bildungsroman:

Coined around 1910, from German Bildungsroman, from Bildung "education, formation, growth" + Roman "novel" - specifically set in the formative years, or the time of spiritual education, of the main character. Kate Bailey - Words written in 2014. Drafts, thoughts, meandering stories and submissions. (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-53455152-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

[katebailey47]

Concepts of Love: A Chronology

1988-1994

The only concept I had of love was of that what I received from my parents. It came to me without me having to do anything.

1996

Kate Rainer wore frilly white socks with polished black shoes. She was in my class. Her blonde hair was always slicked back into a perfect ponytail and golden ringlets draped her neck, bouncing perfectly with each step she’d take. I could never really speak around her, but I sat by her every chance I got. We played catch and kiss in the playground. There were too many girls or the girls team so I volunteered to be on the boys team. I kissed her on the tyre-swing bridge in the lower grade playground of Nerang Primary School. I wrote her a poem. I had planned to read it and then ask her to marry me. Before my courage outweighed my fear, she stopped coming to school. I never saw her again. As much as I could feel it at age 8, it was my first experience of how love comes, and how love goes.

1997

I realised that after we live, we die. No one could tell me what happens when we die. Except my religious education teacher. She told me if I didn’t sin, or at least apologised for them I would go to heaven to be with God. I asked how long for and she forever. I didn’t like this. I remember thinking constantly that there was no point to anything, because we just die and then have to hang out with God for immortal eternity. Love became as pointless as anything.

1998

I wrote Robbie Edmonds a letter asking him out. I thought that since he would likely be school captain, as would I, that now was the time for us to come together and reign. He gave the letter to Tim White on the football field. Tim read it to all the boys. They stood in a circle. Robbie walked over to me and as the boys watched on told me in no uncertain terms that he would never go out with me because I had ugly teeth and wasn’t a real girl. Love as a concept began to form around the idea that I had to be what someone wanted in order to deserve it. My ugly teeth and tomboy ways had made me unworthy of Robbie Edmonds. I stopped smiling in photos. My parents divorced. Love seemed to have a way of making someone reject someone else in the coldest way, inevitably.

2000

All the boys loved Briana because she was the first girl to get her boobs. A kid called Lee announced in the first half an hour of high school that he would finger her by the end of the week. The shorter the skirt, the more the boys loved you. I wore shorts. I still had acquired a boyfriend name Ashleigh. I would talk to him on MSN and every other day break up with him, then get back together with him again the next day. It was my first taste of love as a method of power and control.

2001

Jessie was my best mate. We’d fuck with everyone and spend Tourism lessons learning the cha-cha from a textbook and hum the Becker theme song every time Ms Bekker (our teacher) spoke with us. It was my first experience of loving someone irrelevant of family or romance. She was my best mate and has been ever since. I’ve never had to explain myself to her once.

2002-2005

Love was everything. Everyone had a boyfriend and I yearned to be everyone. I finally landed the new boy at school. The day he arrived I took him under my wing thinking to myself that this was my chance. I got drunk for the first time ever at his sister’s wedding and he proposed to me. I said yes. I had our whole life planned out. Love was real, and it did work out only once we meet our prince charming.

2006

Jacob and I broke up. The world could have very well have ended, if my reaction to the ‘loss’ was anything to go by. I was certain I’d never recover. Love was irreversible devastation.

2008

I feel in love with someone. Deeply. Intensely. No matter how perfectly I could frame myself, no matter how easily I could exist as the person she saw as perfect, the love was not reciprocated in the way I demanded. I demanded a love like mine. I did not accept the love I was given outside of that. I never saw it until after we had ruined it all. Well, I had ruined it all. I had decided how someone should love me based on what I believed love was. All I was doing was rejecting the only way she knew how to love me. Love was a dictatorship. Dictators tend to lose their kingdoms, one way or another.

2010

Love was everything. I had to be working all the time to be what the object of my affection wanted me to be. Love was work. Love was commitment. Love meant I was willing to die for someone. Love overcame everything like a shining knight in armour, to free us from the miserable sadness in this world. I loved everyone and hated myself for I was presenting a silhouette of myself - shaded by the things I thought people wanted to see.

2011

I realised people could control me if I loved them. Therefore, I feared love. Love had played my rational self against my self-esteem. I thought if I were to lose the love I’d found, I’d never have another chance.

2012

I met some people when I was too exhausted to be anyone but myself. I had strength in my friends and family when I had none in myself. Love was no longer a toxic consumer of energy. It came from everywhere and I didn’t ask for it. I misused my returning taste for love and I lusted after someone. This time I had got it right. No doubt about it. I believe this with such reverence. In the face of rejection, I promised myself I would wait. True love meant valuing someone else’s happiness over your own. Love meant enduring someone.

2013

I began to think our work and our love would be the only things that would outlast us, beyond death and in terms of legacy. Life was so precious, how could we deny anyone love? We are all suffering. We must be compassionate. It was the first time in my life I recall exercising the idea of ‘loving myself’. It didn’t come to me in the form of writing down three things I like about myself. It happened by accident, when I started living for myself and valuing my own opinion of myself over everyone elses. I know myself best. I know all my secrets. I should be able to look into my own heart and live for myself. Love was alive in me. I felt it for myself and I felt it for people regardless of reciprocation.

2014

I began to approach the world with an open heart, knowing full well it could be ripped out or abused at any given time. I have survived this so many times, of course I could again. I would no longer deny myself love or anyone I could give my love to for the simple fact it might not last forever. I learned that I would have to learn how to forgive people. If i didn’t start that, I might not have many people left around me. Pettiness has all but disappeared from my life as a result. It has called once or twice, early on Berlin mornings. I’ve just stopped answering. Love has stopped becoming something I am looking for or waiting for. Love has become the cornerstone of my attitudes. Love is not happiness. Love is not peace. From friendship, to work and to romance and beyond - love is an attitude, an approach. I find it far less stressful than hate. Peace and happiness? Well, that's on me.

  To be continued.

[katebailey47]

You assholes can get your own drinks.

I was standing in a field in the middle of regional Poland ordering a beer from a pop-up bar, ankle deep in mud. It looks like the edge of the world, because the white sky hangs like a flat lay around sprawling mountains as if they just stop right there. An all familiar, overwhelming American accent begins to rise to prominence over the monotone hum of  50 conversations happening all at once.

Standing next to me is indeed an American. He is wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘RULES WERE MADE TO BE BROKEN’. He starts talking to a girl to his left who doesn’t speak any English. She’s good looking so he tries regardless. Waiting for service, he turns to his friend and loudly comments that he is indeed, waiting for service. He glances back and to the bar again. He wants the bar people to know HE is waiting. Again, he tries talking to the girl beside him becoming so aggressive she politely smiles and moves to the other end of the bar, joining a new line despite having waited to get to the front of the one she was in. He turns to his friends and asks “Was it something I said?!” and laughs like an 11-year-old at a Whoopee cushion. Well here’s an interesting character, I thought to myself.

I turn to him, smile and ask “What do you think of the idea that something you said made someone want to get away from you?”. He looked pretty shocked which I suppose is fair. He said “I just do and say what I want and people can take it however they want.” He then points to his shirt and gives me two thumbs up and smiles. I still am unsure of what point he was making by doing this. I’d bet he is as well. I couldn’t resist. I had to say something.

“You know what? I don’t think someone has ever made a rule thinking ‘I am making this rule for people to break it’. Meaning, rules are not made to be broken. They are made for the purpose of trying to get people to not do a certain thing.” His friends were sniggering away in the background as I smiled blankly at him. He hates me. “Well, like, whatever it’s just a fucken saying.” I apologise for assuming that because he was wearing it on his body, that he believed it. “I break rules all the time, like, I just fucken do it and I don’t care” he slurs. I respond: “Ok. But are the rules you break made to be broken? Did someone make this rule in the hope someone as bold as you would come along and break it? Or did they just make a rule that doesn't suit you in that time or place, for whatever reason, so you don’t follow it? I mean we all have the choice to break a rule, if we want. I think people just say that when they've broken a rule.”

“I’m just wearing a shirt why do you have to be such a fucken bitch about it?” he says, agitated and turning to his mates. One of them shrugs and adds “Dude, she’s got you. Your shirt’s shit!” They all laugh. He finally orders his beer, stuffing drink coupons back into his pockets. Turning to his mates he says “You assholes can get your own drinks.”

I’m semi-concerned he feels attacked so I quickly add “I’m not being a bitch. I’m only saying that rules are rules and humans then do what they want. I just do and say what I want and people can take it however they want”

He responds with the only rhetoric society and his peers have taught him to use when in a corner: “Whatever.” I wanted to talk more to him but he walked away.

I saw him later watching Clipping perform. His shirt was turned inside out and he was being held up by a crowd of people. He had such joy on his face as the crowd moved his sweaty, plump body above their heads. The Rulebreaker afforded me the chance to practice something I haven't always been good at: seperation of ideology and person. Ideologies are like rules. We create them and hope others jump on board. We hope they conform to our ideas. Or, we find an idea to conform to. Either way, they're personality traits. It's one thing to accept what someone says and walk away thinking a lot less of them, but I am trying to walk away with an indifference (except of course to the point at hand) that in it's most simple form means I dislike a lot less people.

I have a lot more energy to like things when I am not spending much of that energy on disliking things. Inclusive of the Rulebeaker. The crowed moved him through the air to the front. He tumbled into the arms of a large Polish security gaurd, who escorted him out of the tent.

[katebailey47]

ROOKIEMAG Submission: My Mate Jenny

Music is as vital to my mental nourishment as food is to nourishing my body. Under the same comparison, I want to try it all and I savour/devour my favorites. To me, music is the relatability in my odds with the world and the soundtrack to my milestones. I’m not surprised that music played a big role in learning how to appreciate moments, people and sentimentality. After all, we are experiencing a strangers expression of their sentimentality in song. Musicians purge their emotions into their craft and share it for the world to see. It goes without saying but should be said: I am not alone in my love of music.

This is the brief account of growing up with my imaginary friend from adolescence until forever, my mate Jenny Lewis. Listening to Jenny’s new album ‘The Voyager’ I realise how much of a role her work has played in my personal evolution. I suppose this account could be classed as fangirling, given there is no relation or contact between Jenny and I to warrant such personal sentiment. For me though, it’s as genuine as respect for another human can get. Jenny’s work (contradictory fangirl sidenote: it really is work, it’s so clear in the mastery of songwriting she now demonstrates) really was a rich sibling-esque voice in my life. I was just happy to listen.

I remember sitting in my mid-90’s hail damaged Daewoo named Zultan, crying my eyes out. I was 17 and had just broken up with my high school boyfriend. It was Armageddon as I lived and breathed. Blasting and crackling through my speakers in equal measure (also drowning out my melodramatic wailing) was The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by The Postal Service. I feel prehistoric to recount this now, but I was reading the CD insert and noticed the name ‘Jenny Lewis’ in the credits. There was something impactful about her contributions. I’d speculate I ‘asked Jeeves’ and soon discovered Rilo Kiley, the band Jenny fronted. The rest as ‘they’ say, is history. In fact, was the beginning of my very own personal history.

Much of my teen years (real talk: my early twenties too) were spent in the prison we build ourselves when we’re a little different. It’s called ‘No One Around Me Understands Me’. Which, as we grow to discover is really ‘I don’t understand myself enough to be myself around others’. Oh, my own mind, you dick. There were things I wanted to talk about but I just had no one to talk them with. I didn’t buy what the world was telling me about love, success and how I had to be. This contempt for society became a well of resentment to drink from when I was parched by self-pity. I was pretty pissed off about the world. Then, Jenny Lewis came into my life talking about what I thought about (amongst other songwriters, of course). My intuition about a bigger world was so confusing. At a most basic level because I was so limited in life experience. I began to see the world in playlist, I experienced guidance and solace in a new world between my ears.

Being an older child, I felt like a bull in a china shop when it came to life. I was charging around manically trying not to break things but not knowing any other way to move. Glad to report that myth is busted. It was specifically from listening to Jenny’s narratives that I started to learn about people, because I valued her characters so much. I even started to become inspired by some. I became more aware of the suffering we can bring upon ourselves and others from these stories. Rather than resenting the mundaneness of my life I began to find beauty in the ‘ordinary’. My curiosity about people was reinvigorated. The untold stories were what fascinated me. I reinstated a habit that social protocol had beaten out of me: asking questions. Real questions, though. It never made sense to me to attempt to understand a persons behaviour without the insight these answers bring. But, it was just considered weird or invasive to talk about these things in the environment I was in. I began to do it regardless.

Point being, I was realising that everyone had one and we all suffer from our own relative traumas. I began seeing the woman calling and selling things from Me/A Man/Then Jim alive within my middle-aged boss. I grew so curious about her and we formed a beautiful friendship, one of my first true experiences of empathy. Another instance, in a different light, was in the face of constant rejection from someone suffering from a drug addiction I found an odd comfort in the lyric from Under the Blacklight  ‘When you get sober/Will you get kinder?’. Unfortunately, it became the torch line for justifying really shit behaviour, basically. A failure on my part to recognise the true meaning of the song. This is also another kind of magic that comes with good songwriting, the potential for the song to generate new sentiments over time despite never changing.

Wholly drenched in such sentiments are the vivid memories attached to Jenny’s music. Time has blurred the specifics of a majority these moments, as it inevitably does, but there’s no denying they’re forever in my mind, somewhere. One lucid memory though, is of sitting at a set of traffic lights on a bridge in Varsity Lakes, Queensland, Australia. I was driving around with my then best friend and coming to terms with the fact I was probably a bit gay for her and as it would turn out, a lot gay in general. As we sat at the lights, Silver Lining was playing. The lyrics seemed to guide my unspoken thoughts. We were getting nowhere quickly and the romance was wearing thin as romance does, under the cloud of shame. I had known for some time I had to resolve it, or go. The lyrics sang “And I was your silver lining/as the story goes/I was your silver lining/but now I’m gold”. At one point, she turned to me and said something so sweet and so lovely and reached for my hand on the gearstick. She looked at me as she firmed her grip, smiled, and commented on my lemon scented car freshener. As we drove away she sang in tune along to the last lines: “but now I’m gold”. The world was electric for days after, and it was a long while before I did go.

Rise Up With Fists!! had became my anthem of motivation, and I found comfort in the concepts of The Charging Sky and The Big Guns. You Are What You Love was, and still is, unclear in it’s meaning to me but I just listen to it with the same focus. Acid Tongue was a journey and in my own opinion, narrative and classic songwriting at it’s best. It was all perfect soundtrack to the thoughts ruminating around what I gave weight to in life: what was worth worrying about and therefore what defined people. In an interview with Elle magazine, a random and seemingly casual question arose but I really liked the answer. The interviewer stated she was 29 asked Jenny if she was therefore in the throes of hell. Jenny replied “Give it five years, and you’ll be fine. I promise you it doesn’t fucking matter”.  I really was beginning to feel this was on point. It was true in life as it was in the topic they were discussing: big chunk of day-to-day living doesn’t matter. Mate, did life get easier after that realisation.

I started to find relatability in the flawed characters she presented. Failures in emotions and life and knowing what to do were ok. Even normal. Also, it really is ok to be wrong and it warrants forgiveness when we genuinely apologise and unless you want to live a lonely life you had better get good at forgiving people yourself. We’re not meant to discuss our failures. Failures are what we should talk about. You get through them. You learn from them. They bend and mould your character. These thoughts were so often accompanied by ‘The Good That Won’t Come Out Of Me’. Ok. These are truly just snapshots, but I could go through feeling pains we could go for days to recount them all now and I have points to make. Eventually.

So, what about The Voyager? Well, it began streaming on the day of my 26th birthday. This year I had pledged to do only as I pleased on the day, forsaking any formal celebration to bask in the glory of my homely, hand-selected comfort. There I sat at my desk in an oversized shirt and my underwear, eating currywurst, drinking a beer and listening to the new record in my new home - Berlin, Germany. All the experiences I’ve had here so far, from ideology shifts to young people with Chelsea girl haircuts, seem ever present in one form or another on this new record. Another little joy (despite an immediate throwback to Robert Palmers ‘Addicted to Love’ in which I have never seen people less qualified to be holding musical instruments) was the Just One of the Guys film clip. It is an indicator of the scale Jenny Lewis is on. Brighter, bigger and evolved. It reminds me it’s so precious to be able watch creators over time like this. Thanks, Internet.

Throwing back  to Jenny saying “I promise you, it doesn’t fucking matter”, I think of what does matter. I realise what a wonderful contribution to the world it is to create work that matters to someone. That matters this much to someone. Here lies the ultimate takeaway for me. Jenny’s key lesson here is not represented in song but rather by her extensive archive of work: create and do things that matter to yourself and perhaps other people, and work hard doing it. Whatever that variable is to any one person, it is indeed the place where we find our personal fulfillment and purpose. In every context, I’ve come a long way from that cranky little bitch I was in Australia to being a very placid woman-child living in Berlin. I’m just grateful my mate Jenny was along for the ride.

[katebailey47]

Word From Your Mother - Seeking Contributors

‘Word From Your Mother’ will be a collection of thoughts on life from mothers around the world, available in print and online. Each contributed piece will feature a small foreword by the contributors child, whom will not have read the text as of yet.

The idea centres around the sharing of stories and experiences being the richest information accessible to us. In this context, the stories come from people who have simply lived a lot and for that matter, have lived through raising us.

Link to contributors brief is HERE. Crappy Google iFrame is below *psst* use the link for good quality.

[katebailey47]

Semantics of Guilt - STILTS Monthlies 'Accidents and Emergencies'

If you really think about it the whole world is an accident. Calling something an accident really just implies that the outcome was not what was intended by the pre-accident behaviour. I’m not even entirely familiar of the ‘definition’ but anything in this world on paper seems much more different in practice. The problem is, us humans have manipulated these unintentional consequences for the sake of immediate redemption: it was an accident. No one intends to have an accident but often we prefer the idea that we are not responsible for what came before or immediately after. Not even the people involved, even onlookers. I suppose their leniency comes from the place of knowing they’d want it themselves, if it happened to them. That they themselves would not be responsible, if it happened to them.

It’s true I have been thinking it is the accidents fault that I can’t see the sun rise anymore. However, it is my fault the accident happened, so am I as much at fault as the accident? I figure I might not be making a lot of sense to right now, but I have a lot of time to think about these things. As I mentioned, I don’t see the sun rise anymore. I could, though. Unfortunately, here in prison everyday relies on the routine of shuffling us out of our cells at 6:15am, meaning I am in the windowless dining halls while the sun rises usually at around 6:30am. I think about it everyday in the loud hall that smells like wet, rusting metal. By the time I am back the room is illuminated already by the 30x30cm window above my bed. Every morning, I can’t help but think about the last sunrise I saw.

I hadn’t planned to see it. There I was overlooking the beach as the dark bled away into light. There I was. There I was talking to a stranger in my piss-soaked jeans and evening old alcohol on my breath, a stench so cheap. A wreckage before my eyes and gathering crowd that continued to creep closer in my peripheral vision. The policemans radio cracked asking when I could be taken away for questioning. I sat in abject horror as the bodies were wheeled into a separate vehicle. It was an accident was all I could keeping thinking to myself, and saying out loud. Does everyone know it was an accident? I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t asleep at the wheel. I wasn’t drunk but in the eyes of the law, I was not sober. In fact, their car came around the bend and ploughed into mine, as I was far too cautiously edging my way around the corner. I crooked my own neck under the roof of the police car and tumbled in, as one does without a hand to balance themselves. I took one last look at the breaking day. It stirred nothing inside me, as nothing has since, and we rolled off around the mountain. The fact is - I am to be held accountable for the accident. I can’t say I or many people agree with that, but I know deep down my decision to be on that mountain was or in my car, was not an accident.

Some people think it would be good for me and the other families if I apologised. That’s why I keep struggling with the concept of ‘accident’. They say it was an accident too, but that it’s unforgivable, even for people of their faith. So, I don’t know how to apologise for the accident. My apology is rendered void by the predetermination it is unforgivable regardless. I want to apologise for my decisions though. Are they forgivable? Or, am I unforgivable because I am still alive? That is not an accident either.

Nothing about this was cosmic, I don’t believe these boys are in a better place and I don’t believe that God is teaching us a lesson. It was a car crash on a mountain that I happened to be on in the early hours of a Sunday morning nine months ago. I was apart of the three individual decision patterns that led to these consequences. That, in a single moment, collided. Life happened. Forgive me for everything I did not mean, that came as a result of what I, in one moment, chose to do. They must, otherwise life as we know it will continue to be unforgivable.

[katebailey47]

Lover's Fiction - SAND Second Reading Submission - 2014

I’ve stood next to her on train platforms and understood she wanted to get on and go, but get off in another world.

I’ve held her in my arms as she woke. We both wished we were somewhere else.

I hated to be the one to tell her, that despite my past notions, there’s no such thing as sad stories. They’re all just documents of reality in the end.

I’m embarrassed by the tenacity and conviction in her approach. I know she’s only mean because she does not love herself. Her emotional detachment is cocktail she drinks by the gallon, mixed amongst apathy and fear.

And what of her words and actions? They are a calculated, meticulously woven thread of unconscious actions. Tying it all together, it forms the rope from which she hangs herself.

She’s ferocious when she turns. Her petulant spirit yields within her the very worst. I will endure her darkness but I will not be subject to her worst, that’s a choice she makes and forces upon me. I will not live in this perception of reality.

When I am alone I resolve - though, haven’t always - I am in good company. When she is alone she is even unsure of whose company she is in. I have no anger. I understand she is simply distracted because deep down I know, she knows.

All that’s left is love and death. I glimpse her through the smoke and mirrors and gaze upon the view of her only I can see. I think silently to myself, indeed, she only has one of those things left. She glimpses herself in this same second, weighted at once with difference between her and I. I don’t need to look deep down to find the truth. I realise that our moments of heartbreak are too often also our moments of clarity, and must float like buoys amid our sea of memories. It’s with burdened breath I say goodbye.

[katebailey47]

Initial Story Draft

*This story was written in one sitting. Since then, I have broken it up and used decent lines in other pieces. A nice reminder for me that even work that lacks flow can be utilised with a bit of thought.

A flower slowly dies, unnoticed. Like a flower our time is limited to a short life. As the petals wilt I fade into other weeks. If you have to question me one more time – I thought this would mean more than heartbreaks and unwanted devotions. She’s like me. I know I can be superficial, but she brings a sadness to it. 

As the stem bends weary, no amount of light can bring this flower back to life. Wrought with survival the flower degrades and so my feelings change. Mostly, people don’t know how to express the truth of their feelings and can only express the drama of their true feelings.  In this crux I realise, I could never actually love what was never there at all.

As with the withering flower, I could have stepped in. I could have tended its burning thorns. I could have watered its thirsty earth. I could have been everything it needed, but I knew its time had passed. And as with the flower; I exist if you with or without you. We do not live only in devotion to the remarkable existence of you.

So I say my thanks – we’ve always had a polite rapport, and with my thanks my heart hangs heavy, but my eyes look forward with hope for us both. I speak to her;

I know you longed to be gone. Life for you was a series of people you did not care to see, and places you did not wish to be. You should make your mind a place you want to be, you know? That’s the wonderful thing about the mind, it can take you anywhere you want to go. I’m encourageable towards this notion; to escapes this day, to escape this tram ride, to escape this sleepless night.

I’m happy enough to know you’d be in love with everything I’ve never said. If I take deep breathe and exhale with a sigh – I know I can fathom this ship passing me in the deep dark of only a few nights. Every time you looked at me like I was worth your time reminded me my blood was still running red. I was still human. My heart could beat with a steady rhythm of adoration that I thought was lost forever when I lost myself. Forevermore, my heart doesn’t come with a self-satisfying caveat for its possession. I will just love in freedom, because I have let you go and quite easily, survived. 

[katebailey47]

Unconcious States

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” – Carl Jung

Many of the ideas discussed in the following are derived from the science and concepts within ‘Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior’ by Leonard Mlodinow. The books discusses the physiology of the unconscious mind.

In the reading of this book I have realised how important it is to understand the unconscious elements of our mind. Bringing these elements to the forefront can only help an individual to understand their actions. Understanding your actions means you will be able to develop mechanisms to improve your behaviour. In an interesting dichotomy, the more control you have over your mind the ‘more free’ you will be. As I have noted previously, emotions like happiness and sadness will come and go; but freedom is forever.

As the messages our physical selves collect pass through the synapses of our brain, we justify them. Could we not assume that these messages are subject to our unconscious minds interpretation? The preconceived notions ingrained in our personalities from the youngest ages?

I realized as I walked through the empty streets of Fitzroy on a crisp Melbourne morning, I stopped to consider my surroundings. It was a beautiful morning, the kind that makes you want to do great things in the world. My eyes collected the images and pass them through my optical core and as they register I feel alive for all of these reasons. I remember times recent and not-so, where I have never considered these processes. I felt a hint of resentment towards myself, though that’s futile, of all the times I’ve let my mind lead me down a path of poor behavior.

Drunk, denied, disgraceful, delighted, destroyed, decisive, delirious and desirous of all that alludes me. I am all of those things, sometimes. But now if I am not happy I simply acknowledge I am free. That’s more important. To feel the hurt, to learn the lesson, to do the things the hard way.

In fact, my happiest moments are often my weakest so how could I impose myself with only that to mould my character?

You would all know this, too well. Remember: if you feel second best, that’s your mind telling you so. Convincing yourself there is only ever the best or nothing - but you're subjecting yourself to a reality you can’t control. Tend to your mind as a nurse to a patient. To care for it and nurture it and maintain its presence as it endures this wonderful, wicked world.

[katebailey47]

Dark Days

They push

They bend

They break

Dark days

Waiting for the sun to wake

[katebailey47]

Alternate Histories

The world has multiple versions of history, and thats bizarre.

As satisfied as I am with the present, I do still think of those that represent my very own alternate versions. Played back through a romantic hue, when upon inspection, I foolishly attempt to remove the hue with the end of my t-shirt.

Disappointment creeps upon me, though, because I can’t help but question the overall intentions, or the lack thereof. I'd prefer there was a purpose for all of this sadness.

Late night wonder.

[katebailey47]

Good Hurt for Good Hearts

There are few such things that can stimulate a heart such as the heart being undesired. 

Though I know there is no such freedom as there is in giving your heart to someone with no caveat of reciprocation. 

So, one must decide – do I wish to be free or do I wish to be loved? For those with the truest intentions, it will always be freedom. For those that love unconditionally, you gift this freedom to another. Consider this your legacy and you will leave behind no man or woman, as you love him or her well and true.

[katebailey47]

Insomnia and Internal Tyranny

You showed me the man who thinks he’s in love

I see a man obsessed

Pure love can find no room for obsession

Pure love is only interested in the preservation of another

  I should breathe steady, I think

Instead I’m breathing life into ghosts the day forgot

Nothing progresses with such thoughts

Like a corpse, stagnent, as it wastes and rots

  The calamity of existence

Not even one with a true heart

It’s no wonder I get no sleep

With people like him lurking in the dark

[katebailey47]

The Unknown - Fiction Short Submission April 2014

Perpetually walking with me is the unknown. He taunts me everyday as I walk the streets and in the dark corners of my mind whilst I fight myself to sleep. A white misty sky with barely a light to see, a crisp cold and stagnant air that sits on your bones like bricks setting in mortar and a wind chill that turns your frame to glass. I can’t help but long for the ignorance of not considering his impact on me.

This city sleeps divided - a state I muse upon as I feel the city being more transparent about itself than I. Walking the lengthy allee stretch, our laughs echoing through the streets as each familiar mile marker brings a torch song on repeat. Neon gas station signs never looked so perfect to me. This is where the unknown never once walked with me.

It was the first time I told him no. Good or bad, you are gone. We are on much better terms at a distance. To spend my hours working to have him reveal himself to justify a particular gamble was exhausting. I was constantly reminding myself just how little my blueprints meant - petulant in constantly reconfiguring what could never be constructed, battling with a variable beyond uncertainty. It seems improbable I lived so long amongst the delusion it was up to me.

It was when he left my side, that she came to me.

To sow my pleasure now, what sorrow must I reap in the the future? I loathe and yearn the days when our passion existed only in the friction of hips, youthful lust remaining lost to the night.

Skin incapable of abrasion, lips like fresh roses and eyes like oceans buoying my heart in overdue relief. It's as if she is made up of colours and words that don't exist yet. Once again, I am at loggerheads with the unknown. Could the touch of other lovers bring sedatives for hearts about to breach? If these moments make it softer, then how could I complain?

The impending departure leaves us wide awake in warm embrace.

On the bus ride home, the unknown sits beside me and whispers in my ear. To quote such remarks would give them unjust weight. I looked over the sea and amongst the ships were white formations I couldn’t quite make out. Not waves though. No, these shapes looked like clouds beneath the surface tension. I readjust my coat and think only of her face. Oceans mean nothing if you can bask freely in the wake.

[katebailey47]

Berlin - Short thoughts on my new town.

Everything is different. From the man in the traffic lights to the way a cup of coffee is served.

The air is denser and colder and it holds no smell, it's too crisp. The M8 tracks along in perfect rhythm and I feel a little jealous of everyone who is surrounded by something familiar - you can't help missing the comfort of routine and the safety of knowing your environment brings.

The mustard is tart. The sauce is sweeter. The chips always taste clean. The coffee is always perfect drinking temperature the second you get it. It's a much more quiet city, but people are warm on approach. Every building is colorful. Every wall has been marked. There is construction everywhere and people seem busy. Apfel means apple. Everything is different.

I have been told to expect freedom here. Each person I have come across all say the same thing. All nod knowingly when I tell them where I am from and why I am here. I do see it though. No one cares about anyone else’s business here. It’s simple. Questions like: should I say that? Can I leave dressed like this? They become irrelevant. No one cares.

I can now appreciate the youth of Australia. That in some of the toughest times in recent history we have sat off to the side, dealing with things much differently. But, it all happened here. It’s inescapable. There’s moments when the sky is at its whitest and you look down an empty cobblestone street and across the urban abyss and you can’t help but wonder what it must of been like. The traumas of the city, the despair of the people. The complete chaos that seems impossible in this town. Now, it doesn’t falter. Amongst construction and constant change, services are still provided promptly and swiftly and you needn’t question it.

Of course, the food. The idea of a snack here is perfection as I live and breathe. Currywurst, bratwurst, soups, stews, breads, Berliners… Also, they love burgers here. Serious love. You can eat fresh and well also. Whatever you please. The water is like the nectar of the gods; clean, crisp, always cold and straight from the tap. The toilet roll holder is vertical, the doors open the wrong way and the windows are a profound mystery for a few days.

Day four and I have been suffering bouts of adjustment as my body slowly realises: I am not where I have been and I won’t be anytime soon. On the back of my first proper sleep and early rise, I am feeling good and spent the day riding around the entire city. I should mention a friend of my flatmate has kindly lent me her second bike until mine arrives. I rickety old purple womens city rider. I have to say - it’s a tough slog but it’s fun and I am grateful. Firstly, I went down to Ostbahnof for the antique market. I spent a good hour trifling through, finding things to send back home. Next, was my ride to Mauer park for the flea market before heading back across the top of the city home to P-Berg. The market was little busy but I got my first glimpse of the Berlin wall, heard some amazing music and ate some good bratwurst. And, there was waffle on a stick. I am slowly seeing the definitions in the neighbourhoods also. Mitte was oozing with hipster, whereas Prenzlauer Berg seems a little more worker-middle class. Alexanderplatz is very touristy where Kreuzberg leans back to the hipster-grunge-nothing can stop us vibe.

It's a city I have a great lust for at this moment. I want to get to know as much of it as I can. I am tired, weary and struggling to adjust but I know a big adventure awaits.

[katebailey47]

The Silent War

*A product of a small writing challenge I set for myself, setting the context of relationships for purposes of storysharing. I can improve alot in this area.

The soldier walked up the banks; eager to end this hour long journey to the top of the mountain that overlooked the dilapidated city. There’s a bench placed atop the desolate and sparse plateau that earmarks the end of the upward journey. On the bench sat a man. A small but robust man. He always sat with a cigarette in his left hand and a brown cup in the other. Contents unknown. He was a friend by default. He was always there. And they always spoke.

The man looked particularly agitated today. “Look at this. My city. She’s a shell.” he muttered, apathetic. “She has been apart of me my entire life, and look at her. People forget if she isn’t moving then neither are we. Do you understand?”

The soldier thought for a minute, to no avail. “I dont know. I understand love. I understand devotion. To which scale it compares to the immensity of yours, I do not know.”

A wry smile bled outwards from the man’s pursed lips and he asked: “What was her name?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Oh, well. In that case, your devotion was either untrue or undeserved. Which was it?”

“If it was untrue I deceived myself too.”

“We become so good at wanting something to be what it can never be. Don’t be ashamed, we are all able to convince ourselves. Was she here through the war?”

“No. I have been here. Fighting. Fighting for her even. This is her cause more than mine. Her heritage. She went back to her village to care for her sister. who was ill. She was unsettled to be back home. There, in a place she wasn’t comfortable. So, I sent word for her everyday. A story. A simple story. Something for me to do. Something else for me to talk about except this war. I thought it would be nice if she had something to look forward to outside of the monotony of caring for her sister, and her depression. She sent word back everyday, but only ever acknowledged this once. After the third installment. She told me how sweet I was. I was excited, there was 26 more due, and I sent one everyday, but she never said anything about it again. For some reason she started to speak in routine. Like it was a chore she was completing. Yet she remained entirely dependant on my support and I remained entirely submissive to her. It was no longer loving. Me with my bitterness, her with her ignorance. For a long time I didn’t know the difference between love and submission.”

“And now?”

“Now, she loves someone else. But, I still went back when her sister died. On a day when word should have been sent, he was silent. So she came to me. She came back to me so he would come back to her. For all her flaws she is manipulative enough to know a narcissist is nothing without an audience. Their love is contrived from the desire to please their own egos - and the show goes on. And so do I.”

“And now they are together?”

“No. They remain apart.”

“By circumstance?”

“No. There are options.”

“When people are in love the only option is each other.”

The air was as idle, as idle as they sat.

“I believe this too. Perhaps one day she will mourn me?”

“How could she ever mourn you?  She has no comprehension of what she has lost. It’d serve you well from this day forward to imagine how much you could love a person whose appreciation matched your effort.”

“She cried when i left but it felt more like an actress taking her final bow in front of her audience - savoring the applause. La vie, L’amour.”

“You know? It’s empty now but this city will thrive again. The lifeblood will breach the dam and flow through rusted veins. We will be reminded we are alive. Yes, this city will thrive once more; if we can find the courage to rebuild. But, I sit up here, away from the world. If it is courage I seek, I won’t find it there. You’ve waited for her to be courageous and love you back. You won't find courage there friend. Courage only exists in people capable of loving something more than themselves.”

[katebailey47]

Discipline

The cornerstone of any sense of discipline I possess is my youth spent in Karate class. Karate is particularly physical but there is so much emphasis placed on the state of your mind. It is openly discussed that a healthy mind key to your development as a student of martial arts. I learned to respect my body. I learned that I could do things, and do them well, even if I didn’t want to do them. A nice introduction to the state of existence I now call ‘adulthood’. Mo’ adult, mo’ problems.

Nope.

I learned that discipline could be choice I made. Seems obvious, but shit, what a revelation when I was the tender age of 11. I realised that when I used discipline in moderation I could considerably influence the success of my life.

I gave it up eventually - studying and working in equal measure whilst in high school and wanting to focus on athletics and soccer. Despite not practicing consistently since, I have often found myself desirous to return back to the sport. My belief that martial arts is a genuine art in the form of sport aside, I truly believe it is the discipline I crave to cultivate more consistently that calls me back. This is when I am truly grateful for every dollar, every car ride, every sacrifice of precious time my mother made for me to be at training twice a week and attending tournaments, competitions and gradings. You can never quantify the influence  a parent can have on a child’s life by manifesting their love through a commitment to what the child has decided is important to them as an individual.

[katebailey47]

Educate by Existing

The idea that anyone has to acknowledge or discuss their sexuality or ‘come out’ is repulsive. However, Ellen Page coming out at age 26 reminded me to be a little more mindful of the struggles of LGBTQ people across the world. Fortunate to be surrounded by love and acceptance, I am embarrassed to confess that I had forgotten that we live in a world where kids are dying due to a society that perpetuates oppressive ideas of what love and sexuality should look like. I concede, this forgetfulness is in fact ignorance.

We tell kids there is no place for them in our society if their sexuality strays from the accepted heterosexual norm. We casually reinforce these ideas with gender role concepts that set men and women on a path of conformity that ultimately leads to immense internal suppression of self, and ultimately unhappiness. In the most extreme cases, death. Yes, people die as a direct result of all of this and we can not afford to lose lights in a dark place.

It’s not about marriage equality or phasing out casual homophobia. These issues are merely the visible symptoms of a close minded, ideological virus infecting spirit of humanity. The tyrannical injection of personal opinions about who people choose to have a sexual relationship with is not working. It’s not working because people are dying. On the flip side, people who could otherwise be contributing members of this world are spending their time telling someone else what to do. We have the ability to communicate strong opinions without the caveat that those opinions will then be adopted by the person with whom we sharing them with. That is a simple respect and it should be afford to everyone, by everyone. It should be adopted into the fabric of our human condition. As love already is.

Love is an entirely universal experience. The experience of meeting the person for whom you feel that sickly sweet love, who your colours your world with an existence that sets your heart on fire, re-adjusts your perspective on your own existence  and changes the way you feel about the world is something no human should ever be denied. I will not accept that a person understands love if they genuinely believe they have the right to deny anyone that experience simply based on the idea it conflicts with what gender they believe someone should love.  The very notion that this is at the core of any human renders me wordless; unable to acutely articulate just how much it sickens me to think that for all of our abilities as humans to grow and evolve we still live in a world that allows this deplorable injustice to members of our Earth.

To phase out this crippling hatred that simmers below a barely functioning society, it is imperative that individuals strive to demonstrate compassion to any person experiencing oppression. It is the cultivation of this compassion that will truly make a change in the world. Your compassion will be witnessed by those you show it to you and by anyone who observes how you live your life. Simply, exist as a visibly accepting person. Allow your actions to speak for your beliefs. This is applicable to any human rights issue. You do not have to be forceful to make a difference.