Diesel not truckers and a long-winded unrelated introduction to the promised Safe As Houses post

Times, they are a blurrin'. A weekend soaked through to the bone with exhaustion and mix'n'match pile of friends. The whole thing finished with a kebab eaten sitting on a plastic chair on Parramatta Rd with Mr X while he told me about his father and the war and the traffic tucked away for the night.

Before the kebab and the talk of war I made an adventure to the casino. Walking down the long guts of the place with Miles Davis on my mp3 player and those old brown lace-up shoes on my feet I looked around the lit calamity of the joint and the frocked up, clean-shirted crowd and wondered just what it in the fuck I was doing. Theoretically I went to write about the absurd 'Rock Lily' venue. Mr X's band has a residency there and the idea intrigued me. He took to the stage and I sat at a long empty table.

Diesel and his bass player asked if they could join me, but I didn't know who they were until they got up later to play. I'm not in the habit of recognising people I know let alone strangers. I made notes, got drunk on free beer handed to me again and again by Mr X and his band's rider. I rambled down a set of back stairs out into the night after an hour of non-stop Diesel. I was trying to shake off the impression that there's something very wrong with the world.

Back in the Inner West under roadside electric lights I gratefully devoured a kebab and conversation. They shut off the lights after a while so I carried home two borrowed books to read and a whole new set of memories.

Better memories than the ones I'm talking about in my houses project over here.

Safe

I keep forgetting about my project of remembering. This week I vow to not only remember but take action. This week I will visit Catherine Street in Lilyfield, try not to alarm the current residents while I sit outside with my notebook and pen. This week I will remember.

Another forgetting gets remembered

I've been ushered down the horrifying path of remembering that I started a project and then forgot all about it. Vanessa Berry has started a new project blog called Biblioburbia, like all of Vanessa's writings is definitely worth reading, but it is also the cause of my shameful remembrance. Best to just have a read of Vanessa's project while I go about trying to remember where I was up to with mine...

Some days are like houses

Some projects are long term, the kind that unfold as you age and become as essential as breathing. This project, my Safe As Houses project is like that. It us unhurried but permanent. Two days ago I remembered a house I once tried to forget, except for the part where Elliot and I got a horse truck stuck on the front lawn. We climbed things holding six-foot crowbars, we were sure this would help.

Two days ago Ben Rumble had a story about this house published in THE GROUP online magazine and I remembered that it is not easy to forget.

Safe as houses

Don't worry about me, safe as a house with no smoke over here. The worst thing that has happened is this; I drank a tall glass of water immediately after I brushed my teeth. I dislike the slide of cold water over the remnants of mint.

I am working on a new project. I have decided to take portraits of houses, with words. I will post the portraits on Safe as Houses, this will be a slow process.

Some god got hold of me lightly

Not swift like a river but sure as something paved after the retreat of ripping flattening machines. Sometimes pens, most often the tips of all of my fingers not at once but in sequences like a boxer's dance.

There is a destination now. I have put down the need for directions remembering that thing of seeing only as far as the headlights allow and that being enough to steer by. It is novel to have a project of this size. I hold it captive as a striped and stingless bee.

Safe as houses

One twenty five am. Despite desperate attempt to sleep I have had the best idea I have ever had. Safe as houses. I need a camera, notebook, pen and a car. I have all of these things, except a camera. My telephone takes photographs, that was a mad invention I wonder who thought of that, but my telephone is neither new nor fancy and the photographs are generally dim. I need use of an excellent camera. Of course I will need words but I can make those myself.