I dreamed last night that I answered the phone and N's ex girlfriend said "Hi, it's L." I said "Oh hi L, would you like me to get N?" but she hadn't been expecting me to answer. She said "N? N who?" pretending she hadn't been calling for him.

"N my boyfriend. N who used to be YOUR boyfriend." I wasn't trying to be bitchy but realised how it sounded as I said it. She fell silent, until I thought the line had been dropped. I said I was going to hang up and then I heard her whimpering. I kept listening and her distress became clearer and clearer. I told her to stay there, that I was going to send N around to see her and help her out.

the purple oxalis is doing very nicely since I moved it inside by the window. its leaves last forever, and are beautifully photonastic on long, windy stems. it only needs a very little water. no new leaves, though, sadly. it sent out a few when I first had it and they went mushy and died. I realised it was too humid in the porch, and I was over-watering it. now it's content, but it won't try again.

I just rode down to the plant shop and brought back in my bike carrier a couple of yellow orchids - small flowers on long stems - for the window box. First plants for the window box. I'll build it up slowly but as I sometimes work at the table in the mornings looking out that window I want to make it pretty. they had some multi-coloured lantana at the shop that could work well there, but expensive. and I remember what a pest they were in Australia. one day at the port kembla house I ventured up to the back of the back garden and found lantana had taken over EVERYTHING. I hacked back what I could then gave up. I did a terrible job of looking after that place. stuck in thesis misery, relationship drama.

Shortly I'll transplant the bromeliad, now I have new soil. The guys at the nursery, wanting to be helpful, wrapped the orchid stems in paper for me, to protect them as I rode home. But I found they just caught the wind like sails, so I tore the paper off and let them bob around with me the midday heat. I was almost purple by the time I got home but the orchids are okay.

aimless, drifting.

glassy eyes fixed on the rippling water.
-

we brush our feet over a silk carpet that seen from one direction has the colours of a garden of roses, blooming in many shades; seen from the other it takes the colours of the stems.

the classical pianist chides the maid for neglecting the air conditioning. after the meal, while she's serving the chocolates, we applaud her cooking. water trickles through the pool on which the dining platform is set. the lights turn suddenly green, we all look hard and indistinct. it's a fault in the wiring of the adjustable RGB lamp. 

I had tea with a friend and trouble lifted away. the moon let me go. hormone hell over. one week exactly - 26th Feb to 5th of March.

It's not that there aren't other factors, there are, and some months (not many) go by without too much disruption; I might feel more tearful and tender, dream more, need to take things slowly and be introspective, but nothing BAD happens. But if circumstances are off (say I get sick beforehand, or there's some life-upset) it's like - the kind of transformation you feel when someone dies or violence enters your life. a sense of evil in the world, in the people on the street, in the room next door. And of personal and collective doom, of an unclean death in process now, all around. here on the later cusp of it, it's not that I don't feel that that perception is real. but it recedes, and I do not want to chase it. maybe in a couple of days I will be able to put into words the other, safer reality. for now I just feel relief and by simple things- exercise, meditation, sleep, regular waking, regular work, trees, friends - I try to secure it. 

I dreamed that campus was a small resort, and I was arranging accommodation and events for a writer, and tickets to go and see a movie with N. The students saw me in line and I told them I was taking time in lieu. then I was sitting with the yoga instructor at a table at breakfast. A couple stood up to speak, the man pulling the woman up and saying 'my wife has something to say. she would like to apologise to you all'. The yoga instructor pinched my hand, to express tension and dismay, because we both knew immediately he was abusing her. The wife proceeded to read out an incomprehensible apology full of psychotic religious reference that he had scripted for her. I watched her eyes and his eyes, both big and brown and bruised, and saw there the history of what she had been. my hand was being pinched throughout. 

every day collapse, every day resurge. nothing I can easily control. just do my best. is it really not like this for other people? if I can't go this path there's another path. 

peeled a stamp onto it and sent it off. righteous anger. in a box: 'that it was like hearing a baby cry and being unable to pick it up.' 

--

I saw today a crying baby being carried through the jammed mall. maybe a year old, passing me on my right. mouth wide, wet face... carried by a young dad, baby reaching hand out to young mother....

and passing me on my left another one year old, also being carried but peaceful, and transfixed by the mirror scene, chasing it with head and eyes as they passed, face full of wonder....