The Books of Yesterday, Messing With You. Still.

My desk is against some book cases, as if I can't have a window, a wall of books provides ample static life and colour. This time, I was looking at the spines of my olde Dragonlance books, omnibuses and anthologies, cracked from being reread more times than any other book I have ever owned.

And it just occurred to me, wondering if I related more to Kit or Laurana, that the reason these books caught me in the first place, more than the dragons or the fantastic and impossible landscapes, was Tanis Half-Elven. 

At first read, I had a significant crush on him. Because he was half-elven, and as a girl I wasn't immune to the glamour. He was also biracial, and bullied, discriminated against and ostracised for that, and I think that there is the first time I had seen my own story in fiction. 

I'm not twelve anymore, and Tanis is to me now one of the more irritating characters, suffering from an understandable overabundance of self-pity which never pays respect to the true complexity of an identity born of rejection and defined by what it is not. 

I could champion this as an example of how "inclusive" the speculative genres are, that I could find myself reflected in them as a child. But seriously, come on. As a twelve year old girl the only could-be-interpreted-as representation of myself I could find in all the books I devoured was a white older man of a made-up Uber-Aryan-Magic-Race, who wailed, found some dragons and then got intimate with eville gods. Then wailed some more. Seriously, Tanis is super annoying. 

Of course it wasn't a straight projection into Tanis, being as he was an older white man and as I was a hormone-struck straight child I was often torn between wanting to marry him and live happily ever after, and wanting to be him. Of course this meant that my relationship with his relationship with his "half-sister" and fully elven Laurana was equally as conflicted, being as I wasn't sure if I wanted to be her, in order to marry Tanis and live happily ever after, or loathe her utterly, for being fully elven, fully accepted and completely belonging to her elven culture and elven family and she was also a royal princess and she and Tanis weren't actually related by blood (much), and she was essentially everything I could never be as these were things that were set in motion at birth, and could not be altered. 

Conversely, my relationship with Kitiara, Tanis's eville human lover who was a bad influence and constantly led him astray and broke his heart, was fine. I admired her for being confident in herself, in what she wanted and how she was going to get it. She could do much better than Tanis, in my opinion, and did. (Dalamar is the subject for another post.) I was in awe of her, wanted to be her but knew that also wasn't ever going to be the case because dude, no one kicks that much arse unless they're fictional.

This rather binary dichotomy of the conflict between the two races in Tanis's blood being embodied by the conflict between his two rather polarised lovers is telling. There is never any suggestion of reconciliation and harmony; Tanis must chose one, and in doing so also align his morality. 

So Tanis gets his pure-blooded elven princess and Kitiara dies a horrible death and I wonder why sometimes my view of the world is a little off kilter.

I'm glad the biracial kids of today have the books of today. 

Represent and respect.

Swings & Roundabouts

One thing both fatigue and depression do exceptionally well, individually, is negate my ability to love. If there is an off switch, they're the only things that have access to it. There are plenty of days I step outside knowing I'll have to go through the motions because I trust – I must – that it will return. Let none of my relationships suffer for what is the consequence of an internal battle.
As a result, one of the best heralds of an upswing is that switch being flicked again, and the love gushes out everywhere. It smothers that damn budgie, leaves J mewling on the couch and me sitting here, looking at the ordinary lives into which I'm allowed to view on social media, and just loving you. There are so many extraordinary people in my world, I've a bounty no thief can steal.
So, let me love you, now, while the ability is with me and my heart beats strong. To be alive is a gift and a torture, but it is you who make it worth living. 

$30 for 20 minutes

The memory washed in with the warmth; first through my nose, down my throat to rest cozy in my lungs. My cheeks are next, as the only thing that can be done with arms full of clean washing fresh from the dryer is to bury my face into that soft, comfortable warm pile, and hug it to my chest. Let it warm my bones.

It was getting last night's tea towels out of the dryer that was my first waypoint for a standard housekeeper's day in Ullapool. First came the cleaning of toilets, wiping of windows, incessant mopping and buffing; interspersed by dashes to the laundry in the little country garden out back to switch the loads over. Most of the time it was bloody cold, because a Highland summer is a wonderful thing, but not a particularly searing one. After having my hands immersed in cold waters, grabbing all the towels out and flomping myself over a bench and them was the purest of delights. I was overly fond of them, in a weird way. After all the weird stretching and bending and scrubbing, being able to stand still and methodically fold the same square of fabric in the same fashion until the pile before you is a pile no more was peaceful. It did not involve other people's bodily fluids or uncomfortable strenuous activity. Just nice warm hands. The folding of the tea towels also indicated breakfast time. We'd fold them, have them sorted into their colours, and drop them into the kitchen on our way to the staff hut. Lovely cup of tea with the sound of the village waking up and the first ferry coming in from Stornoway.

I don't miss housekeeping. But I do miss Scotland. 

Self-care in Social Justice; Ableism in Activism

I started writing this post a couple of days ago. Enough has happened in the world in those hours between then and now for my approach to go from one of calm and hopefully usefulness, to fury.

Some people can sustain rage. I'm not one of them. Anger lights me up like a burning oil slick, and the smoke fills my lungs and clouds my eyes. Anger consumes me from within, and unfortunately comes with pronounced physical deterioration as well as emotional. It could, with some stringent control, be channeled into some sort of constructive output, but most of the time I do not have that control, and it's probable that I never will. It simply isn't the relationship that anger and I have.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I need this post. So, onward, Here is the mild introduction I had already composed:

A year ago, maybe more, I was trapped in the endless scroll that is the tumblr dashboard. You know; your finger is starting to hurt from all the scrolling past endless pictures of owls and sharks but there just might be something really good coming up next, it just doesn't end, so you keep scrolling. In amid all the pretty dross was a small text post. I thought I'd bookmarked it, but apparently not. I can't remember who the author was, and they've probably changed their tumblr handle by now. 

It was a small, simple thing, simply commenting that the author felt there wasn't enough advice or resources to promote mental self-care for people just beginning to dip their toes into the world of social justice and activism. That first foray can be galvanising, but at the same time incredibly disheartening. Learning of all the wrong in the world, that exists in our ordinary mundane lives, is crushing. Comprehending how much struggle there is, and how much more there needs to be, and how little change has come about can make everything seem futile. 

And I thought, "Yes." 

It was a thought that had been circling the upper stratosphere of my mind, not yet any thing more than a few confused wisps, nothing I could articulate even to myself until this small post gave me the words I was seeking. 

I thought I was the weak one. 

And here is the continuation, no longer mild, written in rage.

The world is a horrible place full of injustice, cruelty, intolerance and wilful ignorance. If you choose to exercise compassion and empathy, if you choose to care about the world beyond your own sphere, then you will get hurt. It's unavoidable. If you choose to invest yourself into improving the world, you'll learn how deeply entrenched the inequality is, how invested in maintaining the status quo your opponents are, and your hope will take a battering.

You'll end up becoming intimately acquainted with despair.

How deeply you're affected will depend on your position in society, your own methods for processing stress, and myriad other diverse factors, but you will still feel it.

It never stops. The victories in social justice a few and far between whereas the demonstrations of inequity are countless. Your initial enthusiasm and passion will wane and wilt, and along with despair you will also come to understand helplessness.

If you're at all like me -- having been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder being just the beginning -- then you're going to burnout and burnout fast.

I look at the people who are engaged in the same fight, who have been fighting for longer than I have, and fight harder, and give so much more of themselves - engaging total strangers in a debate which is aggravating and upsetting if only because it might, later, teach them something. Putting themselves out into the public sphere and taking all the slamming that comes with that. Their anger sustains them, is fuel for the pyre they're building for this broken biased system. Protests, rallies, marches, petitions, High Court injuctions, volunteering, public speaking, fundraising, cold calling--

And I, I have to flee from social media because the noise of the news is soul-destroying.

If I don't, then depression will take over and do away with me anyway.

Suey Park is an Asian American activist I particularly admire, and has spoken much upon the topic of ableism in activism. So much that I'm not going to find any direct quotes, you can just check out her twitter account. She has often pointed out that the industry (for lack of better word) of activism is based upon the principles of labour laid out by a patriarchal and imperial system, the same system we are trying to dismantle. The value and worth of the work you do is measured against external criteria determined by what is best for the economy; not the individual.

I have to admit, after comparing my efforts to those I follow and admire, there's a wonderful feedback loop of inadequacy that I find myself tiredly trotting around. I can't go to a rally, it'd knock me flat for a week. I can only extremely rarely engage strangers in debate because it drains me intellectually and emotionally to the point of, again, being incapacitated. I can't even work a full time job without falling apart. It's not hard to see why I find Suey's stance appealing. She works with such diligence, with the long game in mind, and knows that the harder she works, the more people will target her with abuse and vilification. Yet she manages to keep on because she advocates for herself, managing her own anxiety and respecting her own borders, and working to meet her own benchmark, not what activist culture holds as 'enough'.

These years of illness have been good practice at advocating for myself and my own wellbeing, but it is still an act that does not come naturally. I could not stand up and say, "It's okay to step back, take a break, and recharge. It's okay." Someone else had to go first, so that I could follow. You may not agree with all of Suey's views, I don't, but the fact is that she constantly highlights the ableism in activism, which led to me giving myself permission to take care of my mental health.

In my case, that means no longer berating myself for not doing more physically, nor nurturing the idea of failure that skirts around me when I shy away from the conversation in order to simply make it through the day. It means I watch the people around me, and do what I can to enable them to take care of themselves, regardless of their situation.

Ironically and disappointingly, this means drastically turning down the volume on what news of bigotry or theories on social justice to which I am exposed. I can't follow Suey on twitter. A day is enough for me to admire her insight and intelligence and determination while completely undermining and overwhelming me with all the fronts of the battle she's engaged in. I recently had to do an immense cull on twitter, moving too many important voices into a keeplist before unfollowing. I need to be able to function as a person before wading in to battle. We all do.

Ultimately, only you know if you are making excuses in order to bury your head in the ground and rest on your privilege – and we all have some form of privilege – or if you need to step back for your own well being.

Similarly, only you know if you are making excuses to keep on pushing past your tolerance point and into the realm of damage. Don't measure the worth of your actions by standards that do not take into consideration the context of your life.

The change I seek will be a long time in coming. I doubt I will see it in my lifetime. This is a long, long game.

Pace yourself.

Pu'er Tea & 甘

Yesterday, I bought some pu'er tea. I haven't been able to find my original jar of pu'er since moving, and it had been too long. Pu'er is my favourite tea, of all teas. I may treat English Breakfast with milk as the default 'cuppa', but I actively adore pu'er.

I don't know if T2 can be said to purvey the finest specimens of this tea, but it's good enough for me. That lovely whole and upward-rising flavour, the beautiful clarity of the liquor; I love to disturb the water, and watch skeins of red tea rise up in the glass.

This led to me, unsurprisingly, reading the wikipedia article on pu'er. Pu'er is indeed a unique tea among all teas, and the measuring and production of it appears to be more complex than brewing of beer. Especially considering good pu'er is considered to be aged at least 10 years. Yunnan has always been high on my list of places to go, but after reading that article, oh. I want to visit the tea factories and the Six Great Tea Mountains of old, and see the 'feral tea plantations'.

As you can see, I was having a jolly good time educating myself on the basics of pu'er production, when I came to the following:

甘 is my family name. That is my family seal.

I have never, in 33 years of reading, learning, experiencing and communicating, never, not once, encountered our name beyond the scope of our family. The fact that I can't read Chinese contributes to that, regardless, I haven't even met anyone who shares our name in pinyin. 'Gān' is Mandarin; our name is Cantonese, or Hakka, but that is the character.

I forgot how to breathe, and then promptly broke down crying. I can't articulate why. I'd guess that, somewhere in the sub-levels of my subconscious, is a plaintive and desperate need to belong. To something. Let me stake a tiny claim in any culture that predates my own experience.

And it's tea terminology. It's something I love without obligation.

I'm crying again.

ETA: The lovely Charles Tan brought this site to my attention.  It provides examples of pronunciation and accent for 甘. The variations in regional accents and dialects is obvious, even without examples from all Chinese languages. 

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.