blue powder and soft snow...

okay, it's not quite that wintering yet, but the city has taken on a new skin. Grey and weathered and tearful.

I've been tearful all day (perhaps most of the week) and the long trolley rides into work only exacerbated this feeling. I read Zelda by Nancy Mitford and every few paragraphs I had to stop as the poignant glory of Scott's generosity and love toward Zelda made me want to weep.
I too, like both of them, but perhaps Zelda most of all, yearn for times past and a gone youth. Even though I'm not that old. Even though she wasn't either.

Nobody has measured...even the poets how much a heart can hold...

I am deeply worried about mum, though maybe worry isn't the right word. I feel a mixture of guilt, responsibility and heavy love and I don't quite know what to do with it all.
If only Hungary was an easier place to live, to make a living.
As D-Day creeps closer, I find myself shuttling through these city streets and asking myself, will you miss this? this? this?
And some days I say yes, but most days I say no.

I am ready. I am already picturing slow footed, comfortable, sweaty walks through Melbourne hand in hand with B, seeing through new eyes all over again. I'm 61 days away from a Pisco Sour with VC, the hours are textured like sandpaper.

So it's a mix. It's excitement, and sadness, and gratitude and right now- fatigue.

All I want now is to lose myself in something of the Jazz Age, and maybe cry some self-indulgent tears, but dammit I've read all the Fitzerald I own...

...

There have been stories in the Age this week about Franci MacNab and his desire to breathe 'fresh life' into Christianity, which he is planning to do with a $120000 advertising campaign, and claiming that Jesus was just a peasant, and Moses a mass murderer. Ahem.
I'm a bit tired now to go into what he did to my mother, but I wrote a letter to the Age...it didn't get published of course; how does one dare question the conscience of a 'minister for life'...
God forbid I ever meet the fucker face to face....

but I mustn't end on such a sour note...

The sweetest thing I saw today was a blind couple getting on the trolley with their guide dog, who sat down and proceeded to drool (in a very cute way) all over the floor. I don't know how, but the lady noticed and she wiped the dog's mouth with a clean tissue, all care and unselfconscious love.

Rainy day special

And I thought today was just a shitty Monday. I felt Kenworth-hit when I woke up, it was raining, I didn't dress warmly enough...it goes on.
I was at the Embassy all day and then the journey home was even colder, rainier than before. I won't go into the public transport woes of this poor pathetic city because I'll just get mad mall over again.

So, I push my key in the door and come in. I look at B and say don't even ask me how I am, I am so shit bla bla bla. He waits for me to finish, gives me a hug and then steers me without a word to the bathroom. There is steam, and candlelight and a bath full of hot water for us to sink into.
Luckiest girl in the world.

Ennyi.

My friends, Piotr and Antonin

I'm sitting in this confused Saturday - one minute clouds one minute piercing sun - listening to Dvorak and Tchaikovsky thinking again how damn lucky I am :)

I am working, yes, but the rhythm of the washing machine is quiet from the bathroom, the fridge and shelves are full of the freshness I brought home from market this morning (after our fourth run this week!)...

and I suddenly thought of the perhaps ironic but at the very least smilemaking contrast, between this quiet Saturday afternoon with Pete and Ant and last Thursday when I accompanied B to his rehearsal with the Redneck Zombies.
I enjoyed that so much too! In the damp smelling, too hot rehearsal room, while they tried to figure out how this or that track should begin, Bea crashing out beats on the drumkit... I looked at Balint a lot that night (there wasn't much else to do) and thought to myself "This is my future" and I posed it as a question, and found that I liked the idea of an affirmative answer.

We went to the Belgian Brasserie for dinner last night, a beautiful date, and it amazes me that after all this time, with really only very small glitches in between, I'm still in that very fuzzy place I want to be for a long time to come. That uncompromisable place. The 'in love' place.

If only Sony Ericsson articles weren't so boring... but I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday

...

End of summer

This was the last wasteful weekend hopefully for a while.

I worked for most of Saturday after Sam left, and then Judit picked us up and we drove to Veroce. Winding along the Danube, driving through Vac was packed full of memories, all in a good way. The party was well underway when we got there, but when I was handed a glass brimming with palinka I was grateful for the dark, because I managed to surreptitiously put it back on the table, hiding behind the bread basket.
I drank wine with soda, thinking it would keep me sane a little longer, and we cooked szalonna and sausages over the fire, entertained by this bloke who was so drunk he threw first his socks and then his t-shirt into the flames.
I piked at 2am, feeling the imminent tip over into bitchy drunkenness, and read Zelda in bed till the dawn.

Yesterday felt like a wasted day, though we attempted to go for a swim. Failed because of the crowd. Then spent a really lovely evening with mum and Pista, who is increasingly well.

Now: coffee, work, and then to market, to market...

Side by Side in orbit...

It's been months...though seemingly years as I scroll back and see how little i have made of this year...in the blogosphere at least anyway...
Outside it, under scant stars, pale moon and searing sun, I've had a ripper :)

There were six weeks in Oz... three in the west, where I rerealised that that love will never fade. Although Betty and PG have moved to Lynwood and it's a brand new neighbourhood and I got lost and felt cast apart due to the aching lack of licence, it was still west. It was still clean, and spare and beautiful. The first day I went with Betty to the bottle-o and picked up a Vasse Felix bottle I felt tears spring to my eyes... How badly I want to be settled.
Definite decisions about the phd still haven't been made, though not for any lack of effort on Gary's part. I feel too disconnected here, and haven't even read anything this year. I am hoping, that when I'm back there at least semi-permanently I can knuckle down. And then call me Dr Anna.

The crowded east was next, and three weeks lived with Bud, sharing a bed, eating good (and better) food, drinking too much, farting loud enough to wake the other - it's what dreams are made of!
There isn't the space or the time now to write about everything that happened - one of the definite highlights though was my trip to Canberra to visit Andrew and Maureen (and the amazing AMAZING ride on that big yellow bike)...the days spent with Mellie and Rosco and that unconquerable child :)
Then of course, dancing to John Farnham with Em and Jim, singing around their lounge room...
catching up with Macca in Geelong...
the list could go on.

Then home to B, and a disasterous wedding (not ours ho hum) after which we spent a week not talking, and me thinking this is it this is it, i'm turning around and going home. Of course once we talked about it, little Banana here realised the power of decent communication and it's all fine now.

There was a magical week with mum in Trieste, surely one of the best places in Italy. I know I know, it's not FlorenceVenice bla bla bla, but it's real, untouristy, familiar and it was hot. And it was there I finally learned, that one can get a tan, while wearing sunscreen.

After Trieste, VagueCraig arrived, and all too soon it was Sziget time again. Of course I went, despite my earlier insistence that I wouldn't. I drank too much, smoked too much, embarrassed myself plenty and had a wicked wicked time. Would anyone believe me if I also said I danced?

Then finally, four days of quiet bliss with B at the Balaton. Doing nothing but crawling into the village every late morning for a lazy coffee, then armed with a bottle of water going to shore to lie in the sun and read. And dipped in the suspiciously milky blue water (how strange that it's not salty) And drank wine spritzers and made fires in the evening and cooked what was essentially hunks of lard with onion. Unreal.

And then Sam arrived. And all heads in Budapest turned.
We took a long journey to Slovenia, where more Slovenian heads also turned. It was so good to be with a girlfriend. So good that she was 'my' friend. I adore B's friends, but Sam's my own, and she knows me like few others do.

Ljubljana utterly captured me. The friendliness of the people, the verve and colour of the city and of course meeting Mike and Klemen, a meeting after which Sam and I went back to our hostel room, and danced crazily to by New Order...it was insane. Then we scoffed pistachios lying on the bed, laughing manically.

The next day we took a bus to Piran, and while the mountains passed outside the window I slept, head back mouth open.
Piran is a jewel. Less touristy than Rovigno and smaller, it nestled in next to Ljubljana in that little back room of my heart.
Our hotel, or Hoteli, was right on the water, painted blue, with a curly white balcony overlooking the Adriatic.

We scoffed at the stars, (there were 4) and marvelled at the glory of a night time storm, hair whipping... night swimming under salty waves of temptation and returning to the room, under the scornful gaze of the porter, tasting fresh squid from the sea, watching tennis or porn or tennis, drinking copious amounts of chardonnay, pistachio ice cream and proposals.
It was silly and bright and there was even a town called Arse. Adventure abounded.

Sam left this morning, and when her taxi pulled away I thought again how much I bloody well hate fucking goodbyes. Having said that, new Zealand is totally on the list of next places...

Tonight we're just two, but going to Veroce for an end of summer barbecue and no doubt more drinking. I swear from Monday, fo the sake of my health, I'm going to live a more boring life...

The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked...