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.

and later, after a little lateral thinking . . .

including shameless consumerism (hot jeans)
some loud music
and time-shape wrangling with dear friend

I have solutions, a better feeling stomach
AND a hot pair of jeans.

I shall work less hours, leave town earlier and switch!
around the thumb tacks that I had driven far too deeply into the proverbial map on the wall . . .

It hopefully means no more childcare and a chance to knuckle down with my boy
on a happier medium of Life. You know, that old rag.

Fury on the rocks

This afternoon I agreed to an 8 week extension of my current contract
and ever since I have been
irrationally, steamingly angry.

Which is pretty funny

and perhaps, just a little revealing.

I am so angry that my belly feels as if I have swallowed hot rocks.

Stuffed

I LOVE anchovie-stuffed green olives.
(They are like a mouthwater (sic) of summer: sea water gulp)
I am eating them right now.
They taste damn great.
They make me stink.

I spent a day at my friend's house.
It was nice. Super relaxed and drifty and conversations
are easier when time is allowed to just be that system
we don't have to pay as much attention to as we do (I do)
Three kids doing laps around the house
lego, swords, maiming,
morning tea blends into lunch
blends into post-school
rush of snacks and tears and loud crazed excited voices.
Left-overs for tea and then four children slicking around
the spa
diving and snorkeling and loud loud screaming

Do you remember childhood baths with friends and cousins?
I was watching these kids and laughing and physically remembering
skin and skin and warm water and the laughter of it all.

Vessel:

pod on the sea(ds)

Slow Cooking Here

Yo Yo Ma Baching away
Heater doing its best
Osso bucco lingering
Hair is big: teased, and dreaded


and I'm having a Bloody Mary party
Everyone invited.

Attending the Details

The last few days have been . . . interesting

I call it The Fear.
Dis-ease.
Translates into inertia ie. scared stiff.
I hate it!
Partly, mostly, because I cannot find the seed (kind of like extracting oxalis from your vegie patch, all those horrid, brown pellets to sift out) of this perturbation.

So, although I couldn't find the seed, I did find a kind of sieve for extracting the worst of the heavy brown pellets. This phrase that began to hum around my head: attend the details.

And so I turned to housework. The fine detail stuff. Tended the altars, lured cobwebs from the corners, blah blah.

Achieved simple things, widened the goal posts. God . . . tedious.

But I did have this very unexpected moment of realising that my work keeps me ticking: this bizarre work ethic thing. I was a little . . . exhilarated . . . (almost embarrassing!) to get dressed and to walk into town and the panic room therein. But how to turn this ethic onto my own, self-designated work?

And afterwards I got to play a newly completed violoncelle which is more than a little amazing in the scheme of creating things your own way.

Plunge

Dead

(The title was the word of my most recent 'dictionary reading'. Interestingly, prior to the reading I was about to title this entry Hibernation . . .)

Am coiling up a little these days. Taking thoughts and ideas very slowly,
walking a little slower around the house, writing lists and completing a task a day.

An energy saving spell before imminent upheavals that are BIGGER UP, literally into a different hemisphere.

Sometimes it seems that Things happen and with only the
slightest, most gentlest of nurturing touch.

Touch that neither shoves Things into place, nor becomes oily and complacent.

An I-Ching reading:

Hsien (wooing) . . . the influence shows itself in the big toe.

"A movement, before it is actually carried out, shows itself first in the toes."

My big toe twitched, arched and prepared so long ago it is hard to believe that this motion is nearing the movement of leg and arm. This journey, that begins in September or thereabouts, is like many journeys, and actually began long before departure.

Lunar Scorpio

there is a lovely moon plumping up at the moment
am brooding away . . . peacefully it feels.

another journey is being kind of tacked into some framework:
a house to stay in Italy north.
We shall hire a car.
I am designated driver.
I have to get to Bilbao though,
and Grenada, and Madrid . . . Paris perhaps?

Pushing in thumbtacks into green shapes
on blue backgrounds.


I am also newly soley house responsible
I am seeking quotes for new bath rooms.

I am recently told that the elderly lady who lived in this house before us, died in the bath. Was found there by our neighbour. I go and stand at the door of the bathroom. The old claw foot has suddenly grown magisterial with death and solemnity. The toll of a dripping tap is imagined and sad and I am grateful that I have pressed my back into that old ghost many times without knowing. My next bath becomes an apprehensive first rite. I shall be gentle and not too curious.

The Pleasure Principle vs The Reality Principle

It is ridiculous:

how much enjoyment I get out of sitting in a 'bar/restaurant"
by myself
with a glass of red wine
when it is raining and dark outside
while my child is at The Party of The Year
(for a whole hour and forty-five minutes)
when I can scribble and watch and read and Nada
is on my mind.

I am alone
I am utterly content
I am entertained
I am in a social sphere that I don't have to interact with.

The only words I say in that entire ninety-five minutes are:

- I'd like a glass of wine thanks
- shiraz
- cheers
and later, when an oblivious, self-absorbed suit doesn't adjust his body to allow me to exit
I touch his elbow and mumble, oddly and yet tellingly,
- sorry

(This is funny because much of my time spent in my corner was marvelling at those voices that can split through five scattered conversations, bar music, staffing requests and traffic noise in such places as this: the most notoriously noisy, slate floored establishment in town. Performers spend hours developing this skill and this suit who had such a voice, who I apologised to, this pompous opinionated shit, is probably an accountant. But I shall acquiesce and think, actually, it is a very unfortunate thing, because quite possibly his words are everyday humble words yet, via sheer projection, they appear as the full volume of arrogance.)

Anyway, I cannot adequately describe the bliss of that hour and a half.
And quite honestly, I think only a mother would understand.

Return

phew. . .sorted.

it was a little unnerving to be 'locked out' of my blogslice.

my head isn't at all locking any ideas for the filling today:

all a bit full, and weary and (newly identified) low after the 'high'
that goes with High Intuition days.
I have a bunch in a row, enough to get hooked,
and then I use it up and am left a bit brain pregnant . . . and no, I am NOT clucky. Although I did have
a weird 'let down' reflex dream this morning but that is another story entirely.

I went and saw Macbeth last night (Bell Shakespeare Co).

I watch live theatre with the senses of a child: I catch myself sitting, crouching on my chair, with my mouth open and my eyes popping and I think my face might be expressing my emotions without me realising it . . . all that so-called adult self-control (impulse control anyone?) out the window YYAAAYYY

off to be shadow-ey around the house

Home and Contents Insurance

Iconic Sensory Moment: feeling grounded as I peeled garlic for a meal.

To me it is natural that garlic should be in such a moment - the feeling of weight leaning into one hip socket, down to knee, down to foot and toes and floor and earth and just feeling Presence in the Moment. Frankly I don't know how better to explain it. Does it require it?

Q and I found treasure in our backgarden this afternoon: handfuls of sparkling green jewel beetles (not bugs I am firmly, 4 year oldly told) and another handful of yellow lichened pieces of walnut tree, dismantled months ago but still littering the yard.

Correction: today I spent time in this space and played house in it and by small clean ups in corners it transformed back into a Garden. If I was so inclined I could post a photograph of these small offerings that are now arranged on our table - vignettes, altars. I simultaneously cringe and love how this blog realm makes preciousness.

Apparently it is a corker of a full moon growing in our midst.

I have had sudden extreme feelings of loss in my life, and yet, have been driven to easily complete a multitude of chores that I have steadfastly ignored for weeks.

And have been enacting a different kind of nesting whereby things are Discarded, Sorted and Spaced rather than Collected, Hoarded, Snuggled.

This year, all two months of it, feels powerfully, positively stalked.

Momentum/Momentous

Today I discovered I have been driving la bomb for the past 12 months without any insurance

Last week a woman in another headspace/worldspace raced across a road to follow me at my shoulder and again, my weight swivelled in a socket to catch her front on: it was her breathing that caught me. In her face I could see that she was absent.

It turns out this was a reminder incident and dot points join. A phone call from a distant friend last Tuesday, this absent rushing woman and the spontaneous visit of other dear friends missed for a year. They all connect to one person and many people: a huge Catholic church in the south, The Beach Boys, a restless lady with flair, funeral and wake crashing . . .

God Only Knows Benjamin Rootes I know how to boil a pot of water orright?!

xxx

Attendance

This week I -

attended two board meetings and could see the possibilities
blew a minor gasket at work that needed to be blown
walked quickly everywhere for long distances, sweating off inertia all the while
stood on a High Street with strangers in warm night air and scrawled over the sky looking for a comet. Found it. Watched it slip between earth and sky
sat in the corner of a large room and knitted and listened and nutted out stuff like anxiety and recovery
made basil pesto I am still thinking about
slept beneath a sheet and felt to be the perfect temperature
swam across a basin of water and back and plan to double the distance next week
perched on a rock and discussed panic attacks
made art that I like where its going
opened up an atlas and let the pages open to a country to aim two passports toward
watched planes depart for, and arrive from, an island I need to touch base upon
hatched ludicrous and delightful plans based upon buttery rolls of Romance that will never be consumed

The Modesty Swivel

Today was a lesson in how from one hour to the next, a day can swivel from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Naturally, this swivel can take place upon a millisecond but I haven't the patience for millisecond analysis': the day has been long enough as it is.

So, the swivel was the moment that my son turned from baby to boy and I don't want to make a big deal of that so much because it happens and I'm in no mood to make nostalgic whimsies of it but still, holy fuck, did I witness something huge today. It was society and children and modesty and Lord of the Flies and a scenario where I truely did think, o fuck the lotta you . . . altho I had to gather myself to do it.

It was my favourite summer evening pastime. The 5 o'clock swim at the basin. I didn't have the head for a swim but the Q did and so my mum went to do her thing across the basin proper and Q and I went for the pool. A concrete, 50's homage to summer cut and run. So, I realised that we'd forgotten Q's bathers, and he wasn't wearing any undies, but what the hell, Q was in the water before that was an issue. And then I noticed: my darling boy, with that massive smile of bliss in the water was creating a scandal. He was nude. He wasn't just nude, he was Naked (nekkid) and boy, did he create a splash amongst the kiddies. They did double takes, they nudged each other and giggled, they pointed and gulped chlorine-wee in their excitement and I realised quicksmart (but always a little too late), that some slight shift in age had occured in the past twelve months. That lengthening out of my child's body had all these Modesty Ramifications.

So how does one deal with this scenario? For a while there I was feeling awful: guilt ridden and responsible for putting my child in this position of exposure, and I wasn't thinking Prying Eyes, I was thinking Hurting Words. But then something extraordinary happened, a swivel amidst a melee. I just thought Fuck It, and the reason I thought, Fuck It, was that Q, amazing little wonder who taught me a Big Lesson today, was completely and utterly oblivious to the Scandal that his joy was creating. And, (this is the killer) his joy forced me to stand my ground and stare down his would-be taunters with a beatific smile that dared them to think that this was weird. If I had reacted any differently, I would have simply reiterated what the little 'upholders' of social decorum were plonking on the water. And so we had to create this little bubble of dignity/bravery/glee where neither of us had to say a word to anyone and we were quickly left to do what we were there to do: cool down like everyone else.

This year is fast sorting a lotta shit out! I adore a Big Edit. (Can you tell I've recently read The God of Small Things?)