You didn't answer my question

Did you get me a ticket?

Miss you less, see you more...

Love to know you better.

(Faithless says it best. I'm chanting day and night, chanting in the hope that they will come do an Aussie tour.)

Who the fuck are you and what have you done with my cunt, cunt?

Um, is the news about Jen Cloher or Judith Wright? It's one of them, right?

Send me a photo of yourself. I've forgotten what you look like.

I'm leaving for NZ on Tuesday morning.

It's time ...

Do you know what I mean?

This is Water

Today, a quote:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

(Waffle waffle waffle - good waffle, but lot's of it. And a bit heavy)

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some intangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

(More waffle)

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

(Waffle again)

It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

So, when Brig bangs on about how life is 'all about choices' and we roll our eyes, maybe she has a point. (But she's just kinda bastardised it with her corporate speak)

I really want a tattoo.

Escaping for Dummies

It's a luscious mix of words and tricks
That let us bet when you know we should fold
On rocks i dreamt of where we'd stepped
And the whole mess of roads we're now on

If you're wondering how to leave my place without making any excuses or if you simply don't like goodbyes, you have two options:

1) Pass the Dutchie any which way you like. (x at least 2) Wait for the floor to come up and greet everyone. Laugh maniacally and say, 'My work here is done'.

Or if you'd like something a little less aggressive, yet equally effective;

2) Play Don't Panic by Coldplay and Caring is Creepy by The Shins. And watch as your magic is woven.

We live in a beautiful world

Yeah we do

Yeah we do

Bugs, bugs everywhere ...

People bugs
Travel bugs
Fun bugs
Ideas bugs

They itch.

Remember this?

A maiden never bold:
Of spirit so still and quiet,
that her motion
Blush'd at itself.


Jiofdhn jifnh hoikek oohjenl, jowhioekm herhon ppkwej

If my conscious mind were to pick the subconscious to bits, I would note undertones of wanting the masculine in my life as seen in ‘Jiofdhn’, - If you look closely you will see the name John in there. Upon further inspection I would see that I’m hankering for some Asian-inspired food, hence ‘hoikek’ which is very similar to Hokkien noodles. I would see that the pressures of career are settling in more than usual ‘jowhioerkm’ – a convoluted mix of my name, Jo, and the word ‘work’. And the yearning for some kind of release from it all, as seen in ‘herhon’ a close resemblance to the word ‘heroin’.

I suppose that incoherent, nonsensical jumble of non-words makes more sense that I could ever try to make.

The earth has spun away from the sun
And the night has come to claim me
Away from the couch I will come
And really, who could blame me?

When You're a Boy

Heaven loves ya
The clouds part for ya
Nothing stands in your way
Clothes always fit ya
Life is a pop of the cherry
You can wear a uniform
Other boys check you out
You get a girl
These are your favourite things
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it out
Theyll never clone ya
You're always first on the line
You can buy a home of your own
Learn to drive and everything
You'll get your share
Boys keep swinging
Boys always work it out

Don't beat around the bush ... Throw yourself into it!

I know what I know

I'll sing what I said

That's a thing that I keep

In the back of my head

We had a pea party the other night. A carnival of open-mouthed clowns and some kids to piff peas straight into them. Man, do they roll? Yes they do. There was a lone pea in the hallway the next morning. It made me smile and think of you, my pea cunt. Did you feel embraced with the love of the CC's yesterday morning when you opened your front door to a sea of two minute noodles? I can see your face in that moment and hear your snort. (Chuckle, Dr Hibbert?)

It's your first day at school! I'm in your pocket all day today - squeeze me if you need to.

It's very windy today. There's no doubt about it.

P.S. You are a cunt. You're never around. We* should call you BIC and graduate Ron to Assistant Head Cunt. All you need to do is say 'yes'. It's easy. You should try it.

* The royal fkn 'WE'. It can't be helped but it's mighty irritating. Especially when you are included in something that you don't want to be. An opinion of some sort and you're just sat there feeling like you've been bound and gagged. Spoken for (not in the good way). Like the guy in Office Space. 'Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...' And then later, 'I could set the building on fire.' (Which reminds me - Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.) I think I actually do speak for all of us when I use 'WE' and if I don't, well - FUCK EWE ALL. Another footnote that's longer than it needs to be.

I exist in the realm of brackets and footnotes. That's my metaphor and I'm sticking to it.

(Oh, fk it! There's this MP3 that I really want you to hear. It's funny as all get out. Next time I see you, I'll force it upon you. It's a Stephen Merchant rant about a pig called Vera. Very funny. Ooh, Heart of Glass just came on. Must go. Can't type with one hand.)

Our Song

What is our song?

You must be joking. Does 'I was standing...' ring any bells? (I was being sweet, not trying to seduce you with a couch in a club in the 1980s)

Yes, there was a huge amount of energy in the room on Wednesday night. It's really mind-blowing that we've all landed in each others' laps like this (some literally, others metaphorically). It's very speshool. Very speshool. Whirlwind, indeed. I think I need to stop prefacing any impromptu catch ups with 'a quiet one'. Invariably, it ends up being quite the opposite. Intentions go astray very quickly, don't they? I can't believe I gave you the 'Get your fkn hands of my woman' look as you left. You know I trust you. (That's the jealous streak in me, cnt.)

Yes, get your bro and Lis hooked up, tout de suite! S'pose there's no rush. It'll happen when he dumps the scrag and hangs out with us more.

The sun is shining. It's 23 degrees outside. I'm hoofing it to the Vineyard tonight for a 'quiet one' with PC* Then we're watching Steven Berkoff at the National Theatre.

My favourite lyric**:

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

* Pete Cunt
** Or perhaps it's actually this: He ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl

We've had this conversation before, haven't we ...

Cunt?

To be sure.

The intermission is over. Time for Act II

You first.

One Eye Crying

The Sanema - a tribe living on both sides of the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Four out five of its men are practicing Shamans who take an hallucinogenic drug called sakona, which enables them to communicate with the spirits of the jungle surrounding them.

Another BBC doco that has elicited a couple of dribbly tears out of my right eye. It's the sense of wonder. First, there was those shrimp on the ocean floor - darkness. It was the sense of enormity of this world, how species can exist - do exist - and we will never experience them, except through documentaries and books and stories.

Tribe - the BBC doco with Bruce Parry (one of the luckiest men alive) who roams from country to country in search of remote tribes and lives with them for a month or two, trying his best to inhabit their worlds and teach us a thing or two about them. It's absolutely spell-binding. This tribe, the Sanema, live such a primitive existence (by our standards). Once a nomadic tribe, they've now settled near a larger tribe, mainly due to the dwindling resources of the forest, and to be closer to the western medicine that they now sometimes rely on.

Translators! Heavenly translators. Just to listen to what these people have to say - about this Englishman who's come to live with them, about the spirits that inhabit this world, about their own relationships. It's fascinating. There was a little girl, ten or eleven, who is to marry a Shaman who would be, perhaps, triple her age now. She and her friend sit in front of the camera and talk candidly, giggling like any ten year old would world over. And the frankness of what they say - something like, 'He sometimes doesn't treat me well. He throws things at me and makes me sleep on the floor... if he treats me like this when my breasts have grown larger , I will run away to another village'. She says this with such stoicism (probably the wrong word), with a wisdom that belies the age of her little body (people are people after all, no matter their age, right?). Her face earnest. Then, a moment later, she giggles as her friend tickles her face.

I guess I cry sometimes because life really is so beautiful. It's bloody amazing and I wish I didn't get so caught up in the ugliness of its wallpaper! (Thanks again, Mr Wilde) I was thinking about the concept of 'God' tonight as I was driving home (listening to a podcast of a man who was wrongly incarcerated for the murder of his foster child) and wondering. I guess, in a way, I do believe in God. I believe there's something that binds us all -like the invisible umbilical cord of Middlesex. No matter where we are, who we are, there is such a thing as the human spirit. There is more than just the gift of speech, compassion, etc that sets us apart from other living things. Our spirit is universal. Is it human? I think it is. (Is that an oxymoron? Or am I a moron? Dunno, just thinking in typed words.)

I know what I'll be doing this weekend - watching the three series of Tribe back to back.

I'm in the bath. Twisted so I can type. I'm really uncomfortable, but I thought I'd have a Carrie moment with a laptop and some bubbles. Ha!

(Bloody Byron - beautiful poem the other day. You're still a cunt for not coming in October. I may never forgive you. But then ... I may.)

Windswept

Conversation out in the Smokers' Corner this afternoon turned mighty confusing (and a little embarrassing)

One of the new faces around the traps was there, so I finished my conversation with you and opened up with a comment about The Weather. Something about how windy it was. The guy (another who shall remain nameless simply because he is Indian and I can't remember his name and probably never will) told me that it was much more windy about an hour earlier. I made a comment about how weird it is that there's so much wind but not a cloud in the sky, and immediately realised what I'd just said. (D'Oh) But then I had to take it to the next level - you know, making the situation worse than it had to be - by asking him if you need clouds to make wind (or something like that). I followed this with a 'I think I'm going back to Uni'

The wind swept the blush right out of my cheeks. (No tell-tale physical signs of embarrassment, just all the verbal ones!)

Truth is, I wasn't embarrassed at all. Perhaps this conversation never took place. Perhaps it did.

The Swirling Tits!

This is a layzeeeee post, but there is a tiny bit of forethought that went into it. Remember the Will Self post a couple of days back? Well, this is Rusty and Matt having a bit of a debrief after they interviewed Mr Self.

'You don't get more Aussie than Colin Hay'

Yep. That's right. This is what's happening within the walls of Fairfax Digital's little attic - the Stayz office. Listening to the best of the worst radio has to offer. (FM, that is) Good ol' aussie battler, Col, eh?

I keep thinking 'wallpaperwallpaperwallpaperwallpaper'. It's something that I've been thinking a lot lately. Lifted from Smart Cunt Fry's podcast about Oscar Wilde.

“Why, Mr. Wilde, do you think America is such a violent country?”

“I can tell you why,” he said. “It’s susceptible readily of an explanation. America is such a violent country because your wallpaper is so ugly.”

Now that seems, you might snort with laughter at first and say, “Well, how amusing.” Part you you may say, “Well this is just a typical peacocking primped camp remark from a shallow and trivial man who thinks it’s amusing to say things like that.”

But actually, to understand what the Aesthetic Movement is all about, one has to take that quite seriously. Instead of judging things as being good or bad, things are judged by whether they are beautiful or ugly. And we may say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but actually it’s a lot easier to judge when things are beautiful than it is when things are bad or good. We spend our time puzzling dreadfully over whether we can interpret something as being wicked or whether it’s virtuous. However, beauty, beauty, beauty acts on us in a very real way, and what Wilde was partly saying was, if we look out of the window into our world, we see things that are universally and entirely beautiful from nature. Whether they be palm trees swaying in an island, whether they be the arctic wastes, whether they be deserts, tundra steps. It doesn’t matter where you look in the world, we see nothing but beauty. Unconditional, remarkable beauty.

Except where man has intervened.

And what Wilde is saying is, imagine belonging to a species where all you believe that all you can do to the world is to uglify it. To make it worse. To despoil it. Which is what we do. We know that now in real and profound and terrible ways that Wilde couldn’t have known about because the science hadn’t yet discovered quite how harmful we are as a species to our planet. But he could see that we were harmful to our planet in terms of its aesthetics. That we were making the earth uglier. Uglier with bad architecture, uglier with badly designed factories, uglier with badly stamped out tin trays and cheap ornaments, ugly with appalling wallpaper. And if you’re someone who grows up in such an environment, who is surrounded by badly made ugly things, then you think ugly thoughts of yourself and world. You think ugly thoughts of your whole species. There is nothing for you to do but to, to, to crap in your own nest. It’s what we do when we don’t believe in ourselves. And so although it seems a cheap response to a question about violence, the aesthetic point if view is actually I think a very valuable one, a very profound one, a very extraordinary one. And it makes people think beyond the knee-jerk reflexes of conventional morality, of revealed texts, whether they be the Bible, the Koran or the Communist Manifesto. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to think harder than that, Wilde was arguing.

Where did this man come from? Seriously. I wish I could sing for him, or paint him or shout his name from a rooftop. In fact, the next rooftop I find myself on, I will do just that. And it will echo across the universe. Where do sound waves end? Do they? If I told you I love you, those three words would go on and on and on and on and ... you get the point. Ok, engineer friend, do NOT prove me wrong with your 'facts'. I like to imagine possibilities. I don't really care to know the exact point where whispered words become but a memory. That's sad. If no one's around to remember them, does it flick them out of existence? Which reminds me of another thing that rattles around in my head all the time (along with wallpaper). Naive. I really have a problem with that word. Why is it a dirty word? Why do so many ponces bandy it about like a sword dipped in the blood of all the gormless dead. (I mean people who were gormless before they died, of course. You can't be a gormless corpse ... or can you?) Maybe, when I shout Oscar's name, I will add a mantra about the loveliness of WONDER.

The Last Word

I wonder what kind of a handicap (or perhaps advantage) it might be for English to be your second language. To learn the differences in tenses, and when to use certain words in place of others, and most interestingly - to learn the many meanings of some words. We have words that mean different things in different contexts. We have only one word for some things that other languages have many. (I think snowflake is one.) And the oft talked about fact that there doesn't exist in the English language a word for a parent who loses a child. (A child who loses a parent is an orphan, a husband who loses a wife is a widower and so on) But a parent who loses a child?

I don't know how I'd cope trying to learn the English language for the first time as an adult. I have a hard enough time coming to grips with broad concepts, let alone the nuances and intricacies of our language.

I mean you can regularly patronise a shop (a rather emotionless experience, unless it's for a mixed bag of lollies or Amazon.com). You can go there, spend time. Patronise. Ok, got it. Understand. But, hang on a minute, how can someone BE patronising to another person?

This is where my (Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Chinese) acronym for KDS would pop up. How can this word mean two completely different things? The English language has over 500,000 words. I reckon, at a guess, we could trade around 10,000 of these words (bin them) and make up some new ones so that the existing ones don't need to share meanings.

I was petrified! (Utterly terrified, scared out of my wits)

I was petrified (Literally frozen) *

I was thinking about this after I got a FB wall post from Antonella Gambotto. She wrote: 'Amazon is the opiate of literate escapists'. It actually made me laugh out loud. I felt vindicated. I mean, on the one hand, I'm an escapist (negative connotations). On the other, I'm literate! (positive, one would think) What a great line. That line had the power to eradicate my guilt over spending pennies that I don't actually have. The guilt is gone. The need to buy again hasn't replaced this. What does this leave me with? I suppose it's a nice little revelation.

I realised something the other night, LM. I was spooked. That guy, you know, the c who we sometimes want to WAKE UP and comment our comments? He's scarily scarily scarily like S. I heard an interview he did and the similarities are pretty astounding. It's almost like they lived parallel lives, and 'he whose name cannot be mentioned' got the good life, and S drew the short straw. (I know that life is what you make it. I don't believe you can control everything, but I do believe that you can make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in. But then, I haven't suffered a stroke and been mentally decimated for years on end, so what do I know?)**

On a lighter note, Noel Fielding has a really beautiful voice. I don't really know how to describe it. I suppose you can decide for yourself. I imagine it's a voice that would fit perfectly to a man in a club, the heady atmosphere, a random happy conversation. One that you would forget the details*** of in an instant, but a conversation that you would never forget.

* Yes, smart cunt, I'm a PC. Lifted from AG, of course.
** Rhetorical
*** Don't forget (depending on which quote you think of) the DEVIL is in the details. I've never been one for details.

Flummoxed

Flummoxed is a lovely word.

Until now I thought 'gunt' had to be the most revolting word in the English language.

Now, I would have to say 'CLUNGE' has pipped gunt at the post. It conjures up the most horrid image.

Ode to the Well-Travelled

Time for a quote (a long one) by Will Self:

On psychogeography ...

'... people take it in different ways. There's a kind of wacky, sort of spaced-out take on it where people take a map of Florence and negotiate their way around Toronto with it, or they throw dice to tell them where to go, or there are other psychogeographies like our mutual friend, Nick, well he wouldn't even style himself that, he calls it 'deep topography', who are really just kind of interested in taking one place and understanding it completely. And then there's kind of my take on it which is very much bound up with these airport walks I do, which is a kind of satirical take on it. I'm kind of taking the piss out of international travel. You know, I'm sort of saying, 'What a weird world it is where we jet all over the world' ... you know, someone can be amazingly well-travelled but actually know bugger all about where they are or where they've been. You know they've jetted into Beijing, they couldn't point out North, they don't know where to get their pants washed. You know, they don't speak the language. They kind of aren't really anywhere. They're in their own heads. So distorting is international jet travelling in that way, so the way I earth it is to walk from my house to the airport and walk it the other end.'

Violet Hill

It's beginning to feel like a long and dark December. I cannot get the lyrics, 'If you love me, won't you let me know?' out of my mind. Nice tune. Bit of a departure from Coldplay's old sound. I like. (On the Amazon.com list for that long and dark December day, perhaps?)

Day four of the usual five day week, innit? That's four days without 'You have received an email from Liz Mooney' popping up in the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen. It's bitter sweet. My productivity has shot through the roof this week! I'm beginning to think that maybe I should fluff about a few hours each day, for continuity's sake. I've missed you. I've latched on to 'others' in your absence, so get back here and reclaim what is rightfully yours before it's too late. (The sky is beginning to bruise. Night must fall.)

I've decided on bite-sized posts for you this week. I know what it can be like to read essay upon essay- somewhat arduous. So bite-sized sweets for my sweet.

The Demise of the ATM ...

in my life, anyway.

I heard this morning on some (pea)podcast that a guy once thanked the cash machine that gave him his money. I thought that is something I might do, unthinkingly, just because I have a rainbow of cash in my grubby trotters. (A sliver of orange plastic, at least) I exist on credit, dear girl. It's all about the magnetic strip for me. And even that sometimes doesn't deliver. I feel a wave of relief rush through me when the console reads, 'APPROVED - Awaiting Signature'.

I had a dream about you last night, c. The little invisible heart strings were tugging away. It was the College Lawn (but looked more like The Lounge) and I was walking to the loo and saw you hangin' with your posse. We both looked at each other, mouths in mock-surprise and smiled. Good to see ya! (You cheating whore!)

I would like to be around a girl called Heather just to hear a cockney bloke say her name one day: ' 'ello eva'.

Yes, it's true. I am clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle.

Another Walkley on its way for Marx?

He deserves one for this effort:

http://blogs.news.com.au/jackmarxlive/index.php/news/comments/lette/

FC, indeed. FC.

Little Update on Monster Turd

That turd that was (definitely thoughtfully) deposited in the alley way near work is STILL THERE.

The new Bonds briefs that lay nearby last week have mysteriously disappeared.

This little enclave off an alley of a street at the arse end of town used to be frequented by wedding parties having their photos taken, and the odd commercial was filmed there too.

Now, it's graffiti-ridden and smells like urine.

Charming.

A Rose by any other name ...

joanne tesoriero loves elizabeth mooney 1 %

Dr. Love thinks a relationship might work out between joanne tesoriero and elizabeth mooney, but the chance is very small. A successful relationship is possible, but you both have to work on it. Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to. Spend as much time with each other as possible. Again, the chance of this relationship working out is very small, so even when you do work hard on it, it still might not work out.*

jo tesoriero loves liz mooney 81 %

Dr. Love thinks that a relationship between jo tesoriero and liz mooney has a very good chance of being successful, but this doesn't mean that you don't have to work on the relationship. Remember that every relationship needs spending time together, talking with each other etc.*

* Nice clouds

Synchronicity Rocks

Well, whaddya* know?

I post the College Lawn vid and the next day, Dee calls and convinces Lis and I it's time for a revisit.

I love it.

* I fucking hate that 'word'.

It's plucked!

Let's go back to College or summink...

Help! I think I'm falling ...

back into the Amazon.com abyss!

I log in every so often and cast a maternal eye over the jewels of my shopping cart. They beckon me, cajole me, shimmer for me, beg me to PROCEED TO CHECKOUT and set them on their journey to me.

I am in a constant battle with myself. I mean, 'Moab Is My Washpot', I just have to see you. I must have you. Look at Mr Fry's bright, sharp face on the cover. I need his tales to whip me, leave me with big red welts of insight.

And the Fry memoir is probably the one I least pine for out of my collection of (the now culled to) 13 brilliant little trinkets. 13? Has to be a good thing.

This is the light, bright side of consumerism gone made. I mean, it's a thirst for words, for music, for art, for learning. How can that be bad?

This is my therapy.

There will be relapses. (Sweet, sweet relapses) That's par for the course. But, for now, I lay in waiting.

Redrum and Sweet Charity

This, my lovely friend, is a collection of what some may deem waffle, but I have come to know as sweet plump colourful rainbows.

Rusty Brand: He's pretty and of the rambling ilk. Not so much funny as ... fun. And pretty. And he looks lovely in B&W:



Funny funny cunts. I especially love it when Moore cracks up. Cook is a handsome man:



Man Child. The mate you'd want to carry around in your pocket. Let him out for parties, stuff him back in when it's time for a nap:



Ah, Karl. The mind boggles. I put this one in because of WEWE. You need to listen to the end of this one:

Solace

I told you about the 'Solace' poem.
A couple of things:
1) Sister Jo? (I don't think so, but I'm no poet)
2) You think I'm a PC*. Stephen was the PC King. I was the unsuspecting lamb to the slaughter. (Bit harsh, I know)
* Plagiarising Cunt.
I took this Polaroid upon my return from Italy in 2000. Stephen had said he would not shave until I returned. RC* A couple of hours later, I took another photo of a freshly shaven Stephen. I like this photo. It's autumn. It's Bay Street. It's sweet. * Romantic Cunt

Sister Jo

when days are just a trail of clothes
slung over poetry and prose
a red reminder of things i owe
a songbird silenced in the settling snow
i'm left here looking at the bones
i'm stranded in a sea of stepping stones
i stood inside of something you'd outgrown
a simple sadness in the great unknown
redemption smiled
i followed
it's like the numbness when your heart gets sick
and i say sister jo says
'there's no need to be down, there's something you can do'
it all follows
sister jo says
'there's no need to find solace in anything, if you don't want to'
it's like the light is going to find you
then the beauty in your eyes
the stillness of the night
and the beating of your breast
it'll put you there again
neutralised
it all follows
made hollow.

Email from S 10/05/04

Indeed, we do rock!! I have the best time with you. You fuck good, honeylishuss. x We talk good

And one for the road:

29/07/03

you girls who were seeking
the great love, the terrible love,
what's happened, girls?

Perhaps time
time, time!

because now,
here it is, see how time passes
dragging the heavenly stones,
destroying flowers and leaves,
with a noise of foam and lashed
against all the stones of your world,
with a smell of sperm and jasmine,
next to the bleeding moon!

And now
you touch the water with your big feet,
with your little heart
and you don't know what to do!

Better are
certain night journeys,
certain compartments,
certain most amusing walks,
certain dances with no greater consequence
than to continue the journey!

Die of fear or of cold,
or of doubt,
for I with my huge steps
will find her,
within you,
and she will find me,
she who will not tremble in the face of love,
she who will be fused
with me
in life or death...

Say what?

Monday, May 26 - The Soloc already done what I just done. You already dunnit! My pea brain, my little pea brain forgot what you already done. You dunnit. Already. You.

If I weren't gripping onto my sanity as ferociously as I am, I fear I could lose it soon. So, you've already written to me about 'Letter to D' - fancy that! Well, fancy that. Let's dismiss the likelihood that somewhere there in my subconscious mind, I was drawn to this story because it was one that you've already told me about. After all, we are the two c's and the two peas.

I went through a box of stuff today
Letters photos tapes notes recordings
Voices, LM, voices.

I am nursing my sanity, baby. This is no time for a meltdown. Dreaming of suicidal maidens from days of old, thinking apocolyptic thoughts. Deciding in an instant that motherhood is not something that I want anymore (after a lifetime of being sure it is). I am mad me. I really should have been born a tree. I act like one. Change with the seasons. Late autumn sees me bare and cold. Cave dwelling and bored into melancholy. I wait in almost frozen anticipation for the onset of Spring so that I may flourish. (Everything is a sphere.)

I am reading two books - Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis, and Motherless Brooklyn by Johnathan Lethem.

Letter to D: A Love Story (Andre Gorz)

French philosopher, Andre Gorz, wrote 'Letter to D: A Love Story' for his wife. It was supposed to be a private letter to her, but he decided in the end to have it published, promising his wife that an English translation would only be printed after her death. (She had terminal cancer)

Aged 84 and 83 respectively, they committed suicide by lethal injection and died together in their bed, holding hands.

A couple of lines:

When you came out of the clinic we went back to our house. Your spirit thrilled me and reassured me. You’d escaped death and life took on a new meaning and a new value. A friend immediately understood this when you saw him at a party. He stared into your eyes for a long time and he said to you: ‘You’ve seen the other side.’ I don’t know how you responded or what else you said. But these are the words he said to me, straight afterwards: ‘Those eyes! Now I understand what she means to you.’

And this:

'I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together. ’

A A

Yes, that’s right – Amazon A-fkn-nonymous. Save my soul.

My affair with Amazon began in 2000, I believe. And what an affair.

I have not purchased anything online for a month, two months maybe? It’s been a while. A long while. The old me: I would get paid and hurriedly type ‘A-M’ into the address bar of my browser and watch as it predicted those deliciously sexy six letters – Amazon. I’d check my cart for items I’d ‘saved for later’ and accept them to pay NOW. Now Now Now. (Kinda funny, because it would be at least a 6 week wait from that moment ‘til the gorgeous brown box would find itself hurled up onto my front porch). No mind, it’s not really about the instant high from the instant buy – it’s kind of like a denial of sorts. A fanciful trawl through the music and books of the world. I’ll take it! I’ll hold onto it and think about it! I’ll take it! I didn’t even know I wanted it, but I do! I’ll take it!

I like to say that I’ve decided to stop making these unnecessary purchases, but the truth is I hadn’t a choice. I simply do not have any money. Ha! So, there. It wasn’t because my skin was getting pocky and turning sallow, and I was hiding away in my hovel scuttling to the front door every three minutes in the hope that something had arrived. It wasn’t because I could no longer go to work and perform a solid-day’s work, and it wasn’t because my friends and family had gathered around me one Sunday afternoon for The Intervention. No, this wasn’t self-imposed – if it were up to me, I’d buybuybuybuybuy. There are not enough books in this world to satisfy. (Not that I read all that I purchase, but that’s another subject altogether).

No money
No buy

The only reason I’m adding this post is so that I can list my saved items, those items that are neatly tucked into my cyber-basket ready for that rainy day.

So, here’s my US $194.38 shopping trolley of goodies:

Books

Wislawa Szymborska
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Russell Brand
My Booky Wook

Wislawa Szymborska
Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

Wislawa Szymborska
Poems New and Collected

Elizabeth Berg
Durable Goods: A Novel (Ballantine Reader’s Circle)

Elizabeth Berg
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation

Augusten Burroughs
A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

George Gordon Byron
Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics)

Morton N Cohen
Lewis Carroll: A Biography

Stephen Fry
Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry
The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within

Music

Coldplay
Viva La Vida

Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco
Past Didn’t Go Anywhere

Fleetwood Mac
Rumors

Amen

Time doth flit; oh shit.

A Pig's-Eye View of Literature: Oscar Wilde

If with the literate I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it

DP

(Sit on My) Facebook

Ok, I'm coming up on 200 'friends' on Facebook.

This is ... an empty milestone, really. It's partly exciting - there's a certain twitch in my slow muscle fibres that is lethargically convulsing from the distant memory of a failed Myspace page attempt. I can't remember what I called my page. It certainly wasn't my ACTUAL name. It was something that I thought was clever, no doubt. (Maybe something like 'Meet me in San Juan' or 'Tumbleweed') I had about 6 friends (all of whom were bands or famous folk). NONE of my friends had a Myspace page. I was somewhat disappointed. I'm quite unsure exactly why. In fact, I had one 'friend', a guy named Stanley Paulzen from a band called Fred Astereo who told me he 'rated' me. I was his top friend! And he had a couple of hundred. Wow, I felt special for a minute there. He also told me that he found it very curious that I had minimal friends and he was the first to 'comment' me.

So, that was my Myspace experience. I was rated. Then I dropped off the radar altogether.

Here's what it's all about really. This from the 'All Men Are Liars' blog today:

"This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she's awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand," wrote Mayer on his tour blog recently.

"She'll take a hundred photos until coming up with one she's happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she's done poring over images of herself, will post one on her myspace page and then write something like "I don't give a f*ck what you think about me."

That's pretty much it, isn't it? You and I were discussing the merits *cough* of FB and couldn't think of much to say. (In fact, there are many good things about FB - meeting old friends again has to be at #1)

What's my point? My point is that I have 198 friends. I thought I'd trawl through them and break them into groups.

Old School Mates: 66
Old Work Mates: 28
Family: 17
Famous Folk: 6
Work Colleagues: 11
Friends of Friends: 24
Random and Travel: 30

And, Actual Friends: 15

I think I'm missing one -oh yes, the fish. Hmph.
Yay for my 15 actual friends! Once I hit 200, think I might CULL.

This is all I can manage this week, cunt. I love you.

Fk it! The vid will not load. Next time.

x

Something...

Hunter S Thompson

In it for the truth.

'I've never paid much attention to the Black/Jew/Wasp problem; it strikes me as a waste of time and energy. My prejudice is pretty general, far too broad and sweeping for any racial limitations. It's clear to me- and has been since the age of ten or so- that most people are bastards, thieves and yes - even pigfuckers.'

Happy days.

Really, though, I'd say a general disdain for the human species as a whole is healthier (and more rational) than a fierce hatred based on race or religion. What sets us apart is what's inside us and what we do with it.

Yours in fear and loathing,

Us.

Oh, I would like to know exactly what a comedians' comedian is. There's that old saying (Groucho Marx, I think said it) about how, for a normal person, a man dressed up as an old lady careering down a hill in a wheelchair is funny. For a comedian, it needs to be a real old lady. Ok, I get it but ... I want more. How is it that this stuff is somehow too much for the general punter to take. (Is that a tad condescending?) How far do comedians go? It's a delicious thought. I wannnnnna know.

LM made me smile so much today. It's quite a peculiar thing to watch someone go through motions that are exactly the kind of motions that I would go through. The FB scenario. Me cwacking it at her (I mean, you), her apologising, me feeling instantly bad and self-important, me apologising (but chucking in another caution for the record), her thinking for a little while (and blushing) and then telling me again that she is sorry and that she must really love me (it's in the cheeks. Our cheeks don't lie, right?) Then we kiss and make up.

Then the sweetest, sweetest words from her again (see 'Tumbleweed' today. http://www.thesoloc.blogspot.com)

Of course, it couldn't end there, could it.

Then I had to call, 10 minutes later on my way to the station to tell her about my 'epiphany'. An epiphany? *cough* More like an apostrophe. Planet earth series. Shrimp down on the ocean floor, in the deep black cold. So ... eerily remote. How are they possible? How can they be? It really blows my mind (like space). It's like vertigo or something. I feel like I'm physically losing my balance when I think about this existence - us, people, animals, society, countries, earth, water, wind, consciousness, nature, the order of things, the sky, atmosphere, relationships, stars, the sun and moon, the universe and its infinity (as far as we know). We know fuck all. I love that. That's why I love people like Bob Dylan (he's in my cocoon of experience) and the way he just doesn't seem to judge. People are what they are. They do what they do. Who is anyone to judge? What makes what you think right and what I think wrong? Our perception does. And what is that?

Oh, right, my apostrophe! So, I cried when I first saw that shrimp episode. It freaked me out a bit. We feel through empathy, right? I suppose I sometimes feel a bit like a lone shrimp on the ocean floor. I'm happy enough for the most part. I think we are all a bit like lone shrimp, actually. This is why I think finding love is such a rare thing, a special thing. Lucky are those who find it. I hope the current takes me to my shiny shrimp squeeze some day.


I really love smoking.

Moonlighting

He sees her at the same time every night
At the mexican discotheque
She gives him french kisses
He gives her french cigarettes
They sit at the same table every time
The lights are lowBut their eyes shine
Just digging the music from those sweet soul bands

This morning, as I left Flagstaff station and walked into the still, dark, moonlit air, I was suddenly struck with a vivid flash of memory. (My short term memory is not hacked to bits - do dreams count? I think so)

Last night, I had the most amazing experience. It involved driving, chocolate, clothes-washing, a remote retreat, an ET-esque intenstinal- looking structure attached to a penetentiary, a bright burning flame, a dead legend, and a fucking awesome, funny, delighful living legend.

Remote retreat - Augusten Burroughs' The Wolf at the Table audiobook. Haunting. The author had called his father one night. Both men were intoxicated. His father told him in a menacing horrific shattering way that he was sharpening his knife and on his way to come and kill his son. Son is instantly sober and fraught. Son calls the police. Police call son back and admonish him for being a nuisance. His dad was sober, lucid, pleasant, fine. (This is the melty, not so evocative of the essense of the story, tip of the iceburg.) If you can find this song, INGRID MICHAELSON'S 'Spare Change', which was written for the audiobook recording of The Wolf at the Table, listen to it. Haunting. (Fuck - I haven't even read the book. Tsk tsk and I already love it. It's next on my list.) This probably should have been a post unto itself. But I'm lazy ... and it's not.

I'll skip the clothes-washing and chocolate-eating dream sequences because they're really just plain simple 'need to do' and 'want to do'.

Hunter S Thompson was about to be released from prison (ET set). The atmosphere was palpable. There were members of the press, cigarettes. It was hard to get near him, hard to pin him down (not surprising) but he was there, familiar in had and glasses and filtered cigarette, familiar in his drawl (is it a drawl?). He was relaxed. He seemed to be above us all. Like he held some kind of knowledge that none of us would ever be privy to.

But, it was really the very wicked and delightful Keith Richards that stole my show last night. What a joy - playful, funny, charming. Mr Charisma. We were standing together at a bar (in the ET compound!) His face was so bright, deeply lined, and full of this extraordinary light. He was intoxicating.

Stephen was there, around the traps, too.

If it must be in dreams, then let it be.

58008 - Boobs

11 and 7 are my favourites

27 is my glamour number. I love it, I'm drawn to it, but it hurts

33 freaks me out (Jesus?)

4.44 reminds me of the stillness of the middle of the night.

11:11 good time oldie

Heart of Glass

There is only one image in my mind when I hear Blondie's Heart of Glass.



In a daze for a minute or so. And what a daze.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, Macbeth

MimiCRY

‘Children learn most naturally by imitation. In their manner of speech and walking, in their habits of thought and feeling, in their grasp of their native language, imitation is one of the foundational laws of learning. And that which is acquired through imitation lies close to the bone. The principle does not change with age, but it does become harder to apply because of adult pride, and slows down because of adult "settledness."’ – Douglas Wilson (Vol 14, Issue 1: Childer)

Imitation – the sincerest form of flattery? Well, yes, probably in the realm of adulthood. I’ve found myself imitating a laugh, a phrase, a certain twitch of the mouth in speech that I have seen and liked in others.

I sneeze just like my mother. I don’t know if this is learned. She has always sneezed in the same way – two short sharp bursts. I don’t always sneeze twice, but my sneeze sounds the same as mum’s.

Something that I’m not sure of is my imitation of the things some people do that I don’t particularly like or wish to emulate. But I find myself doing it anyway. The way my flatmate sighs when she comes inside, the sharp inhalation of breath that one of my colleagues has just before she’s about to explain something, a hiccough noise of another colleague after he’s had lunch. I don’t really understand why I do that. I am conscious that I’m doing it, but I don’t know why.

Am I learning? Unsettled?

Rheumy Ruminations

Ticketmaster is offering pre-sale tickets to ‘The Pink Floyd Experience’. Tribute Bands – OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

Which reminds me, I recently bought a C.S Lewis biography, thinking (with my pea brain*) that he was the Lewis of Alice in Wonderland fame, and wondering (with my pea brain*) how it could be that this born-again Christian could pen such a fantastic tale beginning with the great tumble down a rabbit hole. Was this hard-lined fellow really an LSD-tripping paedophile?

"I came into Christianity kicking and screaming." He described his last struggle in ‘Surprised by Joy’. 'You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.'

Well, I can piece together the staunch Catholic with a penchant for little kiddies easily enough. What AM I talking about?*

Back the Pink Floyd Experience, I can understand covering a song here and there, but whole tours? Abba, The Beatles, Elvis. I’m so happy The Stones are alive and well and able to fall out of palm trees should the occasion call for it.

My head is under water.

* I’m a little pea
I love the sky the trees
I’m a teeny tiny little ant
Checking out this and that
I am nothing
So you have nothing to hide
And I’m a pacifist
So I can fuck your shit up
Oh yeah I’m small
Fuck you asshole
You homophobic redneck dick
You’re big and tough and macho
You can kick my ass
So fucking what

The Day Before the Morning After the Night Before

The little blog that could.

I don't know what my ramblings will be and for how long they'll go on
But they will be ramblings and here is the first one.

There was an inkling of a rhyme in there, but not a patch on the genius of Mr Karl Pilkington (Ricky Gervais Podcast) Here's a couple of shining lights of wisdom from him to set the mood:

Jellyfish Trifle

It would be spiteful

To put jellyfish

In a trifle

Me Belly-Ache

For god's sake, me belly-ache

The doctor said it's me kidney

He said he's got to stick a tube up me knob

I said you've gotta be kidding me

For god's sake, knob-ache

Tonight the girls are coming around for a reunion-reunion.
Life is good.