volume one hundred and sixty-four
goodwood road
📍Written from a hotel room, then a hotel lobby, while staring at the rain and people outside in Naarm (Melbourne).
It’d been a while since I had honoured that window in my calendar. Open space. Colour-coded a soft pink to tell me to take it easy. Always on the same day. Play. Artist Date. Nature. Adventure. Whatever I liked to call it — however I’d liked to spend it — had shrunk. I could never face removing it completely. That would be too defeating and like all hope was lost. But rushed? Squashed? Multi-tasked? Was that really better than not at all?
Surely.
But I dare not complain. I am not a victim. Nor is this anyone’s doing but my own. I am simply being given the lesson until I learn the lesson.
And I am getting a little closer to it completely resonating every time I am given it: do less.
I got off the bus a stop earlier than the map told me. I had been on this route often enough to know that the strip was filled with places to eat and fairy lights to look up at. A stroll to find what caught my nostrils or eyes first was the most planning I had done. Oh boy did that spontaneity feel good!
A building I had assumed was a cafe for its house-turned-eatery presence, large outdoor area and French-style tables and chairs outside told me differently as I approached on foot. The whizzing by on the bus had failed to show me this was a Thai restaurant. One of my favourites. Also one of the easiest to accommodate my growing list of foods that I can eat but will regret it if I do. Some will call it food intolerance. Others will call it allergies. I agree when I am cooking for myself. As a recovering people pleaser I might not tell you everything I cannot eat just to make life easier for you when you offer to cook for me. I am getting better at that. Until I perfect it, I might just hold resentment later in the night when writhing in the fetal position unable to do anything else.
“Will you be gone by 7pm?” the young person working there asked me. She looked fifteen but I know I am getting older and she was actually, probably, very much so twenty-one.
“Oh yes! I have a movie to get to!”
She walked me through the almost empty restaurant. One other table seemed to be finishing up. I knew the place would be full soon given her question. I arrived at the right time. I had stopped believing in luck, so I said thank you for the table and admired the view out the window I was sat next to. I watched couples and families flow into the room.
Did they know what day it was? Did they have special plans for it? Were they staring at me for eating alone? Did I care? Do I make things like this up because of ego?
I gobbled down my peanut, spicy, tofu-filled deliciousness — and every single grain of rice — and asked for the bill. I paid cash which these days means someone needs to open a random bag or go out the back to wherever they go to get change.
I made it across the street through dusk lingering, just in time to pick up my ticket as I passed the band setting up for the Rolling Stones tribute. The night I almost had. Sliding doors. The midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was sold out. I had thought about going. But it was midnight. Sold out meant that it was decided for me that I would not be going. The phone stopped ringing — people asking to squeeze into the sold-out screening — for just enough time for the wonderful volunteer to hand me my ticket and let me know the organ had just begun.
I rushed and spilled my buttery-smelling popcorn over the building's original candy bar counter and historical tiles. The volunteer insisted it was her fault for not putting the lid on. I insisted it was mine for owning elbows. She asked me not to clean it up. I did anyway.
I was not too late.
I entered the red-carpeted space to see more empty seats facing a back-turned musical extraordinaire being swallowed by a three-walled Wurlitzer theatre organ. More scattered couples and families. Still lots of empty seats. Even more than at dinner. But these people chose how to spend Friday The 13th more in line with the celebration that I had chosen for myself.
The organ sunk into the trap door and to beneath the stage and I sunk into my chair. All nine of us applauded.
Then everything went quiet except the sound of hands in cardboard boxes grabbing fists full of popcorn.
My popcorn was gone before the trailers and announcements using footage from when the theatre opened — smearing an immersed smile across my face — had even finished. That is my usual routine. Popcorn for dinner is not a rare occurrence for me. Feeding my inner child. And my belly.
I knew the lights would dim soon so I read the label of my delicious, caramelly, bubbly drink for the third time to make sure it was indeed alcohol-free. I wondered if it was enough to keep my lips from cracking with the inhalation of the popcorn? But not too much I would need the bathroom and miss anything?
Empty theatres are the best.
Old theatres are the best.
Women are the best.
Three more years than I have been on this earth have passed since the world last met them. But there they were, in all their hilarious, weird, dramatic, powerful glory.
To age as a woman is magically powerful. I am so excited to be one of them. Aging is a privilege. Aging tends to make women shine even more. It might be because they’re stripped of all the fucks to give they carry around for the approval of men for so many years. I know I am in my thirties because I can laugh at how many fucks I have let go of. And I can stare the ones remaining in the eye and tell them “Just you fucking wait! Enjoy it while it lasts!”
Maybe it’s none of that. Women might shine just because they’re perfect.
Catherine and Winona forever.
Before I pulled on my jumper and layered up to step out into the crisp breeze and hear a Mick Jagger impersonator’s voice drift on the spring wind, I stayed, as always, to see if there was bonus content after the credits.
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me what was the last date you took yourself on?
here are three things i struggled with this week:
💔 Marcellus Williams should be alive.
⚖️ Balancing fighting for myself always, fighting for others when I can and should, but not picking fights.
🥑 Slippery avocado seeds and quick dogs.
here are three blessings from this week:
🍦 My favourite time of year, other than summer, is right before it. When we get caught having to carry our jackets in one hand and an ice-cream in the other.
🎶 Song lyrics when you’re on shuffle that make you start the song over so you can really listen.
✨ My health, my life, my freedom.
here are three goals for the coming week:
😌 Continue to let go.
🎤 Do my first-ever Melbourne stage time. I have a few shows lined up while I am here and I am very excited!
💌 Stay grateful and do not take what I have for granted.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you and I appreciate you reading my letters because I really enjoy writing them to you.
All your reminders—do less, stay grateful, don’t take life for granted—are exactly what I needed this morning, as I listened to your love letter. (Along with Greta, the 16 YO chihuahua I’m oetsitting). 💜💜💜