So, az tagged me on the 8 random things about myself meme. What on earth will I come up with?
1] When I was very young, I had a recurring nightmare about a rubbish truck. It was backing down the laneway next to our house, and about to crash through the (brick) wall/ fence. The worst part of the dream was not so much that it was going to crash into our house, but because in my dream the back door didn’t have windows like it did in real life, I had no idea of when the truck was going to crash through the back door. Then the dream morphed into me being chased by our family car (an Austin 1800) inside! It stood at the top of the stairs with it’s headlights shining, while I hid underneath the piano.
2] I look like a vegetarian. This is not something that I actively contrive to do, but most people seem to assume this is what I am, without seeing me anywhere near a block of tofu. I always correct them with “No, I’m vegetarian-acting”.
3] I find it incredibly hard to throw out sheet music. In fact, I don’t.
4] I will always pick up the latest book on Deleuze and Guattari, to understand what the hell they were going on about. They will always be the pinnacle of coolness for me. Hence this week I’ve borrowed out “Art encounters Deleuze and Guattari: thought beyond representation”, Simon O’Sullivan, Palgrave MacMillan. Actually, it surfaced in a baroque word search I was doing in the library catalogue because I was bored at work.
5] Last week I watched an animated diagram of a squared = b squared plus c squared and it was so exciting I watched it over and over again.
6] When I was in first year uni I ran a 10 week opera course for primary school kids and taught them about Wagner and leitmotif. Together we wrote an opera about pokemon, pikachu and a dinosaur, and performed it for the school. I used to walk to the school in the next suburb along on Friday afternoons, carrying everything in a granny trolley.
7] I like eating tahini and miso on toast with parsley or cucumber or something green.
8] I have a collection of half finished zines that I just seem to keep adding to. At one point, i was just going to make a zine called “Slacks”, about a girl called Slacks who walks around in a pair of… well, slacks and dreams up ideas for zines but is too slack to do anything about them. No points for guessing where that zine is. The latest, which I just cleared up off the loungeroom table which had been gathering dust, was the 7.30 Report. It began:
“Wed 13 June 2007. Tonight’s 7.30 report is actually airing at 10 to 8, because it took a little while to set up. Instantly I’ve dozed off dreaming of everything else I’d rather be doing, like having sex or watching a movie. I didn’t intend this to be such stream of consciousness honesty, but I might as well continue. I bet Kerry O’Brien wishes he could break into stream of consciousness admissions to start his show sometimes. Maybe he’s too professional for that. Welcome to the 7.30 report! Ah, look, there I go again, staring off into middle distance thinking about this that and the other, and how I’m going to structure this thing. I’m tempted to frame some explanation about the raison d’etre of thie zine in a self-effacing congratulatory “How it all began” first story feature, but I’d like to consider myself somewhat above that sort of behaviour. And anyway, I don’t want to produce a complete replica of the 7.30 report [current affairs program on the ABC] just a short piece of writing with a very particular pen, that is, the green one that Kerry O’Brien always used to hold in his hand when he anchored this program, of which I am currently writing with, except it’s novelty size! - about whatever I might be doing at 7.30 on any given night. Tonight at 7.30 I was putting trays of vegetables into the oven. Basically, I mean that was the movement. I had the oven door down, a tray in each hand, and one eye on the clock to see whether it was 7.30 or not. Now, almost an hour later, I’m finishing the beer I poured for myself and licking my fingers from the sampling of potato, pumkin and red onions I put in there. They’re nearly ready. Of course, I’m not terribly interested in writing about these baked vegies”
And it stops there! God help the poor ethno-historian who chances upon any of my writing and is researching what people actually felt like writing. In fact, god help the poor sod trying the bloody zine she has half finished.
Heh! Now I can tag others too! Rightio: lukely, ali, emma, fangrrrl, puppet, wife, mayhem and zoo!

the wind swirls in the trees
i sit still and am dizzy when i remember you
i can imagine the wind running it’s fingers
down the poplars,
pulling back on the leaves as you did my hair
last night. i squeeze my thighs together
and press back into this lounge for all accounts
and purposes suitably esconsced, but my mind feels bound
and my eyelids droop at the thought of you.
i would burrow my hands into the back of this couch
bite my lip and call your name
it seems there is nothing i can do,
tori amos wails in the background and i feel strange:
free in an empty room, cold as the wind rushes through
the windows and shadows in this house, drunk
at the thought of what you could do to me
so quiet: aching to cry out your name in exctasy
can’t believe that the wriggling ball of lust
and delight that i am with you can be contained
by such neat pinafore and maryjanes. i marvel that
in the calm of this cold afternoon, with my clean washed hair
as soft and daggy as a lace collar, my fingers can
so intensely grip this pen and detail my lusts:
that this knitting of words can unravel my interior state.
i wish you’d burst in here like a growling tori piano bassline
then i’d smash up the silence, leave this cool quiet house
through which the city winds roar, live through my fingers
and finally speak, argue wrestle and tumble. scrabble for understanding and not be so caught up in the poet’s
quest for the right word, cos when art impacts upon life,
and the poet can no longer communicate without verse,
this knitting of words must unravel itself, or at least
provide a string to loose all this careful wordcrafting
should the poet tie herself in knots.
Comment by lelith — August 12, 2007 @ 3:01 am
Hey, I only just saw this post. I totally know Simon O’Sullivan! That’s very funny that you’re reading his book. (I haven’t read it.)
Comment by Ika — October 5, 2007 @ 2:25 am