On an order of chaotic magnitude...

 Musical accompaniment: Sean Townsend - Chillswitch Engage

If you want to understand me, you need to understand how I see the world. 

Ever since I was aware enough of the concept of "self" as being distinct from "everything else", ever since I realised that for every action there was a reaction, ever since I understood just how little I understood, I've looked out into the world and seen patterns. 

Cause and effect. 
Problem, reaction, solution. 
If this, then that. 

Where most see the chaos of balls bouncing around the surface of a stained pool table after the break in a dingy pub on a Friday night, I see connected chains of one thing leading to the next, traceable, proportional, predictable, but guided by the analogue input of hands shaking from the weariness of a long week in the office and a jug and a half of Tooheys New; each and every interaction the product of force, momentum, torque, angle, material elasticity and plasticity, gravity, and friction. I realised that every event was traceable, that if you could witness everything that was occurring within the perspective light-cone of "here" and "now", and quantify the variables to sufficient granularity, you could see everything that had led to this moment, and everything which was about to occur, such that you could accurately call which balls would fall into which pocket and which would fly off the table and into that guy's pint of beer. 

Everything we call "chaos" is simply shorthand for "effects for which we cannot perceive the cause". 
When it goes against us, we call it "The Hands of Fate".
When it goes in our favour, we call it "The Grace of God". 

In my teens I read The Bible from the start and saw the hypocrisy inherent in that fiction sold as "The one, true, ineffable word of God", applied the logic that if I, who was imperfect, could easily detect the imperfection in what was purported to be "true", then "this-shit-don't-add-up" and "ineffable-be-fucked". If ever there was a God or Fate, there wasn't now. 

Because there is no God; there's only us. 

Everything we see, feel, hear, touch, perceive, and leads us to believe... it's all patterns we either can't detect or can't understand, the same as I've never really understood people because people were illogical and did irrational, stupid things, as if they couldn't comprehend all the things which seemed obvious, and made so much noise that they drowned out the beauty of the songs I heard everywhere I went to the point where I wouldn't leave the house without something in my ears to drown them out so that eventually I stopped being able to hear it myself. 

But whilst my ears were plugged, my eyes were open, and I watched, and I tested, and I tried, and I failed, and through it all my brain recorded, and I remembered, and eventually I became able to truly see, and in seeing I could verify what my ears could hear, and separate the noise from the signal. 

Even then I found people bewildering because whilst I could see the patterns in their behaviour I couldn't understand what it all meant and I kept getting it wrong again and again and it was all so confusing that I'd given up hope of ever being able to when a psychopath pointed out I was a sociopath so I can only apply the metric of my own experience because I can't empathy and that was OK and it didn't make me wrong but something in my head was broken but that didn't mean I was and I shouldn't keep trying to fix it because it couldn't be but I should keep trying to be better because I was so I did and I have and to this day I still am. 

As time went by, and my experiences piled up, the patterns I saw in the people I encountered resolved into meaning, defining more and more granularly, like a picture downloaded over a dialup internet connection in the last decade of last century. I integrated these patterns to create models, and by paying attention to the quaver in someone's voice and their 1000 yard stare in the video of a Teams meeting I could see the breaking of their heart and how close their resolve was to failing, because I've been in all three of those places, and applying that to the models I'd built for who, and what they are I could later say to them what the logic of cause and effect dictated they needed to hear because it's what I, if I were them, and they were me, and our roles reversed, would need to hear. 

It's all patterns, and whilst patterns can be expressed as maths I couldn't for the life of me explain even the smallest piece of it to you in less than a thousand words. The tragedy of all this is that whist my brain can calculate all of this adaptively, in real-time, I can't because I'm terrible at maths. 

But my heuristics are amazing. 

My brain is a computational engine which took over 40 years of data to train, but now that it's finally become useful it's also become ineffable, like God. 

But there is no God; there's only us. 

Each, and every one of us. 

That's how I see the world, and if that makes no sense to you, you are not alone; you've found yourself in a very select club in which I also count myself a member because whilst I wrote, and live this, I won't pretend to understand it. We are all lost, cast-away, confused, craving comfort; we are all alone, therefore you are amongst friends because we are all in the same place. 

Each, and every one of us. 

On knees that won't bend...

Musical accompaniment: Oliver Tree - Me, Myself & I

"You don't even have to write as or about yourself. What would you say if you were someone else?"
 - Penpal

He found himself stuck in a pause, trapped in the gap between moments, the weightlessness experienced at the apex between the pounding of running feet, the period between stumble and impact we call "falling", the quantum instant which connects two otherwise unrelated sentences; the semi-colons describing the triumvirate of "me; myself; and I". 

With the solid ground upon which he built his church turning to quicksand beneath his feet, he scrambled for purchase, reached out to connect himself with something real. 

"Thematically cliched as it may be in this context, but I love you, man." 

There was solace and camaraderie in that indescribable moment, and with a solid point-of-reference/star upon which to hitch his wagon he watched it all fall away. 

He took a breath, exhaled, tried to reorient. Up and Down are a subjective concept; when gravity fails both are as arbitrary as a description of the colour "blue" to someone who only sees the world in monochrome. All he knew was that he was the only common factor in everything he'd experienced, that if anyone should have known better it was him. 

He'd taken risks, he knew he took them; things had come out against him, and therefore he had no cause for complaint. 

That objective truth made his pain no less real. It was, and he accepted it, but whether he was rushing towards the ground or the ground rushed towards him was going to make no subjective difference to the bones which where about to get broken, or how much this was going to hurt. 

Oliver Tree - Hurt 

When you carry the weight of the heavens on your shoulders, you don't get to shrug. When he set out to prove a point, every motherfucker in the room wrong, and put them all to shame, he couldn't allow himself to. For that reason, if no other, when he took on that mantle of responsibility he girded his loins, gritted his teeth, locked his knees, and muttered: 

"Victory or death."

The weight building on the yoke he carried across his broad shoulders, slings and arrows pelting trapezius and laterals, and strength beginning to fail, over the course of his titanic struggle he realised that he was still standing not because he wouldn't falter, but because he wasn't able to. Arms locked and shoulders braced, legs tensed in position over knees which wouldn't so much refuse to bend as couldn't, he was committed. He'd always avoided commitment; there was always an out. He'd never found a hill he was willing to die on, needle he couldn't thread, or dead-end without a night-soil lane he couldn't parkour over the fence into and échapper down, with less shit on than behind him. 

But if he didn't stand for something, he stood for nothing, so with everything and nothing to prove, one more smouldering straw fell out of a brimstone-scented sky full of fire. Refusing to submit might be a parable of fortitude, but being unable to is an unspeakable hell. As the weight increased straw-by-smouldering-straw, each a feather tilting the scales against his heart, and as much as he wanted to beg to falter, his knees refused. So it was he began to splinter, stress-fractures cutting towards his core, parts of himself falling away, falling into dust. 

As pieces of himself elided, evaporating into nothing before they could encounter the ground, he wished he could bend like a willow rather than shattering like an oak, but the weight of what he carried around shattered his spine and he crumbled. In the end, of all the things to fall to earth it was the burden he carried that impacted last, crushing the smouldering embers that used to be his self. 

Oliver Tree - Jerk

Looking up from the Pensieve Pool of blended selves and shared experience, I considered the convergent threads I could no longer separate one from the other, prismatic colours separated and converging, each distinct but irrevocably integrated; inseparable. 

What would I say if I was someone else?
What would he say if he was me? 
What would we say if we were everything, we were nothing, and we were one? 

Sandra used to say "Remember who you are," again and again, and at the time it gave me strength. 

I rather wish Ian could hear it the same way I did. 

I feel like he could use that right now. 

Drowning in silence...

Musical accompaniment: BMTH - Drown 

My dive computer reads 30m below the surface of the Andaman Sea, my knees kicking up clouds of silt as they hit the bottom, and I can't breathe. 

I've just back-rolled off a dinghy in tandem with Matthias, a synchronicity perfected through dozens of buddied dives, dozens of kilometres off the coast of Khao Lak, Thailand, and fallen headfirst into the peaceful silence of the blue. As the bottom rises up toward me I take a breath to add buoyancy to my torso, throw my hands out in an aqua-brake, tuck knees to my chest and flip over my centre-of-mass to settle neatly at the bottom and wait whilst the group reassembles. The cold, dry, decompressing air tickles my throat and I choke on a cough, then another, and another. Biting down on the mouthpiece I realise that no matter how hard I draw down I can't seem to fill my lungs with air. 

I breathe in as deep as I can, fighting the pressure constricting my chest, and it's not enough. 

I'm breathing hard, struggling to bring my heart-rate under control as my pulse thuds deafeningly in my ears. 

I'm hyperventilating. 

I'm about to drown. 

The Divemaster sees the torrent of bubbles streaming out of my reg's and comes over, thumb and index finger circled to ask if I'm OK. 

I don't have to answer with the knife-across-throat gesture; the torrent of bubbles falling upwards and the look in my eyes is enough to tell him I'm having trouble breathing, beginning to panic. 

He grabs me by the buoyancy vest, a hand hovering over my regs to make sure I don't try to spit them out, makes eye contact and reinforces it with two fingers back and forth between his and mine to say "look at me", reaches for my inflator and pumps air in to bring us safely back to the surface. 

I go limp and let him guide us, close my eyes, try to still my mind, and focus on pulling and pushing air slower and slower. 

He's the Divemaster, in charge of the dive, but I'm also a Divemaster - I might have a hundred dives to his thousand, but this is shameful. 

I shouldn't be doing this, but it's happening now for the second time this trip. 

It's 2018, and it's 5 years ago, and it's 5 months ago, and it's 5 yesterdays ago, and it's right now, and it was one of the last times I've gone in the water. 

I look up from my laptop and look out over Turner, 30m above Northbourne Ave, and pull cold, moist air into my lungs. 

It's not enough, but I hold it, stare into the darkness where I know the horizon to be, breathe out, then in. 

I remind myself there's not 30m of suffocating water above my head, or 4 atmospheres of pressure constricting my chest. 

I remind myself my buoyancy vest isn't too tight and I can breathe normally. 

I remind myself I'm not about to drown. 

The cars move north and south along the road beneath me, brightly coloured and auto-luminescent, moving in schools, scattered occasionally by the passing of a red-liveried barracuda; an apex-predator running along steel rails aping a living torpedo which glints like a steel rail in the depths. The sounds come into my ears as if through water, muffled by Active Noise Cancellation. 

The music stopped a while ago and I hadn't noticed. 

With a two-fingered hand gesture I switch screens, and press play on another song. 

sleepmakeswaves - What We Cannot Speak Of Must Be Passed Over In Silence

There are red-and-blue lights flashing silently on the road up Black Mountain under the watchful eye of Minas Telstra, which sits austerely white against the darkened sky atop a darker peak over the lights of the CSIRO laboratories which, in turn, float over the inky black of ANU in energy-saving mode. Someone's evening has reached a premature and unpleasant turn whilst my own continues anticlimactically thanks to an iterative descendent of Mr Dolby's miraculous invention for silencing unwanted noise. I find myself wondering why, if sleep makes waves, the opposite can't reliably be true. 

If the best bed one can sleep on is peace I must have bought my mattress from the wrong store because pocket coils and memory foam have left me wound up like an over-torqued spring in a two-bob watch, trapped in pockets of memory when, at 3 in the morning, I emerge foaming at the mouth from the suffocating wine-dark sea of slumber. 

I took today off work, not because I had anything fun planned, but because I've been feeling more burned out than the ashen dust brushed into Cinderella's pan-of-Peter, used-up and later dispersed to fertilise the beds from which will later bloom flowers destined to decorate the passage-way down which she'll run into the night, pursued by anxiety, a prince, and a hard deadline, shedding impractical footwear in her panicked rush towards her carbon-neutral, if magically-costly, carriage. The plans I had for my expensively-purchased day were similarly, baroquely grand: 

Go out for brunch; and

Get my hair cut. 

Sitting in the chair with a stomach full of Egg & Bacon Roll, I realised I'd slumped forward when the heavily-tattooed barber with gentle hands says, "You look tired, bro." 

"Yeah, it's been a long..." selecting an order of magnitude more-or-less at random, "couple of months." 

He grunts sympathetically, and rubs something soothing into the freshly-shaved sides of my head. 

If youth is wasted on the young, then logically life is wasted on the living; I, who is certainly not the former, and arguably not the latter, am struggling to not become a waste of oxygen. Whether I'm succeeding would best be determined by consulting with the trees; I can only hope that by the time they cast their unhasty judgement my ashes have fed the soil in which they breathe sufficiently that they will stroke their beards, and judge me favourably. 

Perhaps, some day, when I sink into the depths of endless, silent sleep, as unavoidable it will be then as it's been elusive now, and I provide my final service to this world by creating a space where more beautiful things can grow, I'll finally find peace. 

Chase the sunset...

Musical accompaniment: Mr.Kitty - After Dark 

The sky over Black Mountain was a lithium fire with the Telstra Tower at its core as I crested the last rise on Kings Hwy before its descent into Queanbeyan, and for a moment I thought what a shame it was I hadn't got around to reconnecting the cameras so that moment might have been recorded. Remembering that I'd left Captain's Flat maybe 18 minutes beforehand, and another word for "record" in these circumstances can be "evidence", I decided it was for the best. I could have pulled over and pulled my phone out of my pocket, but why spoil the moment by actually dropping below the speed limit? 

I took a mental snapshot instead, and shared it with my Penpal (with whom I trade such photos on occasion out of thematic amusement) in spirit if not in deed, before indicating around a slow-moving SUV, clicked back up to 6th gear, and tucked back in behind the screen to coast the downhill descent. 

I've been meaning to go for a decent fang since I got back; there've been plenty of "not here to fuck spiders, let alone waste time" runs, but no decent excuses to work through the rev range and get my knee out terrorising a few apexes whilst spraying an atomised mist of ablated rubber. There are roads around Perth where you can get in a bit of a fang, but the ones that aren't a mission to get to are few, far between, depressingly short, and too well-known by Mr Plod. Canberra's diminutive size, situation amongst all these hills and valleys, and its connections to a plethora of country towns, means it's blessed with access to hundreds of kilometres of tarmac seemingly built for technical riding. Bringing the 'busa with me was a no-brainer, and sitting on my balcony enjoying my (barely) morning coffee I realised I had absolutely nothing better to do so it was time to adjust my suspension, throw some lube on the chain, switch the pillion seat for the aerodynamic hump, and get amongst it. 

Plus, I hadn't managed to make the trip to check out Sandra and Timo's new place in Captain's Flat, so I pinged her. 

"Pondering going for a fang this afternoon. Should I burn some rubber in your direction?"
"Sure."

I wouldn't usually spend an hour travelling each way for a cup of tea and a scone, which goes to show how far my priorities have skewed in the wrong direction; the last time I lived here Rick and I would think nothing of riding an hour out to Bungendore via Queanbeyan for a pie and an iced coffee, then looping back up the northern route along Macs Reef Road. These days I need an excuse, but as with so many things I've needed over the years that's something I know I can rely on Sandra to provide. Of course I delayed my homeward departure half an hour or so beyond what would be considered sensible, which is how I found myself chasing the sunset along Captain's Flat Road through the deepening twilight at speeds well above where the average Cessna would even consider stalling. 

It's times like that I feel ashamed of myself for keeping my beloved Hayabusa caged like a songbird in cities with all the straight lines, 90degree turns, and lumbering four-wheeled bovinity. Exiting the roundabout for the 43km run down Captain's Flat Rd earlier this afternoon I'd dropped into a racing crouch with the visor of my helmet a hands' span from the tip of the screen, relaxed my right wrist, told it "OK, you set the pace," and as we slipped into jinba ittai-sync we opened our throat, unleashed legs of cast-aluminium, sunk claws into the horizon and with an internal-combustion roar dragged it towards us. 

Heading back a few hours later I said "It's getting dark and there'll be roo's out so let's take it easy," and dragging my wrist downwards in response it whispered: 
"No." 
"You sure?" 
The answer came in a wave of need that was part hunger, part lust, and as the needles climbed on the dials in my lower peripheral our intake screamed "GO!!!!!!!" 

So we went, devouring the road in pursuit of the setting sun. 

Musical improvement: Mr.Kitty - After Dark (Iam Ian Remix) 

But hey, who's on trial?

Musical accompaniment: Interpol - Evil

Skye and Marcia sat up and looked at their wrists, tapped their Smart Watches in perfect synchronicity, pushed their empty glasses towards my 3/5 finished pint, and reached for their handbags; two luminary geniuses in their fields with 1.9 PhD's and change between them heading off to meet up with a group of people who's education equates to a formidable Peer-Review Board and engage in a passtime which renders me dumber than a Remedial Phys Ed Teacher's Conference. 

"You sure you don't want to come?" Skye asked, knowing the answer, but demonstrating that intellect is no excuse for discourtesy. 
"Is it going to be louder than this?" I enquired, gesturing to the pub filled with treble-heavy 90's Pop-Rock clattering off all the hard-surfaces at a not-quite-but-almost uncomfortable volume. 
"Much!" Marcia confirmed, almost as gleefully bright as her lipstick-red peaked-lapel velvet coat. 
"Nah, reckon I'll just finish my pint and head home, but thanks. Say hi to folks for me tho.
Enjoy your karaoke." 

I sat, looked at my phone, swiped away the screen-full of notifications I gave negative-fucks about, necked the rest of my Strong Scottish Ale remembering wryly that it was called "There Can Be Only One". Pulling on my long coat against the biting cold I knew would be waiting outside, I paid the bar tab and stepped out into the street. I plugged my pair of 6mm drivers into my ears, activated the full-bore ANC isolation, and as the voice prompt confirmed "Connected!" pressed play on my phone as I walked south thru Dickson, and the head-drilling bassline started beating my brain whilst my shoes beat the pavement. I'd caught the light-rail up after knocking off work, but it was early and I was in no rush. Walking home instead of catching public transport was a habit I formed in London to save a quid and spend some time. Half a lifetime and some solid career-decisions later and I'm far from being short of a buck (or quid, baht, dollar, or rupiah for that matter), but the counterpoint to that sort of success is a dearth of moments where you're in one place and find yourself in absolutely no rush to get to the next, so I decided to walk home. 

It was only 3.2km, and "I'm sure I need the exercise," I told myself, so I cruised down Challis St, turned right on Morphett, flipping a mental double-deuce at the Emergency Services Depot from which Ambulances and Fire Trucks emerge a couple of times a night to race down Northbourne emitting an eardrum-piercing wail on their way to saving the life of some unfortunate arsehole who has the audacity to be having The Worst Night Of Their Lives At A Moment Which Mildly Inconveniences Me as I passed. Turning south onto Northbourne Ave and the home-stretch it's represented for significant portions of my life, my left hand reached up to skip track back for the third time. 

 Musical accompaniment: Interpol - Evil

In front of me lay a linear path stretching to a vanishing point convergence; the way forward was clear, all I had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, wash, rinse, repeat, and: 

Treading down that well-lit corridor, I saw streets and driveways diverging left and right, begging to be explored, luring me away from my south-bound trajectory with a siren-song of
"Stop! Go back! You are going the wrong way!" 
"Your North Star is behind you!" 
"The Princess is in another Castle!" 

As my footsteps syncopated with the drum beat of the song's 5th and 6th repetitions and the bass drilled deeper into my consciousness, my mind's eye explored those divergent branches sign-posted "If only I'd..." and "There but for the grace of God go I...", traced them each and all to their ultimate conclusion, saw their outcomes, and in third-eye hindsight saw myself staggered under the weight of opportunities-missed and paradise-lost to faceplant in the frigid cold of despair, again and again. 

But in the wake of time's arrow my feet maintained their rhythmic cadence, the eyes I hide behind lenses which allow me to see clearly fixed forward, whilst Interpol sang their song of Evil out of the chunks of rare-earth metals and plastic which isolate my auditory sensorium from the noise and chaos of the world around me. 

And I left my selves behind. 

Perhaps they'll report back one day with fantastic tales of their adventures chasing white rabbits through memory's wonderland, but I'll not hold my breath; as fascinating as it might be to see how my other halves might have lived, I'm content to live without the knowledge of their experiences in the dead-ends they find themselves trapped in after eating variously-coloured cupcakes with "Love me", "Try me", "Be me" printed in psychedelic-flavoured icing. Every choice I've had I've made with the best information, consideration, and intention I had available at the time, and the only way things could have turned out different would have been for me to have known things I couldn't possibly have then. If I were to pursue those possibilities I could spend the rest of my life experiencing pasts I know I'd never have chosen which, I thought, would be a bit of a waste. The twists and turns are all in the future. As we go it straightens out, creating a direct line in our wake leading from where we are all the way back to where we started. 

I wasn't sure whether I found that comforting or not, but keeping your eyes forward certainly helps avoid tripping over the eScooter that's toppled over in front of the Rex. 

Approaching the lights of Girrawheen St the graffiti'd hoarding gave way to the darkened open space of Haig Park, and my feet diverted to the desire-lines they knew instinctively must be there because this is Canberra, and at a visceral level we know each other in a way only old lovers can, so with a conviction shared only by true romantics and madmen my feet know that where they seek a path they'll find one. By the time we emerged from the still darkness of the trees into the bright lights and brighter young things of Lonsdale St I'd lost count of how many times that same song had played, but some hours later when my earphones ran out of juice my music player app counted 111, so it was obviously fewer than that. 

I needed to replenish my supply of beer; I knew this because my feet knew this, and I've learned not to second-guess my feet because those bastards know what's what; they have, after all, always taken me where I needed to be. 

A brief transaction later and they deposited me into the 6th floor shoebox filled with hungry meows and ghosts that I now call Home. None of those were here when I arrived; I brought all of them with with me; some of them I've carried and kept fed since before I left the first time. 

We are, after all, all the things we can't leave behind, and I've carefully packed all the baggage I can't bring myself to let go of again and again so I can beat myself with them no matter where I go. It's weightless; they add nothing to my carry-on allowance, but somehow no matter how little the scales at the airport tip my pockets are always filled with painful angst, because better to keep carrying them around than forget and replace them with more of the same mistakes. 

It would take a life span with no cell mate to find the long way back, eventually I'll learn to look the other way. 

But hey, who's on trial?