Nostalgia as antidote

 

 

The Perversi and Ongarello clans. Mid 1960s

A who’s who of trouble. Can you spot me?

 

According to the World Health Organisation, those above 65 are considered elderly.  As an elder therefore, I have time on my hands, lots of it, time to indulge in romanticising the past. Cosseting the past couldn’t be described as a trustworthy pursuit, that would be a fantasy.  It’s more a constructed way-it-used-to-be partial unreliable memory, partial imaginary feel-good narrative. I guess it doesn’t require truth. Just rose-coloured glasses! It’s claimed one’s pain perception is lowered through indulging in nostalgia.

 

Today, nostalgia is not so much defined as lived. It has become an antidote to technology, a literal raison d’etre.  Particularly, in this instance, for the elderly.

 

It’s not that I long for the good old days.  Neither do I wish to idealise it; it was different, hard. We were less evolved. Perhaps naïve.  We smoked lots of ‘safe’ cigarettes, drove while pissed, suffered the patriarchy, were oblivious to trauma conditions, the scorching sun, and chemicals and sprays.  Climate change and the ozone layer were conditions that existed in the ether, or not at all.   We even managed to overlook creepy Rolf Harris.

 

I remember the past as somewhat more simplified. We weren’t distracted or consumed by technology, artificial intelligence, scam calls, hackers, stranger danger. We went bush, or drank to forget.  We hadn’t yet been introduced to the production of synthetic embryos, deep fakes and killer drones. We had lots of sex. Well, some people did.  To be fair, I didn’t spend much time reading newspapers.  I was too busy making stuff, partying, working, house renovating and parenting. Not necessarily in that order.

 

Back then we didn’t slam our fist on the fuck-you litigious button to extract financial revenge when someone did us wrong.  We took responsibility, or got angry.  I recently admitted to my acupuncturist I was tormented by it.  His response: ‘still?’ I felt a stab of shame. Only a man would say that to a woman! It remains unfashionable amongst the patriarchy for women to display anger.  Anger energises, sharpens the mind, allows you to let off steam, and gives creativity a boost. It can also make you sick.

 

Largely, as someone inclined toward intensity and sorrow, emotions that share space with a hot temper - go figure - remembering more simple times and the calming feeling of nostalgia, is medicine. Fabrication, or not. Having had my joy factor and pleasure principle overlooked as a small child, nostalgia provides me with enough juju to maintain a sense of personal order, to put on a happy face. I’m drawn to serious people and serious conversation. My tribe. I lay the entire blame for this on my astrological natal chart: Scorpio by four! Due to this, I need more Hare Krishna devotees to cross my path, minus the covert misogyny naturally.  Wearing cheerful, colourful saris, and banging cymbals, a kind of whoop whoop abandon written over their faces, I’m often transfixed by their sight, their real or imaginary inner hosanna.  The sight of their slow procession and their noisy clangers is an event sure to raise my dopamine levels, charm a smile into existence.

 

But seriously, (sorry, not sorry), give me a hit of wistful yearning for the past any day, a sentimentality washed in indistinct sepia tones. Give me just a moment’s return to too-heavy make-up, mini-skirts and fuck-me boots. Disco balls, barrels of riesling, outrageous wedges and stilettos, and Farrah Fawcett hair. Give me hot days in the garden with annoying sisters by four and the even more annoying cousins, mostly boys.  The power of our collective energy, the vibrational delight of singing together, the innocence, the mischief-making and collecting dandelion flowers from the side of the road, destined for neighbourly mothers in exchange for sweets.  Trips to the mountains, backpacking through South East Asia, drive-in cinemas and the crimson Valiant.  Green ginger wine, the smell of jonquils and pine trees, the rolling hills of Diamond Creek, and the winding Yarra River.  The melancholic baritone of Leonard Cohen, his poetry and music.  I don’t want to go back to it all, but the charisma of remembering invokes a feeling of belonging, somehow more real, more wholesome.

 

There’s no substitute for reminiscence, especially an account that excludes trauma. There is no stand-in for the meeting of eyes, the touch of a tender hand on your arm.  I identify with the philosopher Simone Weil when she says ‘attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’. It can’t be replicated with a device. Paying attention to each other, and the feeling of homesickness is a remedy for a world obsessed with smart phones and gadgets.

 

You can’t stop change.  I wouldn’t want to; I actually thrive on it. This medium-level ache for yesteryear could be a desire to escape, preparation for death, or just a natural pastime that aids examining regret and remorse in order to make amends with the past before it’s too late.  It’s a good thing, right?

 

Be like the tree

 

 

A Welcome to Warburton sign on the outskirts of town it is not. For more than one reason. Firstly, the forest is a big drawcard, one of the chief reasons I’m here. Secondly, the words ‘forest’ and ‘closed’ in the same sentence? I’m sorry, they simply don’t belong together.  Myer closes, so do servos, sometimes. Forests don’t! Or shouldn’t. I’m not going for a coffee or a three-pack of new socks. I’m here to hike, in nature.

 

I’ve escaped the city for a week’s R & R.  I can already feel my muscles soften. The ground is a carpet of red, gold and orange autumn leaves. The green contours of the land evoke the topography of the Northern Rivers, the earthy smell of decay a familiar reminder. The babbling Yarra River, meandering, rewards my frayed senses, confers the gentle pause my body longs for.   

 

But this forest closed business can’t be for real. When I check out Mrs Google, I see the bridge over the Yarra River leading to the forest is under reconstruction.  It’s the only vehicular access to the forest.  Wading through the river is an option, but I’d have to have my head read.   I must find a way to the forest. The images of the towering redwoods on the web lend strength and immediacy to the lure in my bones. I recognise this urgent, bracing call, this unambiguous audacity I’m certain I’ve carried for lifetimes.

 

I’ve heard there’s a path high in the mountains.  It’s an old maintenance track built to support an aqueduct that in 1911 was constructed to supply water to the greater City of Melbourne.  Today it’s a hiking trail, a 32 km return trip that takes you close to the forest. I’ll pedal.  

 

Mr Bike Man is patient, and not bad on the eye. Reciting the 5000-word Operation Manual and Book of Expected Behaviour for Novice E-Bike Riders, he stops occasionally to establish my comprehension; I nod, thinly.  Inside, my anxiety reaches new heights.  He then proceeds to show me the route on a very small map – gates to negotiate, steep slippery inclines that require me to walk the bike, crossings of main roads, forks on the path.  I’ve absorbed about 10% of the whole delivery. I come within an eyelash of quitting.  

 

The reward is the route. It traverses great stands of mountain ash and walls of tree ferns. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos wail and sweep across the path ahead of me.  The glorious sun is out, and my wobbly arms are getting furiously itchy from the increased blood flow and vibration of a 22 kg bike doing around 12 km an hour on an uneven path.  Within ten minutes, I’m a pro.

 

On first sight of the forest, the words of the exiled Vietnamese master, Thich Nhat Hanh, sound in my head; ‘I have arrived.  I am home’. I am awe-struck; don’t know whether to walk, sit, or stand. I reach my hand to the forest floor; its spongy, yielding layer is damp.  Around my feet a dozen different species of fungi sprout.  I crouch and examine the bionetwork of colourful fungus.  Some serious psilocybin going on here. 

 

 

 

But it is the largesse of the scene before me that renders me dumb. 

 

 

This enchantment and involuntary hijacking of my sensory field imbues a rush I’m unable to process.  I close my gaping mouth, quieten the need to do something.  Entering a forest of this scope is akin to crossing a threshold into a marginal place of otherness.   Something transcendent happens. The usual direction of my thoughts to the inner field does a one-eighty.  The pores of my skin unzip and open to the throb of the woodland as though they’ve set eyes on a dear old lost friend. I’ve been mourning my absence from the forest, and the strange thing is, I’ve barely even noticed it happen.  I gaze up, and see, not for the first time, the evidence of what Jane Hirshfield, poet and Zen practitioner refers to as ‘blind optimism’.  Here she is referring to the ability of trees to sightlessly trust the primal gravitational pull of the species to orient to the light.  It is the original act of fidelity to life itself.  The interdependence of the ecosystem here is so obvious and breathtaking, a symbiotic smorgasbord of co-operation and growth. I am undone.

 

 

Every so often, an artist by the name of David Digapony, spends a day in the forest, collects the fallen branches that project vertically off the trunk of the Redwood, and sculpts the timber into forms of beauty.  These forms are scattered throughout the forest.

 

Fourteen hundred Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) occupy this plantation, a non-native species of the cypress family originating in California.  Sequoia sempervirens is among the tallest, widest, and oldest living trees on the planet.  With enough water and nutrients this species is known to live for 3000 years.  In the drought-ridden climate conditions of today, these statistics no longer apply.  The trees now form part of the Yarra Ranges National Park, and are a major tourist attraction.  How lucky am I to have had the park to myself?

 

 

                Unruly, black sheep Sequoia by the river in the township

 

I want to be more like a tree.  To trust in seasons of change, move to the rhythms of the cycles of life, urge my frail human heart to have faith in the shifting landscape of time.

 

 

 

 

A day at a time

                                 

This was my Macpac, before I stupidly sold it some months ago. I was having a serious cull before moving out.  In the high stakes game of moving, I erroneously thought my travel days were over. Dumb! The backpack is synonymous with travel, freedom and adventure. In an era of the political, climate and capitalism refugee however, the humble backpack has adopted a new profile.  The Backpack Bed© has arrived, a waterproof, fire retardant, environmentally friendly home away from home. For the homeless.

 

This makes me angry, and sad.  I’ve been both these things a lot lately.  Because I too am now homeless. Is a Backpack Bed the best society can do? 

 

Being homeless could be the new black, especially in Melbourne where I'm currently located, but it’s most definitely the new norm.  It barely raises an eyebrow.  It’s a global crisis, women of my age its main target. It’s an utter disgrace. Fortunately, there are philanthropists out there, changing the face of the diabolical housing emergency, one dollar at a time.  There are also new laws creeping into town planning departments in local governments that are giving green lights to tiny houses and eco-villages and multiple occupancy land-sharing arrangements.  This may be good for the future, but in the meantime?  I recall feminists in the 70s advocating for and building refuges for women escaping domestic abuse so they didn’t end up on the streets.  Father Bob Maguire, bless the depth of his now deceased soul, also cared, and acted. Stirred by his distress at witnessing his father’s violence towards his mother in his early life, he spent his life supporting street kids, the disadvantaged and the homeless.  If you don’t know somebody who’s experiencing housing stress, you’re either not asking the right questions or living with your head in the sand.  We can’t leave this whole sorry mess to the government.  They're suffering blind paralysis. We need to do something but I feel powerless to know what, save for promoting organisations campaigning on behalf of the needy.  Like Womens Village Collective.  We need to rally together to make a difference.  I need hope!

 

So, Melbourne! City of my birth, culturally and artistically rich one minute, cold and bleak the next.  Over the years I've loved Melbourne from a distance; a two week stay is generally my limit.  Too much concrete, too smelly, too busy, too noisy.  I miss the green curves of home.  It's now three months, but feels like six. Housesitting, minding other people’s pets, camping, and wearing out my welcome at the homes of family and friends, wearing down their moods and wearing myself thin with anxiety.  Every day I scan the rentals and sub-lets on social media and community pages.  I’m competing with thousands. You have to be quick; they’re gone in a flash.  My impulses have slowed.  I read, write, walk, cook, try to be helpful and attempt to invoke the voice of my higher self.  I’m doing my best. 

 

Not having a home isn’t easy to talk about.  Too much awfulness inside bamboozles the mind and strangles rationality.  Hungry ghosts descend, whirling through your energy field, driving the intense emotional needs further down, strangling insight and calm. Attachments to early trauma and dysfunctional adult behavioural patterns re-emerge. I unconsciously become seriously judgy - of myself, and others.  Unkind thoughts surface, run laps around my consciousness as though there’s some grand prize on offer at the end. Thoughts like well, if you hadn’t travelled overseas last year, and done that big road trip around Australia the year before, perhaps you wouldn’t be in the situation you’re in now.  Perhaps if you’d bought a house years ago when they were more affordable you wouldn’t be in this position today.  Look at the lifestyle you’ve led! (fuck off Tony Abbott). Maybe if you’d looked after your declining mental health decades ago, you’d be more secure now.  I’ve even fallen into the trap of believing it’s all my fault.  I have to remind myself it’s not.  I’m not sure if I believe this narrative, or not.  It’s the fault of a sick system, I know this.  A system (see government) that fails to invest adequately in social housing, fails to support women fleeing family violence, fails to pay the underclass sufficient to live on. 

 

See what I mean? Judgy as fuck, an inheritance from my folks, the original judge and jury. It’s a difficult mantle to throw off, and in times of need, my neuroses step up like obedient little soldiers, conditioned to attack. They don’t wait for a second invite. Let’s go ride the Shame and Loathing Wheel.  But the humiliation of not having a safe place to lay your head at night is real.  I’ve been very unsocial, preoccupied and irritable.  The day in and day outness of having to rely on others for support and there being no light at the end of the tunnel is tough to live with. An itch that doesn’t go away. The worst sort of homesickness.

 

I drive into the rain, my metaphorical backpack bed's contents strewn untidily across the back of my car. 

 

It feels like 8 pm but it’s only 4.00.  I have no idea where I’m heading.  But I have my fleecy boots, my feathered sleeping bag, and my intuition is on high alert, scoping out the coastal road and its parks, one semi-arc of the wiper blades after another.