blue Monday

I do not fit here. I arrived at 1:30PM, exactly on time for my appointment. I have been waiting twenty minutes so far, and I’m restless. I am alone. Most of the dozen or so other patients have someone with them. Across the waiting room from me, there is a lady wearing a homemade jumper probably knitted by a family friend, and a stack hat with a No Fear sticker on it. Near her, above the back of a chair I can just see the shaking hand of a man who is prostrate in a reclining wheelchair.

My head is heavy, clouded. I need coffee and I am tired. This morning I woke at 4AM, thinking I had hypothermia. I was shivering uncontrollably. I got out of bed and closed the window. I had gone to bed warm from the show.

I drove to work, since I had arranged this medical appointment some weeks ago, when Monday would have been my day off. As it was now, being in training Monday to Friday meant I had to leave at lunch break, missing half a day of training. I parked up on the eleventh floor in the car park I had previously determined to offer the cheapest Early Bird prices, but of course, Early Bird parking has conditions attached – departure after 4:30PM being one of them.

So when I take the car out after just over three hours in the car park, I am slugged for $39.90. There’s nothing I can do. It’s my own stupid fault. As I sit behind a Jeep Cherokee at the boom gate exit, I hear a mighty metallic crack, like when you drive over those metal plates on entrances. Only I don’t think there’s one here. Across from me, I see two pedestrians looking at the Jeep, and it’s then I notice the driver has clipped their wing mirror on a wall, and the mirror is hanging down the passenger door of the car. So things could be worse.

Despite printing out directions to get to the hospital, I took a wrong turn, and ended up driving the streets of Ivanhoe and Heidelberg in frustration. Not my idea of fun at all – being here takes me back nearly ten years, to one of the darkest periods in my life, when Mrs H and I spent nearly six months living in one room with my sister-in-law and her family.

As I drove from level to level in the hospital car park with the slow leak in the car’s front tyre making it squeal like something from a 1970’s car chase movie, it was a reminder of another thing I don’t have the inclination to fix. Just another problem.

In my rush to get to my appointment, I realise I left the iPhone in the car, and as I sit in the waiting room I imagine hearing chimes of text messages or my ring tone even, although I know in reality, there would be neither.

Matt is not a fan of the Public Health Service

I ask for a sheet of paper to write on, as I have exhausted all free space on the ticket from the car park. The receptionist hands me a sheet from the printer, and now, writing at last, I’m at least a bit more constructive.

In the row behind me a young blonde wearing a hi vis top takes her seat. Her face is flushed; it looks like she had to rush to get here as well. “Where are you from?” a male voice asks. “Templestowe,” she answers. “Yeah, I know, but where?” he wants to know, and she lets the question hang unanswered.

On the muted TV in the far corner of the room, Beyonce thrusts her pelvis toward the camera and while one part of me dreads the image of my girls emulating this kind of hyper-sexualised posturing, at the same time I flash back to 1991/1992, when my life changed forever. I would spend Saturday mornings glued to the TV in my flat, watching Video Hits, waiting for Sheena Easton’s What Comes Naturally, Belinda Carlisle’s Summer Rain, or Guns N’ Roses You Could Be Mine to come on. (This was obviously before I discovered Pixies).

I can’t help noticing the nurses or medical staff who bustle back and forth in the corridors look uniformly fit, clean, and well-presented. Capable, in a word. The kind of women you could rely on. The kind of woman I married. She didn’t know she’d be my carer so soon.

A white haired doctory type enters the waiting room and sits opposite me. He’s wearing cargo pants with deep pockets on the side, big comfortable loafers and button down shirt and tie, with glasses worn on a cord around his neck, and he has brought a pastie and a Piazza Doro takeaway coffee with him. He winces as I watch him take his first taste of the coffee. Too hot. Too bitter. Over-extracted, I speculate. He drops flakes from the pastie on the floor, and then wipes his forehead, the corners of his mouth, and finally his hands with a paper serviette.

“I haven’t got enough credit,” an Islander girl opposite me on the phone whispers conspiratorially; hand over the headset, which she’s holding like a walkie-talkie. She’s speaking into the earpiece end of the phone.

It is 2:40PM. A dad and daughter are playing “I spy” behind me. It reminds me of this morning, when Little Miss H and I had played this game as she lay in bed, before she got up. On Sunday afternoon, Mrs H, she and I had played a word memory game while her sister slept, and my memory’s pathetic inadequacies had been exposed again. This is why I’m stressed about my ability to turn three and a half weeks of predominantly theory training in processes and procedures into practice when I start in my new role next week.

As 3PM passes, and I realise my other plans to get things done this afternoon are not going to happen, I am at least thankful for the inspiration a couple of hours observing the general public has granted me. In an ideal writer’s world, it would be a regular part of my day or week.

“Medical emergency, Ward 9C,” a voice announces over the PA system.

A cleaner sweeps up flakes of pastry from the doctory-looking man and I wait. Now it’s my turn; my name is called and I make my way to the consulting room.

Oh boy (reprise)

Corey Haim, dead at 38. Teenage gangs of Tweed Heads. Something’s not right today. I don’t mean out there, in the world. I mean within me. Something’s out of balance. I check: took my meds. Work’s going well.

I exhale deeply, drink my second coffee. Search for reasons. Woke earlier than I intended – nothing new about that, but I intended treating myself to a sleep-in – 5AM instead of 4:30. Don’t laugh. Oh, it’s OK, why not.

So; Corey Haim, dead at 38. Same age as me. Not that I was a fan of the guy as such – of course I enjoyed his performance in The Lost Boys (“my own brother, a goddamn blood-sucking vampire!”), and thinking of that time of my life in itself uncovers all manner of disturbing, ambivalent memories. More to the point, seeing him transform slowly to a seedy, dreadlocked, and overweight middle-aged washed-up former child star unable to kick his habits despite 15 attempts at rehab was a sad reminder that – as Cat Power sings it, hey, We All Die. That’s all there is in the end.

I saw Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet performing their cover of Different Drum, and that image resuscitated my teenage/early adult devotion to Ms Hoffs, at the same time as the image of heavy, bearded and middle-aged Mr Sweet came as a shock.

Last night, on the tram home, I finished reading Mandy Sayer’s essay on Tweed Heads’ child gangs in The Monthly, and while the story was disturbing and arguably melodramatic, it inspired something deep within me; something about the isolation and point blank existence of these people in that coastal border town threw me back in time, back to the film River’s Edge. Part of me wished I could start developing a screenplay based on the piece, and the events which inspired it.

The moderate part of me, used to – if not necessarily well-trained in – the art of compromise decided I’d sit down and write about it when I got home. At the same time, it has become clear to me – and perhaps you feel it too – that this blog has become more about my concerns and thoughts than its name suggests. (I would include links to my former blog here, but I’m pecking this out on the tram on iPhone, so forgive me for leaving them out – I suspect most of my readers know which blog I’m referring to anyway…)

Of course, after over 90 minutes negotiating with my daughters to get them to bed, as usual, I had little energy remaining for writing. I did, however, secure the blog address I had in mind, and I took a photo for the home page – beginning with the end in mind – despite Mrs H asking me what I was doing when she found me standing on a chair with my camera in the kitchen. And here’s the writing, or something like it, anyway.

fear and self-loathing on the 112 tram

See the man on the tram with hands holding his face, bent forward, earphones in. Pithy has been replaced by self-pity. He can’t forget, but he don’t remember. Today he wants nothing – nothing – more than to retreat, to bed, pull up the covers, disappear awhile. That is not an option though. Not now, not today. (“You got to be number one. Win, win, win! You sonofabitch.”)

Too long riding the upswell, had to crash. Should have known / couldn’t have anticipated it. Coulda shoulda shoulda shoulda. Self-blame. Pity. Confusion. Head bursting.

You made it up to Coles minutes after they opened. Driving in the dark to a playlist like a best of upstairs on that creaky chessboard floor at 229 Queensberry St, late 1994/early 1995 (Rob Zombie, Filter, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana). That was fifteen years ago, but it’s a time you will never tire of re-visiting. It was the time you defined yourself, alone in the dark, trudging home in the small hours to that one bedroom ground floor flat in Prahran East. The rage, the desire to express yourself, to be yourself remains unchanged.

You wish it could be as simple as being thankful for the good things you have: the wife whose commitment is unwavering, the healthy daughters you adore. But still it’s not enough, is it? There’s something inside, something still burning, even if it’s just embers. You don’t know whether it’s a poison or a prize. Sometimes it feels like both.

When you told your wife what had happened, she said she knew it. You were shivering at night, talking to yourself like a rabid man. “That’s why you need to have that appointment,” she stressed. And so it goes.

rain is falling (Saturday and Sunday morning)

The girls are in bed at last. The rain has come again, but it’s just steady and pleasant, not like yesterday’s insane hailstorm, and finally, after a couple of hours of it, I have stopped sweating. (Mrs H: “you could be having a heart attack – uncontrollable sweating like that is an indicator”, and I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I still wonder what could be the cause. Especially given that the girls were feeling cold).

It has been a long day, not without its tensions, as my various frustrations manifested themselves trying to discipline my girls, after another late night with their cousins sleeping over at our house last night. Late in the day, I heard Morrissey’s voice in mind,

“God give me patience / just no more conversation.”

But it’s my time now. After I wrote last night, and returned to the lounge room to tell Mrs H how much better I felt at last, she explained to our niece that I couldn’t relax until I wrote. Her look was quizzically dismissive, the way only a thirteen year old can be.

I make another Lavazza caffe latte, check with Mrs H that it’s OK for me to spend the hour or so I need to write, and I cue up iTunes – Electric Light Orchestra’s Rain Is Falling leads into Echo and The Bunnymen’s Bring On The Dancing Horses, and I’m off. At last.

The 34 posts I previously wrote dealing with one of my favourite subjects, becoming a Dad, have developed into an emerging, ongoing questioning of What It Means To Be Man (for want of a better tag), and it is that business which was unfinished in my most recent post.

Saturday morning

Yesterday morning I made a visit to Bill The Barber. As I approached the High St end of Northcote Plaza, across the pedestrian crossing where Blockbuster Video used to be, something caught my eye: a four door Toyota Hilux Safari, circa 1985 vintage, with aluminium flat bed and diesel snorkel. I guessed it had been used to deliver fruit and vegetables to the small greengrocer’s inside the Plaza, opposite Aldi. This vehicle inspired me because it was clearly the kind of thing a Real Man would drive (in my book, at least). It also had a resonance because as a kid I had a thing for monster 4×4’s – and the wonder of four wheel drive in general, as the motoring magazines raved about its implementation in the pioneering Audi Quattro. Remember those days? I do.

I walked through that end of the Plaza, thinking how much things have changed in the years I have lived here – Aldi where Medicare used to be, Keep It Fresh grocery opposite, with bags of grapes on special to compete with Aldi; and as I walked on, I passed a forum of Greek men at a table outside a cafe, and a group of women with their hair in rollers at the hairdressers next to the shop with the incense, sheets of stickers, pirated Dora The Explorer shopping bags, and a gruesome wooden statue from Bali that makes me wonder who would want to have it in their possession.

I made it up to Bill The Barber, and the fella in the seat next to me was having his hair styled by Bill’s colleague. Let’s call her The Predator, for the purpose of this story. I had enjoyed having her style my hair when I went there a couple of visits ago, and when she told me her husband had just left her, the rescue fantasy kicked quietly in as I listened with genuine sympathy. Only on a subsequent visit did I hear the other side of the story, from Bill himself, whereby the aforementioned hairstylist was revealed to have embarked on a relationship with a man some twenty years her junior – and this was just the latest in a succession of like men. “No wonder he left her,” Bill had said. “What’s he going to do with an old woman like her?”

So I listened with interest as her subject confessed to her about the woman he had recently met, and he told her how he goes out with his twelve mates (aged between 32 and 37) to Spice Market, then they want to go out for coffee afterward, and it’s two or three in the morning, and he’s over that, he’s ready for a change now, he wants something different, he’s ready to settle down. He hadn’t introduced his new love interest to the mates, because he knew if he did, they would cut his lunch.

I recalled an incident earlier in the week, when I’d made the mistake of catching the train home, and as I tried to keep my balance in the dehumanising sardine can conditions, I watched two young studs text each other across the carriage, appraising the female subject close by via facial expressions and text messages. The world has turned since I was a lonely single lad.

Sunday morning

I woke after about five hours sleep. Woke to the sound of rain falling. Lightly, but enough of a deterrent to keep me from W1D3 of C2K again. I wasn’t happy about that, but I wasn’t about to catch a head cold from working up a sweat slogging in the rain.

Instead I drove up to Maria’s bakery in Reservoir, next to where I used to rent a shop for my former business. Past the streets with the funny names – Beenak, Purinuan – and walking into Maria’s bakery, the familiar smell of her bread took the edge off the bad memories. I hadn’t been in for maybe six or eight weeks. She told me she thought I was sick, or on holiday. I laughed that off, and told her I was trying to eat less. She scoffed and told me she had been eating fig jam “this thick”, and she held her thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart. “I’m gonna die happy, on a full tummy,” she said, patting her belly.

I left, the car warm with the aroma of a dozen freshly baked ciabatta rolls, through streets wet and empty and lonely, and cars few and far between. It brought to mind nights returning from clubs back in my desolate bachelor days.

I spied a fella in the Olympic Hotel Tabaret on Albert St with one of those backpack vacuum cleaners. Hours before they open, surely. I wondered whether it was the end of his night or the start of his day. I don’t miss early starts in the dark on a Sunday setting off for the kitchen to cook for Monday’s deliveries.

This man dresses like a monk, or Orthodox priest perhaps, but I think he's crazy. I see him around a lot.

Back on High St in the drizzle, with Mercury Rev’s Goddess On A Hiway playing, the grey, atmospheric conditions were conducive to writing and creative thinking, and it brought to mind that story as yet unwritten, from all those years ago, where getting home at dawn seemed so glamorous.

I’m getting closer to that writing goal than I’ve ever been before. Thanks for being here today.

a sweet victory

Tuesday

I’d had a good day. My training group had attended the roadshow at work, where our senior management team talked about the road ahead, the distance to cover, and I was inspired. I am always a believer in new beginnings, rebirth; but I have also been a cynic in many a workplace until now. I am pleased to have changed that around, and at the end of the presentation, I was one of two who spoke up – even as other colleagues ridiculed me afterward, the affirmation by others counted for a lot more.

When I left work there was beautiful sunshine, plenty of high UV and shadows, angles and geometrics for me to focus on, if only I had my SLR with me.

But I had something else on my mind: despite the concerns of friends of mine who dislike the company for its association with Hillsong, I am a fan of Gloria Jean’s – or at least, its vanilla syrup for my coffee. Last week, as a reward for getting my first-ever workplace promotion, I had thought to treat myself to a new bottle of the stuff on the way home. Only thing was, they were out of the regular one at the Liberty Towers store on Collins and Spencer, but they offered me sugar-free, and I accepted it.

On Saturday morning, when I went to make my first coffee of the day, I immediately regretted buying the artificially sweetened syrup. It was like Diet Coke compared to Coke. Not the real thing.

Although my first response was to just throw the bottle out, chalk it up as yet another of my mistakes with money, I noticed the product had a satisfaction guarantee on the label. It took a lot for me to do so as a consumer, but I decided I would take it back to them.

On Monday morning I lugged the bottle of syrup into the outlet on the corner of Bourke and King St, only to be told, “Actually what needs to happen is, you need to take this back to the store where you bought it… because all the stores are franchises.” Ah, OK, that made sense.

So after work on Tuesday, pumped full of all this good energy from my day in training, I fronted up to Liberty Towers, took the bottle out of my backpack, and explained my story.

The guy looked at me like I was talking Greek. “OK, actually I don’t know what to do with this,” he said. His issue was not only with the process of my attempted return, but the fact that I had actually opened the bottle. I explained that was how I knew I was not satisfied with it. “Perhaps you can call this number,” he suggested, looking at the Customer Satisfaction phone number on the label. It was a canny idea, I had to credit him with that. But given the lack of alternatives, I thought what the hell, I’ll call the number, I’ll make a point, damn it.

“Our guest relations actually finishes at five; it’s twenty past five now,” I was told. Guest Relations? I gave my number and was told I’d be called back the next day.

I was fuming. I wanted to smack the guy at the counter over the head with the bottle, except it was plastic – it would probably only bounce off his nut. It reminded me of Anthony Michael Hall’s character’s failed attempt to build the elephant lamp in The Breakfast Club; it was that inane, and all the more frustrating because it was so damn petty.

I left the store, and in a movie scene-worthy moment, Paul Westerberg’s twelve string acoustic guitar introduction to Unsatisfied played with perfect synchronicity on the iPhone, and as I made my way home on the tram, I watched the girl opposite me tapping her boots – I mean really stomping in her seat, eyes defocused on the middle distance , thumbs fidgeting on her iPod, and gradually my anger was dissipated as I realised I was not the only person in the world who had issues.

W1D2 (Wednesday)

I set the alarm for 3AM, to rise for my second day of C25K. True to expectation, I had hit the bed before 8PM, so seven hours would be a good sleep for me. Sleep Cycle woke me at 2:39AM.

My playlist kicked off with the madness and heavy riffs of Ministry’s NWO, and segued into Adam And The Ants’ Stand and Deliver. Its “da diddly qua qua” chorus brought to mind my teenage years in Zimbabwe, dreaming of the adult life I imagined I’d one day live: the glamour of German supercars, and Page Three pin-ups, like those which adorned the walls and ceiling of my room, only for real.

I made it to our McDonald’s, in the process of redevelopment, for my halfway mark, and on to the former Preston tram depot on St Georges Rd, which will no doubt be redeveloped some time sooner or later, too.

I used to view exercise with the polarity typical of my black and white / either/or mentality, characteristic of either my personality or my personality disorder. Now, with sudden clarity, I see exercise is my time to think, to reflect; a healthy mind in a healthy body. Only the day before I had made a mental note when I saw a groover sporting a T shirt emblazoned with the Dewarism

“Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.”

Bust A Move came on (“so come on, fatso, and just a bust a move”), and with my man boobs jiggling, I shuffled along to Sly Fox’s Let’s Go All The Way. It was more a slog than a jog by the last few minutes, but at least I got there. I completed the task. Starting things has always been my strong point – and the first fifty metres of my runs are always strong – thanks to those “rugby quads”. Endurance and stamina are another thing though. But I’m working on that. Slowly, slowly.

I wore a tie for work, for the first time in ages. In another life I parroted my manager, and boasted that the only people who wear ties are used car salesmen. I caught the tram and as I rocked along to Korn’s Got The Life, I made a mental note to add it to an upcoming C25K playlist, for the energizing effect it had on me. Suddenly, I heard a crack, and I turned to see my fellow passenger glaring at me. He must have been wearing a heavy ring, and he’d cracked it on the window, to get my attention. I looked at him for an explanation. “It’s very loud,” was all he said.

He didn’t factor in my two double espressos and the fact I’d already been awake more than five hours. I could have just snotted him. But I didn’t, of course.

Who is more passive-aggressive – the fella who raps on the window with his ring knuckle, or the coward who retreats to the back of the tram to enjoy his music as much as he can, given the mood upset.

I waited until mid-afternoon for the callback from Gloria Jean’s Guest Relations, who listened to my story without trace of interest or empathy, then told me it would have to be referred back to the store. I duly gave the details of the store – and clarified that I was not in Brisbane – and I was told they would be in touch.

Thursday passed without incident – other than a run-in with Chatty Dad on the tram, and no sighting of the Greek goddess and her Lesbosnian friend I had observed with such fascination on Monday. That meant at least no chance of offending any fellow commuters with the tinny bleed from my iPhone bud headphones. Chatty Dad delivered a monologue that lasted a full twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the fortuity of a car accident on Brunswick St and Johnston St meant I had to disembark and catch the Nicholson St tram.

There was no phone call from Gloria Jean’s Liberty Towers.

Friday

I contemplated my approach. I considered mustering the confidence I’d once strived to summon in a previous life, cold-calling to businesses to sell advertising space in a magazine supplement, or background music (“in-store environments”). I imagined I would ask them to call Sydney for me, if they tried to get me to phone again. I imagined bad-mouthing them to whatever small number of customers they might have in store this late on a muggy, sticky Friday afternoon. I imagined pulling out the receipt which totalled the amount I’d paid, but didn’t list the syrup in the first place.

I saw a familiar face when I entered. I thought he was the manager. Then again, he could have been the one who fobbed me off last time I was there.

“Are you the manager here?” I asked, as coolly as I could.

“No, there’s no manager today,” he said, with a sideways glance to his colleague. The other guy came over.

“Are you the duty manager here?” I asked. I had taken the syrup bottle out of my backpack now, and placed it on the counter.

“That’s OK,” he said. “Just take another.” He pointed me toward the shelf. I almost missed a beat. He must have been told. He knew, but he hadn’t called to invite me in. He had hoped I’d go away.

I took the bottle, checking to make sure it was the regular one. “Thanks,” I said, as I left. I didn’t add that I wouldn’t be back.

On my way to the tram stop, I patted myself on the back for taking it to them. For persisting, even though I shouldn’t have needed to. They thought I would just go away. They were wrong.

Everybody needs good neighbours

Friday night we were invited to dinner at our recently arrived neighbours over the road. Nice Guy Dave and his wife (Not The Kind Of Girl You’d Marry – her nickname for herself, not mine) invited The Architect and his family over as well, and we had a good time, with plenty of food, and good conversation. Turns out Nice Guy Dave works for an affiliate of my employer – I’m his boss, in his words – and we share a similar interest in not just photography, but subject matter.

Our iPods would get on well together too, with a soundtrack of a-Ha, The Dandy Warhols, some Stones, and Bruce:

“I come from down in the valley, where mister, when you’re young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done”

Nice Guy Dave even told me how he quoted Poison’s Bret Michaels on his wedding day, and that scored him a permanent place in my good books. No, the song wasn’t Talk Dirty To Me, or Look What The Cat Dragged In, but I’m afraid the large amount of 2004 Melbourne University cabernet sauvignon I consumed has eliminated the details of our exchange.

Seems Nice Guy Dave is an Apple / iPhone fan as well, and when I got into enthusing about Sleep Cycle, The Architect claimed it had to be a scam – how could it work? I explained that I didn’t know how, and reiterated my life philosophy of “perception is reality,” but still he wasn’t satisfied. I had the good sense to know which fights I could win.

There was more I wanted to tell you, really there was. But if you’ve got this far, and enjoyed the experience, my work is done for now. Until next time, thanks for joining me.

be careful what you wish for

I reached a momentous point in my life this week, and I wanted to document it. For the first time in my 17 year work life – and roughly equal number of workplaces (an average of one per year, it’s true) – I received a promotion. The job itself is not important, for this piece. What I wanted to record was my emotional and mental state at this time.

As I left the house yesterday morning, the words that came to mind were “neurotic”, “anxious” and yes indeed, “febrile” (as in, “nervous energy”). I could not help noticing that iTunes Genius selected The Killing Moon, by Echo and The Bunnymen as I walked down our street to the station in the dark. As I passed one house, the sensor lights automatically switched on, and I flinched the same way I do every morning. It’s a reflex.

“Fate, up against your will”

Ian McCulloch intoned, and I found myself gravely concerned about the end of life. I saw myself as a lonesome traveller in the dark; I had to leave Littlest Miss H alone on the couch, first watching Cinderella; then Finding Nemo. She had wrapped her arms around my arm as I sat next to her to eat my WeetBix, and each time I wanted to take a mouthful I had to extricate myself from her embrace.

I was stepping forward, my teeth were gritted, I was grimly determined. I already feel overwhelmed with the enquiries I receive in my current role, and I’m about to expand my knowledge base and responsibilities. I reflected on the wisdom of those who advise to be careful what you wish for.

As the City Loop train passed from Flinders St station to Southern Cross, I looked out the window at the lights on King St, next to The Grand Hotel and from the carriage I felt like a ghost observer, already dead, and I thought about my previous job, working as Night Manager just up the block on King St, and I thought about my dreams as yet unlived, and unfulfilled. The dream of filmmaking, my experience and knowledge of Melbourne by night, that is not dead. That dream will not die.

I emerged from the underground Flagstaff station to Sugar’s The Act We Act, and I was walking like a zombie, in slow motion, my feet heavy in my Colorado boots. The same boots I wore on location in South Africa all those years ago, working as Second Assistant Director on a German telemovie. The time I had sunk a lot of our money into trying to reclaim my happy childhood life in Africa, and merge it with my desire to work in film. I was fired from the crew, because – in the words of Paul Westerberg – “they said I had an attitude”.

Magnapop’s Slowly Slowly blistered on afterward as I walked through Flagstaff Gardens, and it brought to mind again nights on King St working at the short-lived XS nightclub; oh yeah, I was thinking of all my failures past, it was a gloomy retrospective late late show, all the low points of my life flashing before my eyes on my deathbed. And all this, because I had secured a job that I wanted!

There was a ghost tree dividing the path before me. As I walked on, a pile of vomit was splattered in front of a park bench on the path. I could imagine the reveller or junkie sitting in that seat, leaning forward to hurl his or her guts out. A silhouette passed me by with a small orange spot glowing before his bent head, and I smelled cigarette.

Up on the seventh floor, the lights weren’t on yet. It was not yet 6:30AM. I was first in the building. I was ready for the change. Training starts on Monday.

The Discreet Charm Of The Bohemian (part one)

I feel I must apologise for diverting from this blog’s supposed focus on Melbourne in all its visual glory and decay. In truth, this site was conceived as a way for me to express myself in another way than the raw cathartic form I had previously explored. I never intended to give away that style of writing – call it navel-gazing, self-absorbed, the thoughts and frustrations of an ordinary indebted Dad trying to make a better future; whatever you like. I’ll admit, it’s primarily for my benefit – but I hope to connect with you in some way in the process of doing it all the same. Which brings us to this post:

Valentine’s Day has passed for another year. Like many a male, I was never really a fan – favouring instead impromptu gestures of my affection, in keeping with my life philosophy of “first thought, best thought”. That all changed after my first Valentine’s Day with the woman who was to become Mrs H, when she arrived at my one bedroom flat in Prahran East with a big bunch of helium balloons, bottle of Amaretto and a card. Nothing was forthcoming from me in return. My excuse being something along the lines of my independent-minded non-sponsorship of the commercialisation of romance. Never again would I make that mistake. And this, our fifteenth Valentine’s Day together, was an especially enjoyable one for us. Seems things are turning for the better.

We had spent a good day together as family, and in the evening our neighbour came around to mind the girls, so Mrs H and I could make a rare outing as a couple again. We had decided to watch Up In The Air, and as we set off toward Carlton’s Cinema Nova, my co-pilot suddenly questioned our destination. She had thought we were going to Hoyts Norflands. So I pulled over a block from our house and consulted iPhone in vain for session times at that institution. Then, inspiration struck: I checked Palace Westgarth, and they had a 7PM session. Perfect.

We parked in Pearl St, parallel to High St, where I had to make a detour on the way to the cinema for a photo session motivated by the spectacle of a dumped Ford Festiva. Parking there on a Sunday summer’s afternoon took me straight back close enough to twenty years ago, when I first saw one of my favourite-ever films, Hal Hartley’s The Unbelievable Truth at the cinema formerly known as the Valhalla.

That fond memory made me think of other films I had enjoyed in the antiquated great hall of a cinema over the decades before its 2006 restoration and reincarnation as a Palace cinema… (I used to work with one of the daughters of the family which I believe still owns the building). Need I add that I never went there for the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Blues Brothers revivals (too popular for me, too cultish for elitist free-thinking serious young me…)

Quietly I found myself dreaming of a simpler time – the tastes of my formative adult years, simple joy over discovering the smell of coriander, watching Les Blank’s 1980 documentary Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, basmati rice, wholefoods, henna hair dye, first exposure to feminism, existentialism, Jungian psychology, Naomi Wolf, indie pop (Clouds, Lemonheads, Falling Joys and Club Hoy, Club Hoy, Club Hoy), Glebe Point Road, drinking coffee black because I could, and more importantly, hope, self-belief, and determination to live a life without compromise.

As we bought our tickets and settled on a combo deal of two glasses of sparkling white and a large popcorn (even though I once worked with a former Village Cinemas manager who had begged me to never buy popcorn at the movies, on account of its grossly inflated margin) – well, the combo deal did save us three dollars – I quietly rubbed my foot on Mrs H’s calf as I gazed at the brunette with Chan Marshall bangs and a black T shirt serving us.

At a table for two we toasted our Valentine’s Day with plastic flutes, and Mrs H confirmed that she could see the attendant was my type, “She looks like she doesn’t want to be here, like she hates her life,” she smiled, and I laughed. On Friday night one of the parents from Little Miss H’s prep group had organised a family dinner at the Croc (Croxton Park Hotel) – most definitely not the kind of venue we’d normally choose to set foot in – and we’d had a good time there all the same. I had taken a photo of Mrs H, and I suggested she could use this photo for her profile picture on eHarmony.com.au. I suggested she could brand herself as a “newly single mum.”

“Newly bereaved mum,” she countered (and I hope she didn’t mean bereft)…

A friend of mine once observed that our exchanges are much like dialogue from a Hal Hartley film, and I took that as a tremendous compliment.

Time came for us to wind up our banter and we ascended to the first floor 150 seat cinema (site of the former balcony, where I had nodded off to narcoleptic late lamented River Phoenix in Private Idaho one lonely night in my misspent early days in Melbourne). No more creaky staircase up – I guess some would say the reincarnation of the Westgarth is uncalled-for; for me at least it’s not a Nando’s (there’s one of them newly opened over the road, regrettably).

So what of the film? Five stars for me. I’m very much one of the believers in George Clooney as the kind of star or actor who women want to watch and men want to be. I laugh just watching his expressions – and like I did when Mrs H and I watched Clooney teamed with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty, I laughed so hard that I got told off.

This film’s story arc – of corporate downsizing specialist Ryan Bingham (Clooney), who finds himself thrust headlong into just the kind of life-changing great unknown he so masterfully positions his subjects – brings to mind the modern male mind’s overriding desire to control, to imprint, and leave behind something of permanence (other than children), to live without compromise, and to be alone, but to have access to a partner of some kind, for support at times of need. Like Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro)’s motto in Michael Mann’s Heat, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner,” Ryan Bingham has his backpack, which he imagines stuffed with all the things we collect in life – starting with all the little material things, then the car, the home – then, heaviest of all, the people we trust with our “most intimate secrets…” He goes on to state that relationships are “the heaviest components” in our life – “all those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises.”

It’s true there have been many heavy experiences in the backpack I carry – and I have shared that burden with Mrs H by rights or not over the years. But the backpack is getting lighter.

Thanks for being here with me. I hope you enjoy the next instalment…

pin cushion

I wondered if I had jinxed the day by proudly boasting about the latest change manifested at work that morning. I left work feeling gutted. My team leader had announced to us that as of next week we would be reporting to another manager, and apart from this bringing a premature end to the working relationship I had developed with her already, and aside from the fact that she was my third manager in just over six months, my main concern was the impact this would have on my planned career progression. I was only starting to believe I could make a step forward in a workplace for the first time in my life, and this felt like a kick in the gut.

The Gigolo Aunts’ track Pin Cushion shuffled on as my homebound tram drew out of the CBD through East Melbourne to Brunswick St, and the afternoon sunshine through the window was a perfect match for that song’s shimmering guitar lines. The song took me back to 1994, sitting in my op shop armchair by the window of my flat in Prahran. And that in turn represented a period in my life when I had a sense of freedom, opportunity and time ahead of me. I realised the memory was a tad rose-tinted – there were certainly elements of my life which were lacking at that point – but there was also an undeniable truth to it at the same time.

I was distracted from my self-absorption by a grumpy-looking scenester stepping on in platform heels. She was someone I should have known by name, I knew she had a reputation in the arts scene, maybe she was on the radio. Or maybe she was in fact a rock star of some repute. I had probably seen her on TV, on a music quiz show – and part of me cursed my faulty memory for not being able to put a name to her face. As she gazed dreamily into the middle distance, it looked as if she was imagining a camera on her. The paranoid narcissist in me imagined she was making mental note of the portly middle-aged square pecking on his iPhone across from her on the tram, and I decided she was a Gemini.

I took a mental inventory of my fellow passengers: the guy with a twelve inch Dixon Records bag and empty plant pot under his arm; down the back, a metrosexual lad camp as a row of army tents in Abe Lincoln beard, gold necklace and big bangles too, wearing a low cut tunic, leggings and Doc Martens, chatting enthusiastically with his female companion. Her body language openly positioned herself to him, but maybe I was wrong – does something as subtle as body language still have currency to today’s yoof?

I picked up Littlest Miss H from day care, and had the privilege of walking home with her alone together for the first time. Big sister had spent the day with Mum at home, in preparation for her first day at prep today. The Littlest One and I held hands and she chatted about her day freely, so different to her bigger sister’s temperamental reserve.

My evening consisted of the ritual of getting the girls to bed; brushing teeth, reading stories, then re-negotiating bedtime after they got out of bed for more food – Weet-Bix and Vegemite toast respectively. It was after eight o’clock, half an hour after their regular bed time, and Little Miss H was dancing around giddily, singing LL Cool J’s Mama Said Knock You Out. I popped two Mersyndol and passed out as soon as we finally got them back into bed for good.

I woke around 1:30AM, and knew there was a cure for my insomnia: I had to write it out. I came to my desk and realised I hadn’t paid our car insurance – it had been due at midnight, and I had made a note to pay it, but after my day and evening, it had slipped my mind. I called and was relieved to be answered right away by a live operator – “we’re obliged to give you three weeks to pay,” she told me.

I listened to her fingers clicking on her keyboard in the quiet space of her office, and I could imagine the space; the black of night outside the windows, the stark white neon-lit interior. Maybe just a handful of operators there to answer the low number of overnight calls. I had worked there once, for a day or two, as a temp six years ago, when I returned from a misguided and costly exercise in relocation to my home of South Africa. That quiet, that solitude of night shift work – it was what I had sought (and found) when I worked as a hotel night manager, in my job before my current one. I wasn’t about to get misty-eyed over that time, but one thing it had given me was the chance to write. I was glad I had been able to make that time mine again tonight. Thanks for being here.

has iPhone, will blog

One on, one off – that’s the theme du jour.

Allow me to explain: I am returning to work today, after a three day long weekend, thanks to my first Monday off in a while – the result of my new Tuesday to Saturday roster – combined with the Australia Day public holiday yesterday. No complaints about a three day weekend. I have tomorrow off, as a day of annual leave, since it’s Little Miss H’s first day at prep. I suppose I wanted to commemorate the occasion, hence part of my unconscious motivation for writing this post en route to work, for my first day starting at seven o’clock. Change is the only constant: that’s my theme, and again, I cannot complain about its latest manifestation. (Depeche Mode’s Get The Balance Right shuffled on as I wrote that – #synchronicity?)

I woke to the alarm this morning, in the middle of a dream about getting a part-time job working at one of those too cool T shirt bars. I’m supposing the part-time job was in addition to my full-time job, for more income. As I was led into the shop, I told the manager, “Hang on, I’m not cool enough to come in here” – and I wasn’t joking; I felt an acceptance, like I’d made the grade. Funny, eh? Have a chuckle if you like.

Getting back to the theme of this post: my elation over this new-on-the-scene blog’s busiest day yet, just two days ago (I trust you understand we’re still looking at small numbers), was followed by yesterday’s result, the statistical equivalent of “meh”. And after I had made the time to get out of the house early, on a public holiday, and drive all the way to Footiscray and all.

You can perhaps sense the indignation – would you even say it was self-righteous? I wonder. Anyway, I reminded myself that this blogging was mainly a hobby, for my benefit, and besides that, who could blame visitors anyway: one day they’d find pictures of urban decay, the next, cathartic (or self-indulgent) stream-of-consciousness journal entries from a self-absorbed neurotic. “Meh,” indeed.

After it was conspicuous by its absence at Christmas despite its prominent placement on my Amazon wishlist (I’d insert a link there, but hey, I’m on the run to work still, and you know how it is), I was delighted to get my hands on a copy of the latest Stephen King novel, Under The Dome, when I took the girls to the library on Monday. And I was impressed with the map of the fictional world inside the front pages – it reminded me of my Dungeon Master days playing AD&D – even as I was concerned about my ability to make it through the substantial weight of its pages.

I needn’t have worried: I only got through the first chapter. When I realised it wasn’t because I lacked the ability to carry on with it, only the desire to do so, I shared my disappointment with Mrs H. From somewhere within the fantasy world of her latest Harlequin romance beside me, she replied, “Why are you surprised? You like non- fiction.”

She turned back to her pages, and I meditated on the truth of what she had said. Still, it disappointed me that this author whose work had meant so much to me as a teenager all those years ago no longer engaged me. And again I reflected on my work-in-progress, imagined or otherwise; fictional autobiography, that’s it.

Thanks for getting this far – I look forward to our next session!

shadows and light – Michael Mann’s “Heat”

Yesterday I had the chance to sit down and watch Michael Mann’s Heat again, uninterrupted. It has been just over two weeks since I first tried to articulate some of this film’s impact on me, and even though I know I won’t get it all out in the limited time available to me now, I’m going to give it a shot.

Here’s what I noted:

It’s engrossing – apart from the way it’s photographed, edited, scored, directed and designed. (I won’t even get into cinematographer Dante Spinotti’s widescreen framing and his use of light and shadow that inspired the title of this post at this point). Apart from the locations and the casting coups… apart from all of that, it’s epic on a human scale. It’s beyond good and bad – both protagonists are flawed humans. It’s existential drama, dressed up as a modern day Western or cops n’ robbers story.

It’s a study of machismo.

Men are men – they have authority, they give orders, they tell women what to do. These men can pull wiring diagrams to banks from the ether (“this stuff is just out there”, Kelso (Tom Noonan) tells Neil), and not only that, they can understand the diagrams, and effectively disable them. (Yours truly, on the other hand, had to take the car to the dealer yesterday – twice – to reset the radio security code, after the battery failed and resulted in a callout and costly membership enrolment to roadside support and the purchase of an expensive new battery on the weekend. The first visit to the dealership resulted in a call back from the service department with the code – once they had emailed an offsite Ford advisor – and the second visit came about because I couldn’t work out how to enter said code).

Real men are not set back by flat batteries and radio pin codes.

Even as the film glorifies masculinity and “overflows with testosterone” (no point attributing that quote to any one writer, it’s so frequently stated in reviews), its male characters lead fractured lives, unable to reconcile the dual demands and responsibilities of work and family. They have succumbed to the lure of mastering work (in itself no easily-done thing, as I know from first-hand experience), at the cost of failed interpersonal relationships. Although both criminal mastermind Neil McCauley (De Niro) and cop Vincent Hanna (Pacino) have committed fully to one kind of discipline – either side of justice – neither of them has mastered the discipline of relationships with the women in their lives.

“That’s the discipline, to be able to walk out,” McCauley tells Hanna in their one scene together in the diner. “All I am is all I’m going after,” Hanna admits to his wife, and I understand this motivation. Later he tells her, “I gotta hold on to my angst, it keeps me sharp, on the edge,” and a cynical part of me smiles. At another point he literally cannot defend himself – he is rendered speechless, without words.

Hanna’s wife accuses him of not “being present, sharing”; his relationship with his step-daughter Lauren (Natalie Portman) is troubled, and the consequences of her lonely cry for attention scare the bejesus out of me as a parent, I’ll tell you that.

In the film’s final scenes, Neil is let down by his shadow, and the Jungian-inspired writer in me thought this was worth noting. I won’t elaborate on an exploration of the shadow metaphor in Hanna and McCauley’s relationship at this point.

In the extra DVD with the film, Mann talks about his film being about “the laws of cause and effect, and what will befall you is a function of how you think about the life you’re in. There’s no such thing as fate.” The emphasis is mine, because it resonates with my personal belief that perception equals reality.

Mann talks about taking a “cosmic microscope” to understand cause and effect, and when Pacino talks about authenticity, I feel a sense of ownership, as if he’s using my name. That is all I can strive to be: authentically me. A banker, a Dad, a husband, a would-be writer, a dreamer etcetera. All of these things combined define me.