tales from an ordinary world
2001-04-01
Somewhere in the inner suburbs, we're waiting for our food. I'm sinking into my chair, looking at the Random Old Books scattered across the mantlepiece of the fireplace. At an adjacent table, a girl orders a soy latté. Over the slightly-too-loud voices a familiar voice is singing, and by the time I work out that it's Cat Power somebody mercilessly rips it off mid-song to fire up that new P. J. Harvey album. It'll do, it'll do, I guess.
While my mind's wandering, I ponder the concept of the Perfect Day that my uncle was talking about last night at my cousin's wedding. "She's just working out that there's no such thing," he said of his youngest daughter.
Down the road, I make a pilgrimage to Raoul Records and follow a few leads (four, to be exact). If I stop to think on days like this, I'll truly believe my CD habit's spiralling out of control.
2001-04-02
I had to get away so I hit the north, ending up in familiar old territory. A park bench where I'd once sat a handful of lunchtimes in a row, a few years and a few jobs ago, chatting up a friend on the phone, someone I never heard from again a few months later. While I ate my lunch, I cringed as hindsight kicked me for being so silly and intrusive. I should have left them all alone, I was just another annoyance, a fly in their otherwise quiet worlds.
I was trying then, I'm still trying now, to build some kind of internal map of human behaviour. Why do I use logic when I should just use gut feelings, and vice-versa ? What is it with people and cars ? Why didn't I learn to drive ? Why am I scared of self-improvement ? How did I get here ? I feel like my senses are slightly muted - A stereophile's hearing, a wine buff's taste buds, and eagle eyes - I have none of these things. But I make a go of it nonetheless.
2001-04-03
"I must have it," I decided, after listening to ease down the road again this afternoon. "I must go and get i see a darkness." I trammed and then walked the other half of the distance from work to the shop that I figured must have it, and then went on to a second shop, where I found it, I found it, I found it. But not after finding a heap of other stuff I'd been after - the 2nd Suede album, another Smog - or vaguely curious about, like Solex and the Dirty Three. 8 CDs. Way to go.
2001-04-03b
Watch the dimming light of another opportunity that's not going to be. It's ok. Some other time. Just like the other one - "I can't imagine being there without you," she said, but it's too far, too much, and too late.
I should be a better friend. I'm so passive, accepting my fate but plodding forward anyway. I listen, I take it all in, but I don't give much, except when asked. Unless all of this somehow counts. I suppose it does, in a way, or at least that was one of my intentions - I wasn't keeping up with old friends, so I figured maybe if I tried doing the thing I feared most - putting thoughts into words - then they'd get some kind of insight into my state of mind, kind of like when you ask someone "how are you ?", and they really tell you. It's not always a pretty sight, but neither am I. I'm always trying, though, to achieve some kind of feeling of self-improvement. I want to be a better person. No harsh words, even in trying times. Not judging others. A willingness to give it all away, for no particular reason than to make people happy, or better, or something. Of course, looking at me now, it's hard to tell that I try and hold myself to any of these goals. I'm sorry.
But I digress. We'll be together...some other time. Not in electric dreams, but perhaps in my more "acoustic" ones.
2001-04-04
If I didn't know better, I would've sworn she was singing along. The girl in the old, old white ford, stopped at the lights next to me at my tram stop. The noisy fuzz of some random Matator act had just been replaced by a fairly minimally instrumented Pizzicato five track. Just as the singing started, the girl in the car started singing, too. But it couldn't be the same song. The odds...
While I'm on the tram home, a girl hugs her boyfriend and bites his nipple through his tshirt. Flashback to a few years ago, in a Safeway supermarket in Camberwell. In an empty aisle she cheekily groped me, but rather than enjoying the spontaneity like I should have, my paranoia took hold and I looked around for security cameras instead. I'm such a disappointment.
2001-04-04b
Now Playing : Honky Tonkin', by The Mekons.
Maybe it's the couple of beers I had before heading home, but I threw this CD on and it just worked for me. I suppose it makes good pub sorta music - the drowning sorrows of Gram Parsons' Sleepless Nights tempered with the almost singalong nature (perhaps reinforced by the fact that there's two versions of the song on the CD) of Prince of Darkness. I remember the first time I heard someone cover Sin City - it was Evan Dando doing a solo gig at the Tote, and somewhere in between his trademark haphazard performance (including trying a few times to start one particular song, then giving up and coming back to it later, because like, he really wanted to play it for us. "I guess I'm a little flustered," he apologized), out he came with Sin City and it really did something (for me, anyway). "This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poorhouse..." It was events like this (perhaps one could even call it an epiphany ?) that helped me to start appreciating "country" music.
2001-04-04c
did I hear someone say
they'd seen gossip
kill a man
or was I just
imagining things ?
2001-04-05
so I found myself sitting on the grass just inside the shade and by the time I left, the sun had moved out from behind the building to cover me. Ten minutes of solitude. Ten minutes of eating lunch and watching insects hover over the grass. Ten minutes of doing nothing, and feeling like I ought to go back to work, because it won't be long before somebody needs to ask me something or other.
2001-04-07
Trees growing through the see-through ceiling. Gin and lime - "a very individual drink", she told me while pouring it. More stories, from all sorts of people. And even a poem, to celebrate Chi's 30th birthday. Afterwards, we hit the city so Mavis can eat. Lots of people walking around, but we don't know where they're going...
2001-04-09
It's a great way to get real tense. Hear someone tell you about some problem they had all day. Or maybe see something on TV. Or read about it somewhere. And all of a sudden you're there. Worrying about how you'd cope in imaginary (or real) situations that, either way, aren't yours to worry about. I must find better things to do with my spare time.
Today's listening :
Liquid, by Recoil
Niun Niggung and Iaora Tahiti, by Mouse On Mars
both of the Elastica albums, which I picked up on the way home from work.
2001-04-12
My attention span doesn't often lend itself to hours spent hacking away at things - my website, new programs to fix some problem I'm having, whatever - but it's coming back now, a little, and it's nice to be feeling like I'm spending my spare time somewhat productively. So I've traded ePerl for PHP, and HTML fragments for XML and some very basic XSL transforms. It all seems to just work...
Current Listening :
The Sound of Music, by Pizzicato Five.
In Reverse, by Matthew Sweet.
2001-04-13
The Melbourne Aquarium's like most of the other aquariums I've been to in recent years - Sydney, Canberra, and that one in Auckland. But this one had cuttlefish, and so at least I now know what one looks like when it's alive, instead of just being some white piece of cartilage that people buy for their pet birds. On a public holiday, it's hard to see much of anything because there's a heap of kids running in every direction. But it is, after all, their world now. They seemed to be enjoying it.
2001-04-16
St Kilda hums a little, but Acland St is almost sagging with the weight of all its visitors. A small table in a dark room for a coffee. I bought a few books - Slaughterhouse Five, No Logo and a new one by - hoping to achieve a small amount of self-improvement sometime soon.
Current Listening :
Priest = Aura, by The Church.
Add Insult to Injury, by Add N to (X).
Avant Hard, by Add N to (X).
2001-04-17
My devolution will not be televised. Backwards, forwards and sideways. The CD changer tempts me to make more purchases. I received an inflatable transparent postcard from a friend, complete with two pink feathers inside. In a state of pure distraction this evening, I made my computer respond to infrared signals from my old stereo's remote control when I'd been intending to write some more tools for twiddling our directory service. There's another birthday coming up, and I might end up finding myself at a Henry Rollins gig on the weekend. All in a day's work. I never did get to have my bath...
2001-04-18
In my dream, the buses weren't taking passengers. They circled the bus stop and just drove off. I don't know where it was that I needed to go, but I started walking.
A phone call, just as l was leaving for work. She was trying to reach a friend. I wasn't sure if it was a bad line or if it sounded like she was upset, but I no longer knew her well enough to probe (when did I ever ?). I made pointless small talk while I searched for addresses. At the end of the call, she mentioned the word Funeral. Aha. I walked to the tramstop, replaying the situation in my head and wondering if there'd been any points where I could've done it better.
2001-04-18b
I remember you well... It was all part of my New York Experience. I remember you guys with your jackets and shoulder bags on the subways at night, delivering all kinds of objects for people who couldn't (or more likely, just couldn't be bothered to) go out and get them for themselves. What will replace you, if I ever make it back to New York City ?
2001-04-18c
"I wish there was some furniture that I could rearrange"
The
Lucksmiths.
Lately I've been a housecleaner, plugger of things into other things, benchwarmer, courier, customer, tourist, passenger, sleeper, consumer, reader, listener, armchair expert, minor annoyance.
2001-04-19
I never thought I'd find myself saying that something was "to die for", but the dessert I had at Owensville was to die for. Chocolate and hazelnut and quince tart. Everything seems more dramatic when you're still slightly inebriated. Everything seems more amusing, more interesting, more captivating. Even the queue at the petrol station, because apparently petrol prices are going to rise in about 15 minutes, at 10:30pm. Mavis suspects that the two cars behind us are from the same family - father and son. And the car just next to us has a personalized license plate with "ISDN" on it. I wonder what he was thinking ? ISDN ?
2001-04-22
I'm stuck in moments - a few of clarity, but mostly of confusion - as I try to digest my weekend's work. Another book down, two this weekend, and the Henry Rollins spoken word gig last night. All of these words, that I now have to reconcile with my life, my being, my values. The nature of my existence. The future. I feel as if I'm understanding these things less and less, but I don't fear that I'll stop loving life, and I know that in another ten years I'll still be enjoying myself one way or another. The journey - getting there - this concerns me a little more. Exactly where "there" is, this also concerns me still. But I don't feel that this is news.
We tried some new place called "Blue Corn", that we'd passed a few times before, but always after having eaten. People talked, smoked, ate and drank around us as we read our respective books. The food was good and plentiful, the hot chocolate is recommended.
2001-04-24
Bowery Electric's city sounds keep me separate from the other tram people, each going home with their Anzac Day plans. A bonus holiday, midweek even. I remember the Anzac Day we drove off to some park or other and barbequed fish fingers and other nourishing foodstuffs that we'd bought on the way from some petrol-station-with-mini-supermarket because nothing else was open. It rained, a little, but we felt we were spending our day "productively" by not sitting at home.
I cut my hair real short and I seem to be dressing all conservative-like this week. I still don't know exactly why - sometimes it just feels like the Right Thing To Do. I guess. I'm prone to fads as much as anybody.
Current Listening :
Rock Action, by Mogwai
Avant Hard, by Add N to (X)
Lushlife, by Bowery Electric
Knock Knock, by Smog
2001-04-25
The sugar was spilt across the table. The milky way, only smaller. A whole lot of particles that you're constantly told are bad for you, and here they are, spiralling across the surface in front of you like a fractal, like a fern tree.
People wear their war medals, observing Anzac Day. A group of them cross the road as we drive past, and just behind them a woman waits as her man throws up on the pavement of Russell St.
I reread all my Michael Leunig books recently, and it's affecting me, making me feel more introspectve, making me shy away from the world full of people I just don't understand.
I keep my mouth shut these days - every time I try to give advice I feel as if I'm being overly patronizing, pontificating and opinionated. The silent alternative seems better, though it hurts me.
2001-04-25b
"I know a girl, she walks the asphalt world"
Suede
Headlights shining down to the end of our side street, lighting up the front of a nearby house, and the near-dark sky above. We drive. There's nothing on the radio, some guy's talking about - as far as I can tell - the Reverend Horton Heat gigs that occurred recently. In contrast to their upbeat rockabilly music, he's comparing their three shows in Melbourne and Sydney in a clinical, trainspotter-like manner. While she fetches something from her flat, I sit and wait in the car for a while, in the dark, in silence, and watch cars hurrying back and forth, u-turning and stopping behind me with their lights shining full on through the car. A little later, parked elsewhere, I hop out and walk past a building site on North Road. It doesn't say what they're building, and all I can see is some T-shaped outline of a building that's been placed pretty deep into the ground. Mud tracks across the pavement. Inside the Indian restaurant they're playing The Girl from Ipanema and there's these soft lights at each table helping to set the tone. I'm leaning awkwardly over the table, trying not to knock things over, handing over the money and grabbing the bags of food. We navigate some more side-streets, where it's dark and playful, and emerge out onto the larger, sodium-yellow-bathed street to make our way home and eat.
2001-04-26
"Just give me
give me
give me the power
and I'll make them believe."
Suede
Music is such a guilty pleasure. Trapped at the screen, randomizing my mp3 collection but skipping up to all the right tracks, the ones that seem to perfectly envelope my none-too-shabby-but-still-fairly-uneventful existence, and I don't have to do anything, I don't have to apologize, I don't have to get up, I don't have to feel like I'm wasting my time, I don't have to worry about what I want to say what I will say and and what I should've said. I want to die with my headphones on, listening to The Song, the one that fills me with effortless energy and poignant world-weariness and hope and cloudy, sunny and rainy days, all at once.
2001-04-27
Oh look. It's my boring usenet life I'd forgotten all about.
