tales from an ordinary world

2002-03-02

Across the street I see a display window, full of shining steel kitchen appliances that hope to tempt people as they drive by on the highway. But that's about all there is to look at, so I turn back to my drink and quietly wait for the band to start.

2002-03-04

I spent the day tense, and listened to Mark Eitzel all the way home, unable to look at people. I can't let these bad feelings get the better of me, because I know that anything I do will come back at me later. I can't be all things to all people, but occasionally I can be something to someone. On days like today I have to work harder to make this evident.

He apologized for not calling to tell me the contact lenses hadn't arrived for me yet, but of all the things that bothered me today, this bothered me the least. An excuse to escape for lunch, on a day where the only rational thing to do was to go outside. The walk back to work was the best of all, at a brisk but not hurried pace, stopping at the micro-supermarket on the corner of Punt Road for an ice cream (the first one this year, I think). I was relaxed. I wasn't thinking about anything other than how much I was enjoying these moments. These times are few, and I rarely treasure them like this.

2002-03-05

"...and don't you feel like a little bit more
of everything in the world
'cause the world keeps turning
anyway"
golden rough.

Moments of nostalgia. I remember when we took that photo, and how she got angry at me over something foolish I'd said shortly afterwards. As such, I wince every time I look at it, but it's the only photo I have of the two of us. I remember this one, on the Esplanade, on a cold December Sunday, trams in the background, and afterwards I went for the regular (at the time) Sunday evening weber roast. I remember these ones, a borrowed room and a bunch of volunteer geeks. I fit Debian Linux onto somebody's 100MB hard disk for them. I remember those few, on an out-of-focus webcam in a bearded co-worker's office, the day after a rather fun Sunday afternoon haircut-and-dye at a friend's place in Richmond.

It's a sign of something changing when I can actually bear to look at a couple of photos of myself - both taken this year, though - without feeling like it's all wrong.

...but there were other times, other people in particular, and I never had the chance to take a photo of them. Now they're gone.
gone.
gone.

2002-03-08

Random frustrations I bring upon myself, balanced with the lunchtime escape into sunshine, grass and asphalt. Writing words (for work) that nobody reads, although it needs to be done, so I do it. Even as I'm leaving, there's more to worry about. Sometimes, there really is no escape.

2002-03-09

8am. It's colder than it was at 6:30 when I waited for the tram to go to work. There was no particular need, I suppose, to get up so early on a saturday morning for some out-of-hours work, but I do this to punish myself...I think.

midday. There's a lot of people either walking dogs or babies in prams. People brought tents to St Kilda beach. An empty container ship drifts by in the distance.

mid-afternoon. I'm the local mini-supermarket, and they don't have tinned sweet-corn. How odd, and unexpected.

2002-03-09b

Tonight, the city is...

...a mass of people in the street, all starting east, transfixed by fireworks...

...a drunken-sounding trombone, playing under the bridge, under the fireworks...

...rapid-fire Chinese as I pass a group of Young People hurrying to get closer to the fireworks...

...full of smoke from the fireworks, but everybody seems too dazed and happy by the spectacle to complain...

...a tram ringing its feeble bell as it rages against the traffic in its path...

...girls with shoes colour-coded to their tops - one with yellow, another with turquoise.

I'd forgotten about all of this, until I found myself in it.

2002-03-11

[after lamenting that I hadn't remembered any dreams lately, now this.]

Dream: We're out in the country somewhere, a family holiday I think. It's morning, and it's overcast, There's a nice field of grass outside the place we're staying in. Nobody else seems to be around. We're up high, too, I think there's a cliff-face at the end of the field.

So I'm wandering outside, just looking around, and there's the roar of a jet engine overhead, above the clouds. I look up for a while, though, wondering what it is (indulging my boyhood love of most methods of transporation). Eventually it reveals itself through the mist, although it's not any "normal" kind of aircraft, rather some experimental-looking thing. The clouds move away but the aircraft stays, circling and cartwheeling through the sky. I realise I have my digital camera on me, so I try to take a few photos of it. Suddenly the air's thick with aircraft, and I find myself being pursued by helicopters.

2002-03-12

I've rewritten this paragraph all night, trying to find a way to convey my thoughts that sounds right. But I can't seem to expand upon "everything's fucked, and nobody cares" without feeling that my words would be conveniently misinterpreted.

I am Jack's seething mass of frustration.

And even this never works - the problems remain unsolved, and we go on to make the same mistakes next time, without learning, without really trying.

I shouldn't talk about work here. It never comes out right.

2002-03-12b

Waiting for the new layers to sink in, trying not to think about work. The voices of Forster and McLennan hold me up, keeping me from sinking in this room, lit by a candle I'd been given around a decade ago. In this new regime, of trying to keep things clean on a more regular than usual basis, it seemed appropriate to actually use the candle rather than just leave it on the shelf. Like my father, like his father, I hoard things. I've mentioned the plastic bags before. Last weekend I flattened some speaker boxes that did nothing more than fill up valuable space in my room, behind a bookcase. Space seems important to me now. Clean, uncluttered space. There are so many objects, so many things I'm keeping "just in case," but never end up using because "I might need it later" - another part of the same family trait. How do I stop this madness ? Where do I start ? The joy of everyday objects comes from using them, not from putting them on a shelf, "for later."

2002-03-14

There I was, holding a yellow rail near the door at the very back of the tram, where I didn't feel like I was in the way. Lurch. People read textbooks, novels, those free newspapers. A screech as we take the bend. People get off. People get on. A footy scandal makes front page news, you'd almost think that nothing else matters in this town. The tinny insect-like sound of music leaking from schoolboy's headphones. Somebody digs around in his bag, trying to catch his ringing phone, but it's too late. He calls back. "Uh. I don't think I'm at the stop yet." A long beep of the "I want to get off" cable. Incessant minor events, calming me and frustrating me all at once. I can't keep this up.

2002-03-14b

In an instant, my world became read-only. I vainly tried answering messages from people, on my computer, on my phone, but neither would send. Intermittent problems. Now was obviously not the time. They sent me another. I still couldn't answer. I worried that people would think me rude. But what could I do ? I returned to my book, the one about sand, and tried to get comfortable.

2002-03-15

Things found whilst cleaning up old files this evening :

• The resignation letter from when I quit my first job, in a file called bye.doc, which simply said (minus formalities at the top of the page) :

  I have accepted a job in [company B] as a [insert role here], starting on the 7th of October. After an enjoyable two and a half years at [company A], I feel it is time to move on and apply my skills in slightly different ways, in order to better myself. I am extremely grateful for the experience I have gained while working with XYZ, and wish the company all the best.

• A WAV file containing the sound of a Currawong.

• A copy of the "so long and thanks for all the fish" message from the maintainer of the old UWP lyrics archive when it shut down (1996 ?).

• My goofey finger information from sometime in 1996, that mentioned, at the end :

  Most Recently Bought CD : Intifaxa, by Muslimgauze
  Most Recently Bought Book : On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
  

• A message from a friend via goofey, saying :

  i want a cat simply cause i had a weird dream where i had a cat and it was fun :P

• Lots of old Emacs or (mostly) XEmacs config files.

• The playlist for one of the radio shows I did back at Monash (the 1998-12-07 one that's mentioned over yonder).

• An old .plan file, with the words to Hank Williams' Ramblin' Man, and my PGP key.

• An address of an old overseas ICQ friend, to whom I'd send a postcard.

• A quote from Laurie Anderson :

  "'there are ten million stories in the Naked City...'
  ...only, no-one can remember which one is theirs..."

• A copy of RFC1945 (HTTP 1.0), which, going by the date, I'd pulled down for a read just before starting a new job.

• A Staalplaat catalogue.

• One or two conversations with ex-girlfriends. Thankfully I no longer log messages in my instant messengers these days - I used to be scared of forgetting stuff, but these days I've become frightened of remembering.

• A goofey message from another friend :

  Sorry about this. But how do you make the files in Unix writable again??

• A quote from Naked Lunch :

  William: "What do you mean it's a literary high?"
  Joan: "It's a Kafka high. It makes you feel like a bug."

• Old party invites, from 1996 (I went to lots of parties, mostly involving geeks, that year).

• A paragraph or so from Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, which I'd read back in 1996 :

  Our Wednesday afternoon picnic, she called it.
  "Everytime we come here, I feel like we're on a picnic."
  "Really ? A picnic ?"
  "Well, the grounds go on and on, everyone looks so happy ..."
  She sat up and fumbled through a few matches before lighting a cigarette.
  "The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. The time breezes by. That's like a picnic, isn't it ?"

• A file called words.txt, with the following in it (if only I knew the significance of having these words together like this) :

  desolation
  groovy
  odd
  quite
  lydia
  hug
  yuki ("snow")

• The contents of my first internet purchase, an order from CDNow in mid-1996 (the two Information Society CDs were for a housemate :

                                                  Quantity  Price  Ship Date
    1)UNDERWORLD : DUBNOBASSWITHMYHEADMAN            CD  1  15.36            
    2)INFORMATION SOCIETY : HACK                     CD  1  13.97            
    3)INFORMATION SOCIETY : INFORMATION SOCIETY      CD  1  13.97            
    4)UNDERWORLD : SECOND TOUGHEST IN THE INFANTS    CD  1  14.96s           
  
   Total # items: 4                             Subtotal $  58.26    
                                   Shipping and Handling $  16.38
                                                     Tax $   0.00
                                                   Sales $   1.00-
                                                   TOTAL $
                                                   73.64

• A goofey message from a friend. If only I could remember who those two people were, and why they wanted to meet me :

  Hey, are you free on Monday night for dinner?
  Tuck Lye and Kok Mun REALLY WISH to meet you.
  Venue: Meet outside the travel agency at Village Centre (City)
  (ie. near dragon boat restaurant)
  Food: Shanghai Noodle Place (negotiable for change) :)
  Time: 7:00 pm
  Let me know, ok? Ta.

• text files with snippets of indonesian, or cantonese, that various net friends taught me, once upon a time.

• An old, old joke :

  How many people does it take to change a lightbulb on Usenet?
  1 to say the light's out, 100 to say "Yes, I noticed that", and 1,000 to post requests for FTP sites with free software that replaces lightbulbs.
  Meanwhile, it's still dark.

• A rather memorable goofey message from a friend, while stoned:

  this keybo2ward tasteds y8mmy !

• Lots of random small work offers from people, all of which I'd politely turned down because I didn't have quite enough random faith in myself.

• ...not to mention the hundreds of tales of sadness, happiness and in-betweenness, from far too many net friends.

2002-03-16

So I finally met the Shadow, but they should've called him the Ghost - a pale figure, rather than the dark one I'd been expecting. He told me of his uncanny ability to (unwittingly) cause havoc with equipment, but despite this, had managed to transfer much of his old vinyl into the digital world. "The records closer to the ground, they collected more dust," he said.

2002-03-17

She was dressed in that everything-and-nothing kind of hippie-chick way, lost in a book and headphones, and cheerfully asked me "How do I get to balaclava road ?" "Oh, I'm going past there, I'll let you know." Just before getting off, she sat down next to me and talked. "I've been away for 7 years, travelling." "Oh, wow. Where ?" "Africa...India...I'm going to South America next." "A friend of mine lost a camera off the side of a mountain in South America, She sent us a postcard, saying "it's down there somewhere"." "Some guys with machetes took our cameras, in Africa. I guess they needed them more than we did." "I guess so," I replied.

2002-03-17b

Stereo twinkle of PlayStation platform game behind me. I'm ironing 5 shirts, in a sudden bout of preparation. I may not know what the week ahead will hold, but at least I won't have to iron a shirt every morning, unless I change my mind.

A little glass of Canadian Club on the rocks, Elvis Costello's wail and, later, Cat Power again. I could put something challenging on, but instead I find myself listening to that Beatles cover album for a second time, or at least, the first half of it.

2002-03-18

It's days like this when I can almost appreciate the term "work ethic", when a good day's work feels good instead of like it's something I grudgingly put up with before I can go home again.

Getting a lift home seems to steal the last chance of human interaction for the day, leaving me with a feeling of things unresolved.

On the other hand, I've got a CD changer to finish filling, a desk to clean, a website to twiddle, and other things to look forward to. There's always work to do.

2002-03-19

No rainy streets to walk down, hunched inside one's coat - these are the days, the other kind, when there's nothing to do but wait. I can watch the seconds fall like treacle, tonight. Amongst the burble of the TV beyond my bedroom door, neighbours talking outside, slamming car doors, I'm being quiet. I can be patient. I can try.

2002-03-20

a few quiet beers.
I missed doing this.
life's so simple, direct and uncomplicated when you're at the pub.

"look, robot, the stars are out."

2002-03-25

Dream: we (who ? high school friends, I think, but I can't remember faces) were playing "let's pretend we're late 70's NYC punk rockers". It was hard to remember who was playing who, though. I guess it involved jumping around and singing some of the famous songs of the time. I remember spending most of the time getting confused, and thinking how there was a guy I'd met once or twice, years ago, who could've played Richard Hell pretty well, especially since his name was Richard anyway...

2002-03-26

The white wine hangover is, on balance, a little better than other kinds. It certainly lacks the kick in the head of a red wine hangover, for instance. Nevertheless...

2002-03-27

It's black, sticky, and smells exactly like what it is - something from another century. Nevertheless I now have to put this coal tar on my fingers at night. My hands. My feet. I must bear responsibility for how I got here. My frivolous life. Or whatever it is.

In 3 to 4 weeks' time, I might start to see signs of progress, I'm told.

2002-03-28

Minor sickness on the way. I can feel this cold/flu thing start to throttle my throat. gargle salt water. I didn't have much in the way of plans for the next few days, and I guess it's just as well. take some pseudoephedrine. An opportunity to listen to all those CDs I've bought recently. keep those vices down for a while. Or perhaps even a bit of reading. keep fluids up, drink more orange juice, too. One must accentuate the positive in these things. There's still plenty to do.

2002-03-30

Last night I spent a few hours reading all these old interviews at PSF - Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Paul Schutze, Klaus Schulze, Kim Salmon, Mark Eitzel... I figured it'd get me tired enough to make me "just fall asleep" after covering my chest and throat with Vicks Vaporub and my hands and feet with the coal tar ointment. Instead, I found myself staring into inky space for hours, hearing little bits of noise leaking in from the rest of the house, or outside. I tried to feel comfortable in these plastic gloves, and tried not to breathe through my mouth.