And Summer's lease hath all too short a date...

Summer is my absolute favourite time of year. I love everything about it. Summer has the best smells (fresh cut lawn on a hot day, frangipanis wafting from the neighbours garden, the earthiness of hot ground cooling in the evening shade). It has by far the best activities: Swimming and sunbathing, BBQ's and Picnics, waterfights and evening parties outside.
And then there's the food. If I could live perpetually on one particular season's food it would, without a doubt be summer's. Mangos, Pineapples, cherries, and melons! Fresh seafood and zingy salads. Sorbets, icecreams, frozen fruit slushies! I remember as a child sitting in the sand out front of our holiday rental, watching the boats drift by, feeling the sticky, salty breeze on my sunburnt skin, and licking up every last drop of sweet mango juice dripping down my arm as I devoured the fruit ravenously. Even now nothing says summer like an icy mango and a scoop of good vanilla icecream. 
From the food of summer comes the Christmases I love the best. Sitting in the scorching heat watching the soft marshmellow clouds tumble through the sky. Water fights and backyard cricket. Electrical storms terrorizing the dogs and children and sending shivers down my back.  Pelting rain and hail hitting the hot dust and sending earthy, sweet smells into the air, followed by the fresh, clean scent of wet grass.
Cicadas singing, frogs croaking, even the mozzies buzzing and biting has a certain charm at the end of the day. And as I lay in bed listening to the sound of the split-splot on the tin roof I smile and thank God for every sound, smell and taste summer hath brought.

Getting Lost

I've been feeling out of sorts for a while. Not really sad, but far from happy. Almost numb. It's as though my feelings have taken a wrong turn and got lost on their way to Emotion Central.
When I feel like this I often realise it's because I've not been doing the things my soul needs. One of these (and the reason I've started this blog) is writing. Writing unscrambles my thoughts and allows all the little halfling ideas in my head to make sense of themselves. It allows me to separate the tangles in my mind and file things in some kind of ordered chaos. It helps me breathe.
My soul craves water. Not to drink, although liquid refreshment is very important. Water soothes me. It is the element that makes me feel the most at home. Swimming in it, gazing at it, or simply smelling it as it splots onto the dusty earth after another scorching day. In all its forms I live for it. Sadly water has also been lacking in my life of late, leaving me restless and constantly on edge.
My soul pines for words. To read allows me an escape from life. It allows me to lose myself in another world. A world where things may even be worse rather than better, but are, most importantly, different. When I find myself feeling the most lost I turn inevitably to books, all sorts of books: fiction, non-fiction, drama, comedy, travel, history, even (and not just becuase I'm desperate) text books. Somehow by getting lost I manage to find myself again.
This is how I'd like to find myself right now:

 Arabesques by Richard Desaix

The compete works of E.E.Cummings

"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."

Truman Capote

Here I am

Here’s what I am. I’m 25. I’m Caucasian. I’m 165cm tall (although my license reads 168cm). I hover between a size 12 and a 14, usually closer to the larger end. I have red hair and milky-white skin swathed in thousands—if not millions—of pale chocolate freckles. I have small breasts and large, slightly manly shoulders. I have toe issues, foot problems, a dodgy right knee, a crooked pelvis, bad vision, cold sores, and endless teeth dilemmas from clenching my jaw while I sleep. I’m a catch, right?


You’ve picked yourself up off the floor, grasped your ribs in agony, and wiped away the tears of laughter? Well done. I’m sure there are hundreds of others who didn’t survive the torrent of incredulous guffaws produced in response to that last quip. Because, who are we kidding, I’m not exactly pin-up girl material. In fact, as far as 20-somethings go, I’m probably well below average when it comes to physical make-up. But here’s the kicker. I’m mentally and emotionally a bit under par too.

I have a quick temper. Yep, say what you like about stereotypes not being true, but this redhead has more fire than the aptly named matches. But I don’t just get angry. Oh no, I run the whole gamut of bad moods: melancholy, morose, discontent, disjointed, confused, and just plain lost. I’m can’t make decisions. (That’s not completely true, I can’t make decisions about my life—others’ lives on the other hand, I’m all over that.) I like control, but I don’t want it. I love spontaneity, but it terrifies me. I hate being stagnant, but change unsettles me too much. I want everything now, not tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I want that sense of achievement that comes from working hard, but do I really have to get up before nine?

So what about the deeper me? What are my hopes and dreams? What do I really believe in? What do I love to do? I want to travel. But I don’t want to just see the world, I want to take it by the hand and say “how do you do?” I love to cook and I want to be able to do it well. No not just well, amazingly well. I want to effortlessly rustle up the best damn soufflé you’ve ever eaten, or the most mouth-watering roast duck you can imagine. I want to create stuff. What stuff? I don’t know. I can knit and crochet. I (occasionally) make my own clothes and jewellery. I just need to create, damn it!

You know what I want most. I want to have some kind of purpose in my life. And that’s what this is. It’s about finding a purpose. Something more than just a lifestyle, a dream, or a career. I’m not searching for my real self—I’ve already got enough personalities fighting for control. What I’m hoping for is to slowly untangle the hopped-up, flipped-out, craziness that is me. And take you along for the ride. Now I’m warning you, on any given day this may involve absolutely nothing. But it may also involve high-strung excitement at completing a knitting project, the blissful calm that comes from producing a perfect chocolate tart, desperate anxiety over another failed job/interview, and even complete and utter depression when everything just falls apart.

Welcome to the ride of my life. Strap yourself in, it is going to get bumpy, but I’m sure (I hope) we’ll all survive.