So it's been awhile between posts, but let's not dwell on that now. I have been waiting to feel compelled to sit down, apply my fingertips to keys, and share something suitably miscellaneous. Alas, nothing suitably miscellaneous has compelled me to blog. Until yesterday.
Since the last time I wrote you, we have a dog. She's a French bulldog (not a French pug or a British bulldog, the mistaken identity applied by dog-loving strangers on the street). The fact that she's a "she", is not as obvious as it sounds either, given most people see a little black dog and jump to the conclusion; "he". "What's his name?", "How old is he?"..."SHE is five months old. HER name is Millie". We correct them, polite but emphatic.
Yesterday, Ms Millie, aka The Milliken, was simply not keen to go outside. Her Dad had gone to work and I was racing around, frantically putting things in their place, creating order out of our weekly chaos. At about five minutes past my time to leave, I took her into the garage where she has an open door to the run of the yard, a warm bed and enough toys for five pups. I told her to "stay". She looked at me, raised an eyebrow and bolted straight back into the lounge. We played chasey for a few laps around the coffee table and then I picked her up and put her out on the deck.
"No Millie, stay". I put my hand up like a stop sign. She observed it briefly, her head leaning slightly to the right in consideration, and then ran directly past me into the laundry.
By this time, I was starting to sweat it. I was going to be late. So I picked her up with one hand and grabbed the back door handle with the other. I tested the handle right to left and pulled it shut behind me. I sat down with her on her towel, coaxing her to sit and telling her I would not be long, explaining rationally that it was Saturday. I figured I would disappear like an illusionist once I had talked her around. She settled a bit, so I leaped up to make my escape, reaching the door only a few seconds ahead of her to find that it was now, in fact, locked.
I was trapped in my own backyard.
Granted, with the company of a very cute dog. But with no phone, no keys, no change and only barely enough cloth coverage for the day's sub-mild weather. I tried the door again. And again. The nib must have slipped. I checked the flyscreen on the small laundry window thinking I could remove it, slide the window open and unlock the door. With my face firm against the window pane I saw the short stick we had cut to stop exactly this happening at the hands of wanton criminals. Inconvenient genius.
From our yard, you can get out to the street via the garage roller door. The trade off is, that to return to the backyard, I would need to leave the garage door open for potential vagrant visitors while I checked if the front door had been randomly left unlocked. Placing improbable bets on the slim chance that it had, I raced down the street and around to the front yard with dog in tow, leaving the garage gaping large to the street. No such luck. The front door and window were shut tight and secure.
We returned to the backyard defeated, observing on our retreat that the neighbours (our planned next stop in the hope of a free phone call) appeared to have chosen this week to take a break. Their cars were distinctly absent and the mail was piling up in their letterbox. One hour on, I had committed a cardinal sin in the book of Peta by being a no-show for my first Saturday appointment and began pondering how lame my excuse would sound when I eventually got my hands on a phone.
Then it dawned on me, that my Mum was coming over. And she had a key! It was about half nine by now. I had no idea what time she was due, but decided it was worth a last ditch effort to the phone booth and the risk of more vagrant visitors in my garage to find out. I hit the roller door button and put the leash back on Millie. We were released again onto the street, and made a mad dash, across the railway line to the beacon of hope. The phone booth. Well, it's not really a booth these days, but it is a phone. Unfortunately, Telstra's voice recognition robot was not familiar with the concept of calling collect.
I swallowed my pride and went into the green grocer, explaining to a dubious looking girl that I lived around the corner and had locked myself out, trying not to look or sound as frazzled and desperate as I was beginning to feel. She uncertainly handed me two 50-cent pieces, partly in pity and partly to expel me from the store where customers were attempting to spend a peaceful morning selecting vegetables.
I promptly returned to the Telstra phone to find that vandals had stolen my salvation by sodomising the coin insertion slot. I returned the coins at the grocer where the girl explained that her phone was out of credit, shrugged us an apology and went back to stacking apples. Millie was pushing half a plum around with her snout. As I sighed and turned to head home, I heard a kind voice; "Would you like to use my phone?" A lady with thick red glasses was squinting at me, holding out an iphone in one hand and clinging to a bag of organic carrots with the other. I thanked her profusely.
After a reassuring call and a grateful double handshake with our saviour, we ran like the rabbits in Watership Down back to our garage burrow and waited for the Corolla to pull into the driveway. As Mum's key turned in our door, Millie looked up at me and swaggered back to her spot in front of the heater, victorious. The panic of losing a Saturday to sitting still and silent in my backyard subsided. The rest of the day remained, to be unfolded.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Monday, September 12, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, August 1, 2011
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.
Monday, June 6, 2011
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.
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 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.
Monday, May 9, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Monday, February 28, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Monday, January 17, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, December 31, 2010
The Year of Parts & Pieces
The vacuum of time strikes again.
It sucked us through its straw last January, and we felt the slow pull of irresistible traction. As we passed the year's centre, there was a floating sensation as we were suspended in its vortex. Now we are being lifted and pushed out the other side, to land with a 'pop'...right here. Some of us on our feet and some on our asses.
Today, the final day of the year, is usually one of reflection. This morning I have pondered the year that was, how it played out for me and those around me. For many, it was a tough year, one that seemed to stop and start, to happen in parts rather than as a smooth, uninterrupted length of time. It was adjunct and haphazard, cyclic and challenging.
One wise owl (often perched on my shoulder) informed me that in August, several planets cosmically aligned for the first and last time in our lifetime. The period leading up to and subsequent to that alignment was unsettling and uncertain for everyone as the universe anticipated and then consolidated this astronomical anomaly. For me, this made some sense of what has seemed to be an unusual period of upheaval.
Each year is extraordinary in its own way. On New Year's Eve, my husband and I often get together with one particular friend, look back over and dub the year with a theme that captures its essence in a nutshell. There was one year (2006?), where absolutely nothing seemed to happen and it was therefore dubbed, "The Year Where Absolutely Nothing Happened". As you can see, we place an emphasis on integrity.
For 2010, I submit the theme, "The Year of Parts & Pieces", for consideration by my comrades. It was a year that gave a whole new meaning to the term, going with the flow.
There has been one constant for me throughout this year. The commitment I made back in January (New Year? Really?); that I would consistently post and maintain this blog. In 2010, an average of 70 and sometimes over 100 people have visited this site to catch the latest post. Since I started collecting stats mid year, there have been 983 visits to Mindfield.
So next year, if you want to keep reading, I will keep writing. Thanks to those of you who have visited once and a special thanks to those of you who keep coming back.
Reading over the posts from 2010, it seems there has been one other constant that I forgot to mention. The only other thing that ever stays the same.
Change.
Wishing you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
It sucked us through its straw last January, and we felt the slow pull of irresistible traction. As we passed the year's centre, there was a floating sensation as we were suspended in its vortex. Now we are being lifted and pushed out the other side, to land with a 'pop'...right here. Some of us on our feet and some on our asses.
Today, the final day of the year, is usually one of reflection. This morning I have pondered the year that was, how it played out for me and those around me. For many, it was a tough year, one that seemed to stop and start, to happen in parts rather than as a smooth, uninterrupted length of time. It was adjunct and haphazard, cyclic and challenging.
One wise owl (often perched on my shoulder) informed me that in August, several planets cosmically aligned for the first and last time in our lifetime. The period leading up to and subsequent to that alignment was unsettling and uncertain for everyone as the universe anticipated and then consolidated this astronomical anomaly. For me, this made some sense of what has seemed to be an unusual period of upheaval.
Each year is extraordinary in its own way. On New Year's Eve, my husband and I often get together with one particular friend, look back over and dub the year with a theme that captures its essence in a nutshell. There was one year (2006?), where absolutely nothing seemed to happen and it was therefore dubbed, "The Year Where Absolutely Nothing Happened". As you can see, we place an emphasis on integrity.
For 2010, I submit the theme, "The Year of Parts & Pieces", for consideration by my comrades. It was a year that gave a whole new meaning to the term, going with the flow.
There has been one constant for me throughout this year. The commitment I made back in January (New Year? Really?); that I would consistently post and maintain this blog. In 2010, an average of 70 and sometimes over 100 people have visited this site to catch the latest post. Since I started collecting stats mid year, there have been 983 visits to Mindfield.
So next year, if you want to keep reading, I will keep writing. Thanks to those of you who have visited once and a special thanks to those of you who keep coming back.
Reading over the posts from 2010, it seems there has been one other constant that I forgot to mention. The only other thing that ever stays the same.
Change.
Wishing you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Trojan horse
The year is almost at a close and it hardly seems the time to start something new. But that is what I've done. Timing is everything or so they say, yet time itself is more a mock structure for our lives that sets our expectations of what should be happening right now, and what comes next.
It's a new job. That's what I've started. The gates opened unexpectedly, and at first I was cynical. Not a trait I'm proud of but it's part and parcel of my long-suffering survival instinct. I rode in slowly on my Trojan horse. As the wheels creaked to a halt, I sat inside, huddled, listening for explosions, gun fire, yelling. I wait for it, confused and suspicious. I have long prepared myself for this moment. I am armed and I am dangerous. But where I find myself now, this is not the same war zone... I am met by a resounding silence.
Over a decade of siege, I have constructed this wooden horse. It has been my protection. My get-out-of-jail-free, hide-when-you're-scared, armoured shell. The tough 'n' stuff I carry on my back, so that nothing sticks and there is no cut too deep to heal from. Though made from hard, resilient timber, the horse is always hungry. He feeds on fear and indignation.
And in many ways, he has been feeding on me.
Now, I pop the peephole and look out to survey my new surroundings. The sun is shining. The air seems clear. I emerge, surprised to find I am no longer at war. People are amused and pleased to see me as I dust myself off and shut the horse's gut behind me.
I am not their foe, nor have I tricked them to let me inside their secure space. I am invited. I am welcome. Low and behold, the horse that got me into Troy time and time again, was not at all the stratagem to end the conflict. All it took was me.
Needless to say, I do not intend to ride out on the horse I rode in on. But I will stable it, for now. I don't quite have the energy to push it to the outer yet.
From where I sit at my new desk, I can see the back of a sign, advertising the company to those that pass by. A bird is nesting there, inside the letter 'r', and occasionally I look up to see him bringing small twigs and leaves to build his urban hideaway. He tweets and flutters, scampering in and out from behind the metal scaffold. Every so often, he appears to look me in the eye. Head tilted to the side, he regards me with feint interest.
Mr Bird has things in perspective. He reminds me that everything we do feeds back to our home, our family, and is part of something much, much bigger.
It's a new job. That's what I've started. The gates opened unexpectedly, and at first I was cynical. Not a trait I'm proud of but it's part and parcel of my long-suffering survival instinct. I rode in slowly on my Trojan horse. As the wheels creaked to a halt, I sat inside, huddled, listening for explosions, gun fire, yelling. I wait for it, confused and suspicious. I have long prepared myself for this moment. I am armed and I am dangerous. But where I find myself now, this is not the same war zone... I am met by a resounding silence.
Over a decade of siege, I have constructed this wooden horse. It has been my protection. My get-out-of-jail-free, hide-when-you're-scared, armoured shell. The tough 'n' stuff I carry on my back, so that nothing sticks and there is no cut too deep to heal from. Though made from hard, resilient timber, the horse is always hungry. He feeds on fear and indignation.
And in many ways, he has been feeding on me.
Now, I pop the peephole and look out to survey my new surroundings. The sun is shining. The air seems clear. I emerge, surprised to find I am no longer at war. People are amused and pleased to see me as I dust myself off and shut the horse's gut behind me.
I am not their foe, nor have I tricked them to let me inside their secure space. I am invited. I am welcome. Low and behold, the horse that got me into Troy time and time again, was not at all the stratagem to end the conflict. All it took was me.
Needless to say, I do not intend to ride out on the horse I rode in on. But I will stable it, for now. I don't quite have the energy to push it to the outer yet.
From where I sit at my new desk, I can see the back of a sign, advertising the company to those that pass by. A bird is nesting there, inside the letter 'r', and occasionally I look up to see him bringing small twigs and leaves to build his urban hideaway. He tweets and flutters, scampering in and out from behind the metal scaffold. Every so often, he appears to look me in the eye. Head tilted to the side, he regards me with feint interest.
Mr Bird has things in perspective. He reminds me that everything we do feeds back to our home, our family, and is part of something much, much bigger.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Inside the jar
The other night we went out, as you do, to catch up with some friends for a meal at a popular spot, one that didn't require a lot of um-ing and ah-ing. We'd been there before... we knew we'd get a good feed for a fair price. And it was true. What we didn't count on was the colorful and entertaining service.
One waiter in particular captured my attention. It was partly because he walked so very fast. The doors from the kitchen swung open and he launched like a whippet, out of the gates. His movements were sudden and frantic. His face was as thin and drawn as the weasel from "The Wind In The Willows", but he was neither dark nor deceptive. He was friendly, openly helpful in fact, delivering extra cutlery and menu advice without request.
When it came to dessert, we stood, eyes glazed at the glass wall of cakes, reading the little signposts that named the streets on the road to gluttony. While the waiter-whippet assisted by differentiating between three decadent and equally enticing chocolate towers called Mars, Mousse and Death By, I noticed his tattoo.
If you have instantly conjured an ink-laden image in your mind, you would be incorrect. The tattoo in question was not an image at all. It was in fact, a sentence complete with full-stop. Down the inside left of his forearm this man made a bold statement about himself to the world.
It said simply, I am pure will.
For the remainder of the evening, stories ran rampant through my head as to what would motivate a person to brand themselves with those particular words, and in a bodily space that was so deliberately public. I was bemused and fascinated.
I considered that perhaps he was fighting an addiction. Each time he looked down at his arm and the veins that itched and ached, it would speak to him about his strength and his courage. A fire would rise within him, almighty. You have come this far. It was like a permanent post-it to re-assert his self-belief, an affirmation of hope in order to stick with the program. Then, in a blur he whirred past me... if I am right, it may not be working, I thought.
I wondered did he suffer depression? Did he wake with a groan and lie in until late, staring past his TV to the beige of his wall as 'The Circle' made over yet another weight-loss achiever? Blinds down, but flipped upward, so the light could never touch the pasty skin of his toothpick arms. I am fragile, he would think, and wrap himself tighter in the layers of his doona, cocooned, a parcel for the postman to pick up and take anywhere. Anywhere but here. At three, he would wake instinctively, knowing the time had come, and only by reading his arm would he make it to the shower.
Maybe he just wanted to tell people about who he is and he found the regular labels dull. He was not just a father, a brother, a son. He was not just a waiter-whippet. He was will. And not just any will. Blatant. Uncompromising. Indomitable, Pure Will. Or at least, that's the label he puts on his jar. Inside he could be crunchy or smooth. Or both.
His label keeps me guessing. Whether he is an addict or an egotist, I will never know. None of us are one dimensional and none of us are singularly anything. After a few days' reflection, I think the man's tattoo says: Don't tell me who I am, let me tell you who I am.
It's just one example of the attempts we make as humans to define ourselves, to piece together our identities before others do it for us. To assert some control over our own story and how it is interpreted when transmuted through the social spectrum to strangers in restaurants.
Reading people is fun, especially when they have sentences on their limbs. But you can only perceive so much from the jar. You find out more from the list of ingredients.
One waiter in particular captured my attention. It was partly because he walked so very fast. The doors from the kitchen swung open and he launched like a whippet, out of the gates. His movements were sudden and frantic. His face was as thin and drawn as the weasel from "The Wind In The Willows", but he was neither dark nor deceptive. He was friendly, openly helpful in fact, delivering extra cutlery and menu advice without request.
When it came to dessert, we stood, eyes glazed at the glass wall of cakes, reading the little signposts that named the streets on the road to gluttony. While the waiter-whippet assisted by differentiating between three decadent and equally enticing chocolate towers called Mars, Mousse and Death By, I noticed his tattoo.
If you have instantly conjured an ink-laden image in your mind, you would be incorrect. The tattoo in question was not an image at all. It was in fact, a sentence complete with full-stop. Down the inside left of his forearm this man made a bold statement about himself to the world.
It said simply, I am pure will.
For the remainder of the evening, stories ran rampant through my head as to what would motivate a person to brand themselves with those particular words, and in a bodily space that was so deliberately public. I was bemused and fascinated.
I considered that perhaps he was fighting an addiction. Each time he looked down at his arm and the veins that itched and ached, it would speak to him about his strength and his courage. A fire would rise within him, almighty. You have come this far. It was like a permanent post-it to re-assert his self-belief, an affirmation of hope in order to stick with the program. Then, in a blur he whirred past me... if I am right, it may not be working, I thought.
I wondered did he suffer depression? Did he wake with a groan and lie in until late, staring past his TV to the beige of his wall as 'The Circle' made over yet another weight-loss achiever? Blinds down, but flipped upward, so the light could never touch the pasty skin of his toothpick arms. I am fragile, he would think, and wrap himself tighter in the layers of his doona, cocooned, a parcel for the postman to pick up and take anywhere. Anywhere but here. At three, he would wake instinctively, knowing the time had come, and only by reading his arm would he make it to the shower.
Maybe he just wanted to tell people about who he is and he found the regular labels dull. He was not just a father, a brother, a son. He was not just a waiter-whippet. He was will. And not just any will. Blatant. Uncompromising. Indomitable, Pure Will. Or at least, that's the label he puts on his jar. Inside he could be crunchy or smooth. Or both.
His label keeps me guessing. Whether he is an addict or an egotist, I will never know. None of us are one dimensional and none of us are singularly anything. After a few days' reflection, I think the man's tattoo says: Don't tell me who I am, let me tell you who I am.
It's just one example of the attempts we make as humans to define ourselves, to piece together our identities before others do it for us. To assert some control over our own story and how it is interpreted when transmuted through the social spectrum to strangers in restaurants.
Reading people is fun, especially when they have sentences on their limbs. But you can only perceive so much from the jar. You find out more from the list of ingredients.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
I summon the Genie
Rome was built from the ruins, I thought, as I climbed out of my pit of despair. Phew, that was exhausting. I sat, perched on the edge of the hole I had dug for myself, legs dangling, perspiration pouring, dirt smeared across my cheeks. I looked down and then up. I looked for a sign.
Instead, this week, I received a series of revelations. So, in no particular order I am going to share them with (lucky) you.
No one turned up on a government-sanctioned mission to rescue me with a half dozen engineers and a special, rocket-like chute... but many hands reached down from the light and offered to extract me from my hole. I gratefully took these hands. To be alone is sometimes a physical reality, but to feel alone is a choice. The truth is, there are people everywhere, friends, and if you are willing to wave a flag from inside the cavity you have fallen into, your brave signal will lure fellow cave dwellers from their own pits in droves. Invite someone over coffee. Phone a friend. Listen while someone else tells you about their much, much worse situation. Relay and relate. Talk to a stranger at a bar or at the library. There are at least 100 ways not to be alone. So, I picked more than one.
Lesson number two: When you set demanding goals, be they financial, professional, creative or otherwise it is worthwhile to first find out what tools, collateral or energy might be required to meet said goals; as opposed to projecting a deep, dark road littered with difficult obstacles between yourself and where you ultimately want to be. This imagined clutter is difficult to clear up once projected. Start with facts, rather than assumptions and the way to the finish line will look a little less like Jurassic Park during Cyclone Tracy and a little more like the yellow brick road to OZ.
I have been reminded once again that my life's purpose is my property. I own it and I shape it. This idea takes some getting used to. Some days, it feels like I stole it and so I hide it behind the couch until I find someone worthy to give it back to. Then I remember that there is no one more qualified to handle it than me. It's "if you build it they will come" versus "they have built it so let's go visit and do what we're told while we're there". Start small, somebody told me. You might feel like an ant wading in a puddle of almost insurmountable expectation, but keep your head up, swim and soon you will grow.
Getting back to the idea of life purpose made me do a lot of thinking about creativity, both my own and as a general concept. I was referred to a TED Talk by writer, Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. She talks about artists being held accountable and how the creative 'genie' once considered to be a divine enigma, visited upon unsuspecting artists is now considered to inhabit the self. We are on the look out for a (human) creative genius rather than the concept of 'creative genius'. With works pending critical judgment even prior to creation, you can see how one's capacity for inspiration or transcendence could be severely incapacitated by society's jury, waiting with baited breath, tapping fingers and feet, as the artist of today tries to "bring it home".
Whether this judgment is real or imagined, there is a certain truth in an artist's journey being less valued and respected today, than it may have been historically. Artistry was once revered as a dignified and envied vocation. Capitalism sure has a lot to answer for. We shake in our boots at any career that does not play a hearty role in meeting the household budget. There is no creative venture where anguish is not anticipated in advance, where fear for what the future holds is not felt. A sense lingers that there is a danger to our wellbeing, psychologically, socially, financially, if we continue to pursue such fanciful prospects.
And here comes my next revelation...I hereby conclude that this festering attitude in our collective subconscious can go and fuck itself. Artists in all forms should be treated like a protected species, in a societal construct that enables, encourages and fosters creativity to thrive. Let's tear down the emotional firewall that stands between what we think we should be doing and what we were put on this earth to do. Our personal security settings are good and keeping bad things out, but they can also block good things from coming in. If you put up a fence, you always have to climb up to see over. It's protection at a price; quite literally, the cost of living.
Humans are just that. Human. We can be vessels for something greater if we are open and ready. So, show up, be present. Nothing can be achieved by you if you aren't actually there. A transition is just the first step in a revolution. Releasing the genie requires time and space. You have to be willing to claw your way back out of the hole.
Sit on the side with you legs dangling and look around for a sign.
This week, I opened my eyes and an opportunity presented itself. For the first time in a long time I am genuinely motivated, propelled towards something that could feed my soul, for which the entire point is fulfillment of a greater purpose. No money will change hands.
If it is meant to be, I will have another good reason to get out of bed each morning. If it is not, I will dust myself off, keep my head up and swim in my puddle until I outgrow it. And I will not swim alone...all creatures great and small are welcome.
Instead, this week, I received a series of revelations. So, in no particular order I am going to share them with (lucky) you.
No one turned up on a government-sanctioned mission to rescue me with a half dozen engineers and a special, rocket-like chute... but many hands reached down from the light and offered to extract me from my hole. I gratefully took these hands. To be alone is sometimes a physical reality, but to feel alone is a choice. The truth is, there are people everywhere, friends, and if you are willing to wave a flag from inside the cavity you have fallen into, your brave signal will lure fellow cave dwellers from their own pits in droves. Invite someone over coffee. Phone a friend. Listen while someone else tells you about their much, much worse situation. Relay and relate. Talk to a stranger at a bar or at the library. There are at least 100 ways not to be alone. So, I picked more than one.
Lesson number two: When you set demanding goals, be they financial, professional, creative or otherwise it is worthwhile to first find out what tools, collateral or energy might be required to meet said goals; as opposed to projecting a deep, dark road littered with difficult obstacles between yourself and where you ultimately want to be. This imagined clutter is difficult to clear up once projected. Start with facts, rather than assumptions and the way to the finish line will look a little less like Jurassic Park during Cyclone Tracy and a little more like the yellow brick road to OZ.
I have been reminded once again that my life's purpose is my property. I own it and I shape it. This idea takes some getting used to. Some days, it feels like I stole it and so I hide it behind the couch until I find someone worthy to give it back to. Then I remember that there is no one more qualified to handle it than me. It's "if you build it they will come" versus "they have built it so let's go visit and do what we're told while we're there". Start small, somebody told me. You might feel like an ant wading in a puddle of almost insurmountable expectation, but keep your head up, swim and soon you will grow.
Getting back to the idea of life purpose made me do a lot of thinking about creativity, both my own and as a general concept. I was referred to a TED Talk by writer, Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. She talks about artists being held accountable and how the creative 'genie' once considered to be a divine enigma, visited upon unsuspecting artists is now considered to inhabit the self. We are on the look out for a (human) creative genius rather than the concept of 'creative genius'. With works pending critical judgment even prior to creation, you can see how one's capacity for inspiration or transcendence could be severely incapacitated by society's jury, waiting with baited breath, tapping fingers and feet, as the artist of today tries to "bring it home".
Whether this judgment is real or imagined, there is a certain truth in an artist's journey being less valued and respected today, than it may have been historically. Artistry was once revered as a dignified and envied vocation. Capitalism sure has a lot to answer for. We shake in our boots at any career that does not play a hearty role in meeting the household budget. There is no creative venture where anguish is not anticipated in advance, where fear for what the future holds is not felt. A sense lingers that there is a danger to our wellbeing, psychologically, socially, financially, if we continue to pursue such fanciful prospects.
And here comes my next revelation...I hereby conclude that this festering attitude in our collective subconscious can go and fuck itself. Artists in all forms should be treated like a protected species, in a societal construct that enables, encourages and fosters creativity to thrive. Let's tear down the emotional firewall that stands between what we think we should be doing and what we were put on this earth to do. Our personal security settings are good and keeping bad things out, but they can also block good things from coming in. If you put up a fence, you always have to climb up to see over. It's protection at a price; quite literally, the cost of living.
Humans are just that. Human. We can be vessels for something greater if we are open and ready. So, show up, be present. Nothing can be achieved by you if you aren't actually there. A transition is just the first step in a revolution. Releasing the genie requires time and space. You have to be willing to claw your way back out of the hole.
Sit on the side with you legs dangling and look around for a sign.
This week, I opened my eyes and an opportunity presented itself. For the first time in a long time I am genuinely motivated, propelled towards something that could feed my soul, for which the entire point is fulfillment of a greater purpose. No money will change hands.
If it is meant to be, I will have another good reason to get out of bed each morning. If it is not, I will dust myself off, keep my head up and swim in my puddle until I outgrow it. And I will not swim alone...all creatures great and small are welcome.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Bend it like Bender
I am sitting outside in the sun, writing what is my first post this month. Since you last heard from me, I have become one of “those people” you see in cafes tapping at their laptop. Today, the sun has drawn me out, crab from shell, and encouraged to send some unsolicited words out into cyberspace. Have I been lazy? Possibly. Distracted? Definitely. Perhaps I was hibernating, like a brown bear. It was the end of a long Winter after all.
No matter the reason, it's a fact that not a lot has sprouted in the usually fertile ground of Mindfield recently. To those of you who rely on me for amusement, thought provocation or the raise of a furry brow, I submit a formal apology.
My silence may have been best for readership. I have not been an easy person to be around this past month, uncharacteristically introverted and moody. Husband can vouch for my lack of social compatibility. Each time we have left the house to confront the world at large I imagine him phoning ahead to warn them; “We’ll need to keep her separate, you know that she doesn't play well with others.” I arrive at places expecting to see a little signpost at my table.
As yet, I have no resolution for my onset of this self-diagnosed inertia. It seems I am momentarily frozen in time. Prophets of common sense would suggest that action could cure me, but there is a sense that the cons of committing on both sides outweigh the pros of making a move in either direction. After years of doggedly pursuing every lead life had to offer, walking through all doors, open and shut, it seems that I have stopped dead, mid-cycle, and not even mid-life.
Was it wisdom that I paused to ask myself where I was running to and why the hurry? Or was it self-destructive? When I stopped to smell the roses, a question mark somehow got sucked up my nose. Now it is zipping around in my head and I feel like until I answer it correctly, I won’t see anything but an endless quandary of questions. I will be literally missing the point. Period.
There are days when I watch myself spin like Alice down the rabbit hole. I have even considered the possibility that I have accidentally wandered into the Bermuda triangle of life. I would describe it as limbo, but limbo could imply there is a sort of goal. A bar that keeps resetting the challenge, that requires you to stretch yourself, even if it’s just for fun.
For now I accept that I have lost my rhythm or at least misplaced it. The familiar tune I was dancing to inexplicably changed from pop to jazz in the bridge. Now, there isn’t even a chorus. It’s unpredictable and disorderly. The symbols clash and I cringe, not sure what to expect next, my beat in complete disarray. Needless to say, I never cared much for jazz.
I will keep walking down this road that only reveals itself in front of me a few metres at a time. I will take my chances. I need the time to gather the bricks and mortar so I can pave my own road... it is a slow process. I walk past other avenues and alleyways, perfectly constructed and inviting. People I know beckon me to walk their way. I wave politely and ignore them.
I figure, if you have to spend time in limbo, you might as well join in. Sing your own tune regardless of what's playing, and bend it (like Bender) for as long as you can. Only time will tell if you will break your back trying.
No matter the reason, it's a fact that not a lot has sprouted in the usually fertile ground of Mindfield recently. To those of you who rely on me for amusement, thought provocation or the raise of a furry brow, I submit a formal apology.
My silence may have been best for readership. I have not been an easy person to be around this past month, uncharacteristically introverted and moody. Husband can vouch for my lack of social compatibility. Each time we have left the house to confront the world at large I imagine him phoning ahead to warn them; “We’ll need to keep her separate, you know that she doesn't play well with others.” I arrive at places expecting to see a little signpost at my table.
As yet, I have no resolution for my onset of this self-diagnosed inertia. It seems I am momentarily frozen in time. Prophets of common sense would suggest that action could cure me, but there is a sense that the cons of committing on both sides outweigh the pros of making a move in either direction. After years of doggedly pursuing every lead life had to offer, walking through all doors, open and shut, it seems that I have stopped dead, mid-cycle, and not even mid-life.
Was it wisdom that I paused to ask myself where I was running to and why the hurry? Or was it self-destructive? When I stopped to smell the roses, a question mark somehow got sucked up my nose. Now it is zipping around in my head and I feel like until I answer it correctly, I won’t see anything but an endless quandary of questions. I will be literally missing the point. Period.
There are days when I watch myself spin like Alice down the rabbit hole. I have even considered the possibility that I have accidentally wandered into the Bermuda triangle of life. I would describe it as limbo, but limbo could imply there is a sort of goal. A bar that keeps resetting the challenge, that requires you to stretch yourself, even if it’s just for fun.
For now I accept that I have lost my rhythm or at least misplaced it. The familiar tune I was dancing to inexplicably changed from pop to jazz in the bridge. Now, there isn’t even a chorus. It’s unpredictable and disorderly. The symbols clash and I cringe, not sure what to expect next, my beat in complete disarray. Needless to say, I never cared much for jazz.
I will keep walking down this road that only reveals itself in front of me a few metres at a time. I will take my chances. I need the time to gather the bricks and mortar so I can pave my own road... it is a slow process. I walk past other avenues and alleyways, perfectly constructed and inviting. People I know beckon me to walk their way. I wave politely and ignore them.
I figure, if you have to spend time in limbo, you might as well join in. Sing your own tune regardless of what's playing, and bend it (like Bender) for as long as you can. Only time will tell if you will break your back trying.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
An Ode to My Gut
For when I am doubled in doubt
Fighting on the fear frontier
With reason lost or unfounded
I will read this again, to remind myself.
I will place my hands atop my belly
And close my eyes to see
If I can reach into the dark
To pluck with precision,
The Answer.
The Way,
and the Truth.
It will be there, alright.
Buzzing around others, from a land Before
That have served their purpose
And have since lay down to rest,
Content. Exhausted.
If I could place an ear to my soft rise,
I would surely hear it coming.
A locomotive from a tunnel
With its lights on.
Surrender my head that belies logic
Forgo the Queen of Hearts,
and her endless negotiations.
And tune only the channel of instinct.
Pure. Resounding.
Infallible navigator,
Primitive animal.
Sensory genius,
Selfless companion.
May I tread the path that leads me first to your door
So that my when I am mirrored
I can avoid the reflection of my eyes
that speaks,"I told you so..."
Fighting on the fear frontier
With reason lost or unfounded
I will read this again, to remind myself.
I will place my hands atop my belly
And close my eyes to see
If I can reach into the dark
To pluck with precision,
The Answer.
The Way,
and the Truth.
It will be there, alright.
Buzzing around others, from a land Before
That have served their purpose
And have since lay down to rest,
Content. Exhausted.
If I could place an ear to my soft rise,
I would surely hear it coming.
A locomotive from a tunnel
With its lights on.
Surrender my head that belies logic
Forgo the Queen of Hearts,
and her endless negotiations.
And tune only the channel of instinct.
Pure. Resounding.
Infallible navigator,
Primitive animal.
Sensory genius,
Selfless companion.
May I tread the path that leads me first to your door
So that my when I am mirrored
I can avoid the reflection of my eyes
that speaks,"I told you so..."
Monday, August 30, 2010
My coffee shop, the Oracle
I recently set out to challenge myself, to write something other than a post for this blog, a communication strategy or a copywriting job. Set a goal, people encouraged me. Writer folk espouse that competitions can provide the necessary impetus, setting a deadline for you without compromise, a looming date whereby a piece of work must be polished, printed, proofed and posted.
I am used to crafting careful messages, sharply defining the complex, crystallising a blur of technicality into a stark transparency. Sure, I sometimes weave in a witty repartee and experience the odd flash of (dare I say) brilliance during my personal indulgence in developing prose; but generally, I have made my living by making the confusing, clear and the indifferent, meaningful.
So, when faced with the task of drawing outside the lines, dancing with the shadows of subtlety that deliberately push a reader into the dark, I was more perplexed than I expected to be. Skills I learned long ago seemed to elude me. I had put them down somewhere and could no longer locate them. What I had deemed a minor professional transition was suddenly exacerbated to overwhelming. The elephant I had planned to eat in small bites multiplied into a herd, and I began to lose my appetite.
Extracting the required story from my creative being proved similar to the intricate game we played as children called Operation, where you lay on your stomach wielding tweezers to remove tiny plastic bones from an inanimate, two-dimensional man.
My procrastination was excruciating and the blame splashed everywhere but on me. I couldn’t write in an unclean house. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, could not resist watching endless repeat episodes of Californication. I struggled to be creative at the same desk where I conjured up the corporate devil. Fed up and in a flabbergasted effort to refresh and re-boot, I took myself out and down the street to put pen to paper, the good old fashioned way.
Our strip of ‘urbia offers a plethora of options for caffeination. I select the most eclectic of places, the one that vibrates pure, haphazard, hippie randomness in order to enhance the flow of my so called artistic juices. To the right side of the front door, there is a stout blackboard and on it I read a message. Had it been delivered in a bottle, I would have sworn it had been (pre)scribed, just for me:
If you will it, it will no longer be a dream.
How encouraging. After my third latte, it is not only encouraging, but occurring. Ink and paper finally connect and there is more evidence to speak of than when man made contact with the moon. Scribbles return home to be relayed to trusty Daddy Mac. Words front up to numerous iterations and renunciations on screen. Cobbled together, it’s parchment by patchwork and along with some inherent failings, a conclusive draft comes to exist. A story strewn from beginning to end, which in itself seems to be an act of protest against nature. My own nature, that is.
Mould of a masterpiece now etched, I pro-actively seek perspective from a deliberately diminutive number of supposedly like-minded commentators. This serves as a stinging reminder that it is always better to rip the band-aid off yourself. Getting someone else to do it... it is not designed to hurt them. My small band of merry people inflicted many wounds and they used a range of weapons. Some of them technical, some credible, some subjective and some intuitive. I see a bad moon rising and I am remiss to wear my armour. Resilience, I had forgotten, is the formal wear of the artist.
(And despair is the lonely friend, who always wears black and lives in a cold stone cottage, just out of town; close enough to visit occasionally.)
My recovery is week-long until a fresh day when I wake up clean and pick up an empty basket to start cherry picking the wreckage. The story I gave birth to is never the same and I accept that perhaps it shouldn’t be. I polish my beaten resolve and try chanting a more upbeat, mantra. Opinions are like bums and everybody has one, or so I am told.
I meet the competition d-day and after I mail the yellow envelope, I am still rumbling with mild dissatisfaction at the final product but I am relieved to let it go. I decide on a coffee, so it is back to 'caffeine ecelectica' for another dose. I pass the blackboard standing guard and today the message is even more fitting and profound;
Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. [Henry Van Dyke]
Well. How about that.
I am used to crafting careful messages, sharply defining the complex, crystallising a blur of technicality into a stark transparency. Sure, I sometimes weave in a witty repartee and experience the odd flash of (dare I say) brilliance during my personal indulgence in developing prose; but generally, I have made my living by making the confusing, clear and the indifferent, meaningful.
So, when faced with the task of drawing outside the lines, dancing with the shadows of subtlety that deliberately push a reader into the dark, I was more perplexed than I expected to be. Skills I learned long ago seemed to elude me. I had put them down somewhere and could no longer locate them. What I had deemed a minor professional transition was suddenly exacerbated to overwhelming. The elephant I had planned to eat in small bites multiplied into a herd, and I began to lose my appetite.
Extracting the required story from my creative being proved similar to the intricate game we played as children called Operation, where you lay on your stomach wielding tweezers to remove tiny plastic bones from an inanimate, two-dimensional man.
My procrastination was excruciating and the blame splashed everywhere but on me. I couldn’t write in an unclean house. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, could not resist watching endless repeat episodes of Californication. I struggled to be creative at the same desk where I conjured up the corporate devil. Fed up and in a flabbergasted effort to refresh and re-boot, I took myself out and down the street to put pen to paper, the good old fashioned way.
Our strip of ‘urbia offers a plethora of options for caffeination. I select the most eclectic of places, the one that vibrates pure, haphazard, hippie randomness in order to enhance the flow of my so called artistic juices. To the right side of the front door, there is a stout blackboard and on it I read a message. Had it been delivered in a bottle, I would have sworn it had been (pre)scribed, just for me:
If you will it, it will no longer be a dream.
How encouraging. After my third latte, it is not only encouraging, but occurring. Ink and paper finally connect and there is more evidence to speak of than when man made contact with the moon. Scribbles return home to be relayed to trusty Daddy Mac. Words front up to numerous iterations and renunciations on screen. Cobbled together, it’s parchment by patchwork and along with some inherent failings, a conclusive draft comes to exist. A story strewn from beginning to end, which in itself seems to be an act of protest against nature. My own nature, that is.
Mould of a masterpiece now etched, I pro-actively seek perspective from a deliberately diminutive number of supposedly like-minded commentators. This serves as a stinging reminder that it is always better to rip the band-aid off yourself. Getting someone else to do it... it is not designed to hurt them. My small band of merry people inflicted many wounds and they used a range of weapons. Some of them technical, some credible, some subjective and some intuitive. I see a bad moon rising and I am remiss to wear my armour. Resilience, I had forgotten, is the formal wear of the artist.
(And despair is the lonely friend, who always wears black and lives in a cold stone cottage, just out of town; close enough to visit occasionally.)
My recovery is week-long until a fresh day when I wake up clean and pick up an empty basket to start cherry picking the wreckage. The story I gave birth to is never the same and I accept that perhaps it shouldn’t be. I polish my beaten resolve and try chanting a more upbeat, mantra. Opinions are like bums and everybody has one, or so I am told.
I meet the competition d-day and after I mail the yellow envelope, I am still rumbling with mild dissatisfaction at the final product but I am relieved to let it go. I decide on a coffee, so it is back to 'caffeine ecelectica' for another dose. I pass the blackboard standing guard and today the message is even more fitting and profound;
Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. [Henry Van Dyke]
Well. How about that.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Freedom is everywhere
Melbourne is such an outstanding place to live for so many reasons. Coffee is the unequivocal, first and foremost reason. I am not sure why people in other states don’t know how to make it, but they just don’t. It’s like all of the baristas that were any good at distilling and frothing a decent brew have somehow found their way here.
Food, and I refer to both the standard and the variety, comes in a close second. You can find almost any type, fresh and fast, on any budget, at any time. Cook it yourself or have someone much more qualified do it for you. The choice is yours, quite literally. From spicy dumplings, to a juicy steak, hearty Italian cuisine, burritos and churros. All awaiting our visit to the inviting ambience of one of thousands of eateries, all over town.
And the list goes on; from the shopping, to parks and gardens, the galleries, the markets, and the book nooks, it’s an artisan’s vision. But one of the true highlights also has to be how, in less than just two hours, you can be outside of the city, enjoying the enchanting and peaceful paradise that is regional Victoria.
Over the weekend, we made a getaway. We packed the car with a change of clothes and a few bath items, grabbed a magazine, a book, turned off the power at all the sockets, shut the blinds and hit the open road.
In Winter, as you escape the hustle and bustle at the core of Melbourne, and crossover its outer fringes, you can feel the air around you crystalise. All of a sudden, there is space to breathe again. The clarity is stark and visceral.
The road stretches out ahead, as if to show you the way, and the land rises in mounds for a time and then falls flat and lies low, a dewy blanket spread out from the edge of the road to the edge of the earth.
A smattering of homesteads and holiday villas dot the rise at Daylesford, ranging from quaint to colourful, with the ghostly and profound Convent building at its peak, and the main street like a valley of gift shops and day spas. There is an uncompromising chill and a thin ice that coats the morning and melts away as the day delivers a divine and pure sun. Melbourne’s passion for all things edible extends well passed its bounds into its sister townships, where someone who lives down the road grows the produce and you pay good tourist dollars for a plate (or glass) of local pride.
The green is vibrant and the trees out-populate the people, random and rampant. There is a lake of still mud glass. White and spotted ducks are chased by dogs that relish in time spent off their leads. We stay with an old friend, and the welcome mat lays out long after we have shared and laughed over homemade pizza and eggs, sunny-side up. On Sunday afternoon, we take the scenic route, stopping to buy a sourdough Vienna from a baker down an alley in Trentham. Traffic hums and the road home seems somehow narrower.
As we drive back over the Bolte bridge, I catch a sweeping view of our mecca. It glows a hearth as the sun sets, light dancing off the glass windows of sky scrapers.
The weekend is an affair to remember. But my city beckons me home with a love that is as push and pull as a high school romance. Commitment coincides with wonder. The wind rushes in the front window and out the back. Freedom is really everywhere.
Food, and I refer to both the standard and the variety, comes in a close second. You can find almost any type, fresh and fast, on any budget, at any time. Cook it yourself or have someone much more qualified do it for you. The choice is yours, quite literally. From spicy dumplings, to a juicy steak, hearty Italian cuisine, burritos and churros. All awaiting our visit to the inviting ambience of one of thousands of eateries, all over town.
And the list goes on; from the shopping, to parks and gardens, the galleries, the markets, and the book nooks, it’s an artisan’s vision. But one of the true highlights also has to be how, in less than just two hours, you can be outside of the city, enjoying the enchanting and peaceful paradise that is regional Victoria.
Over the weekend, we made a getaway. We packed the car with a change of clothes and a few bath items, grabbed a magazine, a book, turned off the power at all the sockets, shut the blinds and hit the open road.
In Winter, as you escape the hustle and bustle at the core of Melbourne, and crossover its outer fringes, you can feel the air around you crystalise. All of a sudden, there is space to breathe again. The clarity is stark and visceral.
The road stretches out ahead, as if to show you the way, and the land rises in mounds for a time and then falls flat and lies low, a dewy blanket spread out from the edge of the road to the edge of the earth.
A smattering of homesteads and holiday villas dot the rise at Daylesford, ranging from quaint to colourful, with the ghostly and profound Convent building at its peak, and the main street like a valley of gift shops and day spas. There is an uncompromising chill and a thin ice that coats the morning and melts away as the day delivers a divine and pure sun. Melbourne’s passion for all things edible extends well passed its bounds into its sister townships, where someone who lives down the road grows the produce and you pay good tourist dollars for a plate (or glass) of local pride.
The green is vibrant and the trees out-populate the people, random and rampant. There is a lake of still mud glass. White and spotted ducks are chased by dogs that relish in time spent off their leads. We stay with an old friend, and the welcome mat lays out long after we have shared and laughed over homemade pizza and eggs, sunny-side up. On Sunday afternoon, we take the scenic route, stopping to buy a sourdough Vienna from a baker down an alley in Trentham. Traffic hums and the road home seems somehow narrower.
As we drive back over the Bolte bridge, I catch a sweeping view of our mecca. It glows a hearth as the sun sets, light dancing off the glass windows of sky scrapers.
The weekend is an affair to remember. But my city beckons me home with a love that is as push and pull as a high school romance. Commitment coincides with wonder. The wind rushes in the front window and out the back. Freedom is really everywhere.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Earthquake inside
Recently, I made a change. A decision. In fact, 'made' might be a little bit strong. But according to one of my closest friends, who applauded my choices or fate, as it were, I can be proud because "I really owned it". Other people would have just stayed put, treading water, walking in circles, she said.
So, I am now the proud owner of 'it', whatever 'it' is. Well done, me. I think.
It involved a change in job. A change in purpose. A change of mind? Yes, I concur, although not a deliberately articulated one. It was a core shift that might go unnoticed to those who don't know me well. It was one of those underlying, deep, internal movements that seemed to be completely out of my control, yet was somehow both conscious and unconscious at the same time. An earthquake inside.
These core-shakers can be hard to manoeuvre.
It stands to reason, that if you're used to working within a clear structure and you're tossed out on your heiney, you won't know what the rules are anymore. The boundaries dissolve. You lose your bearings. Give me a pre-determined framework to climb and I'm in there, navigating the scaffolding like a pro. On the flipside, working within the constructs of others, requires a bending and re-shaping of both your will and your terms. You're always trading-off something.
The concepts of structure (our external influences and environment) and agency (our freewill and capacity to think for ourselves) are considered polar opposites in the social sciences. They wrestle for power in a classic debate about which has the greatest influence on our behaviour. Can one exist without the other? I think it's a bit like the chicken and the egg. Freewill, left to its own devices must ultimately develop its own set of rules, a baseline to build from, or else it will surely lose its way. Without freewill, structure is never questioned or challenged. They are and they have to be, as interdependent and as balanced as yin and yang.
But freewill can be hard to pin down. It lacks direction, as unpredictable as nature, as the wave I rode in on to find myself here. It rises up like a fire with an undetermined point of origin and shrinks only in the presence of fear and loathing (and not only in Las Vegas). This is a fire I can no longer suppress but cannot yet control. I am both my strength and my weakness and within this contradiction I seek a compromise, a settlement with myself.
It remains to be seen if the change has made me. Whatever 'it' is or will be, there is only one way to find out. I stand now, on one side of a cliff, armed with all of the materials to build a bridge to the other side, but not quite knowing where to start. There are no instructions. No guidelines. The valley in between is an abyss of potential, a projection of possibility.
Struck by a paralysis that is too much time and space, I pause before I venture out to cross the distance, between where I am and where I could be.
I breathe.
And gulp.
So, I am now the proud owner of 'it', whatever 'it' is. Well done, me. I think.
It involved a change in job. A change in purpose. A change of mind? Yes, I concur, although not a deliberately articulated one. It was a core shift that might go unnoticed to those who don't know me well. It was one of those underlying, deep, internal movements that seemed to be completely out of my control, yet was somehow both conscious and unconscious at the same time. An earthquake inside.
These core-shakers can be hard to manoeuvre.
It stands to reason, that if you're used to working within a clear structure and you're tossed out on your heiney, you won't know what the rules are anymore. The boundaries dissolve. You lose your bearings. Give me a pre-determined framework to climb and I'm in there, navigating the scaffolding like a pro. On the flipside, working within the constructs of others, requires a bending and re-shaping of both your will and your terms. You're always trading-off something.
The concepts of structure (our external influences and environment) and agency (our freewill and capacity to think for ourselves) are considered polar opposites in the social sciences. They wrestle for power in a classic debate about which has the greatest influence on our behaviour. Can one exist without the other? I think it's a bit like the chicken and the egg. Freewill, left to its own devices must ultimately develop its own set of rules, a baseline to build from, or else it will surely lose its way. Without freewill, structure is never questioned or challenged. They are and they have to be, as interdependent and as balanced as yin and yang.
But freewill can be hard to pin down. It lacks direction, as unpredictable as nature, as the wave I rode in on to find myself here. It rises up like a fire with an undetermined point of origin and shrinks only in the presence of fear and loathing (and not only in Las Vegas). This is a fire I can no longer suppress but cannot yet control. I am both my strength and my weakness and within this contradiction I seek a compromise, a settlement with myself.
It remains to be seen if the change has made me. Whatever 'it' is or will be, there is only one way to find out. I stand now, on one side of a cliff, armed with all of the materials to build a bridge to the other side, but not quite knowing where to start. There are no instructions. No guidelines. The valley in between is an abyss of potential, a projection of possibility.
Struck by a paralysis that is too much time and space, I pause before I venture out to cross the distance, between where I am and where I could be.
I breathe.
And gulp.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Separate your whites
Last weekend, I went to the laundromat. We don't have a dryer, you see. So, I took my damp towels and bed sheets, I put them in the boot of my car and drove them about ten minutes from my house to the nearby laundromat with the best parking.
I never had cause to visit a laundromat until I left home, at the ripe age of seventeen. After my initial move "out" to board with a friend, I moved again, this time "in", with a boy who was all wrong for what were at the time, all the right reasons.
It was then that I found myself down the road with my baskets of wet laundry for the first time.
Perhaps strangely, the laundromat is a place that I find grounding. There is something about the activity of washing and drying your clothing and manchester in a communal setting...it is humble and simple. It's necessary. It takes me back to basics.
You see people from all walks of life at the laundromat. They are careful to separate their whites from their darks and their brights, but in the process of the sorting and cleaning they reveal a range of colours, and I'm not just referring to their underwear.
I saw a girl take a chair and post herself right in front of the dryer she was using, as if to stand guard of her socks. If someone intended to perform daylight sock robbery she was ready to take them down. She sat right on the edge of her chair. No-one was getting past her. Of course, there was no-one so daring or perverse, at least not while I was there. But it was clear that she felt the need to protect what was hers.
There are those who are polite, even helpful; like the man I saw opening the door for people and warning them that the dryer on the end was swallowing coins in exchange for naught but a few spins of cold air.
And there is always at least one noisy, attention-seeking person. The one who has to take a phone call while stuffing their washer to announce their most recent personal problem over the hum of the machines. All the while, their children run riot around patient others who are mid-chapter of a novel they have been dying to get to all week.
Their laundry speaks volumes about who they are, what they do. From flamboyant frills to baby jumpsuits and Calvin Klein y-fronts, doilies and stained sheets, the innards of life spill out over the tops of cane and plastic baskets.
Like no other time, except perhaps when you need a toilet stop at Picadilly station, is it as important to have the right change. If you don't, you will have to take a walk, purchase something from the milk bar and make a polite request for dollar coins. You will need to pretend that the man selling the milk does not really know why you have asked for the coins and then casually disregard the sign that says, "we do not provide change for the laundromat", smoothing the awkward moment with your nicest manners and a dazzling flash of white teeth.
How much time you get for a dollar is anybody's guess, a secret known only to whomever hides in the booth behind the wall of industrial machines, under lock and key.
Somehow, watching my towels turn around and around in the dryer is soothing to me. The sound and the motion is repetitive, like being on a train. The dryer exudes a comforting heat. You are forced to stop still and stare while it cycles. It's a mesmerizing fabric evolution.
Over the years I have changed laundromats, sure. I have moved house about a dozen times. Being laundro-loyal is simply not pragmatic. But taking this basic, in-house event down the street reminds me that the inner workings of our day-to-day lives are very common. We are not alone. Each week, at some point we will all stand by a basket, sorting and folding, shaking our heads at the occasional white sock gone pink or an accidentally shrunken garment.
These basic threads, they weave us together.
I never had cause to visit a laundromat until I left home, at the ripe age of seventeen. After my initial move "out" to board with a friend, I moved again, this time "in", with a boy who was all wrong for what were at the time, all the right reasons.
It was then that I found myself down the road with my baskets of wet laundry for the first time.
Perhaps strangely, the laundromat is a place that I find grounding. There is something about the activity of washing and drying your clothing and manchester in a communal setting...it is humble and simple. It's necessary. It takes me back to basics.
You see people from all walks of life at the laundromat. They are careful to separate their whites from their darks and their brights, but in the process of the sorting and cleaning they reveal a range of colours, and I'm not just referring to their underwear.
I saw a girl take a chair and post herself right in front of the dryer she was using, as if to stand guard of her socks. If someone intended to perform daylight sock robbery she was ready to take them down. She sat right on the edge of her chair. No-one was getting past her. Of course, there was no-one so daring or perverse, at least not while I was there. But it was clear that she felt the need to protect what was hers.
There are those who are polite, even helpful; like the man I saw opening the door for people and warning them that the dryer on the end was swallowing coins in exchange for naught but a few spins of cold air.
And there is always at least one noisy, attention-seeking person. The one who has to take a phone call while stuffing their washer to announce their most recent personal problem over the hum of the machines. All the while, their children run riot around patient others who are mid-chapter of a novel they have been dying to get to all week.
Their laundry speaks volumes about who they are, what they do. From flamboyant frills to baby jumpsuits and Calvin Klein y-fronts, doilies and stained sheets, the innards of life spill out over the tops of cane and plastic baskets.
Like no other time, except perhaps when you need a toilet stop at Picadilly station, is it as important to have the right change. If you don't, you will have to take a walk, purchase something from the milk bar and make a polite request for dollar coins. You will need to pretend that the man selling the milk does not really know why you have asked for the coins and then casually disregard the sign that says, "we do not provide change for the laundromat", smoothing the awkward moment with your nicest manners and a dazzling flash of white teeth.
How much time you get for a dollar is anybody's guess, a secret known only to whomever hides in the booth behind the wall of industrial machines, under lock and key.
Somehow, watching my towels turn around and around in the dryer is soothing to me. The sound and the motion is repetitive, like being on a train. The dryer exudes a comforting heat. You are forced to stop still and stare while it cycles. It's a mesmerizing fabric evolution.
Over the years I have changed laundromats, sure. I have moved house about a dozen times. Being laundro-loyal is simply not pragmatic. But taking this basic, in-house event down the street reminds me that the inner workings of our day-to-day lives are very common. We are not alone. Each week, at some point we will all stand by a basket, sorting and folding, shaking our heads at the occasional white sock gone pink or an accidentally shrunken garment.
These basic threads, they weave us together.
Monday, June 21, 2010
The Winter Soul-stice
On the shortest day of the year I deliver what might be my shortest blog.
The solstice occurs when the sun is the greatest distance from the equator. Twice a year, this is the case. The other time, the day is much longer.
My soul hibernates now. It has crawled deep inside its shell, my body, to hide away from this harsh and bitter cold.
Today, marks the central point on the annum's road between brisk and unforgiving days to days that glow and draw us out of our caves, warm and inviting. It is not a matter of being half way to anywhere in particular, more like being perched atop a ferris wheel, mid-cycle. What goes up, must come down. We will be back again, one day soon.
Inside, I seek comfort, protection from the insolent chill. I create a cocoon of heated air and mohair throw rugs. I look out at the world from my coddle. Consolation of steaming coffee and hearty soup. My body is suspended somehow, weighted by skies that are the color of indifference.
I struggle against time's moment whenever the outside world beckons, and coat myself in an armor, unnecessary when the days are more reasonable, more relenting. Leather gloves, woolen socks, knee high boots. Scarf and jacket. Turtleneck. Grey and black. Black and grey. I walk to meet what feels like a wall of ice and the air cracks around me.
For now, I am frozen.
I trust that Spring will come eventually; to renew the barren and melt this season's punishment.
To bring about the green sprouts of fresh resolve.
The solstice occurs when the sun is the greatest distance from the equator. Twice a year, this is the case. The other time, the day is much longer.
My soul hibernates now. It has crawled deep inside its shell, my body, to hide away from this harsh and bitter cold.
Today, marks the central point on the annum's road between brisk and unforgiving days to days that glow and draw us out of our caves, warm and inviting. It is not a matter of being half way to anywhere in particular, more like being perched atop a ferris wheel, mid-cycle. What goes up, must come down. We will be back again, one day soon.
Inside, I seek comfort, protection from the insolent chill. I create a cocoon of heated air and mohair throw rugs. I look out at the world from my coddle. Consolation of steaming coffee and hearty soup. My body is suspended somehow, weighted by skies that are the color of indifference.
I struggle against time's moment whenever the outside world beckons, and coat myself in an armor, unnecessary when the days are more reasonable, more relenting. Leather gloves, woolen socks, knee high boots. Scarf and jacket. Turtleneck. Grey and black. Black and grey. I walk to meet what feels like a wall of ice and the air cracks around me.
For now, I am frozen.
I trust that Spring will come eventually; to renew the barren and melt this season's punishment.
To bring about the green sprouts of fresh resolve.
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