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A man came to me today to talk about death. About the cancer inside his mother that had taken her away.
I had never met this man; and he had never met me. I stood listening while tears rose from behind his eyes and shimmered from behind his glasses.
I did not say sorry. I am not apathetic to anguish. Rather, I feel that offering an apology belittles grief. It implies that the offerer had some part in the occurrence and if he wanted, could have mitigated its passing.
I listened to his tale and did not avert my gaze when his tears erected an amorphous barrier between he and I.
His mother was still with him, I said. Not in spirit or ghost but as an entry into his own history. Were he to unfurl his life like a great cloth sail, she would be sewn into the fabric. He could roll it up and carry it with him. Then he could pause and let the cloth unravel. She would be there accepting a cup of tea. Driving a car. And if he wanted to see, eking out her last words before her power source went out.
One can not know waking until one has been deprived of its antithesis: slumber.
As I type I have been deprived of sleep for many hours. Within the hour I will have been awake for 24 hours.
As is said, sleep is not a commodity that one can recapture. Once the night and its prospect for sleep has gone unexploited, that opportunity will not come again. I will curse the sun’s light whilst I seek day time slumber in vain, but I know now as I will now then (tossing amongst sweat soaked sheets of the day) that sleep is a nocturnal creature and that which can be found amongst the day light is no substitute.
What does the sensation of the perpetually woken feel like? Tiredness, nausea, hunger are all travelling companions of the insomniac. But, it is the lack of sensation that is the true marker.
The skin and its magnitude of sensory servants go on strike. The eyes with their power of interpreting light become sloths. The limbs become slow.
Conversely, the mind remains sharp, but dull. It keeps watch armed with a blunt scalpel. It commands lazy blackening eyes to flicker from side to side keeping post. In its madness the mind begins to fear that which it desires most: sleep. It commands its faculties to resist, but secretly it earns for its comatose embrace.
Precarious. Wonderfully exhilarating; powerfully debilitating.
Those who seek life in all its uncertainties know the feeling of existing in a place that demands more than the meager exertions of living within “comfort zones”.
My personal experience is one of induced poverty. Like St Francis, Buddha, and George Orwell, I have cast asunder the trapping of wealth and security and instead replaced them with fleeting splendours of knowledge, intellectual stimulus, and momentary glories. None of these things assists in the settling of debts or the shoeing of my feet.
But alas, this place, the one I inhabit now, is one of my own making. The bed has been unmade and now I lie amongst crumpled sheets.
Paradoxically, but pragmatic in couplet, this endevour in not a quest for tribulation alone. Nietzsche did say that that which does not kill us makes us stronger. But Nietzsche died an unhappy man, albeit a strong one, but equally as miserable. No, my trekking within the realms of trial and toil is intended to see me reenter the world at a far more satisfying rung.
I am a University student first. Fiancée, friend, receptionist, teacher, brother, runner, manager, son, administrator, uncle, all file in behind that former title.
This is not intended to be a forum of woe and whine, rather it is a place where the miseries of endevour can be read and known. But as you read you already know as knowing does; The Knife Edge.
September 20th 2007 03:29
As most of you have probably deduced by now; SecretMelbourne concerns itself with all things Melbourne. And as some others of have also deduced; SecretMelbourne also concerns itself with all things philosophical about living in Melbourne. Secretmelbourne is really the reflection of a life, any life; your Nana's possibly, led in a city.
Now after I have finished defending my next action. I announce that the following post is a removal from the name sake of my site because the main event of the post takes place in another city; I shall launch into it now and we will all know what I seem to know already
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September 14th 2007 05:05
As I type I can feel the blue dye affecting my skin tone. My new jeans arrived at my work by way of courier some half an hour ago. The final step in a long journey.
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September 12th 2007 23:25
September 12th 2007 13:14
There are few other places in Melbourne that stand out like such a beacon of greed and hollow glamour as Crown Casino. Few other monumental temples to the all powerful god of cash. And his cousin credit. Few other places on earth with as much fire, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Crown Casino is a vacuum. A black hole that allows nothing to escape it’s sucking; not light, not time and especially not next week’s rent
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September 11th 2007 02:56
Last night I decided to offer myself up to a higher power. An omnipotent being. A man called Stan. Stanley Fresh Dry White.
After making this decision I felt as all people must feel when they decide to live for a greater good rather than their own gain; at peace
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Adhering to Melbourne’s standard logistical procedure of placing items of interest back from any main thoroughfare is Camy Shanghai Dumpling Restaurant on Tattersalls lane.
I have suspected a colleague of mine to be on the payroll of this restaurant given the amount of times she has filled the post lunch lull with tales of cheap dumplings bobbing in soup. So I go today with a friend to see just what she has been bashing on about
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In the crux of the warren that makes up the Block Arcade exists a spot that is as prized as a piece of steak in a lentil salad. An establishment unafraid to emblazon their mission statement proudly above the front door. An eatery that says what it does right there on the packet.
Dinkum Pies, translated as Genuine or Real pies in the Australian Dialect, could only sound more Australian if it were called "True Blue Tucker", "Bloody Beaut Baked Goods" or "Poida's Pie and Pastie Place
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