letter #1
we're all making our own sense of things and this is mine
#1
Time passes.
I almost forget what it was like to feel the Abu Dhabi summer build, but I do remember what it was like to leave that summer behind. Out at the airport, breathing in the hot, the humid air. The suffocating, stifling air because even at midnight, which is the time that the flights would leave, the temperature had hardly dropped a notch.
I would fly through the night and I would alight into the cold, dry air of an Adelaide winter.
This was the most visceral of moments, and maybe this is what they mean by muscle memory--a recognition so sharp, so sudden that I was grounded immediately, completely. Home. And yet, it took time for my eyes to adjust, to understand what it was that I could see. It was as if there were a sheet of glass, but I do not mean through a glass, darkly because there was nothing opaque, and nothing hidden from view. It was magnifying glass, but it didn't enlarge and didn't bring the world closer. Instead, it made the world entirely clear and I could see, feel, hear in more detail than I ever had before. Each shade of colour distinct, each edge sharp. Every word of every whisper came to me, each sigh was amplified. All of this intensified by the trip from the airport done at Adelaide's sedate suburban pace of fifty kilometres an hour. Less than half the speed we would do on the roads of Abu Dhabi.
Time slowed.
These trips to Adelaide--four weeks, sometimes six--were like a return to the preschool age. My children were still young and their days still had to be filled. Milk was spilled, crumbs were dropped, Lego was scattered (and trodden on). But I was not unhappy. I was not bored or numbed as I had been in the preschool days. My senses were sharp. I would bathe in the Adelaide winter. Grey skies that rarely led to rain. Clearing to sharp, crisp blue. The sun's light, muted but still golden. I felt grounded. The earth was solid underneath my feet, unmoving.
I was not unhappy, but I could feel fragility in this solidity. My senses were so sharp that I could feel the cracks in the earth. Even through the soles of my shoes, even if those cracks were as fine as hair. The cracks were there and I knew that I must tread as softly as I could. The lightest pressure would widen them. A crack would become a crevice, a crevice an abyss, and I would be plunged in.
This was the muscle memory of my father's death. The routine of that June and July had settled in my soul. My morning drive across the city to be with him, to sit, to listen, to try to fit everything in; getting my boys from school and bringing them back to him, and PlaySchool in the other room, a short distraction before they started to wrestle. Do not go gentle, Grandpa. Driving home, boys in booster seats and me thinking, 'Don't let it be tonight, wait for one more day.'
The gold in the light, the crisp in the air, time suspended but always moving.
On our trips back to Adelaide, I taught my children what it means to be from Adelaide. Rock pools at Hallett Cove, stuffed animals at the museum, lasagne at Lucia's. 'Do you remember?' I would say. 'We came here with Denis.' Mostly no, because when you're only six years old you never think to yourself, 'I must take this present moment and transform it, I must save it for a day when it is gone.'
Then I would leave Adelaide. I would pack our bags with the new school shoes I had bought for my children (expensive in Abu Dhabi), the bottles of sunblock (expensive in Abu Dhabi), packets of Haigh's (can't be found in Abu Dhabi). And as I left, the winter was lifting. The days were growing a little longer, the buds on the trees were growing stronger, and the crispness was leaving the air. My senses were growing dull and as I stepped onto the plane my sight was changed, the details gone, the world around me a blur.
Winter was finished, and I was gone.
I watch a lot of television these days
I loved the first few seasons of UnReal, a satire about the behind-the-scenes life of a reality dating show. Although how much it is satire we will never know because it is written by someone who was forced (through contractual obligations) to work on a series or two in real life. I loved UnReal so much that I wanted to jump inside the television and be part of it. The friendship between Quinn and Rachael was wonderful. I have not enjoyed an on-screen friendship that much since Boston Legal's Denny Crane and Alan Shore, plus it had one of my favourite actors from Boston Legal, Constance Zimmer playing Quinn. I didn't finish the last series though. What were they thinking?
I still read a fair bit too
I've been reading poetry which is something I'm not very good at, but when I get into it (which is maybe once every five years) I love it and I get grumpy with myself for having stopped. I've been reading poems that are plays or longer pieces to help me with writing my next show. My go-to is Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood which I read or listen to mostly for the line, 'And before you let the sun in, Mind it wipes its shoes'. But I love Carol Ann Duffy more and more, and especially Rapture. Its intimacy is heart-breaking. The piece, Tea, for example with the beautiful:
I like the questions - sugar? milk? -
and the answers I don't know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.
And I walk along the beach a lot
Because this is Adelaide and we have a lovely long stretch of beach and we are lucky because along that stretch of beach we face the sunset.
PS I know some of you signed up so long ago that you've probably forgotten that you ever did.