I pulled book after book from a giant Saver’s bag and stacked them in three cardboard boxes out the front of my house. I’m decluttering, so I’ve been sharing the books I don’t need any more with the neighbourhood. It’s always interesting to see what people take (craft and kids’ books and blockbuster novels and niche psych-related books) and what they don’t … Helen Garner and Joan Didion!
I decided to walk one street up again. I like the hill start and I didn’t get enough time to really look at the street on Monday’s walk.
I think I told you that the houses here were a mix of fancy-new and humble-old? Today as I walked past one of the humble-old, the garage door was up. They had two very, very fancy-schmancy cars parked in there among the usual garage rubble … and another on the front lawn. I am guessing they might erase their humble house and put a fancy one in its place someday. That’s the way it goes around here.
I passed a house with a bright blue garden hose. And then another. And then a girl walking a dog on a bright blue lead. There’s something about a blue-sky morning that sets off the blue in the neighbourhood too. Even the blue bins look especially smart today.
Further along the road I passed a house with its curtains open. A bed was pressed up against the window with a yellow chenille bedspread neatly pulled up over it. I noticed a pretty white bicycle leaning against a pillar in the driveway and determined that these were my kind of people.
I wandered past the post box on the corner and made a note to buy some stamps so I could send some letters on my next walk. My mum and my Nan are top of the snail mail list. They’ve helped me so much during these hard days. And also, they are great.
I passed a house with a very impressive rosemary hedge in the front garden. I thought about our lemon discussion (I didn’t ever take a lemon!) and wondered if picking a sprig of rosemary was okay … or bad manners.
I passed a house with two brown cane chairs on the front verandah. They were facing each other on opposing sides of the front door, clearly deep in the sort of complicated discussion that these times engender.
During the first lockdown I did some really long walks most days. Between seven and ten km each day. But second lockdown meant that my dawdling pace wouldn't allow for that as we are only allowed out for one hour a day. From this week we are allowed out for 2 hours each day. I have a zero desire to do the longer walks again, though. The shorter wander is where my heart lies, at the moment.
When I reached the park it was alive with twinkling grass and men with edge cutters and chainsaws and people with pups. I walked a short way along the grass and then spotted the house that I had guessed was about to be demolished sporting fences and demolition signage.
I walked towards it to take what might be my last look at it. An older man rode past and circled back. We both stood on the road looking at the house.
I was wearing my yellow coat, so he knew that he could talk to me about noticing things.
“You could do something with that house,” he said, staring at said house.
“I love that house,” I said, “and the garden! They just rip out the gardens!”
He said, “I raid what I can when I see it.”
I said “good idea. The back gates are un-locked.”
Then we talked about the agapanthus and the azaleas and the camellias … and said our goodbyes.
“Sad,” he said as he rode away.
And it is sad. I DO love that house. It towers like a flat-topped boat on its block, looking across the park as if out to sea. I’m sad that by the weekend it will be gone.
But is it sad for the people who sold it? And is it sad for the people who are supporting themselves with the construction of a new house? And is it sad for the people who are going to live in the new house, right across the road from the park? I suppose it isn’t sad for them at all.
I walked on and spotted someone in the window of a house further along the street. I didn’t want to invade their privacy, so I quickly glanced away. What I can tell you is that it may have been a woman, or a man, or a non-binary person or a dog in a shirt. I am not sure which.
I headed up the hill, now just a few minutes from home. I spotted a magpie with a worm dangling from its beak.
“Hello!” I said.
The magpie turned on his dinosaur feet and waddled away crossly.
On the way home I thought about that waddle and about descriptive writing and metaphors and how the best of it is original and true and surprising.
“… a mountain stream, so shallow and so swift that it plaited itself into strands as it ran …” – Virginia Woolf in The Journey Out.
“She stirred her tea round and round; the bubbles which swam and clustered in the cup seemed to her like the union of their minds.” - Virginia Woolf in The Journey Out.
“Kezia liked to stand so before the window. She liked the feeling of the cold shining glass against her hot palms, and she liked to watch the funny white tops that came on her fingers when she pressed them hard against the pane.” – Katherine Mansfield in Prelude.
“She sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped slowly down, she caught it with a neat little whisk of her tongue and ate it before any of them had seen.” - Katherine Mansfield also from Prelude.
The details and the thinking and the noticing really matter.
PS: I made you another cheering playlist!
Maybe Helen and Joan are so popular that everyone has already them?
It's the little things, the attention to the tiny, inconsequential details that make life worth living. Oh those big things they can be great too, but for me it's always the tiny, daily, oft over looked that bring my joy.
And that house, gosh I'd live in it, looks better than my place and I love the idea of looking out to the tree tops and all those windows, gosh I love big windows.
Cheers Kate
This is so beautiful Pip. I love your observational writing. And how can people not take Helen Garner and Joan Didion?! They're the ones I'd snap up first!