SPANISH SAHARA

"beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. but you are the eternity and you are the mirror."

things that i regret

- not continuing with intellectual pursuits. i'm not 100% sure when and why i lost all motivation to try at school, but i would have been about 16 when i dropped the ball completely. i suppose at some point i realised that i was smart, but not all that smart, not anything special. and at that point i just couldn't really be bothered anymore. that and i'm pathologically lazy and unmotivated. it makes me sad to think, if i did so well in school without lifting a finger, imagine what potential i could have had if i'd just bothered to stretch myself a little further.

- loving people who didn't love me. in retrospect so many of my dealings with males have been a complete waste of time. i wish i hadn't spent so much of my life pining over other people instead of moving on. even for someone with such little self-worth i should have known i deserved better than what i had been given, and had a bit more self-respect.

- being painfully shy during childhood. i'm still a bit shy - i can't talk in front of a class without going red and falling over my words a bit, and i'm a bit quiet around people who intimidate me. but the 12 or 13 year old me would balk at the things i am capable of doing now. i wish i had tried to get out of my comfort zone a little more in my childhood and early adolescence, then maybe i wouldn't have been so lonely and scared sometimes. it makes me sad now to think of all the things i could have done if i wasn't so socially withdrawn and terrified of being rejected.

bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

- Bluebird, Charles Bukowski.

blue dark

it's you, it's you, it's all for you

everything i do

i tell you all the time

heaven is a place on earth with you

tell me all the things you want to do

i heard that you like the bad girls

honey, is that true?

it's better than i ever even knew

they say that the world was built for two

only worth living if somebody is loving you

baby now you do

we are young, we run free

i'm a lot happier now. i feel secure with, and love, my friends - they are all wonderful and i hope i'll always be blessed enough to associate myself with them. i have let go of the past, finally, and while in some senses i look back with bitterness i know i am above all that now. i eat less junk food (although i can't attest to perfection). i have started running again, and the sense of freedom and perseverance and strength and accomplishment that comes with it has finally returned to me. i'm reading books again, and enjoying them. i still smoke, but we all have our vices and i get a lot of pleasure out of it for now. somebody loves me, unconditionally, and i love them the same. and it's not tinged with mediocrity or cynicism like most of the relationships around us: it is completely pure, maybe a little naive, but still grounded in determination to be together forever. the kind of love where we talked about marriage and growing old together after three months, stuff that sounds completely silly and in-the-moment and frivolous but was, and is, wholly believed by both of us. and we are both just deliriously happy together. my best friend told me, that she had never believed in love until us. anyway enough of that stuff

so in spite of all this happiness - probably the happiest i've ever been, and the most secure i've ever felt here in melbourne - i have to leave, very soon. i found out fairly recently that i'm to be sent to japan and south korea by my modelling agency, leaving for four months at the start of january. it will be an amazing experience, but it couldn't have come at a worse time. still, i'm sure it will work out fine. i'll come home, hopefully a few thousands of dollars richer, and i can put a deposit on a house with the love of my life, and that will be that. and then all i have to worry about is transferring to a different university and getting a degree, and then getting a job and having babies and living happily ever after and stuff. (this is all completely straight-faced, i hope you know, and i have lots of reason to believe that being happy for the rest of my life is a reasonable assumption to make.)

and yeah

sodom and gomorrah

"those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. the world was better off without them.

and lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. but she did look back, and i love her for that, because it was so human.

so she turned to a pillar of salt. so it goes."

- slaughterhouse five, kurt vonnegut

true love will find you in the end

happiness has found me at last, i don't know how, i don't know what i did to deserve it. but in the past three months of my life i have heard things i never thought i would hear from another person ever. and i have passed the initial utter delirium of the process of falling in love and it's not the same but it still feels wonderful, safe. all i want is for everyone to be as happy as i feel now. i never would have thought i'd be loved, not in a million years.