Fragments of current life

Driving two or three times a week to Logan and points south.

Negatives: a lot of time in the car, overdoses of exhaust from crawling along in first gear on the motorway, sore neck, creaky knees, having to go to Logan.

Positives: overcoming my fear of driving to unknown places. A handful of hours a week on several of the busiest roads in SE Queensland followed by weaving around the backstreets of Logan and surrounds cured that; getting to catch up on lots of music.

Hanging out in places that have:

a) red leatherette sofas in the waiting room.

b) restroom walls entirely covered in graffiti or complicated lifestyle choice information.

c) staff behind locked glass screens.

d) signs on aforementioned sofas informing me that “any person found in the act of graffiti or defacing property…will be charged with wilful damage.”

Discovering that:

a) signs regarding defacing sofas and stern instructions to “wash hands properly” make me want to do the opposite and I’m not even a troubled “youf.”

b) there are actually some nice parts of Logan though mainly bits they inherited from other places (like Beenleigh).

c) there are parts of Logan that do look like downtown LA. You know that concreted-in LA River in The Terminator? I parked next to its twin last week. I felt the urge to go motorcycle riding.

d) after driving 100km or so roundtrips, dropping off or picking up the kids and doing the errands, I have no desire to write or in fact, even stir off the sofa once I sit down at night.

Remembering that this is only a short project and life will return to something approaching normal eventually, if I remember what that is.