'un'-like

i have nothing to write but i have a moment to write so i am writing. Free association like that day we were out the front of the that cafe in sydney and we sat and ordered and wrote and gave each other each other's writings.

I hate it how when i write it seems so pretentious. Like writing is so unnatural to me that when i sit down and do it, no matter what comes out seems like it is someone else's voice and not mine. I never feel like my words contain the desired quality of thought that is in my mind. "I never feel like my words contain the desired quality of thought that is in my mind" - what they hell does that mean? So fucking pretentious. If i were me, and if i were good at being me, i would write the following:

I feel sticky and i need to shower

even though i have complained about the awful cold weather, i feel drained in this heat

my nephew is downstairs and i feel guilty i don't spend enough time with him when he is over

My sister disgusts me and i don't see the point in talking to her about anything to do with her health, because i know she will just lie in response, and make up bullshit excuses and waste my breath and my time

I feel sorry for my dad and my sister and my nephew.

Of late i can't be arsed to see any of my friends, and i feel as 2010 winds up, i am increasingly anti-social.

The thought of an overseas trip tickles my insides.

They are my thoughts right now, at this moment. Not recently, but just at 16:37. Unfettered, un-pretty. And unpretentious.

Travels

I'm a little scared that my thoughts aren't manifesting in artistic imaginings and musings of theatre / dance / art. I think if i truly recount the last 6 months, since waterproof, i would be forced to recognise that my mind has changed. Or at least it has placed it's point of focus in another area which doesn't include artistry or daydreams. Or maybe it's my heart that is somewhere else.

On some foreign island.

Bananas

you said something so interesting last night;

That you feel as though you are waiting for your life to begin.

I asked you what that means, and you said for 'work to start'.

I asked, if your life hadn't already begun, what you had been doing thus far - and you said; 'waiting'.

I find these such honest and brave responses though i don't really know what they mean.

Maybe get back to me? They interest me.

One always knows that life is terminal, it is a cognitive default. But the day i actually understood and realised i was going to die, was the moment my life began, and my 'work' commenced.

Intellectually, i think all we are ever doing is waiting. Living is waiting. You are born, you live (wait), then you die. But obviously that 'waiting' part is where the magic occurs.
Like eating 4 bananas at once...

souvlaki

you stood and sung and i sat and watched as garlic sauce leaked out of my not-so-tightly woven souvlaki, fertilising my forearms.

And you stood and sung and people walked and watched and your eyes closed and you stood and sung and i watched people walk past and wondered how they could not stop - just for a moment.

Freud

Sometimes i get so weak and so loud and so tentative that i waver and feel a breath away from slipping into mania.
I have come from this lush field and every now and then i dabble and get closer untill retreating to my safety. I fear one day i will end up crazy and so i arm myself with knowledge about how the human being works. Foreign creatures...
Freud studied psychology as a faculty which assumes humans are broken and i think he was wrong. Rogers observed an ivy crawl up the leg of a chair (in an underground chamber) desperate to find the sun that would feed it's growth. He concluded humans are like the ivy. That we strive, whilst we are at times teetering on the edge of mania, we are not broken but armed with everything we ever need to overcome and to flourish.
I was asked tonight what i thought love was -
i think it is not something you 'gain', but something you 'lose'. (Did someone say this to me?) To love is to lose control. To fall. To slip into mania.

And then i left you to come home and your face was crumpled and your skin was so inviting and i think that's when nature took over. I wanted to engulf you, to envelope you, not with my mind, but with every wave of nature that flushes and charges my body.

Yum

I have slipped you.

And tomorrow you come back to me.

And I cannot wait.

I am a croc with his jaws wide open, waiting to eat you up.

resting on crotchets

i hate my own words so much i would rather speak through another's. I would rather speak through song. I have spent 3 nights now, slightly wined, alone in this room, awake in sleeping hours pouring it all out. Cleansing my insides. But you aren't here to see my fingers dance on the piano. Or to hear my voice - not sounding pretty, but sounding perfect. How can it not when it comes from such a place? (For you).

I am washed away.

Emptied and filled again.


So that is how it is, you see. Is it not clear? Am i so stuck oscilating between two truths equally dangerous? Just Resting on a crotchet between chords.

Hey you!!!!

...you live too far away.

You know that?

Heirarchy of needs

Last night, you told me i was your greastest acheivement.

I was fixed on your eyes as they welled up, all old and red and cartoon-like. I became aware for a moment that this wasn't acceptable. It was never in our discourse to do these things, to string words together which give away our feelings to one another. But you smashed that law and your words crashed through me.

And inside i cracked and crumbled and all the hardness which i have fought so diligently to build up through the years instantly water-falled.

But outside I showed you nothing. I gave you nothing in response, just a faint smile of acknowledgment. Just a hint of a 'thank you' and and quick as it shot down, the wall (my friend) was reinstated.

I dusted myself off and laughed at how near i came to allowing myself to be seen. What a fool i almost made of myself. A fool to consider greeting your bravery with an open palm.

All is restored, all is safe. Safe.

Narayama

Yesterday my uncle got run over by a car at 6pm.

Here is a mobile text conversation i had with you, 4 hours earlier:

ME - Yuk. Just drove past a very messy accident involving a tram, a car and a pedestrian. And the song playing on my radio is 'life is dangerous'.

YOU - sure is babes. Every one alright?

ME - Doesn't look like it. Life is so fragile.

YOU - It's resiliant too. When i think of ppl dying i think of how much i love you. You know last night i thought everyone who allows themselves to openly love, each one of us commits the bravest act in history.

ME - Fuck oath! Bravest act in history. I totally agree. I love that. xx

YOU - You are my bravest act. Now concentrate on driving. xxxx

ME - Haha. Yes. I actually thought, 'if i die on the way home, my texts would have been somewhat painfully prophetic'.

YOU - You've got many years yet Couroupis, we'll be kicking you up that mountain... xx

The first thing that sprung in to my mind when I found out my uncle was in a coma, was the 6-month old phoetus in his daughter's womb. I hope it's OK in there.

P

As i showered today, i did a terrible, terrible thing - I peed.

I watched my golden stream carve it's path through the air and dive towards the drain like a lightsaber and i had a thought; For the best part of 27 years, i have been peeing down the same drain.

Despite all the events, occurrences, years, hangovers, letters, nail-clippings, phone calls, laughs, plane trips, funerals, full-moons, tears, fist-fights, pub-meals, weddings - there is this bizarre constant that makes a mockery of time. My pee travels 3 more feet to reach the drain today, than it did when i first peed down it all those years ago.




I really need to move out.

Coins in your case

I walked passed you again on the weekend.

Your sweet singing voice cut through the city-street corner murmur. At regular intervals the approval of coins clapping chimed, as passer bye's dropped coins in your case.

I wish you hadn't dyed your hair red though...

And i wish you wouldn't wear those low-cut tops and short skirts and bash your eye-lids together every time a man walks by.

I wish you wouldn't play that game. I wish you would just play the music.

Success!...?

Will it so

My will-power has deserted me.

*stares out the window*

I have neglected my essays and my homework, neglected my diet, neglected to exercise, neglected to take the overnight overdue-by-2-weeks dvd back to the store, neglected to spend enough time with my visiting nephew, neglected to get out and get some sun, neglected to pay my overdue fine, neglected to return my phone calls, neglected to prepare dinner for my visiting girlfriend...

But i have on the other hand, been incredibly scrupulous in checking facebook and posting innane things on people's pages at 35 minute intervals.

forget-fool

A thought stopped me today.

I stood in the middle of some one's lawn, leaning on my rake - stopped for a moment.

Apparently memory is something we create. It is not like a computer or a file-cabinet system where past events get categorised and stored in our mind, from where we retrieve them whenever we please. Every time we 'remember' an event - we are (re)creating it. We imagine and thus create the smell, the sound, the feeling and so on. And each time we 'remember' or recall an event, we subsequently get further and further away from the reality of the original experience. So, the more we recall an event, the more we bastardise the reality of that moment.

I have always been bad at remembering specific events, or specific parts of events - instead my memory consists of the 'feeling' I felt at the time. For example, I can't tell you what happened in a movie that i have seen, but i will know to recommend it or not, because i can describe in detail how i felt after watching it, and how much i enjoyed it.

One memory that i am able to recall with specificity is the night I broke up with my girlfriend of four years. All i remember is her teeth gnashing and saliva dripping and mucus bungee-jumping form her nose to her chin. her head was buried in her arms and she was shaking her head and pleading repeatedly 'no, no, no - i don't agree, this is your decision, but i don't agree'. Then when i left her house, I turned around to see her silhouette - sitting on a chair, alone in her room - saturated with tears, loneliness and shock. I felt so guilty about hurting this wonderful young woman, that i punished myself by replaying this night in my mind, over and over. And each time i dredged up the memory, it became more and more of a nightmare as the hurt i inflicted on my Ex was more elaborate and devastating. But how much of these flashes of memory are true and how much is my creation, powered by my guilt?

If it's true that memories are merely something we (re)create, then what does that mean for a sense of identity, or personality? The string of memories i have are the only thing that inform and give me a sense of identity. If these are all just made up, then identity is just something i have created in whichever way i see fit and is potentially completely distorted from reality.

Getting back to today thought - i was stopped by this thought;

the more you recall an event, the further away you get from the truth and reality of that moment. Conversely, the less you recall an event, the more accurate it will be, because the less you recall it, the less it's distorted. But here's the killer - a scientist in the US (i can't remember his name) tested and proved this theory and excavated an even more astonishing conclusion - the people with the most accurate memories, are the people who suffer from Amnesia. Because their capacity to recall events is tarnished, the memories stored in their brains are much more accurate, than those in a 'normal' functioning brain.


Stop.

who cares?

So, it seems here i am, procrastinating. Once more...

*sighs, scratches thumb, pats cat*

I have always struggled to write a journal, but there is something exciting about leaving a little paw-print out in cyberspace. Of coarse, the inevitable question - will any one ever read it? Who really cares about my thoughts? I know i can't write with any sort of flair, so why would someone take the time out of their life, to sit down and read the meanderings of my mind. It is indeed a little deflating to think that the only person reading this, is me.

But i think all this is irrelevant. The thing that excites me, is that it's possible that someone, one day, some how, might stumble across it. It's the potential that excites me. I have never understood the point of writing a diary when the only person privy to it, is myself. I know what i think, why do i need a hard-copy?

It's the audience - the 'other' which makes this exercise seductive.

For now, that is all...