and one for the end of year

not sure if it is the best image of me out there, but it is a beautiful photograph.

this year, this godforsaken year is over. almost. counting down. under 12 hours. it's relatively empty symbolism, we are just marking time off, it doesn't MEAN things, it doesn't MEAN life will change. but i feel it, moving on.

i can. and it didn't.

being

being with some people is like pushing two ripe pieces of fruit together. the skin bruises across the points of contact. the flesh opens, splits. the juice runs out, and you lick it off your fingers and you taste it.

i am wearing a shirt with little tiny bunnies on it. they are upside down and i can see them clearly like that.

one day, i want to have a child. and i think that's ok. that day, however, is not today. that place is not here. it is in no way aligned with the life i am living, the place that i am, the person that i am. i am ok with this.

christmas usually makes me deeply sad. there is something about it that hovers over me, ominous and dark and ugly and i wait for it to pass. this year, it moved quietly over me, and now, it's another year until the next. this makes me happy.

i am staring down the barrel of the end of this year. i cannot articulate how happy this makes me, that this year is almost done; that i survived it, that i made my way out the other end, that i am still human, all too human, that the carnage is relative to the growth, that i have learned from my mistakes (a bit, i guess). the solidity of my thoughts, my self, my being, and my ... understanding? has grown. it's a long way from wise, but i feel that it's progress. and this year, over, moves me that little bit further away from the tentacles that wrapped around me.

bob dylan and sex

i just finished 'affection' by krissy kneen. sometimes books are very close, and it is hard to write clearly about what you think. it is hard to understand how close it stands to you.

it is brisbane, and sex and the humidity, the streets and the darkness, the bridge and the river, the footsteps.

it has the madness and softness, and god. it's too close for me to articulate it clearly right now. it makes me want to whip a part of myself out and become alive again. it makes me want to reflect across my own life, my own sex, my own intimacies, and the meaning spun between them. it might only add up to 25 years, but there's enough there. there is enough.

i'm whipping myself around it, right now. 'like a rolling stone' - this song is j. b. and i, before b. went to palistine, while j was here, fleetingly, and we listened to it, and we drank, cloudy cigarette tinged apartment, the laziness and the tepid boredom of canberra there, floating with the smoke.

softly.

bunnies

we had a picnic with bunnies in the park, soft gray and velvet black, expansive green around, rolling in the fields, breathing.

today is a hard one.

today is a slow one. a twitchy, trickling darkness of full, ugly regrets and something i'm unable to put into words.

not even regret. it's a dislocation i have. it is a misplaced piece of a puzzle that i couldn't ever finish.

let's all forget it ever happened now, sweetness. i'll lie here, warm and safe in the collapsing tower of books, falling around me, rough under my back, and we'll pretend it away, we'll touch each other until we forget, and my skin sinks out of memory and into you. take me there. take me there.

the sea

now, it is Iris Murdoch time. 'the sea, the sea'. there have been very few booker prize winner's works i've enjoyed, to be honest. so i am very curious to see how i feel about this. it's started well. so far. there's something i'm not sure of... a roughness, a speed to it, the pace, that i'm still getting used to - it is jittery in a way i don't know if i like.

also got a copy of an awesome anthology 'revolting librarians' - have also ordered copy of 'revolting librarians redux.' i've developed something of an obsession with subject headings.... there's a paper in that's around the corner.

i'm working through two main work related areas of interest - LC subject headings, and cataloging in general, and the 'aftermath' for people working with deeply disturbing material. mulling them over a lot, and i think something will grow out of both of these.

see, i don't catalogue. i'm in reference, or special collections, or... i've been in a few areas, really. work wise, my skills are broader, but i do have good attention to detail... but my better skill is in project work - i excel there. it's definitely my strength; strategy, application of strategy... my 'professional' networking needs some work - my 'professional persona' in general is still unpolished - i am too immature, too reckless, have taken personal risks reflecting back into my professional life that i deeply regret. i get distracted easily, bored easily. but i am stubborn. if i decide i want to do a good job on something, i'll not rest until i have.

but subject headings. that's less of a professional interest, and more of a research issue i hold. and i know, it's huge. the revision and application of 'proper' subject headings to a collection of over three million, Three Million titles, is not feasible. but. but. hm. ponder.

i have, i think anyway, sunstroke. i got severely burnt on my back, while sitting in the shade. it hurts. a lot. it didn't at first, i didn't notice until i turned and saw a shoulder, glowing red, and then my back, an even deeper shade... on arriving home, i found myself woozy, and slow. and hot. and then... the pain. it's painful, digging, bloody. not nice.

oblivion

“I HEAR YOU BUT I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU”

Father, where’s my gun
Now that the war has begun
Let me go it alone
I need no one
I said I need no one

But oh god now here it comes
And it’s too dark to aim this gun
And now faster, faster, faster
Once again I’m on the run
And I hear you say

“O’ my stubborn son
I know that you said
You need no one
But don’t you see
Danger, danger, danger
Headed to oblivion…”

I followed the hunt
Far as I could…
Through desert weathers
Petrified wood
And I took one shot
In the dark
Back fired the bullet
Silver to heart

And oh god now here it comes
And it’s too dark to aim this gun
And now faster, faster, faster
Once again I’m on the run
And I hear you say

“O’ my stubborn son
I know that you said
You need no one
But don’t you see
Danger, danger, danger
Headed to oblivion…”

“WAIT A SECOND….

HAVE YOU COME SO FAR

FOR IT TO END LIKE THIS?

THIS IS THE CHALLENGE

I DARE YOU

TO TAKE A HOLD OF THAT

DARKNESS

FROM DEEP DOWN IN YOU

GET BACK UP

WHAT ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF”

Ok.
Show your face to me
Show your face to me
Be you my friend or enemy
Show your face
Face to me

I do not fear oblivion

Father… where’s my gun?
pwolf <3

stone diaries

carol shields is one of the most tragically underrated writers of the last 50 years. she brings out, micro-incident at a time, the profound, epic heaviness of the average life - the monumental nature of simply being.

her characters don't live lives of epic monsterous proportions. they simply live. their dramas are human, and no less dramatic or lacking in complexity for their humility. their lives are not peaceful or perfect, the families and relationships are all so ... so fleshy and alive, and real. Real. she writes from a heart of reality better than any other writer i can think of.

the stone diaries traces through a woman's life. she is born. she marries. her first husband passes away on their honeymoon. she remarries in her thirties, and has three children. she grows old, as do the children. and she eventually passes away. she has a period of deep depression after losing a job. her close friends pass away before her, but she forms more friendships later in life. she loves her husband; she mourns his death, but celebrates his life. it does not break her. she is strong. her mother died when she was born. her father is a wonderful character streaming through.

there is rock. they are all stone. we are all stone.

it is amazing, and i will carry little pieces of the stone with me for a long time. the gentle, beautiful heaviness of Shield's words will not leave me for some time.

goals

sometimes articulating direction helps me. i realise there are things i do, and things i don't, that i should. I won't set these as definates. but goals, suggestions, hopes.

1. read more. novels. poetry. nonfiction. i feel more solid with a book in the background. even just a few pages. even just at lunch. read. read.

2. write more. be it blog, or quietly, or work related librarythings, or shitty poetry, or rambles, or letters to friends, whatever. words. words. make them. make it. solidify.

3. Yoga. take classes, try and find someone willing to do them with me.

4. meditation on sundays. i feel soulless right now.

5. more music.

6. more time with animals.

7. stop watching any television.

8. dramatically reduce internet time. it is for communication. not this bland zoning out i do on it.

9. see more movies in the cinema.

10. continue therapy. keep fighting. keep. fucking. fighting. do not give in.

11. work on friendships and relationships. be a better friend ; listen more ; be kinder ; more giving of time, of self ; fear not.

12. address health issues much more seriously. start investigating what i can do to stay awake a more reasonable number of hours.

13. food. eat better. Much better. MUCH MUCH better. take lunch to work. two coffee maximum.

14. gentle and kind. gentle and kind. gentle and kind.

15. seize myself as a sexual creature, and stop feeling ashamed of that. if i want to be sexy with a lover, stop being so scared. trust. and if that trust is betrayed, realise that the learning was worth the hurt - and the loss is thus the gain.

16. dream more. peace. softness.

17. podcasts to sleep with. open open. open.

18. save money. responsibility.


this is a time i need to build. build. this is the feeling. it's not a time to make, or create, or grow, but build on what is there, and make that stronger. foundations for growth. i'll have a much clearer list of this, i'll work on that. more details on what to read, more details on how to reduce internet time, to eat better, to save money.... little steps. kind to self. i can get there. i will.

space

the thing that defines me to you, you little wonderland, is the spaces. it is the things unsaid, undone, not felt, not able to happen, and what is not.

that makes it no less wonderful, and you no less wise.

......


i just watched 'where the wild things are' - it strikes me as the sort of movie which everyone takes something significantly different away from it with them.

visually, it is beautiful. the acting is just wonderful - the costumes, the sets, the movement, the light - they capture the darkness and the thrills and the complexity of childhood incredibly. childhood is not some halcyon of joy and innocence - it is full of things you do not understand, things you cannot control, the possibility of loss and horror, and all you understand is what you need. and when you are lonely and sad? it is miserable.

children can be depressed, just as they can be angry and scared and alone or joyous and excited. just because they are newer to the world does not make their experience of it any less valid.

for me, it was incredibly moving. it was an amazing illustration of the terror and sadness and often the darkness of childhood. that lack of control, that lack of context, that lack of understanding all these horrible tiny things - that inability to be heard, that feeling that everyone else is too busy, too occupied - and that you are naughty and wrong, and you don't know how to make it better. children can be terrors. they cannot communicate with words, so they wreck things. it is the anger of some sort of horrid, scary impotence.

it also flickered at how hard it always is. even when we kind of start to understand what other people want, and we get a better perspective, it's still scary. it's still Really hard to get along with other people, or help other people.

it is difficult to be selfless and kind, to be soft and not hard, to trust, to let people in, to let go. it is amazingly difficult. it is so hard to hear what other people say sometimes.

it wasn't hopeful, it didn't tell the audience that things get better or easier, or that there is any solution - just that if you love people, and if you listen to people, you might get there. it helps. it doesn't make it perfect, and sometimes, it doesn't make it ok. it doesn't stop the world being terrifying. but if you are honest, and open, and take risks, and let the people who love you in, then things are a bit better. then, you are not alone.

right now? i feel really alone. i feel like someone i care about is not able to let me any closer in, and i feel selfish for trying, because until other things are sorted out, there's nothing i can do, or ask of them, or... yeah. it hurts.

here and back again

humidity is most noticed between fingers, i think, in swollen hands, in the way clothing peels off like rough sticky oranges...

wine, wine, beer, dripping slowly, heat off the road. even when it's not hot, the damp is thick. little pieces of the few days slip out as they pass, squeezed out from the heat and the damp.

there was the gallery, and there were glass beads coating a taxidermy deer, solid dew.

i don't have a christmas tree, and i am not waiting for jesu, small whelping infant, moving fingers, small tiny fingers, grasping.

but i remember back, and i part the fog of the last year, and i go into my gut under sinew and confusing moments. i saw an old friend in brisbane, and she is 8 months pregnant, a small separate human being inside of her, pushing at her skin, and god, i remember that one realization that one day, i want that too. not just that though, the connected fibers. the co-parent, the partner. the stability, the house. the place that is home. the person that is yours. these things? i want them. and i should not feel compromised for wanting them, as though i should wish for something less fleshy and basic.

and then, i hear stories of people who regret it. they say it whisperingly, so deeply ashamed of it, but they want to wish away their children. what if i am misguided, and mislead by this biological fluctuation? what am i looking for really, other than home, and someone to be alone with, and at home with?

i want that, and i have no idea where to look.

there might be something mismade about me that causes this to keep slipping away. the closer i get, the further it moves away.

drifting

i have slept all day again. this time, due to stomach cramps so severe this morning that i passed out on the floor a few times. i thought better than to go to work.

i had uncomfortably vivid dreams all day, maybe it was the heat, maybe not.

one thing i am finding with my poetry reading, is that the more i re-read the poems, the more time i spend with them, the greater the intimacy and understanding and feeling with them becomes. it's more like listening to music than reading a novel.

Desire

Nor
desire
but together
a flower
desire
I was happy

Sappho

i like to re-read them so i can see them better, feel them better, know them better.

it is very different to narrative.



in other news - i desperately want to reorganise my bookselves. only i don't have the space to move things like i want to. this is problematic. problematic indeed.

pleasure

On a soft pillow
I will lay down my limbs

Sappho

i am having a crisis of faith, which is hard when you believe in very few things.

it is not a crisis i can verbalise, or pin down. because maybe you cannot let something in when it won't stop moving.

i am tired, and i want to lie down for a long, long time, until moss grows and bones soften. and then, i will wake up. and then, i will feel alive again.

my voice will catch in the back of my throat when i finally go to sit up and then, and then, i will lay down my limbs, and they will soften.

my vision is soft around the edges at the moment. things are starting to ghost up and coil in on themselves; our skin flaking off like bark each day, scales from our skin cells, dusty snow. and things turn around, and live come out of it, and meaning comes out of nothing, and we see something, sometimes, that makes it worthwhile. and it is close enough to grasp, almost, but too far away to hold. just that tiny inch too far away to hold properly.



i get a nasty itch sometimes for something... something tangible to consume me and take me away. some sort of visceral madness to overcome the flesh, and run away with me. life with this cinematic glow from moment to moment, glistening, jittering, present. sometimes, some things, some places, and it clicks into place. and then i move slightly, and it all slips away, and the cards slip out of my hand onto the floor and i let go, and i drop them, they fall face down, card after card, and i just don't know if this is the last time i will pick them up now.

the streets are so clean here. the trees are articulate in a way, down the streets, soviet. and they don't take me away. they don't drag me down, bury me alive, and make me forget how to remember how to forget.

visual

seroquel nights

disintegration

Time running beneath the pillow wakes
Lovers entrained who in the name of love
Were promised the steeples and fanlights of a dream;
Joins the renters of each single room
Across the table to observe a life
Dissolving in the acid of their sex;

Time that scatters hair upon a head
Spreads the ice sheet on the shaven lawn;
Signing an annual permit for the frost
Ploughs the stubble in the land at last
To introduce the unknown to the known
And only by politeness make them breed;

Time over the roofs of what has hearly been
Circling, a migratory, static bird,
Predicts no change in future's lancing shape,
And daylight shows the streets still tangled up;
Time points the simian camera in the head
Upon confusion to be seen and seen.


philip larkin




------------------------------

music night dark sleepless or sleepy i am not sure. nil by mouth, stinging sharpness in finger tips you remind me of slipping, and depth and sharp movements oh how i forget you. am i hungry? i've forgotten again.

pages.

wind. not agressive wind, but that quiet movement.

one kilo of cherries from the markets. snacks for a week or so.

i don't want to be here right now. and call it weak or whatever you want, but if i can wipe the next 10 or so hours out of my mind with legally prescribed drugs, then well, those hours are going.

and what are the use of these little words? i feel like i'm slipping back again, slipping away, further back, further back again, and you don't think i'm pretty do you? i guess, i guess my face is strangely shaped, and if you don't like clever, there's not much left.

i don't like feeling like this. i don't like knowing why i feel like this. i don't like having to do what i need to, to stop feeling like this.

oh larkin.

lower back.

i think the bunnies are fighting

i can hear them ... disgruntled little rabbit is standing at attention next to big rabbit's house. there are irritated sounds coming from their direction.

for once, it seems likely to be the little one's fault. fussy little bugger, should leave big rabbit alone!

i am tired. deeply, achingly tired.



the coast.
sometimes, in Past Times, weekends are almost monumental. those times where life, and movement, it becomes so strong and dramatic that each scene forms against the next, cinematic, hyperreal.

there was a softness at the coast though. at moments, it was like the lens was twisted slightly and it focused, like lying on the beach at night, music blaring, toxins flowing in bloodlines between us, snow angels in sand, the moon clouds chance touches arms around me oh yes, people moving shadily sitting in circle quiet now, music music, smell the beach the sand, that grit, bury your fingers deep in the sand, that's all you can feel that softness. breathe.


then focus out again.

i slept mostly. more hours than i was awake.

i read some larkin. i like him more than auden, or coleridge, who i took along as well. coleridge is turgid.


today, i got a camera. this is celebrating being an officially qualified librarian. my sentences are slowing down underhand, and i am moving towards... away from. ayh. sleep.