a beautiful school friend and talented fashionista & designer – Giovanna Scarfo – of Dusty Petals fame sent me this package this morning.
a tres fabulous parisian box containing goods from her blog which you must visit here: dusty petals
i love and admire people who are good at what they love doing, and are passionate about it.
a lovely surprise during a ridiculously intense week. thanks Givvy. you are truly talented, which – not surprisingly – matches your beautiful nature.
who knows who i am this week.
i feel a little dumb and subdued. every time ive tried to concentrate, my mind’s glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space
and pirouetted there, absently.
i miss mark. i miss my mum. i am ridden with guilt every time i come home and dinner’s finished,
mum’s in bed with her socks on, prayers are being said
koko’s sleepy and cant get out from under the blankets,
mark’ watched the 7.30 pm project on his own. one wine glass.
little things, i think about. imagine if we had children? how abandoned they would be –
deprived, strangers, and how dirty. the amount of washing that would pile up
the growing resentment, the unwalked dog, the unloved lover.
i feel as though the balance has been lost again. i think – i must get it all back
to kill this thin, papery feeling. to stop the spinning.
take a bow.
i decided i wanted to be a writer. i decided to get a degree in Bachelor of Arts because it was deliciously vague. you can do Modern Literature and Art Theory in the morning, read poetry in the afternoon, become a philosopher / a movie critic / write a column. i majored in Creative Writing and English Literature after five years of strong coffees, sushi and back breaking reading material.
this meant that with all the writing and thinking and opinions, i wasnt sure what job i could actually get after uni. people kept telling me nobody wanted an English major. but a lawyer, or a nurse! everybody would want her. she would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would hand over scalpels, pump hearts with her bare hands, transcribe legal letters.
the trouble was, i hated the idea of serving men in any way. i wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. have my own heart pumped or at least, i wanted all my hurts to be intentional.
i don’t know who i am today. suddenly, i am very tired. very confused. feel like walking until i drop and i’d never ever have to complete the inevitable circle of coming home. but M’s there. and when i think of him, i think of the only stable being in my life.
i KNEW that something was there, waiting for me. i knew it. i knew there’d be a time things would start connecting, and there’d be pieces of string connecting that to this, all in my head – overlapping and messy, you’d trip and trip. i always thought that perhaps someday the revelation will burst upon me and i’ll see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. and then I’ll laugh and laugh, tears in my eyes, a belly hurt. and then I’ll know what life is.
i hate playing the victim role – its so demeaning; requires a lot of crying and dirty hair. i am far too vain for that, far too stubborn. plus, i’ve had too many years to get ready for this.
i realise today though, that i am also far too tired.
is it possible to be completely in awe of a stranger, just by reading his words (a blog!) and looking at his amazing photography?
why, yes.
i’ve been following Jonas Peterson for a long time now. sometimes he puts up videos of jobs that he’s recently done, or images of his personal life – his son, the birth of his second baby boy, a rubbish bin, his wife… and more often than not, it makes me cry a little. it usually happens at work, at my desk with my earphones on. so all you really see is me staring at my screen, looking like im really busy. crying to myself.
there is a ‘power’ in Peterson’s images – and power is a mediocre word to describe what it really does. you look at it and you assess the artistic achievement in it, and once you get pass the technicality, you see – well, you see … life.
its the image of his wife in black and white labour, with her hands covering her eyes, mouth frozen in mid-gasp. a bride escorted down the aisle by her mother. a wedding guest drunk off his nut, in the middle of the sprinkler dance. fleeting moments that he’s managed to capture without any bullshit fluffy complicated composition maneuver. he makes it seem that he just happened to be there. the perfect light happened to occur that split second. the pain behind eyes, the widening of it with surprise.
i just think its all very rare. especially nowadays, with everything so fake. and prompted. and set up.
click here. jonas peter. the way i see things.
sometimes, it still astounds me how lucky i am. i live with my lover, and my bestest friend. its a 24-hour pajama party, without the boy-talk. although last night, while watching Masterchef:
Me: ok. if someone had a gun to my head, and they said you had to choose one of the Masterchefs to have sex with or i die, which one would you … you know … bom chicky bom.
M: *pensive* hmmm.
Me: i find Matt Preston extremely unattractive. mine’d have to be Gary. he seems gentle. we might even cuddle afterwards.
M: that leaves me with George then. he can get on his tippity toes. *makes several humping movements* yeah… he’d love that.
living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, funniest, most clever I have ever met.
i could live in its growing countries forever.
paulina, don’t you want to get dressed?
my mother took care never to tell me to do anything. she would only reason with me, sternly, like one intelligent, mature person with another. they were always orders, posed as questions.
It’s almost three in the afternoon?
I’m writing a novel, Ma, I said. i haven’t got time to change into this and change into that.
write. 