Thursday, May 28, 2009

Of Love, In Its Own Terms

Do you have friends, especially couples who annoy the heck out of you when they act all cutesy and lovey in front of you?

There is a flurry of exchanges of 'honeybunny' or 'sweetiepie' or any other nauseating cute names that lovers dig up for each other because, somehow, calling each other by their given names was no longer good enough. (Take that, parents who took all the time to come up with a name for your child!)

I remember a time when I was on the outside looking in, and whenever I heard lovers call out to each other using their private names, my gag reflex would be activated and I would silently (or blatantly) snicker at these couples.

Only now, looking from the other side and guilty of the very same atrocities, can I begin to try and understand this need for the terms of endearment.

I am reminded of this clip from the wonderful Steve Martin's LA Story, both quirky and poignant at once. It shows his character, Harris, finally getting together with Sara (played by the ethereal Victoria Tennant) after pursuing her for most of the film.



(P.S. Just realised the clip won't play. You can watch it here.)

This scene, all at once magical and fantastic, truly spoke to me. It shows how two people, in the security of their love for one another, are safe and free to be like children once more in each other's presence.

And thus, these terms of endearment, while too saccharine and vomit-inducing to the ears of the outside world, makes perfect sense in the vernacular of lovers.

Of course, the love will mature and take different forms down the years, and perhaps we will all shed the tender names for each other, but just for right now, I choose to enjoy it.

Monday, May 18, 2009

The Hospital's Littlest Orphan



I'm finally back, and so many things are going on, especially with Mum and Sis being here! But first, let me tell you a story:
The Hospital's Littlest Orphan
She walks into the department and up to the ward clerk, her eyes dead and unblinking. I need to see a nurse, she says. I have taken thirty tablets tonight. The ward clerk lets out a silent sigh and inputs her detail into the screen for the second time that day.

Her name comes up on the Department screen, and the nurses roll their eyes. Not again! they curse under their breaths. She just left thirty minutes ago - what a bloody waste of hospital resources!
She'll wait outside in the waiting room, they decide, and we'll take bloods from her in four hours' time. She can be baby-sat out in the waiting room.
She watches the television flicker in the top corner of the waiting area, trying to make out what the silent moving pictures were saying. Her soft pink pajamas rub against the hard seats of the waiting room, and her glazed eyes look up into the fluorescent white lights which hummed a familiar lullaby to soothe the desperate quiet in her.

She closes her eyes, and she remembers how as a little girl, her Mummy had been really sick. They were in and out of the hospital so often that it was like a second home to her. She tries to remember her mother dying, but time and her mind has smudged the painting of that memory altogether.

She was shifted from foster home to foster home from the age of nine, and actually found a good foster mother when she was eleven. But happiness was never meant for people like her, and just as if life had a point to prove - her foster mother died when she was fourteen, leaving her orphaned once more.

She was completely out at sea then, too old to be fostered anymore; and wandered nomadically from the sporadic foster families who would offer to take her in, but she would act up and not last with any one family too long. She was old enough to feel like a trespasser into the lives of these families and the truth was, she was too afraid to love too much in case they were taken from her again.

Two years passed, and finally, she was old enough to live on her own. Her accommodation was nice enough, but she had no housemates, no friends, and no family. Her impermanent itinerant childhood, where the love of a parent was a distant memory rather than an innate feeling meant that she lacked the social skills of interaction, and had no way of making meaningful relationships.

She cries out to the world, pleading for someone to talk to her, to listen to how her day went, or how she liked the colour green or the sound of buses. No one had bothered to ask her where she had bought her nice new maroon sweater from.

She made five hundred calls to the ambulance one month, and was put into jail for her disruptive behaviour.

Her mind directed her lonely feet to the only other place that was a large part of her childhood - the hospital - and she would visit two or three times a week, sitting in the reception area talking to anyone who cared to listen. When the reception area closed at five, she would wander down to the Emergency Department complaining of some vague symptom to be seen, looking for any excuse to stay.

They would bring her in, initially, treating her like they would any other patient. She loved the questions they used to ask her, as that was the only time anyone even showed a vague interest in her. She hated the feeling of needles and would cry like a five year old with no one there with the promises of lollies if she were brave.

As she cried wolf more and more, the Department became less and less welcoming, sitting her outside in the waiting room, taking forever to see her. That was when she began popping the pills. Thirty, forty five of them at a time. Somehow that made everyone sit up and take notice, and the words I didn't want to live anymore seemed to have a magic effect of bringing on the sympathetic looks of strange nurses and the listening ears of concerned doctors.

Oddly enough, no one cares more about you being alive than when you tried to be dead.

But then she overplayed that card, sometimes turning up to the ED three times a day, and familiarity chipped away at the sympathy of her reluctant extended family of the Emergency Department.

And so she waits in the Emergency Department waiting room, her body shifting about trying to get comfortable on her makeshift bed of hard plastic seats, waiting to hear another human voice call her name.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The Fundamental Things Apply

So much to type, and so little time!

I will be heading up to M. again, this time for ten days, so I might not have the chance to share things with you until then!

Unless K brings wonderful internet access with her when she comes to visit this weekend! Yay!!

(All the elephants in the house, put your hands in the air!! Now wave them around like you just don't care...
... that you're letting go of the swinging vines and dropping to your death below! {Curse you, cute kiddie song!})

Till then, feel free to read up on some of my old stuff!

A big welcome to Melbourne to my mum and sis, who I will not be able to see at the airport, but who I can't wait to wrap my arms around when I finally come back!

Big farewell hugs and kisses! hK.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Animal That Never Forgets... Now What Was It Again?


Walking with J down Acland St, we chanced upon the wonderfully named holy Sheet! which was a shop selling bedding and other fun stuff. I decided to get K this elephant which she has christened Baba.

The history of it lies here, if you will indulge our finger-in-throat, vomit-inducing cuteness. Hahaha!



With apologies to k, with this video I now pronounce your declaration of "age + maturity + life’s experiences" null and void! Hahaha! Thanks for the book - I can't believe I am still rereading Essays in Love like I was reading it for the very first time, so I am sure I will revel in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (from life experience, that is, not from reading the actual book! Hahaha!)