the fog

A heavy blanket of fog covered the town this morning. It was dark and eerie until the sun burnt it off close to midday. I had been planning to go into the Gardens and the Waterfront this week to take some photos but in my mind, they were full of bright blue skies. The grey mist, however, was perfectly suited to moody black and white. These photos were taken between 10.30 and 11.00 am and I could barely see 100 metres in front of me.

I think this last photo is my favourite. It’s so eerie and if there hadn’t been a steady stream of runners and the screeching of the colony of flying foxes inhabiting the pine trees, I could easily have let my imagination run wild.

By the time I got home, a whole five minute drive, the sun had broken through. The sky was a clear bright blue and the flowers in the backyard seemed brighter than usual.

thanks

Thanks for your comments, your suggestions and your emails. Thanks for your virtual hugs and cups of tea. It is somewhat reassuring that most people can relate. It is less isolating. I have taken what has been suggested and given each due consideration. I can report I am now taking St John’s Wort, have started a gratitude journal, and am making some attempt to leave the house every now and then. 

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world,
and you believe you are living.
Then you read a book … or you take a trip…
and you discover that you are not living,
that you are hibernating.
The symptoms of hibernating are easily
detectable: first, restlessness.
The second symptom (when hibernating
becomes dangerous and might degenerate
into death): absence of pleasure.
That is all.
It appears like an innocuous illness.
Monotony, boredom, death.
Millions live like this (or die like this)
without knowing it.
They work in offices.
They drive a car.
They picnic with their families.
They raise children.
And then some shock treatment takes place,
a person, a book, a song, and it awakens
them and saves them from death.
Some never awaken.”

Anais Nin via And sometimes planes they smash up in the sky

sad

 

via piccsy, original source unknown.

I’m a bit sad. A little bit down. Maybe a little bit depressed. I’m on holidays from uni but I don’t want to do anything. And the less I do, the less I want to do.  But I want to do something at the same time. I just don’t know what. And thanks to getting myself in a financial pickle, I don’t have the money to do something or anything. Lucky nothing costs nothing. Except perhaps sanity.

I find it hard to concentrate on anything. Like my mind is thinking eighty different things but nothing at the same time. I sit down to write, nothing comes out. I try to read but give up when I've read the same paragraph four times. I look up and realise I’ve been picking split ends out of my hair for an hour. I sigh a lot.

I don’t have a big circle of friends but that’s okay, I never have. I have always preferred a small group of close friends to a hoard of acquaintances. But at the moment, I’m feeling particularly lonely. Close friends live hours away or different time zones altogether. Working on Saturdays is causing me to miss out on weekends away with friends. (I resent working on Saturdays but I don’t have much other choice.) I miss my high school best friend who lives a ten minute drive from here but because we have both changed so much, seems so much further away.

Part of this harks back to a craving for adventure. I need some change, of routine and scenery. Something to inspire. Something to shake off the dust and to get my heart beating faster. I don’t know how to find this, to do this. Even if adventure was free, who would I adventure with?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lonely. But until I find someone to make me not so lonely, how do I know that’s all it is? Maybe it is something else, something more, something worse? I don’t know and it makes me feel anxious. And sad.

some advice

Sometimes, there isn’t anything better than some no-nonsense good advice:

Julie Morris Design via Eclecticist

Have a good weekend, friends.

nostalgia

I went back to Peterborough over the long weekend, though this time, I stayed at the house that my great-grandparents bought back in the fifties. Its name is Palmyra but we have only ever referred to it simply as The House.

My childhood summers belong to that house and that tiny little town. From the day after Christmas to just before school started back in February, we lived there. Hot days and warm nights, sandy feet, suntan marks, the smell of bacon and eggs cooking, the sound of the waves crashing on the beach that we could hear while trying to get to sleep.

Then things changed and we stopped going for a few years. When we did go back, it wasn’t to the house but to the caravan park which started a whole new set of memories. The house though, the house held a special place in my heart, so stepping inside for the first time in about 23 years was like going back in time.

I had forgotten its smell. Old furniture smell. And I had forgotten how high the door knobs were – chest height. In my memory, the kitchen was a lot bigger but the stripy carpet in the lounge room was exactly the same.

 

The built-in seats against the walls are full of old magazines and books. I pulled out a copy of Reader’s Digest which was dated 1976.

The only rule of Peterborough is that when you drive over the bridge to reach the town, you must take a left and head up to the Point. No matter what time of day or night you arrive (a few years ago when we would stay at the caravan park, Dad would finish work at 2am. We’d pick him up, drive the two hours to Peterborough and be sitting in the dark at the Point at 4am, just listening to the waves. Then we would go to the caravan, get four or five hours sleep before the day started. Memories.). So on the way home, I stopped at the Point and took a few photos, even though I have thousands that look exactly the same I can’t help myself. Don’t be fooled by the lovely blue sky, it was fecking freezing.

Over 800 ships were shipwrecked along this coastline back in the day.

This is the golf course, right on the cliff top. I always said if I won the lottery, I would buy the golf course and build a great, big, stinking house with 180-degree views of the ocean. The fact that it is crown land or whatever is irrelevant.

A lot of people don’t see the attraction to Peterborough. It only has two general stores and a pub but what else do you need? It’s my favourite place in the world – besides Italy, naturally.

how to cope with essay writing induced stress

The following tips will only be successful if one tells oneself any or all of these statements:

• I have plenty of time
• I work better with shorter deadlines
• Fuck me, I don't want to do this

I maintain as a qualified medical professional* that these dealing with stress tips have been repeatedly tried and tested, and have proven to be efficient techniques**

• Do not wash hair or wear clean clothes. Dirty manky hair and smelly tracksuits will discourage you from a desire to leave the house, thus ensuring more time spent at work station.
• When feeling overwhelmed, scribble a series of expletives on glass-top desk. Later, idly muse over just how permanent 'permanent' Sharpies really are. Add more expletives as needed.
• Paper and books strewn across the entire floor's surface is quite frankly the only filing system that works.
• As constant studying and research is inexplicably related to making one ravenous, it is recommended that one sates ones hunger with limitless amounts of chocolate, chips and licorice (alternatives may be substituted as one sees fit). Wonder later why self feels a strong desire to expel foodstuffs from body in a variety of methods, as well as why clothes no longer fit comfortably. 
• After essays are bashed out in frantic manner, celebrate by consuming copious amount of alcohol of personal choice.***

Once have awoken from alcohol-induced unconsciousness, life may resume as normal. Which, as from now, it does.

*This is a filthy dirty lie. 

**This is also a filthy dirty lie.

***This is the only tip that I can stand by.