Spirit in a Bottle.

 
It's often commented to me that "India is so spiritual", overlooking the 500 million people living below the poverty line, untouchable castes, child slavery, women as second class citizens, environmental degradation etc etc. The term "spiritual" seems silly to me for its' origin is in animism and ancestor worship, the benign spirit of a tree, river or lake is worshiped or the evil spirit placated, and the ghosts of the great grandparents are appealed to for guidance and support. Muddle-headed seance junkies are into "spirits", vomiting up ectoplasm to have their fortunes told or their dead loved ones revived. And let's not forget the ultimate 'spirit' comes in a bottle, very popular in India, not the genie beside the Arabian sea granting wishes, more like Johnnie Walker granting drunken forgetfulness.

It's true that I myself landed in India as a youth with dreams of "spiritual purification and self realisation", then the reality of the place got to me, knocked me off my high horse, dragged me down into the dust, corrupted me, threw my humanity in my face and laughed at my naive stupidity, and thankfully I laughed also, what a joke "spiritualism" is. Now it amuses me greatly to watch the tourists land in India, after a few moments of breathing the burning shit smell they get it in their heads that they want "enlightenment" and must find a Guru, after a few books and yoga lessons they become convinced they certainly are "enlightened" and a few meditation sessions later they believe they can be Gurus too, who needs the brown guys with long flowing white beards? One can't sit in a cafe that caters to the cosmics with pure 'satvas' food and ask for the salt to be passed without getting a lecture on the 1001 commandments of proper yogic living, it's such a bore.

I am not a spiritual seeker, thank nogod, I'm an unashamed swashbuckling adventurer, dirty, nasty, fun-loving, cynical and satirical, passionate and compassionate, in love with the goddess Maya, the illusory Universe. My sweetest gurus are the peasants in the gutter, the rock-breaking road worker and chapati patting chai-wallah, who have no pretensions, are humble, generous and wise, working to create things of neccesary use, playing hard and living bitter/sweet, such a relief to hang out with and talk over life and death matters. In the 35 years I've hung around India, particularly in Shangri-la in the Himalayas, that mecca for yogic wankers, I've seen swarms of wannabe gurus march past waving their banners, photos, booklets and tapes promoting false Light and self-aggrandisement. As if the legion of Indian fakers weren't enough, it's obvious certain venal foreign sharpshooters said to themselves, "hmmm, there's money and power in this enlightenment business, I think I'll have a piece of that!"

They can even have ludicrous monikers like "Barry Bonkhead" and still get a following of gullible morons because they've got the bullshit down pat, and westerners, who've already had everything modern consumer capitalism can give them, decide they'd like "nirvana" as the cherry on the cake, the ultimate fashion assessory, and scared of old age and death, are desperate to believe any nonsense spouted from any mealy-mouthed loonie, the more outlandish/mundane, the more believable. Money, power, and prestige, with SEX ever lurking beneath, are the lures for these spiritual entrepreneurs and, of course, those consummate capitalists the Americans are thick on the ground plugging themselves as enlightened gurus, but there are also Englishmen, Germans and wild-eyed Aussies parading as "extra-special souls", especially weird are the Israelis touting a mix of Kabbalah and Hinduism, it's kind of gotten out of control.

There's an American ex-house frau called Shanti-mat (as in cosmic door-mat) ensconced in Shangri-la, who looks like a recovering diet-pill addict and has droves of fools throwing themselves at her feet, wailing 'love-songs' and handing over their money to spend a week in her aura. Nicolette and I once sat in on one of her devotional sing-a-longs, giving her the evil Shiva third eye from our funky pierced faces, and she was so pissed off at the sight of us she had her goons remove us from the ashram, such is her equanimous and peace-filled nature. Her followers eat at a cafe near the river, they have shaved heads like frustrated runaway nuns and are so crabby one dares not sit near them for the bad vibes, I've had my head snapped off just for putting my shoulder bag on the seat next to them, such peaceniks! What happened to the meditation discipline of quietude and benevolence?

In my youth my yoga mentor was an old Aussie who called himself Compassion, he'd been a chela of the amazing Sivananda, long dead but a guru who'd left a legacy of good work behind him, like hospitals and libraries, which is the only good reason for the 'gurus' existence. I lived with my old white-haired friend in the jungle behind the ashram, he was dying from cancer and I nursed him in return for discourses upon philosophy and art. He didn't tout for followers, no photos of his smarmy smiles were propped up in the shops of the bazar, he died owning nothing, with only a couple of his friends knowing of his existence. Yes, he was just another westerner in eastern trappings who I realise was an old fool but at least he wasn't into money and holier-than-thou snootines. I tried hard for a few years to be a 'high yogi', meditating for hours, doing yoga all day long, eating little, celibate to the point of uptightness, and then I collapsed, for I'm only human. We're all only human, there's nothing but "humanity", no supermen or great souls or godlings, some humans simply care more than others, are stronger and have the courage to act upon their concerns, like 'Mahatma' Ghandi.

I'm happy to be human, to be in this awesome Universe, to feel the cold when it snows and the irritation when it bites and the joy when there's love, and the horror when there's hate, passion and pain are part of life, one can learn from them and grow, but not if one is afraid and avoid them in a fugue of crazy fantasising. How would anything have ever been achieved in history if one just floated about with a smarmy smile and let any injustice go down with just a murmured "Hari Om" in response?

I'm sure an army of cosmics will want to lynch me for this rave, with their tired retort that it's simply my sour grapes for being a weakling and not reaching the "Light". In their starry-eyed befuddlement they fail to take note of the trail of money that inevitably winds it's way into the pockets of the Gurus, for money is the real God and purpose of all the posturing. The fools are even willing to provide 99 Rolls Royces, then prostrate themselves to the "great men", even touch their precious feet, it's so insulting and dehumanising, all in the hope of 'enlightenment', but from within false consciousness, like hunting for "fool's gold": they overlook the obvious fact it's their EGO that so desperately wants Nirvana, it's oxymoronic.

After my old friend Compassion died and we threw him in the Ganga River I hung about the ashram to continue my studies and sadhana. There was an old female resident there who sat about in meditation with a blissful look on her face and her false teeth jutting out, she pretended she was always in ecstatic trance and possibly Enlightened. We called her the German princess, she was so precious, floating about in her lavender saris. For a while there she took a shine to me, thinking I was the ants pants of yogic endeavours, often chucking me under the chin and telling me what wonderful blue eyes I had, as if she was secretly lusting after me.

Then my big yogic collapse ensued, I got horny and met a taxi driver in the chai shop in front of the ashram. I took him into the jungle and sucked his cock, most disatisfying but human desire had burst forth, no matter the repressive disciplines and goody-two-shoes facades. He in turn told everyone in the bazar who told all the swamis in the ashram and having little to do but gossip they told everybody else. I was no longer the favourite of the German princess, she actually hissed like Dracula with a crucifix everytime she clapped eyes on me.

In the early seventies I had searched out and sat in front of many famous Babas, always with the hope that I'd find the supreme being, who could enlighten me with just a glance. I had darshan of Master Ram Baba, a hugely fat fellow that lay about on an island in the Ganges eating the karma of the crowd of women who patiently spoon fed him curd and rice hoping for freedom from the wheel of life and death. His eyes were forever rolled back in his head in ecstatic trance, so overweight he needed assistance to rise and walk, he was too outlandish for my pragmatic soul and I moved on. I was given 7 oranges by Deva Baba from his hut on stilts by the Jamuna River, he was supposed to be 200 years old so I kissed his wrinkled foot hoping some of that endurance would rub off on me. I meditated in front of Tatwallah Baba at his jungle cave for many weeks, a giant of a man who carted whole tree trunks about for his sadhana and who was eventually shot dead by goondas for using his charisma politically to have cow slaughter banned.

I got magic ash produced from thin air rubbed on my third eye by fuzzy-wuzzy Satya Sai Baba who later on got accused of seducing teenage boys , so maybe I should've hung about his door and got initiated with the name Poofterananda, a match made in heaven. Then I danced blindfolded and foolish in front of Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh for 3 days at his ashram in Poona, but his rave seemed the same old hippie con, "you're already enlightened, you've got IT, NOW!" The mob of hairy hets only wanted to hear more, over and over, but not me, for the Orange people looked to be lonely desperate fuckwits looking for a cosmic fuck, Osho paired them of like Noah with his ark, and I ran away horrified.

I sought out every other famous Indian Baba of the mid 20th century, Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Guru Maharaj, on and on but none of them appealed, I couldn't hand my soul over, they came across as merely charismatic spiritual pop stars, with too much bullshit as luggage. By 1975 I was more or less my own guru, resigned to be no one and nothing at all, human and fallible, crazy and horny as all hell, I still had LIFE to grab by the throat. A group at Sivananda ashram had decided to get darshan from Ananda Mayee Ma in Haridwar, the one real saint I ever had the good fortune to meet. Seven of us piled into a cab, the German princess one of the gang, she emanated haughty distance and chilly silence so I tried to ignore her, a cocksucker trying not to give a shit.

We arrived at a temple to the Goddess, walls and ceilings covered in murals depicting every aspect of the celestial female, Parvati, Laxmi, Saraswati, Radha, Sita, devas, apsaras, Michelangelo couldn't have done better and I was gobsmacked by the beauty of the place. We were all taken into a small room wherein Ananda Mayee Ma sat upon a dais, she never said a word, nor did we, we simply sat there for half an hour drinking in her vibes while she smiled in bliss and bestowed her benevolent gaze upon us. She had been discovered when a small girl, meditating in the jungle, wrapt in ecstasy, a light-filled natural, born thus and instantly recognised by the people as an incarnation of the Cosmic Mother. Money was not the hidden agenda, nor fame, power, prestige or SEX, and there was no television, magazines or internet to flog her wares, she was the last vestige of times long gone, traditional India that was about to be swept away by free-market capitalism and cyberpunk technologies.

(My admiration for her might seem a contradiction of all I'm saying in this essay, but she was not "the Goddess", there is no such thing, she had been elected without her sayso to be a living metaphor, the 'mother universe' that had given birth to everything, hopefully nurturing and loving. It all falls within human nature to me, a spectrum of psycho-emotions and willpower, with compassion and caring at one end and cruel venality at the other, maybe with the herd-mentality gronks somewhere in the middle, no need for gods or angels to explain it, and most gurus falling into the greedy egotism section as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe the planet is capable of producing 7 great seers in any one epoch but I get the feeling they're not hanging about the market place waving photos of themselves, they're hiding out in ice-bound mountain fastnesses or deep jungle labrynths, accepting only the coolest of souls as chelas, or working as lowly nurses in AIDs hospices in the far-flung suburbs, for only the ego-maniacs and money-grubbers would advertise enlightenment for sale: an obvious truism is "you get the guru you deserve.")

At the end of the darshan we filed past Ma and she gave each of us a slight hug, no lecture had been given or money asked for, she seemed to be half in another world, maybe a better one, emanating peace and joy from a long distance, and then we staggered back out into this world, hot, painful, sensual, glorious and hard-arse real. I wandered out in a daze, ecstasy had been communicated and I was enthralled.

Down in the courtyard below her room some Indian peasants set up a furore banging on drums, they also had tasted the bliss of LIFE and wanted to share it, their enthusiasm was contagious and I couldn't resist throwing myself into the DANCE, leaping about, spinning, twisting, gyrating, belly laughing/flopping/dancing, I was JOY personified, moving to the music of the spheres. And glancing up I saw Ananda Mayee Ma at her window watching, her handmaidens at her shoulder, all mesmerised and smiling, particularly HER, she had such a sweet smile of appreciation, of delight, I'm sure the drummers were put there on purpose, for, forgetting all the pain for a few wonderful moments, LIVING was LOVING is what she told me with her eyes.

And then the drumming stopped, the magic was over, reality had to be gotten on with, the hot sun seared into my brain and sweaty people milled about. Suddenly the German princess swept up to me, her face twisted in wrath and, spitting chips, she hissed, "how dare you dance so lasciviously in the sacred compound of Ananda Mayee Ma! Have you no shame? You danced like a cabaret whore, so sexual, so profane, you've acted like a male prostitute, it's disgusting! You little exhibitionist slut!I've never seen such a display of carnal decadence!" And gathering up her horrid lavender sari, she swished off, nose in the air, leaving me stunned, red-faced, crestfallen, for I thought I'd given the performance of my life, the natives had seemed so pleased with my art. "That's DECADANCE baby!" I should've shouted, but no, I was still naive and placatory then, not the demon-possessed warrior I was to grow into, I hung my head in the face of her shame.

We travelled back to the ashram in silence, the princess had rushed off in her her own vehicle, everyone else too embarrassed to engage me, and while I had drawn in my vibes, I still felt secretly elated, and deliciously pleased I'd danced in intense ecstatic trance, for I couldn't get that sweet smile in Ananda Mayee Ma's eyes from out of my mind, you win some, you lose some, and I'd rather lose the German mother, thank you very much. The Lavendar Princess went on to reside in a small house high in the mountains outside Shangri-la for the next thirty years and she got herself quite a reputation as an enlightened being, hungry fools from all over trundled their way up the narrow goat paths to recieve her blessing and imbibe her wisdoms, but I couldn't give a flying fuck for her sainthood, she was just another uptight wannabe, just as human in her pretensions as me, and I often wondered if her false teeth still stuck out of her head when she meditated.

The good matron eventually got picked up by the local cops for never having had a visa and was deported back to Germany in a rush, a rude shock for such a cosmic refugee I bet, the poor bitch maybe lost her teeth in angst with the post-modern, cyberpunk world suddenly crashing in upon her. In 1975 I sent her a card before I left the Sivananda Ashram and it said, "in this world mother no one can love me..."

Ananda Maye Ma

Tales from Oldtime India.

Looking back, from standing on the brink of the VOID, I can't help but reminisce upon the exhilaration of it ALL, that with NERVE you can jump into LIFE and really go for IT, and with a compassionate heart have few regrets. What a bumptious, ecstatic flight it was, to overlook the horror and sadness and for a few delicious moments just recall the wonder and pleasure. For instance, my youth spent in India in the early '70s where like "Kim" I mulched down into the red dust at the side of the Infinite Highway till everyone accepted me as a natural part of the background, the Freak, a blue-eyed Indian native.

At night drums beat feverishly, like a restless heart, even today in the 21st century, echoing from the villages and jungles, pujahs performed to sacralise an awesome Universe, the great stages of Life completed, a child born, reaching the safety of 5 years old, getting married, dying, placating the myriad gods. In 1972 I was only 22 when I first arrived in the Himalayas, dreaming I could find self-realization in the famous town of yogis and seers, Shangri-la, meditating on the banks of the Ganga River. I had been traumatised by an upbringing in conservative, white-trash Auz, where humanity was conferred according to one's bank account, class connections and conformation with the status quo, and I was hoping there was some other way of living and loving, and myths of India had long nourished that hope. (Of course, for the Indian peasant, the handicaps were even greater, but I was a naive, a white sahib and above the dross of daily reality for the natives.)

The beginning of my fall from the heights of yogidom was scoring some hashish from a craggy old sadhu in his hut beside the river and smoking it upon a rope bed in the backyard of the notorious Swiss Cottage, that sanctuary for international freaks who couldn't fit into the uptight regimes of the ashrams. I was spinning away, up into the stars, when I focused on the atavistic drumming reverberating in the near distance. The drumbeats synched with my heart, I was mesmerised, the pulse of the jungle calling to me, like a sleep-walker I staggered out into the dark and tried to locate the source of the exciting sound. I stumbled across an obstacle course of white round rocks and boulders, the Garden of the Moon, upon the widespread banks of the Ganga River, where many years from hence a village would be built, obliterating the wilderness. In 1972 there were no buildings, only occassional groves of precious trees and lone mud huts, and in the dark I fell in ditches and crawled thru thorn bushes, but like a zombie was drawn ever onwards by the primeval staccato of the jungle drumming.

Eventually I came to an isolated thatch-roofed hut with a fenced off compound at the back from where the aggitated drumming issued and, wild eyed with arousal, I climbed over the simple stick fence. In this primitive backyard I found a mob of natives sitting in a circle, with some men pounding away at the drums while a young girl danced evocatively in the centre, her face hidden by a veil of mystique. I was welcomed into the group and a place made for me to sit, and I got carried away with the passionate rythms, swaying and bopping, my limbs itching to jump about. I noticed an old man was shouting instructions to the girl, who stopped every now and then and took notice, then carried on, her movements more feminine, more graceful, even erotic, according to the old fellows advice.

My mind was inflamed, my limbs bounced about, I couldn't resist the call of jungle-life, the call of my heart, and before I knew it had jumped up to join in the dance, me playing the young male part of courting, flirting, loving the young girl. We danced and danced, writhing, undulating, wriggling, leaping, twisting, weaving in and out of each other, and the mob of Indians went wild, clapping, chanting, ulullating and drumming fit to burst, I felt like Krishna seducing Radha and the heavens descended and were like jewells in our hair.

The old dance guru continued calling out, encouraging her to embellish my courtship, ignite my senses and vanquish my soul, and I played the brave warrior, the noble prince, the consummate lover and the capricious boy, while the Indian peasants laughed and clapped and we all melted as one into a thrumming spiritual orgasm at the intense thrill of being alive. Then the drumming stopped, the old dance master shouted an order, the young girl demurely lifted her veil and revealed a moustache on her upper lip, I reeled back in shock, she was a boy, and the crowd of Indians fell about in laughter at my surprise. The boy had passed his exam with flying colours, he could now play the goddess in many festivities, and I felt like Mowgli in "Jungle Book", welcomed back into the embrace of the people, my second home found at last, a dancer of the 'blood' in his element.

Then there was the time I hung out in front of Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. It was around 1974 and I was on a bus trundling thru the town of Meerut, that hallowed site of rebellion against the British in 1857. Suddenly the bus lurched to a standstill and from out of nowhere swarmed a sea of people, a great mass of wall to wall humanity flooding up against and enveloping the bus till I feared we would be disintegrated and swept away like a matchstick on a lava flow. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what was going on, more and more people squeezed into open market space, a vast writhing throng and me the only foreigner for a hundred square miles, I had the paranoid vision of being torn to bits and disappearing into that ocean of brown flesh.

I hung out of the bus window to get a clear view of the mysterious phenomenon, like a freak storm or massing of migratory animals, why on earth were all these people flocking here, had the end of the world been announced? Then in the distance I saw the crowd part, an expectant hush filled the dusty air, cops on motorbikes churned thru and then, ever so slowly, an open-top limousine cruised its way towards me with a woman in a white sari standing up in the back and waving regally to the adoring masses. No screaming, no cheering, just the thrum of a collective heartbeat upon held breath. As the limmo got abreast of the bus I recognised the famous trademark of the white streak of hair sweeping up from the forhead, it was Indira Ghandi, wow!

The limmo was hard-pressed to make it thru the burgeoning crowd, she had time to wave to everyone, and with me hanging so obviously out of the bus window, blue eyes flashing, blonde dreadlocks swaying, she couldn't avoid looking straight at me, the stranger in a strange land, and for an infinite moment I looked into her wearied, dark eyes. She gave me a wan smile and a personal wave and then floated onwards, giving all of herself to her beloved nation and the sea of Indians gradually swallowed her up. (I think she was out touting for votes, grand elections were coming up and draconian measures required for her to maintain control, and she badly needed the People's support.)(One result of her authoritarian rule was the tiger count went up, on such issues a fractured India needs strong leadership.)

As for me, for those few moments I felt blessed, like I'd had darshan of a great saint, yeah yeah, just a politician, and eventually compromised by her tyrannical "state of Emergency", but what an awesome character, "Mother India", her charisma shone for a mile and it had touched me, my usual great luck, it was the quintessential Indian experience. Once she'd faded into the dust-laden sunset the crowd dispersed as quickly and as mysteriously as it had formed, suddenly all that brown flesh melted away and my bus was able to lurch onwards, down that Infinite Highway, me rubbing myself to make the dream real, and glowing. Yeah, the clear existential Light in India always rubs off on one, where humanity is writ large and life has a sharp, bitter/sweet, exilarating tang, a miracle to be alive and a miracle to survive it.

Stay Cool.

 I've been tightly wound up since the heart attack, maybe flashing on my mortality has put me on hysterical edge, I'm rushing about like the proverbial chook with it's balls cut off, like I want to take on as much of life as I can if the sands of time are running out for me. I can't stop my spontaneous rages, the swarms of uncaring humanity suffocating me, my heart ready to explode, it's even archetypal that it had to be that area for my body to start the entropic collapse. All this anguish doesn't mean I would run amok with a gun and kill my fellow sufferers as happens in the land of the brave and free, that's for cruel psychotics and soul-less fame whores, I'm a misfit renegade poet, I'm satisfied with a few juicy curses.

For instance, on Sunday I took the Piccolo dog, Toto, for a walk in the Alamein Fountain park on King's Cross, but suddenly, in the middle of supposed safety and canine joy, I had to rescue the pup from under the wheels of a car that was driving around the park without a care for the world. I snapped back into reality and noticed their were 21 of the metallic fuckers cruising about the park, a place where no cars are supposed to be, even parked in the middle with hardly any room for a person to walk unhindered. They were participants of a "Organic Food and Veg Market", hoping to make bucks and disturbing my peace. As a klunky van lurched towards me, like Dorothy facing the Wicked Witch of the West, I snatched up Toto into my arms and screamed, "Haven't you arseholes ever heard of walking? This is a park not a car-yard!"

A fat bitch hung out of her car window and snarled, "I'm a stall holder, I'm allowed to drive here!"
"I don't care if you've got a brain-surgery set-up in your tent, this park should be sacrosanct, where I can expect to walk my dog in safety. Why cant' you walk a hundred yards and carry the junk, you need the exercise?!"

"Walk, walk, bitch, bitch, why don't you just piss-off!" she yelled, and the mob of other car-gronks hung out their tin carapaces and hooted agreement, some pitching threats of violence, like a lynch mob riled up. "What hypocrits, how very ORGANIC of you! I suppose next week you'll turn the festival of food and wine into a festival of carbon monoxide and petrol fumes! You're all uncaring, selfish cunts! I hope your market's a big flop and you all lose money!" A group moan howled up into the park's fetid atmosphere and I rushed off with Toto hugged to my breast before I was run over by a road-raging petrol-head. Nogod, how to stay cool while civilization collapses? I ran back to the Piccolo Bar where I've long learned how to wrangle the zombies staggering in from the Cross, I'm on my own shamanic ground there.

And Vitto is there, as ever, he works seven days a week, 12 hours a day, like a wise old tortoise he can only be extracted from his shell on pain of death. None of his cheery customers and well-wishers realise how he's martyring himself for the cafe and the "family", he's 72 and works like a dog, will kark it on the hotspot in the middle of the cafe some day, and then where will all the disenfranchised freaks be, without their ringmaster and dancing berdache? It seems nobody can talk him into taking rest, like a whirlwind djinn he spins about, and waits upon a never-ending stream of supplicants, who moan like pilgrims to a bleeding plaster virgin, and he moans back, "What else to do?"

All humanity marches past, and Vitto calls out in a piercing shriek, like an automatic door alarm, no one gets by unnoticed. Today he's all worked up into a tizz because of the death of a local streetie. This schizo guy, looking of middle-eastern extraction, had been sleeping on the streets of the Cross for the last 21 years, long filthy black dreadlocks and ragged clothes, he always carried a manky blanket under which he lived. He'd possibly been carted off to assisted-care hostels a zillion times but always breaking out and crashing straight back onto the streets, where he felt free and unmolested. This morning he has been found dead under his blanket, a bag of flesh quickly bundled off and for most never existing at all. He probably died of malnutrition and exposure, it's the Bush/Howard 'survival of the fittest' regime working at street level.

Vitto is seething with indignation that the guy died so uncared for, but when I mentioned how he was never too keen to let the guy bum fags out front of the cafe, Count Yorga reared his wearied head and hissed, "Is it my fault he's mad? What am I supposed to do about it?" (It was all a false alarm anyway, I saw the schizo back on the street with his filthy blanket a few days later, he'd only been sick and rushed to hospital, even poor souls like him still get looked after in our hard-fought-for social-democratic society of Auz.)

All our fears for the safe journey of Auntie Crack were realized for the poor old fag, at 76, couldn't handle the long-haul flight to the States and had a stroke somewhere "on the road", and worst of all, it's half paralyzed him and he can't talk, the end of the line for a raconteur like him. The first generation of Beats will end with the demise of this old villain, an old-school homo left over from the first wave of sexual lib and teenage rebellion, he long outlived his 'booze and sympathy' mates William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles, he didn't have their genius so he didn't burn out as quick.

Nogod, he had some great stories to tell, of a drug addicted wandering father who dumped him as a boy in New York with a dirty old rock spider; of working thru his teens as a 'carnie' and falling in love with the 'geek' on freak-show alley, a handsome guy who bit the heads off live chickens for a living; Jack even played the bearded woman and had to leave town quick when the local cop fell in love with him; then the U.S. Navy, seducing his fellows and traveling the world until he got drummed out for his egregious fag behavior, made to run the gauntlet and be bashed, even by dudes he'd got off with.

And his famous writer connections, "Ginzberg, Ferilinghetti, Burroughs", wow, maybe he can even add "Zoates" to the end of the list, (I wish), Sydney being Jack's last gasp refuge, not such a backwater as it used to be, some of us 'artists' have made it as happening a place as San Fran or wherever. For a few years he was Tennessee Williams' rough-trade boyfriend, he hoped the artistic glory would rub off on him, and it did, like all those Southern belles who dripped tragic desires onto no-hoper studs, the hustler only got a few bucks out of it, the story of all us 20th century fags.

Jack wanted so desperately to join the ranks of the celestial Beat poets, writing endless reminiscences and mailing them to every publisher in the world, but he got eternally rejected, the stories came across as twee, cute and old codger boring, he needed a ghost writer or at least a sharp editor, for he had the material, a life as nutty as William Burroughs'. And always so witty, the classic fag dry humor that cut to the bone; just one succinct run thru of his wild life would make as captivating a book as Jack Black's or Boxcar Bertha's. Now he's well on his way out and his great novel is evaporating in warped cyberspace, his reason for living deleted, his proof of existence blown away, he'll probably go out screaming, "What was it all about?"

I'm going to see him as one of my legion of gurus and learn from his life, time is always short and one has to get the ART out NOW, no waiting for tomorrow, no taking "NO" for an answer. What a character old Jack Crack was and, if nothing else, I'm sure he'll leave a warped impression on the Akashic records, for what it's worth. (P.S. I just got notified the old bugger did indeed die, he "asked the dust" and it said, as ever,"dust to dust." We'll sorely miss his rapier-wit, his salacious anecdotes, his cultured commentaries, he'll leave a void at the Piccolo, one less freak at the carnival side-show, the bearded lady fading into the twilight, I'm so glad me and him had a reproachment before he left, I hate to leave acrimony as the last farewell.)

Though hordes of Hets patronise the dump for it's cachet of cool, the Piccolo Cafe has long been a kind of sanctuary/oasis for 'queers', Vitto as the front man being such a flamboyant queen, any queen in the area can't resist flopping inside his shoe-box psycho-theatre for a gossip, a respite, a tearful confession, and what a crew of freaks they look, I shudder to be found on the end of their line-up, maybe the most outlandish of the lot. There's Ayesha the Drag(on Lady) swanning about as if she's still on the stage of Les Girls, , she doesn't care that she's got last night's dinner smeared down the front of her dress, entropy reclaiming her like SwampThing's daughter; next to her is fat Greg and his existentially challenged side-kick Barry, they come across like Jabba the Hut with his vicious pet in his lap, (for all he's sleaze-bag with a dildo of cast-iron he also has a heart of fool's gold); there's Doddy Dogcart with bulging belly as if she's about to give birth to triplets, always with a sneer on her ugly mug like nothing can please her, and what could after a life of hanging around the "glory holes" of the Pleasure Chest sex-shop? (The poor 'gay' seems to have given up on life, no one wants him, he can't get a job, he needs a radical make-over, 30 years of drug addiction and rejection has atrophied his soul, even Frankenstein looks better, but like a rancid old chocolate he has a soft gooey centre that simply needs love to bring out the sweetness.)

A lot of the 'gays' who frequent this hole-in-the-wall cafe seem quite mad, jabbering nonsense, ready to throw a hissy-fit at the blink of a false eyelash, I suppose a life of being less than zero and led in the shadows has driven them over the edge, too much drug and alcohol abuse, too many punches to the brain and kicks in the arse.

But there are sweet-natured, smart poofs at the Piccolo too, Peter the composer, Mozart's great grandchild, who can create and play a Requiem to die for; Glen the Magistrate, so generous and pleasant, always with a smile and a kind word, forever giving gifts of theatre tickets and books to Vitto; Frannie the dyke remedial masseur, never uptight with the boys, just kind and cool and loving; old Geoff, the genetics professor, with his laptop on the table forever trawling the Net for gay meat sites, adamantly insisting there is "NO SUCH THING AS A GAY GENE!" It rains Poofs at the Piccolo, that reservoir of extraneous men who create a kind of social glue for straight society, the Hets have to have something to contrast themselves with, otherwise they wouldn't know who they were. Lots of Trannies pass thru as well, ugly men who make even uglier women, Nogod knows how they get by, they could be major attractions in a Freakshow, along with me, the Zippie Pinhead.

But at least the Piccolo provides some sanctuary, even strangers become friends, there's always someone to talk to and commiserate with. I've got to stay cool and not let the horror of a warring world get to me, every TV documentary and news flash I watch, every book and newspaper story I read, all explode with horror, inhumanity, cruelty and stupidity till my blood boils and my soul screams. Then I step out the door to face the marauding zombies, very anti-people of me I know but I need some poetic metaphor to handle the warzone of urban life.

In the face of the "Safe Community" certificate from the W.H.O. a 14 year old girl was horribly raped and bashed in the elevator of the Northccott Housing Tower last week, a ghastly fact that didn't make it into the press as THEY want to desperately believe that their social-working boohoo television docos and theatre pieces are working miracles of social upliftment, as if the zombies have been mollified, peace and love rules, and Society cares. Aaarrrrggghhhh, I've got to stay cool!

As I Lay Dying.

Maybe some fool did indeed get out a voodoo doll of me and stuck pins in it's heart for on Saturday night, 31st of March, I got these stabbing pains in my chest. It was Sydney's token environmental deliverance called "Earth Hour" when the city was asked to turn off it's electricity at 7.30pm, I moved about the house turning off all my appliances and decided to lie on my bed and snooze for the hour. I looked out of the window and noticed very few lights had been turned off, gronks will be gronks, there was a time 25 years ago when me and my fellow Greenies held public protests over the insane use of power for cars, skyscrapers and machines, and fat, agro pigs hung out of their armoured tanks and screamed for our death by firing squad. Now the Media exhorts them to do their bit to save the planet, and at 7pm hordes of wankers sat about the Harbour burning carcinogenic candles and battery-operated plastic lamps before again rushing about in their cars, like cockroaches from Hell, the mega-tonnes of pollution thus issuing forth possibly setting off my heart attack.

For a heart attack it was, an ice-pick repeatedly stabbing at the centre of my being, and a tight band across my chest not allowing me to breathe. I knew what it was but hoped it would pass, if I could just ride it thru. I writhed about in agony, sweat soaking my sheets, phone nearby but hesitating to call for an ambulence, so much trouble and drama, better to just die alone, sick of this fucked up world anyway. I could hear noise from the Pub across the road, people laughing and clinking glasses, the more my consciousness faded the louder the celebratory racket got, I wanted to shout out, "shut the fuck up you uncaring morons, dont you know I'm dying here!" I threshed about for 2 hours, the pain not lessening, dying on the cards, yet so painful, did I really want to die this way? I drifted into my mantra, the ever-present AUM, bathing me in white light and peace, fuck the world, it could go to Hell in a used condom, I was thru with it, and it was a relief, to have the long arduous journey over with.

For a week I've had a huge boil on my arse, all the rubbish in my system deciding to come out in that one sacred, sensitive spot. I'd had it lanced that very day and in response it had swelled up, anti-bodies and plasma rushing down below to deal with the arse-breaking trauma, it was leaking out in rivulets and I spent most of my heart attack squeezing it into a sterile pad. I glanced about my hovel of an artist's studio, second-hand furniture, manky carpet, nothing worth more than 7 measly bucks, and depression added to my woes, that I should end up here, human trash buried under trash, for all my dreams of being the great artist, and a brain to boot, not as clever as I thought, just another deluded bum. I could hear my next door neighbours arguing, I didn't feel to call out to them, they had their own existential woes.

For all the whinging did I have any regrets? Not really. What a hurly-burl of a life, full of civil disobedience and situationist stunts, rock'n'roll deleriums and ecstatic raves, squatter's battles and community highs, with the Auzzie bush to ground me and the exotica of India as wondrous relief, and the trail of art left in my wake, the paintings, murals, posters, films, cartoons, stories and dance happenings, all of it proving I found the universe awesome and humanity a sad joke. My only regret would be leaving my beloved friends behind, those cool souls who made life worth living and encouraged me to feel compassion for all those blind fools who loved money, fame and power above a living planet. And as life receded, like uplifting music at the end of a fabulous movie, the face of one friend particularly hovered at the centre of my weary heart, my mate in India, ever waiting for my return, who brought such joy to the last years of my life, who I may never see again, that really hurt. Mmmmm, maybe I should stay alive, for all the pain, he's worth it.

Then my front door creaked open and Nicolette put her head in, "Toby, are you Ok? I've brought a book for you." I moaned, "Nicolette, I'm dying, I think I've had a heart attack!" She spots me hanging out of the bed, half dead and jumps to with alacrity. Thank nogod for true friends, the few who really care, not the lip-service bullshitters who are only interested when there's something in it for them! I'm lucky to say I have 7 dear, dear friends, and one of them arrived when needed as if with mental telepathy, we're that connected. And rare event, she has a car with her, her boyfriend Sionne driving, and she packed me into it forwith and rushed me to St. Vincent's Hospital Emergency where without much ado, after much squawking on my part, a team jumped on me and laid me on a trolley with a hundred tubes stuck onto and into me, and thus I got saved.

The triage nurse prioritised me and I was led past all the Saturday night revellors who'd come unstuck, a teenage girl whining and collapsing with a nurse heaving her about and disclaiming, "you would mix alcohol with Valium!" The place was full, gasping, moaning, fainting humans laid out everywhere, trolley after trolley, and me taken to the head of the queue like the Queen of May, I would've stuck my nose in the air if I wasn't doubled over with pain. Only 2 weeks previously they'd lost Billy Thorpe to a heart attack on the exact same spot and they weren't too keen to lose anybody else, (and yes, I'm a big fan of Billy, I was one of the teenagers in the crowd at the Music Bowl in Melbourne in '67 and again at the Ourimbah Rock Festival outside Sydney in '68.) Twenty-one medicos had pounced on me and rushed about, I was surprised by their earnestness, tubes were inserted, wires attached, oxygn mask donned, questions shouted, "were you having sex at the time of the heart attack!" "No, I was resting", I gasped. The doctor gave me the laser-eye, thinking, "are you sure you weren't wanking?" "I was resting, promise!" I told them I'm a smoker and they all grimaced, "well now you're getting your come-downance!"

Nicolette appeared and sat by my side stroking my forehead while I was told there was a chance I wouldn't pull thru. I melted into AUM, what would be would be, to be finished with it or to carry on, to be or not to be, who gives a cosmic shit? Then I was rushed up to the cardiac operating theatre and a tube was inserted into my groin to flood my system with a dye so they could see where the blockage was. I watched it all on a TV monitor, my angiogram, amazing to see one's heart squishing away like a jelly fish and the arteries outlined, like river systems on Earth as seen from a plane way, way above in the clouds.

And what else did I think about as I lay dying? How fucked the human race was, greed and stupidity ruling, a long history of nastiness and destruction, and consume, consume, consume the entire planet till one day it will all come crashing down and the breeders will have to eat their own kids. Every year a new car, new furniture, new appliances, new fashions, economic growth like a cancer on the environment. If Capitalsim depended on me it would collapse as I've never, ever bought furniture from a shop, I've found it on the street, even my cutlery and crockery were found on a street corner, thrown out from a deceased estate. My clothes come from friends and opportunity shops, my books from the library, my CDs and DVDs pirated, I ride a push bike or travel by public transport and I own no shares in anything. I guess I should be proud there's nothing of value in my apartment, at least I didn't consume as much of the planet as the other fat gronks I see rushing about in their SUVs, the sales of which have increased instead of decreased in the face of oil wars etc.

Sometimes I think my writing is too vitriolic but right now I feel to take off the velvet gloves, fuck this society that has tortured me, my fellow queers, the whales, chimpanzees and the whole kit and caboodle. All those scumbag fashion victim snobs who think they're royalty cause they can flash an Armani label whatever, they can all go drive their cars off a cliff and into a sea of shit and squish out their puss-filled souls from their screaming perfect white teeth! Example, there are too many greedy, stupid people alive on this planet but instead of being sensible and encouraging half the population to be homo and not have kids, NO, in tyrannies like Africa, the Middle East, China and India "gays" are outlawed, gaoled and murdered, while here in the so-called developed world we're second class citizens to be scorned, maltreated and handicapped.

Queers should be given medals and honorary keys to paradise, but this is not a rational world, 7 thousand elite families run it all for their own privileges, depending on the stupidity and greed of the masses to be suckered into "the System", most of whom will be swept away when the crunch comes, the elite having their walled compounds and electrified gardens to protect them from the marauding zombies left behind after what, a nuclear war, environmental collapse, biological plagues? They need their gold-plated taps thank you very much, the rest of humanity can go die in filth, and that's what's coming down, it's too late, there's no saving the mess, all the bullshitting and "Earth Hours" are just tokenism to hoodwink the morons who'll brainlessly kill for their latest Prada rags and Holden cars while the elite choke on caviar. Yes, as I lay dying, I thought, you're all going to Hell, good riddance!

Whilestill conscious I had a device inserted thru the artery of my groin and manouvred up to the blocked artery near my heart, so painful my muscles seized up and I felt like a mummie undergoing embalmification, a balloon-like Stent was inserted that sent the blood rushing thru and relieved me of the heart-stabbing pressure. I awoke in the morning to the gorgeous vision of Nicolette sitting patiently by my bedside, like heaven with an angel looking on. The head of the cardiac unit, a professor, came in and held a lecture over my tattooed body with 2 female doctors, asking them life-saving questions to which one answered assuredly and was wrong every time, they've got to learn somewhere and thank nogod for St. Vincents Hospital, the only viable good work organised religion comes up with, as far as my agnostic heart is concerned. If I ever got a million dollars some of it would get donated to St.Vincents who have saved my life twice now.

I stayed in the hospital for 2 days recuperating, thinking out my existential challenges, and yes, certain resentments welling up, those part-time friends who now kept their distance, afraid there was yet another needy person in their lives, and my mother of course, her cold selfishness, pointless to let her know I was sick, in her dementia it would mean nothing, and she wouldn't care too much anyway, I was always phantasmal in her life. Friends visited, the last being Cursula and Bawl, commiserating with my downfall, and I thought, "how sweet". The next day I was releivedly discharged and, being dirt poor, I had to walk the 2 kms home, my chest acheing. Crossing a road a fat Euro-trash gronk in his SUV nearly ran me down, he hung from his window as he passed and growled, "poofter!" Give me a break! I did a 'Carrie' and beamed destruction at his disappearing metal arse, I hoped he crashed soon after.

I arrived at Northcott Housing Ghetto to discover my lovely neighbour Cursula, knowing I was trapped in hospital, had broken into my flat, searched it and found my emergency Xanax, stealing some. This is typical of cannibal society, to be robbed while one lies dying, I rushed to her door and abused the shit out of her and nearly gave myself a second heart attack. I've since been trying to keep a low profile in my apartment, chilling out with my feet up, but the zombies have come marauding to my door demanding attention, I made the mistake of letting them in, an old fuck-buddy with his ICE-brained mate who had one eye fucked up with conjunctivitis. I stupidly played Florence Nightingale and flushed his eye out with anti-biotic eye-drops, him thinking I've now adopted him and he's come back day after day hoping for my friendship and I've had to yell, "go away". I feel like the key in my back has been wound a few times tighter, I walk a tight-rope, everything shits me, I've got to stay cool as yet another lease on life has been given me and I have much yet to accomplish, a huge painting of 17 years in Northcott for one.

The sky indeed seems bluer, the sunshine more wholesome, friend's smiles sweeter and every day a blessing, maybe even the planet will get saved, if only there could be a paradigm shift on the part of all humanity and this consume, consume, consume fever healed, and wars and hatred smothered with love. And I talked to my beloved mate in India and there's also him to look forward to, to reach out to. Yeah, maybe there's a future after all.

The Freak at Loose Ends.

I'm at a loose end and have decided to tie up a few, to get some kind of conclusion to this epic crap-fest. In humiliation I had to carry my kitsch painting across the city from the Cross to Surry Hills with everybody staring at me, lit up like a fleurescent disco. On the way I passed a famous art dealer, Ray Hughes, whose monolithic gallery covers an entire warehouse and, fishing for a future show, I thought maybe I could catch the big man's attention. I left my work in the foyer and tip-toed in, and almost tripped over the Master, looking like Godzilla in baggy pants and braces. He gave me the laser-eyed treatment, I got mental telepathy from him, "Oh fuck no, not another desperate artist come to importune me for a break!" He's probably had artists up to his arse-hole; thoroughly sick of them, he ran into the next room before I could squeak. I tried to follow but was warned off by an assistant, "For staff only!"

I glanced around at the works on the walls, giant gloomy brown and black paintings that must have had $7000 worth of oils sludged on every piece,  pedestrian painting in a style a zillion other wankers are using, great lumps of paint applied with a spatula, ugly nude women standing at windows or falling down stairs. The works so huge only a palace ballroom or corporation foyer could fit them in, quite prepossessing if hung in the boardroom, they threatened power and fear, plebs like me better watch my step or one of them might leap off the wall and crush me, overwhelming to the point that I crept out of the gallery without a peep, carrying my cheap-shit acrylic on my head like a third-world peasant.

There was no place for me in this world of high capitalism and corporate art, I had to go fuck it a long time ago and be an anarchist, painting "for the people, amidst teeming life", like my murals and posters put up on squat walls. I've been living out a fantasy of 19th century Paris, absinthe, sex and paint mixed into a heady myth that had me deliriously drunk. But there's never been any money in it, and now I'm starving, the bad part of the "myth of the artist", what a lousy joke, I'm just a twit from Twirpsville! I've been kidding myself all these years, not only am I a kindergarten finger-painting retard with delusions of grandeur, there's no such thing as "the artist", only careerists, State-apologists, businessmen, wallpaper-hangers, upholsterers and master bullshitters.

I trudged back to Northcott Housing Ghetto and flopped back into my cage with my painting hung on my lounge-room wall for me alone to contemplate and gnash my teeth over. Eric the Berserker next door kept me awake all night, he'd been quietened the last few months with a double-hit of Modicate twice a week but he's become tolerant of the mega-dose and was back to his howling Hound of the Baskervilles self, the wailing echoing up the functional brick towers till dawn and creeping out even the creeps. To add to the horror, an old bleach blonde scrag from upstairs has decided to run amok, she got herself on the TV news the other night grizzling because the cops had socked her on the jaw at the protest against Dick Cheney's visit. Now she wants to be shifted to another suburb and has decided the best way is to make such a nuisance of herself the rest of us will complain to have her moved. At sunrise, when Eric finally chills out, she carries on the relay by running up and down the verandah yodeling, squabbling, gargling and giggling maniacally. When I put my head out the door to tell her to shut her gob, she lifted her granny dress and flashed her manky fanny at me, hooting like a cuckoo. Nogod, where does the madness end?!

Northcott got itself a certificate of "Safe Community" from the World Health Organisation, like a piece of bureaucratic voodoo, 'THEY' probably pray such tokenism will convince the loonies to put a sock in it without spending a penny on them, and in the meantime the rest of us residents have to provide the nursing, therapy, counseling, cleaning and compassion. It all adds to my insomnia, I walk around like a zombie, fitting in well with the crowd. Blondie upstairs has zeroed in on old Dolly, two doors up from me, as the best target for harassment, as maybe the authorities would listen to her complaints being the most respected resident here, (she picked the wrong victim, Dolly never complains, ever, she's the classic stoic Auzzie.) Blondie mostly does her mad-hatter's dance by Dolly's door, the 85 year old driven to despair, yet when the filmmakers interviewed her for the documentary, "1000 neighbours", Dolly never said a word about the 20 years of abuse she's received from Eric and Blondie, only describing Northcott as a friendly community with sweet caring neighbors, (like me), such is the goodness of her soul. She often brings me a hot dinner, worried that I'm ill, depressed, defeated, and she helps me to hang in there, surviving Northcott and callous Sydney, revivifying my trust that "humanity" is itself not a myth, or a post-modern illusion.

On the other side of me Cursula and Bawl have settled down amidst her rat's warren of piled up rubbish, with the rabid pet rabbit gnawing at the edges, the star-crossed lovers seem resigned to each others idiosyncrasies and not indulging in the scream-fests of yore. (I think I've figured out the game plan = shrieking, blistering insults followed by repetitive nagging then hours of co-counseling ending up with a session of sexual healing, a god-shaking fuck = the routine for most Hets I gather.) Poor Cursula figured the only way to beat the State, who have taken her two children from her, was to have another baby, and maybe run away to a cave in the bush if THEY tried to interfere again. Only the poor bitch had a miscarriage, dropping a bloody mess onto the floor of her dumpster kitchen. It was then proposed by the 'Department of Human Services' that she have her womb scraped, it was her second miscarriage, but she chickened out, refuses to answer her door and has mulched down into her heaps of garbage, hoping she can hide out.

She's probably unable to get pregnant again, which is maybe for the best as she admitted to me she finds life somewhat peaceful without the responsibilities of bringing up children, it suits her to see them a few times a month, and in the meantime she can get on with her own myth of being an "artist". Bawl and her plink away on guitars and piano, warbling twisted love songs, with only a few interludes of scabrous abuse. Life has settled down to a kind of pastoral idyll, we look in on each other to borrow sugar, valium and cigarettes, and moan about the iniquities of cruel, capitalist Auz, our basement level in Northcott has the feel of a hippie commune such is the entanglement of our warped lives.

(Northcott Towers got on TV again last night, this time a boohoo story on "This Day Tonight", interviews with a gorgeous little girl who lives amidst the horror and degradation of "the toughest neighborhood in Auz." Our housing ghetto has become a 'media star', iconic for its existential challenge, now maybe there will be a rush of deviants from across Auz dying to live here. I'm amazed how I myself am strangely attracted to the biggest HOTSPOT of any city I end up in, such as Colaba in Bombay, Pahagrunge in New Delhi or the Piccolo Cafe at Kings Cross, as if I belong in the background like a telling prop in a piece of macabre theater.)

I daily ride my bike up to the Red-light District of the Cross to the Piccolo Cafe, that mecca for misfits and MY CLUB, which sails on regardless, cresting the stormy seas like a leaky ship of fools with Vitto as mad captain. In the hurly-burl of an uncaring, wilderness city it is the one oasis of 'Realness', people actually talk to you, ask you about your 'self', it's a true site of 'community'. It's such a relief not to be a transient ghost haunting the backstreets, I feel I take on substance there in that grungy shoe-box, all under the aegis of Vitto's irascible, Yoda-like nature. The old fool forever calls out to people passing on the street to let them know they're alive, and the whole district calls in on him, to gossip, get one of the endless books contributed by and for text junkies, sign a petition, drink bad coffee, and get insulted, scandalized, delighted by Vitto's gutter-snipe tongue-lashing.

So many of the old-timers have died, drifted into oblivion, gone mad, been incarcerated or driven away by Vitto's egregious grumpiness, there's only a few of the die-hard regulars hanging in there, like algae in a noxious pond, bemused by the "serious young insects" that crowd in to have their pop video shoot or trendy magazine interview, co-opting the cachet of 'cool' that the oldies have built up over 50 years. Ayesha the Drag(on-Lady) had to have brain surgery, and seems to have slowed down since, she's not as vitriolic in her barbed witticisms, as if the nastiness has been cut out of her, only the milk of human kindness left dripping. Mad Malcolm now permanently resides in Caritas Psyche Clinic, after all the wealth he'd inherited and splurged, he'd been found sleeping on the streets, his trousers filthy with piss and shit, drooling nonsense, even the desperate junkie rent-boys turned off, money can't buy sanity.

Old Yankie Auntie Crack and me are speaking again, he's forgiven me my nasty comments, at the end of his days he knows it's more fun to trade witty insults than have chilly silences. He's always on about his friendships with Tennessee Williams and William Burroughs, carping at his own failure to get published; it's great for me as a writer to soak up his senile wisdom, he once actually spoke to Carson McCullers on the phone at Tennessee's dump, I salivate over his reminiscences. He's now flown off to Seattle, U.S. to have one la
st "on the road" jaunt before he finally "asks the dust", (where am I going when it's all over?) I hope he doesn't get 'deep throat thrombosis' on the long flight, he's such a decrepit old fag. (He was 71 and the flight did indeed do him in, he came off the plane half paralyzed and dropped dead in Kansas city.)

And I've had a reproachment with Cherie Geuvera Glumbum, he knows the Piccolo is the only Club that will have him, the REVOLUTION needs a madcap base, and the funkiest coffee house in the world might as well be it. I don't really hold grudges for too long, except for those who really fucked me over, like Robert Baywatch at the Booze-on-tap Gallery, who is such a petty power-monger, when I rang about for my People's Choice prize from the Images of the Cross competition last year, I was told I'd have to crawl to get it because of my atrocious bad manners. Luckily my friends went over the deadhead dead body and rang the factory where my $500 worth of paints reside and I'm able to go straight there and pick them up.

 I am miffed at how my painting continues to get the rough-shod treatment from 'gronk society'. I watched a doco last night on TV about artists in Iran who get killed off if they're not state-sanctioned. It's not too different here in Utopian Auz, we simply starve here instead of facing a firing squad. I am very pleased to note that one of the main motifs in my controversial work was the "Pink Pussycat Strip Club", the first such club in all Auz and thus Iconic, my intuition as ever spot on, and the painting will live on long after Robert Baywatch has bitten the dust. (Leslie caught him watching porn on the gallery's computer, and getting the gallery to pay for it, and she kicked his red baboon arse all the way back to Queensland.)

The latest disgrace at the Piccolo is Knobby Israel, local raconteur and snatch hound, getting arrested at his part-time job up at Porky's Sex Shop for selling sexually explicit DVDs and he now faces the humiliation of criminal court as a "dirty pornographer". This is all part of the "clean the sleaze of the Cross" campaign, all for the giant apartment towers that are springing up like poisonous toadstools and bringing in a tsunami of 'good citizens', squeezing out the salacious businesses that made the Cross famous and added zest to its Bohemian edge, which is what attracted punters to the area in the first place. Roslyn Street itself, where the Piccolo Cafe is situated, is about to be 'cleansed' and irrevocably lose its Bohemian milieu, when the quaint Baron's Pub building, a faux Tudor Manor, gets knocked down for a post-modern VIP Club that looks like the Titanic sinking into the asphalt. Funk is out, Money is GOD.

CHANGE is inevitable, for the entire Universe is transient, life a mirage, humanity a sales pitch, one's self a construct, the artist a myth, and the Piccolo will also disappear when ancient Vitto gives up the ghost, even Northcott Suicide Towers will fall, all in the name of PROGRESS, gentrification and respectability, and like many an old timer reminiscing in their rocker chairs, (I'm an old rocker), I will be sad as Sydney itself dissolves into the mists of time, like Camelot, me as Arthur getting it in the arse.

Right now I'm reading Gregory David Roberts' "Shantaram", a book it's taken me years to come at as I myself have been writing my memoir of old-time hippie India, fiften years of re-writes and despair, only to find this guy has pre-empted me, with better writing and a more exciting story. He was a junkie bank robber on the run, up for any way to earn a buck, I was a homo yogi trying to lose my abusive upbringing, giving myself up to the Universe, different stories but both of us Aussie. Hets rule, and everyone loves a romantic villain like him. (For instance, our different perceptions are summed up by Leopold's, he's always the guest of honor there; in the '70s I slept on the streets of Bombay as a deadbeat dreamer, Leopold's Cafe was a paradise of lush food and elite comfort way out of my reach, and by the '90s I avoided Leopold's like the plague, it's a plastic tourist trap with the funk cleansed and the patrons all wearing David Jones type clothes.)

"Shantaram" is about to be a movie with Johnny Depp in the lead, an ugly guy turned handsome, as Hollywood-land always tends to do. I'm just jealous, about the writing not the movie, (it didn't happen anyway, maybe they found out what a wanker the guy is), the idea of my reality filtered thru celluloid horrifies me, especially as he arrived in India a demon and was reborn as an angel, I went to India a naive angel and got myself djinn-possessed, realizing my homo Self and becoming a demonic Ling worshiper! Arriving at a loose end, reading his book because I miss India till my heart breaks, I find someone else has gotten there before me and written much that I wanted to say about India, always the way for a loser like me, I'm just not quick enough, it's the quick or the dead in this world.

No big deal. I think I'll get lost in the Himalayas and forget about 'achievement' and 'contribution', there's an avalanche of auto-biographical confessions rushing down upon us, no need for another, this Blog enough. I guess I'll just let myself get swept away. (But the weird thing about us homo sap sap sapiens is we can never be told enough stories, like eternal children we want adventure tales told over and over, so maybe there's space for my quirky bedtime stories somewhere, way way over the rainbow.)

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Big Sister Double Speaks.

Well Toby Z has gone and done it again, flipped out in public and made an arse of himself, lucky I've got the excuse,"I'm an artist, and that includes 'performance'!" Hopefully, a zillion of the city's drone/bureaucrat/cronie's tongues are wagging at the moment badmouthing me as the "enfant terrible", as for an artist bad publicity is good publicity so I'm not going to sweat over it too much. I've been stewing in my juices over my painting "Kings Cross 1980" getting banned from the Sydney City Council's "One Stop Shit Shop" open-forum gallery without anyone giving me the criteria for the ban, who was responsible, or even where the painting has been hidden away, the "cone of silence" that works so seamlessly here in Auz as a way of muffling free speech descending over the whole affair and suffocating me.

Then I heard our lovely Lord Mayor and Independant Member of Parliament, Clover Moore, was coming to Northcott Housing Estate to placate the restless tenants with self-congratulatory speeches and tout for votes, for the State elections are only 3 weeks away. I could never hope to meet her out in the wider world to have my say so I turned up at the Northcott Community Centre and sat with my fellow dispossessed wards of the State intending to get her attention. I tried to remain cool and diplomatic, but after being told to shut up several times the horns popped up on my forehead and I got quite histrionic in my rave, electrifying myself and gobsmacking our dear Big Sister, Clover: actually, I nearly did a "Carrie" and set her hair on fire.
For support and comfort I sat beside my beloved next door neighbour Dolly, the woman who actually cut the ribbon on the estate when it first opened in 1962. Like some long-awaited rock-star Clover suddnely marched in all in a flurry with a gang of cronies trailing her and I was alarmed to see her eyes go straight to me and flash, like she knows who I am and is ready for trouble. Without further ado she barks out a rabble-rousing speech, first congratulating the locals on their marvellous performances in the ABC documentary, "1000 Neighbours", then spitting chips because the Surry Hills Police hadn't shown up and she was on their case and her biggest effort of late was to set them on to us. My skin crawled and I felt relieved the cops hadn't put in their mugs, I'd seen them a half-hour earlier out on the footpath attending to some hysterical woman from B Block who looked like she'd just been ravaged.

As if to pre-empt me, apropo of nothing, except maybe she knows about my blogging invectives castigating her treatment of street-level artists, she shouts enthusiastically how much she's done for artists in the inner-city, providing community spaces for their work to be shown, the local park being an example, right now a committee of experts were judging 10,000 entries, whittling it down to 69 finalists, and all us Northcott gronks can come along and view the results. There, that's you covered Toby Z Shithead! She called for questions and one old codger wanted to know what she was going to do about the sewerage out on the mainstreet. Oh, blah blah, bluster bluster, she was coming to get down on her knees and stick her arms up the pipe and pull the shit out herself, but in reality, it wasn't in her brief and she couldn't do anything about it. More moaning and groaning about the sewerage, and I got jumpy, for me and the Lord Mayor knew my rambunctious turn was coming up.

Up goes my hand. "I've got a question."Her punked-out hair bristled. "I've lived here at Northcott for 17 years and in that time there have been untold suicides, many jumping from the 24th floor, the poor souls probably driven to it by the harsh exigencies of life, it's hard to survive if you're poor, forget about trying to achieve anything. Take my case for example." I then went on to quickly describe how the Sydney City Council had banned my painting with no criteria given even tho it had won a prize called "The People's Choice" and this had depressed me terribly and I wanted to know where was 'freedom of expression, democracy and individual talent' in her scheme for a future Utopia for us plebs?

Instead of mollifying me with sweet cajoleries and sympathetic whimperings she barked 'Big Sister' double-speak, like the armoured rhinocerous she'd learnt to be in umpteen years in parliament. "I've already mentioned how in future there will be no controversies over public art spaces for we will have committees of experts and peers to decide what the public can handle." "Oh great, state-sanctioned art, achievement by committee, just what I wanted to hear!" "Shut up, we dont want to hear about it!" growled an old retard three seats up from me. "No, not state-sanctioned art!" she spluttered." I kept growling, "The art will be blended down to the lowest common denominator, meaningless, bland and safe. Dead art!" "Oh shut up, that's enough, let's get back to the sewerage," hissed the old grump, a real caring Auzzie.

Clover soldiered on, "Blah blah, bluster bluster, we've all got our prejudices!" "I'm nobody and nothing, with no power whatsoever, my prejudices don't matter. You're very powerful, your prejudices rule over us little people's lives, your power can mean life or death, and Linda here from the Council with her little bit of power, even that can have an effect on my livlihood, and I've had to have medical intervention I was so upset by the treatment I recieved, it was so unjust." "Shut up!" the old cunt again, I'd like to slap his face, my one minute to have my say and he won't let me say it.

But poor Clover was glad of the naysayer, she needed protection from this gutter-snipe. "Yes, I think we've heard enough on this subject, let'smove on to something more relevant." "In other words, SHUT-UP and go die!" I blurted out."No, no, don't die! Speak to me after the meeting if you have any more to say" Splutter, splutter. Another old pensioner put up her hand and mumbled, "I'd like to ask about the sewerage." I quietly moaned. I wasn't going to hang around for hours listening to this crap just to be told more gobbledygook. I thought a quiet, dramatic exit would be a fitting finale to my histrionics, I jumped up and shoved my way thru the crowd in a tempest of anguish, flapping my arms about, perhaps they'd imagine I was rushing off to kill myself, me chuckling all the way.

I thought maybe "They" would give me a placatory phone call the next day but the 'cone of silence' continued to rule. Then the posse of sidekicks showed up at the Northcott flats, now going door to door, "Clover is in the building, gird your loins!" I asked them if she'd visit me to hear more of my bitch-rave and they enthused, "Of course, why not?" until one of them recognised me and said, "She already answered your question yesterday." "I dont consider a politician's double-speak an answer. Tell her I'm waiting, I wont kill her, I'm actually a law-abiding citizen." "You sound like a used car salesman", quipped a smart-arse crony. "No, you're the one selling used cars, I'm just an artist." She never came of course.

Clover must be desperate, leaving no mouldy stone unturned in her quest for any and every vote, but still not that interested in the soul behind the vote. I was furious to see a contingent of her lackeys marching in the Gay Mardis Gras Parade last Saturday night, a hundred of them holding stakes with a cut-out photo of her head atop them, that's what I call egregious opportunism, co-opting an entire 'rights' movement, capturing a vast fag-hag audience, not what I was aspiring to when I marched with the original demonstrators back in 1978. I heard some fool stood all day on the footbridge over Parramatta Road near Sydney Uni with Clover's head on a pole and there was one of the monstrosities stuck in the railing at Taylor's Square on the weekend. Doesn't the poor dear realise what the symbolism of heads on stakes stands for? Hello, the French revolution anyone? The high and mighty getting their come-uppance!

Clover has her back to the wall these elections as, in her craze for control she's taken on two POWER jobs, Lord Mayor and Independant Member of Parliament, and not doing either properly, and the people of Sydney are fed up, there's a feeling the city is teetering on the brink of chaos and maybe she's part of the problem. Still, it was foolish of me to take her on, like facing a double-barrel shotgun, yet I was amused that such an experienced gladiator in the bullpit of politics was for a moment gobsmacked by a powerless tho streetwise deviant like me.

The next day I did get a call from Linda, a council worker, in sweet-talk she asks me to come see her, maybe there's a solution to my existential dilemma, (yeah, win the lottery.) I visited her in her office near the very wall where my art was aborted, paintings now hanging that would be more suitable as wall-paper. She explained that council policy was not to hang anything that was "sexually suggestive" which means no crtitique on sexual-politics, sexual practices, sex mores, as if we're 700 years behind the times, but that's Auz for you, not as progressive as it dreams. She was very understanding and kind, took a digital photo of my risque art and posted it on the WEB, putting it into a gallery in cyber-space, which assuaged my hurt greatly. Soon you will be able to see what all the kerfluffle was about, when I can get my cyber-act together.

I'm always on the verge of giving up "ART", especially as far as operating in Auz goes, it's still the prescriptive penal colony of old, the proles have to be kept in their place at all costs, and no free speech allowed, only the Murdochs and Packers to be heard, oh yeah, and the arse-wipe modernist painters THEY can sell for millions of dollars, all a pathetic joke farted in my face. I'm stymmied, I've been killed off again, for the 700th time. Oh dear Clover, please catch my body as it falls from the 24th floor and shed some crocodile tears over me too, I deserve it.

P.S. It was silly of me to ambush the Lord Mayor over my non-career as an artist, she actually has nothing to do with street-level happenings, I guess I just grabbed my chance for a piece of street theatre, and I figured the buck stops with her, it's fun to discuss 'democracy' in the Arts with a bevy of powermongers. Clover has in reality done a lot for Public Housing tenants and gays in the area, she's 1000 times more preferable than the conservatives who'd like to sell us to a chain-gang. But I fear she's hopeless at doing two tough jobs and should stick to just being an Independant Member of Parliament, where she's most needed, and give up the night-shift job as Lord Mayor, it's not working out for anybody.

As Lord Mayor she presided over the withdrawal of funds to the Kings Cross Arts Festival, which left many inner-city artists stranded without support, venues or publicity. Maybe she considers us fuel for the "sleaze factor" which she's hoping to "clean up", THEY want the Cross "naughty but nice!" and, after meeting me, I bet she feels vindicated, I'm one nasty little fucker!