Gah. Gah. Fuck ...

just got home to find the three chapters of my novel i'd sent off to the publishers in the letterbox, along with a rejection letter. a crushing blow. i hadn't really thought about what i expected to happen. i kind of switched off when i gave the envelope to my dad to post. if i'd posted it myself would things have turned out differently? no, musn't think like that. i guess i always had this knowledge that one day, through some publisher or the other, i would become a famous young author. that's the problem with being a novelist, or perhaps simply a human being. one is too idealistic. one "knows" that something exciting will happen sooner or later. maybe one then stagnates and waits for life to arrive rather than seeking it. that was a bad choice of words. i remember a stupid tv ad with the slogan "destination: life". that's as silly as saying that life is tangible. a destination. if life is the destination what is the journey? what are we doing if we aren't journeying towards life? merely existing. perhaps if we don't own the product the ad was selling we aren't living.
back to the novel. i saw my own handwriting on the self-addressed envelope i had to send with it. isn't that ironic. author writes rejection letter to herself, reads it and sits on the front steps of the house with tears in her eyes. masturbation in a dark room and all of that. that's not me. not me not me not me. i want to masturbate on stage. don't we all.

The silence isn't breaking

So my dad and I had the biggest fight ever, over driving. I want to get my learner's license when I turn 16, like most people. But my dad, being anal and compulsive, refuses to believe that in fact the majority of 16 year olds in Australia are driving. No. So I have to wait til I'm 18. I mean, for Christ's sake, I won't even be living at home when I'm 18. What the fuck is the point? Apparently when he's driving the car it's a car. When I'm driving it it's a tonne of death. Impeccable logic.
After that I felt fractious the whole day. Nothing helped it. Nothing. So when Dad went out I moved - like a ghost - to the table and cut my wrists. And of course THAT worked. It always does. I know Frank is right when he says you become addicted, and it sucks all your emotions and you become a void. "You're not supposed to feel nothing," he says to me. I know. I know I know I know. And normally I don't feel nothing, I feel everything. But as soon as the blood sprang I started to cry. Huge racking sobs. I sat with my legs draped over the edge of my bed and cried for a long time. Put my thumb into my mouth. I sat there staring into space, seeing the spines of my books all lined up on my bookshelf but not really seeing them. In the front part of my mind was complete blankness, which was what I'd been aiming for. And you know what? IT FELT GOOD. The back part of my mind acknowledged this. Joanna, the precocious child, always so bursting at the seams with emotion, unable to sleep at night for the weight of it, was enjoying feeling nothing. Calm. I never feel calm unless I cut. Feel everything else to the extreme, but never calm.
So I put my wristband on straight away, and when I looked at my arm I could convince myself that nothing was wrong because I usually wear the wristband anyway. To see is to believe. The image is everything. Anatomy is destiny, said Freud. I say, the image of anatomy is destiny.
The neighbours must be getting thoroughly annoyed with me. Whenever Dad and I fight we yell - the whole neighbourhood must be able to hear us. And then I slam doors and play music loudly. All I can say is that 'Right Where It Belongs' is the best song in the world, for me. I know every part of it - every note, every intonation - so well that it's like a friend, so familiar, never changing. 'You keep looking but you can't find the words. Are they hiding in the trees...?'

NIN

So if ANYONE knows where I can buy Nine Inch Nails tickets for the May 7th show in Brisbane, and how much they are, please tell me??? The link on the official website is fucked, and they go on sale on the 23rd. Today is the 17th. If all works out, this show may very well be the highlight of my life. But I can't go unless I have tickets.
So I discovered a new phenomenom - MySpace. Yes, the days of Bebo are over and it's time to roll onto something new, as the Killers would say. http://www.myspace.com/157281848
I see it as sort of moving away a bit more from Dunedin [hardly any of my friends from there have MySpace - they're all still drowning in the quicksand that is Bebo] and moving towards Brisbane [almost every single person I know from here seems to have a MySpace]. When I think about WHERE I AM [where? where? the geographer's daughter] I see myself as stuck between these two cities, emotionally at least. Every day something happens to make me take a step one way, or the other. Who knows where I'll end up. I mean, I remember when I was five, and there was a big house at the bottom of the hill that I lived on. Looking back now it was a rather ugly creation - brown and white, fussy swirls everywhere, not the sort of place I usually like. But when I was five, it was the BIG HOUSE. And I knew I was going to live there when I grew up. And my best friend was going to live in the little white cottage a few houses down. And we'd have children and horses to keep in the paddock next door. I never even considered there might be other BIG HOUSES where I might be happy. No. No no no. This was the only BIG HOUSE I knew and the only one I wanted. And now look where I am. As you grow, the world grows with you.
On the music front, I've got a new band. They are called Alkaline Trio. Their song 'Blue In The Face' is beautiful. I haven't dreamed/since I quit sleeping/and I haven't slept/since I met you. The story of a flawed love. The story of a heartsick love. At least that's how I see it, I'm sure it means different things to different people. At any rate, every time I listen to the first few lines of Belle & Sebastian's 'If She Wants Me' I want to change the lyrics. It goes 'And it was hard/like coming off the pills that you take/to stay happy' and I want to replace 'happy' with 'miserable'. I know it doesn't fit but ... that's my situation.
Spenser and I saw each other on Thursday. We bought $2 bunny ears from some discount store and walked all around the city wearing them. We considered it a victory every time someone saw us and smiled. And we went into Borders and finished reading the book we started when we were in there last time: PostSecret by Frank Warren. Incredible idea - getting people from all around the world to send in annonymous postcards with confessions on them. My favorite is: I had gay sex at church camp. Three times.'
We've become Borders nerds of late, one could say that after Hungry Jacks, Off Ya Tree and [of course] Koz-Mart, it's our main hangout. We read books without buying them, obviously. Art books are our favorite because they're concise and you don't have to actually read too much. We flipped through the whole of Hotel LaChapelle the other day and it was great. Really incredibly pictures. The chrome colors and the exaggerated poses.

Pianos and Vodka

We went to the city after school. Marisa and Andrew and I. We met Sarah and Spenser at Hungry Jack's. I met Chelsea's boyfriend Harris, and Pyro, and Tom. I was hyperactive, laughing and screaming at nothing. Stoned on freedom. I often think that Friday afternoons in the city are the best part of life, week-to-week. The waiting. Ancient History. It's hot. I watch the minutes tick past, lethargic, not taking notes, staring out the window, counting down. Then finally ... I meet Marisa and we go to the tuckshop to meet Anderew. Walking fast to get the 807. The bus trip, standing up on the packed bus. Then ... we're there. Running. Laughing. Throwing insults back and forth. The prospect of a whole afternoon to do whatever we like looms ahead.
We were stupid all afternoon. Marisa and I went into a shop, walked into the front window display area and posed there, like the mannequins. Spenser filmed us. We were only there for about thirty seconds, before the lady behind the counter started yelling at us. I was incredibly scared that she was going to call the cops but also laughing hysterically. I picked up my bag and we hotfooted it out of there.
Anyway, Pyro was 18 today, so he bought us a bottle of vodka. God bless him. Laughing, unable to believe our luck, we went back to Marisa's apartment. We passed the bottle around. Sitting cross legged on her mattress, my shoes off, my heavy bag on the ground, I felt content. I played Marisa's piano in my stocking feet. Pedal, pedal, pedal as I hit the keys. She showed me how to play the opening chords of 'Coin-Operated Boy'. I danced my fingers over the keys, finding notes that sounded right. I had bought new headphones, so I played Half Jack on my iPod and played the piano along to it. The noise was probably terrible, as Marisa was playing Regina Spektor, but no one complained so I kept going. Music and alcohol, I thought. Where would we be without it? We ate the strawberry Pocky sticks I had bought from the Asian grocery. I left the packet on the piano, with one stick left in it. Present to Marisa and her piano.
My goodness, Nine Inch Nails are quite fantastic. For some reason I just started to love the song 'Ringfinger.' I like the end part ... 'Devil's flesh and bone ... Do something for me.'

Music, dreams, parents, poems ...

I was listening to 'On The Radio' by Regina Spektor [great artist she is, lots of power vocally and emotionally, full of everything] and miming playing the piano as usual [or what I imagine to be playing the piano, as I've never played one seriously] but as there actually were keys of some sort in front of me I found myself tapping out a nonsense sentence, the words of piano, if I actually could play the piano and had been hitting the right keys rather than hitting the keyboard to the beat it would have been beautiful and artistic.
Thinking about it in more detail, it was kind of symbolic. Here I am trying to put everything into words, even music, which can never be put into words. Since I have no musical talent I turn instead to writing, which I do have [some kind of] talent for. Scribe for a a generation. And thinking about in even MORE detail, it was definitely symbolic. Whenever I'm upset or disappointed over something, writing fills the void. Even vacant blogging like this, that no one will ever read, is something.
Also listening to Death Cab for Cutie and Neutral Milk Hotel. And I've started listening to a Belle & Sebastian CD that someone gave me years ago, and that I never listened to because I was a mainstream-music listener. [I'm ashamed to admit it even though I was about 13.] It is really good, and gives the kind of thrill that comes with discovering something wonderful which has been in your CD stack or bookshelf for a long time. Exactly how I felt when I read Fear of Flying [my favorite book. Read it. Read it. Read it] and discovered all that world of irreverency, a word which I didn't think applied in any way, shape or form to my parents' bookshelf, where that particular masterpiece had resided for the years before I found and adopted it. It is now officially mine, and the bright yellow cover is something which makes me happy.
I realized that although it is my favorite book, I haven't read it for months and months. I haven't listened to my favorite band, The Dresden Dolls, for days now. Maybe almost a week. I haven't spoken to my best friend in weeks either. There was a time when I would read Fear of Flying for comfort. I remember my dad being out with his girlfriend [whom I hated] one night, and I stayed at home and read the book. Amanda Palmer's voice is like a friend to me ... I hear Dresden Dolls songs in my dreams sometimes. I've heard 'Half Jack' in a beautiful dream about taking my family to a forest on Christmas and weaving for them a kind of gossamer castle out of dewy spider's webs. And I heard 'Sex Changes' in a dream where I was actually playing the piano [my unconscious screaming that I should learn how to do it instead of pretending in dreams and mimes] in my grandparents' house and considering opening a music school for children. I forget exactly what the school was to be called, but it had the word 'Tree' in its name. Anyway, back to the point. I used to also talk to Emily every day and she was [and still is] my first port of call in troubled times ... I guess what I'm trying to say is that your favorite things or people are the ones who are there for you when you NEED them, when you're upset. Affection only as need ... it's an interesting concept, albeit one that has been explored before. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and all that.
Mick is writing new songs. He sent me one, 'Hope And Despair' and although it's only forty-six seconds long, it's beautiful. Absolutely floating ... and yet heavy at the same time, hence the name I suppose. Anyway, it only enforces my conviction that there is nothing Mick can't do. He is afraid to read my poems, however, because he "would rather continue to be under the illusion that you are perfect." It made me think - does writing make one appear flawed? I suppose so. Especially poetry - poetry exposes all the poet's flaws for anyone to see. I understand Mick's unwillingness, and I remember what an uncomfortable feeling it is to read my father's poems, to see his flaws, in love with the illusion of the father, illusion of the image of perfection.
Speaking of poems, and parents, here is a beautiful, still, peaceful poem that my mother wrote when she was in Year 9 or something ludicrous like that ... how can anyone write like that? why can't I write like that? all the usual ...

Spider

Small spider, curled, eight legs brown,
And hung in clear air.
Held like a drop of water vapour
Unsupported, unattached.

But how does he stay?
Why is he not blown
By the fierce gale of my hot breath?
And how does he climb
With all legs whirring,
Up a ladder which no one can see?

He climbs the web of air
He walks on the atoms
And journeys over vast uncharted regions.

If we could, but would break out,
Crack open this heavy shell,
Leave our touching, grabbing selves.
We’d climb the wind
Run on air
And sleep in the net of the stars.