search categories


i don’t know how much longer i’m gonna last here in surry hills. i don’t fit into this room. and i would like to live somewhere that i like. don’t get me wrong, there are things that i like about this place and this house. and i will always be so greatful to surry hills for saving me from engadine. but it’s like being saved from pain by an analgesic. it’s not real relief or happiness, it’s numbness, a lack of feeling. and if i’m going to write a thesis next year (though that remains to be seen) i don’t think i can do it here. i can’t stay here. people are rippling out and i’m treading water, but i can’t stay here. i can’t.

also, the standout search terms that led to my blog over the last two days:

~ “ken done” dead

~ fuckatrds

~ drunk pug (this is oddly common)

yesterday someone arrived here with the search term: you just stop talking to me poems. it made me so sad. it just made me think of two hopeless kids, sitting in a bedroom at night, one of them sullen, the other exasperated, saying, you just stop talking to me. you just, you just, stop. the sullen boy or girl looking up at the exasperated boy or girl, saying, i’m sorry. i just, i don’t know. i can’t, i don’t know. then the two of them falling silent, the sullen one turning his or her back on the bed, and thinking pleasepleaseplease move over and put your arms around me i’d do it to you if i could i swear but i can’t touch you i need you to touch me. the exasperated boy or girl looking up at the roof, breathing loudly to be heard, the sullen one hearing.

i really love it when people get here with the search term: GET WELL POEMS IN SPANISH. it’s so loud. and i can imagine a million positive and negative circumstances for the search.

i’ve mentioned before when people arrive here through strange search terms. often, they inspire in me what i’m going to call the regret of the host. the ‘if only i knew you were coming, i could have prepared something!’ (dilan’s mother used to say this every time we went over to her house, as she looked, distraught, at the seventeen different fantastic meals that sat in tupperware containers in the fridge). so today i’ve decided to respond to today’s five search terms, just in case they ever come back. or for the next lot of people who come searching the same advice.

1) how to change piercings: in my experience, it’s usually not that big a deal. i would rate the most important elements as: being careful, being patient, and being confident. i think being careful speaks for itself. you need to be patient because sometimes it is difficult to do, and if you get frustrated and just give up, well, your piercing is gonna close up. and being confident, because being terrified of doing it fucks the whole thing up. you sit there prodding at the piercing so lightly and without conviction that the only thing you’re going to possibly achieve is irritating the bloody thing. at some point, you are going to have to push something all the way through your skin, otherwise, you’re not going to get anywhere. also, i would add that you should obviously have both fingers and jewellery clean before starting. i would also recommend not changing things before the piercer tells you too. because either the piercer knows what they’re talking about, or you’re an idiot for getting your body pierced by them. the last piece of advice would be knowing how the jewellery actually functions (clasps, ballbearings, etc).

2) why people talk incessantly: hmmm, tough one, because there can be a million reasons. it could be that they find themselves more interesting than everyone else. or it could be that they know that, paradoxically, only when they stop talking, will they realise, in the silent void, how truly boring they are. they could be praying; gods can be very demanding. they may be in some kind of competition, like a guiness world records thing. if you suspect this, ask them, they would probably admit to it. they may be testing themselves. or, finally, they may have some kind of neurological condition. like a brain tumour.

3 ) what can settle your stomach ache? now i’m not a physician, but i think certain kinds of tea can help. i don’t know too much about this stuff, so here is a link. i intuitively think of anything lemony or green and leafy in a tea as being helpful, but i may be wrong. oriental wisdom (through more than one, real asian person!) leads me to believe that as a general rule, warm water is better than cold water. i have always felt that drinking warm water at any time was completely whack. but i have a feeling that they may be right on this one. i would also advise against any sort of dairy.

4) rain on a wedding day: i don’t know why you came here searching for that. if you’re an alanis morissette fan, well, may god have mercy on you. did you know that she once released an album exclusively through starbucks? don’t you think that’s lame?

5) atxaga poem: i know that’s not even close to a question, but it certainly warms my heart every time someone makes it to this site through atxaga and an english search term. i personally have never been able to find much of atxaga’s poetry over the net. translations into spanish and probably french ought not be too hard to find. though it doesn’t seem that there is a great deal around in english. though i have heard that obabakoak has been translated into english, and received some positive reviews

yesterday i had two visits from someone, or one visit from two different people, who wanted an answer to that question. i understand how google thought i might have been able to answer it for them. the blog being called this is today, and eight posts with poetry as one of the categories. it would seem that i’m interested in both those ideas: poetry and today. and i am. but i don’t really know how i would answer that question. poetry for me is real new. all through school poetry marked itself for me as something to be avoided, where possible. everything rhymed too easily and sounded kind of cheap. or it didn’t rhyme, so why not just write prose?

recently it’s got me excited by the way it moves and the way it moves in you. i still don’t think i’ve got my ear tuned to it very well though. i find myself too distracted either by prosodic elements or semantic depth. i don’t seem able to do the two things at once very well. and as for listening to poetry read, well, let’s just say that i don’t have the concentration span. too much noise in my own head. and anyway, robert gray told us the other day that interesting poetry always has way too much going on in it to take in at the listening of it. i find that i get most out of it reading it out to myself.

as far as answering the question, i’d have to say that poetry today, in my experience, is kind of like listening to a language that you know okay, but not fluently. if you’re too anxious about it, you’ll just get frustrated, think that you’re not understanding anything, and actually stop listening. all you’ll hear is the noise of your unease. if you get past that, and relax a little, one of two things will happen: either you’ll start to realise that you understand more than you thought, or you’ll realise that actually you do understand almost nothing. at that point, you can just sit back and listen to the song of it. some of the most fantastic music i’ve heard has been listening to conversations in languages that i understand little or nothing of.

i have finally had a search engine term used to get to my blog that i absolutely had to post about.

‘fucking in the stairwell’, yesterday.