Author: ThirdCat

Watershed

It was our intention to be away for definitely two years, but expecting ourselves to stay away longer. Like at least three, possibly four.

But two years, definitely, for sure.

Then, as you know, things turned pear-shaped, went arse-up, generally soured and I started to see things a little differently. I still wanted to make the two years, I didn’t want to run away again, I wanted to give things a chance.

I had to develop some good coping strategies. One of those strategies was to start taking things in smaller chunks. I’ll get to June, I said to the mister and see how I feel after my trip. Made that. I’ll stay til Christmas, I told the mister and see how it goes from there. Got there, still going okay. Came back from the Christmas trip, things had changed a little. Plus the weather was freaking glorious, and the lawn in our courtyard took root. Okay, I said to the mister, the March school break.

Then I got my job, and all of a sudden things were easier. I am going to be extraordinarily sad to say goodbye to my job when the time comes. In fact, if I were living anywhere else, I would probably never leave that job. It is my dream job, and not only that, the people I work with are wonderful.

Nonetheless, for me, this is not a city of permanent livability and the only reason I know I can stay is because I know that I will go. It is the future makes the now seem possible.

The problem with this state of mind is that my brain is constantly looking ahead. In my mind, I make calculations…how many months, how many weeks, even, one time, how many days. The future is a good place to think and to dream about, but it is not a place to live.

If I’m just going to spend my time dreaming of the time when this time will be the past, then I should just pack up now. Passing time by wishing it away is not time well spent.

So, I am trying very hard to do that whole living in the now. There is nothing more important than the thing you are doing now. The past is gone, the future is yet to come, only the now is here. And so on. I am trying to concentrate on getting my book written, enjoying my job, watching my children laugh. When I feel my heart race in anticipation of what might be, I close my eyes, take a deep breath and bring myself back to now.

Oh, dear…if we get to June and I start quoting Elizabeth Gilbert at you, you will tap me on the shoulder, take me into a quiet corner and have a word with me, won’t you?

Regrouping

Something happened. And I want to tell you about that something, only I’m having trouble working out how to tell you what I have learned from that something, without the other people who were around being able to read anything into it. Do you know what I mean? Even though I have separated myself and don’t want to make any judgement – good or bad – about anyone else, just by reflecting on myself, it will appear as if I’m reflecting on other people too. Get it?

I’m particularly sensitive about it all, because in the aftermath of that something, I said something hoping to have one effect, but causing another. Tried to do a good thing, but made things worse.

Words are such tricky things.

Sometimes you think they are diamonds, but they are really shards of glass.

And howcome they sometimes don’t reveal their form until they have left you and reached someone else?

I suppose it’s the kind of experience that, at some time or another, will wrap itself in a cloak of fiction and present itself to the world. But I’m not in fiction-writing mode at the moment. I’m doing memoir.

Which, of course, causes me to reflect constantly on which parts of which of my stories I tell. I’m at the point now where I’m comfortable with the lines I’ve drawn. It’s about me and my dad and my mum, and sometimes me and my grandfather, so I’m trying not to mention other people at all, though the mister gets a guernsey, and the lads do feature. That means that it’s incomplete in some senses, that my parents are represented only from my point of view. But in memoir, as I’ve discovered, all of those decisions are a trade-off of some kind of another.

Anyhoo, I’d best be getting on if anything at all is going to be finished anytime soon.

This is really only half a blog post, isn’t it?

Another way of looking at it

He says: ‘Mum, ever since you’ve got that computer you’ve just been living on it.’

I reply: ‘I’m trying to get my book written, I need to work really hard on it, otherwise I will never finish it.’

He asks: ‘What’s this one about?’

I tell him: ‘It’s a memoir…’

He interrupts: ‘Oh, so it’s like your memories?’

I say: ‘Sort of.’

He is perceptive: ‘So it’s about Denis, right?’

I say: ‘Yes, and some other people.’

Eagerly: ‘Me? Am I in it?’

Thinking quickly about how I’m going to answer it: ‘Well, I don’t want to write too much about you and your brother…’

Interrupting (again): ‘Because we’re not memories, right?’

Liveblogging the South Australian election

I intended to follow up my original liveblog of the 2006 South Australian election with a liveblog of this year’s election. But then, thanks to twitter I have discovered that Amber Petty is running the live blog on The Advertiser adelaidenow website.

WHAT THE FUCK?

I am too depressed to speak. Here in Abu Dhabi, I’m listening to the 891 livestream, but apparently they’ll be having Alexander Downer on soon, so I’ll have to turn it off.

Preparing myself

The looming summer dominates our conversations. We are delaying, as long as we can, switching the air conditioners on, knowing that it will be November before we turn them off again. But we are starting to sweat, we are seeking shade whenever we can, we are wearing skirts and short-sleeved shirts. We take deep breaths of each bearable day, savouring them, trying to embed their memory in our flesh. There are so few left.

For all that things are better this year than they were last, I would still rather be at home.