So i haven’t posted for a few days, deleted my queue, liked everything but no posts. I wanted to save it for something nice to come along and give a two thousandth post some dignity.
The air outside is cooling and my sleep just lacking enough that thoughts like ‘well why the heck does it need dignity? Its just a goddamn post’ spring easily to mind. Cynicism, as J pertinently noted, finds itself into a lot of this tumblr. That’s unfortunate but at the same time its improved a lot since you came along.
I’m hopeful about so much, it’s sad, so i’m periodically cynical as a safety blanket. Winter, especially, awakens a somberness in me, so cold nights where you walk down a city street with an old friend to find cheap shoes find me determined to have a last ‘huzzah’ before summer truly disappears. Her bottle was full of bourbon and cola like the streets were full of people but the flicker of police uniform is never far from the corners of your eyes and no matter how many times somebody has done it i can’t quite fully believe it if they tell me they don’t feel it. A flicker of worry you can’t quite snuff.
We were two ‘darned youths’ in a department store, staring at the same coloured shoes repeating down the aisle, chatting inanely, cooling down from the heat that catches you unawares from just walking place to place. She settled on a pair, they were 4 dollars, i pointed out that she might have been contributing to poverty cycles, but that we would have no idea if paying an extra 20 would make a difference or just line somebody’s pocket better. Huh. Sad.
It was the journey to the checkout and on a whim, i suggested we spray display bottles of fragrance over ourselves. We laughed at the glitzy, themed, childrens ones all lined up as if to loudly announce themselves. We baulked at the gaudy, pretentious, adult ones asking for our bank accounts. We pretended to be considering how this one smelled or that one smelled on each other to avoid the suspicious looks of Vendors. We discussed the price of that one, or the box of that one. We walked away and paid for a pair of shoes while smelling of mischief and delight and youth.
I’m turning 19 and maybe a little more cynical as well. I’m not sure that i’ll do something like that again when i’m 38 but you know what? I really hope i do.
“SANGRA”, the words are etched, knifed accross the trains interior. Is it just a vandals name for themselves? what if its somebodies attempt to emblazon ‘Shangri-la’ onto a train’s walls? Unlikely. But a utopian place that travels faster than we can catch it, is often late and also spontaneously breaks down inviting us to a dose of disillusionment? The potential irony was too potent.
no, no i’m not married.
Also the reason that i’m not married is not because i got cold feet, which i wouldnt get if i were getting married, hypothetically speaking. It wasn’t my wedding at all. To clarify.
It was however, a long procession of events and dates and ceremonies last weekend where i discovered that 2 nights out and work wedged between the days followed by a (beautiful, elegant and weather permitted) wedding ceremony with large swathes of extended family is just a little too much for a person-who-isn’t-me. Because i did do that.
Following a dreaded 3am cab ride home and then work the following day, i had geared up for a 19th with friends the next night, selectively un-remembering the fact that i had work 6am the following day and found myself in a murderous state by the time i was on my weekly allotted schedule of making coffee for peasants. (Peasants)
mood swings and several hours later, i got home and found my face attached to a couch before having to wake up and change into a suit with 5 minutes left to spare before the family left without me - they should teach people that in school, how to change clothes quickly - and i really, really didnt want them to leave me because i honestly have never been to a wedding until now. That and the free food and drink is an alluring pros- and i love my cousin the beautiful bride of the day.
I left the night with a funny feeling - besides ‘bone dead tired’ which doesnt really count as a feeling - and that was what everybody had said about the bride and the groom, how creative and caring she was, how silly, goofy and sociable he was. Not to complain, but i remember this because everybody who said anything said the same things, and by the time i was leaving i was truly ready to sleep.
And this is where it happened; okay i’ll be honest, i didn’t know the groom that well, his name maybe. I’d seen him once or twice before and as i walked out him and the bride stood at the door shaking everybodies hands until when he reached me, he shook my hand and addressed me like an old friend. It was in the car on the way home that retroactively, every single word about how great the two were and the appearance of overseas family members took on new significance. In my sans-sleep state i realized here were two amazing people getting married and for some reason, another completely euphoric mood swing grabbed me by the tie and flew away with me.
Yes, yes i know that its the thursday after the weekend now but shortly after i went home i hibernated for 3 days and then woke up today in ball blistering heat to type this up. That is the truth. Because i am not a liar. Just like i am not married.
There are inspiring words by Vonnegut
or beautiful pictures by someone or other.
There are bitter recriminations from her bitter
view of a world tainted by our history
which we don’t study
nobody ever studies anymore.
We just speak. Write. Record
and struggle to find solace when all we’re given
is more music to calm us, enthrall us.
Stories to arouse us, drive us, spark within us
the fires we left behind when we grew
because fires untempered won’t help you through
your new grown up worries. You must tame yourself or else fail.
failure is for others, the masses of others,
forget them, its about you, don’t fail.
Keep striving, work hard, it’ll pay off,
it’ll pay off soon, any moment now. In money.
Don’t stop.
Don’t ever find time to stop and remember your loneliness
Stop it.
Fill it. Fill the void. With pleasure.
Food. Drink. Sounds. Spectacles. Delights.
Stop it.
Give me something else.
Give me another cure for it.
Not just more distractions.
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Someday i’ll be true to myself.
and immediately i was struck with a sense of attraction. Not like that. No I mean the type that just controls your attention like a child tugs at a parents sleeves. It’s probably happened to you before, on a bus, the line for a cinema or some other everyday place and for some strange reason your mind becomes centered around somebody else that isn’t you for a short period of time.
Just then my mind could have woven narratives about any aspect of her life, the way her blue headphones framed her brown hair or the punchy yellow of her sweater, the way her mouth seemed to quiver before she spoke. Maybe she was cold in the winter melbourne weather and felt like eating something. Maybe she was on the way to the city and just needed lunch.
Out of all these unknowns there was one fact and that was her hands were covered in red and brown splotchy bruises and her wrists were painted in red self-inflicted lines when she paid for the order.
When was the last time you felt genuinely miserable through empathy? I did the other day and it didn’t last long but it was real and it was terrifying and I don’t think I will ever forget the girl who commanded my attention or her crisscrossed wrists.
I won’t see her ever again.
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Between you and me, I absolutely cannot for the life of me ever communicate to a satisfactory level. Not really. You can speak to another and hazard a guess they’re feelings and motivations, you can notice similarities between how you feel about something and the concept someone is trying to relay to you. But its mostly language through an opaque window.
But sometimes. Sometimes you hit gold and conversation is like the flow of warmed honey.
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Originally this was written as a response to a single inbox message, and then I got a couple more of them, and now it’s a letter to all of you. I am tired of you.
[TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, rape culture; eating disorders]
It must be exhausting carrying all this hate around,…
Click the link and perhaps read Srini’s post as well for full context..
If misogyny exists and is prevalent, yes its bad.
The presence of Misandry doesn’t make it less legitimate though.
And yet, Misogyny itself shouldn’t mean Misandry is irrelevant.
Both positions, made by both parties have their points and detractors but the problem seems to be that somewhere in the conversation, it has become adversarial. Proof based. Guilt based. Event based. As if buried in the litany of examples and records stands a shiny final answer for who is or isn’t right.
That isn’t true.
Crying Misandry in response to feminist writings in an attempt to denigrate the cause of feminism isn’t what we need, its almost another type of misogyny.
But the position that suffering of one party necessarily precludes the acknowledgement of another parties IS wrong. That is not to say that Feminism does that period, but why IS our language so combative nowadays?
I reiterate: Please be nice to others everybody
is… moral relativism could save the world.
Because nothing would be bad and bad wouldn’t exist.
Then everything could be good.
I think i’d shoot myself in a world like that though.
Black and White is trite, it’s a tired judgement to
make of a person nowadays. But damn if it doesn’t
feel good to have convictions.
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Read moreI had a glass of milk, a midnight snack and forty winks on the night i turned 18.
I had a drink to his memory, and a photo developed the day i found out my grandfather died.
One happened before the other.
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Written a day before posting
Hello Melbourne Airport Wi-Fi.
no i would not like to pay four dollars for 15 minutes of internet.
would you like it if i charged you a thousand dollars every time i threw my rubbish into a bin?
An exagerrated analogy i know, and not a very good one (aw hell, its terrible i won’t kid myself) but the internet… is a human right.
you know that no?
(Source: ahintoforanges)
Read moreA hoon; blaring my car horn down the road and become the hushed whispers between kids in the neighbourhood as they walk through school gates.
“Did you hear it as well?”
The boy on the train; offering his seat to the first person who looks like they need it, and become, a piece of gratitude towards society and all its children.
“And he was such a polite young man”
A rascal; making jokes and playing tricks, nigh on cartwheeling down the road and beoming an over the dinner table story between couples as they fill the silence between them with little anecdotes.
“without a care in the world! Like he didn’t even notice me!”
The musician; humming ditties and whistling tunes everywhere i go, becoming an infuriating melody stuck in peoples minds such that it is cursed at, but still repeated.
“GARH, no not aGAIN”
The Gentleman; making conversation with one and all, delighting with facts, deep with opinions, abundant with humour and to become a memory of a most enchanting night out.
“No, see that was most definitely not what he said, he SAID…”
Another human connection: reminding somebody else once again that if our brains are the most important organ in our body, then our sentience is at once the most amazing and isolating of consequences it creates. Becoming, for one moment, a HUMAN human being to one who might have been most terribly, terribly lonely.
“I can’t say, there was just… no i really can’t explain how i’m feeling right now”
I want to be the stories people tell each other, recollections of a strange quirk of the day, a representation of a different time where things were much less the same. I want to live on, as another memory in the collective consciousness of the world. An impression. My impression.
* ♫ The very best, like no one ever was ♪ to catch them was my real test, to train them is my cause ♪
(Source: ahintoforanges)
I hate having a Populist approach to my own expression.
Take for example the news coverage from my local states newspapers:
Herald Sun: ‘TV’s Golden Boy’ (front page and subsequent 4 pages covering a television awards program that had aired the night before)
Several things in this paper were also covered, politics, taxes, sports, number scorings for dresses women had worn to the event, a 1 and a half inch article that covered the story of 400 prisoners escaping from a pakistani prison after a taliban-led raid as well as an assortment of other topics + ads.
The logic behind it is sound, when you run a paper, you hope to make a profit, when you need to make profit in a paper, you aim to get the most viewers to look at your paper and subsequently the advertisements you’ve put into that paper. I personally have no problem with the logies and the fact that it was an upset win DID pique my interest. I picked up the paper, i read the report.
But to have to decide, every single day, what stories will make the cut in the next mornings paper? To actively skim over stories of international importance that might have less immediacy in favour of pandering to those who stop reading your paper if you didn’t? It appalls me, but even more so, it scares me because i understand why one might do it and i do it myself.
So now what does that mean about my tumblr? About your tumblr? Your facebook, your texts, your emails, your words of encouragement, your words of hate, your statements on your music tastes? How much of what you post and write and describe, how much of what you say is dictated by what you think someone is thinking about you? A Lot? A little bit?
I like to think that my tumblr is non-controversial, inoffensive, acceptable, accessible. But thats boring isn’t it? No, lets step outside of that box as well; by classifying myself, i have already fallen prey to self-censorship. Most times, we feel fine with this, our social skills demand this of us to some degree in our everyday lives but consider just how much it pre-determines your will and maybe, you can start wrestling with how two-faced you can be. It’s great fun.
(and yes, that IS supposed to be offensive, boo to you populism)
(Source: ahintoforanges)
