Solstice Swing

circling back

2011-11-23T23:30:00.000+11:00

late at night is when i forget your feelings.

the edited version

2011-05-22T23:16:00.002+10:00

you make me want to not coast and you see all these things in me that i kind of already hoped were true and truly in me. and you're so kind, gentle, thoughtful, and the people around you are so incredibly fond of you; i sort of wouldn't believe it if i hadn't seen it, how well you live. you're so gosh darn hopeful and i find it totally fascinating if a little bit scary because there's something overwhelmingly huge about all the positive energy - it won't fit in my head, not even close. but here you are and you're so very present, so impeccably sincere, and then at the same time just the tiniest bit delightfully insane.

New things

2011-05-09T23:05:00.003+10:00

more and more all i know how to pray for is blessing. less and less i trust my own ability to intuit what the good is in this or that situation or moment, and so i just ask for blessing upon blessing - for the world, for you, and sometimes for me. bless this, father. let it be a blessing. i think this is a breakthrough in my prayers (humility and settledness and just being a creation).

most

2011-05-04T23:55:00.003+10:00

i went to bed at six pm because i couldn't keep my eyes open and then i woke up at eleven pm and ate some nutella toast and around the same time i realised that there are more important things like kindness and thoughtfulness and compassion and energy and optimism and just this kind of lovely indefatigable earnestness.

In jeans

2011-04-27T20:29:00.000+10:00

I am the incredible shrinking woman.

upon reflection

2011-04-27T00:01:00.000+10:00

dinner dates please.

an easter miracle

2011-04-25T21:57:00.002+10:00

you're starting to seem like a lifetime away! and jesus is just so close, so incredibly risen.

edit: also, i'm so much more me without you, and i can't for the life of me work out what i was thinking when i imagined it otherwise. also, i've realised that i fell in love with the wrong friend. and that's really quite a shame because now it's very done.

developing images at the local store.

2011-04-16T23:51:00.002+10:00

you're both really fun! now for some straight talking please.

My midnight

2011-04-07T23:40:00.004+10:00

liminal spaces are more real, more realistic,
than those road-crossings announcing heres or theres.
beginnings and endings are pretty myths of hindsight,
a retrospective patterning of mess.
i do like this about sunny autumn days.
i like how these months point down while
springtime points inexorably up and up
(you can't wipe her smile off her face!).
the beautiful things i see are almost always dark,
greyed out like the knit on my back;
so, i guess, the in-betweens are mine -
mostly in a gorgeous fraying decay.
my mind is a racing one, a soft dark cave full
of abstractly-rendered projections and premonitions.
some passages are built up and round;
some narratives are threadbare loose.
this is ok.

Welcome to the Window

2011-04-04T18:07:00.004+10:00

It's all up to you, my friend.
It might be what you always wanted but
You might not recognise it
Straight away.
You see?

Close and lips and
Cheeks heavily brushed
Blushed, touched but
It's not quite real or it's in fuzzy focus
At least.

For my part? Nobody knows
Except the King and he's worrying about
Other things and that's
Good for the world,
Which likes generally to turn.

I have so many conversations.
I spill and speak. And
It's hard to make out the register
Of these date-stamped improvisations.
You know?

There are makeshift moments that my eyes
Distort behind the scenes.
I can't say where will and wont
come in in all of this.
It's probably nothing.

answer yes or no.

2011-04-03T22:30:00.002+10:00

my lists have changed! this is an interesting new development. referable to my own anxieties or...? always a bit of that, though i try to ask God to make me want, and then walk, the most holy and selfless route. do half-prayers really count though? the not-quite ones that seem to barely rise as high as the ceiling. regardless it's fun to have something on the go and to feel what i imagine to be an average amount of joy when i open my eyes after another (sleepless! always too sleepless) night.

The years change with me

2011-03-31T01:11:00.006+11:00

Some people look different from the side. They turn their heads and they're surprisingly unfamiliar; even abstract. The people I meet with and eat with are ciphers to me, sometimes: shape-shifters. Identity (mine, mostly) frays at the edges more often than can reasonably be considered desirable, and in fact so regularly that I can't really dismiss it (me) as contained or neatly codified. It's a lot about memory, I think, and all tied up with the way I forget names of novels and acquaintances so easily. Ironically it's a lot about being singular, in probably as many senses of that word you can conjure. I think of James on hopelessly sleepless nights like this - of the man who sways to and fro with the winds of flimsy doubts and doctrines. Is it winds or waves? Either way. Sometimes I feel too multifarious for the faith I profess; far too messy and dispersed. Do you, new friend?

coffee

2011-03-28T18:23:00.000+11:00

never say never.

right?

2011-03-23T22:24:00.003+11:00

needs to stop caring needs to stop caring needs to stop. ok? oh for someone to not blow it - would be nice, wouldn't it? and, well, i probably need to make something change so my insides are less raw, etc. there's a peculiar grief in leaving home and picturing yourself as less alone than you really end up being, or than you really are in that all-of-life ultimate sense. (don't i know it.) actually, it's probably me - the ruining everything, that is. or it's just the whole universe and the person holding it together, except he doesn't ruin things as a matter of course so yeah i guess not which means - i don't know. that fanciness and niceness and kind of profundity to the everyday that comes with things that work out or are in the process of working out is what i think i want. for kicks. i would also like to sleep for several days, so good night.

A parable for the two of us, lately speaking

2011-03-20T23:20:00.005+11:00

"Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair. Curiosity, sadness, and desire were behind them now; this was a true returning - to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car, and she did, but they did not seem close, because for that you have to seem to be growing closer. Nothing stands still."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1941), The Last Tycoon (London: Penguin, 2011), p.114.

freaken hell.

2011-03-19T20:19:00.006+11:00

why do i still care? what the hell is wrong with me? jesus, take this away from me forever. i truly, completely, absolutely wish that i'd never met him.

Friday Night

2011-03-04T21:32:00.002+11:00

my days are full but my nights are empty.
i walked out to put the garbage in the bin and i wished you would drive up, playing out the romantic gesture that used to always seem just around the corner, just off the sidewalk, just outside my house. and not because i 'deserved' it, whatever on earth that means, but because you had to, you loved to; you couldn't not.

my spoken faith

2011-03-03T19:43:00.003+11:00

to change the world / to shatter the spell / to settle me down / to illuminate tomorrow / to break into pieces / to reel everything in / to let everything out / to sit at His feet / to release the tension / to unravel order / to puncture the everyday / to step up and out / to drive away into the sunset / to elucidate, to explicate / to take away these frames / to drink up eternity / to be filled with breath / to answer with reality / to tell fairy tales / to orchestrate happy endings / to make him miss me / to fall to sleep.

sufjan stevens - i walked

2011-03-01T23:11:00.002+11:00

i walked
because you walked
but i won't probably get very far

kate nash, the nicest thing

2011-02-14T21:57:00.006+11:00

I wish I was your favourite girl.

I wish you couldn't figure me out, but you'd always want to know what I was about.

I was I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep.

Basically I wish that you loved me.

I wish we could see if we could be something.

Me too.

2011-02-14T12:40:00.006+11:00

From my Sunday addiction.

i asked for you.

2011-01-30T23:10:00.005+11:00

have you ever prayed a one-off prayer? one that you really feel and need to send out of your heart, but one that you won't repeat? because even though you really feel it you're scared to invest too much in it by making it a private liturgy.

it felt audacious but very right to tell God what i want. and now it feels right to leave it to him and to breathe. i have a beautiful freedom in Jesus - every freedom, in fact, except the freedom to deny righteousness. i feel more calm than i should about all the complicated tomorrows, and i have a funny feeling that this stillness might be the rest and repentance Jesus has been longing to give me. i hope he holds me to it.

a typical week.

2011-01-26T07:58:00.004+11:00

my boyfriend and i broke up, one of my best friends isn't really able to be my friend anymore, and my mum is convinced that i have an eating disorder. plus phd stress, ongoing family dramas, and some weird anxiety problem. i'm doing ok but goodness am i ready for the texture of my life to smooth out a little bit. this really isn't sustainable.

The Weekend Fall-out (or, Psalm 13)

2011-01-24T12:38:00.002+11:00

Sometimes it's not right to read all the way to the end of the Psalm.

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and everyday have sorrow in my heart?

Sometimes it takes a long time to be able to read to the end of the Psalm. Because sometimes the hope rings hollow.

Chemistry.

2011-01-19T12:40:00.002+11:00

"Louisa sang as she came over the crest of the hill from the white folks' kitchen. Her skin was the colour of oak leaves on young trees in fall. Her breasts, firm and up-pointed like ripe acorns. And her singing had the low murmur of winds in fig tress. Bob Stone, younger son of the people she worked for, loved her. By the way the world reckons things, he had won her. By measure of that warm glow which came into her mind at thought of him, he had won her. [...] A strange stir was in her."

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923), New York: Perennial Classic, 1969, pp.51-52.

Note to self.

2011-01-17T14:30:00.002+11:00

EVERYONE ALWAYS CHANGES.
EVEN A FEW MONTHS IS TOO LONG TO KEEP THE FEELING.
NOT ENOUGH.
DOING GOOD DOESN'T USUALLY PAY OFF.

oh - year's end.

2010-12-31T00:55:00.000+11:00

love me love me.

A good night

2010-12-16T23:44:00.000+11:00

"You'll be gorgeous, as usual."

the brim.

2010-12-15T11:52:00.003+11:00

i have a bad feeling that all i love yous are wishful thinking.

to the weekend

2010-12-05T22:45:00.002+11:00

sometimes i feel uncertain and sometimes i feel uninteresting but then other times talking to you is the funnest thing ever and i think, yes, ok, settle now.
xx

2010

2010-11-30T18:05:00.002+11:00

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams
William Faulkner, The Unvanquished
James Agee & Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
Joan Didion, The White Album

Pale

2010-11-19T14:03:00.001+11:00

Real Life isn't really as good as it should be, you know?

waiting waiting room

2010-11-18T11:32:00.004+11:00

Shed the superman/woman urge. No one is perfect, so don't expect perfection from yourself or others.
Learn to relax with walking, a sport, meditation, yoga, tai chi, laughing, singing, etc, and practise regularly.
Visualise how you can manage a stressful situation more successfully.
Find a hobby that will give you a break from your worries.
Live a healthy lifestyle with good nutrition, adequate rest, regular exercise, limited caffeine and alcohol, and balanced work and play.
Share your feelings with family and friends. Don't try to cope alone.

If you think you have too much stress in your life, it may be helpful to talk with a doctor, clergy member, or other caring professional. Reactions to stress can be a factor in depression and anxiety.

National Mental Health Association fact sheet, 'Managing Stress'

Blindfold eyes and cottonbud ears

2010-10-30T18:28:00.003+11:00

Keep quiet, keep still,
little movements ruin everything.
Choke back, reel in,
fancy toppled and troubling.

My lips are far too loud
for this rented room we're in.

Again and again

2010-10-25T16:29:00.000+11:00

Gosh, girl, you can be such a fool.

I promise I'm trying.

2010-10-21T16:28:00.004+11:00

Do you ever think about the fact that we, each, have just one tiny little life here on this spinning sphere, and that it makes no sense not to simply swallow our pride or pain or so-called mind-spun 'issues' and just be with the people we want to be with? I saw a photograph today and I couldn't shake the nonsense of it all, the inexplicable waste of this train wreck year.

Grief, etc.

2010-10-18T10:49:00.001+11:00

I still don't understand.

Last night

2010-10-06T11:43:00.003+11:00

I slept, under a sheet, and a blanket, and a patchwork quilt, and the weight of my disasters. I woke up feeling heavily imprinted on the mattress, as if my body mass had doubled and sunken.

over-reading.

2010-10-01T14:04:00.005+10:00

by thursday i forget tuesday, by monday i forget saturday, by friday i forget wednesday, and in the moment i forget everything. i'm not very good at holding onto temporal ends, frayed and flimsy as they are; five minutes ago is not too short a break to stop my head from shifting you entirely. tirelessly tripping over the loose hems of myself, alone (or something).

lisa hannigan - i don't know

2010-09-03T11:32:00.002+10:00

If you walk my way
I will keep my head
We will feel our way
Through the dark
Though I don't know you
I think that I would do
I don't fall easy at all

You are a disaster to me.

2010-07-27T23:35:00.004+10:00

I hope for you to hurt, despite knowing that will chew up my insides all slow but sure.
I watch where I walk and where I think because you're around every single corner in my head.
You made me really skinny (I eat hot chips without fear): not sure that counts as a plus side.
And you still exist, and I'm still not happy about it, although this other thing over here makes me feel a little tiny bit normal sometimes.

A couple.

2010-07-21T23:18:00.005+10:00

I'm standing on platform 23 again.
This unobtrusively pretty girl - well,
she sort of looks up at him like she's got him.
Sort of looks downwards and then upwards like
she sort of knows she's the most charming to him and
the flowers in his hand, upright, agree.
And he's all leaning against the pole there.

Flowers are one of those things that catch value
from their own brash and brassy mortality.
People say that about about humanity, people I've heard,
but they aren't right about that.

Anyway their hips are touching just and - well,
I sort of look away but the way that they
can't even see anyone else is sort of maybe fascinating
or atrocious or something else lucidly-coloured.
It makes your eyes hurt. You?
You only gave me flowers once or twice.
Maybe you remembered the romantic
boulders and blocks in my head or maybe, you know,
you just didn't think of it and that's
another delicate little excuse I make
for the overestimated you I invented.

11:45pm.

2010-07-08T23:44:00.000+10:00

i hate you i hate you i hate you.

Ugly ever after.

2010-06-29T14:22:00.003+10:00

a colourful, smiling picture from a few years ago: "you look less angry at the world". how horrible to imagine my anger unfurling itself in my gaze, seeping out of my pores, assaulting those brothers and sisters who've grown used to my tears these last months.
i really, really hate you. take this away from me, lord jesus.

on love songs

2010-06-27T16:17:00.004+10:00

who do you write songs for now that you have tossed me aside? whose words do you steal now that you have no right to mine?

on not singing

2010-06-22T21:41:00.010+10:00

i don't know how to sing hallelujah these days. i just put my hand to my heart and pretend i'm not trying not to cry and hope that everyone else is genuine enough about worshipping jesus that they don't notice. (they are genuine. but they do notice.) i love the prayers of my real flesh-and-blood, with-me-in-this friends, so much that the tears escape quicker than i can even pretend i'm not trying not to cry. but i want them to be your prayers, your arm around my shoulders, and your eyes willing my tears to stop. i wanted, just then, in the imagined space before the 'i' that begins this pathetic little paragraph, to write something on here that would show you how much i hate you, but i love you too much to hurt you like that. i perversely wish that i could protect you from the knowledge of how shockingly badly you have treated me. it sort of disgusts me how i still want to protect you. because, no, there is nothing that you have done to deserve my love. there is no doubt in my mind, or anywhere near my mind, that you are not going to meet someone better than me.

STILL CANNOT BELIEVE.

2010-06-08T16:05:00.003+10:00

YOU PASSED ON YOUR DEPRESSION TO ME LIKE A COMMON COLD.

yael naim - far, far

2010-06-01T12:18:00.005+10:00

Far, far, there's this little girl. She was praying for something to happen to her. Everyday she writes words and more words just to spit out the thoughts that keep floating inside. And she's strong when the dreams come 'beause they take her, cover her; they are all over. The reality looks far now, but don't go -

How can you stay outside?
There's a beautiful mess inside.

Far, far, there's this little girl. She was praying for something good to happen to her. From time to time there are colours and shapes dazzling her eyes, tickling her hands. They invent a new world with oil skies and aquarel rivers. But don't you run away already - please, don't go.

How can you stay outside?
There's a beautiful mess inside.

Far, far there's this little girl. She was praying for something big to happen to her. Every night she hears beautiful, strange music - it's everywhere, there's nowhere to hide. But if it fades, she begs, "Oh Lord, don't take it from me, don't take it"; she says, "I guess I'll have to give it birth."

Just look at yourself now, deep inside - deeper than you ever dared.

Angry easily.

2010-06-01T11:18:00.004+10:00

people say crap to other people without knowing anything about them or about their hang-ups or difficulties or spiritual battles. and not suspecting that things that might appear trivial or superficial to them can actually carry huge and unwieldy baggage that they have no right to weigh down further with their thoughtless, black-and-white 'honesty'. surfaces aren't always just surfaces, and the symbolic freight of objects or things is always disproportionate to the actuality of those objects or things. obviously: that's the basic tenet of the symbolic realm. just because something looks lightweight doesn't mean that it's not really, when it comes down to it, when you penetrate those surfaces, when you think for more than two seconds before opening your mouth, when you get over your vague and arrogant assumptions about what's going on or not going on with people you barely know, when you get over yourself, when you actually shift to selflessness and pick up the load for yourself, incredibly, indescribably, painfully heavy.

i have no good reasons.

2010-05-25T09:55:00.005+10:00

"'I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in love.'
'Ah, yes I am, Mrs Osmond!'
Isabel shook her head. 'You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that's not how you strike me.'
'I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss Osmond?'
'No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.'
'I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons.'
'Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw for them.'"

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 494.

update

2010-05-24T15:59:00.005+10:00

7. i am newly clumsy.
6. i am a bursting balloon.
5. i am a disappointed future.
4. i am too far from thankful.
3. i am woefully self-indulgent.
2. i am an open bible and a closed mind.
1. i am without you.
0. i hate that that is my number 1.

retail

2010-05-20T22:05:00.004+10:00

new pajamas don't actually make me feel any less sad, but there's something a little bit nicer about being sad while wearing new pajamas.

waiting for an escape

2010-05-18T10:30:00.003+10:00

in a year when everything is broken and falling apart and wilting away, my dad has been so kind to me.

fragments

2010-05-12T13:55:00.007+10:00

I once read the sentence, 'I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake'. That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen.

* * *

Don't hold yourself like that cause you'll hurt your knees.
Well I kissed your mouth and back - but that's all I need.
Don't build your world around / volcanoes melt you down...

And what I am to you is not real,
What I am to you, you do not need,
What I am to you is not what you mean to me:
You give me miles and miles of mountains and I'll ask for the sea.

Don't throw yourself like that in front of me.
I kissed your mouth, your back - is that all you need?
Don't drag my love around / volcanoes melt me down...

I kissed your mouth.
You do not need me.

* * *

Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

(C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed; Damien Rice, 'Volcano'; Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking)

You never really liked the Psalms that much.

2010-05-11T16:12:00.006+10:00

If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were raising himself against me,
I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
as we walked with the throng at the house of God.

Psalm 55:12-14

Unintentionally suspended -

2010-05-06T21:37:00.003+10:00

I'm waiting and it hurts a lot. Please hurry up.

Liar.

2010-05-04T13:10:00.006+10:00

"Private assurances are terribly easy to break; they evaporate like the morning dew. After all, it is only your word against mine when I say that you misunderstood me and I didn't really say or mean what you thought. We are deeply prone to self-deception in this area above all."

From a book by Christopher Ash that was lying on Eirian's bedside table the night before she got married. On why marriage needs to be a public act.

the reality is.

2010-04-25T20:46:00.003+10:00

i miss you terribly and i hate you for it, and i keep asking god to take away the dreams and the anger. you said that you hurt me too much and that you had to put a stop to it, but nothing you did to me then comes close to what you are doing to me now by suddenly and completely cutting yourself off from me and wiping out all the beautiful things along with the ugliness.

ben harper - amen omen

2010-04-03T15:46:00.007+11:00

there is a boy playing guitar in my living room right now. i wish it was you but it's not and it's absolutely breaking me, still.

*****

i don't know where you came from
and i don't know where you've gone.
old friends become old strangers
between the darkness and the dawn.

amen omen, will i see your face again?
amen omen, can i find the place within
to live my life without you?

i listen to a whisper slowly drift away,
silence is the loudest parting word you never say.
i put your world into my veins
but now a voiceless sympathy is all that remains.

anon.

2010-03-22T13:04:00.002+11:00

all my words are bloated with other people's words, and i hate that you made me a cliché.

instant

2010-03-18T13:59:00.002+11:00

this feels so wrong. i have nowhere to put my feelings.

still life.

2010-03-14T21:19:00.004+11:00

hope does not disappoint us

whether well-fed or hungry

we have the mind of Christ

then we shall see face to face

the fragrance of life

unveiled faces

the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort

who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light

a quiet life.

Letters 2.

2010-03-09T13:17:00.005+11:00

i'm looking forward to one day being able to answer 'good' when someone asks me how i am
but then again the last time i looked forward to one day it didn't work out so well

Letters.

2010-03-08T13:08:00.001+11:00

i imagined myself with a new name

By the way

2010-03-02T16:19:00.002+11:00

I'm not desperate. But you should have fought for me.

denial

2010-02-19T13:20:00.001+11:00

a month spent in a big black cloud. so hazy i can't even think of an original metaphor.

i'm really scared, just quietly.

You Have Forgotten.

2010-02-16T13:27:00.005+11:00

People keep telling me I'm coping really well but they are wrong. I wake up crying every morning after fitful nights passed in and out of horribly realistic nightmares. I want this warped version of you to get out of my dreams. To step outside the hazy edges, morph back into the man who loves me, decide that i'm worth fighting for, and come back home to me for real. Because love? It doesn't just bail.

God says

2010-02-15T16:59:00.002+11:00

That I have loved right.

forever in an hour.

2010-02-01T10:15:00.003+11:00

i'm regretting all the times i took for granted just walking down the street holding your hand.

i don't know why i never imagined those walks coming to an end.

i want to string together beautiful little sentences to make you want me. but really, i just want you to want me. i didn't think it was really that much to ask. i didn't think i would have to hold you down and twist your arm.

thousands of kilometres shouldn't mean anything if you really cared for me. but then again i can't, cannot, face the prospect that you don't really care for me after all.

do you really want to let go of my hand?

will that really make your life better?

i guess you don't understand how much you've hurt me. i simply can't believe that you could have done this to me if you had any inkling of what these days would be like for me.

faraway.

2010-01-30T19:29:00.004+11:00

what on earth are you thinking? how can you be like that when i am like this? why do you think things are so hard for me right now? who do you think made me feel this way?

i cannot

2010-01-26T14:32:00.003+11:00

handle this.

you

2010-01-09T12:19:00.001+11:00

you know what? life is really hard. really un-cookie cutter.

new year.

2010-01-01T02:42:00.001+11:00

down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down.

What a lady once called a misplaced script.

2009-08-28T13:07:00.006+10:00

It's so hard being the one there. On the end of the phone pretending I'm not crying so I won't make you feel worse. Noises of the city. "I can't hear you." "Don't worry." "I'll talk to you later." "Ok." Things turn so quickly into everything angry and ugly. And you're far far. Off the end of the phone, off a cliff and not yourself. Outside of yourself and outside of us and there's nothing I can do and it makes me something. Sort of mad about it. Sort of fervent and something something else. We started the week with funny, silly, lovely words and now it's just some covered-up tears and you all large in your head, all full of everything that is now and all that you don't think will change in months and years and time. Bursting things, uncommon. Refracted in the window between this minute and the next is all possibilities all inevitabilities all improbabilities all. Elated or embittered? Happy and sad are mixed up brawling, up in each others' faces and flailing limbs like they're in a stupid bar fight. The boundaries are murky and indistinct. And where are you in all that? And where am I? And what on earth am I supposed to do about it? And what have these last few months been about? And when do I start picking up all the debris on the floor, on the bottoms of my shoes everywhere I go? And who is supposed to tell me it's all going to be ok? Because I'm ready for your entrance and I'm out here blind with a bundle and a broken one.

Heap

2009-08-19T14:51:00.003+10:00

The rhythm of heart-dwelt drums.
Stepping washed uneven pavements.
Strung-together notes, paper chain inspired.

Life in the past.

2009-08-16T15:14:00.004+10:00

There are roses. And heart-shaped balloons and
confetti type things that
are annoying because they get everywhere in all the little
small crevasses and gaps, all the in-betweens.
There are days set aside and tied up in sentimental sentiment
and also ribbons.
There are scribbled graffittied blue-lined
notebooks that say nothing except how much we all want to
bridge the white space of the page that's like the white space
both denied and admitted with a childish ever-after,
a word,
used by everyone and the biggest most obnoxious
cliche in the whole wide world. Yet
exactly what I mean. You
and a blank space and me and some air making the car
windows fog up with messy alphabets.
There's no epiphany here not even a grassroots one not
even and then a whispered prayer.
You hold me from so so far away.

a missed telephone call.

2009-07-29T15:02:00.002+10:00

trust that as soon as it really comes to crunch time with my thesis, i look back to this neglected little interweb scrap.

the final lines of the title story in the collection i'm analysing for my thesis (or supposed to be analysing, right now) read:

"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."

i'm having one of those hearing-heart days. the beating is conspicuous, and i can feel it - it's trapped and uptight. an ugly, tired feeling.

one unexpected offer that is as unsettling as it is exciting.
one hope for more guidance than i expect He'll give.
one hopeless wish; one love with a head full of hard and sad things that can't get out or over, and that i can't fix with all the beautiful words in the world.
one growing sense of panic at the largeness of this thing i've agreed to do.

too many ones. i know it's childish but i want you to decide and end all these, please. i'm not grown up enough for all these adult-sized dot to dots.

Obviously

2009-03-08T14:13:00.002+11:00

We Should Always Be Together.

notes

2009-03-03T19:58:00.003+11:00

there's room for you here
we'll work out the specifics as we go.

an adventure

2008-12-05T13:44:00.003+11:00

the sea is loud late at night, without competition from sea-soaked, sunscreened families, and the relentless buzz of nearby traffic. it's very noisy, and it's very quiet. they're completely alone on a soft pillow of sand. moored. it's dark: midnight's grey washing all around; water a deep creamy coffee brown, white-tipped with frothy crashing waves. it's cold, too. a tough, gritty wind that rises, falls, whips up sand, blues lips, and chills bare legs.

she's wearing a summer dress. she wraps herself in a beach towel, and in his arms. they talk about big and lasting things.

how much.

2008-11-30T13:59:00.006+11:00

my mind is constantly occupied with finding inventive ways to describe this - constantly because none ever satisfies. it is really quite fun. it's liberating to move beyond the realm of the easily explainable and therefore codified, controlled, boxed and ribbon-tied. we are anything but that, and it's fantastic.

p.s. thomas and isobel are finally dating. this is very cute.

angus and julia stone - mango tree

2008-11-05T16:52:00.002+11:00

sweet, gorgeous, lovely. an old song that never tires.

from her lips i heard her say
can i have you
caught up on what to say
i said you do
i said you do
i said you do.

heavily backwards

2008-10-23T19:17:00.004+11:00

I want to tell you what it feels like to stand defiant and small against the wind.

And what it feels like to do too many things and then to stop and awkwardly catch breath but not quite enough so you still feel sort of tight and without.

It's not like in the movies. But then you all know that already.

I want to tell you about the day all the words became cliches.

cross my heart.

2008-10-21T09:49:00.001+11:00

i woke up to pixelated words that made me smile
a lot
i am eating toast

water and some other things

2008-10-18T18:27:00.007+11:00

unstable and over-thinking, thinking so much i no longer think at all, atop a messy wave, blown to and fro by imaginary winds, wanting quick assurance, doubting you, without need, without cause, without. this without that i negotiate so poorly. having received so much and known so deeply and been filled so full, but feeling so scattered, forgetting the things of five minutes past, unable to pierce a murky view, UP and (down) always, bobbing. breakable. vulnerable. living inside a man-made box that's all misfiring cerebral circuits, and conjured conversations that never were or will be - at least not exactly. and that's the point? the spontaneity? cluttered chaos of spoken movements in the "instance". the thrill of the chase of words across the air and imprisoned on the page...you you you. i'm heeding His word but needing your guarantee. (this makes no sense, and you know it. you do.) x. answer respond reply rejoin react. keeping it courteous and aloof maybe / except i can't do polite and beige. only operating overthetop. in ter act.

atmosphere

2008-10-17T13:25:00.003+11:00

yes i've been sick for almost a week
yes i just bought cupcakes for my family because i have a feeling i am in trouble for never being home
yes i had very little sleep last night

but things are really really really good.

attacked by to-do lists

2008-10-12T14:21:00.001+11:00

i'm so incredibly moody these days. my smile falls at the smallest thing. it's really quite annoying.

rachael yamagata - be be your love

2008-10-11T17:32:00.000+11:00

8am

2008-10-11T12:41:00.004+11:00

there was a girl with dyed black hair and a heavy metal festival t-shirt on the train yesterday morning. the bands had names like massive hammer violence and it was all black splashed with red. it was an all ages festival...seemed weird to have such a h.core tee for an event that welcomes twelve-year-olds. she sat down near me and started drawing little emo princesses in a notepad. they were kinda dodgy but she was being really precise and careful, and she'd scribble them out if she didn't like them. and then she put arrows next to them and wrote appropriate, matter-of-fact little labels like 'long black hair'.

bright

2008-10-08T21:41:00.005+11:00

take my hand - take me up,
move me above the suburbs,
above the grid-mapped day to day.
higher than winter-tinged clotheslines
and copper-coloured rooftops,
leaving meandering white marks
like a wayward scrawling skywriter in the blue.
we're dreaming above in a vibrant now.
there's you and me and a patch of grass
and the landscape shifts while the sun slips;
we're sitting in the sky.
there's crumbs in our pockets
(and flowers in my hair)
an elevated picnic:
we're parked in mid-air.

some leisurely cafe-penned poetry that stutters and stumbles, trying to tell the tiny things that make this this. small, flat symbols pressed on torn paper, gleaming behind this computer screen - little flighty figments, indentations insufficient to capture thoughts and words and looks. but words are addictive.

landlocked behind rolled up windows. you say good bye a million times but you don't leave.

a today psalm

2008-10-05T14:13:00.002+11:00

i wish i had written this.

the historical pursuit.

2008-10-02T10:27:00.004+10:00

looking for the source that will - change - everything. that will explain the fullness of the then in the vibrancy of the now. (this is a pipe dream.)

film

2008-09-27T22:23:00.004+10:00

i am sitting in my room at my computer writing a music review. lara just came in, i showed her something, she made a cryptic comment, i asked her what she meant, she wouldn't tell me, i asked her again, she wouldn't answer, she went to leave my room. i tried to stop her from leaving by holding onto her arm. but i am sitting in a rolly chair so it wasn't all that effective...i just ended up rolling along behind her on my chair.

we laughed about it for about five minutes.

writing an essay on shakespeare.

2008-09-24T23:35:00.001+10:00

hmm my ideas are everywhere. some are in my head and some are written on paper and some are typed in Word but i swear there are some that are floating out the door of my room right now and others that are balancing precariously on my bookshelves, light fixtures, piles of clothes and cds, etc...

everyday rendezvous

2008-09-23T13:05:00.001+10:00

so apparently i'm more of a girl than i thought i was. who knew?

// forward

2008-09-17T21:23:00.007+10:00

i think that
in every relationship that ends
- with the exclusion of those that close with raised voices, slammed doors, enraged insides -
there is always an uneven distribution of affection.
the boyfriend likes the girlfriend more than the girlfriend likes the boyfriend
or the girlfriend likes the boyfriend more than the boyfriend likes the girlfriend.
one of the
two.
one is more heavily invested, more deeply attached, more fully immersed.
so the aim is
to find a person who likes you as much as you like them: a compatibility not only of faith, values, personality, aspirations
but of intensity.
more accurately, to find a person with whom an equilibrium of romantic feeling can be reached and, most importantly,
sustained
with
out
end; which at some point inevitably involves a shift into the realm of choice - a decision to love with longevity, with a stunning openness, indefiniteness, scope. maybe because of beauty, but definitely through and in (and not simply despite) ugliness.

trying to explain

2008-09-14T13:54:00.006+10:00

growing twelve hours older in an empty field. surrounds coloured sepia and some murky swaying trees, in slow motion, in half-light. spinning time with easy words and held hands. sampling an increasing repertoire of memories and in-jokes; keeping the volume low. exactly.

"what are you thinking about?"

at home in a sleeping park with bare feet. tripping toes to a lazy beat across grass punctured with suspicious bindi shapes: a rock? a little white flower?

sight muddied by night but the landscape is surprisingly clear and it's that one a.m. kind of lucid.

"you don't think i planned this?"

ok so

2008-09-05T22:50:00.002+10:00

i often write cryptic notes to myself on scraps of paper, post-its, open notepads. invariably i can't decipher them later. i think perhaps i am a genius in those scribbled moments but then i forget how to be a genius all the other times. ok bye.

letting trains go past

2008-09-03T19:40:00.003+10:00

all grinning and it's ridiculous.
excited!

Typing Sunday.

2008-08-31T21:54:00.004+10:00

Today has not been a particularly enjoyable day, apart from a sneaked spoonful of Nutella and some funny messages from friends, but I am up and yes and full. Jittery. If I were into bad analogies, I would liken it to popcorn with its salty smell of promise. Actually let's be honest, I am into bad analogies.

I am writing an essay explaining how the development of the spa and then the beach-side resort in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected changing attitudes to the body and society. It is interesting but remote to me today.

I didn't enjoy church tonight.