skin and blood

my baby sister in the window of a hotel room.

her heart is so beautiful. 

home again

my hometown, the town of the heavy sun. it had been a long time since i saw my family. 

there is my mother, the eccentric artist. often wearing midriff shirts and falling in love with strangers on public transport. her stories of her youth, as free and inspired as any, give me purpose and a sense of self. she has inspired me to love fully, travel everywhere and to never shave my legs. my young, half-sister is boyish, with long sun-blonde hair and a strong naivety. refusing to let go of her true self. she hides her gentle heart behind many layers of tough skin so that only a few know how selfless she is. my brother was diagnosed with aspergers and never finished primary school. he has never said hello to love, let alone gotten to know love, so his obsessive nature (that i share to an extent) feeds into gaming. lands and battles he talks about with wild passion, him the leader of a gaming cult. his skin has seen little sun and his chest sinks down past his ribs. but he is content.

then there are my many cousins, all so grown up now. when i saw them, all tall and talking of boys they’d loved who had broken their hearts, i almost cried. i realised the worst thing about travelling is not being there to see your family grow. they were strangers i’d once babysat every weekend and lived with for months. i was who they came to when they were hurt or sad. in a way, that is hard to explain without sounding weird, it was like they were my children and then suddenly they weren’t. i didn’t want them to grow when i was away, it broke my heart.

my house hadn’t changed. it was a chaotic mess that felt so much like home. under the house was my mother’s glass studio where she would make jewellery, and beside that were cages stacked up to the ceiling where crazed white rats with bright red eyes lived. me and my sister would collect grasshoppers and big insects to feed to them. watching what we imagined as the bloodlust staining their eyes. there was a fascination in watching them tear the grasshoppers apart limb by limb. watching the insects on the brink of death. 

my room was at the back of the house, which is now my sisters room. it is pink, which i always hated and i’m sure my sister hates now. a lot of my old things were still lying around. it was a strange feeling. remembering that the girl who used to live and breathe in this room was me. my experiences since leaving home have set me a world apart from her. she was wild with feeling, crazed with passion. sometimes i get sparks of her and it makes me feel alive again.

but if i’d known back then, all i would do and how much life would frighten me, i would have never left my bed. i followed my dreams blindly, and i do not regret it.

i’m not sure if it was summer when i visited but it always felt like it. the sun was heavy on our skin. the girls all played with the hose in the backyard and we left the house when the sun was setting and the air was beginning to cool. those days you didn’t want to do anything but laze around, reading books and sucking iceblocks.

it was christmas eve and i was in the pool with my 8 year old cousin kaisy on my back, her arms safely around my neck. it was late and we watched the scattered stars in the sky, excitement in the air all around us. in an almost hopeless way she asked if i believed in santa claus. when i told her i did, her eyes lit up and she said whispered quietly ‘i do too’. she told me of nights where she’d heard sleigh bells and a deep laugh that had echoed into her dreams. then she was silent. lights on the roof lit up parts of the sky and we both saw the most magical thing. we saw the lightest sprinklings of snow falling slowly down in the air. bright white, like only snow could be. hush, i said to the other cousins and my sister in the pool, look. and all was silent. later one of the cousins insisted it was rain that was caught in the light in a strange way. but me and kaisy are certain it was snow from santa’s sleigh.

i got only a few hours sleep that night, waking at sunrise with the children. it’s funny how when you become an adult christmas is no longer about presents but about the children. the way their eyes light up and they don’t stop smiling, not even when they’ve fallen asleep exhausted that night. you want to do all you can to make them happy. 

matt flew in and i picked him up from the airport, having not seen him in months. full of stories of foreign cities and cultures, wearing new scars (with volcanic ash buried under) and thousands of new photographs. he brought with him more presents then i’ve ever received. my favourites being a yashica t4 with film and a pashmina from india. i felt like the luckiest girl in the whole world.

i felt overwhelmingly like i belonged. this is my family, my past. i shared this quiet, homely life with matt and he revelled in it, sunk right down like i did. like we knew noplace else. 

the next time i went here, weeks later, i was flown to be a witness for a court case. a part of me died those days. being forced to think about things i'd buried deep enough to be forgotten. watching it become so real. sometimes i wish i could confide everything in this blog, or even one person, but it's just me alone with it all. i realise now i've never let anyone completely in. maybe i'll always be lonely in that sense.

 my cousin kaisy under falling hosewater.

my cousin, sister and step-cousin's soapy legs.

elise on her birthday.

kaisy wearing fake teeth.

my sister, my cousin and my mother sleeping on my mother's mattress.

early christmas morning.

my mother and her niece. 

my cousins. jayson playing guitar and jami reading.

kaisy and pixie's legs in the rainflooded gutter.

 playing in the rain under streetlamps.

my goosebumped sister.

december belongs to the cities

i shared the beginning of a scattered december between melbourne and sydney.

i met josh when me and m were sleeping on the cold floor of a fashion photographer’s apartment in melbourne. he’d casually stroll by us in his underwear in the mornings. it was a cliche, him being the muse of the photographer living there and naturally i thought he was an egotistical ass, as most male models are. i was kind of right, but he had a good heart there somewhere. i shot a campaign with him in sydney almost a year later, and he became a kind of brother to me.

i was in melbourne for an exhibition i was in and i was staying with josh and the gypsy boys in a terrace near the city. their house was littered with paintings, guitars, rubbish and empty beer bottles. it was a kind of haven for the ill of mind and those drunk on music and art.

those summer days were long and hot. we brought a fan into the room and i'd sit in front of it, singing along to whatever record was playing. some late afternoons we'd walk barefoot to a school across the street and i'd lay on the grass listening to music. the boys played soccer and skated while the sun set the deepest orange. like a sky on fire. i lived on a diet of corner store muffins and iceblocks.

while we were there one of the boys brother's and his lover stayed with us after their house burnt down. the brothers looked alike. long red hair curling like smoke. they spoke the same too, and when i closed my eyes i couldn’t know which was speaking. sometimes the atmosphere was hectic, wild, drug-fucked, and sometimes when i woke before any of the boys it was quiet and safe. like calm water.

in a way they were all my big brothers, i was picked on but always looked out for. and even though i was falling asleep amongst ankle-deep mess on a strange smelling mattress on the floor every night, i was content.

soon i was in an apartment above a brothel in newtown, sydney (or to those unaware: a massage parlour). this is my friend claire's place (a journalist who i met during an interview for cream magazine), shared among 3 or 4 other pretty girls. it was like living in another world compared to the gypsy house. everything was clean, nice smelling and sweet.

i went to the movies, had long train trips, met with agencies and took pictures around the city. i went touring with my friends from papa vs pretty. it was all filmlike. all of us cramped into a tiny car filled with instruments, driving across two states. packed venues, the mayhem of music. later on i met with david lachappelle to talk on the radio. i was full of hope and naive about my dreams during that time.

it was a kind of haze that lasted only a short while. many things happened i chose to not remember. all drowned in that deep haze in my thoughts. sometimes as a writer you want to keep moments alive eternally, whether good or bad because they are created some part of your persona. but some moments are better forgotten.

gypsy apartment in parkville. the lovers whose home burnt down.

tim & josh.

the homeless.

man & dog on melbourne tram.

woman & dog on street.

an exhibition i took part in.

josh through the window.

tim's brother on the balcony.

the boys playing soccer across the street.

quiet allen.

josh & a clouded windscreen.

on the road.

josh's sister and josh.

josh's cousin at sinterklaas (dutch christmas).

josh's cousins at sinterklaas (dutch christmas).

indian headdress.

heavy clouds.

flying into sydney.

sitting on the roof of a car at bondi.

claire's apartment in newtown.

claire and her ex-lover.

freya on the train.

on a train over the harbour bridge.

dinner at bill & tony's.

my favourite friends in sydney.

bondi boys.

mad busker in dee why.

thomas' journal.

roadtrip with papa vs pretty.

upset girl and her boyfriend at a gig in canberra.

central station.

shooting courtney on a mattress on the sidewalk.

silence

i've walked almost my entire life with my eyes open. i saw where i was going and knew who i was. but this period of my life i feel like i'm wandering blind. i'm lost in every sense.

the thing that i feel the most guilt for not taking enough photographs. i compensate for my bad memory by capturing as much of life as i can, and when i miss things, i feel like they are gone forever. this guilt is closely followed by letting people down. which is something i can be very good at. it's not that i don't care, sometimes i care so much i feel like nothing i do would be worthy. not blogging has stuck around like a sickness these past few weeks and i am deeply sorry. 

i am no longer a gypsy. me and m are renting a house on a hill overlooking the blue mountains. it is so cold and beautiful here. we have a fireplace, a bath, big windows and a balcony. the first few nights we huddled under airline blankets, our few possessions scattered around us. our home was so empty. we quickly filled the home with things i never could have owned as a gypsy. i can feel the weight of all these things i now have and i wonder whether it was a good idea. but this isn't the end of travel for us.

i don't know why i'm lost. i can't even remember when i lost me. love brings on so much feeling. this afternoon love made me sit in a hot bath, sobbing until i was weak and drowning a bottle of red wine on an empty, sick stomach. yesterday love made me feel the same intense happiness i had as a child. relationships are hard. especially between passionate, strong-minded artists. but deep down that's what i need, something to experience, feel, write about. maybe i've been losing myself in the bad us. i love you m, i know things will become okay again because they always are. 

i'm so lost i'm not even sure where i am going with this. but please be patient while i slowly return to myself. i have so many pictures i want you to see.

love, n

i don't take many self-portraits anymore. this is me at my grandparents house early this year.