Cafe #27: Achillion Cakes Coffee Lounge

Date: Sunday, 9 September 2007, 4.00pm
Location: High Street, Preston
Coffee: $2.50 - latte, weak; Greek pastry - $3.00, beautiful (and not even chocolate!)

It is another sunny, beautiful day in Melbourne. I am in Preston and it is like small town NSW, except ethnic: one long main street of shops, mostly closed except for Asian $2.00 shops and Turkish and Greek and Asian bakeries and take-aways. I have yet to wander around a residential section of town, but I did darken the pathways of the large and empty markets, imagining the chaos, seafood and junk that would brighten the brick pavement on market days. After a couple of productive hours with Derrida this morning I went for a short walk with Ann in Fitzroy Gardens and then kept on my way up the train line to Preston to check it out. I felt with Derrida I was finally locating my problem - that in his attempt to overthrow the traditional phlosophical definition of truth as 'correspondence to reality' he tries to do away with reality rather than redefine truth reality or correspondence. Doing away with correspondence is the post-modernist project in general but this particular text of Derrida's (The First Session) attempts to get rid of the signified or imitated by first making it absent or nothing and then joining it with the signifier or copy so that they become two things that are no longer dfferent but the same, yet still represent or express difference. It doesn't make sense - how can you even work with nothing? At least Bataille's nothing has presence - it is presence without thinghood. Derrida's nothing doesn't have presence or thinghood so how can it exist as difference? Difference from what else that is not a thing or present? Because presence doesn't seem to exist either!

At the Lilith (Melbourne University feminist journal) fundraiser on Thursday evening I got talking to two American post-grads - male - about criticial theory and relativism and post-modernity. It was a culturally-awakening conversation. I felt condescended to. One guy
laughed at me at one point and questioned my application of complementarity after admitting that he wasn't familiar with the theory. When I talk with Australian males I do not feel condescended to, nor stupid, nor laughed at, nor disrespected. Often the guys know more than I do but they still honour my views and understanding within the stage of study I am at and I never feel like they think I am stupid or wrong. Such discussions can get fiery, but always enjoyable, respectful and informative. The experience with the American students made me feel glad I am here and not there.

Otherwise there is not much to report. Ann and I will be moving to Hawthorn in a few weeks and I want to book return flights to Canberra so I can pick up some more things (music!!, coffee plunger, more clothes) and figure out what to do with the rest of my stuff. I'm also hankering to visit friends.

The past couple of weeks have been productive in terms of thesis reading and writing. Now that house-hunting is over I feel much freer, though job-hunting and applying still usurps time.
Last weekend I interviewed at a bookshop in Brighton and said hi to the beach, but the bookshop owner has not offered me a job. Yesterday Ann and I saw 'Once', a nice but melancholy Irish movie about a songwriter who is approached by a chipper and stubborn Czechoslovakian girl. He find out she is a pinao player, singer and songwriter and they make an album together. The film is a feature-length music video for their album. The naturalism of the acting and cinematography is lovely and the songs quite good, if a bit sad.

Okay, I am off to explore the nonresidential parts of Preston before the sun goes down.


Addendum: I just found the Old Fire station Cafe and Gallery. There's a band with a female crooner and ladies knitting taking up most of the tables. A dull red-orange stone floor, vinyl chairs and laminex tables. A couch and a courtyard, brick walls, a big open space. Cool.