By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com
So on holiday I was, after twelve months of too much work & not enough money. But I had at least been working with my hands, as the cosmos has intended for humanoids like us. I was pleasantly weary you might say.
But to put the rose tinted glasses down, boy this break was damn overdue, I was indeed frazzled. But I could still laugh & that’s important.
The ‘dread machine’ – and that’s putting it kindly -the thing we call ‘the economy’, had been all year grinding constantly away, with each turn of the cog shearing off a thin slice of my bodies proteins & assassinating a few of my brain’s neurons.
That’s how it all works. You gotta know these things. If you know it, you’ll be cocksure enough to brave a smile through life’s blizzards. If you don’t know it – you’re just another frowny humorless schmoe on a treadmill with a juicy carrot always just out of reach. You should never let yourself become something like that.
I had forced myself to have six days off, in the nearby city called Dunedin – a University town filled mostly of past glories. But those past glories have their charm, mainly in the Victorian & Edwardian architecture, built with that golden money made by the Central Otago diggers.
But enough of past history for a moment. So here I was on holiday in Dunedin. I was staying in a cheap writers room – which is always fun – you get great value at a great price. Of course they don’t advertise it as ‘a writers room’, but that at heart is what it is, at least for me and my ilk. These ‘writers rooms’ are cheap, cosy & must have been made well before 1960. They built rooms with character & real craftmanship back then.
I was High on High Street, but don’t get too excited about the connotation – The ‘drugs’ for us fazed cookies slash writers will be the yellowing pages of old books, & coffees & beers on a slow but constant drip-feed. These University towns have great books. These A+ books are a great by-product of the general swindle that’s going on – that is the squeezing of cash of people who should know better. I’m happy to live on these papery time capsule by-products.
The best books for me are the ones are those truth-a-tellin’, usually small-fonted, first-person-ers, & like good architecture – usually written well before 1960, but definitely before 1985. The culture became too warped after that, & especially in the art & books.
This is why they say there’s no good history books written after 1960. My theory is people had higher self esteem back then & were willing to risk their true selves being seen, becasue they also saw the reward in that – Truth.
With those books you’re getting a real story by someone who was somewhere in time, doing or seeing something interesting, & then retelling it for you many years later. It’s a genuine form of time travel. You’re literally listening to someone talk to you from the past. Most people are too dim to realise this. Even better, in a way, you can reply to them if you are of the few souls that put pen to paper, or perhaps should I say ‘finger to keyboard’.
Who know’s maybe one day in some version of an afterlife, the avid reader gets a chance to meet those gifted but very dead authors. You’ll get to have a conversation in real time with your beloved favourite authors. The twist no doubt will be that you’ll only get to meet the writers whose book you’ve read comprehended cover to cover, or perhaps totally misunderstood.
In that scenario you’ll see a tweed coated & cane holding Carl Jung walk by, & wish you had actually got round to reading Synchronicity. You’ll see Plato lying on a bench & get to quibble to him about his shadows on the cave wall theory of existence. You’ll shuffle up to a smoking slouching Kerouac & say man your book was so so overrated, I couldn’t get more than a third way through it! You’ll slur to Boswell, sure your Journal says you partied hard in ye olde 18th Century London, but did you ever do what I did at your in Melbourne Australia on King Street in the 21st?
Who knows, maybe in this Writers’ paradise maybe the truly messed up will even crack open a beer with Charles Bukowski, & share war stories about crazy exes.
Just imagine the shear beauty of all those once in a lifetime chances being available on tap. But then again what’s that they say about too much of a good thing?
Now my love of books is signalled, oh dear reader – I’ll continue with my writer’s holiday lodgings in Dunedin, the University town, which is also my old university town – from decades ago, but that’s another story & probably far more boring than this one.
On the rooftop level ‘executive suite’ level of this grande olde tomb, there’s a great breakfast area – window views of city & harbour, & even a balcony. I am here in my writers room. Of course, a dull man or woman twisted inside ‘the machine’ would quickly write this place off as a ‘dive’.
People brainwashed by the machine can’t discern the true value of things. This is the nature of their prison – the game they’re playing is in fact just the hologram. Then they can’t understand why they can’t truly grasp the hologram.
I highly recommend renting a single room like this, in some out of the way old building, built well before 1960 if possible – if you do this, it’s one of the few genuine ways a ‘poor man’ in this world can feel rich for a few days.
So I’m I’m up in the rooftop 3rd floor aspiring writers executive suite. I’m gonna enjoy hanging out in the dual breakfast, lounge & balcony area or so I tell myself – but as my story unfurls you will see this will be foiled by the man I will later on simply call ‘The Russian Spy’. He’ll annoy me, but i’ll enjoy it. Writer’s act like this all the time. Writers need material, & novel, weird or bad times deliver all that in spades.
So There he is – my future material. A product of the giant cog. Shoulders slumped & looking vacant & stressed. I see there’s a thirty five year told frowney face guy with a laptop, sitting furiously clacking away in the breakfast area executive level area with an ocean & city view that he won’t let himself notice. As I said earlier – cogs in the machine can’t see beauty. He’s alone at the big old formica table – I mean how could anyone with eyes to see want to be next to all that embodied cog-ness? Just as well I’m a writer.
I know his type instantly by looking at him – low eq, high Iq, low self esteem, massive massive ego. He has a weird look on his way too pale face, is semi-bald & will almost certainly be annoying as hell to talk to. I Sound judgmental & mean, but my experience pays. Some types people you can definitely read like a book. Being a profiler has always been a semi hobby of mine. All good writers are also good profilers, it goes hand-in-hand.
These guys ya are a dime a dozen – you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. if you make the mistake of trying your luck at chit chat, to say hi, to make conversation – you’ll regret it – boy will you regret it! They delight in stealing energy. At heart they’re all vampires.
So it was now time to fish for future writing material. I pipe up to him, speaking confidently.
“Hi what are you up to on that computer”
His face looks grey & devoid of all compassion, he’s got a downward trend mouth, he wears a black hoodie. He slowly looks up from the computer with squinted eyes. He speaks in disinterested monotone – the time that lets you know you’re not worth wasting his ‘genius IQ’ on. In this case his high pitched chirping Russian accent magnifies this effect.
“I’m a PHD student from Wellington University – it’s cheap here in this hostel”
He doesn’t elaborate & fails to ask me a return question – of course he doesn’t, that’s what you have to expect from these weirdos. My profiling predictions are panning out well.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s a tonne of great weirdos – but there’s weirdos & weirdos. There are ‘good entertainment weirdos’ Vs ‘boring bad energy-snatcher-monster-weirdos’ – after his first few sentences & body language, I’m 100% sure he’s the later kind. But that’s ok – as I said, I can write about both types.
These kinds of nerds always expect you to just sit there & take their “I’m Einstein & you’re just a bonobo with your finger up your butt” act. They want you to swallow politely swallow this turd act whole, & then shuffle off stage with your head down. As I said they are at heart, vampires. ‘The machine’ readily creates vampires.
These kinds of very-badly-aging-nerds have huge egos. They all think they are on the ‘success track’ & get wildly forever inflating Graf Zeppelin-like egos. Their only currency is IQ – their IQ. It’s all about them, always. This is way most academics who are top of their field are some of life’s biggest assholes – & incidentally they also love to eat their own.
True assholes cannot accept genuine camaraderie, they will always attack each other. After all – that’s how the machine rewards the biggest assholes, they get the so called ‘best jobs’. Just like a Professor or a CEO. All assholes with the exceptions proving the rule.
So anyway back to the story. I’m here in the writer’s-breakfast-suite-with-a-view looking at my “Russian Spy” & I decide simply to nip his ‘asshole play’ in the bud before it flowers & he becomes a mega-vampire. So to recap his opening sentence to me was this:
“I’m a PHD student from Wellington University, this place is cheap”
I reply to his sentence like a old school principal who had been a Seageant Major in the WW2 might have – in other words, I launch a pre-emptive strike. This approach could give me more material.
”No, what you really mean to say is this:
’I am a PhD student from Wellington who has come down to Dunedin, because Dunedin is cheaper than Wellington”
He is struck silent, but he doesn’t let it show that I’ve got to him, but I can tell I’ve made at least a small dint in his Intellectual vampiric armour. Theres silence for five seconds so I add the next question. It’s stock, so he will probably reply to.
“So what do you study?” I pipe.
“I study Archeology” he says greasily like he’s the Kremlin’s go-to Archeologist.
So I now can take aim & take the fatal shot. I shout over my shoulder to him as I nonchalently walk to the breakfast bench & put hot water on my cup of tea out of the kettle.
“So ya found any Dinosaurs yet?”. Sure that line sounds a bit bogan, a bit red-neck but there’s method it it. That’s actually a sharp high caliber verbal projectile, which could unsteady him.
He only says this –
”No Dinosaurs are not my thing”.
I kinda knew there would be no elaboration – I leave my words hanging in the air, about turn & leave the room to go about my day. I’ve turned the tables on my boy the “Russian Spy” – he got no vampires blood from me!. You gotta get up at 8:23 am in the morning to pull the wool over this writers eyes – oh, & I should clarify 8:23 is bloody early for us types. But I will add, he didn’t get rattled. Russians don’t rattle easily. If he is actually a spy, the doubly so.
For the next four days he totally ruins the vibe of the executive suite breakfast with a view area. He’s turned the breakfast area into his personal office with his grey frowny face, his balding head & his frantic keyboard clacking. He doesn’t once think to stop & look at the mighty sunny view. He is so low IQ he doesn’t care that he’s ruining this thing called a “holiday vibe” for everyone else staying in this hotel. I would say ‘including me’ – but as I said, we writers spin gold from horse-shit.
I’ve seen to many fools just like this – invariably they don’t add anything new to the world & they waste their IQ entirely – usually on someone else’s folly project – that someone else is just some guy exactly like him but older – like a PhD supervisor – & then this happens again with the head Professor. It’s a tiered hierarchical system of madness.
In this case I may be totally wrong – maybe he’s all he thinks he is & is gonna set the archeology world alight – but I doubt it. He’ll more likely be polishing vikings coprolites & calling it a ‘revolution in archeology’. I mean let’s be honest – statistically almost all professors won’t do anything new or groundbreaking. The raw numbers tell the story.
But back to my friend the “Ryssian Spy”. In the days after my “Found any Dinosaurs yet” comment, we avoid all eye contact, or any attempt conversation, & I accept he’s happy blindly ruining the holiday slash vibe in the ‘executive suite’ of the cheap hotel with his vampire-blob schtick. Great! it’s all material & I’ve just harvested some. I go about reading my pages, drinking my beer, & chatting with the Dunedin locals – which means mainly the cafe & bar staff.
A few days later I hear him talk Russian to someone on a laptop call – I heard the Rusiian word ‘Nyet’ – this is why I have referred to him in this story occaisionally as the “Russian Spy”. Yes, it’s a bit stock, but trust me it works. Now that a quarter of the 21st Century is gone, ‘Russian Spies’ are back in fashion.
Of course, I doubt he’s a actually a Spy, but you never know – if you were a Russian Spy, it would be wise to go for a hotel like this – ‘low brow’ places won’t attract suspiscion. But would a Spy put on a “I’m totally shit with people’ act? I doubt it. It draws too much attention – Spies arn’t suposed to put peoples backs up.
All the same, I have still dubbed him the “Russian Spy” – why not elevate his status a little from the valleys of being a “Wellington PhD Archeology Student”?
I was now checking out of my room. I noticed from my doorway, the “Russian Spy” was still at the helm of the ‘Breakfast area with a view’ – still sitting down at the formerly communal breakfast table. He had his back to me, so he didn’t know I was only a few paces away, looking at him plack away. Or to be more succinct – I was spying on him. He didn’t turn around – more evidence he’ not a Russian Spy. A real Russian Spy would have felt my eyes on the back of his head.
I notice he has a word document open. I sneakily recorded in my mind what he’s writing down. I’m as quiet as a mouse. Luckily, I have a photographic memory & sharp carpenters eyes. I can record it all for later analysis. I mesmerise the first few lines of what he had written. He never did turn around.
I leave the hotel. I go to my car load in my luggage & sit in the drivers seat. I take out my smartphone -to see what it was he wrote – these days translating foriegn language writing is a cinch. I write out the Russian words from my photographic memory onto my smartphone screen. I hit the “Translate to English button’. It said:
“There is an annoying New Zealand guy who bugs me while I work – New Zealander’s are always so rude. All I’m trying to do is work quietly – this is after all why I came to Dunedin in summer! I’ve seen those older foreign westerner types before – they are all the same. They think they are Sergeant Majors or something, & they insist on irrelevant chatter. This is especially so for the older males. They clearly no nothing of us Russians. Hopefully he will check out soon, as I have a looming deadline & he’s ruining my study vibe. When he’s around it’s almost like he’s spying on me. Maybe he’s entertaining ideas of me being a spy – I can only hope he checks out soon. I can’t have anyone thinking that way about me”.
I put my keys in the steering column & turned the key. I heard a giant bang for a split second. Almost instantly my view had totally changed – I was not sitting in my car but was sitting alone at a small table a large Victorian-era style library. I got up & wandered over to the bookshelves.
I was struck dumb when I saw it not only only had all the books that I’d ever read throughout my entire life, but it also had all the books that were written throughout earths history that I would have read if given a chance.
Naturally the first thing I did was to go over & take out the ‘most read book ever’. I did so & flicked through to see if it was the same or different from Earth’s version. It was immediately obvious it was different. Then I suddenly felt someone’s eyes upon me as I held the giant book. I turned round to look.
A very tall healthy somewhat ancient times looking man with a extraordinary glowing complexion dressed in a spotlessly clean robe said “Yes you were right in what you were just thinking , in the Earth version they left out how I actually came to be me”.
Too shocked to say anything I just sat down at a table and flicked open the book & started reading. After a minute I looked up & the man was gone.
I put my head down & started reading. I spared a minute to take stock. All up, looking back I was pretty happy what had happened to me – I had this amazing book and an endless library of other great material on the shelves, & an infinite amount of time on my hands! And it was seeming all mine!
On top of all that I knew all the original authors would be around at my very whim for me to ask any questions I had of their material, & more importantly I could even boldly debate their unique thought provoking ideas!
I was definitely in somekind of intellectuals book based utopia!
As a added bonus, the overall lighting was perfect without any glare, the chairs were built for a billionaire, & the scenery out the big floor to ceiling library windows was of an ancient birdsong enveloped Triassic era misty rainforest!
I could see the rainforest was accessible from the library’s balcony meaning I could take a walk about it all when I wanted a break from the library.
I was definitely sitting in a bookworms paradise. Being blown up by that Russian Spy in my car on Earth was certainly a cosmic level stroke of otherworldly good luck.
I only had one gripe – where’s was the coffee machine & the cans of cold beer? Where was my pen & paper? Or a typewriter? Or word processor program in a computer? I couldn’t see any of that critical writers stuff anywhere? If I didn’t have that stuff – I’d have to start to questioning things.
I decided not to worry about it – I told myself I’d just wait it out & see what pops up. After all I’d only just arrived. I chastised myself for being my schoolboy-like impatience.
I went out to the balcony & took a giant breath of the crisp triple oxygenated ancient forrest air. I felt my energy refresh.
I walked down the balcony steps to have a look around. After all – nothing could go wrong – those books & those amazing dead authors surely weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
As I walked along the fern encrusted forrest trail, the cacophony of birdsong enveloped me like a warm embracing cocoon.
But then something just slightly unnerved me – blow me down if I couldn’t here a faint annoying plasticky clacking sound in the mix…
The End.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 