Hold 'em, Texas. Texas, hold 'em

How y'all doin, Texas?

First things first. It's Michael Jackson's birthday today. This has nothing to do with Texas but MJ was one of my childhood heroes, as well as being a major influence in the way I shred shapes on the dancefloor. Big ups. I remember the night before he died I had a dream that he died and that he got taken onboard the spacecraft I was hanging out in at the time. And then I woke up and it turned out that he had indeed vacated his meatbag. Kind of made me wonder about the rest of the 'dream'...I mean I have a lot of dreams to do with spacecraft as well as experiences off the planet including saying hi to creatures who don't look like they're from here, but the gimlet haze between waking life and lucid dreaming, not to mention all the modes of consciousness available in between, is one I don't have particularly accurate language for. On with the show! Also, today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. Cool.

 Late lastnight my flight dropped on Dallas. The difference between here and where I flew from is part of what makes travelling so endlessly fantastical. It's like being the lead actor in Inception without the crappy dialogue and side sob-stories. So Texas, you big land of meaty cars, meaty accents and meaty meaty menus...come at me! I took a train into Dallas Downtown this morning, to be greeted by a huge city where the people are ridiculously nice and go out of their way to extend a hand and a compliment to a dusty and unkempt traveller such as myself. Five people said they loved my pants today. My bright magenta MC Hammer style pants from India featuring dramatic oil stains from previous food-to-mouth fails. It's nice to know I can pull off this kind of regal get-up.

The backpacker's hostel I'm slinging my saddlebags down in is named Wild Wild West, and the hilarious saloon style decor and plentiful cowboy haberdashery makes me think I'm gonna meet Roland Deschain somewhere in the hood. I will set my watch and warrant on it. The backyard of this old house-converted-to-hostel is massive! Much bigger than the actual house, and judging from all the houses I've seen in this neighbourhood the huge sprawling grassy backyard with shady old trees full of chittering squirrels and fat bearded dragons is the norm. It reminds me of Australian country living, with the added bonus of squirrels. Think about it...what could possibly make a morning cup of coffee in the garden more pleasurable? The correct answer is squirrels.

Your average Joe street view in Irving, Dallas. Perty gerd.

Did I mention it's fucking hot here? Forty degrees today. After eight months of being kissed by the mild Guate climate I am reminded of what it feels like to be sun-punched. I. Love. It. Although I scratched my nose absentmindedly half an hour ago and it felt a bit crispy. Still good. I went to the supermarket today to get some salad stuff and noticed a giddy wave rise up in me as I trotted through the entrance cattle-gate. I am ashamed to admit that the prospect of having a selection of fine cheeses and salad greens to choose from excited me like that. That consumer habit dies hard huh? I took my time trawling the aisles because I had to find for you the three weirdest items for sale in a Texan supermarket, and dun dun DUNNNNNNNNN....here they are kids.

Coming in at third place, we have a root vegetable dubbed 'elephant garlic'. These are two words which should never appear together in the same sentence. It's like God rolled the genetic dice and both the dice rolled into the bin. Each clove of elephant garlic was the size of my fist. Each clove. Not knob. Which makes me think that it wasn't God rolling the genetic dice and more likely Monsanto.

Second place on the peculiar foodstuffs search conducted this afternoon was in the form of pretzel-flavoured M&Ms. Now. Friends and family who have seen me neck choc-coated pretzels in a flurry of pretzel dust (much like the way a tree shredder operates) will know that I was sorely tempted to buy a few bags of the suspicious rainbow coccooned chocolate blanketed pretzel balls which have clearly been shat straight from the heaving bowels of heaven. And the only reason I didn't was because I spent my last quetzales on a big duty-free bag of Reese's peanut butter pieces. So. I guess when they run out I will roll my soft peanut-butter bloated body to the pretzel M&Ms aisle and activate tree-shredder mode. Stay tuned.

And in first place folks, we have an item that I had to do a double-take to confirm that it was indeed existing on the shelf and was not a figment of my at times technicolour imagination (refer to aforementioned MJ experience). This food item rivalled the sight of already boiled, already peeled chicken eggs which I considered adding to this list but then thought that maybe Australia had also stooped to such laziness since we already have pre-peeled potatoes and readymade garlic butter. But there is absolutely no way that you will find THIS particular item on a foodshelf in Australia or anywhere else in the world but America. I'm still wondering if what I saw was real and not perhaps a promo version of Schmackos dog chews put in the wrong aisle by accident. Ladies and dudes, I am talking here about pre-cooked crispy bacon rashers. Sold in a cardboard box on the shelf, not in the fridge. I don't mean pre-cooked like pre-smoked and cured. This stuff has been deep fried or something, and is lounging around in a cardboard box waiting for some lazy fuck to make all the effort of ripping a hole in the side to squeeze their fat sweaty hand towards instant bacon pleasure. I wanna meet the human who thinks that the two-minute chore of cooking bacon is so tedius that they simply must skip the frying step and go straight to gargling cold congealed rashers straight out of the box. Stay classy, whoever you are.

Overall though, the supermarket looked like anything you'd see in Australia. It was on the whole slightly cheaper. The luncheon meat section was definitely bigger and the range of fine cheese was definitely smaller, and there were a couple of weird items on the shelves. But hey in Australian supermarkets you can still buy Bovril.

Other things of note that I saw today - a lot of hummingbirds and a big quote on the side of a media building that made me laugh on the outside and cry on the inside because it speaks so clearly to what should be happening yet is not. Check it out

And of course I had to check out the JFK memorial and grassy knoll, this year being the 50th anniversary of said event. I skipped the whole museum part since the media coverage of the JFK assassination is a crock of shit. It is interesting to note a few things here in any case...

If there are a lot of leylines running through Dealey plaza, the massive pool of negative energy incited by the JFK assassination would have been like a hit to the jugular for Earth and occupants.

 JFK was assassinated at Dealey Plaza. Dealey plaza is named after George Bannerman Dealey, one of the founders of The Dallas Morning News. He is the guy whose quote about the media features in the photo above. Dealey was a 33rd degree Scottish-rite Mason, a Knight Templar, and a member of the Red Cross of Constantine. How interesting that Kennedy was gibbed at a site named after a 33rd degree Freemason. I would be interested in seeing what leylines run around and through Dealey plaza.

103 witnesses to the JFK assassination died within 13 years of the grassy golgotha gore-fest. Thirteen years is a lot of years, it's true...but if you look at the circumstances of the majority of these deaths (77 percent) it's due to weird causes like a blow to the neck, being stabbed and stuffed in a metal drum and so forth. Very interesting indeed, check it out...strange deaths

The JFK memorial ...see for yourself. The plaque for this eyesore speaks to the way the sculpture represents a place of solitude and peace in an otherwise high-density environment, with only Heaven and Earth the companions of whomever stands in the middle of the memorial spot. It looks more like a jail blinding the clear vision of whomever seeks to see the forest from the trees. The kind of peacefulness and solitude an ostrich seeks with their head in the sand. Anyway I didn't drop in to rant again about what we are and are not being told by governing bodies and their media moguls. Syria Syria Syria. It's Sirius.

And my first day in Texas wouldn't have been complete without being dragged by Lauren to a dive bar in Arlington. It looked like the opening bar scene out of Tarantino's most excellent Deathproof.  The songs were all country and western renditions of gangster rap classics like snoop dogg's Gin and Juice. I still don't know how I feel about that. But Southern Comfort on ice was the goods.

The week before I bailed Guate I went to the beach in Monterrico. On the night of the full moon, with a rabid electric storm cracking up the night sky, I was lucky to watch a loggerhead turtle clamber up the beach and bury her eggs into the sand. As she crashed back into the silverlit waves I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for being on Planet Earth at this time. Yes shit is hitting the fan for humans. We sure like to ride a dead horse into the setting sun. Even loggerhead turtles must grow impatient at our cycles of fail, but there nature goes just choosing to be magnificent anyway. One thing I'm noticing more and more is that humans everywhere, the world over, are really really magnificent creatures too. Seriously, the vast majority of us are beautiful people. Even the grumpy ones who are bogged down in their work work work routine. And 90 percent of Americans polled don't want the shit to go down in Syria. It appears to be going forward anyway. It's pretty clear that this government agenda is not actually the voice of humanity. We don't have to listen to it.

I just have to put a Bill Hicks quote here. He says it better than I ever could. Adios for now comrades, much love to you all.

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.
“Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey − don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…‘
“And we…kill those people.
“(in the voice of a devoted rider) ‘We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.’
“(Hicks again) Just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that; you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because it’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.
“Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded. And we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you’ve been great.”

A New Machine

My time in Guatemala is drawing to a close for now, and in a couple of weeks I´ll be checking out the music scene I´ve been hearing so much about in Austin, Texas. Eight months in central America has me near desperate for some original sounds! Cover bands and latino music aren´t bad per se, but there´s certainly not the broad scope of musical deliciousness that I had become accustomed to as a result of living in Fremantle, Western Oz. Seriously folks, the music scene in Australia is banging! I´ve had the pleasure of listening to world class musicians in all genres that I like in Freo - funk, reggae, metal, glitch hop, afro vibes, psytrance, blues n roots, jazz, you name it, someone is throwing it down like nobodies business.  Having previously being exposed to so many styles of music on a weekly basis, I took it for granted that the rest of the world was also hitting all these musical highs too. Nope. Most people in Guatemala have limited access to internet and pretty much rely on travellers to hear any new sounds...most travelling musicians don´t have room in their backpack for a drumkit or a set of decks and so all music styles are shared acapella or with a beaten up guitar. Cover music as a result all ends up sounding fairly folky. Yawn.

After emailing a few hostels in Austin to enquire about the possibilities of exchanging my painting services for accommodation it´s been brought to my attention that there are´labor laws´ in the states declaring that this kind of exchange is illegal.

I´m sorry. What??

Oh I forgot...it´s the states. Like Australia there are all these beauracratic laws governing what is and isn´t allowed to be traded in exchange for life on planet Earth. Namely, the only thing permissable to trade with is money. To have money you need to be fulfilling a position that perpetuates the current capitalist economy.

See what they did there? Sneaky little monkeys.

So I´ll make friends with other freegan pranksters through couchsurfing or something instead. Because that whole capitalist system that´s currently squeezing the guts out of the planet and all the people yoked to the system really does need to stop. We all know this. If you are disagreeing with this statement I implore you to take a look around the globe, buddy. Maybe your backyard looks good but since we´re all in this together it´s probably worth enquiring into the state of affairs further abroad. If you still disagree with the statement then let´s meet for coffee because I am extremely interested to hear your point of view.

The global inequalities don´t stop until we make other solutions. And I don´t know about you kids but I´m not waiting for the upper echelons of society to come forth with solutions because a few things are becoming more and more clear to me...

1) Governments do not have the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants as their priority.    Governments have the wellbeing of corporations as their priority.

2) Governments do not want there to be other solutions to co-creating a harmonious existence for all beings on planet Earth. If they did that then the corporations feeding them wouldn´t be benefiting.

3) Irrespective of what laws there are dictating what is and isn´t allowed on planet Earth, I know that bartering is not a crime. I know this because I still have a few brain cells knocking around in my skull and it doesn´t take rocket science IQ levels to figure out that a lot of the laws these days are not intended for the wellbeing of Earth´s inhabitants.

4) Just because I like bartering doesn´t mean that what I am offering is worth any less than any other being on the planet. I´m a nice person, I have mad skills in a wide range of areas, I have been employing these mad skills in various barters throughout the year and I refuse to agree with the notion that the only acceptable currency for trading with is money. Even if I didn´t have mad skills, it´s a massive contribution just being a nice person. Ever run into a human who just made you feel good for no reason other than they were good vibes? I have met loads of people like this. They make the world a better place just by being them. Actually it´s likely that everyone would make the world a better place just by being themselves if they had more time to be themselves and not feel like they had to work all the time. Just saying.

I probably sound like I have a problem with authority, because I do. I have not been given any evidence to suggest that the ´authorities´ on this planet are making the game fun and enjoyable for everyone and so I don´t want to play as I´ve said before.

That doesn´t mean there aren´t other games to play, it just means that any other games I choose to play are not authorised. So I probably won´t be writing about them until after they´ve been played for obvious reasons.

Since I´ve last written a blog post, life has been a blur of paint jobs, poi practice, tattoo designs, kids book illustrations, existential conversations and most recently fire twirling. I have two, possibly three fire-poi gigs this week, with my first one happening tonight! I´m excited!!

Latest works...

Iximche, Banana Azul Hostel

                    A detail from a visionary piece I´m planning to paint in a parallel universe

                               
                                      Fred the Goblin bedhead at The Terrace Hostel, Antigua

Also I painted a big wall strip in a friend´s cafe but my camera phone got pilfered a couple of weeks ago and I have no evidence to show for now.

It´s going to be weird living in a ´western´country again. There are some things I´ll miss about Guatemala. Bustling markets exploding with people, fruit and second hand clothes. Friendly people everywhere who make eye contact and say hello whether they know your face or not. Beautiful weather all the time. Not wearing shoes anywhere. Ladies wearing traditional dresses. Everyone being a lot shorter than me (it´s like being on the scene of a hobbit re-take). Jostling on the chicken bus and trying to squeeze half an arse cheek on a seat that already has four people on it.

There are also a list of things that I will not miss about Guatemala but which make for fond storytelling so it was worth it:

Bed Bugs (twice)
Stomach Bacteria and the ensuing toilet hugging antics (numerous times)
Arduous bus rides that take a few hours longer than advertised
Street dogs roaming in packs at night and launching attacks.
Being ripped the fuck off because I´m not from here.
Maize tortillas and refried beans, get the fuck out of my life forever.
People walking slower than I thought physically possible. Getting stuck in a people jam. It´s worse than a traffic jam because it´s more personal...everyone´s all up in your space and stepping on your toes and elbowing you in the jugular etc.

But these are all petty things that don´t really matter. The main gripe I have is not specifically about Guatemala, and is more a side-effect of living in a developing country...

Technology in all areas of society is clearly ten or more years behind what is available in a western country.  Cars are hilarious yet also scary because a lot of them don´t look roadworthy. Architecture and town infrastructure is frightening considering the number of earthquakes and avalanches that go down in these mountains. School is a privelege for wealthy families and as a result most people in the markets and artesanal areas of industry are really bad at maths and many can´t write. An example of the bad maths I´m talking about - it´s often cheaper to buy smaller batches of something than it is to buy bulk (at a tienda you can buy more grams worth of Doritos if you buy it in small bags rather than a big bag. Wtf.)

In my opinion, the main technological handicap which I touched on at the start of this blog entry is by far access to the internet. The internet is slower than the walking pace of the people here and it´s a luxury service afforded by travellers with wifi gadgets and people who can afford a computer or can spare some quetzales to access an internet cafe. The computers in these cafes are mostly shitty old beasts that are just as likely to eat your words as save them.This lack of access to the information super-highway that is the internet has made a massive difference in the availability of consciousness expanding concepts for the people who live here. It goes further than I can talk about but it´s like the whole of life operates on dial-up rather than broadband, if you can imagine the ramifications of this. There are of course benefits to taking everything super slow but it also means that the people in this country are getting taking advantage of big time in a lot of ways. It´s kind of like a direct analogy to the  information available to western society compared to the ruling elite I suppose. A deliberate withholding of freedom of information. Again if you don´t agree with me here I encourage you to see what´s going down in the world of Julian Assanges, Bradley Manning and others as a consequence for making information available to the general public. I take this opportunity to high five these brave and sovereign humans. And also to acknowledge that in countries that are still developing this freedom of information is even more stunted as a result of information availability.

I could go on and on about the awesomeness of the internet. If you are curious about anything you can pretty much learn about it right then and there on the interwebs. Three days ago Lauren and I hand-made our own fire-poi with a complicated inferno rope-knotting technique that we learned from youtube. We were knotting these fire poi in the park and hoards of Guatemalans were crowding around trying to see what we were doing because they had never seen anything like that before. All I have to do if I´m curious is access my worldwide network of friends and immediately get the information I need. Imagine if you hadn´t been exposed to that question-response feedback system in your life. You´d probably get less and less curious and then eventually just accept that the options available to you in life are what everyone else around you is doing. Which is what appears to have happened in Guatemala.

This is not a slur against the beautiful people of Guatemala, or the innate intelligence which is an equal asset expressed in different manifestations in all beings. It´s an observation of the increasingly obvious inequalities that are built into the capitalist game on Earth. Capitalism runs on a win-lose level of consciousness. For someone to gain, someone has to lose, whether that´s the kids at the sweatshop making cheap clothes, the planet being pillaged for every imaginable resource, or the animals and plants being farmed inhumanely to speed up production of products to consume. The beings who don´t have a voice are getting pillaged the hardest. Who has a global voice these days? The people with the technology to project this voice globally. Who are the beings who don´t have a voice that is recognised by corporations? That would be the planet, all the animals and plants, and all the people in developing countries for whom the technology does not exist to interact globally with others to share their story of what´s going on. The internet is a very powerful means of sharing information.

It is certainly possible to create a number of win-win games where every being is honoured (including the planet) and it seems to me that all we have to do is get creative with it and only allow ourselves to be in situations that benefit not only ourselves but every other being involved.

Ok, time to go have the best day ever!! Wishing the same for you, and you´ll hear from me when I start busting some shapes in Texas :)