winter

canberra winters always end up shuddering over the top of me before i realise they are there. i am sitting waiting, waiting for the cold to end up taking me under.  at the moment, there are leaves up to my knees on the side of the road. i love that too; i walk through them, i wade and kick, and run, and have them crunch underfoot.  light filtering more and more through the trees as the leaves fall away, less and less, and yet the sun does less and less....

i find that one of the stranger things. the sun in brisbane is heavy and heady even in the middle of winter.  you will sweat, heavy and hot, wade through the humidity not leaves, the feeling of the heat on your arms, the smell of the air when i walk down brunswick street, treading water? treading over the cement on the sidewalk... near the cliff face, near the trees, oh you can stand on it and see the fucking world unfold in that river....

it's been since, november? october? since my last visit... my old haunts have shifted - my favourite cafe, a place i practically lived in for a few years, has shut its doors. my old friends have new lives in new places.  things change. it's the way it goes, over and over again. that comforts me, actually, i like that things are not static, and i go back, and it's all different. the place, my last year in brisbane which was glorious and wonderful and mad and fun, and silly, well, that world's as dead as the person i was then is. it's passed away, hand over hand, into a new placement of people. you can never go home again. it never is home again. 

and i am not settled here; the streets are sanitized, but i can feel a humanity, a warmth in them. i am still looking for an out, and i have found one - a job that fits all the necessary things i need to apply to an institution that's not mine - and maybe, well, i'll do it.  things are slowing, and it's time for a change. my feet itch, i am hungry, my palms are open, open open, and i want to drink the world up. of course there is potential here, but the quiet, the streets, the wideness of the streets have done me in. the lack of frottage on streets with strangers just trying to struggle to work, the smell of the air... i want a city to open me up and bleed me dry for a bit.  and not just little interludes. i want it to take me again, something new, somewhere new, anything, just shifting off again... 

orange juice

it's cheap, nasty orange juice. i am wary of my tea cup; i came to work this morning and there were traces of mold starting to grow on the surface of the tea i'd left there for a few days.

i'm listening to more xiu xiu. i love falling in love with bands who have back catalogues to trawl through and dig into and hide under and wrap around yourself until you are buried.  new album presents to myself every other week. i'm trying to not download illegally as much as possible, especially music i love.  there's not really a justification, morally for how it can be ok to do this. i can afford it on my Librarian Pay.

my hands are covered in small cuts from a broken light bulb. there's cheese on the floor at home; a candelabra on a Give Way sign on the floor, and a melted wax pile on the carpet in the middle of the room. we've got more side-of-the-road furniture - the house slowly filling with things found, others detritus gathering weight in our living space.

i am losing all sense of perspective. it is hard to see what is close and what is accessible, and what is realistic and what i've imagined now.  it could be all impossibilities or i could be sitting on a landmine, or a goldmine... but it does not change, oh no, impossible things, it does not change.

more xiu xiu

i'm sleepwalking today, loyal reader/s. 

and i love the valley oh! and i am tired, and sluggish, and not sure how alive i am today. i am waiting. it's a becoming time, not a being time. i am in the space, filling it a little too small, and a little too sleepy to feel like i am actually there. i feel like i am half somewhere else. far away, and fragmented.  i need more coffee.

recycled paper.

boredom undoes me, on the largest possible bloody scale.  i am ripped forth, and would happily invert my own body if it meant i would have some sort of stimulation.  i run slow without some sort of energy to butt my mind against, slower and slower, and as it sinks back, something inside of me moves faster and faster, equal and opposite, running away from whatever it is i am trying to do to sustain balance.

one of the earliest dreams i can remember was, as a child, being in a grey room filled with towering people, heads taller than me. i was short, and they were all long and thin, with leathery skin. it was a warehouse, and the air was grey.  the thing was though, they were all speaking in my head, in a room of voices that sped up, then slowed down, then sped up again. they raced against each other, and against myself, and i could keep track, but it was uneven and frightening.  my whole childhood, my own internal monologue would periodically reflect this, racing up, slowing down to a snail's drawn out pace, then speeding up again.

it was a precursor perhaps to being bipolar.

i don't dislike it. sometimes, i am frustrated at the fact it makes me question what i actually am, or if i actually am.  it's the lapse of reality; the psychotic tendencies of the condition making the continuum of reality a little more slippery than it is supposed to be. but my reluctance to accept the labeling of my mind's workings as nothing more than a fallacy, resulting from wrong synapses is fairly solidly linked to being told i was possessed by satan, and my mind again, was not mine, and was just an incorrect set of laws being incorrectly applied. only now, it's not god's plan, but a biochemical one, or something.  i think i can judge what i do well. i think i know when i am pushing things just because i'm bored, and frustrated, and wanting something MORE.  i think this is clear to me.

what i need, what i crave so much is that communication, that friction of mind against body against words against flesh, that connects on some improper level and makes me feel properly alive.  i feel the energy coil inside of me, and i want it to swell out and dissipate and take me on.  it's satisfied, partly, in words.  words and books and paper and sorting, and the fleshiness of language, and the communication, the movement of the words inside of me.  it is satisfied too, with risks.  i take risks not because i am masochistic, but because i get bored.  there is a vortex inside of me, and it swells out darkly, and hungrily, and i will push risks into it in order to feel it properly. 

people suggest that creativity will fill this. i need a few more though. i don't get like this when i have sex. creativity. intimacy. madness. warmth.  books. those things stop the push pull run.  

and i get fucking tired of being sensible. i chose sensible. i've chosen it so many fucking times.  i've resisted urges for drama and madness or even goodness and fun, over a safer, 'smarter' pathway.  i am here, in a city i loath, for a job that will take me wonderful places, and here i stay, feet itching, one step after another, trying to keep going, determined as i can be.  i need to write more, i know this. i need to exercise more. that helps as well. i need an outlet, a place, a force, a focus.  something to occupy the constant jittery feeling under my skin i get from time to time. 

and i don't care what is the supposed theory. i don't think it's just chemistry, i don't think it's just the fact that there's something that doesn't quite work properly in my brain.  it works differently. but the risks i take are often considered, often curious, often evaluated, and i either push the evaluation away, or i just don't care because i want to see what'll happen. and i just want to let go. i want a space where all these things i hold together can let go.  everything is constantly on a tight reign, muzzled like a wild dog, hungry, hungry.  i sit here, and i look so calm, and so neutral, but fuck, there's madness just inches away, and i get so tired of keeping it there.  day after day i do it. i cook. clean. try and sort out extra clothes. feed pets. cuddle bunnies. go to the pet store to play with the kittens because i worry they don't get enough love while they are waiting for their forever homes.  i get coffee. i jump in the leaves by the side of the road.  sometimes i go to the park. i look for snails for my lizards to eat, and i let them crawl across my hands.  i try not to drink too much. i watch Doctor Who. i keep it going, tightly, tightly. just wanting to let it all go.

sharp teeth

dig dig dig dig dig it deeper into the flesh, into the flesh.

the city folded away from me, like rumpled sheets shifting off my body crawling out of bed, but i want to go back in there, and dive away the hours, naked and raw.  the lights flickered off and the onion layers peeled off the cement towers in the sky that shrank and folded off me as we drove, the lines, the blackness, the shaking hands, the small hands, the heart in throat, the slipperiness.



i can feel, preemptively, teeth marks on my neck. i can feel skin i've not tasted on the edge of my lips, and i can feel my feet slip, and my hands slip, and i can feel the memories rise and fall and my eyes grip on tight, tighter than my knuckles, death grip, white and don't let go now, oh no, this is not the time to let go....

and what i need now are words. i need to make them dance. i need to make them sing, i need to make them so glorious the world falls apart. please.  i don't want to let go now. because now, i'm hungry.

fresh fresh easter taste

oh yes, i wake up, and it's the same as before.
but yes, oh yes, it's shifted in that irrevocable way.


it irritates me that my mind is only ignited, so randomly, like this from moment to moment. sometimes there's weeks of sneaking and sliding.  but now, no. this time, i fell. and fell. and over arse over hands, i am gone.

i was at a friend's studio in sydney.  it was the most beautiful room i think i've ever been to. i fetishise white. i am a minimalist at heart, i am wet over ryman, and white walls, and the denseness of the gallery white.  and this room was clouded, drenched, milked in marble dust on every surface.  it coated the floor, footsteps burrowed into the white, and the light that filtered through split into fragments from the airborne stone.  i wanted to die in there. i wanted to be buried, and let the soft flower white stone sink into me, into my body, fucked with the white, fucked over and under this emptiness, this negation.

and yes. it happens again like this.

you cut her name into your heart
you burn his name into your arm
cast out the pig you kiss as love
heaven is closed for now you are alone

this too, this too shall pass away
this too, this too will pass away
listen, Steven is singing to you
the pain of life you wipe away

a reason, that fine gray ash shall
recall these days
inquire
the serpent
to become a rag of a dream
interred
you arrive
and you wave as if she could care
but she can't
nor can you
the relinquishing and a flickering
out of loss

this too, this too shall pass away
this too, this too shall fade away
listen, Steven is singing to us
the pain of life you wipe away

perhaps depraved is who you are
why not?
depraved at least you're not alone
overcome by the truth you face that you can't
get up or look up
at the moon
without throwing up and it
stay the same all the time
lie and wait
it stop again like a bee
it will die
when it stings you once
and its small bee's head will fall off

this too, this too shall pass away
this pain will pass away
listen, Steven is singing to you
the pain of life you wipe away


oh oh oh, it always sneaks up behind you like some dirty black dog, like some silent angry cloud, like some wet sheet on your head, like a dream, like a dream, like a dream...

there's sweat here, it's hot and enclosed and my shirt is sticking to me, and my hair is coiled into ringlets from the heat and i am letting go like i am fucking a stranger drunk, and i am yelling lyrics, and i am jumping my fist in the air, my lungs hurting, my tongue bitten, my thighs light, my arse pressed against bodies against bodies and crawling arms around and over me and under.

impossible feeling

i sat against the glass window pressed face against glass, listening to xiu xiu on the bus.  there were more cows than i could count blurring passed me, impossible exchange, impossible exchange.

i will stick to leather, and i will listen, and it feels like my heart is being forced out of my ears. only realising this sneaking up on me as i am there, sticking to leather, and fuck, where did this come from? where the FUCK did this come from? 

it's always dug into my heart that first point of contact when things start to fall into place, or away. and this one, elizabeth? this is unusually stupid, even for you.