#easy for you to say makes a cameo appearance in my prose

[faithfromanewperspective]

How do I educate people about the Sustainable Development Goals? I had thoughts, lots of them, after I presented on them last Wednesday but, like the location of the pieces of paper I wrote on, whatever the buzz of conversation and performer’s high had me thinking is long forgotten. So it’s back to having ideas and hoping I come up with something better now that it’s a little more processed, a bit more mature. How do I start us from an ecological foundation? Just like I already did. With the diagrams explaining, this is where we get everything we need to survive from, how do I drive this point home? Have I already? The ideas are rolling now. Can I fit this into six minutes? How do I go from concept to reality? I know I’m just rusty, my confidence dwindling, and it’s going to take me doing it to remember the dopamine. Take your time. Pretend the planet it your brain, the sustainable development principles to transformational overhaul written in the stars of your neurons, you just can’t help but get it out. Are the templates distracting me, do I need to mock up a blank power point given that’s what I learned on?

It helped, drawing it out on paper. Templates look beautiful, and are lovely to look at. They’re not sensory overload in and of themselves, but, they’re not the new world, the blank canvas that inspires creativity. Every complete picture is a demand of itself, it’s perfect as it is, why would you add your own colours, why would you decorate what’s already been decorated? Why would you graffiti professional perfection? So I draw it on a scrap of people, pretend it’s on a moodboard, pretend I’m in PDF expert on my iPad at sixteen again, turning what’s barely inspiration into those design folios I was famous for. Why can’t I forget it? Because it’s me, it’s what I stand for, creativity in my veins, trying to be spit out of my fingertips on a keyboard and mouse. I’m trying to educate souls, don’t you forget that.

Educating souls. And now I’m onto brainstorming the third section. This one covers eight goals, covers the things of the people I carry as part of me, eight billion of us all deserving of dignity if any of us are. Drowning out competition with connection. It’s solid, it’s tangible, it’s the meals each of us need to survive and the education that keeps us empowered, knowing how to care for this beautiful planet. It’s the wage from our jobs that have us as individuals, countries, families, able to afford healthcare (which in of itself shouldn’t be for profit. Nor should food, or housing). It’s the cities I dream of designing, graffitiing functionality in every corner of the world, it’s the wildlife bursting into our apartment bubbles and humans who feel happier for it. It’s gender equality built into the architecture of how we do life: lifestyles that support empowerment of all living things, lifestyles of satisfaction and the only real power coming from when we team up with each other, not when we exploit each other. It’s easy to get lost in the daydream. Because I make a life out of this, of bringing people together, I make a life of it despite how many times I’ve messed up, despite the youth that was stolen and filled with mistakes, despite and because of it. (I should take this song off repeat, really, before I hop on the next train to Sydney to see the sunrise again. I feel it in moments, a semblance of free, between all the gasping I finally breathe, but this is it, isn’t it? this is me breathing.) I’m channelling just how important it is.

Because if you care about me, you care secondhand about all the people I care about, just like when you follow a musician, you take on the love from all of their fans, and if you understand a character, you understand the people who feel the same way as you do. If you love me, if you truly love me and don’t want to change me, you love all that I stand for. You stand with me as we mobilise this love. If not, then what do I exist for?

But this is my work, these are people I’m educating who don’t have access to my soul the way that you can, in anonymity and solidarity over shared interest. These are the sharks, and I’m trying to capture whatever in them turns their stupid overconfident heads on and stops them mistaking surfers for turtles, stops them eating turtles at all actually, and shows them we have invented a new-old, more efficient and kinder way to survive. It’s a pity that the way we have to pitch it is that businesses won’t survive if they’re not nice. I feel like I’m back out on the property, when my guineas were younger, trying to tell them how their own pecking order works: it’s a form of discipline, the more people you piss off the more likely it is they’ll band together against you. Maybe you won’t quite be ganged up on or cancelled, but your competitive advantage will be gone. If you don’t what? Feed the poor? Support the latest in sustainable cities, be the power mobilising their creation? If you don’t do this? Who else will?

And that’s it, isn’t it? Everyone wants to be told that they’re the chosen one, chosen to save the world. And it’s not a fantasy, the mundane ways this happens every day. I’m Yoda or Gandalf or heck, even Magnus Bane and I’m here directing them, advising them, praying they use the power that somehow ended up in their hands for good and not evil. And I have to do this educating, advising, in a way that is accessible and hits home. Luckily I’m well versed in fiction. I’m well versed in art. I’m well versed in capturing people’s souls. So what do I do now? Why am I sitting here thinking, well, school shouldn’t be a babysitting device for capitalist labour of adults but teach in a way that I’m teaching now, if you’re a musician going on tour or an athlete off competing or if you need any kind of accommodation, you should be able to finish high school. Without being given extra burdens. Is this the ground that I’m building? The trend that I’m setting? Am I embodying Goal 5 into this power point presentation, along with one, two, three, four, seven, eleven and sixteen? People need to be fed, right, I can’t grow cucumbers out of a computer screen, no matter if it’s an Apple.

I’m thinking of cities now. In Southeast Asia, where my colleagues work, and in Australia with a tenth of the population of Indonesia: how much could we do if our cities were bigger but more sustainable? How much could we meet people’s needs?

And so I come down to earth. This is the start of it. Revolutionary change starts with the mundane, educating a bunch of businessheads from all sorts of backgrounds: these are the Sustainable Development Goals, this is how they fit together, they are your next big opportunity whether you like it or not, so what do you think? Do you want to embark on the hero’s journey, or are you content being a poorly executing, always in the way not doing much useful, not meaning evil but not meaning well and so never really meaning anything at all, soon to be defeated, villain? You can’t walk in these circles without being one or the other.

[dachi-chan25]

I had books that I either loved or hated so idk maybe I need to do another unhaul to ensure I read books I'll actually enjoy.

1- OtherEarth (Otherworld #2) by Jason Segel

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So this was a big disappointment. It started out fine, but I had this bad feeling about what the twist of this book would be about 50% into it, and then the twist comes and it was just as bad as I feared. Honestly I don't even know if I wanna continue with the last book, I have it but honestly I can't say I am looking forward to it, it wasn't just the plot that fell down but the characters felt pretty inconsistent and yeah not a fan.

2.- Fireborne (The Aurelian Cycle #1) by Rosaria Munda

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The only thing I knew going into this was that it was inspired by Plato's Republic and that it was similar to Game of Thrones, so maybe that is why I found it pretty underwhelming. Like yeah I could see why it was based off the Republic with this system of education (tbh I still found it pretty basic and very much alike to other social systems I've read in other YA books) and there was some intresting tid-bits but not enough to keep me intrested. Now the characters, I liked both individually (unpopular opinion but I liked Annie more, I thought she had real potential but it was wasted because the moment she and Lee have this romance her character completely lost herself on thinking about him and what he did all the time) but I do not think they worked together romantically. There is some potential drama for book 2 but I am not intrested in reading it.

3.- The Mistress (The Original Sinners #4) by Tiffany Reisz

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This book was so good. Yeah it was super predictable, but the drama tho. I really loved Layla, she gave us an outsider's insight on Søren and Nora's relationship, and she is just the sweetest that I instantly knew she and Weasley were gonna get together. I cried at that last confrontation scene with Nora and Marie Laure and I am so happy that Nora is back together with Søren because they are truly a good couple despide everything.

4.-Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno Garcia

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I LOVED it. Ever since I saw the cover I was sold. This book I feel like it was meant for me. Like our protagonist Casiopea Tún is a dark skinned mexican girl of mayan descent in the 1920s who meets one of the lords of Xibalba and goes on a quest to help him retake his throne???? And on the way he falls in love with her so much he is about to forfeit his divinity to have a chance to be with her. I just, it was so beautiful, I felt my culture was really represented here, and it's so wierd to see the 1920's represented in Mexico I don't believe I had read something like this before and I will read anything Silvia Moreno Garcia writes from now on. Hopefully we will have a second book for this because that ending makes me wonder what adventures Casiopea will have.

5.-Little Gods by Meng Jin

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This book blew my mind. The structure is perfect for the themes . Su Lan was a truly fascinating character though I felt very sad about her, always wanting to escape her past and thinking she was so undeserving for anything good in her life and still fighting to go on. The ending was so good, and all the cast of characters made an excellent conection between the past and the future.

6.- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

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Yeah I am a pretentious ho. I was very intimidated by this book (and anything written by Faulkner really) and I was really having trouble understanding the book at first because the prose is so particular (there are sentences that read like Shakespeare, some are almost Biblical stuff and then most of the dialogue is this very coloquial english with very poor ortography) and as English is not my first lenguage I struggled. But then we get to Addie's death and all this odyssey the family goes through to bury her, and it was so beautiful and exciting. I especially loved everything about Addie's chapter, she was so much better than her husband and she deserved better than what she got. I really liked Dewey Dell and Darl. While I hated Anse Bundren with a passion so the end really made me angry like waaaaat this selfish asshole gets everything he wanted and then some??? But I got why it made sense for the book. So I definitely recommend this, but my advice is to let yourself glide through the book, do not try to understand or make sense of it as you start it because then you become frustrated like it happened to me at first but it's a really beautiful book so I am really considering reading more Faulkner.

7.-Chosen (Slayer #2) by Kiersten White

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I enjoyed this book so much. It's a very easy read and we get some growth on Nina and Artemis. I liked the idea of the Watcher's Castle being a refuge for inofenssive demons. And omgggg I fangirled SO hard when Oz, Harmony and Clem appeared (my fave characters, like literally I only need a Spike cameo in these books to be completely happy). I really wanna see Nina meet Buffy in real life and ahhh I am excited for whatever the next book will bring us.

8.-Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve

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This is perharps my favorite book I read this month. It felt so relevant to things that are happening in the world, but escapist enough to bear it. For starters I love a good urban fantasy setting, and this was it. Z was a great non-binary protagonist (the fact the author is also non-binary also helps) like it was pretty original to make them a zombie when necromancy is viewed as wrong in their society and they get discriminated for it even though they knew nothing about how it happened to them. And their friendship with Aysel (lesbian muslim werewolf girl!!!) and Tommy (shapeshifter boy) was amazing. Like the way this book translates real life bigotry and social injustice to this magical creatures was truly amazing I recommend it to everyone of any age. Especially middle graders as this book is meant for that age group and I feel this is an amazing diverse read for that age group.

9.-El murmullo de las abejas de Sofia Segovia

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Realmente este libro es precioso, soy una super fan del realismo mágico y este libro realmente me toco el corazón. Aunque he de admitir que entre a este libro sin saber nada, y bueno que este libro pega diferente en el 2020, yo no tenía ni idea que este libro nos presentaba la Pandemia de Influenza Española de 1918, y bueno es bastante triste leer todo lo que paso cuando nosotros estamos pasando épocas muy similares. Simonopio es un personaje divino, poseedor de una sensibilidad y una inocencia verdaderamente fuera de esta mundo, y la forma en que la familia Morales lo adopta y lo abraza tan profundamente dentro de la familia es realmente hermosa. Fue muy difícil leer acerca de Anselmo Espiricueta porque puedo ver de donde venía todo ese odio y esa ignorancia que terminaron en tragedia y no puedo dejar de sentir lastima por él a pesar de todo el mal que hace durante el libro. Recomiendo mucho esta lectura.

10.-Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

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A book so relevant in our current times. So powerful and impactful even if the book is pretty short. We get to see how the systematic racisim at work. We get to get a glimpse of this awful reality through Kev and Ella, two gifted siblings that have lived this experiences in different ways and they cope with this in vastly different ways.It was such an intimate read I cannot begin to describe how angry and sad it made me, but also very glad I got to read it because we need to keep being aware that this is the reality for black people all around the world and they don't get to shy away from it so we shouldn't either we should see, learn and fight as hard as we can to change things for the better.

11.-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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I re-read this book to have it fresh in my mind before the new series airs on July. And I liked it better now than the 1st time. This world is so scary because I see so many realistic elements it shares with the present. I felt a lot for Lenina (for everyone who lives in this world really) because she wanted more than what the society had to offer yet was so deeply conditioned as to what was right that she could just supress her emotions with soma. This book is of course full of racist and sexist stuff (cuz woman and indigenous people can never win) but I feel it helps to get a feel about how fucked up society is as a whole. In the reservation woman are subjected to the usual slut shaming and gender roles we get in our society while in London we get a world in which woman are judged for not sleeping around and being happy and infantile. Like it seems controling woman and their relationship to intimacy and sex is always a bit theme is classic dystopic books which makes a lot of sense given it works like that in the real world too. Same thing with indigenous people being treated as savage to congratula te ourselves for being so much more "civilized" never stopping to think how deeply fractured and flawed this may be. We also get explotation and brain washing of working classes and all that fun stuff. Really and amazing book eerily accurate tho.

12.-Brick Lane by Monica Ali.

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This is the story of 2 very different Bangladeshi sisters with very different temperaments making their way through life. Nazneen is a very dutiful daughter that marries the man her father picked for her, moves to London, though her husband doesn't make her happy she tries very hard in this foreign country with so many desires of her own she wishes that she always supresses because of her upbringing. Then we have Hesina, she was always beautiful and runs away with a guy she was in love with, later he abandons her and she gets jobs and loses them because different man keep making her fall for them to abandon them later. Different as they are this 2 Sisters keep relying in each other through letters. I thought it was very moving, and I really liked the ending for Nazneen while Hasina left me feeling worried and unhappy.

13.- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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I was very hyped for this book and I am so sad I didn't like it. I just didn't feel the world building was cohesive (we have space travel but we don't have baths??? And rapiers as weapons??? Most of it felt like aesthetic decisions) the characters felt very one dimensional to me. And the plot was all over the place, just when I thought I knew what it was about it takes another turn and introduces so many generes but it did not feel natural at all so yeah I will not be reading the next one.

14.- Luces de Bohemia de Ramón Maria del Valle Inclan

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Me pareció una obra maravillosa. Definitivamente captura el espíritu creativo bohemio.

15 .- Don Juan Tenorio de José Zorrilla

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Yo adoro el Tenorio, sin embargo si que he de decir que prefiero la versión del Burlador de Sevilla de Tirso de Molina pues siento que el final es más adecuado. Me parece que aunque la prosa es hermosa Doña Ines pierde mucha agencia en esta versión, me recuerda mucho más a Angelina de la obra "El Honor del Brigadier" que la versión que hizo de ella Tirso de Molina, definitivamente se romántiza mucho más está figura de seductor canalla en esta versión, aun así es una historia arraigada en México, es una tradición para mi verla cada Noviembre, este año me temo que no será posible así que disfrute muchísimo leerla.

[tcm]

Francois Truffaut: The Actor by Susan King

Film directors on occasion have walked from behind the camera to appear in front of it. Part of the fun in watching Alfred Hitchcock movies is to see his wry cameos. The late Agnes Varda was a delightful presence in her documentaries such as in the award-winning FACES PLACES (2017). John Huston, who won Oscars for the direction and screenplay of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (’48), received a supporting actor Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for THE CARDINAL (’63) and another Golden Globe nomination for CHINATOWN (’74).

And Vittorio De Sica, the Italian neo-realist master of such Oscar-winning foreign films as THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (’70), also received a supporting actor Oscar nomination for A FAREWELL TO ARMS (’57). Even French New Wave maverick Jean-Luc Godard has an uncredited role in Montgomery Clift’s final film THE DEFECTOR (’66).

Fellow New Wave pioneer Francois Truffaut acted in four feature films before his untimely death at the age of 52 in 1984. He made his acting debut in his haunting THE WILD CHILD (’70), which was inspired by the 19th century journal of Dr. Jean Itard revolving around his work with the Wild Boy of Aveyron, a feral child found in the forest. Itard named the boy Victor and attempted to civilize him.

Truffaut took on the role of the serious-minded doctor and Jean-Pierre Cargol, a young Gypsy boy, made his debut as Victor. The filmmaker’s daughter Laura Truffaut told me in a 2000 Los Angeles Times interview that he thought it would be easier to direct newcomer Cargol if he took on the role of Itard and also, “because he felt it wasn’t a great role for a professional actor.”

Her father, she noted, “was much more interested in the child than Dr. Itard. I think he worried that unconcsciously a professional actor would feel slighted or neglected by him.” Truffaut gives a poignant performance. And his good friend Alfred Hitchcock was so impressed with his turn, he sent Truffaut a funny telegraph asking the director for the autograph of the actor who played Itard.

He next starred in his brilliantly funny valentine to filmmaking DAY FOR NIGHT (’73), in which Truffaut gives a charming turn—he actually smiles in this movie—as a film director named Ferrand. He is so obsessed with cinema that film stock probably pulsates through his veins.

And while Itard had one charge, Ferrand must keep his cast together during the filming of a less-than-impressive romantic drama “Meet Pamela.” There’s the infantile leading man (Jean-Pierre Leaud of Antoine Doinel fame); Jacqueline Bisset as the British actress recovering from a nervous breakdown; an Oscar-nominated Valentina Cortese as an aging actress who can’t remember her lines; and Jean-Pierre Aumont as a veteran leading man with a secret. Truffaut won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and was also nominated for his direction and screenplay.

Four years later, Steven Spielberg cast him in his best-known role in the blockbuster science-fiction classic CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (’77) as Claude Lacombe, the compassionate, charming and even wide-eyed French scientist who is leading a UN investigating team on a series of unusual UFO activity. Truffaut was one of Spielberg’s idols and was thrilled he agreed to do the part. “I am not an actor; I can only play myself,” he told Spielberg, which was exactly what the filmmaker wanted.

Bob Balaban, who played the scientist’s translator David, recalled his experience working with Truffaut in a 2014 Los Angeles Times interview. “I got the job because I could speak French; at least what’s what my agent must have told them I guess,” Balaban explained.

Because his French was rusty, he basically lied about his prowess with the language. “I had a crash course in Berlitz, went on vacation and met Truffaut and explained to him in my very halting French I had lied to get the job, which he thought was very funny,” said Balaban, He wrote about his experiences in Close Encounters of the Third Kind: An Actor's Diary.

Truffaut kept a tape recorder in his room and would practice simple phrases like “Hello, how are you this morning?” during the evening. “He was so embarrassed he would speak inadequate English. He was an adorable, fun, loveable person but rather proper and just didn’t want to get caught speaking in a language he couldn’t be understood in.”

I witnessed an audience boo at the end of a screening of his dour drama THE GREEN ROOM (’78). Based on three Henry James short stories including “The Altar of the Dead,” the drama revolves around a World War I vet who writes obits for the local paper. Obsessed with death, he has a room in his house that is a shrine to his late wife. After the room is destroyed in a fire, he finds a chapel in ruins where he not only honors his wife but all of the dead he has known. Needless to say, things don’t end well for Truffaut’s Julien Davenne.

According to his costar Nathalie Baye, Truffaut almost shuttered the production because he feared he was giving a bad performance. She recalled that “he would say to me, ‘It’s madness; it will never work.’ And he came close to wanting to stop everything.”

Though some critics gave the film strong reviews, Truffaut didn’t fare as well. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby stated, “Truffaut does not make it easy for us to respond to Davenne.” And Time Out believed the film failed because of “Truffaut’s lack of range as an actor which his not helped by the script’s purple prose.”

I have seen GREEN ROOM a few times since 1979 and admire it more as I have gotten older. And though Truffaut the director miscast Truffaut the actor, we should admire that he took himself out the comfort zone as an actor. He doesn’t give a great performance, but he gives a brave one.

[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities is THE DREAMIEST.

We got our collective, grabby little hands on a copy of Mady G. and J.R. Zuckerberg's A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities a couple weeks ago and we're in luuuuurrrve.

It just came out this week, so we're here to tell you that we think you -- especially if there are some young people in your life you can share it with -- should get your hands on a copy, too.

What is it?  This 100+ page book is a trippy, cuddly and affirming comic adventure that very warmly, gently and with great joy leads the reader through a wide range of identities and some parts of life that are often about or involve them, like intimate relationships, dysphoria, coming out, making decisions about gender expression and our bodies, including medical decisions, finding -- and feeling without -- community and support. It's something that takes some subjects that can be really scary for people, especially for many queer and trans young people, and that I think could help turn a lot of that fear or dread into understanding, acceptance and happy celebration.

It's amazing and wonderful and just the very sweetest thing, is what it is.

I think it's going to be a goodie for just about everyone: whether you don't know jack about any of this, or whether all of this is very much about you and you know a lot from lived experience, a million awesome queer or trans history internet rabbit holes, and other ways of learning. This is potentially for you if you feel pretty comfortable, perhaps even deeply at home, with these arenas and ways of being, or if you are feeling intimidated, lost and uncomfortable (the sheer delight in all of this will help, I promise). For those who don't yet or currently have any queer, asexual, trans, genderqueer or nonbinary community, this can provide some of that feeling.  I think this book would be a great choice for teen readers, including young teens.

There are talking snails! There are Sproutlings (you'll see)! There's even a Julia Serano cameo! There's some dorktastically cool extras in the back. There are soft and lovely colors and beautiful patterns. There are excellent definitions and descriptions and talk-throughs and other helps for understanding concepts that can really get people twisted sometimes.

There's oodles of mad affirmation, bigging up and support. This is a comic full of wisdom, full of whimsy, and really, really full of love. I'm completely over the moon for it. It's my new most favorite thing.

Here's what some of the rest of our team had to say about it:

Al:

I really, really loved this. I loved how in-depth it went into things that I tend to see covered a lot less (asexuality, dysphoria, the challenges of coming out). I really liked the Sproutlings, especially in light of their creator's comments about imagining an idyllic world that truly does allow for infinite diversity where the rules aren't quite so strict and the answer is almost always "Sounds good! Thank you for telling me! I love and accept you!"

Also, I lightly wept when I read the nonbinary-alien part: I can't tell you how many times I've felt like an alien in my own skin. I refer to myself as a frog a lot precisely because of how the things that make me feel different from the people around me (read: brown, fat, hairy, genderqueer and generally odd) might feel more okay if I was amphibious. And I'm at least a few years older than the average "queer youth," so I can say that I've 100% experienced that feeling, and that it's spot on.

Mo:

I am really impressed at how it manages to present concepts in a pretty nuanced way without feeling too heavy or overwhelming for people who may be unfamiliar with what's being discussed. The art is fun and cute without feeling *cutesy* and has a great energy to it; there's such a great loving and celebratory vibe through the entire book. I think this will be a really helpful resource for people who are questioning or just starting to explore their queer identities and for allies who want to educate themselves; this is absolutely the sort of thing I wish I'd had oh...17 years ago when I was first starting to understand my own queerness and had a lot of questions and not many places to turn for answers.

Jacob:

This is so beautiful!!!

Sam:

I love how casual the identity sections are. They do a great job of hitting all the key points without feeling preachy. Also, the reaction the snails have to seeing all the queer humans for the first time is not unlike how I felt the first time I went to a Pride event, and I love seeing that idea that the diversity of queer presentations is something worthy of joy and wonder.

The relationship section is really strong. I could see it becoming something educators use. The prose and drawings communicate the realities of healthy and unhealthy relationships in a way that's going to be accessible to a lot of people.

That link way up top to Simon and Schuster's page for this book has a handful of links to places where you can buy it. We also want to make sure you don't forget you can get it at our favorite local feminist bookstore (the endlessly amazing and resilient Women and Children First), too!

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[rueur]

Morning Pages #30 (09.02.2017)

Thursday 9th February - 10:05 a.m.

I am actually writing in the a.m. now, I know! It has been a while, I know. Yesterday was a very taxing day though, so I fell asleep almost immediately. The only issue was that I got home to Anthony’s parents having dinner with my parents, and whenever they get together, the meal always takes place at a quarter to midnight (give or take a half hour), so I ate a few of their appetizers before the main meal despite the fact that between the hours of 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. yesterday, I had literally nothing to eat at all. I survived off of some warm garlic bread until my parents were ready to serve the dhosa and the eggplant and potato curry, which was just the most warm and sustaining meal I’ve had since Gong De Lin, considering how long I had to wait for it. That and the eggplant curry is always just magical going down your throat. It’s generous tomato texture, and the warm flavour of the spices, and the delicately lingering chilli to top it all off, all carried by the smooth, milky dhosa - simply put, it was the right thing to be eating at that given time.

But enough about my meal! My day was astounding. The meeting with Marcus went very well, with cameo appearances from Mark and Hector. Hector arrived at around 3 p.m., I should say, and immediately went upstairs to have a shower because it was excruciatingly hot yesterday. Then he hung out whilst Marcus and I caught up (after the business of the day was done). I told them both about Ikaros and I, and confided in them that not only had Ikaros called me and asked me to come and see him later that day, but that I was going to use the opportunity to come and see him, to tell him once and for all what I really needed from him right now. Which was plenty of space. I told Marcus and Hector that neither of us were getting what we needed from the relationship and that we had both begun to realise this over the past four months in particular, but that I still wasn’t sure how to make the break-up seem official to either of us, considering that counting yesterday, Ikaros and I have broken up four times over the span of four months. Three of those times were in January-February alone. It’s chaotic. But now it’s over. It was incredibly emotional, and I’m not entirely sure why because I feel like the drama has passed for me. I already went through my heartbreak, and now I’m on the other side. It’s his turn now. He was in denial for this long, otherwise he would’ve gone through this with me. Then again, he has been infamously emotionally immature. I shouldn’t talk about him like this, but these pages are for honesty.

Ikaros also admitted yesterday evening that he knew he’d been treating me badly. Even though he swore he would protect me from my family abuse, because he said he didn’t want anybody shitting on me, he admitted to shitting on me himself. Then he asked me again, if I didn’t want to keep trying with him. I simply said that he had just admitted he had been treating me badly, so what would it say about my self-respect if I were to allow him to be with me after all of this. Thankfully, he understood this. He also began to (for the first time in a LONG TIME) regret the way he had treated me. He was the one who would say no to plans, who would end phone calls and skype calls and days spent together. He was the one who didn’t buy presents and didn’t offer emotional support when it was most needed. He was the one who was keen for an open relationship before it was even appropriate, like three months into our dating! He was the one who made comments about other people, and made deprecating comments about me, and thus, made me end up being very unhappy in my own skin (an insecurity only often softened by him subsequently fucking me and then me being glad that somebody could possibly be attracted to me at all enough to fuck me). He was the one who didn’t say ‘I love you’ back! WHEN HE DID. And even though he failed to do all of these things, it was at least nice to hear that he was aware of this. Even so, I felt really bad for him when he was sitting with his hands on his knees in the Rosanna Parklands, saying ‘I fucked up’ over and over again to himself or to me.

This shouldn’t be important anymore, though. I should start thinking about other things. And I have. For instance, Marcus really loved my script, and so did Mark and Hector. Marcus said it was very ‘non-white-male’ which made me quite happy, and he also said that with a little fine-tuning, he doesn’t doubt that we can get funding from SBS. He just believes that Kali should be given a more concrete goal, to juxtapose her life with her mother’s. Vini’s dream was taken from her, so Kali should be shown making full claims to her passion and achieving everything her mother was forced to let go. I totally agreed with this, and my current task is to rework the script a little to place more emphasis on Kali achieving her dreams. The beach trip scenes between Kali and Adam are growing less and less prevalent with every draft, and I love it. The whole idea of the ‘rock pool’ is supposed to be more symbolic than literal anyway. My only qualm with this is purely that I feel like the beach scenes would be so beautiful to shoot. But after seeing Assassin’s Creed, I guess I am now more than aware of the dangers of prioritising cinematography over the actual plotline when one is tasked with making a storyboard.

I will say this though. I have never felt more of a writer than I have over these last two months, and this is making me increasingly excited for the rest of 2017. I also feel like these pages have had a lot to do with that too, and of course my time in Northcote too. I’ve been thinking about my time in Northcote, and have realised that it has drastically improved my life for the better. Not only did I come across ‘The Artist’s Way’ and begin on my creative rehabilitation, but I was also given time away from everyone and everything and was just allowed to be a human existing alone. Taking care of the cats also kept me anchored, kept me waking up at a sensible hour every morning and returning home at a sensible hour too (except on weekends). Furthermore, living in Northcote and being that close to everything, allowed me to go out on weekends in a way that I’ve never gone before. It allowed me to meet Evan too. Evan asked me, I think on Monday, whether or not I would’ve gone to Laundry if I hadn’t been living in Northcote. I answered very honestly, saying that I actually might not have gone out at all if I had never taken the housesitting job. Because I had gone out alone that night, and the only reason I felt safe enough going out alone that night was because I knew it would be easy enough for me to get back home to the apartment (one tram for like fifteen minutes, it was too easy). I feel like maybe I should tell Emily exactly how much minding the boys has positively impacted me. But she might stop paying me to do the job if she knows how fantastic it’s been for me! No, she wouldn’t, that was a joke.

I really miss Evan right now. My phone plan just ended and I’m switching to something a little cheaper ($5 cheaper a month, yet still way out of my budget), hopefully today. I don’t know what to do if he texts me though! I don’t know if it’ll send. I was tempted (I still am, actually) to send him the photo that was taken of us at Laundry the night that we met. Actually, fuck it. I’m going to do that right now. It’s only 10:36 a.m. and I am probably more than a quarter of the way through this final page. I am making excellent time. I am, however, a little nervous about getting started on the next draft of my script. It’s just been endless, and even Marcus said that it’s SO SO tight as it is right now, like it’s going to take a lot of frustration and editing to get it to where it needs to be. That, and screenwriting is so weird! It’s a very new medium, naturally, and nobody really knows how to do it as Marcus said (but regardless, my uni course was very focused on teaching us the layout and formatting of film scripts over actually writing them), but I feel that it’s infinitely harder for people who are actually traditional writers, or come from a writing background. It’s odd, but I think it’s safe to say that I feel like it’s easier for actors to write screenplays than it would be for writers. Marcus also noted that I had a tendency to indulge in description when I was writing action in my script. He said that sometimes my inclinations to write prose seeped through, and made my script naturally a lot more lovely to read, but a lot less easy to be interpreted by directors and actors, and everyone else who must work off of your script. It is a deceptively simple medium, I’ll just leave it at that. I can’t wait to be finished with this project! And it really hasn’t even started yet!

Okay, I sent the photo. He’s at work right now. Sometimes I worry about him being at work, honestly. Like whenever the weather’s bad. Yesterday, for example, was ridiculously hot, and I was only really only outside in the high sun for about an hour or two. But for him, it would’ve been all day! Even today, it’s supposed to be quite hot and ALSO quite windy too. And I know he finished up early on Monday because some equipment wasn’t available or something, so I can assume that the rest of this week or at least the next few days after Monday, would’ve been a lot longer and a lot more productive. If he’s been working hard both yesterday and today, I can’t help but imagine he’d be feeling rather physically exhausted by the end of today. I know that he really can’t wait till school starts again for him, but honestly neither can I. I’ll be glad to see him taking it easy for a while and studying something he’s passionate about rather than spending all of his time landscaping, waking up at ungodly hours and working in extreme conditions for so long. Goodness, I think I really like this boy.