This Saturday, I was supposed to do some community service (not court ordered) and work at the local election. At five o’clock on Friday afternoon, I was invited to go to Sydney to see the Jack Johnson concert.
I voted “no” on Election Day.
I needed to leave the GC. I needed to leave since November and the patience I apparently have, yet am completely unaware of, has run out. I fear that if I don’t leave soon, I will turn into a meter maid. Or my mother.
(Aside: You know the saying, “There is no place like home”? I am convinced a GC native coined it. Possibly while sitting in a fabulous bar in New York or similar.)
Big cities inspire me. It is like Fossil Fuels are my hallucinogenic drug of choice (cough, cough, it really is nicotine). Whether in Sydney, New York, Paris or London, being surrounded by constant chaos excites me in such a way that I retreat into myself and get lost (read: motivated) in writing. I don’t think, I just do. When slipping, slopping and slapping on the GC, the chaos in my mind increases like a summer cyclone, discouraging me from lifting a pen. I have to lift glasses of bourbon instead, just to get by. Writing when on the GC seems, to me, like an oxymoron. Sun fries the skin, sure, but it does under-researched and irreparable damage to ones brain. While the general population likes to chillax, some of us have to decide: To think or not to think?
But the question really is, Is a life not thought about a life better lived?
Apparently so. People have been telling (read: begging) me to stop thinking lately and so I decided to investigate the declarations that Just Do It is the way to go. Sydney seemed like the perfect place to start.
Because, like the round-abouts that saturate the traffic-clogged roads of the GC, my thought-clogged mind has been working in a circular motion. The same thought, disguised by different people and events, has refused to take a turn off, or just turn off, and it has driven me crazy.
It is no secret that I over think things. About the only thing I don’t dwell on is how every cigarette is doing me damage. Hence why my tombstone will simple read, “IDIOT” and people will walk past, smile, nod and say, “Ah, that Sall.”
When I was faced with the opportunity of spending thirty six hours in Sydney, I literally said, “Fuck it” and decided to leave my mental baggage at ‘home’ and filled my suitcase with knee high boots and fedora hats.
It was time to stop thinking. Oh, Hello Jack Daniels. I do believe we have met before…
I like the person I am when I am drunk. In fact, I love her. Drunk Sall is literally an exaggerated version of myself (and I am no sober wallflower). The free spirit in me is ironically liberated after paying for scotch on the rocks.
I am not an angry drunk, an emotional drunk or a violent drunk. The more I drink, the more the world and social behaviour makes sense to me because as brain cells die, so does my perception and anxiety. Thus, I can only conclude that my (relative) unhappiness stems from over analysing.
(Aside: I actually become very polite, well mannered and a conscientious listener when I am drunk. I become the person my parents tried to raise.)
After twelve hours of not thinking (about anything other than, “make it a double this time Sweetheart”), I was feeling liberated from this anxiety that has plagued me over the past couple of months. The last time I felt this free, I was sitting in an apartment in New York, finally closing the door on my favourite failed relationship.
But I am not stupid (despite mounting evidence to the contrary). I don’t believe that it is alcohol that gives me the feeling of freedom. It is simply a coincidental occurrence that makes coming-of-age stories start with, “I think I was half way through bottle number two when…”. Drinking is associated with celebrating, and some of my most significant soul-searching celebrations have occurred in some of the most brilliant cities in the world. There is something brilliant about being exactly who you are in the place you want to be. Locations play a big part in my life, as I get more than an address from them.
Being in Sydney, for just one weekend, reminded me of that. I remembered what it takes for me to be truly happy. And I remembered what it felt like.
Major cities provide a literal buffet of human life to compare yourself to, to help drill home to point that no matter how retarded you feel, some grown adult still can’t tie their shoes or match pinstripe pants with a shirt. The GC has its freaks, I know (I have dated them all), but I love watching idiots survive in significant urban settings.
“If they can do it, why can’t I!”
It is like watching a monkey at the zoo and who doesn’t love that?
I planned on meeting My Friend in Bondi at one o’clock. I caught a bus from Hyde Park, and sat in the first front row seat, the one reserved for the elderly or handicapped. Otherwise known as The Interesting Ones. After fifteen minutes, He boarded the bus. And by boarded, I mean He dragged his left leg up the stairs, adjusted his errant toupee and threw his corpse onto the seat next to me. I want to say he was about seventy-five years old, but since the Crystal Meth epidemic broke out, I can no longer call ages. I probably graduated along side him, lets be honest.
He turned and locked at me and gave me a greeting that would make many parents proud, “Stay in school.”
He smelt. His order, I can only imagine, was due to his sweat and grime slinking away into an oven, festering for four years before being expelled out of the orephous of an unwell hippopotamus. Eau de in-the-toilette. I have never felt so much motivation to succeed in life, if only to buy a car.
I made a mental note to myself: deodorize my future hummer frequently.
“I will,” I answered back.
“Where are you going?” He coughed between heaving.
Bondi, I told him.
“I went to Bondi once,” he said it like how some people admit they have been to a Nickleback concert or had an STD scare. We were ten minutes drive from the suburbs boarder. I couldn’t really applaud his apparent bravery for coming so close to one of the most beautiful locales the city has to offer. “I am going to the doctor. I can’t go to the bathroom.”
I actually have a mark on my arm from the bus wall that refused to engulf me.
“You’re beautiful,” he smirked.
Unfortunately, all in all, this is not my worst pick-up attempt.
By the time My Friend arrived at The Bar, I was already friends with The Bar Tender and enjoying Drink Number 23490890234. Or similar. I replayed the mortifying bus conversation with such horror, I felt like I was in “Speed”.
“How can some people get life so wrong?” My Friend asked. I tried not to think of an answer to her question.
“Can we have another round sweetheart!?”
By the time we arrived at the Jack Johnson concert, I had not had a progressive or in-depth thought in almost twenty-four hours. And just as many glasses of scotch. I had found solace in drinking, smoking and surf music, which made the desperation to leave a beach-locked hometown seem beyond ironic. I revelled in being surrounded by ten thousand people who also Just Wanted To Have Fun.
“No one here looks over the age of nineteen,” My Friend said to me. In light of recent GC events in my ‘life’, I made sure I didn’t look at anyone suggestively. I mean, it is only March and already I have had my annual quota in Crazy Boy Dramas.
But I did not need to worry about attracting a new Teen.
I asked the three toddlers behind us if they minded me smoking. At an open-air concert. Where multiple people were quite plausibly smoking crack.
“Can you go somewhere else?” they asked. They must not have ingested eighty-five litters of Johnny Walker and were therefore a lot more mobile. I looked around at the sea of people and decided that, no, I can’t be bothered walking fifty meters to kill myself. They were hindering my Freedom Weekend and I was not impressed.
“You will pay for this,” I said as a began gulping my drink.
I drank eight more glasses of bourbon and was very loud with my enthusiasm for Jack (Daniels and Johnson). Then I lit up and smoked myself into oblivion. The creatures behind me were not impressed and huffed and puffed to make it clear. I huffed and puffed right back at them.
“Yeah,” I stumbled around. “I can breath fire.”
Being free to do whatever you want may not always win you friends. It may not even always make you happy. But one thing I know yet was reiterated to me this weekend is that being exactly where you want to be, doing exactly what you love to do, is so rewarding that you don’t worry about the little things in life.
If you make the right choices about where you are going, anxiety stays behind.
Now, in the cold hard reality of Monday morning, I think I have somewhat of a renewed patience on my visa to return to London. Aka, My Life.
On Sunday morning I returned to Hyde Park, where I smoked openly and nursed a horrible hangover. My Friend went to peruse markets, but I did what I wanted to do: I sat, tried to not throw up and watched old men with long grey beards play chess on a life-size board. As I sat, sipping my Starbucks Signature Skinny Hot Chocolate, I was reminded of how boring I consider the game to be.
And I thought: If I have no fun over-thinking in games, why am I intent on trying to find the fun in over thinking in life? The impromptu trip to Sydney had proven to be fun, and exactly what I needed, surely other unthought-out events would be just as rewarding?
My father would be so proud. $300,000 spent on academically encouraging me to use my brain and I decide that trying to balance a spoon off my nose (or similar) would be more fun.
I may have graduated long ago, but I am still in school. And always will be: The school of life. I am just not going to think about it so much.
So, for now, I vote “yes” on just enjoying my life.
Post By Salium.
