Bloodrunning

I drew blood last night: teeth-bared and grinning fiercely, leaning close in, craving the shove of needle entering flesh like I haven't in a very, very long time. I have pierced friends, as favours, and I have made beautiful designs in people's skin, but it's been a long (long) time since the smell of alcohol wipes, the beading of blood, the long rivers of sweat tracing down a naked torso (beautiful endurance sweat, belying what it takes to sit here in this chair and let these lovely ladies do these awful things to you) left me flustered, mouth-watering, snarling, hot, lustful and bloodlusting.

It's piercing as sex, penetrating this beautiful shell, the surge of pride in this sweet thing who grunts and groans with it but sits still, and takes it.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Breathe all the way in- and- OUT., and Oh FUCK and then Oh... that's goood

Afterward we played a game of scalpel-traced tic-tac-toe on a lovely toned shoulder, completed with a slash right through the middle. I was playing 'crosses' and my downward strokes split skin, gaped it open. I made a fist of one black gloved hand and left it, knuckles down, on a spine- to dare her to remain steady as I cut. My co-conspirator (in white gloves and lustful grin) traced perfect circles, won the game, got to do the victory slash. Our victim bled, and was well pleased.

I am rediscovering old pleasures, these past few days, or rediscovering the pleasure in things I have been merely going through the motions of. Blood is not the only medium I have re-found my appreciation for, but oh, it made for a lovely little evening among friends.

Maker's Eyes

A few months ago I mentioned to a friend that I'd decided to see if I could wear something, every single day, that I'd made myself. She wanted to know why: was it ego? The desire to feel unique? So I could say to people who commented, "I made that"? And yes, it was all of those things, but also a challenge to myself, to make things of enough different varieties to encompass the spectrum of my wardrobe (pin-stripe office dyke through pink & ruffles through gutterpunk and back again). And it's a little talisman of who I recently am. Something to remind me always of the ways my life and what I do with my time have changed, to remind me to keep looking at the world through 'maker's eyes' (a phrase this friend and I have often used).

And there hasn't been a day since I had that conversation that I haven't kept it up. It's easier than I would've thought, especially in winter when my pink, wavy-edged scarf or my black & red floating triangles scarf or my little woolen hat are on high wardrobe rotation. Then there's my cock-ring cuff, the first thing I ever made out of rubber, which I wear most weekdays, or my studded leather collar, or the robot necklace, or feathered lizard hair clip.

Another friend was remarking this morning about the difference between clothes and outfits, suggesting that I'm usually to be found wearing the latter ("You don't wear clothes, you wear outfits", she said, "And costumes!"). I don't think this is unique among my friends- I think we all do it, to the point that most of us would struggle to put together something that resembled 'casual' clothing- t-shirts, or jeans, or some bizarre thing- an outfit like that would require significantly more mental strain than an everyday promenading outfit, all mutton-chop sleeves and parasols. Or a Severe Corporate Drag outfit, buttoned-down tight. Or, whatever.

Last summer I felt like I'd reached gardening nirvana when every single day, I prepared a meal at home from ingredients from my garden. It's not such a different thing to always wearing something I've made. It's a funny little sideways section of humanity I inhabit, gardeners and craftspeople and perverts and queers, all of us doing more with the world than what you can buy off the shelf.

Blue

The ceremony isn't til Tuesday but today I passed my grading to advance from advanced white belt to blue belt. I wasn't nearly as nervous for this grading as I was for my first- that was the first time I'd ever sought to measure myself in an athletic activity, and it terrified me. This is the second, and although the material was harder, I wasn't facing into the unknown to anywhere near the same degree.

In the past two weeks I'd isolated two areas that I was struggling in (kata and self-defense, both of which require stringing simple karate techniques together into more complex patterns), sought out friends in the dojo to practice with, and made time for it. Focused and practiced and figured it out. Got up Sunday morning last week, hung-over and weary, and practiced with a good friend in the echoing halls of the train yards til I could do it, quite literally, with my eyes closed. Stayed behind in class or got there early all week to do it over and over again. And it was worth it to have today go so smoothly, to feel my body progress from going through the motions to doing the techniques sharp and clear, to beginning to explore the edges of why it works this way. To even feel myself do, under pressure, something that only a few weeks ago felt beyond my reach. "Kata, eyes closed" said the examiner, and I did it right.

I study Seido Juku. I don't just 'go to karate lessons', anymore. I am filled with this almost hall-monitor-esque sense of pride and responsibility for the space, I stop and help people newer than myself who are unsure of the codes of conduct, I am fascinated by what we are all taught, outside of these ways to move our bodies, about how we relate to each other, to learning, to seniority, to respect. "It's a little like going to church" said one friend, who signed up after I dragged her along to a few trial classes, and it is. It's the sincere way, which is a funny and alien and beautiful concept for my ironic, cynical little mind to grasp.

Iron dreams

This was my horoscope for today, no joke:

Your dreams have slipped out beyond the boundaries of unconscious sleep, breached the tide walls and are now overwhelming your waking consciousness. Nevertheless, you'll still be able to clearly tell the difference between your fantasies and reality. Embracing the symbolic meaning of your visions, though, will add a wealth of richness to your everyday life.

Dreams of steak -> iron deficiency -> my horoscopes, for once, are right on the money, in a surprisingly literal way.

After a strict regime of iron supplement tablets with each meal, a lunch consisting of every leafy green thing in my veggie garden (tatsoi, silverbeet, broccoli raab) sauteed with garlic, followed by a mandarin off the mandarin tree for vitamin C (helps iron absorption), and a dinner of kidney beans & Guinness, I am suddenly... alive. It's amazing how fast my body has bounced back, how enormous the contrast between myself at dinner yesterday (grey-faced, limp, wordless) and today (bounce! Spring! Shine! Babble!). I mean, I know that diet counts and all that, but I'm not often given such a brutally clear reminder of just how much, how dramatic the impact.

Low on red

I dreamed of steak last night. I had sent myself to bed ridiculously early, worn out, grumpy and headachey, struggling with a sense of uselessness, hoping a good night's sleep would help. Stumbled into my flatmate's bedroom this morning after 14 hours of sleep, feeling no better, and the words "iron deficiency" managed to penetrate my foggy brain.

Oh. Oh. Yeah, right, that. Um, duh.

Vegetarian woman who gives blood every single week of her life and has recently taken up four hours a week of relatively intense physical activity but has not in any way altered her diet to provide more iron? Yeah, that might just fit the bill.

I feel a bit silly about it all. I've had such a spectacularly awesome couple of weeks, to be feeling so low and non-functional is a let-down. I want to soar high on the weekends and pull through the weeks with as much good work as I can, not find myself come Tuesday staring, unable to focus, at my computer screen, unable to compute how the reasonably tame good times of the night before could be leaving me so broken. I want the recent adventures and recklessness to inspire and light me up, not leave me feeling like wet leaves on a cold day.

And we've been having such good times recently, this household. Out of state visitors and nights out dancing on podiums, 'quiet dinners' at home turning into all night living-room rampages, a lot of laughing and some sheepish smiles around the breakfast table the next morning. And real quiet nights, recovery Mondays, curled up under doonas with sewing and laptops and books, haircuts next to the heater, tea for sharing and stories til too late at night. It's beautiful, and it's exactly what I feared losing in our state of housing crisis a few months ago.

I have always, being a cautious and pessimistic sort of human, feared not filling my life up with enough of the right kinds of joy. This, right now, is the right kind of joy, and it's enough. If only I could get over this insane pounding headache and dreary fatigue enough to take it all on.

Sunhungry

I wake up every morning in a dark, cold room and return every night to a dark, cold house. Somehow our house, by design or accident, is sun-repellent: in the direction that the sun travels in winter we have a huge, imposing, window-less wall, and our windows face only shade. Our backyard is wet leaves and tall trees, my veggies (even the winter ones) shrinking in on themselves, starving for light.

Sunlight has become the ultimate luxury, days arranged around seeking out small portions of it. There is an hour or even less where it reaches between bare tree branches in the afternoon to light up the balcony outside my room and I am there, on schedule, whenever possible: basking, photosynthesizing, with my crochet in my lap and my coat on. I am more aware than I've ever been before of angles, aspects, the direction of movement, the lowering of the light to the horizon. I know which walls of the park will be warmed by sun the longest, I know which parks will keep their sun til latest in the day, I know which beer garden gets the sun, which balcony, which cafe, whose backyard. I hurl myself out of the house with the imperative of finding some sun and sitting in it, dragging anyone along with me I can find.

Without it we are cold and crazy, dim-light, slow movements, electric everything. Slipping into hibernation, getting used to the constant gloom. But like lizards fifteen minutes of sunlight warming us through our black city clothes and we are alive again, ready to go.

I love my house dearly but I remember my mum, who carried a compass with her through years of house-hunting, her obsessive mission to find the perfect north-facing backyard for winter sunlight, and I can't promise I wouldn't ditch and run for a patch of real sun to grow my food in.

On dance floors we will find you

My room is scattered with the detritus of a huge weekend: boxes of leather scrap, skeins of wool, scattered hammers and make-up from Saturday's frantic costuming. Skirt and corset over the back of the couch, feathers on the keyboard, shoes stuffed under the coffee table from Sunday morning's early return from the big party. Lime-green "CREW" wristband from coat check duties, flat pink boots on the bed from heading out again Sunday night, scavenged sunglasses from still being out Monday morning well after the sun rose (ridiculous!).

Inquisition was a lovely time, although after doing my stint in coat-check prison it took me a while to bounce into it properly. I managed a complete failure of mischief of any kind, although I did initiate a conversation I've been meaning to start for at least four years or so (and hurrah for the positive response I got!). Danced wildly with friends, made a few half-hearted attempts at flirting, spent bittersweet hours in conversation with someone who makes my mind race and my heart turn over. Ended the night kneeling happily with my head on a lovely knee and a hand in my hair, remembering how nice that feels.

I barely made it to Gurlesque the next night, and when I got there I propped myself up against a pole and moved from there as little as I possibly could. From there to the Phoenix ("Just for an hour or two" I said, tired and fuzzy), where I danced until my closest friends had left, then danced some more (hanging out with lovely old clubbing friends I haven't seen in ages), then danced some more, then danced some more, then danced some more. Til the club closed and we were ejected onto the grey, rainy-morning street to wander in search of more adventure. Til hours had passed and we sat crumpled and smiling in someone-or-other's living room, long pauses between conversation, tired grins and creaking voices. Caught a cab back from far-flung corners of the city, bolt-upright and dignified on a Monday with pink feathers in my hair and pink boots on my feet, crawled into bed and slept.

Since then it has been pajamas and piles of housemates on beds, take-away food and videos, slow periods of consciousness, clearing somewhat with the passage of time. I made it out of the house briefly to sit and crochet in the last of the afternoon sun, but that took so much energy I couldn't even think of making it to karate. Ah well, tomorrow I guess.

Got words?

To sit in front of a crowd of friends and community and read out a few stories, just passing fancies that I happened to write down (one read straight from the screen of my mobile phone, where I wrote it while in transit one day), and to have them be so well received: what an astoundingly beautiful feeling. To see people laugh and jump up and hoot and clap for my words. I haven't performed this way in literally years and it's like coming home. I feel like I sparkle and shine in this gorgeous company, this parade of hot, sharply intelligent perverts strutting their written wares across the floor.

Enough people liked my words that I won this stunningly beautiful flogger, hand-made by a community member. It came up to the pub with me for post-reading drinks and swung ostentatiously from my wrist. People grasped the tails of it in their hands, held it up to their face, breathed in the fresh smell of the leather, eyed me speculatively and wondered when I was going to take it out to play for real. And I'm such a bottom by nature but this is mine, a tool I won with words, and I rather fancy the idea of wielding it well.