"Of what use is consciousness if all that one is conscious of is ignorance?"

- Sebastian Faulks: Human Traces.

from half way

I want my whole life to feel like June 2010, where rehearsals finish at 5am and I walk across the road to my elevated living quarters, have breakfast before going to bed, ramble around the night campus squatting in a tutu, mouth vandalising an apple, some deranged creature, climb rooftops, get drenched in newspaper dreams, multiple teas before skytower-looking dreams, photographing myself horizontal upside down, five hours sleep per night plenty, planning installations fueling the fire, freezing outside the kitchen, chalk murals, isolated dreams, glove-thieving inebriation, intoxication clip clip heels, large beast car and friends right next door to disturb at ungodly hours wine on hand to be cinnamon spiced, cried upon, laughed, filmed, shattered, photographed in the woods with spare ribs under my ribs, blue nail polish and blue blankets, supposedly blue houses, tall newspaper clad men, bodies suspended in giant nets, certainty and confusion all at once, indefinitely happy, creating.

important

Compulsory Viewing: 

guests

Little green man, you can't
show me the exit any more
you have been
painted over red

Little green mantis, you can't
live all week on the toothpaste tube
you will die of starvation

day two

Day two
is a
more foreheady scratching in my throat
Is a heavier drag on my lower cheeks
Is a subtler aching in the arch of my right foot
Is greasier hair
Is cut up cuticles
Is a spider hanging in the folds of the net curtains
Is a strange smell that's not quite my own.

desperate plea for help (non-monetary)

Hello.

I'm making a show.
It's called, "How To Make Friends and Still Appear Normal."

Since I am now a "Professional" (not an "amateur" - yes, thank you, I officially wore the funny square hat on Wednesday), I have decided to conduct RESEARCH to assist my process (wank wank wank).

If you'd like to help out and be a part of it please fill out my questionnaire at:

https://viewer.zoho.com/docs/gpbcbae

I would like you heaps if you did. Maybe I'll put your name in the programme or something.

Thanks,

Natalie.

antedisbanding

I found myself here
longer ago than I remember
looking for - close proximity twice over
but seeking further afield now
rooftops of a different kind.
I will dance, I will not
just stumble with platinum grime
I will have clean carpet
and shining tarkett
I will fulfill this.

my hair

My hair is a hazard.

With the windows down
it slices my eyesight while I am
driving.

It gets stuck
under
arms and elbows and heads
when I am horizontal.

During impromptu cafe blurting
it
flicks the cheeks of onlookers
sticks
to the main chewy meal
rips,
brings tears into eyes that need to see.

My hair causes backlash
from severe
hair brushing
and
involuntary bashing of the head
against
stranger bedroom wall.

My hair is out to sabotage.
It wriggles free of its elastic restraints
more than easily
flying across the studio floor

It sheds itself off of my person
into
a million tiny pieces
like the
chocolate bar in Willy Wonka
transports itself into various corners of the
house
leeching onto vulnerable items of clothing
lurks
in dishes of goodwill
scares the recipients
It
blocks the ancient vacuum cleaner
beyond repair.
It
clogs the shower
so that
the bathroom floods and the vinyl irreparably
blisters.

It finds its way
into blu-tack, so that it is unusable.

My hair
sits on the back of my neck
a slightly malicious straggly parasite
looking over my shoulder
conducting the direction of my
steps
whispering suggestions:
Go there, do this.
It
overheats my head with thought
causes drips of worry
to
creep down the open side of my spine,
wallow in the pores of my back skin.

My hair
refuses
to comply;
to be contained;
to sit nicely;
to retain a likeable colour.

I am a siamese twin to my hair
It is a whole entity on its own
but
unfortunately
(for it, not for I)
attached to me.

extra

Why do you listen to that?, they say. Why do you stick that in your ear Why did you put that on your feet Why don’t you choose your favourite? Go on. Pick the one you like. Sign here, and here. 

Right now is grey fucked-up smiling, earl-coloured tea in vacant-crowd mornings. But not wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee mornings. Brain and blood eating, been up all night mornings. Which-morning-is-it mornings. Mornings which reek of the night before, and that night several nights before, and that-Sunday-night-we-acted like-it-was-Thursday-night night. You wake up from staying up all night and smell the rubbish truck’s leftover dinners on you. You can taste wafts of other humans in your mouth – some cannabalistic feasting in a moment of apathetic desperation.

Well I saw something on your neck, she said. Well. 

What you saw were the undiscovered remains of a non-existent adolescence, riddled with nunnery-fast-fed tape worms scorching through its skinny teenage-sized intestines. You saw the unplanned decisions of an overactive imagination, paying $80 a week for a one-bed, one-windowed, one-life, one dream lost down the scummy public shower shared multi-complex drain. What you saw was no jug to boil the murkey tea-water wake-up call. An offer to ride on whimsical naivety, hopeful in-control-everywhere-except-for-here bare-backed youth. 

That is to say, younger. 

An offer which was, I’m sorry, declined. But, resurrected thricefold by quite accident and in fact following the first first accident by the declinee’s own doings. 

Then, once in a run-down, newly done-up-deconstructed, built-for-purpose, thirteen-hour-day, rub-your-manhood-on-the-perspex shipping container. 

The third time while striding past a bus stop. (I still feel bad that I even thought of looking straight ahead – mother most certainly did not bring me up that way – but then she didn’t raise me on $80 a week either.)

Right now: sitting majestically at the top of the stairs. Kingdom of plus/minus 100, a few extra casino stragglers, some fluffy carpet and several lipstick-stained paper coffee cups. One with teabag still inside. That is what your royal crown will be made up: used teabags.

And there will be worms in your teabags too. Running legless through the loose leaves in paper confinement. Like not-so-free-range hens piled on top of one another, scrambling to shove their worm beaks through the gaps in the teabag bag cage. The hot flood flushes them away. Cauterizes their little chicken-worm heads and fluffs their carpet of feathers. 

Until they are purged of all their insides, which flop compliantly into the swirling leaf-water mix. We're literally in hot water now. You're in hot water when your twelve-cups-a-day comfort isn't quite so comfortable anymore. 

What are you going to do, then? Will you find it at your local honey shop? Will you grow your own? Will you pick the scabs from your ten year old knees and feed it to your neighbours with freshly baked scones? Jeopardize public health for the sake of ethicality, organicality, not-for-profit-much-icality. Yes. I don't want to intrude on your sanity, but honestly. 

There's only so long you can meditate on these politics. Mr. Key isn't going to listen. Mister Key doesn't know what your favourite colour is any more than you do. So what're you going to do?

Look across the way and pretend you know me. Pretend you're sorting out your differences. I promise you: We'll be alike in approximately four categorizable ways. I promise: By the end of the night you won't know any of them.

Little green men will light your way home. Light your way to pissing in the gutter. Little green men with skirts begging to take you home, tripping over themselves to show you an inebriatingly good night. Oh, go on! Go on! Take up the offer. You won't find better on the next corner. Honestly.

Squeeze your legs tight. Scratch your own fingers until they're crying out in red-raw rasping throatness. Husky-sexy-ish. Husky is sexy. Red is sexy. Fingers are sexy Everyone knows that.