I was at JH's place in Sydney, and KA was there. It seemed like the two of them were reversed in their affections for me, with JH distant and dismissive, and KA warm and friendly. We were swimming in J's indoor swimming pool. She noted I had helped with the design, the decision to have a waterfall flow from the centre of the house to the centre of the pool. Otherwise I was, and they were, aware of my uselessness, lots of errors I had made on things that should have been simple.

Swimming in the pool there was talk of babies, I think K introduced me to one of hers in her arms, and asked encouragingly about our attempts. I said we'd only been trying for a few months, I wasn't worried.

As I swam bits of detritus stuck to me. A large glob of bloody mucus was stuck hard to my right big toenail, and I spent a long time trying to rub it away. 

"Great isosceles wasps flew up from below. The pretty dawn of evening preceded me, its eyes on the heaven of my eyes, without turning round. Thus do ships lie down in the silver storm."

Andre Breton, from "Soluble Fish". 

"She lifted the cup to her lips; her fingers ached, the water smelled of metal polish. She felt a thin hard form comb through her hair pricking her scalp and coming down towards her spine pushing her belly out more. She could feel him looking at her again."

Romesh Gunesekera, from "Batik", Monkfish Moon.

"Sunset is a good time to arrive in this part of the world..."

Romesh Gunesekera, from "Captives", Monkfish Moon. 

A softer bed, that my mother has a softer bed, that she walks beside a river with the sound of purposeful water on hard round stones, water running hard and stones pale grey, her feet secure around the stones' curves, jandals, round stones spread across the full open valley, current strong and there's so much room for water. 

"Syllables:
                    they ripen in the mind,
flower in the mouth.
                                     Their roots
drink night, eat light.
                                     Languages:
trees incandescent
with leaves of rain.

Lightning vegetation,
geometries of echoes:
on a sheet of paper
the poem builds itself
                                     as the day
on the palm of space."


Octavio Paz, from "The Daily Fire"

I'm getting N's sister to teach a workshop on my behalf. I've done this before. She's barely literate. I ask her if she's up to rewriting the details on the promotional material and she's not, so I do it.

I'm in class, one of the last classes of the semester and I've forgotten all my students' names. I ask them to say their names so I can take the roll and they start being really disruptive and rude. I consult with a colleague who's in the class and he says it's because I forgot their names.

I'm driving with N's family down into a valley. It used to be so quiet and secluded here but since they put the new road in there's heavy traffic, even though it's still green, with many large trees. The van is full of students, large boys, kind of hostile to me. At some point I realise no one is driving the van - I'm in the passenger seat. I want one of them to climb over from the back as I'm blocked by luggage - we're still in motion - but they won't so I start to climb over myself. There are a couple of very tall young men walking out of the woods towards the van - they are bullies and I have to turn the van around and get out of there. I seem to pull off this quite extreme driving manoeuvre. There are bullies in the van too though.