Emotions Past

Im in the process of packing up to move house again. Given that this will be my fourth address in two years or my sixth in three, I'm a bit peeved by it all. I'm attempting to rationalize my belongings, to be ruthless in throwing things away. How successful I am depends on my mood and how much I look at things before I toss them. I was going through a box of things the other day and came across some of my old writings, things I did while I was still at school and for one reason or another was sentimental enough to keep. It was a mix of essays, stories, the occasional half hearted attempt at a novel, a diary and notes and letters to and from girl friends. It's funny, though, because although I recognize the handwriting - even though it has changed dramatically since then - I barely recognize the writer as me. I do not know this person from fifteen, twenty years ago. The certainty in her fiction, and mad raging anger of her notes, the snide snarky - well no, that part I do recognize. I can't imagine being so passionately angry about something that I would need to not only capitalise it when I wrote it, but I would underline the words so hard and so many times I would go throug the page. I do not remember being like that. I remember writing, constantly, always, with torch at night under the covers, in darkness when I had written so long that my batteries died. When I should have been doing homework. When I had finished an exam early but wasn't allowed to leave. I have vague recollects of writing myself out when I was feeling hard done by, but I can't imagine myself back to the person who could be so incandescent in her anger. These days I can muster a bit of a squiff, an occasional huff, perhaps a bit of a tantrum if you squat your eyes the wrong way. The only things that really get me up are my grandmother, work, and L. But the emotions I feel now don't generate nearly as much heat as that girl could. She fairly scorched the page. What happened to her? Where did that passion go? Where is the flame burning to write, to create worlds, to express fiery emotions that will not find any other outlet? How did that get replaced by quietly mocking, by sarcasm and by quips? Somewhere within, that other girl must still be there. I wonder if I can ever find her again, or if it's just my mood, a combination of nostalgia and perhaps a mild depression, bringing me to this point. Traditionally tortured artists are the ones who create the best works. Perhaps I should make use of this. If only I could over throw my apathy, I might. That's what I've grown into, though. The would-have, the should-have. That girl way back then, she was all about the could. A couple of little consonants, they change the shape of the world entirely.

Story of my life

Somehow today I've come to be thinking about speeches at birthday parties and weddings. Perhaps because of the movie that was on when I got home from dinner out. At the end of The Wedding Date, Debra Messing gives a singularly uninspired speech. "There's nobody who knows how to love my baby sister like you do. Be good to each other." Or words to that effect, at any rate. It made me tank back to the last time there was any chance of someone making a speech about me. Someone who at least should have known me really well. It was probably my 21st. There have been occasional speechifying moments since then, but nothing nearly as major. I avoided the massive party that usually goes with that birthday. I was the last of my friends to reach the milestone and the thought of combining hard drinking friends with my teetotal family was something I was not prepared to confront. But I was also concerned about the speeches. I was secretly glad that there weren't too many stories to be told about me that could in any way embarrass me. I loved the idea that my life was so private it was known to only me. Of course, my ideas on this have changed now. I think of the lack of friends able to tell stories about me and wonder why I've spent a lifetime keeping people at bay, what I did with my friends that they would have no stories about me. One of my oldest friends was trying to come up with stories about me not that long ago, someone I've known for almost 20 years now, and she came up blank. Or she claimed to. And we've shared a lot in that time. I have countless stories about her. So is it that I haven't lived? That I've spent my entire life on the fringes? That I'm simply not memorable? To tell the truth, if any of these theories are true, I'm horrified. I know my life hasn't exactly been the stuff that dreams are made of. But I don't want it to be so unremarkable that even the people who have shared it with me don't remember my part in it. There is another theory for why people don't tell stories about me, though. And I think I'm going to stick with this one. As CC Bloom tells Hilary in Beaches, "My memory is long, very long." I remember all of their stories, even the ones they would rather I didn't share. And I have a better capacity for alcohol than most of them, which only helps the memories. I still hold out hope that my memory bank of retaliatory ammunition is all that keeps the stories back, not that there are none to tell. Dear god, let that be the reason...

A pocketful of happy

The weather here has finally taken a turn for the better. A false start a few weeks back was followed by some of the more miserable weather Melbourne has to offer. Howling winds, spring thunderstorms, hail, rain, and cold. Perhaps not London cold, but enough that I was back in my winter wardrobe after a brief flirtation with spring.

But last week saw the mercury rise a little. Not soar, no, but hover in a pleasant range. The winds died and the sun put in cameo appearances. It was time for the spring clothes to emerge once more. And I, for one, am extremely glad of it, but not for the reasons you might think.

Yes, I enjoy the warmer months of the year, although generally not spring. I think it's safe to say that no hay fever sufferer will endure a Melbourne spring voluntarily without contemplating a move somewhere else during the brief moments when they are free from the haze inducing allergies that hold them prisoner for three months of the year. But summer, sure. I'm only human. I prefer to be warm rather than cold. But it wasn't climate that had me smiling one afternoon last week as I shrugged into my lightweight linen jacket, just before heading out of work for the day.

It wasn't even that daylight saving has arrived, bringing with it the joyous moment of changing from work clothes into pyjamas during daylight hours (what can I say, I'm a slob, and not ashamed to admit it).

The moment of pure bliss came when I fished into the jacket pocket for my car key. I'd dropped it in there that morning, one less thing to carry as I juggled office keys, handbag, lunch bag and laptop from the car to the office. The steps I have to negotiate to get into the fish bowl are not steep, but they carry hidden puddles for the unwary in open shoes. Getting the keys out to drive up the road for lunch, I noticed that there was something else in the pocket. I didn't remember putting anything else in there, so I was naturally curious. I find all sorts of things hidden in the pockets of clothes, sometimes before they go in the washing machine, sometimes after. Feeling the paper-ish crinkle of this, I assumed it was a receipt and twisted it from the pocket fully intending to just throw it in the bin. I'm so glad I looked at it first, though.

It was $50.

There is nothing more welcome than an injection of funds in the week before pay day. I wasn't down to brass tacks but I could certainly see the last farthing on the horizon, and it was coming up with a rush. A fifty made me feel rich, like winning the lottery - or rather like winning one of the smaller prizes in the lottery. It was a brilliant warmth in my stomach, a buzzing lightheaded sensation. It was bliss. And yes, I'm fully aware of just how pathetic it seems to be so overjoyed by the appearance of a note that can be withdrawn from an ATM, assuming you have the cash in your account in the first place. And therein lies the reason for my excitement. I had no cash available to me. My lunch run was going to be to the supermarket, because all I had available was a denomination too small to be removed at an ATM. Like I said, the week before pay week. It's almost always a diet of baked beans that week, even when it's not a month where I've moved house, booked flights for a Christmas trip, and paid off my car rego. No wonder fifty dollars seemed like finding the welcome stranger.

I spent the rest of the afternoon merrily plotting not only how to spend it (anything that wasn't sensible, really), but thinking on where it could have come from. I wasn't sure when I'd last worn the jacket. I knew it had been some time this year, but I couldn't say if I'd ever put my hands in the pockets. Some good fairy, evening out the karma stakes a little? Making up for the torrent of crap that rains over my desk at work every single day? Or perhaps a visit from a leprechaun who had been through the currency exchange on his way into the country? A parting gift from the old flatmate, as a reward for being "the best flatmate ever", for simply being clean, not hogging the bathroom, and not being smelly?

It was almost the end of the day when my reverie was brought to a mundane end. I remembered when I'd last worn the jacket, and where the money had come from. Turns out, I'd worn it to Mum's birthday dinner, and the cash was the payment from my brother for his share of her present.

I think I prefer the karma fairy. But I can still hold out hope that she's out there somewhere, just trying to find her way through the crap.

The road more travelled

It's been hard to avoid a sense of being left behind lately. Everyone seems to be sorted out, whether it's in relation to their careers, their finances, their relationships, or their families. Everyone, that is, except me, stuck in a place where I feel that I've never completely grown up.

Of course, there are advantages to not growing up. You can get away with star fishing in a massive bed, because you're not sharing it with anyone. You can spend your time however you want to; if there's a TV show you want to watch, the only thing that might stop you is another equally appealing show being on at the same time. Your sleep is undisturbed, and you never have to fight for the bathroom. You owe nothing to anybody, unless of course you've borrowed it first. If you want to take off to the other side of the world, the only thing stopping you is your bank balance. Yes, there are definite good points.

But the bad seems to be out weighing the good recently. In my family, I still feel like the little kid. I'm the only one left who is not partnered up, one of the only two without children and a marriage. Even my younger cousins are now all married. My younger sister-in-law is due to pop out her second child sometime in the next couple of weeks; the cousin a year younger than me is not far behind her with her first. My boss earns twice the cash that I do, owns two houses and has a partner that she is planning a family with; she's three years older than me. My closest friends either own homes or are looking to buy. They are in jobs that they enjoy, and they're well paid. Many of them are also in relationships.

And then there's me.

I'm single, with no prospects on the horizon. I am extremely badly paid in a job that, on a good day, I tolerate but never love. I have no idea what to do with my life, and have been drifting along without hope of improvement for years now, dabbling around the edges of the problems but too chicken to actually do something that will decide one way or another for me. I tried living on my own, and found that I could barely keep my nose above the financial waters, so had to go back to sharing a house. Although I am older than at least half of my female relatives, I do not have a family of my own; wanting does not bring anything into effect in that area, and my existence is too precarious to risk a solo effort. While everybody else seems to have progressed in at least one area of their life, I have comprehensively wallowed.

It's tough being alone in this world, too. Everything is geared towards couples, from travel to restaurants, to advertising, to radio competitions. Couples and families. The assumption was always that I would have been married and settled by now, a couple of kids in tow. It hasn't happened - not just for me, but for many women I know. Failing that, I was going to have dazzled literary circles with my writing, designed award winning houses, done something to have an impact on the world, rather than becoming the person who holds up people's dream homes because their design is 10cm too close to a boundary. I was supposed to at least make enough cash that I would be able to afford my own place, somewhere to hide my miserable self. It seems that I have failed comprehensively.

I usually try not to get down about things beyond my control; if I did, I'd be in a permanent state of misery. But today, for some reason, I have succumbed to the temptations of chocolate and junk food, to misery, fear, and loneliness. Tonight, it seems too hard to keep up the smiling face of the fat person, the cliche of crying within is ringing a little too true. Tonight, I feel that everybody else is moving forwards, and I'm going backwards. About the only signs of increasing maturity are the soft laughter lines around my eyes, and what I'm starting to believe are silver, rather than golden, strands that occasionally reveal themselves in the thick mass of my hair. I'm tired of pretending that I don't care, that it doesn't hurt to see someone with the life I pictured for myself.

Tonight, of not on other nights, the walls can come down a little, and I can say, with complete honesty, that family functions are a bitter pill to swallow. I may gripe about them a little at other times, but the reason never really comes out. The truth is, that when my outspoken, bitter and twisted grandmother comes out with her barbed comments about weight, about the idea that I have ruined my life by travelling instead of settling down, there are times when I almost believe that she's right. There are times when I look at the life of my cousin, my oldest and probably closest friend, and, whatever I think of her husband, I wonder why that never comes to me. When I look around the table of coupled up people, and find myself seated opposite Nana, as the only other single around the table, and I wonder if this is what life will be like for always, the sense that everybody else is happy, and I alone am not. And you have to wonder, where did it all go wrong? Was it in wanting things that were never meant for me? Or was it in trying too hard to do everything, to be everything? Perhaps it was in wanting it all, and not narrowing my focus. Or maybe it was just never the right thing for me and I'm pining for things that would never make me any happier than I am right now.

Or maybe it was in disappearing down a worm hole of 'What if?'

When I grow up...

When you're a kid, everybody asks you what you want to be when you grow up. Fireman, astronaut, princess, - they rank high on plenty of kids lists, I'm sure. But I never really wanted any of those things. Sure, I liked the idea of being a hero, or of having people running around having to do exactly what I, beautiful beyond belief, wanted them to. But my aim never seemed to be as fantastical as all of that. For a long time, I wanted to be an author. This was back in the days when I actually finished the stories I started (although, based on evidence found in several exercise books buried deep in cupboards when helping my parents move from the family home this month, I clearly didn't finish them all then, either). Of course, those stories ran to 10 pages of illustrated drama - my all time favourite is titled "Murder in the Dark", written at age 10, and featuring dripping knives, things that go bang, and finishing with an arrest after the gruesome death scene - but hey, for a kid, they were master pieces. I was convinced that I would be published.

Once I'd given up on that dream, or at least pushed it further back in my mind, I wanted to be in the Air Force. Blame it on being made to watch The Right Stuff and Top Gun too many times, but I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I had visions of me flying all over the world, doing aerobatics, being an ace like the ones I saw in movies. Reality put paid to that dream when I got to about 16. As an unfit, lazy female, there was no way I was ever going to be put in charge of several million dollars worth of fighter plane. If I was lucky, they'd let me fly a cargo plane; women didn't get to do combat operations. And thank god for that, is all I can say, because the thought now of being in that situation is enough to scare the pants off me.

I think the last dream I had was to be a journalist; yes, the shy kid in the corner who has barely met a deadline in her life and certainly never voluntarily asked a question, you'd make a fine member of the press. One of my class mates did follow this road, into TV news. The other day I saw her interviewing the former deputy principal of my school and having to criticise her; it must have been a kind of bittersweet moment for both.

Notice, though, when asked what you want to be, it's always a job. No kid ever says they want to grow up to be kind, or funny, or anything that involves a personality trait. Maybe I'm noticing this because I'm evaluating what I want to be when I finally finish growing up - because 30 clearly isn't grown up enough. What will I end up being? I'm yet to settle on a dream that fits, but I don't want to resign myself to the idea that I will never find myself somewhere that is truly and completely me. Yes, I enjoy my current job most of the time. I could do without the whinging of a colleague, without the stupidity of people, but as far as jobs go, it's not bad. Somewhere in London, L is picking herself up off the floor at me saying that a job isn't bad. But I conceded long ago that work is a necessity; it just could be more...me.

So the search continues. My recent run-in with writing a thesis has put academia firmly out of my head. I've tried architecture and interior design with some success, but little joy. So the question remains; when I grow up, what will I be? If I figure it out, I'll let you know...

The Whooshing of a Deadline

Douglas Adams once said that he loved deadlines. More specifically, he loved the "whooshing" sound they made as they flew by. I'm getting a closer acquaintance with the whoosh today. My thesis draft is due on Monday, yet here I am, writing another blog entry. Interesting fact; the number of blog entries I make correlates pretty closely with the number of things on my to-do list. There's an inverse relationship between blogging and the number of days left on a deadline, as well. But somehow, on a glorious sunny spring day in Melbourne, it seems especially harsh that I have to be cooped up inside and writing about Marxism. I know, it's self inflicted. I'm not asking for sympathy. I have a feeling I wouldn't get much anyway. I'm just having a moan. Anything to keep me from examining the question of women as consumers/consumables. Yes, sounds entertaining, doesn't it.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many ways there are to procrastinate, if you really put your mind to it. I read somewhere that many perfectionists procrastinated, because they were afraid that nothing they could do would be up to standards, so it's better not to try. I must be the ultimate perfectionist, because I'm notorious for putting things off to the last second. At least this time I won't have someone nearby telling me I look dead when I surface after a weekend of no sleep. L is still safely in London, and nobody else here would tell me so bluntly except my Nana. Sorry Nana, no visits until my sleep pattern returns to normal.

All of which adds up to the fact that I should be doing something else. Anything to do with my thesis, actually, as long as it has a direct relationship. So what am I doing instead? Blogging. Playing online solitaire. Wandering through dating websites. Hell, I'm even considering housework right now, so desperate am I to avoid putting pen to paper - or hands to keyboard, at least. Maybe make a cake. Pathetic, isn't it. Meanwhile, the whoosh is getting louder...

Irony has a name

This week has been a teensy bit surreal. Not sure where it came from, why it came, or how, but I wish it would go away. Because out of the blue, for no real reason, I'm suddenly missing London.

Yep, that's right. The weather in Melbourne turns nice, I get myself set up in a great flat, I pick up my new car tomorrow and I'm in a job that I actually quite like, with the prospect of some financial security looming, and suddenly I'm missing the grey, grim life that I led for the past 2 years. Go figure.

I first noticed it last Friday, after a night out with work people. Maybe it was because it was the first night out with them that I'd had, a night where nobody I knew was driving, where I stumbled home in the wee sma's, not having to sneak around fearful of waking anyone, or hoping that there was nobody deciding that I'd slept enough. Maybe it's down to the looming thesis deadline that's evoking memories of late nights in London, or perhaps it was the arrival of some London-related mail. I know I triggered it properly by downloading the latest episodes of Spooks, and reminiscing about all the times that I've run through the Bakerloo platforms at Charing Cross Station, just like Lucas et al were doing in the most recent, trying to pick where they were filming, and getting excited when I recognised it, just like I used to do with Australian films when homesickness started to bite back in London.

Or perhaps it's really all down to L's announcement that she is definitely coming back to Melbourne at the end of this year. It's truly the end of an era once she gets back. Sure, I've still got friends there, there are still people who I would visit if I was to go back. But she is the only one that I knew over there that I also knew here before I left. And when she comes back, it is almost certain to mean that I am here for good as well. And much as I'm loving being back in Melbourne - and don't get me wrong, I love this city like no other - I'm missing some of the freedom of being over there.

Over there I didn't get nightly phone calls from my mother. I didn't feel sit around doing nothing, because it's next to impossible to pin anyone down without booking them months in advance. I was out and about, doing things on whims without having to justify it to anybody. There is a freedom to living on the other side of the world to what you consider your real life, and I miss that. I miss the adventure of wandering a city that is older than my country, older than I can contemplate, where you turn the corner and suddenly you're looking at something that pre-dates not only your own country, but the one you're standing in as well. The twists and turns, the people.

I never thought I would come back here and wax lyrical about London. Maybe it's the realisation that I really can't move back there that has set me off. I don't think I would move back. But I would pick up huge chunks of it and move them here if I could. I think I understand what it was that made the colonialists attempt to reconstruct England in Australia, at least to a certain extent. I'm glad they did.

Actually, I think I know what has set me off. It's the realisation that both of my brothers are deserting the family Christmas, leaving me defenceless on Annual Family Fight Day. I can see their point; it's the first time I've been home for the festive season since 2008, so it's about time I shouldered some of the burden. It feels strange and slightly wrong to be once again contemplating a hot Christmas, let alone one at home but without half my family around.

It's frustrating to think of just how homesick I was before I made the decision to move back here, only to find that I'm missing London now. I had thought I was settled, but it seems I've been kidding myself, at least a little. I'm not really. It's nice to have a home, it's nice to be home, but damn I love to travel. Guess I'll just have to get down to planning another little adventure...

Nit Picking

I've been indulging in a little naval gazing lately, partly brought about by a dose of the flu, partly by the weather, which has made it so that I'm terrified to set foot outside the house for fear of falling on my arse, getting filmed doing it, and ending up on funniest home videos. That's led to a whole lot of examining why I'm so clumsy and why I'd rather sit inside and look at the pretty through the window than venture out and experience it first hand. Because it has been pretty. And I do love snow once I lever myself out of the chair and pull on every item of clothing I own - not just because it's cold, but also in a vain attempt to cushion as much of me as possible; given that I woke up this morning feeling like I'd managed to dislocate both hips in my sleep, I think it's a futile exercise.

But at least I think I've found the source of my inner klutz. It's a result of my innate laziness. The incident where I tripped and ploughed headfirst into the side of a train? Was because I'm too lazy ti lift my feet properly after the first hundred metres of sprinting. Being falling-down-sober in the casino and ending up with a seriously sprained ankle and a trip out of the service entrance in a wheel chair? Because I was too lazy to pay attention to just how many stairs there were. The ball flying off my own hockey stick and into my face? Product of a half-arsed attempt to tackle someone in a training drill. Doing the splits getting off a bus in Tallinn Christmas before last? Because I was too lazy to use muscles properly to step down slowly and just went flop - in more ways than I'd expected as it turned out. And my current inability to walk down the icy footpaths now that London has officially stopped gritting any non-major roads? That would be my failure to develop the stomach muscles necessary for balance.

Given half a chance, I could easily become one of those hermits who crops up in kids movies, the one who has the messy, rundown house but is never seen. The scary neighbour who, like Boo Radley, the only reason you know they're still in there is because you haven't seen someone carry them out yet. And the inevitable consequence for me of living like that would be the way they'd eventually have to get me out of the house; it would also be like something off the TV, only it would be the shows where they have to remove the wall of the house and use a crane to lower out the lard ball trapped within. My laziness is accompanied by a deep and abiding love of all things bad for me. Television, books, writing, hell, even sewing. So many things that can keep me occupied for days, weeks, months, without needing to step beyond the bounds of the living room, the kitchen, my bedroom. As long as there is something for my mind to do, I could be content. Strangely, my mind has never been lazy. It's always been rather active, in fact, mostly in search of reasons for me not to be up and moving. I guess something had to move, just to prove that I was alive.

But it turns out that I've always been lazy, right from the very beginning. When I was still rolling around on the floor, refusing to even sit under my own steam at an age when most kids were walking, I was taken to the doctor for fear that there was something seriously wrong with me. And it turned out there was. I have been medically diagnosed as stubbornly lazy. When propped on cushions, I would dig my heels in until I was once again lying on my back. I learnt to talk incredibly early so that I could order my brothers to bring me anything I wanted. I'm fairly certain that this early show of determined sloth had resulted in the lack of stomach muscle definition I am blaming for my appalling balance. My suspicions weren't contradicted by last weekend's phone call to my parents.

I seem to have been a topic of general conversation in Melbourne, where they have been wondering how I cope with the cold (refer above for the answer: I don't. I make an environment where it isn't cold and I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any alternative). There have been news reports of people falling and breaking bones. Mum is justifiably convinced that I'm going to join the ranks of these people. Given my track record, I can understand the concern. She was trying to make sure that I had the right shoes on when I went outside, but I promised her I hadn't left the house without wearing hiking boots since Christmas, that it wasn't that I didn't have the right shoes, but rather that I didn't have the right balance. Mum's response was typical, fast and to the point.

'Yes, you were never very good at rollerskating, either, were you.'

Confirmation from an unexpected source - when your mother doesn't defend your abilities, you've really got no hope, and besides, how many other people went rollerblading and ended up getting stuck on tramlines? I was a truly terrible skater - I've cringed every time I set foot outside this week until the overnight rains washed away the last of the snow and ice. If they hadn't, I might have been forced to dig my heels in once more, but this time to avoid being flat on my back. One of these days, I'll just give up and stay inside. And on that day, you can call me Boo.