...Recovered from Australia Day

Yesterday was Australia Day. I had a terrific day, but ended up going to bed with a splitting headache. Not that I'm complaining, as I realize that's just sometimes how it goes. Particularly when you sit in the park for roughly ten hours, in the sun, drinking wine. I did also eat fructose-free vegetable fritatta and tabbouleh made from quinoa (a random and exotic grain I never knew existed until wheat became my nemesis). However, mostly in my day there was the sun and there was the wine. So waking up this morning was near impossible. Covering my persimmon coloured nose, similarly impossible. Having to work all day with the remnants of the splitting headache I had started to develop about 6pm the previous night (but continued to drink my way through for another couple of hours) turned out to be possible, but fairly unpleasant. Yet as I looked around my office at the patchy brown/ red/ browny-red faces of my colleagues, I was comforted by the fact I was not alone.

Ahhh, Australia Day. What a unifying force you have on us. Australian's all let us rejoice for we use the public holiday to drink just a little too much and forget to apply adequate sunscreen.

And that little ode is as far as I'll ever go towards proclaiming chest-beating and flag-waving support for January 26th. In fact, I never flag-wave. I make a conscientious objection to flag-waving, particularly on Australia Day. I do like Australia Day... because it's a public holiday at a time of year we've got good weather. It means I can get my friends together in the park when we'd otherwise be chained to our desks. We can say "damn the man" without having to take any annual leave! Weeee! But as for flag-waving when there are no other flags being waved at the same time (like at a nice sports party like the Olympics)? I'll leave that for those who do fun things in their spare time like race riot on Sydney beaches.

And that, my dears, is the uncomfortable fact we sweep under the southern cross and union jack. We have to remember that "our" flag is a flag of colonisation. A flag that the racist and undereducated can still use to say "I belong here more than you do".

So until you give me a new flag to wave which doesn't scream "You have to be white to wrap yourself in this! Yee-hah I love being white!" I won't do it. That's why I want a new flag. One with a dreamtime kangaroo (in a Ferrari jacket) and a Chinese dragon (wearing a kilt) making out underneath the southern cross... in front of a gay pride rainbow. And until the day I get that new flag I want, you won't see me proclaiming all things "Aussie" on January 26th in any hurry. My Australia Day tradition will, instead, continue to be to drink too much wine in the park and then trundle back to work the next day, grumbling as I go (without a flag in sight).

...Remembered Some of What I Remember

If I tell you that I went to see that Daniel Kitson show again tonight, will you promise to believe that I'm not stalking him? I have a boyfriend. I'm fairly stable emotionally (well, most of the time) and while I found Daniel Kitson endearing, I am not about to start chasing after him from country to country just to sit in the front row of his show every night and then sneak into his hotel room while he sleeps to write love notes in lipstick to him on his bathroom mirror. P.S. If I was to do something like that, I would use pink lipstick and dot all the i's with love hearts. But as I wouldn't, I guess that's not so important.

Anyway....

I went to see the show again tonight. The reason I went, while I did enjoy it and didn't mind the thought of a second round, was mostly because I really wanted the chance to look at it objectively. To listen and to watch with clarity. Because the first time I sat in that room with this slightly odd, bespectacled chap in brown slacks, surrounded by battered suitcases that became beautiful, light-filled dioramas - I was overwhelmed with the emotion of remembering; by the essence of the very thing that he was putting into words, that he was able to describe, that he was sketching out over the framework of how he felt about the flat he lived in for six years. And so I behaved very strangely after I'd seen it. It opened all these little light-filled suitcases inside me so that they were beaming memories I'd forgotten I'd remembered. And I couldn't look at it all objectively. There was just too much emotional white noise inside me created by rooms, and places, and people, and a potted plant on the bench, and a fish bowl filled with cigarette smoke, and Chanel N0.5 on a mohair jumper. I went quiet. Then surly. Then picked a fight (a small one, thankfully, and with my partner not a stranger in a bar). Then became suddenly and unjustifiably weepy considering I was neither pregnant nor a couple of days shy of my monthlies. Very odd.

So after a second viewing, I'm glad to say I've managed to avoid the weepies. The second time around, I realised that the first time I saw the bespectacled man and his suitcases show, it not only triggered the act of remembering but also the realisation that those things you remember (underneath it all, no matter how fond the memories are) actually sting as you remember them. They remind you what you've lost. What you were to never have, that you once believed you would. But mostly, they're painful because they remind you that for everything you've remembered, there are things you've forgotten. Memories lost to the place you left them.

And the bespectacled man in the brown slacks pointed out that that's why we keep things like bits of paper and other useless objects - because they help us to hold on to those memories we'd lose without them there to prompt us (and it seems pretty obvious when I repeat it here, but I guess you'll have to take it on faith that it was pretty freaking profound when he said it). That's why we have the impulse to watch a favorite film over and over: we do it because it returns us to something from the past. It helps us to remember the time when we first watched it, or the last time we watched it, or the time we watched it with so and so. Like last night, Speed was on TV and I was inexplicably overjoyed. In my eyes, Mr TV had done me a HUGE favour. Imagine a five year old unexpectedly being told she gets to to choose ANY cake she wants from the Women's Weekly cookbook to be made. ANY of them. The castle, the train, even the swimming pool of jelly cake. Yep. THAT'S PRETTY DAMN EXCITED! So of course I watched it. And loved it. Like always. I even started writing a post about it (which was aborted due to arrival of boyfriend and then the needing to sleep). This is where it got up to:

What I Did Today... Watched a Movie about a Bus and Remembered 1994

Speed (1994) was on TV tonight. As you can tell from my date annotating of the film title (a typing nervous tick I picked up during my four years studying film at university and just can't seem to shake) it was released in 1994. That is a wee little while ago. There are babies born in that year who are eligible for their L-Plates now. True story. However, by virtue of me being born in the year that The Empire Strikes Back was released, I was fourteen by the time Speed rolled around. I went to see it at the cinema with my friends. I remember the outfit that I wore.

It's clear to me now, that actively remembering the things I've remembered has sneaked up and taken hold of me. Without even realising it, seeing the bespectacled man's show last week had prompted me to write a blog post last night about a film starring Keanu Reeves in SWAT uniform saving the passengers on an exploding bus. From seeing the bespectacled man's show again tonight, I now know why I was doing it. Why I'm compelled to watch a film I've seen countless times before. Not because I really like Keanu Reeves in SWAT gear, but because it helps me remember the time when I was fourteen.

And thinking critically about all those objects in my life that I've held on to, and hold on to, and what exactly they make me remember: it changes them all slightly. Like the Cindy Sherman postcard that I bought at Tate Modern last year that reminds me of being in London... but that I bought because it reminded me of studying Cindy Sherman at uni, which at the time made me think about the trip to Sydney with my mum when I was nineteen where I saw a retrospective of her work, which I went to see in the first place because it reminded me of studying her photographs in high school. Thinking critically about why I put that postcard on my fridge, it suddenly becomes a Hall of Mirrors of Memory. Like I guess it does every time you stop to remember what it is you actually remember about something.

Gosh that's an exhausting thought. I don't think I even have the energy now to go write those love heart i's on Daniel Kitson's hotel bathroom mirror. Pity.

... Googled "66a Church Road"

No, I'm not looking for a new apartment (well at least not yet anyway).

Last night, I saw an amazing show titled 66a Church Road - A Lament, Made of Memories and Kept in Suitcases. It was written, and performed, by stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson. But it wasn't stand-up. It was a beautifully executed piece of theater. And I have to qualify that last comment be saying I am NOT usually the girl who's all aboard the theater train. Ask anyone. Ask them about the time I drank a whole jug of beer on an empty stomach before a third year Creative Arts performance and then nearly suffocated on my own stiffled laughter because the penis on the nude man being yelled at in German and hit with books was wobbling and then shrinking back up into itself with every blow.

I hate performer nudity in confined spaces. Can't stand interpretative dance pieces. Am quite comfortable not to have my bourgeois perceptions of "art" challenged. Would probably be much happier watching Die Hard 2 on TV. Thank you very much.

But this piece was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Set-dressed and staged with visual grace and sensitivity to the subject matter. The monologue itself full of wit and pathos. Delivered with galloping momentum, perfectly punctuated by stillness and darkness and pause.

And it was also very, very funny.

I loved it. So today, I googled it to see what other people thought. Here's some of what I found.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/arts-reviews/daniel-kitson-66a-church-road/2009/11/29/1259429301467.html

This review, I'm convinced, was written by a soulless twat with a fake tan, who is clearly the type to walk around on the weekends in Italian leather loafers with the collar of his "casual" shirt popped up.

He completely missed the point. You don't leave the theater with a feeling of "moral superiority". You leave feeling so deeply and completely the beauty, and the loss, that comes with remembering the people and places from your past who were once "home". I don't know who can still be in possession of their soul and conjure up "superior" as a concluding emotion, when walking away from a performance which invites you to dig through the box containing all the things that made you feel safe and loved that you lost somewhere in the past and you can never, ever have back again.

I believe that somebody probably should have pointed out to this reviewer (a.k.a Satan's lapdog) that this show wasn't JUST about Daniel Kitson's old flat. Like Heart of Darkness is not JUST about a guy who goes on a river cruise in the jungle to find some other guy and bring him back. Sweetie, have you ever heard of narrative complexity? Layers of meaning? Symbols, allusion, allegory, metaphor?! Any of these concepts ring a bell?!!! FYI the show was about NOSTALGIA. Something that Kitson's voice-over actually signals at the start of the show when he defines "nostalgia" for us. Though perhaps that was something you missed as it did coincide with the "ukulele" music (which, another FYI, I'm pretty sure was actually a guitar).

For quick reference, I much prefer this summary of the show:

http://www.perthfestival.com.au/66a-church-road

This one below is fitting too. Interestingly, I think Satan's lapdog from the first review even read it for "inspiration" (but on account of having no soul, missed the point when attempting to plagiarize parts of it):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3558475/Edinburgh-Festival-66a-Church-Road-and-A-Festival-Dickens.html

And this one concludes with the very thing that resonated with me so deeply about 66a Church Road:

http://www.australianstage.com.au/200911273028/reviews/sydney/66a-church-road-a-lament-made-of-memories-and-kept-in-suitcases-%7C-daniel-kitson.html

What I'm trying to say is - if you can, go see this show. It's on until January 31st at The Arts Centre.

Thanks. You've been a wonderful audience. Try the veal and don't forget to tip your waitress.

... Ate a Frenchman's Sorbet on Company Time

Today, I went back to work. For a person who's main priorities for each day had only just recently entailed watching back to back episodes of Scrubs, attempting allergy-friendly baking and taking a low-rider on excursions to the IGA five blocks away - that pretty much sucked.

For starters, I had to be out of bed before 11am. Also, it involved putting on "big grown-up girl clothes" (as opposed to the Bonds underpants and Hello Kitty singlet I've been sporting around the house of late). Everyone knows that accessorizing in anticipation of entering the workplace can be exhausting. Particularly when underwear has been your couture de jour for the good part of a week.

So anyway. My morning.

Alarm goes off. Get out of bed. Decide too grumpy to even shower. In place of: wash face, bobby-pin hair, spray on equal parts deodorant and Comme des Garcons 888. Put on "big grown-up girl clothes" (Zimmerman dress, Mimco necklace, vintage zebra bangle blah blah blah). Kiss boyfriend goodbye in manner of worker drone about to go collect pollen for the queen. Walk through East Melbourne to Face Cream Cult Central, sit down at computer and open Outlook. Click through unopened emails. Delete some emails. Write some emails. Contemplate writing unhinged Haikus and sending them to colleagues in manner of Jack in Fight Club. Go down to the kitchen for lunch. Go back to desk. Proved right in prediction that air-conditioner would cease correct function around 2pm. Feel smug in accuracy of prediction. Read more emails. Delete more emails. Suddenly lose smug feeling re: air-conditioning malfunction on account of becoming increasingly hot and dizzy. Contemplate best place in office to slash-up. Interrupted mid-suicide fantasy with offer of trip to Monsieur Truffe for homemade sorbet. Day becomes amazing.

And just like that, six of us walked out of the office in a pack on the promise of an icy sweet treat. We didn't ask permission and we didn't care. It was over 4o degrees and that meant blazers off and running through the sprinklers at the bus stop. We were bad ass. These bees wanted cassis sorbet (perhaps also with a scoop of sour cherry). We sat on the couch in the coolness of that jaunty Smith Street chocolate cave, while the kindly Frenchman (with a sanguine smile and exceeding goodwill for someone also experiencing a 44 degree day) served our $2.50 scoops of icy goodness in little china bowls with handmade wooden spoons.

Raspberry. Apricot. Sour Cherry. Cassis. Dark Chocolate. All. So. Good.

So my advice, for what it's worth, is this... if you work within walking distance to Monsieur Truffe and are recently back from holidays, feeling about eight years old at the end of summer in your heavy leather shoes and scratchy wool blazer, do EXACTLY what I did today. Go and eat the Frenchman's sorbet on company time.

... Cooked my Epidermis

I'm just going to put this out there. Judge if you want to. But here goes...

I like to sunbake.I deliberately go out and lie down in the sun. With as many clothes off as possible to maximise how much of the sun can "get" on me in one go.

And I know this admission is not at all politically correct. I write this post in full knowledge that the anti-cancer council will most likely seek out my home address in the coming days to form a lynch mob to chase me down the street. They'll throw those ugly baseball caps with the neck-covering flaps at me until I fall to the ground, upon which they will kick me repeatedly and then drown me in a pool of 500+ invisible zinc sunblock.

But I can't help it. Sunbaking is like crack to me. I can't get enough. Well actually, it's more like a weekend social smoking habit that I can't quite kick... and don't seem to have any plans to give up anytime soon. As I no longer smoke "for reals"* I'm finding it difficult to motivate myself to turf this potentially long-term health risk/ short-term source of instant gratification as well. You see, I have so few vices left. At one stage you could have called me "Vicey McVice-Vice". Which would have been a dumb name, but pretty accurate concerning my lifestyle choices. Now I'm living pretty clean. But I do need to keep SOMETHING that resembles a vice of SOME description. Don't ask why (that would probably take a lot longer to unpack than anyone here's actually got). I just know that I need it. I'll stay off the cigarettes and making up most of my weekly calories in booze, as long as I can keep sunbaking and coffee. Deal?!

The other problem with going the "No Gary! No!" route with sunbaking, is that the sunshine makes me happy. REALLY happy. It gives me happy chemicals in my brain and makes me feel WARM. This is actually important to me. So much so that I believe I'm genetically part-reptile. I cry if I get too cold. If my body gets below a certain temperature, I can't think and my body shuts down. Like a crab going sleepy-bys in the freezer. And I know a crab isn't a reptile, but I'm sure you get the point.

Right about now you might be asking me why I don't just go get a blanket, stitch a hot-water bottle into my underpants and wear mohair-blend clothing all year round? But I'm not talking about needing to be "man-made" warm. I'm talking about the Aztecs sacrificed virgins to it**, we live and die by all mighty Ra, "Apollo I bow down before thee" kind of heat THAT ONLY THE SUN PROVIDES. My idea of heaven is a sunny day that never ends, with a hot rock to lie on and an epidermis that never, ever burns. Period. Oh, and maybe to have my boyfriend AND Robert Downey Jr (shirt off, covered in movie sweat like in Sherlock Holmes) there too. With gin and tonics***. Obviously.

In addition (and I'm not sure if it's chicken and eggs or simply "like-attracts-like") but the best friend I've had in my life for the last decade or so is a self-confessed tanorexic. Which is fair enough in my opinion as she does look bangin' with a tan. My Mother once attempted to chastise her after arriving at our house post-solarium session by warning she would turn into a "California walnut" one day. However, that didn't really land considering my Mother is the person who taught me "it's never okay to get sunburnt... until the LAST day of the holiday". She's also the person who calls me a "wuss" whenever I attempt to apply sunblock of any kind.

So long story short: what I did today, was go to the beach with my Mum and the California Walnut. We were all very excited. 36 degrees. Blue skies. We stretched out on the beach for FOUR whole hours with not a t-shirt, umbrella, sunhat or beach tent between us.

But please don't fear, good readers, I DID wear sunblock. Reef Tanning Oil.

Hey, at least I'm not a crack addict.

*this is true 98% of the time
**proof that "saving it until your married" may not work out so well for more than the obvious reasons
*** Bombay, lots of ice, fresh lime. AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PUTTING LEMON IN THERE, SATAN, BECAUSE I'M IN HEAVEN YOU BIG LOSER

... Bought a Gluten-Free Cookbook

I never thought that I would be Allergy Girl. And I don't mean that to sound like I'd never thought I'd be a superhero who perhaps shoots pollen from her wrists to induce fatal hay-fever (which would be kind of cool), because who would actually ever think that?! But rather, I never thought that I would be that girl who has to sit in a restaurant or at a friend's dinner table and say "Does this dish contain...?" or "Sorry, but I have an allergy to...". While it of course isn't a tragic, life destroying event to discover that I have developed fructose malabsorption (I mean I still have my freakin' legs so I'm not going to play the "disability" card here) but enjoying food is a huge part of what I do for fun. It's also a huge part of who I am. Being the guest with impeccable manners, who's easy to cook for because "I eat everything" is something I could pride myself on and I believed displayed I was brought up "right". Being able to seamlessly traverse the choreography of fine dining from start to finish without a missed beat was a marker in my mind of a mastery of social etiquette. So now finding myself allergic to an array of seemingly disparate ingredients which includes (but is not limited to) wheat, onions, leeks, apples, pears, honey, dried fruit, artichokes, coconut milk etc. etc. pretty much guarantees that there will always be an element of "fuss" attached to me eating. Anything. Anywhere. The tight choreography that used to happen between me and a waiter now has all the finesse and grace of debutant ball rehearsals in the school gym as I rake through a menu asking for "gluten-free" and "onion free" and then still coming out with "oh no, actually I can't eat that if there's tomato paste in the sauce. Can you tell me what's in the fish instead?"

However, I have two big shiny lights of benevolence guiding me through this introduction to the Allergy Girl club. The first, is a beautiful colleague of mine who I've worked quite closely with over the last 12 months. She coincidentally has the same food allergy. It's dorky, but now that both of us have the same spastic digestive systems I feel like we're in a special club together. Like Tyler and Jack, but with less punching and more conversations about gluten-free baking. We're like FFBFF (fructose-free best friends forever). The second shiny light through my current food allergy baptism is a dietitian called Sue Shepherd. I am a TOTAL allergy spaz groupie for this lady! If I saw her in the street I would take photos on my BlackBerry and beg for an autograph. She's written most of the meaningful documents on the internet I first came across when trying to understand my new position in the restaurant dining caste system and is also the author of the Fructose Malabsorption Food Shopping Guide which is a pocketbook that tells you at a glance what 500 million things you can't eat and exactly what on a supermarket shelf you can eat. She's also authored some cookbooks. One of which I borrowed from my FFBFF before Christmas and used to make a gluten-free lemon slice. It was tasty. It made me happy. It gave me something delicious to share at "Fructose Club" and to share with the people at work who don't have cranky digestive systems.

So today I went to Readings and bought my own copy of Gluten-free Cooking. My superpowers, now that I'm Allergy Girl, will include being the guest who always brings something delicious to share at the table, the girlfriend who cooks amazing weeknight dinners rather than calling Indian take-away, and the diner who's learned some smooth allergy-friendly ordering moves from cooking all of it at home first.

I'd also like to do that "wrists that shoot pollen" thing as well at some point, but have decided it's probably best I start small and work my way up to that one.

... Created a Blog Instead of Riding my Bike

So I inherited this bike just before Christmas. Not the death of an elderly relative kind of inheritance (though I'm sure someone from the blue rinse set would look pretty sporting on this bad boy). Rather, I inherited this bike from a friend subscribing to the "free to a good home" school of sales. As this is usually only an offer you come across concerning a litter of unwanted mixed-breed kittens (and not a mint condition, cream-your-pants-it's-so-cool Mexicali Beach Cruiser) it's probably not too much of a stretch to imagine how much of a good deal I believe I got on this two-wheeled, leader of the pack bundle of goodness.

And now for some back story.

Up until seeing this picture, and the accompanying "Ken Bruce has gone mad!" sales offer, I had not been on a bike in over fifteen years. Not because the opportunity simply hadn't presented itself, but because I had developed an aversion to riding bikes. I had nothing against bikes themselves, or other people riding bikes, but the physical act of me personally sitting on one and pushing the pedals around to make it go some place? Vaguely horrifying. Something I always recognized as not being at all a logical emotional response, but all the same still felt at a level very much on par in the phobia stakes with my aversion to The Creatures of the Sea (yes, all of them, even seaweed).

Most of the time, through sheer necessity, you reach a point as an adult where you have to face your fears - but when you have a phobia of bike riding? When there's feet and trams and trains and taxis and cars, it doesn't really interfere with one's day-to-day routine. I'd therefore allowed myself the luxury of feeling the fear and doing nothing about it. At best, I looked on it as a personality quirk. At worst, as a private, dirty habit that wasn't harming anyone else (like smoking in your apartment at 3am with all the doors and windows shut, or picking your nose while watching TV).

But the photo of Pedro changed all that. Those wide handle bars, fat tires and that shiny, shiny black paint-job with flame detailing to rival anything Mattel could of dreamed up for their Hot Wheels line in the 1980s? My heart was pounding and it wasn't out of fear. That damn little Mexicali had stolen my heart.

Now Pedro is living in my teeny, tiny courtyard. I had one assisted ride to get him here (and loved it) but have been away since bringing home baby. First day back, my best intentions where to go out for a trot. Make sure "getting back on the horse" was something I could make stick. In fact the plan for the day was to create this blog AND go out for a bike ride. But as the day has unfolded, with me still in a hello kitty singlet and my underpants at nearly 6pm in the evening, computer in lap and this first post for what i did today almost done...

Turns out that what I did today was to create a blog, rather than go ride my bike.

Sorry Pedro.