Hey Ab

I saw Aby yesterday, it was good to see her, it's been... um... too long. Her friend Kel was there too. Kel's great. And I got to see Ruby for the first time. She's nearly one, next month. She has huge brown eyes and she looks at you intently, like she's really sizing you up, getting your measure. (I guess she gets that from her mother) She's not a crawler, apparently, but she sits with a very straight back surveying everyone in the room, closely. She seems like such a happy child.

Ab’s down from Sydney for a few weeks, she’s having trouble with Ruby’s father and is avoiding him for a bit. He never lived up to his promises about Ruby. Ab gave him free reign to be in Ruby's life as much as he wanted or as little as he wanted. She asked for no money from him. Well, he never turned up when he said he would. He missed times and missed weekends to be with Ruby. He never did any of the things he said he would, until Ab told him he was crap and that she wasn't so interested in continue making room for him. Once Ab withdrew visiting rights, rights he never honoured once, he started to fight her for custody rights. You know, just because he thinks he has a right to the baby.

It’s funny how men think they have as many rights as the mother does, when it’s the mother who does all the work.

Anyway, it was good to see Aby, good to hear her no nonsense views on life. I've missed her.

Why do we all have to work in soul destroying jobs if we don't want to? Why do we have to all be the same? Why can't we pursue our passions?

It’s the myth to happiness, said Kel. Industry fodder it's all "they" want us to be.

Ab understood when I said I was giving my mother the next few years, where once she was all for me quitting work and writing and not trading my soul. She shrugged. You’ll have the rest of your life, once your mum's dead.

We talked about Alzheimers and the need for really good euthanasia laws. We laughed that we should be the ones to chose, if "they" needed a panel of experts. None of us could really believe that assisted suicide is still illegal.

If you are chronically ill and want to end it, why shouldn't you have the people who love you there with you, I said. Who cares if they pass the green drink, or the pill bottle?

Even if you're not chronically ill, said Ab, even if you're just tired, why not? It's your life.

Beats a hoze and an exhaust pipe when nobody is looking.

We all laughed.

I think Ab’s mellowed with the kid, as she said she was doing the same with Ruby, giving her the next few years.

I’m giving it a go for the next five years, living on a single mother’s pension, said Ab. We should all live on pensions to pursue our creative endeavours.

The trouble is that pensions don’t pay enough.

You know what I mean, we should all work less and follow our passions more. We all get locked into working and mortgages and wanting more, until suddenly it is thirty years later and our lives have slipped away.

We’re all presented with a beige, one size fits all, future, we all accept beige, we all turn beige, I said. School, uni, work, kids, death for everybody. You pay for it all, no free rides, kept in debt, kept fearful by the politicians and the media, so you don’t have the time, or the will, to think outside the middle class paradigm. And you better be goddam happy with your lot too, cause drugs and booze are definietly not allowed.

Kel says she can’t discuss these ideas with her old friends, as they are all lawyers and investment bankers working for the “cause”, working for their first triple heart bypass. She laughed. She said they are all now beginning to look old. They’ve already had their life bypass. They now look blankly at her when she talks about being an artist. She laughed again. You can see it in their faces, You’re not ticking any boxes here for us Kel.

We ate Middle Eastern food and drank wine. The later Star Wars movies played on the teev, which we all agreed were crap. Ab said Avatar was really good and recommended we go see it.

The three of us said how none of us watch the television news any longer, we’d come to that decision independently of each other.

It’s just the world psycho drama exaggerated to the max, I said.

Nothing but reality TV for me now a days. And of course kids shows.

Why let misery into your life, said Kel. Seven days a week.

Kel, who lives just near me, and I told Ab how the tourists have now ruined Fitzroy. That Gertrude Street was now full of idiots desperately looking for the latest thing and a good time, suddenly it's not cool any more, the G.P. have seen to that. I told her how I was now just beginning to think about moving to Brunswick. It wont happen this year, and probably not next year, but I'm begining to look.

We talked about how the world was now 90% tossers, that people are becoming more annoying not less. Consumerism and fear, is de rigueur de jour. We wondered if it was us, maybe we're just getting older and grumpy? We hoped that wasn't the case.

We laughed at being some of the few perfect people left in the world. We drank more wine and plotted the father of the child's death. Through meditation and karma and calls to the universe and dance, you understand, not through any violent means. Pins, felt dolls and feathers, over a flame, at a pinch.