Goodbyes: Mark and Rebecca (and Aaron)

        I once knew this guy called Aaron who told me a ridiculous story about jumping onto a slow-moving freight train as it passed a station, and then climbing over the train and into the driver's cabin. The police were waiting for him at the next station, and when they angrily asked why he'd jumped onto the train, he replied: “I just love trains!”
        There's no way that can be true, but who cares I love it anyway.

        Aaron used to sit and drink vodka in the kitchen of the Melbourne Connection Backpackers Hostel most afternoons, until one day he announced that he was leaving for Darwin.
        “Are you coming back?!”, I asked, young and scared of losing my new friend in a city I was still coming to grips with.
        “NEVER!!” was his exaggerated reply, and he never did. And sometimes that's what happens – most of the time actually – friends come and friends go, but it's just like that song says: “Don't touch me baby, I'm extra spicy!”

        Hahahahahaha... yeah I don't know what that bit means either, but boy did it make me laugh. Okay.

This is my new favourite picture with my four-wheeled friend, The Rocker.

        Mark is another hostel guy, I met him at The Dictionary hostel in Shoreditch during my first few weeks in London and I immediately admired the abandon with which he seemed to live his life. He was 32 (or something? SORRY MARK!) and had spent the last decade or so travelling the world, with his base being the ski fields of Canada. He was also from Adelaide, and so we bonded over that rare coincidence – two hometown boys who both made it out into a glorious life of wandering poverty.

        The Dictionary was almost two years ago now though, and I hadn't seen much of Mark in London since I quit that 16-bed dorm for damper pastures. The Dictionary used to stage random 3am fire drills, evacuating a few hundred sleepy travellers onto the streets of Shoreditch to dodge buses until someone turned the toaster off, also one time a guy pissed on my bed while I was sleeping in it. It's hilarious, now.
        Mark and I always stayed in touch though, chatting here and there online. I remember seeing a picture he posted of a car flipped on its roof next to a quiet dirt road, with the caption, “Oops! Crashed the rental.”
        Turns out he just found the car like that somewhere in Croatia. Seeing things like that – little windows into distant friends' lives – is sometimes enough to make you feel connected again.

I am slowly learning to love watching what people do when I give them The Rocker and tell them to pose for a picture, it's such an unnatural moment. Mark chose to pretend it was some sort of Thumb/Burrito.

        He hit me up a few weeks ago and told me he was coming back to London, and we caught up a few times and reminisced on old stories. I love that about catching up with friends you haven't seen in a while: those memories are all in there, but the only way they ever get let out and dusted off are when you have someone else who was there to remember them with. That's why it's so important to keep in touch with those people who have been a part of different periods of your life, because without someone else who cares to share those memories with, they lose meaning, and disappear into the bottomless fog.

        Another one of those people is Rebecca. A British girl. We met in Bolivia in 2011 when she was 31 and had recently divorced from the man she spent her 20s with. I was 20, and in retrospect I'm sure my immature cockiness must have grated her – fuck, it's grating me right now... but we bonded over the place that Bolivia was. That summer was a hugely pivotal time in my life, and evidently in hers too, because she hit me up a few weeks ago upon seeing that I was leaving the UK soon and suggested we catch up to relive those moments over a beer.

I didn't even get The Rocker out for this picture with Rebecca, I fucked up.

        After a lot of half-assed fucking around we finally caught up last night; she's in London for a quick internship as she enters the last year of a law degree, and came to grab a drink at what I would loosely term a 'comedy night', that I was performing at. I reassured her that I often do better gigs than the carpeted attic we and the ten others sat in, but then quickly checked myself and re-reassured that I often do much worse ones as well.

        Every time you see someone, there is every possibility, no matter who it is, that this time may be the last time. But we never say goodbye like that, that would be insane – all tears and snot and shouting. Sometimes people say hello like that and it's disgusting – “OOOH MY GOOODDDDDDD! AAAAAGHHHH!!!”
        Everybody hates you.

        But in the last week I've said goodbye to two people who, in all probability, I will never see again. When you say goodbye to someone, it's kind of beautiful. It's like you're both admitting that to each other, at the same time, and you're both okay with it, because you had your thing and there doesn't need to be any more.
        It's rarely sad in those moments. If anything, it feels like a victory, because for every knowing goodbye, there are hundreds of relationships that have soured, or faded away without word, as the image of what two people first see in each other changes into something different.
        People change, but goodbyes are forever.
        “We did it!”, sighs that final hug.
        Perfect.

        I'll always remember Aaron for teaching me that lesson, as well as that train story which is fantastic. And I'll always remember Mark for reminding me of it by being the humble, unassuming image of a life well lived, and lived for people.
        Before last night I remembered Rebecca as the lady who once dismissed my Spanish Speaking Abilities at a group dinner, and who I secretly competed with for the rest of the time I was in Bolivia. That's right. LIKE A CHILD!!! Hahahaha I can't believe I did that to myself.
        Last night she brought her brother to the show, and while she and I were drinking and chatting, he sat mostly silent. Every now and then I'd turn my attention to him and comment on how quiet he was being, and a few times I directed stories at him because his comfortable silence was making me nervous. I'm so pitifully insecure it's hilarious.

        But at least I never felt the need to speak Spanish in front of them.
        YES! Baby steps.

        "Extra Spicy! Extra Spicy! OH! OH! He's EXTRA SPICY!!"

Peace, Taco.

PS Remember when this blog was about the Toy Van that I found? HAH! Don't worry, it's coming back soon.

Click here to read the next part - The Final Push

Brenda

        I can't remember what Brenda reminds me of. It's either one of the four Futurama movies, the one titled 'The Beast With A Thousand Backs'; or the Joaquin Phoenix/Spike Jonze film, 'Her'. It's not that she hasn't made a crystal clear impression on my mind, moreso that my memory is garbage.

        The first time we met was at the Department of Coffee store in Spitalfields Market, I was working there for the day, and it was one of her first days working for the company. Maybe her first day ever, even? Let's say for the story that it was. And she'd just gotten out of jail. And it was raining outside. And let's say it was... ooooh I don't know... a WEDNESDAY!!
        We did whatever we do at work all day: make coffee and chat, and then at the end of the day I said my goodbyes, and turning to her, said something to the effect of, “cya round!”
        “Are you working tomorrow?”
        “No, I was just at this store for today, normally I work at a different store.” With that, the news that we wouldn't be spending the next day, or any in the foreseeable future working together, she turned to jelly and let out what would be the first of many trademark Brenda Cries:
        “Aaaaawwww!”
        And my heart turned to jelly with her.

        That's the thing about this girl, she can melt your heart in a second. It's dangerous though – hearts melt because they feel special, and finding out that she does that to a lot of people... well that's why she reminds me of whichever movie she reminds me of... I'll remember in a second.

        In 'The Beast With A Billion Backs', an alien comes to Earth (look at this point I'm assuming you guys all know the basic premise of Futurama, right? Come on...) and spreads love to everyone by way of shoving one of it's infinite number of alien tentacles into their brain.... or something. There's a scene where Fry confronts his ex, who he broke up with after discovering she dated four other guys at the same time as him, but the confrontation takes an unexpected turn when, with the new perspective of the alien love-tentacle, he offers, “Why should you be satisfied with one man, when love needs to share itself with the whole universe!?”
        Futurama is kind of a parody though, or a satire... whatever it is, it doesn't take itself as seriously as 'Her'.

When I took this photo the gardener asked "what's with the car?", I replied "It's my to van and I like it." To which he said, "Good answer."

        'Her' is about hypothetical near-future AI technology that basically acts like a person without a body, like a human mind inside a computer. The AI minds evolve faster than their human counterparts can keep up with them, and while Joaquin Phoenix's human character remains in love with his computer-girly (Samantha), she evolves past the human limitation of finite love – she's in love with six-hundred and forty-one others at the same time as him. That all sounds so wanky and I can't believe that I just wrote it. I'm almost at the bottom of my can of Stella, sitting in my room, it's nearly midnight. I think I'm going to open another beer.
        The line that hits home here is this one, from Samantha:
        “...but the heart's not like a box that gets filled up, it expands in size the more you love.”

        Beautiful shit.

        So Brenda and I (or “Brenda and Me”... honestly I can't stop thinking about it) took acid on Wednesday. We took acid at midday, and then went to the Tate Modern. It was insane, there were moving colours (MOVING! IMAGINE!!), and paintings, and sculptures, and nowhere to sit down. Modern ART!! The coffee was adequate.
        At one point I started ranting, because as far as I'm concerned – and I stand by this point – art galleries should be places where people are driven to wild, visceral emotions, right? Art is supposed to be this crazy thing that inspires and scares and challenges us and whatever. All of the feelings. So why then, does no one in art galleries show any trace of emotion whatsoever?
        People just file past, straight-faced. “Ooh look at that, that's a bit of wood there, very angry, the artist was clearly in a state of turmoil blah blah”, SO WHY ARE YOU BARELY BREATHING THEN!?!?!
        I pretty much shouted exactly that – those words there in capitals. I shouted them in the middle of the gallery, and then Brenda ran away to let me calm down for a bit.

Before we took acid we had a nice brunch with poached eggs, and then we took this picture to get The Rocker involved.

        I had a difficult afternoon that day, but that's down to my own inability to get out of my head at times, and that's not really part of the story.
        When we got to London Fields towards the end of the trip, we met up with a bunch of mates, including Adam – boyfriend, last blog, no time for re-exposition – and he and I had the chat that we've been working up to for the longest time.
        I mean, it was more him having the chat at me, because I was beyond fragile and in a vulnerable drug-state, but everything he said was perfect.
        We both care about that girl a lot, and we both want her attention all the time, but for some reason, there's something about her that is conducive to close relationships with guys. That's why we've both been able to feel so strongly about her, and that's also why we can't let our own needy inadequacies get in the way of other people's connections with her. That's about as well as I can say it, and that's why Brenda reminds me of those two movies. That girl's heart is open, and no matter how many people she lets in, it doesn't get full.

        I guess, upon reflection, it's more 'Her', than Futurama, so I guess we can call that mission accomplished huh? I had a question, and I answered it.
        Brenda reminds me of the movie 'Her', you guys! The movie 'Her', starring Joaquin Pheonix and Scarlett Johansson! Directed by Spike Jonze! Released by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2013!! Rated R for language, sexual content, and brief nudity!!1!
        I'm actually the stupidest person.

Also some more things about Brenda: she's a super passionate barista, great photographer, and is humble as all hell. Sometimes she dresses like a Japanese Geisha, but other times she wears dungarees, because you gotta mix it up some.
        She's my friend, and that in itself is fantastic.
        BRENDA!!

Peace, Taco.

Click here to read the next part - Goodbyes: Mark and Rebecca (and Aaron)