rainbow street

your glassy eyes betray you

Tried to watch a gig yesterday in the city. There was a bus service disruption, so i had to try another route and i got lost for three hours. its a strange liberation to feel lost in a new city, and to understand the inconsequentiality of you being lost in the city. Finally got to Darling Harbour but by then i was so exhausted i slept during the gig, and awoke during audience applause.

Today was a warm balmy blue day, a sharp contrast to the bleary dreary celtic rain clouds that seemed to take permanent residence in the skies over sydney earlier on in the week. i wanted to go to the beach , but it its getting dark now. started the day with one too many fortifying shots of whiskey before waltzing over to the IGA and buying butter. stumbled home and cooked eggs and cornbeef for lunch. ive been trying to get thru my philosophy readings fast enought to head out and catch some sun , but it doesnt seem likely.

my new landlord is a real character, and i sometimes feel like im living in the paper street soap company. he showed me some kalashnikov baring photos circa the early 1990s when he accidentally stayed in a taliban stronghold near the afghan/paki border. he takes his anti-globalisation, anti MNC ideals to their furthest practicality-shunning conclusions, refusing to buy or smoke big tobacco company ciggerettes or wear any clothes with a label. one comment is all it takes to get him to propel himself into a flaming sermon about third world hunger, american foreign policy, john howard, women's rights or frank zappa. yes zappa. he sings in a frank zappa cover band.

still i feel alot more at home here than in jim's cell. the neighbourhoodn im in now has been the location of 4 knifings since june. one on the street right outside my house. apparently robbers are targeting uni students cos there is a high concentration of them in the area. statistically speaking its probably still pretty safe, but i dont leave home after dark without a jackknife, pretending it would actually help.

the moments passed

your glassy eyes betray you

I moved out from old Jim's house. He was getting really weird and starting to creep me out , talking about us being friends and shit. Plus he continually stopped me in the corridor and proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes telling me a banal anecdote from his family history ( which he spent a decade researching ). it got to a point where i would shut myself in my room just to have my own space. plus i couldnt get my internet running in his house. i found another place with a leftie-tasmanian bloke and three students. i told jim , and he gave me a black face and told me he thought we were friends and asked me what he was gonna do about his financial situation .

i couldnt sleep that night, tossing and turning while the guilt devoured me . but i knew i had to go , i needed the internet for school and i didnt want to dread going home everyday. i walked about the uni area in blustery rain putting up notices and posters everywhere to avertise his place to some other poor sod and gave jim a weeks advance in rent for nothing. Then i moved my stuff over. I told myself id check up on him after my weekend in byron bay. I told my mum not to call the house naymore cos i was getting a little uncomfortable by how they would talk alot.

Well now i find out the old cunt told my mum that i smoke, well before i left . What a fucking arse, i didnt even smoke in his house. my mum has been giving me so much shite about the tabba thanks to old jimbo that i really cant be fucked to help him move his stuff around next week.

i went to byron bay over the weekend for splendor in the grass with kris and her band and her sister...

The train and bus ride to Ballina took over thirteen hours. Taking ciggerette breaks during the train ride were dodgy cos it entailed having to get off at strange little stations (with names like cowbell or cornear), taking three quick drags of a fag before hurrying back on the train before it abandoned you in hickville nothingness for the weekend. We got off the train at Grafton and took the bus to Ballina with dark fields on either side under a sky saturated with stars. We found a trailer park along the pacific highway and stayed there.

The next day we somehow managed to get a limo for the price of a cab to take us to the festival. So we made our way to the festival like rockstar royalty. obviously high out of our minds and making it increasingly obvious by upping our efforts to conceal it. I heard Tony's voice trail off as he engaged the driver in sharp conversation, while i started to zone out. The brilliant blue of the sky melded into the ocean through the limo windows and everything seemed to stand out and seem more real.

When we got there , i was greeted by a suffocating fume of purple haze. We packed into a festival tent and watched Youth Group, then i started to panic. The heat and colour and number of people started to stress me out . I went out to get a break from the sensory overstimulation and came back to watch death cab for cutie , who didnt really sound all that great. The band that really blew my balls apart later on was mogwai, who started off their set with bagpipes and rather ominour gaelic singing samples. Watched sonic youth and dj shadow before leaving the mud and filth of the festival and heading back.

The planned to leave the next day to get to sydney on monday in time for the first day of school, but the bus/train company screwed up my pickup point , bumping me to the day so i missed the second day of the festival for nothing. later on i heard that a girl died at the festival in a porta- loo.

took the long night train back to rainy sydney.

cities dont accept backpackers

your glassy eyes betray you

back tracking a little:

I celebrated my birthday by breaking my thumb on tjinns car door. went to A and E to get my nail removed and restitched on. before that i spent 17 hours q-ing up for the swee lee sale and bought a fender telecaster.

I left the country a few days ago for sydney. Im staying at an inn with a good lee harvey oswald view of oxford street below. Its the gay district of sydney and when i go out at night to get some food i can see men in thongs behind the glass windows of clubs , and leather and pvc queens making their rounds.

i found a place to stay with no bond or lease. Its with a 77 year old man who looks like he might expire at any moment. he seems nice enough though.

Removed the bandage and was amzed to see that my thumb bears a striking resemblance to oyster boy. a crack for a smile and two little holes where stitching was for eyes.

Im trying to not think so much about singapore , and telling myself that the loneliness will pass. i figured out some of the buses, sidney has been taking me around. trying to get adjusted as fast as possible.

its funny how fast you get used to the cold and it seems like the only thing youve ever known and that you havnt come from somewhere warmer.

sydney is a real melting pot of people from pretty much everywhere.

i went to a museum for modern art today. the kind of art that completely baffles me by its complete lack of aesthetic value. am i missing something? rooms with looped videos of people standing still, rooms with random objects splayed about. white canvasses with black angular lines. i mistook a seating area for an installation art piece.
i think alot of modern art is fucking bollocks, validated only by art world marketeering and perpetuated by pretentious art world opinion leaders. or maybe i just dont get it.

After that i walked around the harbour. there are so many old art deco buildings around. the wind and cold are refreshing but make u smoke and drink alot.

im exhausted.