Pure Morning.

Imagine, if you will, the sound of a song recorded to cassette from a crackly radio station, then played through speakers covered with stickers from TV Hits magazine. Imagine Brian Molko’s genderfucking lyrics being purred at a volume nearly high enough to compensate for the bad recording technique, the sound bouncing off the purple walls. No posters. Not after Mum discovered the centrefolds from Horse and Pony were taped up four thick, one over the other over the other, a poor découpage of mares, stallions and fluffy foals in green fields. I am at my desk, on a cramped chair, my ears as close to the speakers as is comfortable, mouthing along to lyrics that make my angst-wrapped teen soul believe someone out there knows me.

On the desk is a plain blue biro, a brown notebook, a cream-shaded table lamp, a metal pencil sharpener and the broken clip from a black fineliner I stole from my mother. Molko blares, the speakers crackle and I dig the slanted edge of the sharpener blade into the softest part of my thigh. The song peters out and I lean over to press the rewind button. I have rewinding down to a direct science, I know exactly how far to go on this tape to only listen to a few words of the DJ announcing the song before it starts.

Outside it is night but not dark. I am close enough to the city that on overcast nights the sky is lit with a dirty yellow-grey glow, making the clouds seem closer, heavier and full of menace. A white night where my mouth tastes like salt and metal, my head buzzes no matter how loud the music is and my restless feet tap out a frantic, discordant tattoo on the wheel covers of the desk chair. This room is not a sanctuary, this room is a cage.

There are voices in the hallway – my Mother will come in nine seconds to tell me to turn down the music, to go to bed. I slide all evidence of my crimes into the desk drawer where it rests among old homework assignments, quarter-written stories and the detritus of a fourteen year old with well-established hoarding tendencies. I needn’t bother – she speaks through the door. When I click the stop button, it jumps up with a click and the tape stops whirring. The stop button doesn’t say stop, it displays a tiny unicorn sticker meant for a toothbrush. The play button features a cat. I am suddenly disgusted at the things around me; china ornaments of horses and unicorns, the shaggy yellow dog with the glow-in-the-dark chest on my bed, the white melamine furniture, all overflowing with stuff, the purple paint sponged onto the walls. There is no space in here, there is no air to breathe.

From the bed, in the dark, I can’t see the glowing sky. There are stars on the ceiling and I trace imaginary constellations as I scratch, flaking the dry blood, getting into the wound underneath. The house is quickly quiet, even Lucy, the retriever, is asleep. The slate floors are cold in this house, so after everyone has gone to bed, you can hear her stand and click-click-click across the floor before she not-so-sneakily heaves herself onto the sofa bed.

Eleven pm. Midnight. One. Two.

I don’t have headphones, so the volume is low. Click, listen, rewind, repeat. I am staring at nothing; the blinds are closed and it’s dark and I can still feel the night pressing on me, weighting my lungs, pulling me down. I am not strong enough to bear this sky. The blade has slipped in between two sheets of maths equations.

Skin has layers – epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. I press the blade slowly through the dermis, listening for the pop of collagen and fibre, watching the skin retract, then well with blood. I am consumed with the inside of me, with escaping from the purple room, the white night; going deep into my blood and my bones. White fat makes me recoil – the hypodermis bleeds more freely, as the blood vessels aren’t constricted by tightly bound skin cells. With the blade out, the weight of my upper leg is enough to hold the wound closed. There are a few drops of blood, suspended by water tension in perfectly round balls on the carpet. I lie on the floor, half under the bed and gently pierce the top of each with a tissue corner – as if by magic, the blood climbs upward until not a trace is left behind.

We are all just chemistry.

youre never weird

You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost) – Felicia Day

youre never weird

So, hands up who ever would have thought that Felicia Day has absolutely crippling social anxiety? No hands? I didn’t know either, but I’m actually kinda of glad.

No, no, hear me out – I’m not wishing any form of mental illness on anyone, or glorifying anxiety in an attempt to make myself feel better. I’m just saying that holy crap, Felicia Day is a fucking superstar, and so talented and if she can do everything she’s done with the levels of anxiety and depression she talks about in the book, then I can do ANYTHING.

Like, actually anything.

So the book chronicles her life, from growing up in the deep, then deeper south where she was homeschooled with her brother. She talks about how unconventional her education was, not just in a ‘I didn’t go to regular school’ kind of way, but also in a ‘my study was partially unsupervised and wholly unstructured’ kind of way. She learned a lot about what interested her (or what interested her family) and not so much about some other stuff (which it turns out is not important anyway). If she was 12 now, it would be called unschooling and she would be a TEDtalk superstar, but when she was growing up it was just kinda weird.

After four years at college as a violin prodigy (hands up who knew Felicia Day was REALLY good at violin? nope, me neither), Felicia heads over to LA and stars in things like Buffy, Dollhouse, House and this (hehehe, so adorable). Then she kinda becomes this massive youtube star with shows like The Guild and Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (I’ll admit to having heard of both of these, but have never seen the whole lot).

So having established all this, Felicia then gets into some super tough stuff. She talks about gaming addiction and social anxiety, about general depression, anxiety and suicide idealisation and about #gamergate, doxxing and the effect the movement had on her personally. I am not a gamer, so it was really interesting to hear an explanation of gamergate from someone who was a woman and a gamer*. What impressed me most about the story is that Felicia hasn’t actually conquered her perfectionism or her anxiety – she deals with it and gets help with it, but this isn’t a ‘how I beat depression and won the world’ tale. It’s actually a ‘I have bad depression and I’m winning the world anyway’ tale.

This is my biggest wish for people who read this: that you realise that despite any mental or physical health issues, despite lack of a conventional education or a trust fund or a perfect face**, despite where you right now, if you keep going and have the drive to get to where you want, anything is possible.

There are two things I didn’t like about the book. Firstly, it’s formulaic, with each chapter seemingly following the same template and everyone knows I hate that way of writing. Secondly, rather than feeling like a natural conversation (which I imagine was the point) the book reads like someone tried REALLY hard to make it seem like a natural conversation and you can sense the desperation to convey that voice. I’m too picky, I realise this.

On the whole, I enjoyed the book – it’s not easy reading at times, but it is still easy to read (ok, now I’ve just stopped making sense altogether) and I would totally recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed Felicia’s work or who is interested in behind the scenes stuff around acting or gaming. She’s funny and cute and exceptionally talented.

⋆⋆⋆/5

*If you never heard about the gamergate saga, I suggest you read the book before you google your little heart out. The vitriol you can read by typing “gamergate” into a search engine is actually horrifying.

**Personally, I think Felicia’s face is pretty damn close to perfect, but that’s definitely not the point here.

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How to Grow Up – Michelle Tea

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I haven’t been having a good month technology wise – my laptop is still broken, despite me paying an arm and a leg to microsoft for them to come and fix it, the charger for my e-reader had the pin snapped off it and my phone is now cracked in more places than it’s not cracked. As someone who mostly reads ebooks now (so convenient! so cheap!), not having a device is a pain in the ass.

Oh and I cut my library down by about 80% and promptly had a panic attack that left me sick for three days. Apparently I’m a lot more attached to my books that I was admitting.

Anyway, I finally got a charger for my e-reader and I wasn’t in the mood for Gloria Steinem, so I grabbed this sweet little memoir.

I quickly discovered it’s anything but sweet. Michelle Tea is a force of nature. This memoir (one of five) chronicles her adult life: she’s sober, she’s single, she’s got her shit (mostly) together. It talks about her issues finding a home (as opposed to a squat), dealing with money, getting back into dating and getting herself knocked up. Along the way she marries the utterly delicious Dashiell (the two popped out an equally delicious baby last year).

What I liked about this book is how much I can relate to it. I dressed goth in a small, shitty, coastal town and had soda cans thrown at my head. I wanted to be a librarian because I thought that was the only way to live around books. I turned into an angry lesbian in my twenties (I was mostly a peaceful lesbian before and after that). I lost myself in drug and booze fuelled binges which I pretended were a result of the system/contributing to my art/not my fault. I made my own god when the other ones seemed too harsh. I have a hard time dealing with money and the idea that it comes and goes. Every new chapter was a revelation- I am NOT the only one and if SHE got through it all, so can I.

The book is smart, sassy, hilarious and sad – even if you don’t relate, you’ll get a good laugh and some pearls of wisdom, I promise. If you do relate, it’s so nice to see how other people worked their shit out, overcame their demons and lived pretty much happily ever after (like I said, her baby is fucking adorable!). The book is easy to read, flows nicely and if you like reading books that kind of sound like a collection of magazine articles/blog posts, you will LOVE the format. Go enjoy!

Book Review: This is not a drill by Paul Carter

I haven’t read Carter’s first book (Don’t tell mum I work on the rigs, she’s thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse – a title which always makes me wonder if he does actually know how to play piano), but that didn’t make my enjoyment of this sequel any less. Carter explodes into the book, immediately diving into the life or death situation that gives the book it’s name. From then until the very end the book is a whirlwind ride of dangerous and comical situations, crazy characters, giant crabs and excessive amounts of alcohol, love and heartbreak.

Carter flies around the word, from Russia to Japan to Afghanistan and back to Australia to see his long suffering girlfriend (now wife) Clare. He reconnects with his Dad and a few of his Dad’s war buddies over single malt scotch, barbecues toes during a storm, discovers the best way to sneak a ciggie on a non-smoking rig and nearly gets blown up researching mercenaries in the Middle East.

Carter’s writing is pretty damn eloquent, given that he’s been a self-professed rigrat for most of his adult life. Sure, there’s some very colourful phrases throughout, but on the whole, the style comes across like an editorial – well researched and factual, but still personal and emotive. Sometimes I found Carter gets a little verbose when he starts talking about causes and issues close to him, which doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the book, but forgive him that and this is a rollicking read which carries itself well into the early hours of the morning.

Review: Monsoon Rains and Icicle Drops by Libby Southwell

Monsoon Rains and Icicle Drops is a memoir written by a founder of AdoptSriLanka, a charity which aims to help people reestablish their livelihoods after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. Partial proceeds from the book go to AdoptSriLanka, so I feel a little bad that I loaned it from the library instead of buying it. Libby starts the book in a Mongolian ger, saying it’s about as far away from home as you can get. She’s cold, miserable and missing the love of her life. You can tell this is not your average adventure. The next few chapters go into Libby’s life before she travels – her early working life, getting engaged to her boyfriend Justin and his tragic death in a climbing accident and then the deaths of several close friends. Desperate to get away, Libby takes a high stress job in Sri Lanka, but soon finds she needs to get away again and in finding some of the most obscure parts of Asia, find herself.

Libby travels through Asia for the next year, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or new associates. She travels through Sri Lanka and India, into Nepal and Tibet and the southern parts of China. She heads up to Mongolia to spend time with migrating herders in the desert. I don’t want to go into the minutia of her travels, I want you to read the book for yourself. While it describes the sights and sounds (and smells) of mainland Asia, this book is so much more than a travel narrative. Libby opens her very soul and pours out the heartache and sorrow she feels about the loss of her beloved Jus. And somehow, wandering ancient pilgrim paths and living emerged in the cultures she is visiting, Libby comes through her grief and emerges stronger.

It sounds like a coming of age memoir for grown ups, doesn’t it? And it is, but not in an overbearing way. And Libby really threw herself whole-heartedly into the places she visited – the book is an anthro students dream travelogue and I read the entire thing in a night and wanted more once I was done. Forget Eat Pray Love and read this instead (or if you enjoyed it, try this as well).

Review: The Butterfly Mosque by G Willow Wilson

The Butterfly Mosque is a memoir. It’s not an autobiography because it doesn’t run a perfect timeline. Willow (I think the G stands for Gwendolyn, but don’t quote me) jumps back and forth quite a bit between using ‘I remember when…’ and ‘I was doing…’ which for me, made the story more engaging. It’s also a bit of a travel narrative as Willow spends a year immersed in Muslim culture in Egypt. This is not a book about Islam. It has lots of references to Islam, Islamic writers and the Quran* and the main character does convert to Islam within the first few chapters of the book, but it’s still not a book about Islam. It is a book about Willow, the faith and culture she embraces and the many, many contradictions she sees while being an American girl married to an Egyptian in a Muslim country.

Willow heads to Egypt after college to spend a year teaching at an English language school in Cairo. Having secretly and somewhat uncomfortably, given her atheist background and the recent events of September 11, embraced Islam, Willow arrives in Egypt with little knowledge of the culture, but ready to embrace all that it entails . She meets Omar and finds herself falling in love with a man she has never even touched. Determined to stay in Egypt with Omar, Willow officially converts to Islam and marries him. Despite being welcomed into Omar’s family and free to worship the god she has chosen, Willow finds assimilation into Egyptian culture difficult. She slowly becomes more and more accepted in her community, but there are problems when she wants to travel the Middle East and even more difficulty when she wants to return home to the States.

This book is a loving recount of a young girl’s year in Egypt. Willow speaks of her hardships and her joys in gorgeous prose and writes observations about religion, culture and humanity that are wise beyond her years. My favourites include

‘With remarkable foresight, the chancellor of BU [Boston University] kept classes in session that day, becoming one of the first to argue that if we disrupted our way of life we would be helping the terrorists.’

‘This is the heart of the clash of civilisations: not the hatred of the Other, but the self-hatred produced by the Other. This is what makes hatred so easy to propagate, and so difficult to counter even for those who question it’s authenticity.’

‘It was such a tantalizing contradiction, being a woman in the Middle East – far less free than a woman in the West, but far more appreciated. When people wonder why Arab women defend their culture, they focus on the way woman who don’t follow the rules are punished, and fail to consider the way women who do follow the rules are rewarded. When I finished an article or essay, all I got was an email from an editor saying, “thanks, got it.” When I cooked an iftar meal during Ramadan, a dozen tender voices blessed my hands.’

Doesn’t that last line just make your heart want to weep and sing at the same time? This book is challenging and engaging. It took me a long time to read and even longer to digest in order to write this review.** Read it if you are not Muslim in order to get a little bit of insight into a challenging and adoring world from the point of view of someone who is western born and educated (and therefore a little skeptical). Read it if you are Muslim for a sweet story of love and acceptance and of finding god when god was hard to find. Read it if you are atheist, change the capital g in god it a little g and you will still enjoy the story! But read it. Even if you don’t agree with everything that Willow says – I certainly didn’t, there were some very confronting parts to this book for me – you will still love the story and the writing is superb.

What have you read lately that made your heart sing? I’ve promised Richard that once I finish The Curse of the Mistwraith I’ll finally read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy***, but after that I’m wide open – give me something to read!

*There are like a bazillion ways to spell this word. Don’t bash me.

**Simple as it is.

***42 is now a running joke in our house.