Every day I wake up and am amazed I exist, life, consciousness and the universe like a miracle, a mirage, a madness and I'm not dead yet, I have to continue finding my way through the mists, the mire, the media maelstrom, to discover my purpose, why I should wake up at all. I guess many of us sap sap sapiens are lost and confused, we find food and shelter, with loved ones if we have them, and try not to ask for more, but I hanker for knowledge, what the fuck is it all about?
I haven't blogged for ages, no hot stories to tell, my creativity engaged elsewhere. After years of cogitating on it I finally got a succinct history of my artistic endeavours on a site called Soul Projector, engineered by a digital wizard mate, Richard Machine, and I feel I've arrived on the world-wide psycho-map, in a back-alley of cyberspace, my very own art gallery, The Vagabond World of Toby Zoates, a lot of silly twaddle but who gives a shit in this world sinking like Atlantis into the Great Muck?
Now I'm in the doldrums, the down-side of my manic flights where I'd been frantically writing till dawn my epic tome, The 7 Lives of Toby the Punk Poofy Cat, the last thing to get off my chest, my life's long journey, trying to figure out where I fucked up, reliving the grand adventures, an explanation of dysfunctions, an apology for mistakes, a never-ending suicide note, a message in a bottle to tell a deaf universe that I, a nobody, existed, a fun ribald tale that makes me laugh for all the kicks in the arse I got. Writing gets me high, then I crash.
The chaos of Northcott Housing Ghetto doesn't help, it exploded last night and woke me up from deep sleep after days of manic insomnia. Since my neighbour, Eric the Beserker, got taken to an assisted-care hostel, a little alcoholic woman, Box-car Bertha, has moved in next door. She's sweet and quiet when sober but makes a racket when pissed, so blind drunk she has to feel her way along the wall and can't put her key in it's slot, someone has to do it for her. She has the nasty habit of bringing drunks back home with her from the pub, and last night hosted a Maori woman, dead-drunk and in a fury, who decided she wouldn't put up with Cursula's whoring/hoarding ways and accused her of stealing equipment from the council worker's compound nearby and stashing it in her flat with all the other junk rescued from the dumpsters. For hours she kicked Cursula's door and screamed about her being "a no-good stupid bitch", and I pissed myself laughing for it was just karma for all the crap Cursula makes me endure by living her frumpy life on my doorstep.
Cursula called the cops and I heard the caterwauling rend the night, blame and counter-blame, the cops left with a warning but 7 minutes later the Maori warrior returned to continue her attack, kicking my door as well and shrieking, "you too, ya white shit!" I opened my door and told her, "I've got nothing to do with anything, thrash Cursula for sure, she deserves it, but lay off me!" The cops were called again, I listened from inside my flat, much swearing, cursing, Cursula living up to her tag and soaking up the abuse, the Maori rebel squawking on and on till the cops got fed up and arrested her, taking her off to chill in a cooling tank, and silence descended at last. Until, past midnight, Cursula decides to hold a conference on my doorstep, yap-yapping interminable nonsense with some schitzo from the block who's hoping to screw her, and I have to yell more curses, "You selfish cow, fuck off, or I'll call the cops on you!" And she replies, "Oh, I didn't know you were in there." "You brain-dead scumbag, it's midnight, where else would I be? I'm trying to sleep!"
I had recently tried a truce with her, the stress from the antipathy and contempt straining my heart, but she took advantage of my friendship, piling up the garbage on my doorstep so I tripped over it every time I went in or out, leaving her breakfast spilled on the concrete for me to slip on, knocking on my door at all hours to plead, cajole, whine for my stash of xanax which I need for emergencies, not for her to get stoned on.
The last straw was her dragging junk from the dumpster noisily thru her door at 4am and calling thru my balcony door for attention, attention, attention, Mistress Passive/Aggressive in the saggy flesh, till I ran out with a stick and threatened to beat her mercilessly if she didn't desist from disturbing me. "But I'm nocturnal," was her big excuse. I really wanted to hit her, I weighed up the consequences, the pleasure of whipping her arse vs. years in gaol. I remembered my mother beaten to a pulp by my father, all too horrible, a waste of energy, the working out of ages-long misogyny absolutely pathetic. The world needs peace and love, but where there is no peace, love is hard to find. I crept back to my bed and took a xanax, and pondered my sorry fate.
Just as I'm dozing off I hear a thump, a crack, a crash as if a body's been flung from the top floor, then lots of swearing and moaning. I peeped from my door to see a skinny, craggy-faced ICE junkie limp by, blood streaming from his head, so stoned he'd walked off the concrete embankment holding up the gardens and fallen five feet, in his pickled state he'd probably survive the Grand Canyon.
''Mate, I didn't see the drop, I walked straight over the edge, nearly broke my skull on the concrete, it's so fucking dark out here!"
"Who are you, you don't live here?"
"That'd be right, you don't fucking care!" I shut my door in his ugly face, glad he'd fell, teach him a lesson for lurking about where he's doesn't know what he's doing.
Such is life, no time to wonder why I'm here, the turbulence of the gutter sweeping me along, the planet cries out for help, everybody's suffering, no one's got conclusive answers, maybe it's the mystery is what keeps it interesting? I don't know, I'm searching for knowledge, that's why I exist. Maybe knowledge isn't everything. I'd like to have the wisdom of equanimity in the midst of the whirling maelstrom, and compassion for the retarded, like Cursula, but such ideals seem illusory, like Utopia, Nirvana, Love. I am, after all, typical of humanity, flawed and ever reaching out for something better.
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anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and
India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
