OH HAI

I´M IN UR ROOM

POSTIN´ON UR BLAG

 

the romantic mode

~ so you don’t believe in inspiration? ~

~ no no, i believe in breathing. ~

 

the room on level two of building three.

s once told me that her mother had said that she never felt that this was her new home until she gave birth to her first child. then she said to herself: this is home now. that idea terrifies me. of being somewhere half-heartedly, kind of longing to leave but not knowing if you would ever be able to. when i was away i knew i would return, so i went about knowing places as deeply as i could while i had the chance. had i just found myself there, exhiled, not knowing whether i was staying or returning, i think i would have broken down.

i feel like i’m kind of losing my mind in sydney at the moment. i’ve never found myself in a situation like this before. whenever i have changed place (only a couple of times) i have always set about immediately rooting myself into that landscape. high school took me out of place but you were out of place amongst other lost boys. the same thing happened in europe. of course coming back was different. because i entered into something that was formed an functioning. the hole i left in it had healed back over in my absence. because i refuse to settle into/for living with my parents, i have to maintain this sense of placelessness. this unbelonging. it’s like standing with your stomach muscles flexed. and it means that i do it when i relate to people too. not everyone. but at times i reflect that coldness onto people around me. when i know what i’m doing, where i’m going, where i’m staying, i think, might be able to treat you properly.

at the moment, i feel hyper-sensitive to the spaces that i inhabit. and usually, uncomfortable. the room on level two of building three, for example, has about six or seven rhythms of cold. there is the air-conditioning that quivers against itself with the circulating air, kind of like a thin, closed hi-hat. there’s the stomach shudder of the lift as it slides up and down the building throat. every time announced by the sick wane of its bell. one ding for up. ding deungggg for down. the computers in the corner hum like they don’t want you to realise, but if you listen, they don’t shut up. they just move up or down in frequency as they think more or go to sleep for a bit. then there is the bubbler, which has another motor in it somehwere, keeping it’s dribble-flow cold, and my brain on edge. there are other breathings that i can’t pin-point. but it’s like feeling someone inhaling beside your shoulder. one thing that worries me is that i’m feeling a similar sensitivity to my uni writing. a sensitivity that actually goes too far and doesn’t let me write. because there’s a tightness in me. like asthma.

 

asthma

i guess it must have been because of the cat. and having stayed here two nights in a row. but my chest just contracted on itself all day and all night long. there’s a heaviness, and a taste to it too. and the way that the back of my chest gets itchy, right between my shoulder blades. and i remember that time at grandma’s house. in those days i was so sickly. i saw a photo the other year and was shocked at my elbows.

i think the weirdest thing is convincing myself that there is a problem. because at the bottom of it, i always feel like, well, i am breathing, aren’t i? the oxygen keeps going in and out, even if not deeply. and every few minutes i force through one of those determined, bottom of the lungs breaths. like moving furniture. and though there’s the tightness, the taste, the heaviness, there’s still air filling me and emptying from me.