While driving yesterday afternoon

I was listening to the radio yesterday afternoon while driving and as I was changing the channels looking for some good, fun driving tune (Noddy Car doesn't have a CD player) I came across the voice of Kay Redfield Jamison being interviewed about her latest book "Nothing Was The Same." I had never heard of this woman before, yet within minutes of listening to her read an excerpt from a love letter her husband had written her I was sobbing.

This is the part I was just in time to hear:


“I am not glad the black hole is there but I am glad I have seen it. When you fall in love with a star, you accept solar flares, black holes and all.”


After I had a really good cry I switched channels again and this song came on:






I adore the way they start the song off with each other's initials. It makes me think of blogging, and that makes me realise how wonderful it is to have this opportunity to "write it in a letter form."

Red Dog

Audition for upcoming film "Red Dog," based on the book by Louis de Bernieres:

I knew that you'd answer

Anna's back, and you know what that means....

That's right....

A celebration poem!!!!!


I knew that you'd answer
That line I did write,
That you'd pick up that flower
In its perfect soft light and
I knew that was you
When I heard that strange song
Of the tiny invention
Which I played with my thumb.

The others all knew
That to us you'd return
With a colourful alphabet
Soup of the soul because
You were the one who once
Showed us the sparks
Of the snow and the sun and
The tightly knit parks.
The trees purled in earth tones,
The leaves all crocheted,
The flowers from paper
Origami and lace.

The benches you sculpted,
Watercoloured the sky,
Took a paintbrush to raindrops
And found feathers for flight.
So the rest I shall write in,
Writing tight, right and strong,
Using letters from oceans
And a sadness long gone.

Unmothering

"The Bicycle Thieves," Italy.


"The Road," USA
"Last Ride," Australia

Three images of fathers and sons I have come across this week.

Imperfect parenting is astonishingly beautiful because it is true. I can't help thinking that mothers tend to pressure themselves to parent perfectly much more than fathers do. Yet perfectionism in any form is debilitating. In "The Bicycle Thieves" the son trips over and hurts himself while crossing a street in the rain, his father doesn't even see it happen as he's too busy running ahead in search of the man who stole his bicycle. Once they both find a place to shelter from the downpour the son begins to swat at the mud on his legs, his father asks him what he's doing, he responds "I FELL before, you know." The father looks at him for a long moment, shrugs and then hands him an already filthy handkerchief. I love that scene, and I wish we saw more scenes like that with mothers and daughters.

In the words of Roger Ebert: "Simple, direct and true."

Silliest worry of the day

I was walking home from the beach with Blue this morning when I bumped into a woman who lives on my street. She was pushing her infant daughter in the stroller and I stopped to chat and admire the adorable baby. Since this neighbour of mine had her baby we have enjoyed a lovely "meeting in the street" relationship. However, prior to the birth, my neighbour had rarely even smiled at me from a distance. Of course, this fact could have been understood in any number of different ways, but this was the reason I came up with (more than two year ago!):

This woman had an old car which she parked on the street and never used. After a few months the rego expired and someone must have reported it to the Council/police because it soon had a sticker on it asking the owner to either remove the car or have it registered. The next day, the woman put a huge handwritten note on the car saying "To the neighbour who finds my car so offensive, get stuffed" (well...that was the general idea). I had decided that she probably thought that I was that person who had alerted the authorities, and even though I wasn't, I still felt incredibly bad every time she didn't smile at me.

Back to this morning. Even though we now have a lovely neighbourly relationship, as I walked away I still worried that she still thought it had been me who had called in her car. Which is clearly INSANE. But you were all so beautifully warm and generous and understanding in your commentboxes for my last post, so I just know that you will UNDERSTAND the insanity.

That felt very cleansing I must say.

No worries mate

Several years ago I worked in a residential college at one of the local universities. I managed the 32 students who lived in the building, looking after the daily running of the housekeeping, kitchen etc, and I also booked the rooms out during the semester breaks, a bit like running a b&b, only for academic visitors. One phrase which I found myself using often, much to the amusement of the foreign visitors was "no worries." You want to extend your stay? The phone isn't working? Extra towels? You're vegetarian? No worries!

The truth was that I worried ALL of the time. I worried that I had double-booked a room, that I misfiled applications, that I gave wrong change, that I was working too slowly. I tend to worry all the time about everything. Most of my worries....OK...all of my worries...are usually about imaginary things that only exist IN MY MIND. The real stuff that happens to me that's not so good, well...I just take action and deal with it as best I can. But the imaginary future is my downfall.

So now I have decided to list the ridiculous things I have worried about today. It's a type of blogging-as-therapy if you will:

That the librarians at the Film School (who I see almost every day, and for whom I baked alphabet cookies for Christmas) are irritated by me. I like to chat with the assistant (if you remember, the one who is intellectually challenged) and one time last December I didn't realise that he wasn't on a scheduled break and I heard him being told that, and I felt guilty and now I think the librarians think I'm a distraction to him, and that may lead to him losing his job and it would all be my fault.

That I'll be the odd one out in my screenwriting class and all of the other students will be really chummy and will go out to dinner together and have fun and I will end up crying in the toilets like I did in Year 6 when I didn't have anybody to hang out with at recess and lunchtime.

That I didn't walk Blue for long enough this morning, and my jogging husband is away, so Blue will pick up bad habits because Cesar Milan says dogs need exercise first and affection later, but I cuddled him a lot and gave him little exercise.

That I may have been too strident in voicing my views in a commentbox of a blogger who was discussing the moral implications of Bella's lack of premarital sex in "Twilight". She thought premarital sex was a good and healthy and beautiful thing and should be described in young adult fiction. Then I worried that I gave the wrong impression in that commentbox, I'm really ambivalent about the premarital sex issue, I really wanted to say that I don't like criticism of stories on moral grounds, stories are entertainment. I'm going to stop now and go on to the next worry. Sorry.

That I am spending too much time worrying instead of actually doing stuff, such as looking after the house, the family and my future-as- yet-to-be-discovered-money-making-career. That's right, I worry about worrying too much.

I bet you can't wait to read tomorrow's list.

Doctor's orders

Having a bad day? Exhausted? Under the weather? Not quite yourself? Pessimistic?

Rent "The Full Monty". Doctor's orders.




NB

Script written by Simon Beaufoy, same genius who wrote "Slumdog Millionaire."



If after a couple of hours you're still not quite happy, apply "Calendar Girls" immediately.