Logic/Passion

sitting with one leg over the other, sunk in a sunken sofa with my eyes looking anywhere, i say:

"i feel very old."

and i do. last night i caught my reflection in the train carriage window, and the fluorescent light cast downwards from the ceiling built crevices in my face that weren't there before. as the train gained momentum, the lights from the city passed through my mirror-body and i felt like an old ghost. 

there are two fists around my lungs that pull and squeeze every time i think about the future. the trouble with wanting everything is obvious, but i still want it, and i still demand it from myself. i am not interested in forgoing the trait of perfectionism; i would sooner abandon necessities such as sleep or nourishment, you know. i do not think this is noble or even clever but like i said on that old sofa the other day - "i have lived like this for so long i don't know how to change." 

(and silently, logic wars with passion, my head against my heart)

Shantaram

i live inside a dream
somewhere between new york city
and fitzroy at 3am.

last night i was lying in bed listening to maybe tomorrow by the jackson five muffled through the door and under people trying to guess their celebrity heads / my bottle of wine and the bell jar abandoned on the coffee table

"i took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: i am, i am, i am."

Expecting

i gotta be honest, i cannot stand when people say 'expect nothing, and you will always be pleasantly surprised'. please. i expect everything, including failure. expect everything, and you will always be pleasantly expectant. 

do not talk to me when i am on the train by myself. i am waiting for something to happen, so i can call my synapses to attention, so i can frame you and show you off in front of strangers in brunswick again. 

my funny car takes me home, my little friend. i drive on autopilot under the super moon, even still trying to learn at this late stage. low voices lull between squeaks from the back. i settle in the warm air. 

(maybe someone listens.)

It's raining on prom night

god, i thought, i forgot about the stars up here. perhaps i was too busy learning how to drive along the road to my girlfriends' houses during high school, and too teenage-drunk on the way home to look up. now i am twenty-one years old, driving by myself in a car that is mine, and ignoring its desperate pleas for coolant and oil i lean over the steering wheel and watch the blanket of stars curl over the hills where i live. my heart aches. 

i remember i was seventeen when we first kissed, and all that day i had spent sharing the stage with arty twenty-somethings as an extra for a video clip. i remember i was so proud of that day, a taster of the life i wanted so badly - music, art, being twenty and 'i just moved into a sharehouse in clifton hill' and kissing boys after watching movies about music, art, being twenty etc...technically i suppose my life is similar right now but not in that 35mm technicolour film-y way that i dreamt about. i don't think it ever could be. 

i don't know why i look back and forward and back and forward with a view and idea that is different from reality. i watched my year twelve production of 'grease', which i had so shined in my head, and felt more bitter than sweet. well, perhaps not bitter, but rumbling heaviness that i could recall so clearly - wringing my hands backstage about to sing 'hopelessly devoted to you', pulling the belt of my dress tighter and tighter to shrink my waist to unbearable dimensions. how silly it all was, to leave half a muesli bar in my locker for tomorrow, because a full one would be too much right now. how relieved i am today, to be able to believe, and to realise, how stupid that is. 

i was a funny little baby bird, with a fragile baby voice and beautiful infant ideas. i watched that baby on stage, floundering and finding her feet, and wondered if i'll watch myself now in twenty years time, and see any difference.

i'm so happy, driving with the stars.