bringing summer back

yeah yeah. woke up today and the sun was streaming in and the air was warm and people everwhere were struttin like summer is coming and today i officially declare that today is the first day of an australian summer and my australian summer and for that i am so excited. ricebag is going to burn some serious rubber.

today. today. today.

today is ricebag's bondei.

v nice. v v v v nice.

and usually i am not interested in having b-days but today i am a little bit interested. i am interested in the balloons miss can-do plastered all over my office and the lindt chocolates left on my seat and the gucci sunglasses delivered to my house in blue wrapping sent express post and the pink cupcake cake and the phone calls from lovers all over and i am also looking very forwardly to this afternoon when ricebag's work-friends and friend-friends converge on the steps of the opera haus for vino and a view of the best harbour in the world.

and all on today. when an australian summer is starting.

sometimes life can be very sweet. v v v v v.

so if you are in sydney right now, right this minute, come down to the opera haus and look for an islandbaby surrounded by some smashing people with beautiful smiles, with jazz in the background, summer drinks at hand amongst a mass of post-work TGIF city-types drumming it up against the backdrop of a glittering harbour. could it get better than that??

______________________________

• 12 months ago Ricebag was sitting in Port Moresby in a cool air-conditioned shh shh office. Lots and lots of air-conditioning. Lots of shhhhhhhh, noise that is not actually noise, humming that lies just under the radar - not sure exactly what it is - leather-backed swivel seats rolling across marbled carpet; computer hard-drives whirring some electronic pah; the slick sleeves of flipping folders and files; ink-jet printers emitting paper emissaries signalling the work due now, due tomorrow, due yesterday.
• 24 months ago to the day Ricebag was resigning from her job in another shh-shh office and about to embark on 4 months on boats and buses across the islands and highlands of this mad and awful, intense and beautiful country.
• 36 months ago to the day Ricebag was walking down off Mt Sinai in the Sinai Desert, Egypt.
• 48 months ago to the day Ricebag can't remember what exactly she was doing but she was with Finah in Amsterdam, camping by a river with a bunch load of bikers.
• 60 months ago to the day Ricebag was losing her impossible love in the blue blue mountains of Enga.
• 72 months ago to the day Ricebag was solo trekking and rescued by a missionary plane somewhere on the wrong side of the border of her home home province.

Today is only the 3rd time in the last 12 years that ricebag will be celebrating with MyMama the birth of her first born child.

I want my cake.

confirmation

yeah yeah. summer is on her way. she is seriously about to roar into sydney.

and i am ready. i am.

today, this mild monday morning, people everywhere were wearing sunglasses. sunglasses, an ode to the lighter mornings and the stripping lunch-hour where people up and down george and across the rocks were peeling cardigans and lingering on sunned-up curbs

summer is coming. and i am ready.

weekend before last keffer took me to see tori amos. tori amos at the opera house. that chick is a musical genius with a radical sense. she kicks some serious ass and as a performer is totally mesmirising. i could only be in awe of her resoluteness.

and outside and inside the opera house people were dressed like summer is coming. and i was too. i didnt even take a coat. and i should have. coz it was chilly in the aftergloow of tori and sundown. but i felt ok coz i know i know.

i know. that i am ready.

and earlier that day lulu and woo and i drank champagne on a chilling lawn under blankets in bondi and it was all story-telling into dusk. then later that night lulu slept over and we languished and slept in and strode out to yum cha and took a looong leisurely walk up my old haunts across chinatown and down on broadway and it felt good it felt good. mostly because it was a culinary exercise spread over 6 hours. mostly because i was with lu. and also because it was png independence day (!!) and that day last year i was with another dear heart in goroka, watching history and the future collide ...

but also because. i am ready. i am.

and then last week ricebag kicked some serious shit into motion at work and it paid off and for the first time since she got here, well it just feels like ...

i am ready.

i am.

not playing confidently

lovers

lover

love

whe she bin? i bin around. i bin workin' man. w-o-r-k-i-n-g. working until 2am or 3am only to shuffle off home in a blue-rent cab, praying the pakistani tailor/chinese linguist/eqyptian doctor behind the wheel doesn't want to make small talk. but of course ... he always do. and somehow i participate through bleary eyes and on-coming head-ache - and all i can think about is how in 15 minutes i shall be starting a too too short 4 hour sleep before this same day, this very to-day, begins 'proper'. begins again.

wow. i lived this life before. i lived it london. the life where i said bye-bye birdie to my flatmates on sunday night knowing that during the week i would return home sometime after they'd gone to bed, arriving home for a solo cup of pinking tea and that perfect-just-me-fag and then in the mornings i'd be out the door before they'd hit their snooze buttons.

so yeah yeah. i know what an office is like. i know what it sounds like. i know what it feels like. i know it at 3am and 3pm and i know intimately the minutes in between. i don't haaaaate offices ... but i am kind of keeeeening knowing that my very (very) good years are being spent in one tiny egg-shell office in one swish smish building in one downtown city in one beaut country in one southern hemisphere and i am just not trailing breadcrumbs all over this scraggly planet anymore, and instead, all my breadcrumbs are forming a little heap at my feet which speak forensic volumes - that ricebag bin standing in one place, for, like, a little-long time.

so ricebag doesn't really care about the hours. its more the actual work thats the scary part ... the random terrifying terrifyingness of not knowing anything in her workity workity and starting from square one (AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN) and falling into a group of professionals filled with brilliance and trying not to wonder if they wonder just how i got here ...

so that's where i bin haden.

and i bin playing too. sydney playing. not playing overly. not playing confidently. not striding about and around, but i am trying to stir it up and its really just bit hard for a baby who sundays is just trying to remember who she is again ...

ricebag has bin up and down and down and down and up and down and down. its all a bit of a slippery sliding slope, this sydney thing, and she is so glad that her birthday is coming so soon because 2 beautiful hearts are coming to play in sydney from png-lala and its just going to be absolutely smiling baby for 2 weeks because there will be laughter and there will be dancing and there will be stories and there just will. yeah yeah.

when girls who all belong to the same order-of-the-cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die they dont need shrugs to explain or hugs to maintain, because all the promise that says i back you up bitch is hard-wired and there isnt anything like a person who says we believe in the same things and better than that, we agree on how to get there and that journey unites us. ... man, that is some deep and crazy shit - that is how movements are made and courage is born and passion is ignited and most of all - that is how things CHANGE, how people change. and these girls are powerful powerful women who change the world they occupy and the space they vibrate in and more than that, they change the conscience and the gutting bellies of other people and the entire terrene those people inhabit.

so as i sit and wonder how how how ... i wait for october when some girls, just some everyday gals get here and help me to remember how to be me again. and they do that by making me forget about me altogether. through them i remember that i really dont matter. none of me does. its what i do that matters. who i touch. the change i effect. the love i give away and the pain i can't. the shit i shuffle and the grovel i hide. the meanness in me that cant be restrained and the desire which goes unnamed. all of it. the effect of it. the butterfly effect innit. aren't we all just butterflies. flapping our fear and our favour forward. flapping hard and hard and harder sometimes in motion with millions and sometimes flapping less hard at 3.12am in a bluecab on george street. on the way home. alone.

always, always, beating our wings against our breasts.

until a baby starts playing different ... until then ... i go on trying not to look like my head is just above water, trying not to panic that my feet can't touch the bottom.