cold weather

beannies & mittens. They are here. There. Everywhere. I've looked down to find them clasping my hands. They cradle my head as it tilts forward to take the cold breaze from my face. They console me, some little comfort against the cold. Small condolances, & remedial relief for some deceased season.

Lets not forget all the other reminders of the end of summer. Those little things that jear at our misfortune rather than protect against it. There are scarves - the hang mans noose. Layers upon layers of clothes perform a stylish mumification. Heaters? i'd perfer the furnace. We see our last breath evade our mouth in the morning air. Quickly beathe it in again before its too late. It is not Winter. It is the end of summer. Local swimming pools are mausoleums for the summer. And let us not forget the midnight dashes to the bathroom. Sheer murder.

Umbrellas are the worst. They are a totem for the coldness. Even during the summer - like the cough of a sick man, the sound punctures life. With our hands streched up we must accept the frailness of life - the need for sancutary. A hovel from the world. Either accept or be drenched to the bone. The fingers of the umberella Snap backwards. Jarring distortions. The metal bends. The fabric wears thin. Liquid trickles in through some unseen, never found, hole. It breaks. Dies. Blows back. just when you need it most.

Tears from heaven or maybe sickening laughter? We wear our black above our heads. With bands of dampness around our legs. Our hands are disfiugured. Semi-permanently raised is salute. Hail to the god of cold weather!

little confessions

I met La La at kooky. Was it easter? anzac? argh, it was a little while back.

So cute with his sleves all done up. It made me smile... so much. Bit his lip. His hand on my chest. we kept it up till the day break. Sent me a picture in the mail. I stuck it up at work. I dont know why. Maybe its a childish thing to do. Hes in melbourne. Im probably being silly. I'll probably see him again but it'll all be different. I can imagine his arms, me kissing him. His voice. Hes cute - i'll leave him up a little longer.

Hes my lullaby, even if nothing transpires more than this, its ok. I'll still sleep in peace.

elephants, fleas & wasps... oh my!

So after approximately 15hrs of photoshop training for work - this is what i've come up with... its kinda neat huh? mmm... or atleast a good start.

feet, flutter

I've done my stretches on my bed room floor. Pulling a tendon. Moving a joint. Pushing my body that little bit further. Im getting ready to go out dancing. Getting ready to have a blast.

It's been a while scince i've had a good dance. Sure, i've been to dance parties - but to really dance? No. This babe wants to dance, to flirt, to smile & to fly.

Yeah babe - so what if i am an angel? What's it worth if i dont spead my wings?

My heart is fluttering. I dont know if its the drugs or the anticipation. Its a pillowfight in my chest. Soft beats & floating feathers. A frollic of angelic proportions. I'd put my bet on the drugs doing this to me.

I know im going to like tonight. Many friends will be there. Gaurentteed goodness of music. It will be a stuble nostalgia. Old faces. familiar sounds. Yet soo different.

You're like my yo-yo

So im out in the pub & i bump into Sai. We're chatting & he mentions how he saw me dressed as a bunny at easter. He recited to me how his friends were a little put out by my costume - 'er, what?' kind of put out. He promptly told them he thought it was great. Thanks Sai.


The lyrics to cloudbusting. Please feel free to guess what they mean.

I still dream of Orgonon.
I wake up crying.
You're making rain,
And you're just in reach,
When you and sleep escape me.

You're like my yo-yo
That glowed in the dark.
What made it special
Made it dangerous,
So I bury it
And forget.

But every time it rains,
You're here in my head,
Like the sun coming out--
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.
And I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.

On top of the world,
Looking over the edge,
You could see them coming.
You looked too small
In their big, black car,
To be a threat to the men in power.

I hid my yo-yo
In the garden.
I can't hide you
From the government.
Oh, God, Daddy--
I won't forget,

'Cause every time it rains,
You're here in my head,
Like the sun coming out--
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.
And I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.

The sun's coming out.
Your son's coming out.

i just know something good is going to happen

So i was listenning to kate bush today. And for once i agree with emma - cloudbusting is better than running up that hill. But only just. ;) The song is how i feel at this moment - and i know something good is going to happen :)

pastel days & neon nights

i cant get this song out of my head - so i've decided to share it. Its a re-mix of Crockett's theme (words not in original version) of the neo.pop CD. dont know much more about it, but the words are true the the tune - very soap operaic. ;)

white linnen on your back,
black secrets on your mind,
a past you tried to hide,
& a life you left behind.

the pastel days & neon nights,
the guilty hearts & the alibi's,
the streets run red on ocean drive,
but can our love survive...

I've seen too many of the wrong men die,
for stealing their dreams & buyin' time.
In your eyes i saw the rising sun,
& still sold my self for a badge & a gun.

I've seen too many of the wrong men die,
for stealing their dreams & buyin' time.
I never thought i'd spend the nights alone,
now i walk the streets tryin to find my way back home.

white linnen on your back,
black secrets on your mind,
a past you tried to hide,
& a life you left behind.

the pastel days & neon nights,
the guilty hearts & the alibi's,
the streets run red on ocean drive,
but can our love survive...

Asuka Langley Sohryu

I woke up so full of anger - just for one day. Such a strange day.

I hated the world, I hated the people around me, I hated you, I hated me. I hated everything.

I couldn't stand the silly games people play, That i followed through with, that i on occassion initiated myself.

I hated the taste of retribution & power in my mouth - in my words. It felt no different to guilt or defeat. I hated those things too.

I resented being the show-pony, the little doll-puppet. Some cutsy boy, some sexy fuck. I didnt want to be an angel! I cant stand being your dirty little boy!

I held contempt towards those who told me my feelings werent true, that they had to be false. And i hated doubting my heart, the heart should never be in doubt.

Damn all those who betrayed me. Who srugged me of who took me for little more than a grain of salt.

I abhored all the evils of the world. The capitalist system. I resented the socialists for their faliures.

I felt exhausted by all this anger & resentment. But i persisted. I needed to feel this. For this moment atleast.

Spit in the face of those who love me. Bleed for those who envy me. Belittle those who need me. Silence to those who speak to me. Spite myself.

I hate the fact that i cry - i'm ment to be the strong one! The fearless puppet - always ready to jump into action. I hate having to help everyone. Always.

I hated everything.

Applaud death as the just punishment to life.

I hated it all so much.

I felt like Asuka in her hopeless attempts to fight the Angel of Birds. I can hear her screaming in my head, saying the same thing now she did then. Shroulded in the light of the angels, teeth clenched & body contorted. 'I'd rather die than admit defeat now!' I hated being so powerless to things around me, and yet I persist. I persist. Persist i must.

It all ended when Greg broke the tension. For the next few hours i unraveled in the bar with adrian, paul, sam, sai & frank. They draw me into conversation as if to draw out the venom. I didnt cry - though i thought i would. I didnt scream, too exhausted for such things. I just sat & talked. Dazed but alive. Between the different boys, rocking back & forth. Craddled by their conversations.

Such a strange day, i wont forget it for a while, i shouldnt, but nor should i repeat it.

we're not the same

It seems that my life is a palindrome at the moment. Everything is different, but everything is the same. Endless movements forward only push me backwards. At times the past seems the only way into the future. Each event that exists in the present brings about a sense of de javu. A feeling of familiarity toward the forigen. It is a palindrome - what is said in reverse paradoxically repeats what is said forwards.

Friends & aquaitances, past & future lovers, unprofound objects & sacred images all seem to repeat within me. They speak in a different tounge, but say the same thing. You become me. I become you. The well known become the forigen. The forigen becomes intimate. Any consistency of identity is lost and yet distinction persists. Forwards & Backwards lose their meanings. Forwards is backwards, backwards is forwards. Closseness becomes distance and distance becomes love.

Someone once said to me that we we're not the same. I smiled. 'I know' was the only reply i could give. Are any two people the same? Certianly not. Are any two people realy different? No, not really. We are all palindromes. A palindrome is the space where what is 'different' & what is 'the same' is both constructed & collapses. All people are palindromes to each other. It is only our beliefs that bring us 'closer to' or 'further from' each other.

Review: Ministry of Pain

I love Dubravka Ugresic. She is an author. A 'croatian' political exile. An unashamed Yugonostagic. Her writing really resonates with me. She acts as a window to the 'croatian' culture & history that i myself have become distanced from. She posseses a reflective nature, seeing well beyond the situaltion at hand. But perhaps most compelling is her willingness to believe in both the posibility of a better world & the tarnished nature of the subject.

The book is first & foremost about the experience of being a refugee. It is of the aftermath of war. Memory & Identity. It covers work she has previously written about in essays, but this she does so with fiction. Through the lectures held by Tanya to her slavic refugee students at a university in Amstedam. All have excaped the war in 'former yugoslavia'. Yet can even these lucky ones truly avoid the scars of the war?

The book starts off slow, emotionless. Shell shocked. Yet as as the plot advances so does emerge little bits of sadness. And then pain. And soon enough all the other elements of anger & absurdity that come with war emerge. Things transform. Pearl earings become the mirror to the soul. Shopping bags become time bombs. Comfort objects begin to cut. Memory is a lethal shrapnel for those who have escaped.

For Ugresic, who believes that 'language is just dialect with the backing of an army' it is important for her to be critical of notions of right & wrong. Of what is proper & improper. She is wary of creating her own army. Of erecting her own proper language, at the cost of dialectical [sic] play. She avoids the certianty that is to war. Her work, wirten in short chapters, with a story that turns in on itself, always reflecting, & without complete resolve, captures a land of dialects. A world of typos, mistakes & character flaws that make sense only in the moment.

A deep statement on memory, war, nation & identity. Perhaps not her best work & it can be dry, with little humor, but still full of insight & personal truth.

there are no pieces left to pick up

luke sent me a text message today. A back handed thanks. Rightly deserved i suppose - i mailed him back his copy of No Logo with some inked scrible left in the front cover. The web address to the pdf for a statutory declaration, to be exact. The conversation deteriorated into one of blame & hurt. I lamented on it for a bit. I had changed from being his 'rock' to being his 'bad friend'.

After the unfounded accusations & childish blog posts I'd had enough. 'Like talking to a brick wall' commented one friend 'he lives in his own little fantasy world half the time, the other half of the time hes pushing his fantasies onto everyone else'

I brushed the events aside. A hour later i found myself falling apart. I got into a bad mood. Something came over me & feelings surfaced... unexpected feelings about something else... something different.

I remembered an incident with Mrs A. An ex-house mate. It occured after she had moved out. The mothership had landed in Newtown cemetary to celebrate some event. I cant quite remember what it was... but i guess thats not important. What was important was what she said. I remember it quite clearly: 'we're not friends'. So simply said. Such a flat matter-of-fact voice. So unlike her usual poetic banter. Bam! Full Stop.

My face flushed red. i was embarassed infront of my friends. I was a fool smiling. I had apparently assumed too much. The trust that comes with sharing a home disappeared so quickly in a puff of smoke in her eyes. The small courtesies that are exchanged in share housing no longer applied. The little pieces of kindness that i offered & she accepted were erased, or atleast forgotten for the moment.

I imagine it was much like hitting a wall at high speed. An immediate stop. The force of your previous momentum crushes your body. The soft tissue colapses were hard metal & stone do not.

No appologies. No recognition. Friends offered condolances to my perished body & reminded me that walls are never to blame.

I let it go. I let it slide. I could find no pieces left to pick up. No cogs. No valves. No motor. None. There was nothing left to ride.

Once again i've hit the same wall. Once again there are no pieces left to pick up.

how do you find release from the past?

here is an extract from the ministry of pain:

"How do you find relase from the past? I kept wondering [...]

The past is our "instalation," amateur stuff but with artistic pretensions. With a touch-up here and a touch-up there, here a touch, there a touch, everywhere a touch touch-touch. (Retouching is our favourite artistic device.) Each of us is a curator in his own museum. [...]

Keep your life dust free. Make occasional changes. Get rid of a thing or two. Uncover A; cover up B. Remove all spots. Keep your mouth shut. Think of your tounge as a weapon. Think one thing and say another. Use ortound expressions to obfuscate your intentions. Hide what you believe. Believe what you hide."

-Dubravka Ugresic

Interesting, but do i agree? Is this the only release from the past? & to readers at home do you agree?

hey... slut

I've been having sex. Quite a bit of sex. Being the little wolf cub that i am i seem to be able to sniff out mischief where ever i go.

'gez, were ever we go you always seem to pick up' notes gary, with a little anoyance. My early departures have left him adrift on more than one occassion.

'a boy has needs' rationalises justin as he sips his coffee - a substitute for his breakfast. I splutter my own coffee '...well i must be a very needy person then'

'how goes the scandolously steamy & supurbly sensual sexcapades?' Questions steve with his well crafted words & witful demeanor.

'for the story' reads the comment scribbled on a card. It is followed by a phone number. the card arrived into my hand after a up close & personal dance with a leather boy. It may have well said 'lets have a fuck' given the way we were getting onto each other.

Peter aptly sumarises the situation with his usual 'yer slut'. the comment's are usually followed by fucking. I think 'sluts' turn him on.

I don't mind the sex. Not at all. But i'm begining to mind the label. The baggage that comes with being a overly friendly individual. Am i really a slut? Is it something to reject? Or should i embrace it?

Some inner christian sentiments lament. 'Bad girls finish last'. Such a silly thing to think... its the bad girls that get what the want... of course... how do i know that this is truly what i want?

on moving house, part 2

i am now well settled into my new place. things are unpacked. my life is in order. i've even had time to start bloging again. Yay!

three
Moving out is a haze. A Intense & jumbled moment. A blur. The image of speed itself. Out of focus & almost out of frame of reference. Perhaps thats why it lends itself to a pessimistic perspective - at such speeds one can't help but get motion sickness. In contrast to this moment is unpacking. Slow, elongated, nothing but endless contemplation. Too many boxes & not enough time. Too much thought. Made haste assemblages of furniture & ornaments.

The dismantled home must be put back together. We have been provided endless fragments to this puzzle but little clues as to how it should all fit together. Like a jigsaw we can separate different pieces that should go together, but beyond that point, placing the pieces on the board remains a elusive task. 'this one with the red pieces... and this one with the greens' the jig saw player mutters to himself. 'this box is kitchen stuff.., and these bedroom items' the unpacker mimics.

The difference is that unlike a person who sit at the jigsaw puzzle contently knowing that she will end up making that picture on the box, the unpacker does not know what the final image will look like. They may have a mental picture of where a particular piece fitted before, in the old place, but that does not help to identify where the piece should fit now.

This is the catch. I'm in a new place. A new house. Some how i need to assemble my things to make this a home. A place that feels warm - a place that is me. There are no instructions to follow. No neatly numbered images like you’d find inside an ikea box. And unlike with a jigsaw, i dont think a hammer will be able to help me. At least not in the same way it does to an unyielding jigsaw puzzle piece.

part four
Suggestions, endless suggestions. Combinations, endless combinations. 'perhaps not there, how about over here'. Things begin to come together not bit by bit. Not chunk by chunk, but rather through perpetual permutations & combinations. My room for instance can only be seen as a whole - an aggregate - an ensemble. The different components work with each other & against each other in order to figure themselves out.

'The bed in this corner means... the lamp in that corner which places my bookshelf on this wall and... no it just doesn’t work! Lets start with the bookshelf first'

Friends offer suggestions. Thank god for good friends :) They give little insights & quiz little biases. 'So what are you saving the space in front of the fire place for? You do know santa doesn’t exist... right?!' We laugh & start over again. I reflect. I move from an ill as ease to a joyful yay! For some reason this picture frame doesn’t look out of place any more & when i peak out from beneath my sheets & can see the faces of loved ones clearly. What a nice way to wake up. As things fit together existential unease depreciates.

Maybe i belong here now. Maybe this is a new chapter in my life. Perhaps as i put the pieces together in my room I also put together my thoughts about how i present myself.

I love to read - i love to sort the multiple books of politics & philosophy on myself. Foucault & other politico stuff up top. Older half read texts to the bottom. The mirror somewhere where i can watch myself dancing - oh how i love to dance. & of course i have a space to lay of the floor - to dissociate - & to glance off the at the world outside my window.

I assemble my room. I make a home with friends. Much loved friends. I make myself... once again.

your regular programming has been delayed...

hey kiddo's

sorry i havent blogged in a while - have been busy... doing nothing. Just a mental break - thinking is exhausting ;) a propper entry is following shortly. (as is a new zine, gasp... shock)

To friends & bears, dykes & lovers, quite web watchers & rascally beer drinkers, and all those other people who visit this site - either to watch, link, comment or challenge:

THaNKS for visiting the sock puppet manifesto. yay!!

currently reading NO LOGO by Naomi Klien - this is a fantastic book, i can see why it was called a manifesto for the anti-WTO protesters. Its long - but even a quick skim reading is fruitfull. I suggest you skip the introduction, it lacks the passion & delicate observation that makes the book so eintersting readable :)

hit the note

cute boys & beers are always an adventure. A mix of risk & desire. Their collisions dont always go as planned. All too often you run the risk of disaster. But sometimes you get lucky & you watch each other watching each other. Its a vision into the future.

Sometimes you summon your strenght & you start to talk. Different interests transpire but a common understanding summarises your not-so-different opinions. Agreement. It agrees. Feels good. Right.

And then it flashes - moments skip forward & backward. Reminders & dejavu. Dont i know you... or maybe you just remind me of someone i loved... Similar styles, a different voice, bits & pieces of several other half loves & other things added in anew.

Your a composer - you make music. Your the babe i allways talk about - 'hey babe, how r u?' - well atleast for tonight, & maybe tomorrow too. And so you sing me a song as i lie in your bed. I am naked. I am so naked. You've stripped me bare.

Oh, smile little puppet - its been a while but i think you remember this happiness. Its the one that comes from cute boys & beers & other finely composed pieces of romance.

on moving house 1

I originally considered calling this blog 'the existentialist guide to interior design'. Needles to say the name was to exhausting, too deeply philosophistic. So i opted for something more straight forward, but i wish to mention the alternate title to suggest a way of interperting what this blog is about. Its not so much about the experience of moving house, but rather the way that the experience of moving house places our selves into question. Moving house - making a new 'home' sets off a range of questions, implicit or explicit, about our existance & identity. So lets begin...

one
Boxes, milk crates & plastic bags. All these material things that i call mine, that i care about if they are lost or stolen, are placed into boxes. Enough for approximately two ute loads. Perhaps a third for the shelf, it may need to travel alone. It is ironic that these personal items, makers of my taste & style, do not travel well with my shelf. The place where they would otherwise sit within my home do not suit each other as well when moving house. Fine china and wooden shelving become parted lovers. They simply do not 'go'. Instead the delicate china is placed in milk crates. And the adored clothes from my wardrobe are placed into plastic bags. Well actually garbage bags. Those personal belongings become indistinguashable from trash. My life is relegated from the fine shelf framing my possesions to the common and unmentionable housing of a milk crates.

China is wraped in yesterdays news. 'Surely its at least worth some up to date?'. No such luck. There is no wardrobe to provide the aura of presitge. They sit in those garbage bags, wraped in that dated paper. Now they too appear to be dated. Some lingering thought persists - that that childrens toy i've kept for so long on the matle piece may as well have been some blackened banana peel. Just a kind of visual gimick, like a peasant sitting on the kings throne. A joke. Perhaps all cultre is just garbage. This isnt so hard to accept. Anthropology has made a science out of such a belief. Treating the waste of ancient cultures as the society itself.

My life, till now, is summed up into a catalouge containing three catagories. Those things best moved in boxes, those things best moved in crates & those things best moved in garbage bags. There is no category for things moved in silken napsacks or finely crafted wooden boxes. It just doesnt fit.

two
I toss out a pair of shoes. They are sill wearable, but only just. 'better to throw them out now, they'll be dead in a month' I tell myself. 'It'll lighten the load for my move.' And so they are thrown out. Trashed. A pair of worn out shoes are thus deleted from my personal belongings, my personal world. Many other things will disapear in this way. Thrown out in order to lighten my load. Other items will be kept. For instance a pair of severly torn pants - long past their use by date. '...At least for a template if i ever decided to sew new ones.' This is a lie. I know the seams are too weak to unpick & the time it would take is not availible to me. Yet... i keep them. They are a sentimental thing.

We clean out things when we move. Keep the things of meaning, throw away those objects which have lost their connection to our 'self'. If something is not liked, if it is no longer 'me' then it is erased. We - maybe I should say 'I', but i feel it is not just me who does such things... anyways - we engage in a process of editing our own lives. This is done much in the same way that we edit photo albums. To paraphrase Dubravka Ugresic, much like a photo album we manage the material indexes of our memories in order to produce a sense of identity that is fitting to who we deem we should be. This does not by necessity match who we are. This process can be a swirl of many emotions but the end result of this process is a clam. The emotions are repressed. We observe a peace that comes with occupying the images of the desired. (After detracting what is undesirable). We are what we want to be. At least for a brief moment, before that image too becomes dated. And no person can ever stand to be dated. We are of the present. The editing proces must begin again.

I continue to throw things out. The pile of stuff i keep sits in one garbage bag in one corner. The stuff to throw sits in another garbage bag in the other corner. I smirk to myself "wouldn't it be funny if i got them mixed up..." My smirking ceases as i decide to move the garbage into the bin. Just in case.

interlude
i am still moving house, or rather unpacking, i have no internet. it will be a while before i post the rest, the less sour finale of this post. i do believe there is some affirming quality to moving... im sure...

this soft lullaby

Every so often i have a an odd moment of understanding. Fateful moments occur. Strange senses of de ja vu & intuitive knowlege.

I listened to the CD i attached to my dance pig zine. Most of the songs have some attached meaning. Reminders of people & places. 'Slave to the Rhythm' for those trashy imperial video jupe box beers. 'Kaltes Klares Wasser' for those house parties at Horden St & 'Ages' for contemplative comedowns as i sat alone in my room.

'Burnt like you' is about those reckless moments we prescribe for ourselves. The reckless things that i do, act that are both inevitable and remorseful. But as i listened to 'Burnt like you' today it wasnt so much about me anymore. The lyrics spoke of someone else. This quite lullaby of a song became so aptly descriptive of another. The sounds soothing the ear with a painful truth before a deep sleep. Before death of sorts.

I have to wonder - did some part of me know this all along? Was the song ever really about me, or was that just some well concealed denial of how things were...

...its a mystery to me, and perhaps it'll stay that way.

Goethe sits on my finger

It was a sureal moment & a special moment.

Drinking beers with my bunny boy. Little flames fly in my stomach - it seems the butterflies have caught alight. My mind lingers, i feel faint touches of fur & see twitching noses. We're close to each other as we sit. Your ears prick up at the sound of my little unfounded fears. And so you show me how much of a fool i am. You summon all your strenght & place goethe on the tip of my finger. I return the favour, in my own little way.

The flames are doused. The buterflies can live now. In peace. With all the other creatures in the forest.

I go to sleep that night, by myself. Before i dream I take some time to Smile in the dark about the things that matter most. Laugh away the things that matter the least. Its what goethe would want.

observation #4: its make or break baby

its funny. Some relationships have recently come to a halt. Others have transpired in front of me. Arising from nothingness, completly unexpected on my part. Some 'ships i have clung to, others i have remembered how sore it is to loose them. Others i am happy to have some form of distance from.

nearness hurts, distance hurts... it seems connecting it a delema not limited to hedgehogs.

in hind sight, all loves take time. all 'ships define themselves. they manifest in their own way... its no use forcing it, just play it by touch.

heat wave

heat in summer. its never the nicest thing. seems to bring out the worst in people. take for instance riots on the beach. It seems everyone decided it wasnt hot enough just lying there. no. some people needed to get a bit phyiscal too...

race riots.

there seems to be several versions floating around. not surprising given how inaccurate & down right wrong the press can be. But there does seem to be some aggreed on - dare i say - 'facts'. two lebs injure a life guard. so some people decide to reclaim the beach. with violence, of course. And so some lebs decide to return the favour & protect their colour. with violence, of course. and so the police decide to stop the riots. with violence of course.

Any use of violence is only done to halt a percieved posibility of violence from the other group in question. Such a flimsy excuse. But then again a thin cover is all thats needed to legitimise actions when things get hot. And when issues of race & nation are rasied things get hot. Stickily hot.

too may fears & emotions mixed together. all sides are misrepresented by the press. it stalls any true understanding of the situation. (perhaps this is the greatest violence of all - if we cant ever really understand whats going on how do we solve the problem?) Latent issues are ignored and only the manifested expressions of those issues are dealt with.

the violence the police issue is most devistating & most hipocritical.

pseudo political spiels either complain about this as being the real face of 'racist australia' or as a hicup within a essentially multicultural society. pseudo politicans play name games, while socialists call a rally. a pesudo political action, no teeth to the bite. no content to the form.

Real thought, engagement of the differently afftected people of society remains ignored. Both perpertrators and victims go on being perpetrators & victims. Policicians hope to buy up the votes by giving the best subjective description to the bystanding majority of australia.

Scince the world trade centre's went blam, one thing is obvious - the religious strategy of tackling racism & opression has failed. As too has the political strategy, half arsed as it was to begin with.

Maybe before we think up anything else to do, before we fix the world, we should take some time out. Be a bit anti-political, be a bit anti-religious. Maybe go down to the beach and have a sit down in the sand. Look at the people dashing around. And, at some point say 'Hi, how are you?' to that stranger near by...

maybe learn something, understand something, then doing something...

letters

i couldnt quite believe it happened. such an unusual thing, and of all people, it happen to me! My mind quizzes over the situation, 'how had this come to be?'

I imagine the catalyst for such a senario could only be a moment of sheer boredom. Someone sitting in there lounge room, daily chores half done, looking for relief in some internet key bashing. Google this, read that. And then at some point a thought would have traversed their mind...

Maybe they glanced at a picture on the wall - a photograph from a summer holiday. Oversized sunglasses and smuges of fluro pink zinc cream. young smiling children whom you half remember, and of course your own face. now aged scince then. A day at the beach, maybe? a typical polariod moment. Maybe such a picture was the reason to thread together several letters on the keyboard into a proper name... d... a... v... all the way through to the letter r.

A name googled. results come up & by sheer coincidence my name appears with a email address attached. A perfect opportunity to send a letter over the ether. Or atleast this is how i suspect the event originated...

I recived an email. from my cousin in canada. she shares my last name. she reminded me of trips to the beach. to the zoo. to the park. even to wollongong. typical things done during a holiday. she's asked me how things are with the family. She writes:

so anyways -- how old are you now? you are working too?
how are your brothers and sister? My mom told me that adam is now 19.... I feel so old. I have thought of you guys many times. In fact I still have alittle note that you wrote me when I returned to canada from my trip.

so I am good - alittle stressed over the whole christmas thing but this shall pass. I have recently gone back to school. I took about 10 years off to raise my kids and I think its time I got back to work. One of my boys is actually named david too! he is seven. daniella is 10 and anthony is 5. and I am old


i am stumped. i don not know what to write in reply. so much has happened. not all so good... memories, sweet memories. remember the good ones eh?! tears stall in my eyes. i fail in my ability to turn letters into words. if only you could offer a silent smile over the ether, and not have to settle for letters.

this dance is for me

last week i had made a decision. It was high time that i went out on the scene... alone.

without the prearranged meetings, without taking along a safety net of friends. i felt it was something i needed to do, given the current pressures that i've had with friends. Given the current change in my life. the only safetly net that i took was a pill and a plan to end up at Dirty Donkey.

During the solo treak... this journey of self discovery... i found that i was never quite alone. My path so quickly flowed into the path of others. I met up with steve at palms. Was good to see him doing well. I could have stayed longer, listening to the handbag trash - but going it alone means going it alone. While jumping between the oxford & manicle i met several of the boys. danny, rob, guy, luke & ben happened to stumble into my path.

Walked into rouges not knowing what to expect. Dirty donkey had got good billing in the past, but rainy days tend to keep crazy clubers away. but rest assured, the dirty cubz were there. those crazy older clubers who rove manicle, arq & kooky lookin for a bit of fun. I knew that i'd be in good hands tonight ;)

danced, clubed raved, little rach & khan graced my presence & ms ali arrived all glamour & glitz promising to stay out the night now that she had taken a pill. My own pill sent me all lovey dovey. Text messages, random pashes & flash dancing. Playful boys & e talks. Bumps of k, flirtations & contemplations of life, Love & friends.

after a snit at phoenix ali, rach, khan and i went back to my place to chill & we all ended up in the cemetary drinking long necks & eating takeaway from clems. such a sweet thing to do with people whom i've known but not really hung out with so closely.

the day ended. i slept, i felt warm. wasnt sure if it was the pill, or if it was real happiness. maybe both... most likely.

workin 9 to 5

so last week was all sex & work. not much time left for puppet or friends - is this what work life is like? mmmm... need to get a routine together.

anyone for tea

i recently obtained a set of japanese tea cups. very cute. very ornate. very symptomatic.

my old life that ive known for all its ups & downs, the recklessness & the love seems to be passing, or atleast changing. altering in quality & quantity. not that it was bad. It taught me lots & still has much to give, but alas, things change.

Transition. Between jobs, places, friends, homes, boys.

I'm beginning to be a bit more, say, tender? brave? stable? - more like relaxed. I still want the clubing, & the occassional recklessness but i need some other things too, things that have thus far has only appeared in apparitions. I am unsure of what i see, there is no manifestation for me to reach out. to grab. all is mystery.

This sighting has left its mark on me. It influences from underneath. Alters my action, differs who i am. ever so slightly. small changes. little desires. glimpses &
the occasional materialisation of objects that remind me of what is to be. They fill me with the kind of warmth you get from drinking a glass of green tea.

is this what they call the mid 20's

two four. 24. i'm older now... though still young at heart :) this was my birthday weekend. 48 hours of drugs, sex, boys, friends, emotions, and friendship, all washed down with several sweetly tasting glasses of sangrier. In the past, a party at my place has meant viciously trashy behaviour - unexpected guests, unwanted messes, and unforseen crashes. Luckily, at this party the trashyness was kept to a more subdued level.

With soft lighting, music from both justin's & my play list, a movie playing in the background and an adequite level of sangrier the party kept a stable level of enthusiasm. No peaks, no slumps, just a fairly chilled hum. People happily roved up and down the long hall separating the lounge from the kitchen, plastic cups in hand, stopping mid way to chat as they bumped into friends. Forgetting where they were ment to be. Rediscovering their destination only after several further displacements and several drinks later.

One thing that was striking about the party was the level of sexual energy and tension that hung in the air. the tension came from the high proportion of ex's present - emma jorja, will, puppet, luke, justin. Sexual enegry i think was the result of the large number of gay boi's present. There was alot of 'W likes X, X likes Y, Y likes Z etc' going on. The outcome of this energy was a a mixture of flirtation, drinking, crying, kisses, D&M's, and other bizare confessions which were possibly more of the moment than of the heart.

the rest of the party on the sunday was at kens & kooky. needless to say, i got my birthday fuck. then went out and got really fucked up. Ran into the older scene boys went down with them to arq & danced well into the morning light.

thankyou to those who came & for the thoughful presents. special thanks to justin for sorting out the music, the kids at kens for getting me extra passes.

serious? fun!? KooKy 10

Its been ten years scince Club KooKy openned. KooKy has changed alot scince the five or so years ago i went there. Different, that is, but still very much the same. Gemma & Seymour seem to have become more serious about their fun. Its as if they are two kids who've moved from a childrens chemestry set to one for adults.

I wish i had some of the past CD's to really touch on the history of their music in this review of KooKy 10. But i cant. So i wont. I'll just give you the low down.

Gemma and Seymour have been hard at work. Its a strong CD, with very little filler. Was a little surprised that they didn't actually mix the songs in together, as would happen on a typical Ministry of Sound CD. Instead it plays like a 'best of' album. The album clues into Seymours liking of deep male vocals (morning city stirs) and gemmas punkish interests (suck it). As well as the usual assortment of electronica (wet n wild), nostalgia (dreams), and darker (dimension) tunes.

club kooky 10 does have a few faults. the rock dont always sit well with the electro. it could also do with some of the more lighter beats. but what can you do? guess i'll just have to hope one of them reads this b4 the next club kooky album is relased...

TRACK LISTING

01 WET N WILD - kim
02 MORNING CITY STIRS - dsico: that no-talent hack
03 SIREN - general electric feat. llama
04 BLACK ELIZABETH - ollo
05 KITTY IN THE MIDDLE (kitty said) - the presets
06 DIMENSION (dimensional kooky mix) - wolfmother
07 QUEEN ON CROWN - the somethings
08 DREAMS - kill peaches
09 TOURIST ATTRACTION - kiosk
10 FAT CAT - liz martin
11 SUCK IT - buggirl
12 ITS NOT ME ITS YOU - paul mac feat ngaiire (itchee and scratchee remix)
13 CRICKET BALL - ez & loretto
14 DUSKY - lake lustre
15 ASTON - suspect

the politics of dance

so at approx 5pm yesterday i wrote this response to someone who emailed me about my zine, 'dance pig'. I thought it would be good to post it here because a) i was impresed that i could write something like this, given how sleep deprived i was. b) it helps to explain some of the politics behind the zine, & c) lots of people who dont participate in dance culture have asked me similar questions -this may offer them the beginnings of an answer ... cheers

hey there,

thanks for taking the time out to read my zine. Im gald you liked it :)

The dance scene is what i kinda grew up on. (or more like the queer alternative dance scene). Mmm, Pretty much everything in it has happened to me or someone else at one time of another, give or tke a few name changes, and alterations. So its kinda more personal than political - not that i really want to separate them (when isn't the personal political?) rather i just want to suggest that i didnt really want to make a definitive political statement.

I wanted to keep the politics implicit. The politics only become explicit through the act of interperetation by the reader. And as Freud noticed from any one text there are many times more interperetations that can be made. Any text is always a highly condensed work of other social, political and psychic texts. This is as true for lived experience as it is the writen word. Any experience is always a highly condensed product of social, political and psychic processes.

It was really good to hear about your take on the scene. I've had talks with friends about this before, and agree that people can partake in the scene as a bit an escapist venture, but this is a highly problematic concept. What i mean to say is who has the right (or ability) to draw the line in the sand so mark where fun ends and escapism begins?, If capitalism is so bad that people need to escape on occasion, is this nessasarily a bad thing? Is escapism really a threat to political action, or can they both exist simoultaneously?

I always find it interesting that escapism is always used in reference to pleasurable activity. Isn't pleasure allowed without some negative connotation or is there a serious need to apply a work ethic to time off the clock. I personally always thought that the true escapists were political individuals who undertake political action that does nothing - such as labor hacks, members of the DSP and people who donate money to charity. They know the system dosent work but they escape from any real form of comitment to social change, yet aleviate any guilt from their own concious by participating in half-arsed campaigns.

Clubing - dancing, meeting people, socialising, substance usage & altered states, a darkened room and loud music. people may find this a nice place to escape, but it is not the only thing they do there. People in these spaces tend to create. They create friends, new perspectives on life, new values that differ from the mainstream. Its a social space in which people can talk politics, they can be confronted with issues of race & sexuality. People can be incited to think - and unlike thinking at work - its on their terms.

What is produced is a sociality that is unlike the nuclear family, the taylorist work place, or the buracratic apparatus that Kafka detested. It is a place with the posibility of open connections. It is a sociality - a way of life - that offers people de-individualisation. I personally follow Fredrick Jamerson in believing that new socialities are a pre-requisite for any political struggle and vice versa. Social spaces - social interaction - shape the culture, politics and actions of the political struggle, and sometimes for the struggle the values and sociality of dance culture are more desirable than the values and sociality of work culture

mmm... i'm talking too much, i hope that made sense, thanks for reading

working 9 to 5

so today i completed my final exam - was up at 4am studying, sat the exam at 8:30am and left campus at 11am. As i walked off campus i felt a little sad that this would be pretty much the last time i saw the campus. *sniff* the place made me allot of who i am. Its also attached to some bad memories... alas, fairwell :(

on the brighter side of things, i got the job at youth association accomodation. YAY! i start in two weeks. so i have a bit of chill time till then. Pro's it'll give me some good experience, its in redfern, it'll be interesting, cons the pay is quite average. Either way it'll be good for the change. Hopefully it'll go ok :)

once again YAY! - it seems that today is one of those thresholds between the old and the new. the past & the future - lets see how i go...

puppet is turning 24!

Its puppet's birthday coming up in just under 2 weeks!

on the Sunday 20th will be partying at Klub Kooky from 11pm onwards! (its at 77 williams st, near the corner of riley)

there are other b.day on goings but you'll have to get in contact with me to find those out.(try dancepuppet@gmail.com)

no more classes

i droped my research report in today! 2 days early. No more classes yay!

And give or take a little bit of study for my final exam i can start to get back on track and be sociable, write not so boring blogs. That is till i get a job, then its all grey suits and droopy faces :-(

UPCOMING: halloween kooky this sunday, dress up & dance up!! performers & tunes 4 the freaktastic!

work it out

mmm... that last post was a bit angsty in a teenage way. Remind me never to post song lyrics again.

Anyways, last week i lived up to my comitment not to drink for 5 consecutive days. I suceeded. Yes thats right the one and only puppet 'is it beer o'clock?' choose not to drink, and whats more kinda enjoyed it. Am a bit proud. I think it was high time that i pushed the reset button on my drinking habits.

My reserch project is done, yay! all thats left is a proper print up. Thanks to luke & nat for their help.

You may have noticed a link in the post, its a first 4 me. I'm teaching myself HTML. Its kinda fun, but also kinda make me feel like 'well now that i can do it so... that's it... i guess...'

study days can be meloncholy too

There’s no point in being careful
I’ll burn bridges anyway

There’s no point in talking vicious
(I’ve) nothing cutting left to say

I’ve achieved my own survival
I’ve refined my own sweet hell

There’s no point in craving beauty
When you’ll tear me anyhow

If I look you in the eye
I swear I’ll die
‘Cos you kill everything you love

Should I scar my face
To find my peace
While you kill everything you love

-Skin you kill everything you love

cute paper and a bow

my sneakers came today, wrapped up in cute paper and a bow. Strangers can be so kind...

It made me think of presents, of the act of giving. Of another gift. A band placed on the wrist and left there, so precariously. It clung to me so dearly & yet just so... i dont know the word, it is somewhere between meloncholy, unworthyness, adoration & confussion. It is difficult to say anything, at all really. Instead a silent game is of interperetation and wonder is played as my fist clenches and releases. The leather tightens and eases on my naked skin. Grip & release...

I also am reminded of being given a letter written on an old type writer. Some mispelt words were erased with other lettera typed over them. Such a cute thing. Like the band it was another goodbye of sorts. I know exactly where it is, in my room, in between the pages of a certian book. I choose to leave those pages firmly pressed closed. other memories typed over this one, it is an effort to remember, to erase the former without damaging the latter...

...as i was saying, strangers can be so kind to give a sense of naievity to the act of giving & recieving. As if what was given and what was recieved is the same thing.

livin' just enough for the city

word count is now down to 5000. most of the formatting is done. referecnes are checked. All thats left for my reseach project is fixing up on one or two mistakes, doing the proof read, grammar, spelling etc & then printing it!! It will be done a week in advance! I'll be glad to have it done and over with. Its an experience to be at uni, but i'm sure there are other experiences out there that i'd like to partake in...

To walk to school, she's got to get up early
Her clothes are old, but never are they dirty
Living just enough, just enough for the city
Living for the city - bonnie tyler
(from puppets homo studyin' music)

dancing with my eyes closed

something inside of me tells me to close my eyes. something told me to just enjoy the moment. roll with the beats. didnt notice whats going on around me. ignored the signs. lived in a dream that 'of course it's all ok...' but then, as always, i bumped into someone. My shoulder connected with their rib cage. coughs... chokes... cry... my arm hurts, but i imagine the pain to be worse for the chest. its such a foolish thing to dance with my eyes closed, to dance in dreams. where what you think your doing and what you are doing are two completely different things.

random things

I am born in the year of the roster, metal is the sub-element.

I smirked as i read Sartre's comments on terror. It goes... 'Marxist formalism is a project of elimination. The method is identical with Terror in its inflexible refusal to differentiate; its goal is total assimilation at the least possible effort.'

Today I bought my first pair of sneakers on ebay. they are navy with orange stripes.

A song comes onto itunes, a reminder of being in the imperial in that beer filled youth of mine. Bizzare love triangle played in the background then too... 'every time i see you falling, i get down on my knees and pray'

My little solider boy is back. I knew he would be.

Dubravka Ugresic has writen a new book! The ministry of pain. The review says 'It is an angry narrative, and a dystopic one, suggesting that it is inhumanity, and not goodwill, that binds us. Ugresic does not so much champion difference as detail its disintegration. (...) Despite the bleak prognosis, and occasional awkwardness of the narrative as fiction, this is a disturbing read that should have you in its thrall'

A boy in a club told me that my cosmological sign is White Electric Wind - is this the reason why there is a hurricane within me?

ordinary life

Study, study, study...

Its all this little puppet seems to be doin these days. Little bits of paper have crept onto the walls of my bedroom. Definitions, mind maps & lists form a wallpaper of reminders & commands. My note book is now filled with quotes from Merleu-ponty, Jung, & Giorgi, with a note or two on Husserl.

I've been hacking away at my interview transcripts puling out themes, generating models, throwin it away & putting together something totally new. It should all come together by the end of the week, yay.

Got a good omen too. it came in the mail. a mysterious check from the UNI. dont know why, some refund i assume. it will be spent on junk by the weeks end.

But in this life... I'll give it time...
Cause its always sneaking up from behind...
It'll be alright, it will be fine...
Its nothing more than ordinary life.
- Kristen Barry, Ordinary life
(from puppets homo studyin' music comp.)

misfits & rascals

Every week starts with corny island & ends with club kooky. These bookends keep many different stories together. Sometimes we have a romance, other times tragedy. Sometimes the story is dramatic, at other times comedic. A wide selection of volumes have found themselves between those bookends. It seems by chance i picked up a childrens story to read this time. A fairy tale. Warm, and friendly, with softly spoken romantic intentions. There were several heroes, but no vilians to this bedtime story.

Valiant deeds we performed. People stood up to challenges and faced their fears. So many little adventures. My soft touches reaching up his leg; having coffee with james dean; running an obsticle course of mass produced 'designer' decore; breakfast snacks at midnight; commmunal facinations with david bowies crotch. The book ended with the same warm tingly feeling that it began with. Comfort. I liked the heroes in this book - misfits & rascals who just wanted to be happy & see justice done. I havn't read a book like this in a while.

It wasn't like the other books either, it wasn't a story for the eyes. The words had been writen in braile. The finger darts across the page to find out the ending. Eyes closed to find an inner picture of the adventure. It was not a story to be seen. It is was a story to be felt.

unexplained bruises can be fun

In tropical climates they only have two seasons. the wet & the dry season. In the world of clubs & fun, i'd assume the weather follows a similar pattern. This passing weekend marks the end of the dry. With the Sleaze party there is a migration from our hobbles & into the wilderness. It is the first big storm for the coming torrential down pour of dance, love, clubs & drugs. It begins a monsoon of dance that will last untill mardi gras. And from the looks of it - this storm is set to leave us all drenched to the bone.

While most of the crew steered clear of Sleaze itself, there was more than enough fun on the outskirts to keep us enjoyed. Emma's birthday procedings went quite well. House parties & clubbing, dinners & pool parties, it was the first time in a while that i've sat down & really chilled out with the gang in the same room at the same time. Quiet chats & plenty of magic made the night pretty fantastic even with one or two hicups through the evening. Afterward we went ot bent bar followed by kooky. Bent bar was pretty much the usuall. Was nice to bump into Will, though a little arkward mainly cause we were both quite trashed.

Kooky was fantastic. The music went off, the boys were cute & the company was great. Spent a good deal of the time dancing with the older boys aka mark, bobbie & their cohorts. The guys created their own little dance floor between the tables & rocked to their own beat. It was nice to be around a different crowd, and of such loverly crowd at that too.

This morning i woke up after 6 hours of sleep. My first snit scince i woke on saturday. My legs were aching. I discovered bruises that i just cant explain & a lot less money than i began with. None the less, i cant wait to brave the weather again.

currently reading 'the psychopathology of everyday life' - Sigmund Freud

oh my god

for those who dont know me too well, i love film. There are a number of films that i have heard about and wanted to watch. I went down to the video store to see if those films were there. Scarface wasn't (steve informs me that its one of the most stolen films from video stores), AI was not there (i guess spielberg aint that popular), so i settled on showgirls. .....Argh! why didnt anyone warn me! As me and luke watched, we laughed, cried & stared blankly - but not in the way the movie wanted us to. laughed at the so-so serous bits, cried at the flimsy twists, and stared blankly at an unexpected rape scene. Completely out of the blue. I dont quite know what to make of it. I wonder why no-one warned me about it prior to watching? It didnt make sense in terms of the movies plot, but then again, im not sure if the movie had a plot. All in all, a very strange movie.

on the brighter side of things Howl's moving castle is good. A little lovey dovey at the end but worth the trip getting there. Its very much in the them, of kikis delivery service & spirited away. worth the watch even though the ending is a bit sappy

on a final note there are newly added links to garys blog & jon's live journal please feel free to browse :)

currently reading 'the democratic paradox' by chantle moffe

TLC

argh! What do ya do when nice people do patronising/paternalistic things? People act with good intentions - they're trying to 'help' but its done in a manner that brushes away any trace of sencerity. Brushed away as quickly as the deed was done.

My 'professional issues in psych' class is full of ex-teachers. they're studying the subject to become school counsellors. They really are nice people - as individuals that is. But on mass they are a clique of anecdote telling, paternalising, and self-refering cowboys. Very in-crowd & very naieve to the fact. Anyways to make a long story short, they noticed the scars on my arm. And so begins an ordeal of questions 'what happened', polite comments 'how are you today', and and ever searching eyes for another scar. Its nice that the care about my health, but the experience just puts me on the spot. Makes me soo self conscious, and feel paternalised. Argh, just makes me not like uni at all. But i dont blame them, they care atleast.

For contrast, Trevor at work comes outright and says to me 'god. those scars are still there'. He then whips out some moisturising cream & begins to demonstrate the 'magic of vitamin e on scaring'. He rubs the cream in for me. No skirting about, no assumptions of my reasons or muffled statement of intentions. Just the action to show he cares.

on the ball

to jump on lukey's band wagon i just might take a moment to reflect on my breakup from William. I feel that this is best done by sharing persistant metaphor

A persistant metaphor
Recently i've been more concious of my body, i've missed the dance floor & going seriously at dance as opposed to comedically. I've started 7am wakeups, exercising and streching. The last time i did this consistently was approx 2 years ago. As part of this conciousness I have attempted to walk less on the side of my foot & more on the ball. I've realised that this pattern of walking - this small aberation - is part of the reason that i dance so fast, and get a little wobbly. The sides of the feet may be stable footings when walking, but on the dance floor, where things intensify, i really do need the stability promised by using the balls of my feet. In conciously changing the distribution of wheight - the way in which i step - i aim to step more steadily. The process led from not noticing a difference to fatige & tumbles as i began using different muscles. But now i'm noticing this is disappearing and now i'm finding that i'm getting more stable even at the extreme of bodily movement on the dance floor.

dance piggy, dance!

at last! my new zine has been printed - dance pig - a zine about clubs, pubs, boys, friends, puppets and love. to all those who will see me around, you can get yours then. If i wont see you & you'd like a copy then email me. it comes with a free CD of my tacky music

dancepuppet@gmail.com (this is my new email, i'm taking for a test run, my other email will still be used for a while). :)

in other news, i'm my usual excessively smiling self today (which is strange cause its a uni day & it usually bores the fuck out of me). I am currently reading a book called metaphysical horror - very interesting to read, if not a trivial safari into the triviality of philosophy.

zen and the art of bookself construction

i stood in the newtown talking to adrian '...its like everyone's life is changing so much, alot of heart ache,' he nods at me, and offers up an observation 'you know lifes changing all the time, sometimes you just notice it... feel it strongly when the change is also hapening to you'. It makes sense. I think he's right.

Heidi opened the door to her little gathering. She's moved to ashfield to be closer to friends. Our posse of four finds some magical beans. we climb the stalks into the sky. Her new house feels warm, friendly, compassionate - as too is the company. 'oooh, oooh, i'm peaking - were's that soundtrack' stamers heidi. Bolero begins to play. It is a strange moment as i move between the past and the present. Was it also a house warming when i last heard this? I hypothesise that house warmings are strange events that require such magical moments - this entirely new place will become as old and as safe as those other places we've given the same name.

the boys from the shift have come down to kooky. theres marky mark, micheal, arq mark, and a host of other boys whos company i have made. i sit in the conner with the little ones as i sip my beer & pass i smile out here and there. little rach, little arron & not so little arron, those little pups rolling around with fun. Emma, luke & daniel arrive to share some drinks, to make this night complete. for the most part i daze away in my happy home of friends & chats. i leave early, and the next day recieve a text from marky - hoping that i'm doing ok today - it reminds me the words that he said the last night, half joking, half serious, 'your magic, puppet, just make a wish, and it'll be'

as i sat contently in the lounge i looked at the book shelf i had made. 'Zen and the art of book shelf construction' i thought to myself. Enviromentally friendly, practical & warm, dismatable, not-quite perfect, but sturdy & capable. Filled with the pages of the books that had filled my thoughts over time. like friends i have made who have filled my arms over time.

a po mo tortise and hare

the heart played a game with the mind, to see who'd win over this body this one last time. neurons trasmit with amazing speed, quicker than the blink of an eye. The mind was always the first to act, to react, to rationalise & over think. It had the ace up its sleave, take what was given & then make it something radically different. Emotions trasformed into denials, feelings endlessly displaced. A fearce competitor for the prize of power - determination.

The heart could not keep such a pace with its mere beats. Its endless profussion of a fiery liquid so quickly became redirected. From the powerhouse of arteries to the dissipated capillaries. Unbounded emotion wanned so quickly. How could the heart win? it had the strength, the patience, but not the skill, the wit, the speed. And in that moment a plan conspired... the mind could not be beaten at its own game, but it could be tricked into an untennable position. The mind could win, with the prize of loosing.

The mind freted & flipped, it collapsed into a heap. Outdone at last - for once it had nothing to think. The heart won, breaking out of its cage and into the world. To guide its boy toward the truth. Yet its plan had unforseen concequences, unplanned tiddings. It discovered that the minds work could not be undone. The mind had lost, but now so too did the heart. It fell in love, and in a week the heart was broken, exhausted, decieved. The lacerations dug deep. To stop the blood, to seal the wound the mind stripped off its own mylien sheath, wrapped it round, and became infused with the hearts very being.

The heart thinks now, the mind feels, its such a strange thing, to sleep with the enemy, so lovingly.

just for this moment....

after the chats, the beers, the sex. After the night of casual jokes in bed, I can tell that things are changing and soon i will need to look inward & decipher my heart. Make sense of all of this. But for now I curl into his arms and just enjoy the moment. I'll tend to my 'capacities' tommorrow. Save all my thoughs of needs & desires, of fears & past hurts, of being true to myself & being respectfull of others for some time after these arms have let me go. Save all that for later, & just let my arms curl back around him. just for this moment....

love puppet

I leave the mall with my recent aquisition. A copy of 'leather folk'. Accounts of kink, politics & community lie within its pages. I had heard the title mentioned by a friend, and decided to indulge. Tales of leather, fetish, love, pain & other assorted forms of taboo fun.

taking public transport home, a bus to be exact, i watch as a young boy stares at my tattoo's. At the ripe age of 15(ish) this little boy discovers a love for the inked flesh. I cant quite remember when i first discovered my affliction for tattoos, but i imagine the event to be much the same. a glance is all it takes.

When i get home i pin my leather voucher to the wall so as to remind me to get out there & spend it. As i sit, looking at it my roomie justin tumbles through the door offering a recent musical discovery for my ears to hear.

'hit me, smack me, drag me to the floor,
hit me, shake me, make me want more,
crush me, break me, drive me to the floor,
crack me, whip me, im your .....(dont quite get the word)
push me, love me, play with my strings, i'm your love, your love puppet.
- sonic animation, love puppet

maybe its time i started to challenge myself sexually instead of letting it just fall onto me as is so often the case. maybe its time i seriously challenged my inhibitions & got down & dirty (& safe). maybe its time that fantasy became reality... maybe... all the signs seem to say so. But its one thing to read them & another to follow.

p.s. as i write this 'dance hall days' is playing, & i cant help but give a big smile as i sit in my room by myself. A smile so big the corners of my mouth may be reaching the ends of the world :)

something found caught in the cogs of a machine

'So we'll change, we have already changed. We're doing all right. Some people think we're bound to stay on the same old path. We dream of other things. more secret, more joyful. Compromise no longer because that wont be necessary, and we will always find allies we want or who want us.'
Gilles Deleuze

little soldier boy

It is a cold day in melbourne. Walking through the market stalls a chance item catches my eye. A small plastic toy, a little solider boy. Such a contrast for such a youthful figure dressed to play an adults game. His story unravells in my mind. This worthless trinket develops a fantastic history. A history that may finally give value to its artificial being.

This scared little boy. His dreams were dashed in the ravages of war. Promises became deceit. And what was right became what was wrong. Surviving, yet without sight of what to live for. The world is nolonger the safe playground of his childhood. He shivers in the cold melbourne weather. This brave little boy. He remembers he once smiled, and in that moment he departs. Abandoning all he has, except the hope for some distant home. Taking his first step away from the front line, now he is a enemy to all but himself. Not quite a boy any more, yet not quite a man. No mapped out route to follow, only the cracked face of a compas to point toward the future. Leading him from the present. His mouth begins to smile once again.

I craddled him in the palm of my hand. He was the only thing worth keeping.

its a heartache, nothing but a heartache

it seems that everyone is so sad at the moment, i learnt from my roomie today that a whole range of dyke friends & aquatences have also recently ended their relationships. Its so sad. It seems eveyone is breaking appart.

on another note, a friend of mines privacy was recently invaded. someone hacked into their email. its quite shaken them up. :( while the culprit has been found, it really sucks that this happened to them, and considering the culprit was in their teens, its really made me wonder how easy it would be for government agencies to access, say, my info. Most likely at the touch of a key.

unpoetic uni life

Once in a while i go to uni. this hapens to be one of those times. I'm in the fourth year of a psych degree. Things seem to be going good. My marks are going well, i'm understanding statistics better than i thought i would after 2 years hiatus (its valuble having a mathamatical/science background sometimes) & am taking time out to study. Unfortunately after four years i cant help but be so over it. I dont want to see another text book, experimental design or university campus for a while. I dont want to administer tests on people & i'd like a bit of life experience before getting into course work for professional accreditation. This of course means that next year will be spent learning to hate full time work in order to take a small snit overseas, b4 i worry about carear path. Probably not as long as Ali or Louise, i cant imagine myself being out of sydney for long, i like the sunshine they have here.

them's the breaks

why is it so hard to get over people & move on? I've quit smoking. Thats addictive, something they have support lines to help you through. But that dosent bring you down like a break up does.

i know that emotions are not rational, just talking about it dont always help. justin explains that in time you 'just turn off. You'll realise something and then you run with it'. Rod from work explains 'that you have to get angry at them' (thus make a distance i assume). emma reminds me that 'puppet, you dont believe that people fall in love with just one person, dont let this get you down.'

the brief-therapy text book that i flicked through in the uni library explians that 'solutions dont always come from the problem itself. sometimes we have to talk ourselves into a solution, the way we can talk ourselves into a problem'. im not quite sure what i want my solution to be.

folk wisdom explains: 'time heals all wounds'. i'm better than before, but i've still got a way to go.

puppet vs existentialism

i watched a movie once. two women alone in the middle of no where. one who talked too much, the other none at all. At a point early in the movie the following passage is read from a book:

'all the anxiety that we bare with us. all our thwarted dreams. the incomprehensible cruelty. our fear of extinction. the painful insight into our earthly condition have slowly eroded our hope of an other-worldly salvation. The howl of our faith and doubt against the darkness and scilence is one of the most awful proofs of our abandonment and our terrified unuttered knowledge'

there is no possiblity to disagree with such a pesimistic view. such a view is the acknowledgement of the death of god. no holy hand shall guide us, or to which we can seek refuge in. there is no destiny. only the cruelty of chance. it is the throw of the dice, a throw that can be mystified as destiny. god may exist, but god is in no dice...

so now we are abandoned. alone. the world entraps with no soul to transgress. how we got to this place we do not fully comprehend. but the desire to change is with us. that feeling called hope prevails. within the darkness & scilence i discover that the criteria for all actions is my will to action. my hope. hope is neither faith nor doubt. it underpin's both. faith & doubt is their false maifestations - faith & doubt wrongly search for exterior criteria for legitimation. the final requiem for some higher purpose. hope is only grounded in the nothingness. It is pure alchemy - as lead into gold, nothing into hope. spontaneous production of life without reason.

so i hope. hope into production. i create, i create a world of hope. chance encounters into friendships. casual sex into dance. a brisk touch into love. hope is neither fantasy nor reality. psychoanalysis & materialism need not apply. endless machines replaced consecrated meaning. and thus meaning becomes the grinding of machines. meaning becomes a secular meaning. ever personal, ever shared, like the teeth of a cog. those i have lost i regret. some cog jumped from the machine. those who i have gained i stand in salute. ours is a strange love. note that our communal hope is all we need. it is a worthy condender to nothing, one that may suceed.

Ms emma dont doubt me - i'm the one who left satre's eyes crossed, and dont doubt yourself - you left my eyes crossed. ms liz one of your words is deeper with meaning than 10 of mine. Luke, dont be afriad to cry. Steven thanks for the love, & understanding. Mr justin, fear is not always the enemy. To those others - jorja, aaron, daniel, arq mark and the all the rest - ours is a world of our making, so make it...

simple frustrations

life feels as if i am on a razors edge, as if i were to crash, to fall, but i have yet to hit the ground. Dont get me wrong - most is good, things are well, but in this crazy world of high flying acts, i seem have lost my safety net. I know the routine, i know myself (enough, at least for this night) but without that net in vision i must acknowledge how precarious my life is. Of course, dear readers, this carnival has more than one attraction...

On the high wire is mr Luke & mr Justin who must now each do their own routines alone. On a tense rope they preform their tricks solo, there could be no other way. Each can only see the other, losing sight of themselves in the process of looking. Walking in oposite directions their bodies obscure their desired destinations. Each walks forward, but to the other they walk in reverse. We do not know if the audience will break out in laughter or tears. beneath them stands a clown with a miniture umbrella. there he waits for the fall. he loves them both. i cannot imagine that what the outcome will be. he just hopes that neither fall, that he need not cry.

In the house of mirrors, (the side attraction that we all love) i make my way. Lost in a sea of reflections. Each reflection is me, yet not me. There are many mirrors, many differing aspects, many differing faces. Then i realise that the reflections are of me but also the people whom i know. This is not so strange. Deleuze & Guattari once commented that our psyche & our social overlay one another. A social repression is a psychic one. A psychic extension is a social one. The 'I' is always already a 'we'. Little parts of me - familiarities & passions - are little parts of them. Yet the people i see these days are less those whom i share history with & dearly love, but rather its the new people & the 'not so causal' encounters i experience. I fully realise that all it takes for me to consolidate my old friends is to walk down the road. But perhaps i like mr bobby with his friendly talks over cigarettes, perhaps i like mr sam with his effortless fun and happiness. Time is limited. Must i loose sight of one to see the other? Perhaps i am making a fuss over nothing, in a moments time i will turn a corner to lead me out, but perhaps i may not.

In her tent the gypsy reads the palms of passers by. She sees a figure. She cant seem to make out his image, his esence, yet she knows he is not a menacing figure. Rather he is a tense figure of survival & dreams. She explains that he is a kind of totem - some animal god - some kind of deep expression. 'the lone wolf is one who has yet to devour...' and so the wolf remains hungry, & the prey remains living. She offers some advice 'the wolf is a pack animal, if it walks alone it is not seaking to hunt but is searching... some great obsession, once glimpsed, forever desired. the wolf is strong but between hunger & desire, the reality principle & the pleasure principle, it must know when to walk alone & when to walk together.' And those cryptic words is all she can offer the passer by who seeks a clue to their future.

Caught up in a range of simple frustrations, little problems with little solutions, that i have yet to solve... that we all at times hope to solve

the drinks stay sipped

Sometimes all the moments, that we savoured for the last,
Get crushed between the good & bad, from pressures we have had,
But you know I can’t conceive the day,
when feeling run too high,
To work out all the stale terrain,
emotions try to hide, when I try,

Lately I can’t seem to colour what we’ve lost,
it all seems like bad means,
When lovers turn from lust,
then I try - try to smoke alone

These shattered ties with no comprise,
fall through this fragile hell,
The drinks stay sipped ’cos we’ve lost our grip,
too exhausted to rebel, then I try

Lately I can’t seem to colour what we’ve lost,
it all seems like bad means,
When lovers turn from lust,
then I try - try to smoke alone

lately, skunk anansie

leather me up!

After trying to convince myself to have a quiet weekend, i found myself desparately in need of clubbing... and so in an instant i was out on oxford, again.

After crashing at mr lukey's house on saturday night we went off to day club in the morning to celibrate manicle's birthday. there was a fantastic mix of people, not just the normal arq-aholics who appear on the monday morning but a whole range of gloss stars, divas & freaks. fun was had. the dance-like-crazy kind of fun. the pink-love-heart brand of fun. and the amazing-people type of fun.

a new friend of mine, aaron, came along. a friendly westy type, who me and luke had met at the newtown that week. at 18 he's alot more confident and together than i was at that age. even when his insecurities show. i got to know one of ms emma's friends, the compelling conversationer mr daniel, that is, before he ran off into the daylight. then while on the dance floor i bumped into steve - a kooky boy who quickly explained he had been without sleep since friday night. trashed, dazed & confused he could think of no other place to be besides dayclub.

To top things off i won a birthday door prize, a voucher for radical leather! considering i have no leather so far i am quite pleased that i can finally get something to go with my boots :D
any suggestions as what makes a good first piece of leather?

in other news i have been off the solain for about 2 weeks (its an anti psychotic) and all is good, with nothing major resulting. because most of my symptoms were fairly mild my psychiatirst reckons that while its recommended to stay on it for 6 months as long as i watch myself i should be cool. yay!

maybe nows a good time, while on a high, to take a relax from clubbing & focus on things like study... but considering its lukey's b.day bash this coming week i think i'll have to stay in the ruckus a little longer. ah the hard life *smirk*

Ms grace, the rhythm

I should have realised that today would be unusual. As i left the house a grace jones disco classic began playing in my head. I was in one of my day-dreamy moods, staring more intently on the horizon of roofs along king street than on where i was walking. Incesant grinnning at passers by & making brief twirls as i waited for the trafic lights to usher me through.
When Im feelin lonely, Someone telephone me, Its gettin hard to pass my time.
earlier today i had conspired to go the anti VSU rally at sydney uni. I made my decision not so much because i agreed with the politics of the action, but rather cause i needed some form of political outlet. It's been a while since i've been politically active and a rally, even one of questionable politics, seemed a good oportunity for reasurance. As i dashed through the crowd, i saw a whole range of familiar faces. Old friends, ex lovers, infamous hacks of student politic days gone by & current aquatences who i had not quite expected to be there. I met each with a small deal of difficulty & delight. It is great these things bring us together, but it is these things that we find ourselves ever more difficult being part of. its nolonger our politics, its not our communities, its not our passion. In times like these i'm sure Marx would thoroughly endorse Aufheben, some creative distruction. destroy the old to make the new, dance on the ruins of the world, if here is not possible then we will make an else where.
Well, Im underestimated, Highly underated, Can there be another way?
So as the rally came to a halt at town hall i decided to do my bit for the cause. On a whim i ventured into the local book store to see what it had to offer for the young aspiring anarchist. I came across a copy of 'queer wars'. a book about the rise of the gay right. Dynasty meets politics maybe. $50. i made my appropriation in true westy tradition. i put it down the front of my pants & walked out the store.
Gettin tired of lookin, Wastin all my cookin, Ending in a dreadful row.
Ended up at the newtown hotel, with Jon, not the usual beer buddy but was most grateful for his company. we talked of boys. we came to many agreements about the needs of people in relationships, about closeness & distances. About the importance of having multiple dimensions to your life & the difficulties to keep them. i dont think i'll be doing anything too serious in dating terms for a while. i'd like to find other boys for some scandolous clubing. (not that my current friends arnt fun, i just want something to challenge me similar to emmas current snit of clubing escapades). i also realised that i really was 'single' - and all that ment: the ups, the downs & the all-over-the-place!
Can somebody tell me, Say to me, oh tell me, Why Im feelin lonely now? oh!.
I need a man, perhaps a man like you, I need a man to make my dreams, And I need a man.

kisses

Part Expert Kisser

You're a kissing pro, but it's all about quality and not quantity You've perfected your kissing technique and can knock anyone's socks off And you're adaptable, giving each partner what they crave When it comes down to it, your kisses are truly unforgettable

Part Passionate Kisser

For you, kissing is about all about following your urges If someone's hot, you'll go in for the kiss - end of story You can keep any relationship hot with your steamy kisses A total spark plug - your kisses are bound to get you in trouble

What Kind of Kisser Are You?

think of it as a verbal tattoo

I have a new name now - puppet. Its cool if people call me davey, its still my name too, just want kids to know that i think of myself as puppet at the moment. It is not a name that i will have for ever, it will have a use by date. Its just a name, not some surmise of my identity. I was not on drugs during the decission & like getting any new tattoo i had some thought to it before i went & appropriated it for myself. Changing my name - playfully or serious - acts as a catharsis. Too often we tell ourselves 'i'm a this person', or 'i cant do that, its just not me' etc a new name is the possibility (& only the possibility) to bypass this. I knew i felt different & was changing. Mainly due to my relationship with Will & the resulting break up, that was the catalyist but not the sole cause. I went numb for a little bit post breakup - a calm before the storm. & in a flood of emotion it was done.

Why puppet? Thats a little tough to explain. The name 'came' to me intuitively, not reasoned out, but it felt right. On rationalisation the name 'puppet' could be transcribed to 3 areas of my life. In my love of dancing & my experience of the scene - cute little boy with crazy body movements. In my theoretical underpining of post structuralism (performativity, subjectivity etc). In my break up with Will (the strings to my heart were pulled). Of course there are other incidental reasons. I like performing & so lends itself to performance, its a cute
name, it gives something for my friends to gossip about, its blogesque, its fun ;)

Why puppet? Even i had to admit that i too am a puppet to my emotions. And the name 'davey' while it represents much good it also has much bad. I spent too much time refusing to show people i loved them. Refusing to cry. Always keeping people a distance away. Being 'davey' meant my breaking down in hysterics with my knight josh(cause i couldnt handle sex or getting close with anyone), then not even trying to date for ages. it meant me cutting up (or burning) my wrists, groin, & face at times in my life cause i wasnt quite emotionaly stable & didnt know how to be. this is what davey became, better or worse. challenged or unchallenged. Hopefully puppet will avoid these painful pitfalls. Hopefully puppet is a name that assists me in being more open, more honest.

finally 'puppet' is not so much a play thing, but rather can be interpereted as the motif of a little boy. a motif that haunts my writings from time to time. it is of a little boy who's own spirit is circumvented by a harsh landscape that imposes itself upon the boy. The boy's own reality is under question as he deals with forces beyond his control. But it is through this questioning of who he is that he can truly determine his own existance. He can save his self.

jamais vu

alas, davey is no more...
& how could it be any different, the forces that pulled him apart were not of this world.
dashed into a 1,000 piceces. scattering across the floor of the night club. frantic hands jerk to save what was. a hopeless task, yet an inevitable endeavour. an inadequate number of pieces are rescued. with no guide to show how to stick them together!

frantic hands work to fashion a jamais vu. davey is no more. this familiar face is something else. dreams, hopes, memory & passion are the same yet utterly different. davey is no more...

he is 'puppet', noun proper. baptised with fire. 7 scars added to his collection. davey/puppet was transformed both Willingly & un-Willingly. poor little pup, brave little puppet. not quite a little boy anymore. for better or worse. let us hope wood is less brittle than bone

woman, modern

ah, uni is about to start back up this week. I have discovered that i am enrolled in a subject called professional issues in psychological practice. Oh what fun - not. tonight is the last night of sunday/monday fun i'll have b4 semester starts. next week i'll have to go out with a guilty concious.

justin, of robot hell fame has moved in. many boxes were carried. & people say i'm not butch!

thanx to Will, i've discovered podcasts. you can subscribe via itunes music store. try 'superfag radio' for gay look at comics; the gossipy-ness of 'unnatrual acts of opera' for opera; or for some american pseudo politics 'free talk live' is good for a listen (or subscribe for regular listening).

things with me and will are bumpy. not quite good, not quite bad. neither of us has cooled scince the break up. i'm not really sure what the best thing to do is. only communicate in letters? under go 2 weeks of intensive counselling? ask a magic 8 ball? maybe i'll give him a call.

finally. in 10 pages time i will have finished reading museum of unconditional surrender. it has refuled my interest in the motif of the modern woman. who is todays modern woman - with their humor & sophisitcation? The book has spurned the idea for a movie that is now playing in my head. It is how to marry a millionaire meets the underground. Its about 3 women in a war torn town in bosnia who try to 'make it' in a crazy world. Of course their own desires eventually coincide with the larger desire of stopping the war in their village. They achieve this by making each side think they have gained control of the village. Both sides 'win', they are left alone. It will probably end with some form of insurrgence, the towns folk take control. The humor will develop from the lives of the women. They continue on with life as if they wern't in a war - e.g. running past the local sniper who has been adequitely bribed to miss. the towns folk faking their own deaths in order to get money off forigen journalists who are only after the money shot. all done by a modern woman. hair pulled up, hem above the kneees, mind & heart ever working towards success, which never turns out quite as they had expected.

another night of postwork bedroom drinks

if my life were a story i cannot help imagine it would be a sad one. My mother is no more. My father never was. my brother is on a thread. & i hopelessly try to care for my younger sister & brothers in the hours we share. At times i strugle to feel i exist. I know that this is wrong. I exist. But recognition of my existance lags. I assume that it is for this reason that I am somewhat socialy inept. i never register my own impact in the social space (how could i when my existence is so tenuous) as luke or emma so aptly do. anyways, this story begins a new chapter.

my boy of 7 months is gone. it has been a long seven months. a beautiful 7. he was so dear to me & i have been avoiding morning for quite a while. I listen to music when i am alone so as to distract & yet i choose the sad songs to hear. Tonight at work (good old Ken's) i once again had to explain the tatters of my love life. Banal. Scripted by now. Not me thinking. Just saying. When i was with my boy i cried. It has been so long since i cried. So long since i sat in some closet, weaping at my own nonexistance. But now im back in survival mode. no tears, no time to weap. Just forget, ignore, aviod.

Freud's later theories talk of the constant return of the repressed. There is a delicate tension in the psyche. The repressed always returns. Displaced or condensed. Replaced with something else or reduced to something more manageable. (funily enough this mirror freuds return to his own earlier theories). But manageable is a very tenuous thing. Now what was manageable & what wasnt is becoming blured. Im in agony - but i feel no pain. It was the right thing to do. But since when did the right thing to do require so much pain?

I've obviously grown through time. I am no longer afraid of relationships. But i still think i ran from my boy. I could have loved him. I should of. But i held back. (Don't i always do this?) Chance played its card. My defence returns to repress. Maybe i need to believe in 'love' before i can experience it. I need to truly believe that it is meant for me, for at least once in my life. & a love of the reciporical sort. Maybe this is why i admire people who bare themselves so completely. They are my apparition. a mirage in a desert. & till then i'll walk about with my thirst.

a picture of a dancing pig

i have now discovered how to add pics... presto.

the time is 1:15am...

during a period of drug induced honesty i have decided that my next zine will be part of the QPR (queen psychotic rage (its from a skunk anansie lyric)) series & not V4R (vouging 4 revolutionaries (a zine of my more political stuff)). It will still be called 'dance pig' - only focusing on the emotional side of dancing rather than the philosophical/politico side (yes there is a philosophical side 2 dance). Why the change? my emotions are in oversurge - there are people in my life who have lost their familiarity, friends i dont see enough of, people who have entered unexpectedly & others who exited in much the same way.

the people i met & befriend mean the most to me (and i feel that all those who i befriend share this ethic). I understand that while our desires to connect with others may preside, as strong as they may be they still fall under the sway of chance & circumstance in order to come to fruition. This is a little inner truth for me. A truth i have learnt in night clubs. I am a cluber - i love the dim lights & loud music. I love to dance. Dance encapsulates this play of connection. To say i'm a 'dance pig' is to state an allegory, the 'dance' pig is the 'connection' pig. I only step to the rhythm of our co-joined lives. In dim lights, in half heard words we often reveal our otherwise censored selves. Dance is an act of communication. Dancing includes the moments when i sit rest.

postscript
the body's movement transforms into dancing just as thread transforms into fabric. at some point fate deters us into a new understanding. be it selfish, thoughtful, spiteful, distant or loving - we now have something between us that was not there before. And it is always a 'something' that is worth experiencing. Near the edges the fabric remains freyed. it is an unfinised mass which can unravel just as easily as it can be reinforced. Remember that even a tango of love can end in divorce from the moving walls of a labrynth of bodies. So have you kept hold of the thread so that you may find your way?

little treasures

i pulled on a pair of jeans the other day. i had not worn them in ages. i found five dollars in the pocket. i found this small treasure on the same night that i lost another. my boy is free, i am alone. i have to smile for him even as i frown. my mind plays tricks. i imagine that i had lost that five dollars in those pants on the night that i met my boy. i imagine that my boy is some magic five dollar genie - and i have now used up all my wishes. The genie is gone. All i am left with is the original five dollars. Is it a consolation prize or a condolence note? It buys me a beer, and i drink it slowly.

quick fix

it is 2am. i have just come home from vortex. It is a club frequented by goths & other creatures. my flatmates boyfriend, leigh, celebrated his b.day tonight. It was 3 levels of fun, some cute boys, & one lingering kiss. But make no mistake, while it was good (a quck fix to my clubing needs) the venue did not live up 2 da musical & performative potential offered by the idea of a goth club... i must admit though, the organic reappropriation of goggles 4 boys rocked.

"Verica asked me for a cigarette to disinfect her throat. Another of her 'pearls' of medicine. Our Verica has a talent for everything, what would we do without her. Sometimes we get fed up with her 'knowledge' - museum of unconditional surrender.

I feel it wise to say that in my previous post (yes, it is a post that has its grammatical downfalls but hey, im only human) i drew heavily from dubravka ugresic (pronounced as oo-greh's-ich). She haunts me in her style, in her areas of topic & in her scencerity. After so much reading in phlosophy (marx, deluze, foucault, aristotle (yes, i have read aristotle, & yes he is boring), freud, james, simmel etc) i am so gratefull to finally read someone who spends a great deal (if not all) of her time writing talking about people. She talks of those arkward moments, of those sentimental encounters, of those events never to be replicated. She quotes authors she admires & speaks of those people in our lives who we never know, but still construct in our minds as 'people'; as someone who meant something. Ms Ugresic speaks in a way that i understand, with names of friends that remind me of my 'other' culture (eg. slavica, branko, mirjana, boža, & verica). With her I feel the croatian in me that has become so distant. she is y own little 'pearl'.

my next zine will be dance pig - a zine on culture, dance, community & transgression... mainly dance though.