This week contained all the emotions. Like we used to say around the dinner table when the kids were small: the rose, the thorn, the banana peel.
Last time I wrote here, my session at the Berry Writers Festival was sparkling before me. Conversations about writing, readers in real life, a weekend of following geese down alleyways in a charming country town. Most of all: two solo nights in a hotel for tiny cups of tea, bouts of Food Channel and quiet work on my book. My own little writers retreat.
Leaving for a night away was a feat in itself as one of the children has required me within arms length at almost all times for months now, and along with Keith, they added the jape of coming down with Covid in the days before the festival. I hung garlic around my neck, made the sign of the cross every time I approached, and assaulted my sinuses with a series of nervous RATS.
By the skin of my teeth, I took off.
On Saturday morning, I tested negative, took to the stage and enjoyed a wonderful conversation, before masking up and leaving the festivities so as not to mingle with the people. At the IGA I picked up smoked salmon and sourdough and cheese and apples and chocolate, ready for a hotel picnic. I had a little nap when I got back, and in the evening when I woke, turned to my novel. I couldn’t concentrate. I was a little headachy. A little sneezy.
Surely no.
I did a RAT. Two accusatory lines started at me. The party was over, almost before it began. I felt pretty shabby for the next few days, my heart in my mouth as I worried about my friend with Long Covid at the festival. Had I patient-zeroed her? Please no. (Thankfully, no.)
Eldest child, mid-HSC exams, was next to test positive, and just as she recovered, smallest went down. I was on orange juice and vegemite toast and Nurofen and grated apple and illness-and-misadventure form duty; and it felt for a while there like we had always had Covid and always would.
But then - oh frabjous day! calloo callay! - smallest baby went back to school, and I felt well again (or at least, the perimenopausal version of ‘well’ which is that something hurts all the time, but not clinically). Covid had passed through like a random king tide, and the HSC was finished - eldest little baby done with high school forever. We drank a bottle of Prosecco, ate cheese and watched The Bourne Identity to celebrate.
There was a delightful day or two of feeling that we were moving to a steadier, stronger place… and then the US election dropped the hammer. I drank three gin and tonics as the results rolled in, trying to process the cognitive dissonance of the times.
Grief. Grief for the planet, trans rights, women’s rights, the minds and hearts of all the impressionable boys. Grief is my core emotion this year, as familiar as a black cat. Grief and its first cousins, anxiety and fear. There is much in my heavy emotional backpack at home, and in the zoomed-out macro, the future feels weighty too. I keep thinking about history, and humanity’s pull towards disaster and destruction. And then I make a sandwich and clean the toilet and cook the allergic dog his special dinner.
There are shocking and sobering truths about our world in the message sent by the American election. I feel both a need to look away, and a need to tune in as the tectonic plates of culture are shift underneath us; the ways that the ripples will alter our landscape not yet clear.
For now, holding tight.
Watching, Reading, Listening
Fictionwise, I read and loved The Albatross by Nina Wan, and both smallest child and I loved the pacey, plotty fun of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Splinters by Leslie Jamieson and Sad Mum Lady by Ashe Davenporte brought painful honesty to their memoirs on motherhood, and I appreciated it.
My ears have been full of US political pods, but I’ve decided to stalk, knees high, out of the weeds. I’ll try to restrict myself to Jessica Yellin’s excellent Substack News Not Noise and the weekly overview from Planet America, so I can keep track of the important stuff, but distance myself from the details. Planet America, with its offshoot podcast PEP, is so good. Chas, John and Dave bring vast archives of knowledge and a calm, funny touch. (I might withdraw slowly from The Rest Is Politics US, because I’m not quite ready to break up with Katty K and the Mooch.)
On TV, I cannot recommend enough the technicolour high camp fun of the Disney adaptation of Jilly Coopers Rivals. The opening shot of Rupert Campbell Black’s bottom as he joined the Mile High Club with tabloid journo Beattie Johnson: chefs kiss!
Season 3 of Fisk has dropped, the most perfect jewel of Australian comedy. I might have been slightly Covid-feverish, but Episode 2 of this new season was the most sharply written, gorgeous piece of TV. I told the dog that several times.
For the true-crime lovers, the Sherry Papini doc Perfect Wife (Disney) is a master of the form- twist after unexpected twist. Really fun.
Keith and I are introducing the kids to Only Murders. It’s fun and charming, and the sumptuous NY interiors are the real star. I’m always impressed with the genius of Martin Short and Steve Martin (whose memoir, Born Standing Up, is a brilliant read for fans of the art and history of stand-up comedy, and who once did Duelling Banjos with Kermit the Frog.
This week I plan to re-listen to the excellent NYT podcast Rabbit Hole, made back in 2020, which explores the process of internet radicalisation and unpicks the origins of the algorithm: dastardly Algorithm, which should surely be a proper noun by now, so we know the enemy we are dealing with. I think Algorithm is the super-villain of the times, like a girl in Year 5, newly flexing her powers of manipulation, who doesn’t like it when anybody is friends with anybody else, and might, maybe, if she’s bored, burn the school down.
Last night, I went to a concert at smallest child’s high school. Tears sprang to my eyes as I watched a row of teenage boys in suits perform a Motown love song; singing and dancing with free, pure joy. It was such a balm to my heart and mind. I’m sickened by the misogyny that I’ve seen since the election; so worried about who is shaping our young men. But last night's dancers reminded me of the alternative, and today, I have an Ethics class to teach - a room full of squirming five-year-olds learning about how to listen and think with kindness and respect. On we go; staying the course, catering the revolution.
Much love in this sobering, unsettling moment.
A final thought from Nikita Gill:
Everything is on fire,
but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living,
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.
xRach
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