11293561
Geelong 2:56 Sat
Killing ten hours in Geelong might not strike everyone as an attractive prospect. At the moment, though, I’m sitting in the reserve on the waterfront, listening to the thoracic thud of footballs being gleefully kicked and heroically marked, to the appealing chick of a sack being hacked, to the squeals (with disguised eroticism) of a red rover roving all over, and the ambient sound of families enjoying Easter Saturday in a variety of languages. A model day in a model democracy, brimming with tolerance and prosperity. I wonder where John Howard is now, digesting his roast beef sandwiches? Presumably he’d find this scene pretty sinister. A happy multiculture, thriving in public space. What a depressing thought for a committed myopic xenophobe, who would rather imagine “people like that” concocting anthrax in a compound somewhere, when in fact all “they”‘re doing is trying to get the tupperware lid back on the raita at the table next to me. Nowhere could be more relaxed, or more comfortable, than here and now, and I only hope that the harmony can survive the White Australia hatchet job that’s being done on it by small, frightened men.
11129129
Why were they born so beautiful
My 30th, Jo’s 31st. Coincidence?
Life’s still full to bursting, mostly with good stuff, which throws any bad stuff into stark relief. I’m getting to a point of actually making life decisions and assigning priorities, as each day’s commitments swell to fill the available hours. For instance, someone rang me yesterday and asked me to do three days’ teaching per week, beginning at the middle of the year. I’m going to say no. Not that the money wouldn’t be great, but it would mean putting aside a whole heap of other plans (like doing uni full time, for instance), and I think that by the middle of the year my finances should be getting back on track one way or another, anyway. I feel pretty virtuous about the whole thing, being able to resist the impulse to follow an inappropriate course just for the sake of bringing in more and more money. I don’t really need that much money. What I need is a life that I enjoy, and I’m just starting to get one. Yes, I could use some extra money, but that’s going to take care of itself. I’m sure it is.
Caught another mouse last night. That makes a grand total of eight. I don’t think I’ve caught the big one, though, the mother of all mice. I have a feeling that she’s wily and smart and been living in this place since the park next door was a rubbish tip. We’re engaging in a battle of wits. My latest weapon is some particularly smelly parmesan cheese. I will prevail.
11023862
Pleasure, overload of
A recent spate of persistent happiness has upset my equilibrium a bit. What happens when you can’t seem to get a grip on some serious angst to remind you how tortured and misunderstood you are? What happens when there’s no excuse for evenings of consolation with just the telly and a packet of dark chocolate Tim-Tams? What happens when you start telling your single friends, in all seriousness, that the perfect person will come along eventually, and actually believe it? When every day seems to send you soaring higher and higher, and when the anticipated crash back to Earth just doesn’t seem to come like it always has before? When the emotional compass, that has pointed so steadfastly at “find consolation in irony” for so long, suddenly starts spinning wildly, perhaps to end up settling on “celebrate exuberance”?
Nothing lasts for ever. Does it?
10854868
Pet Hate of the Day
Questions on assignments that require a yes/no answer, when I don’t think that either is right. The questions tend to refer to some particular sentence in the text that you’re supposed to have read, so that you’re supposed to have this instinctive “Yes!” or “No!” response based on the regurgitation of some paragraph or other, but sometimes they don’t make sense in the context of a wider understanding. Of course, when you’re only allowed to write “Y” or “N”, you don’t have any way of indicating that you even have a wider understanding, and if you happen to stab the wrong guess as to what they were wanting you to answer, then you’re just as wrong as someone who has no understanding at all. It shits me, that does.
(You might be able to guess, I’ve just finished my first Philosophy assignment. Handed in my first History assignment today, which was a pretty small deal, but strangely nerve-wracking at the same time. How long has it been since I’ve handed a piece of work in for a graded assessment? Ten years? Twelve? Alright for all the little sprogs still flushing with the excitement of their VCE results.)
10793562
A Turn for the Busier
After over two months of sitting around waiting for something to happen (a process of which this project was one of the happier side-effects), suddenly everything has taken off all at once. Well, almost everything. My love life has, as I might have mentioned, taken a sudden, significant and long-awaited turn for the better. I’m at uni again. The gigs … well, the flow is increasing with painful slowness, but it is increasing. The result of all this is that I’ve scarcely had two minutes to rub together in the last two weeks, as witnessed by the shameful lack of any writing here. It seems that it’s much easier to write about life all the time when life itself doesn’t occupy too many of one’s waking hours. Still, I’m not complaining.
10405397
Monash Uni Caulfield 1:59 Tue
I’m sitting in the Student Union cafeteria in a break between classes. It’s a hell of a lot nicer than the Student Union cafeterias that I remember from last time I was at uni, which were the kind of places that you always suspected were hosed out at the end of the day. I wouldn’t describe these surroundings as luxurious, but they’re reasonably clean and effective, without too many outward signs of having been designed on the assumption that uni students should be regarded as poorly-behaved livestock.
I’m getting towards the end of three hours between the end of my politics tutorial and the beginning of my philosophy lecture, and I’m struggling to stay awake. It turns out that what I wrote about Jo turned out to be prophetic: over the weekend, things began to happen, and in a big way, and one of the results is that I’m sitting here barely able to either open my eyes or wipe the smile off my face after the second of two long and energetic nights.
I know that it’s a clich� to say that it all feels a bit like a dream, but it does. I went to a rehearsal with her last night, and I was half expecting to show up only to realise that the whole previous episode had existed only in my fantasy world. Sure enough, though, she remembered it happening, too, and what’s more, remembered it as fondly as I did. It’s a product of my past experience that I keep expecting the rain to begin falling on this parade, and it’s going to take me a while to accept that there’s not a crushing disappointment on the way, but for now I’m doing my best to enjoy every moment, even if it means coming to uni with scratchy eyeballs and questionable personal hygiene.
International studies yesterday turned out to be a lot more holistic than I had expected. The lecturer, Seamus, was intent on getting the message across that his subject could offer more to the students than just the results towards their degrees. He was speaking to the school leavers, primarily, which is something that I’m kind of getting used to. “As you’ll all remember from high school” is a phrase that seems to come up a lot. I’m not the only non-school leaver, but I’m in a select minority. The tutorial was a series of getting-to-know-you exercises that could have been transparently transplanted to a self-help group or a management training exercise. Apparently the real work starts next week, and I’ve already done most of the reading, but unfortunately that’s the day that I’m going to have to miss in order to do a couple of gigs. I’m probably more shitty about that than the situation really warrants, but I was so keen on having a really conscientious year that it’s a shame to find myself missing tutorials in the second week. It can’t be helped, I know … even doing all my clashing gigs, I’m still no certainty to get through the next two months without literally running out of cash. I have a feeling that my text books are going to have to start going on my credit card, awaiting the elusive influx of money that will come either from the ethereal inheritance or the ephemeral gig surge. Of course, the events of the last weekend have helped me to cast a positive light on all of this.
This morning was politics, led by a lecturer called Dennis, a Carlton supported with a moustache hanging from his lip and keys hanging from his belt, who I could imagine embarrassing teenage daughters at family functions. He spoke well, though, in a way that implied a depth of hidden knowledge, although I did long for a way to subtly let him know that it’s Hollingworth, not Hollingsworth. I have to give a presentation in a tutorial on the role of the minor parties in Australian politics. Perhaps it’s time to renew my Democrats membership.
Tonight I’m going to be faced with an important dilemma: to swim or not to swim. On Sunday night I went swimming at about six in the evening, after a night not unlike last night, and I ended up with a nasty cramp, and I had to puff my way to the end of my quota after a humiliating rest in the middle. Not to go today, though, would make the first day that I’ve missed (except for a couple when I was out of town) since the 2nd of January, and that would represent the breaking of a pattern that I’ve established through a lot of semi-fanatical stubbornness. Sometimes it’s only the thought of spoiling all those months of obsession that keeps me going back again the next day, because once they’re spoilt, the incentive disappears. There’s a big psychological difference between missing no days and missing one day, and once you’ve missed one, you almost might as well miss two, etc etc. This is how a life of commitment and self-satisfaction can turn into a life of slovenliness and self-retribution. I think that I’ll go and do the bloody laps.
It’s a bit ironic that for the first time in years I’m in a situation where I’m outnumbered by women, most of them young and beautiful, and for the first time in years I’m not single. Maybe that’s just as well - after all, to remain single in the face of all this opportunity might be depressing. They’re mostly too young to go out with, and I’m not really that much into casual sex. I guess I’m just in the habit of searching in vain for opportunities in a pretty barren environment, and it’s odd to be surrounded by so many riches just at the time when I’ve stopped. It’s funny, I don’t remember there being this many girls of such overt attractiveness when I was studying the first time. Maybe, like the cafeteria, standards have evolved in the interim.
10284652
Brunswick Baths 10:37 Sat
I don’t want to be premature about this, and I certainly don’t want to jinx anything, but it’s a long time since this has happened, and I don’t believe in jinxes anyway.
I’ve met someone who I’m interested in, and who seems to be interested in me. That might not sound like such a big deal except for the fact that for either one of those conditions to be true is a rarity, and for both to happen at once is almost unheard of. It’s very early days yet, and I could still prove to be completely wrong, but I don’t think so. I might be better at recognizing this stuff in other people than in myself and my own relationships, but I’m not stupid. I know that we spent a good hour chatting together last night, I know about the eye contact, I know that our goodbye lingered long enough for us to send each other a subtle message. And, promisingly, I get the feeling that she’s someone who might be able to interpret these subtle messages. I know that we’ll see each other again tonight, and on Monday, and maybe tomorrow as well. Our being together is not a fait accompli, but I’d have to say that the signs so far are good. The more I talk with her, the more I’m surprised by the absence of any torpedoes (”I’m married”; “I’m a lesbian”; “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness”). It seems as if every layer reveals something more that we have in common.
Yes, all very premature. We’ll see how it goes.
Ian, the trumpet player who has been spruiked to me as a fount of gigs and who rang for the first time the other day and booked me for one gig, rang again today and asked me about another five or so. A couple of them I couldn’t do, predictably enough. And in fact, most of the others clashed with something or other as well, mostly uni lectures and/or tutorials. After a while, I guess I’ll get a feeling for what if any uni stuff I can afford to miss out on, on the basis of their expectations and on the basis of my needs in terms of learning the stuff. Missing a tutorial is all very well, but I can just see the situation where an exam question comes up that relates specifically to that 90 minutes that I missed. If my objective this year is to kick academic arse, then I’m not going to be able to afford to play too fast and loose with my uni timetable. On the other hand, gigs have to be a very big priority at the moment, or I might just starve before I ever get to an exam.
On the subject of double bookings, I’ve got a hell weekend coming up in three weeks’ time. On the Saturday night, I was booked for a rehearsal with a band that’s doing a gig at Dizzy’s in April. Then Pippa said she was having this party that she wanted me to go along and play at, and she was offering to pay me as if it was a gig. I more-or-less declined the payment, but that leaves me in a quandary as to whether it’s a gig or not … is it okay to pull out of a gig that you’ve refused payment for? Then it turns out that on the same night, Jo and Margaret, the two people with whom I share a birthday and a nascent jazz trio, have organized a birthday party for that night, on their own behalf but with me as a sort of de facto third party to the party. This issue is made more difficult by the fact that one of the birthday girls is also the object of the fledgling romance I was talking about earlier. Then on the Sunday, the day after, my friend Clarissa is having her 30th birthday party in Adelaide, which I would very much have liked to have been at, but I’m not going to be able to. It would mean flying out in the morning and back in the evening, because I obviously can’t miss out on the whole Saturday night thing (as attractive as that thought might begin to seem), and I have uni on the Monday. I have a brass band rehearsal and possible concert on the Sunday afternoon, too. It’s bizarre, when I’ve had so many weeks of doing so little, that everything should come together on one manic weekend, leaving room only for inevitable disappointment on someone’s part. I was fully expecting one of Ian’s gigs that he rang about this morning to be happening on the same weekend, so I guess I should be thankful that none did.
It seems as if the university calendar ignores public holidays. How can that be? What must they be paying their lecturers to come in on Anzac Day?