January
14th, 2001
(my own bell jar)
Early morning detrius of the night before, of many nights
before, the house feels like it is falling to pieces and I've only been
here six months. The carpet is getting dirty. No matter what I do the
place always seems somewhat dishevelled. Summer gets to me. Feels like
the heat is rotting everything.
This time of year always feels strange
- is it the start of new things or the end of old ones? So much emotion
in the last 12 months and where's it got me? Back to where I started from,
on so many levels. Same street, same job, old friends return, having to
start again proving myself with others. Never learning from my mistakes,
it would seem. I am at heart a stubborn fool I suppose.
The thing is, I feel like I am becoming
so detatched. Nothing matters much at the moment. I feel as if I'm caught
inside a bubble, pressing my hands to the cold glass, watching everyone
else live life on the other side of it. I can't let anyone in, and I can't
get out. The logical brain has overtaken the emotional one, and I don't
like it. It means I do not write, do not draw, do not laugh. I sit and
watch bad TV, I get stoned so I can feel even less than I already do;
friends cross my mind so I write them an email and get no reply so I shrug,
and get on with sitting and rotting. I go out and people seem to think
I am doing great, because I laugh and chat and do my usual thing, but
I have become a master at putting on a front - acting, basically. Work
is the only thing keeping me sane, because I can throw myself into it,
and don't have to invest a shred of emotion. In fact in my line of work
the less emotion there is the better - you don't let angry customers get
to you and can just coldly do the job.
I never thought "coldly" would be an
adjective to apply to me but for some reason right now it is.
"I used to hear inside the wall, now I don't hear at all" (Throwing Muses)
February
8th, 2001
(the Tao of who?)
"In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest
moon. In summer a refreshing breeze; in winter, snow will accompany
you. If useless things do not hang in your mind, any season is a good
season for you. "
- Mu-mon (1228) *
Lately, to my relief, I have been feeling a great sense
of calm and acceptance come over me. I don't want to attribute it
to anything specific and it certainly doesn't feel like anything has "changed",
be it for better or worse. But one thing that has certainly brought a
new perspective on things is thereading on Taoism
and Zen that I have been doing lately. I was inspired to do so by seeing
Andrew reading a page at www.dailyzen.com and smiling to himself at the
quote there. After he went home I had a look for myself, and found myself
reading page after page of calming, thoughtful and inspiring wisdom that
captures much of what I've felt in some form or another for a long time.
It has helped me to be able to let go of a lot of the things I shouldn't
hang onto, and shouldn't let hang onto me. It has been quite a revalation.
I have a lot of reading to do, and a lot of contemplation, and I can see
paths, like water which takes whichever course is available to it, opening
up before me like a spreading hand.
*quote and image sourced
from http://www.dailyzen.com
February 17th, 2001
(labels)
There is much in the world that has a beauty even in its
strangeness, its repulsiveness. I was reminded of this when I saw a guy
with Tourette's on the tram the other day on the way to work. I've seen
him once before, and I wasn't sure then what was the matter with him -
was he autistic? Schizophrenic? Off his head on acid? He looked clean,
together, normal; but out of his mouth came an incredible, non-stop stream
of babble that made no sense and was aimed at no one. This second time
round, he sat there repeating, over and over, "got no butter, no pastry...no
butter, no pastry" he'd also mutter something breif and unintelligible
as he trailed off. Almost as if he had one fragment of something from
a film, TV show or ad caught in his head, and playing on an endless loop.
That was when I figured it was Tourettes (I had recently re-read
Oliver Sacks's "Anthropologist on Mars" which had a case study of a surgeon
with the problem).
What made me somewhat sad, bemused and
perhaps a little cross was how easily people on the tram would have written
him off as a lunatic or drug addict of some kind, and felt a fear and
annoyance at his behaviour. People made comments after he got off the
tram. It wasn't like he was getting in anyone's face or being agressive.
Me - I just found an almost morbid fascination for his disorder. Perhaps
in its own way that is just as patronising, I don't know...
Beauty in the lowest things.
February 24th, 2001
(addictions)
I am trying, really I am. It could be that the trying is whats making it hard (trying to much?) but this whole thing feels like such an effort. My body seems my enemy sometimes! I have been doing good to myself, or better, at the least - healthier food, more sleep, less drink, less painkillers. Spent the last 2 days feeling as if a flu was coming on. And then slipped up a little last night - a few drinks, a cigarette or two. Nothing major, nothing punishing, but still... no discipline. Now I am sitting here telling myself I want to go down to the chemist, get some more nice numbing codiene, I tell myself it'll be a reward for the walk - a half hour round trip, well it's exercise. I was telling someone last night I was a codiene addict, someone at the club I went to. They asked me what I took, how much. Seemed unimpressed, as if I'd confessed to being addicted to cough lollies or something. I know its not up there with heroin or speed, but hell, why would someone be prouder if it were that? An addiction is just that - an addiction, a thing of the mind, a mental crutch as much as a physical one. And I will get past it, somehow, sometime - sometime soon, I hope.
(foodlove)
I went to the Prahran Market for the first time in ages
today. I love food markets, and Prahran is fantasic. The minute you walk
into the tiled halls you are confronted with smells and sounds of all
kinds, a vibrant clash. Strongest always seems to be the salty tang of
olives and salamis, and the sharpness of cheeses, with a soft overlay
of freshly baked breads, roasted nuts and pizzas.
Round the corner into the meat and seafood hall and
the smells change to those of fresh beef and lamb, spicy sausages and
the oceany waft of fresh seafood. I walk along slowly admiring the healthy,
robust looking cuts, the sparkling fish and prawns, whole lobsters; I
wish I could afford to eat this indulgently every day. I buy a pair of
salmon steaks and some trevally and feel terribly guilty at the price
it costs me - sad to think that this wealth of fresh food, all the wonders
of nature, once freely available to the wandering hunter, is now some
of the costliest ways to eat...
Then out into the main room, where the fruit and vegetable
vendors are shouting their trade in half a dozen clashing accents. Greeks,
Vietnamese, Italians - they all vie for your attention, shouting and holding
bags of potatoes aloft, waving pineapples by their spiky tops. I can never
make up my mind when I get to this part - there's only so many ways you
can present oranges and capsicums and rows of apples. I feel an odd misplaced
guilt at passing one vendor by to stop at another. I trawl my way through
and grab some nectarines, some lemons, a hand of bananas - score a free
bag of over-ripe figs into the bargain as I pay for the stash.
I leave with a sense of satisfaction, money well-spent
on healthy, quality food.
There is then, a stark contrast when I walk through the
supermarket up the road from the markets. Clean blue flourescent lighting,
a vague smell of plastic and dust, tinny piped music overlaid by the beep
of the computerised cash registers. The fruit and veg aisles here are
indeed a poor cousin to the markets - row upon row of neat, too-colourful
fruits piled up on stands, tended to by tired, bored-looking pimply youths
in ill-fitting uniforms. Nothing has a smell. The meats are all sealed
in plastic trays. The fruits are all washed and waxed. The vegetables
look tired, wilted.
Anyway, I was only here to buy cat food and bread.
I hurry out, wondering why I don't go to the markets more often.
April 15th, 2001
(water)
Yes, it has been a while. Some stuff started to trickle
onto LiveJournal but that just seemed too much like mutual masturbation
("let's all expose our private lives to each other! Yay!") which
I suppose isn't all that different to what I do here in the end, but still...
Last night I dreamt I was in a place that had
started to flood. There was a building - a kind of shopping mall or small
strip of shops - that encircled a central sunken courtyard. That courtyard
was rapidly filling up with water from a source I dont recall. It wasn't
rain, it was more like burst pipes or somesuch. As the dream progressed
onto other things (I recall declaring I worked in I.T for an animal liberation
front of some kind), other areas of this town began to slowly fill with
water, until it began lapping at the doorways and upper areas of the raised
buildings we were in. No panic ensued - just a detached observation that
all this rather damaging water was everywhere and slowly advancing on
us. And it did not rain in the dream at any point. This water just came
out of nowhere...
The dream puzzles me, because I figured after
last night's rather upsetting events it'd have to somehow be linked to
whatever that would generate in my subconcious. But try as I might, I
cannot link this advancement of floodwater to my current emotional state.
Perhaps to someone else reading this the lights are going on and you're
thinking "you daft git! It means [yadda yadda]!". And no, I
don't want any suggestions, please don't write in ;) I determined a while
back I'd avoid too much of the personal in here, especially that which
involves others. But last night someone told me something that made me
very sad, and that's all I need to say.
Water. It is the key of my star sign, it is the element that I've always most identified with. It is the stuff of legend, filled with mermaids and Danish sirens luring men to their deaths with sexual trickery; it is the power and beauty of the sea; it is fourth fifths of our bodymass if I believe the teachings of my childhood. Water is mutable, yielding, compliant and ever-changing, but it can bore through the strongest stone or hugest mountain if given enough steady time to do so. How could I not identify with such a thing?
Water is Tao. It gives us life, but it can kill us also. Maybe that dream makes more sense than I realised.
April 29th, 2001
(distant friends)
The Times atlas is sitting open on my coffee table at
pages 55 and 56. Canada. I realised, you see, that I didn't know where
the fuck Montreal was. Why do I want to know where it is? There is someone,
something, over there... a mirror, a confidante, an inspiration. Its always
wonderful when you meet someone new who you are yet to find things out
about, so there's all those hours of questions and answers and thinking
and talking to be had. Exploration. I am caught up and I want to know
more...
Why is it I always make the best, closest friends
out of the furthest away people? I have had long distance loves, I have
had friends in other states, other countries, I've had people I cared
about who moved away. I suppose the 'net means it is more likely to happen
but it has been happening to me even since I was a teenager and wrote
letter after letter to friends all over the country and the world. I miss
writing letters. I still have a lot of them, and sometimes when I feel
nostalgic I'll get out the shoe boxes full of paper and sift through them.
The tangibility of letters on paper - the person who created it has spent
time thinking carefully, writing, perhaps drawing little pictures or doodles.
The wait by the letterbox each day was a strangely euphoric torture, especially
because at the time I was in love with one of the letter-senders.
It amazes me now to think I could let myself get
so emotional over people so far away, knowing how much it would hurt.
Which is not to say I wouldn't do it again, but experience has taught
me to rein in the extremes, I suppose. And there's a certain kid of freedom
in a friendship of distance, because it hangs, unseen, in the spaces created,
it surrounds us, it is always there, like an invisible warm blanket. I
only have to think of them and I am already smiling.
May 6th, 2001
(love and other catastrophes)
"i went as far as losing sleep
i went as far as messing up my life
unloving still strike me different
a million miles away from home
and fifteen from a payphone
where we sat lonely on the sand
it's not that simple
this dictionary never has a word
for the way i'm feeling
it's nothing plain for me
of a different god and moral
what if i laid my head down on your stomach
or put my mouth to your hand" ("Japanese to English",
Red House Painters)
Well ok. It isnt Japanese, it's French, but the sentiment
remains the same. There's a full moon tonight, clear and bright and visible
from my balcony. I sit on a chair in the doorway smoking a cigarette and
drinking some wine, stunned and lost and totally deep in my thoughts.
Can you call it love if it is totally irrational to say it is love? Are
feelings feelings, no matter what their cause?
Ive looked into mirrors
before, and those mirrors reflected back all the worst parts of my own
personality - all the fear and loathing and selfishness and depression...
but this time the mirror is smiling at me and making me realise how beautiful
I am. I don't know what to do. I am terrified and spellbound all at once.
I swore I wouldn't do something like this again.
But I know if you looked
up right now you'd see the same moon I see, reflecting the same light
to you, the moon a mirror, me a mirror, vibrating with the same frequency.
Swimming in bliss. I just don't know what to say. I haven't felt this
fitted into my own life in a long time. Why should I kick against it if
I am so happy?
You're reading this, but I don't care, because
I want you to know. Not that I need you to know, because you already do.
We knew a long time ago. When we met, it wasn't strangers finding out
about each other, it was old friends returning to meet and holding each
other close. It's been so long...
May 17th 2001
My brain is playing tricks on me again. It likes doing
that, you see. Sometimes I wonder if I have some little elfin thing, like
the little alien creature in the "human" in Men in Black, navigating
me everywhere. And sometimes he likes to be nasty to me and make me get
cranky and feel down when I have no bloody reason whatsoever to feel that
way. Like right now for example. I'm at work, its night shift, its quiet,
I've had a good few weeks. And yet I feel an almost physical burning,
adrenalized tension in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I'm just tired, maybe
I need some painkillers or booze, who knows. I'm supposed to be going
out to Revelations after work but my knee is so sore and I'm...
...I'm not with the one person I dearly wish I
could be going out and sitting drinking in a nightclub with. As someone
said on ACG last week "see? This is what the Internet is for - making
people miserable at a distance." Not that I'm miserable per
se, just lonely. Forehead to the cool glass of the mirror, wishing I could
dissolve into it, to join the one waiting for me on the other side...