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I find myself occasionally feeling as though I have to defend my decision to live contentedly here in TinyTrainTown– in the sticks. Semi–rural. Bush. ‘All the way out here’.
Each and every courier, tradesman or journo who’s ever come to the TinyTrainHouse comments on how far away it is from anywhere. How very small the town is. How they’ve never even heard of TinyTrainTown before. The tradies who get lost on the way here are always the most disparaging, their good humor eaten up by un-curbed roads that seem to stretch forever and all kind of look the same.
“How did you come to live out here…?” People are generally mystified as to why anyone would want to live where I do. I stare back at them, equally bemused, amazed that they’re unable to see what I see.
I guess it’s true, it might seem slightly isolated. TinyTrainTown is at least an hour and half drive from Sydney. We’re fifteen minutes from the nearest service station or major supermarket, probably forty minutes from any larger stores or services.
The road into town is eight kilometers of scrub and barely used train tracks. The population tops about 700 people (and that seems an over-estimate, really). As I’ve heard said, TinyTrainTown is so small it ‘doesn’t even have a pub!’
The town is not particularly quaint or pretty. It’s so nondescript that you could literally drive through it and not realise you’d been here. The mobile reception is nonexistent, and even the land-line home phone and ADSL internet crackles and drops out terribly if it happens to be raining. Or windy. Or, you know, Wednesday. Whenever.
But that’s the worst of it. The tarnished view of the penny, the dark side of the moon. There’s always more to things than that. And if nothing else, I tend to be an optimist.
It’s quiet here, peaceful. There is no din of constant traffic, no continual thrum of people. I like that. When I was little, growing up in Paradise, it was so quiet at night you could hear the rumbling boom of thunderstorms far out at sea. I remember, as a child, staying at a relative’s house in the middle of the city suburbs and being unable to sleep for the never ending noise coming from the streets outside. The cars. The horns. Music. People. It’s never quiet, not really. You get used to it, I know that. But I’ve grown accustomed to the silence again. The only thing that desecrates it is the occasional passing car.
While the town itself is nothing much to look at, the scrubby eucalyptus bushland of the national parks that surround it are soul-soothingly pleasant. A thousand different shades of green. There are parrots and cockatoos, possums and sugar gliders. Sandstone caves and tiny creeks. Snakes and spiders, too, of course; but I don’t think any kid is really that much worse off for having a basic knowledge of them (‘basic’ rather than ‘intimate’ being the key wording here).
People know people, in TinyTrainTown. While I’m never really been a rah-rah-community-spirit kind of person and I tend to keep to myself, I know my neighbors by first name and the local shopkeepers by sight.
We actually do have shops here, though they’re as easy as anything else in the town to miss. Three of them, in fact- a fish and chip shop; a small supermarket; and post office/newsagent/grocery/DVD hire. All the shops are overpriced and sell short-dated stock at the tills, but you can still get all the basics you need.
We walk to the shops, most days, when we’re not in a hurry and the weather’s favorable. Some days we walk home from daycare and school. The round trip never takes longer than half an hour by foot, no more than four minutes by car. If it takes longer than two minutes to drive there… it’s probably not in TinyTrainTown.
It’s safe here. It feel secure. It feels like a wholesome place to bring up small children. And most of the time, it’s just a nice place to be.
None of this seems to sway anyone’s opinion. “Yeah but, love… it’s just so far away!”
I find the only answer anyone gets is in the language everyone seems to understand.
“Uhhhh… The house prices are cheap. Three bedroom house, big backyard…”
And that makes logical sense to most incredulous tradesman who’ve made the hour trek to TinyTrainTown. It’s easier to see the appeal in that; in choosing between a tiny flat or a huge mortgage an hour closer to the city, or having a house of my own and dealing with the occasional inconvenience of living ‘all the way out here’.
I made the right choice– I rarely ever doubt that. It’s just other people, I find, that take some convincing.
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When I said I was only doing cool giveaways from now on… this is one of those. Because, as we know- I love music. Music-ness brings happiness. Or something. And concerts are good for everything that ails you.
And sometimes awesome stuff shows up on my doorstep. Like this…
Why yes, those are bottles of juice that have been grown to the strains of different types of music. Check it out. We’ve got…
Blue Suede Juice– made with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and all those groovers.
Baby I Was Grown This Way– serenaded by Lady Gaga, Madonna, Katy Perry and various other popettes.
And, my personal favorite– Tastes Like Teen Spirit. Influenced by the Seattle sounds– Pearl Jam, Nirvana, The Pixies and so on.
Why, you ask…? Well. They’re all Made By MOG, Telstra’s new music streaming service. There’s this theory that plants who are played music make better, tastier fruit, and therefore better, tastier juice.
I’m a big believer in all that hippy stuff, as we know. Music and moods make the world go round. Little thoughts can have big effects. There’s a whole school of thought and experimentation called ‘ecosonics’- music for your plants. Which ties in beautifully with the concept of ‘Noetics’ based on research that suggests that the collective thoughts of people actually produce enough physical energy to cause identifiable effects on their environment. They have online experiments you can participate in– its one of those things on my “I’m gonna do this, eventually” list.
The jury’s still out as to whether or not playing MOG music has had any effect on the taste of the juice itself. And I’ve even got control samples for this experiment– Cedar Creek Orchard, where the apples were serenaded, is an institution in TinyTrainTown. It’s just up the road. So close, in fact, I even got you a photo to prove it.
Anyway. Taste aside, the juice certainly looks happy. And that’s what counts. Although, having said that, free juice– and a $100 admin fee to write this post– certainly contributes to both musicality and happiness. Or… something.
In honour of music being awesome, I’ve got the following stuff to be won, just for you, my jellybeans…
Ten x 1 month MOG subscriptions.
One x $100 TicketMaster voucher.
To win, I want to know– if you could flavour a beverage with music, what music would you choose? What song, do you think, would taste good?
Go in the draw to win by filling in the form below- if you can’t see the form, click here. Answers that particularly tickle my pickle at the time of drawing the prizes win. Entries close midnight AEST on the 10th April, 2013. Winners will be contacted by email and have 48 hours to respond before their prize is redrawn. My decision is final and no bitching, whinging or circle-jerking shall be entered into.
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A fortnight or so ago, I was invited to a real actual red–carpet movie premiere. With free popcorn and introduction speeches from the director and famous people and everything. It was one of those cases of “I’m almost sure these people don’t know who I am, but I’m taking full advantage of that and going anyway”. (Just to disclaimerise– this was before I took my stance against Pointless Corporate Whoring. And I would have gone anyway. C’mon, jellybeans… it’s a move premiere. With a ’feel good’ dress code. That sounds like fun, yes?)
The worst movie I’ve ever seen.
Anyway. Despite rude and surly cinema staff, it was fun. My mate Kristabelle was my date for the evening. We dressed up. There were goodie bags. And we sat next to famous–type–people, like a movie critic and some Olympic swimmer. We saw Magda in the flesh and she was just as cool as you’d think.
It’s just a pity that the movie sucked so very, very hard.
I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I was prepared to like it, cheering it on. The story of a stay at home mum of two who starts web casting to break the monotony and ease the boredom, and ends up being ’discovered’ and running away to the big city and having to decide between fame and Ronan Keating as her husband doing the washing up in nothing but a pink apron– what’s not to like, really?
It started well– soaring cinematography over green hills, a fresh–faced actress named Laura Michelle Kelly in drab olive clothes, spinning headily in a glorious Sound of Music parody. Which was interrupted by a shot of her twin toddlers eating cow-poo. I know, it should have been hysterical. Unfortunately, at the same time, I think most of the crowd realized that Laura Michelle Kelly– let’s just call her LMK– couldn’t actually act. At all.
The point you realise she can’t act.
To give her props where they’re due, when LMK was singing, dancing, performing the musical numbers (did I mention this was a musical? No? Well. There you go), it was impossible to take your eyes off her. In song, LMK was awesome.
But again, acting probably isn’t her strong point.
Surprisingly, Ronan Keating could act; and did a rather good job with a slightly ridiculous role as a whale researcher who helicopters himself out to Antarctica on an annoyingly regular basis, leaving his wife and kids stuck in rural Tasmania while he listens to the songs of humpbacks. (Yes, really).
Magda, as we already know, can also really actually act. It’s just that the script was so cheesy and so unintentionally sexist it came close to being downright offensive.
On one hand you have LMK, main character, singing her heart out at every opportunity. All the other women in the movie (including a cute, pregnant Pia Miranda and a funny–as–herself Corrinne Grant) hate her. But every single guy she meets– from seventeen year old nerd to tanned, corny pony-tailed busker– fall instantly in love with her. In fact, the pony–tailed, singing busker LMK meets in Sydney seemed to serve no plot purpose whatsoever. Except possibly to perform a song that demonstrated perfectly how not transfer that stage musical feeling to the big screen.
On the other end of the scale, Magda’s character was the ’corporate bitch’, a woman who left her husband in order to shatter the glass ceiling and holds LMK’s devotion to her family and her husband in disdain. Or so we are led to believe. But, evidently, Magda can’t be entirely happy about that decision. Because every time something goes wrong with her somewhat lame evil plan, we see her locked in a bathroom stall eating cookies from her handbag.
Why? I don’t know. No reason was given, nor even alluded to. Maybe it was just because its clearly impossible to have a larger woman on screen without alluding, in some way, to her eating habits.
For pity’s sake.
That was compounded by Magda’s declaration, in the movie’s final scenes, that her husband had, in fact, left her because she couldn’t have children. And that was why she pursued her career as viciously as she did and, apparently, was why she was such a cold hard bitch. She also declared that she was ’Fabulous!’… but not in any way that suggested she really thought she was.
Because, of course, her character couldn’t possibly have been a woman who chose to remain childless, chose not to get married. She couldn’t have genuinely been so passionate about her career that she was happy with the decisions she had made. She couldn’t have even been a lesbian. Not in this movie. Not in a movie where the lead character makes the decision to abandon her career completely, and return to an existence she finds unfulfilling, so that her husband will come back to her and her children won’t be scarred for life. Oh, and, bonus!– the formerly bitchy clique of local women seemingly embrace her. Enough to don multi– coloured rubber gloves and participate in a sing–along. Because, of course, she is one of them now.
Ronan’s bum- the best bit of the movie. Now you don’t need to see the movie at all. Ever.
By this stage, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d cut to a shot of Magda, alone and crying, surrounded by empty biscuit packets and chocolate wrappers. They didn’t. They did provide an unintentionally hilarious comic ending. Which wasn’t helped at all by the fact that it was filmed in an area very close to TinyTrainTown (where I live), and all Kristabelle and I could say was “Holy crap!! That’s Corbett’s Hardware!!”
Anyway. After a long winded duet with lots of cheesy footage of Ronan Keating standing, boy-band style, on the deck of a whale research ship with badly green-screened footage of the Antarctic rolling blandly behind him; he somehow commandeers a helicopter which he has to set down in the grassy courtyard of a small ‘Tasmanian’ town. It’s playing humpback whale songs from speakers. (Again… really). Ronan, with real actual tears in his eyes, proceeds to compare himself to a humpback whale and declare his love to LMK using some strange synonym that I’m not entirely sure I understood (possibly because Kristabelle and I were laughing so hard by this point that we had actual real tears in our own eyes).
Cue musical number, and they all (except, presumably, Magda) live happily ever after.
***
And this is what’s wrong with the Aussie film industry. For every awesome movie by the Edgerton brothers… there’s also a Goddess.
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| Tandem skydives with RedBalloon |
The free-fall was an uncomfortable, bursting spit of adrenaline; ears exploding with pressure, wind chafing and tearing against skin, the salt from the ocean below us stripping all the moisture from your pores. It seemed to go forever. You’ve been told that fall will only last for sixty seconds, just one minute of plummeting toward the surface of the earth. But my tandem instructor– the madman who does this for a living– tells me that if the chute fails to open, it’s just ninety seconds- a minute and a half- before we hit the ground. The last few seconds of free-fall– the roaring density of the air pressure as you tear through it making any verbal communication impossible– are excruciating, the discernible absence of a time keeping device allowing a deep, primal panic setting in. ‘This has taken too long, this has to have been more than a minute, and the chute has not opened, and we are going to die‘.
And then, of course, we don’t die– the instructor pulls the golf ball attached to the rip cord, and the roar is replaced with the most intense inertia. Your body is a rag doll, limbs flailing as you suddenly change direction from down to up, and it takes a moment for your velocity–addled mind to adjust.
As per my status quo when I’m caught up in that greasy mix of trailing adrenaline and sickening relief, I swear like a truck driver at the person who appears to be directly responsible for the overkill of chemical cocktails– the instructor I’m strapped to. While he laughs hysterically as if this is his favorite part of the profession. Which it probably is.
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| Free-fall. |
The float down is amazing, incredible… ecstasy. It’s the most incredible view I’ve ever seen, presented with the full tableaux of its surroundings. Sounds, scents, the movement of a populace below you… it’s intensely real. I’m sharply aware of feeling alive right now… just. It’s alarming what it takes to break through the numbness.
My instructor is gorgeous, tall and tanned with sun bleached hair. His American accent causes him to naturally pronounce my name ’Law–ree’. He walks up to me, shakes my hand and introduces himself. “My name’s Tony.” I stare at him for a second. Life, serendipity… these things rarely surprise me anymore. “Of course it is.” I answer bluntly, and the instructor looks at me oddly. As he should.
But Tony is good fun, thinks of himself as a comedian; and it all just adds to the feeling I’ve had since this sky dive was tentatively booked for December. This is a cleansing, something ritualistic. My husband is here with me… but something about floating down through the clouds, through a whole level of stratosphere… it’s leaving him there, too.
My Tony had been skydiving just a few months before we met, and desperately wanted to go again. I meant to, planned to, send him on another jump for a future birthday. One of those dozens I was positive he had left, we had left.
But I swore blind I’d never, ever go with him. F*ck that. Jumping out of a plane, not my style at all.
I’m a different person, now. I confused myself with how zen I was on Tuesday, strapped to a different Tony, climbing through the air in a tiny plane. Reality only really kicked when the roller door slid open and I took my eyes off it for just a few seconds… only to look back and discover that half the people who had been on plane were already gone, silently flinging themselves into the atmosphere below.
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| A tiny tin can full of people. |
Halfway into our floating, heavenly descent– once I’ve stopped flinging obscenities into the wide blue sky sky around us– Tony hands me the loops attached to the parachute canopy and shows me how to steer. Pull one down toward your waist, bank left; tug at the other and you veer to the right. Pull both evenly down in front of you and suddenly you stop, a sense of quickly buffered, blunted air pressure caught in fabric above you. And, just for a moment, you are suspended in mid air, crystallized above the earth, a perfect sense of nothingness and nowhereness.
It was the most amazing, weightless, almost celestial feeling I’ve ever experienced. Forget trapeze– this is flying. It almost– almost– made that initial free-fall through the blistering cold worth it.
Minute after we’ve left the plane we’re cruising toward the drop zone, and theground rushes up to meet us alarmingly quickly. I use neglected core muscles to pull my legs upwards, lift my heels as high off the ground as possible in order to land safely. And I laugh, exuberant, almost ready to kiss the
ground I’m standing upon. Proud of myself, but in an oddly muted way I know all too well- aware that I’m using this experience to feel alive, rather than enhance the essence of living.
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| The most amazing view |
But it’s something, and that’s better than nothing. In terms of a whole body experience that crackles with adrenaline and exhilaration, what they say is true– you really cannot get anything more intense than a skydive. Guaranteed, this is something you will remember until you are old and grey and surrounded by granbabies, should you be blessed enough to exist for that span of time.
The lovely Iznaya commented, via BookFace, “You just keep happening to life.”, and I take that as the highest possible compliment. It even feels that way, sometimes– as though I’m repeatedly smacking life in the face, again and again. Just when it expects me to go quietly.
Just when it expects me to lay down and rest.
Previous post: Exploring the Putty Road.
Next post: F*ck Christmas.
Pitcher plants at the second orang feeding station
***
We visit the village that was once on the other side of the river. The entire town was moved to here when their land became protected National Park. This village is called Tanjung Harapan, and the name of sounds like a melody, a short sweet song that rolls off the tongue.
It’s a tiny smattering of houses, most what we would consider derelict- most buildings here, we would probably be reluctant to raise our children in. Most roofs are constructed of hot, stuffy corrugated iron. Others are roofed with the traditional- but undoubtedly more expensive, given that they need to be replaced every two or three years- stitched palm fronds.
We come across a woman making roof panels- folding the older, longer palm fronds in half over a stiff stick, then using the younger, sharper palm fronds to stitch them in place. The woman sits cross-legged on her tiny, sheltered porch, her face serene and smooth like a rock washed over by a thousand waves. Ivend asks her if we can come closer to watch and she responds with a nod and a smile. May we take her photograph, we ask, and the request is translated. She nods her ascent, the same serene smile in place, as though she has seen a thousand tourists wander through her village in her time and nothing we wish to ogle at and photograph has the ability to surprise her any more.
And she probably has a thousand of us, maybe more. This tiny economy of this tiny village is subsidized by the tourists who come through Tanjung Pating. The tiny souvenir shop sells orangutans beautifully carved from ironwood; hats and mats woven from reeds; bracelets made from wooden beads and dried, plaited palm fronds.
The local economy is also subsidised by the same palm oil plantations that are now decimating the orang population. Their power was once provided by a giant, old fashioned water-wheel that revolved over and over, bucketing the water from a small canal into hydraulic energy.
Now, the electricity supply to Tanjung Harapan comes directly from the substation that belongs to the palm oil company.
A smiling man appears from a small, dark house and presents us with beautifully carved statues of orangutans, made with his own hands from solid ironwood. There are gorgeous and we all purchase one, with the maker’s name and the date it was made carved into the base.
“Where can I buy cigarettes?” I ask Ivend, and he replies “Up here. From my auntie”.
The shop is tiny and dark, and a woman dressed in a batik dress is sitting on the floor, playing with her children. With Ivend translating, I purchase two packets of Malboros.
“30 000 rupiah” Ivend translates. I hand over a 50 000 note and shake my head at the shopkeeper as she attempts to hand me change. She glances at Ivend in surprise, to confirm there’s been no misunderstanding, and he assures her there isn’t.
“Oh, terimah kasih!!”- “Oh, thank you!!” she cries, and throws her arms arund my neck, kissing me on the cheek.
20 000 rupiah is about two Australian dollars, and I feel myself break a bit inside. A sickening sense of my own over-privileged life. Of how much I take for granted. Of how very lucky- how spoiled- I actually am.
Tanjung Harapan
***
Emma and her mum Helen, the two other women in our group, have bought pencils and small clutching koala bears for the little ones in the village. Children are children, no matter where you go, and they swamp Emma and Helen, laughing and jumping around them as they receive their gifts.
We pile back onto the boat and there are a group of boys on the wharf beside us. There’s five or six of them, maybe eight or nine years old. They laugh at the tour leader and I as we pour water over our heads.
“Panang!” I cry out to them, laughing too. “Hot!”
The boys follow us up the river in a small canoe. They laugh in excitement as the wake of a speedboat rocks their canoe. The paddle it in circles with one oar, around and around. There is not a life jacket amongst them, not a parent in sight; and they show no fear.
Children are just children, no matter where you go.
***
The crew on our boat consists of a skipper, his two assistants, and a cook. The cook is an entirely beautiful woman with a lovely, warm smile. And her food is incredible- I find myself eating things I never thought I’d try; because it is all so fresh, so subtly spiced and carefully made.
The cook’s daughter is four years old and reminds me so much of my Bumpy thing, waiting for me at home, that it aches at my heart. Her name is Aya (A-YA) and she’s so well-behaved, in a way I can’t imagine my Bump ever being. But I can’t imagine bringing my Bump for three days on board a boat on the river, either- no life jacket, no stress. No misbehavior. Not a peep to be heard from her.
Aya
I ask Ivend how to say ‘beautiful’ in Bahasa, just so I can tell her “Aya- chanti!!”. She rewards me with a smile like the brightest of sunshine.
Children are children, no matter where they are.
***
There’s a peaceful, happy, teasing friendship now on the klotok- we’re comfortable with each other, things are running exceptionally smoothly.
We begin the journey back up-river toward Kumai, and late in the afternoon, we see the rarest of sights. There’s a big, male orang making his nighttime nest in a tree on the side of the river that’s not protected, not national park- the population of wild orangutans on that side of the river is unknown, but thought to be diminishing rapidly.
We pull the klotok to a stop and the orang watches us, watching him- we can just see his giant, cheek padded face peering over the top of his comfortable bed.
That night we have our dinner on board the boat again. The table is set, as always, with candles and wine glasses for our juice, and the food is delicious. It’s almost a full moon, with no cloud cover, which means the billions of fireflies that normally light up the river are, tonight, down to just a few hundred.
The Sekonyer River at dusk
Not that it matters. I’ve never seen a firefly before and I’m enchanted by the tiny glowing sparks that look like Christmas tree lights in the dense tree cover. They flit in and around the boat, and Garry, the tour leader, catches one so I can observe it. It’s only half a centimeter long and it’s bum, tucked in under it’s dark wings, blinks and glows a bright, neon yellow.
These people- especially Erin, my American roommate- they’re my friends now.
We eat a glorious dinner, with laughter and good conversation, amongst a hundred flickering fireflies; under the swollen, fat bright light of the waxing, luminous moon.
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June 4, 2013 at 5:04 pm What an amazing trip 
Vanessa recently posted…Your Life, Your Choice, Your Path
June 4, 2013 at 11:45 am It sounds like a n incredible experience.
Trish recently posted…Stepping out of my comfort zone, Naturally – RedBalloon review
June 4, 2013 at 11:27 am I just want to give you wild hugs, for being brave and saying yes to this trip, for making friends! It sounds cathartic and amazing.
June 3, 2013 at 11:31 pm Magic.
June 3, 2013 at 7:40 pm Oh Lori, what a wonderful time you are having. You know, I am so pleased that you are eating all that delicious food. Fireflies are amazing – the only time I’ve seen them was in Chicago, and I felt like I was on Sesame Street. Keep enjoying yourself!
June 3, 2013 at 7:11 pm Oh Lori, this is so beautiful , your words are amazing , it paints a perfect picture of our wonderful trip , it was so nice to share it with you , I can’t wait to show my
Mum , she is really looking forward to reading it
and reliving such a special journey
Emma x
Previous post: Fireflies- Part One. #BloggersToBorneo
Next post: Turtles in Keluang Bay.
It’s right up there with doing laundry in terms of smug satisfaction– while there is no smug satisfaction that competes with bringing in a load of freshly washed, sun dried cloth nappies (diapers, whatever); the cat–in–a–bird–cage–glow that accompanies freshly mopped floors come a very close second place.
It’s Spring Cleaning time in the TinyTrainHouse.
Being pregnant was awesome for cleaning. Forget nesting in the last few weeks of pregnancy– I had the cleaning bug from about 12 weeks in, and it took a good four months after I gave birth for it to wear off. I remember my husband once telling me that I was going to “mop the damn enamel of the tiles if I attacked them again”, and that was probably not an entirely unfair thing to say. I think, at that point, thirty weeks pregnant and with way too much spare time, I was mopping the kitchen floor of the Purple House on a twice–daily basis.
There was no way I could keep that up. Hello, post natal depression and a massive case of useless anxiety. Pregnant the second time around, I actually relished that fervent, all consuming nesting instinct. ‘Sparkle sparkle’, said the glass doors and the floors and the car and the bathroom and the dog and whatever else would sit still for long enough to be drenched in white vinegar and scrubbed to within an inch of it’s existence.
About this time last year, we moved here, to the TinyTrainTown, from another small town that goes by the name of Paradise. Living in Paradise for six months made the spring clean and un–clutter almost disappointingly easy– anything that I hadn’t used, looked at or thought about in six months was more than likely not useless and could be scrapped, recycled or redistributed. (For those of you who have hoarder tendencies without the ruthlessness minimalism requires, pay careful attention to this next sentence– of everything I got rid of when I moved, I can honestly say I cannot think of one material thing I have genuinely missed or wished I still owned. Really.)
And the year before that… well. Life, into boxes, same as last year. But without nearly as much direction or purpose.
This year, with the weather beginning to warm and the heaven scent garden slowly blooming, it feels as though it’s time to clean. To open windows wide and let warm dry air blow through the house, taking dust and mold and mildew and winter and worries and stress away with it. To shuffle through and pick at boxes of toys and books, to delve into bathroom cupboards and builtin wardrobes and rid the house of the accumulated junk of twelve months worth of day to day in’s and out’s, fifty two weeks worth of life piling up on top of itself.
And it’s just mundane life piling up that leaves the most junk behind. There’s a filing cabinet full of papers to be culled, a storage cupboard stocked with Christmas presents, hoarded over winter like chestnuts, that need of be sorted and eventually wrapped. There’s a hot water main valve that requires relieving, a cat that needs to vaccinated, insurances to be renewed, spiders and other creepy crawlies to be poisoned, a sadly neglected vegetable garden that is just itching to be turned and planted, to stretch tiny seedlings towards the spring sunshine.
I only have myself to blame for so much of that boring doldrum falling right now, all at the same time of year. But, in truth, I don’t mind it at all. It feels like a life reboot, a clearing of the slate. Getting things in order before our birthdays and Christmas– the party season for our small family, all the festivities falling at once– begin and the New Year rolls out again with the best of intentions, before the days trip all over one another and life piles up again.
A thorough clean is a spiritual necessity in order to vacuum up the existential cobwebs and complement the Spring life–refresh.
Force me to choose the task I prefer from all the possible cleaning activities available (laundering of cloth nappies not included), there’d be very little hesitation before I answered ’vacuuming’. There’s something morbidly and perversely fascinating about sucking up particles of dust, dirt and the ever–present Cheerios through an appliance that has more horsepower than my first car. (What is it with small children and Cheerios in every conceivable nook and cranny of the house? Like carrots in vomit; they are omni–present, independent of last consumption).
So I vacuum during a Spring Clean. A lot. I vacuum lounge chairs and picture frames, bookcases and the books within them. I vacuum shelves and drawers and smoke detectors. I even move things, big heavy things like lounges and tables, and vacuum underneath them. I strip sheets and flip mattresses– and vacuum them as well, of course– wash linens and pillows and hang them out in the warm sunshine to dry. If you are of the uninitiated and have never vacuumed a mattress and stared in horrified wonder at the pile of white–grey skin cells formed into the finest powder that results… You should. Likewise if you’ve never machine–washed and line–dried your pillows back to their original fluffy whiteness. The only real drawback being that other people’s inevitably unwashed bedding is going to really start grossing you out.
Being the big suburban hippy I am, I swore off bleaches and chemicals that smelt almost–but–not–quite–like–apples–or fields–of–flowers when I was pregnant for the first time, struck with a sudden awareness that bordered on paranoia at the way bathroom cleaners seemed to literally burn and singe the tiny fine hairs at the back of my nostrils. These days I stick to bi carb soda and
white vinegar, eucalypt and lavender and tea tree for cleansing, deodorizing and most other household purification purposes.
I mop psuedo–wood floors with boiling water and essential oils to make them shine. I scrub my bathroom, removing a ring made up of hundreds of days of the washed off dirt and play of two small children. I wash windows and wipe down a dozen or so random surfaces from sink to shelf to dollhouse.
And I wash. And wash, and wash, and wash. A week’s worth of washing to two days of hard cleaning… I’m guessing that’s why spring cleaning is done in spring.
After all that’s finally been done, after the hidden places of the house are tended to and tided, vacuumed and scrubbed; the actual satisfying part begins. You return things to their respective places, tweaking and reconsidering their arrangement as you go. You stock cupboards with clean linen, fresh from sunshine that feels to be blooming along with the garden’s flowers, a heat too big for itself that spills it’s excess into the deepest layers of your skin.
Light incense. Burn sage. Run an ionizer– ironically, plugged straight into the power source itself– to smooth out the constant electric buzz of your life.
And relax… relish. Feel your soul–self come into some essence of alignment, as if it’s had it own spring clean, subconsciously shuffling away junk no longer needed in sync with the cleaning out of a house.
It’s wholly satisfying and self–congratulatory and feels like dark secrets and baggage that was just beginning to rot… cleared. Everyone needs a fresh start, occasionally. Spring blows in a new one every year.
It’s like life’s Get Out Of Jail Free Card. The Universe’s way of saying all bets are off, table clear… get yourself set and prepared to start all over again.
*And before anyone mentions the FlyLady… we’ve covered her before.
{ 12 comments }
Some days, you’ll spend hours crafting a post, writing and re-writing, thinking and editing…. and no one will pay any attention whatsoever.
And, other days, there are posts that you write out quickly and barely look at it again, the catharsis of them coming through bleeding out the words in the first place. You hit publish and file them away in your own mental archives, with hundreds of others, not expecting anyone to pay much attention…
And they get picked up and syndicated by BlogHer.
Excuse me while I rest back here on my laurels for a bit.
It’s comfortable, and I’m tired.
And besides, laurels smell just lovely.
Apologies for the bugs in the commenting system the last few days. I’d like to blame a new mobile blog reader app that may have just been released… but truly, it was my own fault for ticking the wrong box.
Fingers crossed, the gremlins will migrate elsewhere soon.
{ 5 comments }
And the universe, all ominous storm clouds and uncaring grey skies, said nothing.
It wasn’t until I had some kind of epiphany, one so basic I’m almost loathe to admit it. But in truth I had never considered that it doesn’t have to be one way, or the other. Maybe it’s more of an equilibrium. You can live your whole life with the most minimal up and downs, the most unremarkable of tragedies and triumphs.
Or you live big and full, taking massive unladylike bites of every day and letting the juice of them run down your chin. You will hurt deeply, with every atom of your soul, and some of your nights will be very, very dark, swallowing all the light there is. And where there is night, there will be a sunset.
But where there is sunset, there is always a sunrise. And if your nights are dark, then sometimes– not always, of course, but some days– your sunrises will be breathtakingly beautiful.
The sun feels as though it’s shining here, a golden warm light on my face after so many months in the dark. I’m watching a list of Good Things pile up, the weight of them beginning to even out all the Bad Things on the other side. It’s preparing for Borneo. It’s feeling content. It’s finally meeting Someone who isn’t terrified of real life, of my life. It’s writing, and feeling myself get better at it, reading it back and wondering where on earth those structured sentences came from anyway.
It’s finally loving my kids as my own again, feeling as though we’re in sync… feeling as though I understand them again.
It may not seem like much at all, but in light of everything… I’ll take it.
Two years.
I have an answer now, to a question I’ve only been asked once or twice. “How long, till you felt better again?”
The answer, truth until now, would come from my mouth unbidden and unwanted- I didn’t want to say it, no one wanted to hear to it, yet there it was. A screaming, bawling, bloody overgrown truth, disfigured and horrid and staining everything around it as it writhed in pain out in the open, exposed to fresh air and scrutiny. “I’m don’t feel better. It hasn’t happened yet.”
I’m not saying I feel awesome, or that I’m suddenly Suzy Sunshine and life’s roses. But the oddest thing has happened lately.
I’ve forgotten to remember I feel different. I’ve forgotten to remember that I thought this would define me forever.
I feel like myself again. And feeling like myself… that’s not really that great, either- I’ve never been a big fan of me.
But it’s better than not knowing who I am at all.
Two years, or thereabouts… to shell out someone’s soul, and have it feel as though it’s beginning to grow again,
Two years.
It’s been a very, very long time.
{ 6 comments }
I blogged not long ago, slightly distraught with a sense of human hopelessness, about how I no longer believed in karma, in some sort of celestial intervention that insured that just because people were ‘good’, their life would be pleasant and agreeable things would happen to them.
As I always do, I read every comment left for me. If I’m honest, some made me angry, but, as is the status quo, most made me smile. One in particular I read at that time and didn’t think much further about until it popped into my mind as a full colour picture a few days later.
An anonymous comment said this…
Either you can play the victim, or you can acknowledge that yes, this happened, but it also happened to Tony and all the other people who knew him and who know you.
There IS such a thing as the Law of Attraction. As above, so below… as within, so without. What you think about, you bring about. So while the pain and the memories are there, try to focus on what you loved most about Tony, and you will attract more loving people and experiences into your life.
I’ve had alot of horrible shit happen to me too but I have to pick up the pieces somehow and keep living and learning.
There’s probably a whole blog post in how much the first paragraph pissed me off. And as for the last paragraph… I freaking hate being patronised. And I’ve found the only thing that playing the “who’s got the biggest pile of crap” game leads to is everyone’s towers falling down and we all end up covered in shit.
The middle bit… and moved on. I filed it under ‘Good Begets Good, Think Happy Thoughts’ and dismissed it with a mental ‘But I already do that…’ and moved on.
And then, as happens on a continually increasing frequent basis, I had some kind of epiphany. And realized all over again that I am not, in fact, as smart as I happen to think I am.
Chatting via SMS to a guy I’d met in the treacherous waters of online dating, I happened to ask how many kids he had. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the answer I got back. Which was ‘seven’. And this guy was only 34 years old.
There are always deal breakers when you’re dating. And when you’re dating online, there has to be– how else do you sift through the myriad of possible men who may be nothing like what they say they are? It’s easy enough to call game over when you find out things like the person in question doesn’t like children, they use hardcore drugs, they’re only after sex or currently serving time in a penititary.
And once upon a my-mid-twenties, seven kids to two different women would have been well and truly enough to make me stay away.
But really, when it comes right down to it… is cutting off any further communication with someone just because they’ve got (way) more kids than you any different to backing away from a woman because her husband killed himself?
Not really. And the laws of attraction state, you get back what you put out into the Universe.
If that’s the truth– and really, who’s to say its not?– then, should I continue the way I am, I’ll find myself meeting people exactly like me. People who are too afraid of someone’s circumstances to even take the chance to get them to know them.
I’ll confess that I’m not particularly disappointed when communication with this guy fizzled out within the next couple of days. It turned out that we just had nothing much to say to each other. But at the very less I let it get to that point organically, naturally. Without cutting it off just because there was some fact of this person’s life that was scary and unfamiliar.
And that has to be a good thing. Because if I’m continually raving and hurting that my husband’s actions speak more to others than the person I am inside, while dismisses others on the facts of their past rather then who they are in the present, it’s only logical that I’m going to attract people who will do just that. Everyone’s got a past, no one is perfect… if I want people to stop expecting me to be, I have to accept the same from them.
With that in place, a core truth that’s taken me so long to learn, it doesn’t even feel surprising when the next person who comes along is almost farcically ‘imperfect’, if we’re going to count odds and ends and candlewax and things that don’t really matter.
And I know, that probably makes no sense to you at all.
But know for now that I’m smiling. It’s spring and my heaven scent garden is beginning to bloom…. and for now I’m smiling.
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September 10, 2012 at 7:14 am I wish I had all day to read your blog. I lost my father to suicide sixteen years ago, and I have many other family members suffering from mental illness and the stigma that inevitably comes with it. Sending you as much love, light, and good energy as I can muster. Your courage, vulnerability, and strength are an inspiration, and I look forward to reading more of your story.
September 8, 2012 at 11:32 pm I am a huge believer in the Law of Attraction and I can see where the anon commenter was coming from. He/she is right although I don't think anything was meant to come across as patronising. Many people believe that before we come to earth in human form we make an agreement on the things our souls wish to experience from birth til death, even the time and way we die.
I have manifested alot of good and alot of bad with the LOA because I attracted it into my life, whether I wanted it or not. Whatever I focused on the most, the universe aligned for me. Back in January my marriage was falling apart, I was on the edge of being homeless, my husband had kicked me out because he was severely depressed and I had lost my job, I live overseas and have no family so I was scared shitless. Then I began meditating, visualising and focusing on what I wanted – a better job, a nice house to rent & my loving husband back.
Within days my his attitude had changed towards me, I was offered a job days after that. My marriage is now back on track, my husband is much more attentive and caring, his health is improving and he is now much happier in a new job as well.
"What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." W Clement Stone
I use meditation, visualising, EFT and vision boards to keep me focused on what I want to attract into my life. So far it seems to be working!
September 8, 2012 at 5:19 pm My mum always says, "there is always someone with more problems than you." It's how you deal with it is the difference I guess, and no one knows that until you're living it.
September 8, 2012 at 2:00 am P.S. No one has ever found my blog by googling mushroom tunnels. Slightly jealous…
September 8, 2012 at 1:59 am Here's something to further confuse the discussion. I gave up a while back on internet dating and recently decided to let go of worrying at all about men and just focus on my kids and all the things that are right in front of me. I just lost interest in dating. But wouldn't you know it, suddenly men are coming out of the woodwork. Complete strangers finding me on social media and hitting on me (usually in ways that creeps me out a bit). I'm still not interested in dating, but I thought that was an interesting switch. So there you have it. Chew on that. Not sure what to make of it. x
September 7, 2012 at 9:22 pm You never fail to impress me, Lori. It takes quite a backbone to get past the irritating and patronizing parts of a comment and pull out the nugget of wisdom that speaks to you. Wish I could do that. I would have been firmly stuck in irritation and dismissed the comment entirely.
September 7, 2012 at 10:49 am Hey Lori, read this opinion piece from a man about online dating and it made me curious about your thoughts on it as it is a subject you've touched on before… http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/real-life/sex-after-separation-20120831-254qj.html
If you remember me, Jess.
September 7, 2012 at 9:43 am Hi Lori
I stumbled upon your blog yesterday while googling the mushroom tunnels after a conversation at King George on Sunday. I was telling my friend today about your blog (again because of mushroom tunnels) and we then spoke about the laws of attraction. How funny that when I logged on to send her a link to your blog today you are discussing the same topic. I guess thats part of what the law of attraction is all about?!?
September 7, 2012 at 8:49 am I love this post Lori.
Not only because Im so happy you are smiling but because you also reminded me of my own need to remember the laws of attraction.
Thankyou.I believe your words will help so many.xx
September 7, 2012 at 6:25 pm Ha ha ha – perfection eh. I've been told too many times to count that there is no such "thing" as perfection. What I consider to be perfect, is not perfect to someone else. Therefore, I now conclude, & have taught my kids for the last 24+ years, that "perfection" is about being the best that one can. If I get pleasure out of that, then I will accept that as perfection. If someone gets pleasure or happiness from my happiness, then I can accept that as perfection. One man's trash & all that.
I think I'm off topic again – but, as you may know by now (you did say you read everything written to you, so I'm going to believe that you've read my whitterings), my mind tends to wander. I'm still learning the art of the simple "yes/no" answer. Maybe by the time I'm …, I'll have got it. As for expecting anything, let alone perfection, from others – no. As for attraction… like minded seeks like minded. Karma – if not in this lifetime, maybe in the next.
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I wrote this last week- the 7th of January, in fact. I just haven’t felt… solid enough? I think that’s the word I’m after. I haven’t felt solid enough to publish it until now.
***
I thought it was over. I really thought it was over and I was over this and life could move on. That feeling like this was just a memory, something I could have empathy for and vaguely remember but never again feel as keenly as I did.
But I was wrong. So wrong, and I should have known better.
I’ve spent all day mourning, grieving, keening, crying. Pushing through panic attacks and reminding myself to breathe, breathe, breathe. Everything that hurts, everything I successfully disengage myself from most days… it’s all here. I re-live four days spent in the ICU over and over. Tiny events and interactions with nurses and police and family and friends splice themselves unbidden into my mind. The time-frame of them solidifies. Normally, they are painful pops of memory disjointed. I know they happened, but I never delve far enough into them to put them in any kind of chronological order.
The last few days, I have counted them off. Yesterday was the day he responded, moving his eyes and flexing his feet. Yesterday was the day his body flexed and stressed and then relaxed as i told him what he wanted to know– two days, it’s only been two days.
Today was the day he stopped responding. Today was the day the swell of his brain took over what was left of him.
Tomorrow was the day they told us his life support would be shut off.
And Friday would be the day he died.
And there’s more, a hundred more (“I’m not dreaming, am I?” “No dear” the nurse with tears in her eyes as she responded, “No dear, I’m sorry, you’re not.”) but typing them out makes me cry and my eyes are red and sore and all I’ve done all day is cry.
The Most Amazing Man just lets me cry. He cuddles me and tells me it’s okay, cry if I need to. That he’s a good listener, he says, and sometimes he thinks that’s why he was sent to me.
We pack up our camping gear, clean the house. He makes me laugh.
Life…it goes on.
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April 23, 2014 at 2:41 pm Prettƴ! Тhis has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing this informɑtion.
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January 19, 2014 at 3:34 pm My asault and 12 hour kidnapping by a stranger who broke into my boarding room at 1 AM was 18 years ago/was a long time ago now and a very different thing I know- and sounds so trifling here but trauma is such a cheeky bastard. For years I would have horrid nightmares for a few days around the annivesary and in every new apartment I had to rehearse lying in bed at night just how I would escape and where I would go before I could go to sleep. I thought I was over it all but over the US Summer last year realized deep down I was still very angry at him for forever changing who I was and altering my life path. I am so sorry, Lori but glad you are being warmly and wholly loved. (You are a million percent worthy of it, beautiful!
January 14, 2014 at 3:17 pm You know who this is and yes I know what your saying as I hate the days from the 6th to the 10th January. Next year we should go somewhere and spend these 4 days getting drunk and that way we can cry as much as we like because we are so ill from drinking we are vomiting our insides up.
Hopefully now you can move on you got to remember you moved away to another state you started a new life and it was all building up to letting go of your former like. Hopefully with a new man and you had a very good cry and relived those 4 days at the hospital you can move forward. I think you will understand what I am trying to put into words.
January 19, 2014 at 3:36 pm (Was still angry! Had some therapeutic ugly cries on a roadtrip 
January 14, 2014 at 12:34 pm Yep, it does. Beautifully written Lori x
January 14, 2014 at 11:43 am Yep life it does a keep a going and so do you. Sending you lots of fairy wishes and butterfly kisses lovely
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January 14, 2014 at 10:16 am don’t ever make the mistake of thinking it’s gone for good.
because then it will surface from the deep and bite your legs off.
this doesn’t mean you won’t have good times. it simply means that it can come back and clip you off when you don’t expect.
you’ll be ok. keep breathing.
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January 14, 2014 at 9:18 am Lori, I don’t think it will ever become just a memory. When something that traumatic happens to you I don’t think you can look back on it without reliving the pain and being back there in that moment. It’s been 18 years since my dad committed suicide and whenever I think about it I am right back there as a 10 year old girl reliving it as if it was happening all over again. I don’t think the emotions will ever leave you. What I can say though is that the flashbacks do become further apart as time goes on and you learn to deal with them better. And eventually you may be able to look back on them without tearing up. I can relive it all without actually crying, but I still get sad and emotional internally and I still dream about it all the time. I know its probably not what you wanted to hear, but at least you have a lovely man there for you to help you grieve .
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January 14, 2014 at 8:50 am I thought about you a bunch last week…so if you though you felt well wishes and prayers coming your way with a Southern accent…that was me.
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January 13, 2014 at 9:51 pm I’m so sorry you are enduring such pain. Sending you light in the darkness.
January 13, 2014 at 8:08 pm Thinking of you, Lori.
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January 13, 2014 at 7:58 pm Xx rah rah from Lara
January 13, 2014 at 7:16 pm Love to you. x
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January 13, 2014 at 7:02 pm I’m glad The Most Amazing Man is there with you. Xox
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January 13, 2014 at 6:54 pm Sending so much love and hope to you.
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Romanticism: The effect of viewing through rose colored glasses.
It’s common, even healthy to a certain point, to romanticise a relationship that’s ended (rejection is rejection) whether it be through death or other circumstance. The person missing becomes elevated to the status of a God– it’s so easy to make someone infallible when they’re not around to prove you wrong.
In my mind, my husband has become the perfect man.
I catch myself sometimes attributing things to him that are fallacies. Sick with fever, my body aching with the flu, and I say to my mum “Why isn’t Tony here?! He would take care of me and make me feel better…”
My mother looms at me as though I have temporarily lost my mind and reminds me that Tony hated it when I was sick, and didn’t have an ounce of compassion. He wouldn’t have taken care of me– I would have been taking care of myself, and two kids as well, and quite possibly still be expected to have dinner on the table at six.
The same flash of light as I’m texting Pink on Mothers Day– I wish he was here, she says, so the day would be better for you; and she makes me smile with that. But at the same time I’m playing over in my head all those Mothers Days past, in the Purple Life… and remembering that it was never about me, besides the ubiquitous bunch of flowers when I reminded him. Sometimes he’d come through– in amongst my box of treasures I have half a dozen sweet cards in his handwriting– but he was never as attentive or romantic in real life as he is in my mind.
I have taken bits of popcorn reality and strung them on a long, thin string to wind around a tree that would otherwise be ugly… I have taken the best pieces and made it beautiful again.
It’s a blessing– if I am never loved again; I feel as if I have been loved, complete. It’s encapsulated in time, in my memory, and it’s static now– it cannot be changed. No one can ever take away or take back the fact that he loved me, that I was his world– his sun rose and set with me.
It’s a curse. Who could stack up to the irrefutably perfect man, who can do no wrong because he’s simply not around anymore? A man who has been elevated to a saint? How could a human man with mortal, leaden feet compare to that?
It’s necessary; for so many tiny, insignificant reasons that allow me to justify not addressing it psychologically. I need to keep a picture of a giant, a hero, in my mind for my children. And I need it for me.
Because if I think too much about the actual reality of it (cunt), every fight we ever had molds into the biggest one there was (”I’m going to show everyone what a terrible person you are”) and all I can remember is him spitting in my face (slut).
And, as I’ve said before, those kinds of memories (flashbacks)… once they begin, they are difficult to make cease.
Can we blame me, at all, for wanting to remember the sunshine, the happy hue of Purple rather than the nightmare that came after…?
Of course not. Everyone stacks the deck in their favor. That’s the problem with memory, it’s not reality… it’s such a goddamn subjective thing
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June 24, 2012 at 1:15 am Amazing!! Some would say you lost it all but you still have your bedazzler, and you did what any girl would do, started all over again! So proud
June 23, 2012 at 9:30 pm So wise, Lori. So very wise. You can't help but remember the good – perhaps embellish it a little. I think when the time is right, there will be room in your heart, and in your children's hearts for the right man (flesh and bone) and the memory of Tony. So much love to you.
June 23, 2012 at 6:38 am Lori,
Each of us frames our own reality! It's what we do. As humans, we have a certain need to define ourselves and we do that selectively.
So do it!
Enjoy it!
Grovel in it!
Swim in it!
Take a bite of it!
Eventually, as time goes by, your reality is the only one that matters.
Being a grown up means we can take the moments, separate them into compartments and look as each compartment individually as we like. The other compartments exist, but we may have a favorite one!
PEACE.
Karen from http://taytayhser.blogspot.com/
June 23, 2012 at 2:58 am Hi! I am following you from Mummy Time. I enjoyed reading and hope to enjoy some more! I would appreciate the follow back! Thanks! Have a great day! -Kat
June 21, 2012 at 9:36 pm Oh Lori, I cried. I had a feeling, even as I sent that text that he wouldn't have made Mothers Day magical or special, but I knew his presence still would have been felt, and you wanted that feeling that day. Even if you were screaming at him about how selfish he is for not even getting you a card/giving you a sleep in etc.
How you remember him is no one's buisness but your own. Put him up on that pedestal. Why not? Right now it's about what you need him to be.
June 21, 2012 at 6:43 pm I tend to pair them up
June 21, 2012 at 10:17 am I think it sounds like a survival mechanism, and to be able to see it now for what it is looks like progress. Maybe you just see it how you need to see it at any given time? Nothing wrong with that:)
June 21, 2012 at 9:30 am I hear you and have done the same thing. We romanticize our past because we can and dammit that's the only reason we need.
June 21, 2012 at 9:17 am Sometimes, I think even reality is subjective. If you feel like you were loved, it's because you were. Whose right is it to say otherwise? Lys
June 21, 2012 at 9:16 am Wow, Lori…
It's like you read my mind sometimes. My ex-partner isn't gone forever from this world, but he is gone forever (or so it seems) from my life and I'm falling into this same trap of remembering only the best bits of him. It's been really getting me down lately. Sometimes I will have to force myself to remember the uncaring things he did, or the way he took advantage of my kindness and my work ethic just so I don't get upset.
But too, I try and see it as a good thing as well. In their absence, it's kind of beautiful to remember the best parts of a person. I feel like my ex-partner might be cheered a little to know I rememeber the nice things he did over the not-so-awesome stuff. And you know what? I hope he has the same thing with the nicest parts of me. It makes it a little easier…
June 21, 2012 at 8:45 am I love how honest you are. I know you've taken a LOT of flack for it, but I love it.
June 21, 2012 at 8:40 am I do this 'reperfecting' of my husband in my mind daily (and he's still here) I too would turn him into a god like status if I lost him. Why dwell on the crappy when rose coloured smells lovely. Think on the past only as it gives you pleasure (I think Jane Austin said that).
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Oh noes! What you’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist.
Why not read my best bits?
Perhaps we could talk about mental health.
Alternatively, you can just head to safety.
As we know, because I am some kind of sadomasochist with a thing for uncomfortable social situations, I occasionally dabble in Internet dating.
It hasn’t been all bad. I’ve made some new friends, had some fun, and only had to provide one of them with a written declaration that I wouldn’t write about him on my blog. (Yes, really. In writing. I resisted the urge to tell him that only really interesting people end up here.)
But, you know, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Or somebody (me) makes their escape to the ladies room, calls a SOS-texts a mate to make an ‘emergency’ phone call in ten minutes time, and then Tweets about it.
All that within the first half hour. Online dating is a terrifying place, remember?
I normally make a point of speaking with potential dates on the phone before I meet them– at least that way you know if they’re capable of holding a conversation. I hate nothing more than sitting in an uncomfortable silence.
I neglected to make that phone call before this date. More fool me. By text message and email, this guy was so well spoken, and he seemed to fit all the criteria– a few years older than me, two kids the same ages as mine, understands the dynamic of the basic question-answer-response-question dynamic.
I won’t guide you through the whole thing. It was painful to live through as it is. I think I can sum it up in a few sentences…
Not two children, but three. One almost the same age as me.
Lots of tattoos. Which is fine by me, I love tats. But not those faded, patchy blue jail tattoos. Especially when one of them is your ex–wife’s name on your ring finger.
He stunk of bourbon from the moment he got there, and was utterly disgusted that the TinyTrainTown, where I live, doesn’t have a pub. The nearest one is seven whole kilometers away, and “How the f*ck are you supposed to walk back from there, love?”
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| I heart tools. Obviously. |
Now, please, don’t get wrong… all that I could have taken with salt (and possibly tequila), and still had a good night. If only he hadn’t been one of those men I’ve discussed before, who just cannot hold a conversation. This bloke was happier to sit in silence, or mock the fellow patrons of the sleazy, dark bar he’d bought me to (“Oh, did you want dinner, love? I’ve already eaten. And the food here looks sh*t”) rather than actually try to find out anything at all about the person he was not-dining. One syllable answers. No questions, stories, opinions, and refused to take conversation-bait when it was offered….
Get me the f*ck out of here.
I’ve had a system working with a friend of mine for a while now. If she knows I’m on a date and I text her saying ‘SOS’, she waits ten minutes and then calls me, pretending to be the babysitter, and oh no, my little one’s sick, gotta go, see you later.
Anyone who’s brave enough to date-especially online- needs a safeguard like this one. Trust me. And a huge thank you to all my Tweeps who offered to bail me out and rescue me by shifty phone call– legends.
And, why, yes, before anyone points it out… I do feel like a total bitch. Or I did. Until Mr Bad Date rang me the next four nights in a row at somewhere between the hours of midnight and two am, and left me some lovely drunken voicemails… which I’ve kept on the odd chance I may need a restraining order at some point in the not too distant future.
I’m determined not to get too jaded. Or something. Hey, if nothing else… bad dates make for excellent blog fodder.
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June 13, 2012 at 11:20 pm sometimes dates after conversations can be very awful, I had one, he started to try to kiss me but I refused in words, went away but he followed me and clutched my hand very sharply with the words "I don`t like when girls run away from me". Stupid situation, I sent him on dick and went away. Save God.
May 28, 2012 at 7:57 pm Online dating can give you a chance to meet your love. But there can be some troubles on your way. Read more about online dating and find your soulmate.
April 8, 2012 at 9:19 am Oh yes, I've been the 'Safety Buddy' for my friends before, http://blog.mummybrain.com/2009/06/safety-buddy.html scary place to be sometimes! Still, she's now found the 'man of her dreams', and living with him, so I guess it works sometimes!
April 7, 2012 at 10:24 am "How the f*ck are you supposed to walk back from there, love?"
Hey, at least he doesn't drink and drive!! HAHAHAHA
March 30, 2012 at 8:18 am Just keep swimming. I'm 12months on from meeting my man. On line. But that was 12 months after I started. I learnt a a lot about myself from the whole experience, and meeting my man was a bonus. I was deleting my account, cause I was no longer feeling the need to do it. Was feeling confident, self assured and happy. But wasn't leaving them with my money! So I spent the last stamp, deleted the account…. And well the rest is history. Im about to hop on a plane tomorrow and travel to nz, his home town. Meeting him was the bonus in the whole adventure. And it was an adventure. X
March 28, 2012 at 2:47 am March 27, 2012 at 10:13 pm OMG. It just goes to show that there are some serious LOSERS out there. We just have to keep looking for someone that is a winner.
And the only way to find is to keep looking.
But GREAT blog fodder!
xx
March 27, 2012 at 8:23 am Love the photo! Oh for sake I want you to catch a break
March 27, 2012 at 4:11 am What a catch!
March 26, 2012 at 11:07 pm Youch! sounds like a real winner! can't believe you let that one slip away
March 26, 2012 at 11:02 pm Sounds on a par with a date i had once who turned up wearing black moccasins. Apparently he had to wear them because he had gout. It was very awkward..
March 26, 2012 at 7:00 pm Were they naughty voicemails? Please tell me they were! Drunken naughty voicemails (or texts) are the bessssttttt.
I love that you have a safeguard. Everyone needs a friend who will give you a dodgy call so you can leave your crappy date.
March 26, 2012 at 6:08 pm It's great to know that he's already planning his first piss up at the nearest pub near your place so he can crash with you. This shows he is keen and committed to a future with you.
The voicemails are sweet, shows he's thinking of you.
If you play your cards right,you could have a prison tattoo on the finger next to his ex wife's one. So chin up!
Blergh!
March 26, 2012 at 5:22 pm So! Sounds like you guys really hit it off
March 26, 2012 at 4:08 pm Why don't you talk on webcams. You can go to stickam and have them go there and see them in person. See if they can hold a conversation before meeting them in person. http://www.stickam.com/
March 26, 2012 at 3:12 pm Definitely a SOS call situation!
March 26, 2012 at 10:34 am Lol. I don't think you are a bitch.. but I can't help thinking that perhaps he was a bit of a dolt.. perhaps he had a drink or two to calm the nerves and then was so flustered he couldn't talk to you properly. I feel a bit sorry for him. Not sorry enough to want you to see him again, but sorry enough to think "you poor, silly bastard. You screwed that up."
Lol, better luck next time.
March 26, 2012 at 10:25 am Oh by god Lori – how you keep your sense of humour is beyond me!!
I reckon you should give the speed dating thing a go maybe? At least you could see the frogs from the princes and only subject yourself to the frogs for a few minutes lol
March 26, 2012 at 10:14 am Gotta love good blogfodder opportunity.
March 26, 2012 at 10:12 am That should read: You are not being a bitch.
March 26, 2012 at 10:11 am Are you bringing him to the conference?
I had a few of those types. I had one SOS call but the guy was on to me because when I bumped into him the next time he was all aggro. He was like your mate and both times stank of alcohol. Noice.
You are not being a bit – there are just some freakazoids out there.
March 26, 2012 at 8:45 am I remember this well. I once called my sister from the car park to say that my potential date had just turned up in a ute plastered with playboy bunny stickers. I was not going in without the assurance of a phone call five minutes later.
I did however meet my husband on an internet dating site. It does happen. Rarely. And there were ALOT of Mr Bad Dates before hand.
Glad you see the funny side!
March 26, 2012 at 11:26 am What is wrong Lori? He sounds fantastic and really really smart x
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Teaching little kids emotional coping skills is a difficult task. Especially when those skills are so badly needed, at such a young age.
I always struggle with it. I put pressure on myself and, subsequently, quite often end up kicking up my own arse over the things I’m not sure I’m doing correctly.
I’m not even sure there’s a correct way to do them.
It’s easy to monitor the physical accomplishments, the ones that can be metered out loud. Learning to read. Tying shoelaces. Toilet training. Finally being tall enough to go on the rides at Luna Park.
The emotional stuff is never that simple.
You can teach your kids the words for different emotions, but you never know if they’re able to use those words when they need to. You can build your child’s confidence as high as humanly possible, but you have no way of telling, really, if they’re still insecure.
You can talk to them, explain the world in a million ways. But you can’t be sure they’ll believe you. You can show them the ‘right’ way to cope, over and over again. But you don’t know if they’ll pay more attention to your conscious efforts… or what you happen to do, unconsciously, when you’re not paying enough attention.
The things you let slip through when you forget you’re supposed to be trying really, really hard.
***
A play date we had planned with the Chop’s oldest friend is cancelled at the last moment, and he’s understandably devastated.
“Remember when…” He starts to say to me, then his sweet little face clouds with worry and he stops. “No… Let’s not talk about that.”
That startles me, disturbs me in ways I can’t quite articulate. “Why…? Is it because it hurts, talking about how it used to be?”
The Chop regards me seriously. “I’ll whisper it to you.”
He jumps up on the lounge next to me, grabs my face in sticky fingers, and whispers into my ear, loud and wet. “She used to be my best friend.”
All I can do is hug him. “I know. She still is… You just don’t get to see each other as often, is all.”
He regards me sceptically, then disappears into his room to perfect his Gangnam Style moves.
I sit, where I am, on the lounge. I feel like I’ve missed something, like I didn’t do something quite right there.
But I’m not sure what. I’m not even sure I know what the right way to do this is.
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July 7, 2013 at 4:15 pm Am I missing something? I don’t get who your boy was talking about or why he doesn’t get to see his friend or why its an issue. Pretty confusing post for anyone who is a new reader.
July 7, 2013 at 5:33 pm You might need to have another read, I’m thinking. The post states very clearly that he was talking about his oldest friend, and those words even link to a previous post about her. Why they don’t get to see each other isn’t really the main point of the article, so I don’t think it needs to be stated. Just saying…
June 26, 2013 at 2:56 am There totally isn’t a ‘right’ way to do it – oh how wonderful if there was. Sounds as though you are explaining your socks off, you have sympathy and you are being kind. That is love and is what your poppets will remember and be thankful for.
Many many things in life are difficult (as of course you know) and disappointment is a beast. You took him seriously and listened to him – he won’t find that disappointing.
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June 25, 2013 at 9:31 pm It’s not you. Not just your circumstances. I think it happens to all of us.
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June 25, 2013 at 7:44 pm At the moment I feel like I have broken my 17yo daughter. The fact that I have taken her to the doctor, connected with mental health services, doing everything humanly possible to ensure she is ok, eludes me completely. All I can feel is that “this” is my fault.
Motherhood is bittersweet. Doubly so I feel when you’re doing it solo. I constantly second guess everything I do with my kids. And have just about turned myself into a bloody pretzel trying to make sure that they are ok.
All I can hang on to the moments that they inadvertently show me that I have been doing something right.
If its any consolation, after 17 years of mothering, I’m still not sure what the right way to do this is.
Love, light and strength beautiful. From one mumma doing the best she can hour by hour. Xxx
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June 27, 2013 at 9:17 pm Awwww Vicky. Thank you. Though, TBH, I’m not sure if that’s a consolation or not? :p xxx
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June 25, 2013 at 5:21 pm You did just the right thing. The best you can do at any given moment is always exactly the right thing.
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June 27, 2013 at 9:16 pm ‘The best I can’ seems to be my catch phrase these days…
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June 25, 2013 at 1:07 pm Lori,
As parents, I don’t think we are expected to know how all little minds work. I know in my case, the more I think of what my babes are going through with their mummy and daddy separating, it could consume me. The last thing we want is for our children to feel unnecessary pain or anxiety. How do we deal with this at such a tender and beautiful age when they don’t have the ability to articulate what it is they are feeling. I think the best we can do is ensure they feel the love and let them know our arms are wide open for all their problems or issues. Never double guess yourself, you act out of love and remember, their is no guide on parenting 101.
June 25, 2013 at 1:47 pm Thanks Nicole xx
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I find myself searching for… something. Something to make me feel connected to this new place I’m in. Something to make Melbourne feel like mine.
So I do what I always do, when I’m seeking a connection, a way to feel the spark of other people’s lives.
Melbourne takes much better care of its abandoned buildings than Sydney does. Truly deserted structures are difficult to find here, and I haven’t seen enough of the suburbs to know where they are. Internet searches are lousy for that kind of thing- after all, revealing your locations publicly breaks the rules.
But the Brickworks stand out. A bit of online digging, and the address is easy enough to find.
It’s a half hour drive away, which is a short car trip by Sydney standards, an epic adventure for Melbournians spoiled by their unclogged roads and ample public transport. I sneak to the the Brickworks and back between school drop-off and pickup. It pleases me, this secret life I have sometimes. Stepping out of reality, doing things my children have no idea of and may not understand.
Like the Maltings, and other premises that are stalwarts for urban exploration, the Brickworks is easy to access. You just need to know what you’re looking for. The fence on one side is surrounded by homes, well tended and well kept. There will be no point of entry here.
The other side of the fence, however… look hard enough, and you find it. The mesh fencing bent up and over, leaving a hole big enough to squeeze through.
The parklands that surround the Brickworks are dotted with people who are out for the day. When trespassing, it’s best to act as though you have every right in the world to be there. My camera bag is slung over my shoulder, and I have my usual bullsh*t excuse ready. “I am a photographer, documenting this place…”
Not that anyone has ever asked. I like to think that it’s because I radiate self confidence. More likely, it’s because no one cares.
The Brickworks is, as the name suggests, a factory where bricks were made. It’s been closed for years, so long now that any evidence of it’s former functionality is gone. What remains is the evidence of people who have come here after its closure. Graffiti kits, empty spray paint cans. Litter. And a coating of fine, chalky brick dust, a few inches thick in some of the more undisturbed places.
Within minutes, my shoes and pants are covered in it. I’m dusty up to the knees of my flared jeans.
This is a gritty, grungy, post-apocalyptic scene of a place. The bright colours of the street art clash and spangle against rusted iron and rotted wood.
The machinery that has been left here is old and huge. Too cumbersome to have been moved on, probably useless for relocation And it’s all so set in itself– to remove the giant urns would be to defile the structure of the place completely, to risk having it all fall down on top of you. I can see why this abandoned site remains so, when the rest of Melbourne’s urban ruins have been cleaned up and cleared out. Just bulldozing it would be impossible. Tonnes of hulking steel equipment would be tedious to rip out. So it stays, looking more and more like iron oxide modern artwork with each passing year.
I pick around the place, wandering, marveling at the solidity of the equipment. One half of the building is open and cavernous, no more than undercover storage. A forklift is parked neatly by one of the poles toward the edge of the huge room. It seems put of place– too modern, perhaps, for somewhere that feels so antiquated. Not as rust eaten and grubby as its surrounds.
The forklift is tagged in jagged graffiti, a mish-mash of colours and styles. The surface of the forklift is too small for anything rampantly artistic, but the brick walls dividing the building into rooms and sections make the perfect canvases for spray painted art. Colourful cartoon creatures and shiny, six foot high typography cover the brick work.
I wander around, feeling the emptiness of the space, the way it’s hardly a building at all any more. It feels organic, settled in to its environment. Nature is beginning to spread itself within the building. Weeds take root in the base of the corroding steel. Grass grows where the sunshine allows it to.
Walking out of the main building, there’s a second structure. It’s large and circular and squat. The massive chimney soars skyward from the roof. There’s a strange flared skirt of corrugated iron covering the bottom of the building, stretching six foot up the meet the walls. It appears impenetrable. Despite all the people who have been here, left their rubbish and their tags and their spray paint cans, no one has peeled back the skirt and attempted the access the space underneath.
Two smaller outbuilding flank the main one, both of them damaged and spray painted. Door frames and windows smashed, floors are burnt out. The artwork is amazing. But there’s nothing to be felt here. It lacks the romance of the Maltings, the sense that lives have been lived here, the essence of souls left behind.
I leave, my feet padding softly through the brick dust. I find the hole in the fence that I first came through and slip back into reality, settle myself back amongst the people in the park.
I get back in my car. As I close the door, it begins to rain.
Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it.
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It’s been a while since I’ve been ghost hunting. Ghost hunting feeds into urban exploring, I suppose, and vice-versa. But I guess I stopped seeking out ghosts once it felt as though there was one looking over my shoulder all the time.
But I love mysteries and old things, and stories left untold. So when RedBalloon offered me a ghost tour of The Rocks, the oldest district in Sydney, I decided I should take them up on it.
Not that I was prepared to do this alone. I took The Most Amazing Man In The Universe with me. Because if I’m going to be scared, I might as well have someone to cling to.
That was the theory, anyway. Reality, as usual, didn’t quite compete with my imagination. While ‘interesting’, ‘informative’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘well worth your two hours and forty seven bucks’ are all adjectives I would use to describe this experience, ‘scary’ is probably not.
Our tour group consists of about thirty people, and is led by a guy who, in this occupation, has totally found his calling in life. ‘GhostHost James’, as he introduces himself to us, is decked out in a black hat and long black raincoat. He is a brilliant storyteller and his stories don’t come across as scripted (though, admittedly, I’m sure they are). Add to that his comforting, rolling British accent, and we have ourselves one very appropriate tour guide.
To add to the feeling of creepy authenticity, on the night of our ghost tour it rains in Sydney; constant soaking sheets of water. The uneven, picked and pocketed sandstone streets of the Rocks are filled with puddles. The rain drips down over the brim of GhostHost James’ hat as he leads us through bendy alleyways, down two hundred year old staircases and into tiny spaces that once used to be cellars and basements, with original fireplaces still tucked in the carved block corners of the rooms.
Ghost tours run rain, hail or shine, evidently. GhostHost James’ hands out torches and big, white plastic ponchos. They’re totally unfashionable and I keep tripping on mine every time I walk up a set of stairs. But, dammit, they’re convenient, and dry, and practical.
We walk around the Rocks in a huge circle, stopping at various places along the way. We see the the original morgue next to the Harbour- I’ve eaten lunch there a few times. We’re shown the staircase where the well-known ghost of the Weeping Mother roams looking for her child, thrown off the cliff by a roaming criminal gang in the late 1800′s (apparently well-known, anyway. Not well-known enough for Google).
The tour group visits the basement of an undertaker who was murdered by his convict employee, and the fireplace where the employee attempted to burn his cut-up body. The site of two tragic twenty-first birthday parties, held forty years apart, with two twenty-one year olds dead in grisly manners. The foundations of the house where the Bubonic Plague first struck in Sydney.
It sounds creepy, does it not? But this is the Rocks, jellybeans. At eight o’clock on a Saturday night, there are people everywhere. The pubs and restaurants are swarming.
And out of a group of thirty people, there is always one who has to be a total douche by refusing to turn off their mobile phone, and ruining the punchline to all the storyteller’s stories.
Anyway, douche aside, we got to explore parts of the Rocks that, while open to the public, aren’t easy to find– if nothing else, the Rocks retains its original rabbit-warren infrastructure; and older buildings sit metres lower than current structures.
The final part of the tour was by far the most interesting. GhostHost James led us into the deceptively-named ‘Windmill Cottage’, which is actually located beneath a towering block of units. The remains of Windmill Cottage– including the kitchen, complete with its hearth and sink– were found buried metres underground, as the area was being excavated to build the apartments.
Windmill Cottage is stone-cold and bizarrely silent. We’re told that if we are to see a ghost tonight, this will be the place for it. But were also told not to expect any ghosts. I’ll definitely give GhostHost James credit for that- while big on the storytelling, he was not big on bullsh*t. He recounted things fairly matter-of-factly, didn’t seem to be making stuff up (as he pointed out, had he been making it up, his tally of one ghost seen in three years would be pretty poor form). There was no promises of psychic abilities, nor any inspecting our photos for specks of dust that might just be orbs.
The focus of this ghost tour is definitely ghost stories, as opposed to ‘ghost hunting’. Having said that, I’d totally recommend it for fun. But I will confess that the only ghosts I saw all night were a large number of white shrouded figures, following a man in black.
And as it turned out, that was just another tour group. Also dressed in those totally fashionable white plastic ponchos.
***
{ 6 comments }
Continued from yesterday….
Stepping gingerly over broken glass and splintered wood, I’m silently wishing for my Doc boots and my camera, both back in my car in Sydney.
Everywhere are huge communal rooms with massive sunlit windows. And bathrooms- so many bathrooms. “Is that what they are…?” asks The Most Amazing Man, “Bathroom stalls? Why do they have windows… oh.”
Every bathroom in this place has a viewing window. Even the tiny toilet stalls have empty holes where glass in the doors once was. There is no privacy for the insane, and one of the more gothic tableauxs seems to pay homage to that very ideal. A small, walled off tiled white room; a bath sat solid centre, moored to the stretched concrete foundations of the floor, impermeable to vandalism, though it’s certainly been tried and tested. It’s the bathroom of any old creepy hospital… until you notice the viewing window, cut into the wall. A hole, really with nothing there at all.. it seems to speak volumes for the people who really were here, once. (Again, its that image of an overflowing bath tub filled with water swirled and tainted, colored by blood, dark hair and white skin… I don’t know where it came from, some movie watched long ago, a bad pop film clip… I don’t know, but I don’t like it, and it scares me because I think the girl in the water might sometimes be me.)
We come across rooms, private hospital rooms, again with large sunny windows and high ceilings. Most of them are empty except for the accidental litter of falling down cornices and plaster peeling off ceilings. I kick open the door to one room, indistinguishable from the others we have passed (an ingrained habit I seem to have picked up when exploring, opening the door without being too close to it) and I make a strange sound in the back of my throat. My whole body involuntarily shudders and I walk away, quickly away, my surroundings rolling around me like technicolor film for a moment while my mind adjusts, filters truth from trauma. There was an (orange rope) electrical cord hanging from the roof of that room and my eyes followed it down, every inch of it squirming against my optic nerve, until it stopped a few inches from the floor and the apprehensive screaming souls in my subconscious were convinced that there was no body hanging on the end of it, it was just a piece of orange cord and nothing more suspicious that that.
“What..?” His voice trails off and The Most Amazing Man In The Universe is hugging me, holding me from behind.
“I’m okay” I say, and I am, maybe.
“I know,” he replies, his voice and filled with the very best attempt to understand. “I wanted to hug you anyway.”
And I fold into him for a moment, taking stock of where I am and what I’m doing and wrapping a tiny silicon bubble over a moment of being okay, being taken care of, being understood… it’s enough to stop the tumbling, reeling rush in my head.
So we move on. More bathrooms, more common rooms, one which leads onto a massive, open concrete balcony. There are smaller rooms, patient’s rooms, they lead out to here as well; but their doors have remained somewhat respectfully closed and jammed- it’s only the last door in the row, the furthest away that’s open. It’s tucked into a room at the end of a long, straight hallway, tingling uncomfortable with two-dozen doorways leading off it. There are two or three strange rooms we stumble upon that are charcoal black, their roofs dipping as though the fire within created an enormous heat… but the fire brigade must respond to calls here with an alarming efficiency. The damage had not spread to other areas within the building. It looked, bizarrely, as though it has simply burnt the fuel from one room entirely and then folded and extinguished on itself.
We follow stairs and ramps up and down, never one hundred percent sure of where we are or where we will end up next. We find a few tiny crawl spaces, under stairs or tucked in brickwork around the buildings perimeter, and the thought that they may have been used for storing more than objects occurs to us both simultaneously “I wonder who they locked in there…?” We both laugh, but almost reluctantly, because it feels as though there is more truth to that than you really want to think about in detail.
After becoming lost and disillusioned with the asylum’s horseshoe shape, the building seems to spit us down a short flight of stairs and back into the scrubby dry grass of its perimeter. We wander, discussing ghosts and hauntings and history. We overhear the group of teenagers again, one of the boy’s voices bouncing clear, staccatoed against the brick walls of the building. “I hate this place. I always have nightmares about it.”
The Most Amazing Man In The Universe and I look at each other and laugh- childish superstitions, a bad case of the heebie jeebies. While slightly eerie in its sunny stillness, there isn’t a lot of bad vibes here. At least, not until we find the short flight of stairs that lead us down to the first floor, the bottom floor of the hospital. This floor was constructed half sunken into the ground, and it’s dark here. Dark and damp, as if all the moisture the sun scared away from the upper floors is lurking in the corners and shadows, stagnant and eating things in muffled gulping crunches.
“It’s not nice in here,” My voice feels tiny, the statement I’ve made pitiful.
“No,” agrees the Most Amazing Man In The Universe. “Not nice at all. And the floor….”
“It’s not too bad…” But there is no light down here. I can’t see more than three feet of floor in front of me, and it feels spongy. The carpet feels rotten. We go forward three or four more steps and the hallway splinters into a rotted cavern. It feels bizarrely like one of those street paintings that are hellish optical illusions; as though I could walk straight over it without falling into the even deeper, darker cellar somewhere beneath us.
We turn, a reluctant retreat. Dodgy floors are bad floors, always. There’s another building behind this one. A single storey instead of two. A peaked roof of brown tiles. Chocolate brown, with white mosaic and trimmings, looking like an elongated gingerbread cottage. Hidden halfway along it is an access point, of course, a shutter rolled up and back as if it’s been attacked by a giant can opener. We slip under and in and it’s another set of huge, sunny rooms- common room, a kitchen, bedrooms coming off the sides.
The Most Amazing Man In The Universe and I are leaving, walking back to his car, when we’re approached by a man who looks every bit a Wowser– plaid shirt, glasses, a bum bag. He’s carrying a sheaf of printed pages, and as he approaches us we both think we’re in for some form of ‘This is private property’ lecture.
Pleasantly, we’re mistaken. It seems he’s exploring, too. He simply wants to know if we have any information that he doesn’t. Local rumor says the buildings are being knocked down, but this man tells us otherwise- there are plans to convert them into office buildings, historical oddities in contrast with the identical suburban streets and sleek, modern industrial area that borders them.
The Not-Wowser man tells us there is an example of another one of the buildings, just around the corner, that has been refurbished; and he’s right. It’s freshly painted, fenced, with a lawn of lush green grass running up to its front door. I can only imagine it must retain that sunny feeling- panes of window glass that have been fixed in the original window locations dazzle and glint in the early afternoon heat.
Its pretty, surely much better than demolition for buildings as sturdy as these, with brickwork that will last for years. But the fresh clean, repainted vibe of the new building is still… weird. Eerie. Like there’s some other-worldly, alien quality to the light.
Or perhaps I’m just not used to the angle of the Melbourne sunshine, the difference in atmosphere, that come with being one thousand kilometers closer the point of the Earth’s polarity.
Whichever. A quick Google tells us that not only was The Most Amazing Man In The Universe correct about this place’s original purpose as a lunatic asylum; there are (always) those who believe it’s quite haunted. Explorers report having exquisite nightmares following their visit, and as I read that fact out loud to the Amazing Man we both remember overhearing one of the teenage boys calling out that very sentiment to his friends that afternoon; and goosebumps dimple my flesh for a second.
There has been reports of a music box heard playing from the third and highest floor of the main building, especially in the middle of the night. A university that sits on property directly next door to the abandoned hospital has taken full credit for that phenomena- their plan for scaring off potential vandals and trouble-makers undoubtedly worked (unfortunately for them, the rumour itself also probably attracted more ghost hunters to the buildings than ever before).
It’s the first building I’ve explored in Melbourne; the first building, in fact, that I’ve explored in months.
I sleep well, exhausted, wrapped up tight in the arms of the Most Amazing Man In The Universe. Neither of us dream.
***
More photos on Flickr. Full photo credit to Neil (otherwise known as the Most Amazing Man In The Universe).
{ 4 comments }
Or maybe that’s just me.
Whatever. It’s time for a whole new round of the Muse Wars. Feel free to join on in- my own story coming soon.
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hello just wanna ask . how much to pay the pictures? i have plan to try the sky dive this months can u give me info how much. am i allowed to bring own cam to picture my self while im in the air? hope u give me info thanks
Hubby has been hassling me to go sky diving – and when we first met I was all about it, and totally (as he puts it) wimped out… so naturally when he heard about you doing it he said "if rah rah rush-em has done it, you need to do this…"
Yeah that is easy for him to say – he's jumped fifty odd times by the time he was 24…. bloody yanks….
XX rah rah.. loved the pics and look forward to the video.
Wow Lori…that's amazing.
I have added sky diving to my bucket list.
Hehehehehe! The pic of you in the plane…that is NOT a confident smile…too funny Lori
Merry Christmas Lori
Brad xox
It's an amazing feeling isn't it? I did it for my 30th this year, I was half terrified half excited to do it. I want to do it again now! Did you have your eyes open when you slid out the door? I didn't, I waited till we were out of the plane.
You are so brave! I'm not sure I'd able to even get into a little plane like that, let alone fling myself out of one! I'm glad you found it to be such a transcendent experience.
This post made me so happy. It's like an early Christmas present in a way. So proud of you!
Aw, man, that is SO cool that you were able to do that! Skydiving is on my bucket list, but it's sooooo freaking expensive. Someday… Someday…
– Crystal
I am absolutely THRILLED for you!
I'm soooo envious!
Congratulations! You did it. Must've been an awesome feeling.