secret: belonging

My stepmother took us walking up a creek at low tide: the water was wading depth, and sand mixed with black silt covered our feet, sucked us in and let us go with each step.

We were there to see crabs: tiny little blue bodies with orange claws. I had learned the proper names for these parts in school at some stage, but such knowledge had long since been eaten away by whiskey and time. 

I loved the water in that way I have of also being slightly afraid of it: it had always been this way for me, and so low tide seemed to be a safe and friendly time to set foot in the shallow water. We walked and walked up the muddy creekbed, where sharp oyster shells lay in wait for bared feet and clumsy steps. I didn't know this place, but my stepmother walked slowly but confidently up river and we followed her, trying to keep up while hoping she would lead the way.

I lost a thong to the mud, and stopped to stand a while in the shallow water, noting the way the bush and the hills around us made a frame for a very white collection of people scattered into their own trudging rhythms. 

I'm too alien for this: I wondered if the country itself was watching us and sniggering at our complete lack of toughness, skill, knowledge and even determination. Our bright shirts and pink-painted toenails did not lend themselves to discovery or recklessness. To be careful is safe; to be brave and intrepid is certainly too big an ask.

I thought about belonging to a place, and I knew I did not belong there. Walking through Australia's bush and coast and wading through its rivers, I know for sure I am a visitor. Earlier that week we had dragged ourselves up a hill to stand at the top of a waterfall. The bush bit me; I chose my steps carefully to placate the roots and stones that may easily have chosen to trip me over. I love bushwalking, but I will only ever borrow the scrub - it will never feel like mine.

It's a bigger thought for another time; how we learn to belong to places, how we make them ours, how we find our way around a country that we've claimed as our own. All I know is that those crabs ran as fast as they could away from our loud whiteness; they burrowed down into the silty sand in tiny spirals. They waited til we were gone. 

soundtrack to my life - kid cudi: "up up and away"

This song makes me certain that I know how it feels to be drunk on sunshine.

Funnily enough, it's a song about being high, and I never managed to be particularly adept at being under the influence of things (not even peer pressure, yo). This song by Kid Cudi was however an anthem of my life for the 2011 summer - it was a glorious existence, and now when I listen to this classic I remember this one Whistler weekend that I wouldn't trade for anything.

I found the stupid song around the same time I fell in lust with the dumb German. I had unexpected tickets to Squamish Festival with Annica and there was all the line up and potential. Two days of live music and friends! Watch out.

I don't know how to explain this to people who haven't ever been drunk while the sun is up, but day drinking is the best fun a person can have. Particularly with amazing live tunes and a mountain-based backdrop. We drove the 30 minutes to Squampton in Radow, the sweetest little car on the road, with the wind in our hair from the wound-down windows and this very tune in our ears. We even picked up and giggled at a very attractive hitch-hiker! The world had no limits. None.

I saw and screamed inarticulately at none other than John Butler... in a fit of stupid awesomeness, Weezer was also there playing songs I knew all the words to and yelled happily along to at the top of my lungs. 

All the next morning I drank Caesars for breakfast with Mitch at Wildwood. Then I drank some iced tea from David's Tea supplied for free by none other than our sneaky partner in crime, Kate Jenkins. The iced tea was straight when we got it, quickly laced with vodka from a hipflask and a complete lack of fucks. It is truly a glorious time, being quite drunk during the day with your pal Mitch.

We returned to Squamish to the festival. We drank overpriced beers. We tried to drink our own beers in the carpark and the nice Canadian police lady came and told us we could either pour them out or get a fine and she'd pour them out for us. So we poured them out coz fuck fines, right?

I had my face painted. I danced very hard. I got really dirty feet and I believed in summer. I believed in not much further ahead than next paycheck, and I thought I could even love somebody. It was one of the best summers of my life.

secret: feminist to do list

Feminist to do list:

Haircut

Fuck buddy

Cigarettes

Boots

Lesbian friends

Inexplicably intruiging mixture of Anger and Mystery

secret: tinder "about me" options

My tinder profile. For reals, it could say:

Looking for a smart honest adult to occasionally sleep with. Future boyfriends need not apply. Ain't nobody got time for that.

OR

If you're scared of someone who doesn't laugh at your jokes unless they're funny, and wants to correct your grammar but won't, don't swipe right. If you're ok with the above I might put out if I feel like it. Why don't you buy me a scotch and see?

It actually says:

Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?

And let the record state that Tinder has never gotten me laid.

secret: I wrote all this bloody poetry

I wrote all of this poetry, and some of it I still love:

poem challenge: my skin & i

my skin & i, we
have a love/hate thing going on
because we never get any time apart.

you have to play things out til the end
sometimes you already know
the direction, the arrow
(neon)
but you have to play things out to the end.

your love of music & your culture/nature/nurture
intruiges me
i'm less likely to plead flippancy
i'm hanging by a thread
i want to be as certain of myself
as i was at 21
my convictions the greyest area
parts white and black.

i grasp at poetic
like it's the second coming (or are we up to the third now)
i grasp at words, which once
i flexed like muscles
which lay dormant
dormouse
door man
i keep grasping eagerly
(or, to be honest, in fits of desperation).

poem challenge: i've words

I've words,
I've plenty. You're just a button
I like to push sometimes- you're no less for it, but
I reassure myself that
I
am the pusher of the button, and
Shall not be pushed.

Blatantly I stretch to bullshit- you don't
Understand the words I've made, and you
Smile your charmed smile, and I
Become something less (read: consumed),
Just a little less than what you can hold in your hand.

I'm embittered, and for tonight the effort of shininess
Displaced by a poet half a world away, for,
If we make feelings just inklings,
Nothing ever shall be done
Nothing shall ever be done.

You fool, you've put a something in the way of a gap
You've chosen wrong
You should not have gone home.

Unless home had been
What you made me. And what have you made of me?

secret: love poem for no-one (nov 24, 2010)

if your arms
are longer than my arms
your reach further
and i am enveloped
where i can do nothing to fight it
(if your arms
are longer than my arms)
then i shall concede defeat
wrapped up by you.

but if my heart
is bigger than your heart
my love larger and warmer
and you are, perhaps, unknowingly
smothered, a claustrophobic envelope
and you are too quiet to fight it
(if my heart
is bigger than your heart)
then i shall concede defeat
and walk away from the warm wrap of
your long long arms.

secret: waiting

to be inspired
to be loved
to get my visa
to fix my bike
to have control
to have money
to start a detox
for the times i'm alone in the house
to just be kissed by a boy for the sake of summer lovin

for you to realize that you want to know me

for my washing to dry
for a break
for time to finish all the books i own
to be brave enough

for my next day off
for my sunburn to become suntan
for pay day.