i hate this but

I'm looking for a new home, again.

We've been here less than three months but we recently found out that our landlords are selling. While we don't have to be out until January, I don't think I could bear four months of househunting and so am hoping to move sooner rather than later (and have so decided against purchasing a bookshelf specifically for the current house, and unpacking the books).

Everywhere in Melbourne seems to have gone up by about $200 per week since I last checked and it's all a bit disheartening. All the time spend perving on beautiful light-filled scandanavian apartments of parquet floors, white walls and mismatched dining chairs is also a bit disheartening, but also inspiring.

Most of these pictures came from here, here, here and here and are also stuck to my wall in a kind of 'The Secret'ish way.

good news

for any stateside friends: the extremely cool and fun (I imagine, based purely on my own assessment of various interviews with them, as well as their label, blog, and now personal effects) ladies of Vena Cava are having a virtual garage sale*.

Good news also, I suppose, for those of us over here in the Antipodes: I'm pretty sure we can't participate. Bad news for our bookshelves who would benefit greatly from the additions of 'Bad Dates', 'Balls' and 'Disgraced', but good news for our wallets in any case.

*what ever happened to 'virtual'? It was a really good and apt term for all this online stuff.

Photo from their blog

nostalgia

I think most children of divorced parents find it incredibly bittersweet to look at photos of their childhood. I know I certainly do. I feel this pulling in my chest when I see photos of us all together. That's not to say it makes me feel terribly sad, but there is an indefinable tugging sensation. I think that when my parents separated, my heart was broken for the first time, and looking at those photos makes it ache a little.

One thing I love about my parents is that even though they are separated now, they were together for a long time before they had children.

At around my age they were married and travelling the world together. When they left New Zealand, my Dad had to hide on the other side of the ship so my Mum's very strict Croatian parents would not know they were going away together. They even worked on a kibbutz in Israel (Mum didn't like it and Dad had to spent a lot of time keeping the other men away from her. Did I mention my Mum is really, really pretty?)

When they returned to New Zealand they lived in a dank little flat in Wellington and my Aunty remembers them dancing in the kitchen together while making pumpkin soup. We've found photos they took of themselves, cheek to cheek, holding the camera at arms length. It makes me feel hopeful, knowing that they were that in love, for that long a time.

I found this picture of my dad with either me or my older sister at the beach. I think its quite lovely. xx

since i'm feeling literary

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)


- e. e. cummings

A teacher told me years ago that I would like e.e cummings, and boy was she right.