train

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game,
Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.

-Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

I eat
red beads
that gleam
and shimmer
to my stomach.

How do fortune tellers read people's faces? When I interviewed the older people for our project they seemed to remember their childhood so clearly, even the rules of the games (ball-throwing game, catching). It comes to me in patches, strange patches of me and my brother, like being in our pajamas and unfinished cold toasted bread with peanut butter and sugar and milo on the table, sprawled on the sofa watching richie rich or dumb and dumber. and one of the best, when i hid outside his room and booed him when he came out so he jumped up and down like he was skipping rope. HA. This December I will live as close to the forest as I have ever gotten when we go on holiday in the australian countryside, though this a definite poo fake thing, as we will be in modern houses designed for tourists except with the forest is our backyard, though nothing can be as magical as gene's more-than-100-year-old wooden house with soft toilet paper, paintings by kirsti around the house, a musky old smell, a forest behind with berries you can pick and eat and soft bottle green grass that made me feel like it was alice in wonderland (which desiree and i sneaked into for a walk when we were supposed to be working at the park). (and Bismak is such a funny name) Actually the forest is metres from my house; the row that faces mine has a forest at the back, with cobras hiding in big straggly bamboo trees and monkeys flying among tree tops eating rambutans. That whole world is less than 100 metres from my house, golly gee. I think I got my ideas about living in the forest mainly from The Dharma Bums. But let's try it someday! We have to. Will I still use my computer when I am an old granny? Time to enter the dream world. Funny a few years ago I remember thinking how sad that the dream world is more exciting than real living...! Seize the day, seize the night, seize it all....! And kill the mosquitoes that plant their proboscis/probiscus in your soft skin. Goodnight stars and sky.


ah choo, somehow i suddenly remembered that night when the park opened till late and something special was happening (or was it?) and it was night and we were at the turbo bungy and there was a pigeon that kept coming and james and robert were running around playing catching and then james came to lie on the trampoline and there was bird shit we were all trying to avoid and we talked about how he neatened his eyebrows and then probably, as usual, we tallied the amount of visitors for the day. squiggly. and the mad dancing bowing couple at white river junction that night with the folk music! hahaha!! she was barefoot and had long flowy hair and big googly specs and he looked like a neat pervert and they were ballroom dancing right in front of us remember? and there was a plump spiky-haired girl in the room, and a brown-haired lady in a red dress with a bandaged eye and sunglasses. i loved the cucumber-green sweet-smelling room with a sink, where you threw away stuff that wouldn't fit. and how we dragged our luggage in the rain to the shabby train station after a breakfast of bagel and cream cheese and strawberry tea. O why am i feeling so strangely nostalgic tonight!