My dear friend
So little time has passed since I last wrote, and so little has happened in that time. Time! If only it were not offered to us in such abundance. If only there were more ways to spend it. If only it would speed up instead of slowing down. If only it did not stretch into the distance asking, in its mocking tone, ‘how will you fill me?’
I tidied my desk because I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said—as I always say when I tidy my desk, when I move my clothes from the chair or the bed into the drawers and the wardrobe, when I put my rake and trowel back in the gardening shed—‘it’s because I’m a tidy person, that’s why I put my things away.’ I said it to myself because if I say it out loud, the mister says (he never fails to say), you can’t just declare yourself a tidy person and that makes you one. His side of the bedroom is never strewn with clothes, his bedside table never threatens to collapse under the weight of his to-be-read books and a week’s worth of coffee cups. Things are as they have always been.
One day—I think it was many years ago but maybe it was only last year or even last week who would know when such things are utterly distorted by time’s drag—I said to my friend, ‘I wish I were a runner.’ I said this because she herself was a runner and I could see the elation it gave her in the short term, the deep satisfaction it gave her in the long term. She said, ‘Go for a run, make sure a couple of people see you, you only have to be seen running once and people will think you are a runner.’ The thing that makes this not true is that anyone who sees me run can instantly see I’m not a runner. The act of running alone is not enough to convince anyone that a person is a runner. On the other hand, if you saw my desk right now you would think, ‘She is a tidy person.’
You don’t know though, do you, just looking at someone what they are or what they aren’t. Because I have lots of time and not much to do with it, I kept looking through photos long after the need had passed. I was rewarded with this treasure:
This is, by any objective standard, a terrible photo, poorly composed, bad lighting, and without wanting to put myself down too much, I am frowning, my hair is a mess and you might think of me that I look grumpy. But I love this photo, because I remember that moment and I remember thinking, ‘I’m not unhappy.’ After the time that had been, it was a relief to know that my body and my mind could conjure such a feeling. It made me think, ‘If I’m not unhappy maybe one day I will feel happiness again.’ And I am happy to report that I have indeed felt happiness many times since then.
On the subject of happiness and time, I still love Charmian Clift’s piece ‘The Time of Your Life’ included in The World of Charmian Clift. I return to it again and again:
I can remember being asked once, in an interview, if I considered myself to be a happy person. I found this a curly sort of question, because one of the things that experience teaches is that happiness not a permanent condition, nor is the single-minded pursuit of it ultimately rewarding. It occurs, but occasionally, and often quite incidentally to some other purpose or endeavour. But if I am not a consistently happy person I think I am an optimist one, in that I believe in the possibility of happiness and my own ability to recognise it.
But as I write to you now, I am re-reading the essay (goodness only knows how I found this book given the highly disorganised state of the books brought about by the need to once again rearrange things, this time because of a new wall which is yet to be painted so that bookshelves and thus books can be ordered). And I see the following paragraph which is not only underlined, but starred, something I did not long after this photograph was taken:
Time has a particular trick, and a very clever one, of threshing and winnowing experience. As years pass the inconclusiveness of events in actual formation is husked off and blown away like chaff on the wind. All that memory retains is a hoard of separate grain. Oh, I was happy then, one says. Or, that was the greatest time. Forgetting that happiness was inextricably linked mixed with all sorts of vexatious problems and irritations and interruptions. Jobs still had to be done. People knocked on doors at the wrong moment. One waited and waited interminably. And the greatest time ever was probably husked in boredom, doubt and even fear.
I wonder if it was my optimism that made me underline this, my belief that one day I would look back and think, ‘I was happy then.’ But now I’m not so sure she was right, because while time has indeed softened the extremes, when I look back over my life (now several decades long) I can see particular moments of happiness or sadness or joyfulness or melancholy. But I don’t see stretches of time that were any one thing. If anything, emotions and feelings have always felt more permanent in the moment than retrospectively. (And now I’ve confused myself because this seems to simultaneously support and reject what Charmian Clift was saying?)
I also found a photo of me running, and I remember on this day hearing from the crowd, my child’s distinctive voice, ‘Is that our Mum? Is she running?’
There is a convention that says a piece of writing should have a narrative through line, a beginning, a middle and an end. But sometimes all we have is a connected collection of thoughts which all make perfect sense but also none at all.
From here, I am off to have a cup of tea and a biscuit. I will write again sooner or later but in the meantime I hope that your time is more often filled with the promise of a gentle breeze than it is with the turmoil of a raging wind.
With love as always, your friend
Tracy
PS It will come as no surprise to you, I’m sure, to hear that I am voting yes. What might come as a surprise is to know that I have done some careful thinking around this, and not gone just with my instinct to follow the usual crowd. What made me do some thinking was the dreadful use of the slogan, ‘If you don’t know, vote no.’ What a terrible injustice to democracy that slogan is. I mean, if you don’t know, please take the time to find out. But then I realised in some ways I hadn’t done all that much finding out, so I did read and listen and question. The reasons I’m voting yes are both simple and complex. I’m voting yes because we should acknowledge the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our constitution. I’m voting yes because this referendum is about creating a mechanism for consultation, but doesn’t remove the power of the parliamentary process—it is not binding on the parliament. I’m voting yes because I think consultation through a voice will lead to better policy which will lead to better outcomes. I’m voting yes, because like Paul Kelly says, ‘No leaves us nowhere, Yes breathes in new air.’ And I’m voting yes, because so many of the people whose opinions I value support it—I’ve been following people like Nerelda Jacobs, Dr Anita Heiss, Rachel Perkins, Dr Amy Thunig and so many others. For these and many other reasons, I’m voting Yes.
This was a gorgeous read. Thank you!
I remember you being a runner. I recall being quite impressed actually.