I'm a little wanderer wondering what I'm doing when I'm wasting all my money on wine.

Things have been so busy lately I feel like I haven't stopped to catch my breath in some time, and probably wont still for a while as I'm heading off to Sydney tonight to reunite with Sebastian in a dingy little hotel room! I love 'getting away' which is such a strange thing to love because what am I even getting away from, and why, and I've been asked so many times why I feel the need to go away so much and I can't really tell ya, it's just how it is yaknow. Blood boiling I just want to be on that plane now. Christmas has come and gone and it was one of the best I've had though truth be told I haven't had that many good ones, but definitely this year and the last have been so lovely. My cousin and I buy each other books, it's sort of a tradition, and this year she gave me In the Winter Dark by Tim Winton, the translated Illuminations by Rimbaud, and the selected poetry of Vladmir Nabokov and I think those are the perfect books for me right now and are just what I want to be reading. Yesterday some friends and I went to a dub gig in a park, then to Lentils, then to another gig, and I felt like we did so much walking even though it probably wasn't that much, but it really did feel like a journey of a day and those are the best days because you don't sit around wasting time you just get on your feet and go somewhere, which is what I'm doing tonight, and next month Jack and I are going to the Gold Coast, which is a horrible tacky place I know but so hilariously fun. I always carry those necessary little items in my bag such as a toothbrush and deodorant and spare undies because sometimes you just don't know where you'll end up, and in fact I haven't been home in about a week, and it's nice to know that all I need I can carry around on my back and be just fine. This year is sneaking to a close the way they always seem to do and I'm welcoming change, and like a roller coaster ride with both highs and lows this year has been both one of the worst and strangely best I've had.

free write 3

I'm not ready to forget I'm not- i don't know what i'm doing

Heart vomit. I love you cause you’re real stay mine tell me lies. I think I’m going insane in circles turning a blind eye to my freezer burn scar tissue saying your name under my breath with a suitcase packed in my mind prepared for a quick departure. I’ve heard the birds near my window whispering my secrets don’t call me back if all you’re going to do is whistle a song I’ve heard before I’ve heard the birds near my window calling your name they said you’d call me back they said you’d call my name where are you? I saw the trees near your window the willow trees bending I saw them bend to the will of the wind the last will and testimony there it all is, it’s all there. I’ve heard a secret passed between lips and swallowed down like a bitter pill and forgotten I forgot what I heard it’s gone it’s done. Things are twisting into place. I’ve been dreaming of a girl I once knew. She keeps appearing, alba skin like a nightlight in the nightlife emerging through the crowd like a clean glass bottle bobbing on the surface of a brown and muddy lake then sinking, sinking. I delve in arms first grabbing at limbs elbowing passersby she’s there; there she goes she’s gone.

I have so many questions and there are so few answers.

I finished uni last week, what a sigh of relief. I've been tossing up whether or not to defer next semester, but I think I'm going to stick around for a little while longer before jetting off with Jack. One of the deciding factors is that I don't want to miss out of the semester one subject Decadent Literature because that sounds so up my alley. 

I saw my old friend today, we spoke about last year and how messed up we were, how we would constantly call each other up complaining that we were having an existential crisis. We kept fucking up and getting ourselves into strange romantic entanglements and having anxiety attacks every other day. We laugh about it now though, and I meant it when I told him that I'm glad it all happened. I really wouldn't change a thing, because without all those events I wouldn't be here now. The only downside is that in contrast to all the turmoil, life now seems kind of boring. I think that's why I want to go away all the time. But we're probably all safer this way. He's leaving for six or seven months. Things are always changing drastically. 

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I really love studying modernism, except I take so long to write the essays because I get so side tracked with my readings because I love it all too much - I'm supposed to be writing about Ezra Pound but as usual I got side tracked listening to these amazing old recordings of him reading Sestina: Altaforte (his voice is so great) and then I found this hilarious letter written to T.S. Eliot, who, like Pound, explored the objective correlative and yet did so without the influence of Pound's work - to which Pound said 'You've done it on your own, you bitch!' and I found that so funny. How great is Prufrock? I'm going stir crazy because I've been house-bound essay writing, blood boiling. Today Seb turns 21. We're going to Sydney in December. I love T.S. Eliot but I wish I could have written Prufrock first.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

You Taste Like Freedom.

+++

running down the street like water

your hand in mine we say

nothing

my mouth is filled with sand

hot skin freckled

the night air’s a slap

that tastes sweet

our feet beat the ground

your breath’s caught

in my hair we’re

flying

I don’t care

if all we do is run in circles

it’s been an honour

to match your stride

and have 

your hand

in mine.

+++

The past is in us, and not behind us.

Seb and I have a tradition of very theatrically singing and dancing along to hole in the kitchen in preparation for a night out. On Friday we went to a gig in a warehouse in Brunswick, we stood in a nearby alley drinking wine out of water bottles and discussing the amazing feats that are our minds and how strange and scary and bizarre it is when they are out of control, and how little we really know about ourselves. I’ve been piecing things together, I guess over the last few months, working out why I am the way I am and why I am me, what made me. And it’s quite phenomenal to pin point moments in my childhood that have so dramatically moulded my perceptions to this very day – and how coping mechanisms developed at an early age can become distorted into habitual obsessive thought patterns – the idea of re learning how to think is scary and hard but sometimes necessary and it doesn’t mean we’re crazy it means we want to change and grow and get the most out of life.

Things are changing all around me. I have a job now, at an ice cream parlour in Ivanhoe and to be honest I really like it, which is funny, because I’ve always hated working and I have the worst ethic out of anyone I know. But I’m growing up now, and I’ll be 21 in a little over a month.

Yesterday Jack and I celebrated our one-year anniversary, it was so fun, we woke up and for the first time in a while we weren’t hungover which was pleasant, and we went to savers and bought each other the silliest and funniest presents, and ate burritos, and had funny conversations with the staff of grandma funk. We then went to the Nova to see The Turning, which is an adaptation of the Tim Winton short story collection of the same title – seventeen short stories adapted by seventeen different directors. It was absolutely amazing and it blew both our minds, I was just incredibly amazed at how fucking brilliant all the directors were and how different yet complementary and cohesively beautiful each piece was, and how they came together to shape such an amazing story. I was telling Jack after we left the cinema how I’d forgotten what an impact Tim Winton had had on me when I was seventeen and I first read Cloudstreet – I fell in love with that book and have read it many times since, and when I was in year 12 I went on a crazy Tim Winton splurge and read Dirt Music, Breath, That eye the sky, Riders and The Turning.

Jack and I went back to his and built a blanket fort and watched the OC and got emotional when the theme song came on because we were both really emotionally invested in the show as thirteen year olds and it was really funny because it’s actually such an average show yet so so iconic in our minds. I haven’t done an actual post like this in a while where I just talk about myself and stuff but it’s been fun.

Days Like This

shy milk teeth pressing into fleshy orange, fat droplets hit the lino while you stand, five feet four in one sock, squinting out the window at the melting sun, rays bleeding red through fly wire. The breeze carrying the back door swinging hitting lemon tree rust - girl you’re a vision in blue denim overalls,

whistling a tune lips puckered on a note, you’re a goddess doing nothing

but spreading butter on toast for tea - thinkin about that time you watched a stray dog safely cross the road and how your heart stopped and how your heart sang cause you care, you care.

there’s a flower in a vase next to you from your man, he’s thinkin of you too

neighbours barking

         street cars shuddering

                    fragile songbirds sing

you're enveloped in a womb of noise while you stand, tanned and ready

orange peel ceramic plate, bread crumb fingers you're ready

to accept the world

rays of light bleeding red through

fly wire, you

you know how to love.