I first heard that Grandpa had died at 7pm on Friday. As it happened, I had an offer from fizit to join her at the Japan­ese baths anyway, so I went there and talked about Grandpa and griev­ing and loss with her and bun­ni­kins and eye­of­bast. That was sooth­ing and…

For my grand­father, Sydney Levine You were ready to go. Unafraid you said, Every­one has a time. I told you wild stor­ies About a girl in a labyrinth­ine tower, A tower filled with books, scrolls, manu­scripts, And in this lib­rary, schol­ars bend over pages, Translating,…

for my grand­father, Sydney Levine, on the night of his death In the end, his bird-like hands Clutched to his chest, skin like vellum. It is on that parch­ment we write our stor­ies, On this man we weave our tales. He is our silent audi­ence, breath shal­low, As we scrawl…

I’m just exhausted. New job, idiot who backed over my bike and deal­ing with the insur­ance, flooded house, teach­ing, the ten­sion of this wait­ing for Grandpa to go (14 days no food now), the paper I’m sup­posed to be pre­par­ing for the con­fer­ence in Octo­ber, dub­bing the…

Back in Mel­bourne, I am drained but con­tent. Today, I was short-tempered. I feel frayed at the edges. Three classes later, and I drag myself home. I am toying with the idea of order­ing in. I am look­ing for­ward to my own space: I haven’t been alone since Friday…

Thus starts what is almost an entirely dif­fer­ent week­end, in an entirely par­al­lel uni­verse: Brandon and I drive up to the moun­tains, talk­ing all the way. In the morn­ing, we sleep in, wander around Katoomba, head for Black­heath and hike down to Vic­toria Falls. Dinner…

Midday thursday (dead­line day) I get a call from my aunt: Grandpa has taken a sudden turn for the worse. The after­noon is a blur of flight changes and trying to con­cen­trate on the issue at hand. My aunt sug­gests I call the ward and she’ll hold the phone to Grandpa’s…

Tues­day I wanted to write a thrilled post about the amaz­ing poetry I’d seen at the Spin­ning Room, both Ian MacBry­de’s and the Big Voice Chorus people doing gor­geous poems about Mel­bourne at 4am (another of Ian’s) and Steve Smart’s ode to this city. I was thrilled…

The last few days have been intense. Yes­ter­day after­noon, I graf­ted my way into Red vs Blue (“what do you mean it’s sold out? Surely Helen has put some tick­ets aside for journ­al­ists… see, here’s my MEAA card… Oh, Helen, hi there! Con­grat­u­la­tions! Sold out! That’s…

My grand­father is dying. He has pan­cre­atic cancer. A few weeks ago, he blacked out and hit his head badly. Now he’s stopped eating. After he fell, I went up to Sydney to see him and he was his usual self, a little thin, but still him. Last week, I spoke to him on the…

So, for whatever reason, in my dreams last night, I came up with a new live­journal com­munity. It’s partly because I just made pretty CV things for sleazemon­key. I want this journal to stay as my journal, as a diary and a memory track. But every so often, I need…

I’m very tired. All seems to be going well though. I recovered quickly from the shitty gig thanks to lovely let­ters from Brandon (the Cana­dian guy from the Trans­mis­sion con­fer­ence) and I spent some time making pretty CVs for sleazemon­key. I am abso­lutely chuffed that…

I first wrote about Babiy Yar after I read about it in high school. Then I went there last year. It was one of the most intense days of my trip. I didn’t write about it at the time because I got straight onto a train and took a 33-hour trip to Ars Elec­tron­ica. Anyhow,…

That was the shit­ti­est gig ever. Thank you to the hand­ful of people who showed: sleazemon­key, nuwishas_tail, drjon, mireille21, thunderfoot23, why_lederhosen, ana­chrono­clast. The pro­jector they assured me would be there wasn’t there. I checked with them on Friday that…

No time to write, really, but feel like I must or I will lose the three thou­sand things on my mind. Furi­ous about the grow­ing homo­pho­bia in this coun­try. I may think state-registered mar­riage is a het­ero­pat­ri­archal con­struct designed to enforce bour­geois nuclear…