Friendship is for safekeeping

Every time a new Bon Iver record comes out, I seem to be going through some kind of hardship or period of transience. I guess you could say I'm going through it right now, and like a beacon 22, A Million was announced and all I had to do was wait until tonight, and then a few hours more. 

Tonight, with hundreds of strangers, I sat in front of a little cd/tape player and listened. It was perfect because it wasn't. I felt D's knee pressed against mine, the breeze on my face, and my phone lit up with a message from A in all caps: "DO WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY." So I shut my eyes and listened and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be completely whole. 

Then we walked down the street laughing and I thought I might be in a dream, except that the rain on my skin felt too real. The universe has me under its wing, especially tonight.

("really...I don't know anything about you.")

Oh please, as if I'd ever let ya

Readings;

My lipstick is cracked from smiling at E's baby all afternoon. I've never known a baby from pregnancy to birth and I still can't believe this real little creature lying in my lap. A little person that has so much life to live yet. 

Reminds me I have so much life to live yet.

Readings is full, kids everywhere. I scan the books quietly, taking them out and putting them back, enjoying the moment and the feeling. The not knowing - which normally terrifies me, and has done so for good reason this year. Maybe I'm getting smarter, or braver.

Earlier I sat outside the library in the sun, listening to Ceres and thinking about all the complex things all the people around me must be contending with. The year has not been easy. I wonder how much harder it will get - or maybe the worst is over. 

My phone lights up with messages from people that I love. Every time it does that I thank the universe. 

It's ugly but it is all I want

Brunetti near Cinema Nova, 11.03am

I'm standing outside, brushing rain out of my hair and looking at the cakes in the display fridge. Pulling up a metal seat I can't stop thinking about when Aunty Em would drive us straight to Brunetti's after we picked her up from the airport. Luggage in tow, plane-dazed and full of life, I tasted my first coffee at that Brunetti's, a sip of her cappuccino - licking the froth off the top of my lip, she explained good coffee to me ("this is the best coffee in Melbourne, Eilish") and now I understand how she missed it. I notice now that the waiters here have headsets, how everything somehow seems tacky instead of chic and grownup. I wonder if Aunty Em would still say this was the best coffee in Melbourne. J walks towards me from behind: 

"Gilly Gilly Gilly Gilly..."

Lam Lam's, 6.30PM

"I'm just confused...a confused..."

"A confused lump," A offers, alongside a dry smile and a clap on the back. 

"Yes! I really am...it's like - I want to go out and get hurt, or something...?"

B considers this. "Then go!" she says. 

it's good to feel small sometimes

Chris Wiseman

Padding through the airport, dragging a bag behind me that jangles happily every now and again from the tambourine inside. I love imagining that I tread the same path all the time. I would like to be the person who is totally bored by the airport, but I get thrilled by it - I love the drive, I love the people, I love sitting and waiting with my headphones on and watching the planes pull into the gate. No matter how much I travel I don't think I'll ever get tired of the airport. 

Sitting in my seat I literally cannot believe that the only thing I want to do is listen to music. How can that be the thing that I want to do, when I've spent the last week (let alone my whole life) threading myself around it so tightly that I could barely sleep? Live, in big venues with round roofs where my heart swelled to meet the ceiling, or on screens, at 1am with friends, curled up on the couch in the hotel with the roaches and hair all done up in towels like a slumber party film.

I can't stop thinking about when we were standing in front of a monumental vortex of a sculpture at GOMA and beautiful, bright young G said so lightly :: 

"It's good to feel small sometimes."

I looked over at her and couldn't believe how effortlessly she had just constructed a moment that I'll never forget. 

(Kind of like the force of a good band playing a song you've only ever heard recorded live for the first time, and you're in it and it's happening there and then it's gone and all you can do is remember it.)

They come in sharp, glowing snaps - M cheersing a hot chocolate at me in the fancy lounge, S ambushed at the party on the rooftop with the massages and the funny caterer, sitting on the train in the rain reading receipts and thinking about how everything ever is always too short, J standing at the top of the balcony in his thongs waving L and I grandly out of the hotel, running into everyone's arms a thousand times.

Yelling "I'm so HAPPY!" to no one in particular, except maybe the universe as a thankyou for being understanding.