#30: the last day of November

I skipped writing a post for the last day of NaBloPoMo last night, I’m not too sure why (I’m backdating this post, just so I get the full calendar [minus that one day I had no Internet]). I had been thinking about it in the days leading up to the 30th, and I had some vague ideas but when it came down to it, I came home, undressed, watched The Mummy on my naked mattress – the sheets are on the line, dressed again to go downstairs and make a late dinner, came back upstairs, watched more of the movie and then fell asleep. There’s a thoughtless quality to how I spend my time at home lately. My actions are often misdirected, as if I forget halfway through any movement what it is I am meant to do, what I mean to do.

This month’s been fun for me, writing wise. It might not always seem like it – I feel like I come across as constantly sighing. I’m not, even though I may feel that way on certain days. But I found this way to write that has sustained me through this NaBloPoMo which I have not ever done before in previous years. I found a way to crystallize the many tiny moments that make up my tiny days, my small, unassuming life and my vast and constantly searching inner world. I found a way to write about my day that both recorded the events and my feelings of the events. I found a way to turn some of my despair, my heavy stones, my joy, my wonder into some soft, silent poetry. At least, I hope I found these ways. It certainly felt like it, and I can only hope whoever is reading this, and have been reading this past month didn’t mind me finding those ways and writing that way.

I want to acknowledge my rag tag team of fellow bloggers, who I’ve been doing this with for about 3 years? Has it been 3 years? And I was friends with them even before that (jealoussss?) So: cadiz (who detailed the intensive labour of love her wedding was over 30 days), Jon (husband of cadiz, shaver of heads, grower of questionable facial hair), Madelyn (the secret identity of Superman. shhhh, tell no one!) and Jasmine (I said this in a comment over there and it remains true: “I wish we could invent some kind of failsafe guarantee that everyone’s experience of New York is like yours. Or at least my (future, hopefully) experience of it will be, because it sounds so incredibly amazing when you write about it”). Thanks also to Patty, Annika, Davina, Tash, Wezi and Cass* (who I know were reading on and off throughout, and commenting sometimes. Love you guys!) Thanks to whoever has been reading this without me knowing, stay cool and mysterious!

I’m a bit wary of saying this, but I’ve enjoyed blogging again so much this time round, that I am considering keeping it up regularly, maybe even daily, until I get sick of it. But don’t quote me! Lord knows I don’t exactly stick to my convictions (sore point). And I could get sick of this on December 3rd. Anything could happen! Check back in tomorrow! If you can! Talk to you soon! I guess! Maybe! Let’s hope! Okay bye!

*I’m so scared I’ve forgotten someone. If you are that someone, you can steal all the thanks I’ve ever given to anyone else and take it for yourself. You are a supreme human being, and you redefine what it is to be human.

#29: on the ribbon

There’s a lack of conviction in my decisions that makes me wilt under scrutiny. Everything lines up when I only have to deal with myself; all reasons valid, all excuses justifiable.

I had the kind of uncomfortable and heavy nap that comes from a stressful day. My brain whirred and stalled and whirred and stalled. Whizz fizz click. Whizz fizz click. Finally my body laid me under and shut the whole system down. I had had plans, in the middling grey of an unremarkable workday, to look at my things and sort them into piles. To reckon with my possessions and start burning them away, the shell I had built in my time here. But as I entered my room, basket of clean laundry under one arm, I felt heavy and thick with the permanence of objects, and how many things one can accumulate when one isn’t busy thinking of leaving.

My mind recalls the amount of times I have ever said “I don’t want to talk about it.” The outright nerve of such a declaration. Who was I to decide anything like that? Who was I to declare invisibility? I shifted and fussed under the warm, bright glare of constant surveillance and interrogation. Best interests at heart.

Permanent residency in Australia isn’t going to happen, not this year or next. I do not fulfil the important criteria, and I am not willing to throw money after what is, by all accounts, a gentle but firm rejection. My (migration-unsuitable) job, I’ve been told, might be given to somebody else next year, made bigger, made to involve skills I do not have. That’s fine. I didn’t take it personally, although I wish it had all become a little more clear a little bit earlier in that slightly uneasy conversation. That felt like a sign. It felt like a way out from a decision I wasn’t all too sure about making.

I try and think of Europe, however long I can have it. I try and think of coming back to Malaysia, I try and arrange myself inside so that there will be no space for the heavy stones I feel about this home of mine. I try and think of plans, and temporariness, and being happy. I try and be sure. I try not to think of money, and the clock. It feels like I am letting down so many people, although I could not tell you who, although that is how I feel most days. Oh the pains of being your own person, of living in your own skin, of speaking in your own voice, and declaring yourself.

I am, I am, I am*.

Leaving or staying? I would like to think there are more than two options, or an agreeable mixture of both. I am moving. I will keep in touch. I am hopeful. I want you to be happy for me. I am scared. I will try and do this. I will try and come back to visit. I will try to be happy where I am. I will try to remember. I will try not to forget. I am trying. I will keep trying.

* It wasn’t until exactly a month after I first wrote and posted these words that I realized it was, word for word, a quote from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. (Some versions say ‘brag’, others say ‘bray’)

#28: After Queenscliff

We walk on the beach and speak of abortions, empty wombs and the bloody beds of women. We walk to the pier and I see all the shades of blue. The bleached boards of the pier are stuck with crusted, dried seaweed and one rusted and orange starfish I fail to photograph. The rocks below are covered with green moss and there is so much colour. Friends pop up in our conversation like the broken shells and dead jellyfish we sidestep during our walk – all our loved and broken people. Our words are love, our worry is love, we so badly want to fix.

Three pelicans perch, imposing and large, on a small sandy island close to shore. We find a “tree” of dried and tangled branches, each piercing a flat white seashell with a hole in the middle. Christmas is so close. I wear my new, unbaptized swimsuit under my top and shorts but I resist from dipping my feet in the water, unlike Ace who does it twice to shake the sand loose from her feet. Later I will take the swimsuit off and find that my period has come. We go back to the beach where SP stands in the middle of the sea, close enough for me to yell at (with affection), spending half an hour before he finally plunges his body beneath the cool water. I make myself go in the water and roll my shorts up as high as they will go, I flick my fingers in the sea, as if this is something that will make up for everything else.

But now me and Ace reach a yellow signpost and briefly I feel like we are at the end of one world, perhaps a very small world. I snap a photo of a pink lollipop sign by the road so close to us on this narrow, rocky beach. It pops against the muted blue sky. We walk back. Raindrops. Nobody can get a pin on how this day will turn out, our hearts are wrong but we are hopeful. I scratch my calves and on the back deck the milk swirls in my Earl Grey tea.

Some of the descriptive scenes here appear as photos in this post. 

#27: Queenscliff Music Festival Day 3

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queenscliff music festival 2011

Shows attended: Lanie Lane, Oh Mercy, Kimbra, Stonefield, Frente!, Gypsy and the Cat and The Red Eyes.

Incidental in-betweens: We take a quick trip to the beach at the wrong pier. Our walk back gets us stuck behind the temporary fencing that circles the portable toilets. We saunter into a gate and almost make it into the backstage area, instead we are politely told to walk to the front gate and we pass the musicians in the shaded area of their collective trailers, a barbecue fired up and tended by festival volunteers.

The sun comes out and we almost can’t enjoy it, wondering where it was yesterday. My shoes are still a little damp. We discuss the fine art of between-song banter. Factors: frequency, length, tone, pandering levels, intimacy, energy. We notice the female vocalists dominating. Our focus narrows from enjoyment to the academic.

The festival ends quietly, with us sitting on the grass outside as a the sweating shirtless frontman of The Red Eyes serves up dance-y reggae within. Later as we drive away, skipping out on the after party, we see the food stalls we frequented in our three days – Belgian pretzels, gourmet hot dogs – locked up and carted way behind packed cars.

Post: We arrive at SP’s summer house, and end up watching Twilight on the television (ironically), switching to the ARIAs, Brideshead Revisited (the Matthew Goode version), Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth version) and a Swedish crime thriller on SBS 2 during commercials. Ace and I sleep in the same room, on two single beds lined up on opposing walls. We talk into the dark and SP joins us, a shadowy blur who sits in the chair in the corner. Ace tells us of the winters in her homeland when the electricity and water cut out and her countrymen go to the lake when they need to go to the toilet. We come up with a name for a column in the magazine we plan to make together – “Bitchez with a Z” (zed). We ask SP to illustrate an Eskimo carrying a bucket and a torch to the lake in the dead of night with the caption “The ghetto life”. He draws this with colour pencils the very next day.

#26: Queenscliff Music Festival Day 2

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queenscliff music festival 2011

Shows attended: Sweethearts, Amaya Laucirica, Puta Madre Brothers, Dead River Deeps, The Songs of Michael Jackson & the Jackson Five, The Triffids & Friends, Dreamboogie, The Delta Riggs and Boom! Bap! Pow!

Highlight: A train carriage in the small town of Queenscliff, steaming from the heat of bodies big and small, wet from the pouring rain. Parents and children in the back, overgrown children in the front blocking the view, us in between. The band – Puta Madre Brothers – start playing and we are transported. The big kids jump up and down and the carriage rocks and sways, the drums reverberate, the guitars grind. The music is dirty, loud and cut with grit and heat. It conjures cigar smoke, humid war torn countries and smoky underground booze dens. The band members (what I could glimpse of them) wear patched up army uniforms of green, red and gold. The train starts, a whopping 5km an hour but it does not even matter. We are all moving. The rain never stops and it gets wetter and colder as the day wears on. Our hopes for the sun tamped down further into the mud and grass. The heat rises of our jumping, rocking bodies on this small carriage and everything is perfect.

Favourites: We decided to catch Dreamboogie and The Delta Riggs solely on their one song performance at the Michael Jackson tribute. The former wore a one-shouldered sequinned dress and the latter spasmed across the stage in a dandy hat and a burgundy three piece suit. We managed ten minutes of the Sweethearts and wished for more. Amaya’s music was a little too lulling to keep our interests. The festival booklet labelled Boom! Bap! Pow! as “trashy doo-wop”; I listened to their songs the most in the lead up to the festival. Everyone was excited for The Triffids – all that history (this was their reunion gig). But I was more excited for nachos, and am mildly apologetic. I saw their last fifteen minutes. We saw the Dead River Deeps after Puta Madre Brothers and I suppose I’ll keep this polite and say we realized we got on the wrong train carriage* and was sad for our mistake.

* The Festival featured a steam train that carried a rotation of performers in each carriage, leaving on the hour every hour for all of Saturday.

#25: Queenscliff Music Festival Day 1

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queenscliff music festival 2011

Booklet cover art by Doug Bartlett

Shows attended: Leah Flanagan, Gossling, The Beautiful Girls, The Herd and Eskimo Joe.

I saw the sea for the first time in a while. The salt sea air didn’t smell real and the stretching bluewaves over the horizon felt like a postcard. We sat on a circular pier, each of its weathered planks attached with a name plaque. One plank, one person.

There is the wafting marijuana smoke over the heads of the packed crowd near the stage in the main tent – throughout both the “dry” and the drinking area, the latter littered with crushed cans underfoot. Everything lubricates everything else, the music is just another factor.

There are rowdy teenagers everywhere tipping flasks into Coke bottles, but my friends Ace and SP say I’m the one that attracts them. They attempt crowd surfing, their pubescent arms barely strong enough to lift up one of their own (an observed event). But then they lift each other onto shoulders, bone on bone, legs everywhere. On the last song for the main act, a mosh pit is initiated. My friends and I scorn the “fifteen year olds”, and the frontman of Eskimo Joe calls out “Oy dickheads!” – both blanket condemnations.

At midnight we clear out, plans to walk the beach quietly fizzing out as we land on the house, our bodies gentle waves laying our heads down to sleep on the sand. I walk out to the dark backyard, I cannot see the faces of my friends but I can hear one call my name. The lights of the house are bright and warm behind me, blinding. They sit in a circle on the grass under the clothesline and the stars. I knock down a friend’s drink with my knee first thing grand entrance.

We sleep in one room, six bodies to four mattresses. I am wedged under a piano, a canopy of keys over my head. They stumble over my feet by the door. SP talks in his sleep and mentions “the China IRS” and I am surprisingly cosy.