Just Dance

Rage, but it's not quite rage. All you hear is the beat, pulsing through you, mimicking the sound of your own heart, churning in your soul until your blood runs at the same pace as the music and your feet are moving, underneath your desk, and your head is moving, from side to side, and you want to move all you want to do is move and forget forget forget but you are: Chained To Your Desk.

In my head I'm dancing.

Breath

You allowed yourself to be shackled, and now you have set yourself free.

Breathe.

They do not hold you any longer.

Breaking Up

That exquisite moment of pain as you sit next to each other, holding hands for the last time. Aching at the thought of a separate future even as you hang onto each other and relish the routines of touch that have become so hauntingly familiar.

Whether to prolong the moment and so hold on still to his long fingers, his denim-clad knee, his muscular torso, or to leave quickly and bring the scorching pain of that moment of separation behind you so the healing can begin.

Rip it off, like a bandaid.

New York Moments

-1-

I am browsing in Shakespeare & Co Booksellers on Broadway when a woman walks in, unkempt, dishevelled, in what appears to be slippers and a quilted bathrobe, accompanied by a fat cat. A fat black and white cat that walks at her side like a dog, no leash required. A cat so confident of its own superiority that it walks as though it, not she, were leading. I kneel and call to it and it comes to me, and as I stroke its mangy fur, the woman announces to the man behind the counter that she has ordered a script. He nods in recognition and she strides by me towards the back of the store, towards a hole in the wall where another man stands like a dispenser of drugs, the King of Special Orders. The cat turns its back on me with a lazy flick of its tail and ambles after her.

-2-

I am walking in the Village when a large metal skip dislodges itself from its stationary position on the sidewalk and rolls loudly into the street where it crashes onto its side with a thud that vibrates through the soles of my feet. In the space where the skip once was lies a homeless man, swaddled in plastic bags and cast-off knits. He struggles to draw himself up to a half-seated position, leaning back on his elbows and swivelling his head towards me as I move past.

“Hey!” He yells in my general direction, with a large toothy grin. “Smile, you’re in New York City! You gotta dream, everyone here dreams big!”

-3-

In Times Square I am walking with my face turned up towards the sky, overawed by the sheer height and size of the neon steeples surrounding me.

“Hey! You dropped your bag!”

In a flurry of confusion I am aware all at once of a man pointing behind me and the crowd pushing and tugging around me, and I stop dead in my tracks and turn rapidly but there is nothing, and when I turn back the man is laughing and handing me a pamphlet and asking me if I like stand-up comedy.

I can’t help it, I laugh, and he knows he’s got me.

“Where are you from?” he asks, and we’re off.

-4-

I sit in Starbucks off Union Square drinking percolator coffee out of a giant cardboard cup. I am deeply engrossed in my book until I hear a voice from behind me.

“I’m sorry, excuse me. Excuse me!”

I turn and he’s beautiful, moccha like my coffee with dark eyes and strong arms.

I smile. “Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you sing?”

I laugh. “No. Well, that is to say, I can sing, but not well.”

He nods, and I smile again before returning to my book. But not much time passes before he is back.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry, but can I ask you another question?”

I turn, arching my brow.

“Have you ever tried singing?”

“Why?”

“I’m a songwriter. I’m looking for someone to sing my songs.”

A parallel life flashes before my eyes, dark smoky jazz clubs and me, reclining on a baby grand in a red silk dress while this beautiful man plays my song.

Life, or Something Like It

There comes a moment when, suddenly, you realise life is actually happening. To you, right now, all around you. Some shard of opaque glass falls, all of a sudden, from before your eyes and you blink in surprise, blinded by the brightness of this shock: that the ephemeral concept you have imagined to be life, that you have been chasing since you can remember being able to remember anything - you've had it all this time, in your palms. You've been chasing something you already have.  

You recognise in the flash of a moment, maybe with the jolt of a bus or with a clap of thunder or with the unexpected coldness of a summer downpour, that life is not just something one reads about in books. It is visible, tangible, extant in the collage of your every-day experiences. Its very essence is in the minutiae of the quotidian, exactly where a person used to book-learning might least expect to find it.

I had a moment like this last week. I was out to lunch with two friends. We spoke of novels we liked, plays we had seen, places we had traveled. We deliberated over the variety of dishes on the menu, wondered how fresh was the Barramundi we had ordered, sipped wine from Italy, champagne from France. The glass doors of the restaurant opened onto a deck flooded in sunlight and summer breezes, and as the afternoon wore on the chairs outside gradually filled with young people dressed for evening.

And, sitting there, listening to my friends talk, listening to the chatter from other diners, watching the man across the way follow with his eyes the young blonde waitress while he pretended to listen to his companion, I realised that this, right here, is it.

And it needn't have been a summer day and French champagne. 

I have felt that clarity on other occasions, walking down grey city streets crowded with people weary from the day, or sitting at work looking out at a rain-swept sky: this is it. The only one you get.

Life is happening all around us, to us, all of the time. 

 

You sit in a chair that is attached at its root to a row of other chairs, two on the right and three on the left, and that is facing another row of chairs and backs onto yet another identical such row. You are in transit. You hold your book in one hand and your boarding pass and coat in your lap but you are constantly distracted, by the boarding calls that are not for your flight, and by the television that hangs suspended from the ceiling and broadcasts local news stories, the same ones again and again. It grows quiet suddenly, and still, and you realise a rumbling has stopped, a rumbling you were not aware of until it stopped, a rumbling made apparent only in the moment of its absence. It feels, to you, like the eery calm before lightning strikes, and you wonder what storm is about to hit. You are headed for New York City.

The Most Optimistic of Hobbies

Ah, oenophelia. 

My brother has recently - gradually, over the past two years, say - become an oenophile. That's right, you heard me. It sounds like I'm calling him a bad name, but, truth be told, as I've watched his passion emerge and grow, I have become increasingly impressed by the perfervid faith with which he has embraced this new hobby.

He pursues it with almost numinous fervour, and watching that passion grow has caused me, recently, to pause and consider what it means. 

Collecting wine - and I mean serious collecting, not buying bottles for consumption within the next half hour as statisticians inform us the vast majority of us do - collecting wine is a seriously optimistic business. All of my hobbies involve immediate gratification. Even writing, even when it is geared towards publication, sometime, somewhere down the track, provides me with an immediate sense of peace, of fulfillment. Once it is written, it is written - ok, and then re-written and re-written, but nevertheless, I have something concrete to look at and read and recognise as my own.

But oenophiles collect wine for consumption some 10, 15, even twenty years from now.

Think about it: this is a hobby requiring enthusiasts to believe, truly, that they will not only be alive in twenty years, but alive and sitting down somewhere to a marvelous dinner party at which vintage wine of the highest quality will be drunk, probably in the company of loved ones.

When I go shopping, I buy because I want that thing, now. When I go running, it is because I want that running buzz, now. And because I want to be a dress size smaller, yesterday. All of it is about looking good, feeling good, performing well, right this moment, or at least in the near and foreseeable future.

Wine collectors must be the most optimistic, glass half-full people I know. I guess that's the point. They always want their glass to be half full, or more.

The Relativity of Cool

Everywhere I have lived, cool people think they have a monopoly on cool. They believe they own it, it never occurs to them that cool might be cultural, cool might be relative.

But it is.

How else to explain the fact that, in the early 90s, it was cool to like Billy Joel in Munich but not in New Jersey. The fact that David Hasselhoff is still cool in Germany but the height of uncool everywhere else. Birkenstocks are ho hum, run-of-the-mill in Europe but all the rage still in North America.

In the year 2000, when I moved to Sydney, it was cool to like Shania Twain in Canada but oh so uncool to like her in Australia. Hard core techno will always be cool in Berlin but it is vulgar in Australia. Tiny skirts, fake tan and stilettos so high you can hardly walk in them are so cool right now in Sydney - and, I imagine, in LA - but so not cool in Melbourne and Northern Europe.

When I arrived at University in Canada in 1993 wearing tailored skirts I was suddenly uncool, although I was wearing the de rigeur clothing of the European chique. Traveling in France in the late 90s it was uncool to be unfamiliar with the pre-choreographed group dances that were all the rage in French clubs, but choreographed dancing in North America or Australia was decidedly uncool - except in Alberta, or Texas, where line-dancing will always be cool.

In 2008, young people wearing Lederhosen and Dirndls to Oktoberfest were cool in Germany but kitsch outside of Europe. In 2009 cynicism is cool in Australia but enthusiasm is lauded in Canada.

In order to be cool in a traditional way one must stay still, in a single cultural environment, and embrace the temporal markers of cool relevant to that place. It is always cool, in any place, to diss those who do not embrace those markers.

But for me the true mark of cool is the ability to move in and out of cultures without caring too much for trends.

That is why I wear hats. They will always be cool to me, other people be damned.

ps. Ok, maybe Hasselhoff is not truly cool in a traditional sense, even in Germany. But he has become a unique phenomenon of cool - he's so uncool that panning him is now cool everywhere.

Mars & Venus

He will not reach out to her, not properly.

He loves her, adores her, worships her, almost. Only so far as he is able to, and that is not enough for her.

She does not want worship, she wants soulmate.

Each morning he will fold her into his body so that the hairs on his chest tickle her nose, she breathes in his scent as he kisses the top of her head.

He draws a bath for her when she is tired and sad.

But days go by when she does not hear from him at all. The variety of his moods, the distance of his passion are inexplicable to her. She does not understand him, not truly, and he will not assist by explaining.

She probably needs too much from him. It is heavy upon her, this need to be loved.

A wonder, really, that men and women survive together at all.

Adam & Jessie: Chapter 3

Dinner was over all too soon. Later she couldn't recall precisely what they had talked about. Food, travel. Hopes, dreams. It almost didn't matter, they spoke as though they had known one another forever. He seemed to know her intimately, he looked into her and considered her in a way none of her other admirers had done. He entered her through her eyes and took up residency within her before she had time to consider refusing him.

He was the kind of man who broke up fights before they could start. The man in the pub who could start a conversation with anyone, without putting them offside. The man who talked sincerely to the homeless man on the street and left him laughing. He had a presence, a glow, he lit up all the dark spaces inside of her. Her loneliness started to lift.

So that it seemed perfectly natural when, after the meal had finished, he turned to her and said:

"What did you want to do tonight?"

Any other date would have ended then, but theirs was just beginning.

They danced together and instead of knocking his hand away when he reached for her the way she was wont to do with other men, she grabbed hold and allowed herself to be swung this way and that, reeling out and circling back into his arms, dipping and gliding, and then pulling close, coming up for air only to gaze into his eyes.

My Favourite Books of 2009

In no particular order. For a variety of reasons.

1. Paul Auster - The Brooklyn Follies
2. Chris Cleave - The Other Hand (also published as Little Bee)
3. Kim Echlin - The Disappeared
4. Ian McEwan - The Comfort of Strangers (warning: highly disturbing)
5. John Fowles - The Collector
6. Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
7. Christos Tsolkias - The Slap
8. Juno Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
9. Aravind Adiga - White Tiger
10. Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies

Some of the books I can't wait to read in 2010:

1. Anything and everything by Paul Auster
2. A. S. Byatt - The Children‘s Book
3. Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood
4. Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
5. Chris Cleave - Incendiary
6. Kazuo Ishiguro - anything
7. Haruki Murakami - anything

FURY

God how you hate him.

You were naive in the extreme. They tell you there is a power discrepancy between men and women. They tell you men will abuse that power. Somehow you don't believe it.

Until something happens, and the consequences are so foreign, so incomprehensible, and at the same time, so horribly cliched.

And you finally realise: it is still true, what they say. He has taken from you something you never intended to give, and he keeps taking, every day. It affects you deeply.

And what you did not know: it affects every facet of your being. Your career, your relationships. Your naivete has caused this fissure in your life, it was his hand but your permission.

And what you did not know: no other man will ever understand, and a part of you will hate them too, for being unable to understand.

You are a ghost of the person you once were.

November

Growing up in Europe, November was always a rainy month. The corpses of autumn-coloured leaves littered the mossy earth, moisture hung softly in the air, it grew cold and breath hung suspended in miniature cloudbursts. It was too early for snow, usually, although occasionally, oh joy, the very first snowfall - fat flakes falling slowly - would occur in the week of my mid-November birthday.

In Australia, it is as though the gods celebrate for me by causing the landscape to erupt loudly, ostentatiously into bloom. Jacarandas burst with flowers that define the very essence of purple. Bougainvilleas sprout in glorious displays of red and pink, covering the white heritage walls of Sydney houses. Lavender releases its sweet scent, and the ubiquitous eucalypts and lemongrass lend a citrus undertone to the bouquet of spring.

How lucky am I, spoilt even before cake, before champagne.

Familiar Second Person

I saw you last night. I think you might have seen me, too.

For the first time, the sight of you did not send shivers up and down my spine. I did not attempt to catch your eye. I did not approach you, or say hello. I saw you, surrounded as usual by beautiful people, and, this time, I did not feel a need to interrupt, to make my presence known, to smile and nod knowingly in your direction.

The air did not zing, or pop, with the energy usually generated by our proximity.

I left, last night, without a backward glance. I left, knowing that the place I would lay my head shortly thereafter was more welcoming than you have ever been. Even when you were most drawn to me, you pushed me away with your other hand. A human yin-yang. I loved you but I am not a see-saw, being pushed and pulled like flotsam and jetsam in the fickle tide of your desire does not suit my fragile temperament. Over time, you would destroy me. My edges rubbed raw through constant friction against the relentless rockface of your occasional indifference.

Now it is my turn to exert my indifference upon you. Schadenfreude. I hope you feel the coldness of it. I hope it affects you.

And this: in that hope lies the truth, that I will never truly be indifferent, much though I wish to be.

Commuting

I have recently started a job which involves a daily commute. One hour each way. Although I was initially less than thrilled by the prospect, I now find myself wishing every morning that the train ride was just that little bit longer. The time I have to myself, every morning and every evening, provides me with a balance between social time and me-time, which, if it is not enforced, I find difficult to instill in my life.

But I think there is more to my joy in the commute than I initially thought. As I prepared myself on Sunday night for the week of train trips ahead, it dawned on me. And as I settled myself on the train this morning, it was confirmed. I had planned ahead. I had a phone card, allowing me to make the overseas phone calls from my mobile phone that I find it so difficult to find the time to make from any landline. I had my large coffee, set on the seat next to me, to last the entire train ride. I had snack bars in my gym bag, to breakfast on. I pulled out my tiny laptop computer, set it on my lap, and connected to the internet. I pulled out my current novel. I pulled out my iPod, clad in its new leather shell, and the in-ear balancing headphones I recently purchased, and turned on the new album I downloaded last night from iTunes. I had a pashmina in case it got cold, and a spot for my umbrella beside me. I was all set, established in my own small interior world even as I sat in that most public of spaces, the suburban train.

And I realised: I am a gifted commuter. I am a gifted commuter because I am an experienced traveler. Getting on the train each morning and heading out of Sydney is restoring to me because it is like getting on an airplane and flying away from Sydney, something I have been itching to do for months.

I haven't left Sydney in so long and it was beginning to get to me. But now I have a local equivalent of overseas travel, and I get to indulge in this more localised form of travel every day.
No wonder I feel peculiar when I arrive back in the city. My mind has established itself by that time in the familiar routine of away-ness.

In Former Days

In former days we'd both agree

That you were me, and I was you

What has now happened to us two,

That you are you, and I am me?

- Bartrhari

Egypt in all its oppulence lies before me

As I sit in jewels and eat grapes.

You stare with hostile eyes

As gold glitters on each servant

And I clap to the rhythm of the dancers.

Sometimes when I think of you all I see

Is a land of Arctic tides and men

Reigning logic, scorning sentiment

And I wonder why it is you're still with me -

In former days we'd both agree

-

To laugh at Rome, silly Octavius

Marrying off his sister, but oh so

Full of reason, I was vulgarity to him

Wicked witch of dreams

I stole his favourite general

And I wonder, am I vulgar to you?

With you my sweet Marc Antony

I scorned my people and became like you

And you took Egypt. We both knew

That you were me, and I was you.

-

If only time had stopped just then

Balancing like a juggling act

The perfect symmetry of our two worlds

As if we were a comedy. I weep,

Slowly removing one asp from the basket.

This is beyond my control, nor is it you

Who draws the sword though they say

They saw you do it.

I was content with less than our due,

What has now happened to us two?

-

Had we but lived a little longer

The cycle would have turned.

Little Egypts, little Romes

Could have saved us like Perdita and Florizel.

We two were one, though I weakened you in battle

And you me at home; would we were at sea,

Rome and Egypt extremes on land

Our marriage of opposites sealed in waves.

What hand has created our tragedy,

That you are you, and I am me?

- N.

Fragmentation

When she awoke she had forgotten where she was. She stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom by rote, and sat on the toilet in shock as she remembered. She never dreamt she would be back here ever again.

The night before, she remembered now, after walking home seedy from the club setting of their coincidental meeting, they had settled enwined on the couch to watch television, as in times gone by. Her glasses, weakened at one joint, had broken, the arm had fallen off, and he had laughed as she determinedly continued to wear them, skewiff, having set the arm back in the case, an unfortunate, drunken amputee.

Surprisingly she was not self-conscious or shy as she re-entered his familiar bedroom, even though she wore only underwear. She stood in the doorway and looked at him until he sensed her presence, opened his eyes, and turned.

"What the fuck are you doing here!" he exclaimed. But his voice was warm.

She doubled over with laughter. "I don't know! What the fuck am I doing here!"

She got back into bed and they giggled together like children and she folded into his warm side, recognition dawning of the same soft skin, the same strong torso.

"I don't even remember... did we... last night?"

"No," he said. "No we didn't."

She turned towards him and kissed his lips, and, that morning, they did.

*

She saw him two days later, in Court. She stood in the corridor, mobile phone to her ear. He walked around the corner towards her, out of the lift well. Tall in his suit. He looked at her, raised his eyebrows, smiled, but uncertainly. She smiled back at him with a nod of her head, phone still at her ear, on hold.

As he approached he held his hand to his head, miming the wearing of spectacles.

"I have your glasses," he half-whispered.

She smiled. The night before, she had gone to watch television, had opened up her glasses case only to find a lone arm but nothing else.

"I wondered where they were," she said.

"Only they're missing an arm." he said.

"Yes," she said. "I have the arm, I couldn't understand where the rest of them went."

It seemed hilarious, all of a sudden, that they should have divided and conquered like this, a Cindarella moment, one shoe each of a pair, one at his house and one at hers.

And then they were laughing together, silly in their secrets, until she was taken off hold and he walked away.

Strangers again until the next time.

The TCK Experience

Third Culture Kids. TCKs. A term coined by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem to denote those individuals who, as children, spent a significant period of time in one or more culture other than their own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture into a third, unique culture.

Ruth Van Reken has recently suggested that the term should now be updated, to "Cross-Cultural Kids". Most TCKs I know have had to integrate elements from more than two countries into their 'third', composite culture, so the renaming perhaps makes sense, although in my view it removes from the identifier a critical constituent of TCK-ness: the composite culture created (still generally referred to as the 'third' culture) is more than simply the combination of several cultures. Useem's original hypothesis, with which I agree, is that the experience of the TCK means that their own cultural identity is different from either, or any, of the cultures that have gone into its creation.

This is why TCKs often find they have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than with non-TCKs from their birth or citizenship country(ies). They never have full ownership or full understanding of any of the cultures into which they come into contact, even the cultures of their citzenship and / or birth countries.

Returning to a nation of which one is a citizen when one has never actually lived there is not returning at all, although the majority of non-TCK individuals would view it as a homecoming.

What answer, then, to the question: where are you from?

Most people mean, where were you born?

I was born in a country of which I have precious few memories, a country the language of which I do not speak, and of which I am not a citizen. None of that country's more typical natives would view me as one of them.

Some people mean: what passport do you hold?

I hold two passports. I had never lived in either of my passport countries until I finished school.

Some people mean: yes, but where is your accent from?

My accent is a hotchpotch of voices, a motley assortment of lived experiences that have coalesced to create a unique bastardisation of the spoken English language. But what you hear? Well that depends on where you're from. If you're from North America, I sound English to you, or Scottish or Australian. Perhaps even German or Scandinavian. If you're from Australia I sound North American, or perhaps Irish. If you're from Northern Europe I just sound strange.

My answer changes depending on who you are, which is to say, I am telling you nothing about myself by my answer, I am telling you about yourself and your preconceptions of cultural specificity.

Defining characteristics of the TCK: Adaptability. Isolation.

Inch by Inch

Salman Rushdie writes in Midnight's Children of a wife learning to love her husband one bit at a time - focusing her love one day on his nose, the next on his chin, the next on the little finger of his right hand, and so on.

This is how it worked for her, too, with him, although they were unaware of it at the time, it was a subconscious process.

He never saw her naked until many months later. Without intending to be so reserved she let him see just one part of her at a time. One evening she remained fully clothed and unbuttoned her shirt so that just one breast was revealed. Another time she wandered through the room in his white button-down business shirt, legs bare in the moonlight. He lifted her shirt the next night and kissed her belly. She lifted his and became familiar with the muscular indentations at the base of his spine. He carried the soft weight of her hair and nuzzled his nose and lips into her neck. She raised her head and bit, sucked his earlobe, exploring the private space behind his ear. Bit by bit, part by part, they drank each other in, growing gradually to love each other.

So that when he told her he loved her, all of her, she believed it, down to her little toes.

In Defence of Redheads

I may or may not be a redhead. It shouldn't matter, one way or another, should it? No more than my eye colour or my height or the colour of my shoes.

But it does, to many people, not the colour of one's hair generally, but the colour of one's hair if it happens to be red.

If I were a redhead it is likely that I might have been teased as a child - matchstick, lighthouse, little orphan Annie, all of that - but the teasing is unlikely to have been terribly serious, right, no worse than the teasing every young child endures who earns their stripes at a co-educational school.

Or perhaps it might have been a little worse than that.

Ok, fine, I admit it, I'm a redhead, a ginga, a fanta-pants, a ranga. Please don't stop reading, let me finish, give me the benefit of the doubt.

I am infected with the ginger-gene. Gingervitis. Do you pity me?

I never realised it was an infection until those scholars at gingerkids.com gave me something to think about. I never realised I was meant to be embarassed until I went away on holiday with a group of near-strangers and watched the expressions on their faces when they chose for our evening entertainment that particular episode of Catherine Tait - you know the one, it's about a protective shelter for gingers.

Of course I knew I was a minority of sorts. Magazine covers feature blondes or brunettes, not redheads. Features on cosmetics for various skintones or styles for different hair colours generally omit the freckled faces and ginger curls of the McDonald clan.

But it has become cool to poke fun of rangas. Maybe it was always a little bit cool, but it is now the poking-fun equivalent of reality TV, ubiquitous and widely enjoyed (by the baser members of society). A bit of sport. The fast food of poking fun, cheap and readily available.

I read a story not long ago about a couple in the UK with the misfortune of bearing six ginger children. They were forced to move village three or four times in as many years, for no reason other than the appalling bullying the kids endured at school as a result of their hair colour.

One could argue we are the newest minority group in need of anti-discrimination legislation. In fact, we're becoming extinct, haven't you heard?

Truth be told I embrace gingerkids.com, me and my ginga friends hang out together and revel in our very gingessence. There are some advantages in redness.

I have observed, for example, through investigatory browsing that most pornsites have fetish categories specifically for redhead-lovers, so there must be some of you out there. And I have been the focus of a 'ranga-challenge' on a boys night out (the challengers were unsuccessful, if you must know, at least with me).

Redheads are sexy, didn't you know? Just look at Jessica Rabbit. Oh, and a German study a year ago determined we have more sex than the average Joe. We must be having it with somebody, and if it was only other rangas we wouldn't be on the verge of extinction.

And being subjected to inevitable teasing as a child gives us a certain water-off-a-duck's back imperviousness to all sorts of verbal jousting and barbs. We can take what we give, give what we take. Redheads are good to be around.

Unless, of course, you step on that hidden fuse and ignite the ginga temper. The myths do not exaggerate. And we can hold a grudge a long, long time. Be warned.

But in my experience rangas rock. Redheads are fun, we are sparky, we are ok with the fact that you can see us a mile away in the sunlight and our skin is almost see-through.

Your life would be boring without us. Admit it, we make you feel better about yourselves.