Radiohead - Codex

this is the song for right now.

Sunset Rubdown - The Empty Threats of Little Lord

i have a tattoo on of a snake on my arm, i got late last year.

his ex-wife has a snake tattooed on her too - one on her ankle.
the evil of snakes; (not that i think of them as evil - i think of them beautiful, strong, and powerful, but potentially deadly - but they still have a rich, evil mythology that is interesting) - the mythology of evil, that crawling, silent danger, that sums him up.

the last four lines, hissed out, angrily, viciously, ending in 'YOU CAN HAVE THE REST, YOU SNAKE', is how i fucking feel every time i think of him, almost two years on. i saw him for the first time, in a year, the other morning; waiting for coffee with his daughter. his daughter greeted me with a hug - there are under 9 years between us in age, and over 20 between him and i. i wonder about the person i was before him. i wonder about trust, and belief, and not being torn in half. i remember those moments between when he would say he loved me, and then when he's whip back saying he fathered me, and our relationship was doomed; or the months he insisted i meant nothing and he'd leave me for his lover in the US as soon as she'd take him, or as soon as he was ready to leave his youngest, a beautiful kind little boy. (and lies, i feel. he littered his speech with snakish lies...)

i remember the first time he said he loved me - facing away from me as he left my apartment one day. i can't remember if it was a morning, where he snuck back into his house he shared with his wife and slept all day - or if it was after work one day. he muttered it under his breath, like he was ashamed.

one time i couldn't sleep. he called me, and read me the second half of 'waiting for godot' while he stood outside and chain smoked, from his mobile phone to mine. and i fell for him then, and in countless other bitter little moments.

after he'd told me he could never be with me, and that he lied when he said he didn't love her, and that i was too young and too beautiful, and he loved me too much, and i broke into nothing, and i ran away to brisbane, crippled on couches and sobbing in a way i can't even explain, a pain i still can't place - when i got back, he bought my rabbits back to my house. i sat silently in my apartment as he bought up the cages and we placed them in. he looked in the spare room, and told me how he'd fantasised of living in there one day if my housemate left. i sat on the couch, and i just glared. i didn't know what to say to him. and i cried. and he held my hand, looking like he didn't know if he could stay or go; telling me it would stop hurting; (easy for you. you replaced me before you broke up with me. you are scared to be alone, you snake, you snake. you are married with a fourth child, to a woman you told me you thought was pathetic); and you held my hand while i sat there, crumpled on the couch.

and later, you told me that you left in a hurry because just being there, near me, filled you with so much lust you could hardly breathe.

you snake. you. can. have. the. rest, you snake, because you left me with pretty much nothing. and there are parts of me i'll never get back because of you.

if i get married, i want to change my last name. because our initials are the same, and i want that part of me gone. i grew my hair long because you liked it short.

when i saw you, you tried to look through me, and avoid me as much as possible. but i could feel you trying not to look, and that gave me a sick sense of satisfaction.

and yes, i wish you the best, you snake. you crawling along, scales to the ground. your hair is greyer, and your bald spot is bigger. you are as attractive as you always were. i am glad i was nowhere near you, because i cannot tolerate your presence. i hope you are fucking happy, you miserable son of a bitch. and i hope you die alone.

words again

it is hard, to describe in words, something that is, in honestly, nothing more than words.

can i re-use words that have been used in this context to make sense of it?  or am i just an idealist? do i just have an overactive imagination?  am i drawing this out of nothingness again?  i like to live in words; it's a habit i fall into in darker times, over and over again.

but this is not dark. i have my Dom, and my house. i have my place, i have my job, and a world that's real.  it's not like this is filling nothing. 

and i know, i'm stopping the gaps. this is not ideal. this is JUST an ideal.  sate it, elizabeth. make it solid.  you have done this before.  and i don't want it to end the same.

oh oh oh.  i do not sense sense. i do not sense it well. i walk in the dark because i blind myself, and gleefully try and find my way through with hungry fingers. and now they are left with the keyboard, and they bring you out, into me. and i wonder. and i raise my eyebrows, and i feel, yes, like a fool.  like a small hungry fool.

but you know, i am an optimist, i think, in some ways. maybe this time, things are different. ha.

books read in 2011

ok, going to try and keep this a little better this time. not sure how to, however. need a better bibliography Thing.  put them in endnotes? maybe i could have a word document of them.

JAN
My Invented Life - 5.1

Pretty Things 5.1

The Side Door 6.1 

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.