ich will's zärtlich!

as a child i considered adulthood to be a developmental end-point. the growing and learning and confusion of childhood would cease abruptly and a new state - almost deity-like - would take its place, where one knew one's role in the world, where everything made sense, and where there was no more learning, growing and confusion. perhaps there was no more child-like joy.

i stayed with my wonderful friend salva for 2 weeks in spain <3

my spanish husband ;) <3

salva's hometown of albaida

a few weeks ago i turned 32, and i cannot remember any point in my childhood at which i was learning so much, growing so much, so confused, and so full of joy and wonder as i am right now. you were wrong, little ondřej, adulthood is not so different. but it's better. there's no-one to hold you back - just a great big blue sky that you can sail through doing whatever you choose. and if you're lucky, there's someone you love to catch you when you come crashing, agonisingly, back down. 

g and i went to budapest for a few days of relaxation

men-only day at the rudas baths (damn!)
boys cover up with a little front-apron

red as a beet after 5 hours in the hot water!

i love budapest trams!

i've been in europe for 2 months now - mainly in berlin - and my main lesson has been that you can't have it all. i'm not talking about material goods - i'm talking about love. you can be completely honest with everyone around you, but at the end of the day, to love someone is an act of emotional violence: you rip open your chest and set fire to your heart and the hearts of those around you. there can be nothing quite as exquisite as the warmth you feel, and though it is always, always worth it to set fire to that little phoenix - it is a fire nonetheless, and oh how it burns. 

getting down at berghain

les fexes

there is another lesson, though, and that is: be burnt. open that chest even wider and let yourself be devoured by those flames. people need people. that is our weakness, and that is our strength. so keep going, fire-starter. 

g and i spent a few days on the baltic coast chilling out :)

baltic poppies

i've become addicted to the fine art of hand-standing

i'm ambivalent about coming back to australia next week. it's the end of an 18-month down-time that has been my life's greatest adventure, and also a time to say good-bye to my life's greatest love. but i feel that it's time to get back to work, step up, skill up, and dive into that new life. perhaps gather all of my energy (human, curious, sexual energy), and sublimate it to fuel my work instinct! i'm ready, and i'm excited.

i <3 <3 <3 you berlin!

i recently re-heard the fable of the tortoise and the hare. you know the one - the gifted hare is a braggart and snoozes too much during a race with the tortoise and ends up losing. upon hearing it this time, i was left with the impression that in our societies, particularly in australia, we over-value the tortoise. this appreciation of tortoise-like characteristics is a new opiate for the godless masses. here we are, all chipping away at that great sisyphean task of constructing 'a good life' like good little tortoises, but the finishing line keeps moving away from our little tortoise-feet, and we're never going to cross it. the joke's on us, tortoises. while we are plodding along all day (all week, all year), the hare is having the time of his life eating cabbage in the fields, playing with other hares, snoozing in the sun or gazing dreamily up at the clouds in the ceramic blue sky. that hare isn't losing the race because he is capricious and stupid. that hare understands that the rules governing the race are arbitrary and only as valuable as the collective investment made by its competitors. that hare has re-examined his own value system, and instead of repressing his desires when he finds them to be at odds with those of the tortoise (and all the other animals in the woods), he has the courage to disqualify these externally imposed rules and champion his own. he has the courage to accept that he simply doesn't give a shit about the race and that he has better things to do, and then has the courage to go out and do them.

so fuck that silly tortoise. everyone else is a tortoise, but you're not a tortoise: you are a hare. you are an amazing hare, sleek and beautiful. you are a fire-starter. you are the lucky one. you can do anything. get out there and go crazy! no-one can stop you now. run fast, you beautiful thing, run free!

colovebia

JP+O 

as pong and i were recently discussing, not everything goes on the blog; i have been wondering about what - if anything - i am willing to write about my three weeks in colombia. in the end, i´ve decided not to write much about it at all, just have a rant about a few other things that have been on my mind and pepper it with a colombian picture show. i will, however, summarise those three weeks with one sentence: reality is even more sublime than fantasy. what do you reckon jp? hmmm...

day two: hiking out to tayrona national park

day 2-4: camping at tayrona

the wetland in front of our camping area

i have been wondering about love and i have been wondering about non-heterosexuality. when jp and i were at the santa rosa thermal springs near manizales a few weeks ago, i watched as a woman in the hot bath opposite us gazed into her husband´s eyes, and then without thinking, leaned in and kissed him on the lips. she was so light, and so free. she was completely in the moment. she didn´t ask our permission, she didn´t look around to see who might be watching (angry parents who wouldn´t want their children exposed to such things at a young age), it didn´t even cross her mind that she might need to hide her love away for fear of provoking some sort of reaction. how could an expression of love be provocative? and yet one week earlier, when jp and i gazed into each other´s eyes on a caribbean beach and kissed, a whole group of people about 50 metres away started screaming and jeering at us. that was ok - we´re tough young men with thick skin - but the sad part of it is that even before the jeering, we were not light and carefree - we felt heavy and encumbered, but still determined to prove to ourselves that we could kiss each other in a situation that for the woman in the hot bath would have been a simple act of spontaneous love, laden with romance. come on, yes we can do this! but by the time we kissed, it was less about love and more about politics, and a battle to prove a point in the face of fear and an oppressive self-censorship. auto-censoring your love: a very gay art! i believe that this is the most unkindest cut of all.

days 4-6: free at last! camping solo on palomino beach

the view from our tent :) behind us was a tropical jungle,
with the snow-covered peaks of the nevada range visible above that.
does it get any better?!

an old man with a machete opens some coconuts
that we cut off the palm next to our tent :)

torches along the beach on easter evening, right past our little tent :)

arriving back in berlin and now in madrid, there are same-sex couples expressing natural intimacy all over the place. kissing, cuddling, holding hands: whathaveyou. the best part of it is that for these men and women (and i include myself among them), it is completely thoughtless. it is carefree, spontaneous, and natural. thank fucking god for western civilisation.

why drink one delicious juice when you can have two?

the bus back from minca. we missed it and took motorbikes instead :)

hummingbirds everywhere in minca: amazing creatures

it wasn´t always this way. i remember in 2001 i was simply unable to walk down fitzroy street in broad daylight holding sibastian´s hand. and believe you me: the one thing i wanted to do more than anything else in the world at that moment was walk down fitzroy street in broad daylight holding sibastian´s hand. to be honest, that experience was a bit of a catalyst for me. i realised that something was deeply wrong with my own auto-censorship anxiety, and i started forcing myself to do things publicly. before long, forced political acts became carefree loving acts, and during the three years that g lived in melbourne, i can´t remember ever not holding his hand when i wanted to, and i can´t remember anyone ever staring at us when we did (or perhaps if people were staring, i simply didn´t notice or i didn´t care). life has changed in such a short period of time. we´ve evolved as individuals and we´ve evolved as a society. how wonderful it is to realise this.

JP reckons i say ´go fuck yourself´ more than any
other phrase in english. this photo was therefore a must.

so if everything´s so cozy for dykes and faggots in australia, it makes me ponder the question of gay marriage. i think we all know that it´s a given. even julia thinks it´s a given. i´m looking forward to it, and of course i support it 100% because i think laws should reflect the equality with which we regard, or at least aim to regard, other forms of love, and whilst these laws are driven by societal change, they drive societal change themselves.

santa rosa

thermal springs at santa rosa

my colombian piece :) <3

JP+O at santa rosa

but another part of me wonders whether or not the hoo-haa about gay marriage hasn´t hijacked or at least derailed a more important push for sexual liberation. it is true that historically, marriage has been a union between a man and a woman, seemingly with the purpose of creating a family, with the intention being that this relationship will be life-long and monogamous.

and this is where i falter. why do we place such a high premium on long term relationships? why do we place such a high premium on monogamy? are these natural expressions of our human sexuality, or are they cultural prisons driven by the sexual repression that is the basis for judeo-christian society? and is it not possible that this enduring repression may be one of the most psychologically damaging aspects of modern day culture? with gay marriage, are we not just creating a sanitised, pseudo-heterosexual version of love that is pre-packaged and palatable for our sexually conservative societies? where is the sexual revolution?

nature park near manizales

a gorgeous chrysalis

i don´t want to dismiss long-term monogamous relationships. if you are in one: good luck to you. if you aspire to be in one: good luck to you. what i am saying is that i don´t think that this is the only form of love that we should be validating in our societies - it is not the only form of ´success´ in love. if you choose to love more than one person with honesty, either in a parallel or consecutive manner, then i don´t see how the value of this relationship could be less than that of one that is long term and monogamous. if you choose to love no-one at all then that´s fine too. your relationships and your love are there for you to choose and engage in freely, and should be a daily affirmation, regardless of how long you´ve been together. so yes, go and get married if you wish! perhaps one day i will too (despite everything i say about it). however, please don´t allow an internalised version of what society says is right and normal to overpower your own desire for happiness. marriage is not an end in itself, it is simply one of the many valid ways of expressing an enormous, personal, infinitely variable thing called love. let´s remember that, and get stuck into it :) 


love to you all!

camping out near mondo nuevo

dinner!

my sleepy colombian

my pussy juicy, my pussy clean

when my baby! when my baby smiles at me...

i didn´t need a baby to smile at me to go to rio: i just hopped on a plane and flew there.

*there's no denying it: rio's natural beauty is simply breathtaking. sugarloaf mountain from a fort near my hostel*

so after hearing all the hype, i was finally in rio de janeiro. but what to do? i had hugely enjoyed the film 'city of god' a few years ago, so i was keen to check out a favela (i imagined a shanty-town filled with drugs and crime where people were dodging bullets or putting knives in each other for having been looked at sideways), and it just so happened that i found a hostel right in the middle of a favela on the net, so i booked in and off i went!

*view of my favela (babilonia) with JC in the clouds in the background*

the favela was great - there was cheap food, people were lovely, wealthier than i had expected, and the closest a knife came to me was when the dude across the road was cutting up slices of cheese for my vegetarian burger. i felt safer walking home through the favela at 3am than i do in most other parts of the world. the hostel, however, was...something else. i stayed in a room with a couple of girls - one of whom was a pot-head colombian lesbian psychologist that maintained a thick cumulo-nimbus of weed-smoke in the room at all times (getting me high whether i liked it or not), and a fricken dog that slept under my bed. when i turned up, people were recovering from a >24 hour party at the hostel, and staff were found lying paralytic in various locations, unable to speak, focus, walk, and certainly not check me in. the water supply failed for a few days, so people stunk for lack of showers, and unflushable toilets were brimming with vomit and faeces.

*the shower*

it sounds worse than it was: the water started again after 24 hours and i had a great time. it turns out that there was a pipe with water flowing onto the road nearby, and this is where half the favela came to shower, so i just showered there and then hit the beach. did i mention that the favela was surrounded by gorgeous tropical rainforest? did i mention that we were near the top of the hill with stunning views across the jungle and beach? did i mention that the favela was only 5 minutes from copacabana?! now that's what i'm talking about!

*view from the hostel*

unlike buenos aires, i couldn't ignore tourist attractions altogether: i couldn't visit rio and not go to christ the redeemer! who go rio and don't visit christ? a fool! that who. so off i went. the views were spectacular. the tourist crush left me gasping and irritable.

*view from JC: that's ipanema behind the lagoon, copacabana to the left and sugarloaf mountain extreme left*

the 5 days i spend in rio were filled with activities that ranged from the weird to the bizarre. to begin with i met up with my sneaky-but-sexy brazilian friend luis and ended up dining for free at a 5-star restaurant during a jazz concert for him and his hotelier buddies. there were birthday parties on the beach with strangers, naked swims in the ocean at midnight with handsome germans, treks through the jungle, and even the outright domination of a karaoke club with a heart-felt rendition of eternal flame by the bangles. bring it on!

*say my name! sun shines through the rain...*

rio is to buenos aires what sydney is to melbourne, and though i really enjoyed my visit, it's not the sort of place i'd want to stay for longer than about a week. perhaps it's that i love language-based travel and portuguese seems like a dirty and inferior dialect of spanish that i don't want to learn (at this stage...unless i fall in love with a brazilian!), perhaps it was the shock of rudeness of the people in rio after the open affection of the argentinians, or perhaps it was the beach culture of body-worship, where - particularly on the gay beach at ipanema - i felt surrounded by sad people whose sense of self worth was bound to how many hours they spent at the gym and how many people stared at them when they walked by. it made me feel sad too. incidentally, when i slipped into my tight little bathers and threw my scrawny little chicken-leg-white body into that crowd of tanned muscle and augmented crotch, and i still felt fucking beautiful ;)

but hey, we all know that buenos aires and rio de janeiro were only fun pitstops on the way to a final destination that my heart had chosen for me. after 5 days, it was time to say goodbye to rio and plunge into the greatest adventure of all...!