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 it makes me sad now to think of all the things i could have done if i wasn't so socially withdrawn and terrified of being rejected.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.

astral body

"what did my fingers do before they held him?
what did my heart do, with its love?
i have never seen a thing so clear.
his lids are like the lilac-flower
and soft as a moth, his breath.
i shall not let go.
there is no guile or warp in him. may he keep so."

- three women, sylvia plath

do you realise

"and i guess you're proof that when you finally let go of the past, something better comes along."

perfect, perfect, perfect.

oh! darling

so much has happened within the last three weeks or so... i really haven't been this happy in years. i'm so lucky to have the people in my life that i do.

august playlist

1. pumped up kicks - foster the people

2. bundle up - the cool kids

3. terminally chill - neon indian

4. shadowboxin' - gza

5. my girl - the temptations

6. talkin' bout hey love - de la soul

7. auditorium - mos def

8. ex-girl to next girl - gang starr

9. little green bag - george baker

10. nutmeg - ghostface killah

11. bonita applebum - a tribe called quest

12. best of my love - the emotions

13. sacre cool - young montana

14. hip 2 da game - lord finesse

15. u-love - j dilla

ophelia

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donn'd his clo'es
And dupp'd the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do't if they come to't
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me,
You promis'd me to wed.'

'So would I 'a' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.'

does life seem worthwhile to you?

ay me. will to try, fading....

14/7

“it’s all like a dream. everything is ecstasy, inside. we just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. but in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. it is all one vast awakened thing. i call it the golden eternity. it is perfect. we were never really born, we will never really die. it has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: self is only an idea, a mortal idea. that which passes into everything is one thing. it’s a dream already ended. there’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. i know this from staring at mountains months on end. they never show any expression, they are like empty space. do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”

—	jack kerouac

my doom smiles at me

i love you. and i've been listening to way too much patsy cline lately, never a good combination.

things i loved, but did not love enough

"from the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. one fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was ee gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was europe and africa and south america, and another fig was constantin and socrates and attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs i couldn't quite make out.

i saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because i couldn't make up my mind which of the figs i would choose. i wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and as i sat there unable to decide the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

- the bell jar, sylvia plath

bringing it all back home

sorry to the anon for whom i answered those questions and then deleted them, i decided that it's probably not a good idea to air such deeply private matters on a such a public forum that some people i know can see. that two-odd weeks in which i had the link to this blog up on facebook, and then wisely decided to take it down have certainly made blogging that much more interesting...

but yeah maybe i'll stick to just anonymous privacy-invading formsprings instead of devoting a whole post to my weird personal life. get on it!

anyway as a follow-up to that stuff i deleted, everything is still ambiguous. oh, life.

dear boys,

please decide if you like me, or if you do not like me. perform the necessary actions to indicate which of the prior feelings is relevant. stop being weird. (probably a bit optimistic.)

sincerely, alex.

also, on thursday night a combination of no food/being a bit drunk/being a lot stoned/standing up too fast caused me to faint in the middle of a crowded bar, smack my head on the tiles and get a mild concussion. fun fun fun. just thought i'd share, because that's the most interesting thing that has happened to me this week.

the best friends i have had

1. my first best friend, since kindergarten i think. however while we sat together in class/i liked to braid her hair and stuff, i was a very antisocial child and i chose to wander around alone during lunchtime, making up stories instead of spending time with the other children. we drifted after i left melbourne for a year in year three. by the time we were in the same class again in year 6, we were completely different people. we both ended up moving to different schools and i haven't seen her in years.

2. she was my best friend when i moved to new south wales for a year. we used to bond over playing pokemon gold, and sometimes i would go to her house and we would play perfect dark on nintendo 64. however i lost a little respect for her when i found out she supported john howard (yes i had already been indoctrinated into my parents' socially liberal political agenda by the age of 7). then i moved back to melbourne at the end of the year. there was talk of her moving to melbourne later on as well, but she never did. she added me on facebook a while ago, it's funny seeing people you only knew as children all grown up, and i suppose she feels the same was about me.

3. i befriended her in year 5, she has such a warmth and frenetic energy that attracted me and she used to be a bit of a social butterfly. however over time she clung to me more and more strongly, and at the end of year 6 my parents asked the school to put us in different classes for year 7 so we could make different friends. we ended up hanging out in a big group with some of my friends the next year, and then i moved schools. we still remain close friends but now a struggles to make friends where i don't anymore, almost a role reversal of what we used to be. i see her quite often. she can still be a bit clingy but mostly i love to spend time with her.

4. i made friends with her at the start of year 11. by that stage i had lost all my friends from the previous two years, and we became known as a single entity, neither of us really had any other friends so we stuck together. we had so many wonderful times together that i look back upon fondly, but by the end of year 12 i was struggling for independence while she was struggling to keep us together. this year we are in different countries, and i started university while she can't until next year. she was very upset when i told her i wasn't taking a gap year. but i like the friends i have made this year, and i like being my own person for a change. i still love her a lot i guess. i'll see what happens when she gets back.

dumb things that i say

"i'm not a socialist, i love buying stuff"

"man, your house is, like, carb-fest"

"i am soooooo sober"

"i forgot how to do long division"

always

ready or not

i can't articulate my feelings about today. i had two separate, both fairly bleak discussions about my views on my life. and one of them was with someone i haven't spoken to properly in ages and it felt beautiful and just like old times, and made me a little sad that he will never be anything more than a friend ever again.

i want to change my life so that i don't feel quite so depressed about it all the time, but i don't know how. i'm not as bad as i used to be, but a lot of things still go wrong for me almost always these days. (and people always tell me that you get what you give, but i try so hard for things, and put in so much effort, and they never work out.)

oh and to 'a friend', i am almost certain i know who you are. and i'm sorry, i was feeling bitter and frustrated and disappointed with everyone. and listening to "why'd ya do it" by marianne faithfull.

i'm sorry my blog is so boring i will try and think of more things to put on it that isn't moodiness or music that i like.