tales from an ordinary world
2002-01-01
I leapt into the hands of fate and the public transport system and still managed to make it on time to see The Man Who Wasn't There. What was a near-empty cinema foyer at 2pm had exploded into a room full of expectant moviegoers by the time the film finished, and all of a sudden I didn't feel like hanging around for another film. It rained. I crossed Grey St, slipping into the sea of people along Fitzroy St. I bought a new umbrella, with the intention on making it through the rain down to Acland St, but by the time I reached the start of the Esplanade I felt foolish for thinking of it. I found food, and walked confusedly through the crowd, readjusting from my 2 hours in filmland and trying to relocate my tenuous grip on the world.
2002-01-05
A surfeit of service in Degraves St, which makes me feel bad for only ordering a coffee. The guy next to me's only having a coffee as well. Tables in front of me and behind me are eating. I can picture the day when cafes will split themselves into "eating class" and "coffee-with-optional-cigarette class". But for now, I'll greedily sit at this table all alone, with my bag on another chair (sin !) and a mere macchiato to keep me company.
Taking it logically further, all that I've bought so far today in my CBD-wanderings are 3 CDs. Is that enough ? Have I been a good consumer ?
2002-01-07
It's silly really, but it felt a little bit like coming home. Open the door, and a familiar face is fiddling with the curtains. The floor stands out. Everybody says hello, and asks how I've been.
It's my quiet place, especially in the mornings. The world outside is green and leafy, and a bit beyond that it's asphalt and tram lines and concrete and glass and people. I'm letting it all wait.
2002-01-08
A night of simple pleasures. A couple of real (McVities) chocolate digestives. Superchunk and Sparklehorse on the stereo, while I think about restocking the 200-CD changer (but maybe it can wait until my fingers are in better shape).
I feel unsettled, though.
2002-01-09
"six more miles to the graveyard
and I'll be left here all alone."
Hank Williams.
I got the news. I was drifting in and out of sleep around 7am, when the phone rang, and I could vaguely hear Mum's voice asking me to call her back. I filed a mental post-it note to call her when I woke up. I fell into dreams, where I dreamed I was talking to a friend via some kind of electronic means, but all of a sudden it was my mother trying to contact me instead, I could tell by the words they suddenly started using.
The moment I rose, I went to the answering machine. Her voice had Bad News written all over it, and I called back but the phone was engaged. I went through all the possibilities in the shower, and came up with a few more-than-likelys while I mentally prepared myself for whatever it was. The phone's still engaged. My mobile's voicemail had the same message, in that same quick voice. I have to get to work, but I can call my sister's place, they'll probably know what's going on...
...and so, on friday, I'll turn up in my good clothes to that old church around the corner from their old house and just like it was with him, I'll read from the Book and I'll help carry her to the final resting place. I'll ask myself the eternally unanswerable questions. Was I a good grandson ? Probably not. I kept my distance. I kept to myself. I didn't feel as close as I should've. I could make small talk, but...that was all it seemed to be. I didn't just know what else to do, I never worked out how to push past that invisible barrier that kept me separated from the rest of them. I felt like I was just an observer, and I guess I still do.
2002-01-14
He was a bit dishevelled, dressed mostly in shades of brown, but was nonetheless quite friendly. With the noise of all the coming-home-from-work traffic in the background I struggled to make out what he was saying as we waited for the tram in the evening sunlight.
Inside, he explained to me that "it's all 'hand over some money, get that chemical-brain-response. Hand over some money - chemical-brain-response'. People are addicted to spending money."
"I got addicted to buying cigarettes. Then I went onto cigars. I spent all of one week's money and spent next week's money. Then I ran out of money. I'm still down, man, but I'm getting up."
Moments later, it was his stop. We shook hands, I wished him well, and he went on his way.
2002-01-16
Every new street I walk down helps turn more of the world into familiar territory. If I had the time I'd walk every street in this city, just so it'd all feel like home. I don't need to own it, I just want to know it.
It's all wheelie-bins and circumstance. Insects and gloom. Sun and rain. Cars, graffiti and fences. Old household items piled up on the often ill-named nature strips. Angry pets. Forgotten front yards.
We can box this up, we can take it home, we can work it out, we can go to sleep, and never have to wake up ever again.
2002-01-16b
One day, about 8 or 9 years ago, I set out from my parent's house in Glen Waverley. It's mid-morning, cloudy but bright, and armed with my walkman and a heap of tapes I just start walking. Westward, towards my favourite retreat near the freeway and the hill up to Blackburn Road (nowadays it's covered in housing, I think), but before I get there I swing around to the north, through parks and vaguely familiar streets and suddenly I'm at Syndal station. Heartened by my progress, I move on into unfamiliar territory, across High Street Road (yes, it's really called that) and further north, and there's hidden paddocks and oddly-shaped streets and now I'm at the Burwood Highway, tram tracks and multiple lanes, and it's sunny, and I dash across the road before oncoming traffic, stopping at a milk bar for a drink and a breather. There's nothing to do but keep moving. Eventually I find myself in Box Hill shopping centre. My feet start to hurt, and I hop on a train to Nunawading, where I discover there's no bus running today. I sit outside a milk bar just near the station, drinking a lifetime of liquid while I wait for my incredulous sister to arrive.
At work the next day, they laughed at my sunburn said "you did what ? Whatever for ?" Not too long afterwards, I invested in some half-decent walking shoes, but I never got around to doing this kind of thing again.
2002-01-18
Dream : I'm at my parents' house, and I figure I might have a go of dad's old acoustic guitar that always used to lie under my old bed. I go to pull it out - there's always a few things in the way that I need to move out from under the bed before I can pull the guitar case out, but this time there's a lot more junk under here than I remember...now that I'm awake, I can't remember all the stuff that was under there, apart from 3 empty wine bottles, sitting just next to the neck of familiar old dark green guitar case. I didn't end up actually opening the case before I woke up, though.
2002-01-19
At one point during the night, I went out the back yard - before it'd become so crowded you couldn't really move - and up in the night sky, a DC-3 circled overheard one way, then back the other. That old workhorse aircraft purr. I grabbed my lighter and relit a dead candle sitting on a fencepost while I looked for some stars.
At 7:30pm, we'd picked up Nicola from her new place, and I could smell cooking from one of the other flats. I couldn't really tell what it was, but it was nice, in that people-actually-cooking-cooking-at-home kind of way. At 2:30am as we dropped her off, I could smell bread from the (apparently) nearby bakery. Food. Her place will make me think of food from now on.
During the drive home, it all started coming to me - things I should've said, or done, or whatever. I regretted what probably amounted to being a bit standoffish (or maybe nobody really noticed). Next time, next party, I'll be better. Honest.
2002-01-20
I don't welcome summer into my house. Not "real" summer, with its post-30-degree sun and the feeling of tired droopiness that accompanies it. On the other hand, I won't be stopped, I won't stay in the house. I don't know whether it's just where I live now, or in general, but I feel like I just can't stay home. I have to go out and see things, I have to feel like I belong in the world. In my own little way, I guess I was born a ramblin' man.
2002-01-21
"I am terrified but I'm not losing sleep"
David Sylvian.
How foolish to food-shop when tired and soulless and full of Monday - I passed up all the things I should've bought for easy, convenient crap that didn't require effort, because effort was the last thing I needed. I've let my cooking slip, ever since I moved out of my one-bedroom flat all those years ago. Even then, I was only just starting to try, I suppose. It's laughable. But maybe, much like the relationship between myself and music, I'm destined to be a consumer rather than a producer. Somebody has to do it.
I remember the seemingly endless meals eaten at my parents' dinner table, with its thin, square black metal legs, with a top of woodgrain-flavoured laminex (actually, here's a picture of it from Christmas. My aunt is holding my copy of 's 253 over her face, and my uncle's next to her). I remember busily reading some book with one hand while I absently ate with the other - I'd cut up things like sausages first, so I didn't have to use both hands later on, or I'd just use the edge of my fork as a rather blunt knife. Either way, it made life easier. Dad, who sat to my left, would do the same with the paper, or his copy of New Scientist. Sitting to my right, Mum would ask why we couldn't talk at the table instead, but I found that every time Dad would ask me what I did at school, my teen angst antennae told me he wasn't really interested. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he wasn't. I don't know. Perhaps it was just the way he asked. So we'd stick to reading. I'd hurriedly finish my meal and go back to whatever it was I was doing before I was made to eat my food. Mum would point out, disappointedly, that Dad and I ate to live, whereas she lived to eat (I forget where my sister fitted into it at the time). Nowadays, that's a lot less true. I enjoy a good meal, even if I haven't really taken to making food, like my sister has. That can come later. I hope it will.
2002-01-22
"I've been waiting for tomorrow
all of my life"
Matt Johnson
There's this place that I think of as the White Room, that we go to now and then for disaster-recovery testing. It's somewhere down in Fisherman's Bend or thereabouts, and I spend all day there, doing little more than waiting for backup tapes to yield their data and a bit of post-restoration stuffing around. It's about as exciting as it sounds, but like going to the dentist and all those other things people don't really like doing, It's For Your Own Good, and You'll Thank Me Later. Honest.
Like any other machine room, the White Room doesn't have windows. There's nothing to distract you here, apart from the hum of the air conditioning and perhaps the way the equipment's all lined up like real estate. Patch panels, colour-coded cabling, the odd flashing light (green's most popular, I reckon), hot-swappable hard disks with large inviting handles and pull-out keyboards that've been squished so they'll fit into the width of a standard rack. Over by one of the walls, a CD player sits plugged into the PABX, and on top of it sits a CD case for some generic "on-hold" music, the cover depicting a yacht sailing in Sydney Harbour. Repeat after me - "my call is important, and a customer service representative will assist me as soon as possible."
Occasionally I'll step outside and stare at the container yard or the huge trucks passing by, down on the main road. But it feels like I'm on another planet, or perhaps like I'm shipwrecked. The sensible part of my head points out that I'm not particularly far away, but even so I'm chained here and there really isn't much to do, apart from what I'm supposed to be doing.
I've been sitting in my room, watching the ice melt into my Cointreau while Barry Adamson does something to my ears.
It's business as usual.
2002-01-27
"yeah the bright and hollow sky
you know it looks so good tonight"
Iggy Pop.
It was a good night for conversation. At various stages of the night I ended up talking to people I wouldn't normally find myself talking to. In between listening and talking, I'd wander over to the corner and look up. The stars were out, and my vanilla smoke curled up towards Orion. After all that, I lay in bed, listening to The Passenger, and I thought about all these friends that I've been lucky to know. It's hard to feel like I deserve them.
I took a pile of photos of the proceedings - two wonderful people, together as one.
la la la la la la la la.
2002-01-30
A fairly dark but not unfriendly room. The male and female toilets, upstairs, share a sink, with a plughole right where there's a very small area of wall missing. Nice art, on the wall - metal casts of pregnant bellies, the ceiling - aircraft in one square, trilobite-shaped things in another, and so forth. I'd taken in just enough random context earlier in the day to be able to spot the CD they were playing (Talvin Singh's OK). A beer. There's a narrow doorway down one end, to stare through and watch the bright world pass me by. By the second beer I'm ready to read for a while, and then it's time to go, back into the fading sunlight. I don't really want to go, because I'm not looking forward to tomorrow.
2002-01-31
I wish I knew what it was I'm missing. It should all 'just work' by now, and yet somehow, each time, there's always been some kind of extra little spanner in the works. Just to make life interesting. Just to see how I deal with it. I feel like a mouse in a maze.
2002-01-31b
Across the road from where I was today, they had this "importers salvage warehouse" or something, so as the tapes spun, we wandered in for a while.
Rows upon rows of assorted cheap-looking objects. Toys, food, tools, and other miscellanities. Large bottles of scary-looking shampoo. CD racks in the shape of odd, wiry animals. Plastic soldiers with attachable parachutes. "brown jackets" and "green jackets". So many things, and I wanted none of them. A painted skull with a few feathers, on a stick ? Yours for only $15. But the carpark was full. People piled in.
During the taxi ride back to the office, my friendly driver Ivan greeted me by name - it wasn't the usual gruff "are you Andrew ?", it was a nice, pleasant, "hi Andrew, how are you going ?" He told me about Russia, and a 6-storey high christmas tree they have in Red Square during the festive season. "Here, over New Year...the weather is warmer, but the people are a little colder." I wish more taxi drivers told me stories, like Ivan did.
This lifted my mood immensely, at least for a little while after I returned to work.
