P Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney

Spinning in the rain, have you tried it? It’s a wonderful, dizzying feeling. On Wednesday I spun in the rain, like a lone Retard. And it made me laugh. Real laughter, not forced or make-believe, real laughter that had euphoria bubbling through my veins, rushing to my heart and sending loud, jumpy bursts of happiness out at each beat. Cue some music and hello Hindi movie.

I should have known right then though, that happiness really was just an occasional episode in the general drama of life (as Elizabeth Farfrae so eloquently put it in the Mayor of Casterbridge), because when I stopped spinning and my world stopped gyrating in a haze of colour, and I remembered that I wasn’t a little deer with a little yellow butterfly on her butt, vivid reality painted a sombre truth. I caught my balance just before the scales tipped, sending me tumbling off the precipice of melancholy.

So I did the only thing that I knew would calm my addled mind. I went to look for Nemo. That little fish somehow always seems to sooth me. Maybe it’s because I can talk to him and I know he’s not going to tell anyone else, or maybe it’s because sometimes we need to ask questions to which we really don’t want to be given an answer – and Nemo, never ever replies. He just listens (I’d like to pretend he does), swimming in and out of his little reef-like home: It amazes me how he can swim in virtually the same spot for hours, and I can stand there and watch him for about as long.

Though just when I thought that I was fine, just when I could begin my William Blake essay with a clear mind, along came Lin. Lin with a white Kit-Kat and everything’s-going-to-be-alright hug. And that’s when the rickety vault I’d managed to assemble cracked, and feeling the familiar arms of someone who cared, set me off blubbering like a three year old. Not many people who have their own woes to contend with, will wring you off your tears and wipe your nose and stroke your hair till you feel safe and stitched together again, but Lin did. Our worlds are full of people we may know, acquaintances who flit in and out of our lives lending a smile or a nod or sometimes even the knife that’s stuck in our back, but very few of those associates we can call Friend. Dear God, I thank you for my friend, Lin.

I’m sitting here in the dining room, looking out at the ocean. It’s a deep sapphire this morning, with gentle ripples to break its otherwise unmoving surface. How deceptive it is, don’t you think? There is a tumult in those depths, yet to the observer it seems as calm as a sleeping child. The sea reminds me, that still waters are never as they seem, immobility and tranquillity sometimes hide the furore at its core. The sea reminds me, of the heart.I’m sitting here in the dining room, looking out at the ocean. It’s a deep sapphire this morning, with gentle ripples to break its otherwise unmoving surface. How deceptive it is, don’t you think? There is a tumult in those depths, yet to the observer it seems as calm as a sleeping child. The sea reminds me, that still waters are never as they seem, immobility and tranquillity sometimes hide the furore at its core. The sea reminds me, of the heart.