hip, hip…

As you may have caught in the ever-shifting flow of news on Facebook, the date is now set for the surgical replacement of my right hip  – 29th January. I’m pleased – that’s less waiting time between the deciding and the doing than I expected. I actually could’ve had January 4, but I enjoy the swimming/sunbathing/partying/relaxing traditions of a Sydney summer too much to so incapacitate myself at the height of it. I’d rather spend January limping and grumbling in the sun than under fluoros doing physio – and hydrotherapy is a long way short of surf and sand – so the end of January is perfect.

My surgeon is Dr Michael O’Sullivan, who does all the ex-dancers and athletes, and pretty much only does hips. We’ll be at the Mater, according to their website “the largest and one of the most respected orthopaedic surgical hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere, performing over 1,500 joint replacements every year”. I’ll be checking in on the 28th and staying 5 or 6 days. Do come and visit – I plan to be an exceptionally lively patient.

adventures in solitude (forthcoming noir zombie vs vampire film)

adventures in solitude pt 1: fact

A little after dark I am driving a pale blue Kombi down an unlit country road and suddenly I come to a barred gate. Damn, not such a good shortcut. I swing the Kombi into a three-point turn and while I’m facing an open field my lights go out. The darkness around me is immense, shadowy and silent beyond my little engine. I have the parkers, which on the Kombi are negligible, and I can see only by holding the high beam on. I check my phone: no reception. Steering while holding the high beam against the wheel and trying not to turn the indicators on, I head back to the point where I took the wrong turn, remembering houses there. On the way, I see a house I hadn’t noticed before and pull over. I knock repeatedly on the front door; no answer. I step back down into the yard and walk round one side, dodging bits of farm junk. There’s a light on inside, but no-one’s home. Suddenly I can hear my own rough accelerated breathing above the anxious orange clicking of the hazard lights, and the rustling quiet of the surrounding night. This is how horror movies start. Hn. Better get back on the road.

adventures in solitude pt 2: fiction

She stood at the black dresser in the lamplight, twirling a toothpick round the cone and gazing darkly into the mirror. Casey appeared in the doorway, looking insomniac. ‘Casey,’ she growled, low, slow and husky. ‘Go back to bed. Don’t come out here tonight. Forget anything you see or hear, and don’t come near me till daylight. I’m -’ her upper lip curled slightly ‘- dangerous… I’m in a mood to do some damage; hell, I’m in the mood that will do damage if I’m anywhere near anyone! Please, go back to bed. And shut your goddamn door.’

coming home to strangeness

I’m home, but I’m in a strange state. It’s 11.30pm, the plane got in after eight but it took me a couple of hours to get from the airport to Redfern.

That was fun… not. Just under a week ago my bank got wind that my debit card details “may have been compromised” and cancelled the damn thing. My financial lifeline in Europe, you understand. I survived on friend credit (fredit? A froan?) as far as the boarding gate, and I had AUD$10 in my wallet.

Not enough for a cab, though I thought I might be able to share one. But the first cabbie I approached with that plan demanded 75% of the fare, which is his right by law, but he was unpleasantly aggro about it and I hadn’t, at that point, the resilience to keep trying. I was hoping to avoid the train because it meant changing at Central and hauling my bags up 30 steps at Redfern. So I investigated the bus. ‘Investigated’ in this context means queued for, since signage at the airport bus/coach stops is minimal and information non-existent, and after 15 minutes along came a bus whose driver said I needed the 400, which would be along in another 15 minutes, and I’d have to change at Mascot shops and cross the road for the 309. I reconsidered the train, in case it came sooner, but it turns out the train fare on that rip-off private line is over $15. Back to the bus.

A journey by car, planes, and buses that began at 9.30 GMT yesterday ended sometime after 22.00 EST tonight with me collapsing into a chair on the terrace, crumb of herbal anaesthetic in hand. No-one was home, but the new presence is everywhere evident in little differences, someone else’s stuff. Where is Casey? Is he coming home tonight? Is he hiding out? Does he even expect me? I really should’ve Facebook messaged him, I realise after a while, because I don’t have his phone number. This is a little weird.

And so I unpack my laptop and set up, but though it tells me I’m connected to my wireless network, Firefox can’t find anything; Skype won’t open, I’m just not online. I plug in, but it’s not that. A problem with my ISP? I don’t know if I even have their phone number, and I’m too sore and tired to go look for it. Worse, I’ve put my Australian SIM back in my phone but my credit’s expired, and I can only top up online. Worse still, like an idiot I months ago let myself be booked to model tomorrow afternoon, and of course with no phone credit the SOS texts I tried to send this evening to organise a replacement wouldn’t have gone. I’ll have to call the models tomorrow morning, because at the moment, my only means of communication is the landline and it’s a little late to be making calls.

Suddenly, I’m strangely isolated. I can’t even call the people I should. All I can do is write – offline – about coming home to strangeness. And try to reassemble the thoughts I had while away, about coming back.

It’s 1am. I’ve cooked and eaten a bowl of noodles, by my calculations my sixth light meal in about 32 hours. I’m tired and buzzy; and I’ve finished the chocolate. I should try to sleep.

Oh yeah. Don’t worry, I do plan to write about the trip, the whole trip (though don’t expect ‘nothing but’) – but at the moment I just have scattered notes, so bear with me while I construct and reconstruct, over the coming days and weeks. Each section will have its moment, backdated to its time. Do backdated entries show up on an RSS feed? Keep me posted.

time flies, and so shall i

The new – now newish – love affair has (as they are wont to do) driven all before it, drowned much in its briny rush, and generally spread chaos and glory all around. I’m now amid a couple of weeks’ respite before being reunited with the Troublemaker Himself in his home country for a few weeks. The man known herein as Knowledge (for the sake of his online modesty) is from Surrey, more precisely the village of Ewell – now (I gather) pretty much swallowed up by Greater London. I’ll be joining him there before we take various trips into the English countryside and through the Channel tunnel to France, Spain and Germany. I’ll be away six weeks altogether, from September 2 to October 20. If you’re in Europe, plan to see me. If you’re in Australia, catch up before and/or after. More details soon.

snap up a much-wanted present for jaqi now!

I know you love these rare opportunities…

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200358539996&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:AU:1123

With thanks to my inimitable research assistant Susan

rock’n'roll hipparkia

Blissed out for the new year by four days, three nights in the Kombi amid carnival tents and music, high wooded hills and cowpat-studded grassy fields, with a wholesome brown, tannin-scented creek to swim in.

The Kombi has been undergoing a slow evolution of identity since the transition of ownership from Drew to me in October the year before last. Drew was adamant on Jonah’s lack of gender, which unfortunately, in the twisted little human minds we all possess, tends to imply masculine (somehow we think gender is ultimately all about the womb – without one, gender is irrelevant and we’re all, ahem, men). Slowly though, the Kombi is becoming a discernibly feminine space – and no, I haven’t suddenly gone all chintz and frills. But there is a crocheted afghan made by my great grandmother, and a hand-sewn patchwork quilt from further back in the family. There is a pretty blue sarong to cover the doorway, the tins in the kitchen shelves are changing, you get the idea. The Kombi, in this time of transition, has gone by the name Jezebel (a favourite old tag of mine), but this name’s sticking power rather depended on a colour change – a powder-blue Jezebel doesn’t really gel for me. I’d planned a respray in wine-red, but I’ve decided against, for the moment. It’s expensive to do it well, and the present colour is the original, which counts for something valuewise among enthusiasts.

And now, after another good and happy outing – and this one so tranquil and yet so stimulating – my holiday darling has finally found her name: Hipparkia. Hip? Oh definitely. Park – well, der… and yeah. Or rather yah… :)

And yes, of course there is a legendary female role model involved – you can look her up in Wikipedia under the more conventional Latin spelling Hipparchia. She was a Cynic philosopher from the Greek golden age of philosophy, and an altogether remarkable woman.

couplet on tidying the dressing room

I walk the house in joy intense

my hands are covered in frankincense

lost links

This blog exists in a strange sort of limbo at the moment. I’m working on content for a new website that should be up and running in a month or less; in the meantime I’m journal-writing again but even my nearest and dearest are only just finding it, since the blog has moved hosts and is no longer feeding its former RSS clients.

I plan a big party for the website launch, and at that time most or all links should be re-established, but until then I send my thoughts out like space probes, into the great void.

saggy pants and prison terms

From time to time I think it would be fun to start a blog collecting news reports illustrating the grossly hypocritical nature of US ‘democracy’. But I suspect the fun would wear off after a week or two, as recording the avalanche of examples became a daily reminder of the futility of our finest enterprises. So let’s keep it to the level of joyous fascination, with occasional, apparently isolated incidents…

US State passes droopy pants law

Now you could just shrug off the predictable absurdity of the uptight ‘land of the free’ regulating just how low its citizens are allowed to sling their daks, but the real farce only becomes apparent as you read on. The Democrat promoting the new law defends the repression on the basis that the fashion has a forgotten but supposedly unsavoury origin: it’s claimed that it was popularised by rap artists after originally being code in prison for sexual availability. I thought rap artists were notoriously homophobic, but there you go, life is complicated and so are politicians’ justifications. But here’s the irony: where are they proposing to send offenders? Yup, prison – for up to 60 days.

Well, boy, if that don’t teach you to pull your pants up…

consistently publishable thoughts

You see, when you keep an open diary like this – putting yourself on the line online, so to speak – you have to have consistently publishable thoughts. And for a while there, mine weren’t even printable. Sometimes the mere thought of the effort required to depict the dark mountain you have to move just to get out of bed – well, you wouldn’t get up at all.

It takes a while to rebuild after a year that includes a de facto divorce, two deaths in the family, a hard drive burnout, a car crash, and a period of illness. But I had excellent support in my time of retreat, and I bless my friends for their unshakeable patience and love, my medics for their wisdom, and my enemies for making me laugh.

Speaking of un/publishable thoughts, the discovery of this frothing-with-hatred enemy brought it home to me what kind of risks one takes being honest on the ‘Net. I’m still giggling over being labelled a ‘drug nut’ (I’m an occasional weed smoker but I’ve tried to be brutally honest about the dangerous attractions of overuse). I think the carefully anonymous creator of Greenswatch, a hate site dedicated to destroying the Greens, sent me an email when he put up the entry about me, but I clicked on the link, read the headlines and a side box or two and simply went ‘ew – what fool would send me such a link?’ – and clicked away without finding my own name. I found it belatedly a week or two ago when googling ZenSiren in search of my then-dormant blog. It’s a shame, really, that it’s such a crap site – I wish we had a real (ie, balanced and considered) independent watchdog for the Greens.

At least it’s been useful in reminding me that my Greens membership isn’t paid up at the moment. I must rejoin… otherwise the mysterious Mr Greenswatch might take down his links to me, poor goose.