Q and Daisy are here, Q and Daisy are here! I should really apologise to Nick, because we spent the first few hours either reminiscing about meets (New York in particular) or nerding out for BSG/Farseer trilogy/GRRM/Veronica Mars/etc. that he hasn't finished reading/watching yet. Whoops.
But this is so awesome! Tomorrow I'm taking them on a chocolate tour! We'll finish up with Chocolate Martinis at Polly. Oh, the decadence.
Also, I was just sending an email to my Grandma (!) and I found (whilst digging about in old archives) this random bit of poetry. And I have no idea what it is or where it came from:
The four horsemen, without atmosphere, manifestations of us, of human greed and malice, all surviving, with structure made of human hands. They consider the sky, see us in the distance, wave merrily at their faraway children.
I didn't manage many posts in November, did I? Ah well, I spent far too long in front of the keyboard and it possible would have tipped me into insanity to have posted much here while I was working on The Delve. But, it is all going rather well, as long as I actually manage to write the end of it. I think that I'm roughly, oh, six-eighths of the way through it, plot-wise, which I'm feeling positive about. I've sort of got a rough idea of how I want to finish it, but the plot keeps taking little unexpected turns. It's actually quite bizarre. And even a little surprising. Aren't I meant to be in control of the characters and what they're getting up to? Shenanigans!
Still, it is coming along well. I think that I'll finish it, and then go back and do quite a big edit before I show anyone. I really only worked out a few things (mostly to do with how the society functions) after I'd written quite a bit, so I'll need to make a few adjustments. I've re-read bits of it, and I think it's quite OK, really, which makes me happy. Certainly something that is worth working on, and I'm even quite proud of some of it.
I listened to quite a bit of Explosions in the Sky and Muse while I was writing it, and I'm sure that some of the themes crept in. Actually, I'm sure that some of themes from The Resistance worked their way in there, which is possibly quite obvious when reading the text. The album has a good feel for the political science-fiction genre, really, especially with all of the 1984 references.
Oh, and music has been consuming me lately - I saw Sia on Thursday and she was amazingly good! Actually, here's the video of her doing Buttons live:
She kicked off the gig with the glow-costumes and was so quirky and affable on stage that I kept laughing at her (especially when she was giggling!) I kind of love a performer who will bounce around in a costume and then tear me to little shreds with her next song. Oh, her voice! My god, her voice. It was so heartbreakingly beautiful that I kept closing my eyes to take it in properly. Soaring and aching and wonderfully controlled. She's really terribly amazing. And she's a self-proclaimed 'Lesbot'. (Just in case you're wondering, Tran refers to me thusly with alarming frequency, although I kind of like it...) So, she's more than welcome to be my celebrity girlfriend. Sorry, Regina Spektor...
Also, apparently, I am now 25. Birthday was roundly excellent - we drank at Section 8 and then came back to find our shed decked out with balloons and Happy Birthday signs and my neighbour made me a triple-level chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut butter icing. Holy hell, it was spectacular. And everyone was here! And James and Louise flew in from Canberra and Sydney respectively. Someone (and now, I can't remember who, because I was drunk) said to me at one point 'People have flown interstate to be here. You're pretty freaking lucky. You have amazing friends'. I fucking do. My friends are the greatest, and I was so happy that so many of them came to hang out with me. Ah! I feel all loved and warm and fuzzy.
So I'm 25, and all I can think of right now is that I've got the love.
So my flatmate (and general all-round awesome dude) Michael is running a festival. If you're reading this, and aren't in another country, come along!
Rainbird (Michael's band) are headlining, but 14 bands are playing over the day, as well as 6 DJs. It's going to be awesome, and also, if you come, Michael can pay the rent. Huzzah!
No, but really, I somewhat adore Rainbird - very cool melodic rock. So come along, have some beer. Tickets are $12, call me if you need 'em.
And here she is, ladies and gentlemen. In Wordle form.
It is actually terrifying, seeing this take shape. Of course, there is so much of me in this. It overwhelms me when I think of it. Part of me wants to lock it away so that nobody will ever read it. But how can I do that?
I really think that it's going to work. This feels like something that I should pursue. And it is taking shape in an amazing fashion - i have a rough plot (which rather breaks my heart, now that I'm getting to the meat of it) and plenty of notes on things that I shall edit when I am done. Some of it is obvious, but we'll see what happens when I'm finished.
I wrote a scene today that struck me. It was painful, painful. I almost feel terrible for doing such things to my characters. And it's only going to get worse from here. I'm rather destroying them. It's terrifying. But it is an amazing experience to be writing this. As I said, it feels as if there is so much of me in there. Heady. Marvelous. And yes, absolutely terrifying.
So I'm attempting NaNoWriMo again this year, after a few failed runs at it previously. Oh, I've won it twice, the first two times that I did it, but since then I've failed twice. I think. Was it twice? Either way, my Novembers have been disgustingly busy and stressy up until this year, so hopefully I'll make it now that all is well.
It's going pretty well so far - I'm at 7,500 and only three days in. The goal is to try to reach 1,667 words a day, so I'm ahead for now. I did just have four days off, which helped, but even so... I have a good feeling about this year, I really do.
I've been a little iffy about my piece, but seeing as it once was a failed short story, I'm actually rather excited to see that it is working nicely in a longer form. I seem to be stitching it all together fairly well, although I'm rather aware that my characters are moderately awful at this point. First draft, first draft!
Last Tuesday night was the signing for The Etiquette Files, a journal put together by Holmesglen, and I was lucky enough to be included, so a signing I went.
It was all very exciting. I even got to sit behind a table, like a real author. The best part, though, was meeting the other authors and chatting with tutors and literary folk and generally being a bit of a nerd. My piece was titled 'A Rather Sensible Guide for the Enjoyment of Free Beer Provided by Glorious and Venerated Acquaintances, or Why You Should be Nice to Strangers', which ended up being easily the longest and silliest title in the entire publication. I was ever so proud.
Of course, it's not a huge deal as far as publications go, but I was very happy to make the cut, and it has been a lovely confidence boost as well. With Nanowrimo approaching, I am churning over ideas, and am very tempted (despite crazy November schedule) to have a crack at it again this year. I'm quite sure that I will end up expanding upon an idea that I could never really get down in short story form. It might, however, work as a novel. Or novella. Or a longer piece. So we shall see.
I also really need to finalise the content for the zine I'm putting together. Hmm. Shall I include a short story?
Viva la resistance! Don't let those conservative boring hair-cut, no-good, letter-writing folk out-write us! We're gays, it's in our blood to be loud and artistic!
Australia fucking sucks balls sometimes, and this is one of those times. Apparently, tiny European countries are beating us to the punch on this - so is America! America, for fuck's sake!
Go look. Write a letter. There's an easy online form. Don't let the boring people get away with quashing our right to have giant musical-theatre weddings!
Writing this made me cry. I thought I'd cross post it. It's important.
From the board - a thread on where we grew up:
My parents moved to Castlemaine when I was probably around a year or two old. Castlemaine is a town of about 6000 people in the middle of the Victorian country, which was founded when gold was discovered in the area. This meant lots of trips to mining sites and projects on the gold rush when we were growing up. I remember hearing a story about how the building of one of the local pubs was financed because they found an enormous nugget of gold while they were digging out the cellar.
The house in Castlemaine proper was right next to one of the local primary schools. I remember wearing a t-shirt with a Vegemite logo on it for my very first day of school. We lived in that house until Mum and Dad bought a block of land on a hill in Chewton (a bush community about a fifteen minutes drive from the town center) named as such because of the early Chinese influence in the area. Apparently the site was dubbed 'Chow-Town' when the area was being mined, and you can still go out and visit the crumbling stone supports that held the water-wheel, an enormous battery that they used for crushing quartz. Dad designed the mud-brick house and built it, and it remains the strongest example of 'home' that I've ever experienced. Dale, my brother, and I helped on the site - we would mix the mud for the bricks by squelching about in dirt-and-water pits until the consistency was right, and we hammered and sawed whatever was needed.
The house had solar power (with a back-up generator) and rain-water tanks, with a gas fridge and stove, powered by enormous tanks we'd refill when needed. During our first winter in that house the local wildlife hadn't adjusted to us being there, so we'd routinely find tiny black scorpions on the floor, or several varieties of fairly deadly spiders. We never got bitten or stung by anything serious, but we did learn to tap our boots before we put them on. We saw a good number of snakes (including a King Brown once - deadly!) and we had a family of kangaroos in the paddock that our tiny little dog Rebel used to chase indignantly.
Dale and I spent most of the time out climbing the enormous hundred-years-old gum tree which was in our 'front yard' (although we didn't really have proper fences around the property). I fell out of that tree about a hundred times, but never from the secret spot three storeys up that only I could reach. We rode our bikes up and down the dirt road with the kids who lived next door (a five minute walk through an abandoned block). Once we rescued an echidna that was stuck trying to dig under a wire-fence. We'd catch yabbies in the dams deep in the pine forests surrounding the property, and go on fishing trips and build cubbies out of branches and old sheets. When it was hot we'd pile down to the local swimming pool and muck around for hours, baking on the concrete and eating cheap lollies with the tang of chlorine on our skin. When Mum and Dad went for a drink at the local pub, we'd go and play in an enormous mulberry tree that had half-blown over but kept growing. We'd stuff ourselves with the biggest mulberries I've ever seen, and get the juice off our fingers by crushing up green berries, a trick I learned from a friend of ours.
The most beautiful thing about that house was the sunsets - we lived on a hill and could look down over the valley. The horizon was clear, and when the sun set, the golden orange light would flare up and turn the world into a flame-filled extravagance. The huge gum was magnificent, towering, the light snagged on the splayed leaves in an almost orchestral splendor, and we'd walk barefoot on the soft dirt and watch, and slowly the light would fade and the mosquitos would emerge and the stars would sprawl overhead, and Dad would sit quietly while his music echoed off the high church ceilings in our lounge-room.
Eventually, my parents separated and my Dad died, and we sold the house. My brother and I have pledged to buy it back one day if we can.
I was standing in my room, pulling on my PJs and looked around at all of my cluttered bookshelves (three of them, all full to bursting) and my stained writing desk, which is covered in inks and pens and half-filled journals and scraps of poetry, as well as a large collection of watches (mine and other people's that I'm supposed to fix). And my gaze turned to my two guitars and my drums, and also my paintings, and then I got into my snug bed, and examined the pile of books on my beside table, and listened to the rain drumming on the tin roof and sliding down the windows...
This is a sanctuary. I have everything here, I have my books and my music and my writing tools, and... I realised that I really fucking love my life. I am rich. I have so much. I have so many things that expand my thinking and my creativity and my self-expression.
I will sleep tonight surrounded by so very many things that are me and my life.
