Magic thoughts

I’ve never got a handle on this feeling I sometimes have that writing is coming. It feels both exciting and reassuring. My writing is about to pour forth. And it will be as good, as recognised, as I my mind has always imagined it would be.

It’s really happening, I think. But the evidence is that it is not. I’m 51 years old, nearly 52 and this feeling has never been transformed into anything more tangible than this thought. I have finished very little that I’ve begun and those things that I have finished have been good–some very good–but no one has described them as great.

I can explain why this has happened, why I’ve had the feeling but never the result that it has promised. It’s because the feeling itself is dopamine enough, so I am never compelled to go that instant to my notebook and my pen. Rather, that sense of reassurance that I mentioned? It tells me that it is going to happen and so there is no urgency. And without urgency I do not act.

If I had gone that very moment to create, who knows what magic I might have made?

I read only recently–perhaps in those Daily Stoic emails I have subscribed to–that the only thing that stands between us and success is our inability to work through the temporary discomfort. This had deep resonance for me. I recognised myself in it. (Strange then that I don’t remember exactly where I read it, only that I did).

Over time, I’ve come to see these moments as the manifestation of something that is almost magical. Like a fairy, it existed only in that moment and because I didn’t catch it then, it disappeared.

They are gone, those stories I was meant to tell.

Ruts and rhythms and routines

New routines are evolving. Routines have evolved before, and I’m trying to remember whether I was conscious of that at the time or whether I simply let them evolve. Unfold.

I sometimes think about ruts, and I wonder how people get into one and I think to myself, ‘I’d love to find a rut, to know what was happening one day, one week, one year to the next.’

Is it part of getting older this searching for rust and rhythms? Looking for the softness that rhythms brings, the gentleness, the ease. If I were in a rut, I think to myself, I would be able to write the reams that I dream of writing. I would sit for hours and lose myself in words. If I were in a rhythm, I would know when it was time to write.

But that’s just something I tell myself. It’s another, ‘I would be a great writer, if only …’

After four years, nearly five, back in Australia, living in this one place, I do feel the rhythms and routines of the year becoming more sharply defined. Winter leaving, the spring winds springing up behind. Finding my momentum to write my next fringe show, knowing that October is too late to start, but knowing I’ve done it twice before and it all worked out okay.

Most of the rhythms and routines I’ve had in my life have come by accident, just one thing happens and then it happens again and there you are. Going to the market. Watching Insiders. Sewing trips on the Queen’s Birthday weekend (but not this COVID year). And now that I Made an Adult, all I can feel is the spaces where I didn’t get the routines working. The annual trips to this beach. The weekly pizza night. The lunchboxes. And of course, I’m thinking of all the ones I didn’t appreciate enough, didn’t put myself in the moment. How much I hated Saturday sports. Well, all sports really. How bored I was with it.

And as my children grow older, get ready to leave, spend less time with me all the time, I know that my routines will be more clearly mine. That is, unshaped by their needs or wants. I’m looking forward to the things I will be able to do now. The creative projects I will be able to finish. But I’m sad about all of the times we will no longer share. I thought of trying to introduce a routine where we all got together for Saturday breakfast, but then I thought of the cracks in my heart I would have to mend when I was the only one there.

It’s like getting the band back together, only it’s blogging

In which I begin again

I was messing about on my website, and it came to me that a website and a blog are no longer the same thing. They haven’t been for years. But I didn’t want to lose my blog from all those years ago, so I went searching and there it was. My old blog. I left it when I was trying to set up something more of a website, a professional shopfront I suppose. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that’s about the time I more or less stopped blogging. Or blogging more or less stopped. And then of course there was facebook.

But I’ve never been as good at writing as I was when I was keeping a blog. There are things I think that are only suited to this format and without this format to go to, they’ve got nowhere to go.

So there I was sifting through my old blog and knowing it was time to delete everything from my website. But I couldn’t back up the blog … and one thing led to another and here I am. Back in my blog.

I’m just going to use this simple, straightforward template. I’ve got my old blog name, my old blog tagline, and the best photo I ever took of my kids. And this being only the second week of my life where I became the mother of adults, the photo seems even more perfect than it ever did.

It’s like coming home, truly it is.

On internal accents

In which my internal dialogue grows accents

Disconcertingly, my internal voice has started talking to me in the accent of Zelda the Destroyer, Ruth’s wrestling character in Glow. I have no idea why this might be, but it is particularly startling because I’m not having a lot of actual conversations at the moment, so much of what I do is narrated in this strange accent. I speak no Japanese–I haven’t even been able to work out ‘thank you’ yet. So there aren’t many opportunities for conversation, not even the small talk or the little jokes between people that we use to smooth out awkward interactions. Well, there was the man outside the 7-11 where I stopped to buy myself a sparkling water today (it’s hot and humid and I needed the sparkle) … there was a small bench outside the 7-11 and a few people were sitting on it so I sat down thinking it was probably more polite to drink my sparkling water there than as I wandered along the street.

I sat, and as I gingerly opened the bottle, trying to make sure it didn’t fizz on me, the man next to me laughed. It seemed like one of those things you might do when you’re sitting next to someone in the shade of a 7-11, and so I laughed with him. But then he started talking so I shook my head and said, ‘Sorry, English.’ ‘Ah, English,’ he said and I thought he was going to be one of those people who then starts a conversation in perfect English and makes a person feel embarrassed about their own lack of being able to talk to people outside their own language … anyway, he didn’t start talking in English, he kept talking in Japanese. It was about then that I realised as well as sparkling water it was possible to buy sparkling ale and I think he’d enjoyed a few out in the sun. I made my excuses as politely as I could given the circumstances and left.

And that’s about the extent of my conversations, my language barrier compounded by the fact that there aren’t really a lot of tourists here, or at least if there are they are lost in the Tokyo population. It’s not like visiting Paris where a person can hardly breathe for tourists and you get to the end of the day and wonder if you’ve even crossed paths with a Parisien. And while I’m not staying in fancy accommodation by any means, nor is it a hostel where people might go to the dining room to gather at the end of the day…mind you, even if I were at a hostel I’d probably be older than most of the other people and unlikely to get into any conversations there either.

So, having Zelda’s accent in my head is straight up weird. I will say that because it’s only in my head, it’s an excellent imitation of Ruth doing a poor imitation of a Russian accent. However excellent my imitation might be, I’m very much hoping that when I wake up tomorrow it will be gone.

On noodles

In which I eat before bed

As it turns out, the noodles were absolutely not to be missed, and definitely worth staying up for. I went down in my dress and carrying only my room key, expecting that we would be given a packet of two-minute noodles and sent on our way. Not so! The breakfast room opens again, but there are curtains around most of the buffet tables (there are four, all quite small), with only one small space at the servery open for the woman who has the noodle shift to do her work.

People come down in dribs and drabs, most of them wearing the lounge suits (I would call them pyjamas, but that seems maybe a bit rude, because they aren’t pyjamas but are in the hotel rooms with a sign that tells us we are welcome to wear them around the hotel). The woman gives a token to each person and then, when she has made their order calls out the number and tells them their noodles are ready. When she knows we don’t speak Japanese, she calls, ‘Thank you for waiting, noodles are prepared for number 7.’

I rarely eat before bed these days, because I always sleep terribly if I eat or drink too much too close to bedtime (probably I always slept that poorly but now that I’m middle aged I don’t like being tired the next day and get tired more easily and so on and so forth … all of that is a long-winded way of telling you that I wasn’t sure I’d actually eat the noodles, but I did want to see what it was about.

As soon as I saw them, I was in love and knew that they would be exactly what I needed. The noodles are the perfect size. Small enough that I don’t feel over-full and uncomfortable before bed, large enough that I feel sated. The noodles and the soup are both light and thin. Also perfect. The whole thing is extremely cozy, and because it is shared with other people, it is also a reassuring touchpoint, reminding you that you aren’t alone. All hotels should offer something like it, because as wonderful as holidays are it is pretty lonely when you realise that there are all these millions of people around but not one of them knows your name.

And now I’m extremely tired again and about to fall asleep. I wanted to tell you about my day–not that anything amazing happened to me, but I did discover a bit more about this amazing city. Maybe I’ll be able to stay awake long enough tomorrow night.

On departures

In which I make it

It turns out that an hour is enough time to get a domestic-international connection in Sydney airport, but it’s highly stressful and you don’t get a chance to sit and watch the airport go by. Sitting and watching the airport go by is one of my favourite things … mind you anyone watching me go by would have thought I was leaving my dying grandma and never going to see her again the way I was sobbing at the departure gate. Combination of the stress of realising how close my connection was going to be (but knowing that they don’t book it if they don’t think you can make it), but also growing deeper and deeper roots into my house into the next stage of my life.

I’m exhausted now … the only reason I’m still awake is that I’m waiting for the hotel’s noodle service in another twenty minutes. I could’ve gone to sleep hours ago, but there’s something so beautiful in the idea of a ‘noodle service’ and I’m only in this hotel two nights so I don’t want to miss out. Weird thing to not want to miss I know, but there’s been little in the way of rational thought the last couple of days. I’ll be a lot more lucid after a meal of noodles and a nice long sleep.

Talk tomorrow xx

On farewells

In which I’m grumpy, even if I know I shouldn’t be

Sometimes I think, ‘Well, if I just keep talking eventually I will have something to say. But mostly I have no more to say than a person who has nothing to say and no less than someone who has not a lot.

We went out for lunch and it was father’s day. We didn’t know that when we booked. Really we were supposed to be going out for a meal together–the four of us–because I’m going away for a bit, and that’s what you do when someone goes away. You all go out together. So now I’m feeling slightly grumpy that my lunch wasn’t really for me and not only that the meal wasn’t all that great because of course they were doing the whole set menu thing that all the cafes and restaurants do on their busiest days. And I’m grumpy with myself for being churlish, so I’m mostly trying to talk myself out of that.

But we wouldn’t have gone out if we’d known it was father’s day. First, because the meals are always rubbish on days like today. And second, because I try not to buy into the commercialism of it all. I had a wonderful father, and my children’s father is wonderful, but there’s too much pain and hurt in the world regarding fathers and as much as I think it’s important to celebrate the good, I don’t think there’s any need to make the hurt greater than it already is. It feels extremely exclusionary to me. I try not to make a big protest about it, but equally I don’t make a big song and dance about the celebration of it either.

And now I really must go and pack. It’s my worst thing. I’m even worse at packing than I am about being gracious when my farewell lunch gets taken over by something I don’t even agree with.

The puppy is still cute.

On the news

In which I am becoming older

I should have had a bit less to drink than I did especially because I’ll be out again tonight, and it’s been a long time since I had wine two nights in a row, but it didn’t do me any harm, and it would be business as usual, except … the puppy. Productivity zapper that’s for sure. I simply cannot allow it to not be in my lap as I type, he is beautifully affectionate and (at the moment) the perfect size. So while I did have lots of plans of things to be done today, instead I have been wandering aimlessly around the internet, falling down such rabbit holes as dear mariella on The Guardian website.

I scroll through The Guardian and ABC apps a couple of times each day, so I do feel like I’m up-to-date with the news, but I am always surprised when I am in a group of people because they always seem to know what each other is talking about, and I am very often simply nodding in that, ‘Ah, yes, I strongly agree, but have nothing further to add’ until I’m able to generate a quick quip which shows I’m listening and enjoying the conversation even if I don’t properly know what we’re talking about. I think part of that is to do with age. I suppose when I was young, it didn’t bother me that I didn’t know what older people were talking about because one I knew heaps more than they did anyway and two (paradoxically but nonetheless logically) I expected them to know more than I did. Now, I feel that there is a whole world that is not only separate from mine but entirely inaccessible to me. The older person’s world would one day be mine, but the younger person’s never will be. I don’t suppose this is an original or startling revelation, and probably if I’d been listening I would have heard older people telling me about this some time ago.

Which is a long-winded way of getting to the thing I wanted to tell you about which is that I really do miss newspapers, by which I mean news printed on paper. Especially the weekend newspaper. Living in Adelaide our printed papers choice has always been pathetically limited, but I did used to get The Advertiser delivered and I occasionally still buy it. And I like the Financial Review, although less so now that Laura Tingle has gone to the ABC. I have The Saturday Paper delivered but it doesn’t last all that long, and can certainly be cleared away from the kitchen table well before Wednesday which is the day that I used to sweep all of the weekend papers away, leaving whatever hadn’t been read forever unread.

I’m off to find some toys for the puppy now because when it isn’t on my lap it is chewing at my knitting or dragging my socks to its bed. I don’t like either of those things.

On puppies

In which the puppy arrives

Three days missed, but I’ve got an excuse, a reason even, because I got talked into getting a puppy. The last time we had a puppy, it was an Absolute Disaster there is no other way to describe it. A beagle, brought into our lives at the height of its tumult. Cancer, dementia, infertility, beagle. Anyone who knew anything about beagles–about cancer, dementia, infertility, puppies–looked at me with horror in their eyes, and they were right. I had no idea how to care for a dog, let alone a beagle, and it was an added stressor I really did not need.

But while we were living in Abu Dhabi, we grew used to having a dog in our lives. In response to the needs of my youngest boy–I’m serious when I say he didn’t just want, he needed a dog–we fostered a little white terrier that was waiting until it had its rabies jabs cleared before it could join its family in Australia, and then adopted a wonderful dog. She was about nine years old when she came to us, a corgi crossed with a german shepherd and about as far from a beagle as you could get while still being a dog. She was what dogs used to be, back in the days when getting a dog was as simple as waiting for your neighbour’s dog to have a litter and there was none of this putting yourself on waiting lists with breeders. She barked when anyone knocked at the door and they stood on the other side frightened until they opened the door and saw her. Short, tail-wagging…beautiful old thing.

We brought her back to Adelaide with us, but she got older as we all do and one Saturday the end of her life came much more quickly than any of us had been ready for, but it was the best way to die. One bad day, surrounded by people who love you.

It’s funny that having a puppy has made me notice the space where our beautiful dog used to be. It reminds me how it was to be greeted by her every time I came home, or got up in the morning in the way that only a dog can do. ‘Oh my god, you came back, I had no idea you would come back, this is the best moment of my life.’ And when I was lonely, the only adult in the house, she would sit, quietly, just being with me. I had never been a dog person before, but she turned me into one.

And now we’ve got this puppy and it is the sweetest, cutest thing on the planet. As much as sometimes I do regret the passing of time, I like the way this puppy reminds me that life is easier than it was all those years ago when that beagle came to stay. Because when I look at this puppy I’m not terrified.

On change

In which I worry about racism

I think this piece by Scott Ludlam sums up one of my real fears about what this whole debacle in the Liberal Party really means for Australia. We only have to look at what happened to Julie Bishop to understand what they really think about women (they most definitely showed us the hollow logic they apply to ‘merit’ based promotion when they didn’t promote the person with the best polling figures and probably their best-performing minister). But I feel sick at the thought of what our country is going to look like when it comes to race over the coming years. It is extremely sobering to think how superficial our veneer of non-racism actually is, as has been revealed by the United States recently.

I’ve been spending a bit of time in the last year or so examining my own racism a bit more carefully. It isn’t good enough in the current climate to simply count oneself as one of the good guys. More and more I have been realising that my passivity and inaction are themselves a form of racism. I suppose that is something I always knew, but have not fully taken on board. Anyway, one of the things that I have been trying to do is to read a lot of the comment and commentary and to not get huffy and think, ‘Yeah, but …’ and then do a bit of a ‘not all white people’. There is a particular writer I read on twitter and instagram and she is very funny, but very, very dismissive of white people like me. And I’m trying to think, ‘Well, she’s got a point,’ because she does rather than, ‘Yeah, but.’ It’s surprising how quickly it has become easier to think that way and to feel a very real shift away from it being something I’ve forced myself to do towards something that comes much more naturally.

Also, I have a couple of emails and letters I need to finish writing. It’s the 1980s Amnesty member in me. I can’t stop believing that letter-writing is where it’s at even though I do know that in 2018 it’s all about twitter. But I went back to twitter last week and while I see its value in uniting people, I’m not one of those people and honestly after ten minutes I feel so mentally bruised that I am happy to return to my own quiet little place on the internet, open outlook and begin to tap out my email.