continued...

Tuesday II

I haul myself out of bed and into Tuesday in a flurry of activity; reading messages, opening doors and gates, making my bed, putting away laundry, eating my breakfast. My pursuit of these matters is fluid and mechanical, blending into one clean motion.

Good morning, N. Good morning sky pirate hordes. Good morning, good book.

After letting in the domestic worker, my morning is almost totally consumed by reading. Even my customary tea breaks (which are often as frequent as breath) are reduced by my urge to unravel this story. I am strongly reminded of Dracula, but with more warmth and perhaps less true character. Dracula’s letterhead style always stuck with me. It made it real. It explained the difference between what I was feeling and the true horror the characters felt themselves. Some of that is lost in ‘salem’s Lot. In this direct storytelling style, there’s this expectation of being terrified first hand. I am not terrified. I am morbidly intrigued, and perhaps a little disgusted. It is enjoyable, but I think the letter style is better, under the circumstances. It worked for Stoker. It worked for Lovecraft. If I ever write a horror story, I think I shall try and make it work for me, too, unless I am good at emotional conjuration to an ungodly degree.

I eat a pie creature and three strawberry babies. I let out the domestic worker and drive around the corner to do my lift.

“Hi J!” I say.

“Hi 6,” he says morosely. I wonder if this is just because he’s back at school or because his budgie died while I was looking after his house. This is my first time seeing him since then and I’m a little nervous.

“How was your day?” I ask.

“Okay,” he says. Goodness, I’ve conditioned these kids well. Now I’m the chatty cathy and they’re all sullen and silent.

“Well that’s good. I think.”

“Happy birthday,” he says.

“Thank you,” I reply. “I already feel like it was ages ago.”

I chat a bit more, a little nonsensically, as I drive him home. We get in just as his sister arrives.

“Happy birthday for Friday,” she tells me.

“Thank you,” I say. “Enjoy your afternoon.”

I drive off.

I sing ‘The Middle’, whistling the musical bits. I stop around the corner from my house, where municipal devastation trucks are tearing up the sidewalk. I drive a little further. I park on the curb at a four way stop. Shopping bag in hand, I approach an overhanging mulberry tree. With tentative and surgical care I pluck off leaves from the tree, feeling terrible about myself, like I’m some horrible pancreas-eating monster. I don’t want to damage the tree’s growth. I pick the shadiest leaves, or those that are too close together. I even consider coming back here with a bucket of water and some fertiliser. When the branches close to the road are practically bare, I cast my gaze over the low brick wall to the desolate garden beyond. The house looks abandoned. There’s trash in the yard.

Forgive us our trespasses.

I scoot over the wall and fill up the rest of the bag, and then pick up three or four cans from the base of the tree and return to my car. I return home.

It my room I find 30 or so balloons lining the floor, leftovers from my birthday party.

I text xxx. Very funny.

I boot up my pc and launch into a more detailed pirate raid. I take down the Gilmore Girls boxset from my shelf so I don’t forget them. I nab some cake. I check on my cockroaches.

They like carrots. I’m so pleased.

More pirate administration, a flurry of balloon popping. Fear my teeth, ye bloated and rubbery demons! My room is cleared. I pack more clothes and food for housesitting. I go to the garden, see the cracked earth and dry dirt, and begin hauling buckets of rainwater from our defunct pool to pour life into each corner. Half of the time the music from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice plays in my head. The other half is the suite from Plants vs Zombies. I haul uncounted buckets up from the bottom, and empty out about half the storm water that came a week back. I go shower, hot and moist with sweat.

I emerge clean, and dress. Navy blue jeans. Short-sleeve black top with a swirl pattern.

I occurs to me that I may be rushing through this today. Maybe I’m just having less deep thoughts... but no, I’m just having more personal thoughts. There are some things I can’t share with you, dear reader. Happy things, hurtful things (to me and others) and hopeful things. I have a future now. Every day, in every way, I get better and better.

I pack up what I need for now, get in my car, play with traffic. I try to remember the name of the right road, and succeed on the second turning, spotting the white griffin at the gate. Moments later, N and D pull up behind me.

A lets us in, I park, desperately gathering up everything I need before I go inside, and finding myself four arms too short in doing so. I manage, awkwardly, though I don’t get to D’s door before she opens it herself. Darn. I’ll do better next time. Librarian knighthood is a difficult and not always successful pursuit.

Hugs all round. I hand N the bag of mulberry leaves (which we supplement quickly with ones from A’s garden), as well as plastic tubs, and the Gilmore Girls box set.

We go inside. More ‘hello’s. Booting up my laptop at a snail’s pace, provided the snail is moving backwards on an escalator. Chats and things.

I open my latest story, and crawl through to the completion of a dialogue. It’s difficult work. I enjoy dialogues, but they aren’t easy for me. Goodness knows I’ve spent enough time watching them, but being part of one – both parts of one – requires innovation and effort to a degree I don’t ordinarily exercise. Which is kind of sad.

I don’t like talking about people. That’s another reason you won’t get much out of reading this. I even hesitate to use other people’s names. People have their own business, and for the most part I am happy leaving them to it. For the most part. Sometimes it’s just a matter of choosing who to hurt.

After study group, I head on home, pick up my hissing cockroach colony and some food, and hurry on back to P’s. I let everyone know I made it back okay, and they do so in return. It’s late, and we’re all tired. I talk to N a little more, and then collapse into bed. I sleep clear through to morning.

Wednesday II

I wake up yawning. This always strikes me as an odd thing.

With reeling limbs and ambulatory slowness, I bumble through to the kitchen, get a bowl of cornflakes, move my car.

The gardener arrives. I let him in and exchange pleasantries about the weather. I make him a cup of coffee, and return to bed. There I read the introduction to a book on speeches I received for my birthday, and when it’s done, I boot up my laptop.

Sky Piracy. Again. I read a wonderfully descriptive chapter in ‘s Lot. I chat to N.

I then prepare to watch Gilmore Girls while writing, and find the dvd player won’t recognise the dvds. I guess that’s the universe’s way of telling me to get my nose to the grindstone and do some actual work today. I take a frozen pie out of the fridge. I return to the bedroom/office. I open up the continuation of the Shadowolf story, and I write.

Temperance sacrilege

I left the gardener out. I eat the pie. I pick up J, drop off J, and drive across to xxxxxxxxxxxx. Along the way I am thinking of what it means to be Wild. To have some sort of holy force that governs you past law, holds you back in some ways and sets you free in others. I grin madly at the onrushing traffic as I head off to xxxxxxx, a far distant corner of the city over the horizon. My memory fails just as my GPS did and I have to rely on my phone and my luck to get back on track. Both of them pull through in their way, and get me there. I park my car and walk up to the castle-facade that fronts Hollywood’s Costumes, and get hit by a wave of rubberised plastic as I go in. I return the costumes. One jumpsuit. One corset. One red shirt. One pair of tights. One black dress. I pick up the deposit and head back along the motorway to N’s. When I get there, we sift through a large black crate of Dubia Blatsica, recording their lengths in centimetres. They look like large woodlice, armoured with scales like armadillos. This is a difficult and often nose-curling process. The dubias live in a mushy spread of their own faeces, and produce more when they are picked up. I don’t mind. We work while watching Gilmore Girls (the current flavour predominant in this week) and count out around a thousand. We clean out their crate. N then goes off to her dancing class, and I go to fetch D. I get horribly lost. I’m not yet used to the area, and somehow I manage to make the same wrong turn on the freeway three times before backtracking and finding my way to the highschool where D works. It’s dark by the time I arrive, and my stomach feels ulcerous with the stress of being late. I don’t like being late. I apologise to D when she comes out, get the car door for her. We head out to R’s place just over the nearest mountain, and when we get there, we arrive almost as N does.

Together, we set about packaging the roaches into tubs. Today I have the easy job of preparing their habitats, putting in half-cartons, wheat bran and carrots to tide the little crawlers over until someone buys them and feeds them to their pet lizard. The process is getting more efficient by now, and we finish off fairly early. We have some tea, and set out. Back at N’s I’m starving, and she graciously gives me some food. We then feed her roaches, and I head back to the house I’m looking after. My mind keeps wondering, reflecting, glistening brightly. But it is late, and I sleep well.

Thursday II

It’s hard to recall Thursday now. The world has moved on. I have become lost in it, slept, reawakened, had time deluge me.

Thursday I was alone. I started watching Gilmore Girls from the first season while searing ventilation holes into the plastic tubs we use to package the roaches. Two and a half hours later they’re done. I keep watching while doing exercise, sit ups and pull ups, then relaxing. I write. I read. I immerse myself in the world of this show. Fast talking, obscure cult references. Intelligence and charm. It’s definitely my favourite TV series. The world doesn’t really need action or adventure of the dramatic sort. Just honest human contact. Arguments and apologies. Love and compassion. The quiet unity and merge of many lives.

At one point, I move to the bed and read ’S Lot. I finish a chapter, and close my mind and eyes for a moment.

I awake four hours later, groggy and out of place. I feel like I’ve been drugged. I have to relearn to use my limbs, to type on my phone, to do everything. 4 hours of nothing. It’s like I fell through a crack in time. True sleep. Sheer nothingness. Not sleep as I generally know it, but as I’ve always imagined it is supposed to be.

It is unnerving. I do not like it.

I watch more TV, lethargic and mentally wrecked. Eventually, just after midnight, I collapse.

Friday II

After a more natural, churning, thoughtful sleep, I awoke to a bright morning of swirling cornflakes and ideas. They burbled and clogged, and swiftly disappeared. That morning is lost to me now.

But I spent the afternoon with N. We talked about everything as she drove us around the outskirts of the city,

Entropy. Moments spiral away from me, and are lost to the ravenous beast that is history. Ah well. I tried. In part I succeeded. That’s all I wanted.