Aug. 12, 2018—Dubai
Who nose how menny times we've been to Dubai + never left the airport... ½ a dozen or more? Does Dubai even Ǝxist?

Aug 13—Canberra, Australia
Does yesterday even Ǝxist? If we never left the airport or airplane? We left Rome the night of Aug 11 + arrived in Oz the morning of Aug 13, so Aug 12 was lost sumwhere, b-tween time zones + air travel. Mustering to sleep or just space out meditating, to store up as much as we can. Watching movies, nothing memorable except maybe Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs + some Australian movie (Sweet Country) about Aborigines getting fucked over by racist white rednecks. Re-reading Slaughterhouse 5, why, not shore, dint have nuttin' else on hand + we hadn't red Slaughterhouse 5 sints high shcool so figgered hit high time we re-read 'er, since maybe back yonder we dint process ½ of hit. Perhaps what we initially learned about WWII + 1° notions of war in general gleaned from Slaughterhouse 5, since we got no 1° hand experience. We wasn't there, man. We also recently watched dat Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, perhaps why we d-sided to reread Vonnegut's book. In fact we even recently set out to write a war song, but hit ended up being more about our 1° job having a paper route + how depressing hit be to read the news every day, slowly kills u:

The Daily Noose

you came back from Asia, aged 12 years
to every 1 of your gap-year-less piers
the wharf expands into a raft boxspring
u ride the rug while your class keeps sleeping
hide your head in the roadside sand
wear earplugs to understand
the babbling language bubbling up from the stream
from the Mekong Delta to the Tigris she bleeds
black to red while skipping blue  
u heard the cry of your sweetheart's mews
in a dark garage, your first job
wrap rubber bands, around coiled newsprint logs
that u yourself could never be bothered to read
ride a raft rigged of pitch + papyrus in d-Nile down to the sea
red anemones ain't your enemies
the colonel tells us to lick 1 to feel the sting
1st hand, for yourself, otherwise u aint no man
if only you'd followed in his footsteps
u wouldn't have to live with yourself, day to day, year to year
same news delivered from decades ago
to each doorstep back home, to the disposable poor
what for? the horror, our dark cœur, u cant ignore, forlorn hope keeps breeding more
every war dons the robes of tyrants disposed
only landscapes degrade + the life she contains
sold on the allure to see the world
that u saw in a brochure, of an exotic tour
just cuz your forefathers went before u
on reconnaissance, by their own recognizance
u herd the birds circling over your head
they knew for sure you'd try to retrieve your dead
years of sleepless nights under a ceiling fan
waiting to wake come morning, to deliver the noose
thrown from saddlebags past the barking dogs
use garden hose as bugle to deliver the call

So it goes. Spose hit's also about Apocalypse Now + the Gulf War, the 1° one under Bush Sr., in 1991. We was in Malaysia, after travelling thru Indonesia + before dat Australia. And here we are 27 years later, go figger. The above song is the 4° we've finished, reckon we might put out an EP soon... case any 1s wondring what we's up 2, bin writing more music this year then books or on this here blogject.

We landed in Melbourne + then a last short hop to Canberra, where we dint travel before when we was here. Aint much reason to go to Canberra from what we herd, back then we was just mustering to git across Oz spending as little money as possible, hitch-hiking from Syndey up thru the outback to Darwin. Back then the coffee we had each morning was a huge blow to our budget, at 2+ bucks a pop + since they dont got bottomless cups, u might spend 5-10 a day just on coffee + then $5 eating falafel or cheese sandwiches. Thought about dat last night as we had the tasting menu at Raku, eating oysters + all sorts of raw delectables from the sea. Not shore such places Ǝxisted back in '91, if they did we likely glared thru the windows at the rich diners in disdain. Now regalure folk, bearded hipsters + hijabbed mothers, dine in such places. So it goes.

Sides the jet lag, it's winter here, far cry from the sweltering heat of Rome. Snow on the hills right outside Canberra. We haven't travelled much this past year, in fact since we've been living in Rome we aint bin further then Naples (tho seems a weekly occurence that sunday mornings our bedder-½ goes to Fiumicino to jet off sumwhere), but the past few times we have travelled has been to the southern hemisphere... South Africa last December + before dat Buenos Aires. Then we was s-caping winter for summer now vice-versa. So it goes.

Our southern hemispheric state applies also to our state of mind, ½ awake ½ asleep, in dream, not aware of the diffrence tween the 2. Not that we can articulate our dreams, sumping about folks expressing information about a tragedy by using drums (overturned buckets), like morse code. If u wake up + write it down u risk losing the flow, of falling back into hit. Even if yous awake, if u turn on the light aint no weigh u can capture whatever thought u thought u was thinking, becombs just words. Spose dat's the brilliance of Slaughterhouse 5... sure dare was lots of folk egging Vonnegut on to write a book about Dresden, u was there man! Dis was his response.

Magpie in Canberra

Aug. 14

Canberra aint much to write home about, guess when they was d-siding where da capital of Australia was gonna be, Sydney + Melbourne couldn't come to a'cord, so they picked a randumb spot ½ way in between + built a new city for that purpose, from the ground up. They even fabricated a man-made lake to build the city around. Shore, it's clean + probly gots a high standard of living + all dat, but just sterile + lacking culture. We walked thru the botanical gardens up Black Mtn to git some perspective. Saw lots of exotic birds— cockatoos + pink parrots (galahs) + red + blue crimson rosellas + black + white magpies + crows + nutting's afraid of u here. Walked back along the lake, stopping in at he Natl museum then wint + got Malaysian street food for lunch. Definitely they gots good Asian food here, nice for a change coming from Rome. Then wint for a run the other direction along the lake. Dinner had to endure some boring speech for the meeting our bedder-½'s here for, enough to make u want to slit your wrists... speaking of "daily noose". Burrocrats going on + on about how to feed all the ppl on this planit + the hole time we keep thinking rather then figgering out how to feed the proliferating population why not figger out how to stop proliferating. EZ fix, stop breeding! Aint been no world wars since WWII, need sum big catastrophic event or disease to keep things in check. In Slaughterhouse 5 Vonnegut said 135,000 people died in the Dresden firebomb, or at least he says that quoting another book within the book. He was exagerrating a bit (the actual number according to wikipedia is 25,000) tho maybe he was going off the German estimate. He was right about the Tokyo air raids, that killed 83,793ppl (wiki now says ~100k), his point being that it was more than Hiroshima (71,379), but everyone talks about Hiroshima cuz of it's sensational nature. Later in the book he says that 324,000 ppl are born each day (roughly the number still, if not even higher, 330,000—360,000). Followed by the line "I suppose they will all want dignity." And so on.

Stop to think about that #... suppose there was some catastrophic event where 325,000 peoole died, could u imagine what a big deal dat wd be? Granted ½ dat # die each day, but still there's a net gain of around 175,000... even the most extreme wartime events can't make up for 1 day of births. We need a Dresden or Hiroshima every day to staunch the bloody breeding. Canberra is roughly 350,000, so the number of ppl born each day is enough to populate the capital of Australia. And yes, each 1 of those feels entitled to some dignity. It's just nice a sustainable model no madder how u slice hit. But so it goes, on + on.

on the way up black mtn

Eucalyptus

scribbly gum eucalyptus

scribbles made by moth larvae

cockatoo

lake Burley Griffin

crimson rosella

galahs

Aug 15

Got a bike + rode around Lake Burley Griffin + then sum, out to the airport where we saw kangaroos on the way to our hotel so we wanted to get a better view, loads of them, tho they were leery if u stopped to check them out, they'd casuallyhop back over the fence. Then went to the Natl gallery, lots of good aboriginal art as well modern stuff. Then rode to the base of Mount Ainslie, found a trail going up. Saw a few more roos hiding in the shade, in a more natural setting (not raiding a paddock on the side of the road). Got to the top + there was a road going up + lots of people picnicking + walking around. Din't see a single other person walking up even tho it wasn't that far or hard. Went + got delicous pho. And so on. As we write this our bedder-½ is about to be interviewed live on Australian TV.

galahs + roos

or 6 ft. tall meerkats?

roo on the move

if we had food this little fella probly wd of eaten out of our hand

waterfront near parliament

sculpture garden

aboriginal forest

Uta Uta Tjangala

modern meets aboriginal

Doreen Reid Nakamarra

quite a few like this 1 attributed to "unkown artist"

back outside

Mt Ainslie

Canberra as seen from atop Mt Ainslie