book double feature: enon + the wind-up bird chronicle

now that i've vented a bit and actually reflected on australia i'm going to play catch up with some of the books i've been reading. i'm doing them as double features because there are some tenuous thematic connections but mostly it's just to save on time and reduce the amount of filler posts between my last one and the next australia one (giant rocks! desert! dingos! did they take the baby?! you'll have to wait and see!).

so double feature 1 of 2 (both featuring a novel by haruki murakami, so at least there's some consistency in format): enon by paul harding and the wind-up bird chronicle by haruki murakami. i saw enon on a end of year list or two and it didn't even occur to me until after i started reading it that i had read harding's previous effort, tinkers, while in korea. tinkers was a slow, moving book full of beautiful language that poured over you like molasses. the story was almost a non-story, the wandering thoughts of a dying man, something could let wash over you without stressing too much about where it was going (you knew where, he was going to die). harding continues the story of the crosby family in enon and it too deals with death. this time however it is a tragic death, the unexplainable and terrible. although the language is just as fluid and poetic, because of the subject matter it doesn't have the same calming affect as tinkers. rather, it insists on punching you in the gut. its a bit of a contradiction in substance and style. however harding is obviously a talented writer and the book is often beautiful and touching through the claustrophobic sadness of it all.

like enon, the wind-up bird chronicle is about a man dealing with sudden and inexplicable loss and the process he goes through to deal with it. that's about where the comparison ends. you could draw ties to how each character is a bit rudderless and ineffectual without the female other in their lives but i don't want to belabor the comparison too much. whereas harding is a craftsman when it comes to language and the unfolding of a story, murakami seems to throw everything at the wall and then becomes too impatient to even see what sticks. his stories (having read four now) are always interesting and drawn by a sense of mystery, fantasy,  horror and the just plain bizarre. but those same traits can make them pretty uneven as well. but i'm not really complaining. there's not many authors outside of murakami who can make me feel so comfortable reading a story. i'm not sure what it is but i never feel bad reading him, even if it does get silly sometimes.

i would actually suggest reading these books back to back. they balance each other nicely. while the wind-up bird chronicle suggests a supernatural solution for loss, enon begs for one and becomes haunted by it.

meh-bin

and here we go. another one of these rambling, what does it all mean, try and make some sense of my decision to be here, validate life choices, talk myself off that cliff, just generally address my time here so far type things. why are they always such a drag? it probably has something to do with the inability to think deeply and critically about my experiences or...anything really. can i blame facebook culture? video games? something? i need a well to crawl down and someone to trap me in so i can have a good think. i tried wandering the desert for a sign, or a spirit animal, or a dream vision, anything really, but that didn't exactly work out...but more on that in a future post (soon!).

my mind has turned to sludge lately. i know my boss sometimes reads this (maybe once?) so i apologize if he is now, but the slow hours at work are dulling my senses and probably making me stupid. to use his own words we are being paid to be bored. it's a terrible way to spend a holiday: bored. on top of that the hours are soul crushing. working from just after noon until around 10:30pm only to wake up the next day to do the same. i get up at 10 am, have breakfast, take a shower, make lunch and then ride my bike to work. after work i go home, maybe watch something, have a beer, make a late snack and then go to bed. and because its casual this may be the same schedule on a monday as it is on a saturday night. it leaves very little room for a social life here.

last we left off i had just moved into our happy little bungalow in albert park and indeed that is where i still find myself today, lounging on a second hand sofa that we've temporarily moved outdoors underneath a tin awning in the backyard, sipping some coffee and writing some words on the internet.  i've really come to relish these slow, peaceful, outdoor mornings but they too will soon be stripped of me as the melbourne winter - not quite the vortex they had back home but still not what i wanted australian weather to be - quickly overwhelms us.

when i'm not working i am doing my best to appreciate the many things melbourne has to offer. in the mighty melbourne/sydney greatest city debate melbourne has always claimed to be the cultural capital of australia and in regards to sheer number of events and things to do they're probably right. i've been to tennis tournaments, music festivals, art shows, and city-wide events like white night and the forthcoming comedy festival. but those are big events. it's the in-between stuff i feel like i really miss out on.

for example, i will be riding my bike to work on a sunday morning and notice all of the people enjoying a sunday brunch at one of the many lovely cafes in the area. it's like a glimpse into a life that is not accessible to me. it feels like a group of neighborhood kids standing on the front lawn asking if i can come out to play but then my mother turning them away because i have to do homework. obviously i have pretty immature feelings about this whole thing. but i came to australia to mix things up and while my job is nothing like the design job i had before, the grind feels the same, if not worse. the only positive - that i'm in a new/different city - is negated by the fact that i don't have the time to experience it. this all sounds very whiny and i'm sure it comes from a place of privilege but it just happens to be how i feel. i'm here to experience australia and to have fun. it was more fun when we were at the hostel and jobless and running out of money. sure, it was nerve racking to be unsure about what we were doing, but i was able to take more advantage of the city then - broke, living in a hostel, etc. - than i can now. i suppose thats the big difference between being a traveler and actually living somewhere: responsibility. and i suppose it reads like what i'm trying to say is i'd rather not have responsibility, which again is pretty immature, but i think what i'm actually trying to say is that i need to have a balance. right now there currently is no balance.

the job itself isn't terrible, but it also isn't incredibly rewarding. i can work an eight hour shift and only see about 150 people walk through. that's less than twenty people an hour, or enough to fill a single cabin of the wheel. or a similar yet different way to think about it: some days we could fit the entire number of guests for the day on the wheel at one time and still have some cabins to spare. that's a lot of standing around time. we get to work on our pacing and our staring off into space. still, as a team we are incredibly successful. one of the most successful, dollar per head wise, in the history of the company. being a supervisor has wrapped me up in a world of figures i never though i'd be privy to: revenue shares, wage percentages, average sales figures, the aforementioned dollar per head, hit rates, capture rates, the mysteriously labelled PAX, etc. regardless of the actual work i would have to say it has been professionally beneficial for these daily numbers alone. in regards to the actual work it probably hasn't been beneficial at all, but hey a wage is a wage. once again, dan if you're reading this i mean it as no poor reflection on you or the team, both of which are great, but with the general daily tedium of the job itself.

some lifestyle changes that happened since arriving here:
- i eat yogurt and muesli every morning for breakfast
- i consume quite a lot of mangos
- i think about money as an exotic commodity
- i cycle almost constantly and to everything

of this late note, it's no great secret but riding a bike is actually great fun. melbourne is set up with bike lanes on most roads and quite often there are separate bike paths altogether that run through some of the busier sections of the city, like an inner transportation network strictly for cyclists. my work commute, which i wish i could take a video of, finds me cutting across the friendly neighborhood of albert park to a long bike path that runs through a grassy strip which meets a tram depot before cutting through the exhibition center, then across the river and along another bike path along the docklands. even with the shitty used bike i bought i've had far worse times getting to work. you can get an idea on google maps, particularly if you use the updated version that syncs directions with street view. and with all this cycling i'm sure my thighs will be able to deflect bullets by the time i'm out of here.

so we're a little over halfway now and i think my main impression of australia was probably crafted in the first three months. the juxtaposition of traveling down the eastern coast, particularly queensland, with that of living in melbourne is somewhat jarring. the cities and the country are exceptionally different. living in melbourne has been akin to living in any other large city. sure the climate has been different (christmas in summer? how zany!) and every once in awhile i find myself staring at a newspaper headline and being unable to decipher any meaning whatsoever from it (actual example from the other day: DOB IN HOON KIDS - i know that 'kids' is a noun and 'in' is a preposition but the other two words could have been any number of parts of speech. it was as if someone had taken english and, with no prior experience having used it, decided to try and put together a sentence), but overall this has been a move to a city with limited possibilities and a high cost of living. if that doesn't sound all that enthusiastic it may be because i have become a bit jaded about the experience. i'm not sure yet. korea was easy because i was making and saving money, i could travel and see the country, and i could feel good about doing it. here i worry about spending money, about traveling around and seeing it, about being able to save anything at all.

which has helped craft an idea of what i want to do with the remainder of my time here. i have about 5 more months to make something of this continent and if it's not entirely satisfying here in melbourne then maybe it's time for a move. melbourne is a great city but only if you have the resources to enjoy it. every time i venture to the cbd i am amazed at how many things there are to do, even in the daytime, and how nice everything looks. i want to try it all. and i can't. and it's annoying. i've been contemplating a move to the country, particularly western australia. it's a bit less tame but with decent opportunity. i don't know if that means farm work or a job in hospitality. working a bar in the outback? would make for an interesting three months, no doubt about it. a month or two more in melbourne will be enough time to see if there's something else to keep me here. i can finish my job contract and stay at our place through the end of the lease agreement and then i'll be forced into making the decision. with three months in an outer territory i would also earn the right to stay in australia for a second year. at this point that doesn't seem necessary, but it might be nice to have the option all the same.

in my six-month korea post i seemed surprised at how quickly everything went. here i find myself surprised that it's only been six(ish) months. that's probably not a terrific sign. at any rate it has been an overall interesting six months so i hope this trend of boring is only temporary.

and oh shit i've past post 100 without celebrating. we did it everyone congratulations!