My sister left a copy of Haper’s Bazaar at
my house recently and I began reading it, finding that reading it produced a
strange sensation in me. Namely, I wanted to rip out my own eyes and possibly
cause grievous bodily harm to the people on the magazine pages. From reading a
blow by blow description of Jodhi Meares day (on the A list 24 hours page) to
seeing pictures of Michael and Kyly Clarke at home (okay perhaps there is
something to be said for this current debate about literacy teaching – does
no-one understand the proper use of vowels and consonants in names?), I was
filled with an indescribable rage. Well, actually I can describe it, it’s the
rage that comes from superficial crap being lauded as ways to live life. ‘I’m
like Forrest Gump – I walk as much as I can’ proclaims Meares (suggesting that
perhaps she hasn’t seen the movie at all), while she goes on to tell us how she
begins her day with yoga, with warm water and lemon to ‘alkanise the body’. It
goes on from there and if you’re into that shit you can read it yourself.
Meanwhile Harper’s Bazaar takes a stop at the Clarke household on a ‘rare
Saturday off’ where the two of them call each other ‘babe’. How astonishing
that a married couple might use a term of endearment. Cue vomiting now.
Still I figured there was something in all
that about recording the way we live our days in a breakdown of times and
activities. I mean, surely you all find me so infinitely fascinating that you
want to know what I’m doing at every catalogued minute of the day and what I’m
wearing? So here it is. Sharon’s bizarre z list description of my 24 hours.
5.30
am: I awake to what sounds like next door’s bull
rogering one of the cows. There’s nothing like the sound of nature to pull you
from your lazy slumber to the day ahead. ‘Ah’, I think to myself, I’m so lucky to live
here connected with nature’ as I snuggle back into my Target doona. Soon
though, the dog is leaping on me and I laugh as I scratch her fur and clamber
out of bed. (Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. In reality I probably
swear, push the dog off me and drag the doona over my head before the grim fact
that I need to get out of bed sends a shiver of doom in my heart and I crawl
out of bed, tumbling to the floor and dragging my sorry arse towards the
bathroom).
Unlike Meares, I don’t begin with warm
water and lemon, I like to begin the day by evacuating my bowels. I find that
I’m just so much lighter after that, I can feel the life force ebbing through
me. I head into the kitchen wearing some hand me down flannel pj pants I stole
from my husband and an old Qantas pj top that a flight attendant once gave
me. I make a pot of Irish breakfast tea.
I live on a property in an area that was once known as little Ireland and I
find that drinking Irish breakfast tea enables me to connect with the ancestry
of the place and with my own Irish heritage.
It also makes me less likely to drop expletives before 7 am.
I make a monkey salad for breakfast.
Someone shared a link to the latest paleo craze and some 30 day challenge where
monkey salad was recommended for breakfast. I still can’t find the monkeys at
my local deli so in the meantime I make the vegan version which has banana,
coconut flakes, cashews and blueberries. Well, it’s probably not technically
vegan as I can’t swear that the blueberries haven’t come from a farm that uses
that bacteria that kills other bugs– take that vegans who think that your
lettuce leaf hasn’t resulted in the death of an animal. If it’s a weekend or a
holiday I’ll start the day with coffee made by my lovely husband. He’ll
normally do this if I throw myself on the floor and cling onto his legs like a
toddler, begging for coffee to take the pain of daylight away.
6.30
am: By now, it’s time for exercise. I know this
because the dog is throwing a lead at my feet and barking at me and I’ll do
almost anything to make her shut up. We head out into the picturesque olive
grove where the sun is creeping through the cloud and the mountain casts a
shadow over the landscape. There’s an oracle on the mountain and last year
after moving in, I climbed the mountain, reaching the top breathless and sweaty
to find out my life’s true path. The oracle must have been having a bad day as
he told me this wasn’t a public access area and to stay away from the
telecommunications infrastructure. I figure that was a metaphor suggesting that
I need to try and connect more with the authentic me and to not use so many
devices so I’ve been trying to cut back on my facebook and mobile phone usage. Meanwhile, the dog is
dragging me through the olives, eating the excrement of animals and I figure
it’s only a while before I’ll be doing that too as part of the latest ‘get back
to nature’ diet craze.
8.00
am: After a walk with the dog, I head into the
bathroom for my morning ablutions. Unlike Meares who is obsessed with washing
her hair ‘I sometimes wash it twice a day’, I’m obsessed with ensuring that our
farm water supply is continuous and so I shower quickly, thankful that as yet
the bore hasn’t dried up. I read in Bazaar that ‘raw beauty’ is on the hit list
and some designer recently sent models down the catwalk wearing nothing but
moisturizer (surely if it was a fashion show they would have had clothes too?),
but anyway, it seems I’m ahead of the trend as I’ve been embracing raw beauty
for 41 years. It comes from my theory that you can’t stick a candle in a turd
and call it a birthday cake. For work I dress in whatever doesn’t require
ironing and which sends a message that says ‘I’m an academic and if you want to
give me a promotion because of my clothes then I’ll happily stay on this rung
of the academic ladder for life’.
9.00
am: I begin my work day at home as my office at the
farm has breathtaking views of the mountain and the grove and I find these good
for my inspiration. This, and it means I don’t have to go to the corridor of
death at work, where walking down there is like taking on a computer game where
you have to defeat your nemesis and other obstacles all preventing you from
reaching your quest of getting to your office door and turning on your
computer. Once I’ve slayed the email demon, I spend the day trawling through
interview transcripts and wondering how we can defeat the quantitative,
positivist voldemorts and the admin focused ministry of magic who are
encroaching on all aspects of academic life.
12.00: This is hungry work and so I look on my desk for food. There is
none. I go down to the staffroom and the remains of some overcatered event to
which we academic footsoldiers weren’t invited have been thoughtfully placed on
the table by leadership. I ponder on whether to allow myself to have an
enforced detox by eating the smoked salmon sandwich that’s been festering there
for a few hours, but decide against this and instead head to the café where I
look for something that hasn’t been deep fried in a vat of oils, along with the
last of the faculty to speak openly against the administration.
Okay, even I can’t keep this amount of
self-introspection and bullshit up. You want to know about the rest of my day?
It passes as most of the first half. I work, I eat, I talk to people, my
husband comes home and we curse about the idiots we’ve had to deal with all
day. We laugh about the good moments, we share stories about the people we love
and the things we care about. We eat food, some that we grow and that we cook
together and which we don’t overthink (is it wholefood? Is it paleo? Is it
going to kill me?). Who knows, we might even call each other babe. We don’t
label it all. Life doesn’t need to be labeled nor do you need my rantings of
how I live my life presented as some sort of quasi-expert guide to how you
should live. You wouldn’t pay money to read about how my day passes, so why
would you bother reading about people you don’t know or don’t care about?
So I’m putting Harper’s Bazaar in the bin
as it makes me hate humans. I figure there’s enough hate in the world as it is,
so let’s call the superficial bullshit for what it is and just go about living.