grubby metaphores

i can't be bothered rifling around for them. 

this year, it is simple. i am getting my mental health sorted out far better than i have this year. my head's stayed above water, yeah.  i've had no major breakdowns, no complete moments of utter self destruction, but the lapping feelings of misery are getting more and more regular. i wake up and i cannot move.  i cannot fucking move. i sit up to try and leave, and every bone in my body is begging me to lie down again, and hide, HIDE hide, don't LEAVE the room, don't leave your house, just close your eyes.  if i push it, my brain starts pushing back angrily with a constant influx of internal monologue.  it's a stream of hate and loathing, and it sounds like it's not my voice.  then i doze.  throughout the day, and night, i'll be awake for patches, but unable to read more than a few chapters of anything, and numb to the point of apathy. i don't even care i am missing work. i don't care i am losing money. i don't care i am paralyzed here. i'll have mild aural hallucinations - voices speaking to me just out of what i can hear - and if i try to do anything much, i feel as though i am being flayed. 

i've had enough.  i'm getting a full bipolar assessment done at the black dog institute. 

the mania is fine. the mania is delicious. the mania is also really fucking destructive and needs to be managed because it's the Other Fucking Side of this.

i've also drawn the curtains on a four month relationship.  this makes me achingly tired, because i stupidly, optimistically, thought that this time, it could be someone i may be able to start a life with. but not.  and that's ok, i know, but i feel older and older, and more and more tired and unsure of what i want, apart from someone to walk with me and hold my hand when it's cold outside.

more reading. go team

perhaps this is more indicative of my desire to procrastinate?  i really fucking hate writing assignments.

i fond this book amazingly pleasing in a way i find hard to define.  i felt fond and warm and sometimes, a bit horrified.

the narrative was a bit too loose in a way that seemed a bit too tricksy, but that's more a personal preference; i like tight narratives, and not cross sections sliced out and put under the microscope. i feel that i only got to know little fragments of Leah, but despite that, i loved her in a way i don't tend to usually love characters. it was a damp and heavy sort of book at times, but the writing, if not the narrative, was amazingly tightly polished.


i liked it more than i like a lot of the new young shiny things that i tend to think are too much glaze and not enough solidity. it was a book that makes me think i might consider buying other things by the writer. but it didn't change me. i think about this, verses something like 'gilead' which comes in and sucks you dry and ecstatic and the narrative and the writing fit so incredibly...

but yeah. i finished it, happily, and felt i was glad for reading it.
    

Book Time! 'one dimensional woman'

One Dimensional Woman (Zero Books)

i'll admit i blatantly stole this idea off another blogger whose name i have already forgotten. but i like the self shots with the book.

Now - my main critique of this was the fact that it was .... too short.  yeah. this is not something i normally find - i adore brevity in books, especially about ideas - but i don't feel things were... fleshed out as much as they could have been and as much as i would have liked them to be. but, it was a great start.

a lot of major issues with contemporary feminism, and porn, and the analysis of porn, capitalism, feminism, and the notion of 'choice' were brilliantly discussed. but, the thing i often like in feminist texts is the personal - and the lack of this was a bit frustrating - when discussing forms that post-contemporary porn may take that remove it from the troubling place it is in, she's not addressing issues in the porn industry, or the individuals who work in it - she discusses the work as an abstract.

and a pet peeve of mine - the discussion of pornography, but only touching the edges of her darker sister, prostitution. i think when discussing sex and commerce, and the enactment of sex as a commercial transaction, failing to look at least passingly, or acknowledge that obvious space and the fact that porn provides an image of sex, while prostitution is the purchase of time, flesh and some sort of physical intimacy - a far more explicit transaction, is an oversight.


and Oh how it is raining. oh how good it is.  i just want to dive into the sound and never come out. i dread it receding back, and clouds parting. i just want rain rain rain, all over my flesh tone, and wrinkling my toes in my shoes. 

open

well, i've opened my blog up a little more now.  hardly publicised, but it's not hidden.  i've had a habit of doing so after a previous one was 'unearthed' - not that it was particularly salacious, unless you count a rather tedious diatribe about a nasty break up to be of interest - by someone who i'd rather, well, didn't contact me.  if by some peculiar chance they choose to this time, well - /insert image of me, one eyebrow raised, confusion lighting up my face/.

reading wise, i've slowed down with the season. winter makes me withdraw, and i over-filled my time for six months. i fell behind at work, i fell behind in my general movements, and become tired. so now, i recharge.  i'm listening to podcasts, and knitting a lace shawl from a pattern off ravelry.  i'm trying to get better at chess; my Gentleman-Caller is excellent (he claims coyness...) and i'd like to at least be slightly more challenging than the feeble, easily defeated moppet i currently am.

workwise, i am attempting Ambition. there's a half-hearted attempt for me to find places to Go Towards. lots of dim lit scattered capital letters. they are quietly optimistic, but realistic at the same time.

things i've never seriously contemplated are seeming like serious and viable options - this is exciting and scary.  i'm looking at circles and sparkles and i'm not sure how this makes me feel, other than extraordinarily happy, in a way that's new to me. 

blogging is something that comforts me. i feel happy enough and safe enough to return to it, without more hungry ghosts leaping down my throat at phrases that do not belong to them.  i've been doing this since 2000. it's how i purge.  and i do it in silence, and not for an audience, and i occasionally forget, and remember again. it's like life drawing - the art of finding, and losing and finding the image over and over again until some sort of whole is made up. that's what blogging does, it creates a space for thinking and feeling and gives a comfortable context.

i'm thinking about study.  real study - abstract, non-vocational, internal, intense study.  everything is paused for the next six months though, until i know where i am going, and my god-forsaken library masters is over.  two more subjects, and i have the paper, and i'll be walking out, awarded, MIS behind my  name.  furiously hungry to get rid of it.  furiously eager to dig my teeth into something else. itching for this little patch of waiting and tapping my toes and saving every penny and eating out of cans to empty so i can uplift my belongings and start start start... perhaps.

Bands i have seen

Work In Progress.

this is where i try and remember things, like all the BIG bands i have seen, and then find the dates when i see them.  good work elizabeth! funzies! i am missing a lot - and they are ALL out of order, le sigh. 

Morrissey - Livid Festival Brisbane 2003
Mogwai - Livid Festival Brisbane 2003
Dirty Three - Livid Festival Brisbane 2003
The Cure - BEC Brisbane 2007
Arcade Fire - Big Day Out Gold Coast 2008
Bjork - Big Day Out Gold Coast 2008
Sigur Ros - Tivoli Brisbane 2006
Sigur Ros - Tivoli Brisbane 2006
Mountain Goats - The Zoo Brisbane 2008
Mono - The Zoo Brisbane 2006/7 (?)
Animal Collective - The Zoo Brisbane 2006
Gogol Bordello - Sydney 2010
Iota - Troubadour Brisbane 2005
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Troubadour Brisbane 2007
Low - Troubadour Brisbane 2006/7
M. Ward - The Zoo Brisbane 2006/7
Smog/Callahan - Troubadour Brisbane 2007
Dresden Dolls - The Zoo Brisbane 2006
Amanda Fucking Palmer - The Zoo Brisbane 2007
Amanda Fucking Palmer - Sydney Opera House Sydney 2009
Patrick Wolf - Rosies Brisbane 2007
Patrick Wolf - The Zoo Brisbane 2009
The Mountain Goats - The Metro Sydney 2010
Regurgitator - The Met Brisbane 2007
Ani Difranco - Playhouse Brisbane 2005
Ani Difranco - Canberra Theatre Canberra 2008
Mertzbow & Keji Heno - Powerhouse (this is not music festival) Brisbane 2005
Tenniscoats - The Zoo
Tujiko Noriko - Powerhouse
Sufjan Stevens - Tivoli Brisbane 2007
P J Harvey - Convention Centre Brisbane 2005
Boris, Melt-banana, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, et al - Sydney Opera House 2010
xiu xiu - Powerhouse 2010

purpose

this is what kills me.

one of my earliest memories was sitting at the kitchen table doing a drawing, crayons and pencils, and a picture of rabbits playing tennis.

and halfway through, this chill went through me. why was was i doing this? what was the purpose, apart from the fun i was getting, of doing this drawing?  it would rot away with time - the acidic paper would fade (of course, not knowing much about acid in paper when i was 7, my understanding of exactly how and why it would rot was limited).. and even if someone did love it, or it did sell, or whatever, well... then what's the point?

this really only proves i was a fucked up kid.
but this still plagues me hideously. it's friday night, and i should be relaxing. instead, i am wracked with guilt, and want to do something 'Meaningful' with my night. and then, it turns into this nasty sort of pattern - what is meaningful? what is pleasure? what do i want to do? what book should i choose? what would be the purpose though, of reading it if i didn't write about it, or reflect on it, or discuss it, or at least feel like i had been enriched by it. and even, were i to do that, what meaning does that give me? 

essentially, i reduce it all back, and i come to a very nihilistic sort of place, where nothing ends up having any sort of meaning. 

and this is all because it's a friday night and i am trying to pick between reading Gunter Grass and a novel about a guy who really liked The Smiths as a teenager. OH or writing something about my teen novels. or working. or. or, or... or....... what the fuck?


this is why i have the tattoo on my arm. to remind me of the circles and the patterns and to remember that this nihilism is something that's haunted me for as long as i can recall, and that no matter where i go, nothing is just behind and in front of me, because nothing is all i can honestly believe in.

i should start writing again

or maybe it's time for a new blog. i dunno.

anyhow, regardless, i am pondering dinner.  right now, all i know for sure that i have at home is tomatoes, and some couscous. should i get additional vegetables?  capsicum would be pleasing with this.  but maybe beans? i like beans. and chili. from memory, i have some chilli. oh, and spring onions!  excellent.

there's a dinner.

wow.  amazing.  this is a spectacular return to blogging, elizabeth. you get a sticker of excellence.  well done indeed. well. done.