bilateral kellerberrin

Anxiety dreams about film screenings this morning. Smoke filled rooms and double projections, and a critical audience.
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Still in Perth. Intended to go back to keller earlier, but the crappy train timetable and my inability to book ahead have conspired to keep me here.

Have been gobbling up Jo’s book “Emergence” by Steven Johnson, which tackles self organising systems which seemingly have no “control centre” telling them what to do, and yet which still manage to be remarkably complex. Ant colonies and cities are two of his examples. Johnson talks about the computer game Sim City, of which you are the mayor, and you have to choose where to build housing, commercial, and industrial zones, and apportion funding from taxes to police and fire brigades and the upkeep of transportation services.
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i dream we go around kellerberrin doorknocking to see if there are any eligible bachelors in the town.

I dream about flossing but i never actually get around to it…

A bit groggy this morning. Jono’s 21st birthday party last night. Sonya, actually a friend of jono’s friend monica, is studying computer engineering/commerce. She’s been working on trying to programme a series of four lifts to make sure they go up, down, stop and prioritise particular journeys as they should. This, i reckon, is no mean feat. Apart from the notoriously dicky mechanics of a lift (which i’m sure she doesnt have to deal with too much) there are probably some really complex if/then strings to consider. IF i am on the ground floor AND i press the up button, THEN send the lift down from where it is BUT if someone else presses the down button on the way THEN allow the lift to stop and pick them up BUT do no allow anyone to get in if they pressed the up button etc… this is complex stuff, i think she said she’s programming in “C” whatever that might be.
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Some kind of adventure game, rock climbing etc, there’s no way my team is gonna win, my partner is the youngest player, and I already know we are behind. We find some apricot danishes along the route.

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Had beer and falafel with chris last night, bashed his ear about Kellerberrin and what is going on. I had been reading “small worlds” by Duncan watts on the train. I had a bit of trouble with some of the maths which he quickly introduced, but the concepts are fascinating – six degrees of separation really does exist. I was particularly into some postage experiments done in the sixties. In one model, letters are intended for a recipient in new york, but sent to someone completely unrelated in LA. The LA recipient should post the letter on to one person that they know the name and address of, who they reckon has a good chance of getting the letter closer to the final recipient. What they found is that usually this chain of letters only took about 6 links to reach the intended recipient, even though there was no connection with the first person in LA. Chris and I talked about the kinds of things I could do in keller, experiments of this nature. Mapping the social networks between people, or something. But something of the researcher in me (which is not a very strong part) tells me I need to have a “hunch” or a desire or at least something I have an itch to find out before embarking on anything of that nature.
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I dream i go to meet peter mudie at the kerb. It’s a cafe serving all day breakfasts. Bromfield is there, waiting tables. He’s busy with a customer, but peter shouts out “eggs, we’re having eggs!”. To save labour, there is a conveyor belt instead of a busboy, taking dirty dishes to a girl near the kitchen, who unloads them into a sink. I ask her if she doesnt get tired standing still all day, but it seems she prefers it that way. The eggs are grey and rubbery.
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ok, for a start, today i was thinking about the rigidity of the ‘rules’ i proposed for myself last night. I think they are silly – particularly the one about having to note them down on the day that i met the folks, and if i dont make it that day, then i miss out. The truth is, sometimes it takes a few days to process thoughts on a meeting, so it is perfectly valid to log thoughts whenever it takes my fancy. However, looking back on the first few days of notes, i come to appreciate their immediacy, so i reckon it IS a good idea to log daily – so as to map the changes as they happen. I become quite aware of the differences between my immediate thoughts and my memories. And that’s an interesting thing.
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today i met:

*phil and rosemary:
cristina knocked on my door late morning and wanted to go for a bike ride. She was keen to find josephine, the girl she had made friends with at the party in tammin on sunday night. Josephine does dot paintings apparently. We rode down to the ngungar co-op and stuck our heads in the side door. Some guys were chopping up timber so it took a minute to get their attention. A girl came and told us where to go to find josephine’s place, near the hockey field. We headed over there, but when we found the place, a fella (her brother?) came out to the drive and told us she was out. he didnt really look that happy for us to be there, so we pushed on.
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even more folks i’ve met:

*rebecca, who works at the westpac bank in the “co-op”.
rebecca also makes bookings for train and bus trips in and out of town, which she did for me on friday, hammering away even when it seemed like it was going to be impossible to get a seat to perth at the start of the school holidays. Today i saw rebecca again, and she asked about my weekend. She went to perth too with her partner, on saturday, to buy a 1998 commodore. The commodore will replace their early 80’s “statesman,” which, for a car of that vintage, had all the mod cons, power windows etc. I told her I thought it was a shame to let the old holden go, but i understood her pleasure in a car which “feels like a spaceship.”
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some more folks I have met…

*mark, the jolly butcher, who reminds me of my friend rohan in sydney, a booming voice and big belly. he sold me a few pieces of frozen “cobbler” – i wonder if its the same as “silver cobbler” aka catfish. I’ll ask him next time. he asked what kind of art i do, and, since today i am leaning towards publication, i told him that. he told me that a friend of his produces a magazine in bunbury, kind of political, called TWAT – the acronym stands for a different theme each time – he might try dig one out for me to look at. As far as IASKA goes, Mark said he liked the town music concert which happened last november (i think the artist’s name was noah).
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