PS

Oops, sorry, I realise that the recent post about electronics aisles and then one about text messages may have reasonably led to the impression that I had just bought myself a brand spanking new moby fern. But no. Actually not at all. Instead I was at said chain store looking for homephones that hang up properly and that do hands free. I posted about the text messages completely randomly just because I had writtten it ages ago and came across it and thought it was funny. Maybe funnier to me now that I don't have a phone. And trust me, your messages would always be jewels my dears. I think at the time I was reflecting more on that ego boosting role that phones can play, especially in that tentative part of an early relationship when evidence is so scanty. Realise now also that this seems like it is related to previous date posts - which, wholeheartedly, no! I am not collecting jewels from. Oh golly. It was a silly and misleading post all round. Sorry. Blame the gastro flu thing. May wax lyrical on my current choice to go sans mobile later.

Sick

and having a day off. Went to post office as a way to make the day seem more useful. And to get sunshine into my bones, air on my skin. Bumped into date boy. Oh. He said. Oh hi. I said. He said 'it's a small town.' I said 'I'm sick'. He said 'you're sick?' I said 'yes' - firmly.

'Did you get my message?' I asked. He said yes. Neither of us then said anything. I said 'It would be good to catch up again sometime, it's just...' He said 'oh well, what about tomorrow night? Or Thursday?' I frowned and said 'well, no, I don't feel well. Maybe the weekend?' We were interrupted by him being served and having to sort out issues to do with parcels. I jump back in after I buy my stamps, and he is still there one bay over, but waiting for the staff member to return, and say 'I'll call you' taking advantage of the fact that he's stuck to the counter and that I've finished first and can leave. 'Oh ok, he says', a bit flustered. I think fuck it, I'm not well. I have frizzy hair and dry lips and have missed a zillion important meetings to have the day off, you can just deal with it if I'm not chatty and I don't want to see you tomorrow night. I leave thinking this town is way too small anytime you don't want to see someone. I leave thinking maybe this is all a bad idea still.

Website of the week

Fair trade tastes better



This wins the seagreen website of the week award because it suggests such a practical and easy way to make a little ripple and increase awareness / action on Fair Trade.

People drink heaps of coffee out these dayes and while many of us already buy organic, fair trade coffee for home from the supermarket, not very many of us are taking positive steps to encourage cafes to offer the same kind of product when we drink coffee out.

This website is great because not only does it give a great overview of the issues('Why Fairtrade?')but also practical and easy tips for how to influence change in your community.

Letters - remember those, in the old days, people woud write them - are included to print out (just add your name) which give your local cafe owner information and contact details of suppliers. Hey, your letter or friendly verbal suggestion might not make any discernable difference right now, but what if you were the first of 10 people to all suggestthe same thing over the next six months? Said cafe owner may realise that this a business opportunity.

What I also like about this campaign is that it focuses on engaging with people around us (cafe owners / coffee suplliers) and suggesting ways their business could have less of an impact. Suggesting Fair Trade products is obviously just one way - I also dig the idea of talking to the local library about providing recycled paper, suggesting the local cafe use free-range eggs rather than battery ones, suggesting that we use organic wine for our work events... etc. Doing what we can when we can.

Make mine a machhiato! Grazie!

What other products exist and where can I get them?
As well as coffee there is a growing range of Fairtrade certified products available in Australia. Products include tea, chocolate, rice, handcrafts and soccer balls. For more information visit the Fairtrade Association of Australia and New Zealand website.

NB At my work we use organic Australian grown cofffee for the tea room and chemical free (but not certified org) Australian grown tea. The cafe downstairs will be my target :)

Message sent

The staccato rhythm of the text message. Seasonless haiku. Is this too much? The pinnacle of nerves as you press send and then the feeling of relief as you know it’s too late! It’s gone! Too late now. Come whatever may. And no smile, no tone, just little words and you guessing at the feelings behind them. Sneaking a re-read. Once, twice, and later again. And now you’ve started will your fingers sneak further contact, will you get drunk and drop yodefensesces and send another? No you probably wont, but history suggests that I may well.

I will save your messages like little jewels in my phone – part of my montage of affectionate moments – and I will keep them until you replace them with something more intimate, something that reveals an escalation in our relationship. Assuming that they compete well with the other messages and people represented there.

They rise to the top like cream, vying with one another for the limited memory and storage space of my phone - which ones together tell the most radiant tale of a life well lived, a person loved? Of course the jewels may fade and be revealed as cheap ironic costume jewellery, me having misread their value, they may become reminders of the more intimate messages that never came, I may delete them with a self-conscious off handedness. If you really annoy me I may delete your name and number. Delete you. And feel the grimmest of satisfaction in doing so - righteous even. How dare someone not like me?? What right do you have to not play out the role I have imagined for you in my life?? Delete.

happy winter solstice my lovelies

Thanks grrls for your words of support. Very tickled to have a lovely postcard of a longstanding crushee of the seasoned actor variety awaiting me as I arrived home on this, the longest night of the year. Thankyou Betty Sue you gorgeous creature. Now that is a very real and important occasion that hallmark has not yet helped us commemorate - the crap date! Currently feeling more significant and topical to me than many other conventional celebrated holidys and milestones I must say.

Now talking of all things wintery - just a quick reminder to those who fancy a day trip or long weekend that the Winter Magic Festival is on in the Blue Mountains of Sydney this weekend. Saturday is the parade, stalls and bands. Artworks in shops and cafes along the main street feature the community art project that I was (briefly and then somewhat peripherally but whose counting) involved with. It's come up a treat and is a real thrill to have helped create it.

Terribly terribly tired tonight. Clearly was a bad idea to join my workmates for 'one quick beer' at the adjacent pub, as a quick break in a planned extended night at my desk report writing. I pretended that it was good ergonomics to go for the walk and have a stretch, oh and of course contributes to step count! Ha ha. yeah right. I just wanted a beer and a chat and a laugh and to not be sitting at my desk. So actually, really, I'm glad I went. We thought up lots of cool social events to suggest for work (ok ok so it sounds like I need a life here, but really I like my workmates and we want to do some fun stuff together). Hmm yes, but report now late and still unwritten. Thinking I like the icing and not the actual cake of work life..? For example, spent many useful and fun minutes doing worm farm maintenence and training someone else on the mysterious ways of the worm this arvo. Did not finish report. Went out for lunch, ever so quickly. Did not finish report. Finished my brochure. Did not.. yeah you get the pic.

Do you think I can call the shoemaker and borrow the 'get it all done in the middle of the night' elves? I wouldn't mind some nimble little elfy fingers typing away and sewing together good arguments while I slumber. Hmm.. I warned you I was tired..!

I am still enjoying my new boots that the lovely snap dragon helped me pick when she was visiting on her holiday back to Oz from NY a few weekends ago. Hoping she and hubby settle here so we can hang out and eat cake and see funky performance stuff (that I would otherwise be too lazy or not cool enough to think of seeing) more often.

Miss-Adventure

A few little things to share on a cold Monday night.

Firstly - why is it that only boys with a slightly mad look about them seem to catch my eye lately? I gave a talk tonight at an info night for a community org that I've done some volunteer work with before and at the end when the mingling lights cameback on and I sat down the guy behind me said - "yeah, but what's the point - all the whales and turtles will be dead in 20 years anyway..' and the other speaker chipper, younger, blowdried and better at not engaging with intense furrowed brow types - turned in her seat and said 'oh yes they will, if we keep doing things like this!' with a white toothy still-at-uni-and-certain-about-the-world smile(slightly reminiscent of old auunt Audrey steadfastly sweeping family issues under the carpet with another slice of Christmas pudding and cup of tea)and promptly left the scene to mingle while I stayed there to hear him say 'because with climate change we'll lose all those coastal areas, and the krill aren't going to survive - we've only got 10 years to do something' and instead of offering him a sherry and turning up the Bing Crosby I look right at him and say 'yeah, you're probably right'. We talk a while longer and get onto IR laws and refugees and back to climate change and I start to find myself finding his intense brown eyes and no bullshit slightly lined face kind of sexy and suspect maybe that on some bizarre cellular level I transmit that information, because while we continue to talk about the worst that everything has to offer, just for a moment, in that honesty I feel a decided frisson (or was that just my stomach murmuring in complaint at the cheddar and jatz that passed for dinner?)

Oh dear.

And, on the topic of hormones (were we?), guess who had a date sat night? yes an honest to gooodness actual date. ish. thing. Guess who organised said date in the electrical aisle of Kmart? (ooh classy). Guess who is now wondering if it was such a good idea to 'give it a go and get to know someone better and get back on the horse/bike/wagon/whatever of dating?' Erm, that would be me. In typical random bouts of brutish honesty that I seem to dabble in blogwise, here are 5 reasons why I think it was a good idea and 5 more that I think it was shabby. Tell me wise cyberfolk, what is a girl to do?

5 reasons why making a date in the electrical aisle of Kmart last weekend was a ripper of an idea:
1. Good exercise in 'reading the signals' right and responding. Think of it as a remedial community college course in 'guess whether someone is interested or not'. I now have a statement of attainment that I can put in that folder along with my cv.
2. It was kind of fun, and stopped me spending sat night in loungeroom dancing
3. I didn't die - henceforth disproving the recently tightly held maxim that 'I couldn't possibly - I would either die of boredom or fright'. In this case neither was true.
4. I learnt something new about breeding chickens and about the local folk music scene (ooh sunday arvo folk jams at the pub and if you participate you get free drinks! Watch me dust off my triangle*)
5. I thought it would be the start of me being terribly grown up and light-hearted about these things rather than hiding away in my art deco ivory tower reading Seneca waiting for Mr/Ms right to scare the bejesus out of me by arriving through my loungeroom window waving a ridiculously oversized bunch of flowers and delivering an armful of lovely tattered penguin classics at my feet with a flourish

Why maybe it was a really shit idea:
1. He suggested at the end of the night that we see each other again sometime - which I agreed to genuinely in principle until he then said 'like, what about next weekend?'
2. He then rang and suggested we catch up today (Monday - as in the day after the day after Saturday)
3. He then apologised for having to work next weekend and having a commitment to be in Sydney to see a band rather than be in the mountains and suggested that next Monday could be good if today was out for me...
-- To all of the above insert the comment "argh, it was just one date!!!!! I barely know you** we are not an item, we aren't even friends!! Please stop freaking me out"
4. Were the 3 above not bad enough?
Try again for 4. How on earth does this help me with my burgeoning crush on Fernando the oil painting, guitar playing indie rock god in sultry lab coat??
5. I now feel a little creepy like I am a mean leady on-ey bitch who will only crush the heart of this gentle chicken loving man, and henceforth I should stay in said ivory (beigey-custard really) art deco tower and work way from Seneca through Jung to Descartes, buy more cats and invest in some zany hats.


*As in the musical instrument - that wasn't a sleazy euphemism for pleasuring oneself.
** Friend of a friend, not complete stranger ie had met a few times, but seriously in the scheme of things barely know

Website of the week

Loving this cute and simple website: The Temple of Earthly Sins. Enter the temple and find out how to atone for your environmental sins. The specific content is for the Uk but you can make the translation pretty easily. It's even fun with cheesy music.

Act III

‘Ok So I’ll have the thin crust vegetariano with olives thanks. Just a small. What’s ths mallest you have?’

He points – there is just one ring on the wall, it says ‘large’. He shakes his head at the absurdity of it and I laugh and say ‘Ok large’.

‘That’ll be $11.50 thanks. And I just need your name…And phone number. He then laughs and says ‘well it was a good excuse’ and I realise he has flirted with me and I say. ‘Oh, well it’s nice to be asked for a change!’ He seems incredulous ‘really?’ I say ‘oh for sure, no one asks me out ever. It’s been like ages.’ He says ‘well I’m actually engaged, but if it wasn’t for that…’ I smile forgivingly and say ‘engaged huh? Cool. how long tilll the wedding?’ He says ‘you tell me...’ I say ‘oh a long engagement is kinda cute and old fashioned.’ He says ‘we’ve already been engaged for a year and nine.’ ‘And nine? And nine months? That’s funny, hip speak!’ He smiles and says ‘yeah like one pound and six or something’. He says ‘we’ve already known each other for 6 years,’ I say ‘well shit if you’ve known each other that long and you can still stand each other you shoud get married!’ he says ‘yeah, that’s what we figured.’

When the pizza comes I eat it straight out of the box as I walk home, marvelling at how good it is despite being from one of the places I had vowed never to patronise. It is hot and salty and tastes like olive oil, which I like, and keeps my mouth warm while my fingers and nose turn to ice in this cold night.

Act II

(language warning, adult themes..etc)

She says ‘the distance between here and here is meant to be how long your cock is.’ She demonstrates. She says ‘fully extended.’ She takes his hand and stretches out his thumb and forefinger and says ‘so yours would be… 5 inches.’ As if she’s reading his fortune, telling him some mystery he would not already know. I notice that he doesn’t say anything. I feel uncomfortable at the possibility that she has just described accurately the dimensions of his pride and joy. I say, ‘so is this how big my cock is?’ and laugh. No-one else laughs. She says ‘the width is the distance between these two knuckles.’ ‘Yeah but you know, size doesn’t neccessarily make, you know, a good lover’ I say, hoping to sweep the conversation up and carry it off onto greener pastures. She says ‘oh god no. Most men with giant cocks just shove it in and don’t know what else to do.’ I sense the man at our table easing up slightly. ‘My old man’s cock is so wide I can barely fit it in my mouth’ she says. ‘small, but wide.’. We all sit in silent recoil at this image. She says ‘but you know what they say: “if it’s little throw it back. If it’s medium, eat it. If it’s huge, mount it!!’ She laughs and raises her eyebrows encouragingly to conjure up a laugh. She says ‘It is meant to be funny. You’re meant to laugh’. The two men look uncomfortable and I smile weakly to compensate.

Act I

‘I love other countries!’ the woman says in her country NSW accent, to the stifled giggles of the tipsy Sydney woman and the pained sardonic aristocracy of the man in glasses. ‘You know, their languages, and how everything’s different and that.’ She tells us that her family came from Germany and that her relative wrote ‘Silent Night’. I go to the toilet and when I get back I hear that she sang the song while I was gone – not the best rendition – and I gather by the notes and corrections made on the back of a coaster that someone has told her how to sing it in German and that she has tried to capture it phoenetically, or maybe she knew it in German but they have helped some of her words from sliding in together. She is honest and happy, too qualities that sit uncomfortably in the dinge of a Friday night and in the aspirations of the man in glasses who keeps saying ‘This conversation is really going nowhere. Nowhere!’ in an accent that sounds vaguely Eastern European and certainly well travelled. He says it too quickly sometimes, shaking his head and without humour, after just a few sentences about beer, or accents, as if he is the umpire and gets to call what is in and what is out of the goals he has for Friday night pub exchanges. Later he leaves and comes back with a bottle wrapped in brown paper and as he sits thuds it on the table as if this has decided the game. ‘Come on, we’re leaving.’ He says and jumps back up to standing, dragging his tipsy girl from her friendly goodbyes and cheek kissing, pulls her out towards the door and away to somewhere more that annoys him less. Away to somewhere where conversation is going somewhere.

a few nice things

OK gals and boys, this is a quick little post because I am home before midnight and want to do the only sensible thing - get straight into bed and sleep as much as possible before sun rises and I find myself out the door and walking for a train. Commute still wacky. Last week I fell asleep and went too far, ended up home with enough time to sleep for (was it even?) 3 hours before rising and leaving again. Ho hum. Goddess only knows what I will wear tomorrow as I have worn my fave black work pants already and I have no idea of what is clean in that zany wardrobe of mine. Shame I can't wear the same trousers all week- well, same outfit really. It's funny coz some days I could happily get changed a few times in one day as the whim takes me and other times I could just get one really fun getup and live in it.

So, just quickly: thanks to Betty Sue for her reminder about red shoes. While my new boots are black and I love them I had forgotten about my (cheap and falling apart but much loved) red mary janes. AND I had a presentation to give today so it was just the day to be a little bit swingy. So I wore red shoes and the presentation was a hit (despite being a little bit of a last minute jobbie I had actually put some effort in - not least illustrating it with tiny little snippets of my own illustration, which remarkably was also a hit). I love that feeling of running a good workshop session where you have this ring of interested faces looking expectant and hoping that you wont bore them or confuse them...and you keep the atmosphere light and happy, but honest, and people feel safe and a bit adventurous, and together you fill an hour with a good experience. It can be really fun when this temporary bubble of good will gets made and you all suspend disbelief together and stop being self conscious about the being in a workshop together and just jump right in and make it fun. So yeah, happy bout the red shoes.

And hello Miss Ivy! Welcome to the sea green lounge! You can't see it from here but the Sea Green Lounge I imagine as kind of 60's sci fi underwater city - think large rounded easy chairs overlooking a large plate glass window that looks out into the depths of the ocean and has large cheesy sharks superimposed and swimming close by every few seconds. Maybe some cool creamy green lava lamps and a dangly bead curtain or too. As you enter you would be offered something fabulous in a tall glass from someone with good cheeckbones and a feathery fringe and tall silver boots on, maybe offered a canape, and be lead away to the sounds of funky space music. Aaah.

Ooh, where was I? Sorry back to the computer and away from the underwater conversation den/ observation bay...

A few things from my day that I wanted to share:
- A man in a beanie standing in the vestible (gotta love that word - even if I think I just misspelt it) of the train about to get off at the next stop says 'oh! I forgot something!' and opens the door to the carriage and runs up stairs to his seat and gets...? An umbrella? His bag? A magazine? No - an empty chip packet and empty take away coffee cup - to put in the bin rather than leave on the train. How cute is that??
- A man with face tattoos who is living around Central station at the moment wraps his large black Rottweiler in a blanket to sleep
- A long coffee break with a work mate to discuss the ways of the world and being quite honest and laughing a lot while the cafe closes around you and they say 'another coffee?' and you say 'yeah' and watch the sun start to creep down while the cafe stays warm and lit
- Walking home when it is so cold that cars have frosted rooves that glitter like a diamond crust, and you sing to keep warm and find yourself singing 'Summertime' while your nose and chin are so cold they may become ice, but you find it both amusing and somehow warming so keep singing it quietly through big, wide, empty picturesque streets

Hope your days had diamonds too.

Welcome to two new litte people

Over the last few days two friends have each had a baby. Both healthy, cute as a button, otherworldy babies. Miraculous, lovely.

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Boots

These new boots are like having my legs strapped up. They feel tight and structural as if I am wearing ice skates, or big walking boots and am off on a locomotary adventure. They are leather and have shiny bits and a hard heel that thuds loud as I walk on the carpet down the corridors at work. They echo significantly through the cavern of Central Station, and I feel like I am this echo of my boot on the hard stone floor. I am decisive, I am weather proof, I am good with skirts or pants.

I am transported back to my early years where an iconic costume piece could propel you happily through days, be a talisman, act as a defining feature of your persona. When you are very little and insisting to adults. In supermarkets trailing some flight of fancy made solid in prop. When you are older, but young compared to now, and you create new flights of fancy, try on new characters. You get your fairytale in sync with other peoples' and soundtrack it, and pick suitable venues to play it out in. Red gum boots. Mums old rope petticoat which comes to your ankles. Gloves and a bow tie. Velvet red riding hood dress with matching muff. Favourite brown cord pants. Fairy skirt. Denim jacket. Glitter nail polish. A side ponytail. That rara skirt. Those army boots. That piece of netting. It becomes almost entirely irrelevant what it looks like, it's the feeling it conjures which is important. The thing is just the magic of association, of transformation. Dress ups.

These boots summon up for me defiant European women who are harshly glamorous with Baltic cheekbones and icy skin, with wounded hearts but fabulous coats, with coiffed hair and words that can be spat across doorways of cafes in the cold late afternoon to the retreating backs of cold men.

These boots are spacey and me piloting some ship, 'yes captain, we'll lower her down as soon as we got a clear landing this side of the moons'. They are sensible and not to be messed with. They are secure, resilient and confident - everything held firm and secure, all worst outcomes planned for, contingencies accounted for.

They are horse-like, my version of hooves. My childhood fantasy of being a horse - galloping, whinnying, free.

They are slightly stern like a winter dressed teacher who now has extra height and looms down from above. They are like boarding school in another age - woollen tights and mittens and boots to wear as we drift in a row over the snow lined fields towards chapel.

They are sex about to happen in the afternoon on someone’s couch, and the strange dance to get there beforehand. They are being silly in boots, rock star hair, a borrowed v-neck jumper, a silly hat and a tub of ice cream.

Not that you'd know any of these secret tales just by looking at such plain black footwear, dime a dozen, quiet to look at; but I can feel them. These stories throb in me like blood under skin.

Computer says...

"Adobe Acrobat Reader Manager needs your attention". Well, the Adobe Acrobat Reader Manager can just take a bloody ticket.

Burlyesque

Do you think that if one were a burlesque dancer one could claim all purchases of lace and net smalls, heavy duty curl enhancing hair product, fishnets, Prada high waisted tweed skits, champagne, vintage kitten heels and any cds one feels inclined to purchase as tax deductions?

I think if I were to launch the seagreen librarian tramp themed burlesque show I would shake my groove thing to (in no particular order):
- The Cramps 'don't eat stuff off the sidewalk'
- PJ Harvey - not sure quite, was thinking 'M-Bike', but it's a bit angry - maybe her cover of 'If that's all there is' for that old worlde melancholy
- Ricki Martin 'shake your bon bon' because it is clearly such an awful song, and because by some quirk of nature I own the cd (hey no one said this would be stylish)
- Bessie Smith - pretty much anything
- Sandie Shaw doing 'I can't get no satisfaction'
- David Bowie... hmm, maybe 'Oh! You pretty things' or maybe something off Heathen like 'Cactus'
- Something by Pulp, maybe off 'This is Hardcore' just for sheer ironic value

What about you? Tops three songs to camp it up and wink false eyelashes and wiggle that glitter tootsie or shake your rock mullet and leather pants with sock down front to on stage? (Look, this is importannt, you know, you just never know when you might need to have thought this through. It's like organ donation - don't leave it till it's too late - v. important to tell your loved ones what your preference is now).

happy bday shout outs

..to Guitar Boy! Hope it was a great day and soundtracked with lots of Hilary Duff and the Donnas and such like, and lubricated with many pale ales! And no wonky bicarb cake ;)

The UK connection

Here are some funky UK enviro-happenings which I've been meaning to share for a while. Thanks to MC for keeping his finger on the recycled-reprocessed-water efficient pulse.

Hippo Effect
'In London, we use more water per person than any other city in Europe. But we have less water per person than the Sudan. Every day we pour millions of litres of fresh, clean drinking water down the toilet. Luckily, it's very easy to save a bit of water. If you put a thing called a 'hippo' in your toilet cistern, it saves ten litres every day. Hippos are easy to install and very well behaved. You'll barely notice he's in there at all. And, best of all, hippos are free.'

Well Fashioned
Increased concern around what goes into making the clothes we wear has resulted in a much needed boost to what's been dubbed the 'ethical fashion' industry. Anti-Apathy's RE:Fashion London event in February 2005 saw just the beginning of what is now an explosion of media coverage and support for clothing labels working with organic, Fairtrade and recycled/ reconditioned textiles with a focus on improved labour standards.

Find out where to cash in on some cool threads by picking up Anti-Apathy's RE:Fashion London Guide, a comprehensive guide to the finest organic, fair trade, sweatshop-free, guilt-free, vintage, recycled and remade clothing in London.

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