It's still 2015!

it's been so long since i last blogged that my browser didn't auto-fill the url.

9 months if we're counting.

things have changed drastically in my innards and seem mostly the same aside from that. i'm still employed at the same place though i volunteer at a primary school and i've met genuinely inspiring mentors. i'm in the same relationship from the last blog i wrote which is a little unbelievable. i've lost friends and gained none since that time. i travelled china with j where we fought and made up and hate and loved an assortment of things, people and places: 

- dodging a baby shitting on the street as we were driven by a lunatic on an old bike as we rushed late to the airport
- returning to an airbnb apartment with funky furnishings and the odour of sewage
- climbing the badaling great wall north and south
- eating pomegranates the size of my head 
- watching j watch the world through binoculars
- avoiding face collisions with air dried chunks of meat hanging off any ceiling or roof.
- visiting the world's most dangerous mountain; hua shan, where a chain (or not) was the only thing between you and a 2000m fall to death.
- conversations about chinese education systems and politics with middle aged taxi drivers who chain smoked and let you know their entire family history on your ride home.
- museums where everything is interesting and any rock or vase is at least 5 times older than Aus.
- peking duck, savoury meat pastries, xi'an lamb soup with bread chunks, date flavoured yoghurt, chinese bakeries and their crispy garlic baguettes, pomelos,egg yolk congee, cheap ass beer, the most amazing pizza hut pizza (no joke), dongbei sauerkraut hot pot, yunnan bugs, freshly roasted almonds,  macadamias and walnuts in their shells etc. we ate a lot. 
- tandem biking the xi an ancient wall; defeated. it was actually cute.
- hocking. everywhere. everyone. 
- singing folk songs of my mother's childhood with the old lady who let us row her bamboo raft.
- drinking with my generation's version of chinese club rats and not enjoying the company
- 5 star $40/night hotels.
- acidity scraping massages that make you burn/itch.
- crazy, crazy family.   

enough with the listing. lately i've been sick and busy and emotional and okay. i've read consistently less, watched tv consistently more (fucking netflix) and have black hair and wear blazers. i now get pretty drunk off four glasses of wine and love jigsaw puzzles and colouring in. i'm excited about my teaching career. i give my brother the kind of advice my mum would agree to. i tell off employees of embassies and post offices. i love dark chocolate. i miss reading. i love sleeping next to someone. i don't complain as much anymore. i see doctors when i'm sick. i'm still learning how to be patient, and silent where it counts. i think about whether i'm living the life of an old person and whether i'm enjoying it. so far my answer is: staying in is "da bomb".

and most relevant, i really miss having this outlet, even if for petty ramblings. i was reflecting on the past two years and my deteriorating self control and accounted it to a variety of fuckery and also my (initially) gradual and (following) sudden plummet from the blogosphere. 

i miss having time to collect myself; unwind, listen to music, and coordinate my inner workings. i need a place to appreciate beautiful passages and lines from books/other, and to come back to them and be reminded of them again. i need a quiet space. 

i'm going to start doing this again, even if unpublished. 

ivory face.

the decision to be with someone should never be made from negation. that someone should never be 'not bad' and your answer should never be 'why not' (pardon all these double negatives). instead, it should feel like a complementary growth to your life; as though suddenly, delightfully, you've extra arms that are helpful, beautiful and have made your life easier, more understood. you're afraid at first because you must gash yourself open and let your blood run free before these arms are attached. the resulting pain is quite physical in this way. and then there are other pains like being afraid again because you fear the deformity of your prior self and the possibility of over-reliance on these new limbs. you still want to be you. but there is no decision in which avoidance is an option. you won't allow that, there is no flight. in actuality, it feels easy, and it almost is. yet in thought, alone (and even once shared, this fear remains alone as it is alone in nature, inherent and conscious), it is the opposite. you imagine the growth as a sickness that seeps into your body and worms through your skin, your flesh, digs deeper still, reaches your very bone marrow and left centre then leaves you; ribs on display, magnified in nakedness like a living corpse sucking in breath. so vile a complication it seems to be yet nothing can blacken your wide, overbearing grin. because you feel as light as you are afraid. and terrifyingly welcoming, embracing, like a pervert craving normalcy. this new addition is beyond you. and it is all so very, hysterically delightful.   

moving

we have been allotted  inconsistency, hesitation, doubt, pain, superstition, worries about what will happen (even after we are dead), ambition, greed, jealousy, envy, unruly, insane and untameable appetites, war, lies, disloyalty, backbiting and curiosity. We take pride in our fair, discursive reason and our capacity to judge and to know, but we have bought them at a price which is strangely excessive. (Montaigne)

lately is moving day into an elevator full of jolts and quivers.

i'm learning how valuable it is to be open as i feel myself close more and more each day. i know, it's not a fucking seesaw but i'm trying okay. i feel myself becoming excessively repetitive - they most likely won't surprise what you expect, they most likely will be disappointing. but people need chances. they need to be lifted out of their moulds for us to make out their melted selves. this sticky hope is what's been on my mind. because at the end of your day, being unforgiving is harsh only on your own throat and closing the door is just spending too many days in the company of only yourself. in an unreal reality of mine, this would be wonderful. but we're built for connection. we've got brains that lust and long, we've got bodies shivering with touch.

at some point you've just got to start making changes and applying yourself like a variable. perhaps laugh at the stupid rules we've fashioned to make social interactions difficult and play along. you never know what you'll find.  

but did you try?

Lately life has tossed me a few fuck you's and it's bottled me up and confused me. I've been wading through my reflections trying to surface to clearer waters but emotions are a funny thing. They're like oils on glass you can't fucking scrub clean. So anyway, it's been hard to convey an authentic answer to "how are you" and harder still trying to interpret what that means. I recently became quite upset which translated to anger and quickly escalated to some kind of pompous feeling of injustice but it seems now, that I've slowed and thought and really pushed myself against my slimy complaints that I realise I was wrong. My injustices were correct but insignificant in the scope of happenings. You don't have to be wrong to be wrong. My anger was unnecessary. My emotions, misdirected. I think what we need to realise is that when a person suddenly acts unreasonable or strangely menacing to the comfort that usually cuddles your relationship, our first reaction may be negative but our second begs for more thought. Sometimes this unreasonableness is a call for help, a signal of loneliness or a way of escape. Sometimes this comes from the most unlikely person. But it's important to recognise these things because no one is ever that strong and instead of hearing "you're selfish" and springing up your defence shield, maybe what we need to do is simply to keep listening to hear a surprising "I need you". Maybe that so called negativity should be forgiven and understood instead. It isn't every day we're given choices or even opportunities to prove to our loved ones how much we care and will show that care. It isn't something we can always learn from experience. But it is important to seize those moments, expand our hearts and to show that even though we might not know how, we will anyway. That simple phrase, it's the thought that counts, is all it is. So this year will be one in which I stop escaping my problems at home and support my family. It's the bed I sleep in, the voices I hear all day and the people who try their best to support me, who know I love kale so they buy me bouquets of it, who listen to my complaints and solve my problems, who take blame for the bad things that happen to me and who see me in my most ugly state of uncaring, uninhibitedly shameless me yet still love me. It is family at the heel of my every step and family where I park my car and rest. These things that matter, there are many, but in this present moment I feel nothing more significant than the desire to be with my family this year. I will be present, I will share, I will be patient, I will love. 

e.g. life

it's a very funny thing to be informed of someone dying. things become systematic, logical, factual. i called work, i took a shower, i cancelled my dinner plans, i turned on my laptop, i didn't know what to do with my hands. i remember reading an article on the psychology of suicide notes and how real ones repeat mundane facts like 'please feed my cat at 3pm' rather than 'i miss and love you'. death, like anything, is easier dealt with when divorced from emotion. 

it feels like any other morning yet it feels inappropriate to continue watching sex and the city or to scroll mindlessly on facebook. i've never lost anyone before. i've never felt what it is to hear my own mother dearest cry like that. it isn't as though i'm unfamiliar with death, it's that death has never been relevant to me. i booked flights to china. i'm not going. i tried to talk to mum about things but when i went into her room she was googling appropriate funeral wear on her ipad so i sat on the bed and helped her pick a black dress for a winter day. i continued to sit there, watching her wipe down benches, sweep the floors, take out the trash, do the laundry and despite all the noise, we both felt the quiet. "do you want to lie down?" "no". she was struggling to be busy which was just like her father to do. he never understood rest; he was childlike, excitable and full of ways to make the toughest teeth laugh. he was straight like a mean bullet and never depended on anything/body except the cigarettes he swapped for sugar. i've never met anyone so full of quirks, soft drinks and ice cream. 

i whipped up a green smoothie and for once, mum didn't complain and drank it all. dad came home and they went out to buy last minute things, they returned with bags stuffed with food for my brother and i, tim tams, emu oil and 14 blocks of butter. did you know butter is terribly expensive in beijing? i packed it away. i packed mum's luggage too because i like doing it and mum was crying again because my grandma messaged her that she missed her. after that mum told me her eyes hurt but i know it isn't her eyes. i wish i had eyedrops to soothe her stings, or the ability to stop tearing every time i look at her. 

lao ye,
i won't say rest in peace. instead, i hope your departure felt warm and with love, i hope the sugar you consumed so ridiculously had seeped into the marrow of your bones and left you feeling nothing but sweetness. for everyone who's path you came tumbling into, you brought laughter so breathless, so unique. my skin's been burned twice in my existence, once from your cigarette, once from your cooking. one scar remains on my left hand, and with that hand i'll never deny a chance to seize opportunity for laughter, change and strength in the way you did. thank you for being a great example of a life lived, thank you for having being part of my life. i love you. 

Louis.

 “I’m bored” is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless, it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say “I’m bored.”

- Louis CK.

I fucking love everything that comes out of this man's mouth, chewed up cinnabon bits included.

settle, petal

Today's air was thick and the water running from the tap strangely warm. I had a relaxing day. I scrubbed myself with spirulina and honey, I drank my cocktail of veges mindfully, I ran without music, I spent time with family and I melted away into a book. I like to commit to a book intensely so it's hard when I want to read but aren't quite collected enough to propel myself as much as I'd prefer, so that's why I haven't read as much this year. The last couple of days I finally feel a little more settled. So caught up in the fierce, dominating mentality of the fitness disposition I've been harping on about, I've completely neglected the gentle side of a book, a lit candle and a mind ready to surrender. It feels good to be back. 

"I grew bewildered: who was talking? about what? and to whom?My mother had disappeared; not a smile or trace of complicity. I was an exile. And then I did not recognize the language. Where did she get her confidence? After a moment, I realized: it was the book that was talking. Sentences emerged that frightened me: they were like real centipedes; they swarmed with syllables and letters, span out their diphthongs and made their double consonants hum; fluting, nasal, broken up with sighs and pauses, rich in unknown words, they were in love with themselves and their meanderings and had no time for me: sometimes they disappeared before I could understand them; at others, I had understood in advance and they went rolling on nobly towards their end without sparing me a comma. These words were obviously not meant for me. The tale itself was in its Sunday best: the woodcutter, the woodcutter's wife and the daughters, the fairy, all those little people, our fellow-creatures, had acquired majesty; their rags were magnificently described, words left their mark on objects, transforming actions into rituals and events into ceremonies."

- Words, Jean Paul Sartre