![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jen_naiad's journalLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more
| You are viewing jen_naiad's journal Log in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ: Life Entertainment Music Culture News & Politics Technology |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
shikata ga nai 
Current mood: still swish. Current music: Patti Smith, Horses. Warning, this entry contains vanity. Also, New Zealand just won the cricket in Melbourne, it was fantastic! Current mood: swish. Current music: Graceland - Paul Simon. When we walked out our gate this afternoon, we discovered two baby birds lying dead on the grass, being swarmed by ants. We think they died because of the heat (it has been so deadly sweaty sticky HOT here) and fell out of their nest. They were disappearing pretty quickly as the ants went to work on them. When we came back home this evening they were almost all gone. It was pretty fascinating, and I thought about taking photos but then thought that might be gross.</p> It's been nice here, despite the hot weather. I have been a good girl and am remembering to drink lots of water and am not too dehydrated. It's the thing I've had the hardest trouble getting used to - how much more you need to drink here to stay hydrated. Considering my main liquid is normally herbal tea of some description, and when it's hot, you don't really think about drinking tea, I have been fairly remiss in remembering to drink, despite the fact that we have a big cold bottle of water in the fridge. This weekend though, I have been very good. I have done not much but drink gallons of water and sprawl around on the carpet directly under the fan, and watch test cricket and eat cherries. Cricket and cherries are two Christmas/Summer things for me. You Northern Hemisphere types might have difficulty with the christmas/summer thing, but our christmases are all about sunshine and being relaxed. They are pretty much synonymous. Christmas for me has always been a golden halcyon evening with long grass and cicadas outside, the smell of christmas is pine trees and sunshine. Not because we usually had a tree (only when I was working for the city council and got one free, we topped it with a plastic veloci raptor because we couldn't find the traditional christmas decorations), but because our house on the West Coast has a pine plantation behind it and we woul spend several afternoons around christmass collecting pine cones. The smell of that resin-y sap and the earth are so christmas-y to me, but so is that warm summer smell. In summer in New Zealand and Australia, many afternoons also involve watching or listening to the cricket. Cricket seems to be a game lots of non commonwealth people have trouble getting, but it's very tactical and facinating and they all look so good in their cricket whites. New Zealand is playing pretty terribly at the moment, and some desperate New Zealand fan has a sign at this Adelaide test that reads 'please rain'. If it rains, you have more of a chance of resting and getting the runs you need to win. I think. The thing with cherries is just that they are a summer fruit, and in the weeks leading up to Christmas, every street corner in Dunedin would have people selling brown paper bags of them. I remember many summer car trips up to the West Coast eating bags of said cherries. Or maybe just one, that has stuck in my memory. I don't know, I just know they are inextricably a part of summer. It being this hot at the moment does actually remind me of the West Coast as a kid, where the house would get this flat and sticky, and you would feel all wan and tired. Claire and I would just lie on our bunks in the sun room (two up high near the ceiling, nothing underneath) and do silly things like quote pilot episodes of tv series we liked or recite countries of the world alphabetically. Nights would be just as hot and muggy, and you'd sleep on top of your sleeping bag, all tangled in your silk liner. The frogs outside would sing and you'd watch the trains go by. The world felt so big, but also so close. Just like Wallace Stevens. Except sumemr, not autumn. Why isn't this poem about summer? You....You said, [...] It was at that time, that the silence was largest, Incidentally, when I was googling to remind myself of the exact words of that Stevens poem, I discovered Loren Webster's amazing blog, In a Dark Time. She writes about all my favourite poems, I love the idea of a poetry blog. Just to let you know what's happening in the boring part of my life. I like my private hospital library job better and am such a little interloans bitch now, but it finishes next week, with a maybe promise of renewal next year. In the mean time, to stop myself worrying, I have applied for a job as a Library Assistant at a prestigious girls school, which would be interesting but would probably drive me into a socialist frenzy. Here's a photo from the Blue Mountains, when my parents were here. Wilderness experiences with Jenn's parents that will be coming soon... the Croesus Track, or maybe Big River. I can't wait to get to New Zealand and go walk in some bushes and get followed by Kakapo, even if it's just for five days or so.
I actually had two days off this week. Thursday and Saturday. I am basically just pissing away time at work at the moment. It makes me feel terrible. In my best moments I dream of having the coolest job in the world, and a perfect life, and then in reality I skimp on what I buy for lunch and spend the whole afternoon dreaming about being outside and thinking about knitting. It's pretty pathetic. The thing Dan and I have discovered about Sydney, is that we haven't yet 'lived' Sydney to its full potential. But at the same time, the thought of actually going somewhere different on a day off and looking around is almost paralytic. We have a great group of friends, but at the moment work is very lonely, which is getting me down. Apart from my public library job, I am the only young person in all the places I have worked. The fact that I look even younger than I am doesn't help. I relate well to people, but there is very little common interest, and time goes very slowly. Go from this to walking through interesting streets, past lots of cutting edge individuals in distressed denim and dark shirts and satchel bags, and past the little park that I swear is right outside of the Sandman issue 'The Sound of Her Wings', even though that was Trafalger Square, but still... I swear I know those pigeons, past the Vientamese antique store in the terrace house off Cambell Street, where the smell of rice often makes my stomach eat itself, and onto the same train everyday, where it seems like the whole carriage knows each other. They all work together and catch the train home together, and that is the most lonely part of my day. The 50 minute train ride home, where I often forget to take anything to read. I swear, I could have cried on Friday, I felt like even those stupid pigeons had more friends than I do. Then I got home and felt fine, because Dan was there. We see our friends a lot, I think it's just me adjusting to the big city. Who would have though being out in such a vibrant place would make me feel so left out. I talked to one of my favourite people in the whole world last night, Kath. This was very good for me and I felt a lot better. I've spent most of the afternoon watching Cricket, so there are all these things that are connecting me to New Zealand and reminding me where I come from, and that it doesn't matter that I don't come from 'here' exactly, and at the same time realising that nobody else in Sydney does either. We're all in the same lonely boat. I think because of this, I keep connecting more with the immigrants in Sydney (I love these two very gorgeous Indian girls who get on my train carriage and talk to another guy most mornings. They are calm and very serious, but flirtatious and wear many many bangles all the way up their arms), I just feel jealous of all the locals, because they seem to belong so easily, and all look like they love their jobs. I wish I could find a job I love. I sowed basil seeds under my tomato plant before. I also have a jalapeno chili, but don't know what to plant under it. Tomato and basil is such an obvious choice. The hills of Sydney are completely covered in the purple crowns of Jacaranda trees at the moment. They look amazing. It's one of the really interesting things here, when a tree flowers (the sequence since we got here has been Magnolia, Silky Oak, Jacaranda, and the Hibiscuses are starting - That's White/Pink-Yellow-Purple-Red) here, you see that same tree everywhere, from yard to yard, across the hills. I guess you really do need to be in a large city to see that colour colonisation. each time it happens, I wish that particular tree flowered all year. Current mood: cut. Current music: Pictures of Jesus, Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama.. I did like Secretary a lot when we went to see it, so it makes sense, in that I would prefer to watch this kind of romance to the other kind.  You must like to spank or be spanked, because your romance is remeniscent of Secretary. A truly modern love story, it shows that you don't need to be conventional to be normal. You're probably the type that owns a whole lot more leather than what's upholstering your car or sofa. Yeah, you know what I mean. What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life? brought to you by Quizilla I have tomorrow off work. That means for the first time in ages, I get two days off in the same week! Finally the constant segue from one week to the next, so that they all feel like the longest week ever is over! I have broken the chain! We're going out to lunch with our friend Adam, that and I will probably do copious amounts of laundry. I'm becoming a typical Sydney-sider. Suspicious of all people I pass on the street. A nice old man with an accent like my Father's called me "miss' today and doffed his hat, so I could see he wasn't some strange derelict, and asked me if I lived on the street I was on. I gruffly said no and kept walking, leaving him stammering an apology. He said he was trying to find someone, which I guess makes sense, but still, I had a knee-jerk suspicious reaction and lied, when I was 200 metres from my house, and then felt so guilty. It was just a strange way to strike up a conversation. Damn this culture of fear. When my shoulder gets too sore from knitting, I go lie on the floor and rest my feet on the couch and lift my feet up and then put them back down again slowly. It makes your stomach really hurt, but in that satisfying way like the last 10 minutes of a game of soccer. Dan keeps telling me to keep my legs straight, and then I laugh, which is probably even better for my abs, but have you ever tried keeping your legs straight and in the vertical position when you're laughing? Strike that, I know what you'll all be thinking. At the moment I am reading three books. Still slogging my way through Green Mars, now that the Fell Fields and Dorsa Brevia are out of the way I keep forgetting what's happening. KSR really knows how to build it all up and then just let it fall away. Also reading early post-apocalyptic Orson Scott Card that reminds me of David Brin's the Postman and KSR's Orange County books. The thing I like most about the idea of post-apocalpyse this week is that all the parklands will turn into meadows. The post-apocalyptic Wordsworthian sublime. Of course, there will probably also be the gangs and the looters who live in the grass. The other book I'm reading is a pleasant, much anticipated read. I have been craving decent Historical Fiction for ages and went down to the Stack at the library and pulled some Mary Renault off the shelf. My Mum recommended Mask of Apollo, but I can't jump into the second book (unless I'm reading Dorothy Dunnett, okay, and I read Green Mars after an aborted attempt at Red Mars because I wanted to get to Zygote, and who EVER read the Narnia chronicals in order?) cold, so I'm reading The Last of the Wine. Current mood: clicky. Current music: London Calling. I wanted to do the 'What kind of threat are you to the Bush administration' quiz as well, but it's not open to the public.  YOU ARE BASIL What herb are you? brought to you by Quizilla I am flat out at the moment, but just can't make myself stop and relax. I am at the high, frantic point in a particularly bendy sine wave. Of course, it just leaves me stressing about stupid things like what to knit next, and not worrying at all about the important things like getting off the train at the right station. I just need to chill. I have several yummy things in the fridge to help me build rituals out of, to help me chill. They are: strawberries, firm tofu, aubergine, vanilla soymilk, feta, lebanese zucchini, yummy garlic sauce I made this evening for us to have with kebabs, strawberries, did I mention strawberries? Also watermelon. I love Sydney for its cheap, plentiful seasonal food, if nothing else. Current mood: sine-y. Current music: She Will Have Her Way - Neil Finn. I went to a Tongan Feast today. No shit. It was very cool, very different, made me slightly homesick for New Zealand and hangis and just everything Pacific. It was just very cool to be part of such a community based culture for a day, but it was also tiring, and after eating a delicious raw fish salad, I'm a little concerned I may be alergic to more than just crustaceans. I got those familiar itchy ears and lumpy throat. Because of trackwork today, I had to catch buses instead of trains some of the way to work. Waiting to come home, I was standing next to a woman who was complaining about how none of the people waiting with us understood English, and how it's the least you can do when you move to a country. I really hate it when people say things like that. I know I might be a bit of a 'come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together come and love one another right now' pinko leftie, but language is just language, it's just a communication barrier, other than that, there was no difference between those people and me, or this woman. I'd like to see her move to another country and learn their language! I'm constantly aware of the fact that I only know how to speak English, in a workplace full of multilingual people. I admire anyone who will try and learn and then try and live with whatever language skills they have. Why do people think you can only convey culture through a shared language? Or is it because they want to rid immigrants of their culture that these people resent language difficulties? I actually quite like it, the language barrier between me and some of the people I help at the library teaches me patience, and it's so great when you finally come to joint understanding. You just need to be patient and open. No wonder people are afraid to communicate in a language they don't fully understand if all they meet are closed faces and rejection. All I know is that I sat through an afternoon of festivities that was (apart from a few brief sentences in English) performed entirely in Tongan. I didn't need to know what they were saying to understand the significance, or be moved by it. Current mood: itchy. Current music: Small Blue Thing - Suzanne Vega. I had a tense weekend, because I had accepted a new job while I was still unsure if I would have to work wednesday, luckily I have managed to swap my shift (actually just give it away) and things are peachy again. Walking near my work today, I found a restaurant I have dreamed about for the last couple of months. It is such a great concept. It's called The Mah Jong Room and you eat fantastic nouveau-chinese food at (you guessed it) mah jong tables. With this and Wagamama just down Oxford Street I am in Pan Asian heaven. I love working in the city. I have never really spent much time in big cities, and have never worked right in the centre of one before. I like being so anonymous, but also feeling like I belong. They manage to cram residences everywhere. You look up at this little space between two old buildings and suddenly realise it's full of glass and chrome and all these plants and brightly coloured walls. There are so many ingenious little moments of architecture where they fit elegance into the smallest spaces, often a storey or so above the ground. It's all businesses, but little residential terrace houses as well, and parents walking their kids to school. The other thing I love is how much things change from street to street, it's all micro-places. One minute I'm on Oxford Street, pretty much the gay central of Sydney, the next I'm walking down this little tree lined terrace street filled with little vietnamese antique shops, with beautiful girls sitting outside smoking watching you walk by and I feel like I'm in French Hanoi. Then I turn the corner and I'm in a street with like ten fresh pasta shops, then I turn it again and merge with all the commuters walking to the station. It's great people watching, but I'm learning that sometimes the city can smell a bit funny, and pollution makes me sneeze. Current mood: hot. I have another new job. I went for the interview on Thursday, and must have been a little tense beforehand, because I snapped one of my brand new, very nice bamboo knitting needles. I must have been excerting just a little too much pressure. The job's only three days a week, but this fits in perfectly with my other library job which has flexi-hours. The most exciting thing about it is that it's in the city. I took my first walk up Oxford Street the other day, and came across the Wagamama restaurant! Just out of the blue. Then I had a dilemma, excellent japanese food of the noodle variety... or wool (I was on my way to the best wool shop in the city, and only had 45 minutes till they closed). In the end I chose the wool, if I'm working near Wagamama I can go any time. The tattooist whose work Dan covets works in Surry Hills too, so maybe we can do both some time. So until Christmas, my life is going to consist of long train rides and long walks up interesting streets and passing encounters with lots of strange people possibly, also much knitting and reading and I will probably find that I don't end up eating enough. But hopefully it will keep me in wool and clothes and keep the power and broadband going. After a week of rain, it was muggy as hell here today (my hell would definitely be muggy!) I repotted my ailing Magnolia, and am praying like crazy that it will be okay. Apart from that I didn't not much of anything except laundry, and we hung out with my Brother-in-law who is down for a couple of days. Alone this afternoon, I also watched Rain, a New Zealand movie by Cristine Jeffs, the director who made Sylvia recently. I loved Rain, it's set in the North Island, I think the Coromandel, during the summer. It's basically a coming of age story, but I just loved it for its quintessential holiday homes (we call them baches) the whole summer holiday thing. There's something about New Zealand beaches that can leave you feeling very lonely, but in a good way. I just soaked in the fence pailings and the mangroves and the push mower and lemon trees and horizons for two hours. Just all those familiar things that remind me of New Zealand. The rest of the movie was all North Island, 1970's excess and growing up, but they seemed to work well to me. It felt kind of like The End of the Golden Weather meets The Virgin Suicides, if that make sense. Still, it just made me happy. I loved hearing the kids' New Zealand accents, and the still pauses you seem to get in New Zealand drama. The mother reminded me of Kim Hill and the daughter reminded me of Rose Byrne crossed with my friend Mandy and it was just all deliciously watery and sad. Current mood: accomplished. Current music: The Last Goodbye, Jeff Buckley. It's been raining here for days. I never thought you got torrential week-long rain in Sydney, I thought it was more like Auckland, bucket down then muggy. That sounds like a magnetic fridge poem.</p> bucket down then muggy People here carry umbrellas and wear pointy shoes. They do not favour that old standard, the gortex jacket with underarm vents and a little peak in the hood that keeps the rain off your face. This sucks, because I am a huge fan of the Parka, as we call them in New Zealand. I feel slightly silly rugged up on the train in my parka, especially when I'm standing at the doors, pulling my hood up, waiting to alight. But then when I step outside into horizontal rain I am greatful. The trains here leak. Then there's all the water that people tread in. But I like all the water smells, and the smells associated with water, you know, wet wool and the like. They remind me of home (where it really can rain for weeks at a time, but is more often a sort of perpeptual heavy mist that seeps into you, right down to the marrow. This may be melodramatic of me, but it's part of the Dunedin experience and I need to celebrate it, plus, the feeling of water on your skin is really cool.) I have a job interview in the city tomorrow afternoon. It is going to rain again tomorrow. But since I can't look like a post-apocalyptic hermit librarian, I will wear my nice green wool hooded jacket and look all Julianne Moore in The End of the Affair, that's what I always think of when I wear that jacket, red-headed amazon or no. I'm quite looking forward to going into the city, and am quite desperate for the job, even though it's only three days a week. It would make life a lot easier. Life, of course, is not bad at all. We are playing board games and I'm getting my reality tv quota. We are eating nutritious meals and paying our bills. We have cable and a nice big house and I have herbs outside. I am knitting a lot, and reading a lot AND working a lot. I never had time for all these things in Dunedin, yet here they all seem possible. I may have room for all this homebody stuff because we don't know many people in Sydney really, which leaves a lot of room that used to be taken up by saying hello to every second person on the street, and nights out that turned into grey mornings still out and all the rest. I wonder where all the interesting people hide in Sydney. I wonder if they like Feijoa flavoured vodka, singing along to soul music and drinking tea and mah jong and wandering walks. I'm starting to sound like a lonely heart add. But today I miss Ursula and her passion for all things tea and cake and our constant talk and how we never ran out of things to say that were really important. And the day before that I missed Kath and her startling beauty and understanding and most of all her compassion and the way she likes poking things, and the delicate way she eats. And often I miss people from the Science Library, I really miss my boss, and talking to Shelley about her dissertation, and talking to Ewan about environmentalism and philosophy and music. I always miss my sister. I'm not a lonely heart, it's just that almost all the moments I spent enjoying life with people I liked are gone. I think with this comes this big vacuum where I stop experiencing these things, so I stop writing about them. Does that sound silly? The truth is, real life is always so much more exciting and vibrant than any journal, and only a fraction of what I used to experience and love used to make it in here. Now that that has narrowed, I feel like my writing here has narrowed too. I just want to try and make sure that it narrows into the richest, most defiant, exotic little wedge that it can. No, that's not true, I'd just like to to be clean lines, simplicity, open windows, observations. I'd just like it to feel like my life again. Still, Dan and I are fantastic. I love him. I'm going through one of those phases where I marvel that he exists. I love it when I come home and get to see him smile. Also, he has a sick new black trucker cap with a scorpion on it that I just adore, and we talk about politics and architecture and next week I am going to lose him to GTA San Andreas, and life will still be fantastic. This handful of things may not really express how in love and happy I am. But you don't live with us. Suddenly I have all these things to talk about but no real order to put them in. We were without hot water for two days, with all this rain outside. It kept reminding me of the cold winter in London the year Sylvia Plath committed suicide, and how the heating wasn't working. Which is the kind of thing you should just keep to yourself and not mention, because most people don't understand that you can be not at all depressed or unhappy (I'm not unhappy at all, just feel like reaching out to people I love) and still remember certain facts about certain poets. I make a kind of game about knowing things about poets. About everyone really. My women's magazine gossip would be really boring to all but the tiniest fraction of the population if I was the editor. I'm listening to Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama. They are fantastic. I keep trying to sing soul music in the kitchen, but just don't have the voice or the timing. I really wish I knew who sings the song Natalie sings in The Committments, the one that goes 'I never loved a man the way I love you', I think it might be Aretha Franklin. Other songs I love from that movie are I Can't Stand the Rain, although I didn't know Tina Turner sang it, and The Dark End of the Street by Dan Penn. I fucking love that song.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
