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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Extra Hours of Uselessness

I've had sleeplessness. Sometimes brought on by a racing brain, sometimes from shift-work broken sleep patterns, sometimes even just plain ol' insomnia that doesn't appear to have any cause. Sleep and I have always had an inconsistent relationship.

The last couple of years sleeplessness hasn't been an issue (which let me take a moment to say YAY). Instead fatigue has come to rule and now, while I still don't ever seem to be able to get enough sleep, I'm getting heaps of it. Without the structure imposed by core business hours, I will sleep more than 10 hours a day. Every day. Regardless of what those days may hold. It's easy to recognise that I just need more rest than most, but so far has been impossible to accept as I don't wake feeling rested and renewed. Sure, I really, really, really like sleep. Really. But this sleep is like fake sweetener, it does nothing for me, and fucked if I'm not mighty resentful at losing nearly half of the day to it. If I keep going like this, that's half my life gone. It already feels like there isn't enough hours in the day without sleep getting greedy.

Waffling on a bit. Brain is mighty woolly.

The night before last I just didn't sleep. At all. It wasn't anxiety driven, brain wasn't chewing over anything, heart wasn't stewing, had had a single cup of tea that morning, no sugar beyond the afternoon, easy exercise during the day. My body just didn't feel like powering down, and while I wasn't pleased to watch the small hours become larger hours, the frustration and annoyance that usually comes with sleeplessness didn't feel like playing, and mostly I just listened to podcast fiction between attempts to lie still and breathe slow.

Hell, I actually felt alright when my alarm went off, and the only reason I didn't go to work was because I knew the instant I got out of bed and started doing, that would change.

Fibromyalgia and RSI management requires sleep be respected. The meatsack relaxes in sleep in a manner that's near impossible to invoke while awake. The less sleep you get, the less time the nerves and muscles have to recuperate, the inverse result being that I simply get really fucking sore. And dumb. But mostly sore.

Fuck I'm waffling so much. So very dumb.

Anyway, I figured I'd sleep just fiiiiine last night, because my body's reaction to "not enough sleep" is "HIBERNATE FOR THE NEXT WEEK ALRIGHTY!!!!!!!!!"

And I didn't.

Annnnnnd it's actually really weird. This is not even close to the default behaviour of my body for the past few years, and I'm well and truly out of practice in managing sleeplessness, if my old methods would even apply.

And. And. And. I honestly can't remember what the point of this post was. Other than maybe just leaving a record for myself? Um?

I think it might have been to do with the fact that if I'm letting my body sleep as much as I want I lose too many hours being unconscious, but if I'm not getting enough sleep then I haven't gained any time at all because my mental faculties are – herein demonstrated – shitclogged and I'm so full of aches and fatigue all I can really do is sit and stare at nothing in a daze before gently keeling over onto a pillow that never feels comfortable and still staring at nothing in a daze.

I think it might have been something to do with betrayal, in that my default attitude toward my body is resentment, fury and contempt that it sabotages my capacities and abilities across the spectrum, and then this, whatever this is, comes along like a rogue planet as if to say, "You thought I was talented before, now check this out!"

I think it might have been better crafted. Nuanced. Actually a smooth, interesting reading experience. But this is the exact result of all this body betrayal. A whole lot of flibbertigibbet.

Man, I feel like I'm gonna chunder.

Have a kind day, yeah.

Island of Wings - Karin Altenberg

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This book came to me at the Ullapool Book Festival, during which the B&B I was working at was packed full to the brim of authors, editors and publishers. The café was full of book talk. The upstairs lounge was left in an immense disarray every night, as it appears genre writers and literary writers are much the same in their ability to drink and debacle when left unsupervised in large groups.

Karin Altenberg was one of the guests, and I attended an interview with her based solely on the subject of her latest book: St Kilda. The timing was serendipitious. I'd just been there, and still had the ghosts of gannets in the corner of my eye.

It's a beautifully written book. I deliberately let it sit a while, so my memories of the island were not so close, but Altenberg herself has visited the island, and lived for a while on a Swedish island, and there is some intangible but instantly recognisable truth in her prose which captures the essence of island life. That even if you have no contact with the sea, being neither fisher, hunter, sailor nor swimmer, it rules your world with an indifference and benevolence that is at once comforting and horrifying.

This is the story of Elizabeth MacKenzie, wife of the minister Neil MacKenzie, who took it upon himself to save the poor souls of St Kilda. She arrives on this island pregnant with her first child and discovering that no English is spoken, only Gaelic, is completely isolated from everything she has known.

Altenberg spoke of the extensive research she had done prior to writing this book, as there is plenty of historical documentation and correspondence regarding the minister's time on the island. I recall quite strongly that, in all the accounts and letters and records and diaries, she found only two mentions of Elizabeth MacKenzie. One saying she served tea, the other a passing comment on her appearance.

"The forgotten women of history," Altenberg said.

What develops in the pages is a rich narrative full of that which is unspoken, of being trapped in vast spaces and finding peace and strength in being the stranger. It is at once heart-wrenching, both Elizabeth's tale and the circumstances of the people of St Kilda, and uplifting. The island, unforgiving as it is, is a singularly stunning place. A perfect combination of "oh heavens no I wouldn't want to live as the St Kildans did or be so chokingly isolated like Lizzie," and "Perfect wilderness, I want to walk those slopes again." There is no moderate space within St Kilda, and that is how the lives of those who live on her are shaped.

We'll never know who Elizabeth MacKenzie was as a person, never know a thought that passed through her in the long dark winters or the idyllic summers. She's two short sentences in all of history.

It could be that the Elizabeth that Altenberg has summoned to the page is completely inaccurate, and we'll never know. But what Altenberg succeeds in doing is writing of this overlooked woman with respect, warmth, and an understanding that, when reading of her plight and all her trials, is a necessary emolliate for a reader stricken by empathy.

I love everything about this story, even as I despair the historical events which bracket it.

Verdict: Most excellent.

A Little Story

For once, my unconscious was kind. She was crawling up my leg when I woke, and I knew it was her. No flailing and slapping in a frenzy of "WTF IS THAT?!"

I don't know how long she'd been trapped in my room. I only discovered her when I returned from Sydney. When I broke the darkness with the bedside light she fluttered against the wall in a panic, a moth large enough to mark her impact with a shy "thud, thud." I couldn't catch her then, nor the following nights. She'd tumble down beneath my bed and there she'd remain, until the next night, the next time I turned on the light.

She was weak now. It was all she could do to climb onto the hand I offered her. Her feet were large enough that I could feel the small hooks she used to cling to my skin, the timidest of prickles. A thick wedge of a rich deep brown with only the faintest ghost of a texture, two vivid grey eyes her patches like the eyes of a storm. A fur collar like a luxurious lady in a luxurious coat.

She was so tired.

I carried her to the bath room, opened the window and let her out into the dawn.

We all have days, weeks, months, in which we're a confused and exhausted moth. I hope kindness finds you.

Later that day, as I stepped onto an escalator I looked down. Another moth, similar in size and colouring, lay against the grill like a crumpled leaf. Hands clasped, wings to the floor. Kindness did not find this one.

Disabled In The Water

Yesterday saw (after a couple of weeks of grumbling about key selection criteria) the opening salvo of job applications sent to Sydney. Exciting! I have to confess, the past month of navigating the absence of my lover has been, is, continues to be harder than I let on. The job hunt may be a hateful process, but I will go at it tooth and nail to close the distance between us.

The positions were with the public service, and at the end of the bemusingly complex online form, I was asked quite simply if I had a disability. The drop down list gave me two options: lie or dare.

I often fall into the thought trap of assuming myself to be normal. "Okay." I mean, I have a job I can do just fine, I can go out with friends, I can-

-not.

I'm part time because I cannot, can not, survive a full working week without pain and deep fatigue. My salary is so much lower than my friends and peers because of this, because I must balance my health before any sort of job advancement and stress, the fucking demon shitheap it is, can decay my wellbeing in mere minutes. That extra day off on Wednesdays I have is not really a 'day off'. Much as I like to plan to do things on that day, mostly it is used to rest. Sleep. To do nothing and use that inertia to keep the fatigue and pain in balance so I'm capable of another two days of sitting at a desk.

Whether or not to be open about this in my job hunt is a little imp of indecision and anxiety I can never quite crush. The fear that admitting I'm a lame horse will mean I'm passed over for jobs isn't unreasonable. The fear that this will see me waiting months before I can move up to Sydney is nauseating. However, if an office isn't prepare to accept my limitations, then it is not an office in which I want to work. I know this. It's the buoy I cling to.

So I chose 'dare'. 

It's the first time I've referred to myself as disabled. 

Some threshold has been crossed in my mind.

Then there was Chinese New Year (KUNG HEI FAT CHOOOOI!), and a house warming party, and a birthday BBQ, and I was all set to bounce into all three. The logistics were planned out, I had my outfit picked, I was fucking looking forward to the silliness and cackling.

Bones wrought of fatigue, a substance heavier than lead. After firing off my applications I crawled back to bed, hoping a nap would bolster me. It didn't. I didn't leave my bed until today. 

FOMO is close, but not quite the right trajectory. My own not-particularly-well-thought-out take on FOMO is that it stems more from the lack of invitation than not being present. We're adults now, I'm not being invited to events out of pity. My friends ask for my presence because they genuinely want it. That's a fine gift, and I do treasure these requests. I just can't.

Every time this happens, I think of all those passing remarks in which someone is referred to, with exasperation and a touch of disgust, as 'flakey'. That I am that person is anathema. I don't want to be unreliable. I don't want to be a bad friend. All your celebrations and achievements I want to add the happy too. In that joyous memory-making dance I want to play my part and add another thread of glee. I love your presence.

The apologies I send are weeping with penance and self-flagellation and regret, and I doubt anyone is blind to the fact that I'm not asking for their forgiveness, but my own. 

There is no way out of here. 

The Blue Fox - Sjon

Buy ::: Author Wiki

I don't know why I've always wanted to go to Iceland. Perhaps simply because it's remote and still contains wilderness in a world where that which is wild seems to be ever increasingly distant. My love affair with the island only increased upon at last visiting it, and I was excited to receive and read this book.

Being I think the second book of Iceland written by an Icelandic writer I've consumed post-visiting, and perhaps it was coincidence but both stories rooted themselves in the same era of Iceland's history, in the same manner of community. I don't know that you need to be familiar with Iceland's history to ground yourself within this story, but it doesn't hurt.

A pastor hunts a fox. The fox may or may not be a truth. A woman is buried.

And the book ends.

Did the story end? It didn't feel like it. The conclusion felt like a small cheat, to be honest. The language used is sparse and precise, painting with a few deft strokes a landscape both personal and political, topographical and mythic, across which fox and pastor traverse. But it's thin. So thin. It was almost like reading a ghost book: all the while I was enjoying those sentences and paragraphs, and the deeper story criss-crossing the twinned streams, and all the while I could see so much more this story could have been. As if the writer was a bird just skimming the top of the water, the story doesn't leave shallow water.

In doing a quick google to find the above links I saw many a review for the book on all manner of high-circulation and well regarded publications, all positive. This book has won an award. Perhaps the fault lies with me, and choosing to read it on a 40+ degree day while in a hospital room with no underwear on and the flow constantly interrupted by nurses asking me if I had all my teeth.

It's a wonderful piece of writing. It's a good story.

I just felt it could have been so much more.

As an aside: The two female characters in the story die. One dies off the page, we never see her alive, and she is well and truly painted as 'other'. The other dies on the page. Twice. In fact she doesn't just die, she's destroyed. And is also well and truly 'other'. There are no other female characters.

Getting pretty fed up of encountering this in fiction.

Verdict: Beautiful but thin.

Surviving By Increments

Given that the cool change is on its way (Avalon went from 46° to 34°!) this isn't exactly a timely post, but my brain hasn't been great in the heat. Or my computer. 

4 days of 41°+ heat. There are apparently no crops that can survive 7 consecutive days of 40°, which is a terrifyingly close reality. Apart from being very happy to be at work and hanging out in air conditioned public spaces, here's how I managed to not faint in public. 

I freaking love this parasol. Hand-painted bamboo and paper, it's light and beautiful. Bit too delicate to be open in any wind, but my goshness. It made all the difference. My aversion to direct sun on my head is akin to that of vampires. Dark hair and sun just means a head so hot I nearly burn myself scratching. Simply not having the sun on my head made the outside air far less strenuous. Umbrellas, the opaque kind, will do just as well. 

This plain little fan I bought in a temple market in Tokyo for 500¥, about $5, back in 2007. It has travelled with me ever since. When sitting in a crowded train, standing in a queue moving a touch too slow, it has been a blessing. Can't prove a negative, but I know it has been the difference between fainting or not multiple times, this morning included. Thank you little paper fan! You can usually get fans in discount shops, or Chinese grocers. 

Drinking water is a big help, but when you're sweating buckets, not quite enough. I carry a sachet of powerade around, and it has been a big help. Pity it tastes yuck, even when super weak. 

Conversely, if you don't have the cash for sports drinks, soy sauce hits the spot. No really. I ended up necking a fish yesterday. A bit intense on the tastebuds, but I instantly felt better. 

I've seen reports that the cool change had hit Geelong. The Melbourne cool change is a wonderfully traceable phenomenon. Keep an ear out. You'll be able to hear the cheers. 

Hypocrites & Trying

 
This is in my opinion a fairly low bar, and someone called me out on it. 

An incident between other parties, one I don't know well and the other being a casual amicable acquaintance. Such is the nature of online dynamics. One of those instances where, regardless of what happened, I don't feel I know either well enough to "take sides". 

Except there's no such thing as true neutrality. A lack of action is an action in itself, online and offline. Social media displays who we choose to associate with for all to see, and what the victim of any violence sees is people who choose to apologise for or justify their abuse when they look at who chooses to associate with their abuser. 

It isn't for me to get involved. I'm not that invested. It's none of my business. 

And that is how this culture of apologists perpetuates. We don't take responsibility for another person's actions, and use that to deflect attention from not taking consequential responsibility for our own. My own. This small thing, following someone on twitter, has actually been niggling at me since being given the low down. Because. Because. Because I was doing exactly what I was preaching against. But. But. But. I mean. It's nothing to do with me. I mean. Until being called out for it, and spending a minute staring out the window at work after getting back from lunch, and realising what was stopping me from nixing this association was fear of reprisal. I'll upset someone, and there may be lash back from his friends, and maybe people will then cut me out, and- 

Fear of people not liking me. I may never leave this fear behind. 

Which is irrelevant next to the trauma the victims of violence have experienced, and keep experiencing. It was easy for me to make that cut when it was one of my dearest friends crying in the police station. That's personal. It's not so easy to rock the boat when you're removed by a degree, when it's nothing to do with you. But there is no "being neutral". Letting an abuser into your life without consequence is taking a side, and if you, if I, am not prepared to take on that person and change them, then walk away. 

So I've unfollowed that person on twitter. Such a small thing, and it's something that took me most of a year to do. I've hung out with this guy. He's a nice guy. A good guy. I don't want to believe he's a rapist. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I didn't know the whole story, the facts of the incident are in dispute. In doing so, I automatically put the victim in the position of being a presumed liar. 

Some of you reading this will know who I am writing of, and not agree with me on it. You may choose to cut me off. That's okay. I'll be upset, but I do understand. That will be the consequence of my actions. I've been saying these things over, and over, and over. I've raised my voice enough; now it's time for me to actually do. 

After making this decision, and acting on it, there was this:

From a different party. I'm just going to do a quick dissection as this is a 101 fuck up. Actually I don't really need to add anything; Orange has done a fine job of of pointing out the basic tenements of victim blaming which I fell on. There's an excellent post over on Captain Awkward, here:

Some of the boldest advice in the piece is to make sure people know who the rapists & suspected rapists are and openly take sides against them. It’s the advice that is probably going to get the most pushback from MRA- types obsessed with “false accusations.” Watch for lots of appeals to fairness and privacy and “innocent until proven guilty.” Hell, I fell more than halfway into this trap myself when answering this question. Not cool, me.
In a court of law, if you are the judge or the jury, a defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s it. No one else is held to that standard. To even investigate the crime & make charges, the cops and DA have made some presumptions that so and so is guilty. As Thomas says:

Some people will say that it’s unfair to do that, to simply take the survivor’s word, to say things about people without due process.  Well, due process is for the government, to limit their power to lock people up or take their property.  You don’t owe people due process when you decide whether to be friends with them.  You don’t have to have a hearing and invite them to bring a lawyer to decide whether to invite them to a party.  And let’s be honest, most of us repeat things that one person we know did to another person we know based on nothing more than that one participant told us and we believe them.  We do it all the time, it’s part of social interaction.

So if you want to do something, take the label, plant it on the missing stair in your social circle, and make it stick.

And then:

The last section, called It Can’t All Be On The Survivors, builds on this responsibility.  Thomas calls out the total pointlessness and complete shittiness of the idea of neutrality and trying to remain friends with both abusers and their victims, another topic that has come up here  more than once.

It Can’t All Be On The Survivors

I’ve seen the following two things happen:

(1) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and people say to the survivor, “you have to do something!  If you don’t do something, who will protect the next victim?”

(2) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and the survivor yells and shouts for people to deal with it, and the people who are friendly with both the survivor and the violator shrug their shoulders and try to stay “neutral.”

What these two things have in common is that in each case, the people around the situation place all the responsibility on the person who most needs help and can least be expected to go it alone.

…Confronting people is emotionally taxing, and it often irreparably ends the friendship.  In fact, about something as serious as rape, it invariably irreparably alters the friendship.  If you believe that your friend raped your other friend, and you say, “hey, you raped my friend,” then the old friendship is gone forever as soon as the words leave your mouth.  What remains is either enmity, or a relationship of holding someone accountable, just as tough and taxing as staying friends with a substance abuser who is trying to get clean and sober.  That’s not easy.  That’s a lot of work, and most people are not up for it.

The option most people choose, because it gets them out of that, is to choose to not make up their minds about what happened…

…Just think about that.  ”Hey, you’re still friends with Boris.  But X said Boris raped her.”  ”Well yeah, but I don’t know what to believe.”  ”Well, but you know what Y said, and Y’s account was a lot like X’s.”  ”Yeah, but I don’t know what to believe.”  ”But Z said Boris violated consent, too, and that’s three people …” “Well, I’ve been friends with Boris a long time, so I kind of don’t know what to think …”  (Trust me when I tell you, folks, I’m not making that up.)

Those two excepts cleanly summaries exactly what I did in 140 characters. The nuances of intention and further background are irrelevant. Guilty of what I speak out against and pretty disappointed in myself. 

Since doing this, I've had several individuals approach me to talk about the implications behind the decision, because while this decision affects that one guy, it's not about him. There's always more to be said on this subject – false accusations do happen, people are destroyed by them – but the last few hours have been a bit full on, and I no longer have the emotional or intellectual capacity to do words/thoughts good. It doesn't matter which way social bias lies, there will always be people who take advantage of and abuse the system. However, here, now, I choose to give the victim the benefit of the doubt.

Every instance of abuse is complicated and subjective. It's nothing but grey areas, but for those of us not involved, we must accept that there is no neutrality. It's all grey areas, but we must choose in black and white. Maintaining the status quo is easy. Trying to be the change you want isn't. 

I will continue to fuck up as I try to do what is good and right. I hope I learn.

Jettisoning Dreams

It was the standard package; end of the world and you and a handful of randoms are trying to outrun the symptoms of that ending. In this case the continuing rising water. A train exploding. Too many of you in a small car trying to motor up a steep hill. 

(There is always some exhibit, some animal enclosure, that pauses the apocalypse. This time you found a dinosaur pen, and stood watching the dinosaurs, forgetting the rising water and the marauders entirely as those giants stomped about before you. The cage was far too small. They simply paced.)

Codeine to nix the pain and let you sleep sketched the details of this dream with more clarity than is usual, and you remember a flag. Made by your group of survivors to signify that not all was lost, you were a new nation and would rebuild civilisation. You, as a species, were undefeated. 

The flag was the Australian flag, but rendered red, white and black. This, it was explained, was to show that regardless of skin colour — black/white — we all bleed red, we are all the same. 

A nice gesture, you thought, except that it simplifies the idea of race to being only that of skin colour, which is insulting, and then presents that concept as a binary. Black or white, with black standing in for brown, yellow and red, so in fact being all colours not white, and white. 

After that you leave the group, and after stealing dolls, fighting rabbits and walking alone in the bush, you wake up. 

I read about, listen to and occasionally even engage in the discourse on racism in western societies regularly, and have done so for years. I'm all for replacing the current structures that govern our thinking. 

And yet, despite this, when unconscious and building a nation for the ground up, that flag is what my brain produced. What I created. Even as I analyzed and dismantled it. Nice try. But no. 

This is how deep racism runs. 

In me. And definitely in you. 

Prey

Keeping a bird, a small bird, is not like keeping a dog. I only know about dogs. With an allergy to cat hair, we never really had cats, so while I recognise some of the behaviours of cats, it's dogs I understand.

Dogs have teeth and claws and the ability to rip you open if they feel it is necessary. Most of the time it isn't. Most of the time dogs love you like no one else will. They think you're The Best Thing that has EVER happened. The best.

Birds, budgies, aren't that. They eat seeds and grain. Their defence is flight. They are prey the way dogs, cats, and indeed we humans cannot fathom. It isn't an eat or be eaten choice for them. It's simple: be eaten.

So the rapport built with a bird is slow to grow and requires patience and repetition. What you're earning in that little featherbrain is trust. Consider their size, and yours. It's entirely possible they don't recognise your hands and your face as belonging to the same entity. And you come blustering into their world and clutch at them with your big hands and they are so very small and delicate. With hot little feet, claws that curl around your finger. Soft, so soft belly feathers on the back of your hand. A heart beating out a tarantella and a beady little bird eye wide and fixed upon you.

You could break this bird with a finger. The bird knows it.

Months of patience, and repetition, and work.

And yesterday, Poppy didn't just let me scratch her cheek, she encouraged it.