Trysting Fields

Chez Hagakure G&T Sock Swap

With Liv.

(Previously; previously.)

Chez Hagakure Tea & Pizza Shapes Meet

Starring this chick.

(Previously; previously; previously; previously; previously; elsewhere.)

Happy Third Birthday, Blog

Here's to certainly at least one more year of.. whatever the hell kind of fuckery this is.

:)

(A year ago. Two years ago. Three years ago.)

Wither Comments

Looking at old TF posts for the purposes of linking to them in more recent TF posts, I was struck by something: No fucker is commenting here any more. (Except Liv. And Li. And Wortwut. And the odd Neurocam random combing the archives.) (Gotta love those tenacious, cockroachlike Neurocam randoms.)

Where have you gone, beloved blog massive?

Do you not love me any more?

Is it because Lady J doesn't love me any more?

That's it, isn't it.

It is. Don't lie.

Actually, I don't think that's really it at all. It's all about me. (It is always all about me.)

To get perhaps ill-advisedly personal for a moment (Li will enjoy this):

Towards the end of 2005, I had Learned To Love Myself. Man. Really, truly had. It was nice. It had been a long time coming.

And I got lots of comments in those days. Because as we all know, if you love yourself - like, really, truly do - then everyone else will love you too. Everyone who matters, anyways.

LJ fell in love with me at around this time. And that was great. But then I think I became dependent on her loving me in order to love myself. So when she stopped, I kinda stopped as well. Et voila: blog comments? Thing of the past.

It's more complex than that, naturally. But it's One Way Of Looking At Things. Makes a lot of sense to me.

This is partly the reason people sing the blues when their partners leave them. It's partly that you just desperately miss having them around, course; it's partly the shattered dreams of future happiness; it's partly the sense that all this time and energy expended on getting to know this person really, really well and them getting to know you really, really well, and building trust and constructing a shared identity and blah blah blah has all gone totally to waste. It's partly because you feel like a part of your very soul has been ripped out, leaving a huge gaping hole in your psyche.

But it's also significantly because you've forgotten how to love yourself without someone else to back you up on it.

That's really, really bad though. You shouldn't need anyone else to love you. And the more you do, the less they will.

Am I wrong, non-existent blog readers?

It's one of those perverse inverse dynamics that The Universe is so fond of, for some sick twisted reason that I will never entirely understand [*] except maybe when I'm on nitrous oxide.

Ah, sweet nitrous oxide.

It will never leave me. Until they make it illegal.

(Why isn't it illegal? It's so good.)

[*] NB This is disingenuous; I do in fact understand perfectly. It's because people are attracted to power and personal power derives from self-sufficiency. But for the purposes of allowing this post to form a nice, natural arc, I had to pretend to be stupider than I really am. Funny how that happens sometimes.

I Went To The Movies Last Night

I saw a late show of The Darjeeling Limited at the Nova. It was really, really good. Prior to that I literally hadn't been to a movie since my barely-remembered trip to Sydney last July, which is just crazy. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Sitting texting happily away waiting for the trailers to start, I remembered seeing Wes Anderson's last effort The Life Aquatic in the exact same cinema in 2005. It was all very funny and illusion-of-time and etc.

Movies are good. Note to self: see more movies.

Totally.

Trouble is: much as I fucking love going to the cinema, it's quite expensive - and I find it hard to sit down and stay still for long enough to watch a whole movie at home. It feels lazy and timewastey. "What am I doing, just sitting here?" I think to myself. "I could be wandering around in the garden smoking cigarettes and thinking about things, or taking over the world, or updating my Facebook status, or, or, or.. [is overwhelmed by infinite possibilities; goes blank]."

It's partly something I picked up from living with Bendendo and then Wouters, both of whom would sit around for hours watching TV randomly for no particular reason almost every day, in a way that made me want to slap them.

Largely as a result of this, I basically no longer watch TV at all in any form, ever. My TV's been effectively broken for the last two months. It hasn't been problematic.

But maybe I'll just have to get it fixed, and learn. I could doodle whilst I watch.

Hmm. Hmm!

Stuff I Did This Year

(Previously & previouslier.)

I missed most of 2007.

It started excellently, and ended okay. Adventures were had, things were discovered; it was not a total dead loss. But overall it will not be remembered as a banner year on Planet Teigan.

This year, amongst assorted other things (see archives), I:

• Misguidedly started a BA at Melbourne Uni for the second time, and then dropped out after a month for the second time.
• Got kinda down.
• Just about survived winter without going totally insane or throwing myself under a train.
• Gradually got better.
• Got totally ditched, in my absence, by the artist formerly known as Lady J after an extremely Significant & Intense 18-month relationship.
• Spent approximately 680 hours conducting telephone-based social research for money. (The weirdness, the horror, the tedium etc). (Also: The doodling.)
• Somewhat overambitiously applied & was interviewed for a BFA at one of the premier art schools in the country, despite having basically no traditional visual art-type skills or talent at all. Was not accepted.
• Spent what probably cumulatively amounts to several months on Facebook.
• Drank quite a lot.
• Various other things which are none of your damn business. Who the hell are you, anyway? Who are you really? etc

Time Machine Fuel

The artist, gentleman & scholar formerly known as Semi/Dirty Kant/Rorschach gave me - perfectly - a time machine for my birthday.

I was touched. But I have not, as yet, been able to use it. Appropriate fuel is required, lest dire consequences etc:

So, continuing a long and bizarrely successful TF tradition, I hereby formally call for time machine fuel; ideally an ongoing source thereof.

Successful respondents will be escalently awarded.

In Other News: Hell Freezes Over

(It's okay - I'm just using him for my own shallow self-gratification Art.)

It's Time For A New Post

Today is the first day of spring. Happy spring!

My housemate of the past eleven months is moving out on Monday. Au revior, Jaye. My previous housemate Bentendo moved out around this time last year.

Time, eh.

Now I need a new one. But first the bathroom has to be renovated. The bath is sinking and tiles keep falling out of the wall. It's no good.

What else? Um, I've been selected for jury duty, which is weird. I didn't even realise we had jury duty in this country. I guess they have to get jurors from somewhere.

Announcement: Today Is TF's Second Birthday

I celebrated by buying a new goldfish, Feustus II.

His predecessor Feustus I died in April 2005, as documented in one of my very first posts.

It's My Blog And I'll Break My Own Self-Imposed Vow Of Silence Occasionally If I Want To

I blame you, Carfax. Just let it lie, whycantcha?

Anyway.

I recently had cause to send someone a link to my Neurocam Perception Assessment. It is two years old this month.

Rereading it was quite the life-is-strange moment. Many syncronicities and other peculiarities emerged. I even bag out Vanstone in it at one point. Actually, that's not particularly strange. But the whole thing was funny.

Life is funny. Time flies. Other cliches.

That's all, I guess.

But on a related note: since, surprisingly, no one else has picked this one up (as far as I'm aware) I suppose it falls to me to ask - does this dastardly unidentified voyeuristic spycam shoe bandit sound suspiciously like anyone we know?

And with that I must away, dear readers, for now I have an important date with the Green Faerie Jellybean.

Good evening.

Stuff I Did This Year

• Broke up an eight-year marriage, arguably
• Destroyed Neurocam, according to some (Neurocam continues to function in a lame, shadow-of-its-former-self kind of way)
• Bought my first DVD player
• Visited Sydney
• Took LSD for the first time
• Moved from a cupboard in St Kilda to a house in Fitzroy (the first house I have lived in for five years, fact fans)
• Had a bit of a fucking breakdown
• Collaborated in the creation of a singularly unsuccessful gated community for Neurocam graduates
• Took mescaline for the first time, in the form of San Pedro cactus (and on two subsequent occasions)
• Turned 30, legally speaking
• Took ecstacy for the first time
• Threw my first proper party (and my second)
• Took magic mushrooms (and went to a soccer match) for the first time
• Hosted my first Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony
• Finally gave up and got a MySpace page
• Spent Christmas in Geneva, Switzerland and new year in Manchester, England
• Made my first album
• Started my first business
• Attempted (ultimately unsuccessfully) to write a 50,000-word novel in a month
• Kept one ongoing blog, and co-created & contributed to another, for a combined output of 20,253 words, 344 photos, 10 videos & 31 audio recordings (comprising 16 songs, 12 audio messages, and 3 miscellaneous)
• Wrote approximately 458,000 words of email to 92 recipients (& received approximately 506,000 words of email from 128 correspondents, not including machines)
• Spent 164 hours at the gym
• Held five ongoing paid jobs, of which I lost two, quit one, and currently retain two
• Amongst other things

Read My Friend Dave's Blog

One of my oldest living friends - which is not to say that he's really old, just that most of my friends dating from his era of my life have either died or I'm not friends with them any more - now has a blog.

He's really good; I consider him a top-quality friend. If I were you, I would definitely give some serious consideration to the very real option of reading his blog.

It's fun and it's free, just like the Scientology personality test. Except even better, because your chances of being seduced into joining a dodgy pseudo-scientific quasi-religious cult created by a sadistic maniac that will brainwash you and take all your money are relatively small.

Read Dave's blog.

So, November Rolls Around Again

And, as previously advertised, I'm going to be spending much of it writing a 50,000 word novel. Wish me a broken leg. Heh.

I'm not sure how this will effect my blogging output; whether it'll go completely dead, or through the roof, or stay basically the same, or grow into a (yet another) poignant and/or disturbing document of my progressive descent into total insanity, or what.

But I 'spect we'll find out!

Dear Billie,

I don't know if you're familiar with my Amazon wishlist. But if you are, you'll know that I've lately been looking to reacquire your first album, which I originally bought - much to my girlfriend at the time's disgust and bemusement - from the Tottenham Court Road Virgin Megastore shortly after it came out in 1998.

It was an indulgent, impulsive and kind of silly purchase.

I'd thought Because We Want To was a brilliant, stunning, classic, etc pop song. (And the way everyone just instinctively knew, well in advance of its release, that it was going to go in at number one and dethrone #$&% Three Lions '98 was a thing of beauty.)

But, y'know, I'd listened to most of your record on listening posts, and didn't actually even think it was really all that great.

I was basically a snobby indie kid. And besides, I didn't like you as much as B*Witched (whose LP, conversely, was the fucking bomb - and could legitimately be said to have changed my life, in a subtle kind of way).

But there was just Something About You. The way you stared piercingly out of the sleeve from under your hair, a paragon of innocent knowingery; and the matching combination you displayed in interviews of unquestionably genuine irrepressible-15-year-old-witnessing-all-her-dreams-coming-true wonderment and an equally unfakeable worldly-wise, seen-it-all intelligence. (And your tits. I liked your tits, also.)

You were just too cool.

And, hey, there were some nice songs on there. I Dream I'm Dancing remains a staple to this day. Honey To The Bee. Couple of good songs.

Sadly, that copy was stolen along with almost all my other CDs a few years later. Somehow, inexplicably, yours felt like one of the ones I was most gutted to lose, even though I could only ever have played it all the way through maybe five or six times.

Flash forward half a decade or so to a couple months ago and I'm watching an early episode of the excellent new series of Dr Who. And I suddenly decide that I want it back. You can't get all the tracks online anymore. I put it on my wishlist.

Late last week, finalising my previous eBay CD purchase, it occurs to me to search for it, and I find a copy - of the original UK release, with Because We Want To and Girlfriend tracked first, as it should be (although, you know, the US order works, too) - going for 99p, no bids, expiring in four hours. I grab it.

Today it arrived, extraordinarily quickly. I was really thrilled; much more so than I expected to be.

So I bring it inside, and whilst ripping it to the eMac, idly pull your Wikipedia page.

Try to imagine my surprise and delight as my eyes are scanning the opening line of the entry and relay to my brain the hitherto un(consciously)known fact that today is your birthday!

Happy 24th, Billie. Hope you're having a great one.

Love your work.

Very best wishes,

Teigan

Second Twenties

Got it? Second twenties.

I made a right mess of my first twenties.

They were a learning experience. *shrugs*

I learned a lot.

Having given the matter some considerable thought, I've decided to take them again.

(NB Do not argue.)

Ambitions, Revisited

Last July I posted a list of ambitions.

Time for a review.

1. To work in a streetcorner newsbooth.
Partly a joke - but I'd still quite like to do this. I suspect they're basically owner-operator kind of deals, though. Gonna look into it this week.
2. To become a cult leader by rising to the front ranks of Neurocam and then either taking it over, or creating a sizeable splinter group.
Done. I became the head of Neurocam last August (and was subsequently deposed in November). Being a cult leader was fucking cool, if extremely intense and an insane amount of work. I want to be one again some day, in some form. It suited me nicely.
3. To write a throwaway novel ("which I am doing in November").
As things turned out, I was too busy fulfilling ambition no 2 to do this last November. So I'll do it this November.
4. To make an album, provisionally entitled 'Everyone's Too Stupid' ("which I will do next year when I have more time").
A change in outlook has seen this one deprioritised - although I might still release a compilation of Mishuki One's recordings for Hagakure 419 under said title, if a sufficient number of them accumulate.
5. To study for and obtain a degree in Creative Arts from Melbourne's premier university ("guaranteeing me a colourful and lucrative subsequent career as a Creative Artist").
I intend to begin persuing this one next year. Unless my career takes off stratospherically between now and then, of course.
6. To finish reading "The Magus" by John Fowles, and then to ritually burn it.
Done.
7. To have fun and not care about people.
8. To be beautiful.
9. To be loved.
Realisation of these three remain works in progress, although great strides have been made (admittedly, in some cases, made then lost) on all fronts.

Material things I wanted:

• An umbrella.
Acquired.
• A preamping device for my microphone.
Latterly I've been using my soon-to-be ex-housemate's guitar pedals for this purpose. But they've stopped working - I think because the audio-in jack on my eMac is fucked. (Along with several of the USB ports.) But - see above - evolved approaches have rendered this less important than it used to be.
• A Bigpond Movies membership.
With a Blockbuster just down the road, this has become less desirable. Although I would like to join ACMI, whose lending collection goes places theirs, frankly, doesn't.
• A region-free DVD player.
Acquired. (It isn't really region free. But it's okay.)
• A better camera.
Acquired.
• Peter Greenaway DVDs.
Some still pending, some acquired. In one case acquired (see previous link), then rendered unplayable due to careless handling.
• See also: Amazon wishlist.
Note: the DVDs on this list are for reference only - although I know you'd love to buy them for me, I'm better off with locally-purchased Region 4s (see above).

Updated want list:

• More driving lessons.
I started learning to drive in March last year, but stopped in September, due to being too busy & stressed. I'm no longer too busy/stressed, but I am too poor. Shall recommence when it becomes viable.
• A cat.
Once my domestic arrangement stabilizes somewhat - and again, given sufficiently consistent income.
• New trainers.
Soles of my current trainers:

• iPod Mini repair.
I bought a little 512mb Shuffle after my 4GB Mini broke for the second time late last year. At around $150 this was a substantially cheaper option than getting the Mini fixed. At this rate I will be able to get a Nano for less than the cost of getting the Mini fixed. In any case, I miss my Mini.

We'll see what happens.

Old Homage To Constance

From May; I never got around to posting these at the time.

I still get sad sometimes about what happened with Constance. It doesn't seem to have bothered her too much though, so I suppose I shouldn't.

She was really nasty to me. I can't be having with that.

People, eh.

Jonesin' & Pining

I still haven't managed to secure any weed. It's really driving me out of my mind. I don't know why, particularly. In recent times I've gone for whole months at a stretch without so much as thinking about the chronic.

It's pretty goddamn lame. Here I am in trendy, urban Fitzroy and I can't even score. I wonder how many people are getting stoned right now within a one kilometre radius of where I'm sat. Probably hundreds.

Being an isolated recluse may sound pretty sweet but it has its drawbacks.

Stupid prohibition.

I know I've been banging on about this to an extent which is probably getting somewhat tedious but it's becoming all I can think about. I'm hoping if I whinge about it enough someone'll email me and sort me out just to shut me the hell up.

I wish Toots were here. She'd know what to do. She's like a high precision ganj-seeking missile.

I miss you, Toots.

Someone else I've been missing a bit lately is a girl named Sarah. Where are you, Ms Whatever-Surname-You're-Using-These-Days? What are you doing right now, I wonder? (Sleeping, probably.) Did you get the Christmas card I sent to your mum's house in Howth? Or did the two of you finally kill each other? Are you really, as it says in your disused Yahoo profile, a wedding planner? Or was that a joke?

I asked around a bit a little while ago after a working email for you, but without success.

I really hope you are well and happy, and that you will stumble across this page by chance and get in touch.

Finally: how cool is this?

Later, bitches.

Just Call Me Huggy Bear

Coz I'm a motherfuckin' etc.

Look what my childhood best friend Ben did.

When not making webpages, he is also a trained librarian and plays in punk bands, which is an interesting combination. His current band is called Draft Dodger (old site, predating his joinage - new one coming soon, so I'm told), and their album may or may not be entitled, topically, 'Holy Shit, Batman'. And he's a thoroughly nice bloke.

I highly recommend him for all your website, librarianship, punk rock and nice bloke needs.

I have that accursed song in my head now. Damn.

Compelling Reasons To Live (An Occasional Series)

Exhibit A: The Draughtsman's Contract.

However jaded I may have become, I still heart this movie so fucking much it hurts.

(You might want to go away and do something else while the pictures load.)

First saw it when I was about 14. Completely changed my life.

Latterly, before making the mistake of allowing baby sis to borrow it, I used to have it on as audiovisual wallpaper from time to time, but I can't have actually watched it properly for maybe three or four years.

No wonder I've been so miserable.

MR NOYES: Mr Chandos was a man who spent more time with his gardener than with his wife. They discussed plum trees. Ad nauseam. He gave his family and his tenants cause to dread September, for they were regaled with plums until their guts rumbled like thunder and their backsides ached from overuse. He built the chapel at Fovent, where the pewseats are of plumwood. So the tenants still have cause to remember Chandos through their backsides, on account of the splinters.

"It is said that the Duke de Courcey invited his water mechanic to the top of an elaborate cascade he had constructed, and asked him if he could build such a marvel for anyone else. After offering various thanks and pleasantries, the mechanic finally admitted that - with sufficient patronage - he probably could.

The Duke pushed him, gently, in the small of the back -- and the wretched man plummeted to a watery death!"

(raucous laughter)

MRS HERBERT: Thomas, why is Mr Neville interested in my sheep?
MR NOYES: He is to draw them wet outside the laundry.
MRS HERBERT: Wet? Why does he want them wet?
MR NOYES: Madam, I cannot answer you that. Perhaps he has fond memories of being a baby.

MR NEVILLE: Madam, who is this child who walks the garden with such a solemn look on his face?
MRS TALMANN: That is my husband's nephew, Mr Neville.
MR NEVILLE: He attracts servants like a little midget king. What is his patrimony, Madam?
MRS TALMANN: His father was killed at Ausbergenfeldt. His mother became a Catholic, so my husband had him brought to England.
MR NEVILLE: To be reared as a little Protestant.
MRS TALMANN: He was an orphan, Mr Neville, and needed to be looked after.
MR NEVILLE: An orphan, madam, because his mother became a Catholic?!?

MR TALMANN: It is imperative, Augustus, that in representing me, you ask of yourself the very best. And you do not fraternize with whomsoever you choose. Chasing sheep is a tiresome habit best left to shepherds. If Mr Neville chases sheep, he is not to be emulated.

Drawing is an attribution worth very little - and in England, worth nothing at all. If you must scribble, I suggest that your time would be better spent in studying mathematics. I shall engage you a tutor. And who knows - one day you, Augustus, may add the Talmann name to the Royal Society.

Augustus?

Your tutor, of course, must be German. There are far too many English influences on your life as it is..

MRS TALMANN: Mr Neville, I have grown to believe that a really intelligent man makes for an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness; a certain refusal to be aware of all the options. An intelligent man will know more about what he is drawing than he will see. And in the space between knowing and seeing he will become... constrained. Unable to persue an idea strongly; fearing perhaps that the discerning - those who he is eager to please - will find him wanting if he does not put in not only what he knows.. but what they know as well.

Fucking.. fucking.. I love you, The Draughtsman's Contract. Still. Will you marry me?

Brave New Wallet

In addition to buying clothes on Friday, I also got a new wallet. My old one was falling to pieces. Things were constantly falling out of it. I've lost four keycards in the last eight months or so because of this.

As the picture above illustrates, the new wallet is substantially smaller than the old one.

In many respects this is a good thing. However I had not entirely anticipated the extent to which the new one offers severely limited scope for one of my favourite passtimes, the obsessive collection and hoarding of random stupid crap.

My old wallet used give house room to all manner of daft accumulata. Unfortunately for the shiny novelty value of this post, I actually already partially cleaned it out when I moved. It was becoming unweildy.

Effecting the transfer nevertheless necessitated further wallet-crap cullage, and was a welcome excuse to indulge in a spot of the old ultra short term nostalgia.

From top down: plastic bag no doubt used for illicit purposes, business cards, handy Polyester Books "Get Out of Hell Free" card, old Canberran ID & membership cards, including ANU Health Club card, expiration date August 2002

Inscribed scraps of sentimental value

One and a half playing cards

Tickets for things, mostly movies. I decided to retain the ones from Melbourne and archive the ones from Canberra, which comprised the bulk of the collection (note yellowing ticket to Kill Bill Vol 1, dated 27th October 2003, in foreground)

I was unsure what to do with this particular ticket, for a 10:10pm session of Van Helsing on Monday the 30th of May 2004, at the Jam Factory Village (see previous post), which I foolishly went to see entirely on the basis that Kate Beckinsale was in it.

Here are some pictures of Kate Beckinsale:

Kate Beckinsale in Van Helsing (Stephen Sommers, 2004)

Kate Beckinsale in Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003)

Kate Beckinsale in The Aviator (Martin Scorcese, 2004)

It is an unhappy ticket; I associate it with sitting sadly on the floor of T's flat in Toorak, realising that my first attempt to move to Melbourne was doomed. And despite the formidable talents of Ms Beckinsale, the movie was absolutely dire.

But in the end I decided to retain it.

248 pages of The Magus left.

Greenaway

I often feel like I've been struck by lightning.

I want to watch Peter Greenaway's 1980 short Act of God again. It's a documentary comprising a series of interviews with lightning strike victims. Lightning strike is recognisable as a phenomenon comparable to the mysterious Violent Unknown Event at the centre of Greenaway's subsequent feature debut The Falls.

I originally saw both films about ten years ago, deep in the bowels of the National Library, where you could watch 16mm prints from the enormous film collection that they used to hold (which I believe now lives at Screensound) on quaint old Steenbeck viewing tables.

I was completely and totally obsessively in love with Greenaway's work throughout my teenage years. It was the centre of my whole world. I want to get reaquainted with it.

I still possess dodgy VHS recordings (mostly taped off Eat Carpet over the years) of a number of his early shorts (H Is For House, Water Wrackets, Windows, Dear Phone and A Walk Through H), but not Act of God. And I've still never even seen Vertical Features Remake.

I really need to get these two DVDs.

I rescued these two books about PG from my parents sinking ship of a house:

Museums & Moving Images by David Pascoe and The Films of Peter Greenaway by Amy Lawrence

If I ever finish The Magus (I'm not going to give up on it now, but like others I've found it a tad bromidic) I'm going to read at least the Lawrence one again.*

And if I ever resolve my current deeply unsatisfactory employment situation, I'm going to celebrate by buying this DVD edition of A Zed & Two Noughts that I discovered at Chronicles on Fitzroy Street the other day, which features a director's commentary track. My sixteen-year-old self would probably have keeled over dead with sheer excitement at such a prospect.

*Sidebar watchers will have noticed that I'm also currently reading Scepticism Inc by Bo Fowler - at work, since The Magus is a bit too bulky to fit comfortably in my pocket. It's narrated by a sentient shopping trolley. It's about a man who runs a metaphysical betting shop, which makes a killing because - metaphysical propositions being inherently unverifiable - it never ever has to pay out. These are just two of many great things about it.

Dogs

Sam, slightly bewildered indoors

Sammy the retarded keeshond will be coming to live in Melbourne soon, at my sister's house in Fitzroy. I don't know how he'll cope with the change. He's pretty fucking senile, and there'll be a lot less space there than he's used to. It'll be great to be able to hang with him a bit more often, though. I think upon encountering me the other week it took him a while to remember who I was.

Sam, somewhat disoriented in the garden

Here is a 35mm picture I took of him in 2003 (so long film, nice knowing you etc) and printed at Photoaccess:

Back in the day, long before my folks inherited Sam from my Mum's cousin in 2003, we had a much loved black kelpie labrador cross called Sally, purchased as a puppy from the RSPCA in about 1988. I came home one day in 1996 to find her lying in the sun by the study window, a favoured spot of hers, unexpectedly stone dead. She was only eight. She's under the compost heap now.

Moment of silence for Sally. I wish I had a picture of her.

In The Industry We Call These 'Cigarette Burns'

The largest one was made by holding a lighter to my wrist.

I did most of them between 1995 and 1997. A couple in 2000.

I never used to think about the scars very much, but I've become a bit self-conscious about them over the last year or so.

My sister of the getting-marriedness - who is a photography student - is doing a series on scars. She herself has significant scarring on her neck and stomach as a result of several operations for various types of cancer. We spent yesterday afternoon at her place taking pictures of me and my arms.

She is getting married. Have I mentioned that already?

This afternoon I'm off to Canberra 'til Tuesday.

Work

Sooner or later I'm going to have to get another job. I'd like to work in a cinema. Concomitant to liking movies, I like cinemas. I've worked in two previously.

Firstly this one, from 1997 to 1999. I was also apprenticed to the projectionist there for a while. Prior to discovering Peter Greenaway at the age of 14 and deciding I wanted to be a film director, my ambition was to become a lighthouse keeper. Lighthouse keeping is a dead profession, alas, but I reckoned projectionism would be the next best thing. In some ways even better; lighthouse keepers can't splice single frames of pornography into children's films. Unfortunately what with increased automation, not to mention the inevitable imminent digitalisation of cinema exhibition, it's also a dying trade.

Subsequently, in London, I worked at this incredibly cool and scruffy old revival house in Hampstead called the Everyman. It's since been sold and upmarketed beyond all recognition, which is sad.

The downside of seeking employment in a cinema is that it will involve cold canvassing, which - shy & retiring semi-recluse that I've become - fills me with unholy dread. Also, I don't really feel like I've been taking enough interest in movies lately to be very convincing as a prospective cinema employee.

(Digression: Didn't get to Sideways, due to its timing being misadvertised; saw The Life Aquatic instead. It wasn't great, but it was unique, and had a number of absolutely classic moments. And it looked really nice as well.)

One of the great virtues of my current job is that pretty much anything would be a step up from it, so I'm not hidebound by snobbery. I'm easy. As long as it doesn't involve really severe public humiliation, or cold-call telemarketing. Or wearing a suit, goddammit.

All of this is theoretical at the moment, though, coz I'm going to Canberra next weekend before hitting the employment trail.

Bleary-Eyed Ramblings, or I Dream Of Constance

I dreamt last night that I was a girl, specifically Constance. I've mused about being Constance before. I don't know why, other than that I think she's cool. And I've often fantasized about being a girl. I don't think I'm a repressed transsexual or anything. I just reckon it would be awesome. Girls are much nicer than boys. Or at least much more appealing.

Tangent: In my early teens I was completely obsessed with periods. I only found out mentruation existed when I was, like, twelve. This was possibly the origin of my interest in the occult. I was just astounded that this bizarre and horrendous phenomenon had been going on all around me all my life, completely sheilded from my view.

This unhealthy preoccupation was only entirely cured when, at the age of 22, I fulfilled my long term ambition of actually having sex with a menstruating woman, something I will never, ever do again.

I ran out of cigarettes last night. I thought not having any would motivate me to bounce out of bed bright and early this morning and go to the gym. But instead I just lingered in bed for a really, really long time. Then I went out in my pyjamas to buy some and came back home to drink coffee and blog. I'm a disgrace.

In other news, Jojo & Xade report excitably that Tori Amos is coming to town.

I saw her last time she toured 'Straya which was, I believe, in, like, 1994. Sort of tempted. (But upon glancing at the latest incarnation of her website: she really badly needs to fire her current stylist. Admittedly, though, so do I. Or at least I would, if I had one.) I haven't heard her current album, but I grew to love Scarlet's Walk, despite an iffy relationship between us at first.

I can't really afford it, though, especially since.. well, I'm so shat off about this actually I think a separate post may be in order.

Introduction, Part the 5th: Epiphany

Having resolved to withdraw from my course, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief followed by a significant epiphany - I realised I'd transmuted all of my vague, amorphous angst about what I should be Doing About My Life (but wasn't), into concrete, specific anxiety about work I should be doing for uni (but wasn't, or at least not rigorously enough). In eliminating the latter by deciding to withdraw, I'd also, at least temporarily, eliminated the burden of the former.

I didn't have anything to worry about anymore. I felt free, for the first time in maybe a year. I felt happy. I felt like I was existing in the present moment, rather than trapped within a suffocatingly rigid mental structure that I couldn't possibly escape from.

I was reminded of the ultimate, liberating truth that I'd become terribly afraid of - because I saw it as being what had gotten me into this mess in the first place: all of this shit dragging me down was (just like.. whisper it.. everything else I perceive) a creation of my own mind.

My mind, which belongs to me. Mine.

I could choose to let it all go. I could relax.

Paradigm shift. Breakthrough.

The world changed.

My god it was beautiful.

Intense mental reshuffling ensued. In a wired, sleep-deprived, half-drunken state on Thursday night, I scrawled the following notes:

Nothing I do will ever be enough for what? For WHAT? You stupid boy - you have (and it's a bit of a habit, isn't it?) trapped YOURSELF within a recursive mental structure, which has locked your brain up almost completely, and caused you to lose sight of what life is really about - which is to say, the active, fluid, open-ended process of actually living it.

You must accept that you have been clinging desperately to the identity of a person who is dead, staring out of the eyes of a dead person. You must accept that you've done this to yourself. And you must stop. All you need to do this is to know that you can. And you can.

You, the person writing these words right now, is NOT DEAD. The person writing these words is 28 years old and their life is not over. It's recognisable as still just beginning. And although that's kind of dysfunctional, it's a hell of a fuckload better than being dead. Isn't it? Isn't it? Think it fucking is.

You have a past, but it's finished. Over and done. It's yours and you must accept that - but it isn't YOU. It isn't who you are. You are a living, breathing entity. You are an open-ended system. You are an ongoing concern. You are a work in progress.

You may not have the first idea who you are, but you can start finding out, and doing that can be a fun, vital, creative endeavour. And it can begin here, now. Fucking believe it.

Okay. That's more than enough earnest, self-indulgent, self-obsessed drivel for the moment.

Observation: there's a personality characteristic for you right there, no-self boy: YOU ARE INSANELY SELF-OBSESSED. It's only natural: you are recognisable as going through a second childhood, of sorts. But work on that. Persue this whole construct-a-new-identity thing, for sure. But don't take it too goddamn seriously. And make a major plank of it a resolution to LOOK OUTWARDS MORE. For your own sake, and everyone else's. It's so much more interesting.

Introduction, Part the 4th: The Uni-Precipitated Meltdown

My course at Melbourne Uni started at the beginning of March, four weeks ago.

I'd been looking forward to it, but at the same time felt enormously uncertain. About whether I could find the self-discipline to make a go of it. About whether it was really what I wanted to be doing. And uncertain about how, given how much of my time and energy was already consumed with simply coping (after a fashion), I would manage the workload.

I wondered whether I was just kidding myself in imagining that it was a realistic thing to attempt at my present juncture.

I enjoyed the furniture of it all. Buying stationary, going to lectures. Being a Student. But my fears were well-founded; by the end of Week 3 was falling behind and starting to panic. By the middle of Week 4, I was becoming a nervous wreck.

I decided, after some soul-searching, to withdraw, or at least defer until next year.

It felt surprisingly good.

Introduction, Part the 3rd: Neurocam

In late December, via a thread on Metafilter, I heard about the mysterious organisation known as Neurocam. A more detailed account of this can be found here. (My Neurocam-commissioned perception assessment provides a good reflection of my headspace at around that time.)

In my response to the item in their initial questionnaire which asked "What are your expectations of Neurocam?", I wrote:

I have no concrete expectations. The Age article was intriguing, and had me chasing down myriad online trails trying to get a better handle on the whole thing, which was entertaining and intrigued me even more.

Given the substantial number of new signups one presumes Neurocam has received recently, I reckon it's unlikely I'll be selected as an operative. If I am, maybe the assignments will help add some colour to my currently rather lacklustre existence. Maybe I'll be kidnapped and horribly tortured by ruthless sociopaths, which would make for an entertaining dinner party anecdote or two. Maybe my involvement with Neurocam will help me to gain greater self-knowledge, and ultimately crack the baffling puzzlebox of my own tortured psyche. Maybe it'll drive me hopelessly insane.

Perhaps I will discover that time, the self, physical matter, and everything else that goes into making up this shallow world of forms in which we all naively "believe" "we" "live" is nothing but an illusion, engineered by intelligent machines as a power source. Woah.

Perhaps not.

Who knows?

Although I worried (and still, in more paranoid moments, continue to worry) that they might be some kind of predatory cult, I was - and still am - inclined to believe that Neurocam is an art project, and on reflection what really attracted me to it was the suggestion that involvement in Neurocam could serve as a vehicle for self-discovery. From Marc Moncrief's Neurocam article in The Age:

"Have you read The Magus?" he [Neurocam Operations head Charles Hastings] asked.

The Magus, originally titled The Godgame, is a novel by British author John Fowles. In it, English teacher Nicholas Urfe travels to a Greek island where he meets the mysterious, androgynous Conchis, who teaches Urfe about himself through a series of illusions - games apparently without purpose - that challenge Urfe's perceptions of reality and ask him to commit himself completely to tasks he does not understand.

"Neurocam is an unveiling," Hastings said. "That is all you need to know."

An unveiling of what? "That depends on the person."

(I was also attracted by the possibility - speculated upon by, for example, operatives Lady J and Kybalion - that they might be a recruiting front for an esoteric order. I've thought a lot about attempting to join such a group, having had some experience in the field, albiet primarily of the self-initiatory kind. Here, in the first of what will probably be an online purging of many old documents, is a link to the magickal diary I kept throughout the second half of 2003, documenting my third adventure into the strange and - as I've learned - potentially ruinous mental realm that Robert Anton Wilson calls "Chapel Perilous".)

Joining Neurocam also provided an excellent excuse to start a blog of my own.

I called it "Trysting Fields", which might not necessarily be considered significant. Derived from my traditional Favourite Movie Of All Time, Peter Greenaway's "Drowning By Numbers", it's a name I've used a lot. It's what I've called every hard disk I've ever owned. I have an old, abandoned blog from 2002 also called "Trysting Fields" (which is still out there somewhere - I've lost the password and can't delete it. Finding this is left as an exercise for the reader.) I've written a song called "Trysting Fields", and it's the name of the second album by my imaginary band, The Teigans.

But I think my use of this title so incongruously, for a blog intended to document my involvement with Neurocam, reflected the other thing I was hoping to get out of it: a sense of community. I'd previously gained a lot from my involvement in another online community (which is another story for another time) and I suppose I wanted to see if I could leverage Neurocam for a degree of social engagement. Sad, I know. But it does seem to have delivered in that regard; it's gotten me communicating and engaging with other people to an extent that six months previously I'd never have imagined I'd be able to do again.

In a wider sense, it got me thinking about ideas and focussing with some genuine interest on things beyond the dank four walls of my own brain.

Introduction, Part the 2nd: December in Melbourne (Nothing I Could Do Would Ever Be Enough)

So - I moved to Melbourne. And the challenge and the new setting were energising. But December, my first full month, was still unremittingly awful. I felt small and alone and ripped out of context. I suspected that I was likely to go insane, in a really, really bad way.

(I've arguably 'gone insane' before, but although these periods have been enormously disruptive, and damaged some of my relationships quite badly, they've also been extremely powerful experiences which provided me with insights and perspectives that couldn't have been acquired any other way. They may have contributed to my subsequent ruin, but even so I'm glad to have had them. No doubt there will be more about this at some point in the future - although it's an area I find frustratingly difficult to talk about.)

I still felt nothing had been 'resolved', and that this procluded any kind of ability to live a meaningful life. The sense that what I really needed to do was bite the bullet and commit suicide followed me everywhere I went. (Jesus. It gets chirpier, I promise. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.) But I wasn't allowed to do that. So there wasn't anything I could do. Nothing I could do would ever be enough. This became my new mantra. Nothing I can do now will ever be enough. It beat being a VCR funeral of dead memory waste. But it was far from ideal.

What did I do in December? It's a big grey blur. I took up a paid volunteer administrative position at beyondblue - partly because I'd previously been involved with them via a contract to develop their communications strategy scored by my old employer, a PR company also contracted by the byzantine beauracratic nightmare that men (and women too, naturally) call the Federal Department of Health. Partly because their CEO is a friend of my mother's. Partly because I have, at times in the past, identified as a person 'suffering from Depression'. Partly because they were willing to pay me $15 an hour without the responsibility of being a proper Employee.

It was crap, for all sorts of reasons. I felt dirty being there because the 'blue is basically a cheersquad for psychiatry, an institution which I've come to regard with almost total skepticism and no little contempt. Being constantly surrounded by chirpy, brightly coloured promo material wittering about the eminent 'treatability' of depression (and just having to see the word everywhere, all the time) whilst trapped in a seemingly inescapable private hell was not much fun. Nothing was.

I did read Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" - lent to me with enthusiastic recommendations by a friend several months earlier - and liked it enormously. I found its theme of confessional-autobiography-as-skin-shedding-exercise inspiring, in an abstract sort of way. It seemed like a successful attempt to do what I'd tried, and failed, to convince myself I should do in the latter part of last year.

I spent most of my spare time aimlessly surfing the web. Mostly, I read blogs. I was fascinated by the opportunity they provided to peek through the window of a computer screen into other people's lives. Feeling that I didn't have a life of my own - didn't know how to live - they were recognisable as a form of research. And feeling pretty much totally cut off from other people in any interactive sense, they provided me some voyeuristic relief from loneliness.

Ideas about starting one of my own were scuppered by a sense that I had nothing to say which I'd want anyone else to hear. I felt inadmissable to the world. If I'd started a blog, it would have either been a horrible, endless, angstridden whingefest, or be indistinguishable from the sort of material produced by the Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator.

No good at all.

Introduction, Part the 1st: I Was A VCR Funeral Of Dead Memory Waste

Here's a starting point. It may seem a bit melodramatic. Bear with me; I really don't know what I'm doing here. But I'm trying to be sincere.

About eight months ago, after a strange and difficult few years - the details of which may be revealed here over time, I guess - I reached a uniquely comprehensive personal nadir. I felt psychologically disemboweled; like my entire identity had finally dissolved down to nothing. I'd seen through everything, and recognised it as illusory. I'd lost the ability to believe in anything at all. I had a sense that I'd been completely excommunicated from the world, from any tangible sense of myself, and consequently from any ability to act, form opinions, or relate meaningfully to other people.

To the extent that I was able identify with a self, it was one which horrified and disgusted me, and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

I was a VCR funeral of dead memory waste.

I spend the next few months drifting like a ghost, drowning in a sea of memories retained from former selves, none of whom were me anymore. My life was over; my body and my cognitive processes just hadn't caught up with it yet. I've felt lost before - indeed, historically I have felt that way to some degree more often than not, especially over the last five years - but this time it really seemed terminal.

Since I'd decided that I was not allowed to kill myself, I obsessed over what I could DO about this. I tore myself to pieces thinking about it. I considered undertaking some kind of grand autobiographical project, to help me reconstruct an integrated self-narrative, and consequently a viable sense of identity. But the prospect seemed hopelessly overwhelming. And I couldn't convince myself that any honest account of my own history wouldn't ultimately conclude with the protagonist being reduced to a broken, burnt-out shell.

In hindsight, I can now see that I did have a sense of self during that period, but it was an intolerable one. It consisted almost entirely of an indefinable, all-encompassing Problem trying desperately to resolve itself, coupled with an underlying awareness that this was impossible.

I ostensibly gave up on the idea that there was anything I could do about the situation. In late November, heavily coached and assisted by my family, I moved cities, from my native Canberra to Melbourne, took up digs in St. Kilda, and enrolled in a BA at the University of Melbourne.

I liked the idea of being a Student, and liked that it would enable me to give a convincing answer when queried as to what the hell I was doing with my life.

The challenge of relocating and functioning more independently, and the novelty of a new setting were good for me. But I hadn't really moved on. My sense of being in an existential crisis devolved into a more mundane, but still hugely debilitating, depression. I was still almost totally paralysed psychologically. I was still turned almost totally inward, unable to connect with other people except on the most superficial levels. Almost all of my time and energy were still consumed by a constant, nagging, all-pervasive sense that time had stopped, and would continue to be on pause until I could figure out What The Hell To Do About Everything, along with a crushing awareness that there wasn't, actually, Anything I Could Do.

Although I was conscious, able to sustain myself as a person in a technical sense, and had resolved at least on the surface to try and move forward and make the best of things, the subtext that My Life Was Over continued to underpin everything which I did and experienced.

It was no good at all.