(Image: Edmund Kesting, 1929) On a temperate afternoon in January I drove a new friend out to the secret river. We sat in its flow and talked under a canopy of green, the current deluging and rushing to escape the miniature dams made of our rounded torsos. Flushing in collective white rapids, enlarging and distorting our thighs. Her green eyes, freckled forearms and auburn hair hanging wet at the tips. My skin taut and bronzed, and gaze soft after a day in the water – a scene locked in mind of mid 20s women. I’ve been thinking about this age, my age, a lot. What constitutes a meaningful experience of life at 26. A time when tags of designation as to who and where one should be by now can run counter to a peaceful way of seeing all that is. Following prompts from Leigh Patterson’s monthly ‘Moon Lists’ I’m attempting to turn my thoughts away from age group obsession. Things like generation blaming. Truisms of mass assumption that given ones age they must feel as the rest of them do, one for all. My aunty Deb tells me John Reynolds calls himself a generational traitor – a boomer with a mind more akin to the Greta Thunberg’s of this world. I’m so grateful for these ones, and so keep asking myself: why are we so often sat waiting for permission to break from what feels wrong to us? Embroiling ourselves in grossly identified traits devised without any sensitivity to the empirical aspects of our own personal story. Some days I truly feel geriatric – aged and weary, but full of good spirited nostalgia, more taken by the sentiment of decades long before my time. Others have me convinced I am leaning closer to 6 - more unqualified, persuaded by naivety and utopian hopes alone. But which is a better lens, who’s to say. One notion that pressed on me as the new year came in was to find and heed intuitive reason, beyond the branded experience. That is to say, reaching the place beneath labelling to instead favour and feel how my body responds to certain people and ideas. In virtue of this I have been penning more words in the voice of my experiential self, not as occupied with how and where they fit in the storyline, or what they might mean to me further down the track. But more a practice in percolation – allowing thoughts and emotions to appear, be acknowledged, and then liberated. I’m taking a rest from the Greece Stains posts for a bit, and navigating a slightly unforeseen break from the tedium of constant work at the moment. So thought rather than pass the time with my head locked in rewind I would get more up to date, posting what’s been on the mind ad rem. Happy 2020 to you, whoever you are. May it be a year of great feeling whether you’re old or new, and thank you for being the stalwarts to my never-ceasing cause in finding and sharing le mot juste, or the raison d'etre, or whatever it is I'm doing on here. On the mind: Picnic scouting. Crunch point career moves. A ‘not quite’ summer: secretly relishing the freshness. More breathing space, not so demanding. The difference between passivity & patience. Acknowledging my penchant for simplicity. It’s usefulness in times of transition and fullness. Pointless identities or imposed ideas of the self: wary of internet use and structuring the online performance (Jia Tolentino ‘trick mirror’ induced!) What is instinctual and what has become habitual. (If the habit was changed would the motive be revealed..) Single tasking. Sundown deck dinners – welcoming others. Earning none spending none: a limbo of peace, suspended between chapters. Discomfort is never not useful. Wind in the big plane tree at 7am. Ladybird on my sleeve. 12 avos in the back seat. Mattress topper heaven: guiltless napping. Early morning jubilation wave - long & easy ride. Me and 3 middle aged men in sun bonnets with Hart St to ourselves. (02/02/2020)
2 Comments
Leah
2/12/2020 06:43:14 pm
Eloquent as always, Rosie xx
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Josh
2/15/2020 04:51:07 pm
Refreshing writing style. Also loved the paragraph on following intuition and feeling.
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