It’s a Lygon St cafe, but the radio’s playing Flame Trees – or maybe it’s just retro-fashionable for the kids now, I dunno. There’s no inspiration in the air today – a few lines here and there, a slightly new path traversed, but nothing’s really standing out. My next trip’ll have to be further afield. »
It’s gotta be connected somehow. The chatty woman sitting next to me while I sipped tea on Sydney Road after breakfast. She’s waiting for her hairdresser. Who’s late. Around the corner, a (pet?) cockatoo sits perched at the gateway to a garage. We stare at each other for a while, and I move on, giving it a thumb up. It stares back, then shrieks as I leave. I hastily document a few things with my cameraphone (it’s all I have on me) – an abandoned heater, an old ad painted on the building of what must’ve been a milk bar once, the burnt-out wreckage of an abandoned building and a nice apostrophe on a street sign. »
I caught the tram into the CBD before heading into work, wondering if going a different way might help me feel closer to the world. But all I saw were people going their own little ways and plugged into my music I felt more alone, more distant. Silly me. »
It seems like I’m keeping time lately by a never-ending tide of broken things – wardrobe panels, computer monitors, hot water systems and so on – it’s not that they’re broken that bothers me, so much as the time-drain and the way it restricts my movement. Much of my rationale for changing to working part-time was that the non-work time would be my own – instead, again, it’s somebody else’s. »
i can’t get used to my new world yet and i start screaming. Shonen Knife, Fish Eyes. i can feel the time slipping away as certain things happen a second time. It’s all about time – time on hold, time describing the problem, time waiting for replacement bits of wood. I should, of course, be able to make good use of this waiting time, if only I could stop worrying about how time’s slipping away. »