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May 27, 2006
smells like mean spirit
saw this act of political lampooning and loved it; someone's making a statement in my street using the available dog shit. brilliant.
in other news, friday yielded total extremes; the sharpest beauty and the bitterest ugliness.
i got on a tram and sat down to some yeats (look, it's not posturing, okay? poetry is perfect transit reading because, like short stories, you can dip in and out in little bites or even bitelets, as befits your journey. anyone wanting to hack on the pretentiousness tip - you're right, i can be. but not in that revelation i ain't...). it was supposed to be a 75 or 70, but read "00 North Melbourne" on the front. i informed the driver of this when he asked, to which he laughed in reply, saying 'oh, well - we'll find our way to wherever we're going'. he then bantered with the passengers, taking requests for route names and numbers.
some minutes into my heart fluttering at the fenian's piercing, vital eloquence about age and life and the heart, we had arrived at all the sporting arenas, when the driver leaned out the window to speak to a colleague on the platform:
driver: [to platform guy] hey, who's in charge here?
pg: don't know
driver: no one's in charge? who's running things?
pg: no one.
old guy near front doors: [good-natured, chuckling] what's new?
driver: [to platform guy] where am i supposed to go? [to kind of everyone] does anyone know, or should i just follow my heart? [nervous laughter]
tram punters: yes!
tram punters: *always* follow your heart!
tram punters: [laughter]
driver: [pulling out of platform, to passengers] where do we want to go?
tram punters: surprise us!
tram punters: wherever *you're* going ...
me: [enthusiastically, not impatiently] who cares? if you're following your heart, that's good enough for me. drive!
in a week where i got slugged with a $150 fine for having a two-weeks expired concession card, it was almost worth it so see a half-empty tram of laughing, warm commuters being shown the nakedness of the system's flaws and idiocy being met with a gentle, joyful response rather than mean-spiritedly.
but i got my share of bilious immaturity later in the evening.
Posted by reuben at May 27, 2006 2:46 PM
Comments
Oh dear, did you do some discreet editing? I should have read it all while it was there... Or perhaps not.
Lovely tram story, Melbourne's long-distance dream glow just gets glarier, AND...
up with poo protesting!
Enjoy the life,
Liz
Posted by: Liz at May 29, 2006 11:23 AM
re: editing – in recounting in minute detail the puerile behaviour directed at me by someone i otherwise actually really care about, i realised i was stooping to her level. t'was a bit silly, and didn't warrant the extra thousand words, specially as it was a minor blip on an otherwise excellent friday night, leading into a pleasantly lazy birthday weekend.
and yeah, i like it here – it's nearly been two years, but melbourne still feels new to me, partly due to my slower-than-usual engagement with a new place.
Posted by: reuben at May 29, 2006 8:05 PM
Yay, this is a Judith Lucy thing! She handed out the little flags as you left her comedy festival shows, I've been looking for an appropriately enormous turd to put mine in. Or maybe just waiting for him to do something more outstandingly cunty than normal. So difficult to choose with that little weasel.
Posted by: Celf at June 2, 2006 10:30 PM