Every year, I write something here about tax deductions for artists.

 

Now, the way it works, so far as my non-existent accounting experience allows me to understand, is that if you use it for work, you get a tax deduction. So, if you write, you get a tax deduction for your new macbook pro and any subsequent extensions of warranty, which incidentally you should remember to buy (unlike some of us who are idiots and who will regret this later). If you work in film, your movie tickets are tax deductible. If you work in theatre, Kafka novels and ill-advised affairs with people who are not your girlfriend are presumably tax deductible, and if you work in a bank, well, now, I hope you have a career to fall back on.

 

(Sorry, but it's not often I get to feel clever about not having selected a career involving financial expertise and forethought).

 

But I digress. My proposal, on these pages and, well, in pubs at around tax time, is that for a writer, one's main job is observation. It is remiss, I honestly believe this, not to listen in to a conversation in a cafe or a train or, say, a hospital, if you're a writer. If you are visiting your grandma, for instance, and the nurses' staff room is next to the room your grandma shares with three bewildered men in pyjamas, you are duty-bound to listen to the shouty argument between the nursing staff. You are also well-advised to tune in to the subsequent debriefing session between the less senior nurses upon the departure of the most shouty. To not listen would be like skipping a lecture, or not reading a book that's going to be on the exam.

 

I have perfected the laid-back stance of "I'm not really listening, I'm unaccountably interested in this piece of wood", while simultaneously being quite frozen on the spot, lest I miss a vital detail, such as one of the nurses guessing how long it would be until the senior, shouty person either left the hospital or died. Conclusions regarding shouty lady's robust health due to "not having taken a toll on her body at all" are especially important for the files I have stored in my brain for future reference. I cannot remember my bank account details, but I can remember entire conversations between people I have never met.

 

There have been several examples of this in my life recently, including yesterday, when I was walking to a workshop at the Arts Centre for my law-talking job and I heard a familiar noise. A familiar tune I couldn't quite put my finger on. All I knew was, although the tune wasn't unpleasant to listen to, I didn't like how it made me feel. After a couple of moments of concentrating on where the sound was coming from, I realised it was coming from the girl walking alongside me. It was coming from her backpack. It was her phone, loudly singing her alarm. She was wearing headphones and had no idea her alarm was screaming at her to (presumably) get out of bed. People everywhere were narrowing their eyes, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. She continued, oblivious, blaring loudly from the lump on her back.

 

It wasn't so much the fact that she was blaring that made her interesting, although I enjoyed the suggestion that but for a different set of circumstances she would, now, be waking from a heavy sleep and pausing the alarm for a few moments' reprieve. It was the effect this was having on the people around her that made the incident intruiging. United (once they figured out what was going on) in a knowing, nodding pleasure, her fellow commuters looked for co-conspirators in the naughty giggle at the expense of someone foolish. Someone we all knew, but for the grace of a slightly different morning routine, could be us.

 

This small observation, worthy of nothing on paper, indicates many things about human behaviour, about character, about time and the individual pursuit of happiness and hence story and subtext. It's a metaphor, it's symbolism, it's a theme. It's human versus technology, time versus youth, the individual versus society, good versus evil. It's just the stuff of every day life, but in the right hands (not mine perhaps, on a Tuesday evening, but I imagine Kafka would make a good fist of it) it's a mirror against which we see ourselves, even if we are bankers, who have other things on our minds right now. Even then, we can read or watch or listen to something that leads us outside of our usual contexts and into a contemplation of the way the world works. Our imagination is stimulated. You see? It's a service to the public. It could be built into the health system, so positive is its potential effect.

 

Now, where was I?

 

Oh yes.

 

Ergo, I should get a tax deduction for living.

 

 

Thank you very much and goodnight.

This morning, in the pretendy-cafe that used to be a locker room at the State Library, a young man with mop hair half-smiled at me as he took my order.

 

Young Man With Mop Hair is somewhat superior in the pretendy-cafe hierarchy. I've seen him giving orders before and telling people to go and clean up table four please and looking harried while reading rosters on clipboards and so forth. Young Man With Mop Hair is not nearly as lovely as the Cute Young Thangs who used to serve me coffee and complain about their hangovers and then go missing when the RMIT design course started back up again. He seems nice, Mop, but he's not exactly engaging. You kind of get the feeling he might be thinking he's heaps better than you.

 

Now, I know from experience that when you think someone thinks they're better than you, they're usually deeply self-critical and later, at the work Christmas party or whatever, you turn out to be best friends and they've liked you all along and it reveals only one thing: how shallow and stupid and self-obsessed you must have been to have taken offence at their entirely innocent and sometimes even affectionate gaze in the first place.

 

Having said that, Mop Hair is clearly Captain Cool. Now, usually, when I go to work or go out in the evening or whatever, I wear normal clothes. Nice clothes. Not, you know, fashionable clothes exactly, but I look okay. When I come to the library, and hence the pretendy-cafe, I wear tracksuit pants and a hooded jumper. I want to be comfortable while I work. Also, as I have stated many times, I would be happy to wear one of those stud-buttoned full body suits that babies wear if I didn't think it would embarrass my loved ones and bring shame upon my family. HOWEVER, I do not wear these things, and I only wear tracksuit pants and hooded tops when I'm writing or going to gym.

 

Last night, I was going to gym. A guy rode past on a bike. I kind of wasn't concentrating but was looking at Guy On Bike because I wanted to cross the road and had to wait for Guy On Bike to ride past. At the last second, Guy On Bike pretendy-smiled at me and I realised: Guy On Bike was Captain Cool Mop Hair Guy from the Pretendy-Cafe! For a few seconds I felt like a pillock for wearing tracksuit pants and a hooded top in the street as well as in the library and hoped vainly that he didn't think it was some kind of uniform, and then I wondered whether he thought I'd been staring at him on the bike, and then I realised I was an idiot for even purporting to care.

 

This morning, in the pretendy cafe, I deliberately went up to the other guy, who smiles a lot, and waited in line for him to serve me.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere:

 

NEXT PLEASE!

 

It was Captain Mop.

 

Hello, he said. (Did I detect a bit of a tone of "I saw you last night in a different context - what an interesting development in our arms-length coffee-based social ritual"?)

 

Hello, I said.

 

What's your name? He asked.

 

I told him.

 

What's yours? I asked.

 

He told me, with a half-smile. If we weren't right in the midst of becoming friends, I would have sworn that smile was slightly mocking.

 

He gave me my change. I thanked him.

 

There being a big queue, he shouted NEXT PLEASE again and on he went.

 

The next customer ordered a coffee.

 

What's your name? He asked.

 

She told him.

 

He wrote it on a cup and handed it to smiley guy. Smiley guy called out my name. My coffee was ready. It's how they determine who gets what coffee, you see. Makes a lot of sense, actually.

 

I am, it is now painfully clear, a massive loser. Captain Mop has won.

 

Still, and I know I have a vested interest in this, regardless of how much sense it makes, it does somewhat devalue the experience of ordinary discourse, don't you think? What's your name? It's kind of a personal question, too. It's revealing. It establishes a new connection. A new level of intimacy. In certain contexts, it means a great deal.

You're in a cop car. "What's your name?"

You're chatting to someone who seems rather nice. "What's your name?"

You're sure you've seen this person before but you can't quite figure it out. "What's your name?"

 

They can't take What's Your Name. Can they? Can they do that?

 

It started with Huge Icey Juice in A Bucket With A Straw shops. That was okay, I could see there was (as we say in theatre) a fourth wall there - a kind of commercial buffer that made the question less intimate. But in real life? In a pretendy cafe? With a grumpy dude who thinks you live in a tracksuit? I don't know. I feel conversationally violated.

 

The big test will be if he remembers it tomorrow. Yes, I know, I know. I shouldn't go back. But hell, for a pretentious grumpy pants, he makes a good coffee.

Dear Self Motivation,

 

I am writing this letter because I can't seem to find you. Are you in town? Are you drunk? When we all left Bundanon, did you stay there? Have you left me for someone else? Is it Zadie Smith? It's Zadie Smith isn't it. She gets all the self motivation. She gets up before she goes to bed. She writes book after book and wins prize after prize. I hope you realise she's just using you. I hope you realise you're the only thing I've got.

 

Look, I know you must be confused right now. I was all wrapped up in you for a whole month in Bundanon and I admit I've gone cold on you since then. I guess I took you for granted. I admit that.

 

Remember the good times? Remember the looks on the faces of the people in the Melbourne Uni Law School front office when we rode our bike into the actual office, panting and red in the face, and handed in our essay at one minute past five? Remember the time we rewrote an entire play because our hard drive died and we had to start again from scratch? Remember learning all those lines for Three Sisters that time? Remember how we used to go to gym?

 

So I know Zadie's probably great. I know she probably does what you ask, when you ask it, and the rest of her life isn't full of boring distractions like bills that need to be paid, washing that needs to be sorted, life that needs to be lived and so on, and I bet she hasn't got Foxtel, but listen, you mean a lot to me. I can't do it without you.

 

Please come back to me. I'll do whatever it takes. Zadie Smith gets up early. You want me to get back early? I can't do it without you. See how that works? We're a team. A real team.

 

I even cancelled a few social things. I know how you love that. Meet me tomorrow at the library. I'll be holding a red carnation.

 

Yours,

 

L

I haven't written much lately.

 

It's like Life knew that I was escaping it during Bundanon and now it's catching me up.

 

Talk amongst yourself. I'll be back in a minute.

Today, I'm back in the library for the first time since before our residency at Bundanon. It's exam time in here so there are lots of people asleep on desks, wikipedia open in front of them to an entry on the history of Russia at the turn of the century, iPods blaring into their exhausted sub-conscious minds.

 

For the entire morning, due to my computer having been reset when my hard-drive broke at Bundanon, I had no access to the library internet. This was obviously annoying to those thousands of people who were undoubtedly attempting to contact me, but it also led to me doing four hours of uninterrupted writing. Not since Bundanon etc.

 

The one thing I wish, sometimes, when I come to the State Library, is that I could play chess. Upstairs, there is a mezzanine level full of people playing chess (in their study breaks? on their days off? by mutual prior agreement? having just met?). Currently, two out of eleven of them are women. One is a child. One - a man who appears to be consulting a book - is playing against himself.

 

Perhaps this is what people did before the internet. Perhaps I should up the lady-count. How, though, does anyone have the time, when there is so much wikipedia in the world?

 

 

 

By the way, my grandma's operation went as well as can be expected. Thanks for the messages.

 

 

My grandma is in hospital today. News today that grandparents are important in a person's development. Well, as my grandmother used to discourage me from saying, er der.

 

Here are some things I learned my from my grandma:

 

1. How to write an essay (she wrote it down on a piece of A4 paper. It's never lost a customer).

 

2. How to hang washing on the line.

 

3. Banana on toast is nice with cinnamon.

 

4. Teachers are people too (and sometimes grandmas).

 

5. Nullus bastardo carborundum allegedly means don't let the bastards get you down. Whether true or not I think it's an excellent thing to learn from a grandparent.

 

6. How to take up the hem of one's pants (sadly, a lesson I have subsequently forgotten).

 

7. Being an octogenerian vegetarian is way cool.

 

8. Quiet people are quite often noticing things. Lots of things. A lot.

 

9. How to work hard and enjoy, thoroughly, cups of tea as a just reward.

 

10. How to make somebody feel better by giving them a nickname and make someone from Telstra who should have been here nine hours ago feel terrible simply by mentioning your disappointment and offering them a cup of tea.

 

 

I'd say those lessons are fairly important lessons. Bring on the grandparents and get well soon Jean.

 

This weekend in Melbourne was the football Grand Final. It's an infectious day - almost always sunny and full of the joys of early Spring. It's hard not to go to a BBQ and pretend you care about this team or that team or indeed know anything about football whatsoever.

 

I stayed in this weekend. I escaped briefly for essential things like a walk in the park with my mum, but I stayed in, mostly, and recovered from the huge week I had. Then, yesterday, I opened my laptop and I wrote. I actually did some writing.

 

Doing writing on the weekend is just like doing writing on any other day except IT'S THE WEEKEND AND EVERYONE ELSE IS RELAXING. Therefore, like most people who work on Sundays, in my head, I get paid double time. On Sunday, I made a fortune, in bonus points, self-appointed. Yay for me, and Spring, and walks in the park with my mum.