Other people’s words about … – Page 26

Why I drink tea, not coffee

August 11, 2016May 15, 2022Posted in anxiety, favourite quotes, health, Other people's words about ..., reading, rituals, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged mental health, solace5 Comments

Other people’s words about … tea

The MOTH (the Man of the House) thinks the world’s drowning in a tsunami of expensive [cappuccino] froth. He’s fighting the trend single-handedly. He drinks tea made from tea leaves. He doesn’t like ‘gift’ teas that arrive with house guests and distant cousins …

Every morning and most evenings, the MOTH makes tea following the rules set down by his mother. Bring a kettle of water to a ‘rolling’ boil. Warm the teapot. Put in a generous measure of loose tea. Fill the pot with boiling water, replace the lid and wait patiently. In the meantime, put out china cups and saucers, teaspoons, the sugar bowl and a jug of milk. Hot buttered toast and a jar of homemade marmalade will do nicely as well.

From ‘Tea and Sympathy’ by Pat McDermott
featured in
The Australian Women’s Weekly, July 2016

Old-time readers of this blog will know of my love for tea by now. I would rather give up wine, chocolate or cheese than give up my daily pot(s) of tea.

Many years ago, I attempted to become a coffee drinker. I was working as a student barista in a cafe in Port Adelaide at the time, and the coffees I made for my customers smelt enticing. There is nothing better than the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

But. I soon discovered that I am extremely sensitive to caffeine. Give me a cappuccino at nine o’clock in the morning, and I will be jittery and fidgety and twitchy all day. I won’t sleep. I’ll still be awake the next morning, heart hammering away, eyes dry and wide. And don’t even get me started on that sense of the walls of the room caving in on me …

My grandmother drank tea, and I remember her making me cups when I was a child: the ritual of it, the alluring whiff of mysterious adulthood that came with it. Still, for years after I’d begun reacting to coffee, I avoided drinking tea because I knew it also had caffeine in it, though in a smaller dose. Eventually, though, I became close to someone who was an inveterate tea-drinker, and I felt tempted again. Eventually, tea wooed me back in just the way that coffee had once done.

Maybe it’s the smaller amount of caffeine. Maybe it’s psychological. Maybe it’s the ritual of tea-making: my grandmother’s Royal Worcester china, the pot, the brewing, the accompaniment of sourdough toast spread with a (thick!) layer of my mother’s grapefruit marmalade or my father’s quince jam. Whatever it is, I have found that I can handle the caffeine in tea.

I read recently in The Australian Healthy Food Guide (p. 14) that Lord Twining, of Twinings Tea fame, has been known to state that anything less than nine cups of tea per day is a totally unsatisfying tea-drinking day. Clearly, Lord Twining may have vested interests in making statements like this … but I can’t help admiring such a line of thinking, all the same.

And so … let the tea-drinking continue!

How (not) to surf

July 28, 2016May 15, 2022Posted in anxiety, favourite quotes, gratitude, nature, Other people's words about ..., South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the sea, UncategorizedTagged fear, nature, sea2 Comments

Other people’s words about … surfing

He tried to show me the basics [of surfing], but he made it look too simple. Surfing was in his muscle memory, in his blood, in his thoughts. It was like his shadow, simply part of him …

We got back into the water one more time, and the sea tugged me under and tossed me around under a wave, like a plaything, like it was laughing at me. I came up ready to go home, mouth full of salt, hair full of sand.

from Season of Salt & Honey
by Hannah Tunnicliffe
( p. 134)

I know a man who is a surfer. In his fifties now, he started surfing in his teens, catching a ride to the south coast with an older friend who had a driver’s licence.

Though I love the sea, I have a fear of waves, of getting dumped. Still, when I first came to know this man (nearly twenty years ago now), I wanted to give surfing a go. I wanted to see what made him love it so. I asked him if he could help me brave the waves.

So one day, we paddled out into the salt water, he on his surfboard and I on my boogie board, paddling hard. He set me up for a couple of waves. Each time, when the wave rolled towards me, he said, ‘Now!’ and then, when I froze, he gave my board a push, and away I went. I rode the wave towards shore, lying flat on my belly on the board as he’d shown me, and it was fast and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

And I got it. I got what he felt out there in the ocean. I got the magic of it. The awe.

But I’ve never attempted it again. I can’t read the waves or the currents. I’m afraid of getting caught in a rip. I don’t understand the sea. I love it; I’m awed by it; but I don’t know it.

She gives me that sad, hopeful look that says [surfing] can be for everyone, should be for everyone. That surfing is the best thing in the world. Her strange, blue-grey eyes fix on me, like she wants to explain. I imagine her in the sea, like a fish, moving as though made for the water. She would know where to put her feet, how to balance, how to fall without hurting herself, without drowning. She’s probably one of those girls who rides the waves as though she’s dancing with the whole of the ocean; her and the water taking different roles, moving in different ways. The ocean leads and she simply responds.

(p. 134)

I think, for me, the sea will always remain a beautiful, mysterious, unknown quantity. There are different ways of loving it, perhaps. Mine isn’t the way of the surfer, but it’s still there. It will always be there. I have lived by the sea for twenty years or more now, and the sand and the salt and the sea are in my blood.

And that is enough for me.

Storm approaching, Yorke Peninsula — Storm approaching.

It’s not always about speed. Or winning.

July 21, 2016May 15, 2022Posted in anxiety, books, favourite quotes, health, Other people's words about ..., reading, Running, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged anxiety, mental health, running1 Comment

Other people’s words about … running (slowly)

I didn’t fight my way across the finishing line — nor did I float. The significance of that marathon didn’t lie in speed or in pain, but in the exchange between my body and the city. I didn’t need a personal best trophy; I could prize the run on its own terms. After many years of early morning runs and all kinds of races, running is to me a way of being, not a way of testing myself against invisible antagonists and not a competition with my peers. I had nothing to vanquish but my doubts, and now — in ways I could never have predicted — running has brought me into a rich communion with the world. It still surprises me. I’m careful not to slip on dirt tracks, and I pay more attention to warnings about overstraining my knees than I used to. I want to avoid injury. I don’t want a show-stopping finish line moment. I want to keep running.

From ‘The Long Run‘
by Catriona Menzies-Pike

When I (briefly, as it turned out, at least for now) took up running again last year, it wasn’t the thought of speed, or competition, or races, or personal bests, that appealed to me. Nor, God forbid, was it the thought of getting super-fit and toned. Lone beast that I am, it wasn’t the thought of companionship, either: of joining a running team, or running with new friends. I know these are the things that runners often find joy in, but they weren’t drawcards for me.

No, what drew me back to running was what I remembered from the period in my twenties when I ran: how meditative running can make you feel. There is the beat of your heart, the rhythm of your feet, the taking-in and letting-out of your breath. There is the simplicity of moving your feet over the ground, taking you there (wherever ‘there’ is) and back again. There is the joy, afterwards, of feeling reawakened. And alive.

I'm careful not to slip on dirt tracks — I’m careful not to slip on dirt tracks

I suspect that Catriona Menzies-Pike is a kindred spirit. Her whole book, if you care to read it, is an eloquent essay on how running helped to heal the grief she felt for her parents’ untimely death when she was still a child. It is also an exploration of the joys of running slowly — and making the choice to do so. Imagine running, but not forcing yourself to race. Imagine running, but allowing yourself to enjoy the moment rather than the end-result. Imagine running, with no particular aim in mind other than to take the time it takes.

Imagine.

We talk big about fitness these days. We talk about heart-rate and VO2 and pace and gait. We talk about sub-four-hour marathons and heel-striking and foam rollers. We have instruments and apps to help us talk this talk — Garmins and GPS trackers and Apple Watches and the like. (Wait, maybe those instruments created the talk. Have you ever thought that?) So choosing to run slowly, in a world full of talk like this, is tantamount to an act of anti-consumerist, anti-conformist rebellion.

I don’t want a show-stopping finish line moment. Those words apply equally well to life as they do to running, don’t they? There’s another metaphor in the quote above, too. Running, Menzies-Pike says, still surprises me. I get that. I do.

Because life still surprises me. I hope it always will.

The one true story

July 14, 2016July 7, 2016Posted in anxiety, books, favourite quotes, on writing, Other people's words about ..., reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged blogging, despair, mental health, writers, writingLeave a comment

Other people’s words on … writing

He said, ‘What is your job as a writer of fiction?’ And she said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.

from ‘My name is Lucy Barton‘
by Elizabeth Strout

When I first began this blog, I was adamant that, though I am a published writer, my blog would not be about writing. A writer can blog about things other than writing, right? A writer isn’t just a writer: a writer is a person; a writer has a life. That’s what I wanted to blog about.

Besides, it seemed to me that blogging about writing would be, in my case, an inexcusably audacious act. My thinking went like this: I have published only two books. I haven’t published anything since 2010. My books have gone out of print. What can I tell anyone about writing? Who would want to read what I had the temerity to say?

I don’t much like the word ‘writer’. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t published much and don’t make a living from my writing, but I feel pretentious and arrogant when I call myself one. I think of myself instead as someone who has written two books, and would like to write another one, but is struggling to do so.

That’s another word I don’t like: ‘struggle’. When I first began writing stories and fiction, the writing was an act of joy. It was a process of humble discovery. Each word that I wrote, each sentence, each chapter, was a journey. I was learning to do something new. I was learning to do something I loved. I was learning.

Writing is a learning process — Lessons in writing: all part of the learning process

So when I first read the words I’ve quoted above from Elizabeth Strout, I thought: Yes! Writing fiction, for me, has always been about opening myself up to sorrow, and to joy, and to humility, and to discovery. It’s about expressing those things, however afraid I am to do so. It’s about making sense of my life. It’s about trying to make something beautiful. It’s about having the temerity — the audacity, the arrogance — to share my words with other people: people who, like me, love reading.

Most of all, writing fiction, like blogging, is about sharing.

And so that’s the reason I’m posting these words about writing today. Call it pretension; call it temerity. Call it audacity; call it arrogance. Call it learning; call it sorrow; call it joy.

Elizabeth Strout again (from the same book):

You will have only one story … You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.

Maybe this is the only story I have to share, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth sharing.

The butterfly bush

July 7, 2016May 15, 2022Posted in books, favourite quotes, nature, on writing, Other people's words about ..., reading, summer, Uncategorized4 Comments

Other people’s words about … English gardens

The garden was in a jungle state of desuetude: weeds were everywhere. The top lawn descended to a second, where was a tangled rose garden and sun-dial: thence further descent, past more noble trees to a third lawn in the middle of which was a pond, or miniature lake. It had an off-centre well-scaped island, containing one weeping willow and some iris out of flower. Pigeons flew heavily out of bushes like people leaving a play of which they disapproved. Rabbits cavorted and then escaped their attention just in time. A huge old buddleia was spattered with either tortoise-shell or Painted Lady butterflies. Arabella seemed delighted by the whole thing.

from ‘Odd Girl Out‘
by Elizabeth Jane Howard

When I was fourteen years old, my family spent a year away from Australia, living in England. My whole family, on both sides, comes from the UK; my sister and I were born there, too. We migrated to Australia when I was three.

So the year back in England was a homecoming of sorts, for my parents, at least. We lived in an old stone coach house, in Oxfordshire. As I remember it, the coach house stood on stilts in the gardens of a much grander house, also built of stone. There were brambles, and two black cats — one bold and prowling, the other timid and long-haired and neurotic — and several peacocks strutted the spreading lawns, letting out frightening, ghoulish shrieks beneath our windows. That year, the winter in England was unusually severe, and drifts of snow built up in the garden and in the country lanes leading to our house. My bedroom in that cold house was tiny, with room only for a single bed, a chest of drawers, and the hot-water boiler. Because of the presence of the boiler, though, I remember my room as being always cosy and warm. It had cheerful Laura Ashley wallpaper with sprigs of tiny green flowers dotted all over it.

My grandparents on my mother’s side had retired to live in Dorset, and we spent many weekends there. My grandfather loved to garden; he had a small allotment on the fringe of the village, where he grew runner beans and potatoes and lettuce and — that most English of vegetables — spring greens. Their own backyard was small, with a stone wall at the end, beyond which cows grazed in a field.

Near the house grew a bush with beautiful purple flowers. Memory is a strange thing — I remember this bush as a buddleia bush; I remember my grandfather telling me that’s what it was; and I remember the butterflies that visited it in the spring, drinking nectar from the flowers, their wings warmed by the sun as they clustered on the blossoms. Now, years later, my mother tells me the bush wasn’t a buddleia at all: it couldn’t have been, because my grandmother considered buddleias weeds. It was, in fact, a lilac tree.

However faulty my memory is, I know that it was in my grandfather’s garden that I learned to distinguish between tortoiseshells and painted ladies and swallowtails and cabbage whites. Though we returned to Australia a year later, I retained my love for butterflies. The butterflies here are different, and I delight in them just as much, so much so that my house is cluttered with butterfly ornaments and trinkets and gifts from friends.

How do I remember England and our time there? That’s another memory for another time. Lest anyone wonder, this post isn’t intended to be a commentary, condemnatory or otherwise, about the recent Brexit. The timing of this post is purely coincidental. Still, what I love about the words from Elizabeth Jane Howard in the quote above is how, in just a few sentences, they capture an English summer in all its Englishness … at least as I remember it.

Some books say

June 30, 2016June 13, 2016Posted in books, favourite quotes, life, on writing, Other people's words about ..., readingTagged books, readingLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … self-help

Sometimes I am guilty of believing that if I can just read the ‘right’ book, I will know how to change my life. If I can just follow the right advice (and adhere to it), I will know how to live.

That’s the appeal of self-help books, right? You don’t have to think for yourself anymore. You just have to do what the author says, and you’ll find happiness. Success. Wealth. Health. Glory. Inner peace.

Then again …

Some books say start a garden, sing to your plants. Some books say join a book club, take music lessons, start a stamp collection, get a pet. Some books say brew your own beer. Some books say try paintball, enter a local trivia competition, take dance lessons, learn to rumba. Some books say listen to James Brown. Some books say give yourself a hug. Some books say when someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go. Some books say let a dog lick your face. Some books say swim naked. Some books say kiss a stranger. Some books say climb a mountain. Some books say overcome a phobia. some books say change begins with pain. Some books say get busy living or get busy dying. Some books say never say the word try. Some books say there’s nothing you can’t do. Some books say accept your limitations. Some books say don’t take no for an answer. Some books say buy a karaoke machine and invite friends over. Some books say learn a new language. Some books say leave no regrets. Some books say beware a person who has nothing to lose. Some books say do no harm. Some books say never cut what can be untied. Some books say admit your mistakes. Some books say you are not your mistakes. Some books say forgive everyone everything. Some books say never criticise what can’t be changed. Some book say don’t be afraid to say I don’t know. Some books say don’t bore people with your problems. Some books say when someone asks you how you feel, say terrific, never better. Some books say ask questions. Some books say don’t ask too many questions. Some books say carry someone. Some books say let yourself be carried. Some books say there’s nothing to fear. Some books say it’s okay to be afraid. Some books say whistle in the dark. Some books say give more than you take. Some books say God never gives you more than you can take. Some books say God never blinks. Some books say God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Some books say read the Psalms. Some books say if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Some books say choose your life partner carefully. Some books say tape-record your spouse’s laughter. Some books say that if you live with a partner, one usually dies first. Some books say surrender. Some books say do not go gently. Some books say recognise that you are lost. Some books say put yourself back together piece by piece. Some books say it’s never too late. Some books say it’s not unusual to live to ninety. Some books say you will probably be old for a long time. Some books say you can’t kiss your own ear. Some books say it’s nice to meet someone after a long absence. Some books say reunion is a type of heaven. Some books sat there’s no good in goodbye. Some books say never say goodbye, better to say see you later, see you soon, see you someday, until we meet again.

from The Book of Why
by Nicholas Montemarano

Maybe it’s time for us (me?) to remember that there is no single, right way to live: that for every piece of truth someone offers you, there is another, opposite truth.

But maybe there is comfort in that plurality. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s all about acceptance, and making peace with that acceptance.

And maybe — just maybe — that’s part of the adventure …

Roll and thunder and hiss

June 23, 2016May 15, 2022Posted in favourite quotes, Other people's words about ..., reading, the seaTagged books, sea8 Comments

Other people’s words about … the sea (again)

I could see the sea from the terrace, and the lawns. It looked grey and uninviting, great rollers sweeping in to the bay past the beacon on the headland. I pictured them surging into the little cove and breaking with a roar upon the rocks, then running swift and strong to the shelving beach. If I stood on the terrace and listened I could hear the murmur of the sea below me, low and sullen. A dull, persistent sound that never ceased. And the gulls flew inland too, driven by the weather. They hovered above the house in circles, wheeling and crying, flapping their spread wings. I began to understand why some people could not bear the clamour of the sea. It has a mournful harping noise sometimes, and the very persistence of it, that eternal roll and thunder and hiss, plays a jagged tune upon the nerves.

From Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca is one of my favourite books. The unnamed narrator’s character — shy, very English, young, terribly lacking in confidence — is exquisitely drawn. The plot is an absolute cracker. And if you want to find out how to use short sentences to build suspense (and I mean short! sentences), read the last half of the book. I have never seen them used so effectively. Stop reading at your peril.

And then there is the sea. It’s almost a character in itself in Rebecca. Here in this quote, and elsewhere, the sea is a dark, brooding presence. We’re not talking sunshine and sun tans and happy childhood memories here. This is a sea that threatens and menaces, that fills the reader with a terrible sense of foreboding.

You know me by now. These won’t be the last words I quote about the sea. But honestly? I think they will always be, for me, up there with the best.