The Seconds Before the Launch

This isn't me missing you. This is me missing the me I used to be.

This isn't me. 

From here

A Genius Bids Farewell

So I found this on a piece of paper inside a library book a while back, and it was really pretty so I swiped it...


Gabriel Garcia Marquez has retired from public life due to health reasons: cancer of the lymph nodes. It seems that it is getting worse. He has sent a farewell letter to his friends, and thanks to the Internet it is spreading. This short text, written by one of the most brilliant Latin Americans in recent times, is truly moving.


If for an instant God were to forget that I am a rag doll and gifted me with a piece of life, possibly I wouldn't say all that I think, but rather I would think of all that I say. I would value things, not for their worth  but for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others sleep. I would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream!

If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show. Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream a Benedetti poem, and a Serrat song would be the serenade I'd offer to the moon.

With my tears I would water roses, to feel the pain of their thorns, and the red kiss of their petals...My God, if I had a piece of life...I wouldn't let a single day pass without telling the people I love that I love them. I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love.

I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!

To a child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting. So much have I learned from you, oh men...I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled.

I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the first time with his tiny fist his father's finger, he has him trapped forever. I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other get to his feet.

From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.

Happyness.

"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?"
-Christopher, The Pursuit of Happyness

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
- Albert Einstein.

Running

Do you ever feel like you're running very fast? Running away from something but you're not sure what, and towards something, but you don't know what that is either? And you don't know what it is, but you have the feeling that when you reach it, everything will be okay and you'll be someone different? Or someone more, or someone less, or someone. And you're running out of time, so you run faster. And then there's a cliff coming up and you're running too fast to avoid it. So you fall.

 Insert indie photograph here.


"Sometimes I feel so - I don't know - lonely. The kind of helplessness feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going."
- Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

So like.

I noticed I start sentences with 'so' a lot. Oops. But. Good news: I won something. Bad news: I'm not sure what it is yet. Something to do with my story. Hmm. What else. I'm planning on taking my cousin out to the city on Friday, her last night in Melbourne. The next morning (at something like 5am?) she'll be leaving to get on a plane back to China.

The problem is, I'm not sure where to take her. I'm pretty sure she should visit Chinatown ^^ Because y'know, she's Chinese and all. Okay, it's not that funny. Whatever. I have a feeling the Tim Burton exhibition will be largely meaningless to her.

Also, I'm watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on Saturday! I'm watching with this serendipitous guy. I have a feeling that's not the way you use serendipitous. Oh well. I have to use a five syllable to make myself sound smarter. Mission failure! I actually love Michael Cera, like, a lot. He's super cute. My top three Michael Cera movies:

• Paper Heart
• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
• Juno

 So, I was typing the word 'blogging', and I accidentally typed 'bogging'. Haha.

Finally! Does anyone have any ideas for a climate change ad for this competition I'm thinking of entering? sharona out.

What's in a name?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I love Romeo and Juliet to death (haha, I'm so funny) and especially the adaption with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. But while Shakespeare's point is valid, I do think names play a big part in the world.

There's a big difference between calling someone 'Charlie' and calling someone 'Charles'. The first one immediately sounds more casual and friendly. People instantly form their impressions based on names. For example, when I think of a name like...Gerard, I imagine someone sort of dark-ish and mysterious. Which is why vampires usually have cool names such as Angel and Drusilla and etc.

There has been a big push for more original names, hence celebrity kids being called 'Apple', 'Moon Unit', 'Kal-El Coppola' (Kudos for the Superman reference), and...'Princess Tiaamii'.

I recently hosted a kiddy party where I work, and I swear the only normal name there was Cynthia. Every one of the kids had one of those 'unique' names. Which is awesome, but there is a fine line between 'unique' and 'pretentious and lame'.

This ramble was mostly just to explain my blog's name - 'girl anachronism'. Firstly, it's a song by the Dresden Dolls. They're pretty amazing.

An anachronism is an error in chronology, especially putting something (object, person, idea, custom, technology, whatever) in the wrong time period. So this song is basically wishing that she'd been born in a different time, and that she's always out of place. Which I (and most people probably) can relate to.

Also, I really dislike Macbeth. Just putting it out there.

Ticket fiasco.

I can finally be bothered blogging about this incident. Which I am still pissed off about, by the way. Bee tee dubs. Haha. Chatspeak is a funny thing.

So I had this Florence ticket and I couldn't go to the concert. The day before, I found a girl who said she really wanted it. Let's call her...bad-word. Or A, for convenience. She said she really wanted to go, which I knew was only true to a degree, because I'd sort of noticed she didn't know anything much about Florence. But hey, I was finally getting the ticket to someone else.

Few hours after that, an awesome person known as KB told me that she wanted the ticket. And it was her birthday, and I love her, and she really wanted to see a girl that was going. But I'd already promised A, who wasn't a particular friend, but I didn't think it was right to go back on a deal.

But I asked A anyway, are you sure you really want to go? It's just someone else really wants it too. And she replied that she'd organised everything and she really, REALLY wanted to go. She'd have the money on Friday! Fair enough.

She didn't go. And she Facebook messaged me shit, but the long and short of it:





Eff her.

Also, I am not feeling like a special little snowflake. I feel like crap, actually. And so here's a Chuck Palahniuk quote:

"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us."


I would add an appropriately depressing photo, but I really can't be bothered finding one.

SO ASIAN.

This story I entered in the Monash short story comp...


The Beginning

“Lucky indeed,” my mother thinks proudly as she gazes around the room. The paint on the walls is peeling, and the TV is staticky. The carpet is threadbare and the chairs are mismatched. The crowded room is overly warm because there is no air conditioner, only a plastic fan that erratically spins cooled air from side to side. But that doesn’t matter. Sitting in the fridge is a large, gaudily-decorated birthday cake. A wondrous thing, purchased just that morning from an Asian bakery in Springvale. In the adjacent cupboard is a wax ‘1’ waiting to be impaled in the brightly coloured icing. A massive array of food, mostly stirfry, gently steams in the mismatched dishes sitting on the wooden table with peeling veneer.



What a difference from China, where birthdays were celebrated arbitrarily, if they were celebrated at all, and where a birthday feast was an egg boiled with some noodles. My parents didn’t even have birth certificates until they migrated to Australia, and they simply made up their dates of birth because no one had bothered to properly record it - my father’s birth certificate reads two years older than he actually is.



Right now one-year-old me is crawling around on the floor, seemingly oblivious to the mass of people chattering - which one is she going to pick? Surrounding me is a circle of objects - money, pens, a calculator, cards, and various other symbolic items. This is traditional on a baby’s first birthday - the item they choose shows what the baby is going to grow up to be. Personally, my mother hopes I will choose the money. That means I’m going to be very rich. It doesn’t really matter, as long as I don’t pick the cards and become a destitute gambler, she thinks. But of course I won’t. Because I’m growing up in the Lucky Country.



The friends cheer as little me grasps the pen with both hands, and I look up with wide baby eyes. One of my parents’ friends, Edwin, the one who is forever wielding a camera, takes a shot, and this photo of a plump one-year-old wielding a pen ends up in a flowery, pink photo album which was purchased at a stocktake sale at Target.



“Just like her father!” they cry, congratulating my parents on their little daughter. The feast soon begins, getting rowdier and rowdier the more alcohol is consumed. The assortment of guests range from George, the elderly white next-door neighbour whom I adore, to my mother’s best friend who has a daughter just a few months younger. Little me watches the proceedings solemnly. My mother does the customary hostess’ job of piling copious amounts of food onto everyone’s plates but her own, despite the various loud but futile protests.



She thinks again how lucky her child is, beaming at the raucous crowd assembled in her small living room. The pen means that I will be an academic child. At the ripe old age of one, my future is set out. A scholar, because I chose a pen. A good girl, because I almost never cry. Prosperous, because my Chinese name means ‘little stream running through the forest’, and also beautiful, because my English name is the same as one of the most beautiful actresses of the time, or so my father thinks.



I will be perfect. My mother cannot conceive of me being a rebellious teenager, because she never remembers being one. She cannot imagine her daughter as an artist, a musician, an author. In her hometown, if you didn’t work, didn’t try, didn’t study, you were stuck there, among overworked fields, dirty snow. She was the one who went to a school for the gifted, went to university in Beijing, and flew to a distant land named Australia which had just opened its doors to new immigrants. Australia, where the grass was green and the toilets weren’t holes in the ground.



So she simply smiles, content in the knowledge that I will grow up in the Lucky Country.

I really suck.

I messed up pretty much everything yesterday in the show. The actors/dancers/singers were awesome, I just sucked.

There's this ticket issue which I cannot be bothered going through at the moment.

And you should really read this, because it's rather beautiful.

Here's a poem from e. e. cummings. Original formatting.



nearer:breath of my breath:take not thy tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting thy tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white dream
in the glad flesh of my fear:more neatly ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squriming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.

Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,

the poetic carcass of a girl

Selling one ticket. Got the love?

I have one ticket for Florence and the Machine. Which cost me $84.95. Or something. And I can't really go. And no one wants to buy just one ticket. Eff. Eff it. AAAAAARGHHHH. Is selling tickets on eBay illegal? It's not even scalping, it's just that I need to get rid of it.

On a different note, I feel extremely sick. In the stomach department. I hate you, dairy. You're evil and I will never eat you again. -Rude gesture-

Also, I sort of miss you, which is bad. Bad bad bad. Because I shouldn't be. Missing you, that is. At the same time, I never want to see your face again. (But I do.) And right now I'm listening to the Smiths, and they're shiny. (Thankyou, Joss Whedon.)

I think 'brightside' should be one word. Brightside. Brightside. On the brightside. It's pretty.

Colour my life with the chaos of trouble.