Fear, lust, wonder, nausea, mystery

Suspiria

Nausea

I saw the actress colliding with her instrument panel, the steering column buckling with the weight of her heavy-breasted thorax; her slim hands, familiar from a hundred panel games, feinting with the razor-sharp louvres of the ash-tray and instrument clusters; her self-immersed face, idealized in a hundred close-ups, three-quarter profile lit by the most flattering light densities, striking the upper rim of the steering wheel; her nasal bridge crushed, upper incisors driven back through her gums into her soft palate.

Her mutilation and death became a coronation of her image at the hands of a colliding technology, a celebration of her individual limbs and facial planes, gestures and skin tones.

J.G. Ballard, Crash

When I'm With You I Have Fun

The sky outside my house on a Saturday night. A strange number just called my phone but I was too late. I pretended to be glum as a trick but then I made it real.

If your number begins 351, call me.

Birthday Treaties

It was my birthday and my friend David made me a gift that was really great. I made myself breakfast one morning and listened to the CD of short stories he recorded for me. I listened to it four times today.

My favourite story is I Am Unemployed by Tao Lin, but I like them all. I Am Unemployed makes me imagine I am standing on a street in New York, or maybe in Philadelphia (although I don't know what Philadelphia would be like, so I don't know why I think of it), and Betrayed Kingdom makes me think that sometimes I drink too much and am too flirtacious and sometimes people might get tired of me being like that. David's voice is amazingly rich and lovely, and it was nice to hear it and imagine him reading and what he looks like when he speaks.

Thank you David x

I also got some other nice things.

The back of the tapestry below is covered in stickers and doodles; one of Orlando Bloom, and 'Courtney''s signature, surrounded by stars. Twelve year olds are funny and own funny things and I like owning Courtney's old frame, even though she was a terrible speller and Orlando Bloom is not that cool.

My birthday last year was horrid, and this one was good, but the day after your birthday is always weird.

Fan

I love Joy Division. It is somewhat embarrassing to admit that when I bought Unknown Pleasures as a fifteen year old, it was because I loved Interpol and kept hearing that they sounded 'a lot like Joy Division'. Oh, the shame.
Unknown Pleasures is my favourite album. I used to play it in my bedroom and lie in the dark and 'feel'. Track 4, Insight, is particularly good for this since it is the aural equivalent of a crushed windpipe and cement-filled chest. The laserbeam noises are also good. I mostly am an emotionless automaton these days, but Joy Division takes me back to a time when this wasn't the case, and I would listen and weep for the tragedy and beauty of it all. WEEP.
Some people say that Closer is the better album, but my first and true love will always be
for Unknown Pleasures. Emotional ties that can't be broke. My admiration for Ian Curtis has diminished somewhat since reading Touching from a Distance, because it sounds like he was a controlling misogynist, which is unfortunate.

My Own Awkward Family Photo (dot com)

Galactic fantasies

Be my starry girl, sparkle and murmur at me with all your talent, so demure. Kiss me with your glitter mouth, baby.

Happy Birthday

David Klein ca.2010

Happy Birthday David! I intended to send you a card in the post, but with the earthquake and all that was happening, I forgot, I'm sorry. I'm not even sure the postal service is totally functional. I haven't known you very long but I'm so glad we met. You are one of the kindest, most amazing, and refreshing (is that a weird adjective to choose?) people I know. You see the world and experience life with such joy and emotion, and I admire you hugely. I hope you had a beautiful day x

IT'S JUST WINTER

Too much butter = self pity

I used to feel glad that the process of making friends at school was behind me. I thought that leaving school would mean only making friends with people I really had a connection with, and avoiding all those acquaintances I didn't really care for. I didn't realise that school friendships are easy because you see each other all the time and you know that arrangement will continue for awhile. I guess I didn't consider how much harder it would be to make friends 'in the real world', or that from now on everyone I meet will probably only have a semi-permanent place in my life. I know that you don't forget your friends, even when they/you aren't together anymore, I just didn't expect people to stop caring so soon.
I think about my friends so often, and people who probably don't think I think about them, and they don't realise how much I love them, because usually the "Oh my god, I just love you so much, I mean, I really LOVE YOU" conversation occurs after several drinks. But I am sincere. I can tell I'm becoming an "old friend" to a lot of people though a.k.a no longer relevant or adored.

*insert self-deprecating comment here*

I have nothing. Except awkward emotionality. I cried in the toilet earlier because my relatives left my brother's birthday dinner without staying to eat the cake that I spent all day baking, layering, smothering in ganache and decorating with violets. I mean, come on.
I blame Christchurch, it makes me volatile. Maybe it's the changing seasons or the northerly winds or something. Yeah, I bet that's it.

Conversations with my father.

I don't know how or when it happened, but at some point this year I've become terribly, terribly boring. It's only just past seven and I'm in slippers and a fluffy robe. Why did this happen to me? Eat, read, study, eat, internet, eat, internet, (robe) sleep. "Partying", something I've heard others mention, is not a concept I'm familiar with. So, if you know me, a warning: probably let me go as a friend. All I talk about these days is new ways of making good pizza dough, how the weather is too shitty to allow clothes to dry and so forth. GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN. My current state makes me fondly yearn for being sixteen, when drinking was exciting and going to an all-ages gig at Creation on a Friday night was likely to be the highlight of the month. And being sixteen was fucking dire: I was a greasy-haired, self loathing bastard. Routine, that's my problem. Someone put an end to this. Buy me a ticket to Spain. Make me join the Exclusive Bretheren. ANYTHING.

berlin

christchurch

auckland

U.S

Fear

For the past few years I have spent a great deal of time terrified. I'm so preoccupied with being healthy and warding off illness that I am constantly aware of tiny, infinitesimal things about my body and convince myself that they are symptomatic of some terrible illness. Every day I feel a pang or see a spot in my vision and I get scared and think about dying and wonder why I just can't be healthy. Nevermind that there may not be anything really wrong with me yet (wisdom teeth and swollen lymphnodes *fingers crossed* aside), I feel sure there either is or will be. By thinking about morbidity endlessly, I worry I will imagine cancers, growths and swellings into being. I even feel like putting this into writing could be tempting fate, but it can't be worse than saying it to myself over and over. I know everyone gets ill and eventually gets sick very badly. It frightens me that it will happen before a fair and appropriate time. Never would be good, but 70 or whatever is decent.
Far, far too much of my mind is wasted either thinking about food and how I need to eat less of it, or by constant thoughts of death; black tumours clustering in my breasts, heart palpitations and muscle spasms, aching tissue, restricted blood flow, insistent pain, decay and growth.
It is tedious and tiresome and sickening and there are so many things I would rather think about, but I feel as though my brain is stuck on repeat.

My House

Gender, Work and Consumer Culture

To my delight, one of my papers, GEND306: Gender, Work and Consumer Culture, awards 25% of its mark based on a 'research journal'. This journal is, for all intents and purposes, really just a glorified scrapbook, in which I can gather any article, picture, anecdote, advertisement or whatever pertaining to gender, work or consumer culture, and can record my passing thoughts on labour, ''the" "patriarchy" and so forth. It is going to be GREAT. Seeing as pretty much everything ever in the world pertains to one of these things, I shall have to be rather selective about what to put in my journal. My artistic skills are somewhat lacking unfortunately, so I'll probably have to resort to Google Images (trademark) searches of "briefcase" "woman and vacuum cleaner" et cetera, et cetera, to bulk out the book.
If anyone comes across anything at all that I could include in my log, please send it my way.
Since I have become more actively attuned to issues of gendered labour and consumption for the purposes of scrapbooking (for about two weeks), so many things have popped up, holding signs with ''RELEVANT! RELEVANT!" all over them.
Including:

MAC and Rodarte releasing a clothing and make-up line inspired by the maquilladora workers in Juarez, Mexico. Lipsticks with names like "nightwalker" and "factory", eyeshadow called "bordertown". Tasteful. Conveniently, today I saw a (rather dated) documentary on women in Juarez, called Performing the Border. The complete absence of rights for factory workers and the tales of murder, dismemberment and rape rather renewed my desire to never buy first-hand clothing. But if not clothes, why make up? I still spend my money on extremely superfluous things, though not to the extent of some people I know ($400 coat, anyone?). I suppose something is better than nothing though. I have to reassure myself somehow.

When I think about family dinners and gatherings, the various Christmases and Easters of my childhood, the one detail I always recall is how, having eaten, the women at the table get up first, followed more hesitantly by the girls, and begin to clear and wash dishes, while the men and boys remain seated and think nothing of it.
Reminds me of this:

I help clear and offer to wash up out of politeness, but it was certainly also a compulsory and obviously gendered practice in my home. I wonder if my uncle or cousins or brother ever felt guilty or inclined to get up also. Most nights after dinner I recall being made to serve fruit or dessert to my father and (younger) brother, and fetching napkins to spread over their knees like I was their fucking servant. A large part of this kind of activity can be blamed on my father's misogynistic Italian upbringing, of course. But I know that this Christmas, it will still be my mother and I who clear the table and bring out the pudding. At least I eventually got old enough to tell little bro and dad to fucking get their own damn napkins, thanks.

In better news, I found a new blog: http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/

cigarette packaging

http://swallowonmyneck.tumblr.com/

Sunday

This is surely the worst day of the week. Grocery shopping - a trek that takes hours. A hangover, feeling shaky, room messed up from the previous night. Blankets scattered, cups rolled under beds, lipstick flaking on the corners of my mouth. I drink two plungers of coffee and read two newspapers. Parties are never as fun as they should be and I always want to see people I don't see. I never fail to succumb to this gloom, damn you, sundays.
There is a certain amount of enjoyment to be had, sure, then you feel the need to listen to melancholic music and blog.
anti-climax anti-climax

Silent Running (1971)

When Jezebel and Feministing Aren't Enough

Returning to a topic previously mentioned, I express gratitude to my friend Sam for pointing me to this website: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

Plenty to browse here. Great for distracting oneself from the rising sense of despair brought on by thoughts of another semester. ALREADY. HAVE TO GET UP FOR ONE CLASS AT 2PM TOMORROW FML.

Reasons I Like This City - II