucky. Blessed, really, as I have been all my life, and I am so grateful for these blessings.
That's enough for now. If you've made it this far, your eyes are probably as tired as Mad Carols'! I'll write more another time very soon.
posted by Peter at 7:19 PM
5 Comments:
Peter, this is your best blog, written with real feeling. I felt happy/sad too when I read about your Dad, he was very special to John and me. I too like Carol! She should indeed have surgery, before she starves herself with sunbeams. I believe she is right, you should write about South Africa [ you would have to go back for a period, to do some research] ---you feel passionate about it, and there would be LOTS of history to write about! I LOVE the word "clabbering" - sounds Irish to me! Good to read your blog, I must get on with the day! Love Sheelane
I read your blog . I see you have become accustomed to good Aussie slang, your use of the word mate and buggered is spot on. Not sure if you fed the albatross around your neck but obviously the recent trip to Broome was worth it.
I will definitely check if there is a similar tour to what you did when I go to NT. I often star gaze it helps me think and put in perspective whatever in my life is going on and even though I live in a fairly lit up area I often see sattellites and the occasional shooting star, which I don't always make a wish over it just lets me know everything will workout!
Yeah Peter... you really seem at home in South Africa
Loved reading your blog again, it was really great! I really think you should do what you FEEL like doing tho...write the blog? don't write the blog? write the book? don't write the book? South Africa, yes? South Africa, no?...Set the albatross free! If it flies let it go! If it lands head first into the dirt let it be! If it turns around, grabs you by the balls until you finish it then, you probably need to finish it. If it just farts in your face, c'est la vie, but set the Albatross Free! Love you.
Love having your blog to read, it's lovely. I think you should do what you FEEL like doing tho...write the blog? don't write the blog? write the book? don't write the book? South Africa, yes? South Africa, no?.. Set, the albatross, free! If it flies away then let it go! If it falls flat on it's face in the dirt, then let it be! If it turns around, bites you in the balls and won't let go until you finish it, then you will probably have to finish it! If it stops and farts in your face, then c'est la vie!...but set the poor albatross free!Love you.
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