at the edge of azaleas

someone might be interested in this

tree — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 20:40:45 GMT

the cloud appreciation society is looking for someone to write about clouds.

We need help writing content for the Cloud Appreciation Society, and we would love to give this work to one of our members. If you write really well (in English), you have a good sense of humour and you know your Cumulus from your lenticularis, we’d love to hear from you.

The work would be online (i.e. you can do it from wherever) and you could manage it in your own time. We would start pay at £15 GBP per hour (or the equivalent in your currency) – assuming that you don’t write a word an hour. You won’t be able to buy that yacht in a hurry, but it would be really interesting and flexible work for a cloudspotter. If you would like to be considered as a contributor to the Cloud Appreciation Society, please fill in the form below [here] to let us know more about you.

and here is a photo i took on my way home from work of a beautiful cumulous formation above central station.

according to the metadata, i took this in july 2013. which just goes to show that i do get around to things eventually.

--

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like a dogless bone

tree — Sat, 02 Jul 2016 07:53:58 GMT

the problem with passing is that it makes you feel hollowed out. invisible. you start to feel complicit, like you're intentionally wearing a disguise, like you're deliberately misleading people into believing that you're Like Them when you're not. and there comes a point when they make assumptions and you've been passing so long that to correct them would be incredibly awkward; it would require an extensive and very personal explanation. so you say nothing and feel ashamed. and people who don't pass call you a traitor.

the problem with being asexual is that almost no one—including much of the asexual community—treats it as a sexuality in and of itself. it's not enough to simply say: i'm asexual. you have to define what type of asexual you are. the unifying trait that defines our sexuality—the lack of sexual attraction—is apparently not enough. asexuality is treated as a subset of some other sexuality.

but it's not. not to me.

i've spent the last eight years trying not to care about the way in which the LGBT community tries to slice us up so we'll fit into the neat little labels that already exist. but guess what? i do care. i spent thirty years of my life wearing a label that didn't fit because i didn't know i had any other options. i refuse to wear one now so that i can be more palatable to people who are quite happy to treat me with the same ignorance and bigotry with which they've historically been treated. who squeeze and squeeze us into the narrowest possible definitions until our identity is all but gone.

i'm asexual. that's it. that's what i am. if that's not enough, too fucking bad. i don't want to come into your treehouse. i don't want to be part of your acronym. what i want is for you to stop trying to erase me.

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a request. well, actually more of a statement, i guess.

tree — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 05:47:46 GMT

dear friands,

please refrain from using pejorative words describing mental illness as adjectives. your burrito was not "crazy" good. the price of those shoes is not "insane". if your sentence does not make sense when you exchange your word-of-choice with "mental illness" or "mentally ill" then do not use it in that context.

when you use these words in this way you are actively hurting me.

(using them in the context of mental illness has its own problems, but that is another matter.)

if you are also a mentally ill person and do not care about this issue, that's great. but i do.

and i do not want to keep being hurt. in the interests of self-preservation i've decided that i need to unsubscribe from individuals when i see this happening. it does not mean i think you're a bad person; it simply means that every paper cut hurts.

thank you for time,
tree

--

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path of a body

tree — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 02:47:14 GMT

whenever i start wearing a splint on a new—previously unsplinted—finger joint, it always feels uncomfortable for a while. i have the sensation that my movement is being constrained more than it should be. but then i look at my extended finger and see that the joint is level instead of concave and realise this is the range of motion non-hypermobile people have.

more of my joints have been (what i think of as) failing of late. once the pain sets in, it never goes away again completely. i used to only really have to wear the splints at work but more and more i find myself needing them at home as well. i have the feeling that one day i'm going to end up needing splints for all my PIP and DIP joints. having just written that i realise the day is closer than i thought since i already splint both joints on my index and middle fingers, and the PIP on my left ring and pinkie fingers. i also occasionally have to splint the DIP on those two fingers. so really it's only the ring and pinkie fingers on my right hand that have yet to fail. and i think the PIP on the ring is starting to go.

then there are my thumbs. my left thumb CMC was, i think, the first of all my joints to fail. it was the first one i bought a splint for, in any case. the MP and IP joints quickly followed. i also splint my right thumb IP but it's needed a CMC for a long time and i've just been in denial because the pain is less obvious than it was with my left hand. my first thumb splint was the Push Ortho Thumb Brace CMC, which worked very well. then i switched to a CMC + MP splint from eds ring splints, which i've been using for a few years. i think i'm going to have to give it up, though, and go back to the Push because it doesn't seem to be helping my CMC as much as it used to.

except i lost my Push brace on the bus a couple of months ago. i'd shoved it into the top of my bag and it must've fallen out when i went in to get something else. usually when i get off the bus i look back to make sure i haven't left anything behind on the seat but that day i had to manoeuvre around someone sitting on the outside who didn't have the courtesy to stand up and let me out. rude person cost me $70. so now i have to replace the one for my left thumb and buy one for my right thumb and hope that splinting both the CMC and IP will mean the un-splinted MP behaves itself.

i did find another CMC + MP splint made in a similar design to the Push brace, but in reading the description i realised that it immobilises the joints rather than simply preventing them from hyperextending. so that's no good.

i think i also need to find better elbow braces. the elastic-y ones from the chemist don't seem to be quite enough anymore. and apart from my thoracic vertebrae, my elbows are my most consistently painful joints. most of my joints are painful if you apply even a small amount of pressure, but my elbows just hurt.

.

there are things i know i should do. find another physiotherapist. possibly remedial massage would be beneficial. but those are difficult and painful things for a variety of reasons. and it's too hard. everything in my minimal, severely-curtailed life is already too hard. there's no room for anything more. in fact, i think the room is shrinking.

you should try, says the multitude.

i'm tired of trying.

one day i will lie down and not get back up.

one day.

--

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a bright particular star

tree — Tue, 24 May 2016 22:37:18 GMT

there was a girl named casey at my high school in the US. she was a senior (year 12) when i was a freshman (year 9). we were on the volleyball team together. i don't think we ever spoke at all—maybe just to say hi—but i watched her whenever she was around. i couldn't help it. maybe it was a crush; i'm not sure.

(whenever i tried to identify my sexuality as a teenager, i always ended up defaulting to heterosexual because at the time i knew of only two options and i clearly wasn't a lesbian because i didn't want to kiss girls. the fact that i didn't want to kiss boys either was chalked up to the (internalised) belief (of the standard line) that i was simply a late bloomer (emotionally/sexually speaking). why it didn't occur to me that i could be a lesbian late bloomer just as easily as a heterosexual later bloomer i can only explain by saying: i was 14. i had no idea. it was 1991 and the concept of asexual within the framework of sexuality didn't even exist yet. if it had i doubt it would have made its way into the consciousness of a small catholic school in baltimore, anyway.)

i just know that casey made me feel something remarkable that i'd never felt before. to me she had this aura about her. i wanted to be near her and i wanted to be like her. she wasn't beautiful, exactly. she was pretty, i think, but it was more than that. she was magnetic in some way. what i remember most is her hair and the way she seemed to have this light always around her. (the logical voice in my head says i romanticised the idea of her: that the light lingered in my mind because i mostly saw her in the gym, which had enormous high windows, and we were all surrounded by light. the rest of me says the reason doesn't matter. that's how she seemed to me.)

she was white, as 99% of the kids at my school were (this, despite it being baltimore), and while she was small, she was curvy. her hips were like my hips, but lovelier, in the way they gently sloped under her uniform skirt. her hair made me think of a lion's mane, the way it framed her. 'light brown' is too prosaic a description. it was so many colours: blonde and gold and honey and caramel. and it was a step up from wavy, but not quite frizzy, somewhere between her chin and her shoulders. she'd pull it back in a ponytail for games but at practice she usually left it down. i loved her hair.

it's kind of embarrassing, but this bit from all's well that ends well sums up how i felt.

[s]he is so above me:
In [her] bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in [her] sphere.

it's like i regarded her as a different species. i just wanted to be around her and bask in her presence. the only things i really knew about her were that she didn't have a boyfriend and she was kind. she was popular in the way that girls who don't have a particular allegiance to any one clique are. i had the sense that she was nice to everyone in a genuine way, rather than the fake niceness that so many girls performed.

why do i still find myself thinking about her from time to time all these years later? i don't know. i'm sure the memory of her is just as much a construct that i created as any fictional character. if i had actually gotten to know her i'd have discovered she was as flawed and human as the rest of us. i might've not even liked her. but none of that matters now because it didn't matter then. she was the first star around which i orbited. that alone makes her special.

so, casey, you'll never read this and truthfully i'm glad because it would be so very awkward for both of us if you did. i'd be surprised if you even remembered who i was. but a long time ago you gave a shy, scared, dislocated, terribly unhappy girl something bright and lovely to look forward to every day. and even though you didn't do it knowingly or with intention, i'm still grateful.

with nostalgic affection,
a little satellite

--

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a programmed sequence of instructions repeated until or while a particular condition is satisfied

tree — Tue, 17 May 2016 23:43:57 GMT

DAILY AFFIRMATION
A Play in One Act

Setting: a room with a bed

Cast of Characters:

NARRATOR, the voice of reason
CHORUS, a multitude (off stage)
WHISPER, sly, vicious (off stage)
SUBJECT, a lone figure, mute

ACT 1, SCENE 1

[NARRATOR stands alone holding a sheet of paper.]

NARRATOR	[Reading from paper] The fine print. Item one: the other party is not responsible for your faulty inferences.
CHORUS	Grow the fuck up.
WHISPER	No one wants to be your friend.
NARRATOR	Item two: any resultant hurt or obscure sense of betrayal is caused solely by your own misguided attempts to form unsolicited connection.
CHORUS	This is the way things are.
WHISPER	Get used to it.
NARRATOR	Item three: your resentment and desire to inflict hurt in return are unwarranted, petty, and childish.

[Exit NARRATOR. Spot shines on bed where SUBJECT sits.]

CHORUS	Here is the bed you made.
WHISPER	Now lie in it.

[SUBJECT remains motionless for an unspecified period. Blackout.]

WHISPER	Lie in it, liar.
WHISPER	Lie.

(END SCENE)

--

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this post brought to you by many thousands of dollars and two useless degrees

tree — Tue, 10 May 2016 23:41:56 GMT

i wrote to my mum the other day that in person i can barely open my mouth most of the time but give me a textual medium and you can't shut me up. well. case in point. this came up on my dash:

My literature classes didn’t help. My professors stressed the importance of approaching a text with detachment, with a critical gaze rather than an emotional one. There wasn’t a place in academia for gushing or ranting. There wasn’t room to simply say, “I loved this and I don’t know why.” One had to use academic jargon. One had to be methodical and thorough. It was like listening to a song and wanting so badly to get up and dance, but instead of dancing, you have to sit there and think about why those sounds made you want to dance and consider the exact mechanics behind the formula of a danceable song. And I didn’t want to fucking do that. I just wanted to dance. I just wanted to read. I just wanted to write. I didn’t want to deconstruct lines of poetry or do a close reading of Faulkner’s usage of semicolons.

Jenny Zhang, ‘The Quiet Importance of Angst-y Art’, Rookie

so of course i spent an hour expressing my emotions about language and it maybe was sort of articulate, so i decided i wanted to keep it here for posterity.

for reference.

this makes me really sad. and i can only say that it doesn’t have to be like that. that kind of rigidity is the fault of the professors or teachers and not the discipline itself. there is absolutely a place in the study of literature for gushing and ranting. it is necessary. hell, that’s what most of academic literature is: someone yelling about the text because they love it or they hate it. they just clothe it in a certain vocabulary.

i know people often complain about the “jargon” of academia but show me a space made by humans that doesn’t have its own terminology, its own method of communication. tumblr has jargon. slang is jargon. photography, medicine, gaming: all filled with jargon. but there’s this negative connotation to the idea of jargon that it really doesn’t deserve. any school you go to, any job you have, will in some way be opaque until you are familiar with its language and methods. and the more specific and esoteric you get, the more unfamiliar it will be because of its very nature.

while there are people who do use jargon to barricade a space or try to demonstrate some kind of superiority, that’s not the fault of the words. the words have been created to express some concept that requires expression. saying it’s meaningless or unnecessary is untrue; if it were either of those things it wouldn’t exist.

i guess it’s just that i don’t find that knowing the reason why the sun rises and sets makes watching the sun rise or set any less beautiful. it makes them more beautiful because i know how and why it happens and that just adds to the wonder of these amazing daily occurrences. examining the intricacies of a text, getting my hands all up in the guts of it, looking at it from multiple perspectives, breaking it into pieces to see how it works and then putting it back together: none of these things take away from the whole. they enhance and enrich it.

one of the original meanings of the word ‘jargon’ was ‘gibberish’: unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing. it was usually used in the context of colonialist forces talking about the native occupants of the land they were invading. their speech was dismissed as unintelligible and therefore meaningless because the invaders didn’t understand it. i say that merely to illustrate where the idea itself comes from. we see jargon as bad because we don’t understand it. but you can’t blame the words for your own lack of knowledge. anyone who has ever learned a new language knows how impenetrable it seems at first. yet we don’t blame the speakers of a language for that. (well maybe some people do idk.)

there’s nothing wrong with just wanting to dance. but there are actually people who do “sit there and think about why those sounds made you want to dance and consider the exact mechanics behind the formula of a danceable song”. most popular music is actually written by people who do just that. i heard a talk given by mike chapman who wrote or co-wrote some incredibly popular songs from the 70s through the 90s (the best by tina turner and love is a battlefield by pat benatar are probably two of the most well known). he said that when he made the move from the UK (where he’d had a string of hit singles) to the US his songs at first weren’t working for the audiences. he had to sit down and study what was popular, what american audiences liked. once he’d done that work, he was able to write songs that became hit singles in the US.

of course not everyone wants to write top 40 music. and not everyone who’s successful works to a formula. but it’s the same with writing. what works in a text, why it works, how you can recreate it in a new way or push back against it: these are things worth knowing. you can write without them. you can be successful without them. but i feel like you’re letting yourself down if you dismiss that knowledge because some words (jargon) got in your way. i mean, words are the point, right?

tags: #words are my life #me and my charms #holy shit this got out of hand #i just have a lot of feelings #language is magic #words are beautiful #you don't understand how passionate i am about language #do you understand how amazing it is that we have this symbolic means of communication #that we created ourselves #and there is so much variety all over the world #languages evolve and die and they have a life of their own that their creators never intended #and it's just fucking amazing #please don't let gatekeepers hold you back #language is like the tide #no one can hold it #but you can harness it #it's powerful #you can drift on it or dive into and it might very well kill you #never underestimate its danger #never fail to appreciate its glory #think about it: #i'm using language to talk about language #it is doing the thing that is the thing itself #WHAT ELSE IS LIKE THAT? #as;dlgjasldbgsa;dgj

okay maybe 'articulate' wasn't precisely the word for it.

--

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brain taps twice for salt (elegy with anne carson inside it)

tree — Wed, 04 May 2016 01:53:32 GMT

there came a point when i accepted i was never going to "get better" — i was never going to be "well" — and that life would consist of "managing". but even then i was still fooling myself.

diagnostic criteria for various depressive disorders require the identification of specific periods of depression. but the concept of having discrete episodes of depression is completely foreign to me. i know that from birth to approximately the age of eight i was not depressed. and there were likely periods from ages eight to perhaps ten when i was not depressed. but since then depression has simply been the default. i am never not depressed. it's merely an issue of quantitative descriptors, of more or less. more or less since we last spoke; more or less than last week; more or less since yesterday.

i am always going to be depressed. not in the sense of a recovering alcoholic who no longer drinks; not asymptomatic; not in remission. not even in the sense of someone who monitors and controls their diabetes with insulin and/or diet. i am always going to be depressed in the same way that sisyphus is always going to be pushing that fucking boulder up that useless hill. actively and resentfully and without even the empty triumph of making it just once to the top.

okay, then, zeus
well
fuck you

*

do you ever love something so much that you can't
do you ever
do you sometimes just
do you

*

How can bone be changed?
By removing it.

How to subtract hell:
faintly.

*

[dialogue 1]

what is a heart?
four chambers, pumping
what is a chamber?
emptiness enclosed
what enclosing?
atoms and void
where is the ending?
never

*

If you're pushing, pushing and then it begins to pull you.

If you choose what to undo, if you know how you make that choice.

If conditionals are two kinds of graven and where is a place I can write this.

*

[dialogue 2]

what are you picturing?
a landscape without me
is it beautiful?
it is

*

"To think logically is to be perpetually astonished"
said
the saint
before I destroyed her.
The mind is the body.
I hate this fact.
I love this hate.

*

[dialogue 3]

do you feel better now?
a little
why?
a volcano? a boil?
those are two questions
what is the reason?
what are you asking?
why don't you know?

*

Was it Ovid who said, There is so much wind here stones go blank.

--
anne carson takes no responsibility for this message.
¹ "brain taps twice" — 'would be her 50th wedding anniversary today'
² "how can bone" — 'h & a screenplay scene 1, scene 2'
³ "if you're pushing" — 'seated figure with red angle (1988) by betty goodwin'
⁴ "to think logically" — 'decreation (an opera in three parts), part one, aphrodite's stroke and dye aria'
⁵ "was it ovid" — 'would be her 50th wedding anniversary today'

--

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a happiness

tree — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 19:14:21 GMT

my biological grandfather's nickname for my grandmother was 'nugget'. when he proposed, he said, "i love you, nugget. will you marry me?"

i think that is one of the loveliest, most delightful things ever.

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songs yes here is songs

tree — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 10:11:54 GMT

     aefry ember of hope is gan lic the embers of a fyr brocen in the daegs beginnan brocen by men other than us. hope falls harder when the end is cwic hope falls harder when in the daegs before the storm the stillness of the age was writen in the songs of men
     so it is when a world ends
     who is thu i can not cnaw but i will tell thu this thing
     be waery of the storm
     be most waery when there is no storm in sight

paul kingsnorth, the wake

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old bodies

tree — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 23:27:58 GMT

issues surrounding fathers never fail to disturb them. bodies in various states of decay rise to the surface when the field is tilled. some are mere skeletons, some have just enough flesh left to stink with decay and putrescence. they stare at me from empty sockets. their jaws unhinge and clack.

these hauntings. these old wounds. still suppurating and never fully healed.

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

--

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a random 'his dark materials' question

tree — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 05:41:07 GMT

good people of internetlandia,

if you've read the hdm trilogy, please help me with your brains. (i've only read the first book, you see, and that was in 2009.) is there anything in the trilogy that references whether or not dæmons can lie? i'll take anything from an explicit "it says dæmons can't lie on page 97" to "there's this one scene where lyra tells a lie and pantalaimon nods but doesn't speak".

i have this idea but it hinges on the assumption that dæmons are not able to lie, so there's no use exploring it if canon has already proven that false. and i'm not committed enough to said idea to reread the first book and then read the other two. (also the wikipedia page doesn't say anything about it. i checked there first.)

thank you for time.

--

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in such society

tree — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:59:14 GMT

it's time once again for my annual reread of pride and prejudice. (at present i have 11 stand-alone copies and 2 editions within complete works. i justify this ridiculousness by reading a different edition each time.) as with all good books, new aspects of it strike me freshly at every reading. given that i've lost count of how many times i've already read it, one would think i'd have it almost memorised by now. but i don't. i think it's partly that my brain leaks details and partly that the me who reads it each time is always different. older, with different perspectives and focuses and concerns.

on the bus yesterday something stood out, from the mouth of miss bingley no less.

The insipidity, and yet the noise; the nothingness and yet the self-importance of all these people!

that is quite a perfect summation of how i feel about Certain People at work. (well, i could do without 'nothingness', though in context she's referring to a lack of titles, fortunes, and connections, which actually applies.) so there we have it: the shocking instance in which i agree with caroline bingley. who would've thought?

--

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here, bullet

tree — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 10:01:26 GMT

the bullet in a loaded gun has potential energy. once fired, its energy is kinetic (from kinein 'to move'). when it impacts — a wall, a body — energy is exchanged. damage.

sometimes when i least expect it, a shot is fired into my brain. shattering glass, a gouged wall, blood. 'i was just reading a book,' i say to the reporter who interviews me for the six o'clock news. 'i had no idea this would happen.'

"Self-injury. It's a personality disorder. People cut themselves, burn themselves, things like that. Enough to hurt, but not enough to do real damage. So it probably wasn't a suicide attempt. You said she had psychiatric drugs in her bathroom?"

Her stash of pharmaceuticals, the kind prescribed for ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety, even a couple of antipsychotics. [...]

"You didn't take advantage of her, Adam. You didn't know she was crazy until—"

"Until after I took advantage of her."

from the affinities by robert charles wilson, a moderately entertaining, though not unpredictable, science fiction novel. reading that, the top half of page 154, was the mental equivalent of running into a wall.

running into a wall as the bullet.

i'm stuck there. embedded. the metaphor is wrong. but i can't seem to go further. i can't even seem to go further than this.

--

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a mind like a twelve year old boy

tree — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 22:34:58 GMT

i'm finally reading the wake by paul kingsnorth, which was ~~short~~long-listed for the man booker prize in, um, 2014.

(todayiamadaisy inspired me with her yearly reading of the short-listed novels, so in 2014 i decided to attempt it. so far i've managed to finish a grand total of one — the blazing world by siri hustvedt. i abandoned both the lives of others by neel mukherjee (dull) and orfeo by richard powers (pretentious as fuck — a shame because i loved his novel the echo makers). in my defence it hasn't been easy getting these books from the library because apparently everyone else in my local area also wants to read them. and i haven't felt like paying the $2 fee each time i have to reserve one of them. because that's ridiculous.)

but anyway, the wake. i love novels that experiment with language. riddley walker was my first exposure to it, then random acts of senseless violence, which plays more with the de-evolution of language than creating something new. the wake is definitely challenging and i can understand why it might have a narrow appeal. but i think it's brilliant and i love the theory behind the 'shadow tongue' kingsnorth created to tell the story: the idea that the 'old english' spoken in 1066 was so different from what we now know as english as to be another language. and that the words available to someone in large part dictate the ways in which they're able to think and conceptualise the world.

the topic itself (the norman invasion of england) isn't something i'd otherwise be interested in, and the narrator is, frankly, a complete douche, but the language — the puzzle and flow of it — is so compelling. it's like its own story within the story. i love it. and i love that while kingsnorth has provided a brief glossary and a few notes on pronunciation, for the most part he expects the reader to figure it out for themself. which is frustrating and rewarding in equal measure. the marvellous sense of triumph when i finally figure out what a word is — how it should sound and what it means. it's a tremendously effortful reading experience and i'm not sure i've ever enjoyed the process of reading so much before.

it's also, at times, very, very funny. especially because i have read far too much smut and i now cannot set aside the modern meaning of a certain word or overlay it with its meaning in the novel. especially when it's repeated.

but i sceolde spec with care for i did call and sum thing
sum thing cum
sum one cum
sum one cum and is still here

and the twelve year old boy inside of me is snickering and adult me is trying to shut him up but with little success. in context it's a very sinister passage, but all the same it's like having double vision and i can't unsee the more, er, carnal connotation.

(for reference, 'sceolde' = should, and 'spec' = speak.)

(another interesting aspect of the language is that there are no capital letters and hardly any punctuation. so there are few signposts that modern readers would ordinarily rely on to tell them where things end and begin. it's kind of like a fast, winding river of narrative, or maybe a jungle with a barely marked trail. i've often had to stop and go back because i've read past the end of one thought and into the next and lost the sense of the thing. though now that i'm about a third of the way through i think i've developed the knack of reading the flow as well as the language, so that i don't seem to be backtracking as much as i first was. victory! or, as kingsnorth has it, sige!)

--

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ear infection science

tree — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 22:26:01 GMT

hypothesis: eye drops are the worst

experimental data:

eye drops

poke self in eye

often burn

run all over face

bad taste

blurry vision

sometimes neck pain with tilting head back

sometimes dizziness with same

ear drops

constantly miss

have to tilt head almost upside down to get in

some still not seeming to go in

i think it's coming back out?

just go in damn it

hurt sore ear going in

fall over or hit head on side of washing machine while sitting on toilet

damp ear

breeze on damp ear hurts more

make eyes water???

underwater hearing

TERRIBLE CREEPING SENSATION OF SOMETHING MOVING INTO EAR HELP

conclusion: hypothesis disproved. ear drops actually the worst.

--

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the hole was deeper than i thought

tree — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 08:21:59 GMT

the reward is a trick
the reward is a punishment
i fall for every time

--

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of a curved geometric figure

tree — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 23:41:19 GMT

this sounds redundant but
before i write i need to
know what i am going to say

by which i mean i need to
know what's already been said
the shape of it
dimensions
so i know how to find its
circumference

(from Latin: circum 'around, about'
+ ferre 'carry, bear')

the shape of what's
said is always a circle
and what i am going to say is borne
around it
as the rings of a tree are: concentric

everything, everything is physics

words have no mass and therefore are not
subject to gravity
yet gravity is their reason
the why of them

gravity is the why i am
dropping these words like stones
making a path to lead me
not backwards but where
i am going

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.

now and then

tree — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 10:30:21 GMT

wendelah1 gave me 26.

Then

I lived in: either the flat on bourke st or the one on william street.

I drove: nothing. cars bad, public transport good.

I was in a relationship with: mr tree. we'd just gotten married a few months before i turned 26. at that point we were engaged in the endless battle with bureaucracy that was trying to get his residency visa.

I feared: being crazy forever. living a long time.

I worked at: a distance education college. the pay was terrible and it was, frankly, kind of dodgy, but it got me out of retail.

I wanted to be: dead, most days. happy, on other days.

Now

I live in: the same crappy flat we've lived in for ten years. i am so over it.

I drive: nothing. cars bad, public transport good.

I am in a relationship with: mr tree. now we've been married for twelve years. twelve and a half, to be more accurate. it's so weird.

I fear: living a long time. my body crapping out on me more. i'm mostly resigned to the crazy but i do fear it getting worse. i also fear the inevitable things like mum's death and mr tree's. and i fear outliving both of them and also being unable to kill myself.

I work at: it occurs to me that i've never actually talked about where i work now, but it's the same place i've been working for six years. i have a desk and my computer is named tallulah. that's as much as i'm comfortable saying outside a locked entry.

I want to be: happy, most days. dead, on other days. so i guess that's progress.

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half an hour of me rambling

tree — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 02:07:15 GMT

in lieu of typing.

https://app.box.com/s/l63a14et0jsirnwdzwdvo06odc7pyktd

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like a motherfucking adult

tree — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:26:16 GMT

just lodged my tax return with the ato's new mytax. A++ would lodge again. i tried to use etax last year and it was an impenetrable fortress of DOOM, so i gave up and sent in a paper return. mytax was fast and super easy and i know i sound like a paid advertisement but it was awesome. i liked it so much i filled out their feedback form and everything.

i mean, i've been doing tax returns in multiple countries since i was 15 and this is the first time it was ever fun. the novelty was likely part of the fun, but still. well done, federal government. i would click your kudos button if you had one.

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we cuts it precious

tree — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 10:27:46 GMT

after lamenting the loss of my pink hair for many moons, i have finally cut off most of the offending wrong-brown mess.

the first time i ever cut my own hair was also the first time i shaved my head, which was also the first time i ever felt beautiful. i've never quite gotten that same level of feeling since, but cutting my hair does still make me feel pretty good. tomorrow i'll probably go back to normal, but i am totally cute right now.

the secret to cutting your own hair is newspaper. if you put it all over the floor and any other surfaces around where you're cutting, clean-up is super easy. also you should be as naked as you can get because otherwise you will end up with hair everywhere and you'll never be able to get it all out. you will be forever haunted by the ghosts of hairs past. i lost a bra that way — lots of tiny little hairs got in between the layers of fabric and i could not get them out. it was itchy and horrible so the bra went in the bin. a sad sacrifice.

my hair is wet because i took these just after i took a shower to get the hair off me. i didn't wash it, though, because i might dye it pink tomorrow, depending on whether or not i have the spoons.

okay, i look like a potato here. but at least i am a potato with less gross hair!

.

and this is the face of someone who has started writing idfic out of nowhere.

it bothers me that my septum ring is off-centre in this. it bothers me that i'm bothered by the thought that my septum ring could be off-centre ALL THE TIME when i'm not looking and i'd never know it.

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wood, with a gift for burning

tree — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 05:55:37 GMT

warning: self-injury

truth is i wish i could cut right now just because maladaptive coping mechanism or not it at least used to help in the short term but i can't even do that anymore because the meds have rerouted my brain and robbed me of even that temporary escape

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what fresh hell is this?

tree — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 05:07:20 GMT

this body is a never-ending source of joy and delight.

some weeks ago i picked up a virus, because my immune system has a constant 'vacancy' sign up. then i got an ear infection while i had the virus, because i only get bacterial infections when the good parts of my immune system are otherwise occupied.

then i had some depression of doom because i just can't get enough of that!

then aforementioned OAS, which usually takes about a week to settle down. as i was hitting the end of it — identifiable by the way my lips start to peel in big, gross gobs — i got up one morning and, in attempting to remove my mouth splint (aka AQUA JAW), i split my bottom lip. there was this wet, tearing sound, and a sting, and the skin in the centre of my lip tore right down the middle.

awesome.

the good part was that since i was in the big, gross gobs stage, the skin that split was mostly what i was going to be sloughing anyway. it still hurt, though.

but, wait! there's more! about a week and a half ago, i woke up one morning (mornings are fired) to a really painful pinkie finger on my left hand. i determined that somehow i'd over-extended it during the night (no, but, seriously, how do you do that?) and injured the ligament and the joint at the base of my finger. i tried various methods of wrapping my fingers and hand to stabilise the joint, but it's really fucking hard to do that! then i just tried to keep it out of the way and not use it. and i tried massaging the joint because that seems to help with most of my other joints, but all that happened is that i gave myself a bruise. *LOLSOB*

so now i have a bruise and a still-painful ligament/joint combination and two fingers i can't use to type which is super inconvenient because we are approaching our quarterly deadline at work and i am behind from all the time i've had off sick and i could really use those fingers. however, today i had an idea.

awesome, right? i used strapping tape to tape my two fingers together, then tape them between two halves of a craft popsicle stick thing. then i wrapped the base of the craft popsicle stick things where they cover the joint with a stretchy gauze bandage.

i actually think the craft popsicle stick things need to be longer to limit my motion ever further, because it still hurts a bit. but it hurts a lot less than it did. it sucks because i can't really use my hand, but at least i'm in less pain.

and still more! i got a cold sore! unpleasant, but not unexpected given everything else. except it's a mutant cold sore and it shot spores out of its mutant body and now there are MORE cold sores on my face. i told mr tree last night that i was afraid that i'd wake up one morning with my face just one giant cold sore and i'd be his monster face wife.

he said he would still love me but has now taken to calling me monster girl.

LOOK AT THEM. plus, at this resolution you can see all my acne scars and that one random hole in my face.

joy and delight, friends. joy and delight.

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welcome to the worst day of the year

tree — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 05:54:30 GMT

that being: daylight savings has begun.

it seems apropos, then, that it should also be really fucking hot, just to combine two of the things i despise most in the world. misery just isn't misery unless it's coming at you on multiple fronts.

also my current bout of OAS is making me look like i got punched in the mouth and then had some collagen injections. it hurts and is itchy all at the same time.

and in news of more import, the usa and/or russia bombed a hospital and murdered a bunch of msf doctors and patients.

i hate everything.

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