Snotty Singing

After reading the letter from Cam I chucked it in my bag and left work to go to my singing lesson. I felt perfectly fine, I really did. I was nervous about the lesson but really excited, too.

M had made a pot of lemon tea with honey (which he said is good for warming up the throat and is what professional singers often drink as part of their prep, which made me blush- fancy thinking of my lessons as in any way associated with something professional!). We had a bit of a talk about my expectations of these lessons. I said "I just want to be able to hold a tune so I don't hate the sound of my own voice when I sing in the shower."

M thought that was funny and said "Well, that's a good starting place at any rate."

Then we started to do some warm up exercises- some scales and things. And the weirdest thing happened. Halfway through a C major scale I felt this sensation in my throat and chest and before I knew it this enormous sob had burst out of me. I had no idea where it came from or why it chose that moment to emerge. And then I was crying uncontrollably, in front of this guy that I've only met once before, when I thought I was feeling perfectly fine.

M. was amazing. He didn't try to stop me or ask me what was wrong. He just handed me an enormous hankie and poured me another tea. He didn't even make those "there there" noises that most people seem to think they should. And because I wasn't being pushed I started telling him about the horrible week I'd had with the diary and the letter from Cam. I'm so embarrassed to think about this now- he must think I'm a nutbag, but if he did, he certainly hid it well.

He eventually asked me about my family and I explained how it was only mum and me. I even told him about Stevie and how dad had left after the accident and we hadn't had any contact since. And M. said "That's a lot to be carrying around. If I were you I'd be crying all the time." This made me feel better, even if I also felt slightly fraudulent because I hadn't told him everything, of course.

After this I thought I should go home, but M. convinced me to stay. I said "I don't think I can really manage anything much at the moment" and he said "Ok, let's sing some advertising jingles." I was a bit dubious, because this didn't really seem like proper singing but it was actually a lot of fun. And by the time the hour was up I was feeling a lot better. And M. said "We'll have you singing in the shower in no time."

Our next class is on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to it.

Alphabetical Beaus

Have just thought of something odd. I've been working through the alphabet with my boyfriends.
A = Anthony
B= Brett
C = Cam

I wonder if I should start looking out for Davids and Darrens? Or should I be avoiding them?

Letter

Eventually, on Friday afternoon, I read the letter from Cam. It's convinced me that it wasn't him who sent me the diary with the erased page. It also convinced me that I made the right decision about calling off the wedding.

Dear Jess,

I hope you will at least do me the favour of reading this letter all the way through. As you know, I'm not much of a one for expressing my inner feelings and am also not great at letter writing. You should see how many versions of this are already in the bin! So I hope you understand how much effort I've gone to.

When you first left South Lake I admit that I thought "She'll be back." I guess I didn't ever really see you as a particularly strong person. You seemed to depend on me a lot to help you out. Plus you'd never lived away from home before so I was really surprised when you weren't back in a week or so.

I guess I was pretty angry at you too, as you made me look stupid in front of everyone here. I don't want to sound vain but I'm generally considered to be a good catch around here and I had a lot of girls throwing themselves at me after the word got around you'd dumped me. But the thing is, Jess, that after a month or so I realised that none of them made me feel like you did. None of them listened to me and talked about how I was feeling. I know I used to complain and tease you when you wanted to talk about this kind of thing but now I don't have it I realise that I kind of liked it. It's like a mozzie bite that annoys you at the time but once it's healed you find you still itch your leg.

So the thing is Jess that I've forgiven you now and would be happy to have you back. You should stop being so proud and just admit you made a mistake. Everybody here thinks I'm nuts for still being hung up about you but I can't help it. Richo has also said that if you want to call him he'll tell you about what a great guy I am and why we should still get married. This sounds like I'm up myself but Richo made me put it in the letter.

I'm going to stop this letter now as I'm running out of things to say. But to sum up I guess I'd say that you should stop being so stubborn and just come back and we'll forget about all of this stuff that's happened over the last year.

love you honey
Cam

ps in case you're wondering how your mum got your address someone sent it to us on a postcard but didn't put their name on it. Maybe one of your Melbourne friends who was worried about you I don't know.

I read this and thought this : whatever.

The PS, of course, has me perplexed and a little nervous. Who would do that?

Translations

I'm sure there aren't many little girls that dream of being a translator when they grow up, but I did. Admittedly, I never confessed to this publicly- I pretended I wanted to be an airline hostess or a model like all the other girls. But I was fascinated by languages very early on, particularly Japanese with its beautiful written form.

I think what initially appealed to me about being a translator was the sensation of "decoding", of finding out the meaning of a word and then changing it into another word, that conveyed the same meaning in another language. I saw it as being a code with only one solution and this was soothing and reassuring to me. Of course, after a while I realised that it wasn't quite like this; that words wriggle around between countries and take on slightly different tones, slightly different weights when they cross borders.

Words slide around and there is nothing you can do to fix them in place. And because I spend my working day reading words and thinking "how else could I express this? What else are they trying to say?" I find that this colours everything I read.

I received another mail item yesterday- a letter from my mother that contained another letter, from Cam. So I know they have my postal address now. Mum's letter was more of a note:

Jess- I've included a letter from Cam who was worried you wouldn't open it if he sent it to you directly. I think you should know that you've broken his heart and he's still grieving for you.

Blah blah blah.

I haven't read Cam's letter yet, maybe at lunchtime.

I cancelled my singing lesson last night and M. somehow convinced me to come tonight instead, although I really don't feel like it. He is one of those people with a skill for convincing you to do things you don't want to do. Typical teacher.

Parcel

I went to pick up the parcel at lunchtime yesterday. It was quite small and fairly fat and I assumed it was a book. Then I went across to the park where I often eat my lunch. Then I opened up the package. At first I didn't recognise it- a child's diary with the inevitable "keep out" written on the front (and underlined several times.) And then I realised it looked familiar. So I opened it up and sure enough, in the front page was written:

Jess Carmichael
I live at 28 Leister St South Lake
I am 7 years old
This diary was started on Jan 1 1980.

Already I was feeling quite strange about all of this, and looked at the packaging to see if there were any clues as to who sent it. I obviously suspected mum, but I haven't been in contact with her since moving and she would have had to track down my address. And when I looked at the postmark I realised it was not even from Australia ( I couldn't actually work out where it was from). It suppose it might be Cam, but it doesn't really seem like the sort of thing he'd do. But if not them, who else?

I started flipping through the pages of the diary. It contained exactly the sort of things most little girl's diaries do- descriptions of school events, petty squabbles with friends, parties, desired objects. But then I got to March 30. The page had been completely rubbed out so that not even the faintest trace of text could be read, not even the impression of the pen was visible. Even feeling as shocked as I did, I still managed to acknowledge the irony of the fact that while March 30 1980 had been removed from this diary it remains so indelible in my head. An hyperlit scene.

By the time I got back to the office I felt shaky. Even Mr W, who never notices these things said "Jess, what's wrong?" and then I ran to the loo and was sick. Sympathy has that effect, sometimes.

So I went home and lay on the couch and Kibble sat on my chest and purred in a very concerned fashion.

I am supposed to be having my first singing lesson tonight but I think I might cancel.

Post

Such a strange 24 hours. It's been so hot and windy. Then there's this war business which I don't want to think about. So I'm not going to. I had a great night with Matsuko at the Beck concert last night- we went to a bar before-hand and had a beer. I found myself talking quite a bit- normally it's Matsuko that talks. But I was in the mood and she is good to talk to because she doesn't push you into saying things you don't want to.

I have told her before about Cam, but not in very much detail- just that I was engaged to a guy back home and that when I broke it off I felt like I had to leave. Last night I told her a bit more about it. I told her how much my family loved him and how angry they were with me when it ended. Matsuko said "Why were they angry? It can't have been an easy thing to do." I told her how mum had said "You'll never find anyone who is as good to you as Cam." Then I got a bit carried away (Matsuko is such an attentive listener, and it felt nice to have someone paying attention) and I ended up telling her how as I was leaving mum had said to me "You don't even deserve him, considering what sort of a person you are."

Of course Matsuko wanted to know what I meant by that and I realised that I'd gone too far. I just kind of evasively said something about how mum and I had had a few fallings out when I was a little kid and we'd never really gotten back on track after that. She said "That's a bit weird, all little kids are shits, aren't they?" I just laughed and then it was time to go anyway.

And it was fun.

When I got home I found a pick up notice for a parcel which I'll go and collect at lunchtime. No idea what it could be.

Singing

Hmmm. I've possibly done the most stupidly wasteful thing of my life: last evening I signed up for 10 singing lessons and handed over 500 dollars in cash. As I handed over the money I had to stop myself calculating how many Motor-Cross magazines and Angler's Quarterly journals I'd have to translate to earn that amount back. It doesn't bear thinking about.

But I did it and I'm determined to be optimistic. The singing teacher was really lovely and I think this made it a bit easier. I was so terrified that by the time I got to his studio (after basically running all the way from work to make it in time) I was a slippery sweaty mess (it was very hot yesterday too.) But M. (the singing teacher) shook my hand as if he didn't even notice how damp my hand was, and smiled in a manner that suggested he was genuinely glad to see me.

I sang the National Anthem, which is dreadfully lame, I know, but it was the only song that I felt confident that I wouldn't forget the words to half way through from nerves. I don't think I'll ever forget them, to be honest. All those years of standing in school assembly singing it makes me suspect that even when I'm an old, senile woman who can't remember her own name I'll still remember "Advance Australia Fair". Both verses.

He then asked me to do a couple of funny little exercises- singing notes that he played on the piano.The notes were hopping about all over the keyboard. At first I couldn't really do it at all- I think I was too self-conscious, but the M. said "O.K. Now I want you to pretend you are a frog singing the notes. Try to make them sound croaky. And imagine that you are green and covered in warts." It was dumb, of course, and obviously designed to make me not worry so much about it but it worked. I was even laughing a bit by the end and said "OK now I'm going to sing it as if I were a frog turning into a prince." M. laughed too when I said that and I think it was a genuine laugh.

So we start next week.

And in other world-shattering news, I'm going to see Beck tonight. Matsuko came in yesterday with a spare ticket- her friend can't make it and she offered it to me. I don't really know much about Beck's music but it'll be fun to hang out with Matsuko. She makes me laugh. Today she brought in a new toy of hers- a dinosaur that "roars" when you click its back. She was singing Beck songs to get me familiarised with the music and making the dinosaur join in with the occasional appropriately-timed roar.

In Which I Commence my Blog.

This blog was my New Year’s Resolution. It’s just taken me a while to get onto it. Why a blog? My idea is that I can use it to get into the habit of regular writing and maybe develop the characters for my book. Up until now I do most of my writing at home in a Word document, but I've slowed down recently and thought that having a blog might re-ignite my interest. I must admit I haven't addded much to the story since I started working for Mr W.

The problem is that after working all day in front of a screen, the last thing I feel like when I get home is doing more of the same. So more often than not I end up heating left overs and sitting on the couch with Kibble and watching tv together. (Well, Kibble sits on my chest and takes swipes at my nose and I watch tv.) Of course, keeping a blog still involves staring at a screen, but I'm hoping that the whole thing of it being "published" once it's online, and the fact that anyone could stumble across it, will inspire me. Anyway, that's the rationate.

I know I’ve been slipping into bad habits. I’ve been here for a year now; it’s time to do some of the things I promised myself that I would do- those little pledges I made so I would actually leave. So my first step was to get an Internet connection and the second was to assign time to doing some writing. And good things are happening already.

I finally rang the guy about singing lessons, although I was so embarrassed doing it. I was all sweaty and kept saying “I’m really terrible. It’s probably going to be a waste of your time” even though, of course, I’d be paying him. But he was very nice and told me to come in for a chat tomorrow after work. With a favourite song in mind. (oh my!)

Then there is the bug catcher I bought from the Guide Dogs association yesterday. It is exactly like the one I had- it even has the plastic leaf with the fake ant stuck on it. It’s not the one I actually owned, of course- I checked it for my secret mark, but still, it’s pretty good and I’m really happy with it. That’s one more thing off the list.

So I'm feeling pretty good and excited at the moment.