yesterday:

9am. wake up to a beautiful morning, make a cup of tea, slice up a nectarine, and head into the sitting room to watch the sun come through the windows. notice i’ve accidently left my mobile in there overnight, check it to realize i’ve missed a call from home, minutes before.

phone back, confused, but not that worried - it’s the middle of the night there, but not too late. they’re probably just tipsy, and phoning to say i love you. my mom answers, and i’m really confused - sean had been babysitting tyler the night before, i thought, not this one? why is she at my father & stepmom’s house? and then i’m scared, because she’s asking where i am, and if there’s anyone at home with me.

she’s telling me my father’s dead. she says: he had a massive heart attack honey, and he didn’t make it.

my stepmom picks up the other extension, and all she can say, over and over, is: i’m so sorry sweetheart. i’m so sorry.

and then she’s gone, sobbing, and my aunt, my mother’s sister the nurse, the one born on the same day as my father two years later is there, and she’s calm, so calm, and that’s when it really starts to sink in. she tells me i can’t feel guilty about being in london, makes me promise. i say the words, that’s all i can do.

8pm. get my best friend on skype and break down in front of him. he calms me down, somewhat. tells me he loves me. it hurts, not being able to touch people right now.

my daddy, who fought for custody of me, who raised me, remembered every boy i’d so much as mentioned, bought me encyclopedias when i was little so we could look up the answers to all my questions together, coached my fastball team gladly for ten years, even the last year when i was too sick and busy with school and work to go to more than one or two games, who was everything and anything and who always saved me is gone.

he’s gone and everyone’s converging in victoria, and i’m in london. i’m on the other side of the world, in a city that fits me like a glove, that i’ve made a home for myself in, that i was so, so excited to show him when he came to visit in may. we were going to see eric clapton at the royal albert hall. we were going to go to liverpool. he was excited to finally see england, and i wanted to show it to him.

i don’t know anything right now. i have to think properly, logistically. make decisions - make the right decision. i don’t know what that is.

i just don’t know.

shine like the sky

Short burst of radio silence, there. I’ve been quite busy this past week, and the time I have been spending on the computer has been mostly devoted to writing. It’s been beautiful out, like Spring has come early (there’s even snowdrops popping up out of the dark empty soil everywhere - I hope that they don’t get killed off in frost), and I find it impossible to stay indoors when the sky’s so bright and blue.

Here are some of the things I’ve been doing (aside from job hunting - & I’ve finally landed an interview, so that’s good.):

Last night I went to an event at a poetry library in celebration of the release of the film Howl later this month. The poem was recited, and then there was discussion about Ginsberg and Howl. It was good fun, the recitation especially, but I must admit that the majority of the people who turned up were not the type I’d expect to be interested in the Beat Generation. Not that that’s a bad thing. I sat beside a lovely middle-aged man in a suit who does some sort of office job, and is passionate about jazz, which is how he got into Ginsberg. “My daughter,” he said, “I think you’d like her, even though she’s not into all this sixties stuff. She’s all about Morrissey and Joy Division, and the Romantic poets.”

On Sunday I headed out determined to enjoy the sunshine. I started on Marylebone High Street, wandering through the densely packed farmer’s market, before crossing over the York Bridge into Regent’s Park. I wandered all through the gardens before sitting to eat my apples and cheese. Watching a group of Aussies play hacky sack, I was delighted to be approached and asked to join in. I said “I’m not very good.” “Everybody says that.” “No, really.” And then I spent an hour proving just how horrible I am at it. “You weren’t exaggerating.” We ate grapes and cashews and one of the boys played The Doors and The Rolling Stones over his iPod. Later, I walked them to Baker Street to find Sherlock Holmes.

Today I went to the British Museum on a whim, since I was already in the area. I wandered into the prints area to find a special exhibit on modern drawing, From Picasso To Julie Mehretu. It was marvellous. There’s something really organic about drawings, that you don’t get from an artist’s paintings or etchings. A plaque next to one of William Kentridge’s pictures had this quote from him: I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgement, ethics, and morality.

On Tuesday my roommate and I wandered the Portobello Road, and down through Notting Hill, finding a whole host of little gems - handmade clothes, gelato, antiques, old fashioned bears, and a pizza shop with an orange mini acting as a counter in the window.

Here are some of the things I want to do, soon (aside from the obvious ‘get a job‘):

See Roald Dahl’s Twisted Tales at the Lyric Hammersmith, which is less than five minutes from my house, and which, as a venue, I’ve developed a bit of a fascination with. This show, though, I want to see because a)Roald Dahl, and b)it was adapted by Jeremy Dyson, who is one of the League of Gentlemen, who are fabulous and twisted and funny, and who co-wrote Ghost Stories (which I also want to see).

See Frankenstein, which I will have to wait until the extended run to do, as it’s sold out. Unsurprising, but I can’t afford tickets right now.

Finish the poems and stories I’ve been working on lately and get them sent off before submission deadlines. Relatedly, finish reading Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners and Nikesh Shukla’s Coconut Unlimited (both of which are absolutely brilliant), and start in on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go before it has to go back to the library.

See Emma Hunt’s horizon [HORIZONS] at the Hayward Gallery.

And there are so many little things I could and want to tell you about, the feel of city parks on the weekend (lovely), the smell of mint gum and what it reminds me of (my father, and fastball practices), the artist who paints tiny works on old gum stuck to the streets, how I think my house is haunted, and others, but I think I’ll leave them for another entry.