London days and dates for one

It's been a week now since returning to - gasp, sunny! - London. Note I didn't say "warm" London but sunshine seems a conciliatory gesture, especially at this time of year and so I will simply be thankful. For the sunshine and for socks.

Lovely Boy is back to work and I too am hard at work, trying in vain to get my part of the book as finished as I can as soon as possible. Which has meant since I began last Friday, writing the equivalent of an essay a day. We're talking 3000 words and if today is proving anything to go by, just as many calories too, and even at this rate I still don't think I'll be finished by the end of the month. It's the ultimate submersion therapy for my procrastination problem to say the very least...

I do feel inspired though and had a really positive day at the gallery yesterday with some affirming feedback and I just keep envisioning the book, finished, published and in my hot little hand. Full0time paid employment currently escapes me, not for lack of trying, but hopefully something will come up soon enough, especially if I want to get my travel plans shuffling along.

Last weekend was really lovely. LB and I went to Chinatown for dumplings and steamed pork buns and a series of serious conversations about being Grown Up and The Future (this is not code for babies by the way, fuck no, rather, an allusion to talk about life plans and where to live and how to buy a house when you have no money and, if you're me, no immediate prospects for le cashflow problem. And now that I've explained it, it isn't even an allusion. It's just a long sentence. Sigh.)

 

Anyway, the weekend. Sunday I left the B at home, because for some crazy ass reason he "hates" East London and I went back to my old stomping ground in search of flowers, flea markets and Antipodean coffee. I can't say it enough but I love the Columbia Road flower market. And I love East London because even with all its grimy grossness there is some stubborn charm in there and I miss it. Loads.

getting arty with the iphone...

I did come home laden with flowers however and a promise to myself that I would take myself on a date each week, just me and London, chillin', hanging out, seein' some Stuff. A necessary social arrangement really if I am to make this year as worthwhile as I want it to be and a date tomorrow night with some girlies from The Retail Job should be just the tonic to my floral gin.

What I do have to do tomorrow, is not eat my way through 3000 words and somewhere in there try to get to the pool for a head clearing, arm toning (?....) swim. At this moment in time a truck full of Snickers bars wouldn't get me there but tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully a sunny new day.

still getting arty...

Major(ca)ly excited

T-minus six sleeps until LB and I flee London for a week of self-imposed dissertation exile. In the Mediterranean no less.

I was about to say that Saturday cannot come fast enough but having just glanced casually to my left and spying the fat pile of notes and scribbled essay plans I strategically placed yesterday for maximum guilt impact, well, Saturday can come when it's ready - I need this week to write another 5,200 words. Give or take.


It was always the plan to put the whole bloody thing in a drawer for a week once I had the bulk of it written - a bit of breathing space, some time out, some distance... Yes, I know how it sounds and yes, my dissertation and I are involved and yes, we're going through a rough patch... More than anything it's just a chance really to recharge physically and intellectually without the aid of stimulants and a daily contribution to the profit margins of the local corner store and their Diet Coke supplier.

Last week was designated for all things writing and general genius. It turned out to be a week of soggy, foot-dragging exhaustion and academic ennui. Thank god for dramatic death scenes and overwrought acting on Australian afternoon soap operas. To be fair, I did spend an awful lot of time thinking last week, and the week before, trying to find those elusive signposts for my elusive argument. Fortunately the concentrated brain frying wasn't entirely in vain as I did have a couple of significant eureka moments - elusive flashes of intellectual clarity - that struck, somewhat oxymoronically, while battling noisy, shoving, hectic public transport experiences. Honestly, if the Circle Line had wi-fi I'd sit there all day.


Anyway, I have a lot to do this week, including buying a beach towel, but I can't wait for Saturday because I know that irrespective of how much Redbull I need to drink over the next five days (read: A LOT) and how utterly crap I feel by the end of it (read: VERY), I know it will be done. Because my dissertation does not have a passport and is not allowed to travel.

Prom date

I'm toying with the subtitle "This Dissertation has been brought to you courtesy of the good folks at Redbull and Diet Coke."

I am tired and a bit teary and generally feeling not like some epic mountaineer but like the epic mountaineer's sherpa. Dissertation writing is lonely, heavy business and I am s-l-o-w-l-y going insane. My days run something like this:

8.30am: alarm goes off
8:40am: snooze button
8:50am: snooze button
9:00am/9:10am/9:20am: snooze button
9:30-10:30am: shower, breakfast, faffing, 1st visit of the day to the Costcutter for Redbull and Diet Coke
11:00am: Sit down at computer
11:02am: Get up and find something else to eat, struck by pangs of procrastination masquerading themselves as peckishness
11:05am-2:15pm: write, struggle, smack head against wall, (optional 2nd visit to Costcutter), write some more
2:15-2:45pm: Half Hour of Shame (read: Home and Away)
2:45-3:00pm: miscellaneous faffing
3:00-7:00pm: write, struggle, write some more, smack head, (optional bout of tears), (optional 3rd visit to Costcutter)
7:00-11:00pm: all or any combination of the above, plus occasional guest starring events such as movie dates, dinner dates or, as happened this week, a Prom date.


One of the myriad adventures LB and I added to our list several weeks ago was a date to the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall and so on Tuesday we headed off to Kensington for some high brow culture. And by high I mean Up in The Gods high, back row, count the bald heads below high. It was so fabulous. A bit of Mendelssohn, a bit of Sibelius, a bit of schizophrenic pretentious contemporary and we had ourselves a ticked box. The whole point of the Proms is that for not very much money (our tickets cost 11 pounds) anyone and everyone can come and experience classical music at the Royal Albert. While the whole experience is designed to be unpretentious and relaxed I'm still not sure how I feel about seeing someone in their tracksuit pants sipping a glass of rose at the interval. I think I feel, well, "just no."

Dissertation Karaoke

I woke this morning with soggy eyes and an elevated sense of already elevated stress about my dissertation. And all because I had a dream. A dream where, instead of writing 15,000 words on some aspect of contemporary art practice, addressing all relevant cultural and political theories, I had to write an album. Not only that, I had to then present each of the 12 self-penned songs on my album, explaining the structure, content and intent of each verse, sing one of them and then design an appropriate cover which had to feature an image of yours truly. And please justify that too. I have felt sick and anxious and nervy and consequently exhausted all day. Ahh Panic. Hello my friend.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

Oh to still be on a long weekend.

Dorset was just so charming - beautiful countryside, rambling little villages, cream teas, the mellifluous sounds of seagulls in the early morning. Loved it. Loved it so much I still am struggling to care about the fact I didn't get past 76 words of my essay before hitting Le Wall du Apathy. Have yet to hit 100 words - still - and still I don't care. I feel like, I've done the reading, I've had a think, I've learned a few things - surely the point has been made? Why do I have to write 3,500 torturous words to prove it? Can't you just take my word for it?

But I digress. Dorset. ahh. Yes, so LB, his sister and brother-in-law and I took to the road and after negotiating our way out of London last Friday (so glad I don't drive in this bloody city....) and driving through quaint little villages like the one surrounding Corfe Castle, we found ourselves in the seaside town of Swanage.


Swanage is rather well-known, both for its sandy beach and proximity to the Jurassic Coastline (dinosaur fossils anyone?) but also for its old pier. It was a grey sort of day when we arrived but strolling the pier we were rather charmed to discover that to raise money for the pier's upkeep people can buy small brass plaques and have them etched and then embedded in the planks.


Just so many lovely stories and memories and tributes. I'm not entirely sure what they were referring to but I think my favourite was the one that read "David Lloyd caught the crabs here"...


Waking to cooing seagulls and the ready smell of salt in the air the next day we undertook a walk along the coastline towards Studland and Poole Harbour.


It was just, well, so English. Green rolling hills, majestic cliffs, hikers in sensible clothing bearing mountain poles.

Once we got to the ferry crossing at Poole Harbour (after an altercation with a stroppy bus driver who took us the last leg from Studland) we took an over-priced ferry ride to the National Trust managed (and consequently over-priced) Brownsea Island. The one-time home to Henry VIII and the original camping ground for Baden-Powell and his boy scouts, there isn't much happening on Brownsea Island besides shy squirrels and baby ducks and peacocks and stroppy rangers who don't like it when grown men climb trees....


The next day we took in Corfe Castle village and after 20 minutes of deciding it was pretty but also pretty boring, we took to the car and meandered our way through the countryside. By luck we came across the stunning Lulworth Bay....


... where we had icecreams in the sunshine before further meandering on to Weymouth for cream tea and an ogle at the donkey rides, bumper cars and Punch and Judy shows that litter the popular beachfront.


So English.

The rest of our time was spent drinking and eating and having afternoon siestas - was all very stressful as you might imagine. SO stressful there are plans afoot to book a holiday to Sardinia tomorrow. Oh. And write another 3402 words. Oh. And pack up my room.

Dorset and packed and ready for a long weekend.

Well, not quite packed perhaps but definately ready. God I am SICK of school work. Easter was a sloth's delight with plenty of quality time both with LB and the so-good-it-was-nearly-spiritual chocolate he gave me courtesy of Maison du Chocolat. Sigh... But not so much achieved on the university front. I have 24 hours to write 3,500 words and dammit it will be done. Because I'm not going to Dorset with this bloody thing hanging over my head. Am so looking forward to getting out of London for a few days. Notwithstanding my sojourn home over Christmas I haven't been out of London since last October when I went to Berlin and god that feels like forever ago...


This is not Berlin. Clearly. This is Sardinia. This is where I'm hoping to go next month, if it's possible to plan a whim a month in advance. I need some sunshine and some swimming. And some sleeping. And some sangria. And not necessarily all in that order.

Slack tarts and cheese

Again with the slackness - it's a bit of a worry really. No deep-seated psychological hesitations this time, just overdue university work, insomnia and sneaky dates to Borough Markets for cheese and brownies and some genteel lazing in the sunshine.

The weather has been nothing if not schizophrenic lately - my Year of Living Optimistically had a short run last week with balmy 15 degree days and blue skies. I may have even worn open-toed shoes. I know. Indeed the East End has been putting on the ritz lately as Spring starts to make itself known. I've discovered to my delight two magnolia trees on my street and am loving the gradual transformation of all the depressingly grey spindly trees, with their arthritic miserable limbs and general lack of joie de vivre, into cheery blossoms of pink and white. It's truly charming - even with the requisite shopping bags strewn throughout...

Spring not quite sprung but getting there

Winter is definately so last season. The daffodils are out, the ratio of sun:cloud, while wobbling occasionally like a cheap drunk, is nonetheless redressing itself and there is generally an increasing sense of optimism to be found in the air. It's quite lovely actually and while not quite open-toed shoe weather it's tantalisingly close. I can feel it.

There has been much and nothing happening of late. I fear I'm turning into one of those people I normally loathe - those smiley, hand-holding, kissing on public transport types whose death by choking on their own kissy kissy smugness I regularly invoke. I suppose when the karmic stakes are measured up there are worse ways to go....

The last 10 days have been distracting and hectic and not a little tiring. I am trying to get through a hideously protracted essay, one that got well and truly left by the wayside in the dealings with all things housemate. As usual I'm juggling stress and apathy and my irrepressible need to be brilliant and it's proving fucking torturous. Especially as the deadline was two days ago... I think it will be fine once I get started though and I've surprised myself by discovering that in fact I have an urgent curiosity to understand the implications of what I'm researching.

Under the somewhat pretentious rubric of 'the art network', I have been encouraged [read explicitly pushed] to write about the Sydney Biennale, looking at how it is understood curatorially, geo-politically and artistically in terms of post-colonial theory, globalisation and the Asia-Pacifc region. I hadn't realised before now just how big a victim I had become of the cultural cringe. Perhaps my not-so-latent convict blood has realised that I'm not in Kansas anymore skippy and finding that balance between being Australian and being on the other side of the world is actually more complicated than it might first seem.

Whatever the case, it's been a revelation to discover a desire within myself to understand the place of Australia within the global world and the complexity of questions about responsibility, reception and engagement when it comes to transactions of culture.


One thing is for sure - this assignment is a long way from the last, an auction catalogue entry about Andy Warhol's famous Triple Elvis painting. Perhaps I was being provocative but I rather enjoyed comparing Elvis to a Renaissance religious icon...

God I can't wait to have this essay out of the way. So many more fun things to think about - possible weekends in Cornwall, a party at a tiki bar on Portobello Rd tonight, the arrival of European summer time....

Meerkats and pink elephants

I have been a rubbish writer of late and I'm only vaguely sure why - the usual excuses of procrastination, distraction and ambivalence are as shaky as my hands after an excessive night of drinking cocktails and passing out instead of sleeping... but I'll get to that. I think what's happened is I've reached a curious sort of existential crossroad in this whole writing about my life in a public forum lark. Here's my question: When does writing too much, being too explicit, getting too personal just get weird? Never mind slightly compromising...

I've always tried to write honestly, though with an at-times inconvenient conscience that tells me (scarily enough in a voice reminiscent of my grandmother....) that if I can't say anything nice then I shouldn't say anything at all...

Pancakes and post-post modernism

I saw this great t-shirt the other day. It read "I can stop procrastinating. Just you wait and see."

Rather sums up my life at the moment. There's been lots of procrastinating and lots of waiting. Most recently for pancakes in honour of Pancake Day but also some serious waiting for everything from emails to dawn to summer to inspiration to an end to a seriously upsetting situation with a seriously suicidal flatmate. Say what you will but I've never been one to cope terribly well with not knowing what the hell is going to happen next.

Jo can't believe it's been so long since she last wrote

Jo was unable to write on her blog last week because she spent five days nannying precocious teenagers in posh parts of London.

Jo is incidentally £600 richer and so relieved she's no longer 15.

Jo also hasn't been able to write because it's been hard to find something pithy - never mind appropriate - to say about a seriously depressed flatmate.

Jo has felt hysterical lately about her lack of handle on all things university but is so relieved that her hours of pointless stress about a rubbish presentation weren't for nothing. She learnt how to insert video into a powerpoint presentation...

Jo started a new job behind the bar at a cute theatre in Blackfriars last week and despite a fleeting moment of sheer fucking terror in the first two minutes of the interval, actually rather enjoyed herself.

Jo has begun to think that maybe London isn't so mean and awful. She does though still think it's expensive and dirty.

Jo knows she's been living in London for a while when 11 degrees feels genuinely balmy.

Jo wishes she would stop arranging her thoughts as facebook status updates.

Pause

I had an interesting discussion with a friend last week. Following a conversation we'd had the day before about my inability to complete anything with more than a few hours to spare, she confessed the next day to having pondered later about whether I was the laziest ambitious person she knew or the most ambitious lazy person. I conceded that would indeed be a tough nut to crack. And then we parted ways and I went home and did my washing, re-arranged the contents of my drawers and considered writing my essay.

I'm not sure if I've solved it for her but I can tell you this much for free - when a girl is too busy even to procrastinate she is fucking busy my friend.

The final countdown

This time in two weeks I will be kicking about Hong Kong airport waiting for my connecting flight home. Too exciting!

If only this week was over already. Currently I'm 17 minutes down with only six gazillion to go. The sad thing is that there is so much to get done this week I'm not even sure six gazillion minutes will be enough. Just as long as I don't eat my way through this assignment like I did the last. Hell no.


It has been a reasonably productive weekend I suppose - though someone please remind me of my rule about not drinking diet coke after 4pm - another 4am session of bolt awake thumb-twiddling and I will do more than howl in frustration.

Two more weeks, two more weeks.

I went to a school friend's birthday party on Friday night - more cocktails (hello raspberry martini my friend) and a chance to wear some ridiculous heels and a sparkly dress - certainly a shift in gears from my usual attire, channeling 12 year old boys in my converse and baggy pants.


Everyone was in good form, and I think might have even been hit on - though it's hard to know, the last time someone hit on me I was five and in the sandbox, and you know, literally hit on. A slightly peculiar guy but fun to pretend I was normal. He told me I had a lovely nature - I told him that was lovely as usually people found me sarcastic and combative. I think he thought I was joking. Whatever the case it was nice to have a moment of non-social retardation, however fleetingly. And I look forward to welcoming back my social life at the end of this week, once the project is finished.

Until then I shall just continue to whisper softly to myself "two more weeks, two more weeks..."

Fit and you know it

I am so unfit. And there are so many kinds of unfit to be - match fit, piss fit, fit fit. I am none of these things. Add to that a complete lack of essay-writing fit and I'm screaming for a Biggest Loser-cum-Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader type makeover.

Procrastination. Definition: Moi

I can now count on, umm, three fingers the number of days I have until this essay is due and I am still reading, still smacking my head against the books, still checking facebook/yahoo mail/SMH Online 14 times an hour on the off-chance that something, nay, anything, will distract from the burden of post-modernist rhetoric and the 40-year old obtuse ponderings of self-important white men.

For something fun and different I could always just write the bloody thing and get my life back but then I'd have nothing to complain about... and where is the fun in that?