fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Poster: From Jen's first trip to Europe Pot Plant: Oscar Reason: Styling my rooms My part-time engineering consultant Germaine and I went to IKEA today to by some essentials for our respective rooms; for me it was a home for Oscar and something to enable me to hang Jen's poster finally. It was only halfway through the IKEA shopping trip that Germaine remembered to tell me that this particular IKEA had been designed by one of her classmates. It is a great thing that enough time has passed since the days of administering to the UWA Civil Engineering Class of '06 that they are designing the buildings I walk into.

Party: Marketing Agency Christmas Party Venue: The Quarry Amphitheatre Theme: Woodstock I got to wear hippie clothes, dance to sixties classics and I stole a smiley face hacky sack.

Premium fruit: Cherries Source: Jon Doust Reason: He brings Viv some each year after the Cherry Festival Cherries are the taste of an Australian Christmas. These beauties were brought straight from the orchards of Manjimup, and they are out of this world. First Class fruit is such a dilemma because it is so delicious that you don't want to gorge yourself lest you take the heavenly sweetness for granted; but they must be eaten so quickly in case someone else gets a chance to eat any ...

Pot plant: Oscar Reason: Atmosphere in my rooms The is a play staged by The Duck House about a girl called Claire and a pot plant called Oscar. I never saw it when it was playing, and I really wish I had - I keep on asking Sarah if she will re-stage it sometime, because I really want to see it. I can only imagine that it would be awesome, and hopefully quite a bit more interesting than my own adventures today with my own Oscar. The photo above was taken at about 8.45pm tonight, and I am only smiling because home was a mere 5 minutes away. You see, I had left work at 7pm and swung past the residence of a nice Italian lady on Bulwer Street who was selling pot plants. We spent some time deciding what my first pot plant will be, and I finally settled on Oscar. I paid a pittance for him and headed off in the dusk for home. Then the saga began - I answered my mobile on the corner of Vincent and Fitzgerald Street, my purse fell out of my bag as I walked up Fitzgerald talking on the...

Big Pot: A Christmas gift from my brothers Small Pot: A prop I bought for food photos Reason: Because a good stock pot, no matter its size, is a wonderful thing I don't want to give anything away, but I have this tiny ceramic George Clooney too ...

Potplant: No idea what it is called, I just bought it because it was red Reason: To create some responsibility in my life I needed a milestone in my life, so I bought a living thing. I will try not to kill it ...

Plaything: Fondant Main Ingredient: Fingers Reason: Truffles Last weekend Ariel and I planned to make six to eight different flavours of truffles - chocolate was stockpiled, alcohol obtained and imaginative combinations planned. Ariel has made truffles in her sleep and together we are no slouches in the kitchen. But that Saturday we destroyed everything we tried to cook - cheesecakes separated and curdled, ganaches separated or refused to set, cupcakes exploded and then collapsed, caramel ran, chocolate spread and frustration turned to hilarity as nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING went right. So we threw sugar covered hands in the air, excessive amounts of dishes in the sink, uncooperative ingredients in the freezer and put on high heels to drink away our sorrows up and down Beaufort Street. Once out of the kitchen, things were brilliant. This weekend we have done everything possible to appease the Kitchen Gods who so spectacularly deserted us last weekend. Sacrifices and prayers ha...

Location: Cafe 130 Reason: The Bowen Girls are Unhinged I just love it that of all the things that could be written to deface this poster, it was my sister's name!

Shades: Left behind at the Ball Reason: The owner was too busy being chivalrous Today I was lucky enough to spend a few hours with a really well mannered man; not a mostly well mannered man, or a selectively well mannered man, but a universally well mannered man. And stupidly I couldn’t enjoy it because he kept on surprising me with his good manners; I would jump when he was gallant and forget to actually enjoy a warm, kind heart. Next time I am around him I am going to slow down and enjoy the raucous laugh and easy company of this man. I am halfway through my cup of tea and I am ready for my lie down …

Cupcake: Made by me Details: Made by others Reason: Plasticine is fun Last year I went to a Christmas party for a company I had only been working at for about five weeks. I turned up and realised I really didn't want to socialise with the adults, so I established myself at the kids table with the plasticine and decided to go for broke in the Plasticine Competition. I chose a topic I knew alot about - cupcakes - and married it with one I did not - gardening. I love the cupcake, not just because the base cupcake was so well made by me, but because each detail on the cupcake itself was donated by one of the kids at the table. I won the adult section of the competition (one other competitor) and got to take home a great little piece of ... plasticine.

Parasol Installer: Germaine Parasol Painter: Yours truly Reason: Why buy when you can do your own? The scene: A street festival over run with small children sporting funkily styled paper parasols, apparently there was some kind of stall that allowed the creation of said useful articles in the fight against skin cancer. The final straw: A yellow parasol with pink poodles wearing aqua scarves – truly, how do these kids get so good at art? I decided I must throw my hat (parasol?) in the ring. The adult with the colouring-in urge: Your correspondent, with patient Ariel in tow, deciding to perpetrate her utterly derivative and often dire artistic skills upon a snow white parasol. Art: I am not a good artist at all, at best I am passable, but I do have a knack for using my limited resources to produce something not too bad at all. My theory is that my tools have certain inherent possibilities that even my lack of skill can turn into something that doesn't make small children c...

I have a new mobile that I kinda chose because it reputably had a great camera ... I am initially unconvinced!

Poet: Emily Dickinson Reason: Getting back on the horse with a dear friend and valued muse So, she is back hey? Monica’s writing is intrinsically bound up with my own because her experience of blogging was the one I followed. It is nice to read her writing again, albeit in a very different style. I particularly like her change to poetry, given that I am endeavouring to read more poetry. In a nod to M and C getting back into the game, one of my favourite of Emily’s poems thus far: As if I asked a common Alms, And in my wondering hand A Stranger pressed a Kingdom, And I, bewildered, stand – As if I asked the Orient Had it for me a Morn – And it should lift it’s purple Dikes, And shatter Me with Dawn! Emily wrote more than the 1789 poems in the collection that I have, and most of them are far too worthy for me, but there is this cheeky streak to her that ensures the fraction that I love, I flat out adore. I suspect that the power she found to write her difficult and dari...

Hardback: Westwood and Simpson's The Lore of the Land Source: A graduation gift from my Nan Reason: The strangest stories! One of my favourite walks was on Yallingup beach when my Dad and I riffed about a certain beachside cave being being the primal source of all surfers in Australia - and then it turned into a more concrete myth in my head, growing to include a nod to my man Attenborough ... A slender dark woman in her forties with a pristine plait that reaches to just between her shoulder blades stands on a beach at sunrise. She has a slight middle-eastern accent and is dressed in a comfortable pale blue linen knee length dress and a graceful but small sunhat. She is barefoot and holds tan leather sandals in her hand. She has pearl studs in her ears. She addresses the camera, Sugarloaf Rock clear in the distance. [To camera] It is dawn and the sand is like ice. The rising sun hits the water first, the shore and vegetation remaining dark for long moments. It is here,...

Hey Craig ! It is quite thrilling to receive an email asking where my writing has disappeared to; being missed by a reader is a great thing. The style, motivation and topics of my next era of writing is still nebulous, although that being said I have been a little inspired by two very different theories ... During my thesis year I based an entire Post-Modernism essay around the concepts of orders of magnitude from this talk by Richard Dawkins . Although not beloved by my lecturers I treasure the piece, and it was forcibly brought to the forefront of my mind when I read this piece from the New Perspectives Quarterly . I could see the concepts and words of my Post-Modernism essay mutate before my very eyes, the newly encountered ideas changing the nature of the old ideas, leading me to my favourite contemplation – words, and how they hold back the dark. In moments of extreme introspection I wonder if, when I write, do I patiently cutting the white page into letter shaped holes throug...

Publications: Grazia and The Big Issue Source: The Mainstream Media and The Alternative Media, both $5 Reason: To know what those on either side are thinking The Big Issue and Grazia are my favourite magazines, and I read them from cover to cover, except for one section in each. I never read the one serious story in Grazia because I read Grazia for the fashion, and the worthy news story is always stuck in the middle of the mag, laughably out of place alongside the articles encouraging vapid consumerism. In The Big Issue I never read the CD/Music reviews because, unlike all those music snobs out there, I don’t give the proverbial about what other people think about my music. Both publications are obsessed with the Michelle and Barack though, so that’s something.

Postcard (L): Red Shoes from Ely Possession (R): Glitter Shoes from Nine West Reason: On the scale of a girl’s life, the point at which one has enough shoes actually sits beyond the point of death ‘Twas the Friday before the Month o’Christmas Parties and I had to sate the hungry maw of my wardrobe. I have finally embraced the reality of my work uniform being a pretty dress and high heels, and now I can only really justify a purchase if it can hold its own at the theatre after coming straight from work. Thus the fabulous red shoes on Ely’s card are conjured into existence in a slightly different colour, but with the same pizzaz; ready to convey me through the Festive Season in tinsel-ly style, if not in comfort.

Prop: taken from the stage of Papercut Source: 3rd Year Contemporary Performance at WAAPA Scene: Love Letter to the Broken Hearted Marisa Garreffa told me the first time I gushed about a show of hers that she just wanted to help everyone “find their inner clown”. Tonight I heard her laugh with abandon at the jokes that she surely knew were coming – she collaborated on and directed the piece after all. Laughing at your own jokes means a healthy approach to one’s own genius! Papercut was truthful and kind, paralleled by the punter on my right who felt sorry for me in the theatre by myself and chatted to me as if I were a long lost friend; thus it was a night of gentle thoughts and good manners.

Postcarder: Gidget, sometimes known as Woodsprite Source: Hawaii Scene: Orange and Hot Pink sunset, coconut palms, glitter. The glitter really sells it. Gidget is a surfer, and my favourite pieces of writing from her are her love letters to the swell. I relish the delicacy of her descriptions, arising from a spiritual and technical experience of the liquid forces that carry her each day. I have had my fair share of waxing lyrical about the watery depths , but I never do it as much justice as those who should have been born with gills! Gidget

The colours faded with distance and time, the cliff had been scaled on threads of life; blue chokers of raging silence, silver slices of pain inflicted, golden shreds of arrogance indulged, red blinkers of longing for unimportant things. Once breathing freely on the plateau the colours reached equilibrium with her life. The icy rages were tamed by surprising new opportunities into the lush green of goals. The quick silver of her mind was beaten into iron for every day use. She found glory not in the trophy fleeces of gold but the gentle carding and spinning of her experience into the modest white handkerchiefs and bandages applied to hurts. Most importantly the red ran into the black and was absorbed, the time of longing became one with the time before the longing. The black had reached back, and brought her more than she had sought. The flashing, astonishing years of her travels and her return had so obscured parts of her own essence that when she was finally still and balanced, her...