The cool red shoes that I loved when I was two.

Happy birthday me.

This bird is very beautiful but that’s not the best thing about him. My niece bought him because proceeds from the sale go to charity. Nice one, Charlie.  (And I’m calling him Robert.)

No party is complete without some dinosaur fun on the carpet.

Went to the aquarium to see the jelly fish water dancing.

Too hooked, maybe.

Magnetic Poetry App. I’m hooked.

Every day is pretty good when you have a place to live and food and books to read. But every now and then you get a perfect day.

I wrote in a sunny spot for a while.

A friend told me about a book that I know will be beautiful because all the books he recommends are that way.

A good friend sent me an email to tell me that he loved Graffiti Moon.

I went for a walk and my IPod shuffled great songs. Lots of M.Ward. Like this one.

M. Ward – Never Had Nobody Like You (Live on Letterman) from Donaat Dieryck on Vimeo.

Then later it got really good.

I rode to my brother’s house for dinner.

He cooked from scratch while I hoola-hooped in the garden with my niece and nephews and chatted to my sister-in-law Cate.

About a month ago Cate called to find out my favourite word.

And then tonight I got this box.

With this inside.

And this on top.

Even better, there was this card.

And even better, my very, very, very talented nephew made me a graphic novel. Spike and Cocky The Bug Paramedics. © Declan Crowley

Best present ever.

Two very cool bugs with a big dream. With his permission, here are some of the amazing illustrations and text.

And then I rode home. It was dark and my bike light made tunnels that lit up the rain.

I think it’s going to be a poetry kind of week.

ODE AND BURGEONINGS

Pablo Neruda

3

My wild girl, we have had

to regain time

and march backward, in the distance

of our lives, kiss after kiss,

gathering from one place what we gave

without joy, discovering in another

the secret road

I wasn’t all that excited about my birthday until my presents started arriving. Then I remembered that birthdays are very cool.

My first present is a treasure hunt that lasts until my birthday.

This email arrived on the 9th of December

You’re ours now up until and including the 23^rd Dec. You are always allowed 48 hours to complete your mission.

·         Some of your missions will be easy.

·         Some will take a little effort.

·         Naturally you’ll like some more than others

Stay tuned, Grasshopper.

Mission 1

So the problem with setting me a mission is that sometimes I forget to check my mail.

But I checked it and found this card. Very exciting.

My instructions

1. Go to the website 8tracks.com
2. On the right hand side pick a tag that you would normally not listen to. Click it.
3. Pick one of the playlists and listen to at least 4 songs. You can skip a song within the playlist but you must listen to four songs of that list (or more).

I chose Walk the Walk, sexy, strut, walking baddass. You can’t really get further away from Cath Street with those tags. But I really liked the songs so maybe I am secretly a sexy, strut-walking baddass. Unlikely. But I listened to them while I read about Pablo Neruda and it was a strangely right mix.

These were the songs I found

1. Gold Dust (Flux Pavillion Remix) DJ Fresh
2. 15 Step Radiohead (I do like a bit of Radiohead but I haven’t listened to this one before)
3. The Bird Cage chanes
4. Hot Right Now (Bassnectar Remix) Bassnectar

Mission 2

This email came

In your letter box you’ll find a bag filled with lines and single words from various poems by Pablo Neruda.  You must create a new poem from these fragments.  You must use at least three lines and three of the single words from the bag but you can add as many of your own words around them as you like.

I haven’t done this mission yet. I have 48 hours. I’ve spent today remembering how much I love Pablo Neruda’s poetry. I’ve been hunting for these lines and finding ones I’d forgotten about or never known. I write because of the way he uses words. I won’t ever write like him but at least I can stand under his poems and look up at the words and wish.

THE STOLEN BRANCH

Pablo Neruda

In the night we shall go in

to steal a flowering branch.
*
We shall climb over the wall

in the darkness of the alien garden,

two shadows in the shadow.

Winter is not yet gone,

and the apple tree appears

suddenly changed

into a cascade of fragrant stars.

*

In the night we shall go in

up to its trembling firmament,

and your little hands and mine

will steal the stars.

And silently,

to our house,

in the night and the shadow,

with your steps will enter

perfume’s silent step

and with starry feet

the clear body of spring.

My other presents…

My friend, Di, framed my beautiful  ’Till the heart caves in’ drawn by Michael Zavros. I love the frame she chose but I think what I love more is how much she was taken by the picture. I’m glad I could give it to her to stare at for a little while.

This necklace with trees and butterflies and grass on it.

A 2012 diary with a bird on the cover. And a box to fill. I really like boxes.

An empty notebook.

I really like filling notebooks.

For my birthday so far I have birds and empty boxes and a reminder that I have a whole year ahead – (for now) unfilled. But already I know that it has a bird on the cover.  It could (quite possibly) be full of strutting (slightly) badass things and heart-cavings that are good enough to frame. There will be hunts for things that I don’t know about (yet). There will be empty notebooks to fill. And there will be words and clay moonlight. And I will get to stand beneath both of them.

So. At afternoon tea yesterday, Fiona Wood and Gabrielle Wang said that to write good stuff you have to start playing with words again. Without worrying about the sense of them and without thinking too much about what comes out. Gabrielle told me that she opens a book, finds a word, and writes about that word.

I opened Karen Russell’s Swamplandia and found the word Airboat. Without editing, thinking about my characters, this is what came out.

***

I take off in your airboat

See sky out windows

And strange things passing

Not birds

They’re in the drop below

For now I know more than they do

About shunting wind and weaving sky

On my level are other people in airboats

Throwing things out their windows

Notes that say look at the sun making stories from dust

Look below. People aren’t people from here

They’re nothing

They’re too small to even be nothing

I throw a note

About how clouds look different at cloud level

I see small movements in the fog of them

Veins that look more like roads than water

A passing note says they don’t think it’s going to rain

But the nothing people on the ground are waiting for fat wallops

That I know, note or not, boat or none, are going to fall.

Thanks, Simmone Howell, for being your fabulous self, for writing the amazing Notes From The Teenage Underground and Everything Beautiful, and for finding this Jim Jarmusch quote on a tea towel. It sent me back to the page this morning.