At Countdown at 8.30 pm, later than scheduled due to the unforeseen kidnapping detours, I bought grape juice, intending to fend off drinking. But shortly after I arrived at Gilbert's I walked over to the bottle store and bought a bottle of wine. It was Hardy's Sauvignon Blanc, $8; it tasted a little metallic, and very little like wine. During the ensuing conversation between Gilbert, Matt, Pat and I, I said that the first Destiny's Child video was dull, but I liked the ones where they looked tall. Pat told me later that he was so angry at me for dissing the first Destiny's Child video he couldn't speak.

We spent the rest of the night at Meren's watching Rambo. Meren, the beautiful hostess, with her very white skin and curly hair, made us two jars of popcorn, one using oil and one butter.

Saturday 28 July Went to garage sales this morning. On the corner of High and Manse St, a creepy guy selling some electronic equipment and yo-yos, who spoke as if through a vocoder. Duane didn't seem to be scared of him, but soon I had to go back out to the car. His sale was in a garage area that was down a ramp. He looked like a victim of early 80s punk; skinny with a grey face, wearing faded thin black jeans and a grey shirt made out of that stiff cotton only used in the 80s. Or maybe 90s, in Hallensteins.

At the Otago Woodturners Association Garage Sale: a lot of friendly old people, who've obviously still managed to retain some kind of community contact and thus have a reason for their friendliness, selling old computers and record players and other junk cheaply. It was raining lightly on the sofas and couches outside the sale. A big ash-block building that must have been their headquarters. Not a lot of wood. At the end I bought a standard lamp. I said to the tracksuited middle aged lady, "How much for the standard lamp?' She said to a very old man standing next to her, 'Well, it's yours. How much do you want?' He wouldn't say so I offered five dollars and got it for six, at which he looked sick and quiet.

Thursday 26 July mA day of glaring identities. Opposite me in the booths at Arc: a person I've seen around who has a masculine identity, she wears big dark glasses, and her male friend, who naturally does too:

Boy - So, did you see Tool last time they came?
Girl - Fuck yeah, of course.
Boy - I bet you were one of those silly little girls up the front.
Girl - Fuck no, I was not. Unless some of them were singing along to Death Sex Machine* (she sings some of the words in a surly voice.)

*Something like that.

Then after they're gone, a hippy boy comes along with his two female hangers on, who have feminine identities.

He sits down and says in his 'tough' voice, without looking at either girl, just looking down at the table,

Fucking cool. Dirty dub.

One of the girls giggles and says flirtatiously, 'What's that?'

He replies, 'That's what these beats are. Dirty dub.' He obviously doesn't really know.

So you all, and me too, make me puke! But only today, cause I didn't get what I wanted.

July 18, Wednesday ¸H u?rB? u?·?

yeah this is what i was left with after some stupid thing happened to my web page and it vanished.

it's so syntactical.

i don't feel like i have anything to write about. i don't do anything anymore ... i drift between the record store and the shoe store, looking for snoop doggy dogg and sneakers. snoop doggy dogg is the real slim shady. to listen to his voice. to feel his calming and majestic presence. to see him arrayed above me with the white light of music videos behind him, the combination of evil and good permitted to earthly rulers.

but actually it is drizzling and i don't have anything to listen to, i just see myself occasionally in shop windows, and also a girl wearing a red raincoat, but that's only slightly irritating.

duane just whacked me on the arm to show me that our flatmate read on the internet that we had broken up. she sent him an e-mail about it. he was blushing.

so i don't have anything to write about. i had a headache for two days. it goes away at home and comes back on the street, especially in the mall. why? i like the mall.

in every boy a single boy is refracted. but also he is a girl.

July 16. Outside on the hills I can see the unreal light, the hills are dry and the light is pale yellow, it's uncertain where it is coming from because the sky is grey.

I hate the presence of strangers, the girls who come into the computer laboratory with their glossy dyed ponytails and their new shoes and back packs, and look around at everybody's computer screens for a few moments before sitting down.

July 3 I had a utopian vision as I was walking into Otago University today. A couple of workmen were wearing overalls, which looked very practical, and I imagined that everybody wore these dark blue overalls with long sleeves, the only difference between them being the colour of the collars, which would symbolise what part of society people belonged to - for instance, student, lecturer, electrician, etc. This seemed very pleasant, and I imagined that everybody would consider themselves a 'citizen', and be proud of their 'collar', no matter what it designated. Because all citizens would make a contribution to society, inherently and - tautologically. For instance, supposing that white collars signified unemployed people. These people would consider themselves, and be considered, valuable members of society, for as almost everybody knows, without acknowledging it, a pool of unemployed people is a necessary consequence of productive capitalism. These people suffer from low wages and lack of structure in order that other people may receive the benefits of capitalist society. Of course, the 'job' of being unemployed has benefits too, as it rightly should. At the moment, unemployed people generally consider themselves lazy and either secretly or manifestly have a low self image, but this is completely unnecessary, as they are a more essential part of society than many other workers - producers of junk mail spring to mind. However, I see that I have fallen back into the mind set of the current society. In my utopian vision, it would not occur to people to rank the means of contribution to society in this way. I don't exactly understand why. But wouldn't it be pleasant for a lecturer and a painter to pass each other in a hallway in university, and be wearing the same overalls, and recognise each other as equally valuable and necessary? Perhaps the reason that 'contributions' to society wouldn't be ranked is because in this advanced civilisation, people would have come to accept the absurdity of existence, and see the pleasant joke in thinking that someone could contribute 'more' or 'less' to something that isn't of any inherent worth (ie, society). As a sort of mutual joke, they would have set up this social arrangement in the most pleasant way possible taking into consideration the limitations and demands of the human psyche.

Last night I stayed up late reading "In the Open: Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic." This book has had a profound and horrible effect on me. The homeless alcoholic in the book - or the persona, I can't tell whether this is a real document or not, but it's a very clever fake if it is one has an extremely flat writing style, and spends his time, 8 or 10 hours a day in some cases, writing in his diary about economics, his drinking, etc, and most disturbingly, his metaphysical ideas. These are all variations on the theme of God as a malevolent demon.

When I finally fell asleep last night I dreamed that two of my friends from high school, Tristan and Joanne, were near death and unconscious, but for some reason I carried them around with me to the movies, lectures, in the car ... then, that my grandfather was molesting me and finally, that my father died ... I woke up with the feeling of clinical depression for the first time in approximately 8 months. It was difficult to believe that it could be so, but it was ... I was naturally determined not to allow it to progress, so I walked the long way to my office (I have a stupid idea that you can cure depression by walking until it goes away, like you can cure hiccups by holding your breath. It's like challenging your body - seeing who can last the longest ... but for me it's quite realistic, because depression sticks in my chest, as if I had a cold - its very different to anxiety, that radiates outwards into your fingertips and is vibrant, and even addictive - I can't imagine ever seeking real depression, as opposed to melancholy ... anyhow while I'm walking it feels like whatever is stuck in my chest is being shaken into pieces and dissolved).

But the worst thing was that when I do feel depression again, rarely now, I become concerned about it happening to people that I know, most of all my little sister of course, because I am most protective of her, but also anyone who I suspect may be sad ... sadness is ok, but not this particular type of sadness, which is physically binding ... to think that someone I am supposed to protect might grow up and have to endure this, and that I can't prevent it from occurring, motivates me strongly to do something about it. Ideally, I'd like to be able to talk openly about it to anyone, because the other thing that feels like it could shake the physical stuckness out is to cry and complain openly to someone, for a certain period of time, without feeling that you were in any way imposing on them or making them feel that they had a debt to you. (It's strange that crying is considered to represent sadness, when it's so common to cry for happiness as well - it doesn't represent sadness at all, but the most perfect expression of excess emotion possible to the 'human animal'. I'm speaking, of course, in the tone of the book I have been reading - the author uses the phrase the 'human animal' and indeed, he is someone for whom all 'spirit' seems to have been drained from existence. My consciousness has been infected by the homeless man - and although this happens with every book that I read, and I'm sure that it happens to all readers, it isn't really noticeable unless you read something with an unpleasant consciousness. Which makes me question whether my consciousness is 'good enough' to impose on other people, even here.) This position of 'openness' isn't one that I'm in at the moment with relation to anybody, that doesn't bother me unduly, but I would still like somehow to make it known to other sufferers from this affliction that they could come to me, because I understood ...

As a sort of 'cure' I went to the sea this afternoon. I have to admit I was feeling faithless, but as soon as I came to the sea my faith was restored. That's not to say it worked perfectly - but the whiteness and shininess of the sea, and the distance to the horizon which of course seems much shorter when you are by the sea, and most importantly the noise, which was immediately very loud when I walked down the sand dunes, like having the static on the radio playing, much louder than I expected - all these impressive physical facts I had forgotten, but they're perfectly willing to surprise you and shake you out of your stuckness, just like walking but a sudden SURPRISE! that is more powerful that 500 steps - that's not to say that it worked perfectly, but neither can I say that it didn't work at all! The physical immenseness and noise of the sea, and the suggestion of travelling freely, I claim is the best cure possible. Mountains and lakes, no! I grew up by the sea and went there for a cure anytime.

Tea with my downstairs neighbour

"It won't take a minute . . . so, what is it you do up there all day, hm? Typing away, are you? better watch out your fingers don't get stuck to the keyboard, he he he he . . .to be honest, I don't see the point of doing those what you call ems . . . what is it you do again? oh, p - d - . . . yes, I'm a very practical man, you see. Practical. I've never been to university. I received all my training at technical institutions. And let me say this, everything that I've ever learnt, I never learnt anything you couldn't use to keep the paupers - keep the paupers - paupers - keep the old um, bailiffs away from the door. I never learnt anything you couldn't use to make money, is what I mean. Now, you see . . . don't take offense here, but this is the way I see it . . . what you're doing is basically useless, isn't it? What are you going to do with it when you've finished, hm? What are you going to do? You see, you're just .. . em . . frittering away your time, aren't you? he he he .. . My daughter's doing something like what you're doing. . . a load of rubbish . . . what's that? no, not english, I don't know, just some nonsense . . . no, it's not a PhD . . . oh, she's in first year, you may as well not ask me anything about it, because I don't know a thing. but the funny thing about it is, she looks at me doing my programming and she doesn't understand a word of it. Not a word. So we're equal in a way, aren't we? Now let me ask you this - how do you justify it? . . . Hm. Oh, the tea won't be long. Look down there, would you. I've got all the equipment . . . I could sell it at auction if the worst comes to the worst, but lets hope it doesn't come to that. But those bloody bank people, they won't think outside the square. No vision. No vision at all, you see. That's the problem with this country. They expect you to be trained, but they won't pay for it. Bloody low wages, too. They can't think outside the square. That's what it's all about. If you asked me to sit down and design a circuit board, I could. I can do the whole process myself. Design to manufacture. Now, when I saw you working at your computer upstairs, I knew straight off, it's a 386. Not enough memory for windows 95. Working in a 3.11 environment, that's what you've got. You don't know much about computers, do you? No, I can see that by looking at you. Well, there's more advanced systems than that . . . What do I think is wrong with this country . . .I'll tell you. . . . . . .. . . . Two things. One, they don't encourage small business, they don't know how to set up the infrastructure. Two, you cannot have an open market based on an agricultural economy. But what's the use of me saying that? They have no vision . . . Oh no, it's not my daughter keeping me here. She's 21 years old, she can bloody well look after herself. If I don't get this money through soon, I'm going to buggar off. Canada, maybe. They'll lose me. I'd say that of the guys I went through technical institute with, there's 80 percent of them have buggared off. Good guys, too, knew what they were doing. All lost.'

An index to old kitty entries, my links page, and my ontological struggles. XX