pierced

Q. How do you say goodbye to someone who is already gone?
A. Easy! Publish things you journalled about them whilst they were around on a forum they will never read.

Lucky you. If it wasn't midnight I wouldn't even consider posting this. But I do quite enjoy looking back at my angst-ridden youthful writing and finding it at the very least, and if nothing else, amusing.

Goodbye
x

Photo & words: Rachel Kara

nobody pretend. just be.

I am about to get into my freshly made white sheeted bed but the ocean is a little cold at the moment. It's times like these I wish I was a mermaid...genuine wish. A month or two on the sandy floor would be great - I'd let the world keep progressing & rejoin shortly enough.

I'm both fascinated and disappointing by the commonality of human thought & emotion. Do we ever feel something that no one ever has before? 

Photo: Adam Taylor

sky high

Words: It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be - Paul Arden

Lover

I don’t just want your heart

I want your flesh,

Your skin,

Your blood and bones,

Your voice, your thoughts

Your pulse

And most of all your fingerprints,

Everywhere.

Nothing is more criminal than love

It steals hours from the day

Dreams from my head,

The sun from the sky.

Perhaps it shone today,

I don’t recall

I distilled all of your words and made my own climate.

Words: Isobel Thrilling

drop it

Jenny Holzer - Inflammatory essays. Pompidou Paris, 2010

I need to write, to release, to clarify, to consolidate, to see my thoughts but it's not flowing so here's my reworked Holzer essay....

FREEDOM IS IT! YOU'RE SO SCARED. WHAT CAUSED THIS SITUATION? WHAT HAPPENS NOW? LET PEOPLE FULFILL THeIR NEEDS. FREE PEOPLE ARE GOOD, PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE. LET IT EXPLODE. RUN WITH IT. DON'T CONTROL OR MANIPULATE. CLARIFY THE MIND. DEFINE THE WILL. RESTRAIN THE SENSES. VOMIT THE HEART. REJECT ACQUAINTANCES. DISSECT MYTH. SLOW MODIFICATION CAN BE EFFECTIVE. MEN CHANGE BEFORE THEY NOTICE AND RESIST. 
DON'T TALK DOWN TO ME. DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL NICE. YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. YOU THINK NO ONE CAN REACH YOU. LET ME IN.
LET ME IN.

I have one zzzzillion RAFW photos to post but y'all are being bombarded right now so I'll probably save it for next week when no one gives a shiz.

wider than a smile

"Oh dream maker, you heartbreaker
Wherever you're going I'm going your way
Two drifters off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end
Waiting round the bend..."

Photo: Lady & her Captain, Nanna & Poppa - personal scan.

Lyrics: Moon River

reflection eternal

Songofsongs The Man 04

The sweet, fragrant curves of your body,
the soft spiced contours of your flesh
Invite me, and I come. I stay
until dawn breathes its light and night slips away.
You're beautiful from head to toe, my dear love,
beautiful beyond compare, absolutely flawless.

Photos: Rachel Kara

revelation

Watching day come up and spread it's glory over one of my favourite Sydney streets on a Saturday. Delight.

I have put down magazines and picked up novels again. It came to my attention that my mind must be visually saturated as I was not soaking up anything I was seeing.

Do you read? What are you reading? Is it good? Tell me, tell me!

Jonathan Safran Foer has been on my to do list for sometime. A delightful Christmas gift prompted follow through.

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer. 2002.

"The boys, young men, men and elderly of the shtetl would sit vigil outside her window at all hours of the day and night asking if they could assist her with her studies, or in the garden, or if perhaps Brod would like to go for a stroll to the river.

She never said no and never said yes but pulled, slackened, pulled her strings of control.

She maintained a careful balance by her window never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far. She needed them desperately, not only for the favors, not only for the things they could get for Yankel and her that Yankel couldn't afford but because they were a few more fingers to plug the dike that held back what she knew to be true..."

Photos: Rachel Kara

looking in

Can someone write something clever, honest and insightful without being tragic and lame about feeling:

• anxious over success or more specifically, a lack thereof
• drowning, suffocating, getting lost in disorganisation
• a rush to get to the future 
• inability to express all that one feels
• inability to show all that one see's
• tension in the head
• backflips in my stomach

I don't understand why some days adrenaline decides to pump a little harder through my veins (no not that good, ready to leap out of my skin adrenaline, the other one) and my brain whirs at a noticeably and dangerously higher speed.
It is also on these days that the world seems to moves in slow motion and I am able to make everything a melancholic movie moment...like birds flying through the sky for example. True story - I saw that only hours ago and wanted to cry. 

I hate these days!

Tomorrow the sun will come up and I can almost guarantee it will be all rainbows and lollipops but for now my fingers running over these keys release a little of whatever this is that's stirring. All at the risk of being eye-rolled and misinterpreted by strangers. Whatever. 

This too shall pass. Sleeeeeeppp. 

Photos: Click on image for Flickr details

Video: Rachel Kara (filmed the night before last, camera resting on my chest, laying in bed, lots of camera shake, poor framing but plenty of feeling).

daze

It was the perfect night to be sitting on the porch, drinking a soda with your summer crush whilst the cicadas hummed and the anticipation of an awkward first kiss lingered in the sweet air...

...yes, typical American movie scenes is a dialect I think fluently in.

Lady, loose hair, full moon, no shoes, no bra, dog on leash. I feel you lady.

Photo: self portrait
Illustration: Marjorie Miller - Queen of The Night

graveyard

These images come from far and wide.

The wait.

I hope you don't know that I'm in love with you.
It's no secret to almost anyone but you.
I have been living out our romance through song lyrics, stories and pictures.
I find myself clinging to any piece of you that I find in fictional characters - I swear they are more accessible than you right now.
I guess I am a romantic but I also hope that I am a realist.

xR

when i die i'm alive and when i lose i find - my identity

I feel so disconnected from the world with no internet (even though my online world involves very, very few people that I am actually connected to in any real way, shape or form).
Isn't the real life stuff the stuff that you're meant to find connection in? I thought that was the general traditional view.
To me it all feels useless when it's not shared.
But most of the real people I know wouldn't get what I want to share.
But you get it don't you? If you read blogs and crave beautiful pictures, enjoy wasting hours scanning your favourite editorials and dreaming you could someday create something that makes you feel the same way, figuring out your aesthetic and watching it evolve without you without even realising, seeing a face, a font, a shoe, a colour, a quote, an idea, and having it stuck in your head, saved for a rainy day when you finally put all your bits and pieces together then letting your mind casually stroll through them all, creating a path you didn't even know existed until now. You get it. Right?
 Sorry, didn't see that coming...end of poorly written rant.
What I came to say was simply, I'll be back to posting soon.
Dear Telstra, get your ass into gear ASAP. $400 woth of internet from my mobile and I'm starting to not love you...not that I ever did.
Rachel Kara

pack mentality

Flawless. You can't go past good group shots and these would have to be the best I've seen in some time.

The thought of being part of a group, tribe, pack, gang, crew, social circle-call them what you will-really doesn't appeal to me. I don't know whether it's; the fear to take on and be part of an identity that is not controlled by you and only you, not yet finding a group that does line up with how I percieve myself and how I want others to percive me, a lack of desire for surface social interaction, a preference for intimate time in someone's headspace, getting lost in crowd, standing out in a crowd or.....?

Not saying I'm a complete social recluse or one man wolf pack (actually, I did just kind of say that didn't I...think I just wanted to get a Hangover reference in) or anything like that. I have friends who are more like sisters and sisters who are like friends. I enjoy going out and, if I'm in the right state of mind, enjoy meeting people. I am also full of contradictions and sentences that don't make sense when I'm trying to figure things out.

So, hello word vomit, I will come back and review you and see if I can say something of sense soon. Or maybe just stick to pictures.

Photos: Josh Oins

known to keep digging on existence

With eyes wide open.

Words: Keri SMith
Photos: Me