The Road Not Taken. Frost, Robert. 1920.

I’m going to give poetry a shot. I’m ungifted when it comes to music but I figure, maybe I can help someone who is with the writing process. I fully expect to be terrible!! But I’ll certainly give it shot.

Move Me

I used to tell people that my only real talent was admiring other people’s gifts when they asked me what instrument I played or if I sang. What I meant was, I’m easily inspired to create by those around me. What I produce has never really been exceptional. Oh well, I guess that’s never been my objective. 

This is my favourite short piece. My friend Chloe posted it on Facebook months ago.

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

JAN. 19, 2011 By CHARLES WARNKE 

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her. 

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Mundane

I’ve nearly finished ‘Islands in the Stream’ by Ernst Hemingway. I like it, its been an interesting read and I’ve never known so much about a character by the things an author doesn't say. 

I’m going to yoga tonight. I’m going to go because I need to. I need to do something good for my body. Drinking whisky and smoking has never been a long term plan of mine. That said, I can actually visualise both of those things in my old age.

I was considering not going to yoga just so I could talk about how often I talk about things and don't follow through with them. Now I don’t now if I can even be fucked going. 

On another note… I’m selling Wendy’s microwave and I’m going to help her lend the money on Kiva. I’m going to try and get Sunshine excited about the idea of altruism and I fully intend to fail. 

Today I slept till midday. I reassured myself that I’m not lazy and that my body simply needed that much sleep. I’m less convinced now recalling that all I've done over the last 2 weeks is smoke weed and drink. - mind you, I do work.

Do I feel guilty about it? Not really. I did have a slight clarity of thought yesterday and realised I do need to ‘ease up’ a little, so I did. Today wasn't a complete waste, I booked in at Apple to get my phone screen fixed. I also booked my car in for a service. I picked up forms from Uni, I didn't manage to fill them out, but I did pick them up… I cleaned by room, did the dishes and sent an email. I know, it’s all pretty slow. But some times life is slow and I want to enjoy it. I mean, last week I smoked amazing organic bush and had pancakes for lunch. I downloaded music, I read my book, I wrote! Edmond cooked for us, he’s a top grade chef. He and Wendy are so in love. I've never witnessed anything like watching those two fall in love. It’s been unreal. They said they “only want believers at their wedding.”

I don’t want to race through life. I don't want to get the job, get the house, get the mortgage, get the husband. I want to live life. I want to enjoy every minute, even the ones counted down on the work clock. 

Pact

I won't delete anything that I write on here... shit.

Outline

I didn’t quite know what to blog about.. I still don’t really know.

I’m the girl that shoves scraps of receipt paper into her pockets at work. they’re scribbled all over with ideas and stupid epiphanies! 

Every time I smoke a clip I end up writing ideas for stories or ideas for my life into the notes app.

I used to write my dreams down too. I thought it was important. I still do.

Anyway. I want this blog to be about people, places and altruism. Roughly.

So I’ll start with Byron Bay because that’s where it all started. 

Craft

When to write?

  

Mann. Where to start. Thomas Hudson treated painting like work. He saw work to be done in every sunset.

Do I treat my writing like work and put hours in for each day or set goals to achieve by the end of the week?

My flat mate says, “ Do it when you feel inspired.” 

That resinated with me. 
It just so happens I’m drinking red wine and toking on a spliff. 

Thomas Hudson, Islands in the Stream. By Ernest Hemingway. 

From the Top.

I'm Fanny. I live in a granny flat in paradise and I get on wonderfully with Wendy next door and her 12-year-old daughter Sunshine. Plus, I'm the new foster parent of Lucifer, my friend's cat.

 Lucifer humps my leg while I sleep. Everyday. That part's actually pretty horrible.