by Four days a week I pick up and drop off my work colleague who lives near the zoo in Newtown. I talk to him more than anybody else on the planet. After work on Friday he could tell I was feeling like crap (well, I think I made it fairly obvious) and he asked if I wanted to have a beer at Bebemos. They have quite a funky courtyard area there. We had a long chat and I opened up to him, like I never do to anyone. Like me he’s a fan of Paul Simon, and we discussed and laughed about the lyrics from the Graceland album. He wasn’t even born when it came out but he knew all the words. When I got home I felt six times better.
The next day I was at the tennis club, basking in the sunshine and the glory of my two interclub wins (not really), but still massively frustrated with the latest chapter of my seismic saga. I had a chat with the guy I played in the singles and it turns out he owns an earthquake-prone apartment just off Dixon Street. He’s further down the track than me, and faces a six-figure bill. “You’ve got to get over this,” he said. But it’s hard when every time I drag myself up off the floor I receive another hammer blow. You bastards are going to block off my fucking window?! What next? “Do what you want to do. Don’t wait for this strengthening stuff to be over, because you’ll be waiting fucking ages.” This made me feel six times better.
I went to the market on the way home from tennis. I love the market. I’ve always loved markets. Although most of the produce is cheaper than at Pak ‘n’ Save, you do have to be careful. Anything with a label on it is best avoided because it’s probably been in storage for weeks. But some of the stuff there is amazing, like oranges, which I always buy from the same stall. These oranges are all different shapes and sizes, they have rough patches, they have bobbly bits, they have seams. Some of them even look slightly anatomical. They’re not uniform in colour. But they’re all heavy for their size, and when I cut one open, things quickly get messy because it has so much juice. It tastes so damn good. I can’t possibly only eat one so I have another. And another. They’re so good they’re addictive, and they’re about $1.50 a kilo. I buy them by the bucketload. I can’t do Pak ‘n’ Save oranges anymore; the ones from the market are cheaper, tastier and six times better.
When I got back from the market I met up with a friend at the Southern Cross bar, a five-minute walk from my apartment (which, in spite of everything else, is still in its same brilliant location). He’s one of the two blokes I went with on the TPP march just before I went away (as we now know, the march was all in vain, but it was still a great experience for me who had never done anything like that before). The main, indoor bit of the Southern Cross is absolutely huge, but the garden bar is just happiness: the plants, the lanterns, the wallpaper, and the benches all upholstered in different mismatched colours. I love it. If it was entirely up to me (and maybe it is!), the living room of my flat would look a bit like that, minus the wallpaper. It’s a funny thing: you’re supposed to keep all the tones neutral and not have too much clutter in your rooms, so that they look bigger, especially when you come to sell, which should always be soon. I’ve spent eighty bucks or something on my apartment since I moved in nearly four years ago, so my rooms are pretty bare. But they look fucking enormous. Some people even go further and match their lounge suite with their carpet and their décor art, while keeping that neutrality. These tend to be the same people who spend most of their time at work attending meetings about strategic goals or some such shite. How these people don’t get home from work one day, look at all their strategic furniture, and think fuck this, I’m booking a one-way ticket to Boston and jumping off the Tobin Bridge when I get there, I don’t know. Maybe some of them do. Maybe it’s Sophie, Tom and George who keep them strategically ploughing on.
I was digressing a bit in the last paragraph. It was really great to meet up with this guy. He’s an extremely kind, intelligent bloke, but not unlike me, he’s struggled with depression and getting and keeping jobs. He lives with his parents. He hasn’t told them that he’s toying with the idea of living in a van and travelling. I told him about my trip. I said it has had a permanent impact on my life. I then told him about my idea to teach English in Eastern Europe. I got very excited about both America and my new idea for a job. “Hungary! Bulgaria! Romania! I’ve done all these train trips and I can do more train trips! And I might, just might, actually do something I’m good at.” “Wow, that’s awesome, man,” he said. I spent eight days in Boston and three in New York (if you don’t count the tennis which really exists in its own little city). Most normal people would prefer the opposite, but what I did worked for me. Find what works for you, rather than seeing what works for everyone else and pretending it’ll somehow work for you, and life will be six times better.
