tales from an ordinary world

2000-03-01

"So go ahead and call the cops
you don't meet nice girls in coffee shops"
Tom Waits

I've seen things in this life. Plenty of things. Mabye not as much as others, in comparison, but I've seen things. All sorts of things. The core of my being is shaped by every one of these things that I see, in some small but still significant way. Like butterflies causing cyclones, everything, everything affects me somehow. Wishing that one small event had gone differently would change things so much that I probably wouldn't recognize my own life...

The soundtrack to my life is long and complex. Twisty and turny. Happy and sad. I'm still waiting to see how it ends. What note ? What single note will it end on ? Long and drawn out, fading out to silence, or a quick, sharp burst of sound ?

Do I still carry the Mark of Cain ? I don't know. It's hard to see with my kind of eyes anymore.

2000-03-03

The Gin Palace is a different animal on a friday night. During the week it's a wonderfully dark and quiet place to relax in an armchair with a martini, a cigarette and some good company. This time though it was full of, well, other people. We sat and watched for a while, before going our separate ways, off into the night.

2000-03-04

I'd nearly forgotten the simple pleasure of staying all weekend at my girlfriend's place. It's almost like being on holiday - home's only 20 minutes away, but it may as well be the other side of the world. There's nothing to do but relax, and tag along when they go somewhere. For a moment, as I lay on the bed on the floor, it seemed just like a time back in 1993 when I was doing the same thing in a girlfriend's flat somewhere in Clayton, examining my life and wondering where I really was. Is my life really so circular ?

2000-03-05

Bad things happen when I'm left all alone at home with a microphone. I'm sorry.

2000-03-06

How many words must I write before it all makes sense ?

2000-03-08

Things to do on a Wednesday night. Thanks, Mavis.

2000-03-09

I don't quite get it, but I thought it was kinda funny in a vaguely Burroughs-type of way (maybe Kafka too, to a lesser extent).

Apparently it was made in April, 1998.

2000-03-11

I squeeze through the Moomba crowd, my people-dodging skills honed since I was a small child. Crowds were never really my scene. As Alex and Haiyan probably noticed when they ran into us tonight, I'm generally a little incoherent when I'm in a crowd - my mind's generally elsewhere while I concentrate on getting to wherever I'm headed with a minimum of hassle. I shouldn't be so tense.

Sorry.

2000-03-12

"I've been standing in the rain
just to get wet on purpose."
Electronic

So in the early afternoon heat we go down to the irrelevantly named swap meet in Springvale so I can pick up one or two small things. All these things, all more or less the same, in different boxes, for slightly different prices. I make a half-hearted attempt at working out who's got the cheapest thing I want, but in the end I forget and make a second pass around the stalls, settling for something that sounds like a good enough price. I'm sure my thrift quotient must be pretty low - I can never quite manage to stand there in the supermarket calculating in my head whether it's cheaper to buy 6 toilet rolls rather than 4. I'm too busy trying, in a reasonable kind of way, to enjoy life now rather than later.

It'll catch up with me in the end, I'm sure. At least, that's what the Catholic Guilt keeps on telling me.

She's waiting for me to sleep. Maybe I've just been getting too much sleep this weekend, but I'm restless. I can't go yet. The light's down low, and the stereo's on random play because there's no way I could make a decision right now, even about something as seemingly trivial as "what to listen to ?". A million clocks tick forward, beyond half-past-midnight. I step outside, to assess the world for a while. On a night like this, so quiet and so dark, you could feel like you're the only person on earth. But not now. A layer of small bumpy clouds, with a couple of circling lights reflecting off them, and the neighbours next door talking about something or other, reminds you of where you are. You're Here. Right here. And you're not alone. So don't feel that way.

2000-03-14

My life is, seemingly, listening to cheesy indie pop tunes on breakfast independent radio. Sighing at the paper stands advertising a free Ferrari poster (and thinking that there might once have been a time when that would have excited me). Watching the 7am tram crowd and noticing that it's been a while since I was up this early - the people have changed.

People seem to find me valuable at the moment, saying things like :

You are very good at getting things done and making things work
and you don't make enemies
these are all valuable assets

I guess all that's true - I mean, I certainly try to do those things. But like, why is it all coming out now ? What changed to make people offer me all these jobs and other things ?

Just before going home I stared off at a building on the other side of St Kilda Road through my red-tinted glasses. The clouds passed over it quickly, and with the right kind of eyes you could be just about anywhere, staring at the top of some random building as the clouds passed over like in one of those sped-up videos. I couldn't help feeling a small sense of loss at the opportunities I'd just turned down, but at the same time I felt better having chosen happiness (or mental well-being, or something) over money, even if it would've helped my current circumstances somewhat. I guess I should end this with "having a guilty conscience sucks sometimes", but I know that's not really true. Maybe it's what makes me so valuable to people ? I don't know.

Melbourne made me. I guess it'll continue to do so for a while...

Oh yes. The photos are more or less ready.

2000-03-16

room temperature
keeping me warm
but dulling the senses
I sink into oblivion
I'm powerless
I can't move
I can't think
take me away from this place
I need to rejuvenate myself
but it's so hard to get up
the sun never sets here
it's perpetually all four seasons at once
the passing of time
to keep me company
and my thoughts
always my thoughts
some country music
faintly twanging in the background somewhere
mixed with the sound of rain
falling softly, slowly and sweetly
onto my head
and into my heart

...

I haven't mentioned what I've been listening to for a while. I guess I forgot. Besides, it's a bit self-indulgent. But anyway, after coming home and needing to listen to something, I settled on S.L.S.Q. by The Aints. On a night like this, there's nothing like hearing the mighty Edmund belt out some old Saints tunes, not to mention a way cool cover of River Deep, Mountain High. The album just goes.

I feel lightheaded. It's time for some Pizzicato Five.

...

I couldn't sleep, and this song appeared out of nowhere and made its way into my head, so I wrote down some lyrics to go with it, wherever it came from. Picture if you will, a 2-guitar song (with optional drums, but it works well as an acoustic number) like so :

i never wanted anything more than i've got right now
the sun has set and you say you've gotta head home right about now

but won't you stay for a longer time
won't you stay for a longer time

you can always hurt me so much with that look
i thought i could've thrown away my little black book

but won't you stay for a longer time
won't you stay for a longer time

this is the way these things always seem to end
if you go now it's going to drive me round the bend

but won't you stay for a longer time
won't you stay for a longer time

...uh. Yeah. I dunno where it came from. It just appeared in my head. Far from earth-shattering I know, but it was there all the same, and I guess it had to come out. It wouldn't leave otherwise. Sorry. There's a first time for everything, and I feel uncomfortable letting these things out. They seem so...unpolished...in comparison to just about anything else I can think of.

2000-03-17

"hey hey hey
look at me now
I'm unrecognizable
my trademark frown
is gone
and replaced by this easy smile..."
Lloyd Cole.

So I gave up the promise of green beer on St Patrick's day to go to a 10-year high school reunion. Faces were familiar, but many of the names had left my head. Still, hardly anybody recognized me. I always like to think that I've managed to change myself a fair bit over the past 10 years, but it's still odd to be actually confronted by the realisation that I may well have actually done it.

Much of the conversation was the usual slightly nervous "so, what do you do these days ?", although I did end up talking at lengh with one guy I'd only vaguely known back then, about the world of IT and the onslaught of technology. We were having a smoke outside, watching all the people inside, and he asked me "have you ever taken acid ?" "No, unfortunately not." "Well," he replied, "this is kind of like that."

One of our number had gone onto a career in politics (unsurprisingly), and his gift of speech enabled him to give a fairly entertaining talk about our times. I remember back then, on the school bus, he'd go on to me about how great a man Gough Whitlam was. I'd nod and smile - I wasn't that interested in politics then (only slightly less so now), but I humoured him anyway, because he was interesting to listen to.

After we were shown around the new $4 million pool they'd constructed since we left, we were led up to an "archives" room, where they had all sorts of random objects to remember days gone by. A yearbook from our final year (1990) was there, and somebody found a picture of myself and Scott, cheering on someone or other at some athletics meet. I hardly recognized myself.

2000-03-18

Whatever happened to the glory days of Ikea ? Back in the 80's, there were Ikea stores everywhere - even in exciting Mulgrave, not far from where I grew up. And so every now and then we'd wander through the shop and look at all the weird nordic lifestyle accessories that existed seemingly to try and help you forget you were living in boring middle class suburbia. Everything seemed to be assembled using an Allen Key (or hex key, or whatever you call them), which seemed delightfully exotic, despite how many geeks tried to tell you that they were actually meant to be scientifically better than ordinary screwdrivers. Or something.

But times have changed. In later years, when i moved out home and bought a nice kitchen table from Ikea, I was horrified to notice that it used ordinary screws. I was disappointed. I wonder if that's why there's only one store left in Melbourne nowadays ? Melbourne has moved on to other, more traditional furniture, perhaps.

So in a bit of a haze after last night's high school reunion, I tagged along to Ikea today with Mavis and Duane as they went looking for stuff for their new place. I nearly bought a few things - a rug with hexadecimal digits all over it (which I felt was kinda fun, but at the same time way too geeky - what I really want is a nice big persian rug, to be honest), and it's really time i got a new bed, but all these things must wait for Better Times^TM. They ended up buying a nice little orange coffee table, plus some little plastic kid's stools to sit on - 2 in red and one in blue - all to complement the purple inflatable armchairs they already had...

2000-03-19

In dreams we walk
and everything's different.

dream (afternoon) : walking a city street, with mum & jo. We look up in the sky and see a 747 flying over (maybe as an indication that I'm in NYC ?). I notice I'm holding a chair, one of the ones from my parents' kitchen, but I can't work out why I brought it with me. We keep walking, into a food court. One of the Chinese takeaways is called Monash somethingorother, which seems fairly amusing, because I'm pretty sure we're not in Melbourne (where just about everything's being called the "Monash this" or "Monash that" these days). I forget if we decide to get food there or not, but we end up deciding to eat at one of these places. I walk around the right side of the food display to see what else there was to eat. There's lots of live food behind the glass. A lobster(?) walks around inside the display case. Further away, a snake eats some other probable menu item...we go and look. It seems to have turned into an open wildlife park. Some wombats scurry by, and Mum jumps down this small cliff-face to look at something. And what happened to that snake ?

2000-03-21

The moon is a shining pearl in the sky this morning. I'd wasted my night farting about with my computers, re-arranging disks and stuff. Leaving it all in an indeterminate state cursed my sleep, because I lay there for a good hour or two thinking about it all. The end result of all this is that I feel a little...well...disconnected at the moment. Look at all the the people reading books on the tram - the little girl with her huge chemistry textbook, "University of Melbourne" stamped on the side, and the big guy next to her, reading some book called "The Gnostic Gospels" - they're all vaguely in touch with things...right ?

I really must stop buying so many t-shirts right now. But I can't help myself.

2000-03-22

I'm usually only reasonably good at pool if I've had a few drinks. Don't ask me why, I've absolutely no idea.

2000-03-25

Mavis and Duane had their housewarming party, doing the "pot-luck" thing, which always seemed so popular with all the other students from similar backgrounds that I've known in my time. It tends to work out rather well - Duane cooked some really nice food, other people brought pizza, and there was stuff in between. At the end of it there's usually Something for Everyone^TM.

I remember other people's parties I went to, long ago...Trekking out to Clayton in the rain for some fellow student's birthday or something. Being the only person in the room who didn't speak Cantonese, and finding out later that everyone else there was really worried that I wasn't having a good time.

After most of them went off to watch Scream 3, a few stayed to watch the end of Clear and Present Danger on TV. At its conclusion, the flat was empty, except for Mavis and myself. All was quiet. It was only about 11pm.

2000-03-26

So while we were in Box Hill for the swap meet, we grabbed lunch at the rather oddly-named New Age Cafe. Presumably this was some odd translation from the Cantonese for "annoy your customers with confusing service". My food came, but no cutlery. Eventually Mavis' meal turned up, but my drink didn't. "Excuse me, I ordered a Coke a while ago...". "It's coming" (I was tempted to reply with "yes, and so's the Messiah", but figured the waitress probably wouldn't get the joke). Mavis said she could see it sitting on the counter up the back. About 20 minutes (at least) after ordering it, my drink finally arrived. I saw Pike leaving, and when I caught up with him at work on Monday he said he thought the place sucked too.

It's a shame, really. I don't often get annoyed about restaurants - I guess it's part of my "just put up with it and don't make a fuss, it's reallly not all that important, is it ?" upbringing.

2000-03-28

So I've been lost in the world of technology lately, despite my distaste for pushing the rest of my life to one side like that. I can't help it, as much I'd like to be able to.

Still, I guess I was able to put this knowledge to some vague use in that I assembled a PC out of some of my spare parts to give Mavis something she could do her homework on. The geek equivalent of giving your girlfriend a car. Or something. As a result of moving all these hardware bits around, and buying a few new things to indulge myself, I spent hours fiddling about making things behave together. It's fun, in a way, but I guess I figure I should be spending my time in some other "better" way. Not that I do do that normally, but it's nice to think that I might be able to do it. One day...

2000-03-29

"I should have forgotten you years ago
but you're in every song I know..."
The Magnetic Fields.

Sometimes I wonder if I really have learnt anything over the past 10 years. I'd like to think I have, but I fear that in certain areas of my life I'm going to end up making the same sort of mistakes and hence never quite manage to Get It Right^TM. I'm still struggling to find the right kind of balance. Maybe this time...

2000-03-30

Dream : The sky is overcast. Apparently I'm in Scotland (?), at some little airport, waiting for my flight out of here. But something is brewing, and there's a nervous tension in the air. There don't seem to be any planes landing (or taking off). I wander around the airport, and at one point, off in the distance, I can see a group of 3 people who'd been at my high school reunion.

I return to where I ought to be waiting for my flight, and as I get there I see people streaming out to a nearby road (or maybe it's the runway ?). They look up angrily at the sky, and start chanting "ignore the chorus !". Eventually they all start raising one fist towards the sky. Up amongst the clouds I can see small, slow electrical charges - not like lightning - much shorter in length, and they last a bit longer. The chant continues, with more people joining in. Is there a war going on or something ? I wondered if the fighter pilots could hear us, up in the clouds.

...

The walk home will do me good
The walk home will do me good
The walk home will do me good
The walk home will do me good
The walk home will do me good

Drop me in the ocean, but don't let me rust
I wish I had David Sylvian's voice
Don't touch that glass, you don't know where it's been
I've gotta get out of this one-horse town...somehow...