Trysting Fields

HNY, MOTHERFUCKERS

It's on.

!!! \O/ !!!

Stuff I Did This Year

In a nutshell: systematically climbed the fuck out of hell. Again. (See previously: 2005; 2007; 2009.)

And it's good! Can't complain.

:)

"Friends - you know who you are; you know we're grateful." - Blur, 1993. (Seriously. If ever a year was about Who Your Real Friends Are, it was 2011.)

Similarly, those who have fucked me up and fucked me over this year most likely know who they are also, and possibly how I feel about this (hint: angry, bewildered and sad) - with the possible exception of the Rt Hon Lord Mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle (note contact details), who I strongly suspect does not have any idea who I am.

(I also doubt he reads this blog. But since it just can't be said often enough I might as well take this opportunity to (re)state, for the record: Robert Doyle, you're a fucking cunt. You really are.)

The bulk of this year's SIDTY post I rendered in audio format at the coast a few nights ago. It goes into a bit more detail (although, to be honest, not all that much). Enjoy:

Vale 2011. Viva 2012.

Happy new year!

I Decided To Go Back To School

On a see-how-it-goes basis. First day yesterday; went okay. (Previously.)

I have to keep a visual diary, course. Which has kind of been freaking me out. Although that's stupid, coz what is this blog right here except a multimedia visual diary, kinda?

I've just retroactively added text to this post from a few weeks ago, which I initially discarded in favour of just using the photo, since I tend to write overshary, self-obsessy crap on the blog when I'm down that just embarrasses me later and isn't helpful in the immediate, neither.

But we have to Document Shit. It's the only solution.

Blogging's good.

"I heart my blog. It's surprised and delighted me in all kinds of ways and continues to do so. It has a degree of inherent continuity and structures naturally emerge, but it's basically unhindered by any context restrictions except those inherent in the medium, which can incorporate text, images, audio, video, etc etc etc.

It helps me see life as stories, and as an ongoing story. And it provides a means of turning the things I experience and think about into multimedia artefacts that other people can consume and respond to, with a very fast turnaround time. It's simple, but it works.

More profoundly, it enables me to observe and actively direct themes & patterns in my own preoccupations, and it's taught me a lot about shaping one's own experience using symbols & narratives - about the intersection between creativity and life; between what you focus on and what ‘happens’ - about tapping into your own unconscious processes."

- portfolio statement, late 2007 (adapted from email to Em).

La bla blah. It's true though.

That said, I think I'll mostly just post pictures for a while. Or maybe not.

We'll see what happens.

Friday 2nd July.

Easter Camping

Friday 2nd April - Sunday 4th April.

Night At Twyllan's

Monday 22nd March.

SRC Xmas Party

17th December.

Vale SRC. I'm gonna miss you hugely in some ways; in other ways not so much. I'll certainly miss your Xmas parties. Or maybe I'll just crash them.

The following was captured at Harrie & Atkins' house, at some point quite far into the 17-odd hours' worth of extended shenanigans.

Messy night; messy audio. But I like it.

(Previously.)

Smoko

28th-29th November.

Cheers Atkins (and Coulter - who told me to go, so I did).

:)

New York (Two)

With DF & Kev.

Timeslippage

I spent yesterday evening migrating to a new phone.

(I lost my iPhone in a taxi a few weeks ago. Deep down I wanted to lose it. It was cursed by association.)

It's a Nokia 6300, the same phone I had from October '07 to February '08.

I bought it again because I liked the first one a lot. It was the first phone I'd owned with a vaguely decent camera, a voice recorder, substantial storage capacity, and the ability to talk to my computer. I captured a lot of audio and took a lot of pictures with it, and posted a lot of both here.

Thems were happy, phoenix-from-the-ashes times. Could Has Art. It was great.

There was a lot of acid around then. Maybe that was a factor. Who knows.

(The whole record-some-audio-take-a-picture blogging formula continued, in a more standardized way, through the subsequent winter via the MacBook I got when my eMac died, around the same time that Wouters - sick of hearing me whine about nasty text messages from J that I didn't want to read - killed the aforementioned old Nokia by dropping it in a glass of bourbon & coke.

Different era, more complex & difficult, but in its own way equally good.

Then - in a seasonally trend-bucking turn of events - everything went to shit when Spring hit, and life stopped. Couldn't Has Art.)

The phone died, but its memory card survived.

Going through all of that old media last night was reeaal interesting.

I think it's time for some psychedelics.

Chez Hagakure G&T Sock Swap

With Liv.

(Previously; previously.)

Most Fucked Up Easter Ever (Y'know, In A Good Way)

So there I was, attending an uncivilised picnic in the park on Royal Parade, having a perfectly nice time & minding my own and a select handful of other peoples' business when who should call me completely out of nowhere on my - which is to say, someone else's - mobile telephony device but the J-meister.

(Previously.)

We hadn't spoken in the voice since November, when I drunkenly and unsolicitedly facilitated her and Henley's first ever verbal exchange. She's been in the country three weeks, apparently. Now she & the H-Dogg were in my hood. And they wanted to hang.

Headfuck!

The tone of her voice didn't make me feel like something she'd just scraped off her shoe, which was nice. So, throwing caution to the wind as I am wont to do on occasion, I went.

We met at Alia. We talked. We danced. A good time was had. It seems like we're all friends now. Which is totally what I wanted, although if you'd asked me twelve hours ago I'd have said this outcome seemed less likely than [insert comedy incredibly unlikely occurrence which in practice will never ever happen here]. They're totally coming to my housewarming and shit.

I don't know what else to say about all of this, but if ever something seemed blogworthy etc.

Hooray for drugs; hooray for Jebus.

Despite my cynicism regarding his religion(s), I am a fan of the man's work. That cunt was liable for nothing.

Rainbow Serpent (Part 2)

Party IV

Went off.

Oh, what a mess! Though. Liable for mess.

Also, someone stole my weed. I'm a bit unhappy about that. But that's what I get for leaving it unattended in the garden.

So it goes. It was all worth it. Hooray for parties.

Wither Comments

Looking at old TF posts for the purposes of linking to them in more recent TF posts, I was struck by something: No fucker is commenting here any more. (Except Liv. And Li. And Wortwut. And the odd Neurocam random combing the archives.) (Gotta love those tenacious, cockroachlike Neurocam randoms.)

Where have you gone, beloved blog massive?

Do you not love me any more?

Is it because Lady J doesn't love me any more?

That's it, isn't it.

It is. Don't lie.

Actually, I don't think that's really it at all. It's all about me. (It is always all about me.)

To get perhaps ill-advisedly personal for a moment (Li will enjoy this):

Towards the end of 2005, I had Learned To Love Myself. Man. Really, truly had. It was nice. It had been a long time coming.

And I got lots of comments in those days. Because as we all know, if you love yourself - like, really, truly do - then everyone else will love you too. Everyone who matters, anyways.

LJ fell in love with me at around this time. And that was great. But then I think I became dependent on her loving me in order to love myself. So when she stopped, I kinda stopped as well. Et voila: blog comments? Thing of the past.

It's more complex than that, naturally. But it's One Way Of Looking At Things. Makes a lot of sense to me.

This is partly the reason people sing the blues when their partners leave them. It's partly that you just desperately miss having them around, course; it's partly the shattered dreams of future happiness; it's partly the sense that all this time and energy expended on getting to know this person really, really well and them getting to know you really, really well, and building trust and constructing a shared identity and blah blah blah has all gone totally to waste. It's partly because you feel like a part of your very soul has been ripped out, leaving a huge gaping hole in your psyche.

But it's also significantly because you've forgotten how to love yourself without someone else to back you up on it.

That's really, really bad though. You shouldn't need anyone else to love you. And the more you do, the less they will.

Am I wrong, non-existent blog readers?

It's one of those perverse inverse dynamics that The Universe is so fond of, for some sick twisted reason that I will never entirely understand [*] except maybe when I'm on nitrous oxide.

Ah, sweet nitrous oxide.

It will never leave me. Until they make it illegal.

(Why isn't it illegal? It's so good.)

[*] NB This is disingenuous; I do in fact understand perfectly. It's because people are attracted to power and personal power derives from self-sufficiency. But for the purposes of allowing this post to form a nice, natural arc, I had to pretend to be stupider than I really am. Funny how that happens sometimes.

Meredith (Part Two)

(Interlude: Fitsy.)

Meredith (Part One)

I went to the Meredith Festival on the weekend.

It was awse, and then some.

(From their Frequently Given Answers:

No, it is not possible to sneak in. Vicious dogs and armed mercenaries patrol the fences.

NB This is a total lie.)

(To be continued.)

Random Brunswick Street Encounters, Part Deux & Other Assorted

(Previously.)

This afternoon a waifish aboriginal chick came up and asked me if I had any change. I said no, which was a lie but generally my policy in such situations.

She noticed I was wielding an unlit cigarette, and asked if I needed a light. Again, I said no (thanks). Which, conversely, I thought was true.

"You have a good day," she said nicely, and continued on her way.

I fished into my pocket for the lighter I thought I had, and realised I didn't actually have it.

So I chased after her and told her that I did, as it turned out, need a light after all.

"You looked like you didn't have one," she said with a quiet smile.

I gave her a dollar, and went to hand the lighter back.

"Nah, that's okay," she said. "I've got about six of them."

Maybe you had to be there.

My only regret concerning this encounter, which totally rebrightened my day -

(Said day having turned, from promising beginnings, to shitty slit-yer-wrists shit when it became apparent that I'd probably irretrievably lost my bag, containing my camera and my visual diary, in a taxi yesterday.

Which would have been really bad, and totally fucking sucked.

Turns out I'd left it at work the doodle palace. Phew.

But I digress.)

- was that I didn't ask her if she could assist me in my ongoing quest for time machine fuel.

(Note to blog readers: TIME MACHINE FUEL IS SOUGHT.)

In other news: please excuse the rambling, discombobulated nature of this post.

Two and a half hours sleep, see.

I had to be up at six this morning to receive some people who came to strip the asbestos from my bathroom.

(Now the bathroom looks like this:

)

And I didn't get to sleep until 3:30am, because some broad whose name I forget [*] was fucking hardcore with my head.

Although she denies doing it deliberately. And in any case, I'm really just fucking hardcore with my own head, and attributing said headfuckery to an external source.

Which is, ultimately, all that any of us are ever doing.

(It pays to remember this sometimes.)

I fully hardcore fall down go boom now.

[*] I think maybe her name is Audrey.

I remember, very early on in our acquaintance, suspecting that might be her name and addressing her as such.

"Who's Audrey?" she replied, all blinking wide-eyed incomprehension. Although in fact she knew damn well exactly who Audrey was. And she knew damn well that I knew that she knew. And that I knew that she knew that I knew that she knew. And in general, things were Known. You know how it goes, hypothetical blog reader.

In hindsight I might have imagined the blinking wide eyes.

Anyroad, I was well smitten and from that point on there was no turning back.

But that's a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother time, if ever there was one.

Time Machine Fuel

The artist, gentleman & scholar formerly known as Semi/Dirty Kant/Rorschach gave me - perfectly - a time machine for my birthday.

I was touched. But I have not, as yet, been able to use it. Appropriate fuel is required, lest dire consequences etc:

So, continuing a long and bizarrely successful TF tradition, I hereby formally call for time machine fuel; ideally an ongoing source thereof.

Successful respondents will be escalently awarded.

Response To DJ Ravine's Video Review Of 'Mother'

This was originally rendered as a video (y'know, duh), but the video component didn't really work out. I almost canned it completely but in the end I decided the audio was worth salvaging.

[insert predictable absinthe pun here]

To: j hawthone
From: Trysting Fields Central Communications
Date: Friday 26 January 2007, 4:23:36 PM

>(you never really said much about teh fairie, btw, besides that text about
>her being nasty and somewhat evil. forgot to ask you on skype. more detail?)

They had a range of absinthe-y drinks but only three that were called 'absinthe' - the Pernod and two by La Fee, Parisian and Bohemian. I went for the Bohemian, which was also, natch, the most expensive at $15 a glass.

Now (disclaimer: like I said, this has always been a total fantasy thing for me, and as such my scholarship is not profound; I make no claims of knowing what I'm talking about.. just glancing at the La Fee FAQ now I'm learning things I didn't know), my understanding of what constitutes a 'real' absinthe experience is that it must conform to three basic criteria:

- must be in the region of 60-75% alcohol
- must contain, famously, wormwood along with other agents that give it legendary psychoactive properties, considerably beyond those normally associated with alcoholic drinks
- should be served with a measure of water, poured over or through a spoonful of sugar

This was served in a half-full goblet with ice and it certainly looked brilliant glowing greenly clasped in my black-nailed fingers, so that was something. It came with a small bottle of no doubt outrageously overpriced imported water - but no sugar or spoon.

Initially I tried drinking it straight, since I suspected it was probably not exceptionally evil as absinthes go and wanted to maximize whatever psychoactive effects it might precipitate. But this proved impossible because it was hella strong and tasted *awful* (I actually have always hated aniseedy things and hence wasn't expecting to particularly enjoy the taste), and I eventually had to dilute it about 50-50 with the water.

It may well have been in the region of 60% alcohol or so - it got me pretty fucked up. But I certainly didn't hallucinate or otherwise feel anything other than profoundly drunk.

The experience didn't put me off absinthe - but it did help to confirm my suspicion that for a real green faerie experience I will indeed probably have to go to Prague or somewhere like that. Or at the very least do some proper research.

Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony II

(See here and here.)

Party II

It was a much quieter affair than the last one. But it was still good!

~ made sushi

Russian cocaine was served in abundance

First Hamish of the night

The drink's creator attended in A4 poster form

Nada came all the way from New Jersey - what's your excuse? - only to be strangled by ~ in a fit of paranoia. These things happen at Hagakure parties

Former Operative Johana (Hamish)

Former Operatives Reanimator (Scotch & Cola) and Li (rightly hiding in shame behind bottle of Cascade Light)

Semi (herbal tea and sympathy)

T. (fat rocks of crack, not shown)

Some woman dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (not sure what she was on)

This crazy Japanese girl gave ~ a terrible time a while back, but he invited her anyway.

Reanimator, Li, ~, a russian mathematician and i ended up watching Fight Club by candlelight at about 3am. I did loads of bulbs.

It was good.

Don't Come To Our Party

Your loss, bitches.

Me: Hello. Do you have any of those compressed gas bulbs you use to make whipped cream?

Customer Service Technician In Large Sydney Road Catering Supplies Outlet [beaming in bland, vacant customer-servicery way]: Yes; yes, we do. One of our most popular consumables. Right over there. [indicates stock stand groaning under the weight of vast supplies of nitrous oxide bulbs]

~: Tell me, do you get a high volume of well dodgy-looking tweakers like us, who probably aren't actually employed in the catering industry at all, coming in and stocking up on massive quantities of these?

Customer Service Technician [absolutely without missing a beat]: Yes; yes, we do.

(And to that small handful of priveliged people who are coming tonight - see you soon; looking forward to it.)

Man, I Just, Like, Voted

I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.

I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.

Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.

~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.

I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.

Yes, it does.

Recent Correspondence

From: Trysting Fields Central Communications
To: JoBean
Date: 8 November 2006 10:45:32 PM

> :D  I have enough trouble coming up with my own posts, m'dear.
> And you want me think of topics for you as well?

You seem to be doing okay.. slow but not short of content

> How about the fact that I went into a pet shop the other day and saw
> me some kittens.

You want me to post on *my* blog about what *you've* been up to? Tript's right.

> Yay kitten season!  

Yay! I saw two cats fucking for the first time ever the other night; it was well surreal and shit

Everything is surreal at the moment; I blame the racing carnival

I was saying to LJ this morning: the streets are filled with outrageously drunk women in slutty dresses and ridiculous hats; singing, getting into fights, throwing up, falling over

At all hours of the day and night

No one bats an eye, that's standard in Melbourne at this time of year

Freewheeling, zany-ass city that we are

I was trying to sell Melbourne to her

Do you think that will work?

> You should call  those places again if you  want  one  :D

Thanks for the tip :P

heh

But too busy! Too busy!

I have to catch up on Adam's blog too, I haven't read it for ages and ages and ages; his posts are gold but they're too long

So much to do! So little weed. Indeed none at all; it's becoming unacceptable

Get it sorted, "Johana"

Honestly, sometimes I wonder why we are still friends

You never send me flowers, you never have any weed when *I* need it

We may have to see about your license to practice if this whack continues

Much love,

T

Life Is Good

nb clever peripheral utilization may or may not reveal secret hidden messages

Life is good.

We Went To The Victoria Markets On Saturday

And we bought:

A cherry-flavoured cigar!

Calamari!

Three feet of San Pedro Cactus!

Aaand - thanks to an anonymous tipoff - we also acquired from this Asian grocery...

.. Red Bull concentrate!

For $2.80 a bottle, complete with nutritional information:

Sor'ed!

Scenes From A Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony

I Went To A Soccer Match Yesterday

I actually worked at Telstradome for a period last year, but I had never been to any kind of football game before in my life.

It was pretty cool. That said, it's conceivable I only found it to be as such because I was half-tripping on mushies, something else I have never done before.

Absolutely true story: on our way to catch the tram going out, we passed a guy who tried to hit us for change. When we said no, he looked me straight in the eye and shouted "magic mushrooms!" before going back to reaming the coin dispensers on a bank of public phones.

~ assures me I was not visibly fucked up in any way at all.

Fucker.

But in retrospect... awesome!

What I Got For My Birthday

A can of whoop-ass Hagakure style yo Easy Surface Prep

A Discombobulator of my very own

Two bottles of apparently non-lethal Red Bull concentrate

Two bottles of Arrogant Frog sauvignon blanc

Two delicious, beautifully wrapped and generally special cupcakes (not shown)

Colourful and appealing multimedia art products

A hefty biography of John Fowles, bafflingly enough

A black 30 gigabyte iPod, which was nice

A Brave New World mug

Cards & chocolate

Amongst other things.

Thanks everyone. It was great!

Soiree de Semi

~'s extraordinary invention, The Discombobulator (tm) astounds and delights jaded party guests who thought they'd seen everything:

More Postal Benevolence

Surprised & delighted was I to take delivery of this package today.

My birthday isn't till the 14th (yes, as it happens I do have an Amazon wishlist), but I thought it would be alright to open the large bottles now, being pretty sure I already knew what they were:

Thanks, toots! You rock. (Have a good flight.)

Being An Isolated Recluse May Seem Pretty Sweet, But It Has Its Drawbacks Redux

In other flashback to June 2005 news, the stable contact I eventually acquired thanks to this post flaked out on me about six weeks ago.

And if I don't get some fucking weed soon, I may well go quite demented.

It could be entertaining, I guess. See it as a form of reader participation. Help a desperate man out (nb and earn his eternal gratitude) ... or don't.

Choose your own Teigan's Blog adventure!

Update: Sorted.