TAKE WHAT YOU NEED

ALL THE MORE REASON TO SAY THANK YOU

In transition to working dusk til dawn, my body requires three cans of V and two coffee's every night to keep me working through to my 6am finish. Then by 8am, where the sun is rising- I fall into bed, so preoccupied with all things learned and new that behind my eyes, in my sleep I am still working. My first night was followed by the coldest day in 25 years, our uniform is a T-shirt across the entire evening, recovering from a chest infection I can still feel that hollow, cold feeling in my chest when I take deep breaths. The days are spent a blurry mess, with eyes the feel of sandpaper, lying around the house in one of my housemates old shirts, trying to trick myself into sleep. The body clock is a powerful, and dangerous thing. My bed is surrounded by a fort of books, and ink stained sheets. Yesterday I developed a migraine on the way to work an afternoon shift, but being new I was also pretty determined to power through it. The afternoon found me curled up, in hysterics on a public bathroom floor, eyes steeled shut and shaking from the cold tiles as the pain pressed into my skull. I think one of the baker boys carried me to the store room.  This was before work had even started. The lesson here is to take a deep breath, forgive your body and not be so hard on yourself for  being the new girl who was lying on the floor out back at work, being picked up by her dad. I'm 22, and live across the other side of town from my folks. Nevertheless, my father drives softer than an ambulance, so thanks Pa, for getting me home safely. Even though it's like nails are splintering into your skull, I can't help but be thankful that yesterday was the worst of this year so far, it means all those other days I was a whole lot safer. I always feel pretty self conscious about how immobilising migraines can be, so I did some googling. The first I found was "as close as you can get to a seizure while still conscious" (ZOMG) but I found some others too, namely here. Long story short, I think that, to an extent, blood is restricted from entering the brain and your body freaks out until everything is a-okay again. Excellent. I'm off to sleep the rest of this off. On an up note, looking for some post-grad art to indulge in while sorting out my future, found this awesome Cert IV in Media Arts which looks to be just the kind of thing I love. I'm finishing up a Bachelors Degree of Media Arts, and thought perhaps a Cert IV from an art school would be more hands on. It is. I then realised I'd already done it in 2009 hahahah, when it was under the title Cert IV in Visual Arts and Contemporary craft. Still a little sad I can't do it again though. Oh, the indulgence.

Here are some more photos from second valley from a time when migraines were just a memory, I hope you like them, dear reader, I'm rather taken by them myself xx

HEART AND SOUL

I caught a bus into the city and a train into the hills to visit my childhood home. I’d brought my camera, and curled up on the all too familiar train seats peering out the window- it was all the same, yet so much I never knew. Walking along the train line to my parents house, I peered down a rocky cliff face. It’s a different world in the hills, there are beaten paths, through the backs of peoples gardens, with secluded shelters you can make your way across suburbia by wandering down the train line. It was drizzling and while the sun was out it was shadowed by dark clouds and hills smoke wafted through the air. Although I now live so close to the CBD, I’m still a hills girl at heart and chuckled to myself and I hopped across the rocks to avoid puddles and mud, as my leopard print boots became soaked with moisture. Any hills girl would know never to wear shoes like that. I had my camera out, gazing about in search of a new way to document the path that I had taken so, so many times before, at the end of a long day, defeated from my travels through town, across the other side of the city, at university.

Still, I can’t explain what breath it was in, or what photo I had taken when it happened, but I know that it was along that beaten path that the fairies took me.  I had my camera to my face, with my glasses tucked away, and one moment just fell into another. Peering off the edge, overlooking the trainline, through my viewfinder I just had to move a little left but I could feel the rocks slipping, and then the next I was elsewhere. It’s not all level in the hills, of course, and as many rises as it has, there are just as many drops. I peered down through the leaves at the tree so far below, my feet started to slip and I fell amongst things I couldn’t remember. The boots drenched over. The slim branches that pressed against my face as I peered up through the green feel in between my teeth to hold them out of the way of the lens. Then there was garden, off next to the path I had been so many times- I found a tree with leaves intense that the whole world seemed a deep charcoal in comparison. 

As I stumbled across moss, vines and fallen branches to get there, there were pieces of glass which blinked upwards. The tree was surrounded by a mesh of thorns, grown up past waist height and as I pressed closer, the thorns pressed into me, until they’d caught me too. There were little places, small and rich in colour, with every footstep I explored through the lens rather than  with my eyes and as a repercussion of this I started to bleed from the thorns through my clothing. By the time I found myself in my parents bathroom, stripped to my underwear, there bruises, scrapes, cuts and love marks from the thorns, rocks and nature across my body.  The dirt found its way tucked into my nails, leaves in my hair and moss across my skin.  Without me noticing, the day had seeped into night and my clothes were not only full of burrs but moist from lying amongst the nature which was still wet from the rains.  My body has begun to pay for it, with a chest infection and pulled muscles from the cold- I now spend my days in bed, listening to my breath as it drags its way up my throat. But that moment in by the train line was one which was a long time coming, after walking by every day for several years, finally when I'd let my guard down- magic happened. If there was less sickness, there's be more time to share, but for now- this is what there is xx

KNITTED CYCLES