O + (NxS) + Cpm/T + He
The Happiness Equation
A bum with a job. A damn good job. Was I the only homeless person in Sydney working for the government? The only illegal tourist sleeping nights at one of the finest surf areas on the Northern Beaches? I had my own car now and had found a sopping, sponge of a futon on the side of the road, leaving it on the pavement at the Northbridge Post Office where I was working. It dried in one day. I had gas, food and beer money. A room didn’t seem that important. Not when you wake up on Avalon Headland at sunrise, trade the futon for the surfboard stashed in the car and are out at early light for a few waves, alone, before heading to work.
A quick google search of real estate listings today gives a pretty good hint of how nice that headland was to sleep at. A house there is currently listed for over 3 million dollars. The car park where I slept is still there if anyone is interested. Maybe now they have the dreaded “No Overnight Parking” sign. In 1982, there were few houses.
A few weeks past giving my airline ticket away at the pub, actually throwing it away because I had left only two days till departure to decide that I was staying, a letter came to inform me that I was no longer a renter at the house where I had been living. The parents had retired up the coast and had left the house in Northbridge to their sons. I was renting a room there for $20 a week. The letter went something like this…
We sincerely hope that Andrew’s broken arm is coming along, could you ask Mark to leave, and we wanted to inform you all that after the party at the house the night before Andrew left for Papua New Guinea we did hear from a few of the neighbors about having to call the police due to the loud noise. Please be sure to clean up any beer bottle tops that may be around the yard. We will be down soon.
Love,
Mum and Dad
I had nowhere to go because I had no ticket to leave. I had almost gotten married, but could not go through with it. You can read about that here….
Not wanting to bother with finding another place, the call to Avalon was an adventure. Nothing else. At 23 years old, that seemed all that was essential. I wouldn’t die and living at the beach seemed better than just inland where the house had been. And there was something about the name of the beach - Avalon. Mystically magical, some foggy outer region. Knights and heroics. Castles with moats. Avalon in English legend is an island where the amazing King Arthur’s magic sword Excalibur was assembled. Something must have gone wrong later with that same sword because Arthur was brought back to Avalon to die.
Why Avalon? Maybe because it was enchanting when I first surfed it. To me it felt like it was the starting point to the adventure of the Northern Beaches, a 40 minute drive from my work, just at the point where the beaches became more magical, the trees more filled with cockatoos and the surf more powerful. The lookout at the beach was over a spot called Little Avalon, a perfect right barrel that breaks over a rock shelf at the base of “My Headland.” The view swept north, often revealing perfect A frame peaks along the beach. I never did see the north point go off, but heard some amazing stories about that wave. Because of living outside, with the sound of the surf, the slight shaking of the Earth when the waves collided below, there developed a personal connection to Avalon that I still feel these 45 years later. Check out the link to read more about the perfection of that wonderful beach.
But maybe it also had something to do with the band Roxy Music releasing a song that month that played daily on the radio….
When the samba takes you
Out of nowhere
And the background's fading
Out of focus
Yes the picture changing
Every moment
And your destination
You don´t know it
Avalon
Let the reader know, that without a doubt, I could have found a place to rent. The pay every week at the post office was $240, cash, in an official envelope, literally handed to me by the postmaster under the table in his office on Fridays. Homelessness has many reasons. My particular reason had nothing to do with poverty. I saw the letter from the parents and the request to leave the house as a chance to move on, to do something different. To escape ritual, live beyond the ordinary and free. I can say that I was very happy, except when it rained. This 1860 painting below is a good visual, pretty much the same shitty futon, minus the ship and fair maidens tending to me.
Homelessness was a freedom. When I drive past the cardboard carrying person at seemingly every intersection, I get it. No bills, no hassles, do what you want, retire early. An animal, pioneers, indigenous. Belonging to nothing and everything at once. An Earthling. Nights made me nervous, a fear that I would be intruded upon during an already fitful sleep. Exposed means alert. Rains meant running to the shelter of the car seats, sleeping in yoga like positions and turning frequently when numbness entered a limb. But the mornings were to enjoy every Earthly delight with rising at the first change in darkness, the second night becomes day. Sun worshipers must have considered it God awakening. For me, as the sole true inhabitant of the area, the outsider on the grass, it meant a quick, deep breath before changing futon stuff for surf stuff and running down the path to the ocean. The mist of the breeze always warming, the sun shining suddenly, immensely first on the cliffs of the headlands and then reflecting off into the front of waves approaching. A time to sit and watch. Usually I had only about a half an hour to ride waves before running back up to the car and off through gradually thickening morning traffic, heading towards Sydney.
Yellow is the color symbolizing joy around the world. Van Gogh-like yellows in every glance except the blue sky above, sitting as a part of the rising daylight’s scene, enveloped by rapidly evolving of the happiest of colors on the sacred palette. It is said that Vincent tried to kill himself once by eating paint, most likely yellow. To be filled. Hope maybe of a happiness to finally conquer despair. Soon the waves would start to emit a metallic yellow quality, moving cast iron colored and reflecting like stainless steel. I would choose the most likely spot before me to catch a few quick rides, alone. A fullness of the senses, surrounded by the shining and overwhelming beauty of nature, the smell of eucalyptus blending with fuming salt of the churning waters. The birds in the trees singing with me at this new day. If Little Avalon was breaking, I was beneath the immense, jagged cliff, the clear waters shuffling over the seemingly still molten rock underneath my every paddle stroke along the rail of the surfboard. A frames are peaks where the surfer can be on the top part of a wave, where the energy is highest, and be catapulted down towards the flats below before bottom turning the board on the inside rail to pull up along the wall ahead. Avalon had A frames everywhere. Within that short half hour, the distinct magicness of reward for those who are a part of dawn dissolves, colors become more uniform.
Shelter, water, food, comfort, warmth, companionship, responsibility, family, friends, coffee, showers, shopping, advertising, chores, errands……
Surfboard, car, futon, sleeping bag.
Less is more IF you need nature. Cocooned in comfort, you will find excuses to avoid dawn. I often found myself thinking about fate and the part it plays in everyone’s life. That poem where the person comes to the fork in the road and decides to take the one that most people don’t. What if they had chosen the other one? Sometimes, life pushes you down one of those roads. It takes resistance, courage, craziness and curiosity at least to continue down either one really. For a short time, I decided to go whichever way circumstances beyond my control would take me. I had little and was learning about the power of what society deems poverty. The amount of stuff or money one has.
Developed by Psychologist Cliff Arnall, there is an equation for happiness that I totally agree with- "O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He", is broken down into the following elements: "O" stands for more time outdoors, "N" for bonding with nature, "S" for socializing, "Cpm" for positive childhood memories, "T" for warm temperatures, and "He" for vacations.
For a few months, without a house, during the middle of 1982, I was a living example of the validity of the scientific argument for Mr Arnall’s formula and hypothesis.