Brieanna Fist

So I haven’t blogged for about a month and a half, I realised this morning. I knew I hadn’t been blogging, I just hadn’t quantified it into that length of time! In those 6 weeks, life has been purely sweet.

I’ve been away from home more in the last 6 weeks than in the last few years I think! I housesat in Waverton; I housesat at Wamberal; I went to Perisher and saw a white landscape for the first time; I roadtripped up North to Seal Rocks for a night.

I’ve spent time working, I sat (and passed!) the beginning of many university exams, saw school friends, and went on some cute dates with Mr Evans.

I learnt some lessons! Some people just aren’t cut out for food service jobs (um me. Just ask my bosses!), driving a manual is both harder and easier than it looks, living alone is just as fun and fany free as you’ve always imagined, and strapping on ski’s is one of the most exhilirating things you’ll ever do!

I’ve had a really good break. I’ve enjoyed life. I think I’ve spent it in a manner less eternally profitable than I’d planned and hoped: I have a few days left to redeem that. Days, weeks, months like this can make it easier to love life and harder to long for heaven. Its good being reminded that so many of the good times I had will be with people who will be next to me in front of Jesus when he comes. I want that even more for all the others I love. I’m grateful for having breath and blessing enough to do everything I have.

It amuses me being able to peek into other people’s lives through their blogs. I quite appreciate personal updates like this has been! I haven’t had any intentions with this blog: I’m just enjoying the process of writing and reflecting in a public, though truly only for a very limited audience. And that is your advance warning that my next post might herald a new genre – or not!

I only have one grandparent that I see often. My grandpa lives in a retirement home in which he spent part of his working life as a Chaplin, after forming churches, working as a pastor, and working in prison chaplaincy. He achieved that, and Bible college, after dropping out of school at the age of eleven, to work on his parent’s farm in Tasmania alongside, at various times, his five brothers and sisters.

I feel so very privileged that I know his stories. Whilst my family react with mirth that he’s taken the time to painstakingly write his autobiography in Word documents, calling me to ask how to change the size of his font, I have been learning to appreciate the legacy I own in being a Fist.

My Pa once wrote that Fist is a good name, and asked us not to desecrate it in our generation.  Whilst I think we’ve lost the importance of a family name modernily, I am so grateful that he has lived long enough to give me these moments.

My grandma died incredibly affected by Alzheimers disease. September 2006. I was quite little when our family discovered that her memory was disintegrating, and very sheltered from the whole experience for a long time. But when Nanna realised she could no longer rely on the infallibility of her memories, she started calling me. The oldest. And she told me stories. She told me about her childhood, her family, about courting and being married to my Pa. I listened, but I wish that I had soaked in her experiences, as she tried to teach. I regret that I can’t recall most of those precious conversations, and that has caused in me an appreciation of the tales others from her generation tell.

‘And then I said to her, you better not shake me, or I’ll rattle I’m full of so many pills!’

I sat next to the most spirited little old lady the other day on the bus. She was with her sister, and they had just come back from Sydney. To do what, pray tell? To get a haircut! They had both lived in Sydney until two years ago when their mother died, and they had chosen to reside on the property their father had bought in Avoca, where they had camped as children. They didn’t like going home in the dark, for fear they’d fall over, and had sewed a cover for her packet of disposable tissues, which she doled out to her sick sister while calling out ‘Are you fine? Are you sure?’ every single time the bus rounded a corner.

Her willingness to share who she was with me, a stranger, was incredible. To be the imparted a lifetime’s worth of experiences? It is humbling.

Alternate title: stop talking about facebook, you loser.

I’ve begun to take more and more notice of the amount of conversations (remember those real-life personal face-to-face moments?) revolve around this absurdly popular social networking medium.

It makes me laugh every time I walk past a group of people at uni chatting, and you overhear ‘So on facebook last night …’ or ‘Yeah she posted that on facebook!’. It makes me cringe that we really can’t think of anything more valuable to discuss than the latest status updates and photo comments, as though they’ve replaced genuinely enquiring how somebody is and complimenting them.

Facebook makes us feel popular. I think thats one of the secrets to its success. Every time you comment or like, you’re interacting with somebody else: their notifications and friend count are the quantification of how many people think you’re significant enough to warrant a minute of their 24-hour day.

Facebook is also for the lazy. I can say that, because it incriminates me too. Its incomparably simpler to send someone a wall post than to go for a coffee, and its lots easier to hide behind a chat window than it is to gather enough courage to mould an interaction. I think it can be helpful: all of my best friendships have an online component, and many of them began as acquaintances, were developed online, with intimacy transferable offline. But I think its the lazy person’s way of saying I care for you: I can maintain the facade of good friendship by telling someone I miss them. It can be a good mechanism to reconnect. All too often I see it ending there, both parties satisfied that the friendship can be retrieved – when necessary.

I’ve been contemplating the depth in the way I converse. What I talk about with the people I say I love. Ourselves, hopes, dreams, fears, desires? Or her, her boyfriend, his weekend, that breakup, their relationship?

Congratulations Zuckerberg: you revolutionised friendships.

Reason number two thousand and one why I’m lucky to live in Australia: sunrise over Sydney Harbour, the Bridge and the Opera House is gorgeous!

Last Thursday my lovely boyfriend took me down to Sydney on a secret date. Be jealous. We went to Pancakes on the Rocks, took way too many cheesy tourist photos, froze on a ferry, and he loved every moment of trekking around uni with me, of course. I discovered that his mood changes dependant on his level of hunger.

Pancakes on the Rocks was the highlight though. We ordered breakfast pancakes and some sweet strawberry pancakes, and I felt like I needed to be rolled away from the Rocks afterwards! They were amazing. I ‘m pretty sure I could live on strawberries alone but with pancakes suddenly became an appealing option too!

Oh and our menu? It might have been reported missing, because subsequent to our visit, it travelled an hour and a half north to Gosford to reside on an armchair rather than a table. Aw momento. And so, as we when to leave we furtively stood up (I say we, but really, Rhys. I was giggling far too much to ever be stealthy!) and walked to the counter with a menu.  And paid. And then picked up the menu, and strolled out.

Strolled out, and unlike on the way there, it didn’t even take us half hour to find our way back to the harbour. Even with the aid of Google Maps. And phonecalls to friends. And trial and error. And … aren’t boys supposed to be good at directions?

(Cute hey.)

That women bond in bathrooms.

(Also in the bathroom: Woman on her phone. ‘So were they Asian or real Australian?’ um newsflash. They’re not mutually exclusive!)

My university is known for its architecture, and gorgeous sandstone it is! I love more the moments of united campus fervour like the University of Sydney Union Board Elections (that’s why we call it USU, okay?). They were last week, so last week was pretty fascinating.

Chalked pavements everywhere was crazy.
I was offered enough dead trees to paper my room in fliers (several times over. Seriously).
It was as though we were voting for our next head of state there were so many pushy candidate-promoters!
Free food helped. My favourite propagandists were the ones who stood on the sidewalk and urged me to take their pamphlet because ‘You get 5 bucks!’ ….. well, kinda.

Uni students clearly learn alliteration. In with Flynn is now our USU president, beating Dynamic Deb (a personal favourite entirely because she made way too many boys wear bright pink shirts for a few weeks), supported by Hell Yeah Alastair, Keep the Union Strong with Peter Hong and plenty more, whose slogans I clearly don’t remember because they didn’t crash my lectures often enough.

Need to galvanise supporters for a cause? If it appeals to uni students, you have a fairly expedient basis! If you’re a socialist, even better (who doesn’t want to ‘Un**** the World?’).  Coming from a school context where most people simply didn’t care, I’m still astonished by the preponderance of students who value their own opinions, and so consciously exert an effort towards reforming society (even if ‘society’ can just be the microcosm of our campus). Apathy is so disheartening.

I did walkup last week too; a funny Christian way of saying that I started talking to unsuspecting people I didn’t know about Jesus. I loved it! And in reflection, almost nobody was overly ambivalent. People agreed, they disagreed, they had beliefs and they respected that we had beliefs we wanted to share too. Jesus changes hearts. He’s changed mine, changed Andy’s, but to plenty of the people I know, Jesus still seems like one more option alongside Broadway Access benefits or fair-trade reform. Except that we don’t need rhyming slogans to sell what he’s done.

freerice.com

I just rediscovered this!

Sisal is rope fiber (I’ll never need to know this, but now that I’ve typed it, it will be the only one I remember!)

Next time you go to the butcher, ask for a gigot (and watch their face for me! You should be getting a leg of lamb, by the way).

Never calumniate.

Importunate means persistent. I’ve been given that question twice now, and have been relegated down a level twice too!

I think this post is the incipiency of my degradation of my blog into disjointed sentences cobbled together. More significantly though, is that everytime you play, for every answer you choose correctly, the project donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

Mastering the English lexicon and battling world hunger. Well, why wouldn’t you love coupling those notions?

This morning, I got asked how to spell a word. If this was my little sister, it would be unremarkable. But it was a stranger.  I was sitting on the station platform, as she unconsciously selected the seat next to me.

I didn’t even notice that somebody else was on the farthest opposite reaches of the bench. ‘til she interrupted me. ‘Sorry to be so rude, but my phone won’t let me spell a word’.

I glanced at her a second time. Was she was somehow, mildly, disabled? Its an awful truth; the only raconteurs I expect are perhaps the elderly, but too often only these wonderful people. They travel together to work each morning, courtesy of the employment scheme of their disability agency. And every morning, they call out to each other across the bus. They talk to the rest of us! They give us compliments, ask us questions, and beautifully have no sense of the social imposition that we call a norm, of pervasive silence.

‘What word is it I’m trying to spell again? Oh, measure. It’s m-e-s-u-r-e, isn’t it?’

I told her not quite, that there was actually an a in it, and she thanked me, finished her message and after a moment, slid back over to the opposite end of the bench.

She’s probably already forgotten; just another moment in the haze of a morning. I haven’t, at all. I can’t help but to continually admire her willingness to unashamedly admit her fallibility. She didn’t know everything, and she needed help. I don’t know everything, and I need help.

I know that I am not sufficient, but I don’t want to parade it. I know that I consciously manufacture a demeanour that suggests my control. I am stunned even when its the people closest to me admitting they don’t understand. I’ll Google a word, a phrase, a concept, before ever asking what it means. I’ll run a little bit faster whenever I pass somebody on a jog, just to show that I’m really not exerting that much effort. I’ll walk along a street the wrong way, deny my gender by trying to read a map, before I ask for directions. There’s exceptions, to be sure.  Weaknesses I’m willing, even happy, to admit. There’s some people, there’s some situations where I don’t mind asking for help.

It would never occur to me to ask for the advice of a stranger on a station platform. I am so wrapped up in the way in which they perceive me. Am I an interruption, an annoyance? Are they thinking about my stupidity?

I do not have all the answers. Jesus does.  And maybe recognising my imperfections innately in the tiny milieux of life is just an illustrative recognition I am sinful and broken, yet made whole and blameless in Jesus who mercifully loves and saves.

Today is May 5. Today is my boy’s birthday!

Congratulations. You have now turned twenty-one, in the twenty-first century.

I hear that 21 is a Fibonacci number, a Harshad number, a Motzkin number, a triangular number and an octagonal number. I’d prefer that your age was of the Fibonacci variety (in honour of the novelty of having a mathematical pattern that I understand!)

You can legally drink in the US. Helpfully, it was the 21^st Amendment of their Constitution that ended prohibition.

Symbolically, I’d suggest you roll a die today. 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21! 21 spots on your 21^st birthday must be good luck! A game of blackjack (also known as 21, for the players at home) probably wouldn’t go astray either.

Channelling a bit of socialist sentiment this morning? Is your facial hair growing so fast you’re going to have a biker beard by lunchtime? It might be because Communist extraordinaire Marx was born today in 1818 (and Google his facial adornment. I fear you’ll all feel emasculated by his display).

You’ve turned 21 on the 124^th day of the year; just as you were born with 240 days left of 1989. And its International Midwives Day! And in case you were concerned that you’re now a bit too old to commemorate how you emerged into the world, you could always visit Palau and celebrate how old you’re getting on their Senior Citizen’s Day.

Happy XXI birthday Rhys!

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