Where I post about the things that happened in my life. Sometimes they’re diary entries, sometimes works of non-fiction, sometime just random photographs.
And we start this post with the traditional Morning-of-my-birthday-self-portrait-that-will-cause-my-parents-to-complain-about-the-things-I-put-up-on-the-internet (except I think I kind of broke them of that habit after six years of doing this).
This year is going to be pretty low-key, even given the relatively muted standards I use to celebrate my birthday. My plan, such as it is, consists of sleeping, hanging out with the Spokesbear, and collecting mail from my PO Box. At some point, I should go get groceries. And do the post-travel washing, so I don’t spend the rest of the week surrounded a travel-induced fugue.
It’s been about twenty years since I went on holidays with the rest of my family, but it seems we’ll be breaking that streak on Tuesday when all four of us gather and fly down to Adelaide to spend five days at the Fringe Festival.
We fly back Sunday night.
And on Monday, I turn thirty-six. It wasn’t until tonight, looking at a calendar and planning my work week after I get home, that I realised that last bit.
Birthdays are weird. I expect, this year, I’ll be reducing my celebrations down to the absolute minimum: sleeping in, re-reading Murakami’s Birthday Stories anthology, getting on with things. I mean, what little celebratory energy I usually have is going to be burned out by five days of awesomeness as the Fringe, and any reserves are going to be needed to get me through the week that follows at the day-job.
In theory, the coming week is a holiday. I want to take it as one, I really do, but I’m already mentally planning out the various things I need to sneak in between time with the family and the shows I really want to see.
There are still things that need writing, whether I’m on holidays or no. There are things that need doing for the day-job. I’m proving remarkably bad at putting either away at this point, which largely means Shifty Silas is making the trip to Adelaide with me and I’ve just spent a half-hour figuring out how to access the internet by hooking my laptop up to my phone.
If anyone’s got any recommendations for good places to hide out and write in the city-centre of Adelaide, I’m eager to hear about them.
If anyone’s got a free afternoon and they’re interested in meeting up for a write-club somewhere, I’m similarly interested in hearing the news.
These are the things that occupy my mind at the moment. It’s 9:53 on a Sunday evening, which is actually a little early for me to get down to the act of writing. I’m drinking scotch, ’cause it’s been a drinking scotch kind of weekend, and I’m going to be kicking off a short burst of writing that will serve as a precursor to some truly manic packing in the hours to come.
I’m looking forward to Adelaide. I’ve been to the Fringe a couple of times before and it’s always been ten kinds of fucking awesome. I’m looking forward to spending time with my family, although that’s tinged with trepidation at this point.
And, despite the fact I’ll be taking work down there, I’m looking forward to getting some distance from Brisbane. There’s a lot of stuff that I’m processing this year, a kind of unrelenting onslaught of things that need to be sorted out, and it’ll be nice to get away and get some perspective on things.
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A final PS: I can’t remember who first pointed out that actor Donald Glover rapped under the name Childish Gambino – I think it was probably Patrick O’Duffy, but I’m not 100%. Either way, I kinda owe them, ’cause I’ve spent the vast majority of this weekend either a) re-watching the early seasons of Community, or b) listening to Gambino’s latest album.
It happens like that, sometimes. I develop a strong level of focus when I’m consuming media and I just start consuming *everything* I can get my hands on that fits within a particular area of interest.
I’ve been back on public transport this week, regularly catching trains into work for the first time in about nine months. Usually I’m pretty fond of trains. The buses and me, we’re never going to see eye to eye, but there’s something remarkably civilized about rail transport. Especially Brisbane rail transport, which recently embraced the idea of giving people free wi-fi while they’re in transit (which, is apparently, the future once the car-loving baby boomers no longer have control of government).
On the other hand, the train can also be a remarkably frustrating way to travel. I read an article a couple of years back that pointed out the inhibitor for most people when it comes to public transport isn’t the duration of the journey, but how often the services leave. Apparently we’re eager to be in motion when we’re trying to get somewhere and we’re grumpy as hell when we’re left to sit around on the platform.
I spend a lot of time waiting on platforms when I head home in the afternoons. The trains that get me to work in a quick and efficient manner in the mornings go wonky as hell when I commute home. Like, this trip will take twice as long as the trip here kind of wonky.
I’m always amazed by the number of writers that seem to love being in motion. There’s a bunch of famous writers who are closely connected to running – Haruki Murakami and Joyce Carol Oates have both written about the connect between jogging and getting a book written – and there’s a similar number of writers who are all about taking long strolls or going on long drives. Even if they’ve never been to sea, I’m getting a whole bunch of writers see the opening to Moby Dick and feel a strange kinship with sentiments expressed in the opening:
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to the sea as soon as I can.
Writing has its own motion, whether it’s the inevitable forward surge of the narrative structure or the growing rhythm of poetry. The joy of writing, at it’s core, lies in the momentum of language. Writing may be a sedentary profession, full of long hours spent sitting at a keyboard, but there’s motion there, plenty of it, and the inevitable frustration of being left waiting at the station.
I’ve been catching trains all week. I account it high time to get to the sea.
