tall tales ~ issue 26
A text from my sister, words to live by
**Although it is now March, I wrote this when it was February. So let’s all imagine it is still February**
Greetings, friends. Welcome back to another email. I hope you’re well! The month is February. The day is Monday. Well, I’m writing this on a Monday but who knows when you’ll receive it. I’m sitting at The Builders Arms in Fitzroy eating bread and drinking a soda water, which I’m told is what they call a ‘rock and roll lifestyle’. I’m wearing a set of red acrylic talons that simply will not quit (fall off before I go back to the nail place). A man has come to sit opposite me with a crossword puzzle, although I think the crossword is a prop because he seems to just be staring at me instead of the crossword. Oh, how I love to be a woman in the world.
At the end of January I went on a trip to Sri Lanka with my sister. It was the first time my sister and I had travelled as a duo, and it was wonderful. We stayed at a surf camp with 28 Swedish girls, ate a lot of rice and curry, got some strange and inconsistent sun damage, and I hit my surfboard on a ceiling fan which was a brand new experience for me. I had hoped to insert some of my 35mm photos here, but I forgot to take them to the developer until today so… another time.
The title of today’s email comes from a text I received from my sister while we were away. We’d booked a trip to the Udawalawe National Park that left the surf camp at 4am, and my sister decided to join a few of the Swedish girls for a night at the local bar-cum-skate-bowl the night before. My alarm was set for 3:30, and when the chime rolled around I was still alone in our twin room. I sent her two texts:
A few minutes later I received two replies:
Nat was clinging onto the back of a motorbike as she penned that text, but she still managed to accidentally craft a catchphrase for the ages. For the rest of the trip we would intermittently turn to each other and say, ‘I am alive but I am amazing’ and it never failed to make us laugh. But isn’t that it? I am alive, navigating the existential soup, archiving yet another rejection from the literary magazine that will not publish me, emailing my accountant to apologise for making an error on my business activity statement, ordering bread and fizzy water at the pub because my tummy’s feeling a bit funny, and yet! I am amazing. A mantra of sorts.
Before I went to Sri Lanka, I fell off my skateboard without any kind of protective equipment and let me remind you that I am thirty years old. I was also wearing bike shorts, which famously do not extend below the knees. I stripped a great volume of skin off my left knee and it took almost the entire trip to heal, mostly due to the fact that I surfed on it every day (hit it repeatedly against fibreglass while wet). Some of you may remember that last year I was lucky enough to break my wrist snowboarding, and I would like to thank both The Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press for that.
Before 2019, I would never have described myself as ‘sporty’ or ‘outdoorsy’. I liked exercise, but on the whole I was more of an inside cat. Snowboarding came first, and then eventually I just assumed surfing was the same but less cold which was incorrect on both counts. What I remember most clearly about 2019 was that I was so full of nervous energy, so ready to do anything and everything, and do it very fast. I had just left a relationship that made me feel like life was small and stiff, so in response I hurled myself at anything or anyone that made me feel otherwise. I think I wanted to prove that I could be sporty; that I could enjoy being outside.
For the last few months I’ve spent a lot of emotional energy collecting documents to apply for a US work visa. It is not a process I would recommend, although if you’re on the path to applying for an O-1 visa for extraordinary ability I now know about thirty things and would be happy to share them with you. The reason I bring this up is because it’s made me think a lot about myself. Yuck! I’ve spent hours assessing myself in relation to others, sizing myself up against those I consider to be ‘extraordinary’ and also typing the word extraordinary so many times it has lost all meaning. Naturally, in assessing my achievements I’ve also lost a great many hours assessing my productivity in other areas: am I an extraordinary friend? Partner? Daughter? Fan of the work of Rachel Weisz?
The thing about surfing is that it’s really hard. It has taken me years to nervously refer to myself as ‘intermediate’. The learning curve is steep, and if you have a full life it’s hard to get enough time in the water to progress. The fact that I will never become a professional surfer is such a comfort to me — I don’t have to be good, I don’t have to be great, and I certainly don’t have to be extraordinary. The reason I love surfing so much is because it sits at a right angle to everything else I do: it really is just for fun.
The thing about writing is that it’s really hard. I’m trained as a screenwriter but when it comes to prose I’m just out here taking large and mostly uncoordinated swings. I read a lot, I listen to a lot of writer talks on craft and practice, but on the whole I’m just trying to make something I would want to read. The books I love are celebrities to me — the experience of reading them lives in my head like the personal life and dating history of Taylor Swift lives in many other peoples’ heads sometimes against their will. I use too many adverbs and I love run-on sentences. I hate having to decide what a character ‘wants’ beyond an iced coffee and a big sandwich. But I do love writing, and when it’s fun it’s really fun.
You can be extraordinary and also sooooooooooo ordinary. You are, in fact, so ordinary you have never had an original thought in your life. And yet! Like I said last month, you are perfectly unique, so specifically different to everyone around you — you’ve never met someone quite like you. I guess what I’m saying is that both things can be true: you can be alive, and you can also be amazing.
❤️🔥
stories of note
Eros The Bittersweet - A huge shout-out to Art, who recommended this essay to me off the back of a previous tall tales! In it, Anne Carson explores the concept of Eros in ancient Greek literature, and I dog-eared about 40 pages of it. I particularly loved this quote: The words we read and the words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.
One Day - Netflix really delivered, and it will make you sob!!! Ambika Mod for everything. Much better than the 2011 film adaptation.
Broey Deschanel - I love this channel. If you ever have a spare forty minutes and you like movies, Maia has so many insightful video essays about so many different films, directors, cultural moments or trends. In particular, I loved her video on Melodrama and May December.
i am alive but i am amazing