Dancing Behind My Eyelids,

Dancing Behind My Eyelids,

Anonymous asked: Please try and answer with the first thing that comes to mind, as if I were right there sitting/standing next to you, and you had to respond fairly quickly. (Pretend I haven't read anything of yours) What do you write about?

This is hard. I woke up in the morning and I saw this question, but I didn’t have enough time to respond and I was thinking a lot about this today and there were a lot of things I wanted to say, but there were less ways of saying them. But here I go.

Writing is gardening. Each one of us is born with two perfectly circular tiny black seeds on our face; one in our left eye and one in our right eye. Writing is about watering these seeds with worthless words and endlessly hoping that the braches of your nerves will break through your glasshouse eyes and into someone else’s. Sometimes it works and the photosynthesis is beautiful; you can see their irises changing colour. But sometimes in the space between your tree and their tree, the meadow called ‘reality’, their branches get tangled with your branches and push yours back into your own eyes. The roots of your pupils press further into your soily skull and it hurts and suddenly all the words you used to water your little black seeds with are flooding your glasshouses. This is what is happening when a writer cries.  

I know only a handful of special people who have forest eyes.

I write about hope because it is the only reason most of us are still watering our pupils.

Today one of my close friends discovered she has synethesia. The look on her face when I broke it to her that most people can’t make rainbows out of letters or families out of numbers and that, more or less, our world is black and white compared to hers was probably one of the most precious moments of my life.

After she realised this she started tracing the backs of people’s jerseys, where their names are written and asking me what colours they are. I just told her they were white and for a little while I don’t think she believed me. She told me about one time when she wanted to buy a really cute case for her phone, but she couldn’t buy it because the case was a boy and her phone was a girl and that just didn’t work. When I asked her what colour my name was she told me my name started with dark blue and after that both of us got distracted by everything around us and I never found what colour the rest of my name is.

I just had the most surreal father-son bonding time. I was in the bathroom making funny faces in the mirror like I usually do just before I go to bed and I was listening for the first time to a very good remix of a very good song that I have heard a lot and a lot and I was kind of one-third-singing-one-third-dancing-one-third-skipping in the dark on the way to my room and my Dad comes out of his bedroom and looks at me in the dark and I looked back at him and our eyes were locked on each other AND IT DIDN’T EVEN FEEL STRANGE and then I jumped to try and scare him like he sometimes does to me to catch me by surprise, but he even flinch and we stood, staring at each other for a few more seconds before he pokes me in the stomach and walks past laughing and then I started laughing too and I said “goodnight dad!” and it wasn’t even the kind of obligatory goodnight that I usually give. I woke up today, too early, with major heavies, but now I am going to bed (semi) ON TIME and I am on my electric blanket and my dog is snuggled on my lap which is also on my electric blanket and for the first time today I feel really light and bright even though it is dark and rainy and now I am going to have pitter patter patterned dreams

Dancing Behind My Eyelids,

Anonymous asked: Everything you write is beautiful, I know that is the most stock-standard compliment I could give you when it deserves so much more, But it actually leaves me speechless.

Mister or Misses hUman, right now you are making my fingers dance and that is making all of me want to dance and now I am off to dance. Thank you!

There’s still many things you can do even if you don’t want to do one thing (such as writing a history essay). You can collect moths, or lie down on the kitchen bench and play Boggle with yourself, or ponder about the mysterious and torturous way sauce companies employ completely un-squeezable (and very cold) glass bottles to look after their liquid gold. Shame on you HeinZ. I have an essay to write.

The train started going backwards the stop before my stop and now I am 44 minutes late and sitting on the one side of the harbour bridge and I am cold and my friend is sitting on the other side and has been for about 45 minutes and she is cold too.

The girl sitting next to me on the train is reading Kundera and I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO so I’m just going to sit here and make up conversations in my head.