xiu xiu

this is making me deliciously happy. i've listened to it on repeat over and over for the last twenty four hours. it's one of those faster moving times where i find music again and it takes me HOME.  fast and warm. 

i often fall in love with love. and then i draw back to people, and i am back with myself again. that is where i am now, and i can see that, and it's ok, if a little bit sad because i want to drown again.  but i'm waiting, biding my time.

off to sydney today - seeing Gogol Bordello - booked tickets to see The Mountain Goats as well.  i'm going to do another list in here of bands i have seen - had one in my old outdated blog which needs refreshing.  my tummy is bulging out, i don't know if it's additional weight or what.  bus leaves at four.  the bus smooths me over, i love it, i love it. especially with headphones in, it's going to be such a pleasant trip.  i will make a playlist, oh YES> that will be fun.  and books. raymond carver, kawabata, maybe some poetry, and iris murdoch?  something thick, it's four hours, and i always end up finishing what i buy to read quickly.  maybe time to finally get off butt and read '100 years of solitude'?  yes.  likely. good idea.

...

... i feel astonishingly isolated right now.

not sure if this is for any substantial reason, or if i just drank too much, or if i am lonely, or if i am overtired, or just stressed with uni.  but i feel closed out.  not even lonely, that's not the right word, but like i've been trapped inside a cage and put in a box.

it's as though the gray dirt under my nails is crawling deeper below my fingers.  and into my arms. and down inside my blood.  i am gathering energy, as much as i can, from being around people, but i feel so cut off from myself that it's desperate.  i have pmt thought, so it's just chemistry fucking with my head.  nothing other than the balance of chemicals in my body are making this happen.

sleepless

curiouser and curiouser. 

i am a sleepy kitten by nature. i doze when i shouldn't, i sleep all day if i can, and it's easy for me to drop off the wire.

and right now, as it's been for EVERY night for the last few weeks, (pretty much since i started the breakfast eating thing), i am awake after one am, functional, clear thoughts, unable to sleep, unable to even get close. not manic energy either. it's just .... awake.  blurry, perhaps a little? but it's not asleep, it's not close.

right now, i am walking.  each day, when i walk, i focus on the way i put my feet on the ground. this is less obscure than you would think - my feet roll over onto the arch when i walk - they always have. a strange, small part of me has always blamed myself - as though this was happening because i was lazy, and i didn't be bothered walking properly. that's just not true - it's to do with a tendon being too short, bones becoming deformed in my feet, and muscle memory.  but now, when i walk, i focus on how my feet fall, on each muscle and movement, and how to make them push into the ground and off the ground, the rolling of bones next to each other, that soreness i always have in my feet that little bit rougher from the tensing of tendons, and stretching and grinding in different ways.


i am not sure if this sort of active walking helps my life in any way. i am restless and draped in that ennui again, waiting waiting for something dramatic to happen. i am sleep walking but awake, so awake, wanting to be dragged feet first out into the street and shown to the world again.  here i am waiting, waiting, waiting for something to take me, arms outstretched and head thrown to the sky, waiting.   it's blank idealism wanting this, wanting huge emotions to sweep me off my feet. the passions keep getting dimmer, now.   i fee softer degrees, more subtle shifts. but i want that madness again. i want to be drunk on passion and lust and love. i want to want to lie in bed memorising someone's face. i am grabbing at this feeling and it slips away before it forms into substance.  i need to let go.

awake

and alert.
 i work in a Very Big library.

i don't mention work on here much. it's a conscious decision - not because i don't love my job - i am a rare person who does - but more due to a desire to keep work separate. i am thinking of starting a blog about issues relevant to the library industry.  but i probably won't.  i am not obsessive about remaining nameless online, it's not like i say anything here that's compromising, or will have me arrested. but at the same time, it's not important to be attached to me. it's sort of nice that it's not, that i put it out there, quiet, in the space of the great unread of the great unwashed. not that i mind if people do read. but nor do i care if they don't. it's not why i write.

pushing back the book-buying urges.  quiet now.  i felt myself sliding earlier, somewhere darker and darker as the day ticked passed.  but i am stopping, and digging in my heels, and trying to hold my own.  i can. i know i can.

don't be angry

I have to sneak in and put on your clothes
You will know where I’ve been
But I need the protection
Oh what a strange and miraculous thing
Finally recognise what is driving me crazy

All that I want was here now it’s gone
All that I want was here now it’s gone
Don’t be angry
I don’t disagree
It is clear that I left
My clothes on the highway

And I’d like to know
If you ever told
You said if I could have once
Given your life some meaning

All that I want was here now it's gone
All that I want was here now it's gone
All that I want was here now it's gone

Don’t be angry
I will die lonely
Don’t be angry
I will die lonely
Don’t be angry
I will die lonely
Don’t argue
'Cause you will see
That I will die so very lonely
Don’t be angry
Don’t be angry

the organ

new band.
wonderful new band. repeat listening, falling in love sort of band. 


i just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  the movie was solid and difficult, and so was the book. it was beautiful and gray and now i feel along and like i need to hide under blankets and like the gray ash is falling, falling over me, until i cannot breathe, oh god, peel back, peel back, and stop it now....

and i want to fall.  i want to lose it. i want to let it all go and fly far far away again, off away away away into another magical place where it is all more real and more alive and i can dive away, dive away and let it take me.

disintegration

perhaps one way of putting it is when, suddenly, your heart expands. you are just there, breathing, but it feels like your heart is growing wider and wider and swallowing another body into your flesh.  your blood beats through to the end of your fingers, but your heart beats over them as well, because, well, because it is enormous what you feel, and you are so so alive in them, and alive in yourself.

sometimes it happens slowly, growing over you gently. and you do not know where it is, or where they are, but only that they are alive in you, and you in them, pieces, pieces, but they are not fragments, they are whole.  and it doesn't matter how many people you love like this, there is always space for more, because this feeling is enormous.  it is here, and it is on the other side of the country, and it is on the other side of the earth, or maybe sitting next to you, just there, just there.

and other times, you will just be sitting, breathing tight for some reason, almost gasping for air, and suddenly it shudders over you, and you are there, oh god, you are on the edge and it is cascading across you, under you, inside of you, consuming like a hungry ghost, and god, yes, yes, i want it, i want it now, i want it so heavy and badly, and i do not know how this happened.   pressed against each other, heartbeats chasing each other like greyhounds, who is beating faster? no race, no stopping, no starting, it just balloons out and takes you down, over and over again, it is always the same. it is always new. it is always the same.  it is never like anything else. 

erratic

sleep is erratic
moods are erratic.

yoga slows me down, evens out the pattern a little.  but i do not feel all here or there, just scattered, scattered all over the place.

i am awake when i should be asleep and sleeping upside down all day. i am not sure if i feel sick, or if i am just not eating enough.  this isn't a depressed post - i'm not unhappy, just erratic. things are shifting under my skin, i forgot how it feels when your skin slips away and that movement below you starts to shudder and you lose touch with the ground and you start to ... fall... i don't know if it is beautiful or terrifying or meaningless. i don't know where it is, and even as i get older, i am still stabbing in the dark.

i'd like to make it all simple again, reduce my life back and back, receed it. was there some point where i started twisting the patterns into more and more detailed, messy loops and i forgot how to draw the lines clearly?  i can't even remember when it started. i would have been 14 or so, i guess, maybe that was the marker, or when i fell in love with words and emailed from an invisible face at the other end of the lake.  i think that was it, 16 and digging a hole. that was ten years ago.  it was ten years ago, now.  how did that happen?  how the fuck did it happen that i'm 26 in a month or so?  i don't understand how all those years folded behind me - my mind is not holding them tight, the moments slip away, faster and faster, and what have i hear? i hold out my hands and i am scared because i still do not know where i am going.  i still feel like a child. i still feel blind. do we ever get any sort of footing?

i'm finding meaning in music.  it's hazy, yeah, but i feel something clearer coming out of the fog.  i'm not strong, i'm not strong. i feel fragile and easily broken, and that's what it is, you know, the reservations are slipping away and i cannot contain this feeling, i cannot contain it, and this, this is not the way i was heading. 


but i've got that taste in my mouth again.

settling

a different sort of settled.

listening to The Mountain Goats now, to the wonderful happiness that is 'The Sunset Tree'. 

ok, maybe i'm not settled.  maybe that's not quite it.  maybe there's a sneaking sort of feeling, a tiny elephant in my room.  perhaps there's something there, and i'm not wanting to look at it because i don't know what it'll mean.  another piece in the puzzle?  another start?  are the pieces starting to drop? are the balls slipping down the wire? 

i could get used to it. 

there are things and times that become monumental, moments in life that simmer and burn deeper into memory into others.  they are the ones i pick up and pass around my mind like a beautiful little shiny object, glimmering and precious, that needs to be handled.  they make a brightly coloured glitter tube of things i've done, and people i've loved, and places.   i think i might be on the edge of some, because things are shifting out and around and the arrangement of my life is becoming something slightly different again.

i always go back to the cliff on bowen tce, in my mind. i imagine myself standing on that cliff, staring out there. i wonder why, sometimes, it's the most vivid way in my mind of summing up brisbane.  i took lovers there, yes, but i took lovers in my bed more often.  somehow, that place captures a place i was mentally more than any other location. i remember the time H and i got drunk on lust and red wine with J.  we ended up in a sexually tense ball around him, and J slept on the floor and H in my bed, and i could feel them both there, my beautiful boys... i broke up with H there, and i cried, cried cried there whenever i was left alone, and emptied. i was there, bitten by mosquitoes before running away to J's place and crashing there, the night we slept together.

i climbed the fence and stood on the cliff face with S once.  he was a virtual stranger, but i feel in love with him hard and fast and beautifully, and that was all we needed.  not even sex, not even touching, but something else on the cliff's edge, his long lank shoulders...

my friends, my lovers elsewhere, when i think of taking them to brisbane, that's where i take them in my mind. i want to paint them into that place and show them that, because i feel like it holds something essential about myself. i want to take B there, more than anyone in the world. i want to jump the fence with her, and hold her hand, dangling our feet over the edge.  the cliff is huge, large enough to kill you if you fell, easily. it doesn't feel dangerous. it feels safe as you look over the river and the bridge and the building and the streets and you are THERE and i am THERE, and i would take her there and we would drink goon from the carton and draw on each other's hands with felt pens.

books and paper and f a l l i n g

two day book binding course that's excellent.

i miss b.

my floor is unusually clear at the moment, there is a strange amount of carpet available for strolling on, pacing.  i think this is what makes me miss b- the last time i had this much carpet, she was here too.  sigh.

teen novels, feeling slightly off colour, strangely, wanting to re-arrange books, touching around the edges. 

slipping grips on edges, sweeeet oblivion roll over me until i forget my name or where i am or what ever happened or how i got there and all i have is this second; everything else eroded until i am a shadow, i am breathing and shuddering and take me take me take me....  and hold tight, little hands, hold on so tight you can't breathe, because you cannot fall. you cannot fall. there is too much at stake, and you cannot fall.  but hand. over. hand. it takes you by surprise sometimes. 

but it feels good to be dizzy again.

bus trips

there's something marvellous about the trip from canberra to sydney via bus.  i like road trips, i like sitting and watching the green and blue and space move past me. 

i read "the easter parade" by richard yates on the way to sydney. it was... utterly marvellous.  despite the fact the content was ... depressing is the wrong word, - it's a fairly relentless book, and not a lot of good things happen to the characters, but the intimacy you gain with the two women and their mother, their memories and regrets and loves and their aging is a tremendous thing.





i have been thinking a lot about aging lately.  some morbid, some confused, some frightened.  we live in an unsatisfying cult of youth and gratification and purchasing our way to happiness.  it's easy to get caught up in it.  it's Lazy to get caught up in it. 

last night, i felt back breakingly lonely when i was lying in bed.  i texted a friend who is sometimes, the wisest person i know.  his actions can lie about this, but under the delusion and confusion and the lust that clouds my vision in relation to him, his mind is one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen.

i asked him if he got lonely.
he said:
 i get lonely when i compare myself to another person or expectation.  i feel immersed and unbound when nouns do not seize control.  allow the universe to universe, the pamphlet to pamphlet, and the idiot to idiot; then i pursue my own ignorance in the ecosystem i have chosen.  (loneliness often rides w ignorance).   

next time i feel lonely, i'm going to remember this. i am going to gather it around me like dirty red sheets and bundle it under me like books and learning, and wrap it under my neck like a cowl.  my bunnies will talk to me without nouns, and i'll give all my books to strangers who don't love them, and i'll burn my clothes until all i am left with are leggings for yoga that are hideous but comfortable.  this won't make me free, but it will make me move.

little

bunnies. music. i baked a pie.

at the moment, little bunny has a box in his house. he sits on it, all day long, content, staring at the wall.  the lid of his house will be open - he'll jump out, only to run straight back in, back onto the box... sitting there a bit more. 

 

oh little man, scruffy little face and snuffle nose... 

the thing i find interesting about so much debate about Tao Lin's poetry is that people keep asking 'is it poetry?' (a post on HTMLgiant ... HERE) - it seems a sort of empty question to me. what is poetry? what is art? what is writing? these are not interesting questions, because the point is not the word. the point is what it is.  how does it make you feel? why do you like his writing or dislike it? what do you like or dislike about it?  most importantly, if you don't think it is poetry, why not? what makes it not poetry? what would make it poetry?  should they be read individually? as a whole?  how does this change what is written?  or how you read it?  

personally, i love them. they are gentle and small, and use gentle small words. they crawl into your mind, and over your body, and all of a sudden, you are thinking about vegan shoplifting hamsters, and you feel enchanted and disenchanted at the same time.  i don't know if i enjoy them the most out of all poetry i've read recently - Carol Ann Duffy resonates more, moves me more. but the subtly of the colouring of boredom, solitude, confusion, the breakdown of a relationship, sitting on gmail chat talking shit for hours rather than doing anything, eating vegan food to be moral, and... what i best call ennui, is what he paints so well, and it is when you read a collection of them that they creep up on you.

my monologue after reading maybe 30, 40 pages of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Poetry starts to slow down, and stutter along blank lines. it observes and sinks into my brain.   and the words empty out of what you see.  it is a day to day observation.  it is a step from one foot to the next, point by point.  and i like that, and i don't see why that isn't poetry, or why it can't be.

heavy

sometimes i wonder why i fight it.  and then i remember.

but yeah. i spent today in bed, sleeping. when i say that, i don't mean lying around, relaxing. i was asleep until three pm, unbroken. i was in bed by 11pm the previous night.  i'm not upset, or mentally fucked at the moment - i feel fragile, and soft, and easily knocked, but i am not depressed, just sore.  and tired. and unable to move properly.

books.  got huge new pile of wonderful, delicious books. read one so far -

i read it on sunday, and it was soft and gentle and dreamy.  a good one.  it's a part of my teen same-sex relationship collection.  i got six for the collection in my Better World Books order.   ASH is a fairy tale, and does the conventions of it well.  softly, walking, gentle. i liked it, it did not challenge me. 






next though, i'm going to read this:

I've added a link to the publisher on the side.  Blake Butler is one of the editors of HTMLgiant, possibly my favourite blog at the moment. the book is one of the most exquisite looking items i've recieved in a long time. the publishers, fuck, are incredible. it's a part of my attempt to try to push my reading into new places, new writers, new publishers and see what people are doing. i am hungry to read it, but holding off a little because i am so excited by it.  the first chapter, i read on the bus, out past belconnen. there was a huge family behind me, and a man who stank sitting near by. bunny was on my lap, struggling in his bag. it was all too much so i put it aside.  soon. tonight.


sleep too. and flaxseed oil, and oh fuck, i need to get weetbix. and more books. no. no more books until i have finished the ones i have. saving. saving. uni work. ah. the list of shit i need to get done is drowning me.