30pictureschallenge: Day 17

 

it would be sweet if my to-do list was just about yoloing... 

secret: the end of the world, or Day 16 of 30pictureschallenge

in Australia in summer it is inevitable that things burn. tonight, somewhere near Armidale, there is a fire- with a bit of a wind, the streets are full of smoke. on dusk, it seems as though the town is almost empty. it truly feels like a post-apocalyptic reality. me and Maude are making our slow way up the hill to home (she's too keen for second gear and not quite sharp enough to take advantage of third up these hills, i never really know what to do with her). i half expect newspapers blowing past us with headlines increasingly threatening and bleak, like the movies.

my favourite post-apocalyptic movies are those like i am legend, children of men, 28 days later or city of ember, or even the island (which might be a little bit about scarlett and ewan). the anarchist inside of me likes watching societies fall apart (it doesn't have to be a nuclear holocaust, just a good old-fashioned dissolution of the powers that be). i like seeing who takes the lead, who the scriptwriters and directors think is worthy of the power.

because i'm a feminist, i'm particularly interested in what sort of female figures our scriptwriters have imagined. it's interesting how sometimes, the roles of women don't change at all, as though that's too hard to imagine, even though when you're making stuff up you can imagine anything you like.

once upon a time, i wanted to write my honours thesis about the role of women in post-apocalyptic literature. now, i really really wish i had done it. i could go back and do it sometime, you know. i wanted to write about isobelle carmody's obernewtyn series, and margaret atwood's the handmaid's tale. even thinking about this now makes me want to write a blog a billion words long.

for now, i imagine myself roaming the world in my trusty van (who goes forever and never ever breaks down because she's old enough there are no computers in her and i can fix her with my somehow-acquired mechanical skill....). stay safe out there kids. safe from fires, safe from smoke, and safe from zombies.

30pictureschallenge: Day 15

this is about that time it was Halloween.

i'm often of two minds about dressing up in costume. on the one hand, i put a lot of completely unnecessary pressure on myself to think of something good that will look great on the night, which inevitably makes me not want to go to the party at ALL (stubborn like that), and on the other hand, i really love costume parties, which is a fact i always forget when i'm having the costume-based moment of anxiety.

this saturday night just passed was such an occasion. we decided to have a party, we picked a date, we made a facebook event, it loomed, we planned, i vaguely wondered what i'd wear and then all of a sudden, BAM, it was the night before.

cut to me with no costume laughing nervously in the corner. perhaps hyperventilating a little, because you can't not go to your own party just because you don't have a costume. or can you?

no, no you can't.

obviously, as the picture i've posted above indicates, i did in fact figure something out. so i share with abandon my recipe for Halloween costume success:

1) freak out a bit

2) go online to Pinterest and try to get inspiration which inevitably makes you freak out more

3) look at what you have in your wardrobe, realise there's a dress in there you've never worn....

4) build entire concept around dress

5) buy facepaint intending to paint skull onto face

6) watch youtube videos and realise how difficult a task this would be

7) take your brother's advice, which is "just start painting and see what happens"

8) recalibrate expectations

9) paint another layer of paint over the other paint as your insurance policy

10) add hairspray and a petticoat

you win! you win at Halloween!

turns out i had a grand old time, and all the guests dressed up too, which made me happy.

and that is the story of Halloween.

30pictureschallenge: Day 14

it was my birthday. this happened.

i had a lovely quiet birthday, but not in an un-special way. things happened: nice things. i had lots of friends around who happily sat and talked nonsense and ate laksa and cake and drank beer and wines. i am lucky to have birthday-friendly friends. they are good at it. special mentions to ellie for making the above cake, and kate J for making the cookies i had hinted towards in an earlier blog.

i did some good deep thinking for this birthday, because my last birthday was so different. well, i was different in it. i wasn't really sure about being 27, and each extra bit of age i acquired made me compare the ages of myself and my boyfriend at the time. and the uneasy feeling was warranted, but i didn't know it then - i was happily and blissfully unaware for my birthday last year, spent in dungog for mumford and sons in fuck off-hot weather. gah, it was moist (that's an in-joke from my birthday this year! hahaha!). 

the year before that, i was in whistler with the lovely annica, and there was a food fight and some dressing up and more fun than a kid could poke a stick at (i tried: i had a long stick... more of a broomhandle if we're honest). 

birthdays always have that bit of charm about them, and i always wake up early, excited for no real reason. 

another birthday has passed and i can say that yep, i still feel special on my birthday. thanks to all who loved me from near and from far.

30pictureschallenge: Day 13

 Stayin' up late makin' mixtapes:

i haven't made one in a while, but i owe a few people some promises.

so many important moments and thoughts i've had lately seem to be scored to a soundtrack. simply put, music is one of my great loves. i think, when all is said and done, i'd be missing something and never knowing what it was, if music wasn't a thing.

making this mixtape, i am thinking a lot about the person it's for and how much i love and miss him. i am lucky to have some beautiful friends. it's just a constant heartbreak to live so far from the people that seem to really know you and get you. the treasure for me lately has been meeting more people close by who seem to maybe get me a little bit too.

but there are some special ones who i will love the rest of my life, and i hope to keep them in it, in some small way, shape or form.

here, i send out a mixtape, and what i want it to talk of is not only the love and the friendship, but also the will to insert a message through the songs of others far more talented than me to say that i want to be around, in the airwaves in the earbuds, as you go about your life and i imagine you in it. 

30pictureschallenge: Day 12

It is Sunday morning. I'm sitting in my comfy chair in my new room, looking at the work of settling in I did yesterday in a self-satisfied way.

The sun is shining in, there is peach tea and apple with yoghurt to munch quietly. I'm reading everything at once: feminist books, a smattering of chick-lit, the newest Frankie magazine, my favourite blogs that I haven't caught up with in a while.

It's my 28th birthday tomorrow. In an abstract way, 28 is something of a non-event birthday. My mum tells me 28 is the year of Saturn's return, or the year I become an adult. While I am at times skeptical of such pronouncements, this one actually feels about right. Things I want are becoming clearer and more specific, instead of the "I want everything" feeling from before. 

In a less abstract way, I wonder if I will wake up tomorrow with that little birthday zing I've had every birthday so far. A birthday is a birthday, after all. 

30pictureschallenge: Day 11

This one is just a very brief one on stationery.

I have gotten into a bit of a habit with collecting cards. I'm getting quite a good collection now. I tell myself that they're for backups, or for later, or for emergencies. There are many many awesome cards out there in the world- I like blank ones which can be sent 'just because', but if it's a cool graphic or a funny thing (in my rather loose concept of funny things) I will generally buy it and save it. For later.

I know I'm kidding myself- the reason I know this is because sometimes I like to get out the pile of cards I've purchased, still blank, still waiting to be scrawled on and sent off into the world, and just flick through them with a happy feeling in my heart. That's how I know they've become another thing I collect. 

In Brisbane this extended weekend I have found a few more to add to the collection. I'm going to try something different this time- I'm actually going to post at least one of these out into the world, because I bought it for a person in particular. 

What I'm hoping, by sharing this particular habit of mine with the greater Internet, is that someone might write back and tell me they're quietly doing the exact same thing. On the Internet, though- not a card. We're saving those.

30pictureschallenge: Day 10

I've never been very good at sharing a bed. That seems to me to be one of the crappy parts of being an adult, that you have to share your bed with someone who might steal your covers away, or sleep in a star shape while you struggle to hold in to your little bit of space.

Because I have so much trouble with sleeping, I am pretty damn particular about such things. Amongst the many wonderful things of singledom is the wonderful thing of having my bed to myself. 

I took this photo of the magical space that is the bed in the back of my awesome van, Maude the Mazda. On account of the amount of whiskey I needed to drink to deal with Tony Abbott becoming Australia's Prime Minister, I was unable to drive home on election night (this wasn't an accidental thing, let the record show). I parked my lovely Maudie outside Paddy's house on a flat spot and had a little sleepover. 

I'd recently added a few important elements to the bed- the multicoloured rug was a score from an op-shop, as was the lacy pillowslip. It is my intention to furnish Maude with floral sheets as soon as possible, and maybe a little spot to secure my book, notepad and pen so they do not disappear into the bedding.

That bed is one of my particular favourites. In the morning, the sun comes through the pink curtains and gives everything that rose-coloured wonder that on this particular morning was quite perpendicular to the Australian political situation. When you awake, well-rested despite (or perhaps due to) the amount of whiskey imbibed, and you are in a warm rosy world, you are able to feel a little joy in your heart. Fact.

30pictureschallenge: Day 9

this mug reminds me of a pillowcase i saw recently, in an article about tavi gevinson where they put in some photos of her in her room. the pillowcase in question has "here you will dream of endless kissing" on it, and i sort of wish it was mine.

i have a bit of a love-hate relationship with love. wait, hear me out. i'm a reader and sometimes a writer (a lover and sometimes a fighter) and so the concept of love to me is sometimes that it's a thing of power and awesomeness, like all you need is love... like the moulin rouge guy, wasshisname mcgregor (kidding- love ewan and all of his accent and face). maybe it's the first parts that come with being in love that i love so much. the parts where you're bulletproof and giddy.

i don't love in halves. when i love a person, that's basically like saying, i really like them quite a lot. i could write poetry and songs and let's face it, drop them into blog entries as much as i can.

or i have in the past, anyways. but after this last particular failed relationship, i can't help but feel a little suspicious of love. like love is a bit of a tricker and a heartbreaker. i suspect that i'm overly enthusiastic about being in love, and that probably what i should do is just chill the fuck out and play it cool, let love sneak up on me, impress me, buy me flowers. oh wait, that's not love - that's just a nice boy.

i've managed to date a whole collection of people who may have, collectively among them, bought me flowers 3 times in an accumulative total of 7.5 years. i am clearly picking the wrong people, and those people are picking the wrong flowers (by that i obviously mean: no flowers at all). i've always hoped for them, much like i've always hoped for commitment and a little emotional maturity, and yet here i am, me, the friendly blogger, without flowers or commitment or any of those things of the fairytales.

it's a tricky thing though, because even after all that whining, i'd take the endless kissing dreamt of on a special pillowcase, or the warm coffeecup kisses. i'd take them and run away with them, all the way to a dream place full of adult men with aspirations and goals, flowers, and -let's face it- failing actual facial hair, at least the ability to grow some.

love, huh? tricky bastard.

30pictureschallenge: Day 8

i would like some 'be cool' cupcakes. i reckon they would make me cooler. as long as they were gluten free, otherwise they'd just make me sick in my tummy.

if it was as simple as eating a cupcake or two, imagine how much cooler the whole planet would be. no conservative, money-grabbing politicians. probably everyone would bike everywhere, or drive renewable energy cars. there'd probably be no plastic bags, no clothes would ever need ironing. women would work alongside men in the highest-paid positions; men and women would be able to take paid time to care for their kids when the need arose.

you could walk down the street in the dead of night in the highest heels and the shortest skirts (if that was your thing, because i prefer knee-length and flats, and i want to be cool too) and not worry about being safe. you could leave your kids in the hands of pretty much anybody and know, for sure, that they'd take care of your children.

if everyone would just eat a 'be cool' cupcake, it wouldn't even be a thing that some people look different to other people, some are fat and some are thin, some speak different languages and have different beliefs. that would be fine, and merely a point of conversational interest at the table. countries would help each other out, and no leave people floating about in the sea on boats, pretending they don't exist.

there'd always be allocated sleep-in days, and plenty of good coffee to go with those cupcakes.

man, it would be good, if everyone would just be cool.

30pictureschallenge: Day 6

www.toothpastefordinner.com

i remember when fax machines were cool. i remember the shiny fax paper, where the whole fax came in one piece, and would eventually fade, like some kind of magic secret message. i remember sending faxes which were just letters on white A4 paper, written to be faxed to friends who had parents who also had fax machines. bloody amazing, technology, eh?

for me, it's always been about communicating, and i guess that's why i'm still not really reminiscing about how it was better in the good old days. sure, fax machines trump letters. emails trump faxes. msn messenger trumps phonecalls. text messages trump phonecalls, skype trumps phonecalls (i don't like the phone, so for me a lot of things trump phonecalls) and Facebook rules the world.

if the way to communicate and to express yourself gets easier with each technological advance, i am all for it. i have my moments with new technology. i do understand the panic one sometimes sees in the eyes of a generation of parents who are learning to navigate a smart phone (i felt the exact same way, except i was also embarrassed to be panicking); you have this feeling like you're going to accidentally do something undoable that will have disastrous consequences. most often, it's a non-issue, but touchscreens can definitely inspire panic.

i do wonder sometimes how my adult life would be without the level of technology we're currently sitting at. i would have been a lot more lost a lot more of the time (thanks, googlemaps) and i would probably have bought less vintage clothing (thanks, etsy app). would i still be in such good contact with my lovely friends of Elsewhere if there were no Facebook? i'm certain i would have been writing letters instead, but the immediacy of being about to share their everyday lives is a bit of a luxury. it's a luxury i wouldn't sacrifice, really.

it does feel like a strange world we live in, where our devices are obsolete from the second we pick them up, but they still work just fine, for the required 2 years before they're so out of date nothing will work on them anymore. my iPhone 4s is basically an antique now, but i've only owned it a year. it is easy to see why people get cynical about the rapid transformations surrounding technology, but i honestly can happily join millions of others who like it, who eschew the cynicism of those who are stubbornly sticking to their fax machines.

fax machines are in the nowhereland. they're not vintage. they're not a hipster item. they're like the clothing of the 2000s (i recently found out that 90s clothing is now vintage, yikes). no place, really - although what the heck is the clothing of the naughties anyways? someone let me know- not by fax though, i've had to give it up.

30pictureschallenge: Day 5

i've had a lot of very lovely onesie-based memories in the past few years. annabel crabb wrote this article a while ago about how the onesie is symptomatic of gen Y's extended childhood, and it gave me something to think about, but i also think that unless you are gen Y and you are wearing a onesie, you probably aren't quite sure what the appeal is.

they're fun. they're silly. despite how prevalent the onesie has become, it still feels like you're breaking the rules when you wear one in public. it sort of says 'meh, fuck it' about appropriate dress codes and codes of conduct. any kind of code really.

in whistler, the onesie deal was all about getting retro on the mountain. which many people did, regularly. i had the convenient position of working at the thrift store, which meant i was basically the go-to girl for onesies. and i did hook some people up with some awesome onesies - like these ones:

Bottom right modeled by the lovely Karin

i wrote a blog about a cool onesie-based experience i had working in the store which you can read here (it's a good'un). my joy was selling these onesies in the store, the joy on the faces of those who had found their perfect onesie, and then seeing them out on the hill in the following weeks.

dressing up and getting up the mountain was a pretty fun and awesome exercise. normally, there was beer and double Caesars involved.

for me, the onesie is synonymous with friendship and fun, with being truly young and filled with joy. with having the weight lifted from your shoulders. i guess truthfully, the onesie is what whistler was for me - a place to breathe and simply be alive.

i wrote about my first halloween in whistler in this post, and i reminisced about this particular evening at my brother's 21st, for it truly was ridiculous, and worthy of your attention.

there is something warm and secure about zipping or buttoning oneself into a onesie. it's a type of safety that is hard to imagine unless you've felt it firsthand, and with that, i encourage you all to own a onesie at some point in your life.

that is all.

30pictureschallenge: Day 4

sometimes i'm a crafter of silence
sometimes the only thing i'm making
is my breath
sometimes my heart aches
sometimes my heart is aching.

there's not a colour to paint the night
the white and the black of the moon, maybe
i drive the streets of my hometown past midnight, wondering of
you, and the somewhere between here and there.

my peace,
as i shift through first second third
and i let some strange calm
sink right into the marrow of my bones.

i own myself in the way that
i'm proud of the breaths i've made
i own myself, but
i imagine your hands on my shoulders.

the part i hate is the way
i'm here to be shocked out of my own heart
by a half-second
of electricity in your eyes and my eyes and
my heart.

30pictureschallenge: Day 3

this is winter time in whistler. it looks like it's christmas, but the magic of whistler is that it looks like this all through winter.

things freeze, things stop, things slow. at the same time, there is frenetic energy. the village is filled with visitors; it's a visitor's town.

when fresh snow falls, right down to the village, there's a nice time during the night before it's cleared away and salt laid to make safe paths for those unaccustomed to the white winter underfoot. before it's cleared away, it gives beneath your feet. it makes a sort of muffled crunch, a murmur released as you leave a footprint behind.

it's ankle deep. sometimes it's knee deep. these are the nights you quietly head for home; these nights promise nextmornings filled with pow turns and faces full of snow. your heart fills with the anticipation of it. you smile at strangers as you trudge by them, wading through the fresh snow to the bus stop, and home. you pull your hood up; you wrangle your toque into place under your hood. you check your pockets and pull on the mittens you have stowed there.

the more the snow falls, the wider and fuller your heart becomes. the flakes are big, floaty things; they drift slowly to the ground or they fall thick and fast. you're covered in them as you walk, you brush them out of your face and off your eyelashes. they're wet and cold, but you don't mind; on still snowy nights such things can easily be forgiven.

off the bus, you're making your careful way up a hill that is foiling any cars without winter tyres. you pick a path and patiently put one foot in front of the other, avoiding the slipperiness that comes with packed down snow.

once home, you shake yourself off and shed a wet outer layer; hang up a coat, stash your boots. you rub your hands together and blow into them as you stomp your way up the stairs, buoyant with the magic of the winter world you just traveled through to make it back. upstairs there are housemates, equally happy in their anticipation of what tomorrow will bring on the mountain.

a cup of tea, a brief chat, a plan made for the morning, then bed.

30pictureschallenge: Day 2

www.toothpastefordinner.com

for a long time i believed fervently that i was a night-owl. perhaps because of my thing with owls. perhaps because i thought that was a thing that writers did, the staying up late and getting whimsical about their thoughts. it may very well be that this is true, the writers i idolised early on were artists, living artistic lives.

what i have realised over time is that i don't always do my best writing at night. sometimes, yes. if i'm wanting to write an angsty piece then a bit of mood music and a glass of whisky never goes astray. and there's a place in my writing life for this sort of thing; it's important to have balance, and not write sensible things every time i sit to write.

but truthfully, writing during the day, and in fact, in the morning, tends to be more sensible, believable, sellable... readable anyhow. morning time is a time to digest the news (everything seems less depressing in the light of day, even tony abbott), it is a time to be stimulated by the world at large, be it through the reading of a blog or an article online, even ones you disagree with.

some of my biggest thoughts pop into my brain in the morning time. i write copious notes to myself in the morning, which i then attempt to make something of when i return to them after work and have to start on the business of essay writing and thinking.

i've discovered i'm a morning person. i'm not even embarrassed. i'm thinking of starting taking a morning walk. yep. i'm that guy.

so the answer is yes. i do want to be alone, but not necessarily sleepy, for the first few hours of the day. yes thankyou please.

30pictureschallenge: Day 1

www.explodingdog.com

life is a funny thing. my life is a funny thing. i'm never quite sure how to approach it; some days it is friend and some days it is foe. it's a complicated relationship, but i love it nonetheless.

i'm doing all this growing at the moment in the weirdest ways, bits of my heart expanding and shrinking and all this wondering going on in my little brain. i think the miracle of being a human is that we're just, y'know, cells and stuff all stuck together with human glue, and yet there's these feelings that happen to those cells that are outside of physical stimuli. like feeling happy, or nervous, or proud. it's pretty strange and wonderful, really.

as time passes, i get increasingly comfortable, or at least resigned to, this very thing of being human. weird feelings and stretchy parts in my heart and tingly feet. i love it all. and even when the things hurt, the adjusty bits, the change, all that ... even all that is a thing to love.

imagine if a new start was as easy as pushing a button, though. i wonder what i would choose, and how i would set up my life furniture, and what the list of things i'd say instead of things i've said might look like.

i think, overall, i wouldn't push that new start button. i think the peace i occasionally get to feel flashes and glimpses of is hard won, and i want to enjoy it, with its history of bad decisions and unhappy parts and scratchy bits. because there is also the happy, and the nervous, and the proud. and those parts, all of them together, are the funny thing that is my life. and it's mine. and i love it nonetheless.

30pictureschallenge: preamble

i promised i'd do it, and so i'm doin' it. i've picked 30 images and will be using one each day as a prompt for some words. i have a feeling this writing will be a little unfocused and whimsical, to balance out the more serious writing i am doing for my essay, for the paper, and for feminism friday.

the words accompanying may or not be very wordy, depending entirely on what i want to do that day.

i'm starting on monday so i can be a book nerd over the weekend and study the heck out of some feminism.

if you're reading along, thanks. if you don't wanna and you aren't gonna, that's fine too.