Okay, thought I'd note down some 'stuff' that happens around me, so when I look back at this in years to come I'll go 'Aaah, I was a pretentious little prick back then, wasn't I.'.
My friend Bek rang me from hospital this morning. I answered her caller ID'd call with a "Hello Mrs McKenzie", which spun me out with its whole implication-laden Freudianism, and led to me missing the first few comments of hers. But I soon realised that the rock star was unwell, again. And that made me think about the many times I'd visited this lass in hospitals. Do some people spend a lot more time in hospitals than others? Well, obviously, very sick people do, of course that's obvious.
But Bek seems to spend an unfair amount of time inside, if you ask me. She reminded me this morning of a time I'd visited her in the early to mid nineties, along with a few of my Zed colleagues. It must have been early in my highly successful opiate career, because she remembers me expressing jealousy at another inpatient at the time receiving a morphine drip. Funny, but that patient was Russ Moffett, a Zed co-worker who I always recall as wearing a black leather jacket. In fact I think I saw him last week around Toowong somewhere, but perhaps it was another ranga wearing a similar small leather jacket that triggered my memories. Funny how easy it is to trigger memories. I regret that I was born too early in a chronological sense to witness the decoding of memory storage. I would like to know specifically what tags my mind puts against certain recollections.
I do imagine memories like that. Tagged. You know, there's a little scene in my head of myself walking down some street in North Melbourne in 1995, with the loveable Lora on my arm, and I wearing an Old English Sheepdog coat. All white and grey spotted fluffy fur coat. Only vast quantities of gear plus the ego-boost that came from having an unbelievably good looking woman who actually seemed to like me, enabled me to do things such as publicly exhibit myself in such bizarre fashions.
Although I must admit that after a decade with S, I am thinking of starting to wear a hat, or maybe start wearing braces. Fourteen years cubicle dwelling in Toowong has made me desperate for a little individuality.
Anyway, re the tags. That memory of myself and Lora is stored bio-chemically in my mind, and I imagine an index section of my mind associating (tagging) it with "Old English Sheepdog" and "Lora", plus an audio tag of whatever music I was listening to that week, and an olfactory tag of the smell I smelt as I walked past a cafe with her that night. Olfactory tags amaze me. We have all experienced recollections brought on by a similarity in smell, haven't we? I have often been transported to a little village in Asia upon catching just the slightest whiff of some Asian herb cooked with duck. West End is a great place to live if you have traveled in Asia. Walking down Vulture Street (yes, the same one Powderfinger named their album after) is full of recollections at times.
But memories don't get generated when nothing is happening in your life. And that is what I have dedicated this last decade to for some unknown reason. If I had to guess, I would say perhaps its a delayed response to the many friends who died during the mid nineties, plus my own arrest, which was climactic and cathartic, although at the time it was just another meaningless event. So much happened, so many memories were generated, that I have made an effort to keep my head under my pillow day after day, week after week, almost reveling in my lifestyle bordering on non-existent. Every Monday one co-worker or another will ask me 'What did you do on the weekend?". Ten years ago I had many answers, but could not tell them anything due to the illicit nature of my actions. Now I still cannot tell them anything, but this is more due to my activities non-existent nature, than any illicit nature.
I know in my forties I will look back on this time, and I guess I will look at my using records and just shake my head."All that time, all that health" or some such cliche will echo in my head.
Of course everything is done for a reason, I know that. Maybe my mind could not handle any more. Maybe it just wanted a quiet place and a good woman to rest among. But there is no point resting a head unless it is recuperating so that it can do something one day.
Mid-week I was home alone, and I had spent two hours watching one of my favourite directors, A Jodorowsky, doing Sante Sangre. And I was struck by how my remembered image of great-but-deceased friend Mal (Kristen) had been usurped by the actual image of the character Fenix in this movie. the way I remembered Mal was with Fenix's face. I still have photos of Mal, and looking at them there is a resemblance to Fenix (who was actually played by Jodorowsky's real-life son, Axel) but until I looked at Mal's photo, there was a crossover in tags in my mind. The 'Santa Sangre' tag and the 'Mal' tag were both pointing to an image of Axel Jodorowsky. Perhaps my minds' librarian had though them so similar it saved space by throwing away the pic of Mal and just redirecting both tags to the one Jodorowsky image.
I know that when the mind is deciphered, there will be peals of laughter directed at the likes of me who adopted the analogy of a computer storage device for understanding the brain.
Any final understanding of the brain will be the understanding of a mechanism that is so beyond our current experiences that I can forgive myself for such a crude analogy.
Anyway, I am going to start work now on adding a comment feature to this site - utilising CAPTCHA tech to avoid spammers. Although I have looked at the last few month's access logs and I know there are just a couple of IP addresses reading this site. I hope that by adding commenting, and after that some other features, perhaps the ability for other users and ex-users too share their thoughts on their lives spent be it partially, wholly or only indirectly (through a lover or brother) in the hemisphere of dope. But it would be great to hear others' thoughts.
In the meantime, you are welcome to email me at felix@junkie.com.au with any thoughts or criticisms...
Listening to:
New Nick Cave and Warren Ellis album - White Lunar. Not what I expected, one vocal track on 2 CDs, but eery and evocative I guess. Very The Proposition.
Joe Gideon and the Shark - just a couple of songs - Civilization (off his MySpace page )
Doing:
Learnt about utilising url hacks to find filetypes. Knew of this years ago after reading "Google Hacking", but a 12 year old on YouTube put it all together for me.
Watching:
More Star Trek Voyager, Ricky Gervais' Fame live gig,Free Agents S1,Sante Sangre, Some Kind of Wonderful
Reading:
Charles Stross' Jennifer Morgue
Work:
Using Visual Studio 10 to update my bai application, juggling the last of our tranches to keep us lending until the next tranche 'turns on'. Finding things for co-worker Caz to do as she has less to do than I it seems. New HP 3015X printer arrived and set up yesterday, distributed it through SBS03 server-you logon, you get the printer...
Cooking:
Fennel Lasagne, Asparagus Bacon Pine Nuts on Spaghetti, PIzzas-Hawaiian or Bacon Pine Nut Potato and Onion Jam/Sour Cream, easy chicken dishes e.g. chicken and Indian Sauce. Tonight perhaps Leek Chowder.
Scoring:
A mix of home-made from Dr Sly, or the quick n easy woollies out the Mountain way. Still spending WAY too much, still looking for an answer to this need.