back to front

I read magazines backwards so that I don't get anxious about finishing them.

I read the last page of books after I've read the first chapter for the same reason.

If I don't do this I can't read the book/magazine properly. I end up skimming over the words and don't take any of it in.

landing

I can see your homeland, boy
and my wanted four walls
entombing myself in borrowed sand
that my body should disintegrate into some similar gritty substance
and be filled over by a gentle christening
I dread unwanted goodbyes

something like the quiet

Cigarette butts in mum's 'garden'.

You look so lovely lying in the bath
like Francesca drowning herself and catching it all on film
some distanced tranquil quality
I haven't seen your flesh for some time
(though it is, in parts, my own)
it looked more hospitable than before

Please stay here for a while
don't get out yet please
don't get out yet
I want to sit on the cold tiled floor and talk to you
it's been so many years since I saw you this young
stained with age's wisdom
occasionally I feel guilt that I won't hold you -- but not often
and your body is functioning properly
underwater, under
my vision, I wish it stretched beneath the sun-worn land of your face
but it doesn't

Mother my heels are hot with fear and
you, in your solitude,
have befriended old hot habits

I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.

I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.
I will not be anti-social on Christmas Day.

sydney scribblings: beautiful things

When I was in Sydney last summer, my friend Jeanie and I spent a Sunday afternoon at Sole cafe in Newtown listening to live music, ordering tapas, drinking red wine and scribbling in Jeanie's notebook. 

I forgot about the scribblings until this year. I was looking through her notebook and saw the pages we had created together. I reckon that Sunday was one of the most enjoyable days I've had in Sydney. 

There are six pages.  I'm going to post them one at a time.

"

how great,

that when we are little

we are able to look

down on the world.

in our
own perfect
little world

Beautiful things:

1) a man and a woman losing their balance on a traffic island with smiles.

2) kisses in the back of taxi cabs while seeing left ring finger.

3) reading other peoples' books in public.

# 4. couple in SPIDERMAN suits. walking down street.

4) smiles @ strangers

5) puddle jumping

6) feeling pretty in pj's

we look so sad without words

"

BACK TO AUCKLAND TOMORROW

colons and dashes

The whole house is fighting over the toilet
There is a queue to see what you had for dinner
Dinner has undergone metamorphosis and is somewhat unrecognisable

Reverse metamorphosis though -
not a creepy caterpillar to an elegant butterfly but
from something worth paying $65.00 for, to a revolting
half-liquid mass sprawling seductively all over the toilet bowl (some of it)
although mostly basking on the bathroom floor
clinging like some importunate lover to your matted hair
and swinging sloppily off your chin.

Your toilet bowl stance:
bent and subservient
submitting your body to some crazy hot-flushed ache
shoulder blades, lower back seeping damp patches of spent energy
trying to recuperate; suddenly still after
involuntary violent jolts and harsh curved shapes in your spine
you feel it swarm through your body in sequence

Until afterward.
For all the contortion you feel an odd kind of 'better' ...

until the next sickness expands itself in your gut
gnawing away at your delicate immune system which you have taken
so many pills to protect
realising even the doctor can't help you when you are clutching porcelain
It is just you and that erratic bloody target of a toilet bowl jumping all around the damn bathroom

You better watch your healthy round back while you are bent over my dear
because I can guarantee
there is at least one other person standing in the doorway
watching the caterpillars erupt from your throat
housing a nervous system full of lithium, ready to
claim the toilet-throne for their own viewing pleasure
willing to bump heads
prepared to endure that vile green-brown taste
The smell is not great but the
power of being in this position
is inconceivable.

handbag snippets

For some reason my bus has only old people - except for me.


I sit by the girl
She leaves
A boy enters
He sits by the other boy


On the verge of health and riches I am most impatient. Hating my own gut, I go out to find people in unusual places - I climb trees to be with possums and drink cider for the health benefits of the minor artificial fruit content.

I always love an ending and hold onto it like some desperate child clinging to its parent womb.

Willingly, I would take five thousand poisons for friends. But I refuse to stand next to your primitive light - like I said, I'm on an apple diet.

My best accessory is a plastic bag and a plastic bottle to match (this is my plastic boycott). I am saving the world one casual sneaker on a crusty foot inching it's way into the pub at a time.

People are throwing fast food fast over my head and over and over, hangover, pizza in flight across the Tasman, be careful 'cause the pavement will pee on you unless you get him first.

You can park your bicycle at the bar if you intend to order upwards of $40.00 of drinks. But don't ask for a jager bomb - they call it something else here.

I saw a heavily tattooed man stretch his pinky finger out towards another man and the other man walked away smiling coyly. I think it was their first date. Out on Sydney's bigger and stranger version of K Road, with its Friday night manners.


Bus to Newtown
Newboy
Newboy from Newtown
He has your eyes and, I imagine, his hair


We would lie sides apart: parallel train tracks going nowhere; our vision on the 'ahead' and not each other. In these rare moments I hated the sun. Kisses were earned in arm wrestles rather than love. Your room stunk of self-assurance. I shed myself of you in the Chinese Garden on a hotter-than usual day and from a distance you fed me stories of your dead relatives who did not yet suffer arthritis or alzheimer's.

crafty

Yesterday I went to see the graduate design exhibition at UTS. One person had made a notebook with cut envelopes for pages. I can't remember who. Sorry. I thought it was great.

I like paper. Slight obsession. I collect paper. Mostly receipts, tickets, flyers, notes I find on the ground. I have massive bags full of paper which I intend to do something with. Halfway through the year some (a lot) of this paper became my hybrid art project. But I kept collecting even after I finished that.

In Sydney I have also been collecting paper. Today while baby was asleep I decided to make a pocket sized notebook from some of the paper I have collected, inspired by the one I saw at the exhibition yesterday. Some pages fold out into larger pieces. The left side of each leaf shows what the paper was originally used for, the right is blank or blank-ish for writing on. I sewed it together with a needle and thread. And bent the needle and broke it.

I like it very much.

one way only

Weird that to get to what I am you have to be that first. Often think of you as an entirely different species to myself. Sure, I see parts of myself in you but I also see parts of myself in a cat or a polar bear or a frog.

What really stops me from seeing how you can eventually be what I am is that we don't process things the same; I can't communicate with you. You're forcing me to learn a new language that's not even in the same family as mine. And besides, we don't have anything in common to talk about. You don't understand why you have to wear this stupid flappy bit of fabric on your head only on sunny days. Burying your face into the couch makes you invisible. The shelf inside the coffee table is a perfectly acceptable place to store four half-chewed pieces of apple until they rot into a pungent giveaway. 'Hello' can be dropped in at any point of any conversation and taking off your pants is the easiest way to get attention (similar tactic to my species, actually?).

Still. Imagine how small your world must be if the most horrific, traumatic experience of your day is that you can't unclip a helmet strap. Imagine if that was all it took to send me to tears. Truly, I would rather more complex tragedies. My world is a thousand times larger than yours and even I only know one fignernail of it.

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLzzz

Seen a LOT of these posters around town.

"The sluttiest way to end 2010."

 Damn.

"I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry"

- John Cage

pash fest in circular quay

Walking around the city after class tonight I stopped to take photos in a staircase/alleyway I liked.

I found a hidey-hole...  

... and hid inside.

Across the street I saw a couple (early thirties?) who had just come out of one of the restaurants. They were kissing. Quite a lot. I was surprised they felt comfortable doing this in public (I don't).

After a while they stopped, crossed the road and started walking towards me up the staircase. 

 

The man said something to me. I had my earphones in but he made a hand gesture which suggested that he was asking if I wanted him to take a photo for me. 

Assuming this was what he had said, I replied, "Oh, no thanks, it's ok." He asked, "Are you sure?" I waved my hand and smiled and said, "No, I'm fine thank you."

I was conscious that my camera was still on self timer and for some reason felt anxious knowing this, even though the flash was off and besides that they obviously could see what I was doing. I walked back to the camera quickly.

The couple kept walking past me up the staircase. I reallyreallyreally wanted a photo of them back-on walking up the staircase but because the camera was still on self timer I had to wait for it to finish capturing. All I got was the last bit of them ... walking into the hidey hole !

OMFGROFLOLOLOLZZZZZZZZZ scandal!

Awkward because I wanted to keep taking photos. But you can't just go and pose casually next to some strangers' pash fest, can you?

As I walked off I looked back because I couldn't quite believe it. I mean, when I was fourteen my (then) boyfriend and I got snapped kissing at the top of a tower where we thought no-one could see us - except apparently there were monitored security screens on the floor (oops). But I could never imagine public pash fest in a reasonably busy walkway as a 'mature' adult.

Yet looking back my suspicions were confirmed: Definite pash fest in hidey hole.

Crikey. And they go on about us 'young ones.'

oh the places you'll go!

City Rail's My Bitch by Glato at Horus and Deloris: Into the Jungle.

Smokey by Glato at Horus and Deloris: Into the Jungle
[made with warning signs from cigarette packages].

Current play companion [Mimi May Tanner, 11 months].

Business man enjoying a lie-down in Hyde Park during lunch.

St. Martin's church, Kensington.

Concrete TV screen reading "life is fleeting" with URGENT sticker pasted over, Newtown.

we need to find girls

You all look so daunted and fresh-faced, as if you've never heard
this part of town before
did it take courage to end up here or chance?
meandering through the train station before losing your cellphone to the tracks
the gap between the platform and the train is hungryhungryhungry.

There's nothing to do in
this city except walk around acting white and red
so instead we'll sit around in Hyde Park and have a beer or two
the lack of liquor ban basically demands it of us
the Christmas tree has lit us a spot
we'll be green for a bit
then we'll leave our bottles behind in a thoughtfully arranged pile
on the grass

walk off quickly holding your back to the imaginary gun
you're going to be hunted like a lover you will
have your footsteps mimicked
as you pick up your skateboard to climb the stairs
skating in the dark to some destination
put your hood up to save yourself
or: catch the 303 to wherever it goes and walk the difference
or: save all your coins for drinks and walk home instead
or: wander through empty shopping malls and see their attempts at Christmas

OR
wander to every corner
see the cardboard eyes
donate to their Christmas funds instead: a cushion and half a
hit, some fun
in a paper bag
so they can spit on your beautiful white shoes your stupid pointy
shoes sh-sh-shoes there are enough
traps laid out for you as it is
poisoned laughs spiking the footpaths of King's Cross
where the newest concrete has the least gum
and in the morning
as you carry your heels home in time to the sounds of birds
you can smell the remains of the weekend as they are
quietly cleaned away by a man (whose name you can't pronounce) in an
orange vest.

parking only

Walking home from an exhibition in Newtown, we stop in Waterloo to take photos.

 

[Photographed by myself and Jeanie Black-Dunlop.]

and we all dance our fucked up dances

June 2010.

Creating characters for a Hybrid Art workshop.

[Yr 2 Dance, Unitec].

Caterina Laschke

Rosa Provost

 

 

Myself

Jessie McCall

Shani Dickins

delicious/FABULOUS

b&w portraiture binge/past

This is my dad (right) and my uncles.

 

They are all German.

rachel jessica

This is my sister.

When she was eleven.

love/hate*

love:

I love you with your hood up and kind of skulking around with a quiet confidence or maybe shyness and being very lovely to look at etcetera.

 

hate:

I hate your stupid flappy phone wallet thing flapping around underneath your phone and in your face while you talk.

*[inspired by six south's 'love and hate' July 2009 volume 1.]