Sullen Moon

The moon, slung low in the sky, filled the side mirror with its liquid luminescence and made my eyes grow large and black as I began to stare inwards. Travelling onwards – a passenger – in love. Utterly, newly and youngly in love. In love and wishing I wasn't because I really couldn't be bothered with all that again when the grey slug in my brain was already whispering songs of doom.

But I was passenger with a sullen moon at my heel and sane people don't jump from moving cars.

That was one yesterday. One night in a succession of long slow, southern nights, followed by painfully bright southern days.

And I'd see it to the end and then I'd look outwards from despair and ask once again, “Where will I find my next love?”

Like mantras they arise unbidden in my mind – clouds of molecules spelling out lessons never learned. Fragments of teenage poetry forming the framework of my thinking brain. Where did that ten years of nights bring me?

I've always lived a troubled life to justify what I felt inside. It's as if I lived that ten years of nights in order to prove all that I already knew.

Follow Troubles Me

'Trouble doesn't follow me; follow troubles me.' - Mary - Psych. Patient; mad woman; visionary.

I am young; insufferably so. I am sitting cross-legged in the sunny hospital grounds. My chin rests upon my chest. I rock a beat that keeps the dog at bay; growling and circling, hungry for scant meat hanging from bones grown old before their time.

I am drugged and starved and very, very lost.

There is a picnic table beside me. My crazy hospital friends sit at the table engaged in a noisy conversation that I am not listening to. Then someone says, "Don't you think, Oscar?" And I am drawn into the moment with a start.

It is dark. There are no crazy friends. There is not even a picnic table.

I am bemused by this. I go inside where I am informed in accusing tones that I was missing and that I have been looked for, although not that hard, obviously.

One of the two nurses who hasn't yet had their soul ripped out through their asshole happens to be working. I tell him about the imaginary picnic. He says, "Oookaaay," in that slow way that denotes an excess of depth. "I'll let them know," he says. "Oh, okay". An inevitable moment of awkwardness ensues before I turn and go to try to fill the endless hours until morning.

On the strength of this lame-ass vision and the fact that they are fast running out of options in the treatment of my depression (and that I am slowly starving to death), I am diagnosed as being in the early stages of psychosis.

I am transferred to a purpose-built facility where I become part of an epic experiment and am ultimately and miraculously cured by time and appetising food.

Whilst there, I tongue kiss a witch, share a room with a vampire and at approximately fifteen minute intervals, tell an otherwise likable young man, whose mind dwells in some romantic wilderness, that, "No, thank you, I do not wish to 'fuck'." The boy who skips begging and resorts immediately to more persuasive methods goes unpunished and ever uncomprehending, because a judge and jury come to the conclusion that his particular brand of delusion renders him incapable of deciphering the lesser and greater implications of the word, "No".

In the more recent past of an hour ago, I am sitting outside in the suburban night, thinking that in a different time or place, the witch might have been either consulted respectfully or burned, the vampire probably would have been staked. The otherwise likable young man might have been a great historical lover, merely for having had the audacity to ask and the boy might just have got what was coming to him. I might, perhaps, have been a revered picnic oracle, had I learned to listen to the mad conversations of imaginary psych. patients, which I do not doubt held secrets that I can only blindly guess at now.  They may or may not have pertained to the most auspicious location to avoid the intrusion of ants and whether cucumber or egg would best please the gods.

"One tribe's shaman is another's schizophrenic," I conclude, "One revered; one shunned." As I ponder this, staring out at faded stars in an ancient sky, I see, fleeting to its destruction, a shooting star.

"Well, that's got to mean something," I think to myself. But don't tell anyone. That there's magical thinking and I don't have time for epic experiments now. I have dishes to wash.

There Must be More to This Than Life

I am frustrated.

I am frustrated to the point of impotent rage with my inability to be and to do. And to love and to think and to demand and to make and to fly and to dream and to fling open the locked doors in my mind and find a way for madness and sanity to co-exist. In me.

I want to throw my arms wide to the world, but I need to keep them wrapped tight around my chest to protect this fragile heart; to keep it beating long enough and well enough.

PROMPTuesday - The Geek Chronicles

It's PROMPTuesday and this week, San Diego Momma has challenged us to write part of a TV pilot based on our own lives - there's the possibility of some absolutely riveting television right there.

I think I would like my show to be called The Geek Family Robinson. I would be played by Juliette Lewis or maybe I'll play myself and Jonny Depp can play Hammond. The scripts would, of course, mandate surprisingly frequent and graphic sex scenes for a family show, but rest assured, they're very important to the story. DK would probably be played by Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment in drag or perhaps some 'emerging talent' if Dakota and Haley are actually twenty-year-old drug addicts now (they'll always be wee moppets seeing aliens and dead people in my mind...Sigh).

The Geek Family Robinson

The gripping tale of an extraordinary family marooned in the depths of suburbia, the Internet their only contact with the outside world.

SCENE ONE

The scene opens on a sun-dappled dining room. The room is messy, but charmingly so, delightfully raffish even. The table is strewn with an assortment of papers, books and DVD's.  Mother (Mama) and daughter (DK) sit side by side at matching laptops. Each is engrossed in their respective activities.

DK: Mama...

Mama (Glances over): Aha...

DK: Can I download this?

Mama: What is it?

DK: Um...it's a 'toe jam horse'.

Mama (Looks back at work.): Heh, cute...'jam horses'...Sure!

Both work for 30 seconds with only the sound of mouse clicks, tapping keys and the child's off key 'laaa, laaa, laaa, laaaing' to break the silence.

DK: Mama...

Mama: Aha...

DK: What's a 'virus alart'?

Mama: 'Alert', Honey, it's a 'virus alert'.

DK: Oh.

Both work for 30 seconds with only the sound of mouse clicks, tapping keys and the child's off key 'boom-titty, boom-titty, boom-titty, booming' to break the silence.

DK: Mama...

Mama: Aha...

DK: Is 'remott access' good?

Mama: 'Remote access'? It depends on the context, Sweetie.

DK: Oh.

Both work for 30 seconds with only the sound of mouse clicks, tapping keys and the child's off key 'wooo, wooo, wooo, woooing' to break the silence.

DK: Mama...

Mama: Baby, I'm working really hard here. I need to concentrate. Can you just play your horsey game for a little while?

DK: Okay.

Both work for 30 seconds with only the sound of mouse clicks, tapping keys and the child's off key 'greee-ooo, greee-ooo, greee-ooo, greee-oooing' to break the silence.

DK: Mama...

Mama: Aha...

DK: I don't like this game. It's not very much fun.

Mama: Okay, Pookie, why don't you just play Club Penguin for a while?

DK: Okay.

Both work for 30 seconds with only the sound of mouse clicks, tapping keys and the child's off key 'kireee, kireee, kireee, kireeeing' to break the silence.

DK: Mama...

Mama: Aha...

DK: Why has my screen gone all blue?

Fade to black.

We Got Wind

As I open the door, the wind suddenly picks up and blows with a force that causes me a moment of panic, for so many things are loose here. The sudden gust is almost an ambush, as if the wind had lain in wait for me to step out to see to the laundry.

My panic tells me that I could be blown away; lifted from my feet and taken, but my mind is stronger than that inevitable animal response. I tell myself, even as the panic dissolves into the moving air, that I am not so very insubstantial. Anymore.

Framed Prints For Sale in the Gift Shop

In the interests of extending my creative range, I thought I'd try my hand at a bit of art photography. Here are the highlights:

I call this one Starry Starry Night: Impromptu Art Installation by DK in Brutally Pointy, but oh so Shiny Craft Stars on the Temptingly Blank Canvas of the Parental Bed.

This next one, I call: Hairy Hairy Leg or It Really has been a Very Long Winter.

The following photo probably defines my primary style. I take lots of these. They are the inevitable consequence of repeated attempts to photograph a body in perpetual motion. In the interests of keeping it ethereal, I usually delete them, but I thought I'd share this one. I call it The Incomprehensibility of Childhood or Beloved Blur in Pink Pyjamas.

ECT with Bummer Warning

THE SOMEWHAT GRATUITOUS PREAMBLE

Okay, this one's a bit of a bummer. I thought about it and I decided to post and be damned, but I won't be offended if you choose not to read further.

Let me tell you, though many of you are well aware, that on life's road there are tunnels so fucking dark that it's very easy to believe they have no end. 

For the record, even amidst life's challenges, I am now a very happy and positive person. I am not in particular need of your help or your sympathy or even your advice, although there is plenty I can learn from you. In my present, I have been taught to pretend that the past life that made me and constantly informs the sweet blessed days of my present, was a dream from which I began to awake eight and a half years ago. And who am I to bore people and cause them discomfort in the recounting of my stupid dreams?

Having said that, if people, like me, who've made it through, deny their journey, then a thousand others will live and die without ever being heard. So I'm going to post this (and perhaps more) for those that I had to turn my back on and leave behind when I walked from that life to this. And for me. Because I am more than just this moment.

Maybe that preamble is a little melodramatic, because after all, in the end, it all comes down to poo.

ECT

I am quiet and hidden. I relinquish completely. Submit. They put me under. They say, “Use the toilet first or you might poo.” I am terribly afraid of pooing. I walk – follow. A dumb animal, made chemically soft around the edges and unable to care, although I am anxious I might poo. We go in in little groups. Assembled from various wards. Escorted through the grounds in silence. It reminds me of a primary school excursion – hoping that in this little group there might be a word or two from the teacher – just for me.

We enter. The suite is attached to the ward where those who never get better go. I know if I don't do something soon they'll give up and leave me there. Part of me would like that. I try to use the toilet, but I haven't eaten in weeks, aside from cauliflower in white sauce when they have it. To keep me alive they've been giving me ice cold cans of Ensure that I sip slowly. Aside from the cauliflower, it is my sole sustenance. I don't think of that and worry that I'll poo.

We wait. The boredom of these days and weeks and months puts me deeper and deeper into this state of bleak meditation. I am steadily emptying.

We go in. We lie down on a row of gurneys, I think. I think a catheter is inserted in the back of my hand. We breathe oxygen through a mask. Anaesthetic is administered. Nothing happens. I feel proud they could not bring me down easily, though I have no fight in me at all.

Someone says, “Something milligrams of lithnocaine”, or something - like a TV doctor. My head is heavy. There is ringing in my ears. Louder and louder then I'm gone. Only a second or two to appreciate that I am off my fucking head.

Writing this, I am remembering the technician. A quirky freaky-looking little gnome-like man. He talks strangely. He is not someone to trust, but I get used to him with time - with multiple visits. Maybe he attempts to say something kind or funny at some point and wins me over or maybe a familiar (if freaky) face is enough.

I become aware that I am sitting at a table with the others, sipping orange juice from those silly containers they have in hospitals, that are impossible to open. My container has been opened for me and I am sipping. I think someone – the escort, perhaps – woke me up and led me from the gurney to the room with the table and the orange juice and the others and told me to sip.

I am completely empty. I have no sense of self. I am nothing. I know nothing. I do not think I could tell you who I was if you bothered to ask.

As I finish my juice, I become aware of the headache. Not an ordinary headache, but an "I've just been smacked in the head with a baseball bat" kind of headache. An injury. A hurt. It's then we have to drag ourselves out into the blinding light though I want nothing more than to be allowed to stay sitting at that table.

Back at the ward they give me paracetamol or something equally ridiculous and tell me I can lie down. You're not allowed near your bed during the day – except if you've had ECT or been given a shot in the ass for non-compliance. I sleep and when I wake, I think and think and slowly, without passion, know that I have lost something.

But I didn't poo.

Evil Wears Mouse Ears

Don't you hate it when people tell you about their stupid dreams? And it's always those people who remember their dreams in mind-numbing detail who feel the need to recount them to anyone hapless enough to wander by.

"The guitar was all slimy and then suddenly it turned into an eel and it was this particular shade of greeny-yellow, like snot when you've had a cold for a while and it's all viscous, but the weird thing was, it wasn't slimy anymore!"

"Hmmm...That would be a fascinating story, had it actually happened, as opposed to it being a figment of your warped mind."

"But no, wait, then the eel started talking and it was telling me all this stuff about my dead grandma and then it was my dead grandma, or at least, it had her voice, but it was still an eel..."

And have you ever wandered over and accidentally joined a dream conversation half way through (you'd hardly do it on purpose). It's only as you're actually saying, "Wow, I have to see that eel." that it finally dawns on you that you're not in Kansas anymore.

Anyhoo, in other news, I woke up early this morning after a disturbing nightmare. I'm still feeling a little blinky and blurred about the edges, even after coffee. Dappled in sunlight though, my nightmare seems less than credible as a terrifying spectre, lingering on the horizon of my subconscious.

Okay, brace yourselves for the horror. In my nightmare, I was watching a news item and believe me, the fact that I watch TV in my sleep is not lost on me. One of the Wiggles (yeah, you know, 'Toot, toot, chugga, chugga, big red car' and all that) was reported to have said something ill-advised. I don't remember what, but something fairly innocuous, and the vocal minority was up in arms. So Disney (the empire) had him put to death.

Then they had Murray (the red Wiggle) saying, "Well, we thought it best just to go along with it and hand him over."

Then I woke with a start, cold sweat and all that..."Noooo! Not the yellow Wiggle!"

I wonder what Freud would make of that? Probably something about the death of childhood and evil wearing mouse ears and me wanting to sleep with my father.

Little Feet

With your school year just beginning, so many of you have made this homeschooling mother's heart ache with tales of separation from your babies. This morning, I awoke with this poem for DK writing itself in my head.

Little feet, little feet

Let them take you to the world

Then bring you back into my heart

Where you belong.

Little feet, little feet

Holy crap, they've grown so big.

I can see you have the means 

To travel far.

Little feet, little feet

Your first road is laid before you.

It's paved with stones I broke myself

Upon my heart.

But little feet, oh little feet

My heart softens every day

And becomes a thing too tender

For that task.

Little feet, little feet

I have taught you to defy me;

To find a path and make it 

All your own.

But little feet, my little feet

I hope your many roads 

Will sometimes take you

Very near to mine.

And little feet, sweet blessed feet

Though I'll always walk behind you,

I will miss you there beside me

In the dark.

PROMPTuesday - Fragility

Yep, you guessed it (the title may have given it away), it's PROMPTuesday again. This week, Deb, San Diego Momma, sent us off to write a poem that included the following lines in any order:

“I tie a ribbon in a foolish way”

 

“The delicious fragility of this travesty”

 

“Where we still laugh and wish”

I started well. Inspired by that bittersweet ribbon, the first few verses wrote themselves, but ultimately, 'fragility' proved my pitiful undoing. Clearly I should have just accepted my rebellious literary spirit and written a story in prose or maybe that rhyming technical manual I've been planning.

I tie a ribbon in a foolish way,

Between my hands and mind.

I bind my blood inside my chest,

For my heart, it is not mine.

I act without due sanction.

I love as though I'm blind.

I need this pale green ribbon

To connect my hands and mind.

My hands they write a story

That my mind will never read.

The ribbon makes its quiet way

To the delicious fragility.

Of this travesty, I will not write.

I cannot find a way.

This poem barely scans at all.

It may ruin sweet Deb's day.

It was 'fragility' that did it.

Too many syllables to save.

It took me to that dank grey stone,

That marks the poet's grave.

Next PROMPTuesday I'll try harder.

Perhaps shorten to 'delish'.

Then surely I will find the place,

Where we still laugh and wish.

Tightrope

The child wants more porridge. The child always wants more. I always want to give it to her, but I also want a little peace and an uninterrupted quarter hour to get something done.

So that's our life together; a tightrope strung between her yearning and my guilt.

A Scholarly Essay on the Overuse of Ellipses

I think I've worked out why I've been so tired and unproductive.

Yeah, well, obviously the two colds I've had back to back have contributed to the malaise. Yes, yes, and the sweet, sweet, stanky aroma of blossom, inducing hayfever. Actually, now that you mention it, after prolonged and delicate research, I have jumped to the conclusion that viscous tendrils of snot have been leeching through my porous skull into my brain, resulting in clinical slow-wittedness. All that's beside the point, though.

Work? Oh yes, well, I have been working more (you know, as a sideline to blogging), in an attempt to supplement my sock ass rabbit income and pay the crazy-ass rent. I'm not sure how much to say about that, though. I have a contract. There's this whole secrecy thing. I went all tingly signing it, like there was a clause about turning into a pumpkin or first born children or something. There may have been, actually, I probably didn't read the fine print. Anyways, that's all beside the point.

CIA? Ah no, let's face it, I'd go all giggly and crack the second Boris, the smouldering, intense Russian, put his arm around me, pulled me to his naked chest and said, "But Dahlink, why are you keeping secrets? Don't you luff Boris?" Mmmmm...Boris... But yeah, again, beside the point.

Pardon? Ah, no, I don't work for a software developer or an Internet security firm or a lolz cats website or... okay, okay, it would probably be best described, if a little loosely, as "entertainment". I spend long, intense hours in front of the computer, entertaining. Okay? Satisfied?

Oh God, now I've made it sound like I lock myself in my bedroom and rub oil all over my body and make kissy faces at a webcam all day. Not that I wouldn't consider it, but I don't think there's a huge market for skinny-ish, cellulite-bearing, middle-aged women saying repeatedly, "Oooh Baby...Oooh Baby...Hang on a sec....Sweetie, Mama's working. I'll be out in a little while. You have to stop knocking, Honey, it's messing up the audio...What's on fire?" Or maybe there is. What do I know? I can be quite naive at times.

Really, though, that's beside the point. I won't say any more, because before you know it, I'll be all, "Let me show you how it works. It's rather ingenious, really." And then the spies from those other chocolate factories will have me right where they want me.

Once again, though, beside the point. The reason I've been tired and unproductive is...Yes, well obviously the fact that I go to bed really late and have no ability whatsoever to adhere to a routine contributes to the problem, but that's...yes...that's right...beside the point.

Are you even listening here or is this all about you showing off for the cameras?

Okay...thank you. The reason I've been tired and unproductive...I am getting to it...Just give me a chance...The reason is...I've been the innocent victim of a cursed mobile phone...It's not stupid!...It's true.

My friend gave me a spare mobile phone as a, you know...spare. This phone had no SIM card and was turned off, yet every morning, at precisely 6am, it would turn itself on and make a hideous noise until I got up and turned it off. This must have been going on for a couple of weeks, but because at 6am, I am akin to the walking dead, I would simply turn it off and throw myself back into bed and wake up a couple of hours later with no recollection of the event.

As each new morning dawned, like Groundhog Day, I would get up to kill the obnoxious sound, knowing full well that I did this yesterday and the day before and the day before that, but as I collapsed back into my bed all memory would be erased from my mind and I would be doomed to repeat this insane dance every morning for all eternity. Doomed! DOOMED! Mwuhahaha!

What do you mean, 'unnecessary'? I'm building drama. Do you want to tell this story? Do you think you could tell it better? Alright, fine, but I'm telling it, okay, so just shut up and listen.

Where was I? Oh yeah...Mwuhahaha! Until this morning. This morning I awoke to find the mobile phone lying by my bedroom door where I had thrown it, like a message from my 6am self to my 8am self. And thus the wicked spell was broken. A couple of weeks worth of torturous 6am's came flooding back and...

Yeah, I know lots of people have to get up at 6am for work and school and children and whatnot, but I don't, okay? So it's torturous.

Geez, what are you even doing here? Are you one of those "trolls" everyone keeps talking about? "Anon"? Yeah, well, I think "Anon" is a stupid name. What? There's nothing wrong with "tinsenpup". It's a nice name. My dead grandmother was called "tinsenpup". Are you calling my dead grandmother stupid? Eh?

Hello! Hello? Anyone? Mrs Pummelhorse! I'd like to get down now...

Too Bad

This night has invoked a physical memory.

Today was the first truly spring day of the season. Past midnight the air clings to a legacy of warmth. And there is a wind; not a gale or a breeze, but a viciously playful wind that is causing things to stir.

My body is making its own plans to run through the night in a sweetly fluid pack; to visit dark playgrounds and swing on swings and laugh with delight until dawn comes to chase us away.

My body's plans don't involve a mountain of mouldy dishes, a filthy floor and a bed that will be a sweet refuge when its time comes.

Too bad.

I Coulda Been Slightly More Than Mediocre

I'm rethinking the New York Times best seller. I'm not sure I have the temperament for fame. Fortune, I think I could adapt to, but fame could be problematic.

I was asked for my autograph once. Really. Not just, "Please sign this search warrant, Ms. tinsenpup."

I was invited to do a reading at a town hall with some other fledgling writers. This was back when I used to say, "yes" to things without careful consideration of the consequences to my delicate psyche.

The hours before were one massive anxiety attack. I spent the early part of the evening smoking on the fringes or retching in the Town Hall toilets.

The Hall was packed with a few hundred locals, literary types and supporters...and me. By the time I read, I was a ghost. I was 20 and looked much younger; small and thin and insubstantial and after all that retching, pale as water. Voice soft with a nicotine rasp at the best of times, in the midst of a panic attack, it was rendered breathy by mild hyperventilation. With long, light hair falling in lifeless wisps, I might have seemed ethereal. The microphone was swung down alarmingly at my approach. No minor adjustment would do. I was barely present.

The story was called Sorrow Slept. It was quite good in an understated kind of way and my relative absence served the reading well. Finished, I stayed to support the final reader then escaped applause to smoke.

I was high on leftover adrenalin and giddy from an over-indulgence in oxygen and slow poison. My friends milled about offering the necessary reassurance that I'd done great, when a couple of older women, my age now, maybe, approached.

They said nice things that I didn't know how to take; posed a couple of questions and then one of them asked if I would sign her programme.

I, of course, was horrified. Frankly, it had been disturbing enough to be spoken to. I made a habit of making myself liquid in those days. Being noticed was enough to make me feel my soul was being sucked out through my eyes.

I took the proffered pen, signed quickly then went back to laugh quietly with my friends.

Even now, I don't really have the temperament for fame or fandom or the pointless vitriol that goes along with it and don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting it's even a serious possibility. I'm just thinking, because, you know, I think. A lot, actually. Too much. And I was just thinking... Perhaps I should aim for slightly more than mediocre.

Endless - A Comic Book Romance

Neil Gaiman created the world in seven years with 75 issues of The Sandman.

We lived there.

Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium are siblings. 

They are the Endless.

He was in love with Death.

I was in love with Delirium.

Make of that what you will.

We worked in a comic shop.

He was one of the back room boys.

I was on show for the geeks out front.

One day I said, "You need a hair cut."

He looked at me steely-eyed and replied, "You need a head job."

When my world broke, I found myself sitting on a bench in front of the shop on my day off.

Make of that what you will.

I was homeless, so he took me with him.

He said he'd been contemplating suicide, but I'd do.

As I drew him near, I brought him into my Delirium.

As he came to me, he brought me into his Death.

Make of that what you will.

PROMPTuesday - A Fable

I've been thinking. (I know...you're shocked.) I dither about on this blog saying nothing much at all, if anything at all and then San Diego Momma comes along on PROMPTuesday and tells me to write something and I do, relatively easily, in fact. So I realised that if only she would come along one Tuesday and tell me to write a New York Times best seller, I could finally quit my job selling sock ass rabbits and move somewhere where it's always warm. Then I realised that that would never work, because given that when she tells me to write a story, any story, I write a poem; if she told me to write a novel, I would, no doubt, come back with a technical manual. A technical manual written in rhyming verse, of course, but a technical manual nonetheless.

A fable lay between them,
In the space left by their drifting.
It grew epic with the rapid flow of time.

She was ever looking backwards;
Subtle glances through the portal,
She had made to look upon a love sublime.

"Avert your eyes," she thought.
"Avert your eyes," she prayed.
"Avert your eyes," the mantra spoken deep inside her mind.

He stared only inwards,
Willing her to look upon him
And see the love most tender that he to her did bind.

And the fable there between them
Grew ever darker in the shadow
Of the words that fell unspoken, their love thus to unwind.

"Look into me," he thought.
"Look into me," he prayed.
"Look into me," the mantra spoken deep inside his mind.

Cacophonous Calm

DK has a friend here for a sleepover and do you know what that means? That's right, sweet, sweet peace. Well, not entirely. They are a little noisy and boisterous with sugar, but it's amazing how self-contained two seven-year-olds can be compared to one, particularly with Wii-motes strapped firmly to their little wrists and a variety of junk food laid out before them.

Still, this could be the calm before the storm. If you don't hear from me in the next 24 hours, send help...or at least more dinosaur lollies.

Pictures of You

I look at that picture in my mind and I think about what it all means. I try to fit the puzzle pieces together. My mistake, of course, is the perpetual presumption that if I shuffle the pieces long enough they must somehow form a picture of enlightenment; 'Epiphany in Oils' - 3000 pieces waiting to be carefully glued onto cardboard. I have a patch of dark sky and the left side of his face, but the shadowy folds of his overcoat, as it falls over his body, are posing some difficulty.

I always carry a metaphor beyond the horizon of the nonsensical. Life really is like a box of chocolates. Or at least it could be if you lent me your ear for long enough...or bent your head towards me slightly...or fell asleep with sunglasses on...

I'll never be the voice of a generation. I sold out, or rather bought in, years ago. Besides, mid-thirties angst is only attractive if the writer is on the verge of long-awaited self-destruction and mind-numbing mediocrity is hardly the same thing.

The Blogtations Post

Blogtations is having a party. Actually, apparently they're having a "par-tay", but I'll try not to hold that against them. If you're not familiar with Blogtations, it's where you'll find the best that the blogging world has to offer - distilled into tiny little kernels of bloggy goodness. The party is in honour of the upcoming 500th Blogtation and we are all invited to join in here (there could be an Amazon voucher in it for you).

The magical woman behind Blogtations is Musing (Quote Hunter) who has, as near as I can ascertain, discovered the ability to move freely through the space time continuum, allowing her to support countless blogs and bloggers (including this one), while seeking those sublime or ridiculous essences that constitute Blogtations (with only a little help from her adoring readers). Rumour has it that she also squeezes a life in there somewhere too, but I find that hard to believe.

I procrastinated over this post for some time, because Musing has asked that we include a favourite quote, which is a little like asking us to find a particularly pointy needle in a very large needle stack. I'm still agonising over it, but here's one I loved:

'When I was 17, my dad took me to the Hofbrau House in Munich. He bought me a laughably gigantic mug of beer (which I pretended was my first). "Son," he said to me. "But Dad, I'm a girl." He replied, "Just humor me for a few minutes."' - Manager Mom

Oh, but I love this one too:

'Instead of starting my day down in my tomb-with-a-window basement office, the place I go to fulfill my daily quota of writing, I finished my coffee and headed outside. As soon as I stepped out the back door, a welcoming sunlight draped across my bare, albino legs like a big saffron sheet fresh out of the drier, a warm and affectionate note from a long-lost friend. My mind was still a little frozen from lack of sleep. Sad, foggy, and stiff from the cold of the deep black. I found my favourite chair and sank into its cradle, deep red cushions floating me above polished cedar. I shuffled my chair towards the lawn, still sparkling with morning dew and immersed myself completely in the sun. And I thawed.' - Always going, going, going on beyond

And finally, this particular blog is a Blogtations gold mine:

'The first thing I did this morning after getting to work, was to Superglue my fingers to a plastic dinosaur. It was then that I knew today wasn't going to be one of my best.' - Killing a Fly with a Ukulele is Probably the Wrong Thing to Do

Don't tell anyone I cheated and included three. It pains me even to leave it at that.

PROMPThursday - Her Hands

This here is my PROMPTuesday attempt, although for our purposes today, I am renaming it 'PROMPThursday', so that I don't have to face my own failure to be in any way prompt. San Diego Momma's suggestion was to write a story inspired by a back-to-school memory. This is all I remember of my first ever day at school:

It was her first day at school; her first day in her little checked uniform and shiny black shoes.

She was silent, dulled by anxiety that was almost fear. But she was four and preparations had been made; discussion and a picture book at kinder; a couple of short visits to the school. She understood, at least, the inevitability of it.

It was raining. She held her mother's hand as they walked the long wide driveway beside the church to the school behind.

She looked down as she walked. She always looked down. That was how she saw the moth - floundering in the puddle. Drowning. Dying. Life ebbing from its fat grey body even as its wings fluttered desperately for life.

She lifted it gently and walked carefully, with measured steps, under her mother's umbrella, her soft little hands warming the moth, giving it back its life.

Then as she walked, looking down, her eyes rested on the little creature and she knew her place and her reason for being here.

They arrived and waited awhile and then the herding and tagging began. The children were separated from their mothers and lined up. She was in Prep Red. Some of the children were crying or yelling. She was quiet. She looked down. A life rested in her hands.

Then she was pushed - hard - in the back. Her little moth was thrown from her hands onto the wet asphalt and as she staggered forward, her own foot, in its shiny new shoe, fell square upon her charge and ended its life in an instant.

Her wet, rasping sobs joined the chorus around her as she stood desolate with empty hands. The line was led away and she followed in her place, not looking back to see the little grey spot she had made on the pavement.

And so it went. A childhood filled with lesser heartbreaks; the little deaths that would yet prove ill preparation for the greater.

Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of My Ass

Okay, maybe not a rabbit, but I can't think where else I'm going to get the extra $60 I'm going to need each week in order to cover our rent.

Yes, that's right, in December our rent is going up by $60 a week. I'm not an accountant, but given that I'm currently paying $180 a week, isn't that a 33% increase? Mmmm...that seems reasonable, doesn't it?

I had a little put aside for a rainy day that might have allowed us to move somewhere cheaper (the Great Sandy Desert, perhaps?), but then the storm that was the tinsen-mobile's pitiful demise broke over us. Now, I suspect I've bought the perfect car for drought country, because I'm fairly certain that it's going to be bringing rain down on my wet wet wet head before long. So here we are and we'll have to stay for now...at a cost.

I've been feeling more than a little stretched in every way for a while now. But snapping is not an option. So watch me pull a rabbit out of my ass. One way or another, it'll be a sight to see. I guarantee it.