kate’s adventure

so i’ve moved out of the nunnery, back to my parents’ place. i’ve been nervous about it ever since it started to be a possibility, not only are my parents and i usually at eachothers’ throats after about a day and a half, but i was living the dream in a big beautiful cooperative share house. queer women and community events just off king street. what could ever make me want to leave? yes, yes, everybody laughs.

i’ve done a lot of work on my new quarters, hauling furniture about and sorting and chucking plenty of my old stuff that never moved out when i did, and lots of theirs too. and quarters they are, it’s more space than i’m used to, and all mine – or at least more mine than it used to be when i’d crash here between houses or trips. now the bed is in the same corner it always used to inhabit, but turned around the other way. it’s shielded from the door quite nicely by a big set of drawers, as the couch is by a set of shelves. the couch is imposed on me mind you, not something i want, and quite unuseable as it’s my last priority for cleaning up, but it gives the impression of being my own domain. i have a desk, shielded from the bed by the wardrobe, and my sewing table is separate. the latter is what makes the house home, and i’m very pleased to have been using it quite a bit. the other stuff is nice but unnecessary, but being able to set up the important bits well is a joy in any dwelling. delightfully, here my sewing machine has a window in front, good access behind and space for all my sewing junk beside, and my bed has familiarity and difference, privacy and a good windowsill for my colourful pillows to pile up to. i can recline in the pillows and doonas while i gaze out the window at the shaded, moist leafy greenness. what more could i possibly want?

there’s a lot of work involved in being around my father, and if i go upstairs i don’t get back too quickly. i get woken early every morning by my parents clomping around above me, we don’t get on perfectly and i’m a long way away from everything. but the work is important and it’s quite nice staying on people’s couches, being invited into my friends’ houses and lives a little more than otherwise. i enjoy driving in general, so the extra distance is not all bad. in fact, i really feel it on occasions, like when someone has a crisis and i can’t get there, or i have to engage with complicated public transport. or when someone who rarely talks to me makes a point of telling me that they think they’ll just pop out to an event i didn’t know about, that starts in half an hour. i’m back to actually having to plan my life properly.

i haven’t written here for a while, maybe i should get back into it. today was the first day for a while that i’ve had lunch at work. not just eating, i do that all day, buty going out to my little lunchtime hideaway along the train line.

when you sit down in the long grass the sund is warm, the air is fresher, the traffic is almost invisible and slightly quieter, and the world is green. it has been summer and i have used my hour to pay attention to my own life and soak up sun i’ve never appreciated more, before returning to the harshly air conditioned office. but now it is june, and as i drive through the rain on jobs which allow me to leave the office and so supposedly negate the need for lunch, i’ve been worrying how i would survive when my haven is inhospitable.

even in winter there is sun, at least if you time your escape well. the grass is all wet, but the junk pile i usually ignore boasts a three by four foot slab of perfectly good plywood amongst its pallets, nasty fragments of chipboard, general rubbish and an old washing machine. if the lizards can enjoy it then so can i, so today i settled down to watch them, lying on my front in my almost-suit, with my feet kicked up in their grey socks to warm the soles. i feel like i’m on a beach. it’d have to be in russia. 

the grasses are decked out in fluffy pinkness around me, with little beads of water held carefully in the fuzz. the lizards stop taking fright as as i read a book about someone else’s hitchhiking adventures. i feel a little nostalgic for my own, for what i saw and did, and for what i didn’t and would’ve like to do, but really, i have what i want right here, more or less. with these stories as a reminder to look for the undersides again, i keep having moments of joy break out through the day at my dubious job; i take pleasure in small interactions, giggle climbing the stairs. there’s satisfaction in tying my tie, a little spot of reclaimed colour that i certainly am not obliged to wear, often a surge of excitement approaching the office as an employee and elation in driving away – the thrill of travel whether at the beginning and end of the day or right in the middle, out on even the most tedious of jobs. resolving to read my book rather than nervously trying to look busy when noone will give me any work to do, staking out my full lunch hour. i count the containers on the train that passes metres from me – fifty seven. some of the names on the sides are unfamiliar, others put me right back on that ferry from copenhagen to oslo, sailing out from my new home past docks and amphibious windmills, glued to the rails by the wonderful view from above, even when i finally start shivering violenty from the icy water washing around the deck and over my bare feet. must’ve been march or april.

the urge may well return, but i don’t have to leave everything behind again to be able to observe the world. now that i know it, it comes to me.