as opposed to

AUGUST 27 

F home from school sick. Red cheeks, fever, listless. He lay about  all day yesterday, dozing and flicking through Simpsons comics. Last night when his dad was out, he snuggled into bed with me for the first time in ages. He’s twelve, and I keep expecting him to metamorphise any minute into a grunting hairy omnivore. But for now, he’s happy for me to stroke his forhead and fuss.

(a memory: Aboriginal community in Arnhemland,1980’s. The women trudging along the beach together, barefooted, wailing and grieving for their boys. Their adolescent sons  had been snatched away in the night by uncles and carried off for mens business, for growing up. There had been days of nervous anticipation among the boys beforehand, then their seats empty in the classroom) 

Today: I go for a virtuous early morning walk up the hill.  Do not turn on computer, do not check emails, do not rouse the iMac from her midnight blankness. 

Its good to feel my heart pump, and the cold dry air in my throat. Though to be honest, I only vaguely note these physical phenomena. Mentally I am off with the pixies. I barely remember to even see the early morning light on  the high blue range, or to pause in my usual pausing spot to look down on the luminous green paddocks with the toffee-coloured cows. 

There is a bright perky bird with a topknot and a striped chest like a French sailor sitting in some bamboo when I’m almost back down the hill. Brings me to my senses.I look it up in the book at home: A Pacific Bazza. 

After my walk I eat a virtuous (as opposed to virtual) breakfast of eggs and tomatoes and mushrooms, then go to buy my vegetables at the local farmers market. It’s  colourful & homespun. I buy organic avocadoes and custard apples and chat to various people & feel mildly snubbed by someone who probably doesn’t even recognise me seeing as we’ve only met briefly. Then I catch myself  being the snubber ( as opposed to the snubbed)  waving an airy hello and moving on briskly from a person who made recent friendly overtures to me. Aaaach. All this reaching out and risking and rejecting, so wearying.  Much easier in cyberspace, through The  Looking Glass.

Apple crumble and  cup of tea sitting in the sun with T after the market in her yard full of vegetables and purple flowers. She gazes at a  clump of greenery and says  ‘Growing those potatoes gives me inordinate pleasure’ 

late afternoon Grumpy grumpy grumpy after too long on the phone to robots and robotic humans, trying to change the billing address, forgotten the password, but it’s a different password, a telephone password as opposed to an online password, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, account number, punch it into your keypad. Telstra and Energex phone calls: I put them off  because I know I’m going to end up in a rage...and I do. I wish the whole system would collapse and  there would be no more pin numbers to remember ever again, or Bpay biller codes , or robots at the end of phone lines  with their phoney robot cheerfulness. 

I don’t  turn the iMac on until  after the Telstra phone call, which has left me feeling drained of all inspiration. At least there is a  vase of daffodils on the kitchen table,  and the dishes are all washed and back in the cupboard.

Just noticed I have said  'as opposed to' three times