how to get to the dock.

posting things to look at is funner.

i have had these for a while. i tried to get them to align, i really did..

i think i love writing not so much because of what i manage to get down, but because i begin to see everything in a different way.

i went for a walk down to the park tonight, because i found the camera, and it was actually charged. never mind that i've probably done permanent damage to it by taking pictures in the rain.

i'm not sure how to say what i'm feeling at the moment, but i assure you that things are more than fine. by at least 15-23%.

Employable Bron vs. Arrogant Nihilist Bron

EB: How can you just not do your essay?
AN: Now that I have grasped the impermanence of meaning, I am able to change the way I see things so that they do not matter. It’s my super power.
EB: That’s a crap super power. It would be better if you could explode shit.
AN: Not if explosions don’t matter.
EB: Does anything matter?
AN: Mind.
EB: Is that supposed to be wit?
AN: Yes.
EB: You suck.
AN: Your face sucks.
EB: Your face is impermanent
AN: . . . omg


i swear this is helping me study.

The Last Beautiful Day

i am in love with sally seltman.
when i grow up i want to be one of her songs. or her voice. that is all.

alright, so here's the plan: i'm deferring for a year. i expected to love university, and i still expect that at some point i will - all the elements are there, but i haven't had my fill of unstructured living enough to appreciate it at the moment. also, for years i've been fixed on the idea that whatever i found myself doing, i had to be helping people somehow. that's still the case, but i really need to see if i can make something out of doing things i really love, first. so, couldn't i do that WHILE studying? well, i've still been playing and writing music for hours a day this year, but there's no satisfaction in it when i'm still seeing it as a form of procrastination. and to be honest, my time management skillz are nilz. worse than my smack talk skillz, if you can imagine.
and... uni... when i go back i'll probably just keep on with my BA, change majors to philosophy and performance studies, and then take it from there.
still moving out.

lastly, apologies for recent anguish. you guys are rad.

alright, so here's the news: i haven't been having a great time with my course recently. the idea of spending another four years doing nothing by writing essays almost brings me to tears, and although technically i should be able to be creative in my spare time, it's what i'd always prefer to be doing. i'm interested to learn the things that i'm learning, but so far only philosophy has really grabbed me. my motivation has been shocking this semester, and although i have been slack in the past, i have never been so apathetic. it's actually pretty frightening.
i felt something similar even at the end of last semester, but i had hoped that it would change. anyway it seems that it's not going to, and i feel like it would be foolish to continue without any reason to believe that next year will be different. although, the whole original idea was Drama Teacher. i've been hanging out for performance studies. fuck, i just don't know.
the first thing to do is probably dye my hair, to commemorate the quarterlife crisis. after that i'm really not sure. perhaps visual communications, perhaps sca, perhaps a break entirely. even just transferring to a BA, where i could continue with philosophy and performance.
i really hate this, it was nice being a motivated high achiever. really nice.

Versary

Yes I knew her name
It was written in the sky
She was wearing what I liked
The colour caught my eye

Later on that night
With my mattress in the light
Got a ticket and a fright
I brought this on myself tonight

I was afraid to sleep
I knew when I caught my eye
She'd be dancing on the rooftops
Chasing some other guy

Diamonds in her pockets
When she jumps
Her dress is torn
Here she is beside me
Stretched out on the lawn

Grow up, yeah smile
This is here
This is now
You'll have tears
In your eyes
For a while
For a while

Her house is different
That's because she cares
What's hanging from the stereo
She made with her own hands

Pictures on her walls
Remind her what she's living for
Da da da da da...

Grow up, yeah smile
This is here
This is now
You'll have tears
In your eyes
For a while
For a while


i've been listening to new buffalo and joanna newsom today. i think they're my favourite strangers, right now, in that they make strangeness the most beautiful.
so... i haven't been updating, because i've been writing like a fiend. essays and stories, which don't seem to know the difference between one another.
but, in the interests of keeping this blog alive:
good things in the recent past: lecturer making use of the word meretricious; meeting new people; drinking amazing coffee, and finally really REALLY appreciating an espresso.
ungood things in the recent past: millie leaving the country.

evening. the moon is gorgeous tonight, if you haven't looked.

ok, here's something i found while tidying up my files. i'd like to say i drew it ages ago, but i can't; it's only a few months old. stupid blogger always scales them down... click it if you want to read it. in other news... i had a good day!

there is a lot to be said for dead people.

i've been reading hobbes. one of the reasons i like reading philosophy is that it sets a tempo for my head to follow, and when i think faster, it feels like time is worth more. which, possibly, may mean that i'll have more time to work with, only... concentrated into a normal lifespan. i'll have time for liasons with thousands of people, and when i finally do die, god will think i am really cool.
this weekend has been ok.. i have done a reasonable amount of reading, and some writing, which is possibly the more important thing. i saw helen's brother's band play at candy's apartment on friday, and had my socks knocked off. the place itself is great. suitably den-like, the entry fee is cheap, and the dj sets were the first that i've ever heartily enjoyed. hurray for watching people dance to AIH and CSS instead of JT.
on saturday i bought some new socks.
today i ate cake and sang happy birthday to my uncle and moved some tree ferns. things have been nice. and suitably distracting.

love love

it is in your self interest to find a way to be very tender.

it's been a while since my last post. a month of holidaying has passed, with little to show for it. but i strummed a ukelele and had my first schnapps experience and stuff, and i feel rejuvinated.
also, i saw regina spektor and blonde redhead play within two weeks of each other. managing speech after that is an achievement.

right now i'm looking at anselm kiefer paintings and listening to the dresden dolls. all of today's lectures were interesting, the weather was mild, and rach and i made a reasonably successful pasta sauce in the evening, whilst speculating over a postmodern interpretation of Othello in which all the characters wear crab costumes. also, i'm alive right now. this never seems any less amazing however many times i think about it. so, all considered, today has been good.
the only slight on my tuesday has been the reading over of some old writings. they are the vitriolic ramblings of a moderately well-read fifteen year old, and they are awful. despite that, most of them still touch on how i feel about things now (if i were to suddenly become 20% less articulate and start making uproarious generalisations). i've been lamenting the passion i used to feel about certain atrocious things, but really, all it made me was miserable and constantly angry and annoying to argue with. which is hardly productive. i still care deeply about certain things, but these days i only allow myself as much misery as will actually help. it's starting to come back; the reason i'm doing what i'm doing, and the motivation to be all that i reasonably can be, for the purpose of (whatever means positive change but is less buzz wordy). it may last. that would be excellent good.

right now i kind of want to know everything ever, and i am in a good place to make a start on it. tomorrow i will go to uni and read and talk, maybe strum some more ukeleles and drink more schnapps, and life will be nice.

have some fun.

well well,

the second splendour announcement has just come out. no cure, arcade fire or bjork, (haha) but some other nice bands that will make for merriment.
the holidays have been well spent so far, i think. i spent saturday night with rach, buying books, drinking a couple of cocktails, and later watching buffy.. sunday night with larry, eating lollies and getting beaten in mario tennis.. monday working.. tuesday with lenny, watching buffy under some blankets, tuesday night at my aunt meg's place, eating thai and drinking tea and looking at some of her new ink works. which look amazing..
and today i dropped in at the school, ostensibly to pick up my extension two things, and hopefully to see some old teachers. the greetings were a little short lived, partly because it felt so strange to be back there. also, the art staff were out. but i saw suchu. and i hugged suchu. and that was nice.
tonight, i saw the anselm kiefer exhibition again. i haven't been so affected by art in a very long time. so please go, if you can. it's on at the AGNSW. for free.
later, we saw spiderman 3. insurance prices in new york must be ridiculous.

and now, i am off to finish reading the 6th harry potter.. mostly so that i can partake in the excitement of the 7th book. rishi and i have deduced why harry potter is not good: it reads like a fanfic, minus the sex. some of you may have gasped at that. and... i'm not a heretic. i promise. the first three books are still probably my favourite books ever. it's just... getting old? hmm, anyway..

goodnight

Beauty in the Breakdown

bad week.
i really should have taken a year off. i'm handing in things so late that i'll probably fail a couple of things by default, despite all my other marks. and i hate that feeling, but i also don't care enough. it just doesn't matter enough to make me change.

of course, there have been nice moments to offset the dominant feel:
- i spent friday morning at balmoral beach, crouched behind a mangled pink umbrella, watching the wind breathe across the water. it is nice to know that not all places on earth are shadowed by that false 6am blue. i'm looking at you, north sydney station bus shelter, with your scribbles for commuters and your street sweepers that screech like the rapture.
- i also saw an excellent band on saturday night: Kes, featuring the recorder talents of Laura Jean. it was a nice surprise.
- i've been listening to Imogen Heap and Frou Frou, and loving them.
- i finished reading The Book Thief. it was ok. a little too self-reflexive, in my view, and i usually go in for that stuff. also, i don't know if the desensetised perspective of death was the best approach to conveying the horror of the holocaust. still, it was written beautifully in parts.

should i take six months off? probably, but i might then have to give up my scholarship. which would be obviously stupid. whatever the case, i've got to change something.

ea and me

it has been a nice week, though i can only recognise that there's been a week at all by the fact that it's sunday. like i only know that it's cold sometimes because i can't move my fingers as fast. also, it was cold this week.
it was my sister's birthday on wednesday, which was an excellent excuse for many a round of merriment. the first began with my twilight quest for crispy noodles, in order that we might make gado gado as jen's requested birthday dinner. it took me an hour and the scouring of a suburb to come to the realisation that there isn't a store in north sydney that stocks them. instead, realising that i was thirsty at the precise moment that i was walking past the 7-11, i ended up buying a freezie. the ones where you get three times as much for an extra forty cents. my mother gave me a perplexing look when i arrived home - the kind of look a person gives when they have sent you on an errand for noodles and you return beholding 800mLs of flavoured ice. it turned out we had crispy noodles in the drawer anyway. hurray!
on friday i saw the seabellies and bluebottle kiss play at the factory. the first was a marvellous surprise, because i had heard nothing about them. the number of instruments each member plays borders on ridiculous.
also, bluebottle kiss played wonderfully. the soundscapes were hypnotic, the guitar work amazing. some of the cliched lyrics annoyed me, which is unusual, because i rarely register any criticisms for live music. still, i really enjoyed the set.
on saturday i went to fisher to gather the resources necessary for an essay due tomorrow (or should i say, today). and ran into mia! we laughed at ourselves together, and i visited her house quickly to collect a book. the suburb of glebe is a lovely suburb, and mia's house is a lovely house.
today my family had lunch. this is more of an occasion than one might expect, in that my lunch is generally breakfast. also, it was in celebration of the fact that jennikins is 17. 17! we are ageing. i mentioned to my cousins that our days of frolicking outside during the post meal conversation are numbered. we folded the tablecloth into a giant crane. people find it quaint, still.
also, it looked awesome.
i started writing my essay tonight. and i started reading the book thief by markus zusak, which i probably shouldn't have, because it seems like something i won't be putting down for very long over the next couple of days. maybe just long enough to finish the essay.
sleep, now. it is 5am, and i am starting to think what the night would like me to, instead of my head.
good night!

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

i read poetry less than i'd like. i read this for the first time in year eleven, when i would frequently walk aimlessly around my suburb in the middle of the night, and it became very important to me. i had an urge to read it again tonight, as i sat on the small staircase below my window. and now i have. memory. is very strange.

on a less ambiguous note, when i was looking for the book of poems, i also found my copy of Treasury of Provebs and Epigrams! here are some quotable words of wisdom:

"every wise woman buildeth her house; but the foolish plucketh it down with her own hands". well... yeah.

"it is hard to get two heads under one hat"


goodnight!

If you've trapped yourself in a vicious circle, this pamphlet is for you!

apparently the bitter experience of failure is the only path to changing the habit of procrastination. apparently i must grasp the nettle, whatever that means. thanks pamphlet!

haha, simple things make me ridiculously overjoyed sometimes. i just picked up my cup of tea thinking "damn, i drank it all already". but i hadn't! excellent. oh god it just happened again. surely now i can't actually finish it. ok i just did. check cup. yes, its actually finished now.
i've had a nice day. i went to uni, and talked to people for hours instead of going to lectures. hmm.
finished freud though. watched M. i'm doing some actual work for once, and rapidly recovering faith in my being at uni. i'm still quite looking forward to the holidays though, and to next semester, with its glittering intact potential.

night night night.

she's a maaaneeeater make your work hard make you spend hard

i downloaded nelly furtado's album. when i'm at work, i get excited when one of her songs comes on the radio. it is the same with pink and JT and avril... nina whistles along and we sing whatever words we know (which, thanks to commercial rotation, is basically all of them) and clean faster and greet customers with a more genuine pep. but listening to the album now, it's really not so very good. i won't pretend that i'm above pop music - i have avril's discography. but i also won't pretend that its worthwhile listening.
i worked 27 hours this week. far too many. i don't even need the money, i am just terrible at saying no to shifts if i get a message along the lines of BLABLA IS SICK AND CAN'T WORK CAN YOU BE AT NEUTRAL BAY BY 6AM?
well, technically yes. but.. OK THANKS! WE OWE YOU!
yeah. ok.
anyway! i do quite like the work. and i've only got two shifts next week, so maybe i won't fail everything ever. i hung out with shevorn for an hour after the education seminar today, which was really nice. we bonded over our both being immesurably slack. and other things, of course.
i haven't done any proper work in a while. i've read civilisation and its discontents - heavens, what a mind that man had. also, what a perplexing collection of hangups.
hm. i've had quite a decent week on the whole. i made it to the majority of my classes, i enjoyed the company of friends, and i got my first HD, which felt pretty nice. for all my repulsion at the notion of assessments, i still like feeling approved of.

i've still got to get rid of some of my bad habits. i wonder if instead of giving them up, i could offset the cost. like with carbon emissions.
i wonder how much my procrastination is costing to economic productivity. nothing ludicrous, i hope. nothing like youtube.

take care!

slow night. didn't go out. trying to finish an essay. dada spam poems. nuff said. do not read the following, if you possibly have anything better to do with your eyes.


I safely
promised you
never to
Automobiles seven hole behavior
Rid of a science cork,
Today.

And my Love meant:
Come, crawl my little
Madman. Folded strange,
With the same
Disease tempting cover,
Mostly.

But you
Do not
Speak English.


mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. pretty profound.
oh! i saw pikelet play yesterday! it made for a fantastic night. the venue was about the size of my bedroom, and the mood extremely mellow. she has more talent than is probably fair.
afterwards, we headed to a lebanese restaurant next door, which was very pleasant... and then rishi, jared and larry came back to my place for the night.
007 on the N64 (i pwned evry1). mario tennis. buffy. niceness. until four in the morning.

i hope you are all well, and enjoying the remnants of your saturday.

"And the rest of our lives do the moments accrue, and the shape of their goneness will flare up anew."

this is the third time i've started writing a post tonight. it has been a strange, strange evening. bad mostly, though, as always, both the night and its frustrations have settled. what is a little worrying is that i wasn't so sure that they would this time, which is a feeling i haven't had since year eleven at the latest.
of course, i read amanda palmer's diary and watched avril lavigne videos on youtube, and things are better.
who was i to doubt the intransience of all things? i even spent half an hour watching two monks create a sand mandala yesterday. there are no coincidences.
tonight i came across my drama journal from year nine. it's quite amazing, i both dearly miss and desperately distance myself from the person i was in those days. the abbreviations kill me. the conviction of my words kills me also, but in that where-did-my-burning-sense-of-justice-go kind of way. really, where?
i vow to get some of it back. (though please hit me in the neck with the blade of an axe if i start writing articles for the sociallist alliance. RULING ELITE? WHAT?!! i cannot abide their 19th century rhetoric and frightfully biased journalism.(although i will sign their petitions, attend their events and buy their badges)).
i'm looking forward to the holidays. they are at quite a distance, but whisper promises about the writing of stories and the learning of pipes. i would have liked two weeks break at easter... i feel myself losing momentum. oh well. things will pick up.
toast and essays beckon.

night night

"Laying low in a tropical hideout, and if anyone finds out, i'll turn their lights out"

a strange day indeed. five hours sleep again, which has become the average. not because i have anything particularly important to do, but because when i'm feeling inspired, or simply uninspired to sleep, it seems foolish to let the hours go to what seems a waste. one hour of uni. three hours of work, that became four and a half hours, upon realising only after letting maddie go early that none of the washing up for the day had been done, the racks had not been sanitised, and the floor had not been mopped properly. whatevs. i waited at the bus shelter for twenty minutes for the 230 to arrive, and ran into the man that on previous occasions pressed me as to whether i had a boyfriend, and then why i did not have a boyfriend, until i finally told him i was gay. the dialogue that followed was something along the lines of:
him: why?
me: because i am.
but what if you meet a man?
it doesn't matter, i can't fall in love with a man.
*genuine confusion* how can you say that?
*exasperated silence*

this will teach me to talk to strangers. (actually it hasn't). today, we exchanged awkward greetings before i put in my headphones and listened rather intently to some music. oh yeah, and i left my book in the bakery, which is extremely infuriating, as i had reached the height of action and was looking forward to finishing it tonight. the man caught the city bus. the 230 drove entirely past, and i ran rather dramatically alongside it for about twenty metres, devastated at the prospect of waiting close to an hour for the next one. the man driving the city bus kindly pulled up and offered that he might be able to chase it to the next stop, so i boarded, and exchanged another awkward laugh with the creepy man. the driver actually seemed quite intent to follow through with his offer, tailing the 230 closely for three stops before i was able to dash out with a vaguely directed yelp of thanks and run onto my bus. hurray. home, guitar, msn. and an hour unwinding the day to the background of one of those CSI shows. they used a track from The Knife. i was dazzled (though that might have been a result of the spasmodic "we are doing very very high tech lab work now" special effects).
then lateline. the minister for education actually spoke quite well, i thought, considering that the proposed reforms have been accused of being both a baseless election ploy, and simultaneously nothing new.
now, blogging and tatu. my classics chapters have to be read before tomorrow, and yet again i have no idea why i've left them to the last minute. quite stupidly, i know that if i wasn't taking a unit of mythology, i'd have eagerly read the entire book by now.
oh. architecture in helsinki was fantastic. who would have thought indie kids knew how to have so much fun? maybe it was the enormous number of young folk. crazy dancing and great music and a collection of some of my favourite people made for a great night. followed by tequila and merriment.
new buffalo was also astounding. enchanting. i would follow her voice off a cliff. i've also since been obsessively listening to the cd of the support, laura jean. obscure folk lyrics sung beautifully by a melbourne bohemian, backed by sultry, resonant guitar melodies and occasionally a string section - my kind of music.
on an unrelated note, i now have biceps from all the lifting that needs doing at work. do not mess with me!

otherwise, take care!

the divine within me greets the divine within you.

i killed a slug tonight. it was an accident. i do not feel particularly guilty, however i generally avoid killing anything - particularly things such as the "slug", which are already so cruelly treated by nomenclature. it's always interesting, the line at which people determine what is ok to kill and what isn't. my mum finds it quite in keeping with her zen alignment to exterminate entire nests of things so long as she utters "namas te" at the end of it. i find it humorous.
i'm in conflict about it, because at the same time that i don't like to intefere with nature more than i can help, my inteferences are an inextricable part of those cycles. obviously. anyway, it generally depends on the kind of mood i'm in as to whether i justify what i am or aspire to act differently. whatever the case, i will never rise above the status of a toiling agent of history.
so long as my toiling manages to create pretty things, and does some good for people, i'll always be content.

today was alright. i woke late, enjoyed my english tutorial, voted for Ruchir, thereby putting the union into gear (hurray), then... came home. that's about all. new buffalo is playing tomorrow night, for some reason i expect that it will be amazing.

night

We got legs by smoking these.

well, i finally made it to an education lecture today. it was a good lecture, and inevitably reinforced my conviction not to miss any more of them under the pretence of some various, ever weakening excuse. i was never particularly diligent when it came to attendance in high school either, as most will remember, but I somehow imagined that sandstone buildings would be the remedy. They were also to cure my time management skills, or lack thereof. Instead, uni has only really changed me in the ways that I now go out whenever I feel like it and sometimes spell the word women with a y.
I should however mention that I love every moment of study. I’m indulging in optimism, and the glorious way that it makes one’s eyes like hyphens of happiness. I’m not going to explain the simile. You will have to be creative with it.

And for something important… Millie graduated today! We went out to dinner at El Karim’s Lebanese restaurant in Roseville to celebrate. Sigh. I could easily marry anyone who can cook like that.
Which reminds me, Labor is shaping up on gay rights. Finally.

Good evening, dearests.

"In Melbourne you're uncool and square unless you're a lesbian sculptress. Who works only in zinc."

a dandiacal day.
i suppose it technically began with my staying up last night to... do nothing, really. i spent hours clicking around the internet and started reading March. this has been the fourth day spent indulging in the fact that i finished two important assignments last week, both at the last minute, and do not have anything more due for a couple of weeks.
i spent the entire weekend working, which was meh apart from the fact that i got to work with Andrew on saturday, and bitch with him for 6 hours about how pathetically understaffed we are. also, he bought me coffee. so did Rakesh.
the prelude to the weekend was nice too, come to think of it. i saw krista on thursday, to see History Boys and eat ice cream... then i skipped a night of sleep to finish my philosophy essay, which was quite a lot of fun to write, in the end. on friday millie came over, and on saturday i watched Sadie Benning's early short films with Jared. it was strangely familiar - at 15 i spent an enormous amount of time bemoaning my sexuality to anonymous strangers. some people just have more beautiful and interesting ways of going about it. (though i should mention that comparing her work to my experience is a simplification in the extreme.)

this morning i had to rush into uni for a single hour of class, though it was all worthwhile for the hours spent at manning bar afterward commiserating over our demoralising education tutor. waiting outside a bar in the middle of the day in order to start drinking as soon as it opened was a new experience.
i then headed to red eye to get tickets for this week, and bought two pretty cds. le tigre and new buffalo. i am finally becoming a good (i.e. music purchasing) person.

this evening we saw Dylan Moran at the state theatre. i've never been very good at talking about events like it, but suffice to say it was great.

later on i went running for the first time in months. part of the reason it has been such a long time is that the last time i went there were people having sex in the park. at 1 in the morning. to say i was fascinated makes me sound like a freak - i suppose i was more humoured and bewildered by the whole situation. the moral of the story is: do not have sex in the park at 1am. you may end up bewildering me and being written about on my blog.

hm. i should finish my reading for classical mythology. then i will sleep.
goodnight, hearties.

what is up?
part of the reason i haven't updated in months is that every time i've tried the internet has died or the computer exploded or my hands contracted some manner of ache and/or spasm. however, i only really tried to twice. mostly, there has been far too much happening for me to try and condense and make sense of any of it. anyway... i'm posting for two reasons. a) i have an essay due in the next 20 or so hours. b) i have lost my journal. it is somewhere in my room, hopefully. under the carpet or something ridiculous, no doubt.
and by this stage it is probably apparent that i don't actually have anything to write about.
sigh.
to lazily recap, here are two lists that illustrate recent life.
awesome: uni, ebay, coffee, live music, tequila night, spoken word poetry, folk musicians... especially ones that look like loralai, bread, listening to fbi at work, being able to afford things, and talking about capital punishment for hours
not awesome: capital punishment, missing lectures to sleep... particularly when they only start at midday anyway, working 35 hours in a single week, writing essays at the last minute, competing for books in the reserve collection, and spending so much money on coffee.

it is a good outcome overall... but i hope to make it better. on the attendance and last minute essay writing fronts at least. anyway, goodnight.

Re Capping

The days are moving by at an alarming rate (Though I only notice by the length of my nails). And so, the last few weeks have been lost from my feeble record, faded into a haze of vaguely recalled moods. Most of them gleeful.

- I have been doing lots of housework. It’s starting to get to me: On Wednesday I was genuinely delighted to open a new packet of kitchen sponges.

- I’ve been employed! I’m now working part time at the Bakers Delight in Mosman. I can finally afford to leave the house.

- Yesterday on the train I glimpsed a girl toss her head and grin mischievously at her boyfriend. I realised that within the space of those few motions I had assumed her entire character, my mind having been set off on a succession of mental and visual associations that seemed to hover like afterlight over what I saw, brighter the more I tried to peer past it. I feel as though what I see isn’t what is there at all, only a kind of collage of what I have come to expect. It’s a strange thing to feel – different to simply knowing that it’s possible. And strange to think about, when you include how you see yourself.

- Candice and El’s 18th was last friday, which was excellent fun. There were card tricks and cake and conversations with my wonderful friends.

- I caught up with Krista and Millie again on Sunday evening to partake in the glory of Tropfest. Many of the films were really quite good, many were not, overall I had a fantastic night in excellent company. Friendship trophies all around (omg an inside joke AAGH).

- I finished reading Narcissus and Goldmund on the train today, and stared out the window a while, marvelling at the splendour of the world and the wonder of imagination. How fantastic a novel looks in my head, how forgivable a species we must be to create such beauty. The book is also masterful in how coherently ideas about duality, life and art are woven together.

- Niki is going to Melbourne on Thursday. Bye Niki! You will be missed.

- I have been listening to more albums: I love Mew. And I love Amy Millan. And I love Ani DiFranco’s new album.

- I like you lots.

Goodnight!

Pastoral in the Past

not much has happened in recent days. i watched Serenity and Spanglish last night, the latter of which was a very pleasant surprise. the script was fantastic, and spectacularly acted. the story was simple and genuine, and managed to become ridiculously romantic without allowing itself to depart from reality.

that aside, the reason i'm posting at all is that i've just uploaded some photos taken at the farm.



here we (harry, sarah, jen and i) are pulling corrugated iron bits out of the ground. there is a mysterious black line across jen and harry, presumably portending their imminent deaths/ the badness of my scanner.











after our half hour of backbreaking labour, we went swimming in the river. it seems kind of rustically charming and whimsical, doesn't it. it was, at the time. i later couldn't sleep for all the peculiar bites on my arms...









which ensured that i was awake while the sun came up. a thick mist had collected in the paddock below, stretched out like a cobweb.
i watched the sun emerge from behind the mountains and sweep it away, all the while listening to Kid A. then i listened to The Waifs' Up All Night. kind of incredibly appropriate.






oh! and i forgot to mention that my cousins and jen and i have started playing music together. harry came over on saturday and we just jammed... he played the clarinet, jen and i played the violin. it was great fun, and we actually sounded nice. hurray ^^

goodnight!

Music is My Spiegel House

i saw Joanna Newsom perform at the spiegel tent last night. it was such an intimate atmosphere that i almost felt strange staring up at her, though this quickly subsided as she began to play bridges and balloons. this being the song that i first fell in awe of.
from time to time i've mentioned being able to feel a certain out-of-myselfness. last night as she was playing, it hit me without my even trying. she cannot be hyped enough.
and she is so extremely adorable.!

so, i woke up reasonably late today, with not much time to leave the house. it's good in a way, because it has meant that my proportion of excitement during waking hours has been greatly increased.
at 1:30 i met up with Millie and Krista, who i haven't seen since at least year 9. we watched a free exhibition-related bollywood-esque movie at the NSW (with an intermission!), before walking down to the botanic gardens to watch the eels. it's actually really exciting to have gotten back into contact with them both, they being as remarkably cool as they are. they like Cansei de Ser Sexy. so i listened to it. it is the best.

* intermission *

tonight i watched Saw III. i'm ridiculous. it's because Judd has put all these movies on my computer, you see. sigh. i'm still ridiculous.

and right now i'm listening to Beach House again. i keep listening to it, and i keep not liking it. i am usually not so persistent, but i continue to feel that perhaps somehow during all my previous listens i have been in the wrong mood. i can usually save any music that i don't really like by imagining the kind of scene in a movie it would be set to - so i'm currently picturing a wooden carriage at sunset, on its way out of a small european coastal town that has been overtaken by robots. also, the dark-haired clean-shaven bohemian of a protagonist is having an identity crisis, because he has discovered that his great grandfather was a robot. i don't know how it ends, because the music doesn't really go anywhere from there. but now that i've taken the time, i'm beginning to find it nice.

hm! goodnight!

Regret

“to accept oneself as fate, not to desire oneself ‘different’… this is great rationality itself.”

I used to say that I was without regret, for every mistake has led me to where I am. However, it’s the regret and guilt that I live with that has shaped me into what I am. In year four I accidentally fractured a neighbour’s window when some friends from up the street and I held skateboard races in their backyard. At first we didn’t tell anyone. I had nightmares about being arrested for days. One morning I was watching Grease and my mum asked me if I knew anything about a window being broken. So, I confessed. To this day, whenever I feel like a criminal, that scene in Grease where everyone is parked on the cliff comes to mind. Recently, everything awful that happened between Rachael and I has been playing over again and again in my head. Hundreds of times a day.

I don’t know if there is room for rationality, at this stage. Maybe this is how one becomes what one is. But then, it seems ridiculous to fill in more clearly the picture by tearing at what is already there.

Anyway, I’m sounding unstable. Don’t be alarmed by this “I am my regret” thing. It’s not quite so dramatic as that – rather, how certain things happened the way they did is something that has been on my mind. And although these actions are fixed in the past, whatever we manage drag into the present becomes it. Whether we choose to appreciate the now or not, we cannot exist outside of it. Maybe that is obvious.

Oh yeah, I watched Little Miss Sunshine tonight. It was kind of good and kind of meh, but I might have been expecting too much. And I watched Saw II. Which was completely horrible, but made me want to script an atrociously cliché detective movie of my own. Maybe without people diving into pits of syringes. Mostly because I don’t think the budget will allow it.

Night night

women: you can't beat them

last friday i saw a girl rock out on the saxophone, climb on top of her amp and rock out some more. on the saxophone. oh i am so into the saxophone. she belongs to a band called bridezilla (and maybe my heart).
since then i have slipped into a familiar holiday pattern. i watch movies, i read, i go to other people's houses in the evenings and we laugh in a carefree manner.
i go walking in the afternoons. i sit behind a tree that seems barely more than bark and watch people play soccer in the park below. yesterday the air was so thick that their shapes were reduced to whatever their movements reminded me of. it was nice, also, to feel that if the whole world gazed back at me it would have to squint. and maybe mistake me for a deckchair or a crocodile.

i go running at midnight. the city is still so lit that it feels like a perpetual 8 o’clock, except there are no tracksuited couples and tiny dogs. i love it. i’m going to become a doctor and acquire a ridiculous surname so that i can publish children’s books about my adventures:

city lights smirk at the work of the sun,
through a cloudless mirk, like a cancerous lung
(still, running at night time is excellent fun)


now, for something out of my day to day pattern... today i enrolled.
in semester one i will be taking:
EDUF1018 Education, Teachers and Teaching
ENGL1015 Inventing Modernity
CLCV1001 Classical Mythology
PHIL1011 Reality, Ethics and Beauty

and in semester two:
EDUF1019 Human Development and Education
ENGL1007 Language, Texts and Time
CLSS1002 Greece and Rome in Performance
PHIL1010 Society, Knowledge and Reason

fantastic. also, the university is as sexy as they get, and i talked to a friendly co-english/drama-future-teacher by the name of Anne. so i'm feeling optimistic. also, the next few days are full of excitement.

goodnight

i was going to write a proper post.

1. The Dresden Dolls – Yes, Virginia
2. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
3. Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope
4. Emily Haines – Knives Don’t Have Your Back
5. Joanna Newsom – Ys
6. Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds
7. The Knife – Silent Shout
8. TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
9. Cat Power – The Greatest
10. Beirut – Gulag Orkestar

instead, my 10 favourite albums from last year.

* some may notice that i removed X&Y from the list. this is not because rishi might hit me, but because it was released in 2005.

Serpentine

so i've been accepted into Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Education (Secondary: Humanities and Social Sciences) at Sydney University. friends and a gigantic library and cheap live music and societies and politics and lots more learning awaits.
i am mostly overjoyed. but it all seems to have come so easily. i was talking to Helen once (or twice, and probably will again) about there being almost two paths that we could see our lives spiralling down. to dramatise the situation, there is the path of least resistance, where we become teachers and return to the community what we can, having at the same time a nice life full of a responsible love and some children. then, there is forever the possibility of how much more could be sacrificed of that life in order to make that much more of a difference. do i really have the conviction.? for me it's not necessarily about teaching, because i think it's one of the most honourable things a person can do, but about the way i can see my life becoming so very structured, simply because everything is most easily set up to work that way.
the path of least resistance. is what makes the river crooked, makes it serpentine, according to my favourite punk-folkstress.
i have settled deep into a deteministic take on things, which makes the thought less of a plagueing one. yet is, of course, a cop out. it has no practical application. it cannot, without the entire situation becoming paradoxical. trying to visualise the process used to make my small capacity for logic whirr - so much so that I’ve resigned to a kind of faith that everything will work out how it must. it’s the closest I get to god.
I believe in god, by the way. Not the kind that listens, only the kind that lives in people.
Though I have recently been unnerved by the realisation that my meditation-induced feeling of connectedness can be easily reproduced through the consumption of various poisons. Some will respond: “of course”. i will politely instruct them to shut up.
Anyway. I think I’m doing the right thing. In year ten I skipped a day of school and stared at a leech until I decided on a purpose. It is to help people, in the best way that I can. I hope that I can.
Of course, my third plan is to wander the world applying a differently scented lipgloss for every new emotion i encounter, to then spend the years of my dotage using each to evoke the glorious days of my youth. or maybe marry amanda palmer. i guess i could combine the two.

For some actual news… i went to Kristina's 18th last night and had a very good time. we argued about becoming a republic, and gave Kris a tiny tree, among other things. also, i've seen Jared every day this week, which has been really nice. even though (or perhaps especially as) it involved aforementioned poisons. my dad's friend Judd is in town. he makes his own furniture. he sings beautiful old songs, and teaches me new chords. he has installed cubase SX and Reason 3 on our computer, and has tonight taught me how to use them. obviously i'll now become an incredible songstress. obviously.
i'm yet to discover what it is that separates music from that thing that makes your heart feel like it’s there. Someday.

Sleep tight, hearties

today was nice. i spent a few hours with jared and then moseyed on to clare's, where we sat in the sun and talked about how good it is to finally be on holidays. apart from that, a few things are worth mentioning:

1. a computer beat me at chess. i have always found that kind of thing demoralising in the extreme... but at least computers aren't sexist, so if they want to establish a new wold order, i'll yield. like the woman that i am.

2. i saw a woman cry on the bus. two hours later i smiled at the memory of jen (or should i say MC Disease) singing "i'm fieak", and a man across from me smiled in response to my glee. we grinned at each other for a couple of minutes, before he stepped out of the train at town hall and we waved goodbye forever. sometimes it's ok to connect with strangers. without it i sometimes forget that another entire life and history of individual experience exists within each, and begin instead to think of them as being no more real than the zora people, playing background to my amazing adventures.

3. i played twilight princess. i died three times, but it has won my heart.

night night