A snorkel and a muse

Today is my thirtieth birthday and, it occurs to me, I’m not hoping for much out of it. I’m having dinner later with a few friends which will be nice but in truth there isn’t really much else I want out of life than what I already have. I am, after all, currently living within a stone’s throw of beautiful Bondi Beach (well, I couldn’t throw a stone that far, but someone of an acceptable level of fitness could, quite easily I reckon) which, as far as beaches go, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but still it has a lot going for it in terms of golden sand, surf, hot chicks, good food and even a spot at the north end where you can jump off the rocks and go for a little snorkel, see some nice fishies.

Ah – there you go, there is something I want for my birthday – a new snorkel. I lost mine last week in a freak snorkelling accident which left me battered, bruised and bloodied. Well, in truth the term “snorkelling accident” isn’t entirely accurate and does make me out to be a bit more hardy and intrepid than I actually am. In fact I slipped on a rock while holding a snorkel, which almost qualifies it as a snorkelling accident but not quite. I was in the process of reconnoitring a potential new snorkel site when a wave crashed into me, knocking me sideways and forcing my leg into a gap between two underwater rocks. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but when rocks and the ocean get together on a regular basis you end up with an unfeasibly large number of razor sharp creatures - shell-based lifeforms that you wouldn’t have thought could do you much harm until you have the misfortune of scraping one or another part of your body over them.

This is what happened to me when I stuck my foot in the gap. I was attacked by a number of inanimate shells and while I was preoccupied with not getting any other bits of me in a similar pickle my snorkel decided to detach itself from my mask and float away into the big blue. I was equanimous at the time – I lost a snorkel, I could have lost a leg.

The fact that, only moments before, I had ignored my friend Will when he advised me against going into the swell at that particular spot, made the whole experience much more embarrassing. As I limped home, blood dripping onto the pavement from a gash on my shin, I reflected that I still had a long way to go before I was back in the outdoor headspace. After a week back in Australia I was effectively still a pasty limey with no sense of what my body and the elements were capable of – just one step up from the idiot Englishmen who go bright red after a couple of hours in the Australian sun because they don’t bother with sun cream.

My shin ended up getting infected because I refused to stay out of the water to let it heal. In the end a nice Jewish doctor stuck me on antibiotics and told me there was a 50/50 chance I’d have to go into hospital on a drip. I freaked out and decided to postpone my trip to Western Australia on the grounds that I might need to be hospitalised at any moment and if that were to happen I wanted the comfort of familiar people and places. That’s why I’m still here on Bondi Beach, jumping in the ocean on my birthday sporting a waterproof plaster on my sleekly shaved shin, looking forward to celebrating this special day over tapas with my friends a bit later.

I’m happy - but then again, I’m not. I want a snorkel for my birthday and I will jolly well get one when I go shopping this afternoon – that’s the kind of man I am; if I want something I take it! Just like that! The problem is that what I really want for my birthday – the thing that would really make me happy as I settle down to tapas and red wine with my friends this evening – is not something I can simply take. It is something which is utterly ephemeral and thus my inability to attain it makes me feel hopeless. I want to be able to write something - anything will do, as long as it’s good. Ever since I arrived on these golden shores my creativity has withered and waned and now it seems like I can barely string a coherent sentence together, let alone one with a touch of class or an ounce of wit. My spark has gone. My mojo vanished.

I need a muse. Now, a muse does not necessarily have to be a romantic sort of inspiration, but in this case I think it needs to be because I haven’t seen any action in months. My last muse fled many months ago and I’ve been troubled ever since. Actually, she didn’t flee, I sort of chased her away, it was my fault entirely. She was keen and I was scared. It’s a familiar story, it wasn’t the first time I had screwed up a relationship with some potential and missed a chance for love and happiness because I got freaked out. I must hanker for the lonely, soulful suffering of a sad, frustrated artist or something. Either that or I’m stupid, I haven’t quite decided which.

It occurs to me that suffering is a good source of inspiration, but I’d go for a good muse over suffering any day of the week in order to get my creative juices flowing. Suffering sucks but it does tend to focus the mind in a way that shagging rarely does. In an ideal world what you need is a muse who makes you suffer, which, funnily enough, is exactly what the last one did, hence the reason she was chased off. Geez, what a vicious circle, but I don’t need that kind of muse in my life!

The creative process is very naturalistic when you think about it, a seemingly endless cycle of birth, growth and death, rebirth and regrowth as ideas come and go, wither and flourish, are abandoned to be replaced by better ones, but there never seems to be enough consistency in my creative life for me to hold onto an idea for more than a moment – or enough consistency in my personal life for me to be able to hold onto a girlfriend, it would seem.

Self-belief is a factor too, and it’s a problem I have, one that I struggle with incessantly. People are certainly complimentary enough about my writing – it’s awesome when someone writes to me and tells me how much they were touched by something I’ve written. It’s the best feeling in the world to know that you’ve made that kind of connection! Maybe, I think, just maybe I do have a talent! But if that moment of self-belief is followed up by a month of writer’s block then that spark is diminshed.

That’s why I need a reliable muse, a regular shag, a girlfriend, a serious relationship, a life partner – whatever you want to call it. I’ve realised that a man can only achieve so much on his own, it must be through the love of a good woman that he can realise his true potential… isn’t it? I could be talking absolute rubbish here – it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a relationship, as you may have gathered, so forgive me if this is claptrap - but having someone believe in you and support you through the good times and the bad, and for you to be the same thing to them – that seems to me to be what life is all about, when it comes down to it. The rest of it is just trimmings.

Travelling alone, for example - isn’t that sort of a half empty experience? I mean, I have all these thoughts and feelings about what I’m seeing and doing out here and my only outlet of expression for them is this blog! I need someone to bounce this stuff off so all you guys don’t have to put up with it! I guess that’s why the blog is so important to me despite the fact that only a handful of people read it, it’s the only way I can share my experiences with the people I love – indirectly. This is the way I have begun to think on this trip, this is the reason why I’ve decided that continuing to travel alone will not benefit me in the long run.

A snorkel and a muse is all I want for my birthday this year. I’ll have the snorkel by this afternoon, I guess I might have to wait a bit longer for the muse.