tales from an ordinary world
2000-12-02
"It's a nice day to start again"
Billy Idol.
It was odd hearing that old song playing fairly loudly out of someone's car this morning, but yeah. The line...I remember...
There was another cafe we hadn't tried yet, but it seems like we hadn't missed much - just another random assortment of furniture that looked like it'd been picked out of people's backyards or old kitchens or something. This is fine, I guess, but it's getting to the point of being overdone. All the cool retro furniture's already taken, people are resorting to using lesser objects.
It was still a nice day.
2000-12-03
Temptation takes me again, pushing me further into the spiralling chaos of PC upgrades. For a while, I'm somewhere closer to the front, but at the same time feeling guilty about spending the money I should've saved for Something Else, whatever that may be. A holiday ? Somewhere up to about hundred CDs ? But no, just this. It takes up more of my life than I'd like to admit. The idiot box for the new generation. The glue in my chair, yeah, that must be why I'm here almost every night.
2000-12-06
In the middle of anxiously waiting for service from upstream I'm busy taking PCs apart, reorganizing, rationalizing, bootup sequence burnt into my eyes, plug this into that, screw it in here, go find a band-aid for your finger when a sharp piece of metal slices you up. Thinking of new hostnames on the fly - "insekt", "bluestone", "mothra", "trout" and "punch".
2000-12-07
The clock turns
and the cigarette burns
but I just wish
it were all over
now.
2000-12-08
DEFEATED BY BUREAUCRACY.
SINKING.
U-934.
2000-12-08b
Some days are better than others. Days like this make you want to throw things. I need a way of draining these kinds of feelings from my body, like a friend who once told me "well, once I moved out of home I stopped going to kendo, because I no longer felt the need to beat the living shit out of something."
2000-12-08c
I'm sorry that some of you never understood my methods. When I tried to explain, it only seemed to make things worse. I'm sorry for causing all those petty arguments, and for reacting to them in the wrong way. I'm sorry for letting my mood get the better of me at times. I'm sorry for not being the kind of person you wanted me to be.
2000-12-09
Just give me the Eggs Benedict and a window to look out of, it'll keep me amused for a while. Recovery day, yes, that's it.
The sign above the counter at Second Spin in Balaclava says "if you ask our staff if they've seen High Fidelity you will be permanently barred from the store".
2000-12-11
6:45 on a Monday morning, there's a girl on the tram who looks not unlike my sister (apart from the Royal Elastics, perhaps) sitting in the seat where I'd normally sit, writing in some little book of hers about whatever it is that people on the tram think about at 6:45. Someone else is doing the same thing. Others get on and read the newspaper. By the time I get off, it's reached that nice pre-peak equilibrium - just comfortably full.
There's a lucid feel to this particular morning, the getting up and going to work routine etched so firmly into my impulses that my brain doesn't need to get involved particularly much, apart from vague sanity checks.
I get the office to myself for an hour. My PC's fan is making a sick buzzing noise, not unlike a largish housefly.
2000-12-16
We kill time by walking around South Melbourne, and just as we're a hundred meters from the main road there's a familiar sickening thud as metal hits metal in the middle of an intersection. One car looks like it was in a very odd position. People seem ok. We move on, I feel bad standing there and staring, even from a distance.
Once more onto the balcony, watching the traffic below and the trees, the signs, the streets. Happy people.
2000-12-17
"There's so much I've left undone"
Joe Pernice.
Another weekend of grand plans petering out into tiredness and heat. And the unfortunate battle with wildlife - I hate interfering, but when ants decide to take over the house, I figure I ought to do something.
I'm wondering if my lack of bookreading this year has been...detrimental in some way. I did ok last year, but for the last 12 months it's been hard to get enthusiastic when I picked up a book on a shop somewhere. Even if I did eventually buy one, it went unfinished before too long. Perhaps my attention span is getting shorter. Nonetheless, I'll keep trying.
It's almost time to go diving for memories once more.
2000-12-17b
just peel me off
and stick me back
down there
I won't cause any trouble
I'm committed
to being helpful
and non-invasive
non-toxic
and nonsensical.
it was a good idea
at the time
as always
as it will be.
2000-12-19
Long-standing grand plans floating around like an unfinished symphony. Throw it all up in the air and see how it lands. I'm a teacher once more, but I wear the role uneasily - the sound of my own voice scares me sometimes.
2000-12-24
Dream: it was high school, and we were in class, but instead of being in a classroom, it was outside, and there was scaffolding around, with one piece of wood (or something) sticking out above the "classroom". I was sitting on some kind of swing that hung from this piece of wood, and so as the class went on, I just sat there and circled around a bit, at one stage only barely missing the teacher, but he didn't seem to mind - just ducking and going on teaching. Later, I was elsewhere (perhaps half-awake ?), and wondered exactly how I managed to carry my books and such without dropping anything, as I climbed along the pole and down into the swing for each class.
Dream: i was in a museum (?), and sitting on white blocks of laminated wood (the same way they usually present works of art in a museum) in various rooms were PC's from my current job, one per block - just the system unit, no monitor, keyboard, or whatever. There was a familiar Post-It Note on each PC, saying things like "Boyd's PC" (Boyd being one of our recently arrived programmers at work). However, there were also a pair of keys on each PC next to the Post-It Notes. Each pair of keys was on a ring just like the ones on my detachable keyring (a round thing where you can take off each of the 3 or 4 separate rings). Eventually, I figured it might be a good idea to go and collect these detachable keyrings (but leave the keys behind), and so I wandered around finding all the PC's I'd seen before, and collected the keyrings. Then I found myself in a bookshop, looking for one or two books - one by Richard Ford ? but I couldn't find it. I remember picking up one book that looked just like a paperback version of 's All Tomorrow's Parties I'd seen somewhere, except it was a completely different book. I made it to the counter, with some books I don't remember picking up. Apparently the bookshop was part of Monash University, but I'm not sure how or why.
2000-12-24b
Every year, we say "it doesn't feel like Christmas this year", and every year, it seems moreso. I vaguely remember buying christmas presents for the family a few weeks ago - more prepared than usual - then I went back into work mode, knowing the new year was coming, but not letting it sink in. Silly me. 3 friends went off to their home countries, one for good, and I didn't manage to catch up with any of them one last time before they left. I suppose, in a way, it's not entirely my fault - one of them didn't return my SMS, after telling me a week earlier that I should call and we'd catch up...I would have called her a day or two later, but I figured there were probably other things she had to do before she went - she'd get back to me if she wanted to. The next friend was leaving a week later, I was tied up with work, and the last one I only heard from once she was back home.
As individual incidents, it's not so bad. I could talk it all down, away, out of here. But on the other hand if you look at it as part of the bigger picture, there's a heap of other people I let go. Occasionally they came back, months or years later. Usually they're gone. In some cases, there's still the ability to make contact, but as time goes on, I feel sillier and sillier about it. "Hey, remember me ? Just some random guy you once knew...". Even if they respond, most of the time it just seems like they're humouring you. People move on. Situations change. To be honest, looking back on particular years, it's hard to say I really liked what or who I was then, back when I first met some of these friends. Do they know how much I've changed ? It's hard to think they all could have noticed - I try not to make much of a fanfare about the way I change my life.
2000-12-25
Dad making a fuss about having to unwrap his christmas presents. The kind of roast lunch that going home's all about. Mum constantly apologizing for it not being wonderful, even though it's fine, just fine. My sister sneering at the wine being handed up to me, where I sit (like every other year) by the window, at the other end of the table. Dad becoming more talkative as the wine goes down. Mum standing on the front porch and waving as we drive off towards the railway station.
Everybody wants to escape their parents' little habits, but we pick them up anyway.
Now listening :
Special Treatment, by Gerry Hale's Uncle Bill.
Bow down to the exit sign, by David Holmes.
a mix CD that Chi gave me at his party the other night...
2000-12-28
It's mid-morning, but today was an Early Day, so it seems like I've been awake forever, and I take some time out to go up the road and move some plastic notes between financial institutions. Standing in the coffee shop, the clouds are moving by fast, in the reflection of the building next door. For a moment or two, it's as if my body vanished, just leaving a pair of eyes behind to watch.
