iiiiiii'm kiiiiiiiiiiiissing yooooooooou

List du jour is Movies What I Have Loved Far, Far More Than Is Reasonable:

• Grease.  I think that was the first taped-off-the-telly movie that my sister and I wore out with repeats, watching it every day if we could.  Wasn’t sure what Rizzo’s problem was, didn’t know why Frenchie could quit school (are they allowed to do that in America where they also can wear whatever they want to high school every day?!!), thought Sandy was prettier when she was square, could not for the life of me understand why they wrapped Grease Lightning with a giant roll of cling film – didn’t get it at age 7, basically, but I loved it. 
• No, wait, the first taped-off-the-telly-movie we wore out was the Sound of Music.  Mum used to sit on the edge of her chair in the scene where Captain Von Trapp waltzes with Maria.  I thought ‘16 Going On 17’ much more romantic, but I was a fool, I have subsequently learned on yet another round of rewatching as an adult.  CvT is the business. 
• ROMEO+JULIET.  I can hear any song off that sound track and my heart basically stops in its tracks, thinking about Leonardo DiCaprio.  Infinitely cooler than how I felt about Titanic (3x at the movies, people. I suspect I believed Jack was real and that the ending might change next time around).  I think I learned what love/obsession/drugs were by watching and rewatching R+J.  Mrs Grewal in fourth form English used it for our Shakespeare study.  She was a bloody genius.  All the girls in the classroom were rapt, mouthing along with the best bits and the sound track.  Jesus, Leo through the fishtank.  If you were around 14 in 1996, female and had access to a movie theatre, I think you know what I’m saying.
• The BBC’s 1995 Pride & Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.  I discovered this at about 15 or 16 and quickly wore off Leo, let me tell you.  I think I thought I was a modern day Elizabeth Bennet and could not wait to say I was not yet one and twenty.  I have this on both VHS and DVD, as well as the Keira Knightley version (Matthew McAvoy, you’re alright, but I basically watch it to bitch about how it’s not the same as the book.)
• Die Hard.  My sister and I discovered the glory on a lazy weekend (both of us love Alan Rickman which likely drew us in) and were yelling Yippee-Ki-Yay Mother Fucker and bursting into hysterical giggles for WEEKS.  My parents were, I think, both horrified and secretly proud.  I still feel like the first three Die Hards are the ultimate movies to watch at Christmas.  Is that weird?
• Anything with Liam Neeson.  And I’m not just talking about Rob Roy or Love, Actually.  Sadly, I have seen and enjoyed Taken, Taken 2 and The Grey which tells you something about my twisted little mind.  I suspect he’s the best action star of all time (Bruce is second.  Die Hard 4 really jumped the shark.)

Anyway, there are more v intellectual movies in my catalogue of films what I adore (ha.  Do Ghost or Ghostbusters count as intellectual? What about Spaceballs?), but the above are probably the extent of the ones I feel obsessive about. Most of them are the result of being a ghastly yet probably your average middle class teenager: it was a time of bad poetry and horrendous, compulsive adoration.

mother's day is sunday

I am back from deepest, darkest rural NZ where the lamingtons are tasty, the sheep plentiful and the early winter landscape eerily beautiful.  We said goodbye in a very measured way with terrible renditions of 'The Lord is My Shepherd' and 'Abide with Me', but a lovely eulogy by a daughter.  I simply cannot fathom no longer having my Mum.  I think I can imagine the shape of it, but I cannot plumb the depths.  Mum, still so fresh in her grief and the unfairness of it all four years later, said it best just before we left the wake:

every day there is something I want to tell her

Anyway, I am back in Auckland where it is warm-ish and rainy.  While no one will hand me a cup of tea in bed as a wake-up call tomorrow (that is my mother's particular language of love, which also translates to 'get the hell out of bed and start the day with me') it will be nice to be back in my home, surrounded by my books and my kitchen implements and my bathroom products.  I wore her perfume and knee high stockings yesterday and we both wore black pants, cut off at the ankle and I admired her grey cardigan and I thought we are the same, after all.  She is me and I am her.  Even as we are not. 

I forgot to wish her a happy mother's day as I slid out of the car at the airport today.  Why do I still cry every time I leave them?

while i'm gone

Something to chew on: I hated the Great Gatsby.  Not so much because I abhorred the writing (I didn't), but because there was not a single thing I liked about Daisy and Gatsby (I felt a little sorry for Nick, but that was it).  I haven't been able to bring myself to reread it since sixth form, when I was poisoned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  This article by Kathryn Schulz in New York Magazine has finally given me to understand why that might have been: not a skerrick of the emotional connection between them hits the page. 

i will drink a g+t in your honour (but not light a smoke, you know i disapprove)

My great aunt has died and I am soon disappearing southward to attend her funeral + remember her with the relations.  It is sad; I am sad; Mum is sad; but it is best and the tide rolls in, rolls out. 

It has not stopped raining in Auckland for three days.  Thunderously, lightning-like, horizontally, vertically, slowly, sunnily, wetly, darkly it has rained.  It will clear; wan sunlight will break the clouds and One Tree Hill will be etched in light as I travel home from the airport.  It suits my mood. 

really, really dumb. for real.

You know when you leave the house, congratulating yourself on how ragingly hot you’re looking today, then at lunchtime you catch your reflection in a shop window and want to shrivel with shame?

 

That has to be about the dumbest feeling in the world.  Fucking girls, we can be so DUMB to ourselves, to others. 

 

I wish I looked more like Christopher Plummer.  Then I would always look excellent (dapper, suave, devil-may-care-ish) and would only have to worry about whether my pocket square was straight. 

 

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I still don’t know whether I have to move this weekend or Monday or Tuesday.  And, if so, where to.  I hope that if we have to go, it’s just to another apartment in the complex.  I’m holding on to hope.

 

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After losing another auction last night and being stood up by a Wellingtonian in town for some kind of work thing, P and I got quietly plastered.  We downed a bottle of chianti mostly before being seated for a delicious dinner we really shouldn’t have ordered and the man made me laugh.  And laugh.  Our knees touched, tangled, as we first faced each other on bar stools then later fell face first into a pannacotta so creamy it should be illegal (dairy intolerant? You shouldn’t even LOOK at it).  The most fun we’ve had in ages, as we discussed our hopes, dreams and budgetary requirements.  Teased one another about fugly couches.  Dissected the state of our union.  No one I'd rather lose with than that man.

 

 

more of the same feckless behaviour

A shame to knock Captain Von Trapp off the top of the blog, eh?

So old hopeless useless over here set off the fire alarm again the other night.  The toast cinders exhaled hot black breath into the sensors (I swear I only turned my back for a minute) and ominous bleeping began.  I yanked the plug from the socket and raced to open every door in the house, flapping the front door to try and dilute the fugue, while tearfully poking at my phone to call the property manager…thank god it dissipated before it triggered the complex wide alarm and brought in the firefighters.  The bleeping ceased after about a minute but my heart continued making frantic efforts to escape my chest for some time to come.  The shame! The shame!  We really have had a terrible run in the 7 months we’ve been in our current apartment. 

As advertised, the holes in the ceiling weren’t my fault.  We received a call explaining that there was something wrong with the plumbing upstairs, which necessitated access from underneath.  We think it’ll just be a small hole in your hot water cupboard, they promised blithely.  Several enormous holes in the laundry, entryway and hotwater cupboard later, we had ladder marks all over the door frames, scuffs on the walls and bits of severed gib all over the floor.  Then there was the fix-the-holes debacle detailed a post or two ago.  I can’t find it in my heart to get too worked up over it though because it’s probably some sort of karmic retribution for that time in about ‘07 when I dropped a hotel shampoo bottle down the shower drain and the plumber had to cut into the ceiling of the apartment below ours to extract it. 

I really shouldn’t live in communal housing.  I’m a hazard. 

Have I mentioned I don’t know where I’m living past Tuesday next week?  Ffffffff. TBC, no doubt. 

Other recent hopeless useless moments recently?  Well…you may never have experienced the phenomenon known as “wearing your high heels down to the nub and exposing the little metal bits” but sadly, it’s a phenomenon with which I am familiar (work shoes have no goddamn stamina around here).  Not normally a problem except for the scruffy look (don’t worry, people are distracted by the bobbles on my tights and stains on my dress before they get as far as looking at my shoes), but one rainy day last week I walked into the office foyer and both feet skated across the marble.  Whew, I thought, I’m still upright, I’m not sure if anyone saw, I’m going to keep on walking.  And promptly did it again but with one of those enormous wide arm wave/wobbles, handbag flying out sideways.  So profeshunal.  The rest of my steps across the lobby floor were deliberate, spraddle legged feet-plantings.  Really ladylike.  Graceful.  Etc.

pictureless void no more

I can't stand looking at my pictureless blog just now, so Fuck Yeah, Books! has come through once again:  this time, it's introduced me to Awesome People Reading.  I can't even.  LOVE.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER READS
VIA AWESOME PEOPLE READING, PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW ECCLES

SIR IAN MCKELLEN READS (AND STARES INTO THE UNKNOWABLE)
VIA AWESOME PEOPLE READING, SOURCE NICK DRAKE

That's better.