'There are thousands of hungry children all over the world who would give anything to eat your dinner,' my mother said to my eight-year old self, watching as I pushed cold and untouched mashed potato around my plate. Her words had little effect, with interchangeable threats of no dessert, a smack and early bedtime being met with surly muttered responses along the lines of 'why don't you put it in an envelope and send it to them then.' A fussy eater and a brat,  her attempts to strike a chord of empathy in me did nothing to evoke a reaction.

'I hate Christmas', I said. 'It makes everything bad seem worse.' I was fourteen, the child of newly divorced parents and only just beginning the teenage years that were to be filled with determined and steely angst and indignation. I had heard that line in a movie, or read it in a book, believing it to be aptly suited to the way I felt about my current state of affairs. A lady I worked with, in her fifties, someone who knew a little something about the heartache life can bring, reprimanded me while her Christmas earrings jangled and flashed. 'Oh come on, tell me what's bad?'

'One day you will write a book,' my history teacher told me in Year 12, as I sobbed wearily and wiped snot from my nose with my sleeve, all because my final essay remained incomplete. 'On the pain and struggle of your life.'

By the time I finished high school I had a new mantra. 'I hate this fucking town', I spat, as I spent a summer sweating out 60 hour work weeks, all in a bid to leave as quickly as I could. I had tried pessimism on for size and loved the way it fit me. These days I love corny quotes, get a kick from cliches, write overly sentimental messages in birthday cards, gush at love stories, hold on too long during goodbye hugs and get teary at community events, but I'll still call myself a cynic.

The hospitality industry broadcasts the worst and the ugliest qualities in people, while human services shows you just how unravelled their lives can become. Am I doomed to see disaster every day, railing along the spectrum of no manners to no opportunity? I find solace in the sparks of children, who plough through minefields and manage to smile at the other end.  The first time I saw a child in what I considered to be broken pieces of a life, shards that left innocence cut and bleeding, I refused to fathom its functionality. Families cannot be this way and still go on, my mind shuddered that night, as I drank red wine like water so I could stop feeling and desperately searched for someone to explain to me why it was. It seemed like months that I felt my way blindly through each shift, holding onto intuition with white knuckles and emerging a carb-craving mess at the other end every time.

Months on, nothing has changed too much, except now I have begun to be able to distance myself at arm's length. I don't dream of the little faces, have stopped seeing every problem of every person who passes me in the street. Maybe empathy has a limit, before it freezes you where you stand, arms outstretched in a bid to make it better. You are paralysed by comprehension of another's pain, such is so to the point where you don't recognise your own and cannot do anything to stop or change any of it. Last year I was at a friend's birthday, and his mother spoke of how he saw and felt the world's pain but was not overcome by it. I was immediately envious without knowing why.

Apathy panics me, so does idealism. Can't we just be realistic? I plead with my textbooks that reference long-winded theories and how they will help us achieve a world where social services do what they are supposed to, all of the time. They don't say anything about how you are supposed to feel when you watch a child's face remain blank as their parent approaches them for a court-ordered hour every week, of a grandmother's pleas, of tears and tantrums echoing in a carpark and trying to navigate the backstreets of a suburb so far away you wonder if you're still in the same city. I went to a seminar where a child protection worker spoke of 'Positive Fridays', and I thought it was a crock. Now I understand why you have to grab onto the little things every Friday after lunch, so you aren't swallowed up by a system that sometimes seems to hinder more than help.

How can I put Band-Aids where you are bleeding, when my own knees are still mottled purple with reminders of my mother laying her cool hands while I howled in pain? Those scars still aren't quite healed, remaniscent of cold asphalt netball courts, of creaking brakes on a bike, running down slopes, ramps and stairs with no fear, a childhood where blooming innocence was mostly left unpruned, happiness grew like the centimetres marking our height in lead pencil on our grandparents' wall, where strong hands held me, the bath water was warm and at night we dreamt of mostly good things while luminescent star stickers glowed on the ceilings. So blessed was I, that I simply cannot bear to comprehend your world where things have gone so wrong. I want to fix it all, put colour back in your sky as the grey clouds leech borders and the rain never stops. If I could I would, wrap you up tight and hold you close, make you okay. But you are not mine to have, not mine to hold. The broken pieces of the puzzle I desperately want to see, never fit together the way I imagine. Your sun is bright, until they go away, and I have vowed to stop, the day I go home unaffected, where I am no longer angry at the injustice of it all.  

On 22

My confusion is thick. It soon makes way to irritation, frustration, before morphing unsuspectingly but rapidly into all encompassing, hot-headed, full blown fury that turns the grey walls white and the blue sky red. My rage is often founded on comprehensible things. The injustices of modern society and the seemingly ignorant stupidity of those in charge of running it; the way innocence is so often caught up in crossfire with there no one left to pick up the pieces; the hurtful, horrible and hateful things that people do to each other. But I would be lying if I said all my anger was valid, justified and well thought out. The questions that inundate my everyday life are generally of the more mundane, the less pressing, the mostly obvious. Why is Ikea furniture actually impossible to put together? Why do my clothes remain stained even after the use of stain remover? Why does the garlic always burn when I put it in the frying pan? Why do gas, water and electricity bills all arrive at the same time? Why are supermarkets not uniformly set out Australia wide? Why does my mother call at 9pm on a Saturday night when I’m burbling beer banter, sitting in a rainy ash covered pub courtyard somewhere and never at 3pm on a Wednesday when my eyes are rolling back in my head with boredom and I will do anything, anything to not write another word of this assignment? How do I go to the supermarket every day yet never have enough ingredients to make more than one meal that isn’t pasta, or toast, or spinach leaves with some sad tomato and mustard dregs? My anger usually dissipates when I’m wasting hours with my elbows turning black from newsprint or lying in a pool of sunscreen scented sweat dripping watermelon and giggling reminiscence, when the daylight hours have been many but the curtains are still drawn. Tell me what it means to be an adult, I plead with the plethora of overdue notices, the decisions that make my stomach twist and flop, the situations that leave me a wrung out dithering mess, because I still do not know.   

 When someone asked me how I felt about turning twenty two, my response was fuelled by a stream of cheap champagne. I answered with my mouth full of dip from the platter that I’d been dreaming about making for weeks, so excited I was to have a justification to buy expensive cheese. ‘I’ve never known so much,’ I declared, ‘but I have never known so little about what to do with that knowledge.’ I was quite pleased with how that sounded, believing it to be clever and prophetic, and repeated it several times over the coming weeks when people asked me about my birthday, even inscribing it in the notebook that was reserved for writing down things I wanted to remember when I was 97 years old and riddled with dementia. Trying being grown up on for size is a recurrent daily activity. Caught somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, forcing myself to try and grasp the concept of delayed gratification, of foresight without being suffocated by hindsight, shaking off the warmth of nostalgia and embracing the chilly unknown comes about as easily as constructing flowery metaphors after a semester of banging my head against a brick wall of statistics.

Am I real grown up now? I’ve asked, too many times to count, as we chit chat in pretty dresses, amongst the beginnings of lives so carefully but accidentally created. In the beginning there were milk crates with cushions, an old laminex desk and a basket for dairy. ‘Isn’t there something that should be in that hole?’ visitors asked quizzically. Long-life milk will never taste okay again. Even the purchase of a fridge after six weeks of sweaty cheddar and broccoli-in-the-pantry did not segway to functionality. Illusionary grand future plans, lengthy lists, strict budgets, forbidden chocolate, academic and social successes for every week of the year, melt and congeal into a barely recognisable puddle that looks a lot like 40 hours of work and two hours of idle study, eleven dollars for as many days, where I serve flat whites and  scrambled eggs every Sunday while willing myself not to vomit, phone conversations are had with a face buried in featherdown, Rihanna rattles windowpanes and the washing basket overflows.  

Then something happens to remind us of our mortality. I cried when I was watching the news, learning of a brother, a son, who would never go home again. Had he not died, his name would have never passed my lips: it was only in the wave of public mourning that I knew of the life wasted. I walked home in the shroud of darkness, the ebb of fear making me sneak glances behind my shoulder, my stare fuzzy with wine and the warmth of friends but still suddenly attuned to the things that are okay when you do it all those other times except for that once.

I do not always understand, when people envy me my youth. I make the same mistakes often, I want to say, I never have any money, I want to say, I lack certainty, clarity, stability, I miss deadlines, flights and birthdays and I am always graced with realisations long after the moment has passed. One Sunday morning I hobbled home with hollow eyes and a wrung out soul, stinking of cigarettes and of all the fleeting decisions I had made. I lay outside in the dappled light of the fading sun that afternoon and for the second time in a year wished for all things ordinary, for love, a vegetable garden, summer heat to wrap around me like an old friend. This tumultuous wave of life heaves me up and spits me out shuddering onto wet sand, nearly drowned every time.

Case and point, the realisation always comes after the storm, and the temptation to now recite cheesy song lyrics or to summarise in a neat and packaged cliché is overwhelming. While I ignore all the things I should be doing and faff about finding lost socks to put into pairs and writing ambitious To Do lists for tomorrow so I can justify going to bed at 9.30pm and watching Season 2 of Skins for the ninth time, I can see real adulthood hovering in some sort of illusive glass box just out of my reach. There’s a great danger if I grab at it suddenly it will fall and smash into a million smithereens. Best let it suspend there for a while, and I can say I couldn’t be happier about that.

Debunking hippie myths: how one cynic had the time of her life at ConFest

‘Do you want to go to ConFest over Easter?’

The question hung in the air as I pondered my response. I didn’t really know what ConFest was, though I felt the ‘fest’ fulfilled the criteria of the good time I was looking for. I did know that it had been months since I had escaped the smoggy urban fullness of Melbourne, since I’d seen a moon without an orange ring circling it. It’d been months of being surrounded by other people, a bustling populous of order, time, deadlines and ticket inspectors. A five-day adventure beyond the metropolitan postcode area that cost $80 for a ticket sounded like exactly what I wanted to do.

ConFest stayed simmering on the backburner until a few days before the midsemester break. Were we going? Attempts at research were met with a website that appeared not to have been updated since 1994 and a Facebook page where people with names like ‘Phoebe –Lou Raincloud Desiree’ argued about whether the recent floods and the increased mosquito population were going to ruin their time. Where exactly did this ‘event’, that claimed to be non-commercial, family-friendly and host to about 3000 people, take place? A map and directions highlighted a space 13 kilometres west of the NSW town of Deniliquin. Apparently it ran for anywhere between 4-6 days , where alcohol, drug and sexual abuse were not tolerated but since there was no actual security or paid work personnel, issues of this nature tended to be ‘negotiated.’ After I finished reading the spiel about the workshops (commonly yoga, meditation, or discussion groups centred on topics of earthly well-being and sustainability), the drum circles, the fire twirling and the fact it was a ‘clothing optional’ event, my cynic’s highbrow was raised so far it had disappeared into my hair. Despite my scepticism, we visited Coles on Thursday night and bought cans of lentils and baked beans. There were cooking facilities there, so at least we were saving cash. We went to the bottle-o and bought a slab of tinnies, red and white casks of wine so if the actual river that was said to be a part of the idyllic bush setting turned out to be crap we could be sustained by a river of goon.  We drove for seven hours under the Good Friday sun, boot packed to bursting with mosquito repellent, Doritos, deckchairs, lanterns and 500 tealight candles (there turned out to be a total fire ban and we had 3 torches between 17 people).

We arrived and were greeted by a naked man who grinned at us and handed us our tickets and a booklet. There were testimonials inside one in which a woman claimed that she had lost hope in life before attending ConFest. We wound up the windows against the dust and navigated our convoy through the tent settlements while people stood in front of the cars hugging and children rode bikes with no shoes or helmets. We pitched camp in the rapidly fading light next to the river while the wind whipped through the gum trees and the nudist couple in the caravan next to us looked on with smiles. There was no phone reception and we drank punch made in a 10-litre cooking pot. We danced in our underwear at the silent disco and tentatively moved our bodies to the beats of the drums in the marketplace.

In the morning we woke with the sun and the birds songs’. Less than half an hour elapsed before we picked our way through the burrs lining the river banks and slid down the muddy sides into the water. Maybe there was actually something in the river I can attribute to my ensuing feelings. I ducked my head under, letting my cynical and grime-covered self be soothed by the current.

If someone had told me of the sheer happiness I would feel over the next few days and why, I wouldn’t have believed them. Climbing naked into a pit of liquid grey mud with 15 strangers? Washing off said mud in the river shallows before traipsing past barrel fires into the slightly-eucalypt, mostly-feet smelling steam room, before drying off and adorning myself with body paint in the presence of other strangers and mirrors? Lying in the litter of the bush floor with my eyes closed, listening to warbles of an incomprehensible ancient tongue whilst wind chimes flutter next to my ear and ants crawl into my underwear, and this is meant to be giving me insight into some kind of journey?  I sit in my lounge room listening to the cars drive past and remember letting myself be washed downstream by the river current before making my way through the silent trees, bark crunching beneath my feet. Sitting in circles of friends, forgetting where I ended and they began, humming ditties to a guitar’s tune while the moon rose behind the trees and the whole Milky Way filled the sky. I remember the unbridled joy that filled the faces of the people who danced in front of the fire, the beating of the drums that filled the air for what seemed like always. This was human emotion in its purest form, untouched and untainted by daily routine, societal life, having things to do and places to be.

On the last afternoon when our spirits were beginning to waver thanks to the relentless wind and dust eroding our faces, we participated in a spontaneous choir that swelled from 10 people to 150 in the thick of the ConFest village. After leading us through an array of activities that included speaking jibberish and yapping like small dogs, the conductor arranged us into two lines facing each other. One by one we were led through the procession holding onto the shoulders of the person in front. Each person we passed would say ‘I love you’ into our ear. Even with my newly found optimism and acceptance for the diversity of human behaviour, I was unsure. I doubted the sincerity of being told I was loved by someone I had never met. As the procession had passed me by, I repeated ‘I love you’ over and over. I was even more sceptical. The words felt like they had no meaning and were forming a lumpy one-sound phrase I was having to push out of my mouth. I took my turn in the line: I had come this far, need I back down now? I couldn’t recognise any of the voices – they could have belonged to anyone. My friends were dispersed amongst the crowd but I couldn’t pick their docile tones from any of the other whispered confessions of adoration. Whilst I had felt as though each ‘I love you’ I had uttered, became less and less convincing, it wasn’t the case as I took my turn.  Even after someone whispered in my ear ‘I want to lock you up in my dungeon’, I  was expelled at the end of the parade with my eyes half closed and my face swimming with drunken bliss. My heart was calm and my soul mended. I was dropping out of uni and moving to Nimbin. Fuck society, I was home.  

Now that I am home, I can say that I enjoy eating my breakfast from a bowl that isn’t caked with last night’s pasta remains, and I haven’t had too much trouble swapping river baths for showers involving soap. With that said, ConFest rekindled a fire that was dwindling to cooling embers inside me. Believing in love and believing in the goodness of the world and in other people doesn’t seem like ideas that are so farfetched anymore, or ones reserved for hippies who take too much acid. The spirit that filled the air in the bushland somewhere between Moulamein and Deniliquin, that filled me as I sat in a spa chatting to a 50 year old man named Grant about grammar at an unknown hour of the morning, that filled all of us as we arched our necks back and howled to the moon, can still exist here, in the urban practicality of Melbourne we call home.   

One Student’s Struggle: is working in hospitality a rite of passage or just a soul eroding monotony?

On the good days, I find commonalities with someone from an opposite life. I banter and joke, there is a spring in my step, I turn my face to the early morning sky without a thought of the hour of the day and I smile at the sallow-faced commuters one-by-one. On the bad days, I scorn every inane request, every ‘excuse me’, I have no tolerance for the noise, the rush, the things that go wrong. On these days the hours trickle by and I grit my teeth as every minute passes, unsure as to whether I will finish my shift with my sanity and will to live intact.

Jobs within the hospitality and retail sectors are far from uncommon for students, particularly those still in secondary education or the early years of an undergraduate degree. These types of unemployment took on a new role of emphasis for me when I moved out of home and my income was no longer purely disposable. Start and finish times suddenly mattered more, since rent and bills had to be paid and milk and bread bought and when I put ladders in all my stockings there was no parent figure around who might kindly pick me up some at the supermarket.

All of these lessons provided me with sound and valuable learning curves, and I can hardly say my everyday quality of life has diminished since I flew the nest. With that said, years on I am still trudging my way through what feels like the world’s longest university degree (please stop asking me how many years I have to go, it makes me despondent) and still slaving over tables with coffee permanently ingrained into my skin for what feels like a small cut above the minimum wage.

‘Oh it could be worse!’ I singsong, but as I approach my fortieth hour in the week of meeting other people’s needs before my own in shoes that give me no back support, I very much doubt it can.

A summer of sweating in a café in a suburb where the closest thing to a seaside breeze is when a rubbish truck drives past has given me plenty of time to ponder the pros and cons of working one of the bottom rungs of the hospitality ladder. I don’t feel like I’ve grasped onto any final conclusions but I have come up with the following.

1. Thank God for Centrelink

As many profanities have been muttered regarding the government department that begrudgingly provides us with a fortnightly allowance, existing without it would prove near impossible. Despite the bitter employees and handfuls of bureaucratic red tape, we are lucky to live in a place that supports students, and pretty generously at that. Sure, by the time I graduate I’ll have accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in HECS debt but since that will be slowly whittled away from my tax when I have a ‘real job’, I’m happy to place that at the back of my mind. My only gripe is Centrelink’s makes-little-sense eligibility criteria – surely if I live out of home and study full time and you live out of home and study full time we should be receiving the same benefits? With that said, Centrelink – thank you. I hate your automatic voice recognition feature (which doesn’t work, by the way) and I can never remember the answers to my secret questions in order to use your online services, but I know I am lucky to have you.

2. Summer Motivation Hits its Peak

I have never been filled with more ambition to fulfil my career dreams than after a shift where I have washed 30 salt shakers, accidentally shattered a latte glass into a pram ( fortunately without a baby in it) and served a table of beefcake Collingwood supporters with face tattoos ‘bundy and coke thanks luv’ at 10am. With every fork I polish, I think about what I want to do for the years to come, and I know it’s not this. Whilst this industry is made for some, and I admire those with a passion for it and wonder how on earth they summon the tolerance – it’s definitely not for me. I feel another line appear on my forehead every time someone orders a ‘quarter strength decaf soy latte with Equal and no lid on the cup thanks’. But all the hours I spend raging over how shit the human race can be remind me of why I’m studying – so I can end up in a job I care about, doing things I find interesting and engaging. My passion for my studies usually reaches its peak in the middle of summer, though I wish I could bottle and preserve some of that enthusiasm and ingest it during SWOTVAC when I’ve been hitting refresh on Facebook for three hours while twelve weeks of lecture notes on statistics remain untouched in front of me.

But in the mean time, I think of this as a means to an end, where the end will be that much more rewarding since I’ve placed 8764 cappucinos in front of people who don’t say thank you. But that’s okay, because I can see the end.

3. I Am a Good Customer

I am nice to people who serve me in restaurants, I make few alterations to the menu, I don’t get cross if I’m given a flat white instead of a latte, I’ll happily sit on a communal table and when I put my knife and fork together, yes I have finished my meal and you can take my plate, thank you very much. Working customer service jobs make you a kinder, more understanding and empathetic person. Even if your train comes in two minutes and you’re pissed off because you forgot your lunch and your umbrella and you were woken up by a leaf blower at 7am, you smile at the person who takes your coffee order because you understand and know what it’s like to be them.

4. The Value of the Dollar and the Meaning of Hard Work

I understand them. In theory. Even though I can approximate how many tables I served to obtain the paycheck clutched in my hot little hand, it doesn’t stop me blowing it in the first three days, then making 20 bucks last for the next two, before having to use my debit card to make a six-dollar purchase at Coles because I no longer have enough in my account to withdraw cash. Despite my lack of money management skills, I’d still like to think I understand what it means to earn it.

5. It’s Probably the Most Productive Thing I’d be Doing Anyway

This applies to the days where I wake up feeling like I’ve slept face-down in the Sahara desert in the middle of the day; where I can taste every minute of the last 12 hours and I regret it all.

‘Well I may as well be working when I’m that hungover,’ I said to a friend recently. ‘I wouldn’t be doing anything else anyway.’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But it’s hell.’

It is hell, from the moment you walk in and the room is still spinning, to the moment you walk out feeling like you’ve just run a marathon and your muscles are starting to be eaten away by septic acid. But, I argue, at least I can rock up five minutes before my shift starts smelling like a pub floor, eat two hash browns and drink five litres of apple juice, and still manage to perform my duties to a reasonably satisfactory level. As long as I don’t vomit when I’m clearing a table or drop anyone’s breakfast, though everyone notices my bloodshot eyes and shallow breathing as I will away the nausea, they mostly ignore it.

So even though I spent most of my rent money and have once again disproven the highly contested theory of If You Go to Bed Before Midnight You’ll Be Fine, at least I’m at work earning it back and trying to regain status as a functional member of society.

Plus there’s usually someone worse off than me.

6. So At Least

Days of assessing the alleged silver linings of the hospitality industry have left me feeling lightened. Even if everything I’ve outlined above is blatantly untrue, the knots in my back are starting to unclench as the realisations dawn upon me. Crap hours, crap pay and the broadcasting of humanity’s really ugly qualities – ticking all the boxes. But you have to crawl before you can walk, so I guess that means I have to have surgery on my arm for a burn obtained from carrying a chicken parmigiana plate, before I can get paid for doing what I love.

It's infinitely true

Why do you steal the covers, sleep diagonally, jump, twitch, thrash about? You stretch your arms out to hold all four pillows, wrap yourself in a cocoon of doona, selfish little bug! Your limbs are spread like a starfish, you kick, turn, mumble, breathe like a freight train? I had strange dreams, I say, I had funny dreams, I say, I had stressed dreams, I say. Sometimes I wake up bemused, confused, amused, other times my eyelids fling open and I am paralysed with fear, wanting to turn the clock back 15 years so I could smell Oil of Olay moisturiser and feel cool hands smooth back my hair.

I scoffed at the overpriced 3am notebook, for the recording of thoughts and dreams had in the dead of the night. But now I rake my memory for dreams from past nights and I can't, they are leaves that have felt the brunt of the evening rain and are now sodden, mulched into the grass, unidentifiable from one another. We should have raked the lawn.

The buses used to line up at the curb, next to the gymnasium that had such a dusty floor. They were really lined up in some kind of pecking order based on location. With that said, the pack of sweaty and wild-eyed individuals bound for the city centre waited in the scorching sun, no relief. The last bus had a sad stringy gum tree and fence posts that offered leaning opporunities, so maybe it was worthwhile, living where I did. Arguable, though, given the number of times we watched Wizz Fizz being snorted up nasal cavities, arse cheeks being pressed against the back window, fruit and stale sandwiches being thrown back and forth, grubby fingers pressing the bell with no intentions of getting off the bus, and the driver hitching up his shorts as he strode down the aisle to where the culprits sat, threatening to throw us all off on the side of the freeway.


For three months a year, when the cold and grey winter persisted, the slick of green grass that ran parallel to the bus stop became perilous. When the rain bucketed down, the grass became a stage, a slippery slope of doom that saw many scurry too fast and fall to social injury in efforts not to miss the bus. In the navy jumpers that reeked of wet dog when it rained, we piled aboard. One headphone for each, we would share Discmans, in efforts to block out the surrounds.


You were in my dream, I was playing in a band. I know you’re horrified, because my complete lack of rhythm, tone deafness and lack of social etiquette used to make you cringe on a regular basis. Why were we so compelled to sit on the concrete, the cold dirty ground? We were drawn to the curbs, stairs, patches of grass, benches, fences, window ledges. Then we grew up, and now we stand and wait in uncomfortable shoes.

3 days

The man named Thomas who reads his newspaper after a day of saving lives had explained the notions of normal, which you repeated back to me, making overexaggerated gestures to try and mimic his diagrams drawn in puddles of beer.



I imagine a comparitive line graph, red and blue squiggles dancing around each other. Normal is at a lower level for addicts but easier to reattain when the sought-after substance is clutched between two fingers.



My main questions are these: What do you do when you're waiting for the train, and there are exactly 7 minutes until it is due to pull into the station? Do you admire what's in the vending machine? Do you watch the other commuters examine their Metcards, read their newspapers, pace back and forth in their polyester suits? Do you count the number of butts stamped into the bitumen? Doesn't time past so slowly, wind lashing against your face? What do you do, with 3 minutes to go, except draw in your breaths harder and faster, smiling if the timing is perfect?



What do you do when you get home from work? Do you take off your coat, hang it up, take off your shoes, line them up, turn the kettle on - and then what? Sit quietly on your lounge setting and drink your tea, watching the 6pm news? Feel the warmth ebb back through your limbs as you prepare for your evening to be spent indoors, without five minutes of freezing interjected at intervals you determine?



What do you do when you finish your dinner, full to bursting? You recline, digest, then what do you do? What comes between dinner and dessert, that you can't have anymore? That course is missing, and it's the one you're craving the most, regardless as to whether the pit of hunger in your belly is filled to the brim.



What do you do, whilst you talk on the phone, except play with the fire inbetween your fingers, over and over and over? What do you do? Do you pace back and forth, wearing marks into the cream carpet? Do you fold the basket of laundry that's been at the end of your bed for a week, is that what you're supposed to do? Do you sit idly, cross-legged, as numbness sets into your feet?


What am I supposed to do, as I scrape the coffee foam back from the sides my glass, as I stir the ice in my drink with my straw, as I bite my nails as the ball of anxiety in my stomach grows, as I ingest chapter after chapter, as I sit in a crowded room with too many other minds humming, as I sit outside in the sun, as I sit outside in the cold, as I sit outside in the rain? What am I supposed to do?

Synthetic

1. Baby

Tiny little rosebud

With sweet smelling hair

A whole world exists for you

2. Sundays

White tiles and cream carpets

Dark haired girls

Soul food on mismatched plates

3. Swot-Vac

Split ends and chewed nails

Frayed flannelette with buttons missing

Endless winter days

Is that a HB pencil?

Don’t know quite where I am, have an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing but all of the four options seem like they could be correct (unconditioned stimulus). I eat the perfectly ripe yellow banana, even though the smell of banana this early in the morning makes my stomach heave. But it’s brain food, and it’s sad you dropped yours on the floor (Bobo doll experiment). I had stressed dreams, thrashing around like a malfunctioning egg beater and waking up with my mind racing. We’d gone underwear shopping and she’d told me I ought to lose some weight (fixation at the anal stage).

The sun was trying to beat away the clouds, freezing wind whipping at the tops of uncovered feet. He’d scowled in disgust at the nicotine clouds blown in a perfect stream from your lips, but really, why on earth was he compelled to ask you if you wanted to join a gym? (fovea) The days blend together and the battle with the umbrella takes precedence (Mrs. Boles) when superstition dominates (Stanley). The man with the kind face gave you two marshmallows (Cesario); the sour-lipped woman in the op shop begrudgingly docked $3.50 from the final price (assimilation) and the passerby with an expression full of pity and horror clicked their tongue at the figures huddled in front of the window, howling and shrieking over the wind (le subjonctif).

Listen to the sound of hundreds of anxious voices bouncing off the concrete, finding their way into the cobwebbed corners that are neglected in the absence of the Spring Racing Carnival (is Sebastian really dead?). I walked through a puddle and now my socks are wet, this takes priority over my concern of not understanding Orsino’s motives in marrying Olivia. It was like an airport lounge, and as the distressed buzz dimmed (les pronouns relatif) I was horrified to realise the horseshoes printed on the carpet were facing the wrong way. How were they going to catch any luck? How were they going to catch my answers as they spiraled out of the ends of my frizzy hair, wet with the drizzle? (Cattell’s 16 Factor Personality Test). I closed my eyes and imagined Space Invaders, ricocheting past and exploding where the carpet met the tiles. We were numbers. At least English is our first language, I remember saying (reliability). At least we’re not left-handed, so everything we write doesn’t become smudged as our hands race across the page (validity). At least it’s only two hours, not three (cross-sectional). Why were there so many clocks? It would be so silent, surely the ticking would drive us all mad? (longitudinal) As if to support my theory that the desks should be facing the other way, we can see out onto the racecourse. I can hear the crack of a starting gun (factor analysis), the snap of gates being pulled back (Darwin’s theory of evolution) and the thunder of dozens of hooves churning up the soil (separation anxiety). I hear the nasal commentary of the race, which fascinated me at a young age (the id). How do they speak so fast, Mum? (positive reinforcement).

I remember where I am, and what I should be doing. Those who are absent are declared to be so via invasive red sheets of paper, with cruel letters stamped across the front (rationalism). The person sitting next to me is feeling as though a 25% chance isn’t enough to see him through (Descartes). He oozes dismay as the 10 minutes of reading time tick past on the labelled clocks (negative punishment). It’s contagious! (extinction).

I spot his identical twin on the other side of me. I read a question about noses (I think it’s functionalism) and become fixated trying to spot the differences in their appearances. Are thy really related? What are the chances of identical twins doing the same subject, in the same course, at the same university? Wouldn’t they be tired of sharing space, sharing attention, sharing faces? (synapses). I can’t turn my head fast enough to spot them. One is potentially more red-headed than the other, they have slightly different haircuts, perhaps in an attempt to seize individualism by the horns and defy their shared DNA (projective tests). I feel sick from moving my eyes so quickly, I taste the banana that was supposed to help me (taste aversion therapy). And then it begins. And while I’m choosing A, B, C or D, I can see feather-adorned hats, and see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is flickering slightly (You did not just compare a tunnel to a birth canal).

Don’t the voices sound different, without the anxiety laced through them, though they still bounce off the concrete and encourage us to make a hasty exit?

I wrote it in June 2008

Sometimes I wake up and forget everyone else speaks French. My dreams are a confused garble of Romanian, French and English. I'm somewhat of an awe-inducing artefact in my French classes. The woman in charge at Assofac, the organisation who runs the programmes, is a heinous bitch with cankles and was adamant that because I spoke no French (surely I spoke some French) I wasn't enthused about learning the language. So she lumped me in a class with 10 other people who already spoke fluent French and were specialising their vocabulary in the direction of environmental science. I learnt little in the three or four lessons I was made to endure except that my teacher's name was Delphine, she had a pustule on her toe and provided me with living proof as to why no one should smoke at 40. So after it finally clicked that she really doesn't speak French, she wasn't lying, I was put in a class slightly more to my level. However once again they don't believe that I speak no French, and I am subject to a mandatory presentation about oneself within 30 seconds of being ushered in the door - initially they thought I was 28 and had two children but after we got that straightened out, everybody reaffirmed their opinion about my lack of French speaking abilities. I'm made to read aloud, write on the board, write sentences and conjugate imperative verbs - I decided that after the three hours of urine-soaked fear that was the first class, it would be a really clever idea to purchase a dictionary. Outside the classroom, the language barrier is easy to navigate - though I've learnt that I need to stop laughing when I sense the opening for it in conversation, as it gives people the illusion that I understand and prompts them to start nattering at me in French and then waiting for my response. I've become slightly expert at interpreting what people are saying to me given the situation I'm in, and change my answers according to pure whim, swapping between 'oui, merci' or 'non, merci' (creative, no?). This is a mixed luck draw - I never know what I'm going to get. Last week it got me my purchase gift wrapped, definitely a positive, whereas when I responded 'non, merci' when the salesman at Galleries Lafayette asked me for my postcode, the reaction was less favourable. Needless to say, it keeps life interesting.

Incapable of thinking

1. The first thing to go is the ability to think creatively or logically. If I am engaged in a task and there is a possible way of completing in a faster, more simple or better way, I will manage to ignore the flashing warning signals and keep trudging along the beaten track. Spontaneous questions that involve memory recall are destined to fail. Vocabulary shrivels down to the basics, the ability to pronounce things clearly or articulate properly disappears. Conversation other than the necessities becomes too difficult. Along with the ability to think outside the square, being exposed to stimulating material is overwhelming and daunting.

2. Next to vanish is the attention span. Even if I believe I am concentrating, staring at words on a page, my mind has exited the room and is dancing in the puddles outside, thinking about something irrelevant, busy twisting itself into overanalysis or concocting ideas for dinner. I should take this as a cue for what I so desperately need but I never do. I fidget in my seat, flicker back and forth between what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. I read pages and can't remember the subject matter, much less any type of evaluation of material. Basic things become very difficult. I revert back to a page several times just to copy out a sentence accurately. I find myself using wrong tenses, bad grammar, stubby fingers struggling with hitting the right key on the keyboard (and before I wrote 'right' I wrote 'write'). Life is becoming too hard but because I can't think beyond what I am doing at that exact moment, it is destined to remain unchanged for the moment. It's getting worse.

3. The slippery slope of deterioration is steepest when this phase dawns upon me. As I struggle with my brain thumping against the inside of my skull, my hands shaking as I pick up a pen, having to think long and hard about how to construct the sentence 'I am in the room in the library with the green reading lights', I am angry. My whole body is tensed with rage. My eyes are black darts, shooting looks of disdain and contempt at anyone who makes a noise. Why am I so angry? Because the girl sitting opposite me is wearing bangles which are hitting the desk as she types. And I will probably kill her, because I am an irrational fiery ball of crankiness, who hates everything in her direct vicinity. Including the way the lecturer is pronouncing 'transport' and the crackle that it is producing in the left ear of my headphones. I am bubbling and spitting, a cauldron of discontent, of unpleasantness, of stewing distress and fury.

4. Stop. What is that? Through the blindfold that has been plastered over my eyes, enabling me to only see red spots of anger, I recognise something. An innate reaction. And whilst I am angry about it, there is rationale starting to peak through, struggling against the dark shutters but nonetheless letting in a persistant stream of light that is enabling me to focus clearly for half a second. The person sitting beside me is eating. The smells emitted from the spicy hot bowl of nourishing goodness they have in front of them stir something within me which I had obviously tried to repress for too long. My stomach growls. Not just growls, but rumbles and roars like a caged animal who has been injected with a shot of adrenalin. It dawns on me very suddenly, very clearly. I am hungry. Not just hungry, but starved, possibly going to go blind with famine and desperately need something to eat, right now, this very second.

I breathe in food, inhale it in one gulp. And then happiness and tranquillity reign supreme (unless someone tries to pry it from my grasp) and I can live again. The demons have settled, until dinner time. Or until we pool our change and charge towards the vending machine, needs satisfied by king-sized chocolate. But, it's like you told me, the advice I will treasure and ignore its untruth. Nothing is bad for you when you are doing something good.

Missing

"On the warm nights when they wouldn’t move from the back patio for hours except to fill up their glass, they would crave ice cream or something gluttonous, and walk calmly to where the ocean met the land. They wore thongs, they didn’t carry water in their bottles so ended up crouched, mouths poised open, underneath a garden tap; they ate their Magnums and sat quietly on the bench of life, contemplating their days that had usually been filled with not-very-much. Sometimes they had morbid conversations, other times they had meaningful ones, a lot of the time they cackled underneath the cloudy night. They walked home again and slept soundly underneath the star shaped lights, barely stirring when the freight train rushed past."

So what did Act III mean?

In the dream world, she would open up the desk drawer to rows and rows of plane tickets, lined up neatly. None of them have dates on them, she can use them as she pleases. None of them are window seats, she sits two rows from the exit. She'll never sit next to a baby, a person intent on conversation while her eyes are heavy with sleep or someone with repugnant body odour. 1 in 6 tickets will reward her with an upgrade to business class, and there's no disclaimer either.

In the dream world, she would have a typewriter that would send inspiration flying through her fingertips, not like the clunky whirring of a computer where the letter 'e' sticks longer than it should, turning 'the' into 'thee' and sending her brow plummeting to the middle of her face with discern. She would never have to think about the number of syllables per line, or how overly extravagantly flowery her metaphors were. Sometimes she would write with a sharpened lead pencil on a wooden desk that had been scrubbed back and painted.

In the dream world, there is money for fresh flowers, she never has to run for the bus, her room is filled with books that have been chosen with care for her by someone else, she retains information like a thirsty sponge, her conjugations are perfect and her black clothes never fade out to grey.

'But horses are my friends'

The fear of the unknown grabs the blonde hairs that frame her face and holds them up high, tickling her closed eyelids that are twitching with dreams. The fear forces her eyes open, as she cranes to see the little creatures that are trying to torment her in the black night. She can never see them when she’s awake like this, so she doesn’t have a choice but to soothe herself back to sleep, trying to ignore the thoughts that are careering around and around inside her mind, a merry-go-round that is spinning faster and faster. But the normally joyous faces of the horses are twisted and warped, they bare their gums in an angry snarl at her, spitting saliva and thrashing against the worn leather reins that she clutches with sweaty palms.

Wrapped in bed accessories and pillows that bring initial comfort, she slips back into surface sleep, her heart tight with a web of fear that she doesn’t let unravel. In her dream the sticky spider web clings to her face and she can’t get it off, though she scratches mightily, nails that are bitten short leaving red marks on her cheeks. She’s no longer warmed by blankets that Mama had smoothed back carefully in the morning light; instead they are heavy weights that crush her lungs, the fear of the unknown bringing her back to the surface time and time again, wrenching gasps of air with panicked shudders.

There’s no clock in the room because the fiery gremlins feed off the ticking that it makes, and the black air becomes too thick when she can count the seconds in the night. This time she’s back on the merry-go-round, but the ground surrounding it is red dust, and the tinkling music that the horses are dancing to disappears into the empty landscape. Their faces relax, calm and at peace with the circles they gallop in. The silhouette on the horizon makes her uneasy but she is comfortable in the saddle now that the horses no longer snarl and snap at her touch.

Then the figure comes too close, and anxiety spreads like bloodstains on white fabric. ‘Go away,’ she wants to say, urging the horse to go faster and faster, to disappear in a thunderous cloud of dust. But the merry-go-round is slowing, finishing its giddy cycle, and the music is fading, so that all she can hear is the wind carrying the dust against the red sun. ‘Go away!’ she tries to shout.

Then she wakes up again, feeling the panic wash away as she sees the sunlight creep through the crack in the curtains. Little creatures of the night, spawn of the unknown, leave her be.

I don't drink the dregs, I've told you this.

'The footpaths there concern me; there's too much bitumen. I prefer smooth cement on my footpaths. That's what the councils are doing at the moment; trying to reduce the amount of bitumen on the footpaths in the city.'


'You're basing how much you like a suburb on the texture of their footpaths?'


'Yes, for sure. How did you get that scar on your breast?'


'My cat scratched me when I was seven, before I had breasts.'


'At least I said breast, not boob or tit. It looks like an arrow pointing directly to your nipple.'


She raised her eyebrows and tried to remember the Saturday in the suburb with the uneven footpaths. The eye blinked at them from the shop window, beckoning with its tantalizing price tag. It was covered in things, bits and pieces of sorts. Coloured silk, a tarnished frame, shoes with worn in heels. The man in the shop beamed at them, his simple smile dissapitating when he realised what they were after and the challenges that might be involved in lifting the desk from the window front.


'I'll just get the boss for you.'


They waited quietly, as they'd finished their conversation on 'muse' (the word, definitely not the band and their overpriced hooded jumpers) and looked at the trinkets on the counter, searching for hidden beauty that wasn't quite found in a brooch with no pin, a broken key ring, a scarf that was too large to be worn properly without giving the impression you were trying to smother yourself in floral chiffon. A short man scurried to the shop front, sizing them up quickly when they asked to buy the desk with the blinking eye that was positioned in his window display.



'How are you going to carry it home? It's very heavy.'

'I live just down the road, we'll be fine.'

The process of removing the one-eyed desk from the shop front seemed unnecessarily stressful. She floundered about, trying to help but just getting in the way. There was a crash, and they thought it was a drawer falling to the ground and cracking, though it turned out not to be. The other one stood to the side, knowing better than to get involved, her sunglasses hiding the smudges of black that were still left under her eyes (later she would leave those glasses on the countertop, where they would have to return). They had planned to carry the desk, strong and agile girls whose mothers' had fed them milk and yoghurt as young children. The shop man 'tsked' and offered the lending of a trolley, with the condition of a drivers' licence and credit card. They conferred between them and miraculously managed to produce both items, cracked and interstate. She was excited, envisaging a large industrial trolley on which the entire desk would sit and they would steer expertly down the bitumen footpaths to where the cat vomit was, outside the front gate.

The reality was different; it was a narrow trolley that she'd seen previously to move gas bottles, boxes, or other non-challenging, non-heavy items. It bore perhaps a sixth of the weight of the desk, balanced precariously in the middle. They promised to return the trolley (or no driving or extravagant impulse spending for them) and were on their way, relying soley on the vision of the blinking eye, because they could not see past the scratched timber frame. She felt that it was not very heavy, though she assumed it was because she was not bearing her share of the weight. They zigzagged along, compelling other pedestrians to flatten themselves against the walls of buildings in order to avoid them. They turned the corner hapharzdly, breaking into a run onto the road and pulling in to the curb in a way they pictured reverse parallel parking to be conducted (though neither of them really knew how).

She hadn't imagined that in less than 6 hours, little possum with her frightened stare would be splayed across the road, her slight and furry frame shaking in shock and fear while the car that hit her panicked, while passersby buried her under an avalanche of coats and called an ambulance, not worrying that she might be sick or dirty (we are in the place with the bitumen footpaths, after all). Poor possum, she tried to jump from one branch to the other too quickly, but the car knocked her down and took all the wind from her lungs.

They conceeded the trolley was defeated by the time they got to the front gate, and lifted the desk and its closed eye from the bottom, cringing at the weight on their stubby little fingers. There were screeches from both sides as shoes with too-thin soles schlepped through the cat/dog/animal/human vomit on the side of the road next to the broken television. They rested in the hallway and there was a scurry to clear space in the room, moving aside CDs, a box with a letter from Centrelink ('please lodge your employer details to avoid Centrelink debt') floating on top, a guitar and a mass of cords with dust bunnies clinging onto them for dear life. She swept with a dustban and broom, they moved the desk into a corner. They were satisfied, she smiled in delight at the sanctuary they had created, she took the chair from the kitchen where there were never any clean plates and put it at the desk. They placed textbooks on it and marvelled at how productive it felt.

Then it was late, and there was a rush to shower. She lay in the rubble of picture frames of Miles & Otis, of tangled blankets and sheets that needed washing. She read two pages of 'Le Petit Prince' and half-listened to the dilemmas of finding a jacket that didn't reek of cigarettes. Then they were ready, and went to leave, before remembering the cursed trolley that was nowhere to be seen.

There was a rush, and a brief flash of panic, before finding it sitting patiently on the footpath where they had left it. They were relieved, and went to leave the house, not before seeing a couple, one in a sombrero and the other carrying a pinata.

'What is that? Where are they going?'

'They're going to a Mexifest.'

'Why are you so matter-of-fact about it? Does everyone go to Mexifests?'

'Yes, Mexican food is delicious.'

'Oh. I suppose you're right.'

They left and got on the tram, not before seeing a child strapped in a carrier close to his mother's chest, though he was far too big. He could've easily walked.

Disclaimer: these aren't my emotions

En Décembre

I notice the sunlight no longer enters
the window, but hovers outside. I take
an hour to shower and dress, watching the
water pool at my feet. I make coffee only
to leave it to stand cold, undrunk. I listen
to halves of songs, regarde la télé, write halves of poems.
I sleep in the centre of the bed with
my arms outstretched trying to lessen the
empty space where you used to lay.

I buy cheap apples with brown flesh before
I remember I can’t eat tarte tatin
without tasting your lips and thinking of
my white pillows and your blonde tousled head
watching the dust particles dance for hours.




La Nouvelle Vie

I filled the gaps you left with silly little things
I buy new crockery, a teapot, though
Iva doesn’t drink tea. Candles, scarves, new
pens for the poetry I seldom write.
I’ve buried away memories of you
in the back of the drawer, with lost socks and
folded notes (I loved your cursive script) so
I feel brave enough to place one foot in
front of the other. I’ve rebuilt the wall
that crumbled in dusty pieces before me.

When I saw you, you were wearing a blue
linen shirt (creased in two lines at the back)
I took the bullet, tasted the salty
iron of blood, then quickly turned away.

You should have called

You should wake up at 7am, and your eyelids should spring open without the aid of an alarm, because you should be well rested and rejuvenated from the 8.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep that you've had. You should reach for the tall and tantalizing glass of water that you placed beside your bed the night before, and drink it immediately. Because you've risen before you needed to, you should throw yourself into a fitness regime coupled with sports attire and uplifting music plugged into your ears. You should return home gasping slightly, a light sheen of sweat covering your brow, but definitely not struggling to breathe, definitely not throwing yourself on the floor/couch/bed as your muscles seize up in angst. You should then eat a filling and nutritious breakfast, perhaps a bowl of muslei (low-in sugar of course) with natural yoghurt and fresh apple, coupled with a banana and a mug of green tea. You should shower, shampoo, condition, exfoliate, moisturise, tone, moisturise, remove offensive hair, cut offensive toe and fingernails. You should dress indiscriminately, you should be neither hot or cold. You should have an umbrella in your bag, shrapnel and $20 cash in your wallet, a bus ticket that has been pre-purchased. You should pack your lunch and a bottle of water. You should take vitamins and you should eat five vegetables and three pieces of fruit daily. You should limit your snacking in between meals and avoid saturated fats, palm oil and MSG. You should eat your dinner before 8pm and you should drink a soothing cup of cammomile tea before you retire to bed, your mind a clean slate ready for the following day and you should fall asleep within approximately seven minutes.

You should have an equal balance between work, study and a social life. You should keep all your notes in individual folders, separated by neat and labelled dividers. You should tick off your readings as you complete them, you should write summaries of the texts and keep them adjacent to your lecture notes. You should complete not only the presribed readings but the additional and further readings, because you have a fire to learn that is burning within you, which means that in addition to getting 8.5 hours of sleep a night, you should be able to read 200 pages of dry and poorly written research information each day. You should dedicate an additional 4 hours of study time for each subject each week. You should attend each lecture and each tute, you should ask innovative questions, you should complete assignments the week before they're due. You should request practice exams and additional exercises from your tutor. You should spend the time in between your lectures and tutes in the library, which should be a quiet and studious haven filled with like-minded beings. You should print out your lecture notes before each class and make colour-coded annotations in the margins. You should participate in co-curricular activities and volunteer on campus. You should arrive at your classes with enough time to have your books out in front of you, to secure a seat where you can see the screen (and the clock).

You should save 10% of your income each week, you should give to chosen charities, you should save your coins in a sealed tin and empty it every few months. You should resist the urge to make impulse purchases, you should avoid credit card debt and you should have a high interest savings account. You should pay your phone bill on time, you should have high-speed Internet. You should send birthday cards and thank you notes to your elderly relatives, you should speak to your parents at least twice a week. You should give kind and guiding advice to your younger siblings, you should attend family functions as a social and animated being. You should wash your sheets once a week, you should get a haircut before your hair breaks off on its own. You should be able to make idle chit-chat with your co-workers even if you don't like them and you should listen to your music at such a decibel that your fellow train passengers can't hear it through your headphones. You should give your seat up for the elderly, pregnant or disabled, you should recycle your plastics and cardboards, you should stand to the left of the escalator. You should scrape leftovers into sealed Tupperware containers and eat them the following day, you should have a compost bin, you should use environmentally friendly cleaning products, you should have a water-saving shower head and keep a bucket in the shower, emptying the additional water into the garden each morning. You should dryclean your coat every 6 months, you should learn another language, you should give your old clothes to the op shop, you should wash your frying pan with the soft side of the scourer. You should wait until the green man flashes and avoid J-walking, you should park in between the lines.

You should be balanced, well-adjusted, emotionally-stable, in good health both physically and mentally. You should make strong decisions, be kind to yourself, be kind to those around you, not blasphem, be tolerant of others and their views. You should seize each day, you should avoid looking directly at the sun, you should smile at shop attendants and hold the door open for mothers with prams. You should sew the buttons back on your clothes when they fall off, you should wear slippers when it's cold, you should pull to the side when you hear ambulance sirens.

You should, and you could, but do you?

Why are you wearing stockings with holes in them?

In the photo, the baby lies in her arms, swaddled against the unknown perils of the world she's just entered. Her soft newborn head is swollen with a bump and one of her hazy blue eyes was half-shut and bruised. Her little mouth is pursed in distaste and she is bright red with the shock of birth, her complexion resembling that of a boiled monkey, the skin fiery red and inflamed. Welcome to the world, little one, the angels croon. Even the grainy print of the 90's film manage to capture the unique expression of love, shock, disbelief, fear, amazement, accomplishment on the face of her holder. First child and she's here stamping, along the path, leaving behind dusty gold footprints.

Years later, her face scrunched and turned purple within seconds, eyes swelling with tears that are already shut tight with pain. Never the attractive crier, she lies howling in the red dirt, her high-pitched screech elongating the name of the person that she needed, the only one who could bring solace to her devastation and rage at having fallen from the flying fox into the pit beneath when her fat little fingers could hold on no more.

Her sobs shortened to gasps and her hands smeared dirt, snot and tears all over her disgruntled face as the cool and calm hands dabbed at the blood on her knees. She sat with her party shoes leaving marks on the newly-installed bathroom cabinet, relaying the trauma of the incident to the sympathetic ears that half-listened while trying to extract the gravel from shredded knees. She was panicked with the thought of the four candles being blown without her, the candles that studded the birthday cake she'd selected months before from the dog-eared recipe book. The calm voice of reassurance grew tired of her pitiful wails, taking her firmly by the hand and leading her back to the party, holding a tissue for her to blow her nose and lighting the candles of the cake shaped like a clock.

The nest is built in a place that you can't jump from easily, especially in bare feet, as you're bound to get that sharp shooting pain grab you by both ankles and cripples you for a second. Don't try and jump, it's a swooping motion, but you have to do it quickly. No use hopping along the branch. She'd always had one foot outside, itching to fly away sooner than her wings were grown. At the bottom of the tree there were screens with times and destinations, and sterile polished floors. So, with a gentle push, a lingering hug laced with a little bit of hope of lasting longer, there she went.

Hacker

Is it the long list of pressing things that need to be done,
by a certain date, certain time
Maybe it's the ever-present drizzle
And the fear of slipping on the concrete in shoes not designed for wet weather.
Is it the forced imbibing of a book, published in 1986, that turned out to be pleasing to read, cocooned in a nest of featherdown with eyes itching from tiredness?
The leftover coffee foam is sugary sweet, remaining on the walls of the glass in a way I can't quite explain (perhaps because it's separated from the rest, just like this?)
I hid my disappointment in my generic choices, my wide and expansive choices
'I hate accounting, I hate numbers, I just don't understand them. I refuse to study something I hate.'
'It's education' he said. 'Sometimes you don't get a choice.'
I told her about this
As well as this vice of mine, that I maintain isn't an outpouring of emotion (I hate that, in a public forum).
Maybe it's because I need a response, a 5pm Monday response, that's why I'm this way inclined, today, yesterday? (Write it, write it, write it).

I'm just sayin'

1. 'We're dreaming of a bright white Christmas (and I'm crying like a newborn baby)'

In my dream I say this to you while I'm singing it, and secretly grin on the inside while I watch your forehead terse in disgust and confusion. I wait for the familiar spiel that I now know, and dream-like me doesn't feel the cold so manages to find it that much funnier. I mentally prepare myself to ask the questions I already know the answers to.

'I've been through this with you before - snow isn't pretty. It might look pretty while it's falling down in little flakes but the next day it turns to slush, and then it turns to ice.'

'But at Christmas isn't it pretty, you're inside with the lovely fire and all the Christmas images that are plastered all over everything match how it actually is outside.'

'No, because it hardly ever snows at Christmas, it's just fucking cold. And we have central heating, not a roaring fire.'

'I still think snow's exciting, I really hope it snows again here before you leave.'

'Why do you want that? Do you not remember when it snowed last time and it was just really really cold and all the sidewalks and roads were slippery with ice? You fell over in the middle of the street, remember, and you complained about it for ages. Don't tell me you want it to snow.'

'Well it hurt, that's why I complained, I can still feel the egg on the back of my head. And I do want it to snow because then we can make snow angels.'

'I'm done talking about snow.'

In my dream, I don't feel the cold, and I have wings. The Pacific Ocean is a puddle, and 5c pieces are worth a thousand dollars each (I've got a jar of them on my windowsill, just imagine that).

I'm going to cut up my roast dinners and put them in my Thermos too

1.

‘He said it was overwritten, I don’t even know what that means.’

‘It means just really over the top descriptions and paragraph-long sentences that are filled with all these rare adjectives. You visualise everything really intensely and use too many metaphors.’

‘What? That’s not fair, I thought this was the one subject where I’m allowed to do that.’

I could visualise what she was doing while we were having this conversation, separated by the Hay Plain (the most boring stretch of land known to man) and 8 hours of vehicular control. She wouldn’t be sitting still, she’d probably be lurking from one room of the house to the next. She might pause in front of the glass door that looked out into the backyard, but not for long. The fridge door might open and she’d pick at something like cheese or a salad or dish that had been made the day before, but never take a plate and fill it up like I would. She wouldn't eat it while we were on the phone either, having screeched at me before if I took a loud sip of tea close to the receiver. I could visualise the expressions on her face and her body language while she spoke, and be able to predict what she was going to say before she did. Her listening fillers were usually in the same tone, same emphasis, though I suppose mine were as well.

2.

‘I saw a girl get her shoe stuck in the escalator at uni yesterday.’
‘Ha! Did you? Did you tell her that I did the same thing?’
‘First I started laughing hysterically, like I couldn’t stop. Then I said to her “My friend will be so relieved to hear that this has happened to you, it happened to her last week..” She was much calmer than you were about it though.’
‘How on earth was she calm? Were there waves of people coming behind her so that she couldn’t get her shoe back?’
‘Yeah and she was just waiting there with this really tired expression on her face, her shoe was more mangled than yours as well, it was a Haviaana that was all caught up in the teeth of the escalator and flapping around.’
‘I don’t know that I feel any better after hearing this story.’
‘I thought it was pretty funny. Are you going to use the rest of that soy sauce?’
‘No, you can have it, can I have some of your miso?’
‘No, you can’t, you’re sick. And you’ve made me sick, I can feel it already. I have a very low immune system.’
‘There is no way I could have made you sick this quickly, a cold incubates for 3 days at least.’
‘You have.’

3.

‘This is what people do, they work all their lives at jobs they don’t even like so they can come to Ikea on a public holiday and spend their money on a perfect house that looks like it came out of the catalogue.’
‘Everyone wants a perfect Swedish house, don’t you?’
‘No I want to move to Paris, but you won’t let me.’
‘Yes I will, I want to move to Paris too. That’s why we’ll be together forever, because we both want to move to Paris.’

‘Did that movie really have an effect on you or something?’