zomg!

I... I have a laptop.



(Take THAT creepy moustache-stroking man!)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Imagine the Australian bushland. Grey and blue and green, a coarse-looking sort of place, with the chainsaw-buzz of cicadas characteristically bearing down on you. The air can be tangible and close, but always it is infused with the smell of eucalyptus, bark, dust and leaf-fall. There are scuttlings and rustlings and slitherings around your feet, and whip-lash bird calls swoop up above.

Now imagine someone has suddenly placed buildings and pathways through there, like milk-cartons in an over-run garden. The bush, for lack of anything else to do, absorbs it in its old, ....... way, and this stamp of civilisation becomes part of the landscape.

The buildings turn grey and blue and dusty green, becoming part of the bush itself, and concrete is indistinguishable from the pale ghostly trunks of the gum trees, and pathways half sink beneath the leaves and bark piling up on the floor. Walkways stories high sling themselves amongst the trees like branches and a labrynth forms.


I went to the University of Newcastle yesterday.

It is not your traditional sort of University. There no lush landscaped gardens and neat courtyards, no castle-like towers or buildings reaching up to a blue and empty sky. Rather, it is an expansive place, with each nook and cranny hidden from the rest, with small, sudden courtyards and winding paths. It seems to have grown from the bush itself. There are rustlings in the undergrowth and one half expects a snake to loll itself out along the path as you make your way from one place to the other.

I didn't mind it, I think. It was deserted when I went for an explore. My friend held our place in one of the long queues snaking through the Great Hall (it was Advisory Day) while I nipped out quickly for a look. Time was limited, and what I saw was only a small fraction of the grounds, but it was fascinating all the same.

We waited an hour in the queue, and then we had to rush off because my friend and her mother, with whom I had come up to Newcastle with, had business to attend to in town. I didn't have an oppurtunity to see the rest of the grounds, which I was a little disappointed about. I'd like to go again.




My friend is rich because her mother is business savvy. It was fascinating hearing her talk on the way home in the car, telling me these things about finances and the stock market crash that recently befell us. I had no idea how terrible it was, nor that we were on a great decline. It was frightening.

The title of this entry is the title of a book she recommended I read about business, money and the economy. She's always had great faith in me. I've know her many years, and she is incredibly clever. She's never been to Uni. Rather, she went to TAFE - and now she's a self-made millionaire!

It did my head in, yesterday, looking at courses and thinking of the future. Do I really want to do Graphic Design? The course is very computer-based, and I'm more a traditional artist. I'm torn in a number of directions - should I try something new, perservere, and get that job at the end of the day?; Should I follow this urge inside me and do English, which I love, instead?


Sigh. Pressure.

sweet merciful heaven!

I don't know if the above title is blasphemy, so I apologise exceedingly if it is; this was just the phrase that hit me on the distracted drive home, and it seemed appropriate in some far-stretched way.

I've been saving for a laptop.

I don't get much work, as I'm more of a call-girl; I fill in for anyone who isn't up to working, doing sporadic hours. But every dollar, every cent, (apart from the odd few dates, yogurt or petrol) I am saving in a laptop fund -

Ever since I was little, I've wanted a new bed - a dark wooden one, with carved flowers or stained glass. Ever since I was little - and now, finally, for my 18th birthday, my parents have decided to buy one for me. But my laptop need is so consuming that I've even resorted to asking them to overlook the bed and make a monetary contribution!!



And then, a backdoor opens and light falls through...

My parents seem to be in possession of some magic card/account thing, with which I may purchase my laptop and not pay any interest for three years. I'd have it now, and be paying off my parents.


At first, it seemed... a hollow prospect? For what else had I been devoting all my savings to? To what end had I focused my mind, money and energy? I had suddenly something to work for, really earn - and now I get to venture the high-road? It sat ill with me.

But then I thought to myself:

Indi, you are an idiot.

Take the high road. You'll still be paying for it, still working for it...

But will the motivation be quite so intense?




On this dire laptop-need of mine: I don't know where it's come from, or why it is there. It seems an empty yearning, somehow - I feel, deep down, as though I might really be apathetic towards it. What are material possessions anyway? I feel as though I don't truly, deeply, full-heartedly want anything material anymore. They feel like surface-wants, fleeting.

But a laptop certainly would be handy and very, very nifty. I think about it and I am delighted to say that a spark of excitement bubbles still. I am smiling right now.

I'm a many-sided lass, am I not?





I am taking the highroad, and I am excited about it. And I've thought of something new to save for!

Travel!

novo

I am a little pathetic.

I went to bed last night at a quarter to ten. A quarter to ten! And I felt no guilt - not matter how hard I tried to - about missing the end-of-year-that-only-happens-once-a-year-the-darn-milestone-of-the-year fireworks either. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

In other news:

I still don't feel guilty about it.

But yes. The first of January dawns and ends. It be-eth 2009! I like the sound of 2009. I'm not sure why. I may elaborate further in twelve months or so.

I am so looking forward to Uni. I'm so looking forward to ... life. I've made a number of resolutions I hope to keep - have you?




Washed Eve today. She's developing a mysterious and evasive odour of which I am not particularly fond. I scrubbed and scrubbed every part of her - I even peeled back the seat covers and gave them a thorough going over, scrubbing the naked seat beneath until it stopped oozing brown foam from that suspicious patch {I have a canine companion, you see.}.

And she still smells faintly...unpleasant? I'm not sure - it's an annoying, persistant odour at worst, really. Not terrible. Faintly like feet. But still! I want it out out out!

Poor Eve, sitting on the lawn, gleaming like a splayed white beetle, her unfolded metal carapace.

And yes. At the mo I am thoroughly sticky with sweat and dirt. Sigh.

And that was the beginning of 2009 for me. I hope it isn't reflective of the rest of the year.




Oh, and they shaved my dog.

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!!....}