My favourite piece of news for the year is the one about the suicidal Frenchwoman who had half her face eaten by her dog while unconscious after an overdose of sleeping pills and subsequently became the first person in the world to have a face transplant. It has everything you could want in fact or fiction, from desperation to bestial behaviour and the redemption of modern medicine, and provides a conversation starter from an endless number of standpoints including:
1) what an amazing operation
2)what a fucked up woman
3)what a naughty dog
If anyone would like to pursue any of these lines of discussion, you known where to find me.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
February 23
Suffering a small scale human tragedy of the decision making variety- I went for a job interview at Appen where the mistress ( an obnoxious specimen by the name of Julie Vonwiller- I wonder if this will appear when she googles herself) showed me all her teeth at regular intervals for an hour and said that she was almost sure they could use me. It seems that the issue is that I am in fact too employable. She is such an abrasive character that I tell myself I will only accept the job if she offers me a million bucks but of course in reality I'm interested. The thing that really horrifies me is the idea of calling someone up and telling them that I've had a better offer but probably it will provide some long- needed training in assertiveness. Interesting isn't it that I like to imagine myself as a powerful and independent woman but then crumble into a small heap at the thought of saying no to anyone.
Occupying myself more than I probably should with the proceeding disintegration of Katherine- and -Tawfiq: the plot is now so thick that Hollywood would reject it on credibility grounds, and I have spent hours straining my mind trying to work out what's really going on. I am inevitably coming down on Katherine's side ( the sisterhood isn't dead after all ) but having a few regrets as I had Tawfiq earmarked as a nice friend for Marcin to guide him through the pitfalls of migrant life. To be continued.
Occupying myself more than I probably should with the proceeding disintegration of Katherine- and -Tawfiq: the plot is now so thick that Hollywood would reject it on credibility grounds, and I have spent hours straining my mind trying to work out what's really going on. I am inevitably coming down on Katherine's side ( the sisterhood isn't dead after all ) but having a few regrets as I had Tawfiq earmarked as a nice friend for Marcin to guide him through the pitfalls of migrant life. To be continued.
Monday, February 20, 2006
February 20
Contemplating womanhood recently - a difficult subject which is, believe it or not, further complicated by the fact that I am one ( a woman I mean). The subject gives me a sort of vertigo, as if I am inside a building trying to picture how it looks from the outside. How to distinguish the characteristics of my natural self from those attributable to my second X chromosome ? I am thinking of these peculiarly feminine sorts of behaviours and desires such as the urge to tell people to take a warm jumper with them when they go to the movies and a more generalised sense of responsibility for things which I can't control (the happiness of my prospective spouse, the imaginary feelings of my prospective employers should I decline their kind offers ). I fight with the niggling worry that my conception of liberation, and in particular the idea of sexual freedom, is just another nasty joke by the patriarchy - an insidious fashion which isn't really freedom at all but a twisted expression of all the old urges and a novel way of exploiting women by convincing them that they are doing exactly what they want. What can you do when the woman in a burqa (or the woman sucking a stranger's cock in a nightclub dunny) says, this empowers me, I'm acting on my own will, this is what I choose ? Having been so thoroughly molded by the external pressures of socialisation and ideas about gender, an attempt to get an outside perspective feels like an extreme effort akin to a mental space program that catapults me away from the gravitational pull of The World as We Know It. Think of the hazards and casualties of this sort of program- how many dead simian astronauts, how much galactic politicking, how many shat-in space suits, all for the sake of seeing a few square kilometres of dead rock and the vision of the little blue marble called Earth which suddenly looks like a perfectly good place to be after all.
Monday, February 13, 2006
February 14
Anarchy is in the air - it's a time of divorces and flux, and it's reflected in the demolition process going on at the university where they are knocking down the building beside the library. Behind a high wire fence they are slowly reducing it to a pile of rubble and it's a peculiarly satisfying sight: the smashed windows, the twisted wire supports protruding from the concrete, the sudden visibility of previously hidden rooms as they are torn in half and reveal that inside, there is nothing interesting at all. The same impulse that leads me to secretly hope to see a terrible car accident is the impulse that makes watching this destruction such a pleasure: it demonstrates what everybody knows, that nothing is stable, that everything will fall apart when the right amount of pressure is applied in the right place.
These maudlin thoughts provoked partly by Katherine and Tawfik's separation, which is unfolding as we speak in surreal technicolour. He went to Egypt to photograph an archaeological dig, fell in love with a sexy young headbanger and came back listening to Iron Maiden and requesting a separation. My powers of imagination are so exercised by this unlikely scenario that I am even dreaming about it and trying to make sense of it in my sleep. My first thought is that he has gone completely mad but Katherine tells me that 'that's what she thought at first, but that's what people always tell themselves when they're being dumped.' She is vocal and articulate about the process- the pity succeeded by rage with a constant drumming of pain in the background. Destruction is not only a source of secret fascination, it' s also unbelievably easy: it's possible to ruin something that's been years in the making in a matter of minutes.How depressing it is and how paranoid it can make one.
On another, not entirely unrelated topic , yesterday I made my first ever visit to a psychiatrist. I had to meet my mad phone-friend's doctor before meeting her, so at 12:30 I rolled sweatily up to the door of a discreet house in Paddington which had the blinds drawn and only a tiny Please Enter sign to indicate that it was anything other than an ordinary residence in a fashionable part of town. Inside the decor was relentlessly beige, the trashy magazines (Vogue and Cosmopolitan, not New Weekly- there is both money and taste here) lined up with military precision on a spotless glass tabletop, the light moderated by pale, neutral blinds, soothing music and a smiling, unintimidating receptionist hunkered down behind a high desk. Obviously the designers didn't realise that a lack of any discord is just as likely to cause an outbreak of madness as a hot pink couch and a Black Sabbath soundtrack.
Dr. Both himself was smooth and pleasant in the same uncompromising way - polished shoes, a balding head shaved to minimise the obviousness of his hair loss, neat ironed trousers. He sat in one wide beige chair and crossed his legs in an accomodating (as opposed to defensive) manner : I sat in another one opposite him and mirrored his pose. An easy conversation followed with exactly the right amount of eye contact, guided precisely by the doctor who gave me (in an unemotional but caring fashion) a rundown of Julie's illness. Diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia 20 years ago, she has never worked due to her condition and currently lives at home with her parents as she has for most of her life. She struggles with finding ways to occupy her time and has only recently ( within the last couple of years) found a medication which controls her symptoms (voices). She has made a couple of unsuccessful suicide attempts and frequently suffers from anxiety in new situations.
This, then, constituted the only discordancy: this recount of what has basically been an unhappy life circumscribed by recurrent madness, uttered in this reasonable tone by a pleasant- faced young man in his beige office.
These maudlin thoughts provoked partly by Katherine and Tawfik's separation, which is unfolding as we speak in surreal technicolour. He went to Egypt to photograph an archaeological dig, fell in love with a sexy young headbanger and came back listening to Iron Maiden and requesting a separation. My powers of imagination are so exercised by this unlikely scenario that I am even dreaming about it and trying to make sense of it in my sleep. My first thought is that he has gone completely mad but Katherine tells me that 'that's what she thought at first, but that's what people always tell themselves when they're being dumped.' She is vocal and articulate about the process- the pity succeeded by rage with a constant drumming of pain in the background. Destruction is not only a source of secret fascination, it' s also unbelievably easy: it's possible to ruin something that's been years in the making in a matter of minutes.How depressing it is and how paranoid it can make one.
On another, not entirely unrelated topic , yesterday I made my first ever visit to a psychiatrist. I had to meet my mad phone-friend's doctor before meeting her, so at 12:30 I rolled sweatily up to the door of a discreet house in Paddington which had the blinds drawn and only a tiny Please Enter sign to indicate that it was anything other than an ordinary residence in a fashionable part of town. Inside the decor was relentlessly beige, the trashy magazines (Vogue and Cosmopolitan, not New Weekly- there is both money and taste here) lined up with military precision on a spotless glass tabletop, the light moderated by pale, neutral blinds, soothing music and a smiling, unintimidating receptionist hunkered down behind a high desk. Obviously the designers didn't realise that a lack of any discord is just as likely to cause an outbreak of madness as a hot pink couch and a Black Sabbath soundtrack.
Dr. Both himself was smooth and pleasant in the same uncompromising way - polished shoes, a balding head shaved to minimise the obviousness of his hair loss, neat ironed trousers. He sat in one wide beige chair and crossed his legs in an accomodating (as opposed to defensive) manner : I sat in another one opposite him and mirrored his pose. An easy conversation followed with exactly the right amount of eye contact, guided precisely by the doctor who gave me (in an unemotional but caring fashion) a rundown of Julie's illness. Diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia 20 years ago, she has never worked due to her condition and currently lives at home with her parents as she has for most of her life. She struggles with finding ways to occupy her time and has only recently ( within the last couple of years) found a medication which controls her symptoms (voices). She has made a couple of unsuccessful suicide attempts and frequently suffers from anxiety in new situations.
This, then, constituted the only discordancy: this recount of what has basically been an unhappy life circumscribed by recurrent madness, uttered in this reasonable tone by a pleasant- faced young man in his beige office.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
February 9
Last week I went for my first job interview in a mad people's service provider in Ryde. I had forgotten how heavy the silence is in the suburbs- the only commercial sign of life was a bakery selling yellow bread hard up against a decrepit pet shop with empty fishtanks in the windows, the occasional bus rumbling by and stopping to drop off a pensioner in front of a shuttered house.It was forty degrees and I was dressed in my best brown polyester and sweating like a pig- being my father's daughter I arrived 2 hours early and since there are no public amenities in the suburbs I was forced to leap the fence (risking destruction of aforementioned best brown polyester) to piss in the Field of Mars Nature Reserve. Luckily Mad People Central was airconditioned to arctic temperatures so when I finally got inside my synthetic cocoon stood me in good stead.
The panel consisted of a gone-to-seed Morticia Adams, a smurf, an earnest young blonde and a shadowy HR representative called Nhu Nguyen. They gave me a list of questions before going in and the interview consisted of me reeling off my prepared answers while they looked at their notepads on the other side of an enormous round table and scribbled. The only hitch came partway through when the smurf started to cough his lungs up over to the north west- I was too deep in my incantation of Disability Service Standard 2 (Decision Making and Choice) to notice until Morticia stopped me to enquire ostentatiously after his health. The smurf (who liked me) hushed her irritably and my earnest recitation continued unbroken for the next half hour.
Apparently this lecture suited everbody as they offered me the job. Now I'm in a quandary- since, apparently, I am capable of getting a job, maybe I should keep trying and look for something better ? I want to keep studying as well. Will I get to be a famous linguist if I spend my energies reminding mad people to pay their rent and clean under the sink? I am already planning how to combine these two diverse interests.
The panel consisted of a gone-to-seed Morticia Adams, a smurf, an earnest young blonde and a shadowy HR representative called Nhu Nguyen. They gave me a list of questions before going in and the interview consisted of me reeling off my prepared answers while they looked at their notepads on the other side of an enormous round table and scribbled. The only hitch came partway through when the smurf started to cough his lungs up over to the north west- I was too deep in my incantation of Disability Service Standard 2 (Decision Making and Choice) to notice until Morticia stopped me to enquire ostentatiously after his health. The smurf (who liked me) hushed her irritably and my earnest recitation continued unbroken for the next half hour.
Apparently this lecture suited everbody as they offered me the job. Now I'm in a quandary- since, apparently, I am capable of getting a job, maybe I should keep trying and look for something better ? I want to keep studying as well. Will I get to be a famous linguist if I spend my energies reminding mad people to pay their rent and clean under the sink? I am already planning how to combine these two diverse interests.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
January 21
Today Marcin went for a job interview as a draftsman in Arncliffe, where he was harangued for an hour by a steel trader with a bar masquerading as a desk. According to this man, Marcinski's qualifications entitle him to work in an office in North Sydney with men in black suits and a secretary with a double D cup, and not in the industrial zone near the airport with a swampy view of the Cooks River. Result? No job but license to dream of a beautiful future full of secretarial knockers and the pleasure of telling people I am an architect (a pleasure which I get to share by the way when I make my vicarious bid for importance- My Prospective Spouse is an architect.) As for me I find myself erring in the direction of caring for the mad and infirm when it comes to employment, and wondering what my chances are of improving conditions for anyone.
Well, my mother called today to discuss her burial and will with me so I'm off to negotiate my inheritance. Over and out.
Today Marcin went for a job interview as a draftsman in Arncliffe, where he was harangued for an hour by a steel trader with a bar masquerading as a desk. According to this man, Marcinski's qualifications entitle him to work in an office in North Sydney with men in black suits and a secretary with a double D cup, and not in the industrial zone near the airport with a swampy view of the Cooks River. Result? No job but license to dream of a beautiful future full of secretarial knockers and the pleasure of telling people I am an architect (a pleasure which I get to share by the way when I make my vicarious bid for importance- My Prospective Spouse is an architect.) As for me I find myself erring in the direction of caring for the mad and infirm when it comes to employment, and wondering what my chances are of improving conditions for anyone.
Well, my mother called today to discuss her burial and will with me so I'm off to negotiate my inheritance. Over and out.
January 14
Yesterday I tried to blog at the Marrickville library and a warning came up on the screen : You Have Tried To Access a Site Which May Contain Dangerous or Damaging Material. Maybe the blocking software has understood the perversion of people who hang around in dark gardens etc?
We went to the museum in the Hyde Park barracks yesterday, as an expression of new found interest in my convict heritage. Shoes half eaten by rats preserved behind glass under low lights to prevent their further decay, a row of hygienic and lice-deprived hammocks swaying gently in a sanitary breeze. Little plaques and locked display boxes everywhere- as usual the tourist rendering of the Olden Days is so far removed from the reality that the effort of imagination required to feel any empathy is exhausting. In Tuol Sleng, the prison and extermination centre in Phnomh Penh, they had gone to the other extreme and left everything exactly as it had been at the departure of the Khmer Rouge- bare iron bedsteads strewn with pieces of rotting rope and rusting boxes for administering electric shocks – and the only thing under glass was the photographs of the doomed, staring into the camera with the whites of their eyes showing like a herd of panicked horses. The moral of the story? There’s more than one way to skin a cat (arrange a museum).
Will close with selected highlights of the alphabetical listing of things you could be transported for.
illegal pledging
illegal selling
incest
insubordination
insurrection
intoxication
killing
larceny
machine breaking
maiming
manslaughter
miscellaneous
Yesterday I tried to blog at the Marrickville library and a warning came up on the screen : You Have Tried To Access a Site Which May Contain Dangerous or Damaging Material. Maybe the blocking software has understood the perversion of people who hang around in dark gardens etc?
We went to the museum in the Hyde Park barracks yesterday, as an expression of new found interest in my convict heritage. Shoes half eaten by rats preserved behind glass under low lights to prevent their further decay, a row of hygienic and lice-deprived hammocks swaying gently in a sanitary breeze. Little plaques and locked display boxes everywhere- as usual the tourist rendering of the Olden Days is so far removed from the reality that the effort of imagination required to feel any empathy is exhausting. In Tuol Sleng, the prison and extermination centre in Phnomh Penh, they had gone to the other extreme and left everything exactly as it had been at the departure of the Khmer Rouge- bare iron bedsteads strewn with pieces of rotting rope and rusting boxes for administering electric shocks – and the only thing under glass was the photographs of the doomed, staring into the camera with the whites of their eyes showing like a herd of panicked horses. The moral of the story? There’s more than one way to skin a cat (arrange a museum).
Will close with selected highlights of the alphabetical listing of things you could be transported for.
illegal pledging
illegal selling
incest
insubordination
insurrection
intoxication
killing
larceny
machine breaking
maiming
manslaughter
miscellaneous
January 12
Back in blogland find myself having the same old ethical dilemmas- do I have to keep a paper diary as well where I tell thetruththewholetruthandnothingbuthtetruthsohelpmegod? This would make the online version so wholesome as to be unreadable and so isn’t feasible. My solution: tell a maximum of two people about existence of blog and then poach their readership who do not know me. They are reading this because they are the type (types? ) of person (people?) who hang around in other people’s gardens on dark nights peering through the window and waiting to see what happens next, not because they are a) interested in me or b) interested in finding some mention of their good selves and willing to plough through swathes of cyberjunk to get it.
Back in Sydney doing home renovations like a good pair of young marrieds- we cleaned the storage space above the stairs to make some room for the shoes and camping goods which had been breeding quietly under the bed. The accumulated refuse of a junkie, a weightlifter, a Goth with a mucus problem, an aspiring actress and a homosexual biochemist yielded the following bounty:
5 (five) expired cockroaches (proving that they would not in fact survive a nuclear holocaust)
1 motorcycle jacket
8 moldering cushions acquired from hard rubbish with the intention ( unfulfilled) of creating opium den ambience in lounge room
3 kettles
1 beached television set
1 faux fur muff
In fact on the home front the optimism factor is fairly high considering that we are two unemployed people sharing a room in a slum where one has to walk half a kilometre to piss in the middle of the night- I am deeply in love which is a relief since a refund is out of the question on faulty mail-order sex toys.
Today we spent our first day apart in 6 weeks and I went to meet my English student in Burwood. She’s small and brown and pregnant and always meets me barefoot at the door and offers me a drink when I’m about to leave- they live in a one bedroom flat in a backstreet off The Boulevarde with a maroon patent leather lounge suite and an Amway manifesto hanging on the wall.
I AM EXCITED ABOUT MY LIFE AND ABOUT AMWAY
I WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE MY TEAM IS THE MOST LOYAL AND DIVERSIFIED
I AM POWERFUL AND POSITIVE
I AM A CAM
I AM A CAM
I AM A CAM
I WILL DO IT
THAT’S ALL
PERIOD
There’s more but I can’t remember - I had to improvise to get that far. I wonder what a cam is?
Back in blogland find myself having the same old ethical dilemmas- do I have to keep a paper diary as well where I tell thetruththewholetruthandnothingbuthtetruthsohelpmegod? This would make the online version so wholesome as to be unreadable and so isn’t feasible. My solution: tell a maximum of two people about existence of blog and then poach their readership who do not know me. They are reading this because they are the type (types? ) of person (people?) who hang around in other people’s gardens on dark nights peering through the window and waiting to see what happens next, not because they are a) interested in me or b) interested in finding some mention of their good selves and willing to plough through swathes of cyberjunk to get it.
Back in Sydney doing home renovations like a good pair of young marrieds- we cleaned the storage space above the stairs to make some room for the shoes and camping goods which had been breeding quietly under the bed. The accumulated refuse of a junkie, a weightlifter, a Goth with a mucus problem, an aspiring actress and a homosexual biochemist yielded the following bounty:
5 (five) expired cockroaches (proving that they would not in fact survive a nuclear holocaust)
1 motorcycle jacket
8 moldering cushions acquired from hard rubbish with the intention ( unfulfilled) of creating opium den ambience in lounge room
3 kettles
1 beached television set
1 faux fur muff
In fact on the home front the optimism factor is fairly high considering that we are two unemployed people sharing a room in a slum where one has to walk half a kilometre to piss in the middle of the night- I am deeply in love which is a relief since a refund is out of the question on faulty mail-order sex toys.
Today we spent our first day apart in 6 weeks and I went to meet my English student in Burwood. She’s small and brown and pregnant and always meets me barefoot at the door and offers me a drink when I’m about to leave- they live in a one bedroom flat in a backstreet off The Boulevarde with a maroon patent leather lounge suite and an Amway manifesto hanging on the wall.
I AM EXCITED ABOUT MY LIFE AND ABOUT AMWAY
I WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE MY TEAM IS THE MOST LOYAL AND DIVERSIFIED
I AM POWERFUL AND POSITIVE
I AM A CAM
I AM A CAM
I AM A CAM
I WILL DO IT
THAT’S ALL
PERIOD
There’s more but I can’t remember - I had to improvise to get that far. I wonder what a cam is?
Thursday, November 10, 2005
november 28
In the psychiatric ward of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital there is a raging black market in cigarettes- anorexics beg Horizons from schizophrenics and the recently psychotic try to defend their private stash of Winnie blues from bipolar entreaties. To get into the minimum security section of the unit it is necessary to pass through two locked doors though it would be easy enough to leave over the fence. The observation unit for acute cases (the acutely fragile, the acutely unheard) is better defended by a four- meter metal fence, and this is where the damaged and addicted souls of the inner west come to rest when it all gets to be too much. I haven't blogged for three weeks because I wasn't sure if it was legitimate to discuss the revelation that this exists just at the back of the university with a view of the oval where the college boys play football in their underpants. I mistrust the mixture of pity and prurience inspired by my visits and wonder if there's an element of voyeurism in them- I can't help being fascinated by the idea that these people are on a voyage which I can't even imagine, although I probably wouldn't want it to happen to me.
I found myself in Jorge's blog disguised as an extra in a Cairene telenovela and got a strange proprietorial feeling regarding ownership of my past and my character. I am half fascinated and half defensive by the vision of myself in a revolting polyester frock parading through the pages of somebody else's not very fictional fiction. On the other hand maybe the copyright period on that particular incarnation of mine has expired. I am about to become the de facto partner (with a possiblilty of marriage if six monthly performance targets are met) of a Polish prince and I have to say at this point in time that I can't believe my good luck. Long may the honeymoon last.
I found myself in Jorge's blog disguised as an extra in a Cairene telenovela and got a strange proprietorial feeling regarding ownership of my past and my character. I am half fascinated and half defensive by the vision of myself in a revolting polyester frock parading through the pages of somebody else's not very fictional fiction. On the other hand maybe the copyright period on that particular incarnation of mine has expired. I am about to become the de facto partner (with a possiblilty of marriage if six monthly performance targets are met) of a Polish prince and I have to say at this point in time that I can't believe my good luck. Long may the honeymoon last.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
November 6
Today I am discovering that it's possible to commit a rape against yourself. I am sitting in the library writing a discourse analysis paper about a debate between Keating and Howard and I have forced myself to do it without my consent. At the end of this week I will go to counselling.
Friday, October 28, 2005
October 29
preliminary list of logistical issues associated with arrival of a prince-
1.birth control pills for princess
2.internet access for prince
3. quarantine for white horse?
1.birth control pills for princess
2.internet access for prince
3. quarantine for white horse?
October 11
October 11
This blog is rated MA for mature audiences. May contain sexual references and adult language.
I dreamt that I was in a gymnastics competition and at the very beginning a voice predicted from the loudspeaker that I would win the beam event, Kim (Brendan’s ex-girlfriend who runs the mad people’s program) would win the on bars and my friend Freyja would win another event. Freyja got onto the beam and did a beautiful dance in an eighties bodysuit and tights and I got stage fright and ran outside (the competition was being held in a bar)- I was hoping that by some miracle my performance would take place without my actual presence. At some point I realised that it wasn’t going to happen that way and went back in to face the music: I saw that all the judges were ten year-old girls with freckles and teeth slightly too big for their faces and felt comforted.
Then I was in the lane outside my house with a Newtown bouncer. So you know what this means I will have to explain that in Newtown, there is a Maori bouncer cartel and that outside most of the seedier bars there is a musclebound gatekeeper of Islander stock who makes sure that no juveniles, delinquents or people in thongs are allowed to spoil the tone of the place. I am in the lane with one of them and in starts to rain. I am wearing a red jacket and suddenly feel an unbearable romantic urge and start kissing him passionately. Cut to five minutes later- we are fucking in the alley outside my front door – he is holding me off the ground with his 100-plus kilograms of pure muscle and when the rain falls on his skin there is a slight hiss like water falling on a hotplate.
So it seems that I have graduated from my series of nocturnal erotic encounters with Ghassan (my Palestinian colleague) to something even less salubrious. Why I can’t have these adventures with my Prospective Spouse is another issue but I’m sure that I’ll end up in psychoanalysis one of these days and I will explore it further then.
I will end this post with the overseas news, since this year I have been abandoned by my two dearest friends. Cameron is in Oxford about to start his academic career and Marcelle in Panajachel in Guatemala living happily ever after with her little brown lover and running a bar. It has been flooding there after a hurricane and she sent a long group email about life in times of natural disaster- no electricity, bridges washed away, drownings and the difficulty of getting food and clean water. I imagine her walking into town through the mud (which now takes one hour because the bridges are gone) as on an SBS documentary about the misery of other less fortunate climes and feel how far away she is from me. When I allow myself to think about it I get a sensation of equal parts loss and envy, because she had passed some final frontier to belong completely to a place which I have never seen.
This blog is rated MA for mature audiences. May contain sexual references and adult language.
I dreamt that I was in a gymnastics competition and at the very beginning a voice predicted from the loudspeaker that I would win the beam event, Kim (Brendan’s ex-girlfriend who runs the mad people’s program) would win the on bars and my friend Freyja would win another event. Freyja got onto the beam and did a beautiful dance in an eighties bodysuit and tights and I got stage fright and ran outside (the competition was being held in a bar)- I was hoping that by some miracle my performance would take place without my actual presence. At some point I realised that it wasn’t going to happen that way and went back in to face the music: I saw that all the judges were ten year-old girls with freckles and teeth slightly too big for their faces and felt comforted.
Then I was in the lane outside my house with a Newtown bouncer. So you know what this means I will have to explain that in Newtown, there is a Maori bouncer cartel and that outside most of the seedier bars there is a musclebound gatekeeper of Islander stock who makes sure that no juveniles, delinquents or people in thongs are allowed to spoil the tone of the place. I am in the lane with one of them and in starts to rain. I am wearing a red jacket and suddenly feel an unbearable romantic urge and start kissing him passionately. Cut to five minutes later- we are fucking in the alley outside my front door – he is holding me off the ground with his 100-plus kilograms of pure muscle and when the rain falls on his skin there is a slight hiss like water falling on a hotplate.
So it seems that I have graduated from my series of nocturnal erotic encounters with Ghassan (my Palestinian colleague) to something even less salubrious. Why I can’t have these adventures with my Prospective Spouse is another issue but I’m sure that I’ll end up in psychoanalysis one of these days and I will explore it further then.
I will end this post with the overseas news, since this year I have been abandoned by my two dearest friends. Cameron is in Oxford about to start his academic career and Marcelle in Panajachel in Guatemala living happily ever after with her little brown lover and running a bar. It has been flooding there after a hurricane and she sent a long group email about life in times of natural disaster- no electricity, bridges washed away, drownings and the difficulty of getting food and clean water. I imagine her walking into town through the mud (which now takes one hour because the bridges are gone) as on an SBS documentary about the misery of other less fortunate climes and feel how far away she is from me. When I allow myself to think about it I get a sensation of equal parts loss and envy, because she had passed some final frontier to belong completely to a place which I have never seen.
9 October
Rereading my statutory declaration about my relationship with Marcin, with the footers on every page swearing that this is the whole truth and nothing but and so on and so forth. In fact it’s anything but the truth, this earnest unequivocal chronology of coming and going and holidays in the snow. It has nothing to do with the development of a love which has been miraculous and ridiculous in equal measures from the very beginning, a tie constructed primarily out of absence and fantasy, brought into being by two stubborn animals with the aid of fertile imagination and a liking for impractical romance. I wonder how this longing will translate itself into appreciation of a presence? I’m suddenly glad to have time to think about it and to savour my solitude: I am about to change my life in a dramatic way and I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it until now. Being loved from a distance has been easier in many respects.
Not to mention the matter of farting. Yes, we have been together for almost two years and still neither of us performs this small act of intimacy in the presence of the other. Katherine and Tawfiq laugh at me (‘oh that’s right he’s had that operation hasn’t he? That one you had? so that you never fart again?’)
This is a requiem for the days of farting in my own bed, of pissing in a bucket when I don’t feel like making the long journey to the dunny, for nose picking and spinster meals straight from the can and for a thousand other joyous antisocial habits which will have to be terminated in the early phases of the new regime.
Rereading my statutory declaration about my relationship with Marcin, with the footers on every page swearing that this is the whole truth and nothing but and so on and so forth. In fact it’s anything but the truth, this earnest unequivocal chronology of coming and going and holidays in the snow. It has nothing to do with the development of a love which has been miraculous and ridiculous in equal measures from the very beginning, a tie constructed primarily out of absence and fantasy, brought into being by two stubborn animals with the aid of fertile imagination and a liking for impractical romance. I wonder how this longing will translate itself into appreciation of a presence? I’m suddenly glad to have time to think about it and to savour my solitude: I am about to change my life in a dramatic way and I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it until now. Being loved from a distance has been easier in many respects.
Not to mention the matter of farting. Yes, we have been together for almost two years and still neither of us performs this small act of intimacy in the presence of the other. Katherine and Tawfiq laugh at me (‘oh that’s right he’s had that operation hasn’t he? That one you had? so that you never fart again?’)
This is a requiem for the days of farting in my own bed, of pissing in a bucket when I don’t feel like making the long journey to the dunny, for nose picking and spinster meals straight from the can and for a thousand other joyous antisocial habits which will have to be terminated in the early phases of the new regime.
Friday, October 07, 2005
October 8
Suffering a lethal cocktail of excitement and terror at the prospect of Marcinski's arrival in Australia- I feel like I'm in a fairy tale. You can have the prince but you have to kill the dragon. Or a game show- you can have the Ferrari but you have to know who the Australian cricket captain was during the third last Ashes test and what a coprophage might have for dinner . Doubting Thomas has joined my mental menage- what if he isn't the prince? What if I'm not the princess? And how the fuck am I supposed to do anything productive in this state of terminal agitation?
Last night Liz and Christina came around and we had our fingernails buffed and made racist comments about Chinese people and compared fellating techniques (I'm the only one who swallows.) I am feeling sad in advance as my spinsterhood draws to a close , and slightly territorial when I imagine sharing my room with someone who won't fart in front of me and expects the same treatment in return. And now I am going home to drink tea and watch movies and probably have virtual sex with my Palestinian workmate who has been walking unclad through my dreams this week . Over and out.
Last night Liz and Christina came around and we had our fingernails buffed and made racist comments about Chinese people and compared fellating techniques (I'm the only one who swallows.) I am feeling sad in advance as my spinsterhood draws to a close , and slightly territorial when I imagine sharing my room with someone who won't fart in front of me and expects the same treatment in return. And now I am going home to drink tea and watch movies and probably have virtual sex with my Palestinian workmate who has been walking unclad through my dreams this week . Over and out.
October 6
I sent on chain mail containing a sickening prayer, sucked in by the promise of being granted a wish and the next day Marcin called Klaus Masannek and got an interview. What can I say? Vomitous New Age magic has its place.
Dreaming holocausts of various dimensions – in one dream I am at a funeral of an old boyfriend, a friend of my sister’s that I lived with when I was twenty two. At that time he was in the opening phases of an addiction to opiates of every possible configuration- heroin, melted down morphine tablets, a revolting concoction made of steeped poppy seeds which caused me to lie on the floor and vomit for several hours when I tried it. A patient, easygoing, precise man with jeweller’s hands that could find their way around an engine in the dead of night, sounding out its convolutions and its ailments without faltering. He had an old Peugeot that started with a crank, an overbearing mother and an attitude to sex that bordered on absolute indifference. Once I watched him inject himself and saw how his quiet hands were shaking so much with the urgency that he could hardly tighten the belt around his bicep- since then he’s fulfilled all his early potential and gone on to become a full-blown junkie, one of that caste of middle aged Australian men drifting in a limbo of substance abuse and emotional incapacitation.
In my dream it was his funeral but he was still alive. People kept arriving until there were hundreds of them and I was the only one crying. Eventually such a festive atmosphere had developed that his mother started selling tickets for $25 a head.
From there to Siberia, where I’m travelling with a strange man in the middle of winter. We argue and separate, and I find myself wandering in a nuclear waste dump- everything is grey, there is no sign of human life, and I am in a state of extreme panic feeling myself getting more and more radioactive by the minute.
I sent on chain mail containing a sickening prayer, sucked in by the promise of being granted a wish and the next day Marcin called Klaus Masannek and got an interview. What can I say? Vomitous New Age magic has its place.
Dreaming holocausts of various dimensions – in one dream I am at a funeral of an old boyfriend, a friend of my sister’s that I lived with when I was twenty two. At that time he was in the opening phases of an addiction to opiates of every possible configuration- heroin, melted down morphine tablets, a revolting concoction made of steeped poppy seeds which caused me to lie on the floor and vomit for several hours when I tried it. A patient, easygoing, precise man with jeweller’s hands that could find their way around an engine in the dead of night, sounding out its convolutions and its ailments without faltering. He had an old Peugeot that started with a crank, an overbearing mother and an attitude to sex that bordered on absolute indifference. Once I watched him inject himself and saw how his quiet hands were shaking so much with the urgency that he could hardly tighten the belt around his bicep- since then he’s fulfilled all his early potential and gone on to become a full-blown junkie, one of that caste of middle aged Australian men drifting in a limbo of substance abuse and emotional incapacitation.
In my dream it was his funeral but he was still alive. People kept arriving until there were hundreds of them and I was the only one crying. Eventually such a festive atmosphere had developed that his mother started selling tickets for $25 a head.
From there to Siberia, where I’m travelling with a strange man in the middle of winter. We argue and separate, and I find myself wandering in a nuclear waste dump- everything is grey, there is no sign of human life, and I am in a state of extreme panic feeling myself getting more and more radioactive by the minute.
September 30
30/9/2003
The Basement with Freyja, Zaf and their gap-toothed eco-terrorist friend for a jazz concert. When I was small I used to have a recurring delirious vision whenever I had a fever : a disembodied spoonful of medicine floating in front of me, the liquid in it shaking slightly as it hovered there. The first half of the performance was the musical equivalent of that vision – repetitive, quiet, disturbing, trembling on the edge of an event that never eventuated. In the second half, it did happen: a frenzy akin to a prolonged bout of teenage masturbation. The three men on stage, eyes closed, sweating and thumping and fingering with single-minded oblivion, and the audience dead silent, some watching but mostly with their eyes closed, each wrapped in their own private hypnosis. Impossible not to listen and impossible not to feel horribly isolated- this is Australia, inarticulate, passive, infinitely thirsty and utterly unproductive.
The Basement with Freyja, Zaf and their gap-toothed eco-terrorist friend for a jazz concert. When I was small I used to have a recurring delirious vision whenever I had a fever : a disembodied spoonful of medicine floating in front of me, the liquid in it shaking slightly as it hovered there. The first half of the performance was the musical equivalent of that vision – repetitive, quiet, disturbing, trembling on the edge of an event that never eventuated. In the second half, it did happen: a frenzy akin to a prolonged bout of teenage masturbation. The three men on stage, eyes closed, sweating and thumping and fingering with single-minded oblivion, and the audience dead silent, some watching but mostly with their eyes closed, each wrapped in their own private hypnosis. Impossible not to listen and impossible not to feel horribly isolated- this is Australia, inarticulate, passive, infinitely thirsty and utterly unproductive.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Last week my new housemate's father died suddenly and I found myself with the quandary of consolation, complicated by the fact that they hadn't had a good relationship at all. The DG stood back and pondered the syntax of difficult moments, the Novelist was overcome with empathetic sorrow, the Public Servant arranged the funeral. The Bag Lady thought that it would be a good chance to get rolling drunk.
Monday, September 19, 2005
On Sunday afternoon I rode over to Bronte to see Veronika and Evan after several hours of prolonged and highly effective procrastination. It was a golden sunny afternoon etc and in the alleyway just before Centennial park (One Way- Police Horses Excepted) I happened on box of clothing which a young eastern suburbs professional had discarded outside her house, some of it still with the tags on. I came to the conclusion that despite her best bulimic efforts my benefactor had been unable to fit into size small Supre pants and being unable to say no to such a gift I stuffed the lot into my panniers and pedalled away as fast as I could, thanking Baby Jesus for my summer wardrobe. What can I say? My total inability to resist this bounty made me realise that the middle class fantasy is as unattainable as ever - the DG, the Public Servant and the Novelist share lodgings with a bag lady who has a collection of used teabags and burnt matches and spends her nights amongst a hairy mountain of stray catflesh and her days drinking metho in the cemetery.
September 20
Last week I went with Christina to get a Brazilian wax in Dulwich Hill, emerging some hours later minus mustache, eyebrows and the rest. It's a measure of how intimate we have become in recent months that we could lie there with our respective pussies open to the four winds, having our bum crack waxed and gossiping about the pervert from the pool who has been wooing Christina from a Greek Club Med where he is holidaying with his wife. I started to think about writing a linguistics thesis on the discourse of Brazilian waxing from a functional grammar perspective but had to give up the fantasy at the point where I had to explain to Jim Martin what a Brazilian wax is.
Have decided that I hate the Palestinian I work with who endlessly approaches me from my blind side talking to me in Iraqi, Gulf and god knows what other sort of Arabic, which I never understand. After feeling inferior and stupid for several months I decided that one crucial component is missing in our communication- ie the will to comprehend and be comprehended- and that it doesn't mean that I'm retarded. A comfortable conclusion.
Have decided that I hate the Palestinian I work with who endlessly approaches me from my blind side talking to me in Iraqi, Gulf and god knows what other sort of Arabic, which I never understand. After feeling inferior and stupid for several months I decided that one crucial component is missing in our communication- ie the will to comprehend and be comprehended- and that it doesn't mean that I'm retarded. A comfortable conclusion.
Monday, September 12, 2005
September 11
It has been snowing somewhere - there's a cold wind off the mountains and I am negotiating with my ageing liver which is making its distaste of my drinking habits known. At the same time I am girding my loins to begin the promised campaign of systematic harassment against Klaus. Yes, if you are a serious voyeur or a disaster- monger you have come to the wrong place - if you want real news let me direct you to New Orleans where cirrhosis and immigration ordeals have been rendered irrelevant by a grand Act of God. Thank you and goodnight
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