touching showed.

When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted:  and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself--no cost,
No past, no people else at all--
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

philip larkin actually is my god.  that cranky old masturbatory librarian.

he is broken and ugly.  and i love him.   23 days til i fly out. 

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.

rapture

i am reading it again.  oh lordy, oh lordy.

it is spectacular.  it is huge and takes me far away, in small words.  carol ann duffy, my god, breathless.

the darkness clears a little. heavy depression for last two days, clouding the day until 3 or 4, when i can get up and my joints can move again. it is slow and uncomfortable until then, and sad and dark, but i can move then, in the afternoon, the shade is comfortable and comforting and it is ok again. 

i hope tomorrow i can rise up a little better with sunrise and not the afternoon. i have a parcel on my desk at work, and i am sick of sleeping all day in order to survive. 

i have a 40% voucher at borders. i have a bad feeling i need to spend this tomorrow as a reward for going to work. self-bribing.

head above water. i feel like i am the last priority, the least important, the most invisible. the most superfluous and meaningless, like slip away, slip away, and ouch, it never hurts less, does it?  it always hurts.

rocking chair

 

this is my new chair. 

bunny seems to approve of it.

Recent book acquisitions : 

I've been meaning to buy a copy ever since i read about it on Jeanette Winterson's website. so far, it is incredibly. utterly, breathtakingly incredible.  it makes me wish impossible things, and makes me hungry. it makes me sit in the rain and feel like the tears are not salty. oh oh oh. it is beautiful.













  and this one, i just found randomly in a bookstore. series of short stories, (yes, one by Jeanette Winterson... theme much?) for a really amazingly cheap price.  collect em all, i say.  i love short stories though.  they are a beautiful place to play in language, and form, and deliciousness.






 i'm thinking about trying my hand/fingertips at poetry again some time. it likely won't see the light of day... i feel self concious about whatever i write, poetrywise, and i doubt it'd be of much literarrrrrry worth, whatever i splutter out.  i haven't found the voice yet, my voice, any voice.  minimal words, sketching shapes with a few lines and letting our hearts fill in the rest? i just don't know, i really don't. 

nor am i sure what i am trying to say. 

and that is ok.

the baby sitters club

i used to write poems about the baby-sitters club.

i want to photoshop bauldrillard's face onto the cover of 'boy crazy stacey'. i like the idea of Toby the cute lifeguard, being bauldrillard's alter-ego.

i wished i could have been claudia, the hot artist, japanese-american one. but at heart, i think i was just mary-anne, the nerd who cried a lot. i think she's bisexual. i have nothing, however, to base this on.

long week. skin crawling. my kitchen smells so bad that is has become kind of interesting, and i don't want to clean it.

there is only one thing on my mind and it is driving everything else out.

honour

Some honoured me by giving me
the secret of their works
[32]

sappho



a friend sent me a text message that was a poem. it made me profoundly happy. it just said:

condense the space tomorrow nigh/ for face & orbit do silence defy
i'll interpret this as 'call me tomorrow.'

this month, i am trying to drink less. this is because drinking is all i can think about come afternoon. and yet, it doesn't make me happy.

i guess it's systemic, booze, in everyone i know. we are bored. we are just wanting to push our minds out a little and make them wobble. but i'd rather wobble less.

you were made for poetry

i just binged something ugly. three books. on top of the four on saturday. on top of the four i ordered last month. on top of the fact i now want Tao Lin's back catalogue, because now i am sitting with Shoplifting, it's digging a bigger hole/whole in me, and i want more. not because i could ever, or would ever, want to write like that. but simply because i don't. and i like that distance.


two volumes of poetry. Anne Carson, and Carol Ann Duffy. and a penguin classic. i feel i should have read more of them. i've read a significant number, but really, not that many. it needs work.



Magazines I Like

lip - a canberra based teen magazine for girls, with lots of feminism and no bullshit thinking for them. it's about travel, and history, books, logic, fashion. it's not a simple, dumb magazine, but a wonderful, rich, and interesting magazine that talks to girls, and WOMEN, on their level.

frankie - australian magazine with beautiful layout, occasionally wonderful but consistently quite good and funny articles, and interesting drawings. and craft. lots of stunning craft. there is one regular writer who is painfully fatist, and it makes me angry though. i think i might write and tell them that.

bitch - a feminist view of pop culture. that really says it all. i subscribed for years, and recently, when the dollar was up, re-subscribed. now i need to go and fill in the back issues i am missing. it's a glorious magazine to read, and re-read.

the lifted brow - more a journal than a magazine, it is a collection of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism and comics, based out of brisbane and melbourne, with a CD of fantastic music you should listen to.

this year, i am subscribing to mcsweenies, i think, and picking up a few back issues.


Reading Teen Novels in Borders

this is one of my hobbies. i go in for a few hours, curl up on their comfortable couches and read teen novels. i read one today, "Outside In" which was a wonderful novella about a group of teenagers. it was humble and undramatic, which is something i enjoy in teen novels, and the writing rarely overbalanced into melodrama. the movement between the characters is what made it strong. i feel glad i looked at that cover and picked it up. it was a good random choice.

light

Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin, book three for the year...

i didn't find it depressing, nor bleak in that ugly sort of way that grunge novels are. it was touching - detached but not unemotional - it was that disconnected replaying of events in a small, moment by moment, and spacious sort of way. i like Tao Lin's poetry a little bit more, and his shorter, surreal stories more too... they are gentler still and rougher edged. this was slow, and boring, but in a wonderful way. in a strangely joyous way. i don't know if that was intended. i found it hopeful. it wasn't that the characters were unpleasant, or unemotional - the writing was distant, but not without being touching. it was that lack of assurance of how anyone is supposed to feel, or how you are supposed to manage your feelings or understand your feelings or move within your feelings.

i liked it a lot.

it was especially interesting given that i'd just read Slaughterhouse Five. it was a strange feeling to be placing something as monumental as war next to the monumental ennui of that quiet despair of inner city suburban apathy, where you are everywhere and going nowhere all at once. you see madness and strength and vivid colours in Slaughterhouse Five, while Shoplifting fades from one space to another, like sap down a tree.

if i could marry the guardian, i would.

for serious. how AWESOME is this?

The Romantic Poets

they are publishing a series of pamphlets on the Romantics. i want them desperately and am trying to find someone who'll send them to me from the UK. lamentably, this is not as easy as one would hope. we'll see. hopefully.

LITTLE PAMPHLETS!

i like pamphlets. in other news, i am still having metadata issues at work. i am dizzy. i am more than a little cranky. and i am tired. and i want to read the stuff on the guardian's website.

small press publishers

this is a new interest of mine - looking into intriguing small press publishers, and small literary magazines around the world.

see, i want to write again. i don't know where to start - that's mainly why i am using the blog a lot. i don't tag it enough, nor do i have a lot of readers at the moment - no publicity, not that actively involved online, all those sorts of things... but where it comes to writing and publishing, i don't know where to start. i don't know what to say, or how to say it, or who to say it to. and sadly, i am fairly reluctant to publicise my blog too much, due to the presence of an angry, unhinged ex boyfriend from six years ago who's emailed me about offhanded comments i've made in it. that bothers me deeply, and i don't want to encourage that sort of madness.
i guess i just need to Do It. you know. play with words. read. be alone. sit. exist. think. do. not so much apathy, and letting things happen. i need words like this, i need words and i need to be in them. i need my time with them. and unfortunately, it's practice and time and repetition that improves. and feedback and audience. blogs/diaries are good because they get you used to communicating in written words, and get you used to your own rhythms of writing and the way to pull the words together. but i need more than that, i need to write stories, and poetry, and .. and things.

i need to push my reading too - into MORE and Different. what i'm thinking of is investing in McSweeney's for the year, as well as a few choice back issues, and Wave Books yearly subscription - all their published material for a year, for $75.

and i need to write.


Today's Lizard Photo -- Dr Cuddles and Splodgy spooning. adorable.

seroquel nights

disintegration

Time running beneath the pillow wakes
Lovers entrained who in the name of love
Were promised the steeples and fanlights of a dream;
Joins the renters of each single room
Across the table to observe a life
Dissolving in the acid of their sex;

Time that scatters hair upon a head
Spreads the ice sheet on the shaven lawn;
Signing an annual permit for the frost
Ploughs the stubble in the land at last
To introduce the unknown to the known
And only by politeness make them breed;

Time over the roofs of what has hearly been
Circling, a migratory, static bird,
Predicts no change in future's lancing shape,
And daylight shows the streets still tangled up;
Time points the simian camera in the head
Upon confusion to be seen and seen.


philip larkin




------------------------------

music night dark sleepless or sleepy i am not sure. nil by mouth, stinging sharpness in finger tips you remind me of slipping, and depth and sharp movements oh how i forget you. am i hungry? i've forgotten again.

pages.

wind. not agressive wind, but that quiet movement.

one kilo of cherries from the markets. snacks for a week or so.

i don't want to be here right now. and call it weak or whatever you want, but if i can wipe the next 10 or so hours out of my mind with legally prescribed drugs, then well, those hours are going.

and what are the use of these little words? i feel like i'm slipping back again, slipping away, further back, further back again, and you don't think i'm pretty do you? i guess, i guess my face is strangely shaped, and if you don't like clever, there's not much left.

i don't like feeling like this. i don't like knowing why i feel like this. i don't like having to do what i need to, to stop feeling like this.

oh larkin.

lower back.

i think the bunnies are fighting

i can hear them ... disgruntled little rabbit is standing at attention next to big rabbit's house. there are irritated sounds coming from their direction.

for once, it seems likely to be the little one's fault. fussy little bugger, should leave big rabbit alone!

i am tired. deeply, achingly tired.



the coast.
sometimes, in Past Times, weekends are almost monumental. those times where life, and movement, it becomes so strong and dramatic that each scene forms against the next, cinematic, hyperreal.

there was a softness at the coast though. at moments, it was like the lens was twisted slightly and it focused, like lying on the beach at night, music blaring, toxins flowing in bloodlines between us, snow angels in sand, the moon clouds chance touches arms around me oh yes, people moving shadily sitting in circle quiet now, music music, smell the beach the sand, that grit, bury your fingers deep in the sand, that's all you can feel that softness. breathe.


then focus out again.

i slept mostly. more hours than i was awake.

i read some larkin. i like him more than auden, or coleridge, who i took along as well. coleridge is turgid.


today, i got a camera. this is celebrating being an officially qualified librarian. my sentences are slowing down underhand, and i am moving towards... away from. ayh. sleep.

coastal

to the beach, good folk. i am going on holiday by accident, in a house of people, room to room, too much booze is likely - i am taking books. tempted to remove some software from the Boy's iPhone to keep him of the interwebs for a few days. but i like him, so i won't.

sand, and little rock pools, salty water and that itchy under-the-skin feeling from the ocean. sleeping somewhere different, with people i don't know well, sand walk dark beach times, rolling over and over.

poetry. auden, larkin, borges, sexton, sappho - am taking them with me for the holiday.

quiet and distance from this repulsive town.



these are the things that Kill Me....

i am taking monday off work. monday will be a break in something for me, and i am glad that i won't be here. and i'll be celebrating on tuesday. it's the little things, the ones we are waiting for, that are not quite victories, but spaces, and places where we can again feel free again.

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.

Female Poets Reading-time!

ok. i'm starting on a list of different female poets to look at, and trying to work out what sort of form a 'group' of people discussing them could take. i tend to think a communal blog might go well, but that's my own bias towards blogs as an internet mechanism of communication.

so far we have:

sappho
christina rosetti
emily dickenson
patti smith
sylvia plath
judith wright
annie sprinkle
gabrielle everall
kimberley mann
anne sexton
carol anne duffy
adrienne rich
alice oswald
penelope shuttle
zoë skoulding
marianne moore

honestly, i'm shit at organising 'stuff' - pretty much anything. it's hard enough to organise Waking Up, Getting To Work, Feeding Self, Feeding Animals, Money, and other adult things that should be a lot easier than they seem to me.

pondering what sort of form ... all read same writer at the same time? just reflect on whatever one you choose, and then others write about it as well? i tend to like that, so other people can respond if it interests them, or not... ghgmmmm... Nutting Stuff Out.

ETA - The Guardian never fails to be Amazing. here's a link to their Excellent Poem of the Week blog - Poem Of the Week

skinks, heat, mountain-tops and comics

the skinks are cranky. specifically, splodgy the blue tongue, who everyone else insists on calling 'stinky' because, well... he smells a bit, is pacing his house moodily, ramming his little head under twigs, putting his little paws up against the glass. i want to let him crawl around outside the house, only he's being sprayed for mites and ticks today, and i need to keep them in confinement. no water either. fortunately, they are desert animals, and it's not going to hurt them.

the Lizard People have given excellent advice - Dr Cuddle's lack of teeth might not be animal cruelty, but just the remainder of a disease, or something... he had a big meal of Crumbly Lizard Feed, and loved it. i think splodgy has settled. the bunnies had cherries today, which delighted them, and i gave one to audrey rat, and she grabbed it so excitedly with her itty bitty hands and devoured it.

today, two new books - the first volume of 'love and rockets' - 'maggie the mechanic' -- and the first mouse guard comic bind-up - 'mouse guard autumn'. i had ordered 'mouse guard autumn' online, and the order got cancelled, which was disappointing. but i am going to move between these two and poetry while my focus is still wavering a little.

any suggestions of female poets to read are encouraged - my preference is 20th century at the moment.

Now, to CURRY. i am not a very excellent cook, but i do like making curry, and making it simmer for ages to make it strong an' tasty and delicious. so i goin' to cook that and leave it, and have a delicious fruit salad too. and make cous-cous to take for lunch this week.

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.

sore tired attempt at blog post

i was going to write a reflection on the Forgotten Australia's apology, but i felt too ... mentally exhausted by working so closely with it to say anything substantial.

i was going to ponder the question/rant someone posted at me about the fact i do pole dancing fitness classes - they accused me of supporting female subjugation due to a fitness class, and i get irrationally furious when men tell me how to enact my feminism. but, i don't have much of substance to say, other than to raise the question of how this is different from other forms of dance, and if it matters?

i was going to write about the book i just finished reading - "the year of living biblically' by A.J. Jacobs - let's see -

i really enjoyed it. i like his writing style; it is easy, it flows well, it is personal without being forced, and intimate without that detracting from what he is investigating. his analysis of his own behaviour is interesting, and honest, and the interludes to his family life are actually quite touching. and i enjoy it as a way of looking, and really, honestly investigating the bible's content in such a deeply intimate way - enacting the rules with your own body, your own life. it is a daring thing to do, and i think he writes about it in a way that honestly communicates both the problems of fundimentalism, and the many, many variations of it, through his discussions with adherents to the faiths.

Jacobs also approaches all of the people with an openness i found refreshing. it's so easy to laugh at these seemingly absurd beliefs; but rather, he doesn't aim to make fun of them, but to try and understand what they are doing, what they believe and why they do. the scope, and the lightness of the tone of the book didn't allow for a thorough investigation of this - but this was not his purpose, and nor was there the space to do it.

not everything sat comfortably with me - i think there were two points where i stopped and went 'huh? i don't know about this...' - both towards the end. but i like that. i like that i was not sure how i felt about it. and it's not likely to be something i need to mull over - these are not issues i need to deal with. but any book that allows me to approach religion critically, compassionately, and gently humorously is something i respect.

************

today, my complete works of anne sexton arrived. i need to add Carol Anne Duffy to my 'list of female poets to read'. anne first. i am excited.

************

i got two new pets. a splotched blue tongue lizard, and a shingleback. the blue tongue 'musks' a lot - ie, puts out a 'sexy' smell for Da Ladies. the shingleback nuzzles you with his little face. they are both adorable little muffins.


this is the shingleback. the name is Dr Cuddles - N and i suspect he is a she, so Dr will suffice as a title.

the bunnies seem indifferent to the lizardly additions.

Poetry an' stuff

i often wonder about gender and writing. i look through my own collection of books, and notice that so many of the writers i hold most dear are male. i wonder if this is some sort of internalised mysogny i am not entirely aware of.

article: "do women write female poetry?

list: ruth padel's top 10 female poets

at the moment, i'm starting to collect more 20th century woman poets. anne sexton, adrienne rich, alice oswald ... it's a journey. a past lover introduced me to larkin, and i fell in love with him. and now, this world, this connected passion for words and how together they move in and out of each other is taking me back.



list : top ten books on shelley

i've had a passion for the romantics since my mid teens - shelley was the first. i have to stutteringly confess that this interest came out of reading an article online about the gothic subculture, and linking 'goffics' to a love of the romantics. so i was curious, and raided the shelves at my fundimentalist christian school library. there was a copy of 'the collected works of percy bysshe shelley,' thin plastic cover over the red binding. paperback, flimsy. i consumed devoured explored implored shelley to show me his magic, and it unfolded around me, little me, never really... getting... poetry before this point. i progressed into byron, down into ee cummings (drawn first for his dislike of capitals and use of puntuation...)

but, but. the poets have been mostly male. my favourite writers - kawabata, murakami, winterson, atwood, yes, roughly even. but female poets, i've never really taken to.

so now, i will. i'm working on it. i feel... i feel sad sometimes that all this, these interests of mine, i feel like i step into them alone. i like sharing intellectual discoveries, writers, poets, artists, creativity, i like seeing it grow out and over and into and out of me, and others, i like that give and take which comes when you give a writer to someone else - and right now, i feel as though i have no one who gives a fig for the stuff i read and enjoy. so, the solitary journey? it's not without its charms, and i think, it too will give back a lot to me.