A Very Cool Christmas

Melbourne is defrosting and par-boiling in 34 degree heat today.

I just met Jack and Jaime in the stairwell at work. They were red-faced and puffed when I found them somewhere between the third and fourth floors. I asked them if they had been running up and down the stairs and they said:

"Na. Wanna see what we've been doing? Come with us!!"

And so I ran down to the bottom of the stairs with Jack while Jaime ran to the top.

Jack said, "OK, back here, this is the safe spot."

And then in his 11 year old squeal he yelled up to Jaime "OK, we're ready!!"

And then Jaime pelted a plastic penguin down the 7 flights of stairs to near where we stood.

Jack proudly collected the penguin from the cool concrete and handed it to me like a cat presenting a dead pigeon to its owner and said, "See, hardly a scratch!"

I picked the plastic palm sized penguin (I assume is a character from Madagascar 2), from his hand and laughed with glee at the penguin missing an eye and it's beak but with bulbous body still intact!

Terribly Well

Jono and I spent the last few (too few) days with my dad in Tasmania.

On the flight home, J and I gazed at the sun setting and then disappearing on the horizon. Each shade of red, orange, yellow, and blue too brilliant to be afforded these simple ill-fitting labels.

I said to him that I thought instead of 'awesome' the word should be 'aweloads' because we couldn't have been more overwhelmed and fixated on the view from our 11th row seats.

Today there is another correction I'd like to make.

I am almost finished my Monday work-load. My first day back at my desk missing Tassie and my dad terribly workload.

And see that's just it.

If we could sit down and have a cuppa (ideally the plunger sort my dad makes to perfection), I'm sure that after even only a brief while you'd agree that I am missing Tassie, and Petey Boy, and Onemilebridge, and of course my dad, brilliantly.

Day Too (The Big Guns)

This day I question the same thoughts I would have thought unquestioningly two days ago.

A man reaches into his bag beside me on the tram. I wonder if he will pull out a gun. He doesn't pull out a gun.

Today I wonder if this thought is safe. I question my safety.

A man reaches into his bag beside me on the tram. He pulls out a pen. He points to his ticket and asks me to write down on it the time it will expire.

Today I wonder if my reactions are the same as they were a few days ago.

I take the man's pen and circle 12:00 on his ticket. I look up and smile at the man. The man shakes his head and asks me to write the number down for him.

Twelve. I write beside 12:00. Twelve.

bump in the night

a dream that you called me and asked me what type of car i drive.

i said - one of those little minis (even though that is not remotely what i drive)

you said - that’s perfect! we need someone to pick iggy pop up from the airport and entertain him for a few hours till the stage is ready for him.

i said - i’d love to, but i don’t know how to drive.

you said - can you fake it? you can sit there and we will guide you to the venue by remote control.

i said - i don't like to lie.

you said - if you don't tell him you are driving then you are not lying if you sit there and you are not.

i said - what if i crash?

you said - what if you don't?

What Happens Next

I write this now and you are still here, in Melbourne, and most likely only a suburb away from me here, at home, with you on my mind. I picture you at your house-sit, sitting with a bag partly packed, or mostly packed, and maybe you have your heart all tied up, or maybe your heart has already flown on ahead.

I have been thinking about you constantly lately, and have had more time to do so being stuck indoors and disallowing myself any distraction. I know that I will kick myself as soon as you leave, for not having spent every waking minute with you and not forcing myself up and out to be there with you.

In fact I already am.

So yes, I have been thinking about you busying yourself to go, and have been missing you like mad and thinking about the things that best prepare us for what happens next.

For you this is a checklist of things to do and prepare and secure for your adventure, and for me this is how best to keep part of you here with me, even long after your take off and landing and relocation. Of all the things I want to keep I think of your words, your beautiful heart, your incredible mind, and our friendship.

I don't know why things happen when they do, or how, and whether we will them this way, in some way, or rather if they occur chaotically and unpredictably, and in this way perhaps our futures are as fickle as our pasts. But I love whatever it was that brought us together.

I am so glad you found me right when I found you.

Skywriting

Lizzy and Me:

This dream begins on a beach. This dream begins with you and I walking side by side on a beach. You hold a stick and let it trail behind you leaving a line that follows us like the sticky shimmer left by a snail. This dream is full of our laughter crashing out of synch as the waves reach my bare feet before yours.

You walk on my outside.

We walk so long the line of our travels disappears behind us like skywriting fading in a breeze. And then a distant blob on the sand comes into view and transforms itself into a solid object. In this dream this object comes into view as a beautiful shell. And though I know you see it, that we both see it and at the same time, you are silent. You make no movement nor mention to suggest you have seen anything.

And as I think to say something to you, to say, "I see it too, I see the shell too," I suddenly understand you are leaving the shell there for me to discover. In this dream you want this thrill to be mine.

In this dream this thrill is mine.

"It's time to go...

Big Brother Australia."

Man that feels good.

Have a go!

Colour Me In

The truth is I feel many things at once, more than eleven though I’d like to confine it for the symbolism of this occasion.

Eleven months have I really known you, slept beside you, laughed and loved and wept - the way a box of colours offers life in the promise of amusement.

We have done so much living, (eleven months do I frame), you have slept beside me, laughed and loved and wept, and even at times we have washed some of our brushes hastily after the mess, like thieves cleaning any trace of existence. (You have taught me to choose more carefully).

Today I read an article in the newspaper written so poorly I couldn’t decipher it’s meaning. And I tell you this now because I have grown this way; to show you the picture after I paint it.

Eleven months you have let me win, shown me where to begin, like choosing which cause to believe in.

Quick when you come
Hot on my cheeks
Gentle on your tongue
Restless in your sleep
Heavy with a hunger
Wild in the ocean
Perfect in your laughter
Rhythmic beside me (inside me)
Soft on the verge
Hurried up the stairs
Silent when I’m not there

Eleven months have I loved your breathing.

oddly even now

you feel too far away

your words arrive and i feel
like i have found my bike, stolen
and given up
for belonging to somebody else

my life is a collision of
workandwords
and not enough sleep in-between

i mainly write when there is no
time to, and instead
when there is no pressure i find myself bare
and scared that i may never again
create and then
it comes and the pattern continues

to confuse. i was writing
some longer and shorter and now i find
they are musical and true

but please send me everything, even
the left-overs, for i am hungry
and have missed your home cooking.

are yours? my hands are cold and i cross
them and bury each one
in the opposite armpit

softly falls a girl who falls softy

rumblefish

i am eating breakfast at my computer. jono is shaving his beard for the audition. when he joins me at the table i peer above my screen to see him sitting opposite. i study his face freshly shaven. his cheeks look patchy as though just in from the cold.

i don't touch them and instead eat the muesli he brought around to my place because i couldn't face the supermarket last night when i realised i had none. couldn't face going out in the cold to buy oats.

i look at the photos of you as happy then, as you are unhappy now. i shut the browser down too sad to think of you not smiling. jono says soon there will be more photos posted of you smiling, and happier than you were even back then.

jono continues to read the article he started last night when he arrived bearing muesli and a late night episode of the mysterious disappearance of the cat bowl he ritualistically fills for the neighborhood strays, while my thoughts are a disobedient school of fish swimming in different directions.

getting close

hi.

it is the afternoon here and i went at lunchtime to listen to daniel keene, a famous australian playwright (why isn't it playwrite?), read a piece he had written in response to a painting on a wall in front of which he stood.

like all good things that make you think of other good and fabulous things, i thought about you and your lady belle (whom i have never met), and realised that you soon will be parents.

then i noticed the walls on which the drawings were mounted must have been painted recently, and in a hurry, and then i thought about the gaps between keene's words, and felt thankful to him and for them, and for all the space left for the rest of us to create something therein and of and under.

and the creation part led me of course back to you and your lady belle.

this is just love and happy friday and all things cyclical and recurring, where ever this finds you, hopefully with your gloves and scarves unlike the ones i left on my kitchen table this morning.

embrolly xx

This is just to say

I know the man
across the road
gave you the pallet
of eggs possibly

as a thank-you gift
for being so kind
to his cat
or as a gesture

not so easily exchanged
between even men
who have known
one another for the longest

time
but I started
at two for breakfast
on that first morning

and went back
for several more
that evening and
though I knew you

were saving some
for your week-end
plans to make breakfast
in bed

for your girlfriend
I couldn't resist
polishing them off
with a speed

I believe
had you seen
you would
have marveled at

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.

From Memory

From memory

You walk in
You sit down
You make a call
You check your stocks
I check my stockings while
You make a play

You throw your cards
You gossip loud
You fog the glass laughing inside
I check my stockings while
You make a play

You drink the tea
You made for three
I flirt behind the magazine
I hitch my stockings while
You make a play

You set about to sketch me
from the recess of your memory
I laugh when inside I’m crazy
I know your poker face baby
I won’t wear stockings say
You'll make a play

nocturnal journal

we set ourselves up -
put our keys down somewhere
different, listen in for the sad verse
to identify with, feel comfortable
in a place we can feel sorry
for ourselves.

do you remember when you
couldn't hide your disappointment -
my health began to improve and i
no longer needed you
to take care of me? you put the kettle
on a higher shelf and moved
the tea to a cupboard i could never reach
without a step.

i spent the afternoon feeling
like the lights had turned out-
hands sliding along every surface, small
sleep-deprived steps to recover
the things i found, i could return
home.

school of redfish

he tried to fill up the narrow gap between
her names, so she packed the letters in like machine-gun
fire, like the youth with their own teeth
intact, and a wall of fish she once recorded
in her diving log, "i swam through what i thought
at first was a shadow cast by a cloud."










she has hurried too quickly up stairs to rearrange
something or some things: a pile of papers, a hairstyle,
a clue, before his arrival, and found herself
dizzy and gasping incomplete and messy
sentences, "i swam through
first what i thought-
at, was a shadow cast by a-"

she has stamped him with more
than her approval, and shelved
their conversations behind rows of classics,
and in front of the opinions
of her father who until then had delivered
her lifetime of Truths.

but he could not be satin to her, not gentle
flannel sheets, nor a school of redfish
softening with age, when from the beginning
he was an army of enemies
catching her
in friendly fire. the steps are hard; she planned
to explain knowing herself, knowing
the light she photographs best in, the shoes
she wears to the clubs she dislikes,
the saddest words, the delivery
of a love in the past tense.

yes yesterday

my heart is a junk yard
sale on the weekends open
too early you may happen
to overlook a treasure in
my chest bursting open
where there is nothing
more simple
simply open
too early
i’ve opened too early

Jonah

In my dream last night, you and I were fishing. Your feet were long and brave enough to break the surface, while mine dangled shy above a cold I later reluctantly held in my hands as I helped you remove the freezing fish from the water.

I was the one who offered to slice open the belly of the scared body, wanting to protect and shield you from a death I naively hadn't expected. My chest rose and fell as quickly as the one trembling in my clutches, even as I pretended to be handling the situation with deft and confident incisions.

You looked at me with an expression on your face so numb and devoid of any particular expression, that I wonder now if you weren't appalled at what I was doing, even though at the time I read the look as one of surrender, of consolation, of farewell.

And once inside the fish, still panting though ever more slowly, we saw no innards where innards should be, nor blood, nor signs of any organs to keep any living being alive. Instead we found your father's watch, ticking and still living, as it had on his wrist never needing to be wound.

It was your idea to leave the watch there, to tie it back up inside, to return it and the fish to the depths. There they would forever lie, together and without you, even though we stood looking at our wobbly reflections knowing part of you would never be seen above the surface again.

The accident, the tourist

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit my boyfriend visiting his father in hospital. For the entire twenty minute drive I watched in my rear-view mirror, a man in the car behind mine picking his nose.

I wasn't offended by his actions, nor his lack of discretion, more surprised that he had that much to pick out. And then I realised he too must have just moved house. I spent a good few hours on my nostrils on Friday evening after relocating from Fitzroy to my new city apartment. New that is, for me.

He must have lived in his previous home for years; packing his beloved, yet dusty possessions carefully into a series of scavenged boxes, or else his new place is a fixer-upper and responsible for the soot and moving debris up his nose needing immediate removal.

The other information I gleaned from his actions at the time, was that he must also have been driving an automatic car, one hand on the steering wheel, the other free to plough into his face.

I wouldn't want to be his nose cartilage if he were forced to brake suddenly.

And so I drove on, carefully, and more predictably, until he eventually passed me by.

take care, but don't be careful

the trouble with grief, when it is not your own, is that it behaves much like the rubber vine i read about in an article whilst waiting for my boss to have his back adjusted by an osteopath last thursday.

there was nothing better to read in the reception area, or in the magazine itself, and so i waded through each intimate detail of the plant: its pods, flowering times, life-span of up to eighty years, the best methods of prevention and control, and i thought myself bored at the time, but now my mind returns to the weed, so crippling in its threat to the waterways and woodlands of northeastern australia, that it has been classified as a "weed of national significance."

grief has a similar hold.

grief won't let the light in, nor let anything else grow in it's immediate vicinity.

just so you know, writing this makes me feel worse.

for a while i kept waiting for the back-drop to change. for make-up to be called in to touch up the lines by my eyes from too much squinting, smiling. lines that reveal exactly where i have stayed too long.

and then i decided to be careful. then i decided not to be so careful.

and i know that you know that it is easy for me to write any and all of this, because it doesn't belong to me, even though i belong absolutely to it.