Under Cover

It's a wet, grey Queen's Birthday (eastern states only).

Best not to forget your umbrella, if you're brave enough to step outdoors.

One day in Tamarama

In the midst of the packing frenzy, at times I think about how little time I've given myself to say goodbye to Sydney.

I wondered a couple of days ago: am I being fair to us? We've had three and a half years together, packed to bursting with intense memories. Don't we deserve a little more time to linger?

The answer, I've decided, is no. I will fill this last week in Sydney with good things to remember, but I don't have to go out of my way to remember what's past. I've lived with a reasonable amount of purpose and presence in each day, and the things I'll miss most can't be recovered with new visits anyway, because they're filled with precious people and times that I can never bring back in this life.

Maybe I'll dig up a picture from time to time, and tell you the story so you'll have a better grasp of what the past three and a half years here have been for me. I've never divulged very much here before; the full unedited story has always been reserved for my private journal.

It might be a picture like this, taken in October 2009.

There had been some rough news over that past weekend, about the sudden and tragic death of a relative. Also, I was contemplating the imminent conclusion of my Master's and where I'd go next. Unhelpful comments had been made by the people I trusted most at that time to give me emotional and spiritual guidance, and I felt unsupported, misunderstood, unsafe.

On that day, I left home long before class was to begin and took a huge detour to a lookout at my favourite beach.

A beach that my cousin once described as "unpleasantly turbulent", even on the most placid summer's day.

Maybe that's why it's my favourite beach.

Because maybe as deep calls unto deep, turbulent calls unto turbulent.

Every time there is something to celebrate, something to ruminate, anything at all that gets me out of the infuriatingly complacent plodding rhythm that sometimes overtakes my life, I find myself at Tamarama.

On this day in 2009, shaken by the news of my relative's unexpected death and confused about my own life's path, I found an empty pavilion and sat. The waves rose and curled and slapped each other around; I sat. They peaked and cast themselves onto the sand; I sat. I sat until the anger and apprehension had settled; until it seemed the ocean had taken all of my unrest to spend on more rising and curling, peaking and casting.

And then I walked away and drove to class, another day closer to where I want to be.

And the waves, they're still rising high and crashing hard, so I know I don't have to.

Mexican night

Last dinner at Northside for a while. It was a few nights ago, but time flies when you're having trouble deciding what goes into the same box as eight years' worth of journals.

There's so much goodness waiting to meet me out west, but there are also many things I'll miss over on this side. This is one of them.

Punishment and punishment

We were talking the other day about discipline. Someone's toddler nephew has recently got into the habit of hitting his sister, and the Big People are trying to make it stop.

In addition to reprimands and stern warnings, spanking is on the list of methods used to stop it.

I think it's ironic. You think it's wrong for the kid to hit other people, so you hit him to make him stop.

I could be mistaken, but to his little brain, won't the logical process look something like this?

I don't like something my sister does. I hit her.

The Olds don't seem to like me hitting. They hit me.

Hitting must be the standard response to something you don't like.

I shall go on hitting my sister when she bugs me, then.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying. I know I'm not diminishing the need for discipline and boundaries and, not being a parent myself, I am not criticising my friend's family or telling them what to do. Just questioning whether theirs is the best approach -- questioning stuff being one of the things my brain is constantly occupied in.

It got me thinking of how society does exactly the same thing to the people who do Bad Stuff ("bad" as defined, usually, by the majority and by the law. I'm not saying crime isn't bad... I'm just asking, who got to decide on the definitions of crime?)

I have a friend who, from time to time, posts news articles on Facebook about the latest child sex violation case to hit the Malaysian news. It doesn't take long for her other friends to pop up with expressions of outrage or just... rage. It reminds me of the time a few years ago when a few of us were having lunch and somehow, conversation turned to the case of the moment.

(It's a sad thing that for a relatively small country, Malaysia has a thick history of child abuse. And that's only the cases that get reported. We do tend to conform to the general Asian practice of sweeping things under rugs and pretending there are no lumps.)

Around the table, my friends were talking about what the offender deserved to have done to him because of what he'd done to his very young victim. Things got a little graphic and I was stunned by how violent my nice little urban acquaintances, with their expensive chemical perms and manicures and designer outfits, could be.

And then came my turn.

"You don't think that maybe whatever you think should be done to him in retaliation for these horrible things... maybe all of that pain is already in him, from something that happened before, and that's why he's like this now?"

Silence. And glaring.

"Are you saying he doesn't deserve to be punished?"

This is me four years after that lunch. I still am not saying he should have been let off the hook. My point, then and now, was that abusers are usually abuse victims who've finally got big and strong enough to act on the powerless feeling that most often arises from being abused. Unfortunately, frequently they turn on someone weaker as a victim, rather than confronting their abusers -- because no matter how big you get, it's hard not to feel smaller than the person who shattered you to fragments. And then their victims grow up and hurt some other, smaller person. And then that smaller person grows up and...

... and while this pattern repeats on and on, like the seasons of a low-quality daytime soap opera, we sit at our linen-clothed tables eating expensive fusion food while shielded from the relentless humidity that, except for our being so fortunate as to have access to air conditioning, should be ours to experience in sticky discomfort. And so it is that we get to take for granted the grace that has put us here, all pretty and smug in our weekday make-up and fancy office outfits, instead of on the front page of the news to be hated and spat at by all who see.

I'm only asking if we even know why punishment as we understand it exists, in our families and in what to many of us comfortable middle-class types who do not have careers in law will only ever be a cloudy abstract idea: the justice system. Is it for the sake of correction, so that after the event the perpetrator will have a firmer grasp on the makings of a life at peace with him/herself and others?

Or is it just a slap on the wrist, a retaliation for making our family/community/country look bad and for wrecking our blissful little delusion that we've constructed a safe place for ourselves and our families, far from evils large and small?

Behind every dark cloud

Lies a primitive graphic representation of happiness.

I don't know why I allow my craft-less times to stretch so far apart. We need to meet more often, felt and I.

Chocolatey day

Such an innocuous beginning in a little cup of hot chocolate. Who could have foreseen the elevated heart rates, the increasing silliness, the sensation of being detached from our bodies, the impending prospect of crashing hard in a sugar-and-caffeine slump not an hour after the last fateful sip?

(But if I had it to do over again, I would, oh I would.)

Later that night, the big fondue set made its debut. Because hair of the dog is the only real way to get over anything.

Kitchen assistant

Nice to have a donkey around to keep your carrot stack in perspective.

I think we're good with the carrots.

How about cabbage?

Mmm... let's see. Are we good?

How much cabbage did you say we needed?

Mmyeah I guess there is enough cabbage.

Avocadoed

Lots, and lots, and lots of avocado. The generous giving of friends who had a bumper harvest travelled far, to a friend's family, to a friend's daughter's friend, to a friend's daughter's friend's cousins.

What do you do when there's so much avocado in the house?

Here's a sweet idea: chocolate avocado cupcakes. With a tart raspberry centre.

And a savoury one: cheese, bacon and avocado muffins.

Another savoury one: avocado and bacon scones.

We haven't run out yet. I wonder if guacamole will make an appearance.

Trust, stem stitch, and a garden

I watched an old friend playing with his son in the garden.

Over and over again, he tossed the boy in the air and caught him. The response each time: a gurgling belly laugh and demands for "More! Again!"

I watched them, and thought how much fun the little boy was having.

Wondered whether he realises what a privilege it is, being able to do nothing but share a moment of delight with one's father.

Reflected on how the game is only fun, and only goes on, because my friend catches his son every time. Dropping him, by accident or on purpose (and yes, I've known that kind of parent, too), is simply not an option.

I stitched this a few weeks ago, as an exercise in refreshing two skills that had begun to wane: embroidery; and the word I set out to embroider.

My earlier stitches were uncertain and uneven, but by the time I reached that last "t" I knew where the needle should go and how tight I needed to pull. The motion and skill had been dormant all these creativity-less years; I only needed to awaken it. So, too, with trust. Something I thought I had been doing, and doing well, for years... and it turned out my stitches had been shaky in that department, too.

I sewed that last stitch at least a month ago, but I feel as though the work was only completed this past weekend, across the country in my friend's garden. Watching as a toddler exulted in the secure arms of his father, I was reminded that I have a trustworthy father, too. One whose presence I delight to be in. One who is infinitely infallible. One who also loves to toss me up and watch me soar.

And whose arms are there to catch me, every single time.

Hooked