Part I: The Friendship Kaleidoscope

"Live Life Visceral"

Lately, I have been observing my friendships. Standing back from them and watching.

Back at Easter we had a visit from an old friend. Someone I have known for a long time, someone who has known me.

There are some people from the past that you can let go of, and there are some that you hang on to with both hands. Like clothes you used to wear often, that hardly fit you now, you cannot bear to give them away. They can still be worn, from time to time, after a bout of food poisoning or a good week at the gym; and they still keep you warm when you wear them. Best of all, they remind you of parts of yourself that had a time and a place, that somehow still exist.

The time and place of this friend was a raw time for me. A time when I was torn apart, yet more whole than I am now. A time of possibilities and earnest undertakings with a view to the future. It was about looking forward from every angle. Jobs were money for jam and money was traded for Southern Comfort… shared in the dark, dark music blaring. A career was a faraway destination for which a foundation was being laid, the way you lay cards in a game of poker. Calculated guessing about how the game might fall.

Love was a promise, a lesson and an adventure.

Some people change and some people don't. Some people remain stubbornly constant as life shifts around them. These people are the signposts in our lives by which we should stop, turn around and look back down the road to remind us how far we've come - how many bridges we burned, shots we drank and hearts we broke, getting to where we stand today.

My raw-time friend reminds me to live life visceral. Let your guts hang out, live out the sharp and intricate detail of life and stand inside the moment, exhilaration amplified. Squeeze its essence with a white-knuckled fist and see it close-up at 12000 pixels. Be real, be true and show them you, exactly as you are. And if you forget how, drag your leg warmers or that old cardigan out of the drawer; curl up on the couch and phone a friend who can remind you.

True grit

Okay, so it has been awhile. You are not the only one who has noticed. There has been a gaping hole where at least one, possibly two posts should have been. I hear you. I have been lax. But only on this front, I promise. I have otherwise been entirely over-productive. Wired into the corporate pulse of my current employer like a human pacemaker.

In the past month or so, I have travelled to not one, but three, faraway places: Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, in consecutive order. For a creature of methodical and well-articulated routine this presents a challenge of a personal nature.

Of course it’s exciting to travel, it’s food for the brain and the soul. It beats sitting at your desk, wondering out the same window, day-in and day-out. And clichéd as it may be to say so; it takes you out of your comfort zone. Sure.

But I have been carefully balancing two distinct sides of my professional life for some time now. So when the seesaw swings downward in such a dramatic fashion, somebody or something clearly has to get off. The electric fence around my creative time was disconnected, as my raison d’être swung entirely in favour of ‘working for the man’.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been waking up a half hour earlier. Each day, before breakfast, before showering, before another thought can even enter my mind, I sit at my desk with the first streams of morning light and allow whatever is on my mind to spill out onto the hungry pages. Thoughts in freefall, notebook after notebook filled with superfluous, semi-conscious mind matter.

About a week before I left for Sydney, this seemingly well-formed habit began to erode. My mind worked overtime on the details of the trip, the requirements for when I was away and when I got back. I did not take a dedicated notebook with me. I did not take my dedication with me. I just took my mission...and my baggage.

Overseas, I assessed venues and nurtured relationships to bear future fruit. I felt like an enormous crane had lifted me by the scruff of my neck and put me down into Bob Dylan's Complete Unknown. It took me days to converge, to be one and the same again. Like Shanghai itself, where Western consumerism has crashed down around the old town to create a space that is more confused than Confucius, I was two completely separate people; one lost and one searching.  

Only this weekend, do I feel whole and home.

It is clear that my flexibility is not made from rubber. More stretch is required before all of the elements that make up my life can co-exist and flow like the Huangpu River.

I have come to realise that true grit is not necessarily an immovable object applied with ultimate force. Real determination might actually involve less indomitable spirit and more quiet acceptance.

Critical Condition

I find that life happens in cycles. And the cycles I've experienced this year have been all about work.

In between drowning in it, I come up for air for just long enough to gulp in some oxygen, clear my head and get back to the office. Christmas came and went and before I knew it, I was picked up and dropped, dead centre, into the eye of the storm. The proverbial shit storm, that is. Even Easter did not settle the elements.

I have been spinning around and around in this cyclone of everything work related until last week, when my body decided, it is just not going to take it anymore. It didn’t trust me to choose to take a break, so it made an executive decision and took me on an enforced one; the one that I needed and refused to give to myself. Low and behold, I got sick.

I spent the first day feigning surprise that this could happen to me. I turned up at the office only to be marched back out by the germ police. How could I be sick? I take vitamins. I read Body & Soul every Sunday, religiously. Surely, knowing how to look after yourself means that is exactly what you are doing. As it turns out, acting on this information is not only useful but crucial to actually sustaining a state of wellbeing.

For every question I had, my body replied with a resounding; “No”.
No, we are not going anywhere.
No, we are not doing anything.
No, we are resting now.
Please shut up and go to sleep.

And so I did, once I stopped tossing and turning. The questions subsided. I cancelled meetings and conference calls. I cancelled dinners and outings. Horror of horrors, I turned off both of my mobile phones. I underwent a complete maintenance shutdown.

The simple things that one usually takes for granted and does in a flurry became strangely significant. Getting out of bed was miraculous. Brushing my teeth felt great. On Saturday, I showered and dressed with a great sense of achievement. It was like I had been walking at pace, just ahead of myself, and I had reached forward and pulled myself back into the present with an enormous and violent hug. “Hey you, get back here”. I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in weeks.

Work schmirk, I jeer and proceed to make myself a posie of promises. I will eat better, exercise regularly, sleep properly, drink less, decline unnecessary social events and put myself first. Full stop, no excuses. There is no one else who can swallow this jagged little pill for me (thank you, Alanis).

My slumber has restored me. Not only did I get sick, but I got some perspective. For how long I keep it still remains to be seen, but I have a pile of good intentions. I think I will take them out for a walk now while they still have legs. You know, so they can smell the roses.

My Grandmother's pearls

Each time I visit I start by signing my name and the time I arrive. I walk the corridors, deliberately breathing through my mouth, like I'm snorkelling, to minimise my exposure. The combined stink of urine, oversteamed vegetables and talcum powder still finds its way in. I take a left at the dining room where the door is wide enough for wheelchair access.

A recent refurb has turned the walls a shade of latte and wooden white letters stand up off the freshly painted walls. 'Family', 'Love', 'Relax'; they flow and curve. They promise a bright new day when the best they can offer is a fleeting reference to a time now past. Outside, the weather is warm and there a light breeze, but there are no open windows here. TVs blare out from rooms as I walk past open doors, and I see deformed toes poke out from beneath crocheted blankets.

My Grandmother is on her bed in Room 78, half-sitting, half-lying. Neither here, nor there, and in no way comfortable. A table on wheels stretches across the bed like the wing of a small plane she is trapped under. She stares blankly at a double spread in The Woman's Day she has open in front of her but her eyes are still.

I greet her loudly and with gestures to get her attention. Her head moves but her shoulders stay slumped. Her face lights up briefly, like a light globe that flickers in a storm. Someone is here. "Hello dear", she says. The room seems clean and tidy. Inside, the wardrobe and drawers reveal a haphazard clutter of cards and slips and hairbrushes. And photographs. I point at the flowers we sent for her birthday and smile widely. "They're lovely", I say. I pronounce each syllable using all of the muscles in my face.

"They're dead", she informs me, sullen and matter of fact. There is a moment's silence and then she announces, "No one visits me unless I'm sick". Her mouth twists up. The words taste bitter. I turn a chair to face her bed and draw it close. "I didn't know you were sick, Grandma, what's wrong with you?" She doesn't answer, hasn't heard me. I try again. "Who doesn't visit you, Grandma?" She collects her thoughts and explains; "Moira comes sometimes but she never brings her husband." Moira, I think, lives in another state and is possibly dead. She hasn't finished.

"And Peta-Lynn hasn't been here for awhile." She is indignant. I could be Anyone.

"Grandma, I'm Peta-Lynn," I point at my chest now, raising my voice. She seems shocked and then a bit suspicious. "I'm Peta-Lynn, Grandma", I repeat emphatically. "You're Peta-Lynn?" Her eyes narrow and she looks at me hard, an official deciding whether to let me into her country. Then she is bashful. She relaxes and chuckles to herself. "I think I need to get myself a secretary". We both laugh and the tension subsides. The gates are open.

I ask her who else has she heard from? And whether she has been watching the TV? I know she hasn't. "I can't hear it", she shrugs. She asks me how I've been keeping. I tell her we had our first wedding anniversary, but she doesn't remember that I'm married and her response is abstract. Suddenly she becomes angry. "I don't know why they moved me here or where I'll go to next." She has been in a high-care facility in Melbourne for a few years now. I tell her that I think she will stay in Melbourne for awhile, which infuriates her, but her anger is only momentary, a lap around the goldfish bowl.

She surveys her room."Don't worry about it," she tells me. "People come and they go. Some are better than others." I find her musings simple, true and somehow profound. This is what life boils down to. Tiny pearls of wisdom passed from grandmother to granddaughter, unknown. A collection of moments, sewn and harvested.

Her eyes glaze over and I know that she is gone for today. She goes a lot faster than she comes. Somebody better has come to collect her; one of her ghosts, her beloved dead. Someone she loves and longs to see again; who she imagines delivering her cards and flowers to this room where she half-sits and half-lies, day in and day out, unable to move.

I leave her standing on the corner of now and then and as I wave goodbye she waves back from her bed, grateful for the contact, unsure of the context. And I watch her fade a little more.

Rubik's Cube

Last year, while shopping for a birthday present, I suffered a moment of complete and utter distress. Cold fright, in fact. I was trying to find a gift for one of my parents.

I stood out front of where the games store used to be, only to find in its place, a shop that caters for all of your personal hair removal needs. A shot of panic ran through me and I went directly to the information stand. It simply cannot be gone, I wanted so badly to believe it. I couldn't remember exactly what the store was called but it had to be Games...something. When it wasn't on the poster, desperation crept in. I gulped but refused to give up, resorting to the electronic doo-dah where you enter the name of the shop you are searching for by punching in letters on a screen.

Games World. That was it. It had moved downstairs. PHEW. I rode the escalator to the lower level. Relief flooded my system as I entered beneath the archway patterned with black and white cubes. Thank goodness. Soon, I was surrounded on both sides by good, old fashioned puzzles, draughts and backgammon. Brain-boggling mindgames, Monopoly and Connect 4. Not to mention, Guess Who?

A footnote: the husband and I still refer to the generic characters of Guess Who? as we sit, sipping at our local coffee shop. "She's Susan", I whisper and we giggle. She is. Our laughter builds."He's Alfred". We are laughing so hard people start to look over. But there is no doubt. He is a dead ringer for Alfred.

As I reached for the 1000 piece puzzle, I smiled at the intricate, hand-drawn circus on the box. A piece of my past had been momentarily crushed, then resurrected. I touched a collectors box of dominoes and I was reassured. Dominoes are not just rainy day entertainment. They represent the real values of a time gone by; of long gone afternoons at school holiday programs and family feuds fought and won under friendly fire.

Standing amongst the snakes and ladders, I felt deeply connected to myself; like I had pulled a string that dangled from my stomach, and I just kept pulling until I'd almost reached the end. I am the child I was, the teenager I used to be and the adult I am today, neatly folded and ingeniously contained in the very same package. Like a Rubik's Cube.

Childhood is where our true selves first dreamed. The most fervent of dreams, when we could sense the boundaries, but the edges still blurred. Imagination was king and queen and the future was a distant land to be created, then conquered. We saw the homes we would live in, the possibilities of careers, of friendships, of families. We conjured great, great love stories in a world where we could be both the astronaut and the clown.

This weekend, I set up our easel in the front room and laid an old towel on the floor. I pulled paintbrushes from the cupboard and squeezed primary colored acrylics into a palette. The canvas was blank and I had no idea what to paint. Still I took a deep breath, dipped my brush and reached inside. I started with pink and yellow and let my mind's eye guide me in freefall. I am no Picasso, but I can remember my art smock and some vibrant early works of blue grass, green suns and disproportionate pink people.

Today, as I drive by the beach, the pirate ships of Luna Park sail upside down, and I hear the ticketholders screech with a blend of fear and excitement. Behind sunglasses, I see my reflection in those mirrors that distort you, fat and then skinny, tall and then shorter, and at the traffic lights I am placing ping pong balls into the mouths of clowns whose heads never, ever stop turning. An enormous pink bear, forever unattainable, lures me back to play a game that is not really about winning.

I look out over the bay and what seems like one thousand colored birds fly through the evening sky. I catch my breath as the kites dip and glide, frolick and shimmer as the sun goes down. I imagine the fairy dust that trails in their wake.

Magic, it seems, is not always invisible. And games are much easier to play than puzzles.

Shove over

Sometimes I get so busy I feel like I am running a booking hotline. When are you available? Three weeks time? One month? This Friday? Oh, I can't do drinks, I have a dinner. You can bring the kids. How about 7.00pm? But, we'll have to have breakfast because I'm out for lunch and then we have a wedding.

My diary has become an intricate interplay of different colored Lego blocks all linked and overlapping.

I'll paint you a picture. Let's take today for instance. I have back to back appointments of the health and wellbeing variety in order to set myself on the right path to remain sane and physically in tact for the coming onslaught of another brutal work week. This past weekend, Saturday was swallowed by housework and errands that had accumulated beyond the brink of the United Nations standard for third world livability. I spent about two hours on the phone returning calls and then attended an engagement party. Sunday was the first day I had seen my husband in maybe a fortnight. We had breakfast, went to look at property (an urban necessity for those of us looking to enter the ball breaking Melbourne market anytime this millennium) and picked up a gift for our nephew whose birth is pending any day now (I wonder, can we make time for that?).

Don't get me wrong, it's lovely that we have lots of family, friends and colleagues who want to see us. If I was in primary school, this kind of popularity would be almost legendary. The reality is, that we have one day a week where our schedules cross over just enough to remind ourselves that we're married. "Hello", we say. So...you're that bugger who left the towel on the bathroom floor last Thursday? I remember you.

If your life is a hotel, you are forever manning to desk. People come to you and tell you what they need. They need rest. They need a meeting. They need you to listen. They need a drink. Stay as long as you like, you tell them, and they fall at your feet. Some people overstay their welcome. Others refuse to stay and just drop by to use your amenities.

One day you discover you have let too many rooms. The sauna and the restaurant are booked solid and even the pool is overcrowded. There is no room left for you. No one wants to check out because they are far too comfortable. You have been overly accommodating. There is no space, nowhere for you to rest or withdraw to.

A book I am reading about recovering your artist says that creative people make nice to sabotage themselves; "yes, take me, I don't need for much". You appear good to others but are not being authentic or true to yourself. The author calls this the virtue trap. When others won't leave us alone, we abandon ourselves, deferring our needs to meet theirs.

I pondered this and in the days after I read it, I walked past a nightclub sign that said if you love something give it ROOM to grow. It was literally, a sign.

So, shove over people, I need some room. I am clearing my diary but I will be very busy. I have an appointment with myself.

Today, I rock up at my own hotel, bags in hand. Room, please! I ask, but it is more like begging. Just for one. No, I don't care what it costs.

And hold my calls.

Any Other Day

Last night I dreamed that I was dying. It was literally, my very last day on Earth. The strange and unexpected thing was, it was just the same as any other day.

We've been watching Six Feet Under. Relentlessly. If you are not familiar, this is a brilliant and critically acclaimed TV series about the Fishers, a dysfunctional family who runs a funeral home in Los Angeles. We have been watching at least one episode before bed each night for a few weeks. Tonight, needless to say, we might give it a rest.

Anyhow, in my dream Peter Krause is there. Not as as my funeral director (although he does have his suit on) or an Emmy Award winner, but as my only companion. He walks in and out of rooms flashing his reassuring smile and making small talk. I am not sure where my real friends are.

I go through the day knowing that the end is nigh, but I don't do anything differently. I have to ask myself questions that involve multiple choices and no ideal answers. Which casket would I like? Well, I prefer not to have one at all. Do I want to be cremated or buried? I prefer to stay right here, thanks for asking.

In my dream, I stare at a blank page at a kitchen table, wanting to write down what to say at my service so that Peter can read it aloud. You know, who to thank for this life and what was important. But I can't bring myself to pick up the pen and if I do, it will be real. I look up at the clock on the wall. The hours are slipping by, sliding away. But there is still time.

All day I wait for it, knowing it will happen, like an appointment that I cannot cancel. And when the clock on the wall tells me it is five pm, I go an lie in what must be my room, on a single bed with a colorful, handmade quilt that I've never seen before. I stare at the ceiling, immobilised by my complete inability to change what's coming.

In the dream I did not have my health. I knew my family would come, once I was gone, somebody would call them. All I had were these decisions, these finite moments. These last wishes.

And then, the alarm went off and I sat straight up in bed with this slightly sick feeling. This, I thought, this is it.

It's time to wake up.

The Friendship Fruit

There is a little old man living next door to us. He and his wife are Greek and they have a lovely garden. He is always outside tending it and sometimes, when you look out our front door and over the fence you can see him standing on his stoop, pondering his patch of paradise, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned in quiet satisfaction.

This man's name is George and he is our favourite neighbour.

Our conversations are always brief and stilted, with us speaking loudly, sounding out our words emphatically, and him putting his hand to one ear to ask, "Pardon? I cannot hear you". He is frail now and he moves about carefully. We see him struggle with his wheelie bin on our way out of the drive, so the husband gets out of the car and goes to assist. Our neighbour is both grateful and embarrassed as this younger, stronger man does easily what is now so difficult for him.

This year, we put a Christmas card in George and Helen's mailbox. George was very pleased, thanking me many times over.

Now that I think about it, we know very little about each other. But there is an understanding. A comfort. If we needed to stop by, to borrow a hammer or make a phone call, the door would be answered and a kindness extended.

One day, the husband was out front wielding a broom, attempting to tame the never-ending torrent of leaves in our driveway. He was interrupted by a banging on the fence and turned to see a pair of elderly hands, from elbow down, bent over the top. The hands were filled with apples from the tree that stands in the centre of his yard. "Chris?" he rasped from his side of fence, "would you like apple?". Later George came around the fence and up the driveway with a white plastic bag, full of the fruit from his tree.

There were many more apples than two people could eat. They were beautiful and imperfect. Some of them had been attacked by hungry caterpillars. Others shone like someone had polished them with a soft cloth. Piled high on our bench, they sat symbolic for days before we could bring ourselves to eat them. Then we crunched into them and stewed them with brown sugar and water to mix with our morning porridge. Their taste, like their presence, was sweet and unexpected.

This week, George gave Chris some tomatoes from his vine. They are ripe and juicy, not too hard and not too soft. Each one has unique grooves and yellow tinges. I would like to grow something to offer in return. For now, we keep our eyes peeled for a little old man, struggling with his wheelie bin.

I think the next time George offers us apples, I will use them to bake him and his wife a pie.