Nothing in this blog post will be news.

Fuck, you know, I've tried to fucking "sculpt" an opening paragraph three times now. This isn't going to be a technically skilled piece of writing. It isn't going to have a structure that means anything to anyone but me.

Last night was not so much a breaking point as a an unexpected bubble making it to the surface. The tearstorm came out of nowhere. A conversation about devops suddenly careened into empathy and then I found myself sobbing into my hands and blubbering all over J. Which, being someone with depressive issues, isn't actually that out of character, but I hadn't spotted it coming. In fact I'd had a good day, was feeling fine. I thought I was.

Originally I'd been working 11 till 4. My own confidence growing and some crunch time at work led to an extension of my hours and my joining the 9-5 crowd for a week. Only one week. Not counting Wednesday. That's all I lasted. On Wednesday I slept until 3pm. On the weekend I did the same. Right now I'm using a mouse only with my left hand, because the increased hours simply resulted in me doing myself an injury. With a computer mouse. To my right intercostal. Which affects everything I do, including breathing.

It's a pattern established over six years. Change my work routine and set up, and something inside me will break. When I was a House Elf I had tendonitis from scrubbing the fucking showers in the bed & breakfast. At FOI I had to go part-time. Before that at my data-entry role, my body...broke. And I had to just leave and get another job. Actually that's what I did with FOI as well: I left the country, became a House Elf, and failed differently. Six years of failing, and being in pain for trying.

This time I'm in a completely new organisation, and it feels like having a fresh audience. In front of which I am failing. Again.

How can I plan for my future when I can't even control my capabilities in the present? I'm coasting along on the goodwill of others, and that's what my future requires, and it isn't something that can be taken for granted.

I'm just so tired of this. A positive frame of mind doesn't even come into it. I'm happy if I can keep my mind quiet, because it takes so little for all my frustrations and anguish to stir and stampede. It all just feeds my depression until I just look at the massive beast it has become and shrug.

There's no way out but through.

ETA: I think it's especially sharp-edged this time as my current work environment is amazing. A small comfortable office in which everyone actually does their job and gives a shit, and few people actually complain. I want to live up to that. And I all my aches and pains mean I have to make decisions which ensure that I can't. I don't want to be dead weight.

Today I also discovered that typing, not just using the mouse, aggravates my injury. This cuts into my editing work. Nowhere is safe. 

Chronic

A dear friend of mine recently brought two articles to my attention. The first I read, Women with Fibromyalgia Have A Real Pathology Among Nerve Endings to Blood Vessels in the Skin, (pdf) is a concise description of an actual, recognisable, testable THING relating to fibromyalgia. The first. Ever. It's also the first time I've read something discussing the symptoms of fibromyalgia and had it gel with my own experiences. It explains my awful tenderness, which seems to be the longest lasting of my symptoms. When I think back to where I was living when my pain levels were at their worst - a one-bedroom flat with no insulation, no heating and windows that didn't seal - I can't help but wonder if perhaps there is not only some correlation, but causation.

A moderate climate would go a long way toward explaining my current state of wellbeing. 'Wellbeing', that is, not merely 'being'. Although I've deteriorated somewhat since it has become too cold to swim regularly (I took a dip not two days ago and fuck me I won't be doing that again), I have not done so nearly as much as I'd anticipated. I still feel pretty good. My energy levels are mostly in the green.

Definitely something to keep in mind next time we move.

The second article is What is Wrong With Me? (pdf), and it is written by someone with a chronic condition, for people with chronic conditions. It's a story we are all familiar with. Some peculiar flex in my guts forced me to stop reading when O'Rourke stated the years it took to get a diagnosis, which is a statistical average. She goes on to acknowledge the particular conflict a person with a chronic condition must contain within their being, in that we must advocate for our illnesses while at the same time be resistant to conflagrating these same illnesses. She acknowledges the resistance to a shifting baseline.

It was something I needed to read. It's probably something I'll need to read time and again. I encourage all who have any chronic condition to read this article. 

Captured on the 373 on longline

It's not necessarily summer, but the season is at home on this remote shore. We've made the trek from the distant road side, through the lazy sand dunes with half-buried grasses and rushes bowing before and eternal breeze. There is no path, and our feet sink into the fine dry sand with every set, our balance already compromised by blue eskies and beach chairs and umbrellas. There are no trees for miles so we must bring our own shelter.

It is not a vigorous beach, nor an overly safe one. The waves, a deep jade in the shallows falling into a brittle blue darkness limning the horizon, wash the beach with amiable indifference. Marring the wet sand is a chaotic mess of gull prints, the gulls themselves long gone.

The light is timeless. The concept of night has no place in the noon world. We dig in, alone for hours in all directions, the clinkhiss of open beers sounding before the chairs have been set up. Someone has brought along good speakers, and we dance as we toss picnic blankets and towels down, fumbling for oil-drenched olives in jars with too narrow a mouth and tearing apart fresh crusty loaves to slather with rich chunky dips and chutneys. We are so free here, there aren't even planes in the sky to remind us of the rest of the world.

Our picnic is a feast and we graze heartily. Some of us play beach cricket, badly. Some of us swim out past the break of the waves and paddle quietly, rolling with the fluid surface and seeing no shadows in the water. We wander distant among the dunes, unconcerned about losing each other, finding tiny treasures hidden in the tussocks. Beneath our umbrellas - a bouquet of enormous flowers discarded on the shore for us to hide in - we doze, cradled and nuzzled by the warm, loving air, our dreams lined with salt.

Later, when the long afternoon has tilted gently and drunkenly into an equally prolonged evening, with a sunset shy about the colours it paints with, we fall silent, eyes to that featureless horizon, and wait.

It begins with a flash of light which does not diminish, but grows with a sense of intent, small yet determined, just on the curve of the Earth. It's bright, brighter than any of us, and ponderously slow, it begins to lift from the ground. Watching it struggle, we are aware of gravity as we have never been before, and strain with the rocket to break free, to rise, rise, rise leaving a wake of smoke and lighting up the ocean for miles. Now the sound has finally reached us, a grumble and moan that feel completely unrelated to the miracle before us. This rising star paints the cloud underbelly with a light golden glow before punching through, filling the belly itself with an internal fire, quickly extinguished as the rocket leaves our sky and our world and never once looks back.

It is the first of many. It will be a long night. 

Tessa New Year & It's Lack of Importance

Despite talking to mum on Tuesday, and her saying "I'll talk to you Thursday," it didn't stick.
Despite skyping a hot couple yesterday, and them saying, "Happy birthday for tomorrow!" it didn't stick.
Despite my brother sending me an SMS first thing in the morning, and my mum again, and my best friend, it wasn't until dad called and my initial reaction was "Oh shit, something's happened, SOMEONE HAS DIED," that it finally sunk in.

Okay, today marks 33 orbits of the our star for me. It's a birthday, and usually people make a fuss out of these things, and I like to quietly mark them, but honestly, I couldn't attach any weight to this event if it begged me to.

This isn't because I'm distracted, busy or stressed. I think it's simply because there are things I am more excited about, things that a birthday just can't compete against.

I look forward to visiting Melbourne in a couple of weeks and leaping upon people I haven't seen for a year, and people I haven't seen for a month, and seeing my beloved dogs and sitting at the kitchen table and chatting to my family.

I look forward to J coming home every day.

I don't look forward much, to be honest. There's no need.

Every day is pretty nice.

Given the tumult of the last couple of years – not all of it bad – it's really nice to get to a space like the one I find myself in. It's calm and comfortable, and it's precious.

I've love to spare right now, so you can have it. I love you muchly, and I wish warmth upon you. 

Wedding Cake Island

The wiki article tells it all. It's a pile of rocks in Coogee Bay

What the article fails to mention is that it moves. It must move. Every time I look at the sea and it is in view it isn't where I expect it to be. Even just walking down the hill to the shops, which is my most common view of it, it isn't where it should be!

I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

The floating island in Discworld was a temporary build up of gas, which, when it dissipated, caused the island to sink again.

Doctor Doolittle's floating island was in fact a giant snail. Or wait, tortoise? I think he went along the sea floor in a giant sea snail.

This island is a pile of rocks.

And yet.

Dear Diary

Today was brilliant. I didn't sleep in too far, and gave myself a slow enough wake up/get up process that I felt absolutely fine, instead of shellshocked. The sun wasn't too hot, but lovely and deliciously warm and bright. The roll I ate while I walked was also delicious. We saw a cormorant fishing the rocks by the Clovelly cliffs, as if the dashing waves were just a dream. Clovelly was calm, with no swell and slap-happy waves, and so clear. The water bit us cold as we dove in, but Clovelly is full of different waters, and we passed through warm and cold waters alike. Right by the stairs, as if waiting for us, was Big Bluey, the dominant blue groper. An entourage of wrassers and bream followed him, and then smaller striped fish, toad fish and the odd goat fish. Such a glorious velvet blue. I'd never seen him before. Well over one metre long, big enough to grab and throw whole fair sized rocks while grazing. He was unfazed by our presence, and simply continued doing his business. Saw another two smaller females, and a smaller male. Each with entourage. The garfish have grown and grown, and the school is full now of thick ribbons of silver weaving away from me. With the water clear and the sun bright, their subtle colouring became vibrant. Blue shot through the tail, red down the dorsal. Never alone. I saw a small groper missing its upper jaw. Not an open wound, all healed. It was hiding in a crevice. I could see its teeth. Little nubs of enamel, four of them. We sat on the warm concrete and let the sun dry us and cuddle the cold from us. "John's Seagulls" were in court near us; two gulls who get handfed by John pieces of his sandwich, and who do an excellent job of keeping every single other bird away. This exchange takes place apparently every day. One of these gulls had white talons, which in its red webbing looked odd. Then we walked to Gordon's Bay, and clambered over barnacle-crusted boulders. The water here too was calm, and clear, and so deliciously warm. We waded in with ease, until I fell off the drop off. The sand of the seabed was pale and perfect, with small dunes laid down by the waves above, and goat fish leaving frenzied calligraphy on those dunes with their two chin whiskers as they fossicked for snacks. More wrassers, more bream, and many dark wrinkled medium sized fish that simply lay on the seafloor as if terribly depressed. We went looking for the stingarees, but none were to be found. The water was clear and the sand so bare, like floating over a pristine desert. And then I saw it, first thinking it was a clump of seaweed which had broken its mooring, turning to look at it and seeing a sea turtle. Gliding against that white sand backdrop. It caught sight of me and changed its path to give me a safe berth. The gropers of Clovelly have spoiled us with their relaxed and non-threatened nature. This turtle was shy. Once it figured out we were following it, it put the speed on, and without flippers we could not keep up. Extraordinary and completely unhoped for. We tried to high five while treading water and it didn't work. A couple had joined us on the rocks, with an 11 month old Great Dane called Julius, a younger Great Dane pup with enormous feet, and a wee Jack Russell called Troy. They were standing waist deep in the water, trying to get Julius in with them, and he wanted to, he so wanted to obey his human, but this water business. He just didn't know about it. He started barking and wuffing when his humans got too deep for his liking, poor silly boofhead. When we got out, he came over to say hello. Had no idea how big he is and stepped all over us, tried to sit on us. Lovely floppy dog. The puppy was adorable, and Troy came to sit next to us in the sun and get a good back scratch. There's nothing that can cause a grin like a happy dog, let alone three. We basked in the sun some more, and then parted ways. I feel so incredibly buoyant and clean and fresh. 

Jade & Free

J noticed it first. "I think getting out of the water made you sad."

It isn't enough to enjoy swimming in the sea. The ending of such enjoyment does not lead to sadness, which is a rare emotion to surface, so often with other feelings stealing its name. A small enigma. The next time I left the ocean I paid attention.

It's the tangible, palpable, measurable return of gravity that presses down on my heart. It's experiencing the return of the complete heaviness of my body, including the weakness in my muscles and the dense weight of my bones. Once again it requires effort to remain upright, effort to merely walk, effort to lift my arms from my side, effort to hold up my head, and all the threads of my movement, once again, sigh.

It's a raising of awareness of the corporeal prison I will never escape, and the nature of the long-standing frivolous agonies it contains. Not, I must clarify, a raising of pain. Simply a raising of awareness and direct attention.

This reminder shadows the experience of being in the water. Of feeling almost weightless, and all my movements, grand or fine, seem so easy. There is no heaviness in my body. I imagine I can almost be capable of grace.

It's jade. Varying shades of. When it is clouded this jade is deep, rich and dark, an incredible colour to gaze into. If blue sky is looking down then the jade is bright and strong, and if the sun touches the water it is slashed with bands of pale gold and it is almost turquoise. To immerse yourself in such wealth and purity of colour can draw out a gasp slowly. With grace.

I can contort myself freely. Treading water requires no energy or effort or even conscious thought, and so I can hang suspended and free indefinitely. I can climb up waves three times my height and only be breathless from squealing. Spiraling, diving, twisting and spinning. I will strain myself. It doesn't take much. A few seconds of vigorous swimming, or fighting my ridiculous natural buoyancy to touch the sea floor. Even then, the effort required is something different. Rather than straining against the limits of my body, it feels as though I'm straining against the water. The battle line is external, rather than internal.

That is what the water gives me. A moment of respite.

Getting out of the water does indeed make me sad. 

I bought something. As in, I went out of my way to purchase an item I didn't need but wanted, with money better spent elsewhere. Strange, that I always feel a need to confess such transactions, as though unnecessarily participating in the capitalist consumer society was a thing to be ashamed of and be held accountable for.

Especially if it is a blank notebook.

I have so many beautiful, blank notebooks waiting to be bashed about in my bag and violated by my ink. Another is unnecessary, so unnecessary. But it was cute, with differing designs within the pages, and it had dimensions the heft of which called to me. Not burdensome to carry, but not light enough to miss respect.

It's funny that I keep them. And keep using them. Just as I continue with this blog. The notebook is the jurisdiction of the writer. For writing. And I am not a writer. I have not written in years. In years. Yet these accoutrements of a writerly life appear stuck to me. The notebooks continue long after the last story dried out. You know I choose them thinking of what the person who comes after will think of them. As though there will come, in the future, scholars to pour over my scribbles and journals and confessions and analyse this and debate that. As if these writings were ever going to be of interest, let alone import.

Pretend.

We were watching a movie. Only ten or so minutes in. Without turning his head, J said, "You should write more fiction."  His words pushed all the angels of physics out of alignment and from then on the perspectives of the room were never quite right. I couldn't say "stop the movie" as that was too far along the train of thought. "Hit the space bar." That was what I needed. Not why. So I could ask him why he said that, what had he been thinking, to think to say that, right then, and he said I was crying, and I was. I was.

I am scared. I am tired. 

"This is it, isn't it?"
They are two men, not old, in the water behind me.
"This is how we die."

The water is jade. Sometimes cloudy and occluded, other times like glass, but always jade. We float in this wealth and majesty and it does not deign to note us.

"Wait, maybe it's this wave we die on."

From behind clouds came the sun, reclining in the long angles of afternoon, and below me the sand danced. White, jade, and lost seaweed, and the fingers of a star tracing their paths.

Fight.

Remember when a blog was a diary? Not a statement, or an art piece, or designed or crafted or sculpted or any thing that was intended to be appreciated by and audience. When an account of the day in all its minutae was expected, accepted and not disrespected.

I think I want to go back to that mode of blogging. I think I want to talk about getting motion sick on the bus in the mornings, and how the bus air conditioning is always too strong, just like the office air conditioning which leaves me stiff and uncomfortable and thinking winter has come. It's a surprise to step outside into what is not dry Melbourne air but humid thick Sydney air, always warm and wet in the lungs, always like an accidental violation. And maybe talk about the things I need to do but don't. And how I was disappointed in my toast but remembered to buy toilet paper so that's a victory.

I think I want to write for me. Really for me. Not for the me who may read this later, but the me now, who is ever narrating and consciously casts sentence after sentence into the timestream unnoted and unspoken because no one need listen to this narration, this narration does not require an audience, it need not be recorded, it's okay for this narration to leave.

The posts shouldn't matter. Don't need to matter. Let's not sculpt them into some shape that makes narrative or emotive sense. Stop this. If you can.

Just let go.

I sat on the beach today. For some reason, I decided I wasn't going to swim. Some strange compulsion to deny myself the things I enjoy, so as to save myself from that moment when I realise they are not enjoyable at all, so they always remain what I enjoy. But I still went and sat on the sand. It's lovely sand, cool and fine. The pumice scattered throughout are not pain traps for bare feet. This is a manicured beach. They trawl it like a tennis court, little landscaping every day, so the sand is neat and even. At the end of the day there is no sand that does not bear the impact of feet, it is a great swathe of the memory of footprints. I wonder, when I look at these prints, what the beach would look like if we left it alone. If it were simply wind, rain and the ocean giving shape to the sand, it might look very different indeed. It might be a beach of a different language entirely.

The first indication of Poppy's thawing was the call outs. She didn't want anything to do with us, until we made to leave the room, and then she would call out. A specific tweet, projected, definitely a question. 

Here, where there are no dogs and she has run of the flat, she has no second thoughts about following us out of a room. She'll call out, and if an answer isn't coming off she goes. 

She still calls for J, but for me she started to make much softer, meeker, sleepy little pips, which begin as my face is turning away, before my feet have moved. Warm little fuzzy squeaks which cuddle my heart snug.

In the last couple of weeks she has come to discover that fingers, too, can be used as scratching posts, are in fact capable of doing all the scratching themselves, and allowing me to so scritch her funny little feathered head until she croaks from bliss. She'll contort her head impossibly to get the best angle, pause to nibble at me furiously before slamming her wee forehead down on my knuckle, ready for the next scratch. 

She brings me such delight, such delight.

I do so miss the dogs. Dogs and birds provide the same, immensely uncomplicated love, but differently. I can wrestle with a dog. I can chase a dog around the table then touch their tails. I can curl up with a dog and feel the warmth of comfort. A love you can wrap your arms around. 

I saw three owls today. One was white thread on a black singlet, grey tie dye at the bottom. It didn't get on my bus. The second was on t-shirt, this a sort of rose and hibiscus hue, the owl in black paint. The third owl was on a canvas tote bag, and also in black paint.

While they were not identical images, they were siblings in design and size, the owl with eagle ears and enormous round eyes.

It was the same owl, just looking out different windows. 

You Must Learn

A default assumption of mine is that I know what's going on in my head. Any particular malaise, energy, flavour that comes on, I can usually attribute. That article I read connected to that ad I saw connects with a comment I misheard. Hopes were deflated. A small triumph. The tea was good. It's been a roiling year.

As such, I don't keep tabs on this assumption, and as a result there are periods such as the here and now, in which my lapse in attention has gone on so long that I've only just noticed these turbulent moods and quick rages and honestly can't trace the roots.

I was very depressed late last year. Circumstances changed, and I don't know that the depression went away, so much as I became distracted by those changed circumstances. When my adaptation was sufficient to settle, I moved to Sydney and smashed my New Circumstances KPI right through the desk.

There's nothing familiar here. I've had to learn my way around a new city, one which I have no sense of geography for. I've no idea where what suburbs are located in Sydney. A new home which means learning the home necessities of where the nearest supermarket is, what's available where and when, what can't be found within walking distance, when not to go out the front door. A new climate; fuck subtropical weather patterns fucking what. A new home, I mean, learning how to close the shower door without smashing it, not to step on the loose stones, getting used to the sound of the buses, where's the best place to put the mugs. A new job which means learning absolutely everything from the ground up in a field I've never worked in or taken personal interest in while trying to balance my RSI with being able to sleep at night and still do my own thing.

The brain is a sponge, and it soaks up information! Right?

The sponge is full.

When your whole environment is an exercise in learning there is no fallow time, nor any fallow space. It's not a question of balancing things so I don't get overwhelmed; I am already overwhelmed and all that's left is for me to manage that.

Social media. Gone. Done. Might dip my toe in various sites for a minute a day, but that's all. Some stimulation had to go, and what time I spend online is one of the few things I have control over, so it went. Without announcement, and without planning. It happened before I was conscious of it. The knock on being I'm finding the idea of anything social to be daunting right now. If something is close to home I can be brave, because I know I have a bolt hole. But if it's further than walking distance I start to get a little wild-eyed and teeth-bared.

As always, I'm frustrated by the conditions imposed by my mind, the limitations that attempting to retaining some form of stability places upon my activities, and the apologies I owe to people because of this.

But then, the tired and far-seeing part of me that sometimes almost sounds wise is aware that this, too, is but a distraction. When I've learned what I need to know, there'll be nothing left but the wet wool blanket.




Poppy just dropped from my head to the keyboard and is now attacking my fingers while I type. The sombre and serious mood evoked by this topic has now been shat on. Three times already. Little fucker I AM TRYING TO TYPT GIVE ME MY FINGERS BACK wait no, she doesn't want to fight she is demanding head scritches.

I CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS ow that one hurt!

I guess it's not all bad, heey.

s

(That last 's' is from Poppy.)

Dream Drool

The last two nights I have had such cruel dreams. Because my dreams are so far from the norm they are always semi-lucid, I am never unaware that this is a dream even though I never quite gain full control over events. Probably the writer in me has too much respect or expectations of the narrative. A wasted faith. The narrative of a dream is shoddy at best.

There was such abuse, cruelty. It was bullying, a word which will always bring to mind, first, the school yard. This is a dangerous distraction. Worse bullying happens much, much later. I was the victim, and I watched the victim, and so experienced simultaneously the terror of being targeted, hunted and toyed with, and the helpless empathy of the audience unable to intervene. I don't want to remember the details. Only that when I woke, even I found the dream to be out of character for my treacherous sleeping mind.

Today I had the fate of all souls. Some green vials, for the pure. Blue for the good. Red for the mean. And there was so much red. I had to decide how to disperse these colours over the course of history. The first, simplest model was to release them one at a time: green first, then blue, and then red over took all the lights in the cube. There was no way to recover from this. We'd distract ourselves, hiding in folded pockets in buildings for which there was no physical space, while the people whose souls we were determining went about their primary school graduation parties. I tried mixing the colours, all at once, but there was too much red. There just wasn't a way. The cube of light always ended red.

Helpless. I had the power to decide the fate of the world, but was unable to change a thing. 

City Unknown

There's something in the Moreton Bay and Port Jackson fig trees which line the streets and parks of Sydney, some shuttered tension which, while still, is not waiting. A motion that is unaware of its stasis. As though these trees, with a sprawl of roots and shapes that can only be described as tendons and sinew were frozen mid-pour. All thick dark leaves, waxen and lush.

When I think of Malaysia I always recall the threat of the green. There is no stopping the growth, it overflows and erupts and encroaches and yet, the whole country carries on living perfectly functional ordinary lives as though no one has noticed the floral occupation. Sydney emulates this luscious creeping.

Then there are the frangipanis, which don't seem to know how to stop blooming. I can't relate to these flowers. They are, to me, sugar and marzipan, perfect replicas on the pages of a Woman's Day birthday cake cookbook. Yet here they are, lying crushed on the footpath, as if it is not an atrocity. The air is always thick with their joy, and it limns that sublime salt crush with rich smiles.

Magpies. They're half dressed here, having started the day wearing only their white hoods and not the accompanying cape. Other than this there is no difference in their carriage or attitude, yet this one, small, irrelevant thing unsettles me each time.

The streets twist and turn. Melbourne is a wonderfully forgiving grid, with main thoroughfares clearly marked by the presence of trams. Sydney, Sydney is, I think Sydney sneezed and ruined the topography, geography, cartography. I've never had a sense of direction, not in either side of the equator, but straight lines and landmarks have always served me well. Not here.

Melbourne now should be lovely crisp days, fog sneaking around in the mornings, cool evenings and turning leaves. My body expects this, and is flummoxed by the wet season. This is not the time of year for rain, and yet.

It isn't yet two weeks. I will learn to swim with these new currents. Eventually.

Too Much Men

Last night we watched Noah, a film that fails spectacularly in all aspects. I've never made any sort of religious study so I can't comment much on the liberties it took with the source material, but I'm sensitive to storytelling, and it was a spectacular pile of confused asshattery. I'm honestly not sure what point they were trying to make, and harbour the horrible suspicion that the whole shitfest was in fact an exhibition of the Nobility and Tragedy of Manpain. That while making Noah a complete shitstain they were putting his manpain up on a pedestal and asking the audience to bow before it because there is seriously nothing greater in the world than manpain. Not all the explicit violence against women. Fuck no. It's about men, specifically cast as white men, and their manpain.

They could have written the story so many different ways, but this is what they chose. And I've had it up to hear with the Tragic Hero's Manpain.

This morning, it was men being oblivious and privilege-ignorant online. As it always is. That's not new. That's never new. It's never absent either. I can't even be bothered highlighting the specific incidents because it'd be like picking out grains of sand on the beach. Most of the time I can ignore it, because all who haven't lived the heteronormative male life learn to ignore it. That or drown. But I can't do it all the time. Sometimes, I just need to get away from it, the same way I try to get away from sand before I get worn down by sandblasting.

The book I'm currently reading, The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolaño, is wonderful. I really enjoy his writing even if I do pop out the end of his books somewhat bemused. This book hasn't disappointed me thus far. Yet, when had my cup of tea and settled on the couch, opened to the bookmark and started reading, all I saw were men. For a couple of chapters, nothing but men. Not even a waitress. They weren't engaged in any overt misdemeanours of privilege, other than the fact that they were there, not a single woman anywhere, because only men and what men do are worth of attention.

Constantly consciously deciding not to be bothered by the fucking patriarchy is exhausting. It really is. Those times I decide I shall be bothered require admitting and giving voice to my anger, which is also exhausting.

This so called progressive Western culture is exhausting.

And guys, I don't hate you.

I hate what you've internalised and are unwilling to even consider critiquing. I hate that your instant reaction is to say, "Yeah, but what about men-". I hate that you talk over the top of me. I hate that you hear me, but don't listen, and barely even consider.

I know what's internalised can be addressed and amended, because I have had to do it with myself, and am still doing it, and will never, in fact, get to a point at which I can say I'm 'done' and it's all fixed.

I know if I can do this, you can too.

It's your callous refusal to try that I hate.

Splort

My unconscious plagiarised both Pacific Rim and Halo, and there was-

Wait, remember that other dream? That dream in which I was part of some massive intergalactic military fleet and there was a massive intergalactic and interspecies war going on – pretty much just riffing off Halo – and I was an officer on some grand battleship somewhere in the outer rings, with some special fancy dignitaries needing pampering while on board and me being the last person to piss the captain off so getting that duty, and running around trying to do I don't even know what when a massive alien battleship dropped into space right next to us. Massive. Standing by a window watching it glide past, taking whole minutes, and my ship wasn't exactly wee. This was deep shit. We had to get a message to fleet command or Earth or whatever, and warn them that the aliens were here, and being the last person to piss the captain off for some reason this rather important task was my responsibility and...and why the fuck, this far in the future, is Microsoft Outlook being used? For intergalactic communication? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think I could find the appropriate position-based email account to send a message to? Was I 100% certain that most of these accounts were monitored? Captain shouted someone's name at me, to email them, and sudden onset dyslexia screwed that up. Also my first message was something like "omg we're fucked" which when I told the captain just got me in more trouble as it wasn't useful and I had to send another email.

And then there was that dream that was riffing Pacific Rim, with kaiju coming up out of somewhere and being shit, being utterly shit. Some people were special super soldier x-men type people with special powers made for dealing with the kaiju, and I was one of them, although I don't remember what my power was, just that it's hard to look after a wetlands exhibit with all the animals AND slay kaiju at the same time. I remember being underwater. I remember being pretty awesome. I remember that it was established there was one giant kaiju which, if eliminated, would solve all our problems. I was sent to slay this kaiju. The kaiju in question was the sun. The fucking sun. It was a blue network of nodes, with a small gold segment in the middle. My ship was a special shipperson designed just to trump gravity and, you know, the sun being the sun, so I could get inside an just...turn off the gold bit. Which extinguished the sun. Completely. And me and the shipperson, we just turned around and started on our merry way back to Earth, patting ourselves on the back for a job well done because we'd totally just saved the world, while the other me, the me that can't help but critique the fucking narratives of my dreams even as they're unfolding, is stomping and yelling all what the fucking hell did you just do? You extinguished the sun? THE SUN? Just killed all life in the solar system?

And then there was this morning's dream which was totally just copying Game of Thrones with the five bazillion various parties involved in machinations and manipulations in order to gain more power, land, resources, kingdoms, etc, treehouses and magic trains and women with poisons and kings who are really fucking dumb, I mean really. I'm some sort of conscientious objector, or some other faction which has no interest in gaining power, nor do I appear to be championing any party over the others. My sole purpose appears to be to sabotage the lot of them. All of them. I'm some nazgul banshee made of quicksilver and smoke. I kidnap kings. I foil queens. Eventually, everyone becomes aware of me, and that none are able to outwit me, and thus they all give up their silly games and just settle down and let people get on with things. For a while. They meet behind my back, in someone's mother's house. Quietly. They think it is a secret, but it isn't. I waltz in as they're discussing how to displace me, usurp me. It never works. All this, and I have a sick budgie. I can control kingdoms, but the store attendant won't listen to me when I tell them I have a sick budgie.  I'm not elegant dealing with the crime lord because I don't have time to make the story perfect, I have a sick budgie. 

Unconscious is writing shit fanfiction, clearly. 

The Evolving Idea of Home

A year after J & I staggered in the front door after our vagabond days and all our stuff, items, things have been loaded on the back of a truck and are headed north, to the new nest.

The family home has never changed. My whole life, the family has lived in this square house of wood painted white and a corrugated tin roof which gives wonderful voice to the rain. This room, which catches the afternoon sun and is just horrendous in summer, has always been my room, even when I haven't been in it. Chances are, it always will be. 

We've never moved. Not once. It's only recently that I've come to realise this isn't the norm. Most people move at least once as a family unit, then move out and don't boomerang back quite as often as I have. These lovely old gum trees and the soft rush of the wind through them is such an anchor. The way the floorboards creak is an old familiar voice. My idea of home is rooted hard into this one place, this kitchen where for over thirty years we have eaten so many meals. 

I made a good nest in Fairfield. Scotland let me make a marvellous nest, to the point where I do consider some idea of home to have permanently come to rest there. Something about understanding the currents of an ordinary life in what was once an unknown place. Something about feeling comfortable, about being allowed to be comfortable.

Ideas change, however, and while this house will always be 'Home', the day that J moved to Sydney it became a temporary abode until I joined him. 

Places can be home, can be sanctuaries from which the world is shut out and you are safe. People can be homes as well. 

I'm really, really, really excited about my new home. 

Quick Book Verdicts

I thought I'd about finished packing my books away (this time I haven't been counting, because I really don't want to know), and just found a swathe I'd put aside because, having read them, I intended to post my impressions of them. Oh, intentions. You mean so little. Most of these books I read last year. I won't be able to do any of them justice now. Nevertheless.

Crandolin - Anna Tambour

buy :: author

Tambour is an exceptionally luscious, rich, textured, decadent, and enchanting writer, and this book is no exception. It is the story of a monster, which takes the form of a stain found on a page in an ancient cook book, and for which time is not linear, or acknowledged. It spans ages, this story, myriad lives in myriad cultures and walks of life. It is a thick, sumptuous affair that I found incredibly hard to withdraw from, much like treacle. Beyond this, I honestly don't know how to explain this book to you. Like a spell, it affects without letting you understand how. So very incredibly recommended.

Under the Glacier - Halldór Laxness

buy :: author

Purchased in Reykjavík after experiencing how very exalted he is in this City of Literature. He's a Nobel Prize winner, and widely translated with English copies of his works available in nearly all bookshops there. This I selected as it is blurbed by Susan Sontag as being "one of the funniest books ever written." And it is, although a very precise sort of funny which comes from being an outsider of a culture's geographical and religious history, and having only a passing understanding of how this history shapes a nation and such a people. It is one surreal and absurd event after another, with structured religion befuddled by the organic beliefs of those who live under the Glacier. Curious characters, a landscape that didn't require my own memories to be evocative, a bemusing tale. Worth reading.

A Wrinkle in the Skin - John Christopher

buy :: author

I've already established a gobsmacked love of Christopher, and this book met those expectations. Brutally. Here, a massive shift in the continental plates changes the world, the shapes of the land, moving the seas and so completely destroying all infrastructure and civilisation. Following Cotter, who lived on in of the Channel Islands at the time, this book explores the various ways in we (well, the English) adapt to or fall apart when presented with the end of civilisation. It's harrowing, brutally honest and never looks away. Refreshingly minimal in sexism as well. Left it wide-eyed with horror and so excited at having read something so incredibly perfectly well crafted. Worth reading for the sake of it, also as an example of sparse and effective story telling for writers.

The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham

buy :: author

Okay, my advice to you is don't read these two books back to back. In fact, don't read apocalypse books by older English writers back to back. Ever. At all. Your world view will cop a beating and you'll be left wandering around asking what the point is, we're all going to die horribly anyway, humanity is doomed, etc, etc, etc. In this one, something seems to take up residence at the bottom of the oceans, and from there, shit goes from bad to incredibly fucked up to someone is going to be extinct by the end of this. Just like Christopher, is powerful, sparse, and doesn't ever avert its eyes. I loved it, and I won't be reading anything by either Christopher or Wyndham for a long while yet. That's quite enough.

Rant - Chuck Palahnuik

buy :: author

I've always loved Palahniuk's work, so didn't fight too hard when J insisted insisted insisted I read this. As much as I feel that Palahniuk is something of a one-trick pony in that I know exactly what I'm getting in any story of his, he's an incredibly talented pony, and that trick is fucking amazing, and even so, even so, this, this, is just...wow. WOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT. It is a masterpiece in which he subverts the narrative and the reader over, and over. I just. You know, with all the reading, writing, and editing I've done I think I have some qualifications backing me up when I say this is a work of genius. The ways it can be read, interpreted, are manifold. It left me open-mouthed with astonishment and J going "You see!? You see?!" I just. Wow. WOW. No, I can't actually tell you anything else about the book. Much like Crandolin above, it defies easy summation. Read it. READ IT.

The Honey Month - Amal El-Mohtar

buy :: author (Ebooks, ey?)

Full disclosure, I am friends with and love this woman to bits. The concept behind this book is simple; she sampled a different honey every day for a month, and wrote a piece based on that. That she managed to sustain production every day for a month is amazing. That all her pieces remain fresh, individual and plump is incredible. There are fables, poems, vignettes, heart-break, joy, sadness, homes found and lost. She walks through these narratives. Her prose is wonderful and breath-taking, which is what happens when poets write stories. A rich, wonderful and warm collection. Just like honey.

Decay Inevitable - Conrad Williams

buy :: author

Full disclosure: I am friends with and love this man to bits, and have a long history of babbling delighted about his writing. This book is sneaky, in that it begins quietly, ordinarily, to the point that I forgot I was reading horror and expected crime, but the horror creeps in softly, and then, not so fucking softly. Amid all the "Oh shit oh shit oh shit-" is a truly warm and loving relationship, which I've rarely encountered in horror. The apocalypse plays second fiddle to the personal.

I really hope I don't find any more books just lying around. Oh, what do you mean I can't have that many tags? GRRRRR.

The Text is Saturated

The original plan was to wait until I had work before joining J up in Sydney, but, well. I really like him. And it's been three months. And fuck that noise.

This whole expedition has not been as organised as anyone would have liked. Winging it. It has been completely wung. To the point where I didn't know how much notice I had to give work, checked the HR policy and discovered that if I wanted to be in Sydney by the end of the month I'd have to give my notice that very day. Big step like that, I like to be psychologically prepared. I wasn't. It was a rather wide-eyed day.

Post like this should be about beginnings. About everything I'm looking forward to, and anticipating, and the new shape my future seems to be taking on. But, there's that word. "Should."

I've worked for the Victoria Police for over eight years. Although I've changed roles and positions, I have always worked with the crime reports themselves. I read the narratives of what happened, I read the dossiers of people in regular contact with police, I read detailed statements, I read charge summaries, I listen to 000 calls, I watch interviews, I look at photos of crime scenes and photos of injuries.

Every day.

I remember, all the way back in 2005, when I first started, how incredibly confronting this was. A deluge of trauma, fear, hurt and pain. All of it laid out in objective, unbiased terms. Date, time and location. Realising how easy it is to enter a home. Processing my first rape report. My first child incest report.

This was, is, paper. It's just information. No contact with the persons involved, not even the police members.

That wasn't distance enough. I'm a reader and a writer. A life time of training has my mind honed to extrapolate the lasting impact of every crime, and I couldn't stop it getting under my skin. You can't, I couldn't, pretend it was fiction. Empathy can be a right arsehole at times.

But a job is a job. I got used to it. There were always reports that would sink into me, sit in my gut like churlish poison, but when years go by it all becomes familiar furniture. I learned how to turn the volume down.

Last night, talking with mum about I don't remember what and I don't remember how it came around, but she said she'd never understood how I could tolerate the work I did. Sometimes I can't, I said. Sometimes the anger that is simmering rises up and I'm furious, unable to speak from the fury.

Maybe it's a good thing you're resigning, she said.

And that sunk into me to sit with the anger.

This morning I read an interview transcript that made me sick. Then I read a collection of statements that forced to get up, walk away, lock myself in a toilet cubicle and do nothing for a while. The subconscious knows it doesn't have to be resilient to this siege of trauma anymore, and the walls have come down.

Sitting here in my last week working for VicPol, my growing impatience and refusal to compromise on social justice issues, on issues of sexism, gender discrimination, homophobia, racism, misogyny, ableism, classism, all the fucking -isms...you know I've never been quite sure where that comes from. A lot comes from my own experience, being as I tick various oppression boxes, but I've never...I'm not...these personal things don't feel as though they're equal in balance to the anger.

When I think about all that I've read over the course of 8 years I understand where the anger comes from.

And it's time to leave.

Maybe, after this, I'll have the space in my heart to







I don't even know how to finish that sentence.