I’ve spent three of the past four days in the city but today’s quick trip was less about meeting people and more checking off my to-do.
Today’s jaunt started in SoMa, headed up through the top of the FiDi and into Union Square. And now, I’ve returned home, having done most of my chores in preparation for the new week.
It’s a good day.
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A year ago today, I found myself sitting on the polished floorboards of the King George V Rec Centre tucked underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, clutching at my wrist. We had the last game, 10:30pm or so, and we’d only been playing for a few minutes.
It was still cold — ‘Sydney cold’ — and I had decided to play against the sound advice of my physio who had been treating me for knee and back issues. Little did I know I’d fall awkwardly and end up shattering my wrist in the process, a good enough break to be scheduled for the next available surgery slot.
I broke my wrist in the week leading up to the Brownlow Medal. I was devastated that I wouldn’t be able to participate in the Independent Brownlow Medal Count at work, something I’d loved and revered for years with all the fervour of the newly converted.
But the powers that be relented and I was able to participate. My writing was not up to scratch (even though I’d practiced for hours writing with my left hand), but I was able to help by running to and from the printer. And I appreciated the fuck out of it, just to be a part of it one last time. It was my last hurrah.
The recovery was slow and exceedingly painful. In the weeks following surgery, large sections of my hand were numb, and I was unable to move my thumb for a number of weeks into the schedule of ten weeks intensive, specialised physiotherapy. When I saw the worried look on my physio’s face after my second visit, I let a few tears slide down my cheek. I felt like I’d never recover the use of my right arm. I was defeated.
But my physiotherapist was fantastic. She could see that I was not going to accept my current status, so she gave me extra exercises and rewarded me with praise. Soon, I could touch three of my fingers to my thumb. Then my pinkie to my thumb. And eventually to rotating my wrist like the Queen does when she waves. Just small, incremental improvements eventually led to regaining the function of my wrist and hand.
Now, I’m pretty much back to normal. I am back to learning the cello and being able to do a mean downward dog. The scar (with a slight kink in it) is still a reminder that I have a titanium plate and eight screws in there for the duration of me. But on a deeper level, it’s also there to remind me that hard times may dent and scar your body, but if you persevere, you will triumph. That’s what I’ve decided to take from it.
I shall overcome.
PS: I cannot write this without thanking – albeit belatedly – my family (particularly my sister who drove me to the hospital and worked from my bedside) and the lovely folks at work who were all so helpful and kind to me (especially C). Danke Schoen!
I was beyond tired, the type of fatigue that feels so empty, and your limbs weigh a thousand tonnes. I had been so excited for this trip to Atlanta and now the opportunity was here, yet I was so ambivalent about it. It was odd, because I’d felt nervous before the flight — strange reaction for such an experienced traveller.
Eventually, my colleague P and I arrived safely at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta. Or as the locals called it, Hotlanta. I’d finally made it to the South, something I’d always wanted to do. This was a part of the world where the top sports story on the news was about their college team.
We’d come for a conference, but that didn’t leave any real time for sightseeing. A shame, because Atlanta seems to have a lot to offer.
The conference was great: every available moment was filled with breakout sessions, keynotes, between-sessions networking, arranged events. The only ‘free’ time we had was the hour or two before bed. Busy busy, but good.
I hear next year’s conference looks as though it’ll be in Denver and I’m looking forward to it already. Next time, I’ll build in a few extra days for sightseeing.
I, along with half of the Bay Area, found myself heading to Santa Cruz yesterday at the beginning of the long weekend.
Santa Cruz is a small-ish seaside town that can feel more village-like in places. It sits on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, although it’s considered an outpost of the Bay Area. It’s famous for its Beach Boardwalk (a seaside amusement park that reminds me of those found on the East Coast, like Coney Island) and is also home to the University of California, Santa Cruz.
I just finished reading ‘The Pumpkin Eater’ by Penelope Mortimer. The book holds up well more than fifty years later. She was a fascinating person, too.
Here are some of my favourite passages from the novel:
***
“I have arguments with myself.”
“About what?”
“Between the part of me that believes in things, and the part that doesn’t.”
“And which wins?”
“Sometimes one, sometimes the other.”
***
***
So we were back at the beginning again. There was no end. You learn nothing by hurting others; you only learn by being hurt. Where I had been viable, ignorant, rash and loving I was now an accomplished bitch, creating an emptiness in which my own emptiness might survive. We should have been locked up while it lasted, or allowed to kill each other physically. But if the choice had been given, it would not have been each other we would have killed, it would have been ourselves.
***
***
I seemed to be alone in the world. My past, at last, was over. I had given it up; set it free; sent it back to where it belonged, to fit into other people’s lives. For one’s past grows to a point where it is longer than one’s future , and then it can become too great a burden. I had found, or created, a neutrality between the past that I had lost and the future that I feared: an interminable hour which passed under my feet like the shadow of moving stairs, each stair recurring again and again, flattening to meet the next, a perfect circle of isolation captive between yesterday and tomorrow, between to illusions. Yesterday had never been. Tomorrow would never come.
***
Recently, a yearning for a Sunday adventure took me to one of the most remote parts of the Bay Area: the Point Reyes Lighthouse. I followed in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake who landed at Point Reyes in 1579, albeit in a 20-year-old Honda Accord instead of the ‘Golden Hind‘.
The Point Reyes Lighthouse sits on the western-most point on a peninsula that juts out from the mainland in Marin County. This natural feature, as well as the extreme weather conditions (according to the National Parks Service, Point Reyes is windiest site on the California coast and the second foggiest place on the North American continent), has long made it treacherous for ships sailing in and out of the Bay. So the Point Reyes headlands was the perfect place to build a lighthouse.
I drove for what seemed like an eternity, winding around foggy, desolate landscape, the way I’d always imaged the wild moors of Yorkshire to look like from ‘Wuthering Heights’. I couldn’t see a lighthouse, even when I reached the car park. I found it curious that the lighthouse was not visible at all from the road — any other lighthouse I’d visited was visible for miles, standing tall on a headland. I parked the car, walked a few hundred metres, and suddenly the little huts with red roofing appeared below.
The lighthouse was constructed in 1870, perched on rocks well below the top of the headland. The reason it was built down the incline was due to the thick blanket of fog usually enveloping the coast (particularly in the summer months), and so by building the lighthouse below the natural fogline, it enabled ships a greater chance to see the beacon and thus have a better chance of navigating the waters.
The internal mechanisms of the lighthouse were constructed in France in 1867, and shipped over to the US the long way round – by way of Argentina. The lighthouse station also housed a fog horn that guided ships in addition to the lighthouse. It took a while to construct the lighthouse and associated buildings, and the first official night of operation for the station was December 1, 1870.
Point Reyes is so remote, even in the age of horseless carriages, that moving out here to be a lighthouse keeper certainly would have been an experience. Just a glance at the logs for 1888 reveal incredibly difficult work and long hours. Even though the lamp would only be lit between sun-up and sun-down, the keeper (and his three assistants) would be working around the clock doing all manner of other jobs. They would clean and service the lamps of the lighthouse, make and fix machinery parts, investigate shipwrecks (notably called “barks”), endure bad weather, and plenty of delivering coal, painting and cleaning the lamps of the lighthouse.
The keepers dealt with insubordination and frequent personnel changes. There is evidence in the logs kept by the keeper of assistants refusing to work until sunset, others failing to be diligent about the upkeep of the fog horn, and many going AWOL when they were supposed to be on duty.
Another keeper [from Point Reyes Station], as he was transferred to East Brother Light, made final notation in his log “Returning to USA”.
A log entry, January 30, 1889, read: “The second assistant went crazy and was handed over to the Constable in Olema”. [Source]
It was such a hard, undesirable station to be posted to, yet one keeper loved it so much he ended up staying for 24 years.
In 1975, an automated service replaced the role of the lighthouse keeper. But the horn still echoes out into the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean during the day and into the fog as it rolled into shore in the later afternoon.
Hemmed in by fog, Point Reyes felt like the most remote location I’ve ever experienced.
The Rebecca Project 