carried away

i realise how crazy this sounds, but i often define myself in terms of the house i grew up in. the family home i lived in growing up.

and by this i mean it's physical structure- from the foundations, to the green-tiled roof so drastically aged, it scarcely protected the inside from the outside; not from the elements, nor from mine and my sisters’ determined suitors scampering their way across, and the more persistent ones, through.

so how to explain? how best to tell you how there are times i become my childhood home?

well, see there are some days i feel cold and inside, like the dining room located first door on the right as you entered the house, number three half way up the hill.

i don't know if you're wondering, but it is more than my mood i'm describing to you here. on those days i don't feel the way that room used to make me feel, i'm not describing an emotion elicited from a back catalogue of memories evoked by certain things on particular days, i mean i feel like i am that room.

my head is the south facing window, just like those in the room right above it, my childhood bedroom incidentally, the one i shared with my older sister before we renovated and i had one on my own.

oh, are you still with me here? i can get carried away.

my eyes become the couch-bound cushions i dared never to remove from that room, not because the patchwork was hand quilted, nor because they bore any historical significance, nor because there was a fragility sewn into the ornate design, though there was, but because i swear to you as though they were complying to scientific law, those cushions would invariably find their way back to that room if ever they did momentarily stray, which i never even once in my 24 years saw them do.

so yes, i suppose you could say i perpetuated my own obedience by leaving the cushions that were always there left, but it was the way my eyes saw it back then, and the way they become those cushions as they see them now.

and what of those walls?

my flesh becomes those walls. my skin tingles with the texture i can only describe to you as i felt them back then, navigating my way hands outstretched in the dark, on the nights too hot to sleep in my own room, (you would have found at the top of the stairs turning right), lucidly cool and idiosyncratically goose-bumped; i could effortlessly feel my way across the flaws to the other side.

by day the surface of the walls was a landscape neglected by the imagination- mission brown, lacquered by a tradesman in a hurry, flawed not by design or purpose, but by oversight.

i only think of this now, though even this strikes me as implausible. i could only really know it now to have known it then.

i must have known it then.

but there are other days of course, i feel my belly heave up its driveway to the front porch, the rickety cast-iron door is unlocked - it was always unlocked - and if my heart is inside, it is the kitchen bench, waiting for my mouth to arrive home from school with stories that only just escape between treats gobbled down.

my heart is that now.

rapid eye movement

i have come to the quarter to five mark in my day and was mid-way through my eye fatigue exercises -

look at a close spot, focus on a spot far away, look at a close spot, focus on a spot far away - repeat to fade...

and wanted to tell you that just then my eyes started doing these weird saccade like movements (a likely tautology).

and when i remembered the word 'saccade' i was so surprised, and found it so secretly useful, but was worried i would never be able to tell anyone of the experience.

i looked at a close spot and thought it is you or the blog, and you won.

the way you do.

emily at 4.55pm hopes to tell you next time of a close call she had with a phone-call of yours she missed deliberately so that she would therein be able to treasure the message left.

or a dream in which she was talking to you on your side of the fence that may have been more like a wall, say the great wall of china but less long and windy, but just as sturdy though not quite as old.

search by subject

i am alone in my office after hours thinking about two things.

something in my fridge exploded a moment ago but when i looked inside there was nothing to see. just my water bottles stacked in their practical pyramids.

i am thinking about neat things making strange noises.

also, melbourne has been enjoying a run of unseasonably temperate days.

st kilda is a funny place to be when this happens. when the sun appears after a hiatus. people attempt to get around in next to nothing. as though being closer to the beach means they are closer to the sun.

i am still in jeans.

i am thinking about things happening in twos.

post-haste

he and i have different interests. we are interested in different things.

i wait for the week-end to lay my ideas out on the bed.

i am careful not to let them touch.

they are folded and folded in, and have been stored in different sized boxes, one on top of the next, for so long a few have yellowed, and others smell aged.

i look at them now, some still inside their packages.

it reminds me that i have a couple of things waiting for my collection at the post-office. i deliberately did not answer the door when the postman arrived to deliver them, thinking

what if i wait? what if i

wait. when the doorbell rings i will be taken from this thought and will move quickly to repackallmyideasbackintotheirboxes. back into storage in the cupboard.

i do not have time to stack them neatly now, i will return later to carefully reposition them, one on top of the next.

in such a hurry i will not notice that as i collect my ideas i also accidentally gather the decisions we make, differently in our own time.

home and away

i wanted to give you a lasting meaningful piece of me to take with you.

to have me with you.

but that's when i come up empty. isn’t that when we always come up empty?

for some reason and instead i will tell you that when ray moved in two doors down he looked so unlike anyone else in the street – too tough and too well worn – i thought he’d be gone after his first paid month was up.

but he stayed, and was a wonderful neighbour.

helpful and protective.

and maybe that is why i am telling you this now. because you too have surprised me. in a way i didn’t realise i could be, or wanted to be.

you too have moved in. and i am glad.


ray did end up leaving our street the following year, said “the clean” made him nervous. like there was always a trace of him doing something he shouldn’t be.

and so i miss him now. and i miss you too.

salty wounds

what happens to the spaces we don't fill?

i have one left in me for you.

i notice it there and think, "what a waste of space!" and try to move in.

but i am stopped at the gate and realise it is taken.

it is empty, but it is yours.

and i sit down where i am now and feel sleepy.

i send my assistant home early and the phones start up as soon as i do. but i still prefer the silence of the time between calls without her here.


otherwise, melbourne international film festival is over for another year and my eyes are slowly readjusting to daylight.

but i do miss everything melty and choc-topped.

sticky in the dark.

writer’s festival is about to be launched, and then there is melbourne underground film festival, and then fringe. i am sure i’ll not be searching too hard to find culture to replace the missing culture.

feels like replacing drugs with buddhism.

but where are you now, and why do i still have a perfect you-sized space waiting here in me?

i hope it heals before it heals over.

double feature

i listen in the dark
to you breathing, four hours

with interval

i attempt to synchronise
mine with yours
but cannot catch you and
fall, short of each

you do not excite
nor slacken, while
my grip is loose like
a fickle wind

richard ford came to me during one scene and said

“it might seem that i was ‘within myself’ then. but in fact i was light years away from everything”

i hear you
are moving away

the proud cloud

i have felt fear on stage.
and just before.

in the air. on a plane.
in the middle
of the night in a panic.

about too many unclear and uncertain things.
at dawn. early morn.

a boy on my mind. the kind kind.
things to do. or afraid not to.

scared to fall. or of not much at all.
a sudden cloud of paralising doubt.

i got stoned on my own.
like a bad tattoo you can't undo.

--------

robert frost once told me that spring is the mischief in him.

perhaps rain is the rain in me.

last night in the dark

i wanted to wake you to tell you:

i curl my toes in as hard as i can.
i look into the wind till it makes me
cry. i float. i crunch ice
in my back teeth. i lie down
in the front row. i use my hands. i force everyone
i know to read me a page. i panic
when it is my turn. i love the holding
hands stage. i forget
to look both ways. i spit off bridges. i lay
piles of stones at the entrance. i play chess
randomly. i love the character. i love that when i interrupt
you when you are speaking you still hear me.
that your skin changes
temperature when you fall asleep, (to a
soft warm that could have a name of its own
it feels so exclusively yours). my excessive salt
intake and small frame are not related. i would rather
be too hot in a scarf than too cold in a t-shirt. i drop
things even when i am being careful. the most interesting thing a person can do is listen. i love seeing men hold hands. artichoke hearts make mine happy.

ernest 'papa' hemingway

i was curious about his suicide. and his father's before him.

so i read.

his suicide made ernest question his father’s courage, (the one value his father had adamantly held so true), and in the end made him feel as though he had failed him.

hemingway became known as “papa” till the end of his days it is said, in an attempt to become the perfect father his own had failed to be.

in an interview hem was asked about his creativity:

“why a representation of fact, rather than fact itself?”

and he said, “why be puzzled by that? from things that have happened and from things as they exist and from things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. that is why you write and for no other reason that you know of.”

creativity and family.

choosing not to become the person your parents expected is painful.

you leave them.

you leave them and their lives in order to make sense of your own.

and then in time you return. to them, offering you the chance to measure the distance between their world and your own.

to see if the distance is as far as you'd remembered.

choosing not to become the person your parents expected is painful.

no more however, than eventually becoming them.

like a bowerbird

the motivation for movement?

my art.

and motivation for my art?

if i think about this a moment i can reply to your reply with a proper reply.

mostly i just love writing. music.

if it is there all the time i don't hear it. if it isn't then i hear it not long after it is.

like gardening - not weeding, but pruning.

like nesting - gathering feathers and twigs and all things blue.

i rest a while in the clearing.

my foot taps contentedly.

if i cannot capture this time, i will remember it.

it is at this point that i think of the bird on the other side of the valley being a bird.

i love where i am.

reminded of a place i am not stuck in, but settled--

during a time of collection, not reflection.

this is much more beautiful for being true.

carver

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver

every letter of every letter

i had a drink so i could think
i had too much and i lost touch

the trouble is my nights think too much

i am not a fan of jam
i'm thrilled by film

i have not seen snow
and thought i'd write to tell you so

the trouble is my nights think aloud

a delivered letter left unopened still stains and fades
the way a hand held too long begins to ache

letters are safer written on paper

the trouble is my nights think they are days

save as draft

i’m not going to write you an e-mail.

there are things we tell ourselves in order to consider that they may be believed, or adhered to, or filed away under “n” for new year’s delusion.

we all strive. don’t we?

i hope so.

some for perfection, others for easy sleep. the kind that comes and stays. easily.

perhaps we drive to be driven, and are flawed to be floored. take an imperfect body. or an imperfect body of water.

take a name misspelled.

i had intended to tell you about an article i read yesterday morning in the financial times about choice. that we are given too many. as a result we are forever searching and eternally questioning.

restless. not choosing. obsessed with opportunity.

destined to forever be foraging in the undergrowth of personal development at the expense of commitment to any one thing at any one time. so ultimately, at the expense of living, we don’t... choose. i.e. ironically, experience and existing are as much or more about choice and choosing, as not choosing and not having the choice to choose.

but it feels less relevant now, so i won’t.

and then i thought to tell you that sometimes when i am typing my name i write emilt instead of emily and sometimes i even write e-mail. stoopid, but funneh.

or maybe that i just got all excited because a stationery order came through that i ordered this morn and i quickly unwrapped the box and realised that i had only ordered fax cartridges and a highlighter.

nothing can prepare you for something you are not prepared for.

i really love that.

but that's a whole other short story...

cloudy but fine

the things i cannot do, i do not do.

the storms have made travel more difficult. have seen branches and their branches impede movement. have forced us indoors to indoor activities and cupasoups.

i like mine too hot to drink.

my path becomes a mangrove swamp i wade through in boots i hold on to with my toes.

incidentally, how delightful is the mallee root?

my parents used to burn them in the open fire-place of my childhood home. i knew that a new one added to the flames meant a later bed-time.

they take many hours to burn.

the storm will force me to stay indoors all day. i will pile things too high until i cannot reach the top of them without a chair, or a ladder, or a pair of shoulders on which to climb.

and when i can no longer pile, i will no longer climb.

meeting my match

there are days i cannot write.

today i cannot write.

today people make me want to be without them.

when satre said "hell is other people," he meant you and me. and we mean him on days like mine today. and yours on days a little darker than today.

darker even than yesterday.

you had hoped for a closer game. because it gets lonely when you are left to think alone. but i admire the way you barrack.

today being close feels closed. so near it echoes.

today you take me aside. and i am learning. not on the bench this time.

i am happy for the better side to win.