*Ladies* of *Cambridge*

Your week is filled with factory-fresh Mercedes and traffic lights routinely set fifty feet apart. Silky wet tram tracks, clamouring children, a bevvy of hurried umbrellas. But today is quiet, you’re half asleep—lacy shop fronts and flourishing billboards curtsying to a nonexistent audience on the footpaths below. You might see somebody different here today; a shabbily dressed musician busking on the street, a beat-poet girl writing in the park, a few joggers blasting indie from their ipods. But in all likelihood, there’ll still be the women.

“What do you want with those shopping bags, Carmen?”  (paper, cardboard, plastic.) “I use biodegradable ones now.” Because, at last, being environmentally friendly has caught up with the upper-middle class, who don’t start trends; (far too busy, they merely follow.) Except for perhaps, those recurring slate grey fisherman’s pants and crocodile print boots;

“Well like Jean said, you simply can’t get them anywhere further east than Camberwell.”

But you’re not impressing us one little bit, Jean darling—with your handmade jewellery and vintage designer purse. Postmodern fashion died in the arse in the nineties and you’re nothing more than the wealthy dregs of its remnants. Today it’s especially prominent;

“Size thirty-three point five, thankyou.” Like we’re in Paris or Denmark; “forgive me, sometimes I forget what country I’m in!” Arctic white teeth flashing.

“Oh! That some of us should be so lucky.” (Tongue clamped between your own teeth as you mentally subtract that sum into English.)

And at the counter; “Are you sure that’s the final price?” All bargaining and batering like we’re in Malaysia or Singapore and she’s struggling to feed her sobbing malnourished offspring wasting away at home.

“In this economic climate you have to watch every cent you spend.” Insurance banker husband, hefty paternal inheritance, crown jewels aside; “No, we really can’t afford that today.”

“Well, better keep those credit cards in their wallet then, darling. Those shoes simply don’t fit and I really don’t have the time.”  (You have till five, actually.)

Five more robotic hours, to think about tonights frozen food, Penelope’s childhood and how, five years ago, you would have given anything to live here.

“But now she’d much rather be north, or north-west. It’s this suburb, see. It’s just no good anymore.”

It never was going to suit you anyway. You’d be much better off in the North. Yes, in the shabby cafe’s with ochre crockery and wooden utensils off Sydney road, or in the musty shops on Smith street, damp like you’re grandmother’s closet. You always were a a sucker for nostalgia, for it’s fleeting back dissapearing around a street corner, it’s fading footsteps on a grey footpath leading to nowhere. Nostalgia grows so much better in the North.

“It’s just the right climate, and besides, out here we really don’t have the time.”

You’d be much better off to take that vinyl suitcase and you’re fluffy beret and sit yourself down on the 96 tram (if you can find room).

“We don’t have much space here, as you can see, our schools are full to the overflow.” Spoken as though her precious antique tea-cups might spill and break if another Hawthorn barrister impregnates his russet-haired, slim-thighed secretary. Disaster!

“Xavier wouldn’t know what to do with itself!”

It’s amusing, really—the thing’s that scandalise here. Take heed of the thing’s you simply can’t get away with. No midnight visits to safeway—floppy moccasins and cloud-print pajamas, just for some tim-tam’s and a carton of milk.

“They don’t bat an eyelid at that in the North, can you believe?” But here, like Enid said, it’s simply not done.

So traipse back up through that glorious mecca of cautious consumption to your hatchback parked in the no-standing zone, pay that tiresome ticket and be on your way.

but it’s the storm that i believe in

Well its been a while since I’ve written anything substantial. In fact i suppose the word ‘substantial’ could quite well be questioned for its legitimacy . This is a blog after all.

My life has changed drastically in the last week due to the fact that I moved out of home. I now ride to uni, on my grandmas awesome vintage bike, tears blurring my vision as the cold wind rushes past me.. working up a sweat clad in my cosy trench coat, the autumn leaves swirling around me as i cruise past Melbourne museum, Brunswick and Lygon streets. I live with an Indoenesian couple and their kid, Audrey, and so far its working fine. But it’s not the same as being at home. I have to constantly watch that i clean up after myself and don’t leave a scerrick of mess anywhere. The apartment is lovely, on Victoria parade, with a roof top pool and gym. No complaints there...

But I have also left Chirny williams ( as of tomorrow) and I’m starting work at DFO, Spencer Street. This has only happened in the last couple of days, it wasn’t part of the plan. So im now feeling kind of nostalgic, after all Ive been at Chirny for 3 years. i might be back there , but i doubt it considering i don’t intend on moving back home. Thinking about all the people that have been there since i started: crazy Cheryl, gorgeous Melissa, my second mum, the beautiful Michelle, Fabbo, the lovely Stacey, Steph – who became my favourite person in the world for a while, then Nat – who became my favourite person in the world for a while too, Steph Chu who is too lovely for words, Bek and Orsh, two of my best friends now, and Adriana who is top quality too. I kind of feel its the right time to move on though…. i hope. I’m feeling a little displaced though. I think I could describe it that im in the ‘buildingsroman’ part of my life, to use a lit term… the buildings-roman novel is a ‘coming of age’ novel, about the time when a person passes from childhood to adult hood (not puberty, lol) but travels through the events that will shape them as an adult. I have pretty much gone out on my own, without much help or guidance from anyone, and now its up to me to figure my stuff out for myself. It’s kind of exciting, a little scary.

Right now I can’t stop listening to The Cardigans and The Audreys. Two completely different bands, but they are both amazing in a way that i can’t explain! When i listen to The Cardigans I somehow feel content with life and its inadequacies. Not that they glorify love and loss, but they contend with it in a poetic way, they make it beautiful. You don’t have to be in a relationship to understand this love. it is the love and conflict in all relationships, the friendships, the ‘are we more than friend’ships, the one night stands, everything. They make me think alot about love, and i dont think its what i really see in relationships around me. I see convenience. Anyway, know the person that i love the most is someone who won’t ever reciprocate, but when I listen to The Cardigans, as corny as this is going to sound, i get this kind of beauty out of that sense of loss. This idea also makes me think of something from Dostoyevsky’s ‘Notes from underground’. I really did NOT enjoy this book, but it did raise a coupel of interesting ideas, one being when ‘the underground man’ asks whether man might enjoy suffering just as much as happiness. I think in some kind of way, i agree. I’m probably going to look back on this and cringe at my own sopiness, but time is of the essence and i had to get this sentiment down in some shape or form.

I love the city. I love the fact that I realise how little i know about the world. Everyday I learn something new, a cliche that i could never actually say in high school. I am astounded at how much I have changed in the last year and a bit. If i were to write a timeline of significant experiences that have occured in my life thus far, a completely disproportionate chunk of them them have occured in the last year.

I get a ridiculous kick out of just being among people at uni who are, although all so different to me, so like me. I want to jump up and down in my tutes with the sheer joy that someone else , that other people, think in the same way as me, have the same questions as me, appreciate the same things. Its like this huge wake up call saying ‘YOU ARE NOT ALONE!’ I always felt like that in school, although i had the loveliest group of friends and most of the people in my year level were great, that I was just a bit out of the mould, i didn’t fit the prototype school would have liked, I was somehow different (not in a superior way, more in a problematic kind of way). I was interested in things no one else seemed to be interested in. The things everyone else was interested in bored me. At uni, in my classes, everyone is different. There is no ‘right’ way to be. You can’t be too weird. I get to sit there and listen to people describe and bring to life thoughts and feelings that I share, and I want to shout ‘YES! I feel that too!!’ This is going to sound nuts, but it is so liberating. I no longer feel like I have to be a certain person that I’m not. That I have to fit into a little mould, a nice little version of myself that would suit other people. I can think how I want, behave how i want, wear what I want. uni is a forum for self discovery.

Anyway, with those thoughts down i shall push on into the big wide world of overdue essays.

thanks for listening