Date: Saturday, 11 August 2007, 4.30pm
Location: 2 Acland Street, St Kilda
Coffee: $3.20 - latte, very average
Reading: Truth: A Guide
This is an industrial-style cafe/bakery, with grey stone floors, silver stage lights hanging from exposed black piping and grey cement brick walls, although there is purple inch-thick attached walling behind the bar on one side of the upper level and shelves and a fridge on the other. Up a wide set of four wooden plank steps is the pastry counter, fronting a steel-screen backdrop from which wicker baskets of bread hang (supported by a shelf). Behind that I can see a sous-chef working and in front the 'il Fornaio' hangs dramatically in large, long matte-brass lettering. On the lower level there are grey plastic chairs and wooden tables, as well as low leopard-print benches on either side of the stairs. There is pounding industrial trance music in the background (not that I really know what industrial trance is but I think it must be this). The cafe is loud with vibrating voice waves, which is good for reading because no words are distinguishable and thus distracting.
I wanted the last little chocolate tart but someone bought it out from under me.
It has been a beautiful warm morning. I was out late at a party last night. It began as a work party on the Clayton campus, and after drinking wine and beer courtesy of the bookshop the leftover party-goers were locked out of the venue at 10.30. Several of us made our way to S's house - which turned out to be a real treat. He lives with an older man in an art deco pink-brick house with an enormous second-level balcony with a view, two enormous bathrooms (one a green and pink marble Barbie dream bathroom), a bar and generally full of stuff - strange instruments and statues of camels, worn oriental carpets and other assorted cool and kitsch clutter. It was a fun place to be in and we drank and danced and ogled the house. I went home with a fellow workmate to her house in Balaclava, right next to Glick's Bakery.
In the morning I bought latkes and perogies (YAY!) from a Polish deli and ate a sesame bagel and a slice of poppyseed cake at a bakery, then took a long tram ride home. After napping and showering and making latkes with a side of sliced soft-boiled egg and avacado for A and, I decided to say hello to the beach that I didn't have time to greet when I was in Balaclava. I walked to Smith St, picked up a few cans of Amy's refried black beans from Soul Foods, then caught the tram to St. Kilda. I meant to go t Port Melbourne but I didn't quite know when to get off.
By the time I arrived at the beach around 3.30pm it was no longer warm and a bit windy so I only walked the beach for a bit and then found this cafe. I may walk a bit more along the tram line and then hop on when I'm cold. I expect to have a quiet night at home, hopefully finish this book about truth and maybe work on some Heidegger. I am still having trouble concentrating and still feel very melancholy a lot of the time. I don't feel like me. The party last night was a good distraction. I need more parties!
A and I are having one next weekend but we have little idea of who will come as only several of
A's friends have RSVP'd.
Alright, I'm off.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Cafe #25: Upper Crust Bread Shop
Date: Monday, 06 August 2007
Location: 206 Smith Street
Coffee: latte - $2.50, okay
It has been a while since I last wrote. I have been working, studying and being cold. I only have five hours of work this week, which feels like freedom, except isn't. I will have to find another job as freedom requires paying one's rent.
The past couple of weeks have been mixed. I went to see Ian McKellan in The Seagull wth A, S and F. It was lovely to be at the theatre and see Sir Ian, but the play was only okay and his part wasn't large. I didn't get a ticket to King Lear, which I will forever regret.
My thesis began to come together this past week as well. I will look at complementarity as a definition of postmodernism and play Badiou (ethics), Barthes (literature) and Derrida (Law and Literature) off each other, all through Copenhagen, showing different types of complementarities between and wthin the texts. I may organise the thesis around metaphorical/theoretical common concepts such as void, transgression, supplement, etc, and add some Bataille and Sartre in the mix as well. I feel much more settled having a plan and like I have more time to do paid work since I've done most of the reading already. Of course I will read these books again and again but the initial familiarity is there.
This week has been difficult because I found out my rent is going up in October. I have to move. If things work out A will move with me, but 'if' is the key problematic. I need to find a new job (this was the first week I was offered only one shift). And I've found out A has a new girlfriend and peace of mind, which despite my pleasure for him is hard for me. After a few phone conversations with S and my dad and my mom last night I'm feeling much better an am able to focus on study today.
Just earlier I had a meeting with a lovely young woman interested in doing some publicity work for lip as part of her university course, so hopefully that'll get lip some money for the next issue.
I am sitting outside today, which is lovely. Hopefully the worst of the winter is behind us and the days will remain edged with warmth.
My tabletop is painted with a red-headed girl in a blue bikini with white flowers, laying on a red, white and blue striped towel on the beach with water, mountains and a sailing ship behind her.
Location: 206 Smith Street
Coffee: latte - $2.50, okay
It has been a while since I last wrote. I have been working, studying and being cold. I only have five hours of work this week, which feels like freedom, except isn't. I will have to find another job as freedom requires paying one's rent.
The past couple of weeks have been mixed. I went to see Ian McKellan in The Seagull wth A, S and F. It was lovely to be at the theatre and see Sir Ian, but the play was only okay and his part wasn't large. I didn't get a ticket to King Lear, which I will forever regret.
My thesis began to come together this past week as well. I will look at complementarity as a definition of postmodernism and play Badiou (ethics), Barthes (literature) and Derrida (Law and Literature) off each other, all through Copenhagen, showing different types of complementarities between and wthin the texts. I may organise the thesis around metaphorical/theoretical common concepts such as void, transgression, supplement, etc, and add some Bataille and Sartre in the mix as well. I feel much more settled having a plan and like I have more time to do paid work since I've done most of the reading already. Of course I will read these books again and again but the initial familiarity is there.
This week has been difficult because I found out my rent is going up in October. I have to move. If things work out A will move with me, but 'if' is the key problematic. I need to find a new job (this was the first week I was offered only one shift). And I've found out A has a new girlfriend and peace of mind, which despite my pleasure for him is hard for me. After a few phone conversations with S and my dad and my mom last night I'm feeling much better an am able to focus on study today.
Just earlier I had a meeting with a lovely young woman interested in doing some publicity work for lip as part of her university course, so hopefully that'll get lip some money for the next issue.
I am sitting outside today, which is lovely. Hopefully the worst of the winter is behind us and the days will remain edged with warmth.
My tabletop is painted with a red-headed girl in a blue bikini with white flowers, laying on a red, white and blue striped towel on the beach with water, mountains and a sailing ship behind her.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Cafe #24: Issus Cafe Bar
Date: Friday, 13 July 2007, 5.20pmLocation: 8 Centre Place, CBD
Coffee: latte, good
Reading: The Accursed Share
It has been on and off raining again today. I feel I should learn to enjoy rain, or at least not dislike it so much. After all it is only water. Yet I don't like having spotty spectacles and a wet hemline and worrying whether the books in my bag will get water-warped. Stepping over puddles. I wish it would stop raining, at least during the day. I do like the sound of the rain on our tin roof, which has still a comforting ring to it.
The cafes across the lane are closed up and the loud soul music has thankfully stopped. Apparently this evening music is an attraction of this particular laneway, but of course I was reading (Bataille) and didn't welcome it.
Issus is small, cute and dark, like the other cafes on these central lanes. Weathered granite floor and wooden tables, a row of square cushions and tables outside the open front, a gilded mirror written with menu and a red-jacketed waitress with a nice smile. I am distracted by all the people walking to the train or to occasions from work or shopping, hoping that I might see someone I know. I've had a quiet day and am planning on a quiet night - more reading, email, writing, maybe a video. Cook a big green curry.
Reading Bataille gives me more to work with on the whole French theory thing: absence, void, transgression. For Bataille, experiencing the freedom of being a subject (labour makes us objects) that comes from intense emotion such as laughter or pain is the experience of NOTHING. The object dissolves; the subject is a void; murder is the transgression of an object demanding subjecthood. It doesn't make much experiential sense to me but is a pretty mythology of modernism.
I had my first afternoon of work at the Caulfield campus bookshop. It felt better, probably because only five hours rather than 8 1/2. Next week is second semester rush. Can't wait to see if it is as chaotic as everyone makes out. Looking forward to the extra money the extra hours will bring. But not to waking up at 7am three days next week. Am practicing going to bed by 1am and setting alarm for 8.00am instead of ten. I was out of bed by 9.30 this morning. Progress!
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