Beneath every optimism there is a cynicism lurking. I see through their system.
But still I am going back to school and I feel like a career woman. Maybe that’s because I am safe; because of the bigger city and the independence. I might invest in some capsicum spray for when I live in
I feel really good. Hope I won’t forget anything for tomorrow.
I’m back on the bus. School children. It was so easy to forget.
I am sitting in between Mr. Emo and Mr. Peer Pressure (the boy the girls at my work thought I should be going out with). Mr. Peer Pressure is in front of me and Mr. Emo at an angle to the side. The boy I had a crush on in primary school is next to me. They are playing ‘Violent Hill’ on the radio. The sun is pulsing through the dew laden trees from the frost this morning. I got up pre-dawn today. Before my mother. I felt important and self-sufficient as I got up before she did and got the fire going, boiled the jug, and got dressed all before she roused.
Most people on the bus are grumpily half asleep. The two girls behind me are talking, and a few up the front, but not many more. Mr. Emo is texting and sitting half cross-legged taking up most of the two seats.
I just accidentally touched the boy next to me and he drew his foot back six inches. Same old same old. Why am I not a touchy person? And I mean touch as in ‘feel’ not as in ‘sensitive’. People always seem to draw back from me. No-one ever hugs me. There seems to just be this massive sign around my neck declaring that I hate being touched. Like a self-important movie star or cold billionaire. I was thinking last night after watching Doctor Who, that in my fantasy, if I were ever an actor playing Rose, I would be quite a touchy-feely character, since I see the same sort of distance in the Doctor’s character and something about me would just want to bridge that. I see a lot of the practicality I thought was lacking, has been taken on by Catherine Tate, as well as a stronger will and contrariness.
I had a good chat with my one and only gal pal today. Also boring her with tales of work and my hair. I don’t look the best today. One of my instructions to myself in this morning’s phone reminder alarm was ‘Look fabulous’. I don’t think I managed that today. Thought I did enjoy the reflection of part of my right eyebrow in the sun visor while riding in the car. And when I was sitting near Mr. Emo I wondered if he cared for a girl with beautifully plucked eyebrows, but then again that wouldn’t be me either…
May I preface this next bit with – I am shocked, I am stunned, I am confounded. On the trip home, a girl that I know, a girl that I grew up with, just climbed over a seat to get away from me. She was next to the window and I took the aisle seat. She then had a whispered conversation with her friend behind me and vaulted feet first through the gap between the headrests.
I mean, shut up! I had a shower last night, my zits are clearing (just like rain showers), and I haven’t said anything to offend her.
Seriously, WHAT IS UP WITH THIS SHIT?
On my last bus after I sat next to a girl a boy to my left said to her, sort of offhand – ‘I feel really sorry for you right about now’ and jerked his head at me. Am I leper or something? It defies all logic. Almost all teenagers instinctively dislike me. I have some sort of ring of repugnance (which, by the way, is the name for the grass around excrement that cattle won’t eat).
My singing lesson on the other hand, went quite well. I finally got around to bringing in my huge lyrics folder and she got to have a good flick through and see what I was interested in. We did three whole pages of scales, one was accidentally a stage up, but I managed perfectly well. We sung a bit of a song and it was a general success. I haven’t really got any better or worse and may have even improved my lower range.
Conversely I have a lot to vent about my mother. I don’t know whether I will or should publish this, I’m not even sure that the stuff that I said about my grandmother was wise, true, but maybe unwise. Although the odds of someone my grandmother knows finding my blog… I mean think about it. But I really feel that this bullshit is stopping up my creative energies at the moment, and if blogging about it in as much of a vague tactful fashion as possible is going to help me, then I’ll try it. I know some of it is teenage; more to do with where I am in life than who I really am and what do. But some of it is so adult and built on such logic, that it unnerves me. We have such different interests as people; our values especially. Maybe that was an unconscious contrary choice I made, or just the way it was meant to be. All I know is the way I feel, I have no-one to talk to about it, no-one else is there and can give a second opinion – family life is at times an enigma and I admit that.
And now I’m moving out – I can’t believe it. I don’t think she can either. In my more standard irascible teen phase I had dreamt of that moment. Now I don’t know what to think. It’s amazing and scary.
At 17, I am moving away to Uni, alone. My real life is starting.
My life of hard earned money, taxes, voting, my own place, higher education, new friends, new places, big city life, risk, responsibility. This is the moment where I officially step out of my younger years and into adult life – I don’t think I could be more conscious of that. This is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. The things I do now will carry me into my later years. I cannot get over the fact that I will be buying furniture, which I may very well keep for decades. My very own furniture. It’s going to hit me like a ton of bricks when it happens. And I will relish every moment of pure unadulterated independent joy. It’s so beautiful and immense.
I do not deny that that passage of Amanda’s blog pump up the volume changed my whole perception of this forever.
“I couldn’t believe I had my own apartment. it was like I was on acid. I was just looking around going "how on earth did I get here?" I felt like I had to be up at 7:30 so I could eat cereal, put on tights and skirts and combat boots and walk to school in the freezing cold, smoking ginseng cigarettes on the way with my walkman blasting strangeways here we come on one side and meat is murder on the other and flipping the tape over and over and over again, morrissey’s providing the soundtrack for a life that I could find tolerable when the music was loud enough and every step I took and every tree I saw and every passing suburban car was just a planted perfect prop while the credits rolled by. walking to school with the music blasting was always opening credits. I never did closing credits. not that I remember. in-between classes, headphones on, volume dial jammed, my fellow students were perfectly-cast extras walking through the hall for those establishing scenes where the director is trying to set a mood for a
Happy Harry Hard-On is my new personal hero. I don’t need reality. That’s my new answer. So Be It. I bought my rebellion at the blockbuster mall just like everybody else but at least it makes my stomach stir. I cry at weddings.
I stand at the kitchen sink, filling a glass with water, and I look to my left and see a bottle of dish soap. I’m still can’t shake it. I can’t believe I OWN this bottle of dish soap. I can’t believe it’s MINE. I can barely turn around becaue I know what’s in the rest of my apartment and I know I’ll be completely overwhelmed. a COUCH? where did these things COME FROM? who the hell am I to OWN a couch and a bottle of dishsoap? I mean, I OWN it, I’m not just using it because it’s there. I OWN it the way I own my clock and my towels and my books and my dictionary. it’s mine forever. if the house caught fire and I fled in my boxers and t-shirt and stood out on the street, the sympathetic passers-by would shake their heads. I’m So Sorry, they would say. I Know What It Feels Like To Lose Everything. No, I would say, clutching my small bottle of fluorescent orange Dawn, I still have this. It’s mine forever and nobody can take it away from me, ever.”
She understands this so well. If nothing else, this was what cemented her in my mind as someone who gets it. This blog; this thread of truth that we both lived in all its painful glory.
I wrote a song about it just recently. My latest song. It never rains but it pours.
I was searching for something in my desk a few days back, when my mother was out, and I came across my case in which I keep every single piece of paper that I have ever written anything on (letter to and from friends, notes passed in class, diary entries, early blog drafts, poems, finished and unfinished songs, lyric slips for things I wanted to track down, concert and theatre tickets… everything). And I had a lot of newer stuff that I had to file into my system, so having nothing better to do, I sat down and began archiving. In my rummagings I came across this piece of paper that I had written half a song on on the bus; and before I filed it I read over it and found that I liked what I was on about. I began to try and re-imagine the melody and tempo of it coming up with this very fresh and commanding sounding vocal. Abandoning my filing, I proceeded to write a song. Straight out like that, off the ideas on the page. It was wonderful.
Something is working once more.
I think maybe, in the future, I will bring you more short regular blogs and podcasts and less of these huge epics that take ages to put together.
Peace.
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