The Daily Blog experiment – perfect morning

To be honest, the morning can’t get much better.

It’s warm enough to do without socks.

I’m in comfy leggings, a favourite tshirt, and no bra.

It’s Sunday morning.

My grandkids are having a lazy morning gaming, or playing on iPads.

The house is quiet.

It’s pouring rain.

There’s the smell of Holy Smoke incense faintly from where I have it burning outside under the verandah.

My iPad is fully charged.

I have a cup of chai.

My hair is now long enough to pull back into a ponytail off the nape of my neck.

The light is soft, if a little gloomy.

I have just started a new book.

Perfect

A Wild Moment of Abandonment

I looked through my blog ‘newsfeed’ and saw this by Nin Andrews, from the Poetry Foundation. I think it’s the start of a review of a book on writer’s block.

‘Many years ago, my shy teenage son came home from high school and said he had almost spoken in class that day. “But the words got stuck right here,” he said gesturing at the base of his throat. “Maybe tomorrow, they will actually come out of my mouth.”’

The following memory spilled out:

I’m 17, in my final year of Australian high school(Aussie high school goes from Year 7-12, with graduates going straight into university, work, etc.), and I’m in English class. It’s the final English class for the whole term, and we get two weeks off before resuming for the third term, late July-end of October. We’re studying Chaim Potok’s THE CHOSEN, which I am very taken with. I’ve thought long and hard about this book.

I’m not normally a class contributor. I sit there, do the work, do the bare minimum to do well in assignments, and otherwise coast along, not engaging full intellect, and barely any interest. I don’t do class discussion. I certainly don’t debate. Our class teacher, Mr Pamment, ask if we have any questions about Danny’s relationship with his father.

“Why doesn’t Danny mention love in relation to his father?” I suddenly ask. Something breaks open inside me. I simply don’t care any more about how I am perceived, and that I maybe the teacher doesn’t have the answers. I’m suddenly through with considering anything else but my own wild intellect and curiosity. I feel reckless for the first time in my life. I lean back in my chair, stare the teacher in the eyes. “Neither Danny nor his father mention expecting love from the other,” I say. “Why?”

“I…I don’t know,” says Mr Pamment and turns the question back on me. “What do you think?”

“I think both of them are so far down the track that neither of them can imagine asking for that, or expecting it.”

No one in the class wants to go into that complexity. They want to stay with ‘Danny and the Rebbe love each other but can’t show it’. The version of love I have my in head doesn’t hold this dynamic. I want to give Chaim Potok more leeway than that.

I am easy in my chair, my legs flop. I am sticking to my ideas.

“Has anyone else any questions?” Mr Pamment asks. I’m too difficult to engage with. Across the room, one of the Cool Girls, who also happens to be one of the Smart Girls, eyes me up. There’s more to me than she suspected. She’s not sure she likes that.

I will have two weeks to sink back down into anonyminity. I do so. But I don’t forget that singing moment when I rose up, and became someone else for a moment. I don’t fully let her out until my first year of university. She gets a year’s airing, and then mouthfuls of air ever since.