This morning

I sat on an office chair, put my feet on the box of files and made myself French toast. I ate it inside the half constructed bookcase shell lying flat on the lounge room floor. I ignored the DVD bathtub and showered next to the wardrobe. I am evolution.

I'll be drinking til we meet again

I'm not going to walk you through this. The inbox inside my telephone is empty, that's the only thing that's empty. The bathtub is full of DVD's there are office chairs on wheels in my kitchen, the table is piled higher than the top of my head with books. I tried and failed to access my kettle and there is nowhere to have a little sit down. I am sharing my bed with two boxes, one basket, seven books and a plate with the corners of toast, I ate the rest of that toast on Friday morning.

I still don't know what happened really. I know that it definitely started with condiments and now everything is upside down or in the wrong room, this is a not a metaphor. The cat is confused and somebody put their sneakers in the pantry. Last week I decided I would write cover versions of poems in short story form. I am sick of the musicians and their freedom, Grizelda made herself pasta bake for dinner and The Spatula ate cereal for breakfast every morning. This week I decided to sit sensibly in my warm jumper and write my essay and The Peachettes systematically dismantled my carefully assembled still life.

Superman canceled cause he's sick and I was disproportionately upset, somebody has filled the hallway with chests of drawers. I was on my way home from an emergency trip to Ikea, I was pushing a trolley with my impulse purchase white steel locker, two lampshades and one scented candle. I was trying not to vomit a one dollar hotdog and lingonberry soda in the carpark. I was disproportionately upset and wishing it was possible to wind back two days and stand in a house without a wardrobe in the middle of the bathroom.

My brother arrived and he smirked at the chaos, said he definitely did not want to be helping with this shit so we walked to a cafe and waited for Boli. Boli told me he wondered what in the hell I was thinking when I first told him I was moving into a sharehouse in the Inner West. He looked at me and he was thinking about the horizon. There are pillows in the kitchen sink.

The Hoptoun, geological anomaly, guaranteed to be at least thirty degrees in there, no matter how cold it is outside. Fault lines and lava. Spencer took to the stage and three songs in I thought I have had enough of this shit. They've got everything we ever needed, songs, presence, skills, magic, they even have the fucking trousers.

I'll tell you about my bias. I expect more from my friends, I expect rooms to explode and audiences set on fire or I cringe and that is why I am sick of this shit. Gig after gig after gig Spencer's band, The Holy Soul, cancel sentences in my brain. They shake out reason and my arm rises unconsciously with the heel of my hand pressed out in reverent salute while the crowd surges around me calling for more. I'm sick of this shit where Spencer packs venues and rolls light and the hard edge of rock right through the middle of every fucking person there then wakes up on Monday morning and goes to his shit job.

So I'm standing on the footpath outside The Hopetoun sucking down cigarettes and pink lemondae with Boli and my brother. Up walks Artboy and fuck me if this day just didn't get worse. This is how it used to be me, my brother, Boli and Artboy at Spencer's gig but that was before The Holy Soul were good and Spencer was just trying on his rock face to see how it fit, that was in The Swamp Bar at uni, that was before I lived in a house with filing cabinets and oil paintings on the front verandah.

Something's shaken loose and I'm rattle walking in circles again. My essay seems fucked beyond redemption, fail this and I have to pay back the grant money. My home has vanished and I'm living in that junkyard from The Labyrinth, Artboy has pulled off my permanent bandages and I'm a walking, shaking, heartbeat away from panic. I sent Artboy a text message as I watched him cross the road and walk down some dark street. I was pressed against the wall of The Hopetoun standing next to Madam Squeeze, surrounded by friends, flanked by friends, I was standing in the middle of my very own Roman Turtle formation but the words still came out and now the inbox in my telephone is empty and there's six mugs in my sock drawer.

11 o'clock and all is well, now

It started with some loud discussion about condiments, I could hear them from my room which is situated at the opposite end of The Peach from the kitchen. I'm not sure how it happened, I was trying my level best to work on my essay and for once I was actually making some progress. There was stomping up and down the hallway, there was full scale yelling there was door closing and opening, in short The Peachettes were at war.

The Spatula stomped off down the hallway and Grizelda came into my room, I cleared off my armchair, sat her down and rolled her a cigarette. It is my firm belief that non-smokers should smoke in a situation like this one. Grizelda was angry, the kind of angry that eats your words and leaves you staring with a hand on your heart to keep it from leaping out of your chest. I thought oh dear, this is not ideal. The Spatula entered soon after and my essay quietly slipped into the abyss.

I should have been angry. I should have thrown the pair of them out but I thought there is possibility in this situation. The Peach has been in an advanced state of discombobulation for some time now. The corners are all dust and the carpets high and lumpy where we have all been sweeping and sweeping things. Sometimes it is possible to cast a wide net of calm and paint words across air and breathe them like balm. A discussion about condiments had lead us into new territory.

So we talked and despite their anger and their tears and the mess raging all round us like harbingers of doom we decided to rebuild this city. Tomorrow I will work on my essay in my office, away from here, away from the commencement of large scale recombobulation, our grand plan. I will return to The Peach before 3 because that is the hour when everything changes.

We are rearranging all of the communal spaces. We have a grand vision of The Peach rising from the ashes. We have a plan at working at living together. We have been thrown together here by disaster, misadventure and the jagged shapes of broken love. The time for camping and dreaming of a time when our lives were real or longing for our lives to begin again are over. I have lost an evening of much needed study time but I have gained hope and a library. I will make the ridiculous declaration that more people should yell at each other about condiments more often.

Let's be perfectly clear about this

I fucking hate writing this essay. They were right all along, marketing is evil, even if it is creative arts marketing.