tales from an ordinary world

2000-07-11

"You know I'm thinking of you
in the bookstore
in the laundromat..."
The Lucksmiths.

A retreat into geekdom sometimes helps more than you expect it to. It's nice to have a fallback. The sun's still out, but as I tread the familiar path of office to ATM to lunch to office the wind lacks yesterday's bitterness.

I'll always associate this street corner with this particular person, the way we always did lunch in the same way. Similarly, those couple of roads, heading toward the outer south east suburbs, they remind me of her, the variously-coloured cars I sat in as we drove out that way under yellow street lights and filled up at the petrol station near her house. And that particular 7-11 in Burnley reminds me of another girl, way back when, driving unlicensed across town to visit a cousin in the immigration detention centre. We had to clear out his flat, piling his stuff into another friend's van, while my friend ended up with his car, the beat-up old Datsun. The clutch died at the lights one time in the western suburbs somewhere, on our way to the detention centre - we were left motionless, holding up some angry drivers. 5 years later, I found myself wandering around North Melbourne one day with Ohnmar. We walked up to the footy oval, then somewhere near railway line and the Four 'n' Twenty (I think) pie factory, and back along a few streets to Chapman Street, where she'd apparently first lived when her family came here. Walking past one tiny house, we heard someone practising their saxophone. We found number 13, but there wasn't much to look at from the street.

So how did I get here ? All these random occurrences, merely strung together by the ether. And what comes next ? Where to from here ? I hear a faint call from other places, but...but...but...

Current listening :

• Avant Hard, by Add N to (X).

• A Good Kind of Nervous, by The Lucksmiths.