oh this

is all jet lag. slept through but despite that lurking, waiting. just waiting to jump out at you, It is all 'hey, yeah, whatever, let's go to the party' even though everyone is tired, is wondering whether it's the right thing to do. it's all 'well, now that we're here let's mingle huh?'. It's all 'yuck is that what I look like in the random photos - really that bad? shit, oh well.'

It's all 'hey look at that bristled concave boy fire twirling, mmm.' It's all waiting, being the last to jump in, it's all slick women in blonde and red lipstick, it's all duty free perfume plooming up like a big bomb blast of violets, phwah, hitting you in the face. It's surreral, being home, having a sense of home even though you don't rationally know where home is (where the heart is? Sydney? Where the head is? Where I live? My home town? My childhood? My youth? Where i curl up to sleep now?)

And parties - as? As mingling locales, as 'quick, make the most of, talk to, sell yourself, tell your stories' or is it 'slow now, listen, listen to all the people's stories'? Or is it 'quick, smile, glisten - you might find a husband'?

Fucked if I know.

I glistened a bit, I smiled for the camera a bit, I wiggled a bit, I talked a bit, I drank punch a bitg. A bit, a bit, a bit.

Such a stickler, I sometimes wish I could say 'wait, wait, wait, could we just clarify the rules here? What are we doing? Aah that. good, ok then, let's get into it'

But that's just me. Presumably everyone else there somehow magically knows the rules, and is devoid of this existential gap, this space through which the wind whistles when there should be no wind, there should be only anectdote and story and smiles and flirt and vodka. Presumably.

And single-ness? Raises itself again as I come back into the country. It raises itself as something tangible - the absence of someone waiting at the airport to greet me, again, quite sick of this unheralded arrival. It is the absence of fresh flowers there to greet me at home. It is the absence of someone to share physicality with, the absence of someone to talk to in detail of what I've just read, that I miss. Plans. The absence of shared plans, or someone to bounce life plans off. It is a singular, unsupported aloneness in plan making. And yet presumably I've chosen this, on some level I choose to be alone. And all the warm bed moments, and the indulgent smiles of shared secrets, the warmth, the injokes, the solidarity.. I don't have. This somehow becomes more clear as I stand in the courtyard of someone's house, as people in coats tell 'us' stories and couple up and smile into each other's shoulders.