Souvenirs of the apocalypse

It was apocalypse-tastic!

(The single most boring thing anyone could say after an apocalypse-esque dust storm is, it was apocalyptic.)

These days

I feel almost physically sick when I check my email these days. I would be really happy not to have to have it any more, except obviously I have to.

This feeling has been current for some time. One of the results of it is that most of my correspondents have pretty much given up on me, so I hardly have any emails when I do check. In one way, this is pleasing, as I don't have to answer any emails (which I don't know why makes me feel wrong sometimes - I think it's not my preferred way to interact with people: I'm reflective enough as it is); in another way, I feel sad because I'm losing touch with people. Which is very bad.

In other news, I was going to post the pictures I took from my vantage point high over Glebe and Annandale of the post-apocalyptic [-looking] orange dust storm that woke me up at 5.30am (something pounds on the exterior wall of the bedroom during gale force winds and it's not conducive to sweet dreams - and for once it wasn't the nightmare neighbours, more on whom later). But everyone else in the world already posted them. Here, look.

It was a very unsettling thing to wake up, not merely because I see that time of the morning perhaps twice a year at most, but because it looked like a mammoth super-fire was roaring in from Western Sydney. All the windows of our place were open, and in my sleepy state I couldn't understand why I couldn't smell the smoke. I had a flashback to the late eighties and thought the end of the world was nigh. And there were not yet pictures of red sky on the Herald website, so I thought maybe all the journalists had been liquified. Once I had looked up BOM and seen that the meteorologists were still living, breathing and updating their site, I relaxed a bit. Couldn't go back to sleep, though (see tree issue, previous paragraph).

I took photos to show MW when he woke up but it was extraordinarily still completely orange when the proper day started about two hours later. Now there's a yucky film of dust over everything in my studio, because of the vents-I-haven't-yet-found-a-stepladder-to-climb-up-on-and-cover-with-plastic-or-paper-or-something-because-of-the-white-dust-that-blows-in-through-them-when-there's-wind. Fortunately all the fragile masterpieces-in-progress are covered in glad wrap (or as they'd say in Adrian Mole or The Young Ones, 'cling film'. [Cling film, heh]). Dustiness is a place my work goes to in its nightmares.

I've just been in the library so I'm all full of mental blurgh. I don't mean mental 'blah' like 'meh', I mean blurgh like 'urge to blurt things out'.

I so loved Adrian Mole. I always think of him when I'm sorting through 'the heavy papers' on the weekend.

Other things are progressing pleasingly. Time is always a problem; but if there was no time there couldn't be any doing at all so I suppose I shouldn't complain that it's passing.

Waking up late dreams 10/6/07

First, some of my friends picked me up, held me aloft and dance-carried me upstairs in a huge abandoned warehouse. They put me in front of a window from where I could see a bunch of boys who were a geeky crew in my primary school were dancing, totally kitsch Broadway jazz-style, fantastically choreographed, in relay up the road, performing just for my benefit. I was happy and laughing.

Then, I was on holiday in Bavarian summertime when everyone realised that the planet had just been invaded. Large Vogon-like creatures appeared and made an announcement that from now on we were all going to be rounded up and controlled and spied on and that was that. They made everyone get out of the swimming pool and line up, like squashed flat against one another, and to march towards some particular destination. Shinmi was crying and I held her hand to comfort her. I said "I think we have to do what they say" and we all started filing towards whatever place they wanted, probably some kind of work camp. We kept stepping on each others' feet as there was no space between us. We marched past some old industrial buildings that had been converted into a film set and we could see people inside still talking to each other and not marching; resisting? I jumped out of my line and snuck inside; they had been having some party so everyone had wine. Rachel and Holly were there on a shoot and we all hugged. The film people were trying to work out what to do. I felt very strongly that it was the end of everything.