My feet reluctant linger at the gate

I'm inadvertently getting into the olde American poets. All that New York Times reading of late, I guess. I wanted to post a picture of the new Firstdraft here but I can't find them on their website, despite what Will tells me. I'm so proud of all the great stuff everyone is doing.

Why does that paragraph want to indent itself? How odd.

Transformed the very landscape seems to be;

It is the same, yet not the same to me.

So many memories crowd upon my brain,

So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,

I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,

As from a house where some one lieth dead.

I cannot go;—I pause;—I hesitate;

My feet reluctant linger at the gate;

As one who struggles in a troubled dream

To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears!

Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years!

Whatever time or space may intervene,

I will not be a stranger in this scene.

Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;

Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! 

An envelope

Bliggedy-blogger inspired me to post this, because of these.


It goes with these.

What a swell party

Topics of conversation tonight included:

*Which Jane Austen character are you most like?
*Does reading Archie comics as a child give you unrealistic ideas about what teenagerhood will be like?
*The emphasis on scatology in French culture
*Cost/benefit analyses in everyday life and 'Freakonomics'
*Hill End
*Sideways [film]
*The woman who gave birth to rabbits (fake!)
*The possible formation of a photographic lighting ownership cooperative

I can't remember any more. There was a lot of wine and food and goodness.

That is all.

some stay dry and others feel the pain

Man, we just held the nicest dinner party. Sam and Felicity and Chris came. They are all new friends, and the nicest/bestest.

I made salmon with kaffir limes leaves and ginger, a rocket and parmesan salad and roast vegies with garlic and rosemary. We had baba ganoosh and yummy cheese first. We used the lovely embroidered green tablecloth. Maddy made chocolate mousse with cinnamon/honey yoghurt and bluberries for dessert.

It was good!

We drank three bottles of wine and half a bottle of rose.

Life good etc.

I'm going through chan-ges

I looked at my keys yesterday and realised that the whole bunch has entirely changed from like four months ago. I have new studio keys, house keys, gallery keys and I've got rid of old house keys and work keys. I don't know my own keys. I have to examine them carefully every time I want to unlock something. Yes, this is a not veiled at all metaphor.

There are a lot of people leaving town/having left of late, and I haven't been very happy about it. I've been all, oh poor me, all my friends are abandoning me, wah wah wah. But I've got it together now. It makes space for all those new friends not yet known well enough and the old friends currently being neglected.

As you can see, everything is always all right and exactly as it would be in the best of all possible worlds. Or whatever the man says.

Friendship requires honesty

If I were this blog's friend, its true friend, I'd take it aside and confront it.

"You've changed," I'd say. "Take a long hard look at yourself and see what you've become."

I'd only be telling it because I loved it.

In contrast to my previous mood of late

Teigan has been up from Melbourne to visit. As a going away present he is getting me some cold and flu tablets. Isn't that nice? It shows he really cares. Right now the sun is coming through the window onto the back of my head and neck in such a way; I can't tell you. You would just have to feel it to understand.

A man falls into a hole ...

I've been hanging out with a bunch of new friends lately. We've been spending SO MUCH time together. It's starting to take over my life! They're a great bunch, super-smart, motivated, committed, witty ... I have to be pretty alert to stay on top of the repartee (I know ... me!). They make me feel smart too. But they're all (to a one) TOTAL workaholics, so it's kind of predictable when I see them that it's all going to be about them and their jobs. Or their hopeless love-lives that never go anywhere. Sometimes it's a bit much and I have to take a break. But I always come back for more. And they're all there for me.

I know that the relationship can't last forever, it's too intense. I'd say I'm about ... seven twelfths through the friendship. I suppose you can't put an end point on these things, though. But you know, sometimes they drag out a bit long and the quality suffers, and you realise you've outgrown it.

But you know? Those days I don't see them, I miss 'em. I wonder what CJ and Josh and Donna are all up to. I'm sure they don't miss me. But I love them anyway.