Tuesday night: the city
In Golden Towers diner (a romantic place, it's where we went for late night beers and burgers that Comedy Festival we started dating) we are served by the friendliest of waitresses. I think she is Dutch. At the booth next to us, a woman, blonde and buxom and beautiful, her hair up in a coif, wearing elegant black with a pink silk scarf, perhaps in her mid 50s, sits down. Willie Nelson singing a cover of 'You were always on my mind' is playing on the video juke box. He sings slow and soulful. She sits alone. She orders a lemonade. It comes in a tall glass. And a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, which she eats with a knife and fork. As we leave I turn to glance at her once more. She is reading a book. It is titled 'Bereft'. And yet I can't recall when I last saw someone look so happy and content to be alone in a diner in the city on a Tuesday night.
Enough with the awkward already
Embarrassing, perplexing, inconvenient, thorny, uncomfortable, disagreeable, bewildering, sticky, tricky, delicate, uneasy, equivocal, disturbing, inopportune, painful, troublesome, trying …
What do these words have in common? They are all synonyms for ‘awkward’. Melbourne Comedy Festival is here and reminds us just how awkwardly overused the word ‘awkward’ has become.
Stand up comedians and comedy writers the world over are doing for 'awkward' what Alanis Morisette did for 'ironic' in the 1990s.
“Saw my grandmother naked – awkward!”
“And then he pulled out a cucumber – awkward!”
“Oh, you ordered the steak – (this is) awkward.”
Enough is enough.
Seek ye out comedians who can get through a whole show without using it. And applaud with loud, whole-hearted passion. Let there be nothing embarrassing about your applause. Let your appreciation be anything but uneasy. Let the comedians know unequivocally how much you value their efforts to be linguistically and descriptively diverse.
Let the bewilderment begin!
Bizarre love triangle
Running an errand in Greeves Street, St Kilda, I slow my car to look at street numbers. A blonde woman in a short black ruffle skirt mistakes me for a potential client.
Walking back to my car from the errand, a balding man in a hotted up, lowered, shiny red ute mistakes me for a potential worker.
Back in my car I sit a moment and watch as the two of them find each other, she waving him over like an old friend, he making sure his car is locked.
They adjourn together up an alley way, I am curious as to where they are going – a house, back yard, secluded garage?
I consider following, to add the final touch of resolution to my story. But common sense kicks in. I am not Trixie Belden, there is no mystery to be solved, nothing to be gained.
My minor part in this case of mistaken identity has been played. I drive away.
Letter to a friend
Can you teach me how to be equanimous?
On Sunday?
Over morning tea?
That would be lovely.
Thanks,
E x
In memory
Words this week come from Katharine Hepburn, speaking about Spencer Tracy. They resonated for me particularly in memory of my father, who died 10 years ago this week. Not in an exact way, do you know what I mean? But in a poetic, metaphoric kind of way. Thanks KH:
When I met Spencer I discovered myself, do you know what I mean? That apparently meant a great deal to me. I think it must have. But he had me, I didn't have him necessarily, do you know what I mean? One person has to make that relationship work and I think I knew how and I think I did make it work.
Well in the last years of Spencer's life I didn't act so much because he wasn't feeling too well and he wasn't feeling very confident, and I was in a position to alleviate that situation for him and he was my good, good friend and that seemed wonderful to me, to be that useful.
For all those relationships that are a little bit outside the box and take a long time to understand.
Click your heels
high heeled shoes are problematic
there’s no reason they should make you happy
but sometimes, wearing them at home, for no particular reason
raises the likelihood that something glamorous
or magical
may be just about to happen
Sunday
So much beauty and we are so lucky.
In the sunshine there is time to stand and talk.
The brown chickens peck at watermelon.
My niece asks me to try and catch her shadow.
We drink tea and smile at new neighbours moving into the street.
It is like a TV show but it is real.
For an hour on a Sunday afternoon.
On Holiday
Days of warm, wet nothing. The air
is a bath you stand up in. My hair never
dries. There is nowhere to go except
into a book or television show. I am unwinding.
What will be left?
Impressing Jung
Serial killers visit regularly in my dreams.
Last night, for the first time, I didn't run and hide in helpless fear.
I grabbed the smashed bottle he was holding and stabbed him with it. Once, then again, and again, and again.
A violent, yet satisfying way to spend the night.
I wonder if Jung would be proud.
airport philosophy
the problem lies
in thinking things should be
other than they are
fact is, airport carpet is grey
the flight is delayed
and we are here for 5 hours
wishing it weren't so
just makes each minute
tick by a little slower
the flight, when it comes
is its usual miracle
we don't fall out of the sky
we are humans
and we are flying