Wednesday 30 June 2010

secret: i sit in my room by myself, i look at pictures on the internet, and i giggle.

i want excitement in my Chips.

treasure: blind pilot, new favourite

Blind Pilot- Three rounds and a Sound



They're playing our song
They're playing our song
Can you see the lights?
Can you hear the hum?

Of our song
I hope they get it right
I hope we dance tonight
Before we, get it wrong

And the seasons
Will change us new
Be the best I've knownand you know me
I could not be stuck on you
If it were true

I was sleeping
My eyes were dark
Til you woke me
And told me that opening is just the start
it was

Now I see you, til kingdom come
You're the one I want
To see me for all the stupid shit I've done

Soil and six feet under
Killed just like we were
Before you knew you'd know me
And you know me
Blooming up from the ground
3 Rounds and a sound
Like whispering you know me
And you know me

So this was our song
This was our song
I still see the lights
I can see them

And the criss cross
Of what is true, won't get to us
Cause you know me
I could not give up on you

And the fog of what is right
Won't cover us cause you know me
I could not give up a fight

secret: no it is not 'all cool', why the fuck would it be 'all cool', you dickhead?

sometimes exes are stupid.

Tuesday 29 June 2010

happy birthday gaby

dear gaby,

i hope you have a happy birthday. everyone who has a blog that i read gets a cake on their birthday. a blog cake. you get this cake, the one down the bottom. don't eat it all at once.

blogalicious...

i think you're nice, and i liked that time at dad's party where you were there, and i was there, and indea and laura were there, and then all of a sudden i fell, and also made plans with various relatives which i went to sleep and forgot all about until they were ringing asking why i wasn't at their house for dinner.

i sort of hope that one day there is another party just like that.

well anyway my point is, you're getting old.

love helen


Monday 28 June 2010

an observation



maybe being in a relationship is not so great.

all recent emo-ness aside, i can't help but consider the fact that at least i don't have to have arguments with someone, the kind of arguments that two entirely different people have when they decide, for some bizarre reason, to commit to each other rather than anyone else.

even the most perfect couples fight, because it is human nature. i think it's more how you deal with the fighting, how you react to it and how you move past it, that marks what sort of a couple you are.

being in a relationship is constant negotiation. and requires constant compassion. and sometimes it is just about taking a really deep breath before you say something small, poisonous and mean. at least, that's my experience. because i am a snarky individual when i want to be.

it's the being in love, and the heartbreaking fun of it all, that's the bit i miss. the practical, pay-the-bills-on-time, take-the-garbage-out, it's-your-turn-to-do-the-dishes stuff, that bit i do not miss. although a certain level of comfort can be found in this very level of domesticity.

is it fair to blame hollywood for the myth of romance? please can i blame them? fuckers.

i think the only way to keep magic happening is not to live with your lover. ever. this is a theory i am working on, but judging on my luck lately, i will never ever be able to test this theory out again...

there, emo, BAM, right in your eye!

Sunday 27 June 2010

secret: i am so emo right now




nobody loves me everybody hates me i'm going to go and eat some worms
big fat juicy ones long slim slimy ones
itsy bitsy fuzzy wuzzy worms
first you bite their heads off then you suck their gizzards out
see how they squiggle and squirm
nobody loves me everybody hates me i'm going to go and eat some worms


Thursday 24 June 2010

treasure: journal

yes blog, i am cheating on you with my journal. well i suppose technically i am cheating on my journal with you.

i have kept a journal since i became an angsty teenager. as far as i am concerned, i am still an angsty teenager. possibly forever. i have a billion of them stashed safely at mum's house. i just finished one that ellie gave me as a travel present, and now i am into the red one that mum gave me... as a travel present. i delight in being this predictable.

a blog seems to me to be part journal, part self-advertisement. i am pretty sure about 2.5 people read my blog, so that's not bad.

and now, dear 2.5 readers, i want to share something from a journal that i just found tonight, that i kind of like as far as my writing goes:


"she bought tobacco, filters and papers, and took up smoking, just for this rainy friday afternoon, just for something to do. she had returned to her hometown to somehow find herself alone and wandering about, eyeing off highschool children nursing a vague sense that she knew them somehow, that they were friends she'd not yet met. at 23, even the youngest of her brothers had long been finished with highschool (to his relief) and so she did not know any of them, not really. she spent a quiet afternoon smoking, lingering over cups of coffee at the town's various cafes, staring at strangers over the top of her cup. she bought a book. she had no way of knowing the time; she was without a watch, as she had been for the past year, too lazy to commit the single seemingly easy act of buying a new battery. easier to buy tobacco, filters and papers, and take up smoking, just for one rainy friday afternoon."


i like to write descriptions of myself as though i am a character in a book. maybe i am a character in a book. that thought makes me happy.

i have always loved writing, and i think i always will. maybe i should do something with that love- create something worth selling.

oh, i don't know. what i do know is that i love and treasure my red journal, and all my journals really. slightly alarming that i have been writing the same shit in them for more than 10 years.





Saturday 19 June 2010

secret

i want you to go because it hurts me to look at you.

Friday 18 June 2010

secret: fucking homesick


nuff said, i think. i think maybe that night was the best of my life. those boys are my favourite.

Sunday 13 June 2010

treasure: sunglasses and sun

i walked to work this morning from alpine. it took me an hour and a half because i kept stopping to play tourist. but how the hell can you not, when you've been waiting for summer sunshine since august 2009??

i have a lot of pairs of sunglasses. but right now, these are my favourites. i'm about eleventy seven billion times cooler with these on.

secret: sometimes i spike my own hot chocolate with fireball whisky

i never was a big drinker before i got to canada.


granted, there were nights... there are always nights. the retreat and bar etiquette are responsible for most of those nights. and it was the same cause; spending a lot of time in the presence of big drinkers.


within a month of me being in whis, i had embraced day-drinking (those sunny summer days where you're not working, and neither are your housemates, and before you know it you've had 12 beers and are wobbling around at the lake), and had the infamous Fall into the Gravel, where i face-planted and took skin off my nose from my glasses digging in... i was also missing skin from my knees, but (here is the punchline) my hands were pristine. yes, that's right, i fell and i did nothing to save myself. i have no recollections of this night, except lying in the gravel with hugh laughing at me and me saying "just leave me here. i'm sleeping here".


i did 3 months of this. fondest memory= bumping into evan while cashing my paycheck at the bank, and then proceeding to spend $100 in one afternoon drinking beer at citta's. fantastic.


i partied pretty hard. this petered out when i started working 7 days a week in march. much to the relief of everyone in australia. i was starting to get comments; dismissive comments. worried comments. all because i never partied at home. what i SHOULD have done is more drinking at home so the drinking in canada didn't seem an issue. it's all about perspective.


i have just come out of self-imposed 21 day detox. and tonight i made myself a hot chocolate and poured in a rather liberal amount of fireball whisky.


because fireball is delicious. and it goes with EVERYTHING.



Saturday 12 June 2010

treasure: oh there you are, sunshine!!!


now i am going to sit on the deck, drinking fireball and playing my guitar.

secret: there are mountains behind all that fog


when i look out from my balcony, there should be a whole entire mountain peeking through the trees. but alas, for the last few weeks, i have not seen my beautiful Whistler mountain. the stupid fog is hiding it.

i had a fantastic winter, and i don't use fantastic lightly, as i feel it sounds simultaneously over-cheery and sarcastic. so. my winter here was fantastic. there was record-breaking amounts of snow, i learned to snowboard and loved it. snowboarding is the only activity i've come across so far in my life where all i think about while i'm on the mountain IS snowboarding. i cannot really explain why this is so amazing to me, but it's all very zen, i am one with the mountain, etc.

i fell in love with the mountain a little bit. wierdly enough when i say mountain, i mean both whistler and blackcomb mountains, but they are known by everyone as 'the mountain', as in "are you headed up the mountain today?". i fell in love with winter, mountains, furry boots, snow.
then i started to run out of money, and started to get a bit panicky, having never had a debt before. so i worked like a crazy person.

in hindsight i should have let the debt ride a little, after all, it was all the way in australia. then i could have had some quality time with my mountain.

last night i sat on my deck with housemates, drank wine and talked about boarding. and i ached for winter. i made vows that i would learn to freeride, which is hitting jumps and whatnot on the sides of runs. i made vows i would be a powder-riding genius, re-invent the art of tree runs. i did drink a fair amount of wine- enough to get idealistic.

i am really trying to be excited about summer, and i think it would help my excitement if the sun came out and the fog stopped hiding the mountain.

especially on my days off. so for now, i am going to eat a stupidly big breakfast at wildwoods and then attempt to make cookies.

Saturday 5 June 2010

treasure: long lost friends

missing people you love comes and goes.


i think i miss people because i remember how good it is to have them around- so it's part nostalgia, really. i miss times in my life, and the people that were there for them.



i miss working at the Retreat Hotel in melbourne, and being able to walk in feeling like i owned the place. i miss the deliciousness of free knock-off drinks, i miss flirting with bar staff.


i miss the invincible feeling of being in yr12, of getting marks back and doing better than nearly everyone else (except for my damn intelligent friends), of wearing whatever i wanted and pretending it was uniform.


i miss sunny days in the middle of winter, in new england, laying on a foamie on mum's deck at rockvale while my stepdad cooked us barbeque.


i already miss winter in whistler, and riding with hugh on christmas day, and the egg, and the nogg, that me, bridget, sam and hugh drank in copious amounts. copious being the operative word... it's nice to be blurrily drunk for christmas dinner.


i miss hanging out with ellie, at her mum's place constantly picking mel's hair off my clothes (mel being a small mainly white dog) and watching gilmour girls. i miss that one time at coogee where we went and smoked sneaky ciggarettes and confessed our failings.

i miss my brothers and swapping drunk stories! more than anything. they are two of the coolest human beings on the planet, prettymuch.

but on the flipside, i have all these friends here, right now, living the same life i am living, seeing the amazing things i am seeing.


i want to love all these people right now, so i can miss them later.


secret: i am allergic to wheat







since i got to canada i have been ignoring my wheat allergy, pretending i am not uncomfortably intolerant to some of my great loves: beer, burgers, cake, croissants.


finally, 11 months later, i have decided to face facts. my heart is broken, but i am saying goodbye.
although i may have to have the occasional beer, when i am too poor to afford vodka. i really do love beer.
i am looking into wonderful gluten-free cake recipes, so i dont have to feel so sad.

treasure: guitar


i like to play guitar. mostly i am alone in my room pretending to be famous, but just occasionally i actually play in front of people.


i have terrible stagefright. and truthfully, my guitar playing is not that good. but it is a small joy in my life.


i like to play guitar with nick and damen, but damen is leaving for texas. the sad thing about this place is that people are always leaving, just when you are starting to get used to them. i loved those times of guitaring with nick and damen; at their house, on my deck, by rainbow lake... normally it was more about the beer and the joint than the guitar, but they were sweet company nonetheless.

my guitar is about 4 years old now, and i bought it for myself coming out of a terrible breakup, where i was left with heartache and money owed- of hard-earned $2200 scholarship money that semester i had a mere $400 to spend on myself. so i bought a guitar, and played it alone in my flat with the door open to let the hot melbourne summer air in, drinking beer and contemplating all the possible ways in which i would allow myself to be different.

Wednesday 2 June 2010

happy birthday indea


happy birthday to my dear stepsister indea


there are many things i admire about her, like her hair, and also i quite like her taste in shoes.

i hope that soon we can hang out again and maybe one day she will move to melbourne, and i will be in melbourne, and we will all be in melbourne together.


so i hope for the very happiest birthday and maybe i'll send a really late birthday present if i get my shit together, which i probably won't. but i wish i could.


lots of birthday love!


and i hope you get a cake with a turtle on it.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

secret: i like writing lit essays

i just read online that for admissions exams at oxford, until recently they had one-word essay topics.

this means you had 3 hours to write a coherent essay from a one-word prompt. for example, "water", "bias", "innocence".

tests your capacity to bullshit, right? like a lit essay.


i used to gripe and groan, but the honest truth is that i loved those essays. i loved the ones i did for gender studies, where our radical feminist lecturer basically encouraged craziness, as long as it was backed up with quotes and whatnot.


planning these essays, doing the reading and having the expansive, opinionated, epic conversations with friends in coffee shops and walking home from uni through princes park, melbourne, sitting at home with piles of library books and sheets and sheets of highlighted paper... i get all nostalgic just thinking about it.


i like to remember that time, to remind myself that i did a degree once. i do have a brain. once, my brain was not mush. once, it could create 3000 words from nowhere, sometimes overnight (i confess i was a last-minute essay writer, and i never learned to be more prepared, because my marks were always pretty decent).


i do miss being an arts student. i did love writing essays.

treasure: new ipod

i think the one thing that would make me cry to lose is my ipod.
i think being able to walk around, or snowboard, or bicycle about in the canadian summer, with a personal soundtrack, is pretty much the bestest thing about life.

the ipod i have right now i've had since my 21st birthday, and now the screen is broken, and there's some wierd ipod malfunction happening.
i panicked.
i bought a new one.


i know it SOUNDS crazy, but i am crazy.

crazy with a shiny new ipod!