Drift

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I heard a rustling sound in my room, like my cat trying to eat cat food, except I haven't seen him in a while and he wouldn't be eating cat food in my room. No, it was just a cockroach crawling around behind the amplifier.

I remember what happened last time. I'll have to get it away quickly so I can get some sleep tonight.

Then it appeared. Smaller than I expected, just average size. Scarier than I expected. Strands of dust clinging onto spiky legs, wait, its leg joints are higher than its body, like a spider. Are cockroaches normally like this? Maybe I'm just seeing things. Move my bag away, move the guitar away.

I took the guitar out of its case for the first time in a long time a couple of weeks ago to try and play a song. I couldn't. My fingers hurt too much. I tried again the next day, but it hurt too much. I tried again the day after that, and I could play a little bit. Then I could play it after that. It's not a very hard song. I can't play some of the songs I used to like, but I could never play those anyway.

I have to get this cockroach out of here. It scuttles across my room and gets under my bed. If it goes deep, I won't be able to reach it unless I move my table so I can move my bed, and even then there will be barely enough space to reach it, and what will I even do if I can reach it?

I think most of the cohort of my computing courses last semester struggled. It wasn't a hard subject, but most people disliked the lecturer and thought he was bad at teaching. I wrote some notes before the exam and rewrote them before the exam. I guess that's how I've always prepare for exams. Seeing if I can rewrite my notes from memory. I left all of those notes in a heap on the floor, because I have nowhere else to put them. I have maths booklets from my first year in the same heap. Maybe one day I'll see them again and remember what it was like.

I took a sheet of paper with some diagrams of programming patterns on it and sweeped the floor near the cockroach until it was back in the light. I lured it onto the paper, and it stayed there as I lifted it. It wanted to crawl towards my hand, but I turned gravity against it. It started to crawl towards the sides instead, but I turned gravity against it. I don't know what I would have done if it kept on moving towards my hand. I probably would have thrown the paper down and reassess the situation. I opened the door and threw the paper outside. Less than 60 seconds, compared to a few hours.

Look at how I've changed. I'm all grown up now.



As I walked through the front yard this afternoon, coming back home, I felt my face break a strand of a spider's web. I brushed myself a few times and kept going. As I brought my keys towards the lock, I felt the strand again and noticed a tiny spider dangling next to me, its movement synchronised with my arm's.

I didn't know what to do. I don't think I thought, I just acted by reflex and violently threw my keys on the floor. It seemed to work - the spider was on the floor next to my keys. It wasn't moving. Even as I kneeled for my keys, it didn't move.



The roses looked nice the other day, so I took some photos of them. There has always been a rose garden here. Some die and others take their place, but the garden goes on. I wonder how old the oldest one is. I don't know. There used to be lavender bushes too, and I liked them. They would bring bees with them in the summer. I remember writing about it, when we killed them.

These ones are yellow

These ones are white

My mum likes the roses a lot. She used to spend a lot of time taking care of them, but not anymore

This one is light pink

This one is deep pink

This one is actually origami

Some of the roses didn't look good. Some were drooping all the way to the ground, anchored by the weight of their own petals. Some were stripped of their petals, which were lying in the dirt beneath them. Some had spider webs wrapping around their necks.

Roses are like that. They dry out, wither and die. They rot and decay. But some of them are pretty, so we take pictures of them.

This one is orange.

This one is so hopeful

These are purple and lavender

These ones are normal.

We destroyed everything that used to be here so we could build in its place.

I didn't really care about any of it. It's nice, I guess.

My mum thinks that a lot of the builders were unprofessional (there were different types, some dug up the ground, some set up foundations, some bricks, some did cementing, roofing, etc). She's right, but most of it turned out okay.


In primary school we read a picture book. The world was a lovely place with sunshine and rainbows, beautiful gardens, birds chirping on trees. But then people started getting busier, so they stopped looking at it. Instead they walked with their heads down as they hurried to wherever they had to go. The beauty of the world started fading away, but everyone was too busy to notice. No one looked at anything anymore, because they all had their heads down and walked quickly. I don't remember how it ended, maybe some kid looked around and said wow the world is nice we should look at it more, and revived the earth. Or maybe the world died, and no one really cared.

I have to walk through spider park to get to the train station. I always look down because I'm afraid of what I'll see. A couple of weeks ago I looked around, I can't remember why, but I noticed there was a really majestic tree just ten metres away. I never noticed it in more than ten years.

I'll take a photo of it some time.


My cat came to visit, taking cover from the stormy weather.