How to fell a six foot woman

One gentle finger
A calm look of love
Or words, words, words.
Gao Xingjian might be on to something but I'm not quite sure what yet.

Yesterday I went to my mother's house in the mountains. I drove with my brother through layers and layers of air and heat and rain until we reached the point where Sydney ceases to matter and the horizon leaps and drops with astonishing sandstoned agility. Henry Kendall sprang unwillingly to mind with his puzzling clumsy ode to the Blue Mountains.

thy feet are set
Where evermore, through all the days and years,
There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.

His poems grate my teeth and I was frustrated that he of all people should invade my calming self on a day when my main focus should have been shall I have the yorkshire gold or the kwazulu tea with my lindt bunny. Even I wandered lonely as a cloud would have been a preferable thought.

There was an American woman staying at my mother's house, she comes to stay from time to time, occasionally for Christmas. I used to despise her. I used to see only her blonde lacquered exterior and hear only her relentless American chanting of I am great, I am great underpinning every sentence but yesterday for the first time I cast off my petty judgements and sat comfortably side by side in a mountain room drinking scottish tea with an American woman. I thought for the first time, here is a woman who has travelled to the other side of the world by herself, maybe she just needs someone to pass her the sugar with a kind hand.

When I finally made it back to the Inner West I was tired and lonely and unsure all over again about how to press forward in my new solo life. My housemates are both staying with their parents and I found myself alone. It is so tempting to begin rattle walking empty down the hall of an empty house scooping solitude and emptiness into my heart, so tempting to sit finally in relief and let the black wave break over me.

Necessary Dorothy Porter interlude:

fun fun fun
I'm a mono Beach Boys record
my heart breaks

like surf.

But instead instead I was purposeful and drew a hot bath, lit candles, put music on. If this is all it is, if this is all that life holds for me right now then it is enough. I will not fold flattened foetal under the dread dead weight of sorrow. I will train my muscles, I will grow strong enough to cast it aside. And jump on the fucking thing til it breaks.


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