June 23

There's a cold wind blowing right up my very short skirt which I put on this morning to celebrate my anticipated triumph over functional grammar- a horrible mistake, as whenI got to school my essay was semi lost and I had to retype two thirds of it before even embarking on a proof read. Hysterical reliance on technical support has been the order of the day- I'll have to thank them. Now I have one hour before I have to put it in the box and I'm too scared to look it over: instead I am dreaming of whisky and even contemplating a cigar.

June 22

Yesterday climbing until I could hardly walk- Nick regaled me with his tale of tragic love which quelled my fantasies about having my way with him in an instant, his resemblance to Dirty Rotten Jack being far too pronounced for my liking. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was hanging out the Access Denied sign (see? I can't just have a pure sex fantasy). I came home and fell immediately unconscious and dreamt about him: he had invented a very advanced kind of artificial intelligence which had an aesthetic sense. I said, they'll cut your head off for this, and he said (very proudly): No they won't. They'll hunt it. The computer (or whatever it was) liked the poetry of Basho and had built a fountain with some of his verses inscribed in the stones.

Then I dreamt I was a terrorist and two other women and I were going to burn down a dam. We spent a day dragging pieces of brushwood onto the dam wall while the dam guardians watched us from their sentry boxes behind barbed wire, doing nothing. It was incredibly high and I was scared of falling to the point of paralysis: below there was nothing but a vertiginous surge of jungle where we had to crawl about looking for wood. Afterwards I was euphoric at having survived my own terror, but as I was coming home a car pulled up beside me and a woman in a grey suit shot an arrow at me that administered me a shot of truth serum. They drove away and I crawled into somebody's garden (full of bright tulips)- determined that the woman in the car wouldn't have the benefit of my involuntary honesty, I went down some steps and knocked at the door and asked for sanctuary before blurting out the whole story.

This morning I had a message from Marcin who has provisionally booked a ticket for September 2. I felt instant relief and realised that when he has a visa and I know exactly when he's coming I will allow myself to feel something other than terror, doubt and indiscriminate lust for other men. I know that I'm luckier than I probably deserve and maybe that's why I can't allow myself to quite believe that everything will be alright. Hearing Nick's story (in which he exhibits deep interest and a desire to commit to a woman who has been demanding this for years, on the occasion of her meeting somebody else) I thought again about the pathological need to get what you can't have precisely because it's not available to you, and decided ( aided by a combination of will and logic) that what I have is indeed what I want, and will continue to be so for quite a while.

June 21

Yesterday I woke up feeling content (maybe even smug?) and counted my blessings as I lay in bed: three handbags, a Prospective Spouse, and a grammar paper that was proceeding as it should. It was a beautiful winter day and I went sleeveless to the university , where my sense of the bounty of the universe quickly evaporated in the face of the tortured generic structure of Amanda Vanstone's press release. By sunset baby Jesus had taken me well and truly off his Christmas card list and I had a disastrous cyber date with Marcinski, who first couldn't see me, then couldn't hear me, then had his utterances subjected to a half- minute delay. I aborted the mission out of sheer frustration and went home to watch murder shows until I was too scared to piss in case the homicidal dwarf had miraculously escaped the television and was lurking in the dunny.

I have successfully rationalised (but not exorcised) my eruptions of lust for Nick in a number of ways- here are some possible explanations which have occurred over the last few days:
1) 1 1/2 year itch. Have I ever had a relationship that lasted any longer than this? No. Why? Because after a year and a half I get bored and edgy and and start prowling restlessly in search of uncharted Y chromosomes.
2) Pre marital panic brought on by the thought that I may not have the chance to sex with anyone besides Marcinski
a) ever again
b) while I am still young and lovely
c) in the carpark of the climbing wall
3) ovulatory turmoil

If this story were made in Hollywood I could include the uncontrollable -meant- to- be option but as it actually revolves around a warehouse in St Peters I think it's safe enough to leave it out.

On Saturday I went to see a South African film with Liz at the State Theatre. It opened with a very long pan over barren country, accompanied by music that sounded like somebody sobbing and twanging on a fencing wire and it didn't get any more cheerful after that as the protagonists developed AIDS, were ostracised and eventually died. I ended up asking myself why the world(against all the evidence) seems so beautiful on film, and concluded that it has something to do with the intensity of focus, with the reduction of the whole chaotic mess to a distillation of light and colour of manageable proportions. There's something precise and lovely about it.

Then there's the thrill of the State Theatre itself :there's a perverse pleasure in finding yourself, when everybody's dead and the curtain comes down, in the dress circle under a monstrous chandelier with kitsch as far as they eye can see. I always forget how much fun it is.

June 17

Today coming home from Chatswood via Redfern station I had some thoughts about begging, an extension of a prolonged disagreement I had with Evan on Australia Day, where he argued the They Should Do Something For their Money side of the debate and I said, they already are. He said that he was quite happy to give money to Greenpeace/ Save the Children etcetc but refused (on principle)to give anything to people begging on the street: it's a strange sort of morality which says that it's moral to fund some monstrous bureaucracy where most of the money goes into the pay- packets of public servants, but you must never give a penny to anybody who stands in your line of vision with their (usually well pigmented) hand outstretched and says, help me. In my opinion, however, begging is a job, an honest transaction but a delicate one.There are rules: don't look into the eyes of the mendicant: don't give such a puny amount that they will be forced to shout your stinginess after you as you scuttle off: don't give an amount you can't afford to give again next time to the same person. I don't know what they are from the other side, but I suspect you are forbidden from forming a personal relationship even with regular benefactors. The model beggar is friendly but not over- familiar, diplomatic but not obsequious, respectable- looking but doesn't drive a BMW (even if they own one as some are said to do.) And there is my Manual of Begging and Non Tax- Deductible Donation.

Anyway then I remembered Louise at Grandma's funeral who- when she found out I was still a student at the ripe old age of 27- said, well, just make sure you make a contribution to society, not like your father. (To which I responded exactly as my father would have, with an icy smile and a tell- tale rictus about the jaw which belies the effort it takes not to literally bite off the head of whoever has offended you. ) And then I thought, why is it that it isn't a Contribution to be intelligent, compassionate, and thoughtful, and to exploit all the resources that the natural and intellectual worlds have to offer, but you are a model citizen if you sit in an office all day for 30 years and sell your life for $25 an hour to somebody who probably doesn't even know your name? Conclusion: it's a sick old world.

In other news, the DG is in sole possession of my grey matter at the moment so that even when I am having guilty sex dreams about Nick it is within a functional grammar framework. Don't ask me to explain this but it's definitely the case. As for the guilty sex dreams it's that time of the month when I am in thrall to my hormones and I hope it will pass. The best bromide is thinking: OK, we go to bed (and I won't say it hasn't occurred to me in glorious technicolour)- what then? Answer: holocaust. It doesn't turn down my libido but it will definitely stop me from acting on it.

June 13

First of all happy birthday to the queen if she happens to be reading my blog- I am now back from Melbourne spending this alleged holiday sitting in the library with the DG who has returned from the Bahamas refreshed and alert. The trip didn't improve my affairs as I had hoped- in fact now they are in a more advanced state of decomposition than ever. The fermenting sheets in the bucket in the laundry and the carpet of papers on the floor are still there and I have to force myself not to tell stories about how everything would be alright if only Marcinski wa s here. No wonder relationships fall apart with such monotonous regularity: the love object is supposed to play the roles of maid, personal assistant and gigolo as well as fairy godmother and purveyor of happiness.

About the wedding: the bride wore near- white, and the assembled guests drank themselves into a champagne stupour as expected. A religious service which only made me cringe once, when the priest said "I acknowledge you, Matt and Renee, to be in a really good place right now." Or actually twice, because he said it again. Kylie Daley was there, and Vassi, who turns out to be gay which is not appreciated by her mad Greek family. Imagine having to 'confess' to a consensual love as if you had been selling smack to schoolchildren or putting your hand down their nappies.

Saying goodbye to Marcelle which was heartbreaking- I don't know when we'll see each other again and I felt worse than I did last time I separated from marcin. She's off to Guatemala on a one way ticket and I feel like an abandoned wife. Or actually probably worse than that because the abandoned wife has a sauve qui peut attitude that holds real misery at bay for a while.

june 9

I have made a conscious decision to suspend my disbelief in the possiblity of a real and enduring romance: it's hard to decide whether constant doubt or complacency is more boring but I have decided to give complacency its turn. At least it's a change.

Bleeding like a dying pig and feeling an accompanying disgust with myself as the producer of all this indulgent autobiography. Time to hunt down Umberto.

June 7

Marcin went to Lucynka's birthday party on the weekend and gave me the following definition of the Polish middle class, based on first hand anthropological research: they have fast cars, designer babies, and they drink wine not spirits. Feeling out of place, he found the other solitary hooligan and proceeded to get obscenely drunk on vodka. I wonder middle class middle aged complacency is what lies in wait for us all, a four wheel drive on the north shore, tea parties on the terrace. Its completely incompatible with the way I think about myself and i torture myself imagining that in 10 years I will have become fat and mumsy, running around to collect the children from tap dance lessons and bullying them into trying out for shampoo commercials while shouting about their giftedness from the rooftops.

Being examined on the rise (and ultimate demise) of Mussolini: all that sticks in mind is that (after all that) he was eventually shot in 1945 and his body hung up on display in an esso service station in the middle of Rome. This is as it should be, since the only reason people are really interested in history is because they (we ) are bloodthirsty perverts who want tales of death and strangeness and are willing to trawl the archives of the past indefinitely in order to get it. No really serious historian minds negotiating referendums, pacts, elections, the writing of constitutions and the coronations of kings, as long as they are rewardedby the discovery of one good concentration camp or a little known horse-fucking Roman despot. Ohhh-rereading this, I don't like my chances of attaining middle class normality, now or ever.

June 7

Well the Dysfunctional Grammarian has run off to the Bahamas with the Novelist, leaving the Public Servant ( i have decided that this sounds better than Bureaucrat) to keep the home fires burning and daily colonise another small piece of my soul. Under her influence (the PS) I am acquiring a dirty nocturnal look about the eyes and chronic narcolepsy as a response to the heating in the office, my breasts are swelling up painfully in protest at the caffeinated, immobile life she leads and I seem to be growing a beard as well. I feel as if I have been transplanted into some sunless alternative reality populated by grey phantoms in suits and headsets which emit moronic voices all day long (how do I get onto the internet? they ask, how do I make an overseas phone call?) Maybe this is the lake of fire, and reports of its interest level have been greatly exaggerated.

I haven't had time to discuss the main event of last week which was the exit stage left of the Hawking Goth, round about Tuesday. He owed us a certain amount of rent: we repossessed his D V D player and other electronics as surety, he called the police, who came to negotiate a truce. Which consisted of telling us to give back his things- yes officer, we said, and did. Trying hard to convince myself that money is no issue and that if somebody had told me that for $ 100 I could have him out of my life I would probably have paid ( Marcin said, I would have killed him for $50 and it would have been cheaper) but I have to admit that I still wake sometimes in the early hours in a bitter rage that despite zoloft consumption and dyslexia (emosion) he knew better than we did how to fight on the street.On the other hand, I inherited his bed, which turns out -after an exorcism- to be far superior to mine.

june 4

1596 words and it's time for a blog break before lunch. As always I feel a mild attack of stage fright at the sight of a blank blog- box on the screen and the need to please my audience of millions (or anyway of one- hi Liz). Today the day is devoted to Anna Wierzbicka who is advising me (indirectly) of important Polish cultural values which might help my marital life- so far I have discovered that sincerity is prized, that a mobile face is an asset, that the use of diminutives (koteczku, sloneczku, and others which constitute more or less my entire Polish lexicon) reflects a the Polish emphasis on showing affection, tenderness, etc. Maybe this is my own form of psychosis- looking through 35 years worth of linguistic publications searching for personal messages which will tell me how to import an eastern European Prospective Spouse and live happily ever after.

Later:

It's now almost 5 pm and I am returning home triumphant with 2000 words of reasonably well constructed earnest and opinionated rubbish in my little bag. I think that I deserve a beer.

june 2

I had expected the highlands to be full of pallid, unassertive ghosts, retired churchgoing phantoms slithering amongst the yellow grass and dirty sheep without enough energy to undertake a good haunting. Instead my grandmother (converted by Billy Graham in 1959 a and more than capable of raising her posthumous voice one last time ) spoke from beyond the grave to perform her final missionary act, and warn us that those who had not accepted baby Jesus as their saviour would burn forever in a lake of fire. Her chosen mouthpiece for this sermon was the Pastor Shayne Hanes-inarticulate, self righteous, and without an ounce of poetry in his smug middle-aged bones. Inventer of deathbed repentance and alienator of heathens, the hero of the Picton Bible CHurch and its congregation of pensioners whose deaths he appropriates on behalf of father son and holy ghost. I will consult Umberto Eco and diagnose him for certain as either an idiot or a moron- watch this space.

Otherwise an opportunity for a family reunion with cousins first second and third- Kay (last seen as a young bride in white) is now a pushy middle aged mother, and the rest have shrunken or sprouted hairs in strange places or submitted- in general- to the unmistakeable mutations of age. Lyn, who I remember as a 14 year old in shorts with a hairstyle that situates her beyond doubt in the mid eighties, has gotten old even more quickly than the rest with the assistance of an abusive husband (thankfully departed) and a lifelong Holiday habit. Richard is a lonely old man, retired to his father's old house on the opal fields of Grawin and longing for some human contact to keep him tied to earth. On the way home I woke out of drooling uninhibited sleep to see my face in the obscurity of the train window looking creased and weary. In a couple of years I will be thirty and there's no more unavoidable reminder of the passing of time that a family event where nobody recognises you because the last time they saw you you were jy\ust learning to walk.