Love and Other U-Turns Read online

  So he moved out of his house, gave away his car, planted a tent in a camping ground along the coast and decided to switch to cycling, for his health and for the environment.

  ‘It’s funny, Louisa. The day I decided I wanted to ride a bike I found one on the beach.’

  I ask the questions I know people will want to know the answers to.

  ‘So … what if you get cold? I mean, you live in Melbourne?’

  ‘I wear thermals. And you get used to it. Walking to the showers, warming up with exercise. That’s when I started running ten kilometres a day. It warms me up.’

  I look at this fresh-faced man, musing that he is probably healthier than many of the men and women I know who live in houses, drive cars and ‘pay’ to exercise at gyms.

  ‘We need a lot less than we think we do, Louisa. It’s just a matter of taking care of yourself.’

  He slips back behind the counter, his friends from other countries making jokes, singing, moving in a rhythm of grateful productivity. I walk back along the creek, vowing to put warmth before looks from now on.

  At home, I transcribe the tape, and Jim listens, as he washes the dishes. Shanaka only eats once or twice a day, ‘But I make it really good food.’ He stays at friends’ houses instead of the tent when they need a house-sitter. And he seems to look after himself physically and mentally better than anyone else I know. ‘There is so much waste in modern society, Louisa. I mean, my friends are going to pay someone to look after their animals while they are gone. As well as pay their mortgage. As well as pay for accommodation where they are going for a “holiday”. So in effect, they are paying for their own accommodation three times. And that’s how I used to live, too.’

  Jim, who had an outside office as well as his Sydney flat before he threw it all away, remembers the pressure of lots of bills. ‘There comes a point where your possessions own you,’ Jim says. I pause the tape. I think, for a moment, of all the places I would explore without what I perceive as ‘ties’, binding me to Melbourne. Like the rent on this flat.

  Something about Shanaka really struck me. Rather than the clichéd hippy who owns nothing because he can’t be bothered getting a job or working for the ‘suits’, he is the antithesis of laziness, and has managed to reach a middle ground between using his education and intelligence and eschewing cultural mores that he doesn’t agree with. His modus operandi is economy. Use less. Think for yourself. He hadn’t even wanted to tell me he only eats once a day. ‘Everyone has to do what feels right for them,’ he’d said.

  Jim finishes the dishes and sits beside me. He has no gigs to book, nowhere to drive, nothing to hunt or gather. So he turns on the TV and settles in for a night of sport. I cook us curry for dinner and he wolfs it down without looking at the bowl, cheering at the TV when the Swans score a goal.

  One morning, Jim takes a 4 am call about a death in his family. In the past week we’ve been to a country town outside Canberra and driven to Sydney and back twice. My body is feeling as rocked as it did when I was in the middle of Mullumbimby, and my cycle has gone out of whack again. Plus, I have a story to finish up over the next day, so I kiss Jim goodbye as he leaves for the funeral at daybreak, feeling like a weakling for not going with him.

  ‘See you on Friday,’ I say, ‘give your family my love.’

  I go back to bed, revelling in the chocolate starfish action and set to work on my article when I wake. My phone rings, later that day.

  ‘Oh Lou.’ He always says it like he’s glad he’s caught me, like it’s a surprise I even picked up the phone.

  ‘Jim.’

  He’s just been selected for jury duty in Sydney. Of all things – a manslaughter trial for a drunken brawl at a Sydney pub.

  ‘How long are you there for?’

  ‘It looks like it’s going to be at least a month.’

  I wander through the flat looking for physical reminders of his presence, eventually finding a leftover can of Rexona Black and a t-shirt, which I pathetically sniff like a dog who misses its owner.

  ‘This is what people with jobs must feel like,’ Jim says on the phone the next morning, walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during peak-hour to make it to the County Court in the city. Paid a wage, fed and forced to sit in a room with no pens, paper or entertainment except the grisly details of a murder trial swimming in his brain, his job is to decide whether a man is guilty of manslaughter or not. All while being monitored.

  Not a fan of conflict, and the only one on a jury of twelve who believes the man is innocent, the psychic dilemma of deciding a man’s fate makes him sick. He gets diarrhoea, can’t sleep, and calls me to debrief every night on the strange group dynamics of the people in the jury, the video of the brawl they are forced to watch umpteen times, the strange case of one decision to take a swing at someone which missed and landed on someone else, killing them.

  I wake in fright in the middle of the night after another long debrief before I’d slipped into a dream, thinking I’ve killed someone and I can’t remember who it was. I toy with the idea of driving to Sydney to be with him, but since he is sequestered in the court for nine hours each day, and I have more stories which need finishing, and no mobile internet on my laptop, I decide against it. Also, I feel I need to make a decision. Something has been niggling, and it’s not just the sense that Jim’s paid jury duty came just in the nick of time for him financially. We aren’t meant to live this way, together. He’s been trying to hide the fact that his comedy just doesn’t have much of a market in Melbourne, unless he turns the crass gags into philosophical double entendres, which just isn’t his style anymore.

  You can tell a lot about a city by the things they laugh at. Melbourne is less in-your-face than Sydney, and we like our comedians a bit more introverted. The only night I see him really raise the roof is at Young and Jackson’s, and that’s because most of the crowd are from overseas, and he plays his send-up of the typical Aussie.

  I head out with a bunch of girlfriends one night when he’s away. We eat Spanish paella and drink nice wine. The whole night is enjoyable, comfortable, friendly. They talk about their jobs, we drink and eat more than we should, and in the morning we go out for coffee, eggs and the papers. I look around at all our nice clothes and our comfort and contentment. I think of what I’ve achieved and that I’m finally earning a steady income from what I love, that the whole reason I chose this profession was for the freedom to come and go and be who and as I please. But am I really challenging myself anymore?

  I come home and drink far too much red wine in front of the TV. No. I’m plateauing. It’s all too easy.

  That night, I dream children in Western Australia touch Jim’s clown suit to receive spontaneous healing. I dance beside him, planting seeds which sprout overnight into flowers dripping with words. People eat them, and feel nourished.

  When I wake I am petrified, with my heartbeat quickening and a strange sense of urgency, like I’ve got to run, now. Like I must jump off a cliff without first checking that I even have a parachute.

  And then I set about throwing away my belongings.

  In three weeks, I shed a one-bedroom flat full of furniture, whitegoods, clothes, shoes, books, appliances, crockery and manchester. A mint collection of US Elle magazines hit the racks of the local op shop, and a bookshelf worth of modern classics travels from my flat to the local library shelves.

  I start small, going through my filing cabinet of papers and references, paring it down to a folder of vital tax and banking information and article resources, lugging rubbish bag after rubbish bag of my life’s history down the stairs and filling up the recycle bin. Every item gets assessed for deep significance and sentimental value, until gradually I am asking even the most lovely of my belongings to prove their worth. The odd connection between my vision of myself and my belongings means that the shedding is like a deep, intense, week-long version of psychotherapy over a relationship which has served its purpose. Are you replaceable? Are you holding me back? Does hol
ding on to you stop me from exploring better things, growing, learning? Who am I without you?

  Monks shave their heads as a symbol of their commitment to a new spiritual beginning. So it feels with my clean-out. I begin to understand why people sometimes report relief after a fire has burned down their home, with all of their possessions. Like a fast cleansing, they are free to see themselves without any objects to hide behind.

  I place my furniture online, snapping photographs of my double bed, bedside tables, couch, desk, bookshelves, fridge and microwave, working on into the night with this process of shedding. My girlfriends argue over the ten pairs of heels I shuck, each retrieving CDs, make-up, bags and dresses as the shedding becomes more and more extreme.

  My sister, angry that I’m going away, has been silent for two weeks. Finally she calls, and I take the juicer over as a peace offering. ‘I need one of those,’ she says.

  The fridge is lugged away one night by an army captain furnishing his new house on the beach. The couch, by a secondhand re-seller. A bookshelf, to my brother. My father’s books, to my mum. My diaries plus photos, in boxes, to live atop my brother’s house in the attic. In a way, I feel like I would as if I was witnessing my own death. The clean-up. The distribution of the spoils. What I’ve left behind.

  After I give written notice to the real estate agent on the apartment I’ve rented for three years, I take a deep breath and call Jim.

  ‘Want to hit the road again?’

  He sighs. ‘I think I’ve been waiting for you to say that.’

  A remarkable thing happens, as I start to discard belongings, a side-effect I hadn’t been expecting, and only when I’ve got over the shock of actually following through on one of the craziest ideas of my life: my confidence grows. But it’s not in the way you feel when you put on a new dress, or get presented with an award, or could ever feel from any outward accolade at your worth.

  Stripped of everything, I’m forced to look at what my real assets are, in non-physical terms. My brain. The way I tell my own story. The current moment – my only power. It sounds new-agey, corny, clichéd. But it’s how I feel, after the initial shock. That I’d been resting on society’s version of what makes you a valid person for too long. And now, after making the leap of trying to see what life is like beyond things, I’ve finally met the truth.

  At first it’s like a nightmare. I look around at the sparse flat, like a half-empty shell of my life. All that’s familiar is gone. What have I done?! But then, as if I’m camping and need to remember a new routine, each day is simplified. I start – and finish – with purpose. Liberated. Anew.

  Having less physically, makes me more focused on my intentions and my actions. Without cushions, advice, safety, warnings, how far can one leap? More importantly, what do I want to be and do each day? Get published, keep up my relationships, stay healthy. Surprisingly, I don’t need as much for that as I thought. It’s more reliant on how I think, feel and behave than what I have.

  One of the hardest parts of the cleansing was letting go of a filing cabinet full of article references, ideas, papers and sources. I had to trust, when I let them go, that I finally have the skills to find the information that I need for each article as it comes. Instead of a three-drawer filing cabinet of twenty kilograms worth of papers, it’s all on my laptop, which sits perched on an empty box in my living room. But I have one more big thing to do before I’m truly free.

  I throw out the internet modem, and go into the city to look for something Jim had showed me – a little matchbox-sized plug-in modem which means I can connect my laptop to the internet from anywhere. It turns out that freedom isn’t as popular – or as easy to find, in 2006– as I’d hoped.

  When I go to the computer shop it takes four conversations before I can track down what it’s called. It strikes me that what I’m doing is not unlike how I feel when I’m researching an article on a topic nobody has heard of yet. It takes so many questions, going beyond the ‘nos’ and the ‘I don’t knows’ until I find the person at the end of the tunnel who has one vital clue which will carry the thread of the whole story. Finally, an IT whiz appears, who has ‘heard of’ these ‘minimax thingies’ you can plug into your laptop. It takes two hours, and they mistakenly call me ‘Doctor’ on my necessary contract, but I get it connected.

  I walk home from the city with my laptop, stopping at a park bench to connect. I look up at the trees, smiling. I’m free.

  I go from owning thirty pairs of shoes to my runners, my leather sandals, one pair of heels and one pair of boots. Working through my wardrobe is like sifting through the albums of past lives, and from a drawer full of waitressing aprons to tops worn once to events long over, each trip to The Brotherhood bin makes me feel lighter, freer, more mobile. And weirdly, more myself. Why did I ever buy all this stuff?

  The wasted money I’ve spent on once-worn tops here, unread books there and CDs which make me cringe fills me with shame. As I sift through the material documentation of my life, loves and history, I remember, piece by piece, how many times I have bought something to make myself feel better. And has it worked? Perhaps like a drug or a sugar fix, the effects last a few hours. At best, a day. But then you’re left with no actual action that you’ve taken, to carry yourself forward to who you want to be. Except this Neptunian idea which came to you on the lips of an advertisement which promised consumption had the power to transform you.

  Not true! My soul cries in realisation. The television goes, quickly, and I don’t even miss it. Generic ideas, advice, manufactured fears and conflict-induced dramas leave my flat and I am quickly at peace, living intentionally, awake to just how many hours there are in the day when you’re not listening to endless chatter and other people’s dramas.

  As I take bag after bag after bag of clothes to op shops, books to the library and possessions to friends’ houses, I drive home feeling as if I’ve lost weight. I step lighter up the stairs to my flat, and my energy has already shifted from a constant rewind to the past back to the here and now. My body standing in an empty flat. Pure potential, like supergirl waiting for take-off.

  Another remarkable thing starts to happen. I become more confident with strangers. I’ve always been chatty, friendly to those I don’t know, but this is a different friendliness. I’ve lost the fear that comes with needing to protect your space. I have no delineations anymore, no definition via address or things, so in effect, I have nothing to lose. And, now that I don’t have stuff to return to, I feel I’ve been given more hours in the day, as well.

  The neighbour downstairs, mentally ill, living in the only commission flat in the block, asks to borrow my vacuum cleaner one day. The next day, I hear a knock at the door. It’s her again, twitching and muttering, holding the vacuum cleaner, and something else. ‘I heard you cough last night. Thought you might like this.’ It’s chicken and corn soup. She runs away, nervously.

  With nothing to steal, and no distraction of objects to replace interaction, I feel a sort of openness to the world I’d only ever felt when I was travelling before.

  As I’m sitting on a box in my almost empty flat, typing an email to an editor over a story on Chinese medicine, a young woman appears, squinting to look through my window.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she says, when she sees that I’m home, explaining that she saw the flat advertised for lease and she wanted to see it before the group inspection.

  ‘You can come in if you like!’ Why not? I don’t have to be anywhere.

  I show her around, and she says she’s on her way to uni.

  ‘I’m studying Chinese medicine.’

  We trade emails, and she refers me to two experts, invites me to her house and loans me an excellent book which I use for the article.

  It’s quite amazing how quickly things move once you make a decision. It’s only been three weeks since Jim left but the flat is almost empty now. And I’m no longer waking half in shock, looking at the changes in my environment. I open my eyes, fully conscious. With n
o physical clues to who I was, can and should be, from now on I can do whatever I want. Simplifying my environment has shucked an enormous amount of useless clutter from my heart.

  The effect has been physical, too. In three weeks I’ve lost three kilograms. The flat isn’t that cosy to hang around, so I go down to the creek, the park or the beach when I need a visual fix of natural beauty. I no longer focus on what I can buy or accumulate, now I look for what’s already there. What I won’t need to carry.

  ‘What are you sitting on, in your flat?’ Dec asks, feeding his dog absentmindedly from the couch.

  ‘Boxes. I like it. Simplicity.’

  He pats the dog then looks out the window.

  ‘I didn’t have a bed for a year when I lived in Queensland. Just slept on the floor. You need less than you think you do …’

  My main aim, through all of this, is to be as portable, economical and self-sufficient as I can. I look at the fine print of the phone bills I have been unquestionably paying for years, and realise I have been spending at least five hundred dollars a month on phone calls. Jim, who is on the phone constantly, spends less than a third of that. I switch plans, after doing a couple of hours of research. What else have I been blindly accepting?

  After disconnecting my home phone and land internet, transferring to cheaper plans, closing off my contracts, and ensuring my work life is as portable as possible, I have cut my living costs by over a half. Now, the only thing left to get rid of is the car.

  Because Jim and I will be travelling together, it makes sense that an extra car is not only wasteful, but unnecessary. Still, it takes a big dose of braveness to let go of the car, something that represented my own freedom and independence. Definitely no turning back now. Gulp.

  After the one hour walk home, I am struck by the peace of the blank space. Like a piece of paper I can now write upon, clearing my possessions has been the quickest way to get perspective on my life. I wonder about all the adventures I’m about to go on with Jim, a state away, deciding a man’s fate in the jury box, as I submit my last two features from my laptop in the empty flat.