Act one: Love and good feelings
Scene 1: Ambient skyline
I think back and forward my mind tracing the past and circling around ideas of my future. I am here, but could I bet there, will I be there, and was I there? The is so much could and would when you think about it. But right now I am here, and you are here.
We sat there stairing up at the stars on the front of my car bonnet. Sammy, Ashley and Jack. Sammy with her long blonde hair and Jack with her red dress on, and yeah me with a skirt I borrowed from the girls. I see the universe above me and it feels like my eyes are only just opening for the first time. I love my friends and they love me. Well at least that is how I feel in this moment in this zone, in this place and in this world. The ambient heart of mine, beating slow and loudly.
I forget where I am, I can feel the fabric against my thigh and my ankles poking out from under my skirt to feel the soft cool breeze. The universe is so big, and hiden behind lights, I say to myself that I am tall, but really I am small. I am small, and I am okay with that.
I take a deep breath and nudge my friends, and giggle, we laugh at the silly notion that tonight is and ever will be our place, and the only thing is the here and now,a dn there will be no tomorrow.
Scene 2: the best of friends
Sammys smeared lipstick makes her mouth smile wide even in a frown, I did her make up, we I tried to but idk I get carried away really easily and sure enough I turned my head to some distraction will lipstick still pressed against her mouth my hand following my body movement scrawling a line across her cheek.
How do I look – Sammy asked.
I smiled a little confused oh right shit I was doing this, Jack comes in and puts her arms around my shoulders and leans on me looking at Sammys face.
Perfect! – jack says, with a straight face.
I was sitting on sammys bed cross legged wearing one of her skirts, I like this one, with its many subtle colours blending into a nice flow of shapes, actually I like all of sammy’s clothes. And was happy that she let me borrow this skirt for tonight.
Sammy on the floor looking up at us with a smile on her face, larger than I have ever seen.
Jack leans over me reaching out to Sammy grabbing her by both shoulders and licking the side of her face, smearing her lipstick covered cheek.
Perfect! – Jack said.
We made our way out of the room and out of the house and into the back yard. The warm night air I could feel, the grass between my toes. I want this night to last forever. Live in the lie that the future will never come. I love wearing womans clothing, well I love it where I feel safe with close friends in their yard where I can be a little bit more myself.
Scene 3: The long kiss goodnight
I felt the air shift and change as we were sitting out in the back yard over looking the river below, I could feel my empty heart beginning to open up and all that was nd is simmering in and settleing down upon this chest of mine. I wanted freedom, but at the same time I wanted to be captured. These mix of feelings flood my mind and heart.
We sit on the ground, the earth is warm still from the day of hot sun, it is such an odd feeling to feel warm grass so late at night. We lay down a blanket and pillows and sit down. Sammy was constructing a fire.
I love these girls, and I am so happy that we became friends even if it was only by chance and only for a short while.
I can hear the river even though I could not see it.
Sammy – are you guys warm enough? Should I light this thing up?
Ashley- na its cool, but it would be nice to be near a fire even just for a little while.
Sammy – okay cool, well hear goes .
Sammmy throws a match into the fire pit and the wood eats it up with a burp of flames licking high into the air. The smell of fire wood buring, and the flicker of flames. Against the dark stary night.
Scene 4: Start of a new day
I wake my head full of sand and madness from the night before, I can still hear the giggles of the girls. I rub my eyes The warm orange sun streaking into the room. I run my fingers through my hair and breath. I try and sit up and see that I am held down my arms and legs of the girls. The three of us entangled together in a mess of blankets sheets and pillows and bodies.
My thumb feels warm and I look down to see Jack drooling with my thumb in her sleeping mouth. I pull it out only to hear her snort.
My babes, my loves, my girls, my other two thirds.
I sit on the eadge of the bed and breath in and out, just breathing in the day.
I put on grey socks and pick up a white shirt of the ground. I love these Sundays. Every Sunday when I wake up a little early and have time to myself to just sit and be. I the clock on the wall says January 16th.
I head across the room
I wake up and feel the rythem of the day, I can smell the river below and I listen to the trees. My room over hangs a small cliff face, covered in greenery.
This is a place I love, my seceret room beneath the tall trees, there is a path that flows below and I use it when I ride my bike following the river.
But right now I am happy just streached out on a matress white sheets, curtains blowing getanlly in the cool breeze.
I streach out, my stomach muscles feeling all that is good about healthy living. My small chest, my legs. I sit up and pick up a shirt of the floor. And put it on, white against my tanned skin.
I could sit in bed all day with thoughts rambling through my head, but right now I am hungry.
I walk across the cool wooden floors away from the breeze and open windows into the depths of my abode.
All windows are open but the breeze is only felt through my room by the river.
In the kichen I see broccoli lying out in a sieve that I had picked and washed from my garden.
My garden was growing nicely, the soil was usually always damp and the sun is strong in this part of the world.
I learnt a lot about gardening over the years as I wanted to eat predomintly the food I grow from the seeds I sow. And this harvest is beautiful.
I sit on the porch with a coffee and some toast just breathing in the day as I watch the sun do its thing, slowly fading out the moon. My green plants and I think how lucky I am, not just to be here but to have the knowledge and time to make this space my own.
I finish my coffee and hold the empty cup in my hand. Bread crumbs on a plate.
Ashley – how did you get here? And where are you going from here and now?
I asked myself these questions always in my mind filling my thoughts and I can only think about the past, the present and the future all at once, but somehow it feels a little unclear as all I can see are my thoughts in a little window of what I can think and that is just not a big or clear enough picture to make a proper judgement.
What a magical start to my day.
Act 2: The winds have changed
Scene 1: at the dinner table
I look around the office my papers strewn across the desk. Fuck I have been working hard on this project. My college comes in and says I have a meeting soon. The design process does take me some time and I love it. I wanted a job as a kid that was a little bit more creative than the average desk job. Idk I feel at ease when I can get into the zone and refine something and come up with ideas and solve little problems that people are faceing an work with them.
And yeah, so I threw my heart into this, went back to school when I was 25 and made it work. The only way I knew how to but pushing myself. I am a bit of a workaholic when I get into it. I find it hard to just be alone with my thoughts
Ashley, Ashley, meeting now – I hear my college say.
We are meant to impress some company and basically sell a broom that looks slightly better. It is all about the asthetics. Any broom does the same thing but idk sometimes a little tweek here and there makes things just look that much better. As style and fad, these things come and go, but you can make a quick profit out of it if you just time it write. The meeting went smoothly I say over dinner to my two best friends.
We share a house together. With three wages, well that is practically what you need to do okay and buy a house. Our house is small, but it is ours and we have the best garden.
I love looking at the plants growing, a few big trees, but mostly veggies and herbs, the more we can eat from our backyard the better.
I look down at my plate and it is all from our garden. So very yummy. I can’t stand store brought food anymore it just doesn’t taste as yummy.
Scene 2:
I sit in the lounge room an an old leather couch that we picked up from out the front of a house years ago we fixed it up and gave it a little bit of a modern twist with the design.
Across the room Sammy is pulling papers out of boxes. She looks furious and annoyed as she rips each out of the box, reads it quickly and throws it over her shoulder.
I did not ask and just kept minding my business as I did not want to get involved. I have developed such a remarkable sense of patients over the years and now I feel as though I am able to just tune things out. I sit there calm as can be as Sammy is throwing papers about the room.
If there was anyone else seeing this they probably would be wondering why I am not helping, but I know Sammy and if she wanted help she would ask, and me on her back would only make things worse.
I go and make myself a cup of coffee and get back to my drawings, making notes here and there, reinevting the broom.
I have been at this game for so long and yeah at the start I felt like maybe it wasn’t for me, but the things that I learn and the creative expressions I can make in my designs is why I stick at it. Also it gives me lots of time to spend with my girls.
We said to each other, Sammy, Jack and I would get married all three of us if we were not married by the time we were 30 well here it is and we have eloped. I am not sure how official it is but it is our love we are all equal and yeah it is a thing that just kind of happened.
I spend a lot of time on my own, but I do enjoy their company and my heart sings every time that they are near.
Jack comes storming in, – what the fuck are you doing Sam? I have just cleaned this room. And i don’t feel like doing it again.
Act 2 Scene three: Jack, am I a lesbian?
I feel as though I am lost in many ways, the love I have for the people around me grows, but I am a prisioner in my own thoughts, we do so much together, but yet more and more I crave time alone. Not just time alone, but time to think and express sadness uniteruppted.
Sammy – why do you always sit alone, when you know where we are hanging out
Ashley – I just need me time, a way to collect my thoughts it is like I can’t be free unless I can at times be completly alone.
Sammy – I think I understand, but don’t really. Both happens but I don’t really crave one over the other.
Jack – I have to be around people! Yes, well maybe, I don’t know, I have never really thought about it.
Ashley – well I have thought about it lots, I think about lots of things, and some of them don’t make sence as like some riddle that I don’t have an answer to.
Just then a blue tongue lizard pops its head out of the long grass looking to get some sun. Out from the shade, in the distance I can here the screech of Australian native birds. There lovely and somewhat haunting noises that they make. Danalions sprout from the ground and Jack picks one out of the ground and munches on the flower and puts the plant in her basket that is filling up with many dandelions that she has picked this morning.
Sammy – would you say I am a lesbian?
We both looked at Sammy, None of us have had sex yet.
Sammy – A few girls were asking if Jack is my girlfriend, as being a lesbian is really popular at uni right now so they are all talking about it and how lucky I am to have a girlfriend.
Act 2 scene 4: Blue tongue gone to heaven
We sit in the back yard contemplating and discussing our Homosexuallity. Maybe we are, maybe our bonding has some sexuall undertones. But it is just the way we have been, hugging, and showing affection. Doesn’t everyone who is close to there best friends and loved ones do this?
Sammy – I feel as though gay and staright was a line that is more defined in our minds, seeing naked bodies grind against one another in a porno I watched got rid of the idea of boy, girl in my mind. Without the clothes they were just bodies.
I sit there listening but moreso stairing at the blue tongue lizard enjoying the sun, it walks out under the fence and goes onto the road where it just stops feeling the heat of the road and the sun, warming the small creature. It closes its eyes and just enjoys the sun and the day. I would love to have such simple joy that this creatue feels.
And as I watch a car comes along, not seeing something so small on the road and runs right over the creatue, flattening its shoulders, the creatues arms and legs flale, as it trys to comprehend what has just happened, its chest crushed, its head bent up, sufferen. I gasp and the other two come to see what I am looking at.
We stare at the dying creature. Watching it squirm in pain. I have never seen anything like this before. We jump the fence, and argue about what to do, while looking down at the creature. Just then it dies.
In the distance I can here Mum calling me “ dinner, meatloaf”
We pick up the small frail body and place it on the side of the road. Then head inside, Meatloaf? I don’t think I could eat meat ever again.
ACT 3: mid 20s
Act 3 Scene 1: Mumma Sharron and the circle of life
My head feels messy, I loved that little guy. I like all creatures, our parents would not understand, so we went for a walk after dinner as a way to think things over, how we could be so caught up with dick and pussy and yet see a life end, a small creature go back to the earth in which it had once came. As we will do oneday. Mortality was on our minds.
We made it to the end of the street and walked to the river, this was where the boys would hang out, skip rocks and swim. We joined them, I would burn if I sit in the sun all the time but the boys with native heratiage had skin able to withstand the sun much better.
There was an older lady face painting all of the boys, the earthy reds, and bright yellow and white covered the boys faces and skin. The lines telling a story I just did not know enough about these things, but Mumma Sharron was always telling stories about the dreamtime, the animals, slow loving.
We felt that only Mumma Sharron would be able to help us deal with the death of the creature we had only just met. She could see our worried faces, and offered us hugs before asking us what wasw wrong and telling us about the blue tongue and its place in the world.
We sat and listened for sometime, sitting there in the shade by the river as boys would spash around in the waters enjoying the cool rivers, exciting their sences.
This is a moment of my youth that I will always remember.
Act 3 scene 1: cost of hesitation
I waited too long and now it feels like I am behind, I wanted to see a little more of the world and now I feel as though I should have done more with my life and my time. But hey fuck it. There is the three of us sitting in a living room exhausted from hard days work, working separate jobs each of which we have no passion in to pay for rent and food at a run down house. Is this really what it is like, we are in our mid 20s and we are living on the poverty line.
Jack – this is shit.
Ashely yeah true, but I guess this is how it is for everyone starting out, we are just 5 years behind.
Sammy – I should have done a trade, I like art and painting, but that hasn’t helped me become a painter? I feel like I have missed out on something, a key step in becoming an adult.
Jack – I used to feel a lot worse, but now that I can’t afford dinner, I don’t eat myself stupid, so I guess that is a plus side.
Asley – haha, that is funny, but seriously, we work best together, maybe we should do something we love, and then worry about being broke, as there is no soul and no point to this working cycle.
Sammy – you have a point, I think we could be better of if we do a trade, the fresh air, Chicks doing a mans job.
Sammy grabs a hammer of the bench and starts hitting the kitchen table, bang, bang, bang! Coffee jumps out of our mugs,
Sammy – ah, hear that, the sound of success! Only 40 more years of just this!
Ashley – you have such a grim view on the world!
Act 3 scene 2: Funky gardening
The girls and I wanted to have a positive impact on the environment so on our walks we would pick up trash from paths and edges of waterways. We would recycle it place it in bins, but after a while we got thinking, can we do something with it?
So we started washing it, melting it down and turing it into jewerl, funky potplants and were selling them at markets. I am not sure if this will save the world, but atleast we can say we tried.
Sammy – a little blue dye and this bad boy looks amazing!
Sammy said adding dye to a pot of melting plastic, we would then squeeze the plastic out of a mold that is in a heated pressure tube to make these funky pot plants. Some were geometric, some would sag, each with a bright colour that we would blend with the plastic. Working with rubbish was our way of dealling with our emotions in this fast pase world that we found ourselves unable to have a voice following so many rule in place.
Ashley was painting a sign that read “ Funky Garden – pot plants made from recycled plastics!” this was just a small step, but for us the environment is the future, so thinking about it was a driveing force, it gave us purpose.
Jack – After a year of nothing I am able to use my graphic design degree skills.
Jack said standing up a poster that showed and explained how they did it, why they did it and what they hoped to achieve.
Act 3 scene 3: A look back at a year of success.
Success takes time. we had started our business but could see that it was going to take some time, and even though there was three of us, we could only work as fast as the three of us would. I felt many times that I was heading into another dead end. But the positive feedback we had receieved from people at markets, online and people that would pass our house where we had our designs on desiplay in a need little front garden that had a sign, “if you like a pot plant, take it and cherish it – all we ask is a small donation and some positive feed back”
We had a board where people could write things. This acceptance from the public was what was driving us, to know that we in some small way were making a difference.
“greet job”
“I like the idea, I wish I had thought of it”
“I love the colours, this will definitely suit my garden”
“my first plant, I am so excited”
“my daughter will love this, thanks!”
Sammy – I am happy working my job now as I can see a way out, this is my way out, it will take us sometime, but as long as we are together and stay motivated I can see us leaving our jobs oneday and just working for ourselves or in something a little bit more positive!
Ashley – Yeah we have come a long way in a year, i think a few more years of this and the wheels will be greased enough for it to run on its own.
We sat in the back yard of our little house, with potplants all around, our small courtyard this was our little haven now, it is something we are happy to come back to, it reminds us that we can do what we want and as given us confidence.
We are no more skilful than when we started, but to have something that has given us confidence, and from there we feel like we can do so much more. The excitement continues.
Act 3 scene 4: The awkward family gathering
So were are here once again, this akward family gathering, I understand why it is important, but there are little things that I am just so shit at. Taking critisim is one of them. I just get all rhiled up when someone starts poking holes in my lifestyle, why haven’t you done this or that, what is that, and how do you sum up an entire year? Or longer, this is when I find it hard as I have not done a lot, but I am not the happy go lucky indervidual to chat about nothing confidently.
But all that is going to change. So I sit at a table down the end writing names on name tags, but they are all wrong, and I begin handing them out to my cousins. Jess, Robert, Jack, Sammy. I am wearing one that says Bill.
And today I started my story mostly about what I am currently doing,
Then I changed it to chicken farming, then carrot farming, then moss farming, I seem to know a lot about farming today. Just making things up, because I wont see these people for another year and by then no one will remember what I did and will ask me the same questions again. And I see now that it is not about my job or what I do it is about bonding, and carrying on the tradition of exstended family. This is where the real meaning is, so I will have my fun and make it also meaningful. Have my cake and eat it to so to speak!
Sammy came along as she has been to a fair few of these and was not doing anything this Sunday and was up for some free grub and hangouts with my cousins.
Sammy- I am so hungover
Ashley – did you go out last night? No thats right you sat on the front step and got pissed from 10am until after dark.
Sammy – sounds like you are judging me.
Ashley – no just pointing out the obvious. I said with a smile.
Act 4 scene 1: A clean room is a good room
I wake again like any other day, but my head feels clear. I see the mess around me and I want to clean it up I want make this room nice and clean, I put things awak I make a pile for things that I will throw away, strip the bed of my dirty sheets. Cleaning a room is simple but it does something for the mind. There is something about a physical task, taking charge that gives you confidence. To see change in something so easy and reddily. I have hurdles in my life right now but I feel asthough this can help me.
Ashley – ah all done.
I said looking over the room, and a pile of unwanted stuff in the corner. This will all go to the charity shops.
Sammy walks in – oh cool, spring clean what a great start to the day that looks good.
Ashley – I feel like I have been avoiding looking for a job, but this has given me the confidence to submit a resume. And to practice my works as an artist. I know we have our little project but somehow I want to work harder and longer.
Sammy – I don’t quiet understand, what is going through your mind?
Asley – the fogg has cleared and now I want to do more with my life, there is so much eciting things out there and I want to jump on as many things as I can. I want to write, I want to paint, I want to design, I want to make, I want to work, I want to cycle, I want decorate. I want to really use my creativity.
Sammy – Ah I see, I feel the same way though you have a much active goals. I like what we have done with the pot plants and for the moment that is giving me a sense of purpose. That is enough for me. I would be happy doing that for some time longer.
BENT ON LOVE 