Melbourne / 14th of November 2012,
written on the floor of the Melbourne Museum
Shells of existence, it aches to think so much, it aches (yet simultaneously comforts) to understand the irrelevance of all thoughts. I feel safe with Alex. I am calm. I am looking at both everything and nothing. I am the all seeing eye. I am the oblivious onlooker. I am the constant thinker of heavy but minute, unimportant paths that may or may not have occurred. If my mind produces them with no seemingly correspondant stimuli, I accept this as a truth and move along. If I could primarily communicate through written form, I would say more. There is a depth and intimacy made possible through the scratching of a pen; the movement of a wrist. Words falter and often refuse their birth.
Melbourne / 14th of November 2012,
written in Victoria Park
Love(rs) everywhere. Overhearing three old women in the tea room (National Gallery Victoria) speak of grandchildren - filled with such admiration, such love. All this sadness over loves lost - have I even known what it means to love yet? Such futility. Why do lovers always stroll through parks? Couple count: 6 (within 15 metre radius). Is my presence in this moment disrupting this pattern, unnerving lovers? Or do they think we’re like them? Presumptions are all onlookers will ever have. (That is all I have, things are always more complicated than they ever appear to be.)
Melbourne / 14th of November 2012,
written in a cafe
Hairs on my arms raised / can I get a day’s silence for my inability to have conversation? Wearing the shirt with the oil paint stains to mark the occasion.
Melbourne / 13th of November 2012,
written in a garden, facing the subject of the text
Consumed by innumerable alter-egos. My mind is overwhelmed by the amount of information I withhold on a daily basis. So many things I could yell at you right now ‘I LOVE YOU ALWAYS AND ALWAYS AND ALWAYS!!!!’ or maybe ‘why did you leave me? I never meant to hurt us’, perhaps ‘you are forever draining and exhausting me’. The list goes on - ‘I love you like a brother, thank you for still wanting to spend time with me even though I always pick fights with you, say mean things about your girlfriend and never have anything substantial to say’. On the regular occasion that one of these over rehearsed lines slip out of my mouth, you never know how to respond. Everything that I say must sound so conflicting, I had a month where I thought I had lost the truth within me. The lines build momentum so ferociously and so fast that unless I vomit them up they consume me. (I mean, I’d rather that they consume me.) I’ve built a porcelain relationship. I never want to tell you any form of truth that might disrupt this silent harmony we have generated. So many things I want to say to you - ‘I would give anything for it to be April again’, ‘you remind me of a beautiful oak tree’, ‘when I see hills I think of you’, ’ I wish I had never met you’, ‘I wish I had known you my whole life’. Conflicting thoughts, but in my mind they rest in absolute truth. As loud and aggressive or as calm and peaceful, I mean every word. Perhaps this is the invisible barrier between us. You are both the warmth in my heart and my overthinking mind.
Melbourne / 12th of November 2012 - still
written in a tiny room
Paper thin walls -
2. “Can we please just be completely honest with each other, just for a few minutes”
I can hear mumbled conversation through shut doors. I strained to listen, but what good could come of that? I’ve heard this conversation thousands of times only this time it’s not me on the other side of the line.
Melbourne / 12th of November 2012,
written in an empty house
Fractured images of lemon trees -
a thought: make a list of questions you wanted to but never did ask
1. ‘When we get home can we eat dried apricots and cry into each others arms?”
My right eyelid stings as I touch it.
• Eyelids
• Wrists
• Neck
( a list of intimate places I touch when riddled with anxiety / confusion )
Melbourne / 9th of November 2012,
written on a couch somewhere in suburbia
ache, pot plant, paper, bath, acorn, mattress, cloud, bookmark, stains, pebbles, freckles.
a forgotten battle
late night, dizzy headed, young confusion - blue eyes (green heart, now), snow covered sills, dampened pillows / distant sounds, sleep watching, breath contracts, mostly unsigned but with pen in hand
no longer forgotten
repetition stains
Taking off my coat to paint, choreographed drop to knees. Creation.
“I feel like the time Cosmo jumped on top of a wine glass and bled all over my carpet”
All humans want is to return to form.
Form =
• Light
• Love
• The infinite
• The Golden Eternity
To get back to form, we create.
Those of us who do not create: suffer.
Do you now see why I can’t put down this pen?
Melbourne / 8th of November 2012,
written on an airplane
A previous thought: “Feelings never have any momentum until they become memories” - Warhol (paraphrased)
I feel a little seasick, something has lead me to believe that emotions become a little more raw when flying above clouds - perhaps (much like a chip packet) the heart expands. When I was fifteen I flew on a plane with the then ‘love of my life’. There was something so consuming about the flight - the anticipation of creating memories in a foreign place. Moments surrounded by strangers, moments we would reflect upon - a shared beauty for us alone.
Feelings keep gathering momentum then disappearing like smoke caught in sporadic gusts of wind. I feel better, like my life is settling back into a time and place before your existence tainted my perception of how I saw myself and those around me. Spent the eve watching antiques roadshow on mute whilst drinking lemonade spiders with old friends. Moved onto dark spirits as the night progressed and rode home slightly tipsy on the midnight air. Home contains too many memories again; stop pulling me into your non-existent history. You’re buried under the staircase but with every creak of the stairs your presence seems to echo. Are you living vicariously through old works? Anyhow raisin toast, chai tea and flower essence with diluted brandy is the key, as prescribed.
My heart wont stop crooning dark melodies of sadness and fear. I should just tape my fingers together, hide pens in places other than in my hair and wait for this to pass. But I ache and I ache and I know no other way but to write. Empty walls greet me coldly, my bedroom is making me claustrophobic. Dead flowers are scattered everywhere, echoing my inability to let go of the dead and my inability to let go of the beautiful. It’s time to learn that all things of beauty must too decay. It’s like one day you wake up together and you just know it will be last time. You grasp for their hands under the bedsheets to find them hidden well away. You feel like nothing’s ever going to be the same again. What was once beautiful rotted me from the inside out and now with nothing left to lose, I’m letting you cause me one final pain; the pain of lost friendship and lost love. I’ve decided to do the only thing that could ever hurt me more than you already have.
A letter to myself, later on.
Everything is a mess. There are dishes scattered about my bedroom and landmines within my mind. It’s been difficult and strange and everything is new and scary. Being born must be terrifying but at least your parents are there for you. Eighteen years down the track and here I am seemingly alone. Both parents are caught in their own longing and loneliness. The human condition is cruel. Everything I thought to be true has been a lie. There is a god. I know that to be true and I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want it to consume me, I don’t want to be consumed. I don’t want to let go. I want nothing more than to have faith in solitude. However I’m going to have to, living this lie is creating a painful dissonance within myself. Furthermore, why has this god chosen such a painful and treacherous path for me? I don’t know if I believe in god or godliness - however there is a higher power. I owe it to myself to devote my love towards it, in hope that the energy will guide me. However to trust in something I cannot touch or see goes against all I was taught. “All love is cultivated through touch. Love is all. Love is everything”. This being said, love and shame have been subconsciously entwined in my bizarre and subtly distressing upbringing. “I do not deserve love”. This is the mantra of my ego. This is why I am so sad. I am a self sabotager of all happiness. “Why should I deserve happiness, my own mother could not learn to love me”. Please remember that she left you because of love. She believed that leaving you would be better for you. Let yourself be radiant and full of love. You reject the attempt of others to extend their love into your life. I know it’s scary because it appears as if everyone who has ever loved you has jumped ship, so to speak. The pain of abandonment echoes through you every time you feel someone slip away from you. “It is safer not to love”. Love openly with your whole heart. It will let in pain, however all pain is learning. I know it’s hard to talk to people. It feels as if no one is truly listening to the words that leave their mouth. And even if you felt it at all possible to explain the intricacies and complications of your thought processes, the barrier that is a complete lack of inherent understanding still remains (this is why I will always have a very deep love for Alexander). You don’t need to hide who you are, people wont always understand - however the ones who are important will still love you regardless. Things will get better, remember this. Be radiant and open hearted.
The wind! The wind! Oh how I love the wind, please continue to tear up the world surrounding me whilst I nestle underneath my blanket. Allow me to have one feeling of security tonight. Allow me to feel safe within my own skin for a fleeting moment. I ache for company, someone to carry the burden of my being. However language fails me; I am unable to provide coherence to those who extend their warm arms. Bedsheets and blankets hold me tight, whisper to me that I will get through this.
There’s a bittersweet taste lingering that wont wash out. I put the soap to my skin and scrubbed but you have to be patient for bruises to fade. The summer that I locked myself in my overheated bedroom and hit a glass bottle upon my legs, you didn’t mind. You never thought I was strange. You had a way of seeing through my facades of mental instability. Two weeks ago we laid in bed together and I counted my bruises. Just one. One last bruise. I gently prodded it as a form of acknowledgement as you reminded me of the beauty I once saw in these blemishes. Now there is no one. I am writhing about my sheets, my bruises aching and they are not at all beautiful.
Two excerpts from a text I’m currently working on called ‘Art History’
When I was young my grandparents lived in a forest on the top of a mountain. Quiet, still. Lonely, very lonely. Isolated from the world, eight hundred kilometres from home. At night the winds would howl up the valley, singing their songs into the darkness. My delicate frame swimming in a sea of bedsheets and blankets became lost and drowned. A gentle bed light illuminates the room with warmth, radiance, luminescence. Upon the wall at the foot of the bed, an artwork is hung. It is a picturesque lake with a sun setting. Pale golden rays of light dance one last dance upon the waters surface before disappearing into the night. A peachy purple consumes the sky with such an intensity that the notion it was ever blue seems preposterous. Over the years I learnt how to read and finally the text below the painting that forever stood for homesickness and nostalgia for future happenings became apparent: Monet’s Years At Giverny.
You invited me up to your studio one night as the works for your exhibition were half completed. After taking them in, I collapsed. Tears crawling down my face as I clasped my chest in an attempt to stop my heart from breaking. I stuttered incoherence but you understood me. As you drove me home, I curled up in the passenger seat and watched the streetlights dance through kaleidoscopic tears. From then on I found myself thinking that your studio contained all the secrets to your existence. As you left your place at the easel, I rummaged through wet paintings looking for something, anything. Much like a thief leaving their fingerprints all over a crime scene, I was overcome by guilt and resumed my position on the paint stained sofa. I suppose in many ways that room does contain every one of your secrets, they’re just written in a language I don’t understand yet.
I love you, I want to love you, I want to make love to you. I want things to be how they were under the autumn tree. A part of me died when I woke up to find all the leaves on the ground. I took one home and on the first day of the new semester I cried on my way to school because I saw the exact same tree with its branches empty too. Is this how it ends? Are the leaves growing back now? The skies are clearing and your raw fingers might recover soon. Will I ever see that tree in full bloom? Will we ever lay underneath it and count the stars through its long, stretched out limbs? All these questions I have for you, all these questions with no answer. In your mind the future doesn’t exist, but both of us know the seasons will come and go regardless.
