I go to a nearby yoga class on a Sunday afternoon. It’s my first class in a long time and I desperately need it. My mind has been a whirl of change recently: steep learning curves and big decisions in a short period of time.
As I recline, the yoga teacher gently pushes down on my legs, then my feet. I think she could see that I was distracted, my mind still whirring. But skin-to-skin and my breath begins to deepen. It begins to push my diaphragm out, out, out, instead of the breath sitting high in my chest – caught, amongst it all.
Slowly, my exhale becomes longer, more forceful, more meaningful.
She removes her hands and walks on.
I’d started the day by the beach, watching my housemates swim the Coogee Island Challenge. It’s a 2.4 km (1.5 mile) loop out from the beach, around Wedding Cake Island, and back towards the shore. A friend and I watched, sand beneath our feet, as groups began to run into the water, then watched from the ocean pool to the south.
The water was cold to start, then perfectly refreshing. I took my hair down from its high bun and enjoyed the mermaid-like swirl of it around me as I floated, then dripping down my shoulders as I emerged.
‘There they are!’ we kept saying to each other but it was impossible to spot them. Too many people attempting such a feat of endurance.
There’s a construction zone I pass on my walk home. It’s for a new train station, tucked into the middle of Sydney’s business district and newly granted the name of Gadigal in the local Dharug tongue.
On each side of the footpath, there are sheets of scaffolding – black-painted slabs of wood covering metal poles. So far, as expected.
Except it’s not. The slabs of wood are covered in photos. Photos of dogs who’ve walked past the construction site. Some are being scratched and petted by the workers – high-vis arms reaching out. Others are simply existing. Standing on the pavement, looking up to the camera, a smile plastered across their canine faces.
Each photo is glossy and individually printed and attached to the wall, somewhat haphazardly, with clear cello tape. I assume the workers have taken the photos themselves and then ducked to the stationery shop around the corner to print them. I like to imagine that’s what has happened.
The whole scene is temporary and gloriously homemade, yet filled with such a profound sense of joy. The effort of taking the photos, printing them out, and attaching them for the city’s pedestrians to enjoy in amongst their daily rush.
Soon, the scaffolding will be removed and anonymous, impressively engineered infrastructure will be all that’s left.
But for now, there are photos of friendly dog faces on a temporary wall along a bustling street in the middle of the city. A little slice of magic.
I recently read a poem by Fanny Howe that begins:
I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter
The news feels so overwhelming at the moment. It’s hard for actions not to feel futile and somewhat meaningless in the face of so much destruction. But, as Howe writes, there’s so much to love in the minutiae of the everyday.
No matter where you are in the world, it’s likely that you’ll also be wanting the same things: to love and be loved, to have a safe home and a bed to rest your head upon every night, to enjoy food that’s satisfying for what it represents, not just for what it provides. Perhaps a swim in the ocean, a yoga class at the end of a big week, or a dog that’s walking by. That we should be so lucky to have these things to love and enjoy.
I go for a bushwalk with a dear friend around the headland at La Perouse. We get out of our cars and I barely take in the scenery for the first five minutes, so keen to catch him up on the chaos and joy and despair and hope that’s filled recent days and weeks and months.
But as we make our way through the towering gums, the pace at which I’m talking slows down. The pace at which we walk slows down. The more I allow myself to let the rugged landscape seep in.
As we walk we pause regularly to enjoy the views: the twisting tree limbs intertwining and sprawling in their natural, beautiful, wildly untamed way. The water views. The glimpses of the industrial port in the distance. The beaches lining the sides of the headland.
We talk about how far away we feel. Of how relatively close this is to the centre of the city. Of how much being in places like this makes us fall back in love with Sydney all over again.
We talk about the news – briefly, only a little – and I mention how silly it feels to be writing this – here, now – in the context of everything.
‘It’s important,’ he says. Gently, reassuringly.
I think again of the yoga teacher.
Of how fundamentally human her simple gesture was.
She could see that I was distracted, that my breath was shallow.
She saw it. She realised she could do something about it. She helped.
If only a little, just at that moment.
But it mattered.
The deep, gentle kindness of it mattered.
This is important.
Yesterday marked a whole year of living in this beloved home.
A year of terrace-lined streets. A year of local, family-run cafes. A year of a rooftop terrace enjoying wine with friends. A year of long dinners around our large dining table.
A whole year lived in my beloved attic room. A whole year of falling asleep to the sound of rain pattering against my roof. A year of waking up to sunrises pouring over the rooftops, over the hill in the distance and the slight dip down then up to mine.
I’ve been thinking a lot about homes and what makes them special. Of the importance of plants and art and textiles to bring them to life. How the way you fill a home reveals so much about the life you live and what you value.
I’ve thought about the friends’ homes I’ve lived visiting or staying in, either when house sitting or being a guest like I recently was in London. Of how each place was so distinctly a reflection of each of my friends. How at home this made me feel in their home.
It’s endlessly fascinating to me how we’re given an empty shell of a space and we make the most of it, work with what we have to make it our own.
One weekend, a friend and I drive down the motorway to join another friend in the Southern Highlands. He’s house-sitting a sprawling, country home with seemingly endless rooms off a long hallway and a high-ceiling living room that feels both expansive and cosy. We spend the weekend talking through the intricacies of our lives – sprawled on a sofa, in the car on the way to lunch, while having afternoon cocktails in the garden, enjoying a roast dinner as the sun begins to set, and on a cafe’s balcony while having brunch the next morning.
We talk a lot about luck. How lucky we are to live in beautiful spaces and to visit beautiful homes surrounded by gum trees and rolling hills and the open expanse of paddocks as far as the eye can see. How lucky we are to be safe in our homes.
I feel the headlong final rush to a new decade more than ever before.
What are the things I still have left to do, and want to do in my twenties?
Have my priorities shifted from when I wrote my list in the first few days of the year?
Does it matter?
Alice Vincent recently wrote about the importance of savouring. Savouring the little moments – little joys, little blessings, little charming details – in amongst what she calls the ‘Big Somethings’ of current affairs.
‘Sometimes life isn’t delicious,’ she writes. ‘Sometimes it’s really hard work to seek that [joy] out.’
As I write this, the evening sun is shimmering through the window and causing delicate shadows of gum leaves and ferns to dance upon the wall. The window panes frame the scene.
This is important, I think to myself. This is important, this is important, this is important.
It would be so easy – too easy, really – to not notice it. To fail to look up at that particular moment. Or for the earlier sun shower to have lingered a little longer and for the clouds to have dampened the shadow.
By the time I finish writing this, it’s almost disappeared – the sun dipping lower and lower at the end of the day.
As I take a photo, trying to capture the ephemerality within the computer of my phone, I suddenly remember a similar moment a year ago.
I’d just moved in and, toe recently broken and new housemates interstate, I hadn’t yet built my bed. I spent my first night on the incredibly comfortable sofa in the living room and woke to gentle streams of light sifting through the windows.
I lay there, foot resting, and took a photo of the morning shadows drifting through the glass door at the other side of the room.
Now, here, a whole year has passed.
This joy, this luck, this life.
It’s still so easy to forget — how fleeting this all is.