The market

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of the meals I have eaten in my life have been prepared from food purchased from a supermarket. If you're reading this, I'd say that is true of your life as well. My first workplace, at which I spent six and a half years, was a supermarket.The supermarket has been a defining institution in my life, for whatever that is worth.

Since I settled in to my new home, I've been buying my fruit, vegetables and meat from the Queen Victoria Market. Considering it's only a quick walk (or an even quicker tram trip) from the flat, I figured I would probably get cheaper, fresher food and a more vibrant experience than shopping at the supermarket. So now part of my Saturday morning routine is making a list of the ingredients that I'm going to need for my week's meals and then trekking out to the market. This might seem odd, but I feel like making this change has been somewhat challenging for me.

The supermarket, to me, is all about convenience. It has everything you might need to sustain yourself and your family available in one handy location. Fruit and vegetables glisten under bright, fluorescent lighting. Shelves are neatly stacked by people in coloured uniforms that are almost as neat. Trolleys rattle, click and wobble; registers chime and beep as products are scanned and paid for. Aisles logically progress from one category to another, carefully laid out and signposted. It's an extremely orderly, controlled experience; one perfectly suited to the suburban lifestyle.

I know what you're thinking. Ugh, listen to this guy. Five weeks after moving to the city and he's already looking down his nose at the way he did things before. Believe me when I say that I'm not trying to make any value judgements here. It's not my intention to be critical of anybody's way of life; I'm really just looking to think about these different ways of doing things and what it might mean for us as people. I'm not an expert of the way food is grown, transported or sold, so I don't want to make any statements or comparisons between the alternatives from that perspective either. I'm just fascinated by the contrast of the two different experiences.

At around midday each Saturday, I'll grab my trusty black backpack, tie my shoes and get busy on crossing things off my list. Compared to what I'm used to, it's anarchic. It's loud. It's busy. People of every nationality are selling and buying. There is produce I've seen an eaten a million times and there are things that are entirely new to me. Try to visualise me with my bag slung over one shoulder, my list in one hand and a clenched fist grasping gold and silver coins in the other. It's pandemonium, and it's beautiful. It can also be stressful, but I think it's worth it.

It's fascinating to me to think that in some many places in the world, this is the normal way of shopping for groceries. What looks like chaos to me is probably utterly boring for the majority of the people who wheel their carts or trolleys up to the stalls each week. Modern life has taken away so many of the inconveniences and frustrations of our everyday lives, and for many of these I'm eternally grateful. The flushing toilet. The gas stove. Running water. The air conditioner. I realise we are extremely privileged to be living in a world where we can dispose of our poop with the press of a button, I can assure you. If you ask me, a controlled, orderly life has many things to recommend it. Having said that, seeing the way things work at the stalls these last few weeks has shown me that sometimes a little bit of craziness and disorder can be just as beautiful as the flawless, shiny apples stacked neatly on a display.

Rain

It rained.

Boy, did it rain.

Here’s the thing. Just like I love sad things, I love the rain. Always have. Maybe because it reminds me of winter, the time of year I was born. The time where you stay inside, pull on tracksuit pants and cook something warm. I don’t exactly know why, but I love it.

Anyway. I went on the road a few weekends ago with a close friend of mine to watch the Melbourne Victory play in Gosford. From the time we stepped off the train platform it rained incessantly. We walked between the station and our accommodation and the accommodation and the city. In my commitment to light travelling I didn’t even bring a jumper, let alone a coat.

We spent the few hours leading up to the game wandering around a deserted, drenched town. We made our way to a musty TAB that adjusted prices of beer based on the hourly spin of a wheel. It was all a bit naff, really, but we loved it. We bantered with the locals and texted others on the way to the game. We put a few bets on and won ourselves a few rounds of beer for our troubles.

We moved pubs when the specials dried up and we found a few other supporters. We drank and ate and told stories and took the piss out of one another. Nothing groundbreaking went on, but it was a good time.

When game time came, the keenest amongst us stood out in the rain. We sang, we watched, we cursed, and we celebrated. We got destroyed on the pitch, six goals to two. We got drenched in the stands as well. But we did what we knew. We stood out there in the rain supporting the team even when doing so was utterly preposterous, ludicrous even. We stood with our friends, whether we knew their names or not. It would have been more ridiculous to seek cover after travelling so far, I figured.

We could not get a cab on the way back to our accommodation, so as the rain got heavier, we trekked back. Intersections were flooded and the puddles grew so large that we couldn’t really tell how deep they were. By the time we got up the stairs and got the magnetic key in the door, we must’ve looked like mad men.

Here’s the thing about rain though. I’ve come to realise that as something approaching an adult, I don’t get rained on much anymore. We go from our cars to our houses to our workplaces to our cars. We go from pubs to taxis and from taxis to porches. How often do we get caught exposed? I feel like it’s pretty rare.

I don’t own a raincoat or an umbrella. What’s the likelihood of leaving the house and getting rain heavy enough to justify carrying an umbrella? And what’s the worst outcome possible if it does? A damp shirt? Having to dry your hair at work?

When I came back to work on the Monday, I had story to tell about a trip to Gosford that ended in a massive defeat and being soaked from head to toe. To most people, this sounded like something to be disappointed about. I didn’t even begin to consider it that way. To me it was just another story, an adventure with a great friend to a place I’d never been. What more could I had asked for?

If you can take a look at situations in their broader context and try your best to understand them as part of the greater story of your life, you might find that you need the umbrella a lot less. The rain is irrelevant. You might not even notice it in the first place.

I’m doing my best to take a step back and stop hedging against the unlikely and the insignificant. Forgive me for labouring the rain metaphor here, but I think there’s something in all this.

In awe

It's really easy to be cynical sometimes. Maybe all the time, in fact. I’ve found recently that I'm trying to tone it down in my life. When I see cynicism on display in other people, I feel how ugly it can be. It's such an emotional and intellectual dead-end. It's not just that something is terrible, it's that it has been designed that way just to frustrate us and there's nothing we can do about it.

In my recent efforts to reduce my own cynicism, I have started to feel something that might have eluded me in recent times. There's been a couple of occasions lately where I've been utterly in awe of something, and it's pretty refreshing.

On New Year's Eve, I spent the afternoon on the beach and the night looking over Port Phillip Bay. It was a gorgeous day: perfect for swimming, a barbeque and some drinks. I spent the whole time amongst many of my closest friends. There were moments where I looked out across the water and felt genuinely humbled to live where I do and to share it with these people.

At this time of year, I head up into the city every couple of weeks to watch the Melbourne Victory with a few of my good mates. As far as I'm concerned, we've had a pretty fun couple of months. A late goal by Archie Thompson won the Christmas derby, and we celebrated long after the final whistle. We are also fortunate enough to have a young player, Marco Rojas, who in extraordinary form and scoring terrific goals for us. His two goals against Queensland Roar in December were staggering. The first was an audacious long-range missile; the second an extraordinary piece of skill the likes of which this country has rarely seen. In the most recent match, I looked out from my seat in that magnificent stadium, and saw the sun setting across the city. Once again, I was in awe. Here was an improving team with a terrific coach, and I was sitting in an awesome seat, sharing the journey with friends.

I know I promised I wouldn’t. I said some pretty strong stuff in that article and I might wince if I was to re-read it. But I broke my word and I don't regret it for a second. I told you all I wasn't going to buy any more music gear because my obsession with acquisition was taking away from what I should have been doing - playing and writing, you know, actually being a musician.

Instead, I made the biggest musical purchase of my life. By a considerable margin, actually. I found a second hand left handed 1999 Paul Reed Smith Custom 22 in Royal Blue for sale from a guy in Hoppers Crossing. It was the guitar I'd dreamed about owning since I was about fourteen. There was an eight year gap where PRS completely stopped producing left handed instruments altogether and the guitars that already did exist got even more expensive than they already were. There was a time when I honestly thought I'd never own a PRS. When I saw this thing, I was torn for weeks. I drove out to try it in the hope that I would hate it and that my fondness for PRS guitars was misplaced. It was not to be. It was better than I'd imagined.

Sometimes when I'm playing it, I laugh a little to myself. It's so incredible I sometimes don't believe it. It suits me so well it doesn't feel like an instrument. Instead it feels like a natural extension of my arms and my hands. I sometimes have trouble putting it down. One night I put it away to go to sleep, left the room, and went straight back in and played it for another twenty minutes. And then I put it down again, left the room and ended up back in the studio for a third time.

I feel like awe has been associated with näivety. It seems to be understood as a childish feeling. Sometimes it feels embarrassing enough that you keep it to yourself rather than sharing it. It's a vulnerable feeling, because you are showing humility; letting yourself andf others know that there is something more amazing that yourself iin the world. I say embrace it, take it back even. It should be normal to see something that stuns you and allow yourself a moment of reflection.