A Room Called Earth, Page 2

  Stop.

  She loved going to parties with me because her body had a lot more to say to the opposite sex than I did. Her big cheekbones, and white-blond hair, and large breasts made for very engaging conversation. Yet she often became fed up with the limitations of this. She wanted to be seen as more than a plaything. So she would try and beat the boys at drinking games I didn’t want to have anything to do with, and she would crack sex jokes that I didn’t understand.

  I lived poetry and she lived politics. When she lost her virginity, it was because she wanted to get it over with, and when I lost mine, it was because the stars were bright, and I was infatuated.

  One night she had a dream about sprinting against a group of other women in order to “win” the affections of a guy that she had set her sights upon. She awoke from the dream, arrived at brunch, ordered a soy latte and scrambled eggs on sourdough, and asked me what it meant. As her loyal soothsayer, I gently said that it seemed to reflect the ways in which she allowed the whims of men to dictate the parameters of her existence, and that she obviously saw herself as being in competition with other women. She looked at me, smiled, and said nothing. She enjoyed being seen, regardless of what other people saw. I admired that about her.

  She won’t be at the party tonight because she’s already married to a mortgage, two dogs, two cars, one baby, another on the way, a man without a job who golfs on Saturdays, and a large plasma-screen TV that stays on in the background when you go to spend time with her. And I’ve never been able to find a suitable pre-party replacement. Because while she was busy chasing surf-lifesaver boys, and sprinting against other girls, she won my heart, and she still has it.

  4.

  These days I prepare to go out on my own. Well, technically, it’s on my own. It never feels like it, though. Everything comes alive when I’m technically by myself.

  Earlier tonight, I started the festivities in the bathtub. I soaked in warm water with Epsom salts, and castor oil, and vitamin C, and diatomaceous earth, and bush flower essences, and bicarb soda, and peony rose petals from the garden. Peonies are the only roses that I have growing in the garden, because I have the greatest affinity with them and, I know, I know. Germaine Greer would be all like, “Can women please start comparing themselves to something other than roses?” and I’d be all like, “Whatever, Germaine.” Peonies are my homegirls.

  I’ve got fluffy pink angel cheeks, voluminous fairy’s petticoats, wholesome-looking etched salmons, electric yellow Claire de lunes, sumptuous coral charms, fuchsia-colored first arrivals, and wedding-gown-white mother’s choices all moving in circles around one another, and they’ve gone absolutely wild. Their multiple layers delicately curl into themselves and flop outward with such abandon. I’ve hung a hammock next to where they’re all planted so that I can emulate their state when I feel inspired to. Which is, like, every day.

  I’ve also added a few drops of bergamot, sandalwood, and geranium essential oils to the bath because, together, they fill the space with a fragrance that smells like the chambers of ancient Egypt. Or at least what I imagine the chambers of ancient Egypt to smell like. It’s how I’d hope for them to smell.

  If there were one place I would like to travel to in three- and fourth-dimensional time and space it would be ancient Egypt. Which, of course, is problematic. And I don’t really fly in planes, because I can’t make sense of them. I can make sense of birds and insects, and the way that they fly, because people didn’t make birds or insects, or come up with the way that they fly. I don’t trust or understand the things that people make or come up with. I feel safer with nature. It’s just there, for everyone to see, touch, taste, smell, and hear. There’s a simplicity to it that puts me at ease.

  Every season is like a teacher gently guiding me, and Christmas in Australia brings the greatest teaching of all: summer. Right now, it’s Christmas Eve Eve, and it’s the best. I’ve never had a white Christmas and I wouldn’t want one. Every day since the beginning of December I’ve spent time lying on the glades outside, lapping up all of the negative ions, and feeling held and recharged. I’ve doused myself in DIY sunscreen—almond oil, coconut oil, zinc oxide, red raspberry seed, shea butter, and carrot seed—and life has made sense to my body, and my mind. The world and all of the strangeness of being here no longer seems baffling, or ridiculous. It seems obvious. I mean, of course I’m here, where else would I be?

  Although, lying on the grass for too long can sometimes be disorienting: it starts to seep in that I have no beginning and no end, and that everything is moving and vibrating and I might fall into the sky. Then I remember that the earth and the sky are my real mother and father and lover, and I feel calm again.

  5.

  A few years ago I created an altar in a far corner of the garden because my shaman told me to. I picked a lingam stone from her mesa and she was all like, “That means you need an altar in your garden.”

  The one I’ve created is surrounded by pale-pink, plastic-looking wax flowers, and bright-red tree waratah, and it’s filled with malachite and opals and diamonds, and special sticks and eucalyptus leaves, and different sizes of rosella and cockatoo feathers. There’s hematite crystal and jasper spread in a circle around the whole thing, which is designed to shield and energize it in a totally peaceful and non-violent way. Then, at the center, there’s a photo of my family, a watercolor drawing I did of Porkchop, and a signed poster of Heath Ledger. He’s my guardian angel.

  I once had a dream that he and I were walking around the garden together and he put his arm around me and said, “Here we are. Here we are. Here we are.” Out of respect I always call him Heath Ledger. Not Heath, or Ledger, or Mr. Ledger, or Heathcliff, or something overly familiar and weird like that. I mean, I didn’t know him personally, and I’m not a journalist who has to, like, shorthand things because it’s the house style, or whatever.

  So Heath Ledger’s nearly illegible signature is sprawled across the center of a large poster of him as Ned Kelly, and the tagline of the poster reads, “You Can Kill a Man, But Not a Legend.” It’s sealed behind glass, and held by a frame, which is made of stone, and when I sit before it at a certain time of day, and gaze into its dark eyes in a certain kind of light, I can see my reflection.

  I’m drawn to different parts of the altar depending upon my mood, and right now, I find the diamonds to be the most magnetizing part. I read somewhere that, once upon a time, the carbon found in diamonds was part of a living organism, which would mean that, technically, they’re, like, alive. I’ve always thought that sparkling was a lot like laughing. So today I spent some quality time with the diamonds, before going through the process of caring for my physical being.

  I like to get a sense of the weather before going out, and tonight, it’s muggy and dense. There’s a lot of pressure in the air. And smoke. Haziness has become a daily staple thanks to bushfires roaring outside the city. Large portions of the country are burning right now and grief is hanging in the air everywhere else. I bought a smoke mask and I haven’t used it. No one seems to be using them, even though there’s hardly any left in the shops. Australians don’t like to be seen taking anything too seriously, mate.

  Rain is definitely coming, though. We’ve had, like, three days of insistent sun, and smoky-blue skies, and relatively crisp mornings, which always leads to a storm.

  It’s the best weather for a party, though, because no matter how much everyone prepares, not one strand of hair is going to remain straightened, and not one armpit is going to be free of sweat. Thighs are going to stick to chairs, and shirts are going to cling to skin, and no one is going to be able to uphold their carefully constructed social facades, which is brilliant. May our collective fakery melt into the humidity and sink into the soil and evaporate into the air. Rest in peace, fakery. Not. Fakery will never rest. Not even in death.

  It’s also a full-blood-super-moon eclipse in Leo tonight. Once upon a time, lunar eclipses were se
en as bad omens. People were told not to go outside during them because when the earth covers the moonlight it creates a sense of darkness devouring everything. So. I made sure to exfoliate really well and I’m just, like, hoping for the best.

  I used a coffee-and-mint-leaf scrub to wake myself, and my skin, up. The power of being slathered in clumpy, crunchy mud cannot be underestimated. Well, the power of imagining one’s self to be slathered in clumpy, crunchy mud cannot be underestimated. I’m pretty sure that you can buy beauty mud for this exact purpose, or that I could have literally gone outside and scooped some up with my hands. It’s just that the coffee-and-mint-leaf one I found came in this really sleek recycled-glass bottle, and, through buying it, I also purchased the idea of being a conscientious consumer, which felt pleasant.

  Then I quickly showered in cold water to clear my auric field, and to get my metabolism and lymphatic systems going, and I left the windows of the bathroom open with the intention of inviting in an evening breeze. I ended up getting bitten by a mozzie on my thigh, shoulder, and pinkie finger. Now, I’m using every last ounce of discipline that I have in me not to scratch.

  6.

  About a week ago I put the Woolly Bush tree in the living room so that it could carry out its job as Resident Christmas Tree. My parents bought it the year that I was born, and it feels like a sibling. It’s taller than me now, too. It’s three meters high, and a native, and, technically, a shrub. So not exactly the most glamorous member of the Proteaceae family. However, it’s a bronze-glowing Woolly Bush, which means that it has red tips on the ends of each branch. I’ve pruned it in a conical shape, and wound gold fairy lights around it, and positioned it in front of the enormous window that looks out over the front path. It’s pretty regal. I keep the fairy lights going all of the time because I love to be able to see it gleaming at me whenever I walk down the path.

  Underneath, there’s a sea of gifts, which I’ve accumulated throughout the year. Porkchop has made a habit of exploring them, and falling asleep in between them, and clawing at their wrapping paper. Bits of red ribbon are now torn up and strewn all over the floor, and I’m not going to clean it up, because I enjoy living with a creature that has a relationship to things and that has made a conscious choice to tear up bits of ribbon and scatter them everywhere. It’s his contribution to our Christmas cheer, and I would be a fool to clear it away for no real reason whatsoever.

  At the top of the tree I’ve put an enormous, gold Magen David. I’m very into gold, and I’m very into stars, and I’m very into things that are of value to other people. I’ve also got a gold Chanukah menorah sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen, and, every night, I light the candles with the shamash before I cook. I treat the process of cooking and preparing and eating food as a sacred rite. My mum’s mum always did this, too. Nana made the greasiest toasted cheese sandwiches, and poured the sweetest cups of tea, and her blintzes—when lightly seared on the pan and served with blueberries—were as sweet as they were sour, and her fruitcakes were as tart as they were heavy.

  She was a full-bodied beauty and whenever we’d spend time together, we’d cook, eat, watch The Nanny, and play dress-ups with all of her clip-on earrings, and rings, and bracelets, and brooches, and watches, which were given to her by my grandfather and/or by an assortment of companions, admirers, and suitors, which she accumulated as steadily as she did accessories. Or she’d get me to paint her nails. Nana had a collection of pearly-colored polishes that were usually waiting for me on her bedside table along with cotton swabs and remover, in case I made a mistake as I took her hands into mine and decorated them.

  Some of the polishes were a bit peach, or a bit pink, or a bit white, or a bit cream, and they all suited her. Everything about her was like mother of pearl. Her olive skin was cool to the touch, like seawater, and the iridescent tones of the nail polishes always matched her jewelry and accentuated her brown eyes and golden hair.

  Her whole family was murdered during the Second World War. Well. My whole family was murdered during the Second World War. Sometimes I forget that, and I find myself thinking of them as her family, not mine. It’s strange to think that we’re all here because someone wasn’t killed at some point.

  A while ago I read somewhere that we’re like mountains and that our day-to-day awareness is the front of who we are, where the sun shines, and everything we’re afraid of is the back, in shadow, out of our awareness. Although, I have a strong feeling that my ancestors are at the back, and that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Not really.

  7.

  I’ll definitely paint my nails before leaving the house tonight, and I actually think that a pearly polish would go quite well with my outfit. I even have one called “Champagne Frost,” which I suspect Nana would approve of, because my heart swells when I think about it. That’s the best way to know anything, although no one ever tells you that. No one ever says, “Just use the expansive feeling in your chest to understand what’s true, and what you want, and where to go, and what really matters,” because they’re too busy forcing you to learn from books that they’re choosing, and pointing at whiteboards that they’re writing on, and encouraging you to ask questions from curriculums that they’ve set.

  Which is why I’m very proud to announce that all of the books in my possession are ones that I’ve chosen, and that have chosen me. They weren’t recommended to me by anyone. No schoolteacher or university lecturer told me to write essays on their “core themes,” and no bestseller list said that they were “ones to watch,” and no girlfriend in a book group told me it changed her life. I’ve been drawn to each one, and they’ve been drawn to me.

  Right now, Lisa Bellear’s Aboriginal Country is beside my bed. She was an activist, artist, photographer, poet, comedian, playwright, broadcaster, and Goernpil woman of the Noonuccal people of Minjerribah. There’s a street on the north side of Melbourne called Warrior Woman Lane, which is named after a line in one of her poems. It’s actually more like an alleyway than a laneway, although that doesn’t diminish its significance. Melbourne is filled with significant alleyways.

  So before I fall asleep each night, Lisa Bellear tells me about the history of this land and her people. I want to do everything that I can to honor them, and their history, because unlike New Zealand, America, and Canada, Australia has no treaty with its Indigenous population. They weren’t even legally recognized as citizens until 1967.

  I always feel intimidated when I cross paths with them. I don’t know how to build a bridge between who I am and who they are. Whenever I see an Aboriginal person I immediately feel out of place and ridiculous. It seems so absurd that I’m here. Surely I’m meant to be flouncing about somewhere tepid in the Northern Hemisphere, making daisy chains and milking cows.

  It’s confusing. I mean, if I don’t know how to relate to Australia’s Indigenous people, and I can’t really make sense of why I’m here with them, I don’t really know what being an Australian means. Like, if I can’t fathom the link between who I am, and who they are, and why we’re all here together, there must be something broken about the relationship that I have with who I am and where I’m from.

  Which would make sense, because Australia is a broken country. Unresolved guilt, and trauma, and indebtedness to the Crown seem to define the very little history that we have. Aboriginal people possess a much longer, and much more intimate, relationship with this land. We were their apocalypse. They had been living on this continent for more than 60,000 years, and all of a sudden, and as of a minute ago, proportionally, we turned them into the most incarcerated people on the planet, and only just recently did we deem it inappropriate to, like, hunt them at random.

  An American comedian once came here and did a tour and got into trouble for making jokes about how it was legal to hunt Indigenous Australians right up until the 1920s. I’ve always wondered if people were upset with him because he was joking about something so malevolent and fucked up, or because he was
bringing up a subject that we’re so deeply ashamed of. Maybe both.

  I really want to be Australian; I just don’t know how.

  A few months ago, I watched a show about Aboriginal land rights and one of the elders from a community in Queensland stood up and said that the land owns us. All of us. Not the other way around.

  So perhaps at the end of a stinking hot day, what makes me Australian is the fact that I took my first steps on its ground. My body is fueled by crops grown on its soil. My skin sweats in its humidity, and its waters hydrate and cleanse me. I wouldn’t last two minutes without its air. I sleep under its stars every night, and I rub its aloe vera on my mozzie bites, and I coat my hair in masks made from its oils.

  Because even if my hair cannot be tamed under any circumstances, the degree to which it’s nourished can be—and my tresses feel like fucking satin now.

  8.

  Now the most empowering and revolutionary aspect of my pre-Christmas-Eve-Eve party ritual has arrived: the mirror. Hello, friend. I stand here, naked, before you. Sweaty, oily, fleshy, and fresh, looking into my own eyes, and noticing that the right one appears to be slightly smaller than the left. There are patches of skin on my chest, and around my knees, which are still red from my overly zealous scrubbing efforts. Out, damn spot! Oops, I am the spot. I look like an almanac.

  The skin on my face is particularly dewy, because I’m ovulating. My forehead is shiny, and, from what I understand, foreheads aren’t supposed to be shiny. They’re supposed to stay in the dewy and/or matte arena, and, when they refuse to do so, all manner of products are meant to be harnessed and implemented so as to ensure that the horrors of an overly-shiny-forehead-situation are swiftly concealed and avoided, because an overly-shiny-forehead-situation exposes an unmanageable, sticky quality that is considered unbecoming in this day and age.