Nick and Marcus

Nick and Marcus are sitting together in the cabin one calm evening, drinking tea.
They’re both lost in thought. Gradually Marcus discerns a ticking sound above the swaying creak of the boat’s timbers.
“Nick?..”
“Yeah, it’s my titanium valves…”
“Wow….that’s sort of soothing.”
“Fuck off! Soothing for you maybe. When that sound stops it means I’m dead…."

This story was told to me by a driver named Marcus who brought me from just outside Tours, in France, to just outside London, three weeks ago. There are holes in the details, for example the fate of the person driving the petrol tanker or the nature of Marcus’s first job, but I suppose they just weren’t necessary. The Acropolis has a lot of holes in it and nobody seems to mind.

Tours
During my last trip to England I found myself standing at the entrance to a petrol station between Tours and Le Mans, sometime in the early evening. A large petrol tanker drives past. The body a chrome barrel with the effect of a funfair mirror. As it passes I see myself reflected. A barrel-gnome in a fluorescent orange vest, standing in France’s finest interpretation of the deserted central asian steppe. Dun grassland as far as they eye can see. Just the view I needed to bring home the unlikelihood of another lift at that point. I thought about heading out to find the nearest woods and sleep when a silver volvo with an English licence plate drove straight past me, ignoring my freshly serifed sign (“Je Vais Au Nord- Paris/Calais”).
When a man emerged from the car in a rush and began filling it with petrol, I decided I may as well check in case he either hadn’t seen the sign or was put off by the French. I slowly walk over to this man. A stocky and thick-set man in his mid-40s. Blue jeans and a grey t-shirt. Shaved scalp, thick stubble and a pleasing proportion between his well rounded-head and a square jaw. I’m reminded of diagrams I have looked at on the subject of drawing heads. I also have an impression of keen intelligence from him.
“Excuse me, you’re not going to Calais are you?”
“Err…” He looks at me, mouth open and petrol pump in hand. “..Yeah, actually that’s exactly where I’m going. Go on, I’ll give you a lift.”

We drive, north, fast. This is the story.

Nick and Marcus

Marcus was an avid sailor in his youth. From my brief meeting with him I could see he took things on directly with both head and hands, and he sounded like he’d have been quite an industrious teenager. At the age of 15 he went on a normal sailing weekend with his family somewhere in England when a fancy-looking yacht anchored up nearby. When a man emerged on deck Marcus went over and said “That’s a nice boat you have sir, can I help you sail it?”
In that moment he met Nick.

Nick came from a family who owned a large lumber yard. At some point a few years previously, he had been in a car accident where his car collided with a petrol tanker. The resulting explosion slung a sharp metal bar through the car’s windscreen, piercing Nick’s heart and pinning him to the car seat.
The emergency crew arrived, sawed his chair out of the car and took him to hospital where he was thought to have a 5% chance of survival. Three of the four valves in his heart were broken and replaced with titanium ones. Nick spent two years in hospital, slowly recovering. When he was sufficiently fit again he sold his inherited lumber, took around £2 million and decided to carry on living his life. Boating became a priority, and from the day of their first meeting  the two became firm friends, sailing together whenever they had the chance each summer.

Four years after their first meeting, Marcus has finished school and is excited about his first job. An excitement dampened by the sobering realisation that, now out of school, he would no longer have school holidays. Nick asked him about that summer’s sailing possibilities and Marcus replied that he’d be able to manage two weeks but not more.
“Well we can do Ireland at least.” said Nick.

Two days into their Ireland trip, Marcus says to Nick “It’s a bit odd that we haven’t seen land yet.”
At this, Nick shrugs and walks down the steps into the cabin. Marcus senses something is up. He finds Nick inside making tea.
“Err, Nick? What’s going on?”
“…Yeah Marcus…we’re going to America mate.”
“What?!…Oh for fuck’s sake! You can’t be serious! It’s my first job, Nick! I have to be back in there on Monday.”
“Come on Marcus, this will be so much better.”
“Nick it’s my first fucking job. They’re going to fire me!”
“Not if you resign first.”
“We’re on a fucking boat in the Atlantic!”
“Yes, but I have a satellite phone.”


Marcus pacing back and forth on deck.
“Hi? Yeah it’s Marcus. I know I’m meant to be in on Monday but I’m on a boat in the middle of Atlantic and we’re going to America. I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can really do about it. It was sort of a surprise. I’m just calling to give in my resignation."
Marcus’s boss: “Well I can’t say I’m impressed Marcus. It’s all fun and games for you but we needed you this summer. I’m sure you’re aware that formal resignation can only be processed in writing so I’m afraid I’ll have to give you the sack.”

Marcus returns to Nick, loudly lamenting his impending dismissal.
Nick: “Writing eh? I have a satellite fax.”
Marcus faxes his formal resignation letter to his boss and the two sail across the Atlantic.


Florida, some weeks later…
A fancy-looking yacht anchors up in a port somewhere in the Florida keys.
A gaggle of tourists in floppy sunhats and oversized sunglasses canter up the pontoon, arriving beside the yacht slightly out of breath.
When two men emerge on deck, someone in the crowd calls to them.
“What a nice boat you have, do you day-charter?”
Nick eyes the crowd cautiously.
“Err, yeah. Yeah we will…” he says, scratching his head and scanning the ranks of hopeful faces. “Come back in two days.”

Nick and Marcus investigate the boating scene and come up with a business model.
“Well it seems that for this to work all we have to do is sail people around the place, keep an icebox full of beers, pull a couple of lobsters off the reef and barbecue them. Well we would have done all that anyway, right Marcus?”

Marcus and Nick spend two weeks day-chartering the yacht. They charge $600 dollars a head. At the end of the fortnight the yacht is back in the harbour and the last tourists have left. Nick turns to Marcus and hands him the lion’s share of their accumulated loot.
“Alright Marcus, I’m sorry I lost you your first job, but it was worth it. This should be more than enough to fly you home and keep you going through the summer.” Marcus flew back to England the next day.

The Sufi

Just back from ten days travelling to London and back from Madrid. Excerpt here, rest to follow.



The Sufi


This Friday just gone I was waiting in a petrol station in the Basque country trying to get a lift south. The petrol station was a bit too close to the city and situated right where the roads forked, so it was hard to know where the majority of the traffic was going.  Most people seemed very well-dressed and looked like they were on their way to weekend plans. After about an hour and a half of standing there the daylight was fading and I was getting ready to find a place to sleep.
At that moment a man came past, looked at my sign, said he wasn't going that way and wished me the best of luck. He struck me as being someone worth talking to for a couple of reasons. One was his appearance. He was quite short, dressed in black working clothes that looked well-used. He had a bandana tied over his long brown-grey ponytail, wore round glasses and had a big bushy moustache. He looked a little bit like Robert De Niro and a bit like Elmo from Sesame street. I'd had a few shrugs and smiles that evening but there was something that suggested he was open to talking, so I asked him if he knew where I could camp around there. His smile straightened out and he looked at me carefully for a few seconds before saying: "You look like a good person. If you like you can stay at my place. I live in a converted bus in the woods."
I thought about this and said yes.  He asked if I'd eaten and we drove to the supermarket to buy some salad. Whilst finding onions we bump into a friend of his. They speak in rapid Basque before the friend introduces himself to me in Spanish then laughs and says in English 'This man is a cowboy.'  I wasn't quite sure how to take that one but we said our goodbyes and went to the till. I offered to pay for the salad and the cowboy refused.

 During the drive to his it became apparent that he had been living alone for a long time, and it showed. There's a certain level of madcap thinking that comes from being alone which I tend to think is permissible but I wasn't sure on what side of the crazy line he fell. Later we drove past a pub and he said he doesn't go out much to bars as he's liable to get wild in them. At that remark I began to have some doubts and for the sake of posterity I decided to send a location-drop to a cool-headed friend who I knew would relay it to my family if I didn't re-appear in a few days. By that point we were actually in an area without reception and I had to abandon the idea. I sat there as we drove deeper and deeper down a thickly wooded mountain road, replaying our meeting in my head and reminding myself that it had been me who approached him initially.

Twenty minutes later I am sitting on a folding chair, watching big grey slugs sliding around the wooden surface of the improvised cable-reel table by candlelight. The man stands in the near distance washing the salad in a little basin screwed into a clump of hazel. He's shown me his horse, his numerous cats and kittens and the large french bus which he calls home. The interior is wooden-paneled and it must have taken a long time. There is a bathtub, a fold-down bed, a wood-burning stove and a large empty space at the back waiting for his time, money and thought.

He comes over with the food and suggests we eat in the bus. By this point I've reached peace with my initial feeling about his character and if there are further doubts I'll insist on sleeping up the hill in my bivi-bag.

In the bus we sit down to a small table laid with two plates of salad and some bread. The man goes outside and brings back a bottle of cider, explaining that his friend grows the apples and he helps press them in exchange for a couple of crates. I said I wouldn't drink a lot but would have some.

Well, we ate, drank and talked for about an hour. We talked about trees, woodland, family, expression of character, consumerism, time, money, perception of both and what things are necessary for living. He kept saying he had 'sufi'. This is a contraction of Spanish 'suficiente' and seemed appropriate to his mode of being. At this point he doesn't have much work, but he is a self-trained mechanic.

After dinner he explained that if I wanted a shower I was welcome to one and he'd leave the bus for as long as I took. I declined and he shrugged and laid out a thick folded blanket on the floor as a mattress for me. I fell asleep listening to the river and had the best night's rest I'd had in ten days.

In the morning I woke up and went outside. He was up washing his clothes and handed me a cup of coffee. It was about 9.30 and the sun was pouring into the valley. I walked around the place, inspecting the battered old minivan where he lived before the bus, the stable where his horse lived, the little garden where he was growing courgettes. After a brief conversation about gardening and a demonstration of scything he drove me back to the garage.

Hitching: A-A

So here's an excerpt of a time this year where I waited 5 hours, was offered one lift going the wrong way and decided to give up and get the bus. I'm including it on this page because the experience still put me into the frame of mind that hitching puts me in, whether or not I got any lifts. I'm not putting as much time into a write-up as normal, just copying in what I wrote on the day with a few notes.

"Metro line 1 to Pinar de Chamartín. 26/03/18 6-something AM

A long time since the last voyage in this direction. That was late August 2016 and I had the sun on my side...well for half a day, anyway.
Feels as if time already has a different edge to it. Does it come from choosing to perceive it in this way, or is a free day* the genuine requirement that allows this perception? Look forward to passing through the keyhole and getting on the highways. Every time is always the first time.
 




5.20pm Bus to San Sebastian/Bordeaux
Of course for 5 hours of standing there, reality did bear certain fruits. One was the sunrise.
Not spectacular by any standard, but the first I've seen in what feels like a long time.
For all of Tarkovsky's words on mise en scene in cinema betraying the raw incongruence of real scenes in life, I was presented with the arrival of a van of taoists disembarking beneath the row of blossom-laden cherry trees outside the Fountain of Mora. (Fuente De Mora, train station)
Of course the driver came over to offer me a lift, except she was heading towards the national road to Barcelona.**
So at least I've proven to myself that hitching when you have a place and time to be in is a bad idea....though of course if I'd been struck by one of those occasional but completely possible (and perhaps statistically inevitable) miracle lifts, I wouldn't be saying this.
Any damage done by the experience? I don't think so. I know travelling like this is about patience, gratitude, time and hope, and today the thought that 'hitch-hiking is about forgetting' became a sort of mantra. I may've forgotten just what I meant by that.
Now on a surprisingly cheap bus up to Bordeaux and ready to soak up overland travel on the first warm spring day, in stimulating surroundings."


*What I mentioned before was a free day in terms of work. But it was the first day of the Easter holidays and I was falling in love with someone who at that point still lived in Bordeaux.
** She came walking up to me slowly with a calm smile, car keys in hand. Khakis and taoism-t shirt. First interaction in a few hours. The warmth of her personality and the scenery and arrival of that van made the whole morning worth it.

Bank holiday special.

"The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. Artistic creation demands of the artist that he 'perish utterly', in the full, tragic sense of those words. And so, if art carries within it a hieroglyphic of absolute truth, this will always be an image of the world, made manifest in the work once and for all time. And if cold, positivistic, scientific cognition of the world is like the ascent of an unending staircase, its artistic counterpoint suggests an endless system of spheres, each one perfect and contained within itself. One may complement or contradict another, but in no circumstances can they cancel each other out; on the contrary, they enrich one another, and accumulate to form an all-embracing sphere that grows out into infinity. These poetic revelations, each one valid and

eternal, are evidence of man's capacity to recognise in whose image and likeness he is made, and to voice this recognition.
Moreover, the great function of art is communication, since mutual understanding is a force to unite people, and the spirit of communion is one of the most important aspects of artistic

creativity. Works of art, unlike those of science, have no practical goals in any material sense. Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has to do not with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression'. Self-expression is meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately, it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo?"

Andrei Tarkovsky- Sculpting In Time

""

Just heard about this through an interview with Swamp Dogg, who produced the album. Absolute gold.

"To see a candle's light, one must take it into a dark place."

Rest well Ursula Le Guin. I can't see the lucidity fading that fast.