Barcelona

I do not believe I will die, and this is one of the great peculiarities of life. It could happen anywhere and, more importantly, anywhen, and yet it is our final destination, so it feels that there should be some sort of build-up, that we should feel it coming, some sort of excitement or terror (really, they're the same thing). I feel I could very happily sit, drinking wine and trying to make art; would death be more real then?

When we have our 30 (40, 50, 60...) hour weeks, our 9 (8, 7...) to 5 (6, 7...), life has outlines, and you know what you must do and when (but never really why), and because of that, we never have time to prepare for death, to feel it approach, soon to overtake us. We know one day we will retire and perhaps, one day long after that, our mind or our body (and eventually both) will go and we will gently slide from obsolescence to expiration.

But if we had no structure, if I were to really walk from this life and maybe even be happy, would death seem all that more real, because I would have these thoughts as I'm having now, and the time to wonder but, more importantly, time to LIVE? To pursue great art, thoughts, time.

The bohemian dream is dead, but what reality has taken its place?

I sit here and write this, and I know I love Barcelona, and I love Berlin, and I know that I will return to Brisbane, to work that I love but a job that I hate, and then (really, not long after) I will die, and all of this will continue, and will I have contributed to that? It will go on regardless, but can I affect that course, and "make a difference", or will I pay bills and work to pay them, and then die, leaving more bills, bills producing bills, and then I will leave a trail of paper in my wake, littered with ticks and crosses (both of disapproval and meaningless martyrdom) and that will be all.

And maybe on my grave, they will write "He was a child, and a friend, and he lived and paid bills and taxes and then he died". Here lies the corpse of a taxpayer, a bill payer, a cog, someone who kept this machine (what?) running (why?). And his death is mourned by his family and friends but not many else, because a whole new generation has been born, and a whole other has begun paying bills and taxes, and so there will be no letter from us, for your loss is not our loss, thank you for choosing to shop with us today.

Even in these cities I love, I miss, there is this life of tedium, of obscure but omnipresent bureaucracy, always this clacking of numbers being counted, so I will never escape it, I will never be free. And no matter whether my headstone is in a German cemetery, or at the bottom of the Thames, or even back in Brisbane, it will read the same, and be read by none.

Inspired by Roni Horn's Still Water series (at Fundació Miro, Barcelona) & Tori Amos' Boys For Pele.

Carcassonne

This city would fall, as all cities would fall. But, nearly 2000 years later, here it stood. And my dreams would die, and me expire, as all dreams die, and all expire, but here on this wall, I felt they, we, would not, and we could do, not what we wanted, but what we needed to do. Here there coud be happiness, so could there not be happiness everywhere, if that were what we truly needed to live. I had been touched by death so many times, and if I did not fight, how much longer would it be before that touch became an embrace, the gentle carriage to quiet indifference, a life not unpleasant, nor difficult, but with no possibility of return.

I would choose life, I hoped. I hoped I would have that choice.