tidy

When I was still living at home and bad things happened between people I would start doing the dishes and cleaning up the lounge. It seemed like a practical way to show support without dwelling on or intruding upon the people involved with the problem (when I am publicly upset I like to be left alone so I can pull myself together because if anyone shows any concern or love I won't have any hope of controlling myself and then people will think I am selfish or attention-seeking or dramatic (which I am a bit (which is probably why I don't want them to think this))). So I guess doing practical chores in the face of adversity seemed like a good way to help without sending the person over the edge with personally compassionate gestures. Also a good way to avoid getting stuck in the middle of the situation and thus suddenly and unexpectedly becoming a part of the problem.

I still do this (undertaking practical tasks) sometimes but not as much because while at home I was quite closed off and disconnected from the situation happening around me and had plenty of school work and extra-curricular activities to distract me. I had friends with homes in different towns and a car I could drive wherever and whenever I liked to physically remove myself. In my last year of high school I was hardly ever at home. No matter where home is or how fond of it I am, I have always liked not being home. When I was home and sometimes even when I was not it felt like I was a pillar of sanity and objectiveness amongst illogical turmoil. Nothing affected me and I didn't see why it should. I was probably actually what people call 'cold', sometimes.

Then one time, I think maybe at the end of first year (2009) I went home one time (rare occurrence) and suddenly realised the enormity of the situation and balled my eyes out. Everyone else was over it (in that coping way, not actually over it) and felt incredibly strange and sad.

The next day I woke up and felt small. I always feel small in Cambridge. And quiet. I flew out to Sydney for 2 months and resumed a semi-nomadic lifestyle quite disconnected from 'home' and felt very at home away from home and thinking a lot of my new home in Auckland and maybe future homes. That was a good section of life.

Now that I am in places I actually want to be in I am super connected to the people and spaces I encounter everyday. And it's much more confronting then when I lived at home. I still try to cram my life with other things but not for distraction from others, more for a distraction from the possibility of failure. There is always the hope that a semi-perfect utopia will emerge from the existing goodness. Goodness feels stagnant and complacent. So practical tasks are a good way to occupy otherwise-bare moments. Like taking a stack of chairs back to where they came from at the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, in a languid gap that wasn't meant to be and then was and then wasn't.

Chairs and a table. That's what this post was meant to be about.