Dead Letter

Dear Indi-of-the-Past,

We have completed (however satisfactorily) our first year of university.

Has the way we percieve ourself changed? Has the way we percieve life changed? I don't know.

But we have gained perspective.

University is not that big a deal. It is not the end of the world, not even the unbreakable walled path to a specific, singular career.

It is frightening. But it means us no harm.

We have met people. Interesting people. We have realised it is not imperative to fit in straight away. That there is a peace and comfort in solitude. And companionship in a crowd.

We have realised there is time. We have learnt that living each moment like your last, that keen awareness of one's mortality, does not mean one must achieve all their goals NOW. To know, to see, to have, NOW. It means appreciating what one DOES have now and all those tiny, fleeting instances only your soul will truly remember. Like the colours in the sky. Like the feeling of running. Like ringing up a friend, or sitting with your dad, or making hot chocolate on the stove with your sister, late late at night, when you can't study any more.

We've learnt InDesign is a LINKING PROGRAM. That Illustrator is a VECTOR BASED PROGRAM. That we must walk before we run and it isn't about manipulating the medium to suit your purpose, but allowing the medium TO manipulate your purpose.

That patience
is
key.

That compassion
is
all.

That we are 18.

That we must be realistic and forgiving of ourselves.

So, we have learnt alot.

Dearest Indi, you were so nervous about the future. But we have come so far. And so much has changed.

Jay is happy in Canberra and we are so happy in turn. I see her becoming a brilliant architect, or at least some sort of creator. Ess-dear will heal the world. She seems to be enjoying her degree and I believe it suits her perfectly. And she recently got a job too! Opposite Tea's apartment, would you believe!
Tea is still searching for her calling. She is confused. She has been through a truly tumultous year, full of shadows, wavering incadescent light and explosions of sunshine. I feel she will be searching for a while. Like us all, I suppose. She'll find a path soon enough. And we intend to be there.

We went opshopping the other day for the first time in months. We salvaged a few cds from the messy rows, all with cloudy, smudged, plastic covers.

Mum was dubious as to their quality, of course. But I've imported them and they're all fine. Something tells me I should return them all again, for someone else to find. Maybe I'll leave a note in their covers, maybe to tell them to come here. A cycle.

But I would like to keep one, I think. It is green - nicely designed. The Rasmus' Dead Letters. I would like to keep it because I opened it up and it spoke to me. A passage of small white writing against stormy green on the jacket says that:

"A DEAD LETTER IS A

LETTER THAT HAS

NEVER BEEN

DELIVERED BECAUSE

THE PERSON TO WHOM

IT WAS WRITTEN

CANNOT BE FOUND,

AND IT ALSO CANNOT BE

RETURNED TO THE

PERSON WHO WROTE IT".

I imagine a world of dead letters, hanging in space. I imagine victims of war or devastastion. A dark limbo of dead letters.

And I suppose I fling this letter out to you, into the void, to hang there too.

All my love,

Indi.

dead egg

This morning mum lifted the woolen blanket covering Sir Norbert's cage to find he had laid an egg. We had suspected Sir Norbert was female, but Little Sis and I had maintained she be called 'Sir Norbert' nonetheless. But now our gender-ambiguous cockatiel isn't gender-ambiguous anymore, mum's pressing for 'Norbie', or at least 'Lady Norbert', but I figure - why can't ladies be Sir anyway? And Sir Norbert had a nice ring to it.

The egg is very small and blushed with the faintest pink, and Sir Norbert seems to like playing soccer with it. We're not banking on immaculate conception; we know its a dead egg, and even if there had of been a Mr Sir Norbert, it probably would have died in the cold last night anyway.

Now we don't know what to do with it. I think I read somewhere that dead eggs can have a psychological effect on birds, because they never hatch. I want to remove it from the cage - she seems to have detached herself from it already. But I don't know if I want to touch it. It doesn't seem right.

I don't want to feel the cold alabaster of that tiny egg. It'd feel like death itself, in all its unassuming manner.

Sir Norbert seems rather bemused by this thing, both part of her and not. Thankfully she's young.



I have to work soon, so I'll make this quick:

That grey creature, anxiety, has been gnawing at my stomach ever since we came back to uni. I really must find a better way to deal with stress. I want to do yoga again.

I rescued our dusty old keyboard from the questionable, dark domain beneath Little Sis's bed. I cleaned it up and found a power pack for it, and I can almost play the opening part of Clocks. It's amazing. I haven't the longest attention span, even for things that interest me, even when watching a good film - my mind is forever inclined to wander. But I must have kneeled before that keyboard for at least half an hour, my mind completely engrossed by the keys and the sounds emanating from them, without my mind wandering at all. No matter how often I stuffed up, I just kept going. And going and going. And I didn't get frustrated once. It felt wonderful.

Ummm.....

I want Jet's new album.

I went to a Gallery with Ess.

I wrote a crummy story.

I bought a 2nd hand book called 'The Tao of Physics' which I am very excited about.

Annnndddd....

I have lots of work (uni and otherwise) to sink my reluctant teeth into.

Mucho love!

..

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

that is all.

first day

I started Uni today.

Got up. Had an hour to spare. Somehow managed to be rushing about in the last minute anyway. Went to station, heart thudding, stomach heaving a little for reasons I couldn't quite pinpoint - I WAS late for the train, I suppose.
Missed train due to ammended timetable. Was waiting for another when I realised there wasn't another coming. Had to run down to road to catch connecting bus. Realised the place bus was connecting me to was infact ten minutes drive away.
Drove to next station. Mayhem due to trackwork and work-goers. JUST got a park. Had to run for train. Sat heavily into seat, puffing.
Drew in my small notebook all the way to Hamilton. Got off, got on new train. Walked to Uni. Made first lecture with a minute to spare. Shuffled my way through the seats to reach Bri and Ta.
Compared timetables with Bri while lecturer set up. I'd done mine wrong - had another lecture after this one, and not one tomorrow. Dang. But good, 'cos it didn't mean I'd miss work.
Lecturer 15 minutes in announces he is finished. We have 45 minutes to spare. Takes us on a walk to our Tutorial room.
I LOVE THE DESIGN BUILDING.
Have tutes on every floor, including the loft. Loving the desks.
Met with Gee, walked with her. Has a completely different Tute timetable to me. Dang again.
Have Tutes with Bri and Ee.
An hour to spare. Walk around Campus. Give up (bag heavy) and relocate outside the nursing Theatre lecture hall, where my next lecture is. Draw.
Draw.
Gee comes in, sits in ampitheatre with me.
Rest of class surge through door. Meet up with Ee, Bri and Tara.
Mutter excitedly to Ee and Gee about this elective. We have to complete 65 full A3 size self-portraits in the next 13 weeks.
Yyyuup.
Getting a degree for drawing random things. Am excited.
(Starting to feel a little pressure now. Must get into academic swing.)
Walk to train station. Get on, off, on train. Off again.
Visit Salvo's at Morrisset. It is so different from the ram-shackle, cozy treasure-trove it was when Me, Ess, Inoue, Jay, Tea, Bea, Aim and others visited it a year or so ago for Tea's kayaking get-to-gether. Makes me a little sad.
Found a nice stripy shirt/jacket/cut-off-just-below-chest thingamabob. $4
Came home.
Ate lunch at 2. Unwrapped a darling little brown package with red string I found in my mail from Ess.
Love Ess.
A stone, two small booklets, and a lovely small old Italiano-Inglese dictionary. Green, palm-sized, old perfection.

Big day. Now I have work to do.
Wishing Ess, Tea and Jay were here with me. But am really glad they have found such great places to be anyway.

o-week

Went to O week today. Made some friends, got lost, scored freebies, signed up for a few things, got lost again, etc. All in a day's work.

It was HOT. The sunlight was strong and bleached and clear, and you got an idea where the saturated-style of the Newcastle brochures came from.

The campus is HUGE. And it is exhausting getting lost there, in the heat. It's all very exciting though.

The Design building is so AWESOME. It has two stories, and a loft, and it's all very scaffold-esque, sort of. Maybe not. Like, industrial. That's it. But it's made of corrugated iron, so it's scaldingly hot and stuffy in summer, and freezing in winter.

The lecture halls are GI-NORMOUS. Maybe not, but to me they were. There's quite a few people in my course, and being surrounded by all these design-y people, who are at least a little like-minded, was gently gratifying.

I met a girl name Gee. She wants to do web comics. She was pretty cool. Different. She had short, lightly red hair and long black jeans. She carried a heavy shoulder bag around with her, with a laptop and books and perhaps a sketchpad inside, and she reminded me just the tiniest bit of Tea. Minutely. Microscopically. It was the bag.

What else? They had a huge rusted sculpture of a spider.

Ee and I got lost. My fault this time. We managed to get OFF the map.

I re-met Bri and her friend Ta, but we didn't speak much. Didn't have much oppurtunity, I suppose.

They had jumping castles. {? I know.} And the campus has two bars/pubs.

Live entertainment.

Welcoming speech.

Etc.

I might report more tomorrow.

But yeah - It was HOT. Especially walking around in the sun.

{Ee and I had to ask a Tradie to help us find our way back to the Great Hall. He was nice.}