The sun's just coming up over the neighbour's fence here, but the easter eggs are already found and the video player is surrounded by contented faces and slightly sore bellies.
I don't know why Easter makes me smile and worry and cry so much. I could spiritualise it and say the seaon is so imbuded with meaning that it works mysteries in my soul. But I find the same overwhelmed emotion at the most innocuous times. Maybe I'm just sentimental.
This morning Bill put these on the playlist:
O Happy Day (from Sister Act 2)
Hallelujah (Rufus Wainwright)
Monday Morning Church (Alan Jackson)
People Get Ready (Rod Stewart/ Jeff Beck)
I can't ever, in any context, listen to the kid from Sister Act 2 hit that high note without choking up and getting embarrassed and having to excuse myself so no-one sees me cry. Every time. I don't know if that's the message of hope, or if I just am so ga-ga impressed by musical talent, or if I identify with him and his fears and I want to know that I can overcome them as well, or maybe there's merely magic in it.
The lyrics in Hallelujah do it too. Maybe I'm just pleased with myself that I understand them, and I'm always relieved to find something I understand. But it's so raw.
Then Monday Morning Church. I don't know, but I love country music, and by now I'm feeeling so maudlin that anything makes me cry.
Then bloody stupid Rod Stewart starts singing People Get Ready, and he doesn't even nearly have me. Then when he laughs in the middle of singing "Prai(hay) se the Lord!" I want to throw a screwdriver through the stupid computer screen. Stupid man.
Now, if he stuck to "You're in my heart, you're in my soul", I'd listen to him forever. That's a hymn.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Nearly home
You see, I haven't been feeling very creative, or even at all interesting lately. But I've missed you. And then I remembered these photos I took the other week, while I was thinking of you. Thinking of my faceless friends who know a lot more about a side of me than my faced friends do, and a lot less also.
So this is my drive to work:
I wish you could see it when the sun is out, like I did on my way to work.
(I took this picture on the way home. I got out of the car and stood in the middle of the road, and no-one minded.)
In the distance, just before the ocean, is a steeple and a white dome that glows like an easter egg in the morning. That sight makes me want to jump out of the car and stop all the traffic and shout STOP! LOOK! ISN'T IT MAGNIFICENT?! It makes me want to run around naked, dragging paper streamers behind me, and dance around a fire in the daylight.
When did this scrappy scene of telephone wires, potholes and traffic hum become home for me? When did it replace the smell of gravel dust and deisel and the strange noisiness of miles and miles of wheat, the buzz of a westerly through fencing wire?
I felt small, on the farm, and a little afraid. I was a foreigner there: the only human in a world full of noises that were more at home than I was. And I'm foreign here too, but it's becoming more familiar. I'm enjoying the sense of knowing my way around this strange country. I feel like an experienced tourist.
This reminds me of home (or of my grandmother. I get the two confused.) One day I want a house like this, with a Norfolk Island pine in the front yard, and a big, dark verandah. I want crumbly walls and worn-down floorboards.
And I want a prickly green-grey plant like this:
I want to show off. And I want my tummy to be flatter when I do.
I want a gypsy skirt, with lots of colourful pockets. And in my pockets I want useful things, like:
I like to catch the sky pretending to be God.
Some days I'm more homesick than others.
So this is my drive to work:
I wish you could see it when the sun is out, like I did on my way to work.
(I took this picture on the way home. I got out of the car and stood in the middle of the road, and no-one minded.)
In the distance, just before the ocean, is a steeple and a white dome that glows like an easter egg in the morning. That sight makes me want to jump out of the car and stop all the traffic and shout STOP! LOOK! ISN'T IT MAGNIFICENT?! It makes me want to run around naked, dragging paper streamers behind me, and dance around a fire in the daylight.
When did this scrappy scene of telephone wires, potholes and traffic hum become home for me? When did it replace the smell of gravel dust and deisel and the strange noisiness of miles and miles of wheat, the buzz of a westerly through fencing wire?
I felt small, on the farm, and a little afraid. I was a foreigner there: the only human in a world full of noises that were more at home than I was. And I'm foreign here too, but it's becoming more familiar. I'm enjoying the sense of knowing my way around this strange country. I feel like an experienced tourist.
This reminds me of home (or of my grandmother. I get the two confused.) One day I want a house like this, with a Norfolk Island pine in the front yard, and a big, dark verandah. I want crumbly walls and worn-down floorboards.
And I want a prickly green-grey plant like this:
I want to show off. And I want my tummy to be flatter when I do.
I want a gypsy skirt, with lots of colourful pockets. And in my pockets I want useful things, like:
- scissors
- cotton
- lozengers
- a mud map
- tiger balm
- crayons
- bandaids
- a harmonica
- a whistle
- and lots of other things
I like to catch the sky pretending to be God.
Some days I'm more homesick than others.
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