Lentil Pie

4 tins lentils
lots-of-mushrooms (1 brown bag)
1 carrot
2 sticks celery
1 zucchini
1 head broccoli
1 tin diced tomatos
clove of garlic
1 tub tomato paste (the yoghurt-tub ones)
1/2 - 1 cup of stock made with vegemite (nutritional yeast'll do if you're in the US)
splash of red wine
bit of soy sauce
salt pepper etc.
10 sheets of puff pastry - UNsweetened.

In a seriously big pot cook the mushies in oil and garlic till soft. Add all the other vegies (finely chopped for god's sake!) except the lentils. Simmer in vegemite stock and soy, with wine, till soft (this takes ages).

IMPORTANT!!!! Be careful not to add too much stock/wine/sauce. It's a pie, not a soup.

Add tinned tomatoes. Cook a bit more.
Finally add drained lentils and tomato paste and more vegemite stock/soy/wine till it tastes goooood.

Line a greased pie dish (a big one, this is a lot of pie you're dealing with) with puff pastry. Put in oven, which you've had the foresight to preheat to 180C, for 5-10 minutes till it puffs. Take it out. Spoon in the filling and fold edges of pastry in. Lay more pastry on top, tucking down the sides of the tray. Make some cool shapes in the top. Put in oven for another 5 - 10 minutes. DON'T BURN IT!

Take it out. Get a plate. Eat the shit out of it.

Obralem Dziemnaga

Polish-Australian wonder-brothers Jacek Koman & Tomek Koman with a very special guest star in a short film promoting the upcoming Melbourne International Film Festival.

No points for recognising the guest - whose pronunciation, in Polish, of "I peeled a potato" sounds something like "I beeled a bodado" - but kudos if you can name the band for which Jacek is the front-man.

Tuna Cat

Feeling hungry?

Me too...

Bite-sized LA observations

It's my last morning in LA and the US and I'm sitting at Urth Cafe on Melrose, surrounded by Asian tourists and attractive people trying to look like they are somebody worth recognising.

My half serve of tuna salad is huge but at least the oil is a drizzle rather than a pour, and it's good.

And my coffee?
Nice coffee art in the foam. Cup is hot to the touch rather than scalding, which means that had I not asked for it extra hot it would've been brought out tepid. Slightly on the sweet side, either due to sweet soy milk or sweet beans, and slightly more bitter than I'd like. But by American standards altogether drinkable. On second sip it's actually too sweet, but whatever, I'm in LA.

There are some ridiculously overdone girls here, with ridiculously cute white Maltese terriers who look like they've never felt the bliss of mud on the paws. And a dozen tables of glamorous tourists from Hong Kong with a Luis Vuitton on the back of every chair. And girls with blondest blonde hair set in perfect salon curls clipping past in white jeans and Manolo lookalikes carrying scripts with the title page facing outwards.

A young model in trainers and no make-up just arrived accompanied by two Italian greyhounds and a man with dyed black hair who I thought was her father until she called him "honey". We strike up a conversation over restless canines and he reveals to me the tawdry secret of the dogs' relationship; Primo is Angie's father and brother, but due to their impeccable pedigree she is genetically flawless. I try to prevent my mind from straying towards the nature of Primo and Angie's owners' relationship.
They offer me a bite of their green tea tiramisu and it is phenomenal. I barely manage to resist ordering an entire slice once they leave.

There's a couple dudes at a table opposite talking through the funding plan for a new Queer-Eye-for-the-Straight-Guy-meets-dating-show and three Valley girls above me discussing whether to wear shorts or jeans out on Saturday night. The sky is perfect blue and everything is washed in sunlight and all around me people are throwing about phrases like "best-cased scenario" and "the bottom line" and I can see how a person could come to this city and never, ever leave.

One Night in New York via iPhone

I am the green bubbles.
Nick is the grey.
9pm to 1:45am.
Enjoy.

*NFT = Not For Tourists guidebook

*undertake = understand

*New York = Empire State of Mind

What it feels like when the weight comes back

I'm not yet ready to write honestly about Anorexia and the deathly, transcendence of it. But if I were, I might say something like this..

- Marya Hornbacher

Australian Citizenship Test

Please complete and submit results.

On Evil

Am I, in actual fact, a bad person? I've carried this self-label for as long as I can remember and it was only two years ago that someone was finally able, after much work on both our parts, to convince me otherwise.

But maybe they were wrong and the seven-year-old me was right. Maybe I simply am a bad person. The embodiment of evil, so to speak. Because what is evil if not someone who is consistently and irreparably bad? Someone who makes others cry, who lets down and hurts their parents, who is mean, spiteful, envious and lazy. Who manipulates for personal gain and lies and cheats and steals. Who has never loved.

But isn't everyone one or all of these things at some point in their life?
Well, yes. Of course. But is it possible that I am these things more often than most?

And why? I don't choose to hurt people. I never chose to have loose morals. I didn't decide to be a c*nt. It's just the way I turned out. Or came out. It's been consistently and torturously beyond my means to change it. And God I've tried. I've tried and tried and tried till the trying has become a song stuck in my head for all eternity.
I'm so very tired of it.

And so perhaps I'm not a good person who sometimes makes mistakes. Perhaps, even though it smacks of melodrama, I am actually the modern definition of evil. I do believe it may be true. It is possible. I may quite simply be bad. And this being the case, perhaps I should just accept it and do my best to protect the world from the harm of me. Shut myself away from friendships and family and meaningful interactions to prevent any further pain.

And the fact that I'm writing this here - that I'm actually admitting this openly to whoever it is that will read this - scares me. Because it makes it feel true. As if it were a confession. Which it isn't, really. Because there is a part of me, the part that is gentle and light and caring and warm and so-very-full-of-love-and-wanting-to-be-loved that it breaks my heart a little each day, which still believes that I am fundamentally a good and beautiful person. And it desperately wants me to keep trying to be good. To keep trying to exorcise the evil. To keep seeking joy.

But damn it if it wouldn't be easier to just have this guy throw some holy water my way:

A letter to Janelle Monáe

Dear Janelle Monáe,

I love you.

I have watched this video 15 times tonight.

That bit at 1:37, just after you sing the line "I was made to believe there's something wrong with me" and you turn to someone off camera and say "I'm gonna cry" while laughing, breaks my heart.

I wish I could dance like you.
Or have the tenacity to be who you are in the industry in which you make your living.

But it makes me happy just watching.
x


WORDS:
So you think I'm alone?
But being alone's the only way to be
When you step outside
You spend life fighting for your sanity

This is a cold war
You better know what you're fighting for
This is a cold war
Do you know what you're fighting for?

If you wanna be free?
Below the ground's the only place to be
Cause in this life
You spend time running from depravity

This is a cold war
Do you know what you're fighting for?
This is a cold war
You better know what you're fighting for
...

Bring wings to the weak and bring grace to the strong
May all evil stumble as it flies in the world
All the tribes comes and the mighty will crumble
We must brave this night and have faith in love

I'm trying to find my peace
I was made to believe there's something wrong with me
And it hurts my heart
Lord have mercy, ain't it plain to see?

This is a cold war
You better know what you're fighting for
This is a cold war
Do you know what you're fighting for?

KELLINDO!

Do you know it's a cold, cold war?
Do you, do you,do you?

Bye, bye, bye, bye
Don't you cry when I say goodbye

read to me i love you

I should be working on a script, but I’m not.
I’m sitting here typing to myself, and you, because I’m overcome with the need to connect with someone.

I’ve been busy.

I have a new job. A real job. That I’m not qualified for but which I got anyway. And which I’m ridiculously good at. At a desk with a computer and a new wardrobe of clothes that can, if you squint, pass for conservative but are really just longer/looser/duller/neater versions of what I already own, worn without coloured socks and other accoutrements. 

I’m also working on a play. An Australian premiere of a new translation of a classic play. The one with the orchard and the rich folk who lose all their money and cry about it. By the Russian guy who hated the theatre and died of TB.
I have a lead role; the one who cries the most and feels unwanted and doesn’t get the guy in the end… What a stretch.

And finally, I’m Assistant Director to someone I greatly admire, who is famous, on a play that he wrote, which is being performed by a highly respected theatre company. And although this actually means I’m assisting the director, not assisting with directing, it’s still a wonderful opportunity, which I created for myself through sheer determination and a shitload of temerity.

BUT.
Whilst all these things are wondrous and blissful and point to my ability to get things done and disregard obstacles others would consider insurmountable, I’ve been feeling lost and disconsolate. And the theatre work, which I’m usually so desperate for, is turning me in on myself and forcing me deeper into my own head, my bedroom, my bed.
Why?
I don’t know.

But I do know I’ve been feeling so lonely it’s eating me alive and all I want to do is disappear into a crowd so big I’ll never find my way out, and where it’s never dark, and where it’s never quiet.

Or maybe that’s my own idea of hell.

Or Tokyo.

I don’t know.

But I do know that if I don't pull myself out of this inevitable descent into the mire of self-pity and melancholia, things could get very bad. Worse even than they have in the past. Because this time there is no cause for my retreat and therefore it cannot be rationalised away.

So to aid in my recovery, I leave myself, and you, with this. It's not particularly cool, but it's bittersweet beautiful and that's kind of how I'm feeling right now.

Why the Arts Matter

"We believe that the arts are important because they change lives.
 

Art is one of the key ways we have as a culture of seeing ourselves, and of seeing our relations to the world.  Encounters with art - as school students, in further education, as adults - whether they take place in museums and galleries, theatres, concert halls, village halls, street corners, websites or in any of the many many other places that art has made its own -have the possibility to awaken us to new experiences, pleasures and questions.
 

Art is often talked of in terms of affirmation and celebration and just for the record, we have nothing at all against these things. But we're also proud of the role art has to challenge, to provoke and to question. Those experiences are the ones that stay with us - and for us make the most powerful argument for supporting the arts. A healthy society is one that has doubts and disputes, uncertainties and divisions - how we cope with those things, how we give space to discussing and dealing with them is the mark of our success.
 

Art has a double centre - it asks that we look closely at the world we are living in - that we see it, for what it is, with all of its joys, complexities and all of its problems. At the same time art asks us to dream of another space - to imagine things as otherwise, to step outside the limits of our day to day.
 

Art and tolerance go together.
 

Cuts to the arts are cuts to the imagination."

 
Tim Etchells. September 2010.

Source: Forced Entertainment

Just in case you weren't sure...

This is how it's done.

Thankyou Victoria University

M.B.

I would walk barefoot (in pantyhose!) in the rain, if only you'd reply to my email.

I would eat a non-vegetarian burger.
I'd give away my Leonard Cohen tickets.
I'd shave my legs and paint my nails.
If you'd acknowledge that I still exist.

I'd update my blog at night, in a dress which you've never seen, if I thought it might make a difference.

And I'd still think about you.
.............
And think about you.
...................
And think about you.
.........................
And date other men who looked like you.
If it'd maybe make you notice.

But you don't. And you won't. (And it doesn't and you haven't).

And it's taking every piece of my feeble motivation to stop me from contacting you again.

I didn't think it could get any better

I was wrong.

Today, a Gift

You know those songs you love so much you listen to them over and over and then stop listening to them altogether so as not to wear out the magic?
 
This is one of those songs.




You're welcome.

And there will come a time, you'll see

There is an unfortunate state of being that I find myself in occasionally. It doesn't happen often but when it does it's beautifully bittersweet.

I am experiencing it right now, in this moment, as I sit on my friend's velour pod chair in Sydney, post headshot session, suitcase packed and ready to fly home. It is a feeling of intense and exhilarating motivation made tortuously frustrating by my inability to act.

As an actor, I spend most of my time happily waiting for the phone to ring and wildly dreaming up projects I'd like to produce. For the most part, it's a tolerable existence. Occasionally I'm hit with a stab of cold fear that makes me hate my unemployment and question the choices I've made in life. And then, very rarely, something will happen that will fill me with the most overwhelming passion and impatient enthusiasm to be doing something useful RIGHT NOW that it's almost heart-breaking.
I know I am capable of achieving what I would like to and, in these moments, I become painfully aware of just how much more I could be doing to get to where I want to be. It's wonderfully enlivening to have these bolts of positive hyper-reality, but it terrifies me to consider that the people who really do achieve greatness - who succeed - are those who are able to harness this feeling and channel it into the relentless pursuit of their goals, without the distractions of finances, and fashion, and finding love, and facebook.

So now.

All I need to do.

Is.

- Start marketing the crap out of myself
- Save money
- Stay focused
- Marry an American to get a VISA, and;
- Live happily ever after

So hard?

Pfff.

You..

..and your blue eyes should come round and hang out.
I'll make baked beans on toast and pretend we're married.
Then I'll tell you about all the times I've ever seen you from a distance and you'll be a little freaked out but flattered just the same. And you'll love the way I've put old children's books on the picture rails and you'll be impressed by my Hong Kong DVD collection, but you won't say too much because you're not like that, and anyway, that's why I like you.
Yeah. That's what you and your blue eyes should do. And my blue eyes will be glad to see themselves reflected in such a sad and handsome face as yours.

Meta-Blogging

Don't you hate it when you have an idea for something to write about and you start to write it but then realise it sucks and delete it instead?

Yeah. Me too.

See, I was going to write about how I can't finish anything lately or get any of my great ideas off the ground and that I suspect I may have burnt out my creative abilities too early. I was then going to make a list of all the things I'd done before I'd reached my mid-twenties, like running my own zine distribution business, showing horses, working door at a major nightclub, speaking at the National Young Writers' Festival, being a Pony Club instructor and on the State Pony Club Committee, managing a fast-food shop, creating a Fringe show about brothel workers, disappearing into the rave scene, performing in youth theatre, studying psychology and teaching before being accepted into Drama school, and so on and so on, ad nauseam.

Then I was going to make some reference to all the stuff I'd talked about doing recently (rehearsal groups, play reading nights, collaborative shows, magazine articles, performance events) but never completed, and then I was going to bemoan this fact in light of my previous inexhaustible enthusiasm and try to find a reason for it.


But this all seemed SO FUCKING BORING that I gave up.

Sometimes I Do Things that People Like

My, my, my...

Aren't we angsty.

Reading over the last few entries in my much-neglected blog, this is the impression I am left with. If one were to know only the 'me' that is presented here - self-deprecating, intense, lonely - one could be forgiven for finding me a little tedious.

But I am still here, under all those doleful entries, I promise. Eating popcorn in bed and watching Gossip Girl late into the night, making droll comments on friends' facebook pages on my iPhone, and hiding toy wrestlers in compromising positions around the house to be discovered at unexpected moments by my reluctant housemates.

So all is not as it may, at first read, seem.

....

I'm even buying a kitten.