Before I Was A Grownup
- Before I Was A Grownup, Dear Friends, Like a Horse and Carriage, Navel Gazing (and I Don't Mean Oranges)
Failure
Catching up with Nora recently, and she sent out an APB – please, tell me about your worst failure in life! She’s going through some pretty risky life changes at the mo, and was looking for people to reassure her. Most failures in life are survivable, except perhaps failure to strap your parachute on properly before jumping out of a high-altitude situation, or similar. Well, if I can make this usually perky lady a little more cheerful by discussing a few black times in my life, I sure will! So. My WORST ever failure . . . How does one know when one has failed? Is it when you feel…
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Stories from Oz – The Olympic Stadium I
“Next Stop: Homebush!” The train is so crowded we can barely breathe. My boyfriend at the time is short – all I can see is the tip of his baseball cap through the sea of people. It is hot and doesn’t smell great, but the ride is pretty short from Circular Quay down to the stadium at Homebush. We are on our way to our first Olympic event. So, it’s not actually an event. It’s a heat, the runup to the real thing. Since my significant other did not feel he needed to work, and frequently stole the rent money I had earned to buy beer, we…
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Stories of Oz – The Girl in Pink
I am telling a story of Australia. It’s out of sequence, later in the year, and anyway that’s how they come to me now – my thinking about that time isn’t linear, chronological. I was a waitress in a coffee bar/Italian restaurant on the Manly Beachfront for several months. Moby’s Play was always on the stereo. It was warm. I wrote this on a blanket on the beach on a day off. There is a girl who comes into the restaurant some evenings. Small, a few freckles, clear green eyes slightly crossed, with light blond hair and a ready smile or familiar squeeze on the arm, even for me,…
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My Year in Oz Begins
By all rights, I should have gone straight to bed. 55 hours of travel with only patchy bits of sleep does not make for a particularly coherent human being. I just couldn’t, couldn’t close my eyes on that hot sunny day (after leaving a brisk snowy February Indiana), so I dressed in a sarong and tank top (my uniform for that year, and many subsequent). Ben decided to take me downtown to Sydney and show me THE most stunning man-made site I have ever laid eyes on. We strolled down to the bus stop, grabbing a sausage pie on the way (wow, I miss hot pies), and climbed on. The…
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Aaaah, Travel
Lyric for the day – in honor of The Mummy, and The Mummy Returns, which The Professor and I just watched in succession, because we are suckers for corny films: All the old paintings on the tomb They do the sand dance, don’cha know? If they move too quick (Oh-Way-Oh) They’re falling down like a domino And the bazaar man by the Nile He got the money on a bet For the crocodiles (Oh-Way-Oh) They snap their teeth on a cigarette Foreign types with their hookah pipes sing:Way-oh-way-oh-way-ooo-aaa-ooo Walk like an Egyptian. I step off the plane into the terminal, exhausted after 51 hours of travel. 60 hours ago I…