Calibrating the LK-540

LK - 540.mp3

The past week has been full of things. Mostly things i have enjoyed. Some things which have been less than satisfactory. Irregular sleep and strange dietary cravings. Last Wednesday i had the unpleasant experience of attending the latest Bell Shakespeare production of Hamlet. For anyone who is not aware of the production currently in performance, Hamlet is played by an emoesque Brendan Cowell with quiffy rock star hair. Failing to embody the existential tension of the role, Cowell deftly substitutes the philosophical reflectivity of Shakespeare's anti-hero with the ridiculous leap-froggisms of a performer who has an extraordinarily inflated opinion of himself. That said, there are some very strong actors in the cast who do what they can with the very little they have been offered. It is the first time in my time as a spectator that i have sided with Claudius. I have no doubt that this result was unintentional. The staging was sloppy and the design was meaningless. So let us move on and discuss more important things.

The following night i attended Liquid Architecture 9 at the North Melbourne Arts House. Liquid Architecture is an event concerned with bringing the most progressive and challenging artists in sound and audio technologies, local and international, to Melbourne audiences. Suitably, the venue situates the artist at the center of the space with the spectators seated in a spiral leading outward. At the periphery, the speakers of a 5.1 surround rig stand like sentinels guarding a portal to another dimension. The first, Melbourne based artist, Nat, produced many beautiful sounds but was a tad underwhelming. His role as MC implied that his set was intended to get everybody "in the mood." Following, Alex White from Sydney generated an incredible and intense vortex of ascending forces with distinct crescendos and falls. The piece was composed from a relatively limited palate of tones and textures, and was skillfully managed within a twenty minute time frame that left me aching for more. As i sat there in the dark with my eyes closed, i felt the room hurtling through space, digitized. A thousand tiny machines were screaming in the air, like magnetic cogs holding the universe together, making time go.

Marcus Schmickler from Koln, while incredibly powerful, was not as successful, in my opinion, with his 45 minute movement. Indeed, the rushing use of infinity scales and terrifying drones generated an overwhelming visceral landscape. At times I felt myself consumed by the piece and soon memory and thought gave way to the collision and collapse of colour and force in an internal, visual realm. For the first 20 minutes i was completely engaged, engulfed and at the mercy of the German. However, i soon found that the audio textures were moving in too many different directions to be managed, and by 30 minutes he seemed to be running out of fabric. I could not say that he had too little material for the piece. Rather, when the narrative structure had exhausted itself, he was still trying to include new sounds. Sounds that might have wanted to initiate a new movement or narrative, but were suddenly swallowed and forgotten in the mess of noise. Finding an ending was a struggle, but he got me back when he finally did.

Then for some reason the good curators of the festival had decided to allow the High God People to close the night. This unconvincing, self indulgent circus of disparate idiocy seems to have a percentage of the arts community fooled with a contemporary exhibition of the Emperor's new clothes. Of course, there are some interesting components to the High God People's stuff: their costumes offer some potentially interesting bodies 'as symbols', and, once built, i thought the bamboo structures that housed the musicians were very cute. But...

But.

The work is completely disrespectful to the audience. It is clear that no one in the group has considered how it will look from the outside - how the narrative and its symbols can be interpreted. Antonin Artaud observes in No more Masterpieces that art that fails to engage and speak to its audience cannot hide behind the pretense that the failure is on the part of the observer. Art that fails to connect with and communicate is simply art that fails. Further, the performers seem to have no respect for the various objects they surround themselves with or attempt to manipulate. Their movements are sloppy and their engagement with the space is without focus. As a result, every aspect of the stage image appears lifeless and unimportant. This is bad performance art, ridiculous and deliberately confusing in order to conceal its superficiality. In the gesture of crowd confusion they are most successful, as the departing audience is peppered with insecure murmurs of interest. They could perhaps be equated more closely, however, with the production team for Everybody Loves Raymond, rather than the most compelling and progressive artists of their time. At least they were at the end, which i can only assume was to ensure that nobody left without seeing the other artists first.

And after that scathing review i shall now turn to my own self indulgent gestures of disrespect. Last night i got together with members of hard rock locals, TOY, for an improvised jam session. Sadly, the drummer was unable to attend, which may account for the sprawling and chaotic nature of the piece. The first section is driven by grinding minimal techno and layers of oscillating distortion. After about 17 minutes the gloves come off and we descend into ferocious noise and audio torment. I will be the first to acknowledge that this is not necessarily the most listener friendly session - but it marks my first rehearsal with musicians for a long time and may be an interesting moment in the development of our work. Noise enthusiasts and other concerned parties may hear the recording (made in 24 bit quad channel on my Zoom H2) by hitting play on the doodad at the top of this entry.

It is still impossible to get the audio through itunes, but i am working on it. If you know how and can see where i might be going wrong, then please shoot me an email and offer any advice you have so i can submit my noisy experiments to the podcast community. And it may be completely self indulgent to want to put these things on the internet and to reach a wider audience and i am as aware of that as anybody. Still... this has been a fun project for me. Making recordings and being interested in how music happens and the strange and beautiful feelings i get when i listen and get all swallowed by it. And i guess having fun is a social thing and i hope some of you understand why, self indulgent or no, i will keep doing this anyway.

My warmest regards,
Benjamin

Once back in Melbourne

And so now i have been back in Melbourne for just over two weeks and the jet has finally lagged. It is good to be back at work and making coffee and playing with ideas and music. The horizon is particularly beautiful around 5 pm when the fleeing sun seems to stretch the clouds into limbs of desperation. I ride my bike here and there. The winter is cold and beyond the houses i can see where the water must be hiding. It is funny that i never thought of where the bay was before. One can know that something is reachable by road or tram or walking and not quite register that it is there even when one cannot quite see it. Obvious. But fun to ponder.

It was often noted in conversation that everyone in India is "looking for something," and it would be false to pretend that i just went and saw and had a laugh and now i am back and that i have not been asking myself questions. Of course i was looking for something. But that doesn't mean i know what it was or is or why i don't know and probably never will. Someone asked me if i found what i was looking for and i said yes because i wanted to find some very delicious subji (curries) and on that account i was successful on many occasions. But if we are talking about philosophy, as many people travelling in India do, then that is a different question and not one i am able to answer with ease. It is certainly true that i feel very good and that things are exciting and fresh and all i really want to do is travel again and see more amazing things and meet more amazing people. It is good fun and i guess that having fun is really the only thing that makes all this living stuff worthwhile.

And in the name of good fun, i have decided to start podcasting, even though i still don't really know what that means or how it is done. This is my first try at publishing an independent audio file on the blog and fingers crossed it works.



Okay. It worked. It took me a few hours but now it is up and if you have some minutes handy then please take a listen. The file is a recording that was made yesterday, which was Thursday. Alexander Clutterbuck and I got together to make some noise and while we were playing with my H2 microphone in his studio he had a very good idea that we should go and record sounds in a nearby storm water drain. We didn't really discuss what we were going to do once we got there, but what followed can only be described as an eerie dialogue of effects both instrumental and bodily, set within a murky subterranean atmosphere. Part jam session part field recording, two guys trying to scare each other in a drain. And if we do what we say we will do then in coming weeks there will be many more audio recordings posted here and i certainly hope that is the case. I hope that i can get my head around this sound art business and computers and start to make sounds that i like listening to. And I really hope you like it too.

a plesiosaur in paris

It is Friday and it is the afternoon and so i thought i might stop for a moment and enjoy my lunch of baguette with tuna and salad in the Place Renee Viviens and reflect on Paris while i am still in it. One true sentence is always a good place to start: Good coffee has been discovered and after my breakfast of each morning i make my way to the Quai de l'Hotel de Ville to the Cafe Soluna. A haunt owned and regulared by local jazz musicians, writers and visual artists, Soluna has been a perfect oasis for this lone wanderer. The staff are very friendly, passionate about coffee and music and chocolate truffles compliment each espresso served. A creature of habit when habit feels good, i have been a regular since my becoming learned of the place. Today i chatted about classical music composition and the emotive timing of Bach and Satie with the barista. Then, before i could leave, a young woman asked me if i was Australian and i said i was and she said she was from Sydney and has been living in Paris for 4 months and is a writer and so we talked about books and writing. And of course it is now, at the end of my time here, i start to find myself amid a personal community of sorts.

And community is a very important thing to a lone wanderer who feels that he is no longer a lone traveller and has become transformed into something else by the particularities of circumstance. Yes. It may sound strange, but i think that my travelling came to an awkward halt when i decided to stay with a friend in Paris. Then i was, in a sense, "living" in Paris, albeit for a very short period of time. And to live in a place for a while, semi dependant on the generosity of one's host(s), is very different to travelling independently. Travelling when you have to locate accommodation and you are surrounded by other travellers who don't know anyone else either and go hungry for fear of language barriers and precarious gastronomic experiences. But it isn't quite "living" in the place either, because once you've gone and been a tourist at a few famous landmarks and visited the art galleries and museums, you have to find something to sustain your sanity. Work doesn't exist in this ontological space, and study of any kind is structureless and sprawling at best. Social exchange becomes a matter of luck and routine. I had to go to the same cafe three times before i got chatting with the staff.

That said, the evenings are well accounted for. Last night i joined Morvarid and Suzanne to get reacquainted with an old friend (of theirs) from 1998, rediscovered in the logs of facebook. I found myself suddenly surrounded by the pallid tones of computer geeks and music nerds and knew that i had been travelling for some time because i was the least white and the most blonde at the table. Everyone spoke english to varying degrees which was very considerate and some of us were able to speak the universal language of musical elitism.

Otherwise the days seem to float by as lanterns in the periphery of a tree lined boulevard in the quiet prelude to dawn. And so i invent little routines for myself, filling my mornings with yoga and croissants and books and country music. Then i would visit a friend or decide i shall walk so far there and so far back so as i can see a cathedral or walk in the Luxembourg gardens like Hemingway and Joyce and Stein did back in "the old days." It is easy to get a little bit lost in Paris, as the strange winding streets seem to reflect the coiling corridors of the subconscious rather than the rationale of a grid. Occasionally stopping to cast one's eyes over delicate displays of ornate tools for opening letters in the window of some boutique, or catching a glimpse of some well hidden court yard as an opened door lingers at the outer range of its hinges. The imagination swoops in and fills those sudden images with memories old and recent and i am suddenly aware of where i am and where i was and where i haven't yet been.

And as a personal marker of time i have made a gift of some tiny plastic dinosaurs to my host and to my friend Alice with whom i enjoyed a fantastic lunch yesterday and who i shall see perform in a production staged by Philippe Genty tonight. The dinosaur may seem ridiculous at first, but in a place of high culture i think it has a multilayered complexity about it. For when i make a gift of a tiny plesiosaur as a reminder of a time spent together, i think it is good to recognise that there has been a whole heap of time before now, including a time when the world was inhabited by gigantic prehistoric lizards. So maybe there is a whole heap more time that hasn't happened yet. And who knows what is going to happen in that time. It'd be fun if the lizards came back. No?

And now it is Saturday and it my last morning of "living" in Paris for tomorrow morning i will be getting on that Kuwait airlines flight. I hardly slept last night and i cant recall any dreams, which is only significant because i have been dreaming a lot since i came to Europe. Strange deserts with laughing heads, old friends in white rooms with red carpet and the end of the world on a mountain that is home to everyone. Funnily, last night Mo and i went to see Philippe Genty and Co.'s production, Boliloc. I knew about and wanted to attend the show because my friend Alice was in it and also because in the latter months of 2006 i was involved in a Genty piece made in Melbourne, which is where i met Alice in the first place. Like all of Genty's work, the lush visual piece was a comedic and surrealist meditation on the corridors of the subconscious. A myseterious dreamscape where the relationship between human and object, manipulator and manipulated, gets a thorough inverting. It was a beautiful piece, and i got a real kick out of seeing a friend perform familiar gestures on the professional stage. But, although i thoroughly enjoyed the show, the experience and its associative resonances has taken its toll.

Just because you go and see a production that harnesses the subconscious and the world of dreams as its favoured playground, does not mean that you can then go without sleep for a night. In the wake of the show, i have felt riddled with a strange anxiety - a nausea that still lingers and seems impossible to shake. In part, this may be due to my impending departure. It may also be because i have been IN a Genty production in Melbourne and so seeing one in Paris teased out a whole heap of emotions and memories connected to my past, and with my sense of home. Indeed, seeing the show seems to have provoked an excavation of all the personal reasons for my leaving Melbourne 6 months ago. More information may be required for this to make any real sense. Suffice to say, the period prior to, during and after the Genty workshop in 2006 was, for me, one of most intense periods of self questioning, frustration and eventual destruction. By the end of it all i felt like i had undergone a sort of subjective death. Over the following 18 months, a lot has happened and things are better and i fell like i have been sort of reborn. But i'm still getting my legs to work and my hands to hold stuff and talking is more like blowing bubbles. 18 months sounds like a long time to be in an existential crisis, but not really that long, and especially when you think of giant prehistoric lizards.

Seeing Boliloc, with its myriad compounding associations, seems to have brought home the reality of my actually really gonna happen nearly now return home. That and the fact that i have been away for 6 months and i still have no idea who i am or what the hell i'm doing on this great big ridiculous blue planet. Walking down the Boulevard Sebastopol, reading James Joyce and sipping coffee at the Soluna, sitting here typing at an indifferent computer screen; i feel that strange tremor you get in your throat when you need to cry and nearly do but hold it in because the boss is looking. It is slow and it feels heavy in my stomach. A major case of the "holy shits!" have taken hold. But i still have 22 hours left in Paris and a beautiful woman is cooking a Persian lunch and then there is something on tonight and then some air travel tomorrow and then home... Home. And then my mother and my father, waiting for me. And i'm sure to hell that i wont give a toss if the boss is looking or not. Holy shit.

awkward spiral sentences

My time in Paris has been an interesting one so far. Just before Alex left i got a case of anxiety and sort of felt a bit angry and not good about life in general. After he left it sort of got worse. I think it was largely to do with me feeling a bit scared and isolated in a place where i can't speak the language and i am on my own most of the time and i can't afford to do much to change the situation as it presents itself. And so i had a momentary Tokyo flashback. Tokyo was a very lonely time for me.

I was finding it very difficult to leave Mo's flat. And it is a lovely flat in the Beaubourg district, right in the guts of Paris. But i don't like feeling like i can't do things so i had to suck it all up and put on my sexy pants (and if i was gay i'd have a riot in this part of town) and go out and buy some groceries and a phone card. And you know what? I did it and i didn't die and no body laughed at me at... and i didn' die mum. But it was bloody hard getting up and out of that appartment. And so i made contact with a few of my other friends here and then went out for dinner on Friday night with Fred (who i met in Dharamsala and is a joy to be around) and i felt better for a while but the next day it was like starting all over again and i got angsty because i didn' know what to do with myself and it is a bit difficult to go for walks because my new shoes have given me some very big and painful blisters that keep bleeding when i walk on them. But i was going crazy and i was gonna start eating cleaning products so i went to the first bar that looked like it was full of locals and i sat at the counter and before long i was having a chat in english with a very friendly guy called Larry and he introduced me to the staff and then they gave me some drinks for free which is apparently out of character in Paris. And then i felt fine and went off to a party at my friend Didi's place. There were some people who were happy to speak English there and so that was very good for me. We drank a lot of rum and vodka. The next day i went out with confidence and felt pretty good about being in this heady, romantic city where everytime i look up i get a rush of endorphins. So i cooked for my beautiful, stressed out and very busy host last night and it was a grand meal and we listened to records and laughed about things we have done and people we met.

Today i don't know what i'm gonna do, but i have a recommendation for a good lunch and coffee so i will go there and just enjoy walking around in Paris... which is my new favourite city in the whole world except maybe Melbourne but i can go there anytime. It is so beautiful here, and the croissants and baguette make bakers in Melbourne look silly. I havent found good coffee here yet... Mo says i wont. That is a shame. Good coffee would taste very good here.

I could spell out some more falmboyance about my decadence in the magnificent city of Barcelona: where i got lost in tiny lanes like spilt bowls of spaghetti and saw more Picasso and then Gaudi stole my breath and made still my pounding heart in the rib cage of his La Sagrada Familia. We stayed in a youth hostel and i will never ever do that ever again not in a million and one years if you paid me lots of money and got some tea from china no way. There are some distrssingly ugly people in this human race of ours... and they all have money and travel with Dad's credit card. Perhaps it is the Dad... yes... lets be angry with the Dad. Bad Dad.

Before that we had some intense and border line distrssing moments while trekking in the Spanish Pÿrenees where it is not the walking season yet and if anything had gone wrong on those mountain passes, waist depth in snow and crossing unseen rivers, we would have been in serious trouble. We slept in an abandoned refugio one night which was home to rodents who like the smell of our rubbish bag. But we woke in the most beautiful valley i have ever seen, surrounded by mountains and ten waterfalls sparkling in the sunlight. It was ecstasy to know that it was only the two of us and our four eyes that beheld that wonder at that time. Sorry everyone... it was not as awe inspiring as the incredible size of the Himayala... but it was prettier.

And so i am in Paris for another two weeks and then something dramatic will happen: I have a return flight booked to bring me back to India where i will hopefully have no trouble with immigration as i will only be in the country for a few hours before i get on my flight back to Melbourne on the 30th of June. It is all booked and it is ready and waiting and i oscillate between terror and exhilaration at the thought of returning to Melbourne town and seeing all you beautiful people (if you are there) again. But when someone suggests work at an English pub (as horrible as they are) i can't help but to feel tempted... just a whole heap. Either way, i think i would like to go to Iran in February. It didn't happen this time... but February is a good month. Maybe i'll stop over in India for a bit... why not?

So maybe i will write another blog before i get home and maybe i will not. I would like to transcribe a few more stories onto screens before i stop sending you all emails. I know some pretty good ones.

Siesta Festa

Hola amigos,

It has been a busy time. Writing has been near impossible. It still feels so. I am not starting this well. It feels a bit forced and the words cramp in my wrists. Alas. Let me put some places on the page.

We are now in the northern coastal town of San Sebastian, which features quite favorably in Ernst Hemingway´s Fiesta: the sun also rises. It is a very beautiful place, full of old architectural and artistic artefacts, laced with a thirsty drinking culture that flickers one eye around noon and does not dip its beak into the crooked wing until sometime after dawn. It is the sort of romantic and giddy place, heaving with hedonistic consummerism and decorated with top end class, that makes a backpacker feel filthy. There is no way i could stay in a place like this (Spain in general) were it not for the incredible generosity of my brother. And so an homage is due and i consider it paid.

Before we came to this crispy slice of Spanish jamon, we were in the not so sexy city of Madrid - home to the biggeest art gallery in the world and some very typical youth hostels. A very good friend observed recently the importance of trying a few different types of travel, so as we can know what we like and what we don´t: i do not like youth hostels. Not in Europe, and not in Australia either. The gel streaked collar up skiny jeans northern hemisphere kids with their have hair dryer will travel attitude bring with them a rather tedious demand for bad music and bad nightlife. It is no wonder the locals seem a bit aloof around us english speakers. I have not met many people in Spain, which is a little frustrating sometimes. Though it is good to get to know one´s brother again. And what did you like about Madrid benjamin??? We did have a pretty incredible day going to the Sophia Rapheal and the Prado museums - home to some of the most jaw dropping rumble in your guts neck cracking art in the world. Picasso blew me away while Goya blew me apart. Dali is also very cool and very busy. His peers provided some interesting work tambien. And then we had a unique cultural experience. Something that cannot be done in Melbourne. We went to see a bullfight.

And i was on the edge of my seat from the moment that terrific animal stormed out of the gate. The magnificent size and power of the creature, the flow and curve of its thunderous form. And the matador. There is a physical language, a poetic theatricality inherent to the dance of the bullfight. I was horrified, compelled, twisted up inside and exhausted by the spectacle. As per my standards, i was barracking for the bull. The tragedy of watching the slow wearing down and eventual execution of such a beautiful animal made me tremble. It has been an effort to not judge the event, or to delve too deeply into snarling reproach of the human festish for violence and barbarism. I still don´t know how to talk about the bullfight - when i was reading Fiesta the following day, Hemmingway writes about a matador and a series of bullfights: the image of the bull collapsing to its knees, its tongue protruding and blood streaked hide glistening in the sun, made it impossible to read. I stopped, closed my eyes, and shook.

The trip to San Sebastian was a beautiful demonstration of the chaos of decision making. We checked out and walked to a car rental agency. Alex had a bad feeling, so we jumped on the metro and headed to the bus station. There were no buses for several hours to Santander (we were going to go trekking in the north west of the country) so i said we should go to San Sebastian. At that we both smiled and the dread went away and i bought the tickets while Alex got the lunch. The arrival here was a bit anxious as the bok says you should make advance reservations. We had not and were unsure if we would get a room on a Friday night at the beginning of the summer season. The third place turned out to be an excellent accident. We are both happy, but having difficulty settling after travelling so quickly for the past two weeks. Who´d believe we were in Morocco last Saturday? Sipping tea in Kerouac´s old hotel... now we walk on the shores of Fiesta. A literary adventure of sorts, i spose.

I shant dare to discuss what happens next. I don´t bloody well want too. The thought of moving is too seductive and i might just dash again... which is a stupid thing to do. Movement gets addictive, making a sit down unbearable. Lets just exhale a minute... and inhale.

No buses today.

a quick laughing

This is just a quick message to go public on my re-entry to Europe. After about a week in Morocco (which i thought was beautiful and my brother thought was hideous) we are back in Spain - Granada. I would like to write more now but the keyboard i am sitting before is useless. As i bang away (most keys require repeated flogs) every other terminal is being used. So i will try again tomorrow or the next day. But if you like to listen to strange field recordings, i have some new ones up on http://www.soundtransit.nl/ The one from Essaouira is particularly mesmerising.

Peace out.

a necessary down time

This is the worst part of travelling: the waiting.

After returning from the mountains for the second time, it seemed like a good idea to take it easy in Pokhara for a few days. After forking out for two Annapurna permits (at about $35 each), a tandem paragliding flight (!!!) and the relative high cost of living in Nepal (compared to most places in India), i had well and truly exhausted my budget. Its not like i've been particularly strict with my expenditure, but with my entry to Europe looming, it made sense to just keep quiet, read a book or two and let my aching muscles recover. But rarely has anything been that straightforward - it is never the ideal, but the unaccounted for that dominates the moment of execution.

My digestive system was playing up again so i went to see a real (expensive) doctor. I was aptly diagnosed with dysentary - a charming bacterial experience i probably signed up for somewhere in north India. So quiet days and boring food were the doctor's order - accompanied by a bag of assorted pharmaceuticals. No alcohol - which is fine - but annoying when you're bored.

And i am bored. As unbelievable as it may seem. Indeed, it was a relief to be leaving Pokhara after having very little to do for four days. At least when you're on a bus you're going somewhere. I'd found myself watching movies and trashy cop dramas on television - most uncharacteristic behaviour. This culminated with and probably exacerbated a period of despair - most likely an after effect of trekking in extreme and demanding landscapes. I had descended from the mountains to discover a self performing the lethargic gestures of disorientation and anxious recoil common to one who has lost his way. In the life of dreams and the life of waking, alienation has been the tune. The steps i know too well. But before... before i was on a path that assaulted the mind with the densely woven visions of a kaleidoscopic hurricane. The thickness of forests. The scattering of stones. The pulse thudding in my ears. Onwards we stormed - Craig and i. Each morning we entertained delusions of a slower day - "we should take our time - enjoy each delightful cascade, each breath whispering between the bamboo." But once the feet began to move, the rising pace consumed us with its irresistible ecstasy. More than once we broke into a canter - i no longer saw the path, but felt each collision of foot on stone, over branch, every suspended moment - whirling with the joy of movement.

And when we arrived at our destination, the reward was in the cummulative exhaustion of four days climbing splashed across an incredible ampitheatre. The intoxication of achievement mingled with the deprivation of oxygen. The snow laden might of those terrible sentinels seemed unreal. We were such tiny animals in that most sublime of other worlds.

To make the trek back down was obvious and a natural progression. We stayed a night at base camp so as to witness the dawn a second time (we made the final ascent at 5am the previous morning) - and luck would have a blizzard coat the realm in a thick layer of delicious powdery white. I had never seen such a snowscape before. The descent was optimistic - the magic of such extraordinary places lies also in their talent for infusing the imagined outside. And so we wandered down. Slowly at first, then more quickly on the second (and final) day. Exhausted and aching, we arrived in Birethanti - the final village before exiting the Annapurna conservation region. We departed the following morning in much the same fashion as our arrival - perched upon the roof of a local bus.

Now despite the sense of wonder, i was feeling pretty rough the past few days of the trek. My guts had started playing up and i was being assaulted with intense head and body aches. On the final night i had a fever and was tormented with lucid dreamings. It was a relief when the doctor said "dysentary". Naming the beast made it manageable. And now that that is managed - at least tackled and restrained - there is only the sense of longing, of being lost. When the bus was heaving and wretching its awkward way from Pokhara a stir rose within - as each passenger became aware that the clarity of the morning had permitted the first view of the Himalayan mountains from the Pokhara valley - a rare occasion at this time of year.

For me, it was as if a long lost friend had unexpectedly shown up to say a final emotional farewell. After sitting in my room with a dark expression for some days - i shook with sadness at the sight of those mountains - Macchapucchare striking against the sky like a monolithic idol. I knew then that my adventure in the mountains was over. It is, i suppose, in these moments that we feel the ephemerality of all things; that we might glimpse the tragedy of time's unsympathetic advance.

And now i am in Kathmandu and it is 5.20pm and tomorrow i shall fly to Delhi and then wait for 15 hours before my flight to Portugal. And this is the worst bit - the waiting. Not knowing what new challenges await - left alone to finger the debris of my recent memories. But perhaps there is something necessary in this - a necessary down time. And if i had to choose between a life of logical progression from one meagre contentment to another, or to take the intoxicating climbs with the horrendous falls - i know which burning altar i should have no choice but to fling my wretched form upon in a moment of total embrace.

Still.

I hate the waiting.