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.