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the thick olfactory ache of half-bloomed jasmine hangs in the air. it reminds me of some point, years and years ago now, back at my mother's house. the beginning of summer. every day i have an odd, unplaceable nostalgia, but by the time i get to the bus stop, it's gone.
i dreamt of you last night. i was handing you jars of plum sauce or wholegrain mustard, about 6 or 7 of them. (you still haven't solidified, your form is still out of my depth of field though you stand beside me, looking down.) my arms twitched involuntarily and a mustard jar slipped out of my hand. i woke up before it smashed.
i'm already up to 3. i have plumbed some of the darkest caves in my memory before 2:40 in the afternoon on a monday. my shoulders are tense, my hearing shuts off as i drift into daydream.
i state independence, for the first time in my life.
for some reason, i always feel like starting blogs or letters or text messages or e-mails with the words, 'i don't really know'. i don't understand. maybe i just have a subconscious need to tell people that i have no clue of what's going on. and no matter how knowledgable or intellectual or fascinating people might be, no one actually does know. and maybe i don't admit it enough - that i am one of those people. i don't really know. i don't understand. i don't get it. i'm confused.
not in the pejorative sense even. it's a neutral statement.
so tonight i met up with alex and bianca and lucy in newtown. they had come over for less than 24 hours, to see conor oberst and the mystic valley band at the enmore theatre and then leave again. back to perth. i wished a little bit that i was going back with them.
anyway, the gig was fucking incredible. conor oberst is - and i don't care what anyone says - the spokesperson for this generation. the gig was exciting, sorrowful, beautiful, angry, destructive, rich, fulfilling... not just the music (which was fucking top notch), but the whole atmosphere the band created. i felt like i could have been sitting under the same mexican stars where they wrote & recorded their album, listening to this group of like-minded(&hearted) friends jamming away. i walked away from it feeling blissful. even now, some of that warmth is still buzzing through me.
so we came back to my dad's empty house (dad, kath & the boys went down south for a night or two and i happened to have a key), and smoked and talked and listened to music. it was so lovely and comfortable to see them again. but of course, daylight savings decides to kick in this morning, so a whole fucking potential hour got stolen. i just returned from putting them in a taxi back to the airport. i am now in a big, empty house, listening to diane cluck or wilco or queens of the stone age or deftones or autechre. i'm not sure. i don't really know.
it might be just lack of sleep, but i feel deflated and misplaced. things are good here, i have made a couple of friends and melissa and i are getting on better than ever, but about 3/4 of my limbs are missing.
my brain is mush. i miss
i let it flood my ears and soak into my skin.
3/4 of a million miles from home
a tenuous thread shimmers from flesh to land to flesh
i stretch it back like an archer
i strum it like i echo the howl
i sew it into my fingertip callouses
i pull it so tight i can't breathe
the thunderstorm brushes past me
it claws at the air just beyond here
i dream its tentative growl would swell into a howl and
drown out muttering insecurity.
notes rebound on the long ivory walls
it would be too much to ask
them to keep it down
and above me;
i crumble
the thread twines and nets itself just in time to catch the last tiny bits
but the supports creak
the edges fray
my fingertipskin begins to drift outwards, ever-expanding reflective ripples
two correlating waves
of dust
for
each fingertip
falls away
10(2)co
sinew
ave
just don't let go of your side of the thread
and i'll learn how to knit with my fingerbones
and you will have a silvery scarf by the winter
it will keep you warm when the waves come
