What can you do when the rain falls in drips, then flushes, all quite suddenly?
Driving past wind-wrecked streets
With hands slung loosely over the icy steering wheel.
I wondered what happens to nests in the trees;
Observing the fallen twigs and fruit splattered on glistening asphalt.
Winter incubates memories
Frozen in time and essence.
I remember better things that happen to me in winter
Indelible, I see occasional spurts of these events replayed.

There was no pretence of affection
No great length taken to hide disinterest.
Eyes wandered far off, met momentarily,
And a new topic was started.
My resentment over the lack of remorse has petered off;
In its place quiet resignation.
The air was heavy,
And the wind was gutsy.
A limp airkiss later,
We were off, with no promises to catch up.

I woke up with puffy eyes and no colour sense.
I matched pale green with maroon,
And was, naturally, late for work.

Beth Hirsch sang in my head,
You too, should go listen.

Between peach-laced sangrias and champagne brunch,
I've slipped in and out of a 3-night giggly state of consciousness.
Between receiving a compilation tape on 5 April 2000 and falling in love with The Orchids,
I've been sold a sleeveless copy of the vinyl, the last of its kind, I've been told.
Between generosity and discretion, there lies a thin line-
There I lost a friend, made another.
Between taupe and black
I've chosen the latter, of course.
Breaking the wave of inertia
I bought myself a new project.
With much help and pious commitment
It should all fall into place.
I feel like I'm slowly recovering the estranged pieces I'd written about,
Because I've chosen to discard the old cartons of sentimentalities.

I fell asleep to vexed voices speaking over each other.
With a residual hint of tannin on my lips,
And the next day's tasks laid out in my head,
Sleep found me not long after.
I dreamt of strange things:
Of people at work, and ex-partners;
Of inter-changable faces, and hotel bath tubs.
I found myself awoken by the howling wind at sporadic intervals.
But I always slipped back to sleep.
I drove down the leafier stretch of Bulleen Road,
To Beth Gibbons' beautiful poetry.
At work I kept my head down and eyes straight,
And the hours slid sympathetically by.

I saw the pain in her eyes,
Felt it in my gut.
I heard the defiance in his voice
And washed it away in the shower.
I sat in semi-darkness,
Shaping a tune that resembled Jobim's Corcovado.
I've read grand theories,
But all this time it'd been before my eyes.
I sometimes felt like I was actively sealing my own fate;
Other times I saw it secured-
In genes, birth, (fore/hind)sight.
At times I concede to the inner-linings of my adversions.
Admission of fear however, does not justify flight.
There are things I wish I'd never seen,
I've run for long enough now.
I'd like very much to believe I'll be different.
But I've seen myself in her, I am a part of her.
I've seen many others like him,
And together we played out the very roles I turned my back to.

This will be my winter of disarray.
I'd flirt with the idea of doing things,
None of which will be materialised, come summer.
Drive time tune: Cocteau Twin's Twin Lights
I've looked a long time for this EP, three years. I looked under the 'C' section in every CD shop I went into.
I refused to order it because I believed certain things were worth the effort. Even if the effort was unwarranted and/or unnecessary.
Rilkean Heart is a killer track. And it made me think of Sunday mornings in the kitchen, with the trams strumbling over noisy tracks, us in our robes, fag in hand, ribena in a giant yellow cup.

Over uneven pavements
And narrow streets.
Below the sky
Resembling a marble slab marked with swirls of clouds.
Few things fascinate me as much as the sky does:
Sometimes its overwhelming vastness,
But mostly its ever-changing colour-
Particularly the minutes before the sun retires,
I often yearn to claim possession over the rich hues,
Contemplating the imagination behind its creation.
With Lisa Miller's Car Tape as my sole companion home,
The ash-greyness soon became too much to bear.
I needed a happy fix,
And slid into a car park behind Demand and Supply.
I circled aimlessly
Feeling like a lost child.
I soaked in the scent of tropical rattan,
Looked casually, halfheartedly for a wall clock.
I felt my spirits decline as the density of the clouds grew.
By the time I drove up the steep slope of my driveway,
I was tired, brittle, and close to tears.

'I read you letters
One by one
I still love you
When all's said and done'

-T.L. McCall, Nothing Takes the Place of You-

Boring Mexican food,
Garnished with intimate conversation and lack-lustre spirits in the wintery gloom.
The spot: Fiesta Mexican Resturant
The drink: Half Miles Creek 1999 Shiraz
The problem: A chinese chef and lousy latte
The easy solution: A cigarette and more wine
Toasted to: Change

Across the Indian Ocean,
A text message:
Rate your present state of affairs, 1 to 10.
I've been undulating at +6.
For the longest time, I've been persisting at a steady drone.

I slipped easily to sleep last night.
An average person takes 7 minutes to fall asleep.
At 1.48, I awoke with a start.
I needed to rehydrate.
I tried all three positions: left, face-up, right.
And still the thoughts were running.
Still the mind was demanding answers.
Finally I compressed the thoughts and kept to one.
Those were the longest 7 minutes.

One long weekend later,
All the leaves have fallen off the fig tree outside the kitchen window,
Leaving only incongruous knobs of fruit.
Last week I observed as the showers of silver birch leaves rustled in the wind.
Unlike the restless fidgeting of bigger, clumsier types, the silver birch looked as if there were a million butterflies clipped to its branches, all fluttering gently, beautifully.
And today, they too were all gone:
Butterflies, leaves, the last hints of movement.

I coughed up a ball of yellow phlegm this morning.
I think I'm ill.
Or getting there.
The gaudy excesses of Chapel St proved to be too much.
Even for me.
Snazzy cars, air kissing, ludicrously loud greetings.
The sky was a forlorn map of dusty pink and cyan.
Sun setting, temperature dipping.

Sitting alone in Lotus,
Quarter past six and still waiting.
The hushed whispers and muffled giggles annoyed me;
It felt like a library except there wasn't an old man in an argyle vest and tweed trousers to tell me off.
I started to scribble and sip my GT like it was lemonade.
The day had been flat -
My mood was hovering just around mediocrity,
And this day, along with many similar others,
Will be turfed from the databank of worthwhile memories.

She told the story over a gin,
Eyes grey and miry,
Lips in a meniscus formation.
She went back again,
She'd heard the single vioin playing then,
And could still hear faint harmonics.
As they walked, withdrew, and then became just a story.
Three degrees apart, they met in autumn:
She once (and only once) thought it was two autumns too late.
Brought together by ticket stubs and someone else's mistakes,
Their brief encounter seemed as surreal as the films they saw.
Yet there were details that still felt so real.
Their lives weaved in and out awkwardly like
Inexperienced hands playing Bach's fugues for the first time-
Waiting, always waiting for the other voice to unfold.
They sat at arms-length,
But lay abreast,
Up steel stairs, in the morsels of light that were permitted through the broken venetians.
The crispness of morning air made it almost painful to breathe like she did walking to her car,
Wrapped in a white faux fur shawl and sour bourbon vapour.
It did not surprise her when it ended,
For it never quite began,
Not in a proper way.
There were three wrongs,
And in the end three separate ways.
She sometimes wondered about him,
Usually when she was having a gin and tonic.