Comfort in Compost (Letter to a Friend #1)
Over the years I’ve followed a few blogs about books. Now I read just one, and that’s not because it’s the brainiest, most bookish or best-written of the bunch. (It isn’t.) I read it because it’s the most personal.
Post by post I’ve been drawn into another life – a life which is, on the surface, all too ordinary. And yet I’m hooked. Hooked on hearing about the author’s experiences; about her setbacks and strivings; about her surroundings as the seasons wheel and whirl.
It’s got me thinking about my own blog. Yes, this ramshackle affair. Maybe it’s time I made it less ‘literary’ and more revelatory. Maybe it’s time I wrote each post as I would a letter to a friend.
Hey there friend!
Mine too is an ordinary life. And yet it’s an amazing kind of ordinary because life is extraordinary, whenever and wherever it manifests itself.
It’s Show week here in Brisbane as winter struts its stuff for a little bit longer. The creek across the street is running on empty and the beds in the nearby community garden are ragged and raw. The swim school where I work is closed (thanks to the Show), so I’ve got a day without lessons. It feels like stolen time; time I’ll spend writing, playing the piano and shopping for food, some of which I’ll use to cook a family meal later on.
The past week has been full and multifaceted, like a good fruit salad. I spent twenty hours in the water, teaching kids how to swim and, in the case of the babies, coaching parents and carers. Gotta love them babies! (Mine are now in their teens.)
I’ve been a swimming teacher for a couple of months now, having chucked in my gruesome government job last year. I’m a changed man – in more ways than one. Amusingly (and a little alarmingly), my time in the water is turning my ‘hirsute’ into a birthday suit. That’s right: I’m losing my leg hair. (I don’t understand it and I’m not sure I want to!)
Too much information? Well, I warned you I’d be upping the intimacy ante! (The antemacy?)
Thursday was clear and warm, one of those ethereal winter days whose beauty seems to take the world’s breath away. I just HAD to be out in the sun – the urge was irresistible – so I took up our tub of food scraps and cycled to the community garden and its compost bins (all-comers welcome).
Dumping our doings, I strolled through the plots, musing on matters profound and mundane. My life feels pretty scrappy most of the time; little bits of this and that. And yet maybe I can take comfort in compost, where everything comes together to create something rich and rewarding.
Ramsey Lewis, jazz pianist extraordinaire, gave me the soundtrack to my week. His deftness, creativity and the downright catchiness of his music both inspired and disheartened me. I know I’ll never be good enough to wipe Ramsey’s bottom (to misquote Major Woolley from Goshawk Squadron), but listening to him having a ball at the keyboard makes me want to practise smarter and harder.
Them’s fighting words!
Finally, what would a week be without writing? I added a few thousand words to my latest Great Write Hope – a kid’s book called ‘How Joe Died (And Corey Got a Life)’ – wishing all the while I could narrate it a little more normally.
But then I read an article arguing that – surprise, surprise – kids don’t read like adults. Apparently Gen Zers do it ‘multimodally’, bouncing between various book formats (print, audio and electronic) and ranging across online story-telling platforms.
That’s great news because my book-to-be is a mess of ‘modes’. I’m trying to tell the story – that of identical twins who discover they’re different (in ways they didn’t think they were) – using a grab-bag of literary forms and formats: television scripts, online chats, traditional letters and a (protracted) police statement. (The long arm of the law?) It’s an outlandish attempt to maintain interest (mostly mine).
Will it work? And will I ever play the piano well enough to wipe Ramsey Lewis’s bottom?
I’ll let you know next week. Or maybe the week after that. Or the week after that…
timm in type 