enough emo

toothpastefordinner.com

'I liked the John Singer Sargents'

The exhibition night
I left thinking ‘is that all there is?’ just like that song that Polly covered, beautifully. I think this because the show is small, ever so small. I’ve seen floor plans of this place, thinking as I was that I might use the space to show things in, but in being there it seems shrunk to miniature. So small. I enter tentatively, and hover near some large three dimensional shining acrylics on canvas, slide past slowly the summer coloured abstracts and then plunge down the corridoor expecting another chamber, expecting a large central room, only to find the corridoor flanked with Polaroids of someone with their bodily fluids pouring out is the last of the space and I am now outside in an even smaller space squeezed between the paling fence and the wall of the building, dark, thin, pausing for other people to push past, until I emerge into a thoroughly anticlimactic courtyard as big as my bathroom. Ok maybe as big as my bathroom and toilet together. And completely lacking flair – where are the sculptures, the candles, the pot plants, the warm fire in a tiny cast iron vessel? Where is the orange tinged moody lighting and dramatic shadows? Where are the women in sculpted black hair and large necklaces, ironic makeup, complex scarves and gallery laughs? This is, after all, an art gallery, and I expect a certain amount of sensual stimulation. The bright back of the brick wall lighting and cold people huddled in padded brown coats just isn’t doing it for me. I make my donation for my glass of red and look around furtively, weighing up my willingness to mingle versus my laziness, with the latter winning, and head back down the dark walkway into the corridor room to read the artist’s statement about her bodily fluids, back back through the abstracts, finding myself mesmorised with a small family in matching hooded tops, handmade looking, all the hoods lined in loud black and white houndstooth, the outsides a medley of coloured fabrics, somehow this side of eighties retro cool, a little bit ‘I just got a new sewing machine and learnt how to use it’ and a little bit ‘we belong to a really badly dressed cult’. I couldn’t stop staring. I found them much more intriguing and thought provoking than anything on the walls. I head outside and pause to check the front windows, for the display there and then realise that these people out the front are friends of the front-window artist, they are standing on the street in their own front-window-appreciating breathing cold puffs of winter street air exhibition opening moment. The artist swoops on me excitedly and gives me an A4 flyer, photocopies of line drawings, school desk style, school excersise book in the margins style, and his email address (I marvel that it’s not a his-space site) and I am flung back to a time when there were many more boys making scratchy images on small scraps of paper, and everybody’s half baked anything was full of immense wonder and promise. Listen to me – jaded. It’s these heels I am wearing. I wander back down the street which is a pattern of African-Thai-Pizza places and children’s-handmade-secondhand clothes shops, the occasional African-Tahitian-Turkish homewares shop offering cushions. I watch skinny women and bag-eyed children dressed like gangstas, I see altercations ‘no mate that’s just fucken rude, you shouldn’t disrespect my missus like that’ ‘that’s fair enough isn’t it? Isn’t it?’, and stand at a bus stop, swapping weight from foot to foot and looking forward to that moment when I can unzip these relentless shoes and immerse my feet in ugg boots.

Bad Maladies

My litany of ills:
Sore back – stiff, from not stretching properly before sport yesterday, and not having been to yoga for a zillion years, and because I work at a desk everyday.
Sore ankle – tipped it running for a ball
Sore leg – looks like I’ve been in a car crash – big and blue and purple. Ran into someone’s shin. This sport malarkey is proving injurious to my health. Note to self– buy shinpads.
General lethargy – too much red wine? Premenstrual? Late night?
Slight occasional wash of melancholy – of the ‘I don’t really care about this but I’m trying my best to do it anyway’ variety. Of the ‘I can’t be bothered joining in your conversation’ variety. Of the ‘can I go home sick based on a composite variety of minor ills rather than some singular good story sickness?’. Of the ‘My to do list is vicious and threatening to bite me with sharp little razor teeth when no one is looking.’
Wolf Mother hair. Does that count as a malady?

Hot, hot, hot (ad for event)

Excuse the lazy post. Back in the office after weeks away; a bit of a shock to the system! 'What, you expect me to do this for 8 whole hours a day - every weekday??' I was wondering incredulously by 5pm Monday. And this from a girl who actually *likes* her work and spent years expending genuine effort trying to get into the field. Sheesh.

Anyways, for those of you down South and hankering for some intelligent discussion of Big Global and Sustanability Issues, this might be of interest.

P U B L I C M E E T I N G

Climate Change and Global Poverty:
the need for greenhouse development rights

with Tom Athanasiou, EcoEquity (USA)

MELBOURNE

7pm Wednesday 8 August

Edinburgh Gardens Community Room, Brunswick St, North Fitzroy,
Melways Ref 2C 1C
Under the grandstand, enter from Brunswick St (just north of the
pedestrian crossing)

Sponsored Friends of the Earth and CarbonEquity
More info: Cam 94198700

Entry: Gold coin donation

The world must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to
avoid dangerous climate change. But how can we do this while also
facilitating a fair go for the developing world?

Historically the industrialised nations have benefited from a
disproportionate contribution to total atmospheric carbon pollution:
three-quarters of all emissions so far. So how can we bring a sense
of international equity to the climate change debate? How can a rise
in prosperity in the developing world be facilitated while reducing
global emissions?.

Hear Tom Athanasiou speak on why the real climate change challenge
is, as he says, "holding global warming below a catastrophic level
while at the same time preserving the right of all people to more
than merely bare-bones 'human development'."

Tom Athanasiou is executive director of EcoEquity (www.ecoquity.org),
a US-based climate think-tank which works closely with church, aid
agencies and environment organisations on greenhouse development
rights. He is the author of books and essays on poverty and the
environment including 'Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and
Poor',' Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming' and the
forthcoming 'Justice Within Limits: A New Deal for the Greenhouse
Century'.

The dog might eat his serial, but might not, you decide

The lovely Tim Sinclair, poet, writer, cyclist and neighbour in the funky 'hood I call home, is embarking on a new writing project for your and his amusement. Think 'choose your own adventure' meets myspace meets Keats meets Dorothy Porter. Like a radio play only less stupid voices, and likely better writing. Erk, that was an awful description. See - this writing business is best left to the experts. I know what I'll be reading over my monday coffee.

More here:

http://www.timsinclair.org/TheDogAteMySerial.htm

'Play or fold, love is bold, what is the future that will unfold?'*

I meet the man on a sunny afternoon in the industrial backwaters, near the water. Before he gets there I stand on the sidewalk looking down, scouring for rusty metal – to go in a bowl at home and maybe one day a sculpture more structured than that. This part of the footpath is somehow sandy, the rough asphalt clogged, infilled with dirt and sand, and bits, little pieces of glass green and clear, small washers, unknown rough shards of rusted sheet metal, tiny little surprises, and as my eyes scan over them I am reminded of looking for shells at the beach, as if this piece of land is somehow still linked to the tides that run only hundreds of metres away in the big bowl of the harbour, as if this industrial zone is just overlaid on what was there before, and what was there before is somehow tugging at the inanimate objects scattered from lives here, the outer shells of consumer goods now dead, being washed with the wind, in tides, across the black chalky sands, weathered smooth and gentle, there to be found, and made into something new.

He is small and sharp looking, lean, whippet, short, boy-like. He is dressed in that casual attire of the very rich – the crispest white polo shirt in a gratifyingly rough white cotton, asymmetrical press studs which keep catching my eye, jeans, nice slightly roughened brown Italian leather shoes sticking out the bottom in a casual arc. A cap. Not to shade the sun, he parks his black beamer under cover and I doubt he will walk anywhere today except maybe for coffee.

He shakes my hand, looks at me with steady eyes that are sure but not aggressive. We go in. He darts around as he tells me about his vision for the space– he stands legs in balletical first position, then slides to second, or fourth, to show me where walls intersect, where corners will be. His body straight, his arms straight down and palms out beseeching, he becomes the renovations.

Such a big space, so exciting to see the disrepair and imagine the construction of walls, the white paint that will come, the cleaned bare concrete floor which will be strong enough and durable enough to endure slights in the medium of paint or ink or glass or stone. It is a stoic mass and I imagine it will barely even register such superficial interference with its surface.
This will be a great space. He suggests I take a studio space in the front, near the door, and near the hallway to the kitchen and washing area. Normally I would be wary of such a position, my sensitivity to feeling overexposed, or to feeling not enclosed enough would often make me reluctant to take on a spot like this. But this feels different, it feels like a light and small and active place to be, somehow like the hub of a wheel. I want to be part of that, I want to be part of this place of committed, interested, serious people who love what they do and do what they love. I want shelves and a cupboard for materials, a table and jars of paintbrushes, somewhere for rollers and inks and plates to be out, lined up and ready to be used, not enclosed in dark airless boxes. I want keys. I want to be there for the opening. I want to see how the exhibition space gets used, what it evolves into. I want in!

But.. at the same time I wonder about finishing the postgrad course I enrolled in a few years back then stalled. I haven’t quite quit it and part of me thinks that I should finish what I start before I start something new, and that I should boost my employability, be responsible, look to the future etc. My CV is a very bossy and disciplinarian taskmistress, and it is currently having it out with my blank and eager drawing book over who gets access to my spare time.

Or could I do both? ‘The more you do, the more you find you can do’... and all that.

This really has become a ‘Dear Dolly Lifecoach’ column hasn’t it?

* More apols to the Beasties

I got rhythms, I got rhyme

Did you ever play those computer games back in the eighties – you know the text based adventure games that say:

YOU ENTER THE ROOM
THERE IS A KEY
>‘GO LEFT’
(YOU CAN NOT GO LEFT)
etc.
?

I did, briefly, in some computer room back in year 6, I remember the computer paper coming out with those even little holes punched in which I found quite appealing. I quite liked the games, but also found them infuriating. One thing it did introduce early in a fairly intuitive way to the impressionable mind of a 10 year old is the notion of ‘opportunity cost’ and also the idea of streams of events, things that you need to do now that will help you in a situation later. Keys from here for locks that may come later. Not needing to know the outcome now, but knowing that some things here done well or collected will be fortunate later in ways you might not even imagine.

I think I have absorbed something of that sensibility in how I interpret life and it’s choices.

Just recently went to this drawing course, it was borderline whether I’d go or not, I booked the annual leave but then went ‘oh, you know, maybe I have Things To Do that I should be doing instead, maybe I’ll take the leave and do life admin. Maybe it will be silly to do the course’. Maybe maybe. And then. All in a flurry, faxed my enrolment on the last possible day from Vietnam and got one of the last spaces in the only course with spaces still available (and loved it).

Then while at the course I browsed the notice boards, saw flyers for studio space. Ripped one off. Still had it in my pocket when I got home. Rang the guy. Chatted. Had to call him back on the weekend about times. Called him back, made a time. Went to see the studio space. Think I will now go ahead and sign a six month lease, and before I know it I have wandered out into a dreamscape, into a place I could never have got to by being sensible, and is only possible as the product of one choice and then the next in an environment where disbelief has been suspended temporarily. And so many of the good things that I’ve experienced thus far in my 31 years have come as a product of whim, of gut reaction, of rhyme over reason. Reason catches up. Reason nuts out the lists to make the things happen once the decision is already made. But reason alone makes for very boring decisions, don’t you think?

YOU ENTER THE ROOM.

Winter woollies

OMG, Miss Angel found this fabbo link to a scarf festival in Melbourne. Yes you heard it, a whole festival dedicated to the knitted scarf:

http://www.craftvic.asn.au/default_scarf.htm

I want to go!

'Something Changed'

Well this afternoon Aunty B went up up and away on her way to grand old Europe, where she and Bizaro will be setting up home for the year to come, maybe longer, who knows. I mostly felt happy for her when I was waving her goodbye at the airport but coming back here to the pad where she had crashed the last few days noticed that there are little odds and sods of her stuff, like her toothbrush forgotton on the bathroom sink, I felt sad, because her things are lingering but she's gone for ages.

After watching her finish up all her Australian work, organise 'stuff', empty the flat, get rid of past tenants furniture, do the 'oh shit what do I need for now, and what do I need when I get off the plane and what do I need in 5 working days and what can I wait 3 months for and what do I not need at all?' packing and strategising I was reminded of the few times I have gone overseas, and particularly the time I packed up stuff and didn't have a job or house or life plan to come back to. It has it's particular aesthetic, packing up and moving away. All those little shitty household items which are so useful, and you have to buy to set up a house, but that just become logistical challenges when you have to get rid of them (if you are not fond of the 'chuck it in the bin and let landfill deal with it' approach, which most folk I know are not). An egg flip, a bucket, a half eaten packet of pasta, that skirt that you haven't worn for two seasons coz it rides up and bunches when your work bag rubs against it - where will all these things go? Who needs them most? What day will you take them there? What time? On what round trip to what other useful place on the list? What wil you store with significant others, what things hold such sentimental value that the hassle of moving them does not outweigh your care for them in the first place. Is this a phase of 'travelling light' or of 'setting up house'. Will you have to start all over again sometime soon - the collect and purge cycles? Moving house even a suburb away poses many of these same conundrums, but it is amplified when you're paying per kilo for things to go halfway around the world, and infused with a special kind of excitement and simultaneous sense of loss.

I moved from my home town 7 1/2 years ago now (as I type that a big part of my brain goes 'noooo, no way could it be that long ago!' - but it is) and I had similar feelings when I did that move, stagggered in two parts. The first one was more full of excitement than loss, it was a decision made on the head of a pin, a quick turnaround over Christmas New Year of 1999-2000 and the decision to take a job in another state, leave a partner temporarily and survive with just a boot full of clothes and bedding. It was a road trip, it was a working holiday feel, it was an adventure. Almost a year later when I went back to a house that didn't feel like mine anymore, to pack up half of it's contents through tears, it felt mostly like loss. Mermaidgrrrl and Bee Sharp were there that day giving me bolstering advice and encouraging me to be more firm in the reclamation of objects. I owe them for many of my household goods, as at that stage I was of the 'don't be petty, just take the bare minimum and enjoy the view from the high moral ground' school of breakups, they were less emotionallly involved and more pragmatic, of the 'don't be stupid, it was yours anyway and you'll just have to buy it all again if you don't' persuasion. Thanks gurls.

When I went to Malaysia for a swathe of a year for work I left my cat with BShap and Bizarro, boxes in the shed of S & F, random bits with my old housemate in Leichhardt, stuff scattered to the 4 winds. 5 maybe. I re-remembered just the other day that my bright red chaise lounge is still in hometown from when I first moved, having been cared for by Guitarboy (and Miss Ivy too) for all this time. Argh, sorry, I will organise trucking soon my friends!

When my mum also moved from our home town a few years ago, to a different state to the one I'm in, she gave away much of her household goods because she was heading over to join her interstate partner in his home which was already furnished and kitted out. I cried uncontrollably when I realised she'd given away all the furniture that I remembered from my childhood, without offering it to me, all the distinctive things that I remembered as part of 'home', even though home had passed through many houses over the years. I was also upset that she'd given away some of the things I'd left with her to look after after I'd moved interstate myself. She was baffled and couldn't understand why I was crying over, for example, an old kitchen cupboard, and I in turn had forgotten how hard and crap moving can be - her first interstate move, at age 40+ - and that she was also entitled to make a new start, and make those same hard decisions about what to take and what to leave.

Just a few weeks ago I visited S & F and while there poked around in my boxes in their shed, pulled a scarf out and took that home, not quite ready to be reacquainted with the whole mysterious content, and assured by them of their ample shed space for general higgeldy piggeldy storage. Maybe soon I'll reunite with those old cardboard friends and try to find room for their contents in my bedroom in this already full sharehouse.

I guess while people rent and intend to move around there is a natural waxing and waning of attachment to place. Maybe the days of finding homes for eggflips will temporarily pause while people around me 'settle down' into families and owning homes. 'I wonder if I will?' I muse internally, as if my own life is something mysterious which unfolds and I watch. Which is what it feels like at the moment.

Anyway, I didn't mean to reflect aimlessley at length on moving and lifeplans and boxes. Instead just wanted to say bye Miss B, happy trails, we'll miss you here in Synneytown!

Bigger and sleeker and whiter and brighter

What a week! What can I tell you about my drawing class? So many things.

It was all in charcoal, ‘drawing from the imagination’, no fruit sitting demurely, no model cold on cushions, lots of quick sketches and collage and composition. Teacher a practicing artiste – in prints, charcoal and watercolour.

The teacher:
Looked like BSharp’s dad. From London, sounded a bit like Jamie Oliver but less waxing lyrical about beefheart tomatoes and more use of rock music metaphor.

‘That’s alchemy, yeah?’ he said.

‘I don’t care what you like or don’t like’. ‘You can leave your expectations at the door. It’s about the drawing, what works for the drawing, not your preconceptions.’

‘This drawing is ok on the bass, but needs more violins – you know what I mean?’

‘it’s about commitment – commitment to the drawing. Sometimes you talk to the drawing, sometimes the drawing talks to you. Sometimes the drawing sings and you can hear it sing.’

‘You’ve lost the energy’ he said ‘now you’re all just doing it like the tick the box coz it’s something the teacher told you to do. Where was that energy you had before? I want that back.’

‘I want to see commitment, see you reach resolution.’

The place:
Enclosed and stone, rounded walls and small courtyards. An intimate space, but big, deceptively big. Enfolded, buildings, corridors, grounds. Convict hewn stone. High ceilings, sky-lights, exposed beams. Felt like Hogwarts.

My day:
I stand at the biggest piece of paper that I have ever drawn on and I stand very close like it is a lover and we are somewhere dark. I hold charcoal in one hand and in the other hand I clutch at the side of the chipboard and paper, the whole thing resting on the easel, my hand securing it, binding us together. Sometimes when I shade things round I stand with my face close to the paper so that I can peer down from where I imagine the light to be coming, to see whether my shading is right.
When I loose connection and lose faith I scowl at the drawing and stand arms length back, I poke at it, scratch at it, go back and forth without conviction. When I am back in the process and have lost that barrier of scorn and doubt I go in close, I sit on the floor with my tights and my skirt on the charcoal dusted lino and draw from beneath, I peer in, I stand on tippie-toes, I hold off going to the toilet, putting it off, ‘in a minute, in a minute’. I like some graph of a learner, go in peaks and plateaus of satisfaction, one minute the barest sketch makes me happy and pleased with myself, the next a whole day’s work looks pale and unconvincing. Ridges, steppes, baby steps.

Later I look at my skin and marvel that through tights I have charcoal highlighted knees, and that my forarms have the kind of grime you imagine of old newly industrial England.

The people:
A funny bunch. Mostly older women, with funky hair cuts and interesting accessories. A writer, an interior designer, a painter, make that two, a librarian, a television producer, an art teacher, an art therapist, a full time art student, and two teenagers whose parents made them go. And me.

Some I don’t like, don’t like straight away in that way that you feel embarrassed about, that very primal, crotch sniffing (I didn’t, I’m just saying) way. One smiles too thinly, is too attached to having been to one of these workshops already, her smile grows thinner as time wears on. The other is rough, gruff and lacks warmth. I think. That’s just me.

Others are great, they emerge from the mists of random names and faces that you get as an impression at the beginning and emerge through the week as solid characters with names each and families you now know about and plans for drawing rooms, and novels half written and stories, and laughs and suggestions. They have a feel about them, like their drawings. Some are sweet, some are all highs and air, some are little girl like but also solid and decisive, others are willowy thin and druidic.

The process:
Not much really not much for a week I guess, but there are exercises, and collages to make and redrawing to do. I learn how to hold charcoal so that it can be crisp and hard and soft and wide and thin. Willow charcoal, compressed charcoal and synthetic charcoal, I get to know their densities and their softness, how they smudge and how they outline. I use a rubber and see how light can be retrofitted onto dark. I use thick thick paper that is textured and feels ancient like a linen or papyrus. I thin of the word palimpset after I draw and erase and draw and rub back the same space over and over.

I love the time that I start to think round, and shading becomes a tracing of what you see, rather than a constructing of an artificial reality. I love thinking 'where would the moon's light go'? And feeling moonlight tracting objects as I smooth over them with a hard plastic rubber and make them whiter, lighter, lit up.

The work:
‘That's a beautiful horse’.
‘Dog’
‘Oh, dog.’

Dream a little dream

After 3 weeks ouit of the office (straight from hotel room typing extravaganza to annual leave last week, and out of the office this week) I dreamt about work last week. It went like this:
In the blue mountains, a work function, a bit like a day at the beach, but there isn't really a beach in the mountains. I got a lift up with someone from work, and once I got there there were all these little factions, groups of people (from work, plus their partners), all kind of connected, alll socialising, all in little rooms or different areas, all these dynamics going on, and I feel kind of not connected to it. Not really 'left out' or lonely, just not really like I belong there, like I am going through the motions. I drift from room to room, but I'm not reallly into it. I feel a bit lost and think about having to wait to get a lift back down the mountains, having to hang out there. And then I think 'no I don't'! I can just leave. I can just go to Kmart and buy a mystery novel, I can go visit my good friends in the mountains, have dinner, stay the night, catch a train back down the hill when I'm ready. It felt like such a relief - like I was remembering that I could do exactly what I wanted*, do things that make me happy, not just go through the motions.

*yes, bizarrely, this is my idea of wild indulgence (Note that in RL I go to small independantly owned bookshops, but do confess I have bought books at large shops like this, when in the mountains, very few new book stores you see...)

You can try hard, don’t mean a thing – take it easy, then your jive will swing

So yeah, then there was the rest of the weekend, and it involved friends from out of town and friends from within town and phonecall catch ups with folk far away. Miss B is heading off overseas soon and we had a nice cosy going away do for her in a pub in the inner west of our fair town. An interesting mix of folk, and lovely to see some from way back in uni days there, with their small brood. I did a postcard project, where I bought a pack of blank postcards (see your local art shop) and a box of pencils and pastels and scirrors and glue and random strips from magazines, and we created her going away card in installments as the night wore on. Which we'll post in dribs and drabs over the weeks to come. Yah to all those NGO hippies and inner westie mates for creating such funky little numbers.

Off to art course this week (thanks georgie g) and very much looking forward to it. And a little aprehensive. it involves a lot of charcoal as far as I can tell, and giant bits of paper and who knows what else. I expect to have tomorrow be a briefing waffle and demo session and then a few hours of drawing. I expect to come home smudged and dirty, worn out and happy. I hope so. I hope it's not like the hoop workshop last year where I looked forward to it for weeks and then felt like a giant un-co loser close to tears as it rolled (err circled) to a close (note, all you trainers out there, attending workshops can be scary). It's intermediate, and I'm a bit scared that everyone else will be doodling perect circles before lunch. Still. Fingers crossed! I figure it's gotta be messy, and that's what I look for, so I'm sure it will be fun. And a whole nother week out of the office - bliss!

Take it easy..

[Fun Boy Three and Bananarama]

Worried what your brothers friends mothers might one day say

Separation is a theme that is arising these last couple of days. What keeps people together and how do you know when it's time to go?

Someone I know is with someone that I would never live with in a million years. Sorry, would live with if just housemates, and in a big house with seperate wings, and barely sharing a kitchen, and if he paid half for the cleaners. But not as a partner, definitely not a partner. But how much are these things personal and how much universal? Should I tell said person 'Dude, I think your hubby is dud. Seriously. You could do a zillion times better. Leave and get yourself your mojo back, leave and let him work out his *issues* on someone else's time. Those kinda temper tantrums are best left to 2 years olds, so why not move on' ?

But there's lurve, and there's habit, and there's comfort zones, and there's fear.

I have another friend who says we stay where we are till being there is more painful than moving on, which sounds kind of negative, but in some instances makes a lot of sense to me. Dynamic, punctuated equilibrium.

I remember my last major breakup, it was awful, but one of the really interesting things was everyone's response to the break up.

"You can't ever possibly get back together with him or I''ll disown you"
"You just never know how things'll work out"
"You'll probably smooth things over, these things happen, I've dealt with worse in my relationship"
etc.

Everyone had an opinion, it was hard to feel your way and know what was the 'right' response, what was the perfect mix of Cosmo 'yougogirl' self determination, and forgiveness, and flexibility, and staying true to your own feelings etc.

No point really. Just a musing.


[Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set – Divorcee by 23]

Get out of the office and into springtime*

What a lovely sunny weekend I returned to this weekend in Oz. That reallly clear winter sun that around 4pm becomes breathtaking, like unwooded chardonnay pooling on people, everyone golden and warm one one side and shadow on the other. Beautiful.

I realise I posted in the middle of the night Friday with a culmination of jet lag and random vodka slushee contributing to unneccessary candour, but c'est le vie, done now, not going to discreetly edit and pretend it didn't happpen, just be kind and remember those drunken conversations you've probably had with taxi drivers, or regrettable texts, or whatever, late at night full of strongly felt positions and light on sense. Same kind of thing.

But, that aside, where were we? Oh that's right, I was in Vietnam. And then I came back.

Press fast forward and imagine this in blurry fast jagged CTV footage:

Airports. Ha Noi to Ho Chi Minh then Ho Chi Minh to Sydders.

In amongst that there was a blissful cosy few hours sleep on the plane, no one sitting next to me, 3 seats to lie down on, my thermal blanket in pale puple to snuggle under. Slept so deeply, so enjoyed it. Funny isn't it how contenxtual everything is? If I were normally to try and sleep surrounded by strangers in what is essentiallly a public place, 2 rows from the toilet, my face near a walkway, my worldy goods in a handbag shoved under a seat, I imagine I wouldn't sleep well. But there, on the plane, my relief palpable (really? actually palpable? - Ed) at coming home, feeling tired from lugging bags around ('would you mind taking these 4 sets of hard copy reports back to the office?' 'ah, erm, ah.. ok yeah sure, that will make it a total of 3 large bags as hand luggage, but hey, who's counting...').

Remembered to get vegetarian meals on the flights this time. Can't tell you (err, but am about to) what a difference that made. Usuallly I completely forget till on the plane, and let's face it, on domestic flights it hardly matters now that the old skool aeroplane company serves nuts and muffins and the nu skool service does a 'pay as you eat' arrangement off the menu. But for 8 hour flights you plan to eat a meal, and I just get a sinking feeling as my meal arrives and I realise it's a something stroganoff, and I'm either going to have to pick the morsels of veggies out of the meat and gloop, or pick the morsels of my personal moral code from in amongst the meat I've just eaten that I feel unhappy with. So vegie meal is very exciting!

Oh, except, one thing to bear in mind - your meal arrives early. As in, hand delivered to you, while the dinner cart is still just making it's way from business to cattle class way up there rows in front. Fine if you have an aisle to yourself (as in trip home), less fine when you are sitting next to one other person (as in my trip there). Actuallly on the way there I found it very painful because the scene went like this 'Ms blah blah?' 'yes?' 'special meal?' 'oh, yes, yes thank you.' 'Do you have your boarding pass?' 'errr' (looks pained and gestures at bag which is under seat, which is below tray table which is out with special meal now deposited on it). Ahuh! brainwave, ask middleageish lady sitting next to me to accomodate meal temporarily while I phaff about in bag looking for boarding pass. Yes, works fine, she looks happy to help. Very happy in fact, grateful even. Oh. Now she is removing the foil cover from the hot bit. 'Er, um, no, you see, that's mine, it's vegetarian' (curse lack of bilingualism to explain myself on international flights. Grab meal back. Feel bad at her slightly pained look, as if I repreesnted all chivalry, and chivalry is in fact now dying in front of her eyes). Show boarding pass. Read book. Read book and let meal go almost cold while waiting for meal cart to come by and give my neighbour her dinner. Curse my families bizarrely strict etiquette rules about not eating before everyone at the table starts. Get very excited when finally commence meal at the complete absence of pork chunks. Yaah!

Oh, anyway. So yes, got back to Sydney Friday morning. Grinned my face off. So happy to be home.

My cat was very happy to see me, and after putting on a load of washing, heading out to stock up for supplies and ghaving coffee with my housemate then came home for a lovely all afternoon nap. Until evening. Out like a light! Cat under doona and very happy for company.

Then Miss B came by and we cooked and prepared snacks, drank wine. Chatted, it was great.

Then party - see it all comes together.



* Yes, don't ask me why but I've had a whim to go back to naming posts after random snatches of song lyrics. This could be a scary insight into my listening tastes, although, realistically if you recognise the words you probably listen to the same stuff too :) I thought this one was from a song by polyphonic spree, but, like derr, it was Bella and Sebastian so Meri Risa tells me, on a mixed CD that she and C-chan made me which I enjoyed while away recently, chasing those hotel room blues.