taxi bus donkey

Like many men of my age, generation and background I could quite easily count on my available appendages the number of times I have shared poignant or deep moments with my father. In fact even if i was to suffer some form of horrific appendage decrementing industrial accident I could still safely keep a running tally even if forced to rely on the stumps of my hands and feet. The cunning linguists amongst you will have noted that I failed to use the more predictable word “intimate” to describe the sorts of moments I am referring to, but as the intimacy meter betwixt the old man and I has never suffered even the most minor tremble I can safely use the more less eye-opening word “poignant”.

It isn’t impossible to share a poignant moment with any object irrespective of its degree of animation; accountants, travelling sales-persons, tram passengers, puppies or doorknobs are all quite common co-participants in intimate moments. In fact if my Father was an accountant it would help clarify the depth of our understanding. After all comes a time every July when you have to tell your accountant some pretty private stuff; hopes, dreams and off shore tax schemes. (more…)

Time wont tell, time tells nothing, it locks its knowledge away in meticulously maintained, bar-coded and sequentially numbered  zip lock bags, silently awaiting the next decisive moment to materialise at which point it stretches out its hand plucks the moment from space and tosses it into its coffers with all the others. That moment you refer to as time standing still is just time itself pausing your existence briefly to replace your reality with the backup copy that was running on a six second delay loop.

Time has no reason to offer us anything, time is a depository not a library, a drumbeat not a melody, an indexless flat file vault not a relational SQL queryable treasure trove of memories, it is time that is the true omnipotent being, not some needs-no-introduction, preceded by legend airborne dude with a beard and no second name. (more…)

November days in northern Italy are normally punctuated by rain, not a dark depressing or torrential kind of rain, but a steady drizzle broken up by moments of clear skies and crisp air. As November moved into December the days grew noticeably shorter and the temperature of the night air often dropped suddenly. I hadn’t yet experienced a real winter and the little glimpses i got of one during my travels in Europe during 2003 made me realise how hopeless an Australian male with a backpack full of summer clothes was when faced with the brutality of nature’s not so motherly ways.

On this late November night, returning home from yet another evening in one of the local small town watering holes the rain fell more heavily than what I had now been led to believe was normal for this time of year. Tonight like most nights over the last 10 days or so I was walking Mieke back to her apartment, we were drinking beer, smoking unreasonable numbers of cigarettes and no doubt amusing ourselves with the habits of the locals. (more…)

Leisure (1976) - Google Video

There’s a fine line between laziness and standing up for your rights to be inactive.

Doing nothing is a peaceful and private form of anarchy, laziness is a product of your lifestyle or environment.

Very few people reading this will remember Ildiko, life has taken many turns since we were together and even the friends of friends have fallen off the radar.

She’s been reappearing in my thoughts a lot lately, not unusual for a retrospective kind of bloke like me. But even though it’s been 5 years since I saw her and 6 since we had anything that could have been described as a relationship, I think I am understanding what went wrong and why it was mostly my fault. (more…)

My difficult relationship with anything loosely resembling a career continues.

Over the past few months I have been attempting to convince myself and those around me that I am capable of performing repetitive tasks for financial reward, although I had been relatively successful with this, this charade came to an end yesterday when me and those that aren’t me came to an disagreement regarding how much of that reward i should receive for performance of said tasks.

So once again I found myself in that space that I had occupied with some happiness between November 2002 and June 2006, no steady income, no communicable goals, no responsibilities that cant be taken care of blindfolded… but it all feels just a little different know, although I’m well aware that you aren’t surprised that I don’t really understand why it feels a little different.I am hoping that the reasonable amount of routine and discipline I let creep back into my life will create some sort of spark that will keep me away from the non productive aspects of what I was doing before. I’m hoping it will help push some of those ideas to places that exists outside of moleskine pipe-dreams.

There are people around me too now, some of them i like “a lot” and many of them inspire me to get off my ass to do something other than pay for the next bottle of red (occasionally).

Let me know how it all goes will ya?

Conversations at the kitchen table, mothers day 2006.

I sit at the kitchen table after the mothers day lunch clutter has been cleared, mum is as per usual busying herself in the kitchen, Dad is also comfortable in his particular role of being sprawled out on the couch in some state of sleep. Mum produces a platter, a large cake considering there are only four of us and several small meringues.

“What did you get your mother for mothers day?” My father asks,
“Chocolates..” i reply after a slightly too long pause.
“Chocolates..” he says with a well prepared tone of disappointment “chocolates, she gave birth to you, grew you into a man and you get her chocolates? you should be ashamed of yourself”.

My dad is right I should be, but not because of the mothers day gift, more likely due to the fact that I spent as much on a bag of chocolate coated raspberries to eat on the tram ride over to mum’s as i did on the gift i gave her. And please dont think i was buying provisions for a long train ride, i caught the tram from camberwell junction to warrigal road… it’s about 12 stops. I thought it best to conceal my shame by making something up. (more…)

Many of you will be aware that I have gotten into photography over the last 12 months or so. Most of the output of my efforts can be viewed on my little part of flickr.

Im rather excited to announce that I am taking part in an exhibition of photographs, there are 19 photographers, all members of the Melbourne flickr group exhibiting.

The exhibition runs from wednesday 24 May - Sunday 11 June

At: 69 Smith Street Gallery (69 Smith Street Fitzroy)

Gallery is open wed-sun 11am - 5pm

The official opening is on Saturday 27th May 2006 from 3pm-6pm.

Entry is free, if you cant make it to the opening, I will be gallery sitting on Wednesday afternoons during the exhibition, it would be great to see you all there.

(please feel free to pass this on to anybody who may be interested)

(a pdf version of the flyer is available here)

for the curious here are the pics that I am exhibiting