Sunday Night

Happiness is coming home on a Sunday night after a long week of work and rehearsals and teaching and being able to chat to your family on the phone and throw together a pot of potato and leek soup and have a vegetable quiche slowly cooking in the oven, ready for lunches and dinners for the following week. It's slicing up a loaf of fresh sourdough bread from the markets, ready for toasts and sandwiches. It's having Adam Hills and Co. playing in the background, making you laugh as you chop spring onions and leeks and peel potatoes and throw diced pumpkin into a pot of boiling water to soften the flesh. It's finding a double yoke in the last egg. It's going to group meditation and feeling the love and being surrounded by oodles of positive energy. It's listening to podcasts on the train on the way home. It's wearing gumboots in the rain. It's the kindness and support of your friends. It's watching a musical with scripts in hands and being so close to the actors you can literally reach out and touch them. It's the magic of being able to watch productions of shows thousands of miles away on your laptop. It's about taking pause amidst the hustle and smiling and saying wow. I live a life enchanted. And it is magical. And you lick leek and potato soup off the wooden spoon and know you've done good. The end. 

New Year's Eve

It’s days like these that will make you happy. Spending time with friends. Popping in to see Matt and Clairie-O, meeting lovely people and playing board games. Catching the train across the Bridge and seeing the myriad of people lining the foreshore. Sydney is made for big events on the harbour. A bright blue sky day. Warm. People of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life are out on the street. The air is alive. I meet Len at Dawe’s Point. All the “VIP’s” feeling extra special because they have invites. Wrist-tagged and bag searched and inside to where the mood is festive, the music pumping. The view is spectacular. I don‘t recall seeing the fireworks from this side of the bridge before. The Opera House to my right. The sound of the giant bangs. Explosions of sparkle in the sky. 

We walk around to Circular Quay. The kind concierge at the Marriott finds me a safety pin for my holey jumper. Walk up Pitt St and up to the State Library. On the steps of the palace I meet Heath and Lyn and Ben. We walk down to join the queue for the Cahill Expressway. It is orderly and calm and moves quickly. Onto the Expressway and down to the western end. The view is utterly spectacular. The Bridge, the Opera House, the Quay beneath us. People are patiently waiting for midnight. We eat ice cream. Girls in colourful costumes walk past to entertain the crowd. 

On the hour, the half hour, and quarter of the hour before midnight single fireworks explode over the city and over the Opera House. People cheer. And suddenly it is ten seconds to midnight. And the pylons light up with giant numbers, helping the crowds around the foreshore count down. And then it is 2011! And the fireworks erupt. A lone bird flies confused over the bridge through the smoke and glitter. The bridge becomes so covered in smoke you can’t see it any more, and even some of the fireworks are obscured. A giant hand appears on the Bridge. 2011, Make Your Mark. With your hands go out into the world and create. High five the people you meet. Offer your hand in love, in gratitude, in peace. Wave goodbye Sydney. 2011, I’m off to make my mark on the world!

Festive Buses

Imagine you're running late. And you're a bit stressed. And you're forgetting to breathe. And you see the bus, but you miss it, and you silently scream because of course you missed the bus, you're running late!! ARG! 

The next bus arrives. You step inside and find yourself in a tinsel forest. The entire bus, every pole and seat is lined with tinsel. There is a Santa statue in front of the ticket machine. The luggage bays are filled with stuffed toys. There is even a Christmas tree. And you find your stress melts away a little bit, because you can't help but smile. And at every stop, more people get on, and they smile too. And it makes you feel nice, and you marvel at the fact that the bus can be a place of such wonder.

And then imagine the girl sitting next to you has a basket full of handmade soft toys. And she looks like a lovely person so you talk to her. And she turns out to be as lovely as she seems. She makes soft toys and is training to be a Kindergarten teacher, and today she is bringing in her craft to share with her class. And you have a conversation all the way to town.

And when you hop off the bus, you feel better. It was worth being late. You got to ride inside a tinsel forest with a friendly fellow human being. If this is the Christmas season, bring it on.

Bits of Lovely

Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a Chicago based American artist, author, and all round inspiring lady. I've been following her blog for the past couple of months, and much like the beautiful Superforest, can always be trusted to inspire beauty, joy, and lightness in the world. Her recent video Train of Thought made me smile this morning. 

Another bit of lovely inspiration is Amy K.R's "7 Things" (listed at the top of this post), shared at an independent TED Talk, TEDxWaterloo.

El Autobus

Image from www.sydneybusmuseum.com/ shopart.htm

I often think that it’s about time I got my driver’s license. Get myself a zippy little car and not be tied to the constraints of Sydney’s over-priced and archaic public transport system.  But that one hour (or so) each way of public transport commute is the best uninterrupted Me Time I get all day. I read, listen to music, and journal. And sometimes, when the stars are in strange alignments, amazing human interactions occur. Last night heading home from work on the 440 bus down Parramatta Rd, a lady sitting next to me asked in a thick accent how many stops were there until Wynyard Station. The eldery gentleman sitting on the other side of the lady piped up and said it was two or three. He then asked the lady, “¿Tu hablas Españoll?” (do you speak Spanish?). She laughed and said yes. Excited at the prospect of practising my Spanish, I said, “Yo hablo un pocito Español!” (I speak a little Spanish). It turned out that the rather adorable elderly gentleman was Italian, and he was a fluent speaker in Italian, Spanish, and English. The lady was Brazilian, and she was a fluent speaker in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. For the next 10 minutes we had ourselves a conversation in a mixture of Spanish, Italian, and English! It lifted my heart and soul to think of how the three of us had come to be in this conversation. Three people of entirely different ages and backgrounds traveling together down the road getting from A to B. Sure every bus trip isn’t filled with such magic, but how wonderful that there is the chance that it could occur. I’m sure I’ll get my license eventually. But in the meantime, I’ll enjoy the me time, and occasional surprising magic, of catching the bus.