Hungover and happy

Thanks to the lovely Stu for this link, some gentle political satire to warm your Monday morning. Stu is a deadset legend, the only person I ever know who stopped playing guitar because he was getting so experimental that he realised he would eventually end up trying to play a guitar with no strings. Very very process focused, to play until strings break and then try to adapt playing techniques to adapt to less and less strings. As someone who once used a plastic picnic cup to roll out ink for printmaking after loosing her roller, I thouroughly approve of this approach to music making! People are so cool when they are fascinated with things and adaptive and exploratory, don't you think? I think its the coolest.

So, anyway, here I am on Sunday, with a late starter of a hangover which I have just combated with a vegie burger with absolutely everything on it (yes beetroot, yes egg, yes pineapple, yes sweet chillie sauce), am starting to feel perkier. Had a moment of being really glad to be a woman in this time and place this afternon. It was as I sat down to the 'knit in' up here in the mountans - imagine 100 women and kids in a ballroom of a grand hotel, drinking tea and knitting blanket squares and jumpers for kids in East Timor. I sat there thinking 'Golly this is cool' as I noted my trashy bright red nail polished fingers reminding me of last night - a party in the city and dress ups and silly party conversations which reminds me of all silly nights ever with stupid conversations and too much wine, and ridiculous flirting, and general trashiness. And I thought about what the rest of the day holds for me - writing a conference paper for a conference that I've had an abstract accepted for, thinking theory, thinking ideas. How lucky I thought, to have silliness and seriousness in my life - to have freedom to be brash and single and independant, and also the opportunity to enjoy the company of other women and enjoy passtimes that my grandmother and maybe her grandmother did. To be able to enjoy dress ups and also care about whether someone else has enough to wear.

Imagine this magic of sitting down to a circle of women - all ages, mostly strangers - and within minutes talking intimately about important stuff, as our fingers click away, turning long loose threads into a woven fabric, into something useful. These strong, well spoken, resillient, humorous women who step into the role of aunty and grandmother, knitting tutor, guides to stages of life we haven't yet lived, amused and affectionate elders. I love the way women do this, talk, support each other, pull together for common causes, do whimsical things that have heart in them.

And after that I went to the food co-op to buy vegies for the first time since last weekend's mountain party, and saw many of the people from the party who I have known by sight for the last year but until last week never met. It was like stepping through the looking glass - now we have names and a context and have been introduced the ice has melted, we are suddenly no longer in parallel universes but together in the same story. We greetede ach other by name, we talked about photos, we joked abour outfits. I was offered chocolate shards from the sneaky plate kept behind the cuonter. I feel like I belong here. Little by little, each week, it's like I belong here more.

But of course that makes it tricky when the other people I care about are spread across the wide wide world. Note me this morning wanting to stay in Bondi and market shop and drink coffee with Aunty B, but meanwhile needing to come back here for the plans I'd made to meet a girlfriend at the knitting thing. I am often thinking about people who I care about in Adelaide, Brisbane, the inner west, London, New York, Leura. The days whizz by don't they? Wouldn't it be nice to spend more of them hanging out and chatting?

Irrespective, feeling nicely tired and happy and re-nutrientized (if that's not a word yet someone will make it one soon) by my hamburger. On my way to kniting my first ever jumper. All very exciting.