we're all making our own sense of things
So I was in my garrett, writing a new story that begins like this:
“If he asks, she will tell him she grew the flowers. In the garden bed behind the shed. She’d planted them in May, forgotten she’d even put them in.”
But it turns out the daylight robber I thought I could hear in the kitchen (below me) was a pigeon. And it turns out beagles are good at catching pigeons.
And the story is unlikely to be what I thought it would be when I began.
So, we need to decide on a spelling.
Is it ‘yous’ or ‘youse’?
PS And don’t be smart – it isn’t ‘use’.
I would like to write a little about the relationship (or the contrasts or the comparisons between or whatever word you would use) between Helen Garner’s decision to use the name ‘Helen’ as the narrator of The Spare Room and the way bloggers decide to use their own names or synonyms or some combination of the two or sometimes change their minds (and what happens after that).
It is potentially very interesting, I think, to talk about such things. For example, I feel myself blogging very differently now that I am merely pseudonymous and no longer anonymous.
However, I can’t write about such things, because I have not read the book. It’s all a bit too close to home right now all of that about death and anger and so forth. I’ve picked the book up three or four times now – I almost know the first page by heart – but it’s not going to work. I won’t be reading for it a while.
Have you read Dorothy Porter’s El Dorado? You should. Let me know when you’ve read it, and I will tell you a little about how reading El Dorado kept making me thing about blogging.
And if you’ve got nothing to do, do feel free to come and help me conquer this Mountain of Washing.
This evening, I am watching Look Both Ways and drinking exactly the right amount of red.
It’s that kind of night, don’t you think?
Do you know why it’s one of my favourite films? Because of the train driver and his son. One of the most beautiful depictions of the fragility of it all. Ever.
PS This is the view from my the verandah at Kangaroo Island. I found it on my camera the other day.
PPS (sorry, Drew, I can’t remember what you said it was supposed to be the second time) I do not lust after William McInnes in the way that you probably expect me to – as previously discussed.
Because of reasons*, we stop on the way home so that I can buy a new toothbrush. We agree that I will collect a bottle of milk as well. The promised showers are much in evidence and it is getting late. So, it is definitely dark, but not exactly stormy. The mister sits in the car with the boys. I go in.
I have been to this supermarket many times before and so I find the aisle with the toothbrushes easily.
I stand, and I look at the array. I close my eyes for a moment and then I turn away.
I return to the car, open my door, poke my head in, which leaves my bottom in the rain.
I say: ‘which toothbrush do I want?’.
The mister says, after he has rubbed at his balding head and I have wondered to myself ‘when will balding no longer be a process, and become a state of being bald’: ‘you’re serious, aren’t you?’ and I reply.
‘Yes.’
He says ‘stop wasting my time’ in the tone he very rarely applies to his words. I say ‘will you go and choose it for me?’
His silence – momentary though it is – is that particular parental silence which asks ‘what kind of precedent is this’.
‘All right,’ he says. He is gone longer than I expect him to be.
When he returns – with a toothbrush, milk and a packet of lollies which he shoves between his seat and his door before the children can see them – I say ‘you see, it was hard’ and he says ‘the toothbrush was easy, the lollies were hard’ and I say ‘why, they’re just all variations on a theme of compressed sugar’ and he says ‘oh, why didn’t I think of lolly bananas, that’s what I should have got’.
We are at the railway line by then. We are not stopped.
I say ‘time was, there was only soft, medium, hard, and the colours were only primary and maybe orange. Do you remember? They were all Tek. In the old days, choosing a toothbrush wasn’t hard.’
The mister says ‘next time, just go and pick the first one you see that says medium. There’s no difference after that.’
I say ‘yes there is’ he says ‘no, there’s not’ and by then we are home and all that is left to do is put the children to bed, eat the lollies and clean our teeth.
*oh, yes, every moment of my life is loaded with significance
Last night, I realised that it has now been several weeks (at least) since I sent ‘be my friend’ messages to the three or four people on facebook who share my name.
And not one of them seems to have accepted!
Why on earth not? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Obviously, I have misunderstood this social networking getup.
Amongst the seaweed cliffs, your feet are in the water, the wind is in your soul.
All that is hard is behind you.
Ahead, endless hope.
You are alone and on the edge because you want to be.
Why did you let yourself forget that you can feel like this?
Turn around again, you can do anything, be anyone.
Don’t forget the whispers.
Bring them home.
There’s lots of things I’ll miss about the holidays, but this isn’t one of them.
What was I thinking?
Also, as you may remember, I’ve been spending time cleaning up my computer so that it stops stopping and so that I can get some more photos on. But the wordpress photo uploader really isn’t working that well. Are there things I should know?
Not much to say, really. Deciding whether to watch Grey’s Anatomy or get an early night. Have to get up in the morning to make lunches for school.
Rock n roll.
I was just wondering, and it’s no use asking the mister because he’s on the couch watching footy, so thought I’d ask you: do I need a Second Life? It’s tempting, because this one, the First One with which I was gifted, is a teensy bit exhausting right now, and likely to remain so for some time. Would it be any different with a Second one? Or does it just make things twice as worser?
There’s no need to answer. It’s all rhetorical. Isn’t it?
