The ironing board is out when I arrive. I’ve just been ironing your pillow cases, Anne says. Nobody has ever done that for me before, I tell her. There is a Welcome Parcel on my pillow full of floral printed balms and creams as well as a lavender, eucalyptus pillow mist on my bedside. I feel both at home and far away at once.
Dinner is one of those nourishing one pot chickens cooked in more spices than I know the name of. Cucumber and mint from her garden tossed in olive oil, lemon and salt, that’s it. When I comment on the perfectly cooked rice, she tells me it’s all about the pan, specifically, the thickness of its base. Too thick and it will keep cooking when you take it off the heat. It’s all so straightforward, how have I never thought of it before?
Why is everyone so stressed these days, Niraj, my Uber driver, asks me when he learns I am studying psychology. I nod and answer his question with precision, as if I am not one of the people he is referring to. I tell Niraj that just here on the left is fine. You have a beautiful home, he says. I shake my head. It’s not mine, I say.
My sister is on the couch breast feeding her new child. She is nonchalant about it. At the end of the day we are just a bunch of hairy, hungry mammals, I think, even with all this stuff.
There is a twenty-seven page research paper on drug tolerance on the grass in front of me. I can’t get through the abstract without wondering off. I contemplate a three o’clock coffee but the paper suggests I should resist the environmental stimulus that is the smell of the coffee shop over there. I read the same line a second time and start attacking an ingrown hair on my leg only to remember the jar of chocolate coated macadamias in my bag, which Mum bought for me when she didn’t think it could get any worse. Unbeknownst to us, they did.
I think what’s hardest about it all is that I thought I was sagacious when it came character, I say to a friend over a jug of sour beer. Now, I say, I’m not so sure.
Lose two hours in a bath hoping the steam of the nice essential oils will both relieve me and help me consolidate the chaos that is psychological statistics. There is a blood plum cake cooling on the bench top when I get out a prune. We have it with cream and proper loose leaf tea, the pot has a homemade cosy around it, which resembles the outside of a cottage. How does acquire all this, I wonder.
Dinner in the city: we all agree on it needing to be a cheapy. So I called my hypnotherapist and she’s not available until the 14th, Ferg says. Who’s your hypnotherapist, I say. Oh Helen, she’s a G!
Driving around town today, I make a mental note to sign up for PBS. I feel like I owe them one. Many, actually. Talk back radio relieves me of my newfound, occasionally unwanted, solitude. The various presenters grant me not only distraction in these moments of waiting at traffic lights and slicing vegetables, but an intimate kind of company I almost equate to a friend.
There is music moving around my head and wine moving around my body. I am on the 96 tram. I imagine the aerial view of its long body looking like a game of snake on one of those old brick Nokias. Everyone here is on their smartphone, myself included. A WordPress banner alerts at the top of my screen: Your stats are booming! it says. I scroll to find I have more readers in the Netherlands. Tell me, are you even real?
I’m frying fine slices of potato into crispy golden deliciousness when Nico says, it’s all I want out of old age you know? What, I say. Elegance Haz, I want to be fucking elegant!
On Ava’s balcony this evening, I want to reach out just to disrupt the view. It is two dimensional-stillness. This might be our last hot night, I say. Mosquitos hover around us. I wonder if we taste like pizza, like garlic, like buffalo mozzarella.
The tram I am on stops in line with an alleyway. It’s just started spitting outside. There is a bald, slightly overweight man in a suit standing in the alleyway crying. The light turns green and the tram accelerates so I can no longer see him. The image of him standing there like that muddles me up well into the evening. Why is everyone so stressed these days?
In the bath, I look for ways to see cellulite anew. Other peoples cellulite doesn’t bother me, only my own. A memory presents. It’s one in the change room before swimming training. An older girl is pinching parts of her upper thigh in various places. When I ask her what she is doing she swings her leg up on the bench next to me. I remember looking to the smooth, unblemished skin between her fingers. Then to my dimpled version. That’s cellulite, she says.
I’m busy scrolling bed threads as if some assortment of them will make me brand new. I can’t decide between the olive and the rosewater. I hold the phone up to Daisy, then my aunty. It’s hard, my aunty says as she pours the last of the champagne into our flutes. Different moods and seasons call for different sheets you know, Daisy says. I know but my bank account only calls for one set -I need a one colour fits all. I’d definitely go the rosewater then, my aunty concludes.
Why do you write? Sicilian Nic asks. Like really, he adds. We’re walking down (up?) our favourite street in Carlton. We are walking slowly because it is hot and we are early for the happy hour. Hmm, I hum and stall by asking him why he makes art. He says it makes him feel alive. Lately, I can’t help but feel my work is full of maudlin self pity, I say. But also maybe that’s okay.
Soap, razors, herbal tea, ricotta, daph, lavosh, green apple -or pear, oranges.
There is a cleaner coming in the morning, just go about your business as normal, my aunty says. All morning I dodge her, the cleaner. I know I’m annoying her with my snacking and endless pressing of the soda stream button. I move around the house watching my lecture in different spots. Finally, with the assistance of an extension chord, I settle for outside. Half way through, she casts my lounging body in shadow. She wants to know if it is okay to clean the ensuite I’ve been using. I look at her, a little dumbfounded until I realise she is really waiting for an answer.
The change from Summer into Autumn is prevalent. I feel it in the still and eerie mornings. Apples are no longer floury but coming into season. I bite into one at the pool while reading about variables. Adie the old crossing lady is here. Mum says she’s never missed a day. She is fit and punky and tough. More of a person than I will ever be.
Stop for rice paper rolls and spend a moment too long deliberating over whether I should get prawn or tofu. I step out onto the street barefoot to find that the three rolls in my hand have cost me one hundred and seventy two dollars. I’m still in my Speedos and my fringe is poking out in all the directions. The man photographing my illegally parked car won’t take me seriously, he refuses to look me in the eye. I tell him to get a real job. Then I say an awful word.
Paying another woman is just outsourcing the oppression, Eula says
In class, I can see my nails visibly growing as the acrylic moves further and further away from my cuticle. I can’t afford to maintain them right now. My psychology tutor is an established creative writer. I hang around after class and strike up a conversation. I have questions. Though I don’t want her to know I have Googled all about her in lead up to this tutorial. You’re doing a good thing, she says. Your income and your practice should be very separate. Otherwise, she says, shit will hit the fan.
I wish I had a green thumb, Sara says. Like I’m good at pulling weeds out of the ground, but now they’ve all grown back. I have to leave the conversation to write this down. The negroni makes me clunky on the tiny keyboard of my Iphone. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a voice recorder, I keep saying.
Dear Council Member, I would like to appeal the infringement on the grounds of….
I think she put rice in her vagina, a young woman in heavy black clothing says to another. All day I struggle to construct context. Wondering around campus, I run into a loose friend. She is surprised to hear I am embarking on a psychology degree. What happened to writing, she says. I dig the too-long-acrylic nail into my palm. Nobody seems to understand that writers make no money, not even the ones we like.
There is a man reading a newspaper in the front window of this cafe. I order a black coffee for myself and a strong latte for Mum. The man is engrossed in an article, occasionally he shakes his head. I try and remember the last time I sat down to read the news properly. Every now and then the man licks his thumb and index finger when the worlds problems get clumped together.
Do you ever think about how many sandwiches you have made in your life? I ask. My sister laughs. She is performing surgery on a side of pork belly. Already she has stuffed it’s insides with something delicious smelling. Now, she is securing it in a tight roll with kitchen twine like a surgeon sewing a wound closed; her technique is immaculate. She is a true artist, I think, not a fake one like I am.
He’s hot, Daisy says when she pins a docket in front of me. Also he bought a jar of pickled fennel, she adds. When his bread is done, I spend longer than I usually would on his sandwich; I become a little too preoccupied with draping the sheets of rare roast beef on his ciabatta. I am completely aware of my disposition as I do this, I even throw in a few chips on the house.
Did you give up anything for lent, a woman on the train says to the man opposite her. To an extent, he says. I’m only allowing myself to look in the mirror very briefly once a day.
Over iced coffees, Sicilian Nic and I discuss the cost of living. He says we must prioritise what makes us feel good. I have three dollars to my name but am booked in for a massage tomorrow, he says. I get stuck trying to do the math on this one. A woman in a slick apron approaches us with a paper bag. We’re closing, she says. Do you want these? We nod. Inside are almond croissants. I break off the corner and place it in my mouth, then I stand up and ask the lady in the slick apron for a job.
There is a rope hanging just above my head height; it has a jelly fish tassel at the end of it so when I want to read or not read, I simply pull it. My aunty knocks on my door to ask if I would like a pot of tea. I tell her I’m all tea’d out. Tomorrow I will go home. I apply the pillow mist spray generously until I am intoxicated in calm. The click of the rope might just me the most satisfying thing I’ve ever heard.
Pots, potting mix, tea-lights, light bulb, compost bin.
Jack ascends the stairs with coffee in his hands. It’s not that bad you just need a rug or something. Up until he walked in the door just now I had thought it quite good, but I now I see he might be right. Jack tells me about a traumatic dream he can’t un-mind. Everyone who has ever rejected me was in a room being jovial with one another while I just stood there in the corner, he tells me. There is a profound look of concern on his face. Oh don’t worry, I say. I get those all the time.
Are you still looking for admin jobs, someone asks me. I wag my head no, a little ashamed of saying to this person two weeks ago that I desire a job in which I am busy busy busy. Now that I am back at university, I think I would enjoy a job of standing mostly still, thinking.
There is a woman fully asleep in the sun over there. Her snore is the kind of perfect snore sound you would choose if you wanted to simulate the sound of someone snoring in a film. The woman has a pale complexion and, probably, a class to go to. I consider if it is my duty to wake her up in order to prevent her from getting sunburn. It’s Autumn and twenty-six degrees at four thirty in the afternoon. I decide to let her be.
The Rosewater sheets arrive. They are soft and pink and just right.
Then Nico calls with great news. We’ve been accepted for a house, finally. I hang up and a heavy feeling descends in my body. All evening I try and make sense of it. I phone a friend, then another, then another. Sleep on it, the friends say. I write a list of pros, then a list of cons, all of which concern the cost of living. I have to swallow a little blue pill to calm the chaos of what, and if.
Before dinner I lay out the largest towel I own to do yoga with Adrian. This seventeen minute video is targeted at the neck and shoulder areas where, along with our hips, we store stress, apparently. Adrian says that neck tension is often one sided and this might be a sign we are only looking at things from one perspective in our day to day lives.
Rebecca Solnit lived in the same small San Franscisco apartment by herself for seventeen years, I reason with myself.
Which flavour do you think goes best with pistachio, I ask the lady behind the counter. In my mind it is hazelnut, a flavour I am both familiar and fond of. The lady replies stracciatella with a conviction I can’t refute. Back in my kitchen, I drag my spoon through the stracciatella. It’s a barely there flavour, sadder than vanilla. I wonder why we bother asking questions we possess the answers to.
Good words: etiolated, fecund, surreptitious.
There is a mandatory research component this semester, I am told. I browse them all but it’s the third one from the top of the list that captures my interest. We invite you to take part in this project, looking at sleep, feelings and potential previous traumatic events. If you are interested in participating, you may be reimbursed.
I think you’ve made the right choice, Sicilian Nic says. He is one of those people who could live by himself for a long time and be happy this way. We’re at a jazz show. I’ve ordered a cocktail I don’t like the taste of. Throughout the show, Nic continues to bring my attention to the accordion player’s leg, the way it jolts about as if seperate from the rest of his body. How he manages to coordinate so many things at once, I will never know. And while the meaning of the French lyrics are lost on me, the whole performance makes a large impression that persists through dinner.
Yellow Days 