new beginnings...

and so it is, just, like you said it would be...

a new beginning. i suppose when i left i expected so much change in myself - i guess i also expected the world to wait for me. and so the obvious fact that you would - and have - changed, comes to me as a shock. its a feeling i guess parents have when they realise their children are all grown up and don't need looking after any more.

the fact that you can grow, and in fact, prosper, without your life running intertwined with mine is a foreign concept to me. i guess i've been so caught up in my own self-worth and growth that i haven't begun to deal with you yet. or at least, what you have become. it was good to see you tonight. you asked me what i was feeling. i couldn't put it into words at the time. a sense of loss, bordering on grief, for such a beautiful thing we cannot ever hope to recover. selective memories... an overpowering shock at how my feelings have changed towards you.

you were right - i hadn't dealt with them - couldn't, partially because i wasn't sure enough of myself to examine what i was, not knowing yet how i have changed to be who i am now. and partially because i couldn't define that from two thousand kilometres away.

and finally, a sense of hope. a confidence that something i had worried over so much - the possibility of a friendship with you, after the maelstrom - that this was a viable option. and i can honestly say i'm happy. its a new beginning. one i can say i'm satisfied with.

i'm proud of you. you're all grown up.

i'm glad.

for both of us.


every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end...

the end of the journey...

i cannot tell you the whole truth of this journey, for it is not for you to share. please do not judge me too harshly on what i have to tell you, for it is not all i have done, all i have lived through, and definitely only an infintesimal part of what i have learned. for that is another lesson i have learned - whilst flattery may get you 'anywhere', apparently; whilst we manipulate our position with white lies, nudges and extensions of truth, sometimes pure candidity gets you only to places you don't want to go. and thus - my journey was mine alone. the small part you played in it - this i will recount to you. and the banalities of travelling - some entertaining, some strange - these will be related, savouring the memory. but the journey itself is intimate, like lingerie, clinging, only to be seen by chosen few. for as they say, it is not the destination but the journey. and this journey is one i cannot take you on. it is mine, alone.

destination: home.

traffic.

five minutes later behind the wheel i am lost in the streaming sea of headlights, caught in the rush on the freeway, inching my way towards the bridge and home.

like half the world, twice each day i am left alone on a crowded road with my private thoughts, the modern man's equivalent of the religious experience of solitude, driving on mental autopilot, stalled lights behind me as far as i can see...

steve martin - the jury

surrounded... anonymous.

its strange how the days you feel the most alone are the days you're surrounded by people. there's probably thirty people within five metres of me. nobody knows who i am. you've got your usual fat middle aged couple; her wearing a matching nylon skirt and blouse and him in a polo with sneakers and socks halfway up his calves. the family on holidays - a snotty toddler, two annoying boys and a girl stuck in the middle looking fed up but used to it in matching bikini and pink thongs with fake flowers. the shirtless german tourist's walked away, which is a shame, replaced by a gaggle of boys ranging from ten to a tall twelve- or thirteen-year-old who slouches, trying to be invisible, but who'll be pulling more girlfriends in a few years time than the short chubby loud ones with caps and aviators ever will. ugly brits in waisted shorts and reef sandals, and victorians. they look like locals, but with big hats and industrial containers of thirty plus. sometimes they're kiwis. you can pick the lack of tan, but ou can't tell until they speak.

and then there's me. sitting at a table outside the icecream shop, just watching the world go by.

she. just me.

just another one of those days...

ever had one of those days that you wish you could erase off the planet? where you just wake up knowing, having this feeling in your gut that you've stumbled into yet another one? and yet, against your better judgement, against those gut intuitive feelings, we are determined to get out of bed and face up to the day. these are the days where you curse more than you think, where murphy's law becomes the new explanation for the physics of the universe, where we subconsciously kick our own asses and 'i told you so' comes out of the mouth of the entire human population of the planet.

sometimes i feel like god is talking to us in those few lucid moments after we wake up. and it is only the stubbornness of us that refuses to listen.

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But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
So we can both be there and we can both share the dark.
And in our honesty, together we will rise,
Out of our nightminds, and into the light
At the end of the fight...

You were blessed by a different kind of inner view: it's all magnified.
The highs would make you fly, and the lows make you want to die.
And I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standing.
So I know I know I know,
It's easier to let go...

Missy Higgins - Nightminds

this message will self destruct in...

sometimes it seems like the aim of the game is to self destruct. like the whole point of life is to cause each other as much pain and suffering as is humanly possible - only then can we become inhuman - not like everyone else. unique because eve when you think you're experiencing unbounded pleasure, it is merely an absence of pain. when you inevitably return to reality, the pain returns, and with it a harsh reminder of the naiive futility of humanity.

no matter how hard we try to avoid it, try to fotget it, it lurks - waiting for those lonely moments of lucidity until you learn to welcome it, crave it like a drug, because it reminds you of your own unavoidable mortality.

and thus we live, trying to avoid the truth, avoid the pain, yet drunken with it - our minds converting suffering to a semblance of reality, pain to life; like a moth to the flame we are addicted to our own self-inflicted painful reminder of our own ability to breathe...

a drug for the soul...

if you measure the world by what you leave behind...

today has been one of those days. you know, the kind you just want to fast forward. and when you realise you have to live through them, you just want to curl up in a ball and die for twenty-four hours. there's a quote i read yesterday:-

"Knock Hard, Life is Deaf"

strange, somehow text just jumps out of the page at you. or songs just speak to you. force you to listen whilst they ring true to your heart. makes you stop and think. i like books like that. they're the ones you keep.

there's a line in a song i'm trying to think of... but the Streets are playing. i don't like the streets. they make me feel dirty, like they're forcing me to experience something i am hitherto naiive of. or am forcing myself to ignore. even americans aren't that depressive. everyone loves them though. especially the germans, the dutch and the english. i guess that's their appeal.

i think its a powderfinger song.

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the end of something i did not want to end
beginning of hard times to come
but something that was not meant to be is done
and this is the start of what was

delusions

every little girl wants life to be a fairytale - one of those stories where they all live happily ever after. there's a defining moment you realise, though, that a fairytale ending with a white picket fence, two-point-six children and a station wagon just isn't going to happen. its like that moment where you find out that the tooth fairy is your mum. that everything you have blind faith in - that naiive, childish, honest faith - is a complete hoax. its enough to make you pack it all in. noone wants to settle for second best.

second is one step closer to last.

its enough to make you cry. when i grow up, i'm not going to to tell my children fairytales. i'll tell them the truth. not.

innocence is believing. beautiful.