Suspended between Christmas and New Year, The Man and I move around other people’s beach houses as we attempt to simultaneously save money and experience summer. This morning, we are stopped by the line of houses which front Ocean Grove’s main beach. It is clear we are both entertaining a life in which we had a house like this at our disposal as The Man turns to me and says this is what he means. He is speaking to the race again, the one in The Game of Life. I am immobile while I imagine the views from the various rooms: clean and uninterrupted, save for the occasional cargo ship. It is not difficult to convince him to stop at a cafe on the way back to the house. This one belongs to my uncle who has chosen to skip this tourist season by way of a holiday in Japan. I do my best to appease The Man’s guilt over having logged on for work over an hour ago. It is becoming increasingly clear that hard work at our age does not promise the same kinds of returns it did thirty years ago, I declare, triumphantly. It’s a different landscape. In a way, I say, we are handicapped to the extent it isn’t worth competing. I scan the configuration of tables that make up the industrial café car park, noticing almost every individual has opted for ice in their coffee. It’s going to be a top of thirty-eight, I read this morning. A young woman in a filthy apron darts through the cafe car park; she bisects the tables in a hurry while awkwardly hauling two bags of ice. I feel the impatience I had been harbouring disappear. Instead, I find myself empathising with the woman as this is a situation I found myself in often at the deli. That’s awfully nihilistic, The Man says and shakes his head.
We’re currently at capacity, the woman behind the counter declares. I look at the clock, it’s 3.45 in the afternoon, a Thursday. The woman shrugs: January, she says. While I wait for someone to leave, I watch the public through the window who bob up and down like buoys in the 50-meter basin. Time demands that they soon return to work and school where they will wait impatiently for the next summer to roll around. It occurs to me I am cheating The Game of Life by winding back the clock to the start of the vernal equinox. Some of them cross the rope from the double lane to join the swimmers’ making triangles. Without a swimming cap or even goggles, they cross over tentatively, as if they too perceive the lap swimmer as a foreign species unto itself. I try and resist doing laps, having vowed to myself on my way here that I would have a go at just lounging this afternoon. I locate the last towel-size patch of grass and lay out my glasses, book, and biro. Though I soon discover these utensils are useless among this many people. If one were to hover above it all they would see a dark stain around the pool’s edge from the children and men who throw their bodies in with abandon. They would smell the sunscreen and chlorine, strong like a flavour at the back of the throat. Scattered around the grass are sucked mango pips in Ziplock bags, poorly applied sunscreen tans, bright budgie smugglers, and clusters of backpackers who discuss upcoming events and plans for day trips beyond the city. The skatepark music is unwavering in the background. Today they play a classical opera playlist that adds drama and poise to this part of the world, so much so I feel as if I am on the set of a film. Eventually, I succumb to a slow kilometer, which I do feel better for. Afterward, I let a brief and deep midsummer sleep swallow me. When I wake, it is to the sound of a child’s voice: “Can I have an icy pole, please, Dad?”. “Just a lifesaver, c’mon, please?” But it’s 5.15 pm and Dad won’t budge. “What about a packet of Twisties, please, please, Dad?”. It is a pleasure to watch him give in.
Precisely four weeks and six days prior to leaving for what we have named The Sabbatical, The Man brings a chair to my desk. I consider if this has something to do with the house listing I sent him this morning, located on the south coast of Italy. I think we need to talk numbers for a moment, he says to me seriously. I stiffen and continue drafting an email, doing nothing to indicate I have heard him. He pulls out a pen and starts writing a series of words down the left margin of the page. Titles of rows, a list. Budget one, budget two, budget three, budget four, the list reads. Numbers start to appear and multiply out of each option. Quick with math, I watch the page fill up until he dramatically circles four items down the right margin. It is clear he has finished when he drops the biro from a substantial height. I stop typing. His eyebrows are no longer contorted but raised. He has computed the amount of time we will realistically be able to remain in Italy based on how much we spend on the variables: accommodation, travel, food, culture, indulgence-other. I run my eyes over the page, observing the way our time extends the less we spend. I zoom in on the figures which correspond to the number of months I had envisaged to be away. Disappointment becomes me. He smiles apologetically, brings a hand to my shoulder, and squeezes me once, tenderly.
In the weeks leading up to departure, I engineer a full-time role. It’s when the fourth day of these weeks rolls around, Thursday, that I feel less like a person and more like a robot who has been programmed to act human. This disenchantment, I recognise, is the feeling of The Race, but also of interacting with too much pain. I now comprehend why psychologists refrain from seeing their clients full-time, it would be too taxing on the soul. During these weeks, I am made to see the extent of my role beyond screening and matching clients. That is, the great deal of administration involved behind the scenes to minimise the client’s awareness of the business transaction at the core of their turmoil. When the weather is agreeable like today, I relocate my desk to the grass and spend my spare moments watching the pigeons interact or talking to Anne while she de-weeds the grass by hand. She wears an oversized white Bonds Chesty while she does this, which she bulk orders once a year. I signed for this package last Tuesday and so today, Anne is iridescent; her white Chesty repels the hot, late-January sun. I ask Anne what she thinks about the pursuit of satisfaction as she seems to be a person who is in a constant state of it. Though, not in an indulgent way. She just seems very content with herself and her lot, all the time. Anne says that she can only hazard a guess, but she thinks satisfaction requires a shift in behaviour, whereby a person must actively resist the re-invention of the self through consumption. However, this behavioural shift is constituent on a shift in mindset as you must genuinely believe there is such thing as enough. Difficult in practice though, she says, especially for young people. I look up at her. Because of capitalism, she says. At this moment, I think of my online shopping habit during the pandemic, whose purchases may have manipulated my dopamine levels but, at the end of the day, left me fundamentally unchanged. So does it come down to a matter of control then, I wonder. Anne starts cursing and sprints for the tap, bits of her fall out of the Chesty. She has forgotten about yoga, again.
I deny the idea of a going-away party when it is proposed. It’s indulgent and unnecessary, I say. The Man thinks it’s important and his reasons in support quickly outweigh my reasons against and so, I say yes because I cannot say no. In the leadup to the going-away party, I try to understand where these words, indulgent and unnecessary, come from in me. In my pursuit to extend the trip, I abandon my remaining sessions with Roberta and have now stopped replying to her emails altogether. I agree we have made progress, but compromises must be made in The Game of Life. The Man wraps up his job earlier than I do and uses an empty Monday to engineer a GIF invitation in my favourite colour. I oblige and feel discomfited sending it out to a handful of people. I am surprised by the enthusiasm and haste of their responses, many even go as far as to complement the invitation. At 3 pm, the Man delivers an English Breakfast and Maltomilk biscuit to my desk. He hovers behind me and digs his thumb into a knot in my neck. Have you sent it? he asks. I shrug him off and tell him I can’t concentrate on anything until I figure out what to do with all this stuff. As quotes come back from storage units, a new resentment has formed towards all the things I have accumulated over the years. The Man says I should distribute them around, lend them to friends and family. We leave in ten days. I want them to be safe, but at what cost?
We discuss the idea of productivity on the Sabbatical. It is hard to resist wanting to see an output of some kind, something to mark and show for our time. This is especially difficult for the Man for reasons that pre-date me. He is in the process of crafting a safety net should we blow all our funds. He explains this net as a practical pursuit in respect to his situation, this being, his mortgage. For several weeks, he puts his head down to study for the series of examinations, case studies, and interviews one must pass to enjoy the safety of this net. One Wednesday, over bowls of brothy noodles, I probe about the industry and workplace responsible for the safety net, realising I know too little about it for the time and residence it is taking up in our lives. When the explanation is complete, I place my chopsticks ajar, so they rest on the lip of the bowl and take a moment to compress the convoluted description. So, in a way you will be a professional capitalist facilitator, I say. He laughs and says yes, I suppose. I enjoy the way he is not proud like I am. Reverse the roles and I would never absorb such a title. I begin to see he is honest in a way I will never be, a realisation that leaves me feeling both happy and sad. I ask about the salary in a roundabout way, which he answers in a roundabout way back. I notice my eating adopt a new hastiness after hearing this figure as if I must get him home and return him to study.
At the Italian consulate this morning, I observe a young girl in the company of her mother. Like me, they have compiled a series of documents that vouch for her personal legitimacy by way of bank statements, birth certificates, travel insurance. I imagine this girl is going on exchange and is here today to request a student visa. From my vantage point, I have a clear view of the girl and her mobile phone as she moves between using Instagram and another, unfamiliar, platform. For thirty-five minutes, I watch her fingers dart around the screen, hovering over photos and zooming in on faces. She follows all the links. There is a mechanic kind of anxiety to her movements as if she might miss out on an answer by putting down the phone, by missing a link. I watch her for so long that I start to see in the drab grey waiting room of the Italian consulate, the difficulty Anne is referring to. This girl appears as a perfect representation of the contemporary moment. But I wonder, is she solely the product of unregulated influencer marketing and a beauty industry that commodifies her insecurity? Or has she realised the expectations of her life, created by other people, contradict the conditions she is living in? Could it be that she does not know what to make of anything anymore, and longs for control, which she feels she can access by standing out and self-actualising online with, or against, others of her kind. My phone vibrates for the third time from a work colleague asking me to cover her for the remainder of the day. I reply I am occupied and send her a photo of the embassy badge. A serious Italian man behind a sheet of Perspex tells me off and gesticulates to a sign of a camera with a thick cross over it. For the remainder of my time at the consulate, I catastrophise this interaction means I will not be the recipient of any kind of visa today. Eventually, my name is called by a woman who rolls the double r of my name in a way I will soon become used to. The young girl is called to the window next to me though only her mother moves. I don’t know why they are bothering with the visa. It seems when one is using their phone in this way, they could be anywhere in the world.
People don’t show up on time, I say to The Man on the tram into the city. You’d be surprised, he says. Before I can finish a small glass of beer, the courtyard is full of people he has invited. He explains it is because he encouraged people to bring their partners, and, at the age they presently are, partners are stable facts in his friends’ lives. One of his friends brings a child. A couple is freshly engaged as of yesterday. Another says they can’t wait to see me at their wedding in Tuscany. I find myself staring at The Man from across the room, feeling compelled to take him into the dining room, sit him down, and ask him about his relationship with these normative milestones. What will you do when you are away? person after person asks me. What countries will you see? Will you work? What industry? You must go here, they say. And do this, they go on. My answers dilute as I consume more alcohol. Two days out and I no longer possess the urge to persuade anyone of anything. My friends arrive later and stay later. In this way, it’s like two parties that succeed one another. The storm rolls around in the early evening. A warmness rises from the soles of my feet. It’s the sugary cocktails, the thunder, I think. But also, I reason, the product of seeing all the people I love at the same time. In the car service home, I squeeze The Man’s hand and thank him for not letting me vanish like I wanted to. We stop at a beloved Thai restaurant for the last time. The flamboyant host recognises us and ushers us to a table in the room we like. We take the usual and do not to mention we will not be returning for a while. There is a disorienting weightlessness in my body. Opposite me, The Man appears equally dazed. The restaurant is damp and dreamlike. It is as if we are the only two people in the world.
It is the week before departure. I find myself looking around and around trying to discern if I will miss this place and if so, what parts. I question if I am to end up missing this place, whether it is really missing, or if it is just a case of homesickness in the way anyone craves anything when it is no longer immediate and constant but contained in a memory your mind has coloured as fonder than reality. But I think I really will miss this place, especially Anne’s and the people who pay her visits and have business here. I will even miss the stressful sound of the pigeons mating in the backyard and the plump one who is adamant on spending its day walking around our living room. I will miss the Sacred Heart Mission band that plays the same old out-of-tune tunes and the mornings like the one I just had whereby I pull off my goggles to see Jenny Ryan’s head bobbing up and down next to me. I will miss cycling past the morning workers who are mid-yawn and caught in a thought while they wait for someone to hand them a paper cup of coffee. Though in these small and familiar comforts, is also a sense of knowing a place too well, of being able to predict its news and patterns of movement. Our feet are presently the itchiest they’ve ever been, and I do not desire to know what this claustrophobia and disenchantment morph into should we not have the courage to scratch. It is as if we have been in this city for so long, we no longer possess confidence in our opinion of what it is. We must go the land of sensual things, to the furthest part of the heel, and stay until it reveals something not necessarily about ourselves but of the place we are leaving behind.
In the foyer after class, I observe Daisy place a gold star on the last Tuesday of February. It feels like I fell asleep on the first of February and have woken up to this day, I think, gazing at the wall planner full of gold stars. A part of me regrets not signing up for the February Four by Four Challenge; I observe a comradery in the yoga practice foyer, which I am excluded from. There is melancholy imbued in our morning ritual today as we will not do this together for some time. We honour this fact by ordering food as well as coffee at a café nestled in the backstreets of Balaclava. I haven’t been here in years, I think, maybe even since I was a schoolgirl. It is surprising to see the coffee barrister has not changed except now her hair is a terrific purple ash colour, and she appears more miserable than ever. I turn to Daisy, recognising just how much I will miss the proximity and ease of our friendship. I tell her about yesterday afternoon when I sat in the garden with Anne and the way she invited me, for the third time, to join them in Greece this May. Though this time she wondered if I might come alone. She predicted I might need a break by then. I think you’ll be surprised, Anne said, traveling as a couple can be very hard at times. I shook my head. But this comment robbed me of sleep and remains on my mind still. It seems I have failed to realise we are going to be just two people for eleven months. I hug my friend goodbye and wish her luck. When I return, she will have finished her graduate year and, if all goes to plan, will be a qualified midwife. I don’t know what I will come back as.
Yellow Days 