tales from an ordinary world
2002-08-12
Having just returned from a holiday, I wasn't expecting to receive a postcard, but in any case it took my mind off the water I could feel seeping into my right sock as I made my way up the driveway. I'm always thankful for small mercies.
2002-08-13
Roving for food. Sing me to sleep. Why did I expect to find anything interesting in Chapel St tonight ? Raindrops dance on the road, in front of the oncoming traffic. I know where I'm headed, now.
Flashing lights and print shops. Pharmacies and petrol stations. Trams returning home. People clutching their umbrellas. The voice I never had, but once thought I might be creating - it's slipping from my hands, now.
2002-08-13b
"I'm a ghost and I'll be fading with the light."
Joe Pernice.
In my phone I keep a collection of 10 old SMSes, the oldest from about 18 months (and one phone) ago. They're nothing particularly much to look at, but they fingerprint various times and people and serve, I suppose, as some kind of portable encouragement. or something.
2002-08-14
"grateful kiss
it's weariness
and the rain keeps falling
all over town"
stephen cummings.
A sickly sweet confectioner smell wafts down the midday street. I'm going to lunch in the Big Room, because it enhances my sense of Getting Away From It.
In the evening, there's a low chug from an approaching 4WD - I step back and let it pass before crossing the sidestreet - I don't sense much mercy in this one.
This place is closed, that one's full, but I know this other one'll have room for me. They get no points for musical taste, but everything else is just fine. A pair of familiar accents ring out from deeper inside the cafe while I practice my reduced-appetite dining.
Waiting for the tram, I can stand on these little steps with the toes of my red shoes hanging over the edge. I feel like a minor clown, but really I'm just the invisible man (as always).
Walking up the driveway, the white smudge of a single cloud tries to obscure Venus in the recently darkened sky. It's over now.
2002-08-15
just pray for us
pray for sunshine
these days are cold
and i'm missing you
mojave 3.
put out the hand for some fleeting contact. just a moment or two. my post-holiday world seems a little more bleak than usual, and if the holiday itself was a dream, then I'm still waiting to wake up. the details of my time away are already escaping my grasp, as if they faded a little bit each time I did the whole "what I did on my holidays" song and dance.
it's cold in here. did i notice this last winter ? i don't remember doing so.
2002-08-16
Maybe I don't sit out in the sun enough. It's a good day to indulge in the psychological need for sunlight, to survey the sweeping expanse of grass in front of me, and the soothing traffic sounds behind. Some fellow lunchers pass by, discussing property prices. A female magpie waits expectantly as I sit with my drink. An impatient horn disturbs the balance. A girl walks her jack russell amongst the rugby goalposts. Two girls kick a footy back and forth, perhaps symbolising the end-of-week relief you can feel among the people who come here. I'm feeling a little too self-conscious to sit on the grass, so I'll just assume temporary ownership of this park bench, under a tree whose empty branches arc out like frozen lightning. A jogger in ghostlike white t-shirt and shorts pads steadily past, overtaking each group of two or three people, all dressed in darker, more subdued colours. Just when I start to think I might be the only one here on my own, lone strollers appear from all sides, each keeping their distance from one another. But then they're gone, and it's back to the familiar 2-3-4-people groups that seem to "own" the park. I guess nobody really wants to be alone on a nice day like this - I know I don't.
(sorry, that was a bit over the top, wasn't it ?)
2002-08-16b
Wedged into a corner in the place I usually won't go on a Friday evening, but I'm glad I made myself go along and listen. His eyes glint with the possibilities as his friend talks about stuff he's done with a particular bit of technology. It's nerdery at its finest when you've got a glass of red in your hand to help nudge the thought processes along a little bit.
Later, I'm standing outside an apartment block, thinking I'm running late. Inside, I find Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, a book about Country Music, and I somehow manage to get them to listen to my American Analog Set CD. I feel better - humoured, even.
2002-08-17
The rickety little chairs were still there outside the cafe, waiting patiently for my post-holiday return for a bagel and a coffee (I'd come here the in morning just before I left for the airport, it seemed the appropriate place for a final meal), and to watch the traffic and the people. Watching the girls across the road stare and giggle at a guy walking past me, perhaps because he seemed dressed in a little too much white for normal streetwear. They hopped on the bus, to be whisked away up to Punt Road and beyond. He milled around for a while, then vanished.
2002-08-19
The weather promised better days ahead. The window was open, across the table from me. As usual, I didn't really know what to say. Eventually, she vanished behind the wooden relief and dark red curtains. Maybe we'll meet again, but I'll stick to assuming otherwise, and leave myself room for surprises. He left, too. We stayed. It just didn't seem like time, yet.
2002-08-20
I usually find the sudden, irregular early morning cafe bustle to be a pain in the ass, and retire hurt to my office with a takeaway coffee. But I wasn't in the mood to have my morning routine taken away from me so easily today. After the initial shock, it turned out ok. I ignored the teachers and students from the school across the street, who seem to be taking over the place at least once a week now, and had my damn coffee there anyway. The background hubbub of conversations eventually just blended into the background, and I may have even felt better than I normally would have on one of those quiet mornings when I've almost got the place to myself. I can't claim to understand this phenomenon, but I'm trying to accept it.
2002-08-20b
I loathe talking about how little I'm enjoying my working life, right now. It's an easy trap to fall into - the endless "I'm tired, I've had enough, and nobody understands me" kind of entries that you can't bear to read long after they're written. So I'll simply say that I'm hoping I'll either come up with an idea for some kind of plan of action, or merely fall into that "half-asleep" mode where you just run on auto-pilot for a while, surviving day in day out, and then all of a sudden it's the end of another year.
2002-08-23
Friday nights are just one full watering hole after another. Where can you get a quiet drink this night of the week ? Somewhere that's only just (re)opened. The beer's in those funny northern glasses, but it'll do. Polished floorboards and moulded dark red chairs. Hipsters drift by as we sink into the furniture. Funny noises in the toilet's air vent (a possum ?). New stories being created while we tell old ones, the endless cycle of experiences. Two beers and the now-familiar walk down Chapel St to the tram on Dandenong Road. People are just beginning to surface for a night out, all fresh-faced and dressed up. I'm on my way home for a little regeneration time.
2002-08-24
Some days you're alway's in somebody's way, no matter how many times you step aside for them. I could sense their displeasure in the bookshop - every time I stood still to examine something, the woman with the walking stick (she'd lift it up and point it horizontally, then swing it down again) would materialize next to me, or the energetic little kid, or the kid's mother. Whoever it was, they wanted to be where I was standing, so I'd shuffle on apologetically.
Just beforehand, I'd gone into Nando's for lunch - the first time in possibly 6 months, prompted by a guy I chatted to in Singapore who said it was one of the things he missed about Melbourne (so I felt like I should go and "appreciate" it again). A gaggle of teenage girls took a table out the front, one of then complaining to the other that "somebody stole our booth."
Even now, having my coffee on the street, angry car horns indicate that somebody is in somebody else's way.
In the Army Disposals shop, a backpack with the model name "glacier bay" puts the song in my head. An employee walks around Safeway with a "miss universe"-style sash over his shoulder, that says "information".
"anyway, it's wrapped up in good wishes and feelings," she wrote. I'm beginning to wish that I'd had more of such encouragement when I was younger - perhaps it would've allowed me to feel as if I was good at something, rather than feeling like just another pretender. Still, better now than never.
2002-08-26
A tiny cut on my finger, a 2mm split, that almost looks like a tiny mouth. I wonder what it wants ?
2002-08-27
I was catching up with an old friend I hadn't seen for a bit over a year, but was also aware of the couple in the booth next to us, having a ConversationTM. I tried not to listen, of course, but particular phrases seemed to pop up and float over my way. He's on the defensive, it seems, saying "well, this is the place I'm at. maybe you're in a different place." I don't hear her reply. They seem fairly jovial, laughing occasionally, but I don't get the feeling that the guy got what he wanted, whatever that might've been.
2002-08-28
Just like yesterday, somebody got on the tram with a dog-eared copy of on the road. Today, though, he also carried a large Road Atlas, presumably for reference.
I'm in-between books. I'm even in-between CDs. My energies seem to be needed elsewhere - worrying about work, a burst of cleaning up at home (the latter a product of the former, perhaps).
2002-08-30
He spent most of lunchtime spouting economics at us, but it was the concept of "building freeways to nowhere" that stuck in my head most of all.
Later, on the tram, a girl sat with a large white square of cardboard on her lap. There was probably something exciting on the underside, but on top, in one corner, it simply said :
Dear (name),
in memory of everything, anything and nothing.
Love,
(other name) xxxx
