2001-03-21 :: 03:01 a.m.

guaranteed to disappoint

Soundtrack: none

Wow, Diaryland's timing is fixed and localized. I'm shocked. Oops, but the date is a month behind. Well, you can't have it all.

Today I realized that I'm in the same city as Elly and Olivia. I used to read both of them with great regularity, and now I pop in from time to time, sort of like giving a phone call to a friend from high school (only they don't really know me, etc.). It's funny that we all set off to Melbourne to find something new and leave old things behind.

And so, like with those diarists, the world continues to prove its smallness in various ways. One of those was this weekend, when I saw Katie for the first time in 3+ years. I flew up on standby, and toured around the Gold Coast with her. I saw some of the most beautiful beaches on Earth, white sand that crunched like corduroy under my toes, endless blue that was unbelievably warm, a huge welcoming aquatic envelope. Basalt cliffs at Cabarita that you climb down on and watch the surf pound away into milkshake foam, a view from which you could die happy, a view that lets you think about nothing and be thankful for it, moments of silence that beg to be filled by things that can never be said. Katie's house is in the country, a lovely haven in which to relax and decompress, and I loved looking out the window on the Great Dividing Range. My time there prompted some of the more honest, if confused, journaling I've done in a long time.

I try to write with the same feeling I get from reading Heather, who seems to just push words out and post without looking back and removing (but in the good way, trusting the voice). Once upon a time, I wrote carefully, trying to filter details. Now I think I have my limits here built in, but I can let everything go within those boundaries. On paper, I try to forget the lines, and pound as many words out of my pen as I can. It's hard for me to write in both though, and since I've been concentrating on paper, there's been even more silence here then usual. (As Jessica joked before I left: "So what can we expect, an update a month?" Look what you get.) Anyway: though I am sure it's of little general interest, I assure you journaling is getting done, one way or another.

So an update now, why? It's not like I have the itch to write at this very moment, there isn't something I want to really immortalize, but I got the notion, and that's all you need; the rest is just preordained trajectory. I managed to lock myself out tonight, see A Hard Day's Night at a beautiful theater in good company, and have a long talk with a friend about her now ex-(for the second time)-boyfriend and people and relationships and being vulnerable and being scared and all of those sorts of things. The things we talk about all the time in Diaryland, the things that remain endlessly fascinating and elusive. I've been reading The Selfish Gene and it's as close to an explanation for these issues as I've ever come across. Nature has a lovely sense of balance, but a vicious way of maintaining it.

Over here, people keep telling me I "look like a creative writing/English/writer" person whenever I tell them that's what I'm studying. It cracks me up to no end since I'm running away from my computer science degree back home. I also have been called "brooding" more than a few times, which is more of interest to me in terms of self-examination. It would seem to me I talk far too much to get thrown into "brooding" territory, but if that's how I'm coming off, I ought to take a step back.

Robyn and Kevin were discussing how they think: in words, or in images. This was of interest because I'd never really considered the breakdown. I suppose most of the time it's words [for me]; I always think of random sentence fragments (and end up saying half of them), and I frequently write short narratives in my head regarding what I see around me, what's going on. On the other hand, sometimes when I'm writing I have to come up with pictures before I can put words to them, especially with faces and the layout of people and things in a room.

If there's one thing I like, it's when someone breaks the silence in a car by singing along to the music. Somehow that's always a comfort. But when the songs seem to have a horribly appropriate moment-soundtracking quality to them, then it becomes a little queasy.

I'm quite tired so instead of trying to make this any better I'll go to sleep and neglect my updates list again until I have something of more value to say. Maybe this will jumpstart a little more frequent writing here, I'd like that.

Or.