I went to the symphony orchestra on Monday night. The music was so wonderful that even my extreme thirst couldn�t prevent me from being completely attentive to it. The first symphony was Haydn�s Symphony no.26 in D minor. While I was listening to it, I felt really guilty, because it was bringing to my mind a lot of images of things like trees with palebright green leaves and beautiful sunshine and clean fresh water and flowers bursting into bloom. Then I read my programme notes (written by someone with a most enviable name: Nancy November) and found out that this symphony was composed for Easter week back in 1770.
You know how before I said I was really thirsty when I was listening to the music? Well, before it had started I had gone up to the bar to ask for a glass of water, but the (very camp) bartender had gotten all stressed out about giving me one. He poured it from the tap and then said, �I knew I shouldn�t have let those other people have it, they�ve told all their friends and now everyone wants one, I really shouldn�t be doing this�� and I felt quite compassionate and scornful towards him because he cared so much about this trifling thing, giving me a glass of water to drink, so I said, �Well, I could buy some water if that�s easier?� (there were bottles of water in the fridge behind him) and he immediately said, �Yes, yes, that�s fine, that would be better.� And TIPPED THE GLASS OF WATER DOWN THE SINK!
Oh my thirst was like a demon by this stage and I reached into my pocket for some money, but I only had fifteen cents. �I�ll be right back� says me and I rush down the stairs again to get some money, but when I turn back to go back to the bar, the ushers were shutting the doors and they tell me if I go out I will be locked out for seventeen minutes. I felt quite a lot of rage at that point, but I calmed down when the orchestra did that thing where they check their tuning before they start. That bit sounds like the instruments are taking a big breath together, don�t you think?
Lots of times during the concert I felt like something on me was missing, and then I realised it was my camera. At work whenever something happens I usually have to photograph it happening. I like it at work, but I don�t ever want to be a newspaper photographer, OK? I hate those jerks almost as much as the reporters that they accompany. Stupidity in a duo!
February 14th, 2004
ok, so I went to a rock show last night, it was so good! It was the International Telepaths and The Shutups. Even if I had to, it would be impossible to choose between those bands, they are both so cool! I had so much good fun just walking around the bar and talking to strangers and drinking drinks and slumping into a booth and hugging my friends and listening to the music. I was quite happy with what I was wearing, particularly my jeans, which are new. My shirt wasn't quite right (a very dark blue pinstripe with large cuffs) but it did have my beautiful dinosaur pin pinned to the collar and also, Pamela drew a skull and crossbones on my shoulder with a Sharpie so I felt a bit cooler underneath it all. I got into a conversation about pies (the deep love for and the not eating of) and cookery and helicopters with some guy who recognised me as being a member of a now defunct band called Couch, that was cool.
^That was such an Indykid diary entry! I'm (not really) sorry!
February 14th 2004
haha PS: "But this is early Rod Stewart - back when he was underground!"
February 13th 2004
I remember how ages ago I said to someone, �I�ve decided I�m gonna be your best friend�. He said, �Really?!?� and I said, �Yes. Everyone needs a friend like me. Especially you. I�m going to look after you and make sure you�re happy�. He then said something which I can�t accurately remember, but I think it was, �That�s really good news�.
I think I hear you asking yourself, how can she have the nerve to not be so opaque? Well, If you would only let me come around and stand in front of your television then you�d know, wouldn�t you.
Yeah, it�s a good deal, because I don�t really require anything from you. Well, one thing, if you please. Your hair. In feathery soft snippets, falling, with the assistance of my scissors, to the kitchen floor. And you saying, �Try the beer, rainy� and then I�ll try the beer and say to you: �Yum, it�s fresh!�.
Why do you love horses best of all the animals? I think I know why! Is it because a horse can take you away somewhere? Somewhere that is beautiful and far away? And you will be terribly lonesome, because that�s just the way things are? And because the horse will stand near you all night, breathing and being warm and alive, so in the morning when you wake up to the sun and the trees and the water and the warm ashes of your fire, life will be good all over again and your horse will be pleased to see you? And because way far into the future all other horses will remind you of your horse?
January 25th, 2004
Don�t you agree that it is terrible when I have such a great song going around in my head that I feel sort of inspired and jazzed up for something and I feel like I�ve got something to say, or like I have some personality or something but when I try to write or speak or interact with anyone, I instantly realise that I�m just full of impotent, synthetic joy, which is (tragically) ultimately paralysing due to it�s parasitic origin.
That long, appalling, convoluted sentence should convince you how stupid I feel/am today. Do you want to know what song it is that�s in my pretty little head? I�ll never tell. Let me have one thing at least. Just this one. You can have anything else.
Yesterday I hit Danny in the head with a pink plastic coaster shaped like a daisy. Got him right in the chicken pox scar. Haha, I said, take that Danny. Then (fiendishly) he played a most stirring composition on the piano situated to my right, which brought a tear to my eye. No, that tear part is a partial lie. Sometimes these days a tear nearly comes out of one or both of my eyes, but (sadly) nothing really eventuates. Inertia, you see. Very affective.
I�m just blathering on now, because I�m so lonely today, but it�s my diary so I can do whatever I like.
Actually pals, I do have a lovely anecdote for you all, but I can�t really bring myself to share all of the details; I just want to say the end bit. OK: Something, something, something� and we both agreed that even the appropriate penalty would just be a deplorable waste of tar and feathers.
January 20th, 2004
I remember having a teenage fever and needing to take medicine.
January 15th, 2004
It�s harder than you might think to photograph dead butterflies. Truly, they have pleasing symmetrical shapes and come in an amazing array of colours, but sometimes they have a bothersome iridescent quality, which seems fantastic in theory but makes for ridiculous looking lighting set-ups and standing on step-stools and turning this way and that and holding your elbows right in close to your body and pretending not to breathe. I�m pretty sure that the flash bouncing off those iridescent butterfly wings at such close range was making this weird popping sound. Can light make sound? I mean light itself, not the flashbulb or anything. What do you think? Too much un-supervision in 114?
Now, apropos of popping sounds: you know that song �Gepetto� by Belly? Well, I love that song a lot. It�s on the album �Star� and there are other songs on it that I love even more, but �Gepetto� has made my life so wonderful lately (it�s quite a phenomenon actually) that I need to tell you about it.
Let me start with the way she sings the word � that most beautiful word - Gepetto. It very nearly makes me want to die with how perfectly the sounds that comprise it have been sung. It makes me think that the song was written around that word, for the pleasure of singing it: the way that G is so easy and gentle to begin it, and the dreamily ideal number of syllables and the plosive P and the staccato (NB � that may not be the right word) of the double T and the way the O leaves it all with an open-ended sweetness that makes you think of a beautiful mouth singing.
Actually, could you please just listen to it, you will certainly hear what I mean. And maybe it will seem so obvious to you that you�ll find my clumsy attempts at description redundant and endearing. Maybe.
January 14th, 2004
"You seem to have this thing about your own medicine."
"What?"
"You can't take it."
"Oh, yeah. Cool!"
January 12th, 2004
I�m cross today, if you really want to know. I want things. I think I am insatiable. And oh yes, the despicable unglamorousity of earning money! The mind-numbing tedium of queuing to buy a magazine! The cruel necessity of food consumption!
January 10th, 2004
Friday evening is the race. Into a microphone and out to somewhere goes my voice and then I follow it home. I call it home now, because when I get there, everyone else promptly arrives and we sit on the stairs and talk about our dreams and the sound that our heads made when they were growing when we were 8,9,10,11.
Saturday morning is the golden prize and I won it in that race I mentioned before. I win the warm concrete and the next door neighbours coming over to eat their breakfast with me and Danny. I win their voices and the water and the flowers and the sky and the harbour. This is my diary, so I don't mind talking about flowers in it.
January 9th, 2004
It stayed preposterously warm while everyone was sleeping. The garden was an insane paradise at three am; overweight, sweaty roses were lurching about like frat boys on an all night perfume binge. Giant trees were making idle threats to lie down.
And you, awake, the luckiest person on your street. What were you doing? Not much, really. Halfway in and halfway out of the house, what is there to do?
In the morning, you find you have accomplished nothing. Now pouring down warm watery rain, the sky must have admitted defeat when you went back to bed.
January 8th, 2004
Dear K,
I'm missing you badly today. You know when you
called me last night and we talked about 'the pain of friendships'? I felt like you were right there on the back step with me, leaning against the outside of the kitchen door, staring at the washing line with me and playing with my bangles the way you sometimes do. It's a shame that there seems to never be any time. Ah, time! So timeless...
Yes, I'm very much missing you. I had a dream last night that we both bought some Calvin Klein spectacles, from an optometrist's where there were leaves and twigs and other useless debris all over the floor. I think it was part of their Autumn Fashion promotional hype. We were scornful of their desperate marketing ploys, but we got a good deal on the glasses.
Today when I turned over the 8-ball, I saw that somebody had carefully cut out a little circle of paper to stick over where the message comes up and on it was written: "here's a dime - go ask somebody who cares". Is there anything better than being ridiculed by your friends (especially with US-centric references)?
I'm listening to a lot of our favourite music lately. It's getting depressing attempting to make myself interesting to other people, so please come back to me so I can stop caring about everyone else.
January 7th, 2004
January 4th, 2004
Can you feel how I am disconnected and confused? My desperation to not be misunderstood has led to a sort of inertia.
January 3rd, 2004
Have you met Jenee? Her flatmates take her to the beach every now and then so she can frolic about and snorkle and whatnot. I was there too. I played frisbee with her and amused her with my fake ballet.
January 1st, 2004
Ah, the good intentions! You'd be surprised how many of them I actually go through with. I'm so tired, but I'll elaborate later about the bee that chased us for two days and everything. Hilarious!
Oh, wait, before we get carried away with happiness: my new year�s fear. That I�ll be blonde and friendly and hopeful and people will like me and I�ll be good at everything and that I�ll make people laugh and I�ll be a lot of fun to hang out with.
December 26th, 2003
A party, at my mum's house. I'm lying by the pool, my feet slapping and splashing on the surface of the water. Beside me, a buzzing. Telephone. Not mine. The screen says 'Christian' is calling. A moment's hesitation and then I answer.
ME: hello?
CHRISTIAN: (French babble)
ME: er, bon soir?
CHRISTIAN: (more French, unfortunately not fake like my own variety)
ME: Un moment, s'il vous pla?!
Then I hold the phone away and laugh a little bit. Please bear in mind that I am pleasantly drunk on Copperhop and sunshine. Later on, this French gentleman shows up at the party, me having located the intended recipient of the call. He requests from me (in English/French) a cup of coffee. I joyfully oblige. Pointing at the milk I ask, "La vache qui rit de Louis Pasteur?".
December 23rd, 2003
Did I tell you I am going to be an Aunt? It makes me feel heartbroken and as soft as caramel just thinking about it.
Let me tell you something about when I went to Wellington earlier this year. Karen and I were sitting on the sofa, listening to Goldenhorse and taking turns holding a tiny baby, her nephew, who was only four days old. You know what, we were also drinking Speights from cans, which might sound incongruous and irresponsible to you, but you weren�t there, you don�t know what it was like.
A week or so after all this happened and I was back in Dunedin, I tried to write a short story about this experience, but it wouldn�t come out right. I couldn�t explain anything and I still can�t now. I can�t explain how the baby was so quiet and peaceful when he was asleep in the crook of my right arm, and Karen and I kept peeking at his feet and laughing ourselves silly about how small they were. And at the same time we were playing Trivial Pursuit (without the board or pie pieces) and I was winning. And members of this baby�s family kept coming in and out of the room and saying,
�Look how peaceful he is in rainy�s arms, look at his arms and legs, look at his darling little face, Karen he looks like you when you were a baby, keep holding him rainy, he�s so peaceful there, you hold him for a long time?
And I got this feeling that I just cannot explain, it was like the feeling that I imagine people might get on their wedding day, or maybe it was as if I had won a big prize or been in a car accident on the motorway, or I had just told someone that I loved them.
December 24th, 2003
I rate everything
December 23rd, 2003
Liquor, liquor everywhere!
ok, let me try something:
22nd December, 2003
Ensoul ?to infuse a soul into.
Ensphere ?encircle, enclose.
Ensue ?happen afterwards: result
Ensure ?Make (person, thing) safe (against risks); make certain (thing, that it shall happen); secure (thing to, for person etc.); (formerly) = INSURE. [f. AF EN1 seurer f. OF asseurer ASSURE]
December 21st, 2003
I just remembered something. A very terrible exchange, between two people who are too entrenched in habit to be real. Hints are dropped, snide remarks, carelessly prepared cups of tea, obligatory drives to the supermarket, shudder, this is a terrible thing to carry about with you.
One day, both nursing hangovers which they have procured separately the night before, they are lying together on a sofa. Too hot, scrunched and cramped under a feather duvet, they are pretending it's a game; who will win "Survivor, Couch"?
"I'll never form an alliance with you" says he, truthfully
"Oh, yes you will, matey" says she, lying and defeated already.
19th December, 2003
Barely anything today. I tell a girl something while she is standing by the front door of a cafe.
18th December, 2003
Now I want to talk more about my house, is that is okay? Specifically, I�d like to ramble on, in an uncensored and dull way about minor details that are most likely of negligible import and interest to anyone, including myself. I mean, my whole life has been disrupted and I can�t sleep at night for longer than five hours, how can I possibly do anything else? The only reason I�m asking your permission is because that�s my favourite device to use to include you in this whole debacle.
(here was supposed to be something about a mutiny, but I couldn�t think of the right way to phrase it, so too bad. There was something in my old diary about mutinies, but this is no time to be looking back, right?)
Right, onwards then. My house, my new address, my bedroom. It's like I have a broken heart that I'm just now beginning to get over: I'm so intrigued with this new and pleasant situation that I can barely think about anything else. Have still not listened to Ryan Adams, though I did look at the cover again this morning. Last night I used the camcorder for the first time in ages. Scene one: Gerard is sitting on my bed looking (and acting) like a beat poet, Pamela arrives, looking like an indie princess, complete with teary eyes. I'm so unbearably ugly compared to these two when I step into the frame and sit between them.
17th December, 2003
Would you like to hear about where I now reside, and the people I live with? I�d really like to talk about it. At the moment any details I divulge could be confusing, fragmented and possibly not fully accurate as living in this house gives me a feeling almost like I have stepped into a movie halfway through.
I don�t know whether I mean �stepped into a movie?as in stepped into a movie theatre while there is a movie playing and started watching it, or stepped into a movie as in walked into the celluloid and started speaking and gesturing and falling in love and eating and driving about in a nice car and eventually dying an incredible death.
We had a good dinner last night, and wine and music and photographs (looking at and taking of) and jokes. Gerard says �yes?to most (read: all) things I demand and holds my hands under the table. I insist on him taking care of me in this way, as a certain K.E. Thorn has recently suggested I am �vulnerable without realising it? Of her accuracy in this matter you may rest assured, though not because I have anything to say that will reinforce this view ?contrariwise: as the subject I am blind to everything but my recently assumed bullet-proof nature and happiness.
My new home is overwhelming, I feel pulled apart, and put back together and lost and all of that stuff. Is this making sense? I�m trying to say that I like it there. I know this is true because I don�t like leaving each day to go to work. Leaving a quiet house containing people is hard, it makes me sullen and easily provoked. On returning home, I am pliable and dreamy.
December 16th, 2003
I like to have a dream in which many of my friends and acquaintances are gathered together, conversing animatedly in unusual combinations. I host this joyous gathering with magnanimous grace, allowing my guests free run of the mansion and facilitating a bearable level of luxury in every conceivable sense.
As I walk among them, I collect up the refuse of overheard conversations. Having no malicious intent, I then assemble this unusual wreckage into a wholesome yet shapeless mass, and serve tea. My friends all thank me for this; their manners are impeccable, it must be noted.
Then follows a confusing game, played with oddly shaped tiles, some of them much sharper than safety would usually dictate, and a large fold out map, which is marked all over with complicated sets of linear equations written in an incomprehensible code. It is also quite dirty and tattered, which we all seem to feel uncomfortable about and we quickly set about sticking it all over with diamondy pins, brooches and other priceless baubles. The sharp tiles are then shuffled about in this messy arrangement; meaninglessly, noisily and hilariously.
The humour is near-unbearable, such hysterical fun is had by all!
December 14th, 2003
I just moved house, quick somebody - butter my paws!
Do you remember how I wrote in my old diary that there is a type of insanity called boanthropy, which is the condition of believing that you are an ox? I really want to know more about this, it amuses me no end to think about it. How many people suffer from it? Surely more than one. Maybe it�s a great life when you have boanthropy, maybe on sunny days you roam about in the plains, eating tasty grass, feeling strong and healthy and independent. I�m going to try and find a nice picture of an ox now. I�m also going to google search �boanthropy support group?
btw, there is a name for the phobia of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.
December 12th, 2003
December 11th, 2003
This morning, behind the regimental rows of canned food and the red light district of exotic flavouring pastes, A FOREST! Coming from a bag of potatoes! Pinkly green anaemic arms all thin and twisting and reaching out from the depths of the cupboard in a swooping graceful way. That�s what I should have photographed today, but I was so embarrassed I just quickly threw them in the garbage bin. Threw is the wrong word, I wrangled and manoeuvred and coaxed them in.
I forgot all about it until now, actually. Why don�t I eat my potatoes? What is so wrong with me that I can�t manage to cook and eat a potato now and then? Truthfully, I probably only bought them in a fit of dutifulness. Possibly I don�t even like them, though I do know how to address them in French, �Bon soir, ma petite pomme de terre, comment etes-vous? Tres bien, mon ami!?and also how to make a clock out of them.
Since I�ve been living alone I have abandoned many of the more boring aspects of tending to one�s life. Perhaps a corollary of this trend is my recent (or recently noticed) weird domestic behaviour. Sugar in the fridge, why would that be there? Sleeping with my leg halfway out the window? No TV?
My long graceful arms are starting to take on a pinkish green hue. I must reach out to something?#060;p>
for you today I have:
December 10th, 2003
This is where I review music that everyone else already has an opinion on and I do it in my own retarded fashion.
Ryan Adams - heartbreaker
Haven�t even listened to it yet. Lent to me by a guy who I think either wants me to like it, or expects me to like it, or both. The pressure is excruciating. Apprehensive.
Let�s start with the cover and sleeve. OK. Ryan is lying on a bed. I�m pretty sure it�s a hotel bed because the sheet is white. (Also, �heartbreaker? obviously people need to stay in (heartbreak) hotels when they have their hearts broken - OR - run off to a hotel after breaking someone�s heart to avoid the fallout. Further evidence to this hotel theory is the telephone on the bed beside him; necessary for harrowing conversation and the accompanying long and terrible silences.
So, Ryan is lying on a hotel bed, smoking. Actually, it looks like the cigarette has been photoshopped to his lips. He probably doesn�t even smoke. That�s why there�s also an ashtray there on the bed, out of focus.
Now I am opening the sleeve. More photos of him smoking. And playing guitar and looking very beautiful. Definitely a hotel bed. There are other people in some of the photos, one of them has his boots resting on the white hotel sheet. The front cover image is certainly the best one, I can understand why they chose it.
You know, I�m so tired. I can�t even listen to this music. If only I had heard it already and knew it, it seems like everyone else in the world does. Maybe it�s the title that�s scaring me. Ryan Adams - heartbreaker. It seems reasonable to assume this guy will break my heart. I don�t think I would like that. I don�t want that.
Incidentally I have heard some of his most recent album and though I only saw the cover for about four seconds, I have a feeling it is called �Rock and Roll?but the words rock and roll are written in their mirror image. (btw, does anyone know the html for mirror writing? Email me and tell me.)
So is this Adams fellow going to ruthlessly rip my heart to shreds and then drive off in an American car with thinly disguised re-invented wheels? What a horrible, beautiful boy.
When I can pull myself together, I�ll listen to this album with headphones on, in the dark, and to follow shall be lists:
the songs I like
the songs I do not like
the songs I have feelings I can�t describe about
also, a photograph of myself, with a cigarette photoshopped to my lips, looking beautiful and heartbreakingly pensive/ambivalent.
December 9th, 2003
On the inside side of my front door is a line of black vinyl lettering about two inches high:
I do my work for you.
You know I�m loathe to talk with you about the sun and how it shines on me every morning now and makes me happy, but I just can�t stop. These days I turn on the bedside lamp at 5am to make sure the electricity has not been disconnected. So far so good, it hasn�t been. At 7am I wake up, just six minutes before the alarm goes off. Seven minutes after the alarm goes off, I get up and look at myself in the mirror. This sounds like a crappy movie. Next I get in the shower and someone brutally murders me with a knife. So far so good, blood everywhere.
December 8th, 2003
�If only we were near a river!?
�Yeah, oh God, that would be perfect! Why aren�t there any rivers in Dunedin??#060;BR>
�There�s the Leith, I suppose��
�Do you have a hose? Yes, there�s one just there! We could turn that on.?#060;BR>
�We could just pretend?
�What would that washing line be??
�A tree??
�No! A helicopter!?
Then he made up a song, on the spot, at my request and encouragement:
�Sing me a song about a daring rescue by helicopter!?
The song was as you would expect a song made up on the spot to sound, except it was far, far sweeter and better than any you�ve probably heard before. I don�t even feel the need to elaborate or try to describe it.
Later on, we were eating an exquisite dinner for two, sitting on the warm concrete and listening to opera which was coming from the radio in the kitchen. (I�m not making this up, I promise.)
�We�re practically in Italy!?
�If we can have a river and a helicopter then we can surely be in Italy��
Then there was talk of pacing around the room, gesticulating passionately and throwing the windows open and letting silk scarves fly out on the wind.
The boy is something else, I can tell you! He touches his face. Please look at his eyelashes if you get the chance. When he�s sitting there above me on the step, I say in my mind:
Slow down, I need to write all this down! Your responses are so guileless and enchanting. If you like, I�ll get up and actively do something to ensure your comfort and pleasure?
December 5th, 2003
Look at this, my gift to you today.
December 4th, 2003
this is my new diary. As you can see, it is a very pleasing pale yellow colour, with black type. I did this all myself with HTML and I can tell you it's a lot more trouble than that Diaryland caper. (As glorious and melancholy as that was).
I can let you know what has been accomplished if you wish.
Melanesia and Polynesia have been fully explored and discovered. Nice adzes.
Nature, stick a fork in it. I like dirt. I also know the daughter of the man whose Grandfather discovered the Takahe. Her son is cute.
Maritime: what is it that they say about the sea? You tell me, I forgot. Anyway, there was a genius picture of a flag, I honestly think it could win a prize. You can judge for yourself.
SLSP, AA and TW, all on the brink of being finished and never to be forgotten.
ME: Derrida... blah blah...zombies... notdead... notalive... blah blah... resolved.. blah blah.. pharmakon.. etc... blah...
HE: I want to corrupt you.
ME: OH? I'm afraid that will be impossible.
HE: Why?
ME: um, because I am not a zip disk?
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