Sunday 31 July 2016

Non-Fiction Feature Piece for BCN Week

G4 SUMMIT

Graffiti, Guns, Globalization and Ganas



If you ask somebody to define exactly what "subculture" means, they will probably look at you askance for proffering such a banal question, then promptly fail to give you anything like a substantial and well-defined answer. If you look it up online, you will come across a lot of waffle that ties itself up in knots by relying excessively on the word "culture". You will find words like subversion, Punks, ambivalent, non-domestic, Goths, negative, and tribes; and you will be a much better man than I if, from it all, you can derive any real meaning or significance.
When it's too difficult to decipher the meanings of words, it is often easier to take solace in images. As I walk through the streets of the city, I notice colours jumping out at me and dragging my attention away from the grey. The walls of the city are screaming out, looking for answers that I'm not sure I have. The walls are talking, and I think we ought to listen.
The images on the page opposite are all brought to you by Los Martinez, a group that lives and breathes on the same streets you traverse. But the identity of the group is less important than engaging with its discourse. If you look closely, you will see that their work has real content, something you won't find in "subcultures" defined largely by fads and pouty posturing. Interacting with Los Martinez, you are moved uncomfortably from your previous position of impassive alienation. The sharp nip of recognition you feel when you look at their work, particularly their hearts, makes you an active part of a systematic and structured opposition to the dominant culture you were ineffectually loving to hate. You have become a true outsider. You have moved away from subculture and joined the ranks of a counterculture.
One hundred years ago, the city of Barcelona and its people passed through a period of great poverty. A poor population struggled to live and, in extreme cases, starved to death. The ratio of food spending against housing spending was around 5:1. People lived in times of economic hardship and misery, but for the most part they could afford to pay for the roofs over their heads. In modern day Barcelona, the situation has been completely reversed. A normal person, earning 1000€ a month, could survive spending only 200€ a month on food, but would be very hard pushed to cover the cost of owning an apartment in the city with the remaining 800€. Most people won't starve in La Millor Botiga del Mon, but if you're not rich, you had better look for another place to rest your head at night. It is in the reality of this environment that Los Martinez are attempting to offer an alternative message to the people of the city.
Los Martinez are a group of like-minded individuals who found each other by chance as they worked individually on the streets, and who then joined together to produce work in which we find a seamless fusion of art and social commentary. They are social warriors, committed to reclaiming public space as our own by turning it into a free gallery. But the artistic beauty of their message should not fool you into taking their work lightly. This collective group of creative friends is not only fighting to reclaim the city's public spaces. In the barrios where speculation and big business are displacing residents, tearing down buildings, and trying to negate the rich history of the places they wish to reinvent in their own selfish image, Los Martinez are also out on the front lines alongside real people.
In Bon Pastor, Los Martinez painted walls alongside niños gitanos del barrio, in protest of the forceful eviction of families from the "casas baratas". In Barceloneta, they worked with the vecinos del barrio in their fight against the Ayuntamiento's Plan de Ascensores, a scheme that would see elderly people and families evicted from their homes. But it is perhaps in Los Martinez's old home of Poblenou where their fight has been the most intense, and it is this place that best highlights the unrelenting determination of their struggle and their continued belief in it. Nevertheless, it is here, too, where the odds against the success of their movement can seem largest.
In Can Ricart and Poblenou, Los Martinez were part of the group of 3,500 vecinos and friends of the neighbourhood that protested against the monster that is 22@. This privately-funded, local-government-supported venture has displaced the majority of Poblenou's artistic community, as well as many families who had lived for generations in what was tradit ional ly one of Barcelona's few authentic working-class neighbourhoods. It's an ugly thing in itself, and a pattern that's becoming all too familiar, but 22@ is made even uglier because many of the companies that operate out of this new state-of-the-art business park are ones that deal directly in, or have links to, the manufacture of arms. Indra, whose president heads the committee of 22@, is the world's biggest non-US supplier of military equipment to the world's largest military machine, the Army of the United States of America.
The protests in Poblenou, like so many others, were to no avail, and the pain felt in this particular defeat has been worsened recently by the attempted validation of 22@ and its presence in the neighbourhood through the three-day Inside22@ festival, run under the artistic direction of Niu and in direct collaboration with the 22@ committee. How is it possible that Niu, one of the groups that originally fought alongside residents and other artists against 22@, are now actively encouraging the presence of their conquerors in a celebration that is such an incredibly frivolous and insensitive rewriting of history?
But wait. It is too easy to point fingers at the speculators, propagators of war, and those who are completely consumed by the capitalist ethos of "More". If we look closely at the hands we point with, we might note, uncomfortably, that they too have a red tinge. As literate people living in a powerful Western democracy, we are all complicit in the ills of the world, and in one way or another there is undoubtedly blood spilled in our name every day. Maybe Niu, in the wake of 22@'s successful establishment, decided, as so many of us do, that this is the way things work in the world and there's nothing they can do about it.
Perhaps this elephant in the corner has allowed an overriding sense of apathy to fester within all of us; an apathy and a complacency that seem to have become the most prominent and bitter cultural capital of the day. We have been tricked into thinking that we are redundant and unable to offer any resistance to the forces of the world that shape and control our shadow lives. We have accepted our defeat and fallen out of love with the unfamiliar faces that stare back at us blankly from the other side of the mirror. Politicians don't listen to us. Wars are fought despite our Saturday afternoon marches against them. Nothing we do makes a difference, so why should we care? In discussions with members of Los Martinez, I saw that even they feel the weight of capitalism's demand for conformity. Though they fight for others selflessly, seeking no personal promotion through their acts, their lifestyle choice comes with the cost of being reminded every day that they don't own a house, or have 2.5 children, or a job that they can put on a resume. That they have chosen an "unconventional" life.
From what I see, Los Martinez keep doing what they do because they care, not only about making a stand against the violation of the city in which we live, but also about us. They could just as easily be called Los Rodriguez, or Los Smith. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Yet as we walk forward into what may be new times of hope, it was a member of Los Martinez who told me that, "We can't do everything". It is true: the wars won't stop overnight. The mobile phones in our pockets will still signal violence in Africa. The speculators and the greedy politicians won't desist from trying to fuck us over at every turn just because we ask them not to. In spite of this knowledge, or maybe because of it, the core message of Los Martinez is to look a little longer at ourselves in the mirror each day.
The feeling we are meant to experience when we look at the bright colours of their art, standing out against the backdrop of grey and greed that surrounds it, is that those colours are inside us. If we want to pay anything other than lip service to change, then it must start here: at home, in ourselves. The hearts on the wall are our own. It is up to us to rediscover them. And it is then our responsibility to let them sing, write, paint, shout or cry out in any way that affirms our collective struggle to remain part of the original and only truly abiding culture: humanity.
Que seamos más despiertos. Que seamos más conscientes.
Que seamos más vivos.
Más Amor.

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Thursday 28 July 2016

Simon's Place, Pushkar


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Wednesday 20 July 2016

Murmur

Chapter 17

Utopia was postponed.

The retreat was cut out from and built on top of a cliff at the head of a high gorge. It looked across to an old town a few kilometres away that rested beside and grew up from the narrow river that ran through the valley’s centre.
Our room was on the lower level of the retreat, the part of the building that had been excavated from the rock. All the rooms were named after Spanish artists. We were given Lorca, our neighbours Dalí and Buñuel.
The back wall of the room was the original smoothed down rock of the mountain. It swelled out like a pregnant woman, creating a natural border between the two single beds. The door opened onto a deep, sun-filled patio. At the patio’s edge there was a steep incline down to parched, jagged rock, lurid green bushes, and an unobstructed view of the vast winding valley.
“You like?” Maya asked.
“I like. It’s beautiful, but it’s not the place we spoke about.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She outstretched her arms and propped herself against the low wall at the patio’s edge.
“Sam, why is nothing ever good enough for you? Why do you always want more?”
“I don’t always want more, but what is the point of all this, of all our words, if after you wake up and leave in the morning, everything has gone back to zero when you decide to come back?”
“I told you to be patient. I do want the things we talked of, but maybe you want too much.”
“Too much? I just want you and I to start together again somewhere.”
“You want to run away from everything. Maybe we need to fight instead.”

We took a silent walk down through the valley to the town. The sun that was beginning to fall behind us cast our long shadows over the blanched, lifeless sand of the narrow path we followed. The spindly grey branches of flowerless trees cut at our skin and snagged at our clothes as we passed.
We stopped at the first restaurant we came to in town. It was late for lunch but we were served on the condition that we ate quickly and took what we were given.
The large dining hall resembled a service station canteen rather than a restaurant. The room was submerged under an after lunch mushroom cloud of cigarette smoke. The majority of the smokers wore a lot of Lycra and spoke too loudly, as though taking part in a disorganised shouting competition.
“These people are crazy. How can they ride up and down hills on a hot day like this and then come in here and smoke and drink so much?” I said.
“There is nothing to understand. They are just normal, Sam. This is what normal people do.”
“You say that like it’s something to aspire to. Is that what you want today, to be one of the normal people?”
“Maybe, Sam. Yes. I want normal. No more drama.”
The waitress dropped a plate of wet lettuce, tomato, and white asparagus onto the table between us.
“For fuck’s sake,” I replied.
Maya chopped off the end of the asparagus with her fork and dipped it into a small side plate of mayonnaise. I bobbed my head side to side like a boxer, offering her a crumbled, conciliatory smile. She reluctantly met my eyes with a short, empty look before going back to the salad.
I’d learnt to understand her eyes, to be able to decipher the needs and intentions within them that she was often incapable of putting into words. The long silences that we often shared spoke of the distances history and circumstance had put between us, but her eyes had always drawn me closer and sought to assure me that somehow we were working our way out of that silence towards a place where we would really be together.
In that restaurant, in that look, we had never been further apart.
“Why are you so angry with me today?” I asked.
She dropped her fork to her plate, concentrated on the table, and scratched her painted black nail along and through the red and white checks of the paper table cloth.
I left her alone and went through to the bar.
Espectacular y pintoresco were the words the local government information leaflet used to describe the town. I learnt that the name of the town came from the Arabic word for castle. The Moors were long gone, but the castle they had built stood strong over nine centuries later.
My attention was drawn to a red flyer with black lettering. In its centre there was the grainy image of a man with a handle bar moustache. The man was the 'Devil' and the flyer advertised his 'world famous' caves, Las Cuevas del Diablo.
Back at the table, Maya was picking at a dry piece of fish. Three squeezed out lemons rested in a collage around the plate. I showed her the flyer. She just shrugged and let it drop down to the table, one corner landed in the half empty dish of mayonnaise.
“I don’t care,” she said.

The Devil’s Caves burrowed through the upper part of the hill upon which the town had been built. The corridors were adorned with rusty bicycles, sewing machines, barrels and large wooden wheels. The individual chambers contained junk and the walls were bedecked in myriad photos of the moustachioed Devil with Spanish B and C list celebrities, and stills from what appeared to be his numerous appearances on daytime television shows.
“Maya, look at the devil with all of these 'normal' people. I’ve changed my mind, I want to be one too; they all look so happy and healthy.”
From across the darkened room, I caught her reflection in the centre of a gilded mirror. The top and bottom of her face were warped in the glass, her eyes clear and bright in its centre, their darkness shining in the dull light of the gold. She arched her right eye brow into its familiar V of contempt and walked outside to the terrace and the bar where the Devil was serving lemonade to two small children.
Out on the terrace the castle’s ancient tower watched over us, useless but proud. The lights were coming on in the retreat on the opposite side of the valley. The sapphire sky of the fading day was dwindling to dusk as it chased the sun to the west. The slither of what must at times have been a gushing river smeared a still black trail through the centre of the valley’s floor.

Across the cobbled road from the caves, an old cinema had been converted into a museum. In a large hall where the villagers of times past had sat and watched films, tables were covered in old postcards and Franco era stamps and coins. There were copies of the local newspaper from the Civil War, and on one wall the huge stuffed head of a black bull.
At the rear of the hall we climbed up a set of rickety ladders to reach the room that housed the old cinema projector, which rested dormant and magnificent, long empty of film and collecting cobwebs.
In the floor space before and around the projector, ancient farming tools were incongruously spread about. A long bladed scythe. A hand drawn plough. Pitchforks and spades.
“Feel how heavy these things are,” I said to Maya. “Imagine the power and determination you would need to make them work.”
“So what?” she replied.
“Do you not think it’s impressive how people used to suffer and fight just in order to survive?”
“No. I don’t give a shit about that. I’m happy we don’t live like peasants.”
“But life must have been more honest when it relied on these things. Now we don’t know shit. We have no idea where the things we use come from, or how they work. We just get fed things and accept them without question. Our lives are a blind leap of faith into science and technology that nobody understands but that we have all agreed to believe in without understanding why.”
“Sam, what’s wrong with you? You smoke too much. Why is it so hard for you to accept life? Why do you think you can get something different or special? You are not. I am not. Nothing is.”
“I don’t care about being special,” I told her. “But I’m not afraid to try and get something different; to want something better. I thought that was who you were too. And don’t talk to me about 'this shit life', Maya. A general’s grand-daughter has no right to be spitting out that line.”
“Fuck you, Sam.”
“Fuck me? You’re the one who needs to get your shit together. Tell me what the problem is, or what it is I’ve done to upset you, and I’ll try to make it right, but this has got to stop.”
“You didn’t do anything, Sam. The world is bigger than you.”

A goat was slaughtered for dinner.
There were not many guests staying at the retreat. A Swedish couple smiled a lot, but spoke no Spanish and excused themselves quickly after eating. Another couple sat directly across from Maya and I. The girl was dark haired and very petite. Her hair fell forward and covered most of her face, but not enough so as to hide her prettiness. Something about her face made me think I had seen her somewhere before, but she looked uncomfortable and jumpy, which made me hold back from asking her where it could be. The guy with her was tall and dark, broad shouldered with his hair pulled back tightly into a short ponytail. He was loud and made unfunny jokes that the Argentinians who ran the place pretended to laugh along with. On a couple of occasions I caught his bright green eyes looking at me a little longer than was necessary, encouraging me to join him in his good spirits. I flicked him a half-smile and took some bread and another tomato from the plate in the middle of the table.
Maya spoke to nobody and kept her eyes fixed on the plate in front of her. After another unnecessary roar of laughter from the guy opposite, she stood up without comment and left the table.
When I got back to our room, the lights were out and our single beds remained separated. Maya was sleeping with her face to the wall.
I sat out on the patio. The night sky was a black ocean of celestial light. It had shooting stars within it that through the dark like the dying embers of fireworks. Lower in the sky, beyond the castle and the town, whispers of cloud unfurled themselves into nothingness around the faded lustre of a red crescent moon. 
I didn't know shit about the things that existed up there. The diagrams and designs up in this sky were not symbols I had ever known or been taught. The night lights of my past had been street lamps, tower blocks, the buzz of a television screen from behind thin curtains, car headlights, the red numbers as they counted down on somebody else’s alarm clock.
There had never been the time, or the inclination, to look up at what there was above when the constant need was to see what was coming round the next corner, and to be aware of what might have been creeping up from behind.
I had always suspected the enormity of this place, but it was something that could be avoided, something that we had conquered. It was a looming presence that could be ignored safe in the knowledge that sleep would banish it and that in the morning the sun would have always risen.
In the darkest part of that night I recalled a recurring dream. This dream was a nightmare because there was something unknowable about the man who appeared in it. I had seen him many times and I knew we shared important history. I didn’t know his name or where he came from. The full realisation of who he was and what he represented was always just out of my reach, like a word or phrase impossible to grasp when needed the most. And the man was friendly, there was no malice in him, but he was always going and never able to give me the answer I needed. Perhaps that was because it was I who could never form the question. His face was full of compassion, pain even, but he could not fill in the blank. He left and in his absence there was the most profound emptiness. My bones would chill and I would be left paralysed with terror. Gradually the emptiness would fade and a new idea would take hold. A worse one. The idea that the man wasn’t important at all.

I stood up from my chair and opened the door to our room. A shallow strafe of light from the red moon trickled across the floor. Inma had pulled the two single beds away from the wall and together.

I was woken by Maya kneeling at the side of my bed.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
I reached out my right arm to find her face in the darkness. Her hair stuck damp down against her cheek. Her face was warm with tears.
“Sam, would you fight for me?”
“You know I would.”
“Would you kill?”
“Yes, but why are you talking like this? Calm down. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what to do. I feel so alone. I am afraid and I want everything to stop.”
“I don’t understand. Please, Maya, tell me what is going on.”
“You be strong, Crocodile. I’m so sorry. I let you down. You don’t deserve it. I didn’t know. I was too afraid and confused. I’m so sorry. You fight so hard, ok? Promise.”
“I promise, but I don’t understand anything. I can’t see you like this. Tell me what it is that you are afraid of. You never need to apologise. I’ll fight whoever you need me to.”
“I really do love you, Sam. I didn’t know this would happen. I’m so sorry for everything.”
She got into my single bed and we lay squashed together just like we had on the night we first met. She lay on her side and buried her head in the crook of my neck, her right hand resting over my heart. I held her tightly and pulled the wet hair back from her face. Her body shivered and jolted under the pressure of stemming her tears.
“Don’t let me go, Sam. Please don’t let me go.”

In the morning I found her out on the patio, talking quietly with the couple who had sat across from us at dinner the night before. The girl looked down as she saw me approach. The guy stood up and offered me his hand.
“Sam,” said Maya. “This is Iván and Maria, they were telling me about a walk we can take down to the river.”
“Encantada, Sam,” Ivan said.
Iván was less excitable than at dinner and barely fixed me with his eyes as he offered me his hand. His handshake was surprisingly weak given his athletic build and his palm was clammy.
Maria remained seated and offered only a little wave in my direction.
They left to pick up some things and lock their room. Maya smiled at me. She took my hand and pulled me down towards her. I sat down on the stool beside her.
It was a beautiful day. The sky was a soft, cloudless blue that shimmered with an intensity that verged to white above the town where the sun slowly rose into view.
Maya squeezed the end of my nose and playfully rubbed her palm over my face.
“Everything is going to be ok.”
“We need to talk about last night. I’m worried about you,” I told her.
“No need to worry, Crocodile. We will talk a lot later. Everything is going to be okay. I am sure.”

We set off up the road and came to a small village set around a pretty square. A few children stopped their ball game and waved as we passed. An old lady continued beating dust from a rug hanging across a line.
At the edge of the village we came to an unmarked fork in the road. Iván motioned for us to follow the road to the left. He then hung back as we passed while he lit up a joint.
He was an attractive man and looked good with the joint between his fingers, the sun reflecting in the sheen of his black hair. He looked like the part he was so obviously intent on playing but I wasn’t surprised to see that he failed to inhale the smoke that he brought to his mouth.
His weed had a tangy chemical kick to it as it burnt down. Still something inside me tingled at the thought of a taste and my eyes were drawn to the glowing red spark.
“Usted quiere?” He asked. “Sorry, Sam. Do you want?”
“That’s ok, I understand Spanish. Sí, quiero, gracias.”
I held out my hand to take the joint from him.
“Sam, no,” Maya shouted from a little way up the road. Iván stepped forward, blocking her path as she moved towards me. Maria put out her hand and caught Maya by the elbow.
“Tranquila, baby,” I said. “Just a little to balance things out. I need it after yesterday.”
Iván turned back to me, smiling. He rested his hand on my shoulder.
“Good, Sam. Enjoy yourself.”
The strip of asphalt road that we had been following came to an abrupt end. We stood at the edge of a dusty path that stretched out into a vast golden plain. In the far distance the horizon was an undulating blur of heat that split the endless blue of the sheltering sky from the baking earth of the world. We all exchanged glances and then turned to retrace the route we had followed.
Back at the fork we veered left. The path was a natural dusty one, uneven and dotted with rocks and stones of varying sizes, with trees guarding it on both sides. Two hundred metres in, the valley came back into view and the path opened up to our right into a wide plateau that reached out from behind the trees and then ended suddenly in a sheer drop. After the drop, the ground flattened out again before falling off and down as the valley’s edge.
In the rounded alcove between the drop and the edge of the valley, an old car stood perfectly upright on its nose. The paint had faded from red to a sun-bleached ochre. The windows were all missing, but the wheels were intact and the bodywork was undamaged, save for a slight indentation in the centre of the bonnet.
The sun got higher in the sky. There were no clouds. The path was steep and increasingly difficult to navigate. On our left was the rock face and a sharp incline to the valley’s peak. To our right a sheer drop of protruding rocks, vicious looking green brush and broken grey tree roots hanging at oblique angles.
My mouth was dry and I felt the need to concentrate hard on each step. My feet slipped out of my flip-flops. A red, clean line of skin showed where the plastic thongs chaffed and kept out the misty dust that covered the rest of my feet. Sweat ran into my eyes and down my back.
Something was wrong. I felt drowsy. I had been walking in a daze, my body moving forward only on autopilot. I needed water.
I looked back to see if Iván had anything. In his hand there was only a large object my eyes failed to focus properly on. He flashed me a smile and fixed me with his green eyes.
“Are you ok, amigo?”
I looked ahead to find Maria, who was carrying a back-pack, but the path had turned up ahead and they had both walked out of view.
We had reached the highest point of the valley, a broad strip of land that opened out to the void of its centre. To the left and right the world slalomed into the distance in thick brushstrokes of green. On the opposite side, a white building, a hermitage or small monastery, sat glistening under the sun. We were completely alone in a brutally sculpted nature. 
“Vamos, Sam. Go a little more.”
The words came out like an order. His eyes narrowed and the hint of a smile distorted his face. He carried a rock in his hand.
I rubbed my eyes and stepped forwards. My foot stubbed against the floor and my flip-flop fell off. Blood seeped from beneath the broken skin of my toe, congealing in a shallow ruby pool as it mixed in with the dusty ground.
I shouted something out to Maya. The words sounded garbled and not like my own. She moved towards me. Maria reached out to hold her back. They were both in tears and for a split second I was unable to tell them apart. I understood why I thought I had seen Maria before.
“Where are we going?” I mumbled.
“Do you still not know?” Ivan replied behind me.
Maya reached out her hand to touch my face.
“I’m so sorry, Cocodrilo. Please fight.”
I touched the tips of her fingers with my own and slowly turned my head to Iván. He was staring at the floor, pacing backwards and forwards across the open ground.
I understood what was happening. I understood and then the realisation of it disappeared immediately. I was incapable of connecting one thought to the next.
“I just need to drink some water and rest a little second,” I laughed to myself.
I walked forward to where the land jutted out into a peninsula that hung across colourless sky. I slapped my face hard and found solace in the lapis coloured ribbon the river cut though the valley floor a long way below.
I took a long breath and bent down to pick up a large stone from the floor. I brushed my fingers over its surface but didn’t have the strength to take it from the ground. It was hot to the touch and as smooth as skin.
I closed my eyes and fell forward onto my knees.
There was not a single sound. With wonder I savoured the emptiness around me. The light from the sun was incandescent and merciless. Everything equally and perfectly illuminated. Beyond the white building on the opposite, safe side of the valley, the sky was an infinite sphere of the purest blue.
“Sam, you have to fight. Please,” Maya shouted.
Iván flew at me. His right arm tore towards my head with the heavy rock as its extension. Maya’s scream had dragged me up from my reverie. I ducked to avoid his blow, my body instinctively giving way and falling down to the right. The edge of the rock clipped me above the left eye. I hurled myself up and at him before he had a chance to turn and come at me again. My body was too slow and weak. He stepped back, kicking me in the face as I fell down to the spot where he had been.
He punched and kicked at my body as I lay on the floor, struggling to get on my hands and knees to face him. He kicked me hard in the side and pushed me onto my back.
My eyes were drowned and blinded in the light of the blue sky. I felt him stalking around my prone body. There was an almost imperceptible scratch as the earth was broken close by and I knew he had taken a new weapon from the ground.
He stood over me. I could not see his face, but his shadow covered me in a soothing shade.
“It’s time, Sam.”
There was a snap of light. And in the new darkness he brought the rock down hard onto my face.
The world thundered and was blitzed in a shrieking burst of opal light. My head collapsed down to the ground. My left eye remained open, looking out across the valley to the white building and the blue void that framed it.
Iván’s shadow receded once more. I was kissed again by the brutal horror of the sun.
“Iván, no,” Maya shrieked.
She fell across my body, sobbing. I felt the warmth of her hands reaching out for but too afraid to touch my face.
“No, no, no” she cried softly as she lay across me.

“Hija de puta,” Ivan roared, as he dragged her up and away.
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Monday 11 July 2016

Pushkar Lake


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Friday 8 July 2016

Non-fiction: La Paz Collective

The Royal Enfield Experience




The Royal Enfield should be familiar to those who have ever spent a prolonged period of time in the parts of India that ebb and flow with the movements of her long-term travellers, artisans, pirates, digital-nomads, and hordes of Israelis. These beautiful old-school motorcycles are as much a part of the territory as chai, chillum, charas, and chapatti.

If you were in India and don’t remember seeing one, you didn’t stay long enough. Even if you don’t remember seeing one, I guarantee that you heard one of these little beauties tearing its way out of town, or ticking over sweetly as it awaited a passenger outside a restaurant or guesthouse.

I first tried to learn how to ride a Royal Enfield with my good friend Dante on the side of a mountain as the sun set somewhere near the top of the world in Upper Changspa, Leh. It was a wholly futile first effort at taming the beast and the next day I awoke at 5AM to take the weekly local bus to our planned destination. 12 bumpy hours later, a Spanish girl and I stood in dazed silence at the side of the magnificent Pangong Lake; a place that was to change my life forever.

Two years later I was back. I went to see Mukesh (a great man and hero of many stories) at his shop in Pushkar and bought a Royal Enfield Bullet for myself. I had a bike but didn’t know how to ride it, so a Palestinian girl, travelling with Mukesh and some other bikers, drove it down to Goa for me with her little dog nestled on the petrol tank. I took the train and then once they caught up with me in Arambol I learnt on the job exactly what it takes to become an Enfield rider.

Three mad months later I needed to escape Goa. Somehow I had learnt how to ride and with my Russian princess singing soothing lullabies in my ear on the back, we first fled south through the jungle to Karnataka and Kudle Beach for a 10 day rehab in paradise, and then flew like two loved up angels all the way back to Pushkar. It was a magical, unforgettable trip of a lifetime.

A Royal Enfield allows you to see this amazing country in ways that a quick flight or a 36 hour train journey never will. You can take off into parts where foreign skin is rarely seen and you are turned into a travelling circus upon arrival. The bike opens the door to another, realer India, and quite possibly a whole new you.

The trips below are for those who want to find out what the noise is all about and really discover something deeper about the country, the bike, and themselves. These are scenic routes designed for those adventurers who have the luxury of time on their hands, want to savour that great entity to its fullest, and have the capacity to process the great downloads of wonder that will surely come along their way on the road.

I have simplified the trips into stages which won’t all necessarily get done in one day. Sometimes you’ll just have to find the way for yourself because getting lost and making it back to where you were going, or ending up in a completely different destination all together is a large part of what doing something like this is all about in the first place- enjoy!


Arambol- Mahalabeshwar- Ellora Caves- Mandu- Udaipur- Pushkar: Arambol to Kudle Beach is a beautiful little starter ride that can be done in a long day, but this one is only for the fully initiated. The ride up the coast, once you’ve negotiated the weird little ferry north of Arambol that connects you to the mainland, is stunning and forever rising until you turn inland and head up even further for the strawberries of Mahalabeshwar and the amazing scenery in all directions around this quite bizarre hilltop town. You’ll then give the big cities of Mumbai and Pune as wide a berth as possible as you seek out the Ellora Caves and step back into a world long lost in fables and story books for children. You keep going because you have to get to Mandu and the most beautiful middle of nowhere that ever existed. Then, a little tired, you push on further north where the desert of Rajasthan and gypsies older than time itself await to welcome you home.

Pushkar- Bundi - Agra (Taj Mahal) - Orchha -Khajuraho - Varanasi:
This is a trip for serious culture vultures with a lot of stamina. Pushkar is the perfect jumping off point for any trip to India and the half-day ride down to Bundi is a good way to ease yourself into this marathon journey. After a couple of shanti days around the lake and old Maharaja palace in Bundi you’ll have a long cross-country slog to encounter quite possibly the world’s most beautiful building. There is little else to see in Agra other than this incredible piece of architecture and monument to love, but what more do you want? The ride down to Orchha is a gentle one and this old temple town on the banks of the Betwa River is ideal for a few days R&R. Rested up you’ll head to Khajuraho and its exquisite collection of Hindu and Jain temples, 10% of which are covered in the erotic art of the Karma Sutra. The excitement of this stop-over will power you through towards the mad heart of India and Varanasi, where for over 3000 years the fires of the burning ghats have not ceased sending the dead directly to paradise via the portal of the great Ganga River.

Vashist - Rohtang La - Baralacha La - Pang - Leh:
This is a ride into heaven so it’s fitting that you’ll start from Vashist which sits serenely in what is known as the Valley of the Gods. One last dip in the hot spring before you head out and the snow of the Himalayan mountain tops will quickly come into view as you reach Rohtang La. Rohtang literally translates to pile of corpses as this pass was part of the old Silk Road and people would always attempt to cross too late every year meaning that they were stranded up here with no route out in any direction. You will have no such problems as the road is now only open in the spring and summer months and you will be exposed to nothing more than scenery and views unlike anything you’ve ever seen before as you drive through Spiti Valley in the direction of Ladakh. There is only one way to follow at these heights and while the going is undoubtedly tough the sheer beauty of it all will keep you thirsting for more even though you are mentally and physically drained by the demands placed on you by the road. Beyond Pang you will make one final push over the world’s second highest road pass at Taglang La and then it will be relatively plain sailing as you drop down into the Indus Valley and follow the river to Leh, with perhaps a quick pit-stop at the incredible Thikse Monastery and a prayer of thanks before you roll up into Upper Changspa for a very well deserved rest.





 Unplanned Footnote: Last Saturday I was blind-sided off my bike and bounced across the floor on my face. I lost half a tooth, got a weird circular hole in the top of my head, bruised ribs, and numerous cuts and bruises on my arms, legs and hands. My passenger got a nice collection of bruises to accompany the fright of her life and messed up her foot pretty badly too. We were very lucky.
A life cannot be lived without risks, but your own and that of any passenger is massively rocketed up towards the limits of peril when you come to India and choose to explore it on a Royal Enfield.
Always be aware and never forget that you are riding a very pretty but not always reliable lump of metal around roads full of many people who genuinely have no consideration for the sanctity of your life.
I’m thankful just to still be here and my smile is bigger than ever, even if it is a little bit crooked at the moment.

Love the ride, but please be careful.
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Thursday 7 July 2016

Girl On A Wire, Main Bazaar, Pushkar


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Tuesday 5 July 2016

Poetry: Cherry Bleeds


DAY 1

wake up
have big meeting
cry in toilets
surf kiddy porn
fuck your wife
(don’t fuck your wife)
go to bed 
wake up
have some toast
attend church
walk round empty house
forget who you are
go to bed 
wake up
sign some papers
kill some people
masturbate
speak at black tie dinner
go to bed 
wake up
read sports pages
swim in the sea
eat
write for 10 minutes
go to bed
wake up
look out window
speak to no one
get picked up by mother
cut insides of arms with little knife
go to bed 
wake up
stand to attention
stare out at horizon
wish to not be here
play football with friends
go to bed 
WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP
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Sunday 3 July 2016

Sunset, Main Beach, Gokarna


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Friday 1 July 2016

Poetry: Red Fez

the coming insurrection


all my heroes are junkies.
visionaries,
holy and defrauded in rejection,
comatose on a lost highway to paradise.
sleeping dogs lie awake.
tempting night.
                mourning
knells at dawn:
automatic resurrection floods day into subjugation.
city is isolation peopled.
pre-paid advertisements of bought fears
moments
movements devoid of contemplation.
embryonic decimation of self.
silent bones of living dead chime in the half-light.
half-life.
this nirvana is a false and perishable commodity.
the ringing in your ears true;
a shrill echo from the abyss which has swallowed your soul.
open your eyes to the sky.
pale faced Selene draws brilliance from violet dusk to night.
howl at her.
hold her in the palm of your hand.
eat the sun.
beyond
within
whole worlds await
to devour you.
salute a single magpie.
you are privileged
a precious gift that can be beautiful.
shed doubt.
believe.
realise.
the new nature is green
brown purple
blue
and perfect.
we have surpassed our heroes.
the path before us is clear and determined.
small stones whisper entreaties as they scatter down from our mountain top.
the coming insurrection is now.
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