Bite-sized LA observations

It's my last morning in LA and the US and I'm sitting at Urth Cafe on Melrose, surrounded by Asian tourists and attractive people trying to look like they are somebody worth recognising.

My half serve of tuna salad is huge but at least the oil is a drizzle rather than a pour, and it's good.

And my coffee?
Nice coffee art in the foam. Cup is hot to the touch rather than scalding, which means that had I not asked for it extra hot it would've been brought out tepid. Slightly on the sweet side, either due to sweet soy milk or sweet beans, and slightly more bitter than I'd like. But by American standards altogether drinkable. On second sip it's actually too sweet, but whatever, I'm in LA.

There are some ridiculously overdone girls here, with ridiculously cute white Maltese terriers who look like they've never felt the bliss of mud on the paws. And a dozen tables of glamorous tourists from Hong Kong with a Luis Vuitton on the back of every chair. And girls with blondest blonde hair set in perfect salon curls clipping past in white jeans and Manolo lookalikes carrying scripts with the title page facing outwards.

A young model in trainers and no make-up just arrived accompanied by two Italian greyhounds and a man with dyed black hair who I thought was her father until she called him "honey". We strike up a conversation over restless canines and he reveals to me the tawdry secret of the dogs' relationship; Primo is Angie's father and brother, but due to their impeccable pedigree she is genetically flawless. I try to prevent my mind from straying towards the nature of Primo and Angie's owners' relationship.
They offer me a bite of their green tea tiramisu and it is phenomenal. I barely manage to resist ordering an entire slice once they leave.

There's a couple dudes at a table opposite talking through the funding plan for a new Queer-Eye-for-the-Straight-Guy-meets-dating-show and three Valley girls above me discussing whether to wear shorts or jeans out on Saturday night. The sky is perfect blue and everything is washed in sunlight and all around me people are throwing about phrases like "best-cased scenario" and "the bottom line" and I can see how a person could come to this city and never, ever leave.

Of Hands and Teeth

It’s cold and wet and I’m overcome with a familiar feeling of loneliness and solitude. The heater is on. The dog is licking himself in that way that drives me insane. My 26 year-old sweater smells like fabric softener.

The aimlessness is torture.

I’ve never been a person who copes well with inactivity. I fill my days with work, chores, outings, events, to avoid, at all costs, being left alone with my own thoughts. But in the depths of my busyness, nothing excites me more than the idea of an uncluttered day. Because we are wired to strive for happiness in something ‘other’, regardless of whether that ‘other’ has proven itself to be pleasurable or not.

So today, like on all my other days off work, I went out1. I wandered around Sun Bookshop looking for The Trick is to Keep Breathing but ended up being seduced by zombies yet again. Then I went across the street to Cornershop and spent a solid 3 hours reading, eating, drinking coffee, and awkwardly responding to the subtle flirtations of the cute waiter who is slightly too young and too shaggy to interest me enough to want to pursue him. I put off returning home as long as I could. I even walked back across the street to the cinema to see if it would save me from the inevitable. It didn’t and here I am. Sitting in the quiet warmth of my living room, legs tucked under me, on a folded quilt on the ground, feeling… feeling… feeling alone and surrounded by the deafening noise of a million other sorry people rushing about or sitting quietly alone, inflicting some form of pain upon themselves, all in the same state of aloneness as me.

Oh my God. Have you read this thing I’ve just written? Who am I? Please someone take me out and shake the black eyeliner and razor-blades off of me.

And after you’ve done that, stay for dinner and keep me company.


1Because in the three years and four months since I moved to Melbourne, I have spent only one day confined to my house. No. Wait. I did leave the house that day. For breakfast. But I spent the entire rest of the day at home on the couch reading a book. Quite a feat! I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks afterwards.

I can't offend you more than I offend myself..

I’m feeling a lot of doubt, in myself as a person, as an actor, as a woman/girl/female (it doesn’t feel right referring to myself as a woman but that’s an issue I’ll have to leave for another day).
I wonder, all the time, so much so that it’s almost not worth mentioning, whether I’m deluding myself with this whole acting malarkey. But that inevitably leads to thoughts of whether I’m deluding myself with this whole life business.
Sometime in my past, somehow, I latched onto the idea of acting to give myself a purpose. And now, at 28 years old, I’m returning to the moment when that decision was made and once again asking, “what now?”
And so indeed, what now? If not an actor then what? A director? Well, that’s just as delusional as the so-called career I’ve already got. An Olympic equestrienne? Hah! A teacher? Where’s the bottle of cheap wine and sleeping pills please. A writer? Well we’re back to the impossibleness of the realm of the actor and director. So….
A prostitute? Financially lucrative but I’ve never been much good with men. And I have tiny breasts. A dog trainer? Wonderful fun but pays just enough to keep a small poodle in kibble for a couple of days with owner living in cardboard box. Hmm…. I’m drawing a blank. What else interests me? Retail sales manager? I can see my future now. Forty-five and dressed like a girl, telling some insecure brat that she looks ‘hot’.
What else? What else? Fucking God please tell me what else?!
I. Can. Not. Think. Of. Any. Other. Profession. That. I. Would. Be. Good. At.
What do I do? Starve myself to death to avoid my inevitable descent into middle-aged mediocrity? But I’ve already tried that and I’m bored with the self-indulgent narcissism it demands.
What would I be great at? I could watch DVDs for a living. Read books. Look up celebrities on the internet. Browse for weight-loss tips. Tan once a year. Do cryptic crosswords. Eat breakfast at a cafe everyday. Forget to call my parents. Stay up late. Download TV shows. Park illegally. Take mediocre photos and post them on my blog. Buy clothes. Buy cosmetics. Try to find the cure for acne. Eat my own weight in popcorn. Pick up other peoples rubbish while tsking audibly. Write down ideas for outfits I will never wear. Read Amazon book reviews for book I will never buy. Look up IMDb profiles for actors I have never heard of. Doubt myself. Doubt myself. Doubt myself.
I’m so exhausted with the thought of the meaning of the pursuit of fulfilment in life that I cannot even bring myself to think of a way to end this bitter diatri…

A Crepe a Day

I'm sitting in the food court at Australia on Collins, eating my spicy noodles and taking advantage of the free wireless interweb. It's been an interesting experience living in a new house that is as yet unequipped with ADSL. I feel I've grown as a person. I've watched more TV, read more of my book, taken longer showers, and last night spent a romantic evening with myself, a cup of tea, and the pile of promotional mail and local gazettes that had accumulated on the kitchen table. What I haven't managed to do however, is face the stomach-turning task of Unpacking Boxes of Miscellaneous Ephemera. Could I not just burn it all and then deal with the consequences later? Surely I can be reissued copies of all my old tax return statements, university reports, pet vaccination cards, letter from ex-boyfriends and 3 year old birthday cards that were particularly heartfelt.
I've also just lived through another bout of Easter and have a residual chocolate addiction which no amount of Nutella crepes from Aix Creperie (see below) are able to cure.
Although, maybe one more will be the clincher. In fact, I'm off to try that now. And perhaps a little more of The Age Cryptic Crossword - another addiction I'm having difficulty shaking.

Tiger Tiger

I'm sitting at Tiger Tiger in Perth, digesting my Granola Muesli with Poached Pears. No-one in Perth serves porridge; it's a little disconcerting. They also don't know the difference between a long mach and a strong latte, but Tiger Tiger do have free wireless so I'm not about to complain.
At a nearby table sits Peter from Create Digital Music with his entourage who are in town for the byteme festival. They have commandeered an entire table and covered it with an assortment of macbooks and other digital paraphernalia. One of them has an iphone which he's allowed me to play with for a couple minutes. Hearing him rave about it in his Californian drawl has sparked a new feedthegirl obsession.
I. Want. One.

Perfect Porridge

So Benn and I went to Caffé Cortilé in Block place on Saturday for a late breakfast. While we waited for our food we entertained ourselves by sending random Bluetooth messages to other Saturday morning breakfasters commenting on their coffee and asking what food was good to order. I never knew this game existed. It’s good having tech nerds as friends.

Benn ordered the Eggs Atlantic, which looked to me like a small serve for $13.50 but he said they were very good and the balance of Hollandaise and Balsamic was just right.

I had my usual – Porridge – and by God, I think I’ve found porridge paradise.
The porridge usually comes prepared with water and cream but I asked for my usual Skim Milk and the flavour didn’t suffer in the least.
It was served HOT. This seems to a basic element of porridge preparation that is just too hard for most eateries to comprehend.
It was a perfect grainy consistency – still rough and oat-like and neither too soupy nor Clag glue-like.
The berry compote was sweet and warm (thank God someone understands that this is essential).
It was sweetened with Vanilla Honey! Did you get that? Vanilla Honey! Sweet god of culinary goodness.

The café is in a cute, covered alleyway but is itself neither cute nor particularly cool. The clientele were mostly upper middles with some young trendies thrown in for colour. Benn and I were probably the coolest people in the place but, to be honest, what Caffé Cortilé lacks in eliteness it makes up for in its mastery of The Porridge (I may love the dirty, dingy mess that is Degraves but you couldn’t pay me to eat the soupy slop they try to pass off as porridge). At $8.50 a pop it errs on the side of expensive but, once again, the quality makes it a reasonable sum to part with. Just don’t ask for Diet Coke too or you’ll be walking out $12.40 poorer.