A simple question (and a moustache).

In a job and galaxy far far way (one where I shape eyebrows, squeeze pimples and wax people's nether parts) she asked, “So do your eye brows actually grow?”

I continued to snip and work on hers. “You mean long?”

“Well it’s just that you’re trimming them and I wondered ...”

“No they only grow to a certain length,” I said, “or I’d be able to style them like your hair, like a fringe cut.  They’re like your leg hairs,” I said. “You can’t grow them out and style them like you can do to a poodle. Your hairs just grow to a certain length and fall out.”

“I can’t believe I just asked that.”

I love how the child-like mind still exists somewhere in there—in amongst the chaos and adult responsibilities and dramas we craft. It’s reassuring that the questions we used to ask Dad from the back of the car seat on long drives are still there, intact. 

I remember being seven and I’d grown sick of the seventies heavy-cut fringe my mother sculpted. I told her I didn’t want a fringe any more.  The girls at school didn’t have them. We needed to cut it off.

“We can grow it out,” she offered.

“Why can’t we just cut it off?” I asked.

The logic was there.  It was simple. I couldn’t see why she wanted to do things the hard way.

There are these beautiful moments of innocence still that show themselves in moments of need, the more mundane moments of being ‘adult’. When responsibility is about to take a stranglehold on your creativity, on your faith in something more, someone asks a question that makes you think of people in lycra at a dance party, people with pink pouffy leg hair shorn poodle-style into those nasty leg warmer things. Or people in  a cafe reading Kafka with intensity, eyebrows curled at the ends like old fashioned moustaches.

When life becomes magical and hilarious from a simple question in a strange room—a question that makes one woman blush and both laugh hysterically—you know the world just became a whole lot more OK again.

(Image: Uprisings by Kozyndan)

A way of working things out

Relationships have a way of working themselves out don’t they?

In the early days you find your own language, your way of being. You spend little spats of time together flirting with the idea of something more, not knowing what will happen. And then you fall into a groove.

This posting on Jemima feels like we’re getting to know each other again.  I’m nervous.  I’m not sure what to make of us these days.

I didn’t expect to feel the need to hide behind the second person but this post, that is the official one below, is just that: me peeking out cautiously from under a blanket.  But then it’s early days in this renewed relationship.

Perhaps we’ll converse about life in poetic prose for a while as we get cosy with each other. And you can play the cocky observer at the next table saying, “Those two lovebirds over there, they’re on a date. It’s obvious—look at how awkward they are”.

But we’ll work it out. We’ll find our language, fanciful prose or otherwise and we’ll grow to be …

Maybe we’ll grow to be some funny odd unit that speaks ...  Perhaps we’ll grow to simply speak our mind, whatever the format. Whatever the case I hope we grow to be endearing.

*

There is an itch that comes. Then goes. And comes again closer to your birthday.

Your notice the second hand on the biological clock.

You meet friends for drinks at the pub and your pupils dilate when you play aeroplanes with a kid called Kingston.

You drink pints and talk about the same things as usual but there is a child on your friend’s breast and he’s cute and sweet and smiles. And you were present for the nine months before and these nine months after and since everything feels even you figure what if …

What if …

And the child cries. And after conversation of music and life and dinner and beverages you unlock your bike from the fence by the pub.  Brush away the rain from the bike seat.  A changeable Melbourne day.

And you cycle home

and you figure things are fine either way. If or not.

Either way. They’re fine.

Teaching oneself to jog: literal story, an analogy, to take as you will.

‘I’ve been teaching myself how to jog,’ I told a friend today ...

Nearing your next birthday it is possible that you might realise you’ve gathered a million excuses as to why you’re not physically strong, a mountain of reasons not to do a great many things. You realise you have become, and are a little too comfortable in being, a certain kind of person who is defined by a certain number of years in which a certain number of habits have managed to take a firm grip on your neck, a grip which makes most everything feel uncertain.

You’re stationary.

You notice that there are those on the periphery of your world that hang on by small threads. Sometimes it’s you clutching on tight, sometimes them.

Neither of you are game to shake off the grip.

You realise that over however many or few decades old you are that the faces have changed but the dramatic overtures are the same.

You become aware that you are wearing different clothes, that you have more freckles, yet your heart still beats with that frightened tone you thought you muted.

In many moments you have said ‘next time’.

On many days you have said ‘tomorrow’

But today you wake up on a day that’s somewhat close to your birthday and you decide to teach yourself how to jog.


(Image: Chris Scarborough)

Jemima is not my name: a new beginning

Jemima was my rag doll. From the age of two till six she was pressed under my arm or held in the nook of my elbow. Her hair was a mass of long plaited wool. She was an old-fashioned lass dressed in the usual rag doll attire; a floral flock with petticoat and pantaloons. As I became aware of my girlie parts around the age of six, not wanting her to feel left out, I drew them in on her torso in pen. After four years of being wedged under my arm day and night, a loyal security blanket, she finally went bald.

Jemima is not my name, but she was my first lesson in loyalty and my first experience in heart ache.

She met her fate in an aluminium dust bin with a dented lid when my mother grew sick of her munted face and faint stench. At the time there were no plastic wheelie bins. And I know Jemima would have been happier for being buried in an old fashioned sort of bin.

*

I now plan on being far more loyal to this little place, this blog, called, or not called, Jemima.

Jemima is not my name so I’ll walk the middle road in this here place—a little conversation and some snippets of work might do the trick. I hope it, the conversation, and they, the snippets, fill the quieter moments, yours and mine.