If you pull a doona over your head and sit up, and hold your phone at arm's length it lights up the inside to look almost like archetypical light speed travel. You have to be keeping the doona taught with the phone, pushing it out with that arm. Be sure not to let any additional light in. I don't deserve it.
Works best if you're not wearing glasses and have water in your eyes.
Nearly a week without a post. It's not that nothing has happened, because things have. I'm going to Canberra tomorrow. I've not done all the work I'm supposed to have done. All that sort of stuff. Not to mention that my parents got home on Tuesday evening (good thing I finished the last of the pot on Monday night, hey?). Interestingly, earlier that evening I scared myself by thinking about what would happen if they died.
It was more than that. I was showering before going to pick them up from the airport. I had already heard from them when they were in Melbourne so I knew they were alive so far. But what if there was a plane crash on the approach to Hobart? What would happen? I concern myself with such trivialities, often, until they become so overwhelming as to cause me to sob. Not just cry, sob. The last time I was reading encyclopaedic and purely factual articles about the holocaust. Just wikipedia. Browsing around, reading about everything that happened, and suddenly, mid-sentence, nothing particularly in-and-of-itself bad, I started to cry. It just... it just hit me. There is a perfect (and beautiful, in a way I can't explain) description of this flowing-over effect over on another blog.
While I was writing that paragraph the same thing happened. I cried.
So yeah, I think I was saying that on Tuesday I thought about all the things that would happen if there was a plane crash. I'd press through, try to see what happened. I'd organise a funeral and occupy myself with procedural matters and work. I imagined a phone call to Centrelink asking to cancel payments to people I'm not authorised to represent because they died. I wonder how they'd handle that. I even thought about getting funeral sponsorship before I realised how ridiculous the idea was. And I'd get it all done because it would be distracting and I wouldn't cry until the funeral. I would, of course, but I wouldn't break down. I'd be a pall-bearer for Gideon - front right I think - and that's when it would start. And by the end I'd be unable to move, catatonic from the grief. I'd run out of tears and snot and everything else but I'd still try to push it out.
I wondered who I'd invite to the funeral. I only know a few of Gideon's friends - how would I tell the rest? Conceivably I'd send an email to everyone in his contacts list from his account - but how weird would that be? The thing is, of course, that people my age just don't check the obituaries. They wouldn't know about the funeral.
Then of course there's that other question: who can I invite for support? Is it impolite to invite people to the funeral who didn't know the deceased just so I have a shoulder to cry on? It's probably worse if in a drug-fuelled moment of madness you've recently confessed your quickly-dying (as opposed to undying; more later) love for them. This quick-dying love (almost, but not quite, entirely unlike quick-drying glue) isn't to say that it's any less, it's just ... it's something that is more of a friendship love that I could clearly get over very quickly in any other sense. It's me saying that this will pass, as a phase.
In twelve hours I'll be in Melbourne, presumably. I haven't packed yet. The list of things I was supposed to do before leaving and hasn't started seems to be longer than it was, impossible though that is. There is one thing I have done though. Something I did yesterday, late at night, after I got home. Something that was far more important than sleep.
I have created something to give to my next love. Proper love. Something sacred and withheld. Sort of like virginity, sort of like a particular love-song. Something that is special and will be for one person only and forever associated with that person. Interestingly like virginity, and unlike most love songs, I've created this without a person to whom to give it. That makes me feel quite guilty. Here's something that's beyond important. It's unique and special and for just one person. It's perfect and I know it is. It's precisely what it should be. And there's nobody to give it to. Of the I-could-like-these-people-if-I-tried-(or-was-drunk/stoned) group, I could assign it to one of them. But it's a tad generic. There are specific things for them - or for at least 7e-1 of them. One of which I created smilingly just the other day, in fact, Monday, I believe, and haven't been able to do anything with since. I'm going back to an Annabel-style vagueness here and it's not good. Suffice it to say that I've got something and it's a perfect valentines gift for a girl I don't yet know (or don't yet know I love).
It's nearly three in the morning. I really need to be up in five hours if I'm going to even get packed - something which is probably fairly important for this going away business. But this has been nice. I enjoyed writing it, and congratulations if you managed to read it without needing a toilet break. Your bladder is truly laudable. It's nice to cry sometimes too. We all know that.
I really need to work on my endings.
I had a small nervous breakdown earlier this evening. I fucked up my moot, totally failed at it. But it's not the failure that bothers me. I can handle failure.
Take for example another small failing today: this morning I had my administrative law tutorial and it was terrible. The submission I made had almost no meaning at all. It certainly wasn't an accurate reflection of the law or a valid argument to make. I had be buoyed by the return of my second briefing paper (86% or a high distinction, plus a request to put it up as an example for next year's class) but this wasn't why I was ok with doing such a shitty job. I was ok with it because my preparation involved reading the question as I was getting dressed.
The moot was different. I spent five hours in the library today. Admittedly not all of it was preparing for my moot - some of it was sleeping and I also talked to Nikki (Rogers, old school friend) for a while... but I spent quite some time preparing. Reading cases, taking notes, underlining important sections. I spent $2 on printing. I wrote and rewrote. I worked at this. I didn't work exhaustively but I was prepared. I knew what I was doing. I was ready. I was going to kick arse: smash it, as they say.
But I didn't. I failed dismally. My presentation was poor, I gave bad arguments, I didn't have the cases to back up what I was saying. It was terrible. This is the problem. I don't mind failing. What sent me into shock and made me cry (well, I didn't cry about it until I was home and watching sad DVDs, so we can blame them) was that I'm not as good as I think I am. That's the great travesty here. If I work really hard and still can't do it - well, that's incapacity. I know there are things I can't do. But none of them involved using my mind. Anything that required thought I could do. Anything. Give me enough time and I could learn about Puritanism in Elizabethan England or electrical engineering or organic chemistry or gender studies or finance. This was my strength. This is what made me feel good about myself. I was capable of learning anything I put my mind to. But if there are things I can't do... that bothers me greatly. Especially if it's advocacy, precisely what I'm training to do, what I want to do. It makes life difficult.
This then triggered a massive round of self-hate and Nikky-angst and such. And the die alone business. Great fun all around.
I know I shouldn't watch movies until three in the morning but I can't help it.
Normally when I show emotion it's for others. Rarely do I actually display emotion because it's so strong that I have to.
Watching movies in bed is always interesting. Tears inevitably roll down one cheek only. I'm not going to talk about the interesting snot dynamics problems.
The young Noah is the spi't 'n' image of my sister's boyfriend.
I love this movie and will watch it again. And yes, it made me cry, quite a lot, quite often.
I always had a problem with the premise of 50 first dates. Not a comedy at all.