Darwin. Small but fancy.
Wow ... where did I l stranded here? What a place. I'm talking about my hostel. Darwin itself is small but fancy. Clean, happy-mooded, light and a little bit shallow ... and in between these lightness of life and excistence is my hostel pulsating with it's own heartbeat. It's not a typical hostel for backpackers. Well those figures are also running around here, poshy, shallow, not my style.
It's a live in hostel for stranded old Australian fellows, drinking beer, smoking hash and linger in old good times, not honoring their present lives. But well can they? They all are a big family, which doesn't like each other at all. They all are drinking together, laughing together and are sharing in silent moments their all heavy hearts. Here are living broken people. This places is sucked up by sadness and heavyness. Woooooow
It's a hostel for stranded Aboriginis, coming from Arnheim, on a journey to a doctor or without money to come home. Streetfights between them is daily routine. Sitting and doing nothing the whole day as well. They eat unhealty. That's what I witness. They are fighting and fighting and fighting. That's what I am also witnessing.
... and in between all these heavyness, sadness and violence ... there is the hostel father. His 'party' since 45 years, who he personally calles his life here in the hostel. "You look after them" ... "Well, that's waht I do." ... and he just wants to go home and his eyes are turning to the sky and the starts and the heaven. But he is needed here. More than somewhere else. He found his purpose. He found his place. He accept his mission. He was there for all of them. For drunken sad souls. For even more drunken unrooted aboriginis.
When he had our little conversation, I stumbled in my reaction, while he was keep talking. He is a funny personality. Silent on one hand. Peaceful on the other. A resting pole in between all this choas of people, minds and emotions. He is rooted ... in himself.
The change from wet to dry season is taking place and with this change there are also a lot of Aboriginis coming from Arnheimland to town. For those he is here. This silent, peaceful, in himself rooted, funny hostel father. It's high season for this hostel, which name I forgot. It was an animal name and it was laying a little beside the track of tourism and backpacking.
A lot of Arnheim-landers come to Darwin for their 'last' visit. Why the last? Lot's of them will never find the money and the will back to their homeland. Stranded here in a street with a green park infront, where they can sit and sit and the daily sun or fighting, when not sitting. Young and old ones.
This hostel father brings the necessary peace to calm down the emotions. Police non stop. Coming and going. Coming and going. Taking poeple. Drunkheads. THe day before ambulance. A broken leg. But they all come to him, when there is a problem.
And this hostel father wasn't just looking over all those stranded souls. He also was looking over me. I was allowed to work there for my stay. Cleaning and tidying up. For free stay. Four hours of cleaning. Changing bed sheets. Cleaning showers. Cleaning the backyard. Thank you for the opportunity. I could smoke and write and swim and letting myself emerge into this live bubble. Just a bit, because this heavyness was nearly unbearable. So many broken hearts. So many broken souls. So many unhappy people and lives ...
Darwin in pcitures
# 1 „The City of Darwin“
White structured metal letters hammered on the dark blue thick stable aluminium roof stripe of the library building at the end of the street.
„The City of Darwin“ - captured pictures. Like a yellow Kinder surprise egg on red rocky road. Laying. Closed, without the chocolate. Cause she's melted away years ago, lost in transformation what we call cosmopolitical. Personal sweetness and taste, excitement before sensation.
Darwin is a closed yellow Kinder plastic egg, with no pre-joy of sweet curiosity but yet surprises and it’s own truth.
It’s over millions of times reflected, bounced of brick walls and black asphalt, framed by concrete, stored and constantly colliding heat waves, loaded by electromagneic smog bouncing in between this concrete cage.
It’s hard to breath. The main and busy streets taste like burned petrol, drying your mouth. The exhaling heat they produce? A hot boe of dry burning air.
#2 „Color in motion. Color is emotion.“
A glowing ball of red fire whispering and shining through the leaves. A colorful sky, drawn with a canvas of leave patterns.
Twinges looking like a tree man walking towards, with welcoming open arms, the bustling fiery glow of the tired sun.
Leaves that form the shape of a heart. My telescope towards the heavens. Watching two birds in their play of mating, through the hearted shaped lookout, shaped by the beauty of nature.
Lay there and breath. Watch small dragonflies big in the crones. See de dimensions of branches and twigs.
#3 „Attraction“
A Square of attraction, modern entertainment and short lasting stimulation. The circle of the square, the side towards the ocean, a stripe of green, light life and destruction.
#4 „Silence“
Long lasting happiness. Just being. Embracing home. Myself. When the ant crawls up your shoe to touch the water battle just in the moment, your attention is getting drawn towards her. Being. Movement. Action. Surrender. A reminder to drink . The ant crawling down, just to disappear. Shortly after she gets lost for my eye in her thick bushy homeland of blades of grass. Her mysterious kingdom of ever-changing inhabitant, for us a bed of green, fluffy nature we walk on. The grass here is heavy. Soft but strong hairy.
An old Abo block, fatty and old in a wheelchair. Nacken top body. Black dark skin. No. Somehow lighter, liked brushed over with a dusty milky chocolate brown. A colorful, made in China cut of plastic paper decorated in mass production produced Hawaiian flower neckless. Around the neck of a almost lifeless, wheelcaired Abo - that I call cultural integration.
Multiculturalism. Successful integration? Walking along fully equipped in western modern mainstream clothing. Walking the cool men western street man walk. Earplugs. Mobile phones.
A thin plastic bag floating in the beach breath and waves on the first of a accurately planted line of palm trees. They look beautiful accurate in their manufactured beds of rocks and nature of this region. The plastic bag? Humans touch at nature.
… mind bubbling … Oh dear! This plastic! All over the world! To what will it decay? What will come out of it? A tree turns into diamond. Plastik turns into oil? That is my hope. To what will our rubbish, depose and decay over millions of years? Who will be on this earth to witness, whats happening with all over plastic rubbish? Will humanity be able to survive? We need to slow down. Are we on a good way? Do we need to freak out? … end of mind bubbling …