coastal

to the beach, good folk. i am going on holiday by accident, in a house of people, room to room, too much booze is likely - i am taking books. tempted to remove some software from the Boy's iPhone to keep him of the interwebs for a few days. but i like him, so i won't.

sand, and little rock pools, salty water and that itchy under-the-skin feeling from the ocean. sleeping somewhere different, with people i don't know well, sand walk dark beach times, rolling over and over.

poetry. auden, larkin, borges, sexton, sappho - am taking them with me for the holiday.

quiet and distance from this repulsive town.



these are the things that Kill Me....

i am taking monday off work. monday will be a break in something for me, and i am glad that i won't be here. and i'll be celebrating on tuesday. it's the little things, the ones we are waiting for, that are not quite victories, but spaces, and places where we can again feel free again.

waiting

i get tired of this waiting feeling i have right now. it's an edginess, as though i am... waiting for something silent, something big? something small? something new? something repetitive? i can't put my finger on it.

am i waiting to feel acknowledged, or real, or visible, or desired? to be wanted and taken and consumed and hand over hand falling until i forget my name, forget how to breathe, there is nothing oh god, nothing just this tunnel, this place, this small space created between me and you .... ? that sort of rush feeling that now, i feel is probably the last thing i need ever again?

because i am waiting.

checking my phone, anticipation. i cook dinner eagerly wanting this to come. is this... thing... going to validate my existence somehow? if you reach out and touch me and i feel like you feel me and i feel you and there is some sort of sublime dreamy overarching transfiguration through that eee f l reorganized, will i be there? or you here? is there anybody there? i can't articulate it, i can't find it. i can't name it.

Alone

[168b]

The moon has set and
the Pleiades. Middle
of the night, time spins
away and i lie alone.

[130]

Eros loosener of limbs once again trembles me,
a sweetbitter beast irrepressibly creeping in.

..............

the detritus of her body of work, these little quiet fragments break through more than entire bodies of works do, than entire lives. sappho, to take your words, 'you burn us'
it has fallen, it is just in pieces, and oh God, the spaces, the spaces. i adore spaces, i adore the spaciousness of her works. i adore the lost, the fragmented, the disintegration, the crumbles, the taste in the back of our mouths that is all that is left of her.

Female Poets Reading-time!

ok. i'm starting on a list of different female poets to look at, and trying to work out what sort of form a 'group' of people discussing them could take. i tend to think a communal blog might go well, but that's my own bias towards blogs as an internet mechanism of communication.

so far we have:

sappho
christina rosetti
emily dickenson
patti smith
sylvia plath
judith wright
annie sprinkle
gabrielle everall
kimberley mann
anne sexton
carol anne duffy
adrienne rich
alice oswald
penelope shuttle
zoë skoulding
marianne moore

honestly, i'm shit at organising 'stuff' - pretty much anything. it's hard enough to organise Waking Up, Getting To Work, Feeding Self, Feeding Animals, Money, and other adult things that should be a lot easier than they seem to me.

pondering what sort of form ... all read same writer at the same time? just reflect on whatever one you choose, and then others write about it as well? i tend to like that, so other people can respond if it interests them, or not... ghgmmmm... Nutting Stuff Out.

ETA - The Guardian never fails to be Amazing. here's a link to their Excellent Poem of the Week blog - Poem Of the Week

skinks, heat, mountain-tops and comics

the skinks are cranky. specifically, splodgy the blue tongue, who everyone else insists on calling 'stinky' because, well... he smells a bit, is pacing his house moodily, ramming his little head under twigs, putting his little paws up against the glass. i want to let him crawl around outside the house, only he's being sprayed for mites and ticks today, and i need to keep them in confinement. no water either. fortunately, they are desert animals, and it's not going to hurt them.

the Lizard People have given excellent advice - Dr Cuddle's lack of teeth might not be animal cruelty, but just the remainder of a disease, or something... he had a big meal of Crumbly Lizard Feed, and loved it. i think splodgy has settled. the bunnies had cherries today, which delighted them, and i gave one to audrey rat, and she grabbed it so excitedly with her itty bitty hands and devoured it.

today, two new books - the first volume of 'love and rockets' - 'maggie the mechanic' -- and the first mouse guard comic bind-up - 'mouse guard autumn'. i had ordered 'mouse guard autumn' online, and the order got cancelled, which was disappointing. but i am going to move between these two and poetry while my focus is still wavering a little.

any suggestions of female poets to read are encouraged - my preference is 20th century at the moment.

Now, to CURRY. i am not a very excellent cook, but i do like making curry, and making it simmer for ages to make it strong an' tasty and delicious. so i goin' to cook that and leave it, and have a delicious fruit salad too. and make cous-cous to take for lunch this week.

hot day, tired animals

today has been too hot. i've slept most of the last 24 hours. woke up at six for dinner - it's closing in on 10.30, and i am exhausted.

the house is quiet, filled with sleeping critters. both bunnies are sprawled lazily in their houses, warm and cranky. the rats oscillate between picking fights with each other, and sulkily curling up around their condo. the skinks snooze in their house, and wandered around outside, in the apartment, lackluster and belligerent as skinks often are. Kali the dragon sleeps on N's lap, little arms relaxed and a tired frustrated expression crossing his face.

the heat does no one well here.

every so often, a piece of newspaper shifts in someone's house. (that's my preference to cage. all the beasties, after small runs around, attempt to get back to their houses, because it is their territory, and they like it there.) the rats shift around, bunny moves a leg, and the skinks dig deeper into their newspaper. a rat sneezes. the shingleback sneezes too. we are suspecting that he might have a slightly abused past and it worries us - he needs a vet trip.

my mind is hazy, like the feeling after rain on a hot humid brisbane day. it is lazy and cannot hold ideas together very well. sleep suits me today, because it keeps me safe. it is groggy and lazy and smells like sweat, like sleeping all day and folding over and over.

i am starting on the introduction to my complete works of Sappho. i find it interesting that the work that is read, and loved, and respected, on the basis of what has been left behind. it's a similar thing to what interests me, working with manuscripts. it is an art of piecing together the fragments. it differs so much from oral histories, which are offered and are open verbal interactions. manuscripts are collected fragments of what is left of someone's life, the slipped through the cracks, the physical spaces and creations and movements, all added on top of each other. when i've worked with people's reciepts, or old old diaries, or gently, passionatly complied scrap books of photographs of planes, i wonder what they'd think of someone like me reading through them, moved by their attention and their passions, their sheer will to communicate and how this stays behind.

it's what i like about libraries.

sleep deprived thoughts

there are some friends that i miss so much, i actually can't keep in close contact with them. it hurts too much to be so far from them.

i ranted a bit, and deleted.

but i am hurting a bit right now, and i need to find words in a safe way that doesn't overflow like i used to. words are powerful, and when the words you are given are sharp and hard and painful, it digs in to every vulnerability, and you are left feeling like nothing. so thus, i am left using words to rebuild again. rebuild again. am i unable to find a single supportive person anymore? is the only thing i am able to do now is find people who make me feel less and less worthy? i need to stop this.

i am reading sappho. it's a part of my project - female poetry. slow collecting, slow movement through it. sappho is a good place to start.

sore tired attempt at blog post

i was going to write a reflection on the Forgotten Australia's apology, but i felt too ... mentally exhausted by working so closely with it to say anything substantial.

i was going to ponder the question/rant someone posted at me about the fact i do pole dancing fitness classes - they accused me of supporting female subjugation due to a fitness class, and i get irrationally furious when men tell me how to enact my feminism. but, i don't have much of substance to say, other than to raise the question of how this is different from other forms of dance, and if it matters?

i was going to write about the book i just finished reading - "the year of living biblically' by A.J. Jacobs - let's see -

i really enjoyed it. i like his writing style; it is easy, it flows well, it is personal without being forced, and intimate without that detracting from what he is investigating. his analysis of his own behaviour is interesting, and honest, and the interludes to his family life are actually quite touching. and i enjoy it as a way of looking, and really, honestly investigating the bible's content in such a deeply intimate way - enacting the rules with your own body, your own life. it is a daring thing to do, and i think he writes about it in a way that honestly communicates both the problems of fundimentalism, and the many, many variations of it, through his discussions with adherents to the faiths.

Jacobs also approaches all of the people with an openness i found refreshing. it's so easy to laugh at these seemingly absurd beliefs; but rather, he doesn't aim to make fun of them, but to try and understand what they are doing, what they believe and why they do. the scope, and the lightness of the tone of the book didn't allow for a thorough investigation of this - but this was not his purpose, and nor was there the space to do it.

not everything sat comfortably with me - i think there were two points where i stopped and went 'huh? i don't know about this...' - both towards the end. but i like that. i like that i was not sure how i felt about it. and it's not likely to be something i need to mull over - these are not issues i need to deal with. but any book that allows me to approach religion critically, compassionately, and gently humorously is something i respect.

************

today, my complete works of anne sexton arrived. i need to add Carol Anne Duffy to my 'list of female poets to read'. anne first. i am excited.

************

i got two new pets. a splotched blue tongue lizard, and a shingleback. the blue tongue 'musks' a lot - ie, puts out a 'sexy' smell for Da Ladies. the shingleback nuzzles you with his little face. they are both adorable little muffins.


this is the shingleback. the name is Dr Cuddles - N and i suspect he is a she, so Dr will suffice as a title.

the bunnies seem indifferent to the lizardly additions.

Poetry an' stuff

i often wonder about gender and writing. i look through my own collection of books, and notice that so many of the writers i hold most dear are male. i wonder if this is some sort of internalised mysogny i am not entirely aware of.

article: "do women write female poetry?

list: ruth padel's top 10 female poets

at the moment, i'm starting to collect more 20th century woman poets. anne sexton, adrienne rich, alice oswald ... it's a journey. a past lover introduced me to larkin, and i fell in love with him. and now, this world, this connected passion for words and how together they move in and out of each other is taking me back.



list : top ten books on shelley

i've had a passion for the romantics since my mid teens - shelley was the first. i have to stutteringly confess that this interest came out of reading an article online about the gothic subculture, and linking 'goffics' to a love of the romantics. so i was curious, and raided the shelves at my fundimentalist christian school library. there was a copy of 'the collected works of percy bysshe shelley,' thin plastic cover over the red binding. paperback, flimsy. i consumed devoured explored implored shelley to show me his magic, and it unfolded around me, little me, never really... getting... poetry before this point. i progressed into byron, down into ee cummings (drawn first for his dislike of capitals and use of puntuation...)

but, but. the poets have been mostly male. my favourite writers - kawabata, murakami, winterson, atwood, yes, roughly even. but female poets, i've never really taken to.

so now, i will. i'm working on it. i feel... i feel sad sometimes that all this, these interests of mine, i feel like i step into them alone. i like sharing intellectual discoveries, writers, poets, artists, creativity, i like seeing it grow out and over and into and out of me, and others, i like that give and take which comes when you give a writer to someone else - and right now, i feel as though i have no one who gives a fig for the stuff i read and enjoy. so, the solitary journey? it's not without its charms, and i think, it too will give back a lot to me.

Good News Day Today

Today, i am very pleased.

the mary river, in queensland, has been saved, after the utterly revoltingly stupid and animal-endangering dam has been stopped:

News Story On Traveston Dam Rejection

gay civil unions have just been legalised in the a.c.t - i will be happier when civil unions are an option for all people, so that people have an option for a commitment to another person which is free of the ugliness of marriage:

News Story on Gay Marriage

and now, i will pretend that i'll arrive home and find Exciting Books on my doorstep. even though i order them to work. right now, i am about to learn about Anne Sexton. she seems interesting. and i got another Kawabata and Winterson in the mail recently.... delicious times. and i have a copy of a comic named 'mouseguard autumn' also on the way - it has bunnies in it.

Tardis + new blog

this one is more Craft Oriented though. i'm going to resist the urge to do Ranties here, as much as it's a habit drawn out from years of blogging.... it's a proper ye oldeeee craft blog, with me knitting, my spinning wheel named pip, me crochet, and me pets.

i have a menagerie in my house, of 9 animals.

i live in a cold city in a warm country.

i live with my cousin, N, who is super-awesome. i have best friends all around the world, from B. in palestine, to L. & J in brisbane, and F and V in my own city.

right now, i am crocheting a tardis. it's pretty awesome : here's a picture --




using: 1.75 mm hook, 4ply cotton.
2 chain, tbl pattern.

i came off the craft wagon awhile ago. and then. i remembered that Making Things makes me feel about 1000 times more sane.