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DAY 65: Performing a cleansing ritual

I BOUGHT a bundle of sage from Newtown in a fit of Jetstar Blindness. This is when you buy destination-appropriate things that are then totally inappropriate back in your own town. Like thongs in Melbourne.

I asked Google for a few spells, but then Jessica – who knows her onions – told me not to make an actual spell, as it may come true in the most unnerving way. Like if you want to attract a bloke he might end up stalking you, or if you ask for a plane not to crash into the ground, it might crash into another plane instead – that sort of thing.

Apparently it’s okay to just cleanse the house with the sage, though. It might, at least, cleanse that mysterious ‘spare room smell’ out of the spare room before Mum and Dad come over from Pomgolia, or the Mr Thumpy smell out of the laundry. I’m a bit suss about the previous owner, actually. I found weird shit in the attic, like banished, framed pictures of a woman with an ’80s ’do; cartoons ripped from the newspaper pasted inside a cupboard; sponge effect paintjobs all over the ceilings; and seemingly endless collections of bean bag beans. Put them all together, and what have you got? Exactly. Well dodgy, huh? Let’s cleanse.

Sage tea helps me keep my temper at special times of month, but bizarrely, burning sage smells completely different – like pot, as it turns out – so I’m going to have some explaining to do to my parents, and I was hoping we’d finally got past all that.

Keeper? Only if someone creates an awful stench that needs to be got rid of.

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Categories cosmic shit

Day 64: Surrendering to mindless gossip

3 Nov

I can hardly bloody hear anything for the tapping of my keyboard.

EVERY day I am privy to mindless gossip on my commuter train when I’m trying to update you with the important stuff of the day before, like making curtains. Usually I pull tortured faces and eventually stuff my headphones in my ears with a big sigh, to listen to that soothing Panics mantra, ‘Don’t Fight It’ on repeat.

Today, I am going to both exercise my observational skills (see Day 7, A Eureka Moment) and practise acceptance (Day 47, Learning how to ACT), by listening intently to the gossip and learning something. My own anecdotal style is so meandering, and my conclusion so elusive, that perhaps I’ll pick up some tips as to effective timing and delivery.

My carriage is packed, so it’s like someone’s fiddling with the radio dial, with everyone sped up, Henry Higgins-style. “Wittering,” Dad calls it.

“So your work is telling you that you can’t have Facebook in your personal life? Well excuse me, you don’t dictate to me… See this is why I don’t like the way they try and control your life.”
What I learned: If I try not to go up an octave when saying something self-righteous, I may sound less self-righteous.

“Daniel rang me Sunday just after the show. I said, ‘Ah yeah, I’ve just finished the last show.
He said, ‘It’s raining heaps in Bendigo.’
I said, ‘Yeah, I know – I’m in Bendigo.’
I think he thought the show was in Melbourne. He probably would have come if I’d told him.”
What I learned: Filler is acceptable and may lead to something exciting eventually: just keep flinging mud until something sticks.

“It’s their 25^th wedding anniversary. What shall I text? Love you long time?”
“Look at you, you’re the golden child.”
“Aw, fuck you.”
What I learned: Some mates are good for banter; some mates are good for sentimentality. Expecting both from one person is expecting too much, so choose carefully.

“He must have been at Coles for 30 years now. So has that big tall bloke.”
“Awwww, yes, yes.”
What I learned: “Awww yes, yes” is the most accepted interjection on this train, and way more effective than my own version – “Mm” – as it conveys enthusiasm and takes longer to say. Useful for those one-way conversations where the correct response is undetermined.

Keeper? Yes. And I should probably get my ears syringed. I can just about eke out one-liners of gold around me, but I’ve already shifted seats once, so whole conversations elude me.

Categories personality facelift

DAY 63: Learning about immigration

2 Nov

All stand.

NEXT time I need a dose of “you think you’ve got it bad” I’ll come back to the Melbourne Museum of Immigration. The ceaseless sound loops of wails, gunfire and wet farts (I shit you not) that illustrate migrational misery should put things into perspective. And then I’ll walk back to work at Southbank and remind myself that it’s Southbank in AUSTRALIA and not Southbank in London. Hooray!

Keeper? Yes.

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Categories tourist

DAY 62: Learning the ukulele

1 Nov

IF THERE’S one thing that you can be sure of in this topsy-turvy, ever-changing world, it’s that blokes will thrash out ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ over whatever you’re trying to do or say in band rehearsal. I’ve been in and out of ropey bands since I was 16, and that fact has remained constant.

So it’s no surprise to find that, upon joining the local country town ukulele group, the familiar strains of that less-than-original riff comes screaming plinkily out of the souped-up ukulele of the 10-year-old boy next to me. And this is while the rest of us are trying to learn ‘You Are My Sunshine’.

Our tutor, a lovely dapper young chap in a velvet jacket and waistcoat, smiles through gritted teeth: “They’re trying to drag me screaming out of the 30s… into the 90s.”

Keeper? I’ll be back – and I’ll have have learned the solo. (Shouldn’t be hard; it’s only one finger.)

Categories specialist skills

DAY 61: Cooking seafood

31 Oct

Totally cooking those scallops.

IF Helen’s hamming it up, she’s doing a marvellous job. “Fantastic,” she says, tucking into scallops and broccoli, delicately singed with chilli and garlic. “Really, really good.”

Upping the ante thrillingly from Day 11, in which I ate seafood, I’ve put out the call for suggestions for a seafood dish to cook myself, but since these suggestions ranged from “penguin” to “fish fingers” to the bloody impossible ” bouillabaisse”, I’ve decided to go down the scallop route. I’m pleased to be broadening my practical skills, although I’m mortified when I complain to Helen about the toxic garlic and chilli fumes infiltrating the house, and she pleasantly offers, “That’s why I always shut the kitchen door.”

I reckon there’s a ways to go before I think of things like that off my own bat.

Keeper? Yes! Will try mussel broth next time, and laugh in the face of food poisoning.

Categories food and drink

DAY 60: Making curtainszzzzz…

30 Oct

ADMITTEDLY, this is a doona cover threaded through a curtain rod, but I thought of that myself.

How did that one get in there?

Keeper? Not if someone else can do it.

Categories womanly skills

DAY 58: Learning The Secret

28 Oct

“Everything happens for a reason.” OOF.

“It is what it is.” OOH-YAY.

I’m as vague as the next old dear, but even I need a bit more direction than “throw it out to the universe” as a roadmap to run my life.

Still, according to the Oprah-endorsed The Secret by Australian Rhonda Byrne, everyone from Plato to Shakespeare to Beethoven to your next-door celebrity Scientologist is in on a magical formula to get everything you want, so I’d better jump onboard quick-smart.

The Secret is essentially the law of attraction: visualise brilliant things happening to you and those brilliant things will be helpless to resist speeding towards you, like “iron filings to a magnet”.

A quick email around the office instantly conjures up three copies of The Secret, although everyone groaningly insists their copy was pressed upon them by some chump. Sure. I take one down to the beach for a peruse – not for an extra spiritual experience, but so nobody catches me reading it.

Opening the book at random, P59 explains how to visualise yourself thin. Even though you may have stuffed yourself stupid on a Greek fatfest the night before (see Day 57), “food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you THINK it can.”

You can also think yourself well and think yourself a million bucks. Don’t be anti-something, be pro- its positive opposite. And don’t resist! I’m confused, though… how does ‘visualising’ what you want differ from ‘fantasising’, which I’m already doing every waking minute? All that’s brought me is a tendency to not hear a word you’re saying.

Look, maybe there’s something in this. A ‘positivity can’t hurt, and people around you seem to prefer it’ sort of something. When I was a child, home life was a cacophony of tuts: Dad’d get started and Mum would fall in, and now we’re all at it. On trips away, tension would do a Mexican wave around the car at the bloody unfairness of it all, whatever that was.

“Are you sure?” Mum had a tendency to ask doubtfully of any great idea, before forecasting impending doom. Hence my current constitution: C’mon life, you bastard, give it to me with both barrels – you know you want to.

So anyway, let’s see what we have here.

Funny – I’ve always been told I’m NOT the centre of the universe, yet here on p46, within a jolly metaphor about Aladdin’s lamp, it clearly says: “You are the Master of the Universe, and the Genie (that’s the law of attraction, or the Universe) is there to serve you.”

I’m advised to “place an order” to the Universe by writing it out on a piece of paper in the present tense.

Step two is to believe that it’s already mine. I guess I already do this when I go shopping. I look at a dress and imagine myself parading down the street wearing it, looking fine, with my hair bouncing around. Talking of which, this afternoon at the hairdresser I plan to visualise my hair looking glossy and brown, despite having previously bleached the fuck out of it.

Of course, The Secret does have itself a get-out clause. You’re to believe with “complete and utter faith”. So I guess if you don’t get the hair you wanted, your faith was lacking. You infidel.

That’s essentially it, although there are about 200 other pages. It’s pretty repetitive. I’ve written my thingo down, so I’ll let you know how I fare.

Keeper? Can I really expect positive results when my fingers are itching to type out cynicisms for your delight? (“Come on, you fucker,” I snap, when my predictive text turns “fuck” to “duck” while writing this entry on my phone.) I am doubting my commitment, which means I’m doomed to fail. How convenient.

I come from here, Rhonda. Do you really think the universe can be arsed?

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Categories cosmic shit, desk slave day

DAY 57: Getting a rebetika education

27 Oct

REBETIKA is like the blues of Greek music, with seamy, underbelly connotations. A band plays every Wednesday at Spitiko in South Melbourne so I went along with Clare to see them.

Earlier in the day I leapt out of the car upon passing a big watermelon. I’ve got a hankering to visit all the big things in Australia (avocado, prawn and banana are already under the belt), so if anyone fancies doing a heeeey-I’m-sure-that’s-been-done-before road trip… well, let’s do it.

Keeper? Yes, and yes.

Categories food and drink

DAY 56: Taking other ladies’ clothes

26 Oct

Goodbye, old friend.

THE Clothing Exchange promotes sustainable fashion, encouraging recycling, donating and buying clothing that are ethically produced. At their Federation Square clothes swap, ladies bring up to six garments and accessories, which are sorted and hung on rails. You’re given the same number of buttons in return as currency.

Esther calls me at the last minute with a spare ticket, so all I have to offer is my Deniliquin Ute Muster singlet. It’s blue with a comical bull’s face ironed on it. It’s tops.

When I hand it over to one of the volunteers she looks at me like she just knows I’m going to hone in on some Gucci suit, then holds it with outstretched arm to show a colleague. It’s eventually accepted after a certain amount of discussion, but really, I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.

The organisers are piping soothing music into the hall, so when it’s time to get foraging I’m expecting a squall. As it turns out, it’s all pretty civilised – although the rise in cortisol levels is palpable. And is that someone grunting? A current affairs program is filming proceedings, bullishly running over their allotted time as the gimlet-eyed host leads her burly bovver boys through the throng. I zero in on a Stussy v-neck. Outta the way, moll.

As the minutes tick by, I keep casting an anxious eye over at the Deni singlet. Nobody’s taken it yet. “You must be emotionally detached,” the Clothing Exchange website warned us of our donations, but seeing it neglected on the shelf, I feel the same way I did at school fetes when Mum’s wholemeal walnut loaf would be the only baked goods left standing at five o’clock; probably because the povo mums just sent along packets of Jammy Dodgers, which is unfair.

Finally, I run over and grab it, to a loud tut from Esther. But this was always going to happen – I can never emotionally detach from the misunderstood and maligned. And they just follow me around anyway.

Keeper? On a matey scale, I reckon.