/karen/

... for its body and not its brain

Monday, 05 December, 2005

I meant to go see Pride and Prejudice on Sunday but that was before I opened Anansi Boys and wolfed it down in one gulp (all the while hearing Neil reading in my head and doing all the voices). Since I didn't finish it until 2 am, I decided to sleep in instead and spent the afternoon taking it easy, watching highlights of Legally Blonde, playing the New Tetris and generally not doing very much at all.

At 5, however, I had to be at church. After taking care of our friends' plants and mail (the ones who lent us their Nintendo), I made the trek to church and found that it only takes 10 min from our place. No one else was there so I picked the songs myself. Unfortunately that meant that the congregation didn't really know the first one (doh!)

Julia had made all these scrumptious salad-ey things for dinner. Because we were going to have a congregational meeting, we tried to do wash-up quickly but there was also a FEVA mailout to do and Judith had us working in teams conveyor-belt style—folding, stamping, stuffing, sealing, labelling etc. There were roughly 1,000 to do and they were still going at 11 pm when my ride was leaving.

One thing that I discovered which is supremely cool is the FEVA Christmas Cards. They are quite reasonably priced: $8 for a pack of 4; $14 for a pack of 8. And they will ship them to you for free!! So if you want to support FEVA, why not order some? (I especially like Bron's design—the one with the tree).

Today I also had vague thoughts about going to see Pride and Prejudice but again I was up 'til 2 talking to Janet on Trillian and then couldn't sleep so started reading until my eyes felt heavy. But my main objective for today was to go see a doctor like everyone advised so I caught the bus to Broadway and went in to the medical centre. Unfortunately there unless you have a healthcare card, they will charge you $50 for a consultation. (Lucky I have one.)

There was no airconditioning (not sure if there ever is airconditioning in that part of the building) so it was extremely stuffy. I don't know how the doctors and receptionists managed to work in such a sauna. The guy I saw was very nice and turned out to be a Christian. After talking to me and going through some of the symptoms of depression, he said he didn't reckon I had it but recommended counselling so my next step is to find a good one in Sydney who won't charge an arm and a leg. It was good to hear from a professional who knows what he's talking about.

Today was the day where I would treat myself to a day out in Sydney. Unlike those described by the Whitlams I actually really like the city of Sydney. I like the sculpted sandstone on the buildings near Hyde Park. I like the funny toilet cubicles shaped like horse stalls at the bottom of the Queen Victoria Building (from when they used to have stables there). I like that all my favourite stores (Allans Music, Galaxy Bookshop, Kinokuniya) are all within walking distance. I like watching the masses of people swarming on by through the Town Hall intersection. I wanted to do something nice but not shopping since I'd just end up spending a lot of money unnecessarily and I remembered the Art Gallery. So good because it's airconditioned, free and there is a Camille Pissarro exhibition on at the moment which isn't free but nevertheless, how often do you get to see the canvases of the great masters in person? (If you haven't heard of Pissarro, shame on you; he is one of my favourite Impressionists).

I hopped on another bus and went to Martin Place where I kept getting distracted by shops (like Fish Fine Music who did have Before Time Could Change Us (the jazz CD Katie Noonan did with Paul Grabowsky which won an ARIA this year for Best Jazz Album) but strangely enough only one disc of it. They did let me have a listen and it is lovely and I hope I get it for Christmas but I probably won't (trust me to like obscure things that nobody's ever heard of ...).

I walked through Martin Place and thought I'd have my lunch under a tree in the Domain (large grassy park behind the hospital and the State Library for those of you who don't live in Sydney) but unfortunately most of it had been fenced off for Homebake which was over but all the stuff still hadn't been dismantled (stupid Homebake, spoiling our Domain!) I walked all the way around it in the hot sun until I found a nice shady place to eat my sushi rolls for lunch.

Then I went to see the Pissarro exhibition and it was lovely. He said,

One can make such beautiful things with so little. Old Corot made lovely things at Gisors: two willows, a bit of water, a bridge. Happy are those who see beautiful things in modest places. Everything is beautiful, the whole thing is to know how to interpret.

He was right in the thick of Impressionism (he knew all the greats—Monet, Renoir, Degas—and he influenced Van Gogh) and his canvases display such light and colour—the palette of the bygone era of My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle. I especially love the way he paints trees with their slender trunks, fluid branches and thick leafy foliage.

I didn't realise that he was also a print-maker and somehow he managed to translate his signature style into etchings mixed with aquatints and drypoints. For him, the transition to Post-Impressionism or Neo-Impressionism was logical. From the program:

The art critic Edmond Duranty had described the aims of the Impressionist painters: “To decompose the solar light into its rays, into its elements, and to recompose its unity through the general harmony of iridescences that they spread over their canvases”. It seemed to Pissarro that Neo-Impressionism was entirely consistent with such an ambition. It was Impressionism rationalised and regularised.

I love how the Impressionists would look at something—like a beige door—and in it see reds and blues because of the light. It's easy to see where Grace Cossingto Smith got her influences from.

I ended up buying a small stack of postcards. I briefly looked at the exhibition on Australian Photography but it wasn't that interesting and the Grace Cossington Smith retrospective was the same one that was on at the National Gallery of Australia when I was down there in April. So I walked through Hyde Park back towards Town Hall, made the mistake of walking into Dirt Cheap CDs (where everything costs roughly $10 and the labels are a real pain to remove [I usually resort to sunblock and tissues to scrub off the last of the glue], though they seem to be getting better and easier to remove in one piece) and I walked out with The Princess Diaries under my arm. Rockbottom Music was similarly enticing but neither had any Katie Melua.

A quick tour of Kinokuniya (during which Ben rang to tell me that he'd found us another car in Canberra so bye bye Shamgar, we'll miss you) and then my last stop was Comic Kingdom which was less impressive than I thought it would be and even a bit creepy.

Back on the fabulous 412 bus once again which bore me safely all the way home. I started cooking and my father and stepmother came around for dinner. This is an extremely rare event—so rare it's never happened before. I invited them on the spur of the moment and then later started worrying about they'd think about my house (still not very clean) and my cooking. My dad said that when my brother heard that they were going to my house, he said, “Why wasn't I invited?” Oops, and he'll never let me forget it.

They brought me lots and lots of fruit plus a cake from Michel's which I don't know how I'm going to finish and ate all of my dinner. My dad talked about China, communism and democracy and how people these days clamour too much for their rights but don't think about their responsibilities. He said we take it for granted that people here line up in queues to buy things like train tickets; in China, everyone just races to be first (sounds rather typically Asian behaviour to me!)

They were feeling tired (and I was feeling tired too) so they left fairly early. I might go to bed now but I'm scared I'll just be awake for ages again. I wish I had a set of speakers in the bedroom that I could connect my MP3 player to—then I'd play talks by D.A. Carson and Phillip Jensen over and over until I drop off.

Maybe I'll go see Pride and Prejudice on Wednesday.

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