Just today, I have been appreciating...

Perfect Day - Hoku
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police
If I Am - Nine Days
Fire and Rain - James Taylor
I'm With You - Avril Lavigne

Particularly poignant and moving is "if I am", which I'd heard before, but put on repeat last night at about 12 (for about an hour). The lyrics are awesome, check them out. (Do a google search, none of my friends are online to teach me basic HTML :P I may come back and fix this later.) Or it may be just the mood I'm in. But I do like them.

I should really go pack. Really. None of the crockery is wrapped yet, let alone packed, and I want to be in the city by 9.30 tomorrow morning. Ahhh the bliss of late nights due to severe procrastination. I've had all day to do this...

Admittedly almost all my clothes, my CDs, my chess set, and some other random junk - oh, and all my shoes - are packed. But the rest is all over the floor. Oops. Oh well. Never mind.

Thanks to the people who are putting up with me at the moment. I have a feeling not many of them will read this. But for those who do. I have been cranky. I know this.

Sorry.

I hope that I will return to my normal state of bubbliness soon. I'll be trying ;). (No pun intended :P)

I found this in an old email - something I wrote and sent to my best friend. It echoes my mood...

I’m confused by your enthusiasm lately. Also by your apathy. There seems to be so much that goes unsaid between us, so much that is assumed, livewires between telephone poles planted in different places.

I no longer think of you in your image, your physical self. I remember your body as something from a long time ago. When I think of you, it is your mind that I connect to, the way you speak, and the things that you refuse to say. 

In writing about our friendship it is as if I describe something that floats, whizzing and humming through and around the structures of our constant lifestyles. Static electricity – that is the kind of connection that this is, unexpected, shocking, alert. Still, it can be otherwise, or attempt to be. But even in the comforting moments, we are sparks, magnets. Repel, attract, repel, attract. Nothing stays the same.

Time is changing us, reforming us into the people we will be tomorrow. Our orbits are not fixed, our places are not permanent. Our lives are anything but determined. So we bounce, crazily, within the structures that we have around us, testing their limits, working the space. I don’t know why – it’s always been like this. Why was it me, cracking the whip? Why was it you, with the words ‘I love you’? How did we evolve in this manner – a twist of fate connected us, and bound us together like warped and brittle glass. Like molten marbles, opaque cat’s eye swirls and glossy clarity in one.

Transparent yet incomprehensible.


It is good to know within the centre of the chaos that there is one upon whom I am certain I can rely.

Thankyou.

Stuf has been going down recently, as Jayt would say. I have been a busy pumpkin, (though feeling very lazy) finishing at Nando's (YAY!!), packing (very very slowly) and dealing with all the changes in people I love, in different ways.

New music, new loves, new lifestyle. Being almost there drives me crazy. I can't handle in-between-ness...it plays havoc with my sense of order and control. (Yes, I am a control freak. I try to relax sometimes, or I get sick. Really.)

Trying to keep in touch with my friends is complicated plus. I can't wait to get to uni when the circles change and I can stand on my own two feet and look around without feeling like I'm going to hit my head on a stalactite.

I am tired and I'm soooo sick of the complications sometimes I feel like I could just scream. For a few days there it felt like I had got it so right. I should really remember from this never to let my cynicism go...if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

I am so tired of feeling so lonely.

i hope i can get back into study
only two weeks left
one until i move in...

for the first time in a long time
i have passionately enjoyed holidays
i needed a break, desperately

admittedly i only began to relax mid-january...
but since then, it has been fantastic
i do not feel ready to go back to working!

moving into college
everyone says different things
who knows what i have gotten myself into!?
i certainly don't

right now, i almost trust myself
to handle whatever they throw at me
but not quite

a tiny speck of doubt
like a speck of pure hope
may be all consuming

but i shall choose to choose hope
and be joyful

i am reminded of you
in every little thing i do

in everything you say
you take my breath away
i know it's a cliche

and i am sorry, but
it's no less real, no less true
just because it's been said before
equally badly

if i had the eloquence to express
what i dare to dream is going on here
i would never have to get a day job

we do not belong to the real world
i know because you shine
we rose above the lie they tell us

we are above the clouds
and
i can see you

been shot down so many times before
don't want to consider my other options
used to flying high, only to collide
with my own false expectations
or my fears

i can't fly past you
through you
don't want to shoot you down as i soar by
as has happened before
but i can't leave the safety on...

wish your hand could be on mine as we
point and aim the trigger somewhere else
so often i shoot myself down from flight

i need a guide i need a friend
i need to hope that i can make it through the air
unscathed
for the first time
for the last time

you have imagined my wings
as i have imagined yours
together we will grow to be angels

I am ridiculously tired. I should not be this tired. Not from staying up until 1am going to two different (tame but lovely) parties. Just because I got up at 9 in anticipation of meeting a friend at 11, only to receive a message when I was finally well and truly awake, saying 'can we make it 2.30 instead? something came up...'.

Also I have a bruise on my arm, a very minor graze, a sore (possibly strained) toe, and I'm wearing glasses because my eyes threw a hissy fit in the middle of last night's activities and insisted that one of my contact lenses should be taken out "right now". "How do these things happen to you, Eliza?!" I can hear you asking... The answer to that question is, rather simply, that someone held a big, stake shaped piece of wood right next to my face as I was about to walk down a flight of stairs, resulting in me instantly losing the argument I had been having for the previous half hour with said person (and others) in which I had insisted that I was, in fact, not really that klutzy!

However, despite said injuries, I had a rather lovely time. Caught up with lots of friends whom I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks, had some important girly conversations, and spent lots of time with particularly special people.

On another topic altogether. (And yet, strangely not.)

It's strange that even when pretty much everything in life is going wonderfully right, it can simultaneously be incredibly complicated. How can you honestly desire something, not want it, and be scared of it - and be scared of yourself, and the things you could potentially change - all at the same time...

For once, I wish I was innocent. I wish I didn't know how things worked. I wish that I could be surprised and delighted by the little tiny things - as indeed I am - without knowing what they mean, and worrying about what they lead to.

Still.

It is true. You are true.

my shadow looks like you...

i'm in love with fiona apple's voice.

i need $68 more dollars from somewhere, so i will not be cold in winter. (more specifically, so i can buy an awesome dangerfield hoody. i don't have any jumpers, i swear. and it'll only be there for a couple of days...grrr...)

i am keeping to a diet the most successfully in years. perhaps ever. stop, i can hear you telling me i don't need to. i know that. i want to. i would love to be one of those really naturally skinny people, with big cheekbones. i would love to not have such a constant love affair with food.

i move out in two weeks. that is very soon. i need a laundry basket.

i really don't want to do any more nando's shifts. i gave my notice last week, but i'm working for them until i move into uni. (hopefully college will give me a place working in the library...hoping hoping!) anyway. i have to do a shift saturday. bleargh. oh well, look on the bright side... at least i can stop worrying about whether or not they'll fire me for sheer and utter incompetence now ;)

if i could recreate myself
so i appeared on the outside how i am on the inside
so i matched...
i would be similar
but a bit taller
lanky
with bigger cheekbones
mouth
and much more eyeliner.

however, i figure that most of us would look slightly different if we matched, and people could figure out who we were more on sight. there are not many sensible things you can do about it.

except maybe wear more eyeliner...:)


when we talk
embers from a fire at midnight
swirl around us in the darkness
glowing with a light that is not their own

i thought for a while about calling this page soundbites. (i may still do so, if i can get it to look the way i want it to.) anyway. reason behind the name being that these posts, as well as all sorts of other important kinds of communication, are simply tiny pieces of a huge whole, moments of connection in a lifetime of community.

i have found, increasingly recently, that those around you are all too happy to judge you, or even to judge your temperament, on these soundbites - miniscule excerpts of you, frozen in time and space and context - applying a second's action to a lifetime's worth of person. i do not count myself out of this mannerism of judgement and construction - we all do it to some extent - but it does frustrate me and sadden me in its more extreme forms; forms which i see around me in many many people. when meeting new people, their tendency towards judgement becomes increasingly obvious the longer you know them, and you can tell - or i can tell - how fluid and empathic your potential friendship can be.

when asked to categorise my closest and most trusted friends, to explain what they have in common, it is this quality: lack of judgement, abounding empathy, understanding and courage in dealing with others, along with amazing knowledge of themselves and sense of their place. to many, these people would seem extraordinarily different from one another. one has blue hair, is an artist and a lesbian, has a dog named after edward norton, and plans to teach biology and english literature. another can practically speak html, loves his waterbed, his girlfriend and the writing of salman rushdie, reads ten international political journals a week, and plans to own - and live on - a yacht, probably in the next ten years. another i have known since i was ten years old - her habits drive me crazy, because i know them like they are my own, and she is something of a second sister to me. there are several others, and all know me truly. they have not judged on soundbites, nor even so much on the evidence of years, but on their empathic knowledge of me, and the promise of our friendship, the loyalty that spans time, space and circumstance.

this is what lasts.
this is who we are. not what we do, or where we live, but who we know and how we love.

bitterest of bitter pills to swallow
the knowledge that
after all, you must do as you promised
yourself

it may seem straight-forward
the easiest thing
as well as you know it's the best
but

life does not hand you the
easiest platter, the load that you wish
you could take - instead it's the one you committed
your back to

the worst is the sight as you walk to the left
of the platter you've left, on the right
the one that you wanted is drifting away
so close you could touch it and yet

you can't.