====== +2006+ ====== 31/05/2006 The judgment, prejudice, competition and power structures that exist within schools are present right up until kids' final year. Can the child really be blamed for wanting to rebel? Or can they be blamed for wanting to withdraw? As a child I was constantly pressured to perform well academically. This is not a bad thing, but its consequences manifested themselves in the way I related to adults (authority figures such as teachers) and other children. I was the subject of ridicule for other kids, but the subject of praise for adults. In a lot of ways, I mirrored the ridicule I received, attempting to redirect it onto other people. 03/06/2006 Incidentally, we found a dug out area, constructed intentionally by someone before us, hidden amongst the bush. This lent credibility to my story. It was obviously something that someone had put a lot of effort into. There was makeshift furniture strewn around - a sort of cubby house - where people could sit down without getting sandy. A pseudo-roof was formed from the overarching branches of the bushes, which also prevented detection of the hole from the outside highway. Later on, someone told me that the place had been made by a kid who went to our school but this was never confirmed. It was here that we smoked the leaf one afternoon. 14/06/2006 I think today's culture can breed isolation a lot easier than culture of the past. Technology is probably to blame, along with the growth of mass media and multimedia. Distractions like television, DVDs, computer games and the Internet keep people in their homes and give them something more convenient to occupy themselves with. I think people who had their adolescence in the 80's (and prior) didn't have those factors to contend with. They were "forced" to get out and find other ways to entertain themselves. 18/07/2006 I was reading the Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, and this passage really spoke to me - "By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves ... in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even non-existent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience." 31/07/2006 Quote from Lonesome Traveler by Kerouac: "I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under but the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom world only a figure of speech - inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me." (38). "Everything is perfect on the street again, the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream." (39). 26/09/2006 After the plants arrived in the mail, we split each cactus into two parts, one of which we planted in a terracotta pot. The cacti have 4-7 ribs arranged in a star-shape, with small spines, and have a deep green colour. Each plant was approximately 3.5 inches in diameter. One of the portions was designated for my partner and was cut at a length of around 8 inches, while the other was designated for me and was cut at a length of 13 inches. The day before ingestion, we displaced the spines from the cacti portions using small knives, removing as little of the green pulp as possible. Having de-spined the cuttings, I washed them underneath the stream of a tap until they were free of dirt and slime. We then chopped the cacti portions into small pieces and stored them in the fridge overnight. Tasting one of the pieces while it was still fresh was comparable to eating something of the consistency of a cucumber, but having a distinctly bitter aftertaste. My partner commented that it wasn't particularly bad, although I agreed with what I had read of reports of intense bitterness. The next day, we blended the pieces with an equal amount of water, essentially liquifying the whole two portions. In the blender, it looked like a green milkshake but with a slimy, snot-like quality. We poured the mixture into a large stainless steel pot. It was first cooked on a low heat for around 40 minutes. During this time it expanded as green bubbles rose to the top of the mixture. Later, it reduced as the two layers recombined into a dark green coloured water. As it cooked, I read a chapter of Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums." This mixture was allowed to boil lightly for around two hours. At that point, the liquid had reduced significantly and what was left in the pot was a glumpy sludge, reminiscent of mung bean soup. We strained the sludge through a piece of fabric, squeezing out all of the remaining liquid by hand, then discarded the pulp, which looked like a bright green turd. The portions equated to around 500ml of "juice." Working on the rule of proportion, I had around 330 ml of the juice. My partner ingested the rest. The juice was intensely bitter, though not so bad as to induce the gag reflex. We followed each sip of juice with a drink of water and a pinch of sugar to wash away the taste. We consumed the juice over a period of 25 minutes. After drinking the unpleasant goo, we laid down in our bedroom and waited for further effects, already feeling a slight "stoned" sensation, similar to smoking a cone of strong marijuana. It was 3.00pm. After fifteen minutes or so, my partner felt the strong urge to vomit. She was unable to hold it and vomited three times over the next half hour. She has a history of stomach weakness - she can't handle rollercoasters or even plane trips. I was able to keep my juice down without any problem. Over the next hour, the stoned sensation became a shade more intense. When I stared at any flat surface it would warp and shift, but only very slightly. Colours and the contrast between light and darkness became more noticeable. My partner had a short nap. When she awakened, the stoned effect had worn off. She was hungry and went to a nearby restaurant to get some food. I stayed home. Minutes passed and my partner returned. There was a mild queasiness in my stomach. The warping of surfaces had become slightly more intense, especially when I looked at our carpet or bedsheets. Surfaces appeared to be "breathing" gently and I often became mesmerised by the textures and patterns of things. Two hours after ingestion of the juice (5:00pm), I believed I reached the peak of the experience as a triangular, lattice-like pattern appeared on various surfaces. If I focused on the pattern it would change colour and take on different shades. Our bed sheets looked like they had been covered with a yellow-fluro highlighter. The carpet looked like it was covered with thousands of tiny circles, like beads of transparent oil. Occasionally, the entire room took on a shade of lime green but would return to normal after a few seconds. None of these visual elements were forceful. They only came into being when I focused on things and remained still. Two and a half hours after ingestion (5:30pm) I had one cone of marijuana. This potentiated the effects of the San Pedro, but I was now having difficulty separating the individual effects of each substance. The clarity of my thoughts was lessened after smoking cannabis, but the visual aspect of the mescaline became more profound, if only for a short while. Watching TV would "ground" me in my normal sense of perception, though I did think it was somewhat mundane. I went outside for a few minutes and stood on our third floor balcony, overlooking our car park. The night sky was a beautiful deep blue. The leaves of the trees held my attention as they swayed in the wind. Their green colour and intricate foliage was pleasant. It was raining however, so I went back inside where it was warm. I held my partner underneath the blankets. I asked her how it felt. She said she felt very safe. We made love. I'm not sure whether it was the mescaline or the marijuana, but sex was very intense. I managed to delay ejaculation for a long time. As I thrusted into her I felt some sort of primal, natural desire to keep going, as if I was an animal. There was also a spiritual element to sex. I felt complete as we became one being, sharing the experience of a moment in one of the closest ways possible. I had another hit of marijuana and closed my eyes. Visuals were not actually on the inside of my eyelids, but manifested themselves in an uncontrollable series of imaginary images. Hundreds of eyes, layered over geometric patterns, tiles and fractal-like spirals, moved about in my mind's eye. The patterns reminded me of the visionary artwork of Alex Grey. After my partner had gone to sleep for the night (9:00pm), I sat in the dark and abandoned myself to silence for an hour. In the dim light, the room and furniture took on a "frosted-glass" appearance, although it was not particularly acute. Like the other visuals, I could will it away. I had another hit of marijuana, which seemed to overpower any remaining effect of the mescaline. I became very sedate. After sitting in the dark, contemplating, I listened to a little of Radiohead's "Kid A" album. My partner woke up and after we spoke for a while, I went to sleep. I experienced no profound revelations, at least anything of the kind that comes from a divine power. The revelations I seemed to have were no more than rambling thoughts about the depthlessness of society - nothing new for a student of postmodernism and cultural studies. However, there was some innate sense of spirituality to the experience. I could understand the causes for the beliefs and customs of native Peruvians and American Indians. I must admit however, that I am a cynic and am always looking for a cause and effect relationship, relentlessly applying logic to anything that warrants an explanation. Perhaps if I had immersed myself in nature I would have had a more mystical experience. But sitting quietly on the couch showed me the simple joy of just being. If there was one thing I could take away from this experience, it would be this - find peace through stillness. I would have liked a more visually intense experience, with some real sense of ego-loss. The mildness of the experience was possibly due to the fact that I ate something (a piece of cheese) half an hour before ingesting the cactus juice. The cacti specimens were also very healthy. I assume online vendors are experienced growers who do not necessarily stress cacti to potentiate their mescaline content. I would like to attempt this again with a larger portion. It was my first experience with hallucinogens and was pleasant, but I want to see whether the stranger plains of awareness can really be reached. 15/11/2006 I have some photos of her, and a few memories. I remember when she escaped the backyard a few times. But she never went far. She always waited at our front door step for one of us to go outside. I think I discovered her outside at least twice. I remember when my parents went to the Philippines and I let her stay inside with me for a while. She liked being inside, being close to me as we did nothing in particular. She loved to look out the front door at the cars and people going past. She always had a funny way of being coaxed into lying on her back. You had to hold her back and gently lay her down, then rub her belly. I will miss her. It really saddens me to think that I will never get to pat her again. I will never go outside and have her be there. She will never approach me again, with that gesture of friendliness that comes with a greeting a dog always gives. 01/12/2006 I found out that I can eat prawns today. The results of my allergy test showed that I had a very small reaction. I had gone my entire life without eating any seafood intentionally. 18/12/2006 No matter where we went, there was at least one other person around. We did have sex on the beach once, but it was a close call. Another couple made their way through the dunes and came upon us just after we had finished. On our final day we ended up having sex in the water, which was pretty interesting, if not a little difficult. We took a lot of photos and visited nearly all of the bays in our week there. The only let down was the camp site, which was on top of a sandpit. We also had to deal with a lot of ants that were near our tent. My little cacti seedlings are doing really well. More of them have come up since I last wrote here. There are a few that are already developing a pair of spines. ====== +2007+ ====== 04/01/2007 Sometimes I can't help but fantasize about starting a new life. It just seems so far away - an impossible reality. But, in my heart, I know it is possible. It just takes so much to be able to do it. You also need luck. It is hard to find a job in a place you have never been to. I guess this is how people manage to stay in the city in which they are born. How they manage to never escape, to remain in the rut they dig deeper for themselves. Sometimes I ask myself, why did my parents choose to stay in this city, of all places in Australia? Why not Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne? I'd probably be a different person if I had been raised there. 08/01/2007 I can't stand people constantly asking what I am going to do with my future. Definite answers are full of bullshit. Life takes you along different paths. I will probably end up doing something I could not have conceived. Relax. Just fucking relax and take life as it comes. Just try and if things don't work out, then change course gently and without pressure. 11/02/2007 It's easy to become disillusioned with the world and society. Especially in this day and age, people are concerned with the superficial, aesthetics and materialism. That is not to say it hasn't always been like this. Throughout history, people have been primarily driven by material greed. What causes such gripes within me is the way people have actively chosen not to progress, as if the values of knowledge, progress and truth have been replaced with a veneer that mimics such things. In the end, money is at the heart of our motivation in life. 05/03/2007 Maybe my anxiety, on a whole, stems from fear of the unknown. Perhaps all anxiety, in any given situation, ultimately leads back to a sense of fear. What you need to do with this sense of fear is accept it, whole-heartedly, and submit yourself entirely to the situation. Take everything in your stride and always remember to not invest too much. The truth is, nobody is confident when venturing into the unknown. It is why so many people fear death. 08/03/2007 I wake up with a nosebleed. It is my 22nd birthday. I feel different. It is nothing major, but a few things have changed. It has mostly been my attitude towards how I deal with people in this world. I will always be a quiet person. I have never liked speaking to people I didn't know. I can accept that now. But at the same time, I can handle it. I know how to speak to people, despite the pounding of my heart and the shaking in my hands. I don't even care when I get a nosebleed in class. 28/04/2007 Not too much to say. I just like writing here, as a way of keeping up with my thoughts. I do think a lot, mainly about the future at this point in time. But I've stopped worrying so much. Whatever happens will happen. I've done the best I could. I got some work experience, I did well at uni – my academic results are pretty impressive. I’ve gotten a lot of distinctions and a few high distinctions. If someone doesn't want to give me a job, then I can't help it. I will either keep studying or find a half decent job in the next six months, so don’t sweat it. 13/06/2007 I'm smoking a cigar at the moment, which I don’t mind doing from time to time. It's been a while since I last smoked one; back when me and my other friends went out drinking on Saturday and Friday nights. Following a puff with a swig of banana schnapps is quite pleasant indeed. My lungs are like virgin lungs again, though, which means the smoke is a bit harsher than I could once have tolerated. Still, it is something of an additional luxury for a night alone. I like to think about living alone sometimes... often. I think about having the internet to myself, being able to view what I want, when I want. I’d like to start a blog site, archiving my thoughts on politics, culture, media and society. It would be good practice, as a precursor to a proper writing career. But at the moment, that sort of career is a near impossibility. I need to move to the Eastern states. 15/06/2007 Sometimes you need to remind yourself of why you do the things you do. Why do I want to write? Because I seek immortality, in some strange way. I seek recognition, in another way. Writing allows both to be attained, to an extent. I figured it out a long time ago, back when I was sixteen and wrote "The United States of Hypocrisy." I posted it on totse.com. What else makes life meaningful? I will leave behind children, but writing is purer than that, in a way. It gives a reader a proper sense of who you were. Contrary to Barthes, the idea of the author is important - and forever will be. 24/06/2007 Pemberton was good. The silence was eerie at first, but became quite refreshing. It made for a peaceful night and pleasant sleep. It freaked me out for a while, due to the weed. But I thought about a lot of things while I was there. I thought about my life, where I am heading, and my past and the way it influences my actions in the present. I took a few things away - not to be so hard on myself, and to forgive myself for making some stupid choices in the last few years. I can't let the past get me down. I can't let the actions of someone who is growing determine the way I should be for the rest of my life. 26/06/2007 I had to wake up early this morning to attend an interview with Job Network. The whole process is fucked - they’ve made it extremely hard to be on the dole. For the next three weeks, I have to attend PVS Workfind every single day and search for jobs via the Internet, newspaper and phone. Every weekday from 9am-12pm, I have to sign in and sign out in order to get any sort of payment. I suppose I have no choice now... working would be better than doing this shit for the next few weeks. In any case, I have to attend an interview with someone from a Government job department tomorrow morning, as part of my mutual obligations. 11/07/2007 Been a tough past few days. Have had to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Have not been properly walked through all we need to know. I’ve had to adjust my body clock and get used to waking up early. My relaxation time after work has passed extremely quickly. Not enough hours in the day. Is that what working people do? Just wait for the weekend to come? Is that the only time we truly have to forget about our working obligations? 05/08/2007 I just returned from seeing The Cure, live at Challenge Stadium. All in all, an excellent show. They did a good mix of songs, including many from their earlier albums. It was inevitable that the only failing came from the audience itself, who seemed to respond in a lacklustre fashion for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the show. As time went on however, and the band played their more popular singles, the audience seemed to gather some energy and finally deliver a proper response to the performance. 10/08/2007 Quit my job. 24/08/2007 I’m still not entirely clear about whether I am working for 3 or four nights a week, but it would definitely have to be three nights for at least four hours. It will be something clarified after the induction and training I suppose. All I need is the store manager's number... even though he’s clearly a fucking dickhead. I just hope that I won't have to deal with him too much. If I only get three nights per week, then I’ll probably need to find a second job. Hopefully the thing with Coles will work out. 26/08/2007 Who knows what the future holds? But for now, I am planning on what I will be doing with my time once I return to work. I want to take multi-vitamins every morning, just to improve my general health. Once I start lifting shit, I'm going to get stronger and better looking. You lift cartons of Coke every single night and it ends up having an effect on you. I just hope it supports us financially. But when October comes around, the 9th in particular, I will be able to claim for Newstart again. We will have a bit more money to play with. Once the time comes, just go onto Youth Allowance again. 03/09/2007 I had one of the experiences of the sublime yesterday. I had two cones, made a cup of tea and sat outside in the afternoon sun, all while smoking a nice vanilla flavoured cigar. Everything seemed so profound and beautiful and everything was perfect about this one moment in time. 24/10/2007 It’s been ages since I wrote here. Maybe I shouldn't neglect it as much, as it gives me some time to reflect on myself and not the going's on of the culture or the innate sense of need that the blog brings. I need it as the one other person I can converse with, on a completely open and honest level. That is myself, the voice on the page as pure catharsis. The blog went well, but the second blog is doing a lot better. I got over 100 hits in the first two weeks. Traffic has slowed over the past few days, but I am averaging 3 hits a day now. I'll be happy when I consistently get over 10. 30/10/2007 I wonder when the mining boom will end. I just read that it may well lead into the next decade, as China capitalises on what is happening. In that case, I’ll probably be right fucked. That is, unless I totally sell out and jump aboard the bandwagon. Low income earners will definitely get left out in the cold. Maybe something will happen... maybe the Labor Government will just fuck up the economy and things might work themselves out. Either way, if I want to escape this shithole, I need money. 17/11/2007 I decided to quit my job. I just couldn't be fucked anymore, and I didn't want to bother dealing with my manager. So I'm just abandoning my employment and forfeiting any accrued holiday pay/annual leave. I just won't answer the phone – I have no obligation to explain myself to anyone. 13/12/2007 Looking at the 2006 journal, things haven't changed so much. I'm still pretty angst-filled about the future, but at least I have some clearer goals. I still want to do the things I laid out for myself back then, but now I have plans. I've gotten stronger in a lot of ways, and this could only come about because I made a transition into the workforce and learned to deal with people on a professional level, where you really had no other choice. Sometimes I still need to psyche myself up to talking with people and engaging in petty dialogue. But I’m getting better at it. Meeting new people does that. I tend to lose passion for blogging on intervals. I get the feeling that blogging is more about community building than writing or persuasion. Preaching to the converted. Who knows, who cares right? The only kinds of writing people pay heed to are books they pick up of their own volition. That’s the only state where people want to be open, where they want to be changed. Maybe it has to do with the printed word, rather than what’s on the screen. Or the concept of authorial validity comes into play. Either way, I didn’t do any proper post today. Next week I plan to write something on consciousness, but I don’t know what. I've been bored today. I should have done something, but I lack the energy. I didn't eat well. I haven't bothered to do any cleaning up today, there’s little food in the fridge, and I don't know what we will have for dinner. 28/12/2007 When I was xx I realised that we live in a predetermined cycle of life, based intrinsically around capital – exchanging wealth, earning wealth and maintaining wealth. I never bought into it for seeming so stifling on the human condition. I decided I didn’t want to be a part of it. But I have no choice. Now, all I can do is try to mediate this repulsive power of money and the desire to live a full life, but where is the mid-point? How can I reconcile the wage slavery with getting what I want out of life? 29/12/2007 Today I feel somewhat clearer, but still uncertain about the future and about my way of thinking, and realising that maybe we never truly know ourselves. ====== +2008+ ======