Diagrams, curry sauce, kittens and coffee

Spent the afternoon discussing phone hook ups and questionnaire design and then had a nebulous discussion about ecosystem function versus biodiversity – which was a better measure of what and which made more sense to focus on - we ended up drawing a multicoloured scribbly systems drawing that we then realized looked a little like a little robot creature so I put some claw hands and legs on him and realized it was definitely time to go home. One of those days when after lunch you think “what?? No nap time?? This is inhumane!”. When your eyes ache and you think ‘really? All the way till home time?’. The morning was super productive though, I followed a colleague’s lead and hunkered down in a café with a laptop and finished something and submitted it – very satisfying way to start the day away from emails and chit chat and interruptions. Then workshopped a paper with a colleague and amazingly we cracked it – the whole thing, ,the structure, the evidence base, the paragraphs even. All the other thinking we’d done before today kind of went out the window but it was also somehow the necessary substep to what we did today. Maybe that was my problem – maybe I peaked too soon. Used up all my brain energy too early in the day.

Went out for lunch today, by myself, wandered around Chinatown looking for the perfect jar of sauce for dinner. A few weeks back I visited Angel and Mr J in Marrickville and found a Vietnamese family run grocer and found the best (seriously the best) chili and basil sauce. No artificial anything, vego and super tasty (but no MSG). Anyway, no such luck today – everything had shrimp or cod or anchovy or MSG or sodium benzoate. Settled on a curry paste instead. Yeas, I know I could just have bought chilis and basil and palm sugar and done some dodgy imitation of it myself, but you know those days when you just want the satisfaction of plonking something out of a jar, and having it take responsibility for transforming the raw chunks of things you’ve chopped up into a meal? Then ate lunch at a nice hole in the wall Japanese place and had tofu don. Tried to read my book but realized by brain was too tired and the noise was intense and distracting, so I settled for eavesdropping on the guys sitting next to me, without looking like I was. I think they were in advertising, and they were young and fresh faced and talking about how the things that they would like never ever compromise in work was their relationships with other people, and the quality of their work. I tried not to smile a pained and winsome smile at their naivety, snort derisively, or raise my eyebrows. They also talked about where to get good bonito, and historical trends in tea cup love in Japan. There are worse conversations to be squished in next too, in the bento box style seating plan.

Didn’t quite do all the things I needed to do this week. Do you ever find that the big important single task that’s going to take 4 hours gets nudged compared to all the other smaller 1 hour tasks? Partly because you keep getting interrupted by meetings and partly because you can’t bear to have all those little ones lurking there and partly because it’s not due just quite yet? Yes I know about the time management doodads, the quadrants of urgent and important. But still. This often happens.

Went to a cool cultural event yesterday with Miss Snapdragon. Was a fundraiser/ showcase of an indigenous art residency program, she got invited through work, I was her plus one. One of the performers was dressed in a silky dress that to clung her and had a tired look on her face and sang in a slightly wavery voice but when she sang I got tingles all down my arms and body, skin tingles. Do you ever get that? I get it only occasionally when someone’s telling me something very sad or personal, or in performance when someone is very convincingly wailing or doing something else particularly raw – usually to do with grief. In those moments when the artifice seems stripped back and the true exposed unprotected self is revealed. That one I never experience from books or in relation to things I read. Body reactions. Another one is that hot flush and then prickly tears feeling that can come from listening to someone else’s painful story. Today on the bus I had an involuntary physical reaction to what I was reading – in the middle of an otherwise benign chapter on aspects of brain structure and function it talked about an experiment where a kitten’s eyelids were sewn shut (sewn shut! A kitten! Yuck!). I grimaced and pulled my head back and turned my head away, as if the stitches and kitten were right in front of me. I only noticed it because I was on a bus and aware that the person next to me might have noticed my sudden movement. I felt offended like I’d witnessed a violation. I had to pause and think about it for a bit before I felt like reading on. Then I kept reading and found out that they ended up unstitching the eyelids but the kitten was then blind in that eye for the rest of its life (demonstrating that certain brain functions require stimulation in infancy to develop). I found my lips go tight and disapproving. Funny old body does its own thing. Funny old me, me the body, I react without running it past my conscious mind.

In the return to work this year I have been trying to be much more aware of my body, and its responses to things. Responses to things like stress, outrage, tiredness, boredom. I have several times noticed my shoulders creeping up tight and thought ‘oh, I’m feeling stressed, look at my shoulders’ and then just relaxed them and spent some time thinking about what I’m feeling stressed about and why it feels stressful. Trying for mindfulness, rather than identifying with the stress, or repressing the feeling (my old response of ‘whatever, feelings schmeelings, just get on with it!’).

And finally, reflections on today – coffee. Had four. Each different, different taste and different place. Black plunger coffee at home with housemates. Café coffee made by someone whose expertise is really in sandwich making, my excuse to claim a table and squirrel myself away in the back corner of a quiet room of the cafeteria. Unexpected kitchen windfall coffee offered and made by colleague while chatting at the coffee machine, taken back and sipped through a meeting. Late afternoon tranquil coffee had in leafy surrounds in the local neighbourhood with peaceful murmurs to muster energy for errands and the walk home. Quite a lot of coffees really, but all lovely.