tales from an ordinary world
2002-06-02
I spent an entire day in Chapel St, it turned out. Breakfast at Orange - I was early, figuring I'd read my book for a while rather than walk around at the ungodly hour of 10am on a Sunday, when I'd normally just be rising. The others were late to varying degrees, but this is normal, and just fine, since the weekend is all about Taking It Easy. Besides, I had my book for company. We circled the big table at the front, with our orange juices, coffees, eggs and bread and bacon and conversations and the lending of CDs or books - I lent one (my much-prized copy of the thin man bordello) and borrowed the other (Michael's The Atlas of Experience). The cafe crowds ebbed and flowed behind us all morning, a phenomenon I hadn't really noticed before to such an extent, although it's not often that I spend 3 hours in a cafe anymore. A baby stumbled across the stones in the courtyard as I made my way to the amenities. A young couple sat next to each other, reading their respective papers in silence. The music changed, nothing I particularly knew, although at one point two of us figured it "might've been Lou Reed." I admitted a certain disinterest in a new Australian film - having nothing to go on so far but a few large billboard advertisements - because they used an extremely common and rather boring font for all the words on the posters. Later, one of the others admitted to staying up late "playing with fonts", so I didn't feel like I was the only freak in town after all.
We saw Oliver off, to a lunch appointment and, later, back to the northern states. The others wanted to drop into Greville Records, something I happily (if a little guiltily) obliged to. From there, we went further north, to the large shop full of books and music - I resisted the former but not the latter - and then ate nearby, amongst synthetic-clad teens and an old couple who seemed concerned by their teetering teapot. Afternoon crowds streamed past the streetside window. Some Chinese girls behind us exclaimed a loud "wah !" as a girl outside stepped out of a silver Mercedes and onto the pavement. Eugenie gave me a lift home because she wanted to know what my Man or Astroman? CDs sounded like. The whole sci-fi-surf-guitar thing amused her, much as it had amused a few of my co-workers just recently, but then there was a simple text file, the well-planned sounds of a dot-matrix printer, which gave me flashbacks of year 12 assignments, and the time i discovered how to ask the printer to use proportional spacing...
2002-06-02b
I finished my book of travels through the backroads of the USA, and stepped out the back to stare at the stars for a moment, away from the sounds of the tumble dryer over my housemate's computer games. A possum sat on next door's roof, just below the Southern Cross. After a little while, it inched its way to the peak and sat, alone.
2002-06-04
I should've gone out, at least for a little while, but I'm stuck in another tug-of-war - frugality of body and wallet versus the insistence that one's existence is more, more, more than the home/work duopoly. My withered camera eye needs reviving, my ears haven't heard live music for a few weeks. I've been too comfortable, sitting in the chair all night with an assortment of Uncle Bill CDs by my side, and glasses of lemon juice cordial + soda water.
2002-06-06
Walking down Lennox St to a cosy pub dinner in the early evening winter darkness, bats chatter and aircraft drift across the sky. I'm trying to shake off my office-induced rage, but it just makes me walk faster and faster down the footpath and across the roundabout, until the red light at the mini-intersection makes me stop, wait and breathe.
Inside, the window's fogged up with beer and conversation. I stare out of it, at the patterns of lights up the side of the Housing Commission flats across the street, occasional passing traffic, people walking home from work, and wait for my two friends.
2002-06-08
"i've got that sunday feeling
twenty-four hours too soon."
golden rough.
A warm breakfast on a cold, windy street corner. The country music shop the other side of the railway line's having a closing down sale - I could never really find much to buy in there, but I always found its presence comforting, despite it seeming so out of place in this part of town with its confederate flag painted on the wall.
Walking between the ABC building and the railway line, I see somebody's thrown a fridge down next to the tracks, on the other side, amongst a pile of plastic milk crates and other urban detritus. On my side, it's all just autumn leaves along the dirt pathway, occasional piles of old bread for the birds, and colourful (but still seemingly lifeless) graffiti on the brick wall.
Further along my little route I see blocks of flats with names, one even called "harrods" (in decaying, once-shiny letters), as if trying to connote a sense of style that seems dreadfully absent from such an ordinary dark brown brick building. Then there's the light yellow block of flats, a bit later, that seems to be slowly giving in to decay.
Approaching the Balaclava shops from the south, on foot, puts a new twist on an old familiar place, at least while I'm walking up the side street. It all fits in with my great wish to walk down every street in this city, one by one. There's something new on every street corner, if you pay attention.
2002-06-10
"i'll always be a dreamin' man
i don't have to understand
i know it's alright."
neil young.
Walking around the Elwood shops for the first time in a long time made me think of two old friends in particular, neither of whom I've kept up with anymore. One seems completely gone, I have no means of contacting him. The other one I have a number for, but I could never find the right time. So just before I crossed the street, I called his phone and left a message - "I've been walking around the Elwood shops, and it made me think of you. It'd be good to catch up some time..." The last time I called him, I was standing in Orchard Road in Singapore last October - I knew he would've got a kick out of knowing that I'd finally made it there. I walked on, overflowing with regret.
2002-06-11
A restless mind needs exercise, even when it's dark. I took a route through familiar and unfamiliar streets, to try and keep it interesting. The tyranny of high-beam lights along side-streets versus dark and barren trees in the park. I keep my head down as joggers pass, because it's just not the time of day for eye contact. If you're walking (or jogging) alone, you're walking alone. A fully-lit tram slides by, across the opposite edge of the park. I'm a little tired, but not from the walking, so I press on, heading east, past the barbecue smell of the local grill near the park, and past houses and blocks of flats, new and old. Each of these dwellings look like something, as if I can somehow trick myself into guessing what kind of people live there - but this is foolish, and even moreso when it comes to rental properties. When I started out, I had an old Magnetic Fields album - the travelling one - in my head, but now it's turned into The Handsome Family. Near another popular restaurant, I rest a moment in the concrete park, staring into the greenish glow of the fountain-thing that they've lit up from within, but there's nothing in there but algae and pond scum. As I approach a road that'll take me home, I consider extending my journey, but it feels as if it's run its course already. My walking's all about instinct - one day it might tell me to walk home from St Kilda, another day it might just be enough to walk around the block. Mostly, it's somewhere in between. Sometimes I'm disappointed that the length of the walk doesn't seem to correspond to me coming to any particular conclusions about the things doing mileage in my head, but I've come to understand that this is merely an aid, rather the means by which these conundrums get solved.
2002-06-12
On the tram, in between songs on my headphones, one simple phrase made its way down the tram, seemingly out of nowhere - "i really just don't like my job at the moment." Eventually, I work out who said it, but I just watch her lips move, I don't hear any more words.
The rain stunts my will to walk, but eventually I think of something, somewhere to go, and I play the CD again, recapturing recent sadness, because I am feeling sad, even if I've no idea why. The shops are closed or closing. Shopkeepers haul things back and forth, from their shops out to their parked cars. There's nothing to do on this street, and that's fine, because I don't want to do anything. I don't want to spend money. I don't want to indulge. I don't feel as if I deserve these earthly pleasures. All I can do is walk on. All I should do is walk on.
When I get home, I find that I've received an e-mail from somebody I was thinking of just the other day. He asks for the radio edit of this life, of my ordinary world. I answer with the usual "well, I've been doing this...and this..." thing, but after the e-mail's sent I feel as if I didn't really answer the question. I start reading through my old journal entries, and wonder how I could summarize all of this into something tangible.
2002-06-14
Quick coffee in nearby new cafe. The waitress seems to be overdoing it with the "sir"s and "madam"s but, well, whatever makes her happy. Another friend who complains about her usual group of friends only wanting to eat Chinese or Italian food whenever they go out - once in a while, I help them break the cycle, although with one of these friends, "once in a while" turned into almost 2 years between catching up. Still, these things happen when they're meant to.
2002-06-15
I walked to Elsternwick, in the dark, and all of this was true. I walked past a few other people, each one walking alone, but each one buried in a phone conversation while they walked. Just after that, I heard a phone ringing from the local garage across the street, coming from inside the workshop. This wasn't a new-fangled bleepy phone ring, but a full-bodied bell sound. When I reached the lights a hundred metres on, a woman stood in the middle of the footpath, bags on either side, making a phone call. Her face was mere seconds away from bursting into tears.
Earlier in the day, I mused that life is too short to re-read books, but when I stood at my bookshelf trying to pick a book to take with me this evening, I eschewed all of my unread books in favour of an old favourite - a collection of short stories by . My life seems to be one of inward contrariness.
2002-06-16
Every time I'm here, sitting outside the cafe on the street, the waiter or waitress always comments on how it's such a nice day to be sitting outside. "Certainly is," I'll reply. And it's true, too. I tried, in a very small way, to stop doing the same sort of thing I always do, and ordered huevos rancheros instead of my usual bagel. In between snatches of text from my book, I'd wolf down my food. People passed me by. Impatient cars swerved around ones stuck in the turning lane, only to get blared at from behind by somebody else speeding along. I popped over to the bookshop before making my weekly pilgrimage to Raoul Records. When I emerged, a cold mist had started to set in. People were walking a little more urgently, now that the weather was turning against them. I made my way up to the tram stop, glad I'd managed to catch the best part of the day.
2002-06-17
Every once in a while I find myself actually feeling grateful for the tiny interruptions that pull me out of this funk and back to earth in order to fix some small, solvable problem or other.
2002-06-17b
It's a Monday tram so everybody's locked in their own worlds, except for the two Young MenTM playfully jostling each other on the seat opposite me. Somebody plays with her phone, presumably trying to SMS someone. People hurry off, but more hop on to replace them, swarming out of the railway station like insects, leather shoes and jackets their gleaming carapaces in a sodium-yellow night. One sits near me and just stares off out the window behind me, holding his wallet, glasses and keys in one hand. I try not to look too conspicuous. Another sits down precisely, a few seats up, peering disdainfully down my end of the tram. Soon, but not soon enough, it's time to make my exit. Book in hand, canvas bag over shoulder. I check my stuff. I'm off this thing, at last. Waiting for the doors to open, I find myself staring at a man's bald head - hair either side, but a shiny little world atop it. He's wearing dark blue trousers, a t-shirt, and a blue Levi's denim shirt. Some sort of jacket too, I think. I wonder what he's going home to ?
It's dark already, and the footpath's under my feet again, just for a short while. Venus hangs low in the sky. A small aircraft flashes its lights on the way past. The stars are out. I'm nearly home.
I've wasted this night, fiddling with emulators of old computers I once knew and loved. I could've been doing something...useful. Or something else, anyway.
2002-06-18
It's a very crisp morning - all stars, no clouds. I fumble with my discman "remote" while I walk down the driveway, looking up at the dark, dark blue sky. Ah. Got it. electr-o-pura fires up in my ears. I'm still not really looking where I'm going, but I've walked this way most mornings for four and a half years now - there are no surprises.
It's cold - not unreasonably so, but the kind of cold you know people will go on about all day. Two guys, regulars of this particular tram-run get on and sit down together, huddled in their warm clothes. They're always wearing the same respective pairs of running shoes - one, traditional-looking late-20th-century shaped, in black and blue with white underneath, and the other with something slightly more recent but also slightly unattractive, awash with green and blue across the top, as if somebody spilt something on them. They rarely talk, in fact, they usually seem to be trying to catch up on sleep.
I'm reading my book, but - attention span, unquenchable curiosity, I don't know - I spend half my time looking at passengers or (mostly) out the window, at the vagaries of another new day.
2002-06-19
She left me a message on my phone in the middle of the night, so that when I woke up I could hear her voice again. I like this. If she were here I could imagine, exactly, the way she'd shiver on a day like this and say "it's so cold !"
The other day, she sent me a small webcam-picture, holding up some new phone she was playing with. I was too busy looking at the face, slightly blurred in the background, to pay much attention to the phone itself.
Whenever somebody asks how long I have to wait, and I tell them, they always say the same thing - "wow. that's a long time to have to wait." But I take these things a day at a time, confident that if I can lose myself in the minutiae of my daily life for another half a year or more, then things will be Back To Normal. Or back to a different kind of Normal, anyway. Or something.
2002-06-20
The first night all week that I haven't killed a good half-hour or so in emulator heaven, honing my "skills" (or lack thereof) on one particular game I remember fondly, one that's now 17 years old. My housemate commented that he hadn't seen me play a game for this long for a while. I miss zoning out like this, fingers dancing over the arrow keys, getting the attack sequences all set up in the mind, and practicing, practicing, practicing until perfect.
2002-06-21
Friday evening, after our exit from work was delayed by me discovering somebody doing something particularly silly with our e-mail system, that martini at the first bar really hit the spot. After a relatively early start to the festivities, our numbers dwindled towards the end of the night, like candles being lit, and later extinguished.
2002-06-23
A girl on the tram wears a pink and white top with "be nice" across the front. Indeed, only moments after I read it, she stands up to help out somebody who's having trouble working the ticket machine.
2002-06-23b
If I had to live the rest of my life only eating one "class" of food, I'd choose nuts. I have my father to thank for this - he always had a jar of peanuts in the cupboard, for those rare between-meal moments when he might be a little peckish. On slightly less common occasions, he'd have mixed nuts, or smoked almonds, or something else. I adore nuts. Chocolate, for instance, is so much more enjoyable when it's got nuts in it, especially dark chocolate with roasted almonds. Peanuts, pecans, pistachios (I'm not sure about these printed ones, though), hazelnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, macadamias, walnuts, and last but not least, cashews (especially "dry roasted" cashews). Chestnuts are ok, although I never tried them as a kid. It wasn't until they started selling them in the city during winter, and one of my girlfriends would buy them every time we passed a street vendor, that I tried them. In small doses, they're fine, but I can't see myself gorging on them as I could, say, with cashews. Does coconut count ? I know Mavis always screws up her face at coconut stuff over here, because they often mean dessicated coconut, which is quite distant from "the real thing". And then there are pine nuts, the "little addition" of the 80's, when everything seemed to have pine nuts in them. Fortunately I've recovered from those days, and have come to appreciate pine nuts under less overbearing circumstances...
A house without nuts in the cupboard is a house without food.
2002-06-24
Three healing beers and a walk to the carpark. A large, blue, Deutsche Post bag that arrived for me this morning (later, I noticed the nice aircraft motif on it). Man or Astroman?'s cover of some old song called Squad Car. Unexpected deliveries when I reached home. Another listen of Lambchop's dreamy album, Nixon.
2002-06-25
I missed my usual comfort food stop for possibly the first weekend in months. Did it show ? Can I conveniently blame the way my week's going on this ? I suspect not, but all the same I needed to escape the usual lunch spots and go somewhere else just for a little while. Revival of flagging spirits, and all that. Certainly while I sat in the window and looked upon the world from my stool, bagel in hand, it felt like everything was going to be okay - a far cry from when, half an hour earlier, I sat staring blankly into the depths of my desk. As usual, it's the little things that count.
2002-06-26
She asked me to send her 10 postcards - from here, or Singapore, it didn't seem to matter. Apparently she'd gone digging for old letters the other day, and amongst letters from ex-boyfriends she found some postcards I'd sent her 6 years ago or whenever it was, not long after she'd first found me on the net. I think she misses the feeling of what I'd describe in geek terms as "out-of-band" contact - something other than words on a screen. I can understand. Back then she wrote me lots of long letters, full of all sorts of things I can barely remember, but I've always kept them along with all the other letters people wrote me. I always felt lost for words - everybody else seemed to have so much more to say, especially this particular friend. The gift of verbosity is a curious thing.
2002-06-27
Rainy days and thursdays and I'm left to my own devices. It's all Quality Time. I can go somewhere nice for lunch, while I'm still appreciating getting out of the office for a while. I should be shopping for some small though useful gifts, but I can allow myself a meal first. Everybody else here reads the paper, though I have no such desire - it's enough just to sit. It seems I've added just enough mik to my coffee to make it look like a glass tumbler full of muddy river water. Eventually, lunch arrives, with a slight coriander smell I could die for.
2002-06-30
I think I've come to realise my mistake - the thought, the very presumption, that I might have (or should have) been able to have an effect on certain outcomes, that I might've been able to find the right words to fit certain difficult situations, such that somehow it all would've turned out better.
I've been an observer - a camera, even - but should remain such. The act of observing them does not confer a sense of ownership, and I shouldn't let myself think so. Sometimes I forget that my eyes and ears are far more valuable and far more necessary to others than my mouth and hands. I'm (probably) not required to say anything, much less to do anything. Listen. Watch. These events will unfold, will have their own way.
2002-06-30b
As I drop the ice cube into the glass an air pocket burts, sending a tiny shower of whisky and melted ice into the air. I drop another in, and the same thing happens, as anticipated. These aren't the kind of explosions I fear.
