a letter to my sister

God lusts you. can't live without you. regrets ever letting you go. but hasn't the decency to admit His(Her) mistake and take you back. so sneaks in at night and borrows one of your lungs. when you wake in the morning you gasp for air and clutch your chest. and when we look out your window we see a balloon the shape of a lung drifting into the sky with a string attached. and God now gets half of every breath your inexhale. from beneath the ground, puts His heavy arm around your neck, strong and persistent as gravity and won't take it away. rubs your back like a cat for so long it eventually loses its shape. borrows that too, uses it to prop up an angel's dress He's saving for you. of course they open you twice trying to replace the damn thing. in the end a titanium pole. i've never admitted it, but reminds me of an extension bat this kid brought to school once to scare us with. and now this. there goes life again, hacking at you. a little black spot on your heel. no doubt, a kiss. just a reminder. and when God touches you, you turn black like 3am and your world caves in, like drowning in the filth of mortality, drowning in debts or adultery or emphysema or all the other pleasures God uses to remind us he exists. drown in it, it's like heaven bores a hole, and when we succumb, a twig made of light pokes around the bucket and lifts out a limp wilted saturated cloth, and pulls out its nucleus, a daffodil petal or a flint of limestone and out of that awakens a long slept, long suffered angel back into where have you been my love? (while the rest of us are stuck with the cloth. which we dry. cover in a shroud and wash and cry and put in a special delicate box we hate and can't stand the sight of and just to think of gives me the goosebumps while we cuss and swear ever knowing language to know the words 'sickness', or 'death', or 'it's for the best'.

but He likes you my dear, the timeless old F*cker. i know mom would trade, i'd trade, i'd trade anything. all my friends, all of them, each and everyone, never speak to another soul (for once i'm not exaggerating) if you could have a friend. i'd give you whatever you needed, whatever you needed to fill up all the empty holes, the... hollow spaces full of shadows. kidney. lung. the leg that doesn't bend. the blind spot in the middle of your left, crooked eye. the scalp that peels. the urinary tract infections. mostly, the loneliness. i'd cut it out all out and fill my holes with cotton-balls and scrunched up newspaper and live happily as a taxidermal anomaly if you could have a week as a butterfly. if you could drift out of the soil you're rooted to. if you could walk upright and have neurons enough to carry on a decent conversation and shower yourself in less than 90 minutes.

i hate, and wish death on every object that fails to smile at you. (but what good does that do you?)

and. whenever we lose grip of a balloon, or open the to-go order to see they forget a cheeseburger and a kidney, or when gravity pulls your spine into the ground till its bent like a car-accident front-bumper, what do we do? we pray to the Bastard. what else can you do?

are the black spots in the shapes of kisses?

call me when you know something.

(such a pathetic ending)

so long 2009

untitled, heimdalsgate


i expected to be a little overcome today. in my head, i've spent a fortnight trying to plan what i'd think today. what i'd write about. but i've been having trouble writing. it unnerves me when i have trouble writing, i do not take it well. it makes me feel the way... the way we'll all feel when we go to bend over one day and realize by the stiffness in our joints that we're old. not being able to write makes me feel old. it makes me feel i have nothing left to contribute. and that, now, no one will ever love me again. why would someone love me if i cannot write them beautiful letters and emails and cards and texts messages for the rest of forever? wouldn't life be more lovely if you could spend it engaged in beautiful words with someone? i think yes. mostly, when i cannot write, it makes me feel like i am a liar. like some chord within myself has been severed and i am no longer able to be honest with myself. to be completely truthful about my emotions and my reactions and why they came to be and why they want to be. it is terrifying.


*___*___*

i made some progress on the story. i would appreciate someone's eyes on it. if you think you'd like to read the start of a story and tell me if it's terrible or not, and why, then email me (scroll to the bottom if you need my email).


*___*___*

POSSIBLE REASONS THAT WOULD JUSTIFY MY GF BREAKING-UP WITH ME, A LIST:

(1) sometimes i call her (albeit affectionately) jiggle-puff
(2) frequently, i disappear for days on end, without word, into a cave of myself, or a corner of the law library, or my bedroom, to write, or read, or overcome all the paranoias that i lose to
(3) one of my disabilities is a farmer's tan
(4) i recommended she watch the following films: when chumpy met champy, chumpest gump, saving private chump, chumpo cop, dr. doochumpill, chumplock holmes, brave chump, titchumpic, star chumps
(5) if she wakes me up too early i lean against the wall in the shower with my eyes closed and she has to sponge me. (admittedly, half the time, i am playing it up because it is a strange show of affection and one i must enjoy every neutron of because for forever i will remember it)
(6) i refer to her as my 'designated boobies'
(7) if she ever tells me she has decided to be a vegan i will delete her number and sever all contact
(8) some nights she comes second best to a certain delicious pillow that i'd rather hug


*___*___*

2009, the year of unexpected surprises. a year of time-lapses and relapses. of sitting on my couch staring at nothing trying to understand how it had suddenly become sunrise. of amphetamine comedowns and energy drinks and cereal for breakfast. a year of being the only man wearing a bow tie. inundated with paper, everywhere, on my coffee-table and below it, on the desk i drag into my bedroom when i am nearing exams and drag back out after. a year that started with dancing and blowjobs on the beach while staring at the sun and ended with quiet moments in rooms studying and lying on couches kissing for hours (everytime starting with me whispering my my, i forgot how pleasant this was i must never forget, and she smiling into my ear i'm glad i could jog your memory). a year where, at least for the second half, i didn't hate myself. didn't think i was pathetic. didn't think i was not just a loser but a chronic loser and not just a chronic loser but always committed (voluntarily or otherwise) to being a chronic loser. this year when i put my hands in the pockets of my trousers i found sand. when i picked up my phone i never cared what it said. a year spent in orgasmic chemically-stimulated highs and too frequently unable to... grasp at my own emotions, formulate my own thoughts... lost in a geometrical redistribution of time and space, a pill-induced automaton. the year i finally gave hip-hop a chance. the year i finally gave women a chance again. the year i gave (maybe) myself a chance. a year with minimal push and pull, a year with a semblance of grace. of elegance. (i come home from my exam, my legs shake, i stop in the kitchen for a glass of water i lose my knee and fall over. i haven't shaven but i can't feel my face it makes no difference. what is it now, 50 hours? 60 hours without sleep? i crawl towards my bedroom, leaving a puddle of water but no broken glass, unbuttoning my pants as i go. leave a trail like a snail and a few shed snakeskins before i crawl into bed, take a minute to hear my heart out beat the seconds and wake up 22 hours later with the worst back-ache). a year ago today i was in Prague. a year ago a week ago i was in Haifa. a year ago a week more and i'd be in Chicago, in LA. in i-can't-remember. i'd be in Seattle on Martha's couch watching movies everyday trying to forget where i was. i was reading Ulysses. i was sitting out the front on Martha's stoop staring at the streetlight and blowing puffs of condensation, each wrapped in blankets like flight-delayed caterpillars. 2009, a year of such nasty crashes my mother, the most natural-health inclined person i know dragged me kicking-and-screaming to 'resolve this once and for all'. (and the year i discovered there probably is no such resolution to look forward to. just life). just life, just more. more of everything. more of apple pie. more of LA traffic. more of my sister's hardships, more of my own... twitches and spasms. more prayers, said with greater conviction, and more moments you wish God were a man so you could spit on His face and stab at His neck. more recognition of Awesomeness. days without inspiration, attending to your errands and your duties. more love. fast and slow. more drives in cars to unknown destinations you have to find in the map. more frozen cokes. more movies you wish you got to see in the movies, and more hours spent thinking how great a God there must be to have let you have this great moment you are having just this right-now (and then feeling bad about wanting to knife at His neck a few months earlier). more new bands. more mistakes. more failures. more just-when-you-need-them victories. more time waking up in the morning thinking dammit i am exhausted i can't keep this up, more quartets of gourmet cupcakes in gorgeous little white boxes that make pretty girls smile and kiss your cheek. more friends' children. more weddings, and, more and more now, funerals.


*___*___*

it is hard not be sad when you start to understand the train you're riding in. the nature of it, this life i mean. the fact that, we're all going to wait and struggle to... to write the great American novel, or, find a cure, or a man, or get a Victorian house in the neighborhood we want. and mostly, we're not going to get there. and even if we do, we're not going to be happy in the way we think we are. (the way we deserve to be). it's not just the failure of the American dream as a concept, but a failure of the way a whole generation of little boys and girls has been socialised to want certain things that we ought not want. because, maybe my momma was wrong. it is soo unlikely that i will ever be a high-court judge. a pulitzer-prize winner. a president, ambassador of governor-general. any someone you've heard of. life is going to be a great big mass of grey. people better off, people worse off, people trying to make rent and women sick of reminding their husbands to fix the sink and men sick of hearing their girlfriends nag. children who don't get enough attention, because children deserve more attention then there are hours in this universe, and the parents who hate themselves for not knowing how to fit it all into a day - all this dammit baggage. this was a hard year for my sense of uniqueness, which... perhaps has not made it to the finishing line. everywhere i look i feel a death pang for that sense of... i can be a somebody! that i once had. on one level, it's positive. it's a hit to the demons in me. the egos and the (my therapist would remind me) narcissism. also, it's a calming force. to just 'be'. f*ck it, come what will, i've made my peace i'm not the next Obama, or, as she says when i disappear to study can you take a few hours off from saving the world to have dinner with me?


*___*___*

MUSIC I HAVE LOVED THIS YEAR IN LOOSE-CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, A LIST:

(1) For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
(2) So Far Gone (mixtape) by Drake
(3) Tha Carter III by Lil' Wayne
(4) ATLiens by Outkast
(5) Heavy Ghost by DM Stith
(6) Involv2er by Sasha
(7) Los Angeles by Flying Lotus
(8) Burial (and) Untrue by Burial
(9) XX by the XX
(10) The Dance Paradox by Redshape


*___*___*

last words:

i don't want my money back.
it was worth it.

an attempt to write the short story i have not been able to write all week

i tried.

then deleted.

tried again.

deleted.

so instead, here is a poemtypethingee i wrote last year.


*___*___*

ON PEOPLE HAVING A BOWL OF CEREAL AT 3:17AM ON A THURSDAY


Mike:
______Work sucked.
______let’s get this over with,
______and get to bed.
______Pour milk,
______crunch.


Michael and Tam:
______My forehead is damp,
______and the hairs of her fringe are
______tinted slightly darker when wet.
______We turn on the kitchen light and laugh about nothing.
______Love and noise and motion
______leave a hunger.
______I chew, hearing it crunch,
______but still only taste her.


Mick:
______what time is it?
______this room reeks of it,
______the doper smell of
______red-eyes, droopy-faced
______no-good, son-of-
______i must have dozed off

_______________god i’m hungry.

Q:
______he hates the hour,
______but refuses to sleep anyway.
______reads, or sits and stares away.
______complains of too little air.
______after 3, sits in the kitchen,
______fluorescents flicking like angels flying into mosquito traps.
______on the refrigerator door,
______pictures of his sister on her wheelchair:
_______________in a scouts outfit
_______________hugging a giant rabbit
_______________opening birthday presents
______the hour affords silence,
______and a sadness not available elsewhere.

some nonesense

untitled, casimm


but i am soo tired. it is soo late, it doesn't matter what the time is, it is always soo late and too much evening. it is unbearable to always be awake when it is late and when i am soo tired she says; __and then looks away.
__(a track passes in the street, outside somewhere)
he checks his watch. it is 2:52am. at least we have just ourselves and all this massive blanket of quiet is ours and this colour of everything is ours. it is just us two in all this kingdom infinitude. just us. she thinks this over now, her brain chewing it slowly. taking discrete words and mushing them up into hazy meaningless jumble. my god your eyes are barely open she says and he smiles though with his eyes closed. you can't even open them. he shakes his head slowly, still with a far-off smile. and grows more distant. __and then sleeps.


*___*___*

this her breath, this one last here, as she is somewhere else away asleep adrift on a beach somewhere where her sugar-bum can meet the sun and grow tanner under its drunkening heat, and this her breath, or summer's own speaking soo loudly, and me, hiding out in a room, dark with the curtains all drawn, staring in closets at sweaters and scarves reliving the good-ol'-days of winter and fall with them laughing at our stories of rain hail crisp nighttime like three commiserates drinking from the same whiskey flask i mean nostalgia like though as winter were some long-lost friend or girlfriend's postcard found by mistake in a suitcase zip compartment damn, i thought i lost you, but she being she, lost in her own youthfulness and blue eyes open to blue skies and whoever's staring at her sitting on the beach looking at her face will think two holes there are, see the ocean right through swear i do swear i do see see, lookee there see it too? and she, with her freckles exacerbated smiles and nods yes yes, right through, it is the ocean these are swirls that were his eyes.
__she must look exceptionally beautiful, distance always makes you more beautiful.


*___*___*

the one night i intent to write to my heart's content i am soo exhausted i have failed at all else especially this one night writing being human all of it together parts of thing.

epic fail Q.
epic.

chrismas eve

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.

____Laurie Anderson, O Superman
















untitled, claire arman

when the cold air comes i feel like taking a walk. i told myself to remember that line. i said 'Q, remember that line, it can be the start of something'. then i told myself to remember to write a story about attending weddings back home. or a story about assaulting bakeries at knife-point. no, wait. no no. that was Murakami, i was reading late last night - sometimes when i do that i think stories i've read are stories i've dreamt. but the cold air did come. the sky was dark. i ate chicken and drank cranberry juice. i fondled hopes of the future as i ate a blueberry muffin and drank tea, and i fondled them in my head, turning them over like beads. what i'd wear when wonderful thing X happened. and, when wonderful thing Y finally sorted itself out, what words i'd use.

___- we're too big for this town Monz
___- dude, come on
___- people move all the time, how'd we get stuck in this country?
___- i _ have _ no _ idea. ___but we're seriously trapped.

so then i tell myself to write a story about people who drink a lot. who feel bad when they have sex with strangers but want to do it anyway. god dammit Q, just write something doesn't matter what justwritejustwritejustwrite.

i will say this about being home. dad's tea. dad's tea = home. my mom's gone. my sister's gone. my friend's are all gone. but the smell of my dad's tea-brew... makes home. feel 'right', like i imagine home should.

before you know it's 2am. there goes time again. dipping itself in and out of hours and mealtimes and moment-before/afters and then you're sitting in little-boy underwear at 2am writing godknowswhat just because you feel you should. trying to shake your soul into feeling something again. c'mon Q. have a feeling. have one, then write it down. just have one, please god, when'd i turn into such a robot?

___- why's your girlfriend your girlfriend?
___- you really asking me that right now?
___- yah.
___- cause she likes southpark.
___- that's it?
___- it's a good start.
___- there's gotta be more to it than that.
___- of course there is.
___- so?
___- so. she. she has freckles. you know my track record with freckled girls. sucker for them.
___- Q! i'm serious.
___- so am i.
___- stop being facetious.
___- because, my dear, it is nice to laugh with a person.
___- you can laugh with anybody.
___- no. no, you can't.
___- ...
___- you can, of course you can, but the better you know somebody, the more deeply you laugh - wait, what i mean is, that laugh, even a small giggle, even if its just a smirk, it's where it comes from, it comes from a deepester place. it's like love, but funner. it's a different kind of happiness. less intense. more... joy.
___- dude, you can have fun with people who aren't your girlfriend.
___- waitwaitwait, i never said fun. fun is frivolous. fun means nothing. you can have fun whilst being utterly miserable. i should know, i've been miserable most my life and still managed 'fun' on occasion. i'm talking about shades of happiness. happiness is different to 'fun'. screw fun. but happiness, you could be in a trench, in a jungle, you could be anywhere, and you could still feel happiness. even when you're bored or alone or cornered, happiness is a different thing altogether.
___- so she makes you happy?
___- god no.
___- i'm soo confused.
___- she can share it.
___- and not anyone can?
___- of course not. happiness is a matter for interpretation, she'd have to speak my language, see happiness as i see it, understand it a certain way, laugh at life's fangs with me. that's all it is.
___- anything else?
___- never underestimate witty banter.
___- you're a sucker for wit huh?
___- rare.
___- tru dat.
___- true, i'll drink to that.
___- cheers
[he sips a soy vanilla latte, she a long black. when the waiter had put them down he'd placed the opposite drinks in front of patrons. she'd laughed, said that was common. he'd laughed, said there wasn't a gayer drink on the planet he could possibly pick. she'd said tru dat.]

we got old she says. we got old and we got stuck and now we're stuck with our lives she says. and she drinks. f*ck me he says, ain't it true he says. she nods. he sips. she asks where could we move? America, London, usual suspects he says. she nods. how does everybody pull it off? he asks. she shrugs. Richard's in China he says, let's go to China. you me and my-Mona he says. she nods slowly, not really listening.

so now that you're happy, now that 2009's proven to be a flower in an alleyway, what do you do with it? what do you do once you know that your father's tea smells like the last petal of 'home', or rather, the only remaining fossil of what you think might resemble what once-would-have-been the feeling of the (now nonsensical) word 'home'... what now?

___- i need a new suit when i graduate.
___- what are you thinking?
___- i don know. Ralph Lauren i think. navy, or touch lighter, solid. two button.
___- don't go too light.
___- tru. gonna need a few for work. cheaper in America you know.
___- is that reason enough?
___- you kidding?
___- ha. you wish you were that superficial.
___- let a man dream huh kiddo?
___- dream on.

you think you'll ever write a love story? that's an easy way to make a buck and a name. girlies love that love-talk. something about your GFs bright-blue eyes. starshine resembling freckles. skin is... a magnet. a body an atlas. in your hands it is malleable. a movable feast. Atlas loved. something like that, easy to do. some banter, some poetry, and some idealized sex scenes. all a person ever wants is to come home and hang up their jacket and say Thursday, what a f*cker. babe, gimme a kiss, and to actually get one. the rest can carry on in silence. maybe the sounds of people sipping on some tea. i drink mine hot, i'm finished by the time she touches hers. and she likes the couch, i sit behind the small, white, kitchen-sized table. we stare at our computers. i've finished my tea now she sips a little at hers. happiness is a quiet creature. when it settles it hasn't much to say. do what you want, it's happy just lazing about basking in its own 'being there'. hey babs he says, hmmm? she responds typing out something, BL? (code for Boston Legal) she finishes typing her sentence then she looks up. gives a mischievous smile. kiss-me-smile. as a man you gotta get good at spotting those when they turn up. you miss a lot if you can't spot those. perfect kisses, they're there, hiding behind dinner-dish-washing sessions and parking-lot-open-the-doors, if you can spot them... some of the best kisses start with the right kinda smile. this was one such. he knows better than to waste the opportunity, he gets up from behind his chair, dutifully. comes around to the couch, she glances up, pretending she doesn't know where he's going. he puts a knee on the couch, lowers his head, she looks up. he likes it when lips meet at odd angles. it's nice to feel novelty when you kiss. oh yes he purrs, i'd forgotten how lovely this was.


BEST FILM OF 2009
for the heart - let the right one in
for the brain - serious man

BEST RANDOM MOMENT THAT COMES TO MIND RIGHT NOW OF 2009
sitting at the steps at the back of the house by the lake with a 4 year old at sunset watching fish jump out the water with her yelping fisshies! sporadically, and eventually, throwing her over my shoulder and carrying her back in

BEST OTHER RANDOM MOMENT THAT COMES TO MIND RIGHT NOW OF 2009
more sweet bread i say to the waiter as i sip my second refill of lemonade while ranting a mile-a-minute about why religion should never be a source of bitterness with Ashley resisting my humanist-undisciplined-anti-religious-propaganda every step of the way but i don't care because i'm in the Cheesecake Factory and i'm leaving LA in precisely 10 hours and i'm gonna enjoy my last meal and my last chat with my dear friend come hell, high-water or eternal damnation

BEST OTHER OTHER RANDOM MOMENT THAT COMES TO MIND RIGHT NOW OF 2009
i'm laying on grass under the sun reading John Ashberry poems with a coffee in one hand. Q, what the hell you doing? he asks shouldn't you be in class? i look up to him, covering the sun glare with my forearm sure sure, but, it was freezing with the air-con in there i just needed to thaw-out a little bit, plus... plu... he waits for my to finish, but i don't. plus what? he wants to know i guess. plus i just took a shit-ton of amphetamines and i'm tingly as all-f*ck and feel like i'm having an orgasm. __life's rarely this good. i don... remember it being this good. __didn't wanna waste it. i'm sad just saying the last part. he walks away. the sun works its magic.

six months later i write this.

thoughts (fragments)

reflection in a dirty window, hello bum


our parents have boyfriends and girlfriends nowadays. and the parents of our parents' boyfriends and girlfriends can die. it seems adults have feelings too. that's when it happens. when people die. breakups. get lost in themselves and stop calling back - that's when photographs are born. old letters and postcards and scribbles are given souls. and memories become haphazard phantoms that are hard to think of and harder to dammit.forget.

*___*___*


having not told a story for months, now in a room more like a storage, with a fan turning the summer round aimlessly, i'm sprawled, waiting for one to dawn on me ___or at least to remember some of the things from before ; and life just creeks on by, hitting reply automatically like, hey did you hear the one about?)

to be home... i don't know. my mom always says, keep outta that town god dammit, makes you depressed. i say it's the ghosts, the shadows are a few shades heavier here. like asian hair. you can feel it in your hand when you hold it how much heavier it is. shadows like that. few shades heavier like a thicker fabric.

i feel a year older, a year more full of tales to exorcise. perhaps i am the sort of writer who always absorbs but never releases. fills up like a balloon. before i die i'll croak a seven-word sentence that'll be it allofeverything i've discovered worth saying and even then the nurse will look to whoever punk i've made promise to pull the plug on me i'm more euthanasia than your typical cancer ward, and he'll say to the nurse, 'no idea, Q's finally gone crazy. Here's those forms you wanted signed, let's pull the plug and burn what's left i gotta get to my kid's soccer match he always loses and blames me for it no doubt it's my fault if he fails at everything'.

*___*___*


but it is not a problem. to have words left over. long division was never exactly my strongest suit. nor the pinstripe. i work best just seeing what i saw, early mornings left over after the midnights are too blurry. here is a fan. here is a man in boxers, grasping for the memory of a year he recalls enjoying. all of it raw sore eyes on sharp paper and enjoygasms in beds and showers and waking up at strange hours not knowing when he fell asleep and then 50 hours more on the little-speed-pill-train. all i ever wanted was to be enough. whatever that is. in quantity or quality. but the doctor says, all good, here's six more repeats of the prescription, glad to know you're still standing, and the train's fast can't get a word out. now. dizzy and hot and can't tell sleep-from-wake i want to hug something other than a too-warm pillow and tell stories and listen to Max Richter's the blue notebooks which makes me want to cry, goddammit i hate being home.

*___*___*

in a town, somewhere else, night was a chemistry-lab uncertainty. a grad student named Ricardo got the idea one day while closing his eyes to kiss his girlfriend that that colour, on the inside of his eyelids, may be reproducible. with the help of 4 ink-injecting squid and a litany of tea-bags he set to work. adding concentrated bromine solution and some paper he'd asked his little sister to cry on.

*___*___*

because everywhere men die like flies and grow sick like summertime fruit.
the spectacles on our faces betray us, and we wake up late at night craving cereal and hugs and ejaculations.
________so what's next my dad's girlfriend's dad's dead a man i never met but am thinking about tonight anyway.
and my own grandfather too, more than a year now.
for a year i lived in LA and fell in love in various positions like a Kuma Sutra for the heart,
and then for a few months i walked around Adelaide and did what i could to resist a bullet kissing the inside of my brain, and then law, and then the raw eyes, and when i wake up i am in all sorts of strangeness my body doesn't recognize me and i can't recall where my brain's been all this time i've been reading and kissing and god only knows what else.

someone dim the lights.
maybe just a lamp, if nothing else.

anyone who's read their Shakespeare knows that all the tragedies are as much a farce.
they all die and Fortinbras comes in with a smile to carry off the throne,

whatever did the old bastard mean by that one.

*___*___*

but here is no song i know how to sing.
put your lips to mine, what i have is an earthquake i can't remember the beat to dance to

come on down

Haven't seen anyone in a couple of days again by hare christian


i slept for 14 hours. woke up my back hurt. that's normal. stumbled around the house for a while. watched four episodes of the Practice, had no choice i've watched all of Boston Legal now. fell asleep. woke up, watched Withnail and I, falling asleep intermittently. woke up. decided to be brave and go outside. summer is too much. heavy, stagnant air. dried up flowers and grass everything brown and glaring in the sun. my face sweats and my glasses slide down my nose.

bus. sit. stop. stand. stepout. oh yes, Adelaide. only it's Christmas and there're people everywhere bumping into me. i'm dizzy and can't keep my eyes open. when i close them i feel like i'm falling. i still get spasms, just left over electricity in my body from a winter cloud or two i swallowed. i think pancakes can fix this, but get lost and eat at a tiny cash-only Japanese joint. go to the T-bar where the woman's smile recognizes me (despite my not having patronized them for over 6 months). still, she smiles like i'm a regular (and i am, just an infrequent regular) and knows to warm my orange and poppy-seed muffin. i sit and try to write. listen to Max Richter's the blue notebooks, which ends up being soo good i can't write. or eat. i try reading and but keep falling everytime i close my eyes. and keep closing my eyes because i can't keep them open. and can't keep them open because i'm dizzy and the words on the page merge. J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize acceptance speech leaves me breathless. the music doesn't help. now i'm dizzy, breathless, feel like i'm falling, and can't write.

i admit defeat. in under two-hours. i'm not ready to wander yet. back home. need to be at home. in PJs. where it is safe to indulge a little narcolepsy. where it is ok to collapse stupefied and watch obscure British cult-classics and read Nobel acceptance speeches and drift in and out of yourself feeling your veins and arteries clench up tight holding their breath for another whiff of the white powder. where it is ok to be dizzy and stumble into walls and drop forks and sit on couches and occasionally spasm. my dad looks at me oddly. shiver? he asks. __y e s. i answer slowly, a deliberate lie. as i shake my leg up and down dreaming of white clouds and white pills and slowly body is returning to me i feel pangs of lust - is that all it is to be human? (how disappointing).

on my bed i shiver and shake a little while my heart slows itself and my eyes squint, letting in just a trickle of light, just enough to write this. and my hands sticky with sweat and my bed reminds me if i fall asleep my back will hurt when i eventually wake.

frozen coke. Ingmar Bergman film. sleep? shiver it out. shiver it out. sleep it out. in a safe place, close your eyes till you finish falling. then rise and get on with it.

home, some words

nikolinelr


my mom worries about me when i'm in Adelaide. when people ask me why it's weird to be home i say it's the ghosts. there are lots of them. (i sit at my spot on the table with the bridal party and some close friends. the girl next to me is the girlfriend of the brother of one of my BFFs and she says to me, casually as anything, so, Vanessa? and i ask excuse me? and she says to me, she's good friends with my sister and i say who? and she says your ex, right? and i say oh and think wtf. except i don't really. it's Adelaide. this is just the sort of thing that happens here.

when the bride makes her appearance the groom cries and his chin quivers. i smile. my BFFs wife who i'm standing next to gushes awww he's soo cute! i shake my head, more concerned with the sun on my brow and i sweat down into my collar.

i'm home early because i'm exhausted and haven't slept in weeks. god you look pasty she says to me. even with the blinds closed, in the morning light, she's looking at me naked and huffing a little, god you look pasty. i look at myself, it's my library tan i say, with a smile. thinking i'm uber-clever. she gives a smirk, so maybe i am. she is. and if she smirked, then that must mean i am. anyway, i'm home early. because i'm exhausted. because i haven't slept in weeks. because i don't care about humans or social lives or anything. because i wanted to get disgustingly good grades and enter the law-school super-nerdo-sphere and have people gawk at me when i walk down the corridors and get into the Northwestern exchange program and spend half a year walking around the Art Institute in Chicago and half a year eating at diners everyday and half a year smiling and gorgeous girls in summer dresses except it's fall and i'm wearing a scarf and i get to have my very own kick-ass-american-college-t-shirt which (truth be told) is all i really need in life to be happy. except, after i explain this to the girl sitting next to me at the bridal party table, she says but if you're such a super-nerd, won't you end up spending the whole six months in a library in Northwestern instead of whatever cave you currently study in? yes. she's right. i never thought of that. but there's a big difference you know.
- what's that?
- can't guess?
- nope.
- the tshirt.
- the tshirt?
- yah.
- the tshirt? you haven't slept in about 4 weeks, picked up a pretty serious amphetamine addiction, couldn't manage an erection for your girlfriend (who you go weeks without seeing) (and go days without picking the phone up on anyone), have lived off 2-minute noodles and cans of tuna and ice-cream sandwiches for the better part of two months, for a tshirt?
- see that guy over there [i point across the table]
- yup
- that's my BFF
- i thought he's your BFF [she points to someone else]
- dude, look around you, this whole table is my BFF, anyway, that BFF over there, goes to Harvard. and he got me a tshirt i wear to bed everynight.
- and?
- and it's time i got my own.
- and you think that's worth the drug addiction and the malnutrition and the serious libido problem?
- you don't seem to grasp the awesomeness of the US-college-tshirt.
- clearly not.
- well, i guess that's that then, clear you don't.
- clearly not.
- clearly not.
- not.
- clearly.
- hmm.
- hmm.
- so you and Vanessa then? [at which point i excuse myself to go pee]

there are speeches. friends. it has been a long year. a long long year. i have finally named it. it has taken me two weeks of continuous consideration and reconsideration, 2007 was the year of disappointment. 2008 was the year of quiet miracles. (maybe the year of insidious miracles... one or the either anyway). but, 2009 is the year of unexpected surprises.

and now it's 1:14am. which wouldn't normally bother me. except the amphetamine comedown's a real bitch. and my eyes sting. but... it's all over. i'm writing again. and i'm going to tell you all about it. alllll about it.

after i sleep.

hi all.
the penny guy's back.

exams

will check back in to the world post-exams. until then, unless you know where my home is, you're unlikely to see/hear from me. (and if u knock i'm unlikely to open). unless if you have a sixpack of RedBull. if you wanna get in you must bring goodies. for me to know you have a sixpack of RedBull you'd have to ring/knock - which i won't hear on account of the loud German techno. you could call me, but my phone's on silent under one of these mounds of paper-textbook-notes-mindmaps-suicideletters-doodles. maybe just wait until i take a study break. i take roughly one of those between 10pm-midnight. this divides my day study session 10am-10pm from my evening sessions midnight-4-6am (depending on where between 4 and 6 i collapse). during my study break i watch Boston Legal. i eat 2minute noodles, my comfort food, and tuna, because protein is healthy for you. when you visit we will sit quietly and watch 1.5 episodes of Boston Legal. we will drink roughly two redbulls together (each), and then i will give you a massive hug (because those are as necessary as high-dose chemical-stimulants) and then i will wish you well.

and then return to studying.

post-december-18, my soul may return into the confines of my body, at which point i will start writing again. (actually, i'm going to have a nasty come-down for a week, so maybe more like december 25, Christmas, i'll start being human again)

until then,

hope everyone's well and happy, hope your souls are adequately associated with your bodies, and if you forgot redbull, you will be welcome if you have blueberry muffins, donuts, frozen cokes, chemical-stimulants of some nature, fish&chips, something that resembles my mother's cooking. also, if you're expecting a booty-call, forget it. maybe post-christmas i can have my sexdrive back too.

notapoem

yes, but i am sad he says. don't know why he says. in the car. in the primary school parking lot.
three ladies walk past us, staring oddly, take their time putting stacks of bibles into the boot of a volvo.
___one time i spent an hour staring at a ceiling fan.
__my stepdad's taken up gardening, there's a cactus out the front with a big white flower that only smiles at the moon. it keeps me company. i know it's out there, listening to the music coming out of my room at 3am, smelling instant noodles.

wanna hang out with me? she says, i know you need to study, but, you know.. she says. i do. but i don't, so i buy her four cupcakes instead in a square white box. she smiles. they're no tulip pies or raspberry nectar, still. __i kiss her 12 times before i can walk away i'm not seeing her for a few days a mouth is a well full of affection, i'm thirsty.

___are we not well then? he asks. in shades i answer.
(a day later my stepdad knocks on my door at 6am, you're crazy he says. i have dilated eyes (later she and i lie in bed, your heart's running away without you again she says to me with her ear on my chest. i nod. the problem is i'm always outta breath.

___an asian girl sits at the busstop with an open umbrella to shield the sun.
______skin like pearl lips.

how do you feel? he asks me. dear god, i don't remember what the last one was, hard to say i say.

when you visit me we're going to hallett cove, where i grew up. there might be some magic there i think. and we'll catchup on all the kissing we've misplaced beneath 4am and drug addictions (before breakfast? she looks at me funny) and all i want god dammit is...

people love criticizing, whatever i say they disapprove of, no Q, only you can save yourself, no one else. i shake my head. rubbish. rubbish. not once, not once on this planet has a man saved himself, that rope you used to climb out someone left there for you.

___one day i'll accept not being superman and not being super and possible not being even a man.
__and this world is nothing but magic and truth magic and school-desks and mundane children's names and cars that don't accelerate smoothly forgive me if i haven't learnt what i'm supposed to do with it.

can you fix my doorknob? she asks, it's loose.
___outside a flower keeps an eye on the night for me. taking it all in. speaking to passing high-beams.
he says it's just there, inexplicable. small. tiny little sadness.

my skin never feels right in summer. never.
___decade's almost up.
i've squandered more time than a mountain. drank tea.
______won and lost at things that weren't even games, doG knows what they were they hurt like brutal ouch, ___so, __why can't i remember a second of being human?
___(you need a hug she says.
___how do you know?
___you just always do. ___it's true

there's a night growing outside my bedroom.
a whole massive bloom of a thing, grows petals, long connected sheets of silk, sprouting blue out of its navel, i've seen almost every sunrise for weeks, you look up and the cactus flower's gotten bored and gone to sleep. the midnight couch-tv-watchers have already patted popcorn kernels and oreo crumbs off their laps and called it quits. teen masturbators have done it twice before falling asleep. cats have come and gone. dreams have formed and dissolved. ocean tides done their dance. strippers have paid their rents and gone home to their daughters.
_____________________________________________i'm still awake.

______________________________________________________just me.

when the noises start up again, i find myself sitting behind a desk.
the neighbor's kids are making a racket in their front yard.

yes, but i am sad he says. don't know why he says.

in shades i guess.