Good morning, sunshine

Oh hi, I didn't see you there. I guess we have a lot to catch up on...

Fletch and the city

This time next week... I'll be on the plane. New York bound, with nothing more organised than a couch to crash on. It's been coming for so long it feels surreal that the departure point is finally almost here - particularly from my current perch. Manhattan feels like a different planet to the broad, jacaranda-lined streets of the George. Have been reading the sporadic journal from my last trip though, which helps to get into the mood. My first entry, from new year's eve 2008, reads pretty smitten, and I only proceeded to fall further in love:

"New York is incredible, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. People seem to sense that I’m not from around here – could be my willingness to make eye contact, or the squealing at the snow, or constant grins and disbelief that I’m actually HERE. Everyone on the street is friendly, with a ready smile and the occasional whistle. The doormen all tip their caps as I pass down 86th Street, and the coffee vendors are always up for a chat.

"I arrived in darkness on Sunday night, after a death-defying ride on a shuttle bus from JFK with some similarly white-knuckled fellow passengers. New York roads are a chorus of discordant horns blaring and hand gestures; the clichés were accurate in this respect. En route I chatted with a Norwegian exchange student and her Californian friend, as we picked out the profile of the Empire State Building from the skyline, Manhattan nightlife twinkling into existence around us one bulb at a time...

"New York makes me feel like a child, in the best possible way. Everything is slightly dreamlike, in that I’m constantly surrounded by things I’ve seen before, suddenly made real. There are echoes of déjà vu everywhere, and not just from my current Gossip Girl obsession (the Met steps are still under construction, and it was too cold to attempt a yoghurt there anyway), but an entire lifetime of films and pop culture.

"No sooner had I reached Central Park than I was met by a squirrel - delightfully exotic to me, but I suspect more dime-a-dozen here than possums are at home. I passed a children’s playground and soon found myself on the running track around Jacqui Onassis Reservoir. Of course at this point I could no more put a name to the body of water than I could join the joggers, but with my iPod on what proved to be a mostly fortuitous shuffle, I followed the path around.

"There were ducks and picture-book rushes and the whole scene was quite picturesque, my runny nose aside. That familiar sensation of starring in a life-changing montage in the film of my life began to kick in... and then "Khe Sanh" came on. It changed the mood a little, but by clinging to lines like the last plane outta Sydney’s almost gone, I got through it. Soon enough the crisis had passed (gloves negate one’s control of the iPod clickwheel, you see) and I was on Fifth Avenue...."

Stamp duty

One of the most exciting things about starting a real job, at least for a stationery-fetishising nerd like yours truly, was getting my paws on my first business cards. Clearly the excitement of seeing your name in print needn't be limited to bylines!

I always feel there's a small glamour to being able to dole out your details to those deemed deserving... Perhaps the impulse of some of my dormitory contemporaries to write their number on clothes pegs and pin them to suitors at school socials, was not so far removed from Dickensian and Austen-tatious ladies leaving calling cards when making visits in society?

Anyway. I didn't want to give up the idea of business cards just because I'm currently between businesses! I needed something flexible and a bit different. So... until my situation is permanent enough to justify some gorgeous old-fashioned letterpress on gorgeous paper, I'll be making my stamp on whatever works - calling cards, stationery, prints of my photos, new acquaintances' wrists... I'll be like a roaming door bitch...

This is the day

Sometimes songs come to you just when you need them. Sometimes they recur with freakishly appropriate timing, as though you’re just a bit player in some distant, meandering indie film soundtracked to perfection by the big guy upstairs. That’s how “This Is The Day” was for me.

When I first heard it I was about 15, listening to Triple J into the wee hours on my headphones as the dormitory snored. Held in thrall by Richard Kingsmill, I had just decided that I would dedicate my life to the one true path: music journalism (well, it worked for a time). When Richard dropped a track and The The’s eerie tinkling riff and wheezing accordion started up, I was blown away. How could you hear these lyrics as an insomniac teenager and not have some kind of epiphany?

Well... you didn't wake up this morning
Because you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes
Turn red
The calendar, on your wall, is ticking the days off
The calendar on your wall is ticking
The days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world
Couldn't buy back those days.
You pull back the curtains, and the sun burns into your eyes,
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky.
This is the day -- your life will surely change.
This is the day -- when things fall into place.
You could've done anything -- if you'd wanted
And all your friends and family think that you're lucky.
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like
Glue

Fast forward to the end of Year 12; the night before the last day of school, which would also bring the traditional “muck up” day of pranks and our formal. For a group of 12 or so girls it was the last night we’d sleep in a dormitory where some of us had lived for five, even six years. Per tradition we grabbed a bunch of classic videos (yes, those were VHS days), commandeered the common room and set out to stay up all night.

By the time the first sickly shards of dawn light were filtering through the bars on the windows (not an exaggeration), I realised I was the only one who had made it through Empire Records without falling asleep. Whether it was excitement at the end of school, or anxiety at the potential disaster of agreeing have my formal hair and make-up done at the local TAFE – as that starbright tinkle rolled over the credits it was the sign I needed that things would be ok.



About eight months after that I sat huddled over an instant coffee in the St George predawn, about to hit the road for Brisbane and uni. Blinking desperately in a futile bid to wake myself up after a near sleepless night, what song do you think ABC Radio decided to play?

Lately though there's a different song that's having much the same spine-tingly effect on me; I am a bit loathe to confess it because it outs me as a hipster fail that I didn't get on this bandwagon when the song was released in 2007. But on the off chance that I'm not the only one who somehow missed it, the song is of course "All My Friends" from LCD Soundsystem's acclaimed Sound Of Silver. I posted John Cale's cover of it a little while ago - Franz Ferdinand have also done one.

For nearly eight minutes it's driven by a single, insistent, undeviating piano chord and a jaunty hi-hat. Which should be really annoying, but it just makes the circling, gradual build of the guitars all the more powerful. And then the lyrics. It might be loaded with James Murphy's experiences of life on tour ("85 days in the middle of France" isn't something I immediately identify with), but there's something very universal about getting older and clinging to the party lifestyle.

You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan
And the next five years trying to be with your friends again

The all night house parties that you'll never fully remember, with people that you'll never forget. Laughing til it hurts at stupid moments you'll never be able to describe to someone who wasn't there. Sat in the default, circular arrangment of such nights on eskys and milk crates, around clotheslines and bonfires and kitchen tables, bumming cigarettes bleary-eyed as the sun rises. Messy intoxicated dramas and firecracker make-out romances in darkened rooms, over before they begin. And when people ask what you're doing with your life - you can just ask "where are your friends tonight?"



When everything that's happened has brought us to this moment: I wouldn't change one stupid decision / for another five years of life.

Baby steps

It's taken nearly two months of yoga two to three times a week, but tonight I conclusively touched my toes. Gripped my feet and straightened my legs. For most humans this is not cause for celebration, but for a lanky unco like me this is a momentous event. Seriously, the last time I managed this feat was at least a decade ago. The whole process is finally starting to make sense to my body and it's bloody satisfying.

Some days, you gotta take the little wins.

Concerned mostly about... FOOD

On a whim, today I signed up to a site called 750 words. The challenge is, obviously, to write 750 words each day. Probably a lofty goal considering I have been slack with even updating this blog every day, and have you tried sitting down to write 750 words lately? It's more than you think!

Once you sign up and log in, the site gives you a blank page and a word count; then tracks your progress day by day. You accrue points for as long as you keep posting daily. But there's another great incentive I didn't foresee to completing your daily 750. And that's stats.

I don't know when it happened, but stats have become like porn to me - between this and Google Analytics I am going to be like a pig in mud. Because once you save your 750 words, you get a page of stats - a bar graph detailing your progress over time, which periods you smashed out 50 words per minute spiking against the minutes you spent distracted on Facebook. Even better than that, though, is the analysis of content. As you'll see above, to the suprise of no one, my stream-of-consciousness rant was mostly about food and booze.

I have no idea how it all works but it's fascinating. Unlike what I actually wrote, which luckily for you I can't seem to find now the site has saved it. Goshdarnit, now you'll never hear about the time a cat called Action Hero tried to assassinate me while I was couch-surfing in London, or my musings on the futility of not smoking in China.

Friday night rager

There was a time I thought I was ok at drawing. Sketchbooks filled up effortlessly with graphite, ink and charcoal lines; some precisely etched, most hurriedly ragged. But that time, it seems, is long gone!

That said, multiple hours just disappeared while I christened a new visual diary... I drew a fish, some bicycles, what was supposed to be an umbrella, and played around with designs from a very sexy Taschen book of typography. It's time to get back into the drawing habit, and hopefully some semblance of skill will return.

Could definitely handle more nights like this - snuggled under the covers scribbling with a mug of sweet hot tea while the rain lashes outside. And it may have taken a week, but my enormous bundle of lilies is finally opening and they smell exquisite...

Sorry I've been neglecting you blog. I missed you, I really did. I'll make it up to you. Tomorrow brings Creative Sydney (just when I thought I couldn't crush on Jess Scully any harder, her program this year includes Chris Ying from McSweeneys), a trip to the travel agent and Dappled Cities. And probably more rain...

Grand designs

Those of you salivating at the title, I apologise for the distinct lack of Kevin McCloud in this post. He is indeed totally dreamy and a perverse part of me can't wait to check Google Analytics and see how many people googling for Kevin DILF porn ended up here, stamping their feet and shaking their pigtails in disappointment.

The designs in question are actually less than grand.. well, see for yourself. As part of my research into studying design, on Saturday I had a "day in the life of a designer" at a North Sydney design college. Clearly I hadn't completely thought through the whole going-back-to-uni concept and so I was a little shocked to find myself in a room full of 16 and 17-year-olds. When I walked in at the same time as a lad being dropped off by him mum, I realised I am potentially on the verge of becoming that which I so despised as a callow 19-year-old: the mature age student. Speaking of mature age - I think I was older than most the lecturers as well as the students!

Anyway, it was all rather fun - I tried to say the word "like" more often in a bid to blend in, and tried not to smirk when the girls on my table traded tales about failing their driving tests. Eventually we had to pair off and make collages which we then tweaked in photoshop and illustrator. Each pair was given a month, and we had to channel some kind of personal experience of that month into designing a CD cover. If you haven't guessed already that blobby thing above is my inauspicious first foray into this meandering new career path. Look out world haha!

We also got to watch a cute little film called "Marry Me", which won Tropfest in 2008. Can't decide whether the best thing about it is the use of spokeydokes (oh, Baby Blue and your spokeydokes wheels, how I miss you) or the massive mullet on the little boy. You be the judge:

Resolutions

We’re now far enough into January to have got over the "pretending I’ll be so responsible and clean-living Gwyneth Paltrow would shamefacedly turn over of the editorship of GOOP to me" bit. Let’s face it, booze and fags are here to stay... and, frankly, they make life more interesting. Particularly when combined with a pub dancefloor, the early hours of a Saturday and hits of the early 90s.

So what to aim for as a new decade kicks off? Just being back in Sydney these last few days, after spending the first weeks of the new year in sunny Brisbane, it’s been delicious to have the time to notice random loveliness everywhere. Maybe it’s having a hott new camera that makes me look at everything a little harder, searching out special light and shadows and vibrant colours.

Anyway. I’m hoping this will be a year of taking time to appreciate gorgeous things, however fleeting – great songs, sunshiney bike rides, time at the beach, yummy food, good books, art and being out and about with fabulous people – and to do better at recording that beauty through words, photography and anything else that works.

Sure I'd also love to attain skinny arms like my modelesque sister, and the super shiny hair of the girls in the Saturday social pages of the paper, but less superficially 2010 will be the year of:

• More time with old friends
• Less flaking
• More bike riding
• Less days lost to the hangover void
• More photography
• Less TV
• More road trips
• Less unfinished books
• More music
• Less unfinished sudoku
• More writing
• More new recipes
• More random kissing
• More learning

That nice symmetrical more/less thing petered out a little at the end, but a year where excess outweighs limitation is surely preferable to the reverse…!

What are you hoping for in 2010? And has anyone come up with a better moniker for this year? I think the best I’ve seen is “twenty-dime”, but it would be a bit naff to throw that around in Australia!