{"id":2446,"date":"2026-11-06T09:34:22","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T23:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/?p=2446"},"modified":"2026-11-06T09:34:22","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T23:34:22","slug":"my-big-experiment-ch1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/2026\/11\/06\/my-big-experiment-ch1\/","title":{"rendered":"My big experiment (ch1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[this is a continuation of some memoirs<\/a> i am slowly putting down chapter by chapter. I wanted to write this episode before i went in for my recent surgery<\/a> but ran out of time and now i worry that my memories are a little less distinct or something, post anaesthesia and surgical trauma and all that. But it’s probably still worth trying to record this 4-5 month period of my life. I have delayed and delayed writing about it because it is very hard for me to get back inside the state of mind back then and describe the logic i was operating under. In some ways i was experiencing an episode of madness. But in other ways, i was closer than i ever got to tasting enlightenment. I have already written about my first solo trip in India<\/a>, which happened a few months before, and which set in place most of the framework for the quest that i was undertaking.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Cologne (K\u00f6ln) in winter was cold and beautiful. More beautiful was S’s bedroom. At the end of my mad tramp<\/a> across the Netherlands and Belgium, S’s waiting arms were a divinity than my 19 year old seeker’s imagination could not have dreamed of. We folded ourselves into bed surrounded by tealights, and I wondered how lucky i had got.. i felt like i had won the lottery of life, earned perhaps after months of my lonely rompings in India, and staying grim London’s hostels and Amsterdam squats. Although i had my first girlfriend back in Australia, it was S who really introduced me to the human body. She was studying law and lived in an exotic European world of art and culture that I knew nothing about. I felt like I grew up a lot with S, very quickly.<\/p>\n

S seemed to have been changed a bit by our first encounter which was a month or so earlier, over new year. She suddenly was wearing a lot of brown clothing and seemed to want to take a serious turn. Our first encounter had started off in a Jugendherberge<\/em> (youth hostel) in Saarbrucken where I was pausing on my way to London after India and Christmas in Switzerland. I was sitting by myself at the big breakfast table and S came over and introduced herself. Such a rare thing to happen to me. We had a lovely day at the local zoo then a raucous night or two in the squeaky hostel bunks. For those first few days S had been curious but only really invited me back to her home in Cologne after i almost insisted she show me her hometown. But on my second arrival in February 1998 it was all different, it was serious, i thought.<\/p>\n

S’s family, who didn’t speak a lot of English, were friendly to me from the first, tho i think a little disturbed and bemused at my vagabond appearance and sudden intrusion in their lives. I can see now how disruptive and odd it must have been. They didn’t have an enormous house, just a little terrace somewhere near Nesselrodestr station in the north of the city. They were very accommodating. To me it was the perfect cozy European life – breakfast of bread rolls and cheese spreads and coffee. Croissants that could be warmed up over the top of the toaster. I didn’t have almost any money and obviously the situation wasn’t long term sustainable but for the time being i just relaxed into it and began to imagine a life in Germany without any clear idea about how it would work. S seemed to know what to do.. perhaps we should have talked more about it – but it was only my second relationship of any sort and i was na\u00efvely assuming it would work out.<\/p>\n

The snap came after only a week or so. S had seemed suddenly more distant … one night we had just turned out the light while i stroked her hair lovingly.. when she suddenly hissed out in the darkness “stop it i hate you!”. And with those words all my dream castles collapsed. It all makes sense now but at the time it blew apart the tiny fabric of security i had thought i had found in Europe and the cold rushed back in..\u00a0 S’s mum came to my rescue and found a student place that i could rent a room in quite cheaply for a month or two.. so i moved myself there and didn’t see any more of S for a while.<\/p>\n

I took a little room with a bathroom on a high floor of the building that overlooked a little park on Fr\u00f6belstra\u00dfe and the skyline beyond. I spent a lot of time looking out that window. In response to the calamity of my situation, i returned to what i had begun in India. I sat and meditated for long periods, and sat on my bed and gazed out the window where a tower crane a few blocks away lifted things all day. Once i saw it lifting a wheelbarrow which seemed amusingly tiny like a speck. I just sat and tried to work out my situation and my wider life situation. It was no big task, just the mystery of life itself. I pushed myself to the point of a brief satori – but at the last moment just as my mind collapsed into itself i hesitated and wondered “is this a demon?” – and the satori snapped shut.<\/p>\n

My 20th birthday came and went. S kindly bought me a book about Zen buddhism which enjoyed, with a certain critical eye. I took a call from family in Australia who were trying to follow along with my situation. They sent a parcel of delightful Australian things and some books – i had particularly requested leunig and his collections “the penguin leunig” and “a bag of roosters”. The atmosphere of those books perfectly captured my state of mind – the bemused detachment, watching the madness of society. I wanted to live in curly flat, exploring the absurdity of the local lacunae. The Australian scenes tickled the nerves of nostalgia. But i was determined still to make a go of it in Europe.<\/p>\n

I explored the city, taking enormous walks though the centre, discovering some favorite old churches, where i would sit and mediate for hours. My favorite was Gro\u00df St. Martin which had a sort of medieval feel about it (really romanesque) with interesting looking spiral stairways making their way up the walls – how much fun it would be to explore those! It had been rebuilt after the war – as i learned more of the city’s history i discovered how much had been rebuilt after the war. The first 1000 bomber raid of the allies went to Cologne. What madness. It was incredible what a good job they did in the reconstruction of the churches. St Gereons was another favorite with a beautiful colourful decagonal dome ceiling. But i sat alone in these quiet spaces, separate from the congregation, and never talked to anyone. I would sit and meditate on the sound of the echoes.<\/p>\n

There was a large cemetery near my accommodation, the Melatenfriedhof, with lots of paths to explore, beautiful monuments and lots of birds, and a little further off, the Braunsfield park with endless rolling grassy spaces and mature trees and lakes. One day after a few weeks on my own I met S here and we had a picnic under a tree, as i tried to explain my explorations of meaning, my meditative quest. I didn’t really get very far. The hubris of my attempt to escape or puncture the entire world was probably doomed to fail, or end in madness. S told me of adventures she was having with other men. Once she had seduced in a library but he had gone crazy and wouldn’t leave her alone. I still loved her desperately but i felt no jealousy, i felt like i could enjoy or laugh at these adventures of hers through her eyes. S was nearly the only human contact i had during this whole time.<\/p>\n

I did make some half hearted attempts to find work – I had from Alex’s partner a phone number for someone who hired construction workers without paperwork (i had no visa) and i called them up – but not noticing what day it was, i had called them on a Sunday morning and the lady who answered was very annoyed and shouted at me down the line. Put off by her rudeness on the phone I gave up that idea. One day after seeing a violinist busking on the street i became fascinated by the instrument and decided that i would become a luthier. Never mind that i couldn’t play the instrument, i would learn. To find our more about it I visited the busker’s son who was a luthier in his workshop somewhere near the river in the south part of the city. I had accosted the busker after his performance and told him all about my mad plans. S told me later that he was quite a well know musician. His son’s workshop was near the river somewhere on the south side of town. It was a nice big airy room full of bits of violin. He had his toddler in a little pen in the corner of the room and rather than encouraging me he impressed on me (in broken English) the financial complexities of his profession. Realising the fact that even this exotic profession was subject to dull economic realities, as well as my inability to play violin, i slowly cooled on my mad idea.<\/p>\n

In the end i decided that i would burn through my savings to stay in K\u00f6ln for another month until the weather started to warm up and then i would head south to Italy – I was thinking of those MC Escher scenes of southern Italy – and there i would find either work or a cave to meditate in. The warm weather would make tramping easy. I asked S if she’d write a letter of introduction for me in Italian, asking if the person i gave the note to could spare a little food. I was a bit performative, i wanted to impress her with my resolution to live on the romantic and dangerous edge of civilization. Thinking about it now, i was driven by a combination of wanting to avoid the drudgery of work and a genuine spiritual quest to wander in the tradition of a sadhu or zen monk, but in the setting of modern Europe. How would it work? I would find out.<\/p>\n

First i had a few more leisurely weeks to meditate and explore the town. One day I took a train out to the end of the line at K\u00f6nigsforst and sat in a light rain, enjoying the still and silent forest. The silence and nature always spoke to me in an assuring and definite way. Other times I sat beside the Rhine in different places, watching the muddy water rush by, though the river seemed enveloped by the industry of the town and didn’t deliver to me the memories of its origins like other rivers had. I would sit and meditate as resolutely as i could and began to chip away at the fabric of my sanity – and open up the windows to another world which couldn’t be described, but seemed to promise the answers that i sought. I supped on books in a little spiritual bookshop (which mostly i spent hours standing in and reading but would occasionally make a purchase to justify all the time i spent there). One book by Osho seemed to celebrate the worldview i inhabited although i could detect he was a bit .. not a complete charlatan but suspicious .. i remembered the groups of Osho disciples I\u2019d met in Tiruvanamalai a few months before and what I\u2019d read about the free sex at his ashram. The aesthetic spirit and poetic logic of Zen was more appealing to me, that and the solid advaita of Papaji and Ramana. From these resources at least i felt confident that i was following a clear path – maybe not a very well trodden path, but a path nonetheless. A path inward, away from the distractions of the world. I was confident in that and staked everything i had on it.<\/p>\n

April came around and was still disconcertingly cold, but it was time to go. I left most of my things with Sabine as a way of anchor and packed a very small moleskin sack (made by my friend Tim’s mum back in Burra) with just a bowl and spoon, my sleeping bag, a few clothes, my notebook and a couple of books including a copy of King Lear. Then i took a train south – to the German border at Saarbrucken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[this is a continuation of some memoirs i am slowly putting down chapter by chapter. I wanted to write this episode before i went in for my recent surgery but ran out of time and now i worry that my memories are a little less distinct or something, post anaesthesia and surgical trauma and all … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enlightenment","category-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2475,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forkword.com\/plog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}