Dear Brendan [old housemate]

I write to you from aboard QF1074 enroute from Perth to Broome...

... There is a swollen sickness in my guts at the moment, due, I think, to the eggs and gnocchi I had for breakfast, and the sweet, milky coffee that I felt obliged to drink at the airport. Do you feel this obligation to drink coffee? The drink physically sickens me and mentally disgusts me, but I drink it regardless because everyone else seems to be doing it. This behaviour disgusts me because it shows me that I, too, am a bloated consumer and slave to fashion. I don't need the caffeine - I'm sure it's not a physical addiction - but I need the camaraderie with my fellow hollow shells of people, who took up the habit, like me, after seeing Americanos - Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Eva Longoria, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, and other such modern icons - drinking the stuff by the litre in mindless journals of our time like the favourite of Carlie, you, and I, New Weekly. Everyone's doing it man, and we'd be fools to do any different.

My nine days off in Perth were cluttered with the sorts of disgusting excesses that had become fantastically foreign to me during the preceding three weeks: sweet, milky coffees, as discussed above; thick, rich pastas and Asian dishes; cakes of all descriptions; sublime and ridiculous bouts of alcoholism, where I felt compelled to continue drinking, far beyond any reasonable limits, whether they be internal or imposed upon me by others; and, of course, all of this was underlain by a base of sedentary living. Sleep-ins were the norm; even the smallest task was too much. So, as I return to the bush now, I do so carrying extra weight around my waist - though I am still, as many folks observed, skinnier than usual - and, more disturbingly for me, weight around my brain.

At the end of my last three weeks, my mind was sharper than that of a fox. I felt able, in an instant, to slice through difficult situations, removing slabs and swathes of useless information with one or two sweeping strokes of my mental sword - the "slash" finale of the bayonet technique you once taught me in the loungeroom - leaving only the meaty core of the issue at hand. But the city, Brendan, the city dulled my blade almost instantly, and I couldn't summon the will to tend to it, or even the will to care...