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
(______)