Never watch TV on an empty head

I’ve been watching that new series on the ABC, The Slap.  Good so far, but excruciating.  Watching it tires me out.  I get up off the sofa and feel like I need to sit back down again and not do anything for a long, long time.  Maybe that’s just a sign of good screenwriting – that a TV plot can make me feel such an awfully deep sense of…I don’t know.  Something like sadness, something like nostalgia.  Something confusing and sad and sweet around the edges but in a sharp way.  It’s amazing that it can do that to me.

I don’t know what I am.

I like to tell myself that that’s okay and I don’t have to have answers to that question.  And that’s true.  But sometimes I’d like to have some answers.

At  the moment I am confused and nostalgic and a kind of sad that’s happy around the edges but in an awfully sharp way. At the moment I feel like I am a crappy friend and the most awkward person in the world and too caught up in my head to work out how to use it to get where I want.  And I like to tell myself that that’s okay, because I am who I am and there’s a part of everyone that’s self-conscious and hating.  And I don’t want to be anyone else.  But sometimes I want me to be different.  Better.  Me but not-me.

All the Happy

It’s been a long time since I posted anything on here.  Let’s see if I can make that a habit again.

I’ve spent most of the year thus far, it seems, trying to work out exactly what makes me happy.  I think this is a worthy quest, really, because if I’m going to be kicking around on this planet for the rest of my life, then I intend for it to be as awesome as possible.  Alternatively I could just buy a rocket ship and enough fuel to get me to Mars.  That would be pretty cool as well.

Things that make me happy:

• Friends, and the having thereof
• Warm weather and sunshine
• Chocolate in moderate amounts
• Enough sleep
• Being organised and not stressed
• Learning things
• Cooking
• Craft therapy (including awesome crochet sunflower blankets)
• Crazy random bits of luck or odd fantastic moments or wonderful strangers
• Spending time with people
• (But also having some time to myself)
• Making other people happy.  That’s the big one.

I am going to try and do more of the things that make me happy.  I’m going to try to be a better friend and stay organised and cook more things and eat chocolate and look forward to the warm weather rather than get depressed over the cold stuff.  I’m not a psychologist but it seems like common sense to expect that doing things that make me happy will make me happier more often.  Anyway, that’s the theory and I look forward to testing it.

Hey, it’s spring now.  This is good.

A funny kind of faith

I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.  Doubt is at its worst when you felt completely sure of yourself.  I spent today in bed, basically.  With new clean flannelette sheets and the last of my easter chocolate and an extra doona and a hot water bottle and fuzzy socks.  And it didn’t make me feel any better, but at least I didn’t feel very much worse.  Also, sleep is a marvellous antidote to thinking.

I guess it all just boils down to faith.  Not the God kind.  Just trusting.  It all feels a bit hopeless at the moment, and I don’t know how I can possibly compare or be of any value compared to some of the others, but for now I’ll just have to trust in those words and throw myself into things head first.  I have a lot of trust and love inside of me, and that is a powerful thing, and a good thing, and I can promise myself and yourself and anyone else who it belongs to that it won’t go unused.  I place my faith in all of you, and your intentions, willingly and gladly.

But sometimes it’s very, very difficult.  And this will be hard for me.  It’s a lot harder to have faith in myself, particularly when comparing myself to others.  I know that’s something I shouldn’t do, but everyone does anyway so it’s not like there’s any shame in it.  I want to be the very best person I can be.  There are a lot of wonderful people in the world – how can I be better, be more like them, without comparing myself to higher standards?  But there are so many wonderful people out there, and sometimes my own standard just seems inadequate.  And it’s incredibly disheartening at times, especially at the moment, to think of and read of all those wonderful people, and try to fend off the jealousy, and find myself wondering how there can possibly be any value in me when placed next to them.  It just doesn’t make sense, and it’s hard to deal with.  But I guess that’s the point of faith.  You trust anyway.  This will be hard for me, but that’s not the point either.  You don’t get anything that’s worth anything unless you’re prepared to fight for it, whatever form that fight might take.

And so that’s what I’ll have to do.  To trust, and to wait.

How To Tame Lions

I wanted to write you a story, but I wasn’t quite sure how to begin it.  Or where to end it.  Or even if I should end it at all, because the end of anything is really just a beginning.

I wanted to write you the story, but most of the time I can’t tell for sure what happened – is happening – in the middle of it all.  There are days when the skies are so blue it’s like you can see the black behind it all, stretching and stretching and maybe if you looked closely, or squinted at the right angle, you’d see a star or two.  There are days when even the smallest of things have beautiful significance, when you see the sneakers over the wire or the old cat walking along the railing, but you don’t tell anyone and it’s a secret between you and the beautiful things that are there in the world.

Some day at four thirty am you’ll be flicking through the photographs and see it all again in front of you, and this awful-lovely thing called nostalgia will bubble away at your edges, a useless but sweet wish to go back to a time when things were different, even if they weren’t always easy.

You’ll go down into the water and laugh and fall and come up blue and clutching the air with your lungs, and it will be the sweetest breath that you ever did breathe.  You’ll sit in the dark and the warm and the whispers and it will be part of a circle of breathing.  There was a time when I should have taken photos of everything I could see outside that window, because things change and I knew that but I didn’t, so the window-view of the wonderful days went uncaptured and now it’s just going to be a memory that will fade.

There was a time when the world was huge.  There was a time when you clutched at time with me, and I should have been clutching back, or at least holding on more tightly, or at least sitting there taking photos of everything I could see outside that window, like you were, because somewhere along the line jericho fell.  And something was rebuilt from the rubble, but it was something-not-the-same, and it is something that I will now just have to live with and accept.  This awful-lovely thing called nostalgia is a useless but sweet wish to go back to a time when things were different, even if they weren’t always easy.

I want the whole world to be happy.  I want the whole world to feel calm and safe and loved, and I want that for me, too.  Some things are hard, but there is surely beauty somewhere in that that I’m just not looking hard enough to find.

I don’t know where I’m meant to go from here.  The only way I want to go is back to how it was before.  The only way I can’t go.  Going forward while tied down by nostalgia doesn’t really feel like going forward at all.  And sideways is just too confusing to even contemplate.  Sometimes I feel a little lost in it all, and I wish that I had taken the photographs through the window so I could know where I stood.

One day at four thirty am I’ll be flicking through the photographs and in a waving to each other across the arches of the years moment, you will tell me that

in fields of painted-green grass and gaping open sky, there shall you find your direction.

And I hope that you are right.

Emily Goldfish

Emily Goldfish is feeling blue.

She’s tried singing and dancing and making fondue,

She’s tried chocolate and reading and been to the zoo,

She called a few friends, but they had work to do.

She tried some new foods (including tofu),

She got her long brush and she cleaned out the flue,

She blogged and she baked and she practiced kung-fu,

Then saw a good play at a lovely venue.

She learnt a few words in French and Hindu,

She drew sparkly pictures of alien gnu,

She cried very hard into a tissue,

And thought about getting a zebra tattoo.

She even tried writing a haiku or two,

But nothing is helping her through.

There’s just nothing she’s able to do.

Emily Goldfish is feeling blue,

And so are you.

You

You.  I worry about you.  I’m trying to just take you on face value, one day at a time.  But it’s hard, you know.  It’s hard.  I think back to who you were once, and it’s almost funny that someone who was such an ‘open book’ has turned into someone so good at holding all their cards close to their chest.  Sometimes we have that in common.  I just hope that it isn’t your undoing.  I’m watching and waiting and hoping.  I’m worrying about you.

You.  I think about you.  I’m trying to work out how I got to this end of things, trying to wrap my head around everything.  And sometimes it’s difficult to know how I feel, but I’m going to keep trying to pick that knot apart.  I’ll let you know, maybe, when I get to the end of it.  I’m thinking of you.

You.  I miss you.  But I know, of course, that that’s not your fault, and I know what it feels like to be really busy.  Even if I don’t like it, I can still understand it.  I can always try to be understanding.  I wouldn’t want to be anything less, because you have enough to deal with at the moment without more pressure on top of it all.  You don’t need that, and I don’t want to put any pressure on you.  I hope that one day soon things settle down a bit, because I’m missing you.

You have made me feel like a fool.  I never thought this would happen, and I was foolish to think that.  It is happening, has happened.  And it’s not like I can change it (nor should I, it’s not my place to meddle) so I’m just going to have to learn to accept it.  It gets a little easier every day.  But it still stings a bit.  Maybe next year things will all be okay.  Things can change a lot in a year.  For now, though, I’m feeling foolish.  And trying not to feel anything more negative than that.

You.  I’m hoping for you.  It’ll all turn out right in the end, you know, and I hope it turns out the way you want it to.  But if it doesn’t, then I hope you’ll be okay with that as well.  And I hope that there’ll always be someone around to help you through the tough bits.  I’m hoping for all the best for you.

You.  I love you.  You know that.

“Love wins.  Love always wins.”

 

Beautiful, Terrible Days

Something is stirring inside you, the sleepy shuffle that comes with the end of hibernation.  It stretches and creaks a little in the darkness, and by the half light maybe you recognise it a little but maybe mostly you are still not quite sure.  The time of your own personal winter is fading, it’s time to wake up.  Time to get up.  Time to move forward, and maybe time to leave winter behind, a little bit.  Time to live.

And on days when it is finally growing lighter maybe it shows its face to the sun, and you recognise yourself.  Or perhaps not quite yourself, but rather your-new-self, because everything is changing and so are you.  But these days, more or less in all the right ways.  Dancing through the kitchen late at night, squealing at the walls in your excitement.  Afternoons last for longer, are savoured.  There are good things coming on the wind and I intend to catch them all as they float past me.  Beautiful days.

There are days when something stirs behind you and it is not so pleasant; echoes of winter which are harder to shake.  But perhaps these are important too, because they are your past and your past is part of you, the ever-changing self.  And on days when it rains inside and out and look out look out the sky is falling you will try to curl up and sleep to escape, when maybe what you should try to do is lock the winter up inside your heart-box and remember.  It is a cautionary tale and a memory all at once – bittersweet.  It is a part of you, but it is a part of you that with practice you might be able – you have been able – to keep a hold on.  There will be bad days.  Terrible days.  Such is life.  At least there is always the chance that tomorrow will be better.

Beautiful days.  Terrible days.  Sometimes both at once, days that are exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, days that leave me breathless and not sure whether to laugh or to weep with shock.  I am, as they say, “both happy and sad and trying to figure out how that could be”.  I am excited, and anticipating marvellous things, but I am also secretly a little bit scared.  Or a lot.  Sometimes even I’m not sure.

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Beautiful days.  Terrible days.  Both.  All.

Lists, lists, lists

Some places I would like to go to one day:

• Venice
• Florence
• New York
• London
• Most of the world, really.
• Isle de Pines again, to lie on that perfect, perfect beach.
• 11 Ruby Street, Marrickville.  Just to see if it’s the same as my few memories.
• The house my grandmother grew up in.
• Monkey Mia to see the dolphins like in a book I read once.
• Albion, to see ornithopters.

North, South, East, West, I miss your postcard bag.

 

Some things I would like to do one day:

• Publish lots of books.
• Do nothing but write and eat good food and be awesome, for a JOB.
• Learn how to like papaya.
• Find a hat with a helicopter blade on top – you know the type – and wear it even and because it will look extremely stupid.
• Find out what ever happened to Caitlyn Hall.
• Find out what ever happened to Kelly and Tash and Keira as well, just for the heck of it.

 

Some little known things about me:

• When I am tired, I can fall asleep anywhere.  Even in the middle of a large public space.  On the ground.  On a train.  On a table.  Wherever.
• Once when I was small I nearly poked my sister’s eye out with a stick.  It was an accident.  We were sword fighting.
• I never really liked the teletubbies.  I had vague attachments to Lala and Poh, because they were girls and most small girls are in love with anything that’s a girl.  But for the most part, they creeped me out.  Nobody should have a screen in their stomach.
• One of my favourite toys when I was very, very small was a large fish-cushion thing that was pink, purple, and fluoro yellow, with bright purple lips.  My father brought it home.  Apparently, my mother said something to the effect of “You can’t give her that, Alan.  She’ll have nightmares.”  I adored it.
• When I was two, I could recount the proper names of all the major bones in the body.  Can’t do that any more, though, so don’t ask me.
• If I have met you, some part of you is in one of my stories somewhere.  You can’t possibly know for sure where.
• I eavesdrop on strangers on public transport.  I write down interesting things that they say.  I use it as diologue in my stories.  And it’s lots of fun.

Strive

I’ve come to realise that everything really will be okay in the end, one way or another.  All you have to do is be patient.

I’ve come to realise that I’m running fairly low on my supply of patience.

Larks never sing, you know, when they’re captive

Teach me to be more adaptive.

I’ve come to realise that I can’t draw a line anywhere.  I’m always a different person, and that’s not going to change.  And maybe I’m never really going to know all of myself.  And maybe I just have to live with that and learn to accept it.  Or even to be happy about it.

I’ve come to realise that one has a choice.  You can bottle up all the anger and the bitterness and the ugliness inside of you or you can let it spill forth.  I’ve found myself wondering which is more destructive.  I think it depends on whether you’d rather preserve yourself or everyone else.  But it’s like energy.  It is energy.  And it has to go somewhere, that destructive force.  I hope I am making the right decision.  I suppose we’ll find out.

I’ve come to realise that I need purpose, and new experiences.  That somewhere between too-much and not-enough there stretches a tightrope of sorts, and I need to get better at walking it.

I’ve come to realise that some days it’s better not to get out of bed.  And that other days it’s the best thing that you can do for yourself.

I’ve come to realise that people are full of good intentions, and that is wonderful.  And I am glad.  But sometimes good intentions don’t translate into actions, and that is just the way it is.  And that it’s not ideal, but I can understand.  I can always try to understand.

I’ve come to realise that some things are just human nature.  That we’re amazing, and also horrible at times, and if people weren’t awful sometimes we wouldn’t really appreciate them at their best.  That everybody makes mistakes, and sometimes things are just the way they are.

I’ve come to realise that by now I should realise that I am human too.  And that it is okay to make mistakes.  Actually, making mistakes is the easy part.

Forgiving yourself for your mistakes, (because after all, you are only human) is the hard part.

I should learn to be better at that.

Because it’s okay, you know, to forgive yourself.  It’s okay.  It’s allowed.

Oddball

Late nights and ponderings and there’s a dragonfly tap-tap-tapping on the backdoor.  A dog is asleep in a room which is only really half a room because it is bare and full of dust and power tools and echoes.  Rooms should be full.  Rooms should be deep and enclosed and have secrets that you have to look through the clutter to find.  Not bare.  Not like this.

It’s morning again but only just, and she is drooping, a wilting flower.  Strange how the thirst for knowledge is stubborn enough to resist the pull of a warm bed.  It distracts her.  Distractions are useful.

Someday soon we’ll find out how much you really meant it and until then I will not take guesses at the future.  Someday soon I’ll wish you were here again.  Someday soon I’ll wish I was somewhere and somewhen else.  Someday soon the oranges will ripen on the tree in the garden, and my future will arrive on the back of a truck.