Slow communication

We went out to dinner tonight with our besties and upon arriving home I've realised we had a night of slow communication. Not that the conversation was by any means slow, but that it was based on a shared history that's been nurtured over a period of time.

These are people who know our quirks and can tease us for a propensity to talk tech or music. I can start with some marvellously moronic statement and work in concentric circles around it until I finally stumble across an articulate summation of what I mean - which is not necessarily what I said in the first place.

One word can spark a reminisce or a foray into the future; a discussion can be just that without treading on toes or becoming unpleasantly spiky. In short, it's communication of a quality which is becoming increasingly rare - not just a reflection on our 'growing up' and the other calls on our time, but also upon the depth of sharing and connectedness with other people.

I'm very good at knowing other people 'a little bit'; what they do, who they like, what they read and sometimes even what might make them laugh. I do love to be struck by the novelty of some new fascinating person, and some of them I even pursue, wanting to stab them and stick them up on my wall to be endlessly amusing. Ok, I'm kidding about the stabbing part. And the sticking up on my wall. I don't have enough wall space, what with all the pictures my parents are busy moving from their (old) house to ours.

But my point is, we are connected endlessly (and very traceably, with the advent of the interwebs) but shallowly. The threads are tenuous, and often little mothy holes appear. (I could totally link this to the rise of fast fashion vs. couture and clothing designed to be worn a whole season, not just a week, but it's late and I think you all get my point.)

Is this just a point I'm arriving at? You know, the one where everyone pauses, and takes stock, and realises we spend our lives in fractional milliseconds at a constant and very, very fast rate, and perhaps it would be better to spend it in minutes, hours, even days... just better quality ones?

I'm not sure I've made it to the central circle yet (that's where you meet the pebble that's occasioned all these ripples), but I feel on the edge of something profound. Meditation and learning to live in the moment... I think I'm close. Share the pearls of wisdom, people.

What I did on my Sunday.

Sunday started very early in the morning with a showing of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in honor of Halloween. Then there was some sleeping. And a cooked breakfast, because bacon, egg and hash brown sandwiches are vital to schlepping about at the races before ballet rehearsal. Great idea. The caramel popcorn the night before? Very important part of my never-ending carb/sugar/edible loading. There are just too many pale and shiny leotards in this world for me to cope. Therefore more eating is in order. Where was I? Oh, about ten a.m. on Sunday morning. OK.

We offed to the races in style; me in a 1920s black lace and silk chiffon dress (shoestring straps, fitted, dropped waist, floaty skirt), black headpiece, red sinner lipstick (Poppy King gets some things very, very right), the boy in charcoal pants, black french-cuffed shirt with tie, & snap-brimmed charcoal hat.
If anyone sends me photos I'll add one to this post.

Right now I'd like to send out a fervent thankyou to jp for the tickets. I'm sure a highlight of the whole 'going to the races' experience is queuing for two hours in the dusty carpark, listening to a segment of the population whining "Loz, crack meopen another can, wuldja, me feet are killen me!"
where:
 -  "Loz" is their peroxided cohort with tatts snaking beneath her visible bra strap (NO country race meet is complete without strapless dresses worn with possibly-maternity-bras and DIY oompa-loompa tan)
 - "can" is premixed Bundaberg rum & coke or UDL, served from the esky in the dust and tossed aside when drained
 - "me feet" are encased in unsuitably strappy shoes, which are cast aside shortly after aerating the turf and causing their owner to fall over. Oh, hang on, that's the cans and shoes in cahoots. My mistake.

The other half of the population, being male, are
(a) ogling the girls trying to simultaneously pull their dresses down over their backside and up over their strapless bras (while I wonder just how many seconds will elapse before someone gets that very delicate balancing act VERY wrong)
(b) oscillating between a vantage point and one of the alcohol outlets while making copious use of the word "f%^k" as a noun, verb, and adjective
(c) being tools while dressed as tossers.

I've never seen so much badly applied fake tan in my life, and I've been to a lot of ballet/calesthenics/aerobics events. Really, it was just indomitable proof that there isn't enough love in the world. Because if you really loved your bestie (you know, last-piece-of-chocolate type of love), you wouldn't have driven the Barina out of the driveway. No.

Instead, you would have said "Sweetheart, your legs have funny orange streaks up them and that REALLY clashes with your red undies, which, by the way, you can see straight through that pillowcase masquerading as a dress. And the kilo of clanging brass bracelets is just going to give you a headache by the time you finish that slab of Cruisers in the esky, so why don't you pop back in and trade the indian-feather-headband for a REAL hat, find a dress that covers your nipples and your girly bits AT THE SAME TIME and... those shoes? If you REALLY want to walk on the balls of your feet all day, those shoes are PERFECT. Here's a nail brush so you can get started on all that nice fluorescent dead skin."

Next time I go to the races I'm going to take a belt sander. You have been warned.

Thank you, my lovely commenters...

For you have all cheered me up no end.

Especially the indivisible & indistinguishable one, who has made me shed a few late night tears by leaving SEVENTY PERCENT COCOA FAIRTRADE ORGANIC HEAVEN on my doorstep.
And a card. A LOVELY card, which made me smile even before I opened it because that design has history, man!

The card will last much, much longer than the chocolate, but she really is the bomb. I get to steal her little boy every Thursday and channel some type of Mommy vibe. GIRLFRIENDS who give you chocolate, people. (And their firstborn on a weekly basis!) There's the REAL sisterhood. A guy who give you chocolate? Yeah. That's nice and all. Considerate, even. But when your girlfriend looks you in the eye and says "This is for YOU" that's real love.

Actually, this is me being flippant about something a lot more important than chocolate (which keeps taking me six goes to type), but I can't go getting all mushy and teary now, for I am a BIKER CHICK!
Granted, it was more an "on the back of the bike holding onto the BIKER" chick experience, but oh baby, how I want a motorbike. I'd probably be awful at soloing it, can't really imagine hurtling down to the peninsula with fire-engine-red fiberglass case containing violin on back... hang on... I kind  of can.
Probably not so great with a baby seat though. Or a trailer, which  would need for towing about all my teaching violin/ballet stuff. It was a nice dream though.

And herein ends my post for today. It's been a lovely day. Visited the Toy Library, enjoyed lunch with suzukisinger (yes, she of indivisble fame!), taught kids, they all set nice goals, went to dancing and got my tango on, had my little BIKER CHICK excursion, danced with my lovely hubs (and some other people. Dearly beloved, some of them. Hang on, I only danced with the dearly beloved ones tonight. That's extra nice.) Had a few 'breathing dancing' moments.

Um, this is a little odd. it's about 1am and the pug is sitting on the decking outside grinding away at a bone. And I do mean grinding. It reminds me of that scary story about the couple in the car who hear on the radio that there's a serial killer on the loose.

Then their car breaks down and the guy says he'll walk to get help (GENIUS!!!) and while he's gone the chick hears this scratching sound on the roof alternating with a weird thumping... and then police turn up and it eventuates that the killer grabbed her boyf, decapitated him, and has been alternately scratching his way through the roof of the car and thumping the guys head against the duco... (as one does when one has nothing better to do on a Saturday night, being freshly jailbroken and all) AND he was only a millimetre from busting through the roof!!!

I'm sure there are far better versions of this story, but my point is this: Lucy (pug)  is reminding me of the serial killer. I need to let her in before we seriously freak out the neighbors. Or I have really bad dreams. Hang on, I have chocolate! No bad dreams for me, just sugary goodness!