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[12 Oct 2009|12:34pm] |
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She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand, like a lizard on a window pane
A bud, soft ivory petals bound in delicate green, unfurls at its own pace, retreating as soon as it is observed and taking little of the night with it. A shallow and unlikely premise, she knows delicacy is not her sin.
She lives in the deep background, so much a part of the scenery that she may as well dress in theatre blacks and only move in the dim-light behind the curtains. Occasionally she dreams of spotlights with a mixture of fear and longing, but mostly she recognises her role as an extra, the background for other's scenes. When arms shove her into the curtain call, try to make her life look bigger than it is, she is only reminded of the unlikeliness of entering that world.
She improves on closer acquaintance, I am sure, but any potential for glory days were wasted in waiting for a cue that never came. Better than theatre blacks - mild case of shyness and the sort of transient face that is a little difficult to recall. Best to live in the pale-faced world behind the stage, amongst the greaspaints, rigging and discarded props, where in the shadows a sort of understanding exists.
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[20 Sep 2009|11:15pm] |
She comes from a long line of quiet intellectual types, wary and anxious on the way to visit the outer-family regions, and never quite able to see the merit in engaging at the lower levels.
I don't care about: football, 'true crime' stories, anything that you saw on A Current Affair, the latest beauty treatment or recipe involving some brandnamed cereal, reality television, fad diets. You don't care about: philosophy, politics, books that don't make the bestsellers lists, films with no one attractive in them, vegetarianism, intellectual curiousity, or an independent media, but you might have canned beliefs about them - "the media, the media is biased" - like it's a revelation.
It means, though, not learning to relate to anyone. Time spent learning to smile politely and suppress the questions she wanted to ask while she feigns an interest in the latest scandal, story, celebrity secret was time spent suppressing that which was lively. It means now she walks into a room quite confident her views are boring, elitist, intellectual wank that it is impolite to subject people to. Arrogant, most definitely, but the kind of arrogance which breeds humility and shyness. She never really learned how to walk in your world.
The sniff with which it was said, "Oh, an academic" as though there's something inherently dishonest about earning a living removed from manual labour and dealing with people. As though facts, science, methodology, debate - these things are somehow unclean. As though drawing a wage for it is cheating someone, somewhere, who does 'real work'.
She went to university and learned about class politics, worked urban proletariat jobs and felt the disconnect everytime she used a word with more than three syllables in it. She let strange men in navy bomber jackets who reeked of Winnie Blues breathe smoke in her face and call her 'doll', in penance for her pretensions to a world outside this sphere. When the revolution comes she's not first against the wall, but somewhere in the middle with her compatriots - pale and weedy from hours in the library, with their deeply suspicious knowledge and middle-class guilt.
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| Someone else's words, a quiet introspection |
[10 Jun 2009|05:09pm] |
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You said you thought I was cute, but I'm just a cut flower.
I have a job that makes my study feel like a calling, beautifully real friends, housemates who make me feel I've known them all my life. I'm living in the sort of room I always imagined, sloping ceiling, white walls and dark wood, room for even more books. Home is still eight hours drive away, but I should be happy here. The home from my dreams is full of workmates and friends who don't belong there.
I believe beauty was drowned in because.
I shred your soft eyes with my cynicism, because if I let you get close I know we will both only get hurt. I think that I'm better off drinking alone, but I don't know how to end it while I'm still having fun. You tell me your heart belongs to someone else, and I tell you the tin clock in my chest stopped years ago, no one knows quite why. It's not worth a trip down the yellow brick road, though. I try to get you out of my mind, focus on subordinate legislation and ultra vires, black letter law that never lept off the page to make anyone feel. Nothing lovely can survive the ferocity of absolute truth.
We're made up of moments and fingernails, toenails, and hair
This might be someone else's early twenties. I feel so far beneath my skin that I'm no longer responsible for my own sensations. A sixteen year old would call it numb, but I curl the blankets tighter against the world and relish having nothing to cry for. I wonder idly if this is a waste of some glory years, but I've got no real need to pursue the expected. Time is fleeting, and I sink into a novel, the words washing comfortingly through my eyes while I float on beautiful words and the sorts of noble ideas that seem so missing when the pages are closed.
Turn the lights out, close my eyes now
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[30 Apr 2009|10:10pm] |
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[16 Apr 2009|10:19pm] |
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mood |
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 homesick-in-anticipation |
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music |
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[O--O] |
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I'm flying through the night in this city where I can never be lonely, loving the way the light caresses familiar streets and memories.
I think this is why I can't love you, I don't see you framed by the buildings of my relative youth, sprawling comfortably across my world as on a threadbare couch. I don't see you at home in the places I am always homesick for, but rather sight-seeing and humouring me. You would find it nice. Cool. Charming. You would pause and trip in the crowded streets, unused to dodging deftly the flow of human traffic. You would like the parks, the streets, the quirky little coffee shops and independent bookstores, but they wouldn't haunt your dreams. You would want to do what the tourists do.
You stroke my hair, you like how it smells, and you are kind with this fish out of water. We take your time, and the pace is gentle but inevitable. You show me your tree-lined squares, favourite galleries, the council-sponsored community amusements, and I miss the cynical whimsy of home. You mistake my bemusement for rage, and I am glad I never let these two worlds collide, for the unspoiled sanctuary of coming home.
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| thin ice |
[18 Mar 2009|10:08am] |
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music |
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Little Stevies |
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[an editing experiment]
If she doesn't make eye contact, she can have another moment after this one, and another after that, with ice disappearing under her feet and wind rushing past her face. Her cheeks feel pink from exertion, happiness and cold.
She turns to face the tall figure standing alone, and moves to take his hand. Together they shuffle across the lake surface, and it is... pleasant. She can see afternoons and evenings spanning into the future, glove in glove with faint sensations of warmth and nicety. There's a cat on a rug, and a fireplace. They are courteous, if distant - they are kind to one another, give space to each other's quirks and foibles, and they eventually reach a point where to touch does not feel forced and awkward.
And release. Fingers swathed in wool are gone. Her hands are a little colder on their own, but she places one skate in front of the other, faster and faster until the little vision of a comfortable future is far, far behind her, and she is flying, pink-cheeked with exertion, cold, and anticipation.
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| 100 word challenge |
[07 Mar 2009|10:20am] |
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We are the friends who do not touch; artfully arranged around invisible barriers and always, always careful not to let it show. We stare determinedly straight ahead, avoiding the accidental intimacy of a glance that might be deemed too long, too deep. As a step in an intricate dance, one leg shuffles slightly to the side, shaking out pins and needles, and a corresponding limb moves fractionally out of the way. In hallways we pass in a civilised manner, my knees want to curtsey, but instead we each linger to opposite walls. Our disguise holds; we friends do not touch.
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| rising |
[22 Feb 2009|11:55pm] |
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music |
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Kate Miller-Heidke |
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But this is space they cannot touch
Mr Rochester, I am better than you, for I would scorn such a relationship. Reading too much into Jane Eyre, and feeling my misplaced sympathy swell, cresting on a wave of pseudo-restraint. You're safe with me, though, because I'm hiding too. I say that I don't have the mental energy to know what I feel about him, say that I don't remember what love is and I have to give this a chance and see where it will go. I am avoiding eye contact before I even notice it, but I can't help noticing that I'm comparing everyone to you. Even if you chose to be free to choose, the notion that you would choose me is one that I cannot fathom. It is enough to know that you are happy and well in the world. Zenlove is not a needy love. I am needy, though. I don't want a world in which we are alienated, and so I keep my scary thoughts to myself where they can do no injury. The connection remains whole, if not all that I could hope.
My favourite place is me and you
Anxiety beats away anything resembling an appetite, and I'm lost in flashes of hands on waists and recollections of sensation long denied. The warm glows are faux and borrowed, but I'm grateful for the loan, however short-term. Your eyes will shortly stop seeking mine, and you won't reach out to touch my hand or stroke my hair, knowing that the next step is mired in awkwardness and will never quite eventuate. We'll avoid each other on the street, the gulf becoming something which no sane creature would attempt to bridge.
Sitting somewhere on the spectrum between clinically dead and fully alive, I claim that I'm resisting being sold and catalogued just a little while longer, but secretly I'm the child who wants all the things they simply can't have. I know you would take me for granted because that's the way the world works, the gentle and softly spoken are naive and deserve to be trampled. History repeats. I think if you had confirmation that you could have me, we wouldn't even last a week. The only thing I can offer is a challenge, but I always run just a little too far away.
Now I don't need to sleep to dream
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[12 Jan 2009|01:27pm] |
Three days ago I had my gestalt shift and now the world is brighter and more brilliant than I was ever before able to imagine it could be. I'm flying with the wind and ever so richly alive, fortunate in my friendships and associations and able to face nearly anything, as though everything I've ever feared has been a lie, a story built to bar me from accessing this pure and total freedom. Everything makes a kind of marvellous sense.
The flip side is that I could get very used to feeling this way.
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[30 Dec 2008|03:28pm] |
I frosted walls heavy with spice and royal icing, made a marzipan santa with jellybean boots for the roof, and an icing sugar snowman in scarf and chocolate hat for the door. It's strange the way these things become traditions, the truffles and gingerbread houses that shape the Christmas that we share. Wrapping in exhaustion the gifts left until new years eve - awaiting the postman with anticipation and a mild terror that they'll have nothing from you to unwrap in the glow of Christmas morning. There's a flurry of unwrapping, expressions of gratitude and appreciation, and fervent hopes that the choices you made in department stores, markets, fabric and craft stores leading up to this moment were the right ones.
As we get older we replace the glow of magic and mystery with the warmth of friendship, good wine, and overindulgences of every good thing we can find. It's not and never can be a replication, but we manage to preserve some of the happiness and warmth of fond memories and the afternoon glows golden, nevertheless.
An old greek man holds back tears at the dinner table and weeps silently for an orange grove once watered by hand, with a little bucket and a stream over the crest. The forest has reclaimed it and now it's as though it was never there, a childhood spent among the woodcutters and craftsmen, a father who went back to the old country whom he never saw again. There is an awkward silence as we all lack athe family connection to know how to respond. I go to stand beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder, and he is embarassed to be found crying.
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[09 Dec 2008|12:36am] |
Go for broke.
Always try and do too much.
Dispense with safety nets.
Take a deep breath before you begin talking.
Aim for the stars.
Keep grinning.
Be bloody-minded.
Argue with the world.
And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers."
--Salman Rushdie
Thousands of pieces swirl in a girl-shaped maelstrom. Compassion. Cattiness. A tendency to cover my eyes when embarassed. Irreligion, social justice, walking with a purpose in the night, sometimes longing for the pressure of another body curled tight against my spine. Feminism, shyness, outspokenness, vegetarianism, utilitarianism, playing guitar, listening to good and bad music, thinking uncharitable thoughts. Independence that dreams of one day finding some sort of a compromise. Student, wageslave, sister, tutor, lover. The lilt to her voice, the quirk of an eyebrow. Tears that well slowly, damply, spilling over in silence, and great, heaving, hysterical sobs that tear the world apart and make it hard to breathe.
Some pieces are missing, but there's still more than enough for several different and contradictory girls to emerge. I'm trying to discover which one belongs where, so I can leave one in every place that I love and never have to abandon anyone. All of these parts and I'm still incomplete.
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[26 Oct 2008|03:54pm] |
"Miss Collins heroine is prudish, calculating, selfish and dull, despite her miraculous expanding tits."
-The Female Eunuch- Germaine Greer
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[15 Oct 2008|09:52pm] |
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This pizza is rubbery cardboard and cheese, a chainstore catastrophe too cheap to really regret. I'm thrifty, sensible, impoverished- too much so to push it away, nevermind that there must be better things to fill the void with. There was a moment of warmth and sunshine, clinging drunkenly together, but it only broke the surface briefly, so I'm tumbling beneath the waves once more, where every second word is thick and empty. Meaningless noise blares as though channeled through someone else's head first. Looking up and it's a viscous, glassy blanket, keeping the world and myself carefully separated. I think that I am getting better at remaining impassive, letting the sea boil and churn inside while my face is blank, then I realise that I have been crying. Delicate, discreet tears, because it wouldn't do to fall apart, but I can't patch and darn fast enough. It'll be okay, so long as I gather all the threads and wipe away the evidence that I felt anything at all. When everything is ash, all is empty sustenance. Another way to endure, one more day. Crisp, cool linens, shined silverware, glasses that clink, reassuringly whole.
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| Silence |
[07 Oct 2008|12:00am] |
The storm recedes, leaving cherry blossom and ice scattered across the grass. We're back to dainty, pale porcelain, sitting on the top shelf in heavy, dusty fabrics. Brocade and velvet and impossibly tight curls. Unseeing eyes. Each limb impossible to lift, too heavy, and it feels like I haven't blinked since last Tuesday. If I was half alive...
I wish the world would surprise me again. I imagine peals of delighted laughter, the spark inside catching light and glowing into unstoppable smile. Instead I seem to foresee most of the ugly before it happens. Curtains rising on a personal apocalypse dress-rehearsal. The depravity, the selfishness, the bitter soft-centres of the human race has become the tedious everyday. Kind, thoughtful people who minded their manners as children and made a life of being happy for everyone else are left gaping as the fairy tales turn out all to have been wrong. Dusty and broken, careful, you'll cut yourself.
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[04 Sep 2008|01:57am] |
Every time I turn around, there's another crack in the universe. Papering over them has become an impossible, exhausting feat. The world is wrong, and all the foundations which made me feel so secure and comfortable are crumbling away. Previously, I could believe that even though some wonders were beyond my experience, they existed to be looked forward to. That certain things were possible, were in fact part of the natural order. They now turn out to be more exception than rule, and each example of them begins to appear endangered.
I turn away from fruitless repairs to the fabric of my world and try to fill this one imperfect room with what comfort remains. Subsistence foods to share, big pots of tea. It all feels temporary like the roof's about to come crashing in and flatten my efforts. The sun is too bright, and the world outside is frightening. I curl back into my pillow and wish I could stay in bed forever, dreaming that the world outside my window is a happy place.
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[24 Aug 2008|01:11am] |
It's a wailing, screaming blackness, stabbed with white and red and roaring. Articulation is in whimpers and grunts. Light? Heat? Sound? Bad. Everything that's alive is huddled somewhere in the middle, underneath the layers of pain and trying awfully hard not to be noticed, sheepish in the spectacle. Every movement punished by a flash of pain, needles in the central nervous system and feeling nothing ever again seems better than enduring one more moment. In exhaustion, we collapse and in the morning the burnt out shell of the fresh pain is still beneath our eyes, our heads are still heavy and weary, and the new day is dead before it gets its boots on.
Always before there's been the blurry sense that someone is waiting for you to stop falling, but not this time. The pain will cease, and you will find a way out of the oubilette, but you will find that no one particularly noticed you were missing. And for the first time in your adult life you realise that you're crying for your mother.
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[23 Aug 2008|04:35pm] |
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It's as though ever since she discovered the world she's been trailing a thread. It's looped around the streetlamps and tramstops, over stairwells to subterranean bookstores, around chair and table legs in coffee houses across her city. It's down by the river where the leaves turn crimson and set the pavement alight, and it's over the bridge on the soft picnic grass. After all these years of trailing down back alleys and crossing over itself, interwoven with the streets, all of a sudden she is gone. One line out. Vibrant and alive and altogether interesting as things have been, she is feeling more keenly than ever that connection, stretching eight hundred kilometres across the country, as though the end buried deep within her is a barbed hook, and the city back home is pulling, drawing her back. Reasons for staying are beginning to sound more like excuses and she has taken to bleeding inwardly. Without her city of glowing sparks and warm vivaciousness, she's a paper kite without the wind, waiting to become real again.
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| Writer's Block: Cramming Yourself into a Sentence |
[27 Jul 2008|03:39am] |
There's no room to breathe, pressed hard against the edges and too large for this tiny space, curling ever more tightly inwards, yearning for but fearing discovery so much the anticipation aches.
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| Ninety One Words |
[27 Jul 2008|03:02am] |
They think as they shrug on the stiff leather jackets that girls like her will think of Jimmy Dean and cigarettes, eternal youth and an integrity to burn, but all she sees is that you're wearing someone else's skin.
She prefers her rebels with causes intact. Thick with waves of crimson wine that flow painful and soothing, a deep current dragging a lifeless form away from rule and reason. Floating away in a sea of disembodied voice, she wonders if you need to know what you're looking for to find it.
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| Before Sunrise? |
[10 Jul 2008|02:59am] |
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And the streets shine silver, because that is what streets must do in certain situations. An ancient city, an exploration, a stranger – and one night to learn it all. The stars are on cue, and closer to earth the trees twinkle with little white lights. They're breathing out spiced red wine, mingling with frosty air and the promise of freedom in the morning, when we both disappear into the mists from whence we came.
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