everything

it rains more. my sisters are happy. my booba likes her new home. work never owns me. my creativity says "oui" when i pop the question. sex stays this good. i have time to write more. i always have a voice. my voice. i find beauty. it isn't always in the physical. i give more to my friends. jennie sees the silver lining. jdmb feels ok about healing and not healing. sleep will come and find me. emilyinthewayshesneezesachoo.

Mile of My Love

We travel in the off-season,
avoiding higher fares and congestion.
I long to be lost, you long
to be lonely; endless miles on endless
highways, empty beaches to throw sticks
a long way for imaginary dogs to recover. Your
father would have done the same; he encouraged
you to play as a child but you sat surly
on your towel, wanting to be back home
with your friends, just as now you want
to be without them.

“We are anonymous in prayer
but we are never without them.”

I don’t respond because I don’t pray and
don’t know how anonymous
prayers can be answered. I know better
than to strike when you are in this mood.
You wait in the car as I stand at the pump
looking at you disfigured by a mark
you made on the glass. You could be
anyone.

all things scarved

i am so glad you wrote.

i know i seemed confident, but i was actually nervous beyond nervous about giving you the story. and was wondering if you'd reply. and how.

and yeah it is autobiographical and a wee piece of my heart on my sleeve, but also not consciously what i feel day to day.

i suppose.

without weighing down your load already by now stacked with snow gear, it is more something i deal with from afar, or in the (other) corners of my life when i am not distracted by my peripheral vision. or when i am not thinking about my grand parents busying themselves with things that remind me they are no longer my grandparents, or only my grandparents. now they are old, and mortal, and no longer there just to spoil me.

after i sent it to you i realised there was another way to say it. to have said it. richard ford did when he said “it might seem that i was ‘within myself’ then. but in fact i was light years away from everything.”

that conjures something unnamed in me that i had reserved for re-acquainting with an old school-friend thought lost forever, or a crush harboured but never amounting to much more than a few journal entries, or a stolen look at a tram stop, or one given to you near the ‘100 best film’ section at your local video library.

i can’t imagine myself there with you in a week's time. if i had to choose, would i rather look forward to it, or back on it? i wish i was there now doing neither, nor. the time i spend knowing i will soon be somewhere else makes the present feel clumsy and redundant. that’s how it feels.

now anyway.

i should send this because you may have already left. but drive safe if you haven't (and of course if you have), or passenge safe if the first turn behind the wheel isn't yours.

i hope the week-end you have, is even better than the one you have planned.

see you in a week,

emily beside herself.

emily shonagon's list of things that quicken the heart

• my gloves being on my desk the whole time
• humming words to a tune without words
• telling the time by the big hand
• my boss’ squeaky brakes
• the quickening of my breath
• leaving things unresolved
• anything out of a cardboard box
• owning more pairs of undies than days of the year
• the way the french pronounce my name
• the three day weather forecast
• socks with toes
• looking into the wind till i cry
• the chance of a hat-trick
• a hat-trick
• visitors that leave me drawings for my pin-board

if you put the price of freddo frogs up by 10c ...

i get less for my dollar.

THE END

Tall Tales

There are no blank pages in my notebook.

I sit down at a table for four in the back corner of the pub. It is a table that is both most out of the way, and has the most light to write by.

I remember being excited yesterday because I had finished writing about my final thought just as I had filled the last page of my journal. And despite the risk of it threatening that night's sleep, and making me feel jittery and cold in my skin the way too much caffeine does, I ordered a second coffee to celebrate the perfectly timed.

I sat content not to re-read, nor listen to music or a recently downloaded fiction podcast, nor write anything - there was nothing further I needed to say.

And out of habit, attachment, and for immediate access and reference, I continued to carry the book with me that afternoon, night, and even here today I find myself pulling it out of my bag knowing there is no more room in it to write.

And here I am wanting to record a few things I hadn't thought to be related, but have a niggling suspicion might prove to be, if I set them loose to roam about on the page unrestricted.

The first is about two girls at a cafe I had felt fondly towards for ordering two large pizzas, a serve of hot chips, and two chocolate milkshakes to aid in the assuaging of the hangovers I convinced myself they were hoping to cure. The variety and yet specificity of their order reminded me of the particular peculiarity of my own cravings when I am hungover: the sweet, the savory, the salty.

The second is my repeated encounters with Ian ("Ian the Terrible" is the way he introduced himself to me), an older man I see daily at my tram stop on my way home from work. He calls me "darling," and "sweetie" and I tease him that he calls all the girls that, and in fact he doesn't remember who I am.

He tells me he drinks too much soft-drink and not enough milk, and I tell him I drink too much beer and not enough water. He says he won't be there the next day because he is going to Coolangatta with friends, and I joke with him that he will fall so in love with the airport there, that he will see no more of the town than that.

He never boards any of the trams when they arrive, and instead waves to me after I have boarded and carefully chosen a seat by the window to allow him this ritual.

Ian is at the tram stop waiting for me the very next day after he told me he wouldn't be, and I make no mention and instead tell him that I woke up that morning as a giant of eight metres, but took a tablet to return to my normal size to ensure he would still call me "little lady." The more absurd my tales, the wider his grin.

So if I had a few pages to write about these experiences, perhaps I would make the connection that we are our own makers, and create what we make, and what we make we fashion to grow old with; to make believe because we believe all we make.

The two girls may well have been nothing more than hungry, or celebrating their own victories of timing. And Ian the Terrible? He may not be waiting for me and our daily conversations at all, and may think I am the one telling tall tales, leaving his reality on my imaginary journey home.

Kitson's Mission

The second time I tried to get to work this morning I bumped into Michael Georgetti. I got off the tram I was on when I saw him, because it was only traveling as far as the casino, and I was heading to work in St Kilda on the 96 tram line, quite a way further than the tram I was traveling on could take me.

Michael was sitting at the stop on the corner of Elizabeth and Bourke streets smoking a cigarette, and drinking a take away coffee with Vittorio written on the front in brown flowing script.

He was on the way to an artist run gallery on King St to set up his exhibition, opening tomorrow night, and I, as I explained to him, was trying to get to the Prince of Wales where I work and where I had met him, for the second time today.

I had woken up hours before my alarm was to play it's calypso tune this morning, got up, and had breakfast while sitting at my kitchen table writing about Daniel Kitson's stand up show I'd been to last night.

I was particularly entranced by the economy of Kitson’s narrative offerings, effortlessly belying the rich verbosity and deliberate tangentiality of their delivery. What could be summarised as a few tales about his travels on a bus, and a woman walking down the street at 3.15am bleeding down her legs, was exponentially more dense, and took an infinite number of routes, and several hours to deliver.

I sat in my seat holding my breath as Kitson spoke, not wanting to interrupt his flow, or jinx him, and also as a mark of respect for his brilliance, my reaction to most things of incredible wonderment.

And so after I had written for a time, and eaten my muesli, I then showered, and dressed, at which time my boyfriend woke up and sat eating the breakfast I had prepared for him on my balcony.

We left my place together, he out the front door, and me out of the car-park where I went to collect the dvd’s I planned to return after work. I called out to him, "See you tonight," as we parted, and began my journey which was to eventually find me at the tram stop where I realised I didn’t have my tram ticket and had left it in my jeans pocket.

Not having coins on me, and only a $50 note - too big to be able to change with another passenger - I went into the closest 7/11 to pre-purchase a ticket.

I could see the tram arriving at the Bourke St stop and so explained to the man working that I was in a bit of a hurry because my tram was there.

I can't say for sure what he was thinking, if he moved deliberately slower because I had asked of him the opposite, or if he was a slow man who took a long time to process information, and even longer to translate the information into coordinated movement, but I stood watching him look at me looking first at him, then at my tram still allowing passengers on and off at the stop, then back at him.

He chatted for a few moments to his co-worker, then put away some chewing gum, and then began leafing through the ticket box moving some cards into different sections as though this was the perfect time to do his stock-take and spring cleaning.

"My tram is here," I heard myself say quietly as though he had asked, "I'm on my way to work." And when he continued shuffling the tickets in the box I said, "I'm kind of in a hurry, can I please have my ticket." To which he began shouting, "You! You be quiet. You stupid girl, you idiot girl! Be quiet!"

"Please do not yell at me, I am not yelling at you," I said and turned my head to see my tram leaving the stop; I was no longer in a hurry.

"You fuck off. You not tell me. You fucking stupid girl."

His co-worker tried to apologise to me, or for him, and as soon as she said "Sorry, I'm so sorry," he started up again with, "You don't say sorry, I'm not sorry. You stupid fucking girl. I’m not sorry!”

I couldn’t hear any more and left the store because I was too close to tears and didn’t know how to respond without him realising how upset I was. For some reason at that time, this mattered to me more than responding.

I walked back along Swanston street, crying beneath my sunglasses, intending to go home and weep into my pillow for a week, but as I neared my home I decided it would be best not to let this overtake me, that the best thing for me, and the rest of my day, would be to go and have a quiet coffee and write in my journal.

And as if by way of divine reassurance, I entered the café and saw my boyfriend inside writing. And although I had stopped crying by that time, and felt slightly calmer and more settled, his kind eyes and gentle coos of "Are you ok? What happened?" set me off again and I crumbled into tears in his arms.

Daniel Kitson ended his show last night with a general message of hope- that humans are inherently good, and kind, and that there is a basic caring at the heart of most people, (even if it is secondary to the desire for chicken at 2.30am). My boyfriend is proof of that, so is Michael Georgetti, and even the apologetic lady working in the 7/11 that has to spend more time with the the mean 7/11 man than I would ever wish even my worst enemy, (incidentally the mean 7/11 man himself), to have to spend time with.

My second attempt to go to work was once again foiled as the driver explained he was only going as far as the Casino, but seeing Michael Georgetti made up for this, just as a my boyfriend’s arms had more than made up for being yelled at earlier.

There are small rewards and victories in life, even if they are preceded or disguised as set-backs and small defeats, like when you win a game of pool your boyfriend has allowed you to cheat in, or when you feel unconquerable for throwing a scrunched up piece of paper into a bin quite far away and getting it in.

Even when no-one else is around to see.

you decide to live alone

you draw up a list of the pros and cons:

cons
higher rent
higher bills

pros
quiet
creative space
nudity

and when you get to nudity you abandon the list and think about sex. noisy sex with your boyfriend, and if that doesn't work out, with the strangers you won't need to sneakily and hurriedly usher out of your house.

you can be living on your own and can share awkward, "did we really do that last night? and how?" coffee stares with them in the morning at your kitchen table, or in bed, or in your bath, if either of you suggest it.

you can feed each other crumpets in there as you sit head to toe propped up on your inflatable cushions, and the booze still loitering in your system like the kid from next door who stays at your place too long because you let him watch adult TV.

you can leave the bathroom door open, laugh loudly, and ask provocative "getting to know you" questions you can force him to answer underwater as you both slide down to communicate like merlovers.

he can gurgle "yeeees" to having kissed a boy, and "yeeeeeeeeeeees" to enjoying his deep sea blow-job. and you can feel confident and light and uninhibited, and squeal like a kettle when afterwards he pulls you up and over to his side of the tub.

you can hog the bathroom, and leave soapy puddles you can then drag around the lounge as you chase him with a towel you have dangled and twirled into a whip- all the more menacing to naked skin.

but you love your boyfriend, and change your mental image because you want him to be your merman, coming and going and entering you and your place, eventually with his own key, the one you have cut for him when he pulls you up for air and looks at you as he rests your head on an inflatable pillow, moves your hair out of your eyes and, like in the movies, kisses you with his eyes closed.

In the wars

I burnt my hand when I heard Caesar had been stabbed. I was too preoccupied with fantastical thoughts of betrayal and honour, and a time when people lived for their politics. And died for it.

That could be today. That is today.

And so I stood in my kitchen clutching a saucepan lid not long enough off the stove. The pain had not set in; my mind was in Rome, or else the shock was allowing me time to prepare - the running tap, the cold compress.

And for a purpose I also attribute to shock and denial, I thought of Caesar's feet, just as I had once spent an entire afternoon trying to research whether Napoleon had worn socks and whether his fastidiousness, of which i had become fixated, was true of his needing to change them regularly.

I wondered about Caesar's sandals. Did he have someone wear them in before he put them on? And were the undersides of his feet every truly clean?

I wonder this too of my own.

When I traveled abroad, staying in foreign cities on a budget of hostels and baked beans, I would drift off to sleep wondering whether my feet would ever truly be clean again.

I am at home now - I did tell you of the burn in my kitchen - with clean feet and a blister on the pudgy cushion of my palm resembling a snowman with two defined blobs for body and head, formed rather than melted by the heat.

Only Josh

It seems crazy to call Josh my "ex-boyfriend".

It was years ago that we broke up, and even when we did eventually end our fraught relationship, it was months before that time that we both knew it was over, but held on, not even really trying to fix the things. Just treading water without attempting to get anywhere or help each other out.

There were problems. For us both.

Me: Josh's unwillingness to change the things that made him unhappy with his life.

Josh: My inability to fix the things that made him unhappy with his life

Me: Josh's inability to be happy for my successes

Josh: My inability to support him and his lack of success

There is that moment, the last moment of holding onto something, when your grip slackens and you know you will be forced to let go. Because holding on is no longer possible, or no longer good for you.

We arrived there, to that point, and that's when it ended.

I would even say that he let go first, though that isn't to say I wasn't going to soon after. In fact there are so many things that could be said about the end.

Delayed, premature, sad, calm, frenzied, necessary, clean. But clear is what I remember most of all.

CLEAR.

I remember thinking it was as though suddenly everything had come into focus in the viewfinder. And I felt giddy surrounded by an endless number of crisp, defined edges.

I woke up remembering where it was I lay down.