I think those old guys at TAB's and corner pubs are australia's real shaman

[botanika]

They sit there at the inner city shrine of porcelin tiles and VB carpet. They have a language of clipped sentances, old dog sayings and larrakin wisdom. Their faces are meshed with life experiences of the world abstracted through a mystic portal of dog races, schoona's and barber shop rhetoric. Its all metaphor mate. See you sundee. Maybe not as glamouress as a witchdoctor from an exotic feather highland. Maybe not as polished as a chemistry grad burning fancy incense to understand its combustion rate. Maybe deep down not so different from the benchmark viney amazon healers.

Ive learnt from them; they callibrate another side of the australian dream, They are portals to other realities like Dapto, they defy time and place as if they have always been there since time immortal, a confrontational element in ones right of passage. They are the endangered blue healers of terra suburbia.

Edited April 9, 2010 by botanika

[Chiral]

They sometimes tip you a winner or two too if you get to know them...I love all the old school greek men in my neighborhood, friendly as fuck, very family orientated and they have a million stories to tell me when I take time to sit and share a ciggy with them.

[JDanger]

You might be onto something.

[MORG]

Haha! Brilliant!

I love it Botanika. You're a poet.

And I just noticed JDanger's avatar moves.

[ThunderIdeal]

pretty damned unconvincing.

[stiched up]

hahahaha the only healing these guys do is from alchohol poisoning ;)

[drugo]

Consume VB potions in TAB temples and evoke your bogan chakra.

"The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquenstionably due to its power to stimulate

the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts

and dry criticism of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says

no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes."

~William James 1902

Edited April 9, 2010 by telepathogen

[incognito]

basically rave bullshit then head home to smack the mrs around

[paradox]

nah thats beautifully put botanika!

something somewhat similar might be said for the unstable vagabond minority. those lonesome homeless drifters who traverse the endth degree of consciousness & dwell in mental spaces too remote for others to follow. what secrets they would tell if they could return to share their stories!

[FancyPants]

Hmm, I've frequented many pubs throughout my life, and I'd have to say that as with many other groups all of the salt-of-the-earth-aussie-larrikins there are good and bad in each and every single one.

Case in point: During last Easter long weekend I was out on saturday night having a quiet dinner with a mate before watching bands and this old drunk dude approached me and proceeded to TELL me what he thinks he knows all about me, what I should do, how I should do it, why I should do it, what I'm capable of blah blah blah blah. People tend to want to talk all about my physical condition when it's rarely asked if that's what I want to talk about. When I'm out, and talking with a complete stranger I rarely want to talk about my condition. But seeing as it's dead obvious people tend to feel they have every right to ask all about it. I'm ALWAYS polite about it because I know a lot of people are genuinely just thinking they're trying to be nice. But I ALWAYS give very polite hints that it's not what I want to discuss when I'm having fun. The vast majority of these S-O-T-E-A-L never take the hint; either just don't get it, or they're too damn pissed to notice. This guy the other weekend just would not leave me the F alone despite many polite attempts. Eventually got away and got back to my dinner. After then a bit later he approached me from behind (where me and my mate were trying to keep to ourselves in a corner) and clapped his hand on my shoulder quite roughly and started up again! What's worse, I was still trying to politely hold conversation by telling him I'm quite aware of what I'm capable of and what I want to do with my life, but as soon as I would try and say anything he'd just bark "EH!?" at me, to punctuate whatever the last rude thing he said was. NO point trying to be polite, he certainly wasn't even listening to me, just wanted to talk AT me. Now my mate knows a LOT of drunk guys do this but he knows to sit back and wait for me to control the situation, even though there's been a few people he's wanted - and I've wanted - to deck for their incessant rudeness. I also hate having my back towards someone - because it's rude - but this guy even ignored me doing that. I got sick of him barking beer spit at the back of my head so I turned and left the room quickly in a fury before I said any of the things I really wanted to say. My mate lightly pushed him in the chest and told him to leave me alone.

Later that night at another bar, another drunk F-wit who I had been chatting to nicely said after not too long that he thought it was wrong that I don't have a job and didn't "do anything" which I'd been trying to explain that I DO keep quite occupied, just don't have a job. But no, nevermind it's none of his F-ing business.

Let nobody be confused; I've known a LOT of great SOTEAL, many in my dad's side of the family, and my parents run/manage a pub. I would never say they're not in general great people. But this is a large part of the reason I can't stand pubs and people getting shitfaced anymore. I'm not hugely social with people I don't know that well, but the many incidents like these have made me want to avoid all pubs where there's not live music played at to escape to. It has become that I hate spending time with mum and dad when I see them because of all the other drunk F-wits who don't leave me well enough alone. One old guy at a pub in Casula where I was visiting friends actually got pissed off at me and said something to the effect that I was too good to talk to him when he DEMANDED I tell him "my story" ie why am I in a wheelchair? Well fuck me maybe I should start carting around my medical records just in case some curious old pissed fart thought he had the right to know!

Would they think it was OK to go up to a middle aged woman and demand she tell him if she's had a hysterectomy or uterine cancer and that's why she hasn't got any kids? Or would they think it OK to ask an 13yr old boy wearing a scarf over his bald head what his chemo story was? Let alone out in public where you kind of just want to enjoy yourself. Pointing out how amazing it is that someone is out in public at all, kinda just gives you that feeling of "why the hell shouldn't I be out in public"?

It's frustrating sometimes, but everytime I come across people like this I'm always polite as I said, because the majority of the time - at least at the beginning of the "conversation" - they just think they're being nice.

I guess I'm more pinpointing when alcohol's involved, but unfortunately with these blokes that's almost all the time in these places.

Also, they may be full of great sayings, but they can also be full of other great sayings like "look at that fucking poofter in that pink shirt" and "what's that gook doing in my pub?" or "bloody wimmin didn't have my dinner on the table when I got home last night so I had remind her who's boss"...

[ThunderIdeal]

yep

[devance]

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/news/Breaking_News/15836-Enhanced_Vision_Creates___039_Sixth_Sense__039_

[paradox]

yep

 

yep, & fancypants that must really get fucking annoying! but i choose to kind of see botanikas words as metaphor. it's quite lovely poetry (to my mind) & is open to interpretation as most good poetry is...

i think it symbolizes the undercurrents & deeper aspects of human behaviour in just about any group of people &/or human experience.

& i also think a 'shaman'(though the word has become a cliche) may be & perhaps often will be found in the most unlikely of places

[JDanger]

^Right on.

[Quill]

I think there is something to be said about the idea of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "you will find beauty wherever you look for it" but in this case replace beauty with i dunno mysticism. If one is open towards wisdom and probly in this case "alternative" wisdom, then one will come across a great deal of wisdom.

keep them eyes and ears open

[MORG]

And here I was thinking Botanika was being ironic and poetic...

[ThunderIdeal]

i'll say he's a hard character to pin down but i thought he was serious

i guess i'm in the minority of people who has overwhelmingly experienced alcohol as a character-reducing, volume and spit-output increasing enhancer of obnoxiousness and self centred idiocy (when taken that little bit too far).

[botanika]

i'll say he's a hard character to pin down but i thought he was serious

 

Yes, light hearted poetry or a quick thumnail literary sketch.

[Chiral]

i think it symbolizes the undercurrents & deeper aspects of human behaviour in just about any group of people &/or human experience.

& i also think a 'shaman'(though the word has become a cliche) may be & perhaps often will be found in the most unlikely of places

 

don't you hate it when someone else say's what you are thinking but you can't put it into words...nice work.

There ARE some extremely intricate types in society, and it's possible their circles of involvement cross over into the pools of other multi types that may appear odd or unexpected to the outsider...take time to talk to as many people as you can in life, and you will see that many people can actually swim in many other pools not just the ones you think they do based on stereo typing and generic profiling.

There are some dumb fucks in life to FP...unfortunately there are a lot of dumb pissheads that just don't have the feelers or a sober conscience to consider others...I find that it can be area selective when it comes to generic dumb drunks as opposed to free swimming intricate social weavers that can go from betting on Dapto dogs and a beer to cultivating and looking after a lifelong bonsai tree collection for example...different areas and suburbs seem to contain different types of Dumb Drunks in ratio to other areas.

[FancyPants]

I guess I took the OP too literally, with my own experiences too sorely fresh in memory to look outside myself - a selfish hypocrisy because it annoys me when others do that

i also think a 'shaman'(though the word has become a cliche) may be & perhaps often will be found in the most unlikely of places

Absolutely agreed.

[C_T]

i find i talk way more profoundly when ive drank some alcohol. so i must be 1 in 100? I find that hard to believe.

So much so, that my brain works better, ie i can access certain memories way easier when mildly intoxicated. Must be the dopamine increase.

Please stop bashing alcohol so much, just because it doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it doesn't have any place in society.

[botanika]

It's not really about alcohol but the way these old guys at pubs talk and deal with life with their pub mateship and blue collar war stories. They are often a window into what Australia used to be like. They are a contrast to the whirling bleeping gigabyte texting youth. IMO Australia has a sort of faux spirituality. Postcards from palenque and dreamtime raves are all very good but hardly any of us are actually true blooded aborigines and the jungles of amazon are exotic teaching locales no matter what the endeavour is. Almost every documentary on Australia starts with an aborigine set into our famous sunburnt landscape. In many ways that's as exotic to me as it is to a Dutch backpacker. Like most Aussies I grew up in suburbia and urban realms. My 'shamanic elders' could be anyone - footy coach, work mentor, that cool guy down the street who skateboards and has a nine foot tall San Pedro, the Yugoslav that cuts my hair, the Chinese doctor. Many Aussies travel abroad from earls court to phuket, some never come back, but we always seem to end up at a pub.

[ThunderIdeal]

i find i talk way more profoundly when ive drank some alcohol. so i must be 1 in 100? I find that hard to believe.

So much so, that my brain works better, ie i can access certain memories way easier when mildly intoxicated. Must be the dopamine increase.

Please stop bashing alcohol so much, just because it doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it doesn't have any place in society.

 

i agree with that completely, mild drunkenness is pretty grand. dopamine increase might be something to do with it but my simplistic take on it is that the reduction of inhibitions allows your thoughts and words to flow more naturally, without the amygdalas firing warning signals constantly.

actually since i added "(when taken that little bit too far)." i was really only bashing the effects of excess alcohol, and this isn't directed at you but after excessive alcohol i'm sure many people do "find they talk more profoundly" since they aren't encumbered by such hindrances as listening to other people, doubting the utter brilliance of their every word (even after four or five runs saying the same thing), keeping their saliva to themselves or others seeing what gobshites they can truly be.

thanks for elaborating further botanika.

Edited April 15, 2010 by ThunderIdeal

[Chiral]

It's not really about alcohol but the way these old guys at pubs talk and deal with life with their pub mateship and blue collar war stories. They are often a window into what Australia used to be like. They are a contrast to the whirling bleeping gigabyte texting youth. IMO Australia has a sort of faux spirituality. Postcards from palenque and dreamtime raves are all very good but hardly any of us are actually true blooded aborigines and the jungles of amazon are exotic teaching locales no matter what the endeavour is. Almost every documentary on Australia starts with an aborigine set into our famous sunburnt landscape. In many ways that's as exotic to me as it is to a Dutch backpacker. Like most Aussies I grew up in suburbia and urban realms. My 'shamanic elders' could be anyone - footy coach, work mentor, that cool guy down the street who skateboards and has a nine foot tall San Pedro, the Yugoslav that cuts my hair, the Chinese doctor. Many Aussies travel abroad from earls court to phuket, some never come back, but we always seem to end up at a pub.

 

well said.

[Foton]

last-night joke from the pub... there is a new pharmaceutical for depressed lesbians called tricoxagen.