to stay...

All pain

All joy

All sorrow

All rough

And

Regeared

Life

Cut open

Bloody

Exposed

Healing

Through

Your

Knife

What’s left?

What lasts?

What’s important

Until the end day

To overcome

To face what’s

Broken

Hungry like the grave

And try

And learn

And know

What it really means to stay

#mish

#welcomtovietnam...

an extract from my notes #abouttoday...

"Anh asked around to try and find witnesses while i sat in silence at the police station. no one saw anything or as he put it "they only see what they want to see"...
while the bare footed police men were smoking and laughing and questioning, Anh, a Vietnamese stranger i had met through our common enjoyment of bubble tea, sat with me for hours translating my iphone theft report. i spent the majority of the time in silence and there were moments of complete silence- the police officers looking at me and me looking back at them and in those moment we all thought alike and our thoughts were loud and i knew what we were all thinking "what are you doing here?" 

Yet none of this was enough to make me feel as uncomfortable as to get upset about it- i find its not so much the physical thing that gets taken from you that effects you but the experience that is given in exchange that stays with you; replying that moment over and over in your mind, wondering what you could have changed, wondering why humans do these things to each other.
Realizing that although you're just trying to be a human someone will always see you as a number or a piece of paper, a rain drop or a tiny needle and then you feel the weight of being nothing and it makes you forget for a moment why you try...

i looked at flights to hanoi, i dont know what im doing or where im going and my only plan is to continue to let myself be moved by #thehumanexperience... #whoneedsaniphoneanyway right? [i really miss my music...]

#abouttoday post nam...

#abouttoday...

"I feel so much older #thatsalie or though my body aches at times and then I tell myself "you've got the heart of a youth and the bones of an ancient egyptian mummy #dealwithit" and then I remembered those lyrics by The Cure, "yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die, yesterday I got so old it made me want to cry..."
Sometimes their lyrics are so serious and honest but its hard to take it seriously because the melody is so playful. Their music has this ironic way of making me feel good about things. 'The Cure' are great.

Today, walking by the maribyrnong river, to the shopping centre to keep my "genius" appointment at apple and I thought of all the things inside me that I want to get out. All the things I want to say, want to communicate to the world before this ends for me. And I can't work out how, in any kind of way. My eyes glazed over.
Isn't that all we're all trying to do; isn't that what we're doing here? Trying to express this experience of being human and what that means and how it feels. And maybe that's one reason im studying sign language, find as many ways as I can to communicate; just to get it out right... 

im always asking why, too curious and for my birthday, my sister gave me a book called 'Why? Answers to Everyday Scientific Questions' 
"because you're a scientist now" she said.
I am always amazed by her insight of me. She said "I worried about you almost every day but I knew being in Vietnam was good for because of what you were going through. You never talk about how you feel to get approval or reassurance or some sense of direction; you've never needed that from people. You just need to get it out".
I was silent for a moment and then said 
"I feel good when say things like that" she laughed
"why? Because it shows you that I know you?" she asked
"yeah...and you know me and you still like me" I said
"I like you even more because of it" she added

My old iphone4 [replacement of my stolen iphone5] has issues- no safari [internet], no wifi and no app store and the off button doesn't work... They asked me if it's ok to reset the phone, which I agreed to, though it was not backed up- I figured i've been getting good at letting things go. Well they couldn't reset it anyway because you need the 'off' button to go off for that...they apologised and in the end i don't think the ''genius'' felt so genius. I said
"don't worry about it, genius is a pretty lose term these days"

sometimes I wonder, how I got to be so deeply effected by things. Maybe going through my whole life sober is part of it; I have never known what it's like to numb whatever it is I feel. When I cut my leg shaving I thought maybe I should allow myself to be upset [about other things that aren't shaving cuts] and not constantly analyse myself as to why... And just be ok with that.

I keep thinking about that missing airplane; I was flying with that same airline, in that same area last week. And I don't think, "what if that was me?" I just think about the purple blanket that's waiting at your seat, when you board and the endless cups of bad coffee with the weird powdered milk and the eye contact I made with the air hostess and the rows of seats in front of me, filled with strangers, all going the same direction and wondering- only for a moment "who are you all? Where are you actually going?". And the friendly voice that began with "this is your captain speaking..." First in a foreign language, then in English. It all seemed so ordinary then one moment changes the 'ordinary' forever."

'the cure'- in between days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scif2vfg1ug&feature=kp

#adventurehands

its been seven days since i started my 2.5 year journey into the world of Australian Sign Language. I find it creative and enchanting... it's a transparent space where your communication failures and successes are brought to the surface and there is something very vulnerable in that. Our teachers are deaf and we communication with our hands, with our face. It's a learning environment unlike any other.

In many ways i feel like a child again, yet now i'm completely aware that i'm discovering things for the first time. Every common noise is heightened; the sound of pen to paper, someone drinking from a water bottle, even breath and breathing but the silence is still louder than any of that. The room is full of  the sound of things we've never put thought into before, because we can hear them. I can't imagine what it would be like to never hear someone sing or to feel the beat but never hear the music...
Even now I'm starting to see things differently, I feel a change in me already- the way i see things, my senses and the ability to observe and read behaviors. Its a powerful thing to be able to communicate effectively in this way and this study will open up, for me, a whole new community of people to know and love. 
A language so expressive and beautiful should be learnt by all. Imagine how much more effective we  could communicate if we were aware and controlled our face and hands, our body language.

the silence is deafening, deafeningly beautiful...