i know i'll have a good life if things go to plan. i know that i'll finish my dissertation and graduate, and get a position as a research assistant. i know that there is a trajectory and i'll follow it to plan. i'll maybe move to melbourne, that's what you do. try save money, drink and take photos of unfamiliar buildings. i'll go travelling and have my overseas adventure. i'll update my facebook and my tumblr and my blog from foreign airports and these are the best years of your life. i'll do my masters and eventually i'll get a PHD. i'll start as a tutor and some university will hire me and my career in academia will go just as it is supposed to. i'll travel some more, get a house that has polished wood floors. my fridge will have things like pesto and halloumi in it, if i haven't gone vegan by then. two kinds of mustard, fresh herb garden and a few bottles of wine that cost more than twenty dollars. i'll have some lovers and we'll have profound experiences and they'll leave and someone else will come. i'll have a baby or she will, we'll give it some pseudo-European middle-class name like Ava, Simone or Luca, and we'll struggle to maintain a work/life balance. i'll read and write about class war and gender inequality and racial discord and i'll be worried about climate change and i'll feel guilty for my bourgeois life but i'll probably enjoy it.
i think i am looking forward to this, or maybe i feel unaffected. maybe i feel lucky. i know that what i feel is scared because i have always been scared about getting sick, and no one in their twenties gets cancer but some people do and i am terrified that it will be me and i'm just waiting for the news that will shatter everything

hating men is my reason for breathing, obvs

i go to the doctor because i feel like i haven't heard enough rape myth today

i go to the doctor so i can have sex and not get pregnant, because guys hate condoms and i'm the one that would have to get that lil' cell cluster sucked out of me

i talk about rape culture on facebook, because i want some dude to mansplain what equality means to me and tell me 'what about all the nice guys out there?'

here is a PSA from me to MEN: i'm sorry to all the nice guys out there who are so oppressed by women because they don't do anything, they're just "nice guys"!

i'm sorry life is so hard for you and it is so unfair for you that i feel angry about patriarchy

what even is patriarchy omg lol

sometimes i feel like i should curtail my anger and not say things like 'rape culture' and 'perpetuates patriarchy' because maybe it will alienate you

but then i think fuck that, it's not my job to be your easy introduction to GEND101

and i'm sick of being around people who belittle me, and feminism and queer politics, and etc,because it is everything to me, and i just.don't.need to have people like you in my life.

xoxo

Crying isn't cute

think i am losing it a bit. i'm so sick of being constantly broke and constantly borrowing money and my brain has decided to wipe itself clean and this is the worst possible time for this to happen / i can't tell if it's a coincidence or a subconscious self-sabotage but whatever it is it's doing a good job of ruining the most important year of my life so far. i can't concentrate on anything, all i can do is sleep and be tired and complain and it's so boring / and i can see how boring and tedious and not fun i am to be around soz dudes i know crying isn't cute

Chasing Ice

Just saw a documentary about photographer James Balog's quest to capture the melting of glacial ice in the Northern Hemisphere. It's called Chasing Ice. It was crazy. World is beautiful. Climate change is scary. Life is terrifying. Horrifying. Miracle.

I do forget that we're just another organism living on a planet in the universe. Nature is everything, freak out!

Balog did a TED talk about his project, you can watch it here: James Balog - TIme Lapse Proof of Extreme Ice Loss

Marina Abramovic

On Thursday I went to see a documentary called Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. It was the film I'd been looking forward to the most, and I found it a little underwhelming. Too high expectations I guess. Marina Abramovic is an incredible person and artist, and listening to her talk and just watching her face was great. The film focused mostly on her work The Artist is Present and therein lies my disappointment I think. I would love to have seen it for myself at MOMA, sure, but there are only so many montages of people crying and gallery-goers filmed with time-lapse that you can handle. I think the film would have really benefited from a more rigorous edit. I did enjoy it, but I wish it had delved more into the politics of performance art, and spent more time looking at other pieces in Marina's vast body of work. Her interactions with Ulay were pretty cute though.

How Far Is Heaven

Tonight I saw the New Zealand film/doco How Far Is Heaven. The film is set in the town of Jerusalem, near Whanganui. The Sisters of Compassion convent was established there over a hundred years ago and three Pakeha nuns still live there today. The film explores their relevance to the community, and follows a number of children as they live through a summer, autumn, winter and spring in this tiny place. It was a really beautiful, observational film that hinted at the wider socio-economic problems that play out in the microcosm that is Jerusalem, but didn't really delve into darker subject matter. The children in this film are absolutely incredible, I think the filmmakers must feel so lucky to have stumbled across them, real good fortune eh. Damien, an insane little dude, is hilarious, Chevy is beautiful and intriguing, and DJ (pictured) is so good, can't believe he isn't an actor. To have such camera presence and openness and the most expressive face... it amazes me how much the characters opened up to the camera. I guess the fact that they had a year to get used to it helps. After the film, the filmmakers Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith were there to answer our questions, omg. I WISH I could be at the Wellington screening though. Anyone in Wellington, if tickets haven't sold out, you should go on Saturday night. Many of the characters are coming to Wellington for it, you can film-geek all over them.

Really made me feel that NZ is a land of paradoxes/extremes. Jerusalem is a paradise, but you also wonder where these kids will be in ten years. Domestic violence/unemployment/drug abuse/gang membership/native forest/horse-riding/river-swimming/karakia/piano lessons/taniwha

In Darkness

I just saw Agnieszka Holland's film In Darkness, which is based on the true story of Leopold Socha, a Polish man who helped a group of Jews hide in the sewers beneath Lvov for fourteen months. Films about the Holocaust aren't usually my first choice, but I'm ushering at the film festival this year and I don't get a choice about what to see. That is great, because I wouldn't have decided to buy a ticket to In Darkness and it was incredible. Horrifying and  incredible. I was sitting so tense in my seat, and when the credits rolled I cried like a baby. You think you've seen one Holocaust film and you know what they're like; you know they will be awful and you'll think 'how could humankind watch this happen', but I think you can never be reminded enough of how fucking horrific it was. I can't believe it happened at all, I can't believe it happened so recently, I can't believe this story is true and those people are REAL. I could not be a film reviewer because I don't know what to say about it except aaaaaahh. What is wrong with humanity? Actually, fuck. 

this is what you think about me / boys can be sensitive too, see?

"You kiss a lot of people."

-You make me nervous
-I thought you'd been with more people?
-You talk about sex a lot
"I don't believe in wanting something for so long and not getting it"
-Don't talk like that
-You can't just assume things
I believe in romance / Sex is sacred / Love is profound
Did you kiss him too?
Oh.
You touched me and I couldn't help it, I wasn't thinking straight. This should never have happened. This is selfish and now I'm frustrated, oh I feel so bad
(why are you such a slut?)
hey, you can control yourself and i can get frustrated too and i'm sorry if i hurt your feelings and i'm sorry if you think your life is a french novel and you believe in 'one true love' but i think you like the drama and i think that what you think about me is
(______)

Moonrise Kingdom

The first film I saw at the film festival was Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson. This is my review: Moonrise Kingdom was okay. This is actually maybe unfair, but all my friends liked it so much and it has been hyped up a lot, so I feel like I have to think differently to them. If everyone enjoys something I want to look for reasons why it sucks. I don't know why this is, personality defect? That aside, Moonrise Kingdom was a nice film. It was what you expect of a Wes Anderson film. It was pretty to look at, Bill Murray was an amusing curmudgeon, it was "whimsical".

I guess I'm just not that 'into' whimsy. The kid actors were particularly good, however. Edward Norton was great and looked a bit like a sad dog. I love people who look like that. My favourite bit was probably when it the camera did a close-up on Suzy standing on the beach and it looked real Goddardian or something. I liked when Suzy hinted at being troubled and I thought the film would have been better if she was into something more interesting than fantasy novels; like burning herself with cigarettes or something!

I was talking to my favourite lecturer who I have an academic crush on and who I might try sleep with even though he is married because I want to know if I could be attracted to a 40/50 year old bod, and he said that he thought the way Anderson dealt with (or didn't deal with) the issue of children's sexuality detracted from the film. One film that does address children's sexuality well is Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse. It's about a twelve year-old girl who is teased for being ugly a lot; people at school call her 'dog face'.

 Her little sister is perfect and beautiful, and her older brother is a dweeb. Her life kind of sucks. This film really encapsulated how frustrating and rage-inducing being a kid can be. As I watched it I remembered all these things about childhood that I don't normally think about. How unfair life seems. How mean your parents can be. How much of a drag school is. Wait, I think about those things all the time. I still feel like that. Man everything sucks! Sometimes you do want to hit your siblings with a hammer! If you want to see a film that recalls a sense of childhood and what it feels like to be a kid, forget Anderson and watch Welcome to the Dollhouse.

I have discovered that the following course of action is pretty good for relieving stress:

1. listen to Tool
2. not go to university until 4:30pm and eat a really good salad you have made
3. eat pizza (while crying)
4. read the Roswell High books by Melinda Metz
5. write angry poems about your friends to include in my upcoming zine. why luv when u can h8?

actually, now i feel kind of upset that, in a moment of stupidity, i gave away all my Roswell books and only have two that elsie found at a market for me. feel free to scour your local bookstores on my behalf.

I went to the doctor this morning with my usual laundry list of ailments that I save up so that I don't have to spend $6.50 that often. She told me that I should read Dinah Bradley's 'Hyperventilation Syndrome: a Handbook for Bad Breathers'. She asked me if I was stressed. I said everyone is stressed. She said 'are you tired?' I said everyone is tired. She told me I should find better ways of dealing with stress. As soon as I left I felt a million times more stressed and upset and my legs went numb and tingly. How do you deal with stress? This is an actual question. Drinking is not the answer I am looking for. I want to go for a swim but I have no money. I want to go for a run but that is a lie. I want to be alone in a nice house but I am never alone and my house isn't nice. I'm sitting in the Women's Room at university and I just ate a whole packet curry, and paneer really does not seem like the kind of food that has a long shelf life and can be eaten out of a cardboard box for $2.99. Oh my god I am a Bridget Jones-esque caricature of white Western womanhood. Where is my Eat Pray Love?

internet nite owl

you think people who stay up til dawn do it because they're "artists" or they are depressed types and staying up all night seems romantic in some way, and i know that people stay up all night doing things like writing or reading or drawing, because i'm friends with people like that, but i think i'm doing it wrong because / i stay up til dawn so that i have an excuse for sleeping all day tomorrow and not doing things i need to because i wouldn't do them anyway and i will sleep til one anyway but 'maybe' i'll get something done tonight, if i just stay up. but all that happens is you get a back ache from slouching on the couch and clinging to your laptop like it's your best friend. and you say to yourself, 'oh I'll watch a Wes Anderson film' and I'll annotate that article but actually you refresh facebook every two minutes and watch criminal minds-esque repeats on tv and you get really hungry / but you shouldn't eat late at night and you shouldn't eat any more because you always eat too much,\ and you know you can't say anything because it's not like anyone's forcing you to do this and you write a blog post about it because you have nothing nothing nothing interesting to say  //
and always you've been scared that people will find out how not interesting you are, might as well make it apparent to anyone who still has illusions about you

bleak as / lie in bed four hours after waking up feeling like you swallowed a sock / and your mouth is hot / and you might get suffocated by the pile of shit in your bed/table: four books, i'll read none, paper to write letters to friends you neglect, notebook you keep to remember your life but you don't remember and you feel too ashamed to write anything true / clammy hands and five years of mascara never washed off coats your eyeballs like cataracts

FEEL LIKE IAN CURTIS

i think i drink too much / too much waking up depressed

get real hungover these dayz (age) / can't fall asleep if i'm drunk? what's with that

~~~~ i think i am enjoying chch for the first time in ever though ~~~~
went to a gig at a house last night, bands ruled esp. Winter, had a gr8 chat with Simon, got to look at those amazing Hope family cheekbones from afar <3 <3 <3 always look on the bright side

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

passover

i forgot what i wanted to write. i thought that if i opened up a page, stuff would come out. just got back to christchurch from sydney a few hours ago. didn't die in plane crash, didn't have an aneurysm, didn't bleed from anywhere. all in all, a success. sucked saying goodbye to mum. didn't cry. tears in eyes, didn't roll down cheek. hate that. happened also in melbourne, while watching This Is England 88 with Dan. we both cried at the two same bits. so in synch. n'synch. i love daniel. i would have no friends if it weren't for him. NYE 2008 4EVA. where were YOU?? nah, probably would have met everyone eventually. christchurch is small. gbm. st albans. "community". anyway, mum. i was really used to not seeing her, but now i feel like i don't know how i manage to not see her for ages. probably won't see her until december, if she flies back for my graduation. i guess that time will go fast, but right now it sucks. at the airport duty free lounge i sprayed several cardboard samples with fragrances my friends wear. so creepy. endearing? creepy. i hope that one day, in twenty years, someone smells a stranger walk by wearing dolce and gabbana, 'the one' (for men) and think, "oh Daniela!" yearn for me, dix. like that time i though josh was in the supermarket before i remembered that other people can buy '1 million', but for a second my brain forgot he lives in london.
it's weird that i can be in one country and then three hours later be back in this place and it feels like i've never been anywhere else. the magic of flight. routine takes hold pretty quickly, maybe that's a good thing. kind of looking forward to getting back to dunedin, kind of not. everywhere becomes a cave eventually.

australia ruled. got to have coffee and weird fake meat burgers with David, saw Rob, stayed with J-ho, and spent a lot of time with dan and jules and will and hannah and brit. melbourne is way flatter than i thought it was. last time i went to sydney i was fifteen and i thought it had a soulless vibe. i also was really into placebo and fluorescent plastic jewellery though, so dunno how valid fifteen-year-old-me's opinions were. got really good vibes this time. so many babes and bookstores. gelato everywhere. skyscrapers and glass and metal and stone and brick piled on top of each other = good. don't think i'll ever make it as a travel writer huh. too much in my head. listening to glass vaults and fleetwood mac. fleetwood mac is sad, right? a lot of times, i say a song is really sad and no one else thinks it is. what makes a song sad? lyrics? melody? biographical details i reckon. fleetwood mac is sad because you know they were all wrapped up in a torrid love/rejection/regret/pain thing. nirvana is sad, obviously. glass vaults is atmospheric and sounds like a big empty space and experiences that you can't go back to. fever ray is sad because i listened to it having sex then fighting and walking in the rain, now it is "so profound". kurt vile is sad because it's daniel's room and the airport bus that you sit on for ages by yourself after saying goodbye to people you adore and get on so well with and never live in the same city as.
i have to pee but i don't want to get up so i'm going to go to sleep before i have to.

2 sad 2 blog?

what is up with everyone being so depressed and stuff? i mean duh life sucks, but it seems like everyone i know has issues with anxiety etc and what is up with that? are middle-class hipsters more prone to mental illness that other peepz or does everyone in the world feel super miserable most of the time? i really wanna know, sociologists whats up?
Is it NZ? Is it coming of age in a time of economic uncertainty in a world threatened by climate change/iran/whatevz? Is life just a really hard thing?

man it sux

This is the end

Eating a whole box of chocolate covered macadamias while looking at photos of girls on facebook who are prettier than me
#bleak

full moon emo

chch is a nuclear wasteland sovietcore post apocalyptic shit hole /
nature makes shit look pretty fukd pretty quickly
is spatial brain fuzz a thing?
this city makes me feel so weird like i don't know what i'm normally like
terminal illness parental death brain creeps uhhhh
fuck this
h8 u chch