Blog
Solidarity
There’s a café up from my work. It’s the kind of place that’s always been there. Named after the woman who runs it. They’ll sell you a sausage with mashed potato down the middle. Lamingtons and apple turnovers. Paninis with cranberry and chicken. If I went, I’d get the lolly cake.
Every Monday, I walk past the window and see the same 3 guys sipping cappuccinos. They’re nodding and smiling. Sharing stories about work, complaining about their jobs.
The guy on the right seems like he’s always just on the edge of cracking up laughing. The slightest hint at a joke could set him off. He’s willing it. Anticipating joy.
They are just so happy to be there with their friends. Drinking coffee in the big city. Mondays, 9am. That’s their time. This is their spot. The table in the sun by the window.
It’s such a great start to my week. A picture of friendship.
And every time I see that picture, I think that it means something. And I think how these kind of pictures are painted by people.
Because you might get lucky and bump into a mate every now and then, but most of the time we need to organise.
We need to find a time and a place that works for everyone and we need to turn up. And we need to turn up prepared to listen, and prepared to share. We need to be willing to laugh. To anticipate joy. It’s our shout if we get that job, but we’re ready to cover someone who’s skint. If one of us makes it, we all make it. But when shit goes wrong, we’re ready. We understand, but we also know that 9am on Monday is important to us and we will do our level best to be there. We need everyone there to make this happen. The cappuccinos don’t taste the same otherwise. This is our time. This is our spot.
Monday, 9am. The café up from work. The table in the sun by the window. A picture of friendship.
It looks like solidarity to me.
It’s been a weird year
“It’s been a weird year; you got that pain in your heart”
In my first year of highschool I just kept walking and walking at lunchtime so people would think I was going somewhere. I never stopped until the bell rung and I could go back to class.
This year we released our 4th album. After much deliberation, I named it after a line from an Elizabeth Strout book, ‘We lived our lives on top of this’.
“There is so much hope in a name.”
When we name something, it becomes loveable. Love in the sense of feeling so strongly that you get overwhelmed and confused. A complicated love that makes you sad and happy and joyful and scared.
“But we’re running out of wall space. Getting so close to nothing at all”.
I’d really like to see you more next year. Everyone’s busy but sometimes I just sit and flick between tabs and wait and wait and then I say I’m not waiting at all. I’d send you a voice note but it’s so hard to form a sentence when I speak. There are all these other thoughts and, does my voice sound dumb, and is my nose sunburnt, and am I starting every sentence with ‘i guess’…
“I always thought we’d have more time to get it right”
I wrote on social media that @lizkelly says “Not hitting skip on things after 2 seconds is important”. But I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s not that I’m bored or not into it, it’s just there’s only 20 minutes before work starts and I need to cook dinner and I haven’t replied to you and I need to be good.
I say things like, ‘it’s not meant to be a strife’ and ‘stress is needless’ but they’ve been stuck on the fridge for too long and I don’t see them anymore.
“It’s the river, alive at the center of the island”
We try to make stuff beautiful to remind ourselves that beautiful stuff can be made. We’re all perfect and broken and we have these stories beneath us and between us. We build lives upon lives, and every time we move we have more stuff to pack.
“It’s a loving with power”
Lunchtime, 2025. I’m walking around before the bell rings and I go back to class.
But holy shit, I’m not walking so people that I’m going somewhere anymore…
I just need some air.