I saw this man on Saturday and am now carrying his child. Do not ask; it is the mystery of the dance.



Seriously, that show was teh radd. Mr Manuva can only be described as debonair and I am happy to be great with his child. It was also an excuse to have a super-happy-fun night out with Miss Cheney, sans any male distractions, which hasn't happened in ever so long.

I also have a way sexy RSS feed which all y'all should subscribe to. It's in the sidebar underneath the archives links. Subscribe away, my net-savvy minions.

Unease bordering on panic during that hour late in the afternoon, right before the sun begins to set, when the light isn't quite what you'd call dim, but all the shadows have disappeared and the birds have stopped making any noise. This time makes me want to run inside, call my friends, hide under the covers or make someone hold me to escape the uneasiness creeping through my guts. This is the worst time of the day.

Unidentifiable queasiness when I pull into our cluttered garage and see my dad's enlarger sitting on top of a disused cupboard. I don't know what it is. It just looks so... old. It has a dial-type timer, instead of one which displays the numbers like a digital clock, and it has a swing-out red filter from before the time of multigrade papers. It doesn't even have a slot under the lens for carrying contrast filters. I don't know what makes me feel queasier; the redundancy of the enlarger, the hopes lingering around it - hopes of escape, art, expression, a life - of a man clenched between a chattering family and a demanding job; or the way I know so much about it, how I've probably spent more time in the darkroom than he ever has, and how he doesn't know and won't ever know.

The early flush of cold on a winter night, when it's so cold and dry the air is like breathing icewater, and the cold gets into my muscles and bones and skin and all I want to do is run, leap and frolic like a two year old or a baby sheep. It makes me want to run and run in great, goofy circles, chasing my imaginary tail, until someone will come run with me and we can chase each other.

A kind of weariness when you step into a party for the very first time, before you've even established where the booze is, who you know there and where you can smoke. It's a feeling as though the house, the people in it, even the ground beneath your feet are all temporary. No, it's more like you are temporary. It's a flush of mortality, a quick reminder that you're here for an indeterminate time and everything will keep going after you're gone, just as you keep going day after day as people everywhere slip away.

I'm reading 'Breakfast of Champions' for the first time since high school. This is after I snorted 'Cats Cradle,' 'Slapstick' and 'Mother Night.' It's having the same effect on me it always has; that is, I'm starting to go around narrating things in my head in a Vonnegutish way. Like Kilgore Trout I've accepted that I am to be the eyes and ears of the universe, so I keep explaining things. 'This is a cafe, creator.' I say silently. 'It's where you get coffee and sit for hours pretending to read and write, when you're really waiting for a familiar face to save you from the inside of your head.' Or 'that girl's wearing tapered leg jeans, creator. She's ignoring the fact they make her look like a piano stool because they're somehow in fashion. Fashion is where a group of people conspire to make people wear silly things.'

I wonder if there's a category in the DSM-IV for this?

You know when you get a sudden surfeit of something you normally don't have, and it feels so danged luxurious you just want to buy a white tiger and a smoking jacket to enjoy the full effect?

Well, it's three o'clock and I'm not at work, so I have the rest of the day all to my lonesome. I owe this to a bout of terrible, terrible period pain*, certainly not the worst I've ever experienced but definitely the most acute. I've only just started to get used to having a uterus again after taking out the rod of glory and fun times. It's a crazy little medical implant, that one. It's either horrible for you or fantastic, and I was in the latter category.

Anyway. I went out today planning on doing all manner of practical things, ignoring the roiling demon in my pelvis. I'd only just arrived in Cash Converters to look for my stolen camera when it hit like a punch. I felt sick, I was shaking, I was confused. I drove home ashen-faced, where I took a bunch of codeine and paced around the house waiting for it to work. My God, if that was a hint of just how painful my uterus can be I am never, ever having children. I knew it would pass, but I also knew I couldn't effectively pick up a pen or drink water, so I called my boss to say I'd be sick. I then passed out on the couch with a pillow clutched between my legs and BB Cat draped over my head.

I literally woke up ten minutes ago, and I feel great. I have an hour and a half until close of business, so all I've got to do is flatten my bed hair, race out the door and finish doing what I need to. Dang, I'm in such a good mood, what with it being International Talk Like A Pirate Day and all, I might even pop down the shops to buy some things to cook dinner.

The world is my oyster, and I can do anything I like all night. Yarrgh, me hearties, everything's coming up Rachael.


*if you think period pain is TMI then I suggest you return to primary school and resume giggling whenever anyone says 'titmouse.'

Gentle reader, it's been a difficult week, one which sees my piking at the nanna-approved hour of midnight, taking to my bed with a cup of tea and a cat at the nearest opportunity, and making long phone calls to my BFF (who, with hands full of children and family drama, probably doesn't need them) to whimper about the unfairness of the world while I clutch a pillow to my hard-done-by bosom.

Such vague complaints about hard weeks, difficult times and the capriciousness of the universe are common in the blogosphere, and I'm always irritated because no one wants to elaborate any further. So, here is my week; it began last Sunday when I met a snake-eyed man (don't really know what that means) with tight jeans, cowboy boots and greasy hair. After lighting each other's cigarettes we decided we were in love and ran away in his Monaro to our own love-nest in a caravan park near Tathra.

His name was Johnny, for the record.

On Monday, having donned a pair of acid-wash jeans, bleached my hair and changed my name to 'Patsy,' I found a dog. He was a great dog. Admittedly, he had three legs, and couldn't see very well, and he had a bad skin condition, but I loved him and named him Ralph. Ralph and I had a great time frolicking in the bindii, washing Johnny's underpants and reading New Idea.

As you can imagine, for the whole of Monday night I was blissfully, blissfully happy. I had Ralph by my side, a dinner of 2 Minute Noodles in my belly, and my man was tinkering with his meth lab outside. You know, I'd never thought it possible that I, of all people, could have found my own domestic paradise, and I fell asleep next to Johnny's twitchng form in a bubble of gratitude and love.

I woke the next morning to find Ralph gone, Johnny gone, my clogs and Winnie Blues gone. There was no note, only a pile of dirty laundry and the smouldering remains of a meth lab attracting the attention of the local constabulary. Not knowing where to go or what to do I hitched a ride to Darwin with a truck driver named Stan, who had Tourettes and a hook for a hand.

Stan let me sleep in the back, nestled between crates of Delta Goodrem underwear and incontinence pads. I was grateful for his kindness but he wasn't much of a talker. He spoke only in monosyllables when he wasn't spasmodically jerking his head and spewing dirty-sounding syllables. I found myself with only my broken heart, the open road, an uncertain future, and countless pairs of pastel underpants embroidered with roses for company. This was when I began to realise this might not be such a good week for me.

When we reached Darwin Stan and I said our goodbyes. I went to wander the docks looking for a new life and somewhere to bandage the major lacerations from shaking Stan's hook hand. A Norwegian sailor named Oslo took pity on me, and invited me to join his crew as a cook. That night I was aboard the Kottur og Stulka preparing lutefisk for 90 burly sailors with fairy tale accents and tattoos of anchors. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but they declared my codfish soaked in lye delicious and toasted my health

Afterwards, as I tended to my chemical burns, I sat on the deck watching the heaving black sea and contemplating how Johnny must be doing, if he'd gone back for his laundry and whether he was remembering Ralph's scabies ointment. I went to sleep that night curled next to Oslo's foot locker with a heavy heart, wondering what the next day would bring.

During the night the ship hit an iceberg, which stoved in the hull and split the ship in half, so we found ourselves clinging to crates of counterfeit Fendi handbags like lifeboats. A group of sailors and I managed to stay alive by burning a few miraculously dry Croissants and Baguettes and sharing a bag of Maltesers I had snuck on board, but most perished in the glacial waters of the Bering Strait. After a few hours a group of Inuits, who were taking three bloated, slab-faced Americans on a pleasure cruise, rescued us and took us to the Diomede Islands. I was given a mug of cocoa and a penguin-skin coat, which I took reluctantly given my recent pyromaniac dreams, and left to consider what to do next.

Oslo and his friends Galt and Halvor suggested that we have a three-way wedding and start a commune with an ideology based on free love and seal clubbing, but I had to decline. It wasn't that I didn't like Galt and Halvor and Oslo, but my heart still belonged to my Johnny and, besides, Galt had really bad athlete's foot. I farewelled my Scandinavian companions, and departed on a Kodiak boat with the Americans Judy, Hank and Cody.

While I had no money, no passport and hadn't showered in two days Hank, a salesman of restaurant supplies, decided he liked the cut of my jib and hid me in his suitcase for the long flight to Tampa. By Thursday night I had found a position as a dishpig in a retirement home filled with ageing American stereotypes. As I scraped applesauce and cream of eel from countless plates I felt wistful. Florida was sunny and full of palm trees and hanging chad and all, but what I really wanted was to go home. But how? I only had enough money for a flight to Sacramento.

I asked my kitchen compatriots Jorge and Stan for advice. Through various routes and channels they supplied me with a balloon full of cocaine, which, thankfully, I only had to tape to my belly rather than conceal in other areas. We bought a ticket for a flight, and they drove me to the airport.

The plan worked perfectly. It took only moments for teams of burly customs officers to descend upon me and my belly full of hte finest Columbian. Within hours I had been searched, interrogated, and soon found myself on a 'plane headed for Sydney, escorted by two unsmiling FBI agents.

Back in Australia I confessed to the Feds that I had been beaten and brainwashed by Stan and Jorge and the charges were dropped. I hitchhiked home to Canberra, where I found that few had noticed my absence. After watching a couple of taped episodes of Foreign Correspondent I went to sleep in my own bed, with my own cat, grateful to be back to normal.

Saturday morning I discovered my car had been broken into and someone had stolen my camera.

It was a shit of a week, let me tell you.

I had a dream last night that I had to burn a bunch of penguins to death with a flame thrower. It was okay, because I had metamorphosed into a grizzled escaped convict with stubble, a scar across my cheek and a penis, and somehow I knew the penguins were bad and had to die. Still. The squeaks they made as they bubbled and scorched have haunted me all day, and I feel terrible. I know they're only dream penguins, and I know I don't have a scar on my cheek or a penis (thank God; most awkward organ ever), but I feel guilt.

'Is like you are opening window.'

'Is like you are driving car.'

'Is like you are driving car with cigar in hand.'

'Is like knocking on door but harder.'

'Is like I pinch you and you slap me.'

He's started calling me 'little sister.' He has a moustache. I think I'm in love.

Leon and I were talking in my car in the grimy inflated alley way where I've taken to parking in Civic. By 'in my car' I mean I was in my car and he was leaning on the open door. Quite frankly, it's what we do. We bounce off some walls, break some hearts (mostly our own), and have long, long conversations in my car. We also fling ourselves upon one another, play with each other's hair and exclaim at the hotness of our respectives asses. This is why we are pseudo-life partners.

We were talking, Leon was leaning, I was staving off sleep and recurring visions of the Miss University competition I had just attended when a wirey blonde man came up to us. 'Sorry, I don't know if you're having a fight or you're boyfriend or girlfriend or...'

We made noises to indicate that we were not. The guy was clearly drunk but amiable. He looked me up and down. 'You have something to say?'

'Uhm... not really. I'm mostly trying to stay awake.'

'No, I mean, you're the type of girl who always has something to say. Like... you're a Narrabundah* girl but, you know... not.'

'I went to 'Bundah.'

'See? I'm right. You've got the glasses and the pants and the stockings and, man, you've totally got something to say.'

'You saw all that in my pants?'

'I can, like, tell stuff about people just by looking at them.'

Leon was convinced. 'You're like a roadside psychoanalyst. Do me! Do me!'

'You,' the blonde guy squinted and paused. He looked Leon up and down. 'You are really into this girl but, like, you're intimidated.'

'I think you're projecting a bit...'

'No, no. You're into her and you're, like, on the same wavelength and everything but you're not together and you really want to be.'

'Uh...'

'No, serious, I can just tell these things.'

He talked about maths and his journalist girlfriend before going elsewhere to break into his friend's car. 'Turns out we were wrong,' Leon said. 'We're not pseudo-life partners. We're pseudo-star crossed lovers.'

'Yeah. One day we'll be walking along just hanging, chilling, when we'll hear The Cardigans and look into each other's eyes and it'll all be over.'

'Or I'll hear a Cure song and start dancing, and I'll see this other figure dancing in the distance, and as we move closer and closer I'll see you and think, aw, crap, it's Rachael.'

'Smooth, dude.'

I really wish the drunk guy had said something more profound, something about vast acts of God or the fate of the spring harvest. As Leon pointed out, drunk guys like him who start conversations with strangers really are modern oracles. Either that or they've seen too many damned movies.


*For those not in Canberra - and I can't imagine there'll be many of you - kids get shuffled off from high school to college for year 11 and 12. 'Bundah is notorious for being the art/stoner college. If you were in the jazz school or spoke German or painted by rolling around naked on a goopy canvas then you were set; it was the rugby playing jock types who had much to fear. I went there but I was one of those sycophantic IB kids.

They call it an extreme act of looting, I call it one 18-year old kid thinking on his feet and saving dozens of people from dying in the wet, abandoned streets of New Orleans. Jabbor Gibson is my new hero.

The more I think about it the angrier I get, but that isn't an unusual reaction. What I do think is that this event will trigger major, major change in America. Major change. I think it might prove to the greater American population that their government doesn't give a flying fuck about them. Hell, it might even provoke the apathetic saps into voting for chrissakes.

That said, this is a nation that re-elected Bush and willingly sent their young and their foolish merrily off to a meaningless war in Iraq. Therefore, this nation is populated by morons.

I'm re-reading 'Cats Cradle' again, which is a good thing because I had my second Vonnegut-related tattoo finished on Saturday. One quote seems relevant to New Orleans. 'Duffle, [not the bag - heh, I'm clever. R] in the bokononist sense, is the destiny of thousands upon thousands of persons when placed in the hands of a stuppa. A stuppa is a fogbound child.'

In other news, David Byrne has a blog and I was not informed?! You go now.

I vaguely knew the blonde girl sitting near my friend Warwick. Everyone's a friend in this town, so I tried to start a conversation. I told her I liked her shirt and mentioned seeing her around uni sometimes.

'Yeah, thanks.' She said. 'I'm not sure I - oh, wait. You were in that class with that lecturer, weren't you? I'm a friend of that other person.'*

'Oh, yeah.' I hated that class. I had no respect for the lecturer, and spent just as much time bitching about it with my manic, friendly, equally bitchy cohorts. So I asked her what I asked everyone in that class. 'What did you think of her?'

She paused. 'I remember you. You came up to me and my friend in a cafe and told us you hated the lecturer, like, how she showed us her neck or something like that.'

'Yeah, I really didn't-'

'No, you really, really hated her. You kept telling us how you couldn't stand her. It was random. Like, I couldn't understand it.'

I knew her friend much better than I knew this girl. The friend and I used to hang around with this group of sarcastic, faintly superior, forever wise-cracking people. I don't remember the cafe, and I don't remember the blonde girl being around when I bitched, as always, to her friend. Maybe I should have explained that. Instead...

'Yeah, I really didn't like her. I mean, she kept making mistakes and glossing over things and, I don't know, she really massacred it. What did you think?'

She pursed her lips and looked away for a few long seconds. Warwick had gone to the bathroom and I stared fretfully at the door for him to come back.

'She made a mistake about Valerie Solanas, but, I mean, God...'

She trailed off and looked away again. I should have changed the subject, talked about music, asked the guy sitting next to me if bleaching his hair like that hurt, but I felt like a toad pinned out for dissection. I felt excessive, overly dramatic, painfully arrogant. I was suddenly deeply ashamed for what I was wearing, how loud I was talking, for ever complaining, whining, bitching or badmouthing anyone.

She looked up. 'Your necklace is broken.'

'Oh, it's not broken, it's got these magnetic bits, and... I'm going to try and find, uhm, I need a cigarette but, uh, have a good night. It was nice talking to you.'

She smiled tightly. I glanced over my shoulder as I hurried away to catch her rolling her eyes. And I just kept going, growing smaller and smaller with each step.

*ham-fisted attempt at not flinging too many personal details around the internet