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.

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.

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.