Theroux needs no more than three or four brush strokes of his pen to complete the most vivid of pictures

 

 

Dollar for dollar, hour per hour, a travel book is the cheapest and easiest way to transport you from the world you know into one you don't. I had already read Paul Theroux's "The Great Railway Bazaar", but while that was just another travel tome, the absorbing and beautifully written follow-up "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star" gave me this sudden "epiphany", this profound moment of recognition, when my own experience of forty-four years ago - thirty-three years for Paul Theroux - was reflected back at me.

"... I had just finished a book," writes Paul Theroux, "and was out of ideas. I had no income ... I had to go. Sailors went to sea, soldiers went to war, fishermen went fishing, I told her. Writers sometimes had to leave home. 'I'll be back as soon as I can.'"

And so it was with me: I had just finished another consulting assigment in Papua New Guinea, and was back in what was then my hometown, Townsville, without an income, and I had to go when the offer came in for a new assigment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. "I'll get you to join me as soon as possible," I told her.

"It was the age of aerograms and postcards and big black unreliable telephones," writes Paul Theroux. "I wrote home often. But I succeeded in making only two phone calls ... I was homesick the whole way - four and half months of it - and wondered if I was being missed ... I felt insane when I got home. I had not been missed. I had been replaced."

By the time I returned to Australia eight months later, clutching her visa and ticket to take her back to Saudi Arabia with me, I also went almost insane. I also had not been missed and, I guessed, had been replaced.

Paul Theroux writes, "Instead of killing anyone, or threatening it anymore, I sat in my room and wrote in a fury, abusing my typewriter, trying to lose myself in the book ... it was written in an agony of suffering, with the regret that in taking the trip I had lost what I valued most ... I was cured of misery by more work."

After my return to Saudi Arabia, I, too, threw myself back into my work. I regretted that, in accepting this job, I had lost what I valued most. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I just worked and worked. Weeks later I woke up in the intensive care unit of a Jeddah hospital with a drip in my arm and a breathing mask over my face, realising what it must be like to be dead: people might miss you, but their lives go on without you.

And when Paul Theroux writes, "Some betrayals are forgivable, but others you never quite recover from," he makes me relive, with just a few brush strokes of his pen, much of the pain I thought I'd forgotten.

 

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Status Anxiety

 

 

Instead of being born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I found myself with a knife in my back after my parents' messy divorce, which was followed by my constant shuttling from one to the other. The only status I hoped to achieve was the status quo.

The only status anxiety I ever suffered from was financial insecurity. I worked hard to cure me of it, and I achieved it, perhaps sooner than most, because I bought things for their utility, never for their status.

I still remember with great fondness - and even greater regret that I ever left - my first real "home" I bought at 3 Bay Street, Pallarenda in Townsville. It cost me thirty thousand dollars which was even in 1981 a very low price for what was undoubtedly the most modest house in the street, but to me it was the most comfortable home I had ever known.

There was only one time when I did not buy something for its utility, and that was in 1984 when, in a mad rush of blood to the head (and possibly to impress the company I was keeping then), I outlaid some $2,500 - which was then close to two months' average wages in Australia - for a ROLEX Oyster Perpetual which I never wear when I drive into town now.

When I do drive into town - which is no more than once a week when it coincides with our visit to the warm-water pool - I drive in my modest $18,000-drive-away MG3 and I shop for books at Vinnies and the Salvos, where some time ago I found Alain de Botton's book "Status Anxiety".

 

 

The book didn't teach me anything that I did't already know from watching many of my neighbours, but it was reassuring to have my view of the world confirmed. The author himself suffers no status anxiety as he has a personal net worth of £20 million to £30 million, earned from his philosophy and lifestyle books, all of which became international bestsellers and have been translated into over thirty languages.

 

 

Unfortunately, there is no free online copy of "Status Anxiety" on the internet, but I can assure you that buying yourself a copy of the book on ebay for a modest $20 will give you many hours of reading pleasure - although it won't necessarily add to your status, except in my eyes.

 

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Zorba the Greek

 

 

There used to be a video clip on YouTube which shows Basil, the buttoned-up young intellectual, meeting Zorba on a rained-out day inside a taverna on the Piraeus waterfront. Unfortunately, it's gone, as is the full-length movie.

It is my favourite scene of the whole movie, as I myself had spent many such rained-out days in perhaps the very same taverna when I lived and worked in Piraeus, but times and I have changed. I am now also caught in "the full catastrophe", which makes the above clip more appropriate.

 

The film's theme music played on two santuris

 

"Zorba the Greek" is a wonderful tale of a young man's coming of age, and has been a classic of world literature since it was first translated into English in 1952 and made into an unforgettable movie with Anthony Quinn. Zorba, an irrepressible, earthy hedonist, sweeps his young disciple along as he wines, dines, dances and loves his way through a life which is dedicated to fulfilling his copious appetites.

 

 

The sun is out and warming up the day. At the risk of making me feel even more melancholic, I have grabbed a big bottle of retsina, Nikos Kazantzaki's marvellous book, and my mp3-player to drink, read and listen myself through another glorious morning of "Riverbend" idleness.

 

 

Continue reading here

 

Continue reading here

 

Η δόξα που ήταν η Ελλάδα !

 

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P.S. There are several websites that allow you to convert YouTube clips to mp3 files for free. Some limit their conversions to just half an hour, others to four hours. I have just found PullMP3 that offers unlimited conversions and relies on the occasional donation which I gladly give.

 

Another welcome Government initiative

 

 

In an all-out effort to alleviate the ever-increasing cost-of-living pressures, the Australian government has now begun to instal CENTRELINK counters at several Bali hotels for the lodgement of claims for JobSeeker payments by long-suffering Australians who can no longer afford the return airfare to Australia.

Unemployed Australians can now complete their applications without leaving the pool, with waterproof folders provided for their supporting documents. This man said he had been looking for work all morning.

 

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TAIM BILONG "Melbourne"

 

 

Some weeks ago, I bought this tiny "Mini Portable LCD Digital FM Radio Speaker USB SD TF Card Mp3 Speaker Player" (to give it its full name), only to find that it wouldn't play at all, not even after I had it plugged into the charger for a whole night.

I was about to give up and send the ebay seller a stiff note, when she-who-must-be-obeyed opened the battery cover and discovered that the battery was still inside its protective sleeve and thus not connected.

I know I will hear about this for the next twenty-five years (after having survived the first twenty-five years without too much visable damage), but in the meantime I make good use of it inside far-away "Melbourne".

This afternoon I treated myself to the full twenty-four episodes of "TAIM BILONG MASTA" while lazily declining on the bed and gazing up at old photographs of Camp 6 on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea.

 

Top: "Millionaires Row" in Camp 6 facing Loloho Beach
Bottom: A peaceful Sunday morning on Loloho Beach

 

<

Episode 1 Never a Colony Episode 2 The Good Time Before Episode 3 God's Shadow on Earth Episode 4 The Loneliness and the Glory Episode 5 On Patrol Episode 6 Sailo Episode 7 The Boat Came Every Six Weeks Episode 8 Masta Me Like Work Episode 9 The Violent Land Episode 10 Moneymakers and Misfits Episode 11 Wife and Missus Episode 12 Growing Up Episode 13 Into The Highlands Episode 14 The Promised Land Episode 15 First Contact Episode 16 Gold Episode 17 The Good News Episode 18 The Mission Rush Episode 19 You Had To Be Firm Episode 20 Across the Barriers Episode 21 Courts and Calaboose Episode 22 War Episode 23 A Reason For Being There Episode 24 Going Finish

 

The book is freely accessible from the ANU Open Research Library - click here

 

I had found "TAIM BILONG MASTA", then recorded on twenty-four cassettes, in 1983 in the ABC Shop in Adelaide's Rundle Mall during one of my frequent business trips from Saudi Arabia back to Australia. For years, I listened to them again and again as, in the absence of any proper television or radio reception in the world's largest sandbox, they had become my daily nightcap to drown out the howling desert winds.

 

 

Over the years, the cassettes had become, like myself, warped and worn, and I was delighted to rediscover them on a single USB stick, to once again drown out the outside noise, this time not howling desert winds but screening parrots and the raucous laughter of kookaburras.

Feel free to copy my mp3 files onto your own USB stick to play on your own Mini Portable LCD Digital FM Radio Speaker USB SD TF Card Mp3 Speaker Player. At just $16.15, postage paid, it's a bargain - just don't forget to remove the protective sleeve from its rechargeable battery!

 

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