Playground Love

New Farm Park. Camera settings: f1.8, 1/30, ISO 100.

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The Footy

State of Origin

Game 2 is tonight. If Game 1 is anything to go by, I’ll be able to keep track of who’s scoring when simply by listening to the exclamations of the neighbours. Happy exclamations, Maroons; rude exclamations, Blues.

Also, there’s this.

Update: Nasty stomach virus, oh noes!

Update: Maroons win! From the article:

“Queensland lock Dallas Johnson had been on a saline drip only hours before kick-off.”

Pros! Not at all like us!

Winter Solstice

We stand in queue, waiting for hot scones in the cool night air. Under the lights of the tent, the baker kneads the dough, pushing down with the heels of her palms, dropping her fingertips to pull the edge of the dough back to lift it, then pick it up to put it down again before pushing down with the heels of her palms, again. There are two small children standing in front of her station. They are shifting their weight from foot to foot, their hands holding their arms behind their backs, and they are watching her. She rolls the dough out, cuts rounds, and arranges them on a baking stone that she places in the cob oven behind her. The word goes out that it won’t be long now, only twenty minutes longer and then there will be scones, hot scones with thick cream and jam. So we continue to wait. There is a sprite leaping hither and thither, playing songs on his flute, and he has charmed a tiny girl who is beaming at him. And there is another girl, someone I know from a dance class and we are chatting about this and that and it is pleasant to wait where everyone is happy to wait. There is other music besides the sprite’s and there are other conversations besides mine and there is other laughter besides the tiny girl’s and all of it exists because of the farm and because of the solstice celebration that the farm is hosting.

A Father’s Day Post

Dear Dad,

Happy Father’s Day! I sent you a card but I’m pretty sure you’re not where the card is today so I’m turning to the interwebs because the interwebs is everywhere, sort of like God. I know it looks like I’m late acknowledging you by a day, but really I’m not. Australia is on the other side of the international date line from the US, so we’re a day ahead. The 22nd here is the 21st there. Also, Father’s Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September in Australia, so I’m not even late wishing you a happy father’s day here anyway. We can talk about my logic and my timeliness again in two months.

All excuses aside though,  I would like to highlight and recognise a good moment in parenting. Your parenting to be exact. Let’s go to the wayback machine and set it for my teenage years.

It is 1996 or maybe 1997, whatever year it is that you relent and let me “borrow” the old suits from your closet. The world should know that you have excellent taste. You used to own these beautiful three piece suits in lovely colours and polyester, custom tailored for you in late-seventies LA. Fitted jackets. Vests. Alarmingly flared bell bottoms. I was fifteen, I was struggling with my self-confidence, and I was pretty sure that if I was allowed to integrate your suits into my very boring wardrobe, then I would be awesome. I also had designs on Mom’s clothes from the early 80’s, but the fabrics in your closet were so much better.

Amazingly enough, I was allowed access to both y’all’s closets. So off to school I’d skip, wearing your old powder blue bell bottoms and one of Mom’s knitted acrylic vests over a tee. Or maybe I’d borrow your brown suit with a fitted shirt (also from your closet). Or maybe I’d pair skinny jeans with an oversized striped tee from my closet, and then your grey vest over the whole atrocity. And then there were the too-long, kelly green bell bottoms. I have no idea where those came from but my fifteen year old heart believed they were perfect.

Sometimes I look at the indie-hipster-emo kids and the way they dress now, and I wonder what they’ll think in ten years’ time about their sartorial shenanigans. I suppose that since there are others who are complicit, they won’t look out of place. But also, they wear their clothes with irony while I wore mine with enthusiasm. One of those emotions is less embarrassing than the other.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure there were days I left the house and your eyes hurt. In fact, you told me so, many times. Thanks for the straight talk, Dad, and thanks for driving me to school, dressed in those outfits. Also, thanks for not creating a body of photographic evidence with which to torment me now.

Love,

Kim

Meet Something I Want To Eat More Than Once A Week

This is okonomiyaki. I found it and ate it last Saturday at the West End Markets.

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Making Up For All That Extracurricular Time I Spent On The UIL Calculator Applications Team

photo by Sky

Aaaand, for our next trick, we jump rope. As a pyramid. I kid!

P.S. I googled “UIL Calculator Applications” and here is what I found. And although the internet provides many, many videos of extreme circus stunts, there are very few videos of extreme calculator use.

Who, us? We’re just chillin’ in this TREE.

We were just walking along, and tripped, and fell into these climbing harnesses.

Ta’ to Russ at Tree Climbers for helping us into and out of our awesome predicament. Good times.

Photo credits: photo of me: Justin. photo of Justin: me.

These Are Sacha’s Drums.

Sacha is the drummer in a band called Miguel. Miguel is a nine-piece big band led by the charismatic and charming Michael Rogers. Michael Rogers plays the trumpet.

That is really all you need to know to know that this is Justin’s new favourite band. They could be your new favourite band too, if you love jazz and you love trumpets.

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Emergency Exits

I receive an e.mail from someone named Daniel on Sunday. He wants me to know that four doors, reality evacuation points, appeared by the Brisbane River on Friday. They will disappear on Monday. He helpfully includes the specific locations of the exits, but I neglect to remember the specific locations before Justin and I walk out into the waning afternoon.

We look first for the doors underneath the northern end of the Story Bridge. We find an abandoned building and some old buoys. Justin takes photos. I watch three kids rollerblade by, holding hands. A guy on an orange fixie with orange Deep Vs and orange bartape and maybe even orange socks rides past us, going west. We walk east.

On the floating walkway, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary. There are people running and there are people walking. There are houses and not-houses and boats. The same three kids rollerblade by in the opposite direction, still holding hands.

I say: I don’t see any doors here. I’m sorry I didn’t look carefully at where they’re supposed to be.

Justin says: Maybe the art project was to get everybody out of the house, to go out and do what we’re doing, which is to look for something in particular but also just to look at everything. It’s a nice evening for a walk.

I say: It is a nice evening for a walk.

So we keep walking. We walk further than we’ve walked before, to Merthyr Park. We find some monkey bars and we swing for a while. The sun sets and the moon rises. The frogs start croaking, so loudly and noisily that we try to find them by listening hard. On the dock, there is a large seabird furling and unfurling its wings over and over, silhouetted in the moonlight.

We are hungry. We leave the park and start walking home. The roads are unfamiliar but we navigate with a shared feeling of where, developed and nurtured for the last seven months. Eventually the unfamiliar gives way to the familiar, and it is on a familiar road that we spot it: an unusual door, secured to the railing high above the river. The lights in the door catch and refract the lights of the city. We walk up to it, and Justin reaches for the handle.

He opens the door. He looks through it first, and then holds it open for me so I can look through it.

He shuts the door.

Next to the door, there is a man taking a photograph of the city at night. After the image appears on his LED screen, he steps back from his tripod and addresses us.

He says: Hey. I didn’t know that opened. That’s really great. I’ll have to use it in a photo.

Autumn

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