The Only Paperback in the University Book Store

When I was younger; I must have been 13 or something, I was young but I wasn't a kid any more; I pulled the chair across my parents room. From the little jutting out section where my mother has her big make up table with the round mirror and the round window I pulled the wooden chair into the narrow corridor lined with shelves. I had to stand on the chair and on my tip toes on the chair to reach some photo albums on the top shelves. I was looking for a picture I saw a long time ago when someone had layed all the albums out on the bedroom floor of my mother at a toga party. Cause I loved toga's and she wore a very authentic one with the olive leave crown. I flipped through a variety of photo albums and found one of us on holiday; when we went to visit my Grandparents. This was when I was much younger; these photos of when I was truly and definitely a kid; in everyone's regard not just mine. I had my ugly ass haircut. It was something I had forgotten about until I actually saw the pictures and remembered the whole thing. We ran through a forest not far from my grandparents house. It was summer but there were no clouds in the sky the whole day and the sun was starting to come down so it was becoming cold. I wore a jacket because that whole visit the wind blew non stop.The whole ground was grey; that's what my memory of the incident and my memories of reliving the incident through the photographs tell me. The bark of the trees were also grey but the leaves were orange. We saw tracks and they must have been dog tracks but we mistook them for wolf tracks so we went hunting. The photo I remember had me running, looking at the camera smiling, in swinging swooping motion, grey trees all over the place. My little brother was behind me looking to the left terribly confused and out of it, deep in the depths of being young and small, holding his stuffed toy cat which we both loved and called Baby Kitty Cat because we were at the height of creative genies. My father I think was behind us both doing much the same thing as I was.

I saw The Little Prince in the children's section of the book store at University. I always knew the Little Prince was considered a children's book but now I knew for sure that publication companies all over the world put it in the same spot as Spot meets a new friend and the Wiggles Fun Time Adventure and Dora the Explorer. It seemed strange, it stuck out so much to me. I felt like it was in the wrong place; even the blurb described it as a book loved by children and adults and on one hand an allegory of the human condition but here it was. And I was sure I; as a University student probably supposed to be looking at Hamlet or Foucault; was being judged for standing in the Kids section looking at the only paper back book in the collection with a serious look and my wallet in my hand. I walked with it to the counter but halfway through I backtracked and put it back, realizing that it was stupid to buy a book I already had and already read just because this version had colour. I didn't get The Little Prince as a kid. As I read it again and again every year I understood a bit more every time until the point where I just appreciated a bit more every time.

Someone I hit of with well in the bar, we talked about books and movies and music we appreciated in common, hit on me and it made me startlingly uncomfortable. Why couldn't we continue to talk and become friends and become best friends and become those kind of best friends who insulted each other regularly and spoke infrequently on Facebook on trivial internet things we liked. I asked him that because; I was playing a drinking game where I took a sip at every lame commercial and I was watching a marathon of lets get that girl drunk commercials. He looked at me and tilted his head and said that I was on a different wavelength to other people and that's why I looked at the only paperback in the Children's section in the University book store wondering why it was put in the children's section despite having referred to it as a children's book all my life. I looked around at all the people around me; all the men and women some of whom were hitting it off and hitting it on and taking down numbers and buying drinks and escorting home. And there was me by myself on the barstool. I looked at the guy; I guess you're right. He looked at me and said the whole thing made him feel weird too because he should have realized earlier this different wave length I was on. We both ordered food and chatted a bit more while munching away on chips and meat pies. I drank lemonade; lemonade is my favourite summer drink. There is always a source of free lemons around where we live in the summer and lemonade is the best thing. I told him that sometimes I worried because of this slightly off skew wavelength I lived on where I saw no one sitting on the same line as me in the foreseeable foyer. He said that I shouldn't and that he knew people who lived on the same wavelength as me; but then he said "only in terms of the bar thing not the book thing, that's your own personal issue with labelling of French books by publications and by University book stores and by yourself." I told him only the bar thing concerned me, and it concerned me only a little and only from time to time and he assured me I was fine.

I think almost all the time about childhood and that assures me that I have lost it. Youth is wasted on the young because wasting is what makes youth youth. Children never comprehend and appreciate the simplistic deep, the deep swirling pools, of childhood and youth because they are children and living in the pool depend on not knowing anything but the pool and hence seeing everything as wet and never grasping wet from dry because dry is never known and hence never tangibly grasping wet, never tangibly grasping the pool. When I was young I never really 'loved' cartoons. I cartoons. I something cartoons. I had a relationship with cartoons that could not be categorised as love because it was not the opposite of hate it was not the bipolar of hate it was just everything. It was not the something that was not something else,it was the everything.

I now live in a world were I see childhood but I see it from far away, I stand in a valley that will turn grey and as the sun sets it will turn cold and I will always have to wear a jacket and I look at a pool I used to live in that is swirling and deep and clear and smooth and refreshing and cool and not ever cold. I can't jump back into it, not because I'm scared but because it depends on me never having left but I left a long time ago.

I can never go back and once again live in the way I did when I was in my childhood. Children never know and understand the nature of childhood nor do they appreciate it in the way adults do because living it in depends on being almost ignorant of it. You are born it and it is all you know and there is nothing else that you can see in the foreseeable future in the wavelength that you live in so you can't draw it like you can a hat or a boa constrictor and you can't grasp it in your hands. Once you grow out of it and once your legs step out and your whole body moves out of the water; then can you actually look back at it as something you once lived in but something that is now on a different wavelength to you and something that you can grasp and appreciate and miss but something you are never allowed to go back too precisely because you can step back and you can look at.

I can be childish but I can never be a child. I can love cartoons but I can no longer (blank) cartoons. And I can now understand and appreciate the Little Prince, which is a cause for absolute celebration and absolute remorse. After we ate and I sobered up a little, in the cold autumn air the guy from the bar walked me home. It was dark out but the sky was a deep purple instead of a pure black or a pure deep blue. He said he was walking me home because he knew someone who lived on my street and if that person saw him walking a girl home late at night it would up his reputation. I told him that I wanted him to walk me home for the same reasons, except this time it would be to up my reputation among my female neighbours also from the University. When we got to the door he kissed me on the cheek, this may have been because he was significantly drunker after the drinks he downed with the meal, and I kissed him on the cheek, this may have been because I suddenly thought he might be a friend I would send emails to for no particular reason but regularly and in a way that I would anticipate and wait for and look forward to. And I told him that half because I felt like it and half because it was getting a little warmer next to him and the cold air had less effect and he kissed me on the lips for an extended period of time because he thought the idea was cute. In a voice that echoed in my my head while he kissed me he told me his favourite children's book was J.M Barrie's Peter Pan and I told him my favourite was A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner.

I remember that on that night I went the bed by myself with my tummy full of food and we emailed each other most everyday and would meet and go out fairly often as well and I loved my time with him and I loved him. But regarding that one night it was the same as when I had found those photo albums, I only understood them once they were over. I cried when I found the photos and I wasn't sure why, my little brother caught me and with a serious unsympathetic look in his eyes he said it was a silly thing to cry about. And I told him I agreed but I didn't and I dried my eyes, put the photo album back, dragged the chair back across my parents home and went to go play with my brother.

Owls

In my whole life I don't think I've ever seen an owl. I've watched them on TV and I've seen them in books and I want to see one; in real life. I want to feel one looking at me with big yellow eyes and I want to hear it fly away. You look at me and as soon as I finish my sentence you smile at me and you grab me and you tell me: Let's go.
We get up from under the blankets and we start putting on our clothes. You get up first and I watch you get dressed while you talk quickly about where we could go to look for one, where we could go to find me an owl. We both help each other in jackets, I wrap a scarf around you. We don't want to use the stairs, its to dark to see, there's no railing. I wouldn't be able to find my keys in the dark, stick it in the lock and twist. So we jump out the window, the ground is covered in layers and layers of snow so off we go. We jump into a nearby tree and we jump down from branch to branch and off we go into layers and layers of snow. Every step we take we sink further and further into the snow and it's a lot funnier then it exhausting and off we go into a small patch of trees.

Topophilia and Static Shock

We walk out on the asphalt; outside are a million little lights on the skyline, somewhere up there are power lines, with those little basketball's that they suspend from the lines to help direct planes. "If a plane is gonna fly that low it deserves to get all tangled up" Its not like a spiderweb, the plane won't get tangled the power line will fall "If a power line decided to tower up there without massive plane tangling cobwebs then it shouldn't be up there at all" Imagine if we want back to the dark ages, there would be no little lights on the skyline. We are going out to the center of the little lights, to my favorite place in the city. "We have to catch a bus"

I wish I could walk everywhere, I wish, I want everything to be far away far enough to create adventures far enough so that travelers can come along the path into the shire "Bilbo let me tell a tale of a tale for travelers" At the same time I wish that that distance was good enough for walking, close enough but just far enough for an adventurous daring developing dreaming drawing walk. "A walk that would take you 3, 3 and a half hour length movies, but not one that would take you 7 movies with the last movie split into 2"

There are no adventures in story telling in the world anymore, from the beginning we are shown picture books with pictures from all over the world in it, from the beginning we are shown to meet to see people we are shown to meet to see the cultures the creations that make these individualistic sub groups of the global society. They only adventures now are in living, and this is the only place that adventures belong; experience can never be truly learnt as well as, easily as entirely as it can be lived; we jitterbug all over the sidewalk. We walk along the sidewalks and we wait for and catch and sit on the 99 bus that will take us to the center of all the hundred of little lights my favorite part in the city.

Not far from my favorite part in the city is a suburb part of the richest suburb in the city, there are big light colored pastel modern houses, they feature big open balconies and stylish futuristic yet classical curves and corners and cuts and space. Every house is built on the idea of space, not just how you can fill it but how you can leave it, and you can mold and mix space until it serves to become an aesthetic tool for place and posture, the filler that fills up and denies space. The sky is limited and vast and open and wide, everything that floats above the surface of the earth that space of air that we walk upon that we kick and breathe and blow is the sky, we can pretend to be like birds that hover and hover and hover. Big purple trees sprout of from the sidewalks, the sidewalks of that rich neighborhood near my favorite place in the world, the ones on the left of the road spread their branches as far right as they can and the ones on the right of the road spread out as far left as they can. Till they form an arc and arc like you see on the default desktop backgrounds provided on your Windows computer. They drop and shed all their little purple flowers out onto the pavement; the form that little purple arc makes above everything, they force the light to fracture before it falls, fracture and fall in little leaf like purple shapes. The main road you travel on has this arc feature except with beautiful large exceptionally expressive comforting trees, and when you pass by all the little roads on the left and right with the purple and the fragments of the sky and the sun and the sidewalks you feel like you temporarily pass by the adventures you see on your desktop and for a little moment you can feel like you have lived that adventure that that photographer has gone through that these strange people in their place space molding houses must feel everyday. They must look at us out on our road with the large comforting unpretentious green growing graceful main road, the road that provides adventures for every passerby, and from the inside of the adventure they must be so longing. To find someway to be discovered, discovered by Christopher Columbus when he set of on the gloomy Gothic beaches of Cardez past the Roman style theater past the castle overlooking the sea, the castle in Cardez.

The truth is that we all live in our own sense, an adventure, but from within the adventure everything else looks so much brighter and full of much more blossom and full of much more bloom. The flaw of humanity is the grass is always greener for us, the beauty of humanity is the willing the want to come home. I set of an adventure with you to the center of all the little lights to my favorite part of the city, and then we get lonely and then we get scared and then we go home and play PS2. The way for an adventure to become meaningful is to become part of the mind, second home from home. You can only truly love and understand and become enveloped in a foreign place when you can turn the corner when you can walk yourself back to the hotel when you can say hi in the language when you can pass by everything with a knowing sense of knowledge. The way for an adventure to become an adventure that we love that we miss that we appreciate, is when we love we miss we acknowledge it we appreciate it; when it becomes an intrinsic part of memory, when it become a second home of the mind of the thought when it becomes the place you pass by looking into and when it become the place you sink into looking out of.

There is a place by the river, the roads pass by the river, a low lying sort of bridge; there are slopping flat greens and there they built a short little building and on the base some slim little houses. The building is modern, abuses space but creates place, it has reflective blue glass, the buildings at its base a warm linear modern houses with little lights in the inside and fresh new Ikea furniture and thousands of people those young people you see on TV. Out on the river are small little sail boats, masts up in the air bobbing on the river completely at the whims of the maritime breeze never moving very far left or right but always bobbing very much a little up and down, there is always, this is always the best place for sunsets. The colored tinted lights split out from the center of the orange sun that is slowly diving back into the ocean like a bird diving smooth and graceful and splash less; they are reflected by the water that shivers and shimmers due to the endless long length waves that break and turn white at the sands of the beach there out on the right right across the river on the other side opposite the river opposite the big blue building. The light mixes and melts with the tinted blue windows making a deep sunset color; the right of the river hangs a few small buildings, shacks were the street cleaners keep their mops, people lazy to go out to the beaches, dipping their ankles in the swirling swimming surf that has bubbly frothy white foam floating on the top because of the action of the waves and the maritime breezes. And when it becomes dark, and the boats still bop and they cars still pass and the lights in the buildings still shine you can see blaring out the CBD, warm and yellow and distant and far enough, just far enough to be another adventure.

We come out to see our favorite part of the city at its favorite time of day. Eventually we will bore of the place eventually we will leave this place forever. I want to go West because all my friends are there because there are the big bright lights, that will the biggest adventure I will take. You want to go back East because there is no place like home to you and this is the biggest adventure you have ever had. Today on my way to a BBQ I passed by all these purple streets and purple roads and I was forever an outsider passing by looking into; inside me is the great desire to move forward and inside me is the great desire to pull back.

Today we go to the center of the equator and down by the sea and past all the volcanic islands of Indonesia and we pass by so many sea turtles, today I went to the center of all the little lights on the skyline and I went to my favorite part of the city.

Not in anyway a religion

In my dream there are lots of people sitting around me; about 4 or 5 people clustered on my right and 3 people clustered on my left, one of them standing. They're all Caucasian some of them blonde some of the brunette I can't see any of their faces because in dreams you can never really see anyone's face. The one closest to me on my right, the brunette in purple is saying 'Wake up the nurse wants to talk to you' to my left is the standing nurse blonde and wearing white holding a clipboard just like the nurses in those old American films. So then I open my eyes and she keeps saying wake up wake up

And when I open my eyes and look around nobody's there. No nurse wants to talk to me. The room is exactly the same except the chairs which everyone was sitting on are no longer there.

Absolutely uninterrupted sleep; I haven't had that for months. First it was because of the nurse dreams; but they stopped as soon as I gave up smoking. I had started only about 3 months ago but I was instantly hooked; satisfying my childhood love of the second hand smoke blown out by my relatives. The dreams started coming when I started learning how to roll my cigarettes quicker and hence; when I started increasing my nicotine intake ten fold. I would wake up rub my eyes realize that I had only fallen asleep 3 hours ago; sit around spend 2 hours trying to fall asleep again; smoke; fall asleep for 3 hours; have another dream then wake up again. Quitting was easier then I thought I nailed it on my second try. It was, for me, like choosing tobacco over absolute uninterrupted sleep; sleep won. If only every smoker had to face an ultimatum like I did. Shortly after I quit I saw an anti smoking ad featuring a man with a Trachea. Just in time I guess.

The dreams stopped but my 3 hour sleeping pattern continued; it went on for days and days and weeks and weeks until I decided that I'd have to try everything. Strong alcoholic drinks before bed; failed; very unpleasant to wake up to find your drunken spew all over the floor and your clothes and stuck in the little bits of your fringe that hang down over your face and even more unpleasant to have to continually wake up to it every 3 hours for the rest of the night. Lots and lots of exercise before bed; failed; and I would wake up starving and eat all the potato salad left in the fridge. Watching boring documentaries; failed; because when you wake up and you lie there for 2 hours waiting to get back to sleep focusing completely on the documentary waiting for it to knock you out, you suddenly become entranced in it. Never have I learnt so much about the rise and fall of the Stock Exchange. Having sex because apparently after ejaculation men just roll into sleep; failed; and apparently trying to wake your date up after 3 hours and asking for another round is not romantic or spontaneous or sexy or attractive in anyway. Sleeping pills because they may be deadly but they are affective; failed; and that was the scariest failure of all.

The sort of things that I remember about dreams and that I remember about sleep are; that they are a wonderful thing to have.

I remember sleeping; and dreaming, and then; being woken up. There I was, in one instant; in this big place that looks remotely like a lollipop field but I don't know exactly everything is to blurry with people surrounding me talking to me but I could never really clearly see there faces; and suddenly something would filter in Wake up we have to go; we're gonna be late if you don't wake up. The words would at first seem almost part of the dream but then as they got thicker and thicker and more and more solid; the dream would get thinner and thinner and then just turn grey and then I would open my eyes to half see you standing there under the yellow light talking to me telling me to wake up. And those type of dreams; or those type of wakings; would only work against you because for those first 10 seconds that I'm awake I stay convinced that the reality, the warped morphed reality, of my dream still exists and still applies; my mind is convinced that even though the dream in which that reality existed disappeared a while ago into the grey. I remember rubbing my eyes saying I know I know cause the watermelon told you so right? And you would look at me funny and say What? But the minute you say it I would snap out of the dreams old reality and realize nothing I said made sense. My dream had nothing to do with watermelons; but I know if I said it in my dream it would make sense.

I remember my repeating dreams; my recurring dreams. I stopped having recurring nightmares once I became 14 but before that every year I would have the same nightmare; a yearly ritual. I would be sitting on a canoe out by this big blue lake; the sort of lakes you see in films, films called 'Return of the Swamp Monster to Jefferson Camp' , the sort of films that they parody in kid shows where the boyfriend and the girlfriend sit on a boat by the lake the girlfriend going 'Gee Joe I don't think we should be out here' and the boyfriend crooning here into premarital penetration. On one side of the canoe would be me, and on the other side a bunch of fat people, and slowly the canoe would tilt and I would be on the elevated side the canoe almost reaching a perfect vertical position, me sitting there grinding my teeth clutching the sides and-

I would sit up in bed, wake up with that feeling in my chest that you get when you swing too high on the swings, pant; find myself completely out of breath.

Though the nightmare stopped coming to me I would often get the same, almost yearly, dream about me and a group of friends at a large amusement park filled with roller coasters and water slides and fast food stores. And we would slide down the massive water slide each of us sitting in our huge individual inflatable blue and yellow doughnut shaped tubes and right before we got to the end; where there would be some sort of blockage and we would all panic; I would wake up.

I remember having fantastic dreams, and then being woken up; and feeling completely pissed at the person who woke you; at the sun or the alarm clock or just yourself. Being pissed when you find out that the fantastic reality is not. And no matter how long you lie in bed you can never get your self to fall asleep again the whole thing has left you entirely high and dry.

There are so many different types of dreams and different ways of realizing that they are in fact dreams; that I could never write them all down. The only reason I document this is because; there is something amazing about how much a dream captures you and envelops you and sucks you in. You are so convinced that this is reality even though it goes completely against what the laws of true reality had ever stated. If I wanted to end on a shocker I could say But what is true reality? But I honestly believe that this; is it; not because of life is wonderful and life is full of joy because life can be full of shit; but because this reality is the only thing that effectively strips away the fake reality the warped reality the wonderful reality of dreams. And I won't believe in any Matrix or Inception theory that tells me that this; is all some sort of well fabricated dream.

I've sort of surprised my self in this note, because I'm not religious; not like this; theory of mine is in anyway a religion. I've never had much firm unshakable beliefs before except that I hated capsicums in all form and color and that I hated the taste of blood.

But my sleep pattern was starting to change and not in the way I wanted; 3 hours of sleep followed by 2 hours of waiting became no hours of sleep followed by all hours of waiting; and if I didn't write things down and pick a side when it came to the theories of the Matrix and Inception and Vanilla Sky then I'd never see any dream again.

For the first time in months I feel sleepy; a sleepy that I know won't shake off. But more importantly this is a sleepy that I haven't felt ever before in my life, a sleepy that I know won't shake off ever; a sleepy that doesn't leave in the next 8 hours or tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening; a sleepy that lays itself over you and doesn't release itself until. Until it doesn't need to cling there anymore, because nothing in the world is gonna wake you up after this.

Scrap

I deleted another thing I was working on when I found this draft. I don't remember writing but it must have been in Winter when I was desperate for a little sunshine. Anyway I think its incomplete but it's been so long I don't remember how it was meant to end; or even what its called.

Sometime when the rain stops pouring and the wind stops blowing and the clouds stop covering; thats the time when the sun will and the blue sky will emerge. If it doesn't happen now; if it doesn't happen ever. Then I escape to the past; where these things happened. There are jars all over the house and nobody associated them with their previous contents. We keep the labels on saying "Spagetti Sauce" or "Strawberry Jam" but their insides are clean and clear and if not for the labels; transparent. Nobody looks at them as spagetti sauce jars or jam jars they have become the jars for the chocolate biscuits the jars were there is money that I sometimes put in and sometimes take out. There is nothing in this house that gives me indiciation of the previous owner. I sometimes find something of mine; that is old and dusty and mine; and I pretend its the former occupant's. I pretend I've stumbled into something significant of someone else's lives. Better still if the thing I find actually is something significant of mine. Then me and the former occupant have, so much in common.

Umbrellas out but for once "For once it does not look like rain"

You looked at me then the sky and smiled; the past so the sky was turning blue and the sun was emerging from the clouds, and at the same time the cloud as wisping away from the sun. Then you talked but I can't remember of what and then after many hours we departed I decided to walk home and you took the train to meet your old friends. On sunny days like those I wished we had more open train stations old fashioned train stations with old fashioned trains but sometimes, all the time, I want things over sentimentalised.

Despite all my efforts I could never bottle days like that and how wonderful if I could. I tried taking pictures but its magic was limited to the fact that outside the frame things were still wet and grey. The thing I hate most about wet and grey days is that I can't leave the houe on wet and grey days and I'm forced to stay at home, and pretend to find significance in others because I have already fully explored the significant things in me, in my own life. I can bottle rain, and this rain, even on sunny days has a penetrating darkness in it. If I break the bottle of rain its completely likely it will escape all over the white tile floors and change the weather. I feel jealous you and all my friends can leave on grey rainy days.

And the whole mood of the day permeiates into my life faucets. I must, to keep to the occasion, wear dark moody clothes and sit on the coach reading books. Ah summertime, the light airy dresses and shorts and the potato chips and TV shows.

Lomography

There is no greater sport; lomography! Go down to the river, that goes down to the sea; and see everything through a lens with a shutter that clicks. Sometime see things; as if it was seconds away from a polaroid. There is the ocean that you've followed from the river that, has birds swooping over and blends darlingly into the sky, ah what a day. And you see it with white borders equal in length at the two sides and the top; but extended at the bottom like all polaroids are. There is no greater recreation; sometimes go down to the beach when the ocean is calling and shaken of its nervousness and the deepest cleanest blue. There are endless stretches of sand; along with endless stretches of sky. There's a long flat line out there that you can't always see because the sun is sitting flashing in your eye. Go out with a hat and a wicker bag and its so bright you have to put your hand over your eyes.
The sand is completely toasty and deep and it moves aside for you; but gently and only when you ask it too. The water keeps asking you to dip in forever. And when you are in there; when you just get in and your lungs are fill to the top with atmosphere; there is a feeling like jelly is encassing you. But it's not exactly jelly; it adjusts itself perfectly to your shape like jelly; but its not as suffcocating it is light breezy effortless and when you first get down there you lose all clarity of what is wet and dry. When you have to resurface you lose the senseless shapeless escape that is down there; here returns the sensations of soaking and dry; of hot and cold. Then you take 3 steady breaths again; and one big one; then you dive in submerge yourself in the understanding salt.

I Decided To Be

I decided to be a dancer
But I could not move my feet
I decided to be a writer
But I had no words to speak
I decided to be a leader
But revolutions are never easy
I decided to be an ocean
That makes things seasick, quesy.