LOCI

"Instead of adopting isms, joining institutions, pursuing diplomas, swearing to flags, improving lines of credit… Instead of stuffing savings accounts, stocking up on memberships, piling up debts, daydreaming of holidays, dwelling on the state of affairs, relying on social insurance, politicising ways of viewing the world, or collectivising individuality, I was tickled by the notion of hacking a path through the forest—with or without a machete. I had been taught to write legibly, to keep the letters on the line. But what happened when I came across a blank page?"

He turns eighteen and, restless and unwilling to toe the line, flies the nest. He spends months working at a hostel bar, overindulging in alcohol to the point of feeling "vacuum-packed into my own skin". He waits tables with fellow countrypeople, reflecting on the culture that, until then had shaped him, but from then onwards might not. He visits an old friend and revisits their friendship. He takes up teaching and realises teaching is about learning. He almost becomes a father. He squats in an abandoned church, builds wooden surfboards, sells paintball tickets and calzones for a living. He is temporarily adopted by local islanders in the Pacific. He lives with surfers, stoners, scientists, and, potentially, sociopaths and saints. He falls in love with winter, with mornings, with solitude. He tires of drifting and questions what is next. He locks himself in a forest cabin during winter to write about the decade that went by.

LOCI is a collection of autobiographical short stories based on ten years of globetrotting, moving places every few months, starting from zero over and over again. It is a meditation on the dualism between movement and home - what it takes to move, what we take with us, what we leave behind - on meeting people and maintaining relationships, on the role of immigration authorities, on adaptation and tolerance, on bouncing from job to job looking for some Thing. There's blood and break-ups in the process; there's a bit of growth and creation, too.