Defining Home: Winds of Summer

Home.

It's a pretty broad concept, but a very specific one, depending on the context. In fact, one could broadly and yet with extreme accuracy describe Australia to be our collective home.

I drawn to the more intimate context of home in this post however, for as I was walking home from a night out with friends, I was confronted by the idea as I strode through the cold summer winds. I believe this city now to be my home.

Not in a geographical sense, I should make that clear from the outset. This place has been the place of my residence for seven long years, but tonight, for the first time since I moved here, I finally felt a kinship with the street and sounds of this city. I felt a connection. An important link being finally forged.

This city is my home. These streets, my home. I care what happens here, and I care what other people think of this place.

It's nice to feel a sense of kinship and belonging, and I think this bond will hold strong until I feel the need to migrate to the coast in years to come.

I still feel the call of the sea, deep within my blood, but for now, the crisp, calm current of the Murrumbidgee is enough for me.

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room.

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

Phoenix

Flickering Flames: Guttering in the Winter Wind

I hate winter. Just thought that I'd bring that up before I get into anything heavy here. I will probably mention before I get too far into this piece that I've been sitting here on my own for far too long and I'm sharing this only because I feel that my friends have a right to know when something affects me as deeply as I have been affected this morning.

This is going to be mildly controversial, and I don't want anyone who actively reads this flowing to me with pity or even support. This is an affirmation piece. This is me working through my thoughts, hopes and dreams. This is me. I'm sorry if I hurt anyone with this, I really am, but my intention with this is to educate and illuminate. It is never to hurt.

I've never felt love. It's not as uncommon at this age as one might think, but to be honest, I've never been in a true, defined relationship to even give myself a chance of this happening. Whether this is the weather playing tricks with my head or not, I'm not sure. I'm not depressed. I know that much. I've been down that road before, more than once, and it had a certain feel to it each time it happened. Where I am at 6:30am on a Thursday morning is not depression, it's just a sad, cold realisation.

I will never let labels define who and what I am. However, in hindsight, failing to conform to labels in a general sense leaves me feeling fuzzy, vague and unspecific at this time.

As far as labels are concerned, I am gay. Stephanie and later Lynelle were exceptions, rather than the rule. I am not closed to women in a general sense, but both of these girls were special cases who broke that rule for me in specific ways for specific reasons. As all astute readers might point out, neither really worked for me relationship wise, though that had nothing to do with my preferences at the time.

My two closest friends are both moving on with thier lives, starting relationships and forming bonds with people outside our circle. Now, let me be the first to affirm my happiness for all of the involved parties. I think it was inevitable for us to part ways in this way eventually, and I am honestly and truly very happy for both Ned and Lynelle on thier relationships, budding or otherwise.

However, being around couples all the time, and in fact having the idea of couples so omnipresent all the time can leave one quite bitter at night. I have found myself thinking hurtful and angry thoughts about both Ned and Lynelle purely because they have something I do not. It's only envy speaking, of that I am sure, and I often have to control what I want to say to avoid playing the bitter old fag that I feel I am.

This goes deeper than Ned and Lynelle though. Jarrod is with someone who lights him up inside, a girl who makes him laugh and gives him strength. Seeing the two of them together really hit home for me. I have never had that connection with anyone in my life, and unless I start working to change things, I may never.

I am a strong, creative and passionate person. My will alone can give me strength and help me to fight any conflict or complication which happens to stand in my way. Even now, at one of my lower points, I know that tomorrow, I will wake up, shake my head, and get on with the things that need to be done. I am probably even strong enough to go through this life without the love of another person. I'm not one hundred percent sure about that part, but I think if life plays out that way, I could deal.

But I don't want to. I live for my friends. I live to be the person that helps, that cares and that comforts them in times of need. I live to be the one that people go to when they are hurt, sad or tired, to just hang with and be supportive.

Recently, however, I find myself wishing there was somewhere I could go at the end of a day and just curl up and feel safe. Constantly feeling like you are at war with the world for your very survival is tiring, and even more so when you have to shoulder the burden yourself. I don't want to have to be strong all the time. I want to be able to let down my guard with someone, to take them in and to feel safe with them.

I want to need someone. I want to feel the beautiful, desperate vulnerability of requited love.

Even now, I look over to my bed and see it cold and empty. But this is about so much more than sex. It isn't all about that orgasm at the end of a great night of sex anymore. I don't think it ever was. I have inherited a potent sex drive from my mother, for sure, and I think for a very long time I was confusing sex and love. I felt that the only way to really love someone was to show that to them physically.

Yet my complete emotional repression got me thinking. When Ned, Nell and I first started to get close, I remember having a conversation with them about how physical affection was awkward for me. Things like hugging and kissing and any sort of physically comfortable situations were foreign to me and in truth used to make me extremely uncomfortable.

Yet, despite that, I was completely fine with sex as a means of affection. I was confident, and even slightly dominant in the bedroom. I was in control and was at complete ease.

So why the discrepancy? Simple. I guess I used sex and sexual acts to compensate for a lack of actual feeling, and saw hugging and kissing as almost taboo.

The truth. Lynelle was the first person I ever kissed... Girlie, that's why I flipped out so much in my loungeroom down in the flat. That was the first time I had ever been kissed by anyone in my life for real. Can you remember how it nearly overwhelmed me?

I have only ever been kissed by two people in my entire life, yet I have slept with dozens. It tells me that my motives, goals and values were more than a little skewed and I got a lot of things wrong growing up, but we all make mistakes growing up and I have too solid a head on my shoulders for that alone to get me down.

I feel like this has just been an open discussion about my sex life, and that was not it's intention. I really hope that what I was trying to convey in this piece is not entirely lost to the scandal I have painted for you all.

I am so proud of myself. I am going to realise my dream and bring Questing to the world. I am a strong and vibrant person, I am a good friend and a kind, creative and compassionate soul. I know this, and yet...

I don't want to have to weather this alone.

I don't think it's the fear of being alone specifically which is the inspiration for this post. I know it contributed, but I think it's more than that.

In a reference that will only truly be grasped by a single reader of this journal, I have this to say: I want for someone to one day be able to complete the entire puzzle, and while I have given each and every one of you many pieces on this day, there is one piece that I cannot give to anyone who reads this. It will remain incomplete.

By the gods above, I pray with every fibre of my being that it will not be forever...

"Are you ready to cut off your head and place your foot on it? If so, come; Love awaits you! Love is not grown in a garden, nor sold in the marketplace; whether you are a king or a servant, the price is your head, and nothing less. Yes, the cost of the elixir of love is your head! Do you hesitate? O miser, It is cheap at that price!"

-Abu Hamid Al-Ghazzali

FallenPhoenix

One Thousand Memories: An Ode to Homebase

Homebase is gone. I mean not in the typical sense of the word, but the house which I grew up in, the only house that I've ever really called Home no longer belongs to our family.

The most depressing reality in this situation was the fact that I only got twenty-four hours to say my goodbyes to a life time of memories, and trust me when I tell you that that was way too far away from not enough.

I'm going to share some of the memories of my childhood and teenage years with you in slideshow form, just to give meaning to what would otherwise be meaningless words.

 

This is homebase, with the sign which says that it is being sold for auction. The tree that is just off left of the shot has a lot of memories for me. I was always a little bitter that my backyard never had any trees in it, and was kinda attached to this one. When I was waiting for friends parents or visitors to come and pick me up, I'd wait under that tree, rain, hail or shine, summer, winter or some other combination that Leeton could throw at us.

The front yard was never big for me, save that I had to wash the car there a lot, and always on the days that sucked the most. My grandfather would always make me do it on the days where the sun was touching the ground and the cement had turn to hellspawned lava, and Nan always had a talent for having cold water on days when the air had frozen and there was no possible way to wash the car and still stay dry.

Remember my thirteenth birthday party Jassi. That started an era. My grandmother had just put down new carpet and we went and put wax all through it. You freaked the shit out of Jarrod that night, and I've never had more fun with stiff.... sticks. I believe it was a blue bottle with a spirit in it which caused the commotion that night.

Some of my fondest memories of this house come from here. I remember sitting in the leather lounge chair in the middle of winter curled up in my doona watching some wrestling pay per view with Bubba curled up at my feet like a good cat.... dog... >> Whatever, he owned me.

I remember having to try to explain to my grandmother why there was a tremendous dint in the television after Jess and Jarrod played chasies in my living room.

I remember Jezabel finally overthrowing the Tyranny of Seralina in one of my most amazing roleplaying masterpieces of all time.

The back veranda was what made my house interesting. I remember thinking for the longest time that I would move out to this room when I was old enough. Yeah, cause that would have been heaps private.

This room was always so busy in the house. Here, I learned how to first play a Nintendo, back in 1993. I nearly returned my most precious pet the night I bought him home because we sat him under the pool table and he cried for almost the entire night. I learned how to play Warhammer out here, and had countless birthday lunches on the pool table which we later sold.

As we moved the pool table out to Carters, I practiced my martial arts out here, and had some heart wrenching conversations on the phone. This was truly the busiest room in our house. The multi-purpose arena and my den until I moved downstairs.

My baby bedroom. This was my bedroom for most of my primary school life. This nightmare period of my life was spent constantly seeking my grandparents approval and battling clinical depression. Two very dark periods in my life happened in this room, and I can still feel dark energy and negativity within these walls.

My very first computer got set up here, and all the board games for which I was so famous when I actually got friends were kept in the cupboards in this room. We only just got rid of all of them recently, with my grandmother giving them to Bayden Hulme across the street, as a way of connecting he and his mother. This is exactly what those games did for me and my grandmother, so it seems very fitting.

As I made the move from St. Josephs to St. Francis, so to did I make the move from the smallest room in the house to the next up. I have so many memories in this room that they are hard to list. I'll try.

I remember being introduced to the wonders of the internet in 1997, during the very brief trip to Leeton that my mother made back then. It was her who introduced me to the net, and I'll have to thank her for that the next time I see her.

My life changed in this room on so many occasions. I remember fighting through the end of my junior high school life and struggling every night not to hate myself for the trouble I caused at that school.

I remember Jessica putting her ass through my computer table, and then my bed just messing around and then being able to blame it on me because my grandfather had a soft spot for her.

I remember being safe in this space, despite the turmoil going on around me, and I remember that it was here that I pulled my sinking mind out of the fire and really set it to work. A great deal of the intellect I am afforded today comes from the darkest periods of my life.

Year 11 came around and as James got married and moved to Canberra, an opportunity arose. I asked for the flat at the start of my preliminary HSC, and my grandparents spent a great deal of money making this place livable for me.

It was down in this room that I found out that my grandfather had cancer.

I remember the first night I ever stayed downstairs. I was barely 17, and scared out of my mind. Something was making the most horrendous noises just outside my window and I can remember only falling asleep that night with the thought that I was going to die and at least they'd do it in my sleep.

That possum and I had many conversations over the next 6 years, and every person without fail who ever spent a single night under my roof ended up asking about it.

Subsequently, the flat became my space. From the onset of the HSC to the present day, it has been the one place I have considered a sanctuary from anyone. I could be myself in this space like no other, and I feel it's loss most profoundly. I went through two serious relationships within these walls, and will have memories of the time spent in the flat for the rest of my life.

I remember playing Warhammer on the floor of the kitchen, for lack of anywhere better to play. It sucked, but we had games there, and that was that.

I remember Taco completing his twenty temple challenge in my kitchen, much to his and everyone else's surprise.

I remember the pink light.

I remember the sun rising on me the day after graduation with my grandmother yelling at me from outside my room to get up. I remember extricating myself from my sheets thinking I knew what a hangover was and trying to work out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

I remember singing for the first time in front of someone on purpose for my university audition, and I remember surprising them and myself.

I remember light and warmth.

I remember an evil stove trying desperately to kill Ned and I one night in the bitter cold.

I vaguely remember something about Nutella.

The best years of my life played out in these walls, and I cried bitterly that one night I was home alone to reflect on it all.

In a little corner of the back wall, I have written:

"I once was here, I now am not. May these walls serve you as they have me".

Despite what you may think, I was more of an outside kid in my childhood than many of you realise. For many years I trained very avidly on that trampoline, and only when disaster struck did I scale back my interest in it. Still, this backyard has some amazing memories for me as well.

Jessica and I used to come out here of a summer evening and do our homework and quest. The legacy of Titania, and the game which I will one day share with the world was forged on lazy summer days with my cousin in this yard. I remember telling Jessica in this yard the day my world fell to pieces in 2000, and I remember her gently telling me I deserved it, which I agreed to.

I remember ten fantastic birthdays thrown for me by my grandparents with all the people they could muster. I was surrounded with people as a kid, whether to mask the idea that I made friends slowly or not, I won't ever know, but it was with good reason.

I remember my grandfathers funeral feeling so surreal in this yard. I was so numb but Jarrod, Jess and Ned bought some colour back into the world that day. It rained so hard that day, one year into the drought we still languor in, and it was freezing.

I remember the UWF, Sailor Sun, and saving the world in my mind one hundred times over. My imagination grew out of the phantasms of this place, and I hope they linger for years to come to inspire the new inhabitants of this place.

The view from my trampoline of an evening. This was the place that I would collapse after an hour or two of jumping and just stare at the stars, the clouds or the sky, depending on the time of day.

My grandmother used to panic seeing me out here all silent and alone, especially wearing just my usual inside clothes in the middle of winter, but it was my chance to be alone and think right through from the day I first got the trampoline to the day I started working at BP.

The night I went home, I took the chance to marvel at the sight of the sky from my back yard, a sight I'll never see again.

Almost every day without fail, I would lie here after jumping and just think. It was that time that kept me sane, I honestly believe that.

T. B. C. A. P. U.

I wish it was.

The sun has set on the cradle of my mind and my life. I am rapidly approaching the end of what can be considered the best years of our lives and I find myself wondering if I'll ever really have a homebase again.

It's hard to tell at this point.

46 Currawang Ave, I will miss you.

I feel like one of the few anchors left in my life is gone, and when my grandmother finally succumbs to old age, my only tie to my hometown will vanish for ever.

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

-Eugene Ionesco

FallenPhoenix

Reflections in Broken Glass: The Personality Paradigm

I had a dream last night. It was a dream about Dan. It was nice and sensual and most of all, it was warm. I'm not going into the details of it, thats not important. I can already hear at least one of you out there going "Oh my God, I thought you were over him", and the short answer is, I am, but experiences that we shared together changed who I am as person, and that is what this post is all about.

I awoke from this dream at about 5am this morning and was almost overcome with the profoundest sense of loss and self-doubt. Had I done everything I could have with that relationship and all the other relationships I'd lost. Had I traveled forward at all since I left school. Would I?

It has taken me until about 11am, just as I should be getting ready for work to see that every emotionally challenging period of my life has taught me something and made me stronger. Yes, I know, in an esoteric sense, I already knew this. I knew it had made me stronger, but on actually thinking about, I can pinpoint what I learned, who or what I learned it from and how that actually effects me as a person, which is all pretty amazing.

Now kiddies, I warn you, some of the stuff in here is sensitive and pointed. Don't stress. Contextually, this all has already happened, and I don't hate anyone in this world.

My mother taught me to be wary of those whom I trust. When the subject of my mother comes up, I usually either trash her or try in vain to justify what she did, depending on my mood. Despite anything I say, she betrayed me in the worst way. I know the circumstances surrounding her leaving me with my grandparents, and in a way I'm thankful for that, but I will always consider her absence in my life as the ultimate form of betrayal.

Simon and Nick, my two closest friends in primary school taught me never to get too comfortable in my surroundings and to always be on the look out for betrayal. One of the only images that sticks in my head from primary school is Simon picking up a stick on some random day in Year Five and said "If this stick is how much we like you..." and then broke the stick. It makes no sense to me now, but I think everyone gets what he means and I understood perfectly back then. Those two just dropped me, and for almost a year, I had no friends whatsoever. My entire year group would groan when I entered a room, and I would spend entire lunchtimes sitting in front of the staffroom reading to escape.

Jassi, Guillaume and David taught me humility and to rebel against the power of peer pressure when ever I could. I remember a conversation Jassi and I had in my room pretty early in Year 10 where my "contract of friendship" with the group was terminated effective immediately. I remember asking Jassi, 'What do you expect me to do now?" and him replying as he walked out my front door, "You know, I don't really care!". That stung, but I realised what I realise now. It didn't hurt as much as the first time. Still, I suffered yet more at the hands of my classmates, which hardened my shell considerably and doubtlessly me made me a stronger person both mentally and spiritually. Jessica, my dear cousin, lent me a great deal of strength in those difficult months, and I could NOT have done it without her.

Daniel... Dan taught me to fear love, respect love, and when at all possible, flee love. I know that sounds terrible and I really don't blame him all that much. In fact, I don't believe that he ever loved me. I don't claim to know what love is, but I think I got somewhere pretty close with that boy. He hurt me tremendously, but I do understand why. Love is powerful and uncontrollable. It is to be feared, respected and admired. To those who give their lives to love, I salute you, but could not stand where you stand.

Tamsin Skye. Tam reiterated that human beings have the infinite capacity to surprise you. She taught me that no friendship is invincible and that the more you trust someone, the more painful it is when they inevitably betray you. Her strange betrayal which confuses me to this day left me distraught for a very long time. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her, which is a testament to how close we were, but I am so unbearably angry at her as well. I cried over her loss. Not one of the people reading this will understand how monumental that is. I actually cried over you. How dare you! I will always harbor suspicion and wariness of my closest friends because of you. Admittedly, there is still a bond between us, frayed as it is. I have not written off the chance of a resurrection of our story, but I find it highly unlikely.

These are just a few of the reasons I am why I am. I am closed and unconnected, distant and cold, I've been cut and rejected, despite all that I've told. Within me is anger, behind me is pain, but I look to the future and from this I gain, a valuable insight into stories untold, these experiences guide me until I grow old.

Blessed be my friends, I am not easy to be around, so thank you for being yourselves and trying anyway.

"The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself"

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays "Experience"

FallenPhoenix