Beer Budget, Champagne Taste

It's going to be a minimum tonight of 29 degrees (84 F) and a top tomorrow of 43 (109 F). Repeat for Friday.

Now, there is no denying it - when it's this hot, it gets in the way of basically everything. It makes 35 degrees look like you should take a cardigan with you just in case you get a bit of a chill. Me, personally I'm a bit partial to 35 degrees. There's something about the dry heat that makes me go all mystical. I feel free in this sort of weather.

Maybe that's why I stood out at North Melbourne station late this afternoon, waiting for a train 30 minutes overdue, listening to Sergei (that's my new/old iRiver) and just feeling wonderful. I kept looking at people and situations and finding them sort of amusing and getting interesting opening lines for stories and blog posts that have long since vanished. I love how expansive I feel sometimes in hot weather.

The only downside is my house is so horrendously hot, with no insulation in its flat roof. And I was concerned about the vegetables I have planted recently, that they would have withered in the furnace. I was concerned that my dog would be dead. I was worried the oldish airconditioner, which I left running all day, had packed it in from the exertion and Lester had expired in the corner of the room into a burnt-up husk for me to cry over upon my return.

He came bounding to the door when I got home, reinforcing for the 89 billionth time the futility of future tripping into what-if scenarios, and exulted in my dousing him in water. He even wanted to play with the ball, in this heat. He is as stupid as I.

I am feeling so much more hopeful these last few days than I have for months and months and months. It's not that anything has really changed except perhaps a small hitch inside of me that thinks that maybe paths are opening up for me that I shall be able to walk down. They have been dark and closed off for so long, I am not quite sure how it feels to have a full sort of a life, a life where things are happening that make you bounce.

The hope and dreaminess comes from the firm and excited conviction of my art therapist a few weeks ago when I told her about my gallery idea. She thinks it's a good enough idea that I shouldn't go blurting it about. It is an idea that is stealable. I feel very chuffed indeed that I have an idea that's stealable :) So Maggie had a bit of a talk to someone who knows about such things, and they are of the belief that funding would be something possible for this endeavour. Maggie's email was full of good advice and there were a few suggestions in there that I am going to begin to take a look at. So yeah, I'm excited. And enjoying the feeling of rolling this idea around in my head, weighing it up in my hands, aware that I don't have a first clue about anything. Maybe it would be to my advantage. "I can so see you there," Maggie said to me, all flushed with pleasure as if she thought it was something that could be done. The gutsy courage of the artist :)

It's not even about the realisation of dreams for me right now, this bubbling excitement (although how amazing to see concretely in front of you something which first appeared as a bubble in your head. There's been rather a dearth of that sort of thing lately, considering my inability to finish a short story. But that's another story). This bubbling excitement is really just all about being reminded of the latent possibilities that sit out there like big bubbles of something, leading who knows where. It's like the possibilities of people transcending space and time in weird ways. It's not the actual doing of that which excites me. It's the possibility that someone could. And the exciting thing for me these days is that I feel like I have developed the capacity to maybe have a bit of an idea of how to hold those bubbles lightly, so that they don't get encrusted with my gigantic ego and pop. And maybe then they would become something concrete in front of me. Who knows? This is a wondrous sort of thing.

Another interesting tidbit. I had an email the other day from Wayne Jacobsen, one of the people involved with The Shack. He'd had an email from someone wanting to get in touch with the Australia Sue in the credits of the book. Way back when, I was one of the people along with a whole stack of others who did several read-throughs of the book, when Paul was considering actually publishing it, and anally pointed out some grammatical inconsistencies (many of which, I was grieved in my anality to see, made it through to at least the printing of the book that I have read. But anyway, I again digress).

So this woman is self-publishing a book and wants to get a team of people on board with her. She is giving me a call tonight and we are going to have a chat and maybe see if there is any way I could give her a hand.

And just this small little thing is a reminder of how these interesting little ideas and people and circumstances just pop out of the blue when you're least expecting it and fill you again with the shy hope that maybe, just maybe, there are things out there for you to do that will fill you up with bubbles, the sorts of things that you see happening to other people sometimes, where the right people and the right circumstances conspire and there is something like a whiff of kingdom and freedom and life and sharing and commonality about it all, the heady excitement of dreams and visions, headier than any sort of champagne.

But the best bit of all is, even if neither of these things come to anything, the main thing still is, and always has been, the knowing that they could. That's what gives the bubbles their fizz :)