tunnage: wild is the wind by nina simone.

sleep: long overdue.

today: whawhere?

-MM: so beautiful, so much much amazing. appropriate response forthcoming. my eyes are barely open.

then why are you writing?
i was friends with a child. who is no longer a child. i suppose she was friends with an almost-child-Q. if we are still friends it is no longer as children. i had to reintroduce myself. and now i remember i love the sound of fingers tapppping on keyboards and i can't seem to help myself writing more. even though i have little say that hasn't already been said.

2012: the year of falling leaves.
days so quickly, like paper being crumpled up and thrown, so quickly browned and fell and past. and gone. for better mostly, but i'm still scared of time passing. so terribly scared of it.

i have a black bow tie. a tuxedo. dance with me. slowly. in smoky rooms. say nothing. put your head on my shoulder, that will say it all.

i have had this dream before.

and you too, i have had dreams of you with me. we laugh so truthfully unicorns are born.

dear LA i miss your cloudless sky.

i miss the smell of pianos.

like mar i'm trying to buy an apartment. it is an endlessly disappointing endeavour. i am not taking to it as well as i'd have though i would.

i should sleep.

"I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy." <-- dear Mr Joyce, why exactly are you so many shades of amazing?

i have a new umbrella. a new blazer. charcoal woolen pants. i am a new man. no one will know, will suspect. my trojan horse has lipstick on it too. beyond cunning, it is ingenious.

god i miss you.

when the going was good we got going. or maybe just i.

does anything have a centre?

when i land i'm going to call you. you will remember we were friends, once. you will love me again. i will make you laugh. you will lie under the grand piano or walk with me down terraces after friday brunches or laugh with me on steep streets and give me scarves because you are kind. and we will all be so lucky, and know it. and we won't need words like i do, words will be unnecessary because we will never need to express missing, or empty spaces or chasms. it will be real and self-evident. like the glare of white rocks in the sun.

when i land this is.

when i land.








waiting



still.

hobbies: sunday

little italy- 1961 by groucho5



it's been years since i had a weekend like this i thought to myself. rained gently. there was  a book tucked under my armpit, inside my jacket. ambling through a book fair. the opera. gym. the last time i saw her was... the hotel lobby. the time before in the girl's bathroom at roma street station. the stall doors are open at the bottom. some girls came in and started giggling it took me a minute to realise they could see our feet entangled, they knew i was there.
____and when i left, not a second after that adventure was over, the grey fog blanket covered me back up.

- years and years. for years this was how i spent my weekends. my life. walk. sit. read. look around for bits and pieces of nothing that would remind me who i was. second hand books. cds. vintage ties. notebooks and pens. all the sadness i wrote and wrote about , was it even true? was it even real? in hindsight it all feels so much more pleasant. why do i remember it so fondly?
____and these last years, 12 hours days of study and work all days of the week, which i enjoyed every minute of, why do i feel all of a sudden like it was such a waste?

(the inversion makes me smile).

how much i'd give now to just sit for a few days and read and drink coffee alone and hold my face up to the rain and think: yes. f&ck this city/earth/life, i'm bigger that it and too small for it to ever find me. i'm nothing and that is my only strength. yes!


___*___*___*

i've decided to be more selfish with my time. (if that is even possible). everything will henceforth pass the strictest: but do i want to? test. till now i've had to make decisions based on social opportunity. i don't have enough of a network to do things when i want. if there is an event happening i've participated, knowing it may be weeks before i get an opportunity for it again.
___forget that. i'm done with that.

henceforth i go when i want, i'll just go through my phone/FB until i find willing company. i'll eat the humiliation of it.

and anyway my social life has turned into a strange motley crew of outliers. coffee with A once and never again. two breakfasts with C in one week but then not another for six weeks. D shows up once a month for dinner. there are 'no regulars' (as Capone would say). nothing is regular. it is made up of firsts. first conversations. my life is a life of first conversations. heightened awkwardnesses which i have mastered so that they cease to exist.

last week at breakfast, a first with Rr. wow. she said halfway through. 
- what?
- how... what... how..
- what?
- what is happening right now, how wh... who are you?
- a shadow. i've forgotten most of it.
- what?
- nothing. i'm trying to remember.
- what you said or who you are?
- when you put it that way: both.
- what universe is this [shakes her head]
- welcome to mine. [the darkest smile]


___*___*___*

i should have known. the weekend started off with a phonecall from Geneva. woke me up. she'd always call me when she was drunk at parties. it's been months though. too many. did you miss me? she says
- even when i don't i do.
- ahh you are very clever chopinou

we speak and when she gets frustrated or thrilled she switches to french. why do i still think about you? she wants to know. i don't love you, i just want to have you. (suddenly i've never hated australia more than that instant).
- this is the best morning of my life.
- qua? moi?
- oui. you are the most perfect morning.
- you just like it when i say naughty things in french.
- so speak to me in french.
- ahaa, you think it is so easy?
- no. i think it is so hard. soo too hard.
- [speaks in french]

she tells me to read a book she has recommended. hours later i get a text telling me she is home safe.

______i've spent more time missing you than being with you. 

perhaps it's a quote. but it speaks clearly for many of us i'm sure.
it hurts. my body hurts, i can feel the mouth on every cell in me open for a woman's skin and hair and smell. to wrap her up and lie behind her and kiss her neck and shoulders...


___*___*___*

OVER EMAIL

mom --> q

check out this song, it's pretty. [youtube link].

q --> mom

very pretty. not as pretty as you, but still quite pretty. and in all fairness, you're very pretty, so there's not going to be too many things that can compete with your prettiness.

boos

mom --> q

who taught you to speak like that?

q --> mom

i'm a poet remember?

mom --> q

ok. so keep writing me nice things. god knows i've had to put up with your poetic depressions

q --> mom

lol.


___*___*___*

it's all been too much lately. and by lately i mean 2012. it fizzles. i feel it scattering everywhere. like cooking with too much oil. if someone were to ask me what my 2012 has been like i'd say: like cooking and the oil's fizzling everywhere and you can't stop it and everything's boiling over and the kitchen's a mess and it's too hot or cold or god knows what and you're late always but you came early god dammit i can't get here any earlier how am i not done at the end of the day?

it's too fast. too fast i can't keep up. i'm lost. i lost it around the start of march.

so i cut my pills. two for a few days. now singles for a few days. from tomorrow i'm going free-willy for a while. see what happens. let the body relax. recoup. i need things to slow down. i need to read on weekends. not cases, books. i need to sleep more than 3 hours. i need to kiss.

(everytime mom calls:
- have you found a girlfriend yet?
- no
- are you getting back with [ex]?
- no
- are you sleeping with anyone?
- no
- no?
- no
- no?
- i said no.
- since when?
- i said no.
- i know you did. but since when are you... not?
- i haven't been charmed by anyone.
- [mumbled to herself] this won't end well.
- amen mama. )

so i cut my pills. going to force the gym schedule to stand up on its feet again. get a haircut. i need to dream about the future. there's a future around here somewhere.


___*___*___*

BOOKS I BOUGHT AT THE BOOK FAIR, A LIST:

- Norton's Anthology of English Literature (8th Ed) (YAY!)
- Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (DOUBLE YAY!)
- Rushdie, Satanic Verses
- Robert Graves, Greek Myths (two volumes, hardcover, in a box set) (TOO MANY YAY!S TO COUNT)
- Seamus Heaney, Electric Light
- Milton, Poetic Works
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, le Petit Prince (from 1956 with coloured photos and a gorgeous little inscription... Petes et Sabine. (whoever Petes et Sabine we(a)re... i hope that their life was filled with things that are too big to be contained in words)
- John Carey, Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century's Most Enjoyable Books. It's quite amazing actually. his very short essays are remarkable for the brevity with which he expresses so much insight. he is/was Merton Professor of English at Oxford, so perhaps you'd expect that... but it's just so readable. 

there are others. i can't remember. 


___*___*___*

i admit my unhappiness easily. it is harder to admit that i blame myself for it. that it is myself, my weakness, my fault that i am this way or that or the other and that i shouldn't be. that i should be greater. because there's no point being anything else. that's narcissism in a nutshell maybe? maybe it's just humanity in a nutshell. potentiality unbounded but crammed into coffee-cups spent with women you haven't seen in six years or seeing the smartest kids you know working jobs that'll drive them to drink and whores and i'd cut myself just to feel something if i had to time to bandage myself after (which i don't). ______she says to me you're sick you know that?, you'll never be happy, you always want more why aren't you ever satisfied? ___(potentiality unbounded) ___because there's more to monday than f&cking conversations about television personalities i don't care about and highlighting identification numbers and sitting on trains for hours and hours going to and from nowhere twice a day for too much of my week dizzy the whole time ready to throw up if someone would just punch me hard enough , a man almost hit me as i was crossing a crossing intersection it's flashing red are you blind? he shouted get out the car and i'll KILLLLLLL you i shouted back my roomate was terrified so was i but he drove away - you want me to be satisfied with that?


___*___*___*

she wakes me up.
speaks to me in french.
i tingle. my arms and shoulders remember the touch
of lips and the wind of french words and french breaths
passing across them.

i die a death of missing.

dear q: where are you? 
___(echoes in my head for days

where are you?

where?


___*___*___*

this has been a better weekend than any i've had in years.
it's been a memory of who i was.
i remember who i was now.
i was smarter. quieter.
i was alone. drawn
to things, to places
by my feet alone
and the gravity
of sundays
and the
scent
of women
and books

and i loved
soo many things
soo much.


i must remind myself to dance silently again.

bonus points

never is still an always,
i do miss women whispering to me in french )more than anything),

at the end of time and space there is a field of daffodils and a cat named
Claudius who recites Hart Crane and claims to have given a high-five to Wagner,

what i know of creation is that it is not so much essential as non-negotiable,
_____an alternative not having (yet) been found to life - except perhaps love
____(bjork calls a two-way dream,

on either side of your head i put each arm
and you squealed

what surrounds every place better than skin or night or night or hope (of)/(in)/(because)
What am I i got tired of asking of myself and the tree i consulted was too patient for me, i cannot hold my breath as long as geology waiting for something to happen
(and yet somewhere a mountain is growing i'm sure of it and an ocean is giggling to itself as it tiptoes away from Malibu).

what i want to say more than anything is that it's beyond words to do , :.
all things being equal i have done no more than try to be a man or a human or both and words have failed me the way i have failed them.

i hate riddles.

thoughts (fragments)

untitled by kerryab


i used to read you, but now i don't understand what you're saying anymore, that's what he says.
- yes, i know what you mean.
- what?
- even i don't know what i'm writing anymore.
- what?
[it's just night on night. dark on dark. stumbles and grasps. left turns when you're lost, who knows, it's a who knows]


___*___*___*

the kids talk about their futures. where they want to go, what jobs, who wants to be the next attorney-general, who wants to be a high court judge. i sip my soda water, stare into nothing. all the while making three people laugh with talk of cartwheels and unicorn and an occasional joke about masturbatory habits. next thing i remember i'm at a train station, in a shower, on a treadmill, in this bed. it's tomorrow, it's today. it's never all the time. f&ck is going on?


___*___*___*

i'm going to buy my own place. like... soon.
to celebrate i'm going to blast portishead and drink a bottle of rum alone and get naked and stare at my ceiling and cry that my bookshelf is near me again.
___more likely i'll repaint the whole thing for no reason other than... dominion. then i'll bust down a wall or pull or a rug and take it outside and punch it for half an hour until my knuckles bleed.


___*___*___*

a young girl walks past me on the train platform. she has short brown hair and light skin. a little dazed, but conscious, even... defiant. steps with certainty. she's barefoot, she has stockings that are ripped up and dirty. purple pants. i can't stop staring at her. a time-machine. there's a universe somewhere she's an angel. she makes no sense to me - she's not a junkie. not a hipster. there's no other option, she's an angel from a heaven i don't know the name of.


___*___*___*

maybe i need a haircut. maybe i should have stayed on the treadmill longer. maybe i need to kiss someone's breasts. maybe not. maybe i need more pills, or less. or more time. or more things to do.
___i need to stretch. pray. (is that the same thing?) fall. more friends, or fewer strangers (that's different).


___*___*___*

i tell her i'll wear i a leopard skin pocket square. she tells me she'll wear a skin tight leopard print dress and knee-highs. we'll be the king and queen she says. (i don't hear, i'm imagining it).


___*___*___*

i used to write well. maybe i used to think better, maybe that's the problem - my thoughts are damaged. i've lost the feel of myself.


___*___*___*

someone asks me what i'm doing next year. that's a coded invitation for a conversation about the future, the professional future. i tell her i'm taking the year off to dedicate myself to the art of assisting lion tamers in the circus. she giggles and asks really. i tell her i'm moving to las vegas to die. she asks why, i realise the film-allusion is lost on her. i tell her i'm going to the north of Norway where unicorn are rumoured to have been spotted. really? she presses. i tell her i'm going to take the year to decide if i should use black pens exclusively. by now she seems to realise i'm not being serious. i'm relieved. excuse myself.


___*___*___*

she texts out of the blue and asks me to get a 4 hour flight and take a 4 hour drive to see her. i wonder if she needs a friend or a lover. i imagine both. we all need both. i tell her i will if i can. i surprise myself by actually meaning it. turns out i can't. i text her back and tell her i can't. i surprise myself by feeling a little disappointment.


___*___*___*

this coming weekend i will go to a gallery. the opera.
whatever. whoever.
bring it.

4_FILM by Aram Bedrossian

CLYTAEMNESTRA:
__Last night, I say, the mother of this morning.


___*___*___*

THINGS I HAVE THOUGHT TODAY, A LIST:

- i should call mom.
- uh oh. you want to call mom things must suck
- you're fat. go to the gym.
- you're too thin. go to the gym.
- the lighting at this gym sucks. go home and turn a lamp on and hide under your covers.
- don't do pill-free-weekends anymore. this ish cray.
- your eyes are beautiful.
- this is the second time i've tried to make this city work, it doesn't i hate everything about it i hate everything about my life it's all terrible. (mom: don't be so melodramatic) (q: fine.) (mom: there must be something about your life you don't hate?...
- ...these boxer shorts kick butt (mom: there you go. babysteps)
- it's annoying that your name is Barbara. do you know how hard it is to google/youtube 'barbara'? (but worth it:
Tu ne te souviendras pas, barbara
- companionship. what's that mean?
- run. Run. run Orestes, rrruun!.


___*___*___*

RECENT LISTENING, A PLAYLIST:
- stuff i can find, barbara
- domestic scene, radio department
- dream, john cage
- i'm a fool to want you, billie holiday
- election night, bic runga
- (D: i like lost-questionmark better than lost-exclamationmark. Q: wtf are you talking about? D: there's two versions, you know how the album is lost! Q: no i did not know that. D: ok, well the album version is lost!, but there's another version, lost? Q: ninja you trippin i'm looking that up:
lost?, coldplay


___*___*___*

n o c t u r n e

sshh little boy, sshh
tomorrow is not so scary
that you avoid it like this for hours :
close your eyes ,
stop clenching wrinkles into the night ,
__what you need isn't here anymore than there,
there's no point forcing

little things i li(ov)ke about my current life, a LIST:

(1) when you need to go diagonally across a pedestrian crossing so whichever light goes green first you win

(2) getting shirts ironed and pressed. then, every morning you feel like don draper

(3) zoning out on the treadmill. when snap back 10-20-30 minutes have gone and you're human again. i've decided it's akin to meditation. i meditate through my whole body.

(4) pocket. squares. kick. butt.

(5) $1 coffee on my way to work from 7/11. it's the quickest, cheapest way to placate a not-that-serious addiction.

(6) handstands in the living room. well. not well-executed handstands. there's no real standing. handfalling in the living room. on your head.

(7) conversations with my mama.

(8) taking a lunchtime walk to remember what air is and break up the day spent indoors

(9) having something(s) to look forward to.

(10) breakfast. avocado on sourdough with a skinny latte. approx 3 times weekly. at this corner place 2 mins from central station. sometimes with friends, othertimes with the financial review.

(11) connecting with music on the third listen. (welcome to the rotation Atlas Moth)

(12) San Pellgrino as a side-drink to my breakfast cereal. i don't know why, but it works. #serial.

(13) a shelf full of dusty out-of-date legal textbook that are absolutely useless but were too beautiful for me to permit them to be thrown away and will henceforth serve as nothing more than bookcase candy.

(14) the out-of-this-world amazing collection of classical music that has found its way onto youtube which gives me days and days worth of fascinating, new, interesting, loved music

(15) not caring about answering my phone.

(16) discovering 2 seasons of Daria i didn't know existed and therefore have not been watched.

(17) insisting (girl)roomate touch my abs touch my abs they're aaaaamazing

(18) my bright orange pen

clouds.

____(1)

 I think a lot about time. Time is a malleable concept. An hour is not an hour. Sometimes an hour is a second. Sometimes a day is an entire life and when you wake up the next day you are someone new. I have been soo many people. Every few months I think I am a newborn. Sometimes I am an old man, sometimes I am young boy.
____It could be that time is a feeling. Something like that. Maybe it's linked to my heartrate. That would explain it. Since hearts can stop and you die and hearts can fly away and leave you alone while they go off to sit under a tree and recover. To work things out for themselves - I'm sure mine would be better off without me holding it back sometimes. That would be nice right? I could tell my soul: dear soul, you can just tie me to this stop-sign and you fly off and go take care of your things. I'm too slow for you. I hold you back. I'll wait here, and when you are ready, when you have done all you need to do and loved all you need to love you can come back and find me. And we'll be together again and you can tell me about what you saw and I will be proud of you. Farewell Soul. __(just please, uhm, _come back for me. eventually).


____(2)

I also think a lot about space. Where I am. How I came to be here. If there's escaping it. If maybe I were somewhere else I would be somebody else. If it's even possible that I be somebody else. Maybe in the nighttime I am more me. The real proper perfectly honest straight to the core me. Maybe in Paris I am more me. Maybe in Tahiti. Maybe when I'm hungry and hot that is the real me. Maybe it's too far now, too far lost. No longer recoverable. Maybe I've died and become someone new soo many times there's no way to go back to the original.
____In my family we debate this often. Perhaps because my auntie and uncle escaped Iran through the desert into Pakistan. And had to live in squallor before they came to Australia. You don't get much of a choice in circumstances like that do you? Everything is not a lifestyle choice. That's my mother's favourite line. She's right I suppose. You can live anywhere, if you have work and have shelter and you're getting by, you're fine. No one's trying to kill are they? Perhaps not. Perhaps so.


____(3)

One day I stopped dreaming. That's not entirely true, I just stopped remembering them. I don't miss it. Growing up most of my dreams were about me being chased. I thought I was Orestes. Run Orestes, run!! I would giggle to myself in the morning. One night I met my grandfather in a dream, sitting at his kitchen table where he always sat when I was a child. He had made me tea. He tried to speak to me but I couldn't understand what he was saying. He had recently passed away. From that moment on I was certain he was helping me. Maybe I still am, but the feeling is softer now. I have to think about it to remember it. It feels like a hug of sorts. Like the air surrounding you is your friend and likes you. I like that feeling.
____In normal circumstances I know if I've been dreaming because I wake up covered in sweat. Don't remember a thing. Just sweaty. Wherever it is I go, it must be far. Perhaps I am still running. Perhaps not.


____(4)

THINGS I LIKE TO SAY TO MYSELF, A LIST:

- Life's not a game of win and lose q. it's not even a game
- the future has a way of sorting itself out. just leave it alone
- work harder. that's the answer. always.
- this is the only way it could have been. this is the only way it could have been.
- the gym will fix it/this


____(5)

That feeling like I'm falling... it doesn't go away. Sometimes I lie on the floor to remind myself it's there. On Saturday, it was sunny, and I put a towel on the tiles outside and slept in the sun. I rolled my shorts up so I could show the sun as much of myself as possible. I covered my face with a hat so I could close my eyes. I had an invisible blanket. I was soo warm, and calm. In my head I believed I could hear the waves of the ocean. It was delicious. I like to be naked when I am in shape. I like the shapes of my arms and the little lumps of muscle on my back. When I run I pretend I am an engine in a train. Or a robot. (But lying down in the sun I pretended I was a cloud. I had no ideas. No thoughts. I had no dreams. I was not late or early. I was not anything, I was not even my own body. I was just a shape, floating in the sun. Weightless and beautiful beyond compare
 )