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.

A Post-it for my brain

I don’t think a day goes by, maybe two, when I don’t wonder why.

Conversations and casual mentions would have reminded me of the past, if it had ever been forgotten.

The boy who wanted me, but not the way I wanted to be wanted.

The girl he could’ve had, he should’ve had, but didn’t.

The boy who liked me, but simply not enough.

So the questions, question, really, is never really answered, not to satisfaction. I want (have, need) to believe it’s possible – that Boyfriend really loves for all the right reasons, and for none at all; that there is no settling, or resignation, no taking in his stride, no what-ifs, no if-onlys, no buts or maybes or oh-well-sighs.

Time and time and time again faith fails and questions asked again, with patient, unwearied answers, which alone is half the reply I need to hear (again). The now is littered with cracks into the then which I slip between, returning with renewed doubt, fuelling the incessancy.

But today, today I looked out the window at a foggy, mist-softened morning, sunrise more glow than light, and smoke that rolled lazily across trees and buildings, hesitant to rise. It reminded me, then, of a similarly clouded sunrise that peeked around a building wall, that a boy and girl watched together for the very first time, and I smiled.

I need more moments like this; if not for my sanity, then for his.

One of my favourite things about winter..

...is not having to shave.

[I'm pretty sure that posting something written while high on champagne, sleeplessness, and one of the best nights out in a long, long time is probably not the best idea, but there you go. Happy birthday to the beautiful Angel and my favouritest Chocolate Orange..:o)]

Ridiculous, really

“Don’t stay with a boy, and never stay with your boyfriend,” my mother said. Words like ‘reputation’, like ‘face’, like ‘what people will think’ were spoken, over and over again, insistent tones of an un-hung up phone, but words like ‘what you should, and should not do, you know this’ were slid in between the loudness, like tiny stones dropped from the window of a train, her version of subliminal.

But Boyfriend is the quintessential Good Boy, his ‘what you should and should not do’ hacked in stone, and so what she should have told me instead was this; that staying is really living, that the us forgets the I, that a house is always the emptier for having once been filled. And that when you start to miss one person, you end up missing all the rest, and an insomniac, silent night results.

There is, though, in all honesty, a small surprising joy, no, glee, in the solitude. I can change in the living room, avail myself of certain…facilities…with the door wide open so as not to miss a word of House; I can (and did) indulge in all manner of disgusting habits anywhere I pleased, and conduct culinary experiments with fascinatingly revolting results, and no one would complain of starved neglect; I can write.

Finding the I again was unexpectedly scrumptious, and the hour-long just-before-bed phone calls sweetly nostalgic. Boyfriend’s absence is orange peel; not all bitter pith, but also sharply fresh skin, tangy.

Besides, it’s just for two nights, and I am obviously much too prone to self-indulgent melodrama for my own good.

Saying nothing

[one week ago]

She died today. I barely knew her, hadn’t learned to love her, but I love someone who did, does; that doesn’t help. I feel helpless, and useless, and a lie; what good is a love which cannot make you smile, and sheds silent tears you never know about, a love that leaves you lonely because it’s easier to do nothing, afraid to make it worse.

I want to say I’m sorry, but I can’t because I didn’t do this to her, although it might be easier for you if I did, or if someone did, because then you’d have someone to be angry with, someone to blame, instead of endless whys. I want to say I understand, but I don’t, I can only imagine; shades of dull aching to your emptiness that hurts, so bad. I want to say I’ll be there, but I’m not. I want to hold you, but I can’t. I want to say life goes on, but that’s the whole point; it doesn’t, not for her.

Your pain squeezes regret from me. That every step isn’t a step home. That every anecdote forgot is a piece of life unshared. That every word unheard, unremembered, dies its own little death. That every second passing, passes into an irretrievable neverwhere. I know, even before it’s happened, even before the “it might happen”, that I’d want to run backwards through the past, snatching up all the idle minutes and weaving them into time, more time for what, who, really matters.

I can’t say that, either.

I love you, is all I can or want to say, really.

But it’s not me you want to hear it from.

……

I’m sorry for your loss. I understand. I’ll be there. I’ll hold you. Your life will go on. I love you. I love you. We love you.

That’ll have to do, for now.