Ranting and running around the suburbs
Postcards from Florida
I always feel a little bit sheepish writing again after a particularly fired-up post, like my last one.
I learned from the moment I started writing, when I sent my first fired-up post-breakup piece to my then editor at 22, that we can’t rant all over our readers. We can use our fire to fuel us, we can write passionately and raw, but also writing benefits from a little bit of step-back, and a little bit of introspection.
And also, we can’t self-examine and par-down too much. Sometimes I feel like a lot of my writing these days is rage against the robots, the chat gpt, the perfectly measured and tied-up pieces I’m seeing end over end on here and on instagram. The oppositional part of me wants to chomp at the bit and go even more feral. But at some point I need to also understand that while self expression is lovely, I also want my reader to have a good time along with me while I peel back the layers on this life of mine. I sure don’t want to read pieces of other people with a polite grit-teethed smile like ‘ahhh… should I call someone for this chick?’
But then.
There’s also something a little bit lovely when a woman releases all her fucks and just says what she’s thinking. You’d think after writing every day of my life since I was eight years old I’d probably have a solid grip on it by now. But I suppose not. Sometimes I err too hard to one side, sometimes to the other. I guess that’s the price I pay for being a person and not a robot. AGAIN with the robots. No more robot talk.
We’re still here in Florida and it has been lovely.
What I love about Hugo’s big family is when we say ‘we’re not doing a party this year for Jago, we’re going to take him on a trip instead. More low key. Less of a fuss.’
They go ‘lovely. We will also come and join the less-of-a-fussness.’ So damned if they didn’t all buy flights to Orlando and have been kicking it with us over the last two weeks. Ten people going everywhere together all the time, to the supermarket, to the theme park, to the gas station. When I first started dating Hugo I found the togetherness a little overwhelming, coming from a culture that’s a bit more content to stick to our little boxes and are very careful not to get in the way of anyone, perhaps to our detriment. Now, with a kid, it makes me see it a whole different way, noise and love in every corner and knowing that if anything were ever to happen to me, Jago is far from alone in this world.
My Aussie family is also amazing, but of course because this wayward daughter decided at 22 to start a whole new life on the other side of the planet, they aren’t so accessible. Thank God for FaceTime, but anyway.
A big realisation with living between countries is that no place has it all. I love the culture, the colour, the wildness of Guatemala, I love how being at the meeting point of 3 tectonic plates alongside an active volcano gives this aliveness, this mysticality that reflects something deeply at the core of myself. If fairies exist anywhere it is most certainly in Guatemala. I love the different kind of nature and wildness in Australia, but also the convenience and accessibility and sometimes the predictability of being in a clean suburb near but not too near the city, near the coast, near it all. Orlando, from the one week I’ve been here is clean, beautiful and gorgeous sunsets, and there’s something about being able to go for a run with my headphones on. Because there are actual footpaths and not tiny less-than-a-foot-wide shoulders on the side of the road. Because there’s less fear of a chicken bus screaming up the road and taking me out on a sharp bend. Or getting robbed.
It’s also a lot of stimulus. When I walked into Primark I broke out in a sweat at the sheer amount of cheap clothes on display. Excess in all corners, I saw a cute pair of pants and thought… if I bought ten of these in all different colours, who would stop me? Same in the grocery aisle when I see ten different kinds of dark chocolate salted caramel… I could get them all, who would stop me? Not that anyone would stop me in Guate, and off excess exists everywhere. But being in a huge department store in a giant mall, walking past Tesla robots and sushi trains and clothes store after clothes store- it’s a lot, if you’re used to living in a smaller town, like Antigua is. Even outside Antigua, which is a tourist hub, in one of the shoulder towns which we actually live in.
It makes me think about when I first lived in El Salvador, and “Netflix” was asking the lady in the hut down the road for $3 of internet, or asking tourists to pass me their shows they had downloaded on their laptop onto my USB stick. Now I love my Starling and my Netflix, but there is still no reliable international mail in Guate, so if I want to online shop, it has to be REALLY well thought out. The ordered to a friends house who is arriving in the next months. I literally have a pair of mountain bike pants that I ordered to a friends house in Canada. She is coming in November. I have to wait until November for my pants. No amazon overnight shipping over here.
But I like the pause Guate gives me. If I want it, I really need to justify the purchase. Here, I like the convenience, and I like the opportunity to witness my inner consumer come out, the one who falls for shiny advertisements and packaging, who wants to buy everything, and then has to yank herself at the reigns like ‘woah, Nelly.’ And give myself a lil sugarcube (or salted chocolate) like a horse.
I’m running. I’m not a runner, but I’m going for short lil dainty jogs around the lake. I’m enjoying the late summer sunsets in the suburbs and it distinctly feels like Australia in many ways. We have bought a car, the hunt for the caravan continues, and once we have it we’ll be leaving Hugo’s sister house to set out for the rugged unknown. Or family RV parks lol. We still have’t specifically planned out an itinerary but you can be sure I’ll be sharing it all here, wether it’s ’this-chick-is-going-off-the-rails’ rant or a lovely little reflection on the road.
:)