arrivederci

In five and a half hours I will be leaving for Murwillumbah, which, for those of you not in 'the know', lies on the border between NSW and QLD, on the coast.

It's a rural, quite lovely and green place ( at least, my hazy childhood memories tell me it is ) with natural crystals in the creek beds and a nasty tendency to flood.

This morning, Christmas Eve, my family and I had a small, quite pleasant 'Christmas morning', seeing as we'd miss it on the road. And though I was surprised, and it was all quite lovely, and there was the token torn Christmas paper foliage scattered beneath our humble lit tree, I regret to admit that truly, a little more magic was gone.

Perhaps it was my impending 7 hour shift at the Fruit Shop, but I'm not sure.

Perhaps I shall have to think of new ways to enjoy Christmas - new, grown-up ways; though I don't drink or gamble, and the whole club-scene just isn't my, well, scene.

Hmm.

Still, I am looking forward to Christmas Day tomorrow, and being up with the rest of our little family, who we never see because they live so very far away.

I find it interesting that for a great many of us, Christmas seems to be the climax of our year. It seems the thing we all work towards. But so many people, when I asked them at the register, making short conversation as you do over spuds and capsicums and carrots etc, would all give a weary sigh, saying they couldn't really wait for it to be over. Is Christmas merely a force of habit now, is the magic slipping away?

I'd rather not go where your minds are no doubt sidling - the whole materialism thing.

But yes, just some musings.

Anyhoo - I'm off soon, and I cannot wait ( even though I must persevere though nine hours of driving in a dark, musty, freezing cold bat-mobile to get there).

So I shall write more later.

Merry Christmas. Much love, Indi.

fin

The portrait is finito, fixed and paid for. I'm still scrubbing the lead, graphite, pastel and charcoal from my poor, maltreated hands. My right ring finger looks like it's got a five 'o' clock shadow.

In other news: copious amounts of wrapping etc preceded the day, and the lounge room and adjacent dining room look like the crime scene of a Father Christmas spontaneous combustion. We're up to our ears in wrapping paper and ribbon, but I love it all the same. Lovin' the Christmas ambiance this year.

Wow, and that's about it.

I am happy.

Not a major post but, seeing as I'm here:

SIS IS READING NEW MOON.

She stayed up till midnight the other night, reading.

READING!!

And she's considering becoming a writer.

A WRITER!!

I am more proud of her then ever.






{ ....reading!!....}

are you happy?

Just because everything's changing
doesn't mean it's never been this way before.
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
as you head out to the war.

Pick a star on the dark horizon
and follow the light.
You'll come back, when it's over.
No need to say goodbye.

9 7 . 3

I did a final tour. It was dapple-sunny, the trees full of green leaf and small, shivering shadows. I walked slowly up the side of the school, up the stairs, looking up high, high, high at the brick wall - it wasn't imposing anymore. It was familiar. It was warm. It was home.
I went into the dark art room to smell the smell. I didn't turn the light on, and left it twilit and inky, dusky shadowed. My eyes burned. I said goodbye.
The room lit up with a warm glow, and Ess and I were seated together at the end of a table, heads bent over art diaries, and though I didn't see her, for the recollection was a brief one, I knew Jay was there too, a little to the side, her head down, doing something imbossibly detailed and small. There were other presences there, like blurry suggestions, in the foreground of my imagination, towards the small bookcase up the back; apparitions against the creamy painted brick walls, the giant sliding dividing door, the store room behind me. Ms C would be there at her desk, overseeing it all, talking privately in a low, intent voice with someone or other about their Major Work - her chin against her hand, her hand flat against her chest, her large, unreadable pale eyes looking upwards. There would be voices, a cluttery hum of them. Warm, warm yellow butter light. Leaves blown in on the floor.
And then it was gone, and the chairs were empty and stacked, and the desks were vacant and dark.

I went to the English rooms, and found Mr L walking along the walkway (which had been recently refurbished to look like a prison-camp corridor). He shook my hand. He told me he hoped to see a book of mine in a few years, up there on the shelves.

For Mr L----,
Who first foresaw this,

For Ms S------,

For uncountable reasons,

I promised.

I revisited my English room, and in my mind's eye Ms S was there - plump, small, vivacious, hilarious Ms S - and Snewey, and Jees and I were seated in our chairs to the side, and we were all watching her intently, and we were learning Shakespeare, Malouf, Wordsworth, Austen, Hughes. Her hands flapped around in familiar gestures, and she looked over us all with a masked affection, and she laughed and grinned a wicked fox grin when we suggested something she'd never thought of.

And then she was gone. And the room was an empty room with a long window, filled by gum trees and the suggestion of the oval, peeking in the corner. The small, comfortable room, a solstice in the winter.

And I went next door to my Extension English room. Like S's, but different. Different silouhettes, a different yellow - one that spoke of Eucalyptus, of Speculative fiction, of Frodo and Sam and 1950s projected Sci Fi comic covers. Mr L's voice, excitable and passionate, almost breathless with enthusiasm. And the meagre class; and M, Tea and I in our seats to the side, catching only little of all he ever said to us.

And they were gone. And the room was an empty room with a projector, and posters of zombies and a space age Vitruvian man were on the bare brick walls.

A concrete corridor, with the Hall to your right, and the Woodwork rooms to your left, connects the English (D) block to the TAS rooms, and my old Society and Culture abode. I followed it. Woodwork in Yr 7, distances and ages ago. I seldom used this route.

I entered the Tas block, walked through, came out the other side through the heavy glass doors. Here the boys would play hand ball, or cluster about in the miserably cold, wet, blustery winter. I see them in blue. But it was summer now, and it was bright and airy, the mesh they leaned against green and gridding up the teacher's car park and the garden beyond.

I went to the Science room, L1, and paused outside to await a pause in the voice beyond the door, my opportunity to enter. It was Dr B's voice, a familiar, enthusiastic, deep and knowledgeable voice. I was in no way the best Physics student he'd ever had, but I'd enjoyed it immensely. The opportunity came, and I thanked him, and shook his hand, and then I left. I did not have the chance to reminisce in that room, like I had the others - but I can recall it now. Always dark, to me, as if we were about to watch a movie, with Dr B up front, making sweeping gestures and jumping about the board; and me, Bea and Jay up the front at one of the many black desks. Jay's head would be on her hand, and her hand on her elbow, and she would have dozed off with the pen lax in her hand, and Bea would be listening, though her eyes might at any point have turned distant as she sunk into her own world. And I would be in the middle.

The last room I peered into was another art room. It was Ms C-nae's one. I didn't have the chance to see her today. It was a small, comfortable room, with the desks in little congregations in the middle, surrounded by cupboards of art stuff, papers, paints, pencils etc, and sinks and smudged, dusty benches piled with clay projects. Ms C-nae, in her red, paint covered apron, large owlish glasses on her sphinx's nose, up the front for a moment - a brief, fleeting moment - pointing to something above her head on the board that I couldn't see.

And then she was gone. And the room was just an empty room, full of light and clutter.

I walked back up the steps to the front of the school, coming up the opposite side I had before. I made a last stop - to thank the office ladies, one of which (of who I'd never known her name) kissed me on the cheek in farewell and goodluck.

A storm in a jar beneath my arm and a Bellbird rolled in my hand, I stepped down the steps, and the foyer (with its trophies and memorabilia - scholastic artifacts - museum) was behind me. Then the gardens - before which Kizz and Em and I would wait for Jees and Snewey and Power and everyone else, so we could catch the train together - the gardens were behind me. And then the gate, and the arch, was before me. And then it was holding me. And then, it was behind.

I looked once back up at the School, an old-looking, red bricked thing; at its brown name and 1928, its cream-coloured upper story wall, the dark coloured roof gables, where the pigeons liked to roost and where the most remarkable weeds would defy gravity to sprout from their leavings.

And then, I was gone.

There are many things still that I can remember and which I will eventually forget with time. It was the sensations and ambiance of the places and moments that assailed me more frequently in my reverie. I hope they, somewhere, remain; to surface in a smell, a glance, a thought. But for now, I suppose -

The End.

{ Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.

Quantum Mechanics: the dreams stuff is made of.

What's the speed of dark?}

lead pencil smears and bruises. (insert sigh here)

At the risk of not continuing the Christmas-quasi-present metaphor started by Ess and continued loyally by Jay, I have to say, receiving my HSC results was quite anticlimatic. Could be a little depressing if I dwelled on it, of course, my whole 13 years of schooling amounting to six marks running like little squashed ants in columns down the page - but, hey, what you gonna do? Anyhoo - the marks in question. Did have a rather pleasant and unexpected surprise (the 'unexpected' seems rather useless, doesn't it, seeing as ain't a surprise a surprise only because it's unexpected in the first place?..) in relation to my Extension 2 Mark -- FULL MARKS, would you believe? I certainly wouldn't - didn't REALLY think my suite of short stories was that spiffy. Loved the concept, but the execution of said concept? Mmm, didn't inspire confidence in me. But hey - the markers loved it! And I feel especially pleased after the rigmaroll I'd gone through producing it - I'd survived like twenty form-changes to throw caution to the wind and follow my heart with the short story form, even after countless warnings from my teachers, and quite alot of stress and iambic pentameter.

Wow. I just used QUITE a few cliches in that spiel, didn't I?

My sanity, you see, is slowly slipping away, line by shadow, as the portrait is still incomplete and staring back at me from where it lay taped to my desk. ACK!

Yes - the results. I was pleased - I went pretty much how I'd hoped/thought I'd go. Anything higher would have been unrealistic and any lower would have been disheartening, after all the work and the expectation that I at least go ALRIGHT. So, I'm happy. Band 6-out-of-6s and Band 4-out-of-4s, and one Band 5 to my name beside Physics - a class I'd taken only because I immensely enjoyed it, not that I was particularly good at in anyway. And for Mr B's antics.

So yes, to reiterate, I am pleased. UAI's are out tomorrow.

---- IN OTHER NEWS -----

'Went to see Twilight. And I enjoyed it. It was different enough for me to differentiate it from the book and similar enough to have a little chuckle where I though things were getting a bit corny. But yes, I quite liked it. At my sister is thoroughly in love with the tale, so I'm hoping she reads the books. (It would be a remarkable feat, as she NEVER reads. EVER. NEVER. EVER.

EVER.)

Well, back to the drawing board.


{ PN: For interest's sake - how many cliches DID I use?}

Twilight; Line & Shadow

'Off to see Twilight tonight with Ess and thoroughly (and slightly ashamedly) excited about it. I'd scorned it outright when Ess showed me the preview on her lappie, from book-loyalty (the actress just didn't fit how I'd envisioned Bella, dang it! and don't get me started on Rosalie) but now, admittedly, I am excited about seeing it. Ess and I have vowed to treat the book independantly from the film and retain the judgements piling up behind our mind gates, like greyhounds for the rabbit.

In other news: I've been busily and distractedly, to true procrastinating form, doing a portrait for a comissioner. Past the halfway point, so the stress is alleviating a little.

And there's only nine days till Christmas!! I am eagerly excited about Christmas, for the first time in many years, and I hope it lives up to the expectations.

Eve's been playing up. Hope to get her fixed. And I'm off to Newcastle tonight (hopefully) to celebrate my mate Smilli's new place. She's my age, and yet she's moved out and working and attending Uni next year - I'm in awe, really. Smilli's always been the more mature one though, of us all.

And my HSC results come out tomorrow, and the UAI afterwards... how... actually, I'm a little apathetic to it all at the mo.

Better get back to the drawing board.

schoolies retrospect: a muddled day-by-day. VOLUME 2

{ DAY 3 : SUNDAY }
It is a sober, quiet day in which the prescence of a greater power is acknowledged with complete heart and awareness by many, particularly one in our number, Ess, and in which the other three of us contemplate the identity and nature of such a higher existence. Of God.
I am anticipating an unconventional day for myself. We are accompanying Ess to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for she is a Mormon, half from curiousity and half from something elese I cannot quite pinpoint. Ess's religion has always been mysterious to me - what she does on Sundays, and the existence of this quiet, reverent, sober side to her so different from the vibrant, passionate, creative and unconventional personage I am accustomed to. { PN: I have not known Ess as long as Jay and Tea have and so her religious beliefs had never fully factored into how I percieved Ess as a person and concept. Now, of course, I realise that this is a great part of Ess that I'd been forgetting and overlooking, structured religion not playing a very large part of my upbringing. This revelation has added a new depth to Ess that helps me understand her more, like seeing the internals of Tea's house, meeting Aae's large family, and running through Jay's forest. } I feel it is more mysterious for me than anyone else in our little foursome. I come from a spiritual but not exactly religious background and understanding. I believe in a deep, universal power that unites us all and flows into us through nature and other things, but as to the identity of this power I have no inkling. There are so many religious and belief systems in this world that idolise and rever some greater power, credit our existence to it, so their must be something out there. But there is something about organised religions that doesn't sit quite right with me.
I don't like how people, brothers and sisters, can kill each other and die for conflicting beliefs. I don't like half the rules religions can preach. { PN: Gay and Lesbian prejudice, Racial discrimination, being unable to marry others from another religious background, for example. }
I believe in a sort of heaven, limbo and hell {PN: Actually, not hell. } . I respect other people and their ability to have faith so complete and certain.
I woke today deeply contemplating God and his existence, andI think this will be an interesting day for all of us.
I feel sort of honoured that Ess has invited us to share this part of her life with us.
We're almost at the Church.
{PN : The Church was an old white house made of painted brick or a type of concrete, surrounded by green acres and nestled within large, drooping trees. Stones, pinecones and leaf litter made up the driveway and the trees cast light shades over it all. It was an autumn-sort of place. The inside was made up of small rooms and winding hallways, with white arches and old tiles. Sort of Spanish-y or Mexican - all it needed was a second story with a balcony and a lattice full of wildflowers. It was a peaceful, comfortable place, sunny and fresh. }

During the first part of the service, during the testimonies, I felt strange - as if a great expectation was placed upon me, that my life would be somehow less blessed if I were not to join this belief. All the people who testified and acknowledged their religion seemed complete and happy and fortunate - would I be doomed to an incomplete and trouble ridden life if I did not embrace these philosophies and accept these distant, ancient people? { PN: I realise now that it was not their life that had changed, but their outlook. And everything can be changed by outlook and the inner peace of complete faith. } And I was momentarily scared. I felt a pressure. Ess seems to be so happy and her life so comparitively sweet and wonderful - it is not that I don't think she has problems in her life, only that her spirit is so pure and kind and unbreakable, and her family so good, that they would be mere ripples to her tide. {PN: I don't know if that's a good analogy or not, but that's what came out as I wrote, my back against the glass door of the unit's entrance while I avoided watching Kill Bill }
Would my mother be better? Would the negative thoughts that oft times plague me disappear?
But I do not have faith. I could take up the mantle of this religion, I could follow the rules. I could do the sacrament and say the prayers and sing the hymns. But would I cry at the pulpit, overwhelmed with the Spirit? Would I believe unerringly that the prophets and God and Jesus are true? It saddens me, but no. Not at this point in my life. I do not have the faith within me to. There would always be doubts, a bridge, a link, uncrossed and unmade between me and that world. And to me, that would be fraudelent and wrong.
In that moment I resolved to keep believing as I do, but cultivate positivity and goodness withing myself to live in such a righteous and good way as Ess and the kind Latter Day Saints do that I met at the service. The Universe, God, Allah, that greater power, Providence or Fate, I believe is there - under what name I do not know. But it is there. And maybe if I live this way, maybe I will be okay.

{ DAY 4 : MONDAY }
'Morning. It's monday, the day we had orginally planned to leave. We're still up in the air on this point - we had decided to stay another day and leave Tuesday, but Ess has suddenly decided she will leave today with M, so I'm unsure as to what the rest of us will be doing now. It's raining - not really Schoolies weather, so maybe we could go home, without the roadtrip we had been excited for. {PN: I'm cutting a bit out here, as all it entails is me talking to myself, debating what to do, even though it wasn't exactly rocket science. I'd made a bigger deal about it all than it was, really. I'm prone to frustration after disrupted and haphazardous sleep patterns, and it's all just smoke without fire - it dissipates quickly after a brief period of obession. }
Yesterday evening, after a lazy day, we went out to the Observatory up the road. The cloudy, overcast day was swept up by some nice cool breezes and peeled back to reveal an clear, intensely blue sky, and we thought all'd be well. But alas! Clouds swept back over again, translucently veiling the night sky, and all we had oppurtunity to see was a murky crescent moon. It was beautiful still though - the craters were all clear and amazing, and the powdery, off-white surface visible and breathtaking.
We then watched a presentation on space and learned a bit about our universe and the galaxies therein - it is all so unfathomly vast and the stars and galaxies so beautiful, and to think we are all made up of this stardust and that in looking to the sky we look to the past and may see the universe at its known beginnings, it's all truly humbling abd reassuring. It is impossible that we are alone here.

It got me to thinking about the universe and it saddens me to see images of its possible end, no matter how impossibly far away it is. Can it have an end if our time ends with that distance? What lies beyond it? More and more {universes} onto eternity? And I know that it is such questions that turns people to religion and beliefs, and why science can never ever fully explain the happenings and reasons for our existence here. Onwards and outwards, forever and ever.
I suppose we shouldn't fear the unknown, because we don't even know if there is anything to be afraid of. It's all quite awe-inspiring really.
Is it true to say we can depend on infinity?

{PN: This note is scrawled at the top of my journal, like 'Umbilical Brothers: Speedmouse' and ' The Open Door Album (Your Star) Evanescence' : 'In my opinion, we can say that the universe is infinite because our time ends where it does.'}

{PN: The Observatory is manned by volunteers who are old and very helpful. Their passion for the stars and outer space beyond us is infectious and tangible. It exists about them like a soft wave, or invisible light. One old man upon leaving talked to us outside in the orange electric door light of the observatory, half in light and half in darkness, about the stars of the Southern Cross, and how it may always guide us home. He had a kind, content face witha profuse of wrinkles from smiling, large glasses and a short, portly stature.
The Observatory itself was small and quaint, with a particular old charm to it. There were some glow-in-the-dark stars and a painted model on our solar system in one corner, all hung about by a night-colouref fabric with a shooting star and star cluster on it, and maybe a solar flare, though I am unsure. It reminded me of an old theatre. The first film we watched was a grainy documentary about rockets. I sat in the front row beside MT and Cath, giggling inwardly with MT as a young boy up the back repeatedly piped up with things like 'The big spot on Jupiter is infact a giant storm'. The man would compliment him on his knowledge and offer a little more, and then patiently continue with his presentation. Afterwards we followed the dark road home in Cath's car, with the crashing beach on our left (a drop down high dunes tangled with many trees, rocks and shrub - it was like the land gave way beyond the street lights to a mysterious shadow land, incredibly vast, of grumbling storm) and the dark presences of the evergreens that lined the road, piercing like spires the sky, on our right. We had a light dinner, then watched the Umbilical brothers, and Jay and I retired upstairs to sleep in the boys't unit for lack of beds in the girls'.}

It's raining and cool. A welcome change, though I've enjoyed the heat and sun and beach. Not a day for a roadtrip but we could give it a shot. 'Won't be the same without Ess of course but we'll make do.
My parents would disagree and many other people with them, but to me, this is driving weather. {PN: The rain at one point on the way home was infact so heavy that I contemplated pulling over on the freeway - and rain has never been that great a fear of mine whilst driving. We literally couldn't see. } Perhaps we shall leave after lunch {PN: Jace made tacos. :) } and play a bit of Pictionary with Jace {PN: We didn't. We did play Texas Hold'em Poker though, which I was awesome at. And Uno, which, when I tried, I didn't suck too bad at.} A spot of Uno too, maybe - everyone loves Uno. I love the sound of rain.


{PN: My diary ends here. We did infact end up leaving after tacos and stopped at a few places for old time's sake, like Bulahdehlah and Coopernook, and I sent a postcard to myself which should get here soon. It's a tradition I've decided to start - to draw on a postcard from every place I go to and send it to myself. We reached home late afternoon (my place) and Jay and Tea crashed there. We watched Star Wars V and VI (I'd never seent them before, and Ess, Tea and Jay were adament I be intiated) and went op-shopping the next day. We found a great many awesome things to, I must say. Then, I took the two of them home - we stayed at a park for a while, talking on a play set, waiting for Jay's car to meet us there (she's got her first car!!! :D ) and then I dropped Tea off at her house two streets over. She gave me a tour of her house ( a happening only few of us can appreciate ) excepting her room and I came home. And it was as if I'd never left.}

The End.