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.

waiting

i get tired of this waiting feeling i have right now. it's an edginess, as though i am... waiting for something silent, something big? something small? something new? something repetitive? i can't put my finger on it.

am i waiting to feel acknowledged, or real, or visible, or desired? to be wanted and taken and consumed and hand over hand falling until i forget my name, forget how to breathe, there is nothing oh god, nothing just this tunnel, this place, this small space created between me and you .... ? that sort of rush feeling that now, i feel is probably the last thing i need ever again?

because i am waiting.

checking my phone, anticipation. i cook dinner eagerly wanting this to come. is this... thing... going to validate my existence somehow? if you reach out and touch me and i feel like you feel me and i feel you and there is some sort of sublime dreamy overarching transfiguration through that eee f l reorganized, will i be there? or you here? is there anybody there? i can't articulate it, i can't find it. i can't name it.

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.

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.