it was the longest night last night. that means that
today is one of hope. i sat at my kitchen table and watched this: 


and the entire day was joy, for obvious reasons. i had no choice  but to go to the west coast after work to watch the sun fall into the sea again. random boys cautioned me from climbing the fence as the cliff was clayish and slippery and the whipping wind was dauntingly cold. i leered at them and disappeared down the bank. after half an hour on the clifftop alone taking photos i was numb and hoping they didn't realize how conveniently they could have covered up raping me by pushing me off the cliff. their story of 'we told her not to climb the fence' would have stood up to lie-detectors and torture. 


i returned and we had a nice conversation actually, while cloud after cloud of birds were making their evening migration out to the island. 


one of them was british and i said people trust people with british accents.

the south island of new zealand, as seen from porirua, in the north island

By Popular Demand MORE TENETS OF HEALTHY MENTAL HEALTH

Fire, or at least, candles.

Biscuits, for dunking.

Travel eg, walking to the dairy

Astrology or Jesus, so that you have something that doesn't actually mind you blaming all the crap on it.

Entropy and mess, so that you can clean it up and feel like God.

Vaguely criminal behaviour, like breaking into hoodlums yards and planting flowers in the full moon, (because hoodlum gardens are always dark and you can't see except for astronomy)

Creatures, Especially ridiculous ones. My friend Jasmin has a chihuahua-maltese cross. Jasmin says "she is tiny and pathetic and I love her." This is true. The doglet loves me, also.
I have a dead spider in a jar, because I am science. I also have a portrait of Chopin that talks to me. Chopin had a lover who called him 'my beloved little corpse' as a term of endearment.

Melancholy music, for when you are manic, or hypomanic. Nine Inch Nails made some once they were famous and could do whatever the fuck they wanted without having to make money.

I Paid My Debt Off At The Petrol Station Today

i went to the petrol station and filled my tank, but then discovered my card was missing, so they said just pay for it tomorrow, cos i said i knew it was in my room. days later i still hadn't found it, and i went into the bank and they said, "oh call this guy, he has it", and he was a plumber working just down from my house, so i went and picked it up from him, and he said ' i picked it up in the carpark at midnight, did you get raped??" and i was like wtf no, you shouldnt ask questions you dont want to hear the answer to, and he was like you shouldnt just keep your cards in your pocket.
besides, i was trying to portray venus, who is unrapeable because she is so into everyone anyway. 

so i went back to the petrol station and bought more petrol as well, and my card declined me though it was full of money, it was full of tire marks too. i bet it fell out my pocket when i got my keys out to drive home and then i backed over it.

i went to the bank and they fixed it for me. back at the petrol station for the third time they made a big deal out of it and said i looked really stressed the last time they saw me and was i alright now. a question that threw me into incapacitating self-consciousness.

werk

i werk in the next town over, up the gorge, where everyone drives slow, and walks slow, and i am the impatient profane person from the city with pop music blasting from her car.

when i soar over the lip of the gorge in my musical vehicle, i can get life fm, and the huge flocks of gulls from the west coast dawdle in the sky over the streets.

can i sue her please for moral abuse, she hates on the revellious folly of my personal life and i have to work there.

the kids carry music around with them, they play all  my favourite pop songs, which makes it the best place to work, cos the best part of my day is driving to and from work listening to the radio. 

i stayed an hour afterwards today, as i had been writing poetry about dead tadpoles instead and lost track of time. 

Idolatry And Cake

Why is it so cold, I am supposed to look naked and greek. Go to town, buy a lot of gold, like a coat and hat, and hairspray. Three cans, and all it does is make me high, my hair is too dark. Idea!!!-paint my boots gold also, laughing and slapping the paintbrush. They are wonderfully ruined. Lots of hairspray and jewellery, it was two dollar fifty, from asia store. Paint an ankh on an earring, and fuck it up, paint the other and make it into a necklace.

Three cans of gold, and it did nothing. Though I was a toxic cloud; at least I share that in common with Venus.

Dreadocks are so masculine. They are so prophet, they are so hunter. John the Baptist must have had them I'm sure, wilderness and locusts and wild honey and dreadfulocks.

He is not even here. Probably for the best.

Greetings humans. Is your planet always this cold.

No-one noticed anything out of the ordinary. Most of them want to use telescopes, but I shall project Venus onto the wall with a pinhole camera, most artistically pure, and allows me to control the variables I care about. Besides, Larry had a pinhole camera episode the year before I left. I sat for him once, in his walled backyard, in the rain and my mancoat.

Come home, why are there humans in my house. Christians, do I have any prayer requests. Tell them stories instead, of planets and bliss, and stargazing with strange boys on dark paths on the way home. Partake of their cake and pomegranate juice, what a scriptural beverage. Pray for my soul

There is snow on the hills this morning. As if I needed anything else to induce hypomania.
Send me really depressing music, calm me down,  golden planetary raptures.

So she found free Nine Inch Nails album online for me, it is glorious acoustic misery.
Still high, I am going to write poetry all over my ruined boots with a black permanent marker and paint the other necklace into Jupiter, the large round pink pendant.
Come across the most jesus necklace ever yesterday, it is a cross made of nails. In Cosmic Corner, to the tune of trance music and incense, and buy it over a glass counter of neon body piercings and marijuana paraphenalia.
I am going to church tonight, to wear my cross and golden coat, and also for my idolatry.

The one night I had wanted to wear the least, and it was the coldest of the year. 

I'm sorry I have no photos.

languishing in front of your heaters, far too many calories, good because winter is coming.

oh a text, shall we go and meet them in town? / what you know her too? / she used to flat here! /with you? / yes! for years. / I LOVE HER

give me painkillers lets go.

it is new and the young people have not yet discovered it, it is still classy here.

i speak of my dream to make pancakes, so i can consume vast amounts of maple syrup, and you give me an unopened bottle of maple syrup because your flatmate's girlfriend keeps bringing it round to your flat and you have heaps now. and you have some in your bag, on you, at a bar, on a friday night.

i am the sober driver, i only have one cocktail, but my car is on the coast and it is raining. light plays all over the water. everything shines.

*    *    *     *

We don't have to go to that cafe. But too many favourites! We can go to them all! This one is the reincarnation of Modax in it's prime. I wanted to do a chocolate boutique crawl last year. Take me with you! I have to meet the gay boy and the muslim! She was cold and that is why they are in this stuffy large light sunny empty cafe, attached to the Wesleyan. I had never confessed that abstinence was so bad for the soul before! and it was so spontaneous. The universe breathes easier. Pancakes, a nentire bottle of maple syrup, i consume half of it, cheer me on. 

*   *   *    *

I went back after we all left, after i went home to drink water. Because the radio in my car was singing 'Come back I miss you girl". I drove back, and the radio was playing 'Turn All The Lights On" just like it was the first time I drove there tonight. And I caught him after his show, in the empty dome tidying up bits of stuff, and we talked about constellations and gravity. 

*    *    0     *

Sunday is the best day to be at the flat, because everyone goes to church, and it is empty and peaceful. Why is it always sunny on a Sunday. I am back on Cuba Street, and so are you, in a doorway! for the third time this weekend! hello, I am meeting people though, goodbye. 

*   *    *

In a cemetery waiting for  the moon to rise of course. Everyone taking photos of the moon all over the city! don't know why, even if it's bigger, it still looks the same on a photo. the beach! a communal exercise. no-one realizes that mars, saturn and venus are also spying. i tried to resolve the crescent of venus with the stolen lenses.

i have been cold for weeks now. 

spooked

because it was so sudden
without warning
the cloaked men rushing around taking all of the furnishings
and flowers and icons off the wall
folding lace cloths leaving bare wood and a red lamp spotlighting the incense smoke from the service

all to a resounding organ voluntary of dischords and fury in the dark

has been taken seriously ill and to hospital tonight

i skidded to a halt driving home past the beach
because the trees, and the sea-fountain was lit up
with the full moon
and saturn and mars
and the white cross lit on the top of mount victorious was just underneath the Southern Cross
but all too far-flung to get in one photo

even the altar photo is my friends one, i was far too stunned to take one.

there were lots of lovers on the beach tonight

A Year Ago Today (fresh off the boat)

today i bought leek plants from a supermarket because the geraniums at work are thriving after i thoughtlessly removed all of their leaves because the sermon the day before had been about pruning. but perhaps i can make things thrive after all, though i have an aversion to thriving myself, and also an aversion to doing things and an even greater aversion to achieving things, because then everything changes.

and i got home and put all the plums on to cook while i planted the leeks (the woman, she gave me plums. and shoes.) i even sort of planted them in a row so it looks like a normal garden, because usually i make a point of being haphazard.

and came back inside and the kitchen looked like a murder scene because of the boiled over juices and so i wiped it around and now the kitchen is pink.

and scraped the dirt out from under my fingernails

crikey there was so much oestrogen in that room today, the poor architect.

It is shitty weather and forecast to get worse, which is nice because it resonates with my soul and i am validated by the environment which i know is not just being condescending or commiserative, because it is dead.

i am making pumpkin and kumara soup and planting coriander in the rain and have a hot water bottle and good music but it is not working.












I lied, I am not planting coriander in the rain, but it desperately needs to be put in the garden, or just somewhere that is not the plastic bag on the lounge floor that it spilt into after i bought it in a little pot from an old lady for one dollar at the fair and threw it around with the heap of other forgotten things in my room because we had a flat inspection and i had to clean up in ten minutes.

Herds Of Ghosts

They have a short driveway pretty much directly off the motorway 10km along the way to work. Leave the friendly blue of the harbour, up the brown-and-gorse gorge, nestled in huge furrows of Wellington hills. It is a compound, all gravel and chickenwire fences, one of the two opulent overalled women watching me from behind a fence is clutching the diagonal wire grid, with raised hands, by her face. Visitors must pass through reception. Reception is a box, hello I came to pick up some organs for science, but the man is grumpy that I did not come in on Friday, like I said I would, it degraded the product. Does he mean that it was disrespectful to the animals.

She is still watching me with clutched hands. I got back on the driveway and had twenty metres to speed up to a hundred and something for the motorway.

At work they tell me to stop with the anxiety disorder already. Because they have been watching me.......

I Returned Home At Dusk

and there were planets in my backyard.

Look:


that's Venus on the left, and Jupiter above the crescent moon which the overexposure of the photograph required by the low light levels has made into a semicircle. They are the brightest planets in the sky. They are gleaming and beautiful and I am glad I am alive.

This is a ridiculously athletic city. It is perfectly acceptable to variously undertake grave distances just to see how fast it can be done, after work. I go for an innocent swim in the harbour and end up invited to partake in annual swimraces.

On the next sunny day, Stephanie is coming over and we are going to drink cold pear cider on the roof of the neighbour's garage because once I was walking down my street and a child climbed though the fence from the undergrowth and continued up the street. She had come from the shady leafy top of a concrete shed that opens onto the street below, which immediately hairpins and passes the roof of that same shed, because Wellington has wonderful atrocious topography.

I was going to practice open sea swimming today but I went down and though the sea had been calm as death yesterday, today it was....well, people were hanging onto lampposts.

Yesterday I walked underneath a bubblegum tree.

Possessions

I have just come back from a summer at home with more additions to my sentimentality collection.

Among them:

Granny's painting suitcase. It has her initials on in black vivid, which, but for the middle one, are mine too.

The 20-year old Roland keyboard, hours of childhood musical experimentation. I still subconsciously think of stringed instruments as being in the sixties (i.e., that was their code on the keyboard)

Other comforting possessions are the tambourine my aunt painted, the screeds of postcards from various friends that are collaged on my wall, jewellery made by friends, and an old learn-the-blues book of Dad's.

I still can't play the blues.