| September 18th, a Tuesday It's feeling like summer again. It always amazes me how suddenly the transition is made. I can't wear my leather jacket anymore. Well I could but it would be unpleasant and... absurd. No more hiding from the rain with you, no more using drizzle as an excuse for dark corners and held hands Last friday was Claire/Erin/Lindsay's birthday celebrations. A masquerade party, involving real actual masks with silk and feathers and sequins. I didn't have one of those of course. I didn't even wear a novelty mask or one of those ones you get out of christmas crackers. When Claire complained at my lack of effort/enthusiasm I tried to convince her that I was indeed wearing a mask. The conversation went something like this: Claire: You're not wearing a mask! Me: I am so - you see all this make-up on my face? It is the mask of vanity which we, as women, wear every day. Claire: *blank look* You're not wearing a mask. it was a good night - all sorts of odd types were there, as usual. there was this one guy who looked really scary - he was a full-on biker, with an excess of facial hair and rings - but when I talked to him he turned out to be quite jovial. He kept saying I should come to Dominion (Perth's major Goth Club). I don't think I'll take his advice though - Dominion isn't scary like I used to think it would be, but it's just... naff. You can't smoke inside, so most of the time people are out in the alleyway huddled in little anti-social groups, which I think is just... naff. Yesterday Brendan suggested we get hitched in Vegas - he did his best deadpan too "No seriously, baby," he said "I think we could be happy!" I threw a packet of cigarettes at his head. It hit right on the corner. *grin* I did however suggest that he propose to me if he has to go off to war. Because that'd be neat, you know, being the pining fiance back home. I could knit socks and yeah... pine. well it won't hurt to think of you as if you're waiting for this letter to arrive because i'll be here quite a while We had a wonderful day yesterday: sitting in the sun, talking, laughing, mumbling, burbling, grerbling. etc... And much fun has been had lately with Nadia too. You see we used to have fun. All the time. Always together - so much so that some obnoxious twit once asked me "Are you the one that's going out with the asian girl?". But lately we haven't been seeing a lot of each other (conflicting schedules and such) and I have felt the loss of her company keenly. Even when she went to the bathroom, I turned to Conor, a puzzled look on my face "Can you feel it?" I said "It feels weird. Without the constant trickle of noise." (meant in an affectionate way, to be sure) Speaking of noise, we came up with some marvellous ideas for Guild Political Parties. Mine was 'The Loud Noise Party', which involves supporting and promoting the make-age of loud noises on campus. Nadia's was the 'Shake your bon bon Party" which involved posters of Ricky Martin pointing to his butt and well... shaking your bon bon. Yes we are both very very silly. But there is a greater purpose: it is all part of our glorious disdain and desire to subvert University Politics. We just hate it. "Oh yay cheaper beer." Ha - I don't even drink beer. Well I did once but that's another story... Jim is dead. My godmother's husband. It was disturbing, being at the hospital in that pokey room that stank of decay, death rattle ringing in my ears. And then he was in a coma. And then he was gone. The funeral is tomorrow. But any personal tragedies (not that you could call this a tragedy by any stretch of the imagination - he was pushing 90 and he was... well he was an old bastard, to be quite frank) tend to be swept aside by what has happened in America this past week, by the pain and suffering that is still a part of the lives of thousands of people and will be forever more. And it is all eclipsed by the cold fear that stabs me occasionally when I'm about to fall asleep. The horror of the unknown. Someone is threatening my patterns Is everything going to change? September 23rd, A Sunday Yesterday night when I was getting ready for my embarassingly habitual evening drinks at the Conti with Nik, I put on my beloved Hefner cd and just let it roll without skipping to my favourite tracks. Probably for the first time I listened to all of 'I stole a bride' and I realised how much more there is to the song than I thought there was. The song starts off pretty quiet but gets crazy and loud Hefner-style near the end, culminating in some beautiful, beautiful lyrics around the 4 minute mark. I rushed up to the computer to find the lyrics so I could show them to Nik, because I was so excited about them, but the bastards have left them out of the official lyrics thingemy. And because everyone just copies lyrics instead of writing them out themselves I couldn't find them anywhere. Most disappointing. But after listening to the song all night when I got home, I think I have them straight. Here are the missing lyrics from Hefner's 'I stole a Bride'... When I stepped in her room With silver sword in hand She stood there semi-naked The sword fell from my hand And then she let the silk slip Gently fall from her hips And Christ I want to kiss her Because Heaven lies within her lips How great is that? I swear, that's all I need to delight me for the next couple of days. I was talking with Nik last night about women in the media. You see I had just seen yet another Cosmopolitan Magazine with a size 16 model on the front, positively screaming "Hey! LOoky here - if this isn't PC I'll eat my hat..." Frankly that kind of gratuitous kissing up to the seriously overweight only makes things worse. I'd like to see a woman on the cover - no wait, several women all through several magazines, as a matter of course, not as a publicity-grabbing gimmick - who was truly of an average weight. The kind of woman who is attractive in real life but snubbed by the media in favour of her super-skinny counter-parts. I'd like to see those women, the size 12's of this world, side by side with the bone-thin and the voluptuous. That would really mean something. But I'm starting to sound like a Wommon. Hrm. I'm trying to write on Dangerous Liaisons for Uni. It's a bit stressful, considering I have to write it in francais... The Marquise is such a fascinating character - I'd advise anyone to read letter 81 (the novel is in epistolary form) even if they'll never read the whole thing. That is her autobiographical letter, in which she explains what she is, and how she is what she is. She is pure artifice - she has created herself and becomes therefore God and Master of herself. Je suis mon ouvrage, she says And yet she is still flawed, still plagued by a few wretched strands of emotion, which bring about her demise. Poor love. The next two weeks are going to be horrible. I'm going to miss everyone so much - it's study break you see. I mean, I'll still go out, probably more than usual in fact, but I won't have those hazy afternoons taking breaks and making some more, talking with my favourite people, drinking far to much diet coke and smoking like a chimney. But then I will have time to start my Dream Diary, which should be up shortly-ish. Read it when it is - I have such a wacky sub-conscious. When I go to sleep it's like settling in for a David Lynch movie or something. David Lynch peppered with Buffy characters and a whole lotta leaks. Also wax people. And river-restaurants. And Nadia with crimped hair. *Smirk* September 28th, a Friday I've been thinking... It's funny how you can want something so badly it hurts, so much so that you just about can't breathe and have difficulty functioning on any level and then, and then when you actually get it... It's not disappointment exactly, it's just that you don't stop wanting it, like you assume you will. There is no peace, there is no happiness. I mean, you just keep wanting it, or at least something - getting what you want doesn't curb the hunger. Maybe that's because you only get what you think you wanted. How confuzzling. I want to be happy again - it seems to be getting so hard these days, just to be content, to smile and laugh and enjoy things. My friends don't cheer me - when I'm out with them, I find myself wondering what I'm doing there... and much as I love them and much as I know that they are witty, charming and lovely people, I can't shake this choking, suffocating BOREDOM. I suppose nobody else's company is good enough anymore... It's the same with my cds (nevermind the triviality) - I have masses of them, all full of the music I adore and yet nothing appeals - I don't want to play any of them. Usually I end up putting on Hefner or Babybird again and again and driving myself nuts. But it's cool. I'm cool. Just a little jaded. Speaking of music though, last night Nik played 'Show' in the car and I actually enjoyed it. I know what you're thinking: 'How could you not enjoy the Cure?!' You are indeed right to be incredulous. I've tried slapping some sense into myself but to no avail - the Cure are still, as they have been for more than 5 years my absolute favourite band ever, but I don't want to listen to them lately. Maybe there're too many memories attached to them. But then I've always thrived on that - nostalgia. It feeds me. But back to 'Show' - it gave me that tingly feeling again that the Cure usually gives me - this sort of, in-the-presence-of-greatness feeling. This feeling that there's something more than this waiting out there for me - something huge and wild and meaningful. But there more I go on living and breathing, waking up and going to bed, the more I realise that there's probably not, that there's probably nothing, that this is probably the story of me. The End. September 29th, a Saturday Went out to the Cap S for Jo's birthday last night. I think it was really very nice. And fun. But you can never really tell when everything is doused in champagne. No wait, you can tell: it was lovely and my friends are great. Totally restored all that faith... Oh! And I found out that I have met the scary-looking-but-super-nice biker guy at Claire's party before - he was the cross-dresser at Claire and Tom's wedding! I can't believe it - he looked so different - he had on a lacy white dress and a blonde wig, with spike heels. Man could he dance in them heels. I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in ages (not properly anyway): Eugene, Cindy, Jack, Dam Jack said to me "So, you're all skinny these days". Then he backtracked saying something along the lines of "not that you were fat before". Finally he sighed, admitting that he wasn't very good at compliments. But he was. That's the sort of thing I remember - completely shallow remarks about my physical appearance have this strange way of making me smile... Emails from Porl make me smile too. I got one the other day. There's something so young about the way he writes and yet something so wise. He wants to hear about my dancing. Maybe you want to hear about it too... I do Spanish Dance, Flamenco, whatever you want to call it. I've been doing it for 3 years as something of a substitute for ballet (that's a whole other story) but I'll be doing the 6th grade next year, cos you know, I'm just cool (note to self: modesty killed the cat... no wait-) Anyway I love it very much, it's very swooshy and stampy and sexy. We've done 4 performances so far this year and hopefully the number will increase by next year... I'd like to explain how it makes me feel, the kick I get out of it, but that would require deep thought and I am just not up to it today. In other news Nadia and Stupidhead have finally hooked up for real. Ok, so none of you have ever heard of this nonsense. Stupidhead, otherwise known as Leon, has been has been messing around with my most honoured and revered friend Nadia for some months now - you know with the kissing and the 'I've been thinking about you all day' and then the cold shoulder. Anyway he's finally gotten his act together, which is good - the other night at Matsuri they were even holding hands. Awww... The boys pressured Nik into having a big mouthful of wasabi... not good. Especially not good with a stomach ulcer. Speaking of my boy (for he is indeed my boy of 21 months) he is off watching that wretched grand final today... drinking beer and probably wearing that green hat he knows I hate. Or even a beanie. Why is that so endearing? Today it feels like winter. There's a huge wind, occasional bouts of heavy rain, and I swear I heard hail at one point. Last night, the wind blew so hard that it knocked over glasses on tables and smashed them. It was spooky... like God's wrath or something. As far as I can tell he's got plenty of that. September 30th, a Sunday I feel like I'm going to cry. Of course I'm not actually going to cry, but I feel like I might. Some things are so beautiful they hit you like a tonne of bricks, they make you breathe like you're in labour, they just make you fall apart... I wish I could capture that feeling (is it even a feeling?), distill it, grind it to a fine powder and trap it in glass bottles. Or I wish I could just write it down. But I have been writing things again - they may not be quite my tingling spine on paper but they provide some kind of satisfaction, which is more than I've had for a year or so now. I might even put some of my new stuff up in the poetry section soon. I'm not sure I would classify them as poetry though - on the whole they're more song lyrics. They sound rather silly without music. Poor music-less lyrics. My mother is making grapefruit jam (is that classified as marmelade?) and it smells absolutely terrible. There's something about hot citrus... it's wrong. It's not as bad as when Nik's mother cooks kangaroo meat though - that would have to be the very worst smell in the world. Actually it's more of a stench. Speaking of Nik methinks I'm going to make a CD for him today. That is one of my favourite things to do - make compilation CDs of super-duper songs for my loved ones. However, since I don't have a rippy program to get tracks from my CDs onto my computer I have to download all the songs I want to share with people from KaZaa or something. It's very tiresome and time-consuming but worth the wait. I think it's one of the best little presents you can give and certainly one of my favourite things to get. Usually you make a couple of exciting band-discoveries with each CD and even if you don't much fancy the person's choices, you always get some kind of insight into their hearts and minds. That's what music is - or at least that's what it is for my friends - an expression of your inner self. Only someone else expressed it. My body aches all over from kick-boxing - I did a proper session for the first time in a few guilty, slothful weeks on friday and let's just say my ass is feeling it. I swear I can barely make it up the stairs! Dance class was a nightmare! Well... it was actually fun, if painful, because we did a whole lot of new experimental stuff. Tricky and laughter-inducing. Fun. I want to look into eyes. I was looking into my own yesterday and seeing funny patterns. I want to check that everyone has those patterns. I tried looking surrepticiously into Brendan's last night but they seem to get beady when he laughs and he was laughing all the time. I hope I remember to have a good look at Nik's eyes tonight. Make sure I'm not some freak. Slayerfest 4 is on this weekend on Fox 8 - that means a whole season of Buffy and a whole season of Angel. I won't need my friends at all anymore. Ah television. It was raining like mad yesterday. Brendan and I walked past an ENORMOUS puddle in a Claremont car-park and I observed that we could go swimming. He wanted to use a stray shopping trolley as a boat. We did neither. I want to travel - it's been so long that I'm really starting to miss it. it's been a long time between drinks I want to get on a plane, hate being on the plane, drink too much, watch bad movies, get off the plane, hate being in the airport, be cold (I'm thinking Paris), be tired, be unbelieveably excited. Because I still get that flutter every time I pack a bag. Actually, only if it's my own bag and not some other lazy git's. |