A Pen-To-Paper Creation.

Birthdays make poor holidays.

The advent of our yearly survival of this Earth is a back-handed custom; the receiving of gifts, a trade-off. Something to distract our attention away from the untimely arrival of tell-tale indentations, and perhaps more importantly, lingering thoughts of mortality that encompass the very essence of morbidity.

We are nothing if not superlatively shallow.

The gifts reflect this. Maleup, moisturiser, perfume, clothing - most presents are of an indubitably intimate nature. Such items serve a distinct purpose, this purpose being to subtly notify the recipient that certain improvements are called for. 'You stink', perhaps, or 'You are long past the stage of professing to disguise that as a frown line'. To top it all off, a crowd of smug onlookers who are able to avoid thoughts of their own longevity bellow loudly, the lyrical atrocity that is the birthday anthem, before introducing grotesque cakes of assorted colour and taste that, while providing neither joy nor happiness, do enure that each fresh years spent within the confines of this earth will begin with an ass wice the size as it was the year before.

Heinous customs.

Christmas, however, is different. There are trees sprouting in almost every home, each indescribably beautiful, and each casting a cheerful shade over mountains of gift-wrapped goodwill and generosity.

Carols are sung. They are unselfish, and do not bear the name of any particular beneficiary. The joy is meant for all, distributed by all.

It makes us eager to reach each year's end. I feel that this is important...it breaks up the mediocrity of simply surviving. It provides an incline in the paths we are bound to - a rise that is approached by many, and overcome by many. Braving this festivity alone is needless..unthinkable.

Perhaps this is what I love most about Christmas. The unity. The feel of footsteps upon the same wet, wooden boards as those that my own feet grip warily.

A birthday serves only to scrutinize and objectify, in one way or another. To differentiate between each inhabitant of this mysterious planet.

Christmas seems as good an excuse as any to force we nomads of existence into good company.

No.

It is better. The best excuse.

Wishes.

I will use it on you.
My 18 candles will extinguish with one simple thought. You, etched into my mind.

I use my wish chips on you too. And my fallen eyelashes. And captured santa clauses.

Because without you, my next birthday won't matter at all.

'Whoosh!'

"TAKE THIS, AND THIS, AND THIS TOO! AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT BRINGING HER - THAT, THAT TROLLOP AROUND HERE!"

They've been at it for hours now. My parents, I mean. It began with a barrage of hisses and whispers in the carpeted hall beneath my bedroom. Some bullshit about wanting to protect me, I can only assume, though really they have only succeeded in insulting my intelligence. I'm not a fucking retard.

Anyway. The hushed accusations and curtailed responses quickly gave way to well-aimed snipes and sonophonic self-indignance. They must have known enough to realise I could hear - hell, Van Gough could have heard, and he's dead and missing an ear - but this particuar concern diliquesced with the first eager fist-fulls of mud.

I like to think of it as having come out of storage. It's strange to picture. A lurid orange Kennard's garage in some way-off, gentrified industrial zone, still seedy as a grain silon. The flourescent lighting would be dull, and would flicker like the tasteless pink neons decorating cheap motels on barren highways. The aluminium security door would be corrogated, and serve as canvas to budding graffiti artists sporting grubby cans of cheap, red spraypaint. And here among the ramshackle ruins of disused possessions would sit the barrels.

Rough, copper-rimmed barrels filled to the brim with viscid black mud. Each barrel would be clearly tagged: 'The Vanauatu Disagreement'. 'Petition Against A Vasectomy'. 'The Week You Made Me Spend With Your Mother'. 'Comments Made About My Weight'. Some flaunt spatterings and disjointed handprints from previous fits of slinging, and though much of the mud has crusted with age, both parties can account for every barrel.

"IF YOU THROW ONE MORE SHIRT OUT OF THAT WINDOW, I SWEAR CAROL, YOU'LL REGRET IT!!! EVER STOPPED TO CONSIDER HOW MUCH OF THIS IS ACTUALLY YOUR FAULT?"

"KEEP QUIET!! JAMES WILL HEAR!"

Ah. I was wondering when I would make a reappearance in the squabble. Typically, as a detour from the main issue. The screaming match that can account for the Mexican Wave of raising shutters along our street has now turned to the subject of myself. A new barrel of mud - only to me, they hit like clods with heavy rocks at the centre, leaving sprawling purple bruises in their wake. I suddenly don't want to listen anymore.

I turn to pluck a tissue from the table beside my bed. I like the noise it makes as it glides between the plastic. 'Whoosh!' The fiasco on the lawn is muffled.

I take another. 'Whoosh!'

'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'

I begin to imitate the sound as I pull each translucent square from it's flimsy house of cardboard.

'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'

Soon, too soon, the patterned box is empty, my room strewn with discarded sheets of disposable erasers for overwrought emotions. I am left to find another means of muting the argument.

Tissues are so simple. The 'Whoosh!' is simple too. It's like a sniff. We hear it, we know someone is snivelling. They are the surest and most honest way to signify melancholy to the world as it lies in wait, doglike, for it's ears to be pricked. An easily discerned means to an end...something to demonstrate unhappiness, but something to quench it too...to force back the tears.

Or perhaps they really an invitation to them?

If only they would sit down...each either side of a box of tissues. If they had told one another how unhappy they had been, maybe none of this would ever even have happened to begin with.

Why couldn't they have been more like the tissues?

Sounds like

Her fingers moved restlessly in the comfortable darkness beneath the dining table. Twirling the dying tissue between her fingers.
Twisting and straining the soft white security blanket of sorts.

The voices of the others bounce off the honey coloured walls. 'Charming' her mother had called the room. Words meant nothing in the world of her mother though. The expression draped across her face had said what she really thought.
Her father was less demanding. colours and fabrics meant nothing to him. All he saw was her ragged, short hair cut and the t-shirt-less torso of Will. Will the vagrant-who-stole-his-only-daughter-and-turned-her-into-a-gyspy. Will the waste-of-space-boyfriend-who-would-leave-her-pregnant-and-poor. Her parents carried label makers like loaded pistols, and they were all too ready to use them on her and her so-called life.

And so she sat, forgetting to breathe for minutes at a time and giving herself a headache. Her parents were giving her a headache. Her parents and their labels and their savage eyes.

Will kept talking, ignoring what was beneath the surface, or maybe he only saw his own refelction? She was grateful for him, he carried only a guitar and a head full of honesty, but still she kept the tissue moving knowing she was shredding it to pieces and littering the floor with the artificial snow of her anxiety.

3 courses. Tea? Coffee? Shall I get your coat mum? Thanks for coming dad! She kept her own smile plastered on running her eyes over Will for reassurance, to make sure he was still there, still staying.

Standing on the front stoop counting down the seconds til she could shut the door and shut them out her mother stopped in the semi darkness and turned around "Oh and Hannah, deeeear, there's a mess of paper under one of the chairs, cleanliness is next to godliness you know. I would expect better from my daughter."

A Recipe For Revenge.

He was her beginning, her middle and her end, though of course, she never imagined it would be so at the time.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. He penetrated her life at first, only as a number. The newest mandroid to roll off the end of a well-versed production line.

Oh, she primped and flattered, of course. Blushed when the occassion called for it, and flashed a thigh when she thought it would benefit. Her's was a well choreographed routine...she, the beholder of a golden agenda.

He knew what she was all about, and swaggered to the batting plate with a smirk and a hike of the pants. He knew the rules alright, but he never was one to play by them.

He caught her off-guard.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. But all at once, she found herself at the centre of a firestorm.

It raged around her; flooded every delicate blue vein until she herself was boiling with it. It put light behind her eyes...in fact, they danced with it. The embers felled her wooden sanctuary. They charred her cool facade of indifference; burnt away her sleeves...turned every trick to cinders.

In a fever, she emerged from the sinister ashes of her former self as would a phoenix.

The rebirth did not suit him.

Sincerity complicates things.

He was water in her hands...bit by bit he trickled through the gaps...clung to the creases in her palms and slipped away. She could not hold him. Down, down, down he fell, onto her black, patent leather shoes until her nimble feet became water-logged with the sheer weight of him.

Every step dragged...each one an effort. There was no escaping him, or at least, not at first. Her mind was still alight with him. She was entranced...encapsulated...pyromanic.

He succeeded in the end. Her wet feet soon became cold feet. They were ice cold...the kind that spreads like a lethal virus. It slipped into the bloodstream like coolant into anti-freeze and pumped with every heart-wrench, until the fire went out with a hiss that was really a sob, and a great deal of black smoke.

She became infected with it - with the very idea of him. Her every thought of him festered like a bullet wound...rotted her mind against him, and turned her heart gangrene. The bitterness was solvent...abundant...destructive.

He was carefree once more. He drove her to the alps of her own heartland and buried her in heavy snow. There was no escaping. There was never any escaping him.

She was trickless...loveless...heartless. She was hollow...a crisp, terracotta shell fresh from the kiln, and gutted from the inside...covetous of vengeance, and determined to wreak havoc.

There was never a flame. No spark to speak of. A cup of wan smiles and a bucketful of empty promises...a sprinkling of affections here and there, blood brought to boil, and a heart left to simmer till golden brown in the family frying pan. To marinate in it's own juices until bone dry, only to be sealed away in a bland packed stamped 'Will Freeze Well'. They were right about that.

It had all come to nothing.

Bittersweet symphonies.

Revenge is a waste of time. It's like a virus you can't shake.
It hooks your heart (or head, but generally not) and sticks.
Revenge painfully eats at you-
so why does it taste so good?

I am certainly no proficient when it comes to this almost lost artform,
but I am well aware of it, and I will admit I have whiled away many an hour plotting theoretical revenge attacks.
Most of which I never carry out.

I know that in reality, revenge gets you nowhere.
Revenge carried out more oft' than not leads to guilt
but
revenge not carried out oft' leads to regret.

It is so hard to win when it comes to the sticky intricacies of revenge.

Although there are some who carry it off with practiced ease. No remorse, no guilt- just a sense of righting wrongs and carrying on.
I don't really envy these people, I just wonder how they do it.

for your viewing/listening pleasure:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4YJjuQc0BwA
Picture to Burn- Taylor Swift.

My Candlelight Novel.

jack kerouac- 'try never get drunk outside yr own house.'

candlelight. something special.

i will blow it out when i'm done.

paper. 'secretscribblednotebooks' equally as special.

no electricity. pure and just.

and

I live in the light, but I carry my dark with me.

I am in one at the moment.
someone short circuited, pulled the plug
pulled the wool over my eyes.

I did it to myself.
I should have studied.
I should have been harder on myself.
Hindsight is 20:20...and I haven't even taken the test yet.

'test'. nothing good ever comes of a word like that.
it's a word you have to spit out.
'exam' isn't much nicer. more formal, just as abhorrent.

here I am again. turning the lights out on myself.
i have an exam and i'm writing to you.
is this self-inflicted sabotage?

Ah well...I will survive (ooooh as looong as i know how to love...)the same way I got through exams many moons ago:" If I don't know it by now, I never will"

Atleast I can sleep easy in blackouts.

Censorship.

The lights have gone out. With a whirr, the electricity surged and cut out with a definitive and inexplicable 'slurp!', taunting me as if finishing the last strand of spaghetti, and with just as much selfishness.

Blackouts are a queer thing. I step outside, and want to laugh as a dozen neighbors stare back at me from their own dilapidated porches, each of them with a hand to the forehead...protecting their digitised eyes from the cold light of day. Stepping out of the technological haze that is life in the 21st century. Life in the fast lane.

We are all thinking the same thing. What to do now?

I once read an article about blackouts. Nine months following a large blackout in Sweden, the number of babies born tripled. I find it almost comforting that when in doubt, the human species will inevitably revert back to one-on-one entertainment. The kind they had before iPods and Playstations...even before television and computers. There is something illustrious in thoughts of flesh against flesh in the dark. Something soothing.

I have no such option. It is twilight, and I am alone. I was not counting on being alone.

A family visit minus the family. Alone in a house that was once my home - if not in sentiment, certainly in name. I often feel I am in a family all by myself. A tumultuous ideal. A family without bitter words, complications or hatchetts - neither buried nor sharpened. One that is also devoid of any sort of warmth - and I am cold, as I knew I must be eventually.

It makes me wish that I was a different person...one who they thought was funny or interesting. Likeable. Lovable. I hate them for making me think it, because I like being myself. And anyway, everyone else is taken.

The Tulips Are Too Excitable.

I just know that I am going to be one of those overbearingly proud mothers. The kind that takes a picture at every coo, smile and burst of flatulence...who soldiers on in the rain at the sidelines of a soccer field while simultaneously yelling obscenities at the children on the other team.

You know the type [A].

I know this, because at present, in my kitchen, I have been growing three small tulips. I purchased these tulips in March, when they were in full bloom. I bought potted flowers, because I just can't stand the idea of cut flowers. Flowers are - and you'll allow me to be cliched for just a moment - a thing of considerable aesthietic pleasure in this world. For me, they encompass what is beutiful, what is living, and what is reborn. Now, I do understand how a majority of the human race would find showcasing such an artefact to be a pleasureable experience. But I myself - and for the same reason that I could never own a caged bird - detest the thought of severing something so pretty, for the pure selfishness of exploiting it, only to have to watch it die in the end. And while wild flowers do die, they germinate and they grow again the next spring.

So in summation of my horribly philosophical spiel, I would hate to take an ill person cut flowers...I'd want to encourage them to think of rejuvination of life, and not of the inevitability of death.

But back to the tulips. They wilted, as one might expect, on the approach of winter. I was sad because they were red, and I love red tulips, but more importantly, because the only thing I had to look at was a pot full of dirt. So I locked the pot away in a cupboard for six months. No, really. I couldn't bear to look at it.

Last week I remembered the pot, and took it back out with the hope that the bulbs would rejuvinate for spring. I watered it every day, and a few days ago, I noticed tiny green shoots poking through the topsoil.

I was thrilled.

Every day since (and you'll think I am mad), I have watered my tulip buds. I check them obsessively - just to try and gauge whether or not they have grown at all. I open my kitchen window for them, I move them from shade to sunlight and back again, and I empty the dirty plant water. Worse still, I talk to them. Yes indeed.

"Just look at you girls! You'll be flowering within the month!" or "That's the way, tulip dears".

I am as proud as punch of my three little tulip buds. When they flower and wilt, I am sure I will care a great deal more than I did when they were simply store-bought. I'm not quite sure what this all says about commitment, but I am sure it must be something.

Commit.

If only I could.





The concept is one I cannot fully comprehend.


The word itself is foreign. Too rolling a word to wrap my mouth around, let alone my mind.





half-hearted commitment has become my specialty.


But what is commitment really?





It's finishing an assignment the week you get it.

It's holding back someone's hair while they regurgitate their mistakes.

It's replying to random texts at 3 a.m in the morning.


It's something I do not have.
commitment. bites.

If Walls Could Talk.

If walls could talk, what would they tell me? I long to hear the secrets of my fortified enclosure. Would each bleached bathroom tile tell a different story?
Or would the testimony of the yellow kitchen better suit? After all, what's a crack here or there, when all is said and done?

If I put my ear to the parquetry floor, would the stained wood whisper into it? And what of the cupboards and doors? Surely they too have a tale to tell?

I am sure the cool glass of my windows, with their voyueristic recounts, would be the most interesting storytellers of all. After all, people are well aware that walls, though mute, see everything.

But windows - they are treated with contempt. They are hidden behind dusty blinds or curtains. They are peered through mercilessly, and locked at night.

I'm sure they hate it. And of course, anger is always the best catalyst for forbidden knowledge.

Mauer im Kopf

She is her own Iron Curtain. I believe that she was born hairless and blind, within a Berliner Mauer of her own purposeful creation.

It was tantamount to a life sentence. She is free in every physical sense of the word, and yet she lives but a half life. She is manacled in darkness behind encumbering, onerous walls. Walls of gelatinous ice that grow thicker and colder by the year. Nobody could scale those walls.

Angular shadows circle the perimeter. They tote sleek, black revolvers stocked with the silver-tongued ammunition of sharp words. The orders? Shoot to kill. The heavy artillery is in fact, a fusillade of barbed rhetoric designed to wreak mayhem on magnanimity. These guards have no qualms in kicking a grounded bitch.

You may ask, as many have, why she hides behind such fortifications. I sometimes entertain fanciful notions of drawbridges or ladders; of a secret door or a knowing prince who could penetrate her sanctity, though I know of none myself.

But the truth isn't nearly so romantic. She severed her own golden locks and flung them from the window of her Rapunzel tower; barricaded the doorways with red brick and mortar, and melted up the iron keys with her own fiery temper.

She doesn't want to be saved. She never has.

It saddens me, because I feel in my bones that the very walls that house her are about to come under seige.

And I hate to think of them falling in on her.

I can't find a wall to pin this to.*

I'm quite partial to walls.

Mine are blue.
Yours are black. I saw the picture
of the face you painted.
It glistened as it slid down the wall, unaffected in its liquid state.

I had an image of you sliding down that wall too. Mentally, mind you. You'd never actually
let me see you.
Completely affected. I know how you are.

The posters are peeling now. They've been forgotten in your dizzy haze.
You never open the curtains, they hang listless in your wake.
It's hard to discern night from day lately.
In the unmade mess of your tangled sheets I see you sleep.
Troubled.
How I wish I could save you.
You have your walls though.
Solid, comforting.
I have mine too.
Maybe thats the problem.

We need doors, and windows and a better metaphor.

-----

i found a note i had written a year ago : i remember writing it. Sitting outside the science block, one of my last remaining free periods. staring out at the quadrangle, at the place that had been home for 6 years.
-----


Sorry- if i left you
hanging

it wasn't intentional-
if i bit your pretty heart in two
into a thousand shards.
you're like the wall behind me-
cold among other things.

i would collect you if i could.
paint you 40 shades of content.
what happens in the heart simply happens.he said. i wish i had listened.

how do they stay up there? floating. as if they dont fully exist- an opaque impression of life.

i want to remember this
the sky, the grass-
so symmetrical as if its trying to live up to some imagined expectation. the gum-stained concrete, the cage-like canteen.

the lack of lockers, soap, toilet paper.
the abundance of insults, loyalty and adolescence.

the garbage bins painted varying shades of mustard yellow and apple green. deformed attempts of a cylinder. trying to prve they were once something special.
the corridors that stretch and echo with shouts and steps.
the familiar variations of songs rolling out of the music rooms. the pathetic absence of air-conditioning, the lurid sports uniform.

the sounds, the smells of every other grade, of understanding, of a new day.
the people who know me, accept me, acknowledge me. I like having somewhere to go, i like knowing what im doing, where i am. i like the comfort and constancy of fitting somewhere. I want to see every part of this place that has encapsulated my being for six years.

--------

School
had walls that were so perfect i was afraid to leave them, to even look beyond them. I did though.

I have new walls now. Not so familiar. i dont love them as much. enough.
the walls keep changing and moving and i have this feeling that one day soon i may have no walls at all.


-----
* i can't find a wall to pin this to because it has no category. i can make neither head nor tail of it.
disregard its nonsensicality.
antidisestablishmentarianism.

I Doubt It.

Doubt is the tool of tools for the professional pessimist. When times are hard, and optimistic fools, in all of their ignorant glory chant 'Everything is going to be fine', we cynics are able to stand back, shake our heads, and say 'I doubt it'.

Better yet, we almost always have the joy of being able to say 'I told you so', and I assure, this gives endless satisfaction.

I like to think of doubt as a protective type of cloak. You see, it has to be a cloak, because doubt is always described as 'dragging', or 'weighing'...heavy, if you will. So it could never be anything summery.

Anyway.

Shrouded in heavy old doubt, I feel safe from the anguish that it so incidental of hope.

Ah, hope. The wicked antonym. It's a showstopper, to be sure.

Hope should be banned for it's sheer masochistic nature. It's the friend with a well-concealed blade, just waiting for you to turn around. Alas, I stray too far from topic.

I think the real reason I prefer to doubt is because it makes me perpetually right about everything - seriously, what miniscule percent of the things we hope for actually happen? And more to the point, on the rare occasion that hope prevails [snort], one is happy to be proven wrong...yes, even me.

Having said all of this, it is virtually impossible, no matter what one says, to irreverently doubt everything. I have hope for things, even if I doubt the probability of such things ever happening. I don't want to. I just do.

I just had a thought. Maybe it's the other way around?

Seeds.

This year.
Hasn't been rosy.
It has been rather shite actually.
This year was laid out like an ancinet, dusty rug.
Falling apart... a little frayed around the edges,
The kind of rug you never sit on. The kind of rug you eye contemptuously from another room. The kind of rug thats is kept because you can't throw it out... but you actually kind of hate it.

The kind of rug that is usually rolled up and packed away.
However, in this life, putting something away never solves the problem. The rug will be hauled out again eventually... will demand that you deal with its presence.

Thats why, in these winding down months I have no doubt that we will drag that ugly rug of a year outside.
We will hang it on the line and in the stirring humidity of a summer morning we will beat the hell out of it with a tennis racquet. We will roll the rug up and we will donate it to Vinnie's. It will have a new lease on life and we will begin next year with polished timber floor boards. Solid, conforting, invigorating.
Next year the windows will be open, and air will blow through and the cobwebs of cancer will be brushed away.

The rug of this year will be no more. And that makes me unbelievably happy.

She Said:'The creativity is in the shape-shifting'

Once upon a time there was a blossom.
The bud of a blossom.
It liked the look of Signs.
It would ask impertinent questions.
It learnt to read,
and write,
and blossom.
Truly.

The blossom decided to change.
It seemed change was inevitable.
A change is needed.
Why fight the inevitable?
She read once- if you can't beat 'em- join 'em.

'So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book once...but shouldn't it be the other way around?’ [1]

& so, Change occurred. Metamorphosis. Transformation.

But you can never fully change what was once there.
'Born to blossom, bloom to perish'[2]
bud to blossom to bloom.
She is-Living,
Creating,
Learning.
Changing,
You cannot have one without the others.
One is another-entwined beyond distinction.
The blossom is She.

'To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour’[3]



----------------------------
[1] Film; You’ve Got Mail. 1998
[2] Song; What you Waiting For. Stefani.G, 2004
[3] William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1803.

Subtle Changes.

'Tis easier said than done, I'm afriad, but I am learning.

Especially of late.

I have spent a great deal of time attempting to define myself, and with little luck, I'm sorry to say. Today, I had the silly notion that such wisdom would be imparted upon me if I did something to stimulate the muse, and thus, I hopped a peasant-wagon to the Quay and sat on the top-most step of the Opera House, pen and leather-bound notepad in hand. Despite the soundtrack in my ear, and the view before my appreciative eyes, I was really no better for the journey.

No literary genius graced my page, and in fact, there were no words to speak of. So instead, feeling defeated, I rested my head on the rail and stared up at the mid-aftenoon light coming through a crease in the clouds. Now I don't know if it was the sun in my eyes, the location, or the U2 track ringing at top volume in my ears, but I had an important thought.

I find it very difficult to let go. Thus, I must be a person who is intent upon holding on. It isn't much of a thought to be sure, and certainly not a clever revelation. But do you know, it made my melancholy self smile (to the amusement of several passing tourists, I am sure), and renewed my determination to survive the next five weeks.

Having said this, I do realise that holding on to some things is unhealthy. This can be said of the year-long lolly collection that I held when I was 5, the penchant I developed for coffee in my late high school years, or indeed, the shoe collection I have now. It can also be said for the desperation with which I wish to belong to something that has already passed.

This in itself, has undergone a change of late. How to explain myself? I suppose that I have felt these past months, that the other shoe was never going to drop. I stepped out into nothingness, believing that something was going to catch me, but up until now, I have been in freefall.

I can't really say what it was that changed my mind. Perhaps my subconsciousness found a parachute.

Methinks it more likely that I have found a way to appropriate the best of yesterday to the worst of tomorrow. I had help, of course, and it has been a long road. The best part is that I feel I am finally ready to walk down it a way without looking behind me.

It's what you get other people to believe.

Sometimes I think there is a key to this whole thing.

If I could just find that key...

It would unlock everything.

I would finally understand.

As it is I am keyless.

No.

I have too many keys. I cannot find the right one.

Cannot make one fit.

Relentless in my tries.

The door remains locked.

What is behind it?

I cannot know. Unattainable knowledge.

It must be knowledge.

The key to knowledge.

That isn't to say I am unknowledgeable.

It is a certain knowledge, this unattainable knowledge.

I think whatever is behind that door shines terribly bright.

It smells of warm cinnamon.

Feels like water. Not too cold, not too hot.

But these are guesses, stabs in the dark...

Because something vital is missing.

I am missing something vital.

The key.

This key.
Without it I am unfinished.

I am a little less.

Or not enough.

How can you be less if you weren't more to begin with?

However, I am hopelessly hopeful.

I tried to bury my optimism.

I wore pessimism like an ill-fitting coat.

It was warm though. Like a shield. I liked it its unassuming comfort.

But it got too hot. Summer is coming, did you know?

I can feel this weather shifting something within me.

I am no longer satisfied, no longer content to stay this way.

Damned Keys.

Feet aching,
Back aching,
Head aching.

You're bellyaching, child. Put a stop to it.

I plunge an arm into my cavernous shoulder bag as I traipse down the narrow alley.

Right. Left. Right. Left. Don't stop. Nearly there. Never soon enough.

The sensored lights of wary garage doors flare suspiciously as I pass. Aiding and abetting? Hardly. They aren't much help.

I am desperate. The gnarled red oak twists skyward beside me, its buried roots dislodging quaintly shaped pavers that I pass every evening. I am nearly home.

I dig deeper.

Clasping the rust-stained rail, I ease myself down the steep cement stairs. The door looms out of the darkness as I lurch closer and closer.

I sigh loudly, fingers overturning the contents of my bag:

Coins of every shape and size clambouring into my palms. But never when I need them.
The knobbly edges of my soft [empty] wallet.
A stray pen cap. Ink, ink, ink on my hands.

It's no good. I must stop. I hate stopping.

I drop to my knees, and cry out as the gravel skins them mercilessly. Take care, child, take care.

Grasping the edges of the worn leather, I overturn my bag, and shake it angrily. Bits and bobs spill everywhere, clinking and clattering without a thought for the neighbours.

I groan, and chase shrapnel as it trickles along the landing and down another flight of stairs, all the while throwing furtive glances over my shoulder. Is that a shadow I spy?

Wealth restored, I return to the pile. I am annoyed, and it shows. The old grey cat from the terrace next doors sits well back tonight, surveying me, eyes alight with mockery. She knows to come a callin' only of the morning, when I am amiable.

But I spare no thought for her as I sift relentlessly: a miner with her goldpan, working her claim.

What have we here? A hairbrush. A mirror. A bottle of water. A fork? Bringing work home with you again, girl?

They aren't here.

Something glints in the moonlight. Thank God for the moon. I smile and catch hold of the cool silver rectangle lodged beneath a tangled web of wiring. Note to self - need new headphones

They are here.

I exhale. I inhale.

I breathe.

I sweep the things atop my staircase back into the leather purse. I stand.

And with a smile, I unlock the door. I smile at the cat.

Everything is going to be alright m'dear.

Damned keys.

The Drifter

Like a nomad, I travel with a shabby handkerchief folded at it's four frayed corners. Bits and bobs fill the soiled blue cloth, red patch over white.

I once carried a burning ambition in this tote...so nearly tempted combustion. But I lost it somewhere along the way...I must have walked too far into a storm. Rekindling the flame is always difficult in the rain.

After a time, my load grew heavy with responsibility...a weight like that can break your back. It took several legs of the journey for me to find a way to balance the weight...but the skill came with time.

And now, I've nothing left to carry but an array of odds and ends. A length of twine, tattered and tangled, for the loose ends in life. A cardboard arrow, to keep me on the straight and narrow. A pistol, so I can shoot the stars (or was it shoot for them?)...I see no difference these days.

I drift from place to place with my Huck Finn carry-all, hoping to discover some wonderful sort of secret. Does such a thing exist?

On a sea of infinite possibilities.

Like a blank page.

It always catches my breath.

So much is possible.

So much to gain.

So much to lose.

It is like drifting.

My feet no longer firm or flat against the ground.

I like it. Usually. It is pleasant. Usually.

I like to pretend I have much to offer.

It's nice to think about.

The truth is I am far too good at drifting.

I drift from one day to the next.

From one assignment to the next.

From one bus stop to the next.

From one conversation to the next.

Opinions? Do I have any? Sometimes I am not sure.

Conversations about views on socialism baffle me.

I am not political enough.

I am not driven enough.

I am not enraged.

I am not thriving.

I am a drifter.

I know where I stand- beneath a window. A window that is so picturesque it makes my head spin. And yet I seem to shrink. To cower beneath it.

Is it fear?

I don't feel afraid.

Is it sheer laziness?

Perhaps.

The vastness of this life astounds me.

Like lying in the cool grass at ten o'clock at night. Feeling the weight of the darkened sky pressing in on me. It wasn't depressing. It was just being.

In truth:

Our insignificance is so signficant.

Do not take this as depression or as a dusty melancholy.

It is merely a drifting thought.

Drifting thoughts. Like everything I simply let them pass.

Ramble.

My dreams are always dark. That is not to say that they are always frightening, but certainly, there is often an absence of light.

Too often, I dream of well-lit rooms that I am unable to see...someone has sewed my eyelids together.

Heathergirl once asked me what I would wish to know, if I was able to know anything. I replied with 'the lottery numbers'. But when all is said and done, I would dearly love to know what it is that I want from this world.

I firmly believe that these dreams are the key. The room that I stand in with such familiarity is, in fact, filled with answers - with objects and images and memories that piece together the puzzle of my deepest and most foreign desires. Sometimes I catch a glimpse - a flash of colour here or there. But nothing solid.

It is terrible to burn with such curiosity, and to be denied so relentlessly. I never can open my eyes wider than a slit. Perhaps one day.

I love the eve, but the dark often scares me. Not in the traditional way, you understand - I care not for those who dwell in shadows. I find it easer to think after a certain hour. I attribute this to growing up with a stringent bedtime - while my parents were indeed able to abscond with my flashlight and books (and at one stage, they took every book from my room), once the lights were out, and my eyes were closed, they could do nothing to stop me from thinking.

So late at night, and often early into the morning, I lay awake, the moon shining through my venetians, thinking things that have no doubt been thought a thousand times over, at some time or other. But of course, one doesn't think about that.

It isn't actually the dark that frightens me. We are companions to one another; a warm pair of arms to be held by as the rest of the world sleeps. My thoughts. It is my thoughts that sometimes frighten me - they are amplified in solitary. Why am I here? What is in store for me? Who am I? These are lonely questions at the best of times.

I wouldn't say that I love the light...for it is harsh on the muse. But, if only for a moment, I do love the morning. Nothing ever seems quite so terrible in the morning.

I can forget. I can simplify. I can open my eyes.

Incandescent mornings.

Harsh reality comes in the form of incessant beeps.
beep
Beep
BEEP.
each time more aggresive.
each time I hate it more.
It also comes with the sun
slipping sliently into my room. Into my dreams. into my peace.
Breaking and entering. Not so charming now is it?


The sheets are unwilling to let me go.
Maybe it is the other way around?
Tangled in their protective grip.
I want to give in. Stay trapped.
Stay warm. It is too easy/
I could learn to live with the light pouring in.
I could throw the damn alarm against the wall.
I could stay if you would stay.
Reality, however harsh, never seems to bother you.
Illuminated, you stand in your bare feet.
Whistling.
I hate whistling.


The coffee is always cold.
This does not help.
The dog needs to be let out.
Think of the dog. Poor Puppy.

The tea is amiable. Liquid sunshine.
Good Morning Sunshine.

The alarm has been silenced.
I hear you whistling .
I love whistling. The perfect 'O' of your lips. Your dancing eyes.
The toaster clicks as if desperate to join in the serenade.
Toast. Oh, isn't butter divintiy? The smell is like a brilliant hug.

The sunlit morning is no longer cumbersome.
It is blithe. Intuitive. It senses how much I need it.
Nothing is so bad in the light.
The light of you.
The light of facing what needs facing.
The light of waking up to a new day.

Then again-
I could always get heavy drapes and toss the alarm clock?

That Which Doth Speak Volumes.

The words were not enough. Her page was littered with hapless syllables; with generic symbols of a similar appearance to the ones he had drawn on her hand. But that had meant something.

Not the navy ink scrawled in indecipherable script across the creased lines of her palm. The straggly ink imprints were but a means to an end. No. That he had favoured her hand at all, was the tell-tale sign.

There had been paper - sheets of blue lined paper in scholastic abundance. He may have been unaware? She didn't think so. The warmth of his hand as it grasped her own told her more than his adorable stammering ever could have.

She had smiled - just a little, at his nervousness. There was no need for fear of offence. He had seen the sincerity in her eyes. Surely, he had noticed the tingling in her fingertips as he grasped them?

Theirs was a language that spoke volumes on it's own.

With a contented sigh, she scrunched up the note. It was not needed. Everything went without saying.

What You Say?

I have an active dislike for getting my hair cut. I think the methodology is cruel - no one should be forced to sit in front of a mirror, chin emphasised by the tight turtleneck of the mandatory smock, and wet hair clipped here in there a la Darla from Finding Nemo, while the contemporary hair sculptor clicks silver scissors around ones ears menacingly.

When the ends of my hair cry for a trim, and I am forced to undergo this humiliation, I always go to an Asian hair studio.

Call me what you will for my sweeping generalizations, but these people know hair.

On to my point:

I was interested to find that the hair dressers conversed with one another in their own language. This was a plus in many ways, because I detest making small talk of any description. But I spent the entire two hours wondering what they were talking about.

I would love to know another language...not because it's clever, cultured or impressive, but because I like to eavesdrop. I'm the kind of person that sits on public transport listening intently the conversation going on behind me. Blame Emily Rodda - I think it began one year at the Sydney Writers Festival, when she revealed in her speech that as a child, she would record the conversations of strangers in a special notebook.

Other people interest me. Generally, it is because I like to scoff at their insipid whinges, thereby cementing my misanthropnia. Also, the Captain Insano stories that I overhear become good anecdotes for later on. So you can imagine my frustration at not being in the loop.

All I could think of the entire shampoo and treatment was the episode of Seinfeld about Elaine and the Korean nail parlour. Were the wash girls talking about me? Picking on my hair? Scoffing at my gullibility? (I was, after all, paying $110 for a permanent dye and a trim) Healthy paranoia, yes?

What I would like, is to know several different languages, so that I could eavesdrop unhindered. Otherwise, a pocket translator.

Language. I firmly believe it was invented for the sole purpose of allowing people to eavesdrop on one another. That is certainly what we use it for, anyway.

Languaged.

Lang...

Lang syne.

Ah. The Scottish accent. One of my favourites.. though to be quite honest I have many favourites....The Scottish rates highly though.. perhaps I'm biased because it courses through by veins? Ha. I am a Disgrace to the Lindsay and McDonald clans I can't even pull off a decent crappy version of a Scots accent... auch aye.

My Granma calls bobby pins kirbies and she doesn't call crying babies 'crying babies'- she calls them 'greeting bearns'.

My Granma came from Kirkcauldy, Fife. She moved here in 1952. She does have a distinct accent- only I can't hear it....

She came out here with her best friend Marianne, Mariannes' sister Margaret and their brother Ian.

To Melbourne. My Granma went back to Melbourne recently, With Aunty Marianne ( Yes, Granma married Ian (aka Grandad). she's never been home to Kirkcauldy though. I know she misses it. She likes to talk about, meander down memory lane.. particularly when she and Aunty Marianne get together.. the have a good long blether. Aunty Margaret moved back to Scotland. Grandad died in 1997. Same time as Princess Diana.. only he isn't still in the papers only in our hearts. My Grandad was great. Grandad had the best laugh and made the best mashed potato and he loved macaroni and cheese. He was always laughing and always playing- he had a giant spoon the said 'Worlds Greatest Stirrer'. He was clever and brilliant and my sister never met him and now I am home alone crying and I'm not talking about language at all. It kills me because I was seven and I loved him and I never even got to say good bye. Bronwyn never got to say hello. It's all so fragile.

'In quiet moments when memories abound

we will have been honured to have known you

and call you, my husband, my father

my grandad,

my brother, my uncle

my friend.'

Cloaked Motives.

She smiled and nodded dutifully, biting down on the sides of her mouth. Manipulation always did come easy.

He swept his charcoal eyes over her radiating grin, accepting it without question. Why shouldn't she be smiling at him? That it may have been a facade did not occur to him. He had no reason to suspect ersatz gratitude. Arrogance dripped from every pore; it bubbled from the roots of his thick, golden hair. It did a fantastic job of blinding him - woollen glasses could never have emulated.

What was it that he had said? "I'm glad we see eye to eye". How wrong he was.

Her smile became a grimace, but he had already left the room; was wordlessly closing the door. When the heavy oak arch clicked into place, she spat blood onto the floor. His floor. A small price to pay.

The ridges in her mouth. He would wonder where they came from, she thought, relishing the aluminium taste of the blood. If only there were more of it - enough to go around. A taste of blood satisfies everyone. Wasn't that the reason he kept her here?

She didn't know. He was difficult to read. He disguised his motives well - a necessary evil while coercing a mauling.

Hers was next. She could tell by the spring in his step. Executions did that to him.

Dear G, wish you were here. Love, H.

'Potatoes again huh?' I ask, staring at the plate, eyes glazing over.

'No, actually- these are not really potatoes. It is lemon-meringue pie...masquerading as potatoes.' He says a little maniacally.

I whine: '& beans too?'

'No silly.. they are not true green beans- they are jelly beans in disguise.'

'Oh-' I say because I can think of nothing else.'-Oh- but the fish is fish right?'

'Not fish, pavlova! the pavlova incognito as fish! Clever foods aren't they?' Smiling and eating. Eating and winking. Winking and laughing.

The pavlova is in Cognito. I bet it was sunny in Cognito. I bet they drank punch with little umbrellas. I bet the dress up party was held on a deck, under the stars in Cognito. Everyone in Cognito would dance and make conga lines and throw up their arms in unison. In Cognito they would listen to Elvis songs and wear bermuda shorts and hawaiian shirts. In Cognito there would be so much happening- with the songs and the dancing and the parties-you would never be discovered.


It took a while for me to realise.

Much like 'Euthanasia'....I would hear it on the news and think they were talking about the poverty stricken children- the youth in Asia.

Funny. Maybe.

euphemism for a disenchanted rogue.

Tongue and Teeth and air-so-thick.
She used to find it charming. Alluring.
'he drank like a broken-hearted youth'
Oh so vogue. He rode a motorcycle.
The thought is laughable now.
a vision in vinyl leaning,
nonchalantly,
against the heavy bike-a cigarette
hanging dangerously from his lips.
Bee-stung she'd called them.
He didn't like that much.

Her reflection is distorted
her grimy reflected self dances
as the kettle comes to call.
She chews at a fingernail-
absentminded.
She is somewhere else really
kicking her heels against the low brick wall
as his warmth fills her up.
he tasted new then.
She'd be compelled to press a single finger to her lips
to hold him there a little longer. To savour.
She never said she wanted to be his vice.
These Things are better left unsaid.
all those perfect cliches
A life-well-lived seemed imminent.


Reality rattles back into view as several bodies invade the almost-peace of the tiny kitchen.
She wipes her hands on the back of her flannalette night dress and begins again.
The buttering of the toast.
The pouring of the juice.
The reminders- dentist appointment, football practise, detention,
"James DO NOT forget to give that note to Ms Hansen."

Happiness used to be just a hair flip away.
now it comes in stolen moments when its quiet and she can rest her cracked and ageing feet.
Mirrors are no longer friendly.
The cigarettes and vodka are nothing but regrets.
regrets and yearning. Nostalgia, like many things is a disease of the mature.
maybe you can't have both.
He didn't think so.

Vice City.

Off the top of my head I struggle to think of any of my own vices.
It’s not something I spend a lot of time contemplating.

I used to think a vice was a way of escape…but faced with ‘Vice’ as this weeks topic I thought I had best google it…
‘Vice is a practice or habit that is considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a defect, an infirmity, or merely a bad habit.’ {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice#Examples_of_vices}
It then follows with a list of examples: Alcoholism, bigotry, child sacrifice, homosexuality, secretiveness…secretiveness-
At last something that seems relatable… This must be a vice of mine.
I am certainly guilty of this particular trait {Fault? Personality flaw?} But does it make me a depraved being?

Is my almost peverse addiction to tea a vice?
How about my incessant need to envelope myself in books and movies …does this qualify as a vice?

What about things I merely think about? Like my constant want for a bird tattoo on my left wrist…a thought that is constantly on my mind….or my quiet infatuation with classic cars?

What are my vices? Indecisiveness probably qualifies. Maybe fear? Pragmatism? Laziness? Hermit-ness? Unknowingness

I will settle for that….To be frank I don’t mind not knowing my vices….I think it’s better that way…
On the other hand I am realising a very real vice of mine- My obvious obsession with hypothetical questions…I mean what’s up with that?

An Overview of What is Wrong with the World.

God, who I do not believe in, made people. Supposedly. But, being the fickle and indescribably hypocritical bastard that he is, he thought to himself 'Well now, they won't be much fun to watch if they do the right thing all the time. Besides, I'm paying Satan down there two Saints an hour - I'm going to need some sinners so that it's not all for nothing'.

Thus, God - in his eternal wisdom and patronistic glory, created vice.

I went to lunch with my godmother last week - a woman who swears like a sailor, drinks like a fish and smokes like the proverbial chimney, but who is also a devout Catholic. She remarked, and rather correctly at that, that I always look for the worst in people.

"And that, Kelly my Dear," I replied, "is precisely where the interest lies". Better yet, vice is always easier to find.

We humans are a delightfully sinful bunch, which is perhaps, the only thing that makes us truly interesting. My idea of what constitutes as the traditional heaven, is a bland swimming pool surrounded by the people who played 'Eloi's' in the original screenplay of 'The Time Machine'.

Now Hell, it sounds a hell of a lot more interesting. Excuse the pun. According to the Catholics, there resideth the likes of Twain and Wilde, for being blasphemous and homosexual perspectively. JK Rowling already has a bed in the hard-edged brimstone waiting for her, and as I hear it, Elvis Presely and Marolyn Monroe host poker every Friday night. And then of course there are the thousands of other sinners - embezzlers, bank crooks, gays by the thousand, Meryl Streep (because God can't stand the idea of competition), rock bands, and last but not least - Heathergirl. These people, most of whom still have popular cult followings today, were too defective and vice-ridden to make it past the door-bitch at the pearly gates. The place will be like one grand, corrupted, flagitious, life-long mardi gras party! I'll bring the tequila!

Alas, I stray too far from my point.

Where was I? Vice? Ah, yes. So we all have vices - tis the stuff of humanity. I know I'm as ridden as they come. Particularly lately.

But wouldn't you rather it that way?

The Wheels on the Bus.

I live in the City. In Paddington, to be exact, which by technicality, is actually the Inner East of the City. Essentially, the two places are one and the same, however the distinction is made because anything past Darlinghurst is not an ideal walking distance from the CBD.

And thus, twice a day, I catch the bus.

The reference Heathergirl makes to camaraderie is interesting, because by all accounts, it is very true. There is no waving from bus to bus as route numbers pass one another. Instead, drivers who take unauthorised breaks just before the Chalmers Street loading zone glare at one another suspisciously over their self-rolled cigarettes. The 2 way radio transmitter box is always alive with gruff voices barking impatient orders, which are easily heard over the din of the struggling bendy bus motors. But just when one thinks all is lost, the driver - who ordinarily stops for nothing short of a roadblock, and certainly not a red light or a stray pedestrian (I once saw a bus literally take out the drivers door of an illegally parked car) - will hold up Oxford Street traffic so that the 380 can pull into the outside lane.

The passengers keep mostly to themselves, and generally fall into one of four categories: tourist, desk jockey, student, or homeless person.

The tourists are infuriating. They sit on the middle fold down seat and open their upside down, thrift store maps onto you inconsiderately. Some have a habit of standing in the middle of the aisle so they can ask every passenger who passes where Town Hall might be. This is generally on a Bronte Beach-bound bus. Others hold up the boarding line either by counting out their change much too slowly, or paying with a $50 note that cannot be cashed. Worst of all, they incorrectly park their extremely unaesthetic prams, still decorated with a QANTAS baggage check sticker, in front of the fold down seats, preventing anybody else from sitting on them.

The desk jockey's are omnipresent. Most are badly paid, polyester-wearing office workers who plainly cannot charge their transport to the company, and are too frugal to spring for a cab like their cotton suit counterparts. They bundle onto the morning city-bound with black wheely suitcases and ugly imitation leather shoes - both, which they generally wedge painfully against your legs - before flipping open their top-of-the-line mobiles to stage, at a stentorian volume, a conversation over the previous night's inebriation. This is generally with a co-worker that they will be seeing in the following five minutes anyway.

The students are insolent. I have caught the morning 378 five days a week for the past 5 months, and as of yet, I am the only student who has ever given up her seat to an elderly passenger. Some pretend not to hear the less-than-subtle coughs of the tottering aged. They certainly ignore the death stares given by the few that tumble over. The braver among them will actively voice their right to a seat through having paid for a ticket. Others make gesticulative reference to an array of textbooks, laboratory equipment or architecture portfolios to emphasise their overriding need for the space. More arrogant than these, are the students who stand immobile in the aisle with their bulky, Country Road bags, headphones on, directly in front of an empty seat.

The homeless people are the head turners. There is no telling what they'll do. I once had an in-depth conversation with a man dressed in a tatty green velvet tuxedo, who did not hesitate in telling me he had just won the pokie machine jackpot at Star City. I don't think he noticed my distaste for the story as it expanded to include a hotel room, all of his homeless friends, and a Thai escourt service. I was waiting at the pictured bus stop one afternoon, only to be surprised by a woman absolutely screaming obsenities directly in front of me. The airborne spittle was disturbing, but more so was the realisation that she was yelling at her own reflection in the glass of the stop. Going by her abnormally wide pupils, she must have taken soemthing quite potent. A third passenger, weighed down by several cans of Johnney Walker Black placed sporadically in his jacket pockets, imparted his drunken wisdom on relationships to two adolescent out-of-towners. Heathergirl herself was present for his remonstrations...most memorably, the 'ku ku ker chuu' rendition he offered, along with, quite generously, two cans of scotch. And then, of course, there are the regulated fiends, pickpockets and beggars who shuffle up and down the bus, their hair in filthy dreadlocks or knotted quiffs, and their fingernails black with dirt.

A Sydney bus. Crowded, yes - the claustrophobic or olefactory sensitive among us should consider alternate transport, because the likelihood of being forced to make a trip with your face wedged beneath someones underarm is fairly reasonable if you don't snag a seat (and sometimes, even if you do...) That they are unfriendly is inarguable. City folk are not predisposed to be friendly, something that I empathise with completely. Nevertheless, they are interesting.

You might think it strange that I pay so much attention to my fellow passangers. Truth be told, I rather enjoy observing the mish-mash of socioeconomic standings. How could a busload of passengers who live in places as varied as we all do...attractively shabby townhouses, cramped studio apartments, Bondi Junction retirement villages, or the grimey, tiled floor of the ANZ Bank entrance...be anything, if not entertaining?

I like the fact it's taking me away from here.

I spend a lot of time on buses.

I enjoy it. Particularly suburban buses. I like the sense of camaraderie between the bus drivers. They always wave at one another as the drive past, even bus drivers of other companies. This, I have noticed, does not happen in the city. Infact bus-catching in the city is a far less enjoyable passtime. They are always packed the passengers look grim and are always in such a hurry. Atleast suburban buses out her in the west have colourful passengers. Like the disturbed Irish woman who struck up a conversation about reading with me. Interesting woman, off her face, but none-the-less friendly.

I make a habit of thanking the bus drivers as I get off the bus. For their time, for not killing me, for waving at other bus drivers.

The bus carries me somewhere else. Somewhere better than here. In the long run anyway and I am thankful for that.

I have decided that if all else fails I will become a bus driver.

I have a plan for a communal umbrella. i will attach a water proof note to the umbrella reading something like : This umbrella is intended for anyone in need. Use it to get from A to B and then pass it on to someone else who needs its protection. I'm going to leave this umbrella on the 900 and believe in the honesty of people and hope it makes a difference. It's sappy but I like to think about it.

Okay that was off topic. Sorry.

Life with a View.

People don't really think of a ferry as public transport. I suppose that this is because sailing seems to be a sport embraced by the upper middle class - or else, that the idea of everyone owning a boat is not feasable.

I played the truant this afternoon and caught the bus to Circular Quay. I'd like to say that I had this blog in mind when I did so, but I didn't, really. No. It was more a case of the capital weather, and my penchant for that particular part of the city.

Quite spontaneously, I bought a ferry ticket and went joy riding. I love ferries. The world seems a very different place when viewed from a boat.

I tend to lose myself when I'm sailing. Just a little. Truth be told, I hardly see how one could be anything but encapsulated. Escaping the shadow that is reality seems so much easier with the sun on my hair, the wind in my face, and nothing but an unmitigated expanse of glass-surfaced water as far as the eye can see.

I occupied my seat, at first willingly, and later because I was frozen to it, for an entire round trip. I was freezing, absolutely frostbitten...but I was sorry to alight. Everything just seemed so peaceful...as though all was right with the world.

I feel the same way about buses, and on the rare occassion, trains too. I don't know. Being able to look out of a window with the breeze in your face, and the landscape quickly passing you by is a curious thing. You almost feel as though you own it...just through being able to appreciate the view.

It could merely be that I am too curious. Undoubtedly, views of all description interest me. I enjoy, not unlike the concept of the Baudelarian Flaneur, creating self-identity through the art of observation.

I wish I had a balcony.

For the meanwhile, I shall satisfy myself with another ferry ride, I think.

Here's to Hoping.

I had no idea. Not a clue.
You never told me.
Couldn't?
Wouldn't?

It is of little significance.

I wish we could go back...
transcend the damage time has
rendered irreparable.

It would help a lot, I think.

You Can Look Me in the Eye, but I don't do Surprises...

The worst thing about surprises, is that they always occur when you least expect it. But perhaps that is the point...

I am, for the most part, a great advocate of surprises. To me, the word has always connoted exuberant bursts of positivity, rather than a foreboding mess of what's and if's. When I think of surprises, I think of presents - ever the materialist - streamers, bulky furniture and dimly lit rooms overflowing with guests waiting to pounce on the unwary birthday girl. I think of gift boxes with air-holes punched in the top, of visits from old friends...of Colin Firth on my doorstep...

Unfortunately, this is reality - or so I am told - thus statistically, not all surprises are bound to be pleasant. This confronting revelation in itself was a most unsettling surprise.

The inescapable point here is that sooner or later, some morbid bastard is going to rain on your parade. We humans are an altogether daft bunch...capable of creating wreck and ruin, but not of anticipating it. A horrible surprise is inevitable.

It makes no difference. The thing that I both admire and despise about surprises, quite at the same time, is their unpredictable predictability. But I hardly expect you to understand this...

The old-element-of-surprise.

Well, this is a surprise! Sitting here at nine in the morning, home alone for the first time in goodness knows how long. Good Surprise, definitely .
Surprise: [what definition shall I use today, dear?] Surprise.. it’s a noun! [1.amazement] a feeling of shock, wonder, or bewilderment produced by an unexpected event.

I don’t know how I feel about surprises. Oh. What a shocker (surpriser?) there.. Heather doesn’t know how she feels? Woooooow…. (I like sarcastic surprise…that’s a kind I know I like.)

‘I hate surprises’ is never a sentence my parted lips have produced and rightly so, because I don’t hate them. There are too many good surprises to hate them in general. However there are some surprises no-one will ever like . Take for example: Surprise! French tourists stole your thongs! Or Surprise! Your Mum has cancer-good luck in exams! Or Surprise! Santa isn’t real- we’ve just been lying to you your entire life!

Come to think of it I can’t call to mind any surprises I actually liked. (Does Surprise! Miley Cyrus actually belted out some decent (?) music! count?)
Shock horror… Do I hate surprises?
Okay- let us, for the purpose of answering the above question, think back to the last surprise I remember encountering: A week ago, my father (somewhat surprisingly) purchased a game for me. Not to sound ungrateful…but I’m not very adept at this genre of game, on top of which... his surprising niceness rattles my rather firm contempt for him.

To like surprises, or not to like surprises- that is the question. When all is said and done, at the end of the day, despite it all, I must give in to my shattering optimism and continue to think myself a ‘surprise-liker’… Perhaps that is the biggest surprise of all?


Oh and Frenchy.. if you ever read this- I hope you enjoy the thongs…Surprise! I gave you a foot infection! (Just Kidding!... maybe.)

Death Defying Acts.

You know it occurs to me that every single move we make could cause death.

One untimely sneeze while lifting this fork to my mouth could be fatal.

In all honesty it's amazing I am here right now. Once when I was three I was nearly demolished by a ram galloping towards me at full throttle. Now that would have been rather ironic, considering my star sign, non?

Or the time when I was nine and I almost stepped on a snake in a gully at Mt Annan.

It also occurs to me that both times (among countless others) I was rescued by my Mum. My Mum who is always there for me. My Mum. My hero. I know this is terribly morbid and terribly obvious and terribly tragic but she won't always be there. Here.

And that scares me.

That scares me more than the thought of eternal hiccoughs and non-sliding sliding doors.

Death. The be all and end all.

If only it weren't so. In the end there are no death defying acts- there is only life. A life that will inevitably end.

To quote Will:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on,

and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

There She Goes...There She Goes Again...

When the day of mourning is set, and the pallbearers stand tall, let it be known that UTS became the death of her. Of Emma. Not literally, of course, but rather, the metaphorical death of the person she used to be. Pre-University Emma.

This new Emma...I don't much like her. She doesn't laugh nearly enough, and what is worse, never at nothing imparticular. Far more often than I would like, she is completely creatively impotent. She can't write, she can't paint; her comebacks take too long, and are of questionable wit.

I've been mourning the old, effervescent, clever, silly, talkative, relatively good-temepered, quick-witted, happy Emma for some time now. I always hoped that she would find her way back...

But from death, as they say, comes rebirth; from destruction comes creation.

One can only hope it doesn't come to that to begin with.

Untitled. 2007.

The elegant skies stretch high
Overhead in shades of pristine blue,
Just as you would have it
For your final glimpse of life.
Balloons of every colour
Rise toward infinity,
Saluting you, my hero.

You would have me celebrating
With their dancing skyward strings,
With the forced smiles of the
Grieving guests, and
The bright colours of the
Effulgent dresses
you demanded of us.

But I mourn the loss of
Black limousines, lugubrious
in their somber cortege.
Of grey clouds and dark umbrellas,
Of caliginous funerary regalia
and morose expressions,
As surely as I mourn the loss,
My loss
Of you.

Try
though you might,
You will not summon
a smile to my face
with forced Nostalgia that
I cannot bear to remember.

By Emma Dower.

But my breath fogged up the glass, and so I drew a new face and laughed.

Death, huh?
My theory is a mess to be honest- a rather depressing and somewhat confusing mess.
I don't believe in a god (God?) and so technically I shouldn't believe in a heaven. I do however believe there is something else. I mean.. how can this be it?

While I'm the first to admit I am enamoured with Romeo & Jule's tragically, heart-wrenching tale of unrequited love, (my second favourite kind) the double suicide isn't my style. Unlike our loyal friend Emma... I think if you are fortunate enough to find someone else to love and be loved by.. then why the heck not... your dearly departed should be happy for you.

I don't believe in remarriage- mainly because I don't believe in marriage. Not to say I dont believe in that 'encapsulating, overpowering, sensationalist, couldn't-live-without-one-another kind of love.' ( Dower, http://beautiful-exception.blogspot.com/ , 2008)
That is something I believe in whole-heartedly.

This is such a hard idea for me to play with.. it's tied up with religion and love and all those other universal themes that baffle me. Helpful non?

Death. Death. Death. The idea of my own death doesn't worry me, that's probably appalling (oh well). It's the thought of losing others that makes my head spin and my heart falter. That the world could go on without the people I need is unthinkable.

So I'm not going to think about it. This is too much for my head. My ideologies and theories are too muddled to make any sense... I don't know if I believe in destiny, or soulmates or a higher-being. I think I need to know before I can have a true opinion... maybe it's because I am an Aries? (Ha-ha) But if (and only if) there is Heaven and Hell .. I think I am in trouble... I was in trouble before I even did anything (my parents are not married and I was never christened/ baptised)



There you have it. I think, in all it's unoriginality, I will have to repeat those infamous words of wisdom- "To the well organised mind, death is but the next adventure". And that's how I too will look at it- I'll make the most of this life and I won't worry about what will happen next.
On the brightside.. if the Big Sauna is what is awaiting me.. I'll be in very good company.

Existentialist Ramble.

I think about death a great deal. I like to think that this is because, as a Virgo, I need to have everything planned, thus, I need to know exactly where it is that I am supposed to be going in the hereafter. At 18, my views on religion are still largely indecisive, but I will say that my instincts tell me to pack for warm weather...

Something I often contemplate is the concept of monogamy. Death is always the deal breaker...'till death do us part'. I'm going to make a sweeping generalisation here, but I think it is far to say that the majority of couples who feel the need to speak these vows, believe in God. With this in mind, I find it very strange that Christians who believe in heaven, and presumably hell, only feel the need to commit to one another for the time they spend on earth.

I don't believe in remarriage. Plain and simple. I always think how awkward it would be after the three spouses concerned all die. You'd have the twin burial plots of the original husband and wife, and then an add on for the second marriage, and perhaps even an add on for that. And assuming that there is a heaven, think how uncomfortable things would be up there. Would husband number one be the third wheel, or would it be number two? Or, true to their wedding vows, do they each move on and start chatting up pin up girls from the 20s? It is all so confusing.

It is my belief that Romeo and Juliet had the right idea. They had that encasulating, overpowering, sensationalist, couldn't-live-without-one-another kind of love. I think that is the way it should be, and if it were me...well, you know what they say about life imitating art.

Death. It is a morbid habit, I know, but I really can't help but think about it. The idea that some day, the world is going to go on without me is a terrifying thought. The only thing that consoles me when I get to thinking about it, are the words of wisdom spoken to Harry Potter by Dumbledore: "To the well organised mind, death is but the next adventure".

Cutting the Apron Strings.

***

I wish it were that easy.

***

There are thousands and thousands of us. Far too many to remember. We, in our igorant multitudes...and you. Extra special. As it happens, I will always remember. It was insignificant and consequential, quite at the same time.

You don't need to promise to remember me. I know you will.

But do, do promise that you won't forget. It is quite a different thing, you know.

Kid, please try harder.

Sometimes I just want to write my heart out.

...

There is something to be said for 'teen angst'. I mean where would we be without the loud, heartfelt music we blast through car stereos or the tragic poetry I know we have all wasted time writing?

As a generalisation though we seem to spend so much time hating adolescence that we forget to actually enjoy it and then, in the blink of an almost-adult eye, it's gone.

I like to think I didn't waste my teenagedom. I miss it incredibly. Or maybe I am confusing that with High School? I suppose in a way it's one and the same . Never-the-less it's a part of my life that I can't seem to let go of. I realise I am only 18.. and still a 'teenager'- but that will soon morph into 19 and before long.... the '20's'.( Cue jaws-esque music)

There is so much pressure to grow up. To be responsible, mature and 'adult'. My resistance comes far too easily. Sure I am mature.. I mean I wash my own clothes for goodness sake(!) but I am one who shies away from adult things.. Like driving and drinking.

Sometimes I wonder- In trying to cling to the past, am I ruining where I am now? I don't want to be one of those 'can't-let-go-of-the-good-old-days' people- Those people are a little bit tragic... but in truth I can't let go of the good old days. They were good! In saying all this I do realise that I am not meant to forget just meant to move forward.

Thats a scary thought for a change-fearing person like myself. But in the end there's nothing to be done for it. Time stands still for no (wo)man.