Didn't shower today. Wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday: heavy black oversized hoodie; baggy kneed black track pants and mauve sheepskin 'scuff' slippers. You may be pleased to know I haven't left the house. The weather's not conducive anyway - noisy cold morning rain clearing to gusty miserable.
It's the winter hols for me in inner suburban Melbourne. I'm reading/studying Bruce Dawe's poetry, some of which keeps popping back into the front of my mind from some previous youthful reading. I enjoyed it then and I'm enjoying it now, even though I'm inclined to over-analyse.
Does everything have to be metaphoric or can untethered dogs just roam around the 'sixties inner Melbourne streets? "No street but has its canine tributary/ - Confluent in lanes,/They swirl about in bright-eyed vortices,/Whirlpools of snap and sniff and pink-tongued grin." From Dogs in the Morning Light by Bruce Dawe. That took me back to mid-1960s Avondale Heights and packs of dogs chasing my bike and me with my feet on the handle-bars.
Reading Dawe is good for my brain in all sorts of ways. It's made me feel like writing. It's liberating reading about Dawe's meaning of life contemplation after a bad hair-cut and the discovery of a bald patch. "And I couldn't get home quick enough to hold up a/round shaving mirror/Over my head like a silver third eye which would reveal to me/What all the world knew.../Then it was - just then/- I came upon it, in retrospect; the place of baldness,/That solemn high country some get to earlier than others/And some not at all." From The Place on page 111 of Sometimes Gladness.
Perhaps reading poetry will stave off dementia, although it didn't work for mum who, when she could still hold a thought, loved dipping into her Les Murray anthology .
To take a break from Bruce and to get moving, at least around the house, I folded laundry. Three piles: mine, Al's and mum's. Mum's in an aged care facility with a laundry service but I do her laundry. If I was in a Hollywood movie I'd be sainted; St Fraudster. I'm referencing Vincent, in St Vincent, doing his wife's laundry. It's no big deal. Perhaps, like me, Vincent - Bill Murray, what an ugly yet attractive man - didn't want his wife's smalls getting mixed up in the communal wash.
All the while I was listening to Eddie Perfect's Songs From The Middle, loving the music and the lyrics. Was unable to discern most of the lyrics at Perfect's recent concert at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Made me get the digital version though. Perhaps it would be even more brilliant if I could hear the words. (It is and it isn't. Something about live music.)
Can't get through that album without crying. Actually sobbed today. They say women become more emotionally labile after 'the change'. But I've always been like this. Perhaps I have unresolved issues. Perhaps I just cry at something so beautifully, wistfully evocative.
I wiped my eyes, tweeted my regards to Eddie and despite feeling wrung out, resumed the ironing.
I'm a bit foisty and greasy, sans shower. A make-up wipe just doesn't cut it. I'm house-bound waiting on a plumber - who may not even turn up - to replace the hot water service that died a couple of nights ago. I'm pressing the hell out of Al's worn business shirt - one more trip left for that one before the op shop bag.
That was when my shuffled music on iTunes decided that I needed a bit of Idina Menzel. A reminder.
No day but today
Here's some music from Eddie Perfect.
Now back to Bruce.
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