Bowie

David Bowie has died and there’s been a heartbreak fluttering in the wings for months.

David Bowie has died and I’m back to Valentine’s Day 2004
leaping in Wellington rain with one of my oldest friends singing along
Ziggy himself on stage mere metres away.

David Bowie has died and you have cancellations all morning so we go out for breakfast. The café is quiet, the chef your best friend.

David Bowie has died and I buy potting mix to repot the succulent I decorated for Christmas. I take my time to cycle it home, stop to sit in the shade of a eucalypt and write.

David Bowie has died and we’ve bought an outdoor table on ebay
drive to collect it from a neighbourhood of overgrown lawns and car collections
trash thrown in heaps on the footpaths.

Username ‘kewlshit’ is burly and mean. By god I bet he’s done some things he shouldn’t have over the years. But he’s restored the table to hipster-appealing charm, calls a younger man his “servant” as he carries it out shrouded bizarrely in leopard skin print.
It’s been 37 degrees and raining this evening.

David Bowie has died and we listen to all our favourite songs of his, remembering all the other times we listened to those songs, where we were and how they became so. I wish I knew you years ago.

David Bowie has died and we drink gin and tonics, watch the last half of The Godfather which we’d been saving from the night before.

David Bowie has died and I can’t stop admiring our new table, our first joint purchase, white and mint stripes on a wrought iron base. I wonder how something I love could have been created by a man I have nothing in common with.

And then I wonder if he too listened to Bowie tonight and which song struck him in the hardened heart as he sang along, what line reminded him of younger days or that party where he met that girl he fell for, the girl he perhaps bought the leopard skin for.

I wonder which album cover sticks in his mind, captures his imagination the most, which is his favourite lyric, his favourite Bowie quote and how he heard the news tonight, how it stopped him
before he had to get on with it all.

Spatial Awareness

One of the last things I did before I moved countries was hire a small truck and a storage space to house my many accumulated things. I was anxious-but-organised. A guy exposed his prejudices. Here’s the story:

I arrived at the storage place with my brother and our (male) friend. I had booked the space and truck well in advance and all was ready for me. I was pretty excited about driving a truck, to be honest, and the place I was moving out of had typically difficult access and narrow streets. It was going to be a blast.

I asked to see the space I’d hired, just to check it was going to be big enough for what turned out to be an enormous amount of stuff when I started packing it into boxes. I invited my companions to come and have a look too, as they had also recently laid eyes on my giant pile of things. The man at the desk made a flippant comment about how that would be a good idea, because men have better spatial awareness than women and attempted a very forgettable joke along the same lines.

When it came to taking the truck away he asked who was going to be driving it. At this point my brother and friend had had almost nothing to do with the whole process – except for groaning at the sexist joke attempt – I said I would be driving. Of course. This was my idea, my hoarded possessions, my move. For some reason he seemed surprised and said “good for you.”

Driving a small truck around the windy streets was as awesome as I had anticipated and after spending hours filling it with as much as we possibly could, I collected another companion, did a three-point turn on the hill outside my house, made tooting gestures as we wound past other heavy-vehicle drivers with whom I had a new found bonhomie and displayed some nifty defensive action when someone pulled out in front of me (how they didn’t see ME in a TRUCK is incomprehensible).

When I arrived back at the storage facility the man we had been dealing with stopped me and offered through the passenger window to back the truck into the garage for me. I wanted to tell him about the three-point turn, about where we’d come from and how I got myself, all the things I own and two passengers safely to that point, about how much fun we’d been having – but there was a small part of me that felt I should submit and let him finish off the process. For a moment I thought that because he had offered, it must mean I was incapable.

Thankfully, my friends insisted I had this and wound the window back up in front of his astonished face. I proceeded to back the truck neatly into the space provided, despite my apparent gender-related spatial disabilities. When I got out I was told how I could have done that better / differently / his way. I could not have been more disinterested in his opinion and had a photo shoot behind the wheel before unloading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night walk

Late night hill walk past sunset but only just night after afternoon sun here in your springside hillside suburbia of blooming gardens, trimmed hedges. Flower steal. Streetside wild flowers grey as the night air dull light and wild again vivid, clashing in the flashes of streetlight, headlight, smiles from passers-by evening strollers sharing night adventure scrambling at the daisies sniffing in the jasmine… reminds me of your street last month… sniffed in more and the more it wafts nostalgia through me: Teenage feelings, afternoon after school walks home always spring in those days, always warmed by sunshine, smell and private joy. A strange strength in solitude. This late night hill walk street flower steal purple, orange. White yellow green yellow white.

So far away

The first words I ever pretended to read were Dire Straits as my mum handwrote the album details on the cassette she’d just dubbed Brothers in Arms onto. My brother whispered to me what it said and I repeated it aloud to the surprise of already proud mum, who I quickly put straight, never wanting to be seen as anything greater than I was.

This morning I woke with ‘So far away from me’ in my head and there I was back at that kitchen table, that kitchen of so many homebrand haircuts and baking afternoons, tears over flooded lino, burnt muesli and frustrations I will never fully understand and those lyrics that I just didn’t get or know I one day would.

And there’s Mark Knopfler again telling me passion can be mumbled, electric, eighties and understated, cheesy with rhyme and as powerful as those words printed, whispered, shared, confessed, recalled. As powerful as memory itself.

The Full Spectrum

In the season of rainbows and tough decisions
I take photos of the sky while driving

easily bamboozled by others
and their desire for me to be okay. I’m not.

I make lists headed Joy and Frustration
feel my body shrink…

and e x p a n d again with determination.

In the season of sun showers and changing rooms
I am the light that reflects and refracts

ride a lazy arc from ex-haustion
to some stifling form of relaxation

and just as I’m bored of the same three chords

this storm turns out to be the perfect combination
of light dispersal in cool precipitation

so I chase it down the back streets home.

See your memories

I’ve become a little obsessed with facebook’s “see your memories” thingy whereby you can see exactly how similar you were feeling about life on this day last year, the year before or even back in 2007. It’s horrifying to see firstly how quickly a year has gone by and secondly how much has or has not changed in that 12 months. Horrifying but also sometimes affirming.

Here’s something from 13 months ago:

IMG_20150813_095409

Although I see no evidence of this actually happening, I’m still convinced it’s what the world needs. There are some stroppy, fiery, speak-before-they-think people running significant parts of this world and they’ll try and change us – make us feel that our ideas and decisions are less because we communicate them calmly; that our feelings and instincts are nothing compared to their grand plans and loud demands – but we won’t change.

Sadly, I think society still sees strength as anger over reasoning; volume, rather than integrity; busting things apart, rather than holding them together. But many of us are not impulsive or naturally angry people and our strength comes from the gentle, deliberate and well-considered way we approach things. We agonise over decisions because we know the impacts can be far-reaching and we take on many different points of view and consider them in own our time before forming strong opinions. We reflect on ourselves and make a point of being consistent and professional and never losing our shit in public. Other people might not always see that as strength, but as long as we’re acting in accordance to our values and taking our own feelings and beliefs seriously… well, frankly, other people can piss off.

About 5 years ago I was musing on this from a slightly different angle. https://saradhakoirala.com/2010/11/27/some-semi-formed-ideas-on-karma-and-physics/ I was thinking about how we can trust things to be okay for cosmic and scientific reasons and that there’s logic and necessity behind feeling all the feelings there are to be felt. The part I hadn’t realised at this point though was about trusting those feelings. That post five years ago ended with two questions I can now answer: You can and Yes. I realise now that we must trust our feelings. In fact our own feelings are often the only true and honest things we can know. It’s rare but refreshing to find other people who can also see this. More often than not people are invalidating our feelings, telling us to “cheer up”, “harden up” and to stop being “so dramatic.” People will react to our expressions of emotion with “it’s not that bad” or “it’s not that funny” (my most hated phrase to hear – I’ll laugh like a lunatic if I want to!) So rarely do people just let you feel what you’re feeling for a bit. Likewise, society has taught us that we can change people’s minds. Again this is invalidating especially for those of us who have carefully considered each decision we’ve ever made. In childhood we can quickly learn that “no” doesn’t necessarily mean “no” and that nagging, whiney, goading, pleading, bullying and persisting will get us what we want. Holding onto this belief into adulthood is dangerous and disrespectful and encountering it is a constant test of my resolve that strength is integrity and I shouldn’t have to raise my voice or cause a scene to be listened to.

My utopia is still a world run by calm and thoughtful people. People who listen to each other, trust their own instincts and make well-considered decisions based on feelings. If I continue to look back on my posts year after year, I want to still feel the same way and know that I’ve managed to stay true to these values.  We shouldn’t have to change to fit into society’s expectations just to live the life we believe in because, let’s be honest, society’s way of operating actually hasn’t been working out that well for society.

 

(sub)Liminal

I’m a little bit in love with the world again today.
Not just the bright courtyard outside my bedroom door
that eases me into another morning here

or the sea-beyond-rooftops view as I walk down the hill
to this quiet city I know too well

this afternoon city of doors pushed closed
alleyways blocked by bins

streets swept clean by a northerly at least
– it’s the world outside this that fills me with light.

Sent words map out wherever it is you are
snippets of your day in exchange for my evening

a little bit in love and a gallery of images
on trains, at stations: forever moving
or waiting to be moved again.

I am

I am the smell of the unshaken rug
dust warmed by the shifting shapes of sunlight
this long afternoon.

Blossom that once lined streets
russets in gutters like pine needles
its crimson now blooming in bruises above school socks
burns on the backs of our hands.

I am the expected next beat of your raggedy heart
never this beat or the beat just been
I cling in the chill of the pre-rain air.

Talking to boys

Remember when those boys from high school finally grew tall
came back for summer holidays with stories
mostly about drinking, but often about girls
or older women, brazen
emboldened by experience, confessing teenage-long crushes
on you and your friends
using phrases like ‘out of my league’ and ‘punching above my weight’
sporting metaphors incongruous with their still-spindly arms
and narrow shoulders
your own awkward laugh?

Remember when you wanted to start a band, but everyone you knew
was a bass player, like you
and you’d given away your amp anyway after it proved to be
the heaviest thing you owned?

Remember, too, when the sun seemed to beam down on your life
for several days in a row
bright warm views and long evenings
of an active mind ticking off the last of things
last classes, last weeks, last pair of stockings, last days of boots
last time you let yourself dwell in a situation
that keeps you up at night, eyes open, you’d tell yourself, but still in the dark
last days of low-fog on morning hills
a hazy view diffusing street lamp glow
haunting hoot of morepork
last time your pen or mouth runs dry?

Home World


Wake to the sound of birds sun urging at the curtain
semi-conscious
mundanities of an incomplete (whole-wide) world
complete
later
thick clouds lower as the sun does
old windows rattle but no more than most nights
no more than they usually do with the momentum of life time tunes wine
ink paper brain (both sides) darkening
and cooling room (keep pace keep up)
chest both hollow and bursting heightened heart beat
sun back next day connecting
one by one by one
bringing it out from behind lingering clouds
wispy clouds long low clouds that cling to the horizon
too much and just enough all at once
this life
keeps happening
heart beat rattles too full too empty – let it
make itself heard felt known
heat words input output output output
heart (flesh) beat skip
frightening – out of control
but beat beat on
it’s keeping you alive
this world
this (fuck it) beautiful
this things work out things fall apart world
this moving on and staying upright world
this yours to own have live in it world
this hot and cold
this tears of joy sorrow and mediocrity world
this laughter of joy sorrow and awkwardness world
this heart leaping heart break
this moving on and moving on world
this all yours
this departure lounge arrivals gate
this stay away until you’re filthy exhausted until all you want is
this sweet smelling silence of home
this you know when it’s time to come home
this heat sweat and heart beat world
this life
meet connect move on move on come home
come home come home come home (move on).