a week of wordlessness

1. view from my room

2. looking up

3. icon in coffee

4. direction

5. a sky for my mood

6. into the glare

ordinary

"Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time"

Susan Cheever via ThinkExist

July changes everything and nothing

silence sits in the house by the bay

some are sleeping

some are woken

where rage has invaded our dreams

when we wake we can only speak of

uncertain rest, the morning fog in our

heads, where we have been and will

go, silent beyond the inferno

we will gather to pay tribute
to unspeakable love

and shy away from crimes

committed in its name

where the cry of a bird meets

the silence of a grave

we will stand on the edge

waiting to crumble, or to burn

a walk in the park pt2

centre

high above the city sprawl
my head is slowly dizzy
as the earth stretches
out in all directions
the distance peppered
with lights and millions
all those lives and so few
connected with mine

my eyes turn unerringly
in the direction of loss

a walk in the park pt1

Buy prints here

Aid for the introverted dater

As a introvert in an extroverted world, I often need reminders about why I am the way I am. When I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed and struggling with some variation of 'why can't I just...?' it helps to go back and read some of the materials I've gathered on introversion and personality types.

A couple of months ago I discovered (through judicious web surfing) Nancy R. Fenn, the Introvert Coach. If you are willing to overlook the lack of website 'shininess', you'll find a wealth of articles, stories, tips and guides purely for introverts.

A few weeks ago I purchased one of the ebooks, Dating for Introverts. For the bargain price of US$5.95, I got 84 pages of relief from wondering why I still struggle to make connections in a city that supposedly houses over 6 million people.

I sat at my computer in the loungeroom reading avidly, periodically jumping up to call over my (also introverted) housemates to excitedly point out another nugget of truth. One of the mantras that stuck with me was "It's not against YOU. It's for ME'" from the SLAP ME SILLY IF I DON’T CORRECT MY SELF-TALK CHART for Dramatic Long Term Effects in Increased and Appropriate Self Esteem and Success in Dating. (If that title alone doesn't convince you it's worth buying, well, let me say BUY IT!).

I haven't yet had to say that to anyone, but saying it to myself helps me feel "normal" when I choose to close the door to my office or opt out of an invitation to a social event that I just don't have the energy for.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you don't know what an introvert is (and you might not, since we make up well under half the general population), or you want to know what kind of introvert you are, take a look at these websites:
Keirsey Temperament Sorter
HumanMetrics

A poet's work

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie via Brainy Quotes

new sails

(a ten word challenge)

ah the impudicity of the young and heartless
already I can feel my unworn age creeping over me
like some witches curse, an exanthema of
gentle grief that pours in faster with
every adult night of wine and cheese
yet with the space and time I have spent here
I could barely compose a fulsome sonatina

how neatly berthed I find myself in
the overwhelming wharf of this new life
more raw and loosened and a truer self than ever
while I imagine my former friends and apologists
sipping lemonade and iced tea by the old pool
with manicured smiles and synthetic aplomb

I may sigh for their loss, and regret others
but, like any faithful diarist, I
nullipara, poet and funambulist
cannot record other than the facts
namely, that I still cannot help but quiver
with a fear and a hunger for all that awaits me
even under this intrusive zeitgeist

Winter afternoons pt2

you have stolen my reflection

I do not recognise my body
this collection of buried
bones and bared limbs
that has carried me to here

my hands bent to hips
meet unfamiliar form
disconcerting firmness
where fingertips sank
into yielding roundness

what scars must be
waiting to appear?
this silent shedding
of flesh cannot be
without its marks

the strange desires
of men await me
stripped of old identities
I am visible to their lust
but what of mine?
I am only myself
in a shrinking skin

will you love me for
who I was in who I am
or only this newly
uncovered body
giving lie to the
beauty of my youth?

Winter afternoons

Prints available here

How to show someone who you are

Always start with a smile - beaming, grimaced, forced or fractured.... happy-to-see-you... afraid-of-what-you-might-see... I-can't-help-smiling-at-you... if-I-don't-I-might-cry. How to show someone who you are.

The way you laugh with different parts of you... the memory of the colour of your eyes when they're closed... the tilt of your throat when you listen... the scent of the inside of your wrist... the curve of your lip when you smile. How to show someone who you are.

The scars on your knees from before you grew up... the way you crinkle your nose before you sneeze... the creases in your upturned palm when you lie still... that sound you make when you start to cry... the look in your eyes when you hear something unexpected. How to show someone who you are.