The Night Writer

I've lived most of my life looking for ways to feel, to rub myself in the pain of it all, to scream from tree tops, to fall from grace in the loudest of ways, to stumble back into town and challenge a duel knowing I have no gun.
I've died a lot, and I know I'll die some more.

The crazy thing about faith I've found - is that believing doesn't make a better person, just an informed one.

And here we are at the end of the beginning, and what a beginning it has been.  Beginning Febfast that is.
I've not had a drink for 30 days now - I started a couple early to bring me up to speed, and if the truth is known to get back on my feet.

Sometimes when I write I listen to - not just music, but a piece, one piece, normally no words, over and over again. It gets me in a groove, a head space, a pain that has me feel what I need to write. I'm locked in and living the story, I see it unfold and find myself wild with the adventure, or collapsed in the grief.

Over the last 30 days Febfast has been my piece on a loop, repeating over and over again, every morning, everyday, every night. The story I've been locked into is one of many young persons. A story of lost love, of broken friendships, of falling short, of fear and heavy thinking, no escape, great struggle, and faces all turned to see the demise.

If it sounds heavy, it's not, it's the wild, it's the chaos we don't understand that goes through a young persons head that has them the highest suicide rate in the world - in our country, in our back yard, over the fence, down the street up the street, with the spray can in the hand and the bottle in the other. These are our kids.

I'm not preaching, I'm feeling, and febfast has taken me back, to days I was closer to the struggle - not even my own, but young peoples in youth shelters, on streets, in prisons, in care, out of care, in parks, in foster homes, friends homes, hospitals, and schools.

The addiction I see isn't dressed up in nasty clothes and bad kid colors, it doesn't come from poor homes - just broken ones.

I've sat at night not drinking and thinking, looking at my kids and not being able to let them go. I can't keep them knowing they are loved just the way they are, they won't be. We don't live in that world, we live in the world where love and friendship is an investment. How much your mum and dad earn, your dress sense, what you achieve, what opportunities you've got to give, is all about whether love and friendship will pay dividends.

To be loved just as you are, to be taken seriously even if it makes no sense. This is the stuff of grace, and it's this I found had young hopeless thinking take a dive towards the adventure of life.

I know this because it's not a young thing, it's a people thing - and I pray for that same acceptance everyday,  just to have a chance to shine, to know why I'm alive.

I haven't come to the the end of February easy, for my insides are holding me to ransom.  It's not booze they're desperate for, but the focus to not end.  I want to own this pain I feel, I want to thrash it about till it bleeds and goes away with all the lost hope, the fleeting moments to end it all,  the shot up and drunk down days and nights,  the agony of not feeling  worth the love of a friend, the young faces fallen before their time.

How do you let a young person know there's so much more to life than now, and all our nows make up the adventure for tomorrow - when I struggle to grasp this each day myself.

I don't have a great faith - but the faith I do have is telling me the way forward is together.  Embracing that which offends, letting go the expectations that blinds, walking like a beginning - loosing all our ends.

Drugs and alcohol is dirty stuff mostly swept away in it's abuses, thanks for not sweeping the Night Writer ponderings away.

I am going to keep my Febfast abstinence up for this week so as to allow you all to catch up on the opportunity to walk the journey together with our Australian young people and sponsor them through me.

http://www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

Oh and here's the piece I've been playing over and over whilst pondering, play it while you read and feel something about where I've been.

The Night Writer

The Night Writer

Sometimes I don't know what I think, I just feel - thoughts abandon, eyes gaze through, pictures turn into stories playing like a drive in on everything in front of me.
There's no reason, no understanding, no need.
Just a feeling. It's not good ... it's not bad ... it's breathing.

Do you need to know how the couple go after the end of the film?
On the journey they've been painted as complete opposites, she hates him he's arrogant, he thinks she's a prude snobby and pretentious. Yea they won't get along and to be sure they are put into a situation at a dinner party where it all comes undone.
But then tragedy brings them together, not happily of course, but forced into needing each-other. He sees a determined, beauty about her, she sees a gentle wise understanding in him. Time clutches at their needs squeezing out the trouble the struggle the broken hidden view of he and her. They embrace, not to solve, but to accept ... so much more than could be seen.
The credits role, the friends rejoice, the couple love and their pets escape.
Do you need to know how the couple go now ... after Hollywood's gone to bed.

Or is there hope that we don't know. Let it be like nothing we've experienced, seen or heard. Let there be a place of untold happiness that cannot be measured, not for it's greatness but for no measure necessary - it just is.

Not knowing can be so for-filling, so enriching, so exciting, so hopeful, so necessary to survive a world that has the end for everything.
When who I am is all about the end, I don't know who I am anymore ... just a shape bent round someone else's desire.

I see people depressed, expected to get better, be happy. People unemployed expected to find that job, people married expected to feel that love. People addicted expected to loose the desire, the need.

I don't think the end is where the story is, it's the journey to get us believing there is hope.

Support people with afflictions, with addictions, accept them just the way they are - now - all broken and unfixed, unsolved. Do not fear the story does go on, people do grow, but only a day at time, in increments Hollywood can't afford.

Help me support young people with drug and alcohol addictions by sponsoring me for Febfast. I'm going without booze, you go without some money, and together we'll encourage our young friends to go without there afflictions and feel the hope I speak of.

I'm the Night Writer
you can sponsor me here;
www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

The Night Writer

Perfect Sky
it's a mystery the perfect sky, the violence in the storm clouds the wild in the lightning the distance in the stars.
there's a depth of fathoms unknown in the perfect sky, all high and out of reach, all thin and passing, all wide no edges to be seen.
I want to fly in the perfect sky, no wings or space ship, no rockets and steal, just skin on the universe, so I can feel.


I'm still writing about my experience as I go through Febfast. it's gotten harder on one level and more fulfilling on another.
I realise now how much alcohol plays a part my attempt to stop the world turning, to stop my mind running over things that have gone, things that were never, and things that I still can't see. Yes perhaps a numbness, but also a happy diversion. A place to stare empty at sport unfolding news breaking comedy attempting drama struggling and people unwinding.

I've noticed a normal in drinking, a normal to finish the day, begin the evening, to say hello, to say goodbye, to have a meeting, to comfort, to listen, to relieve.
I've noticed a reaction to not drinking, "are you sure?", a constant question as if the decision was leading down a painful path, as if a separation, a divide was being put in place there and then.  Drinkers go places non drinkers can't go - it's not bars and pubs I speak of, it's a place that most who have been addicted to heroin will understand. When you need a hit and it's been a while, when it comes, it's relief from heaven.

The reaction from people at the end of their days to have a glass of their choice and sit, sip, and breath in and out - this is the relief of someone begun a journey away from somewhere they've had enough of for now.

I understand the desire for, but now I understand even more the need to not.

To be faced with one self, sober for all the world to see, feeling - helplessly feeling all the time. Thinking, knowing, understanding and living each day from the first to it's last with nothing but the air you breath to take contemplation to another level. This requires a world within, a place of giving away and letting go, a place of wild and adventure as the world turns more real than it has before.

The need to escape doesn't disappear, it's replaced with time, perhaps to much doing, but in the end it's replaced with me. I spend more time with me sober.

I'm the Night Writer, I'm on Febfast, and you can support me in my journey to raise money for young people struggling with drug and alcohol issues across Australia.

www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart


It doesn't take much to give life - a nights drinking money ... plus the kebab money!

The Night Writer

I’m feeling the longing, the draw, the reminiscence, the taste, the sucking desire of escape, into the throws of a day done hard, the forgetting and letting go of the stuff, that sits on shoulders bringing them low. I’m carrying a world sober as I go.

Herbal teas throughout the day, chinnotto to celebrate a production on its way. New friends look across at me and wonder if I’m in disguise, “the man’s not drinking…what is he trying to hide?”

Restless nights and so long days, the not drinking’s not the struggle it’s the revealing of me. The mask has fallen my face is in the light, my eyes are blue, my mind is free, yet I’m stuck going over who I’ve been.

People poured wine tonight, they drank a glass – I’ve never done that it’s always been a vase. I was the skipper I drove everyone home, I was sober and asking to be pulled over.

Now it’s bedtime, snuggle town awaits, all is quite the nighttime sleeps.

I’m away from my groovers, my lovers by their side, I’m closing my eyes feeling a father full of pride.

Sponsor me on febfast

www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

The Night Writer

It's not easy...  life.
If you don't fit into a groove, you have to keep thinking about it.
If you think about it to much you start to understand less. Things that made sense become farcical.

Why is it presumed - smart well presented work attire - is a suit and tie. Everyone looks the same, all grey and stinking hot, with faces melting down the only unfortunate color on their whole withering facade, that being a ridiculous pink poker dotted tie. (there are a multitude of ridiculous options)

People spend thousands of dollars trying to look the same as each other.  Same clothes, haircuts, cars, sporting teams, underwear,  bed sheets, lawn mowers, and navcams. These of course aren't in any particular order, however it should be said a great deal of research is gone into Undies shopping.

Given that people do spend their lives climbing the same mountain, in mostly the same way - creating that groove I spoke of earlier. When someone comes along and is seen hanging off a precipice far off in the distance, it causes what seems to be societal anxiety. i.e. the suit and tie is replaced with bathers and zink cream.

There is an assumption that the non conforming person is different - not just their attire. Perhaps they appear different, however most people also have Bathers and possibly zink at home, and indeed wear them - only in different places at different times.

No matter how the non conformist dress sense is justified, and explained, they will not succeed in being able to wear what they feel fit. In fact most people no matter how much they wanted to would never, could never,  cross the groove created by those that surround them.

We all create the groove, we just look outward at others working it.

I'm thinking now of another groove with similar people in it. Suits and ties and really really important people, possible with two ties on and extra thick suits.

This is the groove of Beer O'clock. What ever your poison, people work with one eye on the clock knowing when it strikes the magic hour they are out of there and working some tie loosening drinks with friends and colleges.  These friendly drinks commonly head way past the loosening of much of their attire well into the wee hours of unwind and whing.

Now this is a mountain well tracked by many, and a mountain with it's amazing groove, and a mountain with it's far off in the distance person hanging off a precipice. Only on this mountain hanging from that precipice is not a person with a  strange dress sense, it's a person with an addiction.

And like the other groove situation where it could be said that many had a similar dress sense at different times and places, so it can be said about the people here. Who do drink to excess, who do play with drugs, who do work their days to escape in their nights and find a place of  no groove.

You see I do believe that most of us understand and in fact partake at some time or other in the very behaviors that lead to the person with the addictions, only because we do our drinking and drugging within the accepted groove, we can then look to those who hang from the precipice -  and frown -  and watch them fall down.

This is why I am working Febfast, a groove of sorts, but it's heading over to the precipice and giving reason to hold on, even lending a hand.

Check out my sponsor site for Febfast on the link below. Sponsor me and you'll be walking a different groove to.

www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

The Night Writer

The Night Writer

The nights still hot, which isn't so surprising as the days are to. Fans just move the air like hot porridge barely getting thru.
Sheets become a second skin, anything touching is a cause of concern.
My mind wanders in and out of dreams, famous and fallen all in a moment.

Went to a pool party this evening, the water was spectacular, the kids wild, the adults sat and chatted and sipped upon wine and drank their beers. I played in the pool with the wild, and I came home feeling like I didn't need to drink the booze, and was glad of the fact I didn't, and am not.

If it wasn't Febfast - I thought to myself, - I'd of had both beer and wine and kept myself from the wild to do so.
How things have changed from the simple stuff of life, where friends and water was enough.

I think now of the youngsters in their teens, Friday night out with friends, to have a good time is to get smashed or stoned on something.  I know that feeling, the need to escape, to go wild in a delirious kinda way.
When I was young there was nothing ahead of me, only now, only what I thought I needed in this moment. Smashed is what I got, and I never learnt how to find the space without it.

I guess that's what I'm doing this Febfast for, is not to stop young people from drinking, or even taking drugs - everyone takes their drug, it's just for what reason is the destruction.

When your doing it because you can't live with yourself, then you never stop doing it. However I've seen people drinking and even taking drugs and it's a relaxation, a lubricant, but it doesn't take over their lives. They still seem in control and thinking of others.

If young people with drug and alcohol addictions can separate themselves from the drugs and booze and look inside without the judgement of a hypocritical society belting them so constantly. Maybe they'd see someone worth loving, caring for, spanning time with, having fun and adventures, sitting still and not knowing. Maybe that would be ok.
Maybe they could learn what I never did, and not drown their lives away.

God knows the struggle isn't the addiction, it's what left without the drugs and booze.  A sense of pain, but no understanding of where it comes from or belongs to. A sense of being alone and a desperate desire to kill that feeling. A feeling out of place, unsure of where you're going or if you're taking anything with you that's important.

This just takes time, good people, innovative thinking, faith and hope,  and damn good adventures to fill those huge gaps where they've lost themselves.

No one feels better about themselves because their told they're good people, feeling better is about believing it yourself and that's something from within. Changing destructive patterns of behavior is about accepting yourself first, for who you are right now in the shit with the whole world going down around you.

Drunken fallen drug addicted youth have spectacular lives to live, and they have so much to give, and they are amazing people in their present state of chaos.

I really want them to know that, and I want them to know that I and other people in the broader community think that to.

I'm having an alcohol free weekend and loving it.
Mainly because I know it's one way to speak loudly the words I've softly typed for you tonight.

If you're just cruising by this blog and am not sure what I'm on, it's febfast, click the link below and do yourself a favor, sponsor me and we'll both be speaking loudly.

Thanks for your support.

The Night Writer

The Night Writer

The heat hangs over me, smothering, pulling at my skin, licking my brain like a dog it's pore.
I'm sitting here naked again, sticking, thinken...it's time for a cold one.

However I'm working Febfast fabulously well and haven't touched a cold one for 4 days now, that's right, day two and I'm four days dry as Baptist at a Hillsong gathering.

However the side effects are coming on hard as Sydney thermometers kiss 30 in the middle of the night.
I'm grumpy as all hell and would be in this heat anyway, but not having my standard fair of lubricating groove, I'm twice as grumpy every time I move.

I've just sponged my loved ones down and let them know I'll scrape them off the floor in the morning, as for me... it's the loungroom floor again.

There must be something in this water. I am drinking it like a river at the moment, but despite the filthy stinking sloth like mood I find myself in,  I'm feelin very sexy for the task I have ahead and the steps taken so far.

In fact the more twisted this is, the more adventure I find, so bring it on scorching toaster heat wave, bring it on grumponious mood swings, I'm riding you like a well tubed storm. I'm not going down, I'm staying dry...in all my wet sweat.

So peoples stay tuned, stay supporting, and if you're not then do so and support young groovers who struggle with drug and alcohol addictions. It's the future that your present decision is about.  So throw some sponsorship my way at the link below.

http://www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

The Night Writer

The Night Writer

by wildking on January 31, 2011

Well lets begin this adventure with some facts;

I'm not a traditional blogger, I don't blog. So this could well stray into unknown territory for all of us.

I like being honest it creates the best stories and most difficult to believe in my experience, so I may well embellish some story to bring things back to earth.

I have no editor in this process, so what will be firstly discovered is - I am dyslexic, this playing havoc with my spelling and of course grammar.

However I have always believed content to be the most important, given you can understand it - well... can follow it.

So are you with me so far?

Great, all I can see is white fields of page ahead of me as cold lonely winds take letters across its drifts and settles something me.

(this will happen from time to time)

I say cold winds to try and counter the present state of my studio - dripping 35 degrees down bended walls and molten me.

Needless to say conducive for nakedness and a damn good ice coffee - all over.

So here we are almost at the beginning of my blog.

Cleverly I've created distance between now and the top of the page, thus allowing me to complete my blog before you're espoused to anything thoroughly damaging.

The Mid Beginning

I'm a drinker from way back, somewhere around 13 for me, and though my start was staggered it was consistent enough to have me come a good friend of the sidewalk.

Now I'm not going to take you down the road of the enevitable, most have their own atrocious story on this front.

I may have the unfortunate legacy of many a drinking story right into my now, however this is not quite what I'm blogging about today.

The Far Beginning 

I have decided in Gods infinite wisdom, that this very month of February - this being the first of it days today - I will consume no alchol what so ever throughout all of it's celebratory happenings.

This has not come about through mere self observed restraint, but indeed an even better cause than my own personal health and relationships -that's another blog entirely.

I refer to FebFast,

the cause to be sponsoring, to be standing behind with the finance you'd normally throw at a good night out boozing and forgetting the day.

FebFast is about going without grog for the month of February to raise funds and awareness of drug and alcohol abuse within our youth culture.

Now I just made that up, but you can very well head to my Febfast page and clarify the intent and throw some sponsor ship my way.

Here's the link 

http://www.febfastfundraising.com.au/chris_hobart

Don't be shy, it's not for a good cause, it's for young peoples lives and all of our futures.

I believe the money will be going to a number of organisations who have created suport programs for youth in the terrible hold of drug and alcohol abuse.

My aim is to get sponsor ship, to write this blog as I go about what's going through my mind and body as I abstain from drinking. To share the journey as it comes and hopefully be both informative and entertaining.

I want to see if we can't prevent as many young people as possible from struggling through their lives and ruining themselves with these addictions.

So I am the perfect candidate for this adventure, I being the very youth with all these addictions once myself.

Some might say now I am the old man with the addictions, I say all the more reason to support this and grow in understanding as apposed to judgment and what inevitably turns to abandonment.

So I'm urging you to support our young people around Australia by supporting me this month in Febfast.

Keep coming back to my blog, who knows I might get the hang of this.

and as a good friend of mine always says,

Go Well.

The Night Writer