Tuesday 1
Nooooooo. I need more time to wallow in my own disgustingness before I can go to work. I need more time to roll around on the floor, and read a bit of book and then think about having a shower.
Woe.
Saturday 5
The problem with reading is that you get all into something, and then all of a sudden your day off is over and it's night time and you're hungry and dirty and sunburnt and have to go to bed.
I liked the book though, and the bike ride to buy records this morning.
I found a Howard Keel record. Life is complete.
Monday 7
I showed up to my local pub totally wasted on a glorious pomegranate and vodka concoction I made while bored in the afternoon, only to arrive to one of the most rocking gigs I have ever seen at the Phoenix.
The Phoenix is fairly famous for it's live gigs, but they're not normally so fabulously crazy. It's a venue quite perfect for acoustic acts, and slide blues. It's a dark, dingy little place, but it has more character than pretty much any other venue in Canberra. On a hot summers Sunday afternoon I walked right into the middle of a heaving dance floor packed full of lovely little indie haircuts and great shoes. I felt like I had been slammed back in time to the early sixties, into some sweaty, drug fueled dance rage. The band playing were loud, fast, and amazing. I wasn't sure what I was expecting more, a cover of Surfin' Bird, or a cover of Judy Was A Punk. Thee Oh Sees totally blew my mind, so when the band asked if there were any pools near by, I gladly offered mine up.
We drank, we swam, we listened to records, and after a few hours I threw everybody out. Not that I'm not down to party, more just because I'm a lady of the world, and I wanted downtime with my man.
I would throw the Rolling Stones out of my house to get some time with my man.
This morning is amusing. There are clothes everywhere, shoes, socks, towels, empty beer bottles. So many bottles. I could dress a person from head to toe with the things left lying around my house. I think I might, and send the photo to the band.
Monday 7 pt. 2
So, instead of new years resolutions, I'm going to make new years goals.
I have two for 2010:
1. do the cover art for at least one CD, even if it's your boyfriends self released, photocopied, bus shelter dropped albums.
2. Get one piece of writing published somewhere, somehow.
Friday 11
So, it turns out that the reason I've been feeling flat, puffy, down and snotty for the last few weeks is because I'm allergic to something at work. Oh well. What a curiosity.
Saturday 12
It's my fathers birthday. I was out last night, I came home wearing other people's clothes, smelling of booze and booze and gave him a hug. Now I am hiding in my room. We have a very casual family attitude.
Tuesday 15
I saw Where The Wild Things Are. It was lovely and made me happy, I wish I could sleep in such a glorious squishy pile all night long.
A list of things that are not romantic to me:
Store bought roses, or flowers of any kind.
Store bought boxes of chocolates
A list of things that are totally romantic to me:
Flowers stolen from next doors yard
m&ms sorted into colour coordinated piles
six packs of pale ale
I had a repulsively vivid dream last night, I can't get it out of my mind. Bits of it were amazing, like dancing in sync with the amazingly beautiful Indian singer in a mirrored room, but other bits were, just weird. Like undressing a slight blonde woman while watching mice throw minced meat out of their shoe box because they didn't want to eat it. All I could think of was why they wouldn't want the minced meat, mice like meat? Don't they? Why is this woman naked on my bed, did I undress her. She looks so familiar to me, but I do not know her. Maybe I saw her on a street one day? But why on EARTH don't those mice want their meat?
And then I woke up.
And yes, I have started drawing again, and yes, there will be new drawings around soon. I promise.
Thursday 17
It's hot.
The kind of hot that people in America would write rich blues songs about.
It's the kind of hot when it's impossible to cool down. The kind of hot where all I can picture when I shut my eyes is crowds of sweaty, half naked people in bars, trying to cool themselves down with ice. Running their bottles and glasses along their skin, their necks, their arms, just to get some of the sweet, iced, condensation to catch the wind of the fans.
The only way to escape this kind of heat is to lock yourself inside an artificially cooled room of some kind, an office building, a supermarket. I, myself,have just returned home after a brief trip to the local bottle shop, where I stood in the cool room for much longer than I needed to in order to choose my beer.
Of course, this is the kind of heat that just doesn't feel right when you try and chill your bones in a box. This is the kind of heat where your only option is to wear something sheer, and light. Something that doesn't touch your body, but also doesn't let the sun in. Find a porch, find a fan, find an old man to tell you rambling stories of your youth, and a young man with a guitar. Lie back in the heat, and sweat it out with a drink and a fan made of lace that you bought from some tacky shop on a street corner.
Listen to Louisiana blues and sweat it out.
This is the kind of heat you have to sweat out.
It's hot.
My South Central
I have all these images in my head of the Southern States of America. I'm sure people have placed these images in my mind in a vague attempt to make me have a sort of inbuilt distaste for the Southern States of America, but it hasn't worked. Country music and Swamp Blues were the first two deal breakers for me. How could I hate any area of land that produced Dolly Parton and Dr. John? Not to mention Dirty South Hip Hop, like Missy Elliott and Lil' John. Music broke down the barriers for me, and the international image of the Southern States, and from that mighty breach I have swelled into, not just love, but longing for what I assume to be the culture there.
Nothing intrigues me more than the idea of White Trash, I'm fascinated by all the black culture in Louisiana, New Orleans, hoodoo, and gumbo, and sweaty, swampy, alligator weather. I'm not put off by a small town vibe, or the concept of denim being a fashion staple. I'm not bothered by moonshine, casual alcoholism, casual racism, and casual teenage pregnancy.
Something inside me longs for a community less biased against stupidity and commonness.
Something inside me longs for sweating idly on the front porch of some shack like wooden bar, while it rains.
Something pleases me about cowboy boots and cutoffs. Something draws me in about dusty white trailers and muddy ground, armadillos, cars, guitars, bourbon, cheap Mexican food and drawls.
Friday 18
When I start to dream about my work it's not a good thing. I'm not the kind of person who dreams about the stuff they do during the day. When I dream about something it's usually something I'm really stressed out about, and I am the kind of person who gets unnecessarily stressed out. If I start to dream about work, I know I'm taking it too seriously, and I know it's getting dangerous for me. I don't cope with stress well, usually it spirals out of control and I end up in a black, stinking pit of pointless depression.
I don't want a pit, I need a new job.
Sunday 20
Christmas is just an adorable lie. The love, and the family cheer is great. Eating amazing food, lying in the sun, feeling lazy and sleepy and exciting. It's the decorations, and the carols, and the ads, and the cards and the manufactured emotions that are the worst.
Wednesday 23
How do the days of Christmas work again? I have no idea, we never were a big Christmas family. I have memories of my childhood being eternally confused about the 12 days of Christmas, and Christmas Day not being on the 12th. It was the same with Santa. My parents didn't have the energy to carefully propagate the lie. Instead, I just got everybody else's tales about the mystery fat man. It gets confusing when you don't have a base line. A parental influence.
I'm not sure how I'd approach things like Santa if I had a child. I don't think I want to spawn something that has so much faith in something like that, but at the same time, not telling the tale certainly does leave a portion of this cultural childhood out. I did feel left out as a child because I didn't believe in the tooth fairy. It's like being the only child without an imaginary friend, just because you don't understand the word imaginary.
In other news, I have been drawing a bit more lately. I stopped for a while, I was swamped with fear, and confusion and deathly self loathing. I rediscovered some things that I had found a long time ago, like 75 Ways To Draw More by adorable Welsh Graphic artist Michael Nobbs. Inspiration is an easy thing for me to find, but I'm not particularly talented at using it in an appropriate manner. Now, I have a bit of time off, and I'm going to try and get into a routine of drawing. Not just a doodle here and there, but some sort of daily pattern. I am an hideously disorganised person.
Thursday 24
Cooking berries for gin, making shotglasses from ice. Domesticity.
Saturday 26
Oh the pain. Oh the hangover, mmmmm the gin leftovers.
Christmas was ultimately productive.
Sunday 27
Lazy days with my lover. Drinking and nibbling and baking cakes.
Now I'm sleepy, but totally satisfied.
Monday 28
A stasis field on a space ship has a leak, and out the bottom ooze my toes. As they touch the air they start to age, bit by bit. My toes, my feet, my ankles, my calves, they are all older than my face. Decomposing before my fingertips are even free.
Wednesday 30
The day after tomorrow is the day after tomorrow, and the day after that will just be a day too. I don't need to make promises to myself just because it's a new day.
Thursday 31
Rain is coming, rain will wash all the dirt away. I'll stand outside and let it drip down my body and take all the scummy bits away with it. Little trails of clean skin showing after fat drops roll down my face and my back.
Rain is coming.