Self Help

When I returned to Australia last month - I was overwhelmed how everything stunk like weird pollen and even the water tasted funny. My nose, ears, throat and eyes felt like they were going to explode. The phenergan wasn't working and I had to wash every skerric of clothing in my wardrobe - and my sheets, and vacuum my room within an inch of its existence, befor eI could relax hive free, non wet eyed and non wheezy.

I've had a similar reaction coming back to mum's. So today I soaked all the pillows and stuck em on the top of the hills hoist to be demited by the extremely intense sun. Ditto for sheets, blankets and my single bed valance - on which that I could still smell my cat's afterbirth. (she had kittens under my bed in 1982).

So I didn't get a lot of work done today. After chastizing mum for cleaning out the vacuum cleaner with the vegetable knife, she snapped back and then I burst into tears. god i'm a fragile nervy freak. Crying was good. Staring at the computer blankly while trying to organise a lit review was not good.

Actually the computer stuff today wasn't much fun at all. the CD rom wouldn't read the audio files on my CD, and refused to install the driver for my flashdrive. Hmmmm - so luckily I've still got lots of the interviews on my mp3 recorder. I've just gotta plug in the earphones and start typing. I'm not looking forward to it, and keep planning little things to get in the way. Like walking the 9kms to one of my mum's friend's farms. And walking the 5kms to one of my schoolfriends farms, and maybe booking in a scale and clean with her dentist husband. and, yeah, like updating all my blogs, and responding to ALL my emails.

Its weird being back home, and kind of reminds me of being back at Abel's parents house. Each house I've felt my movements confined and controlled and had to work out new ways to orient myself in space. At Abel's - well, there's the long froggy lunches - and there's no where to lounge around and read a book (they don't put the central heating on in the loungeroom - so its kind of arctic), and if I try to cook - well, her parents stand over and supervise and discuss everything - and even making coffee is a bit of an interventionist saga, and washing clothes involves another set of complications........ Here, mum has arranged her house to suit her, and has crammed every surface with objects - so finding anything is imposible, and doing anything APART from loungeing around in an immobile state is extremely difficult.

so I keep thinking of Michel Leiris "rules of the Game" - and his little ethnographic journal observations in 'scratches' which is the main one that I read. And I think of Lucazoid in petersham, inventing and discovering various rules and limits - and the possibilities for activity within those rules and limits. So here, walking around, I'm trying NOT to walk up the same street twice, and trying NOT to think about Abel, and trying to plan certain amounts of time on the computer, and online and on my bed, and then seeing what I can do within that....... Actually I thought of far more interesting things than that - but its late and they've fallen out of my head.

On the heartbreak scenario, I'm realising just how sad I am. Sad stressed, edgy. SOmetimes I imagine the great australian chicklit revenge. COmposing crazed vitriol against SLUT and TINKERBELL - the scheming gallic scrags who stole the love of my life - but this is tragic and fucked, and a stupid self deluded denial of the truth. Abel pulled the plug on our relationship in a brutal and nasty way but I certainly wasn't entirely innocent in the decline and fall of our little corner of sapphic coupledom. I'm bossy, bitchy and often remote, and I was to her. I've got a fetishistic obsession with squeezing pimples for which I should probably seek professional help. Instead of snogging and fornivating wildly - I spent NYE torturing Abel with the new Tire Comedon (that's french for a ZIT Squeezer!) that her mum gave me. That was extremely dumb. Abel had a childhood of having her skin pricked and probed and penetrated by doctors - and is the last person on the planet that should possibly have to endure any more suffering under my zealous fingernails.

Maybe I'll join pink sofa dot com and put in personals for non alcoholic zitty large breasted lesbians. Oh god, that reminds me. I made a TERRIBLE mistake of asking a dyke (by email) about her star sign. (I was genuinly curious). she replied by asking where I live. fucking hell. dumb dumb dumb. I'd better email that cute girl from the library before I do something really silly. Like go and hang outside the local INDOOR CRICKET CENTRE where my mum said that the local lesbians hang.

Speaking of blogs - I was going through The Artlife - and they cut and pasted my intensely personal anecdote about the Archies 8 years ago. thank Dog I don't name names, but I blushed anyway. I actually shared a cab with the condom phantom after this years archies - but both of us were sober enough to eliminate any possibilities of any sordid encounters, conscious or otherwise.

I'm actually gnashing my teeth coz of likelihood of missing A) the last gurlesque of the season and B) the visit of my hard drinking heavy flirting friend from the south. while I should be relieved for the sake of my liver, this does not quell the gnashing and grinding of my vagina dentata. the rash on my hand is clearing up and I reckon I'm ready for ladylove. Still, men are so low risk, and low maintenance. But then do I have to start walking around being a public bisexual? Its hard enough being a bespectacled nerdy academic freak, without forcing myself into a position of ostentatiously theorising about one facet of my sexual preferences. And I'm scared that pole dancing is too easy an option and i'll lose courage if I don't keep to the correct batting team. Shit. Must avoid cricket analogies.

After seeing my counsellor last week, I foudn a really trashy self help book for $3 titled "It's called a breakup because its broken". I got it and read it on the train and gagged at the scarey recipes for comfort food. And gagged further at the weird crypto gestalt take no prisoners, accept no responsibility self help mantra. I wish will tregoning was somewhere nearby so I could give it to him and bore him shitless by postulating on the the type of authentic self proposed in such a volume. He's probably not even doing self help books anymore (it was the topic of his thesis at oone stage). According to the breakup book, the 'real you' is a 'superfox', who I think is meant to be some swinging chick from sex & the city. But I like the rules that are kind of set up - like "get out and move - and get really skinny and sexy - but don't beocme anorexic" and "curl up and eat lots of really gross sickening food and weep a lot with your 'breakup buddies' but don't eat too much" and "chuck out lots of your stuff and makeover your flat, your life and your hair, but don't just do it because you wanna win him back" .... my god - so many new ways to hate myself and be even more scared and anxious about what I'm going through. the best bit was the inside fla cover - which had a CHeesorama colour photo of the authors - a happily married couple -who've had terrible breakups - but have since found TRUE LOVE. I won't even start on the heterosexism, dodgy family values,dodgy capitialist comsumer values and compulsory monogamy. Though I kind of like the 'make your breakup into a breakover' bit coz it reminds me just a bit of Bataille's 'eroticism' and the cultural imaginary of consumer campitalism - and the weird libidinous joy from destroying everything you've got and moving on to get more stuff. Romantic love is that great and crazy point where potlach can take over -where a gift economy meets a scarce economy and eveyrone gets to act in a really fucked up manner. I still reckon I wanna blow Abel's $5000 on an orgy with some sex workers. Maybe I'll do it on her birthday.