Reality has always had too many heads

Sometimes I'm astounded by my own stupidity. You could even say impressed. I come from NZ where, if there's nothing else going on (often), there's always the rain, falling reliably from the grey sky. When I first came over here, I had a quip about the locals: If it's fine they say: it's always like this; if it's raining: it never rains. Now I find myself sitting here without coat or umbrella. Now my quip, if there was anyone to make it to, would be: it's too wet to go out for an umbrella.

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It's like the way I'm unable to resist the temptation to buy trousers that are too small for me. Like the pair of black Levis (Made in Columbia) I picked up from the Sally Army store in Five Dock for five bucks on Friday. Long black legs, tight like a spider, brand new Foxton Straights ... it's just the belly roll that trembles above the waistband, the silver button that must bust someday soon, if I don't bust first. At least they solve the conundrum: belt / no belt.

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But doncha love the rain? I do. And maybe getting my new jeans soaking wet when I go up to the shops for a few necessaries, maybe that'll help them strrrreeeeeetch. It's not all constriction: if it rains for a week, as they ('they') say it will, then I'll just sit here like I did today, tapping out a few scenes in the morning, mumbling through the ms of Fata Morgana in the afternoon, looking for revelations but finding only typos. And listening to the burn of I'm Not There which someone (thanks M) was kind enough to send me today.

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Wasn't going to go to the movie but in the end I couldn't keep away. It's actually a good film. I was going to say great, but who knows what that means any more? A lot of people have raved about Cate Blanchett's role but for me, while a marvellous act of mimicry, it's the one sequence in the film that felt redundant - though perhaps only if you've seen the Pennebaker doco that that part recreates. I mean, why bother? Even then I felt ok about being there - just kicked back and listened to the soundtrack.

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The one unforgettable performance is Heath Ledger's and I would have said that before he died, which I did. He plays an actor trapped in a role. Like Marcel Marceau's cage of silence that cannot be breached, that cannot be escaped from, that you take with you everywhere you go and is with you even when you don't go anywhere. Or do. Go, I mean.

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The song that pulled me most at the time was Tom Verlaine's version of Cold Irons Bound. Late 1990s Dylan re-imagined as the Velvet Underground three decades earlier. Totally eerie. I'm beginning to hear voices / And there's no-one around ... chilled me to the bone.

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Meanwhile, I'm meditating on something Sidney Nolan wrote in a letter to Bert Tucker. 26 January 1950. He was in Wahroonga, up there on the North Shore; Bert was in Europe. Sid said: I know what Nibbi means when he calls Australians brutal but I believe it is something in Melbourne that he refers to. In all the travelling round of the last two or three years I have found nothing of the cold stupidity I remember Melb. for. Sydney is almost a gracious and stimulating city. Melbourne is like badly written Kafka. I'm not saying I agree with this but I do like the way it's put. Gino Nibbi was an Italian who ran The Leonardo Bookshop where Melburnians gathered for news of the Beyond in the 1930s and 40s.

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And then for light relief, there's John Forbes' Collected Poems that I bought at a funny / sad commemorative event for him on Saturday night. And Berlin Noir, a trilogy of Chandleresque thrillers by Philip Kerr, two set in Nazi Germany before the war, and the third in Vienna in the chaos afterwards. Well, the road is rocky and the hillside's mud / Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood ...