I went in search of substance as a counter-point to Tourism and found Cormac McCarthy: "All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise."
I carry my dream with me all day, as something I've noted in my mind that I must tell people. When I go to speak, though, the images are unformed. It's just a feeling.
Like the list in your head of things to tell friends that you try to remember while they're recounting their stories. Sometimes when it's your turn to speak the list isn't there anymore.
As I stand shivering at the garage door there's a square terracotta tunnel and at the end stars.
Last night, though, a blonde woman plagued me, trying to steal my wallet out of the Liberty print bag. Her accomplice abducted us back to his farm. As we tried to escape and it looked like he would catch us, Noonie attempted to shoot him. Each time she fired there was silence and the gun had no bullets.
TRACKING DEVICE INSTALLED in bold white letters is painted on the side of garbage bin outside a student house near Campos. It's our first garbage night and amazingly they take all the flotsam and jetsam that's simply not required in the perfect house. The fog does nothing to muffle the sound of bottles clinking into the truck but it's mixed with talk of a confident goal.
It's my new way to work and there's a man driving a train of trolleys across the road outside the hospital. The trolleys have towels and linen in them. Cars and buses stop to let him across. He's not at the pedestrian crossing either, but then he's not technically a pedestrian. He's a Chinese trolley train driver.
A strangely optimistic thing to do, moving house. A chance to put everything (everything) in its right place. (In its right place.)
Mark Dapin wrote about the night I saw him at the pub. Not about me specifically but about the ridiculousness of the police with sniffer dogs. We think the same things, me and Mark Dapin. We have a connection. I toy with the idea of sending him a link to my blog entry about seeing him at the pub, but then I realise that he'll see the bit about his friend with his jumper slung around his shoulders, and it makes me feel disloyal.
The removalists are mainly polish and the head one calls me boss until I accidentally get their truck stuck in the narrow streets of our new neighbourhood. He doesn't speak to me at all after that.
From my bed I can see the red light on the top of Sydney Tower blinking, blinking. I'm hiding out in the big city blinking. But not very well because it a conspicuous spot, this house. On the first morning winter sun wakes me and I stick my head up, push the curtain aside and below I see my old office-mate struggling with the slinky black dog from workshop. She looks pained.
And Richard E Grant makes us think: who is Denton? He's a man-Kermit, and I've never wondered who he is, until now.
We walk through the park commenting that there seem to be two groups attracted to the laughing club: freaks and old people. A few steps on a radio crew puts a mic in front of us and asks how we like having a laughing club in the neighbourhood. It's great, we reply enthusiastically. Bitterness is unbecoming on women of a certain age.
Preposterously likable. It's the phrase I remember most from the Writers' Festival. Why do we crave it so much, being likable? Preposterously suggests trying, I think. He's talking about McCain. A politician. And how else do you get elected except by being likable? I think about all the things I do to try to be likable. I wouldn't elect me. Naomi was certainly trying. But she's a woman so she has to. Look at you, you'd do anything for a warm look.
It's cold but the house is preposterously tidy. Inspections are motivating. We look inside another house, and it's mostly not tidy. It's a house divided into nine people's homes. We only look in six of them, but that seems like more than enough in one afternoon. I try to think of the most interesting thing I saw in six peoples' homes in a fifteen minute period. It was almost a lime green retro bedside clock. It wasn't Barbara Cartland on the wall, because we could have seen that anyway on the sign outside. I think it was a bath on legs in a kitchen so crowded that you could put out your hand and touch the hot plate while you were soaking.
At drinks in the perfect house there are lots of children, which isn't quite perfect. One of them has a tantrum and then comes back to announce that she's simply overtired. Others eat twisties from a bowl and that keeps them quiet. There's a man with Bert Newton jokes. Almost everyone lives in the neighbourhood. Arthur shakes my hand and smiles.
Di brings coffee for the origami making baby wranglers. Ham and lentil soup. Ratcat's not there. It's scaring away the cockatoos. I'm winning Scrabble but there's yellow sun against a stormy sky and we head to the Courthouse. Tooheys Old and initiation stories from Illinois. Then I search every book shop on the strip for Muriel Spark.
