tales from an ordinary world

2001-12-01

I sit delicately in one of the local cafes with my fixed shoe in a plastic bag on the floor next to me, awaiting a light meal to help me reintegrate myself into the world from hangover-land.

I can visualize everybody else saying their goodbyes - one after another, from lunchtime to nighttime - but I can't remember my own, when the time finally came.

An afternoon of shuffling objects around, from room to room, beginning another purge, another effort to work out what's important and what isn't. After this (maybe tomorrow ?) there's a whole chest-of-drawers full of old computer bits that needs emptying. Digging through another receptacle just means that I throw a few things away and then find some other place to put the rest, until I get around to cleaning up that place, and inevitably move them back to where they were in the first place, etc. A never-ending story. I should be more brutal about throwing things out, but it's a family trait - my father, his father both hoarded random objects, because they might be useful one day. And besides, everything has a memory that goes with it, reminding me of how I used to be, when life was simpler, or something.

2001-12-03

This music makes me remember the confused taxi rides in the middle of the night, out to Clayton, when I had to escape, and somebody offered an ear and cheap wine and junk food to comfort me. I was working, too, although I forget how I kept up the impression that I was getting enough sleep. I just wanted to lose myself, and never have to come home again.

2001-12-04

Ride with me. Escapist lunch break. Smug feeling as I survey cafe menus, knowing where I'll end up eating anyway. Karmic reaction when I see my intended destination is closed. My watch says I've been out too long already, and I walk on.

The Esplanade's pretty empty. Occasional tram passing, sound of metal rolling on metal. Cloudy but clear, I can see Williamstown across the bay. I can remember days spent here, just down there, staring off into the sea. Sometimes I longed for company, sometimes they were next to me but unattainable, and sometimes we were there, together. I feel like I've walked that pier a hundred times, a hundred ways. A sea full of jellyfish once. Or the lazy sunbathers. But every time I'd find a rock to sit on, away from the numbers, and stare into the depths, searching my soul for answers it'd take me a long time to find.

Breakfast menu on Fitzroy St - eggs benedict but the toast's too crusty, missing the taste, the feel I was hoping for.

Do I want to be here ? I want to go.

2001-12-05

dream: he's driving too fast, but he's still in control. Around this corner. Around another. Oh shit, there's a car reversing into the middle of the road. He swerves, and as he does, suddenly I'm out of my body, viewing it all from above, watching him successfully stop himself from getting into a horrible accident, then move slowly around that car and keep going...

2001-12-07

A shut door.

A glass of Cointreau with a bit of that lime juice cordial guff and some soda-less water.

A phrase stuck in my head, from Springsteen's Nebraska - "I guess there's just a meanness in this world".

An urge to try and do "the right thing".

A Karma County CD on the micro hi-fi.

and the phones never seem to work right nowadays, when I call her or she calls me. Her words got all chopped up 'cause she's on the train, and then the recorded voice kicked in in the background, saying the next stop will be Doby Ghaut. She can't usually hear what I'm saying either.

But I've got Hank and Joe, and few others...they'll sing me to sleep tonight - just another guy on the lost highway.

2001-12-08

I sat at Blue Corn and read my book, and once my stomach was happy I headed for St Kilda Beach, to stand on the little pier with the wind in my head. A little too windy to stay there for long, unfortunately. Especially when they've removed the lower deck, where I used to sit for a few hours on a nice afternoon and read, years ago. I took a photo for 3 people, who'd come along behind me and were busily taking photos of each other, at each end of the deck, smiling and laughing and leaning out over the water.

I moved down to the wider, concrete part of the pier and sat on the edge, watching the water and the seaweed and the wrapper from somebody's bottle of Sprite curling in the water like a snake.

I was tired of being here, though. Too many people. I figured I'd head inwards. A stroll through Balaclava, but I figured I wouldn't spend money (nice t-shirt though, that I left behind...). Caulfield Park seemed like it had enough space for me. I read my book for a while, joggers and recreational walkers passing me and my palm tree by. I put Yo La Tengo's Fakebook in my discman and shuffled off for a walk around the inner part of the park, aching along to their beautiful music.

2001-12-15

a few hundred men on my chest. A few hundred voices in the alleyway in front of me, between Little Collins and Bourke. I haven't eaten yet, determined to find something other than Japanese for lunch. Somewhere around 3pm, I end up in the Blue Train, not having eaten all day. A pint of beer and a meal. It's too nice to go home yet, so I stand under Princes Bridge and listen to the trams as they go past above me, sounding like some kind of eerie deathly wind.

2001-12-19

I plod forth.

These times are for other people.

My turn can wait.

2001-12-22

a tangled web. craving simplicity. frightened of boredom. it's difficult to let go of the old ways. we never cope with change as well as we'd like. we underestimate the virtue of patience, especially on weekends. there are a million reasons i could've got annoyed with things today, but none of them were worth it. i can wait. i can be patient. most aspects of my life right now seem to require patience. i'm not really sure what i'm waiting for, as I wander down the lost highway, but i'll wait anyway.

2001-12-23

I spent all day at work, sucked in by the never-ending "I'll just fix this one, too, while I'm here." One of them took 3 and a half hours to run, so I sat in the office with just my music to keep me company. It felt good to get all this stuff done, but I didn't notice how much it took out of me until I got home and suddenly and irrationally felt drained, tired, thoroughly depressed and very lonely. A chemical imbalance ? I'm not sure. I found myself drawn into watching The Interview, and then had something to eat, and then life seemed a tiny bit more bearable. I'm determined not to go under this Christmas.

2001-12-25

I grew up near some large power lines, and while I was doing the family thing for Christmas Day I went up to visit them. I miss having the large sturdy towers watching over me, crackling and humming in the stormy air. If I walk up the hill, I can see Monash University off in the distance a bit to my left while, straight ahead of me, the power lines head for the city.

2001-12-26

I had no particular reason to go out, but I didn't want to stay home. In the city, I saw people ducking for cover in the rain, looking disappointedly in the window of the closed Birkenstock shop, rifling through messy piles of clothes in department stores, queueing up for the escalators. Chapel St didn't seem so desperate, but I'd made it to High St when I decided I'd rather just hop on a tram and eat in St Kilda instead. I didn't buy a thing. I lifted up random items, assessed their worth, and couldn't bring myself to take home any more objects, even if they were cheaper than usual, or whatever. It just didn't seem to matter.

2001-12-28

With a different pair of shoes, I could walk forever. I could leave it all behind. My random objects. My yoyo-ing moods. The people who put up with me. The feelings that hold me back.

I'm so confused.

2001-12-29

The supermarket's full of unhappy people this afternoon. Probably thanks to the afternoon heat, short tempers abound - mothers scolding restless children, a shopper argues over whose turn it is at the deli (something about the ticket machine not working). People look at you suspiciously when you start unloading your shopping onto the end of the rubber runway, as if you're about to steal their stuff (like I care !). But I'm in a good mood, I've got better at not letting the little things get me down...most of the time, anyway...and I just bought a Ramones CD, so I'm looking forward to going home to 3-chord heaven.

While I waited for my connecting tram at Caulfield Park, the geese were wandering about with their children. Geese totally rock. I miss wandering up to visit the geese that hung around the lake out the back of Monash Uni, usually when I was feeling stressed it was a good place to go. It was also where one of my girlfriends and I used to go and sit for a while, especially before we were "going out". I remember the time I'd finally worked up the courage up to ask her out (as it were), and while I stared into the lake, hoping it'd swallow me whole now that I'd finally made the mistake of speaking my mind, she replied "well...actually...I'd given up waiting for you to ask." The lake stared back. It was up to me to convince her now, as if I was trying to sell her a used car, or something. I just scraped through, it seemed. Life went on. After she left me, I'd go back and watch the geese by myself, trying to make sense of it all.

2001-12-30

I sat out the back with the ants and a martini and the new Coupland book I was about to finish, resting my martini on the old broken washing machine that I oughta get rid of one of these days.

Later, I walked down the road to the pharmacy, to buy some more large bandaids for my fingers, which have gone berserk over the past few years, on and off, apparently from too much soap. Recently it's gotten worse. First my left hand, and now that it's recovered (for now), my right hand's going. All this because I was/am a compulsive hand-washer. We all get what's coming to us. I just wanted to feel clean.