The Banana Blog

Another year over

2011-12-31T00:26:00.000-08:00

And I always feel obliged to write, to sum up, to express hope.

And there is Chabrier, because who else (Bizet brings tears too, not just joy) pummels such unbridled cheer into the world. I spent some of today reading on the balcony (nails: Colour me Coral) and listening to a wonderful doco about Jim Morrison. It has been a slow day, just like the last few since Christmas. Comfortable long days, full of sun and thick heat. In fact since yesterday Perth has been tropical. The haze over the city yesterday was mysterious and foreign.

I have started swimming again, and in the forgiving coolness of the pool I am feeling like I am returning to myself.

This year has been less than perfect. I have moved twice and licked wounds and opened them up again, but if this year has taught me anything it's that love is unpredictable and irresistible.
This was also the first year without the resonant and wise voice of Gyula tata in the telephone at Christmas. But such emptiness makes me all the more grateful for the Gyorgy women in my life.

The best thing that happened this year was the job. Sorry, that Job with a capital J. For the first time in my life I am not a PA. And it has changed things and opened things inside me that I hadn't even realised were there, or closed. Dark rooms that are now filled with dust motes dancing in the fresh light.
I am happier in my work than I ever have been before.

And words have also settled back into my life. These last few weeks have been cyclonic in their reading fury, but I must confess that most of it has been lighter literature. I have, however, discovered and grudgingly fallen for Nikki Gemmel.

My one new year's resolution is to run the Rotto Marathon. But there are of course many other hopes that I will nurture and try to make reality. A home for a cat. A home for me. Always bettering myself at work, but remembering to play.

Happy New Year!

And from Chabrier moving on to Liszt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goeOUTRy2es - around the 6th minute a soul explodes.

2011-12-19T15:10:00.000-08:00

I am reading a novel set in Antarctica and it's pushing a comfortable cold through my being. I have been thinking a lot about the Great Ocean Road and how that is a place where cold angry weather works, even for me.
Standing under a flinty sky with the furious waves crashing by the Sherwood River. I miss my Victorian past sometimes.

Between two engagements on Sunday, driving down Hampton Road I came across a garage sale sign. For a fluttery moment I thought it was the old blue house, with its brickwork and pale glass. It was the next door neighbour. The wild-haired woman who shouted shouted at her granddaughter and slammed kitchen things around. I hesitated, and then stopped. I breathed in the old familiar gum on the corner, and fingered items on tables trying to decipher their stories. I bought two books.
And then walking back to where Norm was parked I wanted to stop at number 40 and put my hand on the warmed blue porchwood. It was at that moment I realised that no one from that old life is left. B & P are long gone, I can't call them and say "Remember, we lived here. Together" I haven't written to Gareth in years and then it was just the four of us. There were happy days then.

It was a beautiful and relaxing weekend, even if it was full of drink and screaming children (not at the same time)...

My late written Christmas cards are finally making it to the post office and the macerating fruit will be made into mince pies tonight. It's 66 degrees on the ground in Newman, and my heart is full of happy contrast.

Light and Dark

2011-12-13T15:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a beautiful marbled morning, strung out of the night, and I woke way too early, but rested. And happy.
I went for a run around the lake this morning without my sidekick, but it was at a satisfying clip and I'm determined to work back up to my 10km fitness quickly, so I can start preparing for bigger and better things next year.

The weekend was a magical adventure in the south west, and although my dear Frenchman's winery was not open, I subjected myself to lunch at Vasse Felix and utterly fell in love. To the left can be seen my 'lamb shoulder' smile.

Christmas looms and I have been busily painting cards (some look good, some look like a four year old has been left alone without supervision) and thinking constantly about menus. And what should I soak the fruit in if I can't afford Drambuie?

I received a beautiful surprise in the post from Hungary yesterday. My dear old copy of the Alexandria Quartet, littered with postcards from home and a wonderful article about Bogdan Zsolt (shiver, sigh) - surely the most talented Hungarian actor of our generation- forgive me Alfoldi Robert. Even Norma received a little gift in the treasure trove and it was wonderful to speak with Mum late in the evening.

2011-11-26T04:23:00.000-08:00

I was reminded today, when I was on the balcony unpacking the shells from Shark Bay (after three months I thought I could handle it) of the section in Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude where the main character eats soil.
I sat on the cane chair and I cried like I hadn't since he drove away that morning saying Macska I think I have to go now. I pushed the sandy grains through my fingers and the mad thought crossed my mind that I should eat it. I didn't, but it certainly rattled my mind.

Today has been a rollercoaster. I woke way too early and not in a good mood.
Coffee and breakfast at Swanbourne already feels like a ritual to start the weekend and I enjoyed myself despite the wind, with the white whipped ocean behind me.
From there I picked up Hand Me Down World and came home .... I finished half of it before N and I headed to the city to check out the Canning Stock Route project.
In the cavernous pavilion 6 of the convention centre, the starkly lit canvases glowed above plaques introducing each artist, their language and skin groups. I thought it was exceptionally well done. The curve of the route, the old familiar names struck with rough temptation, but I think it will be some time before I get the chance to actually drive it.

Afterwards we stopped in Northbridge at the Ezra Pound bar for a drink...I stayed after N left and read more of my book, and scrawled words in the back, and looked at the laneway and thought of Melbourne.
At home alone I spent some good time up in the loft, smearing paint and reading, listening to radio national and lying down gazing up through the skylight.
The crash came when I came to my room to make Christmas cards and when I went to the box for my 'use for craft' photos, other, M-photos tumbled out. And then the shells from shark bay...and so it goes.

But it's better now. Nickiy bought me a notebook with cats on it, and that sort of thing makes most things better.

From this weekend's Australian, by Nikki Gemmel, on friendship:

As I get older, I need the soldering kind. That don't try to change or hurt the other person. Aren't judgmental. Involve a cherishing. That beautiful word: empathy. Are a balm amid the great wallop of life. And often it's not when times are bad you find out who your real friends are, but when times are good.

I am fortunate in the richness of my friends.

Melbourne day one

2011-10-31T15:49:00.000-07:00

Melbourne is vastly colder than Perth. No news there. But how wonderful to be back here, among the gray buildings under the gray sky.
I arrived at sparrow's, took the bus to Southern Crustacean and then a train to Jewell to find Timea's amazing little love-house, complete with cat and sleeping Keir.
The first words she said were "Don't look at me, I'm wretched". It's good to be here.
It's a fantastic house, and we sat drinking coffee in the thin morning and started the talk that for us never ever finishes.

Now I'm sitting at VC's dining table, shivering my tits off, but with a warm cup of tea and getting ready to head out to breakfast and then the cup. What does one drink at breakfast? Champagne? Gin? Bloody Marys? It's all much of a muchness to me at the moment after two hours' fitful sleep on the freezing plane.

I've left the Blackcurrants alone for an inordinate amount of time, and it's a hard-to-describe happiness that when I think of Perth I think of them at 'home'.
I'm already noticing how much cheaper Melbourne is, and how much more connected - the trains are incredibly convenient...and if I scrunch my eyes almost shut, it looks like there's a sliver of watery sunshine squeezing through the clouds behind the Rialto.

2011-09-29T00:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2011-09-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-03T01:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Tender Napalm

2011-08-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am so exhausted I've burst into tears twice today. Inopportune moments, and nothing to do with songs or memories or nostalgia. Just tired, and scared. Ratty scared and jittery about the job.
Work this week has been heavy and hard and I've done next to no real work at all...

Tonight I came home, head full and the air fragrant with freesias and the sky low and somehow caressing, and sat on the balcony with N and a glass of Old Well and talked about "There's something in the water" (our homegrown soap to rival home and away) and the bigger things in life. I didn't feel at all like dressing up and going into town to meet JP and sit through a play. I wanted to file my nails and pull my knees up under the doona and read.

But I did get dressed up (not too much) and I did go into town and I parked Norm and I waited in the theatre for JP to emerge. A man approached me, and I couldn't help but smile - a habit I am unable to break - and he was quite close before he said something and I realised that his broad Australian accent was definitely not what i was waiting for. I said "you're not the man I'm waiting for". He laughed, we laughed, and then he said it was delightful to see the expectation in my face.

And then JP arrived. He is gorgeous. We crossed the road to the Bird and had wine and talked for an hour before the play started. There is something incredibly warm about him and it brought VC just that little bit closer.

And then the play. I had such high expectations after Mercury Fur. I so wanted to be moved. But I didn't like it. Lyn Gardner in the Guardian wrote of a melting tenderness in the play. If it was there, I missed it. I felt (and maybe I am getting old and prudish, though I doubt it) it was seeking shock value. Nudity at the end was gratuitious (nice boobs not withstanding) and the fine line between love and hate so easily crossed seemed far too stylised. I didn't connect with either character, and when their violent loss was revealed - or was it - I didn't feel emotionally engaged. Though interestingly, this is the third play I have seen recently that deals with the loss of a young child.
The language was rich, and perhaps would have been better read than seen. The director failed to carry the audience across that very important bridge between the page and the stage. I longed to be transported, to be moved, to be made angry or sad or at the very least happy... I wanted the love to win in the end but I don't think that it did.

As I drove home, Tchaikovsky blaring through the open window, the city sat at my collarbone and warmed my neck. I am home. JP said, as he introduced me to his east coast colleagues: "Anna is a Perthite. By choice"
By great good luck I say.

And now, to bed. Meeting Steph at quarter past sparrows for a run and then ...

And if on Friday it was the Ship Song that tore at the strings and burst memories through marrow, today it was the Bagman's Gambit, as I tried to block out the world and work on the application ...

How I long to hear you say
No, they'll never catch me now
No, they'll never catch me
No, they cannot catch me now
We will escape somehow
Somehow

Reading is Sexy

2011-08-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

I just found this sticker in one of my literary mags...how apt and true! But where to put it? If I adorn Norma's bumper with it, people will think me a grandmother lamenting the passing of her youth ... (I really should be less harsh on Norm eh?)...

And speaking of youth, I've just now had a reminder that I am not in my twenties anymore. I went to the post office after work to pick up a parcel which I had hoped would be the canvas print of one of my B&W Pindabunna photos, alas it was a slinky Cooper Street dress I had ordered online a few weeks ago, when I felt the lards were a thing of the past. Just like the way I registered at the BDO a few years ago among crowds of 17 year olds off their chops that I am no longer 17, standing in front of the mirror just now I giggled to myself and was happy that I am, in fact, 31. Sometimes I can hardly believe it!

I got a sad email from Dad today - Margo is still away, and I really hate imagining him in that kitsch house of tile and glass, holding up traffic for corio schoolkids and then putting up with their violent shit just hours later at the shopping centre. I miss him, and at the same time I don't, but I wish so much that this was different.

I've missed my gym class tonight, and it appears I have a case of the verbal runs ...

Walking home from work today, the clouds had started to gather, glowing from behind with the last of the day's sun. It's crazy to think it is still, actually, winter.

I missed two very important anniversaries this month:
On August 2nd, TEN YEARS AGO, I met two of the most important people in my life. VC and Dale. In the subtly insistent Budapest sunshine, in a gentle fug of cheap beer (or was it VBK?) I found them at the world music stage and I think it's pretty safe to say that they changed my life for the better. On day 2 of our aquaintance, VC sent me a text as I was tramming out to the island again, to say we are going to take you away to another planet. And they did.

And, on August 22nd six years ago, I first touched down in Perth. Surely no more needs to be said on this subject. I think I've found the love that lasts forever. Cue wanky love poem:

How do you know if love will last forever?
You ask the question again,
as you land in yet another city
Will this be the place finally
where searching can stop?
will this be the place
that you'll grow to love Vegemite (and become a real Australian)
the place where the Qantas ad
will no longer make you weep embarrassingly?
but more importantly
will this be the place
The place
where you can put your own full stop
on the map?

And you consider.
And think you'll have to wait a while

But love,
with all its irrational promise
comes within a week
as flame trees curl
their august colour under your skin
and suburban streets hum
reassuringly with the trusting
beat of your footfalls

This irrational love floods everything.
Bus drivers receive
high voltage smiles
and every early morning
is treated as a gift

Another Voicebox tonight, and this time M is coming. I am jittery with hope that he won't hate it.

2011-08-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

Today was a day warm enough for flippy summer dresses and sun warmed skin. At the Wetlands stage next to the gallery poems were read about country, about Australia, in my case about my dear West.
It was another beautiful collection of words from everyone and I read two new poems I had written earlier today.
All my poems about place are drenched in love and this whole weekend has been a time of high emotion.
After the poems, Blackcurrants and I headed through the city to the foreshore, where the cars from Targa West were doing a bit of a drive-by. Oh loud cars with big engines, I do love them so!

The afternoon was full of light, but the end of the weekend loomed large and we were tired and footsore and I've started feeling nervous and preoccupied and ready to rest.
I had a long bath at home, and finished a book of Laura Vapnyar's stories and now I'm listening to Ira Glass before a very very early night.

Outside Paynes Find

We sit in the still Western night
and nothing feels like a cliche
nothing feels worn, or
thought-of before
and the pressure of your hand
reminds me of where i am
And in my naive
and not a little biased rapture
i let my eyes drift upwards
and fill with stars.
Surely, this wides sky
was invented here
surely no place but this place
can possess such vastness
and somehow, for a moment
i can ignore the pain of drought
as the dry soil creases under my thighs
i can forget the dried bodies
of kangaroos
caught by fence-height
dead just metres from the dam
Somehow, i can be selective
and think rural beauty
where there are broken fences
and eerily swinging gates
miles from anywhere
we sit in this
differently perfect night
and forget that we are just visiting
that when the embers of the fire
cease to glow
we'll load up the landie
and go back to a place
with fewer stars
and a little more water
and perhaps,
a little too much comfort.

Shifting lights

2011-08-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

The Perth Poetry Festival opened last night with a wonderful keynote speech from Kim Scott. The venue reminded me so much of Robert Drummond's old studio on the banks of the Barwon back home. There was much free wine and cheese and pate and a whole lot of love.
Bless you dear blog, for I could at least come up with one poem to read at open mic.
More readings tomorrow and an extra Voicebox this Monday.

The week just gone was full but also starting to crack with my own fears.
But last night - last night was wonderful. It fixed so much.

An abbreviated promise
the press of your hand in the dark
the waiting morning
will wash everything white
moving shadows
and the shifting lights

An abbreviated promise
your posture: a question mark
the gentle fray we fall into
with the clink of plastic glasses
moving shadows
and the shifting lights

An abbreviated promise
will become a mere figment
sought-after memory
of the question that owns no answer
moving shadows
and the shifting lights

In the arms of my city, I curl safe in the knowledge it'll still be here when I open my eyes.

From the Heart

2011-08-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

I had an incredibly filling day today.

A wonderful day at work - actually producing things of value. The targeted communication slide I'm devising for the GMs is getting some good feedback and I have my first website workshop with the team tomorrow. I love every hour that I'm there.

After work, Joy and I (in her wonderful purple 'suede' jacketfromMelbourne) went to the Garden for pizza and bubbles to have a chat before her six week trip to Canada. It's always so good sitting down with her and gasbagging. She is my mother-hen at work but she's also my good friend. And absolute queen of the cupcakes.

Then I walked home and changed jackets and hopped into Norma and drove to East Vic Park to Crow Books where the first of a series of "A good book and a glass of wine" events was held. Tonight, the author in question was Kim Scott, whose latest novel, That Deadman Dance I am reading now, and whose first novel Benang, refers also to the title of this post, and was one of my novels to read during my BA AIS at Murdoch.

The bookshop for a start is amazing. And the evening was a pleasure. Kim was so full of quiet pride in his heritage, his language. His face changed when his mouth formed Noongar words. And he spoke with his whole body when telling us about his novels, about his projects and his process of writing. He fielded questions and read to us from his work. He was warm and engaging and I walked out at the end filled with electric light.

Then I got lost on the way home. I turned off at Plain Street, thinking it was familiar, and then somewhere by waterways in East Perth I realised I was going round in circles... but I'm home now. I talked to M, and then I talked to Dad and now I'm ready for a bed, after a gloriously full day - another reminder of how lucky I am.

"Almost everyone seems related, in one way or another. Even to birds and animals, and plants and things in the sea."

2011-08-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful morning in Perth. As I look out my window, the sun slices gold along the windows of the city skyscrapers and the cold winter snap keeps the air supersharp.
I had another night of almost-pristine sleep and woke to go to the gym feeling fresh and energised.

Yesterday's day at work was unreal. I worked until 5.30 but it was a full and ludicrously productive day.
Then the Blackcurrants and I went to a Pho Vietnamese bar where Nickiy treated us to delicious soup (that's what Pho is). Later Evi came over and it was a comfort that we could have a long conversation without a smidge of gossip.

The riots in London are frightening. I just heard girls being interviewed on radio national who are treating it as a night out to collect 'freebies'. Unbelievable.

But here's one I wrote after I saw the Disappearances Act (or was it project?)... the play I saw a couple of weeks ago:

I wait, with curtains drawn
and the door locked

There is a candle
spitting and hissing
but that's the only sound.
I try to contain my breathing.

And there is silence.
There is darkness.
And there is no news.

I put your pictures up-
the toothy smiling face from grade four
I put your pictures up
in police stations and milk bars
and shops and offices
And wait.

The streetscape slides slowly
by the windscreen
the gently lighted buildings
just a wet smudge.

I still have fuel - I think
And I could keep driving
steady, into the long night
but the lights turn green-

The lights turn green
and I stop.
I just stop
And it's not because
It's not because...
but I stop

And later my husband comes
in a differenct car
and takes me home
And there is only silence
and no news.

Your memory is watermarked
on my mind.
But there is only silence.

2011-08-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

What a weekend... much sleeplessness, but some of it was for an excellent reason :-)

On Friday N and I went to Matt's new workplace - Elite cycles I think, in NOrthbridge, where no shit he works with a couple of the most down to earth fellows you'd ever want to meet. There was pinot noir and some caramel-y mud cake and lots of laughs. And apparently there's a bike brand called Pista. I warm to cycling more each day.

Then the three of us went and listened to a spot of jazz at the Universal bar until I had to duck off and go to Applecross to meet Sarah at the Tivoli theatre and watch her squeeze in a performance. The Tivoli is across from the Raffles Hotel, where Bon Jovi stayed during their tour last year. (Cue heart palpitations)... The Tivoli performance was lovely- low-key and accessible, and wonderful that there is still space for this kind of thing. Long tables in a big hall, and a sort of revue up on stage. It really was delightful.

Then I drove home half asleep, fell into bed and woke again at 2. Saturday started off sluggishly, and my potter around the lake was pretty useless and windblown.
Then N came with me to do some shopping that was long overdue. And i was measured properly for a bra for the first time in my life. Yeah so I'm 31, so what!? :)

There was more jazz that afternoon, once in Globe Lane in the cbd and then at the Bird in Northbridge, where we got stuck into a bottle of vino served by one of the coldest bar bitches I've come across in Perth so far.
I wrote another poem, or the start of one, about tall men and jazz and then we walked home, ravenous and perhaps a little tipsy.

I woke again at 2 but managed to talk myself back to sleep till 7. N and I ran, then I showered and got ready and M called just after 10. They are home, and he is like home.
He said he'd be round at 1ish, and so Matt and Nickiy and I went to the WA Museum to see the ACDC exhibition in its last day. And my goodness it was fantastic. Rock n Roll!

And then M arrived. Brown as anything, a tiny bit paunchy, but towering and dependable.

Here's one I wrote before the last Voicebox:

Consider: the soft darkened road ahead
abandoned shopping trolleys
and ill-lit car parks
isolated yellow pools
of false promise

You will be safe here...
Really?
I look and I look
and I think - have we arrived?
Under this wide sweep of sky
where we thought contentment lay?
Contentment by the gentle river
strangling happiness

We thought...
but we may have been wrong

And somewhere across the country
behind shuttered windows
under the aching sharp lights
of the suburbs
we discovered our strangest fictions

Discovered that along the way
we misplaced the map

That language was different here
That maybe only one of us spoke it

But we fought it
pretty hard
battled the everyday
and unlearned habit
and gave in, to hope

But through and through we
discovered
the pain of context
and that sometimes
love is tied to geography

2011-08-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Another gorgeous night at Clancy's, and inspiration drenched the air. I wrote a poem while sitting down, waiting to read. Nickiy and I went up together, had dinner and some Rosily merlot.
I read four poems, and while the crowd was smaller than last time, there was again, some wonderful feedback.

On the way home I stopped at Leighton beach. Yes, it was 10pm, and cold but I had such a strong desire to touch the ocean. So I took my tights and boots off and Nickiy kicked off her shoes and we ran shrieking to the water's edge, Freo glittering away beautifully to our right.
The water was quite cold (surprise surprise) but there was a slim new moon trembling over the waves.

Sleep

2011-07-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

Eludes me. And I don't know why...

The weekend was full, and active (especially Saturday) and I got an early night last night yet still, my eyes opened at 330 and there was no going back to sleep. I finished the Shiralee, just in time for bookclub on Wednesday. I'll write about it on my book blog (www.wordsfromwest.blogspot.com). I need to get a wriggle-on with that as well, feel like I haven't been on a computer non-work-wise in months.

So, I went to a play on Friday night called The Disappearances Act - I think a brave attempt to show what effect a missing person has on a small rural community. I say brave because it was just two actors, sitting in front of a screen, and talking. And while the subject matter is worthy, and important and harrowing, the words themselves didn't entirely do enough to carry it as a piece of theatre. I left a little deflated. The Blackcurrants and I did end up having a good talk until about midnight, which was the perfect way to finish off the week.

On Saturday morning I went to Lake Monger for a run. I figure if I'm set on doing the 10km Rotto run this year, I should really get a little training in. And off I waddled. I did two laps (about 6.8km) walking some of it, but pretty pleased with my efforts. I plan on going again today, as soon as the sun rises.

Afterwards I went stealthily to IKEA, early enough that I was in and out in 20 minutes, armed with a wire draw set for my wardrobe to keep the smalls and lacies. My room is now tidy (seriously, it's true!).
Then we went to the Paddo for lunch and footy (it's become a bit of a tradition already, as Geelong games often aren't shown live and besides, the pub atmosphere is great). We played Melbourne (those poor bastards) and it wasn't really even a competition. The score at the end was 233 d 47.
At home we packed things for a barbecue and when Kym and Libby arrived we set off for Yanchep. I had never been to the national park proper- M and I had been to the Lagoon but that's all.
And in the national park: there are KOALAS!!

Our barbecue by the lake was windy but delicious, and surrounded by active birdlife. Later we drove to the Gingin observatory, where we were treated to intermittent views of the staggerinly beautiful night sky, viewed through five different telescopes. I saw two shooting stars and made my romantic wishes accordingly.

Yesterday was a day of garbage collection which started as garage sales, but degenerated into gleeful picking through people's bulk waste collection piles around Duncraig and Carine. We came home with a bootful of treasures.

And now - I'm awake, waiting for the sun to rise, wondering why sleep has been so fickle.
Voicebox tonight, so I'm going to write up some scribbles from Friday and try and prepare before I go off to AIM for my Change Management course. All good things.

2011-07-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

My life is full of words again.

A 'winter' storm rages outside - Cleaver Street sways in the mottled streetlight, trees shake off their wet leaves and the thunder growls deeply.

Yesterday I went to my first ever Change Management conference/seminar. Not to present of course, but to listen and learn and god lately I am learning so much! Afterwards we went to a bar called the Greenhouse. It had (for me) a real Melbourne feeling. And I loved dear old Perth even more then.

Lately I've been to the theatre a few times, and it, together with the words, is making me feel vastly more alive than i have in quite some time.

Work continues to be amazing. Really challenging, but full of smiles and satisfaction.

And even after all this time, all this brackish water under the bridge, M continues to be the only occupant of my full little heart.

Since the Blackcurrants and I have moved in together, most of my nights are busy. THe laptop lives again, but I hardly ever use it. So much else going on.
Readings and book club and gym and outdoor films (yes, in winter) and running and zumba and Miami Vice. Don Johnson...what a man!

Voicebox

2011-07-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

I went back to Open Mic yesterday. The event has moved from the small Tropicana Cafe to Clancy's Fish Pub in Freo, and the crowd was big and I was terrified, but it was wonderful.
The Blackcurrants were there, along with CC and his tall mate Crispin (who I hadn't met until that night). Two of the poems were less than a week old, and by the time I got up on the stage I felt alright. Memories of the Poetry caff in London and the support and wonder I experienced there flashed through me, and I did well. I'm not yet at the stage of performing the poems without paper, but I will get there. And the audience's reaction was just gorgeous. From the huge cello playing poet Kevin Gillam, to Kate Wilson, people came up to me as they had at Pirra Homestead and said thank you. It's a beautiful thing.
And CC was right in his text today - I was so full of joy and energy, it was a wonderful night.

Otherwise, life is full and rapidly changing.

I've moved in with the Blackcurrants to a townhouse just down the street from where I was before. I have a big carpeted bedroom and a balcony, and a beautiful huge kitchen, and a loft where my easel waits, paitently for my inspiration and my bravery to climb the ladder.

Last week I told M on the phone (on the fucking phone, what am I? Hugh?) that it just wasn't working and wouldn't work and I am broken again. But the less I think about it I guess the better I am. And Nickiy was right when she said going back would simply be the path of least resistance. I have to remind myself why I left in the first place. I can't be burdened with guilt and regret forever. I miss him, and part of my hurt is that he's hurting. But this too shall pass. I have said that before, haven't I?

But the best thing of all now is the job. My new job. Only a two month opportunity for now, but if I kick arse then hopefully I can land it for the life of the project.

Change Management. Imagine that for Banana! The project team I am working with is wonderful, young and energetic. Sarah J and I have become friends very quickly, and I love working in a team where I am treated like an equal.
My brain is exhausted for all the new things to be learned, but also the happiest it has been in ten years.

Perth sighs under the cracking weight of a winter chill and I climb steadily toward better days.

To Mark

2011-06-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I went to you in search of horseradish
Gnarled root in dark earth
Sharp white breath:
eye-watering aroma of home

I went to you in search of horseradish-
suburban treasures
Arranged in the secret comfort
of a home I believed in

I went in serach of horseradish
And found you-
Offering Carnarvon bananas, and
fresh fish from the North West-

Breath palpitating under
a fine film of western salt

The raggedy lines of beetroot leaf
All point to a belonging
swayed by wanting it too much.

Insistence on a present I
Did not yet occupy.
Perhaps cannot yet occupy.

A dreamt suburbia that
Cannot yet exist

So we drift, and although
you stole me horseradish,
although your shop was
An inkling of community

I couldn't stay.

And now all my memories
Of that suburb are taut:
Pulled tight and dry
And I live no longer salad days
But walk instead carefully,
thinking,
Along an imagined line to hope.

2011-06-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

Head has been so full recent days. What is it with 41 year old men?

But today started beautifully. I rose into awakeness late, it was almost 7 and rain was pelting the window and the sky was heavy and gray. And then, perhaps because it was such a Timea day, I thought to wear my red coat instead of Karen and was rewarded in the pocket with the little green mp3 player I got for my birthday last year, full of Bud-music. Much dancing and excited giggling ensued. And now I have the Decemberists again, and all every other treasure that is included on the little machine.

Last Friday there was a social club 'do' at work- music to showcase our wonderfully talented colleagues- and oh the magic of the spanish. Or Guatemalan in this case. And Banana danced. And drank. And wondered later, why love works the way it does. It makes no sense at all.

And in a fog of nonsense I waited for you on Saturday, and after soup I just wanted to sit side by side with you and hold your hand and bask in a certain safety I can't get enough of. What did we do this weekend? Nothing but quiet reading time (other than the game) and some sleepytalk on Saturday night. You said 'very much'. That is enough for me. Enough, but confusing all the same.

So Banana danced. and enthused about music and in the end (although the end, as it were, is still two months away) is very glad that she decided to stay at Water.

The Blackcurrants are arriving next week, so chez Banana will be very cosy indeed, although I am taking off that first weekend down south.
And yesterday I found the dearest little package on my doorstep from the wonderful VC:
Hungarian mustard and a jar of morello cherries (or so I thought). Later last night I thought 'oh I'll just try a few spoonfuls' and they are not just plain morello cherries. They are palinka cherries. Bliss.

And lastly, the AMAL blog post I read today (from May 2008) raised the memory of love letters. And I remembered NRRD passing notes through the study window with those yellow summer flowers that bloomed between the maths portables and netball courts. And how he would suggest massage with castrol gtx.
I remembered Very Old Spice's halting, difficult, keeningly desperate letters and how I longed to be his sunshine.
I remembered dear Gareth, writing from the V festival, missing me - you are my life, now and forever. A more eloquent man I have never met.
And Sacha's love song.
And B's long emails through more than three years of contact.
And now?

Clouds of nostalgia . . .

Alone

2011-05-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

Today's "All men are liars" blog post is about secrets. An anonymous comment posting seems to be a good way of revealing things about ourselves we don't even like to say to ourselves.
And often, the comment that comes up (and I'm only up to page 7 of the comments) is that I am terrified of being alone. Why is this the case? Why do so many of us find it hard to bridge the chasm between loneliness and solitude.

I'm alone because I want to be, as opposed to I am alone because I have no choice.

"If you believe the lies you tell yourself, they will eventually kill you"

Perth airport, elements of surprise, meetings missed and taxi followed. In a wide western night, (to quote Winterson) "Who are you for whom time has no meaning?"
...
Talk of a new chief for the IMF and dear Mr Keating's name came up as a remote possibility. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Gifts

2011-05-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of them this past weekend.

Starting with Tuesday night when Mellie and Ross took me out to dinner for my birthday. And though things change and hairlines recede and hair colours change, we three stay the same. There was no time that we marked when we met. It was the same as ever and my heart truly swelled to be at the same table again.

Ross and I shared a bottle of champagne (sparkles, whatever) back at home so that when they left at around midnight I was more than a little pissed.

But it was at this time I thought that making a spiced cauliflower soup would be a good idea. And eventually it was because the soup was delicious! But I have spatter burns on my arm, and I was mighty tired on Wednsday. Though I did impress Steph by still turning up to the gym in the morning.

On Thursday I redeemed my Christmas voucher from M, at Belen in Karrinyup. Yes, four hours of absolute pampering. And because my head was full I did wonder if I could turn the thoughts off and really relax, but in the end it turned out that I could. I struggled for a while and then this glorious silence descended. I loved every minute of the four hours.

That night I dinnered with Steph and Matt, her fiancee in their wonderfully homey home. Homemade hummus, Matt-crafted red wine and a Moroccan feast and great, comfortable conversation. I stayed the night and Steph gave me her favourite Makine book to read. I am ashamed I have never heard of him but my god is his writing beautiful. Lyrical, just what I like. So a gift in another discovery.

And Friday was a special day. A totally banana day. And I had tons of messages and phone calls and flowers - I got such beautiful flowers!! And Food. And Company. It was one of my best birthdays.

And, on Friday I got an even bigger gift. VC arrived and we spent some of the day in North Perth, lunching and talking and walking. We visited a garage sale on the way home and carried records and ugg boots and a chopping board back to the flat. Treasure hunting!

In the evening VC took me to Jackson's for my birthday. And a more special and frankly extravagant experience you cannot imagine. Seven courses, seven wines, seven knives and forks - all prepared with such precision and passion as to take your breath away. As we talked about it afterwards, often the gift of experience is much more valuable than an object of some kind. And when the experience involves taste buds...

The walk home turned interesting when a legless Scouser fell into step with us on Vincent street, slurringly wondering where his house was. We pointed him in the right direction (our direction) and we walked on, chatting and laughing together. Passing Hyde Park the fellow made a bum grab at VC with no luck. After some time though, the guy went quiet and VC and I continued to chat. When we arrived at his place though he became more than vocal, pushing Craig and kicking at his legs and shouting and being drunk and aggressive. It was horrible. He was luckily so drunk that when he kicked out he just fell down, but it was not a nice experience.

On Sunday we went back to our 'usual' - the Pantry Door and on the way home bought playing cards and then went to Ross's 50th birthday party at the City Beach SLSC. It was a beautiful family affair and Ross's surprise to Mel was just divine.

The three days with VC reminded me of how a good conversation can uplift you endlessly. Of how much better than any gift a night of balcony gardening while listening to Nina Simone with someone I can be utterly myself with can be. My banana batteries are recharged, I have a smile on my face.

And... something way exciting might also be happening soon.

My apartment is full of flowers - this is another beautiful week.

Wet Wattle

2011-05-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Oh I slept and slept and slept last night. Through various tv shows and then through the night, waking only at 6.30 to the songs of birds and the sounds of rain. Real rain.
There were kookaburras on the fence in the yard, and the smell of wet native trees hung thick in the air. It was a beautiful morning. It deserved a drumroll!

Harry's fault

2011-05-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

On Friday my Ablettless Cats defeated Collingwood in a game I shamefully thought they would lose. It was a good start to the weekend with Kym and I making broccoli and blue cheese soup, spag and meatballs and watching the game at home (Kym can't do pubs so the Paddo was out unfortunately).

On Saturday morning I bounded to the gym for a pump class and then spent a couple of hours ambling around Northbridge and North Perth, buying coffee and finishing Murakami in shady local spots. Later I crashed a little; it would seem my heart was not quite ready for Cohen. But then Evi arrived with a curling wand and false eyelashes and looking like a million bucks we headed to the birthday party.
Balloons on CY O'Connor beach, dinner at Char Char Bull, denied entry at East End Bar, admitted to the Clink (and oh the memories started) - a more hideous venue I have not encountered. Until, after much dithering, we wound up at the Newport. The good old Newport.
Security these days is ridiculously over the top, but once in the cavernous bowels of the building it felt so good to dance, embraced by the memories of past Newport nights. And I was hit on by a fresh 21 year old celebrating his birthday, wanting a kiss. "But it's my birthday" he said. Bless.

On Sunday after rpm, I set to cleaning the hubcap I'm going to paint for Ross's birthday and man those things are filthy. My hands look like those of a gay mechanic. All red nailpolish and wheel grease. Classy.

And, here is the part that is Harry's fault. Harry had recommended the film Barney's Version a few weeks ago, and it was still showing at the Luna so I went to see it at 4pm. Alone in a room full of couples, it was one of the most heartbreaking films I've ever seen. A wonderful film, but but worked like a hot poker in my heart. I called M on the way home and after almost 40 minutes on the phone I said I would go to his house for tea (tea???) rather than talking on the phone.
And although this sounds like a cliche, it's true: it felt like a homecoming. And not because of the house.
I told him I missed him. "So why did you leave?"

But I was not abandoning him, at least I didn't think so. The clanging emptiness of the house speaks otherwise, and what joy to make coffee this morning. So, we part again on muddied waters, and then a phone call from the airport "I'm glad you came but we have to talk"... a mess, but finally it was him saying the hard stuff. Post birthday weekend will be a time for words. And tea?

Another reminder

2011-05-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

of why I love living here.

I had another 1.45 hour conversation with the ATO today. I owe them a lot of money and it's taking me a fair while to pay it back. Sometimes I struggle. But the level of customer service I received today just made me smile. Rosemary (whoever she may be) was patient, thorough and very kind. I hung up happy.

Dinner out with Kym today, a Turkish place in Subi and then swimming tomorrow - dare I chance the outside pool? And cocktails on Friday before the game and so life gets busy. And time passes and each dayI walk straighter (upright, not weaving) and happier.

2011-05-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

Mood was touch and go this weekend. For some reason (and really it could have been any hormonal random reason) I crashed badly on Thursday. I got home from the gym (after hearing that bloody 'turn the car around' song that doesn't help the tears) and slumped in front of the telly and cried. And cried. And drank Drambuie and ate an entire loaf of white bread with butter and wrote a rambling love letter that started and ended with

I miss you.

And then I went to bed and had awful dreams, but somehow managed to bumble into a Friday that was at least laced with hope. Until M called at lunchtime. It was all I could do to keep down Kym's delicious mushroom soup and the tears at bay and I resigned myself to another sad weekend until Bud called with her wonderful and generous surprise.

On Saturday an odd calm descended. I was up at 5, so decided to bake some bagels. I also walked to North Perth to explore that end of my neighbourhood and buy some milk. It's a great area, and I found a gorgeous array of cafes and quaint antique shops, and a wonderful florist on Angove Street who sets up at the old defunct servo, and sells - WAY OVERPRICED - sweet williams. I had to buy a bunch. They are the colour explosion in my little apartment and they bring me many smiles.

Then S and I met at the gym for my first Step 'robics class since high school. If I had not been present at the class, I wouldn't have believed that instructor. Camp as camp can be, and frankly a big showoff with regard to his enviable flexibility. I laughed so much my abs also got a workout and the whole class was well entertained with Banana monkeying around, trying and failing to get the steps right. S came for coffee and a fresh bagel afterwards, and then I settled in to make the flourless chocolate cake and coq au vin for dinner, while Geelong nicely demolished North Melbourne on the telly.

The dinner on Saturday night was predictable, and conversation inevitably strayed to topics I didn't relish covering, but then it was over and on Sunday I dozed on and off, while reading, until noon. Then energy kicked in and I laundered, and took myself to lunch at the pantry door where they were playing Ani DiFranco, and I read the paper and looked at the gently moving sunny Sunday just outside the window and I smiled.

Thai pumpkin soup was on the menu for Monday so I put that on to cook while I nipped to the gym for a sneaky shower as the hot water in the apartment has decided to take a holiday.

And so to another week.

Small gifts each day of contact, of returned smiles, of friends being unbelievably generous.

If only Kym wasn't quite so generous with her marvellous marvellous shortbread...

Time

2011-05-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

Is helping.

The passing of it is like a body of water, gently sloughing off the hard edgy bits of my memory. I still pull myself up, often catching myself going over and over a particular scene, or remembered tid-bit that hurts like hell, but then I'll stop and shake my head free of the thought and concentrate really hard on something else. (The BBC's My Music radio show for example) Often I'll shake my head and say "Stop it now" out loud, even when I'm on the street, or here at work. I'm a little bit crazy but I'm definitely getting better.

I am learning not to count the days since the last kiss and to stop asking myself: "I wonder if that was the last one ever?"
I am learning not to re-read old text messages or look at old photos or - and I know this is loco - listen to an old voicemail just to hear his voice say "Macska" again.

When was the last time I cried? You know it may have been as long as a week ago.

On the weekend I had a mad bout of cleaning, giving the balcony walls a good dose of domestos so they gleam white in the autumn sun. Washing the windows so thoroughly turned out to be more a curse than a blessing as yesterday morning I walked straight into the closed glass door. And no, unlike at Nick's party way back when, this time I wasn't zonked on Strongbow (and Mr Apted's moustache). Enough said.

I am amazed, again and again at the wonderful people I work with. Offering words and books and music and random invites for weekend visits. I bless them all.

And I am developing a definite social life. Dinners and cocktails and exhibition openings and warm soup lunches. I feel like I am metaphorically straightening my collar (and it must be metaphorically because Jules isn't here to do it for me) and breathing out: I will be okay.

2011-04-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

Oh a topsy turvy few days. From licking wounds to kicking arse (in my head) it's been dizzying. Wednesday back at work was shaky, then it righted itself gloriously in the evening, somehow the hours evened out. I went to the gym, had a long chat with Bud and by Thursday felt like I was boss again.

And then M called. And I did not pass Go and I did not collect 200. I went straight back to jail.
I don't know how to work up the courage to ask him not to call anymore, though maybe me saying it was making everything so much more difficult will get through to him. I know the passing of time is the only thing that will really help, but at the same time I fear it like a bastard. That self destructive little voice that quavers: what if I never see him again?

I even miss cricket.

So this weekend will be another challenge. maybe a solo trip to the Harvest festival in the hills tomorrow, and brunch with Kym et al on Sunday. It's the quiet pockets I need to fill. The silence after I close the door on a visitor. The confronting whoosh of the morning's first breeze when I step onto the balcony.

On an entirely different topic; one of my favourite blogs is All Men Are Liars, by Sam De Brito who write in the SMH. He strikes me as a real human being. Intelligent, but with warts and all that he bravely faces up to. And today I found out his favourite pollie is my Paul. So there.

Let me not mention Amanda Vanstone on Q&A last night. She may call herself a Republican, but I still wouldn't give her time on telly. Really. I didn't watch long enough to form an opinion, the woman pisses me off.

A long long-weekend.

2011-04-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

I should have been more careful. This weekend was a long period of waiting for the working week to start again. I can't get comfortable in this new setting. I constantly feel like I'm on holiday, or extended punishment-leave and soon M and I will be together again. But i know we're not. Sleep has been an elusive bastard, hard to catch and even harder to sustain.

But there were glimmers of beauty this weekend as well. Saturday was a particularly good day - I relished all the new things my neighbourhood offers. Continental butcheries ahoy- and cafes and bookshops and other purveyors of danger.

I spent Sunday with Kym, watching The King's Speech and some hilarious Robot Chicken Star Wars special, and also driving around to pet shops in the Maddington area to look at cats. (I know, I know).

So this week, redoubling efforts to get life in order and trying to sleep. And ferreting out decent books to read.

2011-04-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

A house in a leafy street in Subi, good friends, amazing food, good wine (first bottle, not the second, despite the funky label) and a relaxed atmosphere switched on the light at the end of the tunnel. And there was laughter and comfort aplenty. (and just quietly, Joe put on Bon Jovi at the end of the night - because I am not ashamed!) :0)

This morning when M called I didn't cry and I am feeling alive, if a little vague from lack of sleep.

One foot in front of the other, and all that. I'll get there...

2011-04-19T23:44:00.000-07:00

You can't go around grief apparently, you can only go through. I was on the phone today and a friend said "You sound worse than a few days ago, that surprises me".

Really? The implosion happened less than a week ago - and everywhere I go, shops, parks, beach, traffic lights, there is some aspect of M there. Whether it be leopard print Easter eggs or the last time we sat there or here...my life is still full of him. I miss him so much it's affecting my posture. I feel like I want to hide from myself. Mirrors have become bad things.

I know it will pass, but this dragging loneliness where I'm not good at being with people but nor am I any good anymore being by myself is a bit irritating. There have been a lot of tears. My eyes have aged in the last few days.

But good things are that I'm not drinking like a fish. Not drinking at all really, last weekend was enough. And last night when Evi offered me a ciggie, I didn't even feel tempted.

I need backup
I need company
I need to be inspired.

Or something...

Corkscrew

2011-04-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

Evi came over yesterday armed with a bottle of wine and a three pack of Johnny Depp DVDs. But the wine was not screwtop, and I don't have a corkscrew, as it turns out. I was reminded of the first dinner Mum and I hosted after dad left, when Kate came over and we looked at the wine then, and ended up taking it to the next door neighbour's house for male help. This time, Evi put a wooden spoon handle on the cork and pushed, while I held the bottle. Red wine sprayed everywhere, including into my eyes, which stung like buggery but we laughed and laughed while mopping at the whitewashed redspeckled walls. I've put a waiter's friend on my shopping list. But we sat on the balcony drinking red wine from champagne flutes (red wine glasses also on shopping list) and talked and smoked and cried a little bit and it was good. Really really good. Letting go is hurting like a bastard but I'm hanging in there.

2011-04-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

The gum trees on Loftus were stark white against the stormy western sky and Perth glowered at me in a tired, still morning. I slept at the new place for the first time last night, and worked through a few more layers of filth and packing boxes. It is shaping up, but it's a compromise. I made the bed and showered and drifted off to sleep to Philip Adams' voice, soothing and full of benevolence. I can't bear silence. This morning, as mornings always are, was better and I sat with my mug of Paul on the balcony and tried to stay positive. But it's hard and my heart is broken. When we spoke yesterday night the distance between us was not just the 1200km's but an increasingly un-crossable gulf opening up. I bought a doona and pillows and toilet brush and cutlery and made carrot and coriander soup, which I was then too tired to eat but it will be great for dinner today. The red fingernails at least would not take much explaining today. So, to new beginnings. New neighbourhood, new Perth resident. Nestled again in the crook of my city's arm. Here's to hope!

No Comment

2011-03-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/uni-students-get-a-free-ride-for-too-long-with-their-hecs-debt-20110320-1c24r.html

I read this yesterday in the Age when the comments were already closed (at 461).
It makes me sad that this drivelous bullshit was published.

I have started repaying my HECS debt. Yes, there was a little hiccup with the tax office and the payroll department at work not communicating which has left me in a bit of a sticky situation, and yes, most uni students would hopefully not start their working lives with debts the size of mine. BUT I hardly think the government needs to force people entering the workforce to live balancing on the poverty line just to get a few extra dollars.
I like the HECS scheme (or HELP or whatever). I believe in it, and I know that without it, I couldn't have gone to Uni. The threshold as it stands now is fair and should be left at $45000.

I've never been afraid of work, and I worked full time during undergrad and part time during Honours.

As for Ms V's suggestion that only priviliged people get to go to Uni - I say that if you want to go, and you work towards it, it is possible.

Otherwise, the sun still shines insistently over Perth, days creak one into the other and life goes on.

2011-03-08T19:21:00.000-08:00

I cross my fingers and reach out to this gathering hope in the midst of new misery. My mother asked me on Tuesday what was good in my life - and for a bleak moment I struggled to answer the question. Yes, the hecs stuff is painful and needlessly so, yes, things with M are about as depressing as they can be, but these are not life tragedies. So I ladle hope from the small stuff. The happy stuff that sustains me.

An instructor yesterday at the gym:

"I once went out with a contortionist from the Philippines. She was a Manila Folder" - it buoyed me with giggles for several minutes.

This morning the polite, smiling and infinitely switched on guy in the Land Cruiser in the merging lane next to me. Consideration is a beautiful thing.

And now, in the midst of all this, comes a possibility. Maybe I won't be successful, but the fact that I've been pre-selected is already such a boon. Ten years of administration does a lot to wear down one's self esteem.

So I reach out to the gathering hope. I hold onto Paul in the mornings, full of espresso and tell myself that 30 is not too old to be alone. I feel the grass crunch underfoot when I collect the washing, and I reassure myself that there is still time for a Hills Hoist of my own.

2011-02-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

We arrived at the Spiegeltent late and tickets had sold out to Piff the Magic Dragon, so we walked into Northbridge to get some dinner. And dinner we did!
A wonderful Italian place with tightly arranged little tables and the windows open wide onto the warm night.
M bought me flowers and a munted little white bear we've called Muki and to finish the meal I had a glass of Grand Marnier and a heavenly panna cotta.
Friday was a full moon, and there was no wind and there were stars out. So when we got home, M parked the ute at the bottom of the backyard where the ground is flat and while I pottered about inside the house he made up the most luxurious bed on the back. I have never slept under the open sky before and it was the most wonderful romantic thing I've ever done. V Day be damned!
Saturday was consumed mostly with house-worky things until we went to City Beach to meet Betty and Pete etc (late as always) for a barbecue. While we waited for them we took the boogie boards into the water and much screaming and squealing ensued. Mostly it was M helping me keep my balance and pushing me forward onto the waves. Great fun.

And yesterday was abandonment. M left to drive back to Newman early, so after an extra 3 hours of sleep I spent a day of Anna-time. Went to a museum, bought cheese and French bread and read in the park, watched a movie and the waited, tetchy with nerves to hear that M had arrived safely having driven over roads that were legally closed to traffic due to flooding.
The phone call came at 10 and afterwards I fell into bed, heavy with relief.

A new week, resplendent with hope!

Motley Crue...

2011-02-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

only kidding...

I just remembered the song "Change" as I sat down to write. And I should write because a couple of people have commented on my recent blogsilence. Thanks for the nudge, guys!

Since the last post, my daily (nay, hourly) mood has swung from leaving to staying to leaving, both house and relationship, until a final good and honest conversation helped me make the decision to stay in Duncraig and see if we both can't hammer out a decent relationship that's worthy of the love we're pouring into it. So we wait and see. Of course, some changes are being made and both of us are much clearer than we were before.

I have spent a lot of time inside my head these last few weeks and they have felt long and drawn out and I don't always like what I find inside there. I think sometimes I also have to accept that I'm not the easiest person to live with.

But a few good things have also emerged. That try as I might to deny it, culture and the arts still makes me feel exuberantly alive.
The List Operators were here for the Perth Fringe Festival, and not only was it gut-shakingly good to see Matt again (and feel the link to Bud a little stronger again) but the show and the festival were fantastic. So fantastic in fact that I went back again on Friday and met Frisky and Mannish, another couple of performers who I hope to see sometime this week.
Perth might be racist and homophobic, but there are pockets of pleasure in the city that do try hard.

This weekend just passed was strangely empty, in that we weren't running around to various activities, although we did get in a sweaty game of cricket in the park yesterday afternoon. I won an innings (whatever the hell that means) but mostly just practiced my girlish bowling.

I am reading All the Pretty Horses, and although it was quite difficult to get into at the start, it has become quite readable. And I hate hate hate to admit this, but I am seriously considering a Kindle. As a means of buying books cheaper, mostly.

Festivals, and days of Love and cliche... happy Monday!

Safe

2011-01-12T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've entered a somewhat inexplicable stage of anger.

This morning as I was feeding the town of vincent their extortionate parking fee my mind was ticking over imagined conversations with M ... that went something like this:

"I'm moving out because I no longer feel safe with you" says I...

And the word safe triggered a memory of Dale.

I am lying in my narrow little bed in Budapest, probably tipsy, with the mobile clamped to my ear and tears making little tracks down my face.
He is saying "I feel safe with you" when all I want him to say is "I love you."

But I get it now. Safety is equally important. I don't know what safety meant to him then, but I'm warmly glad that he felt it with me. After all, M and I can love each other all we want if we can't live together and make a shared life based on security.

And being dependent has nothing to do with money. I was watering my garden this morning and the zucchini flowers opened overnight and the beetroot is standing a little bit taller and and and... and I thought that I have done more to make that fucking house a home than all his money has.

is it tonight yet? I really really REALLY want to get this sorted.

2011-01-11T03:57:00.001-08:00

I am as a madwoman... swinging from one state of mind to another.
Should I move out? Should I stay put? What would be better?

I hate to give creepy Pierre any credit, but what he said the day I left Wray Av with my heart in pieces was true. I have to make my own bubble. Perhaps I can only live with M properly once this becomes our home and not his house. But I don't know.

The apartments I have seen... the first one in Mosman Park last Friday - entrance under the staircase, dank, dark blue lino like Frankfurt airport and pokey. Just awful. Then yesterday I went to Mt Lawley, thinking better thoughts - they promised Perth views from the balcony. About which they did not life, but they hadn't mentioned the stained carpet, the broken mirrors in the bathroom and the smell. But when pushed, I can picture myself in any of these places. I know I can make any room a home.

But the thought of starting all over again.... and then the random uninvited thoughts assail me:
I'll never go to Mark's fruit and veg shop again and feel like a local who belongs, I won't hang our clothes on the hill's hoist, I won't train with Cara anymore, or go to the spinclass held by the Turnbull-Hughesy lookalike...
My routine will be broken. But then I berate myself: these are fixable things. This is not the end of the world.

And then I talk to him, and all my rationality (not that there's a great deal there to begin with) disappears as if by magic and all I want is M home and for this to be good again. And healthy.
I am paralysed by this incredibly heavy apathy- I've basically done FA at home these last couple of days. Thank god for TV and trashy literature, though perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to condemn Stieg Larsson to that category. It was certainly a page turner, but no Winton or White...

I watered the garden today (it's our day) and the flowers at the front I planted last Thursday are starting to lift their heat-abused heads. Slowly, hope blossoms.

Someone said to me today: "Why don't you move to Melbourne?"
And why don't I? Because despite 90% of my loved ones living there, and the life being wonderful and colourful and askew and crazy, and the availability of a good pisco sour (good? the best) and all that... my soul has never felt as at home as it does here. And yeah, sometimes I'm desperately fucking lonely, but this was my choosing, and I don't regret settling here, not for a millisecond.

And Kym invited me to barbecue brunch with them on Australia Day, so I can spend it with Aussies, and then maybe slink off to King's Park with a good book and wait with childish excitement for the sky over Perth to explode in a somewhat commercial commemoration of our glorious way of life.

And in this topsy turvy world, ignoring said glorious way of life, Queensland is suffering terribly. If only we could share the rain, equally dole it out, state by state.

The sun has crept down, leaving the wash of colour I ached for when I lived in Europe.
Mindenhol jo, de a legjobb otthon dad always said. It's good everywhere, but it's best to be home.

Today

2011-01-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

Today is a day full of sadness. Prickling regret at one fly away, ill-thought unplanned lie that has torched the security of all the solid aspects of my life. How is it possible that with one sentence the notion of 'home' has turned to rubble, small pebbles, small enough to patter roughly through my open fingers...

I am aghast at myself, at things in general, at how fast it can all change.

How the one thing i want the most - to belong, to have a home - continues to elude me.

2010-12-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

But the dark shapes of trees
scratched at the window
as we hurtled past
and in my chest
thrummed tainted hope

the months flew by
like tattered branches
scratching desperately...
yet when it was good
it was perfect

this morning i was uncertain
of the day it was
of where you were

my compass needle stuttered
uncertainly-
pointing at vast distances
you no longer occupy

uncertain in the flotsam of days
heaved out of sleep
like a madman-
sweat washed and gasping
gaping, in the morning light

in my head we still curl together
in my heart-
your long body is the lean tree
i am looped around
my head in your hands
my head in my hands

My throat was full of fear and madness when I boarded the plane but I managed about forty minutes' sleep and then walked across that baking tarmac to the inspector who was waiting for me. And in a wash of gratitude, I felt like perhaps we would be okay. He was cheerful and smiling but I no longer know if it is just smoothing the blanketing atmosphere or if it is for real.

Whatever it is, it is beautiful. The drive down through the core of the country was different this time - colours enhanced by the plashing rain. And I recited Lawson, loudly, over the din of the diesel engine... "and every creek and gully, sends forth its little flood" etc etc

We stayed in Cue on Thursday night, at the bed-bug-ridden Queen of the Murchison hotel, a huge old rambling building on the main street. Then between Mt Magnet and Wubin, I drove. The Ranger and I get along alright and it's a great feeling being so far above the road.

On Friday night we watched the Great Gatsby because I am worried about the rumoured Baz Luhrmann remake because he wants to cast Leonardo as Jay Gatsby. I don't know who would work well, I can't decide, but watching the Robert Redford version was also a bit painful. Oh Mia Farrow's voice. Eh.

Saturday was M's Christmas Party at the Esplanade in Freo, where we had a deluxe spa room booked. On the way we stopped at the Naked Fig for lunch, the Indian Ocean spread out in heartbraking beauty before us.
The room really was deluxe and we started with champagne on the balcony ... perfection zizzed all around us and I hope so much that the cracks aren't permanent.
We even danced at dinner and survived through the long Sunday to welcome M's brother and family around midnight...

Holidays start tomorrow, and January will be a time for clean slates and renewed hope.

(And it's raining - and that makes me so glad)

2010-11-10T01:44:00.001-08:00

I normally don't like Alan Saunders and "By Design" on radio national, but this afternoon in the rain, driving home from King's Park they had a special series of talks about Home and the concept of belonging.
Architects, about form and furniture and design, Larissa Behrendt talked about the importance of belonging to Country from the Indigenous perspective, writers and comedians said words about semantics and word-meanings and it was all wrapped up in what it means, to each person, to have a home, to belong.

And now I am home. In this little yellow brick house in Duncraig. And some days the satisfaction eludes me. And I wonder if it will ever be complete. If I will be.

If the questions will ever stop coming, if I'll ever be properly happy with where I am and who I am and what I have. But it's getting better. Each day it's getting better.

King's Park was a balm today. Despite the cold needles of rain, the company of lovely people helped a great deal.

The Outback continues...

2010-10-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Kumarina Roadhouse, Meekatharra, Cue, Mt Magnet and a brief stop at Nannine. Nannine no more. M was tired, Kili was bored and I was glued to the window, face shiny and adoring. This was scenery I could never tire of. Would never tire of, given half a chance. I thought about the character in Winton (in the Turning?) who lives on a road where the only 'sign' is a decrepit fridge with a broken door. I want to live at the end of a road like that. I think. Sometimes.

And worship nothing but the relentless sun and the red dust and the unforgiving vastness of the sky.

Nannine was a bit of a shock. A former gold-mining hub, with a railway running through it and a thriving little community is now nothing. . . but a collection of artefacts. This tub, a burnt and lonely doll's leg, a broken porcelain horse...Thankfully Marble Bar hasn't (yet) gone the same way.

In Mt Magnet we demolished burgers and said goodbye to even the Telstra signal. Payne's Find was a mere 150km away.

The Payne's Find Roadhouse has (apparently) changed. This was my first time and I appreciated the derelict rundownness of it all. Six cans of VB, a bottle of scotch in a bag of ice and we were on our way to the farmhouse, 60km hence, down the unsealed Payne's Find Sandstone Road.

My understanding was that we would find Charles and give him the whisky, say thanks for letting us stay, and head off to find the others. As it happened, we stayed on the big rock with him and helped him and his buddies with the drinking. Helped wholeheartedly.

Then back at camp finally with B and P and the others, Mat remembered that he'd forgotten the other tent for K. So sleeping arrangements were cosy to say the least. And the smell on the third day...

We spent all of Sunday driving around the station... and from the whole day, I still didn't get to see all of it. The tracks were often overgrown and had to be machete-d clear, there were some tracks we didn't even attempt. There were dead kangaroos around dams, caught on fences they couldn't quite clear - left to dry out in considerable pain. The heat was searing, the landscape dry - I was so excited the whole day I think by the end of it even K got tired of asking "Are you STILL excited?"

There wasn't any hunting by us, yet food was still plentiful, and in terms of the camp, my learning to poo-with-a-view was a definite highlight.

The only other thing I would add, is don't eat bean soup for breakfast if you're going to share car space with two others on a hot day driving home. Potent business.

From last Friday

2010-10-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

I am running again. Yesterday morning I spoke sternly to myself and got myself down to Brighton before my body could object. And then I was off... 5kms, two stitches and a not-too-shabby time, considering this has not been a good week for training, due to my obese elbows.
As i was running back towards my waiting Norma, I let my mind drift back to GGS Cross Country meets. Jule's beautiful eccentric mum, with her long fur coats and tireless smiling encouragement: "Come on pet, not long to go now".
My smile was huge as I stretched in the car park and drove home, windows foggy from my overheating heart.

I attended my first site visit yesterday, in the gorgeous south west - Harvey and Yarloop way with a new colleague, PT. I did get the feeling I should have had a rifle slung over my shoulder when PT and I went for lunch at the same place M and I stop for breakfast after our various bambi adventures.

M was home before me, despite my best efforts to leave work on time. I asked him to go and pick up a cucumber and some cream, and on my way home I noticed him walking back from the shop so I picked him up. And he had bought me mangoes and avocadoes "because you don't eat enough fruit, Macska". I melted.

So that was Friday - then in the afternoon I met B and P in Freo and we got on the very VERY bumpy ride out to Rotto. Pete and I were okay, but Betty did not look good when we disembarked in the gathering dark.
We found our Jackson villa, and waited impatiently for our luggage and food to arrive. We weren't patient enough: B and I dahsed back to the settlement for Red Rooster, and of course, by the time we got back, all our stuff was there. Wrapped in blankets, the three of us sat outside to admire the moonshine over the water and to talk, and remember our great good luck in living in such a beautiful place. It certainly was beautiful and we were all in bed by 9pm.

On Saturday morning I trotted to the settlement to see where the race would start, but it was all awash with garbage men and too much random activity so I headed off in the opposite direction instead, toward the Basin and then around the lakes. It was a half hour run so I'm guessing about 5kms. The only scary part came when a rampant and very much unexpected peacock leapt out of a garden from behind the fence.
Much luxurious stretching followed, and then I made coffee and bought fresh bread and made breakfast.
M and K arrived soon after and instead of going fishing, as we really should have done, we went to the bottle shop instead. Back at the house we laid out a huge feast with cheese and salads and crackers and sausage. It was a wonderful atmosphere.
Later in the afternoon there was some fishing, where I managed to incur a good deep gash on my foot, perfect, in preparation for the run.

And all of a sudden it was time for dinner, with wedges and pasta salad and fish and other salads. Oh Betty's tabbuleh...divine!! We fell into bed reasonably early, but upon waking, the thought did cross my mind that perhaps wine before the race wasn't a fantastic idea. We sadly packed up our little kingdom and sauntered down to the settlement, where the marathon was well underway and excitement was at fever pitch. Especially in me.

M fussed and bought me drinks and was far more encouraging than I would have expected. The run itself was fantastic! I really struggled up that sneaky bastard of a hill, but even so, I managed to pick up speed towards the end, and there's a good chance that what I did over the finish line could be construed as a sprint. The were families running, mums with prams, tiny kids...it was all just gorgeous.
Then sweaty and tomato coloured, I ran with the guys to the train station and we did the gun and tunnels tour which blew me away. Our guide Eve was lovely, and I am shocked again and again, what an incredible corner of the world this is!

Despite not wanting to come home, I seemed to have boundless energy and did loads of washing, tidying putting away, putting bins out ...

The Outback starts here!

2010-09-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

But not just yet...

Thursday started with a mad (sunny) dash through Perth, buying last minute things for the trip and generally drooling at the various get-ups in hiking and outdoor shops.
Then home, pack, drive to Joondalup where I picked up K from school, only to discover that my car-food-buying-skills leave a lot to be desired. The coke? Yes. The cheese and bacon roll? No. The hedgehog slice? Later. The strawberries? Get lost...
So - we dropped Norma at home, K got changed, we got a taxi and got to the airport with time to kill. Serious time. Thinking perhaps the Hungarian flash-cards wouldn't be enough, I bought a box of 50 lateral thinking puzzle questions, and we settled on the front row of seats, cards spread out on our knees, sharing the hedgehog slices.
The plane trip flew by (har har har) - and K's pronunciation and enthusiasm were fantastic. I couldn't wait for him to spring one of his key sentences on his Dad.

Newman airport struck with the same wonder and isolation and it felt so gloriously familiar. The reddusty smell of Mat's car, the glowing Red Sands sign, the 'baby' dump truck at the visitor's centre and the apartment. I was very happy to be there.
Happier still to be wandering around Woolies among all the miners...it's such a different world.

Our first dinner was at the Capricorn Roadhouse, just over (or under?) the Tropic - steak, of course. And our first trip on Friday was Karijini, where M and I thought we'd explore a different gorge and settled on Hancock, where I'd heard about the Spider Walk and there were pools to swim in. I had no idea then the bravery that would be required of me.

So in sparkling sunshine we hurtled the 170km or so towards the National Park, passing huge trucks, sometimes stopping to let them pass, the trusty Ranger purring its turbo-diesel tune.
The walk into Hancock Gorge ranged from class 3 to class 6 (super fitness and abseiling equipment required). And so we descended. The scrambling over rocks and under shelves and over the creek was fine. I even survived the ladder without screaming. And the dive into Kermit pool, while it knocked the breath out of me, wasn't as bad as the corner climb at the start of the spider walk. On the way there it was still somehow okay, on the way back, panic struck. I never thought I could watch my brain slide into "OHMYGOD"-ness without my control. But I could feel fear in my belly and at the base of my throat and I was gripping the ledge like my life really did depend on it. Mat tried (and failed) not to giggle, but he leaned out and gently took my elbow to which I screamed "don't touch me don't touch me"... and I made it (obviously) and after calming down a little even stepped back to pose for a photo.

Dinner was at the All Seasons - I think as fancy as Newman gets and my prawns in coconut sauce were divine.

Saturday morning - after a wake up call from the local cockatoos we crammed everything into the car and then tried to cram ourselves in. K and I took it in turns to sit in the front because both seats had their element of discomfort. But discomfort was nothing as the wide road spread before us and we headed towards the Kumarina Roadhouse in rising heat and billowing red dust.

2010-09-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

yesterday i woke up under a big cloud. (not the mia-farrow-voiced "I'd like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around." ) not even a cloud - under a frog's arse. Said frog sitting down the bottom of a coalmine...
work stuff mostly, the old 'i'm going to be a secretary for the rest of my life' worry...

but that's all solved now. Or at least the Bananahope has been restored, and I'm back to being happy in the little and important things around me.

There have been lashings of haiku-hope yesterday, and sun-soaked lunching, there was a wonderful long long long (so that i'm yawning excessively) conversation with Betty last night and this morning a really uplifting conversation with M.

At a Cultural Awareness training course all day today, at King's Park. Afterwards I expect a walk among the wildflowers, and a salute (not that kind of salute) to my beautiful city in mellow afternoon sun.

2010-09-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

My jeans pockets and my socks are full of white sand.

Geelong won the semi final against the Dockers. And I'm sorry Freo fans, but WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHH! It's an awesome thing. Awesome enough to take your top off in almostpublic! Go Cats!

Today was a beautiful day. Both at work and after. Not too sure what it's going to be like now, but until now it has been pure bliss. Even the bits where we talked about imperfections, and am I settling, and what am I settling for?
What is it about rednecks?

I was truthful when we were sitting on the sand and I said I don't need any more than this. The wide Indian Ocean, the sinking sun in the west. Seriously, what more could you need?
Wanting is another thing entirely, of course. But this is where I am happy.

We were talking with V at work today, about 'wild' and 'gamey' things we had eaten...and we were all listing things like crocodile, and goanna, and venison and turtle...and then V said, very bravely: "I've eaten duck". I could have kissed her.

So, a Geelong drenched night. A belonging. A beautiful day.

Galah

2010-09-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

I think M. Nature may be compensating me for the loss of little Richard. I walked out into the yard after work today to check on the asparagus and the lovage (don't you love that?) and my three proud little tomato plants. And there was a shamelessly pink (slightly fat) galah on the lawn, looking at me with no fear whatsoever. I'd like to say there was no fear in the look I returned, but I'd be lying. Credit to me though, I said hello, and told him he was welcome stay if he left my plants alone. He squawked in assent, and flew just over there, to sit on the fence and watch me from over his glossy grey shoulder. Welcome Galah.

I know tomorrow is Friday, still very much a work day, but M comes home tonight, and when he's home it's always a holiday.
Right now, the long thick kilometres of the Great Northern Highway melt beneath the wheels of the Ranger, and hopefully the roos just blink from the roadside.

On the way home from the station tonight, in a slightly hubcapless (ironic, isn't it?) Norma, I listened to Poison by Alice Cooper and cranked it up so loud my mirror was vibrating. It had to be loud so I couldn't hear myself singing...

I can't bear to write about work. To write about how wonderful it is to be doing what I really really want to do, doing something I feel matters.... and yet I've only got a week and a half left and most days I still don't feel like I've cracked the cool veneer of my colleagues.

I've just come back from another wonderfully sweaty RPM class, with the Malcolm Turnbull-Hughesy lookalike, who I am finding sexier every time I see him. Well, tonight his wife was there, and they're such a humorous couple. The new music is hideous: "Come on team, make your legs hurt, not just your ears"

There has been a book doing the rounds lately, called the Slap, by an Australian author of Greek origin, Christos Tsiolkas. And I haven't had such lively discussion about literature since the days of Straz and Mrs Howie. How she leapt around the classroom, holding onto Dawe and Fitzgerald and I knew...I knew exactly how she felt.
My soul has felt more awake these last few days of talking and analysing and reading... I am thinking about going back to study and getting a Dip Ed.

I love words so much. Two nights ago, I had a really bad dream, and while I was waiting for the black wings to stop flapping around my skull, I picked up the only Fitzgerald I have to hand (Gatsby is on holiday in Melbourne) - "The Price was High"... a collection of his final stories, poignant only because I know he was writing them just to get money to pay for Zelda's treatment. They're not wonderful stories, but they're so Fitzgerald. They drove the black wings away and I slept again.

I don't miss her actively, and indeed some of her latest writings have felt like a bit of a letdown, but I read Winterson's column today, and that too was full of light and hope and good words. Careful words. Not this careless bullshit where people don't even read over what they have written. I know that missing the odd apostrophe (fuck me, I'm sure I do it too, but let me have my rant) is not a sign of dull intellect... it's a sign of appalling carelessness.

And just one more thing...
I watched Spicks and Specks last night - and the quality of easy comedy was so wonderful, it took me back to Bedford, to Chook and Keith's lounge room, to my first week in Perth. I embrace that memory and I am so unbelievably fucking glad I am here.

2010-07-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

I was just saying how I've been far too happy to think about blogging, to write tortured posts about how beautiful life would be if only... I am living the if only, and I'm not about to launch into a post of dreams and wishes. I've got them all around me and the world really is beautiful.
But god Hungarians have a knack for fucking it up. We had a potentially beautiful dinner last night with B & P, Pali and a friend of theirs J whose wife recently passed away. So perhaps you'd expect some subdued mood, sadness etc. But the entire evening consisted of nothing but complaining and drinking as if it were rapidly going out of fashion. Cleaning up this morning I was appalled at the number of bottles and cigarette butts.
Mat and I made a great meal - he made Bambi soup, I made the starter dips and platters, bambi burgers and the chocolate/caramel/almond slice for afters. But it wasn't a good night. I'm just over the attitude. It's not constructive, inspiring... I actually don't get anything out of it.

Today I've got a bit of work, Mat is going out this afternoon, but otherwise it's just us, and sunshine and the luxury of being together.

Beautiful

2010-07-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

Why write a Hungarian complaints page when so much that is beautiful is all around me.

Today at lunchtime I learned a valuable lesson. If you lie for long enough in gentle spring sunshine after a deliciously subtle Indian meal, you will eventually want ice cream. (Bacio and Italian custard - a variation on frozen zabaglione I might try and recreate at home).

So, happiness. beautiful without being trite (hopefully) :

-the joy I get from the flowers poking through the zippy green foliage of my pea plants.

-the sign on a landcruiser at Warwick station today, letters fashioned out of gaffer tape: "Fully Loaded"

-bursts of fresh strawberries at breakfast as the sky over Duncraig begins to break into light.

-words from the ladies. the older we get, the more I miss them. And how wonderful is it, that despite teh distance, personalities even manage to squeeze through in emails. Manna's dear, sensible practicality. It might be an imaginery room only, but we're sitting in it, eating Tim Tams.

-mornings in general - I find such comfort in my routines (for now just shared with Richard), and the accompanying Perth sunshine and music from Bud. Note: Bon Jovi not to be listened to at peak hour on the train.

-Kili insisting that I watch the Simpsons too. "It's more funny if you don't watch it by yourself".

-weekends with M when we don't have hoardes of people around. just us in the 'burbs.

-smiling. My grandmasterplan is to make it as contagious as yawning.

the list could go on (the smell of clean clothes that have dried in the sun), but alas, I am at work.

"Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing"

2010-07-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

This morning, some minutes before six am I was on the bike, sweating buckets, following the instructions of Trev, who is, as I may have mentioned before a disturbingly sexy mix of Turnbull and Hughesy. Scary stuff. But I feel great.

Yesterday was a satisfyingly full day. A bout of body pump in the morning, then work, then metrica until Evi arrived at 7.15.
Our english session was good, and I can't help but speculate that I may be my mother's daughter after all, with regards to the pleasure I get from teaching.

Then, when Evi left, I got stuck into making the black forest cake and stuffed peppers for tonight's dinner with G and J.

It feels good keeping busy, because I have been missing M something awful. Many times a day something will happen and I'll want to tell him about it because I know how it will make him smile, or what silly joke he will react with.

The countdown (and Banana) is growing slimmer by the day :)

2010-07-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

(Russell said "she is beautiful just as you said". )

This morning the RPM instructor looked like an oddly endearing mix of Malcolm Turnbull and Hughesy. It was a good class, and deep fuschia colours rent the sky as the sun rose on my way home.

My weekend of Nannuppery and bliss resulted in some writing, so I will slowly type that in here. Or I might just be fancy and difficult and scan it instead.

Nothing like a dew blessed forest at dawn to jolt one's soul back in place.

The meeting

2010-07-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Last night Mat and Kili met my Mum for the first time. Roast chicken and chocolate cake were on the menu, but beyond that I knew nothing before I went to bed last night, more nervous than I should have felt. Nervous twinged with a bit of jealousy that one would be seeing the other without me.

Mum's email this morning coloured my day happy, starting right now at 5.45
She said she gets it. She understands my choice. And I'm happy that she knows now the big unfettered heart I live with. She gets his gentleness, even if sometimes it's in an uncouth uniform.

Today after work I am driving down to Nannup, for a (cold) bit of quiet Anna time. Richard will be taking his holidays with Evi and Levi.

So this really is just a short blurb to say Yay, happiness made.

2010-06-26T01:25:00.000-07:00

I miss M so much there's a dull thudding in my body, that tolls of emptiness. Weekends are the worst, when those 142 characters arrive on the small back-lit screen to say he misses me too, yet those fucking kilometres stretch endless and leering. I know it's only four weeks, but only one of those has passed and it feels like forever. Our little home is looking better and better, and Richard and I live well, side by side.

For the first time in my life, my grandfather didn't recognise me when I called. And he didn't remember that i live in Australia. It was the most difficult 50 second conversation of my life. Our brains turn on us, memory abandons us. Ageing really doesn't have much to recommend it!

I've had a wonderful around-the-house day, the garden is shaping up nicely, if slowly - I've eaten all my meals out on the patio in my pool of sun on my wicker chair.
I've made a big steak and guinness pie, went for a long walk on the wintry beach and even popped in to the city for a wander, and to purchase a miniskirt for $4. Score!

Mornings are so cold now, the grass is frostkissed and I too have taken to sleeping with a heat pack. I shudder at the thought of Paul out on the Nullarbor where nights are about -3, and he's in his swag with only his great moustache to warm him.

I'm feeling too mellow and rested to write about our political situation, but I do have an opinion, it's just not active at the moment.

. . .

2010-06-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

A smilingly slow suburban weekend.

Yesterday at 1pm I drove Mat and a rather phlegmatic Kili to the airport for their four weeks of sun and family in Hungary and Croatia. Airport goodbyes suck, and we managed it in record time, and I was surprised at how hollow I felt, driving away.

Thursday night had been further proof that we are utterly back in business. I felt at home, and completely safe and happy.

Last night I went to Kym's and cooked some carbonara (which turned out exceptionally well) and we watched a Bon Jovi doco (sigh) and chatted. I drove squinty eyed home, and dozed in front of the telly until a text arrived just after 11: you are all i think of. Then I went to bed and slept, my head on his pillow.

This morning when I woke at 5, I couldn't quite believe it was the weekend and I didn't have to work! My heart was also a little confused in the pre dawn darkness: if it's the weekend then where is Mat?
Richard and I huddled together while I had coffee and breakfast, then did round the house things until I went to my first Body Pump class in ages. It totally wiped me out but I feel better than ever.

At home I relaxed. Like real people do.

I read Norman Davies' history of Europe in the sunshine, until I felt the nods coming on, and then I lay on the couch, the afternoon sun on my face and dozed some more. I watched an episode of a doco about Ancient Greece, narrated by Liam Neeson. My brain feels lubricated and content.

And of course dinner tonight is in Freo, with Gary and Jo, and probably Max and perhaps one of Gary's PhD students.

Tomorrow John Forest National Park, to do the loop B and I never completed, and then the week begins, and the quiet empty house will not be so mocking anymore.

2010-06-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

In coffee rooms and tea areas all over the Water Corporation, subdued groups huddle around steaming cups and commiserate. It was a thrashing this morning, and more than the 4-0 score, the suspension of Cahill will hurt us in the all important game against Ghana.
I was just chatting in such a subdued group myself, with two collegaues whose hearts are tied to England. Although they tied the US 1-1, it should have been 1-0 but for the keeper, somebody-Green (and certainly, sadly not Seaman) fumbling a ball and letting it through his hands.
Talk of the world cup threw up happy memories from the last two tournaments. 2002 when I was living in manor house and working in Camden.

Australia wasn't in the World Cup then, and I was all for England. The 3-0 thrashing of Denmark was on a weekend, and we stood crammed in a claustrophobic pub in Muswell Hill, breaths held.
On the morning of the match against Brazil I took time off work and made breakfast for Duncan and Muz and we settled in to watch in that filthy little lounge room in North London.
Oh the disappointment. The faces on the train to work later on were those of mourners. Grief stricken and disbelieving. We was robbed said all the headlines, and the big full page photographs of David Seaman with his weeping face. Oh it was tragic.

And of course the last World Cup - with Peter through the winding night to Mosman Park, in search of television. We were high on hope. And then that Italy game, which I watched on my own at Moondyne Joe's in a crowd of strangers who for the first 88 or so minutes were more like friends. And then that free kick. And then the thundering silence.

Whatever people say, it certainly is a uniting force.

As for the weekend, it was interesting to say the least. I am always surprised and a little awed when Mat reveals to me that he is human (seriously) and does hurt and is affected by my mood swings and tearful proclamations. So. I know the first step I need to take is cut back to just one job, and try and live as normal a life as a girl like me is capable of.

On Saturday I drove us to the Old Coast Road brewery and that was a mission to find. By the time we reached Myalup my nerves were frayed and there had already been a tearful episode in the car. But lunch was good, and I felt so happy to have M all to myself ... until I took a joke the wrong way and the waterworks began again. I collected myself and then the talking started.
And continued until we reached Betty and Peter's later that night.
Waves or relief and remorse and torrents of hope. I feel so much more able to handle the next month without him.

And another minor issue. My AFL career began and ended at the Old Coast Road Brewery where we kicked the footy around a bit and I caught it on one occasion with my right index finger, which is now sore, fat and purple...but also makes a great talking point at work.

And then the rains came...

2010-06-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

Last week was quite the exhaustion. Exhausting. Lacksleeping. lackliving. I am considering cutting back on the extra work. Choices.
But oh the weekend has started well.
Last night we admired my photos from Marble Bar and Karijini, and then went to see the A-Team. I know, not a necessarily Anna film, but Liam Neeson. Liam. Neeson. Hmm.

We got home just in time to watch the opening match of the World Cup between Mexico and South Africa. It was lovely to be curled on the couch together (all three of us, that is) and watching soccer. Of course I've lost a bit of soccer-watching patience after watching more AFL recently, but it is a beautiful game.

Today we slept in until 8 and had coffee in the mellow sun before I took dear Richard to the vet to have his first jab. And to have his temperature taken. Up the bum. Poor bastard. But we're all good, and he's a healthy little feline.

Now we're about to go to the Old Coast Road Brewery - and I feel happy and Saturday and sunshine is spilled everywhere and the curtains are open.

Beautiful.

Back through memory

2010-06-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

through the old Floreat, the neighbourhood that so recently was still mine and yet now I am but a visitor.

At lunchtime I drove to the Forum to drop off these two films that I haven't got around to developing. And an hour or so later: the aching colours of the Pilbara and the wide ocean vistas from Exmouth. The dear old minolta still has it.
The photos of Karijini and surrounds are the best, yet there is one photo, from Corunna Downs, where the feeling of utter abandonment and solitude in the universe was most complete. Where I tried screaming at the top of my voice, just to see what it felt like. Even the cows weren't interested.
I look at the photos Mat brings sometimes, of his campsites from when he does the drive from Newman. I would shit myself on my own out there (watching Wolf Creek was a bad idea), but there is also a renegade beauty that is infinitely attractive.

I have so much work, and so little oomph to do it tonight. Richard is working on chewing one of my feet off and Perth's wintering rattles the window.

Are the yabbies more important than me?

2010-06-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

Was the hot topic in my addled brain on Friday when Mat arrived home (finally finally!). Instead of my pork roast, he opted for the fresh haul of yabbies he brought down from Payne's Find (I felt a bit like Tom Cruise coming up against the lamb roast) which we went and cooked at Paul's place. I was hormonal and a touch hysterical, I've really missed him these last few weeks where the weekends seem to disappear without trace. The yabbies, however, were bloody delicious!

So on Saturday I woke feral and unhappy (and really, all created by myself for myself, because he was lovely the whole time) and decided the best way to cure the mood was to go to Bunnings. I bought herbs and peas and beetroot and asparagus (dare to dream) and set to work planting before I headed in to Northbridge to find the Moon Cafe and go to the poetry reading they have there apparently every Saturday. And you know I couldn't do it. I mean the going to the reading. Finding a park in Northbridge was hard enough, but when I walked into the cafe and saw the cohesive group in the back room I somehow felt a pause that wouldn't allow me to go ahead. On the walk back towards the gallery where I was parked I saw Janet Jackson (the poet, not the singer, thankyouverymuch) looking not much different to five years ago, when we had more in common than perhaps we do now.

I ate a sandwich at the gallery and read the newspapers and sat for a while, in the pooling warm sunshine of late afternoon. Then I bought a watch in the Myer stocktake sale and came home. And from then on, the afternoon and the evening were wonderful.

I came in to the house to find Kili on one couch, playing playstation, and Mat on the other with Richard in the crook of his elbow, both of them dozing.
We ate dinner together with candles, and even Kili finished everything but the pecan stuffing from the roast. The chocolate-mocha-chilli custard was a hit.
Prince of Persia the movie was not.

Yesterday, after a wonderfully sunny Sunday breakfast at Hilary's the boys went south for some blokey time and I fired up the lawn mower, and Richard retreated under the Landie. It was glorious, being outside all day. The lawns took ages, because I have let it go for too long, but bit by bit and bag by bag, I got it done, with another trip to Bunnings in between. So now I also have a new compost bin, that Rich and I assembled together, and some rustic terracota pots that I've put around the lemon tree as a bit of a border.

Then when it was all done, I sat and listened to random French country music and read my book. M and I went to Paul's to finish the cabbage and then watched Underbelly at home before a very unrestful night began. Stupid dreams, and cockroach encounters in the bathroom in the middle of the night. When the alarm went at 4 neither of us could get up. So we woke again at 6.30 and now it will probably be 11pm by the time M gets back to Newman, but I'm glad of the little extra sleep for both of us.

Today: analysis with Richard asleep at my feet, gym later on, then perhaps a drive to discover my new beaches. And of course, a little more pottering in my beautiful green kingdom.

The first day of Winter

2010-06-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it?"

The days are excruciatingly short. Mornings are dark and sharp and cold and night falls suddenly, surprisingly like a wrong turn.
The car was fogged up this morning, so that my visibility was craptastic almost as far as the station.

On the shuffle today:
Paradise City (twice)
Sweet Child O'Mine
I Should be so Lucky - and here I had to put the book away (Batavia's Graveyard- bloody good) because my smile was just too active.
And then, crossing the carpark? Run to Paradise.

Work was awesome today, although it started at 4am. My mind is too busy and healthwise, in terms of food and exercise i'm living awful days.

The last few days of last week were spectacular. I went to Oxford Street books and bought a book of the best new Australian poetry, and the first poem was Adam Aitken's Pol Pot in Paris. And it gripped me and swung me round the room and then shook me into action: Banana you'll never win the Nobel prize if you don't write stuff and send it away.

So I pored over literary magazine sites, and listened to a wonderful new initiative called Paper Radio- and heart Jon Tjhia's velvet voice again, stretching through memory over the years. There's amazing stuff out there. And the Freo first-thursday-of-the-month readings are still on, and there's a place in Northbridge that does readings weekly.

Mat and I had a beautiful dinner on Friday, and lots of talk.
He is the only man I know besides my dad and my grand-dad, who wears PJs. Proper pjs, not boxers and t-shirts. I adore it.
I giggle every time i hang them on the line.

On Saturday, we met the neighbours on the other side. A beautiful young family, and the husband is from Melbourne - so we had an instant over-the-fence-talk-connection.
I replanted one of my frangipani trees, and cleared the weeds from where I want to put my herbs. The big ugly tree will have to go, that's where my garden bed will be... and I'll sort out some photos soon too.

Waiting for Godot - where did I see that play previously? I have memories (but they may be fabricated) of Axel Whitehead playing in it at school...? But the production at His Majestys was wonderful. I was a little tired and perhaps a tiny bit hungover and the theatre was overheated, but I felt solidly at home in Beckett's hopelessness of hope and tragic tussling with time. It's a wonderful play.

She could wake dreamers and split hearts with her night beauty

2010-05-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

He smells baby-like, and milky soft. Right now his tiny head and one white paw are sticking out from under my vest, and his little body nestles sleeping while I work. This is bliss. Not so much the work (the 15th hour of it today) but the quiet, purring company.

Ah work today was good. More achievement. Little achievement, but that's enough for me.

Bud sent me a replacement mp3 player- with all the shuffled random Timea tunes and a bit of Ira Glass on it. I love her endlessly.
Actually it's been a good few days for catching up.
I spoke to MM over the weekend - and learned what Costco is, and learned that in some cases it can be as dangerous as Bunnings.
And I spoke to Lee today - after more than a year of silence.

Ooh and Gary and Jo are having me to dinner the weekend Mat and Kili go home to Hungary.

The rain wet the clothes on the Hills Hoist this afternoon, even though I left work early to race home and take everything in. Alas I left them out there, droopy and dripping in the gray backyard.

This is a nothing much post. Just happy. Blinking tired (nothing unusual there) but happy.

Forgiveness

2010-05-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

I am learning that to apologise is often easier than forgiving.

Last night in my solitary, furious, self pity I thought of grand gestures and something - fuck - anything to make the night memorable. So I wrote to Gareth. And I apologised. Of course it's too little too late, but at least I've done it, and I don't expect or really want a response or any kind of contact. I just want him to know that I'm sorry. So.

And then today - all of today has been flat and crap with more wallowing - and, amazingly more gifts from my beautiful colleagues (yay organic gardening book!!). And then, just after four M called and apologised, and I couldn't say anything for the big fat knot in my throat. So what makes grudges stick so insistently? I wanted to shout at him and say no it's not okay, when really it is. We all have shitty days, and shitty weeks and stressful times. Some deal with it better than others, and some can concentrate in two different directions at once. Some, but not all. And that's okay too.

So at least now I am going to the sail and anchor with a lighter heart. And new knickers. (Well, I had to buy something extravagant if he wouldn't, right?)

30

2010-05-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

and oh there's a lot of love.
It's twenty past seven and I'm already sat down to work for the night.
There were flower (pink carnations) and a book (about Batavia) and a very rushed dinner in Hilarys...but no long looks and no relaxed toying with time because for tonight I still can.
And I can't forgive excuses to study and rest up for tomorrow because I know the nights I have bargained with, the sleep I have gone without to make sure a particular night is special. Fuck practicality.
If I had one wish for my 30th birthday, one I know is not possible, nor right, nor clean would be for one more night with the Adam I met the night the sailors came to Freo. To be back in that yellow room in Wray Avenue when the world and all time had stopped.

Today was full of beautiful things. Until I came home from work it was effortless and special and beautiful. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe being a dad and busy with a proper job is too much, but I don't think so. We were just going through the motions and it's only been six months.

And then Dale called. And that made most of it much better. Because I remember how to banter with people that love you. They might forget, which is okay, but they love you, across years and across states. That's important.

I think I put too much worth in the princess treatment, and maybe the lack of it is what 30 is all about. But I loved Joe for kissing me today, and A for kissing my hand, like a knight. And the flowers and chocolates and the excitement.

So- for want of something more special, I have my soundtrack of powderfinger, gary jules, garth brooks, bizet and ska-p and will work through the last of my metrica.

Goodnight...

You took the words right out of my mouth

2010-05-13T03:19:00.000-07:00

Friends eh.

I always thought I was good at apologising. God knows I've had to do it enough. But does the fact that I don't want to keep apologising over and over mean that I don't care about salvaging the friendship? I'm not sure - and this situation is utterly foreign to me.

It seems my vindictiveness is alive and well, despite being away from hugh for well over a decade!

the circles around me are changing and i'm not sure if i mind as much as i thought i would.

Suburban life

2010-05-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

I had my first real suburban morning today.

In my dream I was shoveling chocolate cake into my mouth when my alarm rudely sounded. The room was still dark and the air was biting cold. Mat insisted on making coffee so I had time to traipse around getting ready.

As dawn cracked the sky, we were already out of the house, in the car and on the way to the station. Being driven to the station, catching the train - how delightfully pedestrian!
I burst into the clean Perth morning and shivered happily in Karen Millen (oh those were the days). After a coffee that was more mirth than caffeine, I stopped at the Information office to get a new smartrider card.
The service I received reiterated why I'm in love with this place. So now I have another smartrider, and another 20 bucks or so, floating back onto it, sometime soon.

I love my job. I am having small success after small success and JA - the lady from the business for whom I do the most work - said I've been doing better than expected (in a nice way, of course).

Last night after a mad tidy up at home, and a quick bout of Metrica, some of the Tuesday ladies and I went to Zumba. I found it more difficult, my hips felt more concrete laced than ever, but by the end of it I was buzzing. Evi drove me to the station, and I called Mat and he picked me up in Greenwood.

At home the smell of fresh soup greeted me, and a warm kitchen. And we sat at opposite ends of the table and worked. He on his ultrasound studies, me on a new short story. This quiet life is what I've always wanted. And if not always then for the last three years definitely. I don't feel like I'm constantly looking over my shoulder now, fearful of time.

I am so full of the happies today I think they're leaking out my ears...

2010-05-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

Her leopard print cigarette case reminded me of a 21st century oscar wilde fan. her generosity was lovely and unexpected.

the rest of the weekend was heavy but full of beautiful moments. There were some ups and downs with M on Sunday - there appear to be some ructions in his heart about all these good looking male friends I have, but i'm on and on at him about talking about stuff. So last night finished much better than it started, and after an hour spent with me lying in the tub, and him sitting on a chair in our quiet suburban bathroom where we went back and forth, amid sniffles and sighs from me - we went to bed smiling and snuggly.

My honest long talk over a loooong breakfast in Freo with VC was the highlight of the weekend though. To say things that even in my head sometimes are taboo. That this is not the great love. Or at least not the greatest. That although it isn't, does not mean this is some terrible compromise.
I can't base my life around dreams, and I can't be with dreamers. He has to be a doer, and M is, and that's enough for me.
The greatest love passed and I'm just glad it existed.

So here is the start of my suburban life. Coffee at sparrow's far and dew on the grass; clackety clack down streetlit sidewalks to the briskly awake station, freeway roaring on either side. I'm looking forward to cooking dinner in your kitchen that we're going to make ours.

2010-05-01T05:16:00.000-07:00

I dream into an imagined past.

Of swinging Hills Hoists under a ruthless sky and endless innocence in burning summers.
Of sticky mornings and days that last and winds that carry no threat.

Change. Gentle change.
Where boredom and certainty live side by side. Bedfellows in a lemony sunrise.

That's all I want. A heavy, cloying certainty. A sureness.

No surprises. No jolting joys and no more questions.

I want to know that you'll be there next week; flights as regular as flights are.
That we have habits and ways.
Our not identical but always the same coffees, the song of the beer in the bottle, the assurances in sleep.

And that the mysterious stirring in the night time is not a threat.
The sharp jarring of stars on my tongue as I go, rickety and hopeful down the rutted road between my twin pasts.

Long forgotten, oft remembered, I wake.
I wake.

I dream into a different past. I wake into another life.

Macska

2010-04-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Will our two fridges fit side by side?

And where will we store my bed?

And will you let me get rid of that hideous leopard print linen once and for all?

And what if my cane furniture gets wet in the rain?
(Don't worry, I have tarps we can cover it with)

I will miss the flame trees that line my street, and the view of my city from the balcony.
I watched both sunrise and sunset today (and I wonder why I am tired) and really believe that the warm light on the trunks of proud gums will be as beautiful in the suburbs as it is in Leederville.

I listened to the buzzing of the universe around me tonight, when I had - oh I don't know - about three minutes to myself and felt the soft round shapes of hope under my hands.
Work continues to surprise and humble me.

The reasons why this is home continue to pile up.

And for all the embarrassingness of my dear Dad, I have made better friends with Margo, and I'm glad they have been here, and now they understand too.

I love my Dad because he'll eat five day old chocolate cake, just because I made it.

2010-04-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Dad and Margo are in town, and the last few days have been full to bursting. Bursting with new places, and gratitude and sharing and busyness.
Mat surprised me with a delightful dinner at the Essex Restaurant in Freo on Thursday night and two bottles of divine Eagle Vale merlot (silly boy shouldn't let me be king of the wine list if he wants to watch his pocket, but there you go)...
In the breezy Freo night afterwards, I guided him up to Monument Hill again, and only when we were at Solomon St did he realise where we were going. The lights saluted gently and I felt at home both in my skin and in my city.

On Friday began the big move - and in the evening Betty and Pete came and we all shifted and hefted and groaned together, before collapsing on the now empty lounge room floor in Bibra Lake and scoffing pizza and garlic bread. After B and P left, Mat and I rolled out the mattress and slept in the echoingly empty house, oblivious to the zizzing electricity and the juddering trains.

I had oodles of metrica (still have) to complete, so the rest of the weekend was a little disjointed, and I saw M much less than I would have liked. He spent most of Sunday and part of Monday lodged in the wardrobe (seriously), assembling and disassembling and securing.
The kitchen is small, but gas powered, and I can't wait to make it my own a little more. And that will happen. I sent the email that will get the ball rolling today, giving up this lease and steering me in the direction of that new life.

And when I arrived on Saturday night - we might have both been tired beyond movement, but the bed was made with beautiful brand new linen, and I got to choose my side. Small things.

When Mat met Dad I felt a double wave of amazement and love. At how respectful he can be, and how unperturbed he was at, well, the social embarrassments Dad and Margo brought with them, like a whirlwind of strange old-fashioned-ness.

I had my first day of autonomous work without AO today, though she is back tomorrow. I am dwarfed and awed by the systems I am supposed to be working with, but luckily I am not afraid to ask questions and smile for help. I adore the people I work with.

A short week, and already the weekend so full of plans it feels impossible. But it's not impossible. And in place of flame trees I'll have the lemon tree that was replanted on the other side of the yard - big blister to show for it.... he wouldn't say it was for me, but it was.

I wonder how
I wonder why
yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
and all that i can see
is just a yellow lemon tree...

(I first heard that song, sitting in Andreas' small black Beamer, in a dazzling Munich night, a very long time ago)...

2010-04-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

The sun crept slowly down, painting the sky Australianblue as we sat propped amongst big embracing pillows. This is what it's like to be grown up, I guess.

Come meet me at sunset, at the Black Salt in North Freo, I'll buy you a drink and we can talk.

At home in the carport I sat for stretched minutes, while Andrew Porter finished a short story reading on the book show. It was harrowing, but beautiful. It reoxigenated my blood for the rest of the night.

Yesterday was a long day, and mostly good.
Sometimes the shit-bucket tips over on Sunday and I am left to start the week harbouring angry thoughts and some frustration.
But the start of Sunday, or somewhere in the middle, was beautiful.

In an indiansummery day, redolent with birdsong, we sat sipping coffee and leafing through the Sunday papers, and your hand never left my leg. Summer skin.

Today is my third (and for this season, final) Carmen instalment, and I was saying to Betty yesterday how wonderful it is to have a catalogue of experiences from which to draw and compare and decide whether this Escamillo was the worst, or just middling?

The new job is glowing and yesterday AO pushed me (with a firm shove) in the direction of the Indigenous Affairs department which may one day result in a dream job.

And tomorrow, Gary and Jo to dinner: sociology and gulyas.

The storm

2010-03-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

Mother Nature kicked our arse yesterday. When I came out of my SAP training class just after 3pm, the sky sagged toward earth, so heavy there was almost a wheeze in the air.
The clouds were dark and the air was beyond humid. It was damp. But still we doubted whether the storm would finally break.

It did.

The power went out at work around 4pm, and we stood pressed to the windows, watching lightning rent the sky as winds whipped trees about and the hail pelted all. By the time we made it out to the carpark, we were ankle deep in water (and I blessed this part of the world again, for being so clean!) and parts of Cambridge Street were properly flooded.

The first wave of the storm passed and there was a misleading calm, when the sun came out and Perth's skyscrapers glimmered so beautifully under a massive rainbow. I had power at home, and took the veal out of the fridge, ready to cook when the power blew. So I had a can of corn kernels and walked from one end of the flat to the other, looking at the different views from the different sides of the house. Perth had disappeared. The cloud was so low and dark, that I couldn't see further than the other side of the street.

Thunder cracked. My hands shook as I lit the candles and settled down on the carpet, next to them with Cloudstreet open and my head resting on pillows. My windows rattled and the wind raged and when it subsided, an eerie pale blue light settled over everything.

It's a lesson in humility when you realise that although you have no power, or hot water or the means to cook or heat, you are still so much better off than many others. I was dry, I had light, and I wasn't prey to the elements. And Winton was a marvellous companion.

This morning the carpark is still flooded, and the heavy scent of eucalyptus permiates everything. There may be more rain today, but we're all okay and the day is beautiful.

2010-03-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd write a big heavy tirade about confusion and love and rah rah fucking rah... instead, I'll just mention how completely perfect last night was.

After a little swim with Steph in an overchlorinated pool, I had a bit of a drive around Perth by accident ("Ooh, I'll just take this turn off, surely I can get off this road before it becomes the freeway"... er, no) and then G and I went to Brighton beach, where I voiced my wussness for a while, and then plunged (timidly) into the crashing waves with a body board strapped to my wrist.
I haven't felt this unco since my last step aerobics class in high school, but my god it was about 80 million times more fun. I screamed like a maniac and swallowed sea water and when I got home my bathers were chockers with sand. But it was beautiful. The sunset, the water (the wind once out of the water was a little serious) the big Perth night that was (and is) all mine (sometimes I share it).

At home I set to baking and cooking (havasi kifli and carrot and coriander soup).

Tonight it's fried oyster mushrooms with garlic aioli served with hopefully a little less thinkingtoomuch...

How well we know

2010-03-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

Fat Yak and cigarettes in a rapidly cooling Perth night. A Perth night that you now love. How bitterly ironic that you could only discover this wonder on your own. Only away from me can you rejoice in the little things and love the different rhythm of life here. (But cricket? Really?)

Was I stifling? Quite possibly, although you say this isn't so.

Our talk was soft and overlong, and today, other than the hangover, I am saddled with the weight of heavy memories, the burden of knowing you too well.

2010-03-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

It is the end of summer here. The sun has lost her ferocity and the morning wind that blows is serious. No more balmy caresses, we're heading for beanie weather. Or are we?

It is midday, high noon and bright as breath. Under the canopy, a lacklustre wind flutters crackling leaves as sweat trickles down the back of my knee.

Yet in the photographs it is even hotter.

The women's faces are slightly more defined than the men's, where all you can see is the stern line of the moustache and the beard. On the women it's as if someone had blown ash across the surface, but the features can still be seen. And they sit, men and women in formal rows, with nothing but sky behind them. The ground is so flat it disappears and bodies hover, held aloft by the relentless heat.

Small, ramshackle buildings stand behind them in some places, in some places they stand in front of mine entrances. Faded now, that life looks fresh and brand new then...it was the frontier, speckled with hardship and lived under a blazing sun. All black and white photos evoke this longing in me. This feeling that things were so unique then. Less cliche and bullshit. Of course this may not be the case, but at the very least we were all more beautiful when we were young...

This red dust wouldn't be visible in black and white. Or the contrast with the aching colour of the sky. Life lived in technicolour.

The brisk morning wind has blown sunrise into today

More suburbia

2010-03-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

There is a Hills Hoist in the backyard of the house M has just found. Less flashy than the others, yet this one is in Duncraig too, and features an enormous back yard - plenty of space for teenager retreats and any lawnmowing fanaticists to indulge.

The image of this house utterly put me in mind of 37 Colorado Drive. In a good way.
Remembering those pastel Geelong afternoons, everything an even shade of grey until the clouds rolled in, or the sun exploded through for a few minutes. Those were afternoons when I didn't have work and money on my mind (I hardly remember what those days feel like, but still) and I curled on our couch, often with cat in tow and gas fire burning, and read book after book.

Outside suburbia breathed, the city many kilometres away and even the nearest shop a good 15 minute walk away. Behind the house, though not directly, loomed ... and now i don't remember the name of the hill... the one with the road running up to Anakie, where Chanel college used to be. The big hill with the big powerlines, crackling static in the gathering dusk.
It was home before I truly realised what a big thing that is.

There are only ten or so photos online of this house, and who knows if M will buy it at all, or whether or not I will move there if he does, but seeing such a typical (at least for me) home, with low ceilings and wide rooms, an enormous backyard and a sunny kitchen looking out on it. Two parts comfort, one part longing...

Mistake

2010-03-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

Yes it was - picking up a wheelbarrowful of theatre and opera tickets from the post office and then noticing that Serendipity Books was 'just over there' ... I should have just returned to the office. Should have. Didn't.

I have now a book about Marble Bar - the whole book, all about life in Marble Bar. There was also an exquisite Graves "The Greek Myths" Folio society edition, but I managed to leave that there. There was Browning and Rosetti and aaaarrrgghhhh... I will need a better paying job if I am to become a regular visitor.

Looking at pictures on facebook today, I realised why people use the term 'glowing' about women who are pregnant. There was a photo of MM and her Bump, and something has infused her face, some ...for want of a better word...glow. Simply beautiful. And somehow more adult.

The weekend passed in a flurry of not very much at all.
M took me to a beautiful dinner in Freo (excellent steak) where we had long conversations and some fabulous shiraz. We drove to Monument Hill afterwards, because what's a night in Freo without seeing the cranes... it reminded me of the first giddy night we went there and he kissed me and I completely lost my head.

On Saturday we had a day of errands and cleaning planned, but shortly after we'd washed the Land Cruiser, M got the news that the house had sold. So instead of running around, there was champagne and cigars (I know, what?) and much excitement.
We were invited to a barbecue in the evening, Swanbourne no less, and by the end of the night I was dancing with a mannequin - having moved from the bubbles to the vanilla vodka.

I started Sunday with "I will never drink again" and then we spent the day driving from open house to open house, M seeking out bigger and better garages, me ogling the beautiful kitchens. One or two serious contenders but even just the looking was interesting. Travels in suburbia.

Then on the way home, when we went to Welshpool to drop off the company car and drive home in mine, Norma decided enough was enough and her battery made an awful end-of-the-road coughing sound and wouldn't budge again. We sped to B & P's, borrowed a started cable, went back, now she started, so M drove to four different petrol stations until he found the right kind of battery (all this at 9pm) and then put the battery in when we got home.

Summer appears to be over. Okay, it might be 31 degrees outside, but the morning was positively brisk, and started much later in terms of sunrise, which washed glorious hues over the tree in front of the balcony. And I think, a few short months, and the flame trees will be in bloom again, and here I am, full circle yet so much has changed.

The bloody Piano Teacher

2010-03-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

That's two hours of my life I'll never get back.

The sweetest thing connected with that film is when I borrowed it from Blockbuster in Wembley, and the pimply young guy at the counter looked at it strangely, looked at me and said "This is one with subtitles...is that okay?" I could have kissed him.

But the film itself- I dunno, am I becoming a prude, or boring or lacking critical thought (the latter quite possibly)...but it felt gratuitous...not to the extent of Hole in My heart, but gratuitous all the same. I failed to feel a smidge of sympathy for the woman at all and the final scene? Give me a break...The music was perhaps the only redeeming feature and the earnestness of the young seducer. Isabelle Huppert played unbelievably well, I just thought the story was unbearable (and not in a challenging 'good' way).

It did however, feel remarkably good to make my own bad movie choices, without explaining myself to anyone. Maybe I should try and avoid French films for a while, and get back into the Spanish ones. Gratuitous sex in those too, but with vastly better looking people. Oh Gael Garcia Bernal...hmmm...

While we're on the subject of name-dropping, I bought tickets to see Waiting for Godot at His Maj starring Sir Ian McKellen. Score! See, Perth is practically London in terms of culture.

New man at body pump this morning. With an unathletic name like Bill I thought he'd be a walk in the park. How wrong I was...

My breakfast tomato had the explosions of the sun inside its skin...

Drunk texting

2010-03-02T22:00:00.000-08:00

Receiving a not at all incriminating drunk text the other night got me thinking about drunk texting in general, and the recent drought of drunk texting in my life in particular.

We used to relish drunk texting and drunk phone calls - we somehow managed it on alternate weekends ... you sober, me at the Newport... or me sober and you out somewhere in the wild Melbourne night.
So what changed? Have we stopped drinking? Or were those messages in some way laced with longing that has dissipated, or that we now must, forever, deny?
(And again, in my mind - "You can't repeat the past, old sport")

The CD that arrived recently, with all those old photos - the first summer and ... why subject myself to memories that surge with a power irresistible?

Brighter things:

The snuggled long weekend in Walpole. Tidy clear days out by the ocean, campfire smell as we fall into the tent at dark, waking with the sun, to coffee and the next adventure.
The trip to the winery with B and P- scenes of such cliched and perfect Australiana it made my eyeballs itch.
Trying to sleep on Monday night, while the 26 degree night struggled at the window. It all felt heavy and just a little bit magical.
The text that came at lunchtime today, as I fretted at the bank: "Hianyzol. xxx" and I stood for long seconds, clutching the phone to my chest and grinning like an idiot.

Tonight I have a date with Betty Blue, after some shopping and a bath for Norma. Why do white cars get shat on more than other colours? It's not right...

not The Norlane Pool

2010-02-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

At 5pm today it was 40.1 degrees. I would say I was in heaven, but in actual fact I was at Beatty Park pool, lycra wrapped and doing slow and happy laps.
I love heatwaves like this, when time melts in cliched Daliesque fashion, and life slooooows down. Not for me the airconditioned rabbit warren that is work. Stepping out of the stairwell into the carpark, the heat shimmers the air, like an invisible wobble-board.
Heat radiates and rises up from the concrete, making my shoes ick. I love it.

There is something undeniably sexy about weather like this. And not because of the copious sweating and scanty clothing. You breathe differently, you move differently. You don't even move, you drift. Even the breeze is halfhearted.

Because it's too hot to sleep, the days automatically get longer, and there is time, long beautiful minutes, to stand on suburban balconies and listen to the neighbourhood rustle of 11pm. There's a brief smear of stars above the city skyline and a trembling sliver of moon, and air that is warm as breath.

Nudity goes without saying here; and little besides water passes my lips as the hours pass in the night, and in fits of half sleep half wonder I slowly come to the realisation that it's dawn.

Later: Domayne furniture, where I went to buy some towels, to make home a little more luxurious - M arrives tonight. And the only luxury I am good at is home luxury. Big towels, clean linen, good food... I want to return some of the comfort and luxury he showers me with, in my own Banana way.
So, I was paying for the towels, and I asked the lady at the checkout what these little ceramic doodads were...like gift tags, and she said they were for special gifts, that the receiver would never through away, like something beautiful you would give your Mum if you were moving overseas.
-That's already happened- I said
And then she told me that her daughter lives in Norway. And in the middle of a City West retail mega store, I felt this soft cord of commonality loop around us. Mothers and daughters, cast apart at separate ends of this happy earth, and yet still finding daggy things that symbolise sentiment and belonging. I left smiling.

Later still, I went swimming with Steph from work. I wasn't looking forward to it, and boy was I out of practice. Not with the swimming itself, but with dressing in the one piece togs. I stood there for quite some time, with the bathers pulled up to my waist, trying to figure out where the hell my boobs go and how to fit my arms through. Until I realise that I should have put my legs through another hole as well. I was laughing so hard it took quite some time.
It was also my first time wearing a swimming cap, and that also caused hilarity.

But the best thing was the memory smell of chlorinated water, and the sound of bare feet on wet concrete, and the smell of sunscreen and the happy screams of little kids.

I am full of wonder today. M's plane is late, but I am full of wonder today.

...

I wish I wish I knew the right words...

2010-02-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

Flying blind with music I chanced upon this (or rather it chanced upon me, ringing in my ears this morning) on the way to work. The Whitlams. High school and Melbourne summer days in thin, watery sunlight.
Strange and random, it's a song about kicking the pokies habit, but the music is just beautiful. I listened to it three times until I got to work, and it affected me to such an extent that by the time I was crossing the carpark I wanted to swing my arms and twirl about. I didn't. But I wanted to.

My days continue to be light and sometimes unbearably full - especially on weekends. This last weekend started with B taking the majority of his things from the apartment, before M arrived in orange work shirt as requested. And they ask on the 7pm project, why do women like tradies? Well...

Norma and I had some brief errand running adventures on Saturday morning before M and I drove to Harvey (past the tacky Chinese restaurant where it all tipped in his favour last December) and walked along the leafy creek. My dear old Minolta is back in action, and I relished the clunkyness of it. Of course the photos will probably not resemble the beauty that I pictured but the act of creating made me very happy.

Sunset pooled orange light in the bends of branches, and on long eucalyptus leaves as they melted in the dusk. Leaving the car some way back on the path, we trekked across the orchard, where the deer had left half eaten oranges littering the ground. Logs where pigs had scratched and grunted to satisfaction were also visible, but alas the only animals we saw were kangaroos. And there were many many of them.

We pitched the tent on the farm, between a tractor and a caravan, within plentiful earshot of the cattle. I loved it. The moon was warm and yellow and M made the bed to such a degree of comfort I could have screamed when the alarm sounded at 5. But it was undeniably worth it, getting up at that time.
Morning was just a bright line across the horizon behind the trees, that grew and blossomed in colours as the minutes slid by. And there was no sound, just the crunch of our boots in the undergrowth and the caws of the crows and cockatoos wheeling above. Sometimes the boom-boom of kangaroos bounding away broke the gentle peace but my heart leapt at each one. The novelty of seeing them has not worn off. I suspect it never will.

We walked until 9 or thereabouts and after packing up had a huge fry-up in Harvey before returning home.

I drove some more of B's things over to his new home last night, Norma's boot slap slap slapping in the night traffic. We were sad together when I left (B, not Norma) and when I got home I sat out on the balcony for a while, letting my head fill. But it wasn't all sad. This is the light at the end of the tunnel.

And Hank is back in May....walking Oxford Street in Leederville alone, back when the west was my wild adventure, solitary as I was, he came with me:
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

Burnished

2010-02-17T04:56:00.000-08:00

was the sky yesterday. It was one of the most impressive sunsets I've seen in ages. I was walking along Brighton beach, having realised that the old legs couldn't hack a run after the first body pump in months... But the walk was beautiful, despite the beach being a bit topsy turvy.
I tried to remember to keep my head up, and as I walked along, the sun sank slowly, luxuriously into the ocean, leaving a thin band of cloud, like an afterthought, scratched across the sky...splendid in burnished gold.

We stood for a time when it was almost perfect dark, listening to the crashing waves ... and said "We live here!"

The only not-perfect part of yesterday was my solitary trip to IKEA. Much as I love that place, it is depressing for the single shopper. I stood for ages, with one hand on one set of crockery and one on a different set, and wished more than anything to have someone to share the decision with. White or black? Black or white? I was on the verge of calling my mother for advice, when I realised that there is no network coverage in the cavernous vastness of the store, so the problem solved itself. I got black.

This morning it was pump again, but I am cocooned in this massive fluffcloud of happiness and the smile refuses to budge from my face. Every little thing in these gifts of days I am living reminds me that I am now basking in the light at the end of the tunnel.

The music I received from Bud is phenomenal, and I can't help but giggle as I am ricocheted from Bon Jovi, through Roxette, to Bright Eyes and the Offspring. It is all moods, rolled into one as I walk to work in the confident sunshine over Leederville.

A seagull on the bridge struggling valiantly, nay defiantly, with a full sized slice of pizza. I treasure these cartoon moments.

M is riding in from Newman on a white horse tomorrow... in the shape of a ute, but I know what it really is. He is also clad in shining armour.

full of opportunity...watch this space

Commercial and crass

2010-02-16T07:02:00.001-08:00

it might be. but through the tacky haze of cliches of Valentine's Day, i got this:
a big playful dag who wasn't embarrassed by a requested elvis song, or the lame try hardness of it all, even though wayne the singer was beyond talentless.

in my bag that evening i had the small fairy pendant i received from someone special the day before valentine's day in london - a sort of talisman, for the last time i was treated like a princess.

sometimes i manage to disengage myself momentarily from my frenzied self-involvement... and i really marvel at how un-easy i must be to live with sometimes. with my 'must have anna-time' demands and general stubbornness... i think i have a fair heft of luck that i've crossed paths with such good, patient people.

today, again, was full of pinch myself moments.

Norma took me back to the gym this morning at 5.50 for my first pump class in fucking years (okay, just under 3 months, but it's much the same thing) which was wonderful, though tomorrow i'll be hobbling/staggering. And things at work are bright and sparkly and hopeful. And maybe not career-directioned, but hopeful all the same.
Can I just say- Greek Australians rock. Like, totally.

Tonight was another Tuesday-with-the-ladies...less raucous than last week, this time at Evi's in Ozzie park. My god that woman can cook. Damn her, it was delicious. We watched Madonna DVDs and talked about the 80s and lots of other things and drank disgusting sweet bubbles...

bed calls now, with my last 20 pages of calvino (i really need to start lewis carroll tomorrow) and then a dash of metrica before work tomorrow. later, a walk date, then a run on the beach. time to sit for a while in the sand and watch the sun sink, and remember how fortunate i am to live here.

goodnight - and into dreams, cheese stained and champagne coloured, that won't disturb the "colossal vitality of my illusion"

...

2010-02-13T03:45:00.000-08:00

And night fell quietly, like a whisper- I hardly noticed it. Night fell on somewhat of a strange day.
I had felt for the last few days, through the euphoria and the tumult of celebrations, that I needed some serious solitary Anna time if I was to preserve my sanity. Some people struggle with this need of mine, but it is a very real need.

So this morning after Norma and I went to Karrinyup to cash in my massage/facial voucher from M at one of the most luxurious salons I've ever visited (note: I've only visited about, oh, two in my life thusfar)... just beautiful. The whole shebang lasted well over an hour and I felt deliciously pampered and beautiful. Aaahhh.

Yes, so after that, I popped home to put on bathers, pack some books (I still haven't finished the Calvino), water and fruit and took off for a bit of a driving day...somewhere beachy. Lancelin was my destination, simply for lack of a better idea, short of driving all the way to Margaret River- but I can't afford the petrol at the moment, so that dream was scrapped.

The driving is wonderful. Norma is a hell of a woman, and thanks to Bud I have a fantastic selection of music to listen to (Beirut the band: they rawk!) but I was tired. So tired that I had to pull over twice on the way there for a nano-nap, and once on the way home for a 40 minute proper, drooly sleep. And I still feel like a Mack is parked on my chest. Bizarre.

The landscape is endless out there, and yet I know that further north it is even more endless. But stopping in Lancelin to buy a burger, I was the only sedan in the parking lot. Big men with big dogs and big 4WDs. And little me, with my glasses and novel, and P plates and old age (for a P plater okay?).

Lancelin was windy and wild, sort of exactly what my mood desired. My burger not so much, but my mood, yes. And even through the haze of tiredness, the old feeling (but happily this time, not an escape) to just keep driving. And hoppa! wind up in Geraldton. This country amazes me every single day. No matter where I am.

I find the increase in "Fuck of we're full" stickers and too too many Aussie flags a little worrying, but ... no but, I find it worrying, but I still bloody love it here.

So the road trip wasn't the screaming adventure I had expected, but I had lots of quiet space to think (and sleep) and drive, and although the living alone is (surprisingly?) taking some getting used to - every noise makes me jump - I am loving it. So many open, clean, light spaces in my apartment. And the reading corner I've set up next to my desk? Heaven in an armchair.

Good things are starting/continuing at work- I have started baking again, for a start, which is important, but also career wise, I think there's a decent chance I won't be a PA forever. Fingers crossed.

And a certain happy Banana, has plans with a man, on Valentine's Day. And I don't care if it's tacky. I'd rather have a date, than know that the person I am with did things with the previous girl, but not with me. I should have gone with Dan to see Casablanca at the NFT that year, instead of agreeing with Gareth, and going to the gym. Bah....

And when I came back from my appointment early on Friday morning, M had folded my clothes and done the dishes. Swoon etc.

"Only a house, quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem."

Ladies

2010-02-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a female day.

I picked up my new Camry from Carine, and very distinctly felt that she is a woman, quite different from the masculine feeling of driving the Commodore. So naming will be a bit more difficult. She drives beautifully. Is large and safe-making. And I had that feeling again, of just wanting to drive drive drive. But I had plans already for the evening.

Betty and Eszti were coming over with bubbles to celebrate the newness of the apartment, the car, the generally freshness of life. Later Evi came over as well, and basically the evening was spent screaming with laughter or doubled over with giggles. It was just plain, unadulterated fun.
I made hummus, and we ceremoniously smashed the wine glasses I had got from B - in a bucket, with a view to safety, of course - good riddance to bad ...

And so another day of perfect freedom begins. Dull grey and humid, peppered with echoes of crowsong and the rat-tat-tat of the retic.

2010-02-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

It took some time and stress and work, but I am back to the life I desire.

I have a steaming mug of coffee beside me, I'm listening to the early silliness on Radio National (sleep still eludes me a bit), and the sunrise-tinged morning seeps in through the open balcony door.

On the weekend, M took me hunting. The eerie light hid a mild afternoon, and through my considerable nervousness I still marvelled at the vast landscape. We were only about 150km from Perth and there was just red soil and big skies and these huge cars. There was something so primal about the whole exercise.
I won't say I didn't almost faint at some point in the night, when the smell of expired animals just got too much, but there was less blood and more excitement than I expected.

So, mine and M's cultural exchange has begun. I have gone hunting, in April we're going to Carmen. He's given me a hunting book to read, I have promised him some Winton.

In the next few days, I hope to gather up some lazy minutes, and write about the adventures in Bremer Bay, the even bigger adventures with Bud recently and just settle into a happy routine that I've yearned for, it feels like forever.

. . .

Life is good

2010-02-04T16:32:00.000-08:00

I met another Commodore yesterday. A white one, owned by one very charming elderly Frenchman. I want it. I almost wept when he handed me the keys - exactly the same shape and everything. And it goes, like any good Commodore should. M and I are going back today to double check.
Then I swung by the Herdsman for a head of Savoy cabbage and went home. I felt totally drained. I was crushed when I realised that the screwdriver was missing from the little toolkit, meaning I couldn't dissemble the desk in the study, meaning that full perfection would elude me. The stains on the carpet (what talent is required to destroy something so completely, in such little time?) are not budging, the lino in the kitchen is a nightmare... and I was so tired I kept crying. So I settled for putting all my clothes away, and making the meatballs, but the savoy cabbage remained untouched once more.
I had a fitful sleep, I awoke at 4 to some serious thumping and scratching in the roof (rats? amorous possums?) but slept again until 5 and when I got up, all clouds had lifted and i was full of energy and smiles.

I washed the windows and cleaned the last piss stains from the toilet door, I eradicated the last maggots hiding under the lining of the sink in the kitchen, I removed the dead bird from the chair outside the apartment and I put the new linen on the bed. It all looks seriously good. And clean.

I am almost 100% back to how I should be. Squealing with excitement at the colour of the morning light - this morning I took photos of the light on the bricks - and being unable to keep the smile off my face.

I purged a lot of anger with the Dyson and the scrubbing last night, but allowed myself one tiny vindictive victory with the Domestos.

From Winton: an explanation of why (for me) living here will always 'be enough', make me happy, hopefully keep me grounded.

"There is no one else around. I flinch at the sound of a school of whitebait cracking the surface a few metres away. It's alive out there. After the still, exhausted Aegean, where nothing moves but the plastic bags, it seems like a miracle. Call it jet lag, cabin fever, but I am almost in tears. There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings."

Discoveries

2010-02-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

And I don't mean the egg streaked measuring cup in the cupboard, pretending that it's clean, or any of the other 'surprises' that I've found while cleaning.
I mean the vibrant-green bugs that tapped against the dark window at 11.30 yesterday, keeping me company in the long, thin night.
Or the wheeling black cockatoos that rent the morning with their cries while I ran several Jacob's ladders worth of stairs, up and down with garbage, and the microwave, and the mushroom kit.
Yesterday I bought new linen, with stars on, I felt I deserved something after the way the afternoon panned out.

When I was in the relationship, I couldn't imagine a situation where we wouldn't be civil; friendly, even. But here is that situation. Here is my vindictiveness rearing its feminine head, armed with matches and wickedness, my frustration and irritation. Ugh. Over it. And now I can't imagine a situation where we are friends once more. Not everyone can be like Dale.

But the anger is (mostly) gone now, and I am home.

Dom dom est os...

2010-02-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

I have the brand names and jingles of cleaning products screeching through my mind in operatic frenzy. My hands are scarred and raggedy from encounters with steelo and scourers and sharp oven edges. My brain is comatose in a milky mist of domestos and white king. I am going home!

The last couple of months have been a complete mess, with pockets of perfect, clear light interspersed to help me keep my sanity. I think I have. Although I have been caught in the bathrooms at work, making "hair product" noises that Timea would be proud of.

So, pockets of light - people's goodness and generosity: from lending cleaning items, to rolling cigarettes, to parking the car when I wasn't capable... these small acts of beauty keep me believing that this year will kick arse. Not ass, arse.

And now that I am finally moving home - although this week it still feels a little alien... a landscape littered with beer bottle tops, cigarette buts and foreign hair ... I am making it mine again. The doona is on the balcony, soaking up sunshine and fresh air, drying sheets of linen adorn the house, mingling fabric softner aromas with the nag champa I am constantly burning to counter the stench of bleach and ammonia.

But the frangipanis made it, and this morning when I had my first cup of Paul back home on the balcony, it felt right.
I will try and recap major events, now that I'm more or less back on line, and back in action.

. . .

2010-01-18T05:04:00.000-08:00

This year has started ... well, the year has started. I have had shiny days full of quiet sparkle and gratitude, and then days like today, when by the end of it, I just want oblivion in sleep. Except sleep has been elusive lately...and not always for good reasons.

I have been looking for apartments, ignorant of the glaring fact that B is still in our 'home' and I am still guilty enough to keep forking out for it. Pete, Betty and M sat around the table at the pool and berated me - in the gentlest way they could - and told me that it's time to move on this decisively.
I'm trying, and I'm so tired of being a 'nyuszi' - a wuss rabbit who is scared to speak her mind. And then one day, after too much whisky I will just explode and say things I'll regret for a long time.

So that's what I started to write last night. This morning, all rabbity traces are gone. I parked the car at the apartment, and lo and behold who walks out of my apartment, looking for all the world as though she were at home - why it was Balint's ladyfriend. And she was the straw that broke this camel's back. The same way it was Damien Rice that did it with Sacha.
Tomorrow is the last day I pay the rent. From there on in, it's no longer my responsibility. No more Mr Nice Guy. I felt wooooo charged up with assertive power. I've written the email, had it checked by Pete (I think he's feeling pretty proud of me today) and sent it. I'm nervous, of course I'm bloody nervous, but enough is enough.

The other big thing that happened yesterday was my bidding farewell (and christ it was teary) to the best Little Car this side of the black stump. Seeing what I had done to it again was pretty awful, but a lesson has been learned.

The apartment search continues apace... with little success thusfar, but I'm not giving up. I'm geographically certain of "home", now I just have to find an abode to complete the picture. Either that or pitch a tent on Monument Hill...