and if you didn't come here to party then why did you come here?

Gosh it's been a long while since I last blogged. I'm really sorry, this blog has its moments of being a bit of a backwater. The words are fresh at first and then you click here, see the same header and leave disgruntled, aware that the posts are getting brackish, pooling, maybe some pond-scum forming. Without movement there is no flow, without flow no oxygen is captured by cold watery hands and folded back into the body of the stream of thought, without oxygen things find it harder to live, only the most hardy and thick skinned perservere, the delicate and subtle beasties languish and don't reproduce, let go of the banks and jagged twigs and let themselves float downstream to somewhere more hospitable. Consider this a cool spring rain come to mix things up a bit, get things moving.

Ahem.

Now. Where was I? Telling stories.

Firstly pesto. Imagine a tightly packed jar of rocket pesto, rocket home grown, homemade in my mum's kitchen, arriving in a suitcase of varied hand me downs and gifts, sent by bus from interstate, the jar of peso bubblewrappped carefully, surrounded by books, big stacks of Literature, old paperbacks of serious radical words, and a collage made by mum and my little brother aged 3 1/2 of the 3 pigs, the wolf stuck on in fluffy grey fake fur, he a blocky little jagged shape with giant boggle eyes. It makes me laugh and makes me feel sad, that they should care about me so much, that he should be so far away, that my experiences of him be mediated by telephone or through drawings or funneled into the space available in a fly in fly out visit. A certain sense of sweet sad loss and of time and of things not being quite the way the should be, of a lost opportunity and of life not waiting while I try to figure out who I am and how I want to live and where I want to live it.

The man at the pizza shop. He has a wide face with wide spaced eyes that make him seem a little otherworldy, his under brow half smile a little cloying, like I drown in its proximity. I become ever so aware of the fact that he sees me walk past, alone, late into the evening, weeknight after weeknight. Not that I fear sinister motives, but just that he has become a mirror to my alone-ness, and of my predictability. His slow burn flirtation, the smile of recognition, and once or twice when I've eaten there, the intimate questions and as I pay the bill, the discount (he tips me). All very familiar for a complete stranger. I am often acutely aware that the pizza man with the wide spaced eyes gives me the most loaded attention I get all week. Sometimes I worry that I would date him if he asked just because I tend to go along for the ride (err, poor choice of words p'raps). I have even imagined what his empty, clothes strewn flat would look like. Not in a sexy way, just out of anthropoligical curiosity. I imagine empty cans, white walls and bright light and the dark impenetrable language shared between him and his wide girthed brother in law. It wouldn't work, I can feel the awkwardness, his cassanova butting up against my ice queen or nerd girl career woman. There's not much scope for finding a foothold in all that, I feel that our personalities would slide right over each other without getting purchase. Ultimately Unfulfilling. The red stamp that many of my idle wonderings end up with after they've been sent to the Romantic Possibility Assessment Department in my brain. Some internal envelopes doing the rounds holding a tentatively penciled outline returning stamped in red, again.

The zine fair. Yes I went to one. Part of an art festival a few hours out of town. Met an old friend (who was once a workmate, then an ex-work mate, and then tentatively a friend, and then by virtue of time and continuous record, an actual friend, and now I think and old friend), caught up also with Ms Snapdragon and Mr T. It was hot and dusty. Mr T had a stall. I had made a zine and put it on said stall. We all sat at the stall and chatted to strangers. Wandered and bought buttons and zines, I bought a boggle eyed badly stitched girl dolly, who I plan to pin and wear as a brooch. Semi-ironically. Or something. The zines were all suitably scrappy and whispered or breathless and teenaged or made as if on a random generator of cut type and photostatted household objects. Some were quasi political in that amorphous, highly insinuating and hyperhbolic, arty kind of way that leaves you a bit unclear as to what they actually suggest get changed and how, but have great scratchy graphics and a gaggle of matching outfitted thin and pierced uni students at the stall. Which, you know, counts for a lot. I felt quite dried out and scatty all day. LIke things are moving just that half notch faster than you and you are running behind trying to figure out what just happpened. I think it was the hot dry wind, and the fact that on the train ride up I sat behind a family with most of the tick a box problems you can think of, and listened to it alll play out, loudly for over an hour. I felt jangled, but like I couldn't move away because if people have such shit lives the least I can do is be aware and bear witness, not slink off to the easy listening carriage and pretend it's not happening. However as a result, I felt wrecked, emotionallly wrung out just from listening to the interactions, the loud rough drug-slurred speech, the unspoken needs left ignored, the car crash of an afternoon the parents had planned, the dynamics, the anxiety, the depression, the overtly sexual behviour and the teenaged daughter cringing in the corner, the drug use, the prison sentence, the neediness. Sometimes I feel very thin skinned around other people like I soak it all in and feel it too. Sometimes think I'm a bit of a delicate flower and also at the same time the rough and uncaring caretaker of the flower, treating myself a little too casually, roughly, not protecting myself from the vageries of the elements, of other people's outpourings.

The hampster wheel. Sometimes work feels like a hampster wheel - right, ready, set go! Spin the wheel! Answer emails, check phone messages, check emails again, edit that document, check that website, quickly hold that meeting, touch base with that, leave a voice message for them, smile at the interns, check the email, make a tea, tell a joke, walk to the printer, breathe, check emails. etc. Well at least on busy days. Some days, especially Fridays, I have such trouble getting myself out the front door and into the office. We have flexible working hours, but sometimes I stretch them until all the flexibility is at its snapping point - ping. Sometimes I just can't bear the idea of going in there - to all the people and all the small talk, all the inane questions, all the interruptions, all the smiling. Does that make me sound like a people-hating, introverted, badly adjusted freak? So be it. Possibly I am all of that, and add erratic and day-dreamy to boot. I just want to be left alone some days, not because I'm upset or sad, but just because my head is full from the last few days inputs, and I need time to let it all settle, I need peace and quiet, I need time to turn ideas into action. I tend to disengage when I feel like this. I sometimes don't go in until late morning, or I head off to a meeting room to work (if it's a writing task people understand, other people do this too). I think sometimes people interpret this as 'she is unhappy' or 'she is stressed', and I lack the language to say 'please don't talk to me, I'm really over people right now' in a way that might make any sense and also not offend. If I had my own office it might be different. If I was an academic and not working on applied research for clients I might find more swthes of uninterrupted time. Of course sometimes I am sad or stressed as well as just feeling in need of quiet time, that is quite the trifecta. In conclusion, I think the whole 5 days a week (plus) shennanigan quite ridiculous. Three days a week would suit me much better, but so far I haven't been brave enough to weather the pay cut.

Dancing around the kitchen. Yes I did this. To Radiohead. It was a funny kind of dance and I looked at my arms move in the lit up glass of the backdoor, with the black night behind and marvellled at such wiggleyness as it was unfolding, feeling removed as if they were someone elses.