tales from an ordinary world

2002-04-02

the end of daylight.

It's dark when I leave work, and it's only a quarter to seven. Stabbing car headlights make me look away from the road, so I look up at the building next door, office lights still on. Pasted to a 3rd floor window are cut out letters saying :

Happy
 th

but it's backwards from out here, of course. Perhaps they just leave it there, waiting for the next birthday, whereupon they attach the appropriate numbers.

Musical cars doof past. More headlights. My tram's got one stuck on high beam. It sputters and lurches at each intersection as it takes me home. No Melbourne Express for me, even though it's sitting right there on the seat, beside my bag - I won't succumb.

Early darkness makes me think of winter, of being out in the crisp evening air somewhere else in the world. Hot drinks and a scarf, something I never find myself wearing here.

Grey suit, dark hair, Davidoff Lights poking out the top of a tiny bag, she gets off in front of me. It's been darkness and light the whole way home.

Quarter past seven I'm walking home, just me and the sodium lamplight. The neighbourhood cats watch me closely, but won't come near.

2002-04-04

The first night of sleep where I didn't feel constricted in some way...where I didn't wake up imagining my hands were covered with icky black stuff, encased in plastic (oh wait, they were)...where I didn't wake up at 3am and use "i need to go to the toilet" as an excuse to take the gloves off and scrub it all off my hands so I could at least get a few hours of normal sleep. Instead, I slept semi-blissfully, and when 3RRR woke me up as per usual it almost seemed, to my horror, that this was all "just how it is".

2002-04-06

After a while, it became too difficult to keep the metaphors flying as our conversation continued. I wanted to provide the right kind of encouragement. Staring out the window, the yellow-lit street below, people waiting for taxis, a cool autumn night, I watched the sense fall from my words and bounce onto the street, under the wheels of passing cars.

2002-04-07

The train ride to the outer edge of the world seemed brighter, more bearable, and even a little uplifting. With a soundtrack by Songs: Ohia, we passed sunlit warehouses, people walking their dogs on the vacant grass along the side of the railway line, a nice old sign painted on a factory wall advertising the Blue Moon something or other - a bakery ? I couldn't read under the graffiti. We scurried under the huge power lines. The Ringwood railyards streamed past, to my left. I didn't want to stop moving through this world, full of tiny sights that just seem like more and more of the same when it's a different, less sunny kind of day. Even the music didn't make me sad, nor did it make me think of sad things. Instead, the sparse guitar, drums, and voices made the perfect accompaniment as the world swept by beside me. I never thought I'd consider the outer suburbs majestic, but just for a day my mind was changed.

2002-04-08

It's important to occasionally do the kind of thing you'd normally loathe, in order to progress oneself. So with a somewhat experimental air, I followed them into the casino, and watched them play pontoon (which is, at least, a semi-sociable way of throwing money away, compared with merely sitting at the button pushing machines). and sure, there's a certain amount of reckless power in the tap or wave - you at least have some small amount of regulatory control over how fast or slow the money goes away. People come and go, betting over your shoulder, some chatty, some just silently staring. One of the dealers bounces around jovially, laughing with the players, the next one's pure business, with a quietly melodic voice and precise hand movements as she sweeps across the table.

It's not for me, but at least I know for sure, instead of simply assuming so.

2002-04-12

For the third night in a row I found myself in Chapel St around 8:15pm, while in transit to other places.

The first night, I was heading home from the David Toop soundart talk/performance. Giggly teenage girls knocked over a bin next to KFC while a policewoman across the street shouted at them to pick all the rubbish up.

The other two nights, it'd be 10 minutes until the tram was due to arrive, so I'd walk up from Dandenong road, getting about halfway between High St and Commercial Rd before the tram caught up with me. A light rain fell across my brisk walking pace. Dodging people on the pavement. Looking in windows. Cake shops, furniture, clothes, stereos, greeting cards, army disposals, hairdressing, fast food and slow food.

It's almost too much. I need a new place to haunt.

2002-04-14

I took a different route to the gig tonight - tram to Balaclava, and a 15 minute wait for the train, up above the back streets in the dark - a few lights and a gum tree to stare at.

At Richmond, there's time to kill, so it's up to Eddie Wong for another lamb roti wrap, complete with wrapping paper that's got "Eddie Wong" in 'modern'-looking bold oblique lettering on the sticker, along with their happy-faced (hungry-faced ?) logo. In the time it takes to walk back to the Corner Hotel (with pauses to stare in closed shop windows), I'm about 2/3 finished. It's more than a little uncultured of me I suppose, to walk while I eat, but it's a nice evening to be out wandering.

Walking and eating also hammers home the fact that you're out by yourself. Unwrapping the roll as you eat, tearing off bits of paper that get ripped from your hands by a sudden gust of wind, so you stare helplessly down the street and watch the paper as it twirls away and heads up Swan St like another lost opportunity.

2002-04-16

I waited over half an hour, but I'd decided nonetheless to wait for the tram - I could, at least in one tiny way, try to cut back on past extravagance by not giving in and getting a taxi home. I wasn't in a hurry - there was nothing waiting at home for me to do, so I could stand here and listen to the sounds of occasional bursts of traffic passing by, and watch other passengers give up in disgust and look for a comforting yellow car to take them far away from this street full of work.

2002-04-18

in the supermarket, one of the staff confronts two teenagers trying to sneak into the bottle shop. they're quite unhappy at being caught and thrown out, and make monkey noises as they leave.

In Second Spin, it's empty, and the sounds of the first Scud Mountain Boys CD drifts through the shop - "please come back to Glacier Bay," he sings. I pick up two CDs, by Manu Chao and Jim White, and head for the bar nearby - the one with a wall covered in curly spades and crosses.

After 15 minutes, they dim the light once again, and it's getting a bit too hard to read. While I wait for the tram, a white Saab does a quick u-turn just nearby, and races back the other way, not quite stopping in time behind some cars waiting at the lights. In an instant, you know what's going to happen, but you don't really want to believe it. Just a minor, minor collision, but the sound of car hitting car still sends a chill up the spine, every time.

2002-04-19

I'm in a Lygon St bar, taking alternate sips from my beer and my water, transfixed by my tired-looking reflection in the mirror behind the bar while my companions play pool or chat to others.

So this is how it is.

Age creeps up on you, especially while you're languishing in insobriety.

Souvlaki and a taxiride home to my bed. I'm too tired to slap the black goo on my hands and feet tonight - the only time I've not done it in my weeks of coal filth remedy.

2002-04-21

By the time I get to Balaclava, the grey's given way to blue. I'm trying to acclimatise myself to this new cafe. Everywhere I go I see couples drifting happily about. Meanwhile, I've got a head full of pedal steel, bending like the trees.

Later, I'm eating dinner in the window of a place called Tusk, in a street of bars and cars. I let myself eat a piece of cake afterwards, but it wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped, after so long without dessert. I guess this change in my appetite over the past few months is a one-way street.

2002-04-22

I remember other days, sky so blue you could touch it, piling into a Volkswagen for a drive to the beach, where we'd try and dig ourselves a hole all the way to China, despite the obvious error in that theory when you're in this part of the world. Later, I'd inevitably get my ice-cream all over my face without even trying. I remember her talking about compounded chocolate as she drove us home, and what a cop-out it was.

I remember the Saturday night I sat nervously in a fish 'n' chip shop in Melton, my father waiting in the car - the wheelchair not lending itself to frivolous excursions, and I suppose it was his way of letting me learn how to do stuff. After an interminable wait, my order hadn't arrived. I'd already handed over his money. In frustration, and being too young to know what else to do, I ran out of the shop and back to the car. I think the guy had misheard me ordering, and I hadn't picked up on it.

I remember playing with old golf clubs in my grandparents' back garden, where the huge lemon tree held court in between the house, the radio shack, and the garage. We'd take turns climbing the aerial, although I can't remember what the view was like back then.

I remember walking, just walking, anywhere would do, when I needed to think, to get away, to feel the pavement under my feet as I worked my agitated mind over any number of internal issues. Up the hill, to a view of the bigger hills, or over by the freeway, in the unclaimed area of land near some tennis courts, where I could sit and watch the scrub and listen to passing traffic and feel like I'd gotten away from it all without really trying.

2002-04-24

A wintry night, the tyranny of rain just gone and rain yet to come. Leaving a major crowd for a minor one. Rear coutyard blanketed by the night sky over autumn-withered creepers. Sudden hiss of ash on water. Steady burbling of drinkers back inside, muffled by the door and walls. On any other day, this could be one of the lesser paradise-substitutes.

Some days, there's no escaping Mister Sandman. I'd been looking forward all day to a quiet evening of a few healing ales over dinner with some friends. But near eight o'clock, every mouthful of food seems like I'm lifting a brick to my mouth, and it's all I can do to hold my head up and listen, let alone speak.

bring me a dream.

2002-04-25

Flourescent flicker of office light in next door's building, across the way. Memories of grey cloudy weekends when, once or twice, I followed dad into work for an hour or two while he fixed up something or other. Geek impulse hadn't grabbed me by then, so I'd just sit and look around the land of shelves full of folders, jokes pinned to cubicle walls, and wondered if this was what my future would amount to.

2002-04-27

...so I stood at Armadale station in the failing light, waiting for a train to the south-eastern lands, where I'd eventually walk up a street that, at its end, seemed to be guarded by the huge glowing moon hanging there like a 10 cent piece.

On the platform behind me, a slim girl in denim skirt and red tracksuit-like jacket hauled a Canon bubblejet printer box back and forth, repeating my own earlier confusion about which platform we were meant to be waiting on. Afer a while, she disappeared beyond the brickwork, beyond my field of view, and not long after I could see the occasional puff of smoke.

For the first time in quite a while I was carrying my discman, listening to the Willard Grant Conspiracy sing of a man who was "born to dangle / beneath that hanging tree". Lately I've regretted that fettered feeling of having too many wires, cables and attachments - you always look awkward sitting up, getting down, or otherwise changing positions, if you have to remove headphones, unshoulder your bag and re-seat the headphones every so often. But today, I needed the inner peace that comes from watching the world with one's own, semi-delicately chosen soundtrack. People looked at me all evening as I walked by with these large earmuff-like headphones, knowing I was only half in their world.

In the backyard later on, we stood there for a moment, gazing in wonderment at this tall white chimney-like device next-door, that served (according to the homeowner) no discernible purpose. But it was better than having neighbours, he said.

2002-04-28

In the morning I'd got up early to go to a friend's breakfast, and since I'd arrived in Malvern half an hour too early I set off west down High St, looking in windows, watching these mid-upper-class cafe-dwellers. Past the art/print galleries. Past where Death By Chocolate used to be, many years ago. One cafe across the street seemed dominated by parked bicycles leaning along the entire front and side. It seemed like a photo opportunity, but by the time I came back along past it, the cyclists were all leaving. So I kept walking, and turned up the music.

2002-04-29

I watched the light fade around bright eyes. These people own the world, now - we sold it to them, and in time they'll sell it to others. The transactional journey - disappointment to death, but not for these ones, who see the other side of things, for now.

If we were smart, we'd find a way of keeping it this way. Darkness into light. Desperation into dream-fulfilment, The sandman's tears couldn't get in our way. But its ephemerality is a core component, seemingly impossible to remove without taking rhyme and reason with it. The successful ones can't explain in our language. You Just Know.

2002-04-29b

My eyes hurt. The constant wear and tear of the box's outward glow. I should be reading instead, but I want this book to last more than 2 days.

My feet are itchy. The southeast takes its toll. It's always nearly time, but not quite.

Bumps and scratches on my arms. Where did they come from ? They never completely manage to leave.