Gino's

I often go to Gino's in the mornings to write and can’t even consider writing anything before ordering a long macchiato. 

Gino emigrated to Australia from Italy and opened a tailor's shop in Fremantle, and he loved drinking coffee with his old Italian mates, and he decided to turn his shop into a cafe, and then Gino’s became the place. The Italian in the background made it the place for me to write early in the mornings.

For a long time, I sat next to the Sicilians. Dom asked me one day 'What are you writing about'? and I said ‘Criminal Underworld Activity in Australia’. I don’t know why I said that, but they became much less friendly, from then on, and would only speak in Sicilian. They became paranoid about making it into the book (come to think of it they have just made it into the book, and it has occurred to me I might have to go and live somewhere else). 

Sometime before, I had mentioned how I had paid for some stonework in Bali and then it had never been sent. When Dom heard about this he said 'I have 'contacts' in Indonesia, if you need any help', which was a kind offer, but the missing $200 didn't seem enough to have the man’s legs broken or for him to go missing forever. It seemed a little extreme to me.

I love writing at Gino’s but there can be distractions like that. I was writing early one day and a woman came up to me and asked if I had a real job to go to’? I just laughed and didn’t say anything (which is what I normally do when I don’t like what someone just said). I only knew she had once been a high-level political aide (and maybe even once a Head Prefect). It was hard to know what had triggered her. Was it the writing, the reading, the reflection? Was it the inwardness? She seemed to think I should be more focused on success.

I am not sure why I didn’t like what she said, but probably it made me feel like the odd one out. The thing is sometimes it seems like we have become so steeped in competitive materialism that even reading and writing and reflection have become out of place. We only like the ‘straight upward path towards success’. I was going to say ‘I was looking for the green fuse that drives the flower’, but thought it was probably better not say that, mainly because I didn’t want her to ring The Alma St Clinic which is just down the road.

But to be fair to Barb (the Head Prefect) I have also sometimes wondered why I write and have also thought I should be more focused on success. It is a mystery to me how I became involved in writing in the first place. Sylvia Plath said there is a voice in her that won’t be still. Sometimes I have thought there is a creative instinct that doesn’t leave me alone, and that somehow it needs to be satisfied or fulfilled and that is whether I like it or not.

Carl Jung said that along with some of the other instincts, like the survival instinct and the sexual instinct there is also a creative instinct that needs to be fulfilled. I have found that to be true. And there is also the mysterious force of a creative eros which can sometimes blow through us which makes us want to write. Rumi said ‘When you do things from your soul it is like a river moves in you, a joy’. It is a joy when a river moves in you.

I have also thought writers are introverts who have finally started to speak. And now they have started don’t want to stop. They are people with a florid hidden teeming inner life who now want to say all of the things they don’t usually say out aloud in public. Or maybe they are people who wandered out of the village and then went out into a wild forest and then haven’t ever been able to find their way back properly. Or maybe writing is their way of bringing something back. Anyway, most people are quite rightly more focused on the straight upward path towards success and with their social standing in the world.

But I am not even sure the person with the most toys wins. And I can only handle so much of the Trump Towers and the Kardashians the secular materialism that is dominating everything before I get a nervous twitch and start wandering around reciting whole verses of Rumi out aloud. Or finding a comfort in the love drenched poems of Hafiz. And then in a strange way that also makes me also want to be involved in writing.

Sometimes I think the world throws out challenges and creativity is my response. And ever since reading Carl Jung’s ‘Modern Man in Search of the Soul’ I have been wondering more about the soul. He said the soul has its own peculiar concerns, demands and necessities and maybe writing is one of those peculiar necessities for me. James Hillman said the soul loves ‘depth’, and quotes Heraclitus ‘No matter how far you travel you will never get to the bottom of the soul’. Maybe I am trying to get to the bottom of the soul.

And I need an inner life. And I also have some tangled ideas floating around in my head and writing seems like the best way to disentangle them. I have thought writers love the vivencia’s or the exciting and life-giving insights they sometimes get, and they have tasted some of the sweet ambrosia and some of that divine nectar of the gods and that is why they aren’t always exactly suited to ordinary everyday life in the modern secular world.

Anyway, people have been writing since the beginning of recorded history. There is something deeper to writing than just personal expression, or saying what you really think. It is also like trying to find a language or expression for a tremendous mystery which is so much greater than ourselves. We try to find a language for the mystery. There is an awe and a mystery and a wonder that is sacred. And people have been trying to find a language for that mystery ever since they first started painting pictures on cave walls.

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