At The End of the Line.

 
I stopped writing for awhile as I was looking my mortality in it's phantasmal face, convinced I'm at the end of THE LINE. I've been in a delirium, painting my last piece of visionary madness before kissing planet Earth goodbye. My injured leg has been poisoning my whole system, the reason for my boils and heart attack, I thought I was dying and had nothing more to write about, and who gives a shit, civilization is teetering on the edge of chaos, and in my punk nastiness I think, good riddance! But then I tackled the source of my problems, the shoddy pin the mad Indian surgeon put in my leg 4 years ago, it's going to be ripped out, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get another 20 years of swashbuckling adventure, I wouldn't mind living till 77, after all, it is an amazing existence, this Universe so awesome.

So I stumble on with my life, no direction home, no great purpose, except for knowledge and ecstatic experience, I'm thankful I've still got a brain and the heart to remain amongst flawed humanity. The Piccolo Cafe also staggers along. Vitto is numb with fatigue and grief, his sister Maria died last month, there was a full Catholic Requiem Mass at a church down Roslyn Street, it was like a Vittorio De Sica neo-reallist movie, with absurd drama and heartbreaking sorrow. It's a weird church, lots of bums and druggies sleeping on the portico and being fed 3 meals in the basement, a true sanctuary and what Christian charity should be all about, but still amazing to have to run the gauntlet of crashed out zombies to get thru the front doors.

The coffin was carried in by a gang of bikers, The "Life and Death" club, her son Joe was a member even tho it seems he doesn't ride a bike, they all wore their colorful biker leathers and were suitably solemn. A large crowd of King's Cross locals turned up, freaks and straights made to ogle each other across the klunky church. Maria had been a notorious underground matriarch running cafes in the Cross/Darlinghurst area for 50 years and people either loved her or feared her. I loved her, she was a real character, grumpy but dead honest, no bullshit. She hated bludgers and druggies and made no bones about it. I never let her get to me, I've always been able to handle old curmudgeons with aplomb having lived and worked with gerries all my life, and me being the most curmudgeonly of all.

In the middle of the tirade of nonsensical prayers there was a commotion on the other side of the coffin, I glimpsed a weird tableau of a black-clad family trying to drag back into her seat one little old lady. An old Italian widow in black was trying to stand up to say her piece, the sister of Maria's divorced husband. After much struggle she threw her family off and grizzled loudly her remorse, "Maria was a bitch but we loved her!" A bit embarrassing but it wouldn't have been a real Italian funereal without such drama. Thankfully Tina, the daughter-in-law got up and gave an inspiring, loving eulogy that dissipated any reservations on the life of the hard task-mistress that was Maria.

The priest, a milksop Auzzie, was named Father Syn (of course) and he thought he'd proselytize to a room full of freaks, Christ this, Christ that, Christ dying for our sins bullshit, the service went on and on forever, stand up, sit down, stand up again, my bung leg ached thru-out, but none of us deviants was up for conversion, even Vitto and family refusing to partake of the sacrament, we're all lapsed in one way or another. All the while Peter played violin up in the choir with 2 other gay guys on organ and chorals, it was so sweet I couldn't help but cry, especially at Ave Maria, funerals always make me cry, they're so final, the soul gone away for good, only the memories left to assuage the heart.

Afterwards I moaned to Peter that these things come in threes, first Auntie Jack died, then Maria, perhaps I'd be next, my leg giving me so much grief. My misgivings were pooh-poohed but Maria had a young friend, Eric, almost an acolyte, one of the few souls who saw her great worth and gave her much energy. Only a few weeks later he had a massive heart attack, at 36 years old, and died, almost as if he'd gone to join her, to keep her company in the happy hunting grounds in the sky. Life/death is such a great mystery, I reiterate, I'm in constant awe of IT.

Vitto has forbidden me to write about the funereal, being too close to the bone for him, he thinks I put shit on him and the cafe with my Blogging, I assure him I'm just painting an impression of Piccolo life, fairly supportive and simply my attempt at creative writing, nobody reads it and, anyway, how to gag a compulsive poet, neither the blood-stained Nazis in Berlin nor the redneck Auzzies in Canberra have succeeded.

Back at Northcott Housing Estate life continues it's dysfunctional roller-coaster ride. The fire alarms clanged mercilessly again last Saturday night, only this time there really was a fire, a fuckwit nearby set his apartment alight cooking drugs in a bent table-spoon no doubt, smoke poured like a tsunami out of his shattered windows and filled the entire complex with a thick fog of noxious fumes, with droogs hollering about the end of the world and firemen stomping in and out hosing down anything that moved, I loved the drama but only as long as I can watch it from inside a protective space-suit, my intact skin, as if I'm exploring an alien planet.

Cursula next door has been up to her sleazy, moronic tricks, bringing back mugs to her flat from the all night pubs down the street with promises of erotic delight, then wheedling money out of them so she can score drugs and return to oblivion, her preferred state. I heard the argument thru my thin lounge-room wall, some dickhead guy furious that he had been conned, spitting on her after he fucked her, throwing 50 bucks at her then demanding she suck his cock when she asked for more money. She whined and pleaded, she had expected he'd give her $200, he laughed in contempt and threw another 5 bucks in her face and charged out the door, kicking the pot-plants over, she staggered after him and I heard her pleading for more money out on the pavement and with a demonic snarl he threw 5 cents in her face and spat on her again. Nogod, what a pathetic existence for some, how can getting drug-fucked be worth such dehumanizing behavior? Oh humanity, where for art thou?

(Her story is my story, everyone with no money, no love and no hope do desperate things, I feel sorry for the poor cow but I dare not be nice to her as she'll be knocking on my door 24/7 wanting to borrow something or get endless counseling, and I don't have that much compassion.)

Maybe I'll carry on with the writing, I'm spurred on by the likes of Bukowski and Genet, only I'm kidding myself with delusions of grandeur again, but it's fun, much like masturbation, even if purely for my own enjoyment, like throwing thought-waves out into cyber-space begging for rescue, making footprints in the Akashic records, I EXISTED, IT sure had it's moments, there could even be a few more stations to go here at the end of the line.

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From the Trenches of Desolation Row.

We had a wake for Auntie Jack at the Piccolo Bar last weekend, it always amazes me how a mob comes out of the woodwork after a death, we humans love to commiserate and reminisce with our fellow lifers in the face of omnipresent death and OBLIVION. It was agreed by everyone that for all Jack's curmudgeon-like carrying on, he was an unforgettable character, shining explosively from the void, and we all miss him badly, there's a hole in the cafe that no longer growls witticisms in repartee. Dennis the basker warbled Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and we all sang along to it, a fitting piece of poetry for that soul's journey upon planet Earth. In the jaws of pain and horror, how awesome it is to be alive and in with a chance at Ecstasy.

The oldtimers hang upon the Piccolo like a life-raft, time is fleeting and flesh is frail. Ayesha the Drag(on Lady) is working herself up to another Dementia furore, cursing the heavens and spitting chips over little nothings. Lately she's been wearing crazy head-dresses of plastic flowers like Bloody Mary in meltdown or covered in faux fur like a cross between Zsa Zsa Gaboring and a dead cat. She'll blow someday like an Asian volcano and I dont want to be in the vicinity, last time she kicked a kid in the guts at a kiddies' birthday party, and lately she's been aiming her abuse at me, whose always got a flippant word for her, like "how's Lee Pong Poo today?" as she's notorious, in her madness, for not bathing daily.

She still thinks the spotlight of "Les Girls" is shining upon her, any camera within a hundred miles she rushes to pose in front of, a star in her own toilet break. What a comedown for her to discover that she was flung to the cutting-room floor of the film "Cross Life", the latest tittilating expose on Sydney's gentrifing declasse red-light district, and she seems to blame me for it, just because I heap scorn on fame whores. I just hope she doesn't drop dead in the gutter on Roslyn Street where she's already had fainting fits, there's a crowd of ghosts in front of the Piccolo and no room for any more.

We had a hissing spat yesterday like two cats locked in a dumpster and it feels like we got the bad air cleared for now she's being nice to me, she knows how sharp my claws are, in her non-fame fever I only have to remind her that she was actually sacked from Les Girls, too bitchy even for that crew. It's a pity we disempowered gronks in the gutter have only each other's skin to shred in our angst, the out-of-reach ELITE depend upon it. Harsh realities like the Iraqui war have got us spewing in sheer sadness and horror with only each other to take it out on. Many conformist patrons of the Piccolo Cafe ogle me like they've never seen such a nasty, spitting pink poofy cat before, but hey, I'd rather grate on robopathic nerves than be demure and melt into the wallpaper like an insipid celebrity worshipper, I may not be nice but at least I'm real.

(Only the other day I was telling a friend, new to the Cafe, about the "old times", when Vitto worked the nightshift. You could come here at 3 am if you were restless and there'd always be some action, someone to rave with, guitar strumming, juke box rocking, ganjha smoke filling the small room till it resembled a sauna, in reality a hothouse for existential raconteurs, pop culture surfers and dispossessed deadbeats. Some nights it boiled over into a punch-up, yours trully often twisted on the hotspot and beat up too, pot smoke wafting like fog up Roslyn street. The Piccolo was notorious, the Daily Terror did it's screaming heebie-jeebie Sunday paper shock treatment, the pigs raided the Cafe repetitively, Vitto go fatigued and paranoid and swapped over to the day shift, fights dwindled to a minimum and, drug free, we sip our coffee and natter how wild and fun it once was. No more fighting, thank nogod, we're sick of the fistfights.

It's a shock when it's me who still comes under attack, I find it hard to humour fools and have to bite my tongue when I'm made to deal with them at the Cafe, compassion wears thin, most people seem to stay alive by manipulating their fellows. Take Fat Greg's side-kick Barry, he really makes me bunch up my fist. Recently he offered to buy groceries for this crippled 70 year old gerrie named Carlito, taking his last $50, then returned with a bullshit tale of how the cops had stopped him and taken the money from him. The truth is he has a wicked poker machine habit and he blew the $50 in 7 seconds. When the old decrepit fumed and replied how he thought Barry had ripped him off, the hefty retard slapped the old fellow around, right in the doorway of the Piccolo, where PEACE had long been declared.

All of Roslyn street was pissed off, old folks should be protected, not brutalised, otherwsie the area falls, the junkies, gamblers and crooks will make mince-meat of all of us. Fat Greg's been rushing about effusing endless apologies, his "adopted son" is existentially challenged, we have to make allowances, in three weeks he'll dredge up another $50 to pay the gerrie back, he's got his own "pokie habit" to deal with. I think the Barry the Beast should be locked in a cage in a back-yard and occassionally poked with a stick, I'm tired of being under threat at a simple rendevous like a Cafe, even if it is on Desolation Row.

Other than this tawdry drama there's been no action at the Cafe, just Vitto slaving dawn to dusk and anxious about his ancient sister who is dying by inches at St. Vinnies hospital. One day, if I stay alive long enough, and when everybody else is mulched back into the VOID, I will tell the full story of the Piccolo and it's gallery of rogues passing thru as I know where the bodies are buried, the 1001 filmmakers and journos who rush the dump to get their thin slice of the Bohemian pie only get the bullshit facade, it's the lifers like me who learn the nitty gritty for somehow I get people confessing all to me, the truth is always amazing, more twisted than a horror movie.

Speaking of which, the latest video-nasty I've relished was "Hostel 2", the critics hated it and gave it zero stars, "torture-porn" they all crowed, but they're not horror-heads and love to wear their morality upon their sleeves to broadcast what good citizens they are, but they're really just media apologists for a cruel system involving a 'profits-at-any-cost' Money-god, they hate social critique dressed in terror. Take the movie's premise, that in this world, if you're rich and nasty enough, you can join a monstrous private club, bid on hapless captured backpacker tourists ( a real terror for us world travellors) and buy yourself an innocent victim to torture at your own pleasure, a spot-on metaphor for our class-ridden world. And most fans of horror-stories doesn't identify with the torturer, thank you (not), we identify with the individual who turns the table on the fuckers and escapes in the end!

I've been devouring lots of cyberpunk novels lately, the only genre that trully fills me in on present and future realities/possibilities, and one can't get past the Masters, William Gibson (Idoru, Pattern Recognition), Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age, Cobweb) and Bruce Sterling (Holy Fire, Heavy Weather). In the latter is the scary idea of "lifeboat cannibals", power-mongering creeps who, in an overcrowded decaying world, prey on others and bump off as many as possible, so that "lifeboat planet earth" has more room for them. They invent and spread disease, encourage terrorism, create nuclear meltdowns, push WAR as the answer to Earth's overcrowding problems, rather than encourage half the planet's population to go "QUEER" for instance, fascists have always favoured the 'death wish' over the 'pleasure principle'. (For what are poofs good for except bashing up?) All these cyberpunk concepts ring true and add fuel to my hard-arsed surrealism, no wonder I'm a hissing, spitting cat on Desolation Row.

Another Cute Northcott Story.

Most nights here in the trenches of Northcott war-zone are blessedly silent and peaceful tho I do hold my breath, taking nothing for granted, for chaos can explode at any moment. 1001 humans living on top of each other can be a disaster waiting to happen and noise is the greatest of our woes but there's no succour for I forgo calling the police as it's like inviting shreiking harpies into the heady mix. The list of noisome phenomena is endless, no wonder we have massacres and suicides, yet I doubt prolonged 'bad noise' would be a good defence at a trial for assault.

We've had a faulty fire alarm for years that often shreds the peace, clanging away at all hours for no good reason, the fired brigade wailing to the rescue, then stomping and shouting, more clanging as the dammed alarm is tested, thus sleep can never be regular. For the last few weeks there's been an ultra-sonic whine ringing thru the nights like tinnitus of the collective head, it's source unfathomable and me ready to run amok with an axe, it's piercing my brain like an ice-pick. We've got jackhammers throbbing thu.out the days while they renovate the crumbling towers, and the garbage trucks trundle and crash, the cleaners clatter and smash, for my flat is near the dumpsters. Ambulences and police sirens scream at the ongoing Estate emergencies and every fortnight the dreaded lawn-mower brigade shows up to tear away at any wayward blade of grass, machine-grinding from Hell, all the gardens chopped to bits whether they need pruning or not for this army of contractors wants the easy money the Estate provides, vegetation and resting invalids be dammed.

Then there's my next door neighbours, Cursula and Bawl, whose constant bickering pierces my lounge-room wall, him berating her slovenly existence, her whingeing defence of her leprous honour, then their reconciliation with bad musical duets that grate on my nerves, him on guitar and her on tink-plink piano, and their lovie-dovie smooching that churns my guts, ending in a crscendo of sexual bellowing, as if a rhino is mounting a hippopotamus. Because she's filled her flat with garbage and junk that's stacked to the ceiling, any of her fellow drug-fucked friends that come visiting can't fit in so she holds her moronic soirees outside, in front of my door, and for hours I have to listen to inane trivia, "gee, if you put a photo of Kylie Minogue and Dolly Parton next to each other, you'd swear they were sisters." I scream thru the door, "try photos of Cursula and King Cong next to each other!"

More hours of saccharine compliments upon her filthy lifestyle, "Wow Cursula, you managed to bake a sludge cake using dirty dishes, that's clever!" till I have to bite my tongue and handcuff myself to my bed or otherwise I'm going to run out there with a baseball bat and knock her teeth down her throat. I've begged her to desist, she just moos like the cow she is and carries on chewing the cud, there's no explaining the waste of space that drug abusers create.

On the other side of me I've got Eric the Viking Beserker, howling hideously at the nights, cursing every passer-by, and climbing thru his window every 7 minutes, the window shudders open then screeches closed, over and over, he's lost his front door key again. The other day he pissed his pants as he clambered thru, a trail of noxious yellow running down the wall and across the footpath. The gay couple down the other end of the verandah shreiked outrage at the sight of it, they have a cleanliness fetish, Tony the Tooth Fairy is forever hosing down the concrete while his obnoxious paramour, Dravid the Undertaker, drunk as a punk 24/7, yells abuse at the heavens, "it's those dole bludgers, those pensioners, they make the bloody mess, they won't work, they own nothing, THEY OWN NOTHING...!", this last repeated like a mantra, all he owns is a black Bat-mobile, big deal.

The main path that cuts thru the whole Estate runs past my front door and I get all the marauding mobs in my face, drunken louts yahooing, Abbos shattering beer bottles, ICE-zombies shouting murder, domestic quarrels weeping and begging at 3am like restless ghosts from the ancient cemetary buried under the foundations of Northcott Compound. Stolen cars are set alight and exploded in the carpark, furniture is tossed from 21st floor balconies and zombies drag trash from the garbage dump in the twilight of dawn, Cursula in the vanguard, broken furniture scraped and banged thru her door just when I'm finally falling asleep. All this noise swells up into a tsunami of caterwauling, a symphony of cacophony, an 1812 overture of angst and recrimination, and I'm swept away, down into a whirlpool of sonic vibrations, my quantum consciousness dissolved, madness filling the void.

All of which brings me to the cute story about Northcott. Some years ago, after a hard night-shift in the House of the Dying, I was trying to sleep when the most god-awful machine thumping threw me from my bed. So loud the walls shuddered and my nerve-ends frayed and exploded. I rushed outside to find a fifty-something moron pushing a pneumatic machine that sprays water, he's swishing trash and leaves from the footpath, ripping up the peace worse than a jack-hammer. I scream over the racket for him to turn the machine off, it's giving me a nervous breakdown, is a terrible waste of water and hasn't he ever heard of a broom. He just looked at me vacant-brained and kept waving his water-wand at a few twigs and cigarette butts.

I yelled and yelled but he was impervious to my admonishments, grunting "it's my job, fuck off!" An ancient old man in a dressing gown hung over the 4th floor balcony and yelled, "yeah, stop the noise, turn that bloody machine off!" I felt somewhat vindicated so I kept squawking, "turn that fucking hell-macine off!" The thump/whine noise increased in pitch the louder I yelled, my brains felt like they were shredding out my arse and the mentally challenged cleaner carried on oblivious, spray spray, thump, thump. I went over the edge and grabbed at the cumbersome machine, wrestling to the death with it like it was some invading Dalek, heavy as an armoured tank, in my rage I flipped it over onto it's side, the thump-thump whining dwindling to a wheezing gasp. The retarded cleaner's face swelled with outrage, he adveanced upon me waving his water-wand and sprayed me head to toe with dirty water till I was drenched and sqeaking like a drowned rat.

I spluttered fury and ran back into my flat and for the second time in my life I rang the cops, I had gone into meltdown and wasn't thinking clearly. Within 7 minutes a matching pair of pigs showed up, as if spewed from a conveyor belt, the usual blonde female with a pony-tail chewing gum, the fat male behind her scowling over her shoulder. She asked me what the big emergency was and I told her how I'd been assaulted by the moronic cleaner with a spray device. They went over to the retard and questioned him, him jabbering away and pointing at his precious machine as if it was a sacred relic I'd desecrated.

They marched back to me peering from my doorway and growled, "look mate, what's your problem? He says you attacked his machine!" "We have enough noise around here, the garbage trucks, the fire alarms, without that moron adding to it with a ridiculous machine from Hell!" "Mate, I've got garbage trucks out front of my place, that's city life for you, we all have to put up with it, he's only doing his job." "The noise here is out of control, there's a lot of old, sick people here who can't stand it and that moron has to add to it with a bullshit piece of make-work, an unneccesary job they've thrown to a retard to give him something to do, like why can't he use a broom?" "Mate, he's only doing his job! And if you keep it up we'll drag YOU away!" "Gee, thanks for all your help, remind me not to call the police again when there's trouble!"

I slammed the door in their grumpy red-faces and prayed they wouldn't take the issue further. I could be murdered with a chain-saw and I won't ever consider ringing the cops, they're useless. I must say, that retarded cleaner ran off and never did come back with his infernal machine, the front-office must have got wind of the affair and told him to desist, so flipping out can get results but it's a pity I have to suffer madness to get 7 minutes of peace.

When I was a young man I fled to the Himalaya mountains looking for a cave where I could meditate in peace and find some kind of enlightenment. But in the deepest jungle and highest crag someone always found me, a grass-cutter or goatherd, a curious cop or zealous tourist, there was no getting away from humanity, anywhere. In my old age I've discovered my apartment can be like a mountain cave, if I discourage most people from visiting me, can keep it reasonably quiet, I can meditate and contemplate the mystery of the Universe and my existence in peace, it's like a monastic cell.

But society hates a drop-out, they drag you into the bumptious world willing or not, and I go screaming. Somehow I'll just have to switch that scream over to my all-soothing mantra, instead of "fuck, fuck, fuck!" it wil have to be"AUM, AUM, AUM" or otherwise I will go mad and there'll be a new Surry Hills massacre at Northcott. Not so cute.

Midnight Cowfag a Child of Gaia.

I should stay indoors permanently as I only get into trouble when I go out into society. The Piccolo Cafe is an endless source of grief yet I suppose I need the spice of life it provides for I yo-yo in and out of the hotspot like a zombie. I was sitting there, lonely and desperate, when an old ex non-boyfriend showed up and asked if he could sit with me. His name is Adyll and he is a DILL! He has robbed me twice over the years and I hate his guts but he gushed friendliness all over me, seemed straight and clean, and his crotch bulged erotically so I gave in and smiled in return. Big mistake as he turned up at my flat a few days later, talked bullshit to me for a few minutes then stole my best sunglasses as he went out the door.

Then he had the nerve to come back the next day as innocent as mud-pie and when I accused him of being a moronic thief he went into an ICE-cold rage and chucked a rock thru my window, screaming blue murder for half an hour, threatening to kill me if he saw me at the Piccolo. (On revisiting one of my all-time favourite movies, "Midnight Cowboy", I realised I'd led a life close to that of poor Ratzo with years of squatting in derelict dumps, scrabbling for food wherever it was handed out, rifling thru punter's pockets, hustling my butt or that of my mates, a pauper poof without the spunk of Joe Buck, my story could be more appropriately tagged "midnight cowfag" but at least I didn't die in a puddle of piss on a bus to Queensland.) Anyway, I shat myself for a week imagining the hobgoblin Adyll at my door then I fled to Melbourne, hoping it would blow over. I'm always escaping from one imbroglio to another like an outlaw on the run, never ever settling down into complacent quietude, a restless homo sap sap sapien.

Yet I lucked out, for I was led straight to a cosmic event in a Pub in inner-city Melbourne, a memorial concert to a woman named Gaia, a great soul who had given her life to helping Aboriginal artists find their way. She was a white woman who had married a black and was the only known whitie to have walked the song-lines of Northern Auz on the directions of the Elders. The royalty of Aboriginal music flew in from all over Auz to perform, each act better than the one before, Joe Gaia, the Dili All Stars, David Bridie, Amy Saunders, Dave Mann, Sally Dastey, on and on, such sweet voiced heartfelft soulfull music that I wept with sad joy, all culminating in Archie Roach singing his big hit, "They Took the Children Away", with a choir of all the other acts behind him. A white light exploded in my head, my eyes rolled back in ecstasy, he'd never sang it better, especially the refrain "bring the children back home", it went to my heart, for that Pub was in Richmond, where I had been born and spent the first 7 years of my life, and after travelling the world for 50 years, I was another troubled child who had found his way home.

I've been to 49 trully great music recitals in my life and that was definitely one of them, convincing me that the first tattoo I'm to do upon myself with my new tattoo kit will be an Aboriginal design of a kangaroo, for after all I am a 7th generation Auzzie, Auz is deep down in my blood, and I pray there's even some Abbo genes in there somewhere, my family's been here long enough. And how cool my family was to me for those loving 2 weeks I hid out in Melbourne, lots of counter meals in pubs and cakes in French patisseries, then off to the Coburg drive-in movies to relish "Pirates of the Carribean 3" with hamburgers and pot in the car, and gyspy music from "Babaganoosh" in a funky hall in Fitzroy, white Auzzie maestros who again pushed me over the edge into bliss, especially the girl violinist who did a Verdi song.

Back in Sydney I reverted to the Piccolo for my daily dose of drama, Hamid the gay black African commiserating with me over the pitfalls of unrequited, unasked for bad-love, both of our nemesis showing up as if summoned by a seance, for him the dreaded Stephan who had broken a bottle over his head after Hamid had given him a blow job, for me the horrid Adyll smacking me on the back of the head as he strode past, yikes, what a life! The two goons met on the corner and blabbed drug deals then marched off without another look at us two sorry fags. That fucker Adyll is a bad-arse Christian wog from Syria who had been sponsored to Auz by his uncle and from the moment he arrived at the age of 17 has done nothing but bash and rob any Auzzie unlucky enough to cross his path. Now at 32 he's spent half his life in gaol, apparently has assaulted yet another victim recently and so hopefully will not be free for long. I'd like to see him parachuted back into Syria where he'd quickly learn the differance between paradise and hell. But I was a fool for even looking twice at him, he glows trouble, so I deserved all the grief I got.

Like a murder of crows on Desolation Row, the poofs seated outside the Piccolo all gazed at me as if shellshocked. There was Fat Greg smoking up a storm, just out of hospital after his umpteenth heart attack, the fire brigade had to get a crane to lift him from his bed and heave him into the ambulence. He had the Last Rites read over him and still he staggered back into existence, three cigarettes in his mouth, this guy wants to kill himself, he can't take "the horror" no more. And oh oh, here comes the 'gay priest', white collar choking and black frock flapping, a smug, holier than thou look upon his face, his aura electric with deviant angst. He's come out from England to proselytise us godless colonials and espouses some weird hybrid Christianity, mad as a UFO cult, with arcane crucifix tattoos on his arm that he flashes as proof of his hipness.
Three doors up from the Piccolo Cafe is John's antique store. His sister Sue came rushing into the Cafe in tears, hysterical, she couldn't take IT anymore. For she'd been begged into letting her main bedroom to the 'gay priest' and he wasn't as lovely as he made out. He'd turned the pristine room into a pigsty, weeks old food stuck all over, fan heater on full blast for days and blowing the circuitry, refusing to pay his share of the bills, tapping into her internet account, a real user and bludger of the highest order. He's always drugged up, even on Good Friday he lay about his room drunk as a skunk, spends most nights in the backrooms on Oxford street giving sex to all and sundry, and has nothing but abuse for us Auzzies, declaring us to be uncultured, iredeemable boors whom he hates thoroughly. What kind of 'priest' is this?

No priest at all we now suspect. It's all a con job, he's come out to the antipodes hoping to fleece the stupid colonials with his outrageous costume of black frock and white collar, like it will get him an easy living. What a nerve, what a fuckwit! As he strides by me I'm tempted to step on his black robe and trip him up, then kick him in the arse. It's bad enough being a priest amongst pagan atheists, but to be a false priest, and egregiously gay at that, takes the half-baked cake. Over the 30 years I've hung out at the Piccolo I've seen all types of con artists and bullshitters creep by but this guy gets the Wooden Spoon award, shoved up his black frock hopefully. Talk about midnight cowfags, even Mother Gaia would disown him. At last I can feel smug about myself, I'm a demonic angel in comparison.

How I got Made...an Acid Freak!

I have already had published 2 different versions of this story, the first called "Alec Farthing" in "Being Different", an anthology of gay memoirs edited by Gary Wotherspoon in 1985, and then a comic book I drew entitled "No Future" published by Headmaster Press back in the early eighties, and I also have in my laptop a 700 page manuscript, "The 7 Lives of Toby the Punk Poofy Cat", wherein I give a full explanation of my sordid adventures ever awaiting a publisher to discover me, (like, where are THEY?) But some friends of mine, who work for "User News", a drug addicts' magazine, find my story fascinating and have asked me to write it out once more as they've had confessions from all kinds of druggies but never from an LSD fiend, so here we go again.

In 1969 I was 19 and suffering intense angst at being homosexual in a world that saw my kind as lowdown dirty scumbags fit only to be tortured, gaoled, hospitalised or murdered. I was studying to be a nurse and an older nurse, Keith, who came onto me as a patronising brother figure, got me to admit my 'gayness' and convinced me I was indeed mentally ill. He told me he was once 'homo' himself but had been cured with 10 sessions of LSD therapy and now was happily married and the father of a baby boy. I had never had any drugs, not even pot, but had heard all about LSD from the media, Ken Kesey's "Merry Pranksters and the Magical Mystery Tour", Timothy Leary's "Politics of Ecstasy" but most especially the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and I was intrigued, wanting so badly to escape the horrors of mundane Melbourne and the less than zero life of a homo. LSD promised other-worldly adventures, enlightened self-knowledge, colourful fun and ultimate ecstasy, but as a boy from a Housing Commission ghetto, the Olympic Village in West Heidelberg, there was no way I could score the drug, I was not hip and had no connections.

Keith told me his saviour was a shrink who promoted Jungian pscho-analysis, delved into the Collective Unconscious with the aid of Lysergic Acid and unearthed the traumas, fixations and compulsions lurking deep within, and I should consider giving it a go. Off I stumbled to a private psyche hospital in Kew that looked like a witch's gingerbread cottage hidden in it's overgrown gardens, and there I was interviewed by the psychiatrist, a Dr. Mackay, who seemed to me to be wise, paternalistic, even out of this world with his strange parchment like skin and piercing eyes. I got it in my naive head he was from a UFO sent to lift humanity up into it's next stage of evolution, and I impressed him also with my sexual anxieties, intelligence and sincere desire to "improve", and so I was admitted into the programme of LSD aversion therapy.

I was to have the requisite 10 sessions of pure LSD25, shipped in from Sandoz laboritories in Switzerland under the guise of " therapeutic purposes" and at the end of the dark tunned I would emerge an outstanding, righteous citizen fit to join the human race. All paid for by my Health Fund, I was admitted into the private hospital, put into pyjamas and locked in a small room with bars on the window. The maggii-like shrink came in and shot me up intra-muscular, also giving me a small white pill, one was the LSD, the other a muscle relaxant, which was which I'll never know, but it did take about an hour to come on and I got quite impatient waiting for the blast. And BLAST it was, suddenly my universe melted and rained down upon my head, super-novae exploded, black holes sucked my soul from my heart, volcanoes erupted, amphibians slithered forth, dinosaurs tore apart mammals and apemen raped me mercilessly.

Every war ever fought in history battled for my consciousness, corpses piled up around my hospital bed and the walls cracked into myriad tableaus, every one of them depicting some crude, sleazy sex act, then blood seeped thru the cracks and poured down upon me till I thought I would drown. My body contorted into grotesque, deformed postures, I gagged, throttled and retched, I thought I was going to die, oblivion threatened to overwhelm me and blot me out of existence and I fought off the impending doom with all my strength, pushing my foot down hard as if on imaginary brakes during a head-on car collision. The shrink came into the room and sat by my side watching me contort, moan and dry-reach, his big comment, "looks like a huge penis trying to insert itself into a small mouth, I think you were molested when you were a child, maybe it was your father, try to remember it!" (YUK! This shrink was really a Freudian wolf in Jungian sheep's clothing!)

Whatever the bad memory was, I fought it off, it was too horrific, like some H.P.Lovecraft monster crawling up from the deep, I did'nt want to know about it. The shrink left and was soon replaced by the head nurse, Anne, a Germanic matron, like a Valkyrie with a blonde bee-hive hairdo, who sat beside me and repeated like a mantra, "vomit it all up, remember the horror, get it out and over with, vomit, vomit, vomit!"

But still I resisted the suggested bad memories and after 8 hours of bad-tripping, the drug wore off, dawn called with birdsong and my first session was over. I went home and continued work as a nurse, going back to the witch's cottage in Kew 3 more times over the next few weeks to try and trip out my traumatic past but each time fighting the impending ghastliness off, no matter how much the shrink and head nurse encouraged, wheedled and directed the bummer trips. Throughout the nights I could hear shrieks coming from other rooms and thus realised I wasn't the only one undergoing the radical therapy. During my fourth session I noticed they'd forgotten to lock the door and as I came down from the nightmare I snuck out into the corridor to explore the hospital and find the source of the hair-raising screams.

I met another teenager in his pyjamas who'd come in because of anti-social behaviour, he had an ugly basin hair cut and told me the hospital staff had forcefully cut off his long hair, and I wasn't impressed. He told me They were convinced our traumas were from past life experiences, the countless times we'd been raped, tortured, murdered over many lifetimes, and somehow we were to cleanse ourselves of these horrors and move on. This news weirded me out, what the fuck was going on in this snake-pit dump? But we didn't get long to compare notes as a crabby faced nurse showed up and we both fled back to our rooms.

During this, my fourth LSD session, I had the usual nasty heebie-jeebies, fighting them off like Frodo battling the Orcs but towards the end of the dark night a miracle occurred, the gloom lifted, white light broke thru, the gates of paradise opened up and I ran into a primordial garden of earthly delights wherein I joined a circle of fairy-type souls dancing atavistically around a Pan-like figure, and all was ecstasy, peace and love. The shrink came in and I beamed beatifically upon him, much to his annoyance, he prepared a second, bigger hit of LSD and shot me up with alacrity, murmuring, " go into the horror, remember the pain, relive the DEATH!"

I put my foot down hard on the brakes, forget it DOC, it was too much SHIT! The white light came again, the rainbow colours, the joy, the awe, the stupendous beauty also to be found in the land of the Unconscious, angels instead of demons, I'd climbed from Hell, and Heaven was all around. When dawn came I realised the place was not where I ever wanted to be ever again, 4 sessions were enough, fuck the full 10 where they'd probably fry my brains into sludge. I got dressed, snuck out thru the back door, ran thru the overgrown gardens and climbed the back fence, escape was bliss.

On wobbly legs I walked into Melbourne city where all had slowed down as if I was pushing thru viscous honey, and I had the uncanny feeling that whatever I thought came to pass, if I thought tram, a tram would come, if I thought red car, a red car would pass, the entire universe seemed to revolve around me and do my bidding. It took me weeks to come down, if I ever did, I never returned to that hospital and it's psychedelic programme and I guess they gave me up as lost, unprogrammable, for they never sought me out.

Another year drifted by and I passed my final nursing exams and, freaked out of my brains, I ran away to India, hoping to find an alternative way of Being, maybe get real Self-realisation, at least have the greatest adventure of a lifetime. I was determined to go thru the "acid experience" without being locked into a room, without "therapeutic purposes", to get on top of it and surf it HIGH, and so I took acid on any and every whim, from the heights of the Himalayan mountains to the beaches of Goa, the Ganga river at Shangri-la to the carved temple caves of Mahabalipuram. One of Ken Kesey's 'merry pranksters' had escaped to India with a huge stash of liquid "Clear Light" LSD and he handed the stuff out at Goan parties via an eye-dropper dripped into the mouth, and I did indeed dance naked with the fairies around bonfires in the garden of earthly delights.

I kept having bummer trips tho, all my Aussie/Christian brainwashing oozing out like puss, I was possessed with the idea that Satan was trying to claim my soul and I had to defeat HIM and become my own self. After many 'trips' I finally got on top of the fears, and morphed into my gutsy, exuberant, quirky self, homosexual and glorying in it. Satan was banished and Pan took his place, I grew into an ecstatic pagan, an admirer of the angel of Light, a Luciferian a la Anatole France's "Revolt of the Angels", and thus I became another rebel angel in the war against the evil "Godists" plagueing the planet.

Years later I discovered that the private hospital in Kew was a front for a CULT called 'The Family' and having worldwide connections, at the head of it the nurse with the beehive, Anne Hamilton Byrne, a Swiss-German, who had convinced a whole bunch of fuckwits she was the new Messiah, the great Aryan Godwoman for a New Age, doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants, all sucked in, she fed them copious amounts of LSD over the years and thus had them quite addled. Eventually she was discovered on a farm in the Victorian bush with a group of children aged from infancy to teens, all of them with blue eyes and bleached white hair like Aryan godlings, and no explanation of where she got the kids from.

One teenager escaped and told the police she'd kept them all enslaved, up before dawn for cold baths, gruel for food, harsh work disciplines all day, no education, no contact with the bigger world, and fed on LSD of which she had a huge stash. One day at the Piccolo Cafe on the Cross I was told the horrible urban myth that she'd forced blood transfusions from the kids and shot it into herself in the hope of retaining eternal youth and, what's really weird, in photos of her in her seventies she actually looked to be only in her forties.

I realised THEY had plans for me also with my bright blue eyes, hoping to straighten me into a Het, marry me to one of the nursing staff as they'd done for Keith, and get me to pump out blue-eyed kids, which she'd then grab as true Aryans. Keith, my wonderful best friend and and supposed big brother, had connived with the Cult all along to have me brainwashed and one of the kids she'd enslaved was probably his, (what a true-blue friend he was!) I don't know where the old bag is now, I think the Law is chasing her around overseas and still having a hard time trying to bring her to justice, she ripped off lots of money of course and still has some zealous zombies supporting her. I know the private hospital got closed down by the cops and the good Doctor Mackay disqualified as there were too many teenage kids going home with fried brains making for a huge, juicy scandal.

As for me, the next fifteen years had me rushing about dropping Acid like Aspirin, unable to party unless I was well and trully tripped out. And back in Auz for the '77 new years party I dropped Golden Sunshie and cavorted with Bon Scott and his AC/DC at a free concert in the old Haymarket, and like a fish flapping on an alien shore I washed up permanently in Sydney. At the horror movies, rock concerts, hippie gatherings, new years eve freak shows or romps thru the Auzzie bush, I just had to psychedelicise my universe with ACID, rubbing the genie's bottle, riding the magic carpet and weilding the sword of Excalibur to claim the Holy Grail. I never actually did come back to reality and have been semi-mad all my life, unable to hold down a job, have a viable relationship or deal with ordinary people rationally, I seem to be permanently hallucinating, which is not too tragic considering I hope to be a visionary artist.

This said and done, I would never recommend Acid to anyone as it's a dangerous drug, for those with a weak link it breaks them irrevocably and a normal life sought after recedes like a mirage. Real LSD is almost impossible to come by these days, as if it's intense efficacy evaporated with the times of the sixties/seventies, once Known, like virginity lost, it's never to be re-established, the morphic resonance fading away, the headspace maybe evolved to other dimensions up the time-line to us ecstatic cyberpunks. What passes for Acid these days is adulterated rubbish, glorified Speed, poison to addle the system, and I avoid it like the plague.

For those who just have to KNOW there's always the pure, natural psychedelic of psyloscibin found in Goldtop mushrooms, and many is the time I've eaten of Pan's fruit up around funky Nimbin and danced with the Green One in ecstacy, but I do this only on sacred occassions, as a celebrant of the glories of being alive in an awesome Universe, like at the Spring Equinox or Mid-winter's solstice, it's not just for cheap thrills and can poison the feeble-minded as badly as any backyard lab chemical.

(If one is still hellbent on doing drugs, no matter what the proscription against it is, then I would advise to follow the Timothy Leary directives, as mad as he was, the grandfather of all "acid-casualties" : consider dosage, set and setting. 1) Make sure you know what the drug is and it's strength by taking advice from a close and trusted friend who has already tried it. 2) Be with the right set of people when you trip out, friends you love and trust, all looking out for each other. 3) Choose the right setting, an environment or site that makes you feel safe, happy and comfortable, what doesn't freak you out, what encourages your high.)(For me, being a freak, it was most often wild rock'n'roll parties!)

And, hey! There's nothing like drug free, clear, lucid consciousness to feel truly high.

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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.