A Crucial Point

If you don't like this blog, don't read it.
It's not like it's being slid under your front door every morning.

Try Not to Move For 10 Seconds

2:30am Sunday morning outside my house in Melbourne.

Was just in the mood for a portrait really. It happens. 10 second exposure on the Tokina 11- 16mm f2.8 -a lens that just gives, gives, gives, and never takes. This will be one of those photos I go back to, I'm sure of it. From a narcissistic viewpoint, I'd like to think interested people might one day ponder over this when I'm dead and dust. Actually it has an eerie mood to it which suggests we're both dead already. We had just ridden home from the Tote, via the kebab joint. One of those warm spring nights (and I'm sorry, I'm gonna crap on about the weather again) where you're like, how did I forget about this; how did I forget that winter passes? Because winter ALWAYS passes. Just one year I'd like to beat winter in a staring competition.  

Spring. Saviour. Eventually in winter one's core temp drops to a point where even one's bones get cold. Gas heaters, open wood fires, fail to transcend the situation. Consequently, said bones make their case to the brain about the general shitiness of things. The brain in turn adjusts serotonin and dopamine release and uptake to thoroughly unhelpful levels. Alas, mild depression ensues. At no point in the process is one's ego consulted on the matter. Fact: I would, if I had the necessary resources and work-rostering authority, avoid Melbourne winters altogether.

Admissible photographic evidence.  

Good lookin' hard cash in a bar we was at for Huw's b'day.

A pleasant view of sun-illuminated pine branches.

Spring afternoon sun casting fence/plant shadows on a house.

My healthy-looking parents, having walked up 900 steps in Nafplion, Greece.
That's their cruise boat behind them.

Writing

It's possible I've chosen to pursue something that I dislike in practice; am fairly mediocre at; and for which I have the wrong temperament.

In fact the only time it seems worthwhile is when I visit my unfinished works two or so years later and go "hmmm, this isn't so bad afterall" - which is hardly fun.

Tom said just keep writing, it's like sport, you just get better at it at some point.

A few pics from a day trip down great ocean road way we did the other day:

Inoperable

Baked beans saves lives.
This is kind of shit. I've been doing creative writing and trying to actually do something with it, and as a result crumble's output has taken a serious blow. It's like my own personal 'myspace' death.
I wish I could put drafts of my works up on here but I can't do that for a few reasons. 1) It could get nicked by Todd Jenkins at Vermont High, who is flunking high school english and is scanning blogs for random prose. 2) Short story comps have rules about entires not being published on blogs previously, but I wonder do they mean proper blogs, or insignificant ones like crumble?
Peanut butter is a silent killer.
Actually maybe from now on I'll just post my thoughts and some pics and not worry about the creative stuff so much.
That's what I'll do.
I quit sugar somewhat two weeks ago and have had a powerful headache in the right sphere of my brain ever since. (It also seemed to trigger a mild depression, but that is more likely a work thing.)
Eating healthy is kinda easy, but then not easy at all when it occurs that a lot of the bad stuff is intricately linked to the secret files and sensitive documents in the basement of the ego.

A novel I'm reading, which I really like

"It was the season of thunder in St Jude. The air had a smell of Mexican violence, of hurricanes or coups. There could be morning thunder from unreadably churning skies, ominous dull reports from south-county municipalities that nobody you knew had ever been to. And lunch-hour thunder from a solitary anvil wandering through otherwise semi-fair skies. And the more serious thunder of midafternoon, as solid sea-green waves of cloud rolled up in the southwest, the sun shining all the brighter locally and the heat bearing down more urgently, as if aware that time was short. And the great theater of a good dinnertime blowout, storms crowded into the fifty-mile radius of the radar's sweep like big spiders in a little jar, clouds booming at each other from the sky's four corners, and wave upon wave of dime-sized raindrops arriving like plagues, the picture in your window going black-and-white and fuzzy, trees and houses lurching in the flashes of lightning, small kids with swimsuits and drenched towels running home headlong, like refugees. And the drumming late at night, the rolling caissons of summer on the march."

-From The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Pale Pale

For unexpected happiness and sporadic elation,
For unashamed wallowing in the cozy depths of sadness,
For a sweet ride with the windows down and sunlight flickering thru passing trees,
For dreaming of shyness overcome, fear conquered, and love found,
For unexpected intensity of thought and logic on the way to the supermarket,
For the kingfishers and ravens that visit our front yard each afternoon,
For a cold one on an empty stomach before dinner with friends,
For old women that smile; old men that laugh; and strangers that talk,
For the magnetic interference of puberty and the patience of love,
For a train to the edge of the world and the ticket I left on your dresser,
For the dream that we shared and the distance between us.