Attention, all passengers...

I have so many things on my mind that it's hard to relax. That's not usually a problem I have. I don't have issues with lazing on the couch until my back hurts. I really don't. I just reshuffle.

Well, as long as my brain isn't over-analysing everything. That's what it does when it's time to go to bed.

The funny thing is I obsess about stuff that would give other people basis to say yupp, he's gone bonkers. It's sort of a first-world-problem thing, I guess.

What if I get this flight instead of that one?

These three-for-ten-dollars corn chips are a bargain, but I like the other ones more.

It's embarrassing when I realise it and it makes me dislike myself. Why am I spending my time thinking about that?

Of course, it's really hard to talk to people about it, when they're struggling with hospitals and mortgages and shitty families. I just feel like a giant douchebag.

What is it they say – an idle mind is the devil's playground? Well, why the hell is mine like that? It's not idle – that's for sure. It's even worse, because instead of rethinking important stuff, it's struggling to solve trivial things.

I need to sort things out with people, let them know how I feel and what I think, and thus make sure I have less grey hair and fewer stomach cramps in the future. I need to tell people what I find utterly unacceptable and why I think I have a reason to get annoyed. I should chop down my Facebook friends list from 550 to 50, and make sure I surround myself with people I have respect for and who make me grin when I think of them.

And the only thing on my mind is how many extra frequent flyer miles is that?

'Inside Australia'

I had enough time to take a detour on the way back from my last bush trip, so I finally checked out Lake Ballard. It's always on the way back, but I rarely have any free time – which luckily wasn't the case this time.

Lake Ballard was chosen by Antony Gormley, the internationally-acclaimed British artist, as the site for a major environmental art installation which he titled “Inside Australia”. Gormley had been commissioned by the Artistic Director of Perth International Arts Festival to produce the work in celebration of the Festival’s 50th anniversary in 2003. 

'Inside Australia' comprises 51 metal figures, dotted across seven square kilometres of the salt-encrusted lake bed. Each of the sculptural figures, both male and female, are the result of 3D laser scans Gormley made of Menzies residents, and he refers to them as ‘insiders’. It's apparently completely obvious which sculpture represent whom.

The place is quite eerie in a way, and it makes one wonder how people have been moving and walking and surviving...

Things

Some things change, and some stay the same.

I'm still tired. I sleep, I eat, I take my vitamins - and I'm still tired.

People change. The forget about you. They find new friends. They take the easy way out.
People don't change.

Assholes keep kicking people to the side of the road.
Those on the side of the road struggle even more.

The quiet ones lose their chance because there's a screeching vulture circling above.
And even though they're horrible, ugly birds, there's  still a fricken ornithologist who will say they're majestic.

I know, it makes no sense.

And it definitely doesn't make it right.

Please, pass the remote, God.

I so need a remote to deal with some people.

Just on and off.

A small on and a big off.

A tiny on (so you need a toothpick to click it),

and a gigantic off (so you can hit it at any time).

Tha-anks!

Preface

Every time people from one culture look at people from another, they need to remember that, sometimes, this is not easy to do.

It is because, as we grow up in our own cultural spaces, we learn singular ways of looking at and thinking about the world without even knowing it, and it means that there are as many ways of looking at life as there are people and cultures. In this context, we also need to remember that all cultures think equally well, they just think differently. It makes it hard to appreciate the difference if we don't acknowledge at the beginning that it's there.

Sometimes it is important to try to see how the process of our looking actually takes place, and this is also a fair question for the people we look at to ask of us. It is often very interesting to see these processes and relationships between people as they actually are.

From Fighting for Survival - The Ngaanyatjarra of the Gibson Desert by Liz Thompson

Just a Sunday morning blurb

Since I moved away, I've been getting more and more feedback from people. And I mean people back in Croatia. How I am, how I was, how I act, how I acted...

I was looking for something in my Inbox and ran into some old e-mails, which reminded me of that.

Australians are quite blunt and they'll openly point out that they think you're weird. Or you're doing something weird. Or both.

Sometimes you'll just get a full feedback in the third sentence they utter. One has to admire that.

The people back in Croatia seem to have, in a matter of speaking, opened up. Maybe it's easier to reveal their thoughts in an e-mail than it must've been in person, but I'm glad to hear it. Even though it's not always necessarily leaving me with with a nice feeling, I still respect the idea behind it.

Therefore, hugs to those who recognize themselves in this post! ;)

Sometimes I just wish I was aware of all that when I was there. I worked on it, but I was pretty much a failure (you should've seen me before, when I was even less aware, brrr...). But later I guess I was trying to make the best out of it, so I would simply choose to ignore all the not-so-good stuff in the background, regarding both others and me, and focused on the good.

And, now that I think of it, all that stuff didn't really matter anyway. Maybe it's just easier to let go now.

Out of sight, out of mind? Perhaps. But it's definitely much more interesting.

Attitude

I admire people who speak their mind. Or maybe not admire. I think they just have it easier.

I had a lot of problems because of my big mouth. But I always had respect for the people.

If they were wrong, I would try to point it out and explain my stand. If it went out of hand, I would try to straighten it out.

Successfully or not, because I tend to lack subtlety. I'm not easy to handle, so I try to keep that in mind. It kind of gives me an edge.

But not everyone's like that.

Ignorance is a bitch. When someone is unobservant, they'll stomp over anything and anyone. They just want to prove their point. And they'll trample over whatever's in the way.

And as good as we can be, that can just be too hard to handle.

So maybe not admire. They just have it easier.

If you can go berserk about something and lose your nerves and go crazy about it all, and then just wave your hand and barely remember what happened, I don't know what you think. And how you function.

And whether I can trust you...

Dunno how many words there are, but it happened in a club in Augsburg

So, he's one of those guys who walk around showing off, bulldozing their way through the crowd and winking at every and any girl along the way. I really couldn't care less, but he's somehow always in front of me, pushing his way into the crowd or elbowing me and stepping on my feet all the time . Something I don't really appreciate.

And so he gets to talk to a girl and (as I'm guessing) they decide to sit on a bar and talk a bit. It's more of a big crate of some sort than a bar, but being that it's an underground club, it serves the purpose of a bar more and more.

He jumps on it in one go, probably showing off how athletic he is. She's a bit more on the shy side and it takes her some preparation and bottle-and-glass translocating, but she still manages somehow. Now there are full as well as empty glasses surrounding her in at least three directions. She's even leaning against an almost full glass of Erdinger, but she's giggling and smiling and enjoying herself and, ultimately, not noticing.

Being the freak that I am and seeing that glass as a potential threat (a wet floor, hectic frenzy, a stampede and a violent death), I move it after a couple of minutes of looking at and observing it as if it were the only thing in the room.

There, now it's in in the middle part of the table and more or less safe and posing no threat. Phew, right?

They roll up a couple of cigarettes and look around for a light. As if it's going to turn up from thin air. He turns around toward me and waves his hand in front of my face. Maybe he thinks I'm a magician or something. Or that I'm blind. I only know it's annoying.

He shows me an imaginary lighter in his hand and the cigarette in between his lips is jumping up and down like an eel. I gesture empty hands and no cigarette in them either, but he's still looking at me, probably hoping I'd be the one to go around the club and ask for fire.

He, of course, is not moving his ass and me, going all private-Ryan on another couple of glasses and bottles that keep clacking around as those two laugh and swing. And among all that glass I see a box of matches. Right behind the douche's back.

So I pick it up and open it to see a single match. Kind of Fifth Element, don't you think? Being that it's dark, I can't even see if it's burned out, but I poke him in the back and hand it to him. He glances at me as if I was asking for money or I'm his lackey or something.

He makes an okay-it’s-not-a-lighter-but-it-will-serve-the-purpose kind of face and lights his and his supposed girlfriend’s cigarette.

And it’s a non-smoking club.

red morning

ok, so this is a song very special to me in a very special way. i remember staring at this video so many times again and again, not being able to quite figure out whether i should be listening to the music, her voice or just looking at the video. it was completely mesmerising and i just found something in it, i guess.

in the end i saw the band on their concert in zagreb and it felt quite the same. i don't even think they played this song, but it seems like i didn't hear anything else anyway. a band so immensely weird that you feel like someone went poking inside your brain and made you forget the whole thing afterwards. they played some of the slowest songs i've ever heard in my entire life - it literally felt like eight beats per minute or so.

the day after the concert i was sitting on a terrace in a bar in the city center with some friends and noticed the guys from the band passing by. they saw me, stopped by the table, said hi, asked how i was doing, told me to enjoy my day and went off waving. such simple people.

i don't even know what i wanted to write here, but in any case, it's a band that sliced completely into my brain. so this track just popped into my head today, which naturally caused a mental avalanche in my head. most people have a song that's really making them happy, or remember nice times, remind them of a nice event or a dear friend or something.

in my case, it makes me remember myself in the worst possible edition. and i wouldn't want to mention other people involved in this situation, since it doesn't matter anyway. it just reminds me of how stupid i am sometimes and how easily influenced i can get sometimes. maybe that's why i'm so cautious, worried and fucked now, but i hope i've learned what had to be learned.

and i'm sorry.

i can oh so clearly understand people who say they can't let go. i can't either. i know it's stupid, i know it's pointless and it's not helping anyone. call it loving to live in pain or whatever, but i think some things are worth holding on to. even if it's the things that tell you what an idiot you are, i don't mind holding on to them. at least they keep me down to the ground.

it's very easy - the easiest, in fact - to fuck up, turn around and go away. it's easy to delete someone's phone number, ban an email address or avoid someone so that one crosses the street when in danger. it's never been easy for me to be on either side. i'm usually the one who wants to get stuff sorted out and usually the one being screwed over.

to be honest, i can't really comprehend what lies inside people's head that makes them act the way they do sometimes. i refused to believe that people are mean by nature and now i'm seriously questioning whether i've been wrong that whole time. are there nice people, good people? are we doomed to dwell in loneliness? do we know anyone who hasn't hurt us at least once? is it them or is it us?

i just have a lousy time seeing nice people being miserable. the thing is i don't know how to balance it out and usually end up on the non-cheese side of the sandwich. i don't know if i'm so sensible and easily affected or i just have this urge (as someone i know calls it, the mother-theresa syndrome) to help people out.

on the other hand, i've been told by people that they can't stand seeing me miserable, which is when i started to look at things from the other angle as well. i know how pointless it is in my case, so i kinda have a better understanding of what people must feel like - and why they push people aside.

so, why do i have this mechanism in my head that keeps me grinding? if i see someone's in trouble or stuck in a bad company or has some problems, i'd wanna talk to them (or at least listen) and try to help out if i can. by someone i mean someone dear to me, since it's hard to notice the symptoms otherwise anyway. but, when the bond gets broken, it can hardly get fixed again.

so, if i keep being ran away from, lied to and strategically manipulated and screwed in the head with, why is it so hard for me to say 'enough'!? i say 'ok, it's in their head, they're wrecking their life, it's their problem', but my gut is telling me otherwise. everyone i talk to must think i'm a complete masochistic lunatic (and, from the evidence above, i might as well be), but i just can't get it out of my head.

maybe i fucked something up. maybe i said something wrong. yeah, it must be when i said this and that. aah yeah, it's probably when i said i couldn't come, yeah. or maybe when i made that joke - maybe it was a bit overboard. maybe i was just too pushy. but they said i wasn't. they said i was completely tolerant and supportive. yeah. they're lying. they're lying to my face. that makes it all nicer, doesn't it. so now i'm being made a fool by the same people that i wanna give a helping hand to. nice. people suck.

and the idiot still gives a fuck.