exit wound

woollen;

2004-04-28T17:07:25Z

oh, my bedroom smells like toffee and i feel like collapsing.

scour;

2004-02-26T13:34:34Z

this would be a good place to stop, i think.

letting in the rain;

2004-02-24T19:00:21Z

good things i have done today:-

written a letter to my grandad, mainly a polemic of love and destruction on the city we adore.
bathed in lavender + cedarwood oil that shimmered sunlit sapphire in the bottle.
started writing to jennie (this is very hard).
written two poems (though one is still a germ, a seed) - this is good; this is breaking through the fog.
felt calm and true. this is important, because tomorrow will be, not difficult, but mournful.

briefly;

2004-02-23T01:19:08Z

my face hurts from laughing so much

neige;

2004-02-20T19:22:14Z

..... and outside, the silent snow

length;

2004-02-19T17:11:58Z

when the sky is still light + bright outside at ten past five pm!

"Fw: Re: your doorknobs";

2004-02-16T23:39:06Z

going through old emails from almost 2 years ago. some of the subject lines are fantastic;

"black someone has nuclearfusion" (from an anonymous boy who used to send me the most fantastically misspelt point-of-insanity rambles. i have no idea how he got that email address or why he chose to send me these emails.)

"marine alert!" (from jennie)

"because you're just as screwed up as me" (from ta)

"aaaasdfsdfsdaf" (from lara. the sole contents of this email was the word "spam" copy-pasted many times. lara was my first love, and she will be my last.)

"the wrath inducing one" (from, and i quote, "Jolie who just needed to scream at someone and you, unlike everyone else in the world, get it." there is also an email from jolie which simply reads, "GAH! GAH! GAH! GET THE FOOL WITH THE HTML AWAY FROM ME, JO!" ascii heartshapes!)

"informal mullets and dreadful fevers" (from jennie)

"an excellent menu for the party of the year" (from jennie)

"Fw: Re: your doorknobs" (from lara)

l'aimant;

2004-02-15T00:09:12Z

i feel so small sometimes, sipping on juice, barely able to eat, my skin so white with this mother-of-pearl sheen to it. my eyes are emerald, coal. and i feel so loved and cared for, and the strong ties of family again - and somehow weakened by it all, though not diminished; just overwhelmed. like i've spent so long standing in the shallows jumping waves, but here i am caught in the riptide and it's beautiful and incomprehensible.

i don't know how to handle myself. mercurial, volatile. i am not an easy person to live with, even at my calmest. today is an anniversary. i never know how to thank him enough. symbolic gifts and a tiny card. all i could write was I LOVE YOU, in huge black lettering.

all is full of love, you know? those sky photographs of mine, the deepest kind of love, that vacuum underneath your ribs drawing these huge intense cloudscapes down into you until you're swollen and alive with it all as well. envelopes from jennie, photographs of yawning oriental lilies, their perfume thick and heady. stand inside your love, nag champa, titanium exposé. cinerama. he gives me fairylights and seventies punk rock seven-inches. love is a deeper season.

i'm a tragic romantic in shades of insomnia, on a day when being worn this paper-thin is almost comfortable.

rocket;

2004-02-13T22:06:31Z

these are weeks old; i've been reluctant to post anything creative or worthwhile.

these are all unedited bar the obvious resize. things can be so beautiful.

* * * * * * *

i need to start thinking about what to exhibit. scarily, i've actually got a fairly substantial body of work now. though most of it's old enough to have become repellent to me.

i am so in love.

carpal;

2004-02-10T13:11:18Z

i have been re-offered my unconditional place to read english in manchester. i was trying to demonstrate to tim how my future is like a spread hand, forked fingers, disparate choices, possibilities. (my hands are so small, ghostlike; bones + veins.)

i could read english and then go on to teach. i could read english and stay in education, study for a master's and eventually a PhD. i could read english and feel vindicated in my desire to write for a living. or i could skip out on the whole university thing, not wishing to be caught up again in this overhyped intellectual snobbery based on Where You Go and What You Study and My First is Higher than Your First. have i wasted too much time already? i'll be twenty two this year; am i clinging to some notion that i'm still eighteen; am i regressing? am i reading too much into this, anyhow?

car crash, war still, and my own stupid dilemma.

flower;

2004-02-09T18:36:10Z

to cleanse your life takes more than time

i'm playing that it's summer, with sleepy psychedelia and incense gliding out of the open window. why is it that everything seems so overwhelmingly simple and easy when i'm sitting alone and it's evening outside [evening - think of it literally, too. the time of day that evens out the creases and the stresses; here my heart knows calm]? february light is to cruel to me; i hate this slow eking-out, these drab grey months.

i rely on summers; perhaps it's to do with that sleepy silly hippy backwater cornish town that's only half-mine if mine at all yet somehow all mine, all the same. launceston seems grimmer and greyer now, but i remember living there; barefoot nights at the castle; the smells of skunk and sunbaked grass and fresh air. you'd just sit around and watch the sun go down behind the wooded hills. {there's a song that my mother played to me last summer, performed by stan getz + astrud gilberto. quiet nights of quiet stars, quiet chords from my guitar / floating on the silence that surrounds us -- always makes me think of those hazy launceston summers growing up}

(i just had an email from izzy; exes and ohs. i might be exhibiting in an abandoned shop!)

*

{{dear you:
take what you want
take all of me }}

forget the past;

2004-02-06T12:32:51Z

today; post a letter to david; make something beautiful and honest to send to jennie (i miss her, i miss her); take deserted playground photographs; burn lots of nag champa incense and dance to this song, always, always.

(the past a distant horizon.)

head ache;

2004-02-05T21:41:44Z

(my friend david sent me a letter which read:)

"IT SCARES ME HOW YOU UNDERSTAND THINGS

and yet sometimes so .....

little"

tableaux;

2004-02-04T22:47:16Z

desperately creating and things; i ordered a lomo lc-a; i've been splodging watercolour all evening; i'm going to try and wrestle some film into the sturdy russian body of my zenit-e. distraction is the only solution.

(i'm trying to keep my head above the waterline)

anywhere but;

2004-02-04T12:07:17Z

i am thin gossamer paper. bruised.

on those images of the earth from space, storms appear as swirls, spirals; with every trace of something beautiful, that storm just beneath my ribcage swirls tighter and tighter until it knots and pulls and tears and aches.

the beautiful things make me feel the most elemental.
the beautiful things make me feel the most alone.

thin ice. the cracks are deepening.

pepper;

2004-02-02T21:04:51Z

we are. overwhelmed with past. (and yet so oblivious to it, so wrapped up, so cocooned.)

there are things that some find calming, like the sea and the sky and deep melancholy music (gorecki by lamb, say, or the moonlight sonata). i am never, ever tranquilised by these things; they evoke within me huge emotional swirls, storms; they unsettle me, they awaken me, they make me want to cry run sing scream! // rainstorms, all music. (i cannot fathom the concept of 'background music' - how can there be such a thing?) everything i have ever created has taken root in these intense, emotional reactions; everything i have ever done, all my aspirations, all are linked to this open breathing lusty swell. am i ever tranquilised? i feel as though i'm air and impulse and hypertension, the click and crackle of synapses ablaze.

-

undo;

2004-01-30T14:11:44Z

things that i like;

x; incense
x; cherry chocolate cocktails
x; singing
x; showers; feeling cleansed, pure
x; slender intricate trees
x; falling asleep in a bundle
x; locking myself away with books
x; does this train stop on merseyside?
x; afternoon rainstorms
x; text messages from my mummy
x; "curiouser and curiouser!"
x; the possibilities of never and forever
x; it's not meant to be a struggle uphill

pour;

2004-01-27T12:48:31Z

blood is thicker than water. a fuschia wool coat in preparation for subzero climate and the possibility of snow. sleep in 'til twelve. chimneystacks against clouded skies. i played our antique piano yesterday; most keys are either dead or out-of-tune; i coaxed some slow einaudi lullaby from it in deep rich tones of e and c.

perpetual;

2004-01-24T20:21:54Z

derision;

2004-01-22T22:52:10Z

further ramblings on the dire subject of Self, i'm afraid. the wise will probably skip this.

there is difficulty here amongst the rain-glossed pavement cracks. the difficulty is, knowing what i want - but in an ultimate fashion totally bypassing the short-term and all its practicalities and daily dogmatic insistences. comfort in tiny placebos; hazy summer night guitars, chamomile, vanilla + honey tea, singing, a bracelet in sultry fuschia wash. and still the hole. i make furious motions towards booking a plane ticket, right this minute, for tomorrow morning - until i am reminded that my passport has expired. and i fall back down again with an extravagant sigh, because i don't want the 9-5 and i don't want to box myself into the education system again, like straining into a corset; all this air and flesh and breath, all this expression and parts of me reined in tight, it must not be seen, it does not fit; make it fit or discard it altogether. god, i cannot do it. i want to, oh, create as and when i can; writing and song and photographs. i want somewhere quiet to live; cushions and music, grass outside and anonymity of a kind. i want to transplant myself utterly from what faces me now, whatever it is that is wringing every last drop out of me; sleep too late and wake too late, slow and sluggish and close to tears; every phrase that coalesces in my head a dead-end rather than a path to follow. i want peace. the purity of joy. of course, there is no magic wand, there is no single living person but i who can be capable of catalysing any change. you see, everybody is caught up with their own dreams and doubts and wishes. and not one person will resonate with me. (this is almost certainly the way it ought to be, but oh so alienating.)

resonate;

2004-01-20T20:18:51Z

visual communication can be tiresome when all i'm doing is communicating the same thing, circumlocution of a sort, and none of it particuarly articulate. i need a new environment. january grey is draining me the same way. i'm sallow. i want peaches. sick of my tiny frame reflected in the same smashed shop windows. the laundry bag overfloweth with lingerie and pyjamas. sick of the same tired old domesticities. i crave violins; something deep and intrinsic misses the way my fingers would move, clumsy, along the black road of the fingerboard; i miss the earthy scrape (like rust, like soil) from low Es, Fs, Gs. my mother nurtures baby orange and lemon trees in her warm kitchen. we talk reincarnation and chaos. old family photos. i inherited my great-grandmother's smallness; she looked like clara bow. twenties doll shoes and rosebud mouth; black curls. my grandfather, her son, so handsome; mediterranean, his skin , his eyes, his smile. irish slum children from liverpool. and my mother and i, in that airy victorian house with airy victorian piano; the highest duck-egg blue ceilings and antique wallpaper. the roads we travel. i want to travel. i want to transplant myself! i've been thinking about australia a lot, trams in melbourne, but mainly travelling anywhere - except that it would be too difficult to choose particular destinations. it's tillmans-esque; i cannot discriminate or prioritise. train journeys through beautiful landscape; once i was going to norwich and i wanted, on the way, to experience every place in between. ely (ancient cathedral surrounded by water!); peterborough (factories everywhere, and trading estates, but even so). i think that perhaps patriotism is a real, tangible love of ones country. i feel as though i ought to know every inch of it. the whole earth. so bored of second-hand experience. i'm complex and introvert lately. (you wouldn't like me much.)

thinking about signifiers of love. one week from tomorrow, emma will be here.

bits of wire;

2004-01-15T21:29:43Z

there is nothing like quite like rediscovering crackly taped copies of albums you thought you'd never hear again. i lost my kenickie cd to the abyss that was f's flat - and today, my mother presents me with two boxes full of tapes. hirameka hi-fi, urusei yatsura; my entire mystifying adolescence is here!!

concentrate each breath / to make sure that it's done / it's not instinctive; yessss.

snapshots;

2004-01-14T17:18:08Z

water, glass;

2004-01-14T14:38:48Z

no consequence: hangover and sinister electro; spent the morning in bed trying to ignore the dryness in my throat. empty stomach. wine at three in the afternoon, vodka at ten, baileys at eleven-thirty. outside the wind is fierce. it's a day when only toe-socks will do.

possibly maybe;

2004-01-12T17:04:24Z

it's that particular kind of twilight, now, when the sky kind of swells. perfect blue, perfect soundtrack.

feeling fragile today, too close to the surface. (feeling unattractive and glum; feeling, oh, stifled and indecisive; feeling as though people think i'm a failure - which in some ways is worse than actually being a failure, you know?) i went to hmv and saw jake + bob; last night we went to jake's house for wine and video games. he wants me to move into the spare room, and i probably will. i went to smiths and bought brown envelopes and fabulous crayola pens. i'm going to spend the rest of the evening writing letters, i think.

i crave nectarines, calm sleep, fresh mornings. a visionary beauty that i don't have to struggle for. to be babied, to be looked after. to retreat, fully, completely.

all the lights are coming on in all the houses on my street. pavement cracks, chimney stacks. who knows what's going to happen?