Huh? Oh, sorry, did you mean me?

Um, yes, it's true, I'm back home. I've been busy wasting time with Facebook.

I know, I know, but at least it aint Myspace.


They're all fucken snobs.

Prodctive and ennobling poverty Days Five and Six

Blah blah procrastinated watched a movie caught up with peeps, packed, made lists, had meetings about stuff, made phone calls, paid some bills. Slept badly. Took all the drawings stuck up on my wall off my wall and put them in a box. Time to make some new drawings. Note to self: remember to draw triangles, cubes, scissors, cylinders, arrows, letters, clouds, rainbows, pins, blah blah etc blah. Went to pub full of hillbilly chic and porkpie hats. So hot right now. Were given birthday cake by strangers. Touched. Tomorrow driving to the bush to focus and be productive properly. Also opshop and make May of the Dead costume. No further excuses to be accepted.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Four

Wake feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. No time, no time, no time. Call J to try and postpone planned collaborative work for weekend. Make lists. Rush off only just on time to mind gallery for entire afternoon. Arrive at gallery. Stare out of window vapidly, accidentally driving away those passersby whose eyes I momentarily catch. Make more lists; realise I am duplicating lists produced earlier in day. Day saved by chatty friends who drop by to visit. Talk art all day.

Finish up. Curse yesterday's laziness while struggling to fit bicycle in back of two door hatchback. Pizza for dinner. Calm down slightly. More talk about art. Let flatmate down via lack of supportive gig attendance.

Nothing produced today but lists!

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Three

Spend inordinate amount of time writing simple letter to get new studio (in which to be productive, natch). Feel warm community-friendly feeling due to proximity of desired studio to house. Still running late so must drive letter up road. Holly's opening. Ride bike into city in accordance with new healthy intentions. Feel slack as didn't help Holly install show as promised. Drown sorrows with three beers. Accept lift home, leave bike in town.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Two:

Awake early in accordance with First Day of Rest Of Life mentality. Look at clothes on ebay. Halfhearted attempt to clean room. Watch adults dressed up a wizard and fairies on commercial TV for a good fifteen minutes before snapping out of it. Yum cha with the ladies and first band meeting. Realise we need instruments. Committed to this for next meeting, which may more fairly be labelled practice, hopefully. Am ahead on this as already have instrument, behind as can't play it yet.

Quiet night at home. Eat fresh salmon. Lots of email and music. Feel warm and good. Decide need more music due to being out of touch. Work on room cleaning project. Sister comes over to tell me all her gossip. Also complains about Gmail and leeches off my internet. Going to sleep with Slaughterhouse 5.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day One:

Awoke hungover. Too ill to live. Cancel morning activities. Back to bed.

Afternoon movie. Companion wants to smoke dope so watch movie wet due to all discreet places at Circular Quay being rainy. Movie all right (Paris Je T'aime). Too much jumping around but quite good bits. Meet J re collaborative work planned for weekend. Drink Diet Coke during meeting, perk up, feel creative.

Home to sleep early.

uuurggh

I am so TIRED

I have been burning the proverbial at both ends.

One more day of work! Then - ennobling and productive poverty!

Should I try to get the dole while I'm away on my residency? Did I tell you about that?

A fuckin' hothouse flower!

I feel like I'm disappearing. I can't tell if it's existential or social anxiety.

Apparently change of any kind triggers feelings of grief. Even positive changes.

I just had this memory of when I finished high school and i was moving away to go to university, as were a few other people that I knew. There was a party for Calum and a party for someone else, in honour of their leaving. I got a bit sad because no-one was throwing a party for me. My boyfriend at the time (the sweetie) desperately started gathering together my friends to have a small thing, and when I found out about the five people who were coming I felt even sadder and made him cancel it. Because I felt that, after 18 years living in one place, if there weren't enough people interested to make a proper party, what was the point?

I still feel like this, all the time. Trying to gather together some lame party. I can't believe that I still have these same adolescent insecurities. Stupid desire for the approval of, like, everyone. Just the approval of the people I love is not enough. I don't know what I'm trying to prove.

While reading I want to be a writer

The reason I said that loving a writer’s work can be lonely is that in order to read (or be read to) you give yourself up/over while the words are being read. You can connect those words to yourself and feel alive while reading, but when you put the book down, it’s like you don’t live in that world any more. You can still take pleasure from the memory of it (especially when there’s still more of that world to experience, ie you haven’t finished the book), and enjoy that sort of secret knowledge that you carry with you while the feeling lasts, but it’s ultimately not the same world that everyone around you inhabits. It's too private. Even when you share the experience of reading, like discussing a favourite writer with someone else, there’s something cold about it; it’s so different to that experience of reading, of living in that other world. Because it’s happening inside your head, and we all know the bitter truth about how accessible our heads are to other people (not very).

It’s a little weird, I suppose, to find loneliness in something pleasurable and life-affirming, simply because the experience can’t be sustained. Glass half empty etc.

And lo, thusly it was become truth

At the stinky pub tonight Brennan made me repeat the following affirmations:
"I have the passion"
"I have the passion and I'm going to build it back up again" (don't question the contradictions, it's a direct quote)

Then I volunteered the following;
"I believe in love"
"I have freedom and financial independence" (he liked that one)

Now, quietly (just between you and me, eh?), I'd just like to add;
"I am the kind of person I'd be happy to know, goddamnit, and people who can't appreciate that are just idiots"

La di da

I am listening to the Animal Collective. They make me feel great. Or maybe it's the sun, or the fact that I'm solving this icky video problem.

My video was going to be bits like this




But now it's gonna look more like this (below - damn! how to fix this?).


Plus some other ways. You have to picture it moving yourself. I can't give the ending away.

Expression of indignant incredulity

Blogger won't let me tag posts with exclamation marks. I mean, what up!!

In other news, I still have NO INTERNET at home.

See how we suffer?

Kurt Vonnegut Up In Heaven Now Shock

Kurt Vonnegut died. I have been feeling uneasy about his health for a while now, well, just knowing that he was pretty old, knowing that we don’t last forever etc etc. I knew he’d go soonish. It breaks my heart, a little bit.

I’m reading Jailbird, coincidentally, at the moment. It’s a really good one. I always found his world and his voice so utterly faithful. So direct, so honest, such clear vision (by which I mean I related to his perspective, I suppose. I get that that’s subjective). He’s pretty much my favourite.

There’s something lonely about loving a writer's work, ain't there?

What can you say, really *sigh*. If we could only conquer time and space!

Presumptions of ethnicity

I just ordered some goulash at a soup place for lunch, and the guy serving it looked at me like I had said the secret password. "Where are you from?" he asks (I'm assuming he was Croatian, as the soup in question was in fact called Croatian goulash). "Canberra," I answer, disingenuously. He looks slightly disappointed. I take pity and elaborate. "I know that's not what you mean, but there's nothing to tell," I say. At a loss, he wanders off to serve someone else.

This is something that happens to me all the time. People think I've got something where there's nothing. Examples from the last seven days:
1. Greek people at the election speaking to me in Greek and being confused when I can't understand them. Their first words to me in English are "you're not Greek". "Sorry!" I say.
2. I told this story to ****, and he said "mmm, what IS your, you know ..." "Ethnic background?" "Nothing," I supply.
"Well it can't be nothing ..." he says, fairly enough. I sigh. "Anglo-Welsh mongrel." End of conversation, confirming my suspicions that he was, in fact, looking for a more interesting answer. Like, my parents were refugees from the Armenian genocide, and I grew up in a small weatherboard house in Marrickville, where my Yaya sang me to sleep with traditional lullabies.
3. Last week, a girlfriend (as my aunties down the south coast charmingly call their female friends) made some allusion to my Jewishness. "Huh?" I counter. "But I'm not Jewish" "Oh!" she says, taken aback. "For some reason I assumed, because [insert ex-boyfriend's name here] is ...," trailing off into a pit of illogicality.

Etc etc etc. A normal week.

I have a vague exotic [read: woggy] look, apparently. According to peoples' visual assessments, I should be either Greek, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian (but that's silly), Jewish or I dunno what. Those are the ones I get the most.

So I think I should come up with an ethnicity for myself that doesn't leave people so let-down. Suggestions below, please.

I don't mind blogging into the void, actually

It makes one less inhibited.

Let's rephrase; it would make one less inhibited. In the blog, natch.

Another 'post not posted' post

I was going to post the most ugly invite in the world but I've decided that it would be churlish.

You'll just have to be content with a mental image of me shaking my head sadly.

Also: note to electoral commissioner - next time make voters mark their ballots in red pen. This will save electoral officers a significant amount of back pain/eye strain. Also, any voter who picks the ballot up and says 'is this the liberal paper?' as though we hand out one ballot for libs and one for labs, should have the ballot snatched back off them and not be allowed to vote.

I wish I spoke Greek. And some other languages. let's say ... Japanese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Hungarian.

People. I just don't understand 'em. (Maybe once I get on top of all those languages ...)

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.

Cross and ranting

Our rent goes up $20 a week ($10 each) in six weeks. Is this the dealbreaker? Should I move out/to Melbourne?

I have a sick feeling in my stomach about this ... it's shit that your rent goes up the same month you stop working. I blame the freakin media, feeding landlords full of stories like this all the goddamn time. That's the roof over my head they're toying with for their petty 'news'!

!!

Trash

It's hard to see what this is. do you want me to explain it, or will that remove the all-too-essential mystique of the art object? Ahem.

Speaking of WTF

WTF etc.