Cafe #24: Issus Cafe Bar

Cafe #24: Issus Cafe Bar

Date: Friday, 13 July 2007, 5.20pm
Location: 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!