Faux pas: History on Repeat

I can be a very social mother when I choose to be so, also, I am directly on the school route.

I've had a couple of children over after school for extended play recently and have been reminded of what an interesting old thing that scoping out of the peer's homes is. I make a cup of tea or coffee for the accompanying mother and we sit at the table and have exhausting conversations. Exhausting for me because I can't abide the small talk and the big talk just ain't happening.

So far, I have been a bit too opinionated about the pulp mill and the mother suddenly felt extremely awkward and left soon after. And this week I did a cursory post-visit objective look at my kitchen table to see what exactly I had revealed. Ah yes. My recent photocopying effort of early 80's poetry/art including an image of the word "SEX" as bait on a set mouse trap. A poster for my brother in law's play "Zhombie Theatre presents THE BODY SNATCHERS". Tame stuff to me, perhaps even tame to these mothers, but the feeling is distinctly . . . odd.

It brings to mind numerous experiences from my childhood. The time a mum came to pick up her daughter from my birthday party (c. primary school). She took one look at my parent's living room, was visibly distressed by the print over the fireplace, became speechless and couldn't leave fast enough. And the print? It is called The Last Cigarette and features a landscape littered with severed heads.

I always get a naive shock with this stuff because I, and my parents, have never been driven by a desire to be confrontational, or 'out there'. And to most people we are not, don't even come close, but occasionally, these situations arise and the minutiae of your life suddenly feels exposed and weirdly, can have freak show impact.

ho hum

I Never Thought I'd Say This . . .

I've always been a bit doggedly loyal to this island of ours, always argued that the criticisms about Tasmania were all the more reason that people like us (amorphous, thinking, creative, active bunch) should stick around.

But recently, I have found myself thinking, and I shock myself with how serious I am, that if a pulp mill is built in the Tamar River Valley, I will be gone. I won't stay. I physically could not bear the disappointment of watching a community having to get on with their lives after being so fucked over by the big fish in town. It's suddenly not (just) about air and water and good looking trees, it's about democracy and how we don't live in one in this state.

May they leap from the frying pan and into the fire. amen to that.

Twiggery and other jaunts

went for a little jaunt today
down a ferny gully with my parents
lots of stag-trees and a forest that looks a bit bashed about and in the distance the gossiping of black cockatoos. They heard us and the flock came over to blatantly have a good look and heckle. It was so overwhelming that I didn't even take a photo. But it didn't feel aggressive, it felt comic and even a bit, as mum said, auspicious.

It has been a weekend to wash doona's,
to finish one side of the neck of the bloody vest
and to collect kindling with a friend, both of us competing to see who can create the neatest green bag of twiggery. (He always wins. He can't help it. He's a Virgo.)

And last night I dreamt of finally understanding a key bit of grammar logic when speaking Italian and was chanting verb conjugations. Very much a 'wish fulfillment' dream.

Fomentation

random stuff includes:

We went to have tea at a friends place but she was running very late, wasn't home yet and so we postponed. We bought takeaway curry and DVD's instead, sat up and watched Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (which is being watched for the second time behind me) for Johnny's teeth.

I taught my first cello lesson in a school scenario and a private one at that. Very interesting little bubble of privilege that one. Everyone extremely uncomplicated and lovely. My cynicism scours the situation a bit but shall enjoy the novelty until departure.

Had a remedial massage to remind my body how to release itself a bit, fill in the gaps. I have been ridiculously sedentary of late, the muscles becoming soft and compressed all at once. Yucko!

People quip 'make sure you come back' to every explanation of travel. Ask after my return ticket details.

And I have been on the rental market hunt again: for an organisation I am attached to: finding myself in wacky CBD locations with agents in bad suits. It's been great to see different vistas of this city from various levels and buildings that are a part of the 'taken for granted' every day fabric.

Aqua(marine)

As a child, my parents and I lived in a inconspicuous white house on a long road that led, naturally enough I thought later, to my primary school. But I wasn't at primary school at that point. I was in kindergarten.

The inconspicuous white house was a rental although it was never actually intended to be so. It was a solid brick number, an investment, that the owner had built next door to his own home, the intention being to sell up and still keep an eye on things, you know how it is. The story goes that the owner saw my dad's ad in the local newspaper's rental section. It said: 'Professional Couple Seek Rental House. Nothing Too Flash.' Intrigued, the owner made contact and we ended up living in this house with a round window in the front patio, a gum tree mural thing in the living room and wooden box cupboards either side of the fire place (where I once found hidden birthday treasures and felt sorely disappointed forever more.) In other words, pretty flash by some standards, but not, as it turned out, by the standards of myself at c. four.

You see, I had a real bad case of the grass in always greener. In fact, I had a house-crush. It was a house on the opposite side of the street, diagonally away from our own. And it was weatherboard. Aqua weatherboard. With white trim and loads of white pot plant holders and even (am I exaggerating? Unlikely.) white tyre swans. I was smitten. I can still even remember my parents rolling their eyes at my house crush. But I was reckless and didn't give a shit what they thought.

It was the colour that did it. Aqua. I have known the colour of aqua since then. It is now this weird type of eye candy for me and has morphed into the purpose of a bizarre hunt: for obscure colour references to this old legend of my childhood.

Sun Day

and sunny it was up at the farm.

I am on a photo-shoot binge: am off the show at present as I haven't had a camera in a bloody long time and when armed with a digital snappy thing?

as I said, off the show.

we did lots of glomping about in gumboots

and it was all eating and watching wedge-tailed eagles overhead, listening to clink clink birds, constructing elaborate yabbie nets, rolling rainwater tanks around like tyres and losing borrowed dogs.

Banking

at the bank today, the woman who served me noticed some of my travel documents and it was a little head turning because she was so interested and so wanted to engage . . . due to personal experience: it turns out that she was also setting off on a journey (same date and general destination).

Yet, what struck me the most was how excited she was, and how not-excited I was in comparison. Which isn't a negative, this observation not being about negatives or correctness, but it was obvious.

Because, altho I do feel little jets of excitement, more than anything, I feel resolute and peacefully so.

(But also, actually, I just can't fuckin wait)

Exit Stage Left

Amazing what situations can be tolerated when the exit is neon in a dark room: the room might be smokey, claustrophobic and crowded with shadowy features, there might be an undercurrent of panic or confusion, but focus on the neon Exit sign and leaving the stage is like hot knife-slicing through butter (where did I read that?).

NB. Recent observation of the globalised organic food market (is that an oxymoron or what?) is that the organic butter that I have been a little obsessed with of late, is a bloody product of Denmark WTF???

Exit plans are escapism hatches. It's a mental flight yet felt physically as a body released from the everyday reality, a form of gravity release. Gravity, in both senses of the word.

At least, that is how I am finding it. Have found it my whole life. Used to read gratuitous amounts of books as a child which lead to a certain kind of absence from the moment as well as parents being driven spare by their daughter who was so mentally locked in a book that she seemingly refused to cooperate with domesticity. (I still get the heebyjeebies when someone asks me where the scissors are . . . random . . .long story: no blood.)

I don't read much anymore. Which perturbs me, but actually, I don't really miss it although I like the idea of it, but I find it really difficult to settle for that long. Which might also explain the other absence from my life: cello playing.