My bin overflows with scrunched up tissues, like bloodied cotton balls on the floor of the surgeon's operating theatre. I gaze outside my window at the solitary magpie perched on the powerlines, and further away, palm trees waving languidly in the breeze. The world can be so beautiful when viewed from here, its blue skies and soft winds, without the angst and turmoil of men to spoil it.

The maple leaves are yellowing. The days getting shorter. I sit here, working (and sniffling), but my heart is elsewhere, with you, skipping along secluded beaches, brushing against leaves in cool dark forests. Love, how easily you turn to hate.

Such a gorgeous day today. The weather was a perfect twenty-five degrees, and the sun shone strongly through a cloudless sky. Strolling-by-the-river weather, picnic-in-the-park weather, falling-in-love weather. One of those days you wish you could capture and bottle, as LD often says. In the late afternoon I walked outside with a workmate, and together we chased the dying rays of the waning sun. I felt like a giant walking potplant. It made me rather melancholic actually, as it seemed to me that this was the last glorious day of summer, and now we would begin our long cold descent into the bowels of winter. 

I know a few of my friends have been unhappy lately, and though I can empathise, I think I'm pretty okay (satisfied/content?) at the moment. Working, hanging out with friends, watching Battlestar Galactica and saving the world from oblivion on my Xbox. See, life isn't so empty when you fill it up with things, no matter how crass or trivial. 

'Mum, you gotta get the rhythm right... no, wait... *dum dum dum... ok, press now. No no, wrong note.... And now! Now! Yellow! Red!'

And so my mum and I form an unlikely bond playing Guitar Hero on a Saturday night.

I've started working a day on weekends, just for that extra money. I can buy that speaker set which can't fit in my room, or that collection of books that I'll read once and never open again. 'Filling my life with material goods' they say.

I met up with a friend for lunch on Friday. I hadn't seen him in a while, and I wondered what he'd been up to. 'Things have happened...problems...' he said over the phone when I asked him why he hadn't been in contact. 'Like what?' I asked. 'I'll tell you later.' 

I wondered if maybe he'd been arrested or mugged or probed by aliens. The truth was a lot worse. Sigh. How can I save others when I can't even save myself? - Or so the cliche goes.

This is my fourth attempt at this post. I just keep writing and deleting, writing and deleting, over a period of days. The feeling is there, knocking faintly on the door of my mind, but I don't have the right words to transform it onto paper. Feelings, nothing more than feelings.

Every now and then, someone comes into your life and turns things upside down. Like a storm they pass through, upending the trees and houses and leaving a trail of chaos and destruction. We spend many sleepless nights, picking up the pieces. Humans are such irrational creatures, believing that this momentary happiness will last a lifetime. The phrase 'dreams come true'. Can memories (so many now) come true (be relived), too?

I watch the grains trickle down the hourglass. A large gaping wound, with nothing but a blue knitted scarf to stem the flow.

'Cos there's a little bit of me, in a little of you' - Jealousy, Sparkadia