The Cerebral Mum

[This post is part of Lightening’s Smiley Saturdays.]

My Favourite Suburb

On my way to university each day, I pass through my favourite suburb, the one I want to be living in again as soon as Ii can. It’s not the most beautiful, or the most stylish, or the most avant-garde or… Well, it’s not the most anything, but on my first day, walking through those streets, from the train station to the tram, I remembered what it felt like to be ‘home’, both in a place and in myself. It just lifted me up.

Reading

For a long time now I’ve been having trouble reading, depression making the kind of concentration necessary very difficult. But since I brought my textbooks and course materials home, I haven’t wanted to stop. Not only am I reading again, but my mind is alive with ideas again. And that means I feel alive.

The Weather

Yes, the sun has been shining and that makes me feel wonderful, even though my face is now horribly freckled brown, but this is Melbourne. The four seasons in one day we have also make me feel at home. Running around barefoot in floating cotton dresses, or jumping in puddles, or reading outside under the tree, or snuggling up under homemade blankets… They’ve all made me happy this week.

Watching Caspar climb into my bed (the mattress in the living room) and snuggle down into the pillow then pull the blankets up to tuck himself in made me smile too. He knows what contentment is.

This Conversation

I was working at the computer, Caspar climbs up onto my lap, and we have this conversation… (I’ve abbreviated it a little.)

Mummy: Would you like to go to the park?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to ride your bike?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to read a book?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to do some drawing?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to make music?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to watch telly?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to have a bath?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to have a bottle?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like some chocolate?
Caspar: (shakes head)
Mummy: Would you like to sit on Mummy’s knee and have cuddles?
Caspar: (Nods emphatically and snuggles in.)

Yes, my love is better than chocolate, but I have saved the best for last.

A New Family Member

Caspar is no longer the youngest boy on my mother’s side of the family. On 1st of March at 8:58am, my cousin gave birth to a baby boy. He weighed 3565 grams and his big brothers think he is cool. I haven’t met him yet because he lives in Sydney, but I was so excited to hear the news. Congratulations to B and M, and J and J.

And welcome to the world, Archie.

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Eeek. Sorry for last night’s rant.

It has been a massive week of organising my life and despite the fact that a couple of trivial things (like bad software) have made me pretty hot under the collar, I’m having a wonderful time and I’m happier than I have been in… I don’t know how long.

I promise I’ll write a lovely Smiley Saturday post and tell you about all the the things that are making me joyful.

At the moment, the big job is getting myself 100% sorted for this semester so it’s focus focus focus in the best sort of way. With Cas, I don’t have the luxury of fluffing my way through study any more. Besides, there is nothing better for me than being super-productive and working towards something meaningful. I know that when I’ve got a handle on all my studies over the next couple of weeks, I’ll have heaps of energy built up to deal with the things which have been dragging me down.

However, I have had second thoughts about taking on a full time study load this semester and I think I will be withdrawing from that 3rd subject, only because I’ve been stuck in this living situation for too long. I want to be able to get out of here and into my own apartment by midyear break. That, of course, will depend on someone buying my house but at the very least I would like it ready to sell and on the market. Once I’m free of that albatross, I’ll be able to pick up extra subjects and do them justice. As much as I would like to do everything at once, only so much is possible.

I’m also in the process of trying to come to an arrangement with the bank so that I can consolidate my debts and reduce my monthly payments. I’ve had to ask a relative to be a guarantor which is horrid position to be in (both for me and them) but at the moment I’m hopeful that I can get it sorted. Not having things in the red, at the same time as reducing my total monthly payments is going to make a huge difference to my psyche.

Over at the Aussie Bloggers Forum today, Ben Barden (great blogger, nice guy) linked to an article by Neil Jenman, How To Save Your Home, and everyone agreed that it was worth reading. Right now, I almost fit into the “mortgage trauma” category, despite the fact that when I bought the house the mortgage repayments were less than 25% of my income. I wasn’t foolish (Who needs a McMansion, anyway?) but life circumstances change. I just have to get my income and my living arrangements compatible again.

On top of all that, I’ve also got a dozen blog posts in development for here, there and everywhere, so it seems like I will be getting my blogging life under control soon as well.

Let’s just hope that the bank doesn’t send me into a tailspin again.

Overall, the best thing about being at university is that I feel like myself. (Can you hear all the energy?) I feel purposeful; I feel like I’m involved; I feel like I’m moving.

I’m a busy person now. I mean business.

(Btw: First history lecture today. It was fantastic! Off to write up my notes now.)

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A few of days ago, Caspar broke my glasses. This wasn’t unexpected. In fact I was expecting them to fall apart any day even without his intervention. They were old and I was resigned to the fact that soon I would be walking around all geek-like with duct tape holding them together. In order to do that now, however, I would need to know where the arm Caspar snapped off was hiding.

I don’t.

After walking around for a couple of days with my glasses lopsided and falling off every time I moved my head, something worse happened: I lost them altogether. There is a chance that they are somewhere in the house but there is also a chance they are somewhere in the park. And that is not good.

They were annoying me while I was pushing the swing and lifting Cas to the top of the slide and bouncing up and down on the stupid, sprung see-saw.

(Seriously, when was the last time you saw a real see-saw? I mean, just a plank of wood? Is everybody so isolated these days that they don’t even build play equipment for two people any more? And don’t say safety issues. Those sprung things are way more dangerous.)

Anyway, I hung the one-armed glasses over my v-neck so we could play. Then we walked home. I’d like to think that I would have noticed if they were missing when we were walking home but my specs are for distances and walking with Cas generally requires stopping to examine every pebble or flower or leaf along the way. It’s very possible I didn’t actually look up the entire time.

Last night I realised the enormity of this loss. I’m not so blind that I can’t get around the house without them but I wouldn’t recognise my own mother walking towards me in the street. And I certainly can’t drive which, out here, makes grocery shopping both tedious and expensive. It leaves me with the local IGA which has hardly any stock that I would consider food (you know, the stuff that doesn’t come in five layers of packaging) and everything is twice the price.

It also means I cannot get to my house to fix it up, which means I cannot sell my house, which means that I will be stuck here in this hellhole the suburbs, crammed into my sister’s tiny spare room with Cas for the rest of my life. I’m really not feeling good about that.

And I’m supposed to go into the city next week. For the person who’ll be meeting me, I’ll be the one either standing there blankly or waving at anyone and everyone who might seem to be looking my way. If you want me to recognise you, you’re going to have to get close.

Of course, between now and then I might be able to locate them but right now I think the most likely outcome is that tomorrow I’ll find the missing arm.

After all, what is a paper cut without a little lemon?

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I have no idea who I am. I am in stasis. I interact with few people. I am not working. I do not see my friends. They are ghosts. They live in the world I used to belong to. The only human contact I have apart from my son is Big Sis whom I am both too close to and a world apart from.

Of course, I see other people. I pay the check-out clerk for my groceries. I say, Have a nice day. I speak to the Maternal & Child Health nurse as she weighs Caspar and checks his head circumference. I watch the audiologist as she moves the dials and records Caspar’s reactions on a photocopied form. I ask for a locker key at the front desk when I go to the gym. I say, Thank you.

But these people are nobody.

Because I am nobody.

I blame the suburbs, but it is I who is to blame. I am a snob.

I was always a snob. I liked large things. I liked words which could be capitalised. Truth, Beauty, Art. The people I loathed were those who went to the opera so they could say, “Last night I went to the opera”, those whose tastes were formed by magazine and newspaper reviews: What’s hot? What’s not?

I liked the way the world flooded my mind, rushing through it like a braided river, sometimes of water, sometimes of blood. Everything moved me. Everything was made of words.

When I read Henry Miller I would salivate. Even the bed lice and the pissoirs would make me salivate. Miller said:

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. _{Tropic of Capricorn}

And I was.

I am no longer. I do not want to be aware of the minutiae of life. I reject it. I am self-destructive. I can no longer even feel the Nausea.

I want to feel ill again at the sight of my hand. I want life to be large again. I want to be that girl again, who, when she walked down the street, felt so huge that shop windows would explode and cars would burst into flames. Years ago, in my novel, I wrote:

...I have been trapped here in this silent inertia by my desire to drive earth’s gears into reverse and nothing – nothing! – can be unmade in this world of time. It will not devolve for me.

Writing is prescient.

There is nothing I can do except write until I am true again.

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It’s too long since I’ve written. It was never this hard. It was never this hard knot in my chest that feels like tears. I’ve have too much to say. I have forgotten how to say it.

It was never this hard when I made myself jugs of coffee and brandy and typed through the night with the city lights creeping through my apartment, knowing all the while there were people still awake, still out in the streets, still living. It was never this hard when I was sitting in a corner of the Supper Club at 3am with my notebooks and a Pedro Ximénez, surrounded by people, alone but never lonely.

I hate living in the suburbs. When did I decide to stop being? I didn’t. It just came creeping and that’s far, far worse. It’s easy to live with the consequences of decision. You have answers to all your whys; you can respect your choices even when they’re wrong. But this creeping passivity, this loss of passion, this degrading slide into conformity…

I hate living in the suburbs. I hate this lack of will in me. I hate this non-entity I’m trapped inside. I hate being surrounded by clean concrete and new bricks and people who speak in nothings. I hate my hollow voice.

I guess there are things that have happened in my life, there are people, I could blame for where I am and I see the temptation but I refuse attribute my life to others. I refuse to abdicate. So instead, I don’t like myself. I am ashamed.

And after stating so categorically that I am a writer I cannot find words. There are times when reading breaks me down, breaks through that barrier freezing my fingers at the keyboard, but today was not one of them. Today, reading Girl’s Gone Child’s past and present futures, reading that she’s on the road again with a Kerouac quote in her pocket, I saw the sad echo of myself and had to face my stasis. Even her predilection for guitarists and Henry Miller was a mirror, an accusing reflection of who I am, or who I was, or that person I’ve failed by no longer being.

But the future is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and life doesn’t have to creep in this petty pace from day to day. Somewhere in me there is a breath. It is a hard knot in my chest that feels like tears and I will write it until I am no longer a walking shadow.

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I’m in the middle of moving house and it’s not an out- of-here into-there kind of deal. The house I own is already empty (of people, at least) and Cas and I are living in my sister’s spare room until it is renovated and sold. My things currently have no home so I have to pack everything away for what may continue to be months (renovating is a slow process with a ten month old) and scale down my three-bedroom, double-garage, outdoor-entertaining contents to suit a city-size apartment.

No problem there. I can’t wait to be living close to the people who know how to make coffee again. The problem is that when I said three-bedroom, it was slightly misleading. My master bedroom hasn’t been a master bedroom since I moved in. The first thing I did was rip out the built-in robes to make room for The Library.

I have books. I’m not sure how many. I stopped counting a while ago.

Now, there is no chance on this green earth that my (partially Dewey Decimal catalogued) book collections will be scaled down but I can’t keep them with me while I’m in the in-between. They have to be boxed up and put into storage. I’m not a particularly dependent person but this process seems to engender a great deal of anxiety in me. What if I need one of them?

I have the capacity to be a very efficient person (Yes, Mum. I do.) but this particular part of packing up my life has been trying.

Yesterday I packed three boxes. Three boxes should take, say, ten or fifteen minutes all up? Unless of course you’re me and each one takes over an hour. Surely I could justify holding on to just this one? And that one… And that one…

There were a few I had no problems boxing. The red velvet covered book of love potions someone gave me? Nope. Don’t need that. The Complete Family Guide to Natural Healing? A quick flick through it, just in case. Herbs for anorexia and and go smell a flower, it will make you feel better? Nope. Don’t need that. Thomas Shelton’s 1612 translation of Don Quixote de la Mancha? No, thank you. As a mum I get more than my fair share of scatological humour daily. Into the box with you.

But then there were the more obscure things like Back to Basics and the time it took me to convince myself I didn’t need to know how to pasteurise my own milk or build a self-composting dunny if I was moving back to the inner city.

Or there was my Asana Dialogue which, when abridged, went something like this:

Hatha Yoga?
=> No. You just joined a gym.
But it doesn’t have yoga classes.
=> You have a DVD.
But…
=> No.
I could feature a posture each week on my blog…
=> Your blog is not about yoga.
I could use the symbolism of each asana to discuss different aspects of…
=> No. No. No.

Pausing to consider the fat Genet biography I’ve yet to get around to reading was perhaps more reasonable. It didn’t smack quite so much of desperation. But why does not having all my books on hand or, at least, just around the corner, make me feel so desperate?

Well you see, right here is where I would mention a passage from a novel. The narrator grew up in a house where the all the walls were lined with books, as I did, and she remembers wondering as a child, when she visited bookless homes, what it was that held the walls up. And that is symbolism which resonates with me.

But I can’t share that passage (which I think is in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Truce) because the book is locked away in a cage made of cardboard and packaging tape.

You never know which book you might need.

There is a happy ending though. I kept aside three books while packing my three boxes. The Penguin Opera Guide and Prima Donna: A History, which I need as reference materials for my own novel, and Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems, a book I will be using to write a weekly feature on my blog, unlike the awful asana disaster.

I think three books for three boxes is fair. So I’ve made a deal with myself and tomorrow when I’m packing I get to hold on to fifteen extra books to make up for the boxes already lining the hallway.

The Camus doesn’t count of course. There can never be a cardboard cage for him.

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