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The yak furs are warm but musty. I am tired. The grass plains below spread from horizon to horizon. My breath steams in the early morning air.
I have far to go.
A dot high above me drops. A hawk.
It lands on my outstretch arm, its heft a comfort. Two dim orange eyes regard me from behind its blinkered cowl.
A note attached to its leg.
“You have one unread DM.”
But… but I’ve read it, I think. I’m certain I’ve read it.

The  monastery is quiet. The monks, serene, tend to their garden, to their bees.
I am welcomed.
Well… perhaps ‘welcomed’ is the wrong word. I am simply accepted - as existing, as being there, as seeking refuge.
I meditate. I heal. The calluses from my travels begin to soften.
I am sat in the garden and the peach blossoms are streaming down around me.
Cross-legged and eyes closed, I am finding my center.
A tap on the shoulder. I open my eyes.
A monk stands in front of me. He leans forward and breaks his 60 year vow of silence.
“You have one unread DM,” he says, his voice crackling with new use.
“I don’t,” I reply. “I have read it.”
But he is gone.

They had come at night. Quiet, at first, but without regard once discovered - tearing through the shōji screens of the house, blades out, cold and hard and terrible. Driven. Unblinking.
I lie propped against the wall. Bleeding. Unable to move. The back door is torn open. The moon is looking down on the bodies of my fallen enemies. 
I am cut. Deep wounds. Such rough surgery.
I am wondering whether it is too late to compose my death poem.
An arrow thuds into the beam above me. A figure, clad in black, scurries from a distant rooftop.
A small banner unfurls from the arrow.
‘You have two unread DMs.’
Oh for fucks sake.

I have to complete an English exam this weekend as part of an application for permanent residency in Canada.
It’s a serious exam that can take up to 4 hours. I have no doubt that among the other people taking it will be non-native speakers struggling with the vagaries and contradictions of the terrible bitch that is my native tongue. That has to be hard and somewhat terrifying. An exam to determine your entrance to a whole new country? Wow.
But. 
All I keep thinking is how amazing it would be to wear a monocle and top-hat throughout the exam and loudly and obnoxiously say things like, “OH ENGLISH YOU SCAMP” and “MOTHER-TONGUE, YOU FIEND, YOU ARE OUTDOING YOURSELF THIS FINE DAY.”
And perhaps at some point, when it’s clear the exam has reached its hardest part, I’ll go very quiet, before muttering, “Hmmmm, wow, this is actually pretty hard.”
And it will be then that I will produce from my lapel a second monocle.

We have a mouse.
“Will you be staying with us long?” I ask.
He’s lost in thought gazing out the window.
I cough. He blinks his black eyes, turns, thinks about the question.
“No. No, probably not… It’s so cold out there, isn’t it.”
He turns back and looks out at the falling snow.
I join him at the window.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”

So I bought that new game that all the nerds are nerding about (Skyrim) and, as with a lot of the fantasy-type games, you find yourself fighting giant spiders. And that’s kinda fine.I have a chronicled history of being entirely unworried by arachnids as a whole. But sometimes when you kill them, they drop money. Like, pieces of gold. This is deeply worrying. Because it leads to some questions. What was the hulking great hairy spider I just slaughtered intending to buy? Is there an entire spider-economy somewhere of which I wasn’t aware? What kinds of goods and/or services does a spider the size of a large dog need? And from whom are they getting this stuff? Other spiders? Men? Are they buying things from scorpions? Basically I’m just worried I may have killed giant spiders that were just going down to the corner-shop to buy milk and bread and maybe a paper. And I don’t want to be that guy.

So I bought that new game that all the nerds are nerding about (Skyrim) and, as with a lot of the fantasy-type games, you find yourself fighting giant spiders.
And that’s kinda fine.
I have a chronicled history of being entirely unworried by arachnids as a whole.
But sometimes when you kill them, they drop money. Like, pieces of gold.
This is deeply worrying. Because it leads to some questions.
What was the hulking great hairy spider I just slaughtered intending to buy? Is there an entire spider-economy somewhere of which I wasn’t aware? What kinds of goods and/or services does a spider the size of a large dog need? And from whom are they getting this stuff? Other spiders? Men? Are they buying things from scorpions?
Basically I’m just worried I may have killed giant spiders that were just going down to the corner-shop to buy milk and bread and maybe a paper. And I don’t want to be that guy.

I have been in Canada for a little under 2 months. I like it here. I am still learning and enjoying the types of days - crisp, bright days; cold, blustery days; still, slow days. Today the air was hazy and cold and scents seemd to linger a little longer - a girl’s perfume passing in the street, a waft of air from a local coffeeshop, the smell of oil from a nearby garage. This type of day - cold, with the scents lingering - isn’t specifically Canadian (it’s always been my favourite part of late Autumn in London) but it’s nice to know it’s here too, especially when I’m walking somewhere bundled in a warm coat.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that everything is still new most days - the tone of language, the weather, the city, the sounds. It’s a fun, joyous, dumb thing, everything being new.

I’ve been climbing for a month or so at a local climbing wall. I’m only learning. It’s fun - a puzzle each time, dependant solely on your own skill, and a nice endurance test - but one of my favourite things about it is watching my hands change. They’re worn a little more each time, sometimes in different places. It’s so nice to be learning something and to see it reflected in yourself physically, especially in small things - tears and rough skin and pink burns. It’s not like learning a new programming language. There are tiny, real, personal reminders. I find myself staring at my hands sometimes, on the bus or in the laundry.

It doesn’t feel like Christmas. That’s okay. It’s nice peering down roads at night here and seeing odd lights littering front yards, some a lurid green or explosion of vivid colours. It’s not something I associate with Christmas but I like seeing it.
Still, it doesn’t feel like Christmas.

I remember, for a week or so while travelling in Africa, being awoken each day by the Call to Prayer. I woke up a few times in Paris to the sound of Notre Dame cathedral. At my dad’s house in South Africa I’d wake up to the sound of the sea. I wake up now most days to the sound of the streetcar rumbling by - the click and clack as it moves along.

I miss travelling a little.

When all the memes were done,all the sandwiches eaten(ordered from take-out menushung on the doors of other restaurants);♩When all the songs were sung ♫and the trumangs textedand all our pets had their own accountsand tumblogsand podcasts;When we’d all married a followerand had finally tired of making fun of making fun of making fun ofourselves,All that was leftwas a horsetelling jokes. Click for high-res photo

When all the memes were done,
all the sandwiches eaten
(ordered from take-out menus
hung on the doors of other restaurants);
♩When all the songs were sung ♫
and the trumangs texted
and all our pets had their own accounts
and tumblogs
and podcasts;
When we’d all married a follower
and had finally tired of making fun of making fun of making fun of
ourselves,
All that was left
was a horse
telling jokes.

As I said to G when he mentioned his broken Kindle, I got the opportunity to see three broken Kindles over the course of the summer (photo of one above), each broken in its own way, and I think they’re beautiful things. They snap and break but parts of the screen still work, which somehow makes them feel wonderfully analogue, not simply an on/off digital device. I love the idea of it, too - that they’re shattered books or splintered stories. Suddenly they’re no longer gray rectangles that just hold your cloud-stored books, easily replaced and refilled with the same content when an upgrade is available or they stop working, just like everyone else’s grey rectangle. When shattered, they become unique, showing in part both the stories you own and the unique broken shards of an image betraying their own, specific accident. And it’s odd to think, too, that it’s an advance in technology that lets us do this - break a book, a story.Broken books. Click for high-res photo

As I said to G when he mentioned his broken Kindle, I got the opportunity to see three broken Kindles over the course of the summer (photo of one above), each broken in its own way, and I think they’re beautiful things. They snap and break but parts of the screen still work, which somehow makes them feel wonderfully analogue, not simply an on/off digital device. I love the idea of it, too - that they’re shattered books or splintered stories. Suddenly they’re no longer gray rectangles that just hold your cloud-stored books, easily replaced and refilled with the same content when an upgrade is available or they stop working, just like everyone else’s grey rectangle. When shattered, they become unique, showing in part both the stories you own and the unique broken shards of an image betraying their own, specific accident. And it’s odd to think, too, that it’s an advance in technology that lets us do this - break a book, a story.
Broken books.

Midnight in the laundry.I gather up my dirty washing and take the elevator down from the fourth floor. Late at night, when there’s no-one else using them, the elevators wait patiently on the floor they took you to until they’re needed again. Like the dogs you sometimes see outside coffee shops.The laundry is warm and rumbles. It feels like the apartment block’s engine room - somewhere deep in its innards, as if it were a large ship or space-freighter. Industrious but not industrial. Somehow homely. Safe.I sit for a while in the blue airport seats. Examine my hands, listen to the sounds of distant cars, think about the day. I watch the clothing tumble.Time passes. I stand, then, and walk out to the patiently waiting elevator. Click for high-res photo

Midnight in the laundry.
I gather up my dirty washing and take the elevator down from the fourth floor. Late at night, when there’s no-one else using them, the elevators wait patiently on the floor they took you to until they’re needed again. Like the dogs you sometimes see outside coffee shops.
The laundry is warm and rumbles. It feels like the apartment block’s engine room - somewhere deep in its innards, as if it were a large ship or space-freighter. Industrious but not industrial. Somehow homely.
Safe.
I sit for a while in the blue airport seats. Examine my hands, listen to the sounds of distant cars, think about the day. I watch the clothing tumble.
Time passes.


I stand, then, and walk out to the patiently waiting elevator.

The aging Captain (if he really was, as he claimed to be, a Captain) stood on one of the Yacht Club’s piers, a bag clutched in his skinny, calloused hand.“The tiny boats will change how we understand the ocean!” he shouted, as the Club’s well-dressed, brawny Security men tried to quietly drag him away.Onlookers peered at him through monocles or over the bridges of expensive sunglasses.The bag split in their struggles and the tiny boats spilled out, pouring onto the dock and into the lake, bobbing along as if happy with their sudden freedom.“My tiny boats!” cried the Captain, struggling in vain against the Armani-clad ruffians as they dragged him into the street.“At least let me retrieve my tiny boats!” Click for high-res photo

The aging Captain (if he really was, as he claimed to be, a Captain) stood on one of the Yacht Club’s piers, a bag clutched in his skinny, calloused hand.
“The tiny boats will change how we understand the ocean!” he shouted, as the Club’s well-dressed, brawny Security men tried to quietly drag him away.
Onlookers peered at him through monocles or over the bridges of expensive sunglasses.
The bag split in their struggles and the tiny boats spilled out, pouring onto the dock and into the lake, bobbing along as if happy with their sudden freedom.
“My tiny boats!” cried the Captain, struggling in vain against the Armani-clad ruffians as they dragged him into the street.
“At least let me retrieve my tiny boats!”

Working on a Saturday

The office, an old carpet factory, looms large and empty.
The corridors are long and quiet and freshly cleaned. I push the button for the elevator - wait and sip my coffee while I watch the numbers descend.
The elevator doors open and inside, in the corner, is a vacuum cleaner. On its own. I step inside.
“Going up?”
It, being a vacuum cleaner, says nothing.
We ride in silence to my floor. The doors open. I step out, turn back.
“Take care.”
The doors close. 

A piece of yellow police tape, cut free, drifts amongst the 8am traffic.
Touching gutters, brushing along against taxis, wrapping itself around parking meters.
Creating little crimes scenes with a kind of lazy affection.

Notes from a month spent offline: After days spent building steps and felling trees and hiking and digging, we eat huge meals. Our bodies become terribly efficient digesting-machines. So much so that one of us paused briefly at the end of his side of a particularly fierce debate to let forth with a long and vehement fart (as if to punctuate his argument.)It was rich. Triumphant. Melodic.It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.It sounded like an old, old elephant that wasfinallyfinallydying.There is a volunteer who, instead of swearing, loudly exclaims “Monkeys!” when something bad happens to him. I like to believe he actually blames a specific group of monkeys for his problems.“My first words were ‘bugger daddy’,” she tells me. “My family didn’t tell me until I was older. They’d always just told me it was ‘daddy.’”While trying to get dressed in my small tent, I turn and squirm and, hulk-style, rip a pair of underwear clean in two.The brief moment of incredible power is the highlight of my week.There are names are Ingi and þyri, pronounced ‘Inky’ and ‘Theory.’ He is large, bald, and incredibly muscular. He teaches kindergarten. She is quiet and wears strange serapes. They treat us like their children, scolding us in thick Icelandic accents.Inky and Theory.I could listen to beautiful Icelandic girls tentatively pronounce ‘windows’ all day. (“We-ind-ohs.”) (I think it’s the ‘ohs’ I like the most.)“He disappeared like birds die - no-one knew where he went.”After months of sunshine, it finally starts to get dark at night, and I see a car with its headlights on again. It’s a jeep, and it growls and swerves over gravel, its eyes blazing like some terrible predator. We spent time trying to prevent paths from becoming too wide or veering off where people have decided to wander off it.Desire lines.I spent a lot of my summer eliminating desire lines. I woke up this morning when a baby wagtail tried to perch on my tent. It fell, sliding down the canvas. I spent today digging holes and had lunch by a large glacial lake. I’ll play some guitar in a little while and then I might cook some dinner. Something with fish, maybe, and rice, and a thick, white sauce.I like my life.“I pray for soft soil,” she says in her thick Italian accent.“Huh?”“Soft soil. At the camp site, for our tents. I pray for soft soil.”That’s a nice prayer, I think.Later she says that she says she has to go because she has places to be. She emphasises the ‘be’. I know it’s simply because the idiom’s not in her native language but I like the idea that there are places that require her to be there. Like she’s fufilling some kind of agreement with a place that requires simply her existence there. Click for high-res photo

Notes from a month spent offline:

After days spent building steps and felling trees and hiking and digging, we eat huge meals. Our bodies become terribly efficient digesting-machines. So much so that one of us paused briefly at the end of his side of a particularly fierce debate to let forth with a long and vehement fart (as if to punctuate his argument.)
It was rich. Triumphant. Melodic.
It had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It sounded like an old, old elephant that was
finally
finally
dying.

There is a volunteer who, instead of swearing, loudly exclaims “Monkeys!” when something bad happens to him. I like to believe he actually blames a specific group of monkeys for his problems.

“My first words were ‘bugger daddy’,” she tells me. “My family didn’t tell me until I was older. They’d always just told me it was ‘daddy.’”

While trying to get dressed in my small tent, I turn and squirm and, hulk-style, rip a pair of underwear clean in two.
The brief moment of incredible power is the highlight of my week.

There are names are Ingi and þyri, pronounced ‘Inky’ and ‘Theory.’ He is large, bald, and incredibly muscular. He teaches kindergarten. She is quiet and wears strange serapes. They treat us like their children, scolding us in thick Icelandic accents.
Inky and Theory.

I could listen to beautiful Icelandic girls tentatively pronounce ‘windows’ all day. (“We-ind-ohs.”) (I think it’s the ‘ohs’ I like the most.)

“He disappeared like birds die - no-one knew where he went.”

After months of sunshine, it finally starts to get dark at night, and I see a car with its headlights on again. It’s a jeep, and it growls and swerves over gravel, its eyes blazing like some terrible predator.

We spent time trying to prevent paths from becoming too wide or veering off where people have decided to wander off it.
Desire lines.
I spent a lot of my summer eliminating desire lines.

I woke up this morning when a baby wagtail tried to perch on my tent. It fell, sliding down the canvas. I spent today digging holes and had lunch by a large glacial lake. I’ll play some guitar in a little while and then I might cook some dinner. Something with fish, maybe, and rice, and a thick, white sauce.
I like my life.

“I pray for soft soil,” she says in her thick Italian accent.
“Huh?”
“Soft soil. At the camp site, for our tents. I pray for soft soil.”
That’s a nice prayer, I think.
Later she says that she says she has to go because she has places to be. She emphasises the ‘be’. I know it’s simply because the idiom’s not in her native language but I like the idea that there are places that require her to be there. Like she’s fufilling some kind of agreement with a place that requires simply her existence there.

I’ve been offline for two weeks, working out in the middle of nowhere. Our bright orange waterproofs are made of thick rubber. They are only vaguely the shape of a man. I’d guess the seams were stitched by an industrial machine with a large needle. They smell like bouncy castles.Someone wrote ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ in the ash that covers the back windshield of the truck. I like to think of it as our Bokonism.  We stumbled across a Viking Rennaisance fair. One viking was smoking a Marlboro, another adjusting his hearing aid. They played the Macarena over the sound system. A tourist wandered by snapping photos wearing a t-shirt that said “Reykjavik Fucking City.”There are always those people who believe that being a leader is being the guy who walks the fastest, talks the loudest, or is the last to put on sunscreen.I turned 29 last week. I usually forget about my birthday right until it happens. It’s an odd feeling, realising you’re another year older - like feeling a gear slip in a mechanism of which you were only vaguely aware.I saw an old couple eating ice-cream cones in a gas-station restaurant near Borganes. They ate them delicately, discussing the ice-creams together. They reminded me of tortoises eating lettuce.There are golf courses everywhere here. It’s a very popular sport. Where once farmers bit deep into the cold ground, hoping to grow something, anything, to survive, men in plaid um and ah over which stick to use to hit a ball. (The wooden one, man. Always use the wooden one.)The soil is either rocky and volcanic - hard and small - or like clay - slick and brown and rich and fertile. Steam rises from odd cracks in the ground. The wind howls and runs screaming around the little huts we stayed in like some terrible creature that had been turned loose. This country feels like a place that God hasn’t quite finished making yet.We spent the last week building stone steps on the side of a mountain. We’d drive stakes into the ground and hit frozen soil a few feet down. We’d hit the stakes harder then, pushing them through, and from 6 feet away you could feel the force of each blow through your boots - like the land was resisting, or perhaps as if with each blow you were brushing up against some terrible power held in it.“Are you happy?” said the Ranger, talking about some work we’d just finished.“No.”“Is okay,” he said, looking down at our wooden steps before peering out into the distance. “Is okay to be happy.” Click for high-res photo

I’ve been offline for two weeks, working out in the middle of nowhere.

Our bright orange waterproofs are made of thick rubber. They are only vaguely the shape of a man. I’d guess the seams were stitched by an industrial machine with a large needle. They smell like bouncy castles.

Someone wrote ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ in the ash that covers the back windshield of the truck. I like to think of it as our Bokonism. 

We stumbled across a Viking Rennaisance fair. One viking was smoking a Marlboro, another adjusting his hearing aid. They played the Macarena over the sound system. A tourist wandered by snapping photos wearing a t-shirt that said “Reykjavik Fucking City.”

There are always those people who believe that being a leader is being the guy who walks the fastest, talks the loudest, or is the last to put on sunscreen.

I turned 29 last week. I usually forget about my birthday right until it happens. It’s an odd feeling, realising you’re another year older - like feeling a gear slip in a mechanism of which you were only vaguely aware.

I saw an old couple eating ice-cream cones in a gas-station restaurant near Borganes. They ate them delicately, discussing the ice-creams together. They reminded me of tortoises eating lettuce.

There are golf courses everywhere here. It’s a very popular sport. Where once farmers bit deep into the cold ground, hoping to grow something, anything, to survive, men in plaid um and ah over which stick to use to hit a ball. (The wooden one, man. Always use the wooden one.)

The soil is either rocky and volcanic - hard and small - or like clay - slick and brown and rich and fertile. Steam rises from odd cracks in the ground. The wind howls and runs screaming around the little huts we stayed in like some terrible creature that had been turned loose. This country feels like a place that God hasn’t quite finished making yet.
We spent the last week building stone steps on the side of a mountain. We’d drive stakes into the ground and hit frozen soil a few feet down. We’d hit the stakes harder then, pushing them through, and from 6 feet away you could feel the force of each blow through your boots - like the land was resisting, or perhaps as if with each blow you were brushing up against some terrible power held in it.

“Are you happy?” said the Ranger, talking about some work we’d just finished.
“No.”
“Is okay,” he said, looking down at our wooden steps before peering out into the distance. “Is okay to be happy.”

International Sign Language

Me, in terrible Italian: <Hi. I’m just a tourist. Do you speak English?>
Shopkeeper: Ah, a little. Si.
Me: Do you have any razorblades? For shaving? <mimics shaving>
Shopkeeper: Ah! Si, si. <gestures at large selection of Mach 5’s, blades with moisturiser strips, etc.>
Me: No, um. Razorblades. Like, uh… <mimics shaving, then slitting wrists with same imaginary item> 
Shopkeeper: Aaah! Si! Si! <gets some razorblades from behind the counter> €1.50!
Me: Thank you.
Shopkeeper: Enjoy!

I am travelling alone now for the first time on this trip, having previously stayed with friends or friends-of-friends. I like the feeling, though it’ll end soon enough.
(I call it a ‘trip’, but since I don’t have a flat to go back to, everything I own is in two bags I have with me, and I’m doing (a little) work as I go, is it really a ‘trip’? Aren’t I just… here, now?)
I’m in Luzern now, holed up in a hostel for a few days to do some freelance work.
I went for a run along the lake just after arriving. As I run along a gravel path by the lake, freshly green trees lining its length, a group of runners rounded a corner ahead. It was 5 men, each more of a clichéd Swiss man than the last - blonde hair, chiseled jaws, blue eyes. They ran almost abreast and in the same uniform of white shirts, black shorts, and white running shoes. The middle runner ran slightly ahead, the others forming a line just behind him. They weren’t intimidating - they smiled as they ran and seemed to be talking happily amongst one another - but they didn’t break formation for anyone coming in the opposite direction. As they ran past me (my chest stuck out and my belly sucked in, my face set in a grimace of what I hoped looked like vague disinterest), the leader inclined his head in a nod of exactly 15 degrees. No more, no less. A simple, quick gesture of acknowledgement, one runner to another.
I thought about them as I ran around the lake and wondered how different each of their lives were to mine. It helped pass the time. I imagine they wear tasteful, mechanical watches and starched shirts. They’re slow to anger but quick to defend their friends, and they’d be the first to ask a stranger to apologise for knocking over a lady’s glass of wine in a restaurant. Should the stranger not, and dare to insult the lady further, they’d be the last to start the ensuing fight but surely the first to end it. They’d not get hurt in the affray - not seriously, anyway - and any minor wounds inflicted on them would be caused by something dastardly or uncouth on the part of the stranger, like having a metal plate in his head or, being cut from a lesser cloth, simply exploding when punched by so just and earnest a human being. Overly stern fathers, dutiful husbands, firm Believers, constant runners. The kind of man who, in another time, would’ve made a good Paladin or Knight-errant. Somehow imbued with a healing nimbus and +5 against the Undead.
A girl smiled at me on the way back. A simple smile in the afternoon sunlight intended specifically for me. Uncomplicated. It made me happy.