I am. I am on my way. I am on my way somewhere. I am on my way somewhere but I only made it as far as Brunswick Street. I don’t really know what’s going on. I don’t know why I am. I don’t know why I am here. I don’t know where I am going.

What I do know is that everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be.

I am sitting in one of those “tiled sofas” on the pavement, one of those little touches that help portray Brunswick Street as “arty”. It’s a stiflingly hot and humid day, a storm will probably break out soon. I’m sitting on the shady side of the street, opposite the cafe Red Tongue, my clothes are drying on a fence in the sun on the other side of the road. I woke on Lars’ sofa at 1.30pm after a very good night’s sleep, showered, washed some clothes, finished off his two day old omelette, met his flatmate, walked down to Brunswick Street.

An Asian couple, most likely tourists, are photographing the other ornamental tiled sofa right outside the cafe opposite. Now the girl is walking off to one side to photograph my drying clothes, unaware that they belong to me. People pass by. Girls in tiny hotpantsy things, men in shades. Some of the more alternative-looking ones say hi to me as they pass, perhaps because I’ve met them somewhere, perhaps they’ve seen me busking, perhaps they identify with me because I seem to be part of the Brunswick Street inventory, perhaps because I seem like a guy who would say hi back, perhaps it’s a sympathy-hi because I look like a hobo, perhaps there’s no reason at all. But it sure makes Melbourne a better place. And Melbourne must be one of the best cities in the world to be a hobo in. I haven’t had a single run-in with the police in all my time here and many ordinary people find you interesting rather than scary.

A group of kids came up to me asking where the Happy High Herbs shop is, I directed them down Johnston Street and across to Smith Street, they finished the conversation with “peace out” as if I'm a bloody hippie. Kids.

Oh bloody hell now the tourists are taking photos of me too. Perhaps I should charge an entrance fee. Or perhaps I should start busking.

I know I am travelling again. The things that only happen when you’re travelling are happening. It would be too easy to brush it off with a “people treat you differently because you’re carrying a backpack”. There’s something more there. There’s an acceptance of the things you can’t control. There’s a letting go. There’s the wondering what lies beyond the next bend in the path through the forest but in a man-made setting.

I tore myself loose. At around 4pm on Thursday, two days ago, I finally tore myself loose from the deep friendship, amazing comfort, cheesy quesadillas, Almodovar films and Spanish lessons of mi amiga Mexicana Jennifer. I walked out the door with a very heavy backpack with a tent, a blanket and a shopping bag full of food strapped to the outside of it, along with another shoulder bag full of food and my new daypack for my laptop and camera. It weighs a tonne. I’d organised and reorganised and packed and repacked and dropped stuff off at the op-shop (charity shop), thrown heaps of things away. I’d tried to leave the week before, then on Monday, then on Wednesday, and finally on Thursday at 4pm I walked out. Jennifer was completely right, it was ridiculous. It was the wrong day to head off looking for work with the weekend coming up so soon and it was the wrong time of day to actually get anywhere. But I had to tear myself loose and get a move on, anywhere. A tram took me to the centre of town and up to the library for free internet so that I could actually work out where the hell I was going.

It struck me that I wouldn’t get anywhere at all on Thursday. And if I was spending Thursday night in Melbourne I may as well busk on Friday night to give myself a much needed monetary boost before heading off. From now on there’s probably no more busking. So the little money I have, about 100 dollars, will just have to last until I receive my first pay check from my imaginary job.

Here you go, here’s a masterclass in projection for you:

I will find a job somewhere between Adelaide and Perth before the end of next week!

Now I just have to wait for the manifestation of that projection. It will happen. I’m going all out for roadhouses, the petrol stations / restaurants / shops / pubs you’ll find every 100 km or so when driving through the middle of the big Australian nothingness in pretty much any direction. I’m just going to be in the right place at the right time. I know it. I’m going to walk in to every roadhouse between Adelaide and Perth and say “here I am” and they will say “oh hi, we’ve been waiting for you”.

Oh dear, my clothes had disappeared from the fence across the road. I ran over but couldn’t find them anywhere. So I opened the bins on the other side of the fence and found them neatly thrown away, probably by someone working at the cafe... So now they’re spread out all over the tiled sofa I’m sitting on.

So on Thursday night, after the library closed, I went looking for a free power plug anywhere in Melbourne so that I could spend the night writing on my laptop. I got kicked out of Melbourne Central because, according to security, “sitting on the floor is not permitted”. But then I had much better luck at the QV Centre. A Sri Lankan cleaner somehow identified with me and took me down the basement of the shopping centre to a table with a socket next to it at a closed restaurant. A girl from Hong Kong with a heavily accented English even if she’d lived in Melbourne for six years started speaking to me and soon took me under her wing, giving me fruits and rushing off to buy rice and pork and fish from the nearest Chinese before closing time. I spread the love contained in a box of Cadbury’s Favourites miniature chocolates from Jen to the Hong Kong girl, cleaners and security guards. My spot was definitely safe for the night. In the morning I went over to the lawn outside the library and slept for four hours wrapped up in my blanket. Isn’t it amazing how sleeping in a park is acceptable in the daytime but if you do it at night the police might come and move you on?!

Realising that this might be the last time in months I will have access to fast, free internet, I went back in the library to write, research jobs, annoy Sony, upload sound recordings from New Zealand, etc., before heading up Smith Street in the early evening. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with tiredness and needed to sit down somewhere. I very randomly chose to sit down and lean against a tree in a little traffic island in a small residential street parallel to Smith. Which happened to be right outside the house of Kiwi Kim who works as a forensic biologist but is sick of her job and perhaps needs some more action in her life which is perhaps why she came out to ask if the guy in the traffic island was alright or if he needed a glass of water. He was indeed alright, he just needed a rest. Five minutes later she nevertheless came out and sat down next to him. They spoke for hours, she brought out tea and chocolate, they had a little traffic island tea party together. It was suddenly about midnight, the only thing missing was a cold beer. Kim didn’t have any and all shops were closed. Suddenly a guy that looked familiar walked past. It was Lars, a Norwegian couchsurfer that the traffic-island dude had met at the picnic in the park on Australia Day and later in Brunswick Street when busking. They had a quick chat, Lars had to go to see some friends of his no less than two doors down from Kim’s place. He walked off but suddenly stopped, turned and said “oh, would you like a cold beer?”

A beer later Kim and the traffic island guy decided to climb the tree they’d been leaning up against. They climbed higher than Kim’s two storey house and they could see the twinkling lights of Melbourne all around. If Kim had had a blog, she probably would have given a Quote of the Day to the homeless, naked, mouth harp playing tree-man on the branch above her when he said:

- You're quite unusual.

Well, her straight-forwardness is sadly unusual in this world. He really appreciated it. And yes, he was naked. Surrounded by a sphere of leaves high above the ground and invisible in the darkness, it was such a rainbow moment on such a hot night that clothes seemed superfluous. Kim was alright with it as long as he had the decency to ask; she realised that he wasn’t doing it to impress her or anything like that. It was just the perfect moment to surrender to the tree and the breeze and the darkness and the lights.

A half hour later he got dressed and they tried to climb down but found the last bit exceedingly difficult. Sitting on the first branch more than three metres from the ground wondering how to get down, Lars turned up again, not only to help them get down but to invite them in to his friends’ place.

I eventually made my way to Brunswick Street by 2.30am but the busking was terrible. I’d made five dollars by the time a bloke called Tim turned up. He was very, very drunk and started picking up the coins from my bag. At first I assumed he was joking but then he seemed quite serious so I said “hey, please don’t, you’re taking food out of my mouth”. He continued until he’d picked up all the coins, he put them in his pocket and then put a fifty dollar note in my bag. “Just needed some change”. And a friend, obviously, as he sat down next to me and told me about the problems with his wife. Suddenly Lars turned up on his bike, on his way home, and asked if I wanted to sleep on his sofa. In Norwegian I asked if he could wait until I’d finished with Tim, which he was happy to do. Tim found out that I was on my way west looking for a job and wondered if I wanted to work for him in Melbourne as a general labourer for thirty bucks an hour. I said I’d be very interested if he can guarantee a minimum number of hours per week, which he couldn’t right off the bat but he was going to make some phone calls and see what he could do. I’m going to call him just before I leave Melbourne but I’m assuming he was just very drunk and I have no hopes.

And that’s how I ended up on Lars’ couch. Which is how I ended up on my tiled sofa. Which is how an Israeli girl ended up walking over just now and asking if she could have her picture taken next to me on the sofa. “If you put my boxers on your head,” I said, mock-seriously. “Are they clean?” she asked. “Yes, I washed them with my own hands this morning,” I replied. “Ok,” she said and actually put the drying boxers of a hobo on her head and smiled to her friend’s camera. I couldn’t quite believe it. I asked her friend for the memory card, put the photos on my laptop, and here they are. I think the boxers go nicely with her dress.

_______

Now I’m at the big internet cafe in Smith Street, I’ve just played a couple of songs with the house band (Walls of Wisteria), I’m about to go busking, then some sleeping, somewhere, anywhere, and tomorrow I’ll hitchhike my way in the direction of Adelaide, probably via Grampians National Park, I may even pitch my tent up there in the mountains for the night.

Upwards and onwards.

_______

The busking was spectacular. Not because of the 30 dollars I made, that was rather modest, but because of the many kind offers of sofas to sleep on. Because of the guy smuggling bags of pork and chicken out from the kebab shop, bags that would otherwise have been thrown away, instead he gave them to me and in such a situation I’m of course a freegan, an opportunistic vegan who would eat anything if it’s free. Because of the Kiwis teaching me the Maori war dance haka right there on the pavement. Because of my discovery that I wouldn’t have to move away from my perfect spot (at the entrance to the bizarrely-named accessory shop Molly & Trombone, as always) when the club opposite the road opened their windows so that their music was even more overpowering; instead I worked with it and used the music from the club as my basic beat which really tripped people out when they walked past, already nodding their heads to the beat from the club, and then crossing into the audible mouth harp range which went perfectly with it. And of course because of the never-ending stream of guys wanting to freestyle-rap over the beat of the mouth harp. Here’s a recording.

And because of the ultra-cheap goodbye-pizza from my Turkish friend at the fast food joint in Brunswick Street, a pizza which will be both breakfast and lunch today, and because neither the police nor anyone else hassled me when I slept five hours in Carlton Gardens in the morning.

After two days of busking I have 30 dollars of credit on my phone and another 55 dollars in my pocket, not bad.

Ok, I left on Thursday. It’s now Sunday and I’m still here. Let’s try that again.


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