a man gave me a dollar on the street today and i was so touched. maybe it was my short dress with thumbprint drawning birds, maybe it was the plus side of global warming which works well for melbourne in october and brings sunshine filled 30 degree days, or maybe it was the undeniable cuteness of my little pickle. i was walking along quite early, on my way to deposit quite a large cheque in the bank incidentally, having spent the last of my cash on a coffee at the galleon, when one old man came up with pickle's hat which he had dropped on the ground as usual. we got chatting, he told me how cute pickle was, pickle smiled and blew some rasberries at him, he told us about his grandkids (12, 10 and 5, all good kids) and pinched pickle's cheeks a bit. then another old man, who didn't know the first one, passed, and said oh he really is a beautiful baby, so nice. he pasued for a closer look, maybe chubbed pickle's cheeks, i'm not sure, then dug in his pockets and took out some coins. he picked out a nice gold dollar coin and gave it to me to buy something for the baby. i was kind of embarrassed, but i didn't want to offend by saying no, and he reminded me of a Mr.Rochstein type, my grandparents' friend who used to run a jewellery shop on acland street and once gave me a gold heart necklace with a little fake diamond in the corner. Sometimes people just want to give you something, i understand. acland street in the early morning is very good old man territory i must say, because a few minutes later another old man came up and admired pickle!

the weather is so beautiful at the moment that it is hard not to be happy, it is warm and fresh. maybe fresh from the beginning of spring or just fresh each day like the juice with the crazy baby picture on the front. just that sort of warmth that even in the middle of the day you can feel the sense of hope that comes with a warm early morning on a hot summer's day. it is so nice to be with baby pickle and his skin on these sorts of days, his skin is warm and so inviting and he loves the fresh air it entertains him almost as much as parker the cat does. as soon as i step outside i am hit by the ohtheweatheriswonderful feeling and it stays with me only interrupted by the occasional anti-fantasy of what if that car were to hit and kill my baby pickle or the flashes of me trying to figure out how i will react what i will say when my boyfriend/sister calls to tell me that my baby pickle is dead. i am not a worrier and i dont take these thoughts seriously but i am annoyed at them because right now my goal is to live in the present and this is a hard goal to achieve and these anti-fantasies are not helping. i can't wait til alex brings out her range of t-shirts i am going to get the "Go Weather" t-shirt because weather really is a wonderful thing.

i'm having a day of trawling through old ideas and i can't believe how many bits of unfinsihed stories or notes about ideas that i've which i dont even remember writing. maybe while i was away someone swapped my ideas folder for theirs, although my handwriting looks quite familiar and of course in amongst it all there are some old ideas which i do remember, the dull ones of course.
mondays is my day in the studio and i miss my baby pickle in such a funny way, it is not that there is anything i want to tell him or show him or share with him, it is kind of like i am missing a physical sensation, just of there being a little being around me, maybe i am missing being so depended on, but at the same time i am feeling happy about having a day to myself and the inside of my head.
pickle and i went to the st.kilda library on friday. that was good even though it is not as good as the fitzroy library because it doesn't have any couches. there is something about a local library that makes me feel that i am skilled at accessing the good things that society has to offer me. i wonder if this is a skill i could list on my cv. i always borrow more books than i can read which is fun and even if i dont read them there is soemthing to look at during the blank morning stare of breakfast.

reading the paper this morning i felt for a japanese man who was arrested for making over 30,00o silent calls to directory enquiries. maybe making silent calls to a public service could be new form of meditation. i have never tried meditiation but i probably should, because i have a lot of mind clutter to clear and often i can't stop thinking about stupid things one night i couldn't sleep because i was so full of regret that i'd picked the wrong colour pusher, and i got up the next morning determined to dye the pusher or look for a new one. and simultaneously alongside that stream of pointless annoying thought was a persisitent pestering about how much i dont want to be a nuclear family, but how hard it is now to change that. surely my brain has better things to do than think about pusher colours when there is so much to work on in the world right now. i shouldn't have read the newspaper. there are many important campaigns to be involved in but i am still tempted to start up my ban heterosexual marriage campaign. the gay community would feel so much less isolated and the state could concentrate on recognising more important things like native title.

on the night of the world cup final we were sitting at an outdoor table of a pizza restaurant in jelsa, croatia, and a bird fell out of the sky, down past my arm in between my body and andy's (pickle was on his lap). it wasn't dead but i think it was dying.