A short list of good things
Conscious joy
The heat, in its fury and majesty, sweeps through Queensland. It is August, but it feels like late Spring. The grass becomes crisp. The afternoons are long and sweltering, fit only for naps. I rise, drowsy and dry-mouthed, stumbling as if drunk.
Seeking vengeance against nature, my wife and I began a habit of attacking our front yard in the late afternoon. There were trees to chop down, each trunk falling with a satisfying, loud groan and snap—each one sounding like a ship in a storm.
Dirt gets under my fingernails. My back is slick with sweat. There are beers in the fridge. They are cold. With each sip, a little over my soul returns to me.
There is no greater earthly delight than this: voluntary, privileged, hard physical labor in the heat, then greeted with a cold beer.
A mate recommends having the beer while in the shower. Wash off your outside, cleanse your inside.
The kids go apeshit at the pool. The eldest makes a quick friend. The youngest plays for a bit but is then distracted by food. A sausage roll puts her at ease.
This will be the first summer when they are old enough to play in the water alone. We no longer need to be in arm’s reach of them. We can sit at the border, bums on wet concrete and feet in the water, and watch.
Afterwards, I drag the spare mattress out onto the lounge room floor, turn on the ceiling fan, and make popcorn. All are happy. We watch The Princess Diaries, which only my wife has seen before. It is (if I may say so) banal and uninteresting, but it hardly matters. It captures the full attention of my daughters for almost two hours.
A mate died. And overnight, everyone I knew, including myself, became an extremist. On one end: abnegation. Off booze, carbohydrates, smokes and sinful behaviour. The cancer shan’t catch me. On the other end: nihilistic hedonism. Fuck it. Cancel work. Get pissed. Make the memories now.
Both extremes exist inside me, sometimes in the exact second. It is bewildering and paralysing. It culminates in a hastily organized dinner party. Babysitters are organized, and we sit in our small community, dazed and making effortful leaps at happiness.
We talk grief and work. One of us is a local journalist and has many stories about the various weirdos that litter the streets. Chaos is everywhere.
An ice addict who puts stuff up his bum when he’s high. A gaggle of women who beat the hell out of each other in the street. The bloke on TikTok who slanders the police.
A dozen board games are on the coffee table, but we only make it to Secret Hitler. Laughter ensues. My wife, it is revealed, was a fascist all along.
Our host provides a barbeque. The game and the meal soften the hard edge of the week. We lapse into grateful silence. Perhaps we should’ve stayed and drunk more - that’s what we would’ve done a decade ago.
But there are babysitters and children, so we leave at a sensible time and climb into bed under a spinning fan. Hearts full and heavy. Onwards, ever onwards, into a new day.
Other posts that may resonate include this one on grief or this diary entry.
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