Post-Celebration

So it seems that we are nearly half-way through 2015.
And what a strange year it has been, and will still shape up to be.


As usual, I feel like blogging when I need to figure shit out... And this has been prompted by my most recent trip away. I went to Tassie for the DARK MOFO festival put on my MONA in Hobart. It was... amazing. So much art, and food, and drink.

There were fires, and warm drinks, and fascinating art. What more could you want, really?

And then I come back here and spend my time at the same desk I've been sitting at for two years and wonder what I'm doing... Of course, I know what I'm doing: I'm earning money. Because without money I'm fucked.

But I'm starting to hope I might be able to find a way to make money that feels less pointless and wasteful. Because I do feel wasted. I'm a clever chicken, so I'm told. I have so much more to give than what I'm doing at the moment.


But how to take that risk? How to push? How to not be scared shitless of the down-side of risk... You know, the chance that I'll end up with no job, no money, and no security. I can't go there. I've seen my parents struggle there, and I don't want to do it.


So for now - I'm doing what I usually do at this point: I'm studying again (this time a combination of useful things and fun things - business and art), I'm sketching and painting to the point that I don't know what to do with the results, and I'm googling non-stop.

What exhibitions could I participate in? What art prizes could I enter? What other pathways are there out there? Where could we move to? What else could I do?


And that's where I am at the moment! Waiting for half my friends to leave (lots of people with big plans afoot), waiting to see if this job will offer me more (or if I could push for more), working on some study, and going crazy with the art.

There you go - the traditional "what am I doing with my life?!?!?!" blog: the foundation of my writing, it seems.

How I Am Not My Mother, Emily O'Neill

To be only bone. To be thin
chrome handle bars on a quiet bicycle.
Small & held like a pebble
underneath my tongue, assassin
of thirst. She used to run, before
all of the children. She used to be
knife fine. I saw a picture
of her glowing frown, her hips
with their ashtray curves. Muse
at dock’s end, endless black olive hair.
That’s what they called her:
Olive Oil. Angular, and animated.
I tore my voice off trying
to be uncanny, porcelain.
I want to be the same ghost.
I jog around the block,
a gasping hole in my sail.
Force my feet into tiny
wooden shoes and bleed.
Hope to become a lens
flare. A stoic.
Like her.

My First Lover Speaks to Me as I Sleep With Her, Raven Jackson (PANK magazine)

This is what it feels like to split the shell of a woman.

Shards of her everywhere. Animal light spread across

the walls. For a second, I feel like a boy entering
a woman for the first time. My skin shivering as if pulled

from the banks of a river. Clothes shapeless on the floor. When she moves
beneath me, I wonder how someone could enter her like a hook

thick as ropes. Tear her into two. And he comes to me as if I’ve closed my eyes.
The braided scar above his lip. The clench

of teeth on my ear. Like this, he says, showing me how to peel her back
like husks. Like this.

*****

Holy shit.

So much amazing.

Sometimes I go weeks without looking at much poetry. Some still filters in, thanks to some excellent poetry bloggers on tumblr (for example lifeinpoetry) and some poets, journals and magazines that I follow on facebook (for example Sam Sax, Australian Poetry). And PANK... when I remember to check it. But man, when I do...

Poems like the one above make me exhale audibly... make me throw my head back and say "fuck", or similar. 

They seem tangible, and I will be thinking about this poem for a long time. 

Audre Lorde, from “125th Street and Abomey,” The Black Unicorn: Poems

mother, illuminate my offering
of old victories
over men over women over my selves
who has never before dared
to whistle into the night
take my fear of being alone
like my warrior sisters
who rode in defense of your queendom
disguised and apart
give me the woman strength
of tongue in this cold season.

We Were Liars

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can't decide how I really feel about this book... which is probably why it has taken me so long to write this review. I did like it. It was a great YA novel, which didn't focus solely on the old "coming of age fall in love" tropes that get done to death in this (and every) genre.

There is foreboding, there is angst, there is revelation that spins your view of the narrative and the narrator again and again. You are reminded of your privilege. You are reminded of others' privilege.

But there was something about this book, despite everything I like about it, that made it drag. I struggled to not skip ahead because there is SO. MUCH. FOREBODING. That I found myself rolling my eyes and going "yes I get it - something is going to happen / has happened".

I didn't expect what happened though, which was nice. And in the end I was glad I persisted. I need more books in my life where the main conflict does not revolve around romantic interests (though there is some believable teen romance going on here too), and while I wish I could love this book more, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be counted in the list.

In the end I probably wouldn't recommend this as a "must read!!!" but if someone was interested in reading it, I'd encourage them to give it a go. And not to read spoilers... because then the pay off of all that foreboding would be pretty disappointing.

View all my reviews

We're All Terminal - Kristina Hayes

I’m carrying a pile of salt under my tongue,
collect bruises in my sleep. In the morning
we patiently make breakfast together, 
laugh into our orange juice and later,
driving until the sky turns slate. I know 
that I’m getting even harder to love. 
Your name is every billboard in this city.
You are in the soft tendons of my knees.
I am in a thrift store and everything is us.
The TV spits out nothing but bad news, 
commercials for laser hair removal 
and vacuums. Smoking my first cigarette 
feels a lot like swimming without 
any clothing on. I wanted to text you this, 
but your number is lost somewhere 
in Brooklyn. When I saw you for the first time
after months of nothing, I couldn’t stop
looking at you, so I didn’t look at you at all.
Even when you love the boy you can't 
scrub him off of you. Even when you love 
the boy your heart demands to be a fist.

Sexual Permissiveness Episode 1: Tinder & Dating

I've been thinking a lot about dating, and sexual permissiveness, mostly as result of being friends with several women who have been using the dating/hook-up app Tinder.

I have found myself profoundly uncomfortable watching one of my friends in particular, as she goes through the suggested profiles of men, deciding against them in less than half a second. I laughed in shock as she went through hundreds of profiles so quickly, instantly dismissing so many men based solely on the impression given by one picture.

I asked "What if you would be perfectly matched with a man who wasn't Cleo-model good-looking, and you dismissed him because his nose is too big, or his eyebrows are too big?" And I can't remember her response precisely, but I got the feeling that she was comfortable in using Tinder in a very superficial manner.

Another friend of mine who dates men and women (I won't identify her as bisexual or pansexual or any other term because I've never asked which label she identifies as) is less instant in her use of the app, but the approach is a slightly more considered version of the same.

I suppose I'm being rather judgemental of my friends, who are using an app in the way it was intended to be used. This isn't a deep and meaningful consideration of who people are at their core... this is an app that is largely used for quick hook-ups. So of course, in a society that correlate looks and sex so highly, judgements based solely on appearances for this purpose should be expected.

Yet I feel somewhat disappointed. Not necessarily by my friends, but by the way this type of thing is so enthusiastically embraced, when I (perhaps naively) thought that "modern" people were more open to the idea that people should be valued for more than their bodies as objects of desire.

I suppose some of that is wrapped up in my friends, and the way I probably project my own values on to them; assuming that because I love these people, and I value these ideas, and therefore these beloved people must also value these ideas because how could I love people with contrary values? And I'll take that, and sit on that, and hope that I can accept that my friends for precisely who they are, and not what I see of myself in them.

As an avid reader/academic, I am also drawn to think about Tinder, and the modern dating world, through the lens of an anthropologist, and a feminist. I can't help but draw connections between the way in which Tinder is used and embraced, and the way in which we in modern Australian society view women, romantic and/or sexual relationships, bodies, sexuality and youth.

I also feel that the very quick fire methods used to click yes or no to the hundreds of produced profiles, might be an interesting way to reveal subconscious bias within users - if you are instantly saying yes or no to someone based only on their looks, then surely patterns must emerge that would shape an idea of what an individual looks for in an attractive partner.

I wonder what anthropologists/sociologists/feminists think about this phenomenon? And I wonder what kind of impact this app (and apps like it) has within societies that are different in terms of objectifying sexual bodies?

I am trying not to judge this as either a good or a bad thing, though I can't help but bring my own values to the table. I feel as though it is damaging to view people as objects, and to dismiss people based solely on a .5 second impression of their face, digitally represented. I feel that people are more than their faces, and their bodies, and while physical attraction is valued in romantic and sexual relationships, I thought that we had accepted as a society, that fulfilling relationships rely on non-physical elements of a person.

I do understand that the point, for a lot of people, of an app such as Tinder is probably not to find a lasting connection with someone with whom you could build and blend a life. But at the same time the idea remains for people that relationships build from casual, to dating, to serious, to committed, and I know of several people who bemoan the fact that casual relationships found through Tinder or similar, do not progress along those expectations.

There is a lot to think about here, and naturally a lot of this thinking is underdeveloped... and has sparked of some tangential thoughts which I'm going to list here, so I can refer back, and write another post along these lines later.



- policing women (women policing women) - sexuality, appearance, behaviour
- classist and racist connotations of slut-shaming terminology
- historical use of words that shame women who appear to be or are sexually permissive
- gendered assumptions of behaviour
- gendered conclusions of bio-behavioural analysis (men are active, women are passive) and the way these feed into social constructs (and have fed into the conclusions of the researchers)

- the line between critiquing sexual behaviour, and labelling someone a slut just for existing as a woman in a public sphere

- men as sluts: what are the negative terms that men fear being labelled in the dating/sexual realm?

- women in art as subject : "the female nude"
- 'classy' sexuality
- bogan sexuality vs. upper class sexuality