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ON THE ROAD

Freedom, ambition and Jack Kerouac

This morning Rach and I woke early and walked into town. There's a hole-in-the-wall bakery called Little Loaf, and they make the greatest bacon and egg baps, and it was a great day for a bap.

We turn down Orient Street, which faces us directly into the sunlight, and we’re blinded - everything goes pale and bright. The colour washes out of the landscape, leaving a haze of watercolour impressions, and we have to drop our gaze, forced to focus on whatever is a few metres in front of our feet. We notice the cracks in the pavement, the single tulip by the gate at number twelve, the crunchy-crisp air on our skin. And wrapped in this brightwash, we turn inwards, to our private reflections:
Life is magic. Anything is possible. Am I doing okay? Does it even matter?

The moment stretches, floods, stops time, opens our minds. We can hear each other’s breaths.

There's a beautiful line in Jack Kerouac's book On the Road, where the protagonist, Sal, describes a week in Denver, all late night bars, and girls, and cherry trees in bloom:

“...the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.”

And I resonate with this so much. These sunlit moments of open skies and in-the-moment experiences. A part of me wants to get off the train, you know? Quit the stage. Just walk away from all the pressure and responsibility and flop on my back in a field.

But, what about goals? Ambitions? How do we get anything done in life?

I’m asking these questions because for the last few weeks, Rach and I have been filming an online curriculum, and it's really hard. We're not on our backs in a field, instead, we pointed to the top of the mountain and said "there!" and began to climb. We made some great progress up the slopes, and then lost our footing and scratched our knees and egos. Then we climbed some more, and slipped back a bit more, and found some paths around and around the mountain, everslowly gaining ground, still nowhere near the top, but now too far from the bottom to give up.

Storytelling theory says that until a protagonist wants something, their story can’t get going. Characters needs to want things - ideally things that are worthwhile - and they need to want them enough to overcome great conflict to attain them. A meaningful story is found on the path of conflict, say the ancient tellers.

Still, who deliberately chooses conflict? I want Kerouac's open-world freedom. No dreams or ambitions, just the in-the-moment experiences of the beat generation he captures so perfectly.

Here’s how I think it resolves:

The world is open before us, like Kerouac writes. With all its options and possibilities and opportunities. And for a while we stand there, without dreams or fears, and just react our way forward, embracing all the wonders of life.

It’s not story, but it is beautiful. It is art, whimsy, a tossing about of our souls on the wind. We're kids dancing in gardens.

But eventually, somewhere amongst all that soul-tossing, we realise that there are, in fact, things we want. Specific things. Things that we want enough to fight for. Things worthy of prioritising above the myriad other possibilities that are out there. So we narrow our gaze, isolate our focus. In a world wide-open with possibilities we choose this one and we get to work.

Now we have a story. A character who wants something, and will overcome all sorts of conflict to get it.

But where does that leave the art? The beauty? The whimsy? Does the having of goals in life require us to give up the open-skies freedom of not having dreams or goals?

What I realised this morning, walking with Rach in the whitewash sunlight, was that when we choose this life of dreams and ambition, we are setting ourselves up for conflict, but the conflict doesn’t break us. It grows us, changes us, and becomes a kind of container that brackets these tiny moments, so that in the breaths between tension, in the sunrise light that blinds us whole, the world is still open to us. And with the sharp clarity that comes from climbing the mountain, we find eternity in every step.

On the road: Gnaraloo Station

Last week I joined a couple of friends for a drive up the coast to Gnaraloo Station. From Perth, Gnaraloo is a thousand kilometres away.

I had a seat in the back, pressed up against sleeping bags, wetsuits, and something that smelled like banana bread. For the two hours before the sun rose, I watched suburban porchlights streak past, all tungsten yellow, then the city lights, giant bug-zappers of brilliant white, then the northern fringe cities with their pale blues and intermittent fuel-station-golds. And then, nothing. Just a comfortable darkness, visited occasionally by a passing car or a stray streetlight.

Nick drove the entire way. For twelve hours he chatted and laughed and shared his stories and listened to ours. Ian is almost twenty years older than me, and engages with others as if we know the secrets of the ages, and just need the time to get it out in words.

My focus drifted from conversations within the car to conversations with the horizon. For hours it was dirt-red, then a splash of canola yellow, forest green, granite and limestone, then back to dirt. It was quite beautiful, an entire palette comfortable with her loneliness.

Gnaraloo is in the middle of nothing. It really is. It's a sheep station, but I barely saw any sheep. Wild goats, though, they were everywhere. They looked down on us with their proud beards and funny tails, like they owned the place, like they were running the show. A people-farm, run by the goats. The locals of Gnaraloo don't dissuade this idea at all: they are wild and earthy and distant, their language is the land and the ocean. People come here for only three things: to surf, to fish and to feel free.

A few mornings in, I asked Ian why he's here. Why it matters to drive all this way, peel yourself into a wetsuit, and take your board out into the hyperthermic waters to ride a few waves. He had just returned from the ocean, and was crunching through an apple, watching Nick finish up his last wave. I got out and leaned on the car with him, and squinted into the glare. Me with my notebook, Ian with his apple.

"Why do you do this?" I asked him.
"Because it's who I am," he replied, then paused, "but only as long as I'm actually doing it."
He talks like this a lot.
"You don't feel like a surfer unless you're surfing?" I ventured.
"No, I still feel like a surfer, for sure. But that identity requires some action, you know? The longer I don't surf, the more I become a person who used to surf, not a person who actually surfs."
I looked at him and blinked twice, and he took another bite of apple.
"It's about identity," he continued, "by doing this stuff, I'm revisiting my identity, empowering it somehow."
"Empowering it?
"Yeah, I'm empowering myself, my belief in myself. It's one thing to become who you want to be in life, but a whole other challenge to stay there. Over time we can start to question ourselves and our abilities, and we can start to doubt ourselves."
"And our identities can lose their way."
"Exactly. Our identities get blurry. And the only way I know to return to clarity is to act. To do something today that reminds me of who I am."
"And who are you today?"
He laughed. "I am a person who surfs!"

Nick appeared on the path just then, and we headed back to the homestead for breakfast.

-

In storytelling, there is always a tension between a character's aspiration and their reality. There is a version of themselves they WANT to be, or that they THINK they are, and then, there is who they REALLY are. It's a gold mine for writers, exploring those gaps, revealing to the protagonist their reality and pushing them off the cliffs that will grow and transform them.

A character can be amazing, but think they are nothing special. Or they can have some serious flaws, but think they are just perfect. In the end, what they, or others, say about themselves doesn't matter half as much as what they do. Like Ian observed: identity needs action.

After that conversation with Ian, I had to ask myself the same question: "Why am I here? Why did I travel a thousand kilometres to a surfing station when I don't surf or fish?" It was an identity question.

While Ian and Nick were revisiting and strengthening their identities as "people who surf", I found myself revisiting childhood memories. Hours of wandering in white-bright sand dunes, playing with shells, drawing in red dirt, watching the shadows from stones stretch out across my bare toes. Being at peace with the nothingness of those places.

By joining Nick and Ian for the trip, I became what I always thought I was, but perhaps hadn't acted on for a while:

A person who seeks wonder and beauty over comfort or progress.

It just took a few thousands kilometres to remind me it was true.

On the road: Basel, Switzerland

A few years ago Rach and I did some work for Roche Pharmaceuticals. With all the pharma-politics in play right now, I thought this memory from March 2019 was worth sharing.

—

We saw the tower before we even entered the country. And we watched it until our wheels hit the runway.

It's not that it's particularly big, but more, that it's alone. Every other structure is regular-sized: Houses and apartments and commercial buildings, all obeying the usual sizing rules of ancient European cities. But the Roche tower is a completely different creation. It stands tall and singular, like the first kid in school to hit her growth spurt. But without the awkward.

It's stands there, an alien beacon awaiting re-enforcements, breathing in 5% of the entire population of the city, like a scheduled apocalypse. 7:00am and they're all gone. And those left behind go about their day until the sunset return of all those who were taken, blinking in the afterglow of sunlight they never saw, wondering what's for dinner, and where the time went.

At least, that was the conclusion I drew, standing on the Wettsteinbrücke bridge overlooking the Rhine, with the softly spectacular homes of Basel Switzerland lining the shores. And that peerless tower, quietly breaking the horizon.

I watched the kaleidoscope sky reflect off the tower's shiny faces and sharp edges, and concluded that a corporate pharmaceutical juggernaut had landed in this quaint town, and is now feeding on the townsfolk, and honestly, how would you even say no to such a beast? We have bills to pay, loved ones to create experiences with, families to care for. We all need money. We all need to live.

I stood on that bridge, and compared the reflections: The crystal windows of the tower, and the slow running river below me. Clinical perfection, versus organic flow. Solidity and Fluidity.
Future and Nature.
The windows were winning, as far as clarity went.

Rach stood beside me, and I'm sure we were thinking the same thing:

What have we subscribed to here?
What possible part can we play in this world of billion-dollar pharma players?

Our message is one of empowerment and empathy, love over fear, celebrating difference and diversity. Who, in that tower, will listen, or even care?

--

The next morning, we were taken to the top floor. I could see France to the left, and Germany to the right. And below me, our enormous shadow, stretching across houses and spaces for blocks and blocks in the early morning light.

I wondered what it would be like to live in that shadow. Sunrise, but no sun. Just the monolith. The whole street would feel colder.

And then we were into it. Our workshop room had the most enormous table I'd ever seen. Someone flipped a switch, and the floor to ceiling curtains glided open, revealing a sunlit green courtyard, scattered with employees drinking their coffees and sharing their perspectives on, I don't know, world domination.

And then our people arrived. Scientists, researchers, health professionals, patient liaison experts. All serving in the Rare Disease Space. And all completely exceptional humans.

All my preempted judgements, all our fears of distant corporate robots, were just blown away by the absolute humanity of these attendees. They were passionate about their work. They want to save lives. They are searching for solutions that don't yet exist.

There were tears, and honesty, and vulnerability, and an overwhelming sense of love.

Yep. These aliens love us.

Turns out, this tower is filled with people who care about people. They've moved cities and countries to be a part of the team. To find cures, and solutions, for others in pain. They work long hours, they give up their own comforts, in the hope of finding needles in haystacks. We spoke to one researcher who has a child of her own with a rare condition that doesn't yet have a cure. But her job is finding a cure for a different condition, one that will save other children's lives but not her own. She works extra hard because she knows the pain the other parents are feeling, and she has to trust that somewhere else, there is a researcher close to a cure for her own child.

It's like this whole industry rests on faith. A daily belief that there is more to learn, more to find. Solutions still to be uncovered. Techniques still to be unearthed. There's this tenacity for justice, that declares "This is not right, and someone needs to fight for it".

I know Roche is a pharma giant. But inside those walls, we met the people doing the work, and in the rare disease space at least, they are doing the work of justice, and miracles. Inside those walls, there are thousands of people dedicating their lives to other people.

I know nothing is perfect, and I know corruption is everywhere. I grew up in a church, that I loved, so I'm well aware of the negative power of the institution. But what I saw in church is what I see in Roche:

Despite the corporation, despite the external shell of power and profits and popularity, there are thousands of people with hearts of gold, giving their lives for something meaningful and needed in this world.

Behind all the sharp corporate edges, beat soft warm hearts, and they are well worth appreciating, and applauding.

On the road: NoMad, Manhattan New York

The beauty of Jack Kerouac’s book “On the Road” is in the details. He travelled all over the place, and had a notebook with him, and just took tiny notes of what he saw, how he interpreted life. When it was time to write, he could connect the story with so many micro-moments of meaning, because those moments had their own tiny factoid.

I don't do that very well - take notes of the tiny moments in each day - but below is a quick story where I try to pay attention to the littlest things, just to see how it writes. This was from our time in New York, pre-Covid, and the plot is nothing at all - I just leave the hotel to get coffee...

—

When I step out of the elevator, the lobby is quiet. The coffee station is bare, the concierge mostly asleep. I say “mostly” because his eyes are open, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Across the foyer, there is a sliver of sunlight on a couch, the only indication at all that it isn’t still nighttime. New York City has always struggled with catching the sunlight this early in the morning. Too many buildings too close together, I suppose.

I zip up my coat, and push through the glass turnstile doors into the street. Now there are others sharing my morning. The palette out here is all greys and browns: dark coats and hats, leather briefcases and satchels, functional umbrellas and scarves. The streets are still glassy from the night rains, each puddle a portal to an inverted world of skyscrapers and pastel skies.

My hands are deep in my pockets, my shoulders hunched against the chill. I’ve never been good with coldness - even as a kid, I would get cold so fast, and it would always feel like an icepick sinking into my spine. I take the three steps to the pavement, and join the murky grey stream of city regulars.

Honestly, I don’t know why I’m even out here. The hotel bed is warmer than this street corner. I tell myself I’m searching for beauty. Being new in a place allows a certain fleeting naivety, which sometimes leads to wonder, and so I’m walking the streets freezing my toes off for the wonder of it all. So much wonder, I try and convince myself. An umbrella up ahead just blew inside out, and my teeth are chattering.

What I really want, right now, is none of the wonder, and none of the beauty. I just want to return to my room. It’s warm there, and it has Rach, all asleep in a cosy bed. I could be under those covers right now, instead of shivering past another block of morning commuters. No one is looking up, and there’s a kind of eerie silence behind the dull city roar. There are engines running, brakes screeching, traffic lights tick-tick-ticking, a million clopping footsteps on the footpaths, but no voices. No birdsong. No faces.

I trudge along Madison Avenue with the grey coats and black umbrellas for another block, and turn onto East 27th. Somehow the ice-wind can turn corners, and it follows me all the way to the door of Birch Coffee, finding all the chinks in my armour of warmth and dropping little daggers down my spine. I push myself into the coffee shop wishing that I had never left the hotel.

“Welcome to Birch, honey.” Her eyes crinkle in the exact places that make it seem like she means it. “There’s a bit of a queue today, but try this while you’re waiting.” A small paper cup is pressed into my hands. It’s steaming, and it thaws my fingertips. “Single origin, Honduras, twelve days from roasting - we think today is the sweet spot!” And she’s off with a wink, sashaying through the bustle with her little tray of espresso cups and a smile for everyone.

I sip the coffee, and it runs through me like a lit fuse, like some delicious lava, heating my bloodstream and closing my eyes in overwhelm. The rest of my senses awaken in response - waves of conversation and laughter wash over me, the dull scream of the coffee grinders, the swoosh and hiss of the steam in the milk jugs, a Broken Bells song playing from somewhere in the ceiling. The fruity caramel notes in my cup mix with the rich nutty aroma of the store in a way that makes my mouth water.

I look up to a grid of golden sunlight stretched across the back wall, behind the baristas and their machines. Reflected light from the windows of the dark buildings down the street, a single warm beam that clearly wanted to be part of this morning with the rest of us. The customers have shed their coats, revealing bright reds and corporate blues and excellent silk greens. A rebirth of the human palette. Everyone here has faces, too. Faces that are seeking other faces, strangers that are connecting over the shared experience of frosty mornings and the nine-to-five battle ahead.

In this fractional moment of the day, Birch Coffee becomes a bottleneck of meaningful experience, a pinch in the hourglass between the cold dark morning and the discontented workplace. I can see all the frail human vessels being restored, filled up, tempered for what lies ahead. There is no status in this space, no labels or titles or hierarchies. Just faces, open and inviting and validating the human struggle. I am feeling warmer.

The door bumps into my shoulder as another cold soul presses in from outside. Face as grey as the street, hands shaking full with his umbrella and briefcase, eyes on the next step forward. Just trying to get in, or away, or above, or out. I reach for the door, swing it wide, makes some space and take his arm.

“Welcome to Birch.” I say with a smile, and he lifts his gaze, pale blues through rain-dropped bifocals. “You should try the the single origin - it’s Honduran, twelve days from roasting.” He raises his grey brows high, a slight smile.

I lean in conspiratorially, “I think today could be the sweet spot."

On the road: The Coromandel, New Zealand

(April 2018)

We're returning from the Coromandel, heading back towards Auckland, and I'm in the back seat, staring out the window. Blurs of green and yellow and bitumen blue. In the rear view mirror I can see Tracey, just her eyes, and in the side mirror is Rach, just her collarbone, which I adore.

This landscape is so beautiful. Wide grassy plains, with occasional tightly gathered cows, heads all together like they’re planning a coup.

It’s the horizon that is the most striking now. These fields could belong to my own Australian landscape except for their horizon. Volcanic misty peaks, layered and foliage’d and quietly exciting. Patches of sunlight drift over the trees, like golden jellyfish ghosts.

Our lively conversation of the morning has dropped off now, replaced with a comfortable peace. Tracey reaches for her coffee, her eyes in the mirror are distant, contemplative. I start thinking about connection, how we do it and why. Out here in the vastness, it’s easy to feel insignificant, small, distant.

As if she saw my thoughts in her side mirror, Rach reaches a hand back behind her seat, fingers reaching, her palm a question, “Will you connect with me? Will you bridge this gap?”

My fingertips find her palm, and hers find mine, and we share a moment of no words, conveying soul-thoughts with the lightest touches, telling our heart stories to each other with tiny pressures and traces and piano taps.

I think connecting is work, and it’s risking rejection, and it demands a sacrifice of our time and our comfort and our independence. And the more we connect, the more these stakes rise. We sacrifice our reputation for vulnerability, hoping and trusting that this other soul will be a safe place for all of that. And we do it again and again, in so many forms, even after being hurt.

What’s the payoff for all this connecting work? Nothing tangible, really. Just feelings and self-worth and something we call “community”. And that intense heat in our souls that make us want to give and sacrifice even more, even if it costs us our life.

And maybe, also, when we connect we are voicing a solidarity - That us humans, in all this wide open infinite, are doing ok, and are worthy of being here, and are not alone.

On the road: Abbortsford Convent, Melbourne AU

(March 2018)

We landed at 5am this morning in Melbourne.
Rach is an amazing sleeper. She sat right next to me, eyes closed and face down, completely zenned out. Like a monk in prayer.

I’m not so successful at the sleeping thing.
I spent the flight staring at the back of my eyelids, and exploring every other sensation my body had running. I imagined being blind, and how all my other senses would grow stronger, like a superhero.

I could hear the low rumble of the engines, and a few muffled conversations two rows forward. I heard every snap and click of the bathroom doors. I heard so many coughs I lost count. I wondered if I could influence dreams, up there in the sky with all these sleeping souls. So I pushed thoughts of courageous generosity out into the ether, but, no one woke and gave me 20 dollers, so I guess it didn’t work.

One of the things I love about Rachel Callander is how she does this: The travelling, speaking, training, listening thing. She hustles so strong, but at the same time she’s not grasping at all, not chasing the spotlight, even when the spotlight chases her. The learning, the studying and thinking is hardcore, but the delivery is kind of effortless.

Not EASY effortless, but, more like, joyfully determined.
Like, she’s been told her future, been given that certainty, so now, no matter what the journey looks like, or how hard it gets, she’ll lean in to it with a cavalier open heartedness.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth would call this “grit”, I think.

—-

Abbortsford Convent is a peaceful ancient thing, straight out of a Harry Potter novel. I swear I saw some kids just finishing up a game of quidditch in the courtyard when we arrived. I laid some books on a table in the hall and enquired about coffee, and Rach stepped up to the stage.

This is the third year North Richmond Community Health has run their “Conversations About Care” symposium, and it has become something quite beautiful and powerful. It feels like a summit of elders, a gathering of altruism where the conversation isn’t about personal gain, money, justice or excuses, but instead, we hear ideas about transforming the customer experience, flattening the hierarchy of ego, building equal respect for both the patient and the professional.

Rach is alive here - Softly buzzing with questions, empathy, warmth and strength. She’s taking notes and sketching models into her Moleskine, and remembering every name she comes across.

I’m terrible with names, and have to write everything down:
Susan Alberti AC - A powerhouse of forward motion;
John McKenna - The Yoda of the Health System, reminding us of our limitless potential in life;
Dr Ajesh George, Prof. John Aitken, Dr Jonathan Silverman, Lucy Mayes, Dr Ioan Jones, Dr Katy Theodore, Dr Martin Hall.
Incredible humans, investing their lives into healthcare and relationships.

Rach whispers to me in passing, “These are our people, Nath!”

And I close my eyes, and again push my thoughts out into the ether; and I see a room full of people invested in humanity and cultural change.

Looks like I found that courageous generosity after all.