spilling

Ok here goes. I wrote this about a week ago and, while some things have radically changed (oh fuck how they have changed - therein lies another tale), I feel it's time to start using this blog as catharsis. This is as good - or bad - a start as any.


So I'm in love right? Which sucks big hairy ones as always, let's be honest here. I'd say it's the best and worst thing about being alive except I haven't tried heroin yet. Love seems to be all about feeling like you've been coshed in the back of the head and had all your internal organs removed.

Especially when the object of one's ardour does not reciprocate.

How is that possible? I hear you cry. How, you continue, flabbergasted, can any woman resist the quirky yet oh-so-manly charms of such as you? For that I can offer no explanation - I can only ruefully shrug, a wry expression almost hiding the torment behind my chiselled features.

Ok, my faux-jocularity and facetiousness is tapped out.

Having clarified the situation, vis-à-vis mutuality of emotion, now comes the hard bit: disengagement for reasons of mental self-preservation.

This is someone I've spent a significant portion of the last year with and who has been a loving, supportive and positive influence on me through the shitstorm of 2009 (and who txted me on New Year's eve saying she couldn't have done Sydney without me, so at least I haven't been a total leech). We've been friends - inappropriately good friends at times. Although, while there's definitely a mutual attraction, we'd never acted on it (I seem to be developing morals in my old age).

So I don't know how to go about severing the connection without appearing a complete dick or a pathetic loser (both of which are facets to my scintillating personality, to be sure). Nor, if I'm honest, do I want to lose her. Well, obviously. Sometimes I think I'd prefer to endure the pain and hold onto the friendship. But I know that, at least for me, that way obsessive behaviour and madness lies.

So I need to somehow move on and move away from her in the hopes that I can stop thinking about her. Like this morning when I woke up and she wasn't on my mind. For five fucking seconds.

This is so exhausting.

Just to complicate matters nicely I'm even kinda seeing someone else (hey, it was all a bit too simple). A fun, lovely & passionate girl who is, in many ways, completely different from me. Someone who otherwise might own me like the dog I am. And maybe I can get there with her, time will tell. Or if not her then the next: I've lost faith in permanency of love or relationships recently - but I do still believe in their recurrence.

I'll leave you with this quote that has resonated with me so damn much since I first read it:

Man, I was thinking about unrequited love. I figure it's best to just walk that shit off. Find someone else to be excited about. It's like if you love ice cream but your ice cream man friend won't give you any. Maybe he's got a good reason. It cuts into profits. Who knows? But he likes you as a friend and wants to hang out anyway. It just drives you crazy to hang out with that dude, even if he's being reasonable from his point of view. So don't hang out with him. What, you ONLY like ice cream? It's ice cream or nothing? Don't be an asshole. Learn to love donuts.
- Joey Comeau

I'm learning.

If this post ever makes it onto eti you'll know that I have completely lost my mind.

root canal

In an effort to make sure this blog continues it's first shambling, uncoordinated steps into the new year here's some filler: a quick collection of songs and bands - both old and new - that have been on my playlist lately.

The Cruel Sea album The Honeymoon Is Over (1993). Especially Let's Lay Down and Make Love, the title track, and the awesome Black Stick.

No Rain by Blind Melon. Nostalgia - and a simply beautiful hook.

The soul-scouring debut album by Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More. I'm seriously upset to have missed out on tickets to their gig in Sydney in a few weeks.

(Nothing But) Flowers by Talking Heads.

The Beat (or The English Beat/The British Beat depending on what country you're in) and their stompingly good album I Just Can't Stop It (1980)

Kalemba (Wegue Wegue) by Buraka Som Sistema. Not much comes out of Portugal music-wise but damn this one is catchy.

Lykke Li's album Youth Novels - another excellent export from Sweden. What is it about that country? Main products: baffling self-assembly furniture and great music.

Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Kills me. Every. Single. Time.


Would add some links to YouTube or LastFM but I've GOT to escape this office and my head before I implode. Laters.

star-cross'd

So astrology is bollocks, yeh - but this was just a little too apt to pass up:

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suspect you have to go down into the underworld for a while. But you have a choice about how it will play out. You shouldn't wait for some random goblin to come along and pull you down into the miserable abyss. Instead, be proactive. Shop around for a more useful abyss -- a womb-like pit with half-decent accommodations and a good learning environment -- and go there under your own power. That way you won't have to slog your way through musty fogs and creepy pests and slimy muck. You'll keep your suffering to a minimum and attract adventures that are more intriguing than demoralizing.

Hat tip to Michelle.

PS: See how I managed to resist making any 'mooning' or 'Uranus' references? I may be growing up.

wasting

I feel like I'm going mad. I simply cannot drag my mind away from thoughts that are poisonous to me, things that are gnawing away at my insides. Quite literally it appears: I'm still losing weight, down to about 75kgs now. Fuck it.

No appetite, no focus, no drive.

I made it to karate this evening, by a tremendous effort of will, and got kicked around a bit by Frazer for my troubles. Fun times - and it's worrying for my mental health that I mean that...

Still didn't manage to have dinner when I got home tho. The whole thought of eating fills me with revulsion at times - no, I'm not anorexic, I still feel the hunger, still want the food. Just can't stomach (hah!) the thought of eating.

I can't believe it's only Tuesday. This week seems interminably long already. This weekend cannot come fast enough.. and yet I dread it. There will be even more pain to be endured, I know, but a closure of a kind is coming. I need it, I fear it and I hope with every fibre of my being that it doesn't work out the way I think.

But the realist in me knows what must happen.

Sorry to be cryptic. If I ever grow a pair I may spill all on eti. But don't count on it.

resolute

I'm not much for making new year's resolutions - but these few things have been hanging around in the back (and front, and occasionally to the side) of my mind for a while now. I figure if I publish them I might be more inclined to act on them:

Learn to juggle. Don't know why this has cropped up in my head - I'm definitely no performer. I just like the idea of keeping more objects in the air than I have hands for. And it allows me to make interminable jokes about dropped balls.

Find some volunteer work to engage with. Probably in the environmental/conservation line. Not sure what's available for someone living in the middle of a huge city but I'm sure there's something.

Learn a language. Ok, it's more of a long term thing - and I should learn French so I can converse with my nieces. Or at least know what they're scheming when I babysit.

Join Toastmasters or do some sort of public speaking training. I can jump out of planes or swim with sharks with no problem but the thought of talking in front of a crowd makes my sphincter clench.

Get a tattoo. At least one. I've got a deadline on this - need to have a design chosen as I have an appointment with a needle in a couple of weeks.

Send letters. Randomly.

There will be more as they take shape in my mind.

new beginnings

Blah blah new year blah...

Frankly I feel no better than last year - worse at times. I envy those who seem to be able to squeeze creativity out of pain: for me it's a deadening weight in my mind, crushing all creativity.

Not to say that every moment of my life is filled with ennui, dolour, existential angst and inescapable misery. No, no - sometimes I'm asleep!

I kid.

Actually, I had a pretty fucking legendary New Year's Eve. One, unfortunately, that modesty, libel laws and the desire not to incriminate myself forbids I record here. Suffice to say that I burnt the candle at both ends - then upgraded to a halogen lamp.

I was also, against the odds and most undeserved, blessed with an absence of hangover. A small mercy but a welcome one.

Unfortunately the real world intrudes. Rude fucker that it is.

Blogyear resolution: I'm determined to overcome the self-censorship that has inevitably crept in eti (note cool unconventional othographic use of lowercase acronym - how fucking hip am I?). Unfortunately (or not - depending on your pov) today is not the day for baring my tortured soul. Gotta leave the punters wanting more, right?

Keep coming back for more irregularly updated windbaggery!

Smoochies.

morning haiku

Still easing back into blogging...

Frangipani: sweet
Blossoms path my morning walk,
Naff stickers on vans


Hi! how have you been?

..oops

It seems that rashly declaring I was back and blogging at a time when I am busier and more unsettled than I have been for years was.. well.. rash.

So.

Seems like I will be resuming my usual modus craperandi of irregular and erratic updates with little content or interest.

Start as you intend to continue I say!

In an attempt to be slightly less shite here's a brief recap of recent events:

I'm working in a new job (still for the Attoney General's Dept tho) which is good and challenging, although at the moment it mostly involves reviewing functional specification documents. More than a thousand pages all up I'd say. My eyes are beginning to crust over..

My long-term relationship has broken down (I did the breaking, truth be told).

Finding accomodation in inner Sydney sucks big fat hairy arses. But I've got a place to move into on the 27th Nov, so things are progressing - albeit slowly. Now all I have to do is buy everything all over again.

The stress of recent events has caused me to lose somewhere between 5 and 7 kgs (my bathroom scales are as erratic as me) and I'm only now getting my appetite back. Everyone keeps telling me I look great tho - which, oddly, makes me feel worse. I don't recommend it as a weight-loss strategy.

Emotional trauma and my general fucked-upness has so far managed to turn me into a hypersensitive asshole, irreparably damaging at least one friendship. Let alone losing the person I've been closest to for years.

I've seen more of Sydney in the last few months and been out & about more than the previous couple of years. The upside of being alone and having to find my own fun/occupy my overworked brain.

I'm sure there are more things I've done in the last year or so but, obviously, my mind is still focussed primarily on the events of the last couple of months.

More to come, hopefully. Fear it.

it's alive!

..ish

After judicious application of magical electricity to the essential areas...

My nipples are still smoking.

I'll be easing back into this so be gentle with me...

...with a whimper not a bang

Or more precisely a 'meh'.

I think it's time to draw a line under this blog and call it done.

It's lasted 5 years and has pretty obviously run it's course. I barely update it, almost never say anything personal, pertinent or insightful and just don't really have the interest in it anymore. Hell, I haven't checked my site stats for months.

I've no regrets: although losing the anonymity was a blow I didn't get fired, lose friends or get cut out of anyone's will (so far as I know..). And I've met some wonderful, weird and wonderfully weird people - some of whom I've been lucky enough to meet in person too.

I'm loathe to say I'll never be back (concocting blog-posts in my head is something I still do) but this is my official retirement.

It's been fun people. Thank you all for your comments, links, email, chat, etc. And thank you to those people whose blogs inspired me to do this - especially those sites I still visit with pleasure (and envy *s*).

Ciao.