girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary

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Sign of the Times?

One of my favourite songs is Prince's "Sign of the Times", supposedly written after he read a newspaper one day.

Well.

I'm just thinking about news, because it's really going on right now. A theatre full of people held hostage in Moscow; maybe they've arrested the sniper in the US.

But the thing that's made me feel sad in the news is one man stabbed in Kentish Town on the weekend, who died when they turned off his life support machine. Because my friend lives in Kentish Town, and because -- believe it or not -- I still like to think this place is somewhere where that sort of thing doesn't happen.

My mother's argument for me moving back to Sydney (and no, it's not so she can supervise my wardrobe) is that there's no terrorism there. That it's safer. Now, I don't have any statistics to hand, but probably more people die from being eaten/bitten/stung/poisoned by something or other in Australia than die here from terrorism in a year. Well, it's just a guess. But you know, the point is... I don't know. You see all these incidents, but in the end it's something mundane that will get you.

Well, I don't know. I saw All or Nothing last night, with Timothy Spall playing a classic lost hero type of character. Paralysed, he is, by this feeling that it's all so random and so meaningless.

He's really paralysed, he can't get out of bed in the morning; he can barely move his face even, or his mouth to say something.

I don't think he even has a name until well into the film. Not that I remember. I think it was a good movie, I wasn't sure, neither was my friend. She said what I'd been saying yesterday, about how the people whose lives are in that film aren't interested in seeing a film like that.

..........

When I was coming home last night, there were students on the bus. Drama students, all full of hope, getting ready for their shows where the agents would come along and give them a fabulous life. And I wished I could be a student again, with the feeling that life holds something in store; something other than ennui, weight gain and credit card bills.

..........

I had dinner with S. after the movie, and we saw something so funny. It was in this noodle bar (me still with my soupy noodle craving) and there was a group of people at the table behind us. I was looking at them, I noticed one first and I thought she was trying to be ironic, because she was eating her dinner with her chopsticks still joined together, and twirling the noodles around like you would a plate of spaghetti. But then I looked again, and there were TWO OTHER PEOPLE AT THE TABLE DOING THE SAME. With the chopsticks not broken apart.

The thing is, there were other people with them who'd broken theirs apart and were eating normally. And I just couldn't understand why these three people didn't notice what the other people at their table were doing. We were really staring at them too, and they didn't notice, they, all three of them, sitting there looking pissed off as they twirled away at the their noodles with their Siamese twin chopsticks.

10:31 a.m. - 2002-10-24

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