a spare friday night...

It’s Friday. 10:12pm

I decided to turn Netfix off for the night. Four candles lit, ok three now; I swivelled my chair around to see that the candle by the window had melted down into a pile of white wax attaching itself to picture frames and running down the wall, into a crack that was there before I moved in… I promise.

‘In Rainbows’ is playing, the vinyl spins, and I left the lid up. The sound carries, I put the second speaker on the other side of the room and I’m glad I did.What is it, fifty-one days? Fifty until I leave? Yes, fifty. Not just leave this room, this house, this suburb, this state but this country…home.

It’s a good thing. It is. I just have to take time and look at things, these things in this room. The places I go, the people; the people I love because I’m counting and unlike some seasons where you may only feel a change, this one has a definite, abrupt ending and I know it.

“I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover” 

 this song is playing now and I’ve always been drawn to lyrics I don’t understand maybe because I have to try harder to find meaning. One of my two plans this year is to see Radiohead play at one of the five festivals they’re headlining in Europe.

There’s so much to do, you know?

I have these extravagant ‘to do’ lists-

+things to think about

+friends living there

+predicted costs/payments so far

+work I could get

+visa check list

+notes on travel

+things I want to do before I go

That’s not even all of them…

 =i took this in Tasmania= 

And you know I wanted to do some really neat things before I left like give away all my art work and write a letter to someone different everyday and take more photos and get better at life admin but it’s not really happening, especially that last one…I am thirty in a few weeks, are you ever ready for your next year, your new number?I’m thankful I was never one of those girl that had grand ideas of “settling down” by any certain age. I’m anything but settled; I’ve never really liked the sound of that, to “settle down”. If to settle means to be comfortable then I want none of it. I am determined to fight comfort until the end. Although I do have fleeting thoughts of a lovely someone, some day… I feel like it’s overwhelming because I’m doing this on my own. This is the way I’ve always done things and so I believe it’ll work out but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The nerve pain in my L5 S1 came back yesterday and walking is hard again now and all my thoughts took me right back to this time last year, when the pain was at it’s worst and I felt it all. 

I felt so alone… It’s this world, this culture.I attended the Melbourne travel expo on the weekend. They shouted out special over the PA system while herding us through the gates. There were people breathing on each other, so many people. Holding flyers, selling you your next grand adventure, shiny free gifts; pens, luggage labels and other useless items. Granted, I use pens, a lot, but still I wasn’t interested; probably because they were plastered with labels so you could walk away and still be a sales person on their behalf.I’m traveling on my own, looking for a one-way flight; I know it’s my choice. I’d signed up for some travel info session- [the first of a series of poor choices...actually I think being there was technically the first] endless power-point presentations on how much better your life will be when you leave the country with someone you like. All the “Expo Specials” were for those traveling in a pair or in groups, all the flight sales were for return airfares. I’d been there wandering aimlessly for three hours until a friendly “expert” lead me to a line where I waited an hour, while couples and families made their plans around me; smiling and laughing at their future, as if making plans and reality were the same thing.

=i took this in Tasmania #too= 

I wanted to be patient, I wanted to be ok, and I wanted to control my feelings; particularly when an elderly couple pushed their way in front of me after I hit the forty-minute waiting mark. Yet I also wanted to try and understand what it was I was experiencing in that moment.The only redeeming quality of the expo was the free wifi, I sat down on the floor, a million strangers moved around me as I streamed The National into my ears to calm me. I had never wanted to be swallowed up by the music more than in that moment.

I love spending time on my own. Sometimes it just hits me that I don’t know what any other way is like. I’ve been on my own for so long that I have naturally adapted. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner, sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in….” and I’m leaving that behind too.

There on the floor flicking through some travel magazines that I never asked for, which came with the free tote bag, labelled “Live, Love, Travel” my eyes began to well up as I remembered traveling through Tasmania a year ago, one night at a restaurant… and that conversation while ordering my meal.

Waitress: any thing else?

Me: No thanks.

W: so, that will be all?

M: ahh yeah… thank you.

W: you don’t want to order another meal?

M: who for?

W: you must be waiting for someone… or is it just you?

M: it’s just me.

W: sorry… we don’t really get many people eating here alone.

After that awkward interaction I began to wonder about our culture; I wondered why restaurant tables are preset for two or more people. In a world were we are constantly fighting for independence or a sense of individuality, we need only to look around us and see that almost every corner implies co-dependence is the ‘normal’, acceptable and approved way of living. Just once I’d like to go somewhere the seating is arranged and see a place set for one.I am happy with the way I’m living and for that I give no credit to a culture that suggests that I am not enough on my own, when that is exactly what I am. Enough. And so are you. 

#hisnamewasfrank...

There so much history here for me and there is something very beautiful about coming back to this place; that feeling of home. Open air, old things, old humans and familiar love.

=this is the view from #nannaandfranks backyard= 

If there's one thing i know about family- it's that it's complicated.

Different personalities connected through blood, excepted to love one another. We can't always get it right. My parents couldn't keep it together, although they may have tried. My father- his affair with his secretary, when i was fifteen. My mum- her Nigerian scam fake lover situation. i needed an example and Frank was it. Although i didn't realise it until the night before he died.

=#nannaandfrank out the front of franks shed=

Nanna and frank had six daughters and when the first grandchild came to earth he thought he was too young to be called grandfather so we always called him Frank...he was grand.

Frank grew up in one house, he never left this place. He never went overseas; in fact he never left Victoria. He said "If you want to see the best view in the world, you just need to stand on mt blowhard and look north." Frank died two years ago now, and i know he'll be remembered for what he did rather than what he never did. 

=the old fire station across the road from #nannaandfranks house=

Nanna and Frank taught me that relationships take dedication and forgiveness and hope. 

Frank made jam, from berries he grew. He was a skilled blacksmith; made his daughters a swing, that i still use when i visit. He was never too busy to spend time with a friend or help in any way he could. The post office run out of their house for years, they taught ballroom dancing classes together. Frank volunteered for the local five service and a helpline for people suffering depression. He could re-sight the great Australian poets and serviced all the windmills in his district. When we were little ladies he would pick roses from his garden, rap them up in tinfoil and hand us a little bouquet when we would visit. Every year without fail, he would personally deliver a real christmas tree to our house. In my young mind he became the smell of pine.

 =the truck in their backyard=

 He never talked about all the things he did, never boosted about how much he knew. He was content to sit with his family, while we ate the soup he'd just made and waited patiently for his famous jelly slice. i loved that stuff.

 =Frank's father invented a type of rubber used on the wheels of a horse and cart, one of his family's cart's is on exhibition at Sovereign Hill, in Ballarat.=

Frank was all deaf toward the end but was still altogether in the head. I was thankful for that because that night, as he lay dying, i said "thank you for being a wonderful grandfather Frank" and he still knew who i was. I took a cloth and run it under the tap and gently wiped the sweat off his forehead. Afterwards Nanna said that was the very best thing i could do for him. 

=They still chop wood because they can't cook if they don't have fire.=

The next morning i was waiting for mum to fly in, my aunties has left and i was the only one at the hospital, in the room, alone with the body of Frank. It was the strangest thing, the light coming in through the window and i swear i saw him breathe. But i didn't... i'd never seen so many people at one funeral before. He had influenced so many, loved so many. Frank is the greatest human i have known. And i am thankful for him, for family. 

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" 'It's a Wonderful Life'

i see this as a rich heritage and i hope my cousins and i can always come back to this place for that familiar love.

 inanystillmoment@gmail.com

photos by mish on hasselbald

one year ago today...

14 feb twothousand and fourteen 

i have this sick feeling of being full and empty all at once. Its the same feeling i've had for a few weeks now i guess... and i can't work out if it started because that boy stopped talking to me or because my aunty died or just because of 2014... either way, in the Melbourne Airport alone waiting for my flight to Vietnam that i booked last night, i find it interesting- life; who we were, who we're becoming and who we'll be in the end.

im usually the kind of person not to make big plans unless there is some reason or purpose; yet when it comes to something i feel i must do, i seem to act immediately- this is one of those times.

2014 has brought my much heartache so far with the one year anniversary of Frank's death, the injustice of what i know the kids from camp have to deal with. Seeing that boy, loving that boy and losing that boy in such a short space of time. My aunty's death, last week, and the pain left behind, almost unbearable. What my uncle and the boys have to face and they are so young and i can't count how many times i've said to myself "it's not ok, it's not fair"

All this and i'm still forced to care for myself when i have never felt so careless, so weak...

I make myself eat, when im not hungry. Make myself talk about it, when i don't want to. Make myself wake, when sleep calls my name and I hear it whisper "forever".

i can't see forward anymore and i catch myself thinking to not be alive wouldn't be such a bad thing and im too curious about all the things i can't see and what they see now- without me. When it really comes down to it and you're low and never have you felt so weak, you still, i still look up to the sky, the sunset ablaze in beauty and i know the sweetness of His love.

How beautiful God is, how constant and never changing. And what i find is that the strength of pure joy and the weight  of worldly pain are together. Just like it was from the beginning- the hurt that God went through, that sacrifice and yet unspeakable love and passion shown on that same day. He has felt everything i feel. 

i am overwhelmed by all the He is and so i find myself longing to be with Him always, in His midst; complete. The Holy Spirit, my great friend, has struck my with a compassion i have never known before; i am very fragile about the simplest of sorrows and human suffering in life. I feel at any moment i could weep, for all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the mystery and i have already- yes, for strangers, cried for them and i don't understand it... 

All i know right now is that im leaving my country for a short time, in search of more of God, a new aspect of His heart [well, new to me]/

Anything could happen and whatever does i know this much- that i will keep coming back to the only one that freely gives perfect peace. Jesus.

#week1review...

+new years- footscray 

+camp life

+weekends off

+also dragons played at bar open

+writing letters

+rooftop bar

+g and t

+button making

+church

+jessica pratt played at the toff

+phone fell from pocket into lake- geelong

+wrote a song

+yarra walks

+small electrical fire in the basement; evacuate building- 2:17am

+almond croissant 

+poziable gifts sent 

+docklands sunset when i thought "i want nothing, except forever"

 

#thetoffintown^