The old woman who lived by the sea.

She had a bedroom with a window that looked out to the bay in the island, one palm tree and two moored boats. The water was always glass and had been that way since 1956, the year the wind stopped. There was no more smells of sea farers or the onion that used to waft across from the other side of the sea. The cries of the old wailing their grief to the breeze. The sounds and smells of Italy left when the wind did. Now there was only silence.

The old woman was alone on the island. 1956 had been the end to the little city that rose slowly to a summit where the old tower still stood. The quiet death had come with the last gust down from the bay of Dubrovnik where it was said the lepers had finally made their curse to the well and dammed the whole of the Dalmatian coast. Korchula with its one port and its slow traffic had been the last to go. She wasn’t alone as such; there was one other with a beard as long as the tower itself. Imprisoned there for breaking her heart, in one room and with seven hundred tins of canned meat with a window also to the sea. The cobble stone streets now had three generations of plant life pushed up beneath the cracks and the daisies someone had once planted in their window box had overtaken everything, the flowers attracted the butterflies and the butterflies the birds until the city itself had become a garden. Without wind the sound of small wings could be heard by the old woman and the bearded man every day without fail and it reminded them both of the times they had sailed in the wind to the point half way between her country and his coast.

In those days it was love that dictated the machinations of the city. Those that came, came for love those that left, left with an empty heart. She was the daughter of the mayor, the man whose power came from the fact that everyone, down to the last child and the first crone loved him. You would have loved him too, it wasn’t his eyes or his looks although both where beautiful beyond compare it was the way he could listen to the breeze and know what weather was on the horizon, the way he could see a womans hands and know that she could no longer take the pain. The way he kissed old men on the mouth with passion and without guile even though their teeth and breath had long before begun to spell their death. He was an empath and he had glorious toes.

When an affair ended in Korchula, as they do, there was a funeral, a rite which saw the youngest members of the community burn the first love letters and adolescent poetry of the grieving pair. A pyre was made and on this an effigy burnt of the two so that in letting go they could be born anew. When someone died they pulled down their house and in its place they planted a fig tree because figs were the fruit of love and good digestion. The ones left behind were moved to a new house where there was blue glass mosaics on the bedroom ceiling to remind them that it was they that were still alive and that love would come again.

Every house on the island had open windows facing the sea in all directions for the heat was terrific and every bit of wind had to be allowed passage. It was this that had saved the old woman from the sickness. When her heart had broken beyond repair of the rites of the city and the consolation of her father the most generous heart in the world, she had boarded up the windows that faced away from the bay, the windows that faced the mainland of Croatia, the windows that faced the tower of her lost love. She had not let them build a pyre and could not let go of her letters. She had a box under the chair she sat in most days and in here she kept the words he had once written to her on the long voyages he often took. He wrote about the mermaids and sea cows and dolphins and the day he saw Atlantis briefly flash beneath his boat. He wrote about love and about the memory of her body as he lay awake at night, the salted pork and the smell of other men so close that some nights they took comfort in each others arms and thought about the ones they had at home the traces of whom they still felt on their finger tips. He was never embarrassed for these moments and she loved him more for the way that he could kiss lips that weren’t hers, for she knew that all the world was full of people who are beautiful and kissable and whose bodies should know the gentleness of his touch.

TBC when I don’t have an essay to write…

what a night of emotions for once me being non-participant. little tough girl all brash and bogan revealed in all her sensitivity, godbless larry she is such an intricate little human being and my hero , only she could or would get paris hilton in a headlock and give her a swift blow to the head, managing to get a photo of it and not get charged. dont get me wrong im not into random acts of violence but well ... and then there was the girl who just couldnt understand transgender, couldnt understand R's desire to not have breasts, to be gendered differently from the way 'nature intended' ,i wanted to yell at her, but watching R's resigned patience taught me a good deal about humility. Hearing R talk about how different life was in the states where there is a larger trans community not having to explain educate negotiate the politics of it all. i hate city bars i hate seeing good people sad and watching the ignorance of those who see themselves as implicitly open minded. and that was just two conversations there was more, oh little ones, my maternal instinct nanna syndrome , protect the good ones diss the rest. bugger educating them round em up paint them black and ship em somewhere like tennant creek. that'll learn em

this country needs a fucking shake up these chicks need a fucking shake up, mammarycentriphillia
self centric
all the bullshit
girls
pha
who needs em

the light is different, like through a fine layer of wire mesh, my focus is soft and long distance. I am slow, heavy lidded, my tongue is thick and rests weighed down on the bottom of my mouth, when i have to speak i hear it from a great distance words somehow from me but not. i feel outside of myself like those near death stories that you hear, floating above surrounded by light. But then i feel inside myself deep down, way beneath the external sensations, too far to register, too far to care that the sun feels nice on my face. Its what i always thought herion would feel like minus the nausea and itching. Like sleeping, like dying, like asphyxiation.

Fitzroy, project street branding, each wall a logo neatly placed or scrawled. I am here, hear me shout my slogan at you spring. Timeless rites of consumer passage. I have art to sell. I saw your name on that last wall and that one over there. I want to call this writing, contemporary art but we grew up, you and I, on a diet of soft art, decaffeinated poetry and writings on walls of despots and demons. Vexta sister you will go on to sell coke and nike and your youthful art will make you edgy in the corporate boardroom. What happens when we are all so desperate to make our mark that we scream our jingles out bus windows and our conversations are ad breaks between the marketing campaigns and personal product placements. i am a hypocrite a cynic a crank. But if I wanted to know your name, I would ask you.

i bet buddha never had to wear shorts

post exameuphoria is easily cured. 10 minutes alone in a change room with fluro lights and swimming attire.

two options

-burka

-aerobics

hmph, the sound of a grumpy elephant

phew

i well and truly passed that exam, would say cained it but well i didnt do well as such just managed to write more than i expected about a subject i have very peripheral knowledge of but i did cain it in a very not failing kind of way.

good theres sufficient time between now and the next one to drink beer just a little.

tied up with string

well im happy, said no to a job, managed to ward off excessive guilt and now listening to the maudlin Bonney Prince whatever he is called. i love this weather im like one of those hypercolour tshirts. warm me up and change my colour. colour me happy doll. but well i want to write long and expressively about the texture of my up, but it just doesn’t translate i speak icelandic it types Bavarian. There’s a difference, well apart from the obvious.

the purpose of this post is to document that I am not ALWAYS a miserable git as this blog might infer

la la la la la la

that’s me singing

that’s also another sign

im wearing a badge too

and dancing a little jig

see how happy I can be

and im not even being sarcastic

bye

tutorials or accounts, puppets or education?

quandery not sure how u spell it but im in one. just been offered fulltime work, as an administrator in the kids puppet theatre i work for. do i not go back to uni next year ? i really really want to finish my degree. admin work bores me silly BUT its a company i beleive in, i only went back to uni because i couldnt get full time work and what if i can't get work once i finish my degree. bugger buggger buggggger. so far my phone poll is one vote to take the job. if anyone reads this thing and isnt morally opposed to communicating with me in virtual land let me know i really dont know...my head will explode in 5 minutes, 1, 2, 3,....
i breathed by the way , i think its an academic advantage to be really obviously terrified of public speaking, teacher is nice to you class is nice to you and mostly they concentrate on the perculiar shade of beetroot you are turning and marvel at just how fast someone can read, they forgive you for you inconsistencies and NEVER ask you questions. goodbye anthropology may i never hear university students say -taming the natives-without any inverted commas ever again. may they all become circus performers and study themselves.

on conversion and translation in16th-18th century

assignment 9. down
4. to go

cheerleeders are circling impatiently
for the end is nigh,
and well Nostradamus predicted there would be cheerleaders at the end of the world.
he liked cheerleaders
i dont really
they remind me of sport
but i like ends, ends are great.
all i need now is to remember to breathe in my presentation and i might live to see the end.
i might write it on my hand.
BREATHE DAMMIT

sweet people are my heros, not football stars or firemen. quiet souls with lovely hearts who make days like today better. thanks.

Man bites sheep. Monkeys in a mole heap. We are all akin to flying fish heads. Smelly and mobile.

A reactionary jesus, saint augmentatia and me. Alone at abus stop. Reactionary jesus tells me this isn’t the beginning of a joke and silicon Catholicism is the new black. Its interesting that my computer thinks jesus should have a capital. What would the capital of jesus be, Toorak? That’s one way of scaring the world into believing in you. Reactionary jesus, believes in guns, and bombs and metal objects in general that penetrate flesh and wreak havoc. The more people die, the more souls in heaven, it’s a bums on seats thing, nothing personal. Look he tells me, I know its rough but it’s the way it is these days you know, why fuck around with peaceful spiritual guidance, why build churches, why spend money on Sunday school and third world famine why not cut to the chase, kill them now save them later. Captive audience in heaven, innit. No sinnable activities on the running sheet all itinaries neatly divided into saintly and extra saintly. So, wars good, George W. is on the payroll if you know what I mean, all that toff about God being on his side was true after all, the axis of evil shit was creative license on his part, lets get this straight we have NOTHING against the muslims, this is not idealogical people. Its about productivity. The earth, mortal world whatever is , well has been underperforming. a cost benefit analysis doesn’t lie. Humankind is just a blood sucking parasite and its about time we downsized, so heres the plan. US is with us, UK is a definite maybe, Australia well I would like to say yes , great team player, GDP reasonable but well they’re a bit obnoxious, but well ok sure. The rest of the world well yeah, see ya.

at uni will study

puniversity, adversity, im adverse to the universe and all those other things i could say. im struggling on page 117 of contracting colonialism, i like that title by the way, its an obvious reference to language and sycopation and then to the way colonialism is like a disease which you catch, is transferred. changing the carrier sometimes killing them but that is cellularly resisted on all fronts.

ambivilance as resitence. are we being insightful or wishful, revolutionary or reductive. postcolonial or prescriptive. who knows. i have the holy trinity of pimples on my face, zac you recon its the chocolate. i recon its the chocolate and the very profound silence in the excercise department, lumps and bumps and blobs and wobblyness all enlarging to a degree unprecedentaly elephantile aerobics is on my WHAT I WILL DO WHEN UNI ENDS list. as well as books, drawing, oh where for art thou drawing and somehow beach, my friend who be absent. and perhaps boys, if i put it on my list it might happen.

o e.e

e.e.cummings on a train to clayton told me, quite as an aside,

"my speciality is living said
a man (who could not earn his bread
because he would not sell his head)
squads right impatiently replied
two billion pubic lice inside
one pair of trousers (which had died)"

we would be perfect for each other him and i, side by side, refusing to adequately punctuate, capitalise or mediate our emotions. we would have words beneath us and over us but never between us. we being wholey unable to take attack would attack covertly under the cover of alliteration. we would kill the sentence, reclaim the fragment and go on perpetuating a kind of sweet malcommunicado. if he wasnt dead we would be having tea. i would like that because he might read my 242 page Anthop text and make me a poem,

an anthropologist is an arse
upon which everyone has sat except a man

and i would stand there on monday, without any doubt that i had condensed postcolonial histiography in a manner befitting my intelligence.

s,mint

art and some theatre and then some art, at least the flier said it was art but what it really was was a gallery with the lights turned off. now me, i like conceptual art, contemporary, installation, challenging minimal lots of things however, an exhibition entitled, Lights Off, which was a gallery with the lights off makes me get out my step ladder and get on my weary and flatulent High Horse. all my years of fielding comments from landscape loving conservatives who asked "wheres the real art" or said "my child could do this" or "my tax dollars fund this shit" really make me hesitate in saying, get a fucking job you smarmy git and stop taking this piss. oh my high horse stinks to high heaven but sometimes opinions just happen like it or not. BUT the theatre that was mint, truly mint. in flinders st station simple and beautiful, im going to a dance on thurs. old friends switch on lights in old rooms, culture, wasnt that why i moved here. life exists in strange places, in trainstations watching the passers by who walk on and off stage unawares or semi aware or totally aware and wondering what the fuck is going on and suddenly after a long period of dialogue and invisible performers you suddenly notice them, your headphones have been telling you they were there somewhere in the crowd and then for no reason your focus narrows and there they are, two people having a strange emotional moment in the middle of the station. you might have walked past them yesterday and thought that they were just two of the inummerable people who have strange and awkward moments in trainstains everyday.

its and old friends month, i like the feeling that shared history brings. i dont have to negotiate we are just as we were and totally different. im very aware that i am not studying at all but i am also aware that i dont really care.

ahh is for aprehension

what disturbs me this week is the toothless russian man who gets angry when he thinks im laughing at him when really im smiling because i dont know what he is saying and he seems to want a response, he thinks i think he's lying, i smile, you laugh at me? stepping closer, and then he talks to the air next to me. mad, ill and toothless, i am not. im not racist like the man on tv who says , this is australia, not some other country, THEY should THEY should not. I am not like the people in the gallery i visited that look like someone painted them , beautiful, still, composed. My hair whipped up by city wind and my skirt a little torn. i am not like the other girl giving the presentation yesterday, who breathed quite effectively throughout. I am just one tired person with a lot of words to write and a feeling that there are a lot of people in the world that are not like me.