| indigestable |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|02:03 pm] |
I dreamed that my teeth fell apart and out
I woke up to regurgitated rat parts
on soft furnishings
and couldn't think or anything to eat for breakfast
that was different enough to stomach
I settled on berries
then passed a mulberry tree
longed for being inside mine at Medindie
the fancy home my father suffered inside
How I hugged the tree Lisbon style
and then kept its sawdust
in a tacky pewter tooth keeper
the cats eyes flood black when they kill
you forgive them because they are familiars
and the rat was not
because it is natural for them
though for you it's not
Then you clean up the mess of their error:
that they don't even know anymore
what will make them sick to eat
Mulberries are specific to silkworms
I don't know if other leaves starve or poison
or produce an inferior expression of thread |
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| Eating mail |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|12:15 am] |
Summer melts and alters the feeling of everything.
One night of fan and it feels like the country has flipped over and become that other place. Different memories click into relevance.
Social intelligence is knowing the right times to say certain things the best ways to say them. When you know the rules you can break them with finesse. Sometimes I think I have it because I'm cringing at someone else but usually I can't keep up. Often my impulses take over, impulses and accidents. My unconscious is never satisfied to let something written go undelivered, something thought passionately go unsaid. This get's me in a bushel of trouble sometimes.
I let the snails eat my mail. I'm obsessed with the paper that results. I want to make art from them but they are already.
I am trying to befriend my body so it becomes like my cat's: strong, flexible and balanced. I want to climb trees and jungle gyms with gleeful aptitude. Want to be able to do a thing? Do it over and over, pushing your boundaries out. That's how you make your own body, this being moving thing, by moving and being aspirationally. The same for the mind I suppose but that's not getting sorted out yet. |
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| Older unposted entry |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|12:14 am] |
This morning...
Man is gold robe at the door of my store: "Are you busy?"
Me sweeping the floor: "uh no"
"God loves you. Are you pregnant?"
"no"
"Not yet. Do you have children?"
"no"
"Not yet. Are you married?"
"no"
"Not yet."
At which point I turned around hoping he had gone and he had.
I don't really have anything else to say about that.
The other night one of the boy's friends decided the world doesn't deserve to exist because people don't enjoy their jobs. 85% of people apparently. He came to this conclusion because he didn't get a job he felt perfectly suited to. Ah melodramatic responses to personal let down.
It did however get me thinking about work life balance. Something I previously enforced upon myself and now utterly lack. I think that overall society would be much improved by job sharing and everyone being able to live off of part time work. People would no longer use there free time to kill brain cells and try to recover from their working week exhaustion but would begin to use it to pursue area or genuine interest. The more self aware and engaged people become as individuals the better society becomes.
It is nobody's responsibility but my own to design my life for my fulfillment and maintain my own well-being. The more well adjusted I am the better I am able to innovate, analyse and serve the wider world. I cannot fall into the trap of claiming to be "much put upon" by the world because it is my own choices that have made my world. This idea drives most of my choices and interactions.
I feel like this stage in my life is about building a foundation for my life. To achieve balance of security and freedom. There's a great deal involved in this for me. Place, materials, relationships, community, health, habits and self esteem. There's also the insecurity that I wont have achieved it in time to experience the next part: being utterly open to what comes and saving the rest of the damned world of course. |
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| Forgetting how hope works |
[Sep. 21st, 2009|09:36 pm] |
Today a former secretary of my father told me that I look like him.
I said "thanks" and "without the lipstick right"
She said "he was known to do some funny things"
I wanted to ask her more. She probably remembers more than I.
She used to type up the stories I wrote,
back when I wrote stories.
They would be printed on paper
with holes down both sides
that you could tear
along perforation
into strips.
Here I am still painting myself cages
that I try to run away from
barefeet to cobblestone
in the back alleys
picking blossom
as an alibi.
Last night I made love too good to last. Some couples seem so sure of each other, so entwined, that it's as if on some level they are making love constantly, even when they're in a different room or house or land. As if the lovemaking, before and after feeling, melts into everyday life, like a mist around their skins, keeping them serene and alive. Connecting them atomically and thoroughly. For me there's more desperation and defeat in the times in between. I have no peace that one of us will, at some point, die, so I'm not at peace in our lives. I saw my parents still in love when they were torn from each other. It haunts.
today I want to take a mental health day from life. The eternal domestic monsters of cashflow and housework. I'm clucky beyond logic or sanity. I am wrestling with deadlines without whatever the positive equivalent is: things to look forward to? I can't even think what they're called. All around me is mess. My close friends are all reduced to plastic coated cables, so far they are. Those nearby, his friends, our faux family, I can't even stand to be near. Not the way I am, the way things are.
I miss those who knew me when my dad was alive, or when I was still a virgin, or when I still felt there was enough time to do and have what I want. Old friends. Heck I'd even take a 'for shiz' lunch date with past injurers. People who thought of me as happy and kept me so.
So, I'm watching dirty dancing. my top tucked into my pants. scavenging for fruit. forgetting how hope works. |
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| Design as a ritual for wellness |
[Sep. 5th, 2009|01:50 pm] |
The self esteem that arises from coming up with elegant, simple, good solutions.
The act of giving in designs that bring joy, wellness, engagement and connection; and especially in those that endure beyond trends or meet the needs of many.
The humble meditation of making;the noble skill of craftmanship.
The powerful metaphor of the process from inspriration, refinement and creation to product life and after life. |
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| the empty places with too much in them |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|11:28 am] |
The faceless-ness makes it feel like fiction even though they would probably have been a lot like me. which parts though. I used to have dreams about Maybe -an unborn child, mine, but never of any of my ancestors. All those people whose whims led to my existence; would I even know them if they travelled time to bump into me in Brunswick. No just she who would travel through time to be a bump in my belly. It's been so long since I've seen her.
It's not just mishearing and my crazy imagination- I just realised Tom Waits - Town with no Cheer really is about riding on the overland from Melbourne to Adelaide, which is something she told me but I didn't click about until now. Then there's "If you wait I'll give all my aches to you", which is from another song entirely but is in my head anyway. oh my Spirograph mind.
I have been thinking about taking up high school maths as a hobby. Really I could just sit in an empty room with her. Even in busy full rooms where I try to avert my eyes, she warms my day.
male eyes adjust white balance better than females but apparently this makes all light colours seem white. Which explains the trouble I'm having convincing any male that Falcor from the neveredning story movie is light pink. I am basing my weave projecton the theme Falcor vs Nothing.
The countdown is on until a dear friend of mine becomes a housemate. We have been reshuffling furniture from the spare room into other rooms. Some of the stuff got shuffled into the newly tidied back area of our shop which is already messy and full. The sewing machine, the overlocker, the spinning wheel will live there. I tried to aquire a knitting machine also. It's going to be a making space. I'm going to start a collective. |
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| feeling like a pervy old artist man |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|03:25 pm] |
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I need people to paint. I need people to let me take pictures of them so I can paint. It's been too long since I have. I paint faces. That's pretty much my thing so I want to start again with that. I like painting from photographs or life. people hate sitting still. so. |
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| Losing friends and the influence of people |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|03:42 pm] |
I forgot to vote in Triple J's Hottest 100 songs of all time. There's no point critiquing a list that isn't based on any one thinking persons opinions. Around 500,000 people picked what they liked and this is what came out of it. Nope, no point critiquing, but analysing maybe, and asking questions those things are okay...
So what I'm asking is why no female artists? I realise this was a popular music countdown and not a list of important and interesting people so why wonder about the representation of female songwriters, vocalists or frontwomen? why not wonder about the under-representation of harmonica harp or harpsicord? Because women are half of the global population and because there are more songs written by sung by or led by women than songs that contain harmonica harp or harpsicord.
In high school my then best friend and I realised how few female artists where in our cd collections. It was odd, we didn't know we didn't listen to female artists, and once we counted it out in crystal cases it was a bit startling. Not to say that gender should come into musical preferences, but when, without even noticing and without any concious dislike for female artists we had nonetheless not chosen them. Being so young and more immersed in radio and video clips I blamed it on an imbalance in the industry and media and made a point to keep my ears open. Was it related to patriachy, maternity? I didn't want to know I just wanted not to be missing out music I might like.
I don't want to get all old school feminist here -it's not my favourite flavour of feminism- but I can't help but feel shocked by this. 100 songs. no females. Is this the 12th century? I wouldn't even be writing this if there were 10 songs, a handful - that fact is shocking in itself- but none? I know it shouldn't matter and has no direct impact on my life but it feels so damn much like being put in my place. Like the world is a big boys club. It's not a nice feeling.
In related matters it seems a bit daft for the triple j website to allow people to comment on the countdown song by song- it's just begging for the internet to bring out the worst (in) people. What can you possibly say:
"yay i'm glad this got in the list"
"your such an idiot this song is a piece of shit what's wrong with the world"
"no you're an idiot and whatever song you like is a piece of shit take that!"
I'm still putting off writing an email about an age old she said/she said situation. I don't think we'll ever figure out whether her chicken or my egg came first and I don't know where we go from there... or if. So I must be old then. To have lost a friend, and not to the wilds and wonders of the world like the rest of them, but to our own differences. Of all my old dear friends the only ones geographically close to me are the ones I've 'lost' how did friendships stray so far from my hopes?
So overall I'm not a very comfortable member of the human family today. |
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| Home or Holiday |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|03:34 pm] |
Adelaide always seems very clean and quiet. spacious.
It doesn't feel like home anymore but it has a sort of belonging pull that Melbourne doesn't have. Melbourne is home because I have set up house, have cats, boy, furniture, responsibilities and everyday activities here. So it was sort of like a holiday to go to Adelaide this week, a holiday to somewhere that will be home again one day.
My oldest dog, Daisy, was thin and disoriented. She had been growing old gracefully for what seemed like years but I was shocked to see her this way. She didn't seem to be getting anything out of life. The vet confirmed that she had dementia and was probably confused and restless most of the time. She was the oldest dog he had ever seen - well over a hundred in canine terms. I held her while she was overdosed on sleep. I wanted to stay until she wasn't warm anymore. You can't ever go back in time and give more hugs.
I read 3 years worth of old journals. They varied wildly between beautiful and extremely cringe-inducing. The best part was when my high school friends and I used to stay at a beach house at Middleton. It was like the parts in Harry Potter where they are at the Burrow. It filled me with remembered joy and longing. Not because I don't still see those people sometimes -a few are still my very best friends- but the time seems long gone when people I love could be gathered together, carefree for longer than a day. I suppose that's part of the reason people make families. |
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| Before I even write... |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|05:23 pm] |
Today I am the person between < and >
What was my tattoo if not a prayer that “our paths shall cross”?
Our ways always intertwined even without our knowing
I had almost given up and then suddenly
“sorry" and "please" and "can we”
My skin sings
I too must throw an overdue rope out to another
Grasping the one I caught in my hand like an anchor
I am the person between two flung ropes
A boat
I write here before I even write to either of them, because it was something of a revelation for me. The same revelation I always have and that I always mention in this place so that I remember -yet I’m continually surprised by it in each repackaging- that life's always moving and me in it. That the red thread stretches, tangles and curls but is never cut.
****
We have been watching twin peaks. It’s a shame the way it outclasses every other tv show ever. So I can’t help but get over my ambivalence for David Lynch. Yeah I’m jumping on the damn bandwagon –alpha 60 dead laura palmer tee and all- almost 20 years too late.
Speaking of dead things, the store is having a chillingly quiet June, which my retail friends tell me is to be expected. Everyone is on sale harder and earlier but I’m not sure what is the right action to take for us. Have to remember that the business is a moving living thing- I have to keep things flowing in and out of it. Can we be self sufficient soon please universe? We’d really dig that.
Having holidays makes me realise how lonely I am and how bad I am of making use of freedom once I have it. I think I’m still in shock-recovery from the intensity of my usual semester hours. I don’t even have the drive or energy yet for all those things I wished I could do while I was doing this or that assignment: writing, oil painting, massive tidying and ordering of house. Playing catch-up with the shop has been enough for the moment.
We finally bought a Bokashi Bin! Not sure if I have the hang of it yet but there’s nothing like tackling the guilt of food waste and my garden’s need for fertilizer in one fell swoop. On the one-day pile is a proper compost bin for a big food garden but for now this is very handy.
We had our boy kitten desexed yesterday and I’m strangely sad about it. Stray cat’sare a huge environmental and animal welfare problem in urban Melbourne so I rationally understand the need and I’ve never had a problem with the idea before. Somehow this time, perhaps because he is under my very own guardianship and I paid, it felt like sending a creature I loved to be mutilated without its permission. He’s doing well, animals are little troopers, its affecting me more than him.
I have been thinking about the uses of bodies beyond their owners’. After watching a contenstant kill her first fish on Master Chef actually. Bodies are and are used organically, fluidly- changing with their uses is silent but material ways. Hardening, stretching, inflating, twitching, flexing. Then something external comes along –fashion, fetish, violence, a surgeon, a butcher, an autopsy, disease- and says “this part is for this now” and gives it another name and themselves permission to partake of a new use. “Ideally it will look this way” they say. They have skills and experience associated with this re-imagining of the body and these help them feel more entitled to it.
The other day I clawed some moss out of a crack in the cobbled street with my bare fingernails. I put it over the exposed roots of my Bansai. It’s still alive and moist. I am glad. |
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