This autumn is strange. It's freezing and then there are bursts of warm sunshine. I've been resting outside on the deck, lying on the warm planks, trying to cook this stupid virus out of me (you know I'm not a doctor, right? This is not medical advice, it's just something I'm doing that can't hurt...) So I have been revelling in the warm rays when they're around. But then other days I'm bundled up with scarfs and wearing my hoodie!
So watching leaves change colour but pretending summer hasn't quite left when I can....
The grey clouds have rolled in but carrying little rain - so the sun paints the clouds a myriad of colours, as if replicating the leaves....
The sun is setting much earlier so my afternoon dog walk is often greeted with a firey blaze when I turn the corner...
When the kids were little, we would trek up to the Blue Mountains for an autumn weekend, to cozy by the fire and tramp about the gardens with red and orange leaves. I saw this quote and felt it's truth - I associate little with the season but much with the explosion of colour in the leaves and the crisp chill...
"“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.”
Long time readers will know that I adore VIVID. It lights up the city ad my heart. Alas, so far this COVID hang over has stopped me tearing about town.
Fortunately, I had tickets for Dark Spectrum so we went in just for that, home in just over an hour.
I really enjoyed it, andjust kept imagining the faulous party you could have, moving from room to room....
Basically, they've opened up some old tunnels and filled them with light instalations, and themed with music.
While I was still not travelling on all cylinders, I was well enough to enjoy it (but exhausted by the time I got home).
I will take some snaps on the way to the Opera House tonight, and that my be as much as I get this year. Though I am really keen to get to the drones at some point.
While staying on Cockatoo Island with my book group, we made a day trip escape for lunch. Enjoying the luxury of a water taxi, we made our way through the sensational harbour to Watsons Bay. Sipping champagne, of course!
It was the perfect setting looking at the birds on the beach and the tiny waves lapping the shoreline.
It felt like we were far away from our homes on some foreign island, when really we were all in our home town, and not that far from our homes!
Which makes me wonder, how much of a holiday is in our head? Our ability to shut off from our real life demands? Do you actually need a new locatioin or will a walk around the neighbourhood or lying in the backyard in the sunshine do the same thing? Are we just more enthusiastic and happy on holiday because we've decided that's what happens? We've put aside time so have no guilt or pressures to do something useful or productive with it? Maybe that's the key, giving ourselves time to fritter away?
We were only gone for a few hours - maybe just over three but it felt like a total break from reality and the familiar.
My taste in music is very different to my husband's, but I do sometimes agree to join him to see performances that I suspect 'will not be my thing' as a bit of a stretch...because you never know, and it's nice to do things together... So it was I agreed to go with him to see Cat Power sing the 1966 Albert Hall Dylan concert. I'd initially said no, and that he should go with someone else, but then he sort of talked me into it.
Then he cancelled because it was State Of Origin.
So I was stuck with tickets to a show I didn't really want to go to. At the Opera House. Now normally I'd think 'I'll just have a lovely sunset negroni' but as VIVID is on and it will be packed, and I'm off booze with this COVID thing, and I have Jaguar Jonze the next night, I'm not entirely sure why I'm going...
So I asked a friend if her husband would want to come as he's a big Dylan fan. She sort of ignored that so I figured maybe she wasn't comfortable with the idea. Then I asked a friend if her friend who I knew from song club would think it was weird if I asked him to come? She said no so I sent him an email. And he said yes. He's a muso and he loves the Beatles so I figured Dylan wasn't too far out of his repetoire. He told me that he'd had tickets last year to a female singer performing Dylan but COVID had cancelled the concert.
Now I could have asked one of my friends but they really just would have been coming along to keep me company, and without the preshow drink, there's little fun in that.
Many years ago, we were going to see Neil Gaiman do a story reading with a string quartet at the Opera House. A friend got sick so we went to the box office line to try and sell her single ticket. The only person wanting one ticket was an American. He had no cash on him (showed us his wallet when he realised he couldn't pay us because he only had a card). Realising the ticket would go to waste, I said "It's your lucky day. You can have it for free." As we walked to the concert hall, he explained he was out here with his family but had wanted to see something in the Opera House, and was a huge Gaiman fan but everyone one else was tired from the zoo.
As we start walking down the front, he starts looking around in wonder. Then he asks if this is a joke. I say "No, we're in the front row". He exclaims "OMG. I don't believe this!" and offering to buy us drinks at interval (there was no interval). While we're waiting for it to start, I uncover that he's a regualr at Comicon and dresses up (the full bit, which his family ALSO is not interested in...so the picture was becoming clearer). I said to my friend "We could not have given it to a better person". This guy was so into it, and his enjoyment and excitement was infectious. Weirdly I can remember very little from that night EXCEPT giving the ticket away and the walking to our seats and how excited this guy was.
When the Thermomix craze was on, I loved hearing people rave about them, even though I didn't want one for myself (and hate cooking). I just loved how enthusastic, almost evangelical they'd get. There was something infectious in it. I felt the same at the EB games expos, it was how I could last 12 hours when I have no interest in gaming myself...There is something really special about unbridled enthusiasm and it's really rare the older we get. I said recently to someone that I think I migh be an energy vampire (but in a non toxic way) and I think this is part of it. I want some of that enthusiasm, even if I'm just 'visiting' from another place.
And thus, I would rather give tickets to someone I don't know but who will really love it, than someone I do know who is just turning up for the ride....
Hilariously when I told my husband who I'd given the ticket to, after the initial "Who?" because he had no recollection of someone with that name, he then said "Oh, he'll really love it. He's a muso, isn't he?". My husband and I are clearly on the same page on this.
So that's what's on my calendar next week...and what say you? Who would you give a ticket away to? A friend or someone who will appreciate the experience?
At Easter, I got up to do yoga every morning by the beach. To get there, I would walk through a little nature walk and see wallabies (to slow to capture on camera) and many birds. And the fading colours of sunrise.
It was a good reminder that it's the doing that matters, not necessarily what you do.
I would already be filled with happiness before we even started the class.
A reminder from the brilliant Phantom Tollbooth, the essense of happiness“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that."
