whatever trevor

I have been feeling oddly detached and disinterested in human company this past week. Has someone invented Post Menstrual Stress yet?

Yesterday after soccer I hit the pub and was characteristically socially inappropriate for a few beers and a wolfed down shared fried rice. I felt unsettled, as I did on Saturday and indeed Friday when I cancelled social engagements to watch Frost/Nixon (pleasing) and then grumpily sleeeeeep.

All I wanted to do was get into bed last night and watch the Grey's Anatomy final which I downloaded with ma new technical skillz. But Grey's was DECIDEDLY unsettling as well. Stupid television, failing to warm my heart and threatening to kill off two characters. We do NOT kill two characters at a time, we only kill ONE. Stupid television. Letting me down.

So it is Monday and I am...you guessed it...unsettled! And jealous of friends who are travelling and cruely posting photos, like I used to.

I am meant to go to physio re knees, but don't feel like spending $80 to hear that:
a) I have harmed them in some way
b) I should lose weight (duh)
c) I need to do exercises or start pilates (bloody exercise is what's harmed them in the first place)
d) I will need further expensive appointments

hmpf. UNSETTLED.

everything is breaking

My body is falling to bits, with sore soccer knees and flu sneezes and such. At what point did this body become an object I couldn't control, a piece of flesh that snaps and stretches in the wrong direction, that starts to hurt on a Thursday for no good reason since i haven't even been to work that day (flu!).

The one part I can control and do is my over-styled, too-regularly-trimmed hair. Fuck I love doing my hair. it's up for the chop in 43 minutes and I'm ever so excited.

I turned down a phsyio appointment I could have had at 1.30pm for my hair appointment at 2pm and I think that shows that my personality is still in tact and I still value vanity over ability to play sports.

stupid sports. breaking my body.

Why doesn't this body break in a repetitive, dependable, expected way? A few years ago a terribly sore lower back (brought on by body shop shifts and long nights of dancing) was treated with pilates and a shift in posture. Now the knees give way.

Actually i think it's a leftover injury from a chair lift incident some years back...the last time i engaged in sports... i'm sensing a conspiracy...

So anyway, I'm off to fix the one part of my body that seems to improve with age. For the rest I'm hoping that my new favourite show Dollhouse* becomes a reality and I can body swap. Ideally with Olivia Williams, my new celebrity crush (I say crush, but I mean passionate conviction that she is The One). Then we could be together foreva.

That said, if I was Olivia Williams I would have to have beautiful long hair like hers that curls and cascades around her british charm in just the right way. It wouldn't need such regular cutting and styling and what would I have to look forward to on a friday afternoon?

oh Olivia.

This blog has not been edited and has no literary merit i think.

* I think that Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's latest offering is not actually a good show. It's possible it's quite bad. But sometimes, just sometimes, strains of Buffy come through in dialogue or character or a particular fight scene (or in the huge number of recycled actors) and I think I am watching new Buffy and it's like a long lost lover has come back from the dead and is whispering sweet nothings in my ear. For that reason, as well as a recent bout of the flu, I have been addictively watching Dollhouse and am convinced Olivia Williams and I are destined to make love.

Too Much Information.

My sister really wants the best for me. That's why she likes to impart charming little criticisms every now and then to encourage my personal improvement, to ensure I am the best that I can be.

One of her latest crusades has been this blog. You see, apparently, I was much funnier and more interesting when I was overseas. Now I am actually entirely in agreement with her on that one, however her other gripe is that I am far too open, that I give too much information.

("No one wants to KNOW when you have you period Maeve.")
ETC
ETC.

So, in honour of my dearest littlest sibling, I would like to share with you all the things you did not want to know about me. Cringe on, little sister! I have no sense of privacy and can't see that changing any time in the near future.

1. I smell my clothes (yes all my clothes) to see if they need washing.

2. I am very content on the toilet. I like how relaxed one can be. I sometimes have a little nap.

3. If we are friends, I have thought about what it would be like to have sex with you.

4. I have also probably talked to you while on the toilet. I do not understand why this is a problem.

5. I really like squeezing pimples and blackheads and sometimes I daydream about having a really hideous skin disease that I could squeeze and pick to my heart's content. I hope I never DO get a skin disease cos there would be scarring.

6. I ate beetroot last night and my poo was purple this morning and I wondered whether the friend I fed beetroot to for dinner also had purple poo but I didn't ask her.

7. I bite my hands. Not just nails, but cuticles, tops of fingers, and knuckles - both sides. I have tried to stop many, many times, but I can't relax in social situations unless I am biting them. Which is crap, cos I look entirely un-relaxed when doing so.

8. I pick my nose. In private. Well, mostly in private.

9. I like eating food with my hands. In private. Well, mostly in private.

10. Once my friend Anastasia and I decided after drinking a little too much of the cooking wine that the secret ingredient in our cooking was our own saliva (cos we tasted-tested everything and double-dipped). We then spat in the meal we were making for our friends.

living in a material world

I didn't let myself buy pretty things on return from o/s having just spent a small car on travel.
But lately, I've found myself moseying into clothing outlets seeking little treats. I have bought a few new items and, time having passed since I last allowed myself guilt-free shopping pleasure, these items have brought me capital-J Joy. They are:

- 6 ties in various colours and patterns, all describable as 'grandpa,' $1.50 each, purchased on my day off when walking home through Petersham
- a Bananas in Pyjamas blue striped shirt that is big enough to be worn as a dress, were I that kind of trendy
- a navy vest
- a black and grey checked vest that cost more than three times the sum total of the above items, purchased from the same place I bought my favourite grey hoodie, an item which I bought in exactly the same way - wandered in while waiting for a movie to start, wandered out with new clothing item.

I want:
- new work pants. I wear the same pair every day. Time to hit up, dare I say it, Country Road.

The first time I tied a girl up, I used a Country Road scarf
...

leichhardt. it has two Hs in it.

I went to Leichhardt this morning for a doctor's appointment, at the same practice I've gone to since I was 5 years old and Dr Ovadia came to our house every day before and after work to check on my paralysed meningitised self. I feel an attachment to that practice, though it has changed buildings and I've changed doctors over the years (to the friendlier, rounder, female and wonderful Kate George).

Walking round Leichhardt always has a strong affect on me. I have a real physical attachment to place and memory, creating a sense of nostalgia in a really short space of time. While I've spent most of my life around the inner west - never essentially leaving Leichhardt (we moved one suburb away to Haberfield in 1996), I have a definite nostalgia about those early years in Australia, living on James St, with neighbours Sue and the Browns and Heather & Skye and Elaine and that place where they kept their dogs under the house.

Because while Leichhardt has been gentrified and de-Italianised (damn Thai restaurants, what's THAT about?) it remains in many ways the same, with stalwart, memory joggers round every corner.

I walk past the school and remember the spots I waited for parental collection; the place where I first remember being shat on by a pigeon...elicits a sense of revulsion still, and humiliation as I look down at my fore arm - I remember the heat on my skin of the grotesque brown...the panic at not knowing how to make it go away. I see the steps where my friend Cleo and I were caught looking up a teacher's dress...though I have forgotten the teacher's name I remember my embarrassment and my conviction that it was all Cleo's idea! Despite extreme parental frankness at an early age, many of my first understandings of sex happened in that friendship, watching Grease and Dirty Dancing and negotiating an idea of what it all meant; I remember dragging my toy rabbit to school in a cardboard box on a string, spinning it round and discovering some scientific process that held the rabbit in the box even when I spun it round and upside down. I did this for so long, fascinated that she didn't fall out. Poor dizzy rabbit...

I remember my first Australian summer thunderstorm raging against the awnings as we walked up Norton St to school.

Irish dancing competitions in Leichhardt Primary hall.
Apricot pieces from the canteen.
The day my mother, Teresa (no Mother Teresa) threatened a girl who had hit me...an interesting parenting practice...

Rooms and teachers and childish confusion and friends who I have no way of tracing as I only remember their first name and would have nothing in common with them now anyway.

And James St, which I have passed so often, still makes me close my eyes and see bicycle rides round blocks (we were so unbothered by repetition), Grainne and I flower stealing to make revolting 'perfume' and street parties where particular games, or particular dishes stand out vidily in my mind.

The walls on Campbells' Cash & Carry where Rowan and I would bash tennis balls crying "WAMSTECKERS" with each hit. Only years later did we find out where we had discovered that word (which went so well with the thwack of a tennis ball). Hank Wamstecker was my mothers' accountant.

Pizza at Leichhardt swimming pool when it opened til 8pm and the infamous incident when Louise accidently got anchovies on our pizza. Travesty.

I remember sitting outside the house in the rain under an umbrella reading a book and pretending to be homeless. A few years on, I sat in my cupboard the day we had to move, sobbing and devastated to be leaving a home I loved so much, not understanding the logic behind this departure for Hateful Haberfield and its quiet streets and lack of broken glass.

I could list on, try harder to create a montage in my head of all those moments and firsts and family rituals, but nothing does it like a walk through old DykeHeart. I can almost do the same in Haberfield, Bathurst, even Newtown now, where I am creating a lived nostalgia, a sentimental attachment to little moments and corners. But not like early-childhood-Leichhardt, where the memories are framed in childish fascination and wonderment.

I cling to my past, grip fast to memory and panic when it fails me. And at the same time I spend so much time day dreaming about potential futures.

It's amazing I have any energy for the now...

money money money ah-ah, must be funny

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! K-Rudd stimulated me last night!

I would like to hereby state that I think the tax bonus is a stupid idea and am, in principle, opposed to it.

That said, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I shall be placing mine into my savings account.

I love nothing more than watching my savings account climb. Especially after the mildly traumatic months abroad in which I watched its rapid descent. I like making my savings account into neat whole numbers by transferring odd amounts. I like checking when the interest comes in. I like developing strange savings schemes. I like putting everything that is left at the end of the week into my savings and starting fresh with a new paypacket. I like spontaneously tending to my savings account with small amounts like $20 or $50. I like trying to calculate how much I will be able to save this year. I like trying to work out what my tax return will contribute to my savings account. I like imagining the grand things I shall buy / do when my savings account is healthy and robust at the end of the year.

Potential recipients of my carefully tended to and adored savings account:
- a trip around Australia
- a trip to the Americas
- cookwear (various)
- a shiny, fancy camera
- gardening equipment and plants
- an apartment

But for the moment there shall be no spending, no sir. The stimulating buck stops with me. I have a love affair with my savings account and I is stimulatin' her good.

Sorry Kevin.

reflections on the west

I ran into some guys from uni the other day, most of whom I don't like. One of the charmers saw fit to sit with my friends and I for a time, feigning friendliness. He said nothing particularly offensive (unusual) but his presence bugged me. And so did his comment that I "have not changed."

In the 3 and a half years since I left uni I feel I have changed a great deal. This is, in part due to growing up, but when I think back on who I was then and place her next to who I am now I notice marked differences - and at times it is hard not to feel angry about who I let myself be before.

I allowed myself to feel ashamed of my politics and to think that my rage was unjustified. I apologised for my "radicalism" and I let my sexuality be exoticised by straight men and, bi-curious women who confused me.

I let my brain get lazy, and shunned my academic side and allowed people to ignore my skills and criticise the fact that I did not have physical talents, without standing up and saying "but this is what I DO have."

I let myself be mistreated by a lover, and I at times mistreated her. I let myself live in a place where there was little choice in lovers and we believed this was the best we deserved.

I tried to prove I was some form of normal, instead of being proud of the fact that I was not.

I believed that I was ugly and bought into a beauty ideal that does not belong to my community. I developed a language of body shame that I am still trying to un-learn.

I would never change my choice to study in Bathurst. There is a list of what I learned as long as the list of what I gave up. I needed to leave my cushioned inner-west environment to SEE what the rest of Australia can be like. I needed to see that open-mindedness and care come in many forms and that judging someone based on their background or religion or education is just as bigotted as homophobia or sexism or racism. I saw the beauty of rural Australia, its history, nature and people. I learned that I could be left in the wilderness for a few nights and survive. I learnt teamwork and discovered I could write but also that I like driving trucks and drilling holes in stuff - and that these practical skills were just as valuable as the academic ones I proved I had at high school.

I learnt a lot. But I will never go back to a community in which I am the minority, in which I am ridiculed and in which I must compromise my values.

I have changed. I am not hiding or apologising anymore.

...