So, it's 3.12 and my interview was this morning. But there are no more nails (or cuticles) to chew and I'm not allowed to drink at work, so I'm trying very hard to be patient. I called my old friends at the tax office to kill some time, but now I'm just waiting to go home and attack something liquid with N.

My preparations yesterday were spot on. N and I met at Harbour Town and for the price of a new suit (ok, not quite that much!) I went like a whirlwind through shops selling lacy smalls. At home there was Old Well, grilled fish, grilling for the interview and a delectable foot massage before sleep. I felt relaxed and beautiful.
And then it was 4am and I was wide awake and my heart felt like it wanted to exit stage left.

The interview itself was short. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I have never felt quite this comfortable before. Now it's just a matter of waiting.

post interview, I went for a coffee with Bernie, who talked to me like a man about football. I am all prepared with my knowledgable statements for Saturday. We have a solid back line. Stuff like that.

There has been a lot of work this week, which has been welcome, partly to distract my overworked mind and heart, and partly to stop me fretting about the job. But the weekend looms welcome and close.

I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new


That's where I'm at. Head so full thoughts are painting tattoos down my cheeks.


It has been a tough couple of days. Unbelievably busy - my calendar is starting to resemble Dave's, and if I could just take away some of the stress and pressure from my dearest team mates, but I can't. In fact I fear I've added to it.
So many alternate realities have presented themselves to me, and too often, I am too scared. But in reality it's not really me who is scared.

"You said I love you. Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? (When you said it, my heart was in my throat, and I was sitting on the stairs, wishing the whole world was a different colour and you were different with it)I love you is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them, but now i am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body.
Love demands expression (how could I possibly keep it secret). It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid."...

Tonight Perth put on a light show as I drove south, and you were on every street corner, watching. I drove to Sah's, and we had cheese on toast and fartmakingbeans and wine and talked. And in the view of my blessed city, sadly, none of my confusion dissipated, but I felt grateful for the night.

I'm home now, and feeling fluey and a bit feral but somehow stronger.

Placebo

In so many ways.

Two beers were too much for my heart this afternoon. Highs and lows.
But it's cracked in so many places. I cradle it in my palms like an injured bird but I always always do more harm than good. Lost without a clue.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Today was achingly bright. Lights over Perth so perfect work felt like an afterthought. Light got under my skin. You got under my skin.

And now, in my room, in my little bubble (because i have to make one when no one else will. I learned that lesson in the first perfect year in Freo) and the evening light kisses the buildings pink and I feel how lucky i am to live here. But there is so much silence still. Silence that I steadfastly believed in. Silence I moved to Duncraig for. To belong. To have a quiet suburban life. What has suburbia given me?
And this city-cradle? It swings.

Who would you walk off the map for? Sarah and I had this conversation yesterday and it's a very short list.

"I'm sorry that I left you
with your questions all alone
but i was too happy driving
and too angry to drive home..."

Dar Williams also wrote a "Spring Street"...

never make amends.... here's a rapid topic change.

Peter and Betty: how does one break up with friends? Where did the original love go?
And how do I explain that they have become poisonous to me? Should I suck it up and be there for her when things topple? I've lost the energy. The energy was there for a fucking decade and I don't have the strength anymore. What then kills love? Only this: neglect.

Rather than go karting tonight, I'd like to curl around and listen to something to Dean Martin - the voice I feel inside my collarbone. Your smell caught in my throat and long desired, the shape of your face.

I somehow returned to Southwood Lane today - spitting cherry stones with Sah and there the film runs behind my forehead.




Okay. things shift. and every listen of Insomnia won't make my skin prickle, but tonight it has. So out into the night, to drive fake cars around a fake concourse and tomorrow, a fresh day. Lucid and hopefully true.

The price of music

So I get an email from WASO today, saying hey, Elgar cello concerto performance, featuring a smidge of Liszt and some Ravel. I think GREAT, water corp gets a discount - I would totally love to go. Alas, a discount from $89 is still effing expensive, so I'll be seeking out the Naxos section at Sanity and listening on the balcony. There are only a few classical pieces I want to hear live, and Elgar's cello is probably one of them, behind everything by Bizet and most things by Pjtor Ilyich. 

Back in Denham

Ah but this was my first time in Denham...however the temptation to allude to the Turbo Negro song back in denim was simply irresistible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-D2VHWYTJQ


We left a drizzly Perth full of chatter and oomph. 800k's? No worries!
Geraldton arrived just in time for lunch and we sat in a cafe on the beachfront, sinking into beery holiday mode.
The kilometres dragged on, past the Overlander Roadhouse, and the Billabong (or was it in the other order?) as the sun tracked slowly downwards. At the turn off onto Shark Bay Road, we entered the World Heritage area and also a world of little more than endless saltscrub and sky and road. Road into road into road. And the sun sunk lower and coloured the air and I put my face out the window, breathless with how beautiful it all was. How end-of-worldly. How happy making.

And Denham? Pure paradise. One main street, and one side of that is just the sea. Our accommodation was in a kitsch hotel/ resorty type thing but with a balcony looking straight onto the water. For the first time I agreed with M that sleeping with the curtains open and the door open was okay. It was magic.
After dinner we sat in the room with a bottle of wine and had really good conversation that was somehow rich with seriousness and I wish it could occur more often.

Saturday began with letting the tyres down on arguably the world's (second) best car. The Landcruiser is the shit. At 20 psi and with it in high range 4wd we trundled down deep soft sandy tracks into the midst of what felt like a vast nothingness. The diesel engine growled and pulled us through, shrubs and tree stumps giving way to birradas...salt pans that are incredibly .... csalo ... um, not what they seem and cars can get badly bogged very easily. So we stuck to the tracks, and let the warm wind into the cabin.
The first stop was Skipjack Point and not three steps from the car I managed to step into something sharp. But it detracted nothing from the embrace of nature that greeted us at the end of the walkway. How are colours like that possible?
Looking over the edge into the pristine water we saw rays, sharks, turtles (god i love turtles!!!), giant trevally and an impressive school of emperor. M was itching to find a way onto the beach so he could fish.
We ended up at Bottle Bay for fishing after a hearty picnic of kolbasz, cheese, bread and tomato and wine. In fact the weekend was a bit of an orgy of bread and cheese. Fat and happy :)
The fishing amounted to little more than whiting (bait) and mackarel (too small) but we spent beautiful lazy hours in the sun. I started reading the Lacuna, the new one from Barbara Kingsolver and so far it's fantastic. Full of bright Mexican imagery and the colours of Rivera and Kahlo.
In bed I'm reading Hunter S and his account of the Hell's Angels.

On Saturday night we dined in a tiny restaurant called the Old Pearler, built entirely of shell bricks, and I finally lost my crayfish virginity. About time too! Delicious, but still nothing on marron. Especially fresh. Sigh...
More national parkery followed on Sunday, following a visit to Monkey Mia where I fed fish to a dolphin called Nicky and was saddened by the commercial cheapening of nature. Yeah there are good aspects but it's much more special to see them truly in the wild. The way we saw the dugong or  more sharks, or those smelly bloody birds.

On the beach between skipjack point and Cape Peron I read more, and walked endlessly, looping into shallow water and feeling so lucky it made my skin prickle. Then on the climb home, and speaking of prickle, maveric maniac banana managed to step in something sharp again. Hole in foot grows larger. Nice.

M fell asleep a nanosecond after dinner on Sunday, and I stood on the windy balcony, looking at the shy shine of the moon on the water, wanting to stay. It's forever that movement of the soul. Is the grass greener?

The drive home contained so much salt and vinegar chip eating I thought my tongue would explode. We saw the old telegraph station at Hamelin Pool and the stromatolites, which really aren't much to look at, but the knowledge of what they are is quite staggering. Hefting my wonderful Minolta I squinted into the hazy light and clicked and clicked.

Waiting for me at home were discussions about Gatsby (so much love!) and darling housemates who had filled the house with even more treasures.
People must think I'm crazy, but it was good to be back at work again. No news about the job but there are no more nails to chew and my cuticles really fucking hurt, so I'll just try and not stress. Not much I can do anyway, but work hard and be prepared.

So late in the afternoon I thought of something I just had to buy from Oxford Street books, and while there, I gaspingly recognised Vince Neil's cosmeticized face gazing at me from a book cover. Of course I bloody bought it. Maybe sometimes I am still 15. Or 25. Or I should just confess to eclectic and sometimes shitty musical taste. But right now, Lhasa plays on the speakers, and I am tasting a 2000 Merlot, and gently letting myself sink into the night.
It has been a beautiful day. Again.

So, here we are. My first little holiday since that horrendous horrendous Walpole long weekend. I have such faith that this will  be good. I can't even recognise in my mind the girl I was then. 
The last two days have been warm and full and every day I come home smiling. 
Today I did good work, and at lunchtime I allowed myself a slow wallow through Oxford Street bookshop. Just to be among the pages, and touch them. And I am so proud - I left without buying anything. But oh how I could have!
I did see a series of cards that were sort of half girl-power, half spiritual, but I really liked one of them: She loved life, and life loved her right back. And corny as it is, I feel that way. I am constantly reminded how lucky I am. How no matter all the crazy things I do and complicate things, somehow I get away with it. Somehow. 

Walter Bonatti died this week - I recall how Joe Simpson wrote about him with such reverence, and indeed he really was one of the greatest climbers of the century. 

Swimming tonight under the floodlights, the water like honey through my fingers (I was so tired I could only manage breaststroke) I felt electric. 

Minutes pulse, and there are voices in the dark.  I am packing.

afterthought

Today's AMAL blog topic was 'owning your number' - ie: the number of people you've slept with. And whilst it was an interesting read, with many very predictable comments, it actually made me think along a different line.
Walking home from an exhausting rpm class I thought about how many people is it possible to really love through your life. Does it ever start to lose meaning? Or if not meaning, then when does the intensity and reality start to blunt?
How many people can cross your path for whom you would walk off the map?
What is the sign of just settling?

Are we supposed to stop somewhere and make the best of it, or, like Winterson, do we continue to struggle and believe that:

it's never easy this life, this love. But only the impossible is worth the effort


The rabbits are done. Two ways.

This weekend was just glorious. Starting with an exciting win for my beloved Cats on Friday, followed by dinner deliciousness in Leedy and then karaoke (I know, crazy right?) in the city. Friday night segued into Saturday morning by the time I walked home, through an almost balmy Perth night, music still buzzing in my ears.

In the morning I raced to Duncraig for breakfast (more bananas!!!) and helped M pack the ute for their trip before I came home. I had grand old plans to clean and iron but on seeing the weather I donned a bikini, grabbed a book (Hunter S about the Hell's Angels) and bottle of water and drove to City Beach. My beach.

The ferocity of the sun surprised me, and even the imprint it made on my skin, although this was not enough to deter me. I was red raw for a day or so, but it's slowly drifting back to brown.
On Saturday I read and dozed and let the sun warm me through. Then, after watching the last twenty minutes of the gallant effort by the Eagles, I met Sergio and after some house-shopping we walked to Mt Lawley, talking all the while about books and the big questions of life.

Later, with Fernando we watched Pollock and I was reminded again how much i adore painting. What I would give for just two days back in Paris. And I'd had no idea that Pollock also painted something other than those speckled, painful canvases. The boys left close to 2am, and I worried for a while that I wouldn't get enough sleep. Alas, I slept till 9.20 which must be the longest sleep in, in the last two years!

Sunday was more water and sun and beach. I actually went in the water, although had it not been for some very forceful convincing I would have preferred to stay dry. But every time that dear water hits my skin, and I see the wide expanse of beach leading down to my cranes, I am reminded of how lucky I am. I live here.

And the week has started unbelievably well. Building my performance agreement, shitting myself about presentations that end up coming off well, contact with people in the business and just doing work. Every day is a thrill.

And although I know it's not summer, today when I walked home I could feel the hope all over my legs. There has been a shift in season: no more stockings, or tights or feral nylon anything. It's just beautiful.

I had a gorgeous moment on Sunday driving home from Freo. Dale and VC called me so I could take part in the ceremonial removal of VC's Sziget wristband (just like every year). I pulled over so we could try video calling, and it worked, and then when we hung up I had a little weepy moment, missing them and yearning for that special iridescent youth we shared, yearning just a little bit too much to keep driving. So I was stopped with my head bobbed over the steering wheel and a couple of cyclists actually tapped on the window to make sure I was okay. Although as the Blackcurrants pointed out, they may have just wanted me to get the fuck out of their lane!

Tonight: cycling and then rabbit adventures.

Ooh and two of my poems were published in Creatrix online magazine. Famous banana.

Many good things

First, I swam. Thinking of that line from Small Mercies where Dyson notes how bodies are made beautiful under water. If you do it enough, swimming becomes a meditation, and it's doing good things for my body but also my soul.
Then at work I was greeted by an email from Lydia. My beautiful friend. She is my articulation in what true friendship is. Cold hands cupped aroudn styrofoam cups, a twenty minute tube ride and parting again. But batteries recharged and heart put right. I have missed her without knowing it. I am so glad she's found me again.
And then Steph showed up, quite randomly, and we went to sit in Sayers and drink coffee and talk. Could my life be turning normal? (Surely not)
And then, while listening to my happy mix of tunes on my dear green mp3 player, I stumbled across Time Bomb and a swag of other Rancid goodies. And there is going to be a 20th anniversary tour next year!!! World tour!!! It made me so sillily smiley. Thinking back to the Crow Bar in Tottenham Ct Road after the concert. Oh London nights...

When M called around lunchtime I was buzzing and so happy he said Macska you're going to explode. I felt a little bit like that.

I snuck away after the meetings, raced home to pick up Norm, wanted to go buy a driver's hat but ran out of time, so settled for a bottle of real prosecco.
And I buttoned up my blazer, and donned a white bow tie, put the prosecco and two champagne glasses in an ice bucket and waited by the white limo (Camry) to whisk the Blackcurrants to dinner. Being new to chauffering, I got lost, but we laughed so much my face hurt, and now I'm just waiting for the call to go pick them up.

And still, the soft day was full of contradictions. Warm and cold, simple and unspeakably complicated. Dr L warns against compromise, but what is life (and love) without it?

I bought new pillows. The first proper pillows in my life that aren't the $7 special from big w. Proper hardfluffly, the stuff dreams are made on :)

It really felt like spring today.
The sun streamed in through the old roof of Beatty Park and made crystal shapes on the bottom of the pool. I streamed along, surprising myself with my lack of antiannatalk. I swam 1000m! A proud Bananarecord.
Then N I walked home and I made poached eggs with grilled tomato and balsamic red onion (diet, what diet?) and we drank coffee after and then did our make up like two big girls in the foggy bathroom mirror. I do like not being alone.
Then we walked partway to work together and I started another beautiful day.

Except slowly slowly the doubt creeps in. What if the answer is no? How do I go back? Do I go back? And then I grab my string and yank it and calm down again. Love the questions, right?
And be patient.

In a beautiful sun-spotted courtyard there was conversation about faith and what it means to be good, to ourselves and to others, about the nature of the soul and our own awareness of it. It made me conscious of time (as if I wasn't conscious enough already)...

I remembered those rushed nights; years and years worth of rushed nights when I had analysis work plus normal job plus waitressing, and there was no time for anything, and although I don't have much to show for it now, at least I'm not in a rush. I have time to pause and smile at the flush of freesias on a lawn, and let my head fill with the heady scent. I have time to pause and touch books and be glad of them.

Tonight Loo came and I drove us to Vic Park to Clare's house first and then to Crow Books where Liz Byrski was talking about writing in general and Last Chance Cafe in particular. She had interesting things to say about female aging, about the beauty myth and about how enslaved we are to popular opinion or at least that propagated by the media. Thin is beautiful (then why does cheese and bread and wine exist?), we must be sexy and smooth skinned and perfected etc etc... and I am glad that although I fight the lard wars like anyone else, I've missed that clenching terror of the mirror.
But I have not missed a little book obsession. I bloody told myself last time that next time before Crow books I should leave my wallet at home. Alas, I did not.
And while Liz was talking I dragged tentative fingers over spines of well loved titles. I have Durrell. And then I found a Cohen I have not read. Book of Longing. And then, while in the line to pay I found a Mr Men book: Little Miss Wise. Because I love my job.
I also saw a copy of Candy by Luke Davies, and I held it in my sweaty palm for a good ten minutes before deciding, very responsibly that that was out of budget. But oh the memory of that film...

And randomly, a poem I found in a volume I received from Kym in a difficult April:

What is a soul?

A soul quivers
in the palm of your
voice, is still when
a sparrow alights

outside. In the winter
sun a soul
twitches neck and
head, neck

buried in the pulse
of a round & thinking
flesh. Like any feathered
thing in its space

it does not try
to be noticed. A soul
pauses to witness
a magpie. Its body

is a lever, its
beak a chisel
prising bark from the trunk
of a myrtle. On the sky

a soul writes
itself. Winter
tosses a gauze
across a single crescent

jewel that fades
into day, watermark
of the fingernail that
lifted the scab. Then

The soul is a prayer
May a great
white egret
lance your skies.

By Anne Elvey

I first smelled it in Harrods. I know, Harrods of all places. But it was one of those very rare, very beautiful days in London when I let go of all responsibility and tightness of chest with regard to spending and saving and went with Sah to Harrods. And bought make up. And sniffed and regaled my nose with dreams of grandeur. I left behind, for a day, how much I missed Dale and how desperately I adored Manor House and wanted a semblance of reality to seep in. But reality merely tickled at the edges, and even that day in Harrods, what was that? A total dream. But a good dream: and I was introduced to Lolita Lempicka.

And now she is here.

There was poetry again tonight, and though lately I've been feeling poetry'd out, I was glad to be there. It quickens my heart.
Loo came, from bookclub, and Mark from work and his wife. And although at the start I worried a little about what they would think about this motley bohemian bunch, I quickly relaxed.
My poems were well received again, and I had a comment on the new one.
And some time before the interval I looked up and saw a familiar face. The same short hair, the same pixie face. But older. So much older I thought to myself - six years, can that be all? - but I went up to her and introduced myself again, and we had a little chat, again after all this time.
Remember those first Thursdays at the Tropicana? The rainbow coloured nighttime when I used to go alone, walking from Hampton Road in those most sacred nights. My Freo nights under the flame trees.

And now the quiet of my bedroom: somehow messy again after just one day, but anna-fied and welcoming.
I'm going to bed with Stephen King (who'd have thought, eh?) and a spritz of Lempicka. Not Tamara. Lolita.

"...she held out her hands, bright with berries,
the first of the season, and said:
Make a wish Tom, make a wish..."

a swag of memories

This frame was a gift at Christmas last year. One of the better Christmases.

It has taken me nine months to take it out again, and consider photos to include.

Today has been a welcome slow day after the week that has been. Even Jorg noticed I looked like shit warmed up yesterday. But it's getting better.

This morning I had a ludicrously expensive haircut. Hardly a cut and there goes $95! So, continuing on the spending jag, I drove to Harbour Town to worship some more at the altar of consumerism. But I tired of it quickly. But oh I do love a bargain!

And at home, the big house to myself I felt an urge to Anna-fy my room some more. Before I did the photos I tidied the bookshelves and did a load of filing (read: piled stuff in the bin with the yellow lid) and read poems, and started writing - a sort of stop start stop start process today.

So the photos. Top left are the grass trees on the zig zag drive high above Perth, next to that, flame trees along Abbotsford Street, top right sunset over City Beach, back when it was mine.
Left side of clock, Sandy Bay at Exmouth, then on the right a glorious stretch of road about 400km east of Balladonia.
Bottom row, left a lemon on Bernard's farm near Harvey, bottom right is a painted tin at the same farmfarm and in the middle, sunset at the Pinnacles when I was there with Mum.

Good to look through the old photos again, good and bad really, a day full of contemplation and remembering.
M has gone hunting (again) this weekend, reminding me (and I know I made this bed for the eightysecond time) that I am third behind his son and his guns. But there's no malice there, I know that. And I do relish my bananatime. Speaking of bananas, he did buy me some and I have just devoured my first curvyyellow in fucking months!

I tried to watch the game yesterday but due to various factors including the Glengarry tavern being stupid I only got to see the replay at home. But we won. And i know it wasn't an important game, but we won and that made me happy. It made Nickiy happy too, she said "our team" and that made me happy some more.

And so tonight. Time for reading and being good to myself. Em always said that, be gentle to yourself. There's music, and the world comes ever closer.

And down on thirsty pastures...

The rain came down in sheets in the garden.
I've submitted my job application
and my celebration was to share the wide gray sky
and be glad for the rain.

And then Norma presented me with a parking fine.

I drove to Ballajura, Pjotr Illyich in the car with me, that reassuring hiss of old cassette tapes at the back of the sound wall.
Paul had asked me to help him with some 'computer stuff' (imagine!) which luckily turned out to be only changing the icon size so we spent the rest of the night talking, sitting with Scruffy in the big red armchair and looking at old photos.
Paul was gorgeous in his youth. There were photos of the rabbiting days on the Nullarbor - 175 pairs of bunnies on the back of the ute. There were photos of sunsets too beautiful to contemplate; photos of Paul and friend soaping up in the wide Ord river... they evoked the same feelings black and white photos do - a longing, an ache for a time that's gone.
I'm glad I finally made it out there and we spent some time. Then M arrived and I drove him home, for a couple of wine spritzers on the carpet and to watch what was left of the Footy Show.

And it still rains. the skyline is only a teaser through the fuzz of cloud, but it's warm, and step one of the job process is, at least, over.

Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.