Everyone has an analyst, don't they?

I was hoping I'd feel more like Annie Hall, or at least Woody Allen, but all I feel like is me with a new pile of psycho homework and not at all like I live in New York.

Last week I had to practice not caring about things. This week I am supposed to 'try and sit in the grey area between decisions'. Unresolved.

The burden of resting

I want to throw myself early each day into a fury of productivity but in the back of my mind, hoarded and loud as a stolen treasure, is this, 'I must rest, I am tired, I must rest'. This is not an unfamiliar thought, I've come to this place before where every small action is paid for in triplicate with exhaustion.

The question is how to navigate out of these waters. I need someone to physically haul me from bed each morning, point to my clean clothes then push me dressed, brushed and breakfasted into my day. I suppose a butler is out of the question?

Part of this exhaustion is left over virus but the remainder comes from being my own anchor. There is only so far I can submerge in my geomorphometry before losing sight of the surface and the always refrain,'I must rest, I am tired, I must rest'. I think I'm going to need a new submarine.

Dolly bomb

His name was Tom, still is I suppose but that's beside the point. I told him straight up I wanted a cross between Dolly Parton circa 1968 and Joan Jett anytime. He kept running his fingers through my hair and staring at me intently in the mirror. He said 'It might be useful if you offered a little bit more of an explanation'. I told him it was more about the vibe than anything else, vibe and volume, no way anyone could say there was a Dolly Parton influence without some height on the hair.

An hour later I walked out of there a whole lot happier. It is impossible to be morose when your hair is a cross between Dolly Parton circa 1968 and Joan Jett anytime which is handy because I've been morose for about a fortnight now. I got to the point where I either had to do a Brian Wilson and take to my bed properly for a number of years while house becomes overrun with bastards or I had to get the fuck out of my bedroom and go kick some stuff on the street, like garbage bins, small children and seed pods.

I was struck down by some kind virus and I was already on holidays with the specific intent of laying around and doing fuck all but still, I found continuous complete inaction was a path not to bliss but to morosetown. Fortunately I am clever enough to have made the following astonishing discovery. The only cure for virus/holiday continuous and complete inaction is a Dolly Parton/Joan Jett haircut. This is a discovery science will not soon forget.

I

This will be my year of deliberate misrepresentation, where there is livestock there is dead stock

There is an overwhelming desire to express without being understood. Every night as I lay cursing the dark for not being dark enough the same thought enters my head. I want to yell at people in French, or Latin or Estonian. I do not want my words to be understood, I want only the fact that I am speaking them with force and conviction to be conveyed.

I have not been saying what I mean. I have said 'yes' when I meant no, 'no' when I meant yes and 'that is fine' when I meant you are a bloody drongo and I think you just cracked the marble-filled jam jar I've been using for a heart. I haven't been lying on purpose, for most of last year I was remarkably honest until I hit November and performed an involuntary retreat into polite responses and expected conversation and then of course I picked up my own jam jar and smashed it into whatever I could find and the marbles got loose and rolled into my eye sockets and lodged under my tongue.

I spent the first hour of the new year lying drunk in a gutter in Chippendale listening to all the happy chatter happen around me. It wasn't a bad place to be, almost everyone was there, sitting, standing or lying in the road. I could have sat up and joined in the conversation but I found that I was comfortable with my hip on the road, my head on my handbag on the curb, content with my thoughts distinctly my own.

I have been philosophical about my insides. Last year I developed a grudging respect for the vast team of doctors assigned to examine my brain. I even formed a fondness for the young neurologist who delighted in hitting various parts of me with his tiny and delicate hammer. I grew used to the robotic hum of scanners and lying very still in that mechanical tube while nurses counted down the remaining seconds. I made good use of all my limbs, making long lists of things I wanted to do before my gross motor skills took an irreversible turn for the worse and investing in ramps became a priority. I started drumming, moved a piano into the library and impersonated Little Richard, I painted scores of terrible paintings and sketched every small object I could see. I walked everywhere, took up running until a tendon gave out and put a stop to the whole idea and I danced in houses, on streets, in bars, on my bed and I climbed no less than seven separate trees. When the official results came in and I was in fact given the mostly all clear I wasn't really surprised, despite the lists and the activities I had been unable to properly imagine a world where I couldn't walk or wave my arms about on a whim.

This year I have been reexamining my notes on bioethics from law school but they have been unable to explain how I could be so happy to swallow pills to play god but so distressed at the idea of the small life snuffing its own self out for no reason at all.

This year will be my year of deliberate interpersonal misrepresentation. If I meet you on the street I am going to tell you I like tomato juice and I am happy to be here. I am going to be impersonal and polite and offer vague and general descriptions of streetscapes and landscapes and a flat pack idea of being pleased to meet someone like you. I am not going to tell you how I feel. There will of course be exceptions, the people who already know what I'm about, people like Spencer and Gemma and the cast of usual suspects and the hard black letters of written words. I suppose I'm talking about acquaintances and strangers and the inevitable people at parties and gigs, I suppose this a broader affair.

Dear World,

Due to the behaviour of your chosen representatives I find I have no inclination to further our friendship. There is no room for new friends in here. My replacement marble-filled-jam-jar  heart has shattered and that was the final object I had saved for installing in the ticking part that should beat. These rattling disconsolate marbles now control my in-flight interaction system and they only steady into a gentle rolling flicker in the presence of genuine friends. I am neither hopeless nor depressed. I am simply drawing a line in your stupid sand. This will be your year of leaving me alone.

Regards
Dale R Slamma

Medicininal Gatorade and Spencer loses his outtakes

I have nothing of interest. Anything interesting was forcibly removed from my body at high speed by all manner of crampings and convulsions. I am almost shiny with absence of interest. Raw, meek and frightened after my ordeal. Any moment now a team of previously invisible holy persons will walk through my walls, wrap me in robes and say I am ready for what lies ahead, this will not be true as I am slightly unsteady on my feet still but I don't suppose they know that. I will of course be surprised at being the chosen one but not a little miffed at being made to vomit and shit all over the place. I see this as an archaic and unnecessary part of the mystical process of which I now belong, historically, as the chosen one.

Spencer popped in this afternoon for a cup of tea which was exceptionally brave of him. I could have been hanging from the rafters ready to vomit and shit all over him the minute he walked in the door considering the last information he had on me was that it was coming out both ends at once. Brave Spencer walked right in through my front door holding aloft a cd and this time it was the rough mix of his new album, not someone who rhymes with Mex Perkins or a band that rhymes with the Trones but Spencer's very own brand new album. It was of course excellent but in my restless listless state I was very disappointed when we got to the end and Spencer promised me outtakes but then could not find them. I am the chosen one and I demand outtakes (and also some assistance with spelling- surely 'outtakes' is incorrect'?).

I am still waiting for the previously invisible holy persons. Sometimes if a person feels raw, meek, frightened and shiny with disinterest the best thing to do is wear silk pyjamas and sit in front of the fire, like Humphrey Bogart.

Table strangers

I've been holed up in here stinking of shit and vomit. It hasn't been a choice. I've been shitting and vomiting, at the same time. The first time it took me by surprise and I had no choice but to vomit on the floor between my feet. The next time I was ready and brought along a bucket, so it continued through the night and into the next day. Each time I was left shaking, drenched with sweat and stinking worse than I had before until eventually I could sleep in fitful bursts of an hour or so.

I've been waiting on kindness but ended up with strangers. The Peachettes are both on holiday in Queensland and nobody else is anywhere that I can see. I telephoned a few key people just to let the world know that I was having a problem here, they were kind but the hallway is dark here tonight and nobody has phoned to see if I'm still alive.

Before all of this vomiting began I put an ad up on gumtree for a table I want to sell, this evening I've been replying to people who've emailed to enquire about the table telling them I'll get back to them in a few days because I have food poisoning. The emails sent in reply were instantaneous and plentiful so I'm sitting here consoling myself with table strangers, its much worse than nobody at all.

Ahh horrible!

I have just vomited nine times. The salad I made for dinner came back out undigested but transformed into a foul tasting salad soup. I can not convey the depth of my horror, this feels like the worst thing that has ever happened. I was utterly helpless bent over the toilet bowl spraying high volume high speed disgusting vomit into the refulgent toilet bowl. My whole body fell victim to the convulsions.

It is a thorough action, vomiting, everything from my feet to my scalp unwillingly unified in performing the action. Rita, with her morning sickness, is my newest world hero. I am curled in my chair shaking, white and in fear that it will happen again. I feel terrible (dreadful, causing fear and alarm - just in case you needed reminding of the definition).

Pahkow

I am beginning to suspect that my doctor is making blood sausages and selling them on the black market. I am beginning to suspect that she is making the sausages using my blood. I'm going to ask for a cut of the profits and also a jelly bean. Doctors are supposed to hand over a jelly bean every time they come anywhere near me with a needle. I made a solemn vow, when I was four, that I would sit still and be jabbed in exchange for a jelly bean. I don't remember breaking my end of the deal. I want my jelly bean.

Oh W, X, Y, Z, its just entered my head

Eight days now the world has been gently rocking beneath my feet. That first moment when you stand, two feet on land, and wonder if the ocean has followed you ashore. This afternoon it lifted, for a few hours, and I navigated happily around hearth and home with incautious steps. It descended this evening with regulation fatigue but I am hopeful now that it shall soon be gone.

It was a novelty run of invisible waters and I made myself Captain but minute by minute it became disconcerting until I wondered if I'd fallen out of rhythm. It would have been eminently sensible to consult a doctor at an earlier time but I was so sure each that the sensation would vanish. Superman, in his stern sensible way, convinced me to see a doctor. It was difficult to arrange, no doctors anywhere were available and I was stuck fast in my new rhythm of measuring steps between sturdy walls, the easy existence of rising in time for work then returning to bed before 8pm. It seems ridiculous now, the exhaustion tinged with blind optimism.

One small box of tablets, two days later and I'm beginning to feel myself again. I quite like the modern miracle of medicines.

Painkillers

Long stretch of blue denim, brown cardigan knitted by my mother and a clean t-shirt that says "Adelaide". I've been measuring my legs again and they are the same length they were last week and the week before last. I've tied a small rectangular tag to my left big toe. I will clean my room as though I was dying.

I am the one steady thing today, the world rocks like a boat or perhaps its seismic, continental drift. I'm feeling tectonic again and a little like building a small house for chickens. I want straw and feathers, clucking, eggs and a reason for gumboots. I lay flat on my bed with my toe tag and my imaginary chickens. My mother phoned and asked if I was dead yet. I told her no but that she should keep hens, five hens.

I once knew a chicken called Mrs Hitler, she was mean and would peck at my small fingers. I cannot recall the names of the other chickens, Arthur was the rooster. We ate Henry the younger rooster. I watched as he was held down flat on a tree stump near the back of the garden near the tangelo tree, his head lopped off easily enough then he ran around the garden a little. I don't remember being frightened.

I once named a doll Mrs Gorbachev, inspired by Mrs Hitler the chicken. This memory is closely associated with ballpoint pens. My Grandmother was able, the year I acquired Mrs Gorbachev, to return to Estonia for the first time since arriving in Australia. She told me they did not have ballpoint pens, elastic knickers or stockings in Estonia. She would say "Ete foot, goot sildrens", eat food good children. I told her I didn't have a ballpoint pen or stockings either, my mother gave me a look then barked suddenly "Mama! No vodka for the children".

I am dizzy or rather I am still but the world rocks around me. I am traveling through time and wishing for eggs in the palms of my hands. I have seven ballpoint pens, twelve pairs of knickers with elastic, three pairs of stockings and one electric blanket. This inventory is incomplete.

Somnambulist

I found the Beaumont children somewhere between blinks staring at my computer screen. My eyes have been screaming and I'm reeling almost enough to clutch at hand rails. I've got a hunch that somebody's punched my emergency exit and I'm escaping into the blue one slow molecule at a time.

Ritardando

My gradual deceleration into aphasia will be grand or imagined. I'm not sure which.

Needles and pins yeah

Usually it starts on my forehead, a hot prickling pins and needles, it slides down the sides of my face and my lips go numb in the centre. Sometimes its my arms, both of them, pins and needles down the backs of my upper arms then it walks in reappearing in my forehead. I've thought about doctors and their poking fingers then I think about something else like a tiny chocolate cake, tinier than the palm of my hand. I wish I had a tiny chocolate cake, tiny enough to make you draw back your lips before biting into it.

Thoughts aren't slipping out of my mind I'm just not having any. I'm concerning myself with the small and menial, remember to drink water, remember to eat food, remember to wear different clothes. I wore the same thing three days in a row. Sunday Monday Tuesday were all spent in my horrid blue house dress and I can tell you Friday's definitely on my mind. Wednesday Thursday I wore the same black skivvy and blue jeans. Ah here it is again. It is not dizziness but a slipping away of the ability to anchor myself, the hot pain and sliding numbness in my forehead and the sides of my face. I keep telling Grizelda I think I'm dying, you'd probably better take me to the hospital, she told me if I can tell that I'm dying then I'm probably not so she's not taking me anywhere. I wish I had a tiny chocolate cake, tinier than the palm of my hand.

Its still here

The throbbing in my head is still here but I'm learning to live with it like an extra foot or a triple thud heart. Its biological and calm. I'm walking at the same pace as the pulse in my face so that hallways and roads make more sense. I came here to the office because I am sure that it will fade if I sit very still and type with a quiet calm.

The pain at the bottom of my spine, the pain in my arm, my battle wound from typing, and the holes in my shoes sucking up rain water are problems that I need to address. It is odd, amongst this raggedness, that I do not feel that I am coming undone. I feel like a ship with a manageable hole or a remote control tank blown open and carefully welded back together because the insides are still good and all the little soldiers still have their hats on.

Captain Fuck Off

Yeah you heard me. This day begins and ends with my face pulsing from the pressure in my head. Exhaustion has gathered its army, in my head, and it is not lying down in peaceful slumber it is a writhing pulsating mass pushing out the gaps in my synapses. If I was the sound of the universe this pulsing would end us all.

Oh what would I do without the broken and the damned

Some fucking philosopher bored me into a migraine and called forth the acid from my stomach. Dorothy Porter finished and I fled Sappho's and hit Glebe Point Rd in full flight. I cranked the volume on some shit french dub and stood like a silo waiting to cross City Rd counting the money in my wallet, not even enough for dinner at the Lansdowne in that crap echo chamber of a mess hall. The pain in my head pushed through the gilt edged bubbles of the passengers on the 428 so I ditched that fucking bus just down from the Vanguard on King St.

Some nights Newtown glows refulgent, all you need is a soft rain and the time shifting imitation of a migraine. My neck was having trouble holding onto my head and the need for food went feral so I took my last $3 and bought the biggest thing I could, some kind of pizza bread, rectangular and big as my head. I was walking and chewing, the paper bag turning to grease in my right hand, my left hand leaving trails of cigarette smoke. I stoked the engines and took King St in fury of walking and chomping down that shit sour last dollar dinner.

Crossing the empty square the sourness worked its way down and I bent my head against the rain, bite for bite I took that fucker on until the crowds thinned and I swallowed the last of it outside the first funeral parlour. I was shaking off words like dandruff, a nicotine powered human machine each stride longer than the last. I was pushing air and thought and words through this veseled thing.

Across the road from the Enmore Theatre the pain in my head went supersonic so I cranked the volume on Lou Reed and lit another cigarette, double time. I swung right at the Sultan's Table downhill upright opening my chest pushing my palms down and out, thinking only by slaps on the soles of my feet.

By the time I crossed Liberty St time lifted upwards and I was breathing strong machine breaths straight through my diaphragm into my hips, breathing smoke out through an open mouth. Charging up the hill smoking and running through the rain I cranked the klezmer and pushed against all this gravity. Smashing into The Peach with the acid and the pain and the sour taste of the footsteps of Newtown I thought, I am well enough to walk again.

Now I'm sitting in the yellow chair in front the cupboard full of fuck knows what from the old house. I'm thinking about something a friend once said and wishing it was a lie.

I don't recommend writing a blog post whilst feeling like a steam train engine is inside your head, results may disappoint no matter how many excellent words you carelessly shed into the street.

Dale and the giant peach

I have roamed this hallway twenty seven times whilst longing for instant death in my pants. Two hired DVDs have refused to play further than three quarters of they way through. I am exceedingly frustrated and in dire need of distraction. The Peachettes have gone out, one went west and the other is dancing to some Mr van Helmet man or some such in the Hordern Pavilion and as such for once in my life are not providing any distractions.

I want to gather all the local chemists and doctors in one room and hit them with giant hammers until they are as sore, sick and sorry as I am. Antibiotics are clearly a man's solution for men. I don't care how sick I get in the future I will die a horrible death on the footpath outside my house while the cat yowls for dinner rather than suffer weeks of horrible side effects from stupid man medicines.

The very next doctor I see, medical doctor not literary doctor, I am going to violently yell at until I either drop dead from exertion or they crumble into a bloody heap before going kapow poof blam and simultaneously melting and going up in smoke. You are supposed to fucking heal me not make me feel horrible in twelve separate ways you fucktards. I hereby withdraw all personal faith in the medical sciences, all of them, that includes you stinky pseudo scientific naturopaths with stinking ineffective herbs of doom.

Worse

Now the cat is ailing. She has fleas despite her anti flea poison drops. The Spatula noticed, after the cat had had a refreshing nap in the bathroom sink, flea droppings and specks of blood in the sink.

I captured the cat and dosed her again with the revolutionary poisonous drops for cats. I hope this works or the cat and I will need to book into the vet for group euthanasia. Its as though I have been cursed with plagues of discomfort. Peripheral failings and their horrid cures are filling my minutes and hours. I need creams and drops and potions, poisons, smoke balls and pessaries. If there was a scale of disparate ailments working together towards doom then the needle has moved rapidly from shit to fuck.

It is important to note that my fabulous new hair failed to cure anything at all.

Welcome to pessary town

Wracked. I was a walking crash until I sat down. It hurts to breathe. All day at work I kept taking ibuprofen and it sort of helped until I got home and realised I couldn't take a full breath without incredible pain.

I woke up this morning and thought my ribs were broken but I ate breakfast took some panadol and went to work. Grizelda went up the street and came back with dinner for me. I ate it and took more ibuprofen, I thought it might be muscle pain so The Spatula got out her massage table and went to work, I was expecting it to be exceedingly painful but it didn't really hurt at all, this worries me a little. I think I might have some fluid on my lungs.

I am walking chemicals, you could tap me for medicines. There are pessaries and pain killers, two kinds, one for the lungs the other for my uterus, there is echinacea and vitamins, I've lost track of which pills I swallowed when and why. There is anti itching cream and face cream, lavendar head roll on stick and fuck knows what else. I am chewing nicotine gum.

In the morning I will go to the doctor and throw myself on her mercy. I need a remedy or I will travel to Zurich for a little euthanasia.

You remind me of the babe

The fucking doctor is a shithead. I have been issued the following orders:
no exercise (not even walking)
no going out at night
no being in a crowd of people

Those are stupid orders. What kind of a person does not walk around at night in crowds, certainly not people who live in Newtown. So as a kind of vengeance I obeyed all orders by sitting in the house and watching a video whilst eating turkish bread with hommous and chilli followed by pizza, then chocolates with popcorn and some cola. Now I feel very sick indeed. Take that doctor. Following doctor's orders can sometimes make you feel very ill and sorry that you followed them.

The doctor informs me that my immune system is up the shit, he said he could give me more antibiotics (evil pills of doom) but they probably won't work as I just keep getting different viruses. He said I must rest, I must not exert myself, I must eat lots of garlic and ginger and take echinacea tablets. I just have to wait this one out. I am not known for my patience.

I am supposed to go to a film festival tomorrow, this would involve walking, being out at night and being in a crowd. I desperately want to go but I mustn't. All evening, in between rewinding the video to watch David Bowie sing the Dance Magic song one more time, I have been meaning to telephone Snuffbox Films and say that thank you very much for sorting out an invitation for me to go and being ever so nice to let me write something about it and put it on your excellent film blog but I can't go as my immune system is up the shit. I thought about it but I didn't do it. I'm trying to work out a devious plan for going.

I could wrap myself in foil and wear a helmet, I could wear a jumpsuit over a unitard, I could grind echinacea tablets into powder and perform circular breathing whilst wearing a shower cap. All of these are excellent ideas but their usefulness may be limited to novelty. I shall write an email and send it, it is too late for telephoning now. I feel quite awful and like a big pain for pulling out so close to the event. Minus ten professor points for me but just before I send the email I might watch this one more time.