Face update.

These are the first photos I’ve taken of myself since I realised a couple of weeks ago, peacefully and subtly, that I am in recovery from PTSD. I haven’t seen my shrink yet to discuss this with him. I’m happy though, most of the time. Took a lot of hard work to get to 30 and to experience this kind of happiness for the first time.

I am really happy with my eyebrows

File under: tired portraits when it is 31°C (88F) in the house at 11pm and the air is filled with bush fire smoke (not close). Too hot to grieve properly, too hot to be loved, too hot to sleep, too hot to know where I want to go if I leave. Too hot to have long hair, pin it up and fantasise about shaving it off. Stray ringlet and eyes drawn into dark circles.

Lying on the flying carpet at the Asia Pacific Triennial last night.

Now that my cheekbones are better defined, I have taken to wearing more blush for the hell of it. A new summer dress (in spring).

I undertook a huge spring clean. I culled books, clothes, shoes. Lined up bottles of nail polish and lipstick tubes into purpose built containers. Deleted chat logs and emails and txt messages from ex-lovers and would-be lovers. You can’t really see it, but I organised three bookshelves: one for text books, one for collections of poetry (this needs more than one shelf, now), one for all the books I’ve bought and haven’t read yet.

I have still haven’t regained a desire to confess, lately I can’t even speak to tell my closest friends what is wrong. I’m writing: no less, no more. Some of it I might publish here. I have no desire to reactivate my Facebook or Twitter, which is maybe why this Tumblr seems so personal today. These last two months if someone asks How are you? My answer would always be the same, I am having a very good day but it is also a very bad day. I have these dreams and intuitions. I always know weeks, months in advance, when something bad will happen. Usually dread takes over but not this time, just patience, resignation. When I think about loving him there is no dread, but I am weary and I don’t know if I will continue.

I like smiling in these cheeks though.

Last night I walked out under an almost full Taurus moon. I wanted to record my face at this point in time. I just had my Saturn Return and there are some very hard and very good happenings in my life right now. I am turning 30, next month. I have so much to confess, so much to write - but hardly anyone I want to tell. I am surrounded by the right people, to grow with, to love with, to teach me. I am less afraid, I am happier, I am more vulnerable, I am more sure of what I want than ever. I am trying to be patient.

To record my joy, two photos. After Prince, and the Love Symbol necklace.
(One of the greatest nights of my entire life. There was Prince in concert…then the after party…was the jam.)

My friend Pippa at True Love Tattoo did this for me today. I didn’t even see the design until a few minutes before I got it done, all I told her was that I wanted bees, and she suggested strawberry flowers. I trust her a lot, obviously. I love it.

Pippa and I have been friends for nearly twelve years now, but this is the first time she’s tattooed me. I think we will extend this into the rest of my forearm, eventually.

I got Steve Roggenbuck’s book “Crunk Juice” in the mail this week, it is funny and tender and happy making like serotonin, go buy it! http://store.livemylief.com/

(Source: Flickr / kathleenjoy)

My necklace reads “Vain” and you can buy one from Natalie Perkins at Fancy Lady Industries.

Freshly dyed red hair is one of my favourite feelings in the world. Annual haircut, I asked my hairdresser to take off three inches. “I leave a red path of destruction”, she said to me as she painted my hair. My hair is naturally light auburn/brown and after being every shade of red and brown (with blue and purple and black and pink in between) I stopped dying it for a few years. I avoid permanent dyes because it’s so long (still halfway down my back even after losing three inches).

I can’t wait to articulate my complicated relationship with the beauty industrial complex and my own occasional narcissism when I can buy and wear one of definatalie’s VAIN necklaces. In bright pink.

Eating blueberries before midnight, straight from their punnet in the fridge. Sharon Olds writes, night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body

When I was a teenager I’d listen to the Bluebottle Kiss album Fear of Girls on repeat, there’s a lyric

The same blue fingerprint the same stained mouth

My juice stained chin, the calls I don’t make, the text messages I don’t send, the buttons I don’t undo, the skin I shy from, the kissing I don’t think about, the lipstick I don’t wear, the bruises I don’t bloom,

the sweetness on my tongue I was saving for you instead,

My heart and my body

coming up empty.

(Going to a Krömosom, Teargas and Toxic Holocaust show tonight)

…not quite work appropriate Mad Men secretary inspired dress to prolong holidays

I love this Polaroid Emma took of Heather, Pete and me. I look unimpressed at the groping but that’s actually my pretend model pout.

New Years Eve day rung in with a birthday celebration, then a backyard party at Memily’s house with many of my favourite people. Painted everyone’s nails. We danced on the deck until the house shook and Heather had to move any breakables. Twirled in the backyard and sung Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at the top of our lungs for maximum camp.