Baby's Back, Dressed in Black

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Ah, just when you thought he'd given up...he's baack. What was the last one? just the change of eddress maybe?? Well, since then I've been up to Townsville a couple of times, cruised around and generally tried to keep the footloose spirit going....this has been assisted by selling the house and doing a torrid CELTA course (to teach English to non-English speakers) and now I'm looking to get some work around here teaching and then head off to join the Bro' somewhere in the Caribbean in June and look for some work around there. Cuba would be good but it's difficult to find out what's happening there...otherwise Venezuela, Colombia or somewhere in centroamerica. So.....these are some ramblings over the past 4 months....

Did I tell you about waking up early, the sun comes up over the railway line outside my front door, often thought of doing a Kerouac and jumping the slow freight train but it only goes down to the refinery or whatever it is at Stony Point, and what an appropriately hard name it is...so the sun comes up, now here's the better bit...the sunlight breaks up a bit thru' the leaves of the giant plane trees then gets refracted(?) thru' the old prismaticy panes of the leadlight, then filtered and distorted thru' the timber venetians, eventually becoming the most extraordinary light show projected on my wardrobe doors...it shimmers and shakes like a belly dancer as all the components move around in their own orbits, branches, leaves, venetians, glass panes....such a beautiful apparition, positively religious if one was so inclined, probably the face of Mary somewhere, fleetingly, certainly more apt than finding her face on your grilled cheese sandwich??
So I'm back in Towny, again, and loving it. The house is on the market. Kate's in India, Ben's found an appartment and Candy, aha, Candy is still going thru' late-life puppy reversion as the anti-rheumatism pills cut in. I often contemplate trying some. But maybe I'd end up like the guy who lived on Pal dogfood...you remember that one?
And i'm trying to get the photos of the trip arranged but the 2,500 odd images in 200 odd albums, over 2 computers, CDs, DVDs and on the blog seem irretrievably muddled. Everytime i try and get them all in some order on one album they get confused...I suspect a higher order, wiccan maybe, or some other deity, crikey, maybe the crack about Mary on the cheese sandwich...jesus wept! anyway, some bum logic in my camera, in collusion with the computers, inevitably leaves me with a worse-than-random selection....but then again, who really gives a rats, it's all just a bunch of pix, doesn't really matter if some Uraguan beach shot comes out next to a Guatemalan volcano?
Does it??...
I drove out West to Daylesford a few weeks ago, in fact I've driven up there 3 times in the past month but that's another story, on the way you drive thru' Melton, the first of the last of the nouveau rooted society communities, and the term is used loosely. Endless terror cottered roofs, an alarming dotting of church spires, even the odd minaret it looks like, and there are a few re-habilitation clinics for the substance abusers.... religion or drugs?. What a choice? what choice?....There's a sign on the freeway embankment "Keep Melton Beautiful" I guess I missed the first one saying "Make Melton Beautiful in the First Place" !!
And it's dry, even the trees are dusty and exhausted, the occasional dam just a few wet spots, cracky mud, sheep bogged to the ankles.
Melbourne spreads way beyond it's extremes. For a city of a little over 3 mil people it covers an inordinate amount of land, everyone's gotta have their quarter acre and the infrastructure, what ever that is, just can;t cope!
But there are fabulously bright red parrots like spots of flame around the trees and the yellow diamond road sign advising koalas for the next 15 kms...ahh you know when you're home.
But I'm not really 'home' yet, it's all a bit strange, and in Towny I struck up conversations with several travellers whereas usually you can't talk to travellers in your own country....that might sound a bit strange but travellers all know the feeling...so it seems I'm still in travel mode, that's why I have this detached feeling about so much of returning, it's all just keeping on keeping on...CRASH...gotta happen soon(?)

A few weeks on.....

I’m taking the train into the city everyday, it’s getting more crowded as the holiday suits return, the cultural diversity strikes me, maybe 20% are ockers, and nearly everyone is wired by the ears, most of them painfully obvious to everyone else, the tinny cacophony equivalent of the Chapel street doof-doof cars on Saturday nights. I’m looking over some suit’s shoulder reading his paper, I mean it’s packed, we’re all scrunched up together, anglos are really not comfortable with this close proximity, hell, it’s almost intimacy, shit, did someone just rub up against me?…was it a bloke, freaking me out, can’t get my hand to the back wallet pocket, trying to flex my arse muscles to feel if I’ve been pick-pocketed, the person behind me is wondering if this is some inner suburban mating ritual…another fascinating aspect of train travel..ahh the women…I’m working on a theory that the earlier the train the less attractive the women…sometimes I’m running late and the train that gets in to the city after 9am has some real stunners….maybe their bosses don’t care when they get in if they’re that hot….but the 6.30am…full of dogs!..anyway, I’m just looking over this guy’s shoulder to check the news…then he turns and gives me the filthiest look…sheeit, what is the problem? Am I taking away some of the news? Soaking up stuff that he then won’t be able to read? Come on! it's way too early for bad breath and BO!...Ahh and the public servants all thinking they're public savants..talking too loudly, cheap suits but the best source of the latest jargon...if you care!..they seem to think everyone should?
And the train service has been soo stuffed lately, so many cancelled trains they even have a published list of cancellations!..can you believe it…so everyone’s crowded in, often a train pulls in, the doors open, and there’s just a wall of bodies, the asian studes are used to it they sort of just melt into the wall of bodies, fantastico...the anglos try and bluster their way in but no way. It’s an odd environment, the hatred against the train company is thick in the air, palpable, but the camaraderie of shared problems shows up in touching gestures of assistance and a few good jokes…my old motto…laugh or die!

On the way to the station I’m stumbling over the uneven pavement slabs. Several years ago they paid some lucky bastard squillions to grind off the raised edges. Ha, what a laugh, a few years later and they’re sticking up again. One day when my old Mum was living in the backyard she decided to struggle up to the corner and watch the train go by. She was born in the old dart so maybe some residual trainspotting gene slipped through. Anyway, she caught her foot on one of these footpath traps and went down, smashed her glasses and cut up her face. Should have sued the council but she’d never do it.

I’m growing tomatoes, basil and lettuce. The tomatoes went berko, shot up over a metre in the first few weeks…..some fruit was appearing but then it would be gone…huh?..one night I was having a smoke out the back and I saw the little fcuker, a ringtail possum, dragging his tomato-stuffed stomach up the fence out of the tomato patch…hand me the rhino rifle…so I built a wire mesh cage, totally impenetrable. Now I can sit and watch my lovely tomatoes but….
And the drivers...did I mention the drivers...omg..we bang on about the seppos but they are popsitively generous..even on the deadly freeways if you indicate, they back off and always let you in..here it's the opposite, you can't afford to indicate as they race up to the car in front and stop you from getting across...unbelievably bad manners and aggression all the time.
Anyway, enough for now...sorry for all of you that I haven't got to see...it's strange, for 15 months I kept intimate, almost daily contact with 130 odd people but since returning I see only a handful of friends.....maybe a party in May/June before I run away again.
Oh well, if you're still there, let me know......

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Photos

refractions on the wardrobe door
waking in my own bed..

Kate's new car
home

All the Shums
home...Michael, Kate, Bill, Ben

The Bro's last party
home..John x 3, Michael x 2, Bill x 2, Robert x 2