competition

Saturday

We are at The Beach House for the school holidays. 

I dropped F off to spend the day with Leroy, a friend who he’s  known  since they were both in nappies. They went to school together for six years when we lived up here.  L and his sister are spending the weekend with their Dad, who is minding a house we used to visit back in the days of the school car-pool. When F and I  arrive, L’s sister is feeding the horse. I remember that horse. Memories wait for you in old places. 

I remember L’s dad, Stretch too. He is down from Darwin on his regular schedule, in between going out on the prawn trawlers up there. He and the kids are going to watch The AFL Grand Final on television.

F and L grin at eachother - they haven’t seen eachother for 6 months and have both grown about a foot taller - they  punch the footy back and forth, and F tells L what a crap AFL team he’s playing for down south. L tells F that the team they both played for up here - the Pomona Demons, made it to the Grand Final. this year. 

“Yeah, they did real well”, says Stretch, who is sometimes their goal umpire. “I told them ‘Youse just have to believe youse can do it’ “He’s got his stash of beer ready for the afternoon’s entertainment. And sandwiches for the kids. We all want St Kilda to win. 

I head back to the beach, for a few hours of sudden, welcome solitude. I read the John Banville book ’The Sea”, lying in the hammock. All wrapped up in the sound of the sea and my love for this place. 

When I drive out to the hinterland to collect F at the end of the day, they are all kicking the footy about rather half heartedly on the paddock next to the dirt road. I hear that the Grand Final has been a draw. “ Must be that frustratin’ “ comments Stretch, “ for the players. And the coach”  Yeah, and all those poor people who bought tickets and went  to Melbourne specially. How disappointing. There is a general mood of disgruntlement, of not having got satisfaction. Left dangling.  

Privately, and not having watched the game, I am unmoved by this unexpected drama, or rather the lack of drama.

But when I’m watching F play football, I  want his team to win. No one wants a 'win-win' outcome in sport.

Or, unfortunately in politics.The way I felt about Collingwood and St Kilda was a bit like how I felt about the two 'major' parties and  the whole ridiculous election business and the ‘hung parliament’ biz. I mean the prospect of Tony Abbott was appalling, but I was hardly excited about Julia - merely the lesser of two evils. 

“A tawdry , media-based popularity contest spun around superficial appearances, catchphrases and...mass deceit’ That’s how Michael Leunig describes what nowadays passes for ‘democracy’. Yet we really need someone to win that popularity contest. 

We don’t like it, do we, when opposing forces are too equally matched?  We feel deprived if no blood is shed, if there are no winners and losers. It’s primal somehow: No matter how thrilling the game, we want some to prevail, others to be vanquished. It’s a gut thing. Equilibium is so dull!

echidna and man return

Still raining, raining, raining.

‘I wish we would get flooded in’, says F thismorning. 

‘Me, too’ I say.

We did get flooded in for a day earlier this year. At the place where the water covered the road there was a cheerful impromptu early morning  gathering of stranded neighbours. Stopped in our tracks by the water across our road, we stood around by our vehicles, chatting with eachother in the drizzle, as if we had all the time in the world. Most of us are usually  Much Too Busy for such leisurely socialising. Swamp hens hooted. Ducks swam between fenceposts and  on the newly-formed lake where cars usually zoom up and down. Children in gumboots paddled around the edges.

But it’s not raining  hard enough to flood this time. 

A big dark wallaby bounded across the driveway just as we were leaving for school thismorning. Then went boing boing-ing off up the hill. An auspicious start to the day.

‘It’s good that the echidna came back’ says F, sitting next to me in the car. The wallaby had reminded him of the echidna, who we saw several times a few weeks ago by the crumbling  back stairs - before the stairs were re-vamped. 

We worried that the new steps  down to the laundry (and all the noise during their construction) would scare away  the echidna. We haven’t actually seen it again - just the mess it makes, burrowing its way in the same old place, scattering all the new white pebbles that looked so pleasingly neat. Oh well. I guess a bit of mess is a small  price to pay for the privelege of having native animals on your back door step. 

D comes back from Melbourne tonight. I look forward to our cosy little family being reunited. I also know it will be a bit of an adjustment. F and I have been in a comfortable groove together these last few weeks. There is a certain simplicity about being a single parent - one less relationships to maintain and, strangely, much less washing up. 

Than again, I am looking forward to not having to plan dinner every single night and not having to drive to the bus stop every single morning. And to having my buddy back to chat with at the end of the day.

a day at the fair

On Saturday, Steiner School Spring Fair. Off we go, F. and I, in the car early in the morning with piclkes for the produce stall  and a big  garbage bag full of jasmine vines for the flower garland stall. We are almost at school when F. realises he’s forgotten his clarinet. Back we go, just stay calm.  We both started the day feeling reluctant to to get out of bed at all.  

Every year there is a Steiner School Festival - this is our seventh, and  our second at this new school. Each year I feel a vague sense of  guilt and dread as the day approaches. Weekly pre-Festival Newsletters arrive with their exhortations to bake cakes, make jam, grow plants, co-ordinate stalls, sell raffle tickets, sign up for  rosters, participate in your school community.

And every year on the day itself I end up feeling all mushy and full of gratitude and spend half the day in tears because it’s all so beautiful.

The primary school children sing songs to celebrate the coming of Spring. The fantastic music ensemble plays a rollicking version of ‘Sweet Dreams’. Everyone sings ‘Shower The People You Love With Love’ And  dozens and dozens of kids get up on stage and perform  -  from little seven year old angels with wobbly voices, through to teenage boys with hair over their eyes, thrashing electric guitars. 

There are some pretty talented kids performing, but what  really touches me is their poise and confidence, their obvious enjoyment of what they are doing, their comfortable sense of themselves. And their supportiveness of eachother. 

‘Lovely young people!’, I cluck, like a doting grandmother.

Small children in white dresses dance around a maypole and young girls in their first bloom with flowers in their hair giggle innocently together. All the food is home-made. There are no advertising slogans from sponsors, just colourful handpainted signs and rainbow flags and flowers. No blaring canned music or jumping castles. Who needs the so-called ‘real world'? Not me. 

Kids can do craft activities like making candles, felting or silk-painting. There is a rockclimbing wall, skateboarding and a soccer shoot out  down on the oval, where F spends most of the day kicking a footy with his friends. That’s when he’s not stuffing his face with pizza, home made icecream etc.  

People sit around in the Spring sunshine chatting over coffee and cakes, or lying on the grass, or dancing to the music. Even the teenagers look happy.

There is a songwriting comp with performances judged by the director of The Blues Festival. The contestants are mostly aspiring popstars ( some with very silly hairstyles, and black holey stockings) aged 13 to 17. I’m amazed by how good they are.

I have an easy roster this year, making flower garlands. I have some nice conversations among the flowers, with mothers of boys in F’s class, about how our boys are suddenly different, on the threshhold of young manhood.

And an intense little chat with S. & R. about  parenting and boundaries for teenagers. And  about  how our kids’ creativity blossoms with encouragement, not criticism. Etc.

Last year the fete was just a couple of weeks after F. had started at the school. He skulked around miserably, saying that he didn’t have any friends, and wished he was back at his old school in Queensland.  D & I felt much the same though we tried to put a brave face on it. We were among strangers. 

This year the  crowd was full of familiar faces - other parents from school, people I know from choir, book club, people I have interviewed for the paper, even therapy clients. Our new community. I guess that’s the real reason I’m waxing so lyrical. 

doing nothing

MONDAY MORNING

A cold wet stay-at-home-in-pyjamas sort of day. It crosses my mind that I could give F the day off school and give us both the Day of Rest that we need after our hectic weekend. We could pretend it is Sunday. 

I wrestle silently with this idea over breakfast.  In favour of staying home: he is tired and so am I and school is so unrelenting and we need time to Do Nothing.  On the other hand, he doesn’t really need to stay home, and he’d probably get restless and cranky by lunchtime. Also floating around in my head is the idea that It’s a tough old world and we all have to get used to it, and that means tromping off to work or school whether we feel like it or not. Life wasn’t meant to be easy etc. I reckon that lot came from my puritanical old no-fun Scots ancestors.

I abandon the internal debate and  off we go, to the school bus, to collect the mail, to Get On With the Day. To Do Stuff.

On the subject of Doing Nothing: I was in  Israel  in 1974 on Yom Kippur, the ‘Day of Atonement’. I’ve never forgotten it. For 24 hours, from sunset to sunset, almost all human exertions ceased. The streets were empty of vehicles and  all shops, and businesses were closed. There were no radio or television broadcasts, no newspapers. Yom Kippur  is a day of fasting, prayer and repentance, a day of making amends.

My memory is of strolling around Haifa - down the middle of the road - with other young volunteers, and some Israeli boys  from the kibbutz; The traffic-less streets were full of people taking leisurely strolls, indulging in the delight of Nothing To Do. 

We sat on a cliff top by the sea. The young Israeli men with us - I guess they were twenty, though they  had already been to war - told how on this day a year earlier the Yom Kippur War had started. Egypt and Syria made  surprise attacks on Sinai  and the Golan Heights.  Apparently the first messengers bringing news of the attacks were abused - or even had their cars stoned? -  for not respecting Do Nothing Day...

I don’t want to talk about war or politics or religion of the awful endless sibling fight between the Arabs and the Jews. ( or how hurling abuse or stones seems rather against  the whole idea of atonement)

But it’s good to remember how extraordinarily peaceful that day in 1974 felt to me. A day of publicly, politically and religiously sanctioned inactivity. It is decreed you must Do Nothing Today. Almost unimaginable in this world of 24 hour shopping  and electronic communication overload.

Yes, I long for peace and quiet  - but then there is the problem of Not Wanting To Miss Out on Things. And there being so very many attractive distractions on offer...

freedom from icecream

Friday 17th

.

Driving home from the acupuncturist, I saw  a snake. It was sunning itself on the road at the bottom of our drive way. I swerved to avoid it. ‘Summer is coming’ I thought as I watched  it squiggle away, off into the long yellow grass down below the house, where we planted the trees last autumn. I looked it up in the book. An Eastern Brown I think, which we haven’t seen here before. Dangerous, says the book.

The acupuncturist tells me that I give my power away, that’s why my kidney energy is low. He also  suggests I stop eating diary. It causes damp and cold in the body, he says.  

He himself eats no diary, gluten or sugar. It’s simple, he says, it’s about loving your body, it’s about freedom, not deprivation. 

Hmm...why does just thinking about this make me want to run to the kitchen and eat icecream?

the secret to happiness

September 16th 

Thank God for Michael Leunig. I got a book of his out of the library called ‘The Lot’. It’s words - articles and essays - not cartoons. A lot of ‘The Lot’ is about how  f***ked-up contemporary consumer culture/politics/art/media is. How corrupt and hypocritical and dull and tragic so much of human life has become. His observations are as bracing a blast of fresh cool air in a room stuffy with too much hot air. ( I picture a room full of men in suits...) 

A lot of what  Leunig reflects  upon is profoundly depressing. Yet I feel exhilarated reading it. I think it is the power of truth-telling. His personal truth. He’s not trying to impress anyone, sell anything, or make you think he’s a nice guy. 

I loved the very depressing movie Sampson and Delilah for the same reason.  It tells it like it is - neither sensationalises, nor sentimentalises, just calmly tells the truth.  

( Though I  saw  described somewhere as ‘black comedy’...Huh?) 

I will say no more about the Gardener, the garden, the endearing 'alternativeness' of the  Rainbow Region etc.  Except that the workers have gone and I am very relieved. The job, however is not quite  finished. As a parting gesture, thick brown soil (“topdressing’) was spread all over the lawn, which makes it impossible to walk from house to car without collecting mud all over your shoes. 

I can’t resist adding that after what turned out to be the final blow-out (How come you are concreting that path when I never said I wanted it concreted?), one of his sweet offsiders offered me a hug and then inquired ‘ Are you a Virgo by any chance, because you know he’s a Pisces and....”

I  am not a Virgo. And I prefer to diplomatically call it an old fashioned ‘personality conflict’  I have to say truthfully that the whole thing has laid me very low. I hate conflict and generally manage to avoid it.  This one came from such an unexpected  direction. 

Absolutely enough about this whole sorry scenario. I am going to return to Books, which is where I hide, if possible, when real life is feeling too hard. I get some of my best reading done when I am feeling miserable. It’s my guilty addiction. I reach for books  like other people reach for the bottle.  

I’m about two thirds through the Hardy book. Enjoying visiting  the long ago English country side. I’m  hooked in. Now Bathsheba has married the dastardly Sergeant Troy and we can see that things are  going to  end badly.  It is a bit of a soap opera really. I read in the intro that it was originally published in magazine instalments. Every so often I read a really excellent sentence and that keeps me going. I’m also interested and annoyed simultaneously by the authoritative way in which he tells us just exactly what sort of person each of his characters is. ( Forget ‘show don’t tell’)

I woke up at 3 a.m.. last night, worrying about the garden, the mud, and the preserves I’m meant to produce for the school fete next weekend. I know, it’s hardly life-threatening is it?  Amazing what we can find to feed our sense of suffering, in the absence of actual pain, poverty, disease, homelessness or starvation etc.

Both Leunig and Hardy got a look-in, in the wee small hours.

What’s great about Leunig is that he’s also so open and alert to to beauty & simplicity anywhere he happens to find it in among all the crap. 

Today, among the greyness:

- a flock of little birds (Scarlet Honey Eaters?) that suddenly appeared in the bushes next to the verandah flashing red and twittering and flittering then disappearing. 

- masses of pink azaleas

- a grey egret strutting across the driveway

And a woman in purple hippy-chic clothes, including a hat with flowers on it. She smiled at me at the school bus stop this arvo as I was waiting for F, and said ‘I love your colours’ and I said ‘And I love yours!’

( Is this all just too Pollyanna?, always finding 'something to be glad about'? No, I think it may be the secret of happiness...)

Late arvo I used some of the left over flagstones to make stepping stones across the muddy lawn. They look rather good. 

My new friend came over for dinner with her 10 year old daughter. We drank some red wine and talked about Gestalt therapy and Central Australia, and death, and relatives; and  the kids went off and played Monopoly, and somehow by the time I went to bed the ripped-apart feeling was healed up again. The scenic railway ride continues. 

HSP

Tuesday September 14th

D’s birthday. At 8 a.m this morning . F rang  him  in Melbourne to say Happy Birthday Dad, and also  to tell D.  how much money he'd earned busking at the market on Saturday; and to have a little chat about The Footy and who’s in the finals. 

I’ve had a mixed day. It was nice going to the bookshop after school with F. He counted out  forty dollars in small change - his  busking earnings - and bought three books. Dragons, man-eating tigers, boy-heroes etc. Playing ping pong with him when we got home was good too. 

Low point was the computer suddenly quitting the application and not saving my changes - just as I’d completed what I thought was the final version of the Nature Writing piece. Aaaaaargh. I’m so sick of the thing, just want to send it off. 

Chatting with the tuesday morning marimba girls is therapeutic. This morning we discuss whether our male partners are getting grumpier as they get older. On the basis of our informal survey, I’d say at least two out of three husbands get grumpier after turning fifty. Of course we Girls have our own sort of grumpiness too, we admit that. But all it takes is a hug, a sweet self-effacing joke, a bit of a laugh and we lighten up and  let it go! Whereas they hang on and sulk for days.

Is this true? I don’t know. But we have a  laugh. 

Talking of grumpy men: The interminable garden saga. Well at least it is starting to look quite good out there. Although they seem to work awfully slowly - but I daren’t mention it because, well you know why. 

I just wish they’d hurry up, finish, and get out of my space. I  think the reason why I hardly ever get any home maintenance done and the place is falling down around me is because I find it so hard having strangers here in my home and  refuge. Just having a cleaner come every two weeks for a couple of hours is excruciating enough for me. Three workers for  two, nearly  three weeks: I am a wreck!

Lots of people don’t seem to mind this sort of thing at all. People, especially rich people, have nannies and stylists  and gardeners and personal assistants.  Even cooks and maids. I’d be no good as a movie star. And I  would have made a lousy aristocrat because I absolutely could not stand all those maidservants and butlers hovering about the place. Polishing the silver and helping me into my gown for dinner. Erk.

I think I have already admitted here that more than once in the last fortnight I hid out  with the laptop in a corner of  my favourite cafe in town  for hours on end  because I just couldn’t face going home and having to relate to the men in my front yard. Two of them in particular, are always keen to chat. About anything from astrology to ‘the dance between male and female energies.’ (that was today, as I tried to sneak out to the car.)  Oh and occasionally about garden design. I have to walk past them to get to the front door.  The third one - the  quiet, hardworking one - is my favourite.

I’ve wondered at times if there is something a bit pathological about my desire to avoid contact in certain situations. I’ve worried that I was a difficult sort of person - pernickety,  oversensitive, intolerant, aloof. And a terrible procrastinator when it comes to ringing Telstra or going into Harvey Normans. Out in the vexatious noisy, clamouring, high pressure world. I'd rather stay home and read a book. 

Then the other day I came across something on the internet - an article  written by some psychologist, about ‘Highly Sensitive People’. I did the online tick-the boxes ‘Are You A Highly Sensetive Person?’  test. 

Other people's moods affect me, yes, My nervous system sometimes feels so frazzled that I just have to go off by myself, yes, I startle easily, yes, I get rattled when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time, yes, I am bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes, I am conscientious, I make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.. Yes, Yes

etc. etc.

According to the article about 15% -20% of the population are HSPs - too many for it to be pathologised, not enough for it to be widely understood. So there, I’m gonna stop beating myself up for being  wimpy. I’ve  re-framed. I’m merely  HSP.  Oh and by the way , us HSPs also have ‘rich,complex inner lives’ ‘are aware of subtleties’ and are ‘deeply moved by art and music’.