thursday's rush

angry wind today - from inside it sounds like howling, from the kitchen i can see the shaking and slapping of the flimsy branches of the cape lilac outside.
it was windy yesterday too when i went for a run at lunchtimeish, but it was still manageable and i felt strong and quite positive. should've seen the patchy colour of my face at the end!

i picked up some printed black and white photos yesterday, and couldn't remember what the film had started with. It was Em's visit to the stormy west, and some of the photos are divine. i'm feeling lonely this week.
the other photos were of our dreamy camping trip and prove again the nostalgic power of film. 

Jay and i went to a really good play yesterday. it was a small studio production at the blue room theatre in northbridge and i wondered briefly what J would think, it being a completely different atmosphere to the heath ledger theatre where we saw the winton in august. it was a great show. not as bleak as sleepyhead, which was written by the same bloke, and funny, in a black humour kind of way. northbridge is beginning to wake into summer, and it was good to sit at streetside tables and eat messy burgers.

so much is happening this week it'll be all my wookie slippers can do to keep up.

Atticus Finch

It's easy to forget sometimes that I approach everything from my own perspective. I should try and remember what Atticus said to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

and try and see situations from someone else's point of view. I'm much better today, and trying to be present in the moment.

Perth is spectacular outside today, blazing sunshine and temperature up around the Anna-approved level.

That also reminded me of Rob Grady in the old house in Freo, reading from Betty's To Kill a Mockingbird in Hungarian and then coming in to the kitchen and reciting to me what he remembered:

"Nem, nem hagylak itt" (No, no I won't leave you here)
It became one of our favourite quotes in that happy little house.

i am angry today. snippy without reason.

i ran 9 kilometres, and listened to music loud. i tried to make the negatives flow out under my feet but my mind wasn't having any of it. so i've turned to words. and they help.

i wrote a little poem this morning, recalling pockets of loose change and how they clang and clutter into a pay phone and how that sound made young hearts clang and flutter... I have also turned back to Winterson.
right now i want nothing more than to have her books with me, and curl up in a soft chair in a warm place, and read.

alas all her books are in boxes in budapest, far away, and financially, almost impossibly slow.

so i content myself with pieces.

“Do you wake up as I do, having forgotten what it is that hurts or where, until you move? There is a second of consciousness that is clean again. A second that is you, without memory or experience, the animal warm and waking into a brand new world. There is the sun dissolving the dark, and light as clear as music, filling the room where you sleep and the other rooms behind your eyes.”
the other rooms behind my eyes. they exist. and often they are furnished with such delicate and exquisite detail. i had a room once with a canary yellow couch, when the real world had not crept in yet and i fully believed in possibility.

strangeness

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by?
Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky?

this has been in my head tonight .. it has been a very full and mostly good weekend.

i am trying to write something new for voicebox tomorrow but my inspiration is a little dry. Dry? who the fuck am i kidding? it's brittle and what there is is fragile. i hadn't realised how stress has been affecting me physically. It's a bit annoying. i think sometimes i forget the power of my body to say oi slow down and be gentle with yourself.

always in a hurry

Jay bought me a copy of quadrant yesterday, because i want to delve a little into the other side too, a little into the liberal side, so when it comes to making a choice, i can be as informed as possible. i want to be inspired.

we also had some great conversation eventually in bed yesterday, solving the problems of the world and talking about the big things in life.

today the weather was angry, and there was a wet delay before we began our run which was then cut short anyway...i need to be more dedicated. no more shrinking from the cold or the rain during the week. i have to run.

and then, almost surprisingly i had a beautiful night tonight. and i'm home early, and i'm ready for bed, and i think i'm ready for what the week may have in store.

so i return to trying to write something for tomorrow night. i remember tuesday nights at the poetry cafe in london, cold beers after those warm, close readings. all those discoveries.

i spent time with roses this weekend too. take the time to pause, and appreciate them.

Relief

of sorts. Last night, after a mammothly (word?) draining day of 'conflict resolution' training I got stuck watching An Education on my laptop. I say got stuck because I only intended to watch a bit, but then I found I couldn't stop. And that's where the relief comes.
Carey Mulligan in this film is delightful, deep and innocent and girlish and worn all at the same time. She was also amazing in Shame. So I am relieved at having seen her, and full of hope that she will do Gatsby justice when she plays Daisy. God I can't wait for that film...

Yesterday during the conflict training, our trainer, referred to Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird when he tells Scout that the only way to really understand someone else is to walk around in his skin. Well, we did it with shoes, and somewhat symbolically. However, it still involved us removing our shoes and I cursed myself for wearing my psychedelic colourful purple-loveheart adorned socks that day. Today I'm wearing sandals. Just in case.

The last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur of activity at work and my enthusiasm goes up and down a lot - I suspect this will continue to be the case until some semblance of certainty enters my life.
Until the end of October it looks like there will be no major change but I'm hoping that by Christmas (god why is it so terrifyingly close already??) I can live a little more like a normal person. But sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm 32 and I'm not in a hurry. I don't need to be. Speaking of 32, at training yesterday my partner at the table who was introducing me asked if this was my first job out of Uni and was I fresh graduate just like him? Bless, he obviously needs glasses but I must have been wearing my youthful good looks yesterday :-)

Dezso was here for a week and it was nice and oddly gratifying to see how much he loved Perth and the aspects of it that I love and the reasons I live here. We had a trip out to the pinnacles on Sunday and the first leg out to Gingin was so full of memories for me. Dark night, random driveway, stars.

Food was, unsurprisingly a big feature of Dezso's stay. We ate dinner at Clancy's on City Beach one night, and found a wonderful little Mexican place (i think called 'that little mexican place) in North Perth. I did not, however, force him to try Vegemite, and the strange man didn't take to Tim Tams, so I'm not actually sure if he would be allowed back in the country. But he said he had a great time, and that's the main thing. 

The weekend just past was a long weekend, for labour day or some monarch's fake birthday. Whatever it was, Jay Smokey and I drove down to Herron Point - in the vicinity of Preston Beach, south of Mandurah for a spot of blissful camping. I was in punishment on Saturday for the vodka I had consumed on Friday night but luckily Jay who suffers not from hangovers did everything on Saturday. And the trend kind of continued through the weekend.
He made breakfast each day, all I had to do was sit and blink into the morning, sipping my mug of Paul and remembering to pinch myself every now and then.

Days were long and clear and we spent a lot of time walking on the beach, in the lagoon, as Smokey galloped up and down the beach, the embodiment of excitement. There was prosecco at sunset, and an incredible roast on Sunday night, there was reading in the sun and watching a bandicoot fiddle-nibble my excitedly proferred bits of apple. There were cheeky (and scary) magpies, squealing swallow chicks in the ladies loos and a beautiful beautiful full moon. And then there was us, just kind of happy and perfect and very lucky feeling. I love the Paddo.

Another day of training today, but I'm up early so thought I'd write a little here as the black cockatoos wake up the neighbourhood and the city twinkles in the morning splendid light.