May 30, 2004
Scattered

Mornings of stray grey clouds hiding the baby blue of the infinite sky under which you and I reside — you and I with all our barriers built for us the moment we were born, where it has never occurred to anyone to tell us that it would be the task of our lifetime to demolish them.

Mornings where sleepy passengers on the train stare out through dust-clattered windows. The sign read "Armadale" but in the reflection it sang of "Alameda". The grass-covered banks of rumbling moss, the backyards hidden from the main streets of the world though in full view of the train travellers — albeit around 100 kilometres per hour.

Mornings, the diving board over the edge of dreams, the dawn of possibilities.

Posted by sniffles at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)

May 21, 2004
Promises

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

"The Adventures of Augie March", Saul Bellow.

"What have you been up to?" is a question I'm getting a lot. My apologies for playing dead (yes, Bill, I'm still here!), it's just that I seem to be very preoccupied with numerous projects. Here's the upshot dividing time between some contracts and casual work instead of working full-time at one job — you end up working a lot more, and it's quite a task to manage everything in your head.

Last Tuesday, for the first time in years, I found myself running a class — a two hour communications class where students got to think about job interview techniques. It is a little strange having a foot in academia again. Though a large part of my experience involves working within universities, I've been IT service areas rather than directly teaching or learning in the academic environment. It's certainly a different perspective having been on the other side of the fence; I find myself looking past the theoretical demands of marking schemes, and thinking, "Well, in reality, you have all these other factors to think about ..." It was a lot of fun getting the students to think a little more about themselves, giving them a different outlook and encouraging them to be more positive about their abilities. (The not-so-fun part is marking assignments, but well, let's not get into that ...)

Apart from my occasional involvement with my old faculty, I'm doing the usual Web thing. Then, there's the travelling time and attempts to spend time with family and friends. After all that, there seems little left for much else. At least the time spent on inefficient Melbourne trains meant that I'm fitting in a lot more reading than I otherwise might have.

Guess who fell sick today? I was half expecting it to happen because every second person I have been in contact with had fallen ill in the last week. While my case is pretty mild, I cancelled all the day's appointments and huddled up in bed. I wasn't sure how my body would cope with the change in climate, but it ought not to be quite as bad as having to cope with the whole barrage of viruses I caught last autumn in Canada (having had none of them before, presumably).

It seems, really, that my entire life is taken up with making and keeping promises. I promise to do this for you, if you would do this for me in return, or pay me this particular amount for what I have promised to deliver. In some cases, it's just: I promise to do this for you. Lately though, I've begun to realise that I ought to get better at keeping promises I've made to myself.

Posted by sniffles at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)

May 13, 2004
Yellow and blue

I can't get my head around it, but I seem oddly busy for someone who is not currently employed full-time. I'm starting to think that I fit more work in simply because time is more "flexible".

Things I've been up to:

• writing an article for Design In-Flight
• scanning photographs for my former professor for an exhibition
• marking first-year computing assignments
• running around like a headless chicken dealing with paperwork, errands, administrative things
• hanging out with friends
• reading

... all this on top of other "normal" stuff.

I finally finished "The Adventures of Augie March". It's a deceptively small book, though the thickness of a book is not necessarily a good indication of how long it might take you to read it; my copy consisted of really thin paper dotted with small print. Called "The Great American Novel" by some, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I only learned of its existence through the name of a band I rather like. It has taken me nearly two months to get through the tale, which begun slow and somewhat sluggish, but picked up pace about halfway and kind of sped through till the end. Still, it was an enjoyable read, and since I'd regretfully closed the backcover, I've missed following Augie's stumble through life in the moments when words call.

Posted by sniffles at 01:18 AM | Comments (3)

May 03, 2004
The flowering

Some grey days never rise to full wakefulness. Cloud-covered dreams, the left-over feeling of having been ruthlessly shaken head-to-toe into unwilling consciousness by someone else's violence in someone else's world. I watched in horror as they threw small knives at each other, nipping at each other's skin, red essence of their flesh scarring the white of their coats while they both continued to stand firm to see who would first collapse.

The density of the diluted sun. I am underwater, succumbing to the call of sad songs while minutes march in front of the clock. The train rattles and rocks to a sleeping halt. The smudge of ink across the virgin page while a dead man sings in my ear and I shall watch over you in your sleep and in my wakefulness, that demons do not touch you.

Posted by sniffles at 11:23 PM | Comments (3)

May 01, 2004
Flying, fleeting

Melbourne is the Australia that the rest of the world chooses to ignore — or at least, its weather is. Melbourne liberally showered by the passing rain cloud. Melbourne shrouded in grey, punctuated by occasional brilliant bursts of sudden autumn sun.

Standing at the station waiting for the train that might never come, it was the rain that came and drowned us with droplets of water from the south — and then, was swiftly gone. I took my rain-splotched self into town, music in my ears and songs in my head.

Please forgive me if I owe you an email or haven't been in touch, I haven't yet had much chance to breathe.

Days have sped by; I have been kept busy by errand after errand. A lightning trip to Sydney to sort out yet more paperwork, where I had the privilege and great pleasure of meeting Alexandre, even if for a very short time. Radiohead (I was lucky, I went on the Monday), The 5.6.7.8's.

Today, I had the fortune to catch up with Porter and Laura who just happened to be visiting Australia. A hearty lunch in St. Kilda, a wind-blown walk to the beach and back, a rumbling tram ride back downtown in search of a coffee in the alleyway cafes to warm the bones. The nature of living the high online life is such that it's a ten-fold pleasure to finally meet people you've worked with face-to-face for the first time.

This was never going to be just a relaxing trip home. Loose ends to tie up, boring but necessary things to be done, like ... going to the podiatrist, the optometrist, the dentist, and to the doc for check-ups. But I can't tell you how nice it is to be back in a familiar city, where things have changed a little but not too much, where beauty is hidden in the eaves of shadows and worn on the changing colour of the trees, with the chance to catch up with old friends and time to meet new ones.

Posted by sniffles at 05:53 PM | Comments (9)