At around two in the afternoon, on Christmas Eve, it began to rain, and he decided the Christmas rush had ended.
He didn’t so much close the store as abandon it – half the lighbulbs blown, boxes of empty and half-empty books everywhere, a back room full of boxes of catalogued books that he had no empty shelves for. The shelves in the store a mess, the mythology section ransacked, gone. He checked the garbage bin to make sure there was nothing in it that would rot while he was away, and for the first time in over two years he shut the store down. He put a sign in the window saying the store would be closed until the new year, got in his car, and drove to his home town.
There was a hand addressed envelope waiting for him when he got there, addressed to Newt Magazine. He hadn’t done Newt, his zine, for six years, and hadn’t received mail about it in three. When he had been making it he’d represented it as a magazine to lists of literary journals, book publishing houses, and the like, and so for a while, even after he stopped making it, he would still receive books for review – never anything he’d wanted to read – but eventually even that had stopped.
It was an application from a girl in South Australia, eighteen, for an internship at the exciting Newt offices. “I’m fully aware that you would receive an extensive amount of letters, emails and phone calls, hopeful to acquire that one chance to earn a place at your fine organisation.” She seemed a preppy, go-getter type, who knew what she wanted. She was even willing to “be ridiculed for not aligning the pens on your desk correctly”.
One sentence stood out. “There are many young determined individuals out there who strive to attain a life such as the one you possess.” He pondered that thought for a while. Attached was an example of her writing, a Cosmo-esque article – with Sex and the City references – on the subject of why girls go for players. Hoping that it would provide some insight into a question that puzzled him, he read it, but it offered nothing.
Later that night he went looking through the drawers of his childhood desk for some squares of origami paper. He’d received the origami paper when he was four or five, accompanied by a book showing how to make origami tables and Sadako’s paper crane. But he hadn’t been any good at it, and the origami squares were too nice for his feeble efforts, so he put them away in a drawer against the day he was good enough to use them. Except he never got good enough to use them, and they sat there for years. Eventually the origami book disapeared, but the origami squares remained, and purely by surviving through various cleanouts they began to acquire a talismanic status, became important, something that he had had for too long to ever throw away. He hadn’t thought of the origami squares in years, but he had remembered them a few nights ago, and wanted to know if they were still there.
He couldn’t find them. He didn't know what had happened – perhaps somebody else threw them out, he knew he never would have – perhaps he moved them somewhere, and they will turn up in a box or trunk in five or ten years time.
Instead, he found a cache of letters people had written to him when he was doing Newt, letters he had little memory of receiving, no memory of stashing away in this drawer. There were letters from people who became close friends, a cache of letters from somebody with whom he got on just fine in correspondence, but terribly in person. And a letter he had no memory of at all – one he didn’t know if he ever replied to, although he thought he probably would have – written in texta slanted across a page, a slightly sad, angsty letter from a girl. He was pretty sure that if he wrote back, she never responded to his letter. And maybe he was cautious, and arrogant then – maybe he would have been nicer to her now.
Most important things to me seem all so far away now ... You know, I really wish that I was Bob Dylan ... I s’pose you don’t know me and I don’t know you so I must sincerely apologise for my rather brash beginnings. I was just thinking that you seem like someone of noble ambition ... in my search for the meaning of life I thought that perhaps you could offer some suggestions? Forgive my horrific spelling. Last night I dreamt that the sky was falling. Can you tell me if it is or not? ... I am but a lonely traveller searching for someone familiar to hold on to. Before you throw this aside, if you do, rememember to NEVER underestimate your own abilities. You will do great things...Such a sad and poignant letter. He wondered where the girl was now, and if she was OK.
The letters made him think about how there was this other person out there: a version of himself as it existed in the minds of people who knew him only through things he had written, and how that person resembled the person he had always wanted to be, yet seemed very different to how he lived on a day-to-day basis and how he saw himself. It reminded him of a novel he liked by William Goldman, the guy who wrote The Princess Bride, called The Color of Light. He’d read this book a number of times. It is about a guy who wants to be a writer, and who becomes a writer, gets a novel published, moves to New York. Then things happen in his life, mostly not good: he gets depressed and isolated, lives alone, tries to write. Towards the end of the book he discovers that for the past five years, while he has been fighting his own private battles, there has been somebody going around pretending to be him. Posing as him in bars, living the life of a glamorous writer, scoring with beautiful women who are into guys with words. He identified with that book, and thinking about this other person, this projection of himself, he decided that he would blog in the third person for a while – partly as an exercise, because it makes him write things differently – partly to acknowledge his disconnect from this projection, this other person that is nonetheless, in some way, him.
On Christmas Day he is driving along Appin Road, his father in the passenger seat, heading for the mountains to see his grandmother. It has been many years since he has been on this road, yet it was one he had been along often as a child, and he never liked it. It’s a spooky, ghostly road: two lanes of traffic, surrounded on both sides by a strange wood of dense, straight, paperbarks that loom over the road, woods that as a kid reminded him of the illustration on the front of Katherine Patterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. Every hundred metres or so one of these trees has a wreath on it in memory of somebody who has died in an accident along this road.
He becomes caught in a convoy of cars. The speed limit is eighty, but somebody up ahead is driving at seventy, and everybody starts to bunch up, frustrated. He is talking to his father. There is a roundabout ahead. Somebody – perhaps the one who has been holding everybody behind up – begins to go through the roundabout, then notices a car coming from the right. They brake hard. The first person behind them hits the brakes as well, and comes to a stop. The second person does the same, human reaction times multiplying. The third person – him – hits the brakes as hard as he can. He doesn’t believe he reacts late, but perhaps he does. The other cars are new, they brake well. His tires screech for what seems like three seconds – the rear of the car in front comes closer, and he knows that even with his foot pressed down as hard as he can, he is not going to stop in time.
The front of his car goes into the rear of the one in front, sending this car into the one in front of them. The incompetent driver at the front of all this continues on his way. All three cars pull to the side of the road. A woman leaps from the passenger seat of the car in front of his, pulls open the rear door, and pulls from the back seat a screaming baby, and he feels sick.
What happened? he asks his father. Or maybe, What did I do? He has been driving for thirteen years and has often proudly and truthfully said that he has never been at fault in an accident. In accidents like this, though, the driver at the rear is always at fault, and he cannot really dispute this in his own head – he drove into somebody else, nobody drove into him.
He feels embarassed and ashamed. Everybody climbs out of their cars and inspects the damage in the way people do, as if they have the slightest idea what they’re looking at. Nobody is hurt – the baby is just shook up – and the damage is relatively minor, and mostly to his own piece of shit car. His grille is gone, the sound of it being popped and cracked to powder by passing traffic can be heard. The people in the other cars are remarkably nice about the whole thing – nobody calls him an idiot, and the two people in front both say that it was only their new brakes that stopped them from rear-ending the cars in front of them. Everybody exchanges details, and – remarkably, he thinks – they all wish him a merry Christmas, before heading on their way. They did make sure he was insured, though. He is insured, third party property, and their cars will be fine. He’s not sure how he’s going to fix his own, though, and wonders whether it was a good idea to take the week off.
Today he thinks
happy birthday, my friend, i hope you’re ok. He tries to think the thought so hard that it crosses oceans. He believes he could once do this, but is no longer sure he remembers how.
Out at Baron’s, in Kings Cross, with Tim and Vanessa. Vanessa had writing success to celebrate. I hadn’t been there since the night I found out my novel was going to get published: it’s that sort of place. Upstairs, low light, bordello atmosphere, expensive cocktails. We sat in the same lounges we’d sat in that night, and it felt like tradition, except Baron’s is closing, and we talked about how that made us sad, how even though we didn’t go there very often it was nice to know that the place was there when we needed it. All other bars in Sydney seem to be chrome and glass these days.
I followed my theory that every cocktail barman has a special cocktail of his own creation, and you should ask them for that. The French barman gave a knowing nod when I mentioned this and I got some fizzy, deadly fruit thing. I drank it and had trouble focussing my eyes for a while. We talked about writing, and about how memory is imagistic and not narrative, and I said that’s what I want to do on this blog. We admired the studded red leather couches.
“Do you reckon you could assemble one of these?”
“How prepared are the materials?”
“Would it make any difference?”
“Well, if it’s a
cow...”
Outside on Darlinghurst Road I had trouble telling the prostitutes from the girls waiting to get into clubs. I decided that red light districts don’t have enough red lights; it should be a council requirement. At the corner, waiting for the lights, there was a busker playing guitar a little way off. It was a warm night, people out seemed happy, and I had one of those moments where I love Sydney all over again. We decided to walk for a while. We crossed through a park which had a monument to Victor Chang, and a lengthy, maudlin inscription on a stone by Victor Chang. Tim began reading it aloud in a maudlin voice and Vanessa and I groaned. “Hey, show respect, he saved people’s eyesight, or something.”
“That was Fred Hollows. Victor Chang was hearts.”
“Didn’t Victor Chang get murdered?”
“That was a Labour MP from Cabrammatta.”
“Well how did Victor Chang die?”
“Heart attack? Hahaha.”*
It was nice; it felt like old times, past summers. You don’t get that too often, when the present feels like a pleasant memory.
I had the Plup christmas party here last night. It was a lot of fun, but it didn’t seem to have the sort of moments and images I want to blog, so I won’t.
Early this morning, hungover, I had another anxiety dream featuring my parents. My mother had organized this sort of intervention, with all my friends, to confront me over not talking to her often enough. She had found my diaries and passed them around, pointing out incriminating and embarrassing passages. People read them and laughed at them, I was mortified, angry at my father for not stopping her. What is going on in my head?
I got up, stumbled out to the kitchen. The floor was sticky. I was thirsty, I drank about half a litre of orange juice. Party detritus everywhere: half-finished drinks, food remnants on plates. There was a partially full bowl of sangria on the kitchen bench. It gave off a slightly rotten smell of fruit and red wine, and I felt nauseous.
* As it turns out, Victor Chang was, in fact,
murdered.
Title of this blog post comes from Mel informing me that I am a Good Egg. I like it, it's my new favourite blog name if I ever change the name of this blog, replacing my previous favourite, The Venerable Nicholas Presents.
For the last couple of weeks one of my coping mechanisms, or more accurately numbing mechanisms, for my non-specific anxiety has been to watch five seasons of The Sopranos on DVD. I've never seen it before, but have gotten into it quite a lot. Complete TV series on DVD are a great numbing mechanism, you can avoid thinking about anything much for eight hours. But ever since, everything I see takes on Mafia overtones, everything is vig and shy and wack jobs. I'm not sure if that's relevant to anything or not. Context, maybe. I'm feeling a little less anxious, anyway.
I had my family Christmas party on the weekend. It's always been early, a legacy of being a child of parents with previous families.
I played with my nephew quite a bit. He's two and great. He's strong on nouns at the moment. We spent a lot of time spotting boats, birds, fishies and spidies. He loved the spidy, kept pointing to it all day and saying "Spidy!".
The Christmas crackers were the worst ever. I say that every year, but this year topped all previous christmas crackers. The party hats were too small and nobody wore them because they cut off all circulation to the head. There were only three different varieties of cracker. The novelties in them were bizarre, practical and un-novel. Red hats seemed to predominate, and all the red ones had the same lame joke and factoid, and the novelties in them were tweezers. I mean, for god's sake, what sort of a novelty is tweezers? There were tweezers all over the place.
It was a nice day though. My uncle has taken up circus performance since he retired, and he gave a performance on the grass for all the children. He did balancing acts on my brother, which was a sight. There were no arguments, which was remarkable, as there used to be an informal betting pool on who the first fight of the day would be between. Often the fights would involve the customary jobs of everybody, and other people impinging on people's pre-assigned turf. My sister origamies the napkins. I make the salads. My younger brother moves the furniture. You can see the potential for conflict.
One of the interesting things about my family Christmas gathering is that my family crosses the socio-economic and political spectrums quite a bit. You'd think family would be more unified than one's peer group, but it isn't the case, and I'm always a little suprised to remember that there are people who vote liberal, people who discuss what television commercials they like best. It reminds me of something I heard Tim say at a party a while back, one of those Tim-esque utterances that come out of nowhere and floor everybody. Somebody was talking about people they know who know other people they know, wild coindence, blah blah blah, we live in such a large city and who would have thunk it. "But we
don't live in a large city," Tim said. "We live in about three small towns,
and we never leave them." I'm probably mis-quoting him, but it was sure great when he said it - everybody immediately shut up, and assumed thoughtful expressions.
My father was OK, though mostly he sat in a chair and held court like Don Corleone. There you go! Relevance!
At work today it was windy outside, the books kept blowing down the street. I made half-puns to myself about the flight of the Penguins. Random passers-by on the street stopped and picked them up, put them back in the racks, and kept walking, and that made me feel good about humanity.
I had a strange dream last night. Now normally I’m the first to start fidgeting when people start telling their dreams. “I was back in primary school, except I was the age I am now, and the teacher was Brittney Spears. And for some reason there was a boat in the classroom. And then the boat turned into a giant candelabra, and we were trying to light it, but it wouldn’t light. Then we were in a garage, and Kevin Rudd was asking us for advice on how to improve his popularity rating. And YOU were there! Only you had an afro.” You know what I mean? Other people’s dreams are usually dull and non-sequeteurious. But I’ll tell this one anyway.
A Freudian would have a lot of fun with this. I dreamed that my father had, this year, been selling second hand books on the internet. I discovered this while at his place, on his computer. He had hired other people to do his cataloguing, had catalogued more books this year than Plup has, and was making more money. He said he had just used old books he owned, and books people had given him, and he hadn’t found any of it difficult at all. This was really upsetting to me, partially because he had misled me, but mostly, I think, because it rended my own efforts meaningless and small.
I don’t think I need a Freudian explanation for it, I think I know what it’s about, and it has nothing to do with my father. I haven’t written much about work on here, although it is a regrettably large part of my life, but I think it’s time I addressed the issue, explained what the hell I’m doing.
The explanation is this: on my list of achievements for this year there’s only one thing, really, and it’s something I’m not remotely proud of. This year we added six thousand more titles to our database of books we have for sale. It doesn’t sound like much. One of the reasons it doesn’t sound like much is that as we go on entropy sets in: the more we catalogue, the more we sell, the harder it is to make the numbers go up, the more work is required just to maintain an equilibrium. It doesn't sound like much, particularly as a sole achievement, yet to achieve it I’ve worked almost every day, with the drain and distortion upon my emotions that full-time work produces.
I’ve talked to friends about this, creative friends, and it seems universal. Full-time work distorts your mind; it takes over your thinking and your self-perception. This is why people get so caught up in office politics, even in a job they began with the intention of it only being a source of income to enable them to do other things. You begin to care what your co-workers think, what your boss is doing to you, and it takes over even your out of work time. It draws energy from the part of your mind that is creative.
There is a reason I’m doing this, a logical and white-hot goal that is now five months off (people keep saying to me
only five months, and I take their point, but that qualifier is hard to see sometimes in my head). When my lease runs out I will pack up our internet stock and move it to my storage unit, sell off whatever is left in the store at bargain basement prices, close the shop, and turn my attention from trying to relentlessly increase the number of books we have for sale to just trying to replenish what we sell and gradually improve the overall quality of the stock. And there should be a number of things that come from this that are good, and important to me. I will have a regular income that meets my needs, which is a pretty big problem in life to have taken care of; if not forever, then at least for a long time. And the income should not require a great deal of work to maintain, which will free me up to write, and give me the empty alone time my head needs to function creatively. Furthermore, it can be
adjusted as need be - I can put the books off and on the internet with the click of a few buttons, so I can actually adjust my need for money against my need for time, which is kind of important for somebody whose mood is as erratic as mine is.
I have this goal, and it's important, and it makes sense. But I've given up a lot for it over the past couple of years, and particularly the last year. I've written erratically, or not at all - and I knew it would be like this! I avoided full-time work for years for this very reason, I knew it would do this to me. I've felt boring, and it has made me uncommunicative, made me avoid people at times. I've felt tired, and that has also made me avoid people. For a long time I didn't feel much like myself, and I had to learn ways of avoiding thinking about work, and was eventually succesful with that - but that made me apathetic about work, and the shop has suffered somewhat of late because of my inattention.
I know I've written some of this on here before, and god knows I've badgered my friends enough with it. But I wanted to write it more clearly, maybe for others, maybe for myself.
The thing is I just want to get to the end of it and find myself not wrecked by it - the goal only works if there is a life to live from then on, and my plans from that point are tenuous at best. Sometimes I feel like a hunched form from some classic horror novel - I don't know which - slouching about the place. Sometimes I feel soulesss and wonder why anybody cares about me. I sometimes feel like I don't cast a shadow on the world or impact on people's lives; mechanical, numb. I hope I'm more than a shell at the end of all this, hope that in the process of securing my future I haven't lost the thing I was working to secure.
But then there are people in the world doing horrible things for eighteen hours a day to buy a cup of rice, and of course I shouldn't complain. No doubt those people also find it difficult to indulge the creative side of their personalities, and they don't get to do something else in five months time, either. It's not that I don't have a global perspective, and I don't expect sympathy. There is a purpose, and I know what it is, I just need to remind myself of it sometimes.
I used the phrase "que sera" today, apropos of nothing important. A few years ago it was a catchphrase of mine. I even snuck it into Suburban Aliens. I don't know why it was a catchphrase, I don't have a que sera personality - or maybe that's why it was a catchphrase.
This began as three different blog entries, but they got merged. Still looking for that thing, that quicksilver way back to what I could once do easily. Consider this a work in progress.
It's a little early for this. But I wrote my other New Year's entry early too. That was the entry that killed off this blog. I wrote it, and spent a fair amount of time on it, and it was actually one of the better things I've written in a while. But it didn't make me feel good. Writing it early turned out to be a good thing, though - for once I waited and considered before I posted something.
I haven't been happy with this blog for a while - I guess that's been obvious. It seemed to have become something that was about everything but what it should be about - a place for me to write thoughts I want to communicate to an audience. Strangely (but perhaps not too strangely) writing a post that ended it all reminded me of why I write it. A desire to communicate is one of my defining qualities - I guess in the end I don't want to give that up.
But I do want to do things differently on this blog, or perhaps do them how I used to. There's a line from Bob Dylan, when he talked about how, when he was young, he could just write great songs. And then it went away, and he said he had to learn to do conciously what he used to do unconciously. That's what I want to do. A lot of the stuff I've written on here over the last few months has been pretty bad, for one reason or another. I want this to be a good blog again, one that people enjoy reading, and one that I'm proud to write. I thought about it, and these are my blog resolutions. Actually, I think they're pretty good things for anybody who writes a blog to keep in mind. They're self-evident, but that doesn't mean they're always obvious.
1. I will try to post more regularly, but will not post things just for the sake of it.
2. I will not pay attention to my stats.
3. I will not think of number of comments as some sort of rating out of ten on my writing.
4. I will not worry about who is reading it or what their agenda is in reading it. I guess I'm happy to communicate to anybody who takes the time to type the blog address into their web browser, and who is interested.
5. Without revealing confidences, hurting people, or being excessively confessional, I will try to be more honest in my writing.
6. I will not invert things in my head. My blog is an adjunct to my life; my life is not an adjunct to my blog.
I have gone through and deleted a lot of the stuff I've written over the last couple of months. Probably unnecessary, but it felt psychologically necessary to me.
Anyway, we'll see how this goes.
Dear Santa Claus,
I know it's been a while since my last letter. About twenty-five, twenty-six years. It doesn't mean I haven't thought of you. But there was the late childhood nonchalance - I thought I knew everything - and the teen angst period, and, well, you know how it goes. I remember once, around eight or nine, seriously entertaining plans to disprove your existence by papering over the chimney, then check Christmas morning to confirm the paper was still in place. I hope that didn't offend you. I know you're omniscient, like God (I find you more believable than Him), and that you must have seen it. I was a smug little bastard, Santa: I admit it.
Why am I writing now? I don't know who else to write to, and I need to write to somebody tonight. I thought you might listen. I know you're busy, but if you could spare a moment to listen to this now-old boy, I would appreciate it.
First, the ledger: have I been naughty? have I been nice? I know you will be the judge of this in the end, but I will tell you what I think. I won't try to make a case, but I can at least document what I've done wrong, and you will at least know that I'm aware of it.
I don't think I've done much evil. The most evil thing I've done this year was swap a price on a book in an op shop, but I only did it once. And the book was overpriced! It was an obscure piece of junk, not likely to interest any random passer-by in a suburban op-shop. I was
correcting their pricing, Santa.
Other than that I don't think I've done too much wrong. I have tried to be a good friend to my friends, as they are to me. I have probably not written to my mother often enough, nor called my grandmother enough. I have been rude to many customers, but most deserved it. A few didn't - I thought they did at the time, but I was just in a bad mood. I did feel bad about it, though. I have tried to be reasonably environmentally concious, and I wrote a blog post - probably my last decent one - to try to help others make decisions about their electricity usage. I haven't given enough to charity, but money has been tight. I haven't given enough cigarettes and spare change to bums, but in truth I'm not sure of the ethics of all that anyway. Santa, is it better to give in those circumstances or not?
OK, Santa, I hope you don't hold grudges. I
was rude about you. On around November 17th, I called you a whore. But you were out the front of a tyre place at Rockdale, ringing a bell and trying to draw passing motorists' attentions to the bargain tyres on offer. I know you are my judge and I am not yours, but I still wonder -
what were you thinking? First of all, don't you hibernate or something? November 17th is way too early for you to be out! And flogging tyres! I expect this from celebrities like David Beckham and Brittney Spears, not you. How do you think parents are going to explain it to their kids? "Mummy, why is Santa trying to sell tyres?" "Well, honey, ever since the elves unionised, it's been tough times for Santa."
I guess I'm skirting around the point. I know you've got a lot to read and a lot to get done at this time of year, and you probably just want me to get on with it - what do I want for Christmas? How far do your powers extend, Santa? I don't really want for material possessions. My parents asked me what I would like for Christmas, and I couldn't think of much. Eventually I came up with clothes, and a pair of earphones to replace the ones I trod on. But that's taken care of, no need to worry about that.
Santa, here is what I would like. I won't complain about my headspace, my current anxiety and insistent bad thoughts - I've spent too much time this year complaining about how I didn't feel anything at all to complain about feeling bad. I can deal with this on my own, anyhow - I always have. But if you could help out with any of the following, I'd appreciate it.
I would like my father to be well for Christmas.
I would like my grandmother to be able to come down for Christmas, although I know that's asking a bit much.
I would like next year to be a better year. I would like to have things to tell my friends when they ask what I've been doing.
I would like to have more time next year - for everything that got missed this year. I would like to write something good next year.
I guess I'd like some resolution on some of the things that are currently troubling me. I'm not asking you to intervene or make things turn out differently - I suspect that's beyond even your powers - just help me to know, even if it's bad, and to move on from that.
Thank you for listening, Santa. My best to Rudolph.
Nicholas
Go somewhere, go up to the roof and write what you see – that usually works. Something always comes. So says
Helen, and yes, it’s true, something usually does.
Tim says try changing your method – handwrite, use an old typewriter, change the font (I mocked the last, apparently). Well, I listen to my friends, and here I am on the roof, handwriting.
I don’t like handwriting much, always [can’t read my own writing – how ironic] I find it frustratingly slow, but I’ll try.
The roof. When I first moved here six years ago I used to come up here every day. It was like my own private backyard – poorly maintained, astroturf ripped up, puddles and dead potplants. Nobody ever came up here, and I told myself I would not become complacent like everybody else. Because in spite of the puddles and dead potplants it’s a good place – fantastic view of this city I still love despite everything, and it was great in the way abandoned utilitarian human construction can be – the allure of the abandoned railway yard. I have good memories of up here – pingpong with Mel, two good new years’ eves, drinking red wine with Bree, and just showing it to people.
But of course I got complacent anyway, and stopped coming up here so often. And they renovated it like they renovate everything in this building, into a beige generic blandness. And for a while it was always crowded up here, but now it’s empty again. People grow accustomed to their surroundings, and I know some people who are always moving and running from that sense of inertia. I feel it too, but don’t need to run so far – rearranging my living room is enough to keep it at bay. Pulling against this also is my high-level nostalgia that makes me uncomfortable with endings and goodbyes.
But there are still great things about this roof. Here’s one: a cubbyhouse! Whose idea was this? There are no children in this building, never have been. Inner city apartment life is like that.
Inner city apartment life is strange. They are always trying to foster a sense of community here, the nongs who run this place. Six months or so ago they kept having these floor parties – by the lifts – with cute alliterative names like “floor frolics”. I adopt a Scroogian persona when it comes to all this. My neighbours are annoying and I know them entirely too well as it is – tempestuous relationship lady and used to be a holiday flat but I seperated from my wife man.
Here’s something else since I was up here last:
I actually know what this is about. Tempestuous relationship lady told me. This woman who lived on my floor, who was on the executive committee, died. She was on heavy duty allergy medications, drank too much red wine, fell asleep, choked on her own vomit. I didn’t know her other than by sight, suspect she found me as annoying as I found her – scroogian vs sociable personalities – still. She wasn’t much older than me.
A wind just came up. Kind of nice; it’s hot. What else to write about. Already I’ve scrawled eight pages on this tiny notebook with my 2B pencil (the bookseller’s choice). I’m still not sure what I’m doing with this blog, will make a decision on it by NYE. The thing is that the window of what I feel comfortable writing about on it gets smaller and smaller. I realized of the five most memorable things that have happened to me this year, only one was blogged. Despite this, I still somehow managed to give the impression I’m having a nervous breakdown with my last few entries. And everybody’s reaction to my Werribee DVD post was vaguely dissaproving, as if I’d publically soiled myself. Anyway I’ll make a decision soon, and if it goes that way I migh stay in on NYE and write a farewell post. What are people doing for NYE? I’m thinking of staying in this year. For a while I’ve had a superstition that a good NYE = a good year, but last NYE was really good, but this year has sucked. Not in a tragic fashion, but have I ever had a year where I’ve been so bored or accomplished so little? (Probably, but who remembers these things). You know what else? The best day I had this year was Jan 1. No kidding, it has been all been downhill from there. Depressing.
Well I wanted to take a photograph of the cubbyhouse for you, but there’s a happy couple rolling about over there, and if I go around with a digital camera they’ll think me a pervert. There’s a sort of arrogance about happy couples like that. I get it, but I find it a little annoying as well.
And the wind has kicked up, and my hand is tired. I suppose this experiment has worked. I just wanted to say, in case anybody was worried, that I’m OK. Not wildly happy, but at least I’m feeling things again. For me, that means I’m OK. It’s just how my mind works.
