The fluttering of our days

Monday 23 March

Everything flickers. Alertness. Confidence. Desire. There are times we feel really in possession of ourselves—we finally know what we want, we’re in flow, we’re in control. Then it fades. We find ourselves tired, self-conscious, or lacklustre. Then it brightens. It’s all in the fluttering of our days.

See also: Flitting | Wednesday 11 February

Tuesday 24 March

I’m trying to remember that the small adjustments add up, whereas the sweeping changes often get delayed.

Wednesday 25 March

If you want to make an apology, but you know you’d still be expecting an apology in return, are you really ready to make that apology?

Thursday 26 March

Inspired by Martha Stewart’s aspirational midnight omelette supper (guests arrive at 11pm and over 100 eggs are used for decadent, made-to-order omelettes), my friend tells me she has made a list of the elaborate things she’s hosted as a personal record of fun.

Friday 27 March

Sometimes we have an idea, but we don’t yet know the ‘best’ medium, so we don’t move forward with it. Yet the medium is often revealed by simply moving forward with an idea, and playing with the various possibilities until something fits.

Sunday 29 March

After seeing the joyously silly comedy show Classic Penguins by Garry Starr, I’m reading an interview where he talks about the notoriously rigorous training he did with the French clown master, Philippe Gaulier. Here, he learned that the funniest thing about you is often the thing you hide, or don’t want people to think. So he probed someone at clown school about what she thought about him, and she replied: “You think you can do everything.”

Fast-forward to 2018, that very insight became the title of his acclaimed debut solo show: Garry Starr Performs Everything.

Behind the shame or embarrassment we carry, can be something so glorious.

Monday 30 March

On the tram, I overheard two high-schoolers sharing their productivity tips. To get to school early to study, one walks there with a friend for accountability. The other keeps lists. The pair then agreed that some days it’s okay to allow for downtime, and there was something so refreshing about how they seemed to celebrate rest.

Tuesday 31 March

When we worry about something being a problem in the future, we are overlooking that if it turns out to be a problem, then our future self can try to solve it—just as our present self tries to do now.

Wednesday 1 April

I’ve had lovers who I make laugh, and I’ve had ones who make me laugh, and if I had to pick only one, I wonder which I prefer? To laugh, or to make the one you love laugh?

Thursday 2 April

Today I shared for the first time the process behind writing things from the day. It was also the first time in a long time that I’d put myself, my learning, my way of being out there. It was daunting, and also delightful. Now I see that the sharing is just as much a practice as the writing.

Friday 3 April

A wise thing I saw on Reddit: “Something I wish people understood is that someone not wanting to give up the benefits your love brings them doesn’t mean they love you.”

Saturday 4 April

Overheard: “Things aren’t hopeless, they’re just in a state of becoming.”

Monday 6 April

Before visiting a friend, I’m thinking about the gifts we can give that don’t perpetuate consumption, but make life more easeful or beautiful for the receiver. A garlic crusher. A potted plant. A cooked meal.

Wednesday 8 April

Overheard: “Letting go is not the same as forgetting.”

Thursday 9 April

Something I admire about my friend Mari is that she’ll often bring a word or a turn of phrase into her daily life to bring a quality into being. At the moment, she’s practicing slowing down by saying, “You go ahead, I’ve got time” to strangers in line at the supermarket.

Friday 10 April

Do I want to, or do I just want to want to?

Saturday 11 April

What you tell yourself needs to be done in six months, could just as easily be three years.

The resolution doesn’t have to be for this year, it can be for this whole decade.

The timeline is made up. Instead of lurching towards our goals, we can apply patience, go slower, take in what we’re learning, and make it sustainable and sustaining.

Sunday 12 April

I keep stumbling upon similar advice: Go with what you’ve got. Do what you can with what you have. Words we can hold like little reins back to the present moment.

Monday 13 April

A line from the film Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart: “My secret goal is to stop being so scared.”

Tuesday 14 April

It’s early morning in Beechworth, and everywhere I look, there’s something beautiful. The slightest crescent moon. The pink-purple hues. The tops of trees forming a giant frame. Turning back from my walk, I see something bright orange descending in the distance. It looks like a fireball, though likely a plane chasing the sunrise. Either way, for a moment I wonder, is anyone else outside on this quiet morning, gasping at the sky?

Wednesday 15 April

At the pub, the waiter and I are trying to pass each other but keep shuffling to the same side of the narrow corridor. Instead of the usual meek or muffled “sorry sorry” she says “Oh, we’re dancing,” with a generous laugh and makes the interaction so much more delightful.

Thursday 16 April

I’m doing an interview for a client, who says, “If you want to call in a different future, you have to go into a state of imagining what it could be. And that state of imagining has to be one optimism that it can be better, that there is a different way.”

Friday 17 April

I’m listening to a brilliant interview with the poet Gregory Orr with Krista Tippett and note down:

1. “I don’t have hope, but I do recommend courage.”

2. “We ordinary people, just in our daily lives, experience enormous amounts of disorder and confusion. It’s inside us. It’s in our past. It’s in the unknowable future [...] not to mention real issues of suffering and so on and so forth. Disorder is a part of our life, we all know that. We also know we need order. That some kind of pattern reassures us. The sun rising, the stars and the moon. The season. Our personal habits [...] we just navigate our lives with this interplay of disorder and order.”

3. “There is creative reading as well as creative writing … we need to look for the things that sustain us.” [Here, inspired by Emerson, Gregory talks about collecting words, stories, fragments and poetry can be used to create our own personal bible.]

Saturday 18 April

I ask my mother if she’s listening. “Of course,” she replies. “Silence is my thinking noise.”

Sunday 19 April

I’m on a morning run, trying to shake off some malaise, when I’m besieged by a stream of bubbles coming from a child in the backseat of a passing bike as if to interject: don’t be so glum, you’re alive, enjoy it.

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