Wednesday, April 30, 2008

BOOYAH



Here's the deal: instead of 7wishes, you get MS Paint doodles. Because, seriously, that's what the government pays me for. Leave requests, suggestions, lists of random things that are required to appear in the one image in the comments, and I shall paint what tickles my fancy. One artistic atrocity per night.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Did you like the speshul 7wishes? I did. I want some genius engineer to steal the idea and make it real. It was a shenanigan. I don’t think anything came from the shenanigan, it being one of those things that comes about when a couple of people say ‘oh, that’d be cool!’ while the rest of the world doesn’t actually give a crap. I don’t mind, still chuffed about that lovely illustration I scored.

I’m very tired. I’m probably understating that. I think skipped tired and went straight to exhausted a long time ago, and have possibly even gone as far as fatigued. Nightshift is looming over me. Can’t find solace in music. Couldn’t purge through decibels. Haven’t found validation in strangers. Failed to achieve critical mass – there will be no 7wishes this nightshift. There are no daydreams in my head. I’m sorry. I have nothing left to give.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

6 is less than 7





someecards is brought to you by former Onion writers who only want to make your inbox a slightly more fucked up place to be.

Because I can't help but make a LIAR out of myself.

I was rummaging, and found this photo. I took it when I was tooling around the States a couple of years back, it's on the Skyline Trail at Paradise, on the slopes of Mt Rainier in Washington. It was August at the time, and not much further up I was walking through snow and looking down on glaciers and generally making alarmed and amazed squawking noises.



Do you SEE? It's a flower-filled meadow!

I DIDN'T BELIEVE THEY EXISTED.

It's entirely possible that Australia possesses, somewhere, at some point in the seaons, flower-filled meadows, but I haven't seen them, and they wouldn't be nearly this green, and there'd be snakes and nasty biting things hiding in the flowers, and there would not be BAMBI dozing in the middle of it, as there was in this case. And the damn flower-filled meadows were everywhere. Ev. Er. Ee. Where. I felt rather like I'd fallen into a Disney movie, and that I should be singing and frolicking. In the flowers. That were everywhere.

I found it a shame that the others with me, Europeans and Kiwis for whom the alpine environment was not at all a new thing, didn't see the marvel before them the same way.

Even though I have that memory, and I took this photo, I find that my belief in flower-filled meadows has diminished. They're too pretty for the suspension of my disbelief.

Monday, April 14, 2008

I don't have anything to say. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Have a place holder.

Thursday, April 10, 2008


This is what the shipwreck coast does to life.


Beats it down, makes it small, misshapen.




Conquers it completely.


These small plants out on the cliff tops speak in quiet meek voices.


They say, “and yet, I live.”


I am not a plant. While I feel just as pummelled and low and bristly and twisted and maggoty, there is no satisfaction for me in merely existing. I want to be a person I’m not ashamed or embarrassed of. I want a life that I don’t need to run away from. Can you imagine such a thing?

I can’t.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

clutching at straws that broke the camel's back



Don't particularly like the bathroom mirror either.

Maybe when I get back history will have spontaneously rearranged itself and that won't say what it says. Maybe I won't have felt the need to write it. Maybe it doesn't matter because I'll have to take it down in a few days anyway when the real estate agent brings strangers with money around to see if they want to buy the place.

I have to go; I'm going; I'm gone.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

/end nightshift

- to hear.

Paper cuts the webbing between my fingers, and I hiss, and with that hiss realise that I haven’t spoken in a week.

I think about saying something, in that empty elevator. There is nothing I have to say that is worth saying, so I say nothing. The elevator stops. I open my mail, carefully this time.

There is one letter, hand-written, and it simply reads; St Kilda Beach, Sunday, 7.00am. There is no name, no return address, and no postmark. It has been hand delivered.

I don’t know. 7.00am is early. I don’t much like it even when I’m paid to be awake at that hour.

In smaller writing on the back; if you do not intent to come, then say so.

I say nothing. There’s nothing worth saying.

No one misses my voice. Supervisors come by my desk to drop of work, rolling out instructions, and I only need nod. Friends ask questions, and I only need nod. The phone rings, and I’m told I have a package waiting at home. I nod. I can drift through this life without saying a word. Words are force direction movement intent, and I am none of these things.

Do this for me, the supervisor says, dropping off a fifty page historical sex offence report. My fingers hurt.

There’s a long string of emails I should reply to, but they’re words, and nothing I have to say is worth saying.

Maybe, if I hold out long enough, words will leave my mind too. Then I will only think in pictures and music.

Come out tonight, they say, and I nod. I’m tired. Over dinner they talk and talk, and I listen. It’s hard not to listen, when people speak with conviction, so sure of their own voices. I can’t keep them out of my head, and they overwhelm my quiet thoughts. I go home with the voices of so many other people in my head. They won’t be quiet. They never stop and listen, so intent are they on what they are saying.

I don’t sleep. I can’t stop listening to the rest of the world. There’s so much everyone has to say. There’s so much that needs to be heard.

Eventually, I give up. After showering and dressing, I go out. Autumn mornings are nippy, and the sun isn’t up yet. I take the first tram to St Kilda. Tired and sobering and dishevelled people slump in the chairs, their fine clothes not so fine now. The beach is long. I get off at first sight of the sand, and amble along it in that slow, easy, comfortable stroll that so few people can pace. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

I find kites. All manner of kites high in the rising breeze of dawn, tied to stakes in the sand. There are dragons and boomerangs and boxes and snakes and the diamond kites like I remember flying in Westerfolds Park. A great flock of beautiful kites, going nowhere. They sound like motion. The wind tears on their strings. Their fabric ripples. I wander in the midst of them, turn about a full circle, and lie in the sand, watching them glide quietly above me.

A child of uncertain age and gender swathed in beanie and scarf walks out to me, and begins reeling in a fish. It pulls away from the others, and curls about the end of its tether. Like most fish, it doesn’t want to be brought in. The child lands it without tangling any of the others. In their hands, the string is clearer control than the best of reigns. The fish lies at my feet, and I prop myself up on my elbows to see.

It’s a beautiful thing, made of such fragile elements, and yet strong. It can catch the wind, and not be defeated by it. It is no specific fish, just essence of fish. Pure fish, swimming in the sky.

The child unties a paper twist from the fish’s tail, and hands it to me. I unfold it, and in it find my voice.

“Thank you,” I say, and it is worth saying.