Crystal Castle

I should preface by saying that Sam is now his normal lovely self, kind, peculiar, happy and well considered, the criticisms in this entry are of a personality which pretty much doesn’t exist anymore so I don’t feel as though I’m picking on him, he is no longer that person.

I find you can really only make fun of people you love, otherwise it’s bad manners and possibly hurtful. The people you love tend to trust you, to trust in your character and it’s harder for them to misinterpret behaviour. It’s important to consider things like motivation and intent when reacting, too many people focus solely on the events and little else. I would never deliberately hurt a friend, it’s not the kind of person I am. Please keep that in mind because if you don’t know what sort of relationship Sam and I have then it just looks like petty revenge instead of it being loving petty revenge. Or something. Lord how I hate disclaimers.

A number of years ago now Brent, Sam, Kieran and I drove up to Ipswich in QLD from Sydney for Stephen’s 21st birthday party. Sam, at that time of his life was a bit of a mess, by which I mean he wasn’t an enjoyable person to be around, people of an ill nature rarely are and he was wallowing in seething hatred, it was just awful, he had to be treated with kid gloves and when he attacked he’d go for the metaphorical throat, no sympathy, whatever is going to hurt you the most is the bit he went for. In high school Sam was known as ‘Happy Sam’ because, as you likely guessed, he was always happy, he’s returned to that state now but for a couple of years he was a nightmare due to a lot of inner and outer conflict because of a girl, more specifically a girl he loved who didn’t want to be with him and whom the vast majority of his friends thought was bad for him, and, openly so. You can’t tell a person who they can and can’t love, that’s a pretty simple universal rule I think. One of the easiest ways to earn someones ire is to tell them that the people they love are worthless and or they shouldn’t spend time with them.

Okay focus Paddy focus, for anyone unfamiliar with Australia, Sydney is about 1000km from Brisbane, it’s a long drive and you see quite a lot on the road so it’s a good deal of fun, about a 12 hour drive if you don’t stop, but we always stop so for us it’s usually more like 16 hours.

Sam was being a pain on the way up, sulking and attacking, switching between them. He was determined to ruin our fun. About 2 and a half hours of out Brisbane we saw a sign on the side of the road which said ‘Crystal Castle, 10 minutes from here’.

Such a great name, although it’s a bit cliche it is very vivid in the mind. I was immediately envisioning a large castle made of crystal, or coated in it, something like that. Brent screamed out ‘Crystal Castle! We must go to Crystal Castle!’ and me also being something of a novelty whore, we decided to go there.

Sam was not happy about this, he really didn’t desire to go looking for it, saying that he just wanted to get to the destination and that he was over the whole drive, all of which is perfectly reasonable, if he was being sincere that is, but he was just being contentious and vulgar so we went anyway.

The signs provided poor directions and the area didn’t have much in the way of buildings or population so there wasn’t really anyone to ask. We drove around for about half an hour looking for Crystal Castle. Sam kept asking us to give up but Brent would say "But what if it’s just over this hill?" Brent, Kieran and I all wanted to continue looking.

We ascended a hill only to see once again no Crystal Castle glistening before us when Brent suddenly said, "Oh shit, I see it!" Everybody said "What?! Where?"

Brent put on his patronising narrator voice and turned to us saying, ‘Don’t you see, Crystal Castle isn’t a physical location, it’s a metaphor, it’s a place within ourselves!" I replied, ‘Brent! You’re right, I see it, I see it! Oh it’s beautiful, it’s just so beautiful. Kieran do you see it?"

Kieran replied, "Yes! Isn’t it marvellous with those twin giant crystal spires casting rainbows into the air! And look at all the grounds around, the full spectrum of colours dappled against the ground! It’s magical."

"I see it!" "I see it too!" Said I then Brent.

I queried, "Sam, do you see it?"

Sam replied, ‘Agh, no!’

Brent saw his opportunity saying, "Don’t you see, the castle symbolises our friendship, because we all looked together with pure hearts and minds on this single goal we found the castle!"

"But why doesn’t Sam see it?" I asked.

"I guess he can’t see it because he wasn’t looking for it with friendship in his heart."

"That’s so sad! Open your heart Sam, let us in, let us in and I’m sure you too can bask in the sight of the glorious castle!" Said I.

"No." Said Sam.

We continued along in that vein of cliched hyperbole and nonsense for a while. On that day Brent, Kieran and I all became the most privileged of friends, welcoming each other into our castle, to share, to share and to love. It was this incredible warm feeling, a trust, an old trust, like memories of familiar sounds, scents and scenes which by themselves don’t offer much but combined together they become this lucid love, this boundless love, in much the same way that captain planet is created from the combined will of the planeteers. That day Kieran, Brent and I all reached enlightenment, we all solved the metaphysical puzzle together and we all gained for it, never have I known such a pure love, as clear as the crystals of the mighty castle themselves.

Despite our best efforts, which persisted for about 10 minutes, Sam never did find Crystal Castle like the rest of us.

Now, it’s worth mentioning at this point, that there has been the argument put forward to me that Brent and I are bastards, and with this I whole heartedly agree, in actuality Brent and I are much more than that, we share a similar sort of manifesto in which we believe the greater the heights of the bastardry the better, and both of us agree that the Crystal Castle nonsense is the most satisfying ‘trolling’ we’ve ever done, spontaneous and beautiful.

Suffice to say this event has become a bit of a theme of our friendship. A group meme in a way. We also find that much more enjoyable than just recalling it, indirectly reminding Sam about it is even better. Plus it’s important for us to bond over that day, that was the day we let each other into our very souls.

We take the matter seriously though and it’s very easy to kill a good joke by using it too much, so about once a year, whilst in our small group of friends that includes Sam, either Brent or I will begin talking about our adventure to Crystal Castle, how we looked and looked to no avail until we realised it was a place within ourselves, and how this brought us such closeness, such pleasure and most important of all we note ‘Oh and Sam was with us that day, but he never did find Crystal Castle.’

Sam loves ‘trolling’ people, and he’s all better now, the person he loves most in the world returned

to him, so with his girlfriend back with him he is once again a true pleasure to spend time with. Personally I think it’s quite dangerous to base so much of yourself on a single person, but I recognise that this is not an ideal world and for many people just to get through the day they’ve gotta do what they’ve gotta do, there’s no shame in that whatsoever, but it is dangerous and a little desperate, desperate in a passionate sense not a weak one.

So, back to the contemporary, Brent and Natalie left to go to Europe a bit over 2 months ago, and that’s when these photo’s take place. We drove up to and then back down from QLD to Sydney, they were making their goodbyes and finishing up their personal affairs as they might not return from Europe.

On the way back down to Sydney we were going to pass Crystal Castle again, Natalie told us that she had been there a few times and knew the directions so we decided to go. She’s the one taking the photographs.

Brent and I thought it would be comical to actually go to Crystal Castle and take a bunch of pictures of us having a wonderful, magical time and then to mail these photos to Sam so that he can see what our Crystal Castle looks like, in the hopes that once he sees how beautiful it is, how much love Brent and I have gained for it, how it transforms us, he will want it as well and he can finally join us in our utopia. Sam is no fool though, he knows the joke only works if he is insistent about not going, he plays his role perfectly.

So these are the pictures we took to send to Sam, the deranged expressions and mildly homoerotic theme is intentional.

Plus because I really only use the camera whilst travelling I don’t have many pictures of me at all, usually as I’m the photographer, well, the point and clicker to be fair. So basically this is as close as I have to ‘profile pictures’ and things of that sort, which is a bit sad because some of the faces that Brent and I pull in this are so repulsive that they crack me up and hardly paint me in a favourable light but it’s good to have a laugh at yourself.

For clarification I am the darker haired male, and I am the Crocodile.

the maze of friendship