furthermore

i just got an offer to ride in a roadtrain!!!!!!!!! could it rival the sexiness of a motorbike? probably not, but the idea excites me very much :-)

Squatter

I can't get warm. Daggy beanie, trackie dacks, blanket yet the cold feels like it's in my marrow, under my skin.
After a nap in the late afternoon sunshine streaming in through my window while B went for a run, I am now working with a little more verve than yesterday, and am soon to go off to yoga in the sharp Subiaco night.
There has been some good news today. I relish it.

Icy feet

warm heart, according to Harry. :-)

Man, this cold has moved into my marrow. But here is something warming, that CS said about a crazy acquaintance of ours:

crazier than a racoon on crystal meth in a switched on microwave.

anyway, it put a smile on my face. In fact, several things and encounters have put a smile on my face today, but increasingly I feel like even having two jobs, not three, is too much.
Today started at 5.20, in the creaking cold morning when even the birds were still silent. I dragged gym clothes on and drove to Subi where that wonderful class woke me up. Why the hell they chose Boys of Summer (awful mix of) for the squat track i don't know, but it bloody works.

I felt sluggish at work, and bizarrely I had butterflies. The kind of excited and anticipating 'something' butterflies, but there's nothing going on. No alarms and no surprises in fact.
The sick with love feeling is well and truly gone and i am pondering what Betty asks me regularly: how much compromise is too much?

I had lunch with CS today in Perth - and the best part about it was the laughing. It's another thing that's missing from home. So much seriousness and straight faces and negativity. Sometimes I just want to play. Not to say I can't do that on my own.

But the walk home was beautiful - the storm clouds were wheezing away, and they were back-lit with magnificent clear sunshine.
And further beauty is to be had tonight - after a scalding shower I am taking Lawrence Durrell to bed with me.

"better than a kick in the head, right?"
"it depends who kicks you"

Flowers

When I dropped B at work on Sunday at 12, I knew there was no way I was going straight home to work. The weather was too perfect. I knew I had two slim novels in my bag, one of them I was already half way through...
So I turned right on Cambridge, instead of left, and parked Little Car at City Beach. I bought two bottles of water, and when I registered how warm it actually was, and no wind either, I was grateful for my polka dot undies get-up as they can easily double as bathers. And so they did.
I settled in the wide open sunshine (and boy are the results painful!) and read.
The first book I finished was a Finnish novel that gave me a similar feeling to being in Helsinki...a sort of squeezing melancholy tinged with cold. It was a decent read, but not outrageously good.
Next I started a Helen Garner novel (I only just found out she was born in Geelong!) which was glorious. Full of real, meaty characters and longing and true friendship.

The other great thing that day, was that all these sentences were falling into my head like gifts, and naturally I had only my diary to scribble them down, but I'll fish them out, one by one, and see if they perhaps make a coherent whole.

I found it incredibly hard to get up and leave the beach, but my arms were starting to really hurt and I was hungry. So I ate greasy fish and chips with my fingers and finished the book.
The thought of home was still somewhat unbearable, so I thought I'd take a drive along the coast. It was crowded though and I smarted from the sun a little too much to want to sit out in it again. I did stop at Floreat beach though, or just past it, and walked up and down for a while, marvelling at my good fortune.

Some cleaning and baking later I picked up B and we ate my most excellent satay chicken for dinner.

This morning I had a message from CS inviting us for coffee, which morphed into lunch. After dropping B at work I settled into the stream of cars on the freeway, and felt happy. That road makes me feel like anything is possible, and although I haven't given in to my urge to just keep going, maybe one day after December 22nd I will...

So, CS and KS live in the most labyrinthine suburb I have ever seen. I think Nelly the GPS really struggled, telling me left or right or second exit fast enough. But finding them was easier than finding my way out. We drank cups of tea, sitting by their magnificent kitchen and talked and I was taken by the feeling of having really found (although I didn't even do the finding) real friends. A good, full feeling. Evidently not full enough though, because I managed to polish off three pieces of tandoori chicken and some excellent salad, replete with the tart kiss of onions. Yum. After more tea and conversation - and biscotti - I said my goodbyes and headed home. But the sly view of the lake in Joondalup made me turn off the main road and stop the car. And if it hadn't been for the all too insistent call (it was building up to a scream) of nature, I might still be there, walking around in the fading afternoon light, taking little photos of the beauty of that park.
I was filled with such joy on the drive home!

...

The slowly blossoming despair, the silent onset of loneliness in a prickly morning of birdsong and cold sunshine.
Whose life am I dreaming into?
Whose future am I imagining?

Living in fast forward and there's no time for anything. Timelines, speeding up, too much waste and not enough value.

Why is the measure of love loss?

In the dawn, when it's only me and the red wattle bird just outside the balcony, I sip my hot sugarless tea and try and blow reason through my thoughts. This rarely works, and I end up marvelling at how sadness can seep through days as beautiful as these?

The space that should be full is empty, gathering dust and lengthening shadows. I create to fill and embellish but sometimes even the solitary turns on me and I am left in a box of lino and plastic, with meaningless brushstrokes and television.

Static.

I think of snow and winters' dull ache and I don't want to go back there. I wish I could shrug off the past like a cape, and reclaim my body as my own.

Today shall have to be a day of long walks and red-tipped toes in the icy sea. The london lessons unlearnt, I inch back to the safety of the mundane.

Sun

There was a lot of it today, and it's done me the world of good.
I had lunch with GB today, he whom I know of through Andrew, though we've really only circled each other until now, never really sat and talked. And it was really good and easy. And in an odd way, it awakened memories of Andrew that really made me feel like talking to him. I've said it before - distance can be a bitch.

But today the whole day was awesome. I got shit done, I helped a friend of B's with his visa (why is it so hard?!) application and then after work, when I got home to a wall of negative, I hefted myself off to the gym for my first body pump class in about 3 months. The pain. But it was so GOOD. Afterwards when we were stretching I held onto my calf for dear life and just felt so happy and fond of myself - does that sound just perverse?

Waiting now for Betty and Peter to arrive for our little foursome to go to Freo. Food and friends. And a long weekend.

Hope and wonder. It's back.

Geelong and the Cats

Oh I'm getting excited. There's a part of me that's almost afraid to watch the game tomorrow, for fear of a repeat of those two awful Eagles games in '92 and '94? Funny how that stuck, but not the fact that Carlton also beat us in the GF in '95 I think it was...anyway.

But cats- Mum has sent me the first two photo taken with her new camera. Well, you can see the 12mp difference! Go Canon and Go Mum! Pista is the star of the photos. His grey fur looks as soft as it is, and I can almost smell the dusty catness of him. I'm so glad that this at least has worked out just the way I wanted it to.

There are two absurdly green parrots on the flame tree outside the balcony, and an errant kookaburra somewhere near the kitchen window (near enough to hear it clearly) - otherwise, I feel like I'm the only one awake. Coffee in the Paul Keating mug, a read of the news, a listen to Fran Kelly and the day can start.

The dash

Sometimes I forget that this isn't a dog-eared exercise book hidden under my bed.

But the night itself has actually been quite beautiful. The necklace is gorgeous enough for the Cats to claim victory on Saturday, and Balint made a beautiful dinner and I feel like the air is full of hope and wonder. And sometimes I am worthy and sometimes I notice.

The other thing that I've been thinking about is Fitzgerald (no, really?) and why Mum doesn't like him. At first, I just thought she was strange and didn't know good literature, but then Mari also said she didn't like the Great Gatsby.
And I thought, of course. Considering the conditions under which they lived in the 70's, the repression, the gray everydayness that Morissey couldn't have written grayer... why would they want to read about the gorgeous, carefree and for a time blameless days of liquor, ladies and longing that Fitzgerald portrayed from New York to the French Riviera?
And yet, the more I revisit his work, the more i believe he was a true genius. Of the damaged kind. His tenacious hold on the past is ultimately attractive to me.

And the dryer cycle is up, and I'm putting in the next load. Bring on the electricity bill.

Equus

It's seven am. I should be getting ready but because I was too sleepy and too full of the sharp experience to write last night, I must write now.
Last night, B and I went to see Equus by Sir Peter Shaffer at His Majesty's in Perth. I knew nothing of the play, yet was super excited to see William McInnes live on stage.
When the actor playing Nugget the horse was the first image on the stage, writhing and clomping, knew B would hate the whole thing. And he did.
But god I loved it.
It's a confronting play, and in some ways reminded me of elements of Edward Albee's the Goat, or who is Sylvia...
The juxtaposition of the 'normal' and the 'wrong' or 'abnormal'....
When the psychiatrist realises that yes, this boy (played by the guy from the Catterpillar Wish film) is disturbed etc...and says "Oh I'll fix him..." and banish him forever into the normal world, the concrete highways slicing through the guts of concrete cities in a world of television and neutered passions... yes, the boy's passions were extreme and of course I don't condone fucking horses, but the sentiment is so strong.
We grow up and we leave that primal passion behind never to regain it.
I haven't thought much about the religious and sacrificial aspects of the play, I was too consumed by this aspect, but I loved the way ancient Greek mythology was woven throughout, as Dysart (the psychiatrist) rails against his own, staid, academic existence.

There will be more, I just had to get that out.

and actually, as I was sitting there, watching the profane love on stage, a line from Brian Patten wafted through my head, and I realised (perhaps I've grown up?) that I don't agree with it anymore (which does not mean I love the poem any less!)

"And if he is unlucky, he will learn how to love
and give everything away
And how he will end up with nothing.."

And McInnes was wonderful in the play. A slight hiccup in the first scene, but other than that his smiling English accent was flawless. I only wish the psychiatrist had got naked in the play too (ok, not really)...

strange things

Like Love. Love is a strange thing. Love is hard work (or is that just relationships?)...
And today I was surprised by how much B actually loves me. Shamed me, really, because I've been thinking so selfishly about wanting to stay here because it's good for me, without giving a hell of a lot of thought to how he feels.
I know he's not that keen on Perth. We've also talked about how I am the only person we know who can be happy at the sight of a green feather, let alone a whole parrot! Woo! But not everyone can find joy in everything, and not all the time. So, would I be willing to move to Melbourne? (I have well and truly crossed Budapest -and probably Europe altogether- off the list of places I would consider)- but I don't want to consider anywhere... I don't know if I'd be willing, and step heavy footed and blindfolded into uncertainty again.
I have increasing trouble loving the question. I can't fly by the seat of my pants anymore - partly because they drag me down- the seat of my pants grows larger by the day.
Could it be that I love myself just a little too much? But then, isn't this what I'm always preaching to Mum as well- that you have to love yourself first before you embark on love with anyone else. I don't know.
I'm not being very graceful in my writing tonight but it's been a day as heavy as a boulder. As murky as 2am in Wray avenue watching a white Pajero pull away from the kerb. As frightening as absynth and weed. Okay, clearly that Malaysian satay I had for dinner had some bad things in it...

Somehow I can't keep up with this 'online diary' with sufficient regularity. I should have spent weeks writing about how I got the job :) and how much I love going there, and how I look up to Dave and how I also think he's bloody fragile. How this is the nicest group of people I've ever worked with (Embassy friends notwithstanding, that's another category).

I should have written about how amazing it was when Mum was here for five weeks, and she understands about Perth and loves Freo as madly as I do. How she and Dad made friends again, and I am a girl with parents again. God, I love them.

I should have written about that night when Dale called, out of the blue late one night and just by accident i happened to have some good news to tell him, and he let me talk and talk, and then quietly he said "I don't want to rain on your parade" and then I knew. I sank into the chair and listened to him tell me how he'd talked to Kat's dad and asked his permission to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. How he had bought the ring and was going to pop the question up at Hotham. I am happy for them, but somewhere my heart still broke. And after I had handed the champagne over in Melbourne, and congratulated them I realised (for the 82nd time) that it's not Dale I want, but that security, that certainty. it's a beautiful thing.

I should have also written about the arrival of Ben, who came three weeks early, but perfectly timed. I only wish I could have been there, but I've seen him on screen and heard his sleep-whisperings.

But, i haven't written about all these things, and I don't have the time to pedal backwards.

It's a thick and emotional evening, I've worked pretty much non-stop for 12 hours (save for the adventure at the green grocer) and now I think I will take Ramona Koval (or at least her voice on the radio) into the shower and waste a little water. Just a little.

Oh and one more thing- Bizet, I know now, for a fact, is a beautiful genius. I saw the Pearl Fishers with Mum and Jeff, and it was so unmistakeably Bizet. So full of verve and oomph and tragedy.

-have also developed an unhealthy habit of wailing along to Neil Diamon when I'm in the car driving alone.... okay, don't even get me started on the car and how much I love it....