Can’t put down Having And Being Had.
Eula has this way of noticing, exfoliating, exposing.
There is one line I read three times before putting it down for the day.
Nico has underlined it too.
It’s the last one on page fifty-six:
THE END IS ACCUMULATION – COLLECTING CARDS FOR A GAME WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY.
Eula refers to Elizabeth Chin’s Diary Of Lost Livingness as ‘field notes on living’.
I underline this also, writing it out in caps lock at the start of my notebook.
She lives a life of contradictions, Eula writes of Elizabeth, and she’s often caught between her own contradictory desires.
She wants more and less at the same time.
Just as I do.
Field Notes from February:
Around the Botanical Garden track I overhear conversations about behaviour and stress and quotas. I ascend the Anderson Street hill, it’s eight forty five and school kids are being dropped off in cars both shiny and matt. That car is worth six figures, a young woman says to another as they bounce around the corner.
Part time administration jobs Melbourne, I type into every search engine I can think of.
I want to know Eula and Sheila and Margaux and Eve and Joan and Deborah, I tell Nico while washing the solidified fat off the pastrami dish.
It’s so nice up here, a friend of a friend says when she ascends the steep stairs into my home. I try and take it in with her brand new eyes like when I get to the Black Rock part of the beach walk and gaze back at the bar chart-city pretending I am the one who has just stepped off the plane. Mmm, I hum, it smells of pastrami most of the time.
At the pub, I cannot distract from the lady who put on lipstick to sit and not talk to her husband. He put on shoes -closed toed, lace up and leather. They did not look at one another once.
How was the beach? Daisy asks. I saw a seagull with no feet, I say, it could not land.
I used to think how gross is all this meaty fatty meat! until someone pointed out to me that the fat has left the slab of meat, which is then discarded therefore not consumed so in a way the pastrami is pure because of its ten hour exercise in the oven overnight.
An ad lights up the room. Isn’t it crazy that I will die not knowing a thing about rugby, my sister says. Our six eyes are are wide on the grass-green-screen. Yeh but I love it when they run at each other at the start, Daisy says.
Sex: a climax, I think..
1 x grilled whiting, 1 x fried flathead, 3 x potato cakes, 2 x calamari rings, min chips, tartare.
Finally alone after ten days of company, my plants are a little droopy. I assemble pasta for one and fall asleep reading. At one point in the middle of the night I wake up disorientated, my head is where my feet should be. Everything is different.
Did you have fun, Mum asks. I hesitate.
An unemployed Tuesday afternoon at the pool; we both agree it’s nice how quiet it is. Then, gathering our things with seldom urgency, Nico says how it’s just too much! What? I say. Not wearing underwear and having to talk to people.
Maybe it’s that we all see each other through the prism of high school from the point of no longer high school.
This isn’t the lemonade ice pole I recall, I say to Nico. There is a broad man swallowing the length of the pool with big butterfly strokes. I inhale the ice pole, so quickly the world goes cold.
My bed does not smell familiar. There is a small drool stain on the extra pillow I have not had to wash since Christmas.
Wake up to pitch black silence. I remain here tossing and turning until I can’t take it anymore. Check the time to find it four fifteen. Five strikes; I contemplate getting up and going walking. But not sure whether, once out there on that cold, dark pavement, I would find it an invigorating experience, or just completely morbid.
You can’t possibly, a man shrieks. It’s true I do, the other man says. I perk up from the book in my hands. Possibly what? I want to know. Nobody likes spinach over rocket, that’s insane!
Sophie opens her cupboard for dinner. There are heavy looking bell bar weights, cotton buds and some homemade biscuits that are mediocre when I bring them to my mouth. They are dry and stuffed with peanut butter. I”ll just have a big breakfast, she says. A furious and confused anger swells from the floor to my face; I have to stop my jaw from hitting the floor, which is made out of old pine – the creaky kind.
Ethan is horizontal on the teal floorboards when he says that lying on the floor is equivalent to walking on sand. Later he says he feels great, just that he wishes he were a little lighter.
The flowers are opening under the yellow candle stick I’ve stuck in a tumblr of rice. Grains from the big five kilo basmati bag we could never get through and now, I realise, never will.
A curly haired boy, who I have once before fantasied of kissing, says he likes my writing. There is cocaine in my body and I am flattered.
Daisy owes me 32 (dollars).
Terrible nightmare someone shot me, a deep bullet in each knee cap. I was able to proceed – hobble around – nonetheless. Spent the rest of the time bleeding out in a small town bakery I’ve never clapped eyes on. A lady who makes local honey applied generous amounts to my wounds until I was able to get up and move about.
We must not disregard the romance of friendship, the podcast says.
Wake up to what I think is the sound of the ocean. I poke my head out the window. It’s just a truck in the distance. I step into my exercise gear and go walking. Vomit lines the pavement until I am made to see how very much I am in Richmond. The old anorexic is already done with her walk. So rugged up on this warm morning I wonder if she has lost ability to sweat.
To Do: Finish Centrelink claim. Apply for jobs. Change tattoo appointment. Organise drinks with Georgie.
Daisy tells us about her new baby sitting gig in South Yarra. The toddler, a two year old, has a queen size bed to himself. What does the Mum do, Jack asks. Daisy is using her fork to spear pieces of gnocchi and bring them to her mouth. I copy her until I have the red-base-gnocchi-sweats. She does some admin, I think.
Just as I’m about to pass The Shrine Of Remembrance, I am struck by the memory of primary school lunch orders. What did we have? What did we talk about?
Buffalo motz, basil, coffee, dynamo, paper towel, tonic water.
The water has a certain shape to it this morning; it’s turbulent from all the squads in. I consider returning to the change room and pulling my clothes back on but I know I’d get home and feel ordinary about myself. I plop in the shallow end and tighten my goggles. A man tumble turns against my legs. He doesn’t say sorry.
My grandma once said the most important thing in life is learning and loving to have sex with yourself, says Daisy who turned twenty-four today.
A thought around my thirtieth lap: do fish notice water?
She came back completely different, a woman in the change room says to another. Mmm, hums the other, I’ve always thought her a very porous person. My own skin is extra dry today, moisturiser won’t sink.
Didn’t realise how many kinds of correction fluid exist. I am sifting through them all when an announcement is made in the supermarket: From 8am-11am we will be dimming the lights, music and touch screen volume to ease into the day. We will be trialing this for 7 days, thank you.
It isn’t steeling, says the Irish writer. It is emulation of a hero!
It’s morning, not sure what part, when a boy takes my face in his hands and pulls it towards his. It is the proximity of our faces in which I am made to recognise the full extent of my sour morning breath, which didn’t go away like it was supposed to when they excavated my tonsils.
First day of Autumn and the clouds are low and pale. My sunglasses sit a little sideways on my face despite my always putting them back in the box.
Ease into what? I wonder at sunset.
Podcast lull. I’m all up to date and so, I try a Stuff You Should Know again, this one’s on Walmart, but still can’t through it without wondering to other things like when does Easter fall this year?
Week one introductions. The class is larger than any I am used to. When my name is called, the words wobble in my throat.
Stopped in my tracks when I reach the private girls school at the end of my Yarra walk. The girls are peddling on socially distanced spin bikes. A nimble girl-woman darts between the bikes teaching the girls willpower.
If I go to bed now I’ll have seven point seven five hours of sleep, is that going to be enough? I ask my mums best friend as if she has all all my definitive answers.
My two nephews are in the bath the same way my cousins and I once were. My right hand is holding a wine the colour of honey while my left hand rests on my belly. It is March. I can feel myself slipping from twenty three to twenty four. I wonder when all the people, myself included, will stop regarding my non-maternal feelings as a juvenile inclination; as something I will grow out of.
Have just been reminded of the very plain, very distinct, very savoury flavour of Saladas.
Do you want another pint, Ken the bartender says to my father. I’d love to but I have to drive. Oh come on, says Ken, you’re a reasonable lump of a guy.
Nico gives me one of his psychology textbooks from when he gave it a go. But promise me H, he says. You have to keep writing.
I found a new trick for washing my shoes, the small guy with the moustache says to his lady best friend in matching lycra. I study the hairs on my big toes. There are seven in total. A toddler shrieks; something about a baby chino. I ascend the line, order a filter and stare at the croissants. A wind whips up the street. My flesh is goosebumps.
Good words: cognac, gingham, philanthropy, languid.
Break a sweat trying to decipher what the hell they’re getting at in this paper on Transcranial Magnetic Simulation. Eula’s book is over there, the pages of it turn over in the wind. It is reading itself, I think. Then finally, after all the persistence I possess in my body, I put down my highlighter to write this down.
Yellow Days 