I don't like my dreaming recently. I had a dream my hair was long and when I woke up I was very upset. I had a dream that someone asked what was wrong with my face, and my response was it's just acne. Both of these reflect minor anxieties I have about both those things day to day. It's become RF's personal mission to figure out my acne, not much success. I also can't stand the in between phase my hair is in. The layers have all grown out and it's just plain ugly.

I suppose the next biggest development is I've signed up for boot camp. I don't really have much to say about that yet. It doesn't start for another 3 weeks. I wonder what it will bring.


Drack surprised me. I got my birthday present early this year. I woke up in the middle of the night parched and stumbled in to the kitchen to find a Professional 600 Kitchenaide stand mixer on the counter top. The color is buffed silver (I'm not sure if that's the real name), very very sleek indeed. Although I would have gone with a simple Artisan series (when and if I ever bought one of these for myself) but Drack tells me this one is made of all metal parts and has a motor powerful enough for many of the attachments you can buy for the stand mixers, including an ice cream maker. Oh my god home made ice cream reminds me of Jameson Ranch Camp. I smile now every time I walk in our kitchen.

Boot camp and stand mixer will probably cancel each other out - how can I not bake every damn weekend now? It would be a travesty. This afternoon the inaugural baking event shall be held. We're hoping for blueberry muffins. I wonder if there is some way to bless the mixer? You know, like cracking a bottle of champagne over the hull, in this case the bowl...

Anyway Drack is truly the best.

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The thing about Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is that all the characters have something profound to say. That can be annoying to a lot of people, because no one is that wise and forget putting them all in one book. But I find myself very much enjoying the book precisely for that reason. India is one of those places that Drack really wants to visit, and even after reading Shantaram it still hasn't crept up my travel list - then again I still have about 700ish pages to go.

Some good quotes so far:

"Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of your life. Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise." - page 58

"She would've done anything for him. Some women are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out - your friends, everyone you used to know. And it's still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it's going to take you down with it." - pg 63

"Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up turns up where you least expect it". - pg 90

"Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it." - Pg 99

"I clenched my teeth against the stars. I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep. One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you." - pg 124

"Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare." - pg 150

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2012 has been a strange year. It's like a big white table cloth that's all scrunched up on one end, it needs some straightening out. I don't even know what that analogy means but it makes sense to me. I think mostly the trouble is that winter here wasn't really winter at all, it was warm in January. Now it's suddenly cooled down and sadly all the flowers and spring blooms that were going to pop out early are totally going to die. It probably won't be a fantastic spring. I wonder if the cicadas will arrive early too?

I've reconnected with many people, some people I never thought I'd ever talk to again. It was also nice to connect with a dear friend and to be reminded of old times. Sometimes things never change. In other circumstances things have changed completely and you lose people you thought you never would.

With RF in India I've been managing the studio by myself. I am still happily amazed that this job comes to naturally and easily to me. It may not be glamorous but I'm good at it. I like that. I have to say though I'm looking forward to my upcoming days off. Although being in the studio is not stressful, I feel like most of my mental effort is spent at work and by the time I get home I don't have much to spare on anything of consequence. I sped through Hunger Games because it was complete shit and now I'm savoring Shantaram's pretty prose. I'm also on the Downton Abbey bandwagon with the rest of the world. But this is the first time I've really thought about what I'm thinking about - so to speak. I miss writing and I guess when I started Shantaram I realized that. I really wish I could find a writing/book club that was worth a darn.

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