Making oneself feel better

We are in Durras, on the south coast, and it is a very damp world here.  The fire is resisting my attempts to light it. Some poor little flames spring up when I pump in air with the bellows but then they cark it again when I stop.  I’m not sure I can be bothered.  I need someone to use bellows on me today, I feel so flat.  And yet there’s a measure of menace in the air that makes me shiver, a horrible shooting of several police by a sniper in the USA, a slightly hung parliament right here..

 The Chilcot enquiry has decided that the Iraq war was based on a mistake and two (and maybe three) major politicians are little short of criminals for what they did.  And what’s more, on the way down in the car what do I hear but Philip Adams, a favourite atheist broadcaster hosting a discussion on prayer and saying he doesn’t like poetry and it should have subtitles.  The world is going squew whiff and who is looking after us all?

 Last night I went to visit friend Jo in her newly finished house next door which is lovely.  We sit and talk in front of her fire. She laughs at me for going to England to say goodbye and coming back all mixed up and uprooted from this country upon which I have now grafted myself.  We both consider ourselves absolutely Australian now, she having come as a teenager and me in my twenties.  We love this place but nevertheless we talk about the curious nature of being immigrants.  How even after being away from the birth country so long, there one can stride head held high with blind confidence, but here we tend to look about us as though checking for something.  We experience a tiny deficit in our identity.

I look down and see the head of a leech waving on the side of my shoe.  It is fat with blood. I salt it and it falls off.  I toss it into the fire.

I went to the first rehearsal of Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony on Thursday.  The Festival Chorus is a huge choir working up to its centenary in 2020.  I am a newcomer, having only performed once before, in Bernstein’s Wonderful Town. On joining I observed with some amusement how bonded the various little groups of sopranos, altos etc were and how people had their people they sat with.  Some members are being honoured this year for their longevity as choristers.  This quirky and varied community would indeed merit an anthropological study. I was a bit more deaf than usual on Thursday and found it difficult to catch the words of our brilliant choirmaster who uses wit and deft remarks to play us like an instrument.  We do anything he wants. Peals of laughter follow his wry reproach when we thump out the rhythm of a line or two of the Walt Whitman words without the music.  It did sound doleful.  But I can’t quite hear what Brett says.  I laugh like the others but I’m just imitating.  It’s what one does to fit in.  I realize that in England I would not care about this little bit of inauthenticity but I feel unnerved here in Australia about not being true blue.  How much of a fraud am I?  Do I belong in this choir? In this country?  Anywhere?

It is evening now and the fire is burning brightly.  My mother used to say when I got sad and anxious “you need to pull your truss up”.  There must have once been a lot of herniated people around for such an expression to have come into being.  But I did it (metaphorically) and went into Batemans Bay to get new batteries for my hearing aids so I can hear properly at next Thursday’s rehearsal. 

How curious it is though, the way words can push us into action when we hardly know what they mean..  And how odd that some people, the French for instance, don’t need words that English speakers do, even if we are only half aware of the need. 

We have two words “do” and “make” whilst the French cover all bases with just one “faire”.  I remember from my teaching days how very difficult it was to explain why one made a mistake but did the washing up.  The best I came up with was that the terrible twins were a sort of circus act. “Do” made things disappear whilst ‘make’ conjured them up.  Once the washing up was done there were no more dishes, homework done equaled no more homework. But once made, a cake or a mistake were there for all to see, for better or worse.  A student once said “What about a bed? You make a bed, you don’t do it” and I had a rather beautiful thought.  Birds make nests and actually isn’t that exactly what we do when we make a bed? Or at least we used to when there were sheets and blankets and coverlets and not just a doona to toss straight.

Anyway, aside from all that I ask myself in this time of personal confusion if there is a clue for me in the make and do dichotomy.  It seems that “doing” is conservative and requires previous social knowledge – hence “Do the right thing” on our rubbish bins.  Until recently charladies would “do” for their gentlemen – but how did they know what to do?  Doing good requires knowing a lot as well.  And there’s a nasty side to doing.  You can do someone in, do someone down, do your worst.  "What have you done?"  is a menacing accusation. Making on the other hand has a sort of innocence to it. You really want an answer when you say "What have you made?" You make a mistake simply because you don’t know enough.  You make war when innocence decays into naivety.  You make love. (Imagine doing it!) 

I suddenly whether that leech was making or doing yesterday when it filled its body with my blood.  I suppose doing.  Doing its feeding.  I don't suppose it made a decision about it.

 When insecure one flails about doing as best one can.  Doing one’s duty, doing the laundry, the cooking and the shopping, doing one’s best and never quite doing enough to make oneself feel good and safe and adequate.  But perhaps this is all wrong, especially if you are out of your element, transplanted without knowledge of the nuances of your new world. (And god help the migrant who doesn’t even know the language.)  Perhaps the answer is to give up on doing and embrace making and damn the consequences.  Make friends everywhere, make whoopee, make believe if need be, make a noise and be damned, make an impression, make a night of it and don’t give a damn.

I’m exhausted at the thought of all this.  Maybe I’ll stop now and do my knitting. Do my knitting.  What did I just say?