New Blog Coming Soon!

Click on me to go to the NEW site

 

Hey guys!

I’m sorry to say goodbye to this stodgy old site. I’ll miss the spontaneous muck I spewed forth on here for your filthy reading pleasure, but alas, I have found my thoughts a new home that is more like ME. The site is still under construction, but please go have a squiz at what is sure to be an enjoyable romp of a blog.

Click here to see it in its full (half-finished) glory.

I’m so excited to start this new writing adventure! Please go and SUBSCRIBE, so you will know when the expedition begins.

Loads of love,

Kara Rose

Today I’m thinking about… a poem I wrote to be performed.

My Mum’s Just a Little Bit Racist

My mum’s just a little bit racist.

She got back from Europe, and at the arrival gate

She told me ‘this little bloody Arab girl kept kicking the back of my seat!’

Through a half laugh

I rolled my eyes and waited til I got in the car before I asked her ’Does it matter

That she was Arab?’

And my dad chimed ‘Yeah! Stop being so prejudiced!’ from the back seat

And we both felt mildly righteous as I pulled the car out

And drove the hour home.

It reminded me of that time she told me

About the man who stood behind her in the post-office

A Greek, who jeered at her when she asked if she could pop out of line

To grab a book of stamps. She huffed ‘You know Greeks

Just don’t have ANY respect for women!’ And pegged the book of stamps at the refrigerator watching

The bills she hadn’t paid yet slide swift

To the floor.

And I thought of a boy I once knew, Greek

Who asked me out but I thought he was too young for me

Only a year younger but with a pudding face

The kind a mother pokes her fat fingers at on the street and he had the utmost respect for his mother

And women

And me. And then he was killed in a car accident

About 6 months later, give or take, from what I remember. I can’t tell you

What it’s like to have a guy who asked you out

A guy you only knew really through a friend

Who you kissed once for the hell of it and thought he was sloppy,

Die.

But Greeks have no respect for women, I heard

Even 16 year olds.

Then I noticed, on a warm day

An Asian man walk down the street, what kind of Asian?

I don’t know. They all look the same but not Indian

Who to me

Sometimes

Look like white people with too much fake tan

He passed a Lebanese woman, wearing a hajib

But then do Lebanese women wear hajibs? Are they muslim? Anyway, she was angry

About something and steered into a half empty parking lot

Flush flesh bundled to guard

From the glare

And the Asian man watched her with shrewd dark eyes and I wondered

If he was just a little bit racist too.

Today I’m thinking about… destiny within reason.

Let me begin this by saying that I do not believe in magic. I had an eye opening experience with a magic kit as a child with which I could not render my brother permanently disappeared, and since then have approached the whole practice with a keen sense of cynicism. Nor do I believe in Mermaids, Witches, Zombies, Jesus rising from the grave or Fairies (but I invite you to clap your hands if you feel so inclined). I can’t stretch my imagination far enough to describe to you the things that I do not believe in, but I do, somewhat against my better judgement, believe in destiny.

Destiny is an annoying term, because whenever I mention it in a positive fashion I feel like a genuine arsehole; the kind of person who expresses opinions in singular, worthless cliches with wide eyed expectation that you will absolutely, without a doubt agree with every syllable uttered from their flapping mouth. ‘Uh…sure, I suppose everything could happen for a reason, but that doesn’t change the fact that my dog is dead.’ Of course this particular kind of arsehole generally has the best intentions, and the most naive of dispositions. So why do I feel so compelled to fall into their ranks?

Today I’m thinking about… being feminine.

I was hanging with a friend complaining about being fat, as I am wont to do far too often for someone who will stand in the kitchen and lick all the icing off a three layer cake unconsciously while trying to decide what to have for lunch, when he whipped around and with staggering contempt called me a ‘fucking idiot’. I met his derision with the wounded yelp of a stupid dog who’d caught its own damn tail. Bewildered by my sore butt, I turned away from him, scratched my nose, watched a fly land on the tiled floor and rub its legs together for a while, then finally stated that I was thirsty.

I contemplated the glass arrangement in my cupboard for a while before I asked if he’d like a drink, too? ‘Sorry’ he said so matter-of-fact I wanted to punch him, ‘I’m just so tired of girls who are perfectly aware they aren’t fat trying to fish for compliments.’ Wow, I thought smugly as I chugged my water and wiped the dribble off my chin, does this guy have it wrong.

Today I’m thinking about… the importance of a shoulder.

Today I asked myself if I have ever had to face a terrible situation on my own. I then picked around the feta cheese in my greek salad and read a poem by Ali Cobby Eckermann* titled ‘I Tell You True’.

I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
since I watched my daughter perish
She burned to death inside a car
I lost what I most cherish
I saw the angels hold her
as I screamed with useless hope
I can’t stop drinking, I tell you true
It’s the only way I cope!

A terrible situation on my own? I asked myself again. I thought about the lonely archetype of the drunk nursing his ninth scotch at a dodgy bar, gurgling his sorrows to a bartender trained to nod, smile, move on. I thought for a moment of what death can do to a person, and then what a person can do to death.

Today I’m thinking about… good, nice, bad, mean

I have a friend, let’s call him TJ, who once laid it all out on the table for me. “You aren’t a nice person, Kara,” he said with deftly focussed eyes nudging at my soul. “You’re a good person, but not a nice person.”

While I watched TJ dodge my quick fire slap, I felt oddly compelled to restrain my go to violent streak. I wanted to know what insights this guy could grant me before I strung him up by his little finger. ‘I’m nice, you arsehole!’ was the only argument I could muster. I paused for a moment, dropped my forehead down onto the salt-stained MacDonald’s tabletop and muttered something about him explaining what the fuck he meant by it.

Today I’m thinking about… an empty shell.

Dead bodies are strange things. We don’t often speak of them because, well, maybe instinct drives us away from the corpse for all the diseases it can carry, or else we hold a natural aversion to the very idea of their unfathomable immobility. I’ve often heard that this aversion could also stem from the notion that a corpse is no longer that which it was. The idea that, like a growing hermit-crab leaves a shell in the sand behind for a roomier, more comfortable fit, so too do our souls.

As a non-believer in gods and monsters, I have always permitted the soul to be a somewhat archaic and idealistic concept, figuring we are more like sand crabs who live and die within their own soft shells. Yet I have never thought much about the impact this has (if any) on looking upon a dead body, or in fact grieving the absence of life within it.

Today I’m thinking about… gorging on yummy animals. Om nom nom…

When I was 20, I was with a guy who’d take me out to pubs for lunch and dinner all the (freakin’) time. Now, I do enjoy a decent, cheap chicken parmy, or a $10 steak when the mood strikes, the cash is strapped or the restaurant is an uncomfortable distance away and I’m in heels. But once, twice or three times a week can take its toll. After all, there are only so many meat, chip and salad combinations one can handle until it all starts tasting like heart attack.

I like to call this time in my life my steak period (like Picasso’s blue period, but with pepper sauce). Before this, I rarely if ever ordered a steak at a restaurant thanks to a father who thought shoe soles were the pièce de résistance of cow meat. Of course to impress the guy, I was all up in this steak business. ‘Oh I loooove steak’ I’d exclaim to him, withholding tooth ache memories of spitting chewy gobs of meat into napkins at the dinner table. After my fifth or sixth pub steak I began to, however, develop a refined taste for the meat, proclaiming that one may only have it medium rare to enjoy the full rich iron-y flavour, and refusing to put sauce on it for fear of sullying the taste and insulting the all important chef.

Recently I became a vegan. It is vegan month and I told those around me that I wanted to do it just to see. Curiosity was my calling, I am after all a writer at heart; what is writing without experience? Of course this was all bullshit. To be perfectly frank, I did it to lose weight. I’d been looking for an excuse, a quick fix, a something to trigger some shift in my body without just starving myself. With the intensive restrictions of veganism I thought no one, not even myself, could persuade me to take a bite of that chocolate cake temptation. Extraordinarily, I was right.

Today I’m thinking about… a letter to promote elegant prose

To Dear Anonymous,

I write to you in distress, for I am most ashamed to the point of remorse over the offence I have caused you. It seems my loquacious nature has taken possession of my senses and my apologies are quite overdue. I understand now your deep irritation over my use of the words ‘lol’ and ‘gonna’. To even call them ‘words’ leaves a bitter taste in my mouth I can not conceive of describing to you.  To use ‘words’ such as these on the internet of all places for the world to see brings myself, my family and my dear friends only true, unrelenting embarrassment, let me assure you.

I do understand your point of view. There is absolutely no need for brevity in an age where technology acts at lightning speeds and working at a slow and careful pace is the only means to stave off idleness. If we write too quickly and send words electronically then we will soon run out of things to do, grow corpulent and succumb to flatulent, undignified deaths. It is un-Christian. You are also assuredly right to say that these internet abbreviations, such us ‘wanna’, ’bout’ and ‘roflcopter’, are bringing about an undignified death to the English language itself.

Today I’m thinking about… Time Machines and sorting out my younger self

It sounds incredibly self-involved, but every time I’ve sat and fatasized about jumping into a time machine, it hasn’t been to go back and slay baby Hitler or save a few of my ancestors from a brutal witchy barbeque. In fact, aside from the numerous and somewhat worrying Louis the XIV fantasies, much of these sci-fi dreamscapes have involved my sitting on a silver seat, in a playground talking with my nine year old self.

Recently I read a blog post written by a mid-thirties journalist about what she would tell herself were she able to step back in time to her childhood. Not to copy her idea or anything (OK, to copy her idea), but I’ve decided to write a list of the things I’ve always wanted to tell my little, naiive prototype. Brace yourself, because this might get emotionally indulgent (and just a little bit gross).