On Imperfection

Pour a glass of water at the cafe stand, acknowledge my liberty with a glance at an attendant, and head to the spongy chairs to recover from the shakes before I attempt Chopin.

Fall into conversation with the couple opposite me. “Oh you are a pianist. There was a girl playing last week who was playing Beethoven and giving it all she had, sitting on the edge of the piano stool.”

“Oh I only play Chopin, I wish I knew Beethoven though'. His other Sonata, the one that is not the Moonlight one, I first heard it from a man I met at this very piano, he was there at the hospital because he had a broken finger. He played the Beethoven later at my house and also on a rickety outdoor piano at a beachside cafe.

Anyhow, I dont know it.

I headed over to play, a performance that was full of perforations due to having just got over the flu and still having an inner ear infection. However as usual I stumbled over the simple pieces only to land all the complex jumps later, only to attempt Winterwind and mangle it, with all pieces underlined by a Helfgott-like muttering and frustrated interjections.

(Realize later that they had been talking about me because they had been there for oncology treatment which probably happens on a weekly basis.)

(Beethoven! How dare they!)

Perhaps just as great as providing music for the hospital is making mistakes with applomb. The listeners are in this building because something has gone wrong.

A performance with errors or technical fragility is much more convincing to the brain because we are so used to perfection these days, from robots and programmes and mathematics. I wish to keep you on the edge of your seat, by playing from the edge of mine.

To give all that you've got means more even if it's less, because it is a relative rather than an absolute measure, and physics agrees with me. 

it was the longest night last night. that means that
today is one of hope. i sat at my kitchen table and watched this: 


and the entire day was joy, for obvious reasons. i had no choice  but to go to the west coast after work to watch the sun fall into the sea again. random boys cautioned me from climbing the fence as the cliff was clayish and slippery and the whipping wind was dauntingly cold. i leered at them and disappeared down the bank. after half an hour on the clifftop alone taking photos i was numb and hoping they didn't realize how conveniently they could have covered up raping me by pushing me off the cliff. their story of 'we told her not to climb the fence' would have stood up to lie-detectors and torture. 


i returned and we had a nice conversation actually, while cloud after cloud of birds were making their evening migration out to the island. 


one of them was british and i said people trust people with british accents.

the south island of new zealand, as seen from porirua, in the north island

By Popular Demand MORE TENETS OF HEALTHY MENTAL HEALTH

Fire, or at least, candles.

Biscuits, for dunking.

Travel eg, walking to the dairy

Astrology or Jesus, so that you have something that doesn't actually mind you blaming all the crap on it.

Entropy and mess, so that you can clean it up and feel like God.

Vaguely criminal behaviour, like breaking into hoodlums yards and planting flowers in the full moon, (because hoodlum gardens are always dark and you can't see except for astronomy)

Creatures, Especially ridiculous ones. My friend Jasmin has a chihuahua-maltese cross. Jasmin says "she is tiny and pathetic and I love her." This is true. The doglet loves me, also.
I have a dead spider in a jar, because I am science. I also have a portrait of Chopin that talks to me. Chopin had a lover who called him 'my beloved little corpse' as a term of endearment.

Melancholy music, for when you are manic, or hypomanic. Nine Inch Nails made some once they were famous and could do whatever the fuck they wanted without having to make money.

I Paid My Debt Off At The Petrol Station Today

i went to the petrol station and filled my tank, but then discovered my card was missing, so they said just pay for it tomorrow, cos i said i knew it was in my room. days later i still hadn't found it, and i went into the bank and they said, "oh call this guy, he has it", and he was a plumber working just down from my house, so i went and picked it up from him, and he said ' i picked it up in the carpark at midnight, did you get raped??" and i was like wtf no, you shouldnt ask questions you dont want to hear the answer to, and he was like you shouldnt just keep your cards in your pocket.
besides, i was trying to portray venus, who is unrapeable because she is so into everyone anyway. 

so i went back to the petrol station and bought more petrol as well, and my card declined me though it was full of money, it was full of tire marks too. i bet it fell out my pocket when i got my keys out to drive home and then i backed over it.

i went to the bank and they fixed it for me. back at the petrol station for the third time they made a big deal out of it and said i looked really stressed the last time they saw me and was i alright now. a question that threw me into incapacitating self-consciousness.

werk

i werk in the next town over, up the gorge, where everyone drives slow, and walks slow, and i am the impatient profane person from the city with pop music blasting from her car.

when i soar over the lip of the gorge in my musical vehicle, i can get life fm, and the huge flocks of gulls from the west coast dawdle in the sky over the streets.

can i sue her please for moral abuse, she hates on the revellious folly of my personal life and i have to work there.

the kids carry music around with them, they play all  my favourite pop songs, which makes it the best place to work, cos the best part of my day is driving to and from work listening to the radio. 

i stayed an hour afterwards today, as i had been writing poetry about dead tadpoles instead and lost track of time. 

Idolatry And Cake

Why is it so cold, I am supposed to look naked and greek. Go to town, buy a lot of gold, like a coat and hat, and hairspray. Three cans, and all it does is make me high, my hair is too dark. Idea!!!-paint my boots gold also, laughing and slapping the paintbrush. They are wonderfully ruined. Lots of hairspray and jewellery, it was two dollar fifty, from asia store. Paint an ankh on an earring, and fuck it up, paint the other and make it into a necklace.

Three cans of gold, and it did nothing. Though I was a toxic cloud; at least I share that in common with Venus.

Dreadocks are so masculine. They are so prophet, they are so hunter. John the Baptist must have had them I'm sure, wilderness and locusts and wild honey and dreadfulocks.

He is not even here. Probably for the best.

Greetings humans. Is your planet always this cold.

No-one noticed anything out of the ordinary. Most of them want to use telescopes, but I shall project Venus onto the wall with a pinhole camera, most artistically pure, and allows me to control the variables I care about. Besides, Larry had a pinhole camera episode the year before I left. I sat for him once, in his walled backyard, in the rain and my mancoat.

Come home, why are there humans in my house. Christians, do I have any prayer requests. Tell them stories instead, of planets and bliss, and stargazing with strange boys on dark paths on the way home. Partake of their cake and pomegranate juice, what a scriptural beverage. Pray for my soul

There is snow on the hills this morning. As if I needed anything else to induce hypomania.
Send me really depressing music, calm me down,  golden planetary raptures.

So she found free Nine Inch Nails album online for me, it is glorious acoustic misery.
Still high, I am going to write poetry all over my ruined boots with a black permanent marker and paint the other necklace into Jupiter, the large round pink pendant.
Come across the most jesus necklace ever yesterday, it is a cross made of nails. In Cosmic Corner, to the tune of trance music and incense, and buy it over a glass counter of neon body piercings and marijuana paraphenalia.
I am going to church tonight, to wear my cross and golden coat, and also for my idolatry.

The one night I had wanted to wear the least, and it was the coldest of the year. 

I'm sorry I have no photos.

languishing in front of your heaters, far too many calories, good because winter is coming.

oh a text, shall we go and meet them in town? / what you know her too? / she used to flat here! /with you? / yes! for years. / I LOVE HER

give me painkillers lets go.

it is new and the young people have not yet discovered it, it is still classy here.

i speak of my dream to make pancakes, so i can consume vast amounts of maple syrup, and you give me an unopened bottle of maple syrup because your flatmate's girlfriend keeps bringing it round to your flat and you have heaps now. and you have some in your bag, on you, at a bar, on a friday night.

i am the sober driver, i only have one cocktail, but my car is on the coast and it is raining. light plays all over the water. everything shines.

*    *    *     *

We don't have to go to that cafe. But too many favourites! We can go to them all! This one is the reincarnation of Modax in it's prime. I wanted to do a chocolate boutique crawl last year. Take me with you! I have to meet the gay boy and the muslim! She was cold and that is why they are in this stuffy large light sunny empty cafe, attached to the Wesleyan. I had never confessed that abstinence was so bad for the soul before! and it was so spontaneous. The universe breathes easier. Pancakes, a nentire bottle of maple syrup, i consume half of it, cheer me on. 

*   *   *    *

I went back after we all left, after i went home to drink water. Because the radio in my car was singing 'Come back I miss you girl". I drove back, and the radio was playing 'Turn All The Lights On" just like it was the first time I drove there tonight. And I caught him after his show, in the empty dome tidying up bits of stuff, and we talked about constellations and gravity. 

*    *    0     *

Sunday is the best day to be at the flat, because everyone goes to church, and it is empty and peaceful. Why is it always sunny on a Sunday. I am back on Cuba Street, and so are you, in a doorway! for the third time this weekend! hello, I am meeting people though, goodbye. 

*   *    *

In a cemetery waiting for  the moon to rise of course. Everyone taking photos of the moon all over the city! don't know why, even if it's bigger, it still looks the same on a photo. the beach! a communal exercise. no-one realizes that mars, saturn and venus are also spying. i tried to resolve the crescent of venus with the stolen lenses.

i have been cold for weeks now.