12:17 p.m., 16.10.03
I should be really buggered.

But I'm not. I'm actually feeling quite fine despite the fact that at 3.30 this morning I was returning from a 10-pub crawl through North Melbourne.

It was just Snags and me - Piero was going to be joining us, but he's been battling some pretty heavy depression lately. He's always had his ups and downs, but it's only recently that he's been diagnosed as bipolar.

He's extremely self-aware about it, and is able to describe what is happening to him with crystal clarity - but even actively knowing that it's a brain chemistry thing and no reflection of his circumstances doesn't make it any easier for him to deal with the stark, hollow lack of emotion he feels.

What annoys him the most about it is that his life is going exactly the way he wants it to be right now. Work, friends, home, money, family - he's worked hard to get himself to where he's at and where he's going. And yet as good as it al is, he hasn't got the physical capacity to feel the pleasure of his achievements.

I don't know if there's much we can do for him - but for him to come out and tell us about it is probably a pretty big step.

Anyways, we stumbled from the Curzon to the somethingorother to the Courthouse to the Town Hall (sumo night! yay!) to the comedy club across the road, where we watched the taping of an indescribably shit impro show for Channel 31 with a painfully underage audience. Then it was on to the Castle, the Metropolitan (where we ran into Mikey, Vaughan and the Pablo boys), the Arthouse where we caught the tail end of Extra Virgin's thrash metal set, the Public Bar and finally "liquid Oz," - a dingy, divey backpacker bar in the city.

It was a much milder version of a 12-hour bender we went on one a couple of years ago, where every time we walked into a bar something amazing would happen. The highlight for me of that day was sitting with a couple of stubbies up the back of a room on campus where a blind preacher was giving it the fire and brimstone treatment out of a braille bible.

Don't speak to me tomorrow, I'll be ruined.

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