Fan Gurl, Fansipan, Futility, Fires, Felines, Families, Funerals and The Future.

I have one official Fan Gurl. She sleeps with my sister, is mother to my granddaughter and for some reason her parents named her Hairy Rat, but that has nothing to do with her adoration. She thinks I’m hilarious, when in fact I am just honest. Her laughter at my comments is not a result of my sharp wit but my ability to say what she is thinking. Most of the time it’s purely because I have the gumption to utter the words in public. A subtle wink across the table is enough to let her know the comment was as much for her benefit as mine. The thing that connects us is that we Understand. Not just each other but existence in general.

According to people who have allegedly completed Degrees in Medicine, we are both crazy. So much so that the other day we went on a Pharmacy date so I could get some Valium for my back pain (?Seriously, what the fuck?) and she could get whatever they’re making her take. Sitting in The Pub before we did the walk, Fan Gurl mentions she’s just gotten off Valium and me strolling in with her might make the Chemist suspicious as to whether or not she’d convinced me to get a script. I absorbed this for a moment before suggesting that I go home for my Viagra prescription and we walk in holding hands. Poor Miss nearly pissed herself.

The thing is, we appreciate the futility of existence but are not willing to commit suicide because we’ve been to more funerals for that cause of death than any other and experienced the terrible grief felt by all connected to the poor soul who couldn’t take it anymore. The last memorial I attended (think Fan Gurl was there as well) was for an artist friend of ours who decided he’d had enough.
 Before that, I had to cross The Ditch and give a eulogy at my Nana’s cremation. A direct quote –

     “Unfortunately, this is not my first funeral, but it’s the first in a decade that has not been convened as a result of suicide and for that I am ashamedly grateful”.

Not wanting to bring the mood down any further, I didn’t mention the decade old pre-suicide epidemic cremation was the result of murder. Or that the ones prior to that had also been suicide. If truth be told, I have only been to three funerals that haven’t resulted from a needless end to someone’s life. Both of my Grandmothers lived long lives and in both cases were seen off by all but one of their children. The other was a kid I went to Primary School with, he died of Leukemia. The doctors did all they could, but it didn’t work. I’ve always felt guilty for not being nicer to him.

Fan Gurl and I are no different to our friends that decided ending it all was the only option. I’ve been close on more than one occasion. I won’t comment on Fan Gurl, she’s a grown woman and can do it herself if she wants. What separates us from our peers is stubbornness. There is no frikkin way we are giving the people who don’t like us the satisfaction of our deaths. We are both graduates of The School Of Not Pissing On Your Opponents When They Are On Fire But Getting Pissed And Dancing On Their Ashes Once They’re Burned. (I understand that’s a bit of a mouthful, from now on please refer to it as TSONPOYOWTAOFBGPADOTAOTB).

Being distinguished alumni from such a venerable institution allows us certain privileges when it comes to matters of social importance. While Fan Gurl uses her fiddle to foster frustration amongst The Great Unwashed, I’m forced into The Cave to type in the hope that some part of the message gets through.

“Thoughts and Prayers”, already ringing hollow, will become the carrion call of this summer. The supercilious reaction of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to the undeniable fact that close to the whole country has been on fire for weeks is a cause of concern. Not only for those people who lose loved ones and property to the fires that are recognised by scientists, firefighters and farmers alike, as the result of human influenced climate change. But more importantly, for those families and communities who have been ravaged by fire that start losing people by their own hand. I don’t want to be the one to point it out, but Australia must be prepared for a spike in Rural suicides.

It is well recognised that Rural and Regional Australia have a disproportionate suicide rate compared to the major Urban centres. Couple that with the worst drought since Europeans started taking records and throw in a few fires that destroy everything you had left after destocking or not planting a crop this year. This will not be a happy summer in The Bush. The Bureau are predicting rainfall at levels of bugger all to none, while informing us that any storm cells forming over or moving through drought affected areas will likely be dry and cause more fires.

Mental health has begun to be something that some people feel comfortable speaking about openly, yet it remains an issue of little redress when it comes to government policy. I struggle to begin with which failure should be addressed first. The lack of post service care for Veterans is well documented, along with their suicide rate. Young people (particularly men) are disproportionately represented. As are those from Indigenous and sexually diverse communities. Older women are finally being recognised as the fastest growing and one of the most vulnerable demographics to experience homelessness. An increase in suicides of women aged over fifty-five would not be a surprising statistical outcome moving forward. Shocking, Yes. Surprising, NO.

We. And I speak of the nation known as Australia, is nothing more than an example of abject failure when it comes to addressing the ever growing epidemic of mental illness in this country. From the Stolen Generations, to the victims of institutional child abuse and the outright illegality of indefinitely detaining people exercising their fundamental human right to seek asylum.

What was once seen as a shining light of all that was good and right in the world has had the sheen rubbed off to expose the dirty, selfish core of these colonies, yet the powers that be don’t seem to give a shit.

That we are suffering, and killing ourselves at a greater rate than any previous period in our history should be more than enough impetus for our elected officials to wipe the beer from their chins, remove their phallus from whatever staffer is looking for a job that doesn’t exist and do what they are paid by ordinary taxpayers to do. (Don’t let me get started on Big Business not paying tax, considering they’re responsible for a decent whack of mental illness issues, we’ll be here all week).

This Burnt Country. A Land of Blackened Plains. Of Scorched Mountain Ranges. Of Droughts and… well, let’s wait and see. I fear her fiery horizons. I miss her jewel sea. No beauty, just terror. A ruined land is all I see.

Apologies to Dorothea MacKeller. My Country is one of my favourite poems, but I struggle to see how it could have possibly been penned if attempted in the climate crisis we are experiencing now. However, it is at times like this that we must turn to the arts to provide some respite and perspective to what is being experienced more broadly. Sitting to right of my monitor is a printed copy of Anthony Lawrence’s brilliant piece,

The Central

Bus Station,

Beer Sheba

I read it most days when at the keyboard deleting sentence after failed sentence. There is something beautiful about its simple honesty. Its tone resonates with me.

I’ve never set foot in Palestine; therefore, I cannot speak for the location or customs that inspired the tome. I can however relate to the mood. Having wasted my fair share of time waiting in foreign transport hubs for buses and trains, the picture his words paint in my mind centre me. Not for the reference to warm whisky, rum is a much more appropriate tipple in such a climate, but beer is clearly the best choice. Nor is it the revision of poems and cheap cigarettes. Of course I’d be smoking the cigarettes, but I rarely write poetry and would probably be stuck trying to compose some rambling screed such as this.

It is not even the nonchalant soldiers taking their rest in the shade. I have had enough rifles pointed in my general direction to not be concerned unless someone is pulling a trigger at the same time. Being drunk and having the sun burn a hole in my face is nothing new to me. Northern European ancestry growing up in Australia pretty much guarantees that if lung or liver cancer don’t get me first Melanoma probably will. Could just have another heart attack or stroke, but I’m getting off point. What really brings me back to reality when I read the poem is not until the final paragraph, but before we get there, the elephant in the text must be addressed.

If I had some republishing rights or even knew who the bloody hell owns the words these days I would have just printed it in full and let it speak for itself but as this is not the situation, I must paraphrase and will apologise in advance for any perceived insult that may be inferred by my thoughts and reflections.

Lawrence, and we are assuming it is Lawrence, as the poem is written in first person, goes for a little wander in the desert when the soldiers position themselves nearby to have a snack and cool off for a while. He recalls that a battle had once been fought in the hills surrounding him. He is correct. More than one in fact, but he is referring to the last successful cavalry charge in a modern military setting. The 4^th Light Horse Brigade stormed the Turkish lines at dusk on the 31^st of October 1917, and overwhelmed their opponents, helping to break the stalemate in The Middle East. It’s just another significant contribution that Australia made to a war that we were only fighting because the bloke on our coins was having a tiff with his cousin. Again, I digress, but stick with me. Fan Gurl wants you to.

So, Anthony buggers off to walk in the sand and comes across a bunch of old folks who’ve been out picking wildflowers. They tell him it’s been eight decades since such a crop has been seen. (There’s a little continuity screw up coming but you can figure that one out for yourself, just remember I first read this poem in the early nineties). One of the group tells him that it is a result of “Days of rain and prayer”. Notice that and spot the difference with the bullshit rhetoric spouted by our Piss Poor Pentecostal Pretend Prime Minister – “Thoughts and Prayers” is his preferred method of placating the masses when it comes to his ineptitude and that of his predecessors regarding the Armageddon caused by global inaction on climate change.

Those elders were praying because it rained. Not for it, in some over publicised, scripted media event as Scott Morrison is wont to do. The outright hypocrisy of the man (and I struggle to call him even that. It shames the rest of us, we’re in the shit already) falsely presenting as a compassionate Christian while protecting a charlatan who controls a cult that won’t admit its guilt regarding child sexual abuse. Then he offers up nothing more than bullshit platitudes for humans whose lives have been ruined by those who claim to represent the god he prays for rain to.

As he dances around in his Happy Clapper Club; denying responsibility for the continued suffering of the citizens he is supposed to be leading and caring for, the desperate souls seeking refuge in this country who thought a person who claims to be a follower of Christ would have a shred of Christian compassion, the continued subjugation of the oldest continuous (who should be, by default, the most respected) culture on this planet and the whole country on fire by the end of November while our “Pacific Family” slowly drown. The PM’s private thoughts will be focused on how quickly he can get home, whip out his Bible and furiously masturbate while reading Revelation.

I’ve already apologised in advance, but I feel I must once more for placing that image in your head. Just be glad this rant isn’t having a go at Barnaby Joyce. Shit. Sorry. That was unintentional. Anyway, back to the poem.

The woman who had informed Lawrence they had prayed when it rained, picks a flower from the desert sands for him and he threads it through a button-hole in his shirt. He notices a faded tattoo on the woman’s arm. He has nothing to say to her, nor her to him apparently.

This is where I can centre myself. Survivors of real tragedy are the truly enlightened. I have only met one person who I can say, said more to me without speaking than every educated eloquent orator that has crossed my path.

I was in Hue, Viet Nam, and figured a moped tour around the DMZ would be a good tourist thing to do. Arriving late, still drunk from the night before and floating in post-coital bliss. My inability to start the bloody bike and shooting straight through the first red light I encountered only served to convince the guide that I was but an accident waiting to happen. After a few stops at bunker complexes and a couple of temples, maybe an old university or palace – I don’t really remember, or care – where I was able to load up on enough soft drink and tobacco to operate the vehicle normally, things picked up.

We arrived at Thien Mu Pagoda late and my companions all seemed a little bit worn out by the whole experience. I didn’t know any of them beyond the few I had been unfortunate enough to be forced into explaining how being Australian is an appropriate response when deflecting questions regarding how one can fall off a mountain, survive sub-zero temperatures and trek themselves out of a foreign jungle less than a week prior to their current activity.

Lighting a cigarette and walking behind the main building while shaking my head as they ignored the signs in multiple languages politely asking that shoes be removed before entering the temple, I acquired a shadow. Oblivious of my escort I headed for what I was really there to see.

In a non-descript shed toward the back of the compound is the Austin Westminster sedan that Thich Quang Duc drove to Saigon in June of 1963 before self-immolating in front of the Cambodian embassy. If you happen to be the only person on earth to not have seen the photo (Credit - Malcolm Browne, AP.) pause for a moment and look it up. You got it? Yeah, that one. I pinched out my smoke and put it in a pocket before approaching the car. I didn’t touch it but tried as best I could to see through the windows while attempting to imagine what the knowledge of your imminent suicide would feel like. Having faced my own mortality head on only a few days ago, the monk’s fortitude was both humbling and admirable. Retreating to a respectable distance, I bowed thrice as is Buddhist custom, sent a few words of thanks via The Universe and turned back to whence I had come.

I notice my companion at almost the exact time I catch sight of the guide shooting daggers in my direction waiting for me to re-join the gaggle of gits. The Monk gestures in roughly the same direction with a slight movement of his head. We fall into step as we near the entrance to the pagoda. A subtle brush of my elbow is enough for me to know that I must pay homage in the temple proper. Seating myself on the steps, I remove the Vietnamese jungle boots I’d picked up in Hanoi. My new friend gestures at them. ‘Army’ I say. He nods and waits for me to place them to one side before touching my shoulder and shaking his head to indicate that removing my socks is unnecessary.

Making my way toward the obligatory statue of a Buddha, I am detoured to the collection of unlit incense. I take one stick but am handed two more. The monk smiles at me and bows. I return the courtesy and, confused, light all three before going through the motions of placing them in the bowl positioned in front of the idol for that very purpose. Turning in preparation to leave the shrine, I push some Dong into the donation box. I didn’t bother to count it but from the impressed reactions of the Vietnamese, it was probably more than I’d paid for all of my accommodation up to that point. The Monk smiles once more, takes me by the elbow and leads me back to the front stairs. He waits as I sit and re-lace my boots.

The guide seems less impatient, observing my interaction. I stand and The Monk finally breaks his silence by asking where I am from. ‘Australia’. He smiles and extends his hand. I shake it. His left hand is added to the embrace. I bring mine forward to replicate his action. For the first time in my life someone looked into my eyes.

Not at them, in them, or dancing around them.

Into Them.

His left hand shifts to mine and he taps The Bracelet on my wrist. ‘Sapa’ I said. He nods before turning my right hand that was still firmly in his grasp. My little finger, still taped to its neighbour, not having set after only a week. He looks back into my eyes. ‘Fansipan’.

There is the briefest pause before he bursts into laughter. He releases my injured appendage before slapping me lightly on both shoulders. Stepping away from me, palms pressed together, he bows.

Deeply.

I am shocked at the level of respect he is displaying and can do nothing more than attempt to duplicate his action. When I realise he’s resumed an upright position I follow suit. He acknowledges my guide who’s managed to edge himself into our radius. The man bows to The Monk, who slightly dips his head in response. The guide thrusts some money into The Monk’s hand, and from nowhere a minion appears before scurrying off with the notes. Once more, a hand is extended, and I take it in both of mine. Again, he looks into my eyes, smiles and in unspoken unison we tap each other’s right shoulder.

Walking away, I realise I have just met the first truly Enlightened person in my life. People speak of the feeling when in the “presence” of The Dalai Lama. Having never met His Holiness I cannot attest as to whether what I had experienced is comparable but as I got further away from where he was still standing on the steps watching me leave, I become aware that I had been in the company of a soul who knew exactly what they were going to do when their mortal husk finally failed. The hairs on my arms started to rise, but I was calmer than I have ever felt in my life.

The guide was following me, a couple of steps behind, in what felt to me, like deference. When we were well out of earshot he asked what The Monk had told me. ‘A Lot’.

‘You very lucky man, he only speaks to other monks, what did he say?’

I looked back at The Monk. He waved, placed his palms together and bowed once more. I again mimicked his actions, the guide almost prostrated himself, none of the group showed any deference or respect. ‘Was he in Saigon with Duc?’

‘Yes, they were friends'.

Starting the moped, I look back one last time, but The Monk has disappeared. I lead the convoy back to Thu’s Café on Two Wheels (unpaid plug, if they still exist), pausing only at intersections to look over my shoulder for directions. When my guide catches up after I’ve already sat myself down and opened a beer he goes to his sister and excitedly explains the day’s events. Thu comes over to my table with a fresh beer and asks if it’s true The Monk spoke to me. Her brother loiters at her shoulder. I confirm his tale. she also asks what was said to me. ‘He asked me where I was from’. They both know my nationality, they found it out last night when I was asked to tell my tale of falling off The Mountain.

‘You spoke to him’ her brother insists.

I don’t deny this fact. Pointing at my boots ‘Army’. My chest ‘Australia’. The Bracelet ‘Sapa’. The finger ‘Fansipan’. Thu had seemed the sharper tool from the outset, she looked at me, waved away the proffered Dong and returned to the bar. Confused, her brother followed her, to be educated in hushed tones (unnecessary. My Vietnamese is pretty much restricted to being polite when ordering food and drink).

The Monk didn’t need to hear my story, nor did he desire to. He had seen more trauma than any person should ever have to experience. He, however recognised that part of me is still stuck edging along a narrow cliff with nothing but clear air separating me from the rocks, several hundred metres below. He was also aware that another part had been in The Jungle for years before I physically set foot in it. The Universe had spoken to me, that night when I stared at The Milky Way, alone and freezing. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but The Monk was a conduit.

He Knew.

He Knew that I’d heard the message but hadn’t listened.

The next day I caught the bus to Na Trang.

I haven’t returned to Hue since.

What took me more than a decade to realise is, in my opinion, eloquently summed up by Lawrence when he leaves the woman and returns to the station. He tries but fails to remove from his memory what he has just seen. At risk of being sued for reproducing a part of someone else’s work without formal consent, I’m tired, half drunk and he says it better than I could –

… - anything to stop

the details of a letter and six

green numbers from entering my head.

But the cannons and the soldiers

lounging over their guns make this impossible.

I polish off the whisky, and take the flower

apart – a stem and six faded petals: J579219

As with The Monk, Lawrence’s Holocaust survivor is able to remain silent while still transmitting the horror and grief of the Hell they had lived through (I know Hell is not held to exist in Judaism, but I think even the most hardcore Zionists can accept that analogy).

When I returned from my third tour of Viet Nam. I don’t want to cause offence to Veterans, but I refer to my trips to SE Asia as such because that place seriously wants to kill me. Fansipan was its first real attempt. Laos had four cracks at it, first when the pilot skewed the plane 45 degrees to port when landing and nearly took us off the runway. A few days later, I stopped in my tracks and looked at my feet. There was a bomblet an inch away from my right boot, advising my lady friend of the situation we backed up and went off to get a feed. On returning to our shack I nearly stood a snake the locals call “Johnny Two-Step”. Waking to a fever that averaged 38.5⁰C and doing your best Exorcist impersonation from both ends of the digestive track is not the greatest situation to find yourself in when stuck on an island in the middle of The Mekong.

Fast-forward to Cambodia where a different lady friend managed to fracture my skull after driving her car into a concrete traffic divider, flipping the thing, crushing the doorframe into my cranium and leaving me with recurring flashbacks every time I sit in the front passenger seat of a car.

I could go on to detail the time I was almost thrown in prison at Hanoi airport because I didn’t look anything like the bloke in my nine year old passport, but I’ve written about that before and if you haven’t gotten the point by now, find someone to explain it to you.

Anyway, I had a stroke. At least that’s what I call it. Like most Australian males I don’t seek medical treatment when I probably should. I didn’t do it when I had my heart attack and played my whole senior year of rugby with a broken scaphoid. “Rub some Dirt on it”.  “Walk it off”. It could have been some other type of seizure, epilepsy perhaps. I had seizures when I was younger after huge nights on The Drugs, but this was different.

The morning we flew out of Hanoi, I noticed an odd bulge around the scar from when the screw was placed into my left wrist. Moving The Bracelet and it’s younger sister I’d acquired on my second tour, I massaged, what I now believe was a blood clot, until it dissipated and quickly forgot about it. With my only contact in Singapore out of the country I spent a solo evening by the river until that day’s Monsoon hit. Think on that for moment Australia. Remember when it used to rain? Not Cyclones or floods. Just rain.

So, I got back to Brisbane. Opened my door. Said hello to the cat. Set the laptop up for some music while I rested until The Pub opened and rolled a joint to help facilitate the process.

Then my nose started bleeding. My whole body began to shake, and my vision blurred.

Somehow, I managed to text my housemate asking him to call before he came home and scrawled a note that I placed in front of The Cave door telling him not to call an ambulance – I didn’t want to be resuscitated. Smashing a last will and testament onto a blank word document and concentrating as hard as I could, wrote what I thought was a legible representation of my password.

Blowing as much blood from my nose as possible, I plugged my left nostril with toilet paper and lay on my back, preparing, once more, to die.

When The Universe spoke to me as I lay, staving off frostbite at the foot of Fansipan, it did so through the medium of The Milky Way. With no such luxury available due to me being prostrate on my futon in The Cave, it needed to pick up it’s game.

Now I’ve taken drugs in my life. I make no secret of that and I’ve taken many of them. I’ve even taken the crap that doesn’t have a street name yet because some chemist mate of your dealer only invented it last week. Most hallucinogens don’t make me hallucinate. Mushrooms are shit. Best they ever did was make a yellow light look slightly more yellow. Acid is fun. I’ll tell you about seeing a Gnome at Woodford another time. 2CB and 2CI and the others are frikkin weird, but the undisputed champion of hallucinogens is DMT.

Apparently, the chemicals released when you consume DMT are only produced naturally when you are born, and when you die. I can tell you. From experience, that when you are actually on the cusp of dying, what your body does on its own, exposes human manufactured drugs for the pale imitations they truly are. I’ve seen some weird shit on DMT, but an actual conversation with The Universe is a fully immersive experience. All of your senses are affected, and you realise the bullshit about a sixth sense isn’t nonsense at all. It’s YOU. Your sixth sense is that voice that tells you not to do something stupid before you do it anyway. It’s that feeling you get when you know you are in a dangerous situation. And it’s what enables a frank and direct discussion with The Universe.

Before you get on your high horses accusing me of being on some kind of religious or spiritual bent, please remember I am technically an Atheist, philosophically a Buddhist (not a religion, by the way) and politically an Independent. Call it what you want. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I spoke to God, Allah, Gaia or any other magical sky fairy.

What first struck me was the colours. A childhood on a Pacific Island, Camping in The Outback when I was a bit older and the night in The Jungle had provided me with magnificent vistas, but nothing compares to what The Universe really looks like. It’s none of that bullshit you hear about seeing your life flash before your eyes, but you definitely get the feeling that you are leaving your body. And that is fucking confronting.

The convulsions get worse. You are freezing whilst drenched in sweat. You smell burning nuts and remember that is a sign of stroke. There is a metallic taste in your mouth and all sound disappears. This is how you know that someone is full of shit when they say that one of the sky fairies “spoke” to them when they had a near death experience. You hear nothing. It is probably the scariest aspect of the whole thing.

When one converses with The Universe it is not in a human construct of language. It is more a complex subliminal exchange of ideas. You’re reminded of what you’ve stuffed up, how you might be able to fix it and what you’ve done well. And then, in my experience at least, it tells you how much time you’ve got left and thumps you back into your mortal vessel. Rolling over to cough/spit the blood that had almost drowned you, the cat, who has been by your side for what you discover to have been three hours, looks at you with genuine concern in her eyes.

Stumbling to the bathroom, collecting the housemates warning as you step over it. You scrunch the now useless note into a ball. It finds its way into the bin followed quickly by the hardened plug of paper from your nose. A cold shower is run. Partially due to the heat but more importantly to close the capillaries in your nasal cavity. Expelling the dried residue, the flow of claret begins again. It takes several minutes before the water can be turned off. You struggle to dress as your feline friend frets around your feet, but you manage to in the end. Grab the first beer from the six-pack you failed to start, thanks to the seizure, and walk out the front door.

Your pussy follows you of course. She will track you to the convenience store at the bottom of The Hill like she always does, before getting frightened and running home. You spark the joint you didn’t have a chance to smoke earlier and chat with the cat until she takes her leave. Turning onto a side street you know is not frequented by police due to speed bumps, the beer is cracked and consumed before returning to a main thoroughfare. Three corners before walking through the front door of The Pub.

Dougie is working. He welcomes you back, asks how the trip was, etc. as he pours you a beer. ‘Yeah, pretty good. Think I just had a stroke’.

‘Shit. Seriously?’ As he places the lager on the bar.

Dwell on that for as long as you want but I feel as if you may curious as to where Fan Gurl fits into this rambling rant. The simple answer is, Everywhere. Considering I’ve already reproduced a section of Lawrence’s work and bastardised MacKeller’s, I may as well quote the late Prophet – Hunter S. Thompson

…but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge

…The Edge…

There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

The others – the living – are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came to choose between Now and Later.

I find myself agreeing with Dr Thompson’s opinion on most topics he bothered to invest the time to formulate one on. Except his claim that The Great Gatsby was the best novel written by an American (it’s To Kill A Mockingbird if you’re playing along at home), and the implication in the above quote that those who have gone over The Edge are by default dead is one that I take personal umbrage with. I appreciate that he was talking about riding motorcycles, and he does continue on to recognise the connection between LSD use and motorcycles riders at the time. So, I’ll take whatever leeway I can get.

The thing is, both Fan Gurl and myself have gone over The Edge and lived to tell the tale. We are not alone in this. But Fan Gurl knows that she’s been over The Edge. Most other people aren’t aware. I showed her the first few paragraphs of this piece, thinking she might have been offended that I’d called her crazy.

I asked.

She responded.

‘I’m on an injection for it. I’m as crazy as they get’.

This is what sets us apart. Not only do we recognise that we are crazy (if a person denies it, call the people in white coats -- they’re a proper nutjob and need help), we celebrate it. We joke about it because we know it is part of us and it ain’t goin nowhere. I don’t know if this a uniquely Australian phenomenon or something that is common globally for those of us to be listed on a Government register as a certified loony. I prefer The Australian argument mainly because I’m a parochial prick but also because we seem to be the only country on the planet that manages to laugh about our misfortune.

Some bloke has his house flattened in a cyclone. ‘Yeah, got a bit windy didn’t it?’

A woman who has saved nothing more than her children and the pets from a bushfire that destroyed everything they owned. (Laughing) ‘We forgot the dog food!’

Family whose house has been inundated by flood water ‘We drained the pool because of water restrictions. Just got filled for free’.

It is not just the distinct Australian acceptance of our lunacy that binds us. (Both of us know plenty of Australian lunatics we will cross the street to avoid and a few more that either one of us would’ve been conveniently looking in the opposite direction of as they were getting their arse handed to them. Crazy people make poor witnesses in court anyway). It’s that Fan Gurl and I have both spoken to The Universe.

We discussed it once.

I had slept the night in my room at the sister’s house and while she was having a shower before the three off us relocated to The Pub, the conversation with Fan Gurl quickly turned to our mutual craziness. A common topic, but one we rarely get the opportunity to discuss between just the two of us. We reaffirmed our commitment to not killing ourselves quickly. Somehow that led me to telling her about my stroke and subsequent chat with The Universe. It had happened years before Fan Gurl became Fan Gurl, she knew me back then but hadn’t stuck her hand in the radioactive Fan yet.

Post transformation, as I told her this tale she was more intrigued than had ever seemed before. Since she became Fan Gurl, she’d laughed whenever I’d questioned someone’s right to exist (not directly, but by virtue of wording questions in such a way that anyone with only basic knowledge of the subject matter they were purporting to be an expert on, would know). On other occasions she’d come close to losing control of her bladder as I explained the global and local political shitstorm that had erupted while she was sleeping.

But this time she was staring at me while I recounted my tale. She knew about The Mountain, Laos and Cambodia and all the rest. We were at least a year into Fan Gurl stage when I told her this. She’d started reading everything I wrote after my sister had shown her Yellowskull (still unpublished). Then there was the whole incident with the Fan and Fan Gurl was born. Interrupting me with three simple words.

‘I have too’

Despite my Spectrum Aversion to eye contact, I glanced up and she caught my gaze.

I looked into her eyes.

Not at them, in them, or dancing around them.

Into Them.

She wasn’t lying.

We asked nothing of each other for confirmation, we knew both of us were on the level. Just as we knew that beyond the details I have described above is all that anyone else is entitled to know. What goes over The Edge, stays over The Edge.

Fan Gurl was looking into my eyes as we came to this conclusion.

Not at them, in them, or dancing around them.

Into Them.

It was strange, and I have later wondered what I may have learned, had I looked into the eyes of The Monk.

Looking into Fan Gurl’s eyes, I learned more about her experience with The Edge than she has ever told me. And I know her knowledge of my interaction exceeds what I’ve expressed to her. It’s an odd feeling to be aware of things about someone, though they have never told you any of them and even more disconcerting to know that they are informed about your path without you having divulged anything of particular detail. Some people will mock this as “Telepathy”, which is an ignorant assertion, neither of us put thoughts into the other’s mind, nor did we try. Awareness is the term I prefer. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to suggest that either of us are enlightened, nor use a fantastical term such as “Kindred Spirits” to describe our connection but the understanding we reached, formed a bond of a strength I struggle to describe adequately.

That was the point where we no longer required words to communicate with each other. It was when a furrowed brow, raised eyebrow or subtle sideways glance to whatever lunatic was on a rant at the other end of the table would result in uncontrolled laughter from the recipient or the pair of us. It’s not as if we stopped talking to each other. We have great chats. But when you know that someone has seen what you were also shown, language becomes superfluous and a simple facial manipulation can speak volumes. It is oft said that a picture speaks a thousand words, but a well placed wink to someone reading from the same page is more words than Tolstoy discarded.

Fan Gurl and I accept and relish the looks that people reserve for the crazy. If they missed our subtle, non-verbal conversation – that’s their fault. They probably wouldn’t have understood anyway. We just laugh a little bit more, clink our glasses, have a drink and resume communication on a higher plane.

Not to boast, but I think I’m a couple of rings higher up The Coil than Fan Gurl. It has nothing to do with me being a rough decade older than her on the mortal scale, more that, on occasion, her raised eyebrow implies confusion rather than acknowledgment. She reminds me not only of myself and my interaction with The Monk, but my Nana. Sounds weird, I know. A woman in her middling twenties and another who clocked eighty-eight before calling it a day aren’t often placed near each other on The Coil. But, The Universe is complex and sometimes things just work out that way.

Nana was a master of The Unspoken, but after I’d survived Viet Nam for the first time and performed the obligatory bi-decadal crossing of The Ditch, I discovered I had surpassed her in The Art.

Only as a result of persistent pestering from my mother to tell hers how she’d managed to raise an intelligent and resilient child who was able to survive an ordeal that would have seen some of my cousins curl up and cry themselves to death, did I tell her about The Mountain.

She listened intently, interrupting only when I used a word she was unfamiliar with. Things like rattan and H’mong. My mother on the other hand interrupted to remind me of something I hadn’t forgotten about but was yet to mention because it occurred several minutes further into the narrative.

Later that day, we three went to a local pub for dinner and Nana had lost it. She was fine when we’d been at her house. Every interruption from her daughter was verbally responded to, before we communicated in Unspoken, had a little laugh and I continued reciting my tale. At dinner though, it was gone. I never had another conversation Unspoken with my Nana. Small interactions comparable to my grasp of Vietnamese, sure, but nothing of substance. It wasn’t Dementia, Nana was coherent until the end. I don’t know what it was, but something I had said or implied, had robbed her of The Art. On reflection a decade or so later, I came to the opinion that when I told her the story I was roughly the same age as her brother Jack was when, by all accounts, killed by Italian Machine-Gun fire on the side of some hill in Tunisia. I’d also told her about my diagnosis recently and she had confided in me that she’d suffered from depression for most of her adult life.

Although I was sworn to secrecy, it was the first crack into the history of mental illness on my mother’s side of my family, it get’s a lot deeper, but I’m writing a book about that so you’ll have to buy it if you want the full story. What really struck me though, and this is only recently, was that her other brother Len who I had always thought was killed at Cassino, survived WW2 -- only to succumb to PTS eight odd years after the war in Europe had finished -- around a month after my mother was born.

Nana had been a medical receptionist in the latter years of her working life, and odds are, she’d seen every first world problem walk through the doors of her clinic, but I think she saw something of Len in me and it scared her. That I didn’t follow in his footsteps before she died, I hope gave her some solace, but she did still call upon her god to save her, at the end of her innings.

The similarity that Fan Gurl and Nana shared was they both know/knew The End is/was coming and that they are/were somewhat apprehensive about it. I, on the other hand don’t give a shit. But what binds the three of us together – The Matriarch, The Prodigal Ebony Ovine and Fan Gurl is the aforementioned stubbornness.

Despite enduring more than seven decades of hellish internal torment, Nana didn’t give up.

Fan Gurl and I wouldn’t be nearly as polite as Nana would’ve been when (considering) suicide knocked on the door. Whereas we would just shout, “Fuck Off!” and slam the door in their face as we are wont to do with religious door knockers. Nana would’ve invited them in for a cup of tea before courteously ushering them back into the elements. Being slightly differential in our approach to dealing with The Black Dog is insignificant when one appreciates that despite our dissimilar methods, we all reached the same conclusion – there is no point ending it yourself when The Universe will take care of it for you as soon as it’s good and ready.

*Here you go Fan Gurl.

This one’s for you.

Thanks for existing.

Love you more than you love Vegemite*

HH. 2019.