Momentary suspension

It’s a winter’s night in Melbourne, cold but not icy, just biting, inside’s heater-warm though it’s a drizzly world outside. Can’t hear the raindrops; jazz is in the air, floating through the window, slipping through the closed blinds like honey, thick and gold. Some cars pass, a couple or two people step quickly around the puddles, heels clacking down, umbrellas flicking up. Can’t see the band playing, but I can hear them, and that’s all anyone really needs. Boyfriend’s warm too, and clean-smelling from one of his hour-long showers. Kettle’s boiled, I’ve got myself my pink fuzz of a hot-water bottle in my lap, and the slight sticky sweetness of mandarins on my lips.

I type in the dark, and sneak a peek outside to this.




The melodies, rising, falling tones and semitones swimming together and apart, slide through the night and the darkness wraps with intoxicating comfort.

Rare are nights when I’m blissfully content with where I am; this is one of them.

For BC

Five years ago you knew if you said to “think about it” I’d say “yes” even quicker.

Four years and 11 months ago you told me so, smugly.

And I promptly smacked the smirkiness out of you.

I do believe it’s been going on ever since, and nothing much has changed.

Strange happiness indeed…but happiness nonetheless.

:o)

*smack*!

Butterfly Dreams

I wake up, most days, not knowing where, or when, or even who I am. This is not a disorientation of alarm-jangled nerves, but rather the slow, stuporous haze of switching from one state of being to another.

Truth: As long as I am asleep, I will dream. I have had five-minute snoozes in lecture halls that result in my utter conviction that, midway through the economics of an oligopoly, my lecturer decided to expound on the virtues of Baywatch (and notes, mind you, to that effect). Nod-offs on the train are soaked in visions of home, or Enid Blyton biscuit trees, and arrival at my station is more often than not a doubled slap of cold air and reality.

But the worst, the worst are the dreams that wrap me, hold me in the night. The ones where the people I know I’ve known for years. We have a past, but our future doomed to end in Nokia’s beeps. My friends are childhood, friends-forever-keep-kept-in-touch-always friends, and I know them better than anyone. I have boyfriends, lovers, husbands even, children I watched grow up. I have memories.

And then I wake up, and it’s a struggle every morning to drain these false memories, shades of loved ones, shadows of lives. I cannot mourn them, because they didn’t die. I am puzzled, then heartbroken, and then puzzled again; in too-rapid seconds I go from imcomprehension, to realisation, to the inevitable forgetting of a history that never was.

I’ve lived thousands of lives by now, lost thousands of loves, wanted to say goodbye thousands of times, but have not had a single chance to say it.

It’s scary that it’s so easy to slip into these pockets of unlived moments, and that this life, this real one, is so easy to leave behind. Wonder if one day, it’d be for good. Wonder which would be preferable, death, or an eternity of dreams. Wonder if there’s a difference.

De Nile Is Not De Lethe

Cramps (and you know the type I’m talking about) are odd, and awful, when they’re so bad you can’t tell if you’re hurting because you’re full or because you’re, you know, emptying. And so you eat more, because you wouldn’t want gastric pains on top of it all, and anyway you’re bleeding so normal calorie-counting doesn’t, haha, count because you actually need to replenish, and it’s not just giving in to cravings. And of course your pants won’t fit, you’re retaining water, it’s normal (as is the extreme use of italics, both written and spoken).

Haven’t written lately because mum’s here, and she’s leaving too soon (“too soon” being anytime after she arrives, really) so I’ve been spending all time possible with her because, because I can’t stop thinking, I've tried, I've tried and I can't, that one day (too soon) she’ll leave, and she won’t be coming back.