How to Steal a Pool

It has been on your mind a while now.

It's getting warm outside, you want to wear your new red bathers and the neighbour's pool is looking bluer than ever.

That's alright, calm down. I can teach you what you want to know.

How to steal a pool is easier than ever.

Firstly, scope out the pool you want. Take into account the temperature, the depth, the shape and the scenery. Scenic scenery is best.

Also, make sure the pool you decide on is not one you will be caught stealing. You do not want to steal an 'obviously stolen by you' sort of pool. Be clever.

Once you've decided on "the one" it is time to mentally claim the pool. If you feel game, tell the pool "I'm coming back for you", and wink, slyly.

Go to your home. Step outside the back door. You should find yourself in a "backyard". This is where you want to put your new pool.

Dig.

Dig.

Dig.

Dig until you have a really big hole. Have you seen the film Holes? Good. See those holes they dig? Dig a bigger and deeper one.

Dig until you have a pool shaped hole.

Put a tarp on the bottom and throw some rocks onto it. This will give your pool both practical-ness and aesteticalprettiness.

Go to the store. Not the regular bread, milk and newspaper sort of store, but the big smelly hardware kind. The kind that sell buckets and rope.

Buy some rope. Buy some buckets.

Tie the buckets together with the rope. You want a string of buckets.

Sit with the string of buckets in your laboratory. Lock the door, have no visitors. Do not answer the phone. Guard the string of buckets 'til nightfall occurs.

It is time to dress into your spy-gear.

I should not have to teach you about spy-gear.

Tip-toe out to where the pool is to be stolen from. If it is not in tip-toeing distance, do not take the bus. Instead, drive a car that looks like this. Wear a hat. Bring the string of buckets.


THROW the string of buckets into the pool and allow to fill with water. The retrieve and drag back to the hole you dug in the "backyard" Empty the buckets into the hole.

Repeat these later stages until the pool is in your property.

You are Welcome.

Lief out.

A New Year; No better time to start a-fresh.

What I want for 2011

- Save money!! ($20,000)

- Decide on a budget and stick to it

- Learn to do the splits

- Read and acquire The Gentle Art of Hospitality

- Continue to collect wonderful things for my future home and life

- Have more control, make decisions based on outcomes and goals

- NOT ignore my to-do list

- Begin each day with yoga

- Keep my bedroom neat

- Volunteer my time to help charities

- Sing and play my guitar in front of an audience

- Buy and watch the film A Clockwork Orange

- Read all the books on my list

- Visit and spend the day in a library at least once a month

- Read a book on Absinthe

What do you hope to achieve in 2011?? Invent something? Maybe bake the largest cake in all of history? Anyway, hopefully you enjoy your New Years Eve celebrations!!

I hate most things.

I do not like camping

I do not like bugs

I do not like trekking through the mud

I do not like sleeping in a smelly tent

I do not like falling on cement

I do not like waking with water on my skin

From the ground into the tent, the water leaked in.

I do not like non-stop rain and floods

I do not like needing to wear gloves

I do not like tents pitched on a slope

I can smell the hippies smoking dope

I am glad I left, I am glad I fleed

Camping is foul, it is not for me.

I am about to pack everything into my car. My books, ID, money, some clothing, gum-boots (it hasn't stopped raining for a week), my guitar and my favourite CDs, because I am about to hit the road.


There is a Folk Festival at the end of a two hour drive North, one that I shall be spending the next week at, surrounded by old friends and amazing and creative strangers.


Here are some pictures from on the way to Peachester last week.

When the parents are away

There is a low, almost white noise coming from the adjoining room. The laughing of the people, the sound of the television program, the music of the birds in the distance all blend together to create the soundtrack of today.

Today will not be amazing.

This little fact is almost set in stone, as last night, sorry, yesterday in general, was completely tremendous.

I'm currently in a little country town, away from Brisbane, staying with some friends from work. Crystal's parents are away, so the kids came out to play.
Every day has been lovely, but last night was just magical.
We sat around an old table, playing cards on the back porch as the sun sank behind the horizon.

Everything I said was heard, my ideas counted, my jokes were funny.

Then without any warning a thunderstorm broke out. It consumed the atmosphere; everything became a part of this incredible, energising storm. If it were a painting, it would be shades of grey with flecks of the rainbow in the grass, peices of kaleidoscope in the air.

So we burnt candles and watched the rain take over the sky.
Red Socks put his fingers in the melting candlewax and made "weird wax fingertip things" which he thought was hilarious.

I went inside, after a long day of (sleeping.) our stomachs were rumbling and a steaming pot of Dahl was on the menu. I cooked it for people who live on Mi Goreng and microwave meals and... they LIKED the dahl!! Success! Nothing is more important than impressing people with cooking abilities.

The storm died down, we continued playing Frustration, cracking open a bottle of "cheap'n' nasty" (actually. I thought it was really nice) champaigne.

Note to everyone: Next time you crack open the bottle of "cheap'n'nasty" champaigne, add some frozen strawberries and a peice of ice. This will a) make your drink prettier and /almost/ negate the "cheap'n'nasty" element. b) make you appear sophisticated c) create a swell beverage.

The game continued and I spied with my beady eyes the "weird wax fingertip things" on the table. I then decided that the only thing more hilarious than "weird wax fingertip things" is melting things. So you can guess what I did then. I tried to melt one, which was difficult since Red Socks protected them like they were his pride and joy. About half an hour later I saw an opportunity and... I melted one of them. Red Socks didn't seem to care since he said "I don't care! You can put that in your pipe and smoke it!".

After the game finished we played Marco Polo in the dark. The weather had transformed and the air was warm, the water inviting.

It became obvious that the house behind Crystal's needed to be spied on. Lights were moving around, there was possibly a party taking place. The game of Marco Polo was over.
Well, it was time for me to take one for the team. And since I am, in fact, a highly regarded spy, famous actually... in the spy world, I stepped up. But not without trusty Red Socks.

We scrambled over the fence (which I'll admit, was something of a challenge for me since I am barely 5"2 and the Fence was almost 5". But we made it. Landing on enemy turf was just the beginning of the adventures. I am tired. Two nights in a row of 0.00 sleep is tiring.



Last night was a hard act to follow. But now that I think about it, the kiss technically happened this morning. Therefore today is amazing.

The girl who didn't dream of the 'roons

I lied. I am not overcome with thoughts of macarons twenty-four hours a day. I don't wake up and see them floating around my room before my eyes adjust to the light.

In fact, I've only ever had one.

It was at work, the lights were bright, my stomache was rumbling and I had spied the pretty lovelies on the interwebz many a time in the recent history. They were amazing looking. Anyone who ate macarons were magically transported to the pretty world of "Paris-and-NewYork-and-London-in-a-time-that-was-picturesque-and-movielike." This was my favourite place in the world. Flickr knew about this place. So did many of the folk on Blogger. (Eh, eh ; )

So I was determined to eat a macaron and join this magical world.

I was clearing trays of goodies from the tables at work when I laid eyes on the leftover macaron. It was pink. I looked around, all was clear so I ate it.

I wasn't transported to the delightfully filmish world. But here are some pictures other folk have taken of it.

Pretty french sweets

Lately, these little dears have been on my mind....

I hear that I am meant to ask questions... Aparently my lack of doing so is the reason people don't like my blog :) So here is a question, eh?

What has been on your mind, lately? Not macarons, surely!?

Please Stay in the Picture Frame

Lovecats Dance, Boots Prance.

See the boots. I want these boots, in all their fiendish glory. Aren't they just darling? They most certainly are. I realised a new problem today when I was shopping in town with mother. That problem is this one: "Lief can not shop properly unless online".

So, it seems I am overwhelmed by the racks and racks of clothing mixed with the store decor that I just cannot see anything that singularly jumps out at me; it all melds together to form a mass of random.

Online/TV shopping is so much easier than window-shopping. I might see these brillig booties in a shop window and NOT EVEN REALISE THEIR AWESOMENESS. All because of my shopping anxiety issue. Lame, eh?

I think I will buy these boots, as they are my size and I only bought one pair of shoes tonight and those were "for work" and all.

I think I should introduce myself. I'm not really called Lief, (Ly-eff) but that name is of a more "adventure novel" nature than my own unfortunate title. So it shall do.

I'm falling asleep. I'll finish some other time, kids.

Lief does sleep. But her dreams are full of whim.

As I Sit, Typing

In my head, I see scenes.
These are the scenes in my movie.
Sometimes they are flashbacks with my after-thoughts as a voice over, other times they are live, happening right then and there except without the dialogue, without the voices, with just the facial expressions, the subtleties like body language, fidgeting... to explain everything.

I wish I knew how to explain everything. I don't think I can explain even the most basic things lately. I don't know how to explain how I feel because my mind seems to have recently climbed up the faraway tree and into the land of topsy-turvy.

Nothing makes sense for long enough. I think I have two minds in one place. Sometimes it's a good thing, I can understand some things instantly, but other times it's impossible and chaotic. Like two people working at the same desk, papers becoming confused and documentation being shredded by mistake whilst trivial things like shopping dockets are being filed away in my memory.

When I wake, I wake by the brook

I bought film yesterday, put it in the Minolta SRT 101, then I went outside. I saw my cats by the flowers and noticed the feel of the breeze in my hair, the sun on my skin. Everything was golden and ethereal. I walked along the path and down the stone steps, feeling as though I was walking on a cloud. Or floating.

I walked through Bunya and photographed the time, that moment. I felt like I was documenting history through a lens of beauty before taking away the filter of the camera lens and realising that the beauty was ever-existing. I was the lens, it was my state of mind that made things appear beautiful.

Or rather, the pure outlook, without the clutter of depression. I don't know what it was, maybe a combination of things, all chance, all part of the butterfly effect, but whatever it was, yesterday I felt warm, happy, beautiful and natural. Nothing mattered because life was art.
On another, note, yesterday evening I lay on my floor in my bedchamber and it occured to me that I had to make a movie or else deny my love.

I want dreamy, photogenic, film-ish, artistic friends.
Yoga and kite-flying friends.
The kind who take photographs of life.
The kind who live life like a movie.
We could go to yoga classes and drink tea and eat dainty macaroons in quaint little teashops.
We would spend afternoons laying on the trampoline talking forever about our hopes and dreams and great plans.
We would go to an enormous library with dusty old books and would explore mysterious towns and get lost in strange neighbourhoods and go rummaging through flea-markets together.

I miss having a friend. I don't know what happened or why I'm so lonesome.

Did everyone grow up? People seem to be moving faster. Every time I close my eyes, for a moment, I open them to find a different time of day, or on more worrying occasions, a different day altogether. Every time I catch up with someone they have progressed in life, become more successful... I am stagnant. People are getting serious jobs, looking at real estate, buying shares, whilst I am still hanging out in record shops and reading online blogs.

Where are all the dreamers in my town?











The following pictures, I did not take. But they inspire me, incredibly.

A thousand kisses deep

I'm good at love, I'm good at hate; it's inbetween I freeze.

My mother thinks I've lost the plot. I sometimes wonder if I have.

This boy from work seems to really like me. He's so nice, too. And he's attractive.

From what I've read in stories and seen in movies, this is supposed to be a perfect scenario. We would then "date" one another until the day we marry. And then we live in our little house with a white-picket fence and have two perfect children. I would bake cookies and throw dinner-parties. We would have a vegetable garden.

I don't understand how this is ever enough.

"Date him." say the girls from work who also know him. "He's a really nice guy and he likes you so much."

He doesn't know me. I don't understand people who like people they don't know. I just feel so conscious and separated from it all. I don't know why people persue relationships. How can they search so hard to find something they can't live without? Isn't it simpler if you don't?

Happy birthday to me

I know it sounds lame. It sounds pathetic; though the importance of my birthday teapot and cup from my highschool friends is significant. Why is this? Well, for one thing, buying crockery, let alone something as personal as a teapot, for a friend, is a precarious task.

It's a very easy thing to get wrong.

Though my friends got it so right.

I love my teapot and cup. They are magnifcent.

Letter

Sometimes I like to think people read my posts. I like to imagine that when I leave a room someone wonders why. Tonight I sort of realised that a lot of the feelings I had been feeling lately were really only ever in my head.

It's hard, I feel a lump in my throat, I don't feel ready... but I sort of know this time was coming, that I'd have to stop carrying on like this.

Not even "have to" by choice. It's more a physical change. I don't know the next step, I feel like you've gone away. I know we can swear 'til the cows come home that we were never close. But I knew you. I think you knew me a little as well. Which was amazing. You knew me. No-one ever knows me. I say I'm fine, people say alright. You asked if I were lying. You were cold but I knew you hid behind that. Like I do. You cared. You would try to hurt me but would let me know in the subtlest ways that you didn't mean it. I did the same to you. I want you to feel love and happiness and to know I cared and (I swear) that I understood. But we were afraid, hells bells, we were terrified, that we were just imagining it. What if one of us were to deny it all. I suppose we understood each other but we never voiced it in black and white so we could never be sure, we could never trust each other completely. Anyway, I know that you cared. You were just afraid, like me.

I don't know if you do anymore.... Maybe we are still going. Maybe even this, this what I am feeling and writing now, maybe THIS is part of it. I am enjoying feeling this. Maybe. I didn't when I first began typing. But now I'm hoping that it's still happening. Maybe you think of me like I think of you.

Or maybe I had imagined everything.

Come to think of it, you were braver than I ever was. You took chances on me, and I appreciate that. I'm so sorry I never responded the way we both hoped I would. I didn't know how to act any different.

But just so you know, should you ever come across this.

A Tea Party Shall Be Held

I'm wide awake, it's morning. It's 1.29am, I must leave for work in four hours.

It is very important to hold tea parties, and bake cakes and dress well.

This shall take place on Saturday, before Lovecats, when two of my friends are coming over. I shall bake a divine cake, brew fruit tea and dress like perfection personified.

This thought entered my head around two hours ago and has yet to leave. It has woken me, motivated me to work towards something.

Now I just have to think of something to say. That's always been my problem. I set the table, I bake the souffle, I mail invitations... but then I don't know how to act the part. So I turn into a conscious, paranoid, awkward mess who talks the way she's seen teenagers on the train talk.

I am terrified.

I feel very, very alone.

There once was a time where I made an effort to distance myself from everyone; where I consciously felt uncomfortable with someone knowing what I was thinking. I fought to hide myself very, very completely.

And now I am alone. No-one knows me. No-one realises there is anything to me. And no-one is at all curious.

I wish I could just look at just one person and have them know every single thing.

I feel so sick, my tears are unstopable and are interpreted as a sign of grumpiness or a tantrum by everyone who sees them. My mother, my sister. Both people who seem so far away and cold.

I wish I could tell you why I felt so down, I would have to start at the beginning but even then, my memory isn't brilliant and it's so difficult to think straight. And I'm terrible at retelling stories. And nearly everything I say is miscommunicated.


I feel like I am trying to describe a new colour no-one has ever seen before.

Gone today, here tomorrow.

I arrived home from work last night around 2.15am. So I suppose it would be more fitting for me to call it morning. I found that three CDs I had been awaiting from ebay had arrived which made me jump oh merry, with joy and thrill. I made a milo and burnt the top just perfectly, like a Crème Brulee and I put Letting Off the Happiness on and melted into the sound of confusion and desperation. I adore Bright Eyes. I can listen to Conor's stories, his painful retellings of moments I can relate to and if I don't feel like I can cope, I can just shut off. It's so easy to shut off from what is being said and to indulge in the beat and the melody that fools one into thinking the song is one of joy. Except in the first song on that particular CD, mind you. Because it's hard to miss "I give myself three days to feel better, or else I swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff".

But it's okay to pretend he's joking and that people don't actually do that. Ever.

If anything is okay.

Which is perfectly possible.



I found a bag full of clothing in my room left by my mother from her friend.

I looked through that bag to find dresses, tops, skirts in perfect condition, mostly in size six...

I couldn't figure out who would give away so much of their wardrobe at once especially since most of the collection appeared to be brand new. I even imagined the owner to have been in some tragic accident which made 3am a very creepy moment in the Happenin' Hut that I live in.

Mother, this morning, told me though that they belonged to a girl who moved overseas and put on a lot of weight whilst she was there. And so she is out buying new clothes in a different size.

Like that, like it was that simple for her to do that.

Will you ever feel okay?

Do you ever find yourself looking at a situation which seems impossible, only to realise that the solution is visible if you take a step back... and do exactly what confirms your downfall?


I do believe this is currently my situation. I took a step, long ago, onto a boat that I can no longer depart with any certainty for it has long set sail. I am on this vessel, trapped, confused, bipola and lost in the middle of this expansive ocean of everything, all the while juggling my ponders and problems and beautiful treasures. I never meant to be grasping onto this final string. But I couldn't just drop this treasure, it would have shattered; you understand. I can't let go now, I keep juggling. Delaying the moment when I drop something, you, everything. Because as painful and confusing and oh god, incomprehensibly detrimental to my health this is... how my sanity is fading, how my mind is disappearing, how I cannot sleep.... I can't let go. I can't face the possibility of seeing you with eyes that don't fear the loss of you. Because I don't trust myself. And you need me. And I need to be needed by you.

Let's keep dancing the dance that keeps you coming back, that keeps me like a yoyo.

I opened my laptop this morning for the first time in a long time. So long I can't really remember the last time I did. I am listening to Make War by Bright Eyes and breathing in every word Conor says like a holy script.
I have to stop leaving the key to my bedroom cabinet in the lock. Some day someone is going to waltz right into my bedroom, spy the key and open the cabinet.

I don't think I'm subconsciously trying to live life on the edge... though I say that all the time.
I don't know why I say that.

My compter password is my friend's fiance's name. I created the password before I realised they would be dating. And I think I thought I was in love with him.

In hindsight, all feelings were real but they weren't for him... I imagined that everything wonderful I had ever dreamed of in a boy was exactly what he was. Now I know him, I see he isn't what I had hoped and is nothing like the magical, poetic soul I pictured. Though it appears he makes my friend very happy.

Now those awful feelings just fly around in the nothingness.

But evenso, my password is still his name. I suppose I must like to live life on the edge. Or perhaps I'm just lazy.

At the moment all I can think of is my great desire to make someone happy.

Like you even know.

All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead...

Today I slept in because I stayed up 'til I could see the horizon patterned with orange.

I was late to college, which I suppose is fine because I could listen to Cassadaga and sing in the car on my way. I walked into the classroom feeling determined to achieve something and make myself proud but I think I just came across as empty. The tutor spoke about.... due dates? I think. Yes. Due dates. I tried to listen and focus and become interested. Through the window, there was smoke coming from a chimney in a distant house. I wish I took a picture. It was rather beautiful how the breeze encouraged its direction so that it looked like a 'P'.

Somebody's phone began to ring and a "general murmuring of the people" occured. Then I realised who the tutor looked like;

Boo hiss.

Disappearing Act

~

I wish I were a dancer

Tiny and elite

And when I tried shine

Not a soul could compete

I wish I was like Hepburn

With just a touch of fear

And if I ever needed

I'd simply disappear

~

A l i e n a t i o n

The face was easy, you'd aged so much anyway

You'd stayed away most of the time

I could turn you into a statistic

the result of a mistake

Your actions could be textbook

but your subtleties would remain

Choreograph my life with poetry

dance my time with love

Outline my world with imagination

colour my canvas with dreams