Chapter Twelve: A Day Worth Living (~jinghan)

“Arg its so early…” I groan squinting at the light and rubbing at my eyes groggily. My sister turns to me with a unamused look. I like to tease her on Thursday mornings – the only morning when I wake up early enough to run into her in the morning. For her this is a luxuriously late start, since mum drives her to school on Thursday.

Some Thursdays I really mean it when I stumble half asleep and grumpy into the bathroom to toss cold water on my face. But I don’t think I mean it this morning. There a faint warmth and sweetness wafting in from the window that hints at this being a good day.

My 9am tutorial turns out to be a good one. My tutor for informatics is allocated this one lecture. In tutorials he ambles through discussion sometimes at a painfully slow rate. However his lecturing method is slow and stead and really easy to comprehend.

As I leave the lecture, my mind is on the two assignments I have due tomorrow. I managed to finish one last night and have just enough energy left to crawl under my doona, I’m just holding my breath until this next one is done and then I swear I will sleep for a week.

The Baillieu Library has been vastly abandoned since renovations blocked up it’s main entrance. Some days its hardly worth it to crawl up to the third floor entrance only to have to head out of the maze as soon as you sit down to study. Today I make the effort and am rewarded by a nice quiet carrell in the corner of the second floor next the to tall windows. I take a moment to take in the peaceful long row of books that stretches incredibly far to the right; and the silent dance of people on the path below the window on the left. I gather my courage and bring out my assignment.

My wording is awkward, but I feel good knowing I’ve nutted out the main gist of all the questions by the time I leave the library. I take an apple out of my bag. This is the first time I’ve actually taken an apple to uni. Yesterday, I was beset by an apple craving and embarrassingly ran into my father while I was stealing into Coles to buy an apple before heading into the train station. But it was worth it. There’s a satisfying crunch and a good sweet acidity to my apple.

“Everything under Creation is represented in the soil and in the stars.”

We have a lecture by a professor in indigenous culture. He tells us about how aboriginal people pass on their knowledge and for the first time I am beginning to understand the depth and connection, the wisdom and respect of their view of the world. He tells us about an aboriginal man who speaks of how he must write down what is traditionally pass on orally because he understands that “learning must change”. He speaks of how our modern way of life is full of freedom ad choices, but while having these we must also accept the anxieties and stresses they produce. While the traditional world has less lifestyle choices but at the same time have a peace from anxiety.

Normally on a Thursday, I hurry to the Union House microwaves to heat my lunch and hurry up to the second floor and eat my lunch hurriedly in the corner of the practice room before snatching up some music and joining in mid-bar. But in light of the assignments weighing on my mind, I decide that today I should find a quiet patch of grass and just watch the sky or absorb myself in a book.

My lunchtime does not go exactly according to plan, I run into some friends. I thought myself too tired for idle chatter, but as I lie in the grass, we talk about memory the sort of detail we each remember and we talk about how you can see so much by just considering someone’s body language. It’s a real conversation. And I watch the clouds weave between the branches overhead as we talk in the shade of the tree.

Our tutor pleasantly surprises us by taking us out to Lygon street during our tutorial. “I want you to really look around you, tell me what you see.” Imagine this: a gaggle of university students with bulging bags slung over their shoulders, talking to each other and wandering almost aimlessly between the curb-side cafe tables and the shops. We we supposed to be considering what cultural images we take for granted, what we zone out on because they’re just “normal” and why someone else might see this differently… but it wasn’t very successful (if you don’t mind my saying) because we were all just so grateful and bewildered by leaving the rigid classroom tension.

The air is a soft comfortable warm as I head back towards uni. You’d have to be awfully bitter and downtrodden to be in a bad mood on such a day, I tell myself. I notice all the shops that other people in my class saw on the way down the street but I had overlooked. I notice the beggar they saw. “How is your day?” “Aw.. look it’s okay, some of my stuff got burnt in a fire not long ago,” he tells me. I press a dollar coin into his hand. “I hope things get better for you.”

It’s almost by chance (or perhaps I subconsciously understood what I really wanted) when I wander past the tall benches with their slanted modern stools behind the Asia-Myer Center. I’ve often seen people studying out here in the open air, but had always preferred the orthodox hush of a nice library. But today, the air, the sky and the light just invited me most obligingly to take a seat outside and study – how could I refuse?

I spend some time frowning over my answers for questions, scrutinising them, but by the time I put everything back into my bag I’m happy with my effort. I take a detour to a photocopier, the assignment submission boxes and then head down Faraday Street to Thesherman’s Bakery for dinner.

Thesherman’s Bakery: bare brickwork, warm comforting smells, tempting sugary things, friendly big wooden tables – sometimes I wonder whether I come here more for the simple but hearty food or for the warm comforting atmosphere. I take my plate and settle on the bar-stool in the little nook in the corner, fork in one hand, book in the other.

My book drags me in. Jeffrey Lu –  ostracised, racially abused, Vietnamese and friend of the protagonist, Charlie – has by sheer chance been allowed to play for the school cricket team because one of the players went down with a dodgy appendix just before the big rivalry game against the neighbouring town. He’s good at it. Really good. But they never let him on the team because they were too full of themselves. There’s something heroic about the way he keeps his head high when the other boys jeer at him. My heart breaks when he misses a spectacular catch that would have won him respect. He picks himself up and gets on with it.

Meanwhile Charlie is sitting on the hill watching the game with Eliza Wishart. Beautiful, witty, dignified Eliza Wishart that Charlie has been willing himself to approach for half the book. I can’t help but share the fluttering of his heart as he say’s to him “Let’s talk about something else. Make me laugh.” and he says “Would you rather a hat made of spiders or have penises for fingers?” and thinks “As soon as I realise what I’ve said, I want to crawl out of my own body and thump myself to death.” I share his relief when Eliza giggles in return.

Jeffrey is up for bat, and as he hits shot after short and the score gets tighter and tighter the silent resentful crowd start cheering for him, actually cheering! The team is four runs from a win as Jeffrey goes up for the last bat of the game. Eliza takes Charlies hand in hers and… and… and…

…and before I know it I’ve missed the tram stop. I bounce off into the warm night air and walk back a block. I wish I was as brave, strong willed, quietly wise or dignified as the characters in the book. But then again there’s Charlie, the flawed narrator, he’s scared of insects, he doesn’t stand up to his own mother, he wills his father to be more of a role model but never says anything – and yet he’s not a dull character. He’s surrounded by all these strong people, you know that he’s going somewhere, that there’s still something more for him to discover in life. Maybe I’m the Charlie of my own story.

I revel in the peace of having the house to myself when I get home. (My family went out to dinner with guests, I excuse myself thinking that I would need all night to do my assignment.) The packet of desiccated coconut that I bought on monday sits fat and lonely on the bench-top slouching against the mug-rack. And I concede to it’s pitiful condition. I bought it to make honey-oat fingers, after much procrastination I think tonight is the night.

I lug out the big box full of of flours, sugars, chocolate chips, sultanas and oats, with a sense of pride at the collection of simple ingredients. There’s a delightful chatter as the oats pour out of the packet into the measuring cup. The brown sugar falls out in soft handfuls. I melt butter and stir in the glossy amber honey into the golden liquid.

As the warm sweet smell of baking wafts from the oven I take a feijoa from a bowl of them someone has left on the bench. There’s been evidence that someone has already eaten some. The green fruit fits neatly in your fist, and is the shape of a rugby ball. They grow in our backyard on odd years and fall to the ground when they are ripe. I cut it into quarters and bit into the tangy sweet grainy flesh. I haven’t had one for at least a couple of years. I don’t remember them to be this good. The next piece I lick out the sweeter jelly clear centre with it’s crunchy seeds that surprise you, and then gnaw my way to the more tangy flesh near the husk.

I steal a chunk of honey-oat finger after I take them out of the oven and almost burn my tongue for my impatience. But it’s good: hot, buttery, sticky and sweet.

It’s been an interesting day. I’m still left wondering why I’m tired by 8:30pm when I used to sleep at 11:30pm and wake at 7:30am no problems. But a day full of good food, good talk, good reading, comforting places, simple accomplishments and sensual delights is a day well worth living.