I planned to commit today to writing.
So I went outside for a walk.
This was as escapist/procrastinatory as it sounds. But I like to think that deep down I know it’s the best way to clear my head and develop my stories.
Except today, because I went out looking for a donut.
Incidentally (or not so incidentally?!?!?!) the bakery was closed due to Chinese New Year and so I walked on listening to Scriptcast with Matt and Eric. The radio show signed off before I knew it and I realised a good hour had passed since I had told my father "I'll be right back". I supposed he was coordinating search planes over unchartered areas of the Pacific.
I was well on my way back home when a light sun shower forced me undercover at a local shopping mall. "Hm, probably re-married to Chris Noth by now," I estimated - so I went inside to stay a while. Feeling blisters and burns of guilt, I sat down on a bench and started writing in my little ideas book. [She went looking for a donut but listened to a scriptwriting podcast and took a notepad and pen? Ha. Nice try. That is one sneaky subconscious.]
Define writing she mused...
Thinking about writing, re-reading mail and journal entries found in any old, random book, napping, jogging, getting lost in Runcorn, listening to This American Life (when they were free), listening to the Les Mis soundtrack, browsing for pastries, watching Les Mis concerts on Youtube, trying to make oneself cry, drawing on one’s legs, finding one’s Mother and nagging her with existential questions while she reads the newspaper, helping one's Mother complete the daily crossword even though she didn't ask for it, planning lunch, looking up new recipes for dinner, googling apple cider vinegar substitutes, plucking one’s eyebrows, reviewing travel photos, jotting down an idea for a short set on a bus, realising one decidedly funny joke, thinking about telling joke to family over dinner, thinking about posting joke on Facebook or that starved Twitter, thinking about blogging it, thinking about posting the blog on Facebook, opting to save it for a script, self-diagnosing the latest emotional stress condition as seen on Brisbane Times, following net links to an award show's red carpet, Google-Image searching Jennifer Lawrence, looking up that girl from the party and her photos on Facebook, tidying every room of the house except one’s own room, looking up the next event on Facebook, browsing for a dress for the next event on Facebook, buying another ugly writer shirt, going to the next event on Facebook and being asked the usual question “So what have you been up to?” and giving the usual answer “Writing”.
Essentially this is one of the more dull, less productive days of being a writer.
Ambling aimlessly around the centre, I realised why people go out to the shops alone for no reason. It’s about the need to be anonymous; to get outside of those damned, confining, familiar walls and be able to forget who we are or what we're supposed to be. We like to let our minds wander from the usual stress and responsibilities and move idly from store to shinier store. Our brains relax whilst we feed the eyes and sometimes our second stomach. The person your family, friends, roommates, partner and workmates recognise you as wouldn’t – nay, couldn’t try on a pair of leopard print jeggings, but the sales staff and other shoppers don’t recognise you as that person. And you couldn’t feel happier or more free being a nobody for that hour of the day or week. Only the second someone clocks you, the new walls of your blissful kingdom of anonymity begin to quake. Hence, the sheepish murmur to the sales assistant, averted gaze from that casual acquaintance and letting of the lift doors close on your father's mother.
Shops mostly sell things we don’t need. But they have things we admire and want and nobody – no feeble, pension-hogging blood relative – should rob you of the illusion that you can access, afford and own those wants with any degree of will or effort.
After finishing my chocolate milk, I decided to return home – by foot again, to the huff and moan of my second stomach.
Food was still on my mind. Specifically, why I and many self-employed workers and heartbroken losers turn to needless, ravenous consumption. I recalled my first health scare. I haven’t had ‘scares’ since, only because my approach to my health changed and has grown increasingly mindful over the years. I can recall it only fuzzily but I must have been slapped / had the shit kicked out of me by a report on diabetes or heart disease one day (circa 2008) because I announced with steely eyes and a straight back before that evening's meal: “Mum, give me all the vegetables from now on”. I used to be rather suspicious of vegetables and harboured a nuclear missile-aimed hatred for onion. Now, vegies and I are like best friends-- except society allows me to eat them and so I savour every bit of oniony nourishment on my plate. The one thing can't do is lamb. On the occasions I've had it over the years, I've found it quite the challenge to chew. I've searched my sneaky subconscious and I really don't think it's baby-animal-related. I can't explain how or where I first came to feel this way. I just know it feels instrinsically baboon. I mean, wrong.
A breakdown of my food consumption today straddles the two, incontrovertible camps of human emotion: fear and love. I love eating nutritious foods because I have a fear of poor health translating to a fear of an inability to do everything humanly possible transcoding to a love for so much and so many in my life deciphered as the fear of dying and losing it all. I used to think about the state of being dead a lot in high school and moved onto pondering the purpose of being alive in university. I don’t consciously dwell on that stuff anymore except when I’m fine-tuning the details of my funeral, epitagh and feature-length video will. That’s technically about my legacy rather than demise, I believe, the girl sitting alone with unwashed hair and tissue boxes for shoes tells herself, before putting out another cigarette and swigging the last drops of her secret-stash, morning moonshine. Really, I love living my life and I fear any and all obstacles that hinder my living it. Because I want to do things and feel challenged. It's so sensible and straight-forward.
Anyway, I try to eat better foods and less sugar. Another wholesome change was rediscovering exercise and running to R&B beats that brazenly objectify women to blow off pent-up post-adolescent aggression that might otherwise be channelled in situations with murderous consequences. I also love shooting hoops and the associated “One Tree Hilling” of my burbs: bball underarm, angst in heart, bonafide fly-girl stomp. I had a couple of friends express their concern with my associated weight loss - the way one uttered the word "skinny" was akin to invisible talons taking a firm, mangled grip of my flesh - and they scared me into thinking I had an eating disorder for about a week. But I'm not one to eliminate foods (baaaaa!) or skips meals and dessert is more important to me than any family, friend or modesty in a bridesmaid's nothing-to-the-imagination gown.
I do admit, however, that I am prone to foetal-position-self-shame when I manicly snack to offset writer anxieties. Something about the way crackers SNAP and CRUNCH soothes me as if Steve Martin himself had whispered “you are a true thinker, of abyss-like, trapped-Chilean-miner-depths, and you're an impossibly funny wordsmith.” But effectively, things don't get done, self-worth is not felt and I feel as heavy and salt-encrusted as a Sumo wrestler. This does not help the whole living-brilliantly-every-second-of-my-life syndrome I burdened myself with post-university. This might mean the odd mood swing. Yes, try to forget all your preconceptions of what the youngest and only girl child in a family behaves likes – for I, yes, I, have lashed out at those I love dearest. Compound this impatient, self-loathing context with the fact that my family foster a very healthy relationship with crackers and biscuits. Healthy as in constant; permanent; married with three children and a second mortgage. Furthermore, with most members of my family being male, they seem to feel like Kings and – probably, in a typical fashion – get better looking and more ripped after indulging in their collective sweet tooth after most meals.
A classic situation – as in traditional as well as humbly humourous – took place after just licking our dinner plates clean the other night. Dad went for a packet of biscuits. Specifically, to do the scene justice, he opened some chocolate-drizzled, chocolate chip chunk cookies. Brother grabbed one also and both men sat, contentedly chomping away. “Hmp?” like a question. “These are good,” Dad thought. “Yes, they’re a good snack,” Brother added.
Before you outthink me and feel entitled to snigger: yes, I wanted a cookie. Sue me. Guilty as charged. Checkmate. For I, twenty-two-year-old human adult, still regard cookies just as I did when I was sticky-fingered four-year-old. I have sampled cookies for over two decades, far and wide – across all the brands, food chains, Australian East Coast cities as well as the gastronomic adventureland, the baked goods Haven that is the United States – so that I have now fledged into a cookie connoisseur. That night I wanted to read and write and I was worried about starting and never stopping (eating, that is) and never starting (reading and writing, that is).
Whilst far from a foreign concept to me, I found Dad and Brother's enjoyment of their cookies very intriguing. Just as I told myself not to trust the smiling face of the cookie to break bad habits, the guys were telling themselves another form of trickery to appease the guilt all the Oprah-endorsed doctors, health magazines and beautiful people trip us with. It's funny; the small, various ways we permit moderate consumption of food that we know is bad for us but similtaneously fills our bodies and zaps our brains with sensational inner joy. Gluttony, I should have said. It would make that former sentence much simpler but it sounds and reads atrocious. Glut. Glut’ny. Anyway, a darling cookie nowhere near qualifies as gluttony but even still, here was diabetic Dad and Brother curiously commenting on these cookies like they were new to their taste palettes and in fact, the marketplace and entire history of the world. Brother’s remark then seemed to say “Yes, this is a decently nutritious food that we have not previously snacked on but should definitely consider snacking on again and perhaps on a regular basis”. This is the honest to God tone of conversation the men shared.
It amused me and I thought calling them out would somewhat amuse them too. The men scoffed, rather naturally. Silly me, for it seems I had been neglecting my abacus and lost track of the infinite trips to the gym and walks to the orphanage they had made this month. But after ribbing the men I saw my misstep. I had made them feel self-conscious. I wouldn’t want anyone to make me feel that way. We all do enough of that to ourselves and are responsible for our own diets and choices and lives. The men knew what they were saying and how they were saying it for a reason. Mum appreciated my point but still I ended up being the only one wiping away tears of laughter like a jerk. I soon forgot I was a jerk. “You have a shrewd eye and make some discerning and terribly witty observations about the human condition,” the crumble of my cookie told me.
Enough about food. Enough blogging. I’m warmed up to write some serious comedy.
