distractions and funnel vision

She stands in the entrance, propping her elbows on either side of the door frame waiting for a cue, anything that gives her an excuse to stay. The stagnant air that pushes so heavy against her chest seems to fall dead at his feet. The room looks just the same as it always does, the life outside the building leaks through the crack at the window mixed with the slight wisps of cool air in loud honks and colourful language. He circles around, talks within, languishes in his own bubble.

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structual support

Bursts of cool air pumps through the musky heavy heat of my room. It's hard to find that happy balance between a shiver and a sweat, but I'm managing it. It's been fucking ages since my words last appeared here, so forgive my tendencies toward the melodramatic, I'm out of practice.

There's yelling and loud percussive clashing going on outside, at 3:30 in the morning, someone is having themselves a hell of a fourth of July weekend.

My days and my mind has been filled with bouts of occupation and preoccupation, alternately. Moments of blissful peace when everything feels easier, like I'm not kidding myself, and then the other times, when I just want to burrow into a generous pair of arms, and wait for it to pass. It's this whole kidulthood thing. Wanting so badly to be making it on my own, to feel like I'm living this life and choosing every element of it but wishing within every goddamn inch of me that there was someone there to pick up the slack. That if it all goes to shit, it's not just down on me. It's my own bed though, I bought the sheets, I should just lie fundamentally alone in it.

I've been trying to be more proactive (I've given up on being productive, I'd settle for just "doing things"). Exploring, discovering, selecting and evaluating the building blocks for this grown-up fort of mine. Internally going over every bone and nitpicking what is jutting and trying my best to pull them out like a splinter. Essentially trying to put this well weathered skeleton back together, piece by piece. You see, if what's at the base of it all is strong and shiny again, the pretty flabby bits hovering over it can get out there again, yes?

And hereby concludes the emo section of this piece.

Even though it seems like the world is obsessed by MJ's passing, most of the people around me seem unreasonably weary of it already. My memories would always include playing Dangerous over and over again at all hours, memorising the lyrics well into the early mornings on school nights and choreographing dance moves of my own. The month leading up to his HIStory concert when I'd burst into an a capella version of Heal the World with any friends who are within vacinity. Having unsound visions and dreams of meeting him and charming him and having him adopt me. They Don't Care About Us booming in our year 12 common room before the exams. It is entirely unnatural the attachment I feel towards a figure and the sadness I felt, I think it is how sudden it was that is the most unsettling. The fact that he never got a chance to separate all the crap associated with his name and the tremendous body of work he left behind. There's not much to say other than, I'm bummed.

I found el cheapo dumplings and decent (not fantastic by any means) egg tarts today. I'm a relatively happy camper today. And considering it is now well after 4am, I should probably try and get some sleep. The house is empty tonight, my head is too. I chose to download and watch two sappy set-in-manhattan so-embarrassing-I-won't-name-them-here rom coms and was thoroughly annoyed/amused by both. The message of both seems to be, even if you hit rock bottom, put on a pink frock and some nice shoes and somehow everything would work itself out, provided you give a heartfelt monologue. I need to go shopping.

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If there was a better way to go...

...then it would find me

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scratches the itch, but finds scant satisfaction. it was pointless, not the least bit enjoyable, and moreover, destructive.

I have had a couple weeks worth of self reflection now, this whole picking up injured sparrows by the roadside game is tiring itself out. I can't begin to admit to myself the true contents of my head, heart, groin, the curl of my toes. What would a snapshot of early 2009 reflect of me? Mother goose? Nesting doll? Tomatoes and onions and my ever expanding waistline. I have one of the finest views of the Manhattan skyline within walking distance, my walking distance, but I forego the dreaming and ram my head straight on into the thick of it.

juice, ham, hummus from Sahadi's, bread, apple cinnamon cheerios, bananas, berries, toilet paper, lamp, change of address forms, apartment hunting, laundry.

endless to-do lists of things that are easily achievable but always eschewed in favour of something far less pertinent, just because another person is involved. I live like a hobo, but would run to the side of anyone who becks and calls as something far more put together, at the drop of a hat. I've done the hermit thing, now I'm onto something different. When it comes to myself, my own world, my own space, there are test patterns and white noise screaming over my head. Nothing flickers into life until another person is involved. I don't even have the attention or concentration to watch things, to read. There's only cognitive behaviour enough to pass judgment on the cohabitant of my space. (Still entirely uninteresting to me, try as she might.)

So it's now 2:30am. First class tomorrow is one I really need to concentrate in, again, I have the problem of utter apathy. I just don't care enough to pull myself into this crazy woman's head.

So it's long overdue, another Friday Five

5 things I wish I could say to 5 different people but won't

"No, a song that you have written in the past and have now sent to me is not good enough. This lady requires all original work written specifically for her"

"I've had better"

"Yes you do freak me out a little, but it's more your personality than your head"

"Honey, why do you pimp yourself out like that?"

"I miss you. Hourly."

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catching up on catching up

Odd day of doing nothing. I mean I usually do nothing, but today was the first time when there hasn't been a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me what I really should be doing. I mean sure, I could do my laundry or clean my room or look on craigslist for apartment listings, but there's no real urgent need. Not today anyway.

A good friend emailed me today with what could possibly be the best first paragraph of an email ever sent to me. You're quite right, I could pretty much talk forever about almost anything to almost anyone, but fact is I do choose to email 3k+ word essays to you filled with details I probably would not include in, say, my facebook messages or here on my blog. My life is hilarity. I have long considered composing a screenplay based on my exploits. It would have to be a long running series though, I'm not entirely sure a novel with a film adaptation would quite cover it.

Since this blog gets sucked into the facebook vortex (because I'm a shameless self promoter) and I'm facebook friends with certain subject matters of these hilarious anecdotes, I will not share them here, I'll save them for publication at the end of my career. Many of you may have heard bits and pieces, needless to say, your beloved Qinny has not changed one bit as far as romance and adventures go.

The downside to taking everything as a joke is that, everything becomes a joke. I would stupidly forage ahead and pull faces at inappropriate moments, wear my 1/10th completed scarf on my head as a headpiece, say "why the hell not" when there's probably a pretty good reason why not. Sometimes I'm more concerned with appearing easy going than I should be comfortable with. It's quite alright though, all consequences fall into my basket of stories to pepper my autobiography with.

The last couple of weeks has been filled with food, spliff, knitting (?!?!), and having more fun in my classes than I thought I could at the start of the year. I swear I'm gaining weight just existing in that apartment, it's good when I come home to find there's absolutely nothing in the fridge except for some expired yogurt. I'm not complaining (you know how much I like my food, by god, I love my food), I'm just saying I should probably keep an eye on my consumption from now on. Matching portions with a 6'3" lad is probably not entirely healthy. But having delicious home cooked meals (however heavy) prepared by someone else, and shared, is always good times. The spliff is, obviously, good times. The knitting was for class, and now I have to finish it, and it would be the best damn imperfect scarf that was ever knitted by a chinese-australian acting student.

Once again it's 2am and I'm trying to finish a blog post about nothing. I have to be on time for class tomorrow, it's the punctual nazi teacher in the morning. I feel like I've exhausted everything I want to say in daily conversations and when I come to this box with the blinking cursor I hit a blank wall. I never have anything to say when I'm just contented with my life. Momentary glimpses of ecstasy don't seem to last long enough to fill me with words, likewise the snatches of the blues don't seem to choke at my throat either. Come at me tomorrow, maybe I'll have a story to tell then. A story safe from the prying eyes. For now, goodnight.

Top 5 mellow songs to fall asleep to right now.

Royksopp (ft. Lykke Li) - Miss It So Much

Carla Bruni - Promises Like Pie Crust

Mazzy Star - Fade Into You

Of Montreal - St. Exquisite's Confessions

Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Little Shadow
(holy crap I'm hearting It's Blitz so bad)

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the big empty

My head hangs heavy. Perhaps from the touch of cold I have developed, or perhaps due to the fact that I can't bring myself to admit how tediously mollified I am. Neither ecstatic nor dissatisfied, getting by with just... getting by. Sometimes I wonder if I willingly fall into trouble just to inject some drama into this little life. Pain feels just as much like living as pleasure, sometimes it's more reassuring when it brings you so startlingly down to the ground, hammering at your core than the full flight of a dream. My lazy bones prevent me from any actual doing. Even when I know it's a fault, I can't seem to correct this. My chiropractor from Melbourne called me yesterday, perhaps I do need a realignment.

I crave for something visceral.

I want to go back to that summer of dreams, tregsie, carilious. I want to bring you to all my awkward dates, and choke on our lollipop juices, drink slurpees, eat pancakes, play stacko/pictionary/scrabble and run a muck in our city. I want to go to trashy bars because girls get free drinks, and have drunk airmen stick their tongues down our throats on the dance floor. Become promoters for some Asian club and fail miserably at making any money. Constantly looking for a job but never doing any work. Stuffing our faces with marshmellows in the middle of Village Bourke St Mall and ruining Keanu Reeves forever. Going to Fed Square because it was new, and getting the crap scared out of us walking around the ACMI exhibits inside the ghost ship. Asian clubbing and shit music. Running through town with Magic Balloons and chomping on smxl sandwiches because a cute boy works there. I want to laugh because we all hated the same movie, and cry over some stupid argument in a car park. It was a beautiful, sticky mess.

I want to chop my hair off again. Sorry to be bringing up something so trivial, but there really isn't anything too interesting happening in my noggin. Yes I want to cut most of my hair off, a cute little cut, something easier to manage. Or a fringe (or bangs for you yanks). Although I'm sure the moment I make any change I would immediately regret it and want it all back. My hair has been a mess since Janice decided she needed more of an education than just being the damn finest hairdresser I've ever had.

Oh man this has been a sucky post. I'm terribly sorry. Perhaps I should bring back my lists. At least then you can pretend to be entertained when you read these things.

List of 5 Burlesque Acts

- The Cocky Tail Shakers. The entire act would be girls in corsets and feathers on their derriere, making beautiful cocktails and handing them out to audiences.

- The Honey Mooners. Not a lot of thought has been put into this. It would involve mooning, and honey, obviously.

- The Puss in Boots. A feline dance in thigh high shiny lace-up boots and cat ears.

- Operation. A game of operation on a real girl, the organs are stuck on her body to be removed by girl in a nurse outfit.

- Powder Puffs. It's like the fan dance, except with giant powder puffs and confetti thrown everywhere!

Now who wants to start rehearsal with me?

also. I miss my pug. I miss driving. I miss my kitties. I miss waking up with a furball licking my face. I miss good coffee. I miss conversations. I miss the como bar. I miss sneaking popcorn into my free movies. I miss the sun. I miss wrapping my arms around my friends who want nothing more than just lazing around with me. I miss the gent who owns soda rock and yells at me for not going to visit him often enough. I miss the sushi from that place downstairs from work that's deliciously inauthentic. I miss shooting silly videos, and planning the lesbian road trip film with rizzle razzle. I miss pretending to be conversing at the same level as ant. I miss snuggling in maya maya papaya's cleavage. I miss all of deano's stupid jokes. I miss guitar hero world tour at sueballs' residence. I miss midnight maccas drive throughs and regretting it immediately afterward. I miss listening to triple j's hack program and pretending I care about the news. I miss backyard bbq's. I miss getting sunburns in inconvenient places because I didn't want the sand to stick to my sunscreen. I miss lucky coq's $4 pizzas. I miss the gin soaked grins of the people who surrounded me only a month ago. COME TO NEW YORK DAMMIT.

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trip

Alright, so this is how it works right? I say "go", and you just come with me. Whoosh. No questions asked.


Are you ready?



GO!


We're running along the subway station, keep up with me now, our train line isn't running today because they have to do all their fucking construction work on weekends, and we have to have fucking class on Saturday mornings. So we're running, through the platform, up the stairs, into the adjacent station with some other lines that would take us as far as Manhattan. We'll have to change trains in a bit, but we'll deal with that later. Our legs are still sore from doing that stupid task in class two days ago, remember? When we curled over and couldn't move? We vow to hit the gym when there's a smidgen of free time, but too late for that now, we're running. The 3/4 hour we set aside for getting to school today is fast running out, and there's a test this morning. A test we didn't study for, hoping that the remnants of our high school smarts would stick, hoping that there's enough of first year linguistics knowledge from five years ago rattling around in there to tide you over until it's done. The 4 train is awfully cozy, we can feel the man behind us softly pressing his hand into our thigh. Shakes it off, shake it off. It's the subway squeeze, we've dealt with much worse. It's an express train and it won't take us where we want it to. Shit, fuck, fuck. Change tracks. More running. Wish we could just stick some fucking vurt feather down our throat and ride it out. Some sexy pink pornovurt. And then we're gone.

We start with a smell. It's dark and you can sense a body lying near you. Soap and toothpaste. There's the faint warmth of the skin but there's still a lot of distance, fingertip to fingertip. We're waiting for a cue, not sure where to begin. The stench of old pain weighs heavy. Our eyes adjust to the darkness, we can make out shapes under the covers. It's a cold night, but funny, we've sweated through. There is movement towards us. The sleeping form inches closer by minute degrees. We're bracing ourselves, letting the tingling in our lips and fingers build up to that old warm fuzzy. The sheets are twisting under maneuvering limbs and torsos. The clamping of jaws, the smacking of saliva. We connect hungrily trying to take something, anything to fill a gap somewhere between our ribs.

We're back in that subway station, crossing platforms, bypassing buskers. The sounds of some Mexican mariachi band clashing with a lone Er-Hu. A bouquet of noise combined with the screeching of wheels on tracks creates a constant buzz around our heads. We're seriously running late now, and we're one more train and two stops away. There's a missed call on our mobile from another girl in our class, oh good, she must be late too. The smell of street vended coffee slaps us in the face as we step out onto the street. Fumbling into our bags looking for our ID tag, cursing the over sized handbag for swallowing all its contents so completely. Right. Breathe. We slip into the stream of the day. The hollowness follows us around, class to class, room to room. But we're alright, the safety of routine covers up our bloodshot eyes and the cloud of complaints above our heads. Ride it out, just make it to the other end of the day and we're home safe.

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pomp and lustre

It is still freezing. Which is why I'm still not blogging the way I'm supposed to. I still don't have a roommate, so my room is slowly degrading into a slum of nuclear proportions. I should have cleaned it up a little today it's my day off, but the rest of me wanted a day off too.

I got a friend request the other day on facebook, apparently he's a fan of my blog.



I'm sorry Jimmy that I couldn't add you. Because of the amount of information I give out on my facebook I do have a "people I've actually met" policy. Plus then you'll see all the classy(crass) photos and that would tarnish your glowing image of me.

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The following is a muddled jumble of fly-by self pity party, proceed with care:

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The numbness I'd been feeling in the last year or so is shedding away little by little. It's mostly uncomfortable, but nice to know that within these frozen limbs, emotions still dwell. The last six months especially has been an exercise in loneliness as a crowd experience. Slowly grasping at, and fingering, feeling my way through the parameters of my comfort zone. Rediscovering that I'm not just a set of digestive and sexual organs, that I can feel things as myself, and not some version that I'd like others to see.

Hopefully this signals a return to form. Over the years, even my prose has turned far more direct, sharp, bitter, and all that is left of the humour, biting. Meanwhile my head had become a bag of jelly, the mushy Aeroplane kind. If it is not aesthetics analysis, it refused to produce an opinion. A vessel of receptors waiting for that instant gratification, shameless contradictions of moral values, and self indulgence. Repetition, repetition, repetition, never letting the senses rest. Videos, sounds, music, movies, images, just don't let it stop, play several at once, I know everything backwards already but just don't let it stop, let my mind shut out any thought that needs to be dealt with, just don't let it stop. Relentless saturation of anything devoid of neurological nourishment. I reach out my hand for anything that is safe, old ideas, old conversations, old encouragements. It's an easy high, you ride it fast and it fizzles out, that's why you need the constant injection. Simulated emotions, play acting, anyone could do this, anyone could be me.

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi... The constant frustration, over the past, the future, regrets, helplessness, my life, all collapsing on me in spasms tightening my entire body. My hands were clamped, my feet jerked the way they do when I come. I couldn't move or breathe, I could only laugh because suddenly I was not doing a Meisner exercise in class anymore, I was fucking my last two years of existence into the ground. Was I okay? Well I needed more than just a drink of fucking water that's for sure. I want a re-write.

But at least I author my own disaster

Back to the point I was making, I can feel flickerings of past excitements, before I became a shell of external gestures. It's an embarrassingly small shift, coming from the least likely of experiences, but it's hopeful. I can choose to nurture this into a healthy flame and try and steer it away from the madwoman in the attic territory, or just let it go because it would be nice to see the fire before the house burns down. This could mean more shockingly revealing blog posts that are basically romanticised graphic self portraits of wrist slitting. This could be embarrassing for everyone around me. I will try to use pseudonyms wherever possible, (past pseudonyms have included G, Sandwich boy, and Damian Assface. THIS COULD BE YOU!!) but basically anything that you have said, related, showed, or done to me is fair game. I will attempt to be as raw as my dwindling work ethic allows. This is merely a warning, I am giving everyone a week to front up and submit censorship applications. That being said, I change my mind so freaking much that by this time tomorrow I could be off this idea entirely. My Fuck-It Manifesto never took off, but this is an extension. Feel free to express your opinions below, whether on the facebook copy or the original blog.

theme music of this post: The Past Is A Grotesque Animal - Of Montreal

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Brooklyn Heights Sighs

That's the weather right now. I'm meant to be going to open up a new Bank account today. But no. There's no way I'm stepping outside this room today.

Time for a New York Update!

I have been here a week now. After a hellish plane ride (where the kid behind me proceeded to kick my chair for the entirety of the 20-something hour plane ride (THROUGH transit stops) I landed in the land of bagels and fake bacon.

There's not a hell of a lot to blog about yet. It's way too cold out to take photos of anything without freezing my little fingers off. This also means I cannot smoke unless I let a cigarette hang out the side of my mouth, Jimmy Dean style, which would be fitting of all the method training I am getting beat over the head with.

I stopped squealing over snow flurries after about 5 minutes of walking through it and feeling my face frost over.

The first week was eventful only in that my roommate came and left. I met her during the half hour she packed up her things and went home. The toilet was clogged beyond belief. I had two remotes in the tv cabinet, either of which were paired to the tv, dvd, or cable box and I just needed a lot of random knickknacks to get everything settled and habitable.

All exploring of the city has been postponed until the sub freezing weather has passed. So as of yet, no museums, no films, no plays, nothing remotely sociable. It took me until two days ago to buy a kettle, and since then my blood has been running tea. It provides a constant injection of something hot to keep my blood circulating.

In fact, my toes are cold right now. So I'm going to go dip them in my doona and watch crap on tv until I fall asleep again. I've been awake since 5 am, I don't know what's wrong with my head. I haven't forgotten my obligation to keep a running commentary on my travels, I have been writing (the pen and 'skine kind) down random thoughts and I will transpose the publishable elements on here, on a day when my head doesn't feel like sleet and my feet don't want to drop off.

So this is just to say that yes, I will blog more, and with eye candy as well, and bubbly anecdotes. Give me some time, until I feel better about all of this, this being away from everyone, this being at an awkward time zone so I can't even just pick up the phone and talk it over with someone, this sick panicky alone feeling. Or at least until the weather turns.

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