Wilderness Not Wreckage: Cultural and Suburban Landscapes

What are they doing? These people, who I trust, have changed everything. They have moved furniture, dessimated the garden (and I spend more time there than anyone) and created an olfactory nightmare. I inhale the sickly stench of acrid bodies and fettid clothing.

I am essentially conservative, although I have been complimented previously on how well I deal with moving home and the associated stress.

We are where we live. Are we where we live? Are you Australian, Melbournian, Brunswickian, or one who lives in your house by your values? You can more easily share with people with shared experiences, from the same culture, but who is to say national culture is more entire of itself than popular culture or alternative culture? I wonder about the European Project- some countries are more Euro-federalist than others- a group of individuals identified as a nation whose character means that they want to be consumed into a larger entity. I suppose some critic has articulated this clearly. But what will make me feel better as I stalk around the wilting stubble and spent debris?

The Bald and the Beautiful

That Man was here again today, watching me as I sat in the garden. He is circumspect with me, and possibly too polite. What power does he think I have? Perhaps he thinks that if he opens doors for me and calls me by my full name I will suddenly adore him. Haven't these people noticed that sometimes I avoid their touch, and lower my back as I pass to avoid their pawing?

He doesn't anthropomorphise me, thankfully. But he infantilises me. Last night I sat on him, and as he removed me in order to leave, he referred to me as 'youngster'. Is it the fate of my race to be considered eternally youthful? Is this akin to black men being called 'boy'?

I saw an advertisement today that asked: "are you sick of cute furry pets?". It suggested Yabbies as pets. Rather than alternatives to the cute and furries, perhaps they should be pets for the cute and furries? She is my giant Yabbie, although I have never told her. But I think she knows.

Am I jealous? If I was I couldn't admit to it. All those times we stared at each other in bed before sleeping curled up together. She still invites me into her bed, but I know her mind is elsewhere, and although she still says she loves me, I suspect that is is an absent and thoughtless love. She leaves the house for long periods of time, and I know she is with him, and she arrives home, happy and loud, and holds me, guiltily, before going to bed, exhausted.

Nick Cave once poignantly asked "do you love me, like I love you?"

Does she love me, and do I love her? Does he love her, does he love me? Can he accept and acknowledge me in the way I deserve?

"have I told you lately that I'm drunk?"

I don't think anyone is aware of the profound and transcendental impact tuna has on my body and my being in general. I have been vomitting. Sometimes I do it with sincerity, as I must expell this horrible excess fur. And there are the times when I do it because the world sickens me. After tuna I feel protiened potent and powerful. Like that guy that Ida sometimes sees in the steam room and finds so funny because he is a large and hideous muscle. "How can someone just be muscle?" she asks me. I don't know, I've never seen him.

The other one talks to me in great gasping bursts when she is drunk. I crawl into her bed and she tells me she is drunk, thinking that I haven't noticed. But they are my girls and despite how irritating they are, I do love them. But they should never think that I don't notice what they do.....

"Amazing Steaks, How Sweet the Sound"

Steak is amazing. It is the muscle of another animal. But that isn't something I consider as I am brutally tearing it apart with my spiky incisors.

Our Vast Continent Is Heavy With Competition and (lack of) Compassion

God how my heart hurts me, when people are cruel and unkind to each other, and when I run too fast when I have just woken up.

I have to slip out the window, unnoticed, at night, for some fresh air and a chance to collect my thoughts and consider my situation. Here I am, at my age, and I own nothing and live entirely on someone else's charity. That window is my little portal to freedom, and sometimes I never want to go back inside.

They say a whole lot of Sierra Leonian athletes have disappeared into Melbourne and will probably resurface and seek asylum eventually. We Africans look after each other. I'm so fucking glad the Commonfilth Games are over. The closing ceremony is this evening, but I can't be bothered watching it. I suppose the government can kick all the homeless people out of the hotels now. Even thgouh I am housebound, I still read the paper.

At Both Ends of the Day

Oh god. This morning she stood naked in the bathroom and screamed 'Tom' repeatedly at me while I was trying to sleep. I opened an eye and attempted to glare at her. What a sight! It made me malt.

She finally gave in and bought ******* again, after a week of my whining. What she doesn't understand though is that I cry out to her in desperation because I can't eat that god awful shite, and she responds by insulting me and whining about how fussy I am. I wouldn't expect her to eat dog shit or offal, so why the fuck should I eat horrible food?

A Division of Joy

She's gone mad (or, like Ian Curtis said "she's lost control". He was a funny man wasn't he?). This morning she picked me up and wouldn't let go, as if she had some need to burrow into me like a mole. She says "Oh Tom, I love you", but she says it so often I can't help but wonder about the sincerity of it. I say "of course you fucking love me, I'm dependant on you for food and shelter, and you interpret my need as love and you love feeling needed". She has talked about unrequited love before, and maybe she should again.

Why is she always in this hyped up state, as if she can never really relax? She is living too quickly, and then she turns around and asks me what has happened to time? Reminds me of a line in the film Memento; "how am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time"? I don't think she feels time the way that other people do. Is that why she is so urgent?

All Day All Day....Domino Dancing

I have been unbelievably lonely recently. When they come home I am mournful and loud, and not because I am a brat, or a "little dickhead" as she calls me, but because I am sad. She has so frequently wondered how she and others would react if I spoke. They place so much importance on speech, and lips, and structure and order. She sometimes looks at me pityingly and says "poor little thing, you can't experience humour, or laugh, or smile". This annoys me. After all, I don't think it is sad that she doesn't eat raw meat or can't lick her own arse. It's funny how your experience of the world becomes the only legitimate one. As Cyndi Lauper once said; "I had a false confidence that the world had no boundaries."