feeling grateful

For a room of one's own.

a home for a while

Holy moly. Where to start? I moved into a new house yesterday + it felt like sanity increased by a degree. I'm only here until February but it's a gorgeous, warm starting point of a home, with the very lovely Gretta, Huni + Tom. (Oh, + let's not forget Leo the dog.) There's a vegie patch + a bounteous supply of tea. We've scraped together a thimble-full of furnishings, with a little bed to lay my head on + a light to write under. I've almost finished unpacking. I squealed with excitement when I got to hang my clothes up for the first time in six months.

I am bone, bone tired after a crazy couple of weeks + I'm starting a new (casual) job tomorrow. So this is a brief update only. Obviously there's a lot to be discussed. I will return. I will. I will.

torture

I'm stuck in front of the confuser on a Saturday night, writing another bloody job application. Meanwhile the fat horns, stomping percussion + ecstatic cheers of the Johnston Street Fiesta reverb off the walls from only a block away.

Please Universe, give me a job + bring back my dancin shoes.

if these walls could talk...

...they'd say thank you!

Melbourne is a serious street art hub. Everywhere I turn there's a new image or pithy catchphrase. It makes every walk an adventure + I'm digging it. I'd momentarily forgotten about street press + that's fun too. I've picked up copies of Trouble + Vice in the last couple of days, along with an assortment of general weird stuff.

My favourite so far is a stapled two-page photocopy, called 'On Wednesday...', which documents an anonymous chick's Wednesdays in time-based increments. Complete with urinary tract infection. "Distributed weekly on the day after Wednesday." Vice would call this a prime example of boring white people. But I kinda like the documenting of the uneventful everyday. Hey, I do it all the time.

kickin around

Big breath in. Big breath out. Big breath in. Big breath out.

The chaos of my first week in Melbourne has passed + a semblance of normality is starting to settle around me. Thank goodness for that! I'm still a tad apprehensive about the future but more accepting that this might, somehow, be an understandable feeling for the right here right now. My head's reeling at the distances I've covered + the changes I've seen since mid-June. So my only goal, for the right here right now, is to carve out a little breathing space in this big bad town + GO SLOW.

(You know as well as I do that the last sentence is an out-+-out lie. Moi? One lonely goal? No creative projects? Not a single item on the To Do List? Not likely! But for now I'll attempt to keep stripping it back. Go slow! Go slow!)

Anj, Brad + I visited the very cool Rose Street Artists Market on the weekend + did plenty of mooching about Fitzroy. Lots + lots of gems which I will spell out at another time. Somewhere on our travels I came across the 'The Slow Guide to Melbourne', an alternative city guide which focuses on "a calmer world, a place to celebrate pleasure over pressure, quality over quantity + midfulness over mindlessness". Just what I need? Sounds like. I haven't done anything more than the preliminary glance-over yet. But it's sitting right by my bed + making me feel better via its eco-sensory calm-making vibe.

This neck of the woods has an almost eerie quiet to it today. Melbourne Cup morning + Brunswick Street is a mere shadow of its bustling self. I know it's the calm before the storm of discarded heels + dishevelled fascinators. Which is why I'm taking my Babka gingerbread men + high-tailing it to suburbia. Roll on an afternoon's respite with my old high school mate Vassie.

for weeze

PS: Full credit to Adi for the image second from the bottom. A very cool little sticker she whipped up for an exhibition catalogue way back in the 90s. All other images created, collaged, pilfered, cut, pasted + assembled from my collection of bits n bobs.