My first couple of comments! And my first mild flaming, as well. I prolly deserve it - some recent posts bordered on caddish.

Now, stuff. I'm well into my internship and have done a solid couple of weeks of trailing journalists around, which has been an education, but now I think I'd like to try writing my own story, if my pitch is good enough. It's wonderful seeing inside the organisation - I get to sit in on editors conferences, where the front page is created before my eyes. Depressing day today though - in courts, watching accused rapists and murderers wriggle and blush.

Stuff I've been thinking bout:
- Car horns as language - beeps parallel the neanderthal grunting - simple, imprecise communication. What does a beep mean, exactly? Sure, "I'm not happy", but how unhappy? What, specifically, do you want me do to? Move to the right? The left? Enter the intersection? The only subtlety is volume, and that isn't particularly informative.

- Justice as curbing selfishness. Rape, greed, most crimes are outpourings of unrestrained selfishness, without regard for the other people affected. Courts are effective because they bring the parties together, force them together, for the accused to see the victim to see the accused.

We held our housewarming last night - pretty successful, I suppose. Human detritus strewn on the median strip, broken bottles and the stench of lingering cigarettes. But lotsa people which was nice.

Been thinking about conversations a lot - the ways of entering and exiting, the choice of whether to seize on an opening line and create a space for interaction.

That's all for now - meagre post, but hey.

Life. Be in it. Whatever happened to that campaign? I loved it - rise up, fat slobs and energise. Self improve, seize the opportunities late capitalism and middle class sprawl have on offer.

Now, a dubious segue: I'm being in life at the moment, after a summer of languishing and waiting. Living in the city changes everything. First, there is no night - streetlights keep a pseudosun in the sky and sleeping feels wrong. I've been cutting down to four hours a night and it feels great. Tea in the morning, a nap in the afternoon lull and extra hours in the day. I actually feel better than when I adhere to the 8 or 10 hour rule.

My internship has started and I am loving it. I've tried to keep my naive, fresh faced intern patter under control in favour of appearing competent at all times. However, I can't seem to stop myself peppering conversations with the word "cool" when what I mean is "excellent" or some other, more professional word. I've trailed some reporters around and witnessed the construction of a story from nothing. Also, the dissolution of a story from something - one that I vox-popped for disintegrated under stony silence from necessary authorities. It's amazing - you can make something from nothing, and sometimes you can't - cos it's nothing. I've also been lucky enough to witness the creation of the front page. A small room, a group of people, talking, discussing - yup, I reckon Mark Latham's superannuation scheme should be up there, then the Spanish election result and implications for Australia. Mmm, and then the ABC strike. And that's it - that's all it is. I am amazed, and inspired. I think I do want to be a journo - this is of course presuming I can get a job in the highly competitive and arguably shrinking industry.

Otherwise, life is good, I think. Still patching my heart together but busying myself seems to be the best solution. And distance. Distance helps. I hate the whole post-relationship 'lets be friends' bullshit - I mean, having had something important, who wants to settle for less? In my (limited) experience, getting far enough away to let the dust settle in the heart is the only way to "be friends" - otherwise, frustrations build, spats start, and it turns nasty. A distance of, ooh, a month should be enough for this one I think. It's like quitting any addiction - I have to unlearn habits, relinquish the cycle of bad-but-good, good-but-bad. I have to get off the ride. And I must must must learn to break this link I make between sex and love.

Final tidbit: last night, my friend-and-housemate came into my room at 2 cos the light was still on to find me lying on my side, with vacant eyes, crying, not making any sense, like someone possessed, unable to answer questions, uncomfortable, distant, not there. He left me cos I seemed to want to be alone and I don't remember any of it. It must have been my naked subconcious, seizing the opportunity to leap to the surface, pour out the poisons and disatisfactions while no-one was looking. It's been years since I last cried in my normal state - perhaps my subconcious does it for me, saves face in an Asian kind of way, lets things flow. But it was sprung, and now I know. It's a little disconcerting, knowing that I, or part of me, was doing something somewhere sometime without my own knowledge. I mean if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?

I'm all over the place right now. Everything is shifting and changing and swirling around me. Had my heart broken; new job; new house; internship starting tomorrow. Feeling a little lost - the special kind of loneliness I get when I'm around people all the time, good people, solid people, but still these levels of distance. Been thinking about it recently, and I don't think I've ever truly loved, in the sense that love must be fully reciprocated to be whole. I should be scared and excited right now about my internship, excited about being immersed in another culture, scared about being surrounded by super-competent, driven people with no time for fools and students but I'm not, I'm still in the eye of the storm where I feel still, calm, angry. That's the heartbreak thing I guess. I've got to learn not to give out trust like it can be replenished so easily. It's a currency easily devalued and now I find I don't have so much of it left. You think you know someone and then find out you don't, not really, not ever. You find out what was said and understood was just by you, your spin, your take, your willing of something to be.

Oh, my god. I can't believe the comprehensiveness with which I have just been fucked over. (transcript ends due to rationality returning )

Useful tip: Never purchase readymade Vietnamese agar drinks unless you want to spend the day vomitting and comatose. I thought it was too cheap...

Haven't posted in a while; new house has limited internet access. Things have been happnin' around here, a change from my other house. Home was great but I'm glad I got out on my own two feet. Discoveries so far, apart from the agar no-nos: #1- Everything costs money (yeah, no shit, but still) #2 - Eltham was really just a small suburb; the city is totally different. There are lots and lots of things to do and I feel like a boy from a country town.

Apart from these fairly predictable discoveries, I have managed to find a job (I hope) at a clever little magazine which distills lots of news sources down into nice neat chunks. It seems great. Also, I was lucky enough to get an internship (as part of my course) at a great newspaper. I'm excited, but scared out of my brain and wondering seriously about my competency. Time to bone up on everything that's happened in Victoria/Australia/the world, over the last, say, hundred years.

Notes from brief travels to South Australia just discovered:
Small town, nowheres. Modern brick, sleek lines, built on coarse earth. The kind grass won't grow on without superphosphate infusions. The lawn sticks tight to the houses, clinging to their providers, here and there daring to extend a line down the slope.

Other things I've been thinking bout:
All the animals we share our lives with in urban settings also share our unique flexibility and adaptability. Cockroaches, pidgeons, rats, foxes - the changable, the ones able to accomodate unnatural modes of being, living in concrete and walking on bitumen. We dislike them for their scrawny compliance with the rules of living in a foreign place, for the way they are willing to prostitute themselves in any way to stay alive. To live in a culvery, on top of a train station, to pioneer the city in ways we have not.

Notes from staying with my gran (a grand old woman, tough as nails)
- Arthritis bulbs blooming in her fingers

And finally, a little thought on mobility. It used to be that we had to go and find the methods of communication, to put outselves in their way. Home phone, posted letters require being in a place. Now, mobiles and email addresses follow us around. The power balance has shifted.