tales from an ordinary world

2000-08-07

"You see, you hear these funny voices
in the tower of song"
Leonard Cohen.

On the evening tram home I manage to get a standing spot right at the back, where you can look out the rear window and watch the track unfold. Down the hill from the junction, the lights from the after-work traffic reflecting off the windows, then under the pedestrian bridge near that pub with the pink elephants on it. We stop here and a busker gets off - the same guy who I'd seen on the tram once before, but I didn't recognize the songs this time. After a while, enough people get off that I can sit down and stare out the window at the blocks of flats along Dandenong Rd. Lights on here and there, the yellow street lights keeping the road alight, but there's a lingering darkness up in the trees. Night's falling. The sky is falling.

She's still telling me how sorry she is, and I'm not real sure what to say. Sure, it really hurt at the time, but I still have good memories. I still don't know what caused the revelation in recent times that maybe she'd been a bit hard on me, but I don't want her to stay feeling so bad. It's hard to feel like I deserve so much sudden sympathy.

It's hard to know when I'm doing the right thing. Sometimes it's hard to feel like getting up in the morning if I think about some of the decisions I've made in the past, like the way I dealt with various girlfriends. People I let go. Things I probably should have done. Nevertheless, some of those decisions I regret were for the best, I suppose. And I've still got the future. I can't change things overnight, but hopefully I can subtly steer things in the right direction over time. Generally speaking I'm a happier individual than I used to be. I enjoy being slightly lost, navigating by instinct, by smell, by feel.