Between The Houses And The Stop Signs

I came across this when randomly browsing my documents, I made it in 2008 I can't believe it was just over two years ago. I was so idealistic back then, but it's nice to look back on anyway, thought I would put it here to remind myself that I haven't always been angry, I did have hope at some point in my life.

An artwork I made for a Tafe exhibition, below the pictures is the text written on the work.



Between the Houses and the Stop Signs

When I paint, I am alone, I am free. Free from what lies outside my doorstep. Stuck in a world where only I exist I make the rules. Life is how I planned it, life is not real anymore. Reaching for things becomes easier; being anonymous with a dream becomes important. It's about the way I hold the dream, how tightly I cling to it, if I cling to it at all. Or do I let it sail away into the breeze, free to find its way back to me when I’m ready for it.

The people have no face but they know who I am, they know what I want and they show me how to get it. They hide with me when it's dark; they become part of my shadow. They are the parts of me I choose to ignore when I am not here. They are the inner voices too afraid to speak up around the others. They feel insignificant in the real world, they feel little. In this world they are bigger than they could ever dream of, big enough to cast shadows onto the land, big enough to chase big things and catch them. When I am here I hold them tightly, they need love, they need someone to tell them that what they are thinking is important. They are here to show me what I don't want to see, what I can't see.

In every moment I spend in this world the light bulb shines brightly, the clouds throw down ropes instructing me to climb up them and the people hold out elongated arms and welcome you into a reality that is far more real than anything I’d find outside of my room. The shadows here aren't cold and burgeoning, they walk with me, they don't loom like a heavy weight over my head, they hold me up so I can see properly, carefully guiding me through the darkness so I don't stumble.

When I stop painting I am awakened to a world where I have restricted what I want, where I have disregarded something more and settled with what it's going to be. I watch the dream float away from my grasp as I accept that it will never be mine to hold, to live. When I close my eyes I see the Dream Chasers, they smile and wave, waiting for me to join them on their quest. The sky blue walls are littered with dream clouds waiting for my realisation that has yet to come.

The text seems poorly written now, and a bit lame, but the idea was there and it's a nice reminder of who I used to be.

I Need For You To Come And Go Without The Truth Falling Out

I don't really have anything to say, except that I miss you and time has made me forget what that used to mean. But that's a good thing right? I don't want to let myself fall back into it again, so I should stop it here, at these words that could mean anything to anyone, even you. Do they still? I don't know.

As The Days Go By

It seemed to me that my father had softened over the years, or perhaps it was just that I never knew him very well. But I did know that when he used to hit my mother he was not soft. His anger has dissolved now and I wonder if that will happen to me too, but I don't think I want to wait that long.

Now he is a two time divorcee with four boys and one girl; me, living in a complex of units in a town so small and far that I've forgotten the name. My father lines up at Crackerjack Chicken and Big Dad's pies for his meals and the thought makes me sad. If he were closer I'd invite him over, remind him what real food tasted like. He could only ever cook grilled cheese sandwiches, but they were the best, that I remember.

I don't know much about his life, only that it is small, and the same things must happen to him a lot, I get scared sometimes, that maybe that will be me in twenty years. Lining up at Crackerjack Chicken behind the young sheila who lived next door, two wives I'd had, five children I'd called my own. But I could never marry, or have children, so I know atleast, our lives will not be exactly the same in twenty years time.

I wish I were still young enough to ask my father silly questions, like what it was like being in the army, and what did he imagine his future to be like? Not like this I am sure. He has his kids atleast, but we don't talk much, him and I, what would we talk about? I think now, my father is beginning to look at me and realise what he has missed out on, he says he should visit more, slack he is, I'm too nice to pull him up on it, but it was true. I guess he decided that I was someone he wanted to know, and that scares me a little. What if I'm not who he thought I was? Or what if I turn out to be someone he doesn't like? Will he leave again, but not looking back this time?

I've never really been angry with my father, mostly I feel sorry for him. I think he has always loved my mother, but she has not always loved him, worst mistake of her life he was, that probably meant me too. But I am glad, that she did not love him back anymore, because for certain if she did, I would not be here now. I don't know where I would be, I don't know if I would be at all. All I know is that she was in trouble and she had to get out. I just hope that I am never in so much trouble that I have to get out.

I am not like mother nor father, but like someone who has grown up by themselves, and I look at them and remind myself that they are human, and we make mistakes more often than we get it right, and I just have to keep remembering that.

But I do hope my father finds someone who will look after him, so he can stop lining up at Crackerjack Chicken behind the young sheila who lives next door, because she's no good for him and neither is the food. My father is an honest man, he may not be the most exciting man in the world, but he is funny and honest and I'm proud of him for that. And maybe I am like him somehow too, funny and honest, atleast, I am trying really hard to be and that's something isn't it.

Storms

You told me to come here, to the edge of the world, and I never really figured out why. I came here to the edge of the world where the sky and the ocean blurred, one began but the other never ended, and I asked the questions burning on my mind.

I stand here knowing that no one who has come before me has ever questioned, they had always just accepted. I'm ready to find out if I'll fall or fly, you've taken me this far, and now it is time for me to let go, for you to let go, and let me find my fate.

I like to believe we end where we begin, and I began in the air, or was it the water? So here I am, facing my ending with so many questions, with so many footsteps towards the sun, cut through the air and above the water. My questions, my truths, on top of these cliffs, looking into the calm sea that people believe is me, but I feel the subtle wind shift through my hair and I know that is really me. The silent storm raging through a darkened sky, the one that no one ever saw coming.

So I try to say
Goodbye my friend
I'd like to leave you with something warm
But never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm.

Lovers And Friends

She was very presumptuous and I didn't really agree with that, but we were best friends, or more, so I forgave her. She said that I only saw things in black and white, but she only ever saw grey, and grey was the colour of my infidelity. Because grey was an unremarkable colour, was it even a colour at all? And by my grey infidelity I mean something that never happened.

There were nights with her that felt like highschool sleepovers. We'd stay up late talking, giggling, using a deck of cards to tell our fortune. Is Bec in love with x? Has Bec ever been in love with x? The cards never lied and those nights we laid our past and our future out in front of us and put a belief in it that was unwavering.

But she was more than my best friend, she was someone who knew me. Someone who would pull me up on my shortcomings, of which there were many. And she knew me in sensual ways that I can't really talk about here. She asked why I never wrote, why it was always about some other girl, and not her, and I guess I thought I didn't need to write about her, because she knew, she knew me. And maybe that's the thing, she stopped knowing me when I stopped letting her, and we became best friends that were strangers, strangers that shared the same bed, but strangers that had stopped sharing the same thoughts.

So I'm giving you back my thoughts because they've been gone for too long, and you might think that we are only best friends, but if you know me, and if you know my thoughts, then you will know the way I think about you, and it's not something I could ever say here.

I've Lost Myself Or Most Of Me

I'm chasing the back of you in a crowd, you are too far to call and too far to run after. So I try to find out if it's you by the way you walk. You have a very distinctive walk that always catches my eye, one that is determined, a woman on a mission. I guess one of the problems of being so observant is that I always see you coming but you never see me, and I take that personally. I look away from you, or who I believe to be you for a moment and you've disappeared. I can't seem to find where you have gone and I'm so busy looking that I almost miss the flirtatious smile from a passing highschool girl. This should make me smile but it makes me want to cry because I'm suffocating. I can't breathe here and you don't seem to understand that. You think that it's about you, but it's about me and it's about this place and the way it haunts me everytime I come here. But I can't take myself out of this place and neither can you, so I find a place within this place that haunts me and I stay there to catch my breath, I stay there until I can breathe again, until I can no longer think of seeing you.

Delicate

She looked like a fifties greaser in the tradition of k.d Lang, back when k.d Lang looked like the kind of girl you wouldn't take home to your mother, before she had you singing hallelujah. And what did that mean anyway? Why had she chosen those words to say to me at that time? Because I knew that everything she said, it had meaning, and that's what I liked about her, perhaps that's what I liked a little too much.

She was the kind of sexy that made you sigh because girl you were in so much trouble. And like k.d Lang, she had a way of singing about loss and longing that seemed to connect only with me, and when she stopped singing, when it was quiet, that was when I finally learnt what it was to lose.

There's always been this incredible distance between my heart and  my mind, there had to be, because I could not stop my heart from wanting what my mind knew I couldn't have. I'm still waiting for my hallelujah moment, and I know it should have come sooner, it should have come by now. I know what it is to feel too much and I know what it is to feel nothing at all, and she understood this in a way that made me think she did too.

Hallelujah is what she said to me, but I couldn't let those words be our last because I didn't know why she was saying them, I didn't know why she was leaving and I didn't know why my last image of her was my hands running through her hair, her baby face revealed, blue eyes that had lost so much.

So why do you fill my sorrow
With the words you've borrowed
From the only place you've known
And why do you sing Hallelujah
If it means nothing to you
Why do you sing with me at all?