The rain is gentle, even in the city you can find the sky.
Smile when it helps, cry when it hurts.
Broken hearted again, loving you still.
Reminded of the past and how it is better left shadowlike underfoot.

I wish you were here,
I want to tell you all about it,
want to ask why you're sorry,
when it's me that did wrong.
why am i so sad,
when were you born?
Because I don't know anything.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter.

I want to walk out of here, I want to be free.
I have to give up to learn this lesson.
Lessons one two and three.
Am I only a student - nothing else defining me?
It's all down to me, they say. Choose, they say.
Just leave it all behind.
Set yourself free.

Lesson one two and three.

"Adversity is like a strong wind.
It tears away from us all but the
things that cannot be torn,
so that we see ourselves
as we really are."
Arthur Golden

Don't let what you are being get in the way of what you might become.
Harry Palmer

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
Sam Keen

Love grows by giving.
The love we give away is the only love we keep.
The only way to retain love is to give it away."
Elbert Hubbard

The way is not in the sky, the way is in the heart.

For the traveler who knows his direction, there is always a favorable wind.
Stuart Avery Gold, ping

"When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow
that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."
Kahlil Gibran

"Adversity is like a strong wind.
It tears away from us all but the
things that cannot be torn,
so that we see ourselves
as we really are."
Arthur Golden

1989

It was murder and negation. I was refusing to dive into the ocean of my life, to really feel it. And Why did I not see that at the time? Because I already had but a tenuous connection to my emotions. I was absent. So it was easy to make the choice not to live, not to feel life. So easy to refuse to be woken up and become present.
One thinks one has no choice, but everything is a choice: every movement, every moment of inactivity, every thought. Every No, every Yes. Every pawn has a place in the battle, it's not just the queen that matters.

So I made the choice not to live, I chose to avoid life, to avoid emotion, to avoid reproduction and everything that goes with being a parent and a co-parent. I chose the selfishness of avoidance. As if it was my decision to make! I thought an abortion was an experience. It was not. It was a denial of experience. It was in both ways, for the child and for me, a negation of life.

And where did it get me? Absolutely no where except further inside the hole inside my own mind. Negation of life, negation of experience, avoidance of pain, when so much learning comes through pain. Avoidance of love and joy and trust and growth, of a shared life.

And do I regret it? No. It is impossible to regret. One is what one is through the habit of living. I can only apologize...

Melbourne Monday

One thing about cities is the flooding multitude of stories being written and rewritten one over the top of another. Some stories get completely obliterated, some remain despite their irrelevance. Despite being totally ridiculous some remain because of how they appear. The mosaic of time and culture is what makes cities (potentially) so exciting.

Carlton Cemetry, Lygon St.

Craigieburn Grasslands

(I'm searching for a way to make life in this chaos bearable!)

The Melbourne sunset is that interesting orange colour because the air is so thick with smog, I think, sitting in my car in peak hour traffic.
I've been here nearly 24 hours. Gosh I miss Albany!

This Remarkable New World is Good

It tears at me each time I go

forced to leave pieces of this new place behind. But each time I leave it’s bigger in me, surer,

the World shown me, in me. I'm surprised

I didn't notice it before, it's so good. I suppose because it fits so neatly into this one, underneath

shells and tied to lamp-posts

And each well-scripted line

surprised I did not find it,

When these tunes make its transluscent space.

You can tell the world I was good; second, that I left a small place open for you.

Before I sleep show me. Farewell.

Show me the World is really good.

I leave something of this newly created thing on your window ledge. The smell of honey.

I long for you until the sun goes down or until I find something to occupy myself, and then I am no longer inside you. Free of you like fish are free of the shore.

Today the season’s first finally ripe Ballardia, pink taste in my mouth.

Some time later the astringency.

He rises fresh and dripping, magically opposed to death.

He sinks and I am left alone on the surface, looking all around me in confusion.

Christ smells miraculously fresh.

This is where you do not notice decayed flesh. I have ridden high on open time

Plateau after overwhelming crisis

Where it was impossible to go forward into the maw of defeat

And retreat was certain failure.

The general gathered strength by turning inward and finding hope, repose.

I look forward to you and then I do not mind.

Now I have turned around and I am not so covered up,

not so earthed.

Something blooms. I'll only do this one last time. And once again perhaps. I lived

so deep I almost don’t feel this pain of forgetting.

This is my tears without leaving anything out.

(I forget I'll feel the pain.)

I lived so deeply inside your tunnels. The bright night swims down to me bursts like fish upon the net.

Ah! Bright night swim to me!

I leave you my tears.

A perfect shape.

It fits me so much cleaner this time.
And then more mature, and then fruitful.
I ripen alone, forced to leave, forced to fruit

As if the only strength I have is to oblige.
Can continue to do so but this would be the last time I stop. I am healed.

...leave something.
I lean towards you until sunset.